Toni:

Welcome back to Leading Woman in Tech. Today’s episode is one I know so many of you have been waiting for because we’re diving deep into what it really takes to lead, thrive, build impact in the male-dominated industry and get all the way to being a CEO. And I have the perfect guest for this conversation. My guest today is Shelley Copsey, the CEO and co-founder of FYLD, an AI powered platform that transforms how frontline teams operate across infrastructure and utilities.

She is bringing 20 years of experience, the intersection of physical infrastructure, digital innovation, and the very human transformation that’s required to deliver on the promise of emerging technologies. And she’s done all of this while navigating and succeeding in an industry where women are more often than not underestimated, overlooked, and often not seen. And that’s why I wanted to run the show, because today she’s sharing with us how being underestimated early in her career and learning to over-prepare that became a coping mechanism, but also a superpower. How finding her voice and presence in rooms fills her with the ability to do what she needs to do, even when the room is full of men and she stopped trying to emulate the male role models around her. She started to find herself. She talks about how she landed her CEO role over Zoom in the middle of the pandemic and what it takes to do that. And she talks about what it takes to build an AI driven company and

rethinking what scaling means in an AI driven era. without further ado, let’s get Shelley onto the show. Shelley is thoughtful, unapologetically honest, deeply generous in way she shares her journey. And this conversation is an absolute masterclass in leading with authenticity, courage, strategic clarity especially as a women CEO in an environment where the odds aren’t necessarily designed for us. So let’s dive on in. 

Welcome to the show, Shelley. Thank you for joining us today.

Shelley:

Great to be here Toni, thank you.

Toni:

I’m excited to dive on in. Let’s start with your story. You’ve talked to me privately about being underestimated early in your career and how you tended to over-prepare as a coping strategy. Tell us about how you got to where you are today and what that being underestimated has meant for your career journey.

Shelley:

Yeah so today, you know I don’t think women always love to shout about where they are today but this year has been an amazing year in my career.

I mean, in the UK, I’ve been nominated as an EY Entrepreneur of the Year. You know, that’s an absolute benchmark to strive for. The company I’m leading today was named onto the Deloitte Fast 50. We were named as like the top, you know, like female or sorry, second top female company in that cohort and an absolute leader in clean tech. So I do sometimes have to step back and pinch myself about how much I have achieved since those early days. But, know, if I kind of talk about what was that like and what has the journey been?

I can’t really explain why earlier in my career people necessarily underestimated me. I don’t think it was from like an intelligence and capability viewpoint but maybe there was some feedback I never really wanted to hear which was how do you find your voice in a room and how do you have presence? But you know I am in my mid-40s now and if I skip back to what was that like in early career it was often role modelled as like what is a man with gravitas like and you know if you’re working in a very male dominated environment as I was and male leadership is equally great like female can be but it’s not necessarily relatable as something that you can build towards and I think I always found it really difficult to be told that’s what great looks like when that was never going to be me.

Leading as a Woman in a Male-Dominated Industry

Toni:

Yeah. I’m so glad you said that because this is one of my topics I’m so passionate about is I truly believe that what works for men does not work for women. It doesn’t feel authentic as you point out. But it’s also that it, if we show up the same way, it’s not just inauthentic, it just doesn’t work because we’re judged differently. Humans judge humans all day long. That’s what we do. And so we’ve got to find our own way. But if we only have male role models around us, it doesn’t work. So how did you find you?

How did you find your way of leading, your way of having that executive presence, that gravitas in the room?

Shelley:

think a few things I’ve spoken to many people I did just as a starting point always over prepare right like and I still to this day I did do a speech last week where I felt a tad under prepared and I could feel those nerves coming back out I know the best strategy for me even now is like be over prepared right if you’ve got 15 points to talk about two or three will come out in the room so that was ultimately the first one I think then also that the deliberateness this has been a hallmark of my career there may not have been a lot of women in the section of the firm I worked but there were women in the firm right go seek them out introduce yourself ask for mentoring look outside of the area you’re in and I was very deliberate about you know that aspect. I hope it isn’t the same as women that are entering the workforce today but I think there was also just a passage of time and getting older maybe a bit unusual one big thing for me was like I had a couple of kids and all of a sudden you all came from hospital and you’ve got this little thing that you could kill that day you can’t really but you thought you could and there was a piece for me about just realising I was a really competent human being who could get through things. you know some of it I think for me has just been getting older and being more comfortable in my own skin.

