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Nicky Senyard – Leading from your family of origin, electric fences, and the importance of escape | Episode 6
413 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to episode six of Builder, Banker, Hacker, Chief! Joining me today is Nicky Senyard, CEO and founder of Fintel Connect, a partner marketing agency for banks, credit unions, and fintechs.
On this show, I’m unpacking the stories, decisions, and influences that make people successful leaders. Nicky charted her path to leadership using hard-won experience and a deep trust for her own intuition. Her willingness to be uncomfortable and take on big risks has set her and her businesses far apart from the competition.
My name is Nathan Baumeister; I am the Co-founder and CEO of ZSuite Tech and the host of this podcast.
Growing up in Brisbane, Australia before the internet, Nicky easily have settled for a life of safety and security, close to family and familiar surroundings. Instead she threw herself into a public relations career and moved across the globe to London, where she took over the helm of an existing PR firm. Nicky then built and sold an affiliate marketing business after capturing 85% of the market. At that point she could have chosen to advise other companies and invest from the sidelines. But her passion and curiosity led her to found and lead another company, this time in the fintech space.
Nicky loves developing long-term relationships with her employees and helping each person unlock their unique superpower. For her, commercial success requires leaders to be constantly uncomfortable, but it doesn’t need to come at the cost of heart and empathy.
Nicky Senyard is a rare voice in the fintech space and I believe that her story will inspire more people to embrace the risks of leadership without the need to figure everything out in advance.
Here is my conversation with Nicky Senyard.
Resources:
Nicky’s book recommendations:
The E-Myth Revisited
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Connect:
Recommended
Transcript
Finding Opportunities in Adversity
00:00:00
Speaker
When we talk about greatest weaknesses and greatest strengths, I think every single expansion opportunity that I've had or every single win that I've had has always come out of a really dark, heavy place, whether that's been pain or disappointment or missed expectations or whatever else.
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:29
Speaker
Hi, my name is Nathan Baumeister, and you're listening to Builder Banker Hacker Chief, a podcast where executives from the world of finance and technology share the story of how they got where they are and the decisions that made them who they are. I'm looking for hidden moments of truth and sacrifice, wisdom and folly, and what it's like to navigate treacherous waters at the helm of a growing company. I want to do all that so that together we can learn from their journey and use that insight personally and professionally.
00:00:58
Speaker
In Episode 6, my guest is Nikki Senyard, CEO and founder of Fintel Connect. Her deep wisdom about people and business seemed to turn every conversation into a meaningful revelation. Her approach to dealing with fate has allowed her to create her own destiny, navigating foreign cultures and business environments as easily as if she was walking through a busy international airport.
00:01:19
Speaker
Nikki brings a perspective that's firmly grounded in her experience instead of the noise and trends of modern business conversation. She sidesteps conventional thinking and attacks problems with an insatiable appetite for risk and growth. This is a conversation that you'll only hear on builder, banker, hacker, chief. And it's my delight to share Nikki's candor and insight with our listeners.
00:01:50
Speaker
Well, Nikki, I can't tell you how excited I am to have you on Builder Banker Hacker G. Thanks for coming.
Nikki's Australian Roots and Business Approach
00:01:56
Speaker
Oh, thanks so much for letting me be here. Over the last couple of years, it's just been a great privilege of mine to get to know you. And I have to say, there's so many things that you've actually taught me through our different conversations that I am so grateful that I can now have you here sharing with our audience some of those things.
00:02:21
Speaker
That's surprising because I think it's gone the other way as well. So I think this is going to be a mutual sharing society. Yeah. Well, it's a good basis of any relationship in my opinion, right? When you can give and get at the same time. Perfect.
00:02:37
Speaker
So I always like to start these conversations with kind of the origin story, because I've always found that there's so many things that happened to us as we're growing up that in the end, even though we don't realize it at the time, actually has a big impact on who we become as adults and then leaders. And so I'd love to kind of rewind a little bit in your life and start with how you started as a person, as a human being.
00:03:05
Speaker
It's, you know, when you offer someone an opportunity to go back to an origin story, it's sort of like, how far do I go back? I think the biggest interesting thing for me is that I grew up in another country. So most of my impactful working career has been in North America, but I'm originally from Australia. And I've recently just come back.
00:03:33
Speaker
And one of the things that I really noticed about Australia is its isolation. It has its own culture. It has its own, you know, TV. It has its own music. It has its own way of being. And I think that isolation actually is one of the corner zones that I put down to my success. So as a person who is responsible for a lot of other human beings and to build something because I'm driven to build,
00:04:03
Speaker
I have always found that as soon as I get myself distracted by trends in the marketplace or whatever anybody else is saying or what's the most current book that people are reading or all the rest of it, I find that it actually puts me off my rhythm. And so I found that it's almost like the country that I was born in helped me resonate to my own sense of self.
00:04:28
Speaker
Because Australia is so isolated, it ends up doing things its own way. And not to say that way is better, it's just its own way, because of its unique climate, its separation, its position in Europe. It's, you know, like, it's, everything about it means that it needs to pay to its own power and its own strengths, as opposed to being influenced what goes on in Europe or what goes into North America.
00:04:54
Speaker
And it's actually interesting, as an entrepreneur and a founder of different businesses, I've actually found that that's one of my greatest strengths. And it wasn't until I went back to Australia this time that I actually saw that as part of my origin story. It's like, so someone asked me the other day, you know, what book are you reading or, you know, who do you follow or whatever else? And I say very legitimately, I don't read.
00:05:21
Speaker
because I found that as soon as I start reading, I start second-guessing my own strategies or where I come from.
Influence of Family and Childhood on Leadership
00:05:28
Speaker
And look, I also am very at the last part of my career. So, I mean, I'm not saying I did this at the very first part of my career, but right now, I'm finding that I am better betting on myself than I am better betting on anybody else. And that's really interesting.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, that is really interesting. What a fascinating insight to have about yourself at this point in your life, but I could see how that has shaped you because I know that you're a learner. You're one of the most curious people I've ever interacted with. You're always open to learning, but I love the fact that
00:06:09
Speaker
Part of that isolation that you grew up with says I have my own path and I'm going to use my experience to be my teacher and conversations that I have to be my teacher because I don't want to be anchored in any particular position.
