 I'm really excited to be able to do this first episode with my good friend, Pipp Jameson, she is the founder of The Ducks as an amazing business and social network and we have become mentors and mentees to each other at different points in our journey. Pipp's journey has some really highs but also some really lows. Some of those include some public stumbles but one thing that's really inspired me about her is her ability to not just be a great leader and take accountability for where things have gone wrong but then to use experiences to make her an even better founder. I am a non-tech tech founder so I don't have a computer science degree. I literally was just one of these naive people that wanted to just make a business, a tech business. I saw 60% of our revenue disappear overnight and it was just terrifying and my board were encouraging me to get rid of my team or a lot of my team to basically extend our runway. So I always made them the promise that if something went wrong with The Ducks I would find you another role before and that was the one time I wasn't going to be able to keep that promise because there was no jobs going in Covid. There's an incident that happened a few years ago where actually do you know what I'm referring to with the equipment process? Can you tell us a little bit about that story? We got a really big backlash on Twitter and it was probably the worst 24 hours of my life. Actually that sounds really dramatic but it probably was 24 hours of my career. And I can understand why it happened. I'm Claude Williams, the founder of Dream Nation and welcome to the Behind The Dreams podcast. Hi, Fit. Hey, how are you doing? I'm good, how are you doing? Do you know what? It's just really nice to see you in real life. It's been so long. It's amazing to be here. I was just saying we haven't seen each other in the real world for loads and loads. So it's so hard to really do it. Anyway, go. Because I thought yeah it was Google that we saw each other and said that then this crazy thing called Covid happened. We've seen each other virtually but it's really nice to be with you. Yeah, 100%. And yeah, no it's been a journey because I guess for something it was 2014, right? Or 2015? Oh my gosh. Do you know what? I'm really bad at dates but yeah it would have been like yeah I was speaking at Dream Nation and it was such an amazing event. I've never been so terrified because it's the first time I've ever spoken without slides. Really? Oh yes. Because I use slides to remind myself what to say. So I was like oh my gosh I have to do it without slides. But yeah it was such an amazing crowd and everyone was really supportive and I did remember what I had to say in the end after rehearsing it a million times. They really did love you. I don't know. I think I still have to record and sit in a hard drive somewhere that I should have on YouTube but you know just one of those things that just never get around to doing. So yeah, so hopefully by the time people watch this I would have actually got my app together. Got that online. Only what? Seven years too late. But no you was amazing. You really was. Thank you so much for that. For today I did want to have a conversation with you about difficult decisions. So as an amazing founder that you are you have made some really tough choices that have led to some really great outcomes. So I'd love to explore how you went about making those decisions and also sharing I guess any lessons that people can learn from your process as well. It was so funny when you asked me to talk about this because in my head I'm like oh my gosh how do I make decisions but actually that it made me think about making decisions. So yeah I'd love to share I guess my process which isn't always right. But I think that's the game. In reality as practical dreamers we have to just make the choices and we will never know if they're right or wrong in the moment. It's just hindsight. So with all that said one of your first major decisions was around your first company. Can you tell us a little bit about the story? Yeah so I am a non tech tech founder so I don't have a computer science degree. I literally was just one of these naive people that wanted to just make a business a tech business. So I started my first tech business in Australia. I had a co-founder and it was a bit like a baby sister version of the dots. It was a creative networking platform and you know I probably made every mistake you probably could make on your first business. The biggest challenge was actually me and my founder wanted different things from the business and so they always say you should never go into business with someone who hasn't got like the same I guess values as you or the same work ethic or the same skills. I did all three. We had the same skills, different work ethics and different values. So I basically made all the mistakes you could make from a co-founder decision. But very long story short we wanted to take the business in different directions. So I wanted to kind of go international, expansion, grow the business. He really wanted a lifestyle business and those things aren't right. I have no criticism for anyone who ever wants a lifestyle business. We just wanted different things and so it just got increasingly challenging day to day. So I ended up having to leave the business. I sold the business. All the money I made from the business I reinvested into the dots. I funded the dots. It was like all eggs, one basket, my poor husband finally made some money. And then I had to restart all over again. And it was really because you know what it's like, you put your love into a business and it becomes almost like your child. So it's really tough to go through that and lots of highs and lows. But yeah, it was in hindsight the right decision. Yeah. Before we I guess talk about the dots, what was it that actually got you to make that choice? So you said the pressure was getting worse etc. But