title: How to Influence Investors Full Proof Blueprint
author: Founders Podcast
contenttype: podcast
publication: Founders Podcast
published: 2026-02-17T09:00:00+00:00
sourceurl: https://anchor.fm/s/10542bd40/podcast/play/113932004/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-0-13%2F416036365-44100-2-4c0746fa66db2.mp3
word_count: 9544
Hello Andrew, how are you doing today? I'm doing well, Ash. Thank you for having me. It's good to see you. Great to have you on on Founders Podcast. Andrew, before we start, do you have a favorite quote, something that motivates you, inspires you, you would like to share with our audience? Yes, it may seem a little bit like a strange thing to start with Ash. One of my favorite quotes is from Gandhi, and he has this great quote about forgiveness. And he said not forgiving someone is like picking up a hot coal and then being angry at the coal for burning your hand when you refuse to put it down. And I think one of the keys of living an incredible life and being a great business leader is learning how to set things down South. I think about that quote a lot. And picking up the right thing in your hand while you're burning it right. Yes. Indeed, indeed. That's a good one. Actually. I've never heard about this, this this one before, so I'll it will stick with my mind for a while. Great stuff. So, so Andrew, imagine we are in a room of full of ambitious founders, early stage builders, you know, people enthusiasts, very, very, you know, motivated towards getting out of their nine to five. They want to get into founder space. There are people who are already in the founder space, but they're struggling with challenges. These people are eagerly waiting for you in a, in a, in this room, right? You walk in and everybody's looking at you because the spotlight is on you. You have the mic, you walk on the stage. Now you have to tell them something, a part of your story, a part of your client story, a part of your journey, which will tell them it's worth to stick with this person for the rest of the hour. What would be your story? Well, since you brought up the context of people may be struggling with something going on in their businesses, I'll pick a story around dealing with struggle and turning around situations that are struggling. In 2019, I had a client for whom I was doing executive coaching and consulting. That was about a $70 million annual revenue business, but not like we think of it today where most businesses are software and they have annual recurring revenue. This is what you might call a Sisyphus business because everyday they had to start over. There was no recurring offering for this business. So they were having to generate that $70 million over and over again. And they sent me into one of their lowest performing business divisions in North America. So imagine that, you know, in 2019 you're doing 50% of your sales target, so you're doing significantly less than last year. You're basically going out of business. So they sent me into this failing business division to turn it around. So one of the things that I've discovered really makes a difference when you're struggling is connection. And there are 4 pillars of connection. People need to understand. You need to get connected to reality, what's actually happening and separate from that to the frameworks that you use to understand the reality that's happening. So the interpretive framework. So those are two separate things that you need to get connected to yourself as the leader who's dealing with this or as one of them. And then you need to get connected to the people involved in this situation, their commitment and their accountability. So those are 4 pillars of connection. So when I walked into this feeling business Division, I called an all hands meeting. So there are over 100 and over 120 people working in this in this division. And they couldn't all make the all hands, but we had representatives of every area. And I asked them to just literally unload on me their litany of complaints about what they thought was not working about the situation. And they just complained and complained and complained. And almost all their complaints were directed at the senior leaders of the company who I did not have at the meeting so that people could speak their minds. OK, so we started off with this kind of all hands meeting and what I did was I promised them a couple things. First, I said, listen, I can I can see that there's some real lacks of integrity and now it's being run and I can see how it's affecting you. So I'm going to take all of your feedback. I'm going to boil it down to the key factors. I'm going to come back to you with what those are and our plan for addressing them. So we did that, right? We call another All Hands meeting. Now, I want to pause and emphasize a point here. One of the things you've got to have in your skill set as a founder is the ability to influence people in situations. You cannot be a successful founder if you can't influence. You have to influence potential investors. You have to influence customers, you have to be able to recruit and influence potential hires. So many people don't know that. Influence begins with empathy and it ends with storytelling. So it starts with empathy and it ends with storytelling. Many people begin with storytelling and they skip the empathy piece and so their stories don't have as much effectiveness. So in the second All Hands meeting, I went through with everyone the three or four root causes of what was causing all of this damage to the division. And until people could actually see that's actually right, what you said, my complaint, that's the explanation for it. My complaint, that's the explanation for it. And a lot of it did have to do with management. So I made a promise that we were going to address these things and have another All Hands. Maybe you see how it was going. So we did that right? And I got to work, work then executive coaching, coaching the leaders, having them deal with their integrity, cleaning things up, in some cases, changing out leadership. And then we had a third all hands meeting. And in the 3rd all hands meeting, people started to reflect on, wow, you know what? I can really see the difference. These things are getting cleaned up. And it was in that meeting, the third meeting where I addressed those stakeholders who weren't the senior leaders. And