00:06:24
Speaker
And that's it. You know, I am fascinated with how people do what they do. Like it's, that is actually probably a cornerstone of me is that my natural curiosity of how things work and not how things work mechanically, but how we work as human beings. So how does emotional intelligence come into it? How does risk profile come into it? How does preferences come into it?
00:06:51
Speaker
does backstories come into it? All of those sorts of things, I really get really, I get really interested in the ingredients that go into the recipe. And that's what I've always, I've always find that I'm sort of like teasing out. It's probably the scientist in me that I never knew I was. You know, like I try to tease out the little bits and try to work out to, if I put them in a different combination, what's the effect of that?
00:07:19
Speaker
But it has everything to do with people and not anything to do with mechanics. Yeah, and just fully ingrained in experience experiential like tactical like getting into it and trying things and stuff like that. Yeah, that's really interesting. So you are also our first guests that Spent most for time not living in North America. Actually, you're not even in the United States right now and
00:07:47
Speaker
No, I'm not. Obviously, you do service financial institutions in the United States as well as in Canada with your current company. But I'm curious on growing up in Australia, doing business there, doing business in the UK, doing business in other parts of Europe, doing business in Canada, doing business in the US, all those types of things with the
00:08:12
Speaker
This isolated experience that you had in Australia, and then that expansive experience you then had through your professional experience, how did that all come together to help you become the leader that you are? I think what it is, is that I have been always very outcome focused. It's so funny with my family, I joke with my sisters, actually all my cousins and my sisters,
00:08:39
Speaker
The women in our family raised very efficient homemakers. And that homemaker efficiency of running a family, because the fun, the funny thing is that most of us, the experience that we have with management and leadership is ingrained into us about how our families manage themselves. So I think a lot of people don't actually realize that the basis of their management approach comes from how they were parented.
00:09:11
Speaker
Whoa, let that sink in a minute. Ask yourself, how has my leadership approach been informed by my family of origin?
00:09:21
Speaker
As children, we're constantly asking questions about how the world works and receive answers in many forms, some spoken, some not. A lot of people experience trauma as children and some carry that trauma unconsciously into their careers. The truth is, is that no family is perfect and everyone's doing their best. Hopefully this idea can help us exercise empathy for the mistakes we see leaders making and have grace for our own personal growth edges.
00:09:52
Speaker
And so this is, again, my curiosity factors coming out. This is my theory. I can't say that I can attribute to anything statistically valid in this way. But what I've noticed is that my mum was a homemaker. She stayed at home until my sisters, who were 5 years younger than me, finished, went to school. So, you know, like she was home most of my life.
Cultural Exposure and Leadership Style
00:10:17
Speaker
But she had 4 kids, under 5,
00:10:21
Speaker
So it became an efficiency game. How efficiently can I get these tasks organized? And I found that that has actually played into my life, and definitely in the way that I run my life and run my businesses, which is how efficient can I be, be clear on the goal, understand where I'm starting, and what is the easiest path to get there? So what's the efficiency drive to the whole thing? And what I've found is that when we've
00:10:50
Speaker
built the businesses we've built, culture is one of the things that you have to take into consideration with this efficiency. And Australia's unique is that we get a lot of media, or got a lot of media when I was growing up, from the U.S. and from the U.K. So I had Australian TV, I had U.S. TV, and I had U.K. TV. And it's really interesting how cultural references and cultural, a prose way a culture is approached is so, so
00:11:20
Speaker
projected through media, especially, you know, TV programs and movies and whatever else. So when I came to North America, when I went to London to work, which I did in my mid-20s, it was like, I understand all those cultural references, the jokes, the inferences, the timing of language, the sarcasm or not, you know, all that sort of stuff. So I felt very, I felt very comfortable there. And then when we moved to North America, again, something I felt very comfortable with,
00:11:48
Speaker
And I think that comfort with culture allowed me to find opportunities because I could relate to people. So my comfort with culture combined with my natural curiosity about why people do what they do and my problem-solving approach, which is also about my efficiency, allowed me to wrap all of those things together to actually find a path to grow revenue. And it was really interesting how
00:12:16
Speaker
each of those things in themselves are not pretty remarkable. But when you combine them all together, it becomes a pretty, well, I've found it to be a pretty potent formula for myself to help drive and underpin the success that we've had. So for me, it's all about people. I travel by people. So have you heard about how people can travel overseas? Some people travel through
00:12:46
Speaker
experiences. Some people travel through history, some people travel through nature, some people travel through food or wine. I travel by people. It's like, Who do I know where I, where I'm going, so that I can then have the most authentic experience of Greece or Italy or England or whatever else. So I found that to be really my fascination with the human condition. I found sort of like permeates
00:13:15
Speaker
through each of the things that I do, because really at the end of the day, what's the common element through all of the things that you do and its people?
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah. I'm curious because this is always something that I wonder about, especially when I was in business school and I was doing case studies because you'd like read this thing and then be like, and then all of a sudden at this point, they had to make this specific decision and they had all the perfect information laid in front of them to then make a decision, right? And you're like, that's not how business works. I'm curious, when did it come to the forefront of your mind? Where those three things actually did intersect in your life and helped you to find success.
Growth Through Challenges
00:13:58
Speaker
I had never thought about it until right now, to be very frank, because I'd never thought about it from that isolation perspective and culture perspective. It was only through your questioning and me thinking about it, did I realize that those elements had all come together. I think for me, my drive to solve problems and the problem may be me building a business.
00:14:21
Speaker
The problem may be getting revenue. The problem may be, I didn't want to work for anybody anymore. You know, like the problem can be really quite simple. But all of those simple problem solving, it's the accumulation. I don't think we get to a point in our lives, especially where I am, where I had more questions than I have answers. I had more questions than I had answers.
