Greenworkx: Small Steps, Big Impact: Building 10 Million Green Jobs

From advising UK Prime Ministers to spearheading green innovation. Mat Ilic takes us from the corridors of Whitehall to the frontlines of green innovation.

Discover his journey from Belgrade to becoming a UK visionary. Mat spent his career advising the likes of Boris Johnson and Theresa May.

Now, he’s on a mission with Greenworkx to foster environmental change and generate 10 million green jobs

Key Takeaways

- How can small steps lead to massive impact? This conversation holds the answers. 

- Bridging the Green Gap: There's a pressing need to address the skills gap in the green sector. Greenworkx's mission is to empower 10 million individuals with green jobs, fostering a low-carbon, sustainable world.

- Step by Step Innovation: Mat Ilic champions the iterative approach in business, reminding us that significant progress comes from small, consistent steps.

- Diversity Fuels Change: Inclusivity isn't just a buzzword; it's crucial for progression. By aiming to recruit from underserved communities, Greenworkx addresses workforce diversity head-on, ensuring that the transition to a greener economy is wide-reaching.

Join us for an insightful conversation where passion meets purpose, and innovation creates a greener world.

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

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

On balance standing who your consumers are going to be, what your product is going to be how it's going to change their life and not just in in an abstract sense, but in the here and now in this market for the price that you need them to pay. 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, I'm Dr. Becky sage, co host of founded and grounded and I'm here today with Ali. Ali, how are you today?

Ollie Collard: 1:16

I'm doing very well. I'm in the festive mood. I went to see my son's school play on Wednesday, which was amazing. I'm heading off to London to do a couple of recordings next week, which I'm looking forward to as well. So yeah, I've really enjoyed this time of year. What about what about you? Yeah, same

Unknown: 1:35

thing. Really, I definitely find that December starts to become a little bit more chill than some of the other months as well, which is nice. I I dressed up as Santa and ran through the streets of my local town the other day, so definitely getting in the festive spirit. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. But yeah, all good fun and raise money for charities. So shout out to everyone who does does the Santa dash every year. So Ali this week, do you want to tell us who we're going to be hearing from you

Ollie Collard: 2:08

a really interesting founder called Matt from a company called Greenworks, which is an ed tech startup, essentially what they're trying to do is be the go to place for green jobs.

Unknown: 2:20

And I thought what was fantastic about listening to this episode was that Matt's working on this massive mega trend challenge, which is climate change, environmental crisis. And yet, a theme that was coming through was taking small steps in order to make a big difference. So I'm really excited to jump into the episode and hear what Matt's got to say.

Ollie Collard: 2:49

Get us on the map.

Unknown: 2:50

Hello, Ollie, how you doing

Ollie Collard: 2:52

very well, thank you. And I have to say, a massive thank you for travelling all the way over to our studio here in Bristol on a very cold. December's afternoon. That's very much dedication to the cause. So thank you for that.

Unknown: 3:04

No worries always good to test the railways and see how infrastructure is doing. Before we

Ollie Collard: 3:08

dive in Matt, I'm really interested in your background, first of all in the public and charitable sectors. And I know you spent time advising Boris Johnson and Theresa May. So could you tell our listeners a bit about what brought you to founding Greenworks?

Unknown: 3:24

Thanks so much, Ollie. Great to be on the show. Yeah, Matt, I'm Co Founder and Chief Exec of Greenworks. As a bit of background, I have a 16 year career behind me public private nonprofit sector, always focused on public policy, social impact in and out of public services. So I started my career as a management consultant and auditor in public sector assurance with originally PWC. And then a company that was latterly acquired by capita cost that journey into City Hall. So she did work as a civil servant and programme manager up until the Olympics in 2012. And actually, in that time, really focused on youth issues, social mobility. So these types of questions have always been a massive feature of my my career, I've been very lucky in that respect, and then ventured into nonprofits. And last job, I was Chief Development Officer at a charity called Catch 22, which focuses on helping people to build skills and resilience. And, yeah, as you said, two years. I also served in Downing Street between 2017 and 19 as a special adviser to Theresa May on Home Affairs and justice, which was an incredible roller coaster. Not something that I was necessarily planning for doing but it's one of those kind of opportunity knocks kind of moments and it was a remarkable kind of turn of events for me personally and professionally and lend a lot and yeah, Greenworks born in Summit 2022 And if you kind of rewind you remember that There were some really hot days one day in particular is around 45 degrees. And I was certainly trying to understand what was going on and in particular felt like it was the right time for me to start thinking about what I should be doing next career wise, and kind of looking forward to whatever next steps are might want to make having having had a really interesting kind of journey to date. And what were the kind of core ingredients that are the core origins? I described it quite kind of flippantly as midlife crisis meeting, perma crisis, you know, you come out of kind of three to four years of, you know, pandemic political chaos, leaving the EU, the advent of war on the European continent for the first time since World War Two, and you start to inevitably gonna question, what's it all for what sort about, but also, how can you continue to, you know, create value, give purpose have meaning. And so that was the kind of poem permit crisis in the middle of crisis a bit. It's actually on that particular day, hanging out with my kids thinking, you know, what is the next 20 3040 years look like? Especially in the context of ecological degradation, climate crisis, this kind of global volatility and insecurity. And I also happen to read this book called speed and scale by a guy called John Doerr, who was the number two guy at Intel for a long time. And it essentially applies the objectives and key results methodology to to climate change, but to net zero specifically, so what do we need to do to transition our world to a world of lower carbon and green technologies and then just a more sustainable existence? And and it was such a evocative and thought provoking read, because for the first time, you could really grasp what needed to happen, how it needed to happen, what types of actors needed to do it, or what timeframe and it all felt measurable and attainable, very hard, but achievable. And in that context, I decided that I wanted to spend a bit more time understanding the question of workforce and jobs and just transition. So what is walking towards a decarbonized future mean for existing workers? And what might it mean in the context of how you turn existential threat into opportunity, and it's kind of self evident what the threat is, and I certainly haven't spent all of my life being a climate activist or even being especially well informed, certainly, like most people felt quite helpless around what I can do to try and affect change in his face. But when you pause and think and try and understand that we're living through a generational change and challenge where you have a unique set of circumstances that are, well, obviously the backdrop of that threat, the irreversible threat, but also then the reallocation of global capital, and we're now talking some $3 trillion, but rising to meet this challenge at around $6 trillion. And the former governor of Bank of England, Mark Carney is very good on this particular topic, how global finance is pointing us in that direction. And also, what that is inevitably going to drive is substantive changes in where we live, how we travel, the efficiency of our buildings, the modes of how we consume energy, what we deliver onshore versus offshore, and so on. And that is a, you know, a once in a once in a lifetime kind of challenge. And the penalty for getting it wrong is obvious, but the opportunity for getting it right is significant. And what's been interesting, particularly context of recent developments is that the best global leadership has landed on that opportunity. So there's an appreciation that if you secure your domestic energy supply, you're less exposed to global fossil fuel volatility. If you can lead the world in a production of new technologies like electric vehicles, you have the best shot at success in the future. And all of this, in aggregate can bring social and economic prosperity to communities, and nations and the world. And so Rewinding back to Greenworks, it says, we're here to bring about 10 million workers in the next 10 years. And that is just 1/3 of what the world needs by 2030. There's a tonne more to do after that. And we were really focused on the skilled trade roles needed for netzero. So hundreds of 1000s of electricians, Retrofit is, energy specialists. Keep pumping installers. So all of those front of my roles that are impossible to automate are deeply important and structurally significant as we shift everything to living in a lower carbon, more effective, more efficient, technologically enabled environment. And yeah, these are uncertain and poorly understood jobs. And so the way that we're thinking about what we need to do is building the talent platform that helps people discover these careers, provides educational content that helps rapidly upskill them, and ultimately matches them to employers as they scale these jobs, and particularly the context, the other context being the shocks to some of our labour markets, which have come about through actually COVID Partly, but also this kind of journey over the past 5678 years, or people maybe working multiple, multiple jobs and flexibly or gig working and the enablement that technology has done for that. And it's meant that, as she certainly in most of the g7 nations, we have workforces that are contracting and ageing, as opposed to meeting to meet this particular challenge. So that's what green box is about. And, yeah, really pleased to have been able to unpack it with you this afternoon.

