Legally on the Move: Festival of Entrepreneurs - Clare Moses - E02

0:00Welcome to the Legally On The Move Festival of Entrepreneurs miniseries recording live here from the Birmingham NEC. We are going to be diving into some of the sharpest minds across the UK, some of the top CEOs, some of the top cutting edge businesses for an exciting fast paced series. So stay tuned, get excited and looking forward to delivering even more from the show. Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast, Legally on the Move, recording live here from the Festival of Entrepreneurs at the Birmingham NEC. And I'm joined by name, title and organisation. I'm Claire Moses, head of proposition for Barclays Eagle Labs.

0:38You sure are. And I loved meeting you earlier because you're telling me all the great things Barclays is doing and textually modernising the services. So you can tell us a bit more. Absolutely. So Eagle Labs has been running for 10 years. We've got this amazing pile of stuff that we can offer to help founders connect, innovate and grow. But as of today, we present that all by a beautiful digital platform that is free, open market and free, where you can access mentors, events. You can filter by industry, by your lifecycle stage. You can connect with other founders, promote your business on our B2B directory.

1:12Very exciting. Very exciting. So if you're also a law firm startup or you are a legal tech entrepreneur, what are some of the things you would say to them that they could really get value from something like this? You could log on right away. You can Google Eagle Labs community. You can log on. You can set up your business profile, connect one to one with other founders. There are some member awards on there. So all those kind of services from other businesses that can help you set up and grow in the right way. you can access programs to help you grow accelerator programs they're all listed on here a lot of support for female founders to mentoring huge mentor database including some legal specialists which you may not need if you're a legal firm but you can filter again by the specialism that you need and connect so you've really got to connect you know connect with each other help each other grow absolutely very very exciting love what you're doing why did you decide to do it in the first place well we had organically grown a big pile of amazing stuff but it was quite hard to navigate so um the point here is if you if we can personalize it for you i feel like this is your sort of personalized proposition for whoever you are obviously for barclays because people are suspicious like of why we do it yeah but um we we want to help the uk eco you know sme ecosystem grow because that ultimately does benefit us obviously if someone chooses to bang with us in process of this then we won't say no but yeah it was it was about organizing our stack of support in in the right way yeah always choose barclays no other banks available could i have said it better myself well yeah it's i can say it you can't uh in terms of uh more generally though at the event um we're good friends here with alex jesnor who's one of the co-founders of festival entrepreneurs obviously barclays are sponsoring the event as well tell us about how your experience has been so far at the festival entrepreneurs yeah absolutely brilliant really high energy um a lot going on it's really nice um array of stands and um we've just had a female founder session on the main stage uh which was a really insightful so yeah good i mean i you know a lot of entrepreneurs are embarking on this world on their own yeah um and and i think you know to help navigate through that difficult journey it's just nice to know you're part of a bigger community and it's brought together today yeah and it's great that such huge brands like barclays are coming to events like this particularly those businesses who are trying to kind of get to that next stage and scale up it's amazing okay so if people want to get in touch with you or learn more about the platform where they need to go uh just just google barclays eagle labs community simple as that well thank you so much for joining me today and from now from all of us here recording live at the league has been podcast at festival entrepreneurs over and out the discussion for today is talent that scales we are sponsored by the world's largest legal technology company and we have a vibration for cuts for the legal experience for all.

3:57And I'm joined by a very star-studded panel today. We're going to go from left to right for some short introductions. And I'm going to jump into, as I say, our top founders drive road. Please get the email about our take notes, basically take action on what you hear today. So, to the end. Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming. My name is Vicky Abraham. I am an employment lawyer by Trace. I have an author and I founded 11 years ago, Howard Abraham. that I exist now to help people fall in love with their work, studios or sounds. And I do that by working with organisations to build strong, resilient, autonomous teams.

4:33And I work with WorkWell. I'm building up Europe to use, break the word. Thanks very much. Nice. Hey, guys, I'm Noah Samuel. I'm CEO of Boundware Connected.