I said, now look, we've dealt with the lacks of integrity on the on the, on the side of the senior leaders, but let's talk about yours. They're like, what do you mean ours? I said, let's talk about yours. I said, now you know that anyone in any position of a company, whether they're in a position of leadership or not, can make a difference with a situation that isn't working if you have the right conversations with the right people. And I just want all of you to look at the extent to which you didn't do that, that instead of having these conversations that would have made a difference, you instead turned against the leaders who did have a lack of integrity. But in doing that, you put all the blame on them. You took no responsibility, and you just lost all your power. And the whole thing just spiraled downhill. And it was only after I had listened and had empathy what they were going through and then told a story to them. But that's a story, that's a possible view that they had power in this situation. They actually wanted to have more power in the situation. They didn't want me to have to be the one flying in there to have to turn this around. They wanted to own the company. They wanted to be the ones who could make a difference. And they stepped into that story. And so from being the being the literally the worst division in the world, this was a global company. In 3 1/2 months they went from being 50% of target to over target and the fastest growing business division in the world. And you know what was it that made that difference? It was influence, which is starting with empathy and ending with storytelling. It was having them get the leaders and the employees and they are the magic of the business, not the business. And founders have got to get this. You may have $1,000,000, a billion dollar, a Unicorn, a deca corn idea, but it's got to come into the world through you. You're the person the idea picked to come into the world through. So that's the second piece is you're the magic of your business, not just the idea. OK. And then the third is the thing about connection, that to be an effective founder, you've got to have this profound connection with what's happening and the interpretations through which you're viewing what's happening. A powerful connection with yourself and a powerful connection with the people you work with. So those are really the three things that I brought to bear on the situation and 3 1/2 months turned the whole thing around. Wow, that's, that's really good use case or, or case study from your books. And, and I, I want to sort of amplify this, what you mentioned this point where is you are the magic, you are the magic of your business, which I couldn't agree more because we, we talk to more than 7080 farmers every month. We host entrepreneurs meet ups here in London, right? And you won't believe this, but a small sample data we have for the year is let's say average fifty a month. We'd never go less than 70, but still let's say 50, around 600 people we touch with their lives, right? Every month, every year, 99.9% people are perfectionists. They love their product, their service so much that they invest into. It's so much that they forget that they're building it for the consumers. They're so good with what they do. They're so talented in what they do is they actually forget that they're not selling the product or service. They're selling themselves when they're going to venture capitalism and they're going for, you know, raise money to, to, to these capital funds. Yeah, I was reading a book called E Myth. I don't know if you have ever touched. Of course. Yeah. Michael Gerber. Yeah, it says that you can't be the artist, you can't be the cook, you can't be the manufacturer, you can't be the plumber, you can't be the artist of creating a table. You need to have this different 5 hats on your head if you want to run a business, right? One of them is manager, one of another one is accountant, things like that. This is not what people understand when they want to get into the founder space. What mindset or framework or blueprint you would share with the new upcoming founders in this world or want to become founder soon? They should be focusing on so that they can develop this mindset because you know, nobody's born founder from, you know, birth. They build these habits, this mindset. So what would you advise them to convert their current mindset into the fruitful? One, I think I would share 2, two or two thoughts and I love that you're asking this question because I also see what you see and there's a lot of unnecessary suffering that happens that also slows down growth when founders have this perfectionistic streak that they turn inward towards themselves as well. So the first is develop a gain mindset. GAIN gain mindset. This is an idea from brilliant coach named Gay Hendrix. And there's a book about this called The Gap and the gain. So the gain mindset is opposed to or contrasted with a gap mindset, which is what most founders operate inside of. And a gap mindset is a mindset in which you look at the current situation and you measure it against something in the future. That's usually an ideal or a standard. You have how things should be, and you see the gap. And the gap that you see between today's reality and how you think things should be occurs for you like a problem, like an expression of some failure on your part and on others parts. And it is something that must be remedied immediately, right? So it's that's a gap mindset. And all you ever see is the lack gap. Mindsets create unnecessary psychological stress, burnout, overworking, under indexing on the things that matter, etcetera. And then the gain mindset is the opposite. You measure what's there today backwards against where you started and you recognize the ground that's been taken. So you recognize the gains. And a gain mindset builds psychological momentum, confidence, and a desire to continue growing. So one thing I would invite founders to consider is start working on building a gain mindset. And part of that is just recognizing that you're not the founder today that you will be in a year from now. A year from now, you'll be significantly stronger as a founder. But you can't be that founder today. You can't be the founder today that you will be a year from now. You can only be today the founder you are today. So if you develop