How to Improve Business Operations

I don’t think I missed opportunities because I’m nonbinary.
I think I thankfully avoided working with people that are basically violent toward themselves.
They don’t allow themselves to be free, and so they can’t work with free people like me.
So I don’t see it as a disadvantage.
I see it as, you know, people do me a favor if they’re transphobic.
They don’t work with me.
Yeah, go stay out my way.
I don’t need you because your thinking is outdated.
It’s ignorant, you know what I mean?
It’s just like it’s nothing to do with me, everything to do with them.
So that’s how I see it.

No Bullsh*t Talks is a podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
Here’s the cleaned transcript:
Too much bullshit out there, especially when it comes to business.
This podcast aims to highlight what’s true and what’s not in the world of entrepreneurship, bringing you honest and raw conversations about the rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship.
Each week, my guest will be a high-performing entrepreneur sharing the ups and downs of their journey and helping you prepare for the road ahead while providing you with actionable insights and absolute gems of knowledge.
Stay tuned as I introduce this week’s guest.

Lu Castello is the founder of Lou & Co., where they help businesses with operations management thanks to over a decade of experience in festival and events management.
They also advise the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access team at NASA.
Lou proudly identifies as nonbinary and works hard to bring awareness to the world about gender issues.
I present to you this week’s guest, Lou Della.
Welcome, Lou, to No Bullsh*t Talks.
Excited to have you here today.
So tell us, where have you come from for today?
Well, not today today, but where in the world have you traveled from to be here?
Yeah, Scotland.
That’s far.
I feel like that’s a saying, like not many people travel all the way to…
I like to pretend that everyone’s doing it just for me.
Of course I am.
I mean, you were one of the main excuses, but yes, you’ve come all the way from Scotland.
Where about in Scotland are you from?
Edinburgh.
Edinburgh.
Beautiful.
We’ve had another person from Edinburgh on the podcast before.
So we had Andrew Dobbie.
Oh, that makes sense.
Yeah.
I should watch that episode.
Yeah, it was only a couple of episodes back actually, so you can have a look at that.
Yeah, so we’ve had Andrew.
So another Scot.
But you’re not originally Scottish, are you?
No, definitely not.
They trick you with my accent.
No, originally Sicilian.
So from Sicily.
Tell me more about Sicily.
I feel like it’s a beautiful place and not really somewhere everyone knows.
Do you want to know?
It’s too hot.
It’s about 40 to 50 degrees in summer.

That’s too hot.
I mean, I thought we were going to be like, “No, we’d love the sun,” but I don’t.
I feel like most people don’t know anything about Sicily other than they’ve got oranges.
Yeah.
Yeah, or lemons, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, well, there is a lot to say.
I don’t know what to say about it.
We have a very rich history, you know, because obviously Sicily has been dominated by so many different cultures, from the Arabs to the Normans, like I’ve said before.
And yeah, it’s just…
And the Greeks as well.
So the Romans.
So you have so much history and culture, and it’s reflected in the food.
It’s reflected in the architecture.
It’s reflected in the traditions.
So yeah, a very peculiar place.
But obviously it’s really Catholic as well, so it’s not the easiest

Landscape to grow up in if you are a queer kid, you know.
So is that what brought you to the UK, and why Edinburgh?
Yeah.
Well, I moved to London first when I was 18 because I needed to learn English, learn to live independently, and learn to work.
So I was like, you know, if I can’t make it in London, I’m not going to survive anywhere else.
So London was my first shot.
And then 18 months in, I was like, okay, London is a little bit too much.
I love this city, but living here, especially when you’re so young and you’re working so much, it was just a bit too much.
And I wanted to study, but I always had this idea of paying for my studies and not putting myself in debt.
And so that’s why I moved to Scotland.
You know, I could study for free because at that time a European passport would get you free tuition fees.
And then I didn’t take a student loan or anything.
I just always worked.
So that’s why I moved to Edinburgh initially.
It was for uni, and then I ended up staying for 11 years.
You know what, though?
That’s so impressive.
The fact that you went all the way through university and didn’t get a student loan.
There aren’t many British kids who have done that, let’s put it that way.
Most of us Brits are just like, “Woo, free money.”
Except it’s not free, and then we work it out later.
Not enough anyway.
No, but most of us did that.
We were like, “Woohoo.”
I still remember the day my loan hit my account.
I was like, let’s go shopping.
It’s so stupid, but we don’t get taught that sort of stuff, I feel like, in school.
So we just kind of think, “Oh my God, this is free money.”
This is why we end up in debt with credit cards as well.
We’re not, I guess, financially very literate, or a lot of us aren’t.
So I find that so impressive.
At the age of 18, or really any young age under 30, we’re all basically children.
And I feel like to have that, I don’t know, it’s impressive.
What made you feel like, “I don’t want to have any debt.
I’m just going to work and get through university without any loans”?
Yeah.
Well, I don’t know.
I think a number of factors.
I think I just wanted to be smart about it.
I’m very strategic as a person.
It’s just the type of mindset I have.
You play chess, you know all about being strategic.
It’s just that kind of mindset that you have.
You just think a few steps ahead.
And I just thought, you know, I want to try to work instead of taking a loan.
And also because I wanted work experience.
I was still trying to find my bearings and meet people and learn the language.
Because obviously when I moved to Scotland, I thought I knew English, and I had to learn it all over again, that kind of thing.
So I don’t know.
I think at that time I just thought it was a smart move.
It wasn’t easy, obviously, because I went to actual university.
I did a full-on bachelor’s degree full-time, in person.
So it wasn’t easy.
I had three jobs my first year of uni.
I had three jobs.
Yeah.
Three jobs in my first year.
Two jobs in the second year.
One job in the third year.
And then my business in my fourth year.
So I took a few years as well to finish it because after the first couple of years, I started to actually get management roles in events.
And that’s the career I was building, accidentally almost.
And I was like, well, it’s either I go to Germany to study or I take director-level jobs at 21 years old.
And I was like, I’m taking the director-level jobs.
At that time, I thought I wasn’t going to go back.
But I paused.
I didn’t officially leave, just again thinking ahead and leaving it open.
And then life, you know, COVID happened.
My events work went out the window.
So I decided to do my third year, and it went very well.
And I was like, well, I might as well finish, you know.
And then this year I had my business, and it was the easiest year by far.
I ended up doing a mad amount of work for my dissertation because I could actually own my time, because I’m a business owner now.
So it was actually the easiest year for me.
That’s crazy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it’s a journey for sure.
It’s funny because you’re like, “Oh, you play chess, you think ahead.”
I was like, I do think ahead, but then I think ahead and think, “Oh, I’ll have nice handbags and nice shoes.”
I don’t care.
And I’m also the sort of person that thinks ahead and overthinks things, but then also loves to live in the moment.
And I think, I want to live for now.
Let’s do this now.
And so I think in some ways, the fact that I chose my career over finishing a degree, it was a gamble almost.
Especially when you’re an immigrant.
You come here and you definitely don’t have the same opportunities or the same perception to employers if you don’t have a degree.
So I did take a gamble there, but I felt it was the right thing for me.
So in some ways, I’ve always been kind of flexible.
In other ways, I just wanted to make sure that future me wouldn’t be stuck in a certain dimension or dynamic.
And if I did do my German year, then I would have been stuck in hospitality jobs for another couple of years.
And then I don’t know.
So yeah, I think you need to have a mix of both.
I always say to people, any good organizer, any good planner knows that nothing goes to plan.
So I think the important thing is just to have a very clear goal and a very clear direction of where you want to go, and then just be flexible with how you get there.
How you get there, you know.
And yeah, I guess so.
You now run your own business though.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about what you do, like how you set that up?