4:44Clare Moses:I've been a founder for the last 12 years, originally building a new creator economy, helping people launch podcasts and videos. Sold that company in 2018 to their gaming company, at which point decided to invest in startups and advise startups as well, work with startups co-fractical capacity, and they became obsessed to the idea of a future of work would be fluid, irrational, as wide all connected, which will be grown now for the last four or half years. Hello, and thanks for coming along. I have a lady, Simon O'Dardner, and I'm the co-founder of a technical group in the company called Kerry to West.

5:17garage chart up if you like just two of us i would have scaled that to 110 people and last two we'll know it was the sun legs buyers before of the year and we're the investors and people patmer before of the year as well of 23 so that's been quite a journey for me two laps of the garage to to you know we're looking after our team which is why i'm near so absolutely and we're here to share lessons my job is to hopefully moderate let's see you leave there's some things that you can go and implement into your businesses from today onwards because we're going to be talking about how founders move from solo operators actually from you to use the Truvy scale so the first part of the power is going to be three sections the first part is all around founders who employer some early lessons so I'll start with you Simon because apparently as you mentioned has been recognized as one of the UK best employers so what practical course that if you take early our story really started because of a disastrous first 14 months we thought that yeah we asked my brother if we could share his garage at the bottom of the garden to have up to have our office and things we were uh we said you know in six weeks we'll be out here we'll make a good one evening well we're not it's not just very well and so 14 months later we still hadn't drawn no single pound person you couldn't attract here wrong you couldn't identify it you wanted to wear less even though you both wanted large corporate companies, puns of people, many for friends and so it was born out of frustration so the first practice was that for mate a decision after that 14 months to he wrote the goal down to find the sky as a sound bead to become a domestic brought and we were chatting to my dad at the time and he said you want to attract because talent if we want to attract the best experienced people the most young children graduates you need to become an attractive place to work and it was quite a simple lying bolt but from that moment onwards rather than just create a recruiting company like all the others but with one thousand to the budget and no brain.

7:21The industry I've usually in our industry is 45 % staff turnover each year ours is 8-10 % so it's really the retention piece that it's lived. There's not one silver bullet, it's 100 different issues. Yeah, now thank you for being so sort of open about that and the success stories there in front of the way and from the journey, very, very inspiring. Nikki, similarly, you know, you have built and scaled two authors and now help organisations create ownership-driven tiers. I really like that. So how can founders in the rooms instill those values where their teams are definitely tripling in size? You know, they know what Sally says about how we track talent and keep them.

8:03You know, I've looked at law, how do we manifest that passion that found its owners of the health value business? You know, you can really hear what someone loves what they do. They're living in recombination. And the values of the company, how do we operationalize that? And one of the contributions that I reached in my own journey as a younger lawyer, I was effectively selling law. I did nothing drier and why I was so invested without having equity or ownership the actual business was because I was allowed to be in our jupinary award. Why when other younger lawyers were in the backroom dropping contracts because the firm and now that they saw that that recorded my breakup and I was allowed to bring myself work.

8:48So when we talk about building autonomous ownership cultures and teams it is really about how can we rethink or look at the design and look at other work course moves around that so looking at the alignment between skills that tannis their purpose and a job that they are actually doing that's how you make race people and that's how you engage them and you know in the world that we're going into we need to look at our people can transfer their different skills across the organization so that they will grow with the company and bring on be more imaginative with the way for our workforce needs so look at what people can bring to the mold that's how you really engage people yeah hope that and again thank you use that practical advice and it's come down to what i always say i'm a fake radio station what's in it for me and understanding people not that a lot number there are personal that benefits them that frieden that arm that you're curating.

9:49Roy thanks up there very patiently and very powerful intro and very impressive background. What can founders learn from this level about flexible and stable hiring?

9:58Clare Moses:Yeah it's a really good question and to echo what these guys are saying I'm holding the second microphone is it just to knock this off my bell so I'm blowing that and I'll just say for it's all about faction talent I think when it comes to building inside of Foxhers, you guys are up 100 % high. It's, for me, I see this, what we see about managing is in that scale, it's used. It's like a three-legged store in that you need all three legs where to work and it's remuneration, it's opportunity and it's genuine relationship. And I think that's one of the things that get so often overlooked when we talk about scaling culture and scaling teams is you have to genuinely guess this.

