Life Conversations with a Twist
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Life Conversations with a Twist
Business Bravery Hacks: Simple Ways to Lead Boldly with Cerys Goodall
"Be brave. You have nothing to lose… All you have to do is say ‘yes, why not me?’, and go for it, because more doors will open to you than you could ever imagine." —Cerys Goodall
Some days, running a business feels like you’re juggling too much and still falling behind. The pressure to do it all, be everywhere, and never drop the ball is real—and it’s exhausting. But there’s a smarter, braver way to build success that doesn’t require perfecting it all and burning out.
From biotech labs to NASA missions, Cerys Goodall discovered her gift not only in building teams or launching tech, but in championing people and guiding leaders through their toughest transitions. Now, as the founder of The Goods, Cerys helps founders and CEOs find their footing when the ground shifts, showing that real progress comes from daring to say yes, embracing imperfection, and holding tight to your values.
Join Heather and Cerys for a friendly chat about outsourcing what drains you, finding business bravery, leading with real values, supporting women and parents, embracing flexible work, and practical consulting advice.
Connect with Heather:
Episode Highlights:
01:43 Supporting Women and Parents in the Workplace
10:22 Navigating the Tech to Consulting Space
16:59 Opportunities in Tech
24:39 Building Values-Based Businesses
28:54 Advice for Small Business Owners
32:54 The Role of Consultants in Business Growth
36:57 Take the Brave Path
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Connect with Cerys:
Cerys Goodall is a Toronto-based consultant and founder of The Goods, where she partners with founders and CEOs to help them navigate times of transition and accelerate their businesses. With a diverse background spanning marketing, communications, operations, and HR, Cerys has held key leadership roles at innovative companies such as Vetster and InnerSpace.
Cerys is a strong advocate for values-based leadership, workplace flexibility, and supporting women and parents in business. She is known for her collaborative approach, helping clients focus on their strengths while she manages the rest, and for her commitment to building inclusive, people-first organizations.
Heather Nelson: Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's Life Conversations With A Twist. I have the honor of having Cerys here finally on my podcast. We were joking around because we got connected back in April, and I was so excited to have you on the podcast and listen to your story. Life got in the way, and we had to reschedule multiple times. But we finally did it today, and I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today.
Cerys Goodall: Likewise. I'm so glad we could make it happen.
Heather Nelson: Thank you for honoring grace. I think we were talking about that. How sometimes when you have so much going on and life gets thrown at you, you get sick and different things come up, that you just have to give everybody grace. So thank you for that.
Cerys Goodall: It's such a good reminder that you don't know what else is happening in someone's life, and you have these little moments where both you and I were struggling to get things done, see kids, have meetings, and then I got sick, and we're here. You think time has also passed, so now we have more to talk about.
Heather Nelson: I cannot wait. Tell the listeners a little bit about who you are, and the work that you're doing now. You've done a lot of stuff, so I want to go back and listen to that. But currently, what's going on in your life?
Cerys Goodall: I run a consulting practice called The Goods. And essentially, what I do is I work with founders, CEOs who are going through times of transition, who need a right hand to handle all of the things that they either don't want to do, don't have time for, or aren't their superpower. I'm that right hand. Let me catch it for you. Let me help accelerate your business and your thinking, and be a real thought partner, which we all know in entrepreneurial journeys can be really lonely sometimes. I need somebody to workshop, to validate, to figure out what that next step is. So getting out of that paralysis is where I come in.
Heather Nelson: I love that. And so that's the current work you're doing. And where do you live?
Cerys Goodall: I live in Toronto, Canada.
Heather Nelson: What's family life like?
Cerys Goodall: So it's just me on my own. But I'm an aunt to two amazing boys who are 11 and 14, and just absolutely fantastic. They are into sports, hockey and baseball, and so I get to be the nutty aunt that spoils them. And then a pseudo aunt to all of my friends with kids as well.
Heather Nelson: Oh, my gosh. I love that. I did that for a very long time until I had my own. And now, I feel like I don't get to see them anymore, all their kids.
Cerys Goodall: I really feel for my parents. Especially today, everything is so busy. The expectation of having children is scheduled into things compared to when we were kids where it was, go outside, drink from the house, you know, please be home for dinner. And now, it's just a different way of raising children. And so I think there's so much pressure. I look at my friends, in particular, my female friends, there's so much pressure on them to really be organized, scheduled, carve time out for themselves. That's a really difficult journey for a lot of people.