And why you decided to become a founder, that sort of stuff?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, I’d like to be one of those people that’s like, “Oh, it was very clear to me since I was a child.”
No, it wasn’t.
You know, I grew up in a very patriarchal culture, so in my head entrepreneurs were just men in suits and ties and boring people.
And also possibly scummy salesy people.
I didn’t know that business people could be like you or could be like me.
And so it took a while before realizing that actually it was probably the best choice for me because I’m someone that is really proactive.
And an issue that I had in every single job I had was that I wanted to improve things.
I wanted to fix systems, do things, and grow things.
And I was constantly being toned down by my bosses.
I always had discussions with all my CEOs because I just felt like I didn’t want to waste my time just doing whatever I was paid for.
I wanted to grow and I wanted to do more.
So I think when you’re someone like that, that is very experimental, likes change, likes challenges, and you have that type of brain, you never want to stop.
Then I think it’s inevitable to end up in entrepreneurship eventually.
Also because I wanted to do more work remotely.
You know, because my events career was absolutely super satisfying.
It taught me everything I know about leadership, project management, and operations.
That’s my biggest skill set.
But at some point I felt like I had exhausted what I needed to learn from this industry.
Or I wasn’t satisfied anymore with the outlets because I didn’t feel like I could grow anymore or build more.
Because again, people don’t like change.
People don’t like to grow fast or whatever.
So I wanted to take more risks.
And that’s when I was like, okay, I think I could actually use my skills.
And, you know, let’s do some market research.
I had to familiarize myself with how to set up a business.
I had to learn a little bit better.
Obviously I already knew a lot because when you organize events, you already do market research, you do marketing, you do client relationships, you do partnerships.
So it’s funny because in a way I was getting prepared for that more, becoming a consultant.
And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past two years, business consulting.
Initially, I wanted to work more in culture and culture transformation.
But then I decided to take a step back because I realized that a lot of the founders I was working with, six-figure-level founders, wanted to improve the culture and everything, but their entire business was chaos because it had just scaled.
So their operations and everything were a bit up in the air.
And I’m like, I can actually help you reorganize and design your business in a way that doesn’t overwhelm you.
And that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing now.
Amazing.
So you’ve got, you work with lots of founders as well.
So I feel like this is ideal for our audience because most of our audience are entrepreneurs, or they’re either budding entrepreneurs or people who want to start their own business but they’re a bit scared.
So I’d love to know more about..

What founders are going through at the moment, because I’m always having these conversations, I think it’s a really tricky time in business.
I think a lot of people are struggling.
And I’d love to know, what are your founders working on?
And what are they struggling with, or what are they thriving with?
How are they feeling right now?
Well, all the founders I work with are obviously doing very well.
Otherwise, I couldn’t work with them, I guess.
They are all in different industries.
I think the people that work with me are people that have a very strong positioning, and that’s why they were able to scale so fast and scale so well.
But the issues that most founders face, and this is across all industries, mostly creative but also some traditional ones, is that when founders scale, they need to acquire a different skill set.
And that’s a director-level skill set.
There’s a difference between being a specialist and starting with that craft and knowing your job so well.
For example, one of my clients is a grant writer.
We’re talking about nonprofit grant writing for million-dollar budgets and asks.
She’s extremely good at her craft, but she had never run a team.
So when she started to work with me, she was making about £10K a month.
Within the space of six months, she was making £40K a month with a seven-person team that we built together, the operations and everything.
Which I don’t recommend, by the way.
Don’t do it.
It was not my idea.
She just sold too much too fast.
And I stepped in to help her set all the structures as soon as possible and coach her in this transition.
Because obviously she literally had to learn what I had 10 years to learn.
She had to learn it in six months almost.
The onboarding, how to hire well, how to build workflow processes, SOPs, and all that stuff.
Because this is the thing, and I tell this to all founders, don’t look for the shortcut and hire a random operations manager before you know what you need.
You need to understand what you need in your business.
You need to understand what you want your business to look like before you go and hire someone to take stuff off you.
Because the problem is that, especially when it comes to people management and culture, a lot of what is traditionally thought of as good management is outdated in my opinion.
It’s outdated and it’s counterproductive.
And it doesn’t set up the business for what we need in the next 20 years, 30 years.
We need very flexible businesses.
We need businesses that can adapt extremely easily.
You could have seen that with COVID.
How many businesses went down because they didn’t have the capacity to adapt?
Because their structures are outdated and fixed.
Because they’re still built like the businesses that existed in the 70s, the first big companies.
So yeah, I would say the main struggle for the founders I work with at that level is making that transition from specialist to director.
Because a lot of them don’t understand that you can’t just be good at your craft right now.
That was good enough to get your positioning and your sales and your clients’ trust.
But now you need to actually build operations.
You need to build a team.
You need to build a brand.
All of that requires a lot of skills.
So yeah, definitely.
And I feel like things have changed a lot.
And COVID actually changed everything.
And it’s really interesting to see how it has.
Because what would have happened if we didn’t have that?
We could have kept going in this mad way.
Even our team, we’ve gone fully remote, fully flexible.
And do you know what?
For a good couple of years, I was like, we can’t be fully remote because we tried during COVID and it was awful.
And then when we came back, we did a little bit of a hybrid thing.
And every time I went remote, it was awful and productivity went down.
But I realized it wasn’t the fact that we were remote.
It was the fact that I had the wrong people.
If the wrong people aren’t trustworthy, then no matter what happens, it won’t work.
But if you have the right people, no matter where they work in the world, they’re going to do good work and you can trust them.
I had the wrong people, so I had to have that shift and realize that if I just hire the right people, they’ll always value the job and they’ll always do the right work.
So you can work fully flexibly anywhere.
Obviously it depends on the job, but our jobs allow that.
And it’s been transformational.
Actually, it’s led me to have a better life-work balance because I can actually manage stuff.
I can spend a day cleaning my apartment.
I don’t have to be in the office to make sure I look after the team.
So it is really good.
But I feel like a lot of people still can’t understand it.
And you mentioned founders trying to learn something in six months that took you over 10 years.
I do think that processes and operations are actually incredibly daunting.
I think very, very few founders understand where to even start when it comes to operations.
But why is it such a complex thing?
Why don’t we know?
Because it’s actually such a huge deal, right?
If you don’t have the right processes, your entire company could collapse.
Like you said, if you scale too quickly.
And we did.
We’re a small business, right?
We went from 8 to 14 people.
It doesn’t sound like a very big business jump, but it changed everything.
We went from 8 to 14, and when we got to 14, it was the worst, most inefficient process I’ve ever seen.
I was like, this is terrible.
We are way less efficient with double the size of the team.
And I was like, this is because I didn’t have the right processes.
I didn’t really spend the time to think about it.
I was just getting so much work coming in that I thought, I must hire people, and I rushed it.
So where do founders start?
Because I’m guessing that most of the people listening to this are going to be small business owners.
They’re not going to be Fortune 500 companies with mad stuff going on.
What do most founders do?
How do we learn processes?
Where do we even start with operations?
What do we think about?
Where do we go?
Yeah, so this is probably the main principle of building a business.
As a founder, you need to learn how to choose what to focus on and at what time.
Ideally, if you were me, you would think about operations from day one.
Because where I’m at with my business right now is part of a plan that I drafted two years ago.
But that’s me.
I have the skill set, and I also know how to move things around.
But I would say, obviously, if you’re starting your business, the first thing you want to focus on is your positioning, your offering, and what you’re giving to the world.
How are you serving your clients?
That’s the most important thing because you need to get the cash flow.
You need to understand your messaging.
And to be honest, never stop with that.
I’m still refining my message.
Also because what I think people don’t account for is how you change as a person during the process of building your business.
People don’t account for that.
As soon as people are focused on, “Okay, I need a business, I need to make money,” once they make the money, they think that’s what they wanted.