10:39There's not enough to just pay it in. Yeah, we give the pace of the world, we give our non-efficacy, but unless you have managers' genuine, for powerful relationships they've built with their individuals.

10:50Clare Moses:In terms of fractional, I think, you know, there are these significant, societal, demographic and technological shifts that have happened over the last few years. Covid obviously changed everything in Southampton. No more commute. Geographic sensitivity doesn't matter anymore, it doesn't matter where we are, more focused on help, more focused on speed, they're less focused on the types of things, that you can spot all that traditional recruitment. You then have the big technological shifts. All these collaborative tools that are coming through online, motion, slack, zoon, everything can be done in the virtual world that doesn't need visitors' face.

11:24Clare Moses:And then you can see you have this massive demographic shift as well. Individuals who are fed up of full-time work, you do call for a career, they don't want to do it anymore. They miss their kids growing up. They don't want to miss their pan kids growing up. They don't want to give all of their lines obedience in a faceless call, what they want to do, work that's immediately from the near top of them, purposeful for them, and give them that flexibility. So all those three trends have really coalesced into fractional working, a way which we see has been totally instructive. We launched in January 2022.

11:55We're now there with 7 ,000 customers, 200 employees, woven. Just because in Barn is this fractional woven, people really want to change the way they're working. And for a founder, it's this ongoing challenge of how do I hire full-time?

12:10Clare Moses:you're hiring full-time you're trying to solve so much when you're hiring fractually you're hiring more about output more barring more about they're working together on specific tangible outcome rather just from face chat or outcome challenges come with all employment you have two points marry very very well in a specific history of it I said in an earlier final today and understand that people come in there more motivated delivering on that to the projects and you haven't all the headaches that passed and actually give people what they want a lot right she's uh important so we talked about the first days then i sort of found it from some of the early days and now i'm going to move on to hiring the bright first of long-term fit and obviously you've had a tremendous success story so how do you ensure that the people in the new hire that are the right fit all your culture for us it's our success came when we stopped hiring i just got to see it uh now for our clients now if you are procuring, there has to be some background, there has to be some qualifications.

13:10With us it's slightly different, we hire the person and be too cheesy a bit, cheap the job. So you know, some of our competitors are still hiring 27 year olds based on their last two years experience. I'm almost completely full double the first 25 years of their life. The resilience, the ability to miss you, communication skills, soft skills that seem to lack these days, they're set in nurture. They're set to Boreham's team. So if you're not interested in this bit and you're just interested in this bit, 10 minutes you get it all. And so that was an earning curve for us. And it's funny that the third part of our culture is cult.

13:54So we've created a bit of a cult in Boreham. there's not just well we need something in January get start next let's have a time I'll tell you about three interviews pick Wally actually is a it's a 20 course every day off and I see all that some sales from me yeah and so we always had some opportunity money size or we could get it if one of these people came to the sales stuff an excellent culture the hungry they're driven that's what we call them you bring me if if if you cannot hire that chipping point and they don't keep those markers it's just annoying and by the way the people that you deploy at a second stage interview have to have such an amazing experience for your crew team experience they've become one of the big sound because you're saying those 99 set people they have to then go to your local community you like the town and go i'm almost nagy i'm almost yeah i'm making next year and i'm always open to this opportunity always thinking about things and always say very openly it could be a mentor it could be a leader could be anybody could be somebody here today that's why it was come in the room network be out there connect etc okay nika coming back to you in building more companies and advising big shit teams across europe when founders are hiring bars how do you keep culture strong enough to make people stay but also growth too difficult um for the first one said as well you know when when you're when you're You're starting out, you're querying, you're going fast, and you try to up gaps.

