Some founders build one business.
Naomi D’souza built several, starting as a mechanical engineer, moving into digital strategy at a Fortune 500 company, and eventually becoming one of Dubai’s most recognised content creators and a three-time TEDx speaker.
Today she runs xNDigitize, a digital marketing firm whose client list spans government, healthcare, AI, energy, and hospitality.
Why This One’s Worth Your Time
If you’re leading a small, fast-growing team, especially a young one, this episode is a masterclass in something most leadership content skips entirely: what it actually feels like in the messy middle, before you’ve got a system for anything.
What Stood Out to Us
- She refused to separate herself from the team, and it built trust fast.
In the early days, Naomi didn’t take on the traditional “employer” stance her team expected. Instead, she worked with them, the same shows, the same hustle, the same long hours.
She admits there are real trade-offs to that approach, but the upside was immediate: people respected her because they genuinely couldn’t tell where she ended and the team began.
Her broader take is one worth noting: you can’t credibly work on a small business if you’re never willing to work in it. Strategy is only as good as the execution behind it, and execution is something you learn by being in the room, not above it.
- The performance review that happened under the stars.
As her team grew, Naomi noticed something starting to creep in, people quietly talking about each other’s performance behind closed doors.
Instead of ignoring it, she looked at how companies like Google and Netflix handle feedback in small teams and built her own version: a twice-yearly open-forum session where everyone gives each other direct, constructive feedback out loud, in the room.
The first one happened under the stars, and by her own account, everyone was terrified going in.
- The rule that made it work: three positives, minimum.
Naomi built one non-negotiable into the process: every piece of feedback has to include at least three things the person does well, not just what needs improving.
The result, months later, was something she didn’t expect: the gossip disappeared.
Once everyone knew feedback had a proper channel, twice a year, in the open, people stopped saving it up to say behind each other’s backs.
- She asked her team to give her feedback too, and actually meant it.
When the open-forum sessions started, Naomi didn’t exempt herself. She told her team she wanted the same treatment, blind spots and all.
What came back surprised her; things like how she came across to clients, or a fidgeting habit she’d never noticed in herself.
Her take on it now: no business coach, however good, can see you the way the people who spend eight hours a day with you can.
- “I don’t look at the CV. I look at the personality.”
With a background in oil and gas rather than anything creative, Naomi built her entire hiring philosophy around personality over paper credentials.
Her job application forms ask people to crack a joke, or flag any mental health concerns they want the team to know about, not the kind of thing you’ll find on a standard application.
Her logic: skills can be taught, but you can’t build attitude into someone who doesn’t have it. It’s the same instinct behind her one big rule for hires: disrespect, dishonesty, and lack of accountability are the only true non-negotiables.
- Leading a Gen Z team by actually listening to them.
Roughly half of XN Digitize’s team is Gen Z, and instead of running the usual “Gen Z is difficult to manage” narrative, Naomi flipped the question: what can leaders actually learn from them?
Her answer, largely, is flexibility. When her team told her the workload had gotten too heavy for a healthy work-life balance, she hired three new people in a single week.
She’s candid that she never enforces a rule without explaining the reasoning behind it, because a team that understands the “why” stays bought in, even when they disagree.
- Learning to delegate, as a self-described control freak.
For years, Naomi worked 12 to 14 hour days rather than hand things off, because she wanted everything done exactly her way.
Learning to delegate, and to recognise when the team genuinely needed another hire, rather than just pushing through, has been one of the hardest shifts in her leadership style.
Why You Should Listen
This isn’t a tidy leadership framework.
It’s a founder talking through four years of genuinely difficult, sometimes messy people decisions: missed red flags, mixed-up boundaries between business and personal life, and a hard-won system for feedback that actually removed toxicity instead of just talking about doing so.
If you’re building a team right now and feel like you’re figuring it out as you go, this conversation will feel like company.
The best leadership lessons rarely come pre-packaged.
They come from missed red flags, uncomfortable feedback sessions, and the slow, deliberate work of learning to trust a team enough to let go.
Naomi’s story is proof that building something that lasts has very little to do with getting it right the first time, and everything to do with staying honest about what you’re still learning.
Listen to the full episode with Naomi D’Souza on the HR Sisters Podcast, and if this resonated with you, share it with a founder who needs to hear it today.