Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey.
Hey.
Joining me today is Anastasia Okoba. Thanks again for being here, Anastasia. So happy to dive into our chats today.
You have such a fascinating background.
You started in Aerospace, your PhD is in aerospace engineering. And you've gone on to found one of the world's leading companies dealing primarily with soil, but not just Regrow ag, but it's not just that you're doing things in the soil, space and sustainability, but it's how you're also using AI to deal with all the data that you're coming through. Somebody like me look at and be like, well, getting way too technical, My head hurts.
So let's talk about that a little bit. What was it originally when you started that that took you into aerospace engineering? Because that's very specific.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: First of all, it was great to be here with you and really appreciate us.
You're taking the time for us to have this chat together.
In terms of my background, I think I kind of generally reflected on my story as the desire to make an impact. And it wasn't clear to me what type of project would fit the mold of what I was looking for in terms of the mission as something that I would be inspired and motivated to dedicate my energy and thoughts around the clock to. So it felt like growing up and observing climate challenges. It was a problem that was under research, under resourced, under tended.
And I think it changed to significant extent since I was a young girl discovering all of those issues.
But I think that gave me a perspective on wanting to find a way to a globally impactful project and an interesting connection. There wasn't, oh, let's, you know, look at the earth from the sky. It's like, well, I, I like and get computers. I definitely want international connections with other universities and researchers and people who are thinking about it in the way that beyond Ukraine, where I grew up and those paths led me to apply to a few programs at universities. Some of them were focused on international relationships management. And I was thinking, oh well, that would be an interesting path to interact with more folks internationally and see how people look at this problem globally. And the advice that I got from my mother, we generally in our family have a lot of technical degrees and maybe it's typical for like the post Soviet mindset that when you have a technical degree, you then have much broader latitude of what you want to be doing with your career. And that was their advice that she gave me and that pushed me towards exploring a control systems degree in aerospace because that was a university that dealt with computers that were going to space or in orbit or flying. So there was a lot of perspective and fascinating research associated with it. But most importantly, that university was really promoting the interaction with other universities overseas.
And the exchange programs that I later on benefited from that package really appealed to me wanting to do something that technically prepares me to work with computers and feels like, you know, aerospace should be using some of the best computers or some of the more sophisticated systems. And so if I'm ready to use that, then I can look at it more more broadly in the next steps of my career. I found in two parallel branches, both pursuing the engineering acumen of aerospace around remote sensing. So what does it look like to observe the Earth from the orbit using satellite imagery? What can we infer, how does that look like from low altitude, high altitude drones and what information can we extract for decision making from that? And in parallel, the other branch that I've explored was working in startups. I always wanted to meet and work closely with founding teams to acquire the skills of doing different jobs that were focused on product, customer, go to market and seeing how that technology makes its way to be useful to someone and get market traction. I think it's those two paths they intersected to form what is now regrow. But I'm sure we can delve more into that space of time.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: So at what point in that process, in that journey, did I guess sort of that seedling of an idea for regrowth really kind of start to take shape for you?
[00:05:33] Speaker B: I've been looking for an idea around impact for, for quite some time and it's not easy for anyone who wants to start a company and wants it to be meaningful to them. I just want to extend my empathy and that it is very challenging that the complexity of the factors, the multi parameter research that one can be doing on their computer or in their head and in their heart, in terms of what is really resonating.
It's such a, such a complex thing and so one can be looking at, well, what can I do with my skills in areas of passion that appeal to me? So for me, that intersection to cut to the chase was that I had remote sensing skills in aerospace. That meant I could look at that imagery, write code around it, translate that information into some useful signals of change over time and scale that analysis. Because even early on as I was doing my PhD, the Nvidia GPUs came out. So we started using them, we started writing what's more akin to current AI algorithms rather than more classical statistical analysis. And that unlocked kind of the power of big data that more and more satellite imagery will, will bring. But that's what happened post. The genesis of regrow. The idea itself for me was the intersection of this remote sensing knowledge, as I mentioned, with the passion for natural world. I don't necessarily consider myself a farmer, an agriculturalist, like none of, none of those. I definitely had those awareness and I had that in the family again, more, more academically actually than just commercial scale farming. But I found that what can I do with those remote sensitive skills and with the understanding of touching the data that so few people in the world are touching right now? What can I uniquely bring that would be leveraging my skills and the passion that I have? And I found that out of the industries that aerospace helps, whether it's defense or firefighting, or supporting natural environment like agriculture, the latter appealed to me the most. And then I started looking at the intersection of the two and seeing what problems were there in agriculture that would be solved by bringing this awareness numerically and then turning this narrative on nature capital from something abstract to something pragmatic. What can be measured can be managed.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: So take us, walk us through the. What did the first couple of years of, once you'd formed, regrow as a, as a company and an entity like what, what was your first two years? What did that look like for you?
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Well, it was incredibly exciting because I think the stakes are low and high at the same time because if you're starting something new, you are incredibly invested in an idea, but it's also the best time to kill the idea. So the iteration on the kind of pointy bits of the go to market model, of the product itself, of the business model, that iteration is so fast and there's so much of it the first couple of years, especially the first two, I would say we're really focused on connecting with agronomists and fields and seeing farms and performing field trials and demonstrating that what can be otherwise taken a lot of manual time and effort and casting can be to a great extent achieved with intelligent analysis of satellite imagery and additional information that can be can be gathered and some input from the farmer, of course. So being out there in the field, showing the product to agronomists and their grower customers, working with them to make it better, and understanding how the business model with them in the center might work as opposed to, for example, after that initial business that I founded that was actually called Fluorosat, we've moved forward with the economic idea for the first four years and we built a lot of natural property around it, we commercialized the product around it, but then we discovered that actually intersecting it more directly with environmental factors has even a more broad reach to the entire agriculture and food value chain. And that's where we have met our peers at a different company, Dagon, and truly formed what Regrow is now. So I look at this journey as two things to date.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fantastic. What I love is I've spoken to a lot of founders and most of them are in offices, you know, and are all living in ideas. So you had the idea, but then you also had boots on the ground of actually being out and meeting with the people who are actually going to be using the software and the technology, which is, you know, you see a lot of companies that don't do that. They just think my idea is good and they build it and then they try to figure out how nobody wanted it. And you, you, you had the idea. And so actually being on the farms and working with the farmers, how, how much did that impact how you developed your company as it came along?
[00:11:09] Speaker B: I think it had a very dramatic impact. I think if someone truly values their time, then they would, I guess there's also ego management involved. Right, because one needs to be prepared to be wrong.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: No, surely there's no ego involved.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: One needs to be prepared to be folded their wrong many, many times as they're creating something new and, and learn how to do it with maybe imperfect input from, from others and continue to carry that idea forward. But if you truly value your time, you would want to validate your idea as soon as possible with the representative sample of say 30 potential customers that truly look as similar to one another as possible so that you know you're doing something that truly matters. I think building a productive doesn't hurt, but investing beyond that without the feedback from the potential customer is quite time and resource consuming and frankly dangerous.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Yeah, so was. So one of the things that's on your website about the leadership is 43% of your entire employee base is identifies as female, 56% of your leadership team is female. Was that an intentional vision you had when you set out or is that something that you've cultivated as you've gone along? Because especially in the tech space, that's, you know, according to like a normal person like me, that's not in the tech space. That, that seems pretty unusual. It seems a lot of the tech space is kind of bro heavy and you guys are clearly not the sustainability business now.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: So I think it's easier to attract female talent to the sustainability Business because of and not just female like all the diverse groups of, of talent really because it's a meaningful venture.
I do remember that in early days of the business we did sign up to support multiple female forward pledges organizations like Locally where we were founded in Australia and more generally as those organizations scaled. And so we were striving towards this goal. Whether I was confident we would achieve it. It all frankly depended on size because I think it's possible to attract a female talent to a business that's larger. It's much harder to even imagine the type of experts and specialists that work at Regrow now joining it in the first couple of years because the scale wasn't quite there yet and the impact wasn't quite there and frankly those skills would be outsized for the baby company Baby started is still figuring out it Product market fit, go to market fit. I think once you have those for the scaling phase, you can attract the expertise and the talent from other industries where they've already developed that scaling and tech expertise. But now they want to apply it to a meaningful mission because that's what they're being called for at their stage of their career.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Sure. So what have you done to kind of uplevel your own skill sets as a CEO? Because you obviously have a very heavy academic background and it doesn't seem like academia really is preparing people for the sort of the day to day, hands on, you know, demands that a CEO is going to need. So how have you addressed that with yourself? Like you said before, part of the reason you were doing the company was you're balancing the science but with the, with the mission and the impact. So how have you, how have you embraced being the CEO of this company? Especially, you know, 2023 was an amazing year for you around the Inc. 5000, fastest growing, one of the top 100 most impactful companies. You're getting a lot of press. So how, how have you, how have you juggled those two sides of the scientist and the leader?
