Episode 1 - Vanessa Tierney of Abodoo.com #backcatalogue

Welcome to the Canopy Founder Friday series.

In Episode #1 of our back catalogue series we are joined by Vanessa Tierney who is the author of "Your company with no walls" and co-founder of Abodoo.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessatierney/ 

• The importance of soft skills
• Blending a startup journey with raising a family
• Learning to trust remote workers
• Launching the book : Your company with no walls 
• Reflections on the Irish startup ecosystem

Share in her gifts of wisdom and experience & join us as we seek to discover what makes this inspiring founder tick.

Guest Co Host Pedro Guimaraes, Tijana Momirov  

Note: this episode was first recorded as a webinar in July 2020 and converted to a podcast so we could all enjoy it away from our screens.
(We first published this episode last year, but having just changed podcast platforms we wanted to include it as the first of our new series)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Founder Friday podcast series from Canopy, where we interview inspiring entrepreneurs and innovators about their experiences and seek to find out what makes them tick. This series was recorded live as a webinar and then converted into a podcast so we can all enjoy it away from our screens. All right, let's dive into this episode.

SPEAKER_05: 0:30

So

SPEAKER_04: 0:31

there are not a few people there, right?

SPEAKER_05: 0:34

They're real people, yeah. I'm a real person, not a fake one. This is a real face, right? It's real. So hello, everybody, and welcome to Founder Friday. As you can see, it's obviously Friday. We're feeling much more relaxed than ever. And we have a great extra special edition today to bring in together Vanessa. Very much great. Thank you for being here today and bringing your story. But to begin with, before we get into the main thing, Pedro, Tiana, would you like to introduce yourselves? Please do, Tiana.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05

Sure. Thank you. Hello, everybody. Thank you, Stuart. Maybe some people already know me. I've been frequenting these Canopy sessions for quite some time. Actually, Facebook reminded me it's been a year that I'm actively involved in Canopy. And one of the coaches here focused on product management for tech startups and all about remote work and the gig economy. And today is such a pleasure to be in this company and chat about the founder journey of Vanessa.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34

Always great to have you, Tiana. Thank you very much. And Pedro, who are you? Tell

SPEAKER_03: 1:40

the world. First of all, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here. I'm Pedro. I'm also on the Canopy team, along with Tiana and Stu and many others, and delighted to be here. I'm helping companies on general management and focused on cross-generation teams, and I'm delighted to be here learning from Vanessa and her great story and awesome product.

SPEAKER_05: 2:07

Fantastic. Thank you, Pedro. So Vanessa, the way this works is all three of us are going to ask you questions at some point along the day, because then we learn as much as we can about you. And what we really want from the Founder Friday is to understand what makes you tick, you know, what makes you, you. And that is going to be inspirational to other people that are watching this today. So thank you for coming along to share your story. Tell everybody to begin with then, who are you and what's your background?

SPEAKER_01: 2:32

Sure. And just so you know, I spent about 10 years coaching C-Level for interviews of like two, three, four people. And now I now feel like that sea level being interviewed by two, three, four people. So it'll be an interesting session. So my name is Vanessa Tierney. I'm based in the Republic of Ireland. And for the last 20 years, I've been working in training and development and talent acquisition, just everything to do with people in organizations and looking at their potential. I went remote like Tiana in 2010. And since then, I set up a remote company. I sold that and then founded Abodoo. And Abodoo is, I can now say, the fastest growing ecosystem that's connecting companies with remote workers that's free. And we work with governments to map talent across the world and demonstrate where the people are outside of cities. On a personal level, I've got a seven-year-old, a five-year-old, and an eight-month-old who has spent more of his life in lockdown than outside. So my disclaimer is they could run into this room at any point in time. And yeah, and just life is good. Life is good. We're safe and happy. That's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_05: 3:50

Fantastic. Well, yeah, I have an eight-year-old and a seven-year-old who may also invade the call. So I think it's all good. Maybe we should bring them all in at one point and just get

SPEAKER_04: 3:58

everything.

SPEAKER_05: 4:03

I'm not so sure. So 10 years remote working, that's pretty impressive stuff, right? You look very calm and relaxed about it all. Is it a good thing, this remote lifestyle? Does it work for people? And does it work for somebody with a family?

SPEAKER_01: 4:17

I definitely think it takes a while to get used to. And it's interesting, you know, I spent the last three years with this technology saying to companies, if you're hiring, use the technology for hiring remote workers. And I didn't even get to the point of talking about the features of our technology. I spent most of my time talking about why you should embrace remote more of the time. But unfortunately, when leaders had choice, it was something that they kept putting on the long finger. Could it be down to trust or technology or whatever? But now when the gun was put to the and they were given notice within 24, 48 hours and everyone's remote, I'm kind of reminded as to what it was like for me 10 years ago because I fell ill and I couldn't commute. And so I had to be at home and I'm the sort of person that can't just sit around. I have to do something. And when I looked for a job remotely, I realized actually there were very few or very few legit jobs at that time that you could do from home. And so being very social, I've struggled at the beginning. I'll be honest with you. And I imagine that's the same for a lot of people right now who aren't used to it I look relaxed today because I think I've cracked it for myself like everyone's different thankfully I'm married to someone who's very healthy and fit so I parked the pizza even though I made one today parked the pizza parked the probably excessive drinking and got more of a balanced life and since then like having fitness in my day and I can't put a price you know that credit card ad where they say it's priceless like this having time with children when you get a phone call from your school to say your little one is sick and you know you can be there in three minutes you could double the salary it doesn't matter that's that's what people once you get a taste of that you want or you're at the nativity play or you just like um our little son the other day crawled for the first time and we were both here to see it you know so yeah i'm relaxed for that reason but you know just catch me on on the hour i'm not always this way

SPEAKER_05: 6:12

Fantastic. So Pedro, what questions do you want to ask Vanessa to start off with today?

SPEAKER_03: 6:18

Okay. First of all, let me say I'm a huge fan of yours and your product and your company. And congrats for the new book. By the way, thanks for the nice gift. Sorry, I forgot to mention that. And thanks to you, Hannah, also, for the nice gift. And my first question would be, one thing that made me more interested was you, at some point, make soft skills appraisal, okay, during your match at Abidjan. And I mean, with your background, I fully understand why. But how does it actually work and how is it seen by your customers?

SPEAKER_01: 6:56

Okay. I guess like just to highlight on the soft skills, I've been going on about this for two decades, probably with the first business where we train graduates because we all get the same sort of level of education, but we're all different, our personalities, our behaviours and our core values, as we call them. And we used to train and develop graduates with potential and they would fly in the right organization so when we were building a bodu i mean we could have just been lazy and put up a job site and let people post their cvs and keyword match and the user experience being average but you know we felt like it's time to actually bring the user experience to another level and one of the integral parts as a hiring manager or recruiter is to be able to assess the soft skills as well as the hard skills and so it's an opt-in right now so individuals decide what soft skills they have and they put them in but that's feeds into a matching algorithm. And so I'll give a classic example right now. There are millions of people losing job in tourism, retail, hospitality around the world. And maybe they're feeling like their industry has really been hit and that's it. They're not going to get another job. But they have acquired soft skills like communication, time management that can be applied to other industries like online e-learning or online retail tech support. And so the idea of a BODU is that when you put in the details and information of yourself and your data and your skills, you're mapped to other industries if you want to leave the industry that you're in. The next level for a BODU, though, is to start. We're working on assessment tools so people can actually actually understand their real potential. So you assess a leader of Dell and you know you have similar DNA, but you're just 10, 20 years behind. But if you know that early on in your career, how much faster can you move?

SPEAKER_05: 8:47

Thanks. How do you break down soft skills? How do you assess them in a quantitative way?

SPEAKER_01: 8:56

It's really good. It's a two-pronged approach, isn't it, with the marketplace? So bearing in mind that the companies have to establish what that is first, and it's usually linked to culture. So the way a BODU works is it's not just post a job spec, highlight experience level. salary range and off you go. The companies have to commit the same level of time. They have to put in 10 minutes of data input for a job, which like in recruiter land or HR manager land, it's a long time. But geez, it's worth it. I've just seen on Slack there before I came onto this call, a company who's specifically looking for, this is like a unicorn, SaaS experience, fluent in French that can speak German or the other way around. And they have two matches, that's it. Now imagine you go onto traditional platforms, you'll get hundreds of matches and you'll be screening through, but then the soft skills, they highlight communication, customer service. So it's the company that leads that. But what we would like to do is we now have 26 and a half thousand people registered on the platform across 62 countries. We're gonna start mapping the type of soft skills people have, where they go and how successful they are. So in time, we'll be able to predict. So if a company, example is very rigid in their thinking as to what they should be looking for we can hopefully open up their minds a little bit more as to the level of experience and type of maybe less hard skills more soft skills for the roles they want to fill certainly at the more junior levels

SPEAKER_05: 10:27

very interesting i could talk to you for hours about this topic but that tiana do you want to jump in with some questions before i get too carried away

SPEAKER_02: 10:35

I do, I do. Actually, I'm going to jump in with two questions. One of them is my favorite question. As I always want to know when we talk about startups and entrepreneurship, how do you go about validating your idea without huge investments? And how do you pivot if the validation says that you should do so? So that's my question. And one question that I know is usually favored by the audience when we have a bunch of early stage startup founders How do you go about fundraising? Where does the money come from? Those are the two

SPEAKER_01: 11:14

questions I

SPEAKER_02: 11:15

would definitely like to hear about.

SPEAKER_01: 11:18

I should highlight, you're my co-author and you could have given me a heads up that your question was going to be

SPEAKER_04: 11:24

so big. That's

SPEAKER_01: 11:25

not how this works. So how do we validate the original idea for a BODU? We definitely knew there was a need for a matching platform that was more accurate. We validated the demand around smart working. Like I say, smart working, because remote working is just a type of work. Smart working, I see, is every form, co-working, hybrid, gig. So we started to research and you could see certainly in America and Canada and the Netherlands, they were starting to embrace this about four or five years ago. So the market was there, but probably the eureka moment was in Ireland. Shopify had landed here on the West Coast, an e-commerce platform who had no intention of having an office, which kind of blew the mind of the government. Traditionally, it would have been, here's the office. Let's have a tour. Let's walk around. The VP's in this room. And no, no, we don't want that. We just want to know good connectivity, talent. And so there was a real gap known as mapping the talent, certainly outside of the cities. And when you think of like smart working, you're now accessing amazing So people who are slightly older, they're not ready to retire. Remote working tick. Returning parents who can't justify childcare costs, another market. People with mobility challenges. So we felt like if we could build a platform but allowed people to be anonymous, maybe they would, at the initial match, maybe they would feel confident about you know, embracing it. And of course the commuters who were sick of driving. And then the validation piece was working with some big companies like Vodafone, Deloitte, who kind of used it, leveraged it and gave us feedback. But like we're on version four of Vodafone and I'm sure there's going to be about 25 more versions. We're constantly improving. And then the pivot, the pivot happened in March. Everyone assumed when COVID-19 hit, they were like, geez, you're onto a winner. You're going to be making millions. The reality is, companies froze in fear. They weren't ready to hire. They weren't ready to post jobs. And then you had, what is it now? 400 million people have lost their jobs in the last three, four months globally. So we sat and we analyzed like companies were barely gonna consider hiring. They certainly weren't gonna pay post on a Bodu. So we only announced it this week. We decided, look, let's pivot. Let's focus on government because what we can do, we did this small pilot a year and a half ago. We've reduced a talent heat map of the available skills outside of the city, an area that was trying to attract foreign direct investment. And we proved the talent was there. They just commuted out of the town every day. And we proved the skills and we proved the earning level and they landed a company. And so because of that, the government, the local government had ammunition to talk to more and more companies globally. So we have actually pivoted Abodu. We're now focused on government, producing talent heat maps for government. And we've even made a dynamic platform so they can access live skills real time, which has meant that this Wednesday we said Abodu is free for business. And it was the best feeling in the world because literally within an hour, six companies were on the platform and that momentum has continued. And so people who've been messaging saying, I need a job. And we were like pulling our hair out are now getting matches and it's just wonderful. And then the last question, fundraising. Oh my goodness. So I've ticked every box except VC. I've raised money locally through government. So there's these grants called primary grants in Ireland, about 15 to 30K. So you need a basic business plan, three pager. We then moved into Enterprise Ireland, which is a national body that invests in high potential startups. So we raised a couple of hundred thousand, but we had to match it. So we did private angel funding. And then we went on last year in September to do crowdfunding. through Crowdcube in London. And each time, the experience has been very intense. It's taken me away from the core business. So it's a really challenging thing to do. And in total now, we've raised just under 1.1 million.

SPEAKER_05: 15:30

Congratulations. That's awesome. And Darren Westlake, the CEO and founder of CrowdCube, has actually been on here, interviewed before, because we know each other quite well. Actually, the hometown of CrowdCube is not London, but it is, in fact, Exeter. And I'm an early stage investor in CrowdCube, and they're based just around the corner from where I'm living right now.

SPEAKER_01: 15:50

Oh, they were amazing. They really, really were. The whole process, it was very intense. And I equally was seven and a half months pregnant or eight months pregnant. So they really looked after us very, very well. But the reaction in the marketplace is wonderful. In the end, we had 400 investors, so it was a really good result.

SPEAKER_05: 16:09

Amazing. So Rodrigo's just put a question in the chat there. You know, do you have global expansion plans? Are you going to go for global domination with this platform?

SPEAKER_01: 16:18

Yeah. And anyone who's listening who has ever dealt with government and local government and their heads of economic development, we're looking to expand and connect now. So during lockdown, when we made this pivot, we built a platform called Geonostics, which is powered by Abozu. And Geonostics is an interactive... mapping tool, government can go in and say, right, We're going to try and win a deal from San Francisco. We're going to try and get a company to land here. And it could be any region, as long as you've got connectivity and skills and you can demonstrate that, you're on to an absolute winner. And so we launched in the UK last week with Geonostics. So it's selling into local governments, but we're really primed to sell to any government in the world. What we need are people with the right connections and the expertise to be able to introduce it to their contacts.

SPEAKER_05: 17:13

Interesting. Recently, I interviewed somebody also from Ireland, but a slightly different part of Ireland, I think, called Irene from Seasense. Do you know Irene at all? She followed a very similar path to you in terms of raising funds and stuff. They have the bike lights, the smart bike light that collects all the data for how people travel around cities.

SPEAKER_01: 17:35

Okay. Yeah, I don't know her personally, but I've read about Scentsy. That's great.

SPEAKER_05: 17:41

Yeah, it's a really interesting concept. Pedro, what are you thinking? What questions do you want

SPEAKER_03: 17:46

to ask? I love the pivot for the government. It's just the right opportunity to move there, the conversation. As far as I understand, now you are focused on local governments. And as you see in Europe, there will be a shift in a lot of things in economy in the next five to 10 years due to this crisis, I'm sure about it. And there's a the thinking on the strategic plan and everyone is being the question it's quite mixes one uh Would it make sense for you to focus on a national country, not just on local governments, as in a means to help them attract foreign investment? Slash, how do you see these as the shifts that will occur in the market, for example? You'll see, I bet you'll see a lot of new industrial jobs arising and less on the service area, just for example. How would you see these and how can you help, how can you be part of this youth transformation we are all about to see in the next coming years?

SPEAKER_01: 18:43

Yeah. Pedro, you're so right. And the product is now ready to do support nationally. We're currently doing a county-wide campaign at the moment. And essentially where BODU fits in is it can reboot economies because it's going to connect people with opportunities, but we also identify the skills gap and we can mirror that skills gap as to where industry is going and plug it in with the e-learning providers. So it's the ultimate ecosystem for a government. I compare it to like the COVID-19 tracker, you know, where it's trying to understand what's our health, what networks are we in, so we all stay safe, whereas this application allows you to upload your skills, find the gaps, match opportunities, not just locally and globally. And for governments, outside of just attracting foreign direct investments, it gives them the insight to know where should we put digital hubs across the country. Let's face it. Not everyone will want to continue living in a city after this experience. Where should we roll out connectivity? And certainly I know in America for the Irish diaspora, there's been a lot of feedback around them considering moving home. the blocker before was, can I move home? Do I have to take a drop in my salary? The career aspiration is not as big in Ireland as it is in the States, but actually now that companies are removing walls, Tiana, like our book name, anywhere is possible to go. And so, the ideal thing would be that countries use our product as a way of knowing what their asset is connecting them to learning to fill the gaps and then positioning that country on a global stage to say look at the talent that we have and the connectivity and the digital hubs land here remotely or physically

SPEAKER_05: 20:38

It's all about tax revenues, right? How to get the tax revenues for the company or the country in the right place.

SPEAKER_03: 20:44

Your platform is pretty much focused on, I would say, tech jobs. And I'm assuming there will be a lot of non-lower tech jobs coming to be created in the next coming years. Is it a challenge for you? Are you ready to do that? Or does it imply, because I'm assuming that they'll be changing the skill sets, just for an example. How do you foresee that?

SPEAKER_01: 21:16

Yeah, so when we started Abodoo, we started with 50,000 skills. The way we built the matching We might represent lots of services, lots of skills, lots of disciplines, but you will only ever see 50% plus matches as the company or as the individual. But we're honing those skills down. We're clustering them more. We're using AI and ML now to really understand when people are in one area, where could they possibly go? Or if they select this, what else is it applied to? We'll still have a couple of thousand skills at least. So every type of skill is represented that's for sure. I just think that we're going to be in a time where Each week, we're having someone message us through our community to say, you don't have this skill on your system. And we're like, wow, what's this skill? This is new. So it's constantly evolving. I don't think it's going to be a static thing. And this is where keyword matching from the user experience for people and for companies, it can get very frustrating online. And then you couple that with high unemployment and hundreds of applications. And then you have to consider people's work from home set up or do they want that it's for recruiters for the next 12 24 months if they are hiring it's going to be very challenging

SPEAKER_05: 22:42

kiana what sort of questions do you want to ask

SPEAKER_02: 22:46

I would like to jump in with a question regarding the talent management since a whole career background that Vanessa has and of course the platform she runs right now, it's all about talent. But how do you leverage this? How do you go about this in running your own business? Who do you rely on? Employees, freelancers, collaborators, partners, external companies? How do you leverage talent yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 23:15

Thank you so much. you know, the reality is having employees very early on, it's very expensive. And there's a lot of administration and sometimes there's headache as well. And certainly my, and I'm sure people can give this feedback to you. Like I love selling and I love being out promoting, but the actual operational, the day-to-day I struggle with. And so we made a shift last summer. I took on the role of CEO. I was co-founder originally, and my remit was raise money, start selling and and build the brand like get the publicity and then i shifted into the role of ceo we were very much tied up with crowdfunding for those few months had a baby came back and now it's about like operationally building out the organization and i'm using a blended approach right now so there's employees very few uh interns actually because I really believe in graduates or MBA grads that have the potential. And now remotely means accessing the best brains in the world, you know, from where you are. I use Fiverr, Upwork occasionally. And then we're starting to establish partnerships, channel partnerships, and an outsourcing firm, you know, for one or two things, because they handle the operations and the sort of reporting and management that perhaps I don't necessarily have the skills or capacity for.

SPEAKER_05: 25:02

Really great question. Really insightful. Amazing.

SPEAKER_02: 25:05

So it's a blend, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 25:08

So Vanessa, you mentioned the team there, being a co-founder to start off with. Who brought this idea together originally? How many were there and what's happened to everybody since it's been growing?

SPEAKER_01: 25:19

So, well, it was my husband and I. I remember the day I... I was using, I won't name platforms, okay? So I was using one of them and having had a virtual recruitment agency, my average spend in the year was 100 grand across the different platforms. And I had a small team of recruiters, about six, seven recruiters, but I said, like, it's just ridiculous. We're spending our time screening candidates. And now that the companies are saying that they would hire anywhere, when you approach a VP saying, I've got a job working from home, six years ago, you had a very funny response to today. And then you had to go through the whole requirements of like their setup and so on. So that's, it was Ben and I that had come up with the name Abode Your Home and Do Being Work. But we very quickly realized actually we had to represent every type of work, whether it was co-working, flexible, hybrid, hot desking, gig working. And then the early team had a really amazing CEO in place initially. She had worked actually for another huge job and platform But it was just, we were too early stage. And I think any timeline you put on from a seed of an idea to actually getting enough cash to get going at 12 months. And I remember someone telling me that in the first six months and being really insulted and going, no, that's not the case. But it's the reality. It's really hard pre-revenue to get that first investment. But we did. And our early investment, Dan Kiley of Voxpro, Dan and Linda are wonderful. They've really succeeded. They've done a huge successful exit and they were our first angel investors. So they brought a lot of, I guess, cloud expertise and international networks. And that really helped us get the momentum.

SPEAKER_05: 27:07

And, you know, a lot of people who are in business partnership with their partner might find that difficult you know how is that working out is it a is it a good dynamic

SPEAKER_01: 27:17

uh we never planned it like literally we never planned it there are moments i won't lie definitely and i think the way it works is like you've probably heard this before divide and conquer and and we really do divide very separate areas and ben really focused on the product and tech the development you know geonastics um and the tech team and then i'm more on the sales marketing and the gap in a boat right now, certainly if someone's listening and they've got amazing operational skills, that's something that we're going to have to fill that gap in the coming months. And then it goes back to the health and fitness and balance. We have a rule that when you leave work, we have a dedicated room in the house and we have an outbuilding that you have to stop talking about it, which is really hard at times, but it's the only way it'll work. Yeah, best tip.

SPEAKER_05: 28:14

Interesting. Good luck. I mean, every co-founder relationship is tense at times, right? Which is why it's sometimes helpful to go back to a partner that doesn't maybe know everything about what's going on in a different life, right?

SPEAKER_01: 28:28

And the other tip I'd say is mentors. I have a couple of amazing mentors. So rather than going to him, you know, if I'm having a really challenging time or I'm unsure about a decision to be made, I'll pick up the phone and have a conversation so that that has made a difference. But having a startup is probably one of the most difficult things you'll do in your life, like, you know, in the business world. And then you throw in a family on top, and COVID-19, it certainly is a challenging time. But it feels good, the direction that we're going, that we've made the platform free, and even the reaction from people in the last few days. We'll buzz on that, you know, that we'll get momentum from the feedback from the community.

SPEAKER_05: 29:11

Fantastic. So, Tiana, how did you and Vanessa meet?

SPEAKER_02: 29:18

Actually, we met on an online event. So when I said me, never met in person, which is just proof of concept that collaboration and teamwork can work remotely. We met on an online event where we were both panelists. It was maybe a year ago already or close to a year ago. Over there, we met a couple of other amazing ladies and decided to form a mastermind group where we can meet every month, more or less. So it's like completely free, just like informal. formal group of ladies that met on an online event. And on one of those mastermind groups, I mentioned that Tammy just said then, doing the book thing, Vanessa had the same interest. We started talking more and it was like more and more things in common that we started working remotely 10 years ago, which was a completely different time than now in regards to everything, not only the remote work, but how people reacted to having a person working for them remotely, the possibilities to grow the career, assume more important positions and like, everything altogether was was completely different even just this thing that we joke about now like kids running into the room or having something in the background now it's funny it used to be like a scandal even you know so like everything changed uh uh since then and so we've been uh we've been on this journey from the very beginning when it was something very alternative to to having it almost mainstream nowadays right and we both entered this for some personal reasons uh that so it just it just happened without planning uh in order to proceed with our personal life we uh we didn't have other choice than uh starting working remotely and making it happen so by talking more and more about this we realized that we have so many things in common from different perspectives me coming from an engineering background and vanessa coming from the the people's um uh world right uh communication talent management all of that uh so looking at the same thing from different perspectives but then again having a similar journey in similar time frame even uh and uh yeah more and more we we got um sure that we want to do this together and then again like like anything you do together is just like in portuguese there is even an expression like everything you share is like doubled every every moment that is great is even doubled when you share it and for me it was it was amazing yeah i mean i could have sat down and write the content myself but it's not the same thing just having these weekly calls and emails and messages and discussing together and this is what remote work is is about not only replicating the office, but having access to these amazing people, collaborators all over the world, even friends in the end, and doing the things together. So we went on this journey together, and then the COVID started, and Vanessa had a baby, and the whole situation, like, so she was even messaging sometimes, so, like, I was on the call because, like, I'm almost giving birth, you know, like, situations almost like that. So, like, people who never met shared all these moments, And in the end, we got out with this book that for us is more, at least I can say for myself, more than a business book. It's sharing the knowledge from all this journey that has been pretty personal to us, but also, of course, trying to put in some business framework that can be useful for the founders and business leaders around the world. So that's how it happened remotely.

SPEAKER_05: 33:03

It's very cool. And what's she been like to work with Vanessa? What's Tiana been like to work

SPEAKER_01: 33:08

with. How are you going to ask Tiana that first? She's been brilliant. Tiana has this perfect blend of being super friendly and can connect but she means business. You're very good at project management but the whole process has been really good because we've kept ourselves accountable and I felt the same as I said the last few years rather than selling the product I was focused on educating first so then I could sell our product and there's a lot of learnings when you're dealing with companies globally and we started to trade kind of tips and hacks we realized actually geez if we could share this with more leaders it would just help them maybe fast track quicker and i love the fact that tiana came from the gig work background because i didn't i had never done it and it was amazing because you can apply some of the learnings but it is very different So, yeah, like the result has been a brilliant process, really enjoyed it. If this is the beginning of our virtual road tour, I'm well up for it. And I hope one day we'll meet and that, you know, it'll be that moment, you know, when you meet someone having worked remotely with them where you know their face intimately, but you don't know how tall or short they are. So it's a five minutes awkwardness and then it's like you're really close. So I'm looking, I'm really looking forward to that day and just something really funny we were trying to come up with a cover for the book in November it was October November and then I threw out this crazy idea I was like look It's your company with no walls. So why don't we do a photograph of you with your hand like this? And I do a photograph of my hand like this. But because we're embracing diversity, why don't I do it while I'm nine months pregnant? We shot this photograph and created a virtual wall. And let's just say we didn't use that cover in the end. We went for something slightly different. But the whole thing was just wonderful. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_02: 35:05

But that was actually when we discussed the... you said like we don't know each other's hate and stuff but then we discussed this because we thought like are we gonna be a good match in a photo then i even said like well your hair is pretty big i think you're gonna be a good match for me the photo like it's now like weird when you say these things but somebody you're you're in touch with on daily basis and share so much and you've never seen in person but yeah it worked out it worked out

SPEAKER_05: 35:32

It's an interesting topic and it's great to see the joy that you've had in this journey because getting a book together is quite an ordeal. How do you make a genuine human connection when you never really meet? Because for most people that human connection happens through touch and smell and those kind of body language things that you can't really get through a camera. So how have you guys achieved that?

SPEAKER_01: 35:56

Between us or just, yeah, well, you know, the masterminds help and this mastermind sounds like it's very high level, all about education and C-level stuff, but it's actually part of the mastermind is just saying, this is how I really feel. And I think that the connection that you can make now, certainly with Tiana and I is I know beyond her work and skills capability. I know who she is. I have an idea of her background. I have an idea of her family. I have, you know, what she loves to do out in the water. You know, and that it's connecting. And then even down to what's in someone's background, like I remember asking, she changed position. I was like, oh, did you paint that in the background? You know, it's these little things make it the human connection, I think. And and it's the consistency. I think it's hard to get good discipline. But, you know, these weekly calls between us. And can I just say she is the only person I have worked with in the last 10 years that abides to a 15 minute meeting. everyone else runs over, but we can have our meetings in 15 minutes. So it's possible.

