Latest / Exit Algorithms / Adapt or Die: How to Lead Your Team Through the AI Revolution | Nikki Barua (#54)
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to exit algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations and prepare your business for a high value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera. And today I'm excited to bring on Nikki Barua. She's a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, keynote speaker and co-founder of Flipwork, a company helping organizations reinvent how their people work in the age of AI. She's an Ernst & Young North America entrepreneurial winning woman named one of Entrepreneur Magazine's 100 most influential women, holds three master's degrees, speaks five languages, and has spent 25 years helping transform global enterprises. Nikki, so excited to have you here. Welcome to the show. speaker-1: Thanks for inviting me, Pete. I'm so thrilled to be here. speaker-0: Yeah, I can't wait to ⁓ for this conversation today. gave a little like high level intro ⁓ your background, but I'd love to hear from your own words if you can share with listeners your journey through business and what got you, what led you to Flipwork. Yeah. ⁓ speaker-1: Well, the through line of my entire story, my life and career has been all about reinvention. Every chapter has been ⁓ facing a massive obstacle and ⁓ myself that turned that obstacle into an opportunity. whether was me leaving my hometown, growing up in India and coming to America as an immigrant with no resources, no relationships, and really learning. to adapt and figure out how to be successful here, building my corporate career in strategy and transformation, working with some of the world's largest companies. to hold my own ⁓ the boardroom when you're surrounded by top executives of the world's biggest companies and ⁓ this young, framed woman in the room. And it teaches you a lot about inner confidence, about having trust and belief in yourself, influence other people and to work hard to earn your seat at the table. And from there ⁓ to at height of my corporate career, walking away from all of that to pursue my entrepreneurial dreams. And ⁓ for the ⁓ 18 years, building ⁓ businesses and every single business, no matter what the focus or the industry was, the through line for every single business has been really looking at the most important problem facing society at that time. you know, figuring out how I could create impact at scale for that problem. And that's what led me to flip work because the biggest challenge facing humanity right now is AI is disrupting our way of life and work. and the technology is racing ahead and people are getting left behind. And that's what I call the exponential divide. And flip work exists simply to close that divide. How can you help people reinvent how they think, live and work so that we can amplify what makes us uniquely human and ⁓ get replaced by technology? speaker-0: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it seems to be a common theme. And we're going to talk more about flip work and AI, of course. Yeah, I just love how you overcome that imposter syndrome that being a woman and from a different country and yeah, really impressive. we ⁓ go a little here? I saw you had successful business beyond curious and how to exit from that. I love if you get starved, you mind sharing kind of that journey and if there's any lessons learned from that incident process. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's that was my first. ⁓ wasn't my very first business. There were some smaller ventures I'd started, ⁓ it was the first one that achieved a lot of scale and success. And, know, for all intents and purposes, I was a first time founder, completely bootstrap business. And, you know, so much you don't know. But sometimes because you don't know it. You're also not afraid to try things. know, sometimes ignorance can be bliss because you haven't heard the nose yet. So you just kind of go all in. And that business was really about, you know, I called it like making elephants run, helping large companies innovate at speed. And so we focused on working with Fortune 500 companies that didn't know how to launch product, you know, come up with ideas and take it to market quicker. And we became sort of the incubator, if you will, of taking them from idea to launch ⁓ in a very short period of time. it was such a valuable offering that we just grew really fast and won tons of awards for the work that we did and all of that. And it was ⁓ the best part that journey for me was just an incredible team that was best in class in every way. And the biggest lessons I learned, the three big ones I'd say is know your unique zone of genius as a business and really double down on it and say no to everything else. started off there of operating in our zone of genius, but as the business grew, we started getting more and more opportunities that were sort of more tangential, not really core. and I think that was looking back, it was a mistake because it diluted our energy and focus, you know, cause when you start doing a lot of different things, you start hiring different types of skills outside of your core ⁓ that you want to be known for. so that was certainly one of like really doubled down on a core. It's not just about core market niche. It's core capability. Do what you do best and be known for it and really double down on it. Number two, having the right people in the right roles at the right time, to me, is the most fundamental business principle of all. ⁓ that answer changes all the time. Someone who was the right person in the right role in could become the wrong person in that role by Q4. And you have to constantly think about your job as the founder of the CEOs to constantly think about. how you're moving people along and ensuring that everyone's in the right place. And then the third biggest ⁓ is know yourself, is a personal one, ⁓ know when own passion ⁓ shifts and your shifts. For me, that was a point This business was an extension of my corporate career. It was similar to what I'd been doing in corporate, except it was my own company. I realized my passion and interests were expanding in completely new dimensions. And was longer the right person to keep leading this company because I knew how to run the business, but that doesn't mean I was still as passionate about the mission and what the business was about. And that became... ⁓ ⁓ a point of misalignment frankly, led to burnout, like where I experienced a lot of burnout from ⁓ feeling misaligned ⁓ know, decided to, ⁓ know, that it was time for an exit and, ⁓ you know, ⁓ it was the best decision I could have made because it was a great run that would not have stayed that way ⁓ I continued to go along. And I find so many founders, feel like because it's a business they started, when they've run out of steam ⁓ their interests have diverged, are to let go. ⁓ And you to separate your identity, your own identity from the identity of your business. You are not your business. And you have to always keep ⁓ connecting dots to see whether it's still the right answer. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. Yeah, I know. Thank you. That's a lot of good nuggets in there. I think we can wrap this show up now. I really appreciate that. Yeah, one of the things you said really stood out too is finding signal versus ignoring the noise. think I got that concept from, think, I don't know, Mr. Wonderful talks about that or something. But. Yeah. speaker-1: you It takes a lot of deep introspection and ⁓ on part, but also level of intellectual honesty. Because the thing always gets in the way is ego ⁓ and worrying about other people will say. I I went through that where I was like, well, here I've won all these awards and recognition for this business I started. but I just don't feel the same kind of passion anymore that I did like 15 years ago. You know, it's just not the same. And there's other problems that are really tugging at my heart that I want to do something about. So at one point I explored, could I run multiple companies at the same time? ⁓ management skills standpoint, the answer is yeah, I'm pretty skilled at managing multiple businesses. I could easily do it, but not the same. as the responsibility as a founder of, you could run multiple companies, but make sure you are equally passionate about each one and not ⁓ one as a stepchild and the other as your favorite child. speaker-0: Got it. That's good advice. speaker-1: Where it ultimately shows up is people and culture, right? Because if the person at the top less passionate, there's no chance you're going to attract the right people and ask them to give more than you are willing to. speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely makes sense. Even if you can do it, it's probably not best for the business even the best use of your time. speaker-1: Yeah, exactly right. speaker-0: Yeah, so, okay. And then you started Flipwork a few years after. so it's amazing you be able to use all of that experience, lessons learned from building a team, like you said, and knowing when and who to hire. Yeah, can you talk a bit more about what Flipwork does? Yeah, what problem is it solving? speaker-1: Yeah, and having had a career ⁓ enterprise transformation and technology transformation over multiple decades, what struck me about the impact of AI was the speed. In previous decades, whether it was internet revolution or mobile or cloud, ⁓ each one, ⁓ was a bit more time for companies and people to adapt to that change. You're familiar with how long e-commerce really took. In fact, it's still growing. And after all of these years, it's still growing. But if someone did not embrace e-commerce back in 1995, it's not like they were going out of business. You could still have a brick and mortar store and still make money and still have customers. It wasn't an all or nothing kind of thing. What's different about AI, is it doesn't give you the luxury of time. It's pretty much adapt or die, right? And the speed and scale at which it's happening, it's unnatural for people to adapt to that