Episode 184 Transcript
Heather Porter (00:01.483)
Hello Val, thank you so much for being on the show. How are you going?
Valentina Coin (00:06.626)
Hey Heather, I'm great. And you?
Heather Porter (00:09.227)
Yes, really well. I'm really looking forward to talking to you about what you do because it is perfect timing for everything that's really happening right now. And we are going to talk about you, your business and everything that you do. But I always like to start with a few tangible takeaways when it comes to business growth. So do you have a few tips that you can share with our viewers on how to grow your business smarter so you don't get all burnt out in the process?
Valentina Coin (00:35.694)
100%. I like the way you start. I guess the, the, we think about less hustle and more balance for me, it really all boils down to being intentional about building a system for your business. Right. And I'll get into the detail of what a system is a little bit later, but I find that hustle and friction.
Heather Porter (00:48.961)
Yeah. Yeah.
Valentina Coin (01:00.394)
often come from, know, duplication or technology not supporting or things falling through the cracks. And so the top three things that I would recommend for growing with a little bit more calm and intentionality is first of all, before adding things, do an audit. Have a look at what you already have. Have a look at what's working and what's not. And don't chase the shiny tools. More often than not, I see business leaders
purchasing software and you you pay a hundred percent of the price of the software, but then you only use 10 % of it. And that's just not going to help you grow. So simplify, look at what you already have and simplify. The second tip would be to never start from technology and always start from the humans. So design for the humans who are going to use that technology and those systems, because systems are really there to support people, not the other way around. And when you
Heather Porter (01:41.142)
Nice.
Valentina Coin (01:58.328)
pick technology and create processes and systems that match how your team works and how your business works, then things will just flow with less effort. And then the third tip that I would have for businesses who want to grow and scale is when you put something in place, don't just measure features, but measure adoption. Because a tool or a system or process, it's only valuable when the people
Heather Porter (02:05.154)
Mm.
Heather Porter (02:20.865)
Interesting.
Valentina Coin (02:27.306)
actually use it and when they use it well. Even, and I know we're to talk about AI today, so let's just get it out with. AI is just a tool. It's like a hammer. It has different characteristics than software, than a hammer, than stairs going somewhere, right? It has different qualities to it, but at the end of the day, AI is just a tool. So focus on adoption, not just the shiny feature.
Heather Porter (02:34.295)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (02:51.883)
Mmm.
Heather Porter (02:57.503)
I love that you're saying that. There's so many people that I talk to that they get sold onto like a new CRM system or new software, a new tool, because they're, you know, entrepreneurs and excited about lots of things. And so they get this system and then they're like, my God, it's amazing. And then no one wants to use it. And they don't even know how to use it because they bought this huge Ferrari and it's, they're running it like it's a moped.
Valentina Coin (03:19.146)
Exactly! Yes, thank you for saying that. I can tell we're aligned.
Heather Porter (03:21.869)
Totally, totally aligned. And you made me think about something just literally now. I haven't thought about it in years. There's a company that's digital marketer. One of the OGs of digital marketing, Ryan Dice, was the founder of that. And he created something, think it was 10 years ago, could have been a little bit more. He called it the machine. And it was a workflow or an elaborate system of automation for marketing, which was two.
Valentina Coin (03:43.246)
Mmm.
Heather Porter (03:50.509)
elaborate and I remember it was all the hype and all these consultants and agencies were building this for businesses and then it would break because there's way too much going on so I'm I'd love that you've said simplify and get the people to use it and know how to use it.
Valentina Coin (04:07.565)
100%. I like how it resonated and it comes back to one of our core principles, which is we see digital transformation as a vehicle for growth, but it's a three-legged stool. There is technology, that's one leg. There is people, that's the second leg. And then there is process. And a stool cannot only sit on one leg. So if you only focus on technology and likewise, if you only focus on people or if you only focus on process, it's just going to fall apart.
Heather Porter (04:25.438)
Yeah. Okay.
Heather Porter (04:37.128)
Mm. Mm.
Valentina Coin (04:37.725)
And we were at a conference yesterday in Sydney, as I mentioned. And I loved how this was a tech AI focused conference. So everybody, course, we love technology. Every single person on stage, clients and providers alike reiterated how those are the pieces where most projects fall apart. When we don't pay attention to our people, when we don't...
Heather Porter (04:41.611)
Yeah.
Valentina Coin (05:05.079)
take them with us on that journey when we don't make sure they have buy-in and they're invested in this change we're about to make. And I love how it's a lesson that sometimes business leaders need to learn on their own skin, but I'm trying to say it as loudly as I can so I can save people time.
Heather Porter (05:14.164)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (05:20.352)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (05:24.428)
Now it makes sense. And now I really want to know about your journey in business as well, because you're working in tech and you are all about systems and building them. But where'd you come from? Where did this all start?
Valentina Coin (05:37.489)
Yes. Well, so this is our third. This is my third life, I would say. So Vaya is our second business that I run with my husband. And my very first role was, I'm going to take us back, but I'm going to make it brief. My very first role was in hospitality. So at the age of 14, I started working at the family restaurant back in Italy.
Heather Porter (05:48.35)
Okay, yep.
Heather Porter (05:53.013)
Okay.
Valentina Coin (06:07.273)
And I started running, you know, you start serving and then over time I started helping them to run events, conferences, weddings in this beautiful Italian villa. And that's where I learned everything about crafting an experience. Yes, there are the systems, but you're also a host of an experience when you welcome a client, right? And then, so that was my first role, my first persona, so to speak.
Heather Porter (06:28.939)
Mmm.
Valentina Coin (06:34.605)
Then we came over to Australia and I kept working in hospitality as one does. And at some point I did reach the breaking point. could not talk to people anymore. So I said, all right, I'm going to go and work with computers. I'm going to find a software company and I'm going work for them. I'll just look at a screen all day. I don't want to talk to anyone anymore. And my husband at the time was just one of the founding members of a software company. So I joined them.
Heather Porter (06:52.94)
Yep.
Valentina Coin (07:02.581)
And very quickly the techies figured out that I could talk to people. So they said, you go train everybody, you go welcome everybody and we'll just keep coding. So my plan didn't quite work out the way I intended. And that's where I learned a lot about technology, which wasn't part of my original upbringing. It wasn't what I studied. It was just what I learned. And that's where I connected that.
the success that I had in events management and hospitality was because I had a systems brain and I put in place systems. But because I was working in a very people heavy, care heavy, experience heavy industry, I merged together the technical side of the systems and the experience. And the lesson I got from that second venture was that you can build the best technology in the world.
Heather Porter (07:45.718)
Nice.
Valentina Coin (07:55.138)
with the best features in the world and actually provide really good training. But we keep seeing ambitious businesses put so much money and effort into technology that was really good, but it didn't stick. And so why didn't it stick? Sometimes tools promise a lot and don't deliver, but this one did, right? And so in my opinion, what I came to realize was this is because the system was not designed around the people.
The software was designed around delivering a certain outcome. Yes, for a certain industry, for sure. But it wasn't designed around the people of that particular business. And those people were just being told by management, this is the software we bought. You're going to receive training on the 30th of September and we're going to roll it out on the 1st of October. There you go. And this, buy-in was missing. The journey was missing. And because businesses didn't take their people with them.
Heather Porter (08:45.228)
Mm.
Valentina Coin (08:53.801)
on that journey, had low adoption, the efficiency the software could bring and would have brought wasn't actually realizing, and we didn't have as good a result as we could have. And so that's why I stepped out of that particular business and started a consultancy. it allowed for several things, agnostic about technology so I could work with any software really, because my thinking was,
Heather Porter (09:14.411)
Okay.
Valentina Coin (09:23.477)
If it's happening here, surely it's happening in other industries and in other softwares. It was very practical and people-focused. Often as technology providers, you cannot have an impact on the culture or on the processes or on the organizational chart of a business. It's just not your role. But I could see that those key ingredients were missing in the recipe. And so this different business model would allow me to go in and
meet with a business leader and say, okay, yes, you want technology, but before we get there, we need to do this, this, this, and this. And in so that we don't have to do change management after the fact, let's do also that, that, and that so that your team will come with us on the journey. They will own it. They will roll it out. You'll have your champions. And then the technology will give you the uplift that you're looking for instead of just picking a shiny tool, pushing it to the team. and yeah, that's.
Heather Porter (10:20.074)
So smart. So, so smart. I have to know how do you actually get somebody, a leader or an owner of a business to get their team to be along the ride for the journey? What are a few things that you do for that specifically?
Valentina Coin (10:21.293)
That's how we got there.
Valentina Coin (10:36.053)
Yes. You choose very good questions, Heather. You're getting right to the meat of it, right? Look, what we do in the people side of things, in the people pillar, is first of all, would say, in order to go from siloed teams, siloed operations, siloed communication, and a team that is disengaged from the technology and sees it as an imposition, we really need to start from perspective.
And so first thing we do, and we recommend everybody does, is gather your team's perspectives. That often takes the shape of interviews, surveys, lunch and learn session. The purpose of that is it's multifaceted. Definitely you want to understand what's working and what's not. So you can go out and find the right technology to close those gaps. But also the simple fact of stopping and engaging with your team and asking them for their opinion.
Heather Porter (11:09.388)
Mm.
Valentina Coin (11:33.694)
is making them part of, is co-creating a solution together. And what I say to leaders a lot is no matter, even if you don't take any of their suggestion, which is very rare, I've never seen it happen, but even if you were not to take any suggestion, just a simple fact that you slowed down and listened to their concerns is going to give you tremendous return because you're taking the time to involve them.
Definitely there's a piece on alignment, alignment to business goals, alignment to each department. And, know, for example, we recommend creating a change journey for different roles in the business. If you have a large organization, you have your, you know, your C level, then you've got your leadership team, your department heads, your supervisors, and then your team on the ground, let's say for simplicity. Each one of those stakeholders or those roles has their own needs and wants.
has their own, maybe I'll use a controversial word, they have their own ego to satisfy. And if you are smart enough to figure out what each role needs from this transformation that's upcoming and frame it to them in those terms, you're gonna have them on board. It's inevitable.
Heather Porter (12:38.496)
Very true.
Heather Porter (12:55.98)
It's like, it's almost like marketing 101 with your own team. I mean, just go to the market, get what they want and give it to them packaged in the way they're telling you they want it. So that's brilliant. I love it. Um, and, and my simpler and really great answer actually for, I had no idea where you're to take that. So I now want to talk to you about your business and your business model because you've come from this fascinating background and
Valentina Coin (13:03.469)
100 percent. 100 percent.
Heather Porter (13:21.864)
You are great with people and systems. You can speak languages, both sides of the language. So what does your business do and why did you choose this sort of model?
Valentina Coin (13:26.509)
Mm-hmm.
Valentina Coin (13:33.166)
Yeah. So, um, right now we say that we are digital transformation consultants. Um, now I know there's a lot of debate on the word consultant and how, you know, it's a bit of a dirty word. Um, and there's also maybe a bit of an overlap between what a consultant does, what an advisor does, what an implementer does and what a coach does. And the truth is we're all of those things. We're all of those things, right? Um, so what we do is we.
Heather Porter (13:58.231)
Okay.
