Asim Amin

Founder & CEO at Plumm | Empowering Minds & Building Thriving Workplaces | Passionate Mental Health Advocate

I’m the Founder & CEO of Plumm, the all-in-one HR platform with mental health at its core.

HR today is fragmented, companies juggle payroll, performance, compliance, and wellbeing across too many tools. Plumm brings it all into one platform, helping organisations cut costs, save time, and look after their people. Because no HR strategy is complete without mental health.

Plumm started as a mental health solution and has grown into a full-service HR platform, used by companies worldwide. Our mission is clear: make workplaces more productive, inclusive, and human.

I’m also the host of the Immigrants Building Companies Podcast, where I speak with immigrant entrepreneurs who’ve built companies against the odds, sharing lessons on resilience, growth, and leadership.

If you’d like to:
🚀 Book a demo with Plumm: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0mJb040 
🎙️ Discuss podcasts, speaking, or media features: taslynn@heyplumm.com

International Trade Program

Poor mental health costs UK employers up to £56 billion a year.

And yet, when employers invest even just £1 in preventative employee wellbeing, they see an average return of £5.30.

We’ve seen case after case, that happier employees make for a healthier business.

It’s why we developed Plumm: a seamless all-in-one, evidence-backed mental wellbeing solution for employers and their teams.

We support your team through our global and diverse pool over 200 accredited therapists and coaches, who can cater to their individual needs, preferences, and circumstances, regardless of where they are in their wellbeing journey.

Whether they can benefit from group learning, need professional help and personalised 1:1 therapy or coaching, or self-help resources, we've got it covered.

Ready to level up your team's wellbeing? 👉 https://www.plummhealth.com/request-demo

You’ll spend £4 a day on a latte without blinking.
But £27 a month for your health?
“Too expensive.”

That’s roughly what a WHOOP costs.
And no, not everyone needs a WHOOP.
It could just as easily be a gym membership. Plenty in the UK cost £20–£30 a month.

The number isn’t really the point.
It’s where the line gets drawn.

Some spending feels automatic.
Other spending gets questioned, even when it’s about your own health, energy, and how you want to feel day to day.

That says a lot about priorities.

Because health isn’t a one-off decision.
You don’t choose it once.
You choose it in small ways, over and over again.

Those choices compound.

And one day you realise how you’ve been feeling for a while now
more tired, less resilient, lower energy
or the opposite.

That’s why what you prioritise today matters more than it seems 👌🏼

PS: I still love coffee, but I’d rather have it home ;)

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Founder & CEO at Plumm | Speaker | Advisor

Let’s be honest.
 
Most of us f*cked up over the holidays.
 
Too much food.
Too much sugar.
Too much wine.
 
And now everyone’s pretending they “reset” on Jan 1.
BS.
Here’s what actually happens:
You enjoy yourself.
Then you feel guilty.
Then you convince yourself you’re already behind.
You’re not behind.
You’re human.
 
What’s messed up isn’t December.
It’s the idea that one month can “ruin” you.
Your body didn’t suddenly forget how to function.
Your discipline didn’t disappear.
Your year isn’t over because you ate more than planned.
 
The real problem?
People think progress has to be perfect.
It doesn’t.
Balance beats punishment.
Every time.
 
You don’t need extremes.
You don’t need to suffer.
You don’t need a diet built around how you look.
You need habits built around how you feel.
 
Energy > aesthetics.
Focus > abs.
Consistency > guilt.
 
So no, you didn’t fail January.
And no, you don’t need to “start again” next Monday.
You start today.
You eat better because it helps you think.
You move because it gives you energy.
You sleep because you perform better.
That’s it.
 
Just show up.
Again.
And again.
That’s how it actually works.
 
Happy 2026 everyone ✌🏼

Perfection is how average founders justify being slow.

I’ve done it.
Watched others do it.
Same outcome every time.

Early on, I hid behind “not ready yet”.
What I really meant was: “I don’t want the market to tell me I’m wrong.”
So I delayed.
Refined.
Overthought.
And nothing happened.

In the first 3–5 years, your product isn’t supposed to be good.
It’s supposed to move.
Because movement creates:
- feedback
- revenue
- momentum
Perfection creates meetings.

I’ve launched things that made me cringe.
They still taught me more in a week than months of planning ever did.
Most features I was obsessed with? Nobody cared.
The market told me that. Fast.