Heather Nelson: Yep, I agree. And then there's people like you that can help with the business. And I think that's where I always struggle. I have three kids, but I also am a podcaster, and I run two businesses. The business that I'm sitting in now, I'm like, what's next for me? And so sitting in this, I need to work on it, and figure out what it is, but I don't have time to do that. It's like always the thing that gets pushed aside.
Cerys Goodall: So sure. It's so interesting that you say that, because I think that's where we all need to come together and help each other. One of the things that I've been really fortunate to be able to do from my vantage point, which I've worked. My last company was a company called Vetster. It was in pet telemedicine. I don't have kids, but can I make life for the women and all parents? But certainly the women working in our company have more support. I don't need to have kids to be able to support that journey. And so making sure that we had 60% women, making sure we had really healthy maternity leave, making sure that people had retirement plans, financial freedom, those were all things that didn't take me being a parent to provide. And I think that's where we need to really come together, regardless of our own circumstance, to be able to say, how can we take care of everybody and really be a community together? And I think that's what's so special now from my vantage point. We talked about my journey. I'm finally in that place in my life, in my late 40s, where I have more flexibility, a little more experience. But certainly, more ability to be brave and take risks. And to do so on behalf of other people who may not be in that situation.
Heather Nelson: Thank you for that. I don't know if it's different being in Canada versus the US. I'm in California, and we always talk about a friend whose maternity leave is 12 weeks, and then we're expected to go back. And we're like, what do you do with a three month old baby? You have to either get a nanny or send them to daycare. And they're three months old. There's that guilt that happens, but we have to go back to work. And so I agree. I think a lot more work needs to get done around supporting people who are growing their families to be able to support that.
Cerys Goodall: I completely agree. In Canada, it is a little bit different. So you are able to be away for 12 months, and your job is held. In fact, it can actually extend up to 18 months. And then whether or not your employer will top you up and help compensate you while you're away. Most do. Well, at least for a minimum of six months. And so we really leaned in on that. In fact, we were ahead of that and supporting. But you also have to make sure that the transition out of the work and back into the workplace is something that is supported where you're not overwhelming your new moms. Exactly as you say, the amount of times I would hear, I'm feeling guilty. I'm nervous. What job am I coming back to? I feel like I'm new again. But at the same time, I've got this little person at home that I have to have some flexibility for. Babies are not going to be convenient when they get sick, or they need something, or something happens at daycare exactly as you describe. And I think it doesn't take much to offer that compassion. We've all learned how to work remotely. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic. But good things came out of it, which we know how to work remotely. We know we've got the communication tools. And so how can you lean in and help your parents, and give them that flexibility to be able to design their life? I think it's so critical, and it's not hard to do. Any company that says it's hard to do, it's not hard to do. It's really a choice.
Heather Nelson: Anybody listening who's in the California law, 12 months would be great. Absolutely.
Cerys Goodall: Yeah. And I think businesses think that in some ways, by having somebody leave for that time, what happens to the business in that absence, you have to hire somebody in. Is it seen as a cost? But it really is an investment. At Vetster, we had really rich, robust programs for our parents. And as a result, our tenure and our retention was 85% of the total lifetime of the business. And so for a very young company to be able to retain people and keep that knowledge in while they were building families, not only was that good business that was a good community. I'm really proud of that.
Heather Nelson: Okay. You've mentioned Vester a few times. What is this business? How did it get started? I wouldn't need to know more.
Cerys Goodall: So Vester was founded by two incredible humans, Mark Bordo and Regan Johnson, about almost six years ago now. They had worked in marketplaces for short term rentals. So think of your VRBO, your Airbnb type of platforms. They were leaving that business, they both had pets, parrots, dogs, cats, you name it, and they realized that getting access to care was really difficult. And so how might you access care for your pets, similar to how human telemedicine was making its way? What if there was pet telemedicine? And so they started to build this company. They were really great at the tech, and I met them and jokingly said, when I was a kid, I wish I was a horse vet. I think so many girls do. I thought I would be a horse vet.
