Sharesy - Growing communities one local authority at a time

The innovator turning forgotten spaces into thriving community hubs.

Meet Felix Atkin, founder of tech startup Sharsey - the Airbnb for community spaces.

What stemmed from a personal problem of trying to book a local venue for his kids' birthday party has blossomed into a business that has already generated over £1million in bookings.

Felix delves deep into his journey, unveils the strategic steps behind Sharesy's considered growth, and shares invaluable insights on coping with the demands of startup leadership.

Key Takeaways

- Self-Care Is Paramount. Amidst the drive for success, remember that personal well-being is crucial for sustaining long-term ambition.

- Resilience in Fundraising. Embrace rejections as learning opportunities. Maintain transparency with your investors and lean on your support network during challenging times.

- Learn the secret of how to context switch  between high-level strategic planning and the nitty-gritty of day-to-day operations in your business
- How to win at founder-led sales

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

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Oh Life is real. And when you're talking to investors and when you're talking to members of your team and to clients, you know, you don't have to sugarcoat it, you can just be very honest about where things are. 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, everyone, I'm Dr. Becky sage. I'm co host of founded and grinded and I'm here today with Ali Ali, how are things going this week? You're very

Ollie Collard: 1:17

well, thank you. We took a couple of days off to go and celebrate my son's birthday over in Wales, which is great. And then I was back to it yesterday in London having a couple of interviews. So yep. What seems busy and yeah, working on exciting things at the same time. So we're very well, how are you?

Unknown: 1:36

Yes, very similar in the sense of, I've just working on so many fun, exciting projects right now, building kind of my own business where I have this new CEO role, as well as working with lots of health and wellness businesses as part of the Ford programme that I'm working on. And I just get a meeting like new founders every single day doing incredibly exciting, impactful things. And it's brilliant. And there's lots of new opportunities coming my way at the moment as well. And at the same time, we were just discussing only this kind of, we have to try and get the balance, right, where I feel like everything I'm doing is brilliant. And I'm essentially living the working life that I would dream of that this is exactly where I want to be. And at the same time, I certainly feel like I need to build a little bit more space into my calendar at the moment, because I'm definitely kind of running from one thing to the next. And it's, it's fine right now. But it's almost hitting that point where you stop appreciating and enjoying all the good stuff that's going on. And you can't actually give good time and good focus to the things that you're doing. So I'm just mindful of that. And over the next couple of weeks, I think I'm going to be really focusing on how I make sure I create that space 100%.

Ollie Collard: 2:56

So after this podcast, Becky, add some of that time into your calendar, and then you can make it happen.

Unknown: 3:02

Yeah, after this podcast, I've got a meeting about remortgaging so maybe once those meetings are done as well, I'll have a little bit more space and personal life admin do. So could you reveal to us who this week's entrepreneur is,

Ollie Collard: 3:17

by caught up with a totally awesome founder named Felix. His business is called Scherzi, and it's Airbnb community

Unknown: 3:26

spaces. Yeah. And I loved listening to this interview, I was reflecting on the fact that so many of the entrepreneurs that we have spoken to on the podcast seemed very considered about their approach to entrepreneurship, they seem to have a good kind of meta view or good perspective on what they're building and how they're building it. And of course, in hindsight, I think all of us are able to do that a little bit more than we can when we're actually in something. But this was definitely a theme that I felt came through as we were talking to Felix so I'm really keen for the listeners to listen in. And just to hear kind of how considered Felix has been every step of the way, as he's been building shares the

Ollie Collard: 4:13

Felix Good afternoon. How are you doing this afternoon?

Unknown: 4:15

I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me on. Well, it's

Ollie Collard: 4:17

an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. shozy is an air b&b for community spaces. Can you send me back to March 2020? And tell me what inspired you to launch as a

Unknown: 4:30

CIO, I had just left a previous startup, I was thinking about what to do next. And my wife had deputy head teacher in state primary schools. I've got primary aged kids, and I was thinking about what I could do to try and help local schools earn a few extra pounds, and that's where the idea of shares he came along. Before it was even called Jersey. It was really designed to be a social enterprise to try and help local schools in the area in our local area and abundant? And

Ollie Collard: 5:01

how did you go from that initial seed of an idea to turning it into a business?

Unknown: 5:05

What I very quickly realised was that this was an opportunity at scale, that there are a lot of community venues that are sitting underutilised all over the country, and even in other countries. So I set out to explore that to try and understand actually, where are these venues who's using them today. And I'd experienced that a bit trying to book a local church hall for a kid's party. And it's difficult, you end up having lots of phone calls back and forth. They have to email you with terms and conditions. It's just a difficult process. And I thought, through tech, we can make this really easy. The

Ollie Collard: 5:42

business was launched just before the pandemic then so I'm interested in though, how did you have to adapt your model due to COVID.

Unknown: 5:51

It was a strange time to be starting an events business. But actually, that gave us the room to think about actually what we were building. And to start to think about the customers that we're going to be serving to without actually having the pressure from day one to be generating revenue. So at the beginning, it was really just trying to understand what was the problem? What's the problem that we're trying to solve here? And what is the simplest solution that we can create. So in that summer of 2020, I was really trying to do two things. First of all, I didn't have any money to be able to fund this business. So I went out and I raised 150,000 pounds of seis funding. And I can tell you about that journey as well. But it was trying to get to an MVP, a minimum viable product, what is the simplest product that we can create? That just proves that as demand. So with a small team of advisors at the beginning, who were working with me for nothing, just to see if we could try and create something, get it going, I created a very simple booking platform where you could see a space with with a few local schools with live availability. And as soon as locked down, one lifted, which was around September 2020, we started taking bookings and there was no marketing, there was no fanfare, it obviously resonated with people. And we got really positive feedback from that. Before those events could take place. We got locked down again, for locked down, too. So having proved that there was demand, the schools wanted it. We actually discovered then that it wasn't just about schools. For us. This was about all sorts of community venues, local community centres about places of worship. We knew that they wanted this. How are we then going to scale this up? So I went straight back out. And I fundraised. This time I went out with a boulder fundraising ambition, I went out to try and raise half a million quid. And I gave myself the target of trying to do that in four weeks, which, after three and a half weeks, I had earned absolutely nothing, in the final few days, got the full half million pounds. So that was just before Christmas 2020. And in the following couple of weeks in January 2021, raised another 250k. So we ended up with around 750,000 pounds. And that was the moment where I was able to think right, we've now got some money in the bank, I can start to build a team, start to build up this platform, and think about how we're going to scale this thing. And from that point, it was working towards the end of lockdown to, to really then go out and try and launch.

Ollie Collard: 8:44

Amazing. I'm gonna ask you some questions later about fundraising tips, because, yeah, typically it can take anywhere from sort of six to nine months. And obviously you've done that in quick succession in very short time periods, which is incredibly impressive. Felix, I'm interested to know about that initial validation then. So you have the validation from the schools. You have the MVP in place, then you talked about getting different target audiences on board with the system. So talking about places of worship, community spaces, did they all operate the same? Or what did they have different nuances between those different venues, all

Unknown: 9:22

incredibly different. And we were learning all the time. So we really had no idea how they were operating. But at the beginning, I had a principle that I was working towards, which is that every community venue probably had a few 100 people associated with it. They're either members of a congregation or their parents of the kids at that school. Those people know that venue. So that is an immediate audience that you can then talk to to say support your local venue. And you can reach them through word of mouth or through venue lead marketing. So the principle was we're going to give the venue some materials to be able to give out to that local Audience, they're going to then be able to see that bucket really easily. And that word from day one. And in fact, what then happens is that you realise that that network grows organically. So suddenly, within quite a small area, you've now got an active community of people looking for different venues. But of course, from the venue point of view, they were all very, very different again. So dealing with a school, you're talking to a head teacher, or a school business manager, if you're dealing with a church or a community centre, they might be a volunteer, or you're talking to the vicar, all of these people are really busy. And at that point, we hadn't proven a thing. So really, it was about trying to tell them this idea, we've got this idea where we're going to bring people together on a platform, we're going to make it super easy for them to book your spaces, you're going to be in control of everything. We've got really friendly terms around this. So we're going to help you generate a sustainable income. And those first few venues that came on the platform, and now some of our most successful, they've stayed with us, they've become amazing advocates that have been brought in other venues onto the platform as well.