a gain mindset and you can have some appreciation for the ground you've taken and some appreciation for yourself, then when you do see the gap between where you are and where you want to be, it doesn't have to be a gap that occurs to you like a an example of what's wrong with you or evidence for that you're not good enough. It can just be an inspiring gap. Like, Oh my God, how amazing would it be to get from here to there? You go to work on that while still appreciating the gains that you've taken. So that's the first thing I would say from a mindset perspective, work on that. People are often afraid of that because they think if they stop beating themselves up, if they stop just paying attention to the gap, but they won't push as hard and they won't perform as well. But empirically speaking, that's just not true. It doesn't play out that way. So that's an unnecessary fear. The second thing I would say is more tactical or more strategic or both as opposed to being mindset, and that is this. Both startups and founders go through distinct phases and their life cycle. Many people are familiar with the five phases of the founder, sorry, of the startup arc where you have a discovery phase where you're exploring an idea and then you have a whole exploration phase where you put something out like an MVP to kind of see what market feedback is like second phase, third phase, you're trying to find product market fit, trying to see can you get this thing to click. Then fourth phase, once you do that, you're in the scale phase where now that you've got product market fit, it's like how big can we grow? And then at some point you reach maturity. So there are these five phases. Most founders don't realize that they are also a startup. Founders are a startup and founders go through distinct phases in their development and those phases are linked to the phase that the business is in. You don't need the same skill sets when you're in the exploration stage that you need in the maturity stage. You just don't they they have no need. There's no application. There aren't enough people to manage. And so it would really be who founders to appreciate then each stage of their business's life cycle from exploration to maturity. They need to learn how to act appropriately to the phase that their business is in and to the phase that they're in and build the right skills for that stage. That will really help them because if you're listening to, you know, David Senra on the Founders podcast talk about how Jeff Bezos handled something in Amazon's 30th year of business, that was a challenge. And you're in year 2 and you think you're supposed to be like Jeff Bezos, just completely the wrong example. You know what you need to be working on. So the to your question, the second thing I would say is learn what phase of the phases of startup life are like. And then appreciate that you are going to go through phases. And your job is to develop the skills that are appropriate to the phase you're in and the one you're about to enter into. And that will help you narrow down what you need to put your attention on to the things that really move the needle. Indeed, and I couldn't agree more with you on this one because this is so people are so infatuated with all these interviews we listen to from these super successful founders, but they're right now actually at the stage 1. So they should be actually listening to people who are either on stage 1 or stage 2 or somewhere a little bit further ahead than them, right. One thing you mentioned in your case study was around influencing people. That is a very key point, right? It's not just about influencing the investor or the users or even the people you're hiring for. It is also about how people have perception around you. For example, people in England send their kids to Durham University if they want them to be a politician since from the childhood, because they understand that this university or this school or this college, this area is very, very focused around how the politicians think, what kind of strategies they focus more on. And they don't, they don't care about other things, right? People who want their kids to become scientists or people who do something, you know, out of the world, they're more, you know, pinpointed around Cambridge and Oxford, right? And people who want their kids to make money, they send their kids to London, Imperial College, London Business School, because they're totally focused on numbers, right? OK. And obviously it depends upon what qualities you have. But no matter where you go, no matter where you go, you go to Durham, you go to Oxford, you go to Cambridge, you come to London. There is a common theme around all these institutions, organization, which is they teach you how to be confident and influence other people, right? And you have pinpointed this influence thing because in founders life they cannot survive without this particular skill set, true. And nobody bond with it. You have to learn and grow this in, you know, this personality of yours to influence other people. What do you exactly mean when you said that influence actually starts with empathy and ends with storytelling? Would you be able to give us a real world example? Something similar to what you have shared initially in during our talks, but something which could relate to more towards a technology or or SAS startup because 28% of our listeners are people who are working on tech, techs kind of startups. Sure, sure. First off, let's just talk about what we mean by influence, because influence can be used in so many ways, and some of them are considered highly negative or pejorative. In the United States, for example, back in 2016, there was a lot of talk about Russia influencing the election of the president so it could be used in a in a pejorative sense. So what I mean by influence is to alter the way somebody thinks and acts through a conversational process that is humane and transparent and that results in a win win outcomes. So that's the specific way in which I use the term so that we can just exclude things like meddling in someone's election or whatever. So what I mean by influence starts with empathy and ends with storytelling is you have to understand this basic principle of how human beings act. So I'll give you the principle and then we'll go into a story. Human beings are this, we are this really