Toni:

Yeah, I kind of wish we could shortcut that. had this conversation so much again. It’s, age does bring wisdom, does bring calmness. Why can’t we shortcut that? I mean, I don’t know, that’s a rhetorical question maybe, but if you’ve got any insights, I’d love to hear them, because I know so many young women listen to this show and would love to shortcut that.

Shelley:

I think there’s a big thing about, know, if you think about how do you pay it forward? I like to maybe throw women into situations where they may feel a little out of their depth, where I know they’re not earlier, and I think we just need to be deliberate. you can give them some little tips and tricks, right? Like I always think a bottle of water and a little drink if your mouth is a bit dry, nobody notices you do, give them the opportunities, teach them breathing, teach them the bottle of water. We may not be able to shortcut it fully, but I think there are tips and tricks that we have all learnt on the way. Because all of what I used to experience, it’s not completely gone from my life today.

Confidence, Being Underestimate, Credibility

Toni:

All this stuff, it’s just, it adds up over time and gives us those little things and you know, I teach breathing, I teach coping mechanisms, journaling at the end of the day if that’s your thing, like whatever it is, but ultimately it is also just 10 years of experiences. The world is not going to end when that happens. My brain might tell me, but it’s not going to end. Yeah.

Shelley:

No, no. You know that people on the other side are more generous I think as you get older. You know you go to more conferences you see some people stumble it doesn’t undermine their credibility you don’t judge them and I think the more times I’ve seen others have a bit of a wobble on stage the more I’m like we’ll do it and you do get that kind of lack of judgment but you kind of maybe need to see that with your own eyes also.

Executive Presence & CEO Identity

Toni:

so let’s talk about this, the experience piece. How did you see yourself becoming a CEO? Was that something you planned?

Shelley:

I don’t know if being like the CEO was and because I kind of came up in a traditional environment of consulting, really this world of like startup scale up tech companies was something not front of mind for me. I think what I always knew though was that I would enjoy leading. The thing that’s always given me great joy and you get this a lot in consulting when kids come in from university, right? And you see amazing talent but it’s kind of I guess it’s raw and you need to help that person understand how to prosper in a workplace.

And even when I had a more technical role, I really enjoyed the technical aspects, but most of all I enjoyed building that competency in people and seeing them do the best work of their career. I think if you absolutely love that aspect, it is hard not to envision, envisage yourself in a leadership role. Probably didn’t ever think I’d be in a technology leadership role, right? Where I’ve ended up is very different to where I began.

Toni:

Well, explain that to us a little bit. where did you say you started out in consulting? Why this company now? We’re going to go back to how you became a CEO shortly, how do you think, like what skillset is it that means that you’re suited to this today? Like what did you grow into during earlier in your career that means today you’re the right person?

Shelley:

think an element of always being inquisitive, Like you’re not in the CEO seat because you’re a master, not in 2026, 25 today, but you you’re there because you’re inquisitive and you wonder what the future will look like. You enjoy building and you wonder about how you’ll build towards those futures. So I think there’s actually a lot of maybe like non-traditional skill sets that we need today that I had a little bit of back then. Also, I think they’re like a comfort in saying, I don’t know, but do I have good intuition? Can I build a good team of people who do know? am I going to get comfort in bridging the gap right like I’ll give a good example for me marketing never been near it in my life you cannot run a startup in in this day and age without having amazing lead gen I’ve had to find ways to say how do I trust them what data will I look at where will I be directive because there things are important I think you need to actually just learn and this is part of those early days of your career learning how you bridge gaps because you can never know everything really today you can never know everything but how do you bridge gaps where you don’t have experience

Toni:

Oh, I’m going to put a pin in trust for coming back to that in a minute, because I think that is something that we will have to do as leaders, but as a CEO, it’s like the most important thing and yet everything is on you. But let’s just roll back a moment and talk about how you became the CEO, because I find this quite interesting. You were appointed the CEO during the height of COVID. What happened to get you there? Why do you think you were the standup candidate remotely? Like what happened? What other women learn from you?

