S14E17: Building paradigm-shifting ventures from the margins (Benjamin Rubin)

Richard
What if you have a vision so bold, so far ahead of its time that the world laughs you out of the room. This is the case, uh, the experience of Benjamin Rubin, who is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of both Reni and Insecta. Now, Benjamin has a rare gift. He creates businesses that are ahead of their time that revolutionize industries.

And change paradigms. And in this conversation we examine what is learned through those two different, but both deeply innovative businesses. How do you lead when your vision is misunderstood? How do you create belonging and loyalty in your team, especially at an early stage when you can’t just pay people, perhaps the same rates that other larger companies might be able to pay.

How do you, uh, scale impact without losing yourself in the process? And how do you keep going? When nobody else believes in you, this is a great conversation. Enjoy it with Benjamin Rubin Sica. Welcome to the Impact Multiplier CEO podcast. I’m Richard Medcalf, founder of X Quadrant, and my mission is to help the world’s top CEOs and entrepreneurs shift from incremental to exponential progress and create a huge positive impact on our world.

Now that requires you to reinvent yourself and transform your. Business. So if you’re ready to play a bigger game than ever before, I invite you to join us and become an impact multiplier. CEO.

Hi Benjamin and welcome to the show. Hello, Richard. Thank you so much for having me. You welcome. So this is gonna be a good one. Here’s what I know about you. You are the founder, uh, you were the founder and the CEO of Sarum, where you helped redefine how the invisible workforce. Uh, perhaps the gig economy even, uh, is managed even years before the term gig economy was even coined.

And I know along the way you face rejection and misunderstanding and the challenge of holding a vision too big for most people to grasp whilst bootstrapping with, I think about a third of your entire family’s savings and balancing leadership with your deep family values. And now with your latest venture in Zica, you’re once again aiming to shift the paradigm this time in the food system.

So welcome to the podcast. Before we get into some questions I have for you, do you wanna just explain like, what are you trying to accomplish right now with Insecta? What’s the mission that year on in the world?

Benjamin Rubin
Sure. I, I, I’ll go with my, uh, stream of thought. My actual way I went about it is that I care passionate about our world.

We, we have gray hair and, and we’ve seen the world in better times and, um, but our children and our grandchildren may not have such a beautiful world to enjoy. And I really was thinking deeply about this problem. We’re growing prosperous and we’re multiplying and that’s good. I, I’m very glad humanity does and we consume more food.

The way we go about producing our food is unsustainable. In order to produce so much food, especially proteins, we are depleting the oceans. Fish where especially pains me in the ocean because we don’t see that and it’s not spoken about. We all know about the Amazons and, and the for and the rainforest.

So I thought about this problem and read about it and realized there is a sustainable solution and that insect mill that can help us. Rare enough food to, for everybody to enjoy high quality. I like fish. I guess you like fish. Most people like fish. But the bottleneck is this insect, this fish mill, this component that, uh, fish farming requires.

Um, and the, if I we drill deeper, it is a technological problem of how do we bring down the cost of production of Insect Mill to be competitive and therefore applicable being a capitalist by my nature, I believe that if we make a solution which is profitable, it will endure. Philanthropy is great, but eventually it’ll end because the person or the state or the institution will not exist.

But if something is. Uh, profitable. It’ll endure forever. Therefore, I applied myself to think about how do we make insect mill sustainably, economically so we can save the, uh, oceans for our children and grandchildrens

Richard
Amazing. Okay, so in Zica Yeah, you’re really pioneering. Insect meal is a, is a replacement for fish meal, right within the food system for feeding other animals.

Benjamin Rubin
I can’t take this title. This, um, b Black Soldier Fly. This BSF industry has, has been launched perhaps 10, 15 years ago, and some say even $30 billion have been now investing it. The thing is that nobody actually managed to make it work. So what I’m trying to pioneer, pioneer is, um, methodology, which is a combination of business model and uh, technology.

To kind of break through this struggling industry and hopefully show to the industry how can it be done well, um, knowing that once it will be profitable, everybody will be doing it. Maybe I’ll make less money, but if everybody makes it and it’s profitable, I’ll pioneer the usage of black soldier fly meal of insect meal in aquaculture.

Not the idea. The idea has been there, just nobody managed to make it. Got it.

