EP364: Conscious Leadership and the Future of Work with Sarah Hawley

5:57AM Aug 2, 2022

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

people

team

company

values

business

building

culture

hiring

create

talk

world

bit

crushing

remotely

empowered

life

book

platform

office

transparent

As a creative and as a visionary, I'm sure that leadership is a topic that comes up, especially when you're at a place when you're ready to hire a team. But here's the thing. Most of us are not wired to be managers. We are wired to be leaders. And because we're creative, oftentimes we're more emotional. We're very passionate about what we do. And with that comes, you know, us feeling like we're failing all the time, because we don't know how to manage people. Well, if that sounds anything like you, I know that it definitely sounds like me. You are going to love this episode today, where we talk about conscious leadership and the future of work. In fact, I interview my friend Sarah Holly, I'll get into that in a moment, where I'm talking to her about how she's transformed her entrepreneurial journey, by thinking differently about how she's leading our team and how she's running her companies. In fact, it even led her to start a remote work platform called Grow motely, where she has a team from around the world, she helps people hire teams from around the world, so that you can source top talent affordably based on where you are. So it's a really fascinating episode, we're gonna dive in momentarily, but before I do, let me introduce myself. I'm Tracy Matthews, I'm the chief visionary officer Flourish & Thrive Academy. I'm also the host of this podcast, why by design, and I wrote a book called The Desired Brand Effect, stand out in a saturated market with a timeless jewelry brand. And I help jewelry makers, designers and private jewelers launch grow and scale successful six to multi seven figure businesses. And we do that through our courses, coaching and programs. And today on the show, I am super excited to be interviewing my dear friend Sara Holly, this whole conversation was basically derived because I recently read her book and I invited her to join us for a mastermind here in in Phoenix in Arizona a couple of months ago. And what she kind of taught me in that mastermind literally changed my life forever, and how I lead my team members. And so I wanted to bring her on the podcast today because she has a very unique approach. And for anyone who is a growth seeking human being who has been dealing with their own stuff and trying to heal as a human being, you have to realize when you're approaching, you know, work environment with all these different personalities and people that everyone's coming to the table with their own trauma, their own ideas and their own frames for what is happening. And so we break down the idea and the thoughts of conscious leadership, where the workplace is going and how to really build authentic, awesome teams who buy into your vision, and want to follow you no matter what is going on inside your business. So with that being said, let's dive into today's episode. Well, I am so excited to have my friend Sarah Holly on the show today, I am beyond thrilled because we masterminded together a couple months ago, and she just started speaking and I'm like, Okay, girl, I have to have you on the show. And I originally encountered her through her hiring platform, which we're going to get into today. So, Sarah, welcome to thrive by design.

Thanks, Tracy. So good to be here. And it is great to remember that mastermind it was such a powerful few days and shifted a lot for me. So yeah, I mean, wow, that was like a turning point in this year.

Well, I'm just so happy that you said yes. Because you didn't really know me then. And you're just like, yes, of course I'll come I happened to be.

That was like divine timing, because I was I was just two hours away. We were spending the month in Sedona and I was like, Oh, this totally random request or invitation I should say. And then I was like, Yeah, I can't do that. That's awesome. And I have a one year old. So you know, I'm not as spontaneous as I used to be with travel. So it was like, so nice to be able to be a little bit more spontaneous. And it was, I'm so glad I said yes, it was such a powerful few days.

It was amazing. And I'm really, really excited for this conversation. I've been looking forward to it because a couple of weeks ago finished your book conscious leadership. Several months ago, maybe like six months ago, I started using your hiring platform form grow mostly. And then I got to like really dig deep into me because we originally kind of like, met through a business group. But I feel like this mastermind kind of solidified everything that you do. So there's a lot to unpack today. But more importantly, like consciously leading your company and creating a culture and the future of work. So before we dive into all those things, why don't you tell my listeners a little bit more about your journey into entrepreneurship?

