Welcome to How we Build

Welcome to How we Build; a trailer introducing an upcoming podcast by Jennifer Clamp.

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To learn more about my work, visit www.withaata.com

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to How We Build. I'm Jennifer Clamp, your host, and this is a podcast exploring how we build businesses and really looking to challenge the status quo and to challenge you to build a business in a very intentional way that feels really right to you and really works for you as an individual. I'm gonna start by telling you a little bit about who I am and my background so you know where I'm coming from. So I have had a career. I've had a long career before I started the work that I do today, and that's in digital transformation change management. I started out doing that in corporates and then moved more into entrepreneurship and specifically economic development and entrepreneurship in the startup world in about 2013. And then over the last six years, since 2019, I made the transition to working one-on-one specifically with female founders as a strategic partner as they as they build high-growth businesses. I'm telling you a bit about my career to start with because that will give you some context for why we have got here today, and I'm just going to be building and sharing this podcast with you. My work has always been about partnering with somebody with a really clear creative vision for what's possible in the world. And yes, this definitely started out in corporate and working with CEOs, senior executives, business leaders who had a sense that the way that they were working was not effective, that it could be a lot more efficient, really capturing that vision and then really believing in their potential to be the subject matter expert, to know their people, to know what was needed, and working with their teams as well, and really trusting those individuals to know what was needed to create this new way of being. And then my role was very much to have this belief in them, a belief in the outcome, and then to create the process to and to run the process essentially to guide them through this process of change, which would often take, you know, one, one and a half, two years to bring about. And then as I as I've moved on in my career in 2013, my work was supporting the innovation and entrepreneurship space and building a countrywide culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. Not very tangible, really, you know, as an as an idea, like how do you do that? And that again is one of my superpowers is being able to take something that's a feeling or a sense or a set of behaviors, and then think about what are the tangible things, what are the things that we can do to create this shift in experience, this shift in engagement, this shift in in behavior. And that's when I really started deep diving into the startup and entrepreneurship space. And it's been amazing to see how it's transformed throughout the years. I started getting interested even in entrepreneurship a lot longer than that, probably 25 years ago. And so then to see where the ecosystem had got to in 2013 and to be working really deeply with the global startup ecosystem at that point was a real privilege. And it was amazing to see how far it had come, how easy it was to start a business, how the kind of startup journey had been documented to a certain extent. You could read read lean startup and have a system to follow, which which was wonderful. But with it, I've always had this interest as well on well, this is this is the story, this is kind of the standard way of building a business, but it hasn't always sat right for me. And I've had questions for myself around maybe how organizations are designed, how the CEO role is performed, how what we're told to prioritize when it comes to business, the trade-offs that we're told are just the trade-offs, that's just how it is. This story that I that's very dominant now around if you want to grow, the path is VC funding. I've been in this space for a long time, as as you've heard, and I've really thought, hmm, that I think there might be other ways. I think there have to be other ways. This just doesn't sit right for me. And that's a lot of the work that I'm doing for my clients, is I'm working with you know, as a client, I'm working with you through this, just doesn't sit right for me. There has to be another way. Because of the breadth of my work and the breadth of my interests, I work one-on-one with my clients. That's that's that's what I do for a living, but it doesn't stop me being interested, still really interested in the system that my clients are operating within, and and really interested in who's pushing the boundaries and asking the same questions that I am, that my clients are. What are the alternatives? And really wanting to open, continue to open my mind and broaden my perspective on how businesses can be built. I think we can innovate the process of building a business as much as we can innovate on the products that we're and services that we're building and selling. And that's my real interest is innovating the process of building a business. So, as you heard from my career, I wanted to kind of lay it out for you. My role throughout time has to be to believe in the potential of the individual, to believe that their vision is possible, and then really hold the space for that, you know, really believe in them and give them that belief, know that they're the right person to do this work, and then support them by creating a holding process, running the process, giving them the tools to be able to navigate this change. And this podcast for me is part of tooling up. So if you're listening to this, I'm really hoping for you, what you will take away from this is new ideas, broader perspectives, assumptions blown out of the water around how you can go about building a business in a way that really works for you. So there'll be some ideas that you hear that you just go, oh yes. I'm so glad that you know that I heard this because I now I just feel like I've got permission to do this in a way that feels really at I feel at ease, like I can do that. I I couldn't do it if I if I had to do it that way. But if I can do it this way, oh that feels like, yeah, I'm off, I can go. And there are other times you'll be like, yeah, I can kind of see where you're coming from. It doesn't really work for me. But there is this idea in what you've shared that does, there's part of it that feels right to me. And so I'm gonna take that little bit and I'm gonna integrate that into what else is feeling right for me. And there are other times you'll be like, wow, totally not with you here. And that's great too, because that means that you can park that one, right? So you know where your boundaries are. It's just as helpful to find things that you really relate as and find things that really just you don't identify with at all. Because the more that you can integrate or reject, the more that you will just come into alignment for yourself on how you want to build a business. And so we'll be covering a really broad spectrum of ideas. So this is a bit of what to expect in the future podcast episodes, and there'll be ideas around identity, especially I work with female founders. I'm really looking forward to exploring some of the myths that we might have adopted as women on what it means to be successful as a woman in society today, some of the myths that we might have adopted around what it means to be the leader of a business, to explore some of the ideas. Though again, I'm gonna keep using the word myths we might have adopted around what good leadership looks like, some ideas around how we go about building a business, so the system that we create around ourselves in order to bring our vision to life. So that system of it might be you and your co-founder, it might be your team, it might be your broader organization, it might be your relationship with the your broader ecosystem of customers, suppliers, etc. So the systems that you surround yourself with, but also the system that you function in, society. So a really broad range of topics, but essentially around the area that I work in with my clients, which is the intersection between personal identity, leadership, and systems. To sum up, what I hope that you will take away from joining this podcast regularly is different perspectives on building a business. And for this to be a space where you can be really intentional in thinking about how you want to build your business, because I believe that when that those three areas are in alignment, your identity, your leadership in the system that you're creating around yourself, when there's congruence between them, that is when you will really thrive as a leader. And when you're thriving, your business will thrive. And and I really want those things for you.