Ollie Collard: 11:01

Fantastic, man. And what are the particular pain points that Greenworks is specifically solving? So

Unknown: 11:09

the number one pain point is the skills bottleneck that arises when trillions of capital are saying, let's bring about new onshore wind farms, let's put up solar panels on roofs let's try and instal 600,000 2 million heat pumps, and here's some subsidies do to do that. And you don't have the workers to do that. And then time time bound way. If you look at the exponential growth in technology over the last 20 years, that's clearly led to the kind of gaps we see today for software engineers and web developers and designers. And that is absolutely likely to play out in the context of the exponential growth of green technologies. But the the anticipation and we have to apply to thinking about that growing skills gap is that we can't really afford to wake up in 2050. And say, I will be great if we had a million more iterations. Because we will have missed all of these jumping off points. And we will have caused sort of irreversible harm to the planet but also missed the economic opportunity of the century. So the number one pain point is ensuring that we have enough workers to fill green skills and workforce gaps at the point of need. And that is an exponentially growing need at whichever market you look at whatever anyone says. The other aspect is how you support incumbent workforces to transition to a netzero economy and transfer their skills into that context. So it's wrong to assume that people working in a car factory will necessarily and easily transition to building electric vehicles. Similarly, it's wrong to assume that 7000 unionised boiler engineers will take the heat pumps as if it was the same, and that switch was easy. And if you think about some of these massive workforce shifts over the past couple of centuries, they in my personal opinion, have been unnecessarily painful and unjust. So they've just disproportionately hurt certain communities around this country and others and actually certain sections of our society. And so the secondary pain is how you might rescale workforces on mass with the use of technology so as to save time, minimise disruption, and maximise actually the transferability of their existing skills by making this very palpable and transparent. So that

Ollie Collard: 13:36

leads really nicely on to my next question, actually, which was, the overarching goal is to get 10 million people into green jobs by 2030. That is the mission of Greenworks. The bulk of these jobs are skilled manual workers. So here's my scenario to you. I'm a trades person, it's a Friday night. I'm in my local boozer with my friends having a couple of pints. We've had a hard week, what's your pitch to me as to why I should move into a green job?

Unknown: 14:07

Well, firstly, thanks for inviting me to have a pint with you. And the next thing I'd say is that this is the most important choice you can make for the next 10 years. And and this is something that will keep you incredibly busy and well heeled for the same time. And more importantly, it will be an opportunity to leave a better world for your kids and or your nephews and nieces. So that will be my simple pitch. I think going one step beyond that. I think it's recognising there's certain things you might be working on now might be less important and relevant there. I say obsolete going forward. So it's also a way of diversifying your skill set and being able to play into something that will be around for a very long time. I'm

Ollie Collard: 14:50

sold on that now. Matt, thank you. How will Greenworks engage people from underrepresented groups?

Unknown: 14:59

Yeah, It's a brilliant question. And clearly, to win in this context, you engage every group, there is no predetermined view of who the people taking up this, this clarion call are going to be, in our experience, they fall into a number of different categories. But before I kind of tell you what those are, or give you a sense of what our sort of broad strategies are, one is that we have to be in the places where all of these people are now includes digital channels. And actually, you know, it probably won't surprise you. The under 24 year olds are not searching for jobs on LinkedIn, they're spending a lot of time on channels like Tik Tok and others. And so how do you create a conversation with them through the medium of things that they are familiar with and might be on already, the non digital means for reaching these groups again, have to be very thoughtful about, Well, partly the pitch, but also like the place and in our experience so far, that's included reaching out to people from non graduate background. So going through vocational training with training providers, or colleges, actually being well connected to the Department for Work and Pensions and job centres. And indeed a number of charities that are supporting people who are not in educational training through relevant courses in energy efficiency, and retrofit, and so on. So we disproportionately have representation from minority ethnic groups, something like 60, or 70% of the current candidates are from those types of groups first or second generation migrant backgrounds. And we also have disproportionately high numbers of women. Which if you contrast that to some of the current industries, so the trade industry is construction, utilities, energy, construction, fewer than 1% of the frontline workforce is female. And so you have these massive pre existing disparities in that workforce. Yet, in our experience, there is absolutely no reason why people from underserved groups can't thrive and be represented and succeed. And of course, it goes without saying we need everyone to be in that zone, if we are collectively to succeed. My

Ollie Collard: 17:05

background literally used to be working with the Prince's Trust, they do some great work in terms of outreach, and like you say, showing up in the right places where these people are hanging out. But more importantly, having the people with the relatability that can empathise with the group that they're trying to connect to. And I think that's a much needed point in terms of how you build trust and rapport with your target audience.

Unknown: 17:28

You should have said that early early. They've just published your, your former colleagues, we just published a piece of research, some focus groups with young people talking about greening jobs. And it wasn't surprising to me, but it demonstrates what needs to happen that, you know, the majority of under 20 fives can't tell you what a green job is. And similarly, it's particularly to talk to young people from certain backgrounds or young women, they perceive this as being something that is science. And you know, we don't help that by calling it a stem job, and immediately feels like something that is otherworldly and unattainable. And yet, our whole spiel is that it's absolutely attainable. And we can show you how to obtain it. And we can help you, however, understand how it relates to your passions and your existing skills. And also then paint in primary colours, the journey that you need to take in order to train for these jobs, and ultimately get you in front of employees to do that. And the next goal after that is to scale. And so really, the number one kind of thing that we need to continue to get right is ensure that we can cast the net extremely widely to attract the widest pool of possible candidates through a whole bunch of different channels. And then beyond that, to understand at what point in the journey those candidates are, because to come back to the analogy of the trades person in their local pub, they are ready and able, at least on paper, and it takes a little bit of convincing or it takes a little bit of positioning and presentation. But in our experience, actually, that group is right now one of the hardest to persuade, because if you're a self employed plumber, and 51% of plumbers are, you might work 10 hours a day and have a call out charge of 80 pounds 200 pounds. And you see very little reason to take on the opportunity cost or the direct cost to kind of retrain the spaces. However, there are lots of younger people who have qualified through those trades that actually realised that they have 20 or 30 years of their career to go. And then this actually might be an important bed for them to make. And then the next level down there are people who are, you know, actually maybe coming from other kind of technical backgrounds, they might have engineering qualifications, or they might have always aspired to work in sustainability, but have somehow got trapped in different jobs. And actually, they're coming with very high intent, but they need to be rescaled in some way. And so it's understanding those relationships between people and what they're bringing to the table and therefore what journeys we need to help them travel in order to be eligible and connecting to these green jobs because there's no shortage of employers who are looking for them, as they go on to retrofit our buildings put up ChargePoint infrastructure or instal renewable technologies,

