S1 Ep12: Why Your Employees Don’t Respect You & How To Be A Good Manager - Heather Elkington

We've got a big old problem in management, which is how on earth to manage Gen Z.

So you were first a manager at Harrods.

I was a really bad manager. Avoided every difficult conversation. I was pissed off. I was like angry. I was hurt. I can imagine just did not make people feel safe at all.

What's your biggest leadership pet peeve?

When she was hiring someone, she was actually choosing the person who wasn't as good. She didn't want to see them as competition.

Have you ever had to personally deal with a really challenging employee?

The most difficult conversation I've actually ever had to have was telling someone in the office that they had body odour.

It's actually incredibly common.

We have to stop being nice and start being kind.

What is the biggest leadership mistake you've ever made?

There's a mistake that I have consistently made for the last 10 years. It's a big one for managers as well. There's a mistake that I have consistently made for the last 10 years, still make it, but I'm working really hard not to. And it's a big one for managers as well, which is always jumping in to save and rescue my team. So when things go wrong— and this is a form of micromanagement— when things go wrong, our first instinct is to jump in, fix, save, help. But ultimately, when we bubble wrap our team and don't let them fail and make mistakes, we just create people who have never been through times of hardship or learnt anything. So when we jump in and rescue, we are essentially stealing a learning opportunity away from them. One time I did this that was really bad was one of my— one of the women in my team, she came into work one day and like she had really like dirty trainers on to come and see a client. And it was just a— it was a difficult bit of feedback that I just had to give her that was like, look, on days we see clients, we just need to be clean and presentable. Quick, easy conversation, said Slightly uncomfortable, but where I then jumped in to fix— so that conversation should have just ended there— where I then jumped in to fix was I was like, let me try and find some trainers for you, like let me find leather ones so when they get dirty you can wash them off. And there's been, yeah, so many times in my career where something goes wrong with a team member and instead of just leaving them to figure it out themselves, fix the problem, I just jump in and help and a rescue, essentially.

What's your biggest leadership pet peeve?

Oh, my biggest, biggest leadership pet peeve is definitely— so, and this is— I hate to say this, but this is actually more prominent in women. We have been taught from a very young age that people are competition, like we see people as competition. And in the workplace, there is a lot of leaders who have never, like, done the work to understand and undo this. So let me just give you an example. Like, last week I was working with a business who, they were really struggling with their marketing manager. So the marketing manager had really high turnover of staff, and she was getting really bad feedback, and the HR team had to step in to help. So they were like, we're just gonna have to step in to figure out what was going wrong with this manager. They started looking at how she was hiring, how she was delivering feedback, all the way to like how she was running KPIs. And what they found was what this manager was doing was when she was hiring someone, she was actually choosing the person who wasn't as good as others because she didn't want to see them as competition. So, and she— anyone who was competition and who was really good at their job, she would purposefully hold them back and hide them away from seniors or like giving them any sort of representation in the company. Now it sounds really toxic, but it's so common. Like, this happens so, so often. With managers I speak to daily, whether it's on social media or inside businesses, who they feel threatened by their own team. And it's my biggest pet peeve because ultimately, like, growth is not a competition. There is room for everyone to win. And, you know, success is not a finite resource. But we just have been taught that in order to succeed, we have to hold other people back or step on other people. And it's just through things like the schooling system and the patriarchy that teaches all these things. And when we get into a position of management responsibility, it is now on us to undo those things, whether it's through therapy or just learning through like YouTube videos like I did, um, to really undo those things to make sure they don't hold us back and hold our team back. That's my biggest pet peeve.

Have you ever had to personally deal with a really challenging employee?

Yeah. Oh God, yeah. Um, many times. Like, all the way from the sort of difficult trust issue things. Like, we had a team member years and years ago who was misusing the company card to buy personal things, booking like business class, first class. Oh wow, for personal trips. Yeah, all the way from that. And it becomes first class. Yeah, I know. Just— and you're like, I get my team to travel first class now because I want them to. And I'm like, I want you to— when you arrive at your destination, I want you to feel great about what you're doing. Like, you're traveling away from home to see— to essentially make my business succeed. You're giving up your time. Like, go for it. But back then, the business I was in, like, we couldn't— not only could we not afford it, but like, it just— we were taking like quick train journeys anyway. There was lots of lying, deceit going on. So that was really difficult. The most difficult conversation I've actually ever had to have was telling someone in the office that they had body odour. Like really difficult one. How do you even begin to start there? You know, it's like everyone's biggest fear, having to tell someone that. But someone had to do it. He— this person was a manager, um, and he was about to have a new member of staff start the next day. And in my head I was like, if I don't tell him, this person that joins his team, he is going to be undermined in front of— it's going to be difficult for them. So I was like, I have to just tell him now. Just took him into the kitchen and I was like, look, I've noticed you smell, like body odour. I think I prefaced it by saying like, this is going to be an uncomfortable conversation, are you happy for me to have it now? And just told him straight. And at first he was like shocked, a bit upset, a bit angry, but then he went home that day, spoke to his partner, and there was just something like really simple in the way they were washing clothes, and he came back to me and he was like, Heather, we've literally fixed it overnight, like thank you for telling me. And it's those kind of conversations now that I have positive evidence over time of when you just deal with those problems as quickly as possible, it does get better, it does get fixed. Even if it's having to go all the way up to letting someone go, like we did with the person who was using the business credit card. Even if it's all the way up to those things, to letting people go, like we still have to solve that problem as soon as possible. Yeah.

I'd say the body odor one in all the companies I've run for years now, I find like there's a specific age when like guys have moved out of home and they're living like on their own or with friends. And I would say it's actually incredibly common, like the amount of times I've had to be like, probably not gonna love what I'm gonna say, but unfortunately like you have really bad BO at work, like it's, it's worth looking at. I couldn't tell you how many times.

Yeah.

Like so, so many times.

And so many people listening to this will have avoided those conversations.

Yeah.

When we are in a position of leadership responsibility, we no longer get that luxury. Like, we can no longer avoid conflict and difficult conversation. If you do, you will be sort of like riding through management for the rest of your life. You will never excel. You will never become the leader that people respect and look up to. And yeah, this is— we get the bigger paychecks because we have to have those conversations. It's tough but needed.

I feel like it's a bit like if someone has something in their teeth. I feel like my, my leadership these days, I would say, is I will give someone feedback almost immediately. And I feel like because I've done it for a long time, I don't fear it like I used to fear it, like saying something that might upset someone. Actually, in the context of saying something that might upset someone, you're doing them a favor in that you're helping them move past something quicker. But I think if you bottle up that stuff. For example, in the body odour situation, if you left it 6 months and that person had had bad body odour for 6 months, they would be, like it or not, branded as that internally, and that would just be such a bad outcome for them.

Yeah, so tough. Yeah, the way I see it now is we have to stop being nice and start being kind. So we've been taught from a very young age to be nice, to put our hand up, to sit in line, like not rock the boat. And if you Google the word nice, the definition of nice is agreeable, satisfactory. It's very comfortable. It's all like very comfortable words. If you Google the word kind, it feels the same and it feels like we're being the same kind of person, but it's just a slightly different definition in that kind is helpful, generous, and caring. So it's just a slightly different way of looking at a certain situation. And if I was to say to you like, Um, so I've got a story of when we— so I used to work for a small business. I was the second member of staff at a business called GoProposal. We were an accounting tech company.

And were you the number 2 employee after the founder?

No, number 2. So there was a guy called Jack first and then me.

Wow.

James is the founder, then Jack, then me. Um, and we built that business really fast, had no investment, bootstrapped. It was an incredible story, like piece of software for accountants. We built a great community. It did so well. In 2021, so I'd been working in the business for 4 years, we sold the business to Sage. So a few million pound in revenue, small software tech company sold to a £2 billion corporate. And if anyone has been through like an M&A process before where you sell a small company to a big one, something we had to do to prove the company was as valuable as possible was to prove that the founder wasn't the only reason the business was successful. So at the time, the marketing was very hinged on James, the founder's face. So like, we'd use him for videos, courses, and he was the sales machine, you know. And we had to prove that when we sold it, that we could remove James from that process. So that's where I had to step in for about a year. I built out this process called Kill the King, which we all loved, where we were just like, for a whole year, we were prying everything from James's hand. So I was ops director, so we were building loads of systems to like take things away from him. And then when we came to the sales process, we, in order to prove that again, I had to do a lot of the presentations. The due diligence was on me. And there was this one scenario where, so Sage's office is in the top of the Shard. It's beautiful office boardroom overlooking the whole of London. And I was doing this presentation, tens of millions of pounds at stake for this deal. And the night before I was practicing, I was so nervous, pacing up and down my hotel room, like, need to say every single word right. So, so nervous, terrified. The biggest deal I've ever been a part of and probably will be for a very long time. So we get into this boardroom, stand up, deliver the presentation, finish, and I'm like, I think I've smashed that. Absolutely smashed that out of the park. Step out of the room and James takes me to the side and he goes, Heather, I just need to give you some feedback. You speak way too fast and I can't understand what you're saying. And I was like, fuck. I was pissed off. I was like angry. I was hurt. I was annoyed. I was like, I'm selling this guy's business and he gives me this now. So I was annoyed in the moment. Went to the hotel room that evening and I was just like, right, let's really understand what's going on here. So if you ask YouTube or a therapist why you speak so fast, you will find the answer that is you don't have confidence in your own voice and so you rush through things because you think you're boring people. Mm. So I went on this real journey over the next few years of how do I find confidence in my voice. I started signing up for like public speaking tests where you— I don't know if anyone's ever— you go to those like little rooms where everyone does a 5-minute pitch and you start to learn confidence in your voice. Eventually I started going to conferences and doing like small speaking gigs on stages in front of 30, 40 people. And then in 2023, I started posting videos on TikTok. Just articulating all the things we were doing in leadership to really build, um, the business and make it incredible. And today I get to sit on podcasts like this with incredible people like you. I get to stand on stages like the TEDx one.

Yeah.

Um, you know, just last week stand on stage at Sony Music, and it's like potentially none of that may have happened if I didn't go on that journey of finding confidence in my voice. So the feedback that James gave me even though it hurt me, even though it pissed me off, I needed to hear it. It was the kind thing for him to do in that moment. And I've actually had the conversation with him since to just explain, like, do you know how much impact that had on me? And he was like, yeah, and that's why I did it, because I could see the potential in you. I didn't tell you because I don't like you or I'm annoyed. I told you because I could see your potential and how much growth opportunity you had. And so I just needed to give over that information even though it was difficult. So I say to people now is you have to stop being nice. Being nice is comfortable. It's working for instant approval. It's working for making today as easy as possible. Being kind, on the other hand, is saying, I'm happy for instant discomfort. I'm happy knowing that what I'm about to say is gonna cause some friction. Yeah, it's gonna be difficult. But it's going to make tomorrow easier and it's actually going to grow whoever I give this feedback to. So yeah, it's just— that's it now, is stop being nice, start being kind. And I think of that every time.

That is some great advice. Over the years I was thinking, so I started as a manager at 21 because I started my own business at 21. I had had businesses before that but never really had full-time staff and was a very bad manager to begin with, definitely. As the years went on, I think became a very good and intentional leader and give people very quick feedback back. I have had such hard conversations, as in so much friction in those conversations, to the point where people have left over things I've said before. However, now that I've been doing this for 15 years, so many of those people that left have messaged me since being like, I, I hate how I acted at the time, I kind of needed to hear that then.

Yeah, and it's like, best thing that happened.

Yeah, it's nice that I suppose can come around. I mean, that's not always the case. I'm sure some people I've let go, really don't like me, but that is unfortunately the way of it. So you were first a manager at Harrods, is that right? And so how did that— how did you end up in a management position?

Yeah, so again, manager at 21, same. Um, so I'd— I was a workaholic from a very young age. Like, at the age of, I think, 15/16, I was working 3 jobs.

That's probably why I was so successful.

I was just a workaholic. I don't know where it came from. And I just, I remember this need for money, like, just like, I need to be able to, you know, like, pay for my driving lessons as soon as possible. And I was the youngest in my school year, so I was like, as soon as I turn 17, I want to be able to do one of those crash courses. So I was saving up, um, did 3 jobs, one of them being— I don't know if any, if anyone listening had Pasta King at school. Did you ever have Pasta King? No. Right, some people listening will remember Pasta King. So Pasta King was like basically this stall where 2 people would— you'd get like really watery.

Did I to let off that I'm from the South, wasn't it?

Or privately educated. That's what I was like, I'm not gonna say it, but I think Pasta King was a thing in state schools, right? Anyway, it was like really watery pasta and you just put like tomato sauce in it. It was shit, but I basically gave up lunchtime at school to be Pasta King or Pasta Queen, whatever you want to call it. £7 an hour I got, which was really a lot back then.

That's amazing.

I know. So I was working 3 jobs, then when I went to uni, which is— this is an important story actually. I did a business management degree at uni, taught me nothing. Like, you would think business management— now I own a business, I have managed many businesses.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I could not have learned less in 3 years doing a business management degree.

And you obviously were at the time where the fees went up, £9 grand.

Oh God, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We didn't have that.

Yeah, don't I know about it. So 3 jobs while I was at school, then I did A-levels, and I just had like supervisor jobs. So supervisor in like retail, Holland Barrett, um, some bars, like just loads of random jobs, but enough that when I left uni I could make my CV look really good, like enough of these supervisor retail things. So my first job, I was an assistant manager on the Harrods shop floor, managing a small team of 8 people. I was a really bad manager, like Avoided every difficult conversation.

Yeah.

Um, made— I, I can imagine just did not make people feel safe at all. Micromanagement to a T, like controlled everything. Felt as though if I was in control, it would be better. Um, and I just really disliked my job as well. Like, there's actually quite a lot in the news now about Harrods leadership and how difficult it was. I was there at that time, and it was a place where you didn't feel safe at all because not physically, physically you felt safe, but mentally, you know, like I would come into work and you have to walk through like an airport security scanners, you can only have things in clear bags. I had to wear a specific dress that I would get pulled up if it's not ironed properly, you get sent home. If your hair's not done up properly, you get sent home. Like one day my manager came in, was like, Heather, just need to speak to you a second. 'You've got a hair out of place there.' And I was like, 'What?' Like, and coming from Doncaster— I'm from a place called Doncaster, right?

I know, you know.

Yeah, I don't know why you would, but anyway, you know, this is just not a world that I am used to. The level of money, strictness— I'm just not used to it. So yeah, I was at Harrods, um, I didn't last long. I was there for about 8 or 9 months, and then I called my mum on the bus home one day and I was like, I'm done, I'm not doing this anymore. Um, but what Harrods really taught me was, I guess, how not to create a workplace. Like, I felt so unsafe while I was there. I would get on the bus every single morning looking at my watch like, only 9 more hours and I'm free. Constantly worried about my appearance, about saying the wrong thing to a customer, about making one tiny wrong move. And it just made me like a shell of a human being. I am a great worker, like I am someone who put 120% into absolutely everything. That workplace shrunk me, like, and what it taught me was just it's the wrong environment. If you want to get the best out of people, you need to create an environment that is the direct opposite of what was happening there.

And so what was the next step for your career after that? How did you— I mean, obviously nowadays we will see you online incredible videos, like incredible, you know, advice, and, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers. Like, what was the journey from Harrods to now?

Yeah, so I worked— I moved into— I got the first job I could possibly find. So it was an EA role, executive assistant, which is similar to a PA, but you kind of just work for more directors than just one. So I got an EA role in a very small music marketing agency kind of in the tech world, and had no management responsibility, but I sat directly next to the founder and CEO. So I got to see his inbox, his calendar, and speak to clients, like sit in meetings taking minutes. And it was there that like my business acumen really started to come through because I would just see the life of what it took to build and run and scale a company. Um, he— we went through an investment round, um, oh God, we would, you know, we'd be going to gigs, we'd be like running meetings across London, like it was just fab. It was fast, it was busy, but I just learned so much. But then I moved back up to Manchester. So I was in London for 2 years after uni, moved back up to Manchester because my partner at the time got a job up in Manchester, and I was like, right, what am I gonna do now? Fresh start. So I um, got a job in— this was at GoProposal, so I was the second member of staff in GoProposal. And at first I was kind of employed, it was kind of EA with a bit of marketing in it. And just because the business grew so quickly, there was so much opportunity for everyone inside that business to grow with it. So every one of us, you know, went on. We started off at— I was the second member of staff. By the time we sold it to Sage, I think we had 30 members of staff. We were very lean as a company, so like we grew quickly, but We weren't just employing people for the sake of it because we didn't have investment. And everyone within that business really had the opportunity to just like take their role and run with it. And I moved through to marketing manager, ran a small marketing team, and then eventually into the ops director position when we were kind of going through that sales process. And so I think what's— there's two things that have led me to being right here right now doing what I do. One of them just being marketing, like the psychology and the emotion that goes into marketing and the systems that sit behind it are what gave me the confidence to start my own business. And just understanding the world of like data and social media and how to create content and write hooks and like write emails and build lists and nurture, all of that, knowing that like when I eventually make the jump I know how to build all those things. But secondly, while I was at Sage, so Sage bought GrowProposal for a few reasons. One of the reasons being their product. So we had a really brilliant product. Another reason was because of the culture that we'd built. So like we had a really agile, like scrappy startup tech culture and Sage being this big corporate giant obviously wanted to like bring a bit of that into their world. So when we joined Sage, we started doing— and anyone who works in corporate will know this— we, we did like 6 monthly surveys where you ask— you get asked questions about management, about how much you believe in the vision, how you feel about your job. And there's these big surveys that go around all— I think we had like 11 or 12,000 employees— that go around all the employees and everyone answers them. And then managers get like scored and graded and you have one-on-ones because of it. We did that twice, and my scores came back some of the best across the globe in Sage for, like, leadership and management.

Wow. So how old are you at the time?

26, maybe 27. And the learning and development, um, team very quickly reached out to me and was like, how are you doing this? Like, can you help create some workshops? Can you teach people within Sage what you're doing? So the first thing I did was start running workshops with like our aspiring management group. So I would talk to these groups of juniors who were looking to get into management roles and start to understand their challenges and help coach them through that process. And then eventually would start running sessions with seniors. And Sage sent me all across the world. We went to Vancouver, LA, up and down the UK running these management workshops. That's when I started posting on TikTok. So I was like, if people like this internally, I'm just going to start sharing these ideas online. Started sharing them, and I think I've posted my first video in February 2023. By—

wow.

