Chris Simmance (00:01.506)
Hello. Hello. Hey, Amy, how are you Not too bad. So, this is the first recording that we’re doing of this podcast. So you have, you have to create some big shoes for everyone else to fill. I’m going to try my best to introduce you because, it is somewhat of a list of things. So here we go. Imagine it in a park lifestyle thing.

Amy Hopper (00:03.924)
Good, thank you. How are you?

Amy Hopper (00:16.33)
I’m very glad I brushed my hair.

Amy Hopper (00:25.12)
Mmm.

Chris Simmance (00:30.51)
Sociologist and entrepreneur. Founded a digital agency at 25. Park life. Got hit by a car at 26. Lost your hair, then shaved your head. Grew the agency to a top 30 Google partner. Had spinal fusion, was wheelchair bound, sold the agency, rebuilt your body because spinal fusion and wheelchair, not because of the soldier agency, or maybe probably because of that as well. A bit of both.

Amy Hopper (00:44.416)
Mm -hmm.

Amy Hopper (00:57.118)
and maybe I’ve a bit rebuilt my mind and so it’s a self -worth, yeah.

Chris Simmance (01:01.23)
Yep, Hiked 600 kilometers solo around Europe, took to the speaking circuit, founded a performance consultancy group and now helps companies remove well -being barriers to produce higher performing teams. And the final one you missed off the list was coming onto this podcast. Here we are, Amy. Welcome to the podcast.

Amy Hopper (01:18.194)
of course, that’s my next goal. And here we are, here we are, ticket off the bucket list.

Gosh that all sounds rather impressive doesn’t it? I know it!

Chris Simmance (01:32.128)
It does, it does, it’s almost like you wrote it.

So the purpose of this podcast, I’ve said to you previously, is that the way that businesses run is that most of us talk about all of the successes when we’re talking to business people and all of the things that are quite hard usually stay in our heads or come out in other ways. And I did a recording with someone for another podcast and it occurred to me that quite a lot of the real part of business is the hard bit that we don’t actually discuss and we don’t talk about.

And it’s quite nice to be able to balance the successes and the pains and the bits that go with it. And no one ever really talks about it. And I know what I’ve been through, you know what you’ve been through. Everyone sees the outward success pieces. So I just thought it’d be a really nice way of having a conversation about what you’re up to now, what got you to that place, where you’re going from a personal and a professional point of view. So without further ado.

Would you mind letting us know what you do in the TOA

Amy Hopper (02:40.758)
Yeah, of course. Thank you for that lovely introduction. of it’s lovely to be here. Lovely to be here as the guinea pig. Hello everyone, I’m Amy Hopper. I’m a sociologist for my SINZ ex -CEO, marketing agency CEO, and now run a performance consultancy group called…

Chris Simmance (02:43.682)
I’ll do my best.

Chris Simmance (02:48.398)
Yeah, if this is terrible, you ought to blame, not me. I did all my things, right?

Amy Hopper (03:08.35)
TOWA group or TOA group as it stands for Triumph Over Adversity. I know, I know, it’s rather cool. what we do is we go into businesses, corporates, and we take a look at the challenges that they may be facing and help them with it, essentially. And we do that from a sociological, psychological perspective. So we’re looking at the underlying issues.

the underlying challenges that are actually happening. So as opposed to what appears on the surface. could be like a company has a high turnover rate or they’ve got a toxic work culture or they’ve got a lot of people sick with mental health issues. All of these challenges that a lot of businesses face, but our mind is, no, there is a underlying sociological wellbeing issue here that needs to be addressed. Let’s not put a plaster.

over a big cut, let’s see what caused the cut in the first place and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Chris Simmance (04:10.85)
Yeah, yeah, it’s the thing behind the thing which is often not immediately noticed by the people inside an organization because they’re in it all day long. know, if you don’t, like you say, don’t plaster the cut, look for the room full of knives.

Amy Hopper (04:25.042)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s like, all of our team is stressed. Yeah, pizza party on a Friday is not gonna fix that.