Ollie Collard: 20:10

I'm just interested in your personal background as well. So well educated University of Oxford, London School of Economics. You've also worked in, as you said, in the charitable and nonprofit sectors and public sector, I'm just interested in the mindset shift that you may have need to have to go from working in an industry that's not driven by profit to working and starting your own commercial venture.

Unknown: 20:39

Thanks, Ollie. It's a great question. I, I will start by saying kind of from a personal background has played you're absolutely right. I I've had the fortune of having that amazing kind of, if you like, elite education, and I think there is a place in the world for that. I also feel like we're slightly over indexed on people like me, and knowledge economy type people. And I would say that's been one of the main reasons why some of these sort of trade sectors have been diminished over the past, particularly the past decade. And if you look at electro technical talent since 2015 16, this is a workforce that's 30%. Smaller today than it was then principally, because the reason being that, you know, the difficulty to get new entrants in but also people can retire earlier having been self employed. So the retirement mid 50s, some retiring during the pandemic, in particular, and of course, a lot of European workers leaving post EU exempt. So in terms of in terms of me, I guess, wanting to say I've always been a bit weird in there. I'm, I'm Serbian by birth. So although I've had this a lead kind of experience, actually, I have some founding kind of immigrant experiences that maybe bring me a bit closer to, to the shop floor as it were, but I think the way I then kind of say, okay, yeah, apply, whatever I've learned, whoever I've met, whatever networks I have, those are the things that kind of make me very confident that I can do quite a lot to affect this problem. So I guess I feel incredibly empowered, having had all of those experiences, be that my education or my professional experiences. And then a zoo, as you kind of alluded to, you know, the other aspect of all of this is the need to really connect to the people that might be on the other side of this, of this challenge. So who are these candidates, these learners? And how do we relate to them in a very human way, and I guess, having particularly worked in some of those charity, in public sector context, I feel that that is actually much closer to home than then on paper might suggest, as well. And I should say, you know, one of the amazing things of being an early stage founder is that you do do a lot yourself. And that means it includes learner cause and candidate causes. So, you know, singularly one of the most kind of humbling and, and kind of reassuring things has been speaking to people over the past year who have had the most kind of colourful human experiences and everything from young women working in supermarkets, self funding through electricians causes at night, or people who had had professional sports experiences, switching channels to the latter stages of career to do renewable installation. So people have had maybe much tougher experiences, like affected by war, and you know, looking to kind of retrain and build a life in a new country. So sort of everything under the sun. And I guess on a bit about switching from nonprofit to for profit. I think there's something about entrepreneurial skills as a generic kind of feature set. And in their kind moments, former colleagues would say that I've always been entrepreneurial that includes kind of in in policy where, although there aren't many incentives to take risks in government, I felt like in joining in joining number 10, at a time that I did, I felt that, you know, taking risks was was the right approach, because you know, who knows how much how many opportunities, you might get to do some of the stuff that you've always wondered how to do. And then yeah, kind of the thing that I guess I find relatively straightforward about Greenworks, when it comes to, you know, returns and everything else is that our incentives are completely aligned. Our main value creation comes from placing people into jobs, so we get paid for creating jobs for businesses. Those jobs then go on to help the people that have gotten those jobs. So they are good jobs, by definition, that's our kind of just transition sort of motive. But the other bit is that those jobs are also directly involved in taking carbon out of the atmosphere. And so there's a kind of full alignment between us delivering impact and as deliver Adding value to candidates and communities economic value and as delivering returns to investors. So I think the story and the value proposition is quite straightforward and therefore, in no way feels alien or somehow conflicting to be in a space of saying, this should be a hyper growth business, if you ever wanted to kind of build a unicorn, deep talent platform, this is it. And and so I think that coupled with the megatrends that we started talking about at the beginning of the show, which is, you know, why does the world need this? You know, I sit here with just cause really clear before my eyes, and hopefully I've kind of explained it clearly enough 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 hexar finance, providing growth funding to startups and scale ups throughout the UK, Ben and Jews started hexa 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. It's not unusual for megatrends to be the driving force in business. But I rarely see megatrends as clearly articulated and translated into a business idea as Matt's done. In this interview today, he identified clear economic and environmental need for the business. And the mission is really strongly aligned with the business model. So what's really interesting to me is how he broke down the idea of purpose in terms of starting the business, which again, is something that we see a lot people are driven by business. But I felt like it that the way Matt broke it down was very relatable. So we often talk about the mission being the starting point. But we haven't really talked that much about business being a way by which we can take action. So when we feel out of control, which is what a lot of what I was hearing from Matt, and I think many of us identify with this feeling of, especially in the world right now there's this chaos, there's so many big challenges that perhaps we feel like we can't get a grasp of, or we can't be in any kind of control of. And Matt's taking action in in this chaotic world by creating a business that is going to address some of the challenges. Do you think there are pros and cons of kind of allowing your business to be the thing that makes you feel like you're taking control in a chaotic world?

Ollie Collard: 28:31

I think it's very smart. I mean, entrepreneurship can is a vehicle for change that you want to see in the world. And I think where there's such a big crisis that he's looking to solve in terms of climate change and environmental issues, it can feel very overwhelming. And Matt's response is really to take actions you say in the form of a business. And to try and correct this market failure, which is obviously occurring. I think, what also what is very interesting is that he's no longer working government and actually sees the private sector as the best way to make an impact. He

Unknown: 29:07

obviously has this great experience that comes from the public sector, from nonprofit sector, and now he's in the private sector and driving it through entrepreneurship. And the other thing that was really fascinating to me is what he's chosen to do in order to solve this giant problem, this is the other thing with when we have these big overwhelming problems, like well, what part do I even jump into in terms of making a change? And he's taken that intersection, it's the business acre guy is what he's done, right in terms of being able to find that place. What does the world need? What are people willing to pay for? Where are my strengths and my networks? And that's where he's found this business, which I found it interesting that he calls it an ad tech business and he talks a lot about the learning that is delivered through the business, but ultimately, the business model is a recruitment model because that's what That's, that's what the people who are paying, are asking for that, that where that need is. So he's not just using the business to drive change for this big, global challenge. But he's also building an inclusive strategy. And I thought that this was something else that was coming through really, really strong when we were listening to Matt's interview. So, first of all, making sure that he is, is not being exclusive in terms of what type of people are we going to recruit for these green jobs, recognising that these are skills that anyone can develop, and especially people who maybe have been left behind by more traditional education system, or traditional, or say, white collar job roles? And so really being conscientious and purposeful about where he's going to go and find these people making sure he's in the places that they are. And I think this is such an important part of being an entrepreneur, as well as understanding where is your audience? Where are your customers? Where are your users, in this case, your beneficiaries. So going there, and then not only being in those places, but building trust by having empathy, which I thought was great that you asked those questions in the interview as well talking about kind of how does he empathise with those young people? How does he understand what their needs are? And so of course, Matt has worked with young people through previous jobs. But he also flagged how important it's been to be that founder who wears many hats, and who is actually sitting down and doing the interviews and talking to these young people and having that like touching base with them all the time, which I think is really important to do, as a founder as somebody who runs a business, even as the business begins to grow. And maybe that's not your day to day role. So building a kind of accessibility is so much more than just putting a job post on LinkedIn. And, you know, doing an inclusive job post on LinkedIn is, you know, tick that box. What do you think we can learn from Matt's approach, because I think a lot of people think inclusion is a really hard thing to do, but perhaps is not as hard as people imply.

Ollie Collard: 32:19

I think this is really innate in Matt's personality, actually, because he could have made this business very niche and focused on specific sub sector like retro fitters, but he wants to tackle this wider problem and get 10 million people into green jobs over the next 10 years. So I think he's really going all in on this and wants to make it the go to platform. I think a lot of businesses do get it wrong when it comes to inclusion, I think where they go wrong, as they make big assumptions, they may have read something in a newspaper or overheard a conversation. And anecdotally, they think they know their target audience. But they don't. I think what Matt has done really well is actually he's got the relevant experience in this field, first and foremost, and he knows the pitfalls to look out for. But what he really understands is that he needs to have this really deep understanding of his target audience. In the case of young people, I think one of the biggest things that I've learned from working in the Prince's Trust is, one thing that they really encourages Seeing is believing. They have this wonderful programme and initiative whereby they get young people who've been through their programmes that have made a massive difference to their own personal lives. And now they're working for the Prince's Trust to go out into their local communities, and spread the word. Why This Works is because people can relate to these people and understand their situation, and understand how they potentially turn their lives around as well. So I think that if this Porter was successful in terms of getting people into green jobs, what green lights could do is actually implement a Champions initiative whereby these people who've upskilled, got into a well paid green job and making that impact on their own lives. And now going back out and selling this opportunity to other people. Yeah,

Unknown: 34:15

ultimately, it's the whole community that is responsible for making these changes, both in terms of giving opportunities to other people in the community and solving this bigger problem of climate change that, you know, we all have some responsibility for. And so I love the idea of people paying it forward. So if they've benefited from Greenworks and getting that green job that has helped them in their lives, then allowing other people and and making other people aware of that opportunity, I think is such an important thing to do. So of course, in order to make all this happen, like many founders, Matt needed to go on a fundraising journey to allow his desired impact to come to fruition. So let's hear a little bit more about Matt. It's a fundraising journey. Yeah, fundraising journey. And I should say that, you know, fundraising has been something that I've had to learn from from a standing start. And I'm so blessed to have both supporters, but also co founder that is much more of the venture capital space than I am. What should funders look out for? I think the starting point is really understanding. What is it that you need? What are you raising capital for? How do you want to kind of deploy it? And what is your strategy therefore? So do you want angel investment? Do you want institutional investment? Once you've figured that out? The next level down is okay, what is the quantum that you're looking for? And therefore, how much do you need to have by way of hefty investment case evidence in order to be able to move things forward? And of course, the earlier your startup, the more you can rely on, founder background, early traction, storytelling, and you know, any other kind of less visible things. And as the last kind of couple of years have shown, you know, the latter stages of startup life, you're just assuming another set of kind of challenges when it comes to funding. So you need to provide more evidence, more rigour more numbers. So the first is, yeah, what's your strategy? What are you after? And how are you going to marry up a solid investment case to move that forward? I think the next bit down is ensuring that you are constantly learning and adopting feedback. So in our experience, we, you know, we came out to kind of fundraise in the autumn. And we were kind of concluding our first round in in early kind of winter. But of course, that that journey can be so zigzagged for any fun founder, and we were no different in that respect. It's not that you're working in a controlled environment, you are trying to build a business from a set of ideas on a page in a particular context. And we are in a context of high interest rates, inflation, global geopolitical instability, so these things do affect the market context. But in our experience, we were lucky to kind of have, you know, our first term sheet and had our precede round, led and concluded by mangrove Capital Partners and ad ventures in early spring. And, you know, if I try and chart some kind of factors involved in that, that sort of generalizable, I think they would take me back to ensuring that you have conviction in what you're doing. And you've, you are really clear on why you are the team that can solve for this. And then also having that depth of data room that even if you don't have all the evidence, and you don't have all of the answers, you have really decent hypotheses that you can take forward. And it shows that you have thought about things that might be around corners, that you never even kind of knew, you're never gonna renew that. So those would be my main kind of points that connect to the experience that we had around fundraising. And it's a it's a tricky thing, and a fund that fundraising is not a laughing matter. But at the same time, you are asking other people to put their or even other people's money behind you and sort of risk their capital. And also, although venture capital is a risky asset class, it, you should still be really clear that there is a massive exchange of trust, and that you have to do good by that funding, and that you have to be really clear sighted and focused on how to execute. And so I would say that in those early stages, the most important question that investors will be asking is, is this thing a genuine problem? Does the world really need this solution? And is this the team who can do it? And so for us, so far that has been that has been the experience. And it's not to say that, you know, we are in any way you absent minded about that, or even kind of, you know, relaxed, you need to kind of continue to focus on execution and doing good and building up towards your future and to keep justifying any any further investment rounds.

Ollie Collard: 39:26

Thank you for that, Matt. And that needs really nicely on to my next question, because you talked about Richard's background and kind of VC. And so I'm really interested in your kind of co founder dynamics, how do you split the responsibilities between your varying roles? And how do you resolve conflict if it does arise? Yeah.