unusual animal on the planet in the sense that our entire relationship to the world is mediated by context and meaning and language all the way down, including our five senses. Even our five senses are mediated by context and meaning and language. And I'll give you an example of what I mean. This is a great story. The story comes from a book written by a neuroscientist called David Eagleman, who's out of Stanford here in the US And he tells the story about this Olympic skier who was born sighted and then at the age of approximately 8, he became blind and even as a blind person, became an Olympic skier. When he reached his 30s, he has already an Olympiad. He had two children. He was married, and they developed a surgery to correct his particular form of blindness. So David Eagleman tells the story that this Olympiad was in the hospital after his surgery, and they were unwrapping the gauze from around his eyes, and he was going to see his children with his eyes for the very first time. So they unwrap his eyes. He looks down upon his children, and he has no idea what he's looking. Yeah, he does not see his children. There's just this flood of visual data hitting his retina and his visual cortex, and he can't make any sense of it. He literally doesn't see his children. So even the idea that there's a border or a boundary to the edge of my body that separates me from the space around me, that isn't a part of just light flooding into the eyes, that is a learned contextual idea that there are borders or boundaries or that there's separate things. So when he saw his children, he didn't see his. Children so he had no idea about it that how he. Had no. He had no memories of it. He had no context for it. He had nothing. OK, so our entire relationship to the world is mediated by meaning. So what does that mean? It means that people's actions are correlated with, or people's actions are always consistent with their view and experience of the world, whatever that is, and it's just different for each person in a situation. Not the way the world is in and of itself, whatever that means. So people can only act in ways that makes sense from their view and experience of the world. They cannot act any other way. Human beings don't work like that. So why am I bringing this up? Because if the way someone's acting now is not the way you want them to act, if you want someone to take an accident they're not currently taking or going to predictably take, that means that that action is not consistent with the way they view and experience the situation. Which means that what you have to do in the conversation is shift their view. You have to get them to see the world in a new way and if you do that successfully, they will naturally take the actions you are committed that they take. So that brings us to the point about empathy, Ash. Not starting with empathy. In other words, not starting with understanding profoundly someone elses view and experience of the situation is like knowing that you want to get to Paris, but you don't know if you're in London or or Sydney, Australia. You don't know where you're starting. So you may know you want to get to Paris, but you have no idea which way to point the plane. So influence begins with empathy, because you have to understand where someone is to understand how to guide them where you want them to land. Is there a? Is there a particular blueprint you follow when you get reached out by a customer or client of yours who reached out to, for example, the the use case you shared initially they came to you with the challenge they were facing. One of their offices were not performing as they should be. When you went there, did you had it already in your mind that this is what I'm going to do or is what it was all spontaneous? Do you follow a certain kind of formula there? I don't. I guess the answer is yes and no. The formula, if there is one, is very general. I think being a great coach, and it's the same with being a great founder, requires that you become a great diagnostician. You really have to have a prowess at looking into any situation and getting down to root causes, and that's challenging because of this thing we're talking about, that there can be a lot of interpretation between you and what's happening as a founder. There's a lot of threat that you deal with, right? If you don't raise the money, you run out of cash. If you don't sell the product out of cash. You know, if you lose this key person and you don't have anyone to replace them because you're only a team of five people, then you know, you might not get someone in place in time or everyone else is going to have to work 24 hour days and they're going to break. There's just threat, threat, threat, threat. This is constantly threat. I like to say like, you know what founders live their their whole life under the sword of Damocles, if you know that reference. So what you have to get really good at as a founder is diagnosing what are the root causes of what's happening. And one of the things that can really support you with that is understanding that although we do live in a chaotic world and there can be things that happen that aren't as directly linked as A + B = C. You know. So for example, let's say you're starting your go to market strategy with this as a SAS company. And the first channel that you're going to go down for your go to market to test your idea is through a warm market or cold outreach to people you have some connection with. OK, So you're going to actually start getting on the phone with people and asking people to test your product and whatever versus like, you know, you're going to go and do social ads or whatever. Well, so it sometimes it's the case when you do that, that you have to put in a massive amount of activity. You have to take 100 actions to get a result. And then the result you get didn't even come directly from one of those actions. But somehow by taking all those actions, there's enough activity going on in the world that so and so mentioned something to so and so and they did it. And then someone comes through it to you on an inbound and you can't even trace it all the way back. So I don't want to say that the world is super simple and it's always like A + B = C, but there is a mechanistic nature to the way things work. So for example, like I just said, when you're starting out in a new project or anything, it takes