But as soon as they make the money, they realize they don’t have any time and they’re not enjoying their life anymore.
So I think it’s important to really be focused on what you need as a person and stay in touch with that.
Because if you’re not happy, it’s going to trickle down into the business at any level.
It doesn’t matter how much money you’re making.
It’s going to damage your business because you’re not going to look at the right things at the right time anymore.
So that’s principle number one.
The second thing is focusing on what to do and when.
It really depends on the goal that you have.
Sometimes people come to me and ask, “What do you think I should do next with my business?”
And I’m like, “What do you want to do?”
It depends on you.
Where do you want to take this?
What’s your end goal?
Because you can go in so many different directions.
Or you can just stay where you are, and that’s also fine.
You don’t always have to grow.
You don’t always have to change.
But obviously it depends on your goal.
For operations, I’d say once you’ve nailed your positioning and you’re realizing you’re definitely selling and you’re stable with that, don’t sell too much too fast.
As soon as you’re seeing momentum, start to stagger your sales and start to think about operations.
Start to think about how to fulfill.
Start to build a process.
Just take time.
Stagger that.
I think it’s because people, and it’s natural, I had it as well.
Even if I knew what was going to happen, when I started to get clients, I was excited and wanted to get more and more.
But then I remembered that my plan was that I wanted to be able to do my university without any stress for once.
One year of university at least in peace.
So I only kept three contracts during my university year, which was amazing.
Everybody else, I told them, “I’ll see you in July.”
Because I didn’t need the money.
I didn’t need the clout or whatever.
And I knew my priorities.
In that moment, I needed to step back from the business a little bit and do my personal thing.
And that’s what I’m saying.
I embody what I teach to founders.
No matter what size your business is, you need to design it around your needs.
Because otherwise, what is the point?
You go to work uninspired every day.
You’re totally knackered.
You forgot about your own things, your children, your people, your friends.
Life is short.
I think it’s important that people remember how to stay in touch with themselves.
So yeah, when you start scaling, that’s when you want to take a step back.
Slow it down because you do have control.
And start to nail down the operational processes.
That’s a rough idea, but it really depends on the business and the goals of any founder.
Yeah.
So I feel like operations is still quite daunting.
But you also mentioned culture as well.
Because I feel like

These are big things and again, like you said, you think about this stuff.
This is what your training and background is.
But there are different personality types when it comes to entrepreneurs, aren’t there?
And I think I’m more of the visionary.
You’re definitely more of an integrator role, right?
I’m definitely that visionary role.
I’ve got this great idea, I’ve got another great idea.
All I do is have great ideas, but then I never take the time to map it all out and pull it together.
The two of us would probably work really well together.
That’s what the compliment means.
You’re my Steve Jobs.
Exactly, exactly that.
I just need someone like yourself to be able to help with that.
I think that a lot of natural entrepreneurs are that sort of person who is a visionary thinker.
I think that your skill set is really important and unique, but a lot of people don’t actually have that.
So culture, I think, is quite interesting because, like we just said, I think our roles and strengths and weaknesses complement each other.
I think that’s what you need in a company.
You need different people in different roles playing to their strengths for a start.
Which doesn’t always happen because if you’re a small business, you kind of throw people into different roles, which is where the friction happens.
And I think people talk about culture, which is ridiculous.
But I just think, from your perspective doing what you do, what would you say good company culture is?
And how do people get it?
Yeah, so I’ll start by saying that most companies see culture as something separated from an HR function.
Separated from everything else.
Something that you have to pay attention to.
You’re looking at operations and then you’re looking at culture.
It’s completely misleading.
Because this is the thing.
I think an easy way to think about it is that businesses are micro-societies.
You’re literally pulling people from any kind of background, hopefully.
Well, yeah, that’s another conversation.
We’ll talk about that.
But you know, people from all kinds of backgrounds, diverse types of people, and you put them in an environment where everybody is focused almost on the same goals and the same projects.
So what happens is, inevitably, you have an emergent culture.
A culture that is naturally emerging because people in a place create culture.
That’s what culture is.
It’s something that people make together.
So what I think the responsibility of an organization is, is to create a psychologically safe place.
Forget the benefits, the perks, the carrots and sticks stuff.
That’s literally fluff.
What any company has to focus on is creating a psychologically safe place.
What does that mean?
It means people are empowered and feel safe to be themselves 100% at work.
Why is that important?
Well, first of all, morally it’s important because we should be at a point where people are not scared of being themselves.
Whether you’re queer, whether you like makeup, whether you don’t like makeup, whether you have a certain hairstyle.
You shouldn’t be afraid.
Because how does that affect your work in a negative way?
If anything, all the research that we have has actually shown that when people feel safe at work, they are more creative.
They’re more positive.
They’re more proactive.
They are nicer to other people.
They are more open-minded toward people who are different from them.
So this is the type of environment.
And this is something I’m taking from the events industry.
This is something I definitely did not learn from the hospitality industry.
This is something I learned through the events industry because it’s the most multicultural industry where I’ve ever worked.
Apart from management boards, but that’s another conversation.
That’s what I really realized.
With such small budgets as well, and so many difficulties that come with building events.
I specialized in outdoor festivals.
So we’re talking about mud, rain, and all sorts of wild scenarios that you’ll never be ready for.
People are shocked when I tell them what a typical day for me was at work.
But that made me realize that any team I ever led or was part of, the thing that glued us together was that we all felt safe around each other.
We knew that we could all contribute ideas.
We knew that even though I was leading a team, you could speak your mind and tell me that you thought it was better to do it a different way than what I proposed.
That kind of thing makes a team flexible, creative, proactive, and energized.
So that is the single principle of a healthy culture.
And it’s something that has been gotten wrong over the years because the way we build our businesses still follows the 70s corporate models.
Which is reflective of the society that we’ve been building until now.
It’s elitist, patriarchal, discriminatory, and racist.
And these things are true.
That’s why they’ve been leaking into businesses because we’ve not been paying attention to that.
So when people say, “Businesses shouldn’t be involved in politics,” it’s like, sure, you can carry on pretending that this stuff is not important.
Then you’re going to have 60% turnover rates.
You’re going to lose so much money because people constantly leave you for better companies.
The newer generations are not going to work for you.
If you want to lead in 2024, then this is the time to step it up.
You don’t need a lot of money to create a safe place.
You don’t need to be a big business to create a safe place.
You don’t need to have a big team to create a safe place.
And that trickles down to how you treat your clients, how your clients feel with you, and how public opinion feels about you.
There are so many advantages apart from it being the morally right thing to do.
I think if you look at companies that have creative teams, like Pixar and movie companies, they actually have non-hierarchical approaches.
They’re famous for collaborative approaches.
There are reasons for that.
And that’s why they make millions and millions because they have the best teams.
And it’s the same thing if you look at the military.
A lot of people say, “Look at the Navy SEALs.”
But the Navy SEALs have the same principle.
Every person on the team is a leader.
Every person supports each other.
Everybody plays to their strengths.
And everybody can step in to solve the problem.
That’s why they’re tactical teams.
And yeah, it’s just a smarter way to do business.
It is.
And actually, I love your example of the Navy SEALs because a lot of people would criticize them.
They say they’re dictatorship-like and the equivalent of a toxic work environment.
Like, “You must do these hours and you must do that.”
But like you said, at the end of the day, their motto is “Never leave a man behind.”
They have each other’s backs in literal life-and-death situations.
And they’re consensual.
Remember that.
It’s consensual.
They’re going into the job knowing exactly what they’re signing up for.
Exactly.
But they’re actually happy to sacrifice their life for another comrade.
That is real culture.
How many people are even willing to work late for another colleague these days?
They’re not.
These people are willing to give up their lives for each other.