Well, I actually kind of came through the ranks of entrepreneurship through a family business. So I my dad had his own company and I worked in that business and then decided I wanted to go out on my own and, and become an entrepreneur. So it probably was in my blood, but I became an entrepreneur in 2009. And up until starting remotely, which was in kind of 2019 2020 I built and sold, built, scaled and sold productized service businesses mostly in financial planning the financial space I had a couple of others businesses as well along the way, but that's kind of what I got good at building productized services, service businesses with, you know, 15 ish team members couple of million in revenue, and then selling them. And I turned all my companies remote in 2014, just to bring the story full circle to how I even got to where I am now. And that journey of turning my companies remote is really what unlocked the door for me to much more conscious leadership, I had to naturally unpack a lot of my stories, a lot of my ideas of the way the world worked. Like I just, I had no idea that I was gonna go down this path when it comes to my company culture and myself as a leader, and ended up becoming so incredibly passionate about remote work and what it can offer the world that when I sold my last financial planning company in 2018, I decided that redefining work for humanity is what I wanted to dedicate my life to. And that's how remotely was born.

It's so awesome. And I'm so excited to talk a little bit about this, the platform and all the other things that kind of are incorporated in this. But you know, in one of our conversations, at some point, you mentioned, like the future of work is changing. So why don't we talk a little bit, I want to kind of open it up, like what is the future of work? And what do you mean by that?

What I see for the world and what is most exciting is this kind of integration of work and life. So it's feels to me like an evolution of work life balance, which was very much about like having boundaries around time in the office and time at home. And obviously, now that we don't necessarily need to have officers, it's now more about integration. But also what that means is we're much more empowered to choose our life and build it our lifestyle, I should say exactly how we want it. So working from wherever we want living wherever we want, having kind of the friends and family that we want around us and crafting our days in ways that are most expansive for us as individuals like I like working early in the morning, a lot of the time, I get a lot of good creative work done. It's changed a little bit since having a baby. But you know, still, if I wake up early, and he's not awake, like old crush some work in the morning. And then sometimes during the day, I'm like not working as much. And then I work later and just all these little things that kind of allow us to build this life and lifestyle that's much more sovereign, like we've chosen it, we've built it for ourselves. And so I have experienced that since 2014, I watched myself take back my power, and take back my freedom. And then I watched my team do the same thing and what a gift it was to give that to them to get out of the way as a leader and trust them and empower them and and watch them kind of really step into their fullest potential. And so I'm excited about that into the future, I think a couple of other key points that are worth mentioning, just to talk about the future of work, and not just my perspective. But what's happening in the world is during the pandemic, the world stood still and we all stopped and thought about our mortality. We thought about you know, the life that we were in that just got halted and like, Wait, do I even want this life? Do I want to be living in this place? Do I want to be in this relationship? Do I like this job like all of these questions that everyone had all this time to mull over as well. And what we're seeing as kind of the outcome of that is people are desiring more meaningful, impactful lives in general. And certainly when it comes to work, they want to work on things and for leaders and in teams that are doing work that matters. They're not just after a paycheck anymore,

not just after a paycheck. So I have so many questions to ask about this, because obviously, you've done it successfully, we had a long conversation because I've, I've worked for with remote teams since I started at Flourish & Thrive Academy, we never were in person. And that was a shift for me because for my first company, my first jewelry company, I always had an office with team members in the office. And then although we did have some manufacturing that was done outside of the house, like the team would come into the office, I just that was the only way that we really knew how to do things. So when my first company folded after 2008, when the market crashed, one of my number one things that I wanted to do was to not have to have an office space. It wasn't that I didn't want to have team because I definitely want a team. It was just I didn't want to have this like responsibility of having someone come into the office nine to five because I wanted to have a more flexible lifestyle. So I knew that when I was building this new business, that everything that I was going to do was going to be around building a remote team or virtual team as I was calling in at the time, and being able to just collaborate and work together. And one of the best parts about doing that was that I was able to source talent from all over the place. You know, I was living in New York City. It's so expensive to live. So if I had to hire only people living in New York City to work for my company, I would have never been able to get Flourish & Thrive Academy off the ground, because I just wouldn't have been able to afford it. The difference between a marketing manager in New York City is like, probably 50 to $100,000 in salary based on someone like finding someone in Ohio or somewhere where the cost of living is lower.

So the country like South Africa, or Yeah, exactly.

Well, I mean that my eyes open to that, too. I didn't even know about hiring people in other countries. And now, like, half of my team is in the Philippines or other parts of the world. So it's fascinating to me about how much opportunity there is to really build a team of people, an international team, which is super fun.