Unknown: 39:48

It's a really good question. And it's singularly the most important relationship in my life after my marriage. So bit of Richard's background Incredible Human Being background initially as a teacher, and then kind of Educational Technology Specialist, also software engineer through training as well. And with a degree from from Oxford, so just kind of polymath, but also deeply steeped in education and technology. So a huge, huge compliment for me. And very technically gifted and skilled, at the same time, very passionate about people and culture. And I think super clear sighted on what it takes to build high performing teams. Or as I would say, I'm a little bit more like visionary in sort of strategic and laissez faire when it comes to those kind of, you know, people and culture building aspects. So we are not through any kind of deep design incredible compliments for each other both in terms of skills, and sentiment, I think in terms of conflict, the thing that we realise that I'm very early on in that massively resonates is a Paul Graham quote, and Paul Graham, kind of early days of Y Combinator, the number one killer of certainly early stage startup is not is not homicide, it's not the threat of competitors, it's, it's suicide as in people falling out, or the company, you know, running out of cash because of, you know, reckless spending and everything else. And so, we're just surprised at the fact that like, in the early days of the company, the most important kind of thing is to get your own psychology, right, and then to get the dynamics between the founders, right, and then to really double down on the things, the fundamentals that will make the biggest difference. So what are the things that we're doing? And what are the things that we're not doing that we should be doing. And in terms of the division, responsibility falls relatively naturally across our spikes and past experiences. So for me, it's broader business strategy and governance and commercial. So I hope forever, I can remain in the kind of VP sales seat. And for Richard, it's product, it's technology, we equally split the responsibility around investment and investors at varying points. And we equally think about team development and recruitment. And so I think we've been incredibly blessed in having a team that is, you know, as diverse as they come and so focused on on execution, and just so driven and so passionate, and again, multitalented. And that that again, alongside the speaking to candidates and speaking to learners is such a grounding experience when you find people that want to work in a company that you kind of dreamed up. It's, it's, it's remarkable and and every day I wake up, that is one of my biggest motivators is thinking. Yeah, there are there are people out there that want to do this as much as I can. So the storytelling continues. Thank

Ollie Collard: 43:01

you for that maps sounds like you're very well matched in terms of those complementary skills in terms of running the business. How are you aligned in terms of life outside of the business, and we

Unknown: 43:12

could not be more divergent on that journey. And I think, again, that's such a such an amazing blessing. I'm sure there is a lot of research looking at diversity in all of its forms and what that means in terms of how people relate to working together and the challenge that they have to work on. And put simply, I think, if I had another another me working with me, although on some levels will be like, Oh, this is really straightforward. Me thinks in the same way that I do. But me also can only do the things that I can do so that's not particularly helpful. Similarly, me thinking the way that I do is not useful either because me thinking as I do means groupthink means screwing up means actually taking two steps back every time you take a step forward. And if you look at some really interesting unpacking of this, you know, the case of Enron, where global board consisted mostly of former McKinsey people, and they all had this kind of symptom where they were getting on perfectly well. But actually, they were asking the wrong questions of each other. And so I think with us, I'd divergence on how we think about certain things, but our alignment on values and expectations are what we want and deep respect for each other is the thing that keeps us rooted and allows us to, when necessary, disagree and keep moving forward. And we're completely of the view that the biggest harm around decision making that can happen is indecision. So Indecision is the enemy, make a fast decision. If the decision is reversible, it's okay. You can walk back through the door and course correct. If it's irreversible, make sure you really own the decision. and actually most decisions that we're making right now they are, they are fuzzy. There is not loads of information sometimes around what you're basing judgments and decisions on. But it's good to be making them fast. But they can, you can also course correct. And I think we are building an environment with psychological safety. So allow actually members of the team to take ownership of particular aspects of their own worlds, so as to be able to keep us moving forward, because we're not going to be able to deliver what we want to deliver if we just keep doing it all ourselves forever. And that's been a big kind of shift in the founding experience, where you start with an idea on your kitchen table. And then over time, as more people sort of join the team, you shift from being the person doing everything, to person doing some things and then supporting other people doing those things. So eventually, being the person that's kind of out there and doing that, you know, bending the external world as well to your mission, and still championing your people and coming back and consulting and advising, but actually ensuring that they can take ownership of the company and they care about the mission as much as you do.

Ollie Collard: 46:11

That talking of that door being fully open and walking backwards, and course correcting. Can you tell me about one of your favourite failures so far? And what was the lesson that you took from it? Oh, gosh.

Unknown: 46:25

It's, it's a really difficult question. Because sometimes it's, it's tough, it's hard to, to keep to keep on top of just how much it's happening in any given time. I think similarly, it's, it's also hard to carve out the space for that deep reflection. And I try and do that try and do journaling, have some coaching, I talk to people who are coming in my kind of immediate circle. I would say like one that really springs to mind that I kind of still haven't forgotten is actually in the early days doing some discovery calls, which sort of would be the client, you know, businesses. And actually, the the fundamental mistake I made was just being too strong on what I thought our value proposition was, as opposed to spending more time in discovery, because actually, the kind of request for product market fit is one about well, the general sort of principle of what we're doing all makes sense, it all stacks up intellectually, it's graspable, it's relatively straightforward to explain. But the bit when you actually talk to businesses, and you kind of hear what their actual problem and pain is, and then you try and come up well, how about this, spend a bit more time in the in the pensive phase, I think is my is my lesson sort of staying a bit more agile, a bit more open on that discovery of well, actually might not be exactly the thing that you thought it was, and spend a bit of time to find the thing that unlocked something for the people that will ultimately be your customers.

Ollie Collard: 48:11

And he talks about it there about everything being quite a lot of times and spending lots of plates, and building a business can be all consuming. So I'm interested to know, what's one sacrifice that you've may have made? either consciously or subconsciously?

Unknown: 48:29

Great question. It is everything everywhere all at once. I think one sacrifice, possibly kind of, well, yeah, subconscious or at least inevitable is the impact on on sort of sleep patterns. And I think it's compounded for me and having young kids who are pretty sort of unpredictable, but But the other aspect is that, you know, trying to kind of create a bit of a bit of space between working and then listening to something or reading a book and sometimes those things in, you know, set you off in in in a completely different kind of thought pattern and process. So, I'm going imbibing a lot of public affairs and current affairs kind of podcasts in strange hours of the night. And I think so. Yeah, it was shocking to hear that, like my sleep. Hygiene is not as good as it has been, by trying to, like really focus on, you know, having balanced, so ensuring that I can see my family and be present and that, you know, I can exercise and also in particular, you know, ensure that I'm connecting with the team in a way that is is meaningful for them and that we as founders are actually creating that enabling environment as we go. So those will be my main. My, my main point points of experience on that sacrifice.

Ollie Collard: 49:45

I've got a friend four year old so I know what you mean about listening. So yeah, consuming things at strange hours of the morning is familiar to me as well. What's your deepest fear?

Unknown: 50:00

Yeah, great question deepest fear. I honestly, I don't, there are days, which are quite tough, you know, my personal feeling of like, when it's tough is there, you know, I don't feel like I'm getting enough traction, a particular thing that I really wanted to get traction on. So like you're talking to a kind of a business that we really, really want to work with and support on talent. And it's like, yeah, we're just not kind of cutting through by I don't feel fearful of that. And the reason is that it's not, it's not cubistic, I sort of do firmly believe that there will come a time where what we currently think will, will land in people's understanding. And I think it's happening possibly sooner rather than later, because there are more or less ambitious companies out there driving, installation of renewables, domestically or otherwise. And so you can have, in the early stage, at least a kind of a self selecting group of early adopters that are prepared to work with a startup that's just about a year old and is building track record, and so on. Of course, these are not things that are in my conception, I feel like I absolutely know what we're doing. And it takes time to build that up from you know, a cold start, but those are the times where I feel a little bit kind of, I suppose at sea, but then it can come back really quickly. And actually, that's my big thing in life and in, in work and in sales is that yeah, things turn on the head of on a small pivot, you know, it's like, everything changes, fortunes change really quickly.

