John SmallMtn (00:00)

Welcome to another episode of Founders Growth. My name is John Hill, AKA Small Mountain. I’m the founder of Adapted Growth. Today on the show, we have Cerys Goodall, and she is the founder of The Goods. We have a very cool conversation lined up for you today. Cerys, can you talk a little bit about The Goods and a little bit about getting back into The Goods, if we can talk about that first?

Cerys Goodall (00:22)

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, John. It’s so awesome. I’ve been looking forward to this all week since we first met.

The Goods really is a consulting practice that helps startups, founders, and CEOs accelerate their business to get from 0 to 1 and 1 to 10 faster than they could on their own—often acting as a right hand, but being able to bring in all the operational elements as you’re building a business, pivoting a business, or navigating growth. So focusing on marketing, customer support, and administration—really being that right hand.

And it is interesting because it has ebbed and flowed. I was listening to your episode with John Wyman and you were talking about seasons. So I’m certainly in that season of growth with The Goods again, but have found myself dabbling back and forth—as I think many founders do, especially in a consulting world where sometimes you get sucked back into a full-time job. And so I loved what you were saying about seasons and recommend people go back to see that episode, because it’s so true. It is one of the challenges as founders in an ever-changing climate: Can you stay committed to this long term? Does it need to change for you? And the identity that you have to reconcile as part of that process.

John SmallMtn (01:42)

My God, I have goosebumps, because I’m a very rigid person just by default. In most situations, it helps me, but part of my development is trying to be not as rigid and more open to things as they come. While I’ve got the things that I’m building, I’m still passionate about helping people perform better and stuff like this. So I still do a fair amount of consulting on the side, not just working on my own programs and frameworks.

I think about this one conversation where I was talking with someone, and she had gone back and forth a lot from consulting to hanging her own shingle. I was kind of like, “Well, you move around a lot. Are you not focused on this?” This was very early and I was kind of rigid.

She goes, “Well, I just don’t have that thing where I can’t work for somebody else.”

I was like, “What does that mean?”

She’s like, “Well, I’m of the belief that most entrepreneurs are just entrepreneurial because they’ve not been able to find someone that they can work well with over a long time, or maybe they just have oppositional defiance disorder. So if it’s not their thing, they’re not going to be invested.” And she goes, “I just like the work.”

I love that conversation, being like, “I wonder if I have any of that, or if she’s just talking about other people.” But I think there’s room to do both. What separates people—and the reason why this is called Founders Growth—is I like talking to people that want to build something for themselves, a lasting thing. Not just, “I want to grow a thing and then sell it immediately and move on to the next one so I can have the status or the title on LinkedIn.”

One of the things we talked about to get ready for this was that you have been on a project for a while, and now that project is wrapped up. So now you’re back out on your own and trying to redefine yourself a little bit, because you’ve found some depth and some areas that maybe you weren’t known for before. Can you talk a little bit about what that process looks like for you?

Cerys Goodall (03:33)

Yeah, it’s quite an evolution. It’s funny because the same advice that I give my startups in the early days—which is “you have no idea who you are, it’s going to change, don’t be so married in the beginning to your brand, to the tagline, to the things, because you don’t know yet”—has been an interesting journey that I sort of forgot a little bit myself.

John SmallMtn (03:58)

Yeah. Sometimes it’s the hardest thing in the world to take our own advice, right?

Cerys Goodall (04:08)

Completely. Completely.

I also call myself the unlikely COO, because I started in biotech, moved into public relations, became a marketing executive, and morphed into operations at a senior level—becoming President and COO.

Now, bringing all of that into The Goods… The Goods has also been with me for 12 years of that journey. When I first started it, it was a networked agency model to help people with their marketing and communications. That was wonderful, and it was so fun and exciting. Now, in this era of my life, it’s: How do I take all of that and package it in a way that is more operational, strategic, and reflective of the experience that I have?

I’ve worked with dozens of startups at this point, and I often say, “Just come learn from the mistakes I’ve made and hopefully we can help you avoid a few of them.” But it goes far beyond that. Usually, you will get someone who focuses either on operations and brings a very financial, P&L, project management background—which is more traditional—or you’ll have a CMO who is much more brand, communications, and digital focused. I’m somewhere in the intersection of those things, which I think is really wonderful for my clients, but it isn’t something that’s familiar. So it’s been: How do I rebrand? How do I have these conversations and help my clients understand what I can really bring to the table?

John SmallMtn (05:28)

Yeah. Okay, I have so much to talk about here, because this is one of those things… and we were talking about this on the pre-call around the idea that a lot of this is unpacking our own biases, whether they’re known or not known.

I love the idea of not agonizing over the name. The joke that I tell everyone is I sweated harder over the name of my company than I did over the name of my daughter. Now, almost eight years into this thing, it could have been so much easier if I’d just started with, “Hey, this is the area I want to help in,” and built it from feedback as opposed to having perfection pressure from the jump.

Operations is one of these things that everybody needs, everyone knows they need, and everyone thinks that it can wait until tomorrow or when they get big enough. When you’re doing this reinvention of yourself—this pivot so that you can help in this way—are you finding that you’re having to educate a lot of people around the operations behind these things, or are you finding that people get it and you just have to change some of the labels or terms that you’re using?

Cerys Goodall (06:50)

Yeah. Where it really landed for me was at the last company that I was in-house with, called Vetster—they do pet telemedicine. I met the CEO and we happened to just have a conversation. I thought initially our conversation was that he wanted some consulting work. He was raising his Series A, the team was super small, and they had the product but didn’t have any marketing or growth. But he had done three companies prior.

