More Happi: Overcoming Fear and Burnout: Unveiling the Power of Coaching

Unlock the secrets to overcoming fear, addressing burnout, and finding happiness with the power of coaching.

Meet Ashleigh Tennent, founder of More Happi - a platform making coaching affordable for all.

Discover how she conquered her fears, recognised burnout, and built a successful coaching business that's changing lives.

Key Takeaways  

- Overcoming Fears and Limiting Beliefs: Learn how Ashleigh tackled her fear of public speaking, which was rooted in her childhood

- Addressing Burnout: Discover how Ashleigh recognised and navigated burnout with the guidance of a coach, emphasising the importance of reflection and gaining perspective.

- The Power of Mentors and Coaches: Understand the difference between mentors and coaches

If you're able to support an amazing cause on behalf of Laura Rawlings, please do kindly donate to Macmillan Cancer, link below

https://coffeefundraising.macmillan.org.uk/fundraising/cm23059103

Have questions about this episode? Ask our hosts, chat now via our website

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Oh look at me a little bit strangely. And I would obviously get this fear and shame that would come up for me because why are they staring at me I've said something silly and and it got fixed. You're listening to founded and grounded with Ollie collard and Dr. Becky sage. The podcast brings you the honest realities of startup life. If you're a founder or aspiring entrepreneur, this is for you. We know running a business can be lonely and tough at times, and we want to help you get ahead with simple tips and sound advice. Every fortnight we hear inspiring stories from an early stage business owner, who's only a couple of steps ahead of you, talking about what they've learned. And as your hosts, we share our insights and experiences as founders, so you can apply this to your own business. Hello, and welcome to the founder and grinded podcast. This is the launch of season five, and we're excited to be back and I'm excited to join the team. You may have noticed that I'm a different voice for this season. Every episode we take the real world experience from experienced entrepreneurs and we take their real world learning so that you can apply it to your own business. I'm Dr. Becky sage. I'm cohosted founded and grounded, and I'm very happy to be joining Ollie collard who is the voice you will recognise from previous series. I Ollie.

Ollie Collard: 1:38

Good morning, Becky, I'm super excited to have you on board for season five are founded and grounded. We've known each other for a while in the startup ecosystem. And it's great to be working with you. On a bit of a sad note, though, I really do send out our best wishes to Laura, she was sadly diagnosed with cancer towards the end of our last series, and she's battling this horrible disease at present. And everyone connected with founded and grounded sends out all of our strength to her, Laura, I have to say has been really strong. And since her diagnosis, I mean, she finished off the last season, and has been incredibly inspiring, and also raised loads of money for Macmillan Cancer, which is fantastic. And we will put in the shownotes. The link to Macmillan, if anybody wishes to donate to that great cause in due course, so really just sending out our best wishes to Laura. So On another note, it'd be great, Becky, for you to introduce yourself a bit more. Obviously, I know lots about you. But for our listeners, tell us a bit more about what you do.

Unknown: 2:43

Yeah, like you said, Ollie, we've known each other for quite a while because we've been part of the same startup and tech ecosystem in Bristol. So I'm a serial entrepreneur, I've got a couple of startups under my belt, I've worked mostly in the high tech and innovation sector. And generally I like to work in and with businesses that are making a positive social impact. My focus at the moment is working to support other founders through coaching, training and innovation programme building, with a particular focus on leadership and creating ethical leaders. We're facing so many issues in the world around us. And we really need leaders and I think entrepreneurs in particular, who can respond to the societal challenges that we face. Of course, you can find out more about me on LinkedIn, and Instagram. So, Ali, we're excited to have a couple of new sponsors this season, in addition to the previous sponsor, and they're making it possible for us to do this podcast. Could you tell us a little bit more about them?

Ollie Collard: 3:45

Yeah, really delighted to have two new sponsors on board who make this all possible. So we're really grateful to them. First up, we have the NP S A. So that's the national protective security authority. So essentially, it's a UK Government technical authority for physical and personal security. So they're really working hard to make the UK less vulnerable, and more resilient to national security threats. We've everything that's going on in the world at the moment, I think it's of utmost importance. So we've partnered with them to ensure innovators are lovely listeners are protecting their own innovation. So the MPSA have a great quickstart guide. All you have to do is simply go to MPs a.gov.uk, forward slash innovation, to download your FREE quickstart guide. So that's our first new sponsor. Next up we have a wonderful business called hex A finance. They're actually a former startup themselves in 2020. They provide growth funding for startups and scale up throughout the UK. Their founders Ben and Stu really know firsthand the growing pains that founders are facing. They've literally been in the coalface themselves over the last couple of years. is, and they're on a mission to make finance more accessible. They've won multiple awards for their work, including startup of the year. And access to finance is always a reoccurring theme on this podcast. So we're delighted to have hexar finance on board. And they can really help you with obtaining finance. So for your free consultation, all you have to do is go to hexar, finance dot code at UK, forward slash contact. So a big shout out to both of those new sponsors.

Unknown: 5:32

And yeah, how great to have sponsors on board who know what it's like to be in those early stages of entrepreneurship. And they're paying it forward by supporting this podcast, so that we can support other entrepreneurs. And speaking of that, I think it's about time we jumped into talking about this week's guests. So Ali, Can you reveal who is our entrepreneur this week?

Ollie Collard: 5:53

Sure, can. So it's Ashley Tennant, who is founder of a company called more happy, it's a coaching platform that enables everybody to access coaching. And I think historically, a lot of people find that coaching isn't affordable. But for just 40 pounds per user per organisation, you can get unlimited access to a coach.

Unknown: 6:16

I'm really excited to hear more about how Ashley has grown the business to this point. So let's dive straight in and see how she got started.

Ollie Collard: 6:28

Good afternoon, athletes, absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast. Great to be here. I'm super excited to hear more about more happy. It's a coaching platform solving two really big problems. So firstly, most people can't afford a coach. And secondly, 95% of coaches fail. So I'm really interested, how did you actually come up with the idea in the first place?