Yeah, so by July of 2023, and I only did TikTok at this point, so there was— Instagram wasn't— I didn't have Instagram, or I did but only personally. Um, so start posting February 2023, and by July I'd built up a following that was big enough to leave and to kind of like create a business out of it. I did have full transparency I did have some money from the sale of Grow Proposal to Sage as well, so that gave me a bit of like, I've got a salary for, you know, the best part of a year, like I'm okay. Um, and yeah, and then left, did a bit of traveling, and then set up Fresh Leadership World fully in August 2024.

I think there's some really good lessons there for, uh, people listening, which is— and Daniel Priestley says this a lot— which is at the beginning of your journey, you should try and go and work for an entrepreneur and just walk in their shadow, which it sounds like you kind of accidentally and purposefully did, and it resulted in just being so close to the action that you get to see everything, like how everything in the business works. And, you know, I don't know because I'm, you know, it's not something I would ask, but in so many of those roles, the, the pay and the outcome for that specific role it's probably never perfect, but a year after doing it, your skill set is about 10 times what it was before. And as proof of you, you know, sitting here now, your journey has been incredible. And probably so much of that is what you learned in that— those crazy years of, you know, doing that role.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I would— PA is my favourite position in the world. And, you know, I think it's so underestimated But seeing in corporate, you know, you can have a PA, which in corporate there's a different term which is chief of staff. So like the CEOs, the C-suite people will have a chief of staff, which is one of the best roles to be in because you just, you get to see everything, you get to learn. And if you're, I am literally a learning sponge. Like I got really sad when I left school because I couldn't learn anymore. I know, I'm freaked. I was like, I just loved learning. Reading textbooks.

We were so different.

I know, I know. I'm sorry.

It's like, get me out of here.

I know. So I don't, yeah, I think most people were the same, but like, I just loved learning. And so when I was in these roles, I was just like a sponge. I was like, why did you do that? Why has he worded that email that way? And you know, when we went through that first investment round in the marketing agency, I had no idea what an investment round was. People were saying like seed, round A, whatever it is. Series A. And I'm like, what does this all mean? So I'll just go home from work and just watch every YouTube video I possibly could about investment rounds. And very quickly, like, if you want to, you can learn it. Yeah, you can. You know, one year's experience in a company for some people could be the same as 5 years for other people, and the difference is just how much are you willing to learn and soak in. And I still do that to this day, as you know, because when we got here, I just fired a million questions at you.

It was fascinating. I mean, I suppose for people listening then, so what was the— you left Sage and you went out on your own, you had some money built up from the sale of the company, so you sort of thought to yourself, I have a year. And what was the business at the time? What was the, the idea, the plan? I mean, obviously it's become this incredible thing, but what was like the day one thinking?

I want to build a world where everyone loves the work they do. So I have seen 2 stark differences in my experiences. I have seen a world where everyone is scared, anxious, Sunday scaries, looking at their watch thinking, when can I go home? And I have also seen a world that is— work is safe, it's exciting, people can use whatever drive and passion they have, they can put in 120%, and it's reciprocated, you know, like the company gives that back in pay and just skill, um, improvements and like just passion and energy. And me as a human being, the difference in who I was, how I showed up for myself, like it was just tenfold in difference. Like when I was the person who was in that job that I hated and didn't add to my life, I just didn't look after myself. I would drink all the time, I wouldn't barely sleep, like I was just shit. I just did not look after me, who I was, my mental health in any way, shape, or form. Fast forward just a few short years, built, working in a business that the team just had this huge level of mutual respect and energy and were free to like be innovative and try new things. I started going to the gym, I started eating healthily, I started like investing in relationships with family and friends, setting boundaries. Sleeping 8 hours a night. And it's just the stark difference in what work can do for your life is mental. And I am human proof of that. And I just see this vision where— because ultimately this version, so the version where people love what they do, don't feel anxious, benefits the business as well. They are the businesses that outrun every other, that are sustainable, that have low staff turnover. You can keep lean because you don't need to constantly replace people. You're not trying to fix problems all the time. And you can stay innovative because people are experimenting. The founder isn't stressed to hell because they know they trust their team. So it benefits everyone. Yet we still have businesses that are just obsessed with control and keeping people down and like competition. And so the vision that I have is to get every business over here. And for me, that really starts with management. It just starts with leaders in any capacity, letting go of control, trusting people, and just learning the tools and systems that really help everyone to thrive and succeed in the workplace. And so yeah, so that was my vision. So I start— I started out with nothing but that as a vision, and I was like, I don't know how I will get there. The word— the words— the words fresh— the word fresh came from like Every time I was asking people, because at the beginning I had no idea what I wanted the brand to be, what it was called, anything. So business is called Fresh Leadership World. I had no idea what I wanted the brand to be. And every time I asked my people, like my audience, you know, what do you get from me that you don't get from anywhere else? Like, what are you seeing from my work that you can't get anywhere else? And the two words that came up were refreshing and practical. So like, it's just refreshing to see, and it's such practical advice. So I was like, Right, let's just use their own words. So it's Fresh, Fresh Leadership World, and the word world came from this idea that like, one, the business is going to be an ecosystem, it's going to be education, it's going to be digital products, it's going to be software, it's going to be consultancy, everything. But also the fact that like, we want this to happen across the whole world, not just the rich Western world. And so Like I went out to India last year to just really understand, you know, like what does the world look like? What's more of a, what are we talking about when we start to go to these different places, these different economies where India, we know has some of the, just it gives us, we, some of the smartest people in the entire world and they're building incredible businesses out there, but, you know, still with different leadership principles. So I just wanted to go and understand and learn from people And so yeah, that's where it came from.

One of the things I've seen of yours is the TAPES framework. Can you talk us through that? What is that as a framework? What does it help with?

Yeah, we've got a big old problem in management, which is how on earth to manage Gen Z. Um, I get questions.

Are you Gen Z?

Um, technically not. If you ask me on a day that I want to be, depending on what article you look at. But no, we'll go with no.

What's the, what's the age bracket for Gen Z?

So I think it's 1996 and I'm 1995. Okay, so technically no, but it depends what—

so what are you, a millennial?

Yeah, by one year. Yes, a millennial by one year.

There you go.

Zillennial, I like to call it. No, I'm firmly millennial, let's leave it there. Um, Gen Z are essentially the people who are in the workplace who didn't really know the workplace before COVID so A lot of us listening, you and I sat in this room, will remember the workplace when it was 5 days a week in the office. It wasn't even a question, like the work from home wasn't even considered. Um, Gen Z generally are the people who COVID happened for them as they were either entering the workforce at university, at school, so that by the time they got there, work from home was a given. It wasn't a— yeah, yeah, you know, it was almost seen as a right. So the TAPES framework was my way of understanding how to get the best out of our Gen Z employees, how we can serve them as best possible, how we can create these environments where they feel safe to experiment, fail, etc. But we need a bit of a shift from what we've been used to. And so in order to understand Gen Z and what they need and how we get the best from them we have to understand the world that they grew up in, which was, um, work from home. It was, you know, I think the average adult spends now 4 to 7 hours a day on their phone.

4 to 7 hours a day screen time?

Screen time, yeah.

Well, I mean, I must do something like that because it's my job, but I don't know. I mean, that's a scary, scary statistic.

