Trapped in the Data Black Hole? Time to Upgrade!

Click the link below for the Limited time 2 for 1 offer mentioned on the pod: 

Life Ready Pathway

In this first episode of the new season, I’m thrilled to be joined by Suke Ridler, the CEO and founder of My LifeJars, a company that assists in organising documents and passwords to access during life and after death. 

In this conversation, Suke and I discuss her journey from acoustic engineer through to winemaker, sheep breeder, and then on to becoming a start up founder.

🌟 Some of my favourite parts of our conversation were:
✅Suke’s inspiration taken from her near death experience that had a profound effect on her and led to her initial designs of My LifeJars to ensure that no one had to suffer through the same experience she went through;
✅The need for a roadmap so that everyone can get what they need to keep the business going on a day-to-day basis and in terms of if something happened in an emergency;
✅How running your business is a bit like driving a car and if something were to happen to you how to ensure, if someone else has to take the wheel they are not without a GPS!;
✅How Suke’s experiences led to her realising the need to go with the flow around having to intermingle personal and business life;
✅The first step mindset, and how in life we just have to be prepared to take that step and then see how the path opens up.

A sneak peek for you below with Suke explaining why data protection and organisation are so important for small businesses today.

An insight into Suke’s fascinating life story and her personal mission to launch a company that is doing important work for Solopreneurs and Small Businesses Owners.

Transcript

Adam (00:01.79)

Okay, so today I'm here with Suke Ridler, the CEO and founder of My LifeJars, an organisation that assists in organising documents and passwords to access during life and after death, including all the important and precious information that you have. So Suke, welcome to the Fractional CFO Show. How are doing?

Suke Ridler (00:23.185)

Hey great, and thanks for having me on Adam, how are you?

Adam (00:26.55)

I'm very well, thanks for asking. I'm very well and thanks for being here. And so today we're going to dive into a topic that's very important to us all, which is securing business and personal information and looking at the kind of getting life organized, getting life ready among other things. So, but before we do that, I know that you're in quite an exciting time with your business. So I believe you have an exciting offer for the audience. So would you?

kick off by telling us what the offer is.

Suke Ridler (00:59.931)

Yeah, it's a two for one offer that we have running for our life ready pathway and we have found that it's all well and good giving people a tool to make things easier but often people need something else to keep the momentum going to make it actually happen to take that first step on the pathway and so the life ready pathway is a step by step

approach over 13 guides which can be taken in 13 weeks so at the end of three months you have everything sorted and it includes tutorial videos, -by -step tasks to do but it also has a get stuff done workshop that you can do late afternoon or early evening and that's to give you really a safe space to start

working on some of this stuff and discussing some of the issues that might creep up as well as having a little bit of an accountability to actually get it done.

Adam (02:07.542)

Okay, excellent. So we'll put a link to the offer into the show notes and so everyone can go there and find out. I think it's the two for one offer that you're providing so that will be very welcome.

Suke Ridler (02:20.855)

That's right and it's great because you know if you have a spouse or a business partner and you both have different bits of information you want to do this together it's ideal for that.

Adam (02:35.338)

Excellent, excellent. Okay, great. Well, thanks for that. And now on to the episode. And Sue, to start with, would you mind giving us a bit of an overview of your very varied career so far? How did you get from being an acoustic engineer through to a winemaker, a sheep breeder, and then on to becoming a startup founder?

Suke Ridler (02:57.989)

Yeah, it's a bit of a strange journey. I started off life as an acoustic and vibration engineer and my party line was I'm into anything that makes a noise and vibrates. So that was really, really hilarious. And what I, I then kind of went through the process of going, sorry, can we stop and start again? I have got what's, I,

Adam (03:25.507)

Yeah.

Suke Ridler (03:27.819)

am getting disturbed by notes and I thought I said not to...

Adam (03:34.232)

That's alright, no problem.

Suke Ridler (03:35.719)

Please stop.

Suke Ridler (03:50.447)

Sorry. It's my someone in the business trying to get hold of me and I I've turned it off but for some reason it's keeps popping up. I mean it's closed down but anyway I'm really sorry about that. It was frustrating because there's images and stuff coming in and I'm thinking yeah and I've just told you I'm doing a podcast and you're still sending me messages. I'm so sorry.

Adam (03:52.066)

That's all right.