speed of change. And what became very clear looking at companies was they were investing in the technology and mandating that their people use it. So here's this new AI tool, ⁓ or got Chad GPT licenses, everybody needs to use it to do your jobs. Well, that's great, but that doesn't help people figure out, what does that mean? Am I training my replacement? Am I using it correctly? What happens to safety and security and guardrails? Like, people didn't know what they were doing. ⁓ so adoption was pretty low. And then ⁓ were getting frustrated that we're investing in AI and we're not getting the ROI. What's ⁓ gap? Well, the gap is the people adoption part. And that's really why Flipwork exists because it's flipping the old way and embracing the new way. And it's about reinventing how you think alongside AI, how you work alongside AI and how you build and do your job and work differently with AI. And it's not simply taking new technology and forcing it in an old process because that's like putting a... a Ferrari engine and a lawnmower, it's not going to go any faster. You have to reimagine everything in that. And that's a pretty complex process. And it has to be done right, ⁓ you're really impacting people and culture, ⁓ just process and tools. So ⁓ that's Flipwork was started. And we've ⁓ built a diagnostic ⁓ and a unique method of transformation. ⁓ that drives change every 90 days delivers 8 to 10x ROI in that timeframe. So been extremely successful and very, very effective. speaker-0: Yeah. Oh, I love that. That makes perfect sense. know, adapt or die. It's a good phrase. Wow. So, and it's a perfect opportunity. I agree. It's changing so quickly. You can barely keep up. Even the agents, you know, how quickly they changed the eight, know, just in the last, what, two months. speaker-1: I mean, now we are like past talking about Gen AI, like generative AI was great and people are having fun at it. But now suddenly, know, managers are leading hybrid teams of humans plus AI agents. Well, that changes even job as a manager. You know, like ⁓ have to understand how to lead humans and machines. That changes who your coworker is and how you collaborate. And ⁓ you no longer need to give instructions to AI and it just does the work. That's pretty game changing. And we're seeing that in the headlines, right? Like there's not a week that goes by where there's not massive layoffs or stock price that has impacted. Various industries are seeing just the sort of ⁓ that this is causing. ⁓ from an investment standpoint, I mean, it's also impacting investors because they don't know like how to accurately ⁓ a business. mean, SaaS stocks been, you know, really all over the place. ⁓ But if you have a holding, you've got holdings in your portfolio, mean, that's a pretty significant decision you have to make about the right timing and level of investment to make to upgrade your portfolio. ⁓ you end up with holdings that are frankly becoming more more worthless as every week goes by. speaker-0: Yeah, wow. Yeah, a lot to look out for, almost too much to keep up. speaker-1: Yeah, it is. And that's the most common sentiment that everybody is feeling, no matter how experienced and advanced they are. The most common thing we hear is, I'm overwhelmed. Every day there's something new that's happening and I don't know how to keep up. And I feel like I'm getting left behind and becoming more more irrelevant, even though, yes, I do use chat GPT. I do try to keep up with AI, but I just don't know. to make sense of it all because it's happening so fast I feel like I'm spinning in circles going nowhere. speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and how do you navigate that change? Yeah. And yeah, it's a great moment in time here Flipwork. You're growing it, you're scaling. How is that process so far? And where do you see Flipwork going in the next few years? speaker-1: For us, we are truly an AI native company. So it's really interesting to build a business this time in ⁓ context of AI, how I build businesses in the past was so different ⁓ compared to this time. single ⁓ aspect of the business, we had to look it from the lens of how should it be designed? given that AI already exists and in the next five to 10 years, it's going to be massively different. how do we, the degree that you can, how do you make decisions and choices that give you the highest leverage and speed? So that was, know, every single choice was very intentional of designing around speed and agility. That's it. It wasn't about like heft. You know, and domination was all about how can we be the most agile in terms of adapting to any kind of change, because we can't predict the change, but we have to be designed in an agile way. so our core focus is really becoming the most trusted thought leader in the space of, you know, people-driven AI transformation. And that's why we're focusing on media content on white papers and publishings through our proprietary diagnostic on collaborations with universities and researchers and really certifying experts in our methodology that allows them to provide this ⁓ transformation to industries and ⁓ different globally, because that also allows us to scale ⁓ in very different way. I think the world ahead is extremely uncertain for anyone to make any kind of reasonable ⁓ The ⁓ thing can prepare for is to design yourself change and adapt quickly. our goal is do that for our clients and to also live that ourselves. speaker-0: Yeah, I was just going to say that too. It's funny you're advising clients, you're also applying the same strategies and techniques. ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah, like we don't have long term plans because it makes no sense that like how can you possibly have a five year plan? I don't even know what the world's going to look like in five years. Will there even still be jobs? I don't know. What does a company look like? ⁓ ⁓ of ⁓ away from the industrial era kind of, you know, hierarchical models. If it looks different, ⁓ our services change? know, what do we ⁓ provide at that point. So everything's going to be so different. our approach is following the exact same model as our clients. We use our own diagnostic on ourselves. We operate in 90-day sprints. Everything we do is around a 90-day sprint. And we move really, really fast in terms of execution and keep everything really asset light, like fixed asset light. And that gives us flexibility. we want high valuation and light, you know, ⁓ lightweight movement. speaker-0: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Keep it agile and nimble as you grow. Yeah. And I find that topic fascinating of the intersection of humans and machines you grow. Is there, I mean, of course you've noticed one team member can now accomplish the work of perhaps three or depending on the role. How do you... ⁓ assess that or maybe it might be helpful if you share at a high level what that framework is, that 90 day sprint. speaker-1: Yeah, well, first of all, even for our own team, mean, we, every single person on the team is really sort of agentic, if you will. Like everybody is, mastered like how to work with not just ⁓ AI, with agents, multiple agents that ⁓ do many of the job function. So it's almost like 10Xing each person's capacity. It's like one person is doing 10 people's jobs. with that, but outside of that, every function, we have a whole team of AI agents doing like every single function. There's just so much gentrification in our business. It's kind of wild to see them even collaborate with each other, right? Like one function talking to another function and like getting things done. And it's really having humans as oversight for that process. And path to getting there now, Does every team start there on day one? Absolutely not. So the starting point is usually like, what's your current state? Your business as usual of how you've always done the work. So in that 90 day timeframe, the first thing we do is start with a diagnostic that helps us figure out the baseline of the current state. Where are they in terms of their workflows, their tools, their mindset, the behaviors, the collaboration methods, even the leadership trust, and all of those things. So that helps us understand kind of where are they today. And from there, every week they go through a step-by-step process that's very guided so that they feel safe in that process instead of feeling like they got thrown off the deep end and this is how I used to do now, I don't know how I'm supposed to do all this new stuff. Every week, it's almost like a capstone project. Like you kind of go step-by-step, take this action this week, let's work on changing this piece. So by the end of the 12 weeks, they've completely transformed how they work how they work ⁓ but also how they collaborate with their teams. ⁓ they build their own agents during that time. And so now they've not only ⁓ higher skillset, but they themselves have built AI agents that give them more leverage. But most importantly, they now trust that agent because they built it. Nobody forced it on them. ⁓ so ⁓ almost like, ⁓ that's my clone. Right now I've got two or three clones helping me I can move to higher value work instead of doing the grunt work. And I trust this process because I created it. so the is higher, the productivity is higher and the ROI is off the charts. speaker-0: Wow, I love that. Thank you. That's really helpful hearing ⁓ psychology ⁓ mindset around AI implementation as grow and scale. speaker-1: Yeah, and trust plays such a big role because what we're really asking people to do is everything you've done your whole career, it doesn't matter anymore. Throw it out the window and start trusting this machine that is smarter than you, faster than you, cheaper than you, teach it everything you know. Well, the most immediate fear that comes up ⁓ if it's already better and cheaper and faster than me, and I'm telling it what I know, ⁓ are you going to need me? You're going to replace me. And so I don't want to teach it things because I'm basically training my replacement. even if that doesn't happen, it's a natural fear to have. The only