Why Balance Beats Hustle in Business with Laura Prael

[00:00:00] Speaker A: 10 years in business isn't luck, it's leadership. Laura Prayel, founder of LEP Digital, joins me to unpack the habits that helped her grow a resilient team, reject hustle culture and lead with clarity. If you want to grow your business without burning out, then this episode's for you. Hey, Laura, welcome back to the Cultural Leadership podcast. How are you? [00:00:23] Speaker B: Good. Great to be back. Brendan, thanks for having me. [00:00:26] Speaker A: It's a pleasure. It's awesome to have you. Now there's not too many guests. I've actually been able to say welcome back because I don't for some reason. I don't recycle too often. Not because the guests aren't fantastic, it's just that I just keep it fresh, I suppose. But it's great to have you back. We are focusing today on a bit of your journey. You are now in business for 10 or a bit over 10 years. You had your 10 year celebration not that long ago. Looked like a pretty good night from some of the photos I saw. [00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it was really good. Brought together a small group of people, people we've known for the last couple of years and who have been friends at Crowne Plaza at Terrigal. It was a pink, kind of like a logo. So everyone was invited to wear a touch of pink or a wink of pink we called it. So that made for some good content. [00:01:13] Speaker A: Well, it was a. Yeah, photos look fantastic. Congratulations. Official congratulations on your ten year anniversary. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:01:21] Speaker A: Hey, Laura, let's dive in. Ten years. So I'm going to start with a really open wide question which you can take whichever way that you like. Is 10 years of business, like what has been the most satisfying thing for you in getting to this milestone? [00:01:38] Speaker B: Gosh, you're not letting me off easy with these questions. A hard one straight out of the gate. [00:01:42] Speaker A: I never will. You know me. [00:01:46] Speaker B: Look, I think we're pretty similar in that you and I both know the value of people and how important people are to business. So not only the people that you're working with, but the people you're working for, your clients or your customers. So I think one of the joys of running this business for the last 10 years is the people that I've gotten to work with and still get to work with, long standing team members that I've had, some long standing clients, people like yourself. And I think that that's the real trick in business is to find your people and treat them well, you know, keep them close because it is difficult to find your people. And I've learned, I'VE learned over my time how to attract the right type of people that I work well with and who are going to challenge me that we're going to get good results for both in my team, but on client side as well. [00:02:40] Speaker A: It's such a journey, the people side, isn't it? Business in general, but then your business, you've employed various people and built up a solid little team. So what is it about yourself? And I do want to focus quite a bit on yourself because it's such that, you know, owning a business is such a development, a personal development journey, isn't it? So what is it about yourself that maybe you've looked at things differently around people and the right people for LEP Digital from daydot when it was you, and maybe around your card table and with your computer and doing all that sort of stuff and then you've grown this successful team and you've got a great name in the industry. [00:03:15] Speaker B: I think there's a few things I look at. So obviously in marketing we're always like, you know, create a buyer Persona. You know, sometimes we do that with our team members as well. You know, if you could paint the perfect team member or the perfect client, what that, what would they look like? And often you look at traits, you know, whether it's hard, hard skills, soft skills, the demographics, where they're based. But I've had to hone that a little bit more because that always doesn't work out. What you think is going to work well on paper doesn't always work. So there's a few things that I look at that's helped me to be successful and to bring in the right people around me. The first thing is gauging energy match. So this maybe seems a bit, a bit woo woo. But it's, you know, when you go to a party or you go to a networking event and there's certain people that you're drawn to and there's certain people that you go, oh, it's, you know, you just don't, the energies don't, don't match. And there might be someone that is very high energy, you know, and is really chatty and you know, their gestures are up here and they're so excited and they talk a lot and maybe you're someone that gets exhausted by that, you know, maybe you can't kind of compete at that energy level or conversely, maybe it's someone that is really softly spoken and you can't get much out of them and you really, you know, you're trying to ask questions and the questions just get shut down. So it's kind of gauging that the right energy match, people that you can. You can work well with, you can bounce off ideas that you feel energized by, has served me really well. And often that's just a gut instinct. You know, how do you feel when you're around someone and helping someone to feel comfortable, whether it's, you know, your employees at work or whether it's a client or a new prospect that you're meeting with for the first time, is a real skill. And being able to change your energy, to be able to match the other person, I think is really important as well. So that's something that I. That's something that I look for. I also look at the stage of someone's journey. So. So journey is very cliche. It's overused a lot. But when you are. And this can be applied to a partnership, business partnership, it could be a contractor in your business, it could be employee or even a client. You've got to look at the stage in their journey that they're at. You know, are they early days, are they kind of growth stage, are they in. Are they seeking transformation, are they wanting to do something different? Or are they quite established in their. In their journey, so to speak, whether that's their career or their business. And understanding where that is and what you can offer them is really important. So there's not that kind of mismatch of someone that you're looking for, but they may not be ready for what you. What you're bringing into them. I don't know if that resonates much with you or with the listeners, but that's something that I found has been really helpful for me. [00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah, well, again, the two that. The energy match and the stage of their journey, I guess. How do you. What comes to my mind is that if you look at. I'll come back to energy, but the stage of the journey, do you look at that in relation to them and their own personal development, but also in line with where the business is at and where the business needs to go? How does that figure into it? [00:06:31] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. So it's a little bit of both. Because every employee is joining your business for a different reason and people are motivated by different things. And I've noticed that in my business there's, you know, there's several people that. Types of people that are attracted to a business in digital marketing. So sometimes it's younger people coming through, or not even younger people, but people that are newer to digital marketing. Maybe they've recently studied or done some additional training and they're looking to get a foot in the door or change, change career paths to go down that digital marketing space. Sometimes it's people that are established in their career, but maybe they want a bit more work. Life balance. LEP Digital famously has a four day working week. So we work Mondays to Thursdays, we all have Fridays off and we do 30 hours. And that's quite attractive to people particularly, particularly women, because women often balance other things in their life, whether it's caring duties or parenting duties. Men do as well, but women do quite a bit and that can be attractive to them as