They’re willing to do anything for one another.
And like you said, they respect each other.
They all have different roles on the team.
They have specialist roles as well.
And they put people in those specialist positions.
One person isn’t trying to do everything.
You don’t see a sniper on the roof also running around the battlefield trying to do everything else.
People see who they are, put them in the best positions, and let them work together.
They’ve got each other’s backs.
If someone is down, they’re picking it up straight away.
They’re not saying, “Well, that’s his job.”
They cover for each other.
But that’s what we do in jobs.
It’s ridiculous.
But it’s because people are detached from their work.
They don’t feel safe.
They don’t feel appreciated.
And they don’t feel that they’re contributing.
Even when I hear all these billionaires saying people are lazy today, I’m like, I spent 10 years working for other people.
The amount of times I really tried to bring a contribution and was just stopped.
Even though I brought data, proof, and other people who would back up what I wanted to do.
I analyzed the risks.
I made the entire plan.
I’m a planner, right?
And I was never given a proper opportunity to take risks and grow things.
To the detriment of those companies.
There were departments where, when I left, they completely collapsed because they didn’t know how to run them or evolve them.
And they didn’t listen to me.
So this is the thing.
The Navy SEALs need a specific type of training and have a specific type of culture.
But when you sign up for it, you know exactly what you’re signing up for.
I think a lot of people get into a job thinking something different.
There’s something called the psychological contract in organizational psychology.
Essentially, it’s the set of unwritten rules and expectations that you have from an employer.
Sometimes we don’t even realize it, but we expect to be treated with respect at work.
But then, you know better than me, on the first day at work you have your first microaggression, second microaggression, third microaggression.
Then your boss is upset with you for something that wasn’t your fault.
And all of this starts coming at you.
You’re feeling like, where do I have space to be myself, bring a positive contribution, and bond with other people?
If you’re being treated like a robot, obviously people don’t want to be there for each other.
And they start what people call quiet quitting.
I hate that term.
I’m more about detaching from the workplace.
I mean, if you’re not valued for anything, why would you continue to put effort into it?
That’s the thing.
And I’ve noticed, and I was definitely guilty of it for a while, by accident, that you don’t give enough credit where it’s due.
If you hire people and they do a good job, you’re sort of like, “Okay, good job.”
But you don’t fully acknowledge that they’ve done a good job.
Then if they do something wrong, you’re quick to point it out.
So what that does is only highlight the bad things they’ve done.
They don’t feel appreciated for all the great things they’ve done.
A lot of bosses go into a job thinking, “Well, I’m paying them to do that.
Why do I need to congratulate them for doing it?”
They say, “That’s their job.”
But then if they don’t do their job, they’re quick to berate them.
And I think that’s the problem.
There are a lot of people who believe that and don’t realize how demeaning and demoralizing that is.
For example, you said you work with creative agencies.
I’ve been running a creative agency for over 10 years.
If a client did the same thing to me and said, “Well, you’re hired to do this piece of branding work.
You’ve done it and it’s great, but I’m not going to say that because that’s what I’m paying you for.
But the moment you do something wrong, I’m going to have a go at you.”
I’d be like, don’t treat me like that.
You wouldn’t want to work with that client anymore.
Yet people do it to their employees all the time and don’t realize they’re doing it.
Where do you think this comes from?
I feel like some people are doing it and don’t realize they’re doing it.
They don’t mean to.
There is a very good book you should read if you haven’t already.
It’s called Multipliers by Liz Wiseman.
It’s on my bookshelf and hasn’t been read.
You should.
It’s very interesting.
She argues that leaders who create other leaders are called multipliers.
Leaders who aren’t quite there yet are called diminishers.
But in the latest version of the book, she added a chapter called The Accidental Diminishers.
And that’s what I think most people are.
Because we were brought up in a culture that has berated us.
At school, if we got good grades, okay.
But if we got bad grades, that was a problem.
We learn to see mistakes as something to be ashamed of.
Something to avoid.
When actually, I would suggest that mistakes are part of the creative process.
Obviously, calculated risks and calculated mistakes.
You don’t want to destroy a company.
But I think cultures definitely need to build space for people to make mistakes and help each other fix them.
It shouldn’t be up to the leader to say, “You did this wrong.”
If the goal is clear and the team hasn’t managed to get there, the conversation should be, “What do you need next time to reach that goal?”
“How can we help you as a team?”
“How can I help you as a leader?”
Rather than, “You messed this up.”
They already know they messed it up.
Why do you need a parent-child relationship?
You don’t need that.
Liz Wiseman speaks about this a lot in her book.
I think it’s definitely a cultural issue.
The way we were brought up and the experiences we’ve had in workplaces have often been psychologically unsafe.
It’s a mixture of that and the fact that a lot of business consultants are not trained in modern culture techniques or DEI.
I’ve even seen some of my clients, when they were ready to hire a fractional operations manager, have that operations manager start making suggestions about culture.
Things like, “You should have a three-strikes policy.
If someone makes three mistakes, you fire them.”
And I was like, don’t listen to these people.
Use them for operations.
Do not listen to them about culture.
One challenge I have is that I really want to do more work in culture.
But there is not enough understanding yet of how important it is.
So I slip good culture practices into everything I teach my founders.
For example, when I teach them how to build an onboarding process, or even before that, the hiring process, I teach them things like focusing on the skill set.
Don’t focus on whether they have a degree or don’t have a degree.
From the start, I teach them that when it comes to projects, you need to be very clear on the goals.
You need to be very clear on what support is available and where the resources are.
Then you need to get out of the way and let people do their thing.
Even when teaching leadership, it’s my way of addressing culture early.
Because the earlier you get it right, the better.
When a company is too big, transformational culture change, if done well, takes years.
It’s something I want to do later down the road.
But I don’t think there is enough understanding and awareness yet of the importance of it.
And I think that’s something the newer generations are going to change massively.
Massively.

Did I not see that you’re doing some DEI stuff for NASA?
What’s that about?
I saw that and I was like, well, this is a bit cool.
I need to ask you about this because it’s not every day that you get to see something like that.
So tell me about that because I feel like that’s you saying you want to do cultural stuff for big organizations.
I mean, yeah.
How does that role work?
So that works as a contract, essentially.
NASA has all these DEI plans for their programs in their Astrophysics Department.
What they do is pay people like me.
There is a database that I’m part of, the IDEA database, and they pull us in as consultants to create panels.
Then we basically critique, add ideas, and make sure their DEI plans are sound and have different perspectives.
It could be a one-day type of contract or a five-day type of contract.
They’re short panels and short contract work.
But yeah, that’s one of my outlets.
This is the thing.
I got through that because I’d seen people talking about it on LinkedIn.
And I was like, oh my God, I really want to get into that.
I did not think I was going to because, first of all, I’m not a DEI specialist.
I don’t pretend I am.
I have obviously studied a lot of organizational psychology, not only at university but also by myself.
I have experience running multicultural teams.
I’m an immigrant myself.
I have intersectional identities as well.
And I put in as much effort as I can to be as knowledgeable as possible.
But I don’t claim to be a specialist.
They had this application where you had to discuss what fresh ideas you would bring, what kind of approach you have, and what issues you believe DEI should address.
All those sorts of things.
Then they got back to me and accepted me into the database.
So I was very lucky.
Usually, on any panel, there are not a lot of nonbinary people or Sicilian immigrants, you know what I mean?
So I think it’s good.
It feels good to be able to represent.
And obviously, I’m meeting so many amazing specialists.
So for me, it’s an honor to be included in that.
So yeah, I guess that’s a bit more of my outlet on the DEI and culture side of things.
You said you had to submit some ideas.
What were those ideas for NASA?
Because I thought, like, you impressed them.
You impressed them.
I remember this was over a year ago.