00:14:49
Speaker
And I think my just natural, like, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be something that we can do about this. For me, I'm immersive. So that means that wherever I'm at, I try to be present. You know that saying where they say, Live 10% in the past, 10% in the future, and 80% now? Right now is something that I'd really try to live by. But I also feel like, just as a reflection,
00:15:17
Speaker
you know, your 20s is really about collecting tools. And that's what I really did in my 20s. I really deep-dived into time management tools, the psychological, the psychological approach of buying management skills. So in my 20s, I consumed all this stuff, the psychologicalness of good mental health and, you know, breathing and, you know, all of that sort of stuff. I started meditating in my 20s.
00:15:46
Speaker
Because to me, I had a great amount of mind chatter that was very exhausting. So for me, it was really about trying to calm my mind so I could see things and understand things. And then my 30s were like, I have no idea, but I'm going to launch forth and see how I go. And then my 40s, it was being able to sell my first business. And right now, it's about being able to capitalize on all of those
00:16:12
Speaker
experiences that I've been able to capture along the way. You know, like I feel like I've still got lots of space to learn, but it's, it's a building, it's a foundational and it's a building. And I think the best thing that I can describe in terms of how did I realize that these things came together was that by just following the things that I was naturally, naturally energized by. Do you know what I mean? Like you, you find where your passions are because you're naturally energized by them.
00:16:43
Speaker
And so I'm naturally curious. So talking to people is fun for me, right? Solving problems is fun. I don't find it, I find it energizing. And so I think what it is is that the curiosity is what has allowed me to be energized by these little pieces along the way.
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah. Well, one of the things that you just shared that that also I think anytime I get the chance to emphasize that I'm going to emphasize it because it's counter to what many of us were taught.
00:17:15
Speaker
which is find your weaknesses, work on your weaknesses to make them stronger. And it's like, why? Why do that? We all have natural curiosities, natural strengths, natural things that energize us. And one of the common threads that we've uncovered through Builder Banker Hacker Chief is that the people that become great, impactful leaders
00:17:44
Speaker
follow those strengths, those passions, and it creates different journeys for everybody, but it does breed success. A hundred percent. If, if I could fan girl at the moment on that comment, I would, because it is so, so true. I was absolutely raised with a, you know, like compensate for this, do this better. You're not any good at this, you know, all of that sort of stuff, which is one of the reasons that I
00:18:13
Speaker
did such a deep dive into the, the psychology of all of this sort of stuff is because I was really trying to rewrite my own recordings of how I was raised, which was of the time. Do you know what I mean? Like it's not, it wasn't a bad upbringing. I can't say that it was traumatic or anything like that, but it was really about, everything was about how you were seen.
00:18:41
Speaker
it was all about the external influences or the external world. It's, you know, be quiet, reflect well on me as a parent, do well, because that means that I've raised you right, you know, all of those sorts of things. Whereas I was much more curious about how I rewrote that. So my internal world, which again comes to this isolationist thing and not listening to other people's
00:19:04
Speaker
perspectives to shape or change what I'm doing. I listen to them to learn, but I don't listen to them to change. And I think this is where the passions of what you are good at come to the forefront. I mean, I choose to go in my early career into public relations and communications, because I thought, I like people, I like talking, I like doing all this sort of stuff seemed reasonable. But the
00:19:33
Speaker
the foundation to communications when I started doing it was the written word. And we didn't have computers. It was sort of like we had computers, of course, but the internet wasn't in there the same. It was faxing and all this sort of stuff. And what I didn't take into consideration, one of my, one of these downsides or weaknesses to me is that I'm dyslexic. So I chose to go into a written world
00:20:02
Speaker
written word, a world of written word, and my dyslexia is my greatest weakness in that. And I chose to go into
Turning Weaknesses into Strengths
00:20:10
Speaker
it. So people would say, Well, that's counterintuitive. Why are you going into something where you have to write all the time when your dyslexia comes out? And then I used it to my greatest strength.
00:20:20
Speaker
So I worked out how to not correct my dyslexia, but I worked out how to manage it rather than it managing me. And I was able to then use all of the inherent things that, a strength of dyslexia, which like you listen more and you consume information differently and greater levels of empathy and all that sort of thing. I used all of those to my advantage to do what I wanted to do and where I needed to go.
00:20:48
Speaker
So my greatest strength was also, the acorn of it came from my greatest weakness. And that's the sort of thing that ends up happening.
00:21:04
Speaker
It's also the stereotypes of what people think will be successful in particular careers or in particular things. I always love smashing those stereotypes and I love hearing stories of people smashing those stereotypes because it opens up people's willingness, I think, to try things that perhaps they wouldn't otherwise because of fear because they don't want to buck against those stereotypes. I love hearing that.
00:21:29
Speaker
Before we move on from your formative experiences and growing up, I do have to say you shared with me over some waffles in Hawaii, one breakfast, a life philosophy. It was a conversation that you were having with me and my wife as we were talking about children and raising kids and stuff like that.
00:21:49
Speaker
And I would love for you to share that insight that you shared with us for our audience, because I think it's just a fabulous image that has helped to organize some very complex principles that you learned. I think where that, thank you, it was sort of like one of those really bizarre things. I think that when we talk about greatest weaknesses and greatest strengths, I think every single
00:22:18
Speaker
expansion opportunity that I've had or every single win that I've had has always come out of a really dark, heavy place, whether that's been pain or disappointment or missed expectations or whatever else. And I think the thing that we were talking about at the time, I was sort of, I think, 16 or 17. And formative experiences are absolutely real. My mom had cancer growing up.
00:22:44
Speaker
and that had a really big blanket effect on the family. She ended up passing away when I was in my late 20s, but she had her second breast removed when I was about 16 or 17. And it was very impactful because we thought we'd beaten cancer and then had to come back because this was the second breast and stuff like that. And at the time, I was doing this navel gazing, as was my want. And I came up with this concept of
00:23:16
Speaker
growth and personal growth and coping with adversities. And the way that I always looked at it is that growing up, I, like all of us, get into a field, I suppose, it's three, and then around us is an electric fence, three meters by three meters by three meters by three meters. So you're in this box, literally, that is our life. That's how we're conditioned, that's how we grow. And the way that I looked at it was that pain and discomfort
00:23:43
Speaker
was like touching the electric fence. When you touch it, it sort of buzzes you and you get a shock, but it moves back three feet. And so then you do it on the other side and you move that back three feet and then you move that back three feet and you move that back three. And now you're in a paddock that's six feet by six feet by six feet. And so I've taken that philosophy is that discomfort and pain to expand your horizons or spanned your operating sphere is just in the moment.