well. But what they want in their career is very different to maybe someone who has just finished studying. So figuring out, you know, what the role is, where our business is up to, you know, early days in lep, I hired a lot of younger people that were newer. There was a few reasons for that. One is that I couldn't always afford, you know, the really experienced people because it was a young, a young business and we only had a few clients. I was young as well, so I was a little bit, I guess, less experienced myself in how, in how to lead an experienced team. So I guess the demographic of my team has shifted quite a lot over the 10 years and now that we are quite established and we've got bigger clients, we've got a real mix, which is really lovely. So we've got some people that are more newer to their careers and junior right through to mid, and then established people that have even more experience than me, which I'm really proud of, who can really balance out our team and make it strong. [00:08:38] Speaker A: It's so interesting, isn't it? I've seen, you know, I've sat on the sidelines and seen this journey, seen sort of Laura and I think we've sat on the sidelines of each other's journey. We've helped each other out and done various things for each other along the way, which has been fantastic. And I know, I appreciate that and I know you do. For me, we sort of just. There's this progression in both of us, apart from me getting a few more gray hairs. You seem to be doing really well in that department, Laura. [00:09:07] Speaker B: I've just got a good hairdresser. [00:09:10] Speaker A: I definitely need a better one because my hairdresser grabs. It's my right hand. I grab the thing and I go over the bin and I start doing this. Anyway, that's a whole other story, probably a whole other podcast, some sort of hairdressing podcast we should do. I love what you're saying there. There's again, there's so much to unpack. But I want to try and come back to you again. Like, what is looking at yourself? What have you seen change in yourself from that early stages to the sort of business owner you are today? [00:09:47] Speaker B: It is interesting. You make a really good point because when you start a business, particularly when you're younger. So I was 29 when I started the business, and even though I'd done quite a bit of my career before that, it is fairly young to start a business and I have grown and matured with the business. So my whole 30s has been dedicated to this business. And I think every year in your 30s, everyone grows. They learn more about themselves, who they are. And I didn't know much about myself as a leader when I started the business. I'd never managed anyone before. In truth, I'd always worked as a subject matter expert. I was really good at honing my skills as a writer and a marketer, but I didn't know how to lead a team. So I was really making it up and doing as much training as I could. And that's how we met when I reached out to you to get some support. And I found it interesting how my disc profile has changed and you know about this. So obviously you run disc profile training. It's something that you ran for my team early on when we were only a few years old. And my result in my disc profile was, I believe it was si from memory. [00:11:08] Speaker A: Pretty sure that's what it was. [00:11:09] Speaker B: Steadiness and influence. So. And you really resonated with that. S part of me. You were like, yep, that's spot on. I can see that in you. Because I'm someone that is very collaborative. I like working with others. I don't like being dominant. I don't necessarily like telling people what to do. I like to support others to come to their conclusion and help them to make decisions. However, as the company grew and I had different types of people join the company from all different points of the disc quadrant, so to speak. [00:11:50] Speaker A: Diversification. [00:11:52] Speaker B: Diversification of the business. That style, I felt, was challenging for some team members because they go, just tell us what you want us to do. There was this sense that they wanted me to be more direct, they wanted me to be more dominant. They wanted me to take the lead, to step up. And I could understand that because you do want that from a leader. You really want clarity. You want someone that's holding the team accountable, who's Going to set the rules, so to speak. And so I had to really adapt and it was quite challenging because it didn't feel natural to me to be dominant. But I did have to change. I felt myself a little bit to be the leader that my team needed. So much so that about four years after I did that original disc profile we met up again, we did training for the team and my profile had changed quite dramatically. I think it was I. But closer to the D quadrant and I think you were like, whoa, what's happened? You've navigated almost halfway around the quadrant, which you know it's probably not. [00:13:07] Speaker A: What have you done with the old Laura? For the listeners and viewers, it's a workplace profile. So you do have that workplace lens on. [00:13:18] Speaker B: Yes, the workplace lens on. So I look, I haven't, I haven't done my disc profile in recent years so I don't know whether I've returned or not, but certainly I have learned to be more dominant when I need to. I would still say that it's not my natural style but I've learned to be comfortable in stepping into it when I need it. When I sense that the team needs direction or leadership or something's gone wrong, I have increasingly felt more confident to stand up and say, right, these are the problems, this is what we've got to fix and call out certain behaviors or things that I've noticed in the team that I don't think are appropriate and that I don't like and I felt more comfortable with that. So I do feel like I've grown a lot and I've changed a lot and interestingly with that experience has come a lot more calm. So I feel like I was calm before but maybe I was more calm on the outside, not on the inside. Whereas now I'm calm on the outside and calm on the inside. So I feel a lot more confident in who I am, the type of business that I'm running and the type of leader that I am. [00:14:25] Speaker A: In the hybrid working world. I've seen too many business owners and their businesses suffer because of poor performing employees leading to below average results. If you want to improve your employees performance to deliver consistent results for your business, you have to master one on one meetings. The doors to our master one on one meetings training program are opening soon. I'll teach you how to improve employee performance and deliver consistent results using one on one meetings. To be one of the first people notified when the doors open, go to leaderbydesign AU waitlist. Don't wait. Sign up now. I Think you've said the critical word twice, which is confident, become more confident or have more confidence. That's the thing where it allows us to move around. And I mean, let me not put words in your mouth, but you mentioned a couple of times, like, is that how you felt over time? There's that confidence level. Maybe you've experienced things in the business. That first time around is like, I'm just winging it, so to speak, which we all are to some extent. And then, you know what? We've lived this or we've lived a variation of this. [00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I think confidence comes from knowing who you are. And I think that that's a key thing that people forget. People think, oh, you're either born with confidence or I need to, you know, do all of these things to become confident. But for me, I. I think it's just being comfortable with who you are, knowing who you are and just trusting who you are. And for me, that's coming back to what are my natural strengths? You know, what am I good at? Embracing my story, Embracing the fact that, you know, I don't have a marketing degree. I have an arts degree. And that was a bit of a. Early on, I thought, oh, I feel a bit like an imposter here, being an agency director who doesn't necessarily have a, you know, a Bachelor of business. But I've embraced the fact that isn't. [00:16:26] Speaker A: It an arts degree, the degree you do when you're not sure what degree