Almost two years ago when I applied.
And then they answered me like six months later or something.
So I didn’t even think I’d get in.
Actually, it was even more than six months later.
It took a while to get an answer.
That’s pretty impressive, I feel.
I remember.
Yeah, I think contributing to something like that is huge.
So hopefully that will translate into other culture work that you can do.
And I think the representation there definitely matters.
Actually, I’d love to talk about that because I was saying that I feel like you identify as nonbinary and…

I feel like there are…
I don’t actually know that many founders who do.
And I think what I’ve found is that I’ve spoken to a few people who have told me that they identify a certain way, but they won’t ever say it.
And that makes me a little bit sad in a way.
Like you mentioned earlier about psychological safety.
When I do the research on this, the stats are so freaking low on how many people actually feel comfortable and safe and truly feel that they can be the real person they really are at work.
It’s like one in six people.
Even lower in some places.
It’s just ridiculous.
And it makes me so sad.
Some people I know have said, and I won’t say who, that they won’t say who they really are because they’re scared it will hurt their sales.
They’re scared that people won’t work with them.
And I would love to hear your experience because you’re quite open about this stuff.
I know that you’ve written posts on LinkedIn and had quite a lot of hateful comments on them.
You’re very open about who you are, what you believe in, and what you stand for.
I’d just love to hear how that’s made you feel.
What response have you had?
Do you think it’s affected work?
Because I think there are going to be a lot of people listening to this who probably think, “Do you know what? I want to be the real me. I want to be brave enough to get up and say this is what I think and this is who I am.”
But they’re scared that’s going to reflect badly on them and that clients will suffer because of it.
Yeah.
I’ll start by saying that it took me a while to be able to be out, especially in the work environment.
This is the thing.
It takes an enormous amount of privilege to feel safe enough to be out.
Also strength, of course.
But I would say a lot of privilege.
You need to be in a safe place in your life.
And you need to be ready to not have as much work as if you presented as a cis woman, for example.
So that’s definitely a factor.
For me, it was a journey.
But when I started my business, I almost immediately decided that I was going to be 100% myself.
I’d been closeted in most of my jobs.
Not the events ones, because that’s quite a queer environment, I’d say.
But in most of my formal jobs, I had been closeted because it was just easier.
And I made a promise to myself when I started my business that I was going to be 100% myself because I wanted to see if it was going to work.
I didn’t want to be trapped in an idea that other people had of me.
I’d been living that all my life.
One reason I escaped Sicily was because I was tired of being seen a certain way.
In Italy, even the figure of a woman is extremely objectified.
You get so much sexism.
Everybody expects you to have children by a certain age.
I felt really trapped there.
Society here is a little bit more open.
I would say Scotland is extremely open-minded.
But still, there is a lot of misinformation about trans people in general and gender-diverse people.
So has it affected my work?
Well, look, I think the best way to frame this is that I don’t think I missed opportunities because I’m nonbinary.
I think I thankfully avoided working with people that are basically violent toward themselves.
They don’t allow themselves to be free, so they can’t work with free people like me.
That’s how I see it.
And they do me a favor.
Because if you work with me, ask any of my clients, I am not going to sweet-talk you.
I’m going to bring you out of your shell.
I’m going to tell you you’re a badass.
Most of my clients are women.
I’ve only had one male client so far, and he’s lovely.
But I will actually call things out.
I’ve had some clients tell me, “My partner wants me to shut down my business,” and they have a six-figure business.
And I’m like, tell your partner no.
I would be that person.
I will empower you.
I will be the person you didn’t have next to you all your life.
The person who’s going to hype you up and help you get out of your shell and really be yourself 100%.
People who want to impose the violence that society has put on them, who want to shrink themselves, don’t work with me automatically.
And I think they wouldn’t work with me even if I identified as a woman because that’s just not who I am.
So for me, being nonbinary is something I love.
Being queer is the thing that freed me.
It freed my thinking.
It also helped me really look at things I can improve in society and what I can bring to the table.
So I don’t see it as a disadvantage.
I see it as people doing me a favor.
If they’re transphobic, they don’t work with me.
Yeah, go stay out of my way.
I don’t need you because your thinking is outdated.
It’s ignorant.
It’s nothing to do with me and everything to do with them.
That is such a strong outlook to have.
I feel like not everyone is going to think like that.
It took me years to think like that, even in terms of work.
The fact that this is called No Bullsh*t Talks, and our agency and club are called N0BS, I’m embracing that kind of thing.
Like you said, it naturally filters out your clients.
That’s what it does.
It naturally filters out the transphobic, the homophobic, and all the people with outdated thinking who judge you for whatever identity you have.
How different is it really?
It’s not like you look like an alien.
How you identify isn’t going to change how you do your job.
But there are people who think like that.
And like you said, it completely filters your client base naturally to the people you want to work with.
But not everyone has that confidence, understanding, or luxury.
Because I know that early on in my career, I hired a guy just to be a guy.
Just to be a man in the company because men didn’t want to work for me.
Wow.
They wanted to work with other men.
Interesting.
So I hired a man just so there was a man in the company.
Be the man.
Yeah.
And I was like, what’s your role?
You’re just a man.
That is your role.
It was ridiculous.
I paid part of my salary to have a man.
And so when we were at networking events, I’d be like, “Oh, this guy feels a bit sexist and a little bit racist. You go talk to him. You go close this client.”
And then he would.
But then I realized, after about a year, why am I working with these people?
Why do I even want their money?
But when you’re at that stage of your career, you’re just thinking, “I’m winning business. I’m winning money. I need money. I’m winning a client.”
You don’t realize how bad those clients are for you.
They’re not the right people.
That’s why I get it.
I’ve done stupid things like that in the past.
So when I listen to you talking about it now so confidently and proudly, I’m guessing you weren’t always like that either.
Like you said, it took you a while to come out.
Well, obviously in my business I was really strict on who I worked with.
For sure.
But is that because of what you’ve experienced in your jobs?
Yeah.
In my jobs, I had to work for some idiots.
And the same with clients.
I had to work with lots of bad clients.
Events, as I said before, are a very multicultural and diverse environment.
But not in the management rooms.
I was often the only non-male person.
And I was often the only immigrant as well on management boards.
That was very evident straight away because I was the outsider.
I was the person trying to bring fresh ideas.
I think that’s also why people didn’t feel confident giving me room to experiment.
It’s a strange thing with events.
A lot of festivals were created by people who have been friends for 20 or 30 years.
So there is that sense of being the outsider.
Even though my reputation got me there, it still wasn’t enough to get some of those new ideas accepted.
Now when you see articles about festivals barely breaking even, it’s because they don’t listen to people like me.
It’s because they don’t accept new ideas.
When I told them they had to transform the festival into a business because it wasn’t being run like one, they didn’t listen.
They were still running it like a rave from 20 years ago.
But now it had a capacity of 100,000 people.
You have to run a business.
You have to think like a business.
I remember in my second year of university, I was already thinking about what I wanted to do for my dissertation.
I wanted to create a sustainable strategies guide for the events industry because it was missing.
There were industry guides, but there wasn’t a proper sustainable strategy guide.
And sustainability isn’t only environmental sustainability.
It’s also about stopping money from leaking everywhere.
I was 21 and had already identified that problem.
One of my lecturers asked, “What’s the point? There are already some sustainable festivals.”
And I was like, but most festivals are losing so much money.
I was just thinking, why is nobody seeing this?
One of my strengths is pattern thinking and systems thinking.
I have that problem-solving mindset.
I’m just wired this way.
I always say I’m not the person who wants to be a leader, but I’m the first one to step in if nobody else is doing it.
Do you think those people didn’t listen to you because of your gender?
You should ask them.
At that time they saw me as a woman.
I wasn’t out.
