Not a cookie-cutter mentor

“We don’t need to burn out to save the world. We can save the world, get paid doing it and have fun because that’s what work should be,” says founder Bailey Lenart. 

An early adopter of the new Startup Aotearoa coaching service, Lenart heads World Changing Business, a venture helping accounting and finance professionals navigate the shift to non-financial accounting.

Its first product, Collective Flow, is a SaaS web app that supports business leaders to deliver sustainability initiatives such as Environmental Societal Governance (ESG) reporting and change projects. It allows users to collaboratively develop, execute and adapt sustainability strategies and working methods, to suit specific needs. It also helps teams determine if their collective efforts are going in the right direction.

Originally from Florida, Lenart moved to New Zealand – “without knowing what it would look like” – in 2008 after an evening spent at an All Blacks game and a Fat Freddy’s Drop concert.

“I didn’t realise what an important decision that would be in my life,” she says. 

Fast-forward a few years and Lenart found herself working for an accounting firm that was a Xero early adopter. When an opportunity to work at Xero presented itself in 2013, she made the jump. 

Lenart leveraged her subject matter expertise to grow with Xero, moving from sales and go-to-market, into product marketing, ownership, management and leadership. 

“I really found my feet when working with cross functional teams. I saw the potential of creating teams of people with clear missions and the skills to creatively reach them,” she says. 

When she returned to work after having her son in 2018, Lenart found herself out of her depth and under supported. As the only woman in her product manager role, she worried messing up would ruin it for others looking to follow in her footsteps. Fortunately, she had an “incredible” coach who gave her life-changing advice: 

“She just looked at me and said, ‘You think you’re so important that you could have caused all this?’”

Lenart says the question woke her up to the realisation that the issues were bigger than her and she was not set up for success in that role. 

When she left the company in 2021, she says she did so “having experienced burnout in pretty much every way possible; role fit that’s not right, leveraging skills you don’t enjoy, being overloaded, lack of purpose”. She began to ask herself how she could create the conditions necessary for her to thrive. 

Originally, Lenart envisioned a service business but plans changed when “a perfectly formed software product idea fell into [her] head”. 

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Making moves

The decision to tap into founder coaching via Startup Aotearoa came once Lenart developed her minimum viable product (MVP) with the help of her technical and design cofounders. 

“We knew the product we wanted to build, test, and iterate on. We had an idea of how to earn money. Now I was thinking about how to get the support around me to make this go off.” 

Having benefited from coaching before, Lenart says when she saw what Startup Aotearoa was offering and that it was free, the choice was easy: “It was the right price and something I already valued.”

Even though she missed the first email and forgot her first meeting, “there was no friction whatsoever in the process” – thanks, in large part, to her mentor, Mike Brown. 

A founder himself, Brown understands what it takes to turn an idea into action. He began his startup life with the Ministry of Awesome a decade ago, and, in the time since, has been involved in several startups, including winning a Callaghan Innovation prize in 2017. 

His current startup, Adaptdefy, is a product development company on a mission to increase freedom for wheelchair users. 

Having run the Orion Energy Accelerator last year, Brown says he leapt at the chance to get involved with early-stage startups through Startup Aotearoa. 

“I really enjoy working with founders and helping them accelerate their business,” he says. 

Not a cookie-cutter mentor

Lenart says her first coaching session was spent with her “word-bombing” Brown. She clearly remembers his “eyes perking up” when he realised what she was building. 

Brown says: “It took me a long time to understand what she was doing, so that was the first feedback: I replayed what I understood, and that supported her in communicating it more clearly.” 

“By the end of our first call, he gauged where I was at,” she says. 

As well as providing a sounding board for Lenart, Brown also offered practical know-how and resources gained from his startup experience, particularly around the next steps for commercialisation and market validation. 

He says the latter is critical for early-stage founders, as many have an optimism bias that can blind them into creating a product before understanding the problem and the customer. 

“I like to be proactive as well, roll my sleeves up and try things out when I can,” he says. In the case of Lenart, Brown used time-tracking software to see how it could work for her and whether he could validate what she was doing. He could. 

Brown also shares his network with his mentees, introducing them to people who can open doors. 

Lenart appreciates that Brown didn’t take a “cookie-cutter approach” to mentorship; instead, each time, he assessed where she was and what the next best step would be for her business.

“It was me putting in the hard yards,” she says, “But having that structure and somebody helping you see the next low-hanging fruit was so valuable.” 

Overall, Lenart says Brown taught her how to stay grounded: “Because I’m a founder, I see the idea’s potential on every timeline; I see where we’re at today, I see the full vision, the next horizon, but I’m not really grounded in the now.” 

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Coming into their own

Brown says being a mentor has highlighted some unexpectedly contradictory things.

“First, it’s the tremendous amount of experience and knowledge I’ve built up over the last 10 years as a founder – which I am immensely proud of, and I feel fulfilled being able to pass on. 

“On the other hand, it makes me realise I know very little about so many things. I’m no expert in a particular domain, but I’m curious. I’ve learnt to actively listen.” 

Brown says that he and Lenart connected due to their deep understanding of why they are doing what they are doing. To him, having that “why”, is the “keel to your sailboat; when things get tough, you can connect with the deep problem you want to resolve, and it helps you stay the course”. 

For Lenart, being a mentee has helped her reach the next stage in her startup journey and personal growth. 

Seeing how Brown embraces his founder’s story to build a business supporting wheelchair users gave Lenart the confidence to lean into her own story of how burnout led her to create her own working environment, product and business.

“I don’t really sit there and talk heaps about burnout and its impact on me and my family, but it really did impact me, and I want to solve that,” she says. 

Recently, Lenart was accepted into the Ministry of Awesome’s Founder Catalyst programme. She would not have applied if not for Brown championing her, she says. 

Her acceptance into that programme marks the end of her time with Startup Aotearoa, though Lenart is hoping to convince Brown to stay on as a “soft landing” once she has completed Catalyst – and maybe beyond.

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This story was brought to you by Startup Aotearoa.

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If you're keen to follow Bailey Lenart's journey, sign up to the waiting list for Collective Flow at www.collectiveflow.app

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