The Atomic Impact Podcast

Episode 33 – Shaun Walsh: The Essence of Resilience

In this episode, we have invited Shaun Walsh, an inventive Co-Founder of Perform Partners. He seeks to improve and change the lives of businesses and people through innovation and embedding new technologies. He started his career in HM Forces, where he transitioned into IT after five years in a communication and technology role.
Shaun is a dedicated dad to 2 kids. He is an avid athlete with several fundraising charities and is involved in many strenuous outdoor activities such as marathons, swimming, and long-distance cycling.
About Shaun
[00:55]
Shaun is one of the Co-Founders of Perform Partners, where he oversees core delivery functions on technical and business teams. He works with teams from customer engagements to senior leadership roles.
Biggest Challenges when dealing with change
[05:07]
Shaun believes no one likes to have ‘change’ being shoved into them. It comes from your perception of control when change is being pushed into you, and you lose that perception of being able to influence around you. However, change is constant, but we carry emotions around it, and that is fear—the fear of trying something new. That’s why Shaun emphasized the significance of resilience and why it’s essential to work through it.
Foresight
[11:44]
Project managers and program managers are valuable for Shaun because they have the ‘persona’ to look up and take a long view of what’s coming at you, find ways to protect your team from future problems, and how you can pivot when it happens. You become more resilient to it, and from there, you can stay on top form.
A Child’s Resilience
[15:46]
Shaun revolves around the concept of “It’s okay to be sad, and so don’t suppress your emotions.” You can’t say that a child is less resilient. They take what we give them. He believes that a child is the hardest and best thing to come in your life. As a family, your approach is to be authentic and give them love. Children are more resilient than you give them credit for, and they are more adaptable. Do your best for your children. Show them love and hope for the future.
Resources:
Free LinkedIn Mini Course Training: https://www.ImpactForLeads.com
Find out more:
Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn/
Shaun’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swperformpartners/
Shaun’s Website: https://perform-partners.com/
Don’t forget:
If you’re enjoying the podcast, please leave a review.
If you know someone who’d enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much, and until next time
Cheers,
Jason

Episode 32 - Karen Green: Elastic Shelfs and Selling Propositions

In this episode, we have invited Karen Green, a sought-after business consultant mentor and author of several best-selling books for a profitable food business. She is a renowned speaker in the Food & Drink space in the United Kingdom, where she spoke at events such as the National Convenient Shows.
Karen’s endeavor lies in enabling food-preneurs to achieve lucrative sales growth and educates them to have an improved understanding of what constitutes an effective listing in UK grocery.
About Karen
[00:55]
Karen is a business consultant mentor, author, and speaker. She works with entrepreneurs in the food industry to educate and help them achieve their endeavors.
What are Elastic Shelfs?
[03:15]
Even if you have a fantastic business proposition, your product has a problem when a retailer still denies it. As an example, Karen uses the statement “elastic shelfs” for food products that can only be sold frozen. There is only a limited space in a freezer, and a retailer already has products in mind. The retailer does not have an “elastic shelf” to fit your products.
What goes in the mind of retailers?
[06:30]
Karen explains the three things retailers are interested in: profit, sales growth, and market share. When a product sells well, the retailers will lean into that more because it’s low risk with a guaranteed profit. They already know what to sell, and precisely because of this that bringing in a new brand is risky.
Karen’s 3X3 Matrix
[14:12]
Karen teaches the 3X3 Matrix in her Pitch Perfect courses, where she looks into the buyer and the company’s motivations, personality, and position in life. After that, she observes the overlay between the two, and it produces nine elements that change the nature of your selling proposition.
Resources:
Pitch Perfect Course: https://www.thekarengreen.com/pitch-perfect/
Free LinkedIn Mini Course Training: https://www.ImpactForLeads.com
Find out more:
Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn/
Karen’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thekarengreen/
Karen’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekarengreen
Karen’s Website: https://www.thekarengreen.com/
Don’t forget:
If you’re enjoying the podcast, please leave a review.
If you know someone who’d enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much and until next time
Cheers,
Jason

Episode 31 - Clive Daley: Taking Responsibility And Avoiding Blame Culture

In this episode we have invited Clive Daley on the show. He has more than 30 years of expertise in retail and the retail supply chain, with experience in China, Japan, Korea, the United States, and Europe. His knowledge, natural commerciality, and creativity enable him to improve and innovate in businesses of any size and shape.
His unique perspective enables him to seriously question current thinking and propose high-impact fresh ideas to any company. Having him as a member of your team helps him detect opportunities and develop genuinely unique strategies to achieve more, whether it's empowering your staff or changing your company's structure, as well as how, where, and why it operates.
Personal Responsibility of Business Owners
[2:24]
Business leaders should take responsibility instead of deflecting, choose to take responsibility for fixing the problem and wrestle it to the ground, instead of spreading blame, own and address the issue.
Better Decision Making
[4:16]
Businesses need to be more proactive when dealing with unexpected problems. You want to have a plan of action that is going to be still successful. Companies must look at what are the risks and what's the backup plan if things go pear-shaped.
Handling Mistakes
[7:56]
When a company is under real pressure, focus on the issue and get it resolved first, never mind the ramifications of how it happened. There are probably two or three reasons why it could have happened. It could just be a genuine mistake.
Taking Genuine Approach
[10:51]
I think that the genuine approach, we're all human. If you can show that nice to your team, it wasn't the right decision that this and then proactively, to be able to make the right decisions where a leader of a business, it's their responsibility to create the environment for not just the company, but the individuals to be successful.
Blame Culture
[13:57]
Leaders and businesses often say they don't blame culture, but there are subliminal messages in it. If the leader says they don't commit mistakes, then the inference is a toxic environment. A toxic environment can create people will filter.
Resources Mentioned:
Free LinkedIn Mini Course Training: https://www.ImpactForLeads.com
Find out more:
Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn/
Clive’s LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/clive-daley-7295028
Clive’s Website: https://www.daleyhub.com/
Don’t forget:
If you’re enjoying the podcast please leave a review.
If you know someone who’d enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much and until next time
Cheers,
Jason

Episode 30 - Mike McDermott: Team Dynamics and Dysfunctionality Ease

In this episode, we have invited Mike McDermott, a skilled Chair and Non-Executive Director who is currently on the Board of a housing association. He also serves as a trustee of a pension scheme and as a governor of a secondary school. He previously served as the Chair of a pension scheme, as well as a Non-Executive Director and Chair of a building society.
Mike also works with boards and senior management teams, primarily in the financial services and charitable sectors, to provide governance, risk, and compliance guidance and support. His work, however, is applicable to most industries.
About Mike
[0:57]
Mike is a non-executive director and board advisor, primarily in the financial services industry, where he consults with boards.
Team Functionalities
[2:18]
Mike believes that a dysfunctional team can be highly detrimental to the business. Identifying and correcting these dysfunctions is critical for long-term business success. These five dysfunctions are the Absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and attention to results. It is not necessary to have all five in order to have a dysfunctional team and problems within the organization. It could be any of these, and the more of them you have, the more they compound and can lead to another.
Implementation Essentials
[8:58]
To address the issue of a dysfunctional team, get dominant individuals on the wall, spend half an hour having a very brief informal chat, and get to know those people. You must be cautious with your buddy's 360-degree feedback and have the confidence to criticize and accept criticism from each other. An open culture and transparency among teammates and understanding your role and responsibility are also required.
Toxic Culture
[13:44]
Making a mistake is one of the most challenging situations to deal with. Because if you make a mistake, you don't want to admit it until the errors have time to accumulate. Then you've got a significant issue to deal with. So bringing it up right away is the way to go. It solves the problem much faster. Dealing with people taking over meetings and conversations required leadership to ensure that everyone understood their roles and responsibilities and that everyone had an opportunity to speak up.
Resources Mentioned:
Free LinkedIn Mini Course Training: https://www.ImpactForLeads.com
Find out more:
Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn/
Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcdermott01
Mike’s Website: https://www.mcdermott-solutions.co.uk
Mike’s Email: mike@mikedemo-solution.co.uk
Don’t forget:
If you’re enjoying the podcast please leave a review.
If you know someone who’d enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much and until next time
Cheers,
Jason

Episode 29 - Liz Whitfield: Communication and Growth Plans for Business

In this episode, we have invited Liz Whitfield, a Chartered Accountant in 1992, before specializing in Corporate Finance. Her career has spanned Big 4 and mid-tier accountancy firms as well as the ABL industry. Liz is a high energy, high impact professional with 20+ years’ experience in the finance industry. A consummate professional, she is well known and well regarded, combining strong people skills with rigorous financial training. She brings a unique style to the Boardroom table. In more recent years, Liz has gained qualifications as a Licensed Practitioner of Insights Discovery, NLP Practitioner and Leadership Coach.
About Liz
[2:49]
Liz started her career as a chartered accountant. She loved going in and out of different businesses every other week or detailing and doing things called walkthrough testing, where you follow pieces of paper, and where goods traveled through the company from the shop floor to the accounts department and paid on the bank statement. She loved that variety of meeting all the different people understanding about other businesses. I then went into corporate finance. As she studied more about coaching, she learned that it's not about having all the advice or answers; it's about asking the right questions to help somebody unlock their thinking and find their answers. Even if she thinks she got answers, she thought they might not be the correct answers for her clients.
A Learning Coach
[5:54]
With a blend of experience, which is the complex numbers and the softer skills, it's great to bring that all together. Liz shared that she works with a variety of teams, and to resolve a particular situation, each of them will share their ideas as to how to solve the issue. With different experiences, or different perspectives, or other personalities or different industries, it will help pinpoint the best solution while getting to know your team. It will also raise your self-awareness and understand your impact and adapt to other people while valuing the difference that other people bring.
Broaden your Horizon
[9:40]
Liz encourages people to ask questions. Asking questions helps not only for you to understand but for others to understand better as well. Two brains are always going to be better than one. And the more brains that you ask, the more different views and perspectives you're going to get.
Disagreement
[12:17]
It's helping people understand that that's their elephant. Raising this awareness that everyone's elephants different enable you to understand communication. The whole world would be in such a better place if everybody communicated well together. And so, just helping everybody comprehend that our brains are all wired entirely differently practices our communication skills.
Resources Mentioned:
- LinkedIn Mini Course: https://www.impactforleads.com/
Find out more:
- Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn/
- Liz’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizwhitfield/
- Liz’s Website: https://growth-plans.co.uk/
- Liz’s Email: lizwhitfield@growth-plans.co.uk
Don’t Forget:
If you’re enjoying the podcast please leave a review.
If you know someone who’d enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much and until next time keep… appreciate your atomic moments of impact.
Cheers,
Jason

Episode 28 - Richard Gomersall: Engaging Employees to Create a Sustainable Business

In this episode, we have invited Richard Gomersall, a strategic, commercially focused business leader. He has strong financial background and a proven track record in driving significant sales, profit and return on capital improvements, by focusing businesses on their customers. Richard is also passionate about customer and colleague engagement to create sustainable long-term plans whilst achieving short term objectives.
[2:54] Concept of Business Architect
A business architect is like a building project in business. The first thing is to understand what your customer wants and what the company wants and understand the vision. Like an architect, you follow through by helping manage the project. In other instances, it can bring in advisors if you like working with the team itself to deliver those projects and deliver the overall. A building project that you're trying to achieve.
[4:57] The 3C’s Framework
The three Cs are colleagues, customers, and confidence. Many organizations were lost internally focused and worried about the team's structure and lost direction. Always focus on what the customer needs. Focus on making sure our customers are met by brilliant colleagues who can deliver for them and give the whole business confidence to deliver. And that's what makes your company tick. It's the strength of the brand and the organization.
[9:07] Do What Your Customer Always Tells You to Do?
Businesses looking to develop and grow and get back on track need to look at their customer base. If you want to make the business successful, let's get back to what customers are looking for now and be a little more leading edge.
[11:03]
And as far as they're concerned, they're in charge of the service. You've got to empower those colleagues, give them the confidence to deal with whatever is coming at them from any one of those four directions. If you can get that right, then that's how you get on top of things and move things forward.
[13:25] Creating a good working environment
Communication is the key to any organization's success. Leaders need to communicate to keep people engaged and engaged. You've got to become a great storyteller as a leader and keep inspiring people and keeping people engaged. Communicate to get engagement, get feedback, get an open dialogue going so you can keep responding to those customers.
[16:29] How To Help Create More Confidence Among Colleagues
If you say you are going to do something, make sure you can deliver on it. You've got to be confident by backing it up by action. You must deliver on what you say. You cannot keep talking and not delivering.
Resources Mentioned:
- LinkedIn Mini Course: https://www.impactforleads.com/
Find out more:
- Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn/
- Richard’s LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/richard-gomersall-37b2843
Don’t Forget:
If you’re enjoying the podcast please leave a review.
If you know someone who’d enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much and until next time keep… appreciate your atomic moments of impact.
Cheers,
Jason