what was the cut and off point where I need to choose between? I mean that one to be honest was a necessity like it just wasn't sustainable. So I think more I was forced into that decision. I think the harder thing is then the decisions you make after that. So actually when I was going through that process you go through a decision of do you play hardball and maybe step outside your value set and start being the sort of business person I never wanted to be. Yeah. Or do you recognize this isn't working, it's becoming quite toxic. I'm going to just try and be the better person and let it go. And I think that was more the decisions like I wanted to stay true to who I was. And even though it's horrific giving up one business I just didn't want to fight in a nasty way to save it. Yeah. Which was my only other option at the time. Was you able to maintain that relationship? No, sadly not. And so it was one of those really horrific kind of times where you know you just if I look back I wish we'd communicated much earlier about it. It just inspired to the point that it wasn't sustainable after that. Yeah sorry to hear that. I think for myself you might not notice but Dream Nation is actually like the sixth or seventh like business projects that I've done. But for the first like five or six all of them before Dream Nation I did that with my best friend. His name is Bola and yeah we've always been each other's back for that. So it's the first time I stepped out without him on that. But when he came to the decision of me going into Dream Nation versus running what we had called the creative circle at the time which was like a marketing agency. It was we were lucky in the sense that we had already had those conversations around like the values, work ethic etc. And the contracts we had between each other literally said like if we ever get to the point where the business is going to impact our friendship then that's the time to walk away. And that's what was happening like we were beginning to want different things, move in different directions and was able to actually have that conversation beforehand. And so now he's still my best friend like his children are my godchildren, best man at his wedding etc. So yeah like I wish other founders had that information before at the start of their journey of like that communication what you need to have decided between yourselves. Yeah communication is key like not just for co-founder relationships but everything. Yeah that's such an important lesson which was don't let things fester. I kind of in that first business I was trying to just fix things and cover up the the cracks and now with this business I'm very much like if there is a problem I'll address it because actually you don't know unless you know and so if you're letting something fester it's you that's getting wound up they just might not know and actually if you address it straight away it's so much better and so yeah I learned that the very hard way. Thank you for listening to these episodes. If you haven't already make sure you sign up to our mailing list at dreamnation.co forward slash mailing list and from there you'll be able to find out about all the things that we have coming for you. Please make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube or wherever platform you're listening to this podcast on. Don't forget to like this video as well. With the dots your your current baby being successful for quite a while now you would have had to make quite a few big decisions obviously you're not in Australia anymore and obviously as well like you are now a solo founder in that regard could you walk us through making those choices around like why you made them how you got to them etc. Yeah so I mean I was so passionate about creating a networking platform that allowed people to find opportunities and really level the playing field so that was the same vision for the platform in Australia so I just wasn't ready to let that go so I restarted all over here um I think the that was kind of a no-brainer decision because I was someone once said to me like if I gave you a million pounds tomorrow for your previous business would you take it and I was like no and then you realize how passionate you are so if you're ever wondering like do you want to sell a business or not ask yourself that maybe a hundred thousand or ten thousand um but yeah so they're kind of starting again and while I'm a solo founder I do have an amazing founding team yeah who've actually been with me right from the beginning so I have to give them credit for this whole journey as well but I am solo founder and CEO but yeah I mean for me it was just about democratizing the creative industries opening up access for everyone so in the early days it was very much like profiles and jobs yeah we realized very quickly particularly in the creative industries that most people do not get a job through applying for a job on a job board um actually most opportunities come through a network and through meeting people and especially in the freelance space and like everything you did at the events and dream nation bringing people together to do that networking that's really actually where the magic happens yeah so again somewhat naively we were like okay jobs aren't good for our community in some ways because it's quite depressing when you apply for a job 500 people apply you don't get a response for a company so we were like actually to really help our community we have to move really heavily into the community networking space so yeah we just basically worked out how do we build an engaged community of really a platform where no one has something necessarily in common apart from they worked in the creative industries so we spent five years working out how do we bring value to people community and networking so what you're saying I guess if we were and I know I know we don't do technical that much in this podcast but you'll read to