Front Room to Forty People: Kelly Dowson, FIS Group

You're busy being busy, or you're busy trying to get busy. There's no let-up from that. Saying no means you can focus on what's right and get there quicker. It's a hard thing to do when you spend your whole working week programmed to achieve. What keeps me grounded now is—

Welcome to the Friday Accelerator. I'm Karen Green. I've helped food and drink businesses secure more than £350 million worth of new listings. I know how to help companies go from startup to supermarket success, but what does it take to be the founder, leader, or professional behind that success? Subscribe to the Friday Accelerator if you want to know. Today's guest is Kelly Dowson, Managing Director of the FIS Group, the innovation and research business on a mission to help reimagine the future of food and drink. Stay tuned to hear how this consultancy business went from front room to Welcome, Kelly. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Tell me a little bit about FIS and what you guys do.

So I'm the managing director of a group of businesses which all form part of the FIS Group. And our ethos as an organisation is to reimagine the future of food and drink. So we have within that an insight brand, we have a food development brand, we have a benchmarking brand, and we also run consumer fieldwork as well. So we're all about blending the deep consumer connection with the insights that we get from our research. and primary insight and creating innovative products. So we're putting the consumer at the heart of product development and innovation ultimately, and we work solely across food and beverage, retail, manufacturing, and food service. Is that elevator enough, or did I— was that too long?

Done your target audience, you've done what you do. Maybe you can shoehorn in an achievement of, right, early on. How long have you guys been going?

15 years now. I think the biggest thing is The size that we've got to and what we've achieved. So we're completely privately funded. It's myself and Mike that own the business, and we've created a— will be almost £7 million turnover, and we've got 40 people that work in the business. I think that's the biggest thing, you know, to look back and think, gosh, it was Mike and Eileen's front room 14, 15 years ago, and now we've got 3 offices. And, and that, that's the biggest thing. I think there's been loads of highs on the way with regards to different projects that we've worked on, our products we've seen hit the shelves, but I think that's— That's the biggest for me.

It's a hefty turnover for a consultancy. 3 locations. Where are you based?

So we've got a site in Cambridge, a site in Bury St Edmunds, a site in London, and we're just, we've just signed the lease on a 4th actually in Birmingham. So we're hoping to be in there before Christmas. Fingers crossed.

So you say it's been going 15 years. How did you come into the business? What's your, what's your background?

Well, like most things with me, very untraditional. So I actually did a— I started off doing a teaching degree at university, realized very quickly it wasn't for me, moved into a food degree just because I loved food. And then I fell into a recruitment role straight out of university. So I worked in innovation recruitment. Ultimately, I didn't really enjoy it, but I, I was, without blowing my own trumpet, I was quite good at it. But a lot of that to do with the fact I'd been on a degree course with 50 other people that needed to find a job. So, I was able to place quite a lot of my peers. Yeah, it worked quite well. But I was fascinated in the food industry, not so much the recruitment side of things, but I did that for 5 years. Mike, my now business partner, was one of my clients. He was head of innovation for Daniel's Chilled Foods, as it was then. And then he went on to be head of food for McDonald's. I used to do a lot of recruitment for him, and we just got on really well. Became good pals. I then just decided I was gonna go traveling, went for a year. He contacted me when I got back and said he'd just left McDonald's. Did I wanna come and help him run some workshops with Tesco? Had no clue what I was doing, but off I went. And that was 15 years ago. So never looked back really. We then, you know, the, we just made a plan and then grew the business together. So yeah, that's the— Brutal reality of what happened.

Makes it sound really easy. So maybe we can dig into that and find out how easy it really was. Did it grow slowly and organically, or has it gone step by, you know, step by step, or has there just been a massive uptick? How's, how's your growth?

