You can’t thrive if you’re fighting to survive
Vinisha wants her business to be a force for good. But she knows in order to have real impact, she needs financial security, too. Welcome to The Club.
“If you don’t feel secure in your finances, or you don’t know what’s happening with your finances … then it's harder to be your best self.
“First we have to look after our basic needs for food and shelter, then we can innovate, and then we can hustle.”
Vinisha Rathod is a values-driven person. In many ways she’s a values-driven entrepreneur, too. But she knows you can’t pour from an empty cup.
For businesses of any size to truly lean into their values, to serve and empower others, they need to have the time and space to do so. And when Vinisha is thriving, financially, that’s when she does her best work and makes the most impact.
Vinisha is a business consultant and advisor to corporates and tech companies. Through her consultancy, p3 Studio, she enables leaders to achieve scale by focusing on their people, partnerships and (perhaps most importantly) connecting to their purpose and end-game.
So it stands to reason that she’s deeply in touch with her own ‘why’.
“Thriving companies can open doors for people,” she explains.
“If I can help companies become sustainable, profitable and great places to work, then I believe they will hire, promote and partner with people based on merit and capability rather than on bias. They’ll offer more people access to wealth and opportunities,” she says.
As Vinisha puts it, humans are “emotional, messy creatures”. Her job is to detangle that from their commercial decision-making, whether that’s through change management, managing co-founder alignment, or redesigning structures and clarifying individual roles.
Overall, it’s about improving culture and creating environments in which people want to work, she says. Those are the companies that create and retain a diverse workforce.
“More and more, we’re seeing the rhetoric that being good in business is good for business,” she says.
“People are your biggest investment and your biggest asset, but so many have been overlooked, and continue to be.”
A push and pull
P3 Studio is what puts money in Vinisha’s bank account and a roof above her head. But outside of that, she’s an advocate for women entrepreneurs, and she’s passionate (and vocal) about tackling domestic violence and reframing ‘women’s issues’ as societal ones.
Over an hour, our conversation twists and turns. We explore all manner of injustices in business and in life, and with every new tangent, Vinisha lights up, animated, and enraged.
I get the sense this is the work that really drives her. But it’s not what she relies upon.
“We’re all in this push-and-pull between looking after ourselves financially and doing what we love,” she says.
“You can do both, but being able to delineate is also really valuable. I know what I will invest my time into versus what I need to be compensated for.”
The way she sees it, thriving companies are able to give back to their communities. That’s as true for small businesses like Vinisha’s as it is for the corporates and fast-growth companies she works with.
The difference is that, when you’re small-scale, being able to do that work absolutely relies on the support of customers. It relies on having people who will pay her for her expertise.
“I’ve had people try to give me equity in return for my work. That’s so nice as a gesture. But my bank won’t accept equity as mortgage repayment.”
“Looking after your needs isn’t greedy”
When mentoring and coaching founders, especially women, one of the first things Vinisha asks is: “How are your survival needs being met?”
To spell it out, she’s asking where the money is coming from.
“If you don’t feel secure in your finances, or you don’t know what’s happening with your finances — even if that’s just because it’s not your strength or you find it too hard to think about — then it's harder to be your best self,” she argues.
“First we have to look after our basic needs for food and shelter, then we can innovate, and then we can hustle.”
Vinisha knows inspiration and brilliance can come out of desperation, but she just doesn’t buy that’s true for most of us.
Being backed into a corner, in constant fight-or-flight mode, literally struggling to survive… it just doesn’t bring out the best in most people, she says.
“You have to know where to start. You have to know what you need in order to look after yourself. Then your decision-making becomes so much clearer. It gives you accountability and ownership.”
For Vinisha, financial security allows her the time and space to focus on philanthropy and advocacy. It’s allowed her to bring her full, messy and whimsical self to the startup ecosystem; to carve out a niche and build an authentic personal brand.
For others, it might create space for creativity, networking, or simply some personal downtime and self-care.
For Vinisha, this is personal. She’s faced her own set of challenges and hasn’t always felt financially secure.
Today, however, she owns her Sydney apartment. She pays her own mortgage. She has her own business. She knows where her money is coming from, and how she’s going to use it to deliver meaningful impact.
She’s fought hard for that. And without an external safety net, it’s an absolute necessity.
The fact is, not everyone can bootstrap to their first million from their parents’ garage — not everyone has the family support, the space, or the childhood bedroom to fall back on. A garage, itself, is a privilege.
“Looking after your needs isn’t greedy,” Vinisha says.
“You can be very powerful while also being loving and kind. But you have to get out of survival mode in order to thrive.”
Connecting the dots
Ultimately, building her own wealth will allow Vinisha to have more impact in the long term. She wants to give back to the ecosystem as an active investor, helping to fund more women founders and getting more women and under-represented people into jobs.
She also wants to help others use their wealth for good.
“I want to continue to be a channel to money, growth and opportunity,” she says.
In the next 20 years, some $5 trillion is expected to be transferred from Baby Boomers and their parents to the younger generations. More than 60% of that will go to women.
But high-net-worth networks haven’t been designed with women in mind.
“Women are trying to navigate spaces that have been created by and for men. Women are just not in those conversations. They might have wealth at their disposal, but aren’t aware of the women founders screaming out for funding.”
Vinisha considers herself a professional networker. So, even if she’s not yet in a position to invest herself, she’s dedicating at least some of her social capital to connecting the dots — introducing the right founders to the right operators; keeping her eyes and ears open for opportunities and the people who might be interested in them.
“My brain is very wired to connect dots, and to connect the right people at the right time,” she says.
“We’re all working towards a common goal, and we need every little bit of help we can get.”
If Vinisha’s story resonates, join the conversation…
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Great perspective, very much resonates with my philosophy towards life and business.