It is. But yeah, it's real. And you know, some weeks Some weeks mine's really low if I'm busy, but some weeks it's really high. Like if I'm traveling a lot, I'm just scrolling. And so, um, yeah, in order to understand Gen Z, we have to understand the world they grow up in. 4 to 7 hours a day is spent on their phones. It's scrolling. It's— they interact with friends through social media, through gaming, through all these different mediums that are digital. And so one thing that comes alongside that is the fact that their social interactions, the majority of their social interactions, are filtered So it's through a lens of whether it's like an actual filter on social media or just people giving off their highlight reels, the best version of what they're doing. So that's the world they grew up in. What that means for us is the trust is gone. So like people just assume that there is a filter or there is a blocker, there is some sort of like facade up. And so the TAPES framework, the first step is the T, which is transparency. If you want to really overcome that in your Gen Z team and help them to see that, um, they can trust you, can trust your business, they can open up to you, you have to be as transparent as possible. And now Netflix, very famously, they place a lot of importance on a move they made about 10 years ago. So they said this was so important that they wrote— they actually wrote a book on it called No Rules Rules. If you've not read it, I would highly recommend. It's all about Netflix and their culture. Something they did was they opened the books. So overnight they gave every employee in the business access to the P&L, to all the financial data, to new customers coming in, new customers going out. They start to treat people as like entrepreneurs, just really trust them, open up the books, be as transparent as possible. And they cite that as one of the most important culture moves that they ever made. And now it's just to show that we have to be transparent. So that's the first thing. So if you think in your business, in your team, what you hiding? Because they will know, you know, like how can you give them more access to information? How can you help to explain processes, explain why we do things? The next one is authenticity. It kind of leads really nicely on from, um, transparency because it's one in the same in that If you imagine everything we have been taught about the workplace is like telephone voice, you've got to dress a certain way, maybe you've got to wear makeup, you've got to do your hair a certain way. Like, if you just go back to Harrods, my hair had to look a certain way, I had to have an ironed dress, we have to wear uniforms. School, you know, we've got to put our hand up, stay in line. By default, people entering the workforce no longer trust leadership. And that comes from politics as well. Like, we just have lost so much trust in leadership in general. And so as a leader, the way you undo that and get your Gen Z team to really trust you, and therefore when you come up with new initiatives or change things, to trust you and be on that journey with you, you have to be authentic. And what I mean is, like, for me, that comes from just admitting when I've made a mistake. Or like being willing to show parts of my personality that maybe I would have hidden in the past. You know, like I'm a messy person, I spill coffee and stuff all the time. So I was like, I'm just gonna show my team that I'm not gonna like hide away from the bits about me that are a bit messy and quirky. And so, yeah, just open that up. A really quick way you can do this, I think this is really helpful for women is just like have period products in the office 'cause it just opens up a conversation. It's like authentic, you know, we all deal with that stuff. But for decades in offices, we just hide it away. It's like, don't talk about it, hide it away, put your tampon up your sleeve. But it's a really fast way in an office environment to just be like, no, this is who we are. So authenticity. Next, we've got progression. So in order for your team to be motivated, the word motivate comes from the Latin stem word, which is motivus, which just means to be moving forward. So in order for any team to be motivated, you just need them to be moving forward in something. Now, ideally, that's the big stuff— the pay rises, the responsibility, etc. It's not always possible. So if it's not possible, just what are we moving them forward in? Is it we're getting them to set up new systems? We're upskilling them in certain ways? We are, I don't know, showing them like the vision of what their role could look like? They have to see a forward. So when your team are stuck in the day-to-day ticking off tasks, doing the mundane, that's when they're going to get unmotivated. E is elastic. So this is just making sure— this goes to the work from home, work from the office policies. Like, you can— we can all be people who say the office is important, it's good for collaboration. I agree, my team come into the office 2 days a week, but you have to have movement on that. The more you put restrictions and guidelines in place, the more these people will rebel. A really important thing to note here is that we now live in the gig economy. So the gig economy being, you can book— you can get an Uber. If your employee wants to pick up some extra driving shifts, they could just download Uber and become a driver. If they want to rent out the spare room, make some money there, they can just put it on Airbnb. Like, the barriers to entry for entrepreneurialism is so low that we no longer rely on full-time salaries, and this is going to keep getting bigger and bigger as the years go on. We no longer rely as much on our full-time salary. Freelance, you can pick up gigs on Fiverr. Like, if you're a graphic designer, you most— you know, you don't need a full-time graphic design job. You can just put a profile up on Fiverr, get a couple of good reviews, and you've got a constant stream of people coming to you to buy a product. So we have to create elasticity in our guidelines, because if we don't, people will just rebel. They will just leave. And then the last one is safety. Safety is literally just a basic need of human beings. If you look at like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, safety is the second the bottom. If people don't feel safe to— and by safety, like, we talk about psychological safety a lot, but by safety we just mean they can make a suggestion, experiment with something, try something new, not hit a KPI without fear of being vilified, being judged, being, you know, without fear of feeling stupid. We have to create that environment, and it starts with you as a manager. In that you show when you make your mistakes, you show when you're not perfect, you come up with silly ideas, you know, that, and just be like, this might not work, but let's just go with it. So that's the framework that I have been using for a good few years now that really works. So when I was talking about those feedback scores with Sage and kind of keeping the team happy, most of my team were Gen Z, a lot of them were Gen Z, and that's what was working with them. So that's when I pulled it together and I was like, because when the leadership development team came to me, they were like, you know, how do we keep the juniors happy, the people who have just joined the business? They were trying to get people to come back into the office. As with every other company, people were pushing back on it. And I was like, let's try and figure some things out and pull together like the grounding principles of management that are going to really help us with this new generation of the workforce.

I feel like there's a hesitation to be very honest about your expectations with Gen Z from a fear standpoint that they will leave. But I think that good businesses and good managers have to accept the fact that people may leave. And so I feel like with my businesses nowadays, I would always just say to people, I would want you in the office 2 or 3 days a week. We are a fast-paced company. We will work hard here. I will pay you more than you're paid elsewhere. 'But I will expect that you will work incredibly hard here, and if you're not hitting the targets and expectations of the company, probably will give you a warning, and then I probably will let you go. At no point will I be not nice, at no point will I not be polite, but the expectation is very clear here. I'll treat you like an adult, and I would hope that you treat the company with respect.' And I feel like, in a weird sense, that clarity is actually what they want. They want to be given the clarity around the expectation, the behavior, and so forth. And I would say the same thing, like, I'm a little bit older than you, but I feel like my experience of work at the beginning of my career, there were loads of negatives to it, but some of the managers I had were like brutally transparent. I mean, horribly so, but brutally transparent about their expectation. But I sort of knew the boundaries. And that gave me clarity around the role. And I think people are a bit scared to say that stuff.

Yeah, for sure, definitely. And I think, you know, this is where I love to geek out about core values. Do you have core values in your business?

My business is only— what are we on now? February. Started in July, so I haven't really got around to it yet. But I would say like being honest and being open is pretty abundantly clear where we work.

Yeah, it is. But core values can be really good to, one, attract the right people, but to repel the wrong people. And so one of the core values we had in GoProposal— and I had core— I have core values about it all the time. I'd love to geek out on them because it just helps me to, like, in times where I feel stuck on a decision, it just helps to guide me. And one of the core values we had at GoProposal was better than yesterday.

It's a good one.

It was a great one, and it was all around that the education we did on it was, it was just learning, this culture of learning. Like, we wanted people who, if you were a social media manager, you were obsessed with social media. Like, and every day you were learning about the trends and algorithms and understanding how that worked. And we would make that so clear in job ads and be like, this is a core value of ours, this is what we expect. And a lot of people that see that would go, oh, fuck that. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm not— that's not me. I'm not looking for that life. That's hard.

But then the people who see it are like, fuck yes, like, yeah, give it to me.

Yeah, give it to me. And so this is why I love geeking out about core values, because I'm— it's just a way of finding people who have those same things in their heart and the way that they want to, like, lead.

Um, we had, um, my last company was still rocking and rolling now. It's a company called Lottie. My brother and I set it up. My wife is the head of product there. And one of our values was just be kind. And actually, like, it was the perfect fit for that business because you want the best people in the industry, but you also want the best people in industry who are really kind-hearted because you work with elderly people. And so that company is now 100 people and I like a very successful company, etc., etc. However, It is the nicest place in the world to work. And recently they had— and I obviously never name any names— but recently they had a very senior team member join the company, and they were like a different cut, you know. They were just a different, you know, they weren't particularly kind, and they honestly lasted a month. Everyone was like, no, no, we're all really good at our jobs, but we're also really, really nice. That's what we do here.

Kind, not nice.

Not nice. And it does. It filters out very, very well. And I would say in a weird sense, like, this, this new business of mine is different and is still finding its feet, but I feel like in some ways the values are emerging from the founding team, and I would love to codify them at some point. So maybe I'll, I'll get your advice on that.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I've just run a core values project with Sony Music. That's why they brought me in. And it's called— I honestly could geek out on core values for years, but it's like having these defining behaviors that we want diversity of thought in every single which way possible, like background, education, skill set, every single which way we want diversity except for the guiding values. And that's the own— that's the thing that connects us all, you know, at heart. And a lot of companies will have them, put them up on a wall, they look pretty, but they never actually use them. But it's a really great way to, you know, like when you say, you know, I've got this person in the team who the performance is okay, but I just can't put my foot— maybe you don't trust them, or you have to— when you delegate stuff, like you have to keep looking back over your shoulder and you can't quite figure out why. That's where core values come in, because you're like, okay, which of these behaviors are they not living up to? Because it must be one of them, because that's the reason why it doesn't feel right. And it just helps us to explain the unexplainable. It helps us to like give logic to the emotion that is human beings and the complexity of human beings.

It's a great, great bit of advice that for founders and managers in general is like— in my first company Verb, we got to 100 staff or something, and but it was an agency, and agency turnovers is so big, you know, just the nature is, you know, the— it's very hard for companies to like differentiate themselves. Agencies are quite similar, and we were luxury focused, so we had a differentiation to an extent But our core values, the minute we put them in, our retention rate went up by like 30%. And within a few months, we had stopped losing people. And it's because we armed all the managers with, do your one-on-ones via the core values. And it had such an impact. I had— I used to work with this amazing lady called Lara who joined my business when we were like full chaos. I was like 25. We were making millions working with like top brands, but it chaos. Like, everyone was always at the pub. Like, it was just a chaos. Anyway, this lady Lara joined, and obviously Ben Askins is my old business partner. And so it was me. Yeah, he's the best guy. I feel like I talk— I was at Number 10 with him yesterday morning. Yeah, it was absolutely wild. And I didn't know he was going, so like, I walked into the room late as always, and I turned across the table and I see Ben Askins sitting across the table. I burst out laughing. And you know, Rachel Reeves there, Keir Starmer. That's hilarious. Anyway, Lara, um, joined, and the first thing she did was she was like, you almost don't know why you want to let go a variety of people, and you don't know what it is that you're looking for in your new people. And it was like, we made this really beautiful navy blue— was our color, um, like employee handbook with values on the front, and it made the world of difference.

