Ash Dey 0:01

The opportunity individual practitioners have with working with corporates is you have immediate access to lots of people, you have an audience,

Jeremy Enns 0:10

you're listening to build a better wellness biz. I'm your host, Jeremy Enns. In this episode, I'm talking with ash de

Ash Dey 0:18

Ivan, a company called open mind. And we're trying to solve the main challenges workplaces have around delivering inclusive wellbeing programs for their employees. And we connect workplaces to a marketplace across the UK of vetted providers. We administer the end to end for both the providers and the workplace. And we measure and report on the impact. And we use those insights to help evolve the well being program and support both the company the employees, and the well being providers we work with.

Jeremy Enns 0:48

Well, open mind primarily operates in the UK, for the course of building the company, as has come to know the ins and outs of how independent wellness professionals anywhere can tap into opportunities to run events and workshops within large organizations, while companies like his can help facilitate this matchmaking process, in this episode, as shares how it's entirely possible to seek out these opportunities on your own,

Ash Dey 1:11

as part of your first meeting with a client, ask them what they're already doing. Ask them what sessions have worked well and what hasn't worked well, and see if you can understand why. If you are an individual who has a broad range of offerings, sit with the company and say, This is why I offer How about we just run a poll and see what people are interested just to try and get your foot through the door.

Jeremy Enns 1:33

We also talk about the power of the communities that often formed around these workplace wellness programs.

Ash Dey 1:39

What we saw was people became supportive of each other within that space, and then that naturally became a community. So thinking about how can you form those communities, whether they're within workplaces or just in your own ecosystem? How can you start adding value and creating a safe space for both yourself to share what you do and the impact you're having, but also for those who are receiving your offerings to share what they're finding. And we also talk

Jeremy Enns 2:09

about some of the big picture societal challenges facing practitioners, employers and employees, when it comes to wellness. Part of accessibility

Ash Dey 2:17

is back affordability is one of those sad realities, where money is the driving factor for for a lot of things. So even though you may have the best intention, the biggest barrier to entry, whether it's a company doing something or an individual is money. So how can we remove those barriers? And again, we've been thinking creatively and have models to remove those barriers. Again, to start

Jeremy Enns 2:41

off the conversation, I wanted to know what types of offerings are organizations looking for?

Ash Dey 2:49

The types of practitioners we work with our former sole traders, individual practitioners, SMEs, and charities. And each one of them has different levels of support in terms of what they're looking for the types of offerings they offer to workplaces, in terms of what we've seen really popular over over the last year, pre COVID. And German COVID is the rise in social group and community based activities. So previously, there was a big focus on awareness and education, around mental health, around nutrition around sleep, more and more than men's health as well. One thing COVID has done, which the positive is brought the focus back to social connection, social interaction. So if any of the listeners are working spaces around, bringing people together, and building communities or micro communities, whether it's in a wider ecosystem or within a workplace, I think the time is now for them to shine, because companies are craving ways to connect, whether it's right now it's virtually but we will go back to one site in a matter of time.

Jeremy Enns 3:56

Okay, and so for the individual practitioner, whether it's like a yoga instructor or somebody who works with I know you mentioned hormones or sleep or nutrition or any of these things, like what are the some of the benefits, I think that this is a like approaching bigger companies is not something that is a natural thought that comes into somebody's mind and it might feel like too difficult to even like put any time or effort into so like what are some of the benefits if they can figure this out and get build these relationships?

Ash Dey 4:21

If I take out practitioner base says that they fall in two camps, one area where they already have relationships with corporates or workplaces. So speaking to the way they've they've gone about it is pull out the old yellow pages or Google and just contacting workplaces and saying, Are you offering x, y or Zed in terms of an offering and saying two or three benefits of that service and putting out there? Those individuals have been so proactive. We've we as a company also rely on their support and I'll explain that in a moment. Many of the practitioners in this where the vast majority, say, or those who have tried to poach in workplaces, and they get shut down, they get shut down because they have an individual practitioner and administration behind and levels of, are you insured Are you vetted, you have to get to health and safety processes. How are you credential eyes all the admin that surrounds it is initially getting a compensation. But then after you've got the conversation, getting on boarded through payroll, a lot of companies are put off by that.