Shelley:

I think one of the things that COVID did really well for all lots of diversity was thrust people that were hiring into a hiring environment that was not familiar to them. Previously, I’m not that tall either, I’m 5’3″, 5’4″. If you think about a normal CEO, like a six foot person called John or Matthew, chalk and cheese. I think when we were all in an unfamiliar environment, it actually just broke down a stack of barriers. Beyond that, when I was thinking what was next for me and talking about this job, there was a real piece for me and I think it’s important in the CEO seat, who are my investors, what will they value and how will we work together? You know my investors are a massive pension fund, a consulting firm in Boston Consulting Group. There’s a lot about their DNA which is really familiar to me and I think you know there’s a piece when you come into the room like park the job that you’re going for, how do you build some shared experiences, shared ways of working and what’s important. I think it’s really easy again let’s say you’re feeling a bit like you might be the not deliberately less preferred but back of the stack because you’ve got a bit different diversity etc. How do you form that bond and I practiced a lot on Zoom I don’t think I’ll go back to this what I always say of over prepare if I’m uncertain I over prepared within an inch of my life because I didn’t know how to be a good candidate on Zoom

Toni:

Isn’t that interesting though? Because the thing is all the other candidates were in the same boat as you at that point, right? Everybody was unfamiliar with how to be interviewed on Zoom. The interviewers were, I mean, I still see this. Some interviewers just do not know how to interview on Zoom. It’s excruciating. But do you think you’re over-preparing? And actually I would call it right-preparing. because for you it’s working and I am the first person as a coach to call out over preparing, but for you it’s exactly what’s needed. Do you think that is why you landed the role or what’s… I’m trying to get you to self-examine here, like what set you apart? Why you?

Shelley:

was set me apart, I had like really diverse background to get into this role, right? Like.

Firstly, I didn’t have normal early stage investors who are like really into product and tech. I had like pure play finance people that you would normally have come in much later. So I spoke their language. I knew finance so I could relate to them from numbers and what they wanted to achieve. That was a core piece. I had done a stint. I invested in myself when I wanted to switch from consulting to where I used to consult infrastructure and technology. I needed to educate myself. It doesn’t just happen. I kind of took a sideways step in my career and I went to Australia’s National Science Agency, spent 10 years in their 10 years sorry 2 years in their data research labs and I just learnt every single thing I could. I didn’t care how many hours it took me, if I had to travel what have you, I just said yes and I doubled down and learnt and I think that when you then go for an interview it shows two things, it’s right this is someone that’s got a learning mindset and can plus she thought a little bit differently about how she’d get that experience versus maybe going to university. I think those things, people tell me one of my natural skills has been articulate.

I think if you’re on zoom being articulate is actually very important more so than even in you know real life. I think that there were those things but then also I had a vision for what I could achieve with this company and I had a big vision and it was a bold one as you should have if you want to grow something new and I wasn’t afraid to share it but it was grounded in reality and what we could achieve. I think that those things were probably differentiators for me.

Trust Based Leadership & Culture

Toni:

Yeah, I think that’s spot on. I think the ability for a CEO to communicate is everything because it then requires you also to trust, which I’m going to come back to trust because I think one of the biggest blockers for people aiming to go all the way is trust. And I’ve had bosses, I think most of us have had the CEO who doesn’t trust. And I always say as a coach, lead with a presumption of trust. Don’t wait for them to prove it. You have to trust.They can then disprove it. Most people though are trustworthy. When they break trust, it’s an accident, it’s not deliberate, it’s not malicious. Most people, the few malicious people out there you can cope with. But I know how hard it is when everything is on your shoulders to trust. So how have you dealt with that in your career, but now also as CEO?

Shelley:

very aligned to what you’ve just said Toni. If I let someone in through the front door I almost give them the gift of trust. I have worked for people who say you have to earn it. That’s like two years of just wasting value right. So the interview process be rigorous and trust them. I always reference people myself as well I don’t leave that to recruiters. Part of that as well my favorite question is how do I set this person up to be successful? You’re not going to call people and they’re going to tell you bad things nobody’s giving you that name so again how do you build trust? Well day one I want to enable them they’ll go back and tell the person that you’ve asked them that and that you care that’s really important to me I think that just building strong bonds you know I really know my team very very well they know me if I’m stressed I’m probably a pain in the proverbial a bit If I built trust and good relationships, I also am quite open with my team and you know, I’m a bit stressed in the run up to year end like most of us are. And I’ve just said it to a few of them lately. I said, sorry if I’m like leaning to micromanagement. I’m probably not, it’s not my tendency, but for me maybe. I said, I’m just stressed. I’m sorry if I’m triple checking. So you know, there’s a little bit about when you know that you’re not giving them what you need, just telling them the reason we’re all humans. And then actually like my board chair always has a great statement of trust but verify.