Yeah, I could tell you story and story. Like, one of the biggest ones is Microsoft. So 2014, Microsoft were in trouble. They were in big trouble. So 2014 was the year that Apple dominated. Apple had existed for decades before 2014, but 2014, the reason Apple dominated that year was we moved from pay-as-you-go to contracts in phones, which meant that a $1,000 iPhone that was already quite inaccessible to most people suddenly became actually quite accessible. And everyone wanted the iPhone. So 2014 was— and like Apple had run this thing in schools where they were giving schools free, free Macs. There were like these big chunky computers so that when the kids left school they were addicted. I was one of those kids. So I left school, everyone wanted an like an Apple laptop, every MacBook, every single person wanted one. So 2014, Microsoft were in real trouble and Microsoft had kind of like coasted for a few decades because they were the only player, like they were the big player, and they had a culture of know-it-all. So there were some very clever tech gurus that worked within Microsoft, and they were unwilling to accept that they may be wrong. And they started bringing out products where the customers didn't actually want them. So one of the big, like, famous marketing analogies is Microsoft and Android would create products and sell features So they would sell like a 25-megapixel camera, whereas Apple were selling, you know, you can take amazing photos of your family and you can have like an album in your pocket. And Microsoft were just unwilling to change the way that they'd done things. They started building products that the customers didn't even want. They were just building them because they looked smart, they looked clever. So 2014, Microsoft were really struggling. They brought in a new CEO, a guy called Satya Nadella. Is still, still the CEO to this day. Um, and the first thing he did was not product related, it wasn't like finance related, tech related. He got the core values because Microsoft already had them, they just didn't really use them, shook them up, started using them himself, and then expected every single person in the team to start using them. Now if you look at Microsoft's share price in 24 between the years of like 20— 20— 2000 to 2014, it's kind of like this. If you look at kind of 2016 onwards, it literally goes like that. And it was because Satya Nadella came in and he started saying, we are no longer having people in the team who do not live up to these core values. One of the big values they had was empathy. And what they realized was they were making all these products just to look good, to look cool, And overnight, Satya Nadella was like, no, we are making products for our customers. We need to understand them, get in their shoes, what do they want, have empathy with them, and make products for them, and not just what's going to make us look good when we're stood on like a stage delivering them to an audience. And so it's just another massive example of how a business has used core values behind the scenes to essentially stay and survive. And I think, you know, Microsoft and Apple is— and Alphabet, I think, are still the biggest companies in the world and will continue to be for a very long time. And yeah, just example after example of that happening in businesses.

So what does a, what does a great manager's day actually look like? What are they filling their day with?

Oh, the big question. Um, the first thing all great managers do— so I have had the absolute honor now of working with FTSE 100 CEOs, multi-million pound business builders. I even worked with the guy who built Microsoft Excel. He was the CTO at Sage. Very impressive guy, I know. So he built, him and his team built Microsoft Excel a few decades ago. And I started really like observing, like I was saying, just learning, understanding what are these people spending their day doing. And I started like writing them down, putting them into practice in my own work. And there is a few key things that all these great leaders are really spending their days focused on. The first one is systemization. So just every single thing that they do, they don't go, what is this problem? And this is actually a Daniel Priestley quote: it's not a problem, it's an asset deficiency. So it's like, this thing is not a problem that I need to solve and get involved in, it's a deficiency of a system. Like, you know, why is this client ringing us up pissed off? We're not solving this problem, we're not ringing the client back and fixing it. How do we make sure this never happens again? What process got dropped? What, what needs putting in place? And they are like prying their time away from working in the day-to-day. They're not saying yes to all the crappy bullshit meeting invites that they get. They're prying themselves away to focus on systemising every single corner of their operational remit. The second thing is delegation. So the greatest managers, like the FTSE 100 CEO that I spoke about, it's called Steve Hare, CEO of Sage, still CEO to this day, great guy. He said to me once, um, I think I had like one question to ask him, and I'd heard that he was really good with decision-making. So someone else had told me about decision-making. So I said, I asked him, how do you make great decisions? Like, what, you know, how are you making all these great decisions as a CEO? Like, CEO of FTSE 100, this guy's earning millions and millions a year. How do you make great decisions? And he said, I don't make decisions. He's like, that's why I hire people. And anytime anyone came to him with a decision, he would just push it back on them and be like, 'I hire you to answer this question.' Um, and it's just this idea of like fiercely delegating and just trusting the people around you. And when people come to you for, 'What do you think I should do in a certain situation?' It's like, 'You're the expert, you know, I trust you. You may not make the right decision, and that's okay, as long as we just keep making them and moving forward.' So they are delegating and taking time to make sure they delegate well and properly, spending time with the team one-on-one. So Brian Chesky actually just really famously said on a podcast, which kind of ruins all this, but he calls them.

Yes, I saw the podcast. So he doesn't like—

where he said he doesn't do one-on-ones, he doesn't have like structured one-on-ones.

But like, my gut feel on that dude is that like, one, he's the biggest workaholic in Silicon Valley, but two, he's like on the phone to people the whole time.

Yeah. And also, he is also the CEO of one of the biggest, fastest-growing companies in the world. His reality is not the reality for the majority of—

yeah, yeah, managers. Comparing yourself to Brian Chesky.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people, when that clip came out, sent it to me because one-on-ones are like my entire thing. Like I said to you earlier, like, the one-on-one system that I have has been downloaded tens of thousands of times.

You're like, it's over.

Yeah, people pay to put the one-on-one system into their business. And so everyone was sending me this Brian Chesky clip, like, he's saying don't do one-on-ones, what do you think about this? And I'm like, we can't be comparing ourselves to this guy. But the greatest managers spend time with their team one-on-one, like, understanding what drives them and, you know, what support they need. I— one of the really crappy things I did in the early days of management was assume that everyone else's priorities were the same as mine. So I wanted success, I wanted career progression. I was like buzzing, always moving forward, willing to put 120% in. I just assumed everyone else wanted the same thing. It wasn't actually until I like asked them and got to understand them and learn from them that I realized one of the team, he just wanted more time with his family. Like, he had a new family and he was like, he was like, I'm gonna give you 100% while I'm here 'But please don't, you know, I'm not going for like—' I'm not giving you over 100%. Exactly, that's it. And that's okay, you know, he wanted to be paid, he just wanted to be paid fairly. Yeah, people gave 100%.

Exactly.

And he was great, he was fab. Then we had this other person, a woman who was in the marketing team, and she was like, I— she was amazing at what she did. And I was like, we want to promote you, you know, manager role is in your job. And she came back to me, she's like, I don't want to be a manager, I don't want that. And I just assumed everyone's priorities were the same as mine. So the greatest managers really just get to know their team, understand their priorities, and then tap into those and move forward there.

Um, so yeah, the Brian Chesky thing is quite funny because he also recently dropped the founder mode quote as well, which set like the founder community on fire as well. And so he, he loves it. He loves just—

what is it? I've missed that.

I mean, he's, he's total maverick. Like, yeah, he's exceptional. He's a workaholic. He's a genius. But like, you know, you'll see in episodes that he talks where he's like, you know, I'm single, I work. Yes, every hour of the day. And so again, like, his reality is very different to everyone else's reality. And so I think you make a really good point. Like, as I've said, you know, publicly before, my wife and I are doing IVF. Like, we're hoping to have kids. That is my reality right now. That's the thing that I think about the most, talk about the most, care about the most. You know, when the second I get off this show, the first thing I'll do is check my phone because I know my wife's had a scan today. And so that's all I care about right now. You can check it now. No, it's right. Um, whereas 26-year-old me running Verb, you know, 30 staff, making a couple million a year, felt I was on top of the world, wasn't— it wasn't even in my head. Yeah, I wasn't even aware that that existed. And I know that's like ridiculous, but I feel like it's quite hard sometimes to put yourself in other people's shoes. But it is key as a manager to do that. Yeah, because you get so much more trust and buy-in.

Yeah, for sure. My childhood was one of two halves. So like until the age of 14-ish, 13, 14, we were a very normal like working-class family. Like my dad worked down the pit until they closed, my mum worked in a bank, like just normal. I would never ever use the word like poor or broke because we weren't. We're the richest people in the world because our household was just filled with fucking so much love. Like, it was so just like working-class northern family, but it was just the best childhood ever. Like, had so much fun. But then when I turned— I think I was 12 or 13— my mum set up a business. So she started going to car boot sales. You ever go to car boot sales? 4 o'clock on a Sunday morning? Loved it. Loved them. So we used to go to car boot sales 4 o'clock on a Sunday morning and she would, um, at first we were just like buying stuff, and then one day she bought this— she found this book, and it was like, I want to say like a first edition of one of the Alice in Wonderland books. Okay. It was like a first edition of one of the Alice in Wonderland books, and she saw it, and I think it was 20p, and she was like, I could sell this on— and at the time eBay had just become a thing, so it just like started taking over the internet.

I love that car boot sales and eBay features in so many of my interviews. It's actually insane, whether it's like your parents or your, or yourselves, but so many people. Yeah, car boot sales, are they still rocking?

I mean, I've not been to one in a while, but I think they will be.

