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The CFO who became a Visionary Founder
65 Plays7 months ago
Sylvie Milverton is Co-founder and CEO of Lynx Educate (a learning benefit platform to help companies retain workers by differentiating their benefits offering) and Host of Talent is Everywhere Podcast. Sylvie and her team are backed by leading investors in the EdTech and Future of Work space, including Rethink, Emerge, Southern New Hampshire University and Brighteye Ventures. Her customer list includes well-known logos such as Deliveroo and Lynx Educate has been voted Top 200 European EdTech startups (Holon IQ) and Top 20 EdTech startups globally (ASU GSV).
Before co-founding Lynx Educate, Sylvie spent her career in various Finance seats, growing and operating international education companies in Latin America and Europe. So, in this episode of the First-time Founders Podcast, we discuss how and why she stepped out of being an employee finance executive and into being a ‘visionary’ founder leader - and what she’s learned through her unusual entrepreneurial journey.
Interested viewers can reach Sylvie via https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylviemilverton/ and Rob (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertliddiard/) at Rob@mission-group.co.uk (or to book some free time with Rob, visit https://www.eosworldwide.com/rob-liddiard). Alternatively, if you’d prefer Rob to send you a free copy of Traction (the book by Gino Wickman which explains The Entrepreneurial Operating System) just complete the form here: https://www.eosworldwide.com/traction-giveaway?implementer_email=rob.liddiard@eosworldwide.com
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Transcript
Introductions: Rob and Sylvie
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, welcome to the First Time Founders podcast, the show where we talk about how to start a business from nothing and grow it into something meaningful. I'm Rob Lidyard. I was the founding CEO of a software company called Yapster that was acquired in 2022. Now I'm a professional implementer of the entrepreneurial operating system or EOS, which means I work with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial leadership teams, help them get what they want from their business. That's my day job, but in my spare time, I love speaking to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial people about the first time founder.
00:00:28
Speaker
experience. Today I'm speaking with Sylvie Milverton. Sylvie is the CEO and co-founder of Lynx. It's an education tech platform doing really interesting stuff for kind of, I was about to say ongoing professional development, but it's actually ongoing development beyond necessarily the the bounds of someone's current role at an employer.
Lynx and Deliveroo Partnership
00:00:52
Speaker
So for example, they've got a big contract with Deliveroo where Silver's technology is made available to gig workers that that might be working just a few hours a week for Deliveroo um delivering food, but they have aspirations to be a software developer or do something in finance and they use Silver's technology that they get access to via her contract with Deliveroo
00:01:13
Speaker
um to bring that dream to life. It's a way for Deliveroo of engaging, retaining those employees to do the gig work ah whilst they're furthering their own long-term ambitions. So it's a really creative approach to retention, engagement, and personal professional development. Now, Sylvie's got a really interesting background because not only is she a fabulous founder that's done the you know the dreaming and the selling that we all do as,
00:01:41
Speaker
founder CEOs, she actually comes from a really technical background. She went to Wharton, did an MBA, came up and in the education sector originally on a finance track. So she's pretty unusual compared to certainly myself or most of us that listen to this podcast. I know there are a few finance folks and software engineers, but a great many of us that are sort of entrepreneurs, you know entrepreneurs to be um typically consuming content like that that I create, because we're not entirely sure where to start, whereas folks with with technical hard skills usually find that the career paths sort of open up for them by virtue of coding projects or working in in in finance opportunities. So it's quite unusual to see someone with hard skills like that jump over to to the sort of soft and fuzzy, confusing, chaotic world of creating something from nothing as the visionary founder. So I thought it would be really interesting for you to get that perspective from Sylvie, how one makes that transition.
Sylvie's Transition from Finance to Ed-Tech
00:02:35
Speaker
and what's easier and harder on the first time founder journey as a result. So, without further ado, enjoy my conversation with Sylvie Milverton.
00:02:49
Speaker
Sylvie, welcome to the First Time Founders Podcast. Thank you for doing this. Thanks so much for inviting me. So, you're a very special guest in that you you're you're you're one of one of our, you know, like me, kind of the this this, not mad, but like entrepreneurial, um visionary, you've started, you've started a business that's in a really interesting space. But unlike many of us, you actually were really successful previously in in a, you know, what some of us might consider to be a pretty hardcore discipline of the finance track. So I'm extremely excited to have somebody that had a real grown up job before became becoming a a founder.