Uh, it's been brutal, as you'll know. It's hard yards. You know, when you're in consultancy, you're busy being busy, or you're busy trying to get busy. There's no letup from that, and it gets even harder. with the more people that you employ, and, you know, there's a different type of stress with that. So, it's not been easy. You know, in the early days, there was months that Mike and I went without paying ourselves and all kinds of things. And then, I think the biggest shift is when you employ the right people, you know, and my ethos has always been around putting people that know more than I do around me. You know, people that you can trust, people that know what they're doing. And that's a luxury in itself to get to the point where, A, you can afford that, and B, you attract the right talent when it's just you and Mike in Mike's front room. You know, that was, that was the first really big challenge. But then growth came off the back of that. And then I think we've formed some really strong relationships. You know, we're still working with clients now we were 15 years ago. But I think this really big shift was when we acquired Cambridge Market Research 2 years ago. You know, they were a big player in their game, a big competitor to us, and Merging there has just meant that, you know, we've got a really strong baseline now and the business pretty much doubled overnight. And that was scary in one sense.

That's the big step, isn't it? Gone from good to super. And has that changed the way you run the business now? Because it's, it must be more complex.

It's not changed the way that I operate as an individual, because I'll always be true to myself with that. Although I was very mindful of the fact that half the business has had different leadership for the last however long. So. So, I haven't changed my style so much, but we make different decisions now, and there's different opportunities and different risks, as there always will be. You know, one of the things now is we've always been really driven by our top-line sales number, and actually, that's not what we need to look at now. It's more about the makeup of how we get there, and, you know, there's just, which would be an obvious thing for a lot of people in a business, but it's never been something for us to think about. previous. So there's just different challenges now, I guess.

What's the main challenge at the moment? Because obviously the industry's in major flux. There's a lot of inflation. There's a lot of people going, ooh, not sure we want to spend money. What's the major problems that you're seeing?

Token answer, isn't it, that inflation is always going to be an issue. And it is, you know, people want more. On every level. Clients want more for what we charge. People that we research with want more incentive. The team are always striving for more because I've got an ambitious team in place. So it's just that constant tightrope. We're doing well this year. We're doing really well. And it's managing that whole balance between making sure that you don't end up with an overinflated bill anywhere, ultimately. And we constantly need to delight our clients.

Yeah.

And it's that we just get pushed at every, every level, but I'm aware everyone does.

So it's, so it's, it's a, it's a big juggle, but what's the ultimate goal for you? Is it, is it a lifestyle business? Is it a legacy business or is it a sell it and go and sit in the Caribbean or do you more traveling or?

Well, I mean, all of those, but you can't have a legacy where you probably could, if it's a really good business, you could have a legacy business and go and Growth and profitability are really important, and I think I, I want to make sure that I run a business that gives people enough freedom as well, myself included. So it doesn't have to— I hate the term lifestyle business because that's not what it is, and it can't be that when you're employing 40 people. Yeah, I suppose everyone wants to leave a legacy. I want to make the food and drink sector better, and we've got a really good opportunity to do that and make a real difference. And if I can have a team of people that love, love, love what they do and they're passionate about it and they've got the freedom within that. That's, you know, that's the dream. When I worked in recruitment, I, like I say, I was, I was skilled at the job, but I did not enjoy it. I didn't enjoy the actual work, and, but the people I worked with and the way the company treated us was actually really good. And I just wanna try and balance all those things.

What didn't you enjoy about recruitment?

It was a brutal sales role, and I look back and it's taught me a hell of a lot. Of how to not be and how to be, as most things often do. But I think it was, you know, big decisions on people's lives were at stake with that. And it's, it can be quite a ruthless game because it's a sales job. It was really hard on the KPIs, which, you know, I get that's any type of sales piece, but it just, it just wasn't, wasn't for me to just purely be in a commercial role.

Ever wondered why sometimes achieving goals is effortless? Other times it feels like you're pushing water uphill? Get your Friday Accelerator scorecard to find out why. Answer 10 questions to access your personalized report and action list. Go to friday-accelerator.scoreapp.com now. Certainly when I talk to anyone, and I've done it with you as well today, I do a personality profile. And I don't know whether you and I have talked about this before, but—

I use the same one you do, the LinkedIn one, Crystal Knows, is it?

Oh, I use Humantics now.

Ah, yeah. Okay.

Um, so, so for those of you who are listening who don't know, Humantics or Crystal Knows both use AI to analyze LinkedIn and other profiles. Actually, it started with LinkedIn and they do other things now, and they will churn out a personality. So according to my reckoning, you're a doer. Is that a fair assessment? Are you a doer? It sounds like you're a doer.

I'm a doer, but I'm going on a journey. So I'm less of a doer now. Which has been really tough, and I'm quite extreme, and I'm working on that not to be like one end or the other. But I am a doer by nature, but I've had to let go because that wasn't conducive. And I think I always used to have the view of hierarchy and stuff has always been sort of irrelevant to me, and I always almost wanted to prove a point that just because I'm the MD, I can happily clean the toilet, I can happily run a panel, and and I used to be quite like forceful with that. But actually, that's the worst thing I can do, really. You know, that's not what I. paid for. And I'm, I'm taking the wrong money from the business if I'm paid what I'm paid and I'm doing that, you know, and that's nothing about hierarchy or, or status. That's just a fact. And, and that helped me think, actually, I don't need to do the do. And, you know, my role now, I see it very much as making sure our business is on that balance of being busy enough, not overworked and not underworked to the point where everybody can do what they're there to do well. And ultimately I do less of the do, you I don't really do any of the doing, nor should I.

You get stuff done. That's what I wrote down from your profile. So if you are not cleaning toilets, what do you do all day? What do you need to do?

I guess my role is setting the direction of the business, and I'm quite a collaborative leader, I guess, whereas I, I like everyone involved in the journey. Again, something I've had to learn as we've got bigger because I can't have all 40 people involved in everything, but my senior leadership team, you know, I want to help Them grow and develop into leaders, which they are doing, and I want to give them the framework to be able to do everything I need them to do and for them to get on in life. So, like I suppose a typical week for me would be Mondays very much about setting out the week. I've run all my one-to-ones on a Monday. We have our team meetings. We have operational meetings. We go through what the week looks like. Midweeks probably a little bit more like client meetings. I'll attend certain debriefs. I work on. I work with the finance team, the marketing team, and. And not so much the delivery teams, but I'll work to set out what we're working on for months ahead. Friday's sort of winding down the week. We've got a no meetings Friday in the business, which is generally adhered to. Sometimes there's always an exception. So yeah, that's sort of a typical week, but there's a lot of more strategic stuff comes my way more and more now. So I'll be often like having conversations about further acquisition. Obviously there's been a big piece of work with this new site. Should we go for that one? Should we not? It's lots of stuff.

There is lots going on and it's interesting. You do the planning on a Monday, which is fairly conventional. The purpose behind Friday Accelerator is to say, well, actually, and it's interesting you say you don't have meetings on a Friday because I think Friday is often a day people work from home. There's a slightly different way of working now. Research also shows that that's a good day to plan. Now, not necessarily planning face-to-face with your teams, but maybe for your own personal reflection, just think about, well, what next? But if you're sitting there on a Friday and you look back on the week, which is fairly minute actually in terms of, because a lot of what you're doing at the moment is quite broad and macro, how do you say, yeah, this week was good, was a success?

That's a hard question for me to answer in many ways because, and my team, my team will tell you this, I've always suffered really badly with impatience. Like if I get something in my head, I'm like, boom, this needs to be done now. And I've worked really hard on that. So, I guess what I've got now is like 5 or 6 key big strategic macro things, which I've got written down on my phone, in my book, on my laptop. So, I've generally got them with me most of the time. I'll look at those and I'll just say to myself, am I closer to this than I was when I started the week on Monday? So, as long as it could even just be a 5% shift to being closer to that, you know, so. That's what I look for. That's how I know if I have had a good week, if I'm closer on any of those. And it doesn't have to be finished. It just has to be closer.

That's a classic good way to be because it cuts out the noise. My experience of moving away from those key goals is lots of other things shout, and I have shiny object syndrome because something will come out and go, oh, that looks much more interesting than the solid goals. Do you have that or do you just go? No, get away from me, issues and problems. I'm focused on my—

I've got better at that because I also have shiny thing syndrome and I tend to fulfill that need by buying lots of clothes now. But I totally get that point and it has happened to me, but I've also learned the hard way, which is the story of my life. Like, I can't really be told many things, which is great why Mike, Mike's a really good person for me to work with. I have to learn myself, you know, and I have to get it wrong to know that wasn't right. So I've got loads wrong, Karen.

Haven't we all?

But I've tried to do that in a relatively safe environment that doesn't impact the business or anyone that works in the business. But, you know, there's been some, we've only done it when it's been safe enough to do it. But, you know, there's been some things we've got really wrong. Like we launched a range of a dark kitchen brand in COVID, you know, on paper sounded like the perfect thing to do. Why wouldn't we? Multitude of reasons why it didn't work. And, you know, there's been other things. We've done a joint venture, didn't work out. We've launched other brands, didn't work out. We've taken on people that haven't worked out, you know, all the standard things. But I think what keeps me grounded now is the 5 or 6 key strategic things that we work on. They're not new, they're just evolving. They're proven that they're right, as much as they can be. So anything new that comes in, I just bat it off. Like, that's going to be a massive distraction because all those other things were, you know. And also Mike, my business partner, raging entrepreneur, He's taught me a lot about actually, no, we have to say no to things. And it's, it's always really hard for someone like me to say no, but actually saying no means you can focus on what's right and get there quicker, which fuels my impatience.

So when you say a raging entrepreneur, in my head, my experience of entrepreneurs is, is they have got shiny object syndrome. So where I've worked with entrepreneurs, you've got, and I'm sure you have as well, they've got a product idea. They're then, well, actually we've got these ideas over here, they're here, here, here, here, here. How do you complement each other in terms of your skill sets?

The big things are, Mike's a massive risk taker and I'm not.

That's a good balance.

Yeah, but actually we've both, like, he's become more risk averse than he used to be, and I've become more of a risk taker. So we've learned from each other, but you know, we've got, we've got a really good understanding with that. He'll push me when he thinks I'm being too risk averse, and I'll rein him back when I think he's been too batshit crazy, you know. And I think that works really well, you know. He doesn't necessarily like rules, whereas I'm quite a stickler for rules. So again, it's a— we've found a place which means rule not, you know, doesn't prevent— like, I quite like process, he hates it.

Again, that's a good balance because you're, you're, you're the half of each other, aren't you?

But for some, for people that are completely opposite, we get on really well and we trust each other immensely.

Like, 100%.

So I think that's like, you know, we couldn't do anything if we didn't have that. And we've seen each other through some rough times, you know, professionally and personally over the last 15 years. So, you know, it's grounded in a deep, deep friendship and understanding.

I was talking to somebody actually a couple of weeks ago. I was coaching somebody and we were talking about, you know, we've got these big macro goals and it's a big corporation, but I don't really know how they break down. So how do you break— you say you like process, you're probably more process orientated. How do you break those individual goals down into, or do you break them down into?

I guess we, I work with, with my senior leadership team ultimately, who will create, we created those big strategic drivers together. And my job now is to keep that on track. So we'll have a meeting every 6 weeks on innovation work streams, and there's actions off the back of every meeting and a deadline. And, you know, we come to that. Meeting next time, and it's we use a tool called monday.com, which is is really good for keeping track of what needs to be done by when. Because you know, a lot of the work that I drive forward isn't project related at all, and that's difficult when you've got a team of people that are constantly on the balance of not busy enough versus too busy. It's difficult to manage, and then you're throwing in some out your side your day job stuff. So I think Monday is just a really good tool for. Helping it fit in with everything else.

So do you use that for all, all of the goal setting, project management? And do you, do you use it for client projects as well?

Or is it— Yeah, it's used for client projects.

Once you find one that you're happy with, I think that's, that's really good.

We've used it for years now and I don't think we use it to its full capability, but that's the standard thing with most things, isn't it? But yeah, it's a really powerful tool. I don't know what we would do without it. And I think if If I said to my team, right, I'm going to take away all the systems and processes that we've got, which one would you keep? I'm pretty sure that'd be the one that they would want to keep.

So do you, do you have a coach yourself? Sorry, that's a, it's a random question, but I was just thinking in terms of your, you're giving a lot of leadership and development within the team. Do you have someone who coaches you?

Yeah, I've had numerous coaches over the years that have helped me massively. I've got 2 non-exec directors at the moment that I use as mentors. And I have a coach that I speak to every, a more formal coach that I'll speak to every week for an hour. And that's invaluable. Absolutely massively. And I actually co— I'm a mentor for somebody on the Flourish, Flourishing Food program as well, which I think you do that.