Yeah, yeah, I might try, I might try and go to one.

You do have to get up at 4 o'clock for the best deals though. I know, we're not doing that. So, um, yeah, she, she sold this book on eBay, and I remember we were all sat around like watching the bids go up. We're sat like, you know, people bidding. This is the golden age of the internet, yeah, in my view. We're watching the bids go up and I think this book sold for like £6.50 or something. Huge, huge. Yes.

And we had 20p for the buy.

Yeah, exactly. So we're all sat around as a family watching on the computer, like watching this money go up, and we're like— my mum's like, what we get, what we buy next week? Yeah, it's like light bulb. Yeah. So she started looking for quote-unquote brands in clothing, which brands were like Next and M&S and just things that had a label that you could put the name on headline on eBay and before you know it, like our garage turned into a stockroom. Yeah, our garage turned into a stockroom. Every day after school, my mum was like picking us up and we were going to the post office for 2 hours while she carried these boxes and posting them off. And then eventually she, so she really found this focus in like homewares. So she would buy like a clock and she would do it up. So she would be spray painting it in the garden and then she'd sell it on eBay for more money. And eventually she was like, what if I bought my own from suppliers? So she started buying things from suppliers, um, she got a warehouse, she quit a job. She was working the two jobs for a good like year or two. She got a warehouse in Rossington, which is a village that we grew up in. Then she got a bigger warehouse and a bigger warehouse, and now her business is— I don't even know how many millions, but 10 million plus, just with this e-commerce— wow— empire that started from selling car boot sale things on eBay. And so my childhood was very much like a very normal working-class childhood. Oh my God, she started this business, then by the time I was like 16, we had loads of money, and it was like, what the hell's going on? You know, we moved into a bigger house. I mean, loads of money for the north of England, but we moved into a bigger house.

We said she was making millions and millions.

Now she is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The business has grown sustainably over the past sort of 15 years. Um, go mum. Honestly, that woman, she's just the biggest icon. Like so proud. You know when people speak about like unfair advantages, I've got two I think that are really prominent in my life. One is the fact that I just got to see my mum do those things, and the other is that I'm Northern, which I used to see, I used to see as a massive hindrance, especially when like, I don't know, just doing things like this, I'd be like, oh my God, a Northern accent, you know, people don't— it's trustworthy and it's friendly, but people don't necessarily see it as smart or like business acumen.

It's, yeah, trustworthy. Yeah, exactly. Do you see that thing on Traders where the lady pretended she was as well because she had a southern accent. And it works. It literally works. I mean, that was great. That was great. It was great. Yeah. But yeah, I agree. Like, I— as you were talking there, I was thinking that's such like a— such an obvious thing about entrepreneurship, but your mom took you to boot sales and your mom's an entrepreneur and you saw your mom be an entrepreneur and now you are. Yeah. It's like the switch has already been flipped.

Yeah. Well, not for a while, because I actually saw my mum be very stressed. Like, I saw, you know, she, she wasn't around. And I, I'm 5 years older than my brother because I was a nightmare child, so she waited a long time to have my brother. But I'm 5 years older than my brother, and I was— by the time my mum set up this business and was out of the house a lot, I was like teenager. I was like, this is coolest thing ever, I've got so much freedom. My brother kind of got the back end of that in that he was still in the age of like, I want to be with my family, see my mum, and he used to get really upset about it. And it used to, it caused some issues like I think psychologically just in the family, and we're all very close now, but I just saw this darker side of entrepreneurship which I saw my mum just be stressed and, you know, like, yeah. And I saw for a long time I was like, I don't want that, I don't think I want it. And which is why entrepreneurship was never on my mind until about 2 or 3 years ago when I started to see it as a vision and started to see that the world needs to be a better place to work. Um, but yeah, icon, idol, love her to pieces. And my dad— I actually want to mention my dad here as well because he's got a great part to play in this. So my dad works for my mum unofficially, and he'll hate me saying that, but my dad works for my mum But he, growing up, he, um, there's— we have this phrase in Yorkshire which is 'be reight.' Have you heard it before? Just 'be reight.' Which basically— be reight, yeah. Which just means it'll be reight, like it'll be all right, everything will be all right. And this man is just the most optimistic man in the world, right? So he, he was working down the pit, they closed. I think the Rossington Pit closed in like 2024— sorry, not 2004. And then he got a job driving trains and then eventually got a job managing train drivers, managing corporate. So he went on this great journey as well, like a corporate career, and he bought this new car. So we're still living in like a really small house, very humble housing estate in Rossington in Doncaster, and my dad had just got enough money to buy this car and he drove it down the street and he's like, everyone on the street's like, whoa, look at this! I think it was a BMW. Everyone's like, whoa, look at this, it's amazing! He drives it, parks it outside the house, goes back, it goes inside. Him and my mum are like watching TV and I'm playing out with all the kids on the street, as you do, as you did. Do kids even do that anymore? I don't know. Anyway, we're playing out. The guy opposite the street who's a year older than me called Adam throws a stone. We must have been playing this game, we're like throwing stones at each other, as you did in the early '90s. We're like throwing stones at each other and he throws a stone through my dad's brand new car window. It smashes. Everyone, every child on the street like runs back into their house like, oh my God, hide immediately, Mark's gonna go crazy, everyone run. I hid behind the car like he'd obviously heard it, comes outside and I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, and he just goes, oh, it'd be great. And I'm like, what? And he's like, is everyone okay? No one's hurt. He's like, it's fine, we've got— it's fine, we can fix it. And that was just the story of my childhood. It was like, it's fine, it's all going to be okay. Um, and so just having like a mum who sort of succeeded in business against a lot of odds and a dad who is just the most psychologically safe, optimistic, sometimes delusionally optimistic person mixed together, just, yeah, so proud of them both.

What's the biggest communication mistake that managers make that you see?

Talking too much. So we think that we can— it's kind of like a peacocking thing. We think that as leaders, like, we need to over-talk, be the first one to come up with ideas, jump in. Actually, one of the most important skills you can learn is just listening and asking questions, and you will come across as so much more emotionally intelligent and competent if you are willing to be the person sat in the meeting who says the least. Something we used to do at GoProposer was have two metaphorical poker chips. So the managers in the room only had two poker chips in every conversation. Once they'd used them up, they couldn't say anything else. That's quite a good, uh, it forces you to shut the hell up. Yeah.

Yeah. So I've seen your videos go viral on how to conduct a one-on-one. Can you talk us through how you would conduct a one-on-one with a, with a, an employee? Yeah, so core values first.

In a one-on-one, always do core values first. To me, they're the most important thing. So it's just very simple: which one shines through the most in you? Which one do you think you need to improve? Next, we would do the same thing with the role. Which— what's shining through the most in you about your daily work? And what do you think you need to improve? And manager and team member would answer those questions. Then we would move into something that's a bit more emotional and makes people feel uncomfortable. But the questions I like to ask are, what is your biggest fear right now? That question will be very telling. If you were to hand your notice in tomorrow, why would it be? Really telling question. I actually got a phone call from a guy who runs a, um, got some feedback from a guy who runs a physio clinic, and he asked his team that question. He downloaded the one-on-one off the website, asked his team that question and discovered something that this person, one of his top former employees, was actually on the verge of leaving and he had no idea why. And he asked that question and he was like, shit, I need to figure out how to fix this. Then we need to move into personal development, but in a different way to what most managers do. So most of us will be like, what do you want to develop in? Okay, let me go and find you a course or let me find you some skills. The first question we need to ask is, okay, what do you want to develop in? Then what are you doing to get there? So give the team member that accountability. It's like, okay, I'm a social media manager, I want to move into a marketing manager role, right? What are you doing personally? What are you learning? What are you taking on that's helping you get there? And then how can the company help you? Because the only truly only way someone's going to develop is if they want to and they take it on themselves. So putting that accountability back. And then I'd move into a section that makes people feel a bit uncomfortable, and it's something that as managers we don't do very often, which is ask for feedback. So if you were my team member, I would say to you, what is one thing you love about the way I manage you? And what is one thing you wish you could change about the way I manage you? And I'm asking these questions every 3 months. So this is a 90-day one-on-one. So it's quite a deep—

and are you having one-on-ones in between that?

Yes, but just they're more like— so I would have, and it depends on the size of your team as to what you can manage, but with my direct reports I would have like 20 minutes every 2 weeks of just like a space held, like just come to me. And that was when I had 5 direct reports, just 20 minutes, bring whatever you need. I'm not going to cancel it, but you can if you don't want the space, like it's just there for you. Um, and something really good that happens in those 20-minute is they, they kind of will save things up. So instead of just sending you questions really sporadically, they'll be like, okay, I've got 3 things I need your input on, X, Y, Z, let's go through it. So in that 90-day, it's what's one thing you love about the way I manage you, what's one thing you wish you could change, and we're asking a very closed-off question. So it's what's one thing, it's not like what should I change, it's like I just— one thing, tell me one thing. And then what do you love about the culture and what's one thing you wish you could change about the culture? Those questions will give you so much information. Blimey. Yeah. And then the last bit is just to go into KPIs, performance, like metrics and stuff like that.

How can managers set boundaries with their employees, and why is it important to set boundaries?