Ollie Collard: 11:09

Yeah. And I can see why because you're removing that friction, from their perspective in terms of the time and effort it takes to rent out their space, but also from their customer's perspective in terms of making it easy, and frictionless to book the, the actual venue. So I really like the model. In terms of validation, then so you start you started out with the schools. And you were saying specifically in North London, when did you scale it to wide areas and different venues.

Unknown: 11:43

So we've we follow the principle of what we call a node saturation. If you're in a local area, and you're looking for a venue, it's no use just having one option, because it's either suitable for you or it's not. That's not the marketplace. So what we wanted to do was to create lots of choice in that local area. With we we what we call a node is a local authority. So we started off in Barnet. Within Barnet, we wanted to have 20 or 30 different venues that you could choose from. And we specialise in community venues. So they all needed to be of a certain, you know, a certain type of venue of a certain price point, they don't feel corporate. And there's also a very nice story that we're creating around your booking local, it's an affordable space, but you're also putting your money back into your local community. And that really resonated. So having created that node, we were then able to lift and shift that model to adjacent local authorities. So if you're in Barnet, and you're looking for a space, well, actually, if you can't find something in Barnet, it's only another five minute drive, and you can be in Harringay, you know, so we can then start to expand out. And that's why we've built out these pockets of of, you know, dense local areas with lots of different venue choice in there, that has proven really effective for us.

Ollie Collard: 13:04

And some of these venues are sometimes, you know, not very commercial in terms of their thinking. So, and you mentioned obviously having friendly terms there. So what was your What was your pricing model to both the venues and to the end consumer.

Unknown: 13:21

So, having had the insight from my wife about what it's like to be in a school, we knew how difficult it was, you know, to think about the commercial aspects of working with a school or with a with a community venue. So we set out from the beginning to have really, really friendly terms, no upfront costs, no fixed monthly fees, no contract locking, and straightaway that made us different from other players in the market. And then we operate on a success basis, which means that if we take a booking for you, we then earn a commission. And that worked very well. So actually, we found that when we were talking to schools, they were able to go and talk to the school governors and say, well, actually, this is great. We don't have to commit long term, we just see how we go. And the result of that is that we've built up amazing trust with them. When it goes well. They don't leave so we have very very little churn. We've got really strong relationships with our venues, they really trust what we're doing. And they've seen it in action. So they can see that we're bringing them bookings. So they now see us more like an extension of their team. I've now sat in lots and lots of Board of Governors meetings, lots of PCC meetings, which are church effectively church Governor meetings, where I'm able to talk about what we're going to do and also how we've taken away the risk of getting started. So

Ollie Collard: 14:47

as a fairly founder, he's very passionate about ethical and social causes. How do you ensure these values are embedded within shares his business model? We

Unknown: 14:56

are an impact business. We are A good for profit business. So it's it's really interesting. We are very mission led. And that's a big part of our hiring process. It's a big part of the way that we talk to our venues and the way that we talk to our Booker's. So our Y is really, really important. It's a common thread through everything that we do. I think, actually a lot, one of the big reasons why many of our investors have Baptists is because of that, it's because we're really strong about why we're doing what we're doing. So that is reflected in our business model, that's reflected in the way that we deal with our venues, we try and be very open and honest and transparent. That even reflects on the way that we work within the business as well. So I always try and make sure with my team that I'm really transparent with data. That's actually something a piece of advice I will give to other founders as well is, don't be fearful of sharing your numbers with your team, you know, be very open about your revenue targets, be very open about how you're performing. If you're doing well share that, but if you're doing badly, share that as well. Because actually, it's all about creating that understanding of where you're at, and what needs to change. So creating that sense of trust, I think, has really been been very positive for us. Felix, you've

Ollie Collard: 16:24

raised just a little over 2 million pounds. So been very successful with your fundraising journey? Can you talk to me about the young glossy side of fundraising? And what should founders really be looking out for?

Unknown: 16:37

So we've raised Yeah, we've raised from angel investors, not from VCs, it's a very different way of fundraising. We've now got 43 individuals that back shares he, we've had three rounds, and we've had around 30% of our investor base follow on in each round, which has been very positive. So we've had that continued support. It is hard fundraising, as every founder will know. And there is no shortcut to it, actually. So I come from a business development background, I'm used to hearing that you have to go out and put yourself out there, make an ask, and you'll get you're going to get knocked back by a number of different investors. And there's nothing to fear with that. Because when you speak to an investor, they may they may have their own investment thesis, they may have a particular group that they like to back or a particular vertical that they like to back, there may be something that particularly resonates or doesn't resonate about your business. And that's okay. That doesn't mean that you're doing a bad job. You're going to speak to a lot of people, and some will say yes, and some will say no. So going into it, and knowing that is a great way to sort of protect yourself about how you're going to go about speaking to those different investors from the outset. I

Ollie Collard: 18:16

love that advice. And actually, what I like about it is that actually no, should be seen as a good outcome because it's an outcome. First and foremost, you're not chasing a dead ally. So actually, getting used to hearing though, is vitally important in business and in life in general.

Unknown: 18:32

When I go out on a fundraise, I'm looking for the quick nose. Because I want to understand why. Some, you know, some of them will say, well, actually, I don't have any money right now available to be able to invest in new businesses. Others might say, I have already invested in similar businesses, and I want to diversify my portfolio. Others might say, I am specifically looking to back climate tech, no problem. So there is an element of one being resilient, but also to doing your research, knowing who you're going out to speak to. And from that, you'll probably ended up with a shortlist of potential candidates who you think this would be a really wonderful investor for me to have. So you might hold those back. And before you go and talk to them, you go and talk to a lots of other investors to hear their feedback to objection handle with them. They're going to fire a lot of questions at you, they're going to be tough questions. Once you've answered those a few times. When you go to speak to an investor that you really, really want. You'll know your answers you'll be ready to go. You'll be able to give them confidence ultimately, that you're going to look after their money and you're going to give them a return. Love

Ollie Collard: 19:48

that. And in terms of hearing no though, from the investors that you really did want on board and it did fit with their thesis. How does those nose compared to the nose of the bear People who weren't the right fit anyway,

Unknown: 20:02

I've had plenty of knows. And sometimes they can sting. Because you might think, well, actually, this was a really great investment for me. And I really feel like this would, you know, on paper, this seems like the perfect the perfect investment for them. But it's all good learning. And actually, you'll be surprised, because sometimes you might come across an investor who you actually thought didn't appear to be, you know, to fit the profile of the investor you're going after. And in fact, it turns out that they love what you're doing, they really wanted to diversify their portfolio and have a you know, to support a business like yours. There's also the other element of when you're talking to investors, which is, you may not necessarily want to bring an investor in because you want them to be active, that you want them to be giving you lots of advice and being involved. But at the same time, you might want to be able to go to them and ask them advice. So having a good rapport with an investor is actually really important. And what you might find, and I found this, personally, is that I can go to our investors, and I know that they might have specialisms in different areas, I can go and talk to them, and get advice about something. And I don't want to be fearful about that either. I can be open with them. And I can get direct feedback as well. And they can challenge me and that can be really positive, too. I love

Ollie Collard: 21:21

that. And how do you manage all of your investors? I mean, you said 43, in total, I see me do monthly investor updates. But how much of your time does that take? Well,

Unknown: 21:31

actually, I do quarterly investor updates. And I know some that do six monthly or even annual updates, I like to keep our investors updated, I don't feel like I would be able to give enough new information on a monthly basis without it maybe being a burden on my team as well. There are some investors that I might reach out to in that time period, and just to have a chat with. But in my quarterly updates, I'll be telling them about the good and the bad. So here's what I told you that we were going to do, here's how we're actually performing. These are the things that surprised us here are the opportunities and the risks. So we can talk about some of those things and to say, This is what's coming up, there shouldn't be any surprises there. And actually, I get really nice feedback from our investors who enjoy hearing about what we're doing, they like to feel involved. They like to feel involved without feeling, you know, like, like they have to commit their time. So it keeps them close.

