Growing Lean

Thriving in the Workplace: A Conversation with Kate Visconti CEO of Five to Flow

• Ethan Halfhide

Share episode

Have you ever wondered what it means to truly thrive in your workplace, not just survive? Join us on this enlightening journey as we sit down with Kate Visconti, the extraordinary founder and CEO of Five to Flow. Kate takes us on her personal career trek, starting from her days in English education to her role in global change management, eventually culminating in the birth of her own business. She reveals the secret of 'flow', a psychological state of being that fosters efficiency and alleviates stress. Learn how Five to Flow harnesses this powerful concept to help organizations, from struggling startups to scaling giants, enhance their performance by tailoring it to the landscape of today's diverse workforce, be it remote, hybrid, or onsite. 

But this episode isn't just about enhancing productivity. It's about cultivating a healthier, happier work environment. Kate emphasizes the importance of employee wellbeing for creating positive customer experiences and overall business success. As we navigate the tumultuous waters of the pandemic, she offers incredible insights on thriving amidst adversity and measures of success that go beyond revenue. From innovative mental health courses to gratitude practices, Five to Flow is championing a revolution in the workplace environment. So gear up to explore new ways of thinking, working, and thriving. Don't miss out!

Support the show

Have an app idea and dont know where to start? Book a Free Discovery Call Here
Learn more about our award winning app development firm Lean Discovery Group
Connect with me on linkedin

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the growing Lean podcast sponsored by Lean Discovery Group. This is your host, dylan Burke, also known as Deej. I'm very happy to be here with Kate Visconti, founder and CEO of 5, to Flow. Welcome, kate, hi Deej.

Speaker 2:

So great to be here. Thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for calling me Deej. You're probably the first one to do so. So, to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about your history or background and how you got to where you are today? I see you had a bit of time in Auckland, so I'd love to hear everything.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, Wow, Keep it to 20 minutes. And that's the first question. I've had a very bizarre career background. I started my career as a high school English teacher Hopefully I started at McDonald's, but not necessarily relevant, except I do think that if everybody had to work one day in fast food they'd treat their customers and workers a little bit differently. But my background undergrad degree is in English, concentration in writing and secondary education, and I quickly learned that I wanted to do a little bit more, have a broader reach. So I started a master's in business administration, went really deep 14 years at a Midwest regional bank called Huntington where I worked in almost every horizontal and vertical you can think of across that organization, which led to me on the business side deploying a large global CRM tool to the whole organization from a change management and business process perspective. Once I did that, I got the fever for this tool Everybody will look it up at Salesforce and I ended up going to a small global consulting firm called Blue Wolf. That grew exponentially while I was there and at that company I grew the change management practice and some of our strategic growth pieces of the practice and quickly realized how much more I wanted to do building teams. So I went over to Acumen Solutions and built a change practice from scratch. They're also working with the solution architects and that took me to San Francisco and then over to London.

Speaker 2:

While in London, I got recruited to become a partner at PWC in Auckland, New Zealand. So I know you wanted to hear the New Zealand story. So I got there just in time for a couple months into my new role to go into global pandemic lockdown. So you can imagine that was a little bit of an interesting experience. But really found myself in that culture, pros and cons of the role and acclimating to different types of ways of working, where I realized over the course of these 12 years in consulting previously that I wanted to do a little bit different of an approach and focus a little bit more on human element of consulting, versus just what the organization is going through but what individuals and teams are going through. So with that I started my career as an entrepreneur and with my co-founder, Jason Haller, we tried to combine concepts of athletics and fitness with concepts of business and the human element in business to come up with five to flow. So here we are today.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. Wow, I love that You've got such an accomplished background. That's awesome. I love all these different skills to where you are today. I love that. And what does five to flow do? I've looked it up a bit on LinkedIn, but audience can you tell us what does your business actually do?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so five to flow is an organization constructed to basically offer professional services for organizations which span nonprofit, public sector and private sector. Higher education, to either help an organization who's hitting challenges or not meeting core metrics like employee engagement and productivity, ideal customer experience and engagement and revenue growth or profitability, and organizations who are doing great at all that and want to scale. So what our organization does is takes a look at your current state and where you want to head and we help bridge the gap from today to tomorrow through a unique kind of consulting focused on the concepts of flow. Do you know anything about flow, dylan?

