1823 – The Importance of Strategic Thinking in Business with Katriona Lee

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2:14With us right now, it's Kat Lee. Kat, you are the co-founder at Kaya. You're found on the web at teamkaya.com. That's K-A-Y-A.com. Kat, thank you so much for joining us. Great to be here, Josh. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Well, I've got your website right here, and I would really love to have you share what an on-demand strategy department is. Yeah, awesome. So we call ourselves a strategy as a service platform. And really what that means is that we've built a proposition that marries top-tier strategy consulting with the benefits and I guess the dynamicism of a service that works for the lower mid markets.

3:00So small businesses, your upstarts, your scale ups, and generally businesses that are a little bit more resource constrained. So they're going to need a bit more flexibility and more technology enabled support to ensure that actually we're right sizing the service for them. And so, yeah, our target customers, really entrepreneurs, people that work really fast, that are often having to make rapid decisions, but don't necessarily have access to the right intelligence to do it. And so that's where we plug the gap. We go to market in two ways, directly with business owners and really supporting them through that journey in a membership type model.

3:34So you pay a nominal subscription fee, but you get a ton of value because you always have a companion and a strategic advisor to help you level up your decision making. And then the other path, actually, which is a predominant proportion of our business is really working directly with private equity funds. So we partner up with these funds and these firms to help them think about what they could do strategically across the portfolio of assets and help them drive a lot of value and returns for investors into each of their operating companies as well. Yeah. So what would be some examples of companies that you've had the opportunity to work with?

4:12Yeah, awesome. So we predominantly work with technical services businesses. That's probably our key spike. We also do a lot of different things, but I think we're getting really good at understanding the marriage between technology and people. So how do you offer really great service to customers whilst leveraging the benefits of technological innovation? So that's kind of where we sit. So an example of companies that we serve include, you know, waste management organizations. We do registered training organizations or technical training companies, education companies, those types of organizations, and really help them think about, firstly, how am I communicating my proposition to market?

4:51How do I continue to improve my proposition in a way that meets the demands of a competitive landscape and that I can continue to be differentiated in the market? I think from a service orientation point of view, some required like waste services, right? But it's hard to differentiate from the next competitor that's doing the same thing. They're driving trucks, they're collecting waste, they're recycling that waste, they're selling that as commodity. How do you make that a better proposition? And so we think about things like can they become an education company? Can they become a sustainable business and integrate best practice and then share that with their kind of micro economy?

5:28Can they leverage different types of platforms and become a trading company, for example? And so we look at non-obvious opportunities for our business owners and with the mindset that they can return a lot of value to all of their shareholders as well. Yeah. So just looking at the membership option, so this is, help someone understand this because it's not like they're going to Team Kaya and they're hiring a strategy consultant, right? This is more of a platform. Yeah, look, that's a great question. And I think that's why it makes us really unique in the sense that we don't go in and do a single project.

6:06We go into a business, we partner with our clients long term and really create what we call portfolio value, which means that we don't necessarily look at the business as it currently stands. We look at the potential of it in, say, five, 10 years and sort of derive a roadmap to getting there. So from a membership perspective, the reason why we don't say, hey, here's a project, when we deliver it, you know, you pay us the money for doing the work. It's much more outcomes driven. So we have skin in the game because we're, you know, they're on the ground delivering what we call practical strategy.

6:38So it might be that a business is ready for an e-commerce capability. Let's take the waste management company as an example. You know, they're not necessarily online. People don't know about them. Their website is probably quite nascent. and so you know a great way of getting them online is to you know rebrand them and then potentially put a shopping cart in there and say hey some of the the products that we're selling offline can go online as well and people can kind of configure them businesses that might need you know regular waste collection services can just book that online makes life really easy and extends the reach for that business and so by virtue of kind of putting to the get that plan that's a great strategy.

7:17But then we also execute that strategy with our clients, making sure that they're providing inputs and they have their decision-making power fully vested into how the projects go. And that'd be kind of just co-create that with them. Yeah. Kat, help me connect the dots here. So let's say that someone obviously has a lot of things that are going operationally, They know maybe they've got some goals. Why partner with you? Like, how do you make execution and, you know, getting those things done more effective? Yeah, look, I mean, first and foremost is sort of helping businesses even recognize that it's time for change.

8:00I think a lot of time we spend fighting fires, you know, doing kind of the day-to-day operational things. you forget to step back and go, actually, what kind of a business do I want to be next year, let alone five years in the future? And we're sort of at this point in Australia, but I think globally as well, where we're seeing a lot of, I guess, entrepreneurs that started their businesses maybe 40, 50 years ago, and now they're continuing to be in the daily grind, but not thinking about an exit strategy. So the options to them are pretty limited because they haven't thought about, well, how do I expand and extend the valuation of my company in the next few years so that I can exit to a really strong pipeline of opportunity from strategic buyers potentially.

8:41And so what is the legacy of my business if I don't start thinking about it? So that's what we kind of put into the minds of entrepreneurs to say, if you're at this point in time, where do you want to be for yourself personally and financially, but also for the future of the business? What kind of business do you want to leave behind? And so that kind of creates a conversation that says, hey, now I've got some urgency to think about, you know, practically, but also structurally, What are the things I can start to execute on that can really boost the value of my company, not just for myself, because I've unlocked a lot of potential for my business, but to the external market that says, hey, now you're the one to watch.

9:18And maybe you're my radar if I'm thinking about buying a small business or I'm thinking about a rollout or if I'm a PE fund, I'm thinking about you as an asset that I could kind of generate a lot of value from down the line. And so that's what it's all about. It's kind of even putting them in that mindset in the first place and then working with them collaboratively to kind of pick off the low hanging fruits and then start to think about those bigger pieces that's going to grow the pie for everybody. And Kat, what is the, you know, what's the blind spot here? You know, in terms of like what we're talking about, does this just not in every organization or with every leader?