So I would say for those practitioners, think about the target audience, avoid the bigger companies, because there's more levels of red tape go for the SMEs, the smaller companies, the charities, and their decision time decision processes much quicker. The other thing it allows them to do is build better lasting relationships with both the employer who's organizing it, but also the students participants, compared to the bigger organizations. The other way we seen and the way we work is how can we support these practitioners find aggregators, so companies like open mind, but there are others out there yoga agencies and well being collectives, which can help individuals access companies. So this is where I think in the space of workplace well being over the next year or two, we're going to see the evolution of wellness aggregators. And those will be the gateways to both enterprises and SMEs. And it's going to be interesting to see how they all differentiate themselves in that time.

Jeremy Enns 6:40

Yeah, and I think that like it feels as a society, and especially in like the business world, maybe this is just my being more interested in this side of things, but that there is kind of an evolution going on, where businesses are really recognizing the value of providing these wellness services, and there's like a hunger for it. And I feel like HR is kind of evolving and being more empowered, and like businesses are, especially in the tech space, you know, they've kind of set the standard there. But I think that's trickling down to other businesses as well, that are, are really looking to to do better to support their employees, and are kind of seeing that that has results for the business themselves.

And so I think that there's this growing actually like need and hunger on these larger enterprises and small and medium sized businesses, like you mentioned, to find people to deliver these services, but they might not have an easy kind of time to do it. And so I think like you're saying those aggregators are going to be more and more important, but also, even as individuals, like actually, like listing out some companies in your area, or however you're doing that, maybe that's remotely, but actually taking the effort to go and reach out and say, like, Hey, this is something that I know, helps companies perform better. And if you've done that, in the past, you might have some more data. But it sounds like that's something that you guys really help with on the back end?

Ash Dey 7:46

Absolutely. It just I want to give one example of a teacher so a yoga teacher meditation teacher I spoke to about two weeks ago, she lives in Canary Wharf, and have a coach has been speaking with the local schools. within walking distance, I've heard apartment in Canary Wharf. And for her that's been her gateway to find opportunities, what's walking distance businesses and schools because that's what she wants to focus to find opportunities. So just, you can go on to Google and scroll endlessly at companies and write emails, but also local. I think COVID has also driven a focus on how do you support the local SMEs, small businesses out there. In terms of what you were just saying around the focus, and the appetite around well, big and how it's been increasing. So business in the community, an organization in the UK, in 2018, published and stats around his well being on the boardroom agenda.

Back then it was on forming 10 workplaces, boardroom agendas, 2019, five and 10 50% COVID. Probably on everyone's agenda. Now the stats haven't been published. But there's a difference between being on the agenda and then actually doing something about it. And you quite rightly say the tech companies, the scaleups, in terms of organizations, where they generally have younger workforces, where there was a big focus on wellness and inclusion from the get go, they are leading the way they are leading the conversation around personalization of what individuals within an organization want. And that's leading to something we're passionate about, which is communities and building communities within workplace and creating that sense of belonging. That said, with the enterprises, they're they're starting to have to think differently. So one of our clients I won't name which one recently re evaluated their well being proposition. Previously they had been spelled spending millions of pounds a year on gym memberships. So part of their strategy was like Stop the gym memberships because we don't need them anymore.

And even then the utilization wasn't that high. Let's create a saving for the company. But then let's reinvest some of that into another well being proposition based on what the employees are asking for. So again, workplaces are going through this evolution by also think for practitioners and well being providers, we need to get better at speaking the language of business if we want to work with business. So I think someone beautifully said to me, when pitching to companies, don't pitch from the perspective of this is going to cost you money. pecci from the perspective of this as a cost saving to your business, and thinking of what's the cost to your business of sick leave and absenteeism and presenteeism paycheck from the spectrum, this can save you money, I think one Deloitte stat, which they published, republished in early 2020, just before COVID was that the cost of absenteeism, presenteeism, for a workplace is about 1500 pounds per annum. If you scale that number up to the number of employees in their company, that's huge cost to a business. So if you can picture it, say if you know an organization is 20 people, and you roughly know that stat, which is backed up by a whole number of research papers, you can quickly work out what it's costing that business, you can then say, for the cost of a yoga session each month, or the cost of a wellbeing session each month. There's not a huge exchange, you'll see the value in a matter of months.