00:03:26
Speaker
CEO. For folks that that perhaps haven't come across you on LinkedIn previously, would you mind just talking a little bit about what you do now, the business, but but but how you got into it and what you were doing before? Yeah, sure. Yeah, thanks for that kind intro. Yes, perhaps we are a bit mad getting into this entrepreneurial journey. um So what I have is a long background in education, actually. I worked at a big education company called Laureate Education, where we ran acquired and operated private universities around the world and I was based a long time in Latin America and then I came ah to Europe and I had you know a variety of operations and finance roles in ah education.
00:04:05
Speaker
um
00:04:08
Speaker
And after you know working a long time in that thinking exiting some you know businesses and selling them, thinking, you know how can I take that passion to continue to work in this space? And this was around you know right before the pandemic and when a lot of things in education were really changing, online education, openness to different ed tech spaces and different ah business models. And I thought you know some of us who have seen that journey from the beginning of a business, growing it, selling it, scaling it,
00:04:37
Speaker
And while all these EdTech businesses were just sort of at the beginning of that space, I thought, okay, someone with my background where we know how to run a thing, we know how to grow a thing, how to do international expansion, how to run teams, that, okay, maybe I could try that, take that experience um and apply that to this sort of nascent, you know, growing EdTech sector.
00:04:58
Speaker
How did you get into finance to begin with? What took you down that track? Because it's interesting actually, you we talked about this in the prequel when you you know you think of yourself as ah as an education person. And when you explain the transition like that, it makes more more sense. Whereas when I came across you on LinkedIn, the first thing that struck me is,
00:05:14
Speaker
My God, CFO, that's a pretty that's a pretty powerful thing to do before. That spoke to me before I realised that there was continuity of sectoral experience. So would you mind just dwelling with me a bit on the finance piece of the prior background? Like what what led you down a finance path rather than into education?
00:05:31
Speaker
you know and Even in that, I think I have like a bit of a nontraditional background. like I went you know to grew up in the US and went to college at the time when there was a lot of sort of liberal arts that we didn't always think how I think students do now of what is exactly you know your Job gonna be and so I studied a lot of humanities and philosophy and religion, but I was always um Really good at math and really always wanted to go into international business. In fact, I found something I wrote when and I was about 10 years old You know, what did I want to do when I grew up and it said international business? you know, what did that even mean to a you know a little child, but I ended up and doing that. But I realized that because my undergrad background was so much like in humanities, like I have a master's in French literature, um you know, that I needed some kind of a, you know, business learning. And so I went and got an MBA at Wharton. And then when I was, you know, looking for a job after that, it was how do I marry these two things that I'm passionate about, like, you know, math and finance and business and growing businesses, but in the sector that I had some
00:06:34
Speaker
relationship to and yeah when I found the education sector and realized like oh there's a way you can look at like making impact and working with students and you know some of those schools we bought universities in Mexico in the you know late 2000s at a time when the um you know number of young people studying in higher ed was you know really low you know 15-20%. And those universities really made education accessible to middle class, lower middle class ah families. And we you know we had hundreds of thousands of students go through those schools. So it was really passionate. On the same time, there's ways to run universities
00:07:15
Speaker
you know, they're businesses, students are paying tuition, you have to manage these complex operations. What other business do you have your customer on your site for four years, five years in a row every day? um And so it was really this great mix of how do you, you know, how could I think about finance and numbers and productivity and a link that with like outcomes and impact? And yeah, that's how I got into it.
Finance and Storytelling in Startups
00:07:40
Speaker
Amazing. It's interesting, isn't it? When you sort of, again, when you tell that story, suddenly it kind of all makes sense to me. And I would imagine there'll be people listening to this. I reckon that that your um your story will have attracted a new listener to this because most of the people that listen to the First Time Founders podcast are existing or aspiring, usually um like entrepreneurs, let's say.
00:08:04
Speaker
quite a bias towards non-technical founders. So kind of like business people, but perhaps without like hard skills and and not exclusively. But I also do know quite a few finance folks that are interested in making the transition and might feel like they're boxed in big company or small company. But actually you you almost certainly have a different background to the majority of those finance people that might've been drawn into the first time founders podcast and community ecosystem.
00:08:32
Speaker
Do you think it gave you a kind of an unfair advantage having that, like those hardcore skills? I mean, Walton's very famous, isn't it? Business school for, you know, on the ah kind of hard side of business as well. It's not all, it doesn't have a reputation for allowing people in that can't do numbers. ah but But actually getting into that program and having a creative perspective and a sort of liberal arts background, presumably is somewhat unusual, do you find? Like when you look at other finance folks,
00:09:00
Speaker
Where do you see the most common limitations to be able to follow your journey that they should perhaps be self-aware and introspective of? who I would say i'd say a few things. One is there's a couple of different types of finance backgrounds, and I have i was definitely the kind of CFO is much more of an operational profile. And so I feel like one of the things I'm good at is taking like an operational reality, like what is the day-to-day way a company is run? What are the metrics? What are the inputs? And translating that into numbers. So instead of starting from numbers or starting from you know accounting and seeing how to reflect it back, take the
00:09:41
Speaker
you know, the reverse, like what is the customer journey? What are the inputs? What are the levers we have? So I think the first maybe advantage I have or that's an interesting finance perspective is how to have the numbers tell a story. um And then I think other things, you know, I worked for another education company in France where we had a private equity exit, we raised, you know,
00:10:03
Speaker
several hundred million in debt and so I think there's also the piece about like writing the information memorandum pitching in front of a lot of. Bankers in front of investors um you know working on all that you know what is the debt story what is the equity story and so I think there's also a piece of finance of that of like understanding the numbers understanding.
00:10:24
Speaker
the model, you know, making the company kind of run day to day, but also being able to translate that into a story, you know, that helps with investors. So I think that's helped me a lot with my startup in terms of raising money, talking to customers ah like how to get, you know, how to tell that story and how to be how to be compelling.
00:10:44
Speaker
And then maybe the third piece is just on like how to run a company. like you know People sell these expressions like cash is king and ah you know be organized with your metrics and have organized meetings. But I think there's something like when you come from finance, like you have that forced monthly rhythm of like, you're doing the clothes, you're, um you know, looking at the bank accounts, you're figuring out the paper. So just like, you know, I think sometimes we have an idea that a startup is like one big mess, and that's totally chaotic. And there is something of like that, because you're growing fast, and you're inventing things. But I think there's also something good, where you come from finance, it's like you can be calm, like you can be organized, like it doesn't have to be sort of a shit show, like you can manage yourself manage your
00:11:28
Speaker
teams you know and look at basic numbers and figure it out. And it isn't like magic. like I'm not running like these you know complicated models, but having like comfort with that, I think those would be the the things that I'd cite.
00:11:41
Speaker
ah very cool. Yeah, it makes sense to me. Of course, folks that come through my track, the kind of business sales marketing side of entrepreneurship and leadership, the the storytelling is usually a contribution. What most of us struggle with is then expressing that story in a coherent set of numbers and keeping track of the numbers changing as the story evolves. But so it makes sense if folks coming in on the other side might more kind of like STEM they might be more comfortable with the the numbers, but but less focused on making sure that they're story led. So I can see why that would be good advice to both camps. Let's talk a bit about your your business then.
Education Benefits and Employee Retention
00:12:17
Speaker
how do you kind like what's What's the easiest way to describe what it is and um and what it does for folks listening? So Lynx is an education benefits company and we help companies ah differentiate their benefits offering by offering high quality education to really solve
00:12:34
Speaker
specific skill gap problems, retention problems, employer brand problems. you know A lot of companies, most companies have some kind of an LMS, have different learning tracks, but usually there's a gap between really getting people to that next level. like For example, when I was a CFO, I had this amazing team of all people that have been there, you know a really long time and I had way too many direct reports and I wanted you know some of them to sort of step up and be you know the manager of others of them. And they just you know didn't have the confidence, weren't quite sure how to become a manager, were pretty comfortable in their individual contributor role. And I thought like, gosh, couldn't I just have a tool where it's like, it would be easy to put someone in like a three month course, a four month course, so they could be comfortable with management. These were like amazing team members.
00:13:21
Speaker
but you know I would have to look and find and then talk to human resources and they didn't know. And so our tool solves that. It's like and all a place where the kind the people on your team who need to move to that next level, you know get retained, have a career path and be able to grow in their job um to solve that in a way that tools like LinkedIn Learning or yeah Udemy or those kinds of tools are just more on the surface for like general learning.
00:13:50
Speaker
Have you got any and like publicly disposable customers that people people would know like like so they can kind of picture the sort of organizations you might work for? Mm-hmm. We have a big um ah push with gig companies. like For example, Deliveroo offers their riders an education perk. So if you ride for Deliveroo, you get access to language courses, digital skills, and different certificate courses. um It's offered across all the countries where Deliveroo operates, and we manage that. And yeah, thousands of riders now have access to access to learning. And it's a
00:14:24
Speaker
you know great virtual circle for everyone that the writers get to upscale and their family members actually and you know they one yeah great for delivery to be able to support the gig workers on their platform that's so cool it's really interesting you know when i am.
00:14:40
Speaker
When I first started Japster, to my everlasting cringe, i i did um I did work experience. I'm really proud of doing the work experience. im just I just cringe at thinking back at some of the conversations I had on that work experience. So I worked in a um in a shop, but like ah a discount shop, right? So like had very kind of um really, really ah working class customers and colleagues, which was awesome. That was deliberate. And I also worked in ah in a bar.
00:15:08
Speaker
And I'd come from being a lawyer, a bit like then through kind of like commercial biz dev type track, right? So I'd always been probably over ambitious, probably too ambitious for my capabilities actually, but whatever, right? So I spoke the language of ambition and Yapster was all about employee communication and engagement. So talking to people, I was really proud of that. And and I get into this these, these, these roles and.
00:15:32
Speaker
It took me a while to get my head around the fact that a lot of the folks were there, were there just to financially support some other dream. you know And I'm there wanting to talk about like the kind of intrinsic merits of the work because I knew my corporate customer were looking to get more out of um you know the bartender or or whatever, or the shop shop steward.
00:15:53
Speaker
and it seemed to me and like it was only after a while that the penny dropped that you had to meet the colleagues where they are and find that their motivations might be using that particular role as a stepping stone to something to something else. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, and I like I wish I'd got there kind of quicker. But it does actually sound like your platform is directly designed to drive engagement by serving the the employees own kind of intended life journey.
00:16:18
Speaker
And that's why Deliveroo and those gig platforms is a good business model for us because of course, those you know they're not employees, they're gig workers. And the purpose of those platforms is often to support people as they grow, um you know delivering or doing gig work for one company while they work flexibly and pursue other things. And there's something about you know the kind of people that work for those platforms have this entrepreneurial mindset and want to move to something else. But it applies also to the kind of companies like that what I was citing, you know, before where you are an employee. And I think, you know, some pushback we sometimes get as
00:16:55
Speaker
you know Why are companies going to pay for someone to do this certificate or to you know learn to become a web developer? um You're going to you know pay for them to learn and then they're going to leave. What I always say is you know and they are going to leave. That is what's going to happen because nobody works for a company for 30 years. But what about the four or five years they do work for you? First of all, they're happy because you're investing in them. And most people, I mean, like people listening to this podcast, like today, do you feel like leaving your job? You know, most people know like they're pretty happy to stay at their company for some amount of time. And often the reasons we want to leave are because we don't feel supported by our boss. We don't feel invested in. We don't feel like we have opportunities. um And one opportunity you can give people is an education opportunity that hopefully leads to a new role at your company. But maybe it doesn't. But in that, you know, 12, 18, 24 months,
00:17:45
Speaker
You've got someone engaged, someone happy, someone eager to learn, and probably you're rewarding the sort of people that are more likely to stay and grow with you. So i just that's why I love this company and this idea, just like the virtuous circle of education and the chance to invest in people. That's very cool.
00:18:04
Speaker
ah Talking about education, right? Nobody goes through the first time founder experience without a pretty hardcore education of their own. What would you say are the elements of the role that came least naturally to you or that you've that's been the steepest learning curve? Because you know, you do have a super impressive background. um How come listeners get some start to believe that you are in fact human? Oh my gosh, such a learning curve. Well, I would say I had never you know, everything to do with like the sales and marketing.