SPEAKER_05: 37:04

What do you think about that, Petra? And

SPEAKER_02: 37:06

on top of that, we're squeezing the small chat. Sorry, Stu. In these 15 minutes, we're squeezing the small chat because we really value it. So when we start our conversation, we say what's been going on in our private life and we refer to the background as well because this is a nice opening and this is what people usually miss on this interview. in real encounters in some super sterile like meeting rooms and everybody's suited up and yeah you're there physically but are you there personally like this you enter somebody's home sometimes person is almost in pajama with the morning coffee like for me it's like 9am right and then you see something in the background you refer to that this is a nice icebreaker and you enter person's home in a way so all these nice wallpapers that we mentioned that even IKEA is providing right now maybe we don't really need them unless you really need to protect the privacy of other family members because this is the way you connect and I think that within those 15 minutes we always found time for some small chat but that means that is like huge you know it's huge value

SPEAKER_05: 38:18

it's huge what do you think Pedro?

SPEAKER_03: 38:20

I fully understand. To be honest, I'm not sure I would comply. Because sometimes I tend to become more involved too much in the conversation. But to make executive decisions, I fully agree. It's a good model. And actually, we prepare best when we know we have a short time of meeting to make a decision and lack of time. preparation is usually the mother of all bad meetings. I've learned a few years ago from a guy that the three hours meeting is prepared in three minutes, but the three minutes meeting is prepared in three hours. So I'll leave it like that. And to be honest, probably the best meetings I had all over my life were shorts because everything was settled, just shake hands and that's it. And very, very, very fast to make decisions. But I have a question. What happened in jobs is a huge digital transformation by definition, because of a disease. Now everyone is working remotely. Well, actually not exactly now, but a few weeks ago, everyone became from normal work to remote work. And one thing I find is, and I see this actually talking with a lot of people, including friends of mine who are running companies and stuff like that, is that they need to be trained to work with a team that is remote or hybrid. I understand from your introduction that you have to train your, five years ago, 10 years ago, you had to train your clients to actually buy a recruitment process for a remote position, but now they are convinced by the disease to actually to do that, but I see there's a gap in terms of one actually really being able to manage that relationship with an employee, and that can lead to a negative impact on the employee, of course, and lack of a bad usage of this free working process that we are now assessing. did you plan or are you planning to have tools i don't say i'm not saying training tools but choose to help your customers actually have success after they hire a person to work on this new uh process on your tablet

SPEAKER_01: 40:52

yeah it's so such a good question because i think in the last couple of months there was no time to really evaluate are we doing this well It was just like, let's just do it. Let's get people remote. And now companies are scratching their heads and it's still summertime. You know, COVID-19, we haven't faced the next lockdown, but I think they're beginning to realise no matter what, the future is different now. And like, let's face it, the way we've worked has been the same since Henry Ford's time for 100 years. And now it's, if we can digitally connect for 24-7, then surely we can change our working model to fit people and people's lives. And the fact that two parents work as well, you know, it's a different time. But from a learning perspective for the leaders, I think it really depends on the type of organization you're leading. If you're a startup and you're 100% remote from the beginning, It's good that you get some skills, but you learn as you go and you have time, hopefully. And in many cases, you're dealing with gig workers. But I've worked with, you know, leaders in banks with thousands of employees or contact centers with thousands of employees. And it's just a sea of desks. You know, when they brought in Open Plan a few years ago and they thought it was brilliant or a decade ago. And now Open Plan is a disaster, you know. And they're the leaders, I think, that struggle. And we're working in unusual times. there's five generations in the organization so everyone's attitude is different culture and business is not is not aligned with smart working it needs to shift it cannot stay the same and then the skills and the tools that leaders need they need to be equipped if you know i imagine a lot of cfos around the world right now are like scratching their heads in terms of productivity has dropped for the few months but they're starting to look at the real estate costs have dropped commuter benefits if there were any rent rates whatever it might be and they're starting to see the potential uplift the companies that actually make it sustainable for the future will reinvest that saving into training into development into a model that's constantly evaluated because work is going to continue to evolve and change in the coming years, I believe. And learning will be everything. So learning for the people, the leaders. So we've partnered with some companies in this space. We're on the fence about developing it. I think stage one was this book with Tiana, which is the tool for leaders for themselves. But I think there will be a lot of companies out there that maybe claim that they know what they're doing, but work transformation is really new. If you Google work transformation jobs, You know, there's loads of them now, but there's barely any people with the skillset. So it's just such an interesting time, but I do think investment in leaders knowing how to do it well will mean that they will benefit from that statistic of 40% improved attrition of staff if you nail remote, increased productivity of 10%, and average saving per employee of about 10 to$11,000. When that hits the net profit, like, you know, it's a game changer.

SPEAKER_03: 43:58

Are we going to offer that or are we going to just preach that to them?

SPEAKER_01: 44:05

We don't know yet. It's the truth. So at the moment when a company creates a profile on the Vodoo, they have a dashboard and we feed them content and offers with partners. So we have partners partnered with e-learning companies, insurance companies, anything that's relevant to them to enable the onboarding. But this might be a direction that we go as a business. Our 100% focus right now is government and being able to initiate these mappings so they can reboot economies. But once again, it's kind of dependent on the people we have on the team. If we have someone approach us with all of those skill sets and they're very interested in joining us now, it's a direction we can go. We're young enough to be agile and pivot quite quickly.