Speaker 1:

No, I don't. Can you tell me a little bit yeah?

Speaker 2:

So Flo is a concept founded by an amazing psychologist named Mihai Chiksen. To Mihai, he wrote a book called Literally Flo, and we've expanded our knowledge on Flo through some studies with the Flo Research Collective and a lot of other amazing resources out there.

Speaker 2:

Flo is a concept of how our brains work and a very interesting thing for me to learn about, on why we feel the way we feel, based on, basically physiologically, what's going on with us in certain situations throughout the day and in our lives.

Speaker 2:

So let's just pretend, dylan, if you're an athlete or a musician or a stand up comic, and you see people really get into deep levels of focus where they are really able to just completely immerse themselves in an experience, be completely undistracted and absolutely just crush whatever they're trying to accomplish through that. There are four stages of Flo. They are struggle, relief, flow and recovery, and so what we do, for example, in our Discover Flo program, is create an immersive experience for teams to improve their performance and efficiency while reducing stress and burnout. That course, for example, helps you apply flow concepts, manage your mindset, prevent burnout, and we teach about those that flow cycle, the flow channel, burnout triggers, flow triggers to help people really understand at the individual and team level how their mindset and mental status, based on the hormones released at each stage in that cycle, can influence how you can perform at work.

Speaker 1:

That is super interesting. I'm definitely going to do a bit more research after this. And how do you sorry, how do you do this with your clients? Is it like courses you do in person, or is it on an app? Or how do you train or do these courses with your clients and the teams?

Speaker 2:

It's a great question. So of course, with the modern day remote slash, hybrid slash, onsite workforce, we have a lot of options and we have multiple services. So how we teach specifically about flow is an offering called Discover Flow that we've done both on site and to promote, and it's modular. So we first get to know our customer, understand at the individual level, team level and organizational level what's going on at the organization. Whether we had a University Gonzaga University who wrote us a testimonial a nonprofit, andrew Goodman, and then a professional services firm, third Eye, go through the programs. So far, that particular iteration of the Discover Flow program was very much modularized training to teach the concepts of flow, how they show up individually and in teams and at work. And then we are about to launch a next wave of that where we do have recorded modules and in the future hope to have an app where people can access those as needed.

Speaker 1:

Okay, amazing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 1:

No, carry on, carry on.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, okay. So we also write a lot of blogs most of them, jason has written, but we also ask some of our board and other teammates to write blogs about their experience with flow. It covers everything from managing distraction. So we just announced a partnership with AQUIS Consulting and we'll be hosting our first big team session with them on distraction management and technology. We also have applied concepts of flow to diversity, equity and inclusion within organizations. We've posted sessions with large events like a summit Agile Summit last year, where we taught about tech professionals and how they deploy technology, and considering concepts of flow with how you deploy technology. So that's basically our teaching component From a social media perspective. We also launch weekly just tips and tricks One app. For a year we did flow vocabulary Friday. We now do wellness wave Wednesday.

Speaker 2:

So really trying to reach various audiences, just to spread the word, because these sessions that we posted another one we did was a leadership series for free for people who were displaced during the large-scale layoffs earlier this year and we had people saying "'Oh my gosh, I wish I knew that there was like an actual physiologic explanation to how I'm feeling'".

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. I love to hear it. And are your clients on a corporate level, or is it more than employees that look for you guys?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So right now, the next piece that I would tell you is another offering we have, but they are at a corporate level. So currently our revenue is all through the organization, whether it's the school, the nonprofit, the public sector group or the private sector group. So the other core offering we have for them is called Achieve Flow and that's a program where, once we sign on with the client so other public references on our testimonials would be like Revivalent or Sonify Focus these clients sign up with us to go through this program where we interview their employees, shadow them, attend meetings, really immerse ourselves in the organization.

Speaker 2:

Internally, we distribute the Wellness Wave, which is our proprietary diagnostic we built to get measurable feedback from people more confidentially. So, for example, if I were to interview you about how much you love your job, we know you might be a little more honest if we're A not recording the session and B if you are anonymous or confidential, if you will. So the Wellness Wave helps us capture more measurable data across the five core elements I think I mentioned earlier people, culture, process, tech and analytics. Those are the five and it takes all five to flow, which is where our name came from.

Speaker 2:

So in that wellness wave and interview process. We make sure we cover those five core elements and the domains of those to see what's really going on at the organization, so that when we then recommend solutions at the organizational level they're addressing the root cause of the issue, not just the symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and do you have any metrics or KPIs that you use to measure the success of what you do for the organizations?

Speaker 2:

That is a brilliant question. I love that you asked that. So most organizations we've been working with so far have implemented a lot of the changes. A lot of them are anecdotal. From a retention productivity perspective, we also have worked with a lot of customers who are implementing technology and we're doing some of the pre-work. So core adoption metrics from those systems and making sure they're set up in a way to be conducive to those employees. But that is our big goal for 2024 and last quarter of 2023 is revisit all of our past customers and have them retake the wellness wave so we can also use it to measure progress. So obviously, lots of things would have to remain constant in that. Other macro challenges that could have impacted your organization might impact some of those metrics, but what we're really looking for is higher rates of employee engagement, retention and productivity. When we talk about productivity, too, we're not really thinking like Dylan, get more work done. We're thinking how can you find more joy in the work you're doing and that you're seeing outcomes yourself of what you do.

Speaker 1:

The second big metric.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 1:

No, carry on, carry on.

Speaker 2:

So the next critical metric we like to see is customer experience and, potentially, cross-sell upsell retention, customer lifetime value. And then, third, we really wanna look at how is this organization doing, either from a revenue or growth perspective? I'll tell you, it's on purpose that I put the metrics in that order of employees first, customers second and revenue third. And that may sound counterintuitive, but we believe, founded very well in some articles by Tiffany Bova in her latest book and a lot of research, that the happier your employees are, the more happiness and experiences they'll drive for the customers, and then that's what drives revenue. So we really want organizations to look at their people first, do things that will prevent burnout, do things that will promote flow, and then think about that where, if you were happy because you're a motivated worker at your organization, how much better of an experience I would have, and then I'd be likely to work with you again 100%.

Speaker 1:

I agree with that completely, and that is the metrics your customers use, correct. What are the metrics that you use to measure the success of your business?

Speaker 2:

So the first ones I gave were what we were hoping to see. That's like if they can share either anecdotally what they're seeing and then what we'll focus on the rest of this year, and next is that retaking of the wellness wave. But if they're measuring those things and see transformation among their employee engagement or customer experience or revenue and we've worked on those particular things with them we'll say cause and effect. Is it causation or correlation? Right, like that's the big question. But we also just measure from an anecdotal and feedback perspective and we take our testimonials very seriously. But we will be revisiting everybody next year to retake the wellness wave, to see how they're doing on that in the future.

Speaker 1:

Okay, 100%, and so this is an interesting question I've started to ask on here. If you were to rate the satisfaction of where you are in terms of your business on a scale of 1 to 10, what would you rate it now?

Speaker 2:

I would give it a 9 and I'll tell you why it's so high. Here's where a little bit I forgot to mention part of my career. I did some stand up comedy and I have a solid sense of humor around the state of the world. Right, and you mentioned a thing, a couple of things we don't talk about and what's going on in the world In the context of. I started this company post pre-launch was March of 2020 and everybody listening knows what happened in March of 2020. So we're in the height of the lockdown. I'm trying to start a global consulting firm where our core offering is an onsite workshop.

Speaker 2:

So when we formally launched in October to November timeframe of 2020, we met a ton of challenges to get off the ground, but I've got a very resilient team and they determined team, were inspired by this huge vision to change the world and we want to reshape employees experiences and really make sure people are what we say connecting the disconnected, and it's happening one person at a time.

Speaker 2:

So I'd give it that 9 because outside of COVID, then we have other major macro challenges, massive companies laying people off and we're still pretty intact and we've shown you're over your growth to get to our third birthday next week. We're still around, and so when you're a self funded startup with a bunch of people who are really bootstrapping along with me and amazing leadership team and amazing advisory board who just keep showing up, you know it's like I am super grateful for that and I'd give it a 10 if we were where I want to be from some of our future development and like measureability of outcomes, dj Dige. But yeah, I'm going to give it a 90. As a former high school teacher, that's an A minus.

Speaker 1:

Okay, amazing. So I was going to ask a follow up question on that is, if we were to meet in three years and ask the same question, what would you say? The answer is that you kind of said that you'd want it to be a 10 right, but what do you need to do or accomplish to get it to that 10?

Speaker 2:

To be at 10 in the next three years. I'd like to have added more full-time staff. I'd like to have our custom app built and maybe by then have affected a million people with our content. I think that's a good goal to have like impact a million lives with capability to access flow in the workplace 100 percent.

Speaker 1:

I love that we are running out of time a bit, but I wanted to ask, before we go, what advice would you give to other business owners looking to succeed in your industry and what advice would you give to the casual employee, based on your flows, to succeed in what they do?

Speaker 2:

Ooh, great question.

Speaker 2:

First, one advice to other entrepreneurs I would say you're never alone and you're going to feel like it a lot, but there are so many resources out there other founders groups, entrepreneur coaches, etc.

Speaker 2:

I'm a huge proponent of coaching and making sure that you really really take care of yourself as either a CEO or founder or leader of an organization that you can't overestimate excuse me, the importance of our own personal health and wellness to be a great leader, so you can't pour from an empty cup, as they would say. My advice for employees if you all just changed one thing, just one thing, it would be to make sure you have time blocked on your calendar for breaks throughout the day. Our brains end up basically looking like my Chrome, with 75 tabs open and it slows us down and we don't even realize it and we just try to plow through. So if there's one major change you could make today, it's make sure you, somewhere on your calendar throughout the day, have time for a break, and that break is best suited with some sort of walk in nature or playing with a dog or positive social interaction, so you can clear that cache of your brain and get restarted on the next big thing.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. I love that. I definitely need to start doing that better. But thank you so much, kate. Thank you for being on the show. I've really enjoyed your insights and I'm definitely going to do a lot more research into how I can better myself with your flow. So what is the best way for people to get in touch with Kate Fisconti if you have any offers for them, or if they want to follow your journey or have a look at your product? What's the best way for them to reach out or follow you?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's super easy. My email is literally Kate K-A-T-E at 5toflow, spelled out F-I-V-E-T-O-F-L-O-Wcom. That's also our website, 5toflowcom. There is a section on there to book a discovery session and, most importantly, if you click the little button to take the wellness wave, and when you take the wellness wave, we'll have you in our system. You can opt in for our newsletter and our blog series, etc. But you'll also, in the short term, get a link with some quick tips for yourself to make some personal changes that are within your control, based on your biggest flow blocker in the wellness wave. We are innovating on that, so more changes to come. But you can follow us on social, which you can access through our website at the bottom, and we also take emails generally at gratitude at 5toflowcom, just as it sounds. So we are super grateful for everybody who works with us. We want to spread this awareness as much as possible to help people have happier and healthier lives at work.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. Thank you so much, Kate, and thanks for being on the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Deej. It was a pleasure. You asked great questions. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.