Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:00:00] Building eco friendly brands and tackling the downsides of AI. They’re both timely issues in the business world, and we’ve got them both covered in this week’s episode. First up, Olympian turned founder Bronte Campbell shares how frustration with traditional activewear led her to co-found sustainable activewear brand Athletica. Bronte also explains why consistency and feedback are essential. Skills in elite sport are also key to success in business. Then, Neal Woolrich from Gartner unpacks how to tackle low quality AI generated content in the workplace. It’s also sometimes known as AI work slop. From Sound Cartel, I’m Grace Jennings-Edquist, and this is Business Essentials.
Success story: from Olympic athlete to entrepreneur
Our first guest is Bronte Campbell, four time Olympian, three time gold medallist and co-founder of Australian activewear brand Bronte, co-founded the company in 2023 to address a clear gap in the activewear market. Elite performance gear made without reliance on virgin plastics or harmful chemical treatments. She said the idea was born out of frustration with the gap between performance claims and product reality in women’s activewear. So let’s dive into the interview. I began by asking Bronte, what was the moment you realized this was a real market gap worth building a company around?
Bronte Campbell: [00:01:34] I wish there was one moment. It was probably a series of moments. Like every time I was digging deeper, I was like, why doesn’t this exist yet? So, I mean, at first started with like, oh, I didn’t realize that all activewear is made from new plastic, and there’s like 42 million tons of plastic waste created by that industry every year. Like, that’s a lot. I didn’t realize that I live in activewear, but I never thought about that from a fabric level. So that’s sort of the first thing I’m like, oh, I wonder if someone’s doing it better and there are like, say other alternatives, like you could wear wool or bamboo. But then I tried them and I couldn’t actually work out in them to a high level without it being like saggy and soggy and like in the case of the bamboo stuff that I tried, like it falls apart really quickly. And so I was like, okay, cool. So maybe that’s not the answer. And I was like, just digging deeper and deeper, like, surely this already exists was just in my head. Like I wasn’t thinking, oh, I’m gonna build a business around this. It was like, I just need to find where this already exists. And you couldn’t find it. Then it was like, oh, I need to start looking at like, is this something that I can build a business around? Is the market big enough for this? Is there a big enough need for that? And that’s when you start like looking at all those qualitative data, but then also just talking to people and getting some of that initial customer feedback and making it sound like I did this all by myself, I definitely didn’t. My co-founders, Libby Babbitt and Chris Rowley, were already thinking about this, and they’d already actually done quite a lot of development before I linked up with them. And I was like, oh, you guys are solving this thing that I’ve been thinking about for a while, so it was kind of a few moments. Like coming together.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:03:04] It does bring me to you mentioned your co-founders, Libby Babbitt and Chris Rowley. Can you just tell me briefly, what does each person bring to the team? What are your roles?
Bronte Campbell: [00:03:11] Yeah, so I’m CEO, Chris is in the CEO role and Libby is head of product. I mean, like we’re all co-founders first. That’s sort of where we say we’re like, we’re co-founders. And then there’s the things that you look after within that. What does each person bring to the role Libby brings? Like just like a deep knowledge of product and building community and businesses. You can say she’s a fitness expert. You can also say she’s a serial entrepreneur that knows how to build businesses. She’s taken business from like 0 to 1, I don’t know. She’s got seven different businesses that she’s built over the years. So like, she is just like the biggest ball of energy but also the most pedantic person on product. She knows everything about product. And then Chris is from a IP lawyer background, and he is like a relentless human who is just really good at thinking really long term and like assessing risk, which is so important, but not something that I naturally think about. And then I sort of like pull all different threads together and really lean on like that high performance background and looking at the financials and marketing and all these other bits and pieces, it honestly feels like you pick up a new book every time you open your desktop.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:04:16] What an absolute dream team. That is amazing. I wanted to ask a bit more about the product because obviously Athletica is aiming for elite performance, but without reliance on unrecycled or virgin plastics. And there’s also no added PFAS, you know, hormone disrupting chemicals. So what is the most challenging part of building these kinds of sustainability and health considerations into the product?
Bronte Campbell: [00:04:39] There’s probably two challenging parts for. The first thing is, if you want to start an activewear brands, you could just like go on Alibaba tomorrow, white label some like product and just start releasing it. And you could do it the easy way. The hard thing is like finding the right suppliers that you can trust, that you know who they are, that you know how they operate. And that took quite a long time like that. Probably we’ve spent like three and a half years finding the right supply chain, and so it’s a bit of a longer process and then finding it so that it can perform. It needs to perform to the same standard. You cannot make a sustainable product, and it performs worse than what’s markedly available, because that’s not a fair choice for a consumer to make. They shouldn’t have to choose between sustainability and performance. It’s like you should be able to have both. And then probably the second hardest part about it is like, I just don’t think that we’re ever doing enough. So like we’re starting with like we use recycled fabric in all of our products. We never add PFAS, but that’s not the end point. The actual like gold medal standard, if I can use that, like the top of the podium is we get this level of performance from our gear, but we don’t have to use any plastic like we’re using recycled.
Bronte Campbell: [00:05:46] But like, what is a plastic free alternative that can perform to the same level? So we’re always talking to these innovation labs that are in Hong Kong. We’ve got a lab that we partner with all the time in America, looking at these other ways to make that stretch and compression and support that you need that sweat working ability, something that holds together for a long time, that doesn’t like fall apart. Because if you buy something and it lasts you for three wears, like that’s not very sustainable. So there’s the two parts. First, it’s really hard to build a supply chain. Then once you’ve got that, it’s like you have to keep innovating because we are not at the end of this. We just want to do better than what’s markedly available and then commitment to continually raising that bar. And I want to be so transparent with that. Like we do not have the end of what sustainable activewear looks like yet, but we’re a lot further down that path than than a lot of people. And we’re going to keep going down there.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:06:37] Yeah, you certainly are. And like the other thing I noticed on the website, it’s beautiful design, but it’s also seems to be designed in a way that, as you mentioned, you can wear these products more than a few times. You can mix and match them. So I think that’s a part of sustainability as well that not everyone thinks about. Like, can I wear this like three times a week? It’s not just like two times and then I’m over it.
Bronte Campbell: [00:06:57] And that was really purposeful. And this is what happens when you put sustainability at the base of your company, rather than trying to retrofit it onto a company that already exists, which is why we wanted to build it this way. It’s like you build with sustainability as a foundation, and then it informs every decision you make down to your design. So like all other designs, mix and match back with each other. So if you buy like a top or two tops and two bottoms over the course of a year, you’ve suddenly got like 4 to 8 outfits that will all mix and match back with each other. Like all the colors go back with each other. You can wear them to multiple different things, like that’s part of it from like the very early design point of view. And then when you think about the design at the start, you’re also thinking about the end. So like eventually when the products are worn out, when you’ve worn them to death, then what happens to them? Okay, great. Let’s see what we can do there. Let’s partner with apparel. You send the gear to apparel, they recycle it into other products, and then you get a discount if you want to repurchase with us, just to try and incentivize people to actually send it there rather than just throwing it into landfill. And so when you start with it as a foundational piece of your company, it really makes sustainability sort of like inevitable because it’s at every stage of the process.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:08:06] Now I want to talk about you because you’re obviously a very multi-talented woman. You’ve moved from elite performance to building a consumer brand. What is the most transferable skill from Olympic sport to business leadership?
Bronte Campbell: [00:08:17] They’re very different. But I think the most transferable skill or like lesson that I learned from sport is that consistency trumps talent all the time. And I would not say that I am incredibly talented in marketing. Like I’m just learning this as I go along. But if I can be consistent and disciplined, the discipline piece is the one that builds over time, and it doesn’t look flashy and it doesn’t necessarily look like a big win. You know, I think particularly in startup space, everyone’s chasing like a big win. And you hear these stories of like these moments that changed everything. It’s the same in sport. Like, you see like one race and it’s like the moment that changed everything, the moment you won the gold medal. But like, that’s not the most important moment. The most important moment is the discipline that happened before that. Like when I look at Olympic sport, there’s 2,000,000 minutes in four years and I race for one of those. So, like, how do I make sure that that one minute, which is the only one that I get judged on, how do I make sure that that one minute is just like an output of the 2 million? So like, where do you spend your time and energy to create that output? And what’s different about business is that, like you don’t just have one minute every four years. So that’s kind of nice. But learning that discipline and that incremental improvement is how you get the astronomical gains. And knowing that deeply in my core, as opposed to someone just telling me, I think that that’s a really interesting thing that I can take to business and not get frustrated that sometimes things go a bit slower than you want.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:09:46] That is great. And I’m just thinking I need to work on my consistency. It’s underrated, but so important. What about like, resilience and cultivating a growth mindset? I suppose they’re a bit related, but do you think those skills or mindsets also help in business?
Bronte Campbell: [00:09:58] Absolutely. The helping business helping support feedback and then incorporating that into a growth mindset. Like I say to people on my team sometimes say, can I give you some feedback? And I watch their face like, just freeze. I think I’m gonna say something awful. And like most of the time I’m just giving great feedback. But I’ve never thought about feedback as a bad thing. Like when I’m in the water and I’m competing, like I’m getting feedback all the time from my coach, from the times that I’m doing, from the strokes that I’m counting, from the way I’m feeling in the water. And it’s all just information. So like feedback is information. Incorporate that with a growth mindset of like, okay, cool. There’s a challenge in front of me that’s just new information. How do I find another way around this? How do we get creative in the face of uncertainty? How do we get creative about challenges? And my injuries in sport have taught me that. So there definitely are these sort of like big. I hate the word soft skill because it makes it sound like it’s not important, but there’s like sort of, I don’t really know, like maybe habits and ways of thinking that have come from sport that I can bring into business really, really easily. And feedback is my favorite thing ever. Like, I see people walking down the street wearing Athletica and I stopped them like, okay, tell me everything about how you’re feeling right now on this product. They’re like, excuse me, who are you? I’m like, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just really want to know. So it’s just a useful tool.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:11:18] I think so many founders could learn a lot from feedback, and I think it’s not always easy to take. So it’s a great position to have. Look, final question for you, Bronte. A lot of athletes talk about identity change after elite sport. How did you navigate the shift from athlete primarily to business consultant and now co-founder?
Bronte Campbell: [00:11:36] Yeah, so I did have that intermediate bit that you just said, business consulting. I was working at E doing business consulting and learning that I could do something that wasn’t following a black line. So that was kind of really an important step for me and learning to use my brain in different ways. But I think I’ve been in sport for a long time. And so I realized that sport is just one expression of my identity. There’s something within sport that speaks to me. And having these goals that are not related to a particular outcome is really helpful for me. So I mean, that sounds insane, but what I mean by that is my goal going into the Paris Olympics was I want to be the kind of person who relentlessly pursues the things that she’s passionate about, and that was expressed through relentlessly pursuing the Olympics. It is also expressed through relentlessly pursuing success with Athletica. So having something that like feels very true to my identity that I can express in different ways, is sort of how I’ve navigated that. That doesn’t mean that it’s always easy. Definitely not. But it has been incredibly helpful.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:12:39] That was Olympian turned co-founder Bronte Campbell.
How to tackle “AI workslop” to improve productivity
Now we’ve been talking about excellence in sport and business. But many business leaders are worried about one force that’s threatening excellence in their workplace low quality AI generated content, also sometimes known as AI workshop. Neal Woolrich is director of business and technology insights at Gartner. He joins us to explain that while AI promises big productivity gains when used poorly, it can create more problems than it solves. Neal outlines the growing issue of AI work slop, and what leaders should focus on to boost productivity without increasing risk, rework, or employee burnout. To begin with, I asked Neal, what actually is AI work slop and why has it become such a pervasive challenge?
Neal Woolrich: [00:13:33] Well, Grace, the way we define work. Slop is quickly produced, low quality work that’s generated with AI or through AI. And quite often riddled with errors and adding not too much value, or sometimes even taking away value. So what we’ve seen in recent years is that rather than genuinely augmenting the work that employees already do, work, slop can get in the way of their workflows, introduce errors, or introduce redundant tasks, and in some cases require workarounds that really require a lot of human intervention, correction and processing. So it’s been described in the context of AI generated content that can be delivered quickly, but really lacks the precision and the understanding that humans can offer in their work processes.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:14:23] So how can organizations decide which part of work should be genuinely AI augmented versus left to human expertise?
Neal Woolrich: [00:14:31] Well, I think the overarching thing we’ve got to look at grace is value. Where can we implement AI in our work streams in a way that adds value? And I think where I’ve seen a lot of organizations get AI wrong is they’re just focused on what are the tasks that people don’t like doing, and how can we get them off humans plate and get AI to do it for us? That can be a useful solution in some scenarios, but it just avoids that critical question of value. Where is AI really able to add value in our workflows and our processes? And so there’s a few criteria you can look at to help answer that question. One is the complexity of the decision making. Do you need sort of nuanced judgment, empathy or the understanding of context, those things that humans are really good at evaluating. Then that’s probably not appropriate for artificial intelligence. But on the flip side, if it’s not complex, if it’s a really routine task, then they’re the kinds of things that artificial intelligence could do well. So that’s the first criteria, the complexity of decision making. The second one that I would recommend people look at is what is the impact on outcomes and what is the potential risk. So if it’s high risk then we would tend to gravitate towards humans doing that work. If it’s low risk then AI might be appropriate for it. That’s the second criteria risk and the impact on outcomes. And then the third one that I would recommend people look at as well is just your employee readiness and their skill level. How ready are people to embrace AI into particular workflows? And what’s their skill levels there? The kind of criteria that I would recommend people look at. But as I mentioned at the start, the overarching criteria is value. Where can we use artificial intelligence to really add value, rather than just remove repetitive or frustrating tasks that people want to take off their plate?
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:16:28] So in terms of impacts of AI work slop, how does this AI work? Slop actually impact employee morale and perhaps trust in technology?
Neal Woolrich: [00:16:37] Well, probably the number one thing that I’m seeing at the moment, grace, is change fatigue. And it’s not just artificial intelligence, but all sorts of things that are affecting the experience of employees in the workforce at the moment. So the volume of change that people are experiencing has gone up six fold in about five years. But also, there are so many external factors and Interdependencies in change that change. Fatigue is one of the number one issues that employees are facing at the moment. And so artificial intelligence, you know, somewhat counterintuitively, can increase the workload of people in terms of, you know, training, reworking workflows and stimulating new networks in employees experience. So change fatigue is one of those things that we need to be mindful of. One of the negative consequences. The other thing that people need to be aware of and leaders especially, is what is the value of the human contribution that we’re getting in our workplaces? And is there a perception that humans feel less valued? The more and more that we’re introducing artificial intelligence into our workflows? And aligned with that is the fears that people might have, that eventually they’re going to be replaced by a robot or artificial intelligence. And then the other big thing that organizations need to grapple with is trust. Do employees have trust that their employer is going to introduce artificial intelligence responsibly. Do they trust that they will still have a job in a few years time? And do they trust that their employer will help them with the implementation of artificial intelligence in terms of training, upskilling them, or even what we’ve seen some employers do is think about external job opportunities as well. If there is not an opportunity for particular employees in their organization, what is the organization doing to help employees become aware of those external opportunities where they may be valuable somewhere else?
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:18:35] I think it’s good to acknowledge that AI does offer benefits, but also, you know, sometimes it’s not worth adopting AI just for AI sake. So how should organizations measure whether AI adoption is driving real productivity gains versus simply faster outputs?
Neal Woolrich: [00:18:52] Yeah, again, there’s a few things to look at. Grace. The first one is efficiency and accuracy. You know how efficient and accurate are our processes as a result of artificial intelligence being introduced, and there are a few metrics you could look at to measure that. One is project cycle times. How quickly does a project get up and running from inception? That’s something that a lot of organizations are already measuring. And after you introduce artificial intelligence, you can compare project cycle times before and after AI. And you can also measure things like error rates or rework times. You know, how much time are humans spending on reworking or overcoming errors? So the first thing you could look at is process efficiency and accuracy. Second thing you could look at is the quality of outputs. Use some qualitative and quantitative assessments to understand how good is the finished product that we’re producing. And again you know analyzing error rates and accuracy those sorts of things. But then the third thing, which is a little bit more nebulous and a little bit harder to track, but what is the impact of artificial intelligence on our strategic business outcomes. How good is artificial intelligence in some of our key performance indicators like revenue growth, cost savings and customer satisfaction? As I said, some of those things are a little bit hard to measure in terms of the artificial intelligence impact, because there are so many external factors that are affecting things like revenue, cost and customer satisfaction. But it’s good to measure those sorts of things, because ultimately, what we want to get to, as I mentioned before, is the value that artificial intelligence is delivering. And the impact on our strategic business outcomes is one of the key indicators of how effective artificial intelligence is.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:20:43] And final question, Neal, is there any advice you would give HR leaders to help future proof their talent and culture as more AI tools inevitably enter the workplace?
Neal Woolrich: [00:20:53] Well, the first thing grace is you’ve got to have a strategy. And what we’ve seen in a lot of organizations where artificial intelligence is not having the impact that we want is there is no clear strategy. So we need to have both an enterprise wide artificial intelligence strategy and also an HR strategy as well. So some of the things that you would want to think about is, as I said before, where is artificial intelligence able to create value. And organizations that I’ve seen do this well, have cross-functional workshops or focus groups to really analyze their workflows, and where are the opportunities to embed artificial intelligence into those workflows in a way that improves business processes and in terms of human resources. Role in artificial intelligence. The role of human resources is really to get on the front foot and get ahead of ripple effects or the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence. And it’s not just things like artificial intelligence going wrong and producing errors, but things like the talent pipeline. If we introduce artificial intelligence. What will that mean for our talent pipeline? Or what will it mean for our organization design? So that’s the first thing.
Neal Woolrich: [00:22:07] Having a clear enterprise strategy for artificial intelligence and a clear HR strategy for artificial intelligence. The second thing is to have a clear education and training program. How are we going to upskill our people to use artificial intelligence and upskill them in a way where they’re not just dabbling in artificial intelligence, but being very clear on how they’re going to create value through artificial intelligence. And then the third thing, which is also really critical, is just having a very clear governance framework for artificial intelligence. How is that going to align to our existing policies? Who is responsible for governance and who is responsible if things go wrong? So in terms of governance, it’s really a cross-functional thing. You need to get HR involved obviously, but also it to understand what is artificial intelligence capabilities and demystifying some of the myths around artificial intelligence. But also you’ll need key members of the C-suite as well your chief financial officer, your chief legal officer, and people like that. So governance is really the third key pillar to getting artificial intelligence right in our organizations.
Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:23:17] That was Neal Woolrich, a director of business and technology insights at Gartner. Thanks for joining us for this week’s episode. Follow Business Essentials Podcast across social media and head to www.BusinessEssentialsPodcast.au for more. Business Essentials is a SoundCartel podcast. Producers are Nick Schildberger, Nicole Goodman and myself. Technical production is by Pete Letts. I’m Grace Jennings-Edquist thanks for listening. We’ll bring you more business essentials next week.
