EP 133: Suzanne Heywood - From Shipwreck to Boardroom: How Education Transformed a Life of Adversity into Extraordinary Success

Imagine spending a decade of your childhood adrift at sea, facing shipwreck and isolation. Could you turn that adversity into a springboard for a remarkable career?

Suzanne Heywood, COO of Exor and author of the captivating memoir "Wavewalker," did just that. In this episode, we unpack her incredible journey from a life of hardship to leading a global investment firm.

Uncover the secrets to:

1️⃣  Resilience: Learn how to harness adversity as fuel for personal and professional growth.

2️⃣ Unconventional Thinking: Discover the power of challenging the status quo and forging your own path.

3️⃣  Transformative Education: Understand how education can break barriers and unlock your full potential.

Suzanne's story is a testament to the human spirit's ability to thrive, even in the face of immense challenges.

Join us to explore her unique insights on:

• How education changed her life and opened doors to new opportunities. 
• Strategies for overcoming self-doubt and embracing your individual strengths.
• The power of determination and consistent effort, even in small increments.

Suzanne's story is a beacon of hope for anyone who has ever faced adversity. It's a reminder that your past doesn't have to define your future.

Watch the full episode now and be inspired to rewrite your own story. Don't forget to like, comment, and share this video with anyone who could use a dose of inspiration. Your support helps us bring you more incredible stories like Suzanne's.

💡 LINKS TO MORE CONTENT 

Host: Christian Soschner

Book: Wavewalker

📌 Quotes:

(00:15:10) "Wavewalker is the story of a seven-year-old girl trapped on a boat for ten years."
(00:31:04) "Getting into Oxford completely changed my life; it was an incredible turning point."
(00:39:03) "When told not to do something, I often go and do it anyway."
(00:44:24) "Unusual people with unusual experiences can open doors that most people wouldn't imagine."
(00:56:59) "Most people...will either encounter something bad or they will know somebody who's encountered something bad."

⏰ Timestamps:

(00:06:38) A Life of Contrast: From Shipwreck to Boardroom
(00:11:42) Innovation in the Startup World: Fresh Eyes and Customer Focus
(00:15:30) Confronting the Past: The Emotional Journey of Writing a Memoir
(00:19:27) Crafting a Story: The Art and Efficiency of Writing
(00:21:28) The Transformative Power of Education: Changing Lives Through Learning
(00:27:31) Gendered Expectations: Cooking and Cleaning on the Boat
(00:30:20) Abandoned in New Zealand: A Year of Isolation and Survival
(00:48:43) Resilience: Overcoming Adversity and Staying Calm
(00:50:47) Unconstrained by Expectations: Embracing Unconventional Paths
(00:51:47) Finding Time: Writing a Book in 15 Minutes a Day
(00:58:55) Putting Problems in Perspective: Overcoming Challenges with Resilience
(01:10:29) The Temptation of Excess: Navigating Sudden Wealth
(01:13:30) Lifestyle Inflation: The Dangers of Upgrading Your Life
(01:16:51) Technology and the Future of Education
(01:27:13) Recognizing and Overcoming Unconscious Bias
(01:30:19) Unmasking Bias: The Perils of Assumptions
(01:39:06) Not a Popularity Contest: Leading with Difficult Questions
(01:47:30) Iveco Group and Metallica: An Unexpected Collaboration
(01:50:

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:05:14

Christian Soschner

Imagine spending a decade of your childhood on a sailboat

00:00:05:14 - 00:00:11:23

Christian Soschner

isolated from the world with no formal education.

00:00:11:23 - 00:00:15:07

Suzanne Heywood

my parents believed that it was entirely their right

00:00:15:08 - 00:00:19:17

Suzanne Heywood

earned enough money for a one way ticket back to the UK.

00:00:19:17 - 00:00:20:01

Suzanne Heywood

and did

00:00:20:03 - 00:00:20:22

Suzanne Heywood

This is probably not to

00:00:20:22 - 00:00:27:24

Suzanne Heywood

to be recommended. I started kind of editing it because I used to walk up to my house from the train station on the side.

00:00:27:24 - 00:00:29:11

Suzanne Heywood

probably not a very good idea

00:00:29:11 - 00:00:29:18

Suzanne Heywood

because

00:00:29:19 - 00:00:30:23

Suzanne Heywood

most people

00:00:30:23 - 00:00:33:02

Suzanne Heywood

will either encounter something bad

00:00:33:02 - 00:00:33:06

Suzanne Heywood

or

00:00:33:10 - 00:00:37:11

Suzanne Heywood

diversity helps a company to be kind of innovative. And also

00:00:37:16 - 00:00:39:19

Suzanne Heywood

education is an incredible thing.

00:00:39:21 - 00:00:46:21

Christian Soschner

Could you imagine that leading to the boardroom of taking over investment powerhouse?

00:00:46:21 - 00:01:13:03

Christian Soschner

MIT Susan Hayward, chief operating officer of XR at $26 billion conglomerate with investments ranging from Ferrari to The Economist. But her journey wasn't paved by privilege. It was forged in the fires of Brazilian resourcefulness and then an evening thirst for knowledge.

00:01:13:03 - 00:01:27:06

Christian Soschner

in this episode, discover how source's unconventional upbringing shaped her into a fearless leader, how the lessons she learned from adversity became the keys to her success,

00:01:27:06 - 00:01:35:21

Christian Soschner

and how education, even in the most unlikely circumstances and transform entire lives.

00:01:35:23 - 00:01:44:05

Christian Soschner

Don't miss this extraordinary story of a woman who defied expectations and redefined what it means to be a leader.

00:01:44:05 - 00:01:52:23

Christian Soschner

subscribe, comment and share this episode with your network. Your support helps us bring more inspiring stories like Susan's to you.

00:01:52:23 - 00:02:01:14

Christian Soschner

Watch the full episode now and unlock the secrets to navigating life's unexpected challenges and forging your own path to success.

00:02:02:19 - 00:02:32:17

Christian Soschner

And then we and Beth right into our conversation. First of all, I would like to thank you for writing this fantastic book. I really enjoy reading it. It's an incredible story and generating laugh, reading memoirs and biographies. If you see some in the background. But this story is truly amazing. On one hand, you capture it. it reads basically like a fiction story, but it's real life.

00:02:32:19 - 00:02:35:09

Christian Soschner

Everything happened in the.

00:02:36:23 - 00:02:51:05

Suzanne Heywood

when I was writing it, I realized that actually this has a story to it that has a kind of arc of a story that you would normally see. and actually, I have no option, the book, to be a mini

00:02:51:05 - 00:02:56:04

Suzanne Heywood

series by called friends select something that could be on the screen. So fingers

00:02:56:04 - 00:02:57:17

Suzanne Heywood

crossed that that's going to happen.

00:02:57:19 - 00:03:07:07

Christian Soschner

I hope so, I hope so. This was one for the for David. It's it reads like a Netflix series. So I was just I was looking is it already on there and not yet.

00:03:07:09 - 00:03:10:10

Suzanne Heywood

Not yet, not yet, but hopefully it will be.

00:03:10:12 - 00:03:11:12

Christian Soschner

Well would it be would it

00:03:11:12 - 00:03:13:17

Christian Soschner

be Netflix, BBC.

00:03:13:19 - 00:03:30:12

Suzanne Heywood

So I've optioned it to a production company. so a production company with an actor called James Naughton, who's very well known actor, and they've also signed a writer. So fingers crossed, they will they will put together a script and then

00:03:30:12 - 00:03:34:12

Suzanne Heywood

we'll move forward from there. So if you would be very exciting.

00:03:34:14 - 00:03:38:19

Christian Soschner

If you need some clicks to make it happen, let me know and I'll make sure that you get some.

00:03:38:19 - 00:03:55:24

Christian Soschner

I think it deserves to be a series. And when we prepared for this podcast episode, I promised to have the book finished, when we, our recording, but unfortunately, I haven't. I, I'm a little bit over half way through the reason is, every time when I saw

00:03:55:24 - 00:04:03:01

Christian Soschner

an island, something that grabbed my attention being a man and you was my son, and I looked up to places

00:04:03:01 - 00:04:15:22

Christian Soschner

just managed to see what, you have seen and on one hand, to describe these beautiful places and on the other hand, I've been to incredible events in terror.

00:04:15:23 - 00:04:35:10

Christian Soschner

Like a tanker ramming the same boat, catching tick waves that hits the boat. today I read about machine gun fights, which was a sadly beautiful. I don't your you know why. And then suddenly you put out a machine gun. Is this really true?

00:04:36:03 - 00:05:01:08

Suzanne Heywood

That is one of the really interesting things about the book is we go to some extraordinary places and and you're right, lots of people have said to me that as they have read the book, they've gone looking up some of these places because they're very unusual places, places like all Amsterdam in the middle of the Indian Ocean where we were shipwrecked, or just and Acuna, which is a tiny island, off the coast of South America.

00:05:01:08 - 00:05:19:24

Suzanne Heywood

So lots of unusual places that people have never heard of. some of them are very beautiful. All Amsterdam is not particularly beautiful, but, Tristan da Cunha is interesting. Wild and beautiful, elegant day, which we went to, which is near Rio is very beautiful. And many of the places in the South Pacific are very beautiful.

00:05:20:04 - 00:05:46:06

Suzanne Heywood

But you then have this contrast between these incredible locations and then what's happening on the boat, as you say, some extraordinary abilities, some of them life threatening. And then increasingly, if you go through the story, because I go on the boat when I'm seven years old and I'm trapped on the boat for ten years, basically, increasingly it becomes a story about how am I going to try and escape from despite how am I going to educate myself?

00:05:46:06 - 00:05:59:06

Suzanne Heywood

How am I going to, you know, have friends, go to school, have a life? Given that I'm stuck on this boat and the relationships inside the family start to deteriorate, so it becomes a real family drama.

00:05:59:15 - 00:06:18:23

Christian Soschner

Yeah, yeah, it it goes down that, I think this in the second half, that's what we were just talking. So there's a lot to discover in there. And I mean, yeah, China's remarkable because a clip from a to set the contrast. Yeah I mean your life is basically less of contrast, if I may say so. You had a childhood spent largely at sea without formal education.

00:06:18:23 - 00:06:20:12

Christian Soschner

If I got it right from the book.

00:06:20:12 - 00:06:39:20

Christian Soschner

And when I discovered your profile on LinkedIn, I saw that you are CEO at Exxon, which is one of the world's largest investment firm, but that doesn't stop. Yeah, usually people have one job and that's it's, you are also chairing the Hayward Foundation board member and chair it as CNA Industrial Event Co Group The economist.

00:06:39:22 - 00:06:50:15

Christian Soschner

While opera House right. Academy of Music and much much more. So my first question to you in our conversation is what drives you? What motivates you to change the world?

00:06:50:17 - 00:06:51:09

Suzanne Heywood

Well, I

00:06:51:09 - 00:07:13:21

Suzanne Heywood

think I've kind of gone did that myself, actually doing something about having been trapped on a boat for the whole of my childhood. When I escaped, I just flung myself into my future. Yeah, I wanted to go and do all of these things that I'd never had the chance to do, whether that was traveling on my own terms and going to museums or discovering music.

00:07:13:21 - 00:07:38:21

Suzanne Heywood

There was very little music on the boat. so that's how I got involved in the in the opera house, or educating myself, you know, I went and I not only got an undergraduate degree, but I got a PhD because I was so concerned to, you know, make sure that I educated myself. And I think that mindset of just, you know, rushing at the world and trying to do things has never really left me.

00:07:38:23 - 00:07:59:18

Suzanne Heywood

and what I've discovered is it's incredible how many things you can do, you know, if you really go for it and you're passionate about something, you can do some extraordinary things. So, you know, the Hayward Foundation, which is something that I set up in memory of my sadly kind of late husband, Jerry, passed away five and half years ago.

00:07:59:18 - 00:08:27:18

Suzanne Heywood

Now is dedicated to, promotion, promoting innovation in public policy. So we work with the UK government to try and think of new innovative public policy ideas. we sponsor senior civil servants to go, and have a sabbatical to think about long term policy ideas. I mean, this is a virtual foundation that I think got created out of nothing using his memory because he was a very senior civil servant in the UK.

00:08:27:20 - 00:08:50:21

Suzanne Heywood

And I think if people had been avoiding me, they would have said that don't try and do this alongside everything else that you do, but it's been a lot of fun and I feel like we've actually created something really very interesting and kept a lot of things that Jeremy was passionate about alive. anomaly Exorcized. Yes, it's quite a diverse portfolio of companies.

00:08:50:23 - 00:09:09:22

Suzanne Heywood

It's a really interesting kind of overall company kind of back. So, we're like a, you know, we're very small in, in the kind of leadership group, but we have the kind of privilege of owning some quite incredible companies. And I get to get involved in some of those companies, which is great.

00:09:10:01 - 00:09:35:00

Christian Soschner

So you unite basically business entrepreneurship, investing, policy making, which is quite interesting to us. I have this this podcast with your family and arts and music. And by the way, speaking of speaking, I mean, this book starts in the 70s. It's really difficult, I think, for young people to understand these days that it was not possible to consume music on an iPhone, on a smartphone.

00:09:35:02 - 00:10:01:22

Christian Soschner

taking your library, of, of records was back then in the 70s, compact disc not invented yet. with you would have meant a lot of baggage to carry. And the funny thing was, when I saw your first style, your profile on LinkedIn, this excellent holding company, this, really resonated with me. And it was such a surprise to discover, how colorful your life is, from sailing to had from running for that and one part.

00:10:01:22 - 00:10:12:16

Christian Soschner

Before we dive into the book that I would like to cover, you're also involved in the startup community. Francesca posted your speech there. what? I would like to hear what what excites you about the startup boat?

00:10:12:18 - 00:10:13:02

Suzanne Heywood

Well,

00:10:13:02 - 00:10:35:20

Suzanne Heywood

so zeal has is a part of that so called Exor Ventures. and Exor Ventures invests in early stage companies and I should say, the other way in which we get involved in early stage companies is through our bigger companies. So some of our bigger companies are Stellantis or Ferrari or Case New Holland, which makes agricultural equipment.

