Jeffery: Welcome to Impact Investing, brought to you by the Supporters Fund from the city with 10 million trees. Toronto, Canada. I’m your host, Jeffrey JP Potvin. Let’s please welcome from the greenest city in Europe, Berlin, Germany. Katarina. Lori. Any sustainable leaders, program and coaching. Welcome, Katarina. It’s a pleasure having you join us today.

Caterina: Thank you so much. I was really looking forward to this, and especially to be the one that answers questions other than the way around, which is what I generally do.

Jeffery: I love it. Also very excited because we’re taking a completely different angle on how we’re going to drive out some of this information and around the great things that you’re doing in the ecosystem. So I’m excited to dive in and explore. But before we start, the way we like to learn more about you is we’d love to learn a bit about your background all the way from your uni days, research days, all the great things that you’ve done, and then one thing about you that nobody would know.

Caterina: Okay. I love the background question and whenever people ask me, what do I do? I always have the temptation of answers. Some of my South African friends would say, what do you mean what I do, I do live. And so to start, as you just said, is the best way possible to actually go all the way through. I mean, you know, I grew up in Italy, in the outdoor between mountains, seas, forests. And when I was in high school, I had a passion for, humanistic subjects. And so I went deep into philosophy. Literature. History. And then at some point, first turn around in my career, I was like, what is it that I really don’t know nothing about? Everything. Probably just as of today. But it turned out mathematics and economics was my next big thing. So that’s when I started studying that at the university, and I completely fell in love with the theoretical part of mathematics. That was the next big challenge. I think I needed to prove myself somehow with that new era, and I started to do research in the academia in that field, and I was just about to start my PhD in Berkeley. Big accomplishment of my life, where another turning point of my career came in. And I started to think, you know, I was working as a researcher for people that were at MIT and Stanford, and the level and the speed of their brain was just something else. And to keep up with that level was really, really hard job for me. I realized I was not really bringing value to the table. I was not having the impact that I expected. And so for how much I loved the image of myself as the small genius at Berkeley inventing new theorems, I was like, maybe that’s not my way. Let’s see. Right. It it was painful somehow to let go of that image of myself. That was a beautiful journey, as always. And I had one specific, pivotal conversation in that time, which was with the CEO of a health startup, and he himself dropped a PhD in physics in an Ivy League to become a social entrepreneur. And he was like, yeah, just say no to Berkeley and join my company and let’s build this startup. and that’s what I did in the following years and was a huge playground. And basically I spent years experimenting things that I would see in Silicon Valley companies, you know, a super small ecosystem. So we played around from operations to strategy to relationship with investors, building data infrastructures, developing in I.T interoperability. Everything was like, let’s just trial and error, trial and error and see what comes out. And that gave me the chance, I think, to really learn almost all I know about strategy as of today, because of the playfulness that was behind that and really the chance to take responsibility for things so early allowed me to, you know, being full agency about what I was doing. And then, Covid hit and with my main job, I also started on a side to be part of the core team, developing the early stages of the Covid tracing app. And also I ended up publishing a paper around the data for that, and it was a crazy experience. You remember those signs? Everything was in the in an emergency, like the speed at which people were going was just different. It was so stimulating, so inspiring, a lot of adrenaline and by the end of that period, I realized I loved early stage. I love when you’re really crafting the first elements of a company and you’re bringing together, you know, the tech, the resources, the stakeholders. In that case, also the government. I was exposed to work with incredible tech CEOs, and it was just something that gave me all these energy. And that’s where I transitioned into VC. I wanted to go more early stage with respect to the company that I was into, and I joined early stage VC investing across Europe. we were a traditional fund investing across all sectors, and my passion was absolutely impact investing. But I was also, you know, really trying to question what that really meant, especially in Europe, with respect to, for example, developing countries. I, I have a very mathematical background, obviously, and so I need to measure things. And I ended up going more toward the climate direction, because the scientific background allowed me to really measure the impact. And that’s how we landed in zero carbon, which is a very early stage fund investing in hard science companies with a strong decarbonization potential in Europe. And let’s say that was absolutely the cherry on top of my role as an investor, in my opinion, to the extent that I was working with incredibly valuable investors, with the incredible background in what they did before building the fund, I was launching it in Europe and it was, you know, just this big thing in working finally in climate space. But life always takes its own ways, in its own terms. And in the past years, I’ve been always working with entrepreneurs. Also outside of my investor role. And, you know, on the one hand, we were working on building strategy, relationships with investors, building a team, scaling the company. And the more I did that, the more I was realizing that the human factor component of resilience, their ability to see outside of schemes, was taking so much more space and was such a relevant element, was actually like one of the pivotal elements for success. And so that part of my job in that way of interacting with founders started to take over for as founders started to ask me, working with them from that perspective rather than from my investor role. And that kind of snowballed, and it was people introducing me to their co-founders, to their romantic partner, to other, to their own investors. And that just started to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, and allowed me to work with the incredible entrepreneurs that I’ve been working up until now and developed into the Sustainable Leaders program. So that’s a bit of the main picture.

Jeffery: Well, it’s a fantastic journey and there’s a lot to unpack. But before we do one thing about you that nobody would know.

Caterina: That’s an amazing question. I realize, you know, we owe so much, depend on others people’s feedback and validation that everyone knows that basically everything about me, because I want to be validated about that. And the more I thought about it, I think what I would when I remained with is that my secret alternative career is going to be. And I would puncture is as I have a passion. As for my job, you know, I bring together business experience with working on, mental development of founders. And the same is that parametric, you know, this big scientific knowledge of medicine together with understanding what that specific body needs and so that ability to listen and sync and customize the journey for someone specifically. And always ask the question, which is, you know, if I observe something or ideas in something, where does that come from? So I know nothing about medicine, but I have a hint that in my next life I could become a master of that area. Or at least I’d love that.

Jeffery: That’s pretty cool. I think over time, and it’s just even from the works that you’re doing, when you’re tying in a lot of energies and a lot of ways of shifting mindsets and using data to do that. I think if you’re looking at acupuncture or that style of, of medicine and other things that fill into those, voids, I guess it’s a lot of human connection and it’s figuring out how a connects to be. And then how do you alleviate the pain or alleviate the mind from thinking it has pain. And I think that’s what a lot of these alternative medicines do is, I think we look at them thinking that scientifically they’re supposed to do X and Y, but I think that they do x and y, but they tie in a lot of, mental, structure that we’re not really familiar with enough. And I think it gets kind of taken out of context and beaten up. And I think if you do explore that from an energies and, what you’re really trying to get out of it, I think there’s a lot more to it than we allow. And science isn’t exactly always prove everything because what it does, it know, it just says it can’t be right because we can’t prove it. So I’m not sure there’s always a it’s always valid, but who knows. We’ll see what happens. But it sounds like it’ll be pretty exciting.