Richard
Beautiful. So, um, let’s jump into, I think the question of vision. So I wanna start with a moment that’s familiar to many visionary leaders. Um, I think back in, I think it was 2019, if I remember right, you launched. Um, completely new kind of HR software.

Something, something that you knew was revolutionary but that no one else at the time really seemed to be able to grasp because you’re perhaps ahead of your time. Um, you’d led successful ventures before you had a track record, but you had to lead this time through layers and, um, and not just hands on.

And so helping. Take this first of a kind product, you know, through a team, was very difficult. Right. I think you would say. And what I wanna know is how did you do that? How did you kind of galvanize your team or help your team, um, lead where there was no precedent, right? Where you had an unproven vision that was bold.

How did you bring your people along with you on that journey? Or did you try and perhaps what, what didn’t work.

Benjamin Rubin
As well? So just historical Torical fact, it was 2013 that I’ve started and, and that light bulb moment was walking down in Fincher Street in London and seeing that mobile phones used, mobile phones, Android, uh, phones have now got the cost where laborers can afford them.

And realizing that now every working person is gonna have a GPS. A computer, a processor, and a communication device in their pocket made it clear to me that single moment that the whole organization of labor is gonna change forever. Um, and, and I had a particular interest in a particular invisible workforce that I identified, um, with and working in my youth as, as a wayer cleaner driver, laborer, painted decorator for years.

Um. I was lucky I had an easier stride than others because through my wife, I ended up in business and my wife and we had a business for, um, staffing for clin contract cleaning in the railway industry in London. Uh, so I could apply my solution on my own team being both the CEO of Proactiv and the CEO of CNO and the initial staff.

This initial talent I brought, which were developers. The staffing people and they could see. The revolution is doing right. So they, they had to have a small, uh, leap of faith that this is a good idea to join. But as soon as they’ve joined and they got to know the problem, they could see how this makes a real difference to the team.

We could go out to the field, we could speak to, um, the labor, uh, to the team and, and see what it makes for working people and how it helps them. So initially it was a gradual process. Initially, I was very much hand on, there was one developer and I was everything. I was the product. Manager, I was the CFO, I was the legal advisor.

I was the sales, I was the marketing. And, uh, of course, I also did the wish, the dishes in the, in the end of the day. Um, as the team grew, it became harder and harder, especially when we needed to do leaps, mental leaps, to, to take it to the next level. Uh, how did I do that? Uh, gradually and, uh, d difficultly, but finding the right people who are willing to bear with me understand there’s something I’m saying there, even if they don’t get it.

And also now that you say it, many ones and ones, can I share an example? At one point I realized I’m stuck. I already had the big team, I had a good management team, and I realized they don’t get the next step. They, they, they’ll, they’re stuck where we are. Uh, I took a consultant to do a workshop offsite for, uh, two days and I said, you know, passive there, I was not the leader, I was not the CEOI was one of the crowd answering the cap else, making sure I’m the least vocal and least dominant person in the team and really put them in the front.

What came out of it was that the, the reasons random is winning is because we understand the problem and the team and the laborers and the clients the best. Not because we have the best engineers, not because we have the best salespeople, not because we have the best marketing, because we have the best understanding.

After that realization had really sunk with each one of my management team. I had dinner appointments one-on-one. Usually with alcohol served support, you know, loosen it, you know, loosen people up and through a very nice conversation. I ask them, what do you actually know about laborers? I would ask them, how many laborers do you know?

Like his friends don’t tell me a name of somebody who comes and I don’t know, cleans your house. Do you know their husband or wife? Do they know their kids? Do you know what they like? Do you know what kind of beer they like? And, and if you don’t, what do, why do you think we’ll win? I. Because you just kept to the understanding that understanding the problem is the key for success, not the solution First, understand the problem, then come up with a solution and you don’t understand the problem.

Right? So there’s two ways about it. Either you’ll take a day off once, uh, every week to go out and go down to the stations, go down to the field, get to know those people, make friends of them, or you listen to people who actually know them. But that was maybe, uh, an ability to crack through this look. I understand.

Therefore, there’s nothing you can teach me and opened up and say, ah, there’s something I don’t see, so I should listen. Either I, I research it or I listen to Benjamin, but I do need to listen. So that was a technique, for example, I used.