you want to do? [00:16:29] Speaker B: Exactly. And I didn't know what I wanted to. [00:16:32] Speaker A: You've done all right with it. You've done all right with it. [00:16:34] Speaker B: I've done all right. Look, you know, things have worked out pretty well. But yeah, I wanted to be an actor when I was younger, and there was no two ways about it. And I begrudgingly did my degree and the arts was very much, yeah, I'm just going to do this arts degree and then I'm going to go to NIDA and I'm going to be on stage. And that was it. Obviously, our lives take different interesting paths and I'm really happy that I went down the marketing path. But early, early experiences in life can really shape how confident you feel. And it can show up in imposter syndrome if you feel like maybe you didn't go down the, the right path or the path that everyone else goes down. And yeah, for me, I think early on I was a bit like, I haven't done a degree in business, I haven't written a business plan. I don't know how to read a P L statement. You know, I didn't have those practical skills. I just had to learn it and win, if you like. But yeah, I think that confidence has born from embracing who I am. And my background and story is that I see that as a strength. I think it's something unique. A lot of agency directors don't have that. That background that I do. Knowing who I am and liking who I am as well is a big confidence, big confidence boost. And also reframing any failure as opportunity. So that's been a big thing for me is I think that the most successful leaders are resilient leaders and they learn how to quickly shake off challenges or discomfort or failures they may have and turn it into something that's an opportunity or something more powerful for them to move on with. [00:18:24] Speaker A: Yes, some great points. Again, let's just deviate to performance because we started speaking a little bit that before we hit the record button. What have you learned over this last 10 years from start to now and continuing to learn, but about what you need to have in place, what you need to do, how your style works for you and works for your team around performance. Because ultimately we're all in business to perform, aren't we? [00:18:50] Speaker B: Absolutely. I have really focused on trying to figure out what motivates each person and the disc tool has been really beneficial from that. But I also ask my team, what motivates you and what do you need to be successful? What do you enjoy doing? So I'm really interested in learning about my team members beyond surface level and not to become best friends with them all, but to know them on a level that is beyond necessarily just I'm your boss. To understand what they do on the weekend, to understand who that. Who's in their family, what are, you know, what do they do in their spare time, what makes them tick. And I think that that is linked to performance because if I know what they care about and what intrinsically motivates them, I can give them the tools or the tasks or the feedback to be able to be successful and to ultimately perform. And it is different for everyone. So, yes, we all come to work and we expect to get paid and you know, salary is a big motivator. But for some people, it's you. They want to work on really interesting projects. They want to challenge themselves, they want career growth. Maybe they want to do things with social impact. So it's trying to figure out what those things are and ultimately that really helps them to perform. And I don't agree in hard discipline unless I absolutely have to. I prefer a softer, a softer approach which is really in start, you know, part of who I am as a leader too. If some, something goes wrong, I try not to expose it in a group setting unless I absolutely have to, unless it's really affecting everyone. And so I'll take them away from the group and I'll say, look, I understand this went wrong, I'm not upset about it, but I'd love for you to talk to me about, you know, what happened from your perspective and how can I support you, you know, to, to do that better next time. So. And I think that that has won a lot of trust with my team because they know that they can make mistakes and I'm not going to fire them or you come down really hard. I'm not going to embarrass them. But they also don't, you know, they don't want to do it again because it's an uncomfortable thing obviously if you, if something goes wrong and that that's led to a really high performing team because people take accountability. They know they can trust me and come to me if something goes wrong. And they care, they do care about at the end of the day getting a good result for the team. And I'm all about helping the team, not performing as an individual. I know that's something we've spoken about a lot. Early on you don't want a team of individuals. You want a team who are supporting each other to help the company succeed. [00:21:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it certainly makes, well, it defines a team, doesn't it, as opposed to a working group? So. Well, how is might seem like a random question in the context of where we're at currently. But myth in business, can you think of something that with where you're at 10 years ago and where you're at now, what has been maybe that one or two myths that you were sort of given, you got to do this, you got to do this. And actually given your real life experience nowadays, it's probably not that accurate. [00:22:13] Speaker B: Two things come to mind. Early on it was all about business plan, business plan, business plan. I think adaptability is far important than any plan. And early on a lot of people like this is my five year plan, this is how I'm going to grow. And people like this idea of projecting far into the future. They love being able to have their goals planned out really far in advance. And look, there's absolutely power in doing that and knowing where you want to go and having that vision and foresight of where you want to go, but things don't go to plan. So as long as you write that plan, but you're willing to rip it up and start again and adapt and pivot, which was everyone's buzzword during those infamous C years, that's the most important thing. And so I've really rejected this idea of long term planning and I'm more focused on short term planning. What do we want to achieve in the next six months? What do we want to achieve in the next year? What are our, what are our goals and, and what are the small things that are going to get us there? Because the truth is, a lot of, a lot in, in life is luck and a lot is external things. External forces that happen, happen to us and we need to be able to, to take what we take what happens and, and use it to our advantage or, you know, leverage from there. So that was the first, first myth. The second one is this idea that I've always rejected is this idea of relentless working, this kind of hustle culture where, you know, the best way to be successful is just to work, work 247 and, you know, ignore everything, you know, drop everything, always prioritize work. And I strongly reject that. I don't think that it's the right approach. I think that again, people start businesses or join a business for many different reasons. And so success looks very different to everyone. And it's a mistake if you're subscribing to someone else's measure of success and not really focusing on what you want. And I think that's where a lot of stress and misalignment happens in business. So, and that's one of the reasons why I was very firm on having that four day working week and only working 30 hours a week. If we could work less, maybe that'll be in the future. Because it's important to have balance in your life. It's important, especially in creative industries like we work in. You need to have stuff that you're doing outside of office work. You know, you need to have hobbies, you need to spend time in your community, you need to spend time with your family. Because that's when all those ideas, and I think ideas and creativity comes when the mind's relaxed. It doesn't come where you're stressed and you're chained to the desk and you're under deadlines and pressures. It happens when your mind and body's relaxed. So that's been a real focus for me and it's proven to be