Caterina: Absolutely. And you know, many entrepreneurs say in the end, physical pain and enduring that and knowing your body is a key element for resilience in building their own companies. And I couldn’t I couldn’t agree more.

Jeffery: I completely agree with that. And I’m going to kind of unpack a bit of the things that you shared, and we’ll jump more into some of the, broader, questions. But I think the one of the things that really stands out is that while you were working through, the educational side, you dolphin and did a lot of research and you mentioned that working with a lot of these people in Stanford, MIT, that their brains were processing at so fast speeds and that you were working with them to figure out kind of what was, I guess, what your outcome was that you were looking for and building that context. Can you share a little bit about how the research side helps you when you were working with early stage founders? Because a lot of the time, people solving problems and it sounds like the whole world to just figure out how they can solve problems and they probably be a lot more balanced, because it sounds like most people just have a craving to solve things. are all mystery sleuths, I guess, but what is the research side really benefited that journey that you’ve been on? Because contextually, you have to really break down so many elements in a story, in a program in how to help people. And it really comes down to how fast you can do something and what information you can have over everybody else. I don’t know if that’s a fair statement, but what are the things that you could take from that?

Caterina: Yeah, I love the question. I love it because it’s it’s actually pointing out at a layer that I didn’t really provide explicitly, but is that it’s a key component of my work, which is that of listening behind what the person in front of me is actually saying. That’s really the ability of, you know, understanding what like what fear, what reputation topic with which ambition, which limiting belief lies behind the the thing that someone is telling me. And that’s very similar to how economics, especially behavioral economics, work. So you have the mathematical equations. It is supposed to mimic, a behavior, a human behavior. And so you have this complicated theorem that say, you know, this is optimized and your utility function and hence happiness. And what happens if in your system you add another layer and you have to basically use mathematical functions to express very complicated human behaviors. And obviously it’s a it’s a big generalization. And the beauty of my work now is somehow doing that same job with the other way around. So listening to someone and people always bring you back to very outer world oriented topics. So they want to discuss about that conversation with the co-founder that, you know, small term in the term sheet with the investor or that discussion that they’ve had with their employees. And then you have to see what is the one system that regulates these relationships. So what is somehow the equation that you can use to imagine and point out what is really going on behind that? So what is the conversation? Is that a financial safety topic that they have over there? Is that a lack of self-confidence and a need of validation from the outer world is that they are questioning themselves, but they are not transparent about it with themselves. So understanding really, it’s a kind of, you know, generalizing the conversation. I always call it upgrading the conversation from the small like complexities and challenges of the outer world to what is really the concept behind that.

Jeffery: It sounds almost that if you’re diving into a conversation or working with anybody, that today the layers are way deeper than they have ever been on how to actually work with different personalities, that there’s so many more pieces that you need to take into consideration when having these conversations, and taking your background in the research and working with them. And because of the coaching you, you really are layering things so quickly in your own mind to say, you know, here’s the direction I’m going with this conversation. What are the backgrounds and the problems that they’re facing. But maybe they’re personally also having problems and that’s contributing what they’re trying to share with me. And how do I dig that out and how do I build more process into them? Because the formula says that these things are kind of the attributes that are going to be connected to this problem. So your mind must be going 100 miles an hour trying to patch through what they’re saying, what they’re really trying to say and what they haven’t said, and then aligning that up to some KPIs or some benefit that’s going to benefit them on that outcome.

Caterina: Yeah, that’s absolutely how it works. It seems way more complicated than it is. and there’s there’s two elements related to this. So the first one is exactly what you said. So that speed of mind. But you know, the person I’m working with who wants to become, who wants to have together with these the role, also a coaching role said, how can you understand what is the conversation behind the outer conversations, what is really lying underneath? And my answer was I can’t tell you like there is no real recipe, in my opinion, to get that feeling to get that. And once is the topic of understanding what the signs are. So why listening to a person, you observe that there is a misalignment in what they say. Maybe they mentioned parts of their story very quickly and you realize they are uncomfortable with that, or they, you know, put a lot of emphasis on something. And you see that is not just that specific matter, but that there must be more. And so that is a very intuition based, mindset which I have developed. I think just naturally, you know, the difference is exactly what you said when I was working with people that were at MIT, I could see that their brain was naturally doing that. It took me ages to keep up with them. That was not my zone of genius. Whereas right now it’s as if this comes out naturally in my work without a real thought behind it. And that’s what makes it something that can always improve and always improve over time. You know, because it’s not an it’s not a linear work, right? Study something, but is, you know, I, I follow the flow of what the conversation brings in. And whenever I see a sparkle, I bring it up. And then from there, doors open for the conversation. As you said, which is not only what that person is studying in that moment, but something else. And there was a second element I forgot about it.

Jeffery: So does that does that tie into. When you’re operating in a position where you’re always working in that high level capacity space and you switch environments, that because you’ve been doing this enough and long enough periods of time that you’re just operating always at that capacity. So when you start to talk to other people, you’re expecting that same outcome. So you’re almost having to notch yourself, to balance yourself down or to put yourself out of space. So it almost sounds like you’re going to spend more time being able to listen because you’ve already processed through 90% of what that person said in the first five seconds, and they haven’t even said it just because they’re slowly starting to work their way through. You’re already projecting where they’re going because your brain’s working at MIT speeds, and you’re now all ready facilitating this conversation without even it not it’s not even bothering you because you’ve been in that environment so for so long, and it’s allowed for you to almost, project further into the conversation and help them move quicker because you’re able to see where the pitfalls are going to be. Just because it’s such a fast. They’re conversation slow, but your mind’s working at that speed already, so you’re able to, maneuver them in the right direction. So if that’s the case, how do you help them when they’re pitching in front of investors and they’re pitching in front of other people, how do you help them drop all of their own issues? Family life, problems with friends, whatever it is, how do you get them to stop projecting what they’re going through in their life and then just project what’s going on in business? Because you just stated that when they are talking, a lot of that’s coming out and you have to read through all that. So is there a way that you can get through that mechanism without having them break down and cry in front of everybody or something?

Caterina: Yeah, that’s actually a good question. And, you know, the I think the reason why people are magnetized towards the way I work is because it brings together these two parallel worlds. So on the one hand, you have execution business being in the outer world. On the other hand, you have the inner world development and their evolution as, as leaders in terms of self conscious and self awareness. And so the ability to jump from one place to the other is exactly what we train on. So that’s what enables them to say, okay, now I have to focus only on this. I know that I cannot spend my entire life only focusing on execution without purpose, but at the same time, I have the ability to shut this down, shut my inner questions down, because I have to be on the execution side of things. And on the other hand, if the execution is calling me, but I have bigger, bigger knots internally or in terms of, you know, a founding team which is not working, or my own conversations around my reputation, this might prevent me from being operational. And so they jump in and out from this. And that’s one of the biggest qualities that we really physically train during the coaching, so that they can separate the two worlds and that they can continuously jump in and out. And one person example of of the tools that we very practically train on is also the ability to be in the conversation live. So someone was asking me the other day, I said, I know I can’t have a session in that time frame. I have the podcast coming. Someone was okay, did you prep? And I was like, no. And the reason why I don’t prep is because the value is exactly in the fact that I am live, that I can really listen to what you’re telling me. I have no idea where the conversation will actually go, but the best way for me to allow the conversation with you or a client to go in the real, the right direction is exactly that ability to listen and to react live. And that’s what I want to trade them on, trading them on, rather than, you know, preparing a pitch deck or a sales day that is kind of fixed over time, that ability to exactly understand what is going on in the environment around them, specifically with the investor, that’s really obviously the focal point. And get those signs and be able to provide a version of themselves that really interacts with what is in front of them, and that’s why they have to react live to things rather than being specifically prep.

Jeffery: It’s fascinating how you bring that up, because when you’re working with anybody in a pitch or working through something, you would think that they were heavily focused and that everything else wouldn’t matter because they’re in this. And if you take the podcast an example to your point, it’s being live. So we’re having a 1 to 1 conversation and we’re exploring in nanoseconds versus over a document and over a controlled environment. So we’re trying to make sure just like a pitch. And I will share this with the founder, is that when I’m when you’re pitching, you’re hearing yourself talk, which means that the next time you pitch, you’re going to try to make that better because you want to impress yourself by doing something more than what you are already doing. So you’re in the context of saying, I have to be better. That last pitch was great, but I’m going to tweak it and say, I did this or we did this. So now you keep changing it. So then all of a sudden, a year later, your business is doing a million different things versus what it was when you first started, because your mind keeps trying to improve on the pitch, because you don’t want to tell the same story over and over again. So in what you were just sharing there, it sounds like, one, you have to get the founder to be really there and being open to being there so that their mind can actually adapt to the environment and shift and change with the conversation and get some learning out of it versus going in fully in control, which is here’s the dialog. Here’s what I want to talk about. Here’s what I’m coming out with. And then leaving. They’re losing. They’re leaving 90% on the table. They’re losing so much based on what you’re sharing. Is that correct?

Caterina: Absolutely. It’s correct. And it goes together with something pretty disruptive, which is radical honesty. I mean, I think we touched this topic, and it was one of the elements that I really that I really couldn’t cope with while I was in VC, the lack of integrity in, in the industry itself and the somehow how everyone and I, I totally include myself and I tend to get into the trap of, you know, I have to oversell myself. And so the one founders that are able to create a narrative about their company and themselves, which is radically honest, they create such a trust worthy relationship with the investor because they allow the investor to see what the bottom level is. You know, when you oversell something, the investor will always investors do have incredible capacity. That’s that’s true. And so whenever a founder oversell something, the investor can see that there is something which doesn’t add up but doesn’t know how much they are overselling themselves, you know? So it’s all just assumptions. It’s this founder actually down here or is it here in the middle? Whereas the moment that you are in radical honesty and that you promise you commit to deliver something as a founder that you are sure you can deliver? I’m making it very clear what is outside of your sphere of influence, and what instead is something that you can achieve as an individual. Then that’s where you become your worth. You become trustworthy and so the investor is immediately magnetized towards you because you create an energy which is completely different from that of the founder who’s, you know, clinging to results that are outside of each sphere, his or her sphere of influence.

Jeffery: I like that, and I think if you take this radical honesty, it almost should be how do we change the story line? How do we get people to be more in the moment and sharing exactly what’s happening versus trying to always be? Maybe it’s overly drawn on this politically correct side, but having a conversation where it’s always upbeat and everything’s happy and, you know, business is amazing. We’re crushing it and killing it. Even though I’m $5 million in debt and I’m losing my house and blah, blah, blah, right? Like, I think that there’s, there is this, perceived value that I have to carry myself a certain way and I’m not allowed to be vulnerable. I’m not allowed to break things down. in an incorrect fashion. Everything is always in the proper way. This is how it’s been done. We’re doing this. It’s great. The company is awesome. but we don’t share the reality of it. And that realism, to your point, how do you get founders to start to see that? And did you find that happened a lot when you were working in the venture world? Because I feel that’s quite common. It’s, you know, your best friend of 50 years. Maybe then you feel that there’s trust. And I know you talk a lot about trust is there how do you bridge those gaps between the two, which is, I want to be honest. I want to see what’s going on. But I also don’t want you to think less of me, and I don’t, you know, so maybe I’m still trying to validate myself to you because you gave me money. So where is that? where’s the line that says, okay, we’ve invested, we’ve passed that chasm. Now what now? Can I be real with you? I’m losing money. The company’s failing, I need help. Where is that? And where do you start to become really real in this conversation?

Caterina: That’s. That’s a beautiful question. That also is exactly the reason why, at some point, it became clear to me that I had to separate my role as a coach and my role as an investor because, you know, everyone in the investment world says, you know, the moment that you do the first board meeting, after you’ve invested is where the honeymoon ends, because you see the real stuff going on. And that’s partially true, but it’s not really true up until the end. Because, you know, when I was an investor, I would have maybe been putting in with the fund the first round. And then there was still the chance that we put on money in the, seed or series or whatever it was the following round. The result of this is that the founder is still very limited in how much he or she wants to share with me, and that’s because of mis aligning incentive. So the role there as an investor is absolutely a cap size to the extent that, yeah, I would like to know what exactly is going on. But at the same time, you know, if I have asymmetric information as an investor, I might end up giving you more money, whereas I wouldn’t if I knew exactly what’s going on. And so the way I create the conversation with founder, with founders, the question that comes from them is always, but if I sell myself properly, so if I tell if I mean radical honesty, then, you know, the market is traveling here with everyone overextending themselves. I would look kind of lame if I am in radical honesty. And so the ability is to find outside. There are the investors that are willing to create that relationship and that once they are, they recognize a founder who holds the space for imperfection in their company and in their leadership to be there. They see you and they’re like, I want to put my money in you tomorrow. So those investors are the ones that know that in the end, it’s not your ability of overselling today, but it’s your resilience is your very large ability to hold space for everything to go wrong that will actually make you a good founder. And so those investors are outside there. It’s a matter of providing the sign that you’re that type of founder, that you’re not overselling yourself because the market does, but you are willing to hold space for imperfection in your leadership. So your authority is on another level. You know, you don’t need to, feel that you are perfect and that everyone is actually providing you thumbs up on everything you do because you do have authority inside it’s inner authority versus other authority.