Chris Simmance (04:32.404)
No, no, it certainly won’t, especially if they’ve got deadlines they have to do over the weekend because they’re enjoying a pizza at 4pm on a Friday. I do remember, I’ve spoken to a good few businesses where they still think that, you know, yes, it’s a perk that we have pizzas and stuff on a Friday or if you hit your targets that you work seven days a week for, you might get a bonus when at a certain point money isn’t all that important, is it? You know, there’s a…

Amy Hopper (04:39.776)
We can’t change that.

Amy Hopper (04:50.448)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (04:58.015)
an employment and a business hierarchy of needs and at the very bottom it’s the financial bit that allows you to kind of live. But what’s the point if you’re working your ass

Amy Hopper (05:07.035)
Completely and this is something that I say to a lot of people particularly when I’m doing keynotes I have this this big slide in that and a lot of performance consultancies and the industry at the moment they sort of work towards this idea of well we’ve worked with such -and -such Olympian and we’ve worked with Manchester City Football Club and we’ve done this and that’s that’s great that’s fantastic but you can’t apply the

dynamics and the same approach to a sports team and a sports person as you do to a work team because every single person on that sports team wants to win. They have the same goal. They want to win. They want to be the best. They want to stretch themselves as far as they possibly can to reach that 100%. And I hate to break it to people, but Susan in HR doesn’t want to win the Premier League.

Chris Simmance (05:56.054)
No

Chris Simmance (05:59.662)
You’re assuming that she doesn’t.

Amy Hopper (06:02.294)
I’m assuming, I mean, she might want to, who knows, but it’s very unlikely that she wants to. So when we go in, treat, it’s about helping individuals to work with individuals. And that’s the point, is that every single person has got their individual goals, challenges, family makeup, dynamic backgrounds, and we’re taking those people.

teaching them how to work with other people within the team environment, working towards the goals of the company as a whole. And that’s a much better approach than sort of like painting everyone with the same brush, because it just isn’t going to

Chris Simmance (06:42.21)
Yeah, and it’s really hard because most of these kinds of sessions, know, the big coach from a football team or whatever, most of those things, yes, they’re really expensive and it’s really nice to say that this has happened and that sort of stuff, but they’ve got a relatively inflexible focus. They come in, they

going to be the best and this is how we’re going to do it and you’re going to listen to this and you’re going to have this mantra in your head for the rest of your life and so on and so forth and then they get wheeled back into the you know into wherever they’ve come from and apparently everything’s going to be fine and the amount of times I’m sure you’ve seen it as well you’ve there’s there’s businesses that have brought me in there’s probably businesses that brought you in where they’ve gone we’ve tried everything it’s like have you tried everything yeah I tried everything we brought this guy we’ve done that guy well have you actually worked out

Amy Hopper (07:25.29)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (07:30.038)
Susan in HR doesn’t want to win. She just wants to make sure that people have the right contracts. Have you worked out that the guy in finance, he doesn’t want to win the thing. He just wants to make sure that accounts receivable matches up at the end of the month. Just let him be excellent at that.

Amy Hopper (07:33.515)
Yeah.

Amy Hopper (07:43.327)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, or have you tried talking to people before you implement any change?

Chris Simmance (07:49.582)
Yeah, or have you talked about implementing change 17 ,000 times and not actually implemented change? You’ve just talked about it because everyone gets excited about those sorts of things. Here’s the big presentation.

Amy Hopper (07:55.782)
Yeah. yeah, that’s a good point. There’s a really, really good, I mean, there’s loads of talk on the subject of implementing change. There’s, I mean, so many theories from sociologists, psychologists, business coaches as to why change isn’t implemented successfully or taken on fully by the team majority, vast majority of the time.

But my favorite one is called the Moorish Three Levels of Resistance. it’s basically, don’t like it. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. I don’t like you. And there’s just the three things. You’ve got your cognitive. I don’t understand it. It hasn’t been explained to me. I don’t like it as in I don’t like how it could affect me or it’s an emotional response.

Chris Simmance (08:33.132)
Right. Yep.