Unknown: 6:50

It's interesting, because I can't remember the moment that I decided to start the business. It's a sort of evolution of ideas and learning over time. And my background is product and marketing for tech startups. So I'd always been in that world and solving problems in various ways, lots of different industries. And I trained to be a coach, I had this, I guess I had this vision of my life, when I would become a coach that I would, you know, have a couple of clients a week, they pay me lots of money, and I you'll get the rest of the time spend time with my child. But as I got into the training, I realised that that made me feel really uncomfortable. This industry is fundamentally flawed, because it's so transformational, yet only those at the top could access it. And why do you have to have almost made it before you get the help you need? What if everyone could have it along the way, but I didn't know how to solve it. I just was annoyed by that fact. On the other side, I could see that all of the coaches were struggling to, you know, get get traction, get the experience and the practice that they needed to get the confidence to get going. And the way I describe what it's like to be a coach is, if you imagine that you were a chef, and you had gone to do this incredible training, and it's very detailed, and you learned all the nuances of what it was to be an incredible chef, and then you're not allowed to cook for anyone. You know, you can see that it sort of quickly unravels, you would lose your confidence, you lose those little skills that you've learned along the way. And that's really what it's like. So two problems, no idea how to solve it. And then COVID hit, and I had a coaching session. And my coaching question that I took was, how the hell am I going to be okay, in this moment, like I was about to start homeschooling, I was freelancing, and all of that just dropped, because obviously every company just got rid of any cost that wasn't an internal cost. And I suddenly like, wow, how am I gonna feel okay. And the coach, Jackie Greene, who I loved dearly, said, or when do you feel okay? I said, when I feel useful, what would make you feel useful right now? And I thought, well, if I help people, what could you do to help people. So suddenly, I had this, I put together this group of coaches, we were coaching key workers, we then started coaching people whose businesses were failing, going through the pandemic, you know, people that didn't know what to do and how to save what they had. And almost the business model evolved through that. So I could see that coaches were getting the experience that they needed, and they were delighted. They were feeling fulfilled, but also able to use these errors, to accrue different accreditation levels that they were aiming for. And on the other side, people that would never have been able to get coaching, were suddenly having coaching and giving great feedback and seeing that it was saving their business and helping them so out of it. Oh, hang on. This could actually this could be a thing. So we Yeah, so we tested the model to get to for startups and said we've got this mean it's a very bootstrapped thing. It's so we laugh about it all the time. Now. It's before it was actually made off but we say we've got this concept and we think it will really help you. We take it too packed coffee was one of them Friends of the Earth was another one. So there's four businesses and total de femme tech brand. And we just said, Try it for two months and give us some feedback made all these assumptions that we wanted to test. And the end of the two months, all four companies said, Great, we'll take it. We were like, What do you mean your take it, we haven't even worked out how we would price this or what it was. We didn't even have a platform properly at the time. And they said, well, we want to take it. So we, you know, we scrambled around, we got everything together. And it's just taken off from there. And now we have a team loads of coaches, we've got over 70 coaches, and it's just grown and grown.

Ollie Collard: 10:38

Wow, I love that organic kind of story of how it naturally came to life because it was a personal problem that you're solving. I mean, what was the alternative at that point? Like, if you decided not to go ahead with it? What was the What were you faced with?

Unknown: 10:51

Personally?

Ollie Collard: 10:52

Yeah, personally,

Unknown: 10:53

I'm the unknown. I guess, at the time homeschooling, oh, I can't imagine anything worse. My, you know, love my daughter dearly, but I'm definitely not a teacher. So I guess I, through the pandemic, I would have been lost. And I needed that. You know, that purpose. I always guess what I've learned through my, my career is that I always do really well when I have purpose. And I always feel when I don't feel it's a strong word, but I don't feel comfortable, and I don't do my best work. So I just gravitated towards the purpose, knowing that I would work out the details. I love them when I had to, and you're being

Ollie Collard: 11:33

helpful and yeah, fulfilling your purpose and sounds like there wasn't really another option. Was there?

Unknown: 11:38

No, I couldn't imagine stopping. So I guess to my point earlier, I don't remember starting, I could never have it was just not in me to stop. And then there was always like, well, what if and let's try this next and keep going. And suddenly, it was a thing that I then had to take care of

Ollie Collard: 11:55

building a marketplace is tough and often compared to the chicken and egg scenario. So going back to that time, what came first.

Unknown: 12:02

So it's interesting, we already had a, I had a group of coaches that I was confident with, I knew them well enough, I trained with them, you know, I knew they were delivering good results. So I also knew that they needed the help. So that came first, I guess that we knew we had that pool. And then the next was bringing on clients, we've tested with four companies. It's always a balance of marketplaces. But we've effectively got three customers that we have to keep happy all the time, you've got the coaches on one side, you've you've got the we call them the sponsor, or the champion, the person who's you know, decides they want it for their company, gets the budget for it makes it happen. And then we've also got the individuals that have probably never had coaching in their life before. So our job is to convince them that this can create massive change for you, this can resolve your challenges, this can help you to get to where you want to be. And there's quite a few people, two lines,

Ollie Collard: 13:00

and how did you go from, you know, very successful two month period of having those four clients to turning it into a business.

Unknown: 13:08

What we saw happen was the initial four quickly turned into eight, which quickly doubled again. So really focusing on those first four customers, they started saying, oh, you should speak to or, you know, they were speaking to other founders in their peer group or in the l&d space. And quickly, people started talking about it. So they were actually coming to us and saying, you know, how did you work with them? Can you help us? So I'd say that grew quite organically in the beginning, which was helpful, because that meant I was taking calls as opposed to knocking down doors. But that was possibly because of the timing as well, obviously, you know, there was never a bigger time that we didn't need human connection, and we didn't need support. So that happened relatively quickly.

Ollie Collard: 13:53

Amazing. And when did you stop the coaching side of it yourself and actually doing the operation or being a founder and doing the wearer of many hats.