Episode 27 - Fiona Dewar: Developing Great Leaders

Fiona Dewar, Founder and Trainer of Pragmatic Leadership is our guest for this episode. Fiona began her career as a management trainee at Marks and Spencer, initially focusing on human resources. She has worked for SMEs in a variety of industries as a strategic advisor and non-executive director. Fiona is now launching a new training company, putting what she's learned throughout her 30-year career into courses that will assist managers and leaders in their development.
[3:01] Sticking to the Knitting
Fiona read a book about looking at successful firms and identifying the key elements that set them apart.
[4:13] Pragmatic Leadership
The right balance of management and leadership capabilities is what pragmatic leadership is all about. It's all about interacting with consumers and treating employees with respect. Fiona believes that businesses should diversify while maintaining their core competencies and capabilities.
[6:02] Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs, according to Fiona, are those who set out to change things in their industry or profession. Her business's fundamental strength was going direct to consumers, but she needed to use several social media channels to expand sales. They enlisted the help of other social networking professionals.
[10:25] Experiences of Marketing
Fiona worked on behalf of existing practices all around the United Kingdom. She believes that in order to sell strategically and successfully, companies must first understand their product and how other industries advertise theirs.
Advice
[13:40]
Fiona's business suffered a setback, and one of the things she wishes she could do differently makes the tough decision sooner. She had the impression that the difficult choices they had to make throughout that difficult time were being made for them.
[15:16] Fiona had always known that they were skilled at handling situations outside of their care and offering specialized care.
[16:41] The issue of "why" is always at the heart of marketing. To maintain your motivation, you must clearly understand why you are doing what you are doing.
Resources Mentioned:
- LinkedIn Mini Course: https://www.impactforleads.com/
Find out more:
- Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn/
- Fiona’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-dewar-43615714/
- Fiona’s Website: https://www.pragmatic-leadership.co.uk/
Don’t Forget:
If you’re enjoying the podcast please leave a review.
If you know someone who’d enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much and until next time keep… appreciate your atomic moments of impact.
Cheers,
Jason

Episode 26 – Thom Dennis: Ego in Leadership

In this episode, we have invited Thom Dennis, Founder & CEO of Serenity in Leadership. He works with companies, organizations, and leaders to help them around inclusivity ensuring everyone feels they are part in business and help the business grow. Thom coaches business leaders to learn how to identify and control their ego towards their business and employees and educate them why it its important to keep their ego in check.
[00:57] About Thom
Thom is the owner of Serenity in Leadership and has been around the business industry for a long time.
[01:55] Leaders and their Ego
Ego is one of the paradoxes in life as the driver to achieve a successful business. Most leaders are driven and focused. However, this ego is precisely the reason why it destroys you and why its important to be self-aware of what drives you as a leader.
[04:29] When does ego becomes detrimental?
Most ego comes down to unconscious drivers and it would, perhaps, would have been helpful if the leader understands where that “drive” comes from—they can see and acknowledge it then set it up. There are times where a leader wants to scold someone, but that anger does not come from your employee’s performance. It’s unfair to take it all out from the “trigger” that made you lash out. You can scream and shout first before seeing anyone and it makes big difference when meeting with them compared to holding it back.
[07:15] How do leaders scale and develop their business?
Thom found out that most business leaders created their business around the time they have their children. It was the creative time of their life, but as the children grew up, the leader needs to let go of the business to tend to their parenting responsibilities. Most leaders hold on to their businesses and when it is the time to let go, they do the most damage.
[10:28] CEO vs. Chairman
A business leader who is a CEO and Chairman at the same time shows that they want to be in control—they simply have no intentions to let go. CEO oversee the day-to-day operations while the Chairman oversee the bigger picture. Transitioning from day-to-day to the bigger picture is challenging. This is why coaching is needed during these scenarios to facilitate you during that transition.
[14:56] Ego in Organizations
One of the challenges in organizations is bringing in people who “only” agrees to their arrangements. If you want to be successful, surround yourself with people who have different viewpoints with you. Even though having people who agree to your ideals validates them, eradicating those who have different ideas removes the “creative conflict” in the organization. You have to allow these people to express themselves in a way and disagree with you.
Resources Mentioned:
- LinkedIn Mini Course: https://www.impactforleads.com/
Find Out More:
- Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn
- Thom’s Website: https://www.serenityinleadership.com/
- Thom’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomdennis
Don’t Forget:
If you are enjoying the podcast, please leave a review.
If you know someone who’d enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much and until next time… appreciate your atomic moments of impact.
Cheers,
Jason

Episode 25 - Sophie Thorne: Scaling Your Business, Task Delegation, and Mindset Shifts