00:24:13
Speaker
It's not lasting. But the fact is the freedom that you get from that expansion is soul uplifting. Because all of us, I think, strive for that feeling of freedom and weightlessness that we all sort of, that I really enjoy when I'm in the moment of the flow. But I think what happens is that I can say categorically now, my paddock
00:24:38
Speaker
is hundreds of feet wide, by hundreds of feet wide, by hundreds of feet wide. And that gives me a really cool playing field. Like I'm not bound by my country. I'm not bound by my, by my, by my sex. I'm not bound by my background. I'm not bound by my language. I'm not bound by any of these sorts of things. And I would never have anticipated at 16, I would have been a technology CEO in a foreign country.
00:25:09
Speaker
But all of those experiences, and I'm telling you, some of them are quite deep, shockingly, you know, like some of them are sort of like painful. But it's in the moment, and it too will pass. But the freedom that you get from expanding your horizons or expanding where you come from is so liberating and so uplifting, for me anyway.
00:25:33
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I just love the visual. I think there's two reasons because I actually have been shocked by an electric fence before.
00:25:41
Speaker
My cousin thought it was a really good idea. He turned off his electric fence and then he touched it and said, see, it's off. And then without me knowing, he turned it back on and asked me to grab it. So I grabbed it and I was like, oh, that it's quite shocking. But the thing that I love about it is it's it's a way like one of the most complex principles, I think, in the human experience is that growth and pain or growth and discomfort are
00:26:07
Speaker
Time, right? And that's so hard to get that, but having this visual of, yeah, you're going to get shocked, but because of that, it moves. I just for me has become super powerful in a way to visualize it, not just for myself, but for others, like my kids, like the people I work with and all that stuff. So I just absolutely love it. So let's dive into
00:26:35
Speaker
jumping into your professional experiences, right?
00:26:40
Speaker
You started working, you decided to go to PR, you find yourself, is it this point that you're in a different country as you kicked off your career? No, basically I stayed in Australia and worked in Australia, left school, got a job, working in PR and all the rest of it. And then sort of, I think this is like 24 or 25, you know, like really early in my career, I'm out for a couple of years.
00:27:07
Speaker
I started to, I left the agency that I was at. I was with the PR consultancy and I thought, no, I'm going to, I'm going to expand my horizons. You know, one to like, why not experiment at this age? So anyway, I took a job at a festival and the festival had a certain budget for it, which was super cool. And I'm trying to experiment, right? I'm trying to gather these experiences. And the festival hired me because I was a junior. And in actual fact, they needed a senior.
00:27:38
Speaker
And then I was fired. So I was fired after 3 months. I said, OK, I've got this psychological scaffolding. I'm on for it. I'm doing the next thing. I got shocked, but it's all good. That's it. I'll get the next job. I got the next job pretty much straight away. And now the PR consultancy, all really well and good, really niche little agency. And what I had learned is that I embrace
00:28:04
Speaker
the strengths and the weaknesses, I'd learnt that at this stage. So I told the guy that I was working for that I was dyslexic, because I'm not going to hide anything. You know, like I'm up front. And so I know how I'm managing it, but I'm telling you how I manage it, because I don't want to, I don't want to, I'm very direct with what, how I do it. That's my choice. And then, so
00:28:23
Speaker
he freaks out and fires me after three months. So, okay, scaffolding, starting to get a little weaker here. It's starting to get a little what took another job, got another one, three months, you know, like straight afterwards. And then this guy was doing something that was a bit unique. He was actually a medical professional that was going into seminars and wanted to promote that about, you know, Hamilton, all the rest of it. And then he decided he didn't want to, so he fired me.
00:28:53
Speaker
So at 24, 25, I was fired from three jobs. None of them had anything to do with me in nine months. What a sucker punch to the ego. I think most people would begin to question their career choices at this point.
00:29:15
Speaker
When you're on the receiving end of a job termination, it's cold comfort to hear that it wasn't about you. It's reasonable to feel depressed and doubtful.
Resilience and Career Motivation
00:29:23
Speaker
Nikki could have pulled back in fear. Instead, she leaped into something new, taking on a new risk and creating a clean break from the misfortune of the previous nine months. Yeah. Okay. At this point in time, the scaffolding is shot. There is none left. And I thought, that's it. I'm done.
00:29:44
Speaker
So I saved up the pennies that I had and I left. I went to the UK. I just went down. I'm out. Tap. Done. I can't cope with it anymore. So I went to the UK, which was great. The Commonwealth countries for all of those in the US, the Commonwealth countries have this thing where they provide two year visas to other Commonwealth countries to let people travel. So I was able to go to the UK for two years.
00:30:14
Speaker
which I left at, I think, 26, left there. And then I did the stuff, the stuff that I did, I temped. So I was a secretarial temp, and then I hostest, and I waitressed, and I did whatever. But my natural curiosity for people and building a network in another country before sort of like mobile phones existed, but it was sort of like before this
00:30:40
Speaker
the connection that we've got, the connectivity we've got now through Facebook and Instagram and all of that sort of stuff. I literally asked every single person that I met with before I left Brisbane, do you know anyone in London and can I have their number please? It became my mantra. Hi, I'm going, do you know anyone? And so I ended up finding a lot of these people. And as it turned out, this woman that I met ended up saying, I'm going with my husband, small child,
00:31:09
Speaker
to Czechoslovakia to do a film. Do you want my business? I mean, as it happens to everybody, right? That's it. So she ended up giving me all of her PR clients in London. So I then worked them, had a very fun time doing all of that sort of stuff and really was experiencing London
00:31:32
Speaker
in the only the way that somebody under 30 can do that has no responsibilities and a load of income, which was fantastic. And then, you know, riding high on all of this experience and all the rest of it, and then my mum passes away. So then I come back, see her go back. And so I did the London Brisbane trip, I think,
00:31:58
Speaker
four times in four weeks, backwards and forwards, the two trips. And, and then it sort of, that really impacted me because Mum was my person. She was sort of like the only person I felt understood me in the world. And it was a very big, very big impact on me. But the interesting thing was taking this philosophical approach that I've got to life. I was walking through Singapore Airport, coming back,
00:32:27
Speaker
I think it was for her funeral. And I thought there was, I was thinking about life and all of that sort of thing. And I got to the point where I, I can remember the pattern on the floor as I was walking through the airport. And it was, there is a difference between destiny and fate. Fate is what happens to you. My mum passing, I couldn't do anything about it, but my destiny is what I choose to do with my fate.