And it was a bit of a full circle moment. Because as we got to talking, they said, do we really need a right hand here to help us do all the things that don't light our fire? Would you come and do that? And so I was very fortunate. I knew a few things to be dangerous, and so I have a background in marketing and communications. I got to build the marketing team. I've worked in operations, so I could build client service, customer support for the first time. I got to lead HR in a really strategic way, which is how I was able to make some of these decisions about who our company was going to be, and how we were going to treat our employees. And so it was really a magical time. I spent four years with them, really getting them from ground zero up to that next phase, through to their series B. And it was really exciting. We did some incredible work, and we were supporting an industry which is 80% women veterinarians. Believe it or not, in the 60s, it used to be primarily men. And forward to today, the industry is 80% women caregiving for animals. And so it was really incredible for my own personal values to be able to say, hey, we can transform this, and we can make it better for everybody.
Heather Nelson: My daughter wants to be a veterinarian.
Cerys Goodall: Amazing. Oh, good.
Heather Nelson: I really, truly believe it. I don't really think it's a dream for her. I really think she loves animals. She is like 80 and over at her dad's house, she is full of animals.
Cerys Goodall: And there's many more opportunities now to really design her life. Thanks to technology and new tools that are coming into place. I wish her well, it's a really exciting time.
Heather Nelson: Well, so you were there for what? Four years. Okay, awesome. I'm curious, how do you meet these two guys? Because I think that's something people always talk about. When these opportunities come to you, or you meet these people, you get in these rooms with these people that are able to be a part of a project like that, how did that even happen?
Cerys Goodall: Yeah. It's sort of a serendipitous story. I was with another company working really hard, doing really great things, but starting to think about what a change might look like. And so I think when you open yourself up to that perspective, you start listening to the universe a little bit more. And funnily enough, a friend from a very long time ago posted on LinkedIn, oh, I've got this great new job at a company called Vetster. And I just responded and said, funny story. I used to want to be a horse vet, sounds amazing. I really wish you luck. And he just happened to be in the room with the founders when this happened, and they said, oh, who's that person? We worked together many, many moons ago. This is what she's doing now. And I got on the phone with the CEO. And initially, to be honest, I thought it was for maybe some consulting work. I really didn't think much of it. He was just, we were workshopping, probing some questions about the business. And by the end of it, he just sort of said, could you just do all the things you've been talking about and join us full time? And I had to have a real moment of, oh, wait a minute. I didn't quite realize that was the conversation we were having. But I think what it taught me was that when you put things out into the universe, they really do come back. And I was ready to make that change. And so I joined the company, and we were able to do some amazing things. And now, they are growing, off and running, and have an amazing team in place.
Heather Nelson: How many employees do they have now?
Cerys Goodall: 65.
Heather Nelson: Wow. And are they in Canada as well?
Cerys Goodall: Mostly in Toronto.
Heather Nelson: What a cool story. I know you didn't wake up one day and was like, I'm going to be a consultant. I'm going to help do all of these amazing things for businesses. How did you get to the point that you're at today?
Cerys Goodall: Yeah. I think I was reflecting as I was thinking about our conversation today. So many of your guests have had defining moments that propelled them on a path. I can't say that I've had that, but I think what I have figured out for myself, and like to encourage other people is more of an attitude shift. My background was actually in biotech. I chose biotech as a career. I very quickly realized that was not for me. I morphed into public relations as a way to be super nerdy about science things, but talk about them rather than do them. And I was very lucky to start working in technology. And at that time, this was the early 2000s, there was this heyday of tech coming. This is before Facebook. This is before Twitter. This is before Apple was there, but really starting its way. And I got to fall in love with these Engineering Marvels. I got to work with NASA, and the discovery returned to flight in 2005.
Heather Nelson: I saw that on your thing, and I had to add, I was like, you are from NASA?
Cerys Goodall: It was amazing. I worked for a company in Ottawa, Canada that built a camera that would scan the shuttle before it would come back to Earth, to make sure that it was safe to come back through the Earth's atmosphere. It was a company called NEPTEC, and I was the PR person. I like to joke that in the words of Bridget Jones, I fancied about with press releases. But what that taught me, and what that gave me was access to business because I got to tell people stories. I got to learn how they thought about things, what they were doing. I could be nosy in every part of the business. And what I fell in love with was really figuring out how businesses worked. And so you fast forward through life. And what I realized was, as long as I'm curious, and as long as I want to be a lifelong learner, and as long as I'm a little bit brave enough to say I would like to try that, that has allowed me to step into a number of rooms. If you look at my resume, I probably wasn't qualified for it. In fact, I know I wasn't qualified for it. But I could convince people and show them that I'm smart enough to figure this out. I'm brave enough to take the risk. I'm trustworthy. I'll prove to you that I can do this.