very effective for me and in my business. [00:25:17] Speaker A: I guess there's always been something I've liked about you and those two things are probably why business plans, there's a lot more than that. But yeah, business plan, I'm 100% aligned with where you're at. And interestingly again, I was saying pre recording that the things I've found challenging in the last 12, 18 months is around my digital product journey and I've had to really start to think about my struggling avatar versus my future based hero. And I've settled on Hands on Hustler as that struggling avatar and gone to high impact leader as the the future. So I so resonate with the Hands on Hustler when I guess let's turn this around a little bit though because so many people out there will be thinking like, oh, four days a week, that's awesome. When does it not maybe serve you well or maybe serves your team well or maybe even your clients well? [00:26:11] Speaker B: It's tricky sometimes because clients who don't work four days, which all of our clients sometimes at the start they're unsure how that could work. So they think, oh, what if we've got something urgent? You know, and I always say to them, look, you've got my mobile number, you've got my email address if something's urgent. But we need to define what urgent is because a lot of the time people go, oh, it's urgent. I need to, you know, change the color on something that's, you know, it's not actually urgent. Urgent could be if the website goes down or, you know, a mistake has gone out in the digital space. It needs urgent correction. And in those, those sort of instances, myself and my team are always on hand. You know, everyone in my team is, even though I say, you know, turn your mobile, turn your, your emails off your mobile, make sure you rest. The reality is these are professionals, so these are people that care about their job. They are managing client accounts and they are available if there is a genuine emergency. And, and look, it's not ideal when that happens. It doesn't happen very often and that can stress. But the way that we manage it is if an employee has had to step in and correct something or help a client on their day off, maybe on a Friday, they will get time in lieu so they will be able to take another day so that they can, you know, recoup that time that they would have otherwise had for rest. So that has been difficult. You know, sometimes we've had requests for community management of social media, especially large social media accounts. So these are national clients and community management is when you post something on a client's social media channel but then you respond to any comments or direct messages. And that's really challenging because it's essentially a 24, 7 role. So I'm very upfront with clients and I say we don't do that unless it's extenuating circumstances because that is, that, that is very difficult for an agency to manage. It is something that is really best served by the client, best done by the client's team. And sometimes that's just a difficult conversation and being upfront with the client and saying, you know, we can't do it all. But other than that it's worked pretty damn well, I would say. [00:28:37] Speaker A: I guess one of the things that again, I really like it as well. I think the thing that comes out and I know again through conversation with you and that there can be an impact on people because you're working four days a week, which sounds great, but even as cost of living goes up and again you alluded to the type of people that those roles seem to resonate with. But that can be challenging, can't it? Like it does it. Do you find that it maybe reduces your available talent to come into lep? [00:29:07] Speaker B: Well, that's interesting because early on in the first couple of years of the business we hired four days and we paid four days. But for quite some time we've paid an annual five day salary but they only work four days. So they actually have no impact on their. [00:29:25] Speaker A: That's a bit more enticing. [00:29:26] Speaker B: That's right. It's no impact on their take home salary. They get a full time salary as if they're working five days but they only are required to work those 30 days. 30, 30 hours. Wouldn't it be good if we all just work 30 days a year? That would be fun. [00:29:43] Speaker A: Anything's possible. It's just about planning for it. Might need a little bit more of a longer term plan that one, Laura. [00:29:48] Speaker B: Yes, so yes, that's definitely one of the benefits. It's something I had to change because obviously, yeah, cost of living is expensive, especially if you've got a family and you're supporting people, you're paying a mortgage. So that, that's really important to factor in. [00:30:05] Speaker A: In this journey, this business journey. What's the, what's the greatest challenge that comes to mind that you've had? And it can be anything. It could be people financial location. I know you had a bit of a hairy moment there for a period of time. So you know, open it up, let's get under the hood. [00:30:23] Speaker B: I think, again, given my style of leadership, I'm far more concerned about people challenges than I am about task challenges or financial challenges. So for me, it's more about the emotional stresses of, you know, a staff member who is maybe ill or has a family member that's ill and maybe therefore becomes unpredictable with their work schedule when they can come to work. I did have a stage during COVID where quite a few people left in the same year. Like within a period of six months, I pretty much lost all of my team. And that was probably my biggest challenge in business because I thought, oh my gosh, like, I've lost so many people in a quick period of time. Is it me? You know, it's a bit of an existential, you know, am I. Am I not a good leader? Am I doing the wrong thing? Is there something wrong with the business? But I think having reflected on that, you know, it wasn't like as if it was a mass walkout. It just so you know, there were long standing team members, just they were living for different reasons, different stages in life. Again, they were younger. So, you know, what they wanted out of the business is very different too. But perhaps the team that I've got in place now, so that was probably one of my biggest challenges. And trying to rebuild from that, trying to rebuild a team and figure out who you are as a leader, what you need to put in place, that was. Yeah, that was really difficult for me. I think that that was. That really shook things up. But I'm not someone that dwells on problems or challenges or things that have happened to me. I like to see everything in a positive light. I like to see the, the silver. [00:32:08] Speaker A: Lining, the over, over optimistic eye coming out. [00:32:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, the most terrible thing could happen to me and I'd go, oh, well, that's okay, because of xyz, you know, I was trying to rationalize in my mind that there's something good that's come out of it or it's redirected me to something else. It's taught me something. And even though it was really upsetting personally and for the business to. To lose some key people so quickly, I ended up hiring people that are incredible and who have stayed with me since and have really helped grow the business. So it has worked out really, really well. And I wouldn't have been able to meet these people had that not happened. [00:32:50] Speaker A: So, yeah, always opportunity in anything, isn't there? But. And you use the word learn a couple of times. So what were your sort of significant learnings from that challenge? [00:33:03] Speaker B: I think it was how to rebuild from setbacks and do it quickly. So in those times, it worked really hard because, you know, obviously if a team member leaves and you're a small business, you absorb their work immediately because it takes a long time to hire someone. You know, there's. Even if the staff member gives you four weeks notice, it might take three months to find someone. So in that time, I took on a lot of work myself. Luckily, because my background is in marketing, I physically can do a lot of the work myself. And it was. I think it was an interesting test for how much I can take and not break and how much I cared about the business to keep it alive. You know, I was working seven days. I was working, learning long hours. It's not something I wanted to do or I'd recommend doing, but, you know, you do what you have to do when you're an owner, and I was happy to do that for the business. So that taught me a lot about my resilience and how capable I am of. Of rebuilding from setbacks. It taught me about the hiring process. It gave me a little bit of time to go. Who do I really need this time? You know, this is an opportunity. It's a fresh slate. Do I want to change the hiring process? Do I want to add in more steps? Do I need to get support with the hiring process from, you know, a HR professional? So, you know, it gave me. Gave me time to reflect on things. I started journaling, which people had told me about before, and I was a bit like, oh, I write all day. Like, I don't want to go home and write at night. But I found journaling really therapeutic because I could just get at all my feelings and I don't need to tell anyone about it. You know, I don't need to vent to my partner or vent to a friend. I can just get it all out on paper and then I can look back at it if needed and, you know, see what state I was in, state of mind I was in to see how far I've grown. And that's been really, really helpful. [00:35:15] Speaker A: Well, I think with. With Pete, I mean, from memory, he was s. Quite heavily inclined to the S side. So he'll be there to support you anyway, even if you needed a shoulder to cry. [00:35:27] Speaker B: Yeah, he's been a great. He's been a great support and continues to be a great support over the years. He's. Yeah, it's. In any small business owner's journey. It's really important to have someone like that that you can talk to and rely on just to get things out. You know, I had a really bad day or having a really bad week and just helps put things into perspective and is a sounding board for you because in those times you might have really heightened emotions and you may not be logically thinking how to get things through. And having someone like him who tends to be quite logical and practical, that really helped me to figure out what are the next steps, what are the actions I can take to be able to figure out this problem? [00:36:13] Speaker A: How easy or hard has that been with? And this is sort of why I joke into the question. But, you know, Pete's been, you know, by his side. You guys have been by each other's side for a long time. So he's. I think early on he was sort of in and out of the business supporting. But now he's. He's full time in the business or in. So how is that can be tough? I mean, you know, 247 relationships are hard. And then you're working together. Like, what's being the good and the maybe not so shiny side of that. [00:36:39] Speaker B: I think if you work with someone in your family or a sibling, you need to have good boundaries in place so that it doesn't bleed into your life because you've got a relationship with someone as a colleague, but then you've got a relationship with that person as a partner or a sibling or whatever it may be. So we're pretty good at knowing when to finish talking about work. And I try not to talk to him too much about work outside of work because I don't think it's fair to the other team members. So I've tried to keep a very professional, almost keep a professional distance in that sense. So, you know, I'll never come home and be like, oh, this team member. I can't believe they said xyz. Because I think, no, it's not fair. I wouldn't say that to another team member. So I really try to limit how much he knows even to the point where he got. Where some of the other team members know more than him. He goes, oh, you didn't tell me that. [00:37:37] Speaker A: I think, oh, you've taken it to the extreme. [00:37:39] Speaker B: Taking it too far, maybe. [00:37:42] Speaker A: You've got fantastic boundaries. [00:37:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. So if we're sitting down to dinner, you know, we might just discuss our day because he works from the office some days and then works from home some days, and we're not actually sitting next to each Other every. Every day of the week, which I think is helpful. And we might sit down at dinner, maybe for the first 10 minutes, we might share highlights or anything that happened during the day and maybe give each other feedback. But then after that it's no work chat. It's kind of that's it until the next day. So I think that's been really helpful. And in the weekend we just try not to bring up work at all or do any work if possible. [00:38:22] Speaker A: Stay away from it completely. You mentioned the word feedback as well, and my ears always spark up around those sort of things. So what's a piece of feedback you've got over time from, you know, Pete or a team member or whatever that's really. You didn't see coming, but it's really helped you and it's been memorable and really helped you in your sort of leadership and business ownership, ownership trajectory? [00:38:46] Speaker B: Yeah, there's been a couple of pieces of feedback over the years. That's really nice. And I think as a leader you don't get feedback very often because one, you don't really invite feedback and two, people probably don't feel like they should be giving you feedback. So it doesn't, it doesn't happen that often. But it was really nice. We've got a new, new staff member who's been with us for three or four months and we had, we do walking one to ones. I do that with all of my team members once a month. And anyway, at the end of the one to one I just said, look, I just wanted to say you're doing a great job. You know, the team team are really happy with you, you're helping me a lot, you're picking things up well, thank you for, you know, really giving it your all. And he said, and thank you for being a good leader. You've done such a good job at bringing everyone together. I really appreciate the onetoone. You really take the time to get to know us. And you, you also, I like that you also dig in when the team needs support. You know, you roll your sleeves up and you get. And you do whatever that's needed. And I was a bit taken aback because I wasn't expecting it. Normally at the end of a they just go, thanks and then we go back to work. So that was really touching for me. I think it's nice to hear what people think about things and know that it matters and that, you know, I'm giving them what they need to be successful. I've also had a key piece of feedback over the years that I help others to feel calm because I'm calm. And I've had this in other areas of my life as well, like even at the hairdresser. I know we joked about the hairdresser earlier, but I went to the hairdresser recently and she. She was just doing a few foils of my fringe, and the woman next to me was getting her whole hair bleached with. From another hairdresser, and mine took twice as long. And the other hairdresser said, what's going on? You take. Why have you taken so long to do this woman's fringe? She said, oh, well, Laura's just such a relaxed person and made me feel relaxed. So I was just enjoying it and taking my time. And, you know, I've had that for my team as well. You know, they'd say, oh, thank you for talking me off the led. I was really stressed about xyz, but you've really helped me to calm and see it from another perspective. And that's really lovely to hear. [00:41:07] Speaker A: And it's specific, too. It's one of the major mistakes people make with feedback and not making it specific and stuff like that. So there's stuff that you can do with it. I. That's really constructive, positive stuff that you can continue to do something with as opposed to someone saying, you know, I think you're a really good leader. Oh, thanks for that. Then you go away and you think, what do they mean by that? It's also, I mean, again, the thing that sparks to me, again, I'm not sure if you prompted a little bit more or not, but if not, it's really aware of the person giving you feedback to do. That's a real skill because it's not a skill that you find often. [00:41:47] Speaker B: And my team are great at doing that as well. I think we're a very open team. I've encouraged feedback. I've encouraged people to talk to one another and give that feedback. So I think it's. Yeah, I think it's also testament to the great people that have on my team, their expertise, their maturity, and how comfortable they feel at work as well. [00:42:12] Speaker A: You know, I've told this story several times on the podcast, I think. So sorry for the community who's heard it before, the greatest bit of feedback I got was the simplest bit of feedback I got. It was many, many years ago from a person who was in my team when I was in corporate. And she said to me that, Brendan, you're so brash and harsh on email. You're actually a nicer person than that. And do you know what it came down to was the very first line I wrote on email was just Laura, Cheryl, Brendan. I didn't even put a hi, a hello, a hey or it was just that's how I learned to do email. Every email I write to this day I start with hey. And I always remember Cheryl because she's the one that told me that it was like so simple but her to have. I mean again she was in my team and I was a sort of senior manager in the organization. But the memories I have of her is just fantastic because she had the courage just to do that was such a simple thing. But you know, when you've got a, you know, let's face it, a power imbalance in organizations like that, it just took such gut and courage. But it doesn't have to be big is my point. It could be something so simple. But back to that word impact that's just impacted me every single day and how many times we write emails every day too bloody much. So I guess that was a constructive improvement opportunity for me. Has there been something like that for you where something along those sort of lines that's come across your path and that's really helped me and I think of it often. [00:43:43] Speaker B: I have been told to give specific feedback. So in my one to ones, you know, I'd be more about, you know, how can I help or what's this happening or that something or the team. And I'd be more broad about oh, I'm really enjoying how the team's working together and I've had a few staff members over the years and go, well, do you have any feedback for me? What, what do you do? What do you think about my work? And that's at the start was a bit like, oh, oh well I hadn't really thought about that. And it's something I still need to practically think about because I see my team every day and we've worked together a long time. They all know that I think that they're great and they're wonderful people and I try to give them as much praise as often, but I have to remind myself think of that specific feedback because people appreciate it, people appreciate it to hear good feedback about themselves and being specific is really important as well. So that's something that I'm still, I've still got to remind myself to do. So that probably prompted me to go, okay, people, people want that specific feedback. And it goes back to that. I think that that dominance thing of being direct, being more direct, not Beating around the bush or assuming people know things is just be direct with people and they really respond well to it. So that's helped me a lot. I think early on as well, I had trouble with hard conversations and I got given the feedback of just tell us, just don't beat around the bush. Easier said than done. But that's, that's really stuck to me. Stuck with me. [00:45:17] Speaker A: I do love the feedback loop, sort of the feedback on how you give feedback. That's awesome. I really. That's fantastic. And it is. I mean, again, what we've got to realize is, and look, I'm not sitting here perfect at it and certainly haven't been perfect over the years. I generally learned more from my mistakes, but it is a real skill in learning to give feedback in a way that. And also, again, this is where back to what we started earlier on the podcast, you getting to know yourself more, your journey of leadership and business ownership, how that's evolved. Like if you don't know yourself well, it's very difficult to then start to learn about other people and how they may like to receive feedback. And this is where your ability to. We go back to disc, because that was when we did that episode, Episode two, many, many years ago. That your ability to understand that, but then to adapt to that in the other person's seat is a key thing because that's where you talked about energy and those people, that's where you start to match each other's energy. Energy doesn't need to be sort of beating each other and like, oh, this is fantastic and racing in the room, but it's just you're leveling out. So all of those things are contextual, which probably AI is going to be very difficult to replace. That. [00:46:27] Speaker B: Yes. [00:46:28] Speaker A: Anyway, I do want to. I threw in the AI thing because I'm not saying we need to go down that path. But what are the. It's more important for me. What do you see as the, you know, the challenges in the horizon for a business like yours given, you know, the AI landscape. [00:46:49] Speaker B: I'm glad you brought this up. I want to preface this by saying that I'm a fan of AI and I think it's great. It's look, in digital marketing. It's been around for many years. Even though it's gotten a lot of fanfare over the last 18 months. The reality is it's sort of been. [00:47:04] Speaker A: Hidden in the background through our feeds and all that sort of stuff. It's not been accessible to us so much. [00:47:08] Speaker B: Absolutely. In tools that we use like design and video tools and writing tools. It's been embedded for years and years and years and years. So we are really no strangers to AI. But particularly in my industry, there's this two main things that I dislike about it and that are big challenges. The first is that when businesses who are not necessarily skilled or experienced in digital marketing use AI to produce content and they don't do it well or they don't tweak it and they personalize it, it can cause distrust from their, from the audience. So early days with AI and I'm thinking like the, the usual offenders. ChatGPT. It was hard to spot a ChatGPT post on social media. It was kind of like, oh, okay, this person hasn't posted for a while. They're quite articulate. Great. Like now you can tell when something's written by AI very easily. So people are more savvy to it and it breeds distrust from the audience. You immediately become disengaged if you think the person posting it hasn't written it doesn't have their, I think genuine, I guess, stamp on it. So that can be a problem for marketers and in, in marketing because we don't want our, our audience to go away from us. It's already harder, it's already hard to stand out in marketing anyway and have our messages cut through because we're just seeing millions of messages a day. So that, that's a big problem. So much so that audiences now are going back to old school ways of communication. They're wanting to pick up the phone, talk to a salesperson, you know, go to a shop, talk to someone in person because they're not trusting what they're, what they're seeing online. So I think that that's a big challenge. The second challenge that is talked about less often is homogenization of content because everyone's using AI. It's producing really bland, uniform content that is, is getting replicated a million times. And to me, I don't know about you, Brendan, but I would rather be hated than being thought of as boring or unremarkable or forgettable. [00:49:26] Speaker A: Well, usually hated me. There's a lot more emotion to that and that it probably means you're doing something, you're making change because you can't be liked by everyone. [00:49:33] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. If I left this earth today and someone was reading up my eulogy, I would not want them to say, oh, you know, she's pretty, pretty average, you know, did all the usual things. There's nothing worse than Being boring in marketing. And unfortunately, AI produces pretty average. It's average stuff. It's not bad, it's not good. It's just. It's average unless you know really what to do with it, how to prompt it, how to create that, that spark. So I think they're the. They're the two biggest challenges for marketers now with AI. [00:50:10] Speaker A: You know, my weird sense of humor has just taken me to the. I think we just got a title