Yeah, I've done that in the past. So I've had coaches in the past and I tend to have what I would call more skill-based coaches. So when I wrote the first and the second book, I had a coach. When I wanted to do some speaking, I had a speaking coach. They were quite specific projects. Do you have a more generic coach? Is it a business coach? Is it a life coach? What kind of coach?

I have a life coach that I see once a week. So she'll help me on broader things. And then with the non-exec directors, I guess they've both got skill sets where I need to bolster. And I I use them for that. That sounds awful, doesn't it? I use them for that, but no, I'm, I learn and they, I don't know whether or not they'll, they'll, I'm sure they know they're coaching me, but you know, I'll, I learn as I go with that.

It's usually coaching and mentoring, isn't it? I mean, I've done any D-roles and it's, it's a, it's a combination. And I always think it's quite interesting, the difference between the phrase mentoring and coaching as well.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. The other thing Just while we're on this topic though, I've done non-exec roles for the past 7, 8 years and oh my God, that's as much about learning and development for me as it is for what you give to the organization. And I just think that I've learned so much through doing that.

So in terms of thinking about people, you must be hugely networked.

Do you know, I thank my recruitment days for this to some degree. But I've always been into people, like you know, and I'm just interested in people. I love people majority of the time, probably less as I've got older. But you know, I'm naturally very sociable, and I'm interested in everyone's story, which I hope never comes across as nosy, but probably could in the wrong mind. But you know, I am just interested. It's one of the reasons I got into research as well. You know, someone picked that turkey skull up off the shelf in M&S. That was the first question that I was ever asked. And I was like, that's a really good question. And, you know, I like the brain, how it works. So networking's always come easy to me because I've got a hunger for learning about people. And as I say, I'm still close with a lot of people I was on my course with. I've got loads of friends. I've got loads of clients that have become friends. Yeah, I just love people. So networking's a great thing for me that I'd fit in with naturally, but I understand it's not that easy for a lot of people.

It does depend on the personality. I mean, I would, a lot of people say that I'm quite well networked, but I'm not great at following it up. My task orientation is I'm more likely to reach out for something. There's very few people I just chitty chat to on a social, and it's probably something I should work on actually, because I enjoy people and I love getting to know them. And this podcast is quite interesting to do something a little bit different, but just going back to something you were saying about Turkey, the Turkish scallops. I know you're doing, and I obviously you can't talk about confidential projects, but I know you've done some work on GS1 or the or Zembic, which I think is really interesting, and that might be the project of choice. But what project would you say has been is the most interesting that you've worked on that you've gone whoa?

Well, you've teamed me up perfectly for that.

I feel so interested.

I think that that is just mind-blowing that the GLP-1 appetite shifters.

Explain what that is for, for the listeners who might not be aware.

This is an example of something I became obsessed— obsessed's the wrong word, isn't it? But passionate about, about 12 months ago, was, was the GLP-1, the weight loss appetite suppressant drugs. And I said to my team, look guys, I think this is going to be big. We need to get on this. We need to get on it now. And totally the right thing. So that's been bubbling away for us over the last 12 months. I went out to Madrid in June to do presentation on what we were finding in the UK with people using it. And it was one of the most awful experiences of my life. But what a learning curve. I stood on stage in front of, I don't know, 100, 250 people, and they were just so not ready for what I was saying about GLP-1. And I was talking to them about what our, our research sample was doing with the drug, and they just couldn't get their heads around it. It was mainly a European audience. Wasn't anyone from the UK there. They just, they went for me.

How did they go for you? I'm intrigued.