way you get past that is if you are able to discover that value yourself and co-create with the machine. So that's why the ⁓ first aspect is so powerful because it reverses ⁓ fear and turns it into empowerment. speaker-0: Love that. Yeah. Wow. I just got done reading that book by Jeff Woods, the AI driven leader. talks exactly about that, that phenomenon. your early adopters that are going to adopt it quickly no matter what. I think it's like 10 % or something. speaker-1: Yeah, and our diagnostic actually identifies who ⁓ what ⁓ So know who the early adopters are. We know who the ones are that are the resistors and don't want to that are resisting the change. And so that does is not putting a label on them. it really helps us do is figure how to meet them where they are. and how to speak to them in ways that resonate with them. Because if someone is resisting change, telling them, well, if you don't adopt quickly, you're going to get fired, that's not going to be helpful. But if you help to unpack the real fears and help to figure out what will allow them to overcome that resistance and actually embrace AI, then you can get the change a lot faster. And so that entire 90-day process is unique based on their archetype. speaker-0: Got it. speaker-1: So because the diagnostic identifies what their profile is, then it takes them every day, every week, they go through a step-by-step journey designed for their archetype. speaker-0: I see. Okay. Yeah, I was gonna ask where do you where do you see organizations go wrong, mostly when they when they try to adopt AI, is it is it that they're trying to do kind of a blanket. ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah, mean, a few things that are very common. Number one, ⁓ investing in the technology before the people are ready for it. two, introducing a one size fits all training. That's just generic, like, learn about ⁓ generative AI, Like use these prompt structures. Well, that teaches someone how to use the machine, but it doesn't help someone trust the machine. know, and so ⁓ Generic AI training also does not consider the unique needs of different types of people, their different personas and archetypes. ⁓ third mistake that is made is the focus is, again, ⁓ ⁓ usage of the tool, not the rewiring of the process. The process actually makes a much bigger difference. So you think about a process, right? Like every step of that process, ⁓ there's certain way it's been done. So imagine just slapping AI technology on top of that without considering what part of the underlying workflow needs to be changed that this fits in seamlessly into it. ⁓ so that's one of the ⁓ mistakes is the workflows don't change. It's kind of automating. And when you automate the wrong process or an inefficient process, you're still not going to get results. ⁓ So did not become know, couldn't have become Netflix just by throwing internet on top of a video store, right? Netflix was an entirely different kind of business. And so that's really what this is about. speaker-0: Yeah. Great answer. We're going to have some, ⁓ some great clips from this. man. So yeah. ⁓ we can talk a little more about AI tools in general. There's so many tools now available. How you recommend a company ⁓ separate the from the chaff ⁓ and the right, the right tool? speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, it really comes down to there's enterprise level choices, right? Like, you know, whether it's choosing Microsoft Copilot or Gemini or Claude or, you know, there's the LLMs and the enterprise level choices that a company has to make. But that, ⁓ everything down to functional choices. You know, what are the best tools for marketing? What are the best tools for sales or for finance or legal? ⁓ So changes depending on the functional area. ⁓ And for us, we are unbiased and not connected to any of the tool sets. So the way we approach it is more about any vendor assessment or tool assessment. Is it stable enough that it's going to fit into your overall enterprise stack? ⁓ ⁓ enough viability for this? And ⁓ does it fit into how you already do the work and finding the best match within that? But the end the day, mean, the ⁓ There's no end to the number of tools that are just available in the market. And they're all, frankly, pretty affordable. the ⁓ decision, even if you make a wrong decision, it's not that hard to replace it ⁓ start off with something new. ⁓ bigger question is, what is your core business objective that you want to achieve? And that should drive the ⁓ tool Don't start with the tech. Don't go fall into the shiny object syndrome of someone came and pitched us a great tool. And so we just bought licenses. What is your business priority and how can AI help you achieve it? That's it. And focus every single thing you do based off of that North Star. speaker-0: Love it. Yes. ⁓ man. Yeah. Finding the result you want to have first. Yeah. yeah, not trying to fit AI in just cause. speaker-1: Because otherwise you just have a warehouse full of AI tools that are sitting unused it doesn't match ⁓ business