Bust and Beyond
Failure is a part of life and business, and I experienced the failure of a business in 2015 that my father had started in 1969. The effect it had on me emotionally was huge, yet the outside world knew nothing. I kept it to myself. I learnt so much from that failure, and it made me determined to support other business owners in the construction industry to avoid failure and flourish.
As I started to speak to business owners about failure, I learnt just how many had suffered from mental health issues and harmful thoughts. This drove me to start my podcast to educate and let people know how to avoid failure and know if they are going through failure, they are not alone, but more importantly, there is life and success after the failure of your business.
Bust and Beyond
E42 How Consistency, Not Luck, Keeps Companies Alive
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Most companies don’t crash because the market was unkind; they unravel because fear, ego, and weak systems derail good decisions. That’s the heart of my conversation with Logan, founder of the Founder Readiness Institute, who brings hard-won insight from early-stage investing and leadership science to a simple promise: measure what matters in people, and your odds of success go up.
We start where many founders struggle—cash flow and fear. Especially in construction, VAT, CIS, and poor forecasting push leaders into panic, where attention narrows and bad calls multiply. Logan reframes this through the nervous system: when you live in fight or flight, you can’t think long term. Practical resets like breathing, clear baselines, and short decision loops help leaders shift into a calmer, smarter state. From there, we break down six constructs that predict outcomes: coachability, purposeful agility, emotional resilience, team climate IQ, strategic complexity (think systems thinking), and leadership execution. Each one is learnable, measurable, and tied to how well a business performs under pressure.
We also get real about the coaching industry. Too many leaders get PDFs, not progress. We contrast mentoring and coaching, argue for explicit roadmaps, and show how AI can add rigour—turning transcripts into pattern insight, flagging blind spots, and converting workshops into reusable assets. The point isn’t tech for its own sake; it’s building a culture that values agency, honesty, and consistency. Social media may glamorise overnight success, but real growth looks like filling a reservoir you can’t see over—until the water finally spills back as leads, trust, and profit.
If you’re a founder, MD, or team lead who senses that people dynamics, not just numbers, are your constraint, this conversation offers a blueprint. You’ll learn how to turn fear into focus, feedback into fuel, and complexity into a competitive edge. Subscribe, share this with someone who’s scaling a team, and leave a quick review telling us which of the six constructs you’ll work on first. Your insight might be the nudge someone else needs to lead better tomorrow.
Welcome And Mission Of The Show
SPEAKER_00Hello and welcome to Bust and Beyond with your host Robin Hayhurst. In this podcast, Robin will introduce guests that have known failure and want to share their story about how they got through it and what happened next. This will make you learn how to see things from a new perspective and avoid making the same mistakes. Please welcome Robin Hayhurst.
SPEAKER_01Hello and welcome to Bust and Beyond Podcast. We're joined by Logan today. So hello Logan.
SPEAKER_02Hello, it's so great to be here this morning. Thank you, Robin.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you for uh taking the time. I know it's quite early there. It's about seven o'clock and it's just after midday here. So, you know, big difference.
SPEAKER_02I'm an early morning person, so me too, sometimes. So uh not always good uh disclaimer sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sometimes I jump out of bed and go, yeah, life is for living. And sometimes I don't. So um so Logan, tell us a little bit about you and what you do.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So I like to say I solve people problems, and what I mean by that is that I've spent a lot of time in my career in early stage investing in the investing world, private equity and uh venture capital, and starting companies as well. And so I've been in and around that space for a long time and made a lot of observations that, and this is backed up by a statistic I'll share, but that a lot of the reasons that companies are failing or that um financial products aren't performing as they might be able to otherwise is because of people problems. And I mean leadership capacity risk, team dynamics issues, people getting frustrated at their manager and leaving. I mean, this just happens all the time. And according to Harvard Business Review, 65% of companies fail because of people problems, because of internal dynamics. And so I set out recently to help solve that problem through my company, the Founder Readiness Institute. And what we do is essentially evaluate hiring and execution risk for leaders.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I obviously work in an industry that has a huge failure rate. I think 18% of all companies that fail are for my industry, but the gross domestic product or the turnover of the industry is only six or seven percent. So it's a huge failure rate. And I put that down to to people, absolutely. Actually, a lot of it's consistency, I think, strangely enough. If I sum it up in one word, it'd be consistency.
SPEAKER_02Consistency, okay.
SPEAKER_01I just think people don't do things they should be doing. And they might start off with kind of the right mindset and the right approach, but then it falls by the wayside as you know things become stressful and far fighting and you know, fear takes over.
SPEAKER_02One, we would use the language of complexity coming in or pressure entering the system. And so essentially, you might have a person or an individual who's set out, you know, in their best, we call it their best day. You know, you're um you when you interview for a job, it's your best self that you're presenting, most likely. And that individual, that version of yourself, can perform maybe at a certain capacity. But when things start to get stressful, and when you have all these demands on your time, and when you are dealing with a lot of complexity, like we have all this AI tooling coming in, you know, people start to kind of crumble in that. And there's kind of um predictable patterns where people tend to break down under pressure that we can actually measure with our tools.