Ollie Collard: 22:31

Love that Felix and before you were talking about using data to kind of manage the team and make decisions? How do you manage the social impact that shares he is having, we're

Unknown: 22:43

constantly learning about this. So the mission of the business is all about trying to enable local communities to thrive, it's about helping community venues to generate a sustainable income, to be able to support that local community. So we love to hear about when we have generated money for venue and how they're reinvesting it. We've run surveys where we hear about, you know, whether they have put money back into their facilities in their communities, or whether they're, you know, whether they're actually expanding their availability to be able to host more people, or even just introducing us to more venues in the local area, so that we're expanding our network. All of those things are really powerful stories. And we're now able to tell you know, lots more of those those stories and share them with people, you know, we had over 10,000 sessions in 2023. It's a big number. You know, it's really exciting. And the number of people that that's reaching is just extraordinary. So, you know, that's why we do what we do. Amazing.

Ollie Collard: 23:46

And how many local authorities are you in at present?

Unknown: 23:50

Oh, that's a good question. Actually, I don't know if I could tell you the answer to that one. We are. There are over 30 local authorities across London, and we are now in most of them. We started out in North London, and then moved east, west and Central. In the last six months, we started moving into South London. So we've now got really good coverage within the M 25. And that was our objective in 2023. Again, it's about quality of venues. It's about having the right type of supply to meet the demand. We're now getting lots and lots of site visitors looking for community venues. So we want to try and make sure that we've got something for them. What has been really interesting is that when we first started out with Scherzi, all of our bookings were one off events. And now almost 60% of those are long term repeat bookings, we call those super Booker's. And we have everything from language courses to religious classes. We have taekwondo classes, yoga, you know, it's really very broad. We do of course, to have one off events like kids parties and music, practice and play formance is. But that sustainable revenue that recurring revenue is great for our business. It's also great for the venue's because they get to build that relationship of trust with the people coming in and out of their spaces. So we feel like now, we're starting to build up this network. And as we grow, word of mouth is still one of the biggest ways that we we grow both our venue site and our book aside. The question then, is how are we going to grow beyond London 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 extra 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 hex or finance.co.uk, forward slash contact. There as I mentioned before, we heard that first part of the interview it comes across to me as if Felix is very considered and even those questions he was asking me at the end. Now how are we going to grow beyond London, it's kind of one step at a time very considered. And I like to talk about this thing called that I have named slow entrepreneurship. And I think there's a real value in this idea of slow entrepreneurship. And I call it slow. I guess as a counter to hustle culture, burning the candle at both ends feeling like you have to do everything all at once. And but I think considered is possibly a better word for it. And I certainly don't think that Felix has moved slowly, for example, with shares a, but I think it's about having this because considered approach. And it did strike me early. A lot of the entrepreneurs we're talking to right now started a round about COVID time, it's just the nature of where we are in the calendar now. And this actually forced slowdown with many of the businesses. We heard with Felix, as well as with others that we've interviewed, that this slowed down actually allowed them to be more considered, and to take the time to do certain aspects of the business, which didn't maybe involve doing so much of the kind of getting out there and running around to get things done. But it means perhaps that they're a little stronger in terms of thinking about strategy or thinking about how they go about building the business in a considered way. Do you think that's accurate?

Ollie Collard: 28:31

I love what you call it there, Becky kind of slow considered entrepreneurship, and I think it gives founders are a real step up and advantage over their counterparts. If we look back on 2020, in the pandemic, it's a really kind of unprecedented time in history. And I don't think everyone has fully unpacked what happened during that period in everyone's life. I think ultimately, if you were running or starting a business during that period, it's given you a point to actually take some reflection on your strategy. A lot of your operational plans probably went out the window. So actually focusing on strategy became the default option there. And we've talked about it with other businesses, as you say, looking back at Yup, as an example. But what that period in time enabled people to do is really challenge everything. Business, as usual, went out the window. So it was our opportunity to look at yourself, look at your business very deeply and ask those those really searching questions. Yeah.

Unknown: 29:36

And I think perhaps the counter that some people might say to this is, yeah, sure. That could happen during COVID because everything had stopped. Everyone has stopped like nothing was moving. But if we were to be slow now, then maybe that's not as possible. So I wanted to kind of highlight some of the examples where I think that we can do this considered entrepreneurship and where it's incredibly valuable. for any business right now, and then these are all things that Felix pulled out. So the first thing was focusing on what I like to call the customer pulling the business from you. So this notion that it by interacting with the customer, and this is something that Felix described very well in this interview, is that he said, like, he really dug into what is the problem. And then it was their job to decide kind of what's the simplest solution for this problem. And so I think this is one way we can be really considered, I see many entrepreneurs running to this solution stage very quickly, creating these amazing kind of they can, they can paint the picture of a brilliant product and a brilliant solution. But then you're like, so tell me about the customers interacting with this. Tell me about your audience. And they don't necessarily have the answers for that. So I think this is one way that we can do considered entrepreneurship is is by really getting to know the problem space from the point of view of the customer. And of course, that's multiple stakeholders, potentially as well as in the case of shazzy. And, and then what's the simplest solution to this? Not? It's not like, what's the most creative thing we can dream up? Or the most kind of exciting or sexy buzzword or whatever? Is? What's the simplest solution? Is this something that you see a lot as well, it is,

Ollie Collard: 31:29

and I think Felix has done this incredibly well as having this deep understanding of his customer base, often, when I asked founders to go out and do that customer engagement piece is actually going out and finding a list of 100 of their problems in relation to the actual thing that they're trying to fix. 100 sounds like a lot, right. But what you realise when you actually get 100 problems, is there probably be sort of three core themes within those 100 problems. And essentially, that's where the business is, in its simplest form. And I think Felix has done it very well in really simplifying what his customers are actually looking for. And also acknowledging that it could be multiple use cases as well. So it could be that person who's looking to book a kid's party in their local hole in their area in a very time efficient manner, rather than going back and forth with with venues actually just doing that in one place very easily. Or it could be something completely different. So I think he's got out understood all of his different stakeholders really well, and actually provided a very simple solution to them, and just making making it easy for them. Yeah,

Unknown: 32:42

I love that. Thanks for that tip, Ollie's write down 100 problems. And then essentially, you're trying to look for patterns, perhaps, or trying to group them in a certain way to find those kind of core problems that exist. The other thing that he did, and I actually told this story yesterday, because I was working with the business. And it was an example of a business who had set something up in Bristol, and then thought, well, London's just a slightly bigger Bristol. And actually, something that shares the have done is treat each local authority as its own geographic area. And to do that, again, in a really considered way. So each one how do we then expand from from one to the next, and we're not trying, we're not just, Oh, we've done one. Now we can do the whole of London, that's not necessarily going to work. So I really loved the way that he was very considered about that. And obviously recognising that community is that the crux of this business, and if you want to understand communities, you've kind of got to be focused in on that local level.