00:32:57
Speaker
And so I don't think I would have taken the risks to leave the country, to build the businesses that I have, to take the risks had my mom been alive. Interesting. And the reason being is that my mom was such a risk adverse person.
00:33:18
Speaker
She, or she wanted, she, sometimes she said to me at 16, all I want to do is I want to wrap you up in cotton wool. That's all I want to do. And you've met me, sort of risk is my, yes. Let's do it.
00:33:34
Speaker
So she and I had this, this friction point where she wanted to protect me. And what she didn't realize is that was suffocating me. But because I loved and respected her so much, I wanted, her comfort became really important to me. So therefore, I held back my natural tendencies to take on big appetites of risk.
00:33:56
Speaker
But I learned lots of, like, because most of the time that I was doing my learning was when she was alive. So it allowed me to get this toolkit. You know, we talk about scaffolding for mental health. We talk about ways of reframing things. When something happens, how do I reframe that? The difference between a reaction and a response. You know, everybody reacts, and that's not a problem, but the breath allows you to respond. That's it.
00:34:24
Speaker
all of these toolkit things I gathered while she was alive, because it's almost like she pinned me down. So to do something so I didn't go mad, I had to actually sort of like, I ended up grabbing all these toolkits. And then when she passed and I came back to my hometown,
00:34:46
Speaker
I ended up working for the PR company that I'd originally worked for when I left school. And I ended up becoming CEO of that before I was 30. Yeah. And I think, as you shared, and I think this is a good chapter, right? It's your 20s, right? There is so much that you experienced
00:35:14
Speaker
And one of the things that I always like to share with people, personally, I never did martial arts growing up, and I'll tell you why. There's very specific reason. Because at least the martial arts that I was exposed to, you had to be a certain colored belt for a certain period of time before you could advance.
00:35:35
Speaker
And that just destroyed my entire sense of who I am. I'm like, but what if it only takes me a month to master everything, right? Like, why can't I move on? And so what I hear you sharing, especially tied back to how you opened up about your learning style is really immersing yourself in experience. And then as you called it, navel gazing.
00:35:59
Speaker
And I love this example that I just want to call out to all of our listeners, the experiences that you have in life are only as good as your ability to learn from them.
00:36:11
Speaker
and to contemplate them and think about them. Because for example, if you went through those three jobs in nine months, which I could only imagine as being utterly devastating. I mean, you want to talk about electric shocks from the fence. Losing your mom, right? That's a huge thing. Moving away from your mom, I bet, even in the first place, going to a different country. All of these things are just huge, big things.
00:36:37
Speaker
But unless you suck the marrow out of what you can learn from those experiences, it could be wasted on someone. And so I just love that you were able to do that and have all those experiences, but more importantly, learn from them to learn more about yourself, to become a better person, become a better leader, become a better business person, to become a better PR leader, all those types of things.
00:37:00
Speaker
And I just think it's beautiful. So thank you so much for sharing that and really just being a great example of that. It's not, it's not how old the car is. It's how many miles have you driven, right? And absolutely. And I think where it comes down to it is that, um, it's, I think everybody's capacity is different and everybody's approach is different. It's like,
00:37:25
Speaker
To me, I make it meaningful, not because it is, but because I choose to look at it that way. And I think where it, and that's why I really enjoy hanging out with people and asking lots of questions. Because to me, it's like, but why do you do it that way? What makes that important to you? What is motivating you for that? You know, and all of those sorts of questions of how and
00:37:54
Speaker
what and people and when and all that sort of stuff to me is just really curious because I see it as a fabric. It's sort of like what you say and it's all just patterns in the fabric. But I'm curious to understand what those patterns look like. Yeah. So you become the CEO of the first PR firm that you ever worked
Founding Tech Businesses and Entrepreneurial Myths
00:38:13
Speaker
with. Yep. So what happens next? Then I'm doing this for a while.
00:38:21
Speaker
And then I meet my partner, and we decide that we will start this little consulting practice, because sort of like I'm heading towards 30, I'm looking at kids. So I decide to start this, we start a practice together, because I want to work from home. I want to be a mom that has upstairs, you know, could you imagine a split-level house? I'm, we're living upstairs with the kids and all the rest of it. And the
00:38:49
Speaker
little consulting practices underneath the house. That was my vision. So we started this consulting practice. And it became the acorn of what my first business was. So we started this consulting practice. We found this client, sort of like early 2000s or, you know, late 1990s or whatever else. And we, it was a, one of the first in the world online casinos.
00:39:20
Speaker
right? So I'm not, I'm not into this. I'm not fascinated by any stretch, but they needed a piece of technology, which is called affiliate technology that they couldn't find anywhere in the world. 2000s, you know, that's what happens. The reason I found online gambling at the time formative and interesting is it was one of the only industries at the time that paid for transactions.
00:39:45
Speaker
not paid for impressions and clicks. So it didn't pay for eyeballs, it actually paid for something. And so we ended up writing, my husband ended up writing the design for this technology on about the back of a napkin. And we've hired- A napkin is always involved somehow. It absolutely is. And we ended up hiring programmers to do it and we
00:40:13
Speaker
wrote it, started working with it from Australia, and then worked out that the time zone sucked. So we moved to North America. If you are familiar with affiliate marketing, then allow me to give a little bit of context. This is the equivalent of deciding that you're going to build a race car from scratch.