you use it with caution but like you know we have data as a language at field and therefore if we trust and we’re talking about it but we are going to be grounded in data we’re going to be willing to ask alternative questions giving people the benefit of the doubt that they’ve shared their version but there could be you know other things at play but you just need to keep reminding yourself and if ever I don’t trust I might tell one or two like people that I really trust them that I can say I’m having a struggle but I always try and take a break be aware of my emotional state like is it me causing it or is there actually something here that I should think about and then just try and figure it out and talk straight with people.

Toni:

shift gears now and talk about what you do. Tell us a little bit more about what your company does and why this company for you to be CEO. What does it do? What are you most proud of? Why is this the company you’re CEO of?

Shelley:

So we work in the infrastructure sector. Think about the utilities that bring your gas and water to your house. We work with major infrastructure, roads, rail, these types of assets. All of our customers have got huge field crews. 2000, 3000 is often on the smaller side. Some of them have got 30,000 people. I can’t believe we’ve managed to land customers like that. That’s super proud for us. The problem that they’ve all had is that when they send those people to work in the morning, they go away from base knows what they’re doing, what’s going right or wrong on site etc. So we’ve built a platform that lets our field worker, I almost think crowd source data, they tell us what’s going on with videos, we have that come to base, we’ve got a very big proprietary data set, we use AI to understand what’s going on on that job, does it look like it’s going to be safely delivered today. Why this for me, career in infrastructure, I just love the built environment, quick detour, my favourite ever job was probably back at PwC in Sydney when I arrived they gave me a window seat and I could look up the harbour and see all the big ships come in right utopia I’ve always liked being proper built things so when I look at field I’ve said many times I didn’t want to do like marketing tech or fintech they’re like incremental gains if you look at our industry these are like amazing people that live in our communities often unrecognised they work in dangerous environments and we’ve not given them modern-day tools it is so satisfying to work with people we all need these in our lives or where we’re not cooking dinner to give them the tools to let them be more visible in their organisations to keep them safer to keep them more productive it’s a really good example of where you can do a lot of social good I mean this is our taxes that go to fund these activities but where you can also build a really solid business around it it’s a really nice spot to be in.

Ethical AI & Leadership Responsibility

Toni:

I love this so much because I mean, where I live, live in a very remote location in Scotland and you see the crews on the side of the road and you know, they’ve driven like two or three hours to get here and then they’re just left to it. you you see those signs in the big sites of like this many days since an accident. And I’m like, around here is caring about these people. And I love what you’re doing and bringing those people into the organization, them a face, giving them a voice, giving them visibility. you are using AI and this is a topic obviously all of us are talking about right now. I can talk about it almost every week on this podcast. How are you making sure this is done ethically? Because you you’re using AI with very human data, with faces, with opinions, with people’s careers potentially. How are you doing that ethically?

Shelley:

just go back to the trust point as a starting piece. The infrastructure sector and industrial work sites are incredibly complex.

In my personal view, anybody that thinks that you can use AI to analyze those sites entirely and come to concrete decisions on whether a human is keeping themselves safe if they’re being productive, doing quality work without human input, they are kidding themselves, at least in the Western world where we’re dealing with old infrastructure in complex environments. The first thing I say to my customers is when we do a deployment, right?

we will almost shine a light on abnormalities that we can see with data and think computer vision, natural language processing etc will shine a light. but you should know your assets, your network, your people and look at it in context and go ask questions yourself. Don’t like automatically trust that we’re going to get everything spot on because these are hard environments. That’s really important to me. Like at the customer end, humans should be in the loop. If you come to our end, there’s like zero black box learning. We can explain everything and we’re constantly looking at the accuracy of our predictions to make sure they’re strong. I also almost like bifurcate the product and our ability to experiment. If we’re doing something with safety these are human lives like the barrier to product release should be very very high it should be tested customers should be completely aware of it if you’re playing around it like the the productivity end you’ve got more freedom to explore right because if we do start with that hypothesis there’s not enough field workers nobody wants to sack people they want them to do better right you can have a bit more of a play around in that area of the product but you kind of again we keep humours in the loop we make sure at our end in particular from safety that we’ve got people that have got experience and they’re looking at the safety outcomes both AI strategists and just humans with extensive experience all the time. I think it’s really important that you kind of keep that ethical framework front of mind.