00:10:35:22 - 00:10:59:23

Suzanne Heywood

All of those big companies also invest in startups because they know there's a lot of really innovative things are happening in the startup community. What I love about startups is that they look at the world with very fresh eyes, and they tend to be incredibly customer focused because they will go and find a customer problem and then try to find a solution to it.

00:11:00:00 - 00:11:22:24

Suzanne Heywood

they're not, you know, constrained by how a big company does things, you know, so they can just go and solve that problem. And they will often therefore do something that's really very innovative. The challenge then, can be with the kind of big companies is how do you absorb that innovation without killing it? You know, and we've got to found that's quite a kind of interesting challenge.

00:11:22:24 - 00:11:44:01

Suzanne Heywood

So so we do it in two different ways. One is we have Exor Ventures that just directly invests in early stage companies, and we have a kind of portfolio of those. And then secondly, we try to encourage our big companies to be aware of their own startup community. So Agtech or whatever it is, and selectively to invest.

00:11:44:01 - 00:12:04:03

Christian Soschner

that's good start. It's good to know. So it may be interesting for some people in the audience. and then you decide it's besides, oh, what you're doing professionally. You decide since that it's it's time to write your memoir and, capture your youth on the boat. what motivated you to share your youth with the. About.

00:12:04:05 - 00:12:04:14

Suzanne Heywood

Well,

00:12:04:14 - 00:12:27:16

Suzanne Heywood

I always knew that I was going to write Wave Walker, this book, because it's an incredible adventure that happened to me. And there is a part of me that's always been a writer. I used to write diaries and everything on the boat. we book is actually my fourth book. I wrote a business book. I wrote a memoir of my kind of late mother in law.

00:12:27:16 - 00:12:47:20

Suzanne Heywood

I ended up writing a memoir with my husband, Jeremy Heywood, as well. so this is my fourth book, but this was always the book that I had to write. The only question for me was, when was I going to write it? Because I knew that if I wrote it, I would probably lose the remaining relationship that I had with my parents.

00:12:47:22 - 00:13:12:23

Suzanne Heywood

I mean, either that, or I would write a book that was so kind of false that it wasn't really worth writing. so although people will find when they read the book, it's not particularly aggressive or against my kind of parents and I don't, I actually kind of want the reader to discover what I discovered as I went through, my parents don't tolerate any sort of criticism, so I knew that that was the risk.

00:13:13:00 - 00:13:32:09

Suzanne Heywood

But finally, I got to the point in my life where my children, I had three children were similar age to where I was on Wave Walker, really struggling to get an education, to have friendships and all the rest of that. And I decided the more interesting thing, the more important thing for me now is to write this story.

00:13:32:11 - 00:13:34:19

Suzanne Heywood

and so, so I did.

00:13:34:21 - 00:13:35:16

Christian Soschner

you mentioned that you

00:13:35:16 - 00:13:49:10

Christian Soschner

wrote four books. and this is your fourth book. I if I, if I listen to it correctly, how was writing your memoir different from writing to other books? So was it just was it simply, simply the same process?

00:13:49:12 - 00:13:49:20

Suzanne Heywood

No,

00:13:49:20 - 00:13:59:15

Suzanne Heywood

it was actually quite different. so first of all, I'm very glad it was that it's my fourth book because writing, like

00:13:59:15 - 00:14:07:04

Suzanne Heywood

every other skill in life, takes a lot of practice. and I definitely become a much better writer, as I've

00:14:07:04 - 00:14:21:02

Suzanne Heywood

written more books. And in fact, what happened with Wade Walker is I started writing it back in 2016, and then sadly, Jeremy became ill, and I put way Walker to one side because I wanted to write his biography.

00:14:21:04 - 00:14:40:14

Suzanne Heywood

and so that took me about a year working with him. And then about a year and a half after he died. And then I came back to Wade Walker, and I'd actually become a better writer by doing that as well. So when I came back to Wade Walker, I rewrote it. So what's similar across the books is I think I've become gradually a better writer.

00:14:40:14 - 00:15:12:10

Suzanne Heywood

I've learned how to use language to express myself in a clearer and clearer way. And there's a difference between writing my first book was a business book is the difference between writing clearly for business and writing something that is more literary. You know that that's a different style of writing. So that's similar. What's different is that Weight Look is quite an emotional book, because this is a story of a little girl of seven years old who is trapped on a boat for ten years and had to figure out how to escape.

00:15:12:12 - 00:15:31:15

Suzanne Heywood

And some of the things that happened in Wade Walker, although I knew that they'd happened and I knew I'd written about them in my diaries, I put them all at the back of my head. I didn't really want to go and confront what had happened on the boat. And so when I came to writing, I had to go back and rediscover all of that.

00:15:31:15 - 00:16:01:23

Suzanne Heywood

I went to read my diaries. I went to met people who we'd met on the boat. I, you know, kind of interviewed them. Many of the crew had diaries that they let me have, but most fundamentally, I had to confront what had happened in order to be able to write about it. So for me, it was a very emotional experience to write the memoir, and it was only by allowing it to be like that that it ended up being what it is, because otherwise it would have been a very superficial book.

00:16:02:01 - 00:16:24:22

Christian Soschner

I think it's quite it's a great book to read. especially to scenes. I mean, you wrote that you had this Teddy Teddy with you and, it really evokes this picture and emotion. So this little girl's character on a boat, in some moments with the teddy and looking for Teddy, on the other hand, the happy days on the islands that you describe, with, parrots.

00:16:24:22 - 00:16:35:13

Christian Soschner

Without monkeys, there was a funny park with monkeys. And, I think it's as if a non-native speak as possible to to to feel the emotions that you have put into that book. my

00:16:35:13 - 00:16:50:23

Christian Soschner

next question is how do we approach such a project? You have experience now with four books. how do we approach a project of writing a book that you make sure that you walk through all steps until you have a finished product, and don't just drop it in the middle of that.

00:16:51:01 - 00:16:57:13

Christian Soschner

Did you develop a method, for writing a book that you could share?

00:16:57:13 - 00:17:34:02

Suzanne Heywood

Well, first of all, I should say, now that I've spoken to many other authors, I realized that there's no one way to write a book. So there are many different ways to write a book. So, the other thing I've realized is that my way of doing it is not a very efficient way of doing it. it's very labor intensive, but the way in which I've done it, certainly with the book about my husband, we've worked is I started off by creating the timeline of everything that had happened, because even though this was something that I lived through, you don't remember exactly what happens through ten years of your life.

00:17:34:08 - 00:18:00:04

Suzanne Heywood

And so I had to put that all back together. And I did that by reading my diaries. passports were really helpful. I had my father's logbooks, I interviewed people, and I gradually put together this very kind of detailed timeline. And then the story started to emerge from that. And what I realized as the story started to kind of come out was a lot of the things that I created were unnecessary.

00:18:00:06 - 00:18:21:02

Suzanne Heywood

Now, people didn't need to know about every island that we went to, even if interesting things happened. You know, even if, you know, I remember we went somewhere where we saw dugong, which is an amazing animal in the harbor, and I'd written all about the dugong. And then I came back and I looked at it and I thought, it's it's interesting, but it's not really part of the story.

00:18:21:02 - 00:18:44:12

Suzanne Heywood

It's not the story I'm trying to tell you. I'm trying to tell the story of what it was like to be a child on that boat, and to escape from that boat. And so what I then found is I then threw away a lot of the work that I'd done so that we come back to the story, which is the the essence of it, because what people love is this, you know, the story is that the people involved.

00:18:44:14 - 00:19:07:01

Suzanne Heywood

And then there's a wonderful phase at the end of writing a book for the end, where you're really just working on the words and how the words flow and how you describe things. I love that part, because that's the part where you could it becomes a little bit more art. How do you how do you say something in as beautiful a way as you can possibly say it?

00:19:07:02 - 00:19:28:17

Suzanne Heywood

so I think that that's the method that I've used for those. I think as I've got better at writing, I've got a little bit more efficient. I think I've learned that if you can early on work out what the story is, you can avoid a lot of the extra work that I've done in the past, exploring things that don't end up being kind of part of the story in a funny sort of way.

00:19:28:17 - 00:19:53:21

Suzanne Heywood

It's very similar to business. You know, if in a business you are clear. Well, the earlier that you can be clear in a business what it is you're trying to achieve, what product you're trying to deliver, what you're trying to solve, you're going to stop worrying about all the other bits and pieces. But the things thing with Wade Walker is I didn't really understand the story until I actually got a long way into writing it.

00:19:53:23 - 00:20:18:05

Suzanne Heywood

and actually, I think when you read the book, you can see the depth that's there because it's, for example, at the start of every chapter, I've actually said how many days this, this particular chapter covers. And that's because originally I had all of that original detail. You don't need to know that, but it is quite interesting to know that we're now on sort of day 750 of being on this boat.

00:20:19:05 - 00:20:40:01

Christian Soschner

Yeah, yeah, I like that part. And it also helps me to then, connect the story arc, with the actual time spent on the boat, which I think is a key information to understand. but you fancy. I mean, sailing the world is a dream. Many people have, but I think dream said I idealized. So it's like nothing bad can happen to orient.

00:20:40:03 - 00:21:01:22

Christian Soschner

You describe that you have a balance of beautiful things, and you have first, you start with a family. You dive into resilience into a family, how family gets together to hard times, how far apart your pursuit of education, what message to you wants to convey to the reader? What do you hope to read as we take you away from the story and you read it?

00:21:01:24 - 00:21:02:06

Suzanne Heywood

So

00:21:02:06 - 00:21:30:07

Suzanne Heywood

there's two big messages, you know, one message. And I'm trying to do something about both of these messages, actually. So the first message is the power of education. I mean, education is completely transforming or can be completely transforming. the fact that I was able to educate myself and then the fact that a university made a bet and let me and transformed my life from being a little girl on a boat in boatyards into everything that I do today.

00:21:30:10 - 00:21:53:02

Suzanne Heywood

Yeah, education is is incredible. I don't know of any other tool that could do that in such a fundamental way. Can change your life. And so what I'm doing on that, on that topic is I am working with charities that are trying to get education to be available to more children. So, for example, a charity I've been working with has been trying to

00:21:53:02 - 00:21:56:09

Suzanne Heywood

educate girls evacuated from Afghanistan.

00:21:56:11 - 00:22:00:12

Suzanne Heywood

and you can change the course of their life, if you can, their lives if

00:22:00:12 - 00:22:09:17

Suzanne Heywood

you can give them access to education. So that's a first in the power of education. And by the way, it doesn't just apply when your child. It can apply at any point in your life. I mean,

00:22:09:17 - 00:22:12:11

Suzanne Heywood

education is an incredible thing.

00:22:12:11 - 00:22:23:12

Suzanne Heywood

I'm one thing I'm very happy about is that I think education is becoming much more accessible than it used to be, because now we have an online we have a I, we have it.

00:22:23:12 - 00:22:37:22

Suzanne Heywood

It's it's more accessible, more fun, more, you know, easier to to do. So. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is there is something in the story about the rights of parents and the rights of children. So

00:22:37:22 - 00:22:41:16

Suzanne Heywood

my parents believed that it was entirely their right to

00:22:41:16 - 00:22:49:13

Suzanne Heywood

decide to sail around the world for ten years, even if by doing so, their children who couldn't go to school, couldn't have friends.

00:22:49:15 - 00:23:10:08

Suzanne Heywood

I think I only saw a doctor once in ten years. I only remember seeing a dentist once in ten years. I almost died several times and so on. So. But that was completely their right, you know, they, you know, they owned us as children. now, I believe actually that there is a balance between kind of parents rights and children's rights.

00:23:10:08 - 00:23:29:15

Suzanne Heywood

And so one of the things which I'm very keen to explore and I'm starting to do now is how do we try to make sure that parents who take their children out of the system, whether that by putting them on a boat or homeschooling them or whatever they might do, how do we at least make sure that we know where those children are?

00:23:29:17 - 00:23:46:15

Suzanne Heywood

Because in the cases where it's not working and sometimes it doesn't work, we need to find a way to help those children sort of reach out and get help. because unfortunately, not all parents will balance the needs of children and the needs of parents in the in the appropriate way.

00:23:46:15 - 00:24:13:07

Christian Soschner

Yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true. 70s, 70s, a different time. And, I have to remind me that basically, you didn't get any formal education for over ten years before you, joined Oxford. You made it into Oxford University, which is quite remarkable because your book starts with school. If I remember the first chapter. Right. And then your dad came home one day, and, this goes to his family.

00:24:13:07 - 00:24:25:20

Christian Soschner

Didn't say, okay, we try. We developed, which was supposed to be a two year journey. how do you remember your initial reactions back in the days when, that that we're talking to you?

00:24:26:06 - 00:24:44:10

Suzanne Heywood

Well, my initial reaction was, I guess, kind of excitement. I mean, I was a little girl of seven. I hero worship my father. I thought my father could do anything. He announced that we were going to go on this incredible adventure. We were going to sail around the world for three years. We were going to leave when I was seven.

00:24:44:10 - 00:25:07:13

Suzanne Heywood

Would be back when I was ten. We were going to follow Captain Cook around the world. My maiden name is is going to cook. I was going to see some incredible places, were all going to be together as a family. And by the time I was ten, we were going to be back. I would see my friends again, my beloved dog rusty, my dolls house, everything else, and it would all go back to the normal.

00:25:07:15 - 00:25:18:02

Suzanne Heywood

So I was sad because I was leaving my dog behind, my doll's house and my friends and my school. But I was also excited about going on this adventure.

00:25:18:04 - 00:25:18:15

Christian Soschner

So

00:25:18:15 - 00:25:37:21

Christian Soschner

I mean, back to education. So you started in school, you left everything behind, and there was no possibility there was no internet, books for, incredibly difficult, so to carry stuff. When you look at the books behind me, it's not so easy. Like today you have a Kindle with you. so it's really confined your space in a small ship.

00:25:37:21 - 00:25:50:20

Christian Soschner

In a small boat where you basically, with your brother, your mother and father and some guests. How what's the dynamic on board between the family and the guests?