00:40:31
Speaker
Today, the affiliate marketing industry is huge. By the time Mickey and her husband sold their company in 2016, they captured 85% of the market in their industry. So they built a race car from scratch and went on to win eight out of every 10 races. That's a story that most hackers dream about, that hardly any get to live it firsthand. We moved to Montreal.
00:40:59
Speaker
And we started building this business in an area that I had no digital experience at this point in time. So it was a really good example of taking something you know, because I knew marketing and PR and all that sort of stuff, and to something that I had no idea about, which was digital media. And how did I build the, it's like John wrote it, John had finished it and all right, he said, Okay, here it is finished product. You're the marketer, make it work. Okay.
00:41:27
Speaker
I said, marketer, not technologist. What are you talking about? And then I had to work out what it all meant. I've got to tell you, when we first moved to Canada and started the business up, I literally cried every night. I cried myself to sleep every night for six months. I was so stressed. And the only thing that took my stress off was a mental game that we played, which was what was the worst thing that could happen.
00:41:56
Speaker
So we worked out what the worst thing was can happen. It would just fail. It would just become disastrous. We'd go bankrupt, and then we'd go back to Australia. I'd get a job in a dress shop. My husband would get a job in a hardware store, and we'd have a roof over our head, and that would be OK. And that was the only way I could mentally survive the first six months of this fledgling business.
00:42:22
Speaker
because it was just so mentally stressful. New country, new technology. We sold our house in Australia to fund the business. We had no backers. We didn't know anybody. We were all in. So all in. But this has also got to do with knowing your own risk appetite. Yes. No, I wouldn't recommend this to everybody, by the way.
00:42:49
Speaker
But it was good for us, and that was the business that was the overnight success that we sold 14 years later with 100 people and 85% of the world market. Yeah, that's an amazing story. So many awesome nuggets in there for anyone that's thinking about building businesses, trying new things,
00:43:17
Speaker
That's hard. The thing that I would really, I'm sorry that I'm just going to interject my own content at this point in time, something that I'm
00:43:28
Speaker
So, you know, this is where you get, and I get to intersect is with the second business that I'm building. Yeah. After the first. Cause you decided to do it again, Nikki. You decided to do it again. And so I'm going to let, I'm going to lay out some of the fallacies that I thought I understood and knew before I did it again, just to absolutely dismantle them. One was I thought I knew what I was doing now. And the good thing is I do.
00:43:57
Speaker
I do know what I'm doing. The difference is I thought it would make a bigger impact. I thought it would be a material difference. It's not. Just because I know what I'm doing, it doesn't materially move the needle. I also thought, because I now had money to do it, because we backed ourselves in this business to start with, I thought we had, because we had access to funds,
00:44:21
Speaker
that would make a difference. I was wrong again. So the first time, I had no idea what I was doing, and we had no money, and we, we ended up doing very well. This time, I thought my experience or our experience plus the money would create speed.
00:44:39
Speaker
I've got to tell you, it don't. Everything takes its own time to mature. And, and the other thing that I did, which I also didn't realize, was that I jumped industries. I didn't jump technologies, but I jumped industries. I went from online gambling to finance. Same technology, so I've been in the same technology
00:45:03
Speaker
Vertical for 22 years like we've been doing it a very long time So I know it in and out but it was I didn't have the networks I didn't have the background like I still speak to people from my old industry and I've still got Which is super cool I've still got a reputation and you know if I chose to go back into that industry I would I would land on my feet at an elevated position very quickly but apparently I
00:45:29
Speaker
I don't like easy street. Apparently, I like to sort of like nail it in another territory. So jumping industries, having money and having experience is not the ingredients that make a business expand quickly. Because the thing is, I suppose this is the other thing. It could, it absolutely could.
00:45:53
Speaker
But where, for me, is I like, I, I like deep roots. I like value. I like all of the good things that come with a solid reputation. Like, I, I want to contribute. So I'm not one of those people in media that's a,
00:46:11
Speaker
a slick, like fast and shifty, you know, like I'm not playing, what's it called, the peanut game? Is that what it is with the cups where you just sort of like move them all around? That's not what I want to build. I want to build depth. I want to build difference.
Mentoring and Company Culture
00:46:26
Speaker
And apparently, the thing I've learnt is it takes time.
00:46:31
Speaker
And it takes time, yeah. Which is, I mean, the fact that it takes time, I think all of us that are growing businesses always want things to go faster. Anytime anyone asks me how my business goes, it's going great. I just want more and faster. And that's like always the answer no matter how well things are going. It's like more and faster, please. Obviously, you know, it needs to be balanced out on multiple different levels. But someone who travels by people
00:47:01
Speaker
Like that makes sense that the deep rootedness of the relationships and any industry that you choose to be in is something that is of value and of high importance to you. And I think if you can see it, it's one of those sorts of things that I think everybody's got a different superpower. That's the way I like to call it. Everybody's got a different superpower. And one of the things that I,
00:47:28
Speaker
realized about myself, I suppose, sort of like coming into my 40s, is that not everybody sees the world the same way I do. I couldn't understand that. Like I thought, well, if I've got this skill, everybody else has got this skill. And that was also the difference, I think, in, in leadership. When you actually can understand if you can see the ability for you to take your rose-colored glasses off and to see the people and the opportunities in front of you, not through your lenses,
00:47:58
Speaker
But from the practicality of what they are, that's also, you know, it's a strength and a weakness. The strength is you're not going to be cut by barbs along the way because you didn't see them. The weakness is, you know, you can't be overwhelmed by what you don't have sort of thing. But the way that I look at it is that I can see what a future is going to look like, not the future. I can see what a future is going to look like.
00:48:27
Speaker
And I take that as my responsibility to work towards that and try to actually bring that to fruition because I can see it. Doesn't mean it's right. Doesn't mean I'll be successful. And it doesn't mean that it should happen. But that's where I see the role that I'm wanting to play and where the industry that I'm in at the moment is to bring financial institutions to a place that they don't know yet. But I can see because of my experience.
00:48:55
Speaker
And that's why I say about contribution. It's sort of like, I really believe that when you can see it, you have a responsibility to share. You don't have a responsibility to make people see. You know, that it's that fine line that you can eat a horse to water, but you can't make a drink. I'm a full, fully endorsed that philosophy. But because I can, means that I can try. And that's what I really feel about this,
00:49:24
Speaker
this opportunity that I've got in this business is that I, I've got an opportunity to make a difference. And that's what I'm trying to do.