As we were describing or workshopping through the projects that he was thinking about—”I need marketing, I need customer support, I need strategy and planning”—he said, “You know, I’ve done this three times. I don’t want to have to manage a bunch of people all day long. That’s not what lights me up as a business owner, and I’ve done that before. That’s the piece for me that makes me hesitate.”

I said, “Well, great. I love being a right hand, and I think my superpower is: Get shit done. So that seems like a perfect marriage for us. Here’s my experience: I can do marketing, I can do communications, I’m really thoughtful about customers, strategic, focused, and I’ve got this résumé around how we accelerate and get from Seed to Series A to Series B. I can do that.”

It was funny—it was a Saturday morning when we were talking over coffee, and by the end of it, he just said, “Can you just do this? Can you just do this for me?” It was a bit of a moment, because I had to think, “Wait, this is a job. This isn’t a consulting project anymore.”

That solidified me into the answer to your question, which is: Like anything in sales and marketing, you find out what people’s pain points are, and then you tell them what you do. If I go out and say, “I’m an operator/marketer executive, and I do fractional work and can help you,” people think, “Well, great, but I don’t know how you fit in my business.”

If I get them to explain… One of my clients right now is in the middle of an executive transition. They’ve had some staff changes. So really, it’s: Come in and help us navigate this department. Let’s give them some stability while we find our next leaders. Great, I can do that. You need marketing, you need operations, you need strategy—perfect. But if I went in and sold them on “I do marketing strategy and operations,” they would have said, “Great, we have people.”

John SmallMtn (09:16)

Yeah, “Send us some information and we’ll call you if we’re interested.”

Cerys Goodall (09:21)

Exactly. Exactly. So for me, it really is about: Do you have a pain point in your business? How can I help you solve that?

Every founder and every CEO will have that one thing on their list that they wish they could get to, but they’re hesitating because they either don’t believe they have the time, capacity, or skills, or it’s something they hate to do. That’s the other piece of it. We all think, “Ugh, I don’t want to do that thing. It drains me. I wish I could be more focused on my clients. I wish I could be more focused on my product. I’ve got all of this other stuff that doesn’t light me up.”

Okay, that’s the stuff that I love to do. Give me all the stuff that doesn’t light you up. I really believe in helping founders and CEOs, and saying, “Let’s get you into your superpower, and I’ll catch the rest.” So that’s been the change now: less selling myself, and more selling the solve to your problem.

John SmallMtn (10:03)

I love that. One of the biggest transformations on my journey was moving away from being a product hawker to being solutions-focused. If they don’t let down their guard to have the real conversation with you, we’re not even really doing anything worth booking time on the calendar for, in my opinion.

Going back to that conversation for just a second: You’ve got this business, you’re talking to this person, and they want you to come on board. You have that dawning realization that this is not just consulting—this is a job. How did you feel in that moment? Were you hesitant? Were you nervous? Did you want to push it out to half court and say, “Well, you can pay me through my LLC”? How did you feel in that conversation?

Cerys Goodall (11:04)

Yeah, I had all of those questions, absolutely.

It wasn’t a hard sell for me, in that a few factors aligned for me personally. One was that it was in the pet space. As I jokingly told him, I wanted to be a horse vet when I was a kid. So it was a bit of a full-circle moment to be able to go work in an industry that really needs help and transformation, and this was a company that was going to do that. It’s an industry where it has transformed from being mostly men to now 85% women—which means the industry and how it works needs a lot of help transforming the model. If a veterinarian wants to take time off to raise their family or be a caregiver, it’s actually very difficult. You can’t just walk away from your clinic. So how can technology help with that? That was really exciting to me.

The other piece of it was that Mark and I were very aligned on values, and we had a lot of discussion around how we can do things differently. I really want to focus on pay equity, which we know affects women disproportionately. I want to be able to build programs which make us a best-in-class employer despite being small. He was so supportive and down for me to flex that muscle, which was really exciting for me.

So it wasn’t too much of a hard sell, but he was also aware that I had The Goods. We had a lot of conversations around how I keep my consulting practice, which is important to me and has been with me for a very long time. I wasn’t shutting everything down. He was wonderful, truly so supportive, and such a great thought partner and business partner—both within his company and within The Goods—for me to be able to do that.

John SmallMtn (12:43)

That is awesome. When you’re consulting, it’s both a great moment and a terrifying moment whenever someone comes to you and says, “Okay, this is really great, but we want more.” Typically that leads to, “Okay, you’re going to hire internal,” or there’s going to be an uncomfortable moment where they try to offer you a job. And that’s just not what I’m doing.

I’ve turned down a couple of people because they were like, “Okay, John, this is cool, but we want more time.” One guy was like, “I want you to shut it down and just come work with me.” I was like, “Unfortunately, that’s not going to be an option.” It didn’t work out—he got a little perturbed and upset about it. But ultimately, it was a fairly easy “no” on my side because it just didn’t align with what I was trying to do.

Cerys Goodall (14:00)

I think that’s a really good thing for consultants and small businesses in particular to realize: If you’re good at your job, hopefully those offers do come and you have choices.

The resilience and boundaries… I have said no to plenty of companies. Vetster happened to be one that made a lot of sense for me. But I have said no to clients, and you’re right—sometimes that means the relationship doesn’t continue. Sometimes it does. I always think you ultimately want what is best for both parties. So having your boundaries is really important, but also helping them realize that if it’s not you, “I’ll help you find somebody.”

Life is long; relationships have an opportunity to develop and grow. It’s the same way I treat staff: I hope you are with us for as long as we can work mutually in a way that is awesome. But if you reach that point where you are ready for that next step, you have my full support. I will help you, I have your back, and I will wish you well.