a massive amount of action to get a result. So if you don't know that you take 5 actions and you get no results, you might conclude incorrectly, oh, this is the wrong product or this is the wrong whatever. When it when the diagnosis that you need is we haven't taken enough action yet, let's take 100 actions. And then if we don't get this much result, then we're going to conclude that this was not a fit, right? So being a good diagnostician is critical to being successful as a founder. So when I go into a situation like that or when I meet and when I start with a new client, I start being very curious. This is my formula. Start with curiosity. Just be really, really curious. Gather as much data as you can. You have to be able to pull the signal from the noise. Don't jump to conclusions. O if there's a formula, that would be the first step of my formula. Be curious, create the right diagnosis and then take the right actions. You know, it's like 1-2, three. If I were going to make it super simple and broad, that would be it. We can double click on any of those that you like. There's a lot more nuance to it than that. But I think that being, you know, being a diagnostician is a great thing to focus on. Indeed, indeed. Now that makes sense. And I think for our listeners also, it's quite straightforward what you have explained, although you need a mentor, you need a coach to you know, get more girth in that particular skill set. So thanks for that. You also mentioned something around performance, right? You, you mentioned that the 80% of your performance is clarity and. Yes. You know, that's something very, very tangible when you're communicating with someone that if I have clarity, that means I have already achieved 80% of what have delivered from a performance perspective. Can you uncover that for our listeners a little bit and make it more digestible so that they can understand it? What it exactly mean? And what are these 4 pillars you always talk about in the connections to elevate your performance? Would you be able to diverge into that tool so? Yeah. So first, this is a like A2 fold statement that 80% of performance is clarity and then 80% of clarity is connection. So let's start with the clarity piece. I'll give you a silly example of this. Let's say ash, that you want to paint your house, but you've never painted your house before. If I want you to be able to paint your house, I have to give you a picture of what that looks like that is so clear that you can see how to take each successive action you need to take. So if all I say to you is let's get some paint and you know, and go paint, paint, paint the outside the color you want. You don't have clarity. But if I say ash, go to your local hardware store and pick three colors you think you might like for your house and then go to the counter with those 3 paint chips and ask them to make you 3 pints of that paint in an exterior grade of paint. Then go, while they're mixing it to the aisle where they keep the brushes and get yourself three foam brushes that cost $0.50, fifty pence. However, you say that in your local currency, wherever you're listening from, and then go back to your house and I want you to paint A1 foot by 1 foot square approximately of each color on all four sides of your house. And then I want you to look at that color in the morning, the afternoon, in the evening, the next day and see which one you like the best. Then pick your color, then go back to the hardware store. And if I just kept going right and said, I want you to get this many gallons and I want you to get this kind of tape. I want you to get this kind of brush. If I kept going, by the time I was done, you'd be like, oh, OK, I know how to pay my house. Now would you do it as well as a maestro? No, but you could do it because you're clear about what it looks like to do it. So once you have clarity on what needs to happen and how to take those actions, you're 80% of the way there makes sense. It does it does. I don't remember the name of that painter, but there is there is a very famous painter who actually painted what's the name of this guy? Brad Pitt picture and the the mechanism he uses. He prints a big picture of the person he is going to paint, divides it into small boxes with lines, right? Yes, the creates and then he paints each block for a year. That's how he paints every single picture. I forgot the name of this. He is from US very famous guy, very big guy. I think he he's, he's somewhere in California. I guess when you were telling me about this clarity piece, my brain remembered of that particular incident. That's why I was thinking about what was the name of this, this guy. OK, OK, Yeah. I wish I could help you out, but I don't. I don't know who that is, but that is fascinating. And it's a great example of what we're just talking about. Right. So clarity now for a founder, what, you know, what does that? What's that look like as the founder's not trying to paint their house. So clarity is about coming to an understanding of what is the right next action of integrity for you to take. And this is really important because sometimes it's, especially in the early days of a startup, you actually don't know what the outcome is going to be. You need to do a lot of experimentation. So you don't get to have clarity about how to how it all plays out. And the best that you can do is get to clarity about the right next action. This is also true in relationships, Co founder relationships, maybe even hiring interview, etcetera. Sometimes all that you're clear about is like, Oh, there's a little something over here that doesn't feel quite right. And I don't know exactly what it is, but I but you can get clear that I need to look into that and I need to understand what it is that's bothering me. And So what you know is that the right next action to take is to look into that thing. So let me give you an example. I was leading an off site last week for one of my clients who was their 2026 kickoff. And in this off site, part of what we were doing is we were dealing with some very challenging, let's say cultural dynamics that were thwarting progress. And so I had a meeting with the founder after I had met with their team and I was giving the founder some feedback along with their Co founder and their head of people. And I could tell that the feedback wasn't landing with the founder, with the CEO