August 19, 2026 • 32 mins
Hiring feels like the obvious next move when a business starts doing well. More people, more capacity, more revenue. The logic is so clean it barely needs questioning.
But the businesses with the smallest teams are sometimes the ones making the most money.
This episode is part of The Work Edit, a format where I sit down with someone facing a real professional challenge and we work through it together. My guest is Lisa, who has spent four years building The Culture Ministry, a diversity and inclusion consulting business. She came to me with a question I hear constantly: how do I scale?
What followed was a conversation about why growth doesn't have to mean hiring, what a proposal win rate above 60% is really telling you, and why a well-designed experiment beats any polished strategy framework.
If you run your own business, or you're thinking about going out on your own, this one will give you plenty of tips to apply.
Lisa and I discuss:
- Why hiring more people often grows revenue but not profit, and how Inventium is having its highest-profit year ever with a smaller team
- The single line in your profit and loss statement that signals when it's genuinely time to hire
- How AI has reshaped businesses, and the surprising place it creates new bottlenecks rather than removing them
- What a high proposal win rate is actually telling you about your pricing
- The Inventium ROI guarantee, and the slightly awkward question worth asking past clients about what you should have charged
- How to treat a market shift as an experiment to learn from, rather than a personal failure
Key quotes
"If you are getting the majority of your proposals accepted, I would say you're not charging enough."
My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Most people running a consulting business assume that growth means
hiring more people, more capacity, more a revenue. And it's
a pretty seductive idea. You hire someone you grow like
the maths seems obvious, But what if the maths is wrong?
This episode is part of the Work Edit, a new
(00:22):
format on How I Work, where I sit down with
someone facing a real professional challenge and we work through
it together. My guest today is Lisa, who runs a
D and I consulting business that she's been building for
four years. And she came to me with a question
that I hear a lot, how do I scale my business?
(00:44):
And what that led to was a conversation about pricing,
about experiments, and why the businesses with the smallest teams
are sometimes the ones making the most money. We get
into how to know when it's time to hire, what
a posal win rate above sixty percent is actually telling you,
and why running an experiment with clear metrics beats any
(01:08):
fancy strategy framework. Welcome to How I Work, a show
about habits, rituals, and strategies.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
For optimizing your day.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I'm your host, doctor Amantha imber.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Lisa, tell me about why you reached.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Out There were a couple of reasons actually, but the
main reason was I run a consulting business called the
Culture Ministry. It's been going okay, but my main challenge
is scaling the business and it's something I've really struggled with.
And I know that you've been able to scale your business,
so I was hoping to get some of your advice
(01:56):
on how to do.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
That great problem.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I love this, I love this.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Tell me what does your business do? In a nutshell, like,
what are the service or product offerings and how is
that delivered?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
There is a range of product offering, but the focus
is really around how do we build cultures and how
do we build an inclusive in culture within organizations that
drives sustainable business. So in a nutshell, that's it. And
then the offerings are a range of products which could
be from helping leaders understand what inclusive leadership looks like
(02:33):
through to coaching leaders inside organizations who are leading diversity
and inclusion work within their organization. So there's a range
of things that we can do.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Okay, and is the work delivered by humans? Like is
it a human in the room advising running workshops that
kind of thing?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yes, we are human okay, great, great great.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
So, like whenever anyone has the question around scaling a
business or around growing, I always like to understand why,
Like why do you want to scale, why do you
want to grow? And what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I want to grow because I want to be something
bigger than just me. And I come from a corporate
background where I was paid well. And I've left that
corporate background where I was paid well, and you know,
by yourself often you can't grow enough to even earn
(03:30):
as much as I might have been earning in a
corporate role. So I think there was something about having
people around me and creating a community and creating something
bigger than just what I am.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And so, are you the only employee of the business
or do you have other employees or contractors at the moment.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
At the moment, I'm the only employee. But at different
times I've had different people come in and work on
different things for me. So but yeah, at the moment
I'm all by myself, it's a bit lonely.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I can definitely relate to that. I remember in the
early days of Inventium, and it was just me for
I think the first year or two I might have
employed a part time admin person maybe in year two,
but yeah, it is. It's definitely lonely. Now I get
the reason in terms of why grow, why scale to
(04:22):
have a bigger impact. I think that's something that I
would also challenge because I think individuals can have an
absolutely huge impact. And at Inventium, we at our largest
we were twenty full time people at the moment, and
for the most of our life over the last couple
(04:44):
of decades, we've been between the sort of ten to
twelve person mark in terms of full timers. What I
see happen with a lot of business owners that are
looking to grow or looking to scale is that they
employ people. They increase operating costs, and obviously when you
employ people, that is increasing fixed costs of the business.
(05:08):
And what tends to happen is is revenue grows. Because
presumably revenue is growing if you are hiring more people,
net profit is not growing. It kind of can stay
the same. And I think at the moment we've got
six or seven full time slash full time equivalent to people,
(05:29):
and then we've got a network of maybe five or
six contractors. Is that our revenue for this financial year
FY twenty six is the highest it's ever been, and
net profit is I think twice as high as it's
been in our highest year with a smaller team. So
I think like for anyone listening that perhaps is a
(05:52):
solo preneur and just thinking, well, you know, growth and
typically that means hiring people, and you know that is
typically what scaling means, is the way to have more
impact but also to grow financially. I think is often
a flawed assumption. So I'm curious what resonates in all
(06:12):
of that.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Oh, so many things. So I probably have never had
in my head I want to have twenty people. I've
probably had, you know, maybe eight to ten people who
have different strengths to me. Obviously, as a soloprinter, you're
good at some things, but gosh, there's some things I'm
not good at, and it would be great to have
some other people around me who are better at those
(06:33):
things than I am. The other thing that resonated, and
you haven't said it, but by having the smaller team,
and I know that you've leant into AI quite a
bit and you've shifted your business more into AI, how
much has that been an impact on you able to
have a smaller team. But to be have more revenue,
more profit. Has that been a big impact.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It's definitely been a big impact. There's a lot that
we have automated in the business. There's quite a lot
of agents that we've built that have sped processes up.
Like I think about, for example, our sales process that
has been dramatically sped up in terms of, say the
(07:14):
time it takes for me to put together a proposal
for a client off the back of a sales call.