[00:15:27] Speaker B: I often reflect on the fact that change is the only constant and if we don't evolve in the way that our environment requires us to evolve, we'll end up like dinosaurs. We're not going to be here actually either in this business or in this industry or relevant in, in the ecosystem. So there have been multiple evolutions, a lot of soft skills evolutions.
The company, the team, the board have been, has been very supportive for me to acquire those skills and.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: Excuse me.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: No, you good?
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Yep, good.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: Okay, no worries.
The company and the board has been Very supportive for me to acquire those skills. I, I have a passion for growth.
I have to admit that, you know, I'm a better leader every day. So in those earlier days it was a lot harder and the challenges were different. I would say now it's very hard in a different way.
But I believe it's not so much looking at someone's academic background and their presence or absence of thereof. I do have a significant background in actually operating within businesses in small teams. And that's what I always wanted to optimize for and acquired. And I think it's the two together. It's no one scientifically, but problems are possible to solve to what degree of certainty. And then knowing how to go about creating the business with that, that's really the intersection of where my knowledge L. Because I wasn't pursuing academic knowledge for the sake of, of that. But I think at every stage of the company, for every company, it requires a specific skill set based on what the market trends are, based on the competitive landscape, based on the requests from the customers and the types of customers the company is working through. I think if anyone wants to lead the company, especially through a wide range of growth stages, that constant development, having an experienced operator mentor has been the recent addition to my leadership growth experience. It's been absolutely incredible to have her on board as an independent director and as a coach to us as a team and to me personally, using professional coaches over the years for the team and for myself, reading, reflecting, taking feedback from the team and having hope and belief that you can get it right because that's why you set out on that down that journey. But it's been a. Been a significant journey in that real regard. And I'm very happy that you asked because it's not as easy or as automatic and I don't think anyone's born to do what they want to do from start to finish. You may be born to start it, but you have to acquire a lot of skills to finish that successfully.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. I think Richard Branson is a good example of, of that. Right. He's really good at starting stuff. He's really good at identifying opportunities. But I think he's gone on record multiple times to say he's not great at running the day to day, which is one of the first things he started doing was he realized early, like bring in a CEO or CEO to do that for him. So, so what is the mission of regrow now? Like, because I, again, I was looking at your website. You're. You're in the Soil, you're in the, in agriculture, you're in livestock. Was I did I see that you were in biofeed or in biotech? A little bit, yeah.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Biofuels.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah, biofuels, biofuels. So was that all just a natural outgrowth of the original sort of concept that you did? And then also let's talk a little bit about, you know, what is the big mission of regrow for people that don't know, you don't know regrow. Like what is it you're doing and what is you're trying to do.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: UCRU's mission is to make agriculture resilient globally. Right now the issue between conventional agriculture and the environment is the vicious cycle that they're both in. So agriculture contributes to the greenhouse gases that make climate worse. In a meaningful effect, depending on the country or the global metrics, you contribute from 11 to 26% of all emissions in the world to agriculture. So those are staggering numbers and you would expect probably the opposite because is the industry that's supposed to nurture the planet and supposed to conserve and preserve resources. But unfortunately, given the scale to which humanity has grown, we are pushing against planetary boundaries with of course the fossil fuel industry first and foremost. But agriculture is one of those hard to abate sectors. So it's considered to be such. Um, and the alternative to this conventional method of farming of high tillage monocropping, not a lot of diversification is to actually go back to methods of farming that are currently practiced of course in a lot of indigenous communities and a lot of smallholder rural communities, but also were native to a lot of agricultural lands from the days gone gone by, especially before the industry industrial revolution. So now with the new technology we can go back to those days and plant without tilling the soil, so to speak. Like the no till farming methodology, we can learn to use cover crops in a way that protects topsoil and diversify crop rotation and creates mark create markets for those diverse products that we are producing. So that shift from a conventional agriculture to the more regenerative agriculture would make agriculture a lot more resilient to climate stress, whether it's floods, droughts, hail, sustained much higher temperatures than are conducive to production and growth of a lot of crops. We're headed by all scientific accounts into a very dangerous territory from the climate change perspective. And we must adapt agriculture as much as possible. And so supporting those methods of farming by supporting the brands that invest in more regenerative agriculture, that ultimately yield resilience is what of course I'M here to tell you more about that we're promoting with, with Regrow and that we're helping the industry to evolve.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: It's interesting that we call it sort of the, you know, the, the way of doing business with agriculture now. And what you're proposing is how agriculture used to be and that was just the common sense way of doing it. Right. It's like the industrial complex took it over and got rid of all the common sense aspects of it because it was growth at all costs. Which again. Right, Humanities has, has grown a bit in the 50 last 50 years. So obviously we're trying to meet those demands. But so it's nice to see that we're starting to bring the common sense back into it and eventually maybe we'll reach that balance between everything. So you'd mentioned earlier about one of the groundbreaking things that Regrow has done is that you're using data, but obviously with satellites now to the extent that we've got more data than ever before, you need a way to manage that data. And what you were doing was creating your own algorithms, which essentially now has become versions of AI. So how are you using your AI tools and AI in general to be able to help you in what you're trying to accomplish? And how does that sort of dictate what you're doing?