founder in the appropriate way for them to start to address what was happening. It was almost like it was getting deflected a little bit or it was getting changed somehow. And I didn't know exactly why, but I knew it was happening. And so I stopped the meeting because it's the four of us were all talking. I stopped the meeting and I said, I'm not satisfied with how we're doing conveying this to you. I don't think this is landing for you the way it needs to, so let's try again. But all I knew was that was the right next action to take in some way was to point out what wasn't working. And then the second I said that and everyone stopped, the Co founder who was not the one getting the debrief said exactly the wrong thing. But it was exactly the wrong thing in a way that I could say, oh, I know what we need to do right? And then I said the next thing and then boom, it just the whole thing landed for the CEO in the right way. And they got the whole picture and the, and then they knew what they needed to do, right? So I didn't know what it was I needed to say. I didn't know what I was missing. I just knew something wasn't right. So for a founder, I've just let this in. Sometimes clarity means understanding what is the right next action of integrity for you to take. Now, how do you get there? So this comes to the connection piece. OK, is that boy. And this one is really difficult for founders who tend to be deeply technical in some way in particular, which is that we want to make decisions logically, but human beings don't work that way. We make decisions emotionally and we justify them after the fact with logic. That is the way it works. And here's how we know that from the science. When people have traumatic brain injuries that damage the limbic area of the brain, the emotional center of the brain, where their emotionality in some way gets either thwarted or blocked or changed, they have a hard time figuring out what clothes to put on. They will spend the whole day figuring out what to wear. They can't make simple decisions because the decisions do get made emotionally and then justified logically. OK, so you got to know this about your design as a human being and not try to pretend something else. So then that actually opens a huge door for you for clarity, because where you can begin with trying to get clarity is understanding where you lack clarity. And a lot of that will be emotionally. So sometimes a your clarity, for example, is that you are afraid of a certain outcome happening. So all of your thinking is around trying to avoid the experience of what you think it would be like if this thing you don't want happens. So like you're afraid of losing a key leader on your team. Everyone else on the team thinks this is the wrong person and even you might think they're the wrong person for the job, but you're so afraid of how hard it's going to be for the company if you lose them or you're afraid of what that would feel like. Maybe you feel like you failed because you're the one who hired them or whatever, that you won't let yourself see what is right in front of you, which is even though it's going to be hard, clearly the right next thing to do is to either let them go or tell them either this changes or we have to separate. So you can't see that with clarity because you're too keyed into the emotion of fear and trying to avoid the thing you're afraid of instead of seeing what's actually there. So this is that piece about connection, right? That's what I'm saying is connecting to what? The reality on the ground and then connecting to the interpretive frameworks you're using to make sense of it. Those are two of the four pillars, right? Then connecting to yourself, which means connecting to your experience. Like, wow, I really feel afraid. I am so afraid that if I let this person go, the whole company will crater or I'm afraid we're going to go through this thing and whatever. Just actually seeing that for what it is without basing some conclusion on it. Just like letting yourself see what's there. So those kinds of connections are what allow you to get to the space of clarity. Like, OK, I see all this and I do do have this fear, but what I know is right is that either this person has to change this thing or we have to separate. Even though I'm afraid of how it goes, I know that's the right next thing to do. And then finding the courage to act on what you know is the right next action of integrity for you to take. That is so much of what it takes to be a founder when you are struggling with something is getting to the right next action. It tells me that most of the time, if you understand the direction you want to go, you have the clarity in your mind and you know how to measure it, track it and keep it going. You're almost there. You can achieve things in a way you want. You were pursuing, you know, your perception was knocking on your door and saying, oh, this is can be done right? Why do why people don't achieve it then if the information isn't open there books there which provide this kind of information. Why do we be? Why do founders fail? OK, so that's a big question and there's more than one answer to this question. OK, there's more than one answer, but let's talk about a couple of the key things. So First off, I think you want to start, if you're a founder with this fundamental orientation. And for many founders, this has to be a shift of orientation and that is this tension between success and fulfillment. So success is achieving some goal or aim, some outcome. Fulfillment is, is the experience and quality of life one gets by pursuing things that are intrinsically valuable to you, intrinsically meaningful to you, not meaningful because of the outcome. So in other words, pursuing something that's worth failing at. The mistake many founders make is that they don't, they're 100% in it for the success, for the exit. So that way, if it doesn't succeed, and as you and I both know, most startups will fail, statistically, if the only reason you were in it was for the exit and then you have one of those businesses that doesn't make it, well, what? You know, what was that? A good investment of your very limited time in this life. If there's nothing intrinsically meaningful in it for you, was it really worth it? You have to confront that question. Yeah. I think the game is to do everything you can to be successful at something