00:25:50:22 - 00:25:51:12

Suzanne Heywood

Well, first of all,

00:25:51:12 - 00:26:23:13

Suzanne Heywood

you're right. I mean, the problem at the time was it was very hard to get an education. My mother took some worksheets with us maths and English and occasionally would do them, but it was very sporadic and I briefly went to school in Australia. And then eventually I tried to teach myself by post. however, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be assured that it doesn't happen today because I'm now being contacted by lots of, people who are, younger than me who've had similar experiences where they've been taken out of the system.

00:26:23:15 - 00:26:46:18

Suzanne Heywood

And even though it is more accessible, they're still struggling to get an education because, you know, if you're if you're on a boat, you know, sailing, even if you've got the internet, it can be incredibly difficult to get an education. but the dynamic on the boat changes over the years. And that's what's interesting about the story, because over a ten year period, everything changes me.

00:26:46:18 - 00:27:09:13

Suzanne Heywood

Most fundamental leap I'm getting older. I start as a little girl of seven. I end up with a girl of 17, you know, quite a young woman and all the things that happen in between. Same with my brother, turning into a young man. My mother becomes increasingly tired of being on the boat. She gets incredibly seasick. and she loves parties, so she's kind of.

00:27:09:18 - 00:27:32:11

Suzanne Heywood

She's also trapped on this boat in a funny sort of way. And I think my father ends up getting trapped, so he would never admit it because we have very little money. We weren't wealthy family. And a boat is very expensive. So he becomes flat in the need to keep on taking crew on board to pay for this voyage, but never really making that much money.

00:27:32:13 - 00:27:52:23

Suzanne Heywood

You know, I'm forced to kind of cook and clean for the crew on board. It was a very gendered world where I was expected to go to kind of cook and clean. but he's got it trapped as well. And what happens to the family dynamics is they start off fine. You know, we're kind of little kids on the boat, apart from the fact that we're very bored and it's quite dangerous.

00:27:53:00 - 00:28:13:22

Suzanne Heywood

And there is, particularly as I get older, I come much more in conflict with my mother, and the dynamic there becomes very difficult. My father becomes less and less tolerant, less willing to make any sort of kind of compromises as we go along. And eventually, you know, my brother and I are effectively kind of

00:28:13:22 - 00:28:16:01

Suzanne Heywood

abandoned in New Zealand.

00:28:16:03 - 00:28:18:10

Christian Soschner

Oh, oh, how was that?

00:28:18:12 - 00:28:27:04

Suzanne Heywood

Well, that last bit of the book where I'm at by this point, I'm 16 and my brother is 15, and my parents become increasingly

00:28:27:04 - 00:28:38:21

Suzanne Heywood

worried about my brother's education as a girl. They were much less worried about my education. They wanted me to cook and clean on the boat, but they were not that worried about my education. They became very worried about his education.

00:28:38:23 - 00:28:59:24

Suzanne Heywood

And so he was enrolled in a school in New Zealand, and I was left looking after him, and they sailed off and didn't come back. they came back for a couple of brief, very brief one two day visits, but they basically didn't come back for nine months. And that was the most difficult period because I'm a 16 year old, I know no adults in New Zealand.

00:29:00:01 - 00:29:20:06

Suzanne Heywood

My visa keeps on running out. They've left us in a very isolated place, very beautiful again, really beautiful place, but really isolated. And I describe in the book actually how I become incredibly depressed. I end up bringing up youth life, which is like a kind of, one of those phone lines that you ring when you're in desperate trouble.

00:29:20:08 - 00:29:31:13

Suzanne Heywood

But one way or another, I get myself through that year, and that's the year when I write to every university I've ever heard of in the world, asking them if they will consider letting me come and study.

00:29:31:21 - 00:29:38:00

Christian Soschner

How did you survive? I mean, no. No money? No, you don't you yourself.

00:29:38:02 - 00:29:42:17

Suzanne Heywood

Well, just my father. My father left a very small amount of money in a bank account.

00:29:42:17 - 00:29:58:23

Suzanne Heywood

not his main money. he put a small amount of money in another account, which I could access by forging his signature because I was too young to have a bank account. But we didn't have very much money at all. We had a very old car which kept on breaking down.

00:29:59:00 - 00:30:22:05

Suzanne Heywood

I think my looking back, the biggest risk was that I became incredibly depressed and I had nobody I didn't know anybody, no adults at all. And, it's an extraordinary position to leave a young girl and a young boy and then just abandon them and sail away, because, of course, I couldn't bring my parents when they were, when there were problems.

00:30:22:07 - 00:30:46:12

Suzanne Heywood

but one way or another, I did get through it. I describe it in the book and it gets very dark. And then we get to the the darkest page. and then eventually it starts to turn around and I come back out of it. And that's the start of me actually escaping because when I write these letters off every university in the world, most of them write back and say that they won't consider me but one.

00:30:46:14 - 00:30:58:11

Suzanne Heywood

Oxford amazingly writes back and says that they will. If I can get myself to Oxford, they'll give me an interview. And so I went and picked kiwifruit, which is, you know, national product of New Zealand,

00:30:58:11 - 00:31:04:01

Suzanne Heywood

earned enough money for a one way ticket back to the UK. and did

00:31:04:01 - 00:31:06:23

Suzanne Heywood

the interview. And incredibly, they let me in and that changed

00:31:06:23 - 00:31:09:18

Suzanne Heywood

changed my life, completely changed my life.

00:31:09:20 - 00:31:34:09

Christian Soschner

I mean, I grew up, it's, the countryside in Austria. mountains, small town, 10,000 inhabitants. And, I mean, education, we had formal education, but also a lot of, I would say, traveled families and, children growing up in difficult circumstances. It was, 70s, 80s, a lot of unemployment in the rich. Murray grew up and many of those kids simply gave up.

00:31:34:09 - 00:31:59:22

Christian Soschner

So, started with drugs, started drinking, practically all their life away. You describe in your book and also in the conversation that you had a yearning for education and, that you really wanted to do something in this world and not give up. then you managed to get into Oxford from New Zealand. just remember, internet was not invented back then.

00:31:59:24 - 00:32:08:09

Christian Soschner

what sparked this interest? 22 but did you get a strength from. Why didn't you give up like a lot of people to in similar situations?

00:32:08:11 - 00:32:09:13

Suzanne Heywood

It's very hard.

00:32:09:13 - 00:32:30:04

Suzanne Heywood

It's very hard to know that. And actually I think it could easily have gone a different way. but there is something inside me which is very strong. I have come back now, and I'd been looking at the academic literature on what happens to children who, as you describe, come from very difficult childhoods. the some very good.

00:32:30:04 - 00:32:51:10

Suzanne Heywood

They're called longitudinal studies where they, they look at children growing up over a very long period of time and see what happens to them. What those studies seem to show is that most people come from a very difficult childhood, are impacted by it one way or another. they end up not having normal relationships or not having normal kind of careers.

00:32:51:12 - 00:33:31:06

Suzanne Heywood

although many of them do manage to fix that, you know, by kind of midlife or a little bit later. But they all seriously impacted. But interestingly, about a quarter of them managed to get themselves out of that and actually do go on and have fairly normal lives in terms of, in terms of kind of academia and jobs in relationships and some of them sort of I mean, we all know some incredible entrepreneurs who come from incredibly difficult childhood, you know, Elon Musk, for example, you know, just a name, an obvious one, but I could kind of list of 15 or 20, and in fact, if you do some of this exercise

00:33:31:07 - 00:33:54:23

Suzanne Heywood

of looking at a group of very successful entrepreneurs or politicians, you will find a large number of them have come from very challenged childhood. So I think if you managed to escape from these childhood, you do walk away with something. There is a benefit of childhood, so I wouldn't wish it on anybody and it's not, it's not worth the cost, let's put it that way.

00:33:55:00 - 00:34:20:18

Suzanne Heywood

but there is a real benefit and there's a kind of overused word which is kind of resilience. And there is something about that. It's an ability to, to keep going when things are against you. And also, I think there's a, a lack of willingness to accept other people's roots. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs are very, very good at some, you know, saying, I see a problem, I'm going to go and fix that problem.

00:34:20:20 - 00:34:40:19

Suzanne Heywood

And despite the fact everybody's telling me that, you know, nobody's been able to fix it before, so why do you think you're going to be able to fix it or, you know, kind of don't bother doing that because there's some big company in that space and they'll kind of eat you up. an entrepreneur has the the guts or if you like that kind of waywardness, to just go and do it anyway.

00:34:40:21 - 00:35:03:24

Suzanne Heywood

and they are very resilient when it doesn't work, you know, they'll pick themselves up and try again. And you know, that one didn't work. So try again. A lot of them come from very difficult childhoods. So I don't know what differentiates that group from the ones you don't. But it it does seem to be a thing that, you know, some people, if they managed to escape, they go on and there are some kind of benefits.

00:35:03:24 - 00:35:06:00

Suzanne Heywood

The comments of that sort of very challenged

00:35:06:00 - 00:35:07:12

Suzanne Heywood

childhood.

00:35:07:14 - 00:35:27:15

Christian Soschner

Yeah, that's an interesting point. It's, you mentioned when I look at the internet and that's on and offline conversations, people very often point out that to say, look, unsuccessful people come from wealth to come from money, to have rich parents, probably to cut the first 10 million in the bank account before they were born. They can starts the first company with money.

00:35:27:15 - 00:35:44:15

Christian Soschner

It's easy to get customers because daddy refers to customers to them. And when you look at the reality of entrepreneurs, most of the most successful people in the world, didn't have rich parents. That's basically sugarcoated the whole life.

00:35:44:16 - 00:35:45:15

Suzanne Heywood

No, it's it's

00:35:45:15 - 00:36:08:22

Suzanne Heywood

really true. And, what's great about that is that that means that anyone can become an entrepreneur. Anybody can do something. And I have said to a few people kind of come up to me and they've said, look, you know, my life has been very difficult. I didn't get a proper education. You know, maybe they've had to go to leave a country because of a war or other situation.

00:36:09:02 - 00:36:45:08

Suzanne Heywood

What about you said to them is now that you've escaped, you actually have a little bit of a secret weapon because you have a strength that people who haven't had to do that will never have. You know, you have an ability to do things that other people say you shouldn't do because you're much less constrained. and you have a resilience because, you know, what difficulties, and those things can enable you to be very successful, whereas somebody who's had a much more straightforward time, it which, by the way, as I say, is a much, much better way to go.

00:36:45:10 - 00:36:59:03

Suzanne Heywood

there are many benefits of that. first of all, it's a lot more enjoyable. But, but what they don't necessarily have is the ability to pick themselves up when things go wrong, because they used to everything going right. and being an entrepreneur entrepreneur is a

00:36:59:03 - 00:37:05:18

Suzanne Heywood

very tough job. As many of your listeners will know. You know, things go wrong all the time because you're trying to start something

00:37:05:18 - 00:37:07:15

Suzanne Heywood

new that's never been done before.

00:37:07:17 - 00:37:13:14

Suzanne Heywood

And therefore many of the different ways in which you try to do it will probably fail. And you've got to be willing to try

00:37:13:14 - 00:37:18:02

Suzanne Heywood

it multiple times until you find the way that works.

00:37:18:04 - 00:37:26:07

Christian Soschner

Yeah. That's true. You mentioned Elon Musk before, and Mark Isaacson in, his biography describes it very well in the first chapters that his

00:37:26:07 - 00:37:39:13

Christian Soschner

parents were not rich. I think when they came in, he came with his mother to Canada and, his brothers and sisters, there were nothing there. Buy one room. They slept in one room. If if your father and daughters and lots of

00:37:39:13 - 00:37:43:10

Christian Soschner

read, today that is referred to as the Berkshire Hathaway of Europe.

00:37:43:15 - 00:37:49:22

Christian Soschner

So maybe you also the European role model and similar to Elon Musk, that it's possible to get out of I.

00:37:49:22 - 00:37:51:01

Suzanne Heywood

Don't think I can

00:37:51:01 - 00:38:13:04

Suzanne Heywood

compare myself to Elon Musk. but but yes, there is something about that mindset of that, that sort of background which is set. And I think it's, you know, what? What is great is it it's hugely motivating for those people who didn't kind of grow up with $10 million in the bank. And, you know, father helping them out.

00:38:13:06 - 00:38:27:06

Christian Soschner

we go back to New Zealand, to your journey, I mean, to date with physio, it's just, use the internet. You search for universities in the fields, you see them for in the 80s, it was second half of 80s when, did the

00:38:27:06 - 00:38:36:23

Christian Soschner

math right. How did you find out about the University of Oxford and how did you manage to get in from basically New Zealand being left alone?

00:38:36:23 - 00:38:39:23

Christian Soschner

No formal education. How did you manage that?

00:38:40:00 - 00:38:40:11

Suzanne Heywood

Well, in

00:38:40:11 - 00:38:55:05

Suzanne Heywood

a way, this is, this is another good example of, you know, had I talk to anybody, I didn't really have anyone to talk to, but had I talk to anybody, they would have said, you know, this is in order to, you know, apply to these universities, you've got to go through a process. You're going to need to get advice.

00:38:55:05 - 00:39:02:04

Suzanne Heywood

You've got to write the letter in a certain sort of way. and anyway, what makes you think that you can apply to these universities when

00:39:02:04 - 00:39:04:06

Suzanne Heywood

you've not really been to a proper school?

00:39:04:06 - 00:39:05:11

Christian Soschner

It's impossible.

00:39:05:13 - 00:39:08:15

Suzanne Heywood

It's impossible. But the great thing about

00:39:08:15 - 00:39:25:04

Suzanne Heywood

my childhood is, first of all, that I didn't have anyone to tell me not to do it, but also and and it taught me a lesson all the way through my life. When people have told me not to do something, sometimes they're right. It's not that I ignore them, but quite often I'll go and do it anyway.

00:39:25:06 - 00:39:43:07

Suzanne Heywood

And amazingly, why often you can do it. So what I what I did in New Zealand was I thought, well, what am I going to do? I don't even know how to find the addresses of these universities. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to write a letter about who I am. You know, I'm the girl is growing up on a boat for ten years.

