Helena Frumson, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of NeoClear and founder of Infinita Club, shares her profound insights on the intricacies of building successful businesses in our latest discussion.

At the core of our conversation lies the principle of risk management and the critical importance of identifying and addressing foundational weaknesses within organisations.

Frumson explains her career journey, marked by a fascination with commerce and a deep understanding of commercial diplomacy, which underpins her approach to fostering collaboration and sustainable growth.

We delve into the necessity of communication between divisions, the challenges CEOs face, and the imperative of continuous self-audit within organisations to prevent crises before they arise.

Ultimately, this episode underscores the vital connection between effective governance, organisational culture, and the execution of strategic plans, advocating for a holistic view of business management that prioritises both growth and stability.

Takeaways:

1. Helena Frumson discusses her journey from a fascination with commerce to founding two companies, emphasizing the importance of commercial diplomacy.
2. The dialogue highlights the need for effective communication between different organizational divisions to prevent misalignment and inefficiencies.
3. Helena emphasizes the significance of identifying and addressing foundational cracks within business plans to ensure long-term success.
4. The podcast illustrates the critical role of risk management in business growth and the necessity for proactive measures against potential issues.
5. A key takeaway is the emphasis on continuous self-audit within organizations to prevent future crises and promote a culture of accountability.
6. Helena argues for the importance of aligning incentives, such as equity participation, with organizational success to foster a sense of ownership among employees.

Today on Connect with Purpose, I'm joined by Helena Frumson, who's the co founder and CSO of Nuclear and the founder of Infinity Club. So thanks so much for being on the podcast, Helena.

Thank you Augusta, for having me.

And I think what would be great to understand, to start is how you got to where you are now and what you're doing with these two companies and yeah, your journey so far.

Thank you. Absolutely.

Sometimes it's a bit difficult to recall the whole way, but I started with early age fascination with commerce through reading about Silk Road, about Venetian merchants, about conversations, dialogues and trades that were made in people that wouldn't meet them, other circumstances.

So it really fascinated me and I grew to appreciate this interdependence between different country, between different people, which effectively shapes and forms what we call today commercial diplomacy. The language that people speak between when they trade and when they f. When they lay foundations of partnerships across. Across the globe.

And then I grew up in a family of engineers, scientists, economists. So architecture, the word architecture for me is not a metaphor. It literally is a system that has to be built in order to.

For venture, for collaboration, for business to be successful.

And then as I see when we build this successful strong businesses on sound and clear foundation, then whole trade as such can happen a lot better way. And I spent last 30 years, almost 30 years shaping, scaling, working inside environments that that required such foundations.

So my personal specialty came from commercial acumen, holistic commercial approach of partnerships, excel and marketing pr, et cetera, et cetera that you put into the blend. But there is a lot more to building a sound business. And this discipline has carried with me into then building my own businesses.

So co building nuclear with my amazing partners. And you mean founder is not here today, but he's the rock and cornerstone of his business or white hat.

And I work with him to build a network of amazing infrastructure projects across the board and again global network starting in Europe and extending further.

And in Infinito club we organize a cockpit or commander unit or shuttle if you will, that helps investors such as private equities, sovereign funds and family offices to ensure that their portfolio is sound and strong in terms of deliverables and pipelines and fit in the very initial investment phases that was behind acquisition.

Wow, amazing. Very complicated, but amazing. So how do you help these firms set up a stable architecture so that the system works and they can scale?

How do you help these firms to do that?

So if we go back to basics, across humans, across companies and across systems, we tend to put a plan Together, right? And I think every coach today, if you go on Instagram, speaks with you about getting from point A to point B, put your map together, etc.

And there is plenty of material that we read in bachelor and MBA degrees all about business management at scale. My job is to analyze and diagnose if what's being built has any crux in it.

So first of all, the right plan is, is put together, but then if it has any cracks in it, I love looking for crux.

And in my lectures and my speaking panels, I typically love asking question if I speak with you about cracks and foundation, about danger, about any signs of stress that you see, what makes you think about. And people tend to reply, oh, it's scary, you know, I want to run away, I want to hide from it, or I want to cover it with something.

So the reaction is biological. Often it's less professional, it's more biological.

And I love bringing us back to professional arguments saying let's remove biology because it's all good and fine and games, but in order to fix it, let's celebrate the fact that we saw foundation crack early enough.