I think the same is true in consulting. As a client, I will help you find that next person if what you fundamentally need is someone in-house. Great, I’ll give you my Rolodex. Let’s help you get an awesome person.

John SmallMtn (15:08)

Then you don’t get saddled with the “Dear John” email of, “Hey, thank you for all the time and effort. We’re now going to go this other way,” because you’re helping them define that path.

In leadership, I think one of the most important things you can do as a leader is show up and have that same thing: “Hey, you might not want to be here forever, so let’s talk about your goals so that way we can be on the same page about helping you get to those goals.” Because then, if that person is out there interviewing, they’re going to come talk to you about it. If they’re not happy, they’re going to come talk to you about it—as opposed to, “Well, you should just be happy to be here and collecting a check,” which is just not real leadership in my opinion.

Cerys Goodall (15:43)

Agreed. When I’m in-house, I talk about it as a triangle: You need the right person in the right role at the right time for the business.

What’s interesting about that is I look for that when I hire, but you have to manage that with the person over time, and things can change. Their personal circumstances can change, the role may not be progressing to give them the development that they need, or your business may be in flux and changing. All of those things have to stay pretty connected, with some variation. If they don’t, it’s time to make a change.

It’s the same in consulting, I find. One of the things I talk about very proactively with my clients is: “I’m here for as long as I am helpful.” At some point, either I will no longer be helpful because maybe you are not keeping up your end of the bargain—because it’s a two-way relationship, so maybe things are changing on your side, the team is changing, or the focus is changing—or, often (and it can be years; I’ve had clients for years), now you’re growing. Okay, let me help you find a team, or maybe now you need a full-service agency, or maybe you need something else. Let me help you with that. I’ve got lots of experience, but also now I have a lot of knowledge about you and your business and what I think will make sense for you.

Again, it’s yet another piece of work that most founders don’t like to have to do. Let me partner with you on that, and that’s okay. We have this idea… Agencies were always classic at this: “We’ve had this client for 20 years.” Amazing! I hope you do have clients for 20 years. But how many clients do you no longer have that you were able to say, “We helped them through that transition”? I think that’s a real testament to success with your clients: being able to help them navigate that for both you and them.

John SmallMtn (17:21)

Right. This is a hotspot of mine, because there are a lot of people in the sales space—sales consultants and trainers and everything—and they don’t really have a lasting impact. They can show up in a touchpoint call and weave a talk track, do something right, so there’s some greatness in the moment, but there’s no lasting impact. That drives me crazy. Your job is to leave them better even when you’re not around. If they’re only getting benefit when you’re standing in front of them, eventually I just think it leads to all sorts of bad expectations.

By that same token, one of the things that I try to think about is: How can I shorten… and this is weird, because there’s a weird mental space that goes along with this… I’m trying to grow a business and I want to grow it, but I also want to help people in a confined, defined way and then move on, let them move on. I’ll have these moments of, “Okay, could we take the program down, make it shorter, and does that make sense?” Is it just because I’m trying to help people as quickly as possible, or am I removing my ability to have a long-term impact? Because people don’t change on a dime; change takes time.

It’s this very weird moment for me: What I should be doing is trying to make sure that I’ve got ways to stay engaged, but ultimately I want people to get the benefit of the stuff that I do without needing me on the payroll forever.

Cerys Goodall (19:24)

I love that you said a couple of things there that are so indicative of your growth mindset.

One: You used the word “should,” which I think is a terrible word. We should eliminate it from our vocabulary!

John SmallMtn (19:33)

I talk about “the land of should” and that we’re not really served by living there.

Cerys Goodall (19:40)

Yeah, and it’s so external, right? “Should” is not something that you come up with. It usually is a piece of information somewhere else that is causing friction for you.

The other thing that you said is, “How can I deliver the most impact in the shortest amount of time?” What that tells me is you have really narrowed in on who your customer actually is and the business you want to have. It takes people a lot of time to get there. There are great consultants who do partner with companies for years, and that is a business model and a decision.

I think sometimes we forget to have our own feet underneath ourselves and really remember that we’re in the driver’s seat of our own lives. We measure ourselves by all of these other yardsticks that exist in the world, thinking that that’s what we have to do. One of the things I talk about with startups all the time is around whether or not to hire an agency.

John SmallMtn (20:25)

Yeah, we talked about this on the pre-call and you were not a fan.

Cerys Goodall (20:44)

I am not a fan, and it’s not because I don’t love agencies—because I really love working with agencies. In fact, I think having distributed models in your beginning gets you going way faster. But what I often see startups do is they will lock themselves into an agency, not realizing how much flexibility they need. It is about agility. It is about remembering exactly who you are, remembering the relationship that you need to have, and remembering that you’re in the driver’s seat on these decisions on how you want to do it. You don’t have to do it the traditional ways; you can think about it differently, which is half the fun, I think.

John SmallMtn (21:14)

I think there’s the realm of taking that idea too far, where you might be chasing some sort of individualistic idea that might not be helping you in the grand scheme of things. For the first two years of me going out and working with people, I was very focused on sales process, and I was talking about process. We’re just now entering into a time period where a wider segment of business is thinking about sales as a process.

When I came out, hung my shingle, and started to try to work with people, the concept of a sales process was something people didn’t even understand. But I heard someone say “playbook,” and I’m this nerd who doesn’t really play a lot of sports, so I was like, “Well, that’s what I’m doing.” I decided to use the word playbook in some of my conversations, and they were like, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I wanted.” It was confusing until I decided to stop making that the fight and just put it in a language that makes sense for them.

Cerys Goodall (22:10)

I love that, because there are so many of those internal fights around your identity, around the product you’re offering, where you want to spend your time, how you see yourself as a founder, and what perception you want to create. Is promoting your business or having conversations like this on podcasts important to you? For some people it is; for others, it’s not.

Do you want to focus on your own marketing, or is this very word-of-mouth networking? There are all sorts of different things that contribute to how you will be perceived and what you want to do as a business owner. It’s just that Rolodex going through your mind of decision-making all day long, which in and of itself can be really exhausting.

John SmallMtn (22:59)

100%. That’s one of the things we were talking about: as a founder, it’s endless opportunities. You’ve got five versions of wheels that you can spin of what you are going to do, how you want to get there, who you want to work with, how much you want to charge, and how you want to deliver all these things. It can be overwhelming.

When we were talking about it, you were talking about how being in the C-suite can be very isolating. Sometimes that comes from being in too cutthroat of a culture, or maybe having too much ego running through your veins and thinking that you can’t go ask for help. But when you’re a founder and it’s just your thing, a lot of people don’t network at all. They don’t have any community. They have nothing around them.

How do you think about not isolating yourself—staying part of the thread, as opposed to walling yourself off in a tower and trying to plan your way to success in the “land of should”? “Well, this should work,” but we’ve not talked to anybody or put it out there.

Cerys Goodall (24:03)

When you’re in school, you’ve got your grades, your teachers giving you feedback, your friends giving you feedback, and society is helping shape you as a human being. Then you get through your career, you’re getting some feedback, you’re getting raises and promotions—there’s some sort of feedback loop. Then you become a founder, and outside of your balance sheet and whether clients are happy with your work, you now don’t have that feedback mechanism. Are you a good person? Are you doing the right things? What does that actually look like?

I think that’s where the isolation comes from. You are often spending a lot of time coaching other people; you’re giving your clients feedback, staff, your teammates if you have them. But no one is doing that proactively for you anymore. So there’s this gap of information that could be helpful to your confidence, your self-worth, and making sure that you are in alignment. Our friends can see things before we can often, but as a founder, you’re not getting that.

I’ve really had to spend time and curate not only a network of trusted people where I can be super vulnerable, but also a network of people who are willing to give me feedback that isn’t just critical—it’s also positive. “You’re doing the right thing,” or “I think you’re capable of this,” in addition to, “Hey, watch out for this,” or “Have you considered something?”

I spend a lot of time with a very diverse group of people, and I’m not afraid to reach out. I’ve got a few friends who I text and say, “I need some positive affirmation. I’m really struggling, and I’ve got a lot of imposter syndrome going on right now. Can you help reframe me back into what my superpowers are? I need an external reminder here.” Because I know it, and I can write it down, but I just need someone else to say it for me and validate me a little bit. I’m not ashamed to ask for that sometimes, because somebody will say, “Remember that thing that you did that you’ve long forgotten about? You were really great, and if you apply that here, I think you’re going to be able to do it.”

“Thank you so much. I really needed that.” I know it sounds silly and maybe a bit egotistical to ask for that, but I think you have to as a founder. It’s really easy to get negative feedback; it’s really hard to get good feedback.

John SmallMtn (26:21)

My gosh, I tell everybody, because people will come to me and say, “Hey John, I got a business idea. Can I run it past you?” My default line is, “If you’re not ready for someone to poke holes in it, I’m probably not the right person to be talking about it with.” My default is more critical than it is nurturing, and I’m trying to be better at the nurturing side of it, especially now that I’ve got a child and she doesn’t need a critical parent all the time.

I’m also having this moment of: that’s a really cool idea, being able to reach out to your network and say, “Can you help me out a little bit? I’m feeling a little bit stuck.”

When I was going through sales training with my coach, he was big on the concept of accountability. I had only ever heard of accountability in the form of, “Okay, you’re in trouble, we’ve got to hold you accountable to it,” so I had a very negative association with it. But I meet with my accountability partner every other Friday. Here in a couple hours, we’re going to meet up and talk through the days and the weeks, and that’s super helpful for keeping me on track, not chasing shiny stuff, and not getting lost in the woods.

My trick—I don’t think I’ve said this before—is all of my social proof, testimonials, and feedback live in a folder. I should be using it more in my marketing, but I’m not always great at that. But I have it, I go through the process of collecting it, and I’ll go look at that stuff: “Hey, you helped me get here, we did this super great thing.” That helps me get unstuck. That’s my normal go-to if my energy is super low or if I’m feeling like, “What am I even doing this for?” That’s my first pivot, for sure.

Cerys Goodall (28:33)

No, and we need that. We would love to pretend like we all have stoicism, we’re fine, and we’re very resilient, but we’re also human. When you are building this and it’s scary, you’re taking financial risks, and it’s your income and your family’s well-being, there’s a lot of stress that comes with it. If you aren’t getting a little bit of encouragement along the way, it’s lonely. I think that’s a big part of what contributes to the loneliness.

Being able to have that network of people who will not only hold you accountable—exactly as you say—and deliver on what you say you’re going to deliver, but also just remind you that part of that accountability is to keep doing awesome things.

John SmallMtn (29:10)

I journal a lot, so the other part of this is: I chose to do this. No one held a gun to my head.

Between those three things, staying in motion is huge. Motion is a big part of this. I talk to people who are struggling, and they will essentially remove all their momentum because they’re just trying to get unstuck. If you’re not falling at least forward on your face, you’re probably not making the progress that you need to make, and it makes it real easy to stay stuck. Momentum is the big one, then accountability, and the last part is having some of that positive feedback—whether it means picking up the phone and calling a friend to fish for a compliment, or having that swipe file of testimonials and feedback that you’ve gotten from people over the years.

Ultimately, it is important. 10 years ago, I would have argued that if you need that, you’re probably not cut out for this. As I get older, I lean more into these things and it just helps me. Younger John, who was super rigid and a little too much of a tryhard, probably would have flamed out if I had not built some of this stuff around me.

Cerys Goodall (30:30)

10 years ago, I was in an environment where I was consistently working with a team who was engaging with me. Maybe we were going for lunch, having meetings, or there was a, “Hey, thank you so much for that delivery.” Once you’re a founder, even that feedback mechanism, which I consider to be positive, has a little bit disappeared.

Fishing for a compliment—yes, sometimes that’s super helpful, but it’s also just a reminder to help me reframe again, anchor in on what my strengths are, and help remind me where my guardrails need to be so that I live in my power of awesomeness.

I reference this idea of keeping your own feet underneath you. It’s really easy to get knocked off kilter, to have a client ask you for something you don’t normally do, for the world to be challenging, or for your business pipeline to not be as strong as you want it to be. Technology is now really making people nervous: “Do I have to completely reconsider my business model?” There’s so much that will knock you off kilter. But when you can really be in that flow state of yourself, magic happens. So why wouldn’t you have people feeding that for you, more than the negative?

John SmallMtn (31:42)

Community is the thing that has helped me get to here. Coming from martial arts, having that community inside of my martial arts school of other people who were trying, failing, figuring things out, and being excited to share with other people was a game-changer. Then I got lucky with building a bunch of in-person networking.

When I started to shift towards more of a digital idea and wanted to work with people outside of my hometown, having to start over with a digital network was kind of a challenge. I don’t know that I’ve ever talked about this on the show, but we have a Slack community for people that are in revenue or are founders, because I’m of the belief that with good community, this whole path is so much easier.

It’s stupid easy to go talk to aunts, uncles, and cousins who don’t get it, and then you start thinking that nobody gets it—which isn’t helpful in any way, shape, or form. So I built this community on Slack. We have like 260 people in it, and it’s a place to come in, have some community, get unstuck, get introductions, and get the help that you need to stay in motion and keep moving forward.

It stemmed from that idea: having good community was a huge benefit to me, so if I can help other people with that and not overly isolate yourself, let me try. It’s just a free thing where people can come hang out. It’s with that idea in mind that it’s super easy to seclude yourself away from everybody else. I’ve got friends that still don’t understand what it is I’m doing, and that’s okay, but if I just surround myself with people who don’t get it, I’m going to sell myself on the fact that no one else gets it, and that’s not going to help me at all.

Cerys Goodall (33:44)

No, absolutely. Not only will it not help you as a leader, it can really change your business. As a business owner, you will get so many more ideas than you need. You will get ideas like, “Have you considered this?” or “Well, what about this?” You’re like, “Cool, but I’m doing this. That’s a great idea too, but I’m doing this.” I certainly experienced that fundraising with pre-seed…

John SmallMtn (34:18)

I get it all the time: “Okay John, you’re going to generate leads for us.” I’m not a lead generator, that’s not what I do. There have been times where I think, “Well, maybe I should just pivot and do that,” and then I always walk away from it because that’s not really what I want to do. It doesn’t jazz me up. I think that’s important: if you don’t have actual excitement, if it doesn’t blow your skirt up, then it’s probably not going to be something you’re going to be able to do long-term.

Cerys Goodall (34:36)

Exactly. I can get up every day and help founders every day. “Tell me about what you’re doing, it’s so exciting. Now let me figure out what’s next.” But exactly to your point, if somebody said to me, “Okay, great, now come in and run HR and be our HR person,” there are great HR people out there who do that, and I can get you going. I love doing that and I love setting the strategy, but if you want me to do your payroll, that’s probably not the place for me.

That’s an entirely different thing, and I love that you can anchor in on that because all of this is about relationships—setting expectations with clients and making sure, in your case, it’s not “I’m going to do all of your lead gen,” it’s “I’m teaching you how to fish. I’m going to get you to do this yourself,” which is amazing. That distinction also selects out the clients who don’t make sense for you, and I think we forget that.

Over the last 12 years of doing this, every time I don’t listen to my gut, I learn that lesson really well. I knew this wasn’t going to be the right thing for me, I knew this wasn’t the greatest match, or I knew there was something where we weren’t in alignment. Thankfully, over time that has become less and less and it doesn’t happen very often, but it is a real reminder that you’ve got to listen to that intuition around what you offer and who you are as a business leader, and stay true to that.

I’ve worked with some amazing CEOs who have opened my eyes to that, where they are very anchored into who they are and they make no exception: “This is the business that I want to run, and that means my clients buy into that. That also means my team buys into that.” It informs hiring, it informs everything that we do, and who we’re going to partner with. I think that alignment is something where you have to be really clear about what that is so that the relationship can be successful.

John SmallMtn (36:48)

One of the very early shows that I was listening to religiously on this developmental pilgrimage was The Tim Ferriss Show. He asks everybody this one question: “How do you get better at saying no to things?” I used to think it was a crazy, stupid question, but now after this time of being a founder, what he’s really asking is, “How do you cultivate focus? How do you stay in momentum on this path that you’re on?” Because everybody will have requests, there are always opportunities, and there are a lot of things to go waste your time on, versus staying locked in on the things that you know you should be doing.

Cerys Goodall (37:30)

I think it’s the number one reason that tech startups fail: shiny object syndrome. They slow down when they should be accelerating because they’re spread too thin on too many things. There’s a certain amount of that that needs to happen in the early days when you’re not quite sure what you are, but once you figure things out, in my observation, there are two types of founders that I work with.