But moreover, I think for so many people, we wait for that perfect resume, and so we don't ever put our hand up. And what I figured out through some consulting, through working in an agency, I would look around and think, well, nobody really knows what they're doing, especially in tech. Because you're doing it for the first time, so you're building something new. You have no idea how the market will respond. What a customer will think. You don't know what your pricing is going to be. And so once I realized everyone was figuring it out, it was very easy to say, well, why not me? Why not me too? And that let me become a head of marketing, a CMO. It let me step into operations, and do things differently than subject matter experts might do it, but say that that was okay. I can look differently than other people who have maybe dedicated their careers to one path. I've had many paths, and so I always encourage people to put your hand up. There's adventures awaiting.
Heather Nelson: Oh, my God, it would be so cool to be in the tech world. I want to ask some techy questions. In your experience, because you probably have been around them, especially being at NASA. What are some of the coolest inventions or the coolest things that you've got to be a part of, or that you've learned about along your journey?
Cerys Goodall: It's kind of funny, because I think what gets said in public versus what is happening behind the scenes, we get the very polished version of everything the public does. And then behind the scenes, it's always chaos. I think a lot of what I've seen is actually in the business process and how companies scale. And how you can go from one small idea to suddenly being in a room with Fortune 500 companies. I worked for a company called Interspace, and they analyze how people move through physical buildings. And a really interesting kind of GPS, but for inside buildings. So understanding where people go and what they do, and how they're spending their time. What was really interesting, it was a company based here in Toronto, and our market was fortune 500 companies. So we had to make inroads with Microsoft, PwC, Airbnb, global companies. How do you do that when you're a team of 12, 16, 18?
When I was there, we were a really small team. I think that bravery is often the coolest thing that I see is we're going to go for this. And everyone is telling us, no. Everyone is telling us that we are absolutely nuts. But what I've learned is the relationships, the influence that you need to have, how you build that, I think that is more magical than the products and the technology that I've seen. But to answer your question more directly, there's so much happening now with AI. And of course, everyone's talking about it. How is it going to replace my job? There's a lot of fear. How should I be using it? I think what's more interesting in terms of AI is, how is it going to unlock people's potential and equalize people's opportunity? Because now, you can be in tech as a podcaster. You can decide to build a company on your own using AI, because you don't need an engineer anymore to build some things. And so I think there's going to be a real revolution where we're going to see a lot of really cool things, because I think more people are going to be at the table than people who have stem backgrounds.
Heather Nelson: I love AI. I use it because I'm a creative person. I'm a very ideal person. I'm like, this is a really cool idea. We should try this. I want to say this, and I use it for a lot of my verbiage because I'm not that great. Something that I know I'm not good at is writing a paragraph, or writing an email, or writing a description of what my business is going to be. So I've really leaned into it a lot. I leaned into it a lot, and it's been so great. Or even just to help like I had told you, that I feel stuck in this business idea of what I want to do. And just having somebody, like you said, you're on an island all by yourself, chat GPT is my best friend. I'm like, yes. Here's some concepts I'm thinking of. Just kind of like workshopping it out. I think it's really cool. What I don't think is cool is the image thing. Because now when you scroll on social media, you're like, is that a real photo? Or is that fake?
Cerys Goodall: Yes, yeah. There's an interesting thing that's happening. And I like an experience I had at a hospital here in Toronto where they actually had a robot greeter. So it was a robot. It somewhat looked almost childlike, like toy-like, and you could ask it questions of how to get somewhere, or basic questions about the hospital. And what was interesting, I asked somebody who was managing the program how people were responding to it. And he said, children are usually really great. They'll ask questions. They like it. But in other people, it evokes anger, mistrust, anger, and people don't like it. And I think AI is having a bit of that moment where we still crave authenticity, particularly if it's coming from human representation. So you want to see an actual human in a photo. You want an actual human giving a testimonial. Instagram right now is the complete cesspool of AI generated videos. You just scroll and you really don't want to engage, but I agree with you. On the flip side, we've all had writer's block. Not knowing when to get started, how to express ourselves succinctly, and AI is amazing for that. It can get you going. It can take you in new paths that you might not have considered yourself.
Heather Nelson: Oh, that's so true. What are your thoughts? Because you're in this whole technology world, and you're dealing with all these crazy business leaders who are billionaires, millionaires. I'm assuming that you're probably one of very few women in that field. Can you talk about your experience of being a woman? Am I safe to say that it's a very male dominated field?