Yeah, so the boundary that most people forget— so people always think about maybe it's like working hours, you know, I need to close my laptop at 5 PM, or I need to not speak to them outside of work, not be friends with them. The boundary that most managers forget to set is one around pace and energy. Pace boundaries are how fast are you responding to people. If you've got your Slack or Teams notifications on, because if you're constantly seeing these like distractions pop up and we're jumping to respond, we're jumping in to rescue them, micromanagement will become the bottleneck because people expect a response really fast. So if you just set some boundaries, and turning off your notifications can solve a lot of this, or just cutting out, like, you know, saying, I'm gonna have a few hours in between when I get asked this question and when I respond. It just sets some boundaries around pace. So it's like, you can ask me questions, but you're not going to get a response within 30 seconds. And it really helps to train the team to start to just not expect that fast, quick response. So pace boundaries are really important. Um, friendship boundaries are a big one, like especially if you're in small business. It's okay to be friends with your team. I think I used to think it wasn't and would really like close myself off, but it is actually okay, especially if you're in a small business because it's just inevitable. You become friends with these people, you share lots of life with them, you spend more time with them sometimes than your partner. And so it's okay to become friends, but just know where the book stops. So a lot of people— for a lot of people, that's sensitive information. Like, never give away sensitive information. A quick reminder for anyone who needs this: do not go out and get drunk with them. Like, just have one drink and go home. We think that people respect us more if we're like the fun one who stays out and is the last to leave, but it's actually the opposite. So yeah, there's some key ones.

What are the biggest leadership mistakes that can make small businesses fail and fail to scale?

So the first 12 people you hire, which is Daniel Priestley's number, but I would say 5 is the most important, then anywhere up to like 30 is still important. Those people will literally shape your business. I think the biggest mistake people make is not firing quick enough when things start going wrong. Um, and it's, you know, when we talk about firing, obviously we're going to do this very ethically, like we're gonna like we spoke about, set expectations really clearly from the start. When things start to go wrong, have some very honest, difficult conversations. Performance manage, like help set them up for success. But when all of that consistently fails, we have to be willing to let people go. And yeah, so many small businesses, because we innately love to avoid conflict— like, we are just a society of people pleasers, that is what we are. And when we start a business, we just allow people to walk all over us, whether it's clients not paying us enough or like, you know, like requesting information at random times in the night. Like, we just want to— people be saying yes to social things that we don't want to do. We're just doing it every single day. But you have to make a choice in your business that is, do you have those difficult conversations, have the conflict temporarily knowing that that's what's going to scale and grow the business, or do you just avoid that knowing that when you get to staff number 10, 20, 30, 40, you've still got that toxicity within the business? It could be that by having those— I listened to MrBeast talk about this the other week, but was like, having B and C players, so people who are just average, like, run-of-the-mill players, will drag a lot of other people down with them. Um, And so just being very careful that if we have those people, sometimes it's okay, like if we know that, you know, we just want to pay people what they're worth, get the value that we pay for, but we need that— they can't really be the first 5 to 12 people in the business. I feel like the—

and I'm sort of saying this live, as in like I'm, I'm working through this in my head at the moment, but as we said earlier, like I want to grow us a a big business with a small team, which means like incredible people. Yeah, like incredible, incredible people who are augmented with technology and systems and AI and so forth. But the people still need to be amazing. And I think a lot about the idea of building a team on top of a bad team. And so like Jenga, it would be literally like taking out two blocks and being like, that's what I'm going to build on. For sure. So the way around it I've been actually playing with recently is having a small amazing team internally um, who I'm like transparent with and honest with about work and so forth. And for the time being, having lots of freelancers support us while we take our time with hiring, because it's— you can so easily get the wrong people in this organisation. Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, this is something that we are really experimenting with at the minute. So we have a very wonderfully humble but incredible mighty team of 3, myself included. So we've got Levi and Joe video editor full-time, and Levi is just a Wonder Woman. I don't even know what to call her. Her official title is marketing and partnerships manager, but she just does everything. Everyone needs a Levi. Yes, yeah, just does everything. Yeah, everyone needs a Levi in their life. We have more than the budget and the requirement for employee number 3, employee number 4. However, I don't want to do that for many reasons, and I think this is a really important lesson for anyone in leadership. We love to think that adding in more people makes life easier. I guarantee you 10 times over it will make things harder, even if that employee is excellent, even if they're brilliant, because human beings are complex. Like, we are emotional, we're not logical. We come with unique sets of emotions, identities, complexities, needs. If you add another human being into the mix, it just makes everything messier and scarier, which is okay and is the beautiful part of life and business. But you should never use that as a plaster for a problem. So if it's like, shit, you know, the content feels messy, it's not get someone in to manage it, it's what's the asset deficiency, what's the system that we're missing first, what's the automation, how do we clean it first, and only then when those foundations feel really solid can you start adding team members in. So we're doing the exact same, kind of just experimenting with that. We've got social media agency, PR agency, We use people on Fiverr a lot for like website help. What other agency? I've got a VA. So instead of bringing in like a full-time, we've just got a virtual assistant who works 15 hours a week. And it's great because the reason I love it so much is that the people you bring in are experts. So they are experts in their craft. So like the social media agency, their entire world is creating incredible content and posting it in a way that people are gonna resonate with. They're way better than me at social media. But like, if I'd have brought someone in, which I do think we will do eventually when the need is there, but if I'd have brought someone in, it's on me to hand down what I know, to train them, etc., and to manage them ultimately, which is the really difficult part. Yeah. So yeah, we're doing the same.

It's a good lesson for, uh, small businesses in general, where at the beginning of your journey, doing it yourself is profitable but stressful. Yeah, having a few people is useful, and I generally think it's somewhere between like 5 and 10. I know Dan says 12, like 5 and 10 people feels like quite a manageable business to actually run, normally quite profitable to— but you're really involved, really, really involved. Like, I would say I'm really involved in my business now, whereas I'm probably doing, you know, I'm probably more involved now than I was when I was running Verb with 100 staff. But it takes probably until like 70, 80 staff for you to be able to be like, here's my 8-person leadership team and I'm stepping back. And so like between those two things, it's this big chasm. And so at the moment I'm just hesitant to cross it because I don't want to end up in the middle land of having 30 employees and not having senior management and struggling. And I think that's a, yeah, intentional choice to use external for now.

Daniel Prusa calls that the desert. Yeah, sorry to mention him. No, he's just— yeah, he's the granddad of my entrepreneurial mindset. A lot of it comes from Daniel Priestley and his book.

What was your first book you read of his?

Key Person of Influence. Yeah. And then oversubscribed. But now I just look at a lot of his assets. So, and just the way, to be honest, like my entire business now is built on this idea of creating IP. So like, you know, creating tangible assets that people can use, implement in their business, download. Trade— we can trademark it. And it's that your business, especially when we're in the digital space, so we don't have a tangible product to hand someone, your IP is your entire value. Like, it's you. So yours with this business would be like the courses, the community, the education. So it's how can you buffer up the IP as much as possible and have all of your infographics—

what do you call them? Cheat sheets.

Cheat sheets. How, you know, how is— how do you turn that into a brand? You know, like, what's the brand there? What's the IP that no one can copy? I learned all that from Daniel Priestley. Have you met Dan? Not in person, but we used to at GoProposal— he's friends with James, the founder, so we used to bring him in to do like webinars to our community. So I haven't met him. Most people I haven't met, I just fangirl.

He's super cool. He's like really nice. He came on the other month and did like a How to Start a Business Masterclass, uh, session with me. And funnily enough, Daniel Priestley, Simon Squibb, Eric Partaker, Tim Amu, Dan Murray, and me ended up in a WhatsApp group January 2023. And most of us didn't make content in January 2023. Wow. And we were all like, wouldn't it be really interesting if we made content? And obviously Dan had been making content and writing books and so forth, but everyone in that WhatsApp group now has a huge profile 2 years later. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, I've spent quite a lot of time with, with Dan, and yeah, his, his principal thinking on business is exceptional. Yeah, it's fab.

And that's the desert. He talks about the desert. I think for him it's when you get past 50 employees. I want to— I think that's when he defines it. Um, between 50 and 150, he says, is like the really difficult part because you all of a sudden have a profile, you have lots of money to manage, you have lots of people to manage, but you can't— you're not the size where you can just leave. Um, you don't necessarily have like huge seniority. I don't know. Yeah, it's really interesting.

So a lot of people will obviously know you as, you know, management expert, leadership expert, but I think sometimes you're not going to see that obviously you are running an incredible business on the back end of this content. And so can you talk us through how the, the actual business works, you know. So I think what you've built is genius. When you came in today, obviously we talked for a while about how the business runs, how it operates, how it's got unbelievable scale opportunity to it. Uh, you've got a big mission. And so how do you think about the actual— the business?

Yeah, for sure. So where to begin? So we started with the vision, with the mission, which is to build a world where everyone loves the work they do. I always knew that I wanted to build a business that I wasn't a slave to. And now I am not afraid of hard work at all. In fact, I work very fucking hard from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, but it's on my terms. And I kind of never wanted to build a business where I'm just running around after other people on other people's terms. So, and what that looks like, so when a lot of people can jump ship from the corporate world and move into a business of education, they might go into coaching or consultancy, for example, and it is very reliant upon you and your relationships with clients. And I started doing a bit of that to start bringing money in at the beginning, but I always knew that the business model had to be scalable. And so how to make— how, you know, how do we make education scalable, semi-accessible? Like, of course there is a price point that comes with it, but that price point for me is paid by businesses. And so I always encourage people if they see my courses or like webinars to say, get your company to pay for a ticket for this. This shouldn't be coming out of your personal pocket. So the back end of the business very much looks like lots of deeply, um, connected and personalized nurture funnels.