Jeremy Enns 11:36

Yeah. And then you get into even like employee retention, and all these things, which that is, I mean, for anyone who's listening, who has hired people, and had to replace people, that is a huge headache, and expense, and time and money and all these things. So I think if you've gone through that yourself, you recognize the value of, you know, keeping your people happy, and not having to do that every month or two months, or however long it is. So yeah, I can see that there is a ton of value there. I'm curious when it comes to the actual programs themselves. So what is the structure that, you know, really works well for these types of companies? And then like, how often are they being run? What's the kind of price points? Can you talk a little bit about that? I'm

Ash Dey 12:15

gonna say, an old consulting phase, which you'll dislike, which is there's no one size fits all, every company is so unique. But that said, I think, from a company perspective, before spending, investing loads of money on a well being program, asking people what they want. Because by doing that, you'll understand what is their focus right now, one more little anecdote for my client we work with, where they have multiple sites across the UK. And they asked for every site what they wanted some sessions focused around, can we have sessions around monopoles? Can we have some sessions around hit classes? Once I asked, Can we have a radio? And it's just so different. And for them, it for them office, it was just deadly silent, and they wanted a radio in the office. That's what their what their need for that for them right now was.

So I would say invest the time to ask what your employees want, within reason. And you can structure it through some creative and structured surveys, forums, coffee meetings. But in terms of answering the question, what is working well, in terms of programs and price points. So far from our data, we can see that if we go to a workplace and suggest a yoga and meditation series of programs, we know that from our data, that eight to 14% of their employee base will be interested in yoga and meditation. So quite quickly, quite quickly with that workplace, you can start talking about the value to those eight to 14%. And you can scale it and work out depending on the size of organization you're talking to.

And in terms of price points, part that for a note in a moment, in terms of other types of sessions, we take the approach of building up a wellness program based on what their employees are saying. So we know eight to 14% of increase interested in yoga, meditation and mindful practices. We are then looking at Okay, what percentage of the employee base interested in mental health specific conversations gut health nutrition, and this is where it varies workplace to workplace because it very much depends on the demographic. So I wouldn't comfortably say there was a one size fits all, you have to ask the questions. That said if you're a practitioner, a sole practitioner or an SME going into a workplace, I would as part of your first meeting with a client, ask them what they're already doing. Ask them what sessions have worked well and what hasn't worked. Well, let's see if you can understand why. If you are an SME or an individual who has a broad range of offerings, sit with the company and say, This is what I offer, how about we just run a poll and see, see what people are interested just to try and get your foot through the door.

Once you've got your foot through the door, you can build upon it, bringing it back to price point. This is where if I take when I spoke to those practitioners, before we started building open mind, if I take yoga, we saw the price point for a yoga class, a 60 minute yoga class range from 23 pounds an hour, up to 100 pounds an hour, that 800 pounds was less than the 1%. But it's worth noting, people and individuals have charged what they want, and what they feel comfortable with asking to workplaces, and workplaces are paid what they feel comfortable for the value of what they deem that session to be. I think times have changed since we did those interviews back in 2018, where there's so much more content and ability to search for price points and understanding price points. And taking yoga as an example, to understand what that price point is. For a yoga class. Now we're seeing the average being between about 70 and 80 pounds an hour for corporate staff. There's still sessions, but above and below that range. For workshop, a well being workshop on something, again, that price point varies from we've seen from 250 to 150 pounds, up to a few 1000 pounds. We've seen it vary depending on location in the country. We've seen it vary from providers picking a different price, depending on the company they're working at. So one is I as an individual practitioner, I would set a boundary for your price, what are you comfortable to charge for the value you're delivering? That should be your lower end. Everything else on top of that should be treated as a bonus. And you can scale up your price depending on the type of delivery. Is that on site? Am I having to travel? Is that travel fee included? Is it virtual? If it's virtual? How many people is it to? And if it's virtual? Is it being recorded? Can I add a cost to that? If it's recorded? So I will start with as an individual, what do you feel comfortable charging?