Richard
Yeah. Really, really brilliant. Yeah. Makes me wonder how many teams.

Going about building solutions to problems they don’t actually understand probably an awful lot. So yeah, that’s genius. When you were doing the offsite, was that like a predetermined outcome that you were kind of hoping for? Yeah. Okay. It was, yeah.

Benjamin Rubin
Yeah. I wonder my, some of my, my ex colleagues are gonna watch it, so I, I, I admit now I, I, I foresaw what would be the result of that workshop?

By the way, I did not speak to the person organizing it. Nothing was, I just, I knew the problem. I trusted that person is gonna lead the workshop well. So I believed what will happen is that the real problem will emerge. It’s sneaky.

Richard
Well, no, it’s really helpful actually because one of the things I, when I’m working with executive teams and with leaders, I’m always saying like, you do want the team very often to be co-creating.

You know, like coming to a shared understanding, co-creating solutions and so forth. However, as a leader, you still need to understand it and have a position yourself, not to force it on them, but to, you know, as well, know what, what you might want to introduce and, and put on the table at different times.

Because if you don’t, then, and everything gets built by committee. And you’re no longer actually able to lead. So I think it’s always a bit of a dance, right. Between, um, so having your own perspective, being open to change that perspective and then letting the team go through the discovery themselves.

Benjamin Rubin
You are touching a very, very real misunderstanding I think of leadership.

When I, when I started in having no experience in, in software, I, I listen, I listen a lot. Anybody who knows me will say, I will ask. As many people as I can who I think have valuable advice. I don’t necessarily take the advice, but I listen. I listened to a guy who was, uh, more successful than me at the time, uh, more advanced and assessed like, and he said how he chooses the, uh, roadmap, which is the roadmap is the materialization of your vision, right?

It’s the translation of the vision into technical terms. Um, how does he choose the roadmap? So he has a survey among all of his clients, what features they like at la la la and I’m sure you all heard that. And anybody who’s familiar with technology would would’ve heard that. And I was sitting there obviously being polite and I thinking, no, no, no, my friend.

You’re not a leader, you are a follower. You know the saying about Henry Ford? Henry Ford said that if you ask people what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses, a true leader. Listens to his people, but doesn’t give them what they want. He gives them what they need, and those are rare. Those are rare.

Richard
Beautiful way of putting it. Beautiful way of putting it. So let’s kind of move forward on the story of Soum. Uh, what was probably heartbreaking for you at the time was, I know that the product did get built, it was years ahead of the market and just weeks before launch, the company was acquired and the new owners didn’t even understand necessarily what exactly what they had.

And that must’ve been probably maddening for you who’d poured your heart and soul into that for such a period. So I’m wondering what did that experience teach you about the timing of vision or the limits of being early, um, and how to deal perhaps with the emotional aftermath when the world doesn’t feel ready for your best work?

Benjamin Rubin
Answer that question in two, it’s actually two questions. How does it feel to deal with a world that cannot see? What do you see? Right. And in retrospect we know, I mean, the, the proof is in the pudding. We know that my vision was correct and those naysayers were just a little bit behind. Um, so that one question, and the other question is, how is it to power from your baby?

How, how is it to also, especially they’ve worked so hard in the last year, on the next leap technological leap. Vision leap of, of CNU and, and knowing that the, the acquirers probably are not going to utilize it. Um, side comment. They tried to kill our FLAG project when they bought it and they decided to, uh, close the, the new, the new feature we built.

And they had a rebellion from the engineering team, the same engineering team. I almost. I clashed with and almost lost trying to get them on board on that vision a year before. Now we’re so into it that when the, the people came and said, look, we don’t understand it, so we’re just gonna close it down.

They said, we’ll walk, I. Walk unless you sit down and you understand what we’re doing here. Once they understood what they’re doing now, um, they actually didn’t close it off. They didn’t utilize it to its full potential. But here again, I had to censor myself from my engineers because I realized that if you share the entire vision.

Often people get scared and get lost, therefore you have to pace it for them. You have to spoon feed them, you know, a step at a time. Uh, so the news is that eventually the acquire is used, the software, and it’s being used well, not to its full potential. Not the way I would’ve done it, but, well, and, and I was very, very happy with the whole deal.