Amy Hopper (08:45.62)
And I don’t like you, like I’ve explained those two things, but I don’t trust the person implementing the change. They don’t fill me with this sense of trust in my job, therefore it’s just not gonna work. And if you haven’t got those three, then it’s…

Chris Simmance (08:56.696)
Yeah, a good friend of mine, I’ll name drop him because he probably listened to this, Betts, used to say to me, hello Dave, he used to say to me an awful lot, first seek to understand in order to be understood. And I know it’s probably from somewhere else as well, but he always used to keep sort of hammering, this is how I do it, this is how I do it, this is how do it. And it sticks with me every single time I’m talking with people from a coaching or a mentoring point of view that.

Amy Hopper (09:04.148)
Hello, Dave.

Chris Simmance (09:24.172)
I’ve got to make sure I understand them first before they can understand what I’m trying to convey. The same thing goes when you’ve got a large team or multiple teams and you’re trying to implement change and you’re trying to make sure that they want it, that they’re able to do it and they actually like the idea. And if you don’t understand them well enough, well, what are you going to do? You’re just going to give them everyone the same presentation and everyone the same pumped up thing and then a pizza and a peroni afterwards and everyone seems to be happy for five minutes. And then on Monday, nothing’s changed because

Well, it’s not my job to do that thing. It’s quite, and it’s tough when you’re running a business though, isn’t it? Because you look at it and you think, well, why aren’t they, why don’t they want to follow me? Why don’t they want this? This is a great idea. Why is the HR person not that keen? It’s probably because I’ve not made it right.

Amy Hopper (09:56.935)
Yeah.

Amy Hopper (10:13.982)
Yes, Exactly, and I’ve definitely made that mistake. Like several times over and it’s so easy. think one, because it’s perpetuated by the media in…

programs such as like The Apprentice, sort of like, you’re fired. And every single person that’s displayed as a manager or a director is in the tell stage of management. in sort of your classic seven stages, you’ve got collaborative on one side, you’ve got tell on the other, and then all the stages in between. And tell is meant to be just for essentially the building is burning down, get out. That’s the only time a director should be in the tell stage.

Chris Simmance (10:55.672)
I’m not doing what you tell me to do.

Amy Hopper (10:57.576)
Yeah, yeah, don’t tell me what to do, but that should be the only stage. then, and, if you’re not, but so many people and so much, such a high percent of the time are in this tell stage and, and aren’t in collaboration. So they haven’t fostered that communication. They haven’t created a safe psychological space in which people feel that they could be seen and heard that they’re not that they’re just going to be heard, but they’re actually, that’s going to actually be taken on board.

then if you haven’t got that, you haven’t got trust. And from which everything is built.

Chris Simmance (11:28.238)
Yeah, so you go all over the place talking in keynotes, giving you that big slide you mentioned, talking about the HR departments. You do an awful lot of good work now, but obviously that comes from somewhere that you’ve had to learn that and you’ve built that all off your own back. Let’s talk a little bit about how you got there in the past. the first part of that intro was starting an agency at 25.

Amy Hopper (11:33.936)
Yeah.

Chris Simmance (11:57.182)
How did you get to where you are now? What were the kind of the key points there? I know there is a recording limit on Riverside, so.

Amy Hopper (12:03.272)
No, wait.

Okay, let’s do the… asked me this in his podcast. Let’s do that. Okay, so… So I’ve started the agency at 25 and at 26 in high speed car collision, woman came into my lane and

the use of my legs for a time, ended up in a wheelchair and was running the business or trying to run the business essentially while undergoing.

operations each year and in chronic pain for several years. The business was actually doing really beautifully. As you said, we’d got the top 30 in the UK out of 30 ,000 agencies. We’d won drum awards and Amazon business awards and created this really beautiful work called Boutique Agency with some really, really wonderful clients. unfortunately, the

back issues persisted, pain persisted, ended up having to have a spinal fusion at the age of 31 in December 2019. And going from why you should be a competitive sprinter and competitive long distance swimmer, very, very sporty, athletics team captain is actually going to again, back into not being able to walk, not being able to twist or turn and blacking out with pain. It was just…

Chris Simmance (13:15.01)
Yeah.