15:23Things need to be done, but I say you need to fire, that things be done. There is a bad day for someone who's not really lying to be the end values of the company. They're not quite right for the organisation if you do it because you just thought you need to. I think, you know, there are roles that are more technical than others, but beyond that, I affirm this thing, number one, teachability. I don't want know-it-alls, whatever the age, whatever the background. I'm looking at the quality of the questions. I'm looking at how much they need to grow with the organisation and beyond. And adaptability.

16:03Because we've talked about it. Companies in order to survive their needs, the workforce needs to make that with it. So their roles need to live and breathe. and we need to be the pirates for the job that my captain's going for, the health company, might grow. And in terms of how we keep people, I mean for me, I take engagement over retention, any client. The time that people are there, engage them, make them invigorating, part of the organization. One of the best ways to do that is to engage people in the mission of the company, and every task they do and to have a parallel back versus watcher back culture because that's where people saw that they could stretch in whatever they're doing and that's when the innovation happens that's when great work happens people can move around so i mean we've got all organizations have internal labor mark that doesn't mean we have to hang on to people for the rest of maternity but it it means tap this into the potential from people that you've fought and also be more imaginative because it's required yeah i think if you build that culture create those safe places i said the creativity and the innovation comes from it is infinite and i remember very early on someone said to me i'll be thinking about firing but it can cause you so many troubles so many problems a lot of money a lot of headache so sometimes waiting out is best Yes, Bradroy, can we back to you?

17:34How do you decide when it's time to invest in senior hafters versus keeping a very lean team? So I think the reality of seeing a hire is

17:44Clare Moses:they need resource, they need context, they need infrastructure to be effective. Because the more senior someone is, the more they become a manager than they are in a suplicio. How is it where you're at the earliest page? The execution. Stay away from seeing a novel. whatever they do, it's an airway if it would just come out of the selfie. So I offended anyone in the rear. There's someone talking once. If you're gonna hire someone who's come from consultancy, make sure there's at least two companies that are being new in there. So just a good lesson to be there and be all there. So when you're at the early stage, senior hires aren't necessarily gonna give you what you need to be.

18:21Clare Moses:You need to be the leader, you need to be a senior hire, You need a team of very aligned, purpose-driven generalists to help you get everything done. Don't expect answers. Expect group calls. Expect inspiration, determination. It's like people who really want to be aligned on the mission. But when it comes to the senior hires, they need to have a resource. They need to have the context of the playbook that you've built with those generalists. Stage ones. You guys know about senior hires. don't get trapped by a whole big nade, big background. They're going to come in and be able to do on a full-time basis what you need them to do.

19:01This is where Fractual is your friend.

19:04Clare Moses:Augment those really, really powerful, really driven generalists with talent that you wouldn't want to bring them in a full-time. And especially for you guys who are at a small stage, focus more on automation, focus more on reverse engineering the week this is an AI other tools to really cover those those weak spots and those this first high it's got to be journalists and more men senior fractional I love sound lights and fractional is your friend London very really well with that so see so century so that's the the second part of the tunnel so just to recap we've gone from founder to employer some of the early lessons that the panelists shared then we've just gone through a firing for growth versus long-term fit now we're going to talk about the tension diversity and future grouping to use if you have learned some things make sure you write them down now hope you will have time for questions at the end so please get your questions ready so coming back to you simon how do you measure and maintain engaged performance in your teams so we've actually got an app that all the v team have got access to and you kind of it's one of these sort of shows you know you see Barazol, LinkedIn, you know re-instance of RTE was re-instance of Kingback.

20:18Do they? I'm not too sure. It's the most stakes on the team that we asked last year 30 ,000 questions of RTE. So each the 110 people get one question a day and it's on the app so they can save it up to a Friday and after five in a row and each team and branding you get a heat mapping beta you carry 90 % of the you know workforce are either this age or accidentally dismanaged so that is a real fobbing and this quite quite easy it's a real issue you know that that was that is that that is money did you do you keep it out the door so we asked we asked feedback we asked live data and one of the other ways to do it especially if you're with us 10 or less.com size because what we do and what we certainly did at the early stages, we work out what the individual motivators of each team member is.