Jeremy Enns 17:27

Okay, and so when when you're approaching companies, would you recommend people try to get a multi session or workshop commitment? Like are there results immediately or I feel like sometimes one session isn't enough to judge whether it's successful or not going into long term.

Ash Dey 17:43

Completely agree. I think measuring success and definitions of success vary. We can talk about that. But I think First things first is as a practitioner, or your audience jelen with you. Because your delivery style, your personality, your content, it will never may never appeal to 100% of the audience. But are you appealing to the majority? And that's a decision for the organizer within a company. So for those we normally start with a provider with one session, is there a connection there? Can we build on it, but we we make sure we leave the door open for more sessions with that provider, and that topic. And then you can go into the programs. The risk is if you go with a program straight off, you're asking for a commitment. And they don't know you, the employees don't know you. The other thing with programs is ideally you want employees or the students or the participants to attend all the sessions in the program.

One thing we've learned with working with workplaces is if you go with a program, it's really hard to get that commitment. There's time pressures, project pressures, manager pressures, family pressures, things come up. So it's easier to put in shorter programs, the longer programs. And it's easier to put in programs where individuals can dip in and out of sessions. They don't need to commit to the full lot. When we talk to workplaces more than more than ever, we talk about how do you create opportunity for employees to attend sessions. So in a calendar month, there might be a topic of gut health. in that month, we might have a session around what does a healthy gut look like another session around IBS and breaking that taboo around poo? We might have another session around fermentation. We might have another session around yoga therapy and movement and on digestion. The idea of is having a variety of different sessions and they may appeal to everyone but they may also appeal to nice demographics within your audience pool and how did you create that opportunity?

Jeremy Enns 19:58

Okay, so I think we've talked to Little bit about you mentioned before using the language of business and how that's something that, especially for people who don't have a corporate background, might not be overly confident in doing it might not have any idea what that is. So when it comes to actually like making the pitch, I'm curious about who should we be looking for, like, which person at the company is that the head of HR is that the actual owner on a smaller company? And like, how should we be structuring the pitch if we're reaching out to them, and wanting to approach them with a workshop or a series, a program like this

Ash Dey 20:29

person to approach varies depending on the size of the organization. So for us, we look at HR directors, HR managers, people, directors, people is all within the HR function. We also look at well being leads well being managers, they don't, while being lead, sometimes don't sit within the HR function, they sit within the business. So the difference there is they can resonate with most people on the ground. So they it's easier to build a rapport connection. And then, with SMEs and smaller businesses, it's easier to directly approach either the MD managing director or director or over financial director within the company, and just go straight to the decision maker. I say that, but it's also if you already have a community. And a lot of well, being practitioners we know already have communities from previously, whether it's from studios or online presences, membership models, if you've got a community, how can they help you?

So people will be from all industries and walks of lives in your community? How can they introduce you to their workplace? So an example we way we work as a company is we've not spent any money on marketing, really, we've not done marketing campaigns, we've not done Facebook ads, or Instagram ads. What we've done is ask our partners, can you introduce us to a workplace, you work with what by doing that we can take your admin challenges out, and we can manage it all for you. But we'll also give you 20% of our gross profit over the first year on anything else we sell to that workplace. So similarly, how do you empower your your community, your connections? How can you empower them, whether that's in incentivization, if you can introduce me to your workplace, I'll give you 100 pounds, once I've got my first sale, so you're not at a loss, you've done it after, after after your first sale. Or you can incentivize further and say, I'll share anything I make with you over a period of time. So in terms of approach, two ways, one is usually community.

The other one is approach the wellness, wellness lead within a company or HR director or someone in the people space, in terms of how you approach them. Again, stick to what you feel most comfortable with. If you've never done LinkedIn campaigning, email campaigning, it's very easy to hire, marketing and spend loads of money to do that. It's one way it does work. But I will caution the market for marketing to those professionals is very saturated at the moment, and it just creates noise. If you can get a warm introduction through a connection, you'll be far more successful. So that's finding the individual and approaching the business in terms of the pitch. Stay true to what you understand that the benefits of your discipline, whether it's yoga, whether it's nutrition, talk about if you Google, mental health and the impact of mental health on the UK economy, you'll see see the staggering stats around that some of the best places to go look around, have a look at mine, the charity, and you'll see all the stats, what what it means to the UK economy and UK businesses around ill mental health and well being. And you can use some of those stats as part of your conversation in but then you can finish the conversation with by delivering modality x we know can see an impact in reduce stress, reduced anxiety, connection, etc.

Jeremy Enns 24:20

Okay, do you know if there are any good resources for either companies that have published reports on this where you know, they introduced this type of program and saw these results? I'm sure there's blog posts and things like that that are out there.

Ash Dey 24:32

So I can share some links with you and we can put them in the comments but definitely check out Deloitte mental health report from January 2020 in mind, and businesses in the community have a whole range of reports around the impact of introducing wellness programs to workplaces.

Jeremy Enns 24:49

Okay. Now I know something that you've also talked before about is selling to specific individuals within a larger company and how maybe there are especially this is maybe on the enterprise scale where there's big, you know, multinational companies, that you can approach people at different teams at different levels within that company. And that that's a different approach to take as well.

Ash Dey 25:09

Absolutely. And so, as I mentioned, as HR directors, people, lead wellness managers, every team leader, or within an organization, there are multiple teams, especially enterprises. So each one of them may have discretionary spend and budget. Each one of them may be also looking at ways to support their teams, especially now, especially since we're we're not all in the same office, how do we encourage social interaction? How do we build connectivity between between our peers? So there's a way of approaching them and is being as direct thinking about what are the challenges and problems they're having right now around how to bring the team together, and positioning sessions, even if it's an awareness and educational session, you can make them interactive.

So as an example is for for some of our clients, where their enterprises, we've worked both centrally with the central HR team, but we also work at team level. And we approach those teams around asking, what are you doing at a team level for well being? How are you making it personalized to the 1015 people in your team? Have you asked them what they need for their support right now, whether that's a mindful creativity session or a session on boundaries, it's the biggest theme in November, December of this year as a result of COVID. And working from home we've seen is the the need to support employees and employers around how to create healthy boundaries, and how to create a sense of permission for employees to say no, say no to creating more boundaries, or going into endless hours of work. by proposing wellness activities, they can create protected times during the day sponsored by the workplace sponsored by your manager, you've got the support for employees to take time off.

One way positioning it. The other way of positioning it is by having wellness sessions, you're empowering your employees to start looking at themselves to self care, that will have a positive impact long term around productivity, but it's also the right thing to do. Everyone's having a tough time at the moment. So I don't want to use the phrase play on empathy. But we all have to be empathetic. And we're all going through different things. And we all need different things to support us right now. So think about how you can empathize with with them either on a personal level, a professional level, from your past experiences, as I know, many wellness practitioners come from other careers as well. But also just empathize on what's going on right now. How can you provide something that can help them?

Jeremy Enns 27:58

Now what about when it comes to let's say you have gotten an engagement, whether that's a single session, or you know, a multi session kind of engagement? And you've delivered that? What can you do as a practitioner to kind of increase the value to the business, I know that you've talked about reporting back on the benefits, and maybe collecting survey information and things like that, as well as community you talked a lot about. So can you share, like what you're seeing practitioners, maybe some of the ones who are having the most success, how they're adding even more value than the sessions themselves back into these businesses.

Ash Dey 28:27

as practitioners, I think one easy opportunity, many Miss is collecting feedback. And that can be a survey that is sent out in the session to people, you can send it out as a survey afterwards. But if you ping the link in a in a in a window, when a live session, will ask them to complete it. Now you'll get real time feedback, if you send an email after afterwards, the the uptake is much lower. But what you can do with that feedback is you've then got something tangible to go back to the buyer, the wellness lead to say, this is what your people have said, the best sales material is stuff from that own workplace. So by using stats and data from their own workplace, whether it's sentiment and feedback. So three questions that come to mind. One, how are you feeling right now to play in a survey to what was the feedback on the provider? So all the professional How would you rate the quality of that professional and three, free text, feel free to leave your thoughts, feelings, emotions around what you found about that session?

With those three points, you have an insight into what they individuals going through what they thought about your session, and free tax and sentiment and you can tell a lot from the sentiment side of things. as a practitioner, you you don't need to be a wizard to excel. But you can probably find a tool on Google to do this. But if you put it into Excel and click the charts button, you can quickly wizards Some charts and graphs and send that back to the company. What it does for them is created immediate justification for being able to fund more of the same sessions. I think that's one trick, I think everyone should be able to do, we should all be asking for feedback, not only from a way of selling, but also from a personal development standpoint. And the second part is community. When I started exploring wellness in 2018, I set out to create an interest group, as we call it, created it and called it an interest group. The idea of that was to create opportunity for employees to access a certain wellness session, what we didn't realize was, over time, that became a safe space.

And you can't just say it's a safe space for the sake of it's a safe space, to have to be constantly safe. And what we saw was people became supportive of each other within that space. And then that naturally became a community. So it's thinking about how can you form those communities, whether they're within workplaces or just in your own ecosystems, whether that's on a Facebook group, whether that's in a chat, whether that's in a newsletter, how can you start adding value, and creating a safe space for both yourself to share what you do and the impact you're having. But also for those who are receiving your offerings to share what they're finding. in workplaces, companies have social media walls, whether that's a Slack channel, or Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Facebook, there's hundreds out there. But what they can often do is create a space for the employees who may be new to a certain wellness modality to try things and explore and see what the conversation is safely. in workplaces, one of the things we're seeing is, especially with virtual delivery, it creates opportunity for those who haven't necessarily taken part in a wellness session, whether that's out of fear, access, or just there's never been an interest. By seeing these communities and seeing the type of language and inclusivity they're creating, it creates an opportunity for them to give it a go.

Jeremy Enns 32:16

Every Sunday, I send out my Listen up newsletter to over 1000 entrepreneurs, marketers, and creatives who are seeking to grow an audience around work, that means something. Each week features an article to help you reframe how you're approaching your business, along with five things I discovered the previous week that I think might help you in your life in business. Instead of another tactic or strategy to add to your never ending to do list. The newsletter is meant to help you rise above the noise and look at your work from a new perspective. It's best consumed sitting somewhere cozy with a cup of coffee in your hand, which is exactly how I write it. reading this newsletter is my very favorite thing I do in my business.

And it's something I'm truly proud to create and share. I'd be honored to send it to you and you can sign up at better wellness dot biz slash newsletter. I know that you've also said before, when we've talked that a lot of times you've seen these communities have built within companies who become really attached to that specific practitioner who maybe it's somebody who is we've used the example of providing yoga sessions every so often and that when that person might leave and somebody else might come in, they'll be asking, but Wait, where's where so and so who was delivering this for a while. And you've also talked about how that can often lead for practitioners into individual one on one clients as well. So is that something that's quite common that you're seeing when people get into these kind of corporate situations? In a nutshell?

Ash Dey 33:35

Yes. One of the things with community and the opportunity individual practitioners have with working with corporates is you have immediate access to lots of people, you have an audience. And as an individual, I think there's an acceptance of you won't please everyone, but you only need to please a few and support a few. And if you're making a smallest impact to that one or two people, the two individuals, if those individuals who will likely go, I've really found that beneficial. I will go go and check out so and so's website. See if they've got a weekly ongoing session. Can I book a one to one session? Have they got a membership model? We've definitely seen that with some of our practitioners and how we work with corporates, I think by creating that community, so at the start of your sessions, if you've got the opportunity, have the small talk at the start and end start building rapport.