Unknown: 14:01

That was that was quite a big decision, actually, because I went into being a coach to make change happen. So that was, again, my purpose. I loved it. But I guess that decision was I can have more impact creating this platform than I can do by helping, you know, one on one individuals. And we've had well over 11,000 sessions having taken place now. So for me that, you know, I could never have done that on my own. Very tired if I had done that. So that's my reward for having stepped back. And it's not that I won't go back to doing the coaching, I probably will. In fact, I have that craving that I do need to bring a bit of that back for me, but I'll never regret having done that. I

Ollie Collard: 14:45

love that. And I seen you've got over 3000 reviews on Trustpilot. So you're clearly doing something very well. What difference is it making to businesses and individuals around the country?

Unknown: 14:56

It's interesting. So any business and that would be Isn't that as well, there's no business that doesn't have challenges. And you either have growing pains because you're growing faster than you can you do the processes yet you don't have the training, you don't have the right people, you know where you need them. And there's growing pains, there's conflict in the team, there's burnout, there's overwhelm, there's problems to be solved, who's being able to deliver the first time managers, there's a massive challenge. So I read a fact, a few weeks ago that 50% of first time managers fail, which is huge, but actually not that surprising when you think about it. So what are coaches do is they're there for anyone on your team that is going through something and needs help. And that could be a problem to be solved. Or it could also be forward looking. So where do I go next to my career or thinking about leaving my job? But actually, maybe there's something more for me at the company I have? Let's explore that. So we can help with the many things, but often, they're the team challenges.

Ollie Collard: 15:58

And I guess from a corporate perspective, a lot of people wear different masks when they show up for work. But through coaching, does that enable people to be their true authentic self?

Unknown: 16:08

I believe so. I hear lots of companies that say Oh, but we've got mentors and the team more we, you know, our managers are trained with some level of coaching. And well, that's great. I believe everyone should have some level of coaching skills, the the true change happens because the employee is able to talk from the heart and actually, you know, see whatever it is they need to say to get off their chest without that fear of repercussion. Oh god, I shouldn't have said that. Or I've been over spoke, and our coaches, free, everything was absolutely confidential. We don't track the calls. We aren't, you know, we're not recording them in any way. So they're the safe space a bit like speaking to a doctor, and you can say what ever you want. And the coach is just there to help you to turn it into something useful word about our sponsors. The security threat to UK tech startups is growing. Protecting your innovation is crucial to your business success. Secure innovation is here to help and it only takes a few simple steps to get started. Don't leave it too late. Visit npsa.gov.uk forward slash innovation. To find out more, and download the quickstart guide for free today. Are you looking to access finance for your business but unsure where to go and who to trust? Introducing hexa finance, providing growth funding to startups and scale ups throughout the UK, Ben and stews started hex of finance with a clear mission to make finance more accessible to business owners like you. Launched in 2020. They know firsthand the growing pains you're facing their fast growth business is the proud winner of the startup of the Year Award, and has recently been recognised for its economic contribution. So if you need funding now, or it's on your horizon, the experienced team at hexar finance are here to help to access your free consultation, simply go to hexar finance.co.uk, forward slash contact. So it's so interesting Ali to hear from Ashley about how passionate she is about coaching and how she turned her own coaching journey into something where she could help so many other people and she was really articulating their the value of coaching. So it's no surprise that coaching is actually the second biggest growing market globally. And there are a lot of startups who are trying to create something in this space. And somehow most people have not been able to find their unique proposition in the way that Ashley has. I think we see a lot and there's there's some, probably a lot of perceptions of coaching that might be false. So we see for example, I don't know about you, but I get bombarded on Instagram by all these Instagram, Instagram coaches. And it's very hard to know which ones to trust, which ones not to trust, who's actually got credentials behind them. And then the other thing we get is that coaching is really just reserved for people who are in really high leadership levels in corporate, which is traditionally where the spending has been. What I find fascinating about Ashley's story is that how her own personal story helped organically find the model. It started as this personal need that she had and the other new coaches around her to try and get coaching hours under their belt. And at the same time she's COVID happens and she really wants to be useful and it was her coach that said, let's find something useful to do. So Ali were both coaches too, so I thought it'd be really interesting Want to just dive into talking a little bit more about coaching and how important it is? And who should be getting coaching? Do you think,

Ollie Collard: 20:09

I think fundamentally, everybody should have access to a coach and this is what I really love about more happy is that it's democratising coaching. And it means people actually can get access to it. And it might be for the first time that they're experiencing it. So ultimately, I just think it's such a great thing and a great mission that Ashley is fulfilling. And I think, you know, it's nice to hear how the whole business came about out of this personal story of, you know, not feeling fulfilled, and COVID happening, and this really organic business coming to be. So I just think it's a wonderful thing. And I think in terms of coaching, it helps people reflect I think what good coaches do is they fundamentally listen and let the people who are being coached find the answers themselves.

Unknown: 20:57

Yeah, I know, I didn't get coaching until I was quite a long way through being a CEO of my first company. And of course, it kind of happened from a need, whereby everything had got on top of me, you know, all the all the different challenges we talk about as entrepreneurs. And finally I got a coach. And suddenly, I have a gymnastics background too. And of course, in gymnastics, you always have a coach in athletics. And we always have coaches. So as soon as I got this coach, the value she added to me, which was to really give perspective, to give that reflection time, to be able to break things down into tangible steps. And I think it's especially important when we're all running around, we're very busy, we're often very stressed, we've got all these conflicting priorities, that space can make all the difference. Now, of course, as I mentioned before, the reason more happy has been able to scale is because Ashley has found this really interesting model whereby new coaches are volunteering, they get their coaching hours. And then that's what enables her to make coaching more affordable. And I think that, therefore, she has to consider many different stakeholders here. And this is what's made it so smart, but it's also one of the big challenges as well. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about this, this idea of multiple stakeholders, having a deeper understanding of the need to solve the problem for each of those stakeholders, understanding that value exchange, and and then finding the right champions as well in the business. So Ashley's really demonstrated an ability to do that. Perhaps it's because she's come from this product and marketing background, listening to her, it sounded quite simple. But actually, we know this is not a simple thing to do at all. What do you think? What ingredients do you think Ashley had that we can all learn from? And what challenges can come up when you've got this type of model with all these different stakeholders at play?