Amy Hopper (13:39.158)
something else because then in the 2020 we all went into lockdown and then very very sadly in the first lockdown my husband and business partner Bradley took his own life. So then being in the position of

having lost everything, like lost my health, the lockdown, we’ve lost business, people have cancelled and then losing your husband, your best friend. And that person that grew the business with me was really just this utter sense of utter surrender. And along with that

of many, many financial issues, almost losing my house and just thinking what on earth am I gonna do in that lockdown period?

Chris Simmance (14:31.192)
Yeah, it’s one thing after another, it? And slowly, I mean, running a business is one thing after another and knock back after knock back. you know, I always used to say it’s champagne on the way up and punches in the face on the way down. And you just don’t know how many champagne glasses you’re going to have before you have a punch in the face. But to have the personal side of those things happen at the same time, or one proceeding the other for obvious amount of really not that nice reasons.

really, I say it’s nice to see a smile on your face. It’s also really important to recognise that those things whilst bad, you’ve got something good from it and that you’ve used it as an opportunity to take something good out of these experiences.

Amy Hopper (15:04.214)
Thank

Amy Hopper (15:19.262)
Yeah, sure. I mean, they say it comes in threes, like not twelves. But I think, I think the one thing it has definitely taught me, when you’re in that, you are put into that position of surrender when you’re literally on rock bottom, mentally, physically, emotionally, like I felt like I had absolutely nothing, nothing left to give, nothing at all. And

in a way, lockdown was almost a blessing in terms of the

Amy Hopper (16:05.513)
but at the same time, everyone else has stopped at the same time. And in that period, I was recipient of the most beautiful acts of human kindness. I can’t explain but work acquaintances have now become best friends and people really rallied around.

to support me during that time. And during a time where everyone in the country was going through such strife and it meant that I had time. I mean, I just, okay, we’re all in lockdown, we’re all in this space. I have time now to focus on my healing body and mind and grieving.

submerged myself into therapy and I think I had 250 hours of therapy just in the first year. did pretty much, pretty much, some days like four hours of therapy a day in the early days. And doing my own physical therapy and physiotherapy, did it myself using YouTube videos because all of my physical therapy was cancelled.

Chris Simmance (17:04.59)
Pretty much all of lockdown, isn’t

Yeah.

Chris Simmance (17:17.24)
Yeah. wow. See, shows strength of character there because, so I broke my collarbone during lockdown and I had to do physical therapy, but thankfully that was during the gap in between. So I actually went to see someone and it was incredibly painful to do. I know, I can only imagine how much worse it must’ve been for a, I say a real injury, a real reason, because

Amy Hopper (17:25.072)
Thank you.

Chris Simmance (17:46.914)
it was a shoulder. Yeah, sorry, what I mean is you had an awful lot more to lose by not doing physical therapy, whereas I hope that physical therapist doesn’t listen to this. I didn’t do any of my homework because it was really painful and I just didn’t want to do it. And so I kept going back to the sessions, but I cannot imagine having to do it all by myself from a YouTube video, because I’d be like, this really hurts. skip this one.

Amy Hopper (17:47.259)
The first time saw a phone is a real reason, Chris.

Amy Hopper (18:16.483)
I was very lucky in that I was living with my parents who were both retired and we live, it was my family home and they have fields around so I had space in order to deal with those things. Also, lovely Becky, Becky from Reflect. Yes, Becky. She took over.

Chris Simmance (18:35.01)
Becky Sims, lovely Becky.

Amy Hopper (18:39.721)
with my accountant, she took over the running of AM Marketing for that period. And really, really kind. so I didn’t have to worry about that in that period, which meant that I could then just concentrate on myself. And it was an absolute blessing.

Chris Simmance (18:44.62)
Yeah, that’s really kind.

Chris Simmance (19:05.769)
The hardship that you went through with all of that, I’m guessing, I know it wasn’t gonna be smooth sailing up to that point, getting to top 30 out of 30 ,000, that’s not easy. And there are an awful lot of things that you have to put up with and deal with just to get to that point. Do you think that kind of resilience in from a business point of view helped with the personal stuff? Or do you think?

the personal stuff is different, like a different battery.

Amy Hopper (19:34.407)
I think that’s a really good question. think that I’ve always had it from a young age, definitely. It was, I think it’s something that you build over time and it’s obviously related to your family makeup when you’re younger as well. I think definitely the business elements of going out and running your own business for several years and…

Being, I suppose, quite autonomous and responsible not only for yourself but for others and having a lot of things on your plate at that time, yeah, definitely contributed without a doubt.

Chris Simmance (20:15.406)
Yeah, it’s one of those things as well though that now in your current role or roles from a speaker and a professional consultant, I bet you, I’d put money on it that you go into rooms and you can see something that someone else can’t see. So you can see a little bit of pain behind the eyes, should we say, in a room full of nods and smiles because…

I know what to look for, but it’s not instinctive unless you’ve had that yourself. So when you’re in a room with, I don’t know, 15, 20 people and everyone’s engaged in a session that you’re running, you can kind of work out who’s playing lip service to it because they’re dealing with something that they need to deal with. And I guess the pain that you’ve went through has probably made

better at what you do now.

Amy Hopper (21:16.649)
that’s a really, really important point and you’re completely right. it’s the pain of going through it yourself, but also having studied, you could say, well, because I’ve studied body language, but there is a certain energy. And I think that once you’ve been through certain amount of therapy and self -awareness and you have kind of confronted your own dark side and you’ve accepted those dark and light parts, it does make your eyes open.

Chris Simmance (21:29.186)
Mm. Mm.

Amy Hopper (21:45.253)
and then you do end up seeing things that others perhaps can’t or find it more difficult to. think also it makes it incredibly important because a huge part of what I do, safeguarding, has to be at the forefront.

And whereas some people might say, well, it’s just business coaching. Because of a lot of what we do, there are elements of CBT in it. And we are looking at people much from a of like a mind, body, holistic point of view, not just business and economics. Sometimes we might come across people that are struggling more than our capabilities and

internal qualifications allow and we need to signpost that to people so that they can be helped properly and yes, seeing that and being able to, suppose it’s more of a reading that energy is incredibly important.

Chris Simmance (22:40.098)
Yeah, mean any business that, all businesses have people in there, whether it’s one person or whether it’s, you know, a hundred thousand or a million. Whenever there’s people involved, it isn’t just the nuts and the bolts. It’s not just the service delivery or the product creation and design. It’s not just the marketing department. It’s not just, those things have to exist for the business to function. And the business will function if those, people behind it aren’t engaged and aren’t happy.

but the business will not function as well and the people in the business will get less well if the people bit is ignored or it’s kind of like that older parenting style type thing where it’s like, just ignore it and it’ll be fine. Little Timmy in the accounts department will be all right. We’ll get him a bike for Christmas. None of the, exactly, yeah.

Amy Hopper (23:25.235)
Yeah.

Amy Hopper (23:30.645)
Yeah, lovely bit of disassociation goes down so well in the morning with a cup of tea.

Chris Simmance (23:36.498)
But genuinely, I’ve sat in on like all hands meetings for agencies where I’ve sat in just so I can get a view of the team dynamic before going and doing a like a training session. And I’ve sat in there and I’ve seen people like going as if they’re about to say something and then somewhat and the leader of the team talks over them because they know they don’t want to hear whatever it is that’s coming up because this person is going to say

I’m struggling with my workload. That person goes, okay, anyone got anything else? Nope. And then they’ll click the red button and that’s the call over. Ignoring it always makes it worse. And if you lose one good team member because of ignoring these types of things, the business suffers not just because you have to essentially pay to replace that person, you’re losing the unwritten ground rules that they have, the unknown knowledge that…

you don’t know what they keep in their brain that’s related to work. So you’ve not just got to replace a person, probably pay a recruiter a hefty fee as well. You probably lose other people because those people may well feel the same. And it doesn’t take a lot for that to slowly snowball into lost clients or poor reputation, all because you haven’t touched on that awkward or painful thing. Sometimes it’s good to be vulnerable as a leader and say, hey, look, I’m not good at this stuff.

but I know there’s something to talk about. wait for me, when you’ve said what you’ve got to say and when you’ve said what you want to say, just wait for me to sort of conjugate what I need to reply to show you I’ve listened, but don’t expect it to be perfect straight away. But I’m trying my best. And then you go, right, okay, I know we need help here. Let’s call Amy, let’s do something about it, you that sort of thing. It’s being in that awkward position that real business leaders...

are really good at. It’s the being in the awkward position that aspiring business leaders have to get over at some point. Some people are just really good at being in awkward places. Some people love doing it. Other people less so and you’ve just got to learn to listen.

Amy Hopper (25:50.035)
Yeah, absolutely. And you’ve actually just described some of the key, like best moments that we have in TOA sessions. some of the best sessions we have are the ones where a company has come and they’ve gone for a whole sort of series. And several of those sessions are facilitator sessions in which we are just creating a safe space. And sometimes it takes an outside party to come in and be able to do that.

and for whatever reason you can’t do it internally with your own colleagues because the dynamic is different. We come in and we create this space giving prompts and giving direction for people to really, really say what is happening and how they feel. And I can tell you in the time that I’ve been doing this, in not one of those sessions have we not had tears.

every single one and I think one of the comments, one of the first ones we did, the CEO said it was one of the most profound things she’d ever seen in 36 years of her career and like exactly, it says a lot, it says a lot.

Chris Simmance (27:00.046)
That says a lot. It says a lot in two sides. There’s the nice side, which is obviously that this has made an impact, but there’s the other side, is 36 years of not seeing that, and that’s one person’s account, which means naturally, however many other people were in that room, they’re probably still talking about it now because of the impact it would have made on them or the impact they’d seen it make on someone else.

Amy Hopper (27:25.877)
Absolutely, and you’re exactly right when you say about people leaving because actually one of the things we tackle or we get brought into tackle is high turnover rate. And we find that in those facilitator sessions, normally they focus around subjects such as imposter syndrome or coping with change. In those sessions, we’ve had people say, I was going to leave, but I’m not going to because of having done this session.

The CEO is in the back of room, like one getting involved because it needs to be top down, like the management needs to get involved. But also they’re there just literally writing down every single thing that every single person says because it’s almost a golden sheet of what’s wrong in the business that they can go and fix and start implementing the next day. And so we’ve had people not leave because of doing these sessions and then the change is being made. You think how much that saves a business in just in recruitment fees, retraining fees.

It’s actually tens and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds in some cases for C -suite teams. And then people say, well, we can’t afford these sessions or we can’t afford wellbeing sessions. It’s not, it’s not. It’s tangible against your bottom line and it’s an investment to save you costs later down the line.

Chris Simmance (28:44.75)
And arguably positioning around this, totally get it. money’s tight in any business these days, especially in service businesses as well, service businesses typically carry a different kind of model with client churn and staff churn. And it’s really easy to say X amount of money for these sessions is too much cost, but they’re

looking at it in an investment perspective or as an insurance perspective. So this costs £8 ,000, let’s say. Well, it doesn’t cost £8 ,000. It’s an £8 ,000 investment to protect £150 ,000. Or it’s an £8 ,000 facilitated insurance policy to protect a million pounds of future earnings. like, I get it, you get it and

when someone’s a leader in a business that absolutely needs it, I know what it’s like for someone to say, you need this support, you need this help, you need this change. It’s gonna carry this fees, but at the same time, you’re gonna feel really bad the entire time. Sign me up. It’s all on you, mate. Sign me up, though.

Amy Hopper (30:00.469)
Yeah, that is the thing. And I think also a big part of it is the term well -being has been bastardised. I hate the word well -being. I despise the word well -being. And when people say to me, what you do is well -being and mental health. No. Yes.

But no, well -being is referred to everything from, I don’t know, sipping a cup of green tea in the morning, doing a morning affirmation, doing yoga on the roof, all the way through to, and that’s what we say, no, this is performance consultancy.

that is approaching your business challenges from a sociological and psychological perspective, it’s just that we use wellbeing techniques, CBT, as the main driving force and aid to sort those out for you because business and economics and logic doesn’t work. And people are people with emotions and they’re human and the mind and the body is entirely connected. And if you have a happy person that can emotionally regulate,

Chris Simmance (31:04.152)
Yeah

Amy Hopper (31:13.932)
they can go off and communicate and work in any team that you put them in. So that’s why I get… Can you sense my frustration?

Chris Simmance (31:23.788)
I can, I can, I totally understand that. And I think part of the problem with all of these things is sadly people who think they know marketing using these types of terms in a marketing vein. Yes, wellbeing is your green tea in your walk in the morning or watching the sunrise. That is good for your wellbeing, but there are different layers to this, especially when it comes

well -being with other people because like I can I still can’t get my head around it that as a species We give up our time lots of it for money to spend the vast majority of our time with people we don’t choose to spend our time with to do something which Strip everything away doesn’t have a huge amount of meaning behind it and and then you expect us all to be

because you’ve set a target that we’ve hit and here’s the pizza. So you’ve got to have a version of a wellbeing set up inside of business because people really need to feel good. I don’t know how else to put it. You know a better way of explaining it, I guess, but you just need to feel good. Otherwise, what’s the point? You’re spending 140 -ish paid hours a month to sit next to Brenda who you don’t like.

Amy Hopper (32:47.493)
poor Brenda! But I think the thing is the younger generations are waking up to this and this is why you’ve got so much noise and sometimes quite nasty articles that come out about how Jen said aren’t good workers and how they are…

Chris Simmance (32:48.396)
I feel sorry for her. She doesn’t want to win the championship or anything.

Amy Hopper (33:08.837)
they can’t communicate and this and that and the other and I’m sure that there is a lot of truth to what is being said there and I’m sure there is there are many many annoyances and grievances and things that are quite that are happening across the board or across all industries but also one thing I have also noticed is there is this side there is this almost underlying theme of jealousy

that comes from the older generations, those directors, C -suites, managers of businesses that, because Gen Z, Gen Z, sorry. I know, sorry, Americanism. Gen Z are coming in and they’re the first generation in which I suppose we don’t so much have the idea of mental health being a taboo.

and they will quite happily talk about it and therapy is much more well known and there is much more knowledge about it and they are much more likely to want time rather than money. And you’ve got…

Chris Simmance (34:01.221)
Mm -hmm.

Amy Hopper (34:15.253)
management team that are thinking okay well we had to we had to earn our we had to earn our salt we had to cut our teeth I had to do a 70 hour week that’s how it was done you should have to do something like I’m in my position now because I I had to work blah blah blah

Chris Simmance (34:31.949)
I sacrificed.

Amy Hopper (34:33.083)
I sacrificed, I missed my mother’s birthday and blah blah blah blah. And therefore are treating the next generation when they say, you know, this, I’m too stressed, which sometimes could be the case and actually could be, you know, come on management, we can change this around. can, we can restructure this. They don’t do it because they’re almost jealous that it wasn’t done for them.

Chris Simmance (34:58.734)
Yeah, I mean, can look, you can literally, you can look back through newspaper clippings from 100 years ago that talk about the previous generation or the new generation or the whatever. For some reason, we always want to hate the people that are coming behind us and hate the people that have got more because they’re already ahead of us or whatever. So I don’t know, it’s another monkey thing. But the other part of this…

Amy Hopper (35:08.404)
Yeah,

Chris Simmance (35:25.534)
seen as it is, is that quite a lot of the Gen Z people, they’ve most likely spent the latter part of their university career locked in their bedroom watching a Zoom class, or spent the early part of their career, postgraduate or as a junior in a business, working from home with a laptop that came in the post and no real connection with people. And then they’ve come with their

sensibilities and their preferences into a work office environment, hybrid or whatever, and they don’t understand the people they’re talking to and the people that are talking to them don’t understand them either. And there hasn’t been an opportunity to learn to understand each other because they’ve been locked together. And one thing I’m seeing at the minute, I don’t know if you’re noticing this, is that a lot of the junior management layer in quite a lot of service -based businesses

Amy Hopper (36:12.021)
Be sure.

