Building high-performing teams in Startups with Harriet Ball

Yeliz Castillo:
What would you say, like the biggest challenges overall in doing this? Whether you’re in, in, in a tech industry or in finance industry or. Yeah, just generally what do you think is overall the biggest challenge for companies?

Harriet Ball:
Yeah. So from a startup lens there are obvious challenges. Budget constraints, you can’t afford to pay the same kind of salaries as the likes of Google Meta, et cetera, that they pay for their engineers. But obviously everybody knows this. So startups have to get creative, but create where’s creativity in startups is, is where kind of magic happens and being able to build a really cool, innovative product, you’re kind of shaking out to market. There’s no reason why the way that you approach talent should be, should be any different. So for me it’s kind of getting that balance between skill, potential and immediate impact when it comes to hiring for your startup and also being able to offer candidates and being able to offer your team members direct access to the founders and being able to give them that experience of working so closely with you to bring this mission, vision and your mission and vision to life and really kind of taking it to the next level. So how startups should approach talent is different from how bigger organizations should approach talent.

But there are lessons that you can learn from both sides. So in a bigger organization, and like when I was working for, on, for example, we really were able to kind of be very specific into the type of profile that you would, you would hire. And typically when your organization grows, the need for the role and the desired outputs for a specific position that you’re hiring for, require quite a specific niche set of skills because you’re able to have more specialists focusing on a particular area that you, that you need to solve. Whereas obviously in startup land, people you hire have to wear multiple hats and they have to kind of COVID a broader scope of different things before you’re able to specialize and really bring in specialists to narrow in on one specific area that you’re trying to solve.

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Yeliz Castillo:
Hello everyone. Today I have the lovely Harriet Ball with me. She is the head of talent of Supersede vc and we have a great topic today for you and that is how to build high performing teams in startup environments. Because Harriet has quite extensive experiences in this field and I’m super, super happy to have you here today. Great. First of all, I would love to know why this topic is important to you.

Harriet Ball:
Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I’m also super excited to be here and talk about this topic. So. Yeah, I mean, building a High performing team for any startup is the difference between winning and just having a company in my opinion. I think there’s so much value that talent can bring. And whenever I speak to founders that we just invested in or we’re thinking of investing in, the number one thing that they want to do is build a high performing team. So for me it’s incredibly important just to be able to give them the support.

But in my role at least at Supersede, how we kind of approach investing is from quite a hands on lens. So our mission as a VC is to help de risk their journey from a founder’s journey from 0 to 1 million in revenue. But my personal journey is to help them de risk their hiring decisions. So I kind of can take the experience that I’ve had from some bigger organizations like Uber L’Oreal and on running and I try and apply those to a startup environment and take those learnings and help give our founders a leg up into kind of building a really high performing team. So for me it’s a really important topic to get right and I think if you’re not focusing on building a high performing team or not giving it the attention and the need that it needs to be, then you’re kind of just setting yourself up for a disaster really. So yeah, that’s kind of why it’s important to me and I’m very passionate about talent. Obviously I’ve been in talent now for nearly 12 years so it’s super important to get this right and to be able to kind of be a part of that journey and that experience for founders to help set them up to have great teams is something that really, really drives me. So yeah, that’s why I feel it’s, it’s important.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah. And from your experiences, obviously you had experiences in other companies before and obviously now you’re diving in into a complete different industry almost. And also like the way I guess you experience building high performance teams as well from like a different perspective.

Harriet Ball:
Yeah.

Yeliz Castillo:
What would you say like the biggest challenges overall in doing this? Whether you’re in a tech industry or in finance industry or. Um, yeah, just generally what do you think is overall the biggest challenge for companies?

Harriet Ball:
Yeah. So from a startup lens there are obvious challenges, budget constraints, you can’t afford to, to pay the same kind of salaries as the likes of Google Meta, et cetera, that they pay for their engineers. But obviously everybody knows this. So startups have to get creative but create. Whereas creativity in startups is, is where kind of magic happens and being able to build A really cool, innovative product, you’re kind of taking market. There’s no reason why the way that you approach talent should be, should be any different. So for me, it’s kind of getting that, that balance between skill, potential and immediate impact when it comes to hiring for your startup, and also being able to offer candidates and being able to offer your team members direct access to the founders and being able to give them that experience of working so closely with you to bring this mission, vision and your mission and vision to life and really kind of taking it the next level. So how startups should approach talent is different from how bigger organizations should approach talent.