Ollie Collard: 23:06

Fundamentally, I think it's a fantastic model. I think Ashley has really nailed the pain points on both sides of the marketplace. I think what Ashley has done really well is actually she's just simplified everything. She said, Look, this is a problem. I've got a pool of coaches, let's pull them together. Let's get started. Let's talk about this to a couple of organisations. And actually just get some feedback on it and not charge them, but just see what value they get from it. And obviously the the value they gave was overwhelming. And obviously this has led to the business. But I think simplification is one of the hardest things to do, but yet has the most impact. And I think that that's what Ashley has done to make this business so successful. Because as you say, she's got three different stakeholders having to pull it together a different time point, making sure each one with different needs different wants, different desires are happy. And it's a big, big Jigsaw that she's managing.

Unknown: 24:11

It's the simplification piece, even as we're just talking now, you're making me think she's had a coach all the way along. And this idea of having perspective, because I think that's often what stands in our way as entrepreneurs from being simple. It's like if you take the steps back and have the perspective, then in fact, it is quite simple. But when we get bogged down in a lot of that detail. And again, like I said, you're under stress, you've got conflicting priorities, it can be very easy to run around in circles, trying to solve problems that perhaps aren't even ultimately related to where you're going to go. So I wonder if that's actually been a big part of the success of the business is that she's had that reflection space, that perspective space, which is what makes it come across as being incredibly simple. When in the data De, often probably wouldn't be that simple at all to make this happen.

Ollie Collard: 25:04

Yeah, of course, it's not that simple. And I think the fact that Ashley has made it look easy means that she knows the industry inside out. I think that's where you get great entrepreneurs is they they know the market, they know the customers, they can talk about it till the cows come home. And they have that, that in depth understanding, which makes them communicate in a very simple and effective way.

Unknown: 25:29

Listening to Ashley made me think about that. That old adage of the customer, it's the customer that pulls the business out of you. And I think really by, like you said, doing the testing, doing the listening, she was able to construct this business in a relatively organic way. But like you said, it hasn't all been symbol. And Ashley already alluded in this first part to the fact there hasn't been plain sailing all of the way. So Ali, you asked Ashley, to elaborate on one of your favourite one of her favourite failures to date, which I love that question. And so should we have a listen to see what Ashley's favourite failure was? I mean, there's so many failures, one of the most important learnings of what I've I've experienced as a founder is that you're just constantly failing over and over again, and that you have to be really comfortable with that. And almost learning to embrace it is the is the way that you get through it, or else you even have to give up. It's something we focus a lot on more happy where we, we actually spent a few weeks ago, we, we all had to draw on the wall almost as a graph, what our experience failure looks like. And what was incredible is that we all experienced failure so differently. But when we know how each of us reacts to failure, we can support the person at the point when it's needed. So we're very accustomed to failure and getting it wrong. So one of the failures that I think I'll talk about was quite a recent one, where we we use a lot of metrics on a test that we did, but one assumption and the assumption was so wrong. And we dissected it as a team, because we were quite heartbroken by it, I'd say we were, you know, quite deeply short term scarred by it. Because what how did we get that so wrong with all the information and the focus that we put on it, and we broke it down. And the main learning that we had from it was that we made the test too big. So we weren't getting enough feedback early to validate that one assumption. So we thought we were on top of it, and we act that you weren't. And we realised that it wasn't us that failed, it was our process, and that we needed a new process. And we're now working off the back of that we're working with this incredible accelerator who's helping us as an external, their coaches, and they're helping us build this process, so that it's never one to see watertight, and nothing is, but we have our more robust process to build on. Because we don't have time for the Nether, we don't have time for the mistakes, there will always be mistakes, but we don't have time for the heartbreak that came with it. And I think that slowed us down.

Ollie Collard: 28:13

And personally speaking, if you've ever got close to burnout, or close to throwing in the towel at any point of your career, or business life, in this

Unknown: 28:21

role, I've definitely got close to burnout. I'd say once so far, it was when I was doing repetitive over and over again work that I knew I had to do. But I didn't recognise the toll it was having on me. And I guess it was just going into thinking, well, it just has to be done. I'm the person that has to do that. And you know, all of those things that as a coach is ridiculous. I should I should be thinking you know better about that and looking after myself, but of course, fell into the trap like we all do. And the thing that shocked me, I think is realising I was losing my love for the thing that I absolutely love, as well, that's a disconnect. And it's, am I actually falling out of love with it? No, I adore it. But something had to change and actually doing a bit of analysis again, like classic spoke to my coach, like what's going on here, you know, worksite? Well, actually, I'm not doing enough things that give me energy, the balance is wrong. And I need to adjust the types of work I do. So there's a lot of lot of founder work that you just end up doing because you want everyone in your team to be focused on what they need to focus on and you end up taking the work. And actually sort of realising that I can only give I can only do so much of that work a week because if not, I will burn out and I will be unable to keep it going.

Ollie Collard: 29:47

How long did it take you to recognise that that was occurring?

Unknown: 29:51

I probably it's like one of those. It's like a curve on a graph right built over time. I think I recognised it. it, I probably sat with it for three or four weeks. And then I was like, hang on. There's something wrong here. But I think for me the trigger was there's, yeah, just lacking in joy. Yeah.

Ollie Collard: 30:14

I mean, it can be very lonely running a business, even if you're utilising coaches and making the most of that, you know, you can still get everything stuck inside your own head as a, particularly as a sole founder as well. I want to know about your mentor. So I listened to one of your podcasts with Lisa Rodwell. So I want to know about how important and mentors and how do they differ from coaches?