goals. speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. I love that. Yeah, how you ⁓ using personally? speaker-1: ⁓ So I have ⁓ team of AI agents ⁓ do a lot of different things, different areas that ⁓ I use it for. And because of the nature of what we do, we're constantly trying new things. So that's almost like part of my daily workflow is constantly trying out new tools. But ⁓ some of my Personal productivity ones are all around meeting planning, note taking, and ⁓ ⁓ just recording. ⁓ The basic thing is meeting recorders and things like that. ⁓ building an agent that not only ⁓ my calendar and what meetings are coming up, helps me prepare, does the research, presents me the meeting prep document ⁓ the meeting. It records the meeting after the meeting and checks back with ⁓ meeting prep. objective and the actual meeting and the next steps and then puts those next steps into my, you know, task manager and, you know, sets reminders on my calendar and like does that whole thing without me pushing any buttons, right? So that kind of thing takes everything to the next level. ⁓ and then a lot around market research and, you know, client research and things like that, where it's daily reports, that ⁓ up. you know, ready for me to review based on the agent's objective. And it produces executive summaries and PowerPoint presentations for me to also doing things like, you know, providing like team updates and like, you know, you know, we often like one of the tasks that always takes time is like meeting, you know, one-on-one meetings and next steps and performance and providing company updates and all of that. turning that into an HR agent that can do all of that stuff, your focus not on all of the preparation and all of the information gathering, but really on the relationship. speaker-0: Wow, incredible. And yeah, I'm glad I asked that that question. It sounds like it's basically a high level executive assistant. speaker-1: It's more like a chief of staff, an AI chief of staff that keeps every project moving along, keeps ⁓ organized and makes sure ⁓ things getting done without me having to remind or check in or worry about falling off. And the best part is when it's connected to all your Google Drive or folders, it's also ⁓ Looking for documents there, but it's also producing documents and placing it there. So I mean, it's ⁓ I mean, there's literally touch point. ⁓ everything is just automatically done. speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ incredible. do you have a ⁓ tool or tool set that you kind of, that you use every day? Is there, is Claude your, your go-to for agents? speaker-1: Yeah. So the one that we love actually is Chat Hub because it combines all different LLMs together. Like through one prompt, sends the same prompt to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and all of that, ⁓ the perplexity. And so in one window, you can see responses from all four of them. and kind of not only get different views, but kind of see which one provides better results for what you're looking for. ⁓ that instantly provides better responses. But then Claude Cowork is great for building agents, lovable. Granola, ⁓ absolutely granola. ⁓ I mean, just so many that are. frankly, part of our standard tool set now that it's kind of funny to have so many things in there. But at one point, I was even thinking as a business owner, you start looking at your subscription costs start piling up, right? Like you're paying for this, paying for that, like all of that. at one point I was like, we're signing up for so many of these and that everybody's constantly using. I wonder how high our costs are. But reality is that the productivity we're getting out of using all of this was when we kind of did an estimates, it's equal to 50 FTE. And so if you look at like even let's just say a basic like average $100,000 salary, for FTE, well, compared to that, we were all in spending barely like, I don't know, all in for the year, maybe about 20 grand in comparison. speaker-0: you speaker-1: So like think about the ROI of that, right? And what does that mean for business owners? If you're not leveraging this kind of setup, think about not only how much money you're leaving on the table, but someone out there like me is building a business to compete with yours that is gonna out compete you in terms of growth and profit and speed while you're still doing things the old way. That's the thing to think about. It's not so much about. I don't know if I'm ready for AI or I don't know if my people adopted. The real question you have to think about is every day that you are not AI ready, you are being outcompeted by who is building an AI native business that is operating at an entirely different scale, speed, and profit that you can't even fathom. speaker-0: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Comes back to that adapter die you said earlier. speaker-1: It really is. frankly, one thing, even for me personally learning this was eye opening. You don't discover how much is possible until you roll up your sleeves and