Cerys Goodall: It is. And sadly, the numbers haven't changed all that much, even with the awareness, particularly in the science, engineering and math roles. And so that is really difficult because there isn't enough representation of the people who are actually building solutions that we're using today. So that's challenging. That said, there are a lot of women in marketing, HR and other roles. Customer experience often tends to be women as well. And the thing that I encourage people now is to reshift their thinking. If you work at a tech company, you are in tech. And the reason that I say that now is if you rewound 30 years ago when I got started, you were using email, you were writing using the Microsoft platform as it were, but you weren't really engaging in tech. It was really knowledge work that you were doing. Fast forward to today, if you are in email marketing, you're not just writing the email, you're using the system. You're cobbling systems together. You're coding sometimes, and that is traveling all the way through. HR is now using AI customer experience. They're creating their own agents. And so when I say that we need to rethink women in tech, we need to rethink it through the length of time we are using technology. We are building with technology. I don't need an engineering degree to think that I can contribute meaningfully to the world and the ecosystem that I'm participating in. And so just that mental shift, I think, gives women a lot more vantage point, and a lot more opportunity than maybe they were thinking about before.
Heather Nelson: So good. Such a great reminder and a different perspective to think about, for sure. I know tech is really taking over the world. When you really think about it, I'm always amazed when I meet businesses and I'm like, what do you guys do? And they're like, we build this little tiny piece on this microphone, or whatever it is. And I'm like, wow. Learning so many businesses around that are part of a piece of the puzzle.
Cerys Goodall: Just a tiny piece of the puzzle. And it's so fascinating that people can be so passionate about that. I learned that a lot when I was working in aerospace and defense, which is the machinery behind what is happening that the public sees is really fascinating. And I'm very lucky. Because when I did get to work with NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and Neptec, the biggest thing that I learned, and I wish everyone could have this moment, was so much bigger than just me. We were putting people into space. The level of excellence that everyone needed to have in order for that to happen safely and successfully was truly something I've never experienced ever again in my career. It was fantastical. It was imaginative. But even for me who was writing press releases and talking to the media, if I didn't do that with excellence, then my boss couldn't focus on what he was doing. Which meant our client couldn't focus on what they were doing, and you could quickly see the trickle down. Everyone had to bring their best foot forward. If you were getting the coffee, it had to be best, and it had to be done because you didn't want the engineer going and getting the coffee, and being distracted from what they were doing. And that's a simple example.
But that was something that I learned very early on, and I wish everyone could have that moment of just complete awe. And then also realizing that even if you might feel really small or insignificant in that big ecosystem, that what you do really does matter. And if you can bring that forward into everything that you do in life, you can really see and feel empowered in the importance of what you do. I think too often that we are told the flip side, the world is big. You're a teeny, tiny speck of dust. What does it really matter? You're going to disappear like the dinosaurs. We hear this, right? And I think it's the opposite if you can be inspired. If you can say, hey, I've got my own little thing that I'm doing right here. Having a podcast conversation. And hopefully, maybe we're going to spark joy or inspiration for one other person. And that one other person will carry that forward to somebody else that they know. How powerful and amazing is that?
Heather Nelson: Yeah, absolutely. That's why I do it. If I could change one person's world or one person's perspective on something, or connect one person? My job's done. Even if I only had one or two listeners, that's fine. But I made an impact, and that's why I love doing this work. I always believe that every woman has a story. I don't think that, yes, I've had some really impactful stories, but I believe every woman has a story. I tell people that all the time. You can totally come on podcasts and they're like, but I haven't done anything cool. I haven't worked at NASA. I haven't written a book. Lost a child to cancer, or whatever it might be. But I'm like, but you have a story, you have a journey, and somebody else is going through exactly what you're going through, or have gone through. And now, they don't feel alone.
Cerys Goodall: You're a multiplier of good karma. I think, because I think that's exactly true. I can give you the resume highlights, which are fun, and there are lots of great stories. But I think it's also about those quiet moments, those moments where the imposter syndrome is creeping in. The moments where you don't have alignment, there's friction in your life. The moments where you're not crushing it, and maybe don't know why. Or it is just a struggle to get through the day to day. Those are the moments where sometimes the quiet becomes really noisy that you need a voice to say, hey, I see you. I hear you. Let's pull you out of it together, whether that's with a laugh and a chuckle, whether that is us laughing about rescheduling again. And now, we get to be here and bring a little magic and joy just to ourselves. And hopefully, a few listeners as well.