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Yeah, let's think about just in a simple model how Regrow works with companies and agriculture value chains and with farmers. So let's look at this kind of triangle between regrouping the third party and the companies that buy from the farmer or selling foods to the farmer, interact with the farmer and the farmer themselves. The farmer is very incentivized internally. They want to pass the land to the next generation. They want the industrial complex to actually value soil health more. They want to not just be rewarded for productivity and have to cut into their own margin. They want to transition to this more regenerative method because this means healthier land passed on to the next generation. There's usually nothing more farmland family wants than doing that. So with that motivation, the farmer needs additional incentive to cover the risk of this transition. Because introducing any new practices means that you need to understand what works in your area, what works with your crop rotation? Is there someone who going to help you transition or take off of the farm, purchase some of the additional products that will be included into a more diverse rotation or, or cover crops that will be produced. So a lot of questions there need to be answered. So the way to expose the opportunities in this space is by bringing Data at large scale. So companies can start looking at the supply sheds where they source using regrow data and seeing what is the current environmental footprint of that commodity, what is the production trend of that commodity, is it very sensitive to climate stressors over the last couple of years? Do we need more resilience to reduce the risk of production? And they can prioritize their investment based on the global footprint that they have. Those investments can then go to the farmer by using the other regrow system that is farmer facing, where the farmer can choose to opt in into a series of different regenerative practices that are scientifically demonstrably leading to positive outcomes in areas like their farm. And they can be rewarded for it financially. There's multiple ways that companies choose to compensate, to offer different compensation strategies to the producers that they work with. But that is kind of the system and how it operates. So the way that AI is fused into it is that of course we don't have any ability, not just regrow, no one on the planet can talk to every single farmer, but all of the global companies. The more corporate social responsibility around climate change is highlighting to them the risk that is embedded with on farm production. A lot of the businesses need this information, they don't otherwise have it. So you have this dilemma where you have a data or space in some way with on farm data and data rich space with the satellite imagery. And so if you could marry the tool using AI by creating models that associate satellite imagery and tell you what practices the farm has done over the last couple of years, then you can use that to simulate the impacts of those practices on the environment, on the soil condition, on the health of the waters locally and the emissions in the air. Together those can answer questions rose to the farmer. How am I doing? How can I do better? What happens if I adopt XYZ plan practice? What if I choose to cover crop? What if I choose to diversify my rotation? And to a business that sources from hundreds of millions of acres globally, they can see this information and supply shed levels. The farmer is protected. Their personal data is never revealed because there's a selection of farmers. We don't have every single one of course, but the map made by AI is for every single field. So the company can see it, the farmer can leverage it to supplement its records, to validate its records and to enroll in such programs and to provide more reporting and verification. So the two party transaction can actually take place because there is a system in place to quantify that ecosystem service that the farmer is providing now to the planet and their buyers.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Wow. So what, what are, what are a couple of your favorite success stories of this model in place of, of combining these two and what was the end sort of result of that?