actually do it. if you're just still at the prompting stage where that's all you do and use it like your chat buddy, you no concept of what agentic AI or ⁓ like even further than that context graphs and other things can do for you. You have no idea. ⁓ the it's truly like the only way to gain competency in this is by doing it. There's no shortcuts. There's no books to read. There's no videos to watch. You just have to stop being a bystander. Roll up your sleeves, start building, gaining experience. And then what it really does is unlocks ideas that you have. Right. Like it gave me like until I started myself, but not just my engineers, but like me myself started like building things and thinking about things that gave me ideas on things I hadn't considered before. And I was like, huh, this is something that I do. like, you know, here's an opportunity that we have that I hadn't even thought of. And now I can apply this. So it unlocks your imagination and you more innovative by becoming co-pilot, your really. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Thought partner. Yeah. Incredible. great insights today. I know we could probably talk all day, ⁓ you know, we're coming up on time here. ⁓ a few, ⁓ things I wanted to ⁓ be sure to ask. ⁓ is, you know, you're a bestselling author as well. It's how much you've been able to get done in your career so far. Just what is the secret to getting so much done? How do you structure your day and work week? speaker-1: Focus. ⁓ what I mean by that is saying no to a lot of things. know, in A lot of times people think it's about what you choose to do. For me, it's what you choose not to do. At a macro level, being ⁓ absolutely clear what my North Star is. And so that mission purpose drives everything else. So even though it seems like, I have like multiple businesses and I'm speaking and writing and ⁓ I have a weekly newsletter and I like do all of these things, but they're not different things. They're all different ways of expressing the same thing. They're all built around the same purpose. So there's no ⁓ of purpose. The purpose remains the same ⁓ the impact I want to create. They're expressed through writing or speaking or building or ⁓ leading team and building products and so forth. So that's. And anything that falls outside of that purpose is a hard no, and being disciplined about it. ⁓ a micro level, what looks like is being really organizing my days around energy ⁓ and how like to work. ⁓ for example, Fridays are writing days, ⁓ and I do any meetings on Fridays. ⁓ I don't take on any kind of client work on Fridays. It's just thinking and writing days. Mondays are internal team days and catching up on every function and all of that. like really designing around that and I never ever, ever multitask. I don't believe in multitasking. So just deep focus applied ⁓ something and then moving on to the next thing. But ⁓ yeah, speaker-0: Great, great tips. Yeah. You know, it's funny. We started the podcast talking about focus as well. ⁓ yeah, it's coming, coming full circle. speaker-1: Yeah, it's, you know, we underestimate the value of not just, know, knowing your focus, but knowing the why behind your focus when when you kind of, know, when you have total clarity on that to say, this is the thing I want to dedicate myself to and here's why it matters. all the distractions go away. really is. ⁓ simplifies every decision because you just know. And if you're sort of diverging from you're doing it with intention as opposed to doing it subconsciously and speaker-0: Yeah, right. Yeah, being reactive to it. my macro focus, you know, through line through all your projects and then micro each each day and even each hour. speaker-1: Yeah, it's really how are you moving every project along? ⁓ timelines of when I'm going to do something. Like I'm working on a ⁓ book now, ⁓ I've set a timeline of when I expect the draft to get done. ⁓ then I break that big problem into smaller commitments. So this week I have to get these like, ⁓ thousand, 1200 words written on this topic. that like everything feels achievable when you kind of break down big goals into smaller action items. And every week my objective is just to keep moving things along, just solve the problems in any of those dimensions and just keep moving things along. speaker-0: Love it. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. know we got to wrap it up here. So many good nuggets, much good information this episode. Where can find out more about Flip Work or about yourself? speaker-1: Yeah, well, I'd recommend checking out Flipwork.ai. We've got a lot of great resources. You can also take the diagnostic there get your own personalized report. So go to Flipwork.ai. And you want to get my weekly where I share a lot of reinvention strategies and adapting to AI, check out niki.barua.com, where you'll all of my content and ⁓ everything from podcasts to newsletters. available there. speaker-0: Awesome. I'll leave that in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time today, Nikki. speaker-1: Thanks for having me, Pete.