Inclusive Entrepreneurship with Celia Boyd [PODCAST]

Phil Cross: Welcome to the Leaders For Good podcast. In this episode, Kerry and myself are joined by Celia Boyd and we dive into the topic of inclusive entrepreneurship. How do we make start-up businesses, which are more accessible and more inclusive for more people?

Celia has a wealth of knowledge and experience as one of the founders of SHE Investments and also instrumental in the success of yap. And you’ll hear more about both of those organisations in the episode. And we learn about Celia’s journey, how SHE got to where SHE is today. We learn about the economic climate in Cambodia, and some of the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in that country.

And we unpack what it means to be an inclusive entrepreneur. What does a style of business that is more accessible and more inclusive look like, and importantly, you as business leaders, listening to this podcast, what can you take away from this? What can you put into practice in your organisations today?

A wide ranging conversation, a really fun one. Celia is a joy to talk to a wealth of information, and we hope you enjoyed listening. As much as we enjoyed having the conversation. Without further ado, we bring you Celia Boyd.

Kerry Boys: Hello, and welcome to the Leaders For Good podcast. Today. We are lucky enough to be joined by Celia Boyd. And Celia and I met when we were both living and working in Cambodia now back in Australia. But both really passionate about the impact that we can make overseas and, and here at home. Welcome Celia.

Celia Boyd: Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Kerry Boys: And Celia works for yap and is also on the board at SHE investments an organisation based in Cambodia. We’ve been working closely together as part of an accelerator program there, but before we get into that in more detail, I’d love it if you could maybe give a bit of an overview on how you found yourself doing the work that you’re doing and your journey in Cambodia, and then back to Australia.

Celia Boyd: Sure. So thanks again for having me. It’s interesting. I’ve been back in Australia now for about seven or eight months, and it’s really interesting. Figuring out what I’m doing here and my place and, and how it all works. But yeah. So about eight, eight and a half years ago now, myself and my two co-founders, we started a business incubator in Cambodia and we started that because the majority of businesses in Cambodia were run by women.

And yet. Almost all of those businesses were really tiny micros size and largely in the informal sector. So once you get up to the formal economy and SME sized businesses, there were just very few women. And we noticed that there were no business support structures in place that were really designed for women.

That were using, you know, relevant role models, like my women, for example that were conducting business training and support programs in my language. And according to my culture and really addressing the very gendered barriers that women in business faced in Cambodia. So the three of us started as incubator program together and low and behold, a few years later, it, I just kind of very organically grew.

And we now have SHE investments, which is a business incubator accelerator that does a whole range of different things to build a gender inclusive ecosystem in Cambodia, working across five provinces with a really amazing team. And in terms of me coming back to Australia, I suppose there’s a lot of stuff that went into, you know, how I found myself here and, and what happened with starting SHE, but, specifically, maybe to our conversation today, I can kind of trace it back to in, in 2020 when you know, the world was very much burning down around all of us. One of the last public speaking things that I did was at an event in Siem Reap. And we’d always talked at SHE about the importance of local leadership and about my co-founder and our amazing leadership team at SHE taking over leadership of the organisation and really driving the vision and the programs forwards into the future.

And essentially that it shouldn’t be led by a, a wide Australian woman. And so that was always the goal. And then I found myself at this, on this panel discussion at this event. And I was being asked questions and I essentially being asked, give advice. And I was looking out at this crowd of this sea of faces, every single one of which was Cambodian.

And I just had this like, huge realization that, oh my God, I’m not practicing what I preach here. Like, if we’re going to do this at some stage, then we have to actually do it. We can’t just talk about it. And. It’s not appropriate for me to continue being the white face of this organisation. Every single thing we do is about Cambodia women and for them.

And so that’s when I kind of really started to very actively put in place the steps that I needed to, to transition out of that leadership role and to step onto the board and really back the team in Cambodia to drive it forward. And so that’s how I find myself now, back in Australia. Up to seven years in Cambodia and on, on the board as a director of SHE still really backing them and, and supporting everything that they do by really enabling them to step into that leadership space and take it forwards.

And so since coming back to Australia, I’ve transitioned out of that leadership and now into a new organisation, working with yap as their head of program design. And they do a lot of the same kind of work as. SHE in many different countries around the world. And so I, I work with them to help design or support, support their impact teams to design accelerator programs in, in a range of different countries. There’s quite a longwinded introduction. Sorry,

Kerry Boys: Such an interesting story though. And I think there’s that you’ve left out there that we could into more, but for now just. Given time, but I think what you’ve articulated there in supporting entrepreneurship is really how the three of us have come, come together today.

And as Leaders For Good, 50% of our profits go to support social impact businesses. And those that create employment opportunities for disadvantage groups and obviously the work of SHE and why gap is very firmly in that entrepreneurship and inclusive entrepreneurship space. And together we’re working on funding and creating an accelerator program for, for women entrepreneurs in Cambodia, which is super exciting.

I wonder if you might want to give a little bit more info on that accelerator program from your perspective and the work that we’ve done to date. So obviously we’ve had the kick-off session. I’d love you to give, give a bit more info on that one.

Celia Boyd: For sure. I’m super about excited about this program actually, because it’s come, come at a time when we’ve been talking so much about, you know, the barriers that women are facing in business and how our programs need to improve. And the, the work that we’ve been doing over the past few years and our biggest lessons from that, and how we want the programs to look moving forwards. And so this partnership has come about at a time when it’s actually enabling us to take all of these lessons from the past few years and design a program that the team really, really want to deliver.

And is, is all about providing that much deeper level of support to, to women so that they can genuinely help like scale their businesses, but also access the, that level of depth that they really need to be successful over a longer period. So the program is built on the foundations of a typical SHE accelerator program, which goes for about seven months as 10 workshops involves a lot of face to face, you know, daytime delivered workshops that are delivered by Khmer women, in Khmer language, and designed to enable women with micro to small size businesses to overcome the, the barriers that they’re facing to learn problem solving skills, to learn those more hard business skills, but also to be surrounded by their peers and to have the role models that they need to be inspired by and, you know, see the, the women who they really wanna be and who are growing the businesses that demonstrating what’s possible.

So. On top of that, what, what the team has really been looking at what they want to be doing differently is I suppose, adapting the program to address the, the additional barriers that women are now facing in business. And a lot of that is due to things like COVID. So there’s a lot of economic rebuilding that’s going on. And there are a lot of skills that have been very, very highlighted that are lacking for business owners across. Much of the world, but including in the Asia Pacific. So digital skills, for example, businesses really need to digitalize.

They need to understand things like digital marketing. They need to understand how to onboard onto eCommerce platforms. They need to be managing their money really effectively using digital tools. And those skills are really lacking at the moment and have the past few years. And the pandemic really sped up the need for those things and left many people behind.

So being able to address. Those specific skill gaps, as well as looking at the financial readiness of businesses. So yes, we want to help their businesses scale. Yes. We want to help them access finance. But what we’ve learned over the past few years is that in, we can’t just put women in front of an investor or a bank, for example, And say like this, person’s got a great story. They’ve got a great business. You should definitely give them money. We’re kind of almost setting them up to fail if they don’t actually have a business that is ready to accept that finance and effectively manage that finance before they can, you know, Scale without falling apart. So what this program is enabling them to do is actually pitch for a small amount of money as a grant. , Look at how they manage that and give them support to use that as capital to help ’em, to scale and put the things in place that they need to be able to in future. Be more ready to access bigger finance. So it’s a much more holistic like comprehensive program. And then at the same time, it’s matching them with technical mentors so that they can get much deeper individual support than we’ve ever been able to give them before.

So we’re really excited about that because they will get access to. Experts to industry specialists to their, their peers in Cambodia, to other women. So they get this whole range of support coming from different areas to kind of tailor it to, to their individual journey.

Kerry Boys: I love that. And the grants part was really interesting for us because when we first started exploring this space, we were looking at impact investment.

As a whole. And we were looking for businesses in lower income countries that we could invest into longer term, get a return that we could then continue to invest that back into other organisations. But the more people we spoke to and the more we went down this path, actually that early grant stage of getting some kind of investment. So you could even get an MVP or sort of start your business off with such a gap. So where in many countries that we operate within, actually, if you need to five grand together to put, get a website up that’s something you can do through savings, or you can ask your family for, mm. Whereas in many of these countries that just that doesn’t exist and you can’t even start to build a business or develop a proof of concept without some kind of funding to enable that.

So we’ve done this in a few areas now, but I think it was a bit of a light bulb moment for me anyway, around that missing gap of that sort of pre pre-investment funding.

Celia Boyd: Yeah, for sure. And that’s exactly what it is. People need to be able to demonstrate that they can use a small amount of funding, get, you know, their stuff together to a certain degree and then be ready to go out for a bit of funding.

And that’s kind of how all of, you know, many of our businesses started with a very, very small amount of capital and, and it went from there. So it’s, they have entrepreneurs in Cambodia or any country. They have this exactly the same needs. They don’t always have the same means or same. Access or pathways towards that capital that they need.

And they don’t necessarily want to do that and get themselves into debt more so than they probably already are before. They’re kind of ready to do that. There needs to be like this stepping stone in between. And at the moment, that’s just not possible, like with no strings attached and without, you know, like a 20% interest rate attached to it or something, it literally doesn’t exist.

So. Providing them with something that is just nonexistent at the moment in Cambodia. So we’re really, really excited about.

Phil Cross: And Celia a question from me for members of the audience that might be a bit more unfamiliar with, with Cambodia or as a society and as a culture and, and the, the landscape over there.

But could you impact some of the specific barriers that are facing women entrepreneurs in Cambodia? You spoke to some of them already, and we know that for example, COVID has disproportionately affected women. Globally in terms of its impact for various reasons, you know just one of which would be the responsibility for, for caring has largely largely fallen into to women in many countries, but are there other sort of social, cultural, or systemic barriers to, to women entrepreneurs in Cambodia that you could just, bring to life a little bit and, and kind of paint the picture of what, why this is why this is such important work.

Celia Boyd: Yeah, sure. And I guess, I suppose people listening because obviously they can’t see my face to, I it’s probably quite obvious by my accent, but to put it out there, I’m like, I’m a white Australian woman. So I come to this with such a degree of privilege that sometimes I feel like the best way to explain it is almost just to really like, obviously call that out, but really for better or worse, like almost use a comparison to how simple in many ways it has been for me to be an entrepreneur in Cambodia compared to the women that we are, SHE is there to support.

And I mean, so one way for example, is that I could go to Cambodia and I could start a business and I could take a certain level of risk knowing that no matter what happened, my parents would always be there for me to like move into their basement and if, you know, if, if the shit really hit the fan, like I could I could get out and I would be okay. And. That’s just not the case for so many people in the world. So many entrepreneurs in the world, but because I came at it with that, like degree of privilege, there was so much that I could do. I could open a bank account. I wasn’t, you know, I have a higher education, but I’m also, I come at it with, because of that privilege I come with a higher degree of self-confidence. My parents have told me from when I was born, that I can do whatever I want to do, and they’ll always be there to support me. And so even things like opening a bank account, registering a business, having a meeting, like getting a business off the ground and going and networking and talking to people and selling myself and selling my business that was terrifying.

And there were, you know, lots of self confidence and, and all of those, you know, things that come about for all of us. But in saying that. I was not raised and told every single day that I couldn’t do it, that my place was at home, that I should be, you know, get married, have babies cook dinner. And that is the case for so many people.

One of the first things that I learned when I moved to Cambodia was that there’s something called the Chbab Srey, which means the rules girls. And it is literally a list of rules for girls and my co-founder Lida. She is the most amazing woman she’s Khmer and she actually gets really annoyed at me when I, when I talk about the rules for girls, because she’s like that doesn’t describe like how, how I am and how I feel and how many women are.

But I think it’s important to acknowledge because it is the, the fact that so many of the women entrepreneurs that we support, they have grown up with this set of rules and it was taught to them by their parents. And it was taught to them as part of the formal education system in Cambodia up until about 2014.

So when you are raised by this set of literal rules, that tells you what happens at home, stays at home and don’t gossip. And don’t talk about your husband the wrong way and stay home and do your domestic duty. Then that creates the self sense of self where going suddenly going to a bank and talking to someone and opening a bank account and standing up in front of a group of people and publicly speaking about your business and, or let alone speaking to an investor or pitching at, at a business event that is such a bigger mountain to climb and such a huge, like more terrifying thing than it is for many of us. So I. You know, we could talk about things like education and low incomes and lack of digital skills and all of these things. But I think so much of it, honestly, at the end of the day comes to the self confidence that you have as a person and as someone who is it was valuable and an income owner and a breadwinner in your family. Who’s confident enough to pay yourself a salary, as well as everyone else in your family and be able to say confidently, I am an entrepreneur. I am a business owner. And let me tell you about my business. Let me sell it to you. That alone is I think the biggest thing, the biggest hurdle for so many women to overcome.

Kerry Boys: Just a quick story to bring that to life. When I was coaching with some of your female women entrepreneurs in Cambodia, and there was an amazing woman that I was working with, and the reason she’d put her hand up for coaching was she said that there wasn’t a single person in her friend or family network that supported her starting a new business.

She said, everyone told her she needed to settle down, have kids. They were completely anti her starting this business, but she was amazing and she was brave and she wanted to do it, but she just needed some people to be able to talk to and to have any kind of support.

Celia Boyd: Mm, that’s just it. Right. You just, you need that circle of people. You need to feel like people are backing you and like someone has got your back and like running your business is, as you guys would know like it’s, so it’s, the highs are so high and the lows are so low. And when you are crying in the shower and don’t know how you’re going to pay salaries next month. And like when all of this, everything is happening and you you’re so alone to also have everyone around you telling you that you can’t do it and you shouldn’t be doing it. I don’t understand, I don’t know how they do do it honestly. Like there’s, these women are amazing. They’re just incredible. And they are so much more amazing and inspiring than I will ever be. It’s like, I can’t understand like how they ever like, even trusted me to. Help start this organisation that will train them in business that somehow they did, but they’re so incredible to be where they. Even now starting out on that journey. So yeah, they’re just, yeah, they’re just incredible.

Phil Cross: And, and that brings it full circle back to the point you made at the start with part of your journey with, you know sort of moving on from the leadership position at SHE investments and taking position on the board and it reminds me of a, a quote that of, I probably lean on too much from Krishnamurti . You know, we’re thinking our own thoughts. We’re not, we’re thinking our culture’s thoughts. Unless you’ve grown up in a culture and, and, and you really have a lived experience and an understanding of the environment you’re not going to speak to it in the same way. And, and I don’t mean that’s just one of the, one of the. One of the many different considerations there, but, from a connection perspective, there’s something there’s something to, to sort of stepping aside in, in a position like that. So yeah, love it.

Kerry Boys: Yeah. And I think the, the awareness that longer term to be the best role model possible is to enable my women to lead and to role model. And as you said, Lida can absolutely do that and is an amazing, amazing woman.

I think this brings us quite neatly to something that we’ve been thinking about a lot recently, and we don’t really have an answer for it, but as part of our journey, Around how, how we best support and what we do with our, our impact money. We’ve been looking a lot at entrepreneurship. And the thing that we keep [1]thinking about is about entrepreneurship and stereotypes. So this sort of Silicon Valley stereotype of an entrepreneur that works all hours, the day they sleep under their desk, they are going to 10 times their business, like all of these things. That really actually, when you look at them are really unhealthy for individuals and actually are really inaccessible for many. So whether that is someone in a low income country that just has childcare duties and cannot do that, whether that’s someone with a disability, whether that’s like there’s, there’s so many people that cannot access entrepreneurship in that way, that it feels the more we looked at it, the more uncomfortable it’s really felt to us.

Some of the entrepreneurs that we’re working directly with. When we think about the thought of them trying to get in front of an investor and secure investment, they’re not going to be the type of entrepreneur that’s going to do this sexy two minute pitch about how much money they’re going to make, because that’s not who they are as an individual.

They have beautiful stories. They’re making the most amazing impact, but that’s just, that’s not them. And why should entrepreneurs have to fit into this stereotypical mould to be able to make successful social impact businesses. And it’s just, it’s been a really interesting journey for us. And I think that’s part of why we’re so interested in funding entrepreneurs, that aren’t the sort of stereotypical entrepreneur and how do we make entrepreneurship more accessible to more people.

Celia Boyd: It’s so interesting because when you think about like these things that we put, these entrepreneurs that we put up on a pedestal so much of the time they are male and they are white and they’re from America or Australia, wherever it might be. And if they have a social enterprise, first of all, that’s a super Western term, but if they’re this like social enterprise, then like good for them, but that’s actually not the majority of businesses in the world, the people who are like keeping economies going and particularly emerging economies in places like Cambodia or Asia, Pacific Islands, wherever it might be like genuinely emerging economies. The people who are actually keeping like the world going around are the people who are running the mechanic down the road and the grocery store and hairdresser, and the day-care centre. Like those are the people who are actually keeping things running. And they’re the people who are not up on that pedestal for, because why, because they are, I don’t know, black or Asian, or they don’t make a ridiculous amount of profit.

And maybe they’re just trying to keep their families employed. Maybe they’re just, they, maybe their biggest goal in life is to pay themselves a decent salary or to, I don’t know, give their staff health insurance or what, you know, maybe their goal is just to register their business and pay tax and pay their employees fairly. And that somehow is like not, I don’t know, it’s it, they’re not on that pedestal. And it’s so interesting that we take that we don’t, we put, like, if you look, if you ask one of those entrepreneurs, how is your life? Like, you’ve achieved this goal. How’s it going? There’s so, so many of them. I don’t know, burnt out.

And as you said, like working seven days a week. Like I only just started being able to fall asleep at night within like a good amount of time without, you know, staying up for four hours or whatever, trying to sleep. And I think the only reason for that is because. I’ve had seven months of not working weekends for the first time since I started business when I was 27 years old.

So like, why is that the goal to these people are on pedestals, they’re probably miserable. And as I mentioned, like crying in the shower like that, like, do you want to be crying in the shower every day for years on end? Like why, how is that a life goal to achieve? And then why do we want to encourage other people to achieve that.

Kerry Boys: And it’s one of the things I love about when we were first started talking about the accelerator program. And you said to me, so many of these accelerated programs, white people fly in, fly out, try and teach like this Western model of entrepreneurship, which just isn’t going to work. And I love that you are back to your leading by local, your entire accelerator program, both what we are developing and what you have in the past is all led by what works for Khmer women. And that’s just such an important starting point.

Phil Cross: I think there’s just to, just to acknowledge one of our favourite topics, which is cognitive biases, the survivorship bias. So the people on the pedestal are very few and far between we put a handful of, as you, rightly said Celia, they’re usually middle-aged white men on, on these entrepreneurial pedestals. And, and we point to them as the personification of success as an entrepreneur, but, but they do not represent the vast majority of the experience of most entrepreneurs, even the ones that fit a similar demographic mould and the sleeping on the factory floor and the working 72 hours a week is perhaps part of the experience, but often it doesn’t come with the same degree of, of even the material success that they’re, that they’re chasing as well. So I think that’s an important thing to, to acknowledge. And the, as you, I think Kerry, you pointed to before the. The mental health and the health implications for that way of working are serious and considerable.

It’s not direct really directly related just to entrepreneurship, but, you know, the Japanese have the, Karoshi ,the term for literally kind of death by overwork because as a sort of cultural norm that’s, that’s, you know, it was, it was so prevalent that, that they have a word for it. And the literally billions of dollars, I think the estimate was that in sort of workplace illness, the cost of burnout was in Australia and New Zealand was, was kind of something in the order of $11 billion per year. So, this is a, this is a, this is a, a, a real consideration that, what is the purpose of work? I suppose, is what I’m getting to at the end of the day, you know, why are we doing the things we’re doing and, and providing for our families. And, and some, some degree of some degree of economic security is definitely part of the equation, but. To throw out another quote and, and not to be a, not to be a, just a jukebox full of quotes for this, but I think it was I think it was Tim O’Reilly that, that, that said this, but, you know, businesses, it’s not a tour of gas stations, you know, monies like fuel in the tank, but, but running a business, shouldn’t be a tour of gas stations.

I’m butchering the quote, but, but essentially it shouldn’t be about just the, the dollar amount. What is the, what is the, what is the impact you’re having. With the work you do. And, and what is the type of organisation you’re creating? I think is the, the sort of larger, larger question we’re asking here.

Celia Boyd: Yeah. And I feel like when we’re gradually, finally starting to move away from this, you know, this social enterprise kind of view where I think maybe 10 years ago that was like really still, that was the ideal business model, the very sexy business model. And now I think we are finally starting to move towards this idea that, well, actually that’s just like how businesses should be.

Like you just, you should just be having like diverse teams and employing people fairly and trying to. Leave the world a slightly better place than what you left it through your business and through your work. And you don’t have to be a social enterprise to do that. It’s just good business.

Kerry Boys: Yeah. And we are really trying hard to role model that.

Phil Cross: We still do call ourselves a social enterprise though. Embarrassingly though.

Celia Boyd: well, I mean, it’s a little, it’s a little bit different for you guys though, because you have a very specific mandate. Right? And you like, you, you like say we’re here to make profit and this is what we’re going to do with that profit.

Kerry Boys: Yeah. It’s built into our business model.

Celia Boyd: Yeah, exactly. So that’s a really different way of saying people who are like, where. I don’t even know what I’ll do is I’ll like use the wrong example and then I’ll like accidentally offend somebody’s business. you know what I mean? Like you guys are using what I don’t like is the kind of that model of like buy one of this and we’ll give one of this kind of thing.

It’s like, that’s I think a little bit old fashioned, but when you’re kind of like, We’re here to make money and there’s nothing wrong with that. And here’s what we’re going to do with this money and be really transparent about it. That I think is a simple, is a different thing. We call it a social enterprise right now.

And I think that that’s like the word that we have for it, but in the future, hopefully more and more people will do that. And they’ll realize the power that they have. By making money and by using it in the right way, and hopefully that’ll be more, more of an acceptable business model and we won’t need to use that term anymore.

Phil Cross: Mm-hmm yeah. Agreed.

Kerry Boys: I love that as a way of thinking. And I think it was it’s on our mind since we started the organisation about the type of organisation we wanted to be, and we wanted to role model, or we wanted to prove that using a business model where a proportion of money goes to good can absolutely work.

And in the same way, when we’ve been talking about sort of hours and burnout, We work four hour, four hour weeks. I wish four hour weeks we work four day weeks.

Celia Boyd: I saw that. I saw that was one of my favorited things that I, I emailed you guys on a Friday and I got this response. I think it was from you, Phil. And I was like, I don’t work on Fridays. And I was like, yeah, see you on Monday.

Phil Cross: Then also my out of office is literally that glib as well. It’s like, here’s the hand. I don’t work Fridays and don’t talk to me.

Celia Boyd: I loved it.

Kerry Boys: Not quite! But it’s important. And we do want to role model it. We want to show, you can create a successful business where people. Have really good wellbeing. You don’t have to work. Like we do work hard. There’s no doubt about that, but we definitely aren’t at the stage where we’re burning out and we don’t want any of our team to be like that, because that’s not a sustainable business in the long term and it shouldn’t have to be like that. Businesses can be successful without those unfair and unrealistic for many expectations.

And it’s actually been really interesting hasn’t it worked cause we’ve been hiring recently over the last 12 months and so many amazing, amazing people come to us that cannot get into the business world in other ways, because for whatever reason, really varied reasons, they can’t work five days a week, nine to five.

It’s just not don’t want to, or don’t want to. Yeah, absolutely. It’s just not accessible for them. And by being incredibly flexible, people can work where they want, where they want. Doesn’t really matter to us as long as they can get the work done. And we’ve got enough crossover in time zones to collaborate as a team.

Then that works for us. We can be flexible like that. And it means we’ve got the most amazing, amazing team that haven’t been able to access the workforce for that reason.

Celia Boyd: That’s very cool

Phil Cross: And acknowledging as well that the, the four days a week is, is coming from a place of privilege. Right? We, we we’ve been lucky enough to build the business we’ve built and have the connections we have and live in the country that we live in and, and have the, you know, the family and the support systems and, and the business. We’re doing well as a business we’re growing, we’re hiring, we’re able to, we’re able to have impact, but that’s not necessarily available to everyone as well that we do recognize that. But I think the, the key thing we talk about with privilege when we, when we talk about it to organisations is what are you going to do with it? Um, and for us, part of that is, okay we’re privileged no doubt about that. Can we leverage that into a lowercase S sustainable business that we’re, that has longevity, that we’re happy working in that will continue having a positive impact on the world for a decent amount of time?

I think, Because privilege is thrown out as a bit of a slander, sometimes in a dirty word , or it can seem like that at least to people and, running workshops where the, where the topic’s discussed. It can definitely get the barriers up if it’s, if it’s broached in the wrong way.

And the core message we want to, we want to talk about with privilege, if, if you’re lucky enough to, to have it or, or advantage, I think is a better word. A more, or a more accessible or palatable word for, for a lot of for a lot of focus, just what are you going to do with it? And again, it comes back to the what, what’s the impact you want to have on, on the world?

Is it, is it all, is it all for self or, or, or are you going to, or are you going to, are you going to parlay that into a positive you know, positive impact on, on, on whatever, whatever you care about. There’s, there’s plenty of, plenty of courses causes that you can you can get.

Celia Boyd: And really role, I think the more companies, that role model that as well, the more people that are doing it, the more normal it becomes for others as well.

And it’s easier for other companies then to, to see what you are doing to see what other organisations are doing and to also see how that works for them, which, which I think is really cool. So hopefully, you know, in, in a few more years time, there’ll be many more other companies that are like watching what Leaders For Good doing what other companies are doing and see that being role modelled and also try it themselves. And hopefully it won’t be, it’ll be much more the norm.

Phil Cross: Just, just to double click on that for a second. Celia, the examples you were giving before about the, the, the sort cultural context that folk in Cambodia are raised in, just made me think of some of the conversations we have with our clients. Similarly, when they get the out of office on Friday from us, the next conversation I have with the client is, oh my God, I wish we could do that that sounds amazing. Like, but we just can’t. And all of it’s story, right. There’s never a good time to do it. It, it, you’ve just got, and the advice I, we, we give, if we give advice is you’ve just got to rip the bandage off, call it an experiment, say you’re going to do it for a month. See how it goes, but there’s literally never going to seem like there’s a good time in the life of most organisations to shift to something like a four day work week.

And, and I think that’s the cultural, that’s the story that a lot of business owners and a lot of organisations have told themselves that, that we, we, we need to keep ahead of the competition. We need to, we need to fire on all cylinders. We need, we need people to be working and sleeping under their desks or else we’re not going to, we’re not going to survive.

And again, that’s just putting people in a sort of. Threat response all the time like that, that becomes, that becomes business in the context of, of survivorship and threat and war. And that’s a very, that’s a very Western language around business. Right? So much of the language of business is, is taken from a, taken from a military context. And that you know, provides a very interesting dynamic to it. Anyway, I think. Took us down a side road now. So I’ll, let Kerry steer us back on the right path.

Kerry Boys: How did you know that’s exactly what I was going to do, which was to say. With these podcasts, we try and make them really actionable for business as well.

And this has been a really interesting one because it’s about impact. And we’ve talked about inclusive entrepreneurship and we’ve talked about Cambodia and accelerator programs, which aren’t things, the majority of businesses and business leaders, owners are currently involved in. So I’m wondering how we can give some implications or some things for organisations to think about.

Um, that might be some sort of directional and actionable things they can take away. So I guess the one. I’ve been thinking about that people can take away, which is. Really about stereotypes. So we talked about the stereotypes of the entrepreneur and how actually that can be really detrimental for individuals, but also for the opportunities that we give and the businesses that we create.

And yeah. Thinking about that in general. So what stereotypes are we looking at as an organisation in terms of who we hire in terms of how we operate and how can we think about the stories, I guess, as Phil spoke to and flipping those on the head and making sure that we are questioning those stereotypes in everything that we.

And that’s training that you can run, but that’s, that’s also looking at the processes

Phil Cross: Maybe as a way to cap it off. If we, maybe do around the grounds and we think about the type of, individuals that might be listening to this and might already have a business that’s in flight, they might be a leader in a large organisation.

And they’re thinking about pivoting to, a more inclusive, sustainable way of working. What would be your one or two key pieces of advice? What would you, what would you have them consider or think.

Kerry Boys: I think the first thing for me is expectations. So what expectations are we putting on our people and are those expectations inclusive?

So we work with a lot of organisations. That speed is one of their key values. They work at pace, and that is totally fine. As long as we’re thinking about how we accommodate for people that might work differently. So we always, when we’re talking about inclusion, or if we’re talking about inclusive leadership, we talk about this need to be really deliberate in what we’re doing..

So not assuming that that one way of working is going to work for everyone. So how can we try and make sure that we’re as inclusive for as many as possible? And that’s looking at our values and that’s talking to our people and asking them what, what works for them at an individual level?

Celia Boyd: Mm, I think I would be similar. Um, and you kind of started saying it there, Kerry, I would say to really be very, very clear on what your values are, your personal values as a leader, or just as a human being and how are you, what are your personal values? And then what are the really special. Um, strengths or, or gifts or whatever you want to call that you have, that you apply to your work.

And then how do those things work together to create the life that you want to lead and the, the job that you want to be in and the role model that you want to be. And so for me, that was like transitioning out of the leadership of my business and I don’t regret doing what I did. Obviously, and I, I just think that to live to my values, I had to stick to my goal and be really true to that and that until I transitioned out of leadership and like made that space for women of colour to step into it. That I wasn’t truly living to my values and my company also wasn’t living or working to its values. And so I need to carry that forwards with me into the rest of my career and to what I do next. And my company needs to take that forwards as well. And they need to like really live to that legacy as well, and like really keep that true.

So I think. Really knowing what your values are and making sure that you are living to them and working to them is, is really important.

Kerry Boys: Love it.

Phil Cross: I couldn’t agree with that more Celia. I had one of our clients do this exercise the other day and I think so many people have got a little bit of PTSD from terrible values workshops that they’ve done in the past that they’ve almost dismissed it as a bit woo- woo and a bit pointless. And every organisation has trust and integrity on the walls and no one knows what that means.

Celia Boyd: Those are the classic ones, aren’t they.

Phil Cross: Exactly. And, meritocracy. But I think when you, when you do it, as you described, which is, you know, if you consider what, what we mean by values it’s what do you value as a human being? And when you get really clear on that and you are like, actually, I, I value family. I value serenity. I value, justice and you feel that in the body, when you say those things like that is true for me.

And then you look at how your business operates and that’s out of alignment with those values. Then there are some really serious considerations and decisions to make about how you might want to shift that. And, and I think that’s where a values based business really comes to life and building on that, I think, my suggestion would be being very intentional about what success looks like as a business. Cause I think it’s easy to fall into the default trap of success equals the balance sheet. And again, going back to the quote before that, you know, if money is the, the, the gas in the tank of the car, it shouldn’t be a tour. Business shouldn’t be a tour of gas stations, I think going well. What does a successful business look like? And for us, just as, as an example, We’ve put as our number one, KPI is the money we can, that we can, that we can give to equity causes that we can, that we can drive to impact businesses. Right? Like us being able to give back is the thing we are focused on and everything else kind of flows back from that.

So I think defining and being intentional about what success looks like and, and really measuring that and making that part of your business structure, having conversations about it and it not just being a, an afterthought would be, would be my, my number one, suggestion.

Celia Boyd: I think, I think that’s really, really cool.

And, and SHE did that again, did that something very similar recently where we have this whole new strategic plan now, and our last strategic plan was so representative of where we’re at at the time as a, as an organisation. And it was right after we just received this investment. We were scaling, we had this three growth plan and it was so much, it wasn’t just about money.

Cause obviously we’re an impact driven business. Um, it was all about that impact and the number of women we could reach, but it was kind of all about those numbers. Like those big numbers, you know, we’re going to reach 600 women. We’re going to do this and this and this. And there was one big pillar that was about money and it was about being like financially sustainable.

But in, for a non-profit perspective, it was very money driven. And now this new strategy, which I kind of facilitated, but the leadership team, which is a really amazing group of young women. They all let it. And what they said was, can we not talk about money in these KPIs? And in these goals, like the, this is what we want to achieve, this is the impact we want to make and the money and the size of our organisation, all that kind of stuff will follow. And that’s like who we need to be to be able to make this happen, but can we actually not have it as a goal? Um, it’s really more like, that’s the means to the end, but the end is this is what the impact we want to make.

Phil Cross: Yeah, absolutely. I, and I love that. And, and how do you bring it to life in the day to day conversations as well? How do you make it the touch point? I’ll use a very quick example from, it’s not an organisation I would hold up as a Paragon of socially responsible business, but Amazon, you know, undoubtedly a successful business. If you measure it on just on just on just revenue and, and profitability, but you know, their goal is to be the world’s most customer centric business, I think, or their, their mission statement. And, and one of the things they did, which I thought was kind of cool was in every meeting they had an, they may, may still do they have an empty chair to represent the customer.

So it was a way of bringing the mission back to the mind of the people in the thing in, in every, in every interaction. So again not pointing to Amazon as a business to role model, in a lot of ways. But, but, but that example of how they’ve kept that top of mind for their people, I think is something that we could all think about in the businesses we run.

Celia Boyd: For sure. Like who are you here to serve? And then how are you consistently making sure that that voice is represented in everything that you do? I think that’s yeah, really cool.

Kerry Boys: And I think what you’ve both said, but moving beyond just defining values or principles or whatever term you want to use, but living them. And that’s often a, a step that we, we see missed. It’s easy to have them on the wall and harder to actually bring them into your day to day life.

So I think that brings us very neatly to the end. Celia, thank you so much for joining us. That was such a interesting conversation about something that we’ve been thinking about a lot and we definitely, we definitely don’t have the answers on, as Phil says, there’s always a devil’s advocate.

Side to everything, but it’s definitely a, a very, a very interesting area. And we’ve been really enjoying working with entrepreneurs that don’t, that don’t fit that mould. And by nature of being an underrepresented group or disadvantaged in some way, anything that we can do to, to help with that process. And they know why gap, and SHE are also on board with that is something that we’re very keen to be a part of. So thank you very much.

Thanks so much for having me. It’s been really nice to talk to you. I always love talking to both of you. I always feel like we have good conversations and, and love everything that you do. So it’s always, yeah. Such a pleasure. Thanks for the invitation.

Phil Cross: We’ll have to do a round two when we’ve got some updates from the from the accelerator. I think that’d be a, that’ll be a fun conversation to have.