Valentina Coin (14:02.517)
We partner typically with businesses that are growing and scaling fairly fast and they are finding that technology is holding the Mac. They might have over invested in technology and not see the return or maybe under invested. Maybe they're running everything based on pen and paper and Excel spreadsheets and they need technology to be brought in. Another case we get a lot is merger and acquisitions. So when two businesses get bought or
a bigger business incorporates a smaller one. Each one of those entities will have their own software and their own processes and their own people who are used to doing things their own way. And we need to somehow merge them. We need to figure out which one works and then take everybody on that journey. this is what we do. More practically, the business model, I'd say that for the past three years, we focus purely on the consultancy side of things. So
We run engagements with clients. First of all, we start from a workshop. That's where everybody starts. So it's at the moment, a half a day workshop. And what we do is it's a diagnostic. We need to understand where the friction is, where the opportunities are and where the business wants to go. Then typically from there, we understand out of our three pillars, what do we need to do in which order? Have we got clarity on how the business operates? Is it mapped? Do we know what we're measuring?
Is the whole system well designed and delivering the outcomes that we want? If yes, we can move on to the next step. If no, we need to do that. Secondly, we need to enable the leadership team to engage the whole organization in that journey. And so that's where we engage with teams. We gather their perspectives. We do alignment workshop and we assess if they have the right expertise for the change that's upcoming. And then the very, very last piece is technology. So we have what we call our software matchmaking.
which is really once we have that understanding of what a business needs today and in the next five to 10 years, because you want your technology to last, not to have to change it every two years, then we can go to market and find the best match. And the best match isn't only features and functionalities, but also can we find you a tech partner that is going to really work with you? Because we don't want to be involved in the long term. We don't want businesses to always rely on us.
Valentina Coin (16:26.337)
We want to build internal capability in the client team to manage it ongoing. But we also want to partner them with a tech vendor that can truly become a partner, not just a SaaS contract that gets billed once a year. And then there is the implementation, which we can also assist with. And then lastly, the continuous optimization. So that's more of an ongoing retainer virtual CIO model where we can...
Heather Porter (16:40.097)
Got it. Yep.
Heather Porter (16:52.159)
Okay. Okay.
Valentina Coin (16:55.393)
As I said, we have translated the business outcomes that the business wants into a software. We have implemented it and we have transferred our knowledge to an internal team member or a group of team members that can then manage that software ongoing. But we still want to offer our expertise at a strategic level. Maybe it needs change, a new feature needs to be introduced or maybe a new... Often there's a new service or a new business model that the client wants to introduce.
And they're asking themselves, can my current software cater for that or do we need something different? So that's what we've built over the last three years. And we're very excited to start translating that into a bit more of a affordable option. Maybe that's a word that I could use because obviously these are very, very large projects and not every business out there can afford these 18 months to 24 month projects.
Heather Porter (17:24.524)
Okay.
Heather Porter (17:29.794)
No.
Heather Porter (17:42.357)
Okay. Yeah, sure.
Valentina Coin (17:54.274)
But the knowledge and the frameworks and the principles that we use are so useful to medium and small businesses. And we want to be able to bring those to the market where it's affordable. They can still benefit from those framework and I need to adjust them to be suitable to a smaller business, of course, because that way more businesses can grow, more businesses can scale and they can get to that bigger size.
Heather Porter (18:23.213)
Such a tricky place to be in, isn't it? Because you literally are at that jumping off point of, oh God, I wish I could remember the numbers. I was talking to somebody the other day and he was saying, oh, there's these points in your business. It's ones and threes, I think, from memory. 300,000, then a million, and then three million. And there's like these moments where everything feels like it's gonna fall apart.
Valentina Coin (18:38.573)
Mm.
Valentina Coin (18:43.435)
Yes. Yes. Yes. You hit the nail on the head, Heather. It's those transitional, liminal spaces between stages of business growth. And you need the same digital transformation as the vehicle to take you across. But typically only businesses that are a certain size can do that. And if I can bring those frameworks down to the previous stages, my God, I'm getting so excited.
Heather Porter (18:51.723)
Yeah. Yeah.
Heather Porter (18:57.941)
Yes!
Heather Porter (19:03.978)
Exactly.
