Andreea Vanacker, CEO at SPARX5 | Transforming the Future of Work

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host, Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth and 10x businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing and business leaders, dissect what's work for them, dispel myths and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable and predictable revenue in your business. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host, Scott and today I'm super excited to be sitting down with Andrea Venacker, founder and CEO of Spark's 5. Andrea is a serial entrepreneur currently involved in Spark's 5. Spark's 5 is a technology company that allows executives CEOs to transform the future of their company, their culture, transform the future of work, they create high vitality, high performance cultures with innovative well-being applications, four companies, obviously the preventative measure to help mitigate any sort of mental health concerns with employees in the workplace, what their application actually does is reduce the stress and enhance its productivity and engagement while enabling employees to thrive personally and professionally. So she's doing great work now at Spark's 5 now just to go over her background. She's a member of the Forbes Council, she's a keynote speaker at Tech Canada, she's done a TED Talk before, she's a member of the board of directors at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, she is an ex-executive for various international companies where she's led teams globally including Vortex, Bombardier, IATA, she also serves as a co-president and executive committee member for the Angel Circle, obviously helping young American startups as well as the board member of Charlie's Foundation helping a to non-profit organization, so helping individuals through education, motivating challenging and inspiring people that aren't as fortunate to obviously help them get to incredible success in their own career. So she's done a lot of great work, she has a very impressive background both through her obviously her numerous accolades as well as her work she's doing now at Spark's 5, we're going to talk about this but she is a PhD in economics which is very impressive considering the fact that what she's learned and what she's implemented extremely successfully is more in a psychology field and that's what she's doing now through understanding human motivator, so we'll let Andrea speak about that, I really do hope you enjoyed this episode, it was a really great Andrea is a very impressive individual, so sit back, relax, tune in and enjoy this episode of the sales versus marketing podcast, all right so thank you again for listening to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host Scott and today I am super excited, we are sitting down with Andrea Venacker from Spark 5, she's a founder and CEO, so Andrea give us a little bit of a rundown about what Spark 5 does and then we can talk about your background and we'll go from there. Yeah thank you Scott, it's a pleasure to be here, the reason behind Spark's 5 is really because we wanted to tackle the mental health issues and we're seeing emerging organizations, so we've developed an application that enhances mental wellness for employees and helps them deal with various life stressors, so mental health in large organizations and it's a technology platform and how did that, how did that technology come about, what's like the background of the company? Yes, the company actually, we've been in business for several years and we used to be a strategy consulting organization that works in primarily CEOs and their executive teams and we kept distinct consistently and many mandates that we had, the increase in stress and mental health issues that we're emerging and consequently we decided to create a shift that led us to actually create an application that is now available that as I said really is about helping individuals deal with all the challenges that may emerge from your relationships to your basically your career, to your productivity, to how do you basically manage specific health-related issues and how do you even bring more fun into your world ultimately? So we've developed this application to actually bring more smiles and reduce stress that you are seeing on a consistent basis across organizations and we are really about prevention, it's some of the solutions that exist in the market states that really are about healing once you actually have a problem but we actually want you to avoid having any sort of mental health problems that may emerge. Yeah, so that makes a ton of sense and I think that that's a really good point that you just spoke about the leading indicators of mental health, not just after the fact like lagging indicators because as we, you know, as we can probably deduce, being effective at anything is about preventing as opposed to just putting a band-aid over it. So I totally get that and mental health is obviously very, very topical right now, everywhere you go, you're hearing people talk about mental health, mental health. Obviously, for good reason, I think a lot of people in careers, in jobs, in the relationships, they probably suffer to some extent and they may or may not even know it. So I think that the more it's discussed, again, my background actually worked for Bel Canada for a long time, which is they do their own whole mental health initiative and I know a lot of companies are taking this on. So I think you're in a very good space and I think the