Because we saw it early enough, then the Eiffel Tower is not going to fall aside or fall through beneath foundation we actually can build if we constantly detect the cracks and fix them on time.

So my work, if I simplify it completely, is really in risk management of this delivery plan by finding these crux and foundation finding and closing them early enough.

Whether we speak about organizational psychology, about commercial growth and commercial systems delivery and PMO systems, product management and systems, and then the transformational layer in between and governance in our twin that then seals the crocs once and for all.

And if they appear going forward, this whole system then can detect them faster as part of discipline and not read our past success as our future, as insurance of our future successes. Because it doesn't work like that. Grow, we move into next stage, new cracks appear, we fix them.

Makes sense. And how do you find the cracks? Are you looking for problems at every level of the business or how are you finding these, these, these, these cracks?

It really depends on the situation. Cracks appear at few levels. They appear at foundation and plan itself, as we said.

So we need to really understand what this company wants to be when it's big and is it on the way and sometimes it's not. It's not necessarily crocus deviation from the course.

And then we put it back on the course so it actually arrives in San Francisco and not somewhere less adorable. Then maybe it Wants to arrive somewhere else. Adorable, but we need to make sure that this is what we mean. This is what we want ahead of the time.

In terms of then analyzing the plan. Typically quite visibly problems come through pipeline that is not delivered on time. Why are we not growing with plan for 20% yearly growth? Growth.

What's going on? Let's have a look. Did we build our commercial pipeline? Because commercial will probably be the first place where we get a company is not growing.

Right? Yeah. Share value is falling or the growth or conversion of pipeline is simply not happening as it's planned way.

So we start diving and then typically the head of sales says oh that's because the product is not good enough. And then you analyze the product is product fit for scale. And then the product guys will say well our product is perfect.

But the PMO delivery, they didn't connect it properly to our clients, APIs or our clients systems. Okay, let's analyze that way. So we really analyze it coherently across different divisions.

Naturally looking into finance, looking into legal as well as they may show something that is not immediately visible. And then sometimes you speak to a company and you say everything is is scalable.

But the CEO or but chief something officer for the reason that this person perhaps was in a rush of creating something phenomenal. They are adrenaline driven. They are this founder hat on, you know, real founder mindset. But now we're in business as usual. We need to take step back.

Not relax necessarily, but sometimes change to l into business as usual. Sometimes look at the whole system as growing in a different pace with different new responsibilities and accountabilities.

And many CEOs transform and grow into phenomenal success. And some of the CEOs that very moment they say well maybe I'm not scalable into next level and maybe I simply dislike the next level.

I actually want my adrenaline back.

So these people exit institution, go back to basics and build five more phenomenal companies and exit them to to to the level where they diselect run it after. So there are multiple avenues. Typically they work all together in the picture that is painted to towards outside world.

So, so, so fast growth essentially sends off false signals to to. To the top people sometimes that actually they they're good, everything's fine. But if there are cracks, that's when problems occur, when they scale.

I wouldn't necessarily say that fast growth is an indicator of cracks. What may happen is that fast growth may fool people into thinking that this is the only right way to grow from shear forever.

So it can be this false Reassurance of my way is right way from now and forever. And then eventually it can snap dramatically because the next phase simply requires different company, different type of a team, larger operations.

Right?

I love giving this example of a salesperson goes and knocks on the door and sells this amazing Hoover or project or contract and it's the most amazing salesperson you can imagine.

But then you ask this person, could you please put the details of what you've done, description of what client wanted into a sales for some kind of sales system. And this person says no, I will not. This is not how I work. So this person can offer you a very fast 0 to 1 jump as you grow your company.

But at the moment of one when you bring 15 different other people and client experience people and support people, et cetera, no one has any visibility into what client actually wanted.

So at that stage, this very fast growing and fast mindset person may actually break entire system because the client will be sitting there saying but it's been six months since I asked for additional features and client support will say we had no idea about it and product will say what they wanted something else, oh, we wish we knew we could put it into next release. So by, by not accounting to what kind of personality and what kind of plan do you need at each stage of your growth and scale?

You may effectively build for failure. And we don't want that.

No. Do you think that a lot of the problems happen with lack of communication between different departments and organizational units?

There's no communication, there's no flow between different sectors in the business.

It is a wonderful point that you're making.