Heather Porter (19:08.813)
It's such a great place to play in and it's tricky and it's so needed because it's chaos and that's where the systems come in. I mean, I have clients and people I talk to that are rather large businesses with big revenues and they're still working on spreadsheets like you were saying. No, that's exciting this sort of phase for you. And I do, I think now would be an appropriate time to talk a little bit about AI because that is
Valentina Coin (19:13.485)
Hmm.
Valentina Coin (19:26.465)
Yes.
Valentina Coin (19:33.163)
Yes.
Valentina Coin (19:37.549)
Mm.
Heather Porter (19:38.229)
and that is a big part of what's being used. So tell me your thoughts on AI. How is it best used in a business that's scaling?
Valentina Coin (19:43.149)
Bye.
Valentina Coin (19:47.519)
Yeah. So.
I think how much time do we have? many days do we have? Right. Okay. So first of all, the basics. to us, AI is very exciting. It's so powerful and it's going to be able to do a lot. But I feel that there are some misconceptions about AI that are developing. one of, you know, we hear a lot, AI is going to replace these jobs.
Heather Porter (19:53.741)
I know, I know, could go for a long time.
Heather Porter (20:01.442)
Yeah.
Valentina Coin (20:21.549)
for example, or AI is going to just do it, right? Can we just give it to AI? We don't need humans to do it anymore. And they kind of want, they kind of want in the same. From our perspective, AI is a tool. It's a really powerful one. It has big strengths, but it has also weaknesses. And like any other tool, if we think to use a hammer to do every single job to build a house, it's never going to work. You need a hammer for some tasks.
Heather Porter (20:29.525)
I hear that a lot.
Valentina Coin (20:51.613)
and a shovel for others and spatulas for others. So AI is just the same. Now...
There's a bit of a framework that we can utilize when assessing whether AI is the right fit or not. But if we don't first understand that it is just a tool and the quality of the question we ask ourselves is going to determine the quality of the output we get. I can give you all the frameworks in the world. It's never going to work. So that's probably the very first thing that I would say about that.
Heather Porter (21:17.377)
Yes.
Valentina Coin (21:29.257)
AI can be a little bit like a black box. That's the other piece of background that I want to give everyone. When we talk about the three things that we usually say is there's human, the way to solve a problem is you can do it with a human. You can do it with automation. So that's your good old traditional software development coding. We call it automation for simplicity. It's the if this, then that. And the good thing about it is that
you can control what's happening at every stage of the process. You need to very clearly map what it is that you want the software to do, the program to do, and you know exactly what happens at every step. If you don't get the output that you desire at the end, you can go back every step and figure out what went wrong where, adjust it, deploy it, and then ideally you get the outcome that you want. AI is a little bit like a black box. You know what goes into it.
And you know what comes out the other end. You don't quite know what happens in the middle. And, and so troubleshooting to get a different outcome isn't as easy as traditional programming. So the things that I would ask myself, so hopefully that helps first to put things in perspective. And the things that I ask myself when I train to determine is this a problem that I should solve with AI?
Heather Porter (22:34.133)
In the middle.
Heather Porter (22:42.647)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (22:51.298)
Mm.
Valentina Coin (22:57.525)
Is this a problem that I should solve with a human or is this a problem that I should solve with a traditional program or automation is well, first of all, what task are we talking about? Let's be really clear on what it is that we are doing. What are the inputs and what are the outputs we are expecting? Is discernment needed in the middle part of that journey? Do we have rules and patterns?
that we can very clearly spot and very clearly describe? Is it repeatable? Is there a lot of data to process? Or is it completely unpredictable? If it is completely unpredictable and there's no pattern and it's all context-based, then you need a human. Tech cannot do it, right? And if that's the answer, I would then ask myself, are we trying to solve with tech something that should be solved at the process and people level? Go back to that framework of the triangle.
Heather Porter (23:37.165)
Yeah.