But there are lessons that you can learn from both sides. So in a bigger organization and like when I was working for, on, for example, we really were able to kind of be very specific into the type of profile that you would, you would hire. And typically when your organization grows, the need for the role and the desired outputs for a specific, specific position that you’re hiring for require quite a specific niche set of skills because you’re able to have more specialists focusing on a particular area that you, that you need to solve. Whereas obviously in startup land, people that you hire have to wear multiple hats and they have to kind of COVID a broader scope of different things before you’re able to specialize and really bring in specialists to narrow in on one specific area that you’re trying to solve. So both of those kind of have the different challenges, but when it comes to smaller organizations, like finding people who are generalists at the earliest stages is obviously beneficial because they can not only kind of solve hopefully the immediate problem, but their wider skill set that you’re, that you’ve attracted and you’ve been able to hire for will hopefully unlock the role and unlock like how this role can grow and evolve in the future as well. So thinking like, okay, what is the problem we’re looking to solve today? And then how can this person. Wider skill sets evolve as the role evolves and role as the, as the team evolves. So when we’re looking for talent for startups, I think looking at the skill versus energy versus the dynamism and like the ambition of the specific candidate that you’re looking to bring on board is something that you can really kind of focus in on.

And I’ve seen a lot of examples where startups have found somebody who brings a lot of energy and is really, really aligned to the mission and the vision that you’re, you’re trying to, to portray or you’re trying to solve with, with your startup and kind of potentially taking that and overlooked, maybe they’re lacking a specific skill or they haven’t developed a specific skill to the level that you maybe were hoping for, but the energy and the, the entrepreneurial spirit of that specific candidate to go out and find a way to solve that problem or find a way to upskill themselves, I think is, is something that startups can have that opportunity to do as opposed to a bigger business where they’re less risk averse and they’re less willing to take a bet on a candidate that doesn’t quite meet all of the criteria. And also in a startup, often your choice of candidates is somewhat limited. Specifically also if your business that you’re operating within is potentially in a really deep tech or very niche industry, your startup talent pool is typically a little bit smaller than you would expect than you would get sorry for a larger organization organization. So I think what founders and what founders can do and what early stage teams can do is really focusing in on like why what you’re doing is important and why the problem that you’re solving is, is also a problem that should be worked on and is an important problem because ambitious people really like solving difficult problems. And so being able to talk about your mission and the vision and like what problem you’re solving to attract people who are. Attract. Attract people who find that interest will kind of unlock on different kind of level of talent for you and unlock different talent pools for you as well as instead of, sorry, just having somebody really focusing in on this specific skill needs solving this specific niche person. Sorry, I’m going to stop because I feel like I’m rambling but yeah, you can edit some of that out, but.

Yeliz Castillo:
No, absolutely. And I echo everything you said. I think the first thing you said as well, like you know, that the founders have to be really in front of, you know, the whole hiring process I think is very crucial because one, I think it’s, it’s the direct source of the vision and the mission of the company and it’s really about, you know, convincing people to what you believe in and what you want to build and you know, needing the help of those candidates or the pool of talent that you’re trying to approach is super difficult I think when you’re in an early stage but then also very, very important to really then reach the success. Right. And I actually do have also like really the strong opinion that founders should be more involved especially in the beginning. They usually are anyway in the hierarchy. But what would you say are the three Things like you already mentioned, like it’s, it’s the entrepreneur and. Oh God, I never can say this word.

Harriet Ball:
Entrepreneurial spirit.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah. And, and I guess the energy and the mindset I guess as well. Right. To, to be able to, you know, wear multiple hats and, and be open to maybe do things that are not in your job description, you know, in, in that kind of environment.

Harriet Ball:
Yeah, like, sorry, what you say, what was your, what were you going to say question?

Yeliz Castillo:
Like what would you say are the mistakes that they do?

Harriet Ball:
Yeah. So when it comes to, to kind of looking for great talent for your, for your startup, like I think founders can be kind of brand blind is what I try and say. Where they’re really focusing on people who like come from these big organizations that maybe have really great experience, market better or uber. Just to kind of throw my own experience under the bus and thinking that that would immediately translate to what they’re trying to build. And in some instances, yes it can, but it really just depends on the, the type of candidate they are. Like, did this person join this company at a high growth stage, part of their, their own organization’s journey or are they typically someone that’s been in more legacy industries or big in more legacy companies that at a later stage and then maybe don’t have that kind of scrappiness that you need to have to be successful in a startup? So I think that I’ve seen it a couple of times where people really kind of lean in on trying to find that, that legacy experience. But it is all timing. Sorry, recruiting is all about timing right and getting the timing right.

And that doesn’t just go like in timing trying to time the recruitment market in terms of when a candidate will be on the market, but also thinking about like when at what period of time was this candidate in this company at? Is that a time that would, where they were solving problems that would resonate with the problems that we’re trying to solve here? And I think kind of overlooking that and just being like I said, brand blind and just going for somebody just because they, they have that brand on their, on their CV when and not spend enough time really digging into like what their role was at the time, the problems that they were solving. And I think this also leads back to not paying enough time and attention in on your, your actual interviewing experience and the way that you interview these candidates and like how you structure Your interview process and find this information out throughout the candidates interview life cycle. So I think like in a startup the desire to want to move really quickly is obviously for obvious reasons there’s a desire to want to do that, investing time up front and really scoping out the, the requirements of the role. Like what is the problem that we’re trying to solve? What specific skills and experience do we really need and kind of taking away from like oh I really, this person from Google has applied this, this has to be the perfect candidate. Instead of like focusing on, on on that maybe more like the vanity things of taking someone from a really big business to working at your smaller stage startup and really focusing in on okay, what problems is this candidate solved and how does that relate to the problems that we’re, we’re going through or what we’re trying to solve here with this specific hire? So that is one of the biggest things that I, I see and I think a lot of that comes from like, you know, founders are super busy. Like they have so many things going on at any point in the, in their day that it can be kind of put on the back seat thinking about like approaching your interviewing process in a more structured way. And I’m not saying like you need spend hours and hours and hours plotting everything out, but you do need to have a interviewing kind of machine which will help you identify the relevant traits in each candidate that you’re looking to hire and will also help you really scope out the role. Not just thinking, okay, this team feels under resourced, maybe let’s just hire, but really being intentional about the hires that you make and being very intentional about how you interview as well.

So those two things for sure. And then I think another thing I would just say is assessing for motivation. And I think that founders can quite often can overlook motivation or like not picking certain things that kind of a candidate will reveal during an interview process or not kind of like digging into more like what motivates them. So obviously you can ask the obvious questions around like how do you work in an unstructured environment? How you know, did you work somewhere where you have to be scrappy to try and hear what a candidate would say. But you know, any candidate who’s prepared for an interview could probably have an answer for that. But what I think is really interesting is to dig into like true deep motivations behind this, this candidate and like doing that by like asking questions about like what’s motivated them in the past and like listening out to what they say and they listening out to how they answer specific questions. So, you know, if you take them, a candidate back to like, their past role and ask them like what happened with a specific scenario, let’s just say. And hearing about how a candidate frames what the problem was and how it was solved will tell you about what intrinsically motivates that candidate.

And there’s actually a really good book to read on this. So it’s called Motivation Based Hiring by Carol Quinn. So we definitely recommend checking that out. And I think that in the book, essentially her ethos is saying that there is a direct correlation between the high performers that she hired into teams and into businesses before in the past based purely on how motivated this candidate was. And it really helps you kind of like work through a way to like dig into how to really assess what motivates that person, not specifically motivating that person to be in a startup, but just motivating that person overall and really helping you kind of dig into that. And I think being able to reveal that through a candidate and through kind of the right kind of questions that you asked to dig into, like what truly motivates them will reveal a lot about their traits. And I say a lot in to my founders, like, you want to focus on traits that you’re looking to hire for as well, so traits that would align well with the value and the mission and the vision that you’re looking to create and the culture also that you’re looking to cultivate within the business, but also specific traits that would work and complement very nicely for this role. So for example, like in a, in a bigger organization, it’s very easy to say, oh, you know, this isn’t my role’s remit.

