- I'm on high performance culture strategists.
I find a lot of consultants and strategists
“on the business plan, on the marketing plan,”
which is all well and good, but if you don't have the culture of the team that you really want to deliver on that strategy, it all falls apart. - Okay.
- Hasea Atherton is a global leadership strategist, entrepreneur, and the three times Amazon best-selling author
of the billion dollar blind spot.
She helps organizations unlock higher performance by transforming workplace culture into a competitive advantage through leadership, accountability, and human-centered strategy. - So what kind of businesses do you work with?
- Businesses that are in male-dominated industries that are wanting to diversify their workforce, but they found that innovation is starting to dwindle, they're not adapting as well, so they're wanting different strategies to do that.
Generally over the 20 million plus revenue, it's called the billion dollar blind spot. So a lot of the positive psychology that I put in there around applying that to our leadership skills to help the people, the process, and the profit,
the book is almost like that Bible that you can take with you into your workplace. (dramatic music) - It spans the globe, like a super high school, internet elders, really high school.
Today, Apple is going to reinvent the fall. - It's our over, uptown, our queer. - The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. - It's extremely, it's awesome over here.
- Oh, that is sensational. (upbeat music) - Open, check up on what's the link you said. - It's the box that's not on the planet. - You can live your dream.
- Hi, and welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'll be your host today, Jay Slingon, and we have a very special guest, who's got an incredible backstory,
and thankfully she's here today, to be able to tell her story, but yeah, please introduce yourself.
“What's your business where you from, tell us the good stuff?”
- Yeah, so my name's Hacia, originally from Melbourne, Australia.
- Yeah, I've never heard that name before, Hacia,
so kind of tell us where's that from? - So my mom, she's very much into different like ancient languages and master numbers. So it's kind of a combination of some Hebrew, ancient Sanskrit with some spelling changes
to get the master numbers. - Yeah, so she must have loved your husband's name too, then. - No, right, yes. - Oh, it's with a mind. - He heard your husband.
- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, my mind definitely. - I was like, my parents divorced now, so she had dinner, she loves much about my mama. - But yeah, yeah, I love the accent, and it's Melbourne, right, it's how they say it.
- Yeah, yeah, it's Melbourne. - Melbourne, yeah, they're like not Melbourne, not Melbourne, you know, 'cause anyways, that was a whole thing there. But yeah, so what's your business?
- So I'm on high performance culture strategists. - Okay, high performance culture strategists. - Yes. - All right, so what's the culture strategist?
'Cause I'm multi-cultural, I'm always trying to,
I guess not really strategize my culture, but just live it, right?
“- Yeah, so what is the high performance culture strategists?”
- So I very much work in organizations with the come from an accounting background, and I find a lot of consultants and strategists on the business plan, on the marketing plan, which is all well and good,
but if you don't have the culture of the team that you really want to deliver on that strategy, it all falls apart, so if you think of a chair, a three-legged chair, you've got your strategy, you've got your money, and then you've got your people,
and the people is very much connected to the culture of that business. - Yeah, yeah, and so what kind of businesses do you work with? - So mainly businesses that are in male-dominated industries
that are wanting to diversify their workforce, whether that is bringing different women into it, different races, all of those kind of things of how they can diversify, often to access new markets and grow or produce new products,
or they found that innovation is starting to dwindle, they're not adapting as well, so they're wanting different strategies to do that, generally over the 20 million plus revenue. - Okay, so not in any particular industry,
but almost like of just a certain size. - Yes, and size, high pressure. I do a lot in trade-based businesses, construction, manufacturing, mining, but then also marketing businesses, finance businesses, so definitely businesses
that understand what got them to where they are is not going to get them to where they want to go. And they're really starting to hit those challenges. They're starting to see things like increased absenteeism, increased turnover as well,
and a lot of the times the businesses were found alert,
Then they brought their first kind of professional CEO
or executive in, private equity has got involved. So there's all of this disruption, and the founders, or slash CEO's like,
“the business was fantastic, we were skyrocketing,”
all these amazing numbers, we got private equity behind us,
we've got all of these executives with all of their MBAs, and this is a paper, and everything's just fallen apart. We're not doing what we used to do. - Gotcha. - And that's because there's been a big transition
from the founder, which might have been a bit like shooting from the hip and just going with their gut. - Bootstrap, the founder, that kind of grew his company to the one million mark, and then the five million mark, and then it's a completely different,
yeah, between five and 10 million and 20 million plus. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. - Exactly, so now that founder that's gone from, yeah, the basement or the coffee shop to having that structure that is needed to go from the 20 million and keep going,
and especially once you've got private equity involved, you've got so many different pressure, you've lost a lot of control of your business. - The board, the board. But we all love our board.
- Yeah. - And often you have the magic source and that business, which was the original team, the first couple of hires that know everything from day one, and they're very special people to protect,
but you start to get conflict because they don't wanna put together a business case to buy a pen, but your board and CEOs, all of a sudden, looking at every dollar.
“- Does anyone wanna put together a business case to buy a pen?”
- I have worked into some companies where it's felt like that. It's like every little decision has to have sign off and justification, they've put so much control that it literally feels like I'm gonna put it
in a business case into buy a pen. - So you work with a lot of bird's nest, and then you're trying to put them into like the mansion that they deserve. - Yeah, that's the stress analysis.
- An organized bird's nest of this bootstrap business, right? And they're just kind of like still being able to work with, but it's not able to kind of hold you know, kind of everything that they have going forward. - And the team's--
- And the team's-- - And the team's-- - And the team's-- - And the team's-- - And yeah, we're joking about the pen thing,
but it can be an issue, right? Everyone's rating the office, the office closet, and getting what are the materials, right? So yeah, there's gotta be systems in place. - And sometimes there's an over-correction.
So I very much work over the pillars of people, process, the profit-- - Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - And looking at how that goes into the strategy and also the branding as well.
And making sure there's alignment between all of that kind of stuff. Sometimes you've got great people, not so great processes. - Okay, so you've got-- - Perfect settings. - Perfect settings, right?
Everything that you're like, the Australian female Marcus Limonus. - Yeah, I guess, all right, I guess, sorry.
- Well, $20 million plus companies, right?
He does more like stuff that, you know, a smaller, I'm gonna buy, right, but yes, it's that now I can kind of like, you know, see it as the people process and people process-- - Profit. - Profit.
(laughing) There you go. Yeah, here we have four p's. We have pre-production, production, post-production, and promotion.
(laughing) So those are our four p's that we're working with. And yeah, I love to say that there's 165 steps in every video, you know? - Yes. - But, yeah, that's amazing.
“So I guess what are you most excited about for the future?”
What's coming up? - So for me, I published my book last year, which is now best-selling, we look at you in the cover. - The Billings Old Blind Spot, so that became an Amazon best-selling. - Nice.
- And so now I'm very excited to take that to the next level, start doing some events, 'cause the book is very applicable, full. So a lot of the positive psychology that I put in there around applying that to our leadership skills
to help the people, the process and the profit. I can put them into workshops, the book is almost like that Bible that you can take with you into your workplace. So now I'm very excited to take that to the next level, start traveling around America, doing events,
and just keep doing my speaking and my executive coaching and consulting to organizations that want to close the gap,
it's called the Billion Dollar Blind Spot, so.
- Yeah, it's really, what's in your workplace culture? - What's your workplace costing you? - Oh, okay, yeah, right on, well, keep on level and up. So how's it been, how long ago did you write this? It seems pretty new.
- Yeah, so I was published in November last year. I started writing it in 2023.
- Yeah, and how's your PR journey been going?
- Yeah, it's been going good. Been getting used to doing these podcasts, done some TV stuff around it as well. So yeah, it's very, very excited. - Great title, by the way, very catchy, you know,
great cover, right, the contrast between what you're wearing and the black and the title, good, good, what do you call it? Good way that you put together a whole look, I'd say, you know. - Thank you, that I can't take crops, it's a team effort
between my publisher and her team and her design team
“and everything, and that's what I really love.”
It's a book for leaders and team, and this came from a team effort. Like my publisher, the editor, the design people, kept pushing me more, better, let's, you know, push me to get the best version of myself out there.
So yeah, going through the writing process, I think a lot of people look at the author. There is a huge team behind you that is really pushing you. - Yeah, that's why it's asking how's it going, you know, because it's not easy to get a best seller, you know,
in any of the list, right? It doesn't matter which list you're trying to go for or the Amazon best seller, right, you need a team that knows the strategy and but you also need a good product to be able to sell, right?
- Yeah. - So that's amazing, that's amazing.
Congratulations. - Thank you. - So you just finished your episode, right? The interviewer said you had an amazing story, right? So I must ask, what was going on? - To the story he's touching based on,
is kind of where the book was born from. - Okay. - So I used to be a high-level dress art rider, and I was training as a cold, winter's evening, and my beautiful young horse, I had CC since she came off her mom, so she was like my baby.
- All right. - And she decided that she didn't want to train any more, so she slammed the brakes on. She read up vertically, caught me in the face, I fell off. - She did a black stallion. - Yeah, she did a black, and she was a black mess.
- All right. - She just wanted to be embraced. - And you're on the back of it, and you're riding it, right? - Yeah. - Okay, and then it threw you off. So it threw me off, I fell to the ground, and her backlegs gave way, and she came and landed on top of me.