Ollie Collard: 33:49

Yeah. And I think founders probably have a tendency to say, Oh, we're following things working here that's expand and scale and get to this high volume, when actually, if you do that too early, and not understanding the initial area you're building out, then you're going to come across multiple problems. So I think, yeah, cracking cracking the nut, proving the model, and also remembering that each area is going to be different and provide its own unique set of challenges. And I think if we rewind back to the episode with Dominic, I think what Dominic and Felix share is that, you know, not doing that copy and paste model, that blueprint is actually looking at getting each area right then how do we how do we replicate that but actually, utilising market information? This one the ground base in those areas?

Unknown: 34:37

Yeah, I thought about Yup, a lot as well when I was listening to this episode, because there's definitely some commonality there in particular, this real respect for the community and the local community. And because that's what both of these again, they're not competing propositions, but they're, they both are really about valuing the community and helping people within the community. So the very, very strong theme combing through there. And then one other way I wanted to talk about the considered entrepreneurship was when Felix was talking about the investors and nurturing this relationship with investors, not only before getting the investment, which, of course, is something I think we've talked about before, it's certainly something I advocate for is you're just building more relationships with people who are potentially partnering with you, when you are talking to investors. But these relationships he was building after they've invested as well. So I thought was great that you asked the specific question about how often he talks to investors. And so he says he sends out the quarterly rather than a monthly report, but also that he does have calls with those investors or, you know, specific people within the his investor group, in order to help move the business forward. So that this was also felt very considered in terms of how he was engaging with those people who have literally invested in the company.

Ollie Collard: 36:03

Yeah, I think Felix does it really well, I mean, he's a wonderful communicator, and relationship builder. And that's obviously reflected in the comparatively small amount of time it's taken him to raise multiple rounds of investment. So I think he does that very well. I think what he also does well, is he's asking the right questions, if you want better answers, you're going to ask better questions. So he's being very specific in terms of the investors that he's going through his doing his research, and asking the right questions. And I think there's a lot to learn from Felix on this front. Yeah,

Unknown: 36:37

absolutely. And so really focusing on the investment front and getting that investment, like you said, getting it quickly. And to me, it was what he described as a perfect example of failing, fast, but doing that intelligently. So only failing fast, if you can do it intelligently. So he's looking for the quick knows as much as he's looking for those who are going to say yes. But also he was very clear about this idea of why did they say no, and sometimes those are going to be things that you disregard, and sometimes they're going to be things that you can learn from and you can build from and more often than not in the nose, you're gonna get probably richer information than you're going to get in the yeses. So that idea of being able to put himself out there, have the conversations hear the no move on from it. It's such a for many people, hearing those nose is still challenging. But but this is what kind of entrepreneur entrepreneurial resilience is really all about, isn't it?

Ollie Collard: 37:39

I certainly love Felix approach here, I think that lots of founders can learn here. If you're willing to see failure as feedback, then it's going to make your business and your proposition a lot stronger to every no that you get asking why? What can you do differently next time around? How can you take that into your next conversation with an investor? How can you pitch differently, I think you're constantly getting all of this feedback. And if you're implementing it, then ultimately you're going to come out the end of it a lot stronger, and just remembering not to try and take it too, personally.

Unknown: 38:16

And I think this is one of the value of having conversations like this, because we're hearing this again, and again, aren't we? Well, in terms of the interviews that we do, and certainly with the founders that we work with, the more we can hear people tell us the value of flipping the mindset and, and advocating for a different type of mindset, the more the or the easier it is to be able to think that way. Because it's still going to be difficult, and especially the first few times you go out there and you hear those noes you still got to kind of build up that resilience. But I think if we kind of normalise it and and hopefully I think it is more normalised now than it used to be, then we can definitely move forward. And that helps more founders to be to be bold, and to be brave and go out there and to pitch their ideas and to learn from the nose and ultimately get those yeses,

Ollie Collard: 39:11

exactly. Any outcome is a is a good outcome, isn't it, Becky? So if it's a no then you can put your time and energy elsewhere. So take it as a blessing.

Unknown: 39:20

The more exposed I get to different businesses to entrepreneurship, or wherever we're really trying to do is take the next step forward. And that's what you're trying to do. And the next step forward doesn't mean like getting those grand things happening. It's literally like what's the next action you can take as a founder to move ahead of where you are now, whether that's to get more information or whether that's to ultimately seal the deal, so to speak. So Felix had experience in both corporates and startups, but being a founder required him to make many changes. So let's listen to the next part of the interview and find out what challenges sat behind those changes he had to make Being a founder is really liberating, in that you're in control of your own destiny. And it's very exciting to feel that you're creating something that is really amazing. I'm walking around wearing my shears hoodie, I really am proud of what we're creating. But it is very different. And it's very hard to switch off from it, the pressure is real, and you're spread very thin. So what I found is that I have to context switch a lot from the strategic vision, thinking about the next one to three years of the business, to literally speaking to a local venue and trying to sell them on shares, and get them to sign up to our platform. So being able to context switch in that way, can be really challenging, it can be exhausting, actually, what I found is that in a big corporate, you might become a domain expert. It's quite a narrow field, but then you can go quite deep in that field, and you can really progress your career. But in a startup environment, you become an all rounder, and you really have to understand everything, you have to be in everything. And that breadth of understanding actually is, is exciting. And that's not for everybody fair to say, you know, so if that brings a lot of pressure. But the way to succeed, then is to surround yourself by really smart people. And as the business starts to grow, you can then start to bring in more domain experts. But in the early days of a startup, actually, what you find is that you're really surrounded by a lot of all rounders as well, everyone might have an area of the business that they're looking after. But they have to be quite agile, and you know, to have the ability to be able to understand what each other's doing, and to be able to, you know, have a view across the business. Interesting.

Ollie Collard: 42:09

And how do you what tactics do you employ to kind of switch between thinking about strategy, then actually speaking to a customer and talking about the nitty gritty, in the day to day, what tactics have you employed personally, to enable you to switch between those,

Unknown: 42:25

when I first started out, I had to almost put two different hats on, I had to take myself out of that environment. And to be able to think strategically, I had to completely change my mindset. But you know, before I would then go into a sales call, or you know, now I find that that happens much more organically, and I can literally switch from one to the other in its instance. So I can be talking to an investor one minute, and I can be, you know, in one to one meetings with members of my team, the next or I can be problem solving with a team about a particular problem with a venue and so on. That has developed over time, but that was definitely a learned skill. And I've had to, you know, you have to build up a bit of resilience there as well. So that that can be challenging. And part of that then comes down to prioritising your own time, you know, being able to know when to say no, or how to delegate, you know, to really push, push work away to other members of the team and to trust the people around you. So that's what I've tried to do as much as I possibly can, which is, you know, I really do trust the people in my team. And I want to be able to give them as much opportunities to grow, and to have responsibility and accountability. But in doing so, I'm actually taking pressure off myself to

Ollie Collard: 43:48

love that. And as you grow the team, like you said, you become less of a all rounder, and you can sort of give up these areas of the business that a you might not be good at or be you don't like so what was the first area of the business that you kind of relinquish some control from?

Unknown: 44:05

Interestingly, I can tell you what I thought I wanted to relinquish. What I thought I wanted to relinquish was sales. As a founder. You know, you'll you'll know the concept of founder sales that actually as a founder, you are the best person to be able to talk about your business into into sell your business to others. And sales is exhausting. It's a hard job. And my first thought was, well, I need to just build a sales team. But the reality is that in an early stage business, you're going to continue to be the effectively the head of sales for quite some time. You need to be the one that is out there. Building trust with your demand side and your supply side. All the way through and actually that has been a bit of a learning for me now I continue to be there. Very, very actively involved in sales in our building our partnerships. So it's, it's made me think twice about actually, which areas of the business, I do relinquish. I would also say I'm also heavily involved in the product vision, but then I'm not technical. So again, I need to have people around me that I really trust. And I really do trust our team to be able to turn that vision into a reality. So at the same time, I also absolutely understand my limitations. I'm not a marketer. I'm not a finance director. I'm not a product manager or an engineer. So I've had to hire into those roles, and to bring people in who can then own those things. And, you know, that's why I think we're successful now, is because we've got such a strong foundation.

Ollie Collard: 45:54

I'm really interested to know, what's one of your favourite failures today? And what was the lesson that you took from it,

Unknown: 46:00

I would say that I literally make mistakes every single day. And the first thing I will say about that is that my learning there was to be kind to myself, and to not fear making mistakes. So actually, I encourage the team to set really ambitious targets and not worry about failing, because failing is just learning. If you mess something up, you know it the next time and then you move on. But if I think about one failure, as a founder, I would say it's trying to hire into functions, before I've really worked out what you want that function to be what you want that function to do. So sales is an example where I thought I won't be able to just hire in to sales and build a sales team before we've really worked out what the product is. And it's taken a while to work out exactly what is that product? And how do we talk about it. And it's taken a lot of my time and you know, probably hundreds and hundreds of hours of speaking to clients about our products to learn, actually, how do we talk about it? And how do you distil that down into something really, really simple. With our customer support function, that's become really important for us having a voice with our, with our Booker's. And with our venues actually. So before we created our customer support team, having learned from that failure, we effectively built an MVP version of our customer support team, with members of the rest of the team, from sales and from marketing and product. And we essentially just very scrappily put together an effective customer support team to understand the types of questions that will come in and to see whether that would help us to convert more bookings. And having tested and learn that. And discovering, in fact, it was very effective for us, we then built a customer support function hired into that role. And that's then become a very effective vertical for us in our business now. So coming back to the failures, I would say it's not trying to be more grown up as a business than you need to be, it's okay to be scrappy at the beginning. It's okay to work things out as you go at the beginning and know that you're small, you know, we're a team of 10 people, and it's okay to be scrappy at that stage. I love

Ollie Collard: 48:34

that honestly, there, Felix, thank you for that. Building a business can be all consuming at times, what's one sacrifice that you've made either consciously, or subconsciously, as the

Unknown: 48:46

founder there is really nowhere to hide. And it's extremely hard to switch off. So being a very small team, it means that really, every member of the team has a very important role to play. And if one if you're a team of 10, and one person's out, that's 10% of your workforce. That's very challenging. So, and of course, lots of people can be out at once. So when I'm on holiday, I never feel like I'm fully off. And that can be challenging. I've quite often found that there's finance and legal work to be done, or I might be in the middle of an investment round. And if an investor wants to talk to you, it doesn't matter where you are, you'll pick up the phone. So there is an element of just always being on. And I think at the beginning that was quite challenging for me. And my wife is unbelievably understanding about that and she just gets it and actually recognises that sometimes it's better just to lean into it. And to you know, just to accept that that that is the life that I am we're leading at the moment. One, I guess one sacrifice that I have made is that I never allow myself to fully fully switch off when I'm on holiday. So I feel like when you leave work in a corporate, you can shut your laptop down. And you literally don't think about it for a second of Office on, you're done out of offices on, you literally don't think about it until you're back in the office, and then you go, Oh, I've got hundreds and hundreds of emails to go through, and then you can switch yourself back on then what I found was that if I was switching myself off and get to that level of relaxation, then I would find the ramping back up again to be really challenging. So in fact, what I started to allow myself to do was to switch off, but to have moments where I could check in, even when I'm switched off, and during the holiday where I would give myself 15 minutes, maybe maybe not 15 minutes a day, but it might be an hour a week, where I can just keep on top of things, I can allow that just to be ticking over in the back of my mind. Because I felt like the ramp back up again, just became that much easier. And I actually found that it was the kind of thing to do for myself, even though I wasn't fully switching off, which I would love to be able to do, being able to ramp back up again became that much easier. That's

Ollie Collard: 51:05

a really interesting way of looking at it because I've done both where you've kind of switched off. And then that's where you're kind of checking in. And I think let you say actually, just having a little bit of check in, you know, on an ad hoc basis, means that that shock when you come back isn't so high. And actually, it means that you can get back into it a lot quicker and feel like you're in control more. Yes,

Unknown: 51:29

although I don't do the same for my team. So when my team are off, I tell them to be off off, I really don't want them to feel like they need to answer messages. Equally. Some of them might say to me, actually I feel like or they say to me, I feel like I need to be able to be on for certain things so that I don't have that same ramp up feeling in which case, that's absolutely fine. But it's their choice. So I just want to make sure that it's it's for them to choose. But you know, I sometimes work funny hours, I sometimes wake up very early in the morning, and I might find that I'm working between five and 6am. And I'll send out a load of emails, but I scheduled them scheduled so that they don't actually arrive into people's inboxes until working hours because I don't want them to have to, you know, bend to my working hours I should be working to this.

Ollie Collard: 52:17

I think that's really important. And we were talking off air about, you know, working on the business in unusual environments and situations. And you were saying about a particular fundraising round that you were going through that was in a very unusual place, would you mind telling our listeners a bit more about that Felix?

Unknown: 52:36

So the beginning of 2021, my son got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. And, you know, life is a roller coaster and life sometimes throws curveballs at you, you know, that was really life changing for me and for my family, and very, very difficult period. We were supported by Great Ormond Street, they've been absolutely unbelievable. He's doing much better now. But it's something that he and we will live with for the foreseeable future. And it was at a time when we had just closed that first, that second round, sorry, for 750,000 pounds. So I had just gone out and brought in a few people into the team. And we now had a bit more stability. And had I not done that the business may have stopped at that point, actually. But it didn't it carried on growing. And that was incredible. But while I was out talking to investors still, you know, I was sitting in a small hospital room in Great Ormond Street with machines beeping around me and nurses walking around in the background. And that was my reality. And you know, life is real. And when you're talking to investors, and when you're talking to members of your team and to clients, you know, you don't have to sugarcoat it, you can just be very honest about where things are. And I feel very grateful that I had such stability in my team. I had an amazing, amazing support from our board. So our first two angel investors essentially made up our board, incredibly supportive, and helped me get through what was an incredibly difficult period. So, you know, for if you're out there, and you're having a difficult time, whether you're fundraising or you're just, you know, trying to overcome hurdles in your personal life and with your business, you know, you just have to think well, actually, there is no normal, everybody's going through tough times. And you know, you just need to be kind to yourself, put a support network around you and do the best that you can. That's what you can do.

Ollie Collard: 54:40

Thank you for sharing that Felix and I'm glad to hear that you're kind of now living with the situation with your son and things are looking a bit better than they were and yeah, it just makes you question everything doesn't time like that. And I can't put it better than a former guest of the show said at the end of the day. It's only fucking business. And some things are obviously more important in life. I'm interested to know a bit about your support network, because he talks about it there. And obviously, you've got a team of 10 people you've got, they've got mortgages and rent to pay, you've got a family support, whose support you to keep you firing on all cylinders. Well,