Heather Nelson: I totally agree. I love that. I'm curious. Your consulting work that you do now, you help small businesses, you support them in growing or whatever they might be. I know a lot of small businesses, especially here in Sonoma County, and I'm more in the events world. So we have a lot of small businesses that are popping up, like different fun services based or product based, but it feels like you're on a lonely island all by yourself. What are some of the things that you teach your clients that you could give a couple pieces of advice to people who are listening, who are business owners that might be struggling.
Cerys Goodall: The first one I can't take credit for, but certainly has become a big part of my own ethos. I learned this from the CEO of a company called FreshBooks. They do accounting largely focused on small businesses, and they're an accounting platform. And Mike McDermott said, don't do the things that don't light your fire. The things that you struggle with, there are people who love the things that you hate. In his case, it was creating board decks and PowerPoint presentations, and he told the story of how he struggled for hours and hours to put together this presentation when he could have farmed it out to somebody who absolutely loves creating PowerPoint presentations. And so that's a lot of what I do. What are the things you don't love that don't lift you up? Let me catch those things for you. But the reason I say that for a lot of small business owners is the collaboration. Being able to farm things over, then you get to spend time in your superpower. So the more time you can spend there, the more you're gonna love your business.
Heather Nelson: It took me till this year to really understand that. I finally got a podcasting team. Bringing on some interns to help with social media with my other business, and I got an admin. It wasn't until this year that I can actually feel like I have the space and the capacity to grow, and to do the things that I love doing. Versus putting in a schedule, doing payroll, posting on social media, editing a podcast.
Cerys Goodall: Yes, it's so true. And for a lot of us, time is money. We get stuck into a bit of a cycle where we're not growing and we're not investing in ourselves. And we're thinking about, how do I make more money? But I don't want to spend more money. That is a really difficult mental hurdle to get through. And certainly workshopping it with somebody can help. But usually when you do and you say, as long as I am making money, or producing my product or service, I can now turn to somebody else and help them with their business growth as well. So exactly as you say, you found an admin, you found a team. You are now also giving back in exactly the way that women do. And certainly, small businesses drive our economy.
Heather Nelson: So good. Any other pieces of advice? Something that you see a lot of businesses, small businesses struggling with.
Cerys Goodall: Yes. I think that one of the common questions I get asked very quickly is around their first marketing hire, or hiring an agency. And what the mistake I see most people make is that they will go all in, and not leave themselves enough flexibility. And so I'll use an example where recently, I had a client. They had gone all in with a marketing agency to run all of their digital ads and do all of their Facebook campaigns. And the agency was doing great. However, they had locked in on a retainer. And so when it came the time that they had to change their messaging, update their website, they were really strapped for resources. And so one of the things that I encourage all small businesses to do is make sure you have lots of flexibility. Make sure you're picking partners that can turn on and off with your business as you need them. Don't over commit too fast. Really figure out who you are. Get some stability in your business, and then you can make those commitments in the short term. Use your freelancers, use your interns, use your Co Op students. There's lots of them out there. Use your consultants to come in and just give yourself a lot of flexibility, especially when you're getting things going, because you don't really know who you are yet.
Heather Nelson: Do you think that the world, or the consulting world is changing? Because I'm doing consulting work too now. Do you think that more businesses are leaning toward bringing on a consultant to do some temporary work versus hiring a couple time person?
Cerys Goodall: I think it really depends on how much you need everything, and is it going to be short or long term. I don't think it's more or less. But I do see a lot of companies, especially in the tech space, who are being a little more conservative in their hiring plans because venture capital investment and the landscape has changed. And so people need longer runways, more time in their business. And if you over commit with a full time staff, sometimes you aren't going to get the flexibility that you need. And so I think people are becoming a little more aware that consultants can come in for short bursts of time, and really help them to accelerate. And then you can build in that capacity with a full time hire when, or if you need it. Or you bring in that generalist person, and then you're filling in some of their expertise with consultants. Sometimes, what I do is I just work with a team to level up some of the skill set that maybe the CEO or the founders don't have time to do. Can I think about partnering with some of their team? Can I come in? And I think that's also really interesting, because then you're helping in that professional development sense, not just in the service that you're bringing. I think some consultants are sometimes afraid of that. I just think more is more. And if we can help people do better work, then you know that relationship really gets forged, and there's high trust there.
