Ep33: Wellbeing for All: How pirkx & Stella Smith are Redefining Employee Benefits

Following a career in financial services, Stella founded a number of small businesses and quickly became frustrated with the lack of well-being benefits that were available, both for her team and other small businesses. 

So, in 2019, she founded pirkx, an online platform dedicated to increasing accessibility to vital well-being benefits. Today, pirkx has secured millions of pounds in series A funding and is on track to support 1,000,000 users by 2025.

Join an inspirational conversation with Stella, as we learn:

• How Stella progressed from McDonald’s to a senior leader on the financial markets trading floor
• Why success is not about luck
• How to win on product and price
• Why the ex-MD of Google UK & Ireland is on the pirkx Board
• How listening improved the health of pirkx customers
• What development opportunities engage Gen-Z
• Why reason is so important in workplace culture
• How ‘being nice’ is a prerequisite for working at, and with, pirkx
• How you can access 40 health and well-being benefits, including GP and counselling services, for less than £5 a month

We are feeling SO energised and inspired after listening to this incredible Founder Story. We know you will be too.

Resources

Links mentioned in the pod:

Connect with Stella Smith

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stella-smith/

Find out more about pirkx UK

• Website: https://pirkx.com/director-welcome
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pirkx/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/pirkx
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearepirkx/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pirkx/
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wearepirkx

Find out more about pirkx Australia

• Website: https://www.pirkx.com.au/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/pirkx—australia/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pirkxaustralia/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pirkxaustralia

Connect with your hosts

• Connect with Al on LinkedIn 
• Connect with Leanne on LinkedIn
• Join the discussion about this episode on LinkedIn
• Email: podcast@TruthLiesandWork.com
• Follow us on Instagram @truthlieswork
• Chat with us on Twitter @truthlieswork
• YouTube channel for the podcast @TruthLiesWork
• Check us out on TikTok (LOL!!!) @truthlieswork

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The Transcript

⚠️ NOTE: This is an automated transcript, so it might not always be 100% accurate!

Stella Smith  
I’ll get the quote wrong but it’s essentially that if you can make a small report, you can create a wave of change and I I subscribed to that

Leanne Elliott  
Hello and welcome to the truth lives and workplace culture podcast brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network via audio destination for business professionals. My name is Liam. I’m a Business psychologist.

Al Elliott  
My name is Alan, I’m a business owner.

Leanne Elliott  
And we are here to help you simplify the science of people. That’s one thing that we do. I’ll walk through the ones you want to

Al Elliott  
saw that episode after 30 Odd episodes will be a little bit smoother than we are now. But yeah, mainly, we had to simplify the science people and to create amazing workplaces. We’re all about work culture, and the

Leanne Elliott  
name guys.

Al Elliott  
Liana is the expert in it. And I’m the idiot who sits next to her and goes What the hell does that mean? And if you’ve made that your first time listening, then kind of this is a, we generalising panel shows, don’t we, which basically, it’s not like a panel show. But like a panel style episode, or we tend to have a few days different guests on like different today. Lea, it is a

Leanne Elliott  
bit different today. And it’s also nice to be back together in the studio. We were separated last week, if you’re not sure what I mean, go back and listen. But yeah, we have we have a really, really cool founder story for you today.

Al Elliott  
So we’re hoping this is going to be a monthly thing where every month we’re going to have just one single founder. And we’re either going to talk about a business related to workplace culture, or we’re going to talk about someone who has implemented something to do with workplace culture in their business. I’ve got three I think three found for four founders. I’m very, very excited about who are all booked in and ready to go. So they’ll be coming up over the next few months. Look out for this new style series

Leanne Elliott  
is very exciting. So yeah, we will be meeting stellar. Very shortly as we said, She’s the founder and CEO of parks, which is an online platform, which was designed to increase accessibility to wellbeing benefits. Her company has already expanded into Australia, where it’s led by MD Shavon Wally no mistake there that is also a woman that led business. And yeah, it’s all on track to have more than 1 million users on the platform by 2025. Not bad for a business that started in 2019 Stella herself has been named in the LDC top 50 of 2020. That’s Lloyds Banking and the times ratings. And most recently, she was the winner at the accelerate her award 2023 in the technology category,

Al Elliott  
pretty amazing lady with a great story. So we’re gonna go meet stellar in his second. But firstly, favourite time of the week. Is the news roundup, jingle?

Leanne Elliott  
Did you miss it? Last week?

Al Elliott  
I have to be honest, he was slightly easy to edit last week, but

Leanne Elliott  
easily transcend into chaos.

Al Elliott  
So he’s rounded. Well young gives us three new stories. And the first one has always started traditionally with a word of the week.

Leanne Elliott  
New word Allah

Al Elliott  
when he got Leah Well, I

Leanne Elliott  
can’t take credit for this one. You aren’t you sent me this one out?

Al Elliott  
I did. I did. I mentioned it last week. I think on the end of the end of the podcast, whether you’re gonna use it or not, but I’m sure this you have.

Leanne Elliott  
Of course, the Word of the Week is quit talk. God. And now I know I now unsurprising it’s something to do with the with the TIC tock, which I believe is what the kids are calling it. You’re

Al Elliott  
sorry, I’m just playing my waters. My microphone. Sorry.

Leanne Elliott  
Um, so yeah, it goes back to July 2021. a simpler time owl. But there was a clip of in the UK and McDonald’s worker who quit mid shift, obviously, put it on tick tock, film that on tick tock. Why would one not and it went viral. So yeah, so that was that was kind of the moment that started lots of other creators start to do similar real time footage of the mountain they told their bosses I quit. So yeah, these are the hashtag quit Talk videos, taking different forms since either people leaving on a zoom call, documenting the point in their hand in their letter of resignation, or clips of actually telling their boss, that real time moment when workers quit thoughts.

Al Elliott  
It makes me think of when someone said Facebook groups are not like airports, you do not need to announce your departure. And I kind of I kind of feel the same with the whole tick tock thing. It makes me feel a little bit sick and obvious. That’s because I’m Gen X nine two generations away from Gen Zed, but why are you filming that shit? I bet most of you just most people who do that just want to have like loads and loads of views about that’s what they’re doing. That could

Leanne Elliott  
be that could be one argument and the argument is that as you say, you know Gen Zed they’ve they’ve grown up digital natives they’ve they’ve learned how to be in the world through social media. If you grew up using you know, using social media recording and and sharing things constantly. Why wouldn’t you do that to share the law? Imagine more significant moments in your life. I’m shocked by the number of live birthing videos it seems.

Al Elliott  
Whoa What did you just say?

Leanne Elliott  
Yeah, well not like not like not like business and not business and Jesus yeah but like the my birth story type thing I need to for years still quite graphic is still see a little summit something come out of our another human by that I mean another human child a baby of humans. Yeah, apparently it’s I mean no judgement, that’s what you guys want to do. And that’s how you express yourself, then cope. And I think that’s one of the things that people have said they get a lot of support from it. A lot of you know, I’ve been there good for you. This is so inspirational. So yeah, I mean, I mean, we’ll see. And of course, you know, we are not against quitting toxic workplaces. Absolutely. Stand up for yourself and, and do what’s right for your own mental health and your own career as well. Long term long term implications. can’t really be sure what what they are. I mean, if everyone’s doing it, what difference does it make?

Al Elliott  
I can’t see that ending. Well, for a lot of people. Yeah, I

Leanne Elliott  
think I think the thing is, yeah, it’s an individually, we don’t know, maybe it will affect your future career opportunities. As a business owner, it’s boring, though, in terms of employer brand in terms of kind of employee engagement. attracting talent. That is that is not there. No, they say like, no, no. All presses quotes. They say, honesty is bad publicity. Yeah, in this case, I’m not sure that’s true. No,

Al Elliott  
I don’t think that is true. And it’s fair enough, if that’s what you want to do, but that wouldn’t be my choice. But then I am 25 years older than you so.

Leanne Elliott  
Okay, so what else is there this week? Let me tell you, I’m not sure if you would have heard, but there’s a little thing called Chat GPT for that’s been rolled out

Al Elliott  
chat. Now. He’s chat, but Jupiter is

Leanne Elliott  
exactly how I pronounce it. Yeah, chat and Jupiter. So yeah, more capabilities. And ever. I saw, I saw quite an interesting thing. I’m not here for the technology, you know, but, but I saw something that was, you know, lots of people have been experimenting with it. And apparently, there’s, there’s a server that’s been done that shows up more than 40% professionals have used it at work. But 70% of them did it without telling their boss.

Al Elliott  
I love this. I love this. I’m a huge fan of AI not just because my name looks like AI. But I absolutely love it. And I think that to be fair, you’ve got to be living on the moon to not know what Chad GBT is now, what I’ve been using it for. It’s just all kinds of weird things like I had to do, I had to work out what the interest rate on a mortgage would have to be based on the principal. And based on what my target payment was. Now, I could write out using my school algebra, what the equation was, could I solve it for y? Could I balls? So I went to Chachi party? And I said, given that I’ve got this number, this number, this number represented by this? Can you write the equation out and then solve it for y? Of course it could. And so basically put that back in. Yeah. And I put it back into Google Sheets. And it worked. And I was like right there that would have taken me probably an hour to work it out before and go and research and probably go and put a post on a help desk and wait for like three days for them to come back to us. So that is brilliant. I wrote some code for us and code with it. The other day came out worked perfectly first time, I asked it to rewrite the bio for this particular podcast. The Andromeda was brilliant. And we both said Shall we have a go with chatty routines if they can do a good job? I said, this is the buyer. This is the that’s the thing about charge up. Sorry, get excited now. Is that is that each conversation remembers what you said above it even it was like a few days a few weeks before? So I’ve named the conversations like podcast. And so I can go back into podcasts and go and I asked it Do you remember what we’re talking about with my podcast? Our podcast, obviously, but chat GBT is not about you. It’s

Leanne Elliott  
not something I thought we’d met introduced. Let’s put

Al Elliott  
a different chat. Although to be fair with with the recent data breaches, then perhaps they don’t know everything about both of us now, who knows we’re connected but but the fact is that I could just go in there and go remember our podcast and when Yeah, yeah, I remember it is best, isn’t it? But yes. Now this is our binary written please have a go at rewriting it. rewrote it. Brilliant first time. So I think well, it’s probably going to scare a lot of people because you think oh my god, it could take our jobs. Yes, it’s going to take some other jobs. But it’s also going to create others. There’s something called a prompt engineer now, which is a proper job. And it’s people who will, who will basically create prompts for mid journey for graphics or Darley for chatty beauty and all the other ai, ai stuff. So there’s, it’s actually creating more jobs. And I kind of see it as sliding up the scale. So now we’ve got this sort of large language model, that to analyse the data, we no longer need someone to go through and read a spreadsheet and summarise it or perhaps to go through and say, Oh, do me a favour. After we just read through all those emails, those 60 emails and just summarise the four you can ask chat GPT or you can ask AI to do that. So I think we are just going to move a slightly off the more important scale sure that at least some people lose their jobs. But they were probably at risk anyway by offshoring, or finding someone who’s slightly better at it at adding up now No offence to any accountants here.

Leanne Elliott  
Is true and I think my My little take on that also I’m loving the can see like if we talked about kind of your word like marketing in tech what thought the podcast would play? Well, that’s why we get on so well because I nerd out. We sound the same. It’s like, oh my god, I’m Miss Miss. Anyway, sorry. No, I thought it was beautiful. I loved it. I think I agree. I don’t think it’s my thing with like, and the whole you know that the server group like 40% Professional used it’s 7% didn’t tell their bosses. I just again highlights that there’s just no trust between employees and bosses because they’re gonna, you know, they’re probably imagining they’re gonna react badly. My point is and you said this to me once like they’re the best people to hire are intelligent and lazy. Yeah, because they’re going to find just that all that kind of stuff that can just be done quicker and just divert their value added time back to the business I don’t understand I would be thrilled if my member of staff came back to you with that because I brilliant what else what else can you do to make this world more effective and efficient and all that you know?

Al Elliott  
So what else you got? There

Leanne Elliott  
was something else that I was reading and I thought it was again topical into our conversation with stealth day. I was reading an article in stylist magazine.

Al Elliott  
What doesn’t I mean looking at you that doesn’t seem like the kind of magazine

Al Elliott  
just describe what you’re wearing right now. She’s she’s looking glamorous. She’s looking lovely.

Leanne Elliott  
I obviously am shocked

Al Elliott  
is obviously a joke. If you listen to us now you’ll know that he’s just banter. You will be stylish in this magazine.

Leanne Elliott  
I don’t want to play anymore. Come on,

Al Elliott  
come on. You’re a professional broadcaster, you should be able to get through this.

Leanne Elliott  
So there’s an article that caught my attention because he was code low dopamine mornings may improve well being okay, so I thought, okay, interested. So I read through it and it basically it’s saying if you start your day with low stress, low stimulation activities, it helps you maintain clarity and focus throughout your day. Apparently, it’s been a popular lifestyle choice within the ADHD community for some time, because lower dopamine helps to curb hyperactivity and increase focus. So would you like to know some tips around having this low dopamine morning? Yeah, one avoid your phone for at least an hour after waking up. Yeah, tricky to wait 90 minutes before having any caffeine.

Al Elliott  
Right This sounds like a ship morning.

Leanne Elliott  
Three is a high protein breakfast. For complete the low stress task like emptying the dishwasher. And five, swap your early morning hip workouts or Sprint’s or high energy workouts for low intensity workout such as a walk or Pilates.

Al Elliott  
Now we do that we do a walk with the dog every single morning so that to be fair, I have noticed that if you wake up and go for a walk with a dog when I come back, I feel like I’ve had a little bit of a break button this morning. It is blowing a gale it was like midwinter.

Leanne Elliott  
Yeah, I didn’t know I didn’t know if this was maybe a challenge owl. I think I think that hour of not having my phone, I’d probably get into habit quite quickly, the 90 minutes before caffeine, I think it’s gonna be hard. But yeah, what do you reckon you want to do a little challenge for next week? And we’ll pull back. Okay.

Al Elliott  
Shall we move on to the show.

Leanne Elliott  
So our very first founder that we are showcasing is stellar Smith, which you know, is the founder and CEO of perks. Now stellar describes herself, always first and foremost, and I’ve seen this in every interview, she’s done every article she’s been featured in. She always described herself first and foremost as a mom to her daughter, and then as a founder and a CEO. So as we said, perks is a technology platform, and is on a mission to make wellbeing and benefits affordable and accessible to everyone. But before we learn more about who Stella is today, and what she is up to, let’s look back at where it all started at just 16 years old when she not and left school, but also it left her home. She started a full time job at McDonald’s. And then a job at Midland Bank, which is now part of HSBC. She started as a data waste clerk which is sorting checks. Gen X is and young millennials listening if you don’t know what a check is, Google it. And then and then she raised quickly through the ranks, ending up incredibly on the financial markets trading floor. She describes it as a fairy tale story.

Al Elliott  
I think a lot of leaders who start at the bottom and work their way up there learn so much on the way up, that it’s just you kind of have this different way of looking at the world like I was speaking to an agency owner who started as an intern now CEO, and and he just knows every single aspect of the business now. So I mean, Stella described herself as being a independent from the age of 11. So we have to ask, does she see this as a key trait for entrepreneurs

Stella Smith  
being responsible for your own well being. So making sure that you’re fed and clothed and able to eat and everything else, I think having that from a young age certainly makes you more resilient. And I think that I don’t even like to call myself an entrepreneur. It’s one of those words, it doesn’t feel like it’s me, and I don’t impulsive. I don’t have that. But it just doesn’t feel like I think that you have to get up and go to work in the morning, or many of us do. I’m very lucky. I’ve done well in life. And maybe that political change now but if you’re going to get up and you’re going to do something in the morning, you might as well do it to the best of your ability because you have to be there and, and so I don’t, I don’t think of myself as entrepreneurial, I think of myself as trying to take advantage of best opportunity or making the best of an opportunity that presents itself or going to work every morning to me is an opportunity to do something and

Leanne Elliott  
we’re chatting to Stella she was saying how her mum and dad always said she had the Midas touch that you know that she was lucky wherever she touched turned to gold. And stellar gave us the example of how she bought Banksy prints for 150 pounds before Banksy was well, Banksy. And she told everyone she told everyone she knew that this will be the next big thing next big artists and some listened in apparently some didn’t.

Al Elliott  
But I think this people who say they’re lucky this this, this is what my trigger words Oh, you’re lucky you are the fight is How Stella bought 100 prints. And as 99 of them turned out to be worth the same as what they paid. She paid for them 20 years ago. If that’s the case, then it’s not luck. She’s just been there in the right place. I think there’s a whole thing there’s there’s a fortuitous situation. And then there’s blind luck winning the lottery is almost blind lobbies love to buy a ticket. But I think that people who who say, Oh, she’s lucky because she’s done this. No, I think she was the right place at the right time. And of course, to be in the right place at the right time. You’ve got to be literally be there and be up and ready to look for opportunities. So yes, seeing a bank or buying a bank, see for 150 quid is lucky. But working your way out from checks or to the trading floor is not lucky is putting in the time and the work to ensure you’re in the right place at the right time. So talking to stocks and shares, I asked seller a bit more about what it’s like to work in that kind of environment,

Stella Smith  
I think working on a financial markets for in your 20s. And you’re talking, you know, unfortunately to him 20 years ago, now I’m getting older, or at least 60. What an amazing experience, particularly from someone with the background that I have. I still get goose bumps in my stomach. When I think about those times. I was incredibly senior, incredibly young age and I had no fear. I didn’t think anything of it, I was just doing the best I could do every day. So that you know, I watched on the I worked at h FOSS. And I’ve worked at Lloyds prior, so I knew a lot of the characters at Lloyds when I moved across to H bars. Now I’ve watched people who had been working in the bank, that view that, you know, bankers are awful. And but that’s not true. You know, there might be a couple of baddies in every organ, I have none in perks, I’ve made sure of that. But you know, you always get some that are not wonderful to work with or wherever you go. I’ve watched people who are good people that got up to living for their families sit there, and they’ve been in the bank a very long time. And I was watching the share price go on the on the screen, and I was there fast, you know, to some people who are much older than me. And I watched them not just watch their jobs go out the window, but I watched them watch all their savings, because they obviously had shares in the bank go out the window to and you know, there were redundancies and there were tough times. And I think that’s a I think you should always stand up for your team. And so I’m proud that I stood up for my team in in those kinds of scenarios. And I had an amazing what an amazing career. It just doesn’t feel like it was my call things that you’ve done. But I think that watching those difficulties watching my troubles learning, compliance, learning regulation, it’s not an exciting answer. But I was schooled in discipline, and the discipline of operating a business very well from that backdrop. And of course, I have lots of fun, you know, on a trading floor. Have you ever been on a financial markets for in the olden days, and remember, this was foreign exchange money markets, derivatives, this is not stocks and shares. But you basically you’d have six screens even back then, you know, and they’d have two little phones on your desk and they have like little light switches. So a customer would come in and they’d be shouting an order here and you’d have something called a Squawk Box in front of you. And you’d get to press a button and or yell and scream across the to get a price and then you’d have to quickly in your head category now it’s all machines and but back then you do it in your head and then check the machine and then and then take the price back because incredibly fast. So I think learning that fast pace. Understanding that business Is can be painful, but we have to find the best in that pain, you know, there’s the job of making people redundant, you know, because there’s the business end, and how you make sure that when those people will get, they get the best deal and they will count with a smile as much as they can. That’s a, that’s a big lesson to learn in your 20s that I think you’ve learned responsibility.

Al Elliott  
So underlining my thoughts, my rant before Stella worked hard, you took advantage where she could and save some cash when she could. But when it got tough, she stood up for people. Now, I’m a great believer in how you do one thing is how you do everything. And people remember when you can go to bat for them. So this leads to opportunities. Now, opportunities don’t always pan out. But Stella’s clearly a nice person with great ethics. And at that point, she did have a little bit of money saved. So there were people coming to her saying I’m looking to do this, and she did actually invest in some of those projects, because it doesn’t always turn out well. But the more people you can help, the more likely it’s going to work to work out in the end. So this is what happened after the global financial crisis of 2008. And nine,

Stella Smith  
I made some money. So effectively, when it got to 2008 nine in the crash, I got to stay at home for two years. And what happened was, when you become good at money is people come to you. So the reason it sounds so eclectic, you know, an ex girlfriend invested in a nightclub, it wasn’t the best idea. So I put some money in and tried to help her out. You know, my brother lives in Thailand. So you end up doing things around friends and family. So not to set the world on fire, not to create, you know, the biggest next biggest thing more that there’s an opportunity to employ and work with and make nice, a nice life for those people that you love and care for. And I ended up with a number of little things. And I also now sit on some boards. So I sat on the boards of a couple of charitable interests, and I sit on a structured bit find them some other things as well, where I think I can add value. And I think, you know, I think you get to the point where if something presents itself and you can fit it in in amongst the busy schedule, you can’t help yourself.

Unknown Speaker  
So as stellar explained, she started and built various businesses and employing others. And she was keen with that with her team to provide the the type of health and wellbeing benefits that she’d become accustomed to in the corporate space. But she couldn’t. The providers were catering for big organisations, they didn’t want to look after the small guys and US Dollars onwards this got on her nerves. So she decided to do something about it in in 2019 founded parks on the belief that it is an injustice that wellbeing benefits should be reserved for only a small minority working in large corporates with big pockets. Her goal was to change this for that.

Stella Smith  
Yeah, well, I think it’s for everybody is the short answer that doesn’t have access to this stuff. So there’s around 3.2 billion workers in the world, only 9% of them have access to workplace wellness. So that’s the kind of things when I worked in the big banking organisations where, you know, you’re obviously given your pension and your pay here in the UK. But you’re often given ancillary benefits, like for example, private health care, or access to a gym, or access to counselling, or further support where that organisation puts it in place for you. Those that are excluded in that big number. A big proportion of those either work in smaller businesses, or they’re self employed, the whole point of perks was that I had a number of smaller businesses, and I’ve worked in a large organisation. So I was, well, I want to look after my people, let me get some of the stuff that I was given for my teens. And I couldn’t because the providers in the space didn’t want to service that smaller party, it didn’t make efficient sense for them to do that cost, I’m assuming is the driver and inclination because they were making plenty of money elsewhere.

Al Elliott  
Any founder or entrepreneur is likely to be very familiar with this. Step one is you search for what you want. Step two, you can’t find it. Step three, you search for thinking surely it must exist. And so step four, you build it yourself. But it’s a hard problem. And of course, it’s going to be a hard problem. Because if it wasn’t, he would have been solved before.

Stella Smith  
I mean, how would you build one platform that solves wellbeing for everybody? And that was the conundrum that I was set with when I am not the epitome of health and well being? You know, I’m definitely not, there’s many of my team that are far healthier than I if you were to take it on. So I had to build a platform that could speak to everybody

Leanne Elliott  
and I explained to her is that she doesn’t believe anyone is good at strategy, although you may have a gut feel for it. Instead, she believes that mapping data makes strategy clearer. So that’s what she did, starting with defining wellbeing. So essentially,

Stella Smith  
we took it back to the dictionary definition, which is the state of being happy, healthy or comfortable. So whilst I don’t know what’s going to sort your well being out individually, because I don’t know you well enough to be able to say, Oh, I think you know, I’d send him off to a staff or a massage office. he’d you know, he’d have a love a love, lovely long walk, or he needs loads more vitamins. I don’t know the answer to that. All we can do by the dictionary definition, happy, healthy and comfortable is work out the determinants of human happiness, the determinants of human health, and the determinants of humans being more comfortable. So what we do it perfectly so that five channels some big broad subject matter that we think breaks that down. So your health is your physical, mental health, your financial well being a lot of impact on that to your physical, mental health, social interaction and family learning, because there’s a lot of science between me and then reward and recognition or motivation to do things. And what we do is we gather together lots of benefits and services under each of those topics. So there’s something for everybody. So I think that we, we tend to win on price and product debt. So let me give you a corporate answer to that, first of all, so that 40 of benefits and services at that price point and we try and find the best and the better. We looked at all the different services we can find in the counselling space and try to find suppliers that you think, you know, give us the best for for the money. And best not just in terms of how much it costs best in terms of the quality of the service. Now, how responsive they are and everything else. So I think in terms of product depth and breadth, we tend to, we tend to win versus our competition.

Leanne Elliott  
It really is the impressive thing about perks as stellar says there are over 40 benefits. And they span health, wealth education, they include on demand GP services, discounted private health, cover, counselling, mental health support, shopping discounts, skills, training courses, and it’s all delivered by a uniquely flexible configurable self service platform.

Stella Smith  
So what we did was build a piece of technology that aggregates together all of those benefits and serves up to either workers in smaller businesses, although we have now some very large customers, and for the individual worker, and what the platform does is it aggregates together all those benefits and services that don’t relate to pay well. So we’ve got 24/7 access to a doctor 365 days a year, it’s really cool just for the doctor, it’s worth it, especially having a five year old. You can have it for everybody in your household, that sort of that sort of the same family and unlimited appointments, no cheeky backs, no extra charges, they can do prescriptions, they can give referrals back into the NHS or to private health care. So that’s a that’s a great benefit. But alongside that there’s 24/7 counselling, again, for everybody in the household aged over 16. There’s different rules, obviously once it gets to children, and minors, digital physio, virtual gym classes, discounted gyms, cashback off your everyday spend, which in cost of living crisis is really important. And basically, it’s about 40 benefits and services. And you can use the app or you can use the desktop, and it’s just three pounds 75 A month plus VAT. When Stella

Al Elliott  
told me this, I was a bit like, that doesn’t sound very expensive. And she kind of agreed. She said, Yeah, I think that’s one of our biggest problems is that it is cheap. And so people think it’s cheap, it was inexpensive, I think is cheap. So I said, How do you even get all that for like four quid a month

Stella Smith  
is still an incredible piece of kit. That means that I can serve that audience without having such high cost because I’m using technology to do it. And so what we’re effectively doing is using technology to aggregate together all of those individual diverse people. So instead of having that one business or 70,000 workers, we are one unit as perks the family. But we’re an aggregation of all the individuals or the SME businesses, which means that that gives me the fighting power to go and get good deals that I can then bring to that membership and audience to get them access to really important and meaningful stuff at the right price. And I think that that our technology is what allows us to do that you can actually custom perk. So even if you just got two people in your team, you can go in and you can click in you can change the logo, so it’s I don’t know, let’s just say it’s ABC bakery limited, I’m looking at a bakery opposite outside my window you can make at ABC bakery team hub, you can pick and choose from our benefits, you can add your own stuff onto the system as well. And to be able to do that for three pounds 75 a month per profitability for each person is a you know that that makes us very special. I

Al Elliott  
think this is what’s so good about the modern tech stack that stuff that 15 years ago as Stella was gonna say is would have taken you 100,000 pounds and a load of like hardware to launch you can now do with five pound a month on Amazon AWS. But I do love this obsession with it being simple and just working. Now there’s a guy called Arthur C. Clarke who wrote 2001 Space Odyssey back in 1960s. And he’s got a famous quote, I think he’s got three laws, the Clark laws or something. This is one of those three camera which one which one it is and he said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And that’s what Stella and her team have done.

Stella Smith  
organisations that are tech magic of it. You know, they pay an agency to build technology. I have a technology team in house we do. I can do user journeys wireframes I can’t even write a functional spec, but my CTO probably put written marks all over it these days, because I haven’t been more for a long time. You know, our technology starts on my bedroom wall on my office wall with me drawing, my CTO then turns that into something that’s logical and gives me a hard time we tend to Rao and and then we’ve got teams that deploy that technology. So I think that’s a, that’s a major advantage of having something in your head, that you then turn into reality is the ability to do that. And we started playing with technology, my CTO, and I back in 2010, you know, and things that take you weeks to build now and cost this much money to do back then with cost, you know, 10s of 1000s of pounds and take months and months and months. So we understand technology, and therefore, like my saints, my team is we should solve everything with a magic wand. So for example, in our cashback service, you know, we get money back on households, thin, like, Wouldn’t it be cool if you could just do nothing? And it just magically appears? And instead of putting that on this kind of, you know, well, that sounds difficult, we made it happen. So we literally, you know, made it connect to online banking now with about 300 retailers. That ability to solve and with technology. There’s downsides to technology, but the upside to technology is if you can think it, if you can dream it, if you can articulate it and you have the time, the money and the inclination, then you can build it. I love

Leanne Elliott  
that from the very start. Stellar has always focused on the customers that she’s serving. And as she says, Now, it’s actually a really great coaching question and I’ve heard it used with business leaders and in terms of their team development, their business development, I always think in terms of ideation if you had a magic wand, what what are we fixing? What we what need Are we answering with this? So unsurprisingly, what followed was an incredible story of growth. So just to recap, perks launched in the UK in January 2019. As a first self serve low cost benefits platform for the self employed and small and medium businesses 12 months later in January 2020. Perks secured over 1 million pounds in seed funding, and by June had successfully launched in Australia onboarding its first client within day one of launch that same month, June 2020. Tada Rupert, the ex CEO of tiro price, global investment joins the perks board as a non Executive Director joining the chairman dam at ko Blake, who you may have heard of the ex MD of Google UK, by June 2022. Perks raised 3 million pounds in pre series a funding. And it’s yeah, it’s tracking to achieve its goal of 1 million members by 2025. So I’ve got a wonder Is this another story of luck? Is it that Midas touch at work again?

Al Elliott  
I don’t think so.

Stella Smith  
I think we’ve worked bloomin hard. There’s a you know, I do, which is not very well being you know, this last weekend I worked 16 hours on Saturday and nine hours on Sunday. I average 50 meetings a week. That is a sprint not a joke in terms of wanting to get admission done. And I I think it’s because we were very driven. But we have fun along the way. You know, we make sure we account for them. That’s me rather than on my team. I’d like the front held up for some horror. The guy I think we’ve worked very hard. And we’ve we’ve had to have, like every young business, but we’re here. Because imagine if he’s sitting in your hands and he thought you had a piece of technology that could change the outcome for millions of people then, you know, we may fail. We may not get it exactly why. But right now live, we are getting it right because there’s 13,000 people that can have a doctor and a counsellor. Right the second so I’m very proud of my team. It’s teamwork. It’s hard work, it’s grasp and I think it’s technic technology capability in house gives us an advantage to be nimble.

Leanne Elliott  
We talk a lot on this podcast about leaders needing to to provide a really clear reason a clear purpose work that has purpose and meaning and providing that to their employees. I think this is a really, really great example and not just one in terms of kinda altruistic drive that Stella has but clearly seeing a very big gap in the market and capitalising on that with all their the skills, knowledge and experience that she’s got, I want to Can I can I join the team, please, Stella employ me.

Al Elliott  
I think I totally agree. And I think there was a lot of businesses who start off they, they’re kind of they’re seeking this product market fit where people actually do want to buy the stuff. But they’re also like, oh, well, we’ve got to make it profitable from day one. I think we’ll Stella’s done brilliantly here is that she’s gone I’ve got a mission to help 13,000 people access stuff and medical care they wouldn’t necessarily be able to get so that’s my mission This was gets me out of you know out of bed in the morning probably what gets her to go on raise capital to continue to do this. But then she’s not daft. She doesn’t sit there and go oh, we’ve achieved our achieved our goal. Isn’t it lovely? Oh, we’re losing a bit of money, but we’re going game that No, no, she goes, right, the next three years, we’re gonna make this profitable.

Stella Smith  
Part of me and perks has changed, I think in the last three years, which is, you know, we get up in the morning and I’m looking at, you know, can I make this thing profitable. So it’s sustainable forever, you know, what’s my gross margin, and how long in my sales cycle all the good stuff that you would do as a leader in a business that’s growing. But at the same time, I’ve got, I think I can put doctors into areas in South Africa that has no affordable health care for sub a pound this year. And I think I can make a difference on and I think my team can make a difference to that statement. And it’s very odd, as a character with my background that’s kind of fought my way up, to then find yourself in a position where you actually think you can do something that’s there. In real life, we have 13,000 customers that can act as a doctor and a counsellor today, right now, this second, because pokes exists and that’s a different driver. And I’ve never, you know, I’ve always hopefully done the right thing by people, but I’ve never had that, it would be remiss for us not to move forward with it, that that that’s how I feel about it now, and I think that’s a that’s an interesting place to sit as a human being

Leanne Elliott  
stellar. Please accept my resume in your email shortly after this episode is leaving me No, but he’s just so inspiring, isn’t it to see an organisation just just have that, that marriage of kind of human drive and helping people and also building a great business where people want to work and, and will thrive? While also you know, making some money along the way, but if you are one of our earlier listeners, you may remember us talking about the deadly arithmetic of compassion. Do you remember this?

Al Elliott  
I do. Yeah, it was a charity advert, was it trying to raise donations?

Leanne Elliott  
That’s how it’s how it’s applied. Yeah, and the charity sector usually, so the story will focus on one person rather than the millions of people who might be starving. And it’s basic because our our feeling systems can’t count. So, you know, it’s, it’s hard for us to empathise, and, and feel compassion for 13,000 people. So you might not be overly impressed with that statistics 13,000 customers that that Pax has helped so far. And you know, Stella understands this as well. And she is keen to gather individual stories from customers to keep her focused and to energise her team,

Unknown Speaker  
we basically had one gentleman that had been misdiagnosed, and it was a particular, you know, hard to discuss type one, and it was a, you know, a traumatic misdiagnosis. And I’m making sure I’m anonymizing this as I’m speaking, but it actually made me cry. So I’m giving you the one that made me cry. And Claire in my team was on the phone to this gentleman for an hour and a quarter. When I worked in the banks, if you didn’t have you know, 1020 100 50 million, you didn’t get to talk to me about the money. You know, I was very, very senior. I’d like everyone who talks to perks to feel like they’re worth 100 million pounds, even though they pay us three pounds 75. So if someone calls us we take the time, there’s a human being, and so Claire’s, not selling anything, not doing anything, but just listening. And Claire is not medically qualified My Head of Customer, Normally people would speak to the doctor, the cancer, this chap just wanted to speak. And he wrote us a beautiful email some weeks later. And he basically said, you know, it’s not that I don’t have the ability to talk about this issue. It’s just that I’ve been in agony for nine months. And I’m just saying the same thing to my friend that I can talk to my friends and family, he was in his 40s. But I’m just saying the same negative thing, because I’ve got no outcome. And he said, he said, I spoke to you, first of all, thank you for spending an hour and a quarter on the phone to me. But secondly, I gave you saltpans 50 Because he can play the tape, but it’s just an individual person. And I, you gave me somebody to speak to on the same day, and I’m still speaking to them more. Moreover, I’m standing here and I got referral from the GP that I also got for the same four pounds 50. And I’ve now got prescription and I’ve been you know, diagnosed with x and I’ve now got some medication I’m about to get. So I think perks must be divine intervention. That is an extreme example, which obviously touched the hearts of my team. Again,

Al Elliott  
regular listeners know that the animais used to be in the Samaritans where we met. And so we know the power of just having someone who can just listen to you non judgmentally. And that can make such a difference. But couple that with the fact that this gentleman had got an issue, and he I don’t know whether he had the money to solve it. I don’t know whether he couldn’t find the right people to solve it. But he just basically sent a fiver to sell his company. And then the very next day, he’s got a prescription in his hand and he’s got this diagnosis. It’s just It’s just incredible. And this brings me on to the other thing is that when I first had a perks I thought it was like a company thing. So you had to be a company had to give employees and I’ve seen lots of them like this. We’re not the same as putting lots of them like this where you do have this company that have policy. But she’s saying no, you can just be individuals, you can literally just ring up and say, Yeah, I’m just Joe Bloggs, can I just give you a fiver, and you can help me. And of course you can. So we go back to this idea of stellar solving her own problem. She’s got a young daughter, herself and an extended family, and they all get to enjoy the perks of perks, we

Unknown Speaker  
have a very clear and health crisis. I mean, we’ve had problems for a long time, and they are going to be here for a long time, I think puts complete small part in solving some of that for individuals in the sense that, you know, you can literally click on the app. And I have, I must have had seven calls over Christmas from family or friends that were having issues and then signed up to perks, and then they managed to see a doctor and get themselves sorted. So I think the doctor, the counsellor, you know, that service, I often think, you know, I tried the counselling myself. I’ve used the doctors 13 times for my daughter last year, I definitely got my foot pounds 50 to fit in my and I made my mum and dad paid for perks, it had to be good enough that they chose to pay for it. Because I would obviously normally get stuff from my mom or dad, it needed to be of value enough that they would pay the money. But that counting when I tried the service. And it was amazing. And I guess I’ve always been and this is very personal, I suppose. But I’ve always been of the mindset, my problems aren’t bad enough to have to go and talk to somebody about I was actually I got COVID Very badly in the first round, and I became more packed. I mean, I was still wearing masks when everyone had lost their masks because I got pneumonia twice. I was poorly, very poorly with it. And it was scary. And they gave me a couple of little exercises. I mean, I didn’t do all the six sessions. And so I probably say on my own part. But in those first few sessions, they gave me two little exercises that I still employ for other things now, and it solved it for me. Now, I would never have troubled anyone because still, to be honest, wearing a mask for the extra day, does that really hurt anyone or mean specifically? Not really. But it wasn’t a good thing. And by having something that was affordable, I would never, you know, normally to pay for cancer, it’d be a reasonable amount of money, or you’d be on a very long waiting list. And yet I could deal with my issue. So I think that the counselling, doctors are very important, but I also think and the gym discounts very popular and the cashback is very popular there for our digital digital physios, many, probably your top five, I would say that resilience building is just as important as diagnosis and fix. So you know, part of the issue when I was interviewed last week is you know, we’re talking about how you can alleviate pressure at diagnosis or fixed point. I actually think that what perks needs to do going forward and does already but can do even better, is start with that resilience building piece that we’ve got a little bit that checks in on your mental health now even if you’re in a in a great set, well, let’s maintain that, let’s improve that. Let’s improve our physical health so that we you know, there’s there’s some horrific stats around preventable diseases and deaths. You know, I mean, I get to look at that stuff these days in my See, wouldn’t it be cool if we could change that number a bit. And I, I think it’d be good if we could focus in on that. So top ones are Doctor counsellor, gym, discounts, cashback and the digital physio,

Leanne Elliott  
Stella raises a really interesting point that about trouble accessing counselling and mental health support, but particularly for, I guess, lower level or not as acute needs. And I’ve experienced that myself. I tried to access counselling when I got to I got pulled over from the car park

Al Elliott  
in Wales. Yeah.

Leanne Elliott  
It isn’t funny, but I got run over in a car park. I wasn’t seriously hurt. But I just anxiety really kind of kicked up from it. But I you know, the doctor was like, Oh, I can but it’s going to be a six month waiting list. I can give you anti anxiety antidepressant pills. I don’t think it’s medication bad. So I didn’t do anything. And then about 12 months later, Dremel got carjacked. On the way to Samaritans deal with a baseball bat nearly tried to kill it. Yeah, this is all true, by the way. All true. So unsurprising after that, that triggered something a bit more intense, more anxiety. And I started about a point again another six months after that, I went to the doctors again to talk about some of the symptoms I was having, because I didn’t know if it was it was a virus as well because I was having lots of vertigo. And I said you know what this happened maybe I need to speak to somebody and remember the on the nurse transferred over I don’t know that’s had stuff and did like the, you know, the curly Wow. This would have been 2012. So 10 years ago, yeah. So again, I didn’t access it. And then about six months later, I had a panic attack so bad that I had to had to call an ambulance on the 56 in the northwest of England. So I can see how this is probably something that I could have. Again as Esther said, learned some of these, these coping strategies that might have helped me then curb this later escalation what became quite acute anxiety. So yeah, it is it’s a it’s a problem that I empathise with, if you’re thinking my mental health challenges aren’t that bad, there are people with a much worse challenges still on waiting lists. That is true. But if we address it a bit earlier, we can sometimes stop it, it progressing. And you know, is stellar says this is access shouldn’t be reserved to the people that work for big corporations or can afford to pay for it themselves. So yeah, I’m thinking that’s one of the really cool things about perks as well. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you might be listening going, this is really nice. And you might be losing complete focus on Stellar story and just thinking perks sounds pretty awesome. I need this for my business, I need it for myself. And as you said, before, I’ll is it all just a bit too good to be true. And I thought the same when I first came across Pax back in in 2020. But as stellar explains, it’s really not too good to be true. The price point is made possible by once again, understanding the data,

Unknown Speaker  
I’m supposed to use the word affordable, but it’s cheap. Do you know why it’s cheap, because I built it for 64 massage therapists and 100 people, it’s an investment, there needed to be enough money to get out of bed to do the job of and there needed to be the right price. Because I was I was only going to be my there was no, I’m going to build this to be the next big thing. It was genuinely, I want to get this stuff. And it got on my nerves that I couldn’t get it. Because basically, they were they didn’t want to look after us because we were the small guy. And obviously, I’ve probably got a chip on my shoulder for standing up for the little guy. And you know, I don’t know, but it irritated me. And I think, you know, I think you could easily charge a lot more suppose. But why should I think I need to get out of bed and do the high volume, low value business. And my job to make money is to go and do lots of it to make it successful. But yeah, I know that we get that too good to be true. In fact, I’ve even worked with behavioural scientists to look at the design say how can you make it feel like it’s not too good to be true? Because it’s such a cheap price point. But do you know how it works? How it’s so cheap? No. It’s really simple. And like some of the benefits and services we build and deliver. So it’s the cost of my technology team to build kudos, we get to give high fives and or survey failure, we build a piece of technology and the cost of hosting that but once you’ve built it, you can’t really pay for it, you just maintaining it right or making it better. So things like the doctors and the counsellors estate, the doctor if we if we owned a gym together, and we had 10 running machines, this is the example I was using certainly is the easiest way to visualise how the purpose unit economics works essentially, is we have 3000 Members, if everybody turns up at 10am tomorrow to use our 10 machines, we’re screwed. We don’t have a gym any longer. But there is lots of data to tell usage of GP services and counselling services, what times they happen, how often they happen how many times an individual word, which is your data set, which will tell you therefore how many in the gym analogy how many machines you would need to service, how many gym members we have the same in our world that we know broadly speaking, what kind of Bank of doctors you would need or qualified counsellors to service that audience. So that means you don’t need a doctor for every single member so that’s how we essentially get the price point to where it is

Al Elliott  
this idea of over selling the gyms use it airlines use it insurance company uses it, you know, the even the bank we’ve seen recently with SBB I think Silicon Valley Bank, yeah, I’ve seen with that, that as soon as everyone wants all their money out at once, that kind of a little bit screwed. So I have to be honest, the marketer and may still wants to create a tear that’s 10 times more expensive, just to make the standard to look like an even bigger bargain. But it is interesting that that Estella got a behavioural scientist in to have a look at him. And the lesson that personally I’m learning here as building oblong and our podcast business is that stellar is designed that her life to be however she wants it. So if she wants to spend 16 hours on a Saturday because she’s motivated to push this new feature, then she can but she doesn’t expect everyone to do this. For example, Aggie from a team who we speak to quite a lot. She comes across the most happy and contented person in our work. And I can imagine that Aggie were just as happy doing eight hours or 16 hours having a happy team is exactly on brand for perks whose mission is to help all employees be happy and healthy.

Unknown Speaker  
I think. You know, we’re all human, aren’t we? We don’t get anything. I was really grouchy with my daughter on Saturday because I worked you know, a big week and I did give her ice cream in the evening which is totally not well being sweeties on top of that chocolate and strawberry sauce to make up for it. But we’re not perfect but what we can do is we can get up in the morning and at least try and my team our amazing team of trials like i i pick what part of our Interview criteria as you have to be nice, which is a very subjective word to use, but, you know, old fashioned basics that, you know, look off to your friends and family, make sure you go out of your way to support them all of that stuff. And finally, I’m in charge, which means I can demand that I don’t have to have to wish for that anymore. In my company, we can make sure that every get I have I had a 20 year old go and look at our global payment system. Why because I don’t think we should be limited by age or experience. And we sent him in to go and have the meetings with all the beggars that I should have been there. Because you know what, sometimes you have to let people just fly. And I think that lifting the lid off. Anyone can do anything if they really put their mind to it. And they’re blessed with the physical and mental capacity to be able to do it. Anybody can do anything and, and I’m I’m living proof of that my head. You know, McDonald’s, no, no results and living such a fairy tale of a of a dream of life.

Leanne Elliott  
There are a couple of things I want to talk about there. That’s okay. If you’ll indulge me that Stella said that she loves one of her interview question criterias is if people are nice, which seems quite subjective, I’m sure you use objective measures stellar. I’m not questioning your interviewing process. But did you know and I’ve had this conversation with people before they’ve gone. I’m not sure if they’re right, for a management position. They’re just a bit too nice. And it’s like one of the things that the research has shown us consistently over and over again, for decades now, is one of the main traits of being effective transformational leaders, a leader that drives drives change and inspires purpose and action is being likeable. And being likeable is huge, because you’re nice. So I think actually, that’s a really great trait to, to look for in people. And secondly, as well, I can’t imagine that stellar has, I mean, she mentioned there about the 20 or so, so firmly in Gen Zed territory there, I can’t imagine given her approach to empowering people to providing opportunities for development and progression and to stretch themselves and use their skills. I can’t imagine that stellar or perhaps has any problem, either recruiting or engaging Gen. Zed.

Unknown Speaker  
I guess the the biggest thing is, isn’t it amazing? What you can do with a collection of people. And I say this to my team was like, we created a noun. It’s a noun. And you know what it was seven people sitting on some laptops in their spare rooms or home offices for those that were lucky enough to have them. And, and Dan is part of that story, you know how lucky we are to have had Ashley, my team is in charge of SEO, sit down with the extremity of Google, UK and Ireland, to get SEO tips. We’ve got a beautiful blend of people who know nothing but have the right attitude, willing to roll their sleeves up. And some amazing experience intellect characters that surround perks. And, you know, the more people that can attach themselves to ambition, even if it’s just saying perks is cool, have a look at it, so that somebody knows it’s there. That’s enough, just that that love and that energy will drive us a long way. And I think having characters like that, and throughput, who is also non exec onboarding, incredibly human being, the knowledge, the experience, the insights, the guidance and counsel for me as a CEO, but it’s not limited to them, you know, as shareholders, that criteria on joining perks team isn’t just for the team, as shareholders have to be nice to all we don’t want them either. And our suppliers have to be nice and niceness needs to be driven into their SLAs. And it’s about doing the right thing and come back. So I think that the one thing is it’s a people and energy that make something happen. I don’t know. I’m everyday bewildered and humbled by what’s happened on our story. And I think if I could give that little bit of magical feeling that we feel every morning to every little business that’s standing there trying in a backdrop of economic uncertainty, and difficulty and strife and troubles and only crises, I would give that little bit of magic, which is there’s a, there’s a winner and a one and a joy in standing up and trying. And when it starts to work, like perks does actually help people It feels amazing.

Al Elliott  
Yes, yes, yes. Yes. A million times. Yes. What is it? Like get carried away though?

Leanne Elliott  
No, I like yeah, I’m the same. It’s, it’s just, it’s so inspiring. It really

Al Elliott  
is. And I think I’ve talked like this before, and the bottom Sorry, I’m gonna say it again. But Jim Rohn. The best way to get what you want is to help other people get what they want. And I think that’s it. As soon as you sit there and go, I’m going to be an affiliate marketer, and I’m going to set up a website and I’m going to use AI to write all the content because I want to earn 20,000 pounds a month. He might work, but you’re going to be bored shitless There’s, there’s no there’s nothing to it. But if you go, I am going to create this platform that will help. It’s going to solve the health crisis. That’s basically what what perks is aiming for, isn’t it solving the health, the health crisis and healthcare crisis? I just love it. I absolutely love it.

Unknown Speaker  
Absolutely. And from a workplace culture perspective, even take away the what perks actually does, building a team with a clear vision of what their product can achieve, what it can deliver for their customers, whatever that that product or who that customer is, giving them opportunities within their job role to be mentored, to learn these skills to push themselves to use their strengths, and to really prioritise those relationships. We don’t tolerate people that aren’t nice. I love as well that Stella did say that she does that nicest face down to SLA. So yeah, she is she’s she’s she is making it objective and tangible, measurable. But exactly right. And it isn’t just about my staff is the same shareholders at the same suppliers is it and it sets this benchmark of acceptable behaviour, and anything below that is not tolerated. And as we know that my favourite definition of culture, culture is defined by the worst behaviours tolerated and you know, you know that workplace culture impacts, and you can hear it in the way stellar describes it is, is just phenomenal, because the behaviours are promoted, are intentional, and they’re nurtured and celebrated.

Al Elliott  
So we’re gonna spend an hour with stellar, but we learned there was like, we pulled out five possible lessons from the interview, I want to spend a bit more time with Sally, because think she’s really, really cool. Actually, she started really sad when he said that, like he’s never gonna maybe meet her in real life. So these are the five lessons we’ve picked out of that. Number one is stand up for your people, your job as a leader should be removing obstacles. So they can create great work, not adding more work or making work more difficult or telling them parking in your parking space,

Leanne Elliott  
and Pathak concern. That’s cool. If you want the fancy word for it, I see a new level word for it. Yet number two, and I think we said give them a reason to care. And the whole team like there cannot be one standard for the team, one standard for the CEO, one standard for the board. You’re all that team together. And we know as well, from a culture perspective, from an engagement perspective, from a well being perspective, if that belief that same belief isn’t held by the board, there’s no point in doing anything, but personally exactly what they’re doing. They know exactly what they’re building, who it’s for, and how to help.

Al Elliott  
Number three, ensure your service is congruent with your beliefs. Now, Stella could easily retargeted her ex employers at the big banks and probably sold perks at 10 to 100 times the price she does, but she chose intentionally chose to help those who didn’t have that kind of access to perks. I’ve I’ve made that point a few times and they get rid of that.

Leanne Elliott  
No, but yes, and another you want me to throw another term at you there what it is it’s preventing moral burnout. So moral burnout is basically when our when our values are misaligned with our environment, and too long in that camp can lead to that cynicism that is one of the main components of burnout. Yep, some people call it moral burnout. So, yeah,

Al Elliott  
I’m just gonna follow up with my fourth lesson, which is my soapbox Leandra soapbox about culture. I’ve got soapbox about pin lock. And Ken, honestly, I wanted to create these T shirts called with just called fuck lock on it. And I just wanted to just hand them out to people to be to entrepreneurs. Anyway, so look is a function of intention, work and persistence. So to be in the right place at the right time, you’ve got to be somewhere that’s got opportunity, and you have to stick with it. Otherwise, you’ve got no chance of being in the right place at the right time. Because you’ve got to spend most of your life being in the wrong place at the right time or the right place at the wrong time.

Leanne Elliott  
Here here. I’m so with you like it’s actually just putting yourself in the right place and just waiting around long enough the time to be right. I think is more Yeah, I’m with you. And I think finally, you know, design a life that makes you proud. You know, Stella, it sounds like she leaps out of bed every morning because she’s doing what what she loves and it sounds like her team at the same. You know, the only thing that makes you happy about your job or business is the paycheck, then maybe think about a change. Not to say do the quick talk thing, though, we might want to be a bit more careful about that. But you know, consider making a change.