Unknown: 30:36

Sure. So I think they're extremely important, but they're very different. I genuinely think we should all have both. And not just one mentor and one coach, I think the learning comes from having a collection of those people around you that can support you for different things. A mentor, I always describe as a fast track to knowledge, a mentor, in my situation would be a founder that has perhaps built a similar business or, you know, multiple mentors that I would have, I might have a marketplace mentor, nothing to do with coaching. But then I might have a mentor in the wellness space. So that would be an example of mentoring. It's incredible, because they give you their knowledge, which is, you know, it's a gold. However, it doesn't always work for your business. So I've worked with mentors, that I mean, genuinely, I would pinch myself the fact that I could even have the insight from these people. But it was only when I went and then spoke to a coach about my learning, that I realised that while it worked for their business, it wouldn't work for mine, or it didn't sit with me well, in the same way. So I think if you solely work with a mentor that's doing peer mentoring, you're at risk of following different paths that for sure worked for them at a specific time doing what they did, but you're you You're unique. The world is different, every business is different. Exactly. And only, you know, the nuances of that. So the coach is there to help you to work out the best solution for you. And that's why it's so powerful.

Ollie Collard: 32:11

Building a business can be all consuming. So I'm interested to hear about maybe one sacrifice that you've made either consciously, or subconsciously.

Unknown: 32:20

I think a sacrifice is always always about the time that you spend with your family and your friends. I think trying to keep that balance is so important. And I've I wouldn't say I've sacrificed it, but at times, it's fluctuated. So it's, it's something I constantly work on to make sure that I keep that balance. You have to you have to give it the deathbed test, how will I feel you know what will be important to me, when I look back, building a business and helping 1000s of people will be something I'm proud of. But I also want to be equally proud that I was there for my daughter, my husband, there for my friends. So important. I guess one thing that I fail all the time on

Ollie Collard: 33:04

is Sarah Ashley, come on.

Unknown: 33:07

I'm terrible at keeping a routine with exercise. And it helps me so much when I do do it. So I love running helps with my mental health. I solve problems when I run. So it's not even like I'm not working, I am working. But for some reason. It's like, oh, there's that Zoom call, or there's that call. And I always, you know, halfway through the day, and I haven't done it, and then it's not going to happen in the second half of the day. So I consistently fall down on that. It's something I'm aware of and I need to work on.

Ollie Collard: 33:39

Can you tell me about a time where you've had a severe moment of self doubt Ashley?

Unknown: 33:43

So I really struggle always have with public speaking, not entirely sure where it came from, I will get out of every opportunity. So if somebody says Oh, come on, come and talk on stage, I would try and get out of it. First of all I would, my mind would literally run to the door. But then I would through my career, I'm very determined that I would push myself to do it. But I would hate every minute of it. And as a result would probably wasn't that good at it in my mind, whether it was or not, I'm not sure if I wasn't in my head. And I think when I started more happy I definitely wanted to hide behind everything. But the more it kept coming up and people would say Oh, come and talk or come and tell us about this or present. Oh, god. Are the two tied together? Do I have to be more happy be able to help more people if I do. So I had lots of lots of doubt there. And I was speaking with a therapist at the time. She kept listening to me talk about this and she's like, what's gonna see what's wrong with you? She was kinder than that. But she was effectively sort of pulled me up on it and I'm really is this a massive issue for you? Yes, terrifies me. I don't know why we did this treatment called it's called EMDR therapy. And what happened is She describes it as it's a type of therapy in which your brain is like a jukebox. And you've got all of your, your records all neatly stored, but occasionally a record is on its side. And affects all the rest of the records from sitting perfectly because so this is the way she described it to me which I liked the visual. Okay, I understand that. Let's do this. And it's a treatment which you can pick up, I'm not going to talk about like how it works, but it's very simple. It takes you back through all of your memories to refile them. And it turned out when I was a little kid, I had forgotten this fact, I came in here. And I had something wrong with my ears. I don't even know what it was. But I had something wrong with my ears. So when I spoke, I was speaking as as I was hearing other people speak. No one could understand the word I was saying. So they would all look at me a little bit strangely. And I would obviously get this fear and shame that would come up for me because like, why are they staring at me? I've said something silly, and, and it got fixed. Well, when I was a kid, but I've completely forgotten this fact, it happened. And it turned out that so whenever people look at you and you talk, the feeling you're having is that same feeling of people not understanding what you're saying being that Yeah. And then after that, it was fine moved. to something I struggled with my entire life. I think it was one therapy session. You can't shut me up.

Ollie Collard: 36:31

Yeah, lots of things are linked to our chart. You don't actually realise it, but also just normalising everyone's speaking to a therapist and encouraging it. Because I think sometimes it's a bit of a taboo, isn't it? So actually, it shouldn't be?

Unknown: 36:43

Yeah, it's some I think, in Britain, we're so far behind. I mean, in America, of course, everyone has a therapist, why wouldn't you and we're just so behind and normalising it, but I think we're we are changing. And I think the more people have pride in doing the work. And, you know, there's no negativity around that. It's, I mean, we should all we should all be doing it. And I think, for me, as well, I want to make sure that any challenges that I do have, don't get passed on, you know, we need to do the work so that we can be better for others. So it's no surprise to hear that Ashley has a pretty good grasp of failure, and the role it plays and an ability to deal with failure. She talks about it very intelligently. And I think this idea of intelligent failure is one that we all need to grasp as entrepreneurs is not just fail fast over and over again, even though we've been told that that's the way it works. Actually, when we fail, we need to be doing it in a mindful way. And we need to be learning from that failure. So something actually talked about was this idea of being really, really clear about assumptions. And then testing those assumptions, which again, in some ways, is entrepreneurship 101, but I think really gets lost a lot of the time. So her failure that she talked about was this idea of making the test too big, and not making it the right size for the context of where the business was at that time. And this is something that I come up against all the time. So a lot of my background has been in the ad tech space. So in the ad tech space, a lot of work that has to be done is about proving the efficacy of your product in terms of the educational impact. And of course, you could argue that a coaching platform is also an edtech product, so they have to prove the efficacy of their product. But if you do too big a test too early, you're not going to get that information quickly, which is exactly what Ashley was saying. So they created this kind of big processes, big test. And then the the problem with that was that they weren't getting the information that they needed quick enough. So they adapted the process. How do you think startups can effectively use experimentation? And and do you see it a lot? Or do you think this is something where a lot of entrepreneurs can improve

Ollie Collard: 39:26

is so important to the early stages of running a business? I think first and foremost, I think that in this case, Ashley rightly identified that she'd put too much onus on this big experiment, and they were expecting grand results from it. And I think, actually, it should be done as more as a kind of continuous development thing. You should be running many experiments throughout the startup phase and testing your assumptions, even if you have a really strong gut feeling that it's true. So I think it's about questioning everything being curious. You're running very slow. More scale experiments where there's less variables, because then ultimately there's less to go wrong. And you really are testing the right assumptions. I mean, from your edtech background, and also your scientific background, Becky, I mean, experimentation and hypothesising is at the heart of what you do. So, yeah, I'm interested to know your thoughts as well.