And I remember when I studied my business degrees in turn, first bachelor degree of Business administration was all about how your division functions and then you learn to be head of each division Information technology and legal and commercial etc. Etc. From but then at master's degree, my revelation was that in fact communication between divisions is what making or breaking a real organization.

And in this order of learning about these problems, I also encounter them as I've practiced running, managing or contributing to running companies Today I can see that communication between divisions is a huge failure factor potentially. But it's also a huge success factor potentially because network effect works within organization as much as it works outside of organization.

The communication problem inside of the division between different layers can be dramatic success or failure factor.

We know all these case studies, business case studies where where the headquarters the mothership simply doesn't know, doesn't have access to information and knowledge that Driver has.

And Driver who delivers to little local shops, actually has a lot more hands on interesting information that had he communicated upwards, perhaps company was taken, would take completely different decisions.

And then if we take one step back, and I think you face a lot of it in your work, Working with individuals, not just with companies, is also our communication with ourselves.

Am I fooling myself in thinking that my knowledge, abilities and expertise that carried me to this moment, is it enough to carry me further and to let me scale right. As much as I want company to scale, we all as individuals need to constantly learn.

My father used to say, the moment you call yourself professional, seriously, without laughing in the mirror and saying there is much learn the moment you called yourself now I really figured it, he says that's the moment you stopped being professional. Because at that moment you really stopped learning, you stopped scaling yourself. So I think there are like multiple layers to that.

Do you.

Do you often find that it's the CEO or the C Suite that is the bottleneck, essentially, they're the ones that need to develop further to take the organization to the next level? Or do you find the problems tend to happen in kind of middle management or levels below?

I would say I'm thinking about the right translation of this phrase, that fish tend to rot from its head. We always, in my humble opinion, need to look at C suite first of all, because truly of all people in organization, everybody can make mistakes.

But the real power to change, to detect these mistakes, to diagnose and fix, really sits with sea level. So I would say yes, mistakes can happen across the board. Vegan lady can make a mistake and CO can make a mistake.

But the ultimate ability to take the wheel and steer the ship back into its course is sitting with co, with board, potentially with board members, potentially with board advisors. So maybe external advisors. But the CEO is the person we tend to look at. This is why this job is so difficult and so lonely.

Because often, you know, mistake happened elsewhere. But you will have to take accountability and find a way to fix it.

Where I do, if I think about lack of communication, then probably from my perspective, the communication between C suite and execution layer is where we could all improve.

This is the area where oftentimes execution lies on shoulders of these heroic personalities who really want to succeed, really want to possess an immense level of information, but not always heard or listened to or even asked for their opinion and knowledge information by the upper echelon. And this disconnect, which often comes from overwhelms, right from so many things on the table. You just recommended a book But I'm gonna read.

But this Dean effective executive who actually has time to go down, down to Trader Pete or you know, we all saw Bloomberg sitting in the, what is it, service floor. Right. We, we all know this leadership lesson that you've got to be getting to the level of what people speak with clients. You need to. Or Jeff Bezos.

Right. Speaking to customers, whether it's true or not. But we were sold this picture and it's great, great embodiment of this idea.

Let me get to a trading flow.

When I was running co running a huge chain of fashion retail stores, I would go to what we used to call sales per cat and listen to what clients say and how do shelves look and how my windows do they stop people or don't. Whatever we designed in there, does it even populate success to store managers?

Yeah, it's clever.

So if you were going to give any advice to someone watching this, someone who is a C suite or someone who is executive leadership, what would that be?

Would that be spend more time in the lower levels of the firm and understanding what people are doing or would that be putting systems in place to encourage communication between divisions? What would your advice be to people?

I think you need both.

I think in order to put the right systems in place, you need to understand your organization, how it breathes and what it, what it's made of, who the client is. Right. You need to understand this organization almost as living thing.

And once you understand your organization, I think this is why for many executives, the first 90 days plan often is to go and understand organization. And then you can put a system.

Once you diagnosed organization, once you saw the crocks, you can then put a system in place to run business as usual and close the gaps or fix the cracks that you've seen.

And then in my opinion there will be certain immune response for an organization, for anything you do, of course, because people tend to clutch to the ways that they know. If you want a bit of a change, then you implement your change management and transformation, alignment and restructuring if you need.

But definitely it's both. It's diagnosing and then putting system in place and governance.