And at the moment, and you know, I guess this
is an indication of right now, like we've got really
good product market fit with our AI training, Like I
would probably be in anywhere between five to fifteen sales
meetings every week because of the amount of inquiries we've
(07:37):
got coming through, and every one of those meetings where
I am diagnosing a need that I think that we
could help with. In like pre AI, before we have
AI fied quite a few of our processes, it would
probably take me, I would say, a couple of hours
to put together a sales proposal based on a sales call,
(08:00):
sometimes up to half a day if it was particularly complex. Yeah,
and this is I think pretty typical in services businesses
and in B to B businesses, and now that process
can take me anywhere from five to ten minutes for
something that is pretty straightforward using the various AI systems
and agents that I've developed over a lot of work
(08:22):
and a lot of time. But it saves me so
much time. But where I find AI is a tricky
one when you are a manager of people less so
when you're a solopreneur, is that AI allows people to
produce output a lot more quickly. You still need to
be the person in charge of having vigilance and checking
(08:44):
what is going out the door when it's your name
on the business. And that is where I'm finding that
Certainly a lot of managers are bottlenecks, but it's where
AI can increase your time and your workload because you're
spending so much time checking all the output that's being
produced so much more quickly by your team.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
That makes sense, And when I've been speaking to people
who work in my clients and they are talking about well,
AI's grade and it does speed up people being able
to do the work they do, but it does create
bottlenecks in other parts of your business. And so I
was thinking of a different example, but I think that's
(09:26):
such a good point. How do you know in your business?
So you've been talking about what we've been able to
create a smaller team and be more efficient, how do
you know when it's the right time to hire someone?
Like in my head, it's am I making enough revenue
or profit is usually where my head's at. And I
haven't been really able to do that yet. I've had
(09:49):
some assistance and things. But how do you know when
it's time.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
It's very pertinent because literally yesterday myself and the team
made the call that it is time to hire another
full time consultant, which is something that I have been
very hesitant to do for all sorts of reasons. So
I can take you through that decision that might be helpful.
So in the past, and I remember the time that
(10:12):
I hired my very first full time consultant many many
years ago, and how I made that decision I remember
really clearly, is that I was using contractors for some
of the training programs that we were running at Inventium,
and I would look at that line in our profit
and loss statement in terms of how much were we
(10:33):
spending on contractors in.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Cost of sales? And I always thought, look.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
When that line item gets above what I would be
paying for a full time consultant, then to me, that
would indicate, well, it's a no brainer to hire somewhere
now because then I get all of their brain as
opposed to just a part of their brain, but I'm
paying the same amount of money. So I think that
(10:59):
that can be quite a useful indicator, particularly for businesses
like ours, where you know, we're in the business of
humans helping humans. It's B to B and we're services.
So that's one thing. Look in terms of why we've
decided to hire someone now at Inventium, and this is
more for the AI side of the business, hiring another
(11:21):
trainer facilitator to deliver our AI programs is that we've
got an awesome small team that does that and our
quality control standards. That's not quite the right term, but
you know, whenever we have put out a job out
in the past for these trainer facilitators, we typically get
upwards of sort of three to four hundred applications and
(11:43):
we would typically only find one person. That is an
absolute hell. Yeah, that is how fussy we are because
it's just so important to get it right. So in
terms of why we have decided why now is that
we're all looking at, Okay, what sort of pressure is
(12:04):
the team under? Because having balance is a key value
at invent team. It's why we do the four day week.
We track utilization of the four day week. Like a
lot of people track utilization of you know, billable hours
of consultants, we actually track how often are you taking
the Gift of the fifth on Friday, which is our
you know, inventing version of the four day week, And
our company goal around that is that it should be
(12:25):
at seventy percent. So if it's getting lower than seventy percent,
you know, over the course of a year, we want
each employee, each team member to be taking Fridays off
seventy percent of the time, I either're getting their job
done in four normal length days. That to us suggests
that we've got it right in terms of people's workload,
(12:45):
the balance that you know people can have, and you know,
the whole intent behind doing the fort day week or
Gift of the fifth, and when we can see that
we're falling below that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And also just.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Because I'm having one on ones with my team every
week and I'm just getting the sense that, oh, I
think like we've got a huge demand coming through, so
we're leaning more on our contractors for certain things, and
we don't really have much of a contingency like if
you know, someone comes down with the flu. There's not
(13:18):
too much in terms of a plan B. We're like, Okay,
we need to do this for the health of the team,
the health of the culture, so that we're not just
constantly in client delivery mode, but that we're making sure
that we've got time for connection as a team, which
when we're busy, it is harder to find a day
that all of us are free to head into our
(13:40):
coworking space, which is the Commons. We love the Commons
and all just connect as humans like and I would
say for the last few months it's been slightly challenging,
but now looking ahead to the next few months, it's
looking really challenging and it's not looking at letting up soon.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So that is why. Yeah, we've literally.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Decided to put out an ad which we're going out tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Brilliant look out everyone.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Winning new client work is great, but winning the wrong
ones is a problem. In the second half of this episode,
Lisa shares something that a lot of consultants struggle with
high win rates, small deal sizes, and how to move
up market. I also get into how I think about
(14:31):
pricing and while getting in front of decision makers is
still one of the hardest things in B to B businesses,
and also what to do when the market you built
your business around just shifts. If you're looking for more
tips to improve the way you work can live. I
(14:52):
write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered
that have helped me personally. You can sign up for
that at Amantha Do That's Amantha dot com.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
One of the challenges I've had with scaling is if
I get an inquiry and I do a proposal. I
have a high rate of winning proposals, which I'm really
proud of, but often there for smaller pieces of work,
and I've worked out that often those smaller pieces of
(15:27):
work are still a lot of work as opposed to
when I win a bigger piece of work. There's still
a lot of work too, but I'm being compensated more
and I mean challenged with how do I win more
of the bigger pieces of work and the littler pieces
of work are still important because they give me an
entry to a client that I might have not worked
with before who I don't know and they don't know me.
(15:49):
So you know it's an entry. But how do I
take those little pieces of work and turn them into
something bigger. That's probably been my biggest challenge to scale.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
I think there's different ways that I can answer that.
