Your Happy Hour - Doing Business with Founders

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Welcome back to Your Happy Hour with Friday Feels!In this episode, we chat to Donnie Bachan who went from tech geek to becoming a fractional founder helping shape ideas into concrete visions and sustainable ventures. Donnie dove into the dynamics and challenges of co-founding, entrepreneurship, the significance of mentorship, coaching and cultivating supportive networks within the startup ecosystem as well as the impact of stress and cultural influences on the health and business practices of founders.Founder, co-founder or part of the team - what has your experience been like? Friday Feels is all about having those honest conversations, the power of community for personal growth and taking those actionable steps towards being our authentic selves.Thanks for tuning in! Keep it raw and real out there xYHH is produced by swartkat.co - captured via riverside.fm & shared via rss.com.

It's the Friday feels and we're back with your first sip of the weekend. You're now tuned in to this week's episode of your happy hour. I'm your host Nicole Carmine and it's amazing to have you here joining me this week as we uncover the truths about being a human and a working professional. What are you up to this Friday? Well whatever it is, this moment is just for you. Hello everyone out there tuning in this week for another episode of Your Happy Hour within the Friday Field Space and for those of you who are still catching up, we're in the middle of yet

another month, April 2025 and we're tackling the theme of doing business with. What does this mean? Well we've unpacked some incredible life experiences with founder executive producer and community leader Simon McCuella and we've had some interesting insights into the world of the creative economy and specifically songwriting with South African dance pop artist Lundy Yulandy and now today we're going to be unpacking this a little bit further from yet another angle and Today we're going to be unpacking this a little bit further from yet another angle. This is Doing Business with Founders. Now, I've got a really cool guest today who I've been so excited to have on and I'm really, really grateful to have met via Saj who was our co-host in season one.

Today we are going to be talking about the business of doing business with founders. So a very, very big welcome to you, Donnie Bacharn, to the Your Happy Hour podcast and the Friday Fuel Space. Thank you, Nicole. It's really a pleasure to be here. Really excited to have our conversation today. Well, it's great to have you. And I know that you and I have had quite a few conversations around my own business things, but also about what you do in terms of business with founders. So I want to just hear a little bit about from you and for our audience out

there, what has your journey been? How on earth did you get into the business of doing business with founders and a little bit of what the topic means for you? Yeah, it's been, it's been a quite interesting journey. I tell everybody I'm just a tech geek. That's how I started my career as an software engineer. And about 10 years ago, my boss was investing in startups. And he would take me along to kind of technically evaluate the startups.

And then I started noticing the same problems that all the startup founders were having from a technology perspective and I did what you know is probably an insane person would do I just quit my job and decided to try and help startups and it's been it's been an interesting journey for the last you know going on 12 years now with meeting some interesting people. Yeah it's a very very crazy ride because you see all different types of people, all different types of businesses and you meet some real characters along the way. Well I think that's really brave. Maybe like ignorance is bliss at the time of doing something like that but that's amazing that you've done that.

And I know you're also, I mean, you're founder of Six Berries and you're doing a ton of things. So how would you explain your role with founders or how do you work with founders when you first meet them? Yeah. So, you know, going back to when I kind of first had the idea to do what I was doing, I noticed the same problem with pretty much all the founders that we were talking to at the time. The challenge was that they had an idea and they tried to get an engineer to build it. So instead of them sitting down and really trying

to understand what they wanted to do, they just went out and found an agency. And a lot of times what happened was the product that they got at the end wasn't quite right. Right. It's not because the agency was incapable or that they didn't know what they want. It was a communication problem. So they couldn't speak technology. Right. So what I did was I quit my job and I started working with non-technical founders to really help them understand what are you trying to build, why are you trying to build it, who are you trying to build it for? And then walk them through that process of designing a solution and then developing a solution. And if you look at most of the successful businesses out there, and some people would disagree with me on this, but all the top billionaires are tech geeks, right? A lot of the tech billionaires are tech, well, billionaires are tech geeks.

And it's because they have the ability to build, right? So they go out and they build software, and yes, they have been fortunate in other places, but the non-technical founders struggle a lot because they have to depend on somebody else. And that's the problem we wanted to solve. We wanted to kind of level the playing field for them rather than saying, I don't know how to build this.

I have to put this in the hands of somebody else. We partner with the founders to really help them have an extended team. So they don't start with you and they're not on your payroll, but they're your team effectively. So a lot of the work I do, aside from being CEO of Six Berries, which is another business problem, to be enough also a founder, is I spend a lot of time with the brands and companies and founders themselves to really help them understand what solution they're trying to build for their customers. So it's one of the most fulfilling things to be honest.

While it's stressful running a business, I don't think I want to do anything else because I enjoy hearing from the founders, I enjoy looking at their challenges, I enjoy even the stressful points with working with founders. And it's so interesting, you see so many different things, you meet so many different people. It's a very fulfilling role that I have with people day to day. For me, it was really intriguing to hear that there's this solution out there

because I found myself in the same position, like you say, a non-technical founder, wanting to build cool stuff out there in the world and then not really knowing how to do that unless you build a little team of founders who are as passionate as you about this topic of what you are venturing into the world on. But then that brings its own dynamics of you sharing equity and how do you kind of split things and are you aligned and all of that. So that's a really tough thing I know a lot of founders are struggling with. And I actually, a good friend of mine, Vincent, who I know you've also chatted to, he found

this app where you could find founders. It's almost like a dating app for founders, you know, kind of swipe through and be like, hey, does this person fit my profile of what I'm looking for and is this a good match? So I think it's quite brave and beautiful that you are actually being like a fractional founder to other people and then to so many different extents because Most of us are just trying to do like maybe one business or two or whatever it is But to be able to be involved in so many different industries with so many different people. I think that's taking Doing business with from a very transactional place to a quite a relational place, which is really beautiful So is that how you found it? Is that what the journey's been like for you?

I'm a very passionate person and I get very passionate about businesses that I work with and sometimes it's a good thing and sometimes it's a bad thing because you are in business, right? So you have to generate revenue and you have to, you know, you can't give away everything for free but because you're involved with such an early stage, you feel like this is part of you, right? So one of the founders that I work with and they're one of the best founders, you know, that founding team, I tell him, I was like, this is your baby, but I'm the midwife, right?

I feel like the midwife. So I feel like I helped bring that baby into the world. So I am so, you know, he can call me at whatever time and I will listen even if there's no kind of physical like money changing hands because I'm always very passionate about the project. And you know, it's, it is very challenging to work with some founders. So you you know, just going to go into that topic of doing business with founders, because I think that to your point around finding a co-founder, I oppose using those apps because I feel like those things you a lot of founders or solo

founders are put under the pressure to find a co-founder. So you go to investors, they tell you that you need to find a co-founder. You talk to Y Combinator and their thing is that you have to have a co-founder. And if you're not technical, you have to have a technical co-founder. So you're now forced to go out and find somebody. And the analogy of dating is like, you know, it's literally saying, I'm going to pick my spouse or my partner from a range of people who I don't know. I just need to pick one. Right. Like because I was told that I need to pick one.

And the risks of, you know, picking a partner like that is the same risks that you have with in business. Right. And in business is even more complicated that you have in business. And in business, it's even more complicated because you have legal structures and a lot more challenges in that space. So I can oppose people forcing it. I think that in a little bit of a self-serving way, I advise customers to look for fractional rules, look for fractional people, bring them in as you need them. Not only in technology, in a lot of different places, but a lot of people sometimes they don't listen, right?

Then they have to learn the hard way. So that kind of involvement, you don't get that from a lot of people to be honest. I think once you're fractional, there's a little bit of a stigma in saying that you're just a service provider. You don't need to tell me about how to do my business. But I take it personally because I always tell people if the things that we build aren't being used by customers, then everybody's failed. It it's not it's not it's not the founders problem it's not my problem as a technology leader it's everybody's failed so we have to work together to kind of bring this to you know forward so i get very passionate about about it and and it's great and fulfilling and thrilling but the challenges are always there. I don't think I would change like my wife always

says you know you always stressed out about these things why don't you just do something else and I was like if you've ever met me you know that I will be stressed out about whatever I do because I I get passionate about everything right so so it is very fulfilling but it's also challenging to work with founders. And especially when they are, they listen to the people and nothing's wrong with this because there are a lot of people with experts, but like, so like the white combinators of the world, they would tell founders, oh, you need this. This is the formula for you to achieve success. And that's not a, that's, that's a rule that they followed for their portfolio.

That doesn't mean that there are other people who haven't gone down a different route and achieve success. So, you know, I try to coach founders into saying like, look at all the options and really come up with a solution that works best for you rather than just taking a checklist from somewhere else. I think that's really good advice

because in a way I was thinking you kind of a bit like a coach, even though you do bring the dev team and you bring all this different experience. And I know also you have an amazing network, so if there is things like funding that's necessary, because sometimes you do need that along the journey. But I think in a way you strike me as of a coach,

and I think we're all needing that on the entrepreneurial journey. I can say that for myself. You're needing an ear, and sometimes that is quite hard to find within the group that you would be so closely working with if you are a group of co-founders. I often think of, you know, it's a bit like when you go to your parents, but now you have this kind of trauma bond with them. And so you're not really objective

in the way that you speak to one another. So I think it's really an interesting model to tackle business that keeps things quite open. And obviously I can hear that, I mean, it can't be easy because like you said, you always, you do take these things personally, it becomes your baby too. And so I'm curious how have you dealt with that stress?

How do you deal with having so much on your plate? Is there something that you like a go-to or like a practice you've developed for yourself? Yeah, previously it was eating. I took a lot of stress eating and I'm being very honest here. It was a lot of stress for everything because you take responsibility for people's solutions. And I think as a service provider, and again, I communicate this to our teams because they don't see it a lot because they're sat somewhere else because we do a lot of offshore work.

When you do something, you don't just affect one person. So if, for example, we built something and there was a bug, a lot of people think that it's just a bug. One person experiences, we'll fix it. Right? But there's so many people in that supply chain that get affected by one mistake that somebody's made. Right? And the stress really gets to me. I take it personally a lot of times and it's probably not healthy to the point where again, I would eat, you know, I would just try to get sugar into me. And one day I was just watching TV and I ate a bag of candy, like an entire bag while I

was watching TV just subconsciously. And I was like, what's wrong with you? When I looked at it, I was like, I can't believe I've gone through this thing. So I actually found recently, I started working with a mindfulness coach. And that's been a lifesaver for me, basically, because, you know, working with him, I was able to really accept what's going on, practice meditation, and not kind of like yoga meditation that you see in movies, really meditation around calming your mind and focusing. And it doesn't take a lot of time. Like 10 minutes is, works miracles, right? Breathing exercises, that has been so helpful for me.

And I can't believe that it's taken me so long to kind of develop those things, right? And that has been a massive help. And also, you know, also detaching a little bit from the businesses because, as I said, I'm a very passionate person about whatever I do. So I have to take that step back, right? Like I have to say, look, I'll help you. I'll give you advice and, you know, it's interesting you talk about the coaching. I do try to coach people. People are always surprised when they come to me and they come to me for a solution. So

they come expecting that I will give them a quote to tell them, hey, this is how much it's gonna cost to build this thing. And sometimes I tell them like, oh yeah, you don't need me. You just, just use this thing. Just go, go do that. Right. Like because I, I started this to really support the founders, you know, and. It's not altruism because I want to be a billionaire, a gazillionaire at some point.

But like, um, you know, the original goal was to help the founders not make the mistakes and not be taken advantage of. You know setting boundaries has been helpful so the meditation has been helpful also setting boundaries because a lot of people would have my my number and they would call me at any any hours you know at any time of the day and now I have my phone on do not disturb at a certain time so past 8 p.m and before 8 a.m you know it's on do not disturb so unless it's my family members you can't really message me unless I actively look at your phone so some of those things have been really helpful for dealing with the stress so now it's like okay it's not your responsibility