00:39:43:09 - 00:40:09:20

Suzanne Heywood

I've grown up watching the whales and dolphins up the side of the boat. I have got some qualifications through this correspondence school. I really want to go and study biology university. Will you consider me, so slightly crazy letter. And then I read it off to every university I'd ever heard of. And of course, the universities I'd heard of were the elite universities, because even sitting on a boat in the South Pacific, you've heard of Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard.

00:40:09:22 - 00:40:34:08

Suzanne Heywood

So I basically wrote to, you know, Oxford University, Oxford, England, you know, Auckland University, Auckland, New Zealand, Sydney University, Sydney, Australia, Harvard University, Harvard America. And then what happened is lots of them wrote back and said no. So Sydney said no, because you're not Australian. Auckland said no because you're not New Zealand. London University said no because your qualifications are too strange.

00:40:34:10 - 00:40:38:04

Suzanne Heywood

Harvard never wrote back. I now realize that Harvard University, Harvard

00:40:38:04 - 00:40:44:11

Suzanne Heywood

America is not the correct address, which is very unfortunate.

00:40:44:11 - 00:40:57:17

Suzanne Heywood

but Oxford wrote back, and I think 1 or 2 others did, but Oxford, most notably Oxford, wrote back and said, okay, it's a bit of a strange letter, right? As a couple of essays and we'll think about it.

00:40:57:19 - 00:41:17:17

Suzanne Heywood

And then, of course, you know, it's amazing also what you can do if you just apply, you know, common sense to something. So I thought, well, what am I going to do? Write in two essays? if I write an essay that everybody would expect me to write, I'll be compared to people who are going to a normal school, have teachers who have libraries, and it will look terrible.

00:41:17:19 - 00:41:44:17

Suzanne Heywood

So I can't write an essay, for example, about the discovery of DNA or. Yeah, or evolution. I can't, I can't write a standard essay. So I went one essay about doing science at sea. And so what the challenges were trying to become a scientist or a young scientist living on a boat, things like when I had to do my dissection, you had to dissect something.

00:41:44:19 - 00:42:05:19

Suzanne Heywood

I had to go catch my own frog on an island. And then I dissected it on my mother's chopping board. so, you know, it was quite a kind of funny essay, but it just kind of showed what it what my life had been like and how you tried to solve all of these challenges of learning science when not going to school.

00:42:05:21 - 00:42:26:06

Suzanne Heywood

And then the other one was a very odd topic, which was whether or not humans are domesticated animal, which is just a very weird topic. And the only reason why I picked it was because I thought nobody else would write an essay about this, and therefore they could compare me to somebody who's gone to school. And based on those two essays, they invited me for this interview.

00:42:26:06 - 00:42:28:20

Suzanne Heywood

I think they just thought, she's so weird. We have to kind of

00:42:28:20 - 00:42:31:00

Suzanne Heywood

invite her and see what she says.

00:42:31:02 - 00:42:36:04

Christian Soschner

What was your conclusion in the second essays essay? That's, humans have to miss?

00:42:36:06 - 00:42:37:15

Suzanne Heywood

Yeah, they absolutely know.

00:42:37:15 - 00:42:59:06

Suzanne Heywood

if you look at all of the all of the traits, if you look at, for example, the domestication of dogs, which used to be wolves or the domestication of cats. Okay. But there's lots of traits that come with being domesticated. And you can then look at how humans behave. And many of the same characteristics apply.

00:42:59:08 - 00:43:22:02

Suzanne Heywood

it's a bit of a kind of weird topic. I mean, I was very lucky, actually. That topic was suggested to me. I had a teacher at the corresponding school where I'd never met. We just corresponded by letters, and he suggested that topic. And it was, what was nice about it is, is it enabled me just to think and and as I say, I knew nobody else was going to write about this, this subject.

00:43:22:02 - 00:43:42:17

Suzanne Heywood

So, and then when I turned up at Oxford, they, you know, and I had my interview with the tutor there. She just wanted to talk about the books that I'd read. So that was fine. You know, I could talk about the books that I read and what I thought and all these things, and, you know, in a way, for her, she already knew that my education was very straight.

00:43:42:19 - 00:43:57:13

Suzanne Heywood

So luckily she didn't ask me about all the normal things that you should have learned at school, like my timetables or how to spell anything, because then I would have felt, you know, she just wanted to know if I was intellectually curious. and

00:43:57:13 - 00:43:59:00

Suzanne Heywood

then she let me in.

00:43:59:02 - 00:44:08:11

Christian Soschner

Yeah. It's good to know that Oxford looks after people. They let in into the university and also opens doors for unusual, careers.

00:44:08:11 - 00:44:26:12

Christian Soschner

Unusual people with unusual experiences. What sparked your interest for science on the boat? I mean, as you mentioned before, your environment for anything but that. And you then moved towards, scientific education. What sparked this interest?

00:44:26:13 - 00:44:29:13

Christian Soschner

You know, you've.

00:44:29:15 - 00:44:30:04

Suzanne Heywood

Yeah, it's

00:44:30:04 - 00:44:51:04

Suzanne Heywood

very interesting is that I think I, I've always been really curious about how things work. So how does the world work? and I remember when I was a young teenager, and at that point we were in Hawaii, we'd sailed all the way to South America. In South Africa, we got shipwrecked, crossing the Indian Ocean. We got to Australia, we went all the way up to Hawaii.

00:44:51:06 - 00:45:11:20

Suzanne Heywood

So we're four years into our voyage and we stayed in Hawaii for a little bit. I wanted to go home at this point, but my parents were determined to keep sailing. But while we were in Hawaii for that brief period, I watched a whole series of programs by somebody who Carl Sagan, who was very well known at that point in time, so kind of early 80s.

00:45:11:22 - 00:45:38:18

Suzanne Heywood

And he would, do programs about what the stars were made of and how many stars were in the sky and the Library of Alexandria. And these programs I found incredibly inspiring. It's amazing how these things can kick off an idea in a child's mind. And so actually, I trace it back to that, that that kind of started me off on this, this idea that maybe I could try and work out how the world worked.

00:45:38:20 - 00:46:03:03

Suzanne Heywood

The problem, I think, is of all the subjects to try and follow, if you can't go to school, science is probably the hardest because English for the arts, you can to some extent teach yourself. You know, at least you've got books you can read and poetry you can write. But science, you need to be in a laboratory. You need to learn facts.

00:46:03:03 - 00:46:26:16

Suzanne Heywood

So it became very difficult for me to teach myself science. But I was very determined to do it as best I could. and in the end, I did it well enough that I could I could pursue it. and that kind of curiosity has remained with me in. One of the strengths of my very odd education is that I did, because I was on the boat because I was following this Australian, schooling system.

00:46:26:21 - 00:46:49:00

Suzanne Heywood

I actually studied multiple different subjects because I was trying to teach my I basically tried to teach myself anything I could find. So I ended up with this very eclectic education. Not a proper education, but very eclectic. and that is actually serve me quite well in later life because I have an interest in all I have an interest in music, you know, fascinated by geography.

00:46:49:03 - 00:47:09:09

Suzanne Heywood

So even though science was my thing, because I couldn't do as much science as I wanted, I was kind of forced to go and find out about other things as well. And that curiosity, which I would recommend to everyone, has always stood me great out of state, because I, you know, you find out about things and that's really helpful.

00:47:09:12 - 00:47:17:11

Suzanne Heywood

Now, I find working with the various different companies I work from work with, you know, there's lots of bits of knowledge. So somehow that's

00:47:17:11 - 00:47:19:10

Suzanne Heywood

there that becomes useful.

00:47:19:12 - 00:47:31:09

Christian Soschner

Yeah, that's true, that's true. Even in the 80s, I, it still helps, being curious sense and trying to figure out two worlds on your own. And so if you're all means the book

00:47:31:09 - 00:47:42:21

Christian Soschner

for describes a lots of challenges. I think the readers can, get to the book and, read about it by themselves.

00:47:42:23 - 00:47:59:00

Christian Soschner

my next question is about the challenges and the lessons you learned with the challenges. What are the top three lessons that you learned on the boat, and how have this experience helped you professionally?

00:47:59:02 - 00:47:59:21

Suzanne Heywood

So I think

00:47:59:21 - 00:48:22:14

Suzanne Heywood

the first one, which I referred to before, is this point around resilience, which, and I know it's a word that some people kind of struggle with. and I should explain what I mean by it. What I mean is, I said, what I don't mean is that by being resilient, you're somehow impervious to, you know, you're not affected by things that happen to that are bad.

00:48:22:14 - 00:48:44:22

Suzanne Heywood

I mean, we're all affected by things that happen to us which are bad. but what I have found coming from that background is that when something happens which is bad, I can put it in proportion because I know what really bad looks like. You know, really bad is being a little girl, seven years old, on a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean when we were shipwrecked.

00:48:44:24 - 00:49:05:03

Suzanne Heywood

So when I face a problem and it sounds a little bit silly, but but literally my my brain works like this, but when I face a problem. So, for example, one of our companies is struggling and I need to go and help them. And people are getting very upset. I could put it in proportion because nobody's life is in danger.

00:49:05:05 - 00:49:23:23

Suzanne Heywood

You know, we will get this sorted out. You know, the will be not necessarily a good course, but there will be a least bad course that we can take, which is going to be the best one, you know, under the circumstances. And and that ability to put things in proportion enables me to stay very calm when things are difficult.

00:49:24:00 - 00:49:46:24

Suzanne Heywood

And I think if as a leader, you can stay very calm when things are difficult, you're much more able to be rational, you're much more able to listen to what people say, because normally there'll be somebody you know around who has a very good idea, even if you don't have one yourself. So that is a huge step. That kind of calmness, you know, that ability to put things into proportion, which is what I kind of call resilience.

00:49:46:24 - 00:50:13:05

Suzanne Heywood

So that that's one thing. I think the second thing for me is because I came from outside of normal society. I know that there's lots of disadvantages of that, but one upside of it is I'm not as constrained by it as other people. So I remember multiple points in my life where people have said, Suzanne, you can't do that for whatever reason.

00:50:13:07 - 00:50:31:05

Suzanne Heywood

because it's not sometimes it's not the socially accepted thing to do or it's not what you're expected to do at that point in time or, you know, give you a couple of examples. I remember when I first joined, I went to McKinsey after after I did my degree in my PhD, I went to the UK government for a few years.

00:50:31:11 - 00:50:48:19

Suzanne Heywood

Then I went to McKinsey, and then I came here to excel. And when I was at McKinsey, when I first joined, going off and wandering around and meeting some of the partners who worked in sectors that I thought were interesting. And then I remember going back and my colleagues said, you can't do that in the you can't kind of go work wandering around and chatting to people.

00:50:48:20 - 00:51:10:10

Suzanne Heywood

It's just not what you do. and it's not that there was any rule against it. and I kind of knew it was unusual to do it, and I was doing it in quite a kind of gentle way, but I don't feel as constrained by what you're expected to do or what you're not expected to do as some people will.

00:51:10:12 - 00:51:34:08

Suzanne Heywood

so that I think is a huge strength and that that served me quite, quite well. I think then the kind of third thing is, I have discovered that if you really want to do something, if you are determined enough and you keep going at it, you can achieve things that people don't think you can achieve. So I guess an example of this is writing the book.

00:51:34:10 - 00:51:48:11

Suzanne Heywood

So a lot of people said to me, okay, but I know you want to write this book away. Focus. But how on earth are you going to do it? Because you've got all these other things you don't, you know, you don't have time to write a book. and anyway, it's not really to do with your work life.

00:51:48:12 - 00:52:05:11

Suzanne Heywood

You know what? You know what? How on earth are you going to find the time? And is it a good way for you to spend your time? What I discovered is if you really want to do something and you're quite determined, spending, just keeping going at it on a continual, you know, on a kind of regular basis, you can get a huge amount done.

00:52:05:13 - 00:52:24:07

Suzanne Heywood

So with the book, what I did was I was often spending 15, 20 minutes in a day, you know, the end of the day or when I was commuting home on the underground train or, you know, when I was, you know, sitting in a taxi, going somewhere or just off, I put the kids to bed or whatever it was.

00:52:24:09 - 00:52:45:13

Suzanne Heywood

I would set myself the ambition of every day. At some point I will spend minimum 15 minutes, sometimes a bit longer if it's on the weekends, and I will just keep on doing it. I'm not going to wait for the perfect day. I remember at one point I was even and this sounds completely ridiculous. I looked at how to put the book on my mobile phone,

00:52:45:13 - 00:52:46:13

Suzanne Heywood

and I started kind of.

00:52:46:13 - 00:52:47:08

Suzanne Heywood

This is probably not to

00:52:47:08 - 00:52:56:21

Suzanne Heywood

to be recommended. I started kind of editing it because I used to walk up to my house from the train station on the side. probably not a very good idea

00:52:56:21 - 00:52:57:03

Suzanne Heywood

because

00:52:57:03 - 00:53:07:07

Suzanne Heywood

I'm sure it's health and safety. Not a good idea. but I didn't have any other time to do it. what I discovered is and the same applies with work things as well.

00:53:07:07 - 00:53:32:03

Suzanne Heywood

If you really want to get something done, you can find the time to do it. So this is for me I think will be quite a three pain and a strength one is this, one is this resilience, the other is this to just not. Yeah, I, I'm not much more conscious of what I'm supposed to do and what I'm not supposed to do, but I do feel is constrained by it, I think, as many people do, because I didn't grow up in that.

00:53:32:05 - 00:53:59:10

Suzanne Heywood

and then the third thing, which is, you know, just go and do it, whatever it is, you know, if you've got a kind of ambition that you're going to start a company, don't kind of wait until you've managed to tidy everything up in your life, and you've got time and you've got money and everything sorted out. If you really want to go and start a company, you know, go and get going, even if you already spent, you know, already today, kind of figuring out the business plan or interviewing customer, you just just kind of go and do it and it will build.

00:53:59:11 - 00:54:05:22

Suzanne Heywood

It will build. Once on a gradually. But you can build a mountain, a few rocks at a time.