So people really, you know, once you put system in place, it really is followed until the next evolution of system is needed.

How do you enforce governance across an organization? Like how do you put in a system to make sure that that's done correctly and it works?

It's a very interesting question because governance for many people sounds almost as if I call the cops if my children are not in bed. By 9pm like if I recall Mary Poppins methodology, then that was a governance. I wish I had this many available, but I didn't.

My children are not as well behaving, but old enough for me to forgive it. In terms of governance, we tend to look at governance at board level first of all. Right.

Because this powerful and yet, and yet empathetic environment has to surround the CEO and C suite, in my view, first of all. But then governance doesn't stay there in every large transformation.

We speak about individuals taking on themselves particular accountability for success or keys of success in this process. And then this by itself is governance.

So we all, every individual and organization, if given enough trust and marching orders or ability to build systems, depend on where you are in this big machine. Every single one can become part of this governance and ethical code and the culture of organizational culture.

So in my opinion, we look at governance at the board level. Sure, that's the first place, but then we can populate it downwards and empower people to govern over their own piece of deliverable.

As much as we want every programmer to before they release code to quality, to look at quality assurance, lens at it and say, well, first let me have look what I created. Does it fit or doesn't fit the purpose? So kind of constant self audit.

And this is where going back to crux, when we constantly self audit and we combine pride in our purpose and what we do for organization of ourselves, our firm, if we are proud of what we achieved and then we're not scared, we're not fearing to face the scraps and say oh wonderful, I've detected two. I can fix them by next week. If we combine this, then you both have governance and growth hat on. So you both set sales and governance.

Yeah.

Have you found it easier to create huge transformational change across organizations when people are either really incentivized by compensation so their salaries are linked directly to maybe the performance of the firm or their unit? Or do you think that it's better when somebody is just really behind the mission of the firm or the vision of the firm?

In your experience, have you seen it been more successful in either or. Or is it a mixture of both?

Right. So it's a very interesting one. And probably my reply will be somehow a little bit skewed to where I come from as my natural habitat.

From motivation and psychology inside business management, we know that people come in different shapes and sizes and their motivation comes from different places. Right. Someone needs more purpose and another person simply driven by cash. Yes, it's.

It's a V. We know there are five, six different types of motivations or possibly more Organization psychologists can give a lot more foundation to that. And I'm not going to attempt to look as professional in that field.

What I have experienced and my driver when I had had a possibility to run transformational projects was always linking some kind of commercial success derivative into people's compensation.

So whether it was in fashion, retail success of of company deliverable going back to in the form of commissions or bonus even for stock people, even for someone who's not exposed to and not sit stand in front of a client simply because then they then feel they do contribute, they see the whole food chain of events. We know also that many employees, maybe not all most want some equity in the company. Right.

Many people are driven by can I have a little piece, you know, some shares and that will motivate me. I'll feel a bit as an owner in this company and those cultures where it's suitable.

I think this is a wonderful driver for people to feel some part of a success in this organization.

Maybe not necessarily commissions because this one is difficult to distribute across the board, but equity or some kind of bonds that is to performance of the company in my view is a wonderful way forward.

Yeah, I think that's really clever. I think that ownership is yeah, in my opinion, the way forward.

It's probably you see that a lot, right, because you place executive talent. And I believe that probably every person we speak with will voice their interest.

And I think that equity is 100% the best way in any business because at the end of the day it enables people to feel like it's their own. And when people care, they will report problems. They will go above and beyond to sell because they want their equity to go up in value.

So for me it's number one and it's what people want. So I think, yeah, I think that's the best.

Do you think that organizations need to constantly question their assumptions around, you know, what, what different units in the business should be doing, what good looks like when maybe systems are drifting or cracking. You know, should, should organizations be questioning things all the time?

I absolutely 800% behind constant self audit. Again, as individuals, as companies, as systems, as economists, this is my view of how we all should function.

However, some people take it the wrong way, they start beating themselves or confusing it with some sort of self hate. And in my view it's an ultimate form of self love. Right. Because if I put makeup on, I really look in the mirror before I go out Walk out.

I want to make sure that what I've created somehow is, is what I wanted to go out with. It's self audit. We do a lot of self audit. We check if, if our laces are not undone on the stairs because it's simple, dangerous.