In this episode, we have invited Sophie Thorne, a business coach. She helps solopreneurs transform to capable CEOs and help them streamline their business. She worked with multiple companies and scaled multiple six figures. Sophie loves mono-tasking instead of multi-tasking and believes focusing and perfecting one thing helped fulfil her goals.
[02:23] Tips to Scale your Business
Have a true growth strategy in place. It does not have to be complicated. You need to have a structure in place to understand where you are now and where you want to go. See what works and what does not. From it, create a monthly, quarterly, or even yearly plan to visualize what you need to do.
[03:25] What companies lacked?
There is a massive difference between goal setting and a plan. Most companies she worked with have the goals like achieving X number of sales, or X amount of revenue, but have no plan on how to achieve that goal. They have an idea “where they want to go” but clueless on “how to go there.” What are the initiatives you need to implement in your business to hit your goals? It is through a detailed plan.
[05:19] What entrepreneurs lacked to hit the first six figures?
Entrepreneurs lacked the mindset piece on how to hit that goal. You need to understand what is right or wrong, and get your mind to a place of understanding your goal. The other thing is to not try to do all things at once. Less is more. Figure out what works and double down on it. Only then when you hit the mark you start thinking on expanding to other things.
[09:30] When do you start to scale?
Scale as soon as possible. Smaller businesses tend to hold back when hiring thinking they can do it all themselves. Hiring is not one plus one equals two. If you hire the right person, it’s one plus one equals three. Having that “right” person brings exponential returns. Delegate the things you are not good at and start focusing on the things you are good at.
[13:24] Organizational Management
Hiring someone better that you is the key. Doing all things at once as an entrepreneur might be tempting for you but this will result to a fear of hiring thinking they are better than you. These “better” people are exactly the people you need—someone who can do what you can’t to make your business well-rounded.
[15:50] Sophie’s “Playbook”
Most people would think that having a system means some “IT systems” but Sophie only has “The Playbook” that her clients and her businesses employ. It is the bible for her business containing the all the templates, standard operating procedures, and systems ready to be used and accessed.
Resource mentioned in the episode:
Free LinkedIn Mini-Course Training: www.impactforleads.com
Find out more:
- Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn/
- Sophie’s Website: https://www.sophiethorne.co.uk/about
- Sophie’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrssophiethorne/
- Sophie’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MrsSophieThorne
Don’t Forget:
If you’re enjoying the podcast, please leave a review.
If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much and until next time keep… appreciate your atomic moments of impact.
Cheers,
Jason

Episode 24 - Zsolt Szelecki: Empowering Business for Better Goals

In this episode, we have invited Zsolt Szelecki. He is a Non-Executive Director and is passionate about building agile business structures, collaborative networks that enhance speed, innovation and accelerate growth.
[2:12] Assessing Business Situations
There is no one size fits all solution. Most companies are in a different stage of their lifestyle. And as companies have different lifestyles. Zsolt can see an evolution in the way boards are composed, developed, or aspirational, how they see themselves. In the last couple of years, more activist roles for the panels, particularly in helping to nurture the global growth or whether it's geographical growth, or industry, niche growth. They are using the board's collective brainpower to spark innovation within the company. Zsolt would like to highlight as a clear trend is that, within the context of changing what the companies are for.
[5:38] Achieving Business Goals
Most companies don't leverage the best way the collective skills and attitudes of the board. Little attention is paid to thinking about how the council could better function as a team. Zsolt believes that is a significant differentiator. You don't have to have necessarily all the big stars in your group to perform best as a sports team.
[9:00] Great Performance of Team
In most cases, if you're giving it an honest try with your current board members, you can turn out much more team performance. Zsolt's argument would be to give it a try and then be pragmatic, learn from your failures for real or from your successes, and it's still worth trying.
[10:49] People With Best Skills
Most sitting board members are keen on trying something new, whether they like it or not. That's another cup of tea. It's actually could be a win-win proposition. You never know that you might develop something new, push them gently out of their comfort zone, and never know they might build something, some new skills they like themselves.
[11:52] Principles of Board
Any senior team can benefit from a better, more cohesive collaboration within the board. The trick is to rethink what responsibility more responsibility means. Board members should have a shared responsibility, not just their own, and board diversity is essential. If you have all sorts of variety using your board, but they are not, there are no environment procedures.
Resource mentioned in the episode:
Free LinkedIn Mini-Course Training: www.impactforleads.com
Find out more:
- Jason’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaosborn/
- Zsolt’s LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/szelecki
Don’t Forget:
If you’re enjoying the podcast, please leave a review.
If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from today’s topic, hit the share button and pass it on.
Thank you so much and until next time keep… appreciate your atomic moments of impact.
Cheers,
Jason