The challenges of Coronavirus and business ownership with Ash Bent

Hey everyone to episode two of the Conscious Culture podcast with Sarah Riegelhuth, CEO and founder of Grow My Team!

Right now we’re in the middle of the coronavirus sweeping the globe and changing how we work and live, and people really need help working it all out.

So I've brought in my guest Ash Bent from Sketch & Etch, Australian leaders in signage and stationary and one of Grow My Team's clients. We’d planned on having a discussion about where Ash is at right now, having recently hired his first remote team member... but let’s throw into the mix the fact that most of us have been forced into remote work right now!

Listen in to hear more about Ash making his first remote hire just a few months before the Covid-19 outbreak and the multiple benefits this set up has brought to him, and how already having a remote role in the company diminished his worries making him feel more prepared to embrace an emergency remote work model.

-

“I think it’s fascinating that one of the biggest fears that people have is how to create culture and community and connection, but it’s not as hard as you think. We underestimate the fact that our generation and in this day and age with social media, we're actually very used to creating connection online.”

-

Remote work has long moved beyond simply being a trend or a lifestyle. It’s a natural evolution in the way we work and collaborate. A complete and vital redesign with profound positive impact for businesses, teams and society as a whole.

With it comes a work culture revolution that requires putting culture, freedom, trust and conscious behaviour at the core of every business that wants to thrive.

I’m Sarah Riegelhuth, your host, and I’m a serial entrepreneur, investor and expert in growing happy remote teams. Since 2014 I’ve been running all of my businesses remotely and that has deeply changed who I am as a leader. I’ve gone from micro-managing an unhappy team, suffering high turnover and working long hours, to moving to the US, traveling roughly six months of the year, loving the shit out of my team and being constantly amazed as to what we’re achieving.

Join me as we dive deep into conversations about remote work magic, conscious culture, and the future of work with some of the most inspiring founders and leaders in the remote work space.

Insights, tips, success and failure, innovation.. we share it all.

-

“We’re constantly being challenged to step up and to step into that next phase. And that resistance can be very strong around delegation and letting go, and asking yourself, What if someone's better than me? What if everything I've been trying to do is going to be exposed? And there’s also our ego thinking no one can do this, no one else will be able to do this except me.”

-

In this episode, Ash and Sarah get into the personal process of making a first remote hire and the journey of going from resistance, doubts and ego to relief, excitement, and sheer cultural and business alignment.

-

“The only way for us to grow and expand and scale as leaders and as human beings is to lean into that resistance, find out what it is, and move through it.”

-

On this episode of Conscious Culture, Sarah Riegelhuth and her guest Ash Bent also discuss:

• Entrepreneurs’ Organisation
• Teaching entrepreneurship with Project Gen Z
• How remote work makes us tighten our business systems
• Cultural fit and baseline skills
• Guilt around growing and expanding our companies and ourselves
• Vegan lattes
• Where and when creativity and inspiration strikes
• Business survival during a pandemic
• Collective fear of the unknown
• Working out our zones of genius as leaders
• Pivoting, downsizing, shutting down and other decisions

-

“I didn’t need to be in here on Monday morning running through whatever my task for the day was. I needed to be being a great leader and surrounding myself with those people and having those conversations.”

-

Thanks for listening to this episode of Conscious Culture: The Evolution of Work. A podcast for conscious leaders, brought to you by Grow My Team.

Follow us as we further explore real stories of remote companies and the thriving cultures they’re creating. To stay updated with all of our episodes, subscribe to the podcast in your favourite podcasting app.

For more information about remote work, check out more of Grow My Team here.

Or email Sarah directly to have a chat about remote work, how it’s done and how it can benefit your company: [email protected].

“As business o...