00:54:05:22 - 00:54:11:07

Christian Soschner

This is not the Nike company, actually. So just do its thing. It's yeah, it's amazing.

00:54:11:09 - 00:54:11:23

Suzanne Heywood

Just do it. But

00:54:11:23 - 00:54:21:02

Suzanne Heywood

you could do it kind of in little tiny bits as my point. You know it doesn't have to be. Lots of people wait for the perfect moment. but the perfect moment never comes.

00:54:21:04 - 00:54:43:17

Christian Soschner

But this is, I can relate to that. So this is when you want to. When you want to have been. Some people want to start something, saying, okay, in one week I will have eight hours and I can work eight hours for eight hours on this project, and I can start in the morning at 8:00, and it can work then until whatever, 6:00 in the evening, 10:00 in the evening, 4:00 in the afternoon.

00:54:43:19 - 00:54:48:06

Christian Soschner

And then suddenly something happens. The day never comes to postpone it next week. Next week. And

00:54:48:06 - 00:55:09:22

Christian Soschner

you said you wrote your book in 15 minutes first. So basically five minutes on the train, five minutes walking home with the hats on from the train station, in the taxi, in the subway. And this is the exercise then. So basically it is the outcome of being just committed and swinging baby steps, steps to the understanding.

00:55:09:24 - 00:55:10:06

Suzanne Heywood

That's

00:55:10:06 - 00:55:27:08

Suzanne Heywood

right, that's right. And I think that applies to other things as well. It applies to kind of book watching, but it applies to many other things in life. Whatever it is that somebody wants to do, you know, postpone this kind of work things, but also other things. You know, I've. Yeah, I've got friends who wanted to learn to play the piano.

00:55:27:11 - 00:55:33:20

Suzanne Heywood

That's always something you can do it, but, you know, do it a little bit, you know, don't be daunted by it.

00:55:33:22 - 00:55:53:12

Christian Soschner

Do it in five minutes, but start with five minutes, then increase next week to 10 minutes to 50 minutes. I mean, this is a process. This is, when someone understands it and has a role model like entrepreneur was, for example, when you, probably as a coach start ups that you invest in, you can tell them and they can learn and they can apply the process.

00:55:53:14 - 00:56:11:10

Christian Soschner

The second part that you mentioned is resilience. And, sometimes I have people in my life, I say, okay, I had a really good life. Rich family, rich people with which parents? there was no problem whatsoever that if mommy solved everything, how can people acquire resilience? I mean, what's

00:56:11:10 - 00:56:22:24

Christian Soschner

your advice to the needs to get on a boat for ten years and, come back and then say, okay, I'm resilient, or I'll become a US citizen, join the Navy Seals or the Army Rangers.

00:56:23:01 - 00:56:33:03

Christian Soschner

and then when they come back after ten years in some more standard incident, how can people acquire that in normal life to become more resilient? What's your advice to them?

00:56:33:05 - 00:56:33:13

Suzanne Heywood

Well, my

00:56:33:13 - 00:56:34:19

Suzanne Heywood

advice is that, you know,

00:56:34:19 - 00:56:46:23

Suzanne Heywood

most people actually and unfortunately will either. And this of course is more likely that you're going to go on in life, will either encounter something bad

00:56:46:23 - 00:57:00:16

Suzanne Heywood

or they will know somebody who's encountered something that this kind of truly bad, by which I, you know, by which I often meet, you know, something that, you know, you may yourself have been made redundant or had something bad happened to you at work.

00:57:00:20 - 00:57:39:24

Suzanne Heywood

You may have lost a parent or a sibling, or you may know somebody, but which something actually, really objectively bad has happened. And then for me, it's a kind of consciousness of when something which is much more day to day happens that's bad. Whether it's losing one customer at work or having a, you know, having a difficult conversation with a colleague or somebody denting your car, you know, things which are really quite annoying but, not significant in, in the, in the course of a life, it's, it's teaching yourself to pause and put it in perspective.

00:57:40:00 - 00:58:03:04

Suzanne Heywood

Now, it's much easier to do that if you've actually been the one who's gone through that very adverse event. But it doesn't. You can still do it. I mean, because, as I say, most of us, as we go on in life, we will sadly either directly or lose somebody for which something really bad does happen. And when you start to kind of spiral and say, okay, because my car has been dented, you know, that's a disaster.

00:58:03:04 - 00:58:21:11

Suzanne Heywood

That's all I can kind of deal with. It's a big problem. Or because I've had a setback at work or the idea that I originally thought about isn't going to work. Put it in proportion, you know, are you still okay? You know, you still going to go back tonight and you still go I mean, it sounds a bit basic, but yeah, you still got food on the table.

00:58:21:11 - 00:58:52:01

Suzanne Heywood

Your kids are still okay, you know? Everything's okay. You've just got a problem to deal with, okay? And that that's kind of part of what that's part of the fun of life, is that we've got to overcome things and create, you know, kind of overcome obstacles and find solutions to things. So I think anybody can do that. I think it's made easier if you've got the personal comparison in your head, but I think it's it's open to anybody to kind of have that mindset of pausing when something goes wrong.

00:58:52:03 - 00:58:55:05

Suzanne Heywood

forcing yourself to put it into perspective.

00:58:55:07 - 00:59:15:04

Christian Soschner

Now, that's good advice. I think, actively looking for hardship, can help create resilience. It was Bruce Lee who said, I just looked up the quotes. Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one. And I think this is good. Just look for hardship. Get on the hard projects. work yourself through it.

00:59:15:06 - 00:59:22:02

Christian Soschner

don't throw it away, into it. The other side is that sometimes it's better to give up. So it's not.

00:59:22:02 - 00:59:40:14

Christian Soschner

Every challenge should be consumed until the end point. how do you wait? It's up for. How did you find for yourself the balance. I mean, you left it both. You left this hardship. You went to university, you went to Oxford and said, no, this is not the way that I want to live.

00:59:40:14 - 00:59:57:24

Christian Soschner

I want a different way. How do you how do you make this decision to say it's worth pursuing the hard way? Or is it better to give up this way and choose another one? What's your criteria for making this decision?

00:59:58:01 - 00:59:58:22

Suzanne Heywood

So I think it's

00:59:58:22 - 01:00:29:07

Suzanne Heywood

it's and this is another thing which is quite hard for us to do. But what you can kind of do it with practice, it's quite important when you're when you're in a situation to try to think about it over different time frames. So when I did my PhD at I went to Cambridge, I did my PhD, but I didn't really enjoy some of my PhD, and I, I began increasingly to realize that probably I didn't want to become an academic, but it seemed very important to kind of push yourself to stop and try to work out.

01:00:29:07 - 01:00:53:18

Suzanne Heywood

Well, why do I feel like that? Is it that I'm not enjoying this immediate thing that I'm doing, but actually the idea of being an academic can have everything that comes with it. It's fine. Or is this a much more fundamental thing, which is this lifestyle is just not the lifestyle that I want. and you've got to kind of think about where sometimes short term obstacles are worth overcoming if long term that's what you want to do.

01:00:53:20 - 01:01:14:22

Suzanne Heywood

you know, but there's no point in overcoming short term obstacles if you're continuing down a route which really isn't kind of working. and for me, in that case, I realized that I wanted a life style or a way of working, which was much more working with other people. You know, for me, the academic lifestyle was just too narrow and too isolated.

01:01:14:22 - 01:01:39:13

Suzanne Heywood

I wanted to kind of I wanted to go and work in teams with other people and get kind of energy from that and kind of give energy from that. So I just realized it wasn't the right fit for me, and therefore I switched and I went into into government. so I think you need to ask yourself, when you hit an obstacle, is this an obstacle that is worse overcoming, or is this an obstacle that I'm just overcoming because it happens to be there?

01:01:39:13 - 01:01:40:14

Suzanne Heywood

You know, lots of people,

01:01:40:14 - 01:01:45:20

Suzanne Heywood

when you ask them whether why they climb a mountain, they say, because it's their fight.

01:01:45:22 - 01:01:48:24

Suzanne Heywood

But, you know, mountains of work, you shouldn't just climb

01:01:48:24 - 01:02:09:16

Suzanne Heywood

because the day you got to climb them, because you think it's a mountain worth climbing. So it's always worth pausing when you get into an obstacle to work out, whether you're just climbing that circle because it happens to be the thing that's in front of you, or whether you're climbing it because it really is worth getting over and there is no better way to do it.

01:02:09:22 - 01:02:30:16

Suzanne Heywood

Yeah, and of course, we can see this all the time at what you know, you'll get, you know, partway into an I.T project and discover that it's much more complicated for whatever reason, than you thought it might be. It's always worth having that pause. There's a kind of there's a little example that people use, you know, kind of come up off the dance floor and go up onto the balcony.

01:02:30:17 - 01:02:46:12

Suzanne Heywood

Just stop and think about it for a moment. You know, am I pursuing this because it really is worth it. But it's tough. Why am I pursuing it? Because it was the thing that I thought that I should be doing, or I was told that I should be doing it. Actually, there might be a much better way of achieving it.

01:02:46:12 - 01:03:00:16

Suzanne Heywood

Well, I might actually decide that the golden I'm going for is not the right one. so I equate people shouldn't confuse determination with just keeping going at all costs because you started doing something.

01:03:00:18 - 01:03:05:20

Christian Soschner

This is extremely important in investing. I learned this after German company

01:03:05:20 - 01:03:26:01

Christian Soschner

Wirecard, it's tempting to throw money. yeah. Into it, into a company. When the market sentiment is so positive that it just seems illogical not to do it at this point in time. And even if the balance sheet looks good, this. What if I describe this picture with that, be filled with dance floor?

01:03:26:05 - 01:03:52:04

Christian Soschner

Sometimes it's good to get off the dance floor and, up into the balcony and look at the thing and say, okay, when there is smoke, there might be fire. And don't ignore the smoke. just cut yourself a little bit short and don't throw money after bad things. But on the other hand, Nvidia, for example, is another great example that's very often looked extremely, looked like an extremely dangerous investment or like an investment cyclical business.

01:03:52:04 - 01:04:00:17

Christian Soschner

I mean, chips ten years ago, nobody wanted to invest it. I think this, this picture like it does get off the dance floor and just think about it for a while.

01:04:00:19 - 01:04:01:06

Suzanne Heywood

Yeah.

01:04:01:06 - 01:04:28:04

Suzanne Heywood

And those two examples are very kind of interesting examples. I mean, I think there was a period of time with Nvidia where they were making some quite big bets and it was I mean, it was a lot cheaper then. So. So you would buy well if you got it, but but it was much riskier and to go in very, very heavily when it was very highly because it wasn't at all clear that the bets that they were making around the technologies were going to kind of pale.

01:04:28:06 - 01:04:46:09

Suzanne Heywood

and that is very different to kind of where they are now. People can argue about whether or not that kind of valuation is fair for where they are, but they have made some bets which have kind of played out. but yeah. So I think it really does apply when you're an investor, anything that you've invested in the past, it's got to go, you know, it's either worked or it hasn't worked.

01:04:46:09 - 01:05:11:20

Suzanne Heywood

You know that, you know, the fact that you've done it. the only the only exception to that, I think, is when you're in a situation where, you know, you've got a certain amount of invested and you think the company is turned around double as it was helping it to, to sort of do that. But by and large, I think as an investor you have to be quite clearheaded about something just because it it might have looked like a good idea six months ago.

01:05:11:20 - 01:05:23:01

Suzanne Heywood

You probably know more now. And if what you know now is, you know, different to what you knew that sometimes, you know, we all have to take a blow to our pride and admit that we were wrong.

01:05:23:03 - 01:05:31:07

Christian Soschner

Yeah, yeah. Walk away back I was fine is fine. If I got Nvidia for this story. I believe in the story 2014. So nobody recommended

01:05:31:07 - 01:06:03:23

Christian Soschner

investing in the chips. who needs that anyways? And I think every shareholder will agree Nvidia deserves to keep kept it to have. Now if it will stay I don't know. But the thing is that the one point you set up one important market about conformity and, you have many demands and as a board member, I think the way I understand parts are that they should challenge the management and should point at the weak spots, which is not something nice to do sometimes, and it's not.

01:06:03:23 - 01:06:29:22

Christian Soschner

So some companies expect their board members to act, as the founders wants to. But how do you deal with the feedback then? I mean, you said you London, you're both nuts to, it rather to push boundaries and, to not do what others expect you to do. But how do you deal with feedback? I mean, I can imagine that very often it, produces not only positive feedback, but also a lot of negative feedback.

01:06:30:01 - 01:06:35:24

Christian Soschner

How do you know that it's worth to stay the course and just deal with the blows?

01:06:36:01 - 01:06:36:16

Suzanne Heywood

So

01:06:36:16 - 01:07:01:07

Suzanne Heywood

we talk about, you know, the ideal board member for us is a critical friend to the company. And I quite like this phrase critical friend because if you if you don't have those two elements, you know, only the one on its own is no good at all. Yeah. There's no point in being a board member if all you're going to do is criticize the company that you're trying to support.

01:07:01:09 - 01:07:24:14

Suzanne Heywood

because what happens if you do that? And I've seen kind of board members do that is the company eventually becomes incredibly defensive, and loses kind of motivation. we'll stop sharing things with the board. You know, the dynamic between the board and the management kind of falls apart. likewise, having board members who are just friends, you just kind to turn up and say, this is fantastic.

01:07:24:14 - 01:07:47:10

Suzanne Heywood

You know, what a great job. You know, it's all kind of going well. That's not very helpful either. so we actually talk about being critical friends and actually being more critical when things are good and a little bit more friendly sometimes when things are bad, because the temptation is that when a company is struggling a little bit, everybody kind of falls in, becomes even more critical.

01:07:47:10 - 01:07:52:18

Suzanne Heywood

But that's actually not very helpful at all. And likewise, when things are good, everybody kind

01:07:52:18 - 01:08:13:09

Suzanne Heywood

of, you know, kind of relaxes and says, well, this is all kind of great, but actually it's when things are good that you can really do something amazing. I mean, it was very interesting listening. I listened to the glass of Nvidia kind of call, which you probably did as well, you know, and they're talking about all the other things that they're now going to do as a company.

01:08:13:11 - 01:08:39:01

Suzanne Heywood

You know, things are clearly very good for them, but they are thinking about doing all sorts of new things, which is interesting. So the company really needs to be challenged when things are good. so that's what I try to do as a board member. I try to be a kind of critical friend. So I'm not afraid to, ask a difficult question, even if I'm the only person on the board to ask the difficult question, I'll go happy to do that.

01:08:39:03 - 01:09:07:11

Suzanne Heywood

I'll very rarely be. And that's I never I never aggressive or the the kind of, you know, kind of negative about the company. I will ask difficult questions. and when a company is really struggling, but through no fault of its own, I'll also be incredibly supportive, which I think is important as well. but that kind of boundary between being on the board and being in an executive role is a tricky one, and it is one that takes quite a lot of practice.

01:09:07:13 - 01:09:28:23

Suzanne Heywood

and that's even though I now work on boards that are very different in terms of what the companies do, I do everything from tractors to high heeled shoes. that the ability to kind of be on a board and ask, ask a good question that hopefully leads into a kind of really productive conversation about what a company should do.

01:09:29:00 - 01:09:34:06

Suzanne Heywood

That's a skill that's pretty transferable across different companies.

01:09:34:09 - 01:09:56:16

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think pretty good friend. it's a good description of, what a board member should be. and how many new board members, when I look at LinkedIn, many startups, many new venture funds. So it's, the first time I think they can benefit from from your explanation. The one thing that came to my mind, fairly speaking, being a good friend, I

01:09:56:16 - 01:10:07:06

Christian Soschner

mean, when startups close the funding rounds, suddenly they go from broke basically overnight to having ten, 50, hundred million on the bank account.

01:10:07:06 - 01:10:27:13

Christian Soschner

And it's tempting then to buy the five Tesla license sense to buy ten more ping pong machines. how do you deal with that as a critical friend? But what do you tell those founders when they have money on their bank account and you see that they're starting over, expanding, hiring a hundred employees and over staffing the company?

01:10:27:13 - 01:10:30:21

Christian Soschner

But what's your advice for?

01:10:31:03 - 01:10:59:17

Suzanne Heywood

Well, I think it's always very important to be clear about the difference between, what, you know, kind of, costs that are variable costs and costs of the fixed costs. and so I remember as we kind of came out of Covid sitting on the board of some of our companies, and a lot of the costs were coming up very dramatically post-Covid, as we knew, because we had supply chain challenges and people were recruiting and all sorts of things.

01:10:59:18 - 01:11:22:00

Suzanne Heywood

And I was always very keen to try and get clear, you know, which of these costs that we're putting in a variable cost. So they're actually changing as our sales are increasing. But if our sales go down, they're going to come down automatically. And which of the things that you're doing which are not easy to reverse, you know, kind of buying everybody a Tesla is not an easy thing to reverse.

01:11:22:00 - 01:11:42:01

Suzanne Heywood

If all of a sudden, you know, the sun goes behind the cloud and it starts going to raining. if you're investing in, you know, building even better products for customers, you know, that's a, you know, that's a kind of long term investment. But I'm very cautious about just putting kind of costs in that you just got to carry over time.

01:11:42:03 - 01:12:06:09

Suzanne Heywood

I mean, another way to think about I'm nimble and my late husband, who used to work in the UK government, he at one point went and worked for Morgan Stanley. And so all of a sudden his income went up very considerably because he was in the public sector and he went into Morgan Stanley. I she knew that there was a very high likelihood that he would go back into government because he was passionate about public service.

01:12:06:11 - 01:12:23:23

Suzanne Heywood

and so what I did was I used some of that money that he earned, for capital, you know, for kind of things that we needed as a family. We actually had to get of move into a slightly bigger house because we had three children and we were very cramped. So we moved into a slightly bigger house.

01:12:24:00 - 01:12:35:06

Suzanne Heywood

What I didn't do was to spend that money on what I would call. And I'm an ex Treasury official, what I would call running costs. So, for example, my husband, who liked his wife,

01:12:35:06 - 01:12:39:18

Suzanne Heywood

kept on saying to me, we are buying nicer wine now. Well, and I kept saying, yes, we are.

01:12:41:22 - 01:12:48:05

Suzanne Heywood

because I knew if I kind of upgraded the wine, we would then be stocked with the better wine forever.

01:12:48:07 - 01:13:05:21

Suzanne Heywood

Yeah. whereas that kind of capital cost of moving house, that was just a one off thing. It's a slightly kind of. But you see what I mean? The things that you can do, which are one off costs, which, you know, and then the things that you do, which are going to be like a kind of permanent cost that you've just got to keep on paying over time.

01:13:05:23 - 01:13:11:02

Suzanne Heywood

and eventually he did go back into the public sector. He took a 90% pay cut,

01:13:11:02 - 01:13:14:15

Suzanne Heywood

to go back into the public sector. But it was absolutely fine

01:13:14:15 - 01:13:39:23

Suzanne Heywood

because, day to day costs hadn't much changed from when he'd been there before. So in a company, as I say, what I try to do is differentiate between things which are variable costs and things which are fixed costs, and then a more on a kind of personal side, I'm very conscious of things which are, you know, one off costs, which if you got a little bit of money and it's not going to change your your kind of fundamental costs, then that's fine.

01:13:40:00 - 01:13:57:23

Suzanne Heywood

And then, you know, fundamentally kind of increasing your lifestyle costs in a way that locks you into a series of, you know, lock you into a position. And I have seen a lot of people in life who, you know, maybe it's a kind of founder who suddenly feels I have a lot of money and they massively increase the cost of their lifestyle.

01:13:58:02 - 01:14:03:16

Suzanne Heywood

You know, they decide, okay, what they're going to do is they're going to buy three houses and they're going to have a boat.

01:14:03:16 - 01:14:09:00

Suzanne Heywood

By the way, boats are very expensive. they can have a plane, whatever it is. And then

01:14:09:00 - 01:14:19:19

Suzanne Heywood

all of a sudden the company gets into more difficult situation and they're really stuck because they've got all of these running costs that they've got to keep on doing.

01:14:19:21 - 01:14:31:16

Suzanne Heywood

and that I think is very dangerous. So I think being very thoughtful about the sort of spending that you do and never getting yourself trapped, either as a company or as an individual is really important.

01:14:31:23 - 01:14:40:03

Christian Soschner

Yeah. That's true. Upgrade into lifestyle. it's painful when someone later has to downgrade it again.

01:14:40:03 - 01:14:52:23

Christian Soschner

entrepreneurship. It always has to swing set, I think. I never saw a story that was just straightforward about it. It's always up and down and up and down and it's, cost cutting lifestyle hurts. Cutting back on the lifestyle really hurts.

01:14:52:23 - 01:15:20:19

Christian Soschner

I think the best way would be to just stay Buddhist monk living frugally, and not being attached to anything badly. so this, you know, mask is a good example to think for that. when I look, at the book, they very often described the tea sleeps in factories and in this paper. Yes. And upgrading to that, it is not the best thing coming to the next question is, you faced a lot of adversity also in your life.

01:15:20:23 - 01:15:44:02

Christian Soschner

And many young people also still today struggling, in the West, not a part of the world, in Africa and Latin America, in Asian countries, no education, domestic violence, living in remote places like, you did. What's your advice to them when they managed to listen to such an episode?

01:15:44:05 - 01:16:07:02

Suzanne Heywood

Well, my my fundamental advice is to try and get an education. I mean, that is the most important thing, and I'm not going to minimize how hard it can be to do that, particularly if you're in a situation where you're expected to work from an early age, which I was on the on the boat or you're very isolated or you're in a family situation, which is incredibly kind of dysfunctional.

01:16:07:04 - 01:16:31:19

Suzanne Heywood

But one way or another, getting an education is the thing that can change your life. And, one thing that makes me very hopeful about the world at the moment, despite all of the things that we know, all the terrible things which are happening is that we have technology advancements that make education much easier to access. it's another reason why is one reason why they're excited about AI as well.

01:16:31:19 - 01:16:53:16

Suzanne Heywood

I mean, AI is a huge enabler. I mean, if we could get to a world where no matter how poor you all, how isolated you are up, you can get access to many of the best teachers that anyone could access. Yeah, that would be incredible. Absolutely incredible. and I think the technologies that we have should increasingly do that.

01:16:53:16 - 01:17:27:07

Suzanne Heywood

So that would be my advice to them is, you know, education is really worth it. It's incredibly hard. It's very easy to give out when it feels much harder. And then the second thing is that, as I kind of mentioned earlier, you know, those adversities that you're overcoming are terrible. And they are, you know, not something anyone would wish for, but you will get a benefit from, you know, if you managed to get through them, it is going to teach you a bunch of things that people have had a much easier time will never learn.

01:17:27:09 - 01:17:40:16

Suzanne Heywood

So do kind of, you know, obviously nobody would wish anybody to be in those situations. But, you know, do bear in mind that, you know, you will learn something from this. You will come out a stronger person. if you can educate yourself.

01:17:40:18 - 01:17:41:00

Christian Soschner

Yeah.

01:17:41:00 - 01:18:05:02

Christian Soschner

That's true. I think Viktor, frankly, would agree, to your statement that adversity is something that people has to have to endure and not give up and just, push through that. Which brings me to the next question. Female leadership, women in leadership in 2024. what changes are you most excited about? it's developed become a better place when we look at female leadership in the last two decades.

01:18:05:22 - 01:18:07:13

Suzanne Heywood

Yes, it absolutely has.

01:18:07:13 - 01:18:29:22

Suzanne Heywood

I mean, when I started my career, it was still quite unusual to have women in senior positions. and you had a big expectation from society, which I certainly felt that as a woman, and particularly when you become a mother, that you shouldn't kind of work, you know, in the way that a man would if they became a father.

01:18:30:03 - 01:18:53:03

Suzanne Heywood

And I think all of those expectations have now changed. and obviously, mothers like fathers, kind of at least most normal ones, care into you care immensely about their children. but this kind of expectation that somehow mothers and not fathers should be the ones that sacrificed their careers for their children, that that's kind of gone away.

01:18:53:03 - 01:19:12:04

Suzanne Heywood

And I think that the couples now have much more open conversations about how they're going to make sure that their children are well looked after and loved and happy. While, you know, both both sides of that kind of part get an opportunity to have a career, and therefore kind of make that their kind of families kind of financially strong.

01:19:12:06 - 01:19:31:24

Suzanne Heywood

on the, on the working side, companies have also changed, immensely. I remember when I first had children and I was at McKinsey at the time, they had a rule that when you went off on maternity leave, they should take your computer away from you on the basis that that was going to be a cost saving.

01:19:32:01 - 01:19:59:21

Suzanne Heywood

and I that was one of the rules. I had to fight to get that rule overturned. Because the point is that if they take away your computer and you're away on maternity leave for six months, you're going to lose all of your clients. You've got no access to any of the knowledge. You know, your your chance of being a and it wasn't a room, as I found most of the things that were obstacles to me as a woman kind of working early on weren't because people were anti women, they were just there because nobody ever really thought about it.

01:19:59:23 - 01:20:26:07

Suzanne Heywood

You know, that was a perfectly sensible rule that if somebody had gone off sick for six months or somebody taken a leave of absence, why should we pay for their computer while they're not there? But it doesn't look, you know, it's not it's not the right thing to do if somebody is on maternity or paternity leave. that's just the tiny examples, loads of examples of things that I found as I came through because I was quite early on coming through, that made it more difficult.

01:20:26:07 - 01:20:54:09

Suzanne Heywood

And all of those things have now, by and large, disappeared. you still get a cut of expectation. And unfortunately, the still is a kind of an expectation that if you walk into a room, the men are more senior than the women. And I think it's going to take a little bit longer for people to realize that, you know, not only is that not always true, but sometimes if you make that assumption, you can end up looking very silly, because sometimes the most senior person in the room is a woman.

01:20:54:11 - 01:21:13:21

Suzanne Heywood

And, you're not going to, you know, you're not going to impress anybody if you make the kind of assumption that, you know, that it's the other way around that's still going to take time. I mean, actually, that still pervades today. But I think the world is a much more positive place. but, you know, the the expectations the couples have, the expectations.

01:21:13:21 - 01:21:33:14

Suzanne Heywood

The women have the, you know, the way in which work supports women who want to work, has all kind of changed, it's very easy. I remember at one point I have a daughter who's now 20, and at one point I said to her, you know, when you get older, you go to work. And she just looked at me as if I, you know, it was a bizarre risk question in the what?

01:21:33:14 - 01:21:51:22

Suzanne Heywood

Why else would I ask you this question? And I just realized her, this isn't even a question. Of course she's got to work. You know, girl, she's going to have a career. Why would she not? and it was me being silly that I would actually ask the question. And I'm sure she'll, you know, I'm sure she'll she'll have a great career.

01:21:51:24 - 01:22:01:21

Suzanne Heywood

But it was kind of interesting because when I was her age, people were asking me that question all the time. and now the world has changed a huge amount.

01:22:01:23 - 01:22:21:14

Christian Soschner

Yeah. To the positive. Hopefully to the positive. you mentioned, but it was quick, you mentioned that you had to fight. It's mid teens. It's they don't take your computer anyway while you're on maternity leave. there is one question. I think it goes back to resilience. as even Musk writes in his, biography, I think it's part of the Musk algorithm.

01:22:21:18 - 01:22:28:15

Christian Soschner

question every requirement constantly and change the processes and take up what's necessary. And you said

01:22:28:15 - 01:22:44:18

Christian Soschner

you fought against this requirement at McKinsey. Did they take a computer away? the usual answer, I think, in big corporations. I was also in M&A in public companies. And the usual answer is when someone questions the requirements in traditional businesses that are run for decades.

01:22:44:18 - 01:23:07:02

Christian Soschner

And then the young guy comes in and asks the question that no young guy should ask, why do we do it that way? And then starts drilling down into the first principle of thinking and saying why, why, why, why, why? Some people get quite annoyed. how do you, respond to that reaction when you see a requirement that's not necessary?