Al Elliott  
Yeah, so the whole, if you want to quit on tick tock, you can do that if that’s what you want to do. But the fact is that you’re the beginning of your career if you’re a Gen Zed. So just take some advice for a second from an old gen X. You’re the beginning of your career. You’ve got so many skills that we genXers would love to have. We’re not digital natives. We don’t know how to take a picture. There’s a great it’s a great thing I think was on Reddit or something just 100 pictures where someone like me and tried to take a picture of the phone and then someone who was 14 came along, took the phone off or office and took like an amazing picture just by turning on his side and tapping things and turning the dials up and down. So If you don’t have to quit a job because it’s hard just quit a job because of the workplace, but not the work.

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, and you know, it’s absolutely well within your, your rights and probably a really great move for your career and your well being to identify an organisation that resonates with you and matches your values. So, you know, go out there, find somebody like stellar who is making a difference, go back to our coaches and mentoring episode and learn some tips on how to find a mentor, you are at the beginning of career and some of the decisions that you make now will have impact for for years and years to come, which is probably wire a little uncomfortableness around the older quit chalk thing. But you know, even even for older millennials, even for Gen X, you know, you don’t have to stay in a career that makes you happy. You know, you don’t quit a job because it’s hard you quit. Because you know, the workplaces is just not the work you want to do. So yeah, I’m feeling inspired. So shall we, here’s some more life lessons from stellar,

Unknown Speaker  
I tend to stay out of touch with what’s happening in the world. You know, throughout my 20s, I was surrounded by Bloomberg, Reuters screens, my PA at the time, you know, we’d have my newspapers lined up, when I hit my desk first thing in the morning, an insane amount of input. I do have views, I think it’s going to be difficult, moving forward. But I’ve also got this, you know, maybe it’s as I’ve got older, I’ve always felt that I can’t change the world. But I can change and impact. The little bit around nothing changed my daughter’s life, I can change my parents life, my friends, my family onward, I found as I’ve got older, I can impact other’s lives. And I’ve seen people come and join my teams and then go off with a lot more skill sets. And now I think we’ve at least impacted or helped their trajectory, go and positively in it in another way. So in terms of my view of the world is the world is the world. And that’s going to keep happening around me. But the one thing I can influence and do is stand up and do the bit that I can affect. So I think I’m very cognizant of, I can’t help myself, you know, I went on to study and get some letters off my name. I love economics. But I try and keep my head in a space now that is focused on the bit that I can do be cognizant of what’s happening. I think it’s going to be a very difficult time. I mean, you’ve you’ve got, obviously, there’s walls going on. There’s crises, economically, we’re sitting in a position that? Well, I think it’s it’s the first thing in a long, it’s in a very long time. What I’ve learned over my financial services career is you’ll have opinions from many different people. The important thing as a human being is what you can do to impact that. And so I have views, but I don’t think they’re important. I think what’s important it for me personally, is taking care of the people around me and as far as wide as I can push that, with whatever backdrop surrounds us. I sit on another board. And it’s a it’s around human rights. And it’s a very impressive individual Republican. And he makes an amazing speech. Because the ripples of Hope speak to me, and it really spoke to me part of the reason why I didn’t do that, and it and it’s basically, and I’m not going to quote it, so I’ll get the quote wrong. But it’s essentially that if you can make a small ripple, you can create a wave of change, and I, I subscribed to that, I’m living that right now, you know, a silly idea in my head in 2018. And there’s real life people being helped by it today. And that’s not me. That’s all the people you know, it’s, it’s people getting excited about it. People. People say, Well, what can I do to help? It’s like, what do you know what just let people know it’s there. I don’t mind whether people buy it or not, that’s not the issue. The issue is at least know that you can get something that’s affordable. And you can do it not everybody can afford four pounds a month, you know, that’s still out of reach. But that’s about as good as I can get it. So now, if I can replicate that in other countries, I think we’re doing a good thing.

Leanne Elliott  
I love it so much. So before we wrap up, I mean, we can’t have somebody like a founder, CEO, MD, like Stella Smith, and not give her the opportunity to pitch perks towards although I think I’m solved.

Al Elliott  
Well, funnily enough, I signed up for it this morning. Did you know got perks?

Leanne Elliott  
Amazing. So we are stellar, if anyone is listening, what is perks? And how can they access it?

Unknown Speaker  
I think any business and any business owners and it sounds like you’ve got entrepreneurs, business owners, if anything, it’s not even that they need to go on and buy perks, it’s just that they know it’s there and that it takes three minutes to do it. To set up perks. I mean, all you need to do is send a one line email, say to team obviously, if you’ve paid for it, put your card details in bam, you’re done. And so there’s no hassle. So it’s really that it’s just the machine that is really simple and sweet. And you don’t have to think because we’ll do that thinking for you and just deliver it and it’s cheap is cheap, and you can also cancel I sound like I’m doing the sales pitch, because I think it’s brilliant. But I have a massive bias. You know, we’ve made it so that you can just turn it off. Because I think that my job and my team’s job is that we’d make it good enough that you choose to stay. So if you put it in place to your team, you don’t like it next month. Cancel it, because that’s what you should be able to do. And I always find on technology, there’s never a red button, you get your delivery thing go wrong, he’s never going to use them again. And then you try and catch it, but you can’t find where you want to cancel it. So I have a big red button that says if you don’t like it, click here. And you can end it because it’s our job to make something that’s compelling enough for our customers to choose to say,

Unknown Speaker  
it really is that simple. And I love that, you know, Stella’s mission remains the same, to bring everybody access to affordable wellbeing benefits that improve health, wealth and happiness. And remember that it’s not just businesses that as individuals as well, she thinks perks is pretty wonderful. We think perks is pretty wonderful. But if you’re not convinced, follows fellas advice, at least do something.

Unknown Speaker  
Fundamentally, I think the big thing for small businesses is do something for your people perks or not. I think perks is wonderful and, you know, depth and breadth of product, but put something in place that you’ve got an infrastructure to support your teams. And, you know, there’s we’re operating in an environment now where lots of people have lots of struggle, struggles, you know, there’s the conversation around on the hiatus, you know, from COVID to today, I have my daughter at home, there’s a lot of strikes around, you know, cost of living energy costs. There’s a lot of things affecting people at the moment. And what we all learned from COVID Is that be at work to do whatever that works shape, size, or how we need to be well. And so if you can put in place something in an affordable manner for your team to be well, the productivity, the being they’re doing what you need to do for your organisation or your business is important,

Unknown Speaker  
I think stellar summed it up perfectly there. If you want to find out more about perks and all the incredible benefits. And you can also request a demo as well head over to perks.com that’s p i rkx.com. And remember, as I mentioned perks offers packages for individuals and businesses. And as Tiller says, why should you miss out on the well being and benefits just because you work for yourself? So yeah, you can also find stellar on LinkedIn, and more from perks on Twitter, Instagram, and tick shock. We’ll leave all the links in the show notes.

Al Elliott  
Thank you for joining us for this special episode which is the founders special we’re hoping to do every four or five weeks on the episode. If you’ve got someone who you think she should be we should be featuring then just make sure it’s some to do with workplace culture. And then just go into the shadows below you’ll see this email their podcast at oblong hq.com And you can you can nominate someone to be a potential guest.

Leanne Elliott  
You absolutely can if you want to connect with alibi on the old LinkedIn or or follow some of the posts we put up after each episode talking about the episode. Come follow us over on LinkedIn as well. All the links are in the show notes. And there’s also going to be a very exciting announcement very, very soon and I think appropriate on LinkedIn before we put it on the podcast, though, you probably do want to go on followers and just see what that see what that

Al Elliott  
is. Nice. Nicely done. Thank

Leanne Elliott  
you.

Al Elliott  
I think I’m becoming more psychologizing and you’re becoming more marketing. Right. We will see you next week then. Bye bye.