So right, for those that don't know, what is a nurture funnel?

A nurture funnel is a series of emails So say if you— whenever you put your email address into what we call like a gated lead magnet, so you put your email address literally anywhere, if you tick opt-in to marketing, you will most likely go into a nurture funnel of some description whereby you will get sent a series of emails. They're usually timed, so it'll be like timed for 2 PM on a Thursday or 3 PM on a Wednesday, and every one of those emails will nurture you well. Done, done well. A lot of companies don't do this stuff. So, the way our business works behind the scenes is I, so that at the top of our funnel, the top of the very top is capturing as much attention as possible towards our vision and mission. This is where social media comes in and doing things like this, going on podcasts. So, it's creating organic social media content, explaining principles, explaining the mission, the vision, and that really captures the masses. So it gets people to understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. We then go a step down the funnel when people either sign up to our newsletter, do our Leadership Level Up quiz, which is just an 18-question quiz, you get a free report, they— but you give us your email address in return for that, or download a lead magnet. So we've got our one-on-one agenda, we've got like a Meet or Move framework for how to cancel meetings, we've got all sorts, all free resources, very valuable. You put in your email address, we ask you a question, which best describes you? It's either business owner, manager in corporate, manager in small business. Senior leader, or aspiring manager. Depending on which one you tick, you will get segmented into a different funnel. Now, that funnel will be a series of emails every Thursday. I think it's 2 or 4 PM, I can't remember. We send a really highly educational email. So the intention is for you to build a level of trust and competence with me and my business. So all those emails are automated. We segment them for the main reason being that business owners, for example, buy and interact very differently to a senior manager in corporate. They're both high achievers, you know, they both want to lead a team well, but they have very different ways of spending money, very different things that they will buy. And so the way we sell to them, for example, is like a business owner, they want to maybe learn how to manage for the first time. Whereas a senior leader in corporate, they might actually— they don't want our course, they don't want Fresh Start. You know, Fresh Start is for people who've been in leadership for less than 3 years, but they might want it for their team, or they might want to bring us in to do a big workshop or something just bigger that they can use for their team. So we just sell to them in different ways. You go through our nurture funnel, and the intention while you go through that is just for us to get you onto a live webinar or training or something deeper. So we have at the minute, we've got a 45-minute pre-recorded training where you can book on, you can take that training at certain time slots throughout the day. Um, again, really highly educational. So at this point, we are qualifying people as leads. They've seen our social media content, they've downloaded a high-value lead magnet, we've been nurturing them through these deep emails. All of this is free. We're giving away everything we know for free. Then in every email, it will say, PS, if you want to learn more, join our live— off— it's not live, but join our free training You will then come over onto a training, 45 minutes. I will deeply educate you on the 4 key principles of leadership. It's called Your Leadership Level Up Matrix. And at the end of that, I do a 5-minute sales pitch, and I'm very upfront about it. And I say at the beginning of the session, I'm like, just so you know, at the end of this, I'm going to spend 5 minutes selling to you. If you're not comfortable with that, you're welcome to leave, because I don't want people there if they don't want to be sold to. But some people do. That's interesting, you know. I love being sold to. Oh my God, I'm like when you go into the Apple shop, I'm like, the biggest dream. Or like when I go into, I don't know, like when I buy my car, I walk into the garage and I'm like, come on, sell it to me. Like, you can probably get another 5 grand out me, if not more. Just sell me all the bells and whistles because I'm here. And so yeah, so we move you into there, and then the sales pitch off the back of that is we've got two things. We've got our Freshly Shipped World community, which is a very small subscription platform— not small, small price subscription platform. £15 a month, you're in there with hundreds of other managers. We've got free resources. You get early access tickets to all of our in-person events. You get access to all of like our webinar recordings that are usually £45 each. All the resources are listed out in there, all sorts. The best part about that is you get personalised help with your struggles. So people are just consistently like, this is what I'm struggling with, I've got a team member who is X, Y, and Z. Managers from all across the globe can jump in and help you solve that problem. So it's really fab. The next tier of product that we have is our course Fresh Start, which is the 6-week course for new managers to just level you up. And that's where it ends right now.

And is that 6 weeks? Is that a live— No, it's pre-recorded.

The reason I say 6 weeks is we lay it out very clearly at the beginning, and I say to people, I don't want you to smash through these modules, I want you to take one a week. So there's 6 modules, 34 lessons. Take one a week because there's some very important actions, and the actions is where you're going to learn the most.

Does the product release it every week, or do you get it all up front?

You do get it all up front. We've not, we've not figured that out technically yet.

You can do that, can you?

Yeah, in Kajabi.

We use Kajabi. Oh, I don't use Kajabi. No, I know, but yeah, I did. I spoke to this amazing lady who was called Sarah, and she ran a company, uh, her book at least was called like The Testosterone-Free Way of, you know, setting yourself free or something. Anyway, she runs this incredible copywriting, uh, cohort-based business, and it is a like quite high ticket. It's got live Q&As, but otherwise it's just drip released. As people sign up every week, it's— they get a new module.

Yeah, I thought that was really clever.

Yeah, that is good, because people, again, people sometimes think that they want all the information up front. Yeah, but actually you want to engage with and deal with the learning week by week. Because obviously I do it, I do a live cohort myself, and people in week 1 are like, give me all the information. I'm like, you couldn't take it. Yeah, there's no way. You know, it took me a 15-year career in digital marketing to learn this. So if I told you it today, you'd just get it wrong and you'd focus on the wrong thing. And so what's next for the business then?

Yeah, well, so just something quickly on that, which is hot take of mine. Which is people don't want or need information anymore. Information is literally everywhere. You could go on YouTube, type in your problem, and there'll be 50 videos telling you how to solve it. Businesses don't want information anymore. So when I do— I only do very high-value consultancy projects now, so I'll usually take on one or two at once. And I love doing that. So the most recent one is with Sony Music. We're doing an incredible project with core values they don't want me to tell them how core values work. They want me to do it. And so consultants, we all have these like really shit views of people who work at McKinsey, like, you know, the classic 23-year-old comes in, tells you what to do, and then leaves. My view's like, no, I'm not actually going to tell you, I'm just going to do it. Yeah. And so I will just get stuck in with the team. I'm like, I'm part of your team for a little bit. Like, I'm coming in, I'm giving you the systems, I'm holding you accountable to— you and your team accountable using them. And so I just— I think people don't want information. And which is why, if I just go right back to the beginning of when we spoke about people saying to me it was refreshing and practical, I just always had this view of like, I'm not just going to tell you what you need to do, I'm going to tell you exactly how you are going to go and do it. And that's what the course really focuses on, is like, I'll give you the information and then I'm going to give you these steps that you will now go and do. And if you don't do them them, you might as well fucking throw your money down the drain because there's no point in being here.

So to give some actionable tips to the audience, what are the 3 things in your mind that separate a great leader from an ordinary leader?

First one is courage. So courage to have difficult conversations. Being kind and not nice takes a lot of courage. Like, everything we've been taught is to avoid conflict Being a great leader is just stepping into that and saying, I am willing to be the person who is going to have these difficult conversations. The next one is talk— um, listen more than you speak. So just stop talking so much. It's so easy to do. Like, just ask more questions than you answer. When you're in meetings, give yourself those poker chips. It will— and, and this actually goes for emails as well. Get— emails are so easy to regulate and edit. When you write your email, write it as you need to, like slam away that keyboard, write it. Just go back and be like— and even use ChatGPT, that's how I do it— make this 50% the amount of words. Do you know what I mean? It's like, and just by saying more with less, we can really start to be seen as a leader. And then I guess, what would be the last thing I would say? I think it's encourage failure in your team, but like to the level that you measure it. Most managers will have KPIs that they're given from their seniors that they have to abide by, and they're just very reactive. The greatest leaders will just take that step further and be like, I'm not going to reward perfection, so I'm not going to reward hitting the KPI every month and doing the perfect thing. I'm going to reward ownership. So even if it's not hit, but someone in that month's like, right, we've tried these 5 new things, these 3 haven't worked, so we're going to stop doing them, these 2 have, this is how we're going to do more. That for me is more than hitting a KPI. That's sustainable growth for me. I would rather that every month and just show like 1% improvements than us hitting KPIs well for 6 months, resting on our laurels, and then being like, shit, we've got to go back to the drawing board. So yeah, encouraging failure, not just saying it, not just saying we need to experiment, like baking it into KPIs and the way that you work.

So where can everyone keep up with you?

Social media is the best place. Leadership Heather across all social media platforms. You'll find all of our free resources on there, and which I hope you go and download because there's just some great stuff. We pour everything into those resources, so and you can learn lots if you put it into action, because we're giving you the information. So go and put it into action.

Well, thank you so much for coming on Wake Up.

Thank you, Chris. It's been amazing.