Ollie Collard: 51:45

And then Tim, as well was quite important. Totally,

Unknown: 51:47

totally. And that, that's back to that point about decision making, which is like, yeah, if you sit forever, prevaricating, what perfect might be, you'll never get there. And you know, my one of my favourite quotes is from Ben Horowitz. And he talks about, there's just no substitute for doing the work. And whatever playbook you think you're executing on whatever founder you think you're emulating, you still have to go about understanding who your consumers are going to be, what your product is going to be how it's going to change their life, and not just in in an abstract sense, but in the here and now in this market for the price that you need them to pay. So there aren't easy answers for doing something that hasn't been done before. And put simply, yeah, you have to do the work. I so firmly agree with what Matt was saying at the end there. And that Ben Horowitz quote about there's no substitute for doing the work. But I think for some people, it can be scary to jump into the work, I think I've experienced this as an entrepreneur, definitely where you kind of feel a bit frozen, you've got that fear of overwhelm the fear of going in the wrong direction, the fear of putting yourself out there, perhaps even the fear of doing the hard work itself. And to me that that leads to the first lesson learned that from me in this section, which is the decision making 101 course that Matt just gave us, which I thought was really helpful. So making decisions with as much info as you already have. But make them quickly like, don't wait until you've got every single piece of information you could ever possibly find. Because while you're going to be waiting forever. And then when you have a team, creating a psychologically safe environment for that team to be able to make good decisions and run quickly with those decisions, which of course, we're seeing in best practice in terms of team team leadership all over the place now that we definitely know how to make these psychologically safe environments for people. Unfortunately, it's still not happening a lot of the time. But that's what we need to do in order to invite the team to make the decisions and move quickly. And then also, he was talking about not getting sucked into groupthink and giving this the Enron example. So making sure that you are actually remaining objective and for yourself and making good decisions and questioning those decisions. But then moving quickly, and I liked this idea that you can cause correct. But what do you think the consequences are of slow, indecisive, poor decision making in an organisation? And what can business owners do to make better decisions?

Ollie Collard: 54:31

Slow decision making essentially is a huge opportunity cost because essentially, you're pondering on all of these things going through your head. And all of that time spent could be invested better in terms of growing the business and making an actual impact and change within it. So I think that the longer you take to make decisions, then it just has that that knock on effect. And I think, you know, sometimes you should definitely sleep on it. I'm not saying you have to make a decision. It's Certainly, particularly with big ones, but there's a great quote by Barack Obama who's basically says, you should get to around 51% certainty or making big decisions, and then actually be at the peace with the fact that you've made that decision on the best information you had at the time. And I'd always encourage business owners to think about what's the worst that can happen. Like if you make a decision, like, what is the consequence of it? Can you actually leave the door open? As Matt says, so I think Matt has got it. Definitely right in terms of this decision making process, and it's probably not come overnight him. But I think from all of experience that he's had in his career today, he's probably learned this along the way.

Unknown: 55:44

I personally think that you can't make a great decision until you start to move as well. I guess this is why we have kind of lean methodologies. This is why with products, we iterate products, because we don't have all the answers immediately. And actually, you're probably not going to get all the answers until you start moving in a particular direction. So it's being active. I think that's such a part of being an entrepreneur of building a business. I mean, it's called business like we need to do business like that's, that's what it is. So, yeah, I definitely think that it's really important. And I love that Barack Obama, quote that you just said, I didn't know that one. But it was making me think it's interesting that a president says that 51% is about the right amount to make a decision, because it's about how much each president gets when they get elected in terms of electoral vote as well.

Ollie Collard: 56:35

Picking up on something you said their back is, well, I really like what you said about business being an iterative process. I think that's so important. I think if business owners are able to test and measure, I always come back to test the measure. If you're testing and measuring what you're doing, then you can make better decisions ultimately.

Unknown: 56:53

Yeah, and it's an ongoing decision making process and isn't it it's like it's very active. So talking about keeping activity up. So something else that I took out of Matt's interview, was this need to make sure that we are in a good place in order to make good decisions. And he talks about sleep. And for me, sleep is the most important thing, I'm terrible without a good night's sleep. And so kind of having sleep hygiene is something that I've worked on a lot and making sure that I am able to sleep well, because the person I am the next day, the entrepreneur I am the next day, he makes a big difference, whether we're asleep or not. And of course, we know it has long term impacts as well. So the things I do in order to get a good night's sleep is, I think the most important thing is, is a phone curfew, which also applies to like working on a laptop or anything else as well. So I have a phone curfew for like 8pm in order to go to bed at 10pm. And for me, if I if that phone curfew doesn't happen, I find that I'm like wired and I'm awake, and I just cannot go to sleep. And then I have to do like nothing stimulating for a couple of hours before I go to bed. So I just watched mindless TV, I tend to watch Grey's Anatomy, because there's so many episodes of that I can just put it on and it like runs into like, yeah, exactly. He never get to the end. So yeah, that's the things that work for me. And I also like to exercise or definitely exercise at some point during the day that helps me to sleep but kind of between finishing work and bedtime as well, because I just find it kind of changed. It changes that energy state for me. But I know I mean, you've got young children, and I'm sure that sleeping is also something that is on your mind. So is sleep something you have to forego? What do you do in terms of your sleep hygiene?

Ollie Collard: 58:52

Yeah, it's a so it's been tricky over the last sort of four years having two young children who were three and four at the moment. So I think they got to the stage now where actually they are they are both sleeping through the night, although our daughter keeps getting up in the night and coming into our bed which is which is fine. But yeah, it does kind of wake you up in the night. So I think we're at a good point now and I think I'm again, prioritising sleep, as you say, and making it one of the key things that I try and maximise in order to have the best productivity that I can. I've been Yeah, practically speaking. And this is talking about the reality of being an entrepreneur is sometimes Yeah, we put the kids down to retake it and alternate nights to put our son and daughter down and then suddenly get back downstairs have dinner, clean up, and it's probably nine half nine and then like you say, you want to have a bit of time where you can actually switch off and you know putting on a good BBC drama watching something called kin recently, which was an Irish gangster drama, or something like vigil. You know something to kind of stimulate you and get you thinking about something completely unrelated to the world of entrepreneurship, and then trying to get into a bed at a reasonable time, but sometimes based on what time the kids go down, it just doesn't happen. So last night, I didn't get into bed till about 10 to 12, which is far too late, which is why we've had a few bloopers this morning. If

Unknown: 1:00:17

people could hear what is behind the scenes today? Yeah, I totally understand because I mean, many of the entrepreneurs I work with, they'll give me every excuse under the sun, why they can't sleep and and they've completely valid excuses as well, you know, and as entrepreneurs, there are going to be times when we're when we need to go to an evening event, and that's going to be late, or when we're travelling, and our sleep is all over the place. I think, for me, the important thing is to kind of have a steady baseline and recognise that you are going to be out of that sometimes. And that, yeah, there's gonna be times when it suddenly gets really busy. And perhaps there's a really tight deadline that is on a top top priority for you and your business. And of course, some businesses are nighttime businesses, too. And so I'm sure there's people, you know, I probably wouldn't be a very good fit for like a nightclub business or something like that. But But yeah, of course, the business is don't just stop at 5pm, we know that being an entrepreneur is not just a nine to five thing, but actually being able to like sleep, and there's so much data. And if people haven't read the Matthew Walker book, why we sleep, I think that that's a really compelling book to read, to give us all the reasons why we need to sleep and why our brains are going to function so much better. And we're going to just feel better, when we actually do look after our sleep.