And all studies in sociology point toward that.
Because it’s all connected.
Sexism, transphobia, racism.
It’s all part of the same system.
Nowadays people seem tired of talking about it.
But what we really need to realize is that everything happening to us right now in society is a symptom of a culture that has been built over centuries.
These ideas, laws, structures, and businesses were created and reinforced over time.
Even though we’re sitting in a room like this now, it wouldn’t have happened 50 years ago.
And even if I had been in a room like this, I definitely wouldn’t have been free to be myself.
Exactly.
These things need to be talked about.
When I talk about these topics on LinkedIn, I hope people take more of the historical and cultural understanding from them.
Because I’m not interested in defending my right to exist.
That’s a fact.
I have a right to live just as much as anybody else.
What I think we need to pay attention to more as a society is the culture we’ve built.
Why is it this way?
What do we need to do to change it?
And why is it important that all of us participate in some way?
In your case, you’re hosting me.
I’m probably your first…
I’m assuming I’m your first.
I’ve never asked.
And that’s another thing.
I don’t even ask.
I don’t know.
I would like to guess that’s correct.
Definitely the first Sicilian.
But I don’t know because not everyone talks about it.
Not everyone brings it up.
I don’t ever ask because, to me, it doesn’t bother me.
I’ve never asked people’s gender, sexuality, or religion because to me, people are people.
If they want to tell me that stuff, they can tell me.
I’ve just never been that sort of person.
I’ll happily have a conversation if someone wants to share that information.
But whether you identify as a particular gender, follow a certain religion, or have certain beliefs, it’s not going to make me think differently of you.
I’ve always wanted to know who people are as a person.
Yeah.
And I don’t think it’s up to you to ask.
It’s something people naturally bring forward.
For me, it’s important to bring it forward because I literally grew up thinking I was almost like an alien.
I had no representation in Italy.
I’m actually surprised that they/them pronouns are becoming more common there now.
I grew up in a very Catholic place where you could only be a woman or a man.
That’s it.
I grew up around all these girls and always felt like, why don’t I feel like them?
Why don’t I want the same things?
Why am I not the same?
I felt different, but I also felt I couldn’t be safe being different.
Then during my teenage years, when you naturally rebel, I got this idea that the way I presented myself would help people understand me and respect me.
So I had short hair, baggy clothes, and all of that.
But it didn’t change anything.
People still saw me as a woman.
They just saw me as a lesbian.
I’m bisexual, so I didn’t really care that much.
But I would get harassed in the street for not looking feminine enough.
That’s what happens in Sicily.
If you’re seen as a woman, you get sexually harassed.
If you’re seen as a lesbian, then you get harassed for that instead.
Verbal attacks, physical harassment, all sorts of things.
That happened throughout my life.
That’s what I’m talking about.
It’s not always safe for queer people to live in our society.
I grew up in a place where I would be hunted on the streets.
Me and my friends had to change the areas where we hung out because if the local bullies decided to come and attack us for being queer, they would push us out of those areas.
It wasn’t even safe in my own city.
Because I grew up with that, when I came to the UK, I definitely felt safer.
Obviously, I have white privilege, so I don’t experience the same things as other immigrants or people of color.
I recognize that.
So now you see me being strong, outspoken, and wanting to bring representation.
I want to show that we have a place.
I want to take up space.
I want to help other people build in that space.
That’s why one of my future plans is to build a pro bono clinic for trans entrepreneurs.
Any background, but specifically trans entrepreneurs.
I want to build that because I don’t see anyone else doing it.
Yeah.

I think what you just said is so needed because I remember working
with Mermaids charity.
We do pro bono stuff as well, a lot.
We basically have pro bono hours allocated for charities and causes that we feel really strongly about.
So we helped Mermaids charity a lot.
I remember I ran a charity dinner and included Mermaids as one of the charities we wanted to contribute to.
And so many people wouldn’t come to the dinner because of that charity.
Yeah.
I was like, what?
I even had friends saying, “I just saw one of them was a trans one. No thanks, I’m not giving my money there.”
I was like, are you joking?
I thought they were joking.
And they were like, “No.”
And I was like, well, okay.
You’re not really a friend anymore.
Great, thanks for that.
What the hell?
And yeah, we were editing some podcast graphics around the time a couple of years ago when all that really bad stuff happened.
I remember we were in the middle of doing something and they said, “I’m really sorry, but our host just got attacked last night, so we can’t continue with this podcast.
We have to lie low because they fear for their own life.”
I just remember everyone in the office feeling sick.
We were like, “Oh my God, that’s nuts.”
It honestly blew our minds.
And I was like, that’s why we do this pro bono sort of stuff.
Because there are some people out there who can’t even get people to support them.
They can’t even pay for support, but they need whatever help they can get because there are people who are still that close-minded.
Not only do they judge people, but they mistreat them.
And it’s really scary, actually.
So yeah, like you said, I saw your posts and some of the hate you were getting.
You didn’t see much because I block a lot.
And I get a lot of stuff privately.
That’s why I don’t have a public link anymore to book calls.
Wait, what?
I got death threats.
I got people booking calls just to come and insult me.
I get DMs all the time.
Yeah.
But I just block it out because I don’t want to give these people any space in my mind.
Because it’s not about me.
That’s scary.
Really scary.
Well, you know, the more you put yourself out there…
With the background I have, growing up being physically attacked and scared, it’s like, what else can you do?
I’m not like, “Come at me.”
But I’m not scared anymore.
I’m not going to live my life in fear because of these people.
So again, I’m in a position where I feel I can be like this and do this.
So I’m going to do it.
But definitely there are a lot of people who get it way worse than me.
You know, it’s interesting because I relate to a lot of discrimination naturally because I get a lot of racism.
And you’d think there are more people who are racist than transphobic or homophobic.
But there aren’t.
I think it’s worse, actually.
I did this poll once.
Obviously, I’ve pivoted my career a little bit.
I’m mainly concentrated on the entrepreneur members club, but I still run an agency.
I was focused on building websites back then.
I was getting really annoyed because the web design and development industry is very male-dominated.
Every time I’d lose a pitch, it was always to an all-white male agency.
And they would say, “We just bonded better with them.”
And I was like, okay.
I just felt really disheartened.
I thought I might just be disadvantaged from day one.
We were better in every way.
Some of these agencies had barely done any work, and people still picked them over us.
I was like, I’m just screwed.
So I remember doing a survey.
It was anonymous, and people could write whatever they wanted.
I asked, “If you had to hire a web design agency and they were in any of these demographics, would it affect whether you would choose them?”
I listed:
* Female
* Black
* LGBTQ+
* Disabled
* Under 25
* Over 50
I’m curious what the answer was.
Wild, right?
I know.
Obviously, so am I.
But I had to know.
I made it anonymous so people could be really honest with their answers.
I got over 400 responses.
It’s not loads, but it’s a big enough number.
I was so shocked.
By far, the group people had the biggest problem with was LGBTQ+.
I was like, wait, what?
I was like, this makes zero sense.
I could actually understand the age categories because people might think, “If you’re over 50, you’re a bit old-fashioned, so maybe you don’t know technology.”
Or if you’re really young, they might think, “I don’t trust you because you don’t have enough experience.”
And if you’re a woman, I can semi-understand the assumption people make because they think not many women do computer science, therefore maybe you don’t know it as much.
But all the rest are just ridiculous.
The LGBTQ+ one was the most ridiculous, I thought.

I thought no one was going to click that.
And by far, it was LGBTQ+, then Black, then women.
I was like, well, I’m screwed.
I was just like, this is ridiculous.
I just didn’t understand how it was possible.
What feelings do you think when you hear this?
Because I feel like there are so many other people out there who identify in that category who are scared to be entrepreneurs, who are scared to do business.