And the reality is, most founders fail because they wait until they feel confident.
Confidence doesn’t come before action.
It comes after exposure.

If you’re still polishing:
You’re not protecting quality.
You’re protecting ego.
Speed doesn’t mean sloppy.
It means honest.
And honesty compounds faster than perfection ever will.

DO NOT hire people who are good on paper.

The strongest hires I’ve seen recently weren’t the neatest on paper anyway.
A few gaps.
Not every box ticked.
Some rough edges.

But when things shifted, they didn’t stall.
That’s what stood out.
Work is changing faster than job descriptions can keep up.
By the end of this decade, around 39% of the skills people use today won’t be relevant anymore.
Most roles won’t disappear.
They’ll mutate.
Which makes “tool knowledge” a short-lived advantage.

In practice, I’ve learned to watch for different signals:
Who asks better questions once the brief gets fuzzy.
Who notices second-order problems, not just the task in front of them.
Who can disagree without becoming defensive.
Who recovers quickly after being wrong.

Those things don’t show up on a CV.
And they matter more when pressure is real.

Nearly 6 in 10 people will need reskilling in the coming years.
Yet the global workforce is still expected to grow.
So the edge isn’t experience alone.
It’s adaptability over time.

You can train systems.
Rewrite processes.
Roll out new tools.
What’s harder to build is judgement.
Curiosity under uncertainty.
The ability to stay useful when the rules change.

As automation takes care of the predictable, these qualities surface.
Not because they’re “soft skills”
But because they’re the difference between keeping up
and actually moving forward.

BREAKING 🚨 Europe just made its boldest move for founders in decades.

Yesterday at Davos, Ursula von der Leyen announced EU–INC.
A single, truly European company structure.
This matters. A lot.
For years, Europe hasn’t lacked talent, it’s lacked simplicity.
27 countries.
27 rulebooks.
Different equity rules.
Different compliance hoops.

So founders did the rational thing.
They incorporated elsewhere.
(Usually Delaware)

EU–INC changes the equation.
One corporate framework across the EU.
Incorporate online in 48 hours.
No mandatory notaries.
One legal entity, valid in all 27 countries.
Taxes and labour laws stay national.

The corporate layer goes European. That distinction is critical.
Because Europe’s biggest problem was never ambition. It was friction.

Scaling shouldn’t mean:
– Setting up new entities per country
– Reworking equity structures
– Burning seed capital on legal fees

If executed properly, EU–INC could unlock:
– Faster company creation
– Founder-friendly equity
– Easier cross-border scaling
– A real Single Market, not a theoretical one

Most importantly?
This is the first time Europe has clearly chosen builders over bureaucracy.
Execution will be everything.
Speed will matter.
Consistency will matter.
But the signal is loud and clear: Europe is finally building for founders 🇪🇺🚀

I didn’t wake up one day and decide to rethink health.
Life did it for me.

What surprised me wasn’t the moment itself.
It was what changed afterwards.

How quickly your definition of “healthy” shifts when it’s no longer abstract.
When it’s not about performance, or numbers, or discipline.
You start paying attention to different things.
How stress shows up in your body.
How sleep affects your mood, not just your energy.
How recovery isn’t optional if you want consistency.

Longevity stops being about adding years.
It becomes about protecting capacity.

The ability to think clearly under pressure.
To regulate stress instead of living in it.
To train, work, and live without constantly borrowing from tomorrow.

I’m reading Outlive at the moment.
What resonates most isn’t the science, it’s the reminder that decline accumulates through small decisions repeated daily.
Ignoring signals.
Normalising fatigue.
Treating rest as a reward instead of a requirement.

Perspective changes how you move through life.
You become less reactive.
More intentional.

Longevity, in that sense, isn’t about fear.
It’s about responsibility.
And once life forces that lesson,
you don’t approach health the same way again.

STOP focusing on your personal brand.

(I know, coming from someone who posts 5x week lol)
But hear me out.

A lot of people start building their personal brands, and then visibility comes:
the likes, the comments, the impressions, DMs
you somehow get momentum

but something doesn’t quite add up..
All those vanity numbers..all the likes, all the followers..
CAN’T fix a sh*t product
(or service)

The issue is that attention doesn’t give you breathing room. It does the opposite.
Once people are watching, they’re not just reacting to your ideas. They’re experiencing everything. The product. The service. The follow-up. The bits you were hoping to fix later.