that you find fulfilling, something that's worth failing at. Why? Well, because this to the second point, many times some of the people who achieve the most amount of eminence need to go through several failures before they land on the thing that will ultimately breakthrough for them. And I'll give you a very famous example since you brought up painters. After I brought up painters, I'll give you an example of another painter, which is Van Gogh. And there's a great story about Van Gogh in a book which I recommend by David Epstein called Range. How generalists are now succeeding in a world of increasing specialization. He tells Van Gogh's story. Van Gogh had three or four careers before he started painting. He tried being a pastor or priest. He tried being a sailor. You know, I think he tried being a school teacher. I may have one of those wrong. And then then he started painting. And it's by the way, as we all know also, Van Gogh didn't get to experience the accolades that have been given to him in his own lifetime even. But when Van Gogh painted starry night, he saw starry night. He saw the night sky like a sailor might like someone who navigates for their life by the star ours, but he also saw it as a priest might see it as someone or pastor might see it as someone who looks up at the heavens and sees God. So when he looks up at the sky, his what he sees is informed by this rich experience of life he's had, many of which were what he decided ultimately were the wrong careers for him. So you might have failures along your way, but the important thing is when your business fails, when you fail to achieve something, that doesn't mean you are are a failure. It means the idea didn't succeed. It means maybe your performance didn't match up with what was needed, or some combination of both. But if if you can avoid saying to yourself, well, I'm a failure because my business failed, then you can learn from what you chose to pursue and even be inspired by yourself that you took on something so risky. I've had failures in my life, in my, in in my my very first business started off successful and then ultimately failed. I chose to shut it down. So that business failed. I grew so much in that business. It was a foundation for the businessman I ultimately became. And I don't regret it one bit, but I just didn't stop because I loved the possibility of building a meaningful business. So it was worth failing that. So I think to your question, why do businesses fail? There could be so many reasons, but I think kind of behind your question is people are trying to say how do I not fail? Well, OK, you should absolutely do everything you can to not fail, but make sure you pick something that's worth failing at first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and thanks for sharing Mango's example, because that is the crux of being successful in your life. You we always talk about this overnight success, but if you look deeply into any founder's life, you will it's. A 12 year overnight success. Years, years, years of hard work, sleepless nights and all these kind of stuff before getting that one day where we had the overnight success. So thanks. Thanks for sharing that, Andrew. Great stuff. I mean, I think I can, we, we can talk, I think the whole night. I, I don't think so I will stop, but obviously we have a limited amount of time and we have to go into our lightning round. Also, I've got 6 quick five questions for you. OK, at any step. If you think you don't want to answer any of them, just give me a skip and then we can move on to the next one. Are you ready, ready. Great stuff. What are the top 3 strategies for founders to make sure that they lead as a leader in their space in 2026? In their space or with their company? I think the the reason I'm using the word space is because nowadays founders are not just somebody who runs the company. They have to be influential in their industry also to become successful. For example, if you are, if you run a delivery company like Deliveroo or Uber Eats, right? It's not just about how you raise the money or running your company. It is also about how you're influencing the outside world. Because a lot of people will have the perception of why would I work as a Uber driver for this man who doesn't care about my festival? Or why would I order from his app who doesn't care about my perspective, right? So you have to be influential in your industry, your space. Gotcha. OK, so in their space, so I think I'm I wasn't, you know, these are rapid fire questions that I would not expect me. So I'm making this up. OK, First off, I think you have to be willing to be a big deal. And I think for many people, it's, it's may be available to them to consider that they landed on a really important idea. But it's hard to consider yourself as someone who's going to wind up being a big deal in your space, like a disruptor, like someone who's actually going to change the game. I think you have to be willing to be that person to be able to see the opportunity that's there to be seen. So that has to do with your relationship with yourself, you know, be willing to to disrupt. Secondly, I think you have to be, you have, you have to take in lots and lots of of like noise and look for the signal. So that the best founders I know, and I'm not saying I know them personally, but or I know about them, including the ones I do know. So like Jensen Wong, I've never met him, but I know a lot about him, you know, and the way he operates. And then there's the ones I have, the best founders I know they, they get lots and lots of data from the world, from the world of their company, from the world around their area. They're just almost insatiable for data. And because they think of themselves as someone who's capable of disrupting something, they're available to see the signal in the noise. So I think that's a second strategy. OK. And then the third strategy I would say is really spend the time you need to spend to be true to yourself. People are attracted to people. And when you meet a human being who's up to something that they authentically believe in and that they operate by values that they that they really honor and that are important to them, there's a something about their presence that is incredibly magnetic. It attracts the right customers, it attracts the right employees, etcetera, the right investors. So be true