Someone else will have to focus on this for you. But then what you really want to look for are the people that put their hands up and say, I will solve this problem for you, even if it’s not within my role scope, because those are the kind of players that you need in a startup, someone who can like, get their hands dirty and get stuck in regardless of whether it technically falls within their role very or not. So, yeah, just kind of wrap it all up. That’s probably the, some of the core things that I say and try and encourage our founders to look for when they’re, when they’re interviewing for their teams.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah, you made some awesome points. I think one of the biggest and very important points for me are really the fact, what you said in the beginning, that founders should really, really focus on hiring and the questions they ask and not just go for, you know, blindly like almost like a bias of looking the CV and the companies they’ve been. Because that doesn’t necessarily say much. Right. Because I start up in an established company, they’re like worlds in between of, you know, how things work, how fast things are or slow things are, the decisions that have been made. So I totally agree. I think there is like a general, a bias almost where you know, you look at someone’s CV and to be fair, I guess I do the same sometimes, you know, where I look at CV and someone’s Korean I’m like, wow. Like they have been and they must have done XYZ in my head.

And then sometimes you talk to them and then they do just like a, like a, like a small part of what I thought they do. So I think it’s really about getting to know the person and not necessarily just getting hooked by the companies they worked for, but then really tried to dig into the experiences they had and, and the situations they’ve been. So I think that’s a really good learning. And from a candidate’s perspective maybe what would you say are the things that a candidate should look into when talking to founders or you know, like very early startup. Because I think there’s also the other side right where you sometimes. And I have as well where I talk to candidates and they’re like, oh, I don’t know, I’m going to be one of the first people and they’re very unsure about it. Like in your experience, what would be your top tips for them to, to look for or ask.

Harriet Ball:
Yeah, I think for this like I, and I kind of coach people to on this a lot. Like I obviously friends and people who reach out like how do you assess an opportunity as a candidate? And I think that’s. Excuse me, sorry. Something that it can feel like one sided but I think when you’re interviewing but there’s such an opportunity for candidates to really kind of deeply understand like what they’re, what it is that they’re walking into and not be afraid to dig deep and ask a lot of specific questions. But it’s kind of like knowing the right questions to ask. Excuse me, sorry. So I think if you’re a candidate evaluating an opportunity and one of the best things about moving into VC is really I’ve been able to learn like how to evaluate companies a bit better and I think that taking that approach to evaluating an opportunity as a candidate is quite interesting. So first of all, number one for me is obviously unbiased but understanding the team so who the team are, what are the backgrounds of the founders? Are they specialists in what they’re building? Have they got industry knowledge, expertise? Are they former founders themselves? This is their first gig doing it, shaping and understanding who the founders are.

Ultimately they’re the ones setting the mission, the vision and the values and they are the ones who are going to be attracting the first team. 10 team members, sorry. And we can talk about the first 10 hires maybe a bit later on, but if you want to be really early in the team, you, you’re going to be working very closely with these founders and getting to know them as well and sending how they work and how they operate I think is very important because while still obviously yes, they’re going to be your managers, but in a small team you’re going to be working basically as their right hand person. So really kind of deeply understanding them, their skill sets, their experience and like what is driving them to do this and their reason why. And that’s something that we ask, we try and dig out of something we try and get our early stage founders that we’re considering investing in is like, what is the reason why? Like why are they building this? Why is this important to them intrinsically? What is that reason? So really trying to understand what that is and see like how that aligns with what you’re looking for in an opportunity. I think also as a candidate, like being very clear with yourself on what it is that you’re really looking for. Moving through a startup is like jumping on a rocket ship. Like there is no such thing as work life balance typically, although of course, you know, we can figure that out.

But generally you’re in the deep end, you’re in the trenches, you’re solving problems, you’ll be pulled from pillars, opposed to be asked to do things maybe you have never done before. So do you have the energy for that opportunity? I think that kind of goes back to what I was saying about assessing true intrinsic motivation from a founder’s point of view and then also from a candidate’s point of view. Like a lot of people who worked in maybe bigger organizations think that they want to go and work in a startup. But the reality of startup life is it can be really exciting and really fun and really, you know, really fast paced. And if you’re looking for that then, then great, but it can also be really hard. There’ll be days when you’ve got like eight, eight weeks left of Runway or maybe in a bit more. But there are days when things don’t go well and because you’re in a smaller team, the ripple impact of that will be much higher. So I really understand and know yourself about what it is that you’re.