Unknown: 55:22

the first person is my wife, Vicki, who has just been unbelievable. She actually stepped out of her deputy head role in school when our son got unwell, because it just became very difficult to be able to manage his needs with a full time job. Vicki now works with me at shares, he works part time with us, which is amazing, and it just feels, you know, it's it's been an amazing thing for me to have someone who really understands what we're trying to achieve. And we're going through that together, of course, I have an amazing team around me as well. And we've worked incredibly hard to create that team culture. But actually, even beyond that, we do have very supportive investors. And I can go to them, and I can bring problems to them. And they can give me feedback on that. And I could, the one advice I would I would give to founders talking to that talking to their investor base, actually, is to be very specific with the question, to go to them with a specific problem, don't make it too broad, and to really try and solve that one particular problem with someone's expertise that they can offer you. But I've also gone out and sought mentors, people that can maybe advise me on a personal level, or on a business level, it might be that they are a founder of a business, it's just a few stages further ahead, that have been through some similar challenges. It might just be someone that you feel that you can be very open with and trust, and they're not so close to the business, that you don't feel like they are judging some of the business decisions that you're making, but they're able to just to talk to you as a person. And, you know, having that a bit of breakfast in the in the mentors that I go and talk to has been brilliant for me. So Felix is certainly done a lot of learning and has developed over the time since you started with share Z. And as he was describing there, there's there's a lot of different tactics that he's taken on board in order to build the business and to build himself as he's building the business. A big thing that came out of this part of the conversation that I wanted to pick up on is the idea of context switching, or helicopter thinking as an entrepreneur, so talking about having to switch very quickly from one task to another. So that might be working, like in detail on the business and then switching to having to be strategic, having to have big investor conversations, and then talking to community members, or talking to the team. And so this helicopter thinking is definitely a skill that is associated with being a founder and being an entrepreneur. How do people develop this kind of skill, Ollie? So

Ollie Collard: 58:17

it's a really good question. And I I personally struggled with it, how you have to go from, you know, having your strategic thinking hat on back into the day to day minutia, sigh of running your business, and you're doing that multiple times a day, back and forth, back and forth. So it is a real issue. I think, like you say, if you are trying to visualise things like you know, actually getting in a helicopter, then taking a macro view and looking down on everything that does help. I also sometimes thinks doing like physical things also helps. So as an example, like, if you were like a watch, maybe moving it from one hand to the other to say, right, my left hand is my strategic thinking. And then my right hand is my more operational arm, or actually getting a physical hat on, and literally swapping hats because you are wearing multiple hats as a founder. And I think that just makes you doing something physical, makes you more conscious of the task that you're concentrating on. And I really like this metaphor. And I often advocate founders doing this with sales, for example. So if you're you've got so you've got 50 calls to make to prospects that you're chasing, right to make that a bit more fun and engaging and sort of gamify it, get a class on your table, get loads of marbles. After each call, you're literally popping in a marble into the glass jar. And then you can see the progress that you're making because, you know, half people won't answer you won't get through to the right people. And it can seem like you're wasting your time. But actually if you've got something physical in front of you actually visualising what you're doing then it just makes it a bit more motivating I

Unknown: 1:00:00

love this. Yeah, like all about gamifying entrepreneurship, we seem to get very serious sometimes about all the things we've got to do and like the challenges with entrepreneurship, isn't it but and actually even love what you said at the beginning there of like, step inside of like visualise stepping into a helicopter and coming up and taking that view as well. It's yeah, creating those things that are going to allow you to have some fun. And yeah, I definitely knew it. No team who, when they had a board meeting, obviously, they were a team of founders. So they were the directors and they were people working on the business, etc. would put a tie on indicate okay, we're directors now. Wait, yeah, I kind of tried to take some of these, these tips for myself as well, I think we need a little bit more fun to help get through all these busy days. Yeah.

Ollie Collard: 1:00:50

And I think sometimes you your head can be at the point of exploding. So I think if you're trying to create a bit of fun with it, and also remove some of the emotion and as you say, gamify, then it can just make your day a bit more interesting.

Unknown: 1:01:05

The thing I do when I want to do kind of more of the bigger picture thinking is to move away from my computer as well. So often kind of big pieces of paper, or via, you've got a whiteboards post, its etc, I find that quite a good delineation as well, in terms of thinking about, like doing the details to getting more strategic, you can't always do it that way. But I find that to be very helpful as well, to get away from the computer.

Ollie Collard: 1:01:30

And lots of founders may not have the benefit of actually having a whiteboard on their wall, there's some great paper that you can buy called Magic paper. And essentially, you tear off a sheet, and you stick it on your wall. And it is great for doing that strategic work.

Unknown: 1:01:47

I love that I use that too. And only word of warning is like just make sure you know where the edges are. So you don't write off the edges and onto your walls. Not saying I've ever done that. So I thought there were lots of things we could learn from Felix in terms of this helicopter thing. And the reason I want to continue to talk about this, because I think it's such an important part of being an entrepreneur, if you can master this, you're mastering everything pretty much. So one thing he described, and he almost described it as part of the challenge, which is you're jumping from one meeting to another, and you kind of have to context work switch. But actually having those people around you in those different roles helps you to do that context switching. So if you've got, you know, and of course, I know you've got to get to a certain size in order to have your team or to have those people around you. But if you've got certain people who are associated with certain aspects of the business, then that helps pull your focus into the next place. So if that's the finance person, then when you talk to somebody, you know, you can really focus on finances, if it's the investor, then you're going to be talking to them in a different way. So I find that to be actually really helpful was it was that's part of the challenges switching from one to the other. And Felix mentioned, he's learned to do this now. And I used that's definitely something that I find really helpful as well, I don't find it too hard. If I'm like, well, like this person I talked to in a specific way. And we talk about specific things. And then this person, we talk about something different. So I find that really helpful. And related to that is, is delegating, so let somebody else go take the lead around certain areas, and then when you come in, you can really be kind of pulled into their orbit versus you having to create the energy and the focus around that new thing. And we talked

Ollie Collard: 1:03:37

about it before, but delegation is a hard skill to master. But if you are letting go and giving trust in your team, if you've got to that stage, then that's really where you can focus on growing the business. So I think you have to have trust in in your staff and giving them a responsibility and also using data to inform their work. I often see founders being a bit of a bottleneck within their business, if they're trying to have oversight on every single thing. They've got to be able to sort of let go and delegate. And it's easier said than done.

Unknown: 1:04:10

It is and something that I've really been working with some founders on is put your time as the founder, your job is to focus on how do I build the trust? How do I build the trust across the team, and then the person who you have hired or you bring in to do a specific thing, their job is to do their job and to focus on that skill sets almost again and it's a lot of the time it's a bit I think founders see it as a bit chicken and egg like how can I spend the time in building trust and various aspects of things that you need to do around that which to be frank are not the things that are massively time consuming? It's more about how you show up and and how you bring the right people on board in the first place, how you kind of communicate across the team, etc. But, but sometimes there is some work to do there. But it pays off in dividends, if you do that work versus, I'm just going to keep jumping in and doing somebody else's work for them. And you're never going to build that trust if you do that. So it kind of flipping where you put your attention can be a bit uncomfortable for founders sometimes. Yeah,

Ollie Collard: 1:05:16

and I love that I think it can pay, you know, metaphorical dividends and financial ones, for your business. So I think if you have, you know, really cracked the trust in your team, making sure that you're, you know, all on the same page in terms of the values and the company mission, but you say how you delegate and communicate is critical, and also build that psychologically safe space within the team, then you're going to be on to a winner in the long term, exactly

Unknown: 1:05:43

be there to support them and help them do the job you've brought them in to do versus just doing it for them. And I think that this is another there's, there's a couple of other things that can help you as a founder with this, I think, something that perhaps both of us need right now, which is I mentioned at the beginning, but kind of creating a bit of time for yourself to take the step back. So almost making sure that you're scheduling time to step back, to have a bit of time with yourself, and to not be just doing the doing all the time, because I don't know about you, but I find even physiologically, you if you're doing things, if you're moving, moving, moving, moving, your body doesn't know how to pause your body and your mind doesn't know how to pause or to step back or to to be able to do that kind of higher level thinking it kind of wants to, you know, it wants to grab on to what's the next task? What's the next tactic, so they're very adrenaline lead way of acting. So I think it's really important to carve out that time, regularly. So you, I mean, it's a bit of a fire break, essentially. But it also gives you the time to do that important work that you have to do as a as a founder. Yeah.