There’s the founder that will follow money, and there’s the founder that will double down on their belief in what they do. It’s not that one or the other is necessarily more successful, but it is a very different type of strategy. Some people will double down and double down, hopefully waiting for the market to meet the moment; sometimes it does, and then they hit big. But many of them will also fizzle out or become a lifestyle business.

On the other hand, I’ve worked with amazing CEOs who follow money. They pivot, they grow, and they are onto the next thing. That is a fascinating mentality because you are not married to the thing that you’re doing, which is also a path forward: you can make those decisions, pivot, and continually evolve. I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other, it’s whatever is going to resonate for you as a founder, but they’re both equally fun to watch and support along the way. So it is a really interesting path.

John SmallMtn (38:47)

During the pre-interview for this, in finding cool things to talk about, we got into an area that I would like to talk about a little bit. Everyone talks about grit and determination—”get shit done” and everything else like this. One of the things that you said—and I find a lot of value in this—is that people can get too zoomed in and focused on just not quitting. We also talked about being a little too over-indexed on effort and not being focused on the right things. I would love for you to expand on those two ideas a little bit and how it shows up for founders in your experience.

Cerys Goodall (39:49)

This is one that I am in forever examination of myself on. I’m not good at it. I overcommit, and what I mean by overcommit is I can be very dogmatic about my intent, my purpose, and my “why,” whether it’s within my own company or another.

It goes back to that piece around alignment, needing the business that you’re working on, who you are as a human, and the life stage that you’re in to be in concert all the time. Where I have been challenged is where I don’t recognize sometimes that maybe the field has changed or the game has changed, and what I thought I was showing up to do is no longer the case.

I am the type of person who really doesn’t like to walk away ever. I don’t like to quit. It’s taken me the last few years to realize—and thankfully I’ve had a really good mentor who said, “If other people are playing a different game or the game has changed, you have choice here, but you have to recognize that choice. The choice is you’re going to evolve with this game, or you’re going to say that this game is not for you.”

Sometimes I wish I was a little faster in getting to that decision or feeling like maybe I could change things back to the way they were. I can create a little bit of inertia there for myself, and usually it’s when I’m not putting myself first, when I’m not aligned to my values, or when I’m not aligned to my strengths. I see this in founders and I see this in teammates; it’s human nature to say, “I’m committed, I have work ethic, I take pride,” and not want to let go. The process of letting go of the work if you are passionate about what you do is a really difficult thing.

John SmallMtn (41:55)

Yeah.

Cerys Goodall (41:56)

I have a friend who is now specializing in grief counseling for employers and the employment space, because when you leave a job that you love, or when you disconnect from a client that you really enjoyed working with—whether that was your decision or theirs—or when the scope of the project changes to a place where it doesn’t light you up the way it used to, I’m really bad at quitting in those moments. I never want to say I’m giving up in those moments.

What I also know now on the other side is that it’s not a personal reflection of me or them; it is an external factor in the environment of what’s going on. For too long, I was internalizing that.

Now, thankfully, I have some great mentorship and coaching so that when those things are happening, I can move a little bit faster, with less rigidity around it, but also just be really anchored in and aligned with my values. Does this align with me and what I do well? If it doesn’t, what are we doing here? Can we get it back on track? Can I evolve? Can the role or the work evolve? If not, again, that’s where it’s okay: How can I help them get to the next phase with somebody new, because I don’t think this is me anymore, or maybe they don’t think it’s me anymore? And that’s okay, but it took me a long time to take that personal weight out of it to be able to say, “It’s not quitting, it’s evolution.”

John SmallMtn (43:28)

Interesting. How have you gotten better, or what is something you do, or a practice or an idea you can use or lean into now that helps you compartmentalize that?

Cerys Goodall (43:42)

My aunt gave me this one, which was something she used to ask people to do when they were thinking about a new career: Write 25 things down that are your “heck yes”—what do I want in this new role? Then write 25 things down that are absolute “no’s”—and they can’t just be the opposite. So you really are thinking about 50 different things that you want in this job.

I’ve now adapted it to be more about: What are the things that light me up? Where are my strengths? Where are my values? What are the types of people I like working with? What are the types of people who work well with me? It’s a two-way exchange, and really having some awareness there helps. When those moments of friction or misalignment start happening, I can anchor into that list.

Sometimes it’s also me—I’ll be reflective enough to ask: Am I stressed? Maybe something is going on in my personal life that is affecting my perspective here. But if all things are equal, I can go into that list and ask: What is out of alignment? What’s not feeling good? Why might I be perceiving friction or a changing nature of the work? How do I anchor into this?

Then I can specifically address that thing: Is it money? Is it culture? Is it decision-making? Is it process? Is it how I’m communicating or showing up? You can get pretty surgical about it from that point on, which has been really helpful.

John SmallMtn (45:11)

That’s the first thing I do in all my client work: “What do you not want to say yes to?” If we can find those earlier in the conversation, we can save a bunch of time on all the bad follow-ups, proposal generations, and everything else.

Most people are a little bit floored when I show up and my first question is, “What do you categorically say no to?” They’re like, “Well, John, you’re going to help me close deals.” First, we need to have the time so we can focus on the right deals, but part of that is drawing the line in the sand so we’re not chasing bad deals.

Changing gears a little bit: You said that we’re too focused on being liked, that work is an exchange for money, and we forget that we have a choice in where we work and the work that we do. But just the way you said that first part—that we’re way too focused on being liked—sometimes being a leader or a manager means you have to make unpopular decisions. Where do you think that shows up mostly for founders?

Cerys Goodall (46:26)

I think being liked most often shows up in latency—it slows down momentum ultimately. If you’re not making calls and being proactive, and you’re not operating your business from your toes, being liked is sitting on your heels. Being liked is seeking validation around your decision-making in a way that probably isn’t super helpful and isn’t you being a leader.

