Podcast appearances and mentions of Jeff Weiner

Guest: Emilie Choi, president & COO of CoinbaseAfter the collapse of FTX in 2022, “the whole industry was tarnished,” recalls Coinbase COO Emilie Choi. “Politicians came out criticizing crypto, saying it was a fraud.”But unlike FTX, Coinbase was a public company in the U.S. So when the SEC served it a Wells notice, announcing its intent to charge the company with violating securities laws, the executive team took an unusual step: They went on the offensive, publicly calling BS on the agency.“Well-regarded CEOs from TradFi, they were like, ‘You don't do that,'” Emilie says. “'You don't antagonize your regulator.' ... It was a combination of chutzpah and maybe desperation that we were like, ‘We have to go tell our story, because if we don't, nobody else will.'”Chapters: (01:14) - Working with founder CEOs (04:12) - Mission first (07:16) - Reviewing candidates (09:48) - Unusual hiring (11:22) - Crypto after FTX (16:29) - Operation Choke Point 2.0 (19:19) - Grin and bear it (21:24) - Channeling negativity (24:21) - Going to war with the SEC (26:20) - Donald Trump and Gary Gensler (28:38) - Was it worth it? (31:19) - Shipping challenges (34:03) - OKRs and personal goals (36:41) - Brian Armstrong and structure (40:56) - The COO guidebook (43:30) - Removing bureaucracy (46:50) - Investing in crypto (49:41) - After Coinbase (53:03) - Constantly on (54:53) - Favorite interview questions (56:28) - Who Coinbase is hiring (58:28) - Standing for something Mentioned in this episode: Google Chat, executive coaches, Mark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, speed reading, Warner Bros., Elizabeth Warren, Sam Bankman-Fried, Wells notices, Paul Grewal, Chris Lehane, Airbnb, OpenAI, FOIA requests, Balaji Srinivasan, Dan Romero, Kevin Scott, Microsoft, Patrick McHenry, Ritchie Torres, Fairshake PAC, A16z, Ripple, Stand With Crypto, Dogecoin, Robinhood, Charles Schwab, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Paul Ryan, Faryar Shirzad, Kara Calvert, Elon Musk, Earn.com, Ben Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Claire Hughes Johnson and Scaling People, Directly Responsible Individuals, Fidelity, BlackRock, Yahoo!, Stewart Butterfield, Brad Garlinghouse, Alibaba, Flickr, cognitive tests, and Loom.Links:Connect with EmilieTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Adam Nash is the co-founder and CEO at Daffy, a platform that makes it easier to donate to charities and non-profits. Before Daffy, Adam was the President and CEO at Wealthfront, where he scaled the company's assets under management from $100M to over $4B. Adam has also held leadership and technical roles at Dropbox, LinkedIn, eBay, and Apple. — In today's episode, we discuss: Why founders should build platforms, not apps The importance of “delighting” customers How Daffy is disrupting donor-advised-funds Lessons on strategy from LinkedIn How to think about leadership transitions — Referenced: Andy Rachleff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachleff/ Bill Gates: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhgates/ Daffy: https://www.daffy.org/ Daffy's 2023 Year in Review: https://www.daffy.org/resources/year-in-review-2023 eBay: https://www.ebay.com/ Jeff Weiner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffweiner08/ Reid Hoffman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/ Robinhood: https://robinhood.com/ Ryan Roslansky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanroslansky/ The Innovator's Dilemma: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Clayton-M-Christensen/dp/0062060244 Tim Cook: https://www.apple.com/leadership/tim-cook/ Wealthfront: https://www.wealthfront.com/ — Where to find Adam Nash: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamnash/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/adamnash — Where to find Brett Berson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson — Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast — Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (02:08) Why the last 10 years have been less disruptive (06:15) Why we think about luck wrong (08:39) How eBay survived the dot com bubble (14:37) The value of building platforms, not apps (22:18) What made LinkedIn successful (27:31) Good company strategy = good product strategy (30:58) Setting LinkedIn's strategy in 2009 (36:41) Why KaChing didn't work (40:56) Pivoting to Wealthfront (43:23) Universal lesson on customer acquisition (45:11) Treating growth like a product problem (49:01) Advice on successful leadership transitions (54:20) How to delegate moral authority (60:24) The problem with metrics and customer requests (66:41) Apple's approach to “delighting” customers (69:16) The 70/20/10 rule you've never heard about (70:29) How Daffy ships “delight features”

Ever wonder how to create a product that caters to both small businesses and giant corporations? Join Matt Watson as he dives deep into the world of product strategy with Jeff Weiner, CEO of Real Quantum. Discover how the company revolutionized commercial real estate appraisal software and the crucial differences in catering to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) vs. enterprise giants. They dive deep into Jeff's journey, from recognizing the industry's need for innovation to building a platform that revolutionizes the way commercial real estate appraisals are done. This episode is packed with insights on: Adapting your product strategy for diverse customer segments Navigating the challenges of enterprise integration Balancing simplicity with advanced features for a smooth user experience  The importance of saying "no" to bad product ideas ‍ Whether you're a startup founder or a seasoned software developer, this episode is guaranteed to equip you with valuable knowledge for tackling the ever-evolving landscape of product development! Tune in, learn, and conquer the market!     Find Startup Hustle Everywhere: https://gigb.co/l/YEh5   This episode is sponsored by Full Scale: https://fullscale.io/   Visit the Real Quantum website:  https://www.realquantum.com/    Learn more about Jeff Weiner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyweiner/    Highlighted Discussion Points Product strategy for startups with Jeff Weiner. 0:32 Commercial real estate appraisal software and its potential to revolutionize the industry. 1:19 Product strategy and market research for a real estate tech company. 7:05 Appraisal software development and market needs. 13:18 Catering to enterprise and small business needs in software development. 19:43 Enterprise software development challenges and solutions. 24:39 Adapting product strategy for enterprise vs. SMB customers. 29:30 Simplifying software for appraisers without overcomplicating it. 34:55 Enterprise software development challenges and solutions. 38:59 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is opting for high-deductible health insurance plans a smart financial move for businesses? Larry Heller's latest episode of the Life Unlimited Podcast features Jeff Weiner, CEO of HKM Associates, who brings his extensive experience spanning over four decades in life, health insurance, and financial services. Throughout the episode, Jeff offers invaluable insights into working with … Read More Read More

Original Air Date: January 6, 2021Oprah Winfrey says that she didn't understand the true meaning of ego until she met Eckhart Tolle. He opened her eyes to how an ego-based mind can sabotage everything. Initially she thought ego meant arrogance or superiority. But now she sees it's the part of us that identifies as our personality, our accomplishments, our talents, essentially the false self. The key to continued spiritual growth is to understand the ego's disruptive role in our lives. In this Super Soul podcast Oprah talks with Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Father Richard Rohr, Brené Brown, Dr. Shefali, Jack Canfield, Jeff Weiner, Phil Jackson, Pema Chödrön about the many challenges the ego presents and what we can do to stay on track. These talented writers, speakers and thought leaders have been featured on her Emmy Award-winning show Super Soul Sunday. You can also find this compilation and other insightful conversations in her New York Times best-selling book The Wisdom of Sundays. Want more podcasts from OWN? Visit https://bit.ly/OWNPodsYou can also watch Oprah's Super Soul, The Oprah Winfrey Show and more of your favorite OWN shows on your TV! Visit https://bit.ly/find_OWN  

Steve Cadigan scaled LinkedIn from 400 to 4000 people in 3.5 years, and is now an author and consultant on global talent strategy. He joins Kelli Dragovich and Nolan Church to discuss lessons from working with LinkedIn's CEO during hyper scale, recruiting talent, going public, and debate the future of work. If you're looking for HR software that drives performance, check out Lattice https://www.lattice.com/hrheretics After the interview, Nolan and Kelli discuss recent incidents of employees being fired for hate speech at work. – SPONSORS: Lattice | Continuum ✅ Discover HR software that drives performance with Lattice: https://www.lattice.com/hrheretics High performance and great culture should never be at odds; they're better together. With Lattice People Management Platform, companies efficiently run people programs that create enviable cultures where employees want to do their best work. Serving 1000s of customers of all sizes. Learn why companies from Slack to the LA Dodgers choose Lattice. https://www.lattice.com/hrheretics ✅ Hire Fractional Executives with Continuum using this link: https://bit.ly/40hlRa9 Have you ever had a negative experience hiring executives? Continuum connects executives and senior operators to venture-backed tech companies for fractional and full-time roles. You can post any executive-level role to Continuum's marketplace and search through our database of world-class, vetted leaders. There is no hidden cost, you only pay the person you hire. And you can cancel at any time. Joincontinuum.com – KEEP UP WITH STEVE NOLAN, + KELLI ON LINKEDIN Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadigan/ Nolan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolan-church/ Kelli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellidragovich/ – LINKS: Steve's podcast: The Work Week After Hours hosted by Steve Cadigan and Shane Howard https://open.spotify.com/show/54IQnRsvb4pCPA0InnjV5u Steve's book: Workquake https://stevecadigan.com/workquake/ Incident at Apple: https://twitter.com/stopantisemites/status/1720380304073035906?s=46&t=DYK-BZSQG0qJD_0l2IU7fQ Incident at Wix: https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-769922 Kelli and Nolan's discussion on Politics at Work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oULeqedDFYM&t=2s – TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (05:24) Week one at LinkedIn (08:30) LinkedIn's biggest problem was recruiting: Why would anyone want to work here? (18:49) Sponsors: Lattice | Continuum (21:13) Overcoming the resistance against boring HR foundations (23:27) How to navigate leadership's expectations for HR (27:52) Steve's take on HR leaders (28:30) How Steve led his team at LinkedIn (30:21) Stories from working with LinkedIn's CEO Jeff Weiner (37:42) How to get other stakeholders to own comp (42:30) When LinkedIn went public (46:48) Counseling organizations on creating opportunities with a distributed remote nature (54:13) Blitzcaling at LinkedIn - what didn't go well and finding the right leaders for a billion dollar company (01:01:35) Would Steve return to the chief people seat? (01:04:03) Rapid fire: Steve's favorite hire and interview question (01:12:20) Kelli & Nolan's segment: Hate speech at work

Dany Garcia, Co-Founder of LinkedIn 2023 Top Startup ZOA Energy, is a committed multi-hyphenate. In addition to ZOA, she's a founder of Seven Bucks Productions, lifestyle brand GSTQ, and co-owner of the XFL alongside her business partner, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. In this episode of #ThisIsWorking the Podcast, Dan Roth and Nina Melendez dig into takeaways from Dan's recent interview with Dany. They talk about what goes into building terrific teams, why relating to your audience is key to growth, and how being the unique person in the room can feel like a shortcoming, but it's actually a superpower. Dan also shares a powerful lesson on why supporting others is a much better choice than than being snarky. To watch Dan's full interview with Dany Garcia, click here. You can also learn more about LinkedIn's Top Startups list of 2023 and see LinkedIn's former CEO Jeff Weiner's approach to team building. Got questions you want to hear our This is Working hosts ask? Share a post or comment on LinkedIn using the hashtag #ThisIsWorking, or drop us a line. You can reach us at ThisisWorking@LinkedIn.com. Follow Dany Garcia, Dan Roth and Nina Melendez on LinkedIn, and subscribe to the This is Working newsletter here: LinkedIn.com/ThisIsWorking

Here are couple of topics about books and AI. 1) comic books and graphic novels illustrated fiction. 2 novels and AI 3 implementation for writers 4 Enhancements to the writing process 5 AI technologies that can shape and refine book marketing 6 AI additional products 7 AI marketing There will be some up to date news going in and out of the show tonight as well

Here are couple of topics about books and AI. 1) comic books and graphic novels illustrated fiction. 2 novels and AI 3 implementation for writers 4 Enhancements to the writing process 5 AI technologies that can shape and refine book marketing 6 AI additional products 7 AI marketing There will be some up to date news going in and out of the show tonight as well

This week, we talk about what it takes to produce a nationally televised show five days a week without losing your absolute mind. Jeff Weiner holds it down as a TV producer for a show many of our sporty spice listeners probably know and love AND still manages to be a super chill dude, so we get to the bottom of how exactly that's possible, his journey to landing this objectively sexy job, and what we can all learn from him when it comes to making work sustainable.

Nan epizod sa, nou wè 5 fason ke yon moun kapab gen yon konvèzasyon ki difisil swa avèk ekip li, manm fanmil oswa patwonl sanl pa rive kreye plis konfli. Youn nan egzanp nou site nan epizod sa nan sa ki gen wè ap dirije avèk konpasyon se egzanp Jeff Weiner te pataje nan konvèzasyon li avèk Oprah; kote lap esplike move entèpretesayon anpil moun fè sou sa ki gen pou wè ak lè yon moun ap dirije avèk konpasyon ak kisa konpasyon pa ye. Nou rete kwè gen plis fason toujou ke moun ki nan pozisyon pou dirije oswa moun yap dirije yo kapab rive diskiste sou sa ki pa fè yo byen oswa kap mal mache antouraj yo nan sousi pou jwenn solisyon san yo pa kreye plis konfli men pito rive pote chanjman radikal sa ke tout moun swete wè a anndan òganizasyon oswa kominote sa. Jan nou repete souvan nan podkas sa, "Lidèship se Disiplin" e tout moun ki nan pozisyon pou lid lòt moun si pa gen disiplin ap toujou gen konfli ki pa nesesè. Epitou Lidè yo sipoze ap fòme tèt yo san kanpe paske se youn nan pi meyè fason pouw pi byen oryante moun sa yo ke wap lid yo. Sonje sa byen, se pa tout konfli kew paka evite men lesansyèl se koman ou abòde sityasyon an kap baw yon rezilta diferan. Nou swetew jwenn fason paw lan kap edew gen konvèzasyon difisil sa epi rive fè chanjman radikal sa nan kilti òganizasyon oswa kominote wap evolye. Sonje pataje epizod ou sot koute a ak yon lot moun ou pa janm konnen ki diferan li ka fè nan lavi pal. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/davidson-jules/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/davidson-jules/support

On the morning of January 25, 2019, Seminole County sheriff's deputies were dispatched to a home in Chuluota, Florida to conduct a well-being check on thirty-one-year-old Cody Amato, who failed to show up for work that day. Upon entering the home, officers discovered the bodies of Cody, Chad, and Margaret Amato, all dead from apparent gunshot wounds—there were no signs of a break-in and nothing was missing. The crime scene looked as though it had been staged to look like a murder-suicide and suspicion quickly fell on the Amato's youngest son, Grant, who was missing from the home.Thank you so much to the lovely David White for research assistanceReferencesDukes, Amanda. 2019. Grant Amato, man found guilty of killing family members, sentenced to life in prison. August 13. Accessed March 22, 2023. https://www.wesh.com/article/penalty-phase-for-grant-amato-to-begin-monday/28670352#.Seminole County Sheriff's Office. 2018. CJIS Report. Missing Person; Well-Being, Chuluota, FL: Seminole County Sheriff's Office.State of Florida vs. Grant Tiernan Amato. 2019. 20190000740 (Circuit Court of the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit in and for Seminole County, Florida, January 28).Swenson, Kyle. 2019. "He spent $200,000 on a Bulgarian 'cam girl.'." Washington Post, January 29.Williams, Michael. 2019. "Accused killer seeks millonaire for help with jail bond, emails reveal." Orlando Sentinel, May 15: A1.—. 2019. "Amato's lawyers ask judge to sequester jruy." Orlando Sentinel, June 12: B2.—. 2019. "Grant Amato verdict: Guilty of first-degree murder in killings of family." Orlando Sentinel, July 31.—. 2019. "'I have become somewhat of a celebrity,' accused killer Grant Amato says in letter." Orlando Sentinel, April 27: B2.—. 2019. "'I want to believe you,' surviving sibling says." Orlando Sentinel, March 28: A1.—. 2019. "Judge grants $750k bond for suspect in family murders." Orlando Sentinel, April 26: B1.—. 2019. "Obsession, money, lies tore this family apart." Orlando Sentinel, July 14: A1.—. 2019. "Records give glimpse into Chulota man's relationship with model." Orlando Sentinel, May 30: B1.Williams, Michael, Jeff Weiner, and Gal Lotan. 2019. "'I hate myself for what I did"." Orlando Sentinel, April 16: A1.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

UFO Undercover W Joe Montaldo Welcomes Jeff Weiner, December 14th, 2022 Jeff has come by to show us some of his art work and show some of the advanced AI  in greeting art and it can create story lines as well is the cheating are just the advanced time we live in ?

UFO Undercover W Joe Montaldo Welcomes Jeff Weiner, December 14th, 2022 Jeff has come by to show us some of his art work and show some of the advanced AI in greeting art and it can create story lines as well is the cheating are just the advanced time we live in

It's the 20-year Anniversary of ESPN's Around the Horn, so Jeremy sat down with the show's production crew -- Aaron Solomon, Josh Bard, Jeff Weiner, and Caroline Willett -- to discuss the ATH's early stages, how it's evolved over the last two decades, where "the heart" of the show comes from, and much more. 

Original Airdate: February 3, 2021In this episode Oprah sits down with inspirational teachers, including Gary Zukav, Mastin Kipp, Paulo Coehlo, Sue Monk Kidd, Pastor Wintley Phipps, Nate Berkus, Diana Nyad, India.Arie, Janet Mock, Jack Canfield, Daniel Pink, Daniel Goleman, Shawn Achor, Jeff Weiner, Wes Moore, Shonda Rhimes and Devon Franklin to discuss how we can fulfill our purpose with meaning and discover our own authentic power leading to the highest and truest version of ourselves. Interviews with these talented writers, speakers and thought leaders are excerpted from Oprah's Emmy Award-winning show Super Soul Sunday. You can also find this compilation and other insightful conversations in Oprah's best-selling booksThe Wisdom of Sundays andThe Path Made Clear.

In this episode of Startup Hustle, Matt DeCoursey and Jeff Weiner, CEO of Real Quantum, explore the value of QA (short for Quality Assurance) and ultimately, how it delivers peace of mind for Founders. Learn how to avoid some common pitfalls and how to make sure that your product maintains its usability even after launch.   Find Startup Hustle Everywhere: https://gigb.co/l/YEh5   This episode is sponsored by Double: https://withdouble.com/sign-up/why-double?utm_campaign=HUSTLE22   Learn more about Real Quantum: https://www.realquantum.com/   Learn more about Full Scale: https://fullscale.io/   Listen to Jeff's previous episode on Startup Hustle: https://link.chtbl.com/Jeff_Weiner  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You'll hear JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates talk about Conversations in Park City, a new De Beers CEO, and a new spin on a classic Patek Philippe watch. Victoria recaps her time in Park City, where she contemplated the present and future of retail with experts curated by PSFK. Rob reports on the change in leadership at De Beers, where Bruce Cleaver has stepped down and become co-chairman, and Al Cook will step into his shoes as CEO. Victoria covers the latest iteration of a popular Nautilus and what it means for the direction of the Patek Philippe brand.Show Notes01:00 Victoria interviewed the president of Bulgari who was in the Maldives.04:30 A recap of Conversations in Park City09:00 A change in leadership at De Beers19:55 New Patek Philippe watchEpisode CreditsHosts: Rob Bates and Victoria GomelskyProducer and engineer: Natalie ChometPlugs: @jckmagazine, jckonline.com Show RecapHospitality Meets JewelryVictoria got up early to speak to the president of Bvlgari, Daniel Paltridge, who was in the Maldives at the time. They talk about the Bvlgari hotel and how expensive it is—€2,500 per night! Rob wonders what guests might get in addition to the room for that price. (Likely not jewelry.) There are other examples of brands that cross over from fashion to hospitality—Armani, Shinola, etc. The hope is that you can capture an audience in one and then target them in the other side of the business.Conversations with Friends—in Park CityVictoria recently traveled to Park City, UT, to Conversations in Park City, the leadership summit hosted by Jewelers Mutual. The brainchild of Mark Smelzer, head of content for Jewelers Mutual (and JCK's former publisher). He had a vision to pull together the crème de la crème of the industry and bringing them all to a leadership retreat. Everyone met at the St. Regis in Deer Valley, with their loved ones in tow. Victoria brought her family and enjoyed the wonderful weather.But the main focus was the content. Mark pulled in one of the leading thinkers on retail strategy and futurism, PSFK. Jeff Weiner of PSFK brought in some experts that they've used for their presentations—on the omnichannel experience, “phigital” retail, and other things retailers need to be prepared for. It was both present- and future-focused, informing retailers about shifts in the consumer atmosphere. Though Victoria tends to tune out when people talk about NFTs, she found this coverage easier to digest. It was a beautiful setting for some great conversations. Overall, the event was brief and meaningful. She hopes there will be another one next year.A Change in Leadership for De BeersRob reports that Bruce Cleaver is stepping down as CEO of De Beers and handing over the reins to Al Cook—an industry outsider who worked for an energy company. His predecessor, Philippe Mellier, was also an outsider. He got great results for the bottom line of the company, but injured some relationships with clients who felt he drove prices too high. Bruce repaired that relationship, and is well-respected. Though it's not clear why he is leaving this position, he will still be involved as co-chairman. It's a job where you're never bored because there are so many aspects to it.Victoria wonders about the selection process. She points out that the new CEO is another European white man. Was anyone from their stakeholder countries considered? Some people have pointed out that De Beers is an African company that caters to women, yet all of its CEOs have been white men. People have comment that Al Cook doesn't have the background on marketing, branding, etc. An outsider will have to be tutored in the varied aspects of the business. It's also of note that Bruce is leaving without a contract with Botswana. A rough agreement has been drafted, but not signed yet. De Beers' portfolio has been diversified by lab-grown, which might give them some leverage.The Lab-Grown Diamond TrajectoryIt's been four years since Lightbox came out. Lab-grown is such a complicated market. Many still don't accept it as a viable category. Swarovski is rolling out lab-grown as well. Breitling has just announced they're starting to use lab-grown diamonds and fully traceable gold. This is more transparent than Victoria has seen a Swiss brand be. It's clear that lab-grown is going to be part of the conversation going forward.New Patek Philippe Watch Speaking of watches! Victoria wrote an NYT piece about a Patek Philippe watch using white gold that might “break the horological internet.” The long-awaited successor to the 5711—a hyped but discontinued watch model— is here. Called the 5811, its main difference is that it's in white gold instead of steel. A Nautilus that has been around since 1976, Victoria is confident it will be popular. It's close to people's hearts, and has always been in steel until now. They're breaking away from the steel sport models that fetch more than the gold models.They went to the prestige category. What they are concerned about is the preservation of the brand. It'll be hard to acquire by an average consumer. Their aim is to elevate the brand.

In each episode of Mastering Your Financial Life, Judy Heft interviews professionals who help others successfully manage their financial lives. Judy is a Financial and Lifestyle Concierge and Founder & CEO of Judith Heft & Associates. In this episode of Mastering Your Financial Life, Judy Heft interviews Jeff Weiner, President of HKM Associates. Jeff and everyone at HKM is committed to helping their clients realize a healthy and prosperous future. Learn more about Jeff Weiner and HKM Associates: https://www.hkmassociates.com 516-316-1255 (cell) Connect with Judy Heft on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judyheft/ Visit Judith Heft & Associates' Website: http://www.judithheft.com/ Subscribe to Mastering Your Financial Life on Apple podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mastering-your-financial-life/id1628822980 Don't miss a video by subscribing to Judith Heft & Associates' YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxnWUm35dJhmCX0XPX_eZhQ

Original Air Date: April 1, 2019On a special edition of “Super Soul Conversations,” Oprah Winfrey discusses her book, “The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose,” featuring some of the most profound insights and Aha! moments. In this follow-up to her New York Times best-selling book “The Wisdom of Sundays,” Oprah shares her own key lessons and the personal stories that helped set the course for her best life. Hear from luminaries and trailblazers in a wide array of fields share the life lessons that helped them find meaning and purpose in their own lives: A.R. Bernard, Sue Monk Kidd, Shefali Tsabary, Elizabeth Gilbert, Caroline Myss, Brian Grazer, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tracy Morgan, Sister Joan Chittister, Wintley Phipps, Shauna Niequist, Wes Moore, Amy Purdy, Adyashanti, Steven Pressfield, Iyanla Vanzant, Michael Singer, India.Arie, Gary Zukav, Michael Beckwith, Carole Bayer Sager, Janet Mock, Brene Brown, Barbara Brown Taylor, Marianne Williamson, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Shonda Rhimes, Jay-Z, Eckhart Tolle, Joe Biden, Tracy McMillan, Glennon Doyle, Stephen Colbert, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gloria Steinem, Jimmy Carter, Lynne Twist, Bryan Stevenson, John Lewis, Cicely Tyson, Jordan Peele, Trevor Noah, Jeff Weiner, Goldie Hawn and Elizabeth Lesser. If you are feeling stuck or at a crossroads, wondering if there is more to life, “The Path Made Clear” provides inspiration and guidance to help you discover not only who you are, but who you are meant to be.

In today's episode, I speak with my friend, Jeff Weiner, the founder and CEO of HKM Associates, a life and group benefits insurance firm. In this conversation, Jeff shares his out-of-the-box thinking especially in the group benefits space, his networking group and much more. You can reach Jeff via email at jeff@hkmassociates.com You can also reach out to him at (516) 316-1255 Jeff Weiner's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-weiner-5903682/ Jeff Weiner's website is https://www.hkmassociates.com/ My email is gbcoyle@thecoylegroup.com Please contact me if you have an interesting story you'd like to tell on this podcast.

Key Points: How Brian got started with Attentive (01:04) My thoughts on the advantages of being vertical-specific with a quote from Steve Blank (02:52) Brian explains the competitive landscape Attentive was playing in at the start (04:23) Why selling should start with identifying the major problems facing your target customers (05:30) I discuss how to identify your customer's pain points and use that knowledge to outsell your competitors (06:15) Brian shares how Attentive saw early success with their outbound sales efforts (07:21) My thoughts on staying relevant to your customers (10:39) How Attentive is approaching a competitive landscape that is changing faster than ever before (13:49) I explain the importance of keeping up with an ever-evolving competitive landscape with a quote from LinkedIn's Jeff Weiner (15:04) Brian explains his strategy for getting accurate customer feedback (19:10) I unpack why customer feedback is so important in the era of saturated markets with a quote from Databox's Peter Caputa (22:51) Brian describes Attentive's website messaging strategy, and where he thinks others go wrong (24:53) My advice on choosing your website messaging strategy, and why you should test your messaging (26:14) Brian's advice for other founders and CEOs (27:25) Wrap up (28:56) Mentioned:Brian Long LinkedInBrian Long TwitterAttentive LinkedInAttentive WebsiteSteve Blank LinkedInJeff Weiner LinkedInHow building methodically is helping Peter Caputa and Databox disrupt the business marketing analytics industryMy Links:TwitterLinkedInWebsiteWynterSpeeroCXL

How did Steve plan his first 100 days as the new CRO at ENGIE Impact to achieve maximum impact?Our guest today, Steve Kline, CRO at ENGIE Impact, shares his playbook for successfully structuring your sales team with Sammy.What's in it for you:1. Steve's roadmap to starting as a new CRO at ENGIE Impact2. How to define a profile for hiring the best new talent to enhance your team3. How to structure your sales team for maximum success4. How your company culture influences your team 5. How to find mentors to help you and your business growAbout Steve:Steve is Chief Revenue Officer of Sustainable Resource Management at ENGIE Impact. He serves the teams that deliver value to the existing customer base, hunt for new customers and partners and build solutions. His role spans solution development, existing account management, new logo sales, development, sales operations and supporting functions in their ecosystem.  Steve spends his free time with his wife and four children enjoying their local beach in the summer and nearby mountains in the winter, hunting, fishing, surfing, skiing, and running from one youth sports event to the next.  Find Steve on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveklinenyc/Steve's company ENGIE Impact: https://www.engieimpact.com/Steve's business book recommendations: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't – James C. Collins https://amzn.to/3xK6haC Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action – Simon Sinek https://amzn.to/3vaXEo1Steve's favorite business leaders: Jeff Weiner - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffweiner08/ and Peter Drucker__________About ENGIE Impact:ENGIE Impact provides software and professional services for companies to reduce their energy consumption, move to a greener environment within their business, so buying energy from renewable energy resources.Website: https://www.engieimpact.com/Industry: Energy, Energy Management, Energy Storage, Sustainability Company size: 5000Headquarters: West Coast, Western USFounded: 1995__________About the host Sammy:Sammy is a former management consultant and now helps partners and managing directors in the consulting industry drive social marketing & sales via LinkedIn.Get in touch with Sammy: sammy.gebele@sawoo.ioLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammygebele/__________Episode is sponsored by Sammy's company SAWOO.Follow SAWOO on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sawoo/Visit www.sawoo.io for more information.__________Past guests on the GROW B2B FASTER Show include:  Justin Welsh, Ian Koniak, Jamal Reimer, Mike Troiano, John Kaplan,  Greg Alexander, and many more. 

Managing compassionately is about putting yourself in another person's shoes and seeing the world through their lens and perspective,” shared LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner during his Stanford GSB View From The Top talk on Thursday, February 2, 2017

Elliot Shmukler, CEO and founder of Anomalo, needed a better way to monitor data quality at scale. He previously led growth teams at Wealthfront, Instacart, and LinkedIn and experienced firsthand the impact of incomplete or inaccurate data. Anomalo has now raised nearly $40M from amazing investors including Norwest, Two Sigma, and Foundation to make data problems a thing of the past.Listen and learn...What Elliot means when citing Jeff Weiner from Linkedin: "If you're launching a rocket even a one degree course change can mean you won't land on the moon."About the data quality issue nobody noticed at Instacart that impacted millions of users.How the role of the data scientist will change as AI platforms automate data quality monitoring.When there's a need for humans in the loop to override AI systems.Why every product will soon be as good at personalization as Spotify and Netflix.The number one skill every student needs to learn that will never be replaced by machines.Past episodes referenced in today's discussion:Milin Desai, Sentry CEOBarr Moses, Monte Carlo CEODerek Steer, Mode Analytics CEOPeter Fishman, Mozart Data CEOKrishna Gade, Fiddler CEOCharity Majors, Honeycomb CTO

He is the Editor in Chief at LinkedIn News, based out of LinkedIn's NYC offices in the Empire State Building. He has previously worked as writer and editor at Fortune, Wired, Forbes and Conde Nast (home of publications like Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair). So, how did Daniel Roth go from growing up in Kentucky to living and working in the Big Apple and traveling the world? Let's learn from his journalism career, I'm sure there are a tonne of lessons for all of us. This is a conversation replete with career lessons we can all learn. Dan shares the following: - What influenced him very early in his life to pursue journalism as a career- How Dan got hired for his first job by an Indian editor in North Carolina over 25 years ago and the Hindi phrase he still remembers till today - How he got hired for competitive roles at Forbes, and other top publications and what helped him to stand out.  - The detailed backstory of how a meeting with Jeff Weiner resulted in getting hired for a newly created role of Executive Editor at LinkedIn in 2011. There are at least 5 lessons from this experience alone, with lots of unexpected twists and turns!- Dan interviews a lot of famous people on LinkedIn News like Bobbi Brown, Robert Downey Jr, Bill Gates, Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, Richard Banson, Gwenneth Paltrow etc. Dan shares research and prep process, because there are definitely some commonalities with preparing for a major job interview. - As Editor in Chief, Dan's message to the listener who's shied away from expressing their voice on Linkedin so far This is easily one of my top 5 favourite conversations of all time.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!Follow Dan on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielroth1/--------------------------------------------Liked this episode? A couple of things:1. Share the podcast with three of your closest friends! And please leave a great review on Apple Podcasts here, as it would mean a lot to me and hopefully help others discover this resource for Job Seekers ! 2. You will love my weekly emails called Charge-Up! .. they're no fluff no spam, where I share my favourite career insights from movies, TV shows, news and my own personal experiences, that I don't share anywhere else. Make sure you sign up here!  3. Come hang out with me LIVE on LinkedIn and Youtube every Friday at 2 pm CET where I answer your questions and often bring in fab guests:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonalbahl/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/SuperChargeYourself

On this episode of "I Deserve Nice Things", Patrice rambles a bit but finally gets to the main topic, the Five Keys to Happiness according to Jeff Weiner. Don't forget to treat yourself. Jeff Weiner on Super Soul Conversation Instagram: @ideservenicethings Facebook: I Deserve Nice Things Podcast Group Email: ideservenicethingspodcast@gmail.com Music: "Idea 4" Kenny (@apt301_music_) Waller, (2019)

Chatting with Sherri welcomes award-winning Illustrator Jeff Weiner !      Jeff Weiner, will travel to Hollywood as a winner in the Illustrators of the Future Contest anticipating that the pandemic will be over and large events able to occur once again with visitors from around the world, Mr. Weiner will travel to Hollywood this fall for a weeklong workshop and be honored at a black-tie awards gala. Jeff Weiner has  received numerous honors from the software industry, including six Best of Show Awards for technological innovation and application. He has created and developed a wide range of products for companies such as AT&T, BMG Music, Sprint, McDonald's, Lucent, Dialogic and many others. As CEO of RocketTalk, Jeff teamed up with Paramount to bring the legendary Star Trek Communicator to the internet—an application promoted by Paramount immediately following each episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Jeff was recognized as a Star of the Industry by Computer Telephony Magazine and named one of the top twelve technologists to watch by the Silicon Valley Reporter. He has also been in numerous publications, including Wired and Forbes. He wrote, produced, and hosted “The Venture Catalyst,” a PBS television show that brought start-up companies together with a billion-dollar panel of venture capitalists. He has served on numerous boards and consulted for NASA. Recently he released a business book entitled 71 Seconds to Funding. Jeff's art has earned him a cash prize and a trip to Hollywood as well as having his art published in the annual bestseller, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 37.        

Mike Gamson, CEO of Relativity, has joined the show this week to provide his take on leadership, sales, and the evolution of his career leading up to Relativity. Mike's path into becoming a CEO is a varied one and his diverse range of experiences has helped him hone in on essential insights, which he very humbly shares. With a background in liberal arts, Mike has an interesting story about how he became a leader in the world of sales and technology. It all began when he made the decision to move to Costa Rica after an epic surfing trip along the coasts of South America. At one point, he faced a crossroads and had to decide between staying in Costa Rica or going back home. He chose the former and opened his own burrito shop. Afterward, Mike served as Advent's head of product development, which set the stage for the rest of his career.In this episode, Mike walks through the transitions in his career and shares why he was initially hesitant to join LinkedIn. He also talks about the crucial leadership skills and values he gained at LinkedIn under Jeff Weiner's tutelage and dives into Relativity, Chicago's “best-kept secret,” and the exciting innovations that Relativity is bringing on board. In this episode, we cover:  Mike's fascinating professional journey leading up to LinkedIn; from turning down Goldman Sachs to opening his own burrito shop in Costa Rica - and he and Joubin discover some of the striking similarities they share. (02:03) The evolution of Mike's role at LinkedIn - and what factored into his decision to come on as an individual contributor. (9:47) The challenges LinkedIn faced in its early stages, as leadership navigated the company's identity - and how the question, “what kind of leader do you aspire to be?” helped Mike tap into his core leadership principles. (15:37) Mike recounts moments when he was challenged to make decisions to preserve LinkedIn's values as he grew into his sales leadership role - and how Jeff Weiner's coaching gave him a more compassionate understanding of how to do business more broadly. (21:17) Why Relativity was the “best-kept secret in Chicago” - and why Mike feels passionate about leveraging tech companies to build ecosystems within their communities. (28:04) Mike's views on investing in companies full-time and how his love for learning plays a role in his decision - and more on his transition to CEO of Relativity and how he gained his footing. (33:37) A look at Mike's life as CEO: what he factors into his daily decisions, lessons learned, and his advice to those who are thinking of the next layer up job. (40:34) Mike elaborates on philosophies that he lives by, including his stance on hiring talent, why “yet” is the most powerful word in the English language, the power of being here by choice, and more. (45:21) Joubin and Mike discuss three important leadership traits - and the importance of asserting agency over your time to create a personal life harmony. (50:33) Links: Connect with Mike LinkedIn Relativity Connect with Joubin Twitter LinkedIn Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Take flight into Minal's journey -- growing up in India,  learning ambition and owning yourself from her mother and the drive to be better from her father; and then going to Singapore to finish her last years of high school! Post high school, Minal secured a full scholar to Stanford University, which started her journey in the US and Minal's foray into tech in the early 2000's working at Expedia and Amazon in the early days, then doing an MBA at Harvard followed by exciting roles at the likes of LinkedIn and Youtube leading product including building YouTube for the next billion users.I also asked Minal about the creator economy, how to build a life post MBA, advice for new graduates, and hear about Take Two, the new venture Minal is building with two co-founders! TIMESTAMPS—————15:10 - Assimilate in a new culture at school: Attending a high school with 300 people per class, all Chinese with Minal being 1 of 7 scholars from India16:40 - Applying to Stanford from Singapore18:45 - Power of own voice, 2003 after dot com bust studying at Stanford24:20 - Opportunity to join Amazon in 200324:55 - Amazon first principles from Day 1 when they started in 2000's27:15 - Learnings early on (work + India) to utilise in career28:35 - Why MBA and why Harvard30:30 - two benefits from Harvard 34:05 - building a life post Harvard38:05 - What should a graduate look for in first role post study?40:15 - optimising for Learning (whether its joining a startup or a reputable brand name)40:20 - what have you done, not where have you been42:15 - solving a problem that fits with who you are. Example of how Jeff Bezos couldn't build Google and Larry couldn't build Amazon44:30 - Learnings from working with Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner at Linkedin48:50 - the creator economy; getting best reach for your content52:40 - Thinking behind LinkedIn groups (Minal was head of product)55:20 - Minal starting TakeTwo and story behind going from corporate to entrepreneur1:01:30 - Finding co-founders, why, howEnjoy!--------I would really appreciate if you can help by rating this podcast on iTunes, as it helps others find us and convince guests to come on the show.Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter for more!This episode & show is to inspire all us to be high flyers in any aspect of life & flip the notion of a high flyer, learning from value creators to help us all be 1% better everyday, together.

Meet Kim LewisKim Lewis is the CEO and co-founder of CurlMix, a clean beauty brand for curly hair. Kim and Tim, her husband and co-founder, operate a manufacturing facility in Chicago, where they employ a full-time staff of 30+ minorities and women.They appeared on the 10th season of Shark Tank where they turned down a deal from Robert Herjavec who offered $400K for 20% of their company. Following their episode, CurlMix became one of less than 40 Black, women-owned companies to raise over $1M in venture capital funding; specifically, raising a seed round of $1.4 million, led by former LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner.On this episode of Making It HappenKim recently made history by allowing her customers and the community to invest in and own shares of CurlMix. She raised $5M in two months, which is only fitting since the community is at the heart of every decision Kim makes.On this episode, Kim talks with Katie and Jenny about:The first investor check she ever receivedHow she turned a Shark Tank appearance into more investor meetingsHer advice on finding the funding for your business

Research shows that 70% of all jobs are not published publicly on jobs sites and as much as 80% of jobs are filled through personal and professional connections.LinkedIn's Executive Chairman, Jeff Weiner, calls this the 'network gap.' You know you need to broaden your circle and network but do you struggle with where to start so that you make connections and impact? In this episode I share 3 quick tips to up-level your networking game. Follow @jillGriffinOfficial on Instagram daily inspiration.Visit JillGriffinCoaching.com for free content and strategies to refresh your career.Questions? Email us at Hello@JillGriffinCoaching.com

Emilie Choi is the President and Chief Operating Officer @ Coinbase, the easiest place to buy and sell cryptocurrency. Prior to their IPO earlier this year, Coinbase raised funding from some of the best in the business including USV, a16z, Initialized and Ribbit to name a few. As for Emilie, before Coinbase she was Head of Corporate Development for @ LinkedIn and before Linkedin served in various positions at Warner Bros., including as Manager of Corporate Business Development and Strategy. If that was not enough, Emilie currently serves on the board of Naspers and ZipRecruiter. In Today's Episode with Emilie Choi You Will Learn: 1.) How Emilie made her way into the world of startups, came to lead Corp Dev @ Linkedin and how that led to her joining forces with Brian @ Coinbase as COO & President? What lessons did Emilie learn from Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner that she has taken with her to Coinbase? 2.) Corp-Dev Guide: Why are so many startups trying to hire Head of Corp Devs today? What are the signals that suggest now is the right time? How would Emilie structure the process of hiring a Head of Corp Dev? What questions should be asked? How can you test their skills? What mistakes do CEOs often make when hiring Head of Corp Devs? 3.) COO Guide: What does the role of COO really mean to Emilie? How does Emilie advise founders on whether they do actually need a COO? How would Emilie structure the process of hiring a COO? What are some common red flags that concern Emilie when hiring COO's? What is the right relationship between CEO and COO? 4.) Resource Allocation: How does Coinbase think about internal resource allocation between core product and their venture products? What was the thinking behind Coinbase Ventures? Why do they have no full-time staff? What is the core objective of the fund? Why does Emilie think it will be one of the best performing funds in venture? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Emilie Choi Emilie's Favourite Book: The Secret History

Founders Focus is the show where we get up close and personal with the leaders of the recruitment technology businesses changing the way we work today Next up are Benjamin Sesser and Teddy Chestnut, Co-founders of Brighthire, the interview analytics company which gives employers the edge in making smarter decisions at job interview.  - Who are Benjamin and Teddy? - What are their leadership values? - What is the difference between being C-level vs Senior Exec? - What happens when you two disagree? - Were you always going to be doing startup, leading a business? - What skills are you guys lacking as C-level execs? How do you fill it? - What do you look for when hiring for leadership potential - What are you doing to do with all that Series A money? - What does the product roadmap look like for 2021? All this and more as we take a deep dive into the business leaders building the technology changing the way we work today. Ep8 of Founder's Focus is sponsored by Brighthire BrightHire's interview intelligence platform helps business leaders make better, faster and more equitable hiring decisions. Built seamlessly on top of the tools teams already use, our platform automatically records and transcribes interviews, unlocks speed and collaboration across hiring teams, and brings evidence and insight into every hiring decision. BrightHire is advised by renowned organizational psychologist Adam Grant, and backed by Laszlo Bock, Jeff Weiner, Rosanna Durruthy, and the investors behind Figma, MongoDB, Instacart and DataDog.  Want to learn more?  Schedule a demo with the BrightHire team today.

AudioLivro não deixe de curtir e compartilhar para que o conhecimento chegue a todos.Infelizmente nosso canal não é monetizado quem poder ajudar agradeço de coração.Apoia nosso canal em https://apoia.se/audiobooksnarvalSegue nosso PIX: audiobooksnarval@outlook.comNossa loja Shopee: CalifóniaStoreMuito obrigado!!!Estamos em todas as principais plataformas de Podcast

Today we have a very special conversation for you. Founder of the CCG and Senior Advisor Julia Culen is in Conversation Fred Kofman.  Fred Kofman is an executive coach and advisor on leadership and culture. PhD. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the founder and president of the Conscious Business Center and the Center for Conscious Leadership. He was Vice President of executive development at LinkedIn and Vice President at Google in charge of advising the CEO's office on leadership and culture. Fred is the author of the trilogy Metamanagement (2001), Conscious Business (2006), and The Meaning Revolution (2018) and was called „one of the best coaches in the world“ by LinkedIn founder Jeff Weiner. People like Sheryl Sandberg call him one of the people that „changed her life“. In this conversation, Julia and Fred are talking about Conscious Leading and Consulting. How the business world has transformed since writing Conscious Business in 2006, how you can help people find their true nature, why compassion is the key to happiness, and how to lead with purpose and clarity.“ So sit back, relax and enjoy a wonderful new episode on the Conscious Consulting Podcast. If you want to dive deeper into the field of Conscious Consulting visit ccg-group.eu, subscribe to our newsletter so we can stay connected and join our Community meetup Conscious Conversation here: ccg.podia.com

This week we're excited to share our third community event with our dear friends at LinkedIn. In partnership with the LinkedIn Asian Alliance (LIAA), we hosted three of their AAPI leaders to discuss their unique paths to leadership. In this discussion, you'll hear from Connie Chan Wang the Senior Director of Global Brand Marketing, Jen Weedn the Vice President of Business Development, and Brian Rumao the Chief of Staff the Executive Chairman, Jeff Weiner. In this podcast we spoke about the following: Having tough conversations with family about unconventional career decisions How the need for financial stability as a child of immigrants can influence career goals Finding and honoring your true north while advancing your career in a non-linear way ------------------------------- Episode resources: Connie's LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conniechanwang/ Jen's LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferyangweedn/ Brian's LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianrumao/ ------------------------------- If you enjoyed today's conversation about the intersection of work and Asian American identity, please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review to spread the word. We'd really appreciate it! Learn more about the show at acrossthelinespodcast.com, follow us @acrossthelinespodcast, and subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest updates.

Todays guest is Michael Lazik, Sales Director DACH at Templafy. That's in it for you:1. How long term relationships and considering buyer's personal goals drive SaaS products success2. How Templafy tests its way to the most effective sales strategy and wins new customers with valuable references 3. Michael's take on value-based cold calling and how to excel in sales meetings by tackling prospects' pain points4. Diversity as a success factor for sales teams and Michael's biggest lesson learned in the past yearAbout MichaelMichael is an ambitious expert with 15 years of experience in the talent management industry and building sales organizations for leading SaaS providers. Prior to his role as Director Sales DACH at Templafy, Michael held senior sales and strategy roles at Stepstone and Cornerstone OnDemand. He is experienced in leading regional and international teams and gained intercultural experience working in Norway, Sweden, and the UK. About TemplafyTemplafy is pioneering the content enablement category with a first-of-its-kind infrastructure that actively accelerates business performance with connected content. Unlike existing solutions, Templafy is embedded in company-wide workflows, going beyond simple content management to serve teams exactly what they need, when and where they need it within the applications they already work in, while allowing organizations to effortlessly govern content and track performance. Essential to business enablement and embedded in every employee's workflow, Templafy's platform enhances the end-user experience, aligns workforces and enables people to create on-brand, high-performing business content faster. A seamless future of work relies on content enabled by Templafy.Founded in Denmark in 2014, Templafy is a global organization with offices in six major business hubs such as New York, London, Copenhagen and Sydney. Templafy supports over 2.8M users and enables over 600 enterprise customers like KPMG, IKEA, and BDOShownotes MichaelFind Michael on LinkedInFind TemplafyMichael's favourite Business book: Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. MooreMichael's' favourite business leader: Jeff Weiner, Executive Chairman at LinkedIn

Evan Harrel and Laura Berland are back as guests on Mindfulness At Work to further discuss Compassionate Leadership at work. They founded and lead the non-profit organization, Center for Compassionate Leadership, and help train leaders for many corporations. In this episode, they explain the evidence and science behind the ability to relate to others in a compassionate way. They share that it starts in the way we see ourselves. It seems so simple but it's not. It's really difficult to relate to others in a healthy manner if we treat ourselves in challenging ways. In fact, there are over 2000 research studies related to the benefits of self-compassion. How does self-compassion heighten the levels of productivity at work or depth of relationships? It's in learning that we don't need external validation to feel nurtured and supported. In order to exemplify this concept and how it works, Laura shares a personal story about the wild success she experienced in an entrepreneurial venture and yet she still didn't feel satisfied or validated. She regrets missing out on calm moments with her son during this time. We can be tricked into thinking, “I'm doing all of this work for my son”, but that's not the truest sentiment. They also reference Dr. Kirsten Neff's work on self compassion. She has the most published, best research in the field, and the her website,self-compassion.org houses an entire section on familial relationships. There is a direct tie between self-compassion, growth mindset, and resiliency. It all revolves around knowing when something doesn't go the way we plan, how to proceed and survive it anyway. A self-compassionate person recognizes everything won't work out just right all of the time but that they can and will recover. They learn from the situation so it isn't costly for them in the future. Leaders are at their best when they are accepting of their own failures. They are modeling vulnerability and therefore, everyone can relate to them. Jeff Weiner is a prime example of an executive chairman garnering amazing results for LinkedIn's culture and bottom line. He talks about his own transformation from being a difficult person without emotional intelligence skills to recognizing and becoming a compassionate leader. He has helped to bring those skills into the core values of LinkedIn. He is one of the most outspoken executives in the business world championing the importance of building a compassionate and truthful corporate culture. He learned it first-hand for himself and valued the results. This is the type of transformation that takes place and feedback The Center for Compassionate Leadership receives from the participants in their resiliency training. People at the top of their organizations have the opportunity to be in community with other leaders who are feeling and experiencing shared challenges and that makes all the difference. An aspect of compassion work that people don't talk about is that it can be viewed as a sign of weakness. However, all it takes is intention and practice to recognize that in every interaction if we hone our compassion skills it is actually a strength. Unfortunately, some leaders want the hack, to get from point A to point B and to jump over the pond of the inner work. Yet the growth is elicited by the muck below the surface. We must go through the muck to get out on the other side. As Margaret Mead states, "We shouldn't teach people what to think, we should teach them how to think". A warm thanks to Evan and Laura for their contributions. Register for The Center for Compassionate Leadership Resiliency Training this Fall.Do not miss it! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/carapollard/support

On this episode of Intersection, we talk to Sen. Randolph Bracy about the police reform bill; Orlando Sentinel justice and safety editor Jeff Weiner joins the program to discuss the Joel Greenberg case; and WMFE's Clarissa Moon covers the return of the Orlando Fringe festival.

Samir Goel is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Esusu, a fast-growing social enterprise that bridges the racial wealth gap and increases financial access for low-to-middle income consumers. Esusu recently raised funding led by Acumen and Jeff Weiner's Next Play Ventures. In this episode, we spoke with Samir about the challenges of raising money as a person of color, how his parents felt about leaving a stable tech job for entrepreneurship, and why growing up in New York has shaped his own perspective on his Indian-American identity. ------------------------------- Episode resources: Follow Samir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/goelsamir/ Samir's website: http://www.samirgoel.com/ Learn more about Samir's company Esusu: https://esusurent.com/ A NASDAQ feature on Samir and Abbey: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/faces-of-entrepreneurship%3A-samir-goel-abbey-wemimo-esusu-2021-01-15 ------------------------------- If you enjoyed today's conversation about the intersection of work and Asian American identity, please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review to spread the word. We'd really appreciate it! Learn more about the show at acrossthelinespodcast.com, follow us @acrossthelinespodcast, and subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest updates.

In this episode of Startup Hustle, Matt DeCoursey and Jeff Weiner, CEO, and CMO of Real Quantum talk about boldly leading your B2B SaaS company. Find Startup Hustle Everywhere: https://linktr.ee/startuphustle This episode is sponsored by Full Scale: https://fullscale.io/ Learn more about Real Quantum: https://www.realquantum.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The last three and a half years haven't been so great for social media platforms. They've been accused of fomenting genocide, breