Don't Stop Us Now AI Edition

This week’s Future Proof mini episode is all about what it takes to get a big idea signed off. 

We’re excited to share very wise advice from senior Microsoft exec, Mitra Azizirad, who heads up their AI and Innovation division. Mitra speaks about what you should do when that fantastic idea or innovation you have gets knocked back.  (Hands up who knows that feeling!) 

Mitra is someone who’s had plenty of practise selling-in new ideas and approaches, and one of her top pieces of advice from our conversation was all about how you should react to being told “no” when you pitch an idea in a big corporate.  

It’s important advice and we’re excited to revisit this with you here. Enjoy! 

Useful Links

Mitra’s Full Interview with us - Mitra Azizirad – How Resilience and Persistence Can Make All The Difference

Mitra on LinkedIn - see her speeches here too! Well worth a watch!

Microsoft Innovation - Mitra’s team

Microsoft AI - also Mitra’s team

Mcirosoft’s AI Business School - Free Course

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Our episode this week features an American woman who abandoned the security and prestige of working with some of the world’s most sought after ad agencies to start her own businesses.

Her name is Allison Kent Smith and one thing that really stands out about her is that she has consciously refused to pretend to be someone she’s not when trying to find VC investors for her startup.   

That startup, giide.com, is a new platform for creating rich audio learning experiences featuring a host of multimedia options such as links, articles and graphics.

In our conversation you’ll hear how

• Allison has experienced a few seminal moments when she just knew she had to leap out of her comfort zone work-wise
• What a Silicon Valley VC told her when she met with him for funding that nearly made her give up
• Why she asks herself how can she do less when she wakes up 
• And how she’s found her tribe of investors and supporters by staying true to herself  

So sit back and enjoy this episode with the not so typical entrepreneur, Allison Kent Smith. 

Useful Links

Giide Website

Allison on LinkedIn

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Our mini episode this week is packed with wisdom from one of our most thoughtful guests. 

Social entrepreneur, author and one of Forbes Magazine ‘100 Greatest Living Business Minds’, Jacqueline Novogratz, blew our socks off with her inspiring purpose and thoughtful wisdom when we spoke with her last year.

We particularly loved how Jacqueline spoke inspiringly about courage and creating change, and she uses the analogy of bulls and doves in a brilliant way. At the time she was releasing her latest book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution. 

Jacqueline starts by stressing how important it is not to spend ages thinking about doing something but to make a start, even if it scares you. 

You’ll also learn how she channels her inner bull and dove and how she overcame her fear of public speaking.

Enjoy this episode. 

Useful Links 

Our full interview with Jacqueline Novogratz

Acumen Website

Jacqueline’s Books: 

Manifesto for a Moral Revolution – Practices to Build a Better World 

The Blue Sweater

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This week’s episode is all about becoming a great ‘people person’. It’s something we believe is probably the most important trait of a great leader. 

Of course, it’s not always easy to do, particularly these days when many of us are working from home at least some part of each week. 

Thanks to Covid, we’re all losing a bit of ‘muscle tone’ when it comes to building and maintaining healthy working relationships with our colleagues, direct reports and networks.

But fear not as we have just the info you need to hear to reinvigorate your working life! 

In this episode you’ll hear: 

• How one CEO was advised not to think she was running a company and instead to think of it as managing a group of individuals;
• Great advice on the key ingredients for strong working relationships even when everyone is working remotely;
• What mistake younger women make in particular when it comes to interactions at work; 
• And the one special ingredient you need to build enduring relationships in ways that are otherwise impossible.

So rediscover the ‘people person’ you want to be, and enjoy this episode!

Useful Links

The Trust Equation by Charles Green

Link to Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas Interview

Link to Connie Mckeage Interview

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This week’s Future Proof Me mini episode is all about asking for what you want. 

It sounds so simple in theory but it’s not always easy to do is it? 

Listen up for great and pragmatic advice on asking and negotiating from the unique and gutsy former advertising CEO, Cindy Gallop. She’s now a Founder and international speaker and she’s passionate about women being treated equally in business. 

You’ll hear Cindy initially talk about being posed a great question about what she wanted to do by an old boss at the famed ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty that really got her thinking and changed her career. Then you get to hear her invaluable advice on promoting yourself and things you can do if you need to negotiate your salary. 

Enjoy this mini episode. 

Useful Links

Link to Cindy’s full interview with us

Ask Cindy Gallop Chatbot 

MakeLoveNotPorn 

Cindy’s TED talk 

Cindy on Twitter 

Cindy on Facebook 

Cindy on LinkedIn

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This week, we’re really thrilled to be able to share our conversation with experienced founder, CEO and all round impressive operator, Connie Mckeage.

Connie recently sold OneVue, the listed fintech business she ran in Sydney for 14 years. It was a dramatic journey at times, particularly when OneVue was left being owed $31 million dollars by another company which had collapsed. 

Connie is Canadian and has spent most of her career in financial services. With OneVue she and her 200 employees were looking to disrupt the funds management market by creating a new digital model that aimed to cut out the middleman and reduce fees for end investors. 

Connie has an impressive list of awards to her name including being awarded the Centenary Medal for contribution to Australian business leadership; as well as twice being named CEO of the Year at the Women in Finance Awards, including last year at the same time she was fighting to keep her business afloat when it was owed $31 million. 

In this episode you’ll hear: 

• How Connie started her career in financial services by accident 
• How she dealt with her husband’s vehement opposition to her business for years on end
• What she learnt from the hardest 18 months of her career; and   
• Her advice if you’re looking to disrupt an industry. 

So get comfy and listen now because Connie has such wise and thoughtful insights on so many topics. 

Useful Link

Connie on LinkedIn

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This week’s mini episode is all about facing your fears and not being held back in life by the fear of failure. 

It’s important to know that we don’t always recognise how we’re feeling as ‘fear of failure’ when we hesitate or say no, but often that’s what lies behind any hesitation.  

In this episode we hear again from Kat Dunn. Kat was running Grameen Australia when we spoke a year or so back and these days Kat is working for herself and very much still focused on social ventures. 

Kat has thought a lot about failure and has held numerous failure-themed events in the past, and as a result, she has all kinds of wisdom to share as you will hear in this future-proofing, mini episode. 

Extra Info

Here are the 4 different lenses we shared at the end of this episode that can help when you’re worrying about failing. . . 

1. Growth Mindset - overcoming a fixed mindset and embracing the prospect of growing and learning;

2. The practise of Gratitude - to be more positive;  

3. Purpose - instead of focusing on what you're afraid of, think about what are you moving towards? 

4. Play - we underestimate the power of play in the adult world to really unlock creativity and get us into a state of inspiration and action, the perfect antidote to failure-inspired hesitation and inertia. 

Links

Kats Full Interview

Kat on LinkedIn

Kat on Instagram

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This week’s episode features one of the most unassuming and humble entrepreneurs we’ve met.

Adina Jacobs is the Co-Founder of an international technology accessories company called STM Goods that basically created a whole new category of product when it launched it 23 years ago. (Think really functional and yet not boring laptop backpacks and bags, ipad and tablet covers, chargers, and a whole host of other accessories.)

Adina’s success as a young entrepreneur is testament to the power of building win-win relationships; whether it’s with manufacturers or retail clients. It was thanks to great relationships with Apple resellers that led to her products landing coveted space in Apple’s own destination retail stores when they launched. 

And not only does Adina work with Apple but STM are also key suppliers of Microsoft accessories as well, plus many other brands. 

Adina is also Co-Founder of Mentor Walks in Australia, a not-for-profit expanding all around the country with its ‘walk and talk’ model. We had her Co-Founder, Bobbi Mahlab, on the show some months back.

In this episode you’ll learn: 

• How a creative use for a padded postal envelope 23 years ago was the genesis of a new product category, and an internationally successful business
• How Adina thinks, and goes about, building win win relationships 
• How STM has succeeded getting things successfully manufactured in China and elsewhere in the past two decades; and 
• How to set yourself up for success with your Co-Founder. 

So sit back, relax and enjoy this episode with the humble and high achieving Adina Jacobs. 

Useful Links

Adina on LinkedIn

STM website

MentorWalks website



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This week we look at the realities of being a startup founder. Becoming an entrepreneur and a founder is increasingly popular, even with school students where a recent survey showing that 40% of them now want to be entrepreneurs when they complete their studies. 

But it’s not all fame, fortune and delightful autonomy if you intend to build a business that will scale and survive. And we figured, who better to hear what being a founder is really like than one of Australia’s most successful female entrepreneurs, Cyan Ta’eed, the Co-Founder of the hugely successful digital marketplace, Envato (valued at over a billion dollars). 

Cyan is also the founder of the ethical chocolate company Hey Tiger and go milkshake, an app for Instagram influencers. 

In this episode she shares with us just how hard she and her co-founders worked to get Envato off the ground. It didn’t mean that they couldn’t choose where they’d work those long hours as you will hear in this fascinating insight into this Founders reality. 

Enjoy this mini episode. 

Useful Links

Cyan Ta’eed’s full interview

Cyan’s personal Instagram

Hey Tiger Instagram

Hey Tiger website – order your chocolate here (delivery to Australia, NZ & US for now)

Milkshake Instagram

Envato Instagram

Envato website

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We have a very special episode this week because we’re sharing the vulnerable story of how one of our guests was subsequently fired from a high profile role in the US and how she navigated her way through the dark times that followed.  

That guest is Heidi Hackemer and what she shares in this episode is so generous and valuable for all of us to hear; after all nothing is permanent and plans fall over on a regular basis. 

Heidi is a leading creative who had her own brand agency in New York and also headed up the Creative Studio at the philanthropic Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) in California. 

Not long after our first conversation with Heidi in July 2018 things went wrong, very wrong. Heidi was fired from CZI and not only that, when she got back to New York, she had to close her brand strategy agency, W&W too. We learnt about this because Heidi wrote an extremely brave and vulnerable article on Medium (link below) describing what had happened and how low she was feeling.

Admiring her generous honesty, we reached out to her just as COVID was taking hold everywhere round the world last year. Heidi agreed to speak with us.

After our conversation, we made a decision not to publish the interview last year, as it just felt too raw. With Heidi’s permission, we’ve all agreed that now is the right time to share the story she has been so generous in sharing with us. She’s well and truly bounced back from the lows she describes and is now the Executive Creative Director for North America at the booming global company, Oatly. 

In this episode Heidi shares: 

• How, after being fired, she initially couldn’t stop worrying about money
• Her advice for others who lose their jobs
• Heidi’s generous sharing of all the things she did to pull herself out of depression and bounce back, 
• And the inspiring reason she shared her extraordinary piece on Medium

Even if you are securely employed right now, we really recommend you listen to this unique conversation. And if you know someone who’s lost their job make sure they listen to this too! They’ll thank you later. 

Enjoy this episode with the generous, and very thoughtful, Heidi Hackemer.

Useful Links

Heidi on LinkedIn

Medium article that prompted this second interview

Heidi on Twitter

Heidi on Instagram

Oatly website

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