Being liked is a great teammate attribute. Being liked as a leader is different than respect.

On the point around the exchange of work—and it’s interesting because not everybody loves or agrees with me when I say this—what I mean by this is the rhetoric on social media and in the press is always: “Bad leadership is the reason that everything else is horrible. I left my job, they were the worst, they were terrible, and now I’m leaving.” I get that, I totally get that. But somebody’s great manager might be somebody else’s bad manager, and that is only one person. Somebody’s amazing CEO is somebody else’s nightmare of a CEO.

We don’t like to acknowledge that as human beings because we like to “other” the business—that the business is this evil entity, the CEO is somehow going to screw people over, and you as the employee have no choice in this matter and everything is being done to you. Now, don’t get me wrong: in a capitalistic society, there are many examples where that is true. But when we’re talking about the founder group and entrepreneurship, we have to remember that there’s a way to lead a community that doesn’t mean you are just doing it to be liked.

Being nice is not being kind. Being nice is a platitude; being kind is leadership. I see many founders mix that up. They don’t hold a line, they don’t set expectations, and then things get away from them. That’s a real challenge.

I reference this video that Gary Vee had where an employee came to him really excited: “Gary, we’ve got to do this,”—I think it was something about sustainability, if I remember correctly. Gary said, “That’s amazing, you should go work for that company.” The employee was caught off guard: “Well, what do you mean?” He said, “I love that for you. If that is your passion, please go do that. But this is my business, and this is what we’re doing.” Maybe they’ll do it in the future, who knows?

We have to remember that you want to be kind in your business, not nice, not liked. You want to be a leader and wrap your arms around everybody and help them move forward. I used to describe my job as a thousand marbles on a table that I had to move from one end to the other. If a few marbles choose to jump off the table, you can’t throw everybody else off, too. That’s really difficult when we’re human beings and want that validation.

You will have more people who complain about you than you will ever have people who tell you they loved you as their boss, and you can’t be all things to everyone: your clients, your partners, or your staff. That’s a hard, isolating place to be.

John SmallMtn (50:20)

I’ve worked in some sales orgs and under some sales managers, and when I was younger and more rigid, it was just, “Okay, you’re doing this the wrong way and you’re wrong.” Then one day the clouds parted and I thought, “Wait a minute. If they go through enough people, they’ll find their people.” They’re not categorically wrong, it’s just the wrong fit for me.

Maybe I need to take some of the judgment out of my perspective and just be okay with the fact that just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean that it’s categorically wrong. I should be focused on finding the things that do fit for me. It was a big shift, because I would be like, “This is terrible, I can’t believe this, you’re the worst.” Then I realized some of these people have found success by being these kinds of people, so maybe they’re not wrong, maybe it’s just not a great fit, and maybe I’m playing a part in that as much as they are.

Cerys Goodall (51:21)

Yes, and I don’t want to be so obtuse as to say, “Just quit your job, throw your hands up, and go find another one.” The job market is hard right now. But maybe what it means is you are adjusting your expectations when you’re showing up. Maybe it is finding some new passion within your existing job, changing some things for yourself, and talking to your manager or leader about it. Maybe it is also starting to do the groundwork to say, “I know that this company probably isn’t for me long-term, so I’m going to start the groundwork to find something when I’m able that is a little bit different and aligns to my values.”

Similarly, on the founder side, it goes back to what we were saying earlier: I will be your biggest cheerleader. If you decide you are ready for growth in a new direction, I hope we have a great time working together for as long as this works out, but I will also be the first person to be really thrilled for you when you move on and say, “I have found something that lights me up.”

Life is long; life is so long. Why spend time belaboring this false loyalty that we’ve built? It’s a very 1980s way of looking at the business relationship, and we’re beyond that. I want to know that my teams have gone on to have great success, and that maybe one day we’re going to revisit and find ways to work together in the future.

At Vetster, I was able to hire somebody who I had worked with in the early 2000s, and it was an amazing moment to find our way back to working together. She had evolved, I had evolved, but that friendship and trust were there. It was really amazing and very special.

John SmallMtn (53:05)

That is awesome. I tell everybody in that same vein: I want to be here as long as I’m helping. But I can also admit and acknowledge that if you’re not pushing in the same direction that I’m here to help with, I’m not the right person to keep on. I’m going to be way too innovative and pull focus away from the things that you’ve decided to be focused on.

If this is no longer valuable and you’re not pushing… I’m that “1% better every day” kind of person. The worst kind of client for me is someone who has gotten to the place where they’re like, “No, I’m good.” We should wrap up, because I’m not here to rain on your parade or be a fearmonger, but if you’re complacent, I’m going to be a bad fit, so I need to go find something else to do.

Cerys Goodall (54:08)

Human beings are so good at the binary that we don’t like change—once it’s established, then we have to maintain it. The thing about being a founder is you have to break that from your thinking and navigate impermanence. You need to be able to flex.

It comes back to keeping your feet underneath you in your business. You want to do good work that aligns with your values, and you are smart enough to recognize, “Hey, when that is out of alignment, I’m also okay to let go.” Talk about a trifecta—there’s your book!

John SmallMtn (54:48)

Changing gears a little bit, I’m curious: How did you get your very first client when you went out on your own? What did the process look like, and how did it come together for you?

Cerys Goodall (55:06)

It was honestly very much by happenstance. I’m so lucky. I am not a traditional outbound person. My background in public relations meant that I had kept a network and continue to keep a network, and I love networking with people. My style of networking was not, “Hey, I’m hanging up my own shingle and I have a business.” My version of networking is always matching people to their problems and opportunities to connect.