First thing is I would say, if you are getting
the majority of your proposals accepted, I would say you're
not charging enough. So for me, I like to think
about have I got the price right? If you know,
I'm probably getting about like we know, where I've identified
(16:21):
the need correctly, where our product is going to be
a really good solution to that need, and where, and
looking at what's the conversion there, Like if I am
getting higher than you know, probably around a sort of
sixty sixty five percent conversion, I'm going to be questioning
(16:42):
whether our price is too low. And likewise, if you're
kind of down the other end, like only getting you know,
maybe twenty to thirty percent of proposals through, then either
there's potentially an issue with you know, have you actually
diagnosed the right need and have you got the solution?
But assuming that's all correct, I would then go, well,
maybe you're pricing things.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
A little bit too high.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
So rather than aiming to have every proposal accepted, aim
to increase your prices until you're sort of in that yeah,
you know, about sort of sixty percent or so, you know,
give or take five to ten percent getting over the line.
And of course then there's also supply and demand. That's
(17:26):
the other thing I think about. It sometimes feels like
more of an art than science, but I'm also just
trying to manage, you know, supply and demand. Because if
we were priced a lot lower than we were, the
demand would be even greater. There's no way that we
would have a six month weightlist at the moment, we've
got about a two month weight list, you know, Hence
(17:46):
another reason why we're hiring right now. But I think, yeah,
pricing is such a tricky one to get right, and
so I would just simply run some experiments, like, for
the next ten proposals that you're putting out to clients,
see what happens if you increase your price by fifty percent.
Because I suspect that you're probably undervaluing the value that
(18:07):
you're giving to clients, and I also think that it's
worth having a really transparent conversation with the clients that
you have worked with and asking them what should I
have charged, which is kind of a strange question to
ask a client. It's certainly a conversation that I have
had many times over the past few years in business,
(18:29):
because obviously I never want to deliver something that is
not great value for money, but I don't want to
undervalue the value that we're bringing. And also just one
other thing, and I don't necessarily recommend that you do this,
but something that we have forever done is that on
every quote that goes out at Inventium is that we
have what we call the Inventium ROI guarantee, and it says,
(18:52):
and I'm reading directly from one of our quotes, you'll
find our pricing just below. But here is something to
keep in mind, especially if you've never worked with us before.
Our programs will deliver a positive ROI on your investment,
and if they don't, just pay what you think it
was worth. And in the last twenty years, I think
(19:12):
we have had I want to say, two clients take
us up on that where they just felt it wasn't
worth what they paid, and then we absolutely honor that.
Like you know, we obviously want to get feedback, but
we're never going to dispute it. We're never going to
get defensive. We're just going to be like, what do
you think it was worth? And we will adjust the
invoicing or we'll refund you the money. Because I think
(19:35):
it's so important, like clients need to be getting amazing
value for money, and you need to be charging what
you're worth, and it's about finding where is that where
is that point that delivers on both those promises if
you like.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I have another question. When I started my business, so
it's been running for about four years, and in my head,
my clients were the people leading diversity and include in
their organizations, and that worked for a little while, and
I had a podcast that targeted those people. But what
(20:08):
I realized over time was I wasn't targeting the decision
makers and I wasn't working with the decision makers. And
so even some of the pricing conversations and I had
one just recently where I know I didn't charge enough.
I absolutely know I didn't charge enough. But when I
gave the clients some feedback on something, they said, oh,
(20:29):
we would never pay more than that, and it was
a very small amount of money. It was a ridiculous
small amount of money, and it made me realize I'm
dealing with the wrong people and the value I'm trying
to sell. They don't have either the budgets or the
decision making power. So I wonder how you look at
are you targeting the decision makers? And then do you
(20:51):
get in many debates about pricing because you're actually dealing
with the decision makers.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh, I find this question.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, it's so hard and it's been a constant struggle,
constant frustration because often it is not the decision makers
that reach out looking for a solution to this problem.
Sometimes they do, and look, I think you know where
we've had really good relationships with executive team members, often
chief people officers. They will reach out directly. But then
(21:24):
sometimes the project will get delegated to someone that doesn't
have decision making authority in terms of finalizing what that
proposal looks like. And you know, the lower down the
decision making chain that you get, the harder it is
for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's really hard to
do a good needs analysis unless you're speaking to the
owner of that project, the project sponsor. But I understand
(21:47):
also that the project sponsor is sometimes too busy, you know,
particularly when an organization is speaking to several different suppliers
or partners that could be providing the service. I think
one solution that has worked quite well is if I
am finding it or my team are finding it hard
to get in front of the decision makers, then I
(22:09):
think about who are organizations that we can partner with
that are getting in front of those decision makers. So,
for example, you know, thinking about chief people officers, who
are often the people that Inventium and Inventium AI are
selling to. These are often the people that are looking
for the solutions that we deliver. There have been a
(22:29):
couple of amazing partners that we've had that have that
we've worked with on events to get in front of
those people, and that has been really great in terms
of opening doors to the right people, helping us form
relationships with people that we know that we can help,
and then making that sales process a whole lot easier,
and also just really nailing it because generally, if we're
(22:52):
speaking to someone on the executive team, they've got real
ownership of the problem. They know exactly what the problem
is when we ask and then we're able to much
more effectively, Taylor a solution that's going to help. So
it's still a problem that we struggle with. I haven't
found a solution, but there's some of the things that
have helped, and I think, you know, certainly finding the
(23:12):
right partners who are in front of the people that
you want to be in front of has been one
of the more effective solutions that we've tried.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Thank you. I have one other question, and one of
the things I have been, I guess worried about is
that the market that I was part of and what
I was selling to has changed and priorities have changed.
You know, when I started my business, diversity and inclusion
(23:42):
work was really important and organizations were scrambling for a
number of reasons to get better at it and to
not be seen as not doing the work. And last
year we had Trump come back to power, who had
a huge impact in the US, but also had a
knock on effect across Australia, across Asia and New Zealand
(24:04):
where I work, where companies often didn't have budgets anymore.