Yeah, it's, it's incredible. And I relate to your experience very much because I was up until 2014. When I was in an office and hiring locally, obviously, because I was in an office, I was just struggling to grow my company, like it would just falter. And I was always bleeding money. And it was just like, so exhausting to try to figure out like how to make this thing work. Because I was in Melbourne, Australia, where the cost of office space is really high, the cost of wages is really high. You know, when you have an office, the reality is you also have someone likely on your team that's doing a fair bit of like facility management, even if you have a small office, you still need someone to check on the internet and coordinate the cleaners and go to the store and make sure there's milk and tea and coffee and like you're paying, you know, whatever, Melbourne local rates just for that extra theme. So there's like all of this stuff that's going on. And then when I thought about hiring remotely, and getting rid of the office, and then I realized I could hire anyone anywhere, it was like whoa, like so much just opened up. And personally, like one of my favorite things to do in life is to travel. And so it's, you know, the next best thing when I'm not traveling is to be working with people in other parts of the world everyday life because I one of the things I love about travel is that diversity and seeing these other experiences. And I ironically, although I think a lot of people will understand this, I find the act of traveling grounding in terms of my sense of self, because it's reminds me of like, how the things that I think to be true in my world are only part of, you know, the culture that I grew up in. And I love to see all these different ways of doing things. And it also opens my mind to these different potentials. So anyhow, I love bringing that aspect into the team as well and into my life. And then being able to split my wage budget over a broader kind of, you know, I can usually hire more people, essentially for the same amount of money, which means my company can provide better services or you know, now we're a tech tech company, we can move, develop our product faster, or whatever it might be. And we're also providing more employment opportunities. So, you know, it's not all about the financial savings, because sometimes you might find that dream person who happens to be in frickin Switzerland, and it's more expensive, but like, if they're the person that's really going to move the needle, then like, now you have access to them, at least,

exactly. That's so true. And you know, so I have two remote businesses right now like my jewelry company. And that was designed so that I was only like, kind of like finding leads and building that sales funnel through my website. That was really, really important for me, even though I was based in New York, and a majority of my clients were in New York and San Francisco, I wanted to work remotely, I didn't want it to have to be something where I had to be physically in an office to see them if that worked great. But like if not like I wanted other way. But then with Flourish & Thrive Academy too. We similar. We have people from all over the world. And it's been amazing. And so I want to talk a little bit about your platform, which is not normally the way that I would run a an interview like this talk about like, how did grow mentally come about? Why did you want to start it because you basically come from financial services, and now you're have a tech hiring platform?

Yeah, so when I turned my companies remote, I wanted to find people all over the world. And there was no way to do that. And so no streamlined way anyway. And so I started a company prior to grow remotely that was called grow my team, that I just got some recruiters to work for my business or like they were their own business, I should say, but I got them to do all of the hiring for my company. And my friends companies basically and I mean, we took some clients on but we would never like growing massively. I just hired these recruiters to find me global talent and and it was it was just this like small business that wasn't really growing. And then when I finally sold my financial planning company I was having I mean, I had a breakdown, I had a whole thing of like, who am I in the world and what do I want to do next? And am I going to be successful at anything ever again and all this all the things that a lot of people experience when they sell their companies, but through that process and all the soul searching I was like, What is the thing that I'm most passionate about, and it was remote work. And so I kind of picked up, grabbed my team, this little company and just started digging around and learning more about it. Because I, I really, you know, I'd never even worked in it, I just knew I had some recruiters who were helping us find talent, and started talking to them about the challenges and saying that, like, this was the big opportunity, there was no like global job board or place, there was no single place that they could go or that companies could go to find professionals who wanted to work remotely. And then thinking about the whole end to end process of like, managing that hiring process, like the they call it like an ATS and the applicant tracking system, but basically managing all the applicants that come in and screening them and moving them through a process, and then hiring them. And with contracts and payroll. And the whole process, given the global nature of it, you know, was there was nothing it was, it was pretty complex. And there's obviously Upwork, and freelancer and millions of gig marketplaces. And that was basically my idea was like, What if we created something like that, but for small businesses, building their teams, not just building some talent, who can like do bits and pieces here and there, but actually building hiring their marketing manager, hiring their operations manager, that integrator, their finance person, like whatever it is. And so, that was kind of how the whole idea came about. And that's essentially what remotely is now, it's an end to end piece of HR technology that business small businesses can use to run their entire HR function. From posting jobs to managing all those applicants, we take care of all the contracts and payroll, we also then do professional development, and plug their professionals into a community so they can knowledge share, we provide quite a bunch of extra support. We also built culture tools into the platform as well. So you can get a pulse every month on how your culture is, which is, you know, I wrote about that in my book. But that was a real turning point for me in 2016, when I started asking my team every month, how happy they are. And so I kind of built, like, all of the things that I had learned and that was lacking and that we needed into this technology. Now for kind of smaller growing companies, I want

to talk about company culture, because this part of your book, like I was just like, oh my gosh, when I heard you say like, when you ask your team, like, are you happy? And like? The answer is we're just like, nuts and other things. And I'm like, she, I don't even want to ask my team.