Fear, Cash Flow, And Construction Risk
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, that's that's very useful. What I see is is fear. So I see people start a business. Normally in my industry, they might have a professional or a trade background. So they might be a site manager, they might be a carpenter, and then they have the bright idea of starting a business, completely different skill set to run a business, to actually do the trade. And the first thing that hits them is the complexity really of the tax system. So we've got VAT, we've got a thing called CIS, all these things have to be, you know, you you can look at it, look in your accounts and go, yeah, I've got loads of money, but none of it's yours. So they will hit a point somewhere where the fear creeps in, and because of cash flow issues, and let's face it, 90% of the companies in my industry don't actually have a cash flow forecast. So they don't predict these things, they just look at what's going to happen at the end of the month. Yeah, it's so common. One of the things I teach is cash flow because people don't do it. Their cash flow will be haven't got enough money until the end of the month. That's that's as far as it goes. The fear creeps in. And the trouble with fear is where focus goes, energy flows.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Oh, I definitely agree with you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so so the focus goes on the fear and not on running the business. And then kind of the fear comes to realisation, really, it it happens. And I think that's that's a big problem. And trying to get people to say, well, hold on, you know, let's firstly predict these problems so you can work in them, you know, you've got more time to react and sort it out, but also to see where you're leaking money and you know, whether you actually need to do more or do less or whatever. So that's kind of the first thing they need to do. But any way of measuring employees and measuring founders, I think is really important.
Stress States And Better Decisions
SPEAKER_02Well, and I can I can share a little bit more because I actually was speaking to a coach the other day and she shared something, a really interesting analogy or a way of thinking about leadership capacity. And I thought it was really beneficial. So she talked about the nervous system and you you mentioned fear. And so we're in when we're in a fear, fight, or flight state, we're in the sympathetic nervous system. And it's really difficult to make good decisions or long-term decisions when you're sitting in that nervous system state all the time. And so there are practices that she employs to help people move into the parasympathetic nervous system, things like just an easy breathing technique. So to transfer your nervous system over to a different state so that it can then grow and learn new things. And so I think that's a really important part of this dialogue. It's like, how do we get people out of that fear state and thinking longer term and thinking more about how they can incorporate this complexity and pressure instead of seeing it as an adversary?
SPEAKER_01The way I do it is I understand the problem. So I, you know, I attack the problem with, you know, all the information I can find. So I understand it. And understanding takes away the fear. And with many, many years in business, you understand that nothing terrible happens quickly.
SPEAKER_02I love that. Nothing terrible happens. I guess unless you're day trading or something.
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah, yeah, but we yeah, we won't go into that. But yeah, so not you know, it tends to take a long time. And and if you've got any creditors and stuff like that, they're not gonna kind of, it's not days, it's months. So generally, you know, you've got a chance to to rekindle and and rethink and and and sort it out. So it's quite it's quite an important um uh tool that I use, but I see so many people go into fear and I see so many people fail because they have the head in the sand approach.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and I think um, you know, obviously that is um we would probably attribute that to our coachability construct. So we measure, we can measure many things, but we uh for founders and for business owners and leaders, we we tend to measure six kind of core contracts. I'd love to get into that if if that's if that works.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Uh that that sounds brilliant. I mean, I you know, I think it's important. I speak to so many business owners on the phone. So our process is, you know, we advertise what we do, people sign up for more information, and it leads up to a discovery call with me. And so many people are in distress. Their companies are in distress, but they still have barriers in their head to getting help. And it's quite frustrating the amount of companies I've spoken to, and then I've kept in contact with them, I've I've given them a quarterly call, and you know, at some point they failed. Yeah. So they could have saved themselves, but they failed. And, you know, that is that is concerning. I think it's it is a mindset problem.
Coachability And Taking Feedback
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think and that's this coachability construct that I uh that I started to talk about is really fascinating to me because what I've heard over and over is, you know, when people do think about how they assess other people for for hiring and things like that, or what they think are important attributes of a good leader, coachability comes up all the time. And so what is coachability? It's it is a mindset in many ways of strategically taking in outside information and doing something, you know, valuable to your current situation with it. But in order to do that, you have to have a more objective perspective on yourself and the system you're working with. And that's where complexity comes in and compla the perspective of complexity. So when someone's a little bit lower on their coachability development, they tend to be more eye-focused. And so they'll be like, well, when criticism or outside constructive criticism might come in, they might attribute it just to getting offended about themselves. And so that's a really challenging place to be because you're kind of blocking information from coming in. And that might be important for your business. You might be listening to customers and you're just not taking in that feedback. Or, you know, they contact you, Robin, because they're like, okay, maybe he can help me, but then they just are they get um offended, you know, that you uh say that their business isn't working the way that they think it should. And so that's kind of like um early on in someone's development. And as you evolve as a person, you can take in many, many, many more perspectives and see yourself within a constellation of the system and say, okay, well, I'm one part of this, but I'm gonna objectively step back and look at all these different pieces, like you said, attacking the problem as a problem instead of it's about me. And so that's what the kind of thing we're able to measure in how people speak and talk about themselves and tell stories about where they've been and and what they've accomplished.