And like you said, you’ve come a long way and you’ve got a background of having built that resilience.
But what about people who are born in the UK or who just haven’t got that confidence yet?
What advice would you give to those founders trying to navigate their way in this world?
Move out.
Just get away.
My advice is to be safe.
Stay safe and try to build a community around you that is safe and treats you the way you deserve to be treated.
Try as much as you can to find jobs where you’re safe enough.
But I know it’s hard.
And I know most companies are not queer-friendly.
And then if you’re also Black, for example, you get hit with racism on top of that.
If you’re a woman as well, then you get misogyny, right?
So really, I think you definitely don’t have to put up with this BS.
There are newer, younger companies now that are finally doing it better.
So if you have the privilege, if you still live at your parents’ house, for example, and you have the privilege to take a little more time before taking up a job, assess the culture.
Assess how you’re feeling.
If you’re starting to get bullied at work and you can, please document it and take them to court.
We need to call this out more and more.
Obviously, I have my own thoughts on how bullying at work is addressed.
And I also think the government should actually step in and do more in that sense as well.
But really, just be safe.
If it’s not safe to be out, I’m not going to tell people to be out.
You know what I mean?
I know what it means to be scared.
And I know what it means to really feel threatened for your life, for the way you dress, or for the way you want to live your life.
So it’s not easy.
You can’t have a clear-cut answer.
But I think the important thing to remember is to build a lot of self-compassion and self-love.
Reach out to the community.
Because something I probably got wrong when growing up is I never reached out to LGBTQ+ spaces.
In my head, I had a lot of internalized homophobia.
Even though I’m bisexual and I’m also nonbinary, and I knew that at the time.
Obviously, I had the term bisexual.
I didn’t have the term nonbinary quite yet.
But I knew who I was.
Somehow, I didn’t think I needed that community.
But actually, when you have that community around you, it does a lot for your self-esteem.
It does a lot for your confidence as well and for your capacity to defend yourself when you’re going to be verbally attacked or anything else.
But I think also the important thing to remember is that the people who hate us, hate us because we’re free.
They’re literally people that need to affirm their own gender or their own sexuality by discriminating against us.
It’s almost a way of saying, “I’m not like you.”
“I need to make sure everybody knows that I’m not associated with you because I need to affirm my gender and my status.”
I think it’s a problem of safety.
These people are trying to feel safe as well.
I’m not saying they’re angels or anything, but there is some compassion there to be given because we are all brought up in the same society.
And I think this is what people forget a lot about me.
I was brought up as a woman.
I was socialized as a woman.
I am treated as a woman 90% of the time.
So I know exactly what a cis woman goes through.
Yeah, exactly.
And then I know partly what a trans person goes through.
Because I’m not a trans person who has accessed gender-affirming care, for example.
I don’t have a body that people immediately identify as trans.
So in some ways I’m safer.
But at the same time, I know part of the experience.
The experience of not being seen for who you are.
Even from partners.
As I said, I’ve had partners of different genders.
When I had cis male partners, almost every single one pointed out things like, “Why are you never wearing heels?”
“Why don’t you use makeup more?”
“Why don’t you shave?”
Little comments that made me understand that they didn’t see me as the person I am.
They saw me as the person they wanted me to be.
They wanted me to be a woman.
They wanted me to be a feminine woman in a certain way.
And people are socialized to be like that.
We are socialized to be like that.
And obviously, as social animals, we want to feel safe.
Sometimes feeling safe looks like not being attached to people who are potentially going to make you unsafe.
And because the media bombard people with messages about queer people, and it’s true that we are attacked and demonized, but it’s not because…
We’re in this podcast now.
Hopefully you’re not going to get attacked tomorrow.
You know what I mean?
Hopefully.
I mean, this is the thing.
It’s quite interesting because I’ve seen this so much.
When I post on a topic like this, which is divisive, I suddenly get loads of negative comments and loads of unfollows.
Yeah.
I just got excited because we hit a thousand subscribers.
If I post this and suddenly half my subscribers drop, it’d be really interesting.
But do you know what?
For me, some people say, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that.”
And that’s why they won’t have certain people on the podcast.
But I’m just like, great, good riddance to you.
Because if you’re that bothered by the topics we’re talking about now, then that’s the whole point of this show.
It’s No Bullsh*t Talks.
I’m not going to come here and have some surface-level conversation.
I could have just spoken to you about culture and processes and been like, look, you’re this expert in strategy and what you do for your business.
I could have just not mentioned anything else.
Because that’s what I think you’ve probably spent a lot of your life doing.
Ignoring who you really are and talking about work because that’s all people care about.
But then that would be a terrible podcast.
That would not be contributing anything to society.
Because this is the thing.
Talking about this is not just about my safety or my community.
If my community is safe, your community is safe.
We’re all safe.
These are the conversations that we need to be having.
I think the reason there is so much transphobia, racism, misogyny, and all that sort of stuff is because people don’t understand.
A lot of people just aren’t having these conversations.
They’re not being educated.
And the more times we have conversations like these, the more it helps other people understand who people truly are.
I think it actually will help normalize things and reduce that sort of hatred.
And that’s what I want to do.
That’s what I’m trying to do.
Let’s normalize these conversations and consistently have them because we need to.
Otherwise, people don’t realize these things exist.
And it’s kind of crazy.
And I think also, if I can add, because I’ve written a lot of posts about this as well.
Modern feminism.
Obviously there are different strands of feminism.
There have always been different histories and approaches.
But what we’ve seen with the movement is that when it becomes exclusive to only white women, for example, it’s not actually advancing women’s rights.
And when people ask why women in the workplace didn’t advance as much as we thought they would, it’s because the focus was only on certain types of women in certain roles.
And here’s the thing.
We need to look at this less as women being the end point of sexist structures.
Of course they get the brunt of it.
But we need to look at this as a cultural system.
We’re all socialized.
Men are socialized to be sexist.
We’re all socialized to be sexist.
We internalize sexism as well.
It doesn’t matter what gender you are.
So when we discuss this more broadly, when we create spaces and women’s awards, for example, we should ask who we’re awarding and why.
Are we only awarding cis women?
And why?
Because you’re basically saying these are the only people worthy of support and the only people affected by sexism.
And that’s not true.
That’s why a lot of those spaces are white-women-dominated.
There’s a stereotype around cis women, and they’re usually white.
That’s why a lot of Black entrepreneurs I’ve met personally really struggle with networking events.
Because they feel like they’re the only Black person in the room.
And their needs are not catered for.
There is no intersectional thinking.
So a message I really want to bring, and something I share in my posts when I talk about women’s networks, is that you need to open up your doors.
You need to actually learn what feminism is about and what the work is actually addressing, which is cultural and social conditioning.
Obviously, there is space and time to have women-only clubs and Black women-only clubs.
I’m not saying those shouldn’t exist.
But when we’re talking about larger events, larger awards, and things like that, I’ve had people ask me to participate on panels, be a judge, or be a participant.
And then as soon as I tell them I’m nonbinary, they take back the invitation.
No.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tons.
Dozens.
Dozens and dozens.
I could even show you the DMs.
Dozens.
Okay, wow.
And then revoking invitations or treating me as if I’m problematic because I’m asking, “Are you trans-inclusive?”
Because I’m nonbinary.
And if I win the award, am I going to be called the best woman of the year?
Because that feels wrong.
Both because I don’t identify with it and because I’m not here to take someone else’s space.
Right?
So there needs to be more conversation about how we build these platforms and events in a way where we say we are here to destroy sexism.
And you need men to be involved in that as well.
If not first and foremost.
Why are we always absolving men from doing the work?
Every real movement happens when the opposite party actually gets involved.
The abolition of slavery wouldn’t have happened if white people hadn’t spoken against it.
The same principle applies here.