Ollie Collard: 1:01:43

And quite rightly, what you say that back is very true. So entrepreneurs, you know, their demands are so kind of up and down and like that typical roller coaster, but I think we've anything, it's trying to build in as much consistency as you can, and trying to embed a routine when it allows, but then also when you're not sticking to it because you can't not beating yourself up about it.

Unknown: 1:02:06

Yeah, I was gonna say that when when you were saying about like, I didn't go to bed till midnight last night, I definitely have times when I'm like, why am I not going to sleep or like when it's late, and I've really had to talk give myself that talking to about, it's okay, like, You're gonna be fine, like, you'll still survive. It's not the end of the world. Because if you get stressed about it, of course, that's going to make it even worse. Now, going back to talking about green Futures, a green future is one that we all know is important. But not everyone is doing as much as Matt. So should we go back and see, what does he think a realistic aspiration is for Greenworks? It's such a great grounding question, because so much of the day to day is like fixing the immediate sort of challenge before you and put simply I optimistic but realistic that the world is heading in a direction that is inexorably going to happen. And it's true. And the only real challenge is, how it happens and to whom it happens and whether there is more or less chaos in that in that transition. So when it comes to Greenworks, what I want Greenworks to become in 10 years time or sooner is synonymous with green work, I want Greenworks to be the place that every single person be that a school leaver or a career changer who wants to get into into these spaces. There's, I know where I'm heading to get my next green job. And in that context, also understands what a green job is and how to qualify them. And you know, it's consuming our education content as a way of getting upskill for that sooner rather than later. The next best alternative. And also then we have amazing businesses really, really small, your local trades person from the pub or even you know, really big businesses, all of whom are grappling with the challenge of a lifetime for them as professionals but for them as businesses to that is in every aspect is essential both in respect to their business models, but also in the context of the role they play in the world. So I want us to be the trusted partner of business and to be synonymous with green work for candidates that want good, well paid, purposeful green jobs. And to get there we clearly need to continue to hold the balance between the two sides of that or that talent marketplace. Cop

Ollie Collard: 1:04:34

28 is taking place over in Dubai at the moment. What's the importance of this and given the fact that UK is a legally binding Net Zero target by 2050? Are the government doing enough?

Unknown: 1:04:47

I'll start with a second question first. Are they doing enough? My short answer to that is no. Beyond the leadership were actually was staked in the ground in 2019. By Theresa May. Were And we had one, we were one of the first countries to legislate for Net Zero out of most of the developed world. And and then we therefore we had global leadership, and that continued into cop 26. in Glasgow, in terms of 28, I can't profess to be close to the action, I think what's really important about those exchanges is they're the countries that are most likely to be disproportionately negatively affected by climate change, have a loud and significant voice and a seat at the table. And so for me, that multi-lateralism around involving those nations is possibly the most important kind of feature of the cops, as well as, of course, bigger and more developed nations advanced nations, showing that leadership that requires them to take the plunge first. And so this idea that, you know, if we contribute only 1.1% of global emissions, we should slow things down is clearly nonsense. It's, it's a not representative of any contribution that we might have made over the past 200 years in terms of environmental degradation, but also how important we are in the context of that global geopolitical positioning, as well as the more advanced technological development for climate tech or, you know, deep tech or whatever it might be carbon sequestration, concrete, manufacturing, algae farms, all those things are going to come from Britain, the US, China, really advanced nations that properly can lend investment heft to solving this problem at the heart.

Ollie Collard: 1:06:43

But one of the key parts are founded and grounded is asking our featured founders to distil down just one piece of advice that they would pass on to somebody either running an early stage business or thinking of starting one. So what would your one piece of advice be?

Unknown: 1:07:00

This one's really easy, because I give it to myself when I'm feeling impatient, or I'm struggling, and it's just put one foot ahead of the other make this day better than yesterday, and the next day better than than the day before. So it might happen fitfully, and slowly as opposed to drastically and energetically and transformative ly as much as you'd like that to happen. But I think try and incrementally and iteratively improve on a how you are and how you're being but also what you're working on and moving things forward. And so I think through the conglomerate on those small fitful steps, you can you can move things forward in a way that you can't even imagine when you're sat there struggling,

Ollie Collard: 1:07:46

where can people find out more about Greenworks, and you personally online,

Unknown: 1:07:51

the starting point is our website. And in particular, if you want the green job, that is the place to go, or if you want to partner with us, similarly, drop us a line through that. We have presence on all the main social channels, so LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or so. So give us a follow as well. Matt,

Ollie Collard: 1:08:10

thank you so much for your time, wisdom and insights and coming all the way to Bristol for this interview. Much appreciated.

Unknown: 1:08:17

Thanks so much, really, and hope everyone enjoyed the episode. from business owners, to governments, everyone is grappling with the environmental crisis. And even the businesses that have been sheltered from it in the past of feeling the higher cost of living, highlighting the need for energy sovereignty. Not all businesses are focused on climate solutions. However, all businesses are feeling the pinch. And they can do things to help by taking small steps. And I think this is the big lesson I took away from this part of the interview. And like I said, at the beginning, I feel like this is a theme that was coming out throughout the interview. Small Steps always pay off, they keep us moving forward. And I had to learn this lesson because I have a chronic illness. And I'm neurodivergent as well, I'm autistic, and I've had times when I've had like burnouts with that. And I would have these times when I'd be completely burnt out. And I was then beating myself up because I couldn't move forward. And these are the times when the small steps have been particularly important. You know, I can't do 100% But I can do maybe one or two things and realising that, you know, when things are going slower, whether that be because of something like that, or whether it's other external factors, you can still keep things moving forward. And I feel like this is really where success is made in terms of working towards your goal. In the past, I was always so focused on trying to do the big things that make the big impact and ultimately inevitably did I always happen. And then you'd beat yourself up. And so I think having a mindset shift, which is quite tricky for founders, because I think as founders, we also want the big things to happen. We're ambitious, we've got a bit of impatience about us as well, perhaps because and that's what drives us. But we need to make this shift. That is, the small things are actually good. These small steps are what keep you moving forward consistently. Have you found yourself in those situations where you felt pressured to make the big splashy moves, but you end up burning out and not accomplishing what you set out to do? Anyway?

