Inside the head of Loïc Soubeyrand, Founder and CEO of Swile

 

This article is based on the first episode of our What Health podcast, with guest Loïc Soubeyrand. To listen to the episode go to Spotify and don't forget to subscribe to receive a notification when the next episode is released, as well as put 5 stars to help us emerge.  

To launch our What Health podcast, we decided to dedicate the first episode to the mentor of the Future4care class of 2021, Loïc Soubeyrand.  

Loïc is both the Ying and the Yang. On the one hand we have the successful entrepreneur. The one who comes to shake up markets with great ambitions. First in advertising and now in the employee experience. Able to start from scratch, but with impressive determination.  In a few figures. Teads, the first company founded by Loïc, has several hundred million in sales, a merger, several hundred employees, dozens of countries, and then a buyout. Swile, his second company, has been in existence for less than four years and is already valued at more than one billion euros.  

On the other side, we have a a thirty year old who is described by his former partner as 'humble despite a success that could go to your head, and retains an incredible desire to learn'. He is also an attentive and involved family man and husband.  

At Future4care, we wanted to offer you an immersion in Loïc's head; to know all the ins and outs of his successes, his way of thinking, of managing and of course creating.  

This podcast presents both the life of an entrepreneur with two successful businesses under his belt, but also the life of a boy, from a family of health professionals, who followed his instincts and determination to achieve his dreams.  

To give you an idea of what's inside, here are the 4 things we discovered about Loïc that make him the well-known entrepreneur and man he is today.  

1. Entrepreneur at heart, but family first  
2. Culture at the heart of corporate life strategy  
3. People, the pillar of a sustainable company  
4. Decide quickly, rather than overthink  

Entrepreneur at heart, but family first  

As mentioned, in Loïc's case, there is the tails side, the entrepreneur who started working when he was a student, and the front side, the family man, the husband, the brother, the son.  

Much more sensitive to his personal life/side, Loïc talked to us about his life to explain how he got there today. A duality from his origins, half Breton and half Ardèche, even if born in Montpellier, he has never known how to be one thing at a time.  

Coming from a family of health professionals, he says he was not attracted to that, but always fought to achieve what he wanted. In his family, you never lacked anything, but you never had everything either, which forged his determination to get what he wanted, whatever it took.  A scholarship student, he decided to become an entrepreneur with 800€ per month to live on, including 400€ for rent "the real life, the real reality" he says. Seven days a week at work, living for himself and his company alone, the ransom for creating Teads.  

Today, things have changed. Two companies later and more responsibilities than ever, he is now married with two children. On several occasions he mentions his gratitude to his wife, the chief family officer, who agreed to temporarily put her professional career on hold to allow him to develop his own while raising their two children together.  He confided that they had understood that they could not be two entrepreneurs like him. The children would lose out completely.  

So we asked him how he managed his time, how he managed to keep time with his wife and children, between his travels in France and Brazil and his various responsibilities.  It's all a question of organization and will. He tells us that his wife makes sure that family time exists, lasts and is of high quality. Working during these times is out of the question. On weekday evenings, when he is in Montpellier, Loïc is home by 7pm to have dinner and put the children to bed. He allows himself an hour to an hour and a half with them and he does not bring the problems home.  

In spite of the work, the load of responsibilities, Loïc tries to work on moments when his entourage does not realize it. What matters is that the work never impacts the family, especially on weekends, even if it doesn't prevent him from having to put in a few hours.  

Culture at the heart of its corporate life strategy  

It was the need and desire to build a strong culture in his entrepreneurial adventure that made Launchr, the first name of his second company, evolve into Swile.  

Indeed, the initial idea was to dematerialize the restaurant vouchers, but at the same time there was a strong desire, on the part of Loïc and his associates, to have a strong internal culture.  Swile was therefore born out of the need to build a strong culture internally, and then to become an offer and a product marketed to other companies concerned about taking care of their employees in turn.  

We asked Loïc what a strong corporate culture is.  He explains that he has defined a framework made up of 5 drivers of development and commitment.  

1. The first is what we call 'safety'. Psychological safety, financial safety and physical safety.  
2. The second is 'grow', personal development with all the issues of career planning and impact.  
3. The third is 'belonging'. All the topics of team cohesion, the one that Loïc expresses as the most intense for him.  
4. The fourth is esteem, recognition and consideration.  
5. And the fifth is 'meaning'. The meaning of one's work, of the company, of the mission and vision, of the values, of the CSR issues, of the company's objectives...  

These five pillars are fundamentally individual. That's why it's important to work together, to give employees a voice.  

They are the basis of a company's culture, of the bond that will be created between an employer and his employee and that will determine the quality of the relationship and the evolution of the company itself. Evolving over time, they need to be treated with a long-term vision, with a view to collaboration.  

People, the pillar of a sustainable company  

"People don't want to tolerate what is not tolerable anymore, so go right away" says Loïc.  

It was through the Teads experience that he learned and integrated the importance of creating the "pole people" from the beginning. He refuses to call it 'human resources', which takes us back to the industrial era, where employees were interchangeable bolts, employed for their efficiency only, without taking the time to consider their needs, their expectations.  

He also explains that in order to live a hyper-growth adventure, where raising funds is essential to hire employees, the key is to think and develop the employee experience, from the start.  

There are dozens of questions you need to ask yourself to make your company attractive and livable. From the very first recruitment, you need to be able to answer the following questions: What is my compensation policy? What will I offer employees? Is my vision clear? Am I being fair or not?  

Loïc also explains that commitment is a form of consequence of fulfilment.  

It's earned, it's a form of gift. A person that you employ, if they feel good about your company, then they decide to commit to you. And if they are committed, then of course there are all the wonderful things that come from that, that are the consequences of your own commitment.  

It's obvious, it's not just about a table football or a ping pong table. We are not talking about doubling their salary at the end of the month, the employees are not asking for that, they know very well what 1€ represents, they are not utopian.  

They want to feel psychologically safe to be able to talk, to feel listened to. They want to understand where they are going and they also want to feel part of a team where there is kindness, respect and recognition. Above all, they want to work on a project that makes sense to them, in which they will feel useful and valued.  

In concrete terms, your project depends on the people who work for its development. The more you value them and invest in your teams, the more your project will gain value and move in the right direction, since your vision will be shared by all.  

Decide quickly, rather than overthink  

Loïc told us that he has a tendency to theorize and think about things before taking action. At least, this was the case before he met his former partner Pierre Chappaz and the merger between Ebuzzing and Teads.  

While observing and working with his partner, he became aware that until now he had been holding back. He was too often preventing himself from taking action. Then he learned and continues to decide very quickly.  

He does not deny that this can lead to errors of judgement, but draws attention to the need to act in a considered manner despite everything and especially according to the vision and strategy established. In the end, this guaranteed him a much more interesting ratio than before, rather than two decisions out of ten, which were certainly right, but eight others not taken, he noted rather eight right decisions taken and two to be reviewed and improved.  

He confides that there is necessarily a part of intuition in this process, that you have to accept not having all the cards in your hand sometimes, but that above all you have to accept to rely on what you have built and the strength of the people around you. It is at this precise moment that confidence comes into play. Finally, all this is possible when we are confident. We accept to take a decision, whatever it is, when we accept to give our trust in the person, the moment, the situation that surrounds this decision.  

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It is clear that the human being is at the heart of all Loïc Soubeyrand's personal and professional reflections.  

Successful entrepreneur, family man, husband, son, he made the most of his lessons, successes and background to get exactly where he wanted to go.  

He tells us that Swile is a much larger playground than he had imagined and that the adventure is far from over. The employee welfare still needs to be dug, improved, enriched. He also explained to us that even if meal vouchers were born in France, they are now 4x more popular in Brazil, the world's leading market in employee benefits, which suggests the work that remains to be done in this sector.  

For Loïc and his associates, corporate life will never be synonymous with productivity alone, but also with kindness, trust and collaboration. The company is above all a question of humans working together to accomplish a common project.  

When Loïc was asked what his wildest dream would be, he replied that he would like to see the majority of companies in the world become people first, and that technology could have a positive impact on the people we too often forget.  

See you in a few years to know if Loïc's dream comes true, if the employee welfare develops as much as it can and should. In the meantime, you can watch the podcast in its entirety here and listen to it on our Spotify channel, here.