SPEAKER_01I find with you know, founders or MDs or CEOs, often they miss the common denominator in the problem, which strange enough is them. So um, you know, it is constantly, and there are certain red flags I see, people that you know profess that the whole team loves them, never had never had a better boss. Sounds like um a president, we know, really. But uh no names to be but you see a lot of this, and yeah, I I think understanding themselves and their stories and and everything else is is really valuable. So if you've got a way of scoring that with um of identifying it, that's a valuable tool.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Yeah. And what you just spoke to is a lot of um, we call it team climate IQ. And so the foundation of what that construct is about is are you able to facilitate a flow state or are you able to create psychological safety with the people that you're working with enough that they are motivated to do their jobs and really see you as a leader? And so you can, by someone talking about their experiences leading a team or telling stories about that, we can assess uh a lot of those patterns also. So it's really fascinating. Like someone, you know, I I've met many people who think they're really good leaders and you talk to the individuals that they work with, and you know, obviously it's a different story. So these are all things we can we can score and measure.
Team Climate And Real Leadership
SPEAKER_01I actually think the best leaders don't think they're good leaders. They're they're trying to improve their leadership, and you step back and look at them and you go, well, do you know you've got a lot right? I think, you know, people who have not got that imposter syndrome part of them, you know, struggle to become a leader. You know, I think that that's a natural imposter syndrome is a natural part of our makeup. And, you know, if you ever meet someone who hasn't got it, please steer clear of them because they're that's not normal.
SPEAKER_02Yes. And I think that um, yeah, you tend to see, you know, there's that adage of if you, you know, hire people that are smarter than you or that are better at their jobs than you. And I I absolutely agree with that. I mean, I think if you're seeing someone who's leading a team and they think they're the smartest person in the room, it's it's probably a flag. But, you know, we also have um there there's many, many dynamics, but I think these are we're kind of getting at like central themes, you know. There's always variations on the theme, but these are like good rules of thumb, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01I don't think rules of thumb are really important. You know, there there'll always be variations, but um, they are important. If you look at, I would say a good leader is um Richard Branson, for instance. He believes look after your people and they'll look after your clients.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Which I think there's a lot of truth in that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But he also is not afraid of employing people that he sees as being a lot cleverer than he is. What he does is he goes out and finds the very, very, very, very best person in the world to run his new company and then bribes them as much as he needs to to get him over to run it. And I think that's that's clever. That that's that he has got no kind of issues around employing the right people and employing people that know more than he does.
SPEAKER_02And giving them agency. I think that's a very important thing. You have to give people, they have to feel like they have agency to make decisions if they're if you're gonna appoint them, you know, as a leader. So yeah, no, there's so much. I mean, I imagine a world where everyone has some has taken some form of this and has a pretty good idea of where they stand in their own developmental patterns and are working towards improving that. Like that's my vision. And I would love to see businesses all around the world implementing these kinds of assessment tools and growth tools so that people can make better decisions in business and have better outcomes, both financially and innovation. I think we would see a very different world if we used more of these capabilities, you know, and and they're possible now.
SPEAKER_01So so would you say things have changed in business quite a bit? So I mean I often used to use the maybe analogy of you've got a kind of dictatorship. So dictatorship used to be the old way of running the business. Everything generally ran through the CEO or founder. There wasn't good delegation. You know, it worked, but it was very restrictive. Whereas a dynamic team environment is much more common now. Would you agree with that? Or am I kind of for the most part, yeah.
Flat Organisations And Changing Norms
SPEAKER_02I think we've definitely moved in that direction. I know in in the US, um, Gen Z has really pushed a lot of more of the flat organizational model. And I think with COVID, we also got obviously a lot of people working from home, which changed their dynamics a lot in terms of like even just interacting with people at higher levels than yourself, you know, in a more casual way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I definitely think the authoritarian bit's gone. Um, hopefully. I remember being on site and having a director throw his hard hat at me. That wouldn't uh I don't think that happened now.
SPEAKER_02So um Yeah, that doesn't sound as right, you know. I yeah, I hear tales of of past, you know, decades of business or or generations. I'm like, wow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. But then I was uh kind of brought up in an era where in some things we were quite old-fashioned. So you know, they used to still cook eggs and steak on their shovels, but that was kind of behind the times, even then, you know, so it was a bit bit odd. But it's a strange industry, you know, construction. Um it's a very male-oriented industry. I was thinking the other day, actually, I've never had a woman boss in my life, ever. That's a strange dynamic, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, well, never have, which is you know, it's odd. I I wasn't anything, no, no kind of negative thoughts about a woman boss, just never have had one.
SPEAKER_02Oh, interesting. Yeah, I mean it kind of makes sense in the construction industry, but yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But now I see so many dynamic, amazing women in the industry. And in fact, I have a lot of clients that are women that run construction companies. So, you know, things are changing. And they bring, you know, you've got to face it, women and men are different in many ways, and they bring that a uniqueness to it that I think men don't. So, you know, they're very good at what they do. And in fact, all the ones that are in them in my mentoring are actually really open to mentoring, much more open than some of the others.
SPEAKER_02I do think we have seen a an openness to things like mentoring, mindfulness at work, you know, just well-being, employee well-being in general. That is really helpful. And I think that's uh one of the most exciting aspects of business in in the modern era. But I also think that there's still, like if you take the coaching industry, for example, um, this is not to denigrate the coaching industry writ large. There's a lot of amazing coaches, but it's still very informal, like how people are trained and what approaches they're taking. And it's it's a bit of a Wild West situation in terms of um like the professionalization of coaching.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I mean I think the coach industry's got a terrible name. Honestly, I see so many business coaches out there which they just haven't got the experience. And they're they're coaching, not mentoring. There's a big difference, as well in my mind, the difference. I mean, I see myself more as a mentor that does a bit of coaching.
SPEAKER_02The term mentor has less of a a connotation to it. I agree. It's yeah, yeah.
Coaching Vs Mentoring And Trust
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, a mentor, as I see, is someone who's been there, done that, and is more descriptive in in or prescriptive in in what they they um suggest you do from experience. Whereas a coach is is really about you trying to find your way and their support you do. So I think there's a clear difference, and um different people need different approaches, really. But yeah, I think in both the UK and America, I think it's you know, for the coach industry is everyone's it's a high-ticket industry. So everyone sets themselves up as a coach, and they're not necessarily interested in the outcomes for their clients, they're interested in the high ticket, and I think it's really difficult now to you know make yourself appear different from that. In the UK, for instance, we've got a lot of property coaching, and you know, I have done so many developments, it's ridiculous. I've been involved in so much stuff, uh, and these guys that are coaching people for thousands and thousands of pounds just haven't got the experience. They've done a little bit of development and they've decided to add this to their portfolio of incomes, and they they don't know what they're talking about. I can honestly say that. It's a really difficult area to kind of break into because people see all these people out there doing it and wearing it down, yeah. Yeah, yeah, they they just don't the trust is gone. The trust is gone. So, you know, it does worry me in mentoring and coaching. You know, it's such an important thing that people get the right mentor and they get someone of experience and someone that can help them, and they don't. They often they often they don't. They end up with someone who has decided to become a coach on a two-week course and um they're off.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And so one of the things we're actually I as a quick anecdote. So I was speaking to a founder the other day, and she said one of her coaches, you know, often the um conversation started with, what do you want to work on today? to the founder. And the founder's like, What do you mean? What do you mean? Like, I don't there was no roadmap, you know, and I think I think we all need roadmaps to look at, you know, even with mentors, they're sort of setting the bar of like where you can go. And I think we all need those aspirational goals and roadmap to like see ourselves in a higher version of ourselves and to to aspire and to work towards. And so if you're gonna go to a personal trainer and they don't have a roadmap for how you're gonna get stronger, that doesn't really make a lot of sense to keep working with them. So yeah, I I'm really passionate about kind of adding more rigor to the coaching industry and to having tools like this to set a baseline for somebody so they can look at, okay, here's where I am now. And here's as I move up along this vertical development trajectory, here's how I can improve my purposeful agility or improve my team, you know, my emotional resilience, things like that. So that's one of the things that we're really excited about built, helping build for the market.
SPEAKER_01That is so important. Have a roadmap. It's much easier, I find, in my workshop groups to do that than one-to-one clients. Trying to get the baseline is the complicated thing. Because unfortunately, people don't always tell you the truth. Right. It's a key thing, you know? It's a key input factor, yes. Yeah, it's just it's just an embarrassment thing, but people don't. I mean, I remember working with someone for three or four months, at which point I found out that they literally were about to go bust. Now I I hadn't got that information prior to that, and they had skirted around, you know, they'd lied about cash flow and other things. And the thing is, three or four Once earlier, I might have. Can't guarantee it. I might have been able to save them.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I know.
SPEAKER_01Change my process to actually ask those questions, but it doesn't mean that people are going to answer honestly.
Roadmaps, Baselines, And Truth
SPEAKER_02But at least you give them the clear opportunity to do so.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, it's interesting. I have a um a colleague who started a company that actually can analyze transcript data for truth and deception analysis. He can't tell you if the person's actually lying or telling the truth, but he can directionally point you to say, yes, this person is likely deceiving or telling you the truth. So I think it's fascinating what is possible now with transcript evaluation and with AI coming in and looking at patterns, because even if, you know, you're not going to catch everybody, for an instance, like what you said, but there's a lot in like a person's minute ways of choosing words or their tone or like different behavioral cues that if you put it all together and you and you analyze it, you can start to look at some very interesting patterns.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, patterns are really important. I put so much stuff through AI. Almost everything I do has transcript. Even my workshops now. I I have a little recorder and it makes a transcript of the whole workshop, the whole day. Just leave it running all day. And the value I get out of that, you know, it tells me how often I go off piece, you know, and start talking about something else. You know, it tells me, you know, what hit home, what didn't. Right. You know, it's so, so important. But also, out of that transcript comes a month's worth of social media posts and you know, key learning areas, and you know, it's just so much stuff comes out of it, and using AI to process it really quickly. As long as you're aware, and I love the fact that my AI use, which is Clawed, gets things wrong. It's helpful it gets things wrong because I always check things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. You do have to. I've noticed a lot of uh, yeah, the hallucinations or just something that I, yeah. It's it's important to it's um tresperify. And, you know, I was gonna say one of our capabilities is if someone has a lot of publicly available, you know, transcripts from speeches they've given or talks or interviews or things like that, we can actually take that and ingest it and come up with the same, a lot of the same scoring um that that than just taking the assessment. So yeah, I mean, even internally, if you wanted to look at your own uh vertical development or some of these contracts, you can do that with your your workshop presentation data and things like that. So yeah, it's pretty exciting.
AI, Transcripts, And Pattern Insight
SPEAKER_01AI I find quite exciting. I I I see the kind of the downside, and I see that people will start using it and not checking it and you know, mistakes we made and all that kind of stuff. But I you know, for me, it just it saves me days a week at the moment. Yes. Um, and it allows me to do so much more that I wouldn't, I just couldn't have had time to do. So it's really helpful.
SPEAKER_02It led me to this podcast.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Because I use uh thing called Pod Pitch, and they um they find you know relevant podcasts for you to put to pitch to essentially. So so AI is everywhere.
SPEAKER_01Podcasts, I I you know, we're hoping to start another podcast soon just for construction. It'll be a full full video in a studio podcast. So um anyone listening to this, we're still looking for sponsors, particularly want to reach out to any builders' merchants that are interested in working with us. But yeah, so we're I do this as a hobby. This is you know, it's it's a real hobby. I get some lovely feedback that people have had some really real nice gold nuggets out of the podcast, you know, things like I never saw it like that, and now it kind of makes it all clear for me. Just little bits and pieces that we've come up and said, and I've met some amazing people on it. So, you know, that's been really good. Yeah, bringing it up. So you were talking about your six tests. Should you all just outline those then?
SPEAKER_02Sure. Yeah, so six constructs. So um, and what that is is really just a um a think about it as a keystone of like a keystone metric, like something that, you know, you can't measure everything, but if you measure these things, you're more likely to better understand kind of the holistic nature of a person and their capabilities in in this, you know, in this case to for to do a startup or to run a to small, medium enterprise. So their coachability, uh, we talked about that a little bit, purposeful agility. It means about it talks a lot about pivoting. Like how do you pivot quickly when you need to while keeping the the goal or mission in mind? Um, emotional resilience. So, you know, we all are somewhat familiar with that, but just how do you handle stress and pressure, emotional pressure? Like what happens to you? Do you have um systems in place to manage stress because otherwise you just sort of tend to implode or burn out? We talk about team climate IQ. And so that's really what I said before about psychological safety, about creating a flow state, the presence of a leader and their ability to hold space for a team to motivate them. And then the strategic complexity is is what I've touched on it a little bit in all of them, but it's really this ability to hold complexity and perspective over time and and the ability to like really frame things as a constellation rather than just an individual experience.
SPEAKER_01And so So would that be kind of seeing the wider picture? I'm sorry, say that again. Would that be like seeing the wider picture? Because framing something like constellation rather than individual is is perhaps a bit highbrow. How would you how would you Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_02It's I think sometimes our I think that's you know, the naming of it.
SPEAKER_01I'm not saying my audience, I'm not saying my audience uh are not highbrow. I'm just saying that there's a lot of builders that listen to this. And um it's it's trying to put things in a language that people actually understand because I think what you're saying is really interesting and really important. It's just getting that language so that it's completely kind of understood.
SPEAKER_02Well, we could workshop it a little bit, you know, Rob. Systems thinking.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
The Six Constructs Explained
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like, are you a systems thinker and how good are you? How proficient are are you at really juggling a lot of balls at once and seeing them objectively?
SPEAKER_01Does that kind of be pro yeah, so would that be process driven? Are you process driven?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think it's kind of like with um, you know, they've I've I've heard this, I look I listen to the Scott Galloway podcast a lot, and I love how he how he talks about the future of work and how he made this statement that like it's not that we're gonna, it's not that, you know, white-collar jobs are all gonna go away. It's that the people that really know how to manage AI are gonna get the jobs in the future. And what he's I would call that strategic complexity because AI is quite complex, like we have all these tools coming at us, and they're taking, they are taking a lot of functions away, but there are people who are learning how to manage the actual systems themselves and position themselves as a person who can manage AI. And so I would call that like a higher ability of um what we call strategic complexity or systems thinking. And they're not doing they're not imploding under the pressure. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01I I totally get that. So if you go back uh, you know, quite a way when machines were coming in, you know, machinery in in factories. Yes, and and it was doing people out of out of work, you know, big thing about it. Um, you know, there was marches and demonstrations and stuff like that, like it was gonna stop.
SPEAKER_02Aren't those lights when the the people that used to be? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know your history. So um, yeah, so you know, all these changes. The clever man or the or woman, you know, I've got to grant myself there. In those days it was men, but you know, or women, would have learned about the machines and how to look after them, how to install them and how to use them. Yeah, absolutely. So um it yeah, exactly. And I think I I totally agree with you on AI, you know, that we've got to embrace it. I I also think we have to control it. If we give it free reign, we've got a problem because there are there are things it's gonna start doing, and privacy is one of the things that you know is a worry uh around AI. But yeah, I think it's uh but I mean I'm I use AI so much now, and even I go, well, actually that's a bit limited because it can only remember so much about me, and I want it to remember so much more, but I can also see that if it remembers more, then that's a privacy issue. So, you know, how how do you how do you work around that? But I what it what it Claude does is I can set a file up and I can get it to do loads, loads of reports, I can put one in the file, and then it can refer to the reports, right? Which is quite useful. So that's it, that's its memory, but it's a paper, like almost a paper version. So if you delete the report, it's gone from its memory. So that kind of works.
SPEAKER_02No, I think we have to have these guardrails in place, and we know we're figuring out it's like the technology is moving faster than the culture, and this has happened for many decades at this point, but it's like it is hard to kind of keep up with the pace of change, and that's why I think this idea of um being higher in your strategic thinking or strategic complexity is really powerful. And there are ways you can grow that muscle, you know, like build that muscle. And so that those are some of the things that we would then coach on specifically, or you know, maybe there's a future where you train AI on your vertical development baseline and then it prompts you and helps you. Oh, you know, here you could have said XYZ, or you know, it has that framing in your own calls or presentations where it can kind of coach you in that way.
SPEAKER_01So, how accurate is your scoring then? So you score people and you tell them kind of, you know, where they where they are on a what's the baseline? Is it other scores or is it, you know? How how does it work?
Strategic Complexity In Plain Language
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we we brought in a lot of different um, we looked at a lot of different existing frameworks and research and so to come up with the six constructs that we have now for our one assessment that um again we can build others, but we we took a bunch of research, we digested it, and then we looked at correlations between the constructs we're looking at and business outcomes. So, you know, how positive were the outcomes from the businesses of the leaders when they had these high scores on these factors? And so in terms of accuracy, I think that's a really interesting question. What I would say to that is that the way we began scoring was human-based. And so we would score based on the transcripts, and now we have AI doing it, and we're finding we're getting more and more accurate as a you know connected to or as opposed to like having just a human do it. So the accuracy level is now in like the 80th to 90th percentile compared to a human doing it. So we're getting better all the time. What we tend to say now is we have AI do like a first pass, and then a human will come in and confirm whether they agree with the way that AI So this might be way way off base, and perhaps you could describe, uh, explain the difference.
SPEAKER_01The only kind of thing like this I've come across is disk profiling.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so which I love. I'm still finding a way to cost-effectively bring it to my clients because it's I I was just shocked how accurate it was, you know, considering you seem to be answering some random questions, but when it actually profiles you, it's pretty good. Is it a long way from there or is it based on that kind of technology and an approach or completely different?
SPEAKER_02It's a great question. Um, I would say that the so I've taken disc. Um, I disc is more about like your personality characteristics. So like are you dominating? I forget it was what's the S stand for?
SPEAKER_01Um, it's uh it's uh I call it it's dominating influencer. Um there's um supporter. There's the blue one, which is uh really detailed. Yeah. If you've got someone like an accountant, you want them to have a lot of blue in them, and there's green one which is emotional, I think it's empathy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it's only four. And every person has a mix of those four. And I just find it's really clever because it's so, so, so accurate. And you I just, you know, whoever came up with it, it's it's pretty good. Um, you know, if everyone understood their team's disc profile and their disc profile, they would manage their team in a completely different way.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and I think it's a really these are really helpful tools. I mean, there's many assessments. Um, what I would say is that they don't so my experience of disc was that I got a report and then I understood generally how my team what you know how where they landed on their disc profile. And we got a PDF and nobody ever really did anything with it. And now that was at my organization. But also it doesn't, so let's just take like the influencer personality. So that person might be good at team climate IQ, like if we were to correlate it with our you know, constructs, they may be really good at that. But it's not really telling you it's and maybe they're less detail-oriented and less of a dominating personality, or I think that's the the D. But it's not really telling you their ability to hold complexity over time, or their ability to um handle emotional regulation, or their ability uh how coachable are they? Like these are um aspects of their behavioral characteristics that it's not really highlighting. So it gives you some information, but not not what we're talking about, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01I really yours is a much more in-depth view of someone, and it's more purposeful for their role within the business.
SPEAKER_02And there's a roadmap for how you can how you can change yourself over time according to these constructs.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Okay. So you create that for your clients. So what kind of clients do you work with?
Accuracy, Benchmarks, And DISC
SPEAKER_02So we've been primarily working with venture capital firms and accelerator programs. And we are moving into, we're doing a pivot of sorts into um middle market corporations. So companies that have employees uh, you know, ranging from 50 to 2,000. So that's gonna be our our sweet spot um going forward. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Sounds sounds interesting. In fact, uh my own experience with venture capitalists was um a company that I won't name that got taken over by venture capitalists, and they didn't have a clue how to run the company. In fact, they weren't really interested in the company as itself, it was just what uh what its value was and what profit it made. The trouble is that short kind of outlook was actually very detrimental to the company because the company had some really good connections and was well renowned for what it did. I think it became a problem. And and also this was a a hundred million hundred, yeah, a hundred million uh turnover company in the UK. And I think they just didn't support the CEO at all. You know, he didn't he didn't get aboard because that was expensive, you know, he didn't get that support. And I think when when you see kind of things like that happen, you think, oh gosh, you know, very good at the figures, very good at numbers, very good at the detail, not understanding people at all.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think unfortunately the the way the current venture model works, you know, nine out of ten companies are gonna fail. The one is gonna carry the funds, and one or two that, you know, go gangbusters. That's what everyone's betting on. And so it's a bit of a numbers game in that way. And I do think as soon as, you know, companies show signs that they're not gonna make it, they just kind of move on with them. And so that's one of the roadblocks we've found to kind of some of our offerings is that it's not that it doesn't make sense to to evaluate founders, you know, accord along these constructs pre- or post-investment, but there's a mindset that, well, most of them are gonna fail anyway, and we're good at picking winners. So that's kind of what we've run into a bit in the venture capital industry. I'm not saying there's not forward-thinking venture capitalists, but that's essentially what we've heard from the market.
SPEAKER_01That's absolutely in line with what I've from my one experience. So yeah, that's that's in line with what I've heard as well. So it's uh it's definitely challenging. And I think, you know, in my industry, like I said, the failure rate is really high. So one in five companies every year fail. Forty percent of all companies actually don't make a profit. In fact, they don't even make enough for the the founder or the CEO or the MD, whatever you want to call them, to actually take home a salary or a wage that would be equivalent to working with someone else. So it's a big the the industry is has got a big problem. Um, but there is plenty of work around because there aren't a lot of good contractors. I don't know how that varies in the UK. You've got a licensing system in sorry, in the USA. You've got a licensing system in the US, haven't you, for for contractors?
SPEAKER_02To be honest, I don't know. I I assume so, but I don't know how to do that.
SPEAKER_01I can tell you, I can tell you you have, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. I'll take care of it.
SPEAKER_01So every every contractor have to has to have a license to carry out work. That makes sense. In the UK, we're unlicensed. We've got parts elements that are licensed, so anything to do gas or electricity, you've got to have a qualification, which is renewed. Um, so that part of it is the general construction work. Um, and we're hoping to move towards licensing, but it's uh it's a bit of a struggle at the moment. And and I would definitely support licensing, but I think there's an element of the industry who's a bit scared about it because they're wondering if it's going to stop them from operating because they haven't got any formal qualifications, and it shouldn't be about that, it should be about experience. So, you know, it's quite important. So um, yeah, just uh just another side. Well, that's been that's been really interesting. So is there anything else you'd like to tell my listeners then before we kind of come to the end on the podcast?
Venture Capital Realities
SPEAKER_02No, just um just to consider, you know, thinking about these dimensions in leadership and ways in which the um we could have a a future that's got more um positive people dynamics, more you know, self-aware leaders with with higher capacity and better innovation outcomes. I think, you know, we're we're in a very disruptive time and we have the opportunity to, we always have the opportunity to intervene in our own ways and in our own spheres of influence. So I would just encourage people, if you're interested in what we're doing, you know, this isn't just for for startup founders, it's for business owners of of any kind. And I think any everyone can benefit from knowing things like how coachable and how agile they are in making decisions. So these are just constructs that matter to me in business. And I I hope that um it's been inspirational at least to hear that um that there are ways to improve leadership and and dynamics.
SPEAKER_01So oh, I th I think there are, and I I I you know it'd be terrible if you were set in your ways and you couldn't move.
SPEAKER_02Um people believe that though, the fixed mindset.
SPEAKER_01No, I I I I don't believe that. I think you we've all got our eureka moment.
SPEAKER_02I can tell you have a growth mindset. It's it's it's very it's refreshing.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's it's about pivoting, isn't it? It it's it's knowing that there's a problem. You pivot, you you move, you you change. And we've had a few, you know, uh running a construction company is is pretty hard. Uh running a coaching and mentoring business is I would say harder in some ways because we keep on having environments and and funding, and other things change. So rather than panic and you know, think the world's gonna end and you know you're gonna have to go and find another job, you sit down and you pivot and you think about it and you think, what am I doing? What can I improve? What what can I change? You know, what how can I adapt to this new environment? And you've got to do that without the fear. The fear stops you thinking. So you've got to have that ability to do it without the fear, and it's it's quite difficult. And I think it is a skill you can pick up, and the more you do it, the more you realise there's a there's a solution out there. My father, who was uh just an amazing bloke, and I I I really, you know, I'm very privileged because not a lot of people look up to their father. There's many people who don't, but he was an amazing bloke, and he unfortunately died during COVID. So, you know, the celebration of his life was 10 people in a church, because that's all we're allowed. Uh not a church, actually, a creme creme, a creme. And I'd like to think because of the business he ran and you know the local that there'd been a few hundred people there. I never got that closure when he died. But he was really such a believer in people, and he was really good at pivoting, and he was really good at you know thinking outside the box. Just uh, you know, he definitely instilled a lot of his values, you know, on me.
SPEAKER_02And they live on, yeah, absolutely. That's fantastic.