Adam (04:17.014)

No problem, so I'll take a step back and I'll, no, no, not at all. I'll go back to from after the offer and I'll sort of introduce you again and then you can start talking through your experience again. Does that sound okay?

Suke Ridler (04:29.883)

So where are we going from after the offer? Okay, Sure.

Adam (04:32.566)

Yeah, exactly. Okay, great. Thanks. Thanks for that, Sue. Can now on to the episode and to start with, would you mind giving us a bit of an overview of your career so far? How did you get from being an acoustic engineer, a winemaker, a sheep breeder to becoming the CEO and founder of a startup?

Suke Ridler (04:54.588)

it was a long journey but I think in life nowadays more so than...

you know years gone by is that we have to be flexible and change with the times and we may do many jobs throughout our life and that's certainly what's happened to me. So I did start off as an acoustics engineer and I worked here in the UK and overseas and I ended up in Australia and from there I was married and my husband wanted to be a wire maker, get out of the rat race and so

So we moved to a country town called Mudgee, a greenfield site and we put in a vineyard and a winery because he decided we should also make wine. And I loved the setting up and the whole kind of process because I was kind of more of the engineer so I did all the working out and that was great. And then I kind of got into marketing. Along the way I did some science teaching and some agricultural teaching. I got really interested in breeding little

sheep that were great to go in the vineyard and they could eat the grass because they couldn't reach the vines so we didn't have to keep mowing the grass. that was quite an experience learning to birth sheep from a YouTube video.

Adam (06:07.436)

Yeah.

Suke Ridler (06:16.921)

in the paddocks but you know it shows that we can be actually quite versatile and we can take tools from one part of our business life into another part of our business life and into our personal life and vice versa and eventually what happened was I had a very serious illness I contracted septicemia in my colon and I went downhill and basically I had to be airlifted from the mudgy which is

in the country New South Wales into Sydney and they looked at me and they said huh your vitals are so low you're not going to survive an operation.

we're going to pump you full of antibiotics but you know it's chips basically and at that point I realised my then husband would be in such a mess because he really didn't know how to operate the business and where I kept everything and I hadn't left messages for my kids nobody really knew the details of my life story and

Luckily I did recover otherwise I wouldn't be here now but it really had a profound effect on me and I decided that I really wanted to have a tool to make it easier for myself but also I didn't want anyone else to experience what I had experienced and that absolute devastation and you know that that that at that point where you think you're going to die that that was what was going through my mind.

So I really wanted that that peace of mind not for me, but for others as well that they've got they've got this They've got everything prepared and I wanted it to be really a tool that could be quick and easy to use for the people that knew what they were doing but also for the non -tech savvy because it had to be a kind of a family tool that parents as well as well as kids adult kids and ourselves could use it had to be a

Suke Ridler (08:22.009)

multi -generational tool where you've got different skill levels of people. So anyway, I left my marriage to go off on my own journey and my own passion and I set up a small company that's grown. has a tech team based in Australia and Indonesia. I moved back to the UK. We have some people

working with us over in the States as well. So now I head up a multinational team. But the other thing I learned from that experience is there's no putting life on hold, that you have to intermingle personal and business life. So now I do both.

Adam (09:04.877)

Hmm.

Adam (09:10.392)

So.

Okay, wow, that's quite the story and explains very well how you've got, where you've got to. I guess for the purposes of the audience of this podcast, it's typically small business owners. And I'd be interested in your view around why it's so important that small businesses have secure...

Information management, you you talk about from a personal point of view and ensuring that your husband was able to run the business and your kids, you'd left messages from a business perspective, that kind of lesson from passing everything onto your husband. What was it that made that so it's such an important mission for you?

Suke Ridler (09:56.357)

I think you know running a small business we all struggle with the paperwork and the digital files it takes up so much time every year particularly around you know tax return time we say this year we're going to sort it out but how many of us actually do and how often do you find yourself even asking now where's my company number

[8.43 – 9.12] You know the reality is we've got crucial information scattered across devices, cloud storage, on hard drives, even scribbled in notebooks. And the risk isn't that we just lose track of things, but that if an emergency arrives, no one else knows how to find these vital pieces of information.

That's why data protection and organization are so important for small businesses today. But yeah, I get it. You know, it's hard. It's hard when there's so many other things clambering for our time.

Adam (10:55.158)

No, absolutely. And I guess the challenge for a small business owner is that there's, as you say, so many other things. So how do you advise or recommend to people to prioritize? Like what are the sort of most important things that you or your courses advise people to start with?

Suke Ridler (11:13.775)

Okay, so one of the biggest challenges is simple procrastination. And we're all guilty of that. We're all so busy, as I said, managing day to day operations that sorting documents becomes something will just goes in the get to later basket.

Another issue is the the patchwork systems, particularly in small businesses that kind of evolved where we haven't got kind of good systems in place. I say that a little bit laterally because they're sort of scattered everywhere and.

It really is a problem when someone needs to step in. I think there are four really common mistakes that need little explanation and that is the sticky note and paper chaos we all have. The forgetful file name chaos. You know that that

those names that we name our documents and then we can't struggle to remember what we've called it. Now we can get there but if someone else was actually having to do that it would be a real problem. And then there's the, this is a good one, the email attachment abyss. We leave the PDFs attached to emails.

they just get buried in our inbox now and they can take a while to dig out and then there is a you know what I've mentioned before but I call it the the digital dilemma where in the F did I store that what device

Adam (13:02.476)

Wow, wow, yes, sorry, you're saying that and it's just making me think about meetings I was having just today. I'm working with a business where the whole team has left and there's a whole new team that we've brought in and trying to find all of those digital assets, all that information is proving very stressful. I hear you, I absolutely hear you. What are the sort of, I guess,

Suke Ridler (13:26.289)

you

Adam (13:31.118)

The challenges that we're finding and be interested in your take on this is about how you bring the company with you. How do you bring, so as you say, you've got a business with developers and tech staff in Australia, Indonesia. How do you find sort of training those people to all follow the same processes? Is it everyone does your 13 week course and then...

they're good to go or do you have a different way of bringing a team with you?

Suke Ridler (14:02.609)

Well, I'd like to say, Adam, this is about, I'm talking specifically about kind of small businesses, solo businesses, and perhaps, you know, people have got a side hassle or a contractor's. So when a business gets to a certain size, yeah, there are...

Adam (14:11.704)

Mm -hmm.

Suke Ridler (14:24.923)

things in place, have to put, you know, hard and fast systems in place. And I'm not really talking about that. Because my business operates with a lot of contractors as well, and contractors have their own way and their own systems of doing it. So I'm talking about a roadmap.

Adam (14:40.886)

Mm

Suke Ridler (14:50.664)

a way that everyone can get what they need to keep the business going on a day -to -day basis and in terms of if something happened in an emergency. I'd just like to think about, imagine running your business a bit like driving a car. I mean,

You know where everything is. You know the all the stuff is in your brain is like filed in the glove compartment and you know your brains like a little glove compartment. You know where everything is and you know you might have to ram it around in it sometimes but basically you're good with driving your car. But.

if something were to happen to you and someone else has to take the wheel and they've never driven this car before they don't know what the buttons do and without a GPS they have nowhere to know where they're going so if something happened to you how would they keep the business running smoothly or at least park it safely in the garage and it's a bit like my

contractors and my people that work for My Life Jars is that we use My Life Jars as a a tool it's a very light navigatable tool so we have all our

access credentials in a life profile for the business that's really easy to share. There's lots of different files, systems and know naming structures. It's very clear the password jar just has eight jars in it and you can file everything in one of those eight jars and you can share it with individuals that need that specific item or you can share with multiple individuals.

Suke Ridler (16:59.893)

easily and then you can also share the overall access to that jar to one of your what we call trusted guardians so and it sits so you can build a profile for your business and you can also build profiles for people so it's a very it's like a it's like an overall roadmap so for instance the other day we were closing down some AWS storage that we have

Adam (17:10.104)

Mm

Suke Ridler (17:29.79)

over in Australia. We didn't need any more we have actually all our data residency in the UK.

This AWS, I don't know if you've ever tried to close an AWS account down, it is a peak to do, excuse my French. And you have to have a root user. Now we set this up a long, long time ago and do you think we could remember who was the root user or what email address it was associated with? And I reached out to our main architect over in Australia, I say,

Adam (17:41.262)

Hmm.

Suke Ridler (18:07.317)

said hey Pat you remember the AWS we we set up it's still charging us like a couple of bucks a of hundred bucks a month we need to shut it shut it down have you got the password for it and he said do you know what I have I'll go to my life does and sure enough he came back with it within a second because

And it was something we hadn't used for a long time. there you go. It's a kind of real life example.

Adam (18:35.884)

That's a great example. Yeah, no, absolutely. I was going to ask you about some examples that's spot on. And actually it got me thinking because there was a business that I was working with a while back where it was a solopreneur who had grown. yeah, it was a small business, it had grown out of this individual's passion. And he had some real problems with his personal and professional business data being intermingled.

And I wondered if you could identify with that and if you had seen some issues where individuals and business data was all intermingled and then how you advised people in that situation to resolve it.

Suke Ridler (19:22.597)

Yeah, now that's an incredibly interesting question. So Bert, I'm a great advocate for keeping business.

information. When I talk about business information I mean talking about everything that we're running on a day to day basis. All the applications that we use within our business, the CRMs, the whole kind of kit and caboodle. I always think that should be very separate for many reasons, for tax reasons, all sorts of reasons, should always be separate. And of course then we have our own personal environment which is a bit more like the rest

Adam (19:50.339)

Mm

Suke Ridler (20:06.042)

or I mean I always keep separate email addresses and I keep them completely separate and that's great but here's the thing is that our lives are not that segregated you know we aren't segregated and

Adam (20:22.094)

That's right.

Suke Ridler (20:27.309)

when you run a small business if someone had to step in where do they start to look at look at how to operate your business because they don't have necessary the skills to operate all those different applications or even know what applications that you run or which systems you use so again

We need this kind of little road map that anyone can use to know where everything is.

Personally, we have a whole load of assets. So I've heard of people say that they've had to manage an estate, and they really didn't know whether they'd found everything, you know, whether there was one person that had was a car collector. And this person was absolutely adamant that he hadn't found every every car that this person had.

he'd found this one scrap of paper up in the loft and he thought it was another car somewhere but you know so even having some sort of like record system that has everything in it is really important for our personal life.

as well as our business life so we have this overall kind of like understanding of everything that we we have to deal with if we have to step into someone's shoes even if they recover or if it's chips.

Adam (22:02.87)

Yeah, of course. And you obviously speaking from personal experience there. So I wonder, like, is there a different mindset that you have when you're transitioning from sort of managing personal records on the day to day basis to actually starting to create that estate plan, as you mentioned? Is there sort of a transition that you take yourself in mindset or in approach?

Suke Ridler (22:31.003)

Yes, there's a very big mindset, I think here and that's something I've used throughout my life. It's about taking that first step, the first step mindset, you know, because often if we get overwhelmed or we don't know where the journey's going or we're not sure of how to

how to how we're going to move along that journey it becomes quite frustrating and a barrier for actually taking that first step. Sometimes in life we just have to be prepared to take that step and then see how the path opens up.

With estate planning obviously we can get to a situation where we kind of got it nicely sorted and that's what our life ready program does but we also have to understand that we probably have to go back and revisit it and just keep it up to date and kind of looked after now and then. The thing about

are using a tool like My Life Jars is that because it's so quick and easy to use, it's something that you can kind of keep up to date with anyway. And I found that it's so useful that I'm updating it as I go. So there's nothing big that needs to be changed in terms of all my access credentials and bits and bobs like that. But I would say that

with... Sorry I've lost my train of thought. We might have to go back there, sorry Adam.

Adam (24:13.112)

That's alright.

Adam (24:16.812)

That's alright, I know we're talking about the first step mindset and the LifeJars tool being quick and easy to use.

Suke Ridler (24:20.917)

yeah.

Sorry about that. So where shall I go back to? About the steps moving through, isn't it?

Adam (24:25.006)

That's all.

Adam (24:32.066)

Yeah, and how you're regularly updating the tool as you go because it's quick and easy. Yeah, so maybe start from there.

Suke Ridler (24:34.883)

that's that's yeah. Yeah. Okay. So regularly updating your life documents and access credentials as you go means that you've got them at your fingertips now. And of course, they're already for later. The only thing you have to be mindful of that if you have big life changes like, you know, new kids,

divorce, marriage, someone die within the family, then you might need to revisit your kind of your legal documents and your wishes in terms of how you want things to be dealt with in the future.

Adam (25:18.318)

Okay, interesting. And something you said there about maintaining and keeping up to date, a challenge that I've found, and this might be unique to an accountant and to financial information, but there's often a sort of line in the sand that needs to be drawn and you've got your legacy data.

and you kind of put that to one side and then you've got your ongoing data and to your point that's the data that you're keeping nicely organized and nicely maintained and updating as you go. Do you have a similar mindset with sort of how you advise your clients, your users of Life .js? Is there a point in time where you go, we don't go any further back or do you go all the way back? Do you get all the legacy data?

onto my life, yours, and that way everything's in one place. What's your recommended approach?

Suke Ridler (26:11.963)

that's interesting because I think if you start off with that mindset that we're gonna do everything it's like huh yeah that's gonna happen later someday you know I don't know when that's that's not the approach I suggest my suggestion is okay let's start off with the critical stuff you know

Adam (26:21.155)

Mmm.

Adam (26:25.852)

Mm

Suke Ridler (26:31.563)

And I think the life ready pathway is very clever in the way that it kind of takes you through one thing each guide or each week if you want to do it. Because again, if you try and put it all together, it becomes overwhelming. So for instance, the first week we look at personal documents and certificates. So I always start off with the critical ones. know, have you got your will, your enduring power of attorney? And it doesn't matter if you haven't, we know we're going to get to those later, but you

let's get those in then let's start off with the next important ones which is your passports and your driving license and the real real good one is your birth certificate now you would be staggered at the amount of people that can't lay their hands on their birth certificate which

Adam (27:20.034)

You're getting me, you're really getting me worried now, Sook, I have to be honest.

Suke Ridler (27:24.227)

So I say, hey, if you can't find it, at least go and get a copy of it right now. So it's not so hard for your family down the track. Because believe me, it is later on down the track. So I then say, so that's OK. You're beginning to get those sorts of things. And for people that live have

foot in two countries or perhaps you know have a holiday place and have different passports then you've got double of everything so that becomes you know quite hard to manage but okay so let's just take you know typical so we've gone through all of those and so that isn't so

so difficult to do is it? So and then I say okay so we've got those those documents now how about your certificates? We're not interested at that 15 meter swimming certificate you did you know when you were in kindergarten. Now let's forget that one but let's take you know your GCSEs and your A levels let's get those in

we got some special awards? Let's get your professional certificates, sorry your professional memberships in and your professional qualifications. So we've already now secured the most important documents. I'll tell you a little story here that

In my thirties I actually put all my certificates in the basement of the house I was living in because I had to make a mercy dash back to the UK when my father was critically ill and died and they ended up staying there for a year and my warrant from I didn't mention this I was also in the territorial army for eight years and my warrant from the Queen got completely ruined it's all mouldy and everything but it had her

Adam (29:10.485)

Okay, wow.

Suke Ridler (29:19.825)

So you know the storage of physical documents, know having doing this process so you actually get everything digitized is really important.

Adam (29:32.674)

I was going to ask actually, that was a question I had around the sort of use of technology and sort of the benefits of using technology. And I guess you touched on some there in terms of making it safer and more protected from mold from your basement to protect the Queen signature, but also make it more retrievable and findable. And from a business point of view, I guess that's incredibly important as well. do you...

Do you start with the digitization process or how do you ensure that people are particularly who are less comfortable with technology, how do you help them on that journey?

Suke Ridler (30:12.069)

Yeah look, as I say, you know, say for instance in the first week in the Life Ready program we sort of focus on like documents and certificates so we get those digitized but I also go through, you know, people think my god that's going to take me ages but you know I should say hey you know you can get a phone app on your phone and do some...

do some scanning, know Adobe Scan on your phone, it's really easy to use and you can adjust your corners and it looks great or you can get your home printer out and do a few you know a few documents. I'm talking about small solo kind of people here not people that might have a personal assistant to help them or the cat but

where it's easy to use some of these little simple tools to actually get this done so it doesn't become a barrier. If I said to you right now go and get every single document that you have that you think you need for someone if something happened to you you'd go gee I was going to tell you. Month of Sundays, sick! Yeah that's going in the hard too hard basket but if I say let's start with that one.

you know your passport let's get your passport out and just let's get a copy of that using Adobe Scan that's not a barrier to getting some of being on this pathway.

Adam (31:42.039)

Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly. As you say, it's that first step approach, isn't it? You get started and then it becomes a lot easier. And one question I have in terms of the sort of the platform itself, are there, because, you know, I could go and scan my documents and put them on my desktop. Yeah, what are the benefits of having

sort of one platform like LifeJars where everything is contained rather than separate folders on my computer or backing up stuff to a hard drive. What are the benefits of having this unified platform?

Suke Ridler (32:15.943)

Okay, so you know how tech has changed so much over the last 20, 30 years? Actually 30 years, probably wasn't, there wasn't that much tech. So it's continually changing and security of our data is critical.

all heard of things being hacked and pilching and all those sorts of issues and personal data being available on the dark web. So it's real and that happens. So with a platform like My Life Giles, we actually have patented security technology. It's technology that we developed and I know you've, it's very hard thinking that I was a sheep reader and I've gone to having a patent for

encryption technology but I was very fortunate to meet some people that really got behind this idea and had worked in some of the first Hollywood movie encryptions to stop people pinching films so they were particularly interested so we developed some encryption technology that we had patented globally and

So, and it, what it does is it's like a multi -layered effect and it's, it means that all the assets don't have to be decrypted and re -crypted by another tech down the track. So it's good for decades and it's good against the new supercomputers that are coming.

and the quantum computers. So it's very clever and I'd love to explain a little bit more more about it, but maybe maybe not here right now. But we do have stuff if people are really interested in the tech. So firstly, My Life Giles has some incredibly powerful encryption technology and you know one day and it won't be long Microsoft you can see has started to be hacked and you know we all rely on

Suke Ridler (34:22.859)

Google quite a lot and you know that's that's not going to be far down the down the track. Last pass has been hacked so it's happening.

My LifeJars has this incredibly secure encryption technology so that's one thing but the other thing is it is incredibly simple to use and it's the old adage one place. I do say though that we should mimic when we go through our process that we always suggest having a file with the hard copies that you do have around in the same kind of filing structure so you've got kind of both there.

some when you're dealing with estates you do actually need the physical copies for some records but you you having them alongside each other really does help.

Adam (35:18.347)

Yeah, of course, and you touched on there some of the essential features that you need when you're sort of organising, so the filing structure being a prime example. What are some of the other things that a small business owner needs to consider in terms of sort scalability of these systems and also potentially integrating? And I appreciate this is more for businesses than individuals, but if they wanted to integrate

My Life Jazz with other business systems. Are there sort of considerations? Have you come across that? Are there best practices that you recommend?

Suke Ridler (35:55.409)

So My Life Jazz isn't itself something that I would suggest is we use in our business from a day -to -day perspective in terms of, you know, just daily operation. It's more for keeping things like, you know, our company records, our app.

Adam (36:11.576)

Hmm.

Suke Ridler (36:21.999)

credentials for everything that we use within our business so it's kind of like the overriding structure so it's all that critical information it's not the information that we use on a day -to -day basis it's not that kind of tool it's more of the it's it's more of and that's it's called my life jars it's like storage jars for where we're putting that critical information

that we need and those vital documents and those access credentials that we'll need as well as the sentimental stuff. in my jars I have pictures of...

my kids mother's day cards they sent me when they were five or their little fluffy toy and as well as you know the banana cake recipe that my son always manages to lose and now I've shared it with him so he in his jars so he doesn't have to keep asking me for it but so those sorts of things are equally as important as the information that we need to run our business so I don't

want your listeners to think that this is something that comes in and replaces everything they've got. That's not what My Life Jazz is. My Life Jazz is more about the management of those critical, important records that we need to have a handling so we can go in and operate the business the way that everyone sets it up because everyone sets up the way they run their business so very differently.

Adam (38:00.63)

Yeah, absolutely. And I have to ask, talking about the Mother's Day cards, have you kept the physical cards or when you've digitised, did you do away with the physical cards?

Suke Ridler (38:11.599)

It's really interesting you say that.

Some of them I have now. I've ditched a lot of stuff because I really can't hang on to everything. And there is this kind of like culture as we move through life now. We is becoming a little bit more minimal and a bit more like light footed. And I do live between, I'd still have a home back in Australia. So we live most of the time in the UK, but we do have a home back in Australia. And so I have

stuff in both places. I also live on a canal boat so I live very kind of sporadically and spread out so having stuff more digitally and secure is really important for my life. Yeah so but there is stuff I've just thought no you know what I just I just can't hang on to all this stuff anymore and actually if you think about it you know as you get older do you want to leave all that?

Adam (38:58.776)

Yeah, absolutely.

Suke Ridler (39:14.021)

junk and that stuff to your adult kids to sort out because I know sorting out my husband's parents stuff was a nightmare.

Adam (39:29.632)

No, that's very true. It's definitely something that you change your mindset on as you go through life. I can see that. And particularly if you're living on a boat, which is going to be a challenge to keep all that stuff physically. that's great. And changing tack slightly, we're moving on to a section of the podcast that I call our business book bonus section. So this is where we ask our guests to give us a recommendation for the audience of a business book or to make it a bit easier.

any sort of business content that has really helped you during one of your varied careers and that you would like to recommend to the audience. So, Sukh, what would you like to recommend?

Suke Ridler (40:11.675)

Well it's an oldie but a goodie and that's a book by Jim Collins called Good to Great. Have you come across it?

Adam (40:19.596)

have indeed. Yeah, great book. Yes.

Suke Ridler (40:21.703)

followed by the book Built to Last, but Good to Great had a really profound impact on me. And the thing that really I'd like to touch on, which we haven't really talked about much at the moment, well I guess we have a little bit, but not specifically, is about people.

and the importance of people within your organization. For large companies, kind of they have people inside their company, but for small businesses, and particularly like a business like My Life Jars, but there are a lot of businesses like My Life Jars that rely on contractors and independent people, and we only have a few key people actually within the business.

we need to look after those people as well. They may not be direct employees of us but they are associated with our business and having those the people and how we manage those people I think is actually incredibly important to the success of our business and that's one of the key things about being in the book about good to great.

Adam (41:36.774)

That's brilliant. And yeah, it's always important, particularly in this day and age where more and more of us are working in these kind of contract hybrid freelance type of roles. Being mindful of those people and even if they're not full time employees, very valuable. yeah, Jim Collins, Goods Are Great. That's an excellent recommendation and we'll add a link.

Suke Ridler (41:47.441)

Absolutely.

Adam (41:58.572)

to that in the show notes, so thank you very much for that. And is there anything else, Sukh, before we wrap up that we haven't covered and you'd like to say?

Suke Ridler (42:08.719)

Yeah, look, many people might be listening to this and thinking, yeah, she says some good stuff. I need to get around to do that. And then they'll go away and do nothing. And I'd like to just say about, tell about my Australian accountant. A couple of years back when I was saying about, you know, I said to Daniel, Daniel, you need to get your life jar sorted. And he said in a very flippant manner, yeah, of course they do.

And about six months later he died and the account business, small account business, one or two partners, he'd grown from a single business and he'd just taken on one or two partners or merged with another company I think he did. They were in a terrible bind for a couple of years because a lot of stuff was in Daniel's head. His wife didn't even know how to get onto his phone when he died.

And I often think about Daniel and what I could have done to have actually made it easier for that business and for his wife. And again,

Christmas time we have to rebuild a little section of our house back in Australia and we had a draftsman come in, an architect draftsman come in to do the plans and he's only a young chap, three small kids and a wife and I said to him, he asked me about the business, I said to him, you need to get your life jars, he said, what a great idea!

And then everything went quiet. I got no plans back. And I asked him, said, know, is anything happening? Everything all right? Are you still going to work on our project? And he said, yeah, unfortunately, my best mate.

Suke Ridler (44:03.437)

died I'd known him from from school he had an accident actually he had he had two small kids and the only person that could really help him out was the architect he said it was a nightmare he didn't know where anything was he he also ran a small business his wife was in a mess

really struggling herself and also bringing up their two very small children. I think they were, you know, very under five. And he said, you know, that's really made me think. And he started his life jazz now. I have, you know, life jazz is my life jazz in itself is a great tool. The life ready pathway has given people

a way to step onto the pathway in getting this done and the momentum to keep going to get it done. And I really hope that the listeners in this podcast will take on board doing some of this stuff and actually getting life ready because we just really know where the next curve ball is coming from.

Adam (45:21.96)

Absolutely, absolutely. And a great, great sort of tale on which to end today. So thank you so much, Sukh. Really, really appreciated your insights, your perspective and your time. So thank you for joining me.

Suke Ridler (45:35.852)

Thank you Adam, it's been great having a chat.