work that you're doing is obviously very good. How do you actually use technology, like walk us through some of the actual, I guess, practical implications or use cases for how Spark 5 works with an organization. Say I'm a CEO and you want to sell me the tech, what does it do? Yeah. So we typically started with the diagnosis because the sense of the global health of your organization from day one, because ultimately we also want to measure the evolution and the impact that we have had with our application. Typically, we can be looking at data that even relates to what's the percentage of employees that are currently on antidepressant. If we do look at that metrics, it is a very strong indicator as to whether the overall health of the employees or mental health is high or low. And from that starting point, basically we have tools built within the application to measure and improve mental wellness. Some of the elements that we measure relate not only to overall well-being, but also psychological safety. A sense of control, a sense of meaning, a sense of balance, essentially, between the work and life. And we measure all these on a return basis. And we also compliment, of course, our services with a tool that helps individuals actually improve all facets of their lives through micro-wisdoms and micro-challenges that we stand on a daily basis from Monday to Friday. So Monday's we talk about purpose. So we think it's very relevant as to begin your week to really stay up there. How do I really want to contribute to the schemes of this organization or to my community as large? Every Tuesday, we talk about career. It would link to your productivity. How can you really be as effective as possible in whatever you do and ensure that you're really leveraging your strength? Every Wednesday, we talk about relationships. Relationships are so essential to our well-being. I mean, Harvard did a study over 75 years and that's the core conclusion that they be reached. That relationships are so essential to our mental and also physical well-being. And then we move on Thursday and we talk about basically everything you have to do with the health, whether it's mental health, physical health, and continued growth. And finally, Friday, we finished on the week with some fun. It's really about how can we enhance your qualitative life? So ultimately, what we've done is that we've integrated with them that are deliberate, yeah, videos of 10 to 15 seconds that also give you a challenge. And the reason we've integrated the challenge, because everything we do is linked to neuroscience and psychology. And as you know, we could all be learning many different things from playing tennis to learning about a new technique that we can apply our job. The reality is that whatever we've learned, if we're not applying, it's within the next 48 hours of learning it, we're going to be losing a large majority of that knowledge. And this is how we transform habits. By not only teaching individuals new things that were able to take micro-cepts or transformation, but helping them basically take all the steps by giving them a challenge for the day, that will not take more than two, three, four minutes. And the other aspect that we brought in is a concept of good gamification whereby the more actions that employees take whereby they're consciously engaging and taking on those challenges, the more we contribute to street philanthropic causes, we plan trees, we give meals to local students, and we also support education for underprivileged kids. And contrary to establishing a dollar sign behind those contributions, we actually quantify them. So when we work with specific clients, we're very transparent, we take 5% of every contract value, and we translate it in a potential number of trees, we can plant potential number of meals and hours of education for kids. And this is great. This is the group. Yeah, and ultimately, as our users continue using the application on the daily basis, we then also share with them their progress, and we say, well, this is a potential here of how many trees they could have planted. And ultimately, if we only have 50% participation, they realize that we've only planted 50% of the trees because we've entered the data gamification component. So people actually are more cautious relating to this stuff that they think to not only transform themselves, but also transform the world. Okay, so there's a ton of, I can already tell that a lot of this is rooted in human psychology, and you're not only doubling down on reinforcing the points that you're teaching over to people to make sure that they stick. You're using these psychological drivers to actually ensure that they even engage in the first place. So this is very, very cool stuff. Everything that you just described, I kind of, I want to go into it more, but first I want to understand your background, because I don't think a lot of people building this application would understand all these psychological drivers at the extent that you do. So I'm sure that there's something either on your team or in your personal background that's obviously led you to be able to understand that these are drivers of human behavior, which obviously will be the most successful driver at the end of the day. So let's speak about, where are you from? What's your background in? Are you trained in this kind of in psychology and motivational or intellectual drivers or tell me a little bit more about yourself? Sure, actually, I have a business degree in finance and international business, and when I was in France, the international finance, and I finished off with the TG in economics. Okay. So my background is very different from an academic perspective. However, what I've always done in the last couple of years is that I've managed international teams and I was always fascinated by the human psychology and how do I get individuals to actually thrive and to move to new levels that even go beyond what they believe they could achieve themselves. So over the years, I mean, I've had a long career within the corporate world, I've worked for international organizations, I've had global teams, had a lot of fun basically doing that, and I tested different concepts that I was learning about with my team to actually see if it was fueling basically performance or preventing it. And what is fascinating is that it was not just the psychology behind human beings, it was also the cultural dimension that came to play as well, because I had teams all over the world imagined dealing with individuals from Latin America, to the Middle East, to Asia, it was very, very different dynamics, and plus being a woman leader, as you can imagine, it brings in certain realities that I had to overcome. So over the years, basically, I've analyzed tested different things, and I wrote actually my first book that was focused on human performance, and that first book was called Sexist Anality. I even invented a word that I have a trademark for by combining success and personality, because that's really what I was focused on. What are the 10 pillars that can allow an individual to truly perform at their best in anything that they do? And some old imaginal research that I had done behind that book, then basically, I'm now in my third book that I just published, which I actually had. Congratulations. That's amazing. Thank you. So the third book actually highlights all the research that we've done linked to neuroscience and psychology that are tied to the Spark 5 application. But as I said, really, my passion, although I'm not the psychologist or your scientist, my passion has always been about people, and this fascination about how can we push the human's potential to new heights and new levels, and I'm constantly exploring things. Like, for example, we're going to be degrading in Q1, new modules in our application that relate to how do we get into flow more easily. So we're always like that evolving and testing new things to make sure that we help people live happier and help your lives, but also allow them to have a greater sense of fulfillment. When you figure out how to get into flow easier, let me know, because I need to figure that out myself. Absolutely. It's pleasure. I'll make Q1, as I said, will be sessions and new program focused on on flow. And actually, there's research by McKenzie and other sources where they said, if you're able to get into a state of flow more regularly, you're going to keep in one hour, or what other people may take five hours to do. So, I believe in myself. No, I'm well aware, and I completely believe that's that, because I don't have any data points that I can pull from, but I'm just gauging my own productivity. I could definitely agree with that data point from a very subjective point of view. So that's very cool, and I think that if I don't mean to be so bold, I think that part of your success has been your passion for focusing on people, which has led to approaching people like a scientist analyzing, researching in a good way, and then building out processes, which eventually led to the technology that you have now, to optimize people. And by that massive focus and understanding and self-awareness that people view you differently, and then people view different cultures differently, depending on where they are in the world and tapping into that to drive them. I'm sure that's why, you know, if I've never, obviously, never been on one of your teams, but if I was probably on your team, I would understand that you felt like you actually cared about me as an individual as an employee just because of that mindset. So I think that's probably why you've been so successful in management, global management role. So, congratulations, because I think that not enough people even do that part. Let alone go and build a company focused on helping people, but you know, that's very good of you. Okay, so you, okay, so let's summarize. So you've sort of building set over your entire career. Your crew is very impressive. If I even go on your LinkedIn, I'm on your LinkedIn now, you know, you're a member of Board of Directors for an art institution. I think you've done a TED talk, which is very cool as well. Obviously, all very fun stuff to put on a resume. So obviously, you know, you've built quite a reputation of yourself, which is, congratulations, path off to that. And then, obviously, now with Spark 5, you're doing incredible work. So let's go a little bit more into, I guess, lessons learned from obviously your career, but lessons learned from Spark 5, when you're trying to sort of like a tactical takeaway for people that are listening, when you're trying to build out an organization that is focused on employees, is focused on productivity, engagement, happiness, fulfillment, what are some of the things that people should be doing better than they are today, and there's probably a long list, but let's sort of like top things that are immediate, that can sort of change the culture and inner workings of an organization. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think one of the first things we should stop looking at individuals as human resources, but rather embrace the fact that they're human beings. And ultimately, embrace the reality that they come into work and they don't leave their life at the door of your organization. We were at work, but we are challenged with different life realities that make you on our mind, and we really need to embrace, as I said, that if we can tap into understanding the human nature of individuals more closely and show them that we care in new ways about them, I think that brings together a sense of togetherness that is much much stronger than if you simply say, well, you're in finance, you're the role, and I don't want to hear anything about your personal life, but I mean, that's absolutely not the way to go. And in fact, I was just reading an article this morning, which was highlighting that it was an organization that had so much pressure on employee performance that they basically, I mean, this is when we see a high rotation of people going to burnout, and there's a very thin line, right? It's all like we're stretching this elastic and human beings have a potential to really go far and beyond. But at the end of the day, if you stretch too far that elastic, you're going to have a lot of mental health issues and stress that is created. One of the elements that I believe is really, really important we were talking about slow is really, how do we create an environment where individuals, first of all, are leveraging their strength? Because that's one of the first factors. If you're getting someone to actually do something that is not in line with their core strength, they're going to struggle, or the other challenge is actually to get into slow, there's a door whereby you're matching the challenge that you give to someone, to the actual skill sets that they have. If you give them a challenge that is too high in comparison to their skills, they're going to be in total frustration and anxiety. It's the same thing that happens if you give them a challenge that is too low in comparison to the skills that are being individual, then they're going to get into boredom. In both cases, you're going to have performance issues. You're going to slide through the individual, but as I said, everything starts with how can you get that person in slow? How can I give that person a challenge? I've matched their competencies today, but as they engage in that specific activity, their knowledge and expertise is going to improve. With time, you're going to have to continue increasing the challenge we give to individuals so they can continue flourishing, striving, and always remain in that state of flow, ultimately, where they perform their best. That's incredibly insightful. How does somebody do that? If I'm a manager and I've hired somebody for a role, I understand it to the right person. They fit all the boxes in terms of a traditional fit for this role. How do I find out exactly what kind of challenges they can take on within the role that I've given them? I think it's a matter of really looking deeply and honestly at their current competency and skill sets and aligning those skill sets with their experience to a specific challenge that you may have within your organization, but also realizing that there's an opportunity for continuous development and growth. Ideally, based on research around flow, is when we're able to push ourselves, like those athletes basically, that they're always going one step further, and they're not going 25% further every single day. They're taking that 4% extra step to do things a little bit better every single day. That's really what leads us to move beyond our current capabilities on a continuous basis. What would you be looking for as markers that somebody is outside of that, either being stretched too far or not being challenged enough, that would be a red flag that they're not in the right spot? Some of the red flags, basically, as I said, they're not meeting deadlines, they're not meeting the quality expectations that you've set, and it's really a matter of not jumping to conclusions too fast, but rather sitting down and honestly assessing as to how the person feels, and sometimes some people will say, I'm in over my head. I can't handle this, so then you need to actually assess, is it a training issue? Do I need to maybe give this person a bit more time to deliver on this expectation? As long as leaders, organizations, we become more human and understanding our employees and engaging in authentic dialogues that truly allow us to have a constructive conversation, then I think we can make more effective decisions together. What are the elements actually when you have a lot of stress and everyone is really scrambling to need specific results, what we see emerging at a leadership level is often a very strong parenting style, let's just call that emerges, whereby there's a leadership we can look at parenting or a partnership model that they merge. When you're in a parenting mode as a leader, you're basically more in a role where you're giving direction, it's really by micromanagement and it does not become inspiring for individuals. It's almost like you're also disempowering them to find their own path to tackle this whatever challenge we have in front of them, but when you embrace rather the possibility of a partnership conversation, when you're truly looking at the employee and being equal to you rather than as a parent-child relationship, it pushes the dialogue to a completely new level, and this is how our brain works