21:12We operate something called Ventilation Maps where each person takes, you know, it's a sort of heat bag, it's the end again. We do that every six months as peak and fro and large change. We work out what actually motivates them. Everyone thinks you're a recruiter, you're motivated by financial stuff, of flashy stuff which is actually very, very rare. So we understand what each person, we do a profile of each person, which means that we can motivate them. We ask them to, we sit with them, and especially the other ones, we sit with them and we make our vision for their next three to five years of their life.

21:46So many founders expect their team to know what the goals of the company are, the hiring figures, the revenue for next year. And they don't do the first thing about like, you know, what's your goal? Well, I'm getting married this year. Well, so we see it as a two-way value exchange. So we work out exactly what each person wants to do in the next three to four years. They see working at our businesses as a way to achieve their largest ambitions after solid work. So with all these different things, that's how you get long-term engagement. And the final thing, and this is what you can do, even if there's one or two of you, is you keep sending the future.

22:19You know, I've read somewhere that CEO should be called CRO, the Chiefful Appetitive Officer. You should repeat it at least once a day, have it on the walls wherever you like some people read things some people listen to dates whatever you have to keep completing what their role is going to be here i love all of those points and there's lots of synergies across here victor broadestown put genuinely care and what you're doing there you're showing you genuinely care and for people and it's the whole we is greater than me take people along the journey and have that caring they will you know compound their entirety get exponential results and so your point earlier nick is more about mission focused company if people understand what they're doing and how that's delivering on the mission they get that intrinsic value sometimes outweighs you know the sort of paycheck at the end of it that they feel chickenly off contributing to that mission because they believe in it but like you say whatever period of time it may be it may be for a year to use and they're going to be able to do something else that's fine so yeah really loving the synergy across your panel here so coming back to you then of the years as a very successful discrimination lawyer and scaling your own firms what do you see as the most powerful levers for retention diversity and huge briefing tubes today.

23:21Looking at diversity from and I think for me it is one of the biggest levers for attention. You know I for a number of years I was fighting discrimination patients so that's why do we get the bank's news big was what silver-richting acts of single discrimination harassment but what I found almost all depressing you know when I was working from organizational individual was that slow decay can happen in an organization when there's more diversity little and the behavior slowly by here become acceptable sometimes it culminates hangston once it doesn't and in in many ways that was that was worse for me and now you know i i go to organizations and we talk about and the operationalized building strong autonomy part of that conversation is diversity how do we build that operationalize that in way that works and how do we really build that social intelligence because we we need to look at not firing for saneness and not celebrate that as much as celebrating legal's differences you know that's true meaning of diversity I've come to hate the term like-minded I want to look at what is that person good abs the organization what they're going to bring to and what skills can be exchanged what diversity is for an experience and confidence going on in the organization you know there are so many things are happening so so much such changing but we lean people's different force different experience that's what creates the diversity of frontier disruption of the status quo which is needed more than ever and that's what creates where we were so the number one lever for attention is a diversity of thought experience and common sense dictates that you're more likely to have that when you've got diversity of gender orientation raise all of those characteristics so beyond my legal knowledge I just defer to common sense say that diversity means and can coexist with unity being line at the end mission as the company I love that the only constant of businesses change and when organizations continue to talk about cultural fear think about cultural ad and if you think about it from that perspective here if I'm going to bring something fresh bring something new that can continue to move forward as an organization it's going to keep it exciting fast-paced and with that we're going to you because you've worked to make startup broker accessible and diverse over the years so how can founders practically widen their talent beyond traditional networks I think

26:23Clare Moses:one of the interesting challenges of hiring when you're in startup mode is the requirements are constantly changing, right? You know, the thing that you think you need day one, I guarantee you do not mean day three or so far. So it's tough. It's really tough to get that right. And there are certain things that we want to solve to try and make that challenge easier. For example, hiring for coaches or values absolutely diversity at all 100 you don't actually want diversity values you know you want to make sure that you're all aligned and what good is you know the white type of culture that you want to have sports in powery or all of those good things so for us we found the monic reasons we've had so many organizations now hiring fractually connecting is you can sort of try fully but when you have that ever-of-all-y set of requirements that ever-of-all-y set of outcomes they're looking at the rules.