I think the whole thing around the GLP-1, without giving away loads of stuff on the study, is I was quite negative about that to start with. And I was like, well, if people want to lose weight, they just eat less and move more. That's as simple as it is. So, you know, you know, very, very ignorant of me to some degree. And what the study has shown me is, and I was going off on all these tangents about how Amazon are to blame for this because they've made everything so instant. People just want to take a jab. And I was going down the whole, no one wanted a COVID vaccine and now look, it's this instant gratification. They're looking for shortcuts. Then we conducted the study and I just had so much more empathy and realized that people that are taking this have generally got a medical, like a, you know, mental illness to some degree. And food is just such Such a big part of people's lives, psyche, emotional state, and it's not that easy for everybody. And also in all of this, I got diagnosed as a celiac. And, you know, I am super health conscious. I really care about my health, what I put into my body, how I move my body. I'm really into that, which I think was again another reason why I was a bit sort of GLP-1 jabs. So, you know, if someone said to me now I could take a jab that would mean I could not have to worry about being a celiac, I'd have it, you know, because— and so it gave me a different type of empathy for it. And some of the things we've seen, like people are just generally feeling so much better about themselves. And, you know, it's doubled. The households on it have doubled in 8 months. So it's having an impact. Definitely, and people describe it as like a magic miracle thing, and it's made their lives so much better. And yeah, there's a lot of noise about side effects and whatnot, but people are happier. So I delivered something of that type of ilk, and people were just outraged because they were probably in the headspace I was before I really understood. People still email me about that now, and it's like what four months later? It's asking for the asking for the deck, so they can't have disliked it that much.

Still doing research into it, or are you? Yeah.

So what we've done is we've got a, a program that we've got some partner clients that have signed into, and it's a 12-month study. So we have different waves. We've just done wave 1. Wave 2, I think, will come up in January. So we've got, we, it's a qual and quant study. We've got, I think there's 16 people that we are following that are on it. We've got people on it, people that are looking to go on it, people that have come off it so that we can just understand You know, how they're thinking about food choices. So I'm really interested to see what happens over Christmas and how people think about that. But that's, that's a really interesting thing. And then obviously I work with the food people on our Future Food Tracker. That's another really interesting thing because you're looking at like 5 years out, you know. A lot of the things that we're tracking are things that people haven't necessarily heard of. In 5 years' time, what's, what's your one recommendation or one thing There's gonna be some big shifts in health and how health becomes decadent as well. That's a really interesting thing to look at, especially with the, the rise of the GLP-1 and things like that and supplements. I think, I'm not saying that we'll become a nation that's just gonna have a pill to eat, but there could be some variations in that that might be quite different for us.

Yeah, I think it will have an impact. So you, you take care of your health, you exercise. What else do you do to make sure you don't burn out? Because listen, I think anyone listening to you will be like, whoa, there's a lot going on in her life.

People say that actually to me a lot, which I don't always feel because I just like to be busy. But what I have learned, and this is what my life coach will help me with, is I do need to not do so much. And I'm trying to recognize that. As well now, and I'm getting better at that, I think. But it's important to do, to have time where you don't do anything. But that's always been a foreign concept.

I'm not that good at that either.

It's hard, isn't it? And so I'm trying to make time to sit with myself. So we closed the business on Friday for Mental Health Awareness Day, and being really honest with you, the last few years I've still worked. But, you know, not full, full-on work, but I've still done stuff. And this year I thought, you know, I'm gonna practice what I preach. I'm asking my whole team to take the day off to focus on their mental health. So, I just went to the, to my gym for the day and read a book. And I found it really hard, but I did it.

You know, I've been building this scorecard to work out what type of goal setting and planner you are. And I was, I was looking at the doer, the red personality, which, which you have. And One of the recommendations for that type of personality is to do less because there is this drive, and I have a lot of D in me as well, to do stuff. And I'm sure you find this as well. The good ideas come from when we're not doing stuff. So, you know, like, yeah, totally. Like when I'm walking my dog or when you're not actively doing, that's when I think the good stuff comes. So I actually have Keep Free. In my diary for Fridays, and I can't remember the last time I kept it free.

But I think what holds me to account is practice what you preach. And I think the other thing I've had to sort of learn, which my life coach has helped me with, is not everything needs a bloody target. But you can get trapped in that when you're running an organization. So I got a horse recently and it was like, right, What am I going to do then? I need to get to this competition, this competition, and this competition, to the point where I then didn't enjoy it.

It's another stream to, to do.

Have you thought about just not doing something to actually really enjoy it? And I'm like, uh, yeah, good point. Well, it is, you know, it's, it's a hard thing to do when you spend your whole working week programmed to achieve.