as well, and I think if we really as leaders we become more conscious in every single dialogue that we engage with our team members, whatever we're faced with a problem, we need to look at it, am I acting as a parent here, or am I acting as truly a partner, and when you embrace that partnership leadership style where you give people a chance to truly find solutions, but you look at the parameters and the deliverables that really make sense for everybody, then everyone can truly thrive. Do you find that that's really good, and I like the way you frame that. The parent first partnership, because I think that, and this is sort of going to segue into the next question I have, I don't think enough managers do that. Effectively, I think that it's still in a hierarchical organization, I think it's almost a default to be the parent to the child, and it's not the default, unfortunately, to be the partner. Let's talk about where organizations are now, because everybody talks about culture and how important culture is. It's a very common theme. Culture in the workplace, I would say, is almost as topical now if you're in professional development circles as mental health is in terms of topics that are always coming up in these types of conversations. You always hear about culture. How many you work with companies on, obviously, culture is a very high level, and what you do is diving into the key motivators and root causes of how to actually impact culture, but you work with companies in this aspect, or in regards to culture. How many companies do you feel are actually taking proactive steps to improve their culture, or is this just an industry buzzword that is just spoken about but not actually actioned on? I think that some phenomenal organizations out there, you really have a spectrum of extremes, right? Some companies are really putting a lot of energy and effort to build phenomenal cultures where employees are thriving. There are typically the ones that will get the interesting accolades from best places to work in Canada or wherever they may be. And ultimately, I think those are strong indicators that companies are truly putting in the effort and energy to head in the right direction. We also have the other extremes where you have companies that have huge absentees and great, huge difficulty attracting new talent or retaining individuals that are within their organizations. And when you're talking about culture, culture is not just something you define in a nice strategic plan. It's something that at the executive level and all levels across the management team has to be embraced through every single interaction. And I think sometimes we make things a bit more complex than we can. And we have maybe a list of, well, our culture is about this list of 10 values. But if I were to go in an organization and ask, you know, okay, who can tell me now the 10 values that you have? The reality is that people do not remember. Mentally, it's challenging for us to say, am I being creative? Am I being a team like it becomes overwhelming mentally and it's been proven actually. So I think we're able to maybe simplify the concepts of, why do we truly want to achieve? What is the energy we want to see within these walls? And how do we get there and keep it more simple? I think we're going to have an easier shift from some of those companies that are currently struggling to progressively get them to evolve towards the other spectrum where with every single step, they can actually create a culture that will be more appealing, more attractive for employees. So like anything, right? We live in a world of extremes essentially. Of course. No, yeah, no. And what I wanted to pull out of that was that our company is actually moving the needle and it sounds like some really, really are making an honest effort, which is positive. And that kind of leads me to, again, the next question, which would be, if I'm an executive or a CEO, I want to invoke change across my organization because I'm forward thinking, I understand that we do have culture, but nobody actually lives them. How would you suggest that I would start making change within my own organization because I really do want to. I just have no idea how to do it effectively. Yes. My recommendation is actually to start with purpose. What you see across many organizations, I think, define their mission statement, what they're all about, then what they actually produce for the market. They establish their vision statement as to what is their aspirational state, whether they want to go, but rarely have the action to find their purpose statement. Why do they do what they do? And to truly transform culture, I think we have to gain clarity on purpose first because everything starts there. And as organizations have deeper and more profound purposes, then we can connect with those deeper purposes at the individual levels. And what you realize is that companies that join a certain organization often is because they're attracted to that purpose, to that big impact that that organization is having. And it goes beyond basically generating revenue. I mean, when we're talking about a lot of companies that are on the stock market, and there's pressure to generate certain performance levels and certain KPIs, the reality is that you have to go beyond beyond those metrics. You have to integrate a sense of purpose. And some companies have taken very interesting steps. I mean, you have great organizations out there from Caligonia, to Tom Schoon, that at the core of their being, they know what they're for. And everyone across the organization, irrespective of their role, know how they are having a positive impact on this world, through what they do collectively. Other organizations are more, as I said, extensively focused on just the financial performance. And I think that to truly improve culture, you have to start with the purpose first. I think that's an incredible takeaway for people that are in leadership positions and have the capability to either affect culture and their business unit to start. Maybe they're not the CEO, or if they are CEO level, that's where they should start for their organization. Now, let's flip that on its head for employees, because you're an employee, you're looking for an organization, and you want to make sure that they actually sort of walk the walk, and they don't just talk to talk, right? You want to make sure that they actually live up to the 10 things on their wall, or whatever, or on their website. So what are some things to look for as an employee going in, and you're interviewing, and it's a mind field out there. What would you recommend for people, what questions to ask, so that you don't end up with the wrong company? My approach is often focused on higher for passion, and where you have a very strong alignment to that purpose, or to your why. I feel those are really the individuals that bring the greater value within your organization. Often as well, if you really want to test for competency, or skillset, the typical questions that I add are more sensitive around. Give me an example where you have demonstrated, you know, ex-wise that, you have demonstrated team work, or if you don't mean, I think true examples, then we can actually see more clearly how people think, what they've gone through, and the experiences that have enriched them. And I often ask them to share stories, and ask them, what is the lesson learned from this specific story for you? How has it helped you as an individual? And I think that's also very insightful to discern this, whether they said people are in a growth mindset, and to lean great that, yeah, we may have a lot of success behind it, but we may also have some failures, but those failures do not necessarily define us, they rather enrich us, and help us actually look at fresh eyes, and do challenges that we may have in front of us. That's very good, and I think I like that you said, okay, so we're asking the open-ended questions about certain events, but then we're also understanding how it impacted the individual. So it's more than just walking through the steps of, you know, XYZ happened, it's XYZ happened, and this is how it actually impacted me, and this is what I learned from it, and this is where I ended up because of that. So I think that's a very good strategy to really sort of get an inner understanding of individuals that you're interviewing, or if the employee has to ask these questions about the organization, both good points. I want to go, we've gotten a lot of content about really like your core, like what you do for companies, so I want to go a little bit more back into where, you know, how you came to be, where you are today, and sort of lessons learned, but before I do that, I want to just sort of wrap up this session. Is there any other strong data points about mental health, well-being, employing engagement in the office, or anything else that you wanted to mention at all about the work you do? I think when companies were talking about culture earlier, culture is also about integrating well-being as an essential pillar, or you need to make sure that that's also the core of your foundation, and when you allow that to become one of your priorities, then you can truly create a conditions for individuals to thrive, and become more self-aware, that is, I said, by embracing the humanity of individuals, we can truly sing differently, and truly show that we care. I think it's an essential point for organizations to consider, but once again, I think a lot of companies are bringing forward solutions that are maybe solving certain problems, and focusing on the prevention, and really asking yourself, what can we do differently to prevent mental health challenges emerging? And I think that opens a ton of answers from how we need to act as leaders, to what is the environment we're creating from literally from all dimensions of perspective. So having that preventive act on, I think, is really really essential for leaders and organizations. And what are the benefits to an organization when they do sort of grab the bull by the horns and have a preventative program in place? What are some of those benefits data points? Maybe ROI, dollar value, I don't know if you have anything top of mind, but yeah. Of course, the pleasure, actually, the World Health Organization has said that for every dollar invested in mental wellness and prevention programs, they do actually have an ROI of $4 in increased productivity. There's a more recent study that came out by Deloitte, just recently, that was focused more on Canadian organizations, and they were mentioning that for every dollar invested, the ROI could be excess of $2 after about three years. So I think it's a very, very strong element to actually decide that that mental wellness should become a priority rather than something that will do later on when we have time for it. I don't think we can be in that mindset anymore. Yeah, no, that's good. Okay, so for people that are younger in their career, I want them to understand how you got to where you were. So if I knew you in high school when you were 14, 15 years old, what were you like then? Was it anything like what you are now or was it very different? Well, maybe my path started with a very shy, I was very, very shy, and I would never actually imagine that it would be giving conferences to countless people. So things have evolved, let's just say a long way from there. But I would say one thing that was very marking for me was the fact that I lived through a very interesting experience when I was very young when I was about 10 years old, and we were living in Romania at the time. That's where I was born, and my parents decided to live the cognitive regime that we had there at the time. But everyone basically said, this is a mission impossible. You'll never be able to do it. And it was a year of torture. In many senses of the word, we're valued critical to school anymore, and I wanted to talk to us because we were looked upon almost as traders over the regime, as you can imagine. But that lesson for me was really, really marking because my parents did manage to get us all out, and I have to other brothers. And we left the cognitive regime illegally. And what it taught me actually was that perseverance is key. And whenever someone says, Andrea, this is a mission impossible, I literally say, I'll prove you wrong, because this is really what my life has been about. Every time I got into know, I'm always then saying, you know what? Thank you for saying, no, this is giving it opportunity to rethink how I need to get to, yes, moving forward. And when I think perseverance and pursuing a path that's really your passion about is essential, because ultimately, if you're not doing something that you truly, truly love, you're going to end up at the end of your life with many, many regrets. That's incredible. And I think that after going through that at such a young age, I'm pretty sure that any other business challenges seem trivial in nature. So that's great. That's a great story. I'm very good. And I guess the last question I wanted to really ask was, where do you go to sort of improve yourself? Do you have resources, mentors, do you read books, podcasts, audibles, what's your go to for sort of self-improvement and growth? Everything you just mentioned. Yeah, okay, okay, got you. On a daily basis. Okay, so that's good. Yeah, favorites then. Yeah, favorite. My favorite, I've been privileged to have some amazing mentors in my life that have really guided me in an optimal way. But at the end of the day, I truly believe that it's true experience, that you really get to a certain level of evolution that is incredible. So you have to embrace that in order to live a life that you truly cherish, you know, you're going to have to jump in the water at one point and maybe take some wild, crazy decisions and be open to taking a certain level of risk. Because if you really navigate within, I would say you're your regular zone and you never step outside of your comfort zone, well, you're not going to be able to truly live a life that you'll be proud of. So that's what I live on. I'm a total risk taker every single day. And even some of my mentors have said, I'm dry, you know, you're too wild. And I said, no, I said, well, for me, this is, you know, either we make the best out of life and we take certain calculated risks or I live with regrets. And for me, it's everything I do is about living with no regrets. I think that's important. And I, is that an added to that you've always had just or is that something? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But the other reality also that I embrace every single day is really, how can I have a more positive impact on this world? When we shifted basically from strategy to technology and my company sparks five, that was a fundamental question that I was asking because I said I can continue working with CEOs. I can continue doing conferences, writing another book. But I kept asking myself, how can I have a more massive and more positive impact on this world? And this is where I decided to embrace technology. So I think no matter what we do in life, we can all ask ourselves, how can I use what I love to do? How can I use my strength to truly have a positive impact on this world? And make sure that every interaction is an opportunity for me to enlighten and possibly inspire people that I think that the life force living. I think that I think that that has been a huge driver for your success as well. So yes, you know, you are jumping off the cliff and learning how to fly in the way down for some of the tasks and, you know, initiatives you've taken on. But to the same token, you've always done it with purpose and you've always had your core values and your, again, purpose, right? Like that's what drives you. So you've had your own, if you use that to guide you in almost every aspect of your life and that's led you to be successful just because you know what, so when it gets tough, it's no longer that tough because you know why you're doing it. I think that's a huge takeaway as well because I think that everyone at one point in their career or their life will have a million dollar idea. It's just whether or not you're willing to go through the hardships to see it too fruition, right? So that's really where you've seen success because you have gotten through all the tough points because you know like what's supporting that vision. Indeed. Yeah. So that's all I really, that's all I really have. That was an incredible session and I really, really like the work you're doing and obviously you know from speaking like the insights are incredible. So first of all, thank you very much for that. That was really good. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. If somebody wants to reach out to you, how should they connect with you? So they can go on our website, the spark five, the spark x number five dot com. They can also reach out to me Andrea with double e and dr e e a at spark five. This is Andrea versus the Romanian way. Okay, that's it. That's it. Okay, perfect. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And we'll we'll talk again soon. Bye now. Thank you, Todd. Thank you. Cheers. Bye. Cheers. Bye. Welcome to Scott's thoughts where we break down some of the most important points in the sales versus marketing podcasts that you just heard. We just spoke to Andre of an actor founder CEO of sparks five. She's focused on improving employee mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. So a lot of really, really great points and takeaways. I don't even know where to begin because there's so many data points and knowledge and insights that she dropped. But what I would really like to sort of focus on the sort of agnostic of industry is how do we create an environment where individuals leverage their strengths. And she spoke about a sliding scale where individuals can either be not challenged enough, which leads them to being bored in the workplace or challenge too much. And the tasks that they're assigned are not in line with their skill sets or their core competencies. And both of those create disengaged, obviously unhealthy, mentally, mentally stressed employees in the workplace. So it's really important as a leader, as a manager, to focus on aligning the tasks that an employee is responsible for with their skill set. And you want to give them tasks that are just slightly beyond their reach. So you give them tasks that are slightly pushing them to be better, to perform better micro micro improvements in or micro micro additions to their to their workload or to their to to their to the tasks they take on in their in their day to day. And what that will do is it will allow for improvement without all of the negative repercussions of stretching too far. So just aligning those challenges and tasks within a role to the skills that the employee is incredibly important. And the second point that she spoke about was understanding how purpose drives most everything in an organization. If they want to align their employees with your organization's goals, if they want to set up a successful and healthy culture, the first thing she has to do is focus on purpose. So why are you doing what you're doing? Whether or not it's in your business unit or it could be your organization if you are if you are an executive who's charged with building out the culture of the organization CEO or other you want to focus on driving purpose and helping employees align with that purpose. And if your employees aren't aligned with that purpose, that's when you'll notice that there's gaps in your culture. And the there there is a lack of goal congruence across your organization. And lastly, the point which is so important for anyone who is focused on a positive culture which more and more companies are is she spoke about and which is something that obviously if you aren't focused on you should be or you're going to find that your employees are leaving or you're having a very hard time attracting a new talent is to embrace the reality that people are humans. And when you embrace that reality and you embrace the reality that people cannot leave their personal lives at the door when they walk into the office or when they clock in or when they go on to slack in the morning, whatever your reality is, that's when you will become a better manager, a better leader, a better employer. So embrace that reality, understand that people are human. They're trying to do their best. Nobody wakes up in the morning trying to fail and adopt everything that you do for with and as part of your as part of your organizational success through that lens. And when you do that when you humanize people, you will be a more successful manager. And one way that she mentioned that you can do that quite effectively is instead of thinking of your employees as a parent child relationship where you're the manager, you're the parent and your employees a child, you instead think you look and speak and engage with your employees as a partner or a peer regardless of where they are in the organizational structure. And when you do that, the whole relationship becomes healthier and all the interactions are a little bit more aligned with understanding how people are humans and they're not just resources. So that was another sales versus marketing podcasts, incredible points. I hope you all enjoy that you haven't already hit like, hit subscribe, leave a rating, any rating school as long as the five star rating, anyone who you think could enjoy this podcast or learn from Andrea, please share with them. So that's colleagues, peers, friends, family, bosses, anybody. If you if you want to tune in and subscribe, this podcast is available wherever you can download podcasts. So iTunes, iHeart, Spotify and any of the other stitcher, any of the other podcasts environments. And then you can also watch it on YouTube as well if you'd like to watch the podcast. So that's been another sales versus marketing. I hope you enjoyed. I'm your host Scott. I hope you all have a very productive week and we will speak again soon. Bye now.