Right. Um. Uh, when I got the offer for acquisition, my honest to God, my first words that just came out of my mouth, we said, no. Like, do, are you interested in selling? No. ’cause it was going well. Finally, I was over all the hardships, uh, sales was going, money was coming, you know, it was getting fun. The hours were getting shorter and it was getting more fun.

Um, but then I reminded myself of my obligation that if. A person is not willing to sell their business for the right price. It’s a hobby and it’s not a business. And I made a decision years before. I’m a businessman, I’m an entrepreneur, and therefore my business is for sale for the right price. It also coincided with a personal decision my wife and I did ’cause my wife is also an entrepreneur, CEO founder, CEO.

And having two of those at home with four children was, uh. Bringing us to the point that the kids are not being raised in the way we want them. We realize we can’t just have, you know, a nanny. We need to be home and we can’t be home if we’re doing that. So I wanted to take some time off. I. I was planning to take some time off and therefore the offer came just at the right time.

So actually there was no heartbreak over there. There was, there was elation that the deal went well, that we made. We got the financial gain that we wanted, that the team, I. Was happy the team stayed, the choirs got the whole team. Almost everybody were better off because of this deal. And yes, maybe I didn’t get to fulfill my entire vision and maybe I didn’t take it to wherever I wanted, but, uh, the, the journey I, I had was, was worth everything.

The second part of your question actually precedes it. The second part is how do you deal with the frustration when people don’t get it? I don’t, I don’t know. Everybody deals with it differently, but what I got laughed out of the room for three or four years straight. Very few people actually said, wow, Benjamin, this is a great idea.

Most of them were either kind and saying, you are wonderful person. It’s a very nice idea. It’s not gonna work. Or they just outright laughed me out of the room. Uh, how did I deal with it? I, I, I think. I made a commitment to see every rejection as a lesson, to listen carefully to why they say no. Is it the way I present?

Is it something in me? Is it my materials? Is it my business plan? Some of them shut down my business plan. I listen carefully. Why they’re shutting it down. Is there a good reason, a bad reason? Maybe it’s shortage of knowledge. You don’t know what MR is. It means you’re not a mature assess as an entrepreneur and I don’t invest in entrepreneurs who don’t know the financial, legal, great.

Go home, make homework, study the whole financial study it come back next time prepared. So I think that’s the way I allow, I’ve managed to, to keep my sanity.

Richard
Yeah. Beautiful. Uh, because obviously you starting any business, you’re likely to hit a wall of rejection. Uh. Well, at least of all of nos, right? You know, whether it’s rejection is a, is a phrase right, we use, but, uh, yeah, you’re gonna hit a lot of people saying, no, not interested, not now go away.

And, uh, choosing to use that as a lever for growth, I think is, is super important. One of my mentors says, you know, Lees lives in the land of no. So if you want to get a yes, you’re gonna have to. Go through the nose. Right. And if you want to get a really big yes, you might have to go through even more. No, right.

Depends what you’re shooting for. If it’s a moonshot, you might need to, um, yeah, steal yourself for that. There’s many frogs, many,

Benjamin Rubin
Many frogs.

Richard
I hope you’re enjoying this conversation. This is just a quick interlude to remind you that my book making time for strategy is now available. If you want to be less busy and more successful, I highly recommend that you check it out.

Why not head over to making time for strategy.com to find out the details? Now, back to the conversation. Yeah, there we go. Exactly. So, let’s move on. Um, one things I admire in your story is your ability to build tight, high performing teams with really, really low churn, uh, without just throwing lots of money at people.

So can you walk us through your thinking of how do you do that as a founder? You know, what have you learned about what truly motivates people to stick around and give their best?

Benjamin Rubin
So I, I think I’m leaning on my education, my life experience that might, has nothing to do with business. I travel the world through and through on a shoestring with bicycle, and I have a, I hold a master’s in evolution and I.

Uh, um, insect psychology. So I’ve studied sociology from the deepest, you know, how the genome is built to facilitate how emotions are created in our brain. Our genetically programmed to have certain emotions, how evolution plays with it and with, and, and my experience with humans, with a diverse group of people.

I did not stay in the business school and with the people with, uh, you know, nice shirts and soft fingers. Most of my life I hang out with people. Or more or rough, um, combining it all to, I, I go to the conclusion that what people want in the deepest, deepest sense is meaning no belonging, meaning and satisfaction.