Through that, when I said I was interested in doing some project work, two people said, “We’ve got a similar issue.” I thought, “I could probably help with that,” and they thought of me. It was the first time where my networking was able to come back to me.

For people in that relationship-style business—which I very much think mine is—it needs to be a very high-trust role for someone to want me to come into their business and pick it all apart. It really is the network. Usually, it’s people who say, “I trust her, I get her values, I understand the integrity that she’ll bring to this organization,” and that’s the match. The work almost becomes secondary. So my very first client thankfully came through the network and then matriculated from there.

I was fairly lucky, I will say. The tech scene in Toronto at the time was having a bit of a resurgence with consultants. Agencies were a little bit déclassé at the time; some of that model was getting examined in the zeitgeist, so consultants were really able to have a moment—in particular because funding at the time was also a little bit soft for startups, so they had to be really smart with who they were bringing onto their teams. It just kind of worked.

I never take for granted the amount of networking that taking that approach requires. A solid 20% of my week is connecting with people—not to just drive my own business, but really to create valuable connections with other people.

John SmallMtn (57:01)

I got here solidly through networking. When I started to move online and got on LinkedIn, I’d say, “Hey, let me have a digital call,” and people thought, “You just want to sell me, you just want to sell me.” It was disheartening, because I’d built this really cool network, but it was all local. There are still a lot of people who have their walls up, and wearing a sales title can make those walls a little bit higher at times. Networking is fantastic; I love that.

Let’s move into the rapid-fire portion of this. First question: If someone is going out on their own today, what do they need to be thinking about in the realm of operations when they’re starting? How do they set themselves up for success long-term?

Cerys Goodall (57:59)

The first thing I would say is don’t overcommit yourself to anything that requires capital. You don’t know who you are yet, and you don’t know what you’re going to need. You need flexibility more than you need that big agency, software, program, or whatever the case may be. I encourage everyone to keep it as light as possible.

In addition to that, there are so many people who are willing to help you. I watch so many founders isolate themselves and think, “I’ll do it myself, I’ll struggle through this.” There are people who love creating PowerPoints, PDFs, and sales materials—there are lots of people probably in your network right now that if you just asked and said, “Hey, do you think you could give me two hours to help me knock out this presentation? I’ve got all the content, but I need it to look good. Do you think you could help me?” Great! Do that, and then promise to give back as well.

I watch so many founders struggle in those early days thinking, “I need a logo, I need a brand, I have to go to an event,” trying to take big business thinking into that very early stage. Just pick the pieces that you need and keep your capital really flexible.

John SmallMtn (59:15)

I like that, that’s a great idea. On social media, everyone has channels and content with mantras and folksy wisdom in the realm of business. What is a piece of advice you see online now that you can appreciate, but you had to learn the hard way yourself?

Cerys Goodall (59:37)

This was that representation matters. A friend of mine was running an agency here in Canada, and she used to talk a lot about how if you can say something, you should say something. At the time, I was too early in my career and didn’t have the maturity to really understand what that was. I was having some personal success, so it didn’t feel like it connected to me. I am also a bit of a contrarian and don’t like people telling me what to do, so I was very much, “I don’t want to if I don’t have to”—very immature.

Fast forward: I wish I had understood that message so much earlier, which is that our storytelling matters so much. It helps with that isolation, and it helps give people new ideas. For myself as a woman in tech, I want people to see that I came from biotech and public relations and now I’m doing what I’m doing, because my career path looks a little crazy on paper. But had I been able to see somebody who had done it, I probably could have done so much more and thought so much differently about my own career than the traditional ladder.

So representation matters. If you feel like you don’t have a story, I guarantee that you do, and it will resonate with somebody. Even if it’s just one person, put it out there.

John SmallMtn (1:01:02)

I love that, that’s amazing. The storytelling aspect of being a founder… I got lucky because I read about it in a book, and they were talking about the founder story being one of the most important stories to feel comfortable sharing with people. If no one else knows why this matters to you, how excited are they possibly going to be?

Last question, Cerys: You’ve been on this path for a while, worked with a lot of founders, done the internal and external stuff, and seen things shift. What is your word of caution or warning for someone who’s going to go out on their own as a founder, independent of what they might want to launch?

Cerys Goodall (1:01:43)

It’s less about a word of warning and more about: Remember who you are. Remember who you are—not what other people tell you you are, and not where you think the market or technology is going, or the shifts in the market.

People hire people at the end of the day. People will bet on you because of who you are. It doesn’t matter how great your product is; if you don’t have that founder story or if you are out of alignment, it doesn’t really matter. We’re seeing that in mass media today: How much backlash are we seeing where founders are not showing up as good humans?

Just remember who you are and how you want to shape your product, your services, and your team. You will find the people and the customers who believe in what you’re doing. It will be hard—it always is, it’s not easy—but you will not want to stay in this for the long haul if you don’t remember and stay true to your values.

John SmallMtn (1:02:41)

Yeah, it’s going to be harder than we think. I love that.

If people want to keep up to date with what you’re doing as you go through this relaunch after this long-term project, where should people spend time with you and learn more?

Cerys Goodall (1:03:02)

LinkedIn is definitely my platform of choice these days, so that would be the best.

John SmallMtn (1:03:06)

Awesome. Well, Cerys, thank you so much for coming on and doing this. I know that this is going to help a lot of people, and your depth of experience through your own path and working with other founders made this a cool conversation. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, and we’ll talk soon. Cheers.

Cerys Goodall (1:03:23)

Thanks so much, John. I’m so glad we’re friends now. Thanks so much!