- Oh. - All 1300 pounds. - Oh. - 600 kilos, so just boom. - Okay. - Straight down on top of me.
“- Whoa, and-- - And I'll never forget the sound,”
the sound of the burns popping and cracking.
- Right. - Right king was just, yeah, I'll never forget it.
- Wow. - So you broke what? - A lot, sorry. - No. - Pretty much shattered my pelvis. I've had a lot of surgeries rebuilding my pelvis. My pubic bone, I've had my right hit replaced.
I've got two computers inside me for the nerve damage that happened as well. So six months in hospital after that initial accident, and then over 30 procedures since accident happened in July 2017.
- Oh, that's not even that long ago. - No. - Oh, my lord. (laughs) - Wow, but I mean, you're doing great now, right? - I'm doing great, I successfully taught myself to stand, so I stood on land 117 days after the accident
was the first time I stood on land.
- Wow. - And then from this, slowly, but slowly took myself to walk again, took a couple of years to be able to properly walk un-aided, and then I've even run a half marathon on since. So doctors wouldn't kind of show how the walking was gonna go,
but so I thought I would double prove them wrong and teach myself to walk and run a half marathon. - Wow, and have you gotten back on horses? Or that's just like no more. - I love the horses still.
I have got them back on a few horses here and there. I still have those dream of getting back into dressage one day. But yeah, at the moment, it's promoting the book and life and drawing. - It's weird, I've had a lot of horse stories recently, you know?
Honestly, it was just two days ago, we had another woman who's, she just bought a horse ranch and her daughter did bear o-racing, right? So I was only about bear o-racing. And then one of the women at the clinic,
“she, you know, just people will surprise you, right?”
She was like some championship horse acrobat, or whatever, like she was doing. - No, she was like doing handstand on top of horses while they're riding together and then she'd like do, like flips on the side of the horse of whatever,
you know, and a broader international, she was like at the world championships, you know? And I was like, what are you doing at the desk
Of this clinic, you know?
It's like another, people have multiple lives, that they do, right?
“But the life you're about to live is your healthy,”
you're standing, you've run the marathon, right? You've kind of got back on the horse of your company of life, yeah, totally, I absolutely love it, and I'm excited for you. And the next journey, you know,
you seem to have a lot of energy, right? And yeah, how can people find you? - So through my website, which is HACAatherton.com, HACAATH-E-R-T-O-N.com, and then that's the same on LinkedIn and Instagram, my first name last name as well.
- Yeah, and then I'm sure that they can buy
billion dollar blind spot on Amazon.
- Yeah, Amazon bonds are noble. - Nice, nice, okay, so you got the physical locations and the storefronts as well. - Yeah.
“- Nice, nice, that's a, it's quite an achievement, you know?”
- Honestly, it is like, I've helped with book promotion, you know, so it seems like you are right on it. - Definitely a journey. It's something like a blend a lot through this. So currently researching my second book,
which is exciting, right now, feeling. - I guess once you write one, it's like, okay, I'm on a lot more. - The hardest one is the first one. Now, with my process, I know what works,
I've never liked the rhythm, so I know how to research,
a little bit better, and collect the notes, and everything like that. So, yeah, each book gets easier and easier written. - Nice, and so where are you living now? We only talked about Melbourne, where are you now?
- Yes, and now I'm based in Florida in the 10th day area. - Nice, not so far. - Yeah, yes, so decided to move to paradise. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I love it here too. - It is, it's beautiful, it's kind of like,
coming from Australia as well, and like, I've traveled around the world, but so many places in Florida, I'm like, why would you even leave Florida? - Yeah, I mean, Melbourne's not bad either, though.
I went to my first God there, yeah, when I first got there,
I was like, oh my God, I could totally live here.
“But I was only there for like four months, you know?”
But oh my God, I was so long ago, but I loved it there. The people were great, the fringe festival was great. - Yeah, it's a good time. - Honestly, and then I also loved how you can get
beer at the bar, and like, you don't have to get the full pint glass, but you can get a little schooner, right? - Yeah, a little schooner. - Like, why don't we have that? You know, you don't want a full beer,
you just want a little half beer, right? And not be made fun of, but yeah, we need to bring some of that culture over here. It seems like a lot of businesses need to bring your business culture to the table as well.
But yeah, if you are interested to learn about her whole entire backstory, where they really get into the details of everything, you know, we just kind of touched on it here, but it really amazed the interviewer,
and you can see it as a lot of energy. So we're excited to work on it and air it. But thank you so much for joining us and glad that you're here, healthy, smiling, and congratulations on the book.
- Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. - All right, well, that's it. And thank you guys for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.
Cheers. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