Heather Nelson: You've done a lot in your career. Are there any other really cool things that you've done that you want to talk about or that you've learned from?
Cerys Goodall: I think one of the things I've been reflecting on a lot recently is how to build values based businesses, and how to have your own mission in life. I think so many times, we throw our values out when things get difficult, especially in business. Revenue, money talks. So if you say you're a people first organization, but when the economy gets tough, the first thing that you do is lay off your people. You're not a people first organization when you say that you want to innovate, but your roadmap is lagging behind. Or when you say that you are all about inclusion, but you're not really walking that talk. And I know that that's a little bit of a taboo thing to say. Now, we've really shied away from some of that, but you can still have your values and anchor in on them. I was really lucky at Vetster being one of the examples. But also at Interspace, where at Interspace, we were very much a people first organization.
When the pandemic happened, and all of a sudden there was nobody inside buildings for us to measure which was her entire business, it would have been very easy to put everyone on furlough and say, we'll ride this out and wait. And we didn't do that. We kept all 20 plus people in our organization. We pivoted our strategy. We grew the business at that time, and most of those people are still with the company today. Now that they've grown, it would have been very easy for us to say, hunker down, everyone. Just be laid off. But we said, no, we're a people first organization. We're going to do absolutely everything that we can to keep everybody here. And we did. And that, for me, is a choice. Most people will choose to walk away from their values in business. When things get hard, others will choose to lean in and say, we're a values based business, and that's going to come first. And it really is as simple as choosing door A and B. I really think more businesses need to be encouraged to stick to your values. It'll work. It might be harder, but it'll work.
Heather Nelson: That's such a great reminder. I just think all businesses need to hear that message.
Cerys Goodall: I think it's hard. You're told from a number of people to hunker down, conserve your capital. And of course, there's practical aspects of that. You need to be able to pay people. But what I did learn was, sometimes, it is that diamond under pressure. Which is, if you really think about it and get creative, magic can happen. And it might mean that you have to be flexible. It might mean you have to make some tough calls. But I think too often when things get hard, we shy away from our values, because that's where the friction is going to happen. And I think there are ways to be a little bit rebellious to have success, and that's by leaning in.
Heather Nelson: You have given all these little nuggets that I'm just like, yes, yes, yes. All business owners need to listen to this podcast. Thank you, and I hope that you continue to do the work to inspire people to want to be better business people. Be a better business support to their employees, because I think those are the things that are getting lost lately.
Cerys Goodall: I've been listening to your podcast since we met in April, and just the stories, the richness of the people that you have on your podcast in every episode, I'm plugging and telling to everyone to go back into the catalog, because every episode has just this beautiful fabric of experience for people to connect with. And so you're doing the good work too.
Heather Nelson: Thank you. I've been doing this for four years. I don't even know how many episodes, I think 140 or something. Crazy amazing. But I'm like, there's so many great stories in the beginning. I'm guilty of it as well. I'm a podcast. I listen to podcasts all the time, and I only listen to the top few. But I'm like, I'm sure there's so much more good nuggets in the earlier days, too.
Cerys Goodall: And what a journey, because four years ago was a very different time. So think about the evolution of what people have been experiencing through that time, and what resonated then versus now. You've got this history that you're collecting through the work that you're doing.
Heather Nelson: Even my own episodes, sometimes I'm like, I should go back and listen to one of my beginning lists because it would probably be, what a journey, what a journey. Is there anything you want to leave the listeners with that we didn't get to talk about? Anything that you want to talk about, your business or how they can find you.
Cerys Goodall: Thank you. LinkedIn is always the best place. It tends to be where I also post the most.
Heather Nelson: I need to do that, so good for you.
Cerys Goodall: It's my social media these days, but to really say and encourage people is just to be brave. You have nothing to lose. That inside voice that's telling you you're not good enough, or you don't have the perfect experience, or all of the reasons that society might be saying, no, all you have to do is say, YES, why not me? And go for it, because more doors will open to you than you could ever imagine.
Heather Nelson: You're living proof of that.
Cerys Goodall: I'd like to think that I have put it into practice.
Heather Nelson: Yes. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for being here. This is such a great conversation. It is worth every month of rescheduling, and I'm so glad that we finally got to connect and you can tell the world your story.
Cerys Goodall: Yeah. Thank you so much.