If that experience is weak, people don’t argue about it. 
They just disappear.

I’ve seen people with impressive visibility struggle to keep customers.
I’ve also seen founders with no presence at all build businesses people stick with because the thing actually does what it says.

A personal brand doesn’t create trust. 
It spends it.

Does that mean you should not work on your personal brand? Absolutely not, you should.
But that shouldn’t be your priority.

Building an amazing product should be.
Building a fantastic service your customers can’t stop talking about should be.

Once you have that, then you can build your personal brand on top.
Just get your priorities straight.

And btw, sometimes the best move is to shut up, build properly, and let people talk later 👋🏻

If your best people are leaving..
it’s probably NOT about MONEY.

It’s about growth.
Companies that invest seriously in L&D see up to 50% higher retention.
Yet most still treat learning as a perk - or worse, a cost.

That’s not a people problem.
That’s a leadership one.

High performers don’t quit bad jobs, they quit stagnation.
When people stop learning, they don’t argue.
They don’t disengage loudly.
They don’t ask for more.
They just start planning their exit.

The data is blunt:
- 94% would stay longer with better development
- Growth opportunities now outrank pay for many senior performers
- Teams with weak learning cultures lose their best talent first

And yet we keep trying to fix retention with:
Bonuses.
Perks.
Offsites.

None of those solve stagnation.
Real L&D is whether someone leaves a year later with better judgment, broader scope, and more confidence than when they arrived.
If the answer is no, they’ll leave.
Eventually.

That’s why we don’t treat L&D as HR hygiene.
We treat it as leadership responsibility.
Because people don’t stay loyal to companies.
They stay loyal to growth.

“Go to HR.”

People hear it the same way they heard “go to the headteacher’s office” at school.
Somewhere you end up once things have already gone wrong.

That perception didn’t come out of nowhere.

HR usually gets involved after weeks of small things being left unsaid. 
Feedback is usually avoided. 
And, expectations are left vague. 
Managers hoping issues fix themselves. 
By the time HR shows up, there’s history, emotion, and momentum.

From the outside, HR looks like enforcement.
Inside, HR is dealing with accumulated silence.

Most problems don’t start as formal issues. 
They start as ordinary moments that weren’t handled early, when the cost was low.

When managers treat HR as the place difficult conversations go, people learn to associate HR with punishment instead of support.

If you want HR to feel human, managers have to do the human work first.

Clear expectations early. 
Feedback while there’s still room to adjust. Intervention before frustration hardens.

HR isn’t the headteacher’s office.
It just inherits what wasn’t handled sooner.

2026 HR trends you need to know:

1. HR will end up owning problems no one else wants
Because they sit between leadership intent and lived reality.

2. AI will finally expose how little most companies understand their own workforce
HR has been saying this quietly for years.

3. “Hiring shortages” will keep being blamed on the market
When the issue is internal talent stuck in the wrong places.

4. Job frameworks will keep getting rewritten
Work will keep changing faster.

5. Hybrid work will stay unresolved
Because many leaders still don’t know what good work looks like.

6. Burnout won’t be treated as a crisis
Until it hits delivery timelines.

7. As usual, HR will be looped in late,
then blamed early.

HR isn’t late. 
It’s just been convenient to ignore.

There’s one kind of decision
I never got used to making.

It wasn’t about direction or priorities.
It was about people, and knowing that whatever I chose would follow them home.

Later, it gets called a pivot. 
In the moment, it felt like sitting across from someone and realising you were about to change something you couldn’t take back.

I’ve been laid off before. 
I remember the shock, the quiet afterwards, the way it made everything outside of work feel suddenly uncertain.

I’ve also had to be the one delivering that news.
What stays with me isn’t what I said.
It’s what I saw.
The pause before someone replied.
The way they nodded, even when it hurt.
How often they asked about everyone else instead of themselves.

There wasn’t anger.
There was care.

People checking in on teammates.
Worrying about how the team would manage.
Trying to make sense of what came next.

That kind of response doesn’t come from policies or values written on a wall.
It comes from how people have been treated all along.

You don’t really understand leadership when things are moving fast and going well.
You understand it when something breaks and there is nowhere to hide.

We talk a lot about growth.
But responsibility shows up differently.
It sits with you long after the meeting ends.
Long after the decision is made.

Those moments are uncomfortable, and they should be.
Because once the decision is made, there’s nowhere else for it to land but on you.
You don’t get to soften it with language or hide behind process.
All you can do is stand in it, be clear, be honest, and make sure the people affected are treated with as much care as possible.
Not because it looks good.
Because you owe them that.

If things get hard → raise.
If growth slows → raise.
If you’re unsure → raise.

There’s a weird default in startups…
Everyone’s obsessed with raising.
But no one really stops to ask the boring question:

What exactly are we trying to buy with this money?

Not the pitch-deck version.
The one you’re honest about when it’s just you and the numbers.

Some of the best decisions I’ve made at Plumm didn’t happen after a round.
They happened when there was little (sometimes VERY little) money in the bank.
Because that’s when you’re forced to think differently.
You get creative.
You stop hiding behind “we’ll fix it after the raise”.
You really ask: what actually moves the needle?

Scarcity sharpens you.
It forces out-of-the-box thinking.
It makes you ruthless about priorities.
Sales matters more.
Focus matters more.
Every spend suddenly has to earn its place.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve been sold this fundraiser lifestyle.
The press.
The LinkedIn posts.
The idea that raising equals success.

But money isn’t success.
It’s just fuel.
And fuel on a bad engine doesn’t fix the engine.

There were moments where raising felt like the obvious next step.
And then we realised it wasn’t.
The better question became:
How do we push revenue?
How do we sell better?
What can we do without more capital?

Raising can make sense, I’m not anti-fundraising, but raising by default is a trap.
And sometimes, having less is exactly what makes you a better founder.
Because when there’s no safety net, your instincts show up properly.

You can’t make an A-player out of a B-player.

I know people hate hearing that.
I used to, too.

For a long time, I thought the right coaching, enough time, or “the right environment” would change people. It doesn’t. Not in the way founders hope it will.

I’ve tried. 
More than once. 
And every time, it cost the business.

Ash didn’t step up because he was promoted. 
He was promoted because he was already acting like it mattered to him personally.

No one had to chase him. 
No one had to spell things out twice. 
No one had to convince him to care.

He already did.
That’s the difference.
Some people feel ownership naturally. 
Others wait to be told what to do, how to do it, and when it’s “enough.”

You can train skills. 
You can’t train that internal bar.

At some point, I stopped trying to turn the wrong people into the right ones. And started backing the people who were already wired differently.

Everything got easier after that. 
Decisions. 
Trust. 
Progress.

Ash is a good example of this.
He is THAT person who takes responsibility even when no one is watching.
He cares.

If this makes you uncomfortable, good. 
It should.

PS: Choose carefully. 
And stop lying to yourself about potential.

The worst way to start a business:

	1.	Decide you want to be a founder before knowing what you want to build (because you like the “lifestyle”..)
	2.	Reverse-engineer a product that sounds good to investors, not customers
	3.	Build an MVP to justify a deck, not to solve a problem
	4.	Avoid talking to users because “we already know the market”
	5.	Call early confusion “vision”
	6.	Ship features no one asked for because they look impressive in demos
	7.	Measure success by meetings booked, not problems solved
	8.	Sell discounts as “traction”
	9.	Hire sales to compensate for unclear value
	10.	Blame sales when customers don’t convert
	11.	Add more features instead of fixing the core problem
	12.	Call lack of focus “moving fast”
	13.	Run internal meetings about growth instead of external conversations with users
	14.	Burn cash to protect the narrative
	15.	Pivot quietly, rebrand loudly 
	16.	Tell the team profitability comes after scale
	17.	Run out of time, not ideas
	18.	Buy PR articles to boost you ego

Remember: Build something people would miss if it disappeared.

Everyone wants the quick win.
The overnight success.
The shortcut.
The “one good idea”.
What they don’t want is the part before it.

It took me 10 businesses
and 27 years
to get here.

Because that’s how long it took to actually understand what works.
Most of those businesses didn’t fail, they just… faded.
Wrong timing.
Thin margins.
People problems.
Ideas that sounded good but didn’t survive reality.

Each one taught me something small and painfully specific.
How fragile cash really is.
How quickly momentum dies.
How often “almost ready” is just fear in disguise.

There was no big moment where it all clicked, just fewer mistakes over time.
The Plumm people see now isn’t the result of a breakthrough, it’s the result of repetition, and the sum of all the hard lessons learnt in those 27 years.

Everyone wants the result.
Very few want the years it takes to recognise one.
That gap is where most people disappear.

We all say we hate talking about money.
What we really hate is being exposed.

Because money has a way of cutting through the BS.

The biggest mistake I see some founders make is stepping away from numbers too early.

Because staying close to revenue forces uncomfortable conversations.

Sales conversations.
Pricing conversations.
Reality conversations.

Top line tells you if anyone actually wants what you’re building.
Bottom line tells you whether the way you’re building it is sustainable.

Ignore either, and you start lying to yourself.

I’ve seen founders obsess over growth while margins slowly collapse.

I’ve seen “strong pipelines” with no cash to show for it.

By the time they re-engage with the numbers, the options are already limited.

Spreadsheets aren’t finance work. They’re where the truth shows up first.

If you know your numbers, you feel in control.
If you don’t, you call it stress.

That’s the difference.

“Is there still a future in HR?”

That question keeps coming up because a lot of HR work is disappearing in plain sight.

AI is already handling the volume work.
Questions. Admin. Scheduling. Screening.
The things that kept teams busy and roles full.

That part isn’t coming back.

But much of that work was never the value.

For years, HR became the place unfinished thinking was sent.
Vague roles. Avoided conversations. Poor decisions dressed up as process.

AI exposes that.

Because once the admin goes, what’s left is judgement.
And judgement is harder work.

The future of HR belongs to people who can design work that still makes sense as organisations change.
Intervene early, before silence turns into resentment.
Support leaders when there is no policy to hide behind.
Read patterns humans feel long before data shows them.

AI can answer questions.
It can’t rebuild trust.
It can’t decide what “fair” looks like in a messy situation.
It can’t carry the weight of a hard call.

Teams using tools like Plumm are already shifting this way.
Less firefighting.
More thinking.

So yes, there is a future in HR.

But it belongs to those willing to step away from owning process
and into helping organisations make better decisions about work.

Cognitive decline starts earlier than what you think 
(and if you are 30+, you should be reading this..)

Yep, the decline starts in your early 30s..
way earlier than you expected, right?

And interesting enough, the other day I was reading how some studies put the difference between people who actively challenge their brains and those who don’t at 2–3 years of memory decline.
In some cases, closer to a decade…

So, I was like “Hold on a minute.. I need to do something about it..”

So I’ve been trying to go back to basics lately.
And yesterday, instead of doing anything particularly “CEO-productive”,
I did a puzzle.
No phone nearby.
No background noise.

What surprised me wasn’t that it was calming.
It was how unfamiliar it felt to concentrate like that.
Holding pieces in my head.
Remembering what didn’t fit.
Staying with the problem instead of jumping to something else.
That kind of effort used to be normal.
Now it’s rare.

The data on brain longevity is pretty consistent on one thing:
it’s not about consuming more information.
It’s about effortful thinking.
Puzzles, crosswords, problem-solving tasks - they show up again and again in studies on cognitive reserve.
They force the brain to slow down and work.

Kids do this instinctively.
Adults engineer it out of their lives.
Shortcuts.
Assistance.
Constant input.
The brain adapts.

I’m not claiming puzzles are a solution to anything.
But they’re a good reminder.
If brain health matters - not just now, but over time -
it’s worth paying attention to how often we actually ask our brains to do something hard.

Sometimes going back to basics isn’t regression.
It’s maintenance 👌🏼

PS: What was your weekend “brain activity”?

“Graduates should work for free.”

That’s not a hot take.
It’s exploiting the market while pretending it’s common sense.

What it really says is this:
We want output without accountability.
We want talent without doing the work of building it.

Entry-level roles were never meant to be efficient, they were meant to be formative.
You hired for raw potential.
You tolerated mistakes.
You invested time before expecting judgement.
That’s how people got good.

Now?
Many companies want graduates who arrive finished.
Tool-ready. Confident. Immediately useful.

And when they don’t?
The gap gets filled with unpaid labour.
“Trials.”
“Exposure.”
Open-ended internships with no real intent to hire.

The cost moves from the balance sheet to the individual.
Income disappears.
Waiting becomes the price of entry.
At that point, talent isn’t about ability, it’s about who can afford to be patient.

AI is making this worse.
The low-risk learning work is vanishing.
Junior roles are fewer.
The remaining ones demand judgement before judgement has time to exist.
Instead of redesigning how people grow, many companies opt out altogether.

Pay matters.
Not as a moral argument.
As a forcing function.
Pay creates obligation.
Clear expectations.
Feedback.
Actual management.

Without pay, there is no graduate role.
There is only unpaid labour with nicer language.

If you hire graduates, you’re making a choice.
Either you build capability, or you extract value and avoid responsibility.

We’ve always paid interns, because serious companies invest in the pipeline they depend on.

If you hire graduates, pay them.
That’s the line between developing people
and taking advantage of them.

He travelled the world building businesses. 
Then he came back to the UK.

James went to China at 18. 
1997. 
Six months to teach English.

He picked China because it felt hard. 
New system. 
New rules. 
Nothing familiar.
That choice shaped everything.

Working abroad showed him that business isn’t just about competence. 
It’s about knowing how things really work. 
What’s said. 
What isn’t.

In China, contracts were flexible. 
In the Philippines, age mattered more than ability. 
At 26, being young made selling harder.

He moved across Asia through a management programme. 
Different countries. Different businesses. 
Sometimes with a week’s notice.

Family brought him home.
He built a bike marketplace. 
It looked successful. 
Awards. Partners. Press.
But it didn’t work. 
Ethical supply couldn’t scale.

When his family needed him, he stepped in. 
He grew the recruitment business. 
88 people. Five countries. 
Sold in 2020.

He’s not an immigrant in the UK. 
But immigration shaped everything he built.

Today, he works with founders who are already carrying a lot. 
Helping them think more clearly. 
And make better decisions under pressure.

🎙️ Watch the full episode below. 
Link in the comment section.

Founder & VC Coach | Advisor | Speaker | Podcast Host

Co-founder & CEO at Flash Pack 🌏 Social adventures for solo travelers. Follow for daily posts on building a career and life with purpose.

On a mission to create 1 million meaningful friendships using the power of travel. 

In 2014, I founded a boutique adventure company called Flash Pack that connects solo travellers aged 30-49 across the globe. 

I was in my 30s:
 
➤ Stressed with work. 
➤ Not quite nailed what I wanted to do. 
➤ Friends were busy, getting married & having kids

I wanted to get away for some fun & an adventure. 

But when I researched the market, there was nothing for me, just: 

a) Party packages for budget backpackers in their 20s.
b) Slow but luxurious options for retirees in their 60s. 

I wanted something in between:

✨ A dynamic adventure. 
✨ People at my stage of life. 
✨ A boutique hotel, not a hostel! 

And Flash Pack was born 🌏 

Fast forward 10 years… 

🗺️ We offer all the classics, as well as bucket list trips. 
🗺️ From Portugal, to Japan, Australia, and beyond! 

Our trips are 100% hassle-free. We sort the incredible people, handpick the experiences, hotels & guides. And we OBSESS over  the group dynamic, ensuring those connections feel natural. All you need to do is turn up! 

So far, we’ve created: 

✨100,000 friendships
✨With 80% of travellers staying connected after trips. 

But the journey has been FAR from linear. 

Diwali 2020: COVID forced us to close the business & we lost everything. 
Diwali 2021: we relaunched Flash Pack 2.0. 

Today, we’re stronger than ever. 

↳ A global team of 90.
↳ A +400k strong community. 
↳ A £7.5M raise to expand our mission. 

What took us 4 years pre-COVID, has taken 2. And we’re just getting started!

Follow for more of the journey, as I scale Flash Pack 2.0 - sharing the mistakes & the lessons, whilst championing the importance of human connection, women’s empowerment & diversity in entrepreneurship 🩵

Want to explore our life-changing trips? ⤵ 
🌐 Head to FLASHPACK.COM 

– 

For media, press or speaking inquiries: radha@flashpack.com

For soul-warming content ⤵
📽️ @flashpack on Instagram 
📽️ @flashpacktravel on TikTok

Radha Vyas

A lot of people my age don’t want to say this…

But getting a job is not the same as it was 10 years ago.

Things have changed. 

Here are 7 new rules I'm teaching my daughter: 

❌ Your degree determines your career trajectory 
✅ Skills matter more than formal education

❌ Only technical skills matter 
✅ Soft skills ARE skills (especially in the age of AI)

❌ Follow rigid career ladders 
✅ Carve unconventional paths that leverage strengths

❌ Wait for permission to lead 
✅ Leadership comes from initiative, not titles

❌ Let your work speak for itself 
✅ You must advocate for yourself

❌ Stay off social media for work
✅ Your online profile can help your career

❌ Stay at one job forever
✅ Strategic job-hopping can accelerate your career

The world of work has evolved (thank goodness?) 

Job-seekers and employers...

Your approach must too 🤷🏽♀️


🍀 Agreed? What would you add?
—
👋🏽 I’m Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack. We connect solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

Follow for regular posts on the journey!

What people THINK a career break is:

→ Laziness masked as "finding yourself" 
→ A sign you can't handle the pressure 
→ Career suicide that you'll never recover from 
→ An expensive way to avoid responsibility 
→ Something only privileged people can do 
→ A massive gap in your CV that needs explaining 
→ Running away from your problems

What it ACTUALLY is:

→ A chance to reset your mental compass 
→ Space to rediscover what truly drives you 
→ An investment in your long-term growth 
→ Time to develop new skills and perspectives 
→ Permission to prioritise your wellbeing 
→ A catalyst for significant life changes 
→ An opportunity to broaden your worldview 
→ The clarity you need for your next chapter

A break isn’t a setback.

It’s a setup for something greater.

Agreed?

🔄 Repost if this resonates
_
👋🏽 I'm Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack, connecting solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

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The most confident person in the room is usually the least qualified.

I used to watch certain people in meetings speak with absolute certainty and think: they must know something I don't.

They didn't.

Cornell University psychologists proved that incompetent people physically lack the cognitive hardware to realise they're failing. They can't see the complexity of the task. So they radiate confidence.

Meanwhile, the people actually paying attention to nuance? They hesitate. They second-guess. They feel like frauds.

Corporate culture rewards the loudest voice, not the smartest mind.

So if you're a woman sitting in a room full of confident men wondering why you feel like you don't belong, consider this:
You're not failing to keep up.
You're just the only one who can see what they're missing.

🍀 Repost if you've ever mistaken someone's ignorance for leadership capability.
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👋🏽 I'm Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack. We connect solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

Follow for daily posts on the journey!

"You have a young child, how can you run a global company?"

I get this question often. 

And it baffles me that people still assume: 

Family should be a woman's priority more than a man's
Mothers can't be fully dedicated to their careers
Children need their mother present 24/7

These assumptions make me feel:

→ Frustration at the outdated thinking
→ Determination to prove the doubters wrong
→ Pride in showing my daughter what's possible

But let's think about what actually matters...

What does successful parenting look like?

I believe:

1. Showing your child what's possible
2. Being present when it matters the most
3. Having a partner who shares the load

My husband Lee and I are 50/50 partners:

→ Some days I work late
→ Some days he works late
→ We both read bedtime stories
→ We both do school runs

For me, this is modern-day parenting. 

With proper support and priorities, a woman can be both a mother AND build a killer career. 

So when people ask how I do it all?

I remind them I'm not doing it all alone.

I'm doing it with an equal partner who believes in me.

And showing my daughter that ambition has no limits.

♻️ Repost if you think this could help someone in your network. 
—
👋🏽 I'm Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack, connecting solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

Follow for regular posts on the journey!

People-pleasing is a form of lying. Your team knows it.

When I first started Flash Pack, I used to think the nicer I was, the harder people would work for me.

Turns out I had it backwards.

What I called "nice" was actually avoidance. I didn't want to be the difficult boss. The demanding one. The woman who makes people uncomfortable.

So I let things slide. Said "great job" when I meant "this needs work." Smiled through missed deadlines.

Then came the reckoning. Six months of feedback I'd been sitting on. Six months of things I should have said but didn't.

And you know what happened?

They weren't grateful. They were furious.

Not at the feedback itself. At the fact I'd known for months and said nothing.

One person told me: "You let me fail in slow motion."
That landed.

Here's what I've learned since:
👉  Honest feedback isn't unkind. Withholding it is.
👉  People don't need you to protect them from the truth. They need you to respect them  enough to share it.
👉 Being liked is not the same as being trusted.
👉  And trust is built in the uncomfortable conversations you're avoiding right now.

🍀 Repost if you're learning that kindness sometimes looks like honesty.
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👋🏽 I'm Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack. We connect solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

Follow for daily posts on the journey!

A perfect CV is a red flag.

Here's what I look for instead.

A gap. A failure. A moment where everything fell apart and they had to rebuild.

Professional scar tissue.

Apple call it "distance travelled." The candidate with straight-A grades and prestigious internships has a short distance. They started near the top and stayed there.

But the candidate who failed, got knocked down, and clawed their way back? They've travelled miles. They've got scars.

That's what I'm hiring for.

Because I need people who can handle a new category launch imploding the day before. Or scaling into a market when nothing goes to plan.

A polished CV doesn't tell me how you'll react when that happens. Scar tissue does.
So, stop hiding the mess.

Your scar tissue might be the most valuable thing on your CV.

🍀 Repost if your path wasn't a straight line either.
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👋🏽 I'm Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack. We connect solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

Follow for daily posts on the journey!

Not all “high performers” are good for your company.

Some quietly destroy trust, morale, and culture - and hide behind their results to get away with it.

Here are 6 toxic behaviours to watch for:

1/ Shifting blame when things go wrong. 
2/ Hoarding information to stay indispensable. 
3/ Performing for leadership while creating chaos. 
4/ Relentless critique without offering solutions. 
5/ Saying what leaders want to hear, not what's needed. 
6/ Quietly undermining colleagues’ credibility.

And when you call them out?

"It's just how I get results." 
"You're being too sensitive." 
"They’re just not a fit for our culture."

The truth:

You can’t build a great culture if you protect toxic behaviour.

No matter how good someone’s numbers look.

Culture is shaped by what you reward AND what you tolerate.

Agreed?

♻️ Share to protect teams.
—
👋🏽 I’m Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack. We connect solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

Follow for regular posts on the journey!

Not all “high performers” are good for your company.

What's the point of "making it" if you can't enjoy it? 

True success isn't just business metrics.

It's having energy for your loved ones.
It's feeling present in your own life.
It's creating space for joy and rest.

We glorify the hustle culture.

But at what cost? 

The real goal is sustainable high performance. 

In your career AND your wellbeing. 
In your ambitions AND your happiness. 
In your business AND your relationships. 

Success without wellbeing?

Its just exhaustion with a fancy title! 

And who wants that, right? 

🔄 Repost to remind your network! 
_
👋🏽 I'm Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack, connecting solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

Follow for regular posts on the journey!

Let's talk about the real reason we fear career breaks.

It's not just about missing opportunities.

It's that voice in your head saying:

"What if they realise they don't need me?"
"What if everything runs fine without me?"
"What if I'm not as important as I thought?"

I hear these fears constantly.

We've tied our worth so tightly to our work.

It's a treadmill. One too afraid to get off... 

Even when it's exhausting us.
Even when we know we need rest.

Because jumping off feels like risking our career. 

But after 10+ years leading teams, here's what I know:

Your value isn't in your constant presence.

It's in:
Your clarity.
Your energy.
Your perspective.

And you can't maintain any of those running on empty.

Take that break. 

The work will be there when you return, and you'll be better equipped to do it 🩵 
—
👋🏽 I’m Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack. We connect solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

Follow for regular posts on the journey!

Being the only brown woman in the room comes with a specific kind of exhaustion.

You're already scanning for whether you belong.

Then imposter syndrome walks in and sits on your chest.

It's a double weight. The external question of "do they think I should be here?" layered on top of the internal one: "should I be here?"

But here's what I've had to learn:
The Dunning-Kruger research shows that the people who feel like frauds are usually the ones whose brains are sophisticated enough to detect their own gaps.

The people who are actually unqualified? They don't feel it. They can't. They lack the cognitive hardware.

So if you're a woman of colour leading something and the imposter feeling never quite leaves - it might not be because you don't belong.

It might be because you're paying attention in ways others aren't.

Your doubt isn't proof you're behind.
It might just be proof you're ahead.

🍀 Repost if you've carried the double weight and kept going anyway.
-
👋🏽 I'm Radha Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder of Flash Pack. We connect solo travellers on life-changing social adventures.

Follow for daily posts on the journey!

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The Battle

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