my product market fit so trying to find like the right product for the right people um and like I said it took you five years to get there like what was that process like trying to find the right answer yeah I mean it was literally test iterate test iterate I mean when we first started out we were really guilty of going oh I've got this brilliant idea for the platform and then we'd spend like a month building it only to find like three people click that button and actually used it and so we then got a lot better at doing tests on the site so let's test a feature let's actually just build the button see if anyone clicks it and then have a little thing that says coming soon yeah so we got a lot better at that process and then it was just looking at kind of the data how people are using it and a lot of kind of in-person chats with our community as well to make it more valuable for them but I think what the secret source was is just a recognition that we wanted to connect people in the real world as much as digital so you know that is the stuff that you did is where the magic happens so how do we help our community find out about amazing events and networking opportunities where they can actually make magic yeah together kind of so going back to the idea of decision making so even though I don't know if you realize it but you did walk us through one way to make a choice um which is that idea of testing the things out um don't do necessarily all the work just find what is the simplest way to run that experiment and decide whether it's worth doing the investment or not yeah there's a brilliant book oh my gosh there's lean startup but there's another one which is um testing business ideas is another brilliant book on that and it's everything from like surveys chatting to a community just testing things it's a great way to kind of cycle through and I think it's found as you know what it's like we've got so many ideas all the time so test and learn test learn test learn make a lot of mistakes but kind of acknowledge they're the wrong mistakes and move on to the next thing so funnily enough we've probably taken as much code out of the dots as we put in it because there's so many tests that went live that totally failed that we had to sort of take out of the process have you ever gone against what the data has told you when you're making a decision and what was the consequence of that yes I actually I I love using data as one of the data points but I think it's really important that the community the data can tell you one thing like a button can tell you one thing but there could be so many problems with that button it could be the wrong wording it could be in the wrong place it could be so working off that instinct of what actually do my community really need that's the more important bit for me using the data to validate it but actually listening to people and trying to help those people is I find the more magic the magic bit for me yeah yeah and but I guess what informs your instincts so yeah how do you how do you instinctively know what people your community need um I think well we're both dyslexic we have a kind of a a dislink just yeah there's my dyslexic sometimes I'm mispronounced word um so we have a distinct advantage where I mean if you think about humans being like the most sophisticated robots that exist you know we take in data all the time and information all the time in the real world and we synthesize that into like intuition and gut feeling the advantage of being a dyslexic is we tend to take in more information from the world so our intuition tends to be more honed and there's loads of research on this so anyone who's listening who's a dyslexic it is a superpower but um so yeah I think that instinct of taking in the data and kind of acting on gut but then using other you know the team the community the data to also validate that gut gut's not always right but it really does help on that journey particularly yeah there was I remember years ago when I came to your office you just gave me some advice around planning for apps but there was something that you was doing that was seemed quite unique to me around um neurodiversity in your team if I remember correctly you would deliberately hire people with certain like neurodiversity to do certain roles could you tell us a little bit about that yeah I mean it's sort of I mean I've always had to be really open about my dyslexia so you know I there are challenges obviously so my written my written and pronunciation sometimes the words aren't so good but and we both now have and I've started having an email signature says just likefully dyslexic excuse typos I've completely stole that yeah no I'm so glad you did and anyone who's listening steal the likefully excuse typos and put it at the end of your email because it goes from people going oh they're an idiot yeah oh I understand context um but because I guess I was always so open about it my team who I didn't realize had different neurodiverse traits started being more open about their neurodiverse traits and there's some roles that are just brilliant for people that are neurodiverse so you know engineering teams autism is a absolute superpower for engineering and so yeah it's not it's been a kind of more because I'm open it makes it an open place for also other people to be open and then recognizing also that in interviews it's you know you there's those biases that you can have about certain neurodiversity but it's being open to that which has been the most important thing no I doubt I've so literally since I stole that e-mail signature from you like it has opened so many conversations where there are people all around us who are hiding um their neurodiversity because unfortunately there still is a bit of a stigma around it in the world um and I guess the decision to do that has been like it's been liberating for a lot of people as well as for myself like now I don't feel scared if I write an email and there's a typo and it's like you you all survive um although one of my experiences in the corporate world I remember artskin hr from allowed to include it in my signature and they said no um and I was a really weird experience kind of just like but so what are you trying to say I need to hide who I actually am um in that regard so yeah and it's not constructive and the thing is is there's such brilliant strengths and there are negatives like you know I have some real challenges so you know but lean into your strengths so 35 percent of entrepreneurs are dyslexic and 40 percent of self-made millionaires and as only 10 percent of the population have dyslexia we're more likely to be entrepreneurs and when we are we're more successful so um lean into those entrepreneurial strengths that's brilliant and also recognize that you I'm never going to be able to code right I I can't spell I would be the courage would be a very scary place to be in your cover today have there been any other I guess really difficult choices you've had to make yeah so I mean COVID was horrific for everyone right um uh what happened with us is with the dots obviously we're a community-based platform but we made money through jobs so people advertising jobs on the platform um in about a week I saw 60 percent of our revenue disappear overnight um and it was just terrifying um so very long story short um my board um were encouraging me to get rid of my team uh or a lot of my team to basically extend our runway and yeah um however I'd made a promise to my team that I've always been transparent this is a startup right we we there's a likelihood we can fail but if we do I will get you a job before I go and like cry at home and collapse and have that holiday I haven't had in eight months I mean it is um but uh so I always made them the promise that if something went wrong with the dots I would find you another role before and that was the one time I wasn't going to be able to keep that promise because there was no jobs going in COVID so I was like there is no way I'm getting rid of this team that's the one promise I made so very long story short I end up having a very big board discussion I'll use my words carefully here um and I was like I'm going to find a way through and so um as serendipity came about is we actually got contacted by um the so house group uh who wanted to build an app for so her works which is their co-working space um and they got in touch and said well we love what you've done with the dots would you consider white labeling the technology for so her works um and obviously I was like yes please um so we found a way through and we started white labeling the dots um we now have 23 partners we shipped our first product 19 months ago no one knows we're doing this because if we haven't even had time to talk about it there isn't even a website um so really I have this baby which is the dots and then we have like 23 other partners um so funnily enough I've moved a team and operational team running the dots now and I'm running this thing entity up here which we haven't got a brand name we started to think of the dots as one of our partners one of our clients um and it's just been this most magical kind of journey seeing my tech now adopted by all these different other communities when things have gone hard you know that was one of the most horrific it sounds like that was an easy process it wasn't it was the most terrifying bit where I have to I have to find a way through I have to find something that is going to keep us in business so that I don't have to let my team go and that was just grit basically that's amazing so first I do you want to acknowledge that you did this dropping exclusive on the podcast yeah we're now talking about it with a brand name on no by the way so whatever this new brand is that could be a name brand name on no but beyond that um I do want to ask what was it like going against your boards so they told you to do one thing but you're got as a founder said to do otherwise I mean it was horrific um luckily I have an amazing our chairman of our board is this amazing guy called John Higgity um who started bbh um and he really had my back and so that was brilliant um but yeah I mean at the time we didn't know I did that you know somehow hasn't gotten in touch we just I just had to work out what we were gonna do um so yeah I mean it's complete sleepless nights and you know mild panics and you know transparency with the team but also just will I actually be able to do it um but we did find a way and I think if you if you really want something work really hard you can find a way um but yeah it was it was horrific at the time I can imagine even the um choice to be transparent with your team that is that's still a decision you need to make like what led you to make that decision we've always I've always been transparent so they've always known like how long we've got cash flow um yeah I don't give them all the gory details and board fights but yeah I think that's always been my mantra with the team it's not fair on them otherwise um and I think that security of always saying I'll always find your job has meant that everyone just gives it their crack uh oh their crack a crack but yeah I mean that's that's I've never wanted to be one of those founders where decisions are made in a vacuum and you'll just dictate to your team actually the team helps shape everything we do so I'm I'm probably overly transparent if I'm sure honest Claude I'm sure sometimes they're like please don't tell me that but yeah I think it's really important because then they can be collaborative in the solution yeah right and actually sorry one of the things that happened off the actual we people did take a pay cut because they knew what was happening right so um the founding team took the biggest pay cut um seniors took the next biggest mid-levels next and we didn't cut any of the pay of