Ollie Collard: 1:06:53

And I think lots of foreigners probably have a sort of an ongoing argument within their own brain about No, I need to keep on working, carry and stay focused. And, you know, keep on that kind of hustle and that that continuous treadmill, but actually, you're going to be more unproductive in the long run if you don't build in that time. Yeah,

Unknown: 1:07:12

absolutely. And I was, like I said earlier, like, that's, that's the work I'm doing with myself, my brain is definitely doing that at the moment as well. And I'm having that conversation inside my own head. And I think there's so going on just kind of one of the last things that Felix mentioned there, which was having this breadth of mentors. And so this is where other people can really help us as well. So having the mentors around you, and not just a single mentor, but having maybe different people who can help with different aspects, they can also help you with creating and carving out some of this time for yourself. A

Ollie Collard: 1:07:45

lot of the successful founders that we work with and see on the podcast, do have that banker, mentors and people they can call upon. So I do think this is critical to be able to grow yourself, but also your business at the same time. So I would encourage people listening to try and develop that bank. And you know, it's not going to happen overnight. So yeah, just taking a bit of a kind of step back and thinking right, in the next 12 months, who were the types of people that I want to learn from. So

Unknown: 1:08:15

we spoke to Felix about how he's growing himself and the business over the coming months and years. So let's listen in and see what's next for shazzy. Our ambition has always been to try and support communities everywhere. And proving our concept to this point has been about trying to create a really active network of people that are booking venues, bringing more venues on bringing more Booker's on. We've achieved that in London. So now we're looking to expand to other cities, we're building up partnerships. That's been really, really exciting. And that's really where we're heading over the next couple of years now, to start to build out this network. We're actually getting inquiries from all over the country, which is just amazing to see, we were fortunate enough to have a couple of features and some national newspapers were mentioned in The Guardian. And actually just just recently in the times, and on the back of that we suddenly start getting requests from all over the country. That in itself is a challenge for us, because we are still pursuing this concept of trying to have density and specific local geographies. So when we get inbound requests, we will accept those but what we're actually trying to do is to then work towards building clusters of venues around those. Those anchor venues, we call them where we've got a new local geography.

Ollie Collard: 1:09:48

Fantastic. So is it going to be a National Business International Business, where's the where is the scope for it?

Unknown: 1:09:55

Well, I always like to set really crazy targets and I believe that This could be an international business. I, my my background has always been in in launching and growing new products. And I've done that internationally all across Europe and across the states. I don't see why not, you know, so when we talk to our investors, they believe that this could be really huge. And, you know, that is that is where there is a healthy tension, I think with being a good for profit business. If you want to do good, and you want to do good at scale, you have to be commercially viable. So we are trying to be very sensible in the way that we're growing the business, we want to be commercially viable, but we also have really, really grand ambition. So yeah, what's the space? Love

Ollie Collard: 1:10:42

that? And what's your big, hairy, audacious goal, then Felix?

Unknown: 1:10:47

Well, for 2024, we absolutely want to be in other cities, and to be achieving the same sort of network effect that we're getting in London, that does feel like a big goal to do it properly. That does feel like a big goal. So we're also making some really exciting technology developments as well. So we have a very busy 2020 forehead.

Ollie Collard: 1:11:10

Fantastic, and what's your biggest fear?

Unknown: 1:11:13

My biggest fear probably is letting people down. You know, I set myself tough targets. You know, I give myself a hard time. And probably that sense of expectation. And, you know, I want everybody that's associated with shows you to be incredibly proud about what we're doing and how they're associated with it. But yeah, I'd say, you know, this isn't just about making money. For me, this is about trying to make an impact. So, you know, I really hope that we can do that.

Ollie Collard: 1:11:50

How would you balance that self care, and looking after yourself and being kind to yourself with being very ambitious,

Unknown: 1:11:58

I've had to adjust the way that I work a little bit. Sometimes I don't sleep very well, sometimes I'm, you know, sometimes I might wake up incredibly early in the morning and get some work done. And then in the middle of the morning, I need a break. So what I quite often allow myself to do is to go to the gym. So quite often, I'll be in the gym, you know, mid morning, because that's when I need to recharge, and that's where I sort of I might charge up my creative juices, and it'd be ready to go again. So it's allowing myself to have that flexibility. And I want that flexibility for my team as well. You know, we're not a big corporate entity, we can as long as we're available for our free each other within the team and available for our customers, then we should work in whatever way is best for us. And I have to try and be by example there.

Ollie Collard: 1:12:52

What are your predictions for tech in the community space?

Unknown: 1:12:58

It's interesting that there's a there's, I think, a common misconception that people generally in the community space are not technically minded, and not technically capable. And I think that's completely untrue. We are showing that we can digitise venues and you know, community networks that historically haven't been digital, and they are adopting that really, really quickly. So I feel like there is now going to be a real wave of that there is an expectation of any sorts of online interaction is really simple, and smooth and trustworthy. And we want shares to be at the forefront of that. So I think there is now this increased expectation there. And I think that will that will continue to that will continue to grow. And you know, there are businesses out there like audio, where you can you know, the food food sharing app, where you can now reach people in your local area, and you can do that digitally. I think that will continue to grow. And you know, I really hope it does. How

Ollie Collard: 1:14:11

do you see other marketplaces or community platforms, really impacting your own business or the strategy or direction of travel?

Unknown: 1:14:20

So we we work with community venues in quite a unique way. So we are both providing technical support, we provide the technology and the marketing to be able to promote a venue but we also provide customer support. So we were a bit of a hybrid solution. And there are I can see that there are other providers in the market that maybe lean more into supporting on site or there could be others that are more about just trying to, you know, generate lead, you know, lead generation for our community. And you, and those don't necessarily have to be competing, they can be complimentary. So, you know, my attitude is that this is an opportunity for us to help the overall sector grow, get more people utilising these spaces help community venues to thrive. You know, ultimately, I'm, you know, very collaboratively minded. So, you know, that's, that's the direction I think we're heading.

Ollie Collard: 1:15:27

If you had to distil down just one piece of advice Felix, to an early stage founder, what would that one piece of advice be?

Unknown: 1:15:35

My advice would be to lean into your strengths. I talked before about being an all rounder, yes, you do need to be an all rounder, you don't need to be an expert in those things, but you need to have a good understanding. And you need to make sure that your vision is reflected in all aspects of the business, but still lean into your strengths. My personal strength, I think, is in being able to tell a narrative about the product to be able to tell a story and to make people really see the my passion in this in this project. So that's what I lean into, you know, so I spend a lot of my time talking to prospective clients, you know, potential partnerships, investors about the work that we do. So, lean into those things, try and work out what it is that you do really well. Yes, you need to put a support network around you. And that might mean hiring, that might mean having advisors around the business or you know, but ultimately, you need to as a founder, you're going to be the one that's driving that business. So think about what it is that you do really well and have confidence in yourself.

Ollie Collard: 1:16:44

Where can people find out a bit more about share the new personally online,

Unknown: 1:16:49

so you can find me on LinkedIn, feel free to reach out. And you can read more about share z at Share z.com.

Ollie Collard: 1:16:57

Felix, thank you so much for all of your time and insights this afternoon, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Unknown: 1:17:03

Thank you so much for having me. Self Care and ambition. These are the big themes that I think were coming out in this episode, and particularly in this last section. And Felix really does seem to have hit a handle on this idea of you can have self care, and be ambitious. And I think we've been kind of banging this drum a little bit when it comes to entrepreneurship. And well, I certainly have and the two of us when we speak to one another and speak to the founders, this is really important. And I think there has to be a belief and I think maybe many people across the entrepreneurial ecosystem, perhaps still don't even have this belief that if they look after themselves, then they can also be ambitious. And the two things can go hand in hand. In fact, it's important to have some self care, in order to make your ambitions come to fruition, if you don't do it, then the likelihood is that you're going to burn out and you're probably going to sacrifice some of your big goals. So self care and ambition was a massive theme for me. Did you? Did you feel that when you were talking to Felix as well?

Ollie Collard: 1:18:14

I do. And I think the issue that we often see online in particular is that you've read about the successful founders, you know, their morning routine is getting up at 5am and meditating for an hour then doing an ice bath and doing some journaling. And then doing sales calls. And by nine o'clock, they're, you know, halfway through their, their working morning. And it's it's unrealistic. I think that the main thing that you have to take all of these things with is what works for one person, one founder isn't going to work for another. So really focused on what makes you happy, what gives you energy, what is going to get your brain in a good mood to be able to do the best work that you can do. And like I say, it's going to be different for everyone. I think if you're looking after the basics of getting enough sleep, doing some regular exercise, you know, not sitting down at a desk for eight hours in a row then, you know, it's going to help your your body and your brain to operate on its best possible level.

Unknown: 1:19:15

Yeah, and I love how Felix talks about the routine that worked for him. He was kind of like well, I do wake up quite early. And if I'm awake, I'm I'm working. And well that makes sense. Because if like that's what works for him. That's what his body clock is doing great. And then he goes to the gym perhaps mid morning and I thought that that was really great way of thinking about it. I tried to do some similar things I find very helpful where it's, I don't get so up so early because I train later into the evenings with my gymnastics, but I like to be able to almost have to two sets of mornings for me. So in the sense of you kind of start the day, you do some work, but then you take enough of a break to sort of refresh your mind to get away from it. Maybe that's like walking Going outside, might be going to the gym, whatever it might be, and then coming back and being like, okay, it's sort of a bit of a fresh start now and building your days, you know, again, in a way that works for you, that might not be what works for everyone, are you able to kind of be flexible and buried in how you build your days as well? Yeah, and

Ollie Collard: 1:20:21

I do it quite consciously of doing the things I want to do, whether it's doing a gym class, or going for a walk, you know, building these things within your day to enable myself to be able to say operate in the best way that I can, I think if you're not building them in, then everything just gets a bit frantic. And it means that you're not operating your best and things will slip and your job balls and hats will fall off. And yeah, things would go a bit wrong. So I think you've got to be Yeah, building into your diary. And we talked about this at the start of the conversation, but doing what works for you. And also, sometimes there's a bit of a mindset shift that is needed from, you know, lots of people, particularly founders who started later in life, they've been an employee through a vast majority of their life, and they haven't actually maybe realised that they now have the freedom to design their day, exactly how they want it, they may have just carried on habits that they built into their normal working day, but actually just start with a blank piece of paper, and you know, do things at times the work for you.

Unknown: 1:21:32

This is one of the most fascinating things I find about entrepreneurship, because so many people are like, we want to be entrepreneurs, because we want kind of autonomy and freedom. And we're bored of how it works in you know, in big business or in your corporate and we want to be our own boss. And then as soon as they start their business, they have like the same routine and the same hours, and they're tied to the desk in exactly the same way. And, and I do understand why. And it's you know, there is a, an inertia in the world in the world of work in particular, you know that it works in a certain way. But it's also knowing that, you know, you don't have to, there's that residual guilt, I think that certain people feel where it's like, if you were to go to the gym, maybe on a Saturday, you wouldn't feel that guilt, but you go on a like mid month, Monday, mid morning or something and you feel like that's weird, even though you might have constructed your week totally different. And so I think there's that there's a bit of that guilt that's built in, like you said, where you need to do that mindset shift of, no, you get to construct your life, of course, there's many things you have to do, there's a lot of time that's taken up in terms of being an entrepreneur and having to build a business. But you also get to construct your day, week, month, whatever, in a way that that works for you. 100.

Ollie Collard: 1:22:51

And I would like to say, just question those old habits. And, you know, are they working for you, and if not, then look to change.

Unknown: 1:22:58

Something I've talked a lot about, and I think we've mentioned this before on the podcast, too. But it's also the idea of, like, let's really build our energy through the work we're doing on the business, because that's the other thing, right? We start our businesses because we we enjoy what we do, or we want to make this impact. And this is something that I've been that has really been growing my energy recently is just like, loving and throwing myself into every single piece of work that I'm doing. And I'm really enjoying it focusing on my own strengths as well, I think that helps and, and really leaning into that. And so that's something that I think that everyone can also do as well is when you feel that feeling of like, but I can't, you know, structure the way the week in the way I want or ache because I've got all these things to do and you to build a business, you have to do X, Y, and Zed. And it's like, Well, again, even within the work, you can structure that in such a way that you're like, well maybe do some of the things that feel a little bit more draining to you, and get them out of the way. And then you can flip and you can do some things on a whiteboard and do your strategy. And you know, and start to vary that working week as well and figure out what, what drives you and what builds your energy in terms of how you construct the work as much as how you construct the other aspects of your day.

Ollie Collard: 1:24:14

Yeah, what I just add to that is just having that reflection time and feeling grateful that you are working on what you're very passionate about. And you know, lots of people, unfortunately, live a life of regret or don't make the hard decisions, what they want to do. So actually, just taking that step back and say, right, I've made this conscious decision to start a business. And you know, there's going to be things that you don't like, but actually you get to spend the vast majority of the time spent working in on the business and things that hopefully are really exciting.

Unknown: 1:24:49

What a great way to round up this conversation about Felix and Scherzi. Being conscious being conscious of that decision you've already made and then continue to be conscious about how you spend that time. moving forward. So if you are interested in knowing more about shazzy and Felix, make sure you check out those links. Ali, let's go back to the last episode with Kishore and nvao. Pap, what are people saying in answer to his question?

Ollie Collard: 1:25:16

Cuz you have a really interesting question he wants to know, does it make sense to purchase an electric car, even if it is charged from fossil fuel energy production? The results of this poll were really split 58% of you said yes, it still makes sense to purchase an Eevee. And 42% of you said, No, we had an interesting comment from Gideon Barker, who said he drives an Eevee and mainly charges it at home via renewable electric via octopus energy. He added his main conundrum in making the decision to go Eevee or not, was the amount of resources and carbon produced by making a brand new car versus buying a secondhand one. Hopefully, that's given you food for thought, because you'll let us know if you do buy your Eevee or not. And now we're gonna go back to Felix, as he also had a question for you, our listeners?

Unknown: 1:26:17

Well, we're here at the beginning of a new year in 2024. And that feels like an opportunity to achieve something amazing. You know, when you look back on your life in your later years, you're not going to think about, did I get that promotion? Or did I earn a little bit more money that year, you're going to think about what did you achieve? So it's quite a nice time just to be able to reflect on that and to say, What am I going to achieve? This year? I'm going to tell my grandkids about so my question to you is, what are you going to achieve this year? Is it going to be something for your personal development? Is it something for your business? Is it something for your health and wellness? What is it for you?

Ollie Collard: 1:27:06

Fantastic. Well, we'll get some answers to you on that question on our socials.

Unknown: 1:27:12

And Who have we got coming up next on the podcast.

Ollie Collard: 1:27:15

We've got a really interesting founder. It's his second startup. And he's only 11 months into his journey with rare founders, which is a community of founders that Vassili is building through pitching events, primarily in London, that bring together founders and investors to really give founders more confidence in their pitching ability to ultimately then to go on and raise investment. So doing some really important work in the ecosystem

Unknown: 1:27:46

is great and very relevant to all of our listeners. Thank you everyone for listening. 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 for hydrogen grinded on your favourite podcast player. Thank you for listening to find it in grounded with Ollie collard and Dr. Becky sage. Don't forget to press that follow button to help us to grow the show.