Valentina Coin (23:52.586)
Then I would ask myself things like, how often am I expecting things to change? Again, is there a degree of rules and requirements that stay the same and are repeatable or do they change constantly and there's lots of exceptions? How important is it to get the same results? Do we want variation, creative work? Do we want accuracy and non-negotiable results that must be identical every time? So if we want extreme creativity, you need a human.
If you're happy to sit in the middle, a of creativity, a bit of process, we don't mind, for example, customization at scale, go for AI, easy, perfect use case. Do we want the same accurate non-negotiable outcome every single time because we're talking about a financial report? I would not use AI for that because you need the result to be identical every time. And then probably the last piece that I would consider is
Heather Porter (24:44.374)
Yes.
Valentina Coin (24:50.641)
how, how quickly do you want the outcome and how big the workload could be because, more context. So a human, can provide a certain amount of outcome of results in a work day. Then you have a program, a computer, an automation, you can set the rules and it can work 24 seven, keep repeating the process. And ideally.
Heather Porter (25:17.293)
Mm.
Valentina Coin (25:18.689)
the cost of developing the software, the program is going to be big in the beginning, but then the ongoing cost, barring maintenance and server and all of that, is negligible. For every action that a program does, you don't have additional costs. AI, on the other hand, has that initial development cost, but also typically a per action cost. You would be familiar with tokens, for example.
Right. And that is also a consideration that we need to make. how quickly do we want the outcome and could the workload grow very suddenly? Because if it could grow very suddenly, then maybe a program is better when our costs are not going to balloon out of expectations because we need 10 million tokens to complete the task. Hopefully that gives a a few
Heather Porter (26:14.419)
interesting.
Valentina Coin (26:17.741)
questions that are maybe not so tech focused, but context focused to decide whether AI is a good fit or not and how we see AI fit in the business space.
Heather Porter (26:22.348)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (26:30.893)
So I'd like to ask you one more question off of that. And that would be back to human centric. With all the knowledge you have right now with systems and tech, what is important to keep human in your business?
Valentina Coin (26:32.586)
Yes.
Yes.
Valentina Coin (26:40.781)
Mmm.
Valentina Coin (26:45.389)
It's a very good question. First way I would answer that is every business should and does answer this question differently. So every business should decide for themselves what is the truly non-replaceable way, part of what we do.
So there is what we do as businesses, we sell socks, we provide healthcare, we collect bins from the road. There is the what we do, and then there is the how we do it. And the how we do it is the experience we are delivering to our customers. Now it is possible that AI can play a role in either facilitating the experience directly, touching the customer directly, or supporting the human delivering the experience to the client.
And the answer should be different for every business because this is the example that I use every single time. Let's take the use case of a business who needs to implement a booking system. Now let's look at two businesses. Business A is a gym and we can assume that their target audience would be, let's make a generalization, male, 18 to 25 year old.
Heather Porter (27:58.38)
Okay.
Valentina Coin (28:11.213)
They value efficiency, speed. They don't want to talk to anybody. They just want to jump online and make a booking and know that the personal trainer or the gym equipment will be there for them. They want to show up, do the workout and leave. Now, AI might be a good solution there to augment the booking system and technology might be really taking care of 99 % of that experience, whether it's AI or programming.
If instead we look at the same use case, a booking system to book an appointment, but this is now an HK facility and they are taking booking for a doctor studio, for example. Now the target audience there is an elderly person. They might be living in the retirement village and the value that they get, yes, they want to book an appointment with the doctor, but how joyful is it for them to walk into a studio?
and have a chat with the receptionist and tell them about their little niece or their little nephew who got an award at school the other day. And if we take that away and replace it with an online booking system or an AI bot that calls them to remind them to book their quarterly check-in, yes, we might be efficient, but what are we taking away from the experience that we are providing that person? so maybe connection is the answer. AI can never replace human connection.
It can facilitate, it can help, it can support the human. So we can have a booking system that's supporting the receptionist. So the receptionist has the name of the gentleman who just walked through the door and maybe she can have a, or the AI could suggest to the receptionist, hey, Bob has a little niece called Mary and she's eight years old and beautiful. This is technology augmenting human and supporting human connection, not replacing it.
Heather Porter (30:03.309)
Val, I think that was a beautifully, beautifully answered question. Thank you. That really kind of brought everything around. That was great. Oh, it was brilliant. Now I want to talk to you a quick question on your business and specifically something that you feel like you've done exceptionally well in the last year in your business. What has that been?
Valentina Coin (30:10.285)
Thank you for asking it!
Valentina Coin (30:18.381)
Mmm.
Valentina Coin (30:24.909)
Mmm!
Something we've done exceptionally well in the last year is to really organize our framework and our methodology into a usable, easy to explain, easy to understand body of knowledge. And I mentioned earlier that we do do typically bigger projects, but having organized our framework and our knowledge and our expertise into this body of knowledge is now allowing me to, and we started.
Heather Porter (30:43.917)
Mm-hmm.
Valentina Coin (30:56.781)
I think three months ago we started, for example, utilizing this for online webinars that are free. I run them every two weeks. And that has allowed me to open up our knowledge to anyone really that's sitting on LinkedIn, because we play a lot on LinkedIn, who is interested in those topics, but maybe don't have the capacity to go and pay $500 an hour consultant just to consult on their business, but they still value from having that knowledge.
Heather Porter (31:14.262)
Yes.
Valentina Coin (31:26.547)
And what it will also allow me to do now that I have this body of knowledge is how can I best package it to deliver it in a way that will benefit different sized businesses in different industries, different markets. And I can't wait to play with it. I don't have an answer yet. I don't know if it's going to be a course or a membership portal or a community. I don't know the answer, but I know that
having taken the time this last year to really unpack and really, in a way, systemize my own business, one might say. I now get to play with all of these different pieces. we've created a lot of scorecards, for example, self-assessments that businesses can take and say, it's adoption success scorecard, change readiness scorecard, business systemization scorecard. They're all there, they're all available.
Heather Porter (32:04.575)
Yeah.
Valentina Coin (32:24.373)
I've put in the time and effort to create it now and now it can start paying us back. So I'm very proud of that.
Heather Porter (32:30.241)
Very smart. Yeah, I'd be very proud of that. I love the assessments. think those quizzes, personal assessments are really powerful. With the webinar as well, do you charge for admission to that or is that a free ongoing session? Nice.
Valentina Coin (32:36.098)
Yes.
Valentina Coin (32:42.035)
No, at the moment, those are free and I would like to keep them free ongoing. They are, they're about 40 minutes. And I'm having honestly so much fun delivering them. I know there will be paid versions of that and paid maybe, you know, two hour intensive workshop, but that's where rather than just sharing a topic and sharing a little bit of know how I'll actually say, just close, shut down your phone, close your door.
Heather Porter (32:52.482)
great.
Valentina Coin (33:11.105)
For two hours, we are doing things in the room. We're achieving results. You're gonna walk out of this room with a plan, who's gonna do what and when, and all you need to do is execute. Yeah.
Heather Porter (33:21.249)
Yeah, really, really smart. And also in marketing, obviously said a lot, lead with your best content and try before you buy, right? And I think especially now where people are looking to trust people and there's so much fake stuff online too. I think it's really smart what you're doing, know, having that connection point. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah.
Valentina Coin (33:27.841)
Hmm
Valentina Coin (33:38.488)
That's right. Yeah. In software, you can take a free trial for a week. In consulting or in marketing or in sales, whatever you're selling as a person with knowledge, you can't give people free trials of you and your expertise, but with webinars, you can kind of create the same system.
Heather Porter (33:57.845)
You can. Yeah, really well said. So is there any advice that you'd give to yourself from a year ago on something you might do differently?
Valentina Coin (34:12.489)
It's, whenever I get a question like this, I always find it very challenging to answer because I think life is a progression of discovering yourself, learning new things. And in the process of figuring out who I am and what I believe, the simple process of discovering that turns me into a different person. And so even if I could give myself this advice a year ago,
She probably wouldn't listen because sometimes you have to learn it on your own skin, right? I'm being cheeky. I'm not directly answering your question, but...
Heather Porter (34:49.441)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (34:54.068)
You are actually you are because the questions I ask for very different reasons, obviously. And what's great about these questions is it says so much about the person and how they answer it. There's the flip side of this. When I've asked people what's something you've done amazingly well, and then they really struggle to talk about that, you know? So now I think you have answered it perfectly unless you want to add anything else to that.
Valentina Coin (35:00.095)
Hmm.
Valentina Coin (35:16.695)
I'll take it. No, think trust the process maybe is a more digestible end.
Heather Porter (35:22.132)
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's great. So look, as we start to wrap up, what is the best way for people to access some of these assessments, webinars, where do they find you and find out more about you?
Valentina Coin (35:37.518)
100%. Thank you for asking that, Heather. LinkedIn is the place where we play the most. We're very active there. We share videos, we share the assessments. We run our webinars and we always promote them through LinkedIn. I do have other social media like Instagram, Facebook, you you've got to exist out there. But LinkedIn is really the core place where to find us or our website via technology.com.au, VIA.
Heather Porter (35:58.603)
You too.
Valentina Coin (36:07.917)
And I am at the moment trying to build a knowledge repository where all the assessments are on the website. So for the moment, the best place would be LinkedIn. And if you browse on the website, go have look at the blog and we're trying to match each blog with one specific assessment. So if the blog topic is AI, there will be an AI readiness assessment. So you get a little bit of entertainment and a little bit of education at the same time.
Heather Porter (36:17.088)
Great.
Heather Porter (36:37.64)
very smart move, Val, I see what you're doing there. And on LinkedIn, is it just your company name? Is that where they go search for?
Valentina Coin (36:45.301)
Yeah, you can search for Viya Technology, V-I-A, or if you want to look for me, the name is Valentina coin. Coin, just like a coin, nice and easy. I've got a good surname.
Heather Porter (36:52.554)
Yes. Coin. Yeah, it's a great name. Well, as we start to wrap up, is there any last word of advice or just anything you want to leave our listeners with?
Valentina Coin (37:05.825)
I think the most valuable thing that I can leave listeners with for businesses who do want a scaling row is as tempting as it is, don't start with the technology. Start with your people. It's, it's the fastest way to make sure the systems you design feel natural and supportive to the humans using them, which is
what tech should really do. It should free your team up instead of frustrate them. And it is the safest way to make sure that there is a return on your technology investment. Because when you align your people and your processes and your technology to work together, that's where you get clarity, efficiency, balance, all the benefits we're looking for. But technology isn't a silver bullet. So we have to start from the people.
Heather Porter (38:00.108)
Perfectly way, perfect way. I mean, you're human centric, right? So I wouldn't expect anything else, but know that it's a very good piece of advice. So thank you. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your knowledge and really helping to clarify how somebody can use technology in a really important way moving forward in their business. So thank you.
Valentina Coin (38:01.377)
Hahaha.
Valentina Coin (38:18.455)
Thank you, Heather. What resonated the most for you? I'm very curious.
Heather Porter (38:21.5)
Ooh, back at me. I like the thing that keeps standing out is go to your people first. You've said that that's a common theme throughout rather than the back to front way, which so many business owners say, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah. Look, this I just got marketed on LinkedIn or Google and I see this piece of technology and I love it and shiny object syndrome. And then they try and force it on their team. I love that you said opposite way because there's so much to learn from that and to allow your growth to stick and be part of.
Valentina Coin (38:48.386)
Yes.
Heather Porter (38:51.092)
your team be part of your vision. So that would be mine.
Valentina Coin (38:54.465)
Thank you, Heather. I love that came across.
Heather Porter (38:55.628)
Perfect, well you nailed it. Thank you.