the juniors right so we basically all came together to made that happen and then when we got through it everyone got back to their original pay but we also gave them a 10% pay rise as well that's amazing so but you know that was them all coming together my actually head of back engineering offered to cut his entire salary I was like no way and you're amazing I'm not doing that to you but um but yeah that was it was all of us grinding it through together yeah I just want to take a minute just to let you know about an amazing book that I've read this year my friend Kenny methadone has written a book called that pecking boy it's a autobiography about his life and his journey up until this point and I can say out of doubt it's the best book I've read in 2023 check it out I hope you enjoy but also let me know what you think about it I'm hearing three themes coming up in terms of how you make decisions um I'm hearing be guarded by your values trust your gut and be collaborative with it um actually a fourth is also do do use data um but don't make don't let data be the deciding factor and I think the other one actually when I was sort of thinking about it was actually sometimes you just have to make a decision like I think when I was starting out I would sort of sit in limbo land like am I going to make the wrong decision am I going to make the right but actually being in that limbo land is really bad right because you're not doing one way or the other yeah so I've just got better at making a decision as quickly as possible so everyone knows where we're going and I think more importantly especially when you have a team making sure everyone is aligned behind that decision because the worst thing that can happen is if you've made a decision but one team's going off in a different direction and you're going off in this direction you don't know which if it's right or wrong yeah so you're always going to make the wrong decisions I've made so many wrong decisions but the important thing is we make the decision we're aligned behind it we test it validate it and we quickly realize it's the wrong decision and we can change that decision and move somewhere else but if you're not if you're in limbo land or people are going off in directions you just don't know what's right what's wrong yeah um but if you're working together you can go okay actually that wasn't all right so let's do that instead so how do you get people to align behind the decision even when you don't know if it's the right one so I think it's transparency again collaboration again don't like make a decision and just tell them that's a decision it's like yeah get people involved so we do we use something called the unkillable process okay it's based on objectives and key results which are a bit like KPIs but the problem with KPIs is their performance you have to hit them when you're scaling a business you don't know if they're realistic or not so okay ours are aspirational so it's like you know you shoot for the moon you land in the stars type situation but you're not accountable for them and the unkillable process is basically where you have core and explore okay ours so the core ones you can bet your house on and the explore ones are more like I'm not sure if this is the right decision but let's test it and go and sorry back to your original question the reason that's so important for the team is they have a kind of a model to work around so they know why the explorer okay ours are the ones we're like we're probably wrong but we're gonna test it and the core ones are like this is what we have to definitely focus on just for clarity because we you did use both terms so okay ours are objectives and key results objectives and key results and then we split them into explore ones where these are things where we might be right we might be wrong and then core ones which are we've validated them let's focus on them and that's a principle that was made popular by google is that right okay ours yeah where unkillable was whatever all the start up started adopting because they realized even with okay ours sometimes you're just testing and iterating so much yeah um okay ours can be set for too long so you're like you're trying to achieve a goal but you don't know how to get to that goal so the unkillable model kind of balances the two it's awesome do you happen to know where people can learn more about the unkillable model oh my gosh do you know i don't think it's online so what i'm gonna do claude i'm gonna give it to you i've got a whole slide deck on it and anyone who contacts you you can get in contact with so you know what that was awesome thank you another decision that you've made and i guess well we've gone in separate directions is around funding so you started off with an investment right from the beginning of your business um what made you go for that decision so yeah i mean i seed funded the business originally from my exit in australia but yeah we've been through three rounds of investment um why because tech is very expensive um and engineers are very expensive so and it was kind of the thing to do back then you know this is eight years ago i was like yeah i've got an app i'm gonna raise some investment and i did and then you forget that actually when you raise investment you're giving up a part of your company right you are no longer the boss you are accountable to shareholders they own a percentage of business it's a completely different business so i think i somewhat sort of naively went in there um somewhat from necessity because i don't have an engineering background so i needed to build tech that i couldn't afford to build and the money i made from australia wasn't enough to scale that through yeah however the problem with raising money is i also spent stuff that i should never have spent like we spent loads on instagram ads and facebook ads what a disaster anyone listening like get this is one thing you definitely need