Satisfaction is not fun. I was a mountain climber and I was a cyclist. It’s not fun. It’s painful. It’s sometimes bitterly painful. But it’s hugely satisfying as you would speak to any sports person. So satisfaction is different from any person, but the two are similar. We want to belong. We want to have somewhere that if we are gone, somebody will miss us.

The idea that we’re just a, a leaf in the wind, that our life is in between being snapped off the branch until we hit the floor and we’re just drifting in the wind is something that frightens humans from the moment humans were walking onto and talking. Right. We have burials even in the other thirds.

Right. The, the, the afterlife, the, it’s, it’s important to us. It’s very, very deep. Sense. It’s beyond all the masquerading of Western society and all the wealth and all the lifestyle we have. It’s something much deeper in our, in our being, in our gene. So the second is the feeling that, I mean something that my life means something.

It’s not what is life for? Remember wondering, I, I cycled for two and a half months in. And the force of Patagonia not meeting a soul. I just on my own and just thinking what is life about a bigger TV than a bigger tv? I’ll be successful. I’ll go and make a career and I’ll get a TV, and then I’ll get promoted.

I’ll get a bigger tv. Then I’ll get even more successful. I’ll get bigger. Then I have a huge TV and a pool and everything, and pretty much before I retire and then I’ll die. I said, is that it? Is, is life measured by the size of your TV? And I think that question, perhaps less articulated is in the mind of most of us.

I think it’s really, uh, crucial and I think the fact we’re seeing so much depression in the West is because we don’t have that. We are not being taught to look for meaning. Uh, Viktor Frankl, A Man Searches For Meaning is one of the books that influence me most in life. One of the three books of five books that influence me.

So with those three, understanding they need satisfaction, they need meaning, and they need belonging. I came to build a team. And Cran was an experiment in that. So first of all, about the, the, the team itself in being belonging. Uh, for example, I would give a team the number of leave days. So let’s say there are five people you calculate the number of hours they need to do, including the annual leave, and let’s say you as a team get that leave.

Now, if you, Richard. Wanna go out with your mates on a fishing trip or something, you have to go and talk to your teammates and ask them to arrange it so you can go. Now. You are dependent on them. They’re dependent on you Now. You are important to them. They are important to you. You need to become their friends.

You need to be liked. You want to be liked. Okay. And I also did, you know, even the most, um, I would call it the superficial, the bonus scheme. Was evolving. I didn’t complete this move. Again, we got acquired before I got to complete everything I wanted to complete, but, and unlike what they’re teaching us in American business schools where I need to understand what Richard does the best so I can give him KPIs so I can reward Richard for his contribution to the company.

And then Joe will be compensated similarly. And I actually mashed it. I gave Richard some of the bonus for Joe and Joe, some of the bonus for Richard. Why? Because if I’m actually very successful in cutting your job so finely that it’s just you. If you disappear, Joe doesn’t care. No skin of his nose. He’s gonna be compensated for his achievements regardless of Richard.

But if I bind you together, then you have to. Develop that emotional social relationship. You care, you truly care because you are interdependent. So that, that’s something I’ve done in creating the belonging. The meaning is very important to me. I don’t choose, and I kept saying it to the team. I’ve never chosen to do anything and I call this big, angry bird businesses.

Okay? Angry Bird will remember the, the game. Perhaps we old enough to remember it. You remember it. Um, wonderful game. Amused many people for about six months or a year or two years before they moved to the next thing. Somebody got very, very rich and many millions of people had a nice time for a little bit of, for a short one.

I struggled to find deep meaning in such a business. Frankly, I would say most people will struggle to find deep meaning there will get satisfaction from building the business. They get satisfaction from selling the business, the software, from developing it, all of that. But the meaning part? The meaning like what, what does it mean?

So I live this world and I live behind me a bigger tv. Who’s gonna remember Bert ask my daughter. She doesn’t know Bert. What’s the legacy there? So I, I went for a business that I. Sincerely believe he’s helping the invisible workforce improve their lifestyle. And I would tell my employees only person who join, I said, one day you’re gonna walk down with your child.

You know, Serrano would be a very long distance and you’re gonna see something Serrano on app or, or something and say, I helped fund that. You know, I was part of the founding team. I helped build this massive change in the world. And Richard, it sounds corny, but actually I. It works. Um, and the third, as I said, it’s the satisfaction.