Jeffery: So does that tie into being vulnerable, creating trust and finding different ways to create that trust? Or is.

Caterina: Yeah, absolutely. I, I have a perception as of today that vulnerability is a bit of, is a bit of an over abused word that there is this entire New Age movement about men have to be vulnerable and founders have to be vulnerable. You know, real learning vulnerability brings mostly joy because you can be yourself. And the best way, in my opinion, to do that is, is to practicing. It’s just being like, it’s so it’s such a process of freedom. I’m going to do it live, because I think that’s the best way to explain what I mean. And I had a conversation yesterday, with someone about the podcast and I said, yeah, to, to more. I have to do the podcast, but to know all the other podcast guests are like very seasoned. The investor is in their 50s and like, what am I bringing to the table? And I realize, you know, I’m falling back into an imposter syndrome. But what if instead the value is exactly the fact that I’m not one of those investors, that I have transitioned into something that I realized the market was needing? And so the moment of vulnerability, of saying, wow, I don’t belong there. And I and the misfit actually gave me the immense joy of saying, that’s exactly why I belong to that table, because there is request and I mean this. It’s easy for me to say this today because I have so many clients that have been seeking for that, that obviously I’m just surrounded by positive confirmation about the fact that this is how it’s supposed to be, and people are asking for that and more. And more, at the beginning, it wasn’t that easy. It was a process of it for me was mostly freedom. Freedom is a giant value for me. And the feeling of adrenaline that I have when I’m in the mountains, when I’m climbing, or when I’m sailing alone, is exactly the same feeling that I have when I go straight to the point. And I know the other person is traveling in another, value system, in another social framework, and I hit with completely with like, really that authenticity that makes me feel very free. And that’s what I see happening in people around me when they do that, the people that are equally free, that are equally inauthenticity, they get magnetize. And so that’s where the best partnerships, best investments then take place.

J; I love that there’s you’re taking vulnerability and you’re changing vulnerability into I think, authenticity. I think what you’re doing is you’re saying that people are using this vulnerability as a way to hook you in. Maybe it’s manipulation, maybe it’s the wrong way of how we should be using vulnerability, and we should be doing it more from an authenticity standpoint, which is, you know, if we’re going to go for a walk and have a coffee, you know, there’s a moment where you might share an odd story that may seem odd, but it’s more of opening up to who you are. So you’re being, trustworthy because you’re sharing something you may have done or something or business is done. So you’re putting me on the same wavelength, which is actually saying, let’s bring ourselves down to this level at this very moment. And both of us can have this sharing moment which shows that we’re human, but it shows that we’re not just in this for business that we have. There’s more here for what we can do, and then you can let it go wherever it goes from there, which I guess humanizes the whole process. But it takes away the vulnerability side, which is me posting everywhere that I have mental health issues, and I have all of these issues where everybody feels, empathy to come towards you, to work with you. But that doesn’t change your character on it doesn’t bring value to your character. It doesn’t bring that trustworthy. It doesn’t bring all those other elements. You’re luring me in through emotion. Whereas what you’re trying to share from what I feel is that bring people into you because they’re being authentic and to your story of how you got to where you are today with our conversation is that you were taking the authenticity road. road to here because it didn’t make sense for you to try doing it. to, as you mentioned, the imposter syndrome, which I feel that we all have every day. But if you’re authentic about your means, then people are going to be able to connect with you easier and want to work with you because they see that you’re on the same wavelength of that time.

Caterina: Yeah, I 100%. And, you know, there’s also very strong power dynamics that are included in these relationships. There is power dynamics mostly between founders and investors and that’s another area where I work a lot with my clients, because obviously, you know, when you approach an investor and you need the money, you automatically put yourself underneath in, in, in a, in the power dynamic and your ability to let go of that need and sit it. Why with the investor is key. And this reflects a power dynamic which is based in this case. So it’s a hierarchy between the investor and the founder which is based on power that’s not safe. That doesn’t last long. It’s not sustainable as a relationship. And this is because the hierarchy, if you look at competencies, is generally inverted, obviously. Yeah, the investor will have experience as an investor. But generally the founder knows everything about the market, about his own company. And so if you look at the hierarchy from a competencies point of view, the founder is up. If you look at the hierarchy from a power point of view, the investor is up. And this creates misalignment in the relationship. Because when you talk about knowledge, there is something coming up. And when you talk instead about who has the money, something else. So for founders sitting eye to eye with investors and taking the standpoint that they actually are supposed to have, it’s a process that requires them to step out of the feeling that they need the money desperately from that specific investor, and that is a very relevant process of somehow the way we work on it is really making friends with the idea that you may not be able to raise the money. It’s actually it’s kind of disruptive and uncomfortable to the deepest self to think, you know, I may not be able to raise money with my company and I would have to shut it down. And I don’t die if that happens, is like the possibility to sit back and sink in with the worst case scenario and see that the ground holds you, even if that should happen, which is has never been the case in my experience. The more you, you know, get acquainted with that biggest fear that you have as a founder. The more you approach investors from an eye to eye perspective and the role that you have is, you know, human to human rather than we are inside this power dynamic.