Toni:

actually love something you’ve touched on there, which is, you know, it’s a very real situation in that grouping and that there aren’t enough of them. You can’t afford to let them go. But something that angers me deeply and one of the reasons I do what I do is because of wasted talent. we, the tech industry is notorious for this, we just let people go rather than working with them to make them better. There is a case for letting some people go. There is. I have come to that realization. It’s taken a while but it is far rarer than the way we actually behave. And you get industries like this where there just isn’t the workforce, so you can’t afford to. What have you learned as a leader from watching this and how has it changed the way you lead at all?

Shelley:

think it’s made me more generous to people in understanding the complexities of the situations they find themselves in. When you go out in the field you you think it’s going to be cut and dry if that’s not where you spent your career. I might have spent my career in infrastructure but I was doing like mergers and acquisitions style work I wasn’t digging holes. My co-founder Carl was on the tool for like 20 years right. I’ve really learned that when you go out to the field there is a multitude of reasons why things go wrong. I’ve learned it’s often the organization’s fault the finger gets pointed in the wrong direction. those things that we send people to site with the wrong kit and stuff right it has really learnt me pause take a breath we have a real statement we non-stop at field like hold up the looking glass look at yourself before you look at others I always had this but I think with hindsight I paid lip service a little bit more to it and today it’s a bit more this industry’s taught me really hold up the looking glass and look at what your contribution was before you immediately go and look at what the contribution of your team member was

I’m not saying I perfected this by any stretch, but it is something that I try and work on day in, out.

Toni:

And can I just applaud you for saying that because I think sometimes people think the people that come on this podcast have got it all together or they’re perfect and none of us are. I think the fact that you are still saying, hey, I’ve got to work on this. is no, listeners, please hear me. There is no human out there who shouldn’t still be working on themselves, working on their abilities, working on their people skills, working on their leadership skills because we’re never done. The people that are done, I’m sorry, but you don’t want to work for them. You just don’t.

It’s why I have a job, ultimately, is because actually a good leader is still working on herself and I’m one of the people that helps with that. So of course I’d say that, but yeah. Don’t work for somebody who’s not working them in themselves. 

Leading Through Change & Resistance

Let’s talk about scaling businesses because one of the conversations you and I had previously before we hit record was talking about rethinking what it means to scale. Give the background to that for us, please. Can you like, why do you think we need to rethink this? What does it mean to scale these days?

Shelley:

Yeah, I think you only need to go back two or three years ago and scale was about, I’ve got 50 people, how am I get to 150? How do I retain the culture of those first 50 so that I don’t slow down and like what one person used to do now takes 0.75, right? It really was about headcount and culture. I don’t like this bit because it really worries me about the younger kids coming into the workforce. But let’s just park that. The simple fact of it is you have to reimagine every role in an AI era. Right? So if I look at customer success as a simple example, because I think that there’ll be some amazing talent there that can figure out how to win. And I think there’ll be some amazing talent that doesn’t embrace it. There’s always been industry norms, right? A million pounds of recurrent revenue to one CSM head.

People are now kind of saying, how could I get that to five million pounds per head because I can automate that. Right. And I think you can take that premise across all of your business. What does it mean though? At the moment in leadership roles, there’s probably not a category. Let’s just keep picking on customer success. There’s probably not like a big cohort of people who would call themselves an AI customer success leader because this is new. Right. It does mean again, when you think about scaling to my mind, it’s more about how many, how much of revenue to full time employee can I do?

How can I do it with a great culture where people aren’t overloaded? So we’re investing in the tools and investing in their learning. But you need to rethink those leaders, right? So, know, right at the moment, a seasoned customer success leader may not be the person. You might actually think about bringing in an AI strategist and supplementing them with a great CS leader on the side or, you know, various permutations. But this is how I think about it. How do I get more and more from my existing team, but not from a burnout and do more hours perspective? Because that’s just a bad spot to be in.