There are multiple all the checks that we do during the day. Similarly, if we do it in organization, we prevent so much of a future firefighting.

And future firefighting costs a lot because houses burned and the dog has run away and you had to carry the baby out, but jewelry stayed in the house and now melted and your insurance is not going to cover it. There is so much that we lose in firefighting that in my opinion we should work to prevent.

Having said that, we know that there are heroic individuals and ethical psychological types who adore firefighting because it's only then they can demonstrate how indispensable they are and how needed they are for institutions.

So if institution at the very helm, at the very top is encouraging this heroic behavior, this institution should be bracing for constant firefighting because people will create it subconsciously. They will delay diagnosis to the moment when tumor is that size and you need to dig it out rather than pass an easy procedure.

Having said that, not that I do my health checks all the time. So preaching here with a lot of hypocrisy from organization perspective given.

Again, we talk about success, we talk about growth, but there is, in the end of the day, someone who invested in those. People often carry fiduciary responsibility to their limited partners or taxpayers or whoever has invested in them in this food chain.

So in my view, this responsibility lies the entire organization, its C suite and board and investors and investors of investors.

I think what you're saying is super interesting because actually you're right. A lot of the problems, I think start with ego and people wanting to be seen.

And unfortunately, in a lot of organizations, they're set up for people to get promotions and get pay rises based on being seen. And from what I've seen, often that happens when there's big problems and they solve big problems, they're seen.

So you're completely right in the sense that firefighting happens and people enjoy it. Actually, I think in many firms I've seen it. People enjoy the stress. It's even like a child.

A lot of children will wait till the last day to revise for exams because they want the pressure. It happens a lot.

I hope my sons are listening to this podcast in this particular moment, it happened, not Finger Point.

People want pressure.

It's true.

And it's true that some people are self driven by pressure and in my view it still is different from being self driven by this excess excessive level of disability.

Because if I'm driven by self pressure and again I'm not psychologist like to take it all with, with grain of salt is just, you know, life experience and, and work experience.

I've seen employees pushing their deliverables to the last moment that it would be within reason of the interdependence between divisions and so they would still deliver this piece of or project within the program of deliverables and so entire thing will succeed.

So in other words, whilst in their internal self management, this is how it works versus me, who I prefer to do things in advance and then sleep well for the next week. They can't sleep properly if they already done it, so they will push it to the last moment.

And I know that some people do it this way and I think we can live with this so long as it doesn't affect others.

But I think a lot more dangerous is the situation where this person literally digs such a hole that entire project falls in and then heroically they extend their hand and pull everybody one by one out of this hole, inevitably coming across as that, you know, savior.

And, and these are the situations where typically we could assume that if it's one off individual, it might be that this person needs a bit of maybe leadership coaching or any kind of additional education around how to put their value on the table of executives in more effective way without damaging the organization.

But if I see this behavior across organization can already tell that it's encouraged from above, that someone above really loves seen this adventurous story. It's all turned into, you know, Tarantino level movie full of blood if you, you know, if you want to visualize it.

So we really need to address where and in which capacity it comes to the surface.

How do you work out where it's coming from? When you go to work with an organization, do you, you obviously start at the top.

Do you interview people or do you look for what's failing in the organization already? Or where do you start.

Typically in ideally, in my view, we always need to start at the top.

And first dialogues have to happen at the top because as much as people love moaning about oh CEO, this CEO, that CEO doesn't understand, if you go into middle layers, I guarantee every third person will be saying that CEO is stupid. It happens and often happens of a total ignorance to what's on shoulders of that CEO. And I'll give you example of why am I more empathetic?

When we speak with CEO and their team, these are people that are tasked with ultimate deliverable plan and also loaded with a lot of pressure that comes from board, from investors, from, you know, funds or the entire cup table on top of them.

So we need to understand that, we need to assess this, this situation, these people first of all, with a lot of empathy and understand what they, how do they lead organization.

And then in my view, we need to drop down and help them, help them not instead of them, but help them work out a plan of how each division can perform better and how communication between divisions can perform better. And I'm talking here about pure practical intervention, pure practical delivery partnership. I'm not talking about McKinsey.

Here's a framework about the framework which will teach you which are super valuable because we all learn from these frameworks, but they often are left with institution to then work it out on themselves, which is a business model that empowers organization. But then organization needs to work it out.