Because people remember that bit. That's the bit that creates stickiness. So that's the bit that encourages the feedback, but also encourages the decision maker to bring you back again because of feedback saying so. Diving back to a previous part of this conversation around pricing. If you have created that stickiness, you then have the opportunity of going let's book a 10 session series. They'll give you a small discount. But again, that creates stability for both the practitioner, but also creates, it makes the admin easier for the company, but also create some stability and structure in terms of what you can then deliver and the long term impact you can have. Awesome.

Jeremy Enns 35:18

So one of the things that I always like to say about this show is that it's a show that is disguised as a show about building better wellness businesses, but it's really about building a better world. And I think that you and your company really worked on kind of multiple sides of that both within larger companies as well as on the practitioner side. So I'm curious, when you hear building better that phrase, like what comes to mind for you in the context of either business, or just life in the world in general,

Ash Dey 35:42

for me building betters all around having a social impact. setting out on this journey, I knew we would have to align with both my personal values. And that's essentially shaped our company values as part of that. And the third value is all about social impact. Are we having a positive impact on both the workplaces, we're supporting the well being practitioners and the planet, as back to people purpose and planet. And with the planet aspect is also looking at, are we driving in the right positive shift. And the reason I talked about local earlier and supporting local communities is we don't want practitioners traveling halfway across the country to deliver a workshop when there's someone local who was qualified to do it as well, because that just creates a bigger carbon footprint. So that there's so many angles, as you touched on in terms of when we are looking at building and supporting workplaces and practitioners. What's the knock on effects, whether it's the positive impact, but also the potential negative impacts as well? I think as part of the business is yes, we're a for profit, how do we make money? But also, what are we doing to give back to our communities?

So how are we supporting charities, schools, organizations who can not who can't necessarily afford well being? are we are we being smart enough in terms of using commercial models to be able to support those organizations as well, I'm proud to say that we we are we are challenging how we're thinking about how to support those organizations in the short term, but also the long term, and the long term is going to take some time to build. But it's there in our ethos, just thinking about that phase again, the second part is around accessibility. Well being shouldn't be a luxury for people, it should be accessible to everyone. And I realized that when I was working in my previous job, where we were fortunate as very good company, we had lots of perks. The impact on our health from the way we worked and the culture was detrimental. And how do we create more accountability as a society for ourselves around wellness? So part of accessibility is back to affordability is one of those sad realities, where money is the driving factor for for a lot of things. So even though you may have the best intention, the biggest barrier to entry, whether it's a company doing something or an individual is money. So how can we remove those barriers? And again, we've been thinking creatively and have models to remove those barriers again, but similar to that the affordability side is back to the practitioner, are we paying and other practitioners charging the right amount for the value they're delivering?

I personally have the opinion, the answer is no. Right now, it's such a broad disparity in prices at the moment and rates for the value. And it's it's a challenge for workplaces, frankly, to understand what's good and what's not. And a lot of them based on price, which isn't necessarily the answer in terms of quality and effectiveness. The first value so set our values backwards, social impact accessibility, the first value is community, I think to build a better better world and be better. How can we start supporting communities, whether it's a practitioners community, whether it's a local community center, whether it's creating lots of micro communities within a workplace, so it creates a sense of belonging, and empowerment and engagement for individuals? How do we do that?

Jeremy Enns 39:27

You can find out more about open mind at open mind well being co. uk and further connect with Ash on LinkedIn. You can find links to both of those plus everything else we mentioned in the show notes for this episode at better wellness dot biz slash zero to seven. This episode was produced by our amazing team at counterweight creative Big thanks in particular to Tom Kelly for sound engineering support. Rena Penner for her work on the shownotes Ari lumber dozy for his help with video editing, and Casey Bowen and Francesca mandolin are there behind the scenes work keeping everything running smoothly. on schedule. Finally to you listening. Thank you so much for spending this time with me and until next time, keep building better

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