01:23:07:02 - 01:23:22:01

Christian Soschner

You start asking your questions and you feel that people start getting annoyed and they don't want to change it, but it costs a lot of money. How do you deal with that situation when they respond negatively to your, inquiry? Let's call it that way.

01:23:22:03 - 01:23:22:14

Suzanne Heywood

Well, I

01:23:22:14 - 01:23:46:12

Suzanne Heywood

think in most organizations, one of the things that you need to figure out really early on is what is the what is the thing that makes this organization change? And, and it varies by organization. So in some organizations the best way to make them change is by, you know, organizing, you know, kind of project and kind of proving that, you know, what's being done today is not the right way to do it.

01:23:46:12 - 01:24:15:11

Suzanne Heywood

We should do it the other way. in other organizations, you do it. You know, organizations often bring in external people to kind of prove a change. There's lots of ways to do it. McKinsey McKinsey is about people based business. and certainly was when I was there. It's become even bigger today. But but certainly then and what I realized was the, after I hit my problem with the IT department in this case and they said, well, unfortunately, you know, literally computer says, no, you've got you've got to give us your computer back.

01:24:15:13 - 01:24:36:13

Suzanne Heywood

I went to the most senior woman in London, who was, you know, more senior than me. And I told her and she picked up the phone, rang the IT department, you know, it was probably not a not a conversation that should be recorded because I think got a quite a few swear words. You used it, and the policy was changed.

01:24:36:15 - 01:24:58:10

Suzanne Heywood

but I knew if I went to her and I only did it on that one issue, and it was clear enough she would, you know, she would sort it because that that was the way to get things to change in McKinsey is departments had a huge amount of power. because effectively McKinsey is like a series of kind of entrepreneur as we're working within a system.

01:24:58:12 - 01:25:20:16

Suzanne Heywood

But I think that the kind of broad a way to do this is that in any organization, you need to figure out, how do I make change happen in this organization? And the answer is, is quite kind of organization specific in a startup. It is, it gained it's very much around for the people. and there's a real openness to change in kind of bigger, more kind of corporate organizations.

01:25:20:16 - 01:25:30:23

Suzanne Heywood

It's harder. But generally a big part of the solution is finding a coalition. You know, you as an individual, you can do as much as you want about, you know, this is wrong. This is wrong. This

01:25:30:23 - 01:25:41:10

Suzanne Heywood

is wrong. If you're just a lone voice, you're not going to get anywhere. If you build a coalition of people, it's much harder to be ignored.

01:25:41:12 - 01:26:08:02

Christian Soschner

Yeah, that's true. I think it's one of the most interesting points in business. This it is striking the right balance between change and stasis. economic change is the universe changes. If companies don't go with the change, they will fall apart. but if they change too quickly, they will fall apart. This fact, so striking, this balance. I think it's it's very interesting when we talk about change, there is one passwords, inclusion, inclusive inclusiveness.

01:26:08:04 - 01:26:34:09

Christian Soschner

not only female leadership but also, let's say different gender roles, being more open to also other, gender roles also being more open to ethnicity, also being open to, people from different silver backgrounds. how do you see the future of the economy? So there's still some work after, is everything already at its best in the West?

01:26:34:11 - 01:26:35:00

Suzanne Heywood

No, I,

01:26:35:00 - 01:26:57:03

Suzanne Heywood

I think there's definitely kind of more work to do. I mean, it's kind of interesting here, you know, as a biologist, I guess I, I guess from. Yeah, if I, if I kind of think of it as a biologist is a natural human thing where you tend to trust people who are more like yourself. And I think one thing that we need to accept is that that is a natural human thing.

01:26:57:03 - 01:27:15:14

Suzanne Heywood

You know, we used to live in small communities and people who lived outside of our community who were different to us. We always kind of regard with a little bit more suspicion and kind of people who are more like us, we tend to trust a little bit more. Once you understand that, you understand that because it's a fundamental part of the human condition.

01:27:15:14 - 01:27:44:08

Suzanne Heywood

We're always going to have to try and stop ourselves from doing that, and we need to stop ourselves from doing that for two reasons. One is, it's not fair. I mean, it's absolutely not fair. But the other reason is that, you know, the best talent is probably evenly distributed across all sorts of different people, you know, different shapes, sizes, colors, genders, sexual orientations, backgrounds that, you know, talent is kind of across all sorts of different people.

01:27:44:10 - 01:28:09:07

Suzanne Heywood

And if we restrict ourselves to only hiring and promoting people of a certain so whatever that certain thought is that we're we're kind of constraining the amount of talent that we can get into an organization. So we have to keep on fighting that sort of very natural human inclination to, you know, trust people who are more like ourselves.

01:28:09:09 - 01:28:34:23

Suzanne Heywood

I think kind of step one is admitting that that is a natural human condition. And step two is I think we we will have to kind of proactively keep on making sure that, you know, for example, a big organizing recruit from a wide range of different sources, that, you know, when it has its internal schemes, that it makes sure that it they are open and accessible as possible to different people.

01:28:35:00 - 01:28:57:03

Suzanne Heywood

I do think it will get slightly easier over time. So I think as, as the senior people in organizations and on boards and, and so on become more diverse in their makeup, then it becomes easier for people coming up through the organization to see somebody who looks a bit like themselves further on. So that's a very good thanks.

01:28:57:05 - 01:29:15:07

Suzanne Heywood

I think the other thing is that it kind of teaches people that they shouldn't make assumptions about other people. So as I say, kind of early on in my career, quite frequently it was assumed that because I was the woman in the room and often I was in a room with mainly men, I was there for the most junior.

01:29:15:09 - 01:29:36:10

Suzanne Heywood

As time is going on and there's many more senior women around, that becomes a quite a dangerous assumption for people to make. Well, likewise, if we live in a world where, you know, you might be very senior or very experienced or very knowledgeable, regardless of your kind of skin color or educational background or kind of gender or whatever it is.

01:29:36:12 - 01:29:59:09

Suzanne Heywood

I think people will naturally be more inclusive in how they deal with people, because you got to be you don't want to end up kind of treating somebody in the wrong sort of way because you've made some sort of, you know, biased assumption about who they are. So the positive thing is, I think this is all going to get somewhat easier as as populations in companies become more diverse.

01:29:59:11 - 01:30:19:05

Suzanne Heywood

The negative thing is, I think this is something that we won't have to keep worrying about because it is a natural human condition to be more trusting of people who look like ourselves. And we shouldn't pretend that it's any different, that that is a normal thing. And therefore we have to keep it, if you like, forcing ourselves not

01:30:19:05 - 01:30:21:10

Suzanne Heywood

to be like that.

01:30:21:12 - 01:30:48:15

Christian Soschner

Yeah. You mentioned, biases, conscious and unconscious biases and assumptions. And, our conversation when I discovered, the post from Francesco on LinkedIn and, where he, wrote about your speech at, his, his venture fund, I thought I would like to talk to you. I would like to understand better your approach to investing and what Excel is doing and stuff like that.

01:30:48:17 - 01:31:08:18

Christian Soschner

And then you wrote back that, people try to talk about your book, so I'm totally fine about it. And, you said it was a challenging chapter in your post, and then if you haven't, she see. Oh. So, how challenging can that be? And then about your book, and I hope you kind of be kidding me.

01:31:08:19 - 01:31:27:04

Christian Soschner

It's about sailing cars. It's. What do I get? Yeah, it's a book about sailing gains. why should that be difficult? Isn't it fun to sail around the world and then read the book? And, it reminded me of, my own biases to say, okay, I tend to put people into boxes immediately. So I saw I saw your role, and you're in that box.

01:31:27:06 - 01:31:48:24

Christian Soschner

Oxford. Cambridge in that box, challenging childhood sailing can be challenging. I like sailing, so why should that be challenging? can you explain how biases can be problematic in companies and what management and employees can do to fight biases in a way that the company doesn't fall part well?

01:31:48:24 - 01:31:49:12

Suzanne Heywood

I mean,

01:31:49:12 - 01:32:16:13

Suzanne Heywood

biases can be problematic in lots of different ways. First of all, as I say this, people biases. So most companies will have and even today many companies will have a certain sort of person who works in a particular sort of company, you know, whether that's, people from the industry or more men or more women or people from a particular nationality, or people from a particular type of educational background.

01:32:16:14 - 01:32:54:03

Suzanne Heywood

You know, I've come across companies where virtually everybody has worked at a particular university. You know, maybe they've come out of MIT, or maybe they've come out of, you know, some other kind of university. and there is a bias because you've got a group of people who are similar to each other, they quite naturally begin to assume that people who don't come from that background, who, by the way, may therefore be less good at some of the things that they're good at, that those people are worse, like they could be ineffective, and that, I think, is a very dangerous way to think, because there's lots of evidence, actually, that when you have

01:32:54:03 - 01:33:16:17

Suzanne Heywood

a group of people who actually come from very different backgrounds, they're more willing to challenge each other, you're less likely to have groupthink, you know, if you've got a bunch of people and they've all kind of been educated, you know, in engineering at MIT, they're all going to think in a certain sort of way. And then if you put somebody else into that group who comes from a very different kind of background, they're going to have different things that they're worried about.

01:33:16:17 - 01:33:39:07

Suzanne Heywood

You know, maybe they're they're less worried about, you know, detailing the process and getting that very clear, which, by the way, is a very good thing to do, but they may actually come at it in a very different way and be much more worried about what the culture of an organization is or whatever. I don't know, I'm making wild assumptions here, but the point is that as you mix up these groups, generally you tend to get to better outcomes.

01:33:39:09 - 01:33:56:20

Suzanne Heywood

but you also it's more painful in the short term. I mean, we all know what it's like to be in a group where everybody in the group is like ourselves. it's actually quite easy. everyone is busy agreeing with each other, but in a company that's not very healthy. so that's that's a kind of bias.

01:33:56:22 - 01:34:22:23

Suzanne Heywood

but of course, there's other biases as well. You know, there's a kind of bias in a company that, you know, because we've been very good at doing this, we're not going to do that. And we all know that kind of famous examples of companies that were unable to pivot, you know, the kind of famous kind of BlackBerrys and kind of people, those who find it very difficult to pivot, from one way of doing business into a new way of doing business.

01:34:23:00 - 01:34:41:21

Suzanne Heywood

and that's very dangerous. So there are there are all sorts of biases that people have, even very clever people in organizations. And I think one thing that your board can do sometimes, because they're not as embedded in the organization, is they can look out for and sort of call out some of those biases.

01:34:41:23 - 01:35:03:12

Christian Soschner

Yes. On parts, I would like to dive deeper. I mean, you have probably seen in your career a few hundred if not thousand companies. you have a really diverse career. And when I look back to business school, it was quite a simple story. A lifetime of a company, a company starts, matures, and then sometimes it benefits.

01:35:03:12 - 01:35:13:11

Christian Soschner

And then when I look at the economy today, we have this outlier companies like Apple, like Microsoft, like Amazon, like also Nvidia. Meanwhile,

01:35:13:11 - 01:35:27:03

Christian Soschner

whenever I think they are done and expects that the company will vanish to find something new and stick pivots. And they managed to pivot and at a stump managed to do that. from your experience with the variety of companies that you have seen.

01:35:27:07 - 01:35:49:12

Christian Soschner

But what makes the difference in leadership? Why do some companies successfully implement the culture of innovation and can innovate and innovate and innovate to keep innovating and keep growing, like Apple, Amazon and VI to other companies? Facebook. What's the difference? Can you boil it down to a few simple rules?

01:35:49:14 - 01:35:51:11

Suzanne Heywood

I don't know about simple rules. I mean, I sometimes

01:35:51:11 - 01:36:10:24

Suzanne Heywood

call them kind of Phenix companies. You know, they kind of reemerge after the fire. You know, they they they reinvent themselves. I mean, at Excel, when we're looking for companies, we look at companies not just that perform well financially, but we also look for companies that are sustainable because that's important.

01:36:11:01 - 01:36:39:01

Suzanne Heywood

but also companies that are innovative, you know, and that they have created, you know, a moat their distinctive. So they're distinctive and they're innovative. And I think if a company is going to be around for a long time as a culture, the management needs to put as much emphasis and reward, and attention on innovation and distinctiveness as they do on the kind of short term results.

01:36:39:03 - 01:37:02:11

Suzanne Heywood

And the danger, of course, particularly if you're a public company where you're being kind of driven by quarterly earnings is what you're really worried about is what's the next lot of numbers that I'm going to present, by the way, that's not a bad decision. That's a good discipline. But where it can become dangerous is if that means that you're not putting emphasis on kind of innovation and distinctiveness and sustainability as well.

01:37:02:13 - 01:37:20:02

Suzanne Heywood

and so one of the jobs, I think, for a CEO with a leadership team and for a board is to try to kind of make sure that the company is, you know, doing as much on those longer term issues as the shorter term issues. and it's the companies that lose sight of that, I think, that end up in trouble.

01:37:20:02 - 01:37:38:16

Suzanne Heywood

I mean, I never kind of worked inside that at Apple, but I imagine I would hope, I'd be surprised, actually, if it wasn't the case of, you know, the conversations even at very senior level, as much about what they're developing for three years time as they are about, you know, what, the sales are all today and next month.

01:37:38:16 - 01:37:41:19

Suzanne Heywood

And, you know, at the end of the quarter.

01:37:41:21 - 01:38:00:18

Christian Soschner

I think the apple is quite an interesting example. In 1987, it was close to bankruptcy. Then Steve Jobs came back. Tim Cook, I read his biography. Sometimes it's not very got the information. Tim Cook trained at Microsoft, interestingly invested in a plant. then they created this huge success story. And I think this is what a few important.

01:38:00:18 - 01:38:17:05

Christian Soschner

But I think it was a bystander a comes back to diversity. So when you have, people from diverse backgrounds in a company, you can look at problems completely differently than, when hiring just from one social group, from one gender group.

01:38:17:07 - 01:38:19:06

Suzanne Heywood

Yeah, I agree, I agree. I think

01:38:19:06 - 01:38:24:02

Suzanne Heywood

it makes a huge difference. and I do, you know, I do I do think that

01:38:24:02 - 01:38:28:03

Suzanne Heywood

diversity helps a company to be kind of innovative. And also

01:38:28:03 - 01:38:37:22

Suzanne Heywood

when you've got a more diverse group of people, I think people are more likely to ask the questions. You know, the uncomfortable questions. You know, it's all very well.