That's how I felt I was like, Oh, God, you know, when you know, you have to do something, but you just don't want to like experience.

It's not that I think they're not happy. But I think I could be doing a much better job of building culture. And

you know, I talk I really want to look at that, you know, I

talk a lot about, you've been doing working a lot on really developing culture. And it takes time, you know, it's like, it's something that, you know, when you hear and you think, and you're like, what am I trying to create here, it's like, I want to create a fun environment that people enjoy working at. And you're gonna go through these times where you have hiccups, or where things just aren't working the way that you want them to work, or where you have someone who's not a culture fit on the team, and they're kind of ruining the culture. And you're like, shoot, if I let them go now, like, everything's gonna fall apart, or whatever it is. So why don't we start, I want to just unpack that a little bit. Why don't we started about talking about, like, what does culture mean to you? And how does someone develop a culture in their company?

Yeah, and I just do want to express my empathy further asking, because it is it is difficult, but you know, having that regular feedback, was the thing that helped me go from like a six out of 10, to now being above nine out of 10. So it's, it's like having that two way conversation at the same time as intentionally trying to improve culture is what what really helps when I think about culture, at this point, and what it really is, and everything I've experienced up until now is like, it's essentially the values of the organization. And when I think about values, it's like how we show up for each other for our customers, how we desire our customers to show up. Like if we were considering partnering with someone, you know, would they show up in the same way as our so it's kind of having this values or ethos or whatever you might want to name it, but this kind of three to five, whatever number of kind of statements I like to say, but usually some words to summarize it, of like who we actually are. And the one thing I think it's really, really important is not who we aspire to be, but who we are in truth. Like if we hear that flexibility is the new trend, so we say Alright, our values are we're flexible, but like the truth is, we're just not like we have a much more structured, rigid culture. Maybe the founder was a military background or something. Like just being like, that's actually like, that's actually okay though. And where we run into challenges is if we say we're flexible, but we're out should be more structured. And we're attracting people in that are like appealing to this aspirational idea that we're like a more flexible team or something. And then they get in there like, this is not this is not like, this is not flexible and like, then they're struggling, and we're struggling with them. And, and so it's really digging deep into like, who are we actually, and in a smaller company, you know, a lot of that's going to come from the founder, we built this company, you know, if it's five or 10 people or whatever, like, it's not that far removed from us as founders, that it's become this whole different thing, like, it's gonna be pretty reflective of who we are. And so, you know, I think one kind of sanity check is like, if you do a values exercise with your team, and you hate all of the culture that they've put forward, like, maybe we haven't got it quite right, or we don't have the right team members or whatever. But just just kind of like thinking through, like, who are we actually in the way that we show up, like one of our values at remotely is trust through transparency and transparency is very high value of mine, you know, like, it's one of my highest values, if not my highest. And this is this idea of like, we create trust as we be more transparent. And it's a practice. And we have to practice having conversations that are candid, and timely and transparent, because most of the workplaces out there, don't do that. And so it's not super familiar to people. So it's still having compassion for the fact that not everyone is used to it, but like, this is what we hold ourselves to. And so me as a leader, I am fully transparent with the team about what is going on for me what the financial position of the business is, what the like, whatever it might be, like the things that are difficult, usually the things that we avoid being transparent about, but then we use that value as a navigation tool, where if we're having challenges with a partner, or a team member, or a client or whatever, like looking at those values, and being like, where are we not? Like, that's usually a really great place to start of where we're not showing up? Well, we had a partner once as an example, who had an outsourced team, like in an office in another location. And they were doing some work for us. And like, we had no issue, obviously, that they had a team in another part of the world because we're all over the world. So they had told us that, but they didn't usually tell their customers that and I didn't really connect the dots on it. But as we started working together, it just became really, really difficult. All of our communications and conversations were challenging. And I realized, like, this high value of transparency for us, that was it, they did not have that value that a different types of values. And they the way their communication flowed in their organization was very different to ours were much more like flat open structures that everybody wants to talk to everybody on their side, you know, they they kind of had that team siloed, and it would go through project managers. Neither is right or wrong. It just was not fucking working. Like it was terrible. But yeah, it was just not working. And knowing that there is no right or wrong, there is no right way to have cultural wrong way to have culture, the most effective culture is when you know who you are. And you know how to communicate that and then navigate conversations where things feel out of alignment around those kinds of values, and ethos, or whatever it is.

So when you say transparency, like this is really fascinating to me, like how much are you telling people? Like are you telling them like, we might run out of cash soon? Yeah, something like that.

Yep. 100% my team know our runway every day. They know they

don't get freaked out about that. Because I've always, this is something where I'm like, okay, transparency, like you need to communicate, like, where you where you stand with people so that they understand and like, why things are important. And you explain the why and all that stuff. But then you hear from other people like, Oh, don't ever tell anyone like where do you stand? Don't be transparent.

Well, so caveat in my answer with, like, do what feels right for you, you know, do what, and if that doesn't feel right for you don't do it. But for me, like I said, transparency is a really high value of mine. I prefer to know all of the facts, always I prefer it in my relationships, I prefer it in all aspects of my life. So I bring that into my company, the way that I see it. And like I said, this is not right or wrong. It's just my perspective. But the way that I see it is to empower people with all of the information so they are making empowered choices, and they are informed of the situation they are in the idea of protecting someone from things that they don't need to know, you making a decision for them that is coming from a place in some way of like that parental dynamic where like I somehow I'm determining what they're capable of handling and what they're not. And I personally don't think that's super healthy for like our societies or anything, but it's very much the framework of like everything that exists right now. Yeah. So

it's interesting to see like, who are the people that are actually going to like step up in a situation like that. Um, and like not to say that either where anyone is I just think that like there are times when companies have cashflow issues, and they have to like hustle to get money coming in to their business. And it would be interesting to see if transparency was a core value of a brand. How would the people working on that team? Would they rise up? Or would they bolt.

So I can tell you, in my experience, they only ever rise up. I've never had anyone bolts, I've had people take up to 20% pay cuts, I've had people offer to suppose their salary for a month when we've been taught. I've had like, the most extraordinary offers of sacrifice in order for the common goal. But that's also because we have really high alignment on our vision and our mission and our values and how we show up. So because I've spent so long yet focusing on building alignment around that, like, I don't have anyone in the team. I mean, even the fact that we're a startup, for example, for right now, like they want to be part of that startup journey. And that is a part of the startup journey, you know, this example that we're talking about of like cash flow, for example, you know, yeah, but the other thing that is valuable that I've found is, I get what I'm gonna say two things. One thing is the way energy works. And I think this is so important. And if more people understood this life would be a lot simpler. When something is not said in the field, the other person or people, at some level, know that something is not said mostly it's unconscious, they're not aware that they know it, but their system even knows it. And what they do to create safety within themselves to try to understand what's going on with our minds create stories around things, is they start creating stories to fill in the gaps of what's going on. So the simplest, you know, I'm sure everyone has experienced that feeling when you catch up with a friend, and they're like kind of grumpy, but they don't say what they're grumpy about. And on the way home, you're just thinking, like, what's wrong with them? Is something going on for them? Or did I do something? Are they mad at me, or maybe it was on Saturday night, because I left early, and I didn't, you know, and you're creating all these, like reasons why you had this experience with them. And that is true, always like the just knowing that the energy of whatever is going on is going to be in the field. And your team are at some level going to be making stories up about what that means the idea that we have this like mask, and this ability to shelter and shield, what's really going on and out in a world from the world around us. It's not real, we might be really well practiced at like, you know, gripping it together and stuff. But like, at some level, your energy is different when things are like really amazing. And you just got off the call from this amazing when like, you're gonna be high five, and people and like, Hey, how you doing? And like, if you're looking at the bank going shit, like, I don't know how we're going to make payroll, like, you're not going to be the same. Even if you walk in and do the high five, like there is something in your field that's not there. So I just I just wanted to share that to set up my next point. And that is specific to financially because I think that's a big aspect that people feel really scared about being open within their teams. So and anyone who's an entrepreneur has probably heard friends that are not entrepreneurs do this thing where you go to get to know some kind of event. And then your friend who's on entrepreneur does this multiplication in their head of how like, Oh, my God, there's like 5000 people here. And they charted this by the ticket and they must have made, they made like $7 million. Wow, they must be crushing it. And you're sitting there going, yeah, like, what are their expenses? We don't know, they made a loss. Like, you know, as entrepreneurs, we know how complicated this all is. But that's the simplification level for someone who's not been an entrepreneur. And so that happens in business as well. Our staff will be doing like simple multiplications in their head of like, well, if we have this amount of clients, and they pay this amount of money, and the business is making this so like, you know, we must be crushing it. I don't know why she's so uptight. I don't know why they're always putting pressure on us to do sales. Like seems like they're doing great. And like why don't they pay me more money and like you're robbing them and yourself of having like, true understanding of the aspect of the business and letting them grow and understand like their role in the whole thing. But also understanding that it's like not always so easy. It's not always like what those easy multiplications and arithmetic might might show, but it also means you can genuinely celebrate the wins. Yeah, like and I think one of the reasons people are scared of being transparent is like, when we're really crushing it. I'm sorry, when we're really crushing it like, Oh, how's my team gonna feel when I'm making a lot of money? Yeah, but like, if you've been transparent along the journey, and people were with you, like, there's always gonna be someone and you know, somewhere within the team that was with you when you were slugging it out when you didn't pay yourself for however long and you know, provided you're willing to reward your team as the company grows, which I certainly am, then you know, everybody's winning as the company becomes more healthier or has better, better quarters. So yours or whatever, and we get to celebrate that together as well.

Exactly. I love that. So I wrote a note here, because I wanted to come back to this, I feel like we could talk for hours. You talked a little bit about vision, mission core values. And I know from reading your book that in the beginning of all your meetings and everything you're expressing that, like, how do you share that, because there's so many different ways to share a vision, like it could be like in the Eos model, maybe that's the rocks that you're the goals or targets that you have or like, where the company is going for the year? Or the mission. So what's your take on vision mission and core values? And how are you sharing that with your company?

Yeah. So for me the vision, and the purpose is what? You know, it's kind of like, where are we going? Like, what are we trying to be in the world? Okay, and then like, why are we doing this? Those two statements, we might change them over time as we get to know ourselves more, but like, ultimately, like they are? Pretty, they have a lot of longevity in them, I would say. So when I think of vision and mission. I'm not talking about where we're trying to go this quarter, or this month, I'm talking about like long term. Yeah, like we want to, you know, be the global remote work marketplace for long term positions. Like that's what we want to be in the world. And the why that we exist is to create this kind of empowered, embodied, sovereign work experience, like those are our two. So we just read them at the start of each all company meeting. And every so often, when we haven't talked about it for a while, I'll say, I'll just say like, Hey, I'd love to like dive into our purpose. And just ask, like, what does it mean to you? Like, if a couple of you could just share, like, what does it mean to you? Or why are you proud to be working on this. So I usually just do that, like randomly, but not every month, we have a monthly all company meeting. Now when I had smaller teams, I hadn't weekly, and I did the same thing that I'm talking about here. And my weekly, the reason we have monthly is because we're a bigger team. And I don't want, you know, like a lot of people sitting through a meeting where they're not able to talk and contribute. So it makes more sense to have it monthly now. And then the values, this is the most important bit, whatever you call it core values, values, ethos, this kind of culture piece of like how we show up for each other. Every single meeting, we share value stories. So we all anyone can share a story of where someone in the team, one of our community members, a partner and investor, like anyone really in the field has lived up to this value has expressed this value. And we share like as many until people get bored, really. And that helps us kind of understand and bring those values to life. That process of just like sharing the value stories really brings them to life really helps people understand. And also it feels really good to like give shout outs to each other,

we have something in our Slack channel called the awesome jar. So anytime someone does something awesome or RAD on the team, we like shout them out. And then at the end of the month, they get like put into a drawing to win a prize. It's usually like 100 bucks. So like for our team in the Philippines, that's massive. Like in the United States, it's like, okay, cool, I can go to dinner. But like, you know, it's just, it's a nice gesture kind of thing. So we

built gratitude and shoutouts into the platform as well, where you can just randomly go on and give someone a shout out, which is cool. And then every week at emails, like the whole team, all of the shout outs from the week. So that's really nice. But the way the value stories are, I mean, it's kind of it ends up being a gratitude and a shout out. But it's just in this meeting. So it's a little bit different than kind of having this ongoing ability to just give it but what it would be would be for example, one of our values is passionately committed. And so the systems engineering team recently overhauled our whole video q&a feature of the interview process. So we now believe it is really cool, actually, it's like my favorite, like my favorite part of our whole technology. So you can watch, you can ask up to five questions and have people record up to two minute answers before you go to the effort of like interviewing them just for people's context. But we had to rebuild the whole thing and use a different, like video technology. So it was actually really huge. And there was some functionality we wanted to improve. And it took like a lot of effort by the team. And you know, they had this big lead up to when they were going to release it. And they worked really, really hard and really long hours. So that was an example where somebody gave them a shout out that next all company may have like shout out to the whole engineering team. They've been so passionately committed, we know you all worked like overtime last week, and just really crushed it to get that out. And you also went the extra mile with XYZ. And so, you know, that was so amazing. So one of our values is stay open, stay curious. So, you know, somebody might give a shout out of like, hey, I really loved those questions that so and so was asking, because it actually helped me see a blind spot that I had and it was so useful to have their input and to be opening my mind or something. So that one's the passionate committed was a real one. The other ones a made up example. But I think you get the idea. Yeah,

that's awesome. Okay, so let's talk about conscious leadership. I really want to dive into like what that means to you and having have the honor to get to know you a little bit better more on a friend level and hearing some of your stories when we were masterminding together, I think this is going to be super valuable. Because, you know, we're both really committed to personal development and healing past trauma and healing generational trauma and all that stuff in our own personal lives and bringing that into our leadership styles. And does not make us mean that we're perfect. We were talking in the Free Party, I'm like, I'm so emotional Jesus

really cried by something you said, I'm like, Yeah.

And I'm like, I'm trying to like, really keep it together, because I get emotional sometimes on the meetings, because I'm passionate, or it's stressful, and sometimes I break down, and I'm not perfect, and stuff like that. So this kind of is a nice segue to tie into what conscious leadership means and how can we use our own, you know, point of view, you know, to be authentic in being part of a team, leading a team, you know, hopefully, the visionaries aren't managing, but sometimes they do have to manage people for a while. So I'll just hand that over to you. Hopefully, that made.

Mostly, you know, for me, it really is about bringing that whole aspect of myself into the team and then creating a safe space for them to be able to bring their whole selves as well, which does take time for them to feel safe. And it really is about leading by example. But you know, what I mean by that is all of this inner work and healing and growth that we're doing, like bringing that in, and, you know, I've cried in that many team meetings and leadership meetings, because it's just like, this is where I'm at right now. And this is what's happening. And over time, as I've done more work, I have more language to be able to just say, Oh, I'm really emotional right now. Maybe I need to take a break, or yeah, sometimes I'm just emotional for somebody else. And like, I'm, you know, I'm okay. But like, just understanding myself and bringing all of that into the team. It's also about understanding and looking inward, like when there is an issue in the culture and in the team, at some level, like we created that, as the leader. And that is like a pretty significant shift. It's hard. It's a hard truth. And it takes practice, to always be asking the question like, alright, what role did I play in creating this? Like, where is this my own pattern, my own cycle? Where is this a part of me that's just kind of showing up in the field addressing that. And so it's a lot of that ownership, really, like self ownership, but also then having the values and the ethos and everything to have a conversation around boundaries and, and things like that, to me really, yeah, it's bringing all of this inner work into the organization. And I believe that when we do that, and we stop treating people as though they're not sovereign, empowered individuals, and we stop treating them in this hierarchical parental dynamic, and we start treating them as whole, healthy, empowered, full, full potential humans. Now we start to create organizations that are vehicles for Regenerative change, regenerative healing, where they're going out into the world and becoming no beacons of light for other people. And like, why not create that I mean, that the amount of trauma that is perpetuated in the workplace, for one main reason is because of this idea of a professional self. Yeah, and a personal self. So your emotions are, to some degree allowed in your personal life, but not at work. Like the reality is, you're still going to be triggered by all the same stuff. In work as you are outside of it, you're just stuffing it down, and it's not allowed. And it's not to be seen, which means there's a lot of trauma ended up happening and things getting perpetuated, and nothing ever getting cleared. And not a lot of healing going on in the typical organization, because it's actually just getting perpetuated. So there's a really big opportunity for us as leaders to create incredible systemic change, just you know, one person at a time.

You know, it's really interesting. I had someone on my team, like suddenly quit, and it was like, shocking to me. And she was a really integral part of the team. I was like, cried for days, because like, a year and a half before, she's like, I'm never leaving. This is like, what I meant to be doing. And obviously, people change their mind, and they change course of action. So that's fine. It's just like I was literally so blindsided. And she was telling me that she would be curled up in a ball having panic attacks. And I'm like, why? You know, because she never communicated to me that she needed support. Yeah, in her role, and that could have been something I could have easily gotten her.