to look look at your data for so we spent loads on instagram loads of people are signing up to the dots are like this is amazing yeah about six months later we were like are those people still on the dots and no they just churned and we suddenly realized that was a complete waste of investment so that was one where the data did tell us the right thing or did was should have guided us so yeah i think the problem with money as well is you like suddenly have this money and also you have investors like grow grow grow and we almost grow too quickly you know we're a million members now but that's great but at the same time i actually tell all our partners grow slower so you learn more about your community and you can help them or we almost scaled too quick that it was a bit discombobulated so that was now i definitely get that and i think that's part of the reason why i like all the things you said is part of the reason why i've chose to do the opposite um i will raise investment at some point but actually advice that once again you gave me if you don't you might not remember it is get product market fit and then add investment to grow so don't use investment money to try and find out what your real product is meant to be and that's exactly what yeah we did and that's why meta and instagram just didn't work because the product wasn't there yet and so product market fit should have been everything yeah but also if you can do it without investment if someone can do it without investment and i would like that's an amazing way to go as well because yeah as i said it's a raising investment is a bit like going into a relationship but without the benefit of makeup so it's basically stuck with them forever at least it's not meant to include that oh yeah there's some really bad investors out there luckily they're not on my gap day but but yes but yeah it's uh it's you know you are you can't get rid of the mental you get rid of your business yeah essentially and that's it yeah it's a root that you really need to think very carefully about there's an incident that happened a few years ago where actually do you know what i'm referring to with the uh the equipment process do you can you tell us a little bit about that story yeah so um i mean we obviously with the dots we were working with all these companies that were using the dots to hire and one of the things they could do on the platform was search for profiles um and look for profiles and there was a huge amount of research that was coming out around bias and that people make decisions on looking at like if you're doing a search say for videographers and you get a list of videographers people make a snap to judgment in like 0.01 second if they should put them into their shortened list or not yeah at the same time there's lots of research that was also coming out that say someone called adam was four times more likely to hit a short list than someone called Muhammad and so um on the dots we launched like a bias free browsing toggle that our partners could use that basically hid anything where you could make snap decisions so profile picture educational background companies you've worked at because that's the other thing like it's much easier as a junior to get into a really famous company if you're more affluent that sort of thing so yeah we removed all that um and then we got a really big backlash on twitter um and it was probably probably the worst 24 hours of my 24 hours of my life oh I actually that sounds really dramatic but it probably was 24 hours of my career yeah that's stuff that happens um and I can understand why it happened like I have a hidden disability but I don't know what it's like to be hidden because of something someone can see um and in hindsight it was a decision that we made with the right intentions but we should have done more consultation yeah and it was just one of those things that I learned a lot about that process I'm very grateful for very dear friends like yourself who helped mentor me through that process um and it was yeah it was you know we all I've always gone into this morning to build like up our algorithm is based on positivity and kindness the kind of the community are the higher they come off and I always wanted to build a positive environment not a negative and so that was the one time where I let myself down but also I just it was just one of those things where I've just it was just horrific in the eye of the storm um and so you learn I guess you learn from mistakes and I mean the interesting bit with it is yeah you just I have this little sticky on my computer for mistakes to never repeat and one of them is just more consultation on some features can't do that on everything though and that's the challenge especially as a small business it's quite hard as you're scaling you're gonna make mistakes we all make mistakes I guess how do you find that balance when yeah when to go down this whole consultation process versus we just need to get something up and running um well we have a beta club now which are amazing so that's like a community that we give early releases to um but we have actually all the other communities we have we have like either what we call founding member groups or committees and so we release everything early to them and I think when it comes to and then there's certain things where we're like you know this is something that we need to be more conscious of and build a huge bigger sort of um more experts around the decision but I think what's lovely around making it also very collaborative with our community is they they pick stuff up really quickly but also I love my community because they they we get the loveliest complaint emails that's like I love the dots but I think people who use us they know that our intentions are good we're not always going to get it right and so um but yeah we love we love feedback you can't grow unless you're getting feedback from the community on what's working and what isn't I think that's another principle that you've just pointed out so yeah this idea of um consultation with the people you're trying to serve and yeah feedback our one expression I stole from my sister is um I'm always now repeating the feedback as a gift um it's both a gift to the person receiving it but it's also a gift that you can give others so if you can build a community that feels it that way and sees it that way then yeah like it results in successful business as I find I love that because in our training deck so for all our partners that we on board we have like a training deck for the app um for the apps and one of them is feedback as a gift direct messages on our product is where the magic happened if you get the feedback that's the perfect way to kind of evolve and iterate what you're doing so that's like um just we did touch on it a little bit earlier but do you want to go into a little bit more informational detail on it so you have this new brand unknown situation you have Woody's amazing partners you've told us about days can you tell us about any others already top secret yeah so Apple was one I'm terrifying um so we're 180 the strands um networking platform so for anyone who doesn't know 180 it's the new kind of creative hub that's on the strand near Somerset house so it's very kind of fashion focused freeze which is their freeze art fair um that's the that's the most interesting one for me in the fact that it's the first one that's social not professional so that is more talking about our exhibitions and it's not about getting work um and yeah we've got a brand called a Dorian which is like a founders club so we're doing more and more founders ones and business ones so yeah it's just kind of really magic seeing and we ual's alumni platform for as well so but for their founders and freelancers and my favorite recent one is the brit school so we're looking after the brit school which is oh my god they're so driven it's like the last year final year brit school kids and they're alum as well so amazing and also just for clarity what is the platform or that you're providing for them on that white label so it's basically a white label app so it's um it's our app our app that we have in the app store but it's white labeled for these different communities it's their color palette their branding their community so if you tried to get into the 180 so if you downloaded 180 studios tried to get into the app um it uh basically recognizes are you a tenant in the building are you not so you have to be a tenant in the building to join it if you are a tenant you can join that space and then it's essentially a space so the only thing that doesn't exist on any of our white label apps is jobs it's all around um events connecting around events direct messaging connecting with individuals in that space and why i'm so excited about the days club app which is coming out now is the first one that's open to everyone so um days to have this amazing um days club which is all about opportunities for the industry and so that's the first one that anyone can download and join and that's all days club branding days club opportunities day club community so that's going to be great and although you haven't said it yet and you probably wouldn't because of uh and they you're humble in that regard but it sounds like this is a great financial opportunity for you as well yeah i mean it is to be completely transparent i mean it's you know it's the majority of our revenue now um and if i'm honest again recruitment was probably the worst business model ever um why because um one as i said jobs people don't really get work through jobs so i was making money from people posting jobs but the majority of my community were getting jobs from meeting each other so it was a bit of a weird circle secondly um i just hated how the companies never got back to people but i was selling to companies because we had to make money the other thing is that as soon as something happens like covid or an economic downturn yeah all the money disappears so we might have got through covid maybe but then jobs are going down again now we wouldn't have survived now so um this is way more sustainable because it's a long term subscription so thank god because we couldn't have gone through another downturn and i think the other thing is recruiters just move all the time so it's not like our products don't still have jobs on but they're all people posting those now is someone doing a call out and saying can you recommend a videographer so you're actually talking to a human you're not talking to a vacuous job with a non-human behind it and an HR person that's never going to get back to you so i way prefer it that way i'd rather clod post i'm hiring than you know this weird brand never getting back to you and doing it through a recruiter or a talent manager yeah well massive congratulations on that you worked hard you massively deserve it so i'm kind of floak as well found a serendipity it is but the reality is one that i've kind of learned in business or life is when you don't quit sooner or later you end up with the right answer so and you hang in there you went you went through covid you didn't drop your team so as much as it's serendipity and a bit of luck which we all need to be successful like you did the hard part or sticking by your values and like believing in your your team and your objective yeah and you're you're right i mean like it's it's about not giving up um and i really believe it's about being nice but the actually the interesting bit with the serhouse partnership is the guy who mentioned us in a meeting with nick jones who's the founder yeah he used to work at vice and when he left vice he came to me for advice advice when he left vice he came to me for advice on his next career move and he was interested in joining tech so i took him to a couple of tech networking events he decided he didn't want to join i think he'd met too many bitcoin founders was like this is way too scary for me um but he ended up at um the vinyl factory which is linked to serhouse and he mentioned us in that meeting and so sorry the reason i mentioned that is yeah it's sort of like not giving up but also it's amazing how many times i've basically helped someone out not for any reason and then like five seven years time they're helping me out and that's like the power of a network you know just be a nice person it always comes back around um when you need it without a doubt you have been so intentional uh in terms of not necessarily growing your network because are this person useful that person's useful but just giving and sharing and i love how what you've just said is a perfect example of when you do treat relationships like that it does eventually come back to you in one way or another there's this amazing kind of piece of research that was talking about people who give and people who take and they were saying that actually the most successful people are the ones that give um and also the most unsuccessful people are the ones that give but we're never the medium ones and um i guess there's layers of giving right yeah there's a giving that is positive and constructive and then you know we've all been in relationships where we're giving and we're not going back at all um but you know i think that whole like i've just i think maybe it's from when i was young i had to have so much help i'm always willing to help others if i can and so it's always just come back around but i just that's just be a nice person it's just the it's the easiest networking kind of trip ever just be kind be nice help people if you can help them i mean it's also a magic feeling where you're like i know that person i can connect you i guess that's why i built a networking platform no i've never actually put two and two together because i do believe in giving etc and i've always said i was because i've all feel like i've had so much given to me but i didn't realize until you just said it that i had so much i had to depend on so many people throughout my life because of my dyslexia so i don't know about you but the first part of my life i was so it was so like debilitating um i couldn't really do anything um in terms of like i couldn't read this by myself i couldn't like write that etc i couldn't struggle with emails so i had to depend on people around me um because i've had so many people that were willing to be so patient with me and put into me like at this point i feel like i've got so much that i want to give back because of that so yeah i mean i'm the same i mean i couldn't read till i was 11 and you you know what it's like when you're at school and they're all like oh that's too stupid my mom amazing was not having any of it but um yeah you just you learn very young that actually you have to rely on other people yeah um but then you can help other people too and you that kind of it's magical right because it means then everyone's focusing on their strengths instead of doing everything and yeah collaboration just grows the pie for everyone everyone's got to stop trying to eat each other's pie let's all just grow the pie together there's enough there's a client which if we work together would be this massive pie that we could all work together um and i think that's sort of the key but yeah we i guess we have a massive advantage that we learned that that empathy of like what is it like when you're really struggling and you need that help um because yeah i like you like my team is amazing um i a hundred like i look like i do all these amazing things and yes i do but more people don't see is like just how much i'm being supported but i guess to begin to wrap things up i do this want to say thank you pit for for being here today but also thank you for all that you have invested into multiple communities over the years um like without a doubt dream nation like yeah your contribution to that whether that was taking the time to be to be at an event speak for us or to open doors for us or just even be giving me advice or encouragement has meant a lot and with that it's part of why i'm now able to bring this back to the world and hopefully make a huge difference and and there's so many other people that have nothing but amazing things to say about what you what you've done and who you are so on behalf of everybody thank you oh bless you but same same to you claude like everything you've done is unbelievable so maybe it's dyslexic which we're not very good at taking compliments so that was my final question before you pit if i could have anybody else in this podcast who would you recommend it would be natasha chawanda and she was the founder of bow and arrow um it's an agency it was 20 people when they sold it to excenture she scaled it to 200 people and she's literally the badass female boss with the biggest heart and she has just um now she's built that business and sold it she is now focusing on her next venture which is having a baby while she focuses on her next thing and she would be an incredible woman to talk to because i have no idea what it would be like to sell to something like excenture that's huge that's so huge that's amazing that wouldn't note her down but everyone's again thank you so much thank you for tuning in to today's episode if you'd like more information on dyslexia and how the bda can support you please visit bda dyslexia.org.uk we release new episodes every sunday so make sure that you subscribe and follow us so that you never miss out if you'd like some more inspiration why you wait for the next new episode then check out the recommendation above don't forget to follow us on social media and you can send us a question or a dilemma that you'd like us to answer on the podcast. This is Club Williams, you've been watching Behind the Dreams and we look forward to seeing you at the next Dream Nation event.