So I distinguish between these two different lanes and each of them is much needed, it's just that they are different. So yes, starting with C levels, then drilling into divisional deliverables, accountability, et cetera, et cetera.

Why am I talking with confidence about people who moan about CEOs? I've heard it multiple times in organizations that I knew really well from my colleagues working in different other organizations.

And people, typically they tend to speak about CEOs above them because their domain knowledge might be deeper than CEOs and CEO cannot be the main knowledge that's in absolutely every discipline. Just impossible. I've been CEO in a very young age and a fast growing fintech company.

And when on 31st of December, my clients didn't pay on time on 31st of December, I didn't have enough cash. Tomorrow on 1st of January when everybody gets up to pay my team and contractors.

So whilst the team was celebrating and you know, going and watching fireworks, I locked myself in the bathroom and I was crying my head off and my then newly wedded husband was rather surprised.

What, what do I do with this situation because I was in such distress of well, deals are done, contracts are there, but the cash didn't get into bank account. So this pressure on shoulders of the CEO is incomparable to any other pressure.

And I'm talking about tiny company where I was, you know, interim CEO for a year.

Those people that carry this weight for 15 years, 20 years in different companies or same company, they really need to be assessed and addressed and empowered with a lot of empathy. So whilst we say we go, we interview them, it's not interrogation, it's.

It's a mutual search for truth, which, you know, the 360 search for truth, for crux, for how to help assist and wow, let me cheer for you from side.

I like what you're doing because you're going in and you're actually helping firms to execute what they need to do instead of just a plan.

Because I think that, you know, with the likes of AI and things, it actually as a business, often businesses really know what they need to do, but they don't do it. They need the supportive system, the support, somebody to actually come in and handhold them through the process.

Because change is hard and communication is often hard.

I think you're very right in assessing this is how I see it as well, that this delivery, partnership, this day and time becomes almost luxury product on its own and expensive luxury product because you have real humans who've been there, build it, you know, have these scarred backs with plenty of knives that were so, you know, all sorts of damages to the body. But they also would be very, very careful about saying that AI can now build a plan.

Because I've built, I've tested AI from the moment I could lay my hands on it across different variety of different subjects in which I have in depth expertise, not, not the one my dad says is bad, but actual expertise, including my experience, my previous experience in fashion, retail, in personal styling, because I have as well education from London University of Arts School of Fashion. So I wanted to test it in different lanes in which I understand how it should be. And AI was drifting badly. So it would give me a very confident plan.

And if I put this plan on LinkedIn, those people that don't specialize in it will say, wow, that's amazing.

Wow.

It even puts it in chart, which between us will take me a month to create that elegancy, the bullet points and everything without typos. So it's. It gives you very confident plans. You challenge it, what it says, good instinct, Good catch, Helena. So Raheem says, good catch, Helena.

So we know that plans that AIs create are only as good as input, input beneath them and data that they assess and access. And it's not always professional assessment. I see now people put on LinkedIn, I've created a strategy.

Well, first of all, as you say, good luck implementing. Yeah. But before implementing, did anyone adult look into this strategy? Have you, have you like, what's your benchmark?

Where are you sailing to San Francisco or somewhere else? Like what, what, how, how did you build it and what was your prompt behind it?

You know, and sometimes they show the prompt and even prompt is not sound and information behind it is not sound. But you know, 450 likes and shares and means more clients for everyone it seems.

No, I think you're right on that, on AI, because it's even for us in what we do. We use, we've tested systems with AI and we've tested AI to create market maps of the industry and things and it's always inaccurate.

You know, it will get a lot of it right with the parts it gets wrong. Will make you look incredibly stupid to somebody who knows what they're doing. Yes, that's the issue.

So we found, we found that, we found big flaws in it. And I think as you said, the implementation, that's the hard part. Execution is always the hard part, right? In my opinion.

Definitely. And I think that, I think we'll be closer to having AI agents that really are at a level of good.

Again McKinsey or PwC or ex Goldman employee, I think eventually will have these agents trained by those very professional people and really delivering and possibly will have additional capacity in face of these agents or anything else that really will come with AI. But I think at this stage and for observable future, for some observable future, I think we're not there yet to rely on strategies built by AI.

Definitely not taking them as much in orders for implementation and without implementation plan itself. Then also good luck.