Unknown: 40:20

Well, I loved what I heard that that sport happened for Ashley, because I certainly recognise that and like you said, I've got a scientific background, I have a PhD, which, of course, is a three year long experiment, very different from what we're doing in the startup space. Having said that, my first startup was in the scientific space to and our customers were scientists. So you really did have to get this balance right around how to, there were some longer term studies we had to do. But at the same time, you've got to do all those short term studies. And I really like what you said about this kind of continuous process, and often hear about the idea of a culture of learning. And I think in a startup, that's what you need to do, like always be looking at, what is the hypothesis? What are the assumptions, and then testing those hypotheses in the way that is relevant to where you are at the business in the business right now. So we often talk about it with very, very early stage founders. And of course, again, is when you're just testing like, Is there even you know, is there a value proposition here, and you've got no money, you've got no investment, and you don't really even know what that USP is for the business, the last thing you can do is go out and create a three year study or something like that, you need to be able to get out there talk to people have very short, quick conversations, but meaningful conversations, understand what you're testing, and be able to listen, not put your own biases and your own needs for this problem to be a real problem onto those people. And then that's going to give you the information that you need to move forward. And so I definitely even that kind of at the very beginning those kinds of core business hypotheses, which of course change over time, too. That's the other thing. It's being dynamic, and continuing to do this kind of testing of your assumptions. I talked already about product efficacy, like is the product actually working? Of course, on the marketing side, I think most marketers know that everything that they do starts as an experiment, and and you're testing to see what works, what kind of messaging, what kind of channels, what platforms are working for you. And then also for most of the businesses that we talk to most of the businesses I will work with, they also do need to work with the idea of their impact businesses. So they need to figure out whether they're making the impact that they say that they're making, and building in some of that impact kind of testing, which again, you can do in small ways. I think that culture of learning that culture of making sure you are always articulating what it is you're trying to do. And testing.

Ollie Collard: 43:02

Yeah, 100%. There, Becky. And I think one of the biggest takeaways that I'd pass on to founders is just trying to fall in love with the problem, rather than the solution that they're developing. And I think if you're constantly doing that, you're always putting the customer at the forefront of everything that you're doing. So you know, how they think, what they want, how they want the product to develop, or service in the future. And I think if you're putting them at the heart of it, then you're onto a winner there, really.

Unknown: 43:33

And you really discover the nuances by doing them. And it doesn't just become this generic thing, which I think is exactly what what Ashley's done in terms of more happy. That's, that's why it's been able to get the traction that it's got, because they've really looked at the nuances in terms of what's their model, what's gonna work for what type of customer? Like I said before, what's the model they need? And then how are they going to make sure they're actually having that impact across the businesses that they work with?

Ollie Collard: 44:03

Yeah, no. 100% And you just have to look on their Trustpilot page to see all the wonderful reviews and you know, that's the Ronseal thing. It does what it says on the tin, right?

Unknown: 44:12

Absolutely, absolutely. So let's move on to a conversation that I seem to have a lot and it came up when you're talking to Ashley which is about mentors and coaches. Often I get asked the question like, should you have a mentor or a coach? What's the difference between a mentor and a coach and and then the other thing I get is when I don't really want to talk to more people because I already am getting so much advice and I don't know what to do with it all and and is it even helpful? And so I Ashley was talking about that as well. There's this notion of, especially when she was talking to mentors, that she was getting given advice as though it was set in stone concrete, universal advice, when actually almost everything that we hear from anyone is only ever going to be contextual. So if a mentor has done something that's worked, that's a data point for you to take a look at. But it doesn't necessarily mean that that particular strategy is gonna work for you in your context. And you need to take that data point alongside all the other information that you're receiving. And you need to be able to pull those things together to determine the best strategy for yourself and for your own business. So, but something I did think and something that I've certainly done in my career as well, is have both mentors and coaches. And I think actually gave us lots of interesting examples of how this worked for her. So can you talk a little bit more about that? Do you think we should all have we talked before about just coaches? But should we all have mentors? And coaches?

Ollie Collard: 45:49

It's a great question. I think Ashley's definition of the difference between them is perfect. So I think I probably don't need to elaborate on that more. But I do think we need both. I think the Mentors are people who have got lots of experience. They've been there, they've done it, they've created some form of success. But I really like your point there, Becky about not taking that verbatim. And just because it's been successful for them, it doesn't mean that it's going to work within your business. And I think it's always good to try and find a mentor, as Ashley said, who's either scaled a similar type of business or been in a similar market, and there is some relevance there. Otherwise, it might not be applicable to your own business. And that could be more dangerous than actually helpful. So I think that's a really important point to take note of. And I think, yeah, coaches are so important to enabling people to operate at their best and actually achieve their full potential. I think it is a different type of relationship. I think it's, it's more reflective. And I think, yeah, everybody should try and obtain both, but obviously, you know, resources, network, time available, trying to, you know, manage all of the different advice that you're getting can be potentially too much, or I think there probably is a sweet spot between finding the right amount of people that you're seeking wisdom from?

Unknown: 47:11

Yeah, I think Ashley gave two examples where I would say it was more of the coach that enabled her to move actually move very quickly, she gave her the public speaking example where she'd had this really deep rooted thing that was going on, that came from her childhood, where she just had this fear this block when it came to public speaking, and so many people do. And that very quickly, she was able to change that once she got to the crux of the issue. And she also talked about burnout and recognising the burnout when it happened. And I think that was another example of where being reflective and having perspective helped her. So she very clearly articulated those ways in which the coach had helped her. And I think that mentors often come about in perhaps examples where we need something that's very sector specific, or something related to the market or something related to maybe a particular technology that you're building out, or some some more specific problems that they can help with. Although I should say, I have actually worked with a mentor who's also done that other piece for me that feels it's not so much coaching, but has given me that perspective has given me some reflection time as well. So I think it's about finding the right people, for you.

Ollie Collard: 48:29

I think so. And I think it's about finding the right people that actually resonate with you and you build a good working relationship with I think that's, you've got to be able to get on with the person first and foremost as well.

Unknown: 48:40

That's so true. I've definitely cancelled mentors. And coaches, actually, as well. And I do if you're listening, don't just think, Oh, I've worked with somebody and they're really not helping me. And this feels like a waste of time. And I'm just gonna keep pushing through because everyone says you have to have a mentor or coach, I think, if it's not working, it's not working. If it doesn't feel like a valuable use of your time, then you need to be able to move on from that. Talking about moving on and moving forward. Let's find out where more happy is now, and how Ashley envisions the business changing over the next five years. So we're around about we have 150 organisations now. And we're looking all the time ways that we can essentially help more people an example of that used to be used to sell company wide, but recognising that you know, not all companies want to support their teams and that way which you know, we understand however, individuals on the team they so we know that they still need support. So now instead of you know signing up to lengthy contracts, we've made it so that individuals within teams can sign up to monthly contracts they can pay for it themselves so they can pay on like a Thanks Ben card. They can spend their own personal Learning and development budget essentially being in charge of their own personal development. And that's really important for us. So we've just launched that we are next step for us is expand, grow, help more people across different industry sectors, different sizes of business, we are also looking at ways that we can support our coaches more. So going back to that stat of 95% of coaches feel like what else is it that they need. So other than the practice errors, we offer our coaches in return for their coaching and supporting others to get the errors that they need to improve and practice with these the ICF accredited areas, they also get free training from us in the background. So we're delivering that every month for them. We give them free supervision to help them but we want to expand that how can we help them develop as a coach and get clients? So we already coach in 42 countries? Oh, wow. Okay, so Well, we're based here and our coaches are UK, we have we're serving all over the place, and the US is a big market. Also, as I mentioned, with therapy, it's more advanced in terms of coaching. So most, most people in business would understand what a coach is, and why you would want one, it would be completely normal in the US. Whereas here, there's still quite a lot of education required. So that's a big opportunity for us as well.

Ollie Collard: 51:21

Amazing. And if you had to distil down just one piece of advice that you could pass on to a founder or somebody thinking of starting a business, what would that one piece of advice be?

Unknown: 51:32

I think sense check how passionate you are about it, and the impact that you're going to have. Because it's so tough. And even when it's tough, I find it joyful, because because I'm doing it for a reason. I think if I was doing something that I didn't feel that passionate about, I would have given up or failed. Every time there was a roadblock or someone telling me it wouldn't work or that I shouldn't be doing it or what you know, there's always people they're pulling you down. So you need to be super passionate so that you've got that constant fight in you to keep going. So yeah, sense check the mission.

Ollie Collard: 52:06

Love that. And actually, I know you had a question that you wanted to ask our listeners.

Unknown: 52:11

So my question is, for what percentage of employees within businesses are thinking of leaving at any given time? And is the answer 10% 20% 30%? Or 40%?

Ollie Collard: 52:27

Correct question. We'll get some answers to that. On our socials, I got an inkling what the answer might be, but I won't give anything away. Where can people find out a bit more about you personally, but also about more happy.

Unknown: 52:39

So the best place to connect with me is on LinkedIn. And just say that you've listened to this, and we can connect. And the other places just more happy.com, happy spelt with an eye. And all the information is there. But I'd love to meet you.

Ollie Collard: 52:53

Amazing Ashley, and just one curveball. Last question for you. If I knew you better, what's one question that I would have asked? And what's the answer to that question?

Unknown: 53:04

So the question that I think you would have asked is, What is your biggest fear? And my biggest fear in life is being a good mom, or not being a good mom. Like, will I be there for her in the way that she needs me to be throughout her life?

Ollie Collard: 53:21

I have thought I mean, yeah, being a foreigner, myself and having two kids. It's a constant battle, isn't it? And yeah, that's self reflection. And you don't ultimately know I guess at any point how well you're doing, do you? Yeah,

Unknown: 53:33

there's not there's not always the feedback that it's not like a business. But But yeah, that always is my, my quest. And my sense check. Am I am I doing enough for her in the way that she needs?

Ollie Collard: 53:47

What a lovely note to end on. Ashley, thank you so much for your time, it's been a pleasure chatting with you,

Unknown: 53:51

thank you, great to be here. Whereas there was so much to dissect in, in that part of the interview. And when we're going all the way from growing the business moving to the US to actually what Ashley's definition of success is in terms of being a good mom and and what the business vision looks like as well. So we can't cover all but I'd really like to talk a little bit more about how we motivate people in the business. So for this business coaches are really the cornerstone. And for Ashley to be able to scale more happy in the way that she wants to she's going to have to continue to really refine this relationship with the coaches and ensure that the quality remains high as it scales. I mean, I think we've heard from other organisations with a relatively similar model I'm thinking about say BetterHelp, whereby the quality perhaps diminishes as the business grows or a lot of work has to be done in order to ensure that the quality is maintained across is the business? How do you think Ashley has made that work to date? And do you think she can kind of carry that on through what she's going to need to be conscious of as the business scales?

Ollie Collard: 55:14

It's a really tricky one, isn't it? Because you can't have quality, speed and growth at the same time, right? So I think I think Ashley's approach to it probably is going to be focused on the quality element, I think she's grown the business very naturally today, I think she hasn't taken on too much outside funding, she's still in control of a lot of the business. And I think that enables her to ensure that she's got a very strong vetting process, in terms of taking on the coaches, I think the fact that she's a coach herself, she knows the industry inside out, as we've said before, really helped she gets it. I think the fact that coaching is a massively growing market obviously helps, because you know, you're going to have more coaches entering the market as it grows naturally. So I don't think she's going to run out of customers, coaches to work with. So it's a matter of ensuring that the processes are really tight, and she's getting the right people on board.

Unknown: 56:12

I think, like you said, I think expectation setting is really important. And it feels to me like that's already been seeded in this business, I think there's already a good understanding of the type of coaches that would be a good fit with more happy and the clients of more happy. I think motivation is the other thing that she's already really understood, like you said, because she's got this background, because she knows the coaches really well. She understands that there are both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards for the coaches to come on board and to perform at a high quality. And we didn't talk with her about the ways in which she tests that quality. And I'd be really interested to understand that further with her as well. And but we know that she has this this head for experimentation for learning as she goes. So I'm sure that they've got some really interesting things behind there that helped you measure the quality of the coaching, you mentioned the Trustpilot. And of course, feedback from customers. So yeah, I'm sure there's a lot that we could potentially learn and find out even more from Ashley about how she's doing that quality measurement. So speaking of kind of what's going to happen as they grow, she also discussed moving into new markets, even though they're already International, she talked about the US market, it's a big market, especially in this learning and development space. So I think it's really interesting to look at the approach that more happy and Ashley have used in terms of being organic and being smart about the strategy that they're using, and not trying to do it all at once. whilst they're talking about the US now, this isn't something that they immediately jumped into other than what was just happening more organically. So they've got the traction they've tested early on, and then they've been able to expand and grow. What do you think a UK company needs to be aware of if they have the US as a target market? Or even more generally, what if people are in one geography? Should they always start from their own geography and then move elsewhere? Or how should they approach these different geographical markets?

Ollie Collard: 58:24

I think you've got to correct the home market first, which obviously, they've done to some extent, and I think it is really interesting that they're already expanding internationally, and the US is a massive market. If you can make it there, you can obviously make it anywhere, doing business outside of your own country of origin, I'd say, you know, first and foremost, you've got to understand the cultural differences. You know, obviously, America is an English speaking country. So that helps. And there's not a language barrier, per se, but there's different ways of doing business. There are, you know, subtle cultural differences. And I think, ultimately, the US market is going to be a lot less unforgiving. I think you're really going to know quite quickly, whether you're going to be able to make it there or not.

Unknown: 59:08

Something I really love about Ashley's story is that she was a she has never run before she could walk by the sounds of it. I mean, from the outside and this ability to kind of take it step by step and learn from each stage and, and then move forward more quickly, actually, because the growth has, if you look back has been relatively quick. But that's because it's been kind of slow and considered at certain points in time. And so it's really nice to see that that's what's happened, which means she now has what she needs to be able to maybe break through into that bigger market and give it the time. I think that's one of the things that people often say, Oh, we're a global society. Now. We've got the internet, you can reach anywhere, like it's just going to be global. And we're not really going to be strategic about But the trouble is, because of those things that you just talked about, even if it is just different cultural approaches, it's still the same language. But it is incredibly different. And you need to put focus and resource into breaking through into those different markets. So if you're spreading too thin early on, you're just not going to have the resource to really focus on any one of those markets. And perhaps you're not going to get the traction anywhere. So I really like this idea that she's used reflection to drive growth. So it's been consider all the way along, and but never standing still.

Ollie Collard: 1:00:36

Yeah, and I think that comes back to probably Ashley's DNA, that that's probably embedded within her in terms of her, you know, the coaching culture, and that self reflection. And I think, you know, a lot of businesses will go out and raise VC funding and try and use that as rocket fuel to grow the business really fast, really quick, expand beyond their, their own comfort zone, I think, to build a more sustainable business, I definitely prefer Ashley's approach to it.

Unknown: 1:01:05

And something I think Ashley has, which I think is a fantastic mix for entrepreneurs is she has this considered approach. But she also has the passion, which she spoke about in this last section. And that ability to have both of those things we hear about this entrepreneurs paradox of having dispassionate passion. So you can be really, really passionate, but you're also able to look at the business objectively. And so from that she's been able to harness this growth and this impact. So of course, as always, Ashley has a question for you. So let's go over to Ashley and listen to the question that she has. So my question is, for what percentage of employees within businesses are thinking of leaving at any given time? And is the answer 10% 20% 30% or 40%? Thank you, Ashley, make sure you send your responses into us via social and check out Ashley and more happy online using those details that she just gave us. On the subject of social? Shall we go back and see what you've been saying in response to the final episode of last season, where our featured entrepreneur asked a question, Ollie, what was the question?

Ollie Collard: 1:02:31

So we have the CEO of flow neuroscience, Aaron on the podcast? And her question was really pertinent. So she asked by the end of this decade, so by 2030, what will be the leading cause of death and illness globally? What is it expected to be? So the four answers that she gave were colon cancer, heart disease, war related deaths and murders, obviously, in the news a lot at the moment with what's going on in the Middle East. And lastly, depression. So the results were really interesting. 58% of people actually said depression is going to be the leading cause of death globally, which in fact, is the correct answer. And that was followed by heart disease, which is, which is quite incredible, really, in a bad way. And I think that it is such a global issue. And it's amazing to see lots of businesses like flow neuroscience and other ones. And as we talked about, at the start of this podcast, there's a massive, global issues that we're facing as society. And I think entrepreneurship is such a great vehicle to be able to help solve some of those issues.

Unknown: 1:03:44

Yeah, it's amazing that even more happy the guests we've just had, are tackling this problem in a slightly different way, perhaps. And it's a horrible statistic, isn't it? But it's, I'm not surprised about it, and just hoping that we're all moving in the right direction in terms of turning that around, because I really think it's a solvable problem. So Ali, can you tell us who's going to be our next guest?

Ollie Collard: 1:04:11

Our next guest is a exciting founder from Bristol, who runs a business called Yup, which essentially is a marketplace for experiences and he's actually going to be knocking on our studio door any minute now. So how exciting and can't wait to unpack his business.

Unknown: 1:04:29

Absolutely. Well, thank you everybody for listening. If you like what you've heard, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts. And don't forget that there's a big selection of previous episodes just search founded and grounded. Thank you for listening to find it and grounded with Ollie collard and Dr. Becky sage. Don't forget to press that follow button to help us to grow the show.