So I would interview most people in a very untraditional way. I would ask them very little about their professional capabilities and a lot about themselves. I. What is the, what are their dreams and aspirations? And I would find a way to, to ask that to, to overcome all the, the bias people tell you when they prepare for, they see all those YouTube, how to prepare for, uh, um, an interview and then know I’ve developed my own methodology, which I will not share here.

Otherwise it would become, um, useless. Everybody has, well, you know, maybe individually if somebody wanna ask me, I’ll tell them, uh, uh, to try and get. Into the crux of it. Okay. And I’ll one example, one of my employees, without giving any description that might help understanding, I knew is looking to settle down romantically.

Okay. And I knew status, social status is important to them in order to find a partner they were looking for, they needed to up their social status. I had a frank conversation with him. I said, look, you know, you’re not very well qualified. You’re smart enough, but you’re not very well qualified. You’re gonna get a low wage for a wine, but I’m gonna make you a high-tech employee.

You know, with everything that comes with a suit, with a bonus, with the status, and knowing that that’s actually what they’re looking for. Okay? Another person looked for professional. Another person was looking for the social for the team. Okay. They were very lonely. I’m trying to understand what they want and some people, I said, I can’t employ you because I can’t give you what you need.

You will not be happy with us. Um, or I said, I can take you so far and at certain point you will have to go because I will have nothing to give you any further. Uh, and I think it worked.

Richard
Yeah, it’s such a beautiful point because how many leaders actually know these things about their people? I’m gonna suggest very few.

A lot of people just think, well, I’m paying them enough. And I’ve seen many very good leaders otherwise, you know, make the real bad mistake that they think that just throwing money at people will solve problems. It never does. And, um, I think it’s beautiful what you do. Yeah. Knowing that this person, they really want a social context.

This person really wants, uh, status. This person, uh, is trying to make a difference. What, you know, whatever it is that allows you to, um, to speak to their hearts, right When you are, when you’re planning and giving.

Benjamin Rubin
Also also design their path in the company in such a way that they get that they want. So if they’re looking for professional growth, don’t get them stuck in one department, even though it’s more economically profitable because hey, they trained to do this job.

Now they’re peak performance and moving them into another world means that their productivity is gonna drop again. Yeah. But replacing them is gonna be harder. Right? If I put it in economical terms. Actually, I wasn’t really thinking about the camera. I just thought, that’s not fair. Somebody wants to move on and forward your life.

I should never, my father gave that, that advice when I was very young, just leaving home, starting my own life. He said, you never stop in anybody’s way to the pursuit of happiness. You never, you know, you never stand between people in pursuit of happiness. If they’re looking to progress, you should facilitate it.

And I think it worked well. Richard, you work a lot with. Entrepreneurs and leaders. Here’s a question to you. It is well known that money is a very poor motivator. It’ll only get you that far. Right. Would you agree that most of your, the people work with are aware of that tourism?

Richard
Yeah, I would say, um, it’s interesting, right?

So I think that most of the leaders. I work with, um, probably have self-selected perhaps, but they, they’re, you know, they’re on a mission, right? They, they, for them, for them, it’s definitely not about the money. Right. They’ve probably got enough money right at this point anyway, in their lives, and they realize it’s not about the money.

What I see can happen though, is when they’re thinking about their teams, they assume it probably is about the money for them. And that not all the time, right? But I can certainly think of some leaders who have that default pattern that I help them, help them kinda reframe.

Benjamin Rubin
Uh, I think it’s com common and, and you work with more people who are with a mission.

But I see it a lot among my colleagues where they think they can just throw money at the problem. On one hand, they will watch this clip or go to this lecture and say, it’s not about the money, and the next thing they’ll do it, they’ll just throw money at the problem. And I find that, I find that a little bit bewildering, and therefore, I think what I’m saying is self-evident.

Don’t throw money about it. Try and think about your people and give them what they need.

Richard
Well, I’ll tell you why. What’s going on for me is that most of us, most of the time, we think what we need is a better plan, a better strategy, or more resources. And so. It’s a kind of intellectual solution. It’s like, well, if we had more money, we’ll just, you know, give them more money that’ll make them bond.