Chris Simmance (36:23.102)
They’re finding it hard to manage people because they’ve never spent professional time with people. It makes it really hard to do kind of that quick, dynamic, proper listening and they just don’t know how to do it. Not for any fault of their own. Someone locked them in a house for basically a year and a bit. It’s really tough.

Amy Hopper (36:42.675)
Yeah, exactly. Really, really tough. I’ve got that exact example, as you say, with the junior management finding it hard to manage. Also, we’re finding it hard with people trying to manage a client against…

Say for example, you’re in a digital agency, you’ve got software dev and then you’ve got the account manager managing client expectation. Again, that’s really difficult if the person in the middle is in that, has been through that lockdown phase. Because of course, one of the beautiful things about when I suppose the millennial generation did go through is that you get to spend time with people and shadow them.

Chris Simmance (37:04.535)
Mm -hmm.

Amy Hopper (37:24.467)
We shadowed people in offices and then you gain that experience of interpersonal connection and how you have to perhaps change your wording and change how you speak to different people depending on who they are and their background and

they’re in and again we’re coming down to what would be perceived as a well -being issue, is a lack of communication and empathy and a lack of empathy on both sides and that’s the the juniors and the younger generation thinking that the older C -suite team have it all kushti.

Chris Simmance (37:49.122)
Word again.

Amy Hopper (38:04.969)
which they certainly don’t, and the other way around, and actually just sitting down in a room and talking about it and fostering connection can be the first start of solving a lot of these challenges.

Chris Simmance (38:18.936)
Yeah. Seek to understand in order to be understood. Listen, listen, listen, talk and talk and talk and be uncomfortable. Where do you think your future lay? Where are you aiming to? You had a barnstorming start to start in your career. Lots and lots of painful things. You’re working on some really important, really important stuff at the moment. Where’s it all going? What are you thinking?

Amy Hopper (38:47.391)
Some of them I can’t tell you because they’re under NDA.

Chris Simmance (38:52.014)
Unbelievable. You heard it here first, You heard it here first. Nothing.

Amy Hopper (38:53.839)
There’s like four things I can’t tell you. I’m very excited though. For me, course, the business is about growth. The reason we started this is, and the reason I think most entrepreneurs start their business is to make a difference in the world and to leave it in a better place than you found it. And that’s what Towa wants to do. We’re always…

Chris Simmance (39:01.366)
Yeah, I’m sure.

Amy Hopper (39:23.015)
wanting to grow, to seek and to understand. We have now started conducting sociological research every quarter to make sure that the workshops that we are providing are actually conducive to what’s happening on the ground in different industries and different channels. And for me personally, more speaking, more travelling, more contentment.

is probably the word.

Chris Simmance (39:54.766)
Well, I know whatever it is, it will be filled with a giant smile, but also an awful lot of hard work and effort. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you for sharing everything as well, except for all the stuff under NDA for obvious reasons. know, yeah, great. Yeah, loved hearing about none of that.

Amy Hopper (40:11.222)
Yeah, it’s been a pleasure, it really has.

Amy Hopper (40:16.703)
Ha ha

Chris Simmance (40:19.776)
If anyone wants to get hold of you, I’m guessing the best thing they can do is go to toagroup .co .uk or find you on LinkedIn. Genuinely, knowing you as I do in such a short period of time that I have, I do know that you really do give a damn about this stuff. So anyone thinking about this from a perspective of some of these things I’ve recognized in my teams and my business.

Amy Hopper (40:27.399)
I’m on LinkedIn, that’s the best for

Chris Simmance (40:47.53)
it’s an investment slash insurance policy to get someone in to facilitate some of this stuff and maybe open some eyes and it can only do good. It can’t do you harm having this sort of stuff happen. So thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, really enjoyed talking to

Amy Hopper (41:08.521)
You too, Chris, you too. And I would say to people as well, they don’t have to go and invest in TOA, but I’m always willing to have a conversation if it means that someone’s going to do something positive for their team and for the people in it.

Chris Simmance (41:21.42)
Wonderful. Amy, take a bow.