You really are looking for in an opportunity and the type of environment that you want to work in as well. I’d also say another thing that we look at as investors, obviously is the market. So what is the market for this product? Do you really think this product is solving a problem? Who will they be selling to? What kind of does this fill a dark desire and a burning need in the market that no other competitor is doing? Or is there something unique about their products? So really deeply understanding that piece and really understanding the team, the market, and then, of course, as I said just now, the product. So what is the product? What is it solving? What is it like today? What is it going to be in the future? Do they have the team in place and the technical know how to really kind of accelerate and grow the product and really make it even better than it is today? And do they have, what’s the kind of timelines to do that? What is their next steps? And being very clear with the founders on, like, okay, what, where are we at today? Where do we think we’ll be in six months? Where do you think we’ll be in 12 months? Because the best founders that I work with have a very clear roadmap of their product and where they’re going with it. And for you as a candidate to very clearly evaluate that. And if a founder can’t clearly evaluate the next six months, 12 months, 18 months, whatever, I would have a red flag about that. So that’s kind of the key things I would look for if I were a candidate. So think like an investor, because at the ultimate day, at the end of the day, you’re investing your time in this.

So you’ve got to decide whether it’s worthwhile for you to invest your time in this opportunity and whether it’s something that is really going to tick the boxes that you’re looking for in your next opportunity.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah, totally agree. I also always say, like, I think you have to be the, the type of person to work in a setup. I don’t think everyone could do that. And I think it’s also knowing yourself and like, establishing for yourself, okay, am I this person? Can I wear different hats? Am I okay with not having structure? And am I okay with, you know, waking up to different problems and decisions every day that are completely the opposite of what we discussed yesterday, for example? Right. Like, this dynamic change is really something that you can get into for sure. But I think you have to be the person for it. And I think there’s…

This, you know, kind of image of working in a startup, you know, is like kind of jet set live almost. Do you know what I mean? But I think it’s really important for people to assess whether they are the type of person and it’s totally fine if you’re not, but if you’re a person who needs structure and need to know every day, you know, what you wake up to and you do the same thing, or you know what you have to do or you, what you’re doing, then maybe that’s not really your environment yet, you know, because I feel especially in the early stages, everything is very hectic and it’s different and it can be chaotic, like it can be also organized. Don’t get me wrong, I think I’ve also seen startups that are organized for the fact that they’ve been in a, in an early stage or just in the growth phase as well, but it still comes with the chaos and it still comes with, with a very dynamic change at the time. So.

Harriet Ball:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeliz Castillo:
Going back to the founders, what would you say are like apart from the talent specifically or the candidates that they’re looking for, have to kind of look into, what else do you think they really need to dive into in order to build a high effective team?

Harriet Ball:
Yeah, for sure. So I think there’s a couple of key things here that I think can quite easily be overlooked, especially when there’s a lot of other things going on, but will really help set you up for success for when your team goes beyond 10 to 20 and to 50, etc. Etc. And kind of getting a good interviewing and talent machine wearing in the earliest hires and, and kind of following some kind of structure when it comes to your recruiting is, is super important. Even if those hires are from your, your network, I still think that there’s an opportunity here to put some framework in place and just knowing that the first 10 hires that you make will basically set up the type of company that you’ll ultimately build. So at some point in your founder journey, you’ll switch from building a product to, to really building a team that probably will come a little bit later on hiring journey, but at the earliest stages, and this is the mission that I try to have for my, for my role and what I try and do with our founders is really set them up with the building blocks of what great talent looks like at the earliest stages. And we’re talking precede and seed stage that will ultimately help them attract better talent in the future. So knowing that the first 10 hires kind of sets you up for, for the future.

I think one thing that can be quite significantly overlooked initially at the early stages is creating a kind of understanding the type of values and type of culture that you want to create. And I think what is so easy to say are, you know, we’re entrepreneurial, we are curious, curious, we are this, we are that. But I think what really smart founders do is connect the dots between the mission, your overall mission, your vision for where your startup is going, and then the kind of connecting those two things with the values and the type of way of working that you, you want to encourage and the behaviors that you want to encourage when you’re, when you’re building your startup. So, so working with the people, maybe if you already have a couple of employees, like working with those people to understand, like, what is it that you love about working here already? And it only has, you only need a couple of people to get the answers there. And then along with your founder, kind of taking that information and building values that amplify the type of culture and the type of traits that you want to attract to your company, and then kind of having them written down and making sure that they again relate back to the mission vision, and then talking about them and getting the word out there about like, what it is that you’re, you’re creating, because top talent will be attracted ultimately to the mission and the vision and the problem that you’re trying to solve, but will also attract them is the type of culture that you’re, you’re trying to create or the type of what it’s like to work that basically. And I think that really knowing that in the earlier stages and having maybe a couple of values written down that they don’t have to be extensive, but they also have to be, again, related back to the mission and vision and the problem that you’re solving to tie it all in together very nicely. And that will really help you attract talent and being able to talk about examples of where people in your, your company have exemplified those values and those traits to attract more talent. And what I mean by that is, you know, going on podcasts, talking on LinkedIn, you know, bringing them to life a little bit more so people can kind of see examples of what you mean by those.