Right? Or, um, yeah, because that’s like, we have more resources. Throw the resources at people that’ll solve it. Right? Or it’s a slu, it’s a strategy. Well, you know, if we just incentivize them, that’s gonna motivate them differently. Fine. What they’re avoiding in that conversation is the leadership challenge for them.

Am I prepared to be a lead? You know, am I the leader who could actually speak to people’s hearts and elicit. Commitment from them, am I being that kind of leader? And that’s a harder bar than just writing somebody a check. So I think that’s why often we default to strategies and tactics rather than looking in the mirror and saying, okay, who do I have to be to actually galvanize these people?

On my mission. And sometimes that’s about raising the standards. Sometimes that’s about inspiring people in new way, but it’s definitely gonna be about the emotional connection with somebody. And that is gonna have to come, as you say, like at least through understanding who is this person in front of you.

Right? They’re just not a generic, uh, minion in a suit. Right. Or looking identical. A unique human Right. And, uh, so I think it’s a really valid point, what you’re saying. I have one follow up question on that very quickly, is, is there like a go-to interview question that you would use. To kind of draw that out so that you could start to figure out their dreams and aspirations.

Benjamin Rubin
In many words, I would try and understand what would that person do if money was never a problem. Okay. We’re so bogged down with paying the rent or mortgage that we. We don’t think, we do think, but we feel more than think. By the way, some of the, the people I’ve interviewed, many of them never thought about what they will do if money was not in a, an, um, an issue.

Most of them, which is also something to tell you. Those guys are never gonna be visionaries ’cause they have no vision. They have no vision for themselves not to say something else. And, and it’s great. And we need them. I mean, without, without them, society would collapse. Really good friends, no judgment. I think so.

I’m, I’m gonna take some, because it came out maybe a little bit vain. I traveled the world through and through. I, I’ve cycled and I was hungry and I was afraid and I was sleeping off and I had, I robbers, robbers in South America. Took mercy on me, on me, and didn’t rob me because I was looked so miserable that even robbers even, you know, criminals.

Felt sorry for me. Um, that, and, and I’ve learned something from that experience. There’s no right and wrong. There’s no bad or good. I mean, of course there is in the way you live your life as long as you don’t harm anybody else. It’s what suits you and I’ve learned to appreciate and love. All forms and, and when I say most people don’t even have a vision for themselves, themselves, it’s not to degrade them saying that’s who they are and that’s what makes them happy.

Just figure out who they are and what they are asking. What do you do if money is not an issue? Exposes some of that and there’s no, and the good thing is there’s no right or wrong answer. Like there’s nothing they can say, ah, that’s the right answer. Now I hire you.

Richard
Okay, I’m aware of time, so I’m gonna ask perhaps one last question here, which is really looking forward.

I often ask people, what would you do to, what are you gonna do to be multiplying your impact in the years to come? But I think we know the answer to that, right? You, I mean, you’re right in the middle of launching Insecta here, going through your fundraising, getting the first product into market, and I know that you see this as potentially, um, a massive impact in the world, right?

Being able to really shift the. The carbon footprint of a huge part of the food chain. So, um, as you think about that, that global mission that you’re on, the, the impact on changing it really how an industry operates, the paradigm, uh, that it operates under being an innovation, uh, into market, uh, potentially with real scale.

Uh, and I know you want to do that as well without losing your life in the process. So what’s that mission gonna require with you? Over the next few years, how’s it gonna require you to perhaps operate differently? So how’s the, the Benjamin leading in sector care at scale? How might he be different from perhaps the Benjamin that built Sarum?

What’s gonna be the edge for you?

Benjamin Rubin
Maybe, maybe I feel like I’m speaking to, to my shrink. Um, I think that I have a tendency in order to recruit the energy. And the drive, which is necessary to lead, to create, to have those uncomfortable conversations, to face those challenges and those rejections. I need to be total, right?

I need to kind of make it the only thing in my life. I need to kind of convince myself that my life is dependent on it, where I know it’s not. I know it’s not. As you said, money’s never been the issue, never been, never been a motivation. It’s only a measure of success and tool, never the objective. I’d like for myself to be able to do that with all my heart and recruit that drive and recruit that passion without forgetting about my family, without forgetting about my friends, without forgetting about my, uh, social obligations to my community.

Uh, to be involved in my community, to be involved with my family, uh, to find the right balance for all of those things without losing the, the passion and the drive.

Richard
Hmm. And so would you say that previously you, you tended to go, like all in, but at the expense of your family, or did you feel that you didn’t go all in?

Benjamin Rubin
In the past, I went all in and, and with, with Serrano it was with Conscience. I even spoke to my wife and, and because she’s a founder, entrepreneur, I. Um, she, she knows that in order to make something like that work, you have to be all in. And, and she made as much space as possible for me to, to do that. But I, I think she’s very kind and she’s not saying, it’s like, we don’t really need to do that again this time.

Let’s find a way where I, I’ve kept. I think what saved me, and we spoke about my tradition is, is as, as, as being Jewish and we have the Sabbath. I don’t work on the Sabbath. So there was one day a week, which I don’t think my colleague had. When the phone was down, there was no work. And you train yourself not even to think about work, not even with yourself in the shower, I.

And it was only about the family. And by the way, it’s a challenge like as anybody who’s a career person will tell you, not even to think about it in your subconscious with yourself in the shower. It’s a challenge. So at least I had that one day and I think that kept us. And without that, I’ve seen many families break.

I. I, I wanna do, I’m greedy. I always want more. I want to do impact more. I want to do, make, uh, more changes and I also want, uh, more for me and my family. And, and that’s my challenge. My challenge is not to get lost in my next man.

Richard
Yeah. Beautiful. And that’s a great way of putting it not to be lost. I’ve heard that for many clients actually.

Uh, and for me, that’s the possibility. That’s, um, one of the. One of the meanings of X quadrant, uh, you know, the name of my business is, um, it has a couple of meanings that I, I kind of bring out of it. But one of it is, is this point about something which feels like a, an either or, and we make it into a both end, right?

So, like, you know, either being completely committed to my business and making it work, you know, and like having a great life with my family. And I think people know how to do one or the other of those, and then it kind of becomes intriguing when you say, well, how would I do both together? And how can they even inforce

Benjamin Rubin
Your comfort zone?

It’s, it’s getting outta the comfort zone because the comfort zone is just to continue what you know and just continue with the next business and get the next round of investment and meet the same people and being lost. And then you get to retirement age and you realize that you are a bit estranged from your family.

And I think that’s what I was seeing, the path I am. And, and it’s challenging, it’s challenging to change lifestyle change mentality, but uh, I see that part of the, of the challenge. Yes.

Richard
Beautiful way of putting it. Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, hey Benjamin, it’s been great speaking with you. I’ve loved the, uh, insights that you’ve shared.

You know, the story of Sarum and being ahead of the market, you know, how you actually, um, helped your team understand what their need to get into deep. Insight around the problem that they were trying to solve, rather than just solutionizing the hub time, the way that you dealt with the rejection that came at you three to four years straight, right?

And, uh, and moved through that. And then, yeah, this amazing stuff around building teams based on belonging and meaning and satisfaction and, uh, getting to the heart of what matters for them and, uh, and finding ways to bind people together. As well. So there’s not just an individualistic game, but it truly is a, a community team dynamic.

So it’s been, you know, a fascinating, uh, conversation with you. Wish you all the best. I’m gonna follow along as you revolutionize the food chain. Um, if people wanna find out more about you, uh, or about Insecta, how do they go about doing that?

Benjamin Rubin
I think LinkedIn is, is the best tool. I, I don’t post frequently, but there’s something to say.

I’ll, I’ll post it over there. So, um, we just sold our, our first, uh, one ton deal of, uh, insect mill. So I think we’re doing, uh, good progress and everybody’s interested to continue and follow the progress of insect. LinkedIn would be the best tool. Beautiful.

Richard
Well, thanks, uh, thanks again. Um, uh, Benjamin, and here’s to your, uh, your leadership and your legacy.

Benjamin Rubin
Thank you very much for this opportunity. It was a lovely, I really enjoyed the conversation you about you again.

Richard
Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Well, that’s a wrap. If you received value from this conversation, please do leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform we deeply appreciate. And if you’d like.

Like to check out the show notes from this episode, head to x quadrant.com/podcast where you’ll find all the details. Now. Finally, when you’re in top leadership who supports and challenges you at a deep level to help you multiply your impact, discover more about the different ways we can support you at xquadrant com.