Yeah, I, I think it's— I think It's true. You, you kind of, if you are driven, you are driven. And so leisure becomes a drive as well. So, you know, if you're like you say, I don't know what, at the gym, you might be wanting to run further or longer or, well, lift weight or—

Sorry to interrupt you there, Karen, but I've got a great working example of this. So I do parkrun, okay, most Saturdays, and my life coach set me the challenge about 6 weeks, 7 weeks ago to try and get my worst PB. And you know, I've thought about that question and that challenge so much because I was just explaining to her, I go to parkrun every day and I can't bear to not get a better time, and it pains me. And she was like, that's not necessarily that healthy, because I started to get anxious about parkrun. Parkrun's a friendly event, non-competitive, for Christ's sake. Do you know what I mean?

Prizes or a medal.

There's no medal, and it's not about that. So I've taken this great family lovely event and made it into a competition with myself, and to the point where I was thinking about the night before and thinking, well, what shall I eat? Because I need to get— that's not right. And so hence her question of, you don't have to measure everything, and you don't have to beat yourself every week. So get your worst PB. Now I'm on a journey with that. So I think about it for the first half and then just, I haven't been able to do it yet, but that just proves it's hard for me, right?

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it is counterintuitive.

But important also.

I think maybe, I think maybe I need your life coach actually.

She's great.

Let's finish with some, some sort of quickfire questions then. And this one's quite good actually, because it builds on what you've just been saying. If you could delete one distraction from your life forever, What would it be?

Oh, wow. Well, emails are distracting. Instagram.

Yeah. Are you, are you a scroller?

Yeah, I'll scroll.

It's, it's taken up a lot of, a lot of my time as well. Okay. Different one. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received about working smarter?

I think just that piece I mentioned before about as long as you're going in the right, on the right path, you don't have to get there tomorrow. So 5%, 2% improvement is better than standing still. So don't try and do 100% all the time.

Yeah, I think that's really good advice. The compound value of 1%. Okay. So are you a reader, a podcaster? Where do you learn?

Podcasts, audiobooks, really. I'll read the odd book.

What's your best audiobook that you've listened to recently?

I really enjoyed Why Be Led by You. And it's one I read about five, six years ago, actually, on when I sort of was on my main leadership journey, and it was just about being authentic. And I was like, I've often struggled with oh, am I too feral? Do I say the right thing? You know, am I professional enough for this? And actually, all people want is authenticity, really. And so, yeah, that was that was good. The other book is now sorry because I know you live in France, Karen, but Les Simplificate is it. Which is a book which is about how to live well with less. Because I do like to buy clothes and stuff like that. That was a brilliant book, which stopped me buying things for about 6 months. I need to reread it actually.

I'm listening to The Art of Spending at the moment, and I can't remember who it's by, but I'll put it in the show notes. And that's really interesting because he says wealth is the equation of what you have minus what you want. If you don't want anything else, you don't want any more new clothes and you've got lots of clothes, then you're actually wealthy. And I think that's quite good. That's my favorite new equation at the moment in terms of— and then the other thing he says, I did, I first of all heard him on Diary of a CEO and then I was listening to the book and he was saying, quoting the statistic, and I don't know whether it's true. I presume it is that if you live near a lottery winner, You'll most likely become bankrupt.

What?

Yeah, I know. What? The logic behind it is if your neighbour wins the lottery, he or she is suddenly going to buy maybe a new car, get a new shiny kitchen, and then you're going to want one.

Oh, really? Yeah.

So actually, and I have read this before in another, it might've been his book, Psychology of Money. But where you live will impact. So for example, I used to live down on the coast in Antibes and I used to buy a lot of clothes, you know, cause I used to go to like nice dos. Then I lived in the village up in Suppiau and everyone wears jeans and goes walking and coats. And probably the most respect would be if you bought a really waterproof coat or something. And it changes completely the way you, I approach clothes and my perspective.

So you're telling me I need to maybe move house then?

Yeah. Thank you so much. It's been really, really interesting. Thank you for being so open.

No, thank you for having me.

Where can people find you if, if they want to reach out and find out more about the study or?

Um, yeah, on LinkedIn, it's probably the best.

Thank you so much.

It's been great. Thank you, Karen. Thanks for having me.

Thanks again to Kelly for sharing her experiences and some of the secrets of her success. If you want to get in touch or find out more about the FIS Group, the links are in the show notes. If you want a regular dose of inspiration and impetus for growth, resilience, and success, subscribe to the Friday Accelerator wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to accelerate your personal and business performance, email me at karen@virology.co.uk.