Toni:

Absolutely! Do more with less should be about being more efficient, not working crazy hours. And it’s always been a dangerous phrase. I’m a big fan of do more with less. I was way before we had AI, but it needs to be done without burning people out. There’s no point. Our burnout teams are just not a recipe for success. But you hit on something which I have this conversation daily with clients, whether they’re CEOs like yourself or senior leaders of, know my team needs to do more with AI, but They don’t, and I’ve had this with my team. I use AI all the time and yet my team is struggling. What have you done with your team to try and help them embrace it, grow with it, coach them in it? What are you doing?

Shelley:

Yeah it’s a good question even though we’re an AI native platform. internally, we are still just humans, right? So anybody I think that thinks just because you’re AI native product that you’re inside is perfect. Again, you’ve got to work on everything. A few things, I think you can just set some basic targets. You know, if you look at your your engineering team, you can just begin to set the we need to have five more tickets, 10 more tickets produced per sprint, right? So I think there’s some crude measures. I think there’s also giving the freedom. So I’ve been trying to like encouraging our ops team that they start just doing some discussion focus groups with people. Right. So you know, again, like, let’s get people talking about it. Let’s get them talking about ideas. There is things like that. I think then there’s just like the lead by example. Right. And so again, like I try and talk to people the amount of time I might spend on chat GPT, I said it to one of my shareholders the other day, and I’m sure he nearly fell off his chair. But it’s the like, right from the top, like we are using these tools and actually like honesty about where is it even taking me more time, a because I don’t know the tools and I have to invest, or B, because I’m getting really into it and I’m getting better outcomes and therefore I want to spend a little bit more time on it.

But there needs to be an honesty. I don’t think there’s a silver bullet though, except for being really clear that the metrics are moving and it’s relentless. And I think there’ll be like a little bit of my work of opt in, opt out. I don’t want to lose great people, but fundamentally, maybe not like the next funding round we go through. But if you think in two years, you’ll be competing for cash against people that were born onto an AI native cost curve, and you won’t be able to get it if you haven’t made it. So they’re always, I think, even if it’s an uncomfortable

truth there has to be transparency with your team about here is what we need to achieve over the next two years.

Toni:

Yeah. Yeah, and it’s really bringing the team along. I mean, I was kind of shocked that my team weren’t doing things that I thought was obvious. And they were just, they’d read the news articles that said it, you know, it just tells you what you want to hear and all this kind of stuff. mean, yeah, well, yeah, it does until you get it to question itself. And it’s like any other tool. It has limitations. You’ve got to figure out its limitations. Don’t just stop at the first hurdle. And I do think there is, I mean, incredibly clever, talented people are resisting and our job as leaders is to hold their hands and show them and then then they embrace it. That’s the thing that’s happening, right? Once you show them it’s not so scary. It’s just another tool. They do embrace it, but I think some of us are forgetting it’s not sufficient to just sit in our office and say you should be using AI. Why aren’t you using AI? Doesn’t work, right?

Shelley:

No, it doesn’t. It’s not, it’s like anything else we’ve done in our careers, like just telling and not showing and leading has never worked for any initiative.

Toni:

Mm-hmm. No, no. 

Self-Doubt at Senior Levels

I’ve got one final question before we wrap up this section. I want to talk about your self-doubt again. You are obviously incredibly successful. Like, I mean, you are just a shining example of what I want many of the women listening to the show to believe they can be. But how do you manage your self-doubt as a CEO? What, how does it come up and how do you manage it? What would you say to you from 10 years ago? What did the women here listening to the show need to hear from you?

Shelley:

doubt I do try and check in and be conscious of how I’m feeling particularly if there is something big going on. know board meetings can be a little bit of a trigger for me I’ve had one bad board in my career you can’t pretend it doesn’t leave you with an element of PTSD is the only way I can actually describe it non-flippantly and so like just being aware of triggers and why they make you feel one way or another sleep is for me important before big events. I’m not always the best sleeper in the world but you know if I’ve got a big week or a big meeting it’s like right let’s get to bed at nine o’clock so that I am rested and at my best. And I think sometimes just surrounding yourself with the three people that can quietly tell you that you’re great. My co-founder is amazing I had a meeting earlier this week that I thought I tanked and it was an important one for me and you know I was talking to him afterwards and he’s like Shelley he says like you know sometimes you are your worst self-critic we all know that you would have been in there articulate great opinions. Let’s just stop this discussion now and move on. So there’s also a little bit of like knowing those people that will kick you out. The people you can safely talk to and tell the truth but they will just give you that little shove along when you need it.

Toni:

Yeah, absolutely. As long as, as long as you also, you don’t come across as a person that’s complaining all the time, because I think it kind of, we end up in this doom loop at that point as well. But I love that you have people around you who are safe, because I think we do all need that. We need somebody who has our back and can be like, hey, you, you know better than that. Because sometimes there is a bit of a doom loop. So.

I can talk about this all day, but I do want to get onto the quickfire realm because I think you’re going to have some amazing answers to my first two questions, my favourite questions I ask everybody. So let’s do this. What is the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Shelley:

Okay so I smile a lot. Someone once told me that I should stop smiling and look serious more. It’s just I go back to being authentic. It is not me and if I need to deliver bad news I can still actually do it in a warm way. So I really disregarded that very quickly.

Toni:

I’m so glad you did. the smile is, it’s for those of us who do smile, I’m a smiler. It’s a huge asset. And if it’s who you are, you going to do it. I’m so glad you disregarded that. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Shelley:

first CEO job, right? I nearly gave it to someone else because I was on the board of the company and the guy who were going to give it to me he just said to me, know Shelly, he goes you’re just not backing yourself enough, you’re fabulous, you’ve built the strategy, you’ve got the company funded, why are you giving this away? And it was, it was the best thing, it was like trust yourself when you think you’ve ticked four of ten boxes, go for it.

Toni:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. love that. I’m so glad you had that person advocating for you. It does seem to me that you’ve done quite a good job of surrounding yourself with people who have your back. Would you, and this is a of a tangent for the quick fire run, but would you agree with that?

Shelley:

I get rid of people who are doubters and make me feel bad. Life just generally is short, right? You can surround yourself with 50 good people.

Toni:

Mm-hmm. Now, surround yourself with the people you want to be like and with and who will push you and hold you and support you 100%. How can people find out more about you? Connect with you. How can we find out who you are and what you do more?

Shelley:

So LinkedIn, Shelley Copsey, I’m really easy to find on there. know, me a connection, always accept. My company’s website field has got like a stack of case studies and interviews and so forth that I’ve given.

Toni:

Thank you so much for sharing that and I strongly encourage anybody listening to go and check out Shelly. She is a rock star CEO. Just follow her. I’ve been following her for a couple of months now and I just love seeing things pop up and just there is so much you can learn from just following Shelly. That’s all I can say on that one. Shelly, this has been amazing. So what final thoughts would you like to leave us with today?

Shelley:

As for any woman up and coming who’s aspiring to get into a leadership role, I think I hope the big thing you’ve heard from me, just back yourself, get rid of the doubters that are around you and get positive people. People will tell you the truth and coach you and feedback you need, but people that have got your back and want you to be amazing. I always say to the team, there’s eight billion people in this world. We can find 60 amazing ones to build field, and I think that about personal circle, you can do the same thing.

Toni:

That is a beautiful way to finish. Thank you so much, Shelly. I just want to remind everybody here, you can be Shelly. I know so many of you listen and they’re like, could I be that one day? If you want to, the only thing stopping you is you. You get to choose your path. Listen to what she says, that she understood what was limiting her. And yes, she over prepares, or as we’ve decided to call it, we write prepare. She’s recognized that something that. backs herself. She is backing herself. She’s dealing with herself down. She’s decided to lead with presumption of trust because that’s who she is. She’s decided to embrace the fact she smiles all day. She smiles every day. She leaves with truth and leaves with trust. And more importantly than anything else, she has backed herself. Those to me are the things that are going to catalyze your journey every single time. So if you’re listening and thinking, I? It’s decided to, it’s time to decide, yes, I can. That’s your first step surround yourself with the people you want to be and back yourself. Until next time, remember you can do anything you put your mind to and I look forward to seeing you all soon. Bye for now.