You know, the economy has been hard as well, and
I've been questioning, like, am I actually working on the
right thing? And how have you looked at that in
your business? I mean, AI is hot at the moment,
and so I love the stuff you're doing where you know,
diversity and inclusion used to be hot and it's not anymore.
(24:26):
And you know, how have you, I guess, made decisions
around am I doing the right thing? Should I do
something different? Like you know, all that naval gazing kind
of stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
I think the best thing to do is to run experiments.
And something I've learned the hard way at Inventium is that,
you know, in all of our strategy planning processes that
we typically go through around about now, you know, before
the start of the new financial year, I've tried all
sorts of methods. Some I've spent tens of hours, probably
(24:58):
more than tens of hours, like using well known strategy
frameworks and you know, research methods, competitor analysis, going really
really deep, creating what I thought was an amazing strategy
and only to have it fail because you know, the
market decided to do something completely different that I couldn't
have predicted. And then in other years, and I'm particularly
(25:21):
thinking about the last two years where I kind of
abandoned the traditional strap planning process, and I said to
the team, and I think about this, like, for this
financial year that we're about to conclude, is that we
are just going to try experiments. We are going to
run experiments, Like, yes, we've got our company goals. You know,
we've got company goals around revenue targets obviously, around customer
(25:45):
satisfaction related goals and employee happiness, employee engagement goals and
you know, gift of the fifth utilization as well.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
But in terms of how we're.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Going to get there, I just know that we're going
to run experiments. We're going to try a few things,
and we're going to dabble down on the things that
are working. You know. For example, I think about the
very first experiments that we ran in the AI space,
and this is back in kind of September October November
twenty twenty four, and it was like off the back
(26:17):
of a shocking year, shocking for the culture, minimal like
tiny net profit, I think, the smallest that we'd ever had,
and that was off the back of having like a
water tight strategy that so much work had gone into.
And then you know, in sort of like yeah, the
first half of FY twenty five We're like, look, we've
(26:37):
played in the productivity space for forever and you know,
I was pretty hardcore into AI, a very heavy user
myself near Applan.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Who co hosts how I AI.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
We were like, well, why don't we like just try
running a full day master class. We'll put together something
really cool to help people build AI capability. And at
the time, it was really just a short term injection.
We just thought, let's do this. If we can fill
a room, that's going to be very helpful in terms of,
you know, paying the salary bill. So we ran a
Melbourne workshop, like you know, for sixty people, sold out,
(27:12):
you know, within a matter of weeks, did the same
in Sydney again, sold out very quickly. And off the
back of that, we had so many people go do
you do this in house? Or oh I want to
recommend this to friends. When's your next workshop? Like the
word of mouth and the feedback was crazy, and so
we thought, okay, let's maybe schedule in a couple more programs.
(27:34):
We really didn't think we'd be able to sell out
more workshops.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
We just thought it was a bit of a fluke.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
But we thought, well, you know, this was a successful
experiment by the metrics that we set, so let's just
try this. And in the meantime, we were starting to
get through some inquiries to do in house JENAI training
and we thought, okay, cool, you know, let's lean into this.
And now, like fast forward nearly two years the AI
side of our business, like we started Inventimai, I kind
(28:00):
of like assist company to invent him, and in terms
of revenue between both companies, about two thirds of that
now comes from AI. And that was all off the
back of these experiments. Nowhere in our company strategy for
FY twenty five did it say we are going to
start an AI capability building company. It was simply through
(28:20):
leaning into experiments. And I think when I look at
the most successful things that we've done as an organization,
they've generally been off the back of just going I
think there's something here, let's try it and see.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
How it goes, and if it goes well, let's.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Lean into it. Lisa, how does that sit with you
in terms of the idea of just going, let's just
run experiments and see what happens.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I agree with you, and I have been watching your
business for a while, listening to your podcast for a
long time. And I have seen the energy that has
gone towards AI, and that is an experiment, but now
how much it's grown. I do like trying new things.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I do.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I think, like any entrepreneurs, something new and shiny is
always fun. I probably got a bit burnt out last
year because everything I tried last year nothing seemed to land.
And I don't know whether it was a perfect storm
of we had Trump saying this stuff is rubbish and
we shouldn't do it, and we had business leaders listening
to a bed, and we had a bad economy. Well
(29:26):
you know all the reasons. But actually this year, I
around International Women's Day March April, I tried some workshops
around women leaning more into AI and why it's really
important for women to lean into technology and not let
it get away from us, and that landed really well.
And then I ran some in person workshops for chief
(29:47):
people officers and for diversity and inclusion leaders around AI
and whereas AI coming into those functions, and they landed
really well. And why haven't I built on those? This
is a good question. I meant that, I bet you
want to know the answer to that. Yeah, I don't know.
I think maybe a confidence thing that I spend a
(30:07):
lot of time learning about AI and but haven't really
leant into it well enough yet I think to have
the confidence, but there was definitely some energy there that
I should follow.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
And I also think when these things are happening, because
I think it's being really cognizant that this is an experiment,
and the aim of an experiment, of any experiment is
to learn, Like you're testing a hypothesis, is it supported
or is it not supported? And either way there's really
rich learnings there, And so I would encourage you when
(30:39):
you are trying things new to go, well, this is
an experiment, and here are the metrics that I'm going
to judge whether my hypothesis was supported or not supported
by like it makes it really objective, less emotional. And
then if the hypothesis is supported and you know there
is product market fit, there's a logical next step to go, well,
(31:00):
I'm going to build on this experiment and I'm going
to do the next thing, as opposed to just going well,
that was a really good experience that went well, let
me move on to the next thing. So I feel
like that's where I would want to tweak your approach
there with what you've described.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
I like how you've framed it around. It's an experiment.
We have an hypothesis and we'll see if it's supported
or not. As opposed to sometimes when you try these
things and they don't work, it actually feels like a
personal failure. It's like, oh, I wasn't smart enough, I
didn't pick the right thing. But you're right. I like
the way that you've framed that. I think that's a
really helpful way to think about it.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Lisa.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
I want to say thank you for coming on and
sharing where things are at in your business right now.