Mastering Sales and Marketing
00:18:30
Speaker
is like very new. And I will not necessarily say a sales pitch because I suppose pitching, but like that whole process of like reaching out to companies and having um you know a good up and back conversation and managing that whole process, getting leads, just like managing a sales process, which now I think I'm up certainly much better at it than I was before. There's um a lot to learn. ah So that is definitely hard.
00:18:57
Speaker
Um, and actually to learn that I spent a lot of time imagining like, okay, when someone is selling to me, what do I like? And so that's taught me, but still I've spent a lot of time trying to get better at that. Um, I'd say the other thing is like my natural habitat is like sitting quietly thinking about things. I'm like working on an Excel, working on a presentation.
00:19:19
Speaker
and certainly being a CEO, you're just like constantly like on calls, talking to people, um being out there. And now it's less, but I certainly remember in the earlier days, like I could physically feel my body relax when I had to like open a PowerPoint or open an Excel. It's like, I'm going back home. and Now, i I don't feel the difference as much. like I can still be more relaxed with an Excel than I am like you know, having back to back to back to back meetings. um ah But it's like less different. So I would just say that, yeah, the second hard thing was just like, you know, just having to be like on and engaged a lot more than is like my introverted comfort zone, I would say.
00:20:05
Speaker
It's interesting with the sales piece. Um, I've done quite a lot of sales and I, but and I come across quite extra. I'm actually more shy and nervous than, than people would, would realize as sort of a lot of this is learned behavior. I had a very pushy working class mom that was determined that I was going to be, be confident. Um, I don't like rejection. And for me, uh, trying to put myself in the shoes of the buyer and imagine what's genuinely helpful to them to get myself in a place where if they reject me.
00:20:33
Speaker
I feel confident that it's their misunderstanding. like It might be my fault for not communicating it well enough, but that rationally I was trying to add value to their lives. It's the only way that I can do it. um Have you found some of those kind of mental hacks and sort of coping mechanisms to to be able to be enough on the front foot to to create opportunities to support the business, or are you still still finding an approach that really works for you?
00:20:57
Speaker
I guess a bit of both. i It's funny for me, it's less like the rejection that gets me. It's more like trying to figure out the thing, like how do I genuinely solve the problem? Like how do I organize this product, position it, ah interesting think about it so that it's actually adding value and like that somebody wants to buy it. Like to me, I mean, of course no one likes to hear no. And we've heard no, we need to have a startup like thousands of times, right? It's more to me,
00:21:26
Speaker
the frustration like landing it like, Oh, I helped someone like this worked. And so, and I think part of the way my brain works is I love a puzzle, like I'm always doing like 100 word puzzles. And yeah, I love like figuring something out like solving a problem. um And so I think for me, if I can position sales, it's like, how can I get better at this? Like, what did I do wrong? Like, why didn't this work? Was it Did I talk too much? Did I, you know, I feel like the other thing we do as founders, even though we think we're not doing it, we are, which is that we're talking too much about the product and the solution and not enough about the problem. And even though I know that that's an issue, I think still doing that. So I think it's all, to me, it's less the mindset and more just like learning, learning, like how, what went wrong and how can I get it right the next time?
00:22:19
Speaker
I suck at listening to customers. i It's funny because I was customer obsessed. When I look back, i i at the time I was convinced that I was unbelievably customer centric and now I look back and the company's been acquired and free of the pressure. I just realized I was just projecting the whole time. you know like I just couldn't get out of my own way to truly, truly, truly listen.
00:22:45
Speaker
to where they were and what they wanted. It was like the tiniest little slither of objection or affirmation, and I'd be off again. It's so true. And also, I think that, and maybe I'm, because this is the area I'm in, but in learning and development and like workforce education, so many companies, they all say exactly the same thing. I think it's different if you're selling like a SAS tool that has a specific functionality where you can say, like you know like I look at all these different CRMs, or I look at different
00:23:16
Speaker
cold email outreach tools or you look at different, you know, FinTechs. Anyway, they have features. And so you can say like, we have this feature or that. But listen, if you look at, if you Google things about learning and development or workforce skills, everyone is saying the same thing, which means you're saying nothing.
