Building an Engaged Team, Virtually, with Brianna Ansaldo of Bamby Media
Do you get the best from your team? Guest Brianna Ansaldo is CEO of Australia's largest independent podcast production agency in Australia, and has a completely virtual team.
When I started this podcast two years ago, I clicked immediately with Brianna but also knew that after the onboarding I'd be working with the team not Brianna directly. Here's the fascinating bit - her team was just as great to work with. So what was it about her leadership that was creating such a great environment for the team and clients to be thriving?
So nervously I asked a podcasting professional to be a guest on my podcast.
In this episode we talk about her time as famous singer on reality TV, the time we both have been mascots dressed in huge suits with big heads, her journey into podcasting, and the bit you're probably most interested in, her 3 leadership lessons:
the questions she asks during the interview process to ensure a perfect fit for both the job and the team culture at Bamby Media.
how to stretch and get the best from your team (hint: it's not a sink or swim approach)
her foolproof processes for establishing top-notch work standards within her team, preventing any tasks from falling short of excellence and ending up back on her desk.
If Brianna's leadership journey has inspired you to level up your own, here's two ways I can help:
Guest Bio - Brianna Ansaldo, Bamby Media
www.bambymedia.com
After over a decade working as a songwriter, Brianna fell in love with podcast production and founded Bamby Media. Eight years on Bamby Media is now the largest independent podcast production agency in Australia, with a current roster of over 65 clients globally.
Brianna is also a podcast industry judge for the Australian Podcast Awards, Webby Awards and Signal Awards. Working with podcast industry professionals to help celebrate the best of the best has been extremely rewarding and Brianna is excited to work more in this space in the coming years.
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Episode Transcript:
Today, I am both excited and nervous to welcome Brianna Ansaldo to the podcast. She is the head honcho at Bamby Media and the person that I have to personally thank for getting this podcast off the ground two years ago. I got passed on Brianna's name from my VA. She came highly recommended and was actually the only person I spoke to about my podcast because when we met, there was this certain something about her. that we talked about music and our love for singing, and I just felt like my podcast was in good hands. Something I noticed with working with Brianna is she was so great to work with. And then when I worked with her team, they were also great, which is not always the case when we work with people that are not the CEO of the business or not the founder of the business. And this made me think, huh, there is something about her leadership that we can learn from. And so today's podcast, we're digging into some of the leadership lessons she's learned along the way and three in particular that we have chatted about and pulled out to talk through. The first one is when you're hiring your team about some unusual questions. The second one is about how to get the best from your team. And I can tell you it's not a sink and swim approach. And the third was about standards, big picture thinking, and something that I like to refer to as they get a voice, not a vote. So we're going to dig into these three questions.
Welcome to the podcast, Brianna. Well, thank you so much, Kate. Happy to be here. So, as I said at the beginning, we bonded over our love of music. For those that listen to the podcast know that I am a singer, a violinist, piano player, and I love musical theatre. Brianna is also a singer, and I think you might have been on a popular talent show, if I recall correctly, but you have a degree in Music from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. Can you tell a little bit about your music background and how you got into podcast production? Oh, it's been such a fun journey. So you are right. I, like you, love music. I was also in musical theatre. Uh, I have been a musician since I was very tiny, uh, and I'm a, I play the piano and the guitar. I did Spanish classical guitar and I did classical voice and then I moved into jazz voice and then I moved into Broadway voice and then I kind of mushed all those things together to create like a a mashup, I suppose, of those styles. So I did that for a very long time. And yeah, I did, did musical theater shows for, uh, quite a few years as well, uh, during my last kind of couple of years of high school. And then once I, once I was out of high school as well, they were amateur theater companies and I would tour around. I was also in pantomimes. So I did a bunch of pantomimes all over Brisbane, touring around. Uh, that was pretty crazy. And I was also like the Easter bunny in shopping centers with like a giant scary Easter bunny. I was Wonder Kid from, for the Children's Hospital. And if you've been in one of those big costumes, like mine had a fan in the head and an ice vest. Oh, they're hot. Oh my God, you, you, at least you got that. I didn't get any of that. I was, I mean, at least I was in, I was in pretty decent air conditioning, but. The thing about that, that I learnt, was you can actually do things that are ridiculous, and feel really hard and silly, and if you have the right frame of mind, the right mindset, you can have a very good time. I remember. At the end of that day that I was Wonder Kid at the Brisbane exhibition, my cheeks were sore from smiling. I was in a full body costume, you couldn't see my face, which just shows it's a whole body experience. It's a whole body experience, But anyway, I digress. So I did that. Obviously I have a very, energetic and entertaining type personality about me. I love to be that person. And I, when I finished school, I decided I would do a bachelor of audio production. So music production at the conservatorium of music. I did that for four years. During that time, I also decided to go and try out for Australian Idol because it was six years in or something at that point, and they would allow you to sing your own song in the audition. And I was like, man, that's the first year they allowed that. I wasn't interested in being a pop star at all, but I was certainly interested on hearing what people thought about my original music. You're a storyteller. I really get that. Yeah, I'd been performing for so many years and I'd written so many songs and I had a couple of albums under my belt already that I'd produced myself. So I went to this audition and it was insane and I ended up getting picked. I got through the next round and then I got down to go down to Sydney and then I was up against a whole bunch more people. I made it through that as well. I got into the final 12 that were then on TV. And, uh, and then I had a chef and I had a driver and we had paparazzi and, you know, just an incredible, it was an incredible year. It was very stressful and I didn't enjoy a lot of it, but I also enjoyed Aspects of it, like meeting behind the scenes people and your, uh, your production lawyers and your VP and your, you know, the other musicians and the band and putting together a huge band and an orchestration within. 48 hours. And, you know, all that stuff was really, really cool. So that was quite an experience, but I am profoundly deaf in one ear and that made it much harder for me to compete properly on that program because they didn't have in ear monitors for us at that point. So they'd also make you choreograph and like walk around the stage, you know, to be a good showman. but the band was behind you and you couldn't hear and the monitors were really far in front of you, so you actually couldn't hear all that well. Foldback. Foldback, exactly. So the foldback, you couldn't hear it if you didn't have it in ears and you're walking around a stage. So for me, I struggle with sound if it's not right here in my ears because I can't tell. What's going on? You know, and I was trying to choreograph. So, or like dance around. Uh, so that was very hard. And I had a blow up with the head of, basically the head of the whole show. Uh, and I said, you need to give us in ear monitors. Like if this is a show about being a musician, about being a singer and all that, we need in ear monitors. That no one should be expected to. walk around like this. He said, no, there's no budget for it. You know, that's not something we're willing to do. And then I got booted off the program the following week. And, uh, then two weeks after that, they all had in ear monitors. And I was so like, I was a bit jaded by that going man, it's, it's, it's a show, you know, you should make the musicians feel like they can do what they're supposed to be doing, uh, and so that brought me into a different side of it, okay, actually it was a television program, it wasn't really about the musicians as much as it is about the judges and highlighting them and, you know, all those things that you don't kind of realize when you're in it, and it's just afterwards where you It's a TV show that happens to also give a platform to musicians, but it's definitely not the main thing. It's like people that watch Married at First Sight, like that's not to build relationships. That is like TV. It's just TV. If you get a relationship, well, that's like a chance bonus, but yeah. So that was really incredible. I got a little bit agoraphobic, I think after that, because I was very famous. for a while, it was just, you couldn't go anywhere, you know, going to the shops, just, there was, even just to get my groceries, people would come up to you or they'd stare at you and they'd want your signature and photos with you and bonkers, like, just, what did my, what is this life, you know, it was just a crazy situation, I was featured in all the papers and all this paparazzi stuff and, yeah, so eventually, I realized that's not a kind of life I wanted to have. I didn't want to be a celebrity. I wanted to write music and I continued to write music. I got my music featured on film and television, sinking deals and all sorts of fun things through that. Then I had a child. And I was a touring musician for a long time at that point. And, uh, my husband and I, we had to move up to Cairns and I realized I didn't want to be a touring musician anymore because that was very hard with a young child. And he was also an intern and was a doctor at the time. And I was looking at the trajectory of our lives going, there's no way, like, there's no way he can be a doctor and I can be a touring musician. And we have a child or multiple that have any stability other than a nanny, you know. Yeah, so I had to make a shift at that point. And I started getting into podcasting from that point because I wanted to take all the skills that I'd learned as an audio producer. I'd had, you know, many, many, many hours in big studios and I understanded the whole aspect of it. And podcasting is a form of storytelling that I just fell in love with and I could use music and I could use stories and I could highlight people and the make their voices sound beautiful and clear. And it just felt like a step that I was meant to go on. And then, was this when Bamby was born? This was when Bamby, it took a couple of years before it was born, and then I realized, yeah, like I just started getting so many jobs from it and referrals and big comp, you know, sort of big podcasts over in the States. I was working just with the USA clients for quite a while because this industry was really small here. And then I just started. It was really all word of mouth. I didn't do any advertising. It didn't do anything. And I just started getting clients. And, uh, then it just got bigger and I had to hire. And eventually my husband quit his job as a doctor six years in. He quit it so that he could join Bamby Media and have a different life for himself as well. And, uh, yeah. And tell me about your team now, because I've met quite a few of them. How big is the team and where are they situated? So at the moment we've got six in the team. we've got Deb, Maylee, Emily, who are in, well, Deb's in Sunshine Coast, Maylee's in Brisbane, Great place, Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, any case, represent, and then Maylee's in Brisbane, Emily is on the Gold Coast. And then Josh, who's also in Brisbane, and then we've got me and Alex, who are in Brisbane. So although we're all kind of Southeast Queensland ish, none of us work in the same location, except for Alex and I, who obviously, you know, we work from home. We have different studios, so we barely see each other, to be honest, uh, that's a whole different story. But yeah, it's, it's, uh. It's a spread team, completely distributed, so we don't see each other day to day. And I think this is interesting to talk about because when we go through your leadership lessons, sometimes people presume that, oh, it's easier if you can see someone if you're having face to face time, but you've essentially built your business virtually and done these leadership lessons that I'm going to talk through today, virtually. And I think this is a good little side note for people to keep in mind that this wonderful culture that you've built has not been done face to face. So, you've got a team of six. The first leadership lesson that you had mentioned was about how you go about hiring. And I absolutely agree when you talk about it's about the person. And you've got some interesting questions that you ask. Can you share a bit more about this? Yes, so whenever I'm coming to approach the hiring of a person, so right now, I think, just to give you context, I've probably hired eight or nine people, uh, that have come in different seasons and been with us for different amounts of time, depending on what else is going on. The thing I always look for is, I care less. about their actual skills, which seems maybe counterintuitive, but for a technical job, exactly. I look to hire people who are curious, who can follow direction, who have an ear for sound. Even if they've never edited a podcast before, because the, especially in my realm, the state of podcasting podcasting changes so rapidly, the software that we use, AI being a thing, the kind of things they need to know and learn, it evolves. over time. And when I've hired, I hired one guy who had a music production degree, very, very good, like, technically amazing. But, and he was, you know, just a nice dude as well, just a fun guy, but he was really particular about the edits because of his background in music production. Which meant that over time, the time that he took to do an edit would be much longer than someone else's because he was going, just zooming way too far in and forgetting about the context, the story, the over, like who this client is, how they like to sound. It's a conversation, keep it sounding like a conversation, not like it's chopped up every, you know, too polished, people don't feel. Don't, yeah, exactly, don't make it too polished. So, yes, the skill, he technically had the skill, but he didn't have the personality or he was too technically skilled to zoom out enough to go,"Am I creating an experience that the listener will enjoy?" So that's why I always hire and I always ask questions of people around what they do in their lives outside of work. So there needs to be a creative flair in the person that I hire, but it doesn't need to be technically something that they've had as a job. So we have Josh here. Uh, he is a phenomenal illustrator, artist. He likes to ride one wheels. He does rock climbing. He likes building Gundam. He like loves bonsais, you know, he's very creative. with all these different things, and he's also a videographer, and he's probably our most skilled person. I would say, but he wasn't so set in his ways that you couldn't go, I know you're creative and you can figure this out. Doesn't matter what the context is, you're creative, and that is, that's, so that's kind of the question I always go with is what's your hobby, what do you do outside of work? I also ask them whether they like peanut butter or Vegemite, whether they like sunshine or rainbow, rainbows. Yep, whether they like, uh, nighttime or daytime, like the preference, and these might seem like kind of random questions, I mean they are random, but it gives you a feel of who that person is, and especially if you then ask them a question around, you know, If you could have three eyes or six legs, which one would you choose? You leave it open and then you get them to answer it and a creative answer tells me that there's humour and they explain why they've, they've sort of decided on one thing or another. It really paints a picture as to who they are and how they think about things. I think what you've just said, it tells you how they think, because that's really, in an interview, you want to know how somebody thinks, like, if they have a problem, how are they going to work through it? It reminds me of, like, maths at school, where you would do, like, show your workings, like, that's stupid, I've got the right answer. But it's the same thing, like, I want to understand how you think, so when you're in a new situation, how are you going to think about it? When you're under pressure, how are you going to think about it? I often would ask people in interviews, Like in my decades of hiring, like what do you do on the weekend? What do you do for fun? And for the same reason, like when I'm hiring a person, these people are going to interact with the other people and interact with clients. And people who like people, people that work with people, it's so much more than a technical thing. Mm, a hundred percent. And something you and I have spoken about, um, in the book Legacy by, I was going to say James Clear. That's