Donny you have to you know you have to focus on your business, but also trying to make sure that your mental health is there. It's such a difficult thing. And I think I'm so glad you mentioning all these things. And thank you for being so open and honest about that, because I think everyone is, you know, we're all struggling with it in our own way. And I'm always surprised that we don't learn these things from a very young age at school. You know, we learn a lot of very interesting things, theoretically, but we don't actually

learn about our bodies and how to breathe and how to look after ourselves. And like you said, just mindfulness. And I'm always laughing when people think meditation and it's like yoga pose because that's what we've been conditioned to think. And most of the time it's actually just being very present in your body and breathing and being, like you say, very much with yourself. So I think it's really awesome that you've done that. And I'm very happy to hear that you're looking after yourself so we can have more founders doing their cool stuff in the world.

But it's true and I think that it's things that we all struggle with and so being able to take that time and sugar is really a killer. It's really not the best thing for all of us. I think a lot of people talk about things that are like alcohol, this or that. But to be honest, I think the hardest thing to come to terms with is that it's the things that we eat every day. And being able to cut down on that is not easy. Sugar is the worst drug known to man, right? Like it's worse than heroin.

Because you can, you know, like, and heroin is pretty bad but like sugar is really really bad for you you know like it's good to have sweets and like I still love cakes and I still have chocolate and all those kind of things but like overdose of sugar it's it's it does something brain and you know it's just not good for you and it's so hard to break out of it it is and I also feel like it's quite a cultural thing and and I would be completely remiss if I didn't touch on this topic because you're also Trinidadian and so I've now made so many wonderful people from there. I know being Afrikaans, I grew up in a culture that uses a lot of sugar and a lot of things

and we don't eat the healthiest. But how has that been for you? Like growing up in a place, I don't know what the culture and the food is like, but also I'm sure that that cultural experience and now moving to a new place has played an interesting role in your journey. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I didn't know I was doing anything wrong because you never taught that you know I grew up so I grew up in Caribbean I left when I was 22 so I lived a long time there and I'm of East Indian descent so my parents cooked you know Trinidad has a lot of different kind

of cultures so African descent you know West Indian I'm sorry Trinidad has a lot of different kind of cultures. African descent, you know, West Indian, sorry, Trinidad, Indian, you know, Spanish, French, very, very, you know, kind of big melting pot of cultures, Chinese. And our food reflects that very rich, very rich food. So you grew up eating these things and you didn't know that you were doing anything wrong. Right. So a lot of oil, a lot of sugar. And again, I love it still, right? But when I go home now, I don't, again, I am no way in there, you know, a gym rat or somebody who's super healthy in any shape or form, right? Like I still love,

you know, dirty foods, but you go home and you definitely see. So I get indigestion when I go back and my mom, when my mom cooks and she's a very good cook so she you know she she always tries to make stuff for me and I go back and I get indigestion all the time because there's so much oil, so much sugar in everything that we cook right and I went out with a friend of mine and we were at a bar and I asked for a diet coke and they didn't have anything without sugar. So there was nothing on the shelf without sugar.

And I've got to go in, how is this possible in this day and age, right? And people in Trinidad, like younger people are taking their health a lot better. They get up, they go to the gym at four in the morning, lots of fit people in Trinidad the older kind of generation has You know a lot of chronic illnesses like diabetes and stuff that but younger people are healthy in but you go out to places And there's still no healthy food right and you know come into it

I lived in New York for a little while after that and again New York is not you know again your huge portion sizes, so everything. And you know, there's Chinese and there's McDonald's and you know, you eat a lot of fast food and it was a big shock when we came to the UK because I think that the UK wildest takeout, still the same things. I think you eat, first first of all portion sizes are smaller but you tend to start eating better and you start walking more just naturally doing these things so it was a bit of a culture shock and we started eating less west indian type food and more you

know european type food and you know my wife her menus change, like she eats, the type of food that she eats is very European in what she would eat day to day, right? Like more Mediterranean actually, rather than European. So now it's been a big, big shift. And my daughter grew up here. Well, she was born in the Caribbean, but she spent most of her life here. So she's very different in how she eats from what we do. So you know I think it's been a positive change for us. It has been a big shock right? You live half your life in one place and you learn these things and then you come somewhere else to have to learn something else. It is and I think it's really interesting how you know when you become a founder, for example, depending on where

you are in the world, it will also shape who you are, what you do. You know, I think if, for example, for me, like moving from to Paris, like you say, like the European style, you walk a lot more. So you actually, you take metros, you're not driving, you know, so it's just a completely different way of life. And that plays in how you actually run your business, how you think as a person. And all of these are so interesting. So I'm sure that when you're doing business with founders,

you're finding these different things and you probably have a lot of people with their own little habits and ways of doing things that you're building alongside. Well, it's really interesting. so we see a lot of founders, while there are always exceptions, I think a lot of founders that we see these days are actually really young and I'm pretty I'm getting on in age so you know I call everybody young. But like we see a lot of people just out of university or you know a couple years out of university. So less than maybe between 23 and 27 that kind of

age range. So they haven't gotten a lot of experience in actual work, working in stuff yet. And then we get a lot of people who are in their 40s. So 40 plus. So either they they don't have any experience so they have a lot of experience in industry we don't see a lot of people in the middle to be honest now that's changing a little bit but generally speaking and it's very interesting looking at the two sides right so younger people and especially today so maybe ten years ago it was like the different but younger people today are very aware of the things that they don't know they don't know. Right so they listen and they

look for the advisors and they look for the coaches a lot more. Whereas if you have somebody who's been in the industry 20 years it's very difficult to try and get them to to look at things in a different way right. So I have this experience with one company that we were working with and the co-founder is a very successful lady and they wanted a brand name for their company and they asked me to do something for them and I was like, this is costing a lot of money. Are you sure that you're allowed to use this name? And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine. I was like, I don't think you should use this because it's the

category of the name is actually trademarked by somebody else and a big company. You shouldn't use this. You shouldn't use this name. And they were like, no, no, no, fine. It's fine. We just get it. So they spent a lot of money on this thing. And then their lawyers told them, yeah, you can't use this name because this thing. So they ended up spending a bunch of money somewhere else And again, it's like their experience worked against them there, right? So we have that issue with people who have experience in working they are very challenging to work with and younger people tend to be a lot more open to getting ideas, getting feedback and experimenting.

Whereas people who have experience don't experiment, they think I've done this before, I know exactly how it should be. They never think of the things that they don't know, they don't know. And that's the biggest killer, right? You have to be aware of the things that you don't know, you don't know they don't know and that's the biggest killer right like you have to be aware of the things that you don't know you don't know and people were like how can I be aware of something I don't know I don't know and my advice is just be aware that there are things that you're not seeing right and you you can't worry about planning for it because something will change in the future so what you have to do is worry about what you're doing now, focus on that,

and always be mindful that your solution or whatever you're doing is not always going to be 100% exactly, or not even 60% exactly what you kind of envisioned it from the start and be prepared to change. But people tend not to want to change so kind of difficulties in working with founders is getting them to understand that things will change and to really think of it from an iterative perspective and you younger people understand that because they they live it now right there everything is small everything is cyclical so that's one of the biggest challenges that I have with people and it's an age demographic thing.

Culturally it's like it's super interesting because we work with a lot of people from the UK, people from the US now and culturally we don't see that much of a difference I think people are fairly similar in mindset when they're trying to build a company they are the biggest challenge as you pointed out earlier is funding a lot of the times so they are very stressed about funding and how to get funding and a lot of people don't understand I don't know how to kind of express this without making it sound bad but like it's a class differentiation. I think if you come from a group or somebody who doesn't not affluent or middle class and you're trying to

get into any startup world it is very very challenging because you don't understand the dynamics and you said something earlier like we're not taught these things taught a lot of things and finance is one of the things that you're not taught a lot when you are when you come from a from a kind of again you know you have parents who would kind of successful financially and you have to learn these things. It's very, very different. It's a big learning curve, right?

So we see founders who underpay themselves, they take on more debt than they should be taking on. They do a lot of things that they shouldn't be doing from a financial perspective, whereas somebody who's come from, you know, they went to a good school or they have parents who are a little bit affluent and, you know, kind of middle to upper-income, higher-income families, they are a little bit more savvy about these things and that financial competence is a big differentiator I think between within ecosystem you see that a lot. That makes sense that makes sense and I think it's

so interesting because I think we don't often think about the holistic person who becomes the founder who sets the culture and you know makes the decisions and often because of generational things that you absorb from your environment or from your parents or what happens around you, how you grew up and what you learned how to handle finances or your health or whatever it might be, you make certain decisions and you don't always realize that. I think often when you're alone, and I've seen this for myself, is that often when you're alone, you're not questioning yourself, unless you're very mindful that you are not necessarily questioning yourself in the right way about the decisions that you're making. And then sometimes those kind of ignorant decisions end up being wonderful decisions down the line, and sometimes they're not.

So then you have to kind of just, you know, make your bed and sleep on it. So I think it's really interesting when you are a solar founder in that way. And then when you work with other people to be able to be open, like you say, I found that really interesting that you were saying about the gaps between the ages, because I sit in the middle. I'm in my 30s, I guess I'm in this weird bucket of people who are now starting businesses, but I've been through corporate and all of that before. And I can see my kind of like oldest self always wanting to have the answer, always

wanting to know because that was ingrained in me, you always have to know. And then there's like the younger self of me that's part of that more the millennial vibe that's going, it's okay not to know, rather ask, you know, and rather be open to changing and being agile in your environment. So this is such an interesting dynamic and I'm curious for you, Donnie, as you kind of planning and or not planning as you said, you know, sometimes you don't know, you can really only live in the moment. What does a year from now look like for you? What are you busy with that we can celebrate with you?

Well, for me personally, well, for the business wise, I, like I said, I'm getting very involved in client work still. And from a corporate perspective, I have to be more of a CEO. In the sense that it's around not working in the business, it's working on the business. So looking at how we can grow and scale. And I have never really been motivated by money, you know, to the detriment of my family. They don't like, they go, Donnie Tony you should just get a job and make more money

because I think the amount of money I could be making outside of what I do now is significant. But so not being really driven by money is one thing. So I do a lot of stuff because I enjoy doing it and I try to support people and stuff like that but you know now I have a team we have they have needs we need to grow the business so my focus really needs to be about supporting my team as well right like how best can I support them and then also again from a passion side we want to support these smaller founders who may not have funding yet and we want to take some risks a little bit on those things.

To do that we need financing. We need to be able to get bigger projects where we can have cash flow. My primary focus now is to really scale the business going forward. In a year's time I need us to be in a really good position around projects, how many clients we have on board. But also, and I was talking to my team about this recently, it's around taking care of our people. I feel like we haven't done as good a job as we could have done in the past.

So making sure that we, and we have a diverse team, we have people in India, we have people in Bosnia, Tunisia, Nigeria, the UK, and we want to grow into the Caribbean, you know, in Latin America in the next 12 months. Making sure that we can effectively keep global culture, you know, our core beliefs and stuff that going forward and then expanding that out to the rest of the team. It's important thing for me to do, right? Taking care of our people because look, I know it's a cliche where people say, your people is everything,

but like we operate from a, we almost operate like a two-sided marketplace. We have clients on one side and we have staff on the other side and You know recruitment is hard, right? So if you have to go on a recruit client staff you have to do the interviews and but a Very good indicator of talent is when somebody in your team recommends somebody else Because they tend to recommend people who they know

will do well in the company, because if they recommend somebody who's bad, then they look bad, right? So they only recommend good people, but you want them to recommend people, right? So you want them to say, come work with me, because this place is great to work. And then on the other side with clients,

we want to make sure that clients do the same thing. We want them to recommend us because that's again, that's the best kind of sales pipeline. It's not the, you know, you talk to salespeople and they go, that's not how you should base your business. But like, you know, if your clients are recommending you, that's what you want, right? So, you know, making sure that we can keep our staff happy, giving them, you know, rewards and benefits and building a global culture that really takes that passion that I started the business with and really care about these brands that we work with. That's like really real core part of what I wanna do

in the next 12 months with the business. Oh, that very much up our Friday feels alley. And I guess this is why we connected, because, you know, I think we're all living globally, but wanting to, or rather operating globally, but wanting to live locally and feel that connection, feel that feeling. And like you say, feel valued and being part of a team. So that's really important. And we're excited for you for the next year.