00:23:31
Speaker
um And as you're hearing your customer talk, you're like, oh, I can solve that. I can solve that. I can solve that. But to force yourself to probe more, more, and more, more. like Everyone wants to learn. Everyone wants things that are engaging. Everyone wants skills. Everyone wants development. Everyone wants to reduce turnover. But like what, what, what? And to keep pushing behind that, um yeah, that's like the hard part, right? like where you're act You're not just listening and being like, all right, I can fix all your problems. It's digging to be like, what is your actual problem?
00:24:02
Speaker
But I think one of the things that's still hard with that is when you're trying to create something from nothing, you've so often crowbarred your way into getting an audience that a lot of that kind of classic enterprise sales teaching, which is right about discovery, discovery, discovery. The bit that those folks don't understand is they don't understand what it's like to have barged away into an elevator and you've got 15 seconds to pitch in that moment. um It's hard, isn't it? There's an element of needing to kind of talk and develop rapport to get through the initial awkwardness bit because you forced your way into a lukewarm opportunity.
00:24:42
Speaker
It's hard to switch mindsets. I think that's where I struggled the most. If you're selling a big company in a category where the customer is already invested in learning more, then I think you can go into discovery mode much more quickly. When you're climbing through the window and then someone's like, oh, who are you and where did you come from? You then can't. You have to justify your existence before you can then spend 20 minutes doing deep discovery. Have you ever kind of felt that?
00:25:07
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah, totally. And another thing and what I do is just try to get in the zip code. Like, you know, for example, there are learning tools that help you build internal content and share it with employees. Like we don't do that. There's ones where you can, you know, interact, you can build an academy, you know, you can organize workshops. You know, we don't do any of that. We have, you know, we partner with external, you know, with universities, with different learning organizations to provide content or, you know, upskill in certain area So it's like the first thing it's like just get in the zip code like are we talking like do you want a thing? Which is in the zone of what we solve and then dig deeper like what are the skill areas? What is the profile of your employees? What other tools do you have like what's working? What isn't um and I've gotten better at being like, you know what? If what you want is X we're probably not the right solution I can give you some ideas of where else to look but you know, this probably isn't gonna be right which I think helps on the one hand also build trust be like I'm not just gonna try to sell you and
00:26:07
Speaker
oh my thing, but also, yeah, narrow it down so that you're not sort of wasting their time and wasting yours. That's great advice. Okay, so to stretch my metaphor. So we've identified a prospect, we've climbed through the window, we've startled them, but then we earn their trust by being quick to qualify them out if we're not in the right zip code. Is that generally the what you recommend? Yeah, and that has um and that has ah yeah definitely But it's a journey and I think part of it is you know, building trust, but also it's I think, and maybe this is more specific to human resources, like it's just like complicated, like organizing people, figuring out their career paths, all these HR tools, like human resources is hard
Challenges of Selling to HR
00:26:48
Speaker
to sell into. I mean, like maybe it's hard to sell into any, I suppose maybe everyone would say sales is just hard, but I think human resources has a unique difficulty in that often HR executives um don't
00:27:01
Speaker
you know, they're not as in charge as other ones. So it's different that if you're like chief revenue officer than if you're chief human resource officer, um that your your data isn't right. Because by definition, you know, people are always changing. So it's, you know, the needs and also you're dealing with like everyone's personality, it's just human resources is messy. um And so I think it's also you know, just getting into the, you know, getting a sort of a strategic approach, like, you know, understanding that person's reality and then realistically being like, okay, where are you? Like, are you looking for content? Are you looking for a new platform? Is it something that's a board level issue? Is it a CEO level issue? Or is it just, you know, you're running your department and you're frustrated and we can sell you this kind of thing to solve that problem. Um, yeah. So yeah, it's understanding, you know, how does it fit in the overall, you know, company landscape?
00:27:56
Speaker
It's interesting, i um because I sold for eight years into an ah HR buyer persona. I've got quite a lot of friends in the HR world, and now I'm super passionate, as you know, about the entrepreneurial operating system. And when you teach the fundamentals of EOS, people in the people industry, also HR roles, can sometimes get a bit offended, because EOS, when you teach the fundamentals, doesn't doesn't as a default put a people leader in the leadership team.
00:28:23
Speaker
Like we literally teach and we say the most simplified structure will be sales and marketing to generate demand and capture it, operations, deliver the service, build the product or both, and then finance, manage monies in and out, human and capital assets, right? So you've almost sort of bunched HR into the finance seat, which HR folks hate. And I always have to explain to them that entrepreneurial operating systems broadly for entrepreneurial companies, and if they're an HR person in a big company,
00:28:49
Speaker
I'm not talking to them. I'm not saying that there's no room for a people director on the main board. I'm just saying if you're running a small company, ah you you need to bias towards simplification because the most important thing is the delivery of the vision, right? Not the comfort of the executive team and making everyone feel like they've got a grand title. And then what I have to do is say, if you're willing to accept that premise as an HR leader that's interested in in entrepreneurship,
00:29:14
Speaker
Is there more you can do because it's not that we don't think people is super important. We do think it's really important. We think it's so important that every leader in the leadership team is responsible for getting the right people in the right seats. right We're actually elevating the importance of the people leader.
00:29:30
Speaker
um not dismissing it. It's just we're we're expecting you to take on a broader role than what you might do as an HR person in a big company. We're expecting you to actually contribute to running the company, strategic, financially and operationally. How do you feel about that? And I would say about 20% are like, that's awesome. I've always wanted to get quote a seat at the table. I've just been trying to do it from an ah HR perspective.
00:29:54
Speaker
um And then the other 80% are like, of well, you know, I actually really love people and culture, but I'm not that interested in hitting operating plans and financial objectives. Yeah, it's sort of the, um yeah, it's a little bit like the the paradox. And actually, you know, like our startup, like what we tried to solve is to say, you're leaving money on the table, you have an opportunity, like imagine if people were super engaged, like imagine if you could fill roles with existing people by teaching them a skill. Like, you know, now you need like the head of the head of accounting. Well, what if that person already worked for you, but is just missing XYZ skill or, you know, I worked in finance a long time, FP and&A, financial planning and analysis.
00:30:38
Speaker
you know Everyone's like in these old Excels. Well, for example, you could use Python to build better models. okay I don't know how to do that, but I've looked at Python and I see that it's very similar to Excel. It's not hard, but you have to probably invest so the six, 10 months to learn it. um and so those and That's just two like little examples. But what if it's like digital transformation or changing You know major skills like in terms of technical skills and management skills and communication skills and that's a way where HR it's like in the service of the business and so to me HR is an operating role and often we try to reach out actually to.
00:31:16
Speaker
you know, heads of departments, heads of, you know, chief operating officers, because our platform can be like transformative in the way that a company is run, like just a matt think of where you've worked places where it's like everyone's got been there a long time and kind of stale and a little bit grumpy and a little bit negative versus what about the kind of company where it's like, oh, there's so many opportunities and so many things to do, and they're giving me this and I have a chance to learn that and da, da, da. And so I think it makes sense that HR isn't you know in the EOS model.
HR's Role in Business Strategy
00:31:45
Speaker
Because to me, it's like part of operations. It's a piece that makes the operation work. And it's not like its own thing. Because to your point, when it becomes its own thing, it becomes like kind of a bit in a silo of you know compliance and payroll. No, but it can be like so much more. But it can't just be by itself. It has to be like in the service of the business.
00:32:06
Speaker
I totally agree. So this has been
Closing Thoughts and Invitation
00:32:08
Speaker
so enjoyable. I can't believe we're at half an hour already. Are you happy for people to reach out to you? What sort of conversations are you most excited about having with folks if they're minded? to I'll put your LinkedIn in the show notes. ah Great. Oh, yeah, I love talking to people in spite of my ah ah speech about being um introverted and liking to sit quietly at my desk. um Love talking about like upskilling and reskilling and ways that, you know, that HR can be at the center of a um, you know, company strategy and you know, we have a unique new kind of learning solution for all the companies. I talked to so many people who say that they're tired of LinkedIn learning and would like something new. So anyway, if you'd like something new, happy to talk about it and see if you can do that thing. I strongly suggest you take silver up on that. There's so much you can learn from, um, from silver's experience. So we thank you so much for doing this and looking forward to chatting again. Thanks for having me. It was really fun.