[00:28:11] Speaker B: There's a number of scaled programs that we work with. I would mention a few. So for example General Mills has regenerative agriculture and commitment to sell healthy soil as front and center of their work as a company and they monitor all of their supply sheds.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: My co host, oh she's like hey, you started without me. Sorry about that.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Well there is, there's General Mills products I think for pets too if I'm not mistaken. As well as Nestle and Mars, all fantastic companies.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: She came in, she's like hey, there's some infer in there. It's going to make my skin better.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Some, some yummy food on offer and it also can be regenerative. That's fantastic. Actually pet food is a hu area for, for this because it's largely commodity agriculture.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Well, let's talk about that next. Finish your statement before my co host so rudely interrupted us.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: Yeah, so a couple of success stories that I can think of. One for example with Kellanova working with rice farmers in Louisiana area that supply rice for Rice Krispies and Special Case and then having that initiative showcased at Walmart has been really one of the first example is globally when regenerative practice from on farm has reached all the way to the shelf and has been exposed to consumers and is driving the change is a five year program. So that's very exciting and it's a relatively straightforward supply chain to explain it on on the other end of the spectrum there's two large companies that I think are doing phenomenal work in this space. On one hand for example General Mills that has very significant commitment to regenerative agriculture and soil health as part of their overall sustainability commitments. And they monitor all of the supply sheds where they source and understand the risk and resilience of those supply sheds and co invest with their partners in projects locally. A company that does it on a very large scale is one of the largest agricultural companies in the world, Cargill. Their regenerative agriculture program in the US alone this year has hit over 1 million acres and has supported thousands of farmers to transition to regenerative which then in turn supply this grain to Cargill which then passes it on to a lot of the food brands that you see on on shelf whether in cereal aisle, in the pet food aisle and in other food aisles.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Wow. So let's just to give people the, the magnitude of the scale. Do you happen to know like the amount of agricultural acreage that's available just in North America?
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Yes, it's 320 million acres if I'm not mistaken.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Yeah. As I think when we say a million acres, like oh my gosh, that's so, so huge. And you like that's just not, it's not even one half.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: It's getting started.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: Well that program start and the fact we're going. But just so people realize, I don't think most people realize that we've got, you know, 300 million acres of agriculture just in the United States. And so and to give you a.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: Complimentary example, Travis R. Monitors 1.4 billion acres globally. So we monitor a very large amount of acres of the fields all, every single field in the US In Canada, in lots of parts of Europe, Brazil, Australia. Because we want to expose the information. What are the current practices, what amount of risk versus resilience they're currently showing and what amount of investment is required to change those. So you're exactly right. Like that awareness then leads to investment into practice programs that continue to scale year on year.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: So does, does the, the technology you've developed, is it, does it get as granular as showing? Like you know, when you're doing crop rotations? Like what crop rotations and what sequence and where, like which is best? And I mean, has there been scenarios where you've gone into an area and they're like, oh man, like you know, this million acres over here, they're, they're growing this crop, but they really should be growing this crop because it would be better. Is that kind of how granular you're.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: Exactly. You can answer any of those questions. Yes. Usually you don't wholesale change the production. That has happened in the Soviet Ukraine. I can tell you that that was a, a president who came to the US Saw corn and then Ukraine started going core non sale. But Ukraine has very rich soil, so that was luckily possible. But usually you don't like flip a switch unless you have that type of planning economy. In this market economy that we live in, you need a balance of market demand and supply. And so it's a gradual shift and there's more and more demand factors and signals for regenerative agriculture or for the commodities that are being produced with low emissions through regenerative agriculture to get more compensated on an offtake side by the, by the buyer. But you can answer any of those questions of like what should we be growing? Should we be making this particular snack out of this flower or this flower? What will be more climate resilient going forward? What is a rotation that's lacking here? Would it help? Because luckily people are already doing the right thing. You just need to scale those data points and demonstrate them like this. What I absolutely love about what we do at Regrow and about this industry is that it's knowable because humanity already has had done what's right. And so figuring out what's right in different places is not always inventing something new. It's understanding what combination of the old can create the future that we want to see.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: So regrows eight years old. What's the big ambition you have for this 12 months ahead? And what's the five, five year ambition?
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Yes, the ambition is to continue to partner with the leading brands in the market and continue to help them transition their supply chains to resilience. And we want to make a meaningful dent in the acres that are transitioned, just like you've highlighted. Currently we have commitments to around 7 and a half million acres across all of the programs that we're involved in. But again, it's a drop in the bucket versus 1.4 billion that we're monitoring. So how much can we advance and how willing the market would be this year to invest in this work and scale it? That's where we're spending all of our energy and acceleration of market adoption and growing the adoption that we have.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: So if there's a somebody that's in agriculture, maybe there's a farmer that sees our interview here, they want to get involved. Like how do they get involved with what Regrow is doing?
[00:35:29] Speaker B: Yeah, so usually if someone is working for a company that procures food and beverage ingredients, they can directly reach out to RegroweGregro AG.
If they're a producer, they're a farmer, they could also do that. But usually we would connect them with a local program that's available to them that we're already running on the platform because we believe in farmer in forward programs that are incentivized. All of the programs that we're running are providing strong incentives to farmers and not convoluted like strong financial incentives. And because that's not coming off of our P and L, that's something like we produce technology and we get paid SaaS subscription fee for the farmer to get paid. We would connect them into the local program that they have and it might be that they already are working with an off taker that has such a regenerative program or an ag input provider and they should just ask.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: I love it. You said something earlier. This will be our last question one on there. But you were saying that the, the founder route is, is. Is not necessarily an easy one and you have empathy for anyone who decides to be a founder. What are, what are the three biggest surprises that you've had in your founder journey?
[00:36:49] Speaker B: Oh gosh, Travis, we got to uncover some naivete I had when I was on this journey, that's for sure. I guess the first surprise to me, despite what everyone said, is that every business is really about the people. And I don't even mean about the team like it's all about the people. Every single aspect of it is about the people. Your, your customers, your investors and shareholders, your first team, your big team, like your entire company as a team, your even family and your friends that are with you to give you encouragement and support along the way. Think it's all about the relationships. And I think generally everything in the world is but business, especially the business that you're founding and starting, it's cultivating those, those relationships that are strong and resilient in their own right and stand to grow in the way that you wish or achieve other outcomes. Growth is what, what I am looking for personally and from the impact perspective.
There's been a lot of surprises in that in that category and a lot of them are positive, but some of them are just completely unexpected. I would say that's probably the biggest one and more nuanced because you have for three.
I'll give you two examples. One of my early startup mentors, Petra Andran, who used to run Sukati Innovations Accelerator in Sydney, Australia, is in a different role but still supporting the startup ecosystem. He told me to do what needs to be done and it seems like such a simple advice, but in early stages of the business that really is all that matters. If that company's hardware was sent to this customer but it not working, it's your problem as an entrepreneur to go and get it to work and to go out there and to fix it or whatever is the issue that they're having, whether it's with payment, with the software, with the adoption, whatever it is, you should consider yourself the first line of defense. And I absolutely loved that principle because sometimes when we start companies we look at all these stories that are being told to us and we think, oh, all these people just have great ideas and someone else goes and executes them. No, I think the people who actually achieve success execute a lot of their ideas through of course teams, but they really drive the execution and are willing to roll up the sleeves and do whatever it takes. And that's why they succeed because they actually have lived experience of solving that problem, not just offer guidance from an intellectual perspective. Anything that advice, do what needs to be done has really carried me through the years.
[00:39:50] Speaker A: You know, I heard a very successful entrepreneur one time, somebody asked him, there was a fireside and there's a Q and A after he was worth multiple billions of dollars. And so somebody was asking him and I don't remember the exact question, but it was around work life balance. And he talked about the fact that he's like, you just need to accept the fact that you're not going to have balance. You're never going to have an ultimate balance in your life. He's, especially if you're a founder, he's like in the, especially in the beginning age, you know, there's, there's the cliches about working really long hours in the founding space because in the first couple of years it is that way. And he said, but at the same time, right, there'll be a time where a lot of people, they're very running very successful businesses, they'll have a family where necessarily they'll start spending more time with family and they won't be spending as much time on the business. Right. So now they're not in balance with, with that. But what that comes, where I'm going with that is that ties in basically he was saying what you were, your, your mentor was saying you need to do what needs to be done, you know, right. And you know, just, and there's, there's nothing, there's no right or wrong answer with that. It's just like this is what needs to be done. Just go and do it. And I think that's also about being sort of transparent and authentic in your business as well. Right. Just owning up and accepting accountability for the things you're doing.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: So absolutely. And being adaptable to change. Right. Because we can kind of stretch this analogy into what the market is dictating. You can have the best plan and the best execution and the best team and the best customers to support you. But if the market say it's not growing to the same extent that you wish to or planned for it to grow, you will have to adapt. Or if the market is growing, gain fasters more than you expected, you will have to adapt. And it possibly is even more difficult.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: You could be four years your founders journey and suddenly there's a world pandemic that shuts everything down. So suddenly you've got to adapt.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: That was exactly what happened. How did you know?
[00:41:45] Speaker A: I know. That's interesting. Well, Anastasia, thank you so much for your time. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate it.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.