27:24Clare Moses:Car and full-final doesn't necessarily make sense especially when you're looking to those people will they'll be guiding rather than expertise. When it's about expanding out your pool expanding out the network sit creatively about it you're not going to be able to forward the right type of senior hires early on. you might be able to get through for a day a couple days, a day here, a day there really helped, we had an amazing story for earlier this week founder, she's launched a Hero Cosmetic brand and she's now brought on fractionally as an advisor for a day to month the head of product for the Estelle you know, you just wouldn't get access to that trying to solve that or being happy, so now with automation, there it is the doing should be done in a really smart way.

28:15Clare Moses:Hiring fun time should really be your last potion. Now, when you are seeing that you're having to forego high-valued tasks to do things which could be done by someone else, that's when you should buy it. And again, generalists, that's root for, that people want to be involved, love the passion, love the project, love the mission. But when it comes to spreading the talent global widely, practical dirty way. Not that I have a vested interest in... Not at all, but it's working smart, isn't it? It makes me laugh, actually, when people say to me, I don't have time to come to events, I'm too busy. And I take it the other way.

28:56If you think of the combined years of experience, knowledge, connections in this room now, that one person who is specializing in that one thing, you ask that right question, it's a Nicky's point, you probably shortcutted that half a day out of the office. It's taken three to six months or a year to get right. And so that's one thing I'm getting out there and networking these people and asking the right questions. And with that, I'm going to go to the audience. They have got time, hopefully, for quick five questions. So does anyone have a question from the panelists? If so, raise their hand and then come to you.

29:30Otherwise, I'll click question and ask all the panelists. Okay, let's go for it.

29:36Clare Moses:So you spoke about, oh gosh, you spoke about motivating your staff, hiring the right staff, the right culture for the organization, caring for your staff. How do you, as a founder, you also have a boss? Well, the investors, they're pushing you to generate revenues, to be profitable. So how do you balance both motivating the staff, paying attention to them and a startup environment where everything is urgent, you have to do several things at a time. So how do you ensure, protect your people beneath you, but also keep people of value in terms of the investors happy? Well first I would recommend coming to the who supports the CEO, how do they do?

30:26Anyone like to share their thoughts? Yeah, 100%. to something I'm really passionate about and as somebody who's been a founder the last 12 years uh challenge that I know all too well and it's actually a really really easy answer to that and the answer is peccating every single person you connected even now 200 employees is on our

30:45Clare Moses:peccanty steed so that you can truly align those two things to the advert because if you are working with teams we're really a team now a team shell a team with genuine upsized he'll never sit right to me to go come on guys that's so long day it's fine with anyone who's going to better think them is run 100 miles by the way if you start with everyone who found the reason doing that on equity side things because that's where you can educate could upskill and can bring to our team on the journey with you to say look if this is what the investors care about this is what we should care about the perunus together is a solding together we're all in the same boat and at the end of the day we'll all share that a future transfer 100 transfer i'll get through the good and the bad time because what we'll also see because there will be bad times is those who were there with you and want to fight one of you there alongside you when in those difficult moments there is the you could really rely on those your future needs and what people have skillet's thing to get they'll take more front take pride you know they'll feel when things go well and you'll be able to authentically share with one on the how to get over this because they're all matched like there's the best at interest so absolutely plus one to that i think i'm being waved up there at time so what i will say is firstly feel free to take a tip take a photo of the panlister i would share your learnings with linkedin educate your audience tag these speakers use the hashtag question to watch from those the likelihood is they will repost that you'll hijack that speaker's audience and you get new people into your networks as well it's all really good things to be doing and just think you'd say thank you so much nikki right and so i'm at your time today thank you for listening to this week's episode if you like the content here why not check out our world leading content and collaboration of the legally speaking club over on discord go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com for the link to join our community there Oberon out!