Jeffery: That’s brilliant. If you take that concept, it reminds me of, when I worked for the largest retailer in Canada, which is Loblaws, I worked in it and I would walk into the, senior vice president’s office and ask a question and get on with my day. People would say, how did you do that? You just walked into this person’s office and I said, what the. There’s no difference. What’s the difference between them and me? They know something that I don’t. And I know things that they don’t. So that makes it an equal balance. And I think that’s the what the concept that you’re trying to say is that you need to create that equal balance, the eye to eye, which I think is brilliant. The way to share that is that, you know, things that I don’t know and vice versa. So we can help each other, but we have to go in on the same equal playing field just because you have money. And I need it. You have a you have an interest in a company to invest. And so we both are passing needs. So in order for us to meet those needs, if one is going in with the hierarchy or I’m better than you, that or I want more than you than the control and the power offsets the dynamics, which means that my entire time of taking your money means that now I’m focused on always supporting you and what you need without supporting my business. Because at the end of the day, my fear is that you gave me that money, and that power dynamic has always occurred, that you’re always on top, and you’re telling me how to organize and operate versus going in and playing that as an equal playing field. And I and I think the big one that you shared that you pulled from that was fear. How do I take the fear out of what I’m living through, what these investors and everybody else? How do I take the line of fear out and use that as empowerment for myself? that I have something that they need? And if I can change the mindset to the exact same thing that you said it in coming into this podcast, which was, wait, I’m not an old 50 year old investor, but what I am is I’m a coach and I’m helping lots of clients succeed and grow companies and scale. Wow, I’ve got this value. So I’m already at that level of value that would could be more comparable, if not better than what’s already on the podcast. So I’m going in there with, more juice, if you will, because your mind changed the way the juice worked, or how you built that energy. And I think that that’s a brilliant way of, enabling founders to not become cocky. Maybe that’s the wrong word, but going in and feeling they’re more in a power position.

Caterina: Yeah, it’s it’s a totally fair question. And the answer is the neurosciences play a role in in our mental processes. And I’m not an expert. So I would never provide detailed scientific information about that. But my experience is that the more you get the chance to sit with the fears and with the limiting beliefs, so the assumptions that we do as individuals, without even realizing that we are making, is kind of the default setting of my brain. So the more I found spend time with that fear, the easier it becomes for him or her to step out of it and how I do it is very practical. Every now and then, whenever someone hits a deep fear or a deep limiting belief or a topic that they want to go deeper into, we schedule a deep dive. Which means that I ask them to be outdoor for 2 to 3 hours. I mean, you know that I have a background as, I have a background as an alchemist, instructor and mountaineering guide and sailing instructors. So obviously the outdoor is a space where I’ve been guiding people and in my experience, has the power to connect us with the deepest versions of ourselves. So I ask founders to go in nature, ideally, and they have a task which is a set of questions and reflections around the fear that they are facing. The more is sphere oriented, the more we really sit down with the scenarios and their brain goes through that and realize it’s, you know, it’s almost as if they envision what happens and they realize that in the end, they survive as individuals and they actually might learn potentially way more. So the processes, on the one hand, sitting down with the uncomfortable thing that is in the back of your mind and that is creating the fear, ideally in nature, that’s that’s my experience. And on the other SAT side is also the ability to understand exactly what is relevant for you in the longer term. That could be you. You know, you said the aspect of realizing that you can reframe a situation, reframing is really what happens, and it’s the reframing that basically allows you to connect to what’s really is relevant. So what happens when people feel that fear and that misalignment when they when they enter the call with the investor and feel like probably all the other founders that are fishing for them have their revenues very high. And I’m just I’m just revenue zero right now, and my team is splitting up and my clients are failing. Whatever. The thing is, what are you trying to, you know, assimilate to? What are you trying to emulate? What is the model that you’re trying to develop for yourself which doesn’t fit you? So the moment that you sink with the story and the version that really fuels natural to you, if that’s the one that the market wants, then this is going to be like the huge disruption, like that’s going to get to the heart of the person in front of you, because it’s exactly what the market needs, and it’s that you’re the only one that can deliver that. And this boils down to the conversation around genius, which is highly related to fears. And many times, you know, the interpretation that people have about genius is basically what you can do best is like, you’re a genius if you’re very clever at something. And I love how David Waithe, which is white, which is who is a crazy poet and naturalist and walks around leadership, defines it. And he says, genius use is the conversation between your experience, your abilities, your skills, your mastery, and the outer world. And this makes it so clear that it’s not just a matter of being extremely good at something. So I always ask people, what is the one thing that you’re incredibly good at and better than others, and you’re just in a flow when you operate that? But at the same time, does the world need this is almost as if if there is no market fit. This is not your genius, because that needs to be something that the market is willing to pay for it, that people actually need. Whatever is going to be the version of your company could even be an NGO. But in the end, the scope is that the world needs that and potentially is willing to pay in one way or another.

Jeffery: Well said. I think that that’s a great way to kind of break down and utilizing your environment, which is what you’re comfortable with using that environment to almost de-risk the conversation between yourself, the coach or, sorry, the founder or the investor bringing them somewhere where it almost removes everybody’s powers. So taking them out into to a picnic table or picnic, then it kind of diffuses that anybody can be in a suit or somebody can have this overall arching governance. So you’re able to kind of take that away and then kind of start from the playing field, which is how do we move forward in this conversation? How do we move forward without the fears, without all of these other background prejudices and everything else that could be there? And then how do we move in a conversation and utilizing the atmosphere, the climate, everything around us to be able to better, better balance that conversation out? So in that it kind of brings credibility, because now it’s two people having to share their own feelings, comments, to move that conversation forward. So I think that’s a great way to, kind of share that forward using the outer world. and then, you’re going to have to share David’s last name again, because I do want to, quote that again, because I think that that’s a it’s a great way to again, destabilize everything, to allow for everybody to kind of move forward and just kind of feel like the theme of energy, coaching and everything is almost trying to get people to refocus themselves, balance themselves out. Not feel threatened, remove the fears and do that for both parties, not just the one. It’s not just the founder. Because they know about this. They have to do it. It has to be worked on both, both parties to do this. So does this in a way. And I guess this will be my kind of my last question before we dive into the 62nd rant. Is this a way of changing the way entrepreneurs work? Is it a way of altering the mindset of how entrepreneurs should be operating? is this a total different view on your side of yours? here’s a different way to look at entrepreneurship than the way the rest of the world kind of perceives it.