I feel like it's always you know, it's a really
generous and vulnerable thing to do, because I think there
are going to be so many listeners that can relate
in their own way, particularly people that are running businesses
or maybe thinking of going out on their own. So
thank you for sharing so honestly and openly, and I
(31:56):
wish you the best of luck with running some more experiments.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Thank you for having me. This has been such a
delightful experience, and you're someone who i've a mind for
so long, so to be able to talk to you
one on one is really special. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Work Edit.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And if you know someone facing a similar challenge to Lisa,
why not share this episode with them. And finally, if
you've got a question or a challenge that you would
love to share with me, I'd love to hear from you.
Just drop me a note via LinkedIn or via the
contact details in the show notes. If you like today's Joe,
make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to
(32:35):
be alerted when new episodes drop.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
How I Work was recorded
Speaker 1 (32:39):
On the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of
the cool And Nation
Most people running a consulting business assume that growth means
hiring more people, more capacity, more a revenue. And it's
a pretty seductive idea. You hire someone you grow like
the maths seems obvious, But what if the maths is wrong?
This episode is part of the Work Edit, a new
(00:22):
format on How I Work, where I sit down with
someone facing a real professional challenge and we work through
it together. My guest today is Lisa, who runs a
D and I consulting business that she's been building for
four years. And she came to me with a question
that I hear a lot, how do I scale my business?
(00:44):
And what that led to was a conversation about pricing,
about experiments, and why the businesses with the smallest teams
are sometimes the ones making the most money. We get
into how to know when it's time to hire, what
a posal win rate above sixty percent is actually telling you,
and why running an experiment with clear metrics beats any
(01:08):
fancy strategy framework. Welcome to How I Work, a show
about habits, rituals, and strategies.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
For optimizing your day.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I'm your host, doctor Amantha imber.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Lisa, tell me about why you reached.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Out There were a couple of reasons actually, but the
main reason was I run a consulting business called the
Culture Ministry. It's been going okay, but my main challenge
is scaling the business and it's something I've really struggled with.
And I know that you've been able to scale your business,
so I was hoping to get some of your advice
(01:56):
on how to do.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
That great problem.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
I love this, I love this.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Tell me what does your business do? In a nutshell, like,
what are the service or product offerings and how is
that delivered?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
There is a range of product offering, but the focus
is really around how do we build cultures and how
do we build an inclusive in culture within organizations that
drives sustainable business. So in a nutshell, that's it. And
then the offerings are a range of products which could
be from helping leaders understand what inclusive leadership looks like
(02:33):
through to coaching leaders inside organizations who are leading diversity
and inclusion work within their organization. So there's a range
of things that we can do.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Okay, and is the work delivered by humans? Like is
it a human in the room advising running workshops that
kind of thing?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yes, we are human okay, great, great great.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
So, like whenever anyone has the question around scaling a
business or around growing, I always like to understand why,
Like why do you want to scale, why do you
want to grow? And what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I want to grow because I want to be something
bigger than just me. And I come from a corporate
background where I was paid well. And I've left that
corporate background where I was paid well, and you know,
by yourself often you can't grow enough to even earn
(03:30):
as much as I might have been earning in a
corporate role. So I think there was something about having
people around me and creating a community and creating something
bigger than just what I am.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And so, are you the only employee of the business
or do you have other employees or contractors at the moment.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
At the moment, I'm the only employee. But at different
times I've had different people come in and work on
different things for me. So but yeah, at the moment
I'm all by myself, it's a bit lonely.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I can definitely relate to that. I remember in the
early days of Inventium, and it was just me for
I think the first year or two I might have
employed a part time admin person maybe in year two,
but yeah, it is. It's definitely lonely. Now I get
the reason in terms of why grow, why scale to
(04:22):
have a bigger impact. I think that's something that I
would also challenge because I think individuals can have an
absolutely huge impact. And at Inventium, we at our largest
we were twenty full time people at the moment, and
for the most of our life over the last couple
(04:44):
of decades, we've been between the sort of ten to
twelve person mark in terms of full timers. What I
see happen with a lot of business owners that are
looking to grow or looking to scale is that they
employ people. They increase operating costs, and obviously when you
employ people, that is increasing fixed costs of the business.
(05:08):
And what tends to happen is is revenue grows. Because
presumably revenue is growing if you are hiring more people,
net profit is not growing. It kind of can stay
the same. And I think at the moment we've got
six or seven full time slash full time equivalent to people,
(05:29):
and then we've got a network of maybe five or
six contractors. Is that our revenue for this financial year
FY twenty six is the highest it's ever been, and
net profit is I think twice as high as it's
been in our highest year with a smaller team. So
I think like for anyone listening that perhaps is a
(05:52):
solo preneur and just thinking, well, you know, growth and
typically that means hiring people, and you know that is
typically what scaling means, is the way to have more
impact but also to grow financially. I think is often
a flawed assumption. So I'm curious what resonates in all
(06:12):
of that.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Oh, so many things. So I probably have never had
in my head I want to have twenty people. I've
probably had, you know, maybe eight to ten people who
have different strengths to me. Obviously, as a soloprinter, you're
good at some things, but gosh, there's some things I'm
not good at, and it would be great to have
some other people around me who are better at those
(06:33):
things than I am. The other thing that resonated, and
you haven't said it, but by having the smaller team,
and I know that you've leant into AI quite a
bit and you've shifted your business more into AI, how
much has that been an impact on you able to
have a smaller team. But to be have more revenue,
more profit. Has that been a big impact.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It's definitely been a big impact. There's a lot that
we have automated in the business. There's quite a lot
of agents that we've built that have sped processes up.
Like I think about, for example, our sales process that
has been dramatically sped up in terms of, say the
(07:14):
time it takes for me to put together a proposal
for a client off the back of a sales call.
And at the moment, and you know, I guess this
is an indication of right now, like we've got really
good product market fit with our AI training, Like I
would probably be in anywhere between five to fifteen sales
meetings every week because of the amount of inquiries we've
(07:37):
got coming through, and every one of those meetings where
I am diagnosing a need that I think that we
could help with. In like pre AI, before we have
AI fied quite a few of our processes, it would
probably take me, I would say, a couple of hours
to put together a sales proposal based on a sales call,
(08:00):
sometimes up to half a day if it was particularly complex. Yeah,
and this is I think pretty typical in services businesses
and in B to B businesses, and now that process
can take me anywhere from five to ten minutes for
something that is pretty straightforward using the various AI systems
and agents that I've developed over a lot of work
(08:22):
and a lot of time. But it saves me so
much time. But where I find AI is a tricky
one when you are a manager of people less so
when you're a solopreneur, is that AI allows people to
produce output a lot more quickly. You still need to
be the person in charge of having vigilance and checking
(08:44):
what is going out the door when it's your name
on the business. And that is where I'm finding that
Certainly a lot of managers are bottlenecks, but it's where
AI can increase your time and your workload because you're
spending so much time checking all the output that's being
produced so much more quickly by your team.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
That makes sense, And when I've been speaking to people
who work in my clients and they are talking about well,
AI's grade and it does speed up people being able
to do the work they do, but it does create
bottlenecks in other parts of your business. And so I
was thinking of a different example, but I think that's
(09:26):
such a good point. How do you know in your business?
So you've been talking about what we've been able to
create a smaller team and be more efficient, how do
you know when it's the right time to hire someone?
Like in my head, it's am I making enough revenue
or profit is usually where my head's at. And I
haven't been really able to do that yet. I've had
(09:49):
some assistance and things. But how do you know when
it's time.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
It's very pertinent because literally yesterday myself and the team
made the call that it is time to hire another
full time consultant, which is something that I have been
very hesitant to do for all sorts of reasons. So
I can take you through that decision that might be helpful.
So in the past, and I remember the time that
(10:12):
I hired my very first full time consultant many many
years ago, and how I made that decision I remember
really clearly, is that I was using contractors for some
of the training programs that we were running at Inventium,
and I would look at that line in our profit
and loss statement in terms of how much were we
(10:33):
spending on contractors in.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Cost of sales? And I always thought, look.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
When that line item gets above what I would be
paying for a full time consultant, then to me, that
would indicate, well, it's a no brainer to hire somewhere
now because then I get all of their brain as
opposed to just a part of their brain, but I'm
paying the same amount of money. So I think that
(10:59):
that can be quite a useful indicator, particularly for businesses
like ours, where you know, we're in the business of
humans helping humans. It's B to B and we're services.
So that's one thing. Look in terms of why we've
decided to hire someone now at Inventium, and this is
more for the AI side of the business, hiring another
(11:21):
trainer facilitator to deliver our AI programs is that we've
got an awesome small team that does that and our
quality control standards. That's not quite the right term, but
you know, whenever we have put out a job out
in the past for these trainer facilitators, we typically get
upwards of sort of three to four hundred applications and
(11:43):
we would typically only find one person. That is an
absolute hell. Yeah, that is how fussy we are because
it's just so important to get it right. So in
terms of why we have decided why now is that
we're all looking at, Okay, what sort of pressure is
(12:04):
the team under? Because having balance is a key value
at invent team. It's why we do the four day week.
We track utilization of the four day week. Like a
lot of people track utilization of you know, billable hours
of consultants, we actually track how often are you taking
the Gift of the fifth on Friday, which is our
you know, inventing version of the four day week, And
our company goal around that is that it should be
(12:25):
at seventy percent. So if it's getting lower than seventy percent,
you know, over the course of a year, we want
each employee, each team member to be taking Fridays off
seventy percent of the time, I either're getting their job
done in four normal length days. That to us suggests
that we've got it right in terms of people's workload,
(12:45):
the balance that you know people can have, and you know,
the whole intent behind doing the fort day week or
Gift of the fifth, and when we can see that
we're falling below that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And also just.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Because I'm having one on ones with my team every
week and I'm just getting the sense that, oh, I
think like we've got a huge demand coming through, so
we're leaning more on our contractors for certain things, and
we don't really have much of a contingency like if
you know, someone comes down with the flu. There's not
(13:18):
too much in terms of a plan B. We're like, Okay,
we need to do this for the health of the team,
the health of the culture, so that we're not just
constantly in client delivery mode, but that we're making sure
that we've got time for connection as a team, which
when we're busy, it is harder to find a day
that all of us are free to head into our
(13:40):
coworking space, which is the Commons. We love the Commons
and all just connect as humans like and I would
say for the last few months it's been slightly challenging,
but now looking ahead to the next few months, it's
looking really challenging and it's not looking at letting up soon.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So that is why. Yeah, we've literally.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Decided to put out an ad which we're going out tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Brilliant look out everyone.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Winning new client work is great, but winning the wrong
ones is a problem. In the second half of this episode,
Lisa shares something that a lot of consultants struggle with
high win rates, small deal sizes, and how to move
up market. I also get into how I think about
(14:31):
pricing and while getting in front of decision makers is
still one of the hardest things in B to B businesses,
and also what to do when the market you built
your business around just shifts. If you're looking for more
tips to improve the way you work can live. I
(14:52):
write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered
that have helped me personally. You can sign up for
that at Amantha Do That's Amantha dot com.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
One of the challenges I've had with scaling is if
I get an inquiry and I do a proposal. I
have a high rate of winning proposals, which I'm really
proud of, but often there for smaller pieces of work,
and I've worked out that often those smaller pieces of
(15:27):
work are still a lot of work as opposed to
when I win a bigger piece of work. There's still
a lot of work too, but I'm being compensated more
and I mean challenged with how do I win more
of the bigger pieces of work and the littler pieces
of work are still important because they give me an
entry to a client that I might have not worked
with before who I don't know and they don't know me.
(15:49):
So you know it's an entry. But how do I
take those little pieces of work and turn them into
something bigger. That's probably been my biggest challenge to scale.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
I think there's different ways that I can answer that.
First thing is I would say, if you are getting
the majority of your proposals accepted, I would say you're
not charging enough. So for me, I like to think
about have I got the price right? If you know,
I'm probably getting about like we know, where I've identified
(16:21):
the need correctly, where our product is going to be
a really good solution to that need, and where, and
looking at what's the conversion there, Like if I am
getting higher than you know, probably around a sort of
sixty sixty five percent conversion, I'm going to be questioning
(16:42):
whether our price is too low. And likewise, if you're
kind of down the other end, like only getting you know,
maybe twenty to thirty percent of proposals through, then either
there's potentially an issue with you know, have you actually
diagnosed the right need and have you got the solution?
But assuming that's all correct, I would then go, well,
maybe you're pricing things.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
A little bit too high.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
So rather than aiming to have every proposal accepted, aim
to increase your prices until you're sort of in that yeah,
you know, about sort of sixty percent or so, you know,
give or take five to ten percent getting over the line.
And of course then there's also supply and demand. That's
(17:26):
the other thing I think about. It sometimes feels like
more of an art than science, but I'm also just
trying to manage, you know, supply and demand. Because if
we were priced a lot lower than we were, the
demand would be even greater. There's no way that we
would have a six month weightlist at the moment, we've
got about a two month weight list, you know, Hence
(17:46):
another reason why we're hiring right now. But I think, yeah,
pricing is such a tricky one to get right, and
so I would just simply run some experiments, like, for
the next ten proposals that you're putting out to clients,
see what happens if you increase your price by fifty percent.
Because I suspect that you're probably undervaluing the value that
(18:07):
you're giving to clients, and I also think that it's
worth having a really transparent conversation with the clients that
you have worked with and asking them what should I
have charged, which is kind of a strange question to
ask a client. It's certainly a conversation that I have
had many times over the past few years in business,
(18:29):
because obviously I never want to deliver something that is
not great value for money, but I don't want to
undervalue the value that we're bringing. And also just one
other thing, and I don't necessarily recommend that you do this,
but something that we have forever done is that on
every quote that goes out at Inventium is that we
have what we call the Inventium ROI guarantee, and it says,
(18:52):
and I'm reading directly from one of our quotes, you'll
find our pricing just below. But here is something to
keep in mind, especially if you've never worked with us before.
Our programs will deliver a positive ROI on your investment,
and if they don't, just pay what you think it
was worth. And in the last twenty years, I think
(19:12):
we have had I want to say, two clients take
us up on that where they just felt it wasn't
worth what they paid, and then we absolutely honor that.
Like you know, we obviously want to get feedback, but
we're never going to dispute it. We're never going to
get defensive. We're just going to be like, what do
you think it was worth? And we will adjust the
invoicing or we'll refund you the money. Because I think
(19:35):
it's so important, like clients need to be getting amazing
value for money, and you need to be charging what
you're worth, and it's about finding where is that where
is that point that delivers on both those promises if
you like.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
I have another question. When I started my business, so
it's been running for about four years, and in my head,
my clients were the people leading diversity and include in
their organizations, and that worked for a little while, and
I had a podcast that targeted those people. But what
(20:08):
I realized over time was I wasn't targeting the decision
makers and I wasn't working with the decision makers. And
so even some of the pricing conversations and I had
one just recently where I know I didn't charge enough.
I absolutely know I didn't charge enough. But when I
gave the clients some feedback on something, they said, oh,
(20:29):
we would never pay more than that, and it was
a very small amount of money. It was a ridiculous
small amount of money, and it made me realize I'm
dealing with the wrong people and the value I'm trying
to sell. They don't have either the budgets or the
decision making power. So I wonder how you look at
are you targeting the decision makers? And then do you
(20:51):
get in many debates about pricing because you're actually dealing
with the decision makers.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh, I find this question.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, it's so hard and it's been a constant struggle,
constant frustration because often it is not the decision makers
that reach out looking for a solution to this problem.
Sometimes they do, and look, I think you know where
we've had really good relationships with executive team members, often
chief people officers. They will reach out directly. But then
(21:24):
sometimes the project will get delegated to someone that doesn't
have decision making authority in terms of finalizing what that
proposal looks like. And you know, the lower down the
decision making chain that you get, the harder it is
for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's really hard to
do a good needs analysis unless you're speaking to the
owner of that project, the project sponsor. But I understand
(21:47):
also that the project sponsor is sometimes too busy, you know,
particularly when an organization is speaking to several different suppliers
or partners that could be providing the service. I think
one solution that has worked quite well is if I
am finding it or my team are finding it hard
to get in front of the decision makers, then I
(22:09):
think about who are organizations that we can partner with
that are getting in front of those decision makers. So,
for example, you know, thinking about chief people officers, who
are often the people that Inventium and Inventium AI are
selling to. These are often the people that are looking
for the solutions that we deliver. There have been a
(22:29):
couple of amazing partners that we've had that have that
we've worked with on events to get in front of
those people, and that has been really great in terms
of opening doors to the right people, helping us form
relationships with people that we know that we can help,
and then making that sales process a whole lot easier,
and also just really nailing it because generally, if we're
(22:52):
speaking to someone on the executive team, they've got real
ownership of the problem. They know exactly what the problem
is when we ask and then we're able to much
more effectively, Taylor a solution that's going to help. So
it's still a problem that we struggle with. I haven't
found a solution, but there's some of the things that
have helped, and I think, you know, certainly finding the
(23:12):
right partners who are in front of the people that
you want to be in front of has been one
of the more effective solutions that we've tried.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Thank you. I have one other question, and one of
the things I have been, I guess worried about is
that the market that I was part of and what
I was selling to has changed and priorities have changed.
You know, when I started my business, diversity and inclusion
(23:42):
work was really important and organizations were scrambling for a
number of reasons to get better at it and to
not be seen as not doing the work. And last
year we had Trump come back to power, who had
a huge impact in the US, but also had a
knock on effect across Australia, across Asia and New Zealand
(24:04):
where I work, where companies often didn't have budgets anymore.
You know, the economy has been hard as well, and
I've been questioning, like, am I actually working on the
right thing? And how have you looked at that in
your business? I mean, AI is hot at the moment,
and so I love the stuff you're doing where you know,
diversity and inclusion used to be hot and it's not anymore.
(24:26):
And you know, how have you, I guess, made decisions
around am I doing the right thing? Should I do
something different? Like you know, all that naval gazing kind
of stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
I think the best thing to do is to run experiments.
And something I've learned the hard way at Inventium is that,
you know, in all of our strategy planning processes that
we typically go through around about now, you know, before
the start of the new financial year, I've tried all
sorts of methods. Some I've spent tens of hours, probably
(24:58):
more than tens of hours, like using well known strategy
frameworks and you know, research methods, competitor analysis, going really
really deep, creating what I thought was an amazing strategy
and only to have it fail because you know, the
market decided to do something completely different that I couldn't
have predicted. And then in other years, and I'm particularly
(25:21):
thinking about the last two years where I kind of
abandoned the traditional strap planning process, and I said to
the team, and I think about this, like, for this
financial year that we're about to conclude, is that we
are just going to try experiments. We are going to
run experiments, Like, yes, we've got our company goals. You know,
we've got company goals around revenue targets obviously, around customer
(25:45):
satisfaction related goals and employee happiness, employee engagement goals and
you know, gift of the fifth utilization as well.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
But in terms of how we're.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Going to get there, I just know that we're going
to run experiments. We're going to try a few things,
and we're going to dabble down on the things that
are working. You know. For example, I think about the
very first experiments that we ran in the AI space,
and this is back in kind of September October November
twenty twenty four, and it was like off the back
(26:17):
of a shocking year, shocking for the culture, minimal like
tiny net profit, I think, the smallest that we'd ever had,
and that was off the back of having like a
water tight strategy that so much work had gone into.
And then you know, in sort of like yeah, the
first half of FY twenty five We're like, look, we've
(26:37):
played in the productivity space for forever and you know,
I was pretty hardcore into AI, a very heavy user
myself near Applan.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Who co hosts how I AI.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
We were like, well, why don't we like just try
running a full day master class. We'll put together something
really cool to help people build AI capability. And at
the time, it was really just a short term injection.
We just thought, let's do this. If we can fill
a room, that's going to be very helpful in terms of,
you know, paying the salary bill. So we ran a
Melbourne workshop, like you know, for sixty people, sold out,
(27:12):
you know, within a matter of weeks, did the same
in Sydney again, sold out very quickly. And off the
back of that, we had so many people go do
you do this in house? Or oh I want to
recommend this to friends. When's your next workshop? Like the
word of mouth and the feedback was crazy, and so
we thought, okay, let's maybe schedule in a couple more programs.
(27:34):
We really didn't think we'd be able to sell out
more workshops.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
We just thought it was a bit of a fluke.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
But we thought, well, you know, this was a successful
experiment by the metrics that we set, so let's just
try this. And in the meantime, we were starting to
get through some inquiries to do in house JENAI training
and we thought, okay, cool, you know, let's lean into this.
And now, like fast forward nearly two years the AI
side of our business, like we started Inventimai, I kind
(28:00):
of like assist company to invent him, and in terms
of revenue between both companies, about two thirds of that
now comes from AI. And that was all off the
back of these experiments. Nowhere in our company strategy for
FY twenty five did it say we are going to
start an AI capability building company. It was simply through
(28:20):
leaning into experiments. And I think when I look at
the most successful things that we've done as an organization,
they've generally been off the back of just going I
think there's something here, let's try it and see.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
How it goes, and if it goes well, let's.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Lean into it. Lisa, how does that sit with you
in terms of the idea of just going, let's just
run experiments and see what happens.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I agree with you, and I have been watching your
business for a while, listening to your podcast for a
long time. And I have seen the energy that has
gone towards AI, and that is an experiment, but now
how much it's grown. I do like trying new things.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I do.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I think, like any entrepreneurs, something new and shiny is
always fun. I probably got a bit burnt out last
year because everything I tried last year nothing seemed to land.
And I don't know whether it was a perfect storm
of we had Trump saying this stuff is rubbish and
we shouldn't do it, and we had business leaders listening
to a bed, and we had a bad economy. Well
(29:26):
you know all the reasons. But actually this year, I
around International Women's Day March April, I tried some workshops
around women leaning more into AI and why it's really
important for women to lean into technology and not let
it get away from us, and that landed really well.
And then I ran some in person workshops for chief
(29:47):
people officers and for diversity and inclusion leaders around AI
and whereas AI coming into those functions, and they landed
really well. And why haven't I built on those? This
is a good question. I meant that, I bet you
want to know the answer to that. Yeah, I don't know.
I think maybe a confidence thing that I spend a
(30:07):
lot of time learning about AI and but haven't really
leant into it well enough yet I think to have
the confidence, but there was definitely some energy there that
I should follow.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
And I also think when these things are happening, because
I think it's being really cognizant that this is an experiment,
and the aim of an experiment, of any experiment is
to learn, Like you're testing a hypothesis, is it supported
or is it not supported? And either way there's really
rich learnings there, And so I would encourage you when
(30:39):
you are trying things new to go, well, this is
an experiment, and here are the metrics that I'm going
to judge whether my hypothesis was supported or not supported
by like it makes it really objective, less emotional. And
then if the hypothesis is supported and you know there
is product market fit, there's a logical next step to go, well,
(31:00):
I'm going to build on this experiment and I'm going
to do the next thing, as opposed to just going well,
that was a really good experience that went well, let
me move on to the next thing. So I feel
like that's where I would want to tweak your approach
there with what you've described.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
I like how you've framed it around. It's an experiment.
We have an hypothesis and we'll see if it's supported
or not. As opposed to sometimes when you try these
things and they don't work, it actually feels like a
personal failure. It's like, oh, I wasn't smart enough, I
didn't pick the right thing. But you're right. I like
the way that you've framed that. I think that's a
really helpful way to think about it.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Lisa.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
I want to say thank you for coming on and
sharing where things are at in your business right now.
I feel like it's always you know, it's a really
generous and vulnerable thing to do, because I think there
are going to be so many listeners that can relate
in their own way, particularly people that are running businesses
or maybe thinking of going out on their own. So
thank you for sharing so honestly and openly, and I
(31:56):
wish you the best of luck with running some more experiments.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Thank you for having me. This has been such a
delightful experience, and you're someone who i've a mind for
so long, so to be able to talk to you
one on one is really special. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Work Edit.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And if you know someone facing a similar challenge to Lisa,
why not share this episode with them. And finally, if
you've got a question or a challenge that you would
love to share with me, I'd love to hear from you.
Just drop me a note via LinkedIn or via the
contact details in the show notes. If you like today's Joe,
make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to
(32:35):
be alerted when new episodes drop.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
How I Work was recorded
Speaker 1 (32:39):
On the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of
the cool And Nation
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