– Julie Rasmussen

Julie is a highly experienced corporate executive and entrepreneur, taking senior leadership and board roles in a range of industries and several countries for major organizations including Mary Kay, CVSL and EnXray. She is now the founder and CEO of She Banks, a fintech startup whose mission is to increase financial security for women.

LinkedIn: Julie Rasmussen

Twitter: Julie Rasmussen

Julie Rasmussen: Hey, Ross. It’s great to be here.

Ross: Since I reached out to you to interview you on how you thrive on overload, I gather you’ve thought a little bit more about the subject.

Julie: I have indeed. It’s quite fascinating because until you sent me your list of questions, about thriving on information overload, my opinion about it really was more like barely surviving on information overload. I think sometimes it’s more like drowning in information overload, it’s like trying to drink from a firehose, or in the immortal words of the Texas punk rock bands, The Butthole Surfers, it’s like drinking from a fountain that is pouring like an avalanche coming down the mountain.

Ross: They do know all about it.

Julie: Exactly. Then I started looking at your list of questions and listening to some of your other interviews. In particular, one of your most recent ones, with Leslie Shannon, from Nokia, who was one of my very good friends, and one of the most brilliant and interesting people you’ll ever hope to have a chance to meet, she mentions her five F’s, she has Find, Filter, File, Familiarize, and Formulate. I started thinking more consciously about the fact that, in fact, I do thrive on information overload, because this is where I get the ideas to start up new businesses or fix businesses that I’m working on.

Ross: Tell us what it is.

Julie: Ross, this is not that different from her process. Again, I will repeat one thing that Leslie says, it’s very important to find what works for you as an individual, and what works for one person might not work for another. What I discovered is that my process if we want to name it as a system is the seven S’s. It consists of Search, Scan, Sort, Structure, Save, Synthesize, and then Synergize.

Ross: So this is starting with the Search. Is this in chronological order as in, you start with the Search?

Julie: I just start by scanning my inbox, what has been pushed to me, and scanning the headlines in the news aggregators, to see what the topics of the day are. Then I will delve more deeply into the topics of particular interest that I happen to be researching at that particular time. One time I was working with a cannabis company so I would focus on issues facing the cannabis industry. Or if I’m working with a security and transportation company, I’ll be scanning and searching for information relevant to that. My newest startup that I’m working on right now is a Fintech Ecosystem for women so I’m looking at everything having to do with Fintech, financial products and services, and women’s use of financial products and services. Then it just goes deeper and deeper from there.

Ross: Is this for your use only?

Julie: Yes, my own use only.

Ross: Nice and novel.

Julie: I can’t get anyone to use my Slack channels, because I’ll have 150 channels, let’s say on Fintech, with everything I’ve ever read on Fintech that I thought was interesting, I’ll just make a channel, or I’ll add it to a channel in Slack.

Ross: Fabulous

Julie: Over time, I might have a Slack workspace that has 1000 or 1500 links to various topics. There are many, many tools you can use, like Endnote, and different internet searching tools, but I just found Slack was so easy to use; create a channel, post the link, and then I can make notes, right in the Slack channel under the article, or you can cut and paste certain paragraphs in the article and paste them to the channel and then you can pin the channel. I’m also a member of many collaborative Slack workspaces. That’s how I have organized my research with articles and online content into Slack.

Ross: I never heard anyone doing that, but it makes a lot of sense, not least because you’re already in Slack all the time and you’ve got an instant tag by sticking it in there.

Julie: Exactly. That’s just something that I just discovered, I just stumbled across as I was researching and thinking, what am I going to do with all these…

Ross: Innovation?

Julie: Yes, and all these different links to all these different articles, I got to store them somewhere. When I’m writing articles or emails, I will just click open my Slack workspace, quickly find the channel, copy the link and send it to somebody, or click on the article or see the parts that I’ve excerpted. It’s a fantastic archive tool I have found for storing this information. That’s my main sorting procedure, is to make an Excel spreadsheet, make a slide, but mostly store things in Slack.

Ross: What tools do you use to put structure on it or to capture the structure which is apparent in your mind?

Julie: Leslie uses this analogy of the Christmas tree. Areas that she has more information about, I think she used the example of Brazil, she knows a lot about that, so she hangs the information on this mental map of a Christmas tree that represents Brazil, and it glows very brightly in her mind map because it’s so rich with information. For me, it’s more like I’m looking at that green code that flows down the screens in the movie “The Matrix”, and I’m looking for the patterns and I’m looking for the underlying connections in this information, which again, I’m looking for the meta structure, and then I will use mental maps or some systems’ analysis tools, flowcharts like Coggle, or Kumu.

Ross: I’d love to just dig a little bit deeper into that. For example, on the legal pad, when you sketch things out, are there any particular types of relationships that you’re trying to capture in terms of dependence, causality, priority, or anything else?

Julie: Yes. After we have searched, scanned, sorted the information according to what kind of structure and type of information it is, then saved it in the appropriate place, then it’s really critical to try to synthesize some of this information. Are there clashing elements? Are there contradictory statements? Are there statements that ring true? Or are there statements that cause doubt? And I’m looking for gaps, both in the information and then gaps in the real world. If there’s a root cause or a systemic element, where’s the blockage in the system? Or where does the system ignore information that if inserted into the system could cause it to change? Synthesizing is like you’ve got all these pieces like Legos or building blocks, so you’re trying to see how they fit together, and what parts don’t fit and what parts do fit, and are patterns revealed that illustrate systemic problems. Then you think about what ways could those problems be addressed.

Ross: Is this something where you sit back and get into this certain state of mind to synthesize where you are pulling back to be able to ask these questions to yourselves?

Julie: Yes, synthesis is a process of very active work, where I’m really consciously reading this information, trying to process it, trying to understand it, and trying to group it together in my mind, in this structured mind map that I’m building, so I think synthesis is really the hardest part because there’s so much information. When it tends to start to repeat itself, then you can say, Okay, well 70% of the data on this is all congruent so let me just now make up an object, which has certain premises, which I believe to be more or less true, that’s been now synthesized, all that information.

Ross: I’d later come back to that, perhaps, after finishing off your seven S’s.

Julie: Yes. The last step is after that information is synthesized, and I’ve got this mind map, and I’ve got this underlying code in The Matrix where I think I know how certain systems and forces are working, the next thing is really Synergize. Now, this is where the real value add comes and two plus two is not four, two plus two starts to be five. This is the one that I don’t think you can really force, and I find that it’s obsessive deep thinking, a rumination process that runs in an infinite loop in the background while I’m brushing my teeth, taking a shower, making scrambled eggs, whatever, it’s like, you got a little bit of small piece of food stuck between your teeth and it’s there, you want to get rid of it, you don’t know what you’re going to do with it, it’s quite annoying until you can get rid of this. Going for a bike ride, just letting your mind wander through all the information, picking up things, looking at them, turning around, putting them back down, until suddenly, if the process is working, and I’m doing this right, I’ll get some kind of sudden insight or epiphany, that will bring me to a new level of understanding of both the problem, the systemic issues, and then possible solutions.

Ross: Absolutely. Ultimately, of course, the purpose of this is to create something wonderful, which wasn’t there before, either to solve problems or to create new opportunities. That’s where it all comes. But as you say, once you resolve the tension, the other tensions emerge from that.

Julie: Exactly. I do think that it’s very important to schedule downtime but it really goes against our culture, this work-addicted, workaholic, high-pressure culture. But I find that I have to schedule and I will try to schedule two days a week, sounds like a lot, but where I just do nothing, but nothing being thinking, where you’re just going away, and you may be writing, you’re writing down your thoughts, or riding a bike, or doing something, shopping, it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing, lying in bed watching TV, I don’t know, but that’s when the real creative impulses come and your subconscious takes over, and we’ll make these connections that result in epiphanies, innovation, and synergies.

Ross: Fortunately, two days a week corresponds with the weekend, so you’re lying with the rest of the society.

Julie: Yes, but I try to take at least one day during the week, a Wednesday or a Friday or a Sunday. I actually rent a small studio apartment near my office. I won’t even go to the office because I have to have just no distractions, nothing on my agenda, nothing on my schedule, just force me to have that downtime. A good example for me was I used to take this 13-hour flight from London to Hong Kong back in the days before there was any Wi-Fi on the planes. I was really lucky because I was a CEO of a large organization so I used to fly business class or first class with a flatbed seat. It was such a relief and such a haven to go into this confined space where you didn’t get up really for 13 hours, they would bring you your food, bring you your water, there were no distractions, no one could call you, no one’s talking to you and all of my most productive, creative business insights almost without exception would come to me during this flight. After a few hours, I get out a pencil and a notebook, and the words, and the thoughts, everything would just flow, just flows out of your brain onto the paper without thinking about it. It’s just percolating up from the deep recesses of your brain. If you’ve done the first six steps, then it just percolates up.

Ross: My experience used to always be that I’d literally get the 30,000-foot perspective of my life.

Julie: That’s a great analogy.

Ross: I just want to dig back into a couple of those S’s. I want to hear a little bit more. In the structure piece, you use the term mental mind maps. Are those classic mind maps with a concept in the middle and then branching forks of the hierarchical structures?

Julie: Not really, I think it’s very important that your mind map is very free-flowing. I might just take one thought, or one problem, or one question, or one fact, just write it down and draw a circle on it. Then I just let my mind wander wherever it wants to go, like, what’s connected to that, or what’s not connected to that. It’s a very free-flowing thing. You just spew everything out onto the paper, then later, I will go back, and I’ll maybe impose more order on it or more structure on it or make it more formal, more like maybe a classic mind map. But I think it’s really important not to have any preconceived ideas, like, okay, it has to be organized in a certain way, no.

Ross: When you jot down some concepts, what kind of relationships between them are you trying to elucidate?

Julie: For example, I started researching for this latest startup. My father has a Ph.D. in economics. I’ve always been very strong in personal finance and economics, because of what he taught me. I’ve worked with tens of thousands of women entrepreneurs, and then I started to realize that women lack confidence in investing, they have lower levels of financial literacy so I draw a big circle over here that represents the finance industry, finance, financial concepts, then over here, I draw another circle, and this is women, women entrepreneurs, women’s challenges, what’s going on with women. I realized these are almost two separate universes. Then I started thinking about, well, maybe this is the problem, this disconnect. This is why women are not using financial products and services. What are the root causes of this? I’ll start to put things in the middle, like how can we bring these two circles closer together? Are there any overlapping circles like in a Venn diagram? I’ll just start drawing Venn diagrams and circles and putting things into them and then just seeing if there are connections. Then when I’m done with this map, I’ll see where there are connections, where I think there should be connections, and where there are no connections. It’s the blank spaces, often that are more important, or as important as the circles that are filled in with data. Where these big white areas are where there is no connection? That’s the opportunity.

Ross: Yes, absolutely.

Julie: Like in this particular example, it’s a huge opportunity. I had no idea when I started researching this. Oliver Wyman did a study that says, the difference in the use of financial products and services by men and women is a $700 billion global opportunity. That’s mind-boggling to me. That’s a huge white circle that really bears thinking about and figuring out how do you fill in the circle with basically encouraging women to use financial products and services so that they start investing more, and start to have better economic outcomes. But without drawing that mind map, I’m not able to really visualize how to do that.

Ross: That’s interesting. On a related note a dozen years ago, in Harvard Business Review, there was a strategy map, where they did a semantic analysis of all of the content that companies created, including all of their filings and so on, and then looked at the relationships, created network analysis of these companies, which ones are adjacent. From that, there were white spaces, where there are basically industry sectors that barely exist at the moment, where opportunities lie rather than where there are massive clusters of everybody using exactly the same language to say what they’re doing.

Julie: Exactly. I’m looking for these whitespaces. The world of finance is dominated by men. This is not a criticism. It’s just a fact. If you think about creators creating things in their own image, it’s no wonder that the financial services industry speaks the language that the creators of it understand and feel comfortable with. It’s not the same language that the universe of women who control three-fourths of domestic household spending and then on average have 13 different roles they feel at home versus three or four for men, it’s no surprise that that universe of women is speaking a different language. Neither one is good or bad, or better or worse, they’re just different. How can we translate from one of these worlds to the other in a way that they understand each other better, and when they do, then the first circle here of the financial and services industry, will then start to communicate with and include and involve this world of women who are not participating in or who may be underserved by the existing financial industry.

Ross: You mentioned building systems diagrams using tools like Coggle and Kumu. Have you had any education in systems mapping and diagrams? Or is this something that has come to you intuitively?

Julie: I always was a systems thinker. My Myers Briggs profile is an INTP, which is a researcher and a gatherer of information. However, the answer to your question is yes. I just recently went back to school and completed an MBA, which I finished in June of 2020. I’m already a very experienced, very successful business person. My friends are like why on earth are you doing that? Why are you wasting your time doing that? And I said because I’ve done many, many startups, I’ve done many turnarounds, I’ve sat on many boards but I want to know if maybe I have one last big startup in me. If I’m going to do another startup, it has to be big because startups are hard, it has to be something that is potentially massively scalable, or it’s just a lifestyle business and you can do that as a hobby in your spare time.

Ross: Yes, absolutely. You definitely need to trademark your seven S’s though. A few decades ago, McKinsey, put out their Seven S’s of strategy so you might have a bit of a tussle on your hands.

Julie: Okay, I’ll have to look that one up. Maybe they beat me to the punch.

Ross: No, it’s a different seven S’s. I think yours is wonderful. That’s a great insight, really valuable. Perhaps, you can write a book. In conclusion, any last recommendations for listeners on how they too can thrive on overload as you do using your seven S’s?

Julie: Yes, I think one thing to do is to research frameworks because those frameworks can be very helpful, and they’re good shortcuts and good tools that people have already thought of, that you don’t have to reinvent, that you can use as your Christmas tree structure or your mind map structure or whatever. Then we also read a book for the MBA program called “Thinking Fast and Slow” by behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman. It’s a very dense book, and there’s much repetitiveness in it. But if you will scan the chapters or read a synopsis of this book, there are some very important principles in there. I think it’s really important to be aware of confirmation bias and loss aversion.

Ross: That’s fabulous. Thank you so much for your time and your insights today, Julie.

Julie: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.