Caterina: Yeah, that’s that’s definitely one way of looking at it. I think that what people are mirroring back to me in this process, I really stand low, like, I, I feel like there is so much that I and these people are learning in the process that I let them speak. Like I let the, the evidence come up from the people I’m working with. And what they mirror back to me is the feeling of, you know, I always knew I could do that. I always knew I could build that company, I always knew I could get that money, but I was somehow limited by something. Even if they are very arrogant, which sometimes happens, then still the outer world prevents them from reaching something. And so they’re the process of, you know, cleaning out all these layers of reputational conversation, financial fear, expectations that someone has on them or that they have, on their selves brings them into somewhere they’re completely different. And so at the end, the two develop is an entrepreneur ship that somehow is willing to go through the journey of entrepreneurship itself, rather than being only focused on the final multi-million dollar company. And the beauty of it is that the company comes, but these people understand that the value is what they create by their own experience in between. So what they find out about themselves, the opportunities of of development that they give to the people that they employ, they’re the chance that they give to investors to really engage in a conversation on another level where all these elements are outlined on the table. So they start to feel that entrepreneurship, you know, these courageous curiosity of the entrepreneur, which is the one that really steps out of the known and is, you know, the beautiful image of the fool, which is in, in, in our ancient traditions, is the guy in the village who walks away from where everyone else, and he walks toward the cliff and he says, I want to look what’s behind the cliff. And everyone else is back and says, you know, man, you’re going to die the moment you walk down that cliff. And the moment he walks down, he steps on gold. So the fact that he steps out on the mainstream mentality because he’s courageous, but he’s also a fool, you know, entrepreneurs in history have been seen as fools because they just challenge so deeply the ecosystem. And like working with people that are pioneering their spaces in this way is most powerful thing ever. And it’s not just from a technological perspective or scientific breakthroughs, but it’s mostly the idea that they say, you know, entrepreneurship as of today is limited. We want to experiment with why like why ways of hiring people or of creating relationships with our investors that are completely in transparency or with the way we interact with our co-founders that completely disrupts certain social dynamics, which are obsolete as of today. So that’s that’s I think the entrepreneurship that is kind of popping up through these journey.

Jeffery: Well, I love everything that you’ve shared and the way you break it down, because I think if I was to paraphrase what you’re doing with entrepreneurs and the way you’re changing the mindset of an entrepreneur is, I think the way you’re you’re empowering entrepreneurs, you’re finding a way to remove their fears and you’re building confidence in them. Not the negative confidence, but a confidence that allows them to build off this, authenticity and build them forward so that they can utilize that to balance the playing field with the money and with what they’re building, because eventually they’re both going to come to a crossroads where there’s enough money and there’s a big enough business that they’re the playing field is equal at that time. But that could be at series B, C, whatever that founder feels that. So it sounds like that’s the journey that you’re you’re working founders through. And your past experience has really generated a lot of that. So, thank you. That was great. Great sharing. So we’re going to move into the 62nd rant. So the way this works is you have 60s I’m going to time it. And I’m not going to hold you to it, but rant about anything you like. I will try and counter it. And then at the end, you can close it off with any final thoughts, and then we’ll jump into rapid fire questions.

Caterina: Way to have a question for you before we start. Can it be something I like or does it have to be something I dislike?

Jeffery: It can be anything in the world you want, just any random rant that is something that is either super exciting or drives you crazy. Okay, okay. Ready to go? Okay. You’re on.

Caterina: So I’m ready to go. So something super exciting to me is the concept of personal board. And I invite every people I work with to choose between 4 and 7 people that they want to interact with whenever they go through a big personal decision. And so they bring these people together, and whenever they have something really challenging in their lives. So it’s a personal board. So it’s not about the company. They bring these people together. And what happens is that community is created. These people are incredibly excited about meeting other people across the world that are somehow related with the one person that brings support together, and there’s a lot of them that lives down there.

Jeffery: Done. It might be the shortest read, but I like it. So putting together this board as you as you’re sharing or a group, is there an outcome that is expected from this? Or is this specifically just to generate relationships and network, or what is the context around how this works?

Caterina: The biggest outcome is how asking for help. Most entrepreneurs, you know, they are able to ask for help for someone like me because it’s institutionalized, but they don’t have, you know, the day by day ability to ask for help to other people because you have to, you know, the ego says that you have to hold it together. And so nominating people and telling them, hey, I trust you so deeply. You’ve been bringing so much value in my life. Like your insights, your experience is so precious to me that together with these other four people who are between my clients are between Silicon Valley, Europe now, even one in South Africa, you know, it’s all over the world. So their boards are also all over the world. But allow me to say, I have a big topic that I want to face. And, you know, there’s so many different ways to look at it. And bringing together experience from people that are in the investor world are tools. Someone in policymaking, someone who’s just a relative of mine and knows me since I’m very young. All of these multifaceted people that can come together and give you guidance, that’s the goal in the end. And it’s also a lot of fun. Some people organize dinners with their boards. Other people organize just remote meetings. But in the end, the goal is somehow to create a community that can tap into such deep conversations with you and it’s you institutionalize it.

Jeffery: Well, the only counter that I would throw at this, and I don’t really want to counter it because it’s very positive and I think it’s actually, merited and needed is once you create this group, do you feel that you tie relationships in that could become vulnerable to new information about the way you’re operating your business, the way you’re doing things that might tarnish those relationships and make that up to businesses so that everybody just thinks, the only time I ever get you is in this group. You don’t come in to have wine anymore. You don’t do these things. So does it take away from that? Because we don’t have enough of an ability to separate things? Yeah. Or does it actually create more bonds?

Caterina: I think it it poses the, the challenge of breaking the silence of ourselves and stepping into a version of ourselves where we are not just the founder, the father, the friend at the pub and the athlete or whatever, but we kind of you know, dense, very fluidly among the very few selves. And whatever is the mastery that we have in one field, we can bring it also in the other field. So if we’re a strong leader, in a company, we can also have leadership, even in our family or in our romantic relationship. And so breaking the silence of the selves is something that I work hardly on winning best with founders and investors when I work with investors as well. But in the end, that’s a good exercise. You know, having the ability to create relationships where you can jump from your personal topics to just having fun and balancing out the depth with being just joyful in a friendship. That’s exactly.

Jeffery: I love that. It reminds me of a podcast I had listened to where I believe that they were talking about that during the pandemic, because of the amount of, isolations that were occurring, that this group of people, they were all having children and they were all stay at home dads, that they formed a group where they would meet once or twice a week, and they would just talk about what they were going through and what they were learning about this whole scenario. And it started to bloom and more men started coming. And then I guess the wives started coming because they wanted to be part of the group, too, because it seemed pretty cool. So I guess at the end, if you find something that’s very common to what a building, a company, a relationship, whatever it might be, and building these pods around what you’re doing, there could be a lot of outside value, not just for people that have that identical problem that they’re going through, but bringing in, the outside listeners, like you said, family, friends and other people come into it. It could turn into something a lot more dynamic, because you’re going to learn from that situation. And you may have people that have already experienced it, whereas there might be a handful that are just going through that new experience at that time. So now you’ve got people that can educate and share at the same time. So it sounds pretty dynamic.

Caterina: 100% dynamic is the right word.

Jeffery: I love it. All right. We’re going to jump into rapid fire questions. The way this works is you pick one or the other based off of yourself. As an investor, ready to go.

Caterina: Oh, I lost the first part of the question. Sorry you were frozen for a second.

Jeffery: Oh, sorry. Pick one or the other. Business side as an investor and your best, you’re past background. Pick one or the other. Which one would be more suited to yourself?

Caterina: What do you mean business side? I think business side.

Jeffery: Correct. Would you rather invest in a founder or co-founder?

Caterina: You mean a single founder or a group of founders?

Jeffery: Correct.

Caterina: We used to have red flags on solo founders and I still prefer it. Team. Yeah, even though it comes with so many challenges. But as a coach, that’s also the fun part for me.

Jeffery: I love it. preferred unicorn or a four year ten x exit.

Caterina: That’s the hardest question ever. I would obviously say not the unicorn in this case, but you know what the the person plays such a key role that somehow the possibilities for this person to build something, you could almost say the question, what is the scope of the question? Is the scope making money? Is the scope, being on a blind journey with someone and somehow, in my experience, if you are with the right interpreter, with someone who has the curiosity in their mindset, that willingness to disrupt the existing both journeys are going to be incredible.

Jeffery: Agreed. Do you prefer AI or blockchain?

Caterina: AI, although I really don’t consider myself an expert and, I’m looking forward to see what will happen.

Jeffery: leader, follow.

Caterina: Lead or, follow. That’s a very good one. Surely lead I can I have to be sincere. You know, when I’m in the mountains, I am always leading my my climbing, my climbing mate. That’s my place. But having a beginning, my beginners mindset and being a novice is the best in life. Like, it’s just so comfortable for me. So the top of the path, who would be being the one that leaves but with the crown of the novice.

Jeffery: I love it. would you be do you prefer first time founders or more experienced 2 to 3 time founders?

Caterina: that’s a good question. I love first time founders. I love the, you know, the the feeling of of it’s the first time that I step into something, obviously, as an investor, the more times you’ve gone through the journey, the better. but there is there are so many learnings that are, in the first time founding experience that I believe that there is as a coach. That’s the era where I want to be. I mean, yeah, that’s not that’s not even true. I work with the person who’s been built. This is in his 50s, and he’s just a joy. He’s been building several ventures. So that’s also a hard one. as an investor, I would have probably said to a founder, okay.

Jeffery: Favorite part of investing? What did you enjoy about it the most?

Caterina: I would say seeing how different people were answering similar problems in completely different ways. you see companies that are producing the same thing and one of them is 100 people company, and another one is the three people, super lean, highly executional company like the we take because we want to we want to provide models for everything. And so we look into data and we think, okay, these are these are going to be my revenues. Then this is the number of people that I have to hire, blah, blah blah. And then you see that there is someone who’s doing it completely different. And then you are faced with the reality that all of these projections are personal, are the results of our experience or whatever we’ve been told. But there are such disruptive ways to build companies. So that was what was fascinating. Me as an investor.

Jeffery: Perfect. Okay. We’re going to move into the personal side. Pick one or the other most famous person that pops in your mind.

Caterina: Most famous person that pops in my mind I would say Nelson Mandela, but that’s just because it’s a very close bias that I have from having been so long in South Africa and really not understanding that country at all. I love it, but it’s too complicated and questioning a lot about the conversation around freedom with the people I work with who feel very tied in terms of time. And, you know, Mandela, from a perspective of rephrasing stuff and inverting reality, that’s a master. I was speaking with some founders with whom I was working with, and I was in South Africa, and we were talking about, you know, time is limited. Is is time is something physical. There’s no way to reframe that. And all of a sudden we started to talk about the different impact that you can have with the same amount of time. So, you know, the entire conversation around scalability. I built the technology that makes that scalable. And I’m like, I think this was 2000, 2016, 2020. Now what is on my table is the ability with the same amount of time doesn’t matter. Where do you scalable whether it’s, you know, a video that I record that can go out. But if I can create that energy so the conversation moves into energy and somehow noticing how nonlinear that is, and starting to envision different ways of getting out of the trap of, I don’t have enough time. That’s what fascinates me. And Mandela did it with freedom while being in prison. He said, I’m free. And so that’s really like the that’s so cheesy what I say. I, I literally didn’t think about this. It’s coming out very cheesy, but I like it. It’s really inverting the concepts of their maximum, as you say. You know, when a founder needs the money, how can they be not in need? How can they be free from the investor? And that deep ability to reframe the conversation? That’s mastery to me.

Jeffery: Great first brand that pops in your mind.

Caterina: Apple. Apple I’m not for brands, so apples fair

Jeffery: bike Or run.

Caterina: I’ve been a runner in my life, and there is periods of my life where I can’t walk. I’m like, I want to be stable. I want to be steel and a. And so bike comes more to my mind. But what it told me over time is that all those time I thought I was stuck, I was like, I’m stuck. I can’t, I can’t walk because physically I need to be there. And then I realized, maybe I’m just still right now. And that’s also okay. So Ronnie, I have a I have an ever changing relationship with running. So I would say probably, cycling to play safe, fair.

Jeffery: beer or wine?

Caterina: Italian wine. But I used to produce beer, so.

Jeffery: very nice. Ted, talk book reading.

Caterina: Book listening.

Jeffery: TikTok or Instagram?

Caterina: Instagram. I’m too old.

Jeffery: Trophy or money?

Caterina: Trophy for money I really like. I think. Money. In the end. I’ve been seeking trophies for so long in my life and now I. I really worked hard to detach myself from that. And I would say, you know, money is something that no one could know. You actually have it and there’s so much I could do with it. Whereas the trophy really, in the end, ends up being just my reputation.

Jeffery: Well, shared. Favorite book?

Caterina: So every book is right now the I mean Harry Potter to give justice to the kid. Me who read it like 15 times every single one. But right now, the surrender experiment from Michael Singer. It’s it’s a book that it’s really representative of how I work with founders, as in, if the story of the super successful, software, entrepreneur in, in the US. But it goes through a journey of surrender, a deep journey in the mind space. It’s like really mind blowing. It’s very radical. But he sees his success as the result of his ability to be in a flow and surrender to what life brings him. So he basically always says yes to life, and at the same time shows up with the best version of himself, which is a little bit the core of my coaching. You know, the ability to strive for ascendancy and at the same time recognize that something is upside of yours for your influence, and hence there will be a process of beautiful unfolding and surrendering and the book is just mind blowing. What the guide built out of that mentality is incredible.

Jeffery: Sounds awesome. I love to read that. I love it all right, we’re almost there. What is the meaning of success to you?

Caterina: That’s such a good question. I love it, you know that one of the tools I use when I work with people is etymology of words and so the way we do it is I ask them to write down the the meaning of a word for them and then look it up. And it’s so beautiful. We do it with entrepreneur, we do it with success. And every time you see how, what are the value that they actually do to something? And I actually ask them to define their own version of success. I think my version of success, under a certain point of view, will be the ability to continuously discover things, continuously have this curiosity toward life, and continuously engaging with what is around me, with the mindset which somehow is willing to be continuously surprised. But what is outside there? That’s going to be probably my journey. And together with that, the concept of enough. That’s something that comes very often in the picture the ability to define what is enough for you, rather than being in a spiral of achieving more and more. That’s my nature. I’m impatient. I am like, I see the world and I want to conquer it. Like there’s so much that I feel drawn to it and so the ability to, you know, compensate that with saying what I have is enough financial safety, networking, relationships, whatever experiences is enough. That’s something that I perceive as an incredible, mastery that some people have.

Jeffery: I love it. Agreed. Well, this might lead into the next question then. What is your superpower?

Caterina: What is my superpower? I would say I’m going to answer you with something that is a superpower that I seek in people, mostly. So many people ask me what makes all these people that I work with so successful? Like, what is the secret sauce, in my opinion? What is their superpower? And every time I say I’m not for Instagram sentences that will change your life. So I don’t know. But there’s three elements that I’ve noticed over time. And the first one is intensity, is the ability to, you know, always strive for excellence in whatever it is your field. The second one is the beginner’s mindset. And working with people that are in their 50s or that build several ventures, that ability to continuously challenge your mental framework and want to grow outside of your current container. Because there’s something else. That’s something that I always seek and the final one is transparency and radical honesty within themselves so that you can truly see yourself but also bring it to others. And what I’ve realized is that over time, these are the elements that I look for in the people that I work with. You know, super successful, extremely talented founder. If it doesn’t have the other two, is not someone who’s going to be successful in my version of success. And so probably looking for these superpowers all together is what I’m interesting in. And that’s what I’m cultivating.

Jeffery: Well, if you take all of that and everything that we’ve shared today, I would also say that you bring a high level of authenticity to every conversation. You are a chameleon. You adapt and grow and continue to build on yourself. And I think it shows, quite a bit in the conversation. but just in your career itself. So I want to say thank you very much for all of your time and for being a rock star. I took so many pages of notes, I got to find another way to do notes, because I’m running out of paper all the time. But it was awesome. And the way we like to end our show is that we like to give you the last word. So anything that you want to share to investors, founders, business people, like. But we turn it over to you and please share how people can get Ahold of you as well. But thank you very much for sharing.

Caterina: Something that I want to share, I think is the big learning that I hold from my parallel lives, from being in the wilderness and in the outdoor and being in the business world. And in the end, what I serve more and more is that the ability to bring these two selves together. And so to work on these parallel areas, tapping into the wild selves, tapping into the adrenaline for me, is what I have experienced by guiding people in extreme environments and running those risks. And at the beginning it was not conscious. In my experience, I was on glaciers, I was in oceans, and I could see that people were following and were fascinated by it, but there was no awareness. And over time I realized that it’s like the reward that you get from really pushing the edges of something, from pioneering, from questioning the status quo and being the one that looks at processes and says, you know what? They don’t work out and people need something different. And I’m going to build it and people are gonna, you know, criticize that. But I will get power from the people that whose need is actually satisfied. And I will be continuously innovating, continuously iterating, continuously trying to challenge the status quo. That’s, I think, the space that I want to be into because of the high creativity, that it brings. And that’s where I see the most successful entrepreneurs thriving in the end, because it brings together exactly that ability to run risks. Many entrepreneurs I work with are actually in extreme sports. I don’t think it’s just because I mean extreme sports. I think it’s there is a double match with that ability to, you know, enjoy the adrenaline and the risk without the full need of being in control and at the same time holding space for everything to happen. That deep responsibility that you have when you’re building a company or running a business, and the ability to know that in the end you will be able to provide for yourself. You will hold your ground. You are fully responsible and in agency for whatever happens as much as you are. When you’re alone in the wilderness, the same when you’re building something on your own that didn’t exist before. So I think that’s my that’s my take. what was the rest of the of the question?

Jeffery: How can people get Ahold of you?

Caterina: Oh, that’s another very good one. I don’t have a website. And the reason is because I work mostly out of referral and there’s so much content outside there, I wouldn’t be adding any value. so people generally come to me just because someone shares my email. So shall we provide that with the podcast? I don’t think there’s going to be so many people that are going to be, spamming me stuff. So let’s be, let’s be let’s trust the public. And I can share my email with you. That’s the best way to get a hold of me.

Jeffery: Perfect, I love it. Okay, well, thank you very much for your time. Very well shared.

Caterina: Thank you so much. I love the questions. I love how unconventional they are, and I love to get the chance to always speak about what I do. So precious I.

Jeffery: I can’t wait for version two.

Caterina: Yeah.

Jeffery: Okay, that was a great conversation that, I had with, Katrina and I just a couple things to highlight. I really like the, the idea about being eye to eye and utilizing this radical honesty where you are hyper focused on creating a balance between yourself and the authority or yourself in somebody of influence, but which can certainly be investors, other founders, friends, family, friends, everything across it. But just being able to be honest and utilizing authenticity to really blend yourself into the environment there and find ways to diffuse the environment so that everybody can work off the same plane field. I just love the way that, she was able to kind of break through all the different ways that founders can operate with investors in the, in the market together, without feeling that there’s a power dynamic. And, you know, I think once you balance those out, I think it makes things easier for needs and wants across the playing field. But, there’s certainly going to be a lot of challenges, out in the market. And, I think there’s a great way to dive in and explore and learn more about how you can balance these dynamics with, the investor and, of course, building and aligning to your drive as an entrepreneur and the things that you want out of your business. And would things benefit you so thank you for joining us today. If you’ve enjoyed this conversation, please feel free to share with your friends, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and or please follow us on Spotify, Amazon or Apple. Feel free to share an audio clip or video clip for owners around our show, and they include it in one of our future podcasts. You can find us on all social platforms including LinkedIn and Supporters Fund. Your support and comments are truly appreciated. Please visit us at. Supporters 1.com or startup events are open. People network.com. Thank you and have a fantastic day.