9:56Shouldn't they just be able to do all of these things on their own? Yeah, you'd think so. But, you know, truthfully, and I look at myself and I think it's a humbling thing. It's not possible to be great at everything. I think, you know, leaders are there and they guide the business, but it's impossible to be great at the financials, great at the strategy, great at operations, and also great at hiring the right people at the right time and then being future focused and then thinking about all the macros that impact, you know, the risk profile for your business and for the local ecosystem around you.

10:28And so to me, there's no harm in having an objective viewpoint that lets you see the bigger picture, that gives you the information at the right time to make better decisions, to challenge you potentially to kind of look at paths that may not be obvious up front and to really just have somebody in your corner. Being a business owner, being an entrepreneur is such a lonely journey. You might have a co-founder. I do. But still, I think it's a very isolated journey. And so having the ability to speak to someone at your level, spar with them, kind of have that real respect for conflicts and see if you can come to a solution that may be better than the one you could have crafted on your own, I think is only a very good thing.

11:14Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, again, I'm just looking at your website. This is fairly accessible. And that's surprising to me in just in terms of the investment. This is not a, you know,$10 ,000 a month type of consultancy where you might expect that if you were to bring in, you know, someone that's a fractional leader or something like that on a part time basis. So it sounds like it kind of fills that in-between gap, right? Where at the early, early, early stages, you're probably just consuming a lot of content, a lot of free content, trying to figure it out. Then you start business adulting and you're like, okay, now I need customized professional guidance here, but I don't necessarily have CFO money or CMO money or whatever.

12:03And so it seems like this kind of fits within that gap there. Yeah, it does. It really helps, you know, businesses in two ways where you're sort of like, okay, I've validated on an idea, particularly for early stage entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs. This is a really good service. Our startup plan is a really good way to kind of brainstorm, to validate, to, you know, run some light touch experiments and really get coached along the journey of how do you think about you know the investment thesis over a period of time how do you measure success what are the right kpis to think about whether your idea is good and how long are you going to give that idea before pivoting and so we give a lot of professionalization and a lot of i guess support guardrails because we've seen it so many times and i've you know walked businesses through that process so many times that it's yeah pretty clear from patterns perspective what will work what won't work and what needs to change for that idea to turn from you know a great concept into a proper thriving business that generates revenue so that's kind of one path and then the other one is still I think it's accessible is the notion of just chief of staff second in command type support to say hey we understand where you're going with your business you might be great at strategy there's only one of you and potentially in most sort of you know lower mid-market businesses there's not a lot of people thinking about strategy.

13:25There's a lot more people doing and executing the work. And so I think there is that middle ground and a bridge between the working layers of the organization and the thinking layers of the organization, connecting dots for them, and then saying, hey, what are the things that instead of hiring permanently for, you can potentially offload to a team of smart, intuitive people that can go and hit the ground running and deliver those results for you much faster than if you were to do it in-house. And so my mission really with Kaya is, you know, it's a bit of a cliched word, but to democratize consulting in that there are great businesses with lots of great potential and smart people that are running smaller businesses that just have limited resources.

14:06It doesn't mean they should miss out on great strategic guidance. And so, you know, by embedding a lot of technology into my own tech stack, I make the consulting delivery model really accessible and I can pass on those savings to the end customer and to the user, to the business owners. Yeah. And just so I understand, right? So it's not like you're not just investing and you have access to a library of good advice. Can you explain maybe a little bit more about the personal, you know, attention or, you know, the fact that this is someone, you know, a founder who wants to be a part of this platform, wants access to some consulting and that's part of this?

14:48Yes, absolutely. So they do get access to a great community, a great platform, a lot of resources. But what actually is our key proposition is the people. We have a great team of consultants sort of located everywhere in the world and, you know, directly work with our clients and solving the problem. So it might be that our business owner thinking about negotiating, you know, new contracts for suppliers, for example. we could be part of that process we could be in the room guiding the conversation facilitating some of those negotiations coaching the entrepreneur before they even enter the room to make sure that they've got their strategy locked down here are the things that you need to be aware of here's probably what the other guy is thinking about and so how do we make sure that we get the very best outcome for you in every conversation in every situation so it's absolutely you know, the marriage of fantastic human touch and that real personal and tailored approach to supporting you, but at the same time underpinned by a robust technological kind of delivery model, just to kind of strip out all the admin.

15:51So you don't have a consultant sort of following up manually. It's much more that it's a systemized approach to a lot of that delivery work, which means that we free up a lot more capacity to actually deliver real world value for our customers. Yeah. All right. Kat Lee, again, the website is teamkaya.com. When somebody goes there and they want to see what you and I have been talking about, what would you recommend their next steps be? yeah look the best way to get in touch and just to learn more about kaya would be to jump on our linkedin and subscribe to our newsletter i write you know a piece every couple of weeks and really why i've done that is because we get a lot of questions and a lot of comments and poll results from our community that says you know i'm struggling with market entry i'm struggling with pricing i'm struggling with commercializing those great products or they should i go down the path of creating courses when I'm not an education business, for example.

16:53So we gather a lot of this data and these inputs from our audience and produce some great free content that just helps you figure out the right way to go and gives you a starting point when it comes to thinking about what projects might make sense for your business. How do you solve some of those initial challenges yourself? And yeah, it's just a great resource to learn more about the basics of strategy as well. Yeah. Kat Lee, again, co-founder of Kaya, found on the web at teamkaya.com. Kat, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks. I had a great time. Cheers.

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