So really kind of setting those, the building blocks for those values in the early days really help you attract talent later on and know that these values will change over time. But this is important to help you attract talent. And one bad hire, as we know, not only can cost you an absolute fortune, but can also damage the morale for the rest of the team. If you bring somebody on board who maybe doesn’t align with those values because, for example, they have a great CV or they’re immediately available, for example, it can just cause you a lot of problems later on. So overlooking that in the early stages is, I think, detrimental to the success of your startup. And you’re only as great as the team that you build. So really embedding that early on and also embedding that into your hiring processes so that doesn’t have to slow down your process. I know a lot of founders always say, you know, adding another interview step in is going to slow us down.

But what’s going to slow you down more is making the wrong decision and compromising on somebody for, on the cultural fit side of things, for maybe their great skills or their great experience and damaging team morale, et cetera, et cetera. So the ripple effect is just so huge. So finding a way to implement that into your interview process and if you know your values and you know what you want to hire against, then finding interview questions or ways to kind of bring those values to life and ask candidates about their past experiences where they would have exemplified those values and those traits. Ultimately, it is your past experiences and past behaviors that can help predict how someone will behave in the future. So knowing some great values that you can assess against and ask them direct interview questions about in your interviewing process, that is one thing I think really can be overlooked. So really something to, to be, to give and focus on. And then also is, is this is the building blocks of your employer brand, right? So this is the, the building blocks of what will attract people to your business, but will also attract people to your business is how you approach talent and how you approach hiring overall. So giving a great candidate experience, regardless of outcome is a top priority.

And that means moving with pace, not giving wishy washy feedback to candidates who have taken the time to apply to your, your business. And really kind of helping explain like, okay, maybe it’s not a fit today, but this is someone who’s engaged in our talent brand. If they have a good experience with us, they’ll likely tell their friends about it if we do something a bit innovative, bit of a different interview process like, you know, I don’t know, example of my head, but trying to do something that’s maybe outside of the typical norm of a Recruitment process, just giving people a great experience will help attract more talent to your business. And that is also going down to the basic things like a job description. Like, I can’t remember how many times in my career where I’ve seen job descriptions and just immediately been turned off by the opportunity, which maybe isn’t even a fair reflection of the business or the founders or the opportunity, but the way it’s been communicated, it’s been so uninspiring that it just completely switches you off from that company. And like, you know, even just something as simple as that can really turn off top talent. And then one other thing that I’ve. I’ve seen a lot in the past, like, particularly when as an Uber or kind of the larger organizations I’ve worked for, is if you’re going to do a task in an interview process, make sure the task is relevant to the role and actually exciting for the person to complete.

Because I’ve had people pull out of interview process processes before because they thought that the task wasn’t relevant or they didn’t think the task was very good or actually very hard. So being kind of conscious of where you can make people excited about joining you at every single part of the interviewing process, from the job description to the way you deliver the offers, to onboarding everything. So, but for me, that all begins with what are the values that we’re looking to create? Because that if you have those nailed down, then everything else can flow afterwards and it can help help really set up the building blocks for your employer brand and as your business evolves, those will also evolve over time. So for me, that’s where it’s a really great opportunity for founders to put some structure in place. Early days.

Yeliz Castillo:
Great. Thank you so much. I think this is super helpful and super insightful. Everything you said, I think is really connected with each other and they kind of build up on each other. So if you really look into getting great talent in, then you have to check or you have to start with your values. You have to start with your mission. You have to kind of believe in it within yourself and then kind of try to bring it out there and have like the, the right mindset and the right tactics, I guess, to, to really bring that branding out and, and yeah, convince people to join the journey with you. So, yeah, thank you so much, Harriet. It was lovely speaking to you and also hearing all your expertise in this. So, yeah, thank you so much.

Harriet Ball:
Thank you so much for having me. It was great fun.