00:49:33
Speaker
Yeah. Well, something else that has struck me about, because I joked around, is like, why did you decide to do it again, Nick? You really, you did it once. Take the win. Enjoy life, right? Invest your money, do it passively, and just be on boards and stuff like that. Instead, you decided to jump right back into the trenches. And you shared a little bit about why, because you see a vision that you
00:49:59
Speaker
you feel like is worthwhile sharing. But the other thing that you shared with me that I just wanted to tackle a little bit is it seems to me part of the reason that you're doing it is to also give back and help others that you love and care about and that you work with to mentor them and help them and give them opportunities. So I just wanted to give you an opportunity to just talk a little bit about that because that's something that has always stood out to me as one of the things that you're really focused on.
00:50:29
Speaker
And I think this comes, and it's really good for me to hear myself say this, because sometimes you, you, you touch the essence of what the motivation is, and then you move up in life and all the rest of it. One of the reasons that I was so passionate about building companies and was because those times that I got fired, I felt that there was no heart. Right? So the thing that
00:50:58
Speaker
I mean, it was all very practical and whatever else, but like, I'm not a cog in a machine, right? I'm, I have, I've got a heart and soul in this sort of stuff. And so one of the things that I've always been really focused on, and I think I sometimes forget this, is that I believe commercial success does not need to be at the expense of heart.
00:51:25
Speaker
If you've been listening to our show, you've heard me talk about how much I dislike the distinction some people make between business and personal decisions. Businesses are made up of people, so your choices as a leader always affect real people. That realization can be very painful, but it doesn't mean that you have to pick business or relationships. There is a middle road, but it takes a lot of bravery and willingness to be uncomfortable. The world needs more leaders who face conflict with empathy and humility.
00:52:00
Speaker
Now, I don't mean this is bleeding hearts. I don't mean this is sort of like, you know, anything on the edge of obnoxious. I just mean that there's common courtesy and common respect. And I think where the situation is, is that also COVID changed things a lot. And the reason that I think COVID changed things a lot, not for good or bad, I'm just talking about change, is that a lot of
00:52:30
Speaker
our separation during COVID created it as a very, very tactical relationships, as opposed to woven strength of relationships. And I don't find that with people like us, who've been around the block a couple of times and had lots of different experiences, my ability to connect with people who have had depth of experiences has been really the same.
00:52:58
Speaker
but I find it really interesting. And this comes back to the mentoring ship. So I'm not off track, but I'm sort of building the story to where I'm going. I found, I find that a lot of the people that work for us now, cause we employ, which we, you and I have spoken about, we employ a ton of first and second job people out of school. And what I find is that they now, because of the COVID experience, treat work as a,
00:53:27
Speaker
tactical interaction. Like you need to make me happy because I'm giving you my time. Sort of like it becomes really, whereas I'm trying to provide an environment for people to get the skill sets, you know, to, to, to get the scaffolding, to get the levers and pulleys and things like that. So I can't make somebody get them. I can only provide an opportunity for them to get. So, um, and I found that COVID has
00:53:58
Speaker
change the expectations of people coming into the workforce, that it's basically, it's rather than, you know, that book, Win-Win, you know, this is a win, and rather it being than a win-win situation, Stephen Covey's 7 Habits, where win-win. Instead of it being a win-win, it's like a, you're lucky to have me, so therefore everything that I ask is reasonable. And that's something that I'm finding a piece of the puzzle to solve.
00:54:28
Speaker
And that's where I think it's one of those things where I so desperately want to be able to people not to have the experience I had.
00:54:45
Speaker
right? And so what I'm trying to do is, and I've been very fortunate, people in this company, our head of product has actually worked with me for 20 years. Our COO, Alana, has actually worked with me for 10 years. Our COO has worked with me for 5 years. In my previous company, I had people that were working for me for 12 and 15 years. So I take it very seriously. And I really believe it's about
00:55:11
Speaker
not only what I need is for the business to grow, it's like, what does somebody else need to grab that, to get those toolkits in them to do what they need to do? So, um, it is very, very important to me and I'm struggling. Yeah. Yeah. It's a learning opportunity for all of us. Absolutely. And I don't think they're wrong and I don't think I'm wrong. It's just trying to come up with that. And also the company's grown pretty fast. I mean, we're in our,
00:55:40
Speaker
third year, and we've got 40 people.
Leadership, Curiosity, and Empathy
00:55:43
Speaker
And we've grown that through 40 or 50 people. And we've grown that through COVID. And I've got an in-house policy. So, you know, like, I've had to grow that all from the Vancouver area and train people up and all the rest of it. So it's something that I'm really struggling with at the moment, because my heart is in a place where I don't think it's being
00:56:08
Speaker
in the way that I want it to be. Besides the specific topic that we just talked about, I think the other thing that I love about that last conversation that we had is you have had tons of great success in your life and you are still putting yourself out there to
00:56:37
Speaker
Find those uncomfortable situations to still go to that end of your paddock and touch the electric fence to see how much further you can push it out and your curiosity has not waned, not even a little bit. I think that's beautiful. And I think that's a good segue to go to kind of our two questions that we always like to end off with.
00:57:03
Speaker
So the first one is everyone talks about business books and their favorite business books to learn to read from and stuff like that, which I think is good, but there's so many other amazing books that people should read out there. So we always like to ask our guests, what is your favorite non-business book that you would recommend people to read? It is.
00:57:32
Speaker
difficult for me to say that answer. And the only reason that I say this is because I am
00:57:41
Speaker
such a consumer of, I read a lot, but I deliberately read trashy. So I deliberately read where I'm really interested in the human condition more than anything else. I'm with you on that, by the way, as well. I would say that 80% to 90% of my reading volume is actually fiction.
00:58:07
Speaker
Yeah. And I, and that's where I, I'm going to absolutely endorse that. So what, however you escape with whatever, however it goes. So I'm going to say as a, as a genre, not as a, not as a specific author or a specific literature or whatever else. And it's, and the reason that I do it is because, like I said at the beginning, I just don't want to read any more business literature because I don't find it, I find it more
00:58:37
Speaker
derailing than helpful. But I, I know this is not going to, on your agenda, and I, and I am going to say this because it was, these are fundamental tools that were so materially impactful for me. The two books that I actually read in my 20s that I still recommend now would be the E-Myth, which is the entrepreneurial myth, and Stephen Covey's Seven Habits. Those two books,
00:59:08
Speaker
Seven Habits was a good time management tool. And the E-Myth was about structure and process. And I don't think that they're books that entrepreneurs are encouraged to read, but I think they're really fundamental. So, sorry, I am sort of like segueing into business books. But it's, they were just so fundamental to me. And I don't think I would have the power of what I do now without them.
00:59:36
Speaker
Yeah, I have never read E-Myth, but I will put that into my list. But Seven Habits of Highly Effective People from Stephen Covey is typically the number one book I suggest for new business leaders.
00:59:46
Speaker
And what the book, the reason I enjoy, and I would never recommend someone read Stephen's Seven Habits, I would recommend they listen to it. It's so dry in places. So the, and the genre of books that I really do is some of its fantasy, some of its romance, some of its suspense. It's sort of like in, it's, it's really about the human condition. I love it where you get to hear inside someone's brain.
01:00:15
Speaker
You like how they're seeing a situation. So I like the psychologicalness of it. That's probably the theme. Yeah. No, I love that. We're going to have to trade some book suggestions then because it sounds like we have a similar taste. But I'll tell you from my perspective, which ties to exactly what you're saying, I can say that reading fiction books has probably been the best tool to help me practice empathy.
01:00:45
Speaker
because it allows me to dive into someone's completely different context of life and then view life from there and then see how they're making decisions in a different way than I would make decisions because they're very different than me. And it's hard to practice empathy in real life.
01:01:07
Speaker
And reading fiction books or listening to fiction books, which is typically what I do, has been a huge tool for me. And I think that understanding the human condition, I think, is how you put it. All right, so the last one. So it's all about leaders, this whole podcast. So the question is, is the leader born or is the leader made?
01:01:38
Speaker
I hate the wishy-washy answer I'm about to give you. I actually believe that all of us, this goes back to this latent scientist that I am. I think we all have the ingredients to be a leader. I believe that it comes down to choice and appetite.
01:02:06
Speaker
When I've sold, and so I don't know if that answers the question. I think that every, you have to have the fundamental ingredients, and I think we all do. It's just whether we access them and whether they're, they're, whether they're working to our strengths or working to our weaknesses and all that sort of thing. When I sold the first business, I see myself as pretty ordinary. I sort of like, you know, I put my shoes on one at a time and, you know, like all that sort of stuff.
01:02:32
Speaker
And so when I was looking at the success that we'd had with the business, last one, I was looking at what makes this, what, what makes an entrepreneur or what makes a leader? And I distilled it down to three things. And I was talking to people. This is my curiosity, right? Like talking to people, working it out and all that sort of stuff. And I came down to three things, which goes into your question. One is to be a leader. I think you have to manage risk.
01:03:01
Speaker
Cause I think it's like managing, like as an entrepreneur, you're managing cashflow, you're managing suppliers, you're managing clients. It's risk. It's risky. So you have to manage risk. The second thing is that you have to have an appetite for risk. Like you have to actually be prepared to touch that fence multiple times a day because you know, like it's fuzzy and not necessarily in a good way. And the third thing is that you have to be able to be constantly uncomfortable.
01:03:31
Speaker
because I really feel that the calm that I have now is because every situation, like that client where you speak to them and they're so angry about a situation. Or I used to actually, when clients were, what I would classify as would try to bully my staff, I actually would resign them. And that's scary because it was just some, it was one of my rules that, you know, like,
01:04:01
Speaker
that they are not here to be your kicking bag in any way, shape or form. So that ability to constantly be in an uncomfortable situation, I call it pain. So the ability to constantly be high functioning in pain is the third thing that I think you need to be an entrepreneur and to some extent a leader. So I think all of us have the capacity for all of those things, but whether that energizes you or not, and we're going back to what we said is preferences.
01:04:30
Speaker
that energizes me. So therefore, dun, dun, dun, did it again. But I really feel like I'm done now. I really feel like this is all good. I don't need to do it. This is the one. I'm good with this time. That's it. That's exactly right. Yeah. Well, we'll follow up with you in several years. Oh, no, thanks. I'm all good. I think this is good. If I can, I, I,
01:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, I'm good. If I can provide, if I can be a resource to somebody else who wants to do this, that's where I think my role is. I don't think I need to do it again. But I'm really thrilled that I did, because it is such a privilege to touch those fences. And I don't think
01:05:18
Speaker
I realize how much I enjoy the expansion process, the learning, the whatever else. So yeah, that's good. Yeah, I love it. Well, Nikki, thank you so much for your time. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and I have no doubt that everybody that takes time to listen to this podcast will, will enjoy it as well. Thank you so much for providing me the opportunity. And it's a really cool thing that you're doing with this. And yeah, I hope it helps.
01:05:55
Speaker
In speaking about the beauty of literature, the author F. Scott Fitzgerald said, I think that message is vital for leaders. It's easy to get lost in a world that feels extremely isolated and lonely. But the reality is that everyone is bumping against that same electric fence and some people have just taken a few more shocks than others.
01:06:23
Speaker
I admire Nikki's independent spirit and unwavering commitment to build a business that refuses to choose between heart and profit. That's a false choice if there ever was one. Thanks for taking the time to listen. I love that you chose to join me in learning from Nikki Senyard. You'll find Nikki's book recommendations in the show notes.
01:06:42
Speaker
You've been listening to Builder Banker Hacker Chief, a podcast produced and distributed by Zsuite Technologies Incorporated, All Rights Reserve. I'm your host, Nathan Baumeister, the CEO and co-founder of Zsuite Tech. This show is written and edited by Zach Garber. If you enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to leave us a review or share the episode. This helps other people to find our show. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify.