April 7, 2025 • 29 mins
Ever wondered what building a business is REALLY like behind those glossy Instagram posts? In this must-listen episode, Michelle Battersby (Sunroom founder) pulls back the curtain on entrepreneurship's harsh realities with the 8 business mantras she learned the hard way that apply whether you're a founder or climbing the corporate ladder.
Learn why perfectionism kills products, how to approach competitors, the surprising way to attract investors, and what to do when employees literally steal from you.
Whether you're dreaming of starting something or leading a team, this episode is your essential guide to avoiding startup mistakes that nobody warns you about!
Here is Michelle’s 75-question Questionnaire to help ascertain if you have found your founder fit!
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HOSTS: Michelle Battersby, Soph Hirst and Em Vernem
EXEC PRODUCER: Georgie Page
AUDIO PRODUCER: Leah Porges
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to Amma mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hello and welcome to Biz Your Work Life Sorted. I'm
m Burnham and today we're diving into something that both
our career coaches, Michelle Batisby and Sophurst, are unpacking the real,
unfiltered truth about what it's actually like to build something
from scratch. So you know those moments when you're scrolling
through Instagram and you see all of these founders living
(00:35):
their best lives making it look super easy. Well, today
we're pulling back the curtain on all of that. Michelle
sharing her business mantras that she's learned the hard way,
and when I say the hard way, I mean dealing
with everything from employees stealing your money to having to
completely rebuild products from scratch. Meanwhile, Soph's bringing her experience
(00:56):
from Google to help us understand what these lessons look
like in both a startup and corporate environment. Plus, if
you've ever thought about starting your own, they're both going
to break down exactly how to know if an idea
is worth pursuing, and more importantly, how to avoid the
mistakes that they wish someone had worn them about.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I launched my business with twenty thousand dollars and I
made nothing.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I feel like everyone's tiktoks every article. It's all like,
launched this business with fifteen grand.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
And now look at me being a millionaire, and it's
just fucking bullshit.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I'm just going to sit here and be so open
and honest.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I thought I would be in a much better position
than I am this year.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I love the transparency of founders on socials, specifically when
people are really open and vulnerable about the mistakes that
they've made, because I think often we see the shiny
and there definitely has been that history of romanticizing entrepreneurship
and really glorifying what it's like, but in my experience,
(02:02):
it has been mountain after mountain, definitely with wins in
there that kind of keep you going.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
You're so right about the sort of transparency because I
think you see people running these successful businesses online and
you think it's a certain way, and then you do
it yourself. You make heap some mistakes, and then you
realize that some of those traps are actually avoidable. And
I think what people love about your style and listening
to you, because you share a lot on social as well,
you just like cut the crap and give people the
(02:29):
good stuff. You're also very young for a founder, and
you're a female in a pretty male dominated space, like
you have a tech startup, still male dominated space, and
I'd just like, look at what you've done.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
When I first started out being a founder, or maybe
my approach as an individual had always been the mistakes
are bad, like must do good work, must succeed, must win,
can't lose. And I think what I've realized is I'm
actually quite proud of every mistake that I've made, and
like riding these like mantras, they're all derived from real
(03:07):
life mistakes, and I think one of the biggest lessons
you have to learn as a business owner, but it
can serve anyone throughout their career, is just like redefining
what failure actually looks like, because with every mistake, it's
kind of not a dead end, it's not the end
of the road. It's actually an opportunity to strike again,
(03:28):
but with a little bit more accuracy and taking a
little bit more of an informed shot. So I'm actually
quite proud of all these mistakes because they've made me
and my business much stronger, and they've also made my
story much stronger.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
I had to peek at some of your notes, and
regardless of whether you're own a business or not, or
have ambitions of only a business, like, most of your
points are so relevant to anyone, like people working in
an office job, like people who run a startup small
business whatever. So yeah, I'm really excited about it. I'm
excited to learn from you.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Okay, So number one, Reid Hoffman, who is the founder
of LinkedIn, said, if you're not a little embarrassed by
your product, you've launched too late. This was my co
founder and my first mistake. We felt like we had
to launch a squeaky clean product that had all the
(04:35):
bells and whistles, something that we felt really proud to
put out into the world, and it ended up taking
us a year to build our app, which is too
slow in the world of tech, and it's because we
just couldn't let our standards down and our perfectionist tendencies down.
(04:57):
And if we just got it out the door, we
would have saved a lot of time and money, and
we also would have been able to get real feedback
back and get a bit of a sense on like
if we're on the money in a faster kind of
feedback loop, then going out with a product that at
the end of the day was actually over engineered and
ended up having features that people just didn't need.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
There's this line from a movie We Bought a Zoo.
I just really like the quote, all you need is
twenty seconds of insane courage, and then it talks about
this idea of embarrassing bravery, and I like think about
that all the time as I'm trying to do things.
I think just that thing that you said, Michelle around
waiting too late, and this idea we have of trying
to make something that's perfect, and it's that feeling of
(05:39):
you'll have sort of a spark of an idea, you'll
kind of be trying to make it perfect, and you
kind of never do anything with it. And then you
see someone else comes out with something the same kind
of idea and it's way less good than how you
would have done it. They did it and they've been successful,
and you see this all the time. I was just
talking to a friend about it. So yeah, just trying
to get out the smallest, simplest version of your thing,
just to get that feedback loop.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Number two definitely ties into the first one, and it's
don't assume because a competitor has a feature that it
actually works or people use it. So when we were
founding Sunroom and coming up with our feature set, we
spent a lot of time doing product teardowns of our competitors,
(06:22):
and we started working on features that we assumed people
would want or people would use because our competitors had them.
And there was one feature in particular spent a lot
of time building and it was so poorly adopted, and
that was a huge.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Learning curve for us.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Interesting, sometimes you will interview your consumers and everyone will
tell you that they'll use something, but when push comes
to shove, they actually won't. And sometimes it can be
really hard to get honest answers, especially if you've built
relationships with your users. Sometimes they don't want to offend you.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
And then in a work context, I think there's almost
the same principle. So we would often talk at Google
about landings, not launchers, and you'd see other teams, like
from other countries, and they have this amazing launch and
they'd send this amazing launch email, and like you're just
kind of sitting there with so much time. We were thinking,
oh my god, we should be doing this, so it's
a very loud launch and then there would be this
(07:18):
very quiet you know. Actually that didn't really work that well.
It was actually kind of average. You never really hear
about it. Yeah, we would always kind of say to
ourselves landings, not launchers, and don't just pay attention to
this big, glossy loud launch email.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, I love that, love that saying.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
The third one, still on the competitor train of thought,
is it's always nice to know who you're up against
and be aware of their strengths and weaknesses, but stay
focused on your differences. This one kind of hurt me
to learn because it was something that I already knew.
I already knew like keep your head in your boat,
(07:56):
you know, like, don't look around. It slows you down.
But I think sometimes when you're doing something for the
first time, sometimes you'll trust in yourself and your instincts
can become a little bit rattled, and so you do
start to look around a little bit, and I think
that's when you can lose focus. And we definitely went
through a period of that at sun Room, where we
(08:18):
just started paying too much attention to how our competitors
were growing, and we started trying to copy some of
their acquisition strategies and it just ended up being a
complete waste of time, and we would have been better
off focusing on what was working for us and just
continuing to double down on that or think about new
(08:40):
innovative ways to keep targeting that same niche of creator
for us.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
How did you get out of that phase then if
you were kind of just looking at what your competitors
were doing and that was shaping the decisions you were making,
and then what did you start doing differently instead?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, we ended up losing quite a bit of money.
So that was a pretty big wake up call when
there was kind of something that we knew was working
really well for our competitor is but we never wanted
to do it, but we reached this point of desperation
at one time and so we felt like, all right,
this is our only option. Let's give this a crack.
(09:16):
And it was hands down the worst thing I think
we did in the history of a sun Room and
lost us considerable amounts of time and money. And so
that was just a slap across the face, like wake
up call in terms of, you know what, let's go
back to the drawing board, we actually ended up going
back to what our go to market strategy had been
(09:38):
and how we initially built a lot of hype and
had a lot of success. And I think sometimes you
might set really aggressive growth targets, so you think that
what you were doing a year or two ago wasn't
that successful. But then as you've learned and as you've
tried a lot of other things, you have a bit
more of an understanding of the market, the industry, maybe
(09:59):
what a reasonable pace is, and you're able with the
benefit of hindsight to look back and realize, oh, actually,
that was quite successful. We just didn't really have like
the wisdom to understand that at the time.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
I think that's really interesting that you sort of did something,
maybe it wasn't as successful, and then at a different
time it was, Yeah, how much time would you spend
in your day actually talking.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
To your customers and your users if I'm working.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
For eight hours seven hours.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Out of the area.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
From what I've heard, I've never run a startup, but
sometimes founders get into this trap where they don't want
to talk to their customers or they feel like it's
so time consuming. But especially in the early phases, most
of your time should just be spent hanging out with
them and learning from them.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
One hundred percent. It's that saying, like, do things that
don't scale. I think that's really really important at the
start because it builds a lot of brand loyalty and
that's something that has always paid off for us and
worked really well. That's always meant that our retention is
good and we've kind of got these people that are
willing to advocate for us.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah. I always love that.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Whenever I'm signing up for new products and it's like
a very techy you know, you just think it's kind
of like this faceless software and then the email you'll
get once you, you know, sign up for it. Sometimes I'll
get emails like three days later from the founder and
they're like, hey, just checking in how you're finding the product,
And you're like, well, I thought this was this massive
software company and now it just feels very human and
very personal.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
That's such an easy way to stand out if you
have a tech company, because we're also used to existing
on these giant platforms where there's no way we're ever
going to directly hear from anyone from like Facebook, Instagram,
TikTok you lose your account and like it's really impossible
to get in touch with someone. So I think if
you're building a tech product, like people really appreciate that
(11:45):
personal touch and being able to speak to a real
human on the end of a line. Number four is
when you're building features, people don't care about the feature,
they care about the benefit. So if you're going to
speak about it to your consumers, you need to focus
on that. I think when you work at a tech company,
(12:05):
there are so many smart people that are able to
solve these really tough problems through you know, like engineering,
critical thinking, coming up with like innovative ways to get
people to connect on a product, whatever it is, and
then there can be a tendency to get really excited
about certain features that actually the consumer doesn't really care about.
(12:27):
I think that's that friction, that tension point that can
often exist between engineering teams and marketing teams, which is
something that I also experienced when I work at Bumble.
You know, you get given a feature, you have to
market it, and you're thinking, no one is going to
care about this, But I think it's really in how
you communicate it. So not talking about what the feature
(12:49):
is or kind of how it exists, but what the
benefit is for the user.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
So true.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
We lived by this at Google. The way we did
marketing at Google is no, the user know the magic
and connect to the two. And the magic is nothing
to do with the product or the feature. It's about
the transformation that it creates in someone or like the
joy that it sparks, or the time it saved them, whatever,
But it's nothing to do with the product of the feature.
(13:14):
I mean, obviously it's to do with the product of
the feature, but it's like not about the product or
the feature. Yeah, so yeah, I think about that all
the time. There's that really famous quote which whenever someone
says it to me, I never understand. I have to
like process it slowly. My brain is slow. But it's
people don't want the drill, they want the whole. The
thing is, they want the change, right, they want the
(13:34):
thing it's making. They don't actually want the benefit of
the product, so they want the change.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Number five. This is a great one, and this came
from one of Sunroom's investors. Actually who fun fact, he
is the creator of Little Mikayla, which was that first
like avatar Ai influencer. Yeah, that's his company. And he
said something to Lucy, my co founder and I which
(14:00):
just really stuck one day. He said, if you want advice,
ask for money, And if you want money, ask for advice.
And when you're raising capital, it's just the best way
to go about it. Like hit people up and bring
them in on your journey. Talk to them about what
(14:21):
you're building, talk to them about the problem, talk about
the product, talk about the wins, talk about your challenges,
and if they end up loving your product and believing
in you, they'll just offer to invest or. They'll offer
to intro you to someone else who might be that
first check. And it's just a really smart way to
(14:43):
go about raising money as opposed to just outright asking
for it.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Why do you think that works?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Oh, Like people have also done this to me before,
where like they come with a product and they want advice,
and I'm like, oh, this is good. I believe in it,
Like I actually want to give them a bit of
cash for it. I think it probably helps the individual
in how they tell the story, to be honest, like
it removes that pressure of I'm about to kind of
stand up and pitch to someone with the goal of
(15:10):
like getting cash at the end. Of the conversation, so
I think you end up sharing the story in a
different way, And people also liked talking about themselves and
kind of having their egos stroke a little bit. So
reaching out to investors or angels or other founders in
your space and sharing your struggles and then asking for
their advice in return, it's just a very good way
(15:32):
to build relationships.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Do you have any advice for someone who like, we're
in Australia right and a lot of.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
The money is in not Australia, in the US. I guess,
so for.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Someone sitting here being like I kind of want to
start talking to people and networking and maybe following this
kind of thing around asking for advice and hopefully getting money,
how did you get started getting connected to people? And
do you have any advice for other people?
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:56):
So it did definitely help that my co founder and
I had backgrounds in tech. So I first went out
to my own network, which was people i'd worked with
when I was at Bumble, and was able to get
the founder and CEO of Bumble to invest in some room.
That then made it much easier to kind of start
reaching out to people that we didn't have relationships with.
(16:18):
Because you've already got these checks committed, and it shows
this level of belief in you as a founder.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I suppose.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
I've also had a lot of people working in corporate
jobs who leave and want to start their own company,
and they do go and hit up all the execs
because they know that a lot of the execs probably
have a spare ten k, yeah, and they already know
that this person is good, and so they kind of like,
I believe in you. I think I know that what
you're building has potential. And sometimes they'll get their first
little small checks through that.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
I think it's smart, yeah, exactly, and then they will
introduce you to their networks and it kind of just
goes from there. And once someone that's worked with you
is out there then speaking to their network saying hey,
you know this person's building X and I've invested, it
just creates this snowball effect where you kind of trust
your network and then you might end up investing as well.
(17:06):
But I also think it is a really good strategy
to get on socials and talk about what you're doing.
There's that saying, you know, build in public, and that
ended up achieving a lot for Lucy and I and
I was really surprised with just who was watching, and
so I wouldn't be afraid, And I mean, you don't
(17:28):
need to have followers to pull that off.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Can you give this an example?
Speaker 4 (17:32):
Because I heard this, I love it, I want to
do it, and I found it it's actually harder to
do than I thought, just because it feels so unnatural
to be like, what do you think my business model
should be?
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Whatever?
Speaker 4 (17:42):
I'm finding it actually really hard even though I want
to do it. So can you give some examples of
what building in public actually looks like?
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, so it's probably going to feel uncomfortable and it's
probably going to feel a bit icky, but it's not
self promotion. It's idea promotion. Like that's how I like
to think about it. And it kind of breaks down
that like where you feel a bit gross because you're
taking talking about your own work or you're talking about yourself,
You're actually not You're talking about your ideas. It's like, hey,
(18:11):
I've been working on this problem. Does anyone else have
this problem? I'm working on solutions for this that i'd
really like to share with others, and just start talking
about it in whatever way comes naturally to you as well,
like it doesn't really have to be on TikTok, But
I do think TikTok is good if you don't have
an existing audience, because anything can go viral, anything can
(18:33):
get eyeballs. I found that investors started reaching out to
me once I started just speaking about what we were
working on on socials. Don't be afraid to do that.
I think sometimes there's a little bit of fear around
will someone steal my idea? And I don't think you
need to give away your secret source or if you're
working on a really innovative solution to something, you don't
(18:57):
need to give that away in this information. But there's
definitely no risk talking about the problem, what you're working on,
how you're thinking about doing it. I am of the
view if someone could take it and copy it, then
it was probably not going to be that great or
defensible anyway.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
So true, I love.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
It, Okay number six and I definitely learned this one
the hard way. Culture is what you punish and what
you celebrate, So one rotten apple will spoil the bunch.
(19:36):
And I really feel like that truth is exaggerated when
you're in a small team and you really can't settle
for bad attitudes. So you've probably heard the saying higher, slow,
fire fast, But when you have a startup, I think
unfortunately your brain is more geared to higher, fast, as
(19:58):
fast as possible, Like you're just trying to grow, you're
trying to scale. It's that move fast and break things mentality,
and it can really end up hurting you. I also
think there's that level of excitement, like yay, I'm finding
people that actually also believe in this thing I'm doing,
and I just want to get them in the room.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I speak to so many leaders, owners of companies things
like that, and I am so surprised. I'll always say
to them, what are the qualities you're looking for in
young people that you hire? And I'm so surprised by
how many people say number one attitude. So many other
things can be learned, but if you have a bad attitude,
it just undermines everything. Back to the point Michelle around,
(20:37):
I really liked that thing you said around what was
it punish?
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Culture is what you punish and what you celebrate.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Do you have any examples of like what that looks
like or how you actually do that as a leader
a business owner.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I think with the culture as what you punish. It's
like at the start, Lucy and I were quite scared
to be a bit ruthless, Like you kind of hear
that in business you need to like flex that muscle
a little bit. You're going to have to have difficult
conversations and conversations, and we we had so much fucked
(21:09):
up stuff happened to us, like what employees stealing from us?
It's like stealing our money, not how are they even
doing that? Yeah, like on company cards or we had
test versions of the product where you actually could make
money through the app, and we realized that some members
of our team were sending each other like thousands of
(21:32):
our coins on Sunroom to kind of get each other's
earnings up when they were linked to sunroom accounts.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
And is that just an immediate fire?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Ah, yes, yes. But I kept a journal at the
start of like the major thing that would occur every week,
and it was just blow after blow, like engineers taking
your ip and trying to sell it on the side,
like just wild stories.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
I'm sitting there thinking, like people complaining too much, but
like that's serious.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Yeah, it honestly was laughable times, Like yeah, you kind
of just got to roll with the punches. Yeah, I
also think what you celebrate, So this kind of happened
at Bumble. Actually, there was this culture of loads of emojis,
lots of exclamation marks, getting really excited, almost by the
bare minimum, getting really excited by someone just kind of
(22:25):
meeting expectations. It kind of had to be overhauled because
it meant that once someone actually wasn't performing, they were
really shocked because they'd been met with so much joy
and excitement at all these other points along the way.
So I think in terms of what you celebrate as well,
just being aware of things as simple as that, like
(22:47):
how exclamation marks and emojis can actually lead someone to
feel like they're doing an incredible job when maybe they're
just kind of average, and then if you have to
start performance managing that person, there's a bit of a disconnect.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
A lot of people love complaining about gen z and
about how entitled they are, and sometimes I see that
exact problem where companies sort of started celebrating the wrong
behaviors or they're just like over celebrating things, and then
people get used to that and it's sort of not
their fault, and then the leaders want something to change
because the company's growing, and then they expect people to
(23:23):
just understand number seven.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So this also kind of comes back to performance. Steve
Jobs said, a's higher a's and b's higher c's, So
a's will help you maintain a high performing culture, and
you need to refine your recruitment process to.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Find the a's.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
This is kind of what we started to learn or
witness whilst we were working on Sunroom. We ended up
hiring this absolute gun of an engineer who was nineteen
at the time and he's still to this day our
head of engineering and he has two patents. I think
he's twenty two now. Yeah, and he is so smart,
(24:07):
and as we began to grow the engineering team around him,
we realized that he just helped maintain this very high
performing culture and that these genius types won't really settle
with working for people who are underperforming or not really
willing to put the work in to level up. You know,
(24:29):
that doesn't mean there's not opportunity to expand upon your
skill set and to learn and to be coached by
great people. There's definitely that, but there also needs to
be that element of wanting to do better. We definitely
lean more towards you don't really need to have the experience,
but do you have the right attitude? Are you displaying
a level of like hunger, commitment, competitiveness, what do you
(24:52):
work hard for those sorts of things trying to identify that.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Is there anything around like the amount of time you
spend with someone before you actually hire them, or like
having some kind of probation period that has helped. Is
it like, you know, I went out and went for
a hike with this person and then after that time
I knew they were good.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Is there any advice you have around that.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
We actually did do a trial period with someone once,
and it was someone that we were going to be
moving over to the States, So that allowed us to
set something up where we could actually trial working with
the person over a two month period, and that was
a really good strategy. Definitely like getting out of an
(25:32):
office situation and like going for a drink with them,
or going to dinner with them, or starting to like
jam on the side like casually with someone if you can,
depending on like what sort of a relationship you have,
Like can you just start texting about like tiktoks that
you're seeing whatever is relevant to get a little bit
(25:52):
more insight into their brain.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
I got this advice as well.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
If you are even thinking about maybe if you want
to start a business with someone, don't sit down and
be like, should we start a business together? Just start
talking about ideas, constantly sharing voice notes whatever, sharing stuff
that you're into, and then just start like doing the
thing and then you know at some point, yeah, you
sit down and you have a conversation around and a
contract around the business, but like, just start.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Actually something we can put in the show notes. Which
is kind of off topic, but similar for anyone who
actually is looking for a co founder. Lucy and I
did a seventy five question questionnaire before we founded Sunroom.
We'd never met in real life. We founded Sunroom through COVID,
so it was all virtual. So we were really trying
(26:34):
to get an understanding of like do we like each other?
Can we work together? And she had done a fellowship
called on Deck for tech entrepreneurs, well people wanting to
become tech entrepreneurs, and they gave a seventy five question
questionnaire and it gets into a lot about your values,
your struggles, what your mindset is like under pressure, asks
(26:55):
you questions like you know, would you prefer to own
one percent of it a billion dollar company or like
ten percent of one hundred million. How many years do
you want to work on this? Like what financial sacrifices
are you willing to make? It kind of gets into
tougher questions that you might struggle to actually bring up
with someone.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I'll get a.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Version of it and we can put it in the
show notes for anyone looking for a co founder.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
We're gonna have a really good newsletter for this, and
we'll definitely put all this helpful stuff in the newsletter,
and the newsletter you can find through the show notes
as well.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Epic.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Okay, last one, This is a good one to end
on when hiring. If it's not a fuck, yes.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
It's a no.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
And sometimes that means like you do, let some candidates
go that same really strong, but I think, yeah, you've
got a trust your gut on that one.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Every hiring mistake I've ever made, I think back, and
I convinced myself into it because on paper or the
brand or the skill that you think they have that
you need at that time, and it's never worked out.
So yeah, I think it goes back to that your
gut is actually your second brain, and there's tons of
signals that you're picking up when you spend time with
(28:02):
someone that you don't actually consciously know what they are.
But it's so hard though, because it's also like, do
you keep holding off to find the fuck? Yes? And
I guess there's probably no one answer, but I definitely
know what you just said is very true. I just honestly,
I don't know about anyone listening, but I am personally
so excited about some of the stuff that I just learned.
(28:22):
And I think the interesting thing is, like whether you
even planned to start a business or not, it's just
career advice, life advice, work advice in this, So yeah,
thank you, Michelle. I also just think it's so funny,
like you're so low key about you just like, oh, yeah,
I run like a startup, but then when you actually
share the shit you've had to deal with, it just
completely blows me away.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I'm sitting there in my like.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Cushy corporate office job, just like I've never had to
deal with things like that before.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So that was a lot, Michelle, and amazing. I just
learned so much.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Every single one of these points is going to be
in the newsletter, and you can get that in the
show notes. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
My mind is absolutely blown by some of the stories
Michelle and So share today. For anyone who wants to
dive deeper into this, our newsletter this week has Michelle's
full seventy five question co founder questionnaire, plus a breakdown
of all the mantras you've heard with real examples on
how to apply them. We will link that in our
show notes, and while you're there, make sure you're following
(29:24):
us at biz by Mama Mia on Instagram for daily
career tips and some behind the scenes content from Mish
and So and the entire biz team. We will see
you on Thursday for our Biz Inbox episode, where we'll
be answering all of your career dilemmas. Bye, Mamma Mia
(29:47):
acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this
podcast is recorded on
You're listening to Amma mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hello and welcome to Biz Your Work Life Sorted. I'm
m Burnham and today we're diving into something that both
our career coaches, Michelle Batisby and Sophurst, are unpacking the real,
unfiltered truth about what it's actually like to build something
from scratch. So you know those moments when you're scrolling
through Instagram and you see all of these founders living
(00:35):
their best lives making it look super easy. Well, today
we're pulling back the curtain on all of that. Michelle
sharing her business mantras that she's learned the hard way,
and when I say the hard way, I mean dealing
with everything from employees stealing your money to having to
completely rebuild products from scratch. Meanwhile, Soph's bringing her experience
(00:56):
from Google to help us understand what these lessons look
like in both a startup and corporate environment. Plus, if
you've ever thought about starting your own, they're both going
to break down exactly how to know if an idea
is worth pursuing, and more importantly, how to avoid the
mistakes that they wish someone had worn them about.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I launched my business with twenty thousand dollars and I
made nothing.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I feel like everyone's tiktoks every article. It's all like,
launched this business with fifteen grand.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
And now look at me being a millionaire, and it's
just fucking bullshit.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I'm just going to sit here and be so open
and honest.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I thought I would be in a much better position
than I am this year.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I love the transparency of founders on socials, specifically when
people are really open and vulnerable about the mistakes that
they've made, because I think often we see the shiny
and there definitely has been that history of romanticizing entrepreneurship
and really glorifying what it's like, but in my experience,
(02:02):
it has been mountain after mountain, definitely with wins in
there that kind of keep you going.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
You're so right about the sort of transparency because I
think you see people running these successful businesses online and
you think it's a certain way, and then you do
it yourself. You make heap some mistakes, and then you
realize that some of those traps are actually avoidable. And
I think what people love about your style and listening
to you, because you share a lot on social as well,
you just like cut the crap and give people the
(02:29):
good stuff. You're also very young for a founder, and
you're a female in a pretty male dominated space, like
you have a tech startup, still male dominated space, and
I'd just like, look at what you've done.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
When I first started out being a founder, or maybe
my approach as an individual had always been the mistakes
are bad, like must do good work, must succeed, must win,
can't lose. And I think what I've realized is I'm
actually quite proud of every mistake that I've made, and
like riding these like mantras, they're all derived from real
(03:07):
life mistakes, and I think one of the biggest lessons
you have to learn as a business owner, but it
can serve anyone throughout their career, is just like redefining
what failure actually looks like, because with every mistake, it's
kind of not a dead end, it's not the end
of the road. It's actually an opportunity to strike again,
(03:28):
but with a little bit more accuracy and taking a
little bit more of an informed shot. So I'm actually
quite proud of all these mistakes because they've made me
and my business much stronger, and they've also made my
story much stronger.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
I had to peek at some of your notes, and
regardless of whether you're own a business or not, or
have ambitions of only a business, like, most of your
points are so relevant to anyone, like people working in
an office job, like people who run a startup small
business whatever. So yeah, I'm really excited about it. I'm
excited to learn from you.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Okay, So number one, Reid Hoffman, who is the founder
of LinkedIn, said, if you're not a little embarrassed by
your product, you've launched too late. This was my co
founder and my first mistake. We felt like we had
to launch a squeaky clean product that had all the
(04:35):
bells and whistles, something that we felt really proud to
put out into the world, and it ended up taking
us a year to build our app, which is too
slow in the world of tech, and it's because we
just couldn't let our standards down and our perfectionist tendencies down.
(04:57):
And if we just got it out the door, we
would have saved a lot of time and money, and
we also would have been able to get real feedback
back and get a bit of a sense on like
if we're on the money in a faster kind of
feedback loop, then going out with a product that at
the end of the day was actually over engineered and
ended up having features that people just didn't need.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
There's this line from a movie We Bought a Zoo.
I just really like the quote, all you need is
twenty seconds of insane courage, and then it talks about
this idea of embarrassing bravery, and I like think about
that all the time as I'm trying to do things.
I think just that thing that you said, Michelle around
waiting too late, and this idea we have of trying
to make something that's perfect, and it's that feeling of
(05:39):
you'll have sort of a spark of an idea, you'll
kind of be trying to make it perfect, and you
kind of never do anything with it. And then you
see someone else comes out with something the same kind
of idea and it's way less good than how you
would have done it. They did it and they've been successful,
and you see this all the time. I was just
talking to a friend about it. So yeah, just trying
to get out the smallest, simplest version of your thing,
just to get that feedback loop.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Number two definitely ties into the first one, and it's
don't assume because a competitor has a feature that it
actually works or people use it. So when we were
founding Sunroom and coming up with our feature set, we
spent a lot of time doing product teardowns of our competitors,
(06:22):
and we started working on features that we assumed people
would want or people would use because our competitors had them.
And there was one feature in particular spent a lot
of time building and it was so poorly adopted, and
that was a huge.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Learning curve for us.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Interesting, sometimes you will interview your consumers and everyone will
tell you that they'll use something, but when push comes
to shove, they actually won't. And sometimes it can be
really hard to get honest answers, especially if you've built
relationships with your users. Sometimes they don't want to offend you.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
And then in a work context, I think there's almost
the same principle. So we would often talk at Google
about landings, not launchers, and you'd see other teams, like
from other countries, and they have this amazing launch and
they'd send this amazing launch email, and like you're just
kind of sitting there with so much time. We were thinking,
oh my god, we should be doing this, so it's
a very loud launch and then there would be this
(07:18):
very quiet you know. Actually that didn't really work that well.
It was actually kind of average. You never really hear
about it. Yeah, we would always kind of say to
ourselves landings, not launchers, and don't just pay attention to
this big, glossy loud launch email.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, I love that, love that saying.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
The third one, still on the competitor train of thought,
is it's always nice to know who you're up against
and be aware of their strengths and weaknesses, but stay
focused on your differences. This one kind of hurt me
to learn because it was something that I already knew.
I already knew like keep your head in your boat,
(07:56):
you know, like, don't look around. It slows you down.
But I think sometimes when you're doing something for the
first time, sometimes you'll trust in yourself and your instincts
can become a little bit rattled, and so you do
start to look around a little bit, and I think
that's when you can lose focus. And we definitely went
through a period of that at sun Room, where we
(08:18):
just started paying too much attention to how our competitors
were growing, and we started trying to copy some of
their acquisition strategies and it just ended up being a
complete waste of time, and we would have been better
off focusing on what was working for us and just
continuing to double down on that or think about new
(08:40):
innovative ways to keep targeting that same niche of creator
for us.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
How did you get out of that phase then if
you were kind of just looking at what your competitors
were doing and that was shaping the decisions you were making,
and then what did you start doing differently instead?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, we ended up losing quite a bit of money.
So that was a pretty big wake up call when
there was kind of something that we knew was working
really well for our competitor is but we never wanted
to do it, but we reached this point of desperation
at one time and so we felt like, all right,
this is our only option. Let's give this a crack.
(09:16):
And it was hands down the worst thing I think
we did in the history of a sun Room and
lost us considerable amounts of time and money. And so
that was just a slap across the face, like wake
up call in terms of, you know what, let's go
back to the drawing board, we actually ended up going
back to what our go to market strategy had been
(09:38):
and how we initially built a lot of hype and
had a lot of success. And I think sometimes you
might set really aggressive growth targets, so you think that
what you were doing a year or two ago wasn't
that successful. But then as you've learned and as you've
tried a lot of other things, you have a bit
more of an understanding of the market, the industry, maybe
(09:59):
what a reasonable pace is, and you're able with the
benefit of hindsight to look back and realize, oh, actually,
that was quite successful. We just didn't really have like
the wisdom to understand that at the time.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
I think that's really interesting that you sort of did something,
maybe it wasn't as successful, and then at a different
time it was, Yeah, how much time would you spend
in your day actually talking.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
To your customers and your users if I'm working.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
For eight hours seven hours.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Out of the area.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
From what I've heard, I've never run a startup, but
sometimes founders get into this trap where they don't want
to talk to their customers or they feel like it's
so time consuming. But especially in the early phases, most
of your time should just be spent hanging out with
them and learning from them.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
One hundred percent. It's that saying, like, do things that
don't scale. I think that's really really important at the
start because it builds a lot of brand loyalty and
that's something that has always paid off for us and
worked really well. That's always meant that our retention is
good and we've kind of got these people that are
willing to advocate for us.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah. I always love that.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Whenever I'm signing up for new products and it's like
a very techy you know, you just think it's kind
of like this faceless software and then the email you'll
get once you, you know, sign up for it. Sometimes I'll
get emails like three days later from the founder and
they're like, hey, just checking in how you're finding the product,
And you're like, well, I thought this was this massive
software company and now it just feels very human and
very personal.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
That's such an easy way to stand out if you
have a tech company, because we're also used to existing
on these giant platforms where there's no way we're ever
going to directly hear from anyone from like Facebook, Instagram,
TikTok you lose your account and like it's really impossible
to get in touch with someone. So I think if
you're building a tech product, like people really appreciate that
(11:45):
personal touch and being able to speak to a real
human on the end of a line. Number four is
when you're building features, people don't care about the feature,
they care about the benefit. So if you're going to
speak about it to your consumers, you need to focus
on that. I think when you work at a tech company,
(12:05):
there are so many smart people that are able to
solve these really tough problems through you know, like engineering,
critical thinking, coming up with like innovative ways to get
people to connect on a product, whatever it is, and
then there can be a tendency to get really excited
about certain features that actually the consumer doesn't really care about.
(12:27):
I think that's that friction, that tension point that can
often exist between engineering teams and marketing teams, which is
something that I also experienced when I work at Bumble.
You know, you get given a feature, you have to
market it, and you're thinking, no one is going to
care about this, But I think it's really in how
you communicate it. So not talking about what the feature
(12:49):
is or kind of how it exists, but what the
benefit is for the user.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
So true.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
We lived by this at Google. The way we did
marketing at Google is no, the user know the magic
and connect to the two. And the magic is nothing
to do with the product or the feature. It's about
the transformation that it creates in someone or like the
joy that it sparks, or the time it saved them, whatever,
But it's nothing to do with the product of the feature.
(13:14):
I mean, obviously it's to do with the product of
the feature, but it's like not about the product or
the feature. Yeah, so yeah, I think about that all
the time. There's that really famous quote which whenever someone
says it to me, I never understand. I have to
like process it slowly. My brain is slow. But it's
people don't want the drill, they want the whole. The
thing is, they want the change, right, they want the
(13:34):
thing it's making. They don't actually want the benefit of
the product, so they want the change.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Number five. This is a great one, and this came
from one of Sunroom's investors. Actually who fun fact, he
is the creator of Little Mikayla, which was that first
like avatar Ai influencer. Yeah, that's his company. And he
said something to Lucy, my co founder and I which
(14:00):
just really stuck one day. He said, if you want advice,
ask for money, And if you want money, ask for advice.
And when you're raising capital, it's just the best way
to go about it. Like hit people up and bring
them in on your journey. Talk to them about what
(14:21):
you're building, talk to them about the problem, talk about
the product, talk about the wins, talk about your challenges,
and if they end up loving your product and believing
in you, they'll just offer to invest or. They'll offer
to intro you to someone else who might be that
first check. And it's just a really smart way to
(14:43):
go about raising money as opposed to just outright asking
for it.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Why do you think that works?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Oh, Like people have also done this to me before,
where like they come with a product and they want advice,
and I'm like, oh, this is good. I believe in it,
Like I actually want to give them a bit of
cash for it. I think it probably helps the individual
in how they tell the story, to be honest, like
it removes that pressure of I'm about to kind of
stand up and pitch to someone with the goal of
(15:10):
like getting cash at the end. Of the conversation, so
I think you end up sharing the story in a
different way, And people also liked talking about themselves and
kind of having their egos stroke a little bit. So
reaching out to investors or angels or other founders in
your space and sharing your struggles and then asking for
their advice in return, it's just a very good way
(15:32):
to build relationships.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Do you have any advice for someone who like, we're
in Australia right and a lot of.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
The money is in not Australia, in the US. I guess,
so for.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Someone sitting here being like I kind of want to
start talking to people and networking and maybe following this
kind of thing around asking for advice and hopefully getting money,
how did you get started getting connected to people? And
do you have any advice for other people?
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:56):
So it did definitely help that my co founder and
I had backgrounds in tech. So I first went out
to my own network, which was people i'd worked with
when I was at Bumble, and was able to get
the founder and CEO of Bumble to invest in some room.
That then made it much easier to kind of start
reaching out to people that we didn't have relationships with.
(16:18):
Because you've already got these checks committed, and it shows
this level of belief in you as a founder.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I suppose.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
I've also had a lot of people working in corporate
jobs who leave and want to start their own company,
and they do go and hit up all the execs
because they know that a lot of the execs probably
have a spare ten k, yeah, and they already know
that this person is good, and so they kind of like,
I believe in you. I think I know that what
you're building has potential. And sometimes they'll get their first
little small checks through that.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
I think it's smart, yeah, exactly, and then they will
introduce you to their networks and it kind of just
goes from there. And once someone that's worked with you
is out there then speaking to their network saying hey,
you know this person's building X and I've invested, it
just creates this snowball effect where you kind of trust
your network and then you might end up investing as well.
(17:06):
But I also think it is a really good strategy
to get on socials and talk about what you're doing.
There's that saying, you know, build in public, and that
ended up achieving a lot for Lucy and I and
I was really surprised with just who was watching, and
so I wouldn't be afraid, And I mean, you don't
(17:28):
need to have followers to pull that off.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Can you give this an example?
Speaker 4 (17:32):
Because I heard this, I love it, I want to
do it, and I found it it's actually harder to
do than I thought, just because it feels so unnatural
to be like, what do you think my business model
should be?
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Whatever?
Speaker 4 (17:42):
I'm finding it actually really hard even though I want
to do it. So can you give some examples of
what building in public actually looks like?
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, so it's probably going to feel uncomfortable and it's
probably going to feel a bit icky, but it's not
self promotion. It's idea promotion. Like that's how I like
to think about it. And it kind of breaks down
that like where you feel a bit gross because you're
taking talking about your own work or you're talking about yourself,
You're actually not You're talking about your ideas. It's like, hey,
(18:11):
I've been working on this problem. Does anyone else have
this problem? I'm working on solutions for this that i'd
really like to share with others, and just start talking
about it in whatever way comes naturally to you as well,
like it doesn't really have to be on TikTok, But
I do think TikTok is good if you don't have
an existing audience, because anything can go viral, anything can
(18:33):
get eyeballs. I found that investors started reaching out to
me once I started just speaking about what we were
working on on socials. Don't be afraid to do that.
I think sometimes there's a little bit of fear around
will someone steal my idea? And I don't think you
need to give away your secret source or if you're
working on a really innovative solution to something, you don't
(18:57):
need to give that away in this information. But there's
definitely no risk talking about the problem, what you're working on,
how you're thinking about doing it. I am of the
view if someone could take it and copy it, then
it was probably not going to be that great or
defensible anyway.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
So true, I love.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
It, Okay number six and I definitely learned this one
the hard way. Culture is what you punish and what
you celebrate, So one rotten apple will spoil the bunch.
(19:36):
And I really feel like that truth is exaggerated when
you're in a small team and you really can't settle
for bad attitudes. So you've probably heard the saying higher, slow,
fire fast, But when you have a startup, I think
unfortunately your brain is more geared to higher, fast, as
(19:58):
fast as possible, Like you're just trying to grow, you're
trying to scale. It's that move fast and break things mentality,
and it can really end up hurting you. I also
think there's that level of excitement, like yay, I'm finding
people that actually also believe in this thing I'm doing,
and I just want to get them in the room.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I speak to so many leaders, owners of companies things
like that, and I am so surprised. I'll always say
to them, what are the qualities you're looking for in
young people that you hire? And I'm so surprised by
how many people say number one attitude. So many other
things can be learned, but if you have a bad attitude,
it just undermines everything. Back to the point Michelle around,
(20:37):
I really liked that thing you said around what was
it punish?
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Culture is what you punish and what you celebrate.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Do you have any examples of like what that looks
like or how you actually do that as a leader
a business owner.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I think with the culture as what you punish. It's
like at the start, Lucy and I were quite scared
to be a bit ruthless, Like you kind of hear
that in business you need to like flex that muscle
a little bit. You're going to have to have difficult
conversations and conversations, and we we had so much fucked
(21:09):
up stuff happened to us, like what employees stealing from us?
It's like stealing our money, not how are they even
doing that? Yeah, like on company cards or we had
test versions of the product where you actually could make
money through the app, and we realized that some members
of our team were sending each other like thousands of
(21:32):
our coins on Sunroom to kind of get each other's
earnings up when they were linked to sunroom accounts.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
And is that just an immediate fire?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Ah, yes, yes. But I kept a journal at the
start of like the major thing that would occur every week,
and it was just blow after blow, like engineers taking
your ip and trying to sell it on the side,
like just wild stories.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
I'm sitting there thinking, like people complaining too much, but
like that's serious.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Yeah, it honestly was laughable times, Like yeah, you kind
of just got to roll with the punches. Yeah, I
also think what you celebrate, So this kind of happened
at Bumble. Actually, there was this culture of loads of emojis,
lots of exclamation marks, getting really excited, almost by the
bare minimum, getting really excited by someone just kind of
(22:25):
meeting expectations. It kind of had to be overhauled because
it meant that once someone actually wasn't performing, they were
really shocked because they'd been met with so much joy
and excitement at all these other points along the way.
So I think in terms of what you celebrate as well,
just being aware of things as simple as that, like
(22:47):
how exclamation marks and emojis can actually lead someone to
feel like they're doing an incredible job when maybe they're
just kind of average, and then if you have to
start performance managing that person, there's a bit of a disconnect.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
A lot of people love complaining about gen z and
about how entitled they are, and sometimes I see that
exact problem where companies sort of started celebrating the wrong
behaviors or they're just like over celebrating things, and then
people get used to that and it's sort of not
their fault, and then the leaders want something to change
because the company's growing, and then they expect people to
(23:23):
just understand number seven.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So this also kind of comes back to performance. Steve
Jobs said, a's higher a's and b's higher c's, So
a's will help you maintain a high performing culture, and
you need to refine your recruitment process to.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Find the a's.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
This is kind of what we started to learn or
witness whilst we were working on Sunroom. We ended up
hiring this absolute gun of an engineer who was nineteen
at the time and he's still to this day our
head of engineering and he has two patents. I think
he's twenty two now. Yeah, and he is so smart,
(24:07):
and as we began to grow the engineering team around him,
we realized that he just helped maintain this very high
performing culture and that these genius types won't really settle
with working for people who are underperforming or not really
willing to put the work in to level up. You know,
(24:29):
that doesn't mean there's not opportunity to expand upon your
skill set and to learn and to be coached by
great people. There's definitely that, but there also needs to
be that element of wanting to do better. We definitely
lean more towards you don't really need to have the experience,
but do you have the right attitude? Are you displaying
a level of like hunger, commitment, competitiveness, what do you
(24:52):
work hard for those sorts of things trying to identify that.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Is there anything around like the amount of time you
spend with someone before you actually hire them, or like
having some kind of probation period that has helped. Is
it like, you know, I went out and went for
a hike with this person and then after that time
I knew they were good.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Is there any advice you have around that.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
We actually did do a trial period with someone once,
and it was someone that we were going to be
moving over to the States, So that allowed us to
set something up where we could actually trial working with
the person over a two month period, and that was
a really good strategy. Definitely like getting out of an
(25:32):
office situation and like going for a drink with them,
or going to dinner with them, or starting to like
jam on the side like casually with someone if you can,
depending on like what sort of a relationship you have,
Like can you just start texting about like tiktoks that
you're seeing whatever is relevant to get a little bit
(25:52):
more insight into their brain.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
I got this advice as well.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
If you are even thinking about maybe if you want
to start a business with someone, don't sit down and
be like, should we start a business together? Just start
talking about ideas, constantly sharing voice notes whatever, sharing stuff
that you're into, and then just start like doing the
thing and then you know at some point, yeah, you
sit down and you have a conversation around and a
contract around the business, but like, just start.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Actually something we can put in the show notes. Which
is kind of off topic, but similar for anyone who
actually is looking for a co founder. Lucy and I
did a seventy five question questionnaire before we founded Sunroom.
We'd never met in real life. We founded Sunroom through COVID,
so it was all virtual. So we were really trying
(26:34):
to get an understanding of like do we like each other?
Can we work together? And she had done a fellowship
called on Deck for tech entrepreneurs, well people wanting to
become tech entrepreneurs, and they gave a seventy five question
questionnaire and it gets into a lot about your values,
your struggles, what your mindset is like under pressure, asks
(26:55):
you questions like you know, would you prefer to own
one percent of it a billion dollar company or like
ten percent of one hundred million. How many years do
you want to work on this? Like what financial sacrifices
are you willing to make? It kind of gets into
tougher questions that you might struggle to actually bring up
with someone.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I'll get a.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Version of it and we can put it in the
show notes for anyone looking for a co founder.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
We're gonna have a really good newsletter for this, and
we'll definitely put all this helpful stuff in the newsletter,
and the newsletter you can find through the show notes
as well.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Epic.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Okay, last one, This is a good one to end
on when hiring. If it's not a fuck, yes.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
It's a no.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
And sometimes that means like you do, let some candidates
go that same really strong, but I think, yeah, you've
got a trust your gut on that one.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Every hiring mistake I've ever made, I think back, and
I convinced myself into it because on paper or the
brand or the skill that you think they have that
you need at that time, and it's never worked out.
So yeah, I think it goes back to that your
gut is actually your second brain, and there's tons of
signals that you're picking up when you spend time with
(28:02):
someone that you don't actually consciously know what they are.
But it's so hard though, because it's also like, do
you keep holding off to find the fuck? Yes? And
I guess there's probably no one answer, but I definitely
know what you just said is very true. I just honestly,
I don't know about anyone listening, but I am personally
so excited about some of the stuff that I just learned.
(28:22):
And I think the interesting thing is, like whether you
even planned to start a business or not, it's just
career advice, life advice, work advice in this, So yeah,
thank you, Michelle. I also just think it's so funny,
like you're so low key about you just like, oh, yeah,
I run like a startup, but then when you actually
share the shit you've had to deal with, it just
completely blows me away.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I'm sitting there in my like.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Cushy corporate office job, just like I've never had to
deal with things like that before.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So that was a lot, Michelle, and amazing. I just
learned so much.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Every single one of these points is going to be
in the newsletter, and you can get that in the
show notes. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
My mind is absolutely blown by some of the stories
Michelle and So share today. For anyone who wants to
dive deeper into this, our newsletter this week has Michelle's
full seventy five question co founder questionnaire, plus a breakdown
of all the mantras you've heard with real examples on
how to apply them. We will link that in our
show notes, and while you're there, make sure you're following
(29:24):
us at biz by Mama Mia on Instagram for daily
career tips and some behind the scenes content from Mish
and So and the entire biz team. We will see
you on Thursday for our Biz Inbox episode, where we'll
be answering all of your career dilemmas. Bye, Mamma Mia
(29:47):
acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this
podcast is recorded on
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