Ollie Collard: 1:10:39

100% I've definitely been guilty of that, Becky. And I think what you said there about being impatient, I think that's probably a big trait of a lot of entrepreneurs, because everything's moving so quickly. So you're like, right, I just want to get there, I want to make that happen. And what you realise over time, is that everything takes longer than you think, in life in business, full stop. So I think if you're making those smaller steps towards working towards a bigger goal, that's where the real magic happens. And the issue is that you don't often see that progress. So day by day, you don't see you working towards that end goal. But if you actually reflect back on the last couple of years of what you've achieved, then you will actually realise that it's all about taking those small steps in order to hit that that big, hairy, audacious goal.

Unknown: 1:11:34

I think we underestimate how much we're doing. So like small steps feels so tiny. But if you look at the day in the life of an entrepreneur, it's so much stuff with there's like so much activity going on. And so I think there's also this perception issue as well, where it's like, I'm so used to doing a million things. If I just do three or four things, then it feels like nothing. And I also was thinking, as you were talking that this links back to what we were saying about decision making and making good decisions. If you're really focused on like, how do we just do the big, big thing and work really fast and, and kind of not respect the decisions and not take the time, and then not take those small but regular steps towards it? Then we're actually again, running around like a headless chicken, chicken, and we're not going to hit our goals anyway. So So I think there's something interesting here as well, that we're talking about, yes, you need to move quickly with the decisions. And sure you need to move effectively. But that's not the same thing as being impatient and kind of rushing in a mindless fashion. Yeah,

Ollie Collard: 1:12:43

I mean, that's a really important point. And the thing that you say, decision makings, vitally important, and also prioritisation, and making sure that you're focusing on the right things where you can have the most impact. And, Becky, thank you for being so open about your health conditions as well, and how that's impacted your life as an entrepreneur. I'm just interested to know, when did you find out your diagnosis for that? Yeah, what difference I actually made,

Unknown: 1:13:07

actually got the so the chronic illness I have, I first started getting symptoms of that when I was at university, and then spent 17 years being undiagnosed, before finally getting a diagnosis. And I had some support during that time. So but that diagnosis happened during my first business. So yeah, it was already three years. And I think and, and that was, so that struggle with that was Yeah, and so this is an autoimmune condition, which really affects my joints, gives me a lot of fatigue, and, but it's also very stressed triggered. And so of course, I kind of have noticed now, I get far less symptoms than I did a few years ago. So the more mindset work I've done, the more physically I've been better. I didn't get the autism diagnosis until this year. And it was something that I hadn't really thought about until about a year prior to getting the diagnosis. And funnily enough, it was my business experiences that led me to looking into a diagnosis because I was noticing a lot of patterns when it came to certain people I'd been working with and certain challenging situations I got myself into and then these burnouts that I just described, and I've now found out that for women in particular, and this is often the symptoms that you are symptoms not even seeing but you know, like the signs that you may be neurodivergent less than traditional signs, because you are socialised to cover those things up, and women are more likely to do that than men. But actually, it's these kinds of consistent burnouts and even When you've dealt with some of the challenges, you kind of ended up going back into them. So, yeah, I didn't get that diagnosis until April this year, and it has been life changing to have that diagnosis. I've just found myself in a, in a situation where the label of autism doesn't really mean that much to me, although it's important to it to a lot of people. But the thing that shifted most for me was just recognising that I can just be myself now. And I say it was it was exactly that, like the label. The label I have now is like Becky, in a way that I think before, I always felt like a little bit off and a little bit out of place. And I didn't really know why. And I've just relaxed into, like who I am. And, yeah, it's taken a long time to get there, but been really life changing to get that diagnosis. And yeah, it was a was a struggle to, to be happy being in those situations, but not not even knowing that there was anything going on, but having some challenges that were associated with it over and over again. Well,

Ollie Collard: 1:16:07

that's wonderful to hear about you. And thank you for sharing that live on there as well. I think it's important to talk about these, these things. And it sounds like it's had a very positive impact in your life lately post. Yeah.

Unknown: 1:16:19

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm really happy to talk about it. Because it's was one of the other good things about getting these kinds of diagnosis is diagnoses. And being open about it is then you realise that you help other people along the way as well. And so and that's been another positive that has come out of it. So should we going back to talking about green jobs, talking about Green Works and wrapping up this episode. So green jobs are such an opportunity for the economy and for individuals who are looking for work. And I remember reading a book, this was, I think, back in 2000 2008 2009, called the clean tech revolution. And it was all about the opportunity of cleantech in terms of the economy in terms of jobs in terms of businesses. And it's not going away like this is only getting bigger, it's only more of an opportunity. It's only more of a need now. So for anyone out there who's thinking are no like, am I even going to be able to get a job like we're hearing all the scare mongering that AI is going to take all our jobs and everything else. But this could be the place to look like this could be your sustainable career path, and you'll be doing something great for the planet as well. So if you're searching for opportunities in this space, and make sure that you, you check out Greenworks or if you're a business who is in this space, and you're looking for skills, you're looking for people then of course, check out Greenworks as well. And before we go Matt wants to know something about you, our audience. So listen to his question, and then head over to our socials to answer it. Yeah, my question is, how green is your job? Answer A, if you directly work in a green job, like some of the ones I've described. So you could be an electrician working on solar panels or charge points on some B if you don't work in a green job, but you're pretty curious. And you know, what I've talked about makes a tonne of sense. And you would consider doing a real job at some point. And if you are, drop us a line and Greenworks and see what's the green job?

Ollie Collard: 1:18:31

Fantastic. Well get some answers to you on socials.

Unknown: 1:18:35

So that was Matt's question from Greenworks. But Shall we go back and check out what you're saying about hexes? Question from last week? So Ali, can you remind us what was the question? And what are people saying?

Ollie Collard: 1:18:48

It was a really interesting question that was posed by the founders of hexa. So they wanted to know, where would you go when looking for finance for your business. So the options they gave were your traditional bank, or a trusted advisor like an accountant. So that's option one. Option two was online search or doing a bit of googling or searching on YouTube or Tik Tok, or wherever you do your searching these days. And thirdly, was asked your network so somebody that you trust to know in your network. And lastly, you're completely stumped and just don't know where to turn. So the results were really split. And I think this emphasises the whole issue with looking for finance. People, I think, just don't know, particularly if you're doing it for the first time. So 19% would go to your bank or trusted advisor 13% would look online and searching 38% would ask their networks and that's the biggest response. And that's followed by 31% of you just don't know where to turn. So I would definitely recommend reaching out to hexar if you fall into that last category

Unknown: 1:20:01

Yeah, he's actually surprised me that that's the result there. And it's great that we've got hexar out there to help everybody out. So, Ali, tell us about our next guest.

Ollie Collard: 1:20:13

Our next guest is really interesting. And he's an entrepreneur who's taken a personal problem. And that's turned into a massive business. So kind of complete opposite from today's guests. So, Andy Welsh is the founder of a business called seriously low carb, this business is now addressing some massive, massive issues like Matt, in the form of addressing diabetes, epilepsy, the obesity crisis. So really interesting how a personal problem is turned into a massive business.

Unknown: 1:20:46

I'm excited to hear that interview. So thank you everyone for listening today. And if you like what you've heard, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts. And don't forget there's a big selection of previous episodes just search founded and grounded on your favourite podcast player. 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.