01:38:37:22 - 01:38:46:12

Suzanne Heywood

We're doing fine. But I didn't see what we're going to be doing in three years time. You know? You know, how are we still going to be interesting in three years time?

01:38:46:14 - 01:39:06:16

Christian Soschner

Yeah. When I was at a fraternity, as a student in 96 plus mid-nineties, the uncomfortable question doesn't make your friends. And when I get my stats, I know the manager said you don't have to make friends. It's just. Yeah, it's just have to work together and have to make sure that the company thrives, and that's okay.

01:39:06:18 - 01:39:07:24

Christian Soschner

That's enough.

01:39:08:01 - 01:39:25:19

Suzanne Heywood

Yeah, yeah. These things are not a popularity contest. You know, you need to look, you know, you need to. Yeah, you need to build relationships. And people need to trust you. And they need to, respect you. And you need to respond, respect them and trust them. But, you know, you don't. Fundamentally, this is not a it's not about kind of building friendships.

01:39:25:19 - 01:39:33:14

Suzanne Heywood

It's about getting a company to work. And sometimes in order to do that, you've got to ask difficult questions and make yourself a bit unpopular.

01:39:33:16 - 01:39:57:02

Christian Soschner

Oh yeah. One of my, female bosses was excellent in that sense. one time, you know, in a meeting in a 1 to 1 meeting, asked, why is she so aggressive to this, to this, to this guys? And she looked at me and said, look, I mean, if you want to be liked, then you should go to to work in marketing because, people are much more likely to return, if you accept bad habits in a company.

01:39:57:02 - 01:40:17:02

Christian Soschner

And this also gets back to diversity and biases. If you accept bad habits in a company to grow. And if you let the bad habits grow, the company can fall apart, stops innovating, it stops moving forward. And you have to ask the uncomfortable question. I think this is how are you interested? Also, as a board member asking the uncomfortable question, one uncomfortable question be addressed.

01:40:17:03 - 01:40:42:11

Christian Soschner

Maybe we can, shed more light on that. it's children, education and children. I think there is a lot of work that needs to be done. when you had only to choose three points that you would recommend with your expertise, from your policy work to European governments. what we should change in the world so that every child on this planet gets access to education.

01:40:42:13 - 01:40:46:19

Christian Soschner

But put these three measures be.

01:40:46:21 - 01:40:48:00

Suzanne Heywood

So the first form

01:40:48:00 - 01:41:09:04

Suzanne Heywood

would be and it's quite interesting, I'm trying to a little bit of kind of campaigning around this. there has been a huge surge in the number of children who've been taken outside of formal education. not just, Bates, which is quite a small thing, but home schooling has become a huge thing, both in Europe and in the US.

01:41:09:06 - 01:41:33:24

Suzanne Heywood

So my first thing would be we need to know what's happening with all of these children. at the moment in the UK, for example, we don't know who's being homeschooled. We don't even have a register of it. If you'll take out of the system, we don't know. And if we don't know, we have no chance of ever trying to work out whether or not they're getting any sort of decent schooling.

01:41:33:24 - 01:41:51:06

Suzanne Heywood

And also because nobody goes to see these children or contacts of in any way, because there's no requirement to do so. There's no way that anyone can raise the alarm if things are going wrong. And I should add, many people who are taking outside of the children and taken outside of the system, it may work absolutely fine.

01:41:51:08 - 01:42:20:21

Suzanne Heywood

You know, they may have a great time. They may get a great education. The thing is, we just don't know. And that to me is very worrying given my background. So my first plea would be, you know, let's at least kind of know where our children are and how they're being kind of educated. the second thing is, I think governments trying to create access to these new forms of education, making that access as wide as possible would be incredible.

01:42:20:23 - 01:42:45:13

Suzanne Heywood

so even if you're going to a school which is not a great school, or you, you know, outside of the system, or you are just in a school which doesn't offer a subject, you might be fascinated by it. Maybe you're in a small school, but you're fascinated by coding. you know, the it's now completely doable to make this sort of education widely available for children.

01:42:45:15 - 01:43:09:17

Suzanne Heywood

And I think governments investing in that and supporting companies that do it, I think would be incredible and quite transformative. and then the I guess the third thing is, you know, children needed types of education do differ. in the UK, we put a huge emphasis on people going to university, but apprenticeships are just as powerful as well.

01:43:09:19 - 01:43:39:02

Suzanne Heywood

and so we need to create various different routes and not just going to go down a kind of single route for education. because if we do that, we will find some people who just don't fit very comfortably in a, in a standard education setting. And then they'll just leave at a very early, early stage. so I think kind of tracking, knowing where the children are making these new education forms available and, you know, creating multiple different pathways for children to go down.

01:43:39:04 - 01:43:42:22

Suzanne Heywood

all all those things I think would make a huge amount of difference.

01:43:42:24 - 01:44:05:23

Christian Soschner

Yeah. That's true. The internet is a blessing. So the second point that you mentioned resonated, I think in your book, for example, growing up in the countryside, you were on a boat. I was in a small mountain town, whenever I wanted to book, the local bookstore, refused to buy it because finding that book somewhere on the planet meant, obviously affecting Kim Emerson and the internet.

01:44:06:00 - 01:44:28:19

Christian Soschner

And there is so much possibility today to make, education accessible. It's incredible. And policymakers can make a huge difference in that, to make sure that children get the opportunity, regardless of whether they think it's simple things like, making sure the children have, internet and, access to an iPad or a computer. not all not our children are rich.

01:44:28:19 - 01:44:47:06

Christian Soschner

you balance a lot of areas in your life. This is pretty amazing. So you had this, amazing child. So this incredible check. So it's on a boat, then went to the top universities, worked for McKinsey. we talked a lot about your professional life, but you also have a passion for the arts. How do you balance that?

01:44:47:08 - 01:44:51:20

Christian Soschner

Professional life and arts? Try. Does it play in your life?

01:44:51:22 - 01:44:52:11

Suzanne Heywood

Well,

01:44:52:11 - 01:45:12:00

Suzanne Heywood

one of the things that happened is when I came back off the boat and I came to London, that was when I first really discovered music, because on the boat we had very limited music. we were still in the age, as you mentioned before, where you had, tapes. And my mother had a dolly Parton take.

01:45:12:00 - 01:45:32:04

Suzanne Heywood

My father had a, he had a kind of a he had a tape. I think he had a kind of Bob, Bob Dylan tape. I had a, I think I had an appetite, but my mother had a kind of hooked on classics tape, and that was pretty much it. You know, those four tapes that just got played and eventually got very distorted, actually.

01:45:32:06 - 01:45:57:01

Suzanne Heywood

So it was only when I came back to London that I actually discovered music. I went on a trip with a friend to Hungary, and we went to an opera, and that was the first opera I'd ever heard. And then I fell in love with classical music and opera. I love the source music as well. but there is there is something very special about going to a concert, which you can do relatively cheaply as well.

01:45:57:03 - 01:46:17:13

Suzanne Heywood

And I certainly find that for me, if I can go to a concert or an opera or a ballet, I just switch off, you know, it's just a wonderful experience. I regret the fact that I can't really play an instrument. That's one of the downsides of growing up on a boat. I can't really play an instrument, and I have occasionally thought about doing that.

01:46:17:13 - 01:46:44:04

Suzanne Heywood

But of all the things in my life that I need to make choices about where I spend my time, it's probably not the best way to do it, but I really enjoy enjoy that now. Nowadays, I did have a phase where I was very involved at the opera House in London. Since I become more focused on some of these issues around education and public policy, I so shifted a bit of my time across to that, but I still really enjoy going and just listening to music.

01:46:44:04 - 01:46:54:16

Suzanne Heywood

It is a wonderful experience and I feel very privileged to live here in London, this big city of London where there's so much music you can go and listen to.

01:46:54:18 - 01:46:59:18

Christian Soschner

Yeah, that's true, that's true. What kind of music do you like the most?

01:46:59:20 - 01:47:19:01

Suzanne Heywood

It depends on in terms of what for what as it were. So I really like lots of different sorts of music, but it depends really on the, on the circumstance. so yeah, I love going to a kind of classical music concert, but I also quite enjoy kind of, you know, pop music as well. I don't mind that at all.

01:47:19:03 - 01:47:27:03

Suzanne Heywood

I'm actually going if echo, which I chair, is doing a whole collaboration at the moment with Metallica.

01:47:27:05 - 01:47:28:00

Christian Soschner

Ready.

01:47:28:02 - 01:47:32:05

Suzanne Heywood

Yeah. So I'm going to tell a good concert in, in a few weeks time.

01:47:32:12 - 01:47:47:07

Christian Soschner

May I ask? do you did anything? Is it one of your companies is doing a collaboration with Metallica? Hey, Metallica, the metal band. So I'm done. And, just as far, I think that's one of the records. Why?

01:47:47:10 - 01:47:52:09

Suzanne Heywood

Oh, well, this is a vector, so that code sucks.

01:47:52:09 - 01:48:16:20

Suzanne Heywood

so I think for them, you know, doing a collaboration with a heavy metal band, and then that company fits a lot of that. Truck drivers love Metallica. And actually, Metallica is also a very environmentally conscious group. And so we are providing Metallica with very environmentally conscious trucks, you know, kind of electric trucks.

01:48:16:20 - 01:48:17:01

Suzanne Heywood

So

01:48:17:01 - 01:48:41:02

Suzanne Heywood

we're supporting the band in their European tour. So, you know, we're providing them with trucks. You know, they are kind of, working with us in terms of, you know, the messaging around quality deco. So I think sometimes these kind of creative partnerships between a company and a, you know, an artistic, you know, group, in this case, kind of Metallica can be incredibly powerful.

01:48:41:06 - 01:48:47:06

Suzanne Heywood

It's also very motivating for the the staff and the people in the company.

01:48:47:08 - 01:48:47:21

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I believe

01:48:47:21 - 01:49:05:09

Christian Soschner

that Metallica is a great band. except 80s, 80s, 90s. I was a great success story. It's also, I think, a story of resilience pushing through, going through hardships, sticking together, making music, continuing and out of adversity. great band. Love it. Yeah. Of itself.

01:49:05:09 - 01:49:16:03

Christian Soschner

When we look at the time of, we are ten minutes before 2:00 here, it's 1:00, I think in London.

01:49:16:05 - 01:49:27:08

Christian Soschner

I'm almost at the end of my questions before I ask my last question, is there anything open that you would like to talk about, on this podcast? Is there any topic that you would like to address that's important for?

01:49:27:08 - 01:49:34:12

Suzanne Heywood

You know, I think we've we've covered so many different things. It's been a lot of fun. So thank you very much.

01:49:34:14 - 01:49:48:02

Christian Soschner

Thank you for your time. I enjoyed this conversation. And it's, was unusual from the first minute, very immature online. until to the end of this conversation. then I come to my final question.

01:49:48:02 - 01:49:58:01

Christian Soschner

You mentioned that you wrote four books and it looks like a series of books. when the next book come out, do you have time to read it?

01:49:58:04 - 01:50:20:05

Suzanne Heywood

I do, I do d so so two things are happening. One is I mentioned at the start that way. Walker has been optioned for a mini series. So I'm very excited about that. I think that's going to be a lot of fun, but I'm actually starting to write my next book. So one thing that happened after Wave Walker came out and Wave Walker was has been very successful as a book, which is wonderful.

01:50:20:07 - 01:50:44:03

Suzanne Heywood

But one of the consequences of that is lots of people have reached out to me who had very extreme childhoods of their own. So lots of people who grew up on boats, but also people who were homeschooled or dragged across America on a cycle or across Africa or whatever might be. And so my next book, I think, is going to be a collection of some of those stories.

01:50:44:03 - 01:51:02:14

Suzanne Heywood

And I think it should be fascinating because some of these stories, they are incredible stories, of of these things that happened. but they also say something because these stories don't always end up in the same place. You know, some of them are very positive stories. The person kind of comes out of it in a very positive way.

01:51:02:20 - 01:51:19:12

Suzanne Heywood

Some of them, they're very negative. And I think we can actually draw quite a lot from that. But, but but fundamentally I think that great story. So I'm really excited to try and figure out a way to tell them in a compelling manner. It's going to be an interesting writing challenge, which I'm looking forward to.

01:51:19:14 - 01:51:41:09

Christian Soschner

Send me an email. I would love to read that book. enjoy reading your book. I still have, a little bit more. I got a bit less than has to go. I will definitely finish it. It's a great book. It's very well written, if I may say so. I said non-native speaker. I enjoyed every minute. I actually bought the, the e-book, the hardcover and also the the audiobook.

01:51:41:09 - 01:52:02:19

Christian Soschner

It's, great. It's a great combination. thank you very much for your time and for the insights in your childhood, your insights also into, business, into investing, entrepreneurship, also into heavy metal. Metallica. I loved every single minute of it. And it was great to stay in touch like.

01:52:02:21 - 01:52:06:07

Suzanne Heywood

It would be. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

01:52:06:09 - 01:52:10:10

Christian Soschner

Thank you. Have a great afternoon. Have a great day. See you soon. Bye.

01:52:10:10 - 01:52:29:23

Christian Soschner

And the ultra. From a childhood shipwreck to the boardroom of a global company. Susan Hayward's story is proof that resilience, a thirst for knowledge and embracing the unexpected can lead to extraordinary places.

01:52:29:23 - 01:52:38:16

Christian Soschner

Her journey is a testament to the transformative power of education and the importance of challenging conventional thinking.

01:52:38:16 - 01:52:59:09

Christian Soschner

If you are inspired by Susan's resilience and wisdom, hit that like button. Leave a comment. Sharing your biggest takeaway and share this episode with your network. Your support helps the team continue to bring you compelling stories of leadership and personal growth.

01:52:59:09 - 01:53:13:00

Christian Soschner

Remember, even the most challenging beginnings can lead to incredible outcomes. Stay curious, embrace the unknown, and never stop learning.