That's really awesome. And can't wait to hear more about all the businesses that you're building and being a part of. And I can't wait to have some more conversations with you about Friday fields when the time's right. So on that note, I did want to do a little quick shout out to our support in this podcast. And we wouldn't be able to capture all this great sound.

We would be able to have these conversations if it wasn't for our audio tech partners, Riverside FM and RSS.com. So if you are a content creator, a podcaster, maybe you want to live stream something or you just want to capture your meetings audio, video and words in a very efficient way. Check out Riverside FM, they have amazing transcription and other features that they're rolling out all the time. So every day that I'm working with them I kind of feel like I'm discovering something new and I'm sure you will too. So if you want to check them out they've also given us a great discount for our audience and you can contact us on the socials at fridayfields.co and we will send you the discount code. And then Donnie, I wanted to give a quick shout out on this note.

We're doing something called the People, Places and Spaces, which are the persons, the platforms or the creations out there in the world that we feel have the feels and that make us happy. And today's shout out goes to Canva. I know this is a tool, a content creation tool that a lot of us are using out there in the world. And for me personally, as I was travelling back from South Africa to Paris and having to do a lot of event work and creating flyers and all of that, I just really was so grateful for Canva.

So thanks guys for making it easy, for making it cool, for keeping the trends alive in terms of content creation. And then I would like to move into a little section on that topic of being grateful. And there's a section we call the gems. And that is every week that we just take some, a moment to share what we've learned. Maybe something's been difficult,

maybe it's been a cool experience for you. So I'll start and you're welcome to share if you want. But this jam for me this week has been kind of wrapping up things in South Africa a little bit and just spending interesting time with family. My poor family were there when I was fixing up my house and packing up boxes. And you know, it's not every day that you get to share in

these comical moments where you're sleeping on a couch in the middle of your living room because everything else has been cleared out and then being able to do it with parents who get to laugh with you in the moment and help and so thank you to them for supporting me through this change and also then being able to come back to Paris and see the blossoms after five weeks of being away it looks really different and I'm very excited for you Donny to come and experience Paris now in this time of the year and to hold Gracie again was just absolute gem as always so that was really my

gem for the week what has yours been? Yeah, it's been, it's been an interesting week. I think we've put in some, you know, just going back to that employee kind of rewards and stuff that we just implemented something that made me feel really, you know, I had a bit of a cry this morning because one of my staff said thank you this morning to, you know, and that he was really happy to work in a place. And while I don't need, you know, my staff to tell me thank you for anything, right? Like it was, it meant a lot that he saw the value in what we were trying to do.

And that was really touching this morning. Again, I, coming back to that passions thing, I take a lot of pride in everything that we do and that kind of made me Understand that we are doing the right things, right? So we are kind of getting to We only right path. So we just need to kind of continue on there and stick with what we're doing and you know kind of continuing to be You know treat people with with respect and that kind of

thing. So it was really, really good and I'm really excited to be in Paris tomorrow. So yeah, I can't wait. I love Paris. So it's one of my favorite places. And I just wanted to touch on, you know, the, you know, you spoke about Riverside and Canva and Riverside is awesome. I love their magic clips. So so like you can you don't have to edit you don't have to edit it it automatically finds clips that are pretty cool as the first thing and then on Canva my my marketing manager he loves it like he can just do anything on there so you know not to not to you know kind of kiss up to them but they have been very helpful.

Both of those platforms have been very helpful for any little things that we've been doing. We've been doing a lot of kind of content creation around video and audio, but like, we've done a few interviews with some of our customers and we've done testimonials and that kind of thing. And Riverside really helps us. And then Canva has also been great

for really helping us kind of get things out the door. So shout out to them as well. It's really good. As founders and entrepreneurs and as business people, we're very grateful when people make things easy. I think that's the most important part. And for that, I think AI is gonna change the game. But not to divert onto that topic for a moment.

Donnie, I wanted to ask you one more question. And that is something we've been doing is building our reading list at Friday Fields and Your Happy Hour. And we're calling it the stack. So on our website, people can navigate and see what are the books that have been inspirational to people. So if you have any books that have been lying on your pile that you feel like you keep going back to, or maybe you haven't yet and you'd like to recommend, I want to ask you what

is in your stack. I mean, I have some books there that I love, but there's actually one that I've been reading recently and it's called Vivid Vision. I don't know if you can see this, Vivid Vision. It's actually quite a really interesting book it talks around how do you share your vision so a lot of businesses don't aren't able to so the CEO or the founder has these things in their head right and people have to come back to them all the time so how do you get that vision out into, you know, it's not a vision statement,

it's not a vision statement, it's a real detailed plan around this is what I'm thinking, this is why I'm thinking it and that's been amazing to really read and digest. And then there one of the book that I really recommend to anybody who works globally. It's called The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. It's so good at understanding cultural differences between people. So the difference between a French person and a German person between a British and an American, between Japanese and Indian, it has been an eye-opener. And once you start reading the book, you realize that these things actually happen and it gives you tips on how to work around those things, right?

It's been, I've given it to a lot of my staff for them to understand because, you know, we have people in India who have to deal with people in the UK and one of the funniest moments that I've ever seen was I was on a call with a client and so the client British client and they gave feedback on something and give the feedback and then you know we left the call and I spoke to my team I was like how do you guys think that went and everybody in India was like oh it's great they really like what we're doing and I was like mmm that's not what they said they were just being polite so you didn't get the contextual

understanding of what they said and you know British people are generally not good at giving feedback they're not, right? So I was sitting there kind of going, yeah, they're not happy about this particular thing, so we need to fix it. And the team was like, oh no, they loved it, they really loved it. And so that cultural difference about communication and how it goes, so that book is one of my top recommendations for anybody. That's so great. Thank you. Thank you for recommending those. I'm really excited to add the Vivid Vision one to my stack as well and to go read. And I think that's just so comical.

I remember when my corporate job where I used to work, they actually brought Erin in and she spoke about the culture map and it was really insightful. And there's a lot of things you can learn about yourself and your own culture from that, which is awesome. So that is really comical. And yes, I can appreciate that British culture being somehow colonized from an African's perspective in South Africa through it all. We very much about the subtleties.

Yeah, well, that's amazing. And just for everyone out there who's listening, I wonder what you're feeling and what are you thinking about doing business with? Maybe you're a founder, maybe you're on your entrepreneurial journey or you're just looking for a cool team and feel free to reach out to Dani. I'm sure we can. We'll put everything in the socials and just to make sure everyone knows how to find you, Donny, what's the best place for them to connect with you?

I'm on LinkedIn. So also we are on Instagram, you know, the Six Berries Instagram as well. And this email, I'm pretty old school. I don't really, you know, I have a Twitter account that I never use and Facebook account that I never use so you know maybe Instagram and LinkedIn or email one of those three so it's just Donnie at

sixberries.com if anyone wants to get in touch. Thank you so much and thank you to you for coming on today and just sharing so openly and you really gave us a lot of food for thought in terms of building business and how we relate with one another in that that regard so thank you for being so open and it's just always a pleasure and I hope I get to see you in Paris but if not we'll definitely catch up soon. Yeah thank you so much Nicole I really appreciate this I mean I've never really done a podcast because I didn't start like I never really did a podcast before my first time and I hope that people find some value in the experience and as you said if anybody wants to even get some more advice feel free to

Get in touch and happy to Happy to contribute where I can If you haven't just yet follow Friday feels on Instagram Facebook TikTok and LinkedIn you can share with us all your feels this week by tagging us at fridayfeels.co and you can also find the website at that handle. And now as you ease into this weekend, take a moment. Celebrate who you've become, what you've overcome and what is yet to come as you do the crazy and cool things that you do as the authentic you.

You know the truth about life and work is that it's hard, but the beauty is this global working experience that you're in while we are in it together. So keep connecting, empowering and inspiring this week and of course keep it raw and real. Until next time.