Licensing, Standards, And Industry Change
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and and you know, core values are so important to me. And you know, but when I first came across them, it was like yeah, okay, something for your website and for the clients, and maybe on a brochure somewhere. Didn't realise then how important they are to a business. I think you Know having that open mindset to change. Yes. Yeah, and measuring it, you know, and measuring change and and making sure that um, you know, you don't close off. You can you must investigate every idea, even if it proves out to be a really bad idea, investigate it with an open mind. Because at least you've thought about it or you've tried or you've, you know, and then you can rule it out. But also there's consistency there because just for because you do something, and this is where you know I started by saying consistency is kind of the biggest thing. Just because you start something, you know, it doesn't work, doesn't mean it's not going to work. And I use this a lot as a kind of as an example. You know, you're filling up a reservoir of water, but you can't see over the wall. You can't you can chuck stuck water over, but you can't see over the wall. And what you're waiting for is the water to come back over the wall, and that's your reward, your leads, your success, your money, whatever it is. And you're chucking this water over, you're putting hose pipes over, you're doing everything you can. How many people give up a millimeter?
SPEAKER_02That's true. I know. That's the art of knowing. What is it? And there's a saying, or there's a famous song, know when to hold them, fold them, and walk away. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know. But the can but you do have to coward of the coward of the county.
SPEAKER_02I think that's one of the things about, I guess you asked me how business has changed. I think that people nowadays have such short attention spans. They do. It's just remarkable. Like I feel like every generation is just like split attention. And I think that's really doing a disservice to that commitment, that consistency. We want really quick wins. And um, you know, some businesses are harder than others, but I think you know, that maintaining that consistency and having that embedded in what you're doing is so critical.
SPEAKER_01And we the big problem is is every business from the outside looks more successful than it is.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01And every business from the inside looks less successful than it is. Okay.
SPEAKER_02And because of social media, very interesting way to put it, yeah, yeah.
Pivoting, Mindset, And Consistency
SPEAKER_01And because of social media, that's how we see life. Everyone looks more successful than we are, happier, prettier, you know. And and we don't feel like that all the time. But they don't feel like that all the time. And they're not more successful than you are, they're just out there on social media pretending they are. And you know, it's really social media, it's most probably the worst thing that ever happened to the human race. And we we all use it, and I use it for guessing clients, and I use it a lot, but it's still mostly the worst thing ever happened because we have got instant uh gratification on there, and we've got instant knowledge that is fake, you know, and we we really can't tell what's true and what isn't. I saw a great one of Richard Branson selling a platform where you can make millions of pounds out of investing£10.50, you know. Uh and I knew it was a fake, but it was really difficult to spot. It was really, really difficult to spot. And there's so many of those out there, and and I I've got to blame the platforms. If the platforms are allowing people to do that kind of advertisement, then there's something really, really wrong with them, you know, and that they should be responsible. On British TV, if you advertise something and you make a fake claim or you do it in the wrong way, you're fined.
SPEAKER_02That goes back to values, isn't it? And and what how the platform you're engaging with, how do they define their values as a company?
Social Media Illusions And Scams
SPEAKER_01And lots of them don't. I remember as a test, just as a test. Uh I'm quite into automation, so I I like um these these robots Hoovers. Okay. And I bought one for my wife. That's really sexist. I apologize. So I bought one. I bought one. Um, and my wife went mad. My wife went mad at me and went, Oh, yeah, it's just so rubbish, it's it's useless. What are you doing buying this thing? You know, she wouldn't be about it now. She we she said stuff every day the the the dog smell that we used to have in our house, we used to have two dogs, went within about two days. Really, really clever little device. Anyway, so I'm on one of the platforms, and uh they're advertising this one with a a base station where it sucks all the cleans it all out and you know, and also what mops the floors. And I thought that's not that. There's no way it was 39 pounds, and I know a good one of those is five, six, seven, eight hundred pounds. So just honestly, just as a test, because I knew what the outcome was gonna be, I ordered it. Right? Came from China. Well, it was a battery-powered brush, that's all it was, most probably worth about three quid. Three quid. Yeah. So it was, you know, it was absolutely so I got on to them. I went, uh, you know, I want money back. And they went, we'll give you half money back. You can keep it. I still want to keep it. It's not what you what was on the video, what was the video was a big proper, you know, robotic um, you know, brush thing, and uh had a base station and it climbed stairs and everything. Um wow. And they went, no, well, okay, we'll give you, you know, three quarters of your money back. I went, look, I'm gonna complain to the the I purposely bought it on a credit card. So I'm gonna play complain to the credit card company that you're cunning people, and kind of we went through and through that. In the end, I think I got my money back and I kept the product, which went straight at the bing because it was completely useless. But this is a company who've got a video out there showing that they do this, that, and the other. It's been like health claims they make on you know, on these platforms for certain things, and it absolutely was nothing like the product. And where's the comeback? Where's the comeback with the platform? You know, where's who's responsible for that? They're like, well, you know. Um, so yeah. So I just thought I'd I'd digress into that story because I it it always makes me laugh a little bit, but anyway, there we are. Anyway, Logan, it's fantastic uh meeting you. Um, lovely to have a chat. Definitely, I I love the fact that you feel that people can change. I think that's really important, as you know, and having a roadmap, I think, to that change is really important. Um, and we must have a catch-up again and uh, you know, see see where your business takes you.
SPEAKER_02Yes, thank you so much for having me. It was a delightful conversation. I appreciate all your thoughtful questions. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Logan.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to Bust and Beyond with Robin Hayhurst. Be sure to tune in next time and visit his website at robinhayhurst.com.