When people start listening to women, often it’s because other men are standing up for women.
You need to use your power to support other people.
That’s why I think there is definitely space for women-only networks and trans women-only networks.
Absolutely.
You need to have that.
But I think there also needs to be more.
And it’s something I hope to build from next year in Barcelona when I start doing events.
I want to show how it’s done.
I want to show that it’s possible to have events that support each person in their uniqueness.
To support and bring forward the message that cis women have been discriminated against in certain ways, Black women in other ways, nonbinary people in other ways.
It’s totally possible to exist in the same space, support each other, have awards in different categories, and be together in the fight.
Because we need to be together.
We need to build this culture together.
Because sometimes I see feminist posts that are all about men versus women.
The men have been socialized as well.
It’s not people’s fault that we’ve all been socialized in a certain way.
It’s not men’s fault that they were born men.
But privilege comes with responsibility to act.
And it’s our collective responsibility to expect action.
We need to build more of a sense of collective effort.
When I talk about the queer community, I’m addressing us in that way not because we’re an exclusive club, but because we have some unique issues that other communities don’t have.
But I don’t see myself as separate from everyone else.
I have tons of cis friends.
Actually, I probably have more cis friends than queer friends.
And always have.
We need to remember how to be together and how to do this together.
Exactly.
And I think the more all of us realize that, the better.
I see it in your content.
I see the comments you get.
And the same happens to me when I write about race.
People jump on my posts and say really racist things openly.
And I’m like, okay.
So I think it’s really difficult.
And I’d love to talk about that as a final question because I feel like we both post a lot on LinkedIn.

That’s kind of the main platform we use.
And I think it’s an interesting time at the moment on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is an interesting place at the moment.
I’d love to know your thoughts and advice because so many people come to me and ask, “How do I write on LinkedIn?”
“How do I build my personal brand?”
“What should I be talking about?”
I’d love to be talking about topics like this.
And that’s the thing.
Most people come to me and say, “You’re so brave.”
I get that a lot.
And I don’t see it that way.
But they consider me brave because I’m writing about the topics I do.
They’re scared to open up and be honest on LinkedIn.
Now, if you’re a founder who feels that, whether it’s because of gender, race, religion, or anything else, that you can’t open up and talk about who you really are, what would you advise?
For people who want to build a brand and don’t want to post generic entrepreneurial content, but want to talk about who they really are.
Because it’s what they want to be.
It will help them and their business.
But also, in a way, it’s cathartic.
It’s almost like a journal.
You’re sharing your thoughts and feelings with the world and educating people at the same time.
Because that’s how I see it.
The reason I’m sharing these stories is because I believe people need to have these conversations.
They need to hear a different point of view.
That’s why I continue to tell these stories.
Because I believe that if we put these stories out in the world, the world will become a better place to have these conversations.
That’s the only reason I’m a little controversial or provocative on LinkedIn.
Because I think we need to have those conversations instead of the normal, polite, agreeable, perfunctory ones.
And I think there are other people who want to do that but are scared of doing it.
Both of us do it.
So what advice would you give to people who want to do the same thing but are scared right now?
Again, personal needs and end goals, right?
I think the need for safety is paramount.
I would never tell people they need to be more outspoken knowing that it could put them in danger.
I’ve been there.
I’ve seen friends go through it.
There are people who get killed for doing that.
And people still get killed for doing that in the UK.
So I really want to say something important.
A lot of people with marginalized identities feel this pressure to become advocates of some sort.
And I don’t think you should.
I think everybody should live their life however they want.
In my case, I pick my battles.
I don’t talk about everything.
I only talk about things that I know I have the mental capacity to discuss.
I know that I’m ready to get hate.
I know that I’m ready to manage that hate.
I know that I’m ready for whatever backlash may come.
But it’s also true that I am proof that by being yourself, you actually build a community.
What I love is when a post does well and I get loads of comments.
No one person is the same.
Everyone is different.
Different nationalities, different genders, different backgrounds.
I love that because it means all those people are feeling safe.
They’re resonating with what I’m talking about.
They’re absorbing my message and bringing their own message.
I get loads of cis women writing to me saying, “You know what? I did not see that. Thank you for educating me.”
When I talk about how women’s networks can be exclusionary to trans people, especially but also in general, people start to see things differently.
The same applies to men’s networks, by the way.
I always mention that they’re making the same mistakes.
I see people learning with me.
They’re learning new things.
That’s what keeps me going.
Because honestly, if it wasn’t for that, and the fact that I also get a lot of nonbinary people, trans people, and queer people messaging me privately, I don’t know if I’d keep doing it.
A lot of people are not out.
They message me privately and tell me they hope one day they can be like me.
And I’m like, this stuff matters.
It’s bigger than me.
It’s bigger than my safety in a way.
Obviously, I am very privileged.
I have a lot of white privilege.
But I also live in a very safe place.
The neighborhood in Edinburgh where I live has trans flags everywhere.
Every single shop has trans flags.
It’s literally one of the safest places you could live in Scotland.
So I’m really lucky to have ended up there.
And that’s why I’m using that safety to be of service.
Because it’s bigger than me.
It’s bigger than you.
It’s bigger than all of us.
It’s just my little contribution.
I definitely want to do more in the future somehow.
I don’t know what that looks like yet.
But my advice is to be safe first.
And only do things that you genuinely want to do.
If you want to start talking about these topics, maybe start with one thing you feel strongly about.
Something you can talk about confidently.
Something where you know what objections you’re likely to get.
And in terms of bullies, I don’t think it’s worth wasting your time.
If someone is coming at you just to be aggressive, ignorant, spread misinformation, or attack your audience, I personally would just block them.
Now, criticism is different.
There is absolutely a place for criticism.
I’ve had people ask objectively ignorant questions, but they were coming from a place of curiosity.
They were polite.
Even if they used the wrong terms or didn’t understand the topic, they genuinely wanted to discuss it.
I leave those comments open.
I have those interactions.
But when it comes to haters, people who are only there to spread hate and reaffirm what they think they are by attacking someone different, I don’t think it’s worth your time.
It speaks volumes about them.
So I would say pick your battles for sure.
Preserve your energy.
Focus your energy on the community that needs you and the people who need you.
Don’t waste it on random people on the internet who just want to hate on you.
It’s really hard, though.
Everyone gets caught up in ridiculous social media arguments.
Do you regret it when you do?
Yeah, all the time.
It’s really stupid.
You think, what a waste of time.
But again, I was like that a while ago.
Now I’m used to it.
And that’s why I think what you said is important.
Don’t feel the pressure.
You mentioned that marginalized groups often feel responsible for speaking out.
That’s exactly how I felt.
I had so many DMs saying, “I feel like you’re the voice of us.”
And I started thinking, “Oh my God, do I have a responsibility to do this because nobody else has the confidence to say these things?”
And that’s a lot of pressure.
I started to feel that weight.
Even someone like me who doesn’t enjoy getting hate, even if I’m used to it now.
It’s a lot.
So I think you’re right.
If anyone feels that pressure, they should do what’s right for them.
Because it takes a lot.
Especially when this is about your own life and identity.
People are attacking you online.
You might already be getting attacked on the street or at work.
You’re adding that to your plate.
You don’t have to.
You don’t have to.
And I think it’s everyone’s responsibility in whatever capacity they can.
It could be as simple as supporting your best friend.
Or supporting yourself and decolonizing your own mind and your own biases.
You start to heal yourself, and you can help heal society.
That’s what I always say.
So again, I think everybody should listen to themselves, listen to their needs, stay as safe as possible, and do what they can.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, thank you so much.
It’s been amazing having you today.
Honestly, it’s been so insightful.
And I really hope your words and stories have helped other people who are going through similar things.
I think there are a lot of people struggling right now.
So thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
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