Yes. How have you found starting your own thing and what gave you the kick to do it? What gave you that purpose?

It's a very good question. So if I replied from perpective, I think we chatted about it some time ago. The world is not doing well.

Specifically on ability to speak, on ability to have a sound dialogue between disagreeing partners. I do see commercial diplomacy not as ideology, but as a sound plan to actually bring people together, whether we like each other or not that much.

If system works, if it benefits both sides, eventually affinity grows, mutual affection grows. But I also in a way didn't quite start anything because I was doing.

I advised a number of CEOs how to create commercial programs so they're not diluted as much at that Fundraising stage and all sorts of situations of this sort and worked with communities, with founder institute, as a mentor with some of the accelerators to support them until such moment that they realize maybe we need to, you know, need to look at it a bit more seriously. So that's it.

This is where I find myself as co founder, a person who can implement this knowledge and ability and learn from the situation as we go, that I can contribute quite a bit, put it on the table and as someone who can help other companies succeed because I think we all need a bit of positive success. And again, commercial dialogue.

I love it. So what is your purpose within work then? What do you think gets you out of bed every day?

I may wish to reach the age when I want to be in bed. There's so much going on and it's so exciting and we're only starting, right? I think, I think growth itself.

Growth itself and this intercultural dialogue. The first time I was fascinated again reading history books, reading venture books. I don't know, I was what, 10, 11, 9.

And to this day this very idea that some people may create something that then has interdependence of some kind of partnership or distributional channel or, or mutually beneficial growth in different geographies, different languages and out of this we can see sustainable economy growth. Then our children inherit better world. Kind of keeps me idealistic within my very, very, very, very risk management, probably destructive mindset.

Right.

It allows me to remain very idealistic, very positively tuned to this world person as opposed to someone who focuses only on crux and how to prevent problems in the future. So I don't know if it asks probably.

Yeah, no, that's a big. They were amazing. Yeah, yeah. Growth essentially it's growth mindset. Do you think you got that from your upbringing? Do you think you got that from.

It's a very, very, very good question. I definitely was brought up that way. My dad was a person who managed any stress or negativity very easily.

He said well if program didn't happen yet, then why are you worried? And no, no need to stress, only to analyze and fix it. And if it already has happened, then why are you worried? It's already happened.

Now let's focus, analyze and fix it. So it kind of. There was never a good time and from his perspective to be stressed or worried about things. If I look back, it's not bad at all all.

And, and also like there are no hopeless situation. We'll find solution, find fix. This is why I'm not scared of, of crux. Because I know we'll find fix yet. So yeah, definitely I bring in.

My mother was always very focused on excellence on again on growth and excellence and her way of, of driving it towards this excellence was always, well, if I knew that you average person, I wouldn't demand of you as much. To this day I'm not convinced I'm anything above average person, by the way. But it is what it is. She got her good results on my school paperwork.

So yeah, I, I was brought up this way.

But I also think there is certain biological wiring in you because some phenomenal people that I know, including people who are very dear and close to me, they are in completely different life concept.

Some of them just know how to exist in the moment and growth for them is just a bypass, just a result of being here in your moment and enjoying and living it.

And I wish I had this ability or more of this ability because I'm a lot more focused towards, okay, what's next thing, how do we achieve what stands between me and my next goal. So probably a combination.

Yeah, it's very interesting. I think I'm more like you than the other people. I think it's. I think it all. I personally think it comes from upbringing and it comes from parents.

I don't want to, I guess as a stereotype, but I also think sometimes it comes also from being a woman. I think in many ways when you start your, you know, at school, your corporate career and you. In many ways you have to do more to be seen at first.

And I think it instills that love, that, that struggle, that purpose. But maybe I'm wrong.

That's very interesting. Well, as a woman, we also grow life. Exactly.

Those of us who grow life, we also have this kind of angle which I'm not sure fully is fully utilized in my case as a learning or acknowledged what is a learning foundation. But definitely it is there as well because I see my children going from this size to say next year I'm starting my driving license.

It's also growth that literally is there in front of our eyes.

It's in our DNA then. Yeah.

And in many ways companies are just essentially, it's your baby when it starts and you grow companies into something an adult, it's the same as a child.

Definitely. Well, there you have more experience than I do.

Same thing. But thank you so much. I think it's an incredibly interesting conversation. So thank you for coming on today.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Augusta.