this episode. Laura Average Priel. [00:50:19] Speaker B: You wouldn't dare. I wouldn't share it. [00:50:23] Speaker A: No, I wouldn't. But maybe one of my team will. How could I resist? It's really interesting. Like I've. I won't say I've gone all into compared to some other people I know, but I love it as well. I think from a small, you know, from a business owner like me, where I'm not trying to grow a team locally. Like I said, my team's sort of remote. That works really well for me and less risk and all that sort of stuff. But I've been able to get AI through some help of communities I'm involved in, to speak in my tongue because I've got like, you. You've got so much content out there, it can pick up your style. I've got an AI avatar which is like 90 pages and there's all some structure around it, but I've basically talked into like a product like this or Zoom or whatever, and I've pulled out the transcript. So it's learned my story, it's learned my ups and downs and all this sort of stuff. And that's been, again, I'm not saying it's far from perfect, but it's like that has been the single biggest thing that has changed the game for me and a business like mine in the content creation space. It doesn't give me vanilla. Like, it gives me stuff that. And this is where, like, where I start to think is that, like, what I don't know, from an individual perspective, I can produce content, but the strategy and the thinking and that level which you have and your team have and all that like that to me is where the power sits. Because AI can, you can say, oh, give me a strategy around my. But like, honestly, that's the stuff that I find very difficult. So I think this is where the. To me in your space, like, that's where the value really sits moving forward. I mean, we can get people producing content and stuff. But anyway, I mean, what's your thought on it? You guys are experts in your field. You've sort of pointed me in the right direction at different times. And it's really at that sort of higher level of thinking that makes the big difference. [00:52:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. You've got to have the idea in the first place. You can't really outsource strategy or ideas. You can ask it to, but again, it's just going to be probably an idea that everyone's thought of. It's not going to be unique or fresh or different. And that's something that I think AI struggles with at the moment. Not to say it won't change, it'll. It'll evolve and get better, but it struggles with creativity and emotion. And the best way to judge if your content is good or it really is original is how much engagement it gets. So, you know, if you're someone that social media is really important part of your marketing, you can test it by putting up something that you've written yourself, you know, or something you've designed yourself, or a photo or whatever next to something AI is written in design and just see how the audience responds. That I do still see that there is a spot for creators. I don't think that that is going to be eliminated because you still need to put your, your stamp on it. There's still going to be a human element of analysis and checking. I would say that you, Brendan, are a super user of AI. Most people are not at the level that you are at. They're doing very basic prompts, but also because they don't know what they don't know. They don't have the expertise or experience. They might think something AI produces is great until their audience, you know, their customers tell them otherwise. So for example, I had, I was talking to someone who is a small business owner. It's a retail based shop. I won't sort of go into any more because I don't want to embarrass them. But they came up to the. The other day and they said, oh, this is. They said, oh, have you heard of a. I said, yeah, what about it? What part of AI? And they said, oh, well, did you know that you could produce your own videos now and you can do everything with AI? And I said, oh, okay. And they said, oh, I got to show you something. You know, they got their phone out and they showed me this video that they created for their local business. And this is a business based in New South Wales that's a bricks and mortar business. And it was an image of first of all a New Yorker skyline, city skyline at night with cars buzzing by. Very Busy city. And a woman popped up who was kind of like a robotic looking woman who had an American accent and was like, hi, you know, blah, blah, blah, and then shrunk down. He said, it's so good. It's real. It's like we filmed it. [00:54:59] Speaker A: And you're going to tell me they're a business in Narrabri or something like that as well? [00:55:04] Speaker B: Pretty much. And I just was like, do I break this person's heart by telling them all the problems or I just say go for it. Just, you know. But they were so proud of it and they were so proud of what they'd been able to achieve with it. So I think that that is the issue is that people are getting very excited about the new technology and it is, it is bloody exciting. You know, the fact that you can create videos and you can have avatars and you can do all of this stuff. But again, that goes back to the strategy. You know, who are you trying to appeal to? Why? What is the actual message? What do you want people to. And that is an example where people will immediately go, that's AI and I don't care, and I don't live in New York. [00:55:50] Speaker A: It's sort of. And again, I don't want us to divert too much, but it's bringing it back to connection. You and your team, you need to be numbers people around the work you do. But what I feel like I'm seeing more is the stuff that is the. Obviously we should have various types of content we're putting out there, but the things that I feel like are progressing better now maybe because of the landscape is what I would call connection style content. So it still may have the flavor of, you want your flavor of business coming through, but it's a story about something you've done and how you've related to that stuff. That again, AI can support that, but if you don't tell it a story, it's not going to know that story. You know what I mean? It's going to know the how to stuff or the what to do stuff, because that's bread and butter. Do you feel that? Do you see numbers in that? Do you see there's a rise in the real connection requirement around content? Because that does link back to leadership. That's the thing that is key connection for people and that's what you're great at. [00:56:52] Speaker B: Absolutely. And you touched on there the word. The key word there is storytelling, because people remember stories because they're about people. Stories aren't really about objects or things. They're about someone moving from one spot to another. They're going on a journey, and that's what a story has to have. They're the key components of a story. How one person moved from one spot to another spot. And it's basic human connection is wanting to hear about other people's stories. And that is genuine, it's relatable, it's something that is memorable. The way that you can make your marketing more memorable is to create emotion behind it. So to either make someone laugh or make someone cry. And people will remember that. People don't remember things that are necessarily objects or statistics or, you know, images. They remember pictures of people and smiling and laughter and emotions. And that's why that, that. That idea of storytelling is so important. We call, even though we are, digital marketing, and that's the term most people know, our agency was born from content marketing. And it's this idea of storytelling and building genuine connections with people. So even though we do advertising, we do all the things that a digital marketing company does. We try to take it from the perspective of what's in it for the viewer, what's in it for the audience, what are they going to feel out of it. [00:58:18] Speaker A: There's your acting coming in. [00:58:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I. And I do believe that it is that background of art and acting and moving people that does make a difference in terms of the creative output that you've got. [00:58:33] Speaker A: It's really. Isn't it always interesting how we relate things to what we've just been researching or whatever? So I came across this video yesterday that sort of came in on an email and it talked about sort of the power of conversation. I'm like, all right, I love that shit. So I dived into it and it gave a stat. I can't remember the number, but it was that there was a study done around blind dates and those that got a second date after a blind date. And the study proved in that it was those people that asked emotionally digging questions, created an emotion in others that had a high possibility of getting a second date. So it is when you make people feel a certain way, good, bad or ugly, but they're deeping, you know, they're diving down a little bit deeper into whatever their thought bank and driving up those emotions. That's what makes a difference. So it just sort of reinforces what you're saying. If you tell us when you're speaking on stage, you're telling a story and stirring out some emotion, again, that emotion can be positive or negative or whatever, but it's an emotion that's memorable. That's the key. Right? AI doesn't do that. [00:59:42] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:59:42] Speaker A: That I know of. [00:59:43] Speaker B: Absolutely. And businesses that get to talk to their customers or clients have an advantage because they can have those conversations and try to go a little bit deeper than that sort of surface level. I was very well known as a young person when we first turned 18 and we went out to clubs and so forth. Is. People would go, oh, Laura, she loves a dnm. Loves it. [01:00:08] Speaker A: That's your ass. That's your ass. [01:00:10] Speaker B: And, you know, my friends would be, you know, on the dance floor, you know, this. Wanted to have a good dance and whatever. And I'd be out on the. The balcony of the. You know, it was at Iguana Joe's back in the day. And I'd be meeting people and I'd go straight into, what do you want to do with your career? What drives you? And I'd be interviewing them and having these deep conversations. And these poor men, most of them, they probably be like, oh, I just wanted to get someone's number, you know, And I'm really interviewing. [01:00:38] Speaker A: I was gonna say, I've got a bunny boiler here. I've got a bunny boiler here. Get me out of here. [01:00:45] Speaker B: My friends will be, oh, no, Laura's out the back talking about politics again. Oh, no. [01:00:53] Speaker A: Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah. I'm not sure I was looking for deep conversation at 18 years of age, but anyway, that's a different story. Laura, let's start to wrap this up. We've gone about an hour or so, but a couple of questions I would like to ask you as we finish up. So you're starting. Think about. Think back to your starting and your mentoring. Giving advice to somebody else who's thinking about this path. What advice would you give them about? It doesn't mean starting a content business or additional marketing business. Starting a business. [01:01:27] Speaker B: We famously have a big sign in our office, it's illuminated in pink that says begin anywhere. And that is a quote by composer John Cage. And it's something that I resonated with really early on in my career journey because it's this idea of having any creative spark, you know. Yes. It was applied to kind of more creative industries. John Cage was a composer of music. I am a writer. But it can be applied to anyone. Is this idea of there is no perfect or best place to begin. You've just got to start action, something. Start anywhere. And not just start, but be deliberate about your going. That's what Cage says, begin anywhere. But Be deliberate about your going. So the idea is start something, but stick it out, follow through with it and see where it ends up. And that is a principle that anyone can apply in their business. I think in the world that we live in is so crowded and busy and we can get stuck in this phase of endless research because there's so many ways to do things and that can paralyze us. But true, I guess true success happens when you just do something. You've got to take action and follow it through and see what happens. And you may be surprised at where you end up if you do something. [01:02:54] Speaker A: I love that and I've always loved that sign, begin anywhere. It does ring in my head a lot, being an ongoing recovering perfectionist forever. Just start, Brenda, just start. Write something, do something, make it happen. It's another piece of feedback. There you go. Your feedback keeps coming back to me as well. The second bit of advice question, I suppose is that I'm very much on this sort of journey and what I've in my own journey of 10 years is that those that I help the most are those that are trying to create impact in the world. And again, that person, that owner, defines impact and I just define it as a high impact leader. What do you think in your journey? What advice would you like to leave people that, that helps them lead with impact? [01:03:41] Speaker B: Two things. I think you've just got to be really honest with yourself about what you're trying to achieve and don't get, don't get distracted by other people's ideas or plans for you or measures of success. So that's really important. Just come back, coming back to your authentic self, what you're trying to achieve, who you are, what you set out to do, stick true to that. And the second thing is don't be scared to have hard conversations. Don't, you know, put them to the side. Something that I continue to, I guess, struggle with is trying to be a people pleaser because I want people to be happy. I want people to have a great experience with me, with the team, in all areas of my life. But the downsides of being an endless people pleaser is that you struggle to voice what you want. You tend to take a back seat because you're trying to. So busy trying to help and please others. And it's really important. Again, it kind of links to. The first thing is just be true to who you are, what you want and don't be scared to have those hard conversations, give that feedback, tell people how you feel, tell people what you want to achieve. And ultimately it just, it's made my shoulders go down, I reckon about 2 inches. It's just, just voicing what I want, voicing how I feel in a positive way. You know, obviously don't vent to people and don't be rude and mean and so forth. There's ways that you can do it appropriately. So there's my two things. [01:05:13] Speaker A: Very solid advice. Absolutely. Thank you very much Laura. It's been a pleasure talking to you today. Let's hopefully it's not. Well, no, from a business sense, hopefully it's another 10 years time but I'm sure we'll see each other before then. But thanks for coming on and having a repeat on cultural leadership. [01:05:29] Speaker B: A pleasure. Thanks so much Brendan. Really appreciate your time today. [01:05:33] Speaker A: Always a pleasure. These are my three key takeaways from my conversation with Laura. My first key takeaway High impact leaders focus on people before process. They know lasting growth comes from the right people in the right roles. Finding your people, keeping them close and matching energy and values creates trust and consistency. That foundation is what drives performance and long term business growth. My second key takeaway High impact leaders reject hustle culture. A relentless 247 grind doesn't build a sustainable business. The smartest leaders design rhythms that energize their people. Knowing balance fuels creativity, resilience and stronger results for clients and the business. My third key takeaway High impact leaders turn setbacks into growth when challenges hit. Whether it's losing key team members, financial pressures or external shocks, they don't fold. They rebuild, refine and emerge stronger. True leadership is proven not when things go right, but in how you respond when they go wrong. So in summary, my three key takeaways were High impact leaders focus on people before process. High impact leaders reject hustle culture and high impact leaders turn setbacks into growth. You can let me know your key takeaways on YouTube or at theculturalleadership.com thanks for joining me. And remember, the best outcome is on the other side of a genuine conversation. Sa.