SPEAKER_05: 44:50

We've got a couple of really interesting questions in the chat, which we'll get to in a second, but I just wanted to get your view really on a topic, which I don't really know how to explain, but it came up in our Future of Work series. So one of the panelists said, he spent a long time teaching his son about a strong handshake and the importance of that in the workplace and when meeting other people as well. He said one of the strange things for him was just trying to work out when, if ever, his son was going to shake somebody's hand, because obviously with the COVID stuff, it's changed, right? And for me, living and working in Portugal, one of the things that really changed was it wasn't just a handshake, it was a hug, it was the kisses, it was the warmth of the interaction with people, not just the things you did together, but you actually had this kind of open-hearted connection. And so I just wondered, from your perspective, what's the next six to 12 months look like in terms of real people interactions, hugs, handshakes, kisses, and that kind of connectivity stuff?

SPEAKER_01: 45:44

It's really hard. I love a hug. I think Tiana and I discussed this, didn't we, a few weeks ago. We were just saying we miss

SPEAKER_02: 45:51

that. That we cannot use with a mask.

SPEAKER_01: 45:57

Yeah and like I look we're not going to be hugging that's for sure or kissing for at least two years or a year and a half maybe and I don't think we'll be handshaking because you know you might be risk adverse but then someone else could be the complete opposite so I think we all have to respect each other's space. Geez I hope we don't get to a traffic light system. You know, for red, orange, green, green, you can hug me. But I do think that we need to, I worry about, not so much millennials, I worry about people probably in their early 20s, just out of college. And, you know, this is the generation that has done a lot of communication via text. And even the idea sometimes of a phone call for a chat or a video call, it's just not the same. And now they're in a world that's, they're removed. You know, I was spoken to a university the other day because we're partnering with universities now, and they were saying how Freshers' Week is 100% remote. And that's really daunting. And in Ireland, it's the same. They're missing the fundamental elements of maturing and connecting with people. And these same students, certainly in Ireland, they didn't even get to do their school exams. They were canceled. So they're just going straight into college, and now they're doing it remotely. So I do worry about that. This is a personal project I've done. It's called Masters of Remote, and it's a free training specifically for grads or people early on in their career. And they're just thinking, how the heck do I do an interview remotely? How do I get my CV ready? I've got no experience. Obviously, I'll encourage them to register on a Vodou, but there's so much more that you need to do. And as unemployment rises globally, It's going to get really tough. But there are some nice tips for connecting with people on Zoom. Tiana mentioned some of them already. And okay, you're being interviewed by a hiring manager. Are you really going to say, oh, is that a lovely painting in your background? You're not. You'll be too nervous. But you might have other icebreakers on your side or you might be able to drop something in. And I love, since I've been 23, I've been coaching people on interviewing and right up to C-level. I love it. I love the dynamics of going in and understanding how do you convince that person that you take every single box for the role they're trying to fill because at the end of the day they just want to impress their boss and and so this can be done remotely but there are there's learnings to to be made and um yeah if there's anyone on the on the video today or call today that wants to join if you're actively looking for work you're very very welcome to to join i'll be doing one in a few weeks

SPEAKER_05: 48:36

It's interesting because I do a number of non-exec roles and I recently interviewed for one and I've never met the people in person. So I'm now working actively with them as a non-exec. We're doing stuff together every week and we've literally never crossed that line. It's very rare for a non-exec role. And when they interviewed me, they interviewed several other potential non-execs and they said to me that we knew it was you. We knew you were the right one because you swore really inappropriately halfway through the interview. We could see the real person. And she said, we just didn't get that with the other people. I'm like, if I'd have known I'd have done it in the first five minutes. How do you get your character across in environments like this? It's very hard. So Dave in the chat, he's got, what are your thoughts on using video recorded or live in talent acquisition for interviews and introductions, which kind of links to this, right? Videos versus non-videos. Where do you stand?

SPEAKER_01: 49:26

I stand on it. That video is really good. So important. You can't assess and connect and evaluate on a phone call or remotely, you know, by just CV screening or using assessment tools. It's funny because, like I said, I've coached and I've done interviews and the whole live experience. I love that. I think, you know, that's how you assess someone really, really well. And you can have fun with it. And you can sell your brand very well as well as the organization of choice It was a fund I was going for, a government fund, and it was a pre-recorded interview that you had to do. But the questions popped up on the screen, and then I had to give the answer. Now, it was on a Bodu. And I must say, I really struggled. I crumbled. we didn't get through stage one. That was appalling. And I thought, hey, I'm good at interviews. And yet I failed because it was recorded and I could see myself and there was just, you know, and it was a bad day and the time was limited and then boom, gone, it was sent. And I thought, no, no, because empathy, and especially today, empathy is everything and emotional intelligence or as they say, emotional fitness is critical. And if I'm interviewing someone and I can see they're not bringing their full potential there's a reason and i'll dig deep and i'll understand did something happen in their past or are they nervous about the future and you can't do that with a pre-recorded so is it a screening tool to screen in and out and i think i would prefer to ask questions and get typed answers and use maybe other personality assessment tools as the early stage if i have hundreds of applications but then i would be shortlisting and doing live interviews

SPEAKER_05: 51:13

It sort of speaks to Sylvia's question over here as well, which is, you know, how do you put measures on people's soft skills and their personality? How do you actually put a number to it or a relative score to it with people?

SPEAKER_01: 51:26

So I use this phrase, I don't know if it's still going around, but talent war route. in a company you have a talent war room basically what that means is any touch point of a candidate in the hiring process or for big organizations you may have recruiter hr manager hiring manager you may have four in c level in a small organization it might be founder and one other person but before you even write a job spec or push it out to the big bad world you have to have an honest open conversation as to the culture of the business and the soft skills that you're looking for and then you need to Establish that. And there are tools out there that you can use. I've worked with predictive index, which I thought was fantastic, where you can actually develop personal behaviour levels and soft skills for a job. Then the second thing is you go to your top performer, if you have one, and you evaluate their soft skills. And then finally, you have the talent war room, you debate it out, and it should be done blindfolded, like you should fill out exactly what you feel the soft skills are and rate them one to 10, or use a tool like PI. And then you have a conversation and you see, and what many cases, what you'll find is the gatekeeper is not looking for the same as the C-level. And so you all have to get on the same page and then you create the job spec data that you want to match and then you push that out. The interviewing process as well, whether it's interviews, team exercises, assessment centres, personality behaviour, it all has to tie in with that master spec as to these are the soft skills and hard skills that we're looking for.

SPEAKER_05: 52:58

All right, thank you. Well, you know, an hour has gone by so incredibly quickly and I'm just going to give you a couple of seconds to think about a question, which is, What advice would you give for any first-time founders who are watching this today? And while you have a think about that, Pedro, Tijana, any last reflections that you want to give on today's session?

SPEAKER_02: 53:19

Tijana, please. I think that would have been my question as well, because we are targeting the audience of younger founders. So anything that you can share, Vanessa, I'm sure it's going to be appreciated.

SPEAKER_05: 53:32

And Pedro, from you, any reflection?

SPEAKER_03: 53:35

Yeah. Which tip could you give to a newcomer as being an employer? What would be the magical tip you would give him when he was entering this market and trying to recruit someone on a remote or hybrid way? What is the key magical tip for him?

SPEAKER_01: 53:55

Oh, okay. So really the tip for the employer and the tip for someone who's starting out.

SPEAKER_04: 54:00

I have

SPEAKER_01: 54:00

so many. Will I talk about the employer first? Because that's probably more straightforward. I think that have confidence from day one. Because sometimes when you build a product and you're thinking, I've got the product and I'm trying to sell and now I'm trying to get staff in and convince them in my vision. And just firstly, believe in yourself. And secondly, as painful as it is, well, it was for me to define a culture, define the culture, because they'll buy into the founder and they'll buy into your culture. And when times get tough, that's what will keep them with you and loyal. have a very clear idea of if you can offer an incentive path Have that in place. Don't find yourself in an interview and then someone says, I want equity. And you're like, oh, I haven't even thought about it. And they're your A player. Do your due diligence. Like really, the social networks right now give you insight. I'm not suggesting spying, but they give you insight to be able to identify talent and really research someone. Look at their connections, referrals and so on. And then just be human. Be yourself. Don't feel like, I remember doing my first interview and she's actually my best friend now. the person I hired. And she said, Vanessa, you were hilarious. You were in a room that was six foot by eight foot and you had a desk that filled the whole room and you sat behind the desk, you know, and there's no need for that pretense. Just be yourself because that's what people will buy into. And then the tip for starting the business, she says so many, but what I would say is it don't feel like you need to build the perfect product before taking it to market. And I know Tiana feels that way as well. You know, MVPs for a reason. And sometimes, you know, there's the art and science to starting the company, the art, the brand, the image, the feel, the emotion, the science is like the tech, how good it is. And just everything have enough that you can bring it to customers. And, you know, people really, if you ask them to review something, they will. They don't expect something perfect, but move as fast as you can. And, you know, fundraising, it doesn't happen overnight. It's a six, nine month lead. So start from day one and don't read the notes online that says pre-revenue, you don't have a chance. You do. Local government will give you money. They won't take equity in most countries. And then the other thing is have a break. You know, it's so intensive that you can connect 24-7. Don't care if you get a troll online that says something bad or a bad review, because just go back being yourself. And then the final thing, I'm a big believer in writing goals and visions. And I've started doing meditation every morning. So I do sound hippie now, but it has really helped me through the tough times in the last few months to visualize where you want to go with the business and personally. So you can kind of stay on track and stay pumped during the day until you pour that glass of wine.

SPEAKER_04: 56:53

I mean, it's perfect.

SPEAKER_01: 56:54

And the final motto that I've used for freaking years is like, life is a journey, not a commute. And, you know, it really is now more than ever.

SPEAKER_05: 57:06

Great. Life is a journey, not a commute. I love it. Well, I think, you know, I really want to say thank you for being here today. It's been a wonderful conversation, really inspiring. And I hope every first-time founder who's watching this today has been able to take something away from your story. A great big round of applause for sharing so openly with us. And as ever, for Tiana and Pedro, amazing to have you here and for your questions and shedding your own inspiration as well. So I wish you a lovely Friday and a lovely weekend with your family and good luck with everything on your journey. And of course, the book, which we shall all be reading after this episode today.

SPEAKER_01: 57:44

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you guys.

SPEAKER_05: 57:48

Thanks everybody. See you later.

SPEAKER_00: 57:52

Thank you for listening to the Founder Friday podcast series. If you've enjoyed this episode, please feel free to rate, review, and subscribe on your preferred podcast listening platform. We really appreciate that effort. If you'd like to recommend an entrepreneur or innovator for a future edition, please go to our website, www.canopy.community, and tell us all about them. This series is made possible by the kindness of the members of Hashtag Tribe, along with support from our sponsors, Damia Recruitment, Corp. Angel's investment and ideas, spaces, and co-working. Obrigadíssimo a todos!