This is an example of the trauma that is happening for everyone because of this idea that, you know, she obviously felt too scared to tell you because that's not acceptable in the workplace. And she just needs to keep showing up. And so she's doing her best to deal with it. And then she hits a point where she's like, I can't do it anymore, and she's out. So you You're now traumatized because you've been abandoned or rejected or whatever your kind of wounds are like, we all have these kind of core wounds or, or what have you. But that is such a great example. And I always say this as a simplest example, but if anyone has ever quit unexpectedly, or you fired someone unexpectedly, if the other party in that was blindsided, that's trauma, you know, it never, no one feels good about that. It's, you know, maybe not quite as hard as your partner walking out on you, but it's pretty damn close, like, it does not feel good,

it does not feel good. And that's happened, you know, over I mean, I've been employing people for 25 years. So it's happened a couple of times, a lot of times when people quit, you kind of know, because it's just like kind of going down. Or like when you have to let someone go, it's not a surprise to them. But I think the ones that are the hardest is when you're like literally so blindsided, because they're, they're not being who they truly are, and being transparent with you about what matters to them. And I think, in order to really create that collaborative work environment, like, obviously, you don't want to be yelling and screaming, or crying on every meeting, like, you know, if you need to take a break, take a break, and I am a very emotional leader. So I, you know, I take full responsibility for that. But also, I'm also a very passionate person. And I don't know that I would be able to lead an audience and like enroll people to buy into the vision of like, what we're creating over here at flourish and thrive and what I'm doing in my other businesses, if I didn't have that passion and emotion internally,

and I could see one of your core values being something like emotionally passionate, and like being able to communicate clearly to your audience and your potential future hires that, then they're going to people that also are emotional, and passionate, enthusiastic, and want that kind of fire that comes with like really feeling life, they're going to be attracted to that. And then you're not going to run into like, the person who's like, I don't want to talk about emotions, like that's not gonna go so well. And you're like,

Oh, shut off. They're like, let's be professional. Yeah, like, not have any problems. Everything is perfect.

I mean, it's still we still might have people that are like at different aspects of their readiness or desire to be this way. But if they value it, if they see it as valuable like that, you might have someone who's a little more closed off, but they're like, I love that though. Like, I want to be part of that. And I can be a rock. For others. I can hold a container, like, yeah, yeah, he's

like a great space holder.

Exactly. Like I can be proud of holding the container for our team. That's really emotional. But as long as they're like opting into that, that they actually are attracted to that, then we're golden. But if you have someone who's like, What the hell, I don't want to wait, I don't want to hear about everybody's emotional stuff. Like, you know, they're just gonna get frustrated.

Sarah, it's been so awesome to have you on the show today. Where can everyone first of all, where can everyone buy your book conscious leadership?

It is available on Amazon, and probably all other book sellers. But the audio version, which is only two hours and 22 minutes, that was not that angel number was was an accident, but must be divine two hours, 22 minutes is the audio book. So if you like listening, I would recommend that I also read it to myself. Or narrated it whenever you say, Yeah, Amazon,

was it published? Or is it self published? It was published. Okay, awesome. It's so good. It's just the best book. And because I feel like I got it on Audible for free. How was that possible?

I think Audible has, yeah, I do have some links somewhere. So if you do like a free trial, you get like a credit a month. So that's how you can access it for free.

So get it with your audible membership, or buy it all the things. So grow remotely, they can find you if they want to hire remote workers and use your tech platform, I highly recommend it. I've hired team members through it. It's an amazing platform for growth. And we also have a link in the show notes to grab that as well.

It is and we're very focused on helping kind of what we call culture first, companies, companies who are focused on their culture and kind of bringing more consciousness into their leadership and into their teams and you'll find the talent on our platform. You know, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for working with founders who are passionate and excited. Yeah, we're here to help and support you all. And thank you for letting me talk about Grammarly. Today, Tracy, that was a real treat. I mean, I love what I do. It's so good.

Thank you, Sarah. Thank you so much for listening to the show today make sure that you pick up Sarah's book conscious leadership. And also if you're interested in hiring a remote team head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash grow motely and if you'd like to learn more about grow motely head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash grow motely this is Tracy signing off. Until next time