not right. We were talking about James Clear before. I'll have to think about who the author is. It's about the New Zealand All Blacks. And they say that to be a football player, like a New Zealand All Black, you must have something outside football and you cannot be an All Black if you don't have a hobby. And they're saying you need to have a passion outside football because if something happens with football, you need to have something else that you can rely on for your happiness. And I think this is just a good basis for human life. We can't put everything in one spot and we can't have everything in our job. Did you find the author? I did. James Kerr? Yeah, James Kerr. So close. Oh man, I mean, it's very close. Yeah. it does show why your team, I find fascinating and interesting to talk to because you've hired interesting people. Yeah, they were all, you know, and Emily is a A musician, like a touring musician. Deb just finished her yoga teacher training. So she does yoga teaching. Alex is also really into gardening and woodworking. May Lee loves board games and she's on radio every second Thursday night talking about crazy board games and video games. And, uh, you know, so they've all got stuff. It just makes it more fun to work with people like that. As long as you know, you can't just like hire a flighty creative, because you know, there are lots of flighty creative people that don't want to commit to anything. That is a very real problem. That is a thing. You also need to lay down the law and hire people that understand that yes, there's creativity. Yes, there's silly. Yes, there's fun, but there's also doing a very good job and sticking to the processes and things that we've set out. I think that segues beautifully into your second leadership lesson, which was about your team and how to encourage them, but not. It wasn't your word, but I'm going to say mollycoddle. Yes. Yeah. Infantilization. Yeah. Is, is one of them. And in fact, one of our clients, The Wholesome Show, did a podcast episode on workplace infantilization a couple of weeks back, which was kind of what was making me think about it. It's a very real thing. As a manager, it can be, and a leader, it can be so easy to like micromanage your team and to go,"No, I need it to be done this way firstly. But if you don't understand how to do it, let me just do most of it." And then you do the end bit or alternatively asking the team if they can handle it. And if they can't, then you take a bit back, giving them an in to say,"Oh, that feels like too much work for me. Like, I don't want to do that whole thing, or I don't like editing that client." So give it to someone else. Like, you can't treat them like children. You have to make them aware that yes, they can have creative freedom and they can have lots of flow in their day. But also, they need to be in charge of themselves and I'm not going to be holding their hand through things. I talk about this idea of stretch and support. So stretch your people because they probably can achieve more than what they think they can. How do you stretch that comfort zone but also know they're supported? Not supported that you will do it for them if they don't do a good job, but that they're, it's okay to fail and provide,"this is a safe place to stretch outside of your comfort zone. And yes, it's not going to feel good all the time and you're going to get it wrong sometimes. And, I still expect you to do it." Yeah, exactly. I still expect you to do it and that piece on failing as well, I find very interesting because there's also the point where if they do something wrong, and let's say they're client facing, they do something wrong. There's also a part of you that might want to go, Oh, I'll reply to the client or, you know, I'll, take the blame or I'll apologize or whatever. Getting them to do it. Is actually, yes, it gets them out of their comfort zone, but it also means that they're so much less likely to make that mistake again, because they're front facing and they have to own up to the thing that they've done. Now, if this is a bigger process issue, if this is something that's training that's, you know, on me, then. I'm going to be taking the fall for that and making sure that the team is processed out properly. But if they've made a genuine error that I feel they can resolve and they can talk to the client about, then a hundred percent, that's what they should be doing. It reminds me of the idea of, uh, tying your child's shoelaces. They're like, Oh, it's just quicker and easier if I do it myself. But when they're 16, it's awkward, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There's going to be a point that they tie their own shoelaces. So when people talk about like delegation or giving people tasks, the responsibility and accountability has to match. So if you're giving someone the responsibility to do a job, they also need to have the accountability to follow that up and to own it, and you can support them in doing that. But unless you give them the accountability, which is both the good and the tough stuff, they will never feel responsible for it, and they will always opt out. 100%, I could not agree more. You just summed that up so nicely. So I think if you're giving people tasks. Be okay to stretch them and tell them that it's going to be uncomfortable. Like someone's job should be two thirds in what they're great at and one third what makes them uncomfortable in a stretch. And also some of the crappy tasks, because let's be honest, we all have some crappy tasks and you just can't avoid them. but just telling people up front, and I think that's something that you do really well at Bamby Media talking about. This is the concept, you're responsible for this, you're accountable for this, you need to follow up. I will support you and it's on you. Yeah. A hundred percent. Totally. Something else that you mentioned at the beginning of when we're talking about the second leadership lesson was about process and systems, which is your third leadership lesson and something that I personally have experienced working with you because I've got to see how you set things up. And as a client, it gives me such peace of mind knowing, ah, there's a system, there's a process, everything is under control. Can you tell me a bit about the setting up of processes and how it's impacted your business? Yeah, so I learned pretty early on, and in fact, I learned this from my previous role. So when I was studying as a musician, uh, in my degree, I had a part time job in a huge travel company, massive. And I was the head of training. in the customer service center, and I was a supervisor and head of training. And so, obviously I didn't start there, but I worked my way up to that role. Their processes, because they were a huge company, were on point, and you just knew exactly what every single job was that you would need to do, and, uh, there was no margin, really, for error in the actual process. So, for me, I then was in charge of writing and recording and going through all the training for all the customer service representatives. So anyone that came in that was new, I would train them. And I set up systems within that to go, okay, this is what your training needs to be, and this is the part you do yourself, and this is, you know, blah, blah, blah. This is where I step in and help you, all that. So I learned that we needed firstly an intranet. Yes, which is the back end of your team where anything that you think your team needs to know lives. And we've processed that out. I spent a long time doing it. We use Confluence for our intranet where any tutorial. that they're likely to have lives. Any question that they're likely to have, especially because we're a remote team, a remote team, they can't just pop into my office and be like, Hey, Brianna, blah, blah, blah. And if they try and get me on Slack, a lot of the time I'm not available. I'm in a lot of meetings. They can't get me a lot of the time. And so it is necessary and a requirement that they use the intranet, which has really search, searchable, like. terms there, that they can find whatever they might need to know. So from the backend perspective, and intranet is key, as soon as I started really building that out and have lots of stuff in there, ah, the amount of questions I got just reduced by 99%. You know, I don't get asked questions, and so that, from that side, it's important. The other thing I do, and I do less of now, is when we get a new client, I take the first step. So obviously I set that client up. I'm the first one they communicate with and I, we have like a Google drive where everything's submitted. They have, they get a welcome email. They get all the processes. They get a welcome video. The client really understands how it's going to roll. Absolutely. And then from the other end. I do the initial introduction to the team, to the client. The client's not like getting, I don't mean like a virtual, Hey, this is the client. This is the team. It's me shooting a tutorial for the team to go, this is this client, they're this kind of personality. They have this kind of spark about them. These are the things this client likes that they don't like. They get a video about that client. And then go, and this is how I want you to edit this person. And then I. do the edit, they watch that. So that there, again, is no situation where I feel like I haven't represented the client properly first to the team, so that they understand who the client is. Now, as I get bigger, that's a role that I have to pass off. And that's a tricky one, because for me, client customer relations is huge. But it's something that I, you know, am training upwards on, so that I do less of that as well. Because it's necessary. On that hiring someone to do that job, when businesses grow, like the first thing you hire is people to do things that you're not good at, and the sign that you've reached the next level is that you're hiring people to do the things that you are good at. And that can be tricky. Yeah, it's really, that, the, I'm so personality based, like I'm so personality driven, I really enjoy our clients, and so to have someone step in, that matches my energy. It doesn't need to be the same energy. That's crazy. They don't have to be the same person, but they need to match the flair and the brand that is Bamby Media. And I think when it's your own business, the culture and the values, they are your values. And so every time you hire, it's hiring someone that represents who you are. Even though it's a company, it's still representing who you are. And as I said at the beginning, the reason that I didn't even talk to anybody else, I was like, Oh, yes. This is the match. Done. Yeah. I love match. Uh, when you talked about your processes and your systems, something that I wanted to highlight to listeners is you're very good at expectation setting. And one of the challenges people have with leadership is you either expect someone to already know because they're good at their job, they'll know what to do, or you expect them to know nothing. So you micromanage everything. And people think there's this line, it's like, I do everything micromanage or I'm completely hands off. There's actually a triangle and your leadership style is what we call, Hmm. A little bit called something else. It'll come to me. The pointy bit of the triangle. Constructive leadership. There we go. Got it. So it's a third point. And what people think is like this, like hands off, go completely hands on. You want to find the spot in between. That's not true. It's a third point. It's completely different. And it's setting these expectations up front. So the way that you have met with the client first, and then you've explained, this is what the client's about. And these are my expectations for working with them. These are our end goals. And then they work within that. So setting clear expectations and then giving them some scope to work within it is the key there. Because you can set clear expectations and then micromanage. That's not good. Or you could set no expectations and expect them to do their job. They're not going to meet what you think. And then you're going to end up doing it again anyway. So this falls under when you're delegating and working with a team, a rule of three. So if you do something three times, you need to delegate and have a system for it. If you do it once, you might as well do it yourself. If it's something you only do twice, by the time you do it once, figure it out, and then you tell someone, there's no point. If it's three times, you need a system. So if you think about Brianna's example, you're onboarding clients all the time, so it makes sense that there's a system. They are continually doing podcast episodes, so it makes sense that from the beginning they know exactly what you expect. and you do the first one, you show them. And I'm going to imagine there's then a checking process to making sure that what they're doing. Yes. Okay. Excellent. Quality assurance, making sure that you're checking in, that the expectation you said at the beginning is being followed through on the, how does that checking process happen? Now I've put you on the spot. Yeah. So that is really a fun one. The checking process, because I started off where I would. Okay. It depends on how long you've had your team members in place, right? Because certainly if they, if you take a bunch of newbies, then I need to be checking all of it. So for each individual podcast episode, I would then go in, there's like a tick box. We use Trello for our workflow. So Trello is just a checklist master. It's awesome. Yeah. And, uh, there's plenty of them, exactly. So there would be a checkbox where after they've done their bit, it's like Brianna to review. So then I would have to go in and listen, review, give them feedback via loom and show them things that they can improve. Okay. So it's not just like, yeah, this is good enough. It's like, no, here's the things that you're missing. As the team, oh, and that goes for like content writing as well, video snippets, things like that, that I. would start off doing. I would then review everything. When I was hiring multiple, multiple people at once, that was, that was awful. I just, that was my whole life. I was just reviewing and giving feedback, but I knew that the end goal was they'll be really good and I'll trust them. Mm hmm. To do it. After about three weeks, You could stop. Didn't have to review anymore. And then it would only be where, you know, some little things would come up. Or sometimes I would just pop in without them knowing and just listen to something and see how they're going. Yeah. That kind of stuff. But the thing that's happening now, which I was trialing, was they review each other. Oh, I love this. Tell me more. Yeah. So it's like, instead of me getting my hands in there, These people that have been working here have been working with me for quite some time. They are very aware of the process and the systems and how things are supposed to go. If I assign someone new to a task they haven't done before, let's say it's content writing, I assign them to it. Then there's a checkbox underneath that says, you know, Deb to review or Emily to review or Meili to review. So that another team member has to go in. Listen, review, and give that person feedback same way I would. Now why this is valuable is because it makes, firstly, the person that knows they're going to be reviewed by someone else in their team you know, because they, they want to do a good job. They don't want to, like, they want to represent themselves really well for the other person, for their peer. So it makes them do a better job. It also makes the person reviewing. Good, because they come in, they listen, they review, and they might even learn something from the other person, and they're being critical, and then they actually take that on to their own work as well. So. That's working really well. I love this as a concept because you learn so much when you teach something or you critique something else because you put it in a different lens. And I think that is wonderful as a skill set development, but also as a team, like a team environment, because I also believe that the way you've set up your culture is this is viewed as. I'm on your team, I'm here to help, not I'm going to catch you out. And that is such an important difference. If you think, yeah, we're going to do this and then, uh, it's the team explodes. It's because they think they're getting judged by their peers who they think no less. Bad culture. You want to set up in the way that you are supporting each other, um, to be better at the job. Yeah. It's fun. It's a fun little extra thing for them to do. And uh, the feedback's been great. Yeah, I have, um, been writing some leadership programs and I recently taught a leadership program that somebody else wrote. And it was so good for me to sit on the other side and see what it was like to go through that content because it made me better at my writing skills. I was like, Oh, I like what they've done here. I'm like, Oh, this is actually not clear. Where have I done that? So it's a good skill development, whether intentional or not. We're going to put that as your fourth leadership lesson. You get a bonus one. Now, before I dropped the name James Clear, when I meant James Kerr, but James Clear was someone that we spoke about just before we hit record. And talking now of these next section of the podcast is the one percenters. So like, what is some practical tips and some one percents that people could take for their leadership straight away? And one person you said was James Clear. Yeah. So, I mean, his book, Atomic Habits, just like, if you haven't read it. It's a great book. It's just everywhere. Go to the program. Just get, just get to it. Uh, and he has this journal, So you can get this that goes with it. I don't know if you, you might not have the video, but if you can look for on Amazon, uh, it's just like Atomic Habits Journal or something. The thing that's cool about that is that it gives you a tangible way to track your habits, the little things that you want to improve. There's like a habit tracker thing at the back of the book where you can go month and habit. And then every time you do that habit, you can give a cross to it. You can then see over time how many times you've done that thing. now for me, if we look at just more generally, let's, I'll just show you. Hang on, I'll see if I can find what I was habiting out here. Okay. So for me to feel like I can be a human in the world and get 1 percent better, I came across what I felt like were the things that helped me feel better, be more creative and then lead better. And for me, it was meditate, but not like a massive meditate. It was like two minutes. Meditating for me is. I, I find it kind of, you know, boring, but I can do it for a couple of minutes. Qi Gong, which is like a process, oh, Qi Gong, you look it up, it's, it's basically a system of slapping yourself. So you're just like, you're just like slapping yourself all over, like your whole body. That's not the whole thing. This is not where I thought this podcast was going. Yeah. You're just slapping yourself. Um, and it's so energizing. It's really Thinking about the science of it, it makes sense. Oh man, like really like going at it everywhere and you look like an absolute mental person just like, you know, just whatever, like everywhere, but Qigong is really cool for that. And again, you don't need to do a lot of it, but it's an energetic match for me to go. I need to wake myself up. I sit here at my desk all the time, playing music, journaling, bed by nine 30. reading, walking every day in the morning and checking in with my partner. They're the main, like, things. Obviously there's kids stuff in there and all that sort of stuff, but so much of getting 1 percent better is firstly acknowledging that you have a problem. You have a problem you're trying to fix and get better at in some way. And then for me, it always goes back to personality. Who am I as a person? What was I like as a child? How can I bring in elements of that person into my day to day to then be a better functioning human and be a better leader as a result of that? Yeah, I love that. The quote that you loved from James Clear was about Um, goals and systems you rise. Was it You, you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Yeah. And I think you can have all the goals. Yeah. I was saying to Brianna that. one of my previous podcast guests, Lauren Fraser from Thea Media, who was on probably about a month ago when this comes out. Um, she talked about the same one about having these goals, but then realizing that the systems for her life she didn't have in place and for her business. And I think your habit tracker is actually a really good example of how you have set up these systems and processes for your life that then impact your business and your leadership. And it's setting you up for the person that you want to be. Yeah, it's You 100 percent need to think about yourself more than you're thinking about yourself, I think is, is the thing that a lot of people don't do. They really don't reflect on themselves, who they are now, who they want to be, and how they can get to where they want to be. And a lot of people don't even know where that place is. Like, where do they want to go? Where do, who do they want to be? It's only through a process of self reflection and doing little incremental things that you enjoy. where you start to actually realize what it is that you overall want to do. I think your question there will leave a lot of people thinking. Um, and I love that you finished off like, what are the little things? So sometimes that question can be so overwhelming, like who are you and what are the things that make you who you are? Like, ah, okay, well, let's think about 1%. What's something small that helps to make you who you are? And for me, there's some similar things like being outside, exercise, music, singing. Those are the things that the 1% ers, when that other question gets too big, they're the things that help bring me back to sort of the base of who I am and life becomes easier. So, Jay, we're going to give people some homework for this podcast. Yeah, get onto it, guys. Go and find that. I have a tracker or there's plenty of online ones as well. Yes. There's a couple of other things you mentioned in your 1% ers, other books or, people that you find interesting. Can you share a couple of those? Yes, for sure. So I obviously put down the James Clear book, Atomic Habits. Yes. There's also an incredible book called Principles by Ray Dalio. Ray's like 65 or 70 ish now, and he is the head and founder of Bridgewater Investments, which is like The biggest financial hedge, like investment fund in the world or something. It's crazy. Don't quote me on that, but he's huge. Okay. Bridgewater is massive and he built a huge team and he wrote a book pretty recently. where he splits the book up into two. There's life principles, and then there's work principles. Which I think is really cool, because he goes through all the things that he does in his life, the things that are important to him in his life and his family and all that, and then you kind of break and pause, and then he talks about the work ones. Now, a lot of the work But he frames things in a very interesting way in the work part of like keeping your, team accountable to things and how they work through disagreements and how they give feedback and. It's just an incredible book. And again, there's a journal that goes with it where you can, you can tell I like journaling, where you can write down your principles and like reflect on that and, and change things over time. So that book is incredible. I highly recommend, please, uh, go through that. There is a big section in the middle, uh, beginning where he talks about his backstory, which unless you're into financial investment. and things knowing about that. It's just a very hard read, that section. And he even says, if this doesn't interest you, I'm not, I'm not like offended if you skip this bit. I was like, oh, good. Okay. Cause I started reading it and I was like, no, this is, this is well above something I'm interested in. So his is really good. Uh, a hundred million dollar leads. I mean, I know we all hear about Alex Formosy all over the place at the moment, but his book was actually Written for like a four year old, you know, as in like, it's so easy to read, so accessible, so easy to read, so understandable. And he recorded the whole book as video lessons as well. So that teaches you about how to, yeah, how to get more leads, how to generate them. And, uh, that's a really good one. Four hour work week, I found interesting by Tim Ferriss. A lot of it I don't agree with, but there was certainly aspects of it like, you know, not checking your emails 50 Agreed. Yeah, some great principles in that one. And then I love our client, Christina Carlson, who's the founder of Kiki K and we've been working with her now for quite some time. She does these, she has a podcast called Your Dream Life Podcast. She's done some incredible things and she's also very humble and she's very into self development and that's, she's a person to just witness. and enjoy her stuff. Her podcast is also very well received and she, uh, interviews some huge people. And then Matt Gray is another one I found just more recently. I can't remember what the name of his business that he, I think it's called Founders or something at the moment that he's running, but he's an interesting character. YouTube him. He's just starting to surface everywhere. And he's talking about, yeah, teams and being a founder and, uh, you'll find him interesting as well. And he steps things, a lot of, a lot of things out on LinkedIn in these really cool infographics that he just writes himself. Awesome. Well, Brianna, as I said at the beginning, the reason that this podcast got off the ground is because I was working with you and your team. So if somebody else has a podcast that is looking to really make it special, how could they work with you? There's a few ways. So they can, if they want to keep doing the thing themselves, they have their own production team or they're producing it themselves or whatever, then they can do what we call the pod coach service. Essentially it's, that's great. What we do is we give you feedback on your episodes. We look at you without you knowing about it. Too much, you know, so we'll listen to your episodes, we'll score them, we'll look at the way you share on social media, we'll, uh, read your articles, we'll, you know, broad spectrum, not just like, is this content good? It's like, what is this person doing for their podcast? on a consistent basis. We give you feedback in a, again, systemized, processed, production schedule. Uh, we shoot lean videos. You get access to a Slack channel. We give you feedback on there and we track all your metrics over a three month period. where we then, every time we give you feedback, we expect you to, again, 1 percent better. Make a change based on what we've said. Probably hold them accountable to it because that is the key. Exactly. So, Podcoach is awesome. Three month minimum commitment. If you want to keep doing it yourself, that just means that we're. We're paying attention to you and, uh, it's a fun one. There's lots of people in that podcoach service already and I just love it. So you can do that. Uh, you can also hire us as a production team. You can find that on our services page. There's a bunch of different things that you can do there. We can help you launch your show and then produce it every week based on your package and your budget. And. And. You can also do some free stuff, like we have a DIY podcaster program, which I actually just made completely free and you can go in there and learn how to produce your show yourself, do the whole thing. It's a video tutorial, every single episode, it's all using the script and I did have it paid as a course and I had members in there and I just decided one day, look, I think I actually just want to make this free and then instead those members. Went into pod coach. Mm-Hmm. So as in they could, they got that then in Yeah. So that they weren't getting nothing, uh, out of it. So that's really cool. Do it yourself. Again, go to the site. You'll see that we also have a free audit service where we will just give you feedback, 48 hours turnaround, which is awesome. That's the main things. I'll make sure I put all the links in the show notes so people can find you. today I felt nervous at the beginning because it's always nerve wracking when you interview someone that is really good at what you're doing. As we said at the beginning, I think it's good to be outside your comfort zone. And a good testament to Brianna is like, just your personality, we've always got along so well and how comfortable this process is. thank you for coming and joining and sharing your leadership lessons. And it's so nice to hear the stories from the inside of the things that I've witnessed from the outside, because I guarantee your clients have a sense of your business. It'll be because of the things that are happening on the inside, they permeate to the outside. Um, and so it's lovely to hear what's like the magic that you're doing inside your company to make it so magical on the outside. So thank you so much for sharing your stories today. Oh, that's just such a nice thing to say, Kate. Well done. That's just awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I've had a great time. I've definitely been judging you really heavily this whole time. And I've got some notes. Oh, trust me, I've got notes too. Thanks so much. I hope everyone enjoyed this. Thank you.