to yourself as a strategy. Really work on that because it has a magnetic power. Great stuff. What book would you recommend to our audience and why? My. God your questions are so hard. There's like so many ways you could go with this. What book would I recommend to our audience and why? OK, for early stage founders, I'm going to speak to those, especially those who are struggling. I think I would recommend an uncommon book called The Third Door by Alex Benayan. And it's a book about a kid, Alex. It's a true story. It's not a fictional story. Who was sitting, you know, in his freshman college freshman dorm room regretting his choice to become a doctor because all he wants to do is write a book that would change his generation by learning from the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. And he's like this nobody like no one knows this guy He's literally just he's a first generation American immigrant, you know, and he winds up doing it and he discovers along the way this principle of the third door, which is there's 3 doors into every opportunity. There's the front door where everyone waits in line to get in and you only get in and you have avip pass there's a side door that a few people know about, but again, you have to know someone again and there's a third door and the third door is like in the back alley. There's one window that they never lock because the lock is broken. And if you slide the the window open and you pop in there, you can get into the kitchen and then you can meet the person you need to meet in the room because they won't know you weren't let in through the front door. It's like it's the idea is there's always a third door. I think founders need to know about the third door, that there's always a way in to the opportunity they're looking for. And it's a great read. It's a page Turner. Perfect. I'm going to add that into my Kindle reading list and and go through it later on. Right now I'm going through the emit and after that I have another one listed, but after that I'll add this one. What 1 attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder? What is 1? What attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder? Resilience. Resilience. 100% resilience, you have to be able to take the blows and get back up and keep going. Indeed, indeed. What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit? It's called productivity mastery and it is a system for managing absolutely everything that you need to make sure happens and actions you need to make sure you take without relying at all on your memory. So it takes absolutely everything out of memory, everything out of like sticky notes and to do lists you have to remember to look at. And it puts everything into your calendar in a way that you no longer have to worry about how am I going to get something done? Productivity Mastery. Productivity mastery. Yeah, that's a good one. I'm going to search for it. What's a new or a crazy business idea you would love to pursue if you had time? Well, I don't have this. I mean, I wasn't expecting your question, so this is top of mind, but I don't have this fully fledged as an idea. But I'll tell you the outcome. One of the things I'm noticing as a trend, at least in the USI don't know if it's as severe where you are in Great Britain. It's definitely global, but it's really heightened right now in the US is the complete lack of connection and civil discourse. So I've just, I've really noticed in the world right now around me that where people are ideologically different, they can't talk anymore and they can't connect anymore and they can't work together to find a way forward. So in my view, things are really breaking down socially here in the US as a result of this. So if I were going to come up with a business that would make any kind of impact in the world, I would try to, I would come up with some kind of business that addresses that and that reconnects human beings to human beings across that ideological divide, where people can remain on the same side of humanity even when they differ about what's the best approach and what are the right values so that we don't break down. But we were meant to be connected, and we're more and more disconnected now than we've ever been. Cool, that's a very good idea actually. I think I can related to it a little bit, not as much as maybe in US, but a little bit I can I can understand. Anyone who's watching the US can probably appreciate this. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And last but not least, what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know? OK, so I'll give you 2 really quickly. One is I used to be a professional dancer and the instructor and I was once in an IMAX film with a performance troupe that I performed in. And then secondly, I recently completed two what are called ultra marathon mountain biking races. So there are mountain biking races over 100 miles long up in the 10,000 foot elevation of the Colorado Rockies. So I'm an avid cyclist and mountain. Biker. Awesome, you have those one of those racing bikes for the mountain. Oh. Yeah, I do. I might have two. I'm not saying I do. I might. I might have two even though you only need one. Always happens, isn't it one of our, I don't know how many Macbooks I have right now. I mean, on my table right now there are three three. I have that cylinder 1. And then I have like the laptop. I have the pro and then I have the Mac mini and then I have the studios love it. It's just you just keep buying things with Jilla, right? Great. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story and packing all the wisdoms. This was a great talk for me personally. I really appreciate the knowledge I've shared. If people wanna get in touch with you, people wanna check out your website, what's the best way to do it? Yeah, my website is www.andrewpulse.com and there is a contact me page there. And then I'm also very active on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn handle is just LinkedIn slash in slash Andrew Pulse and people can DM me there or request to connect. Great stuff Andrew, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your inspiring journey and the impactful work you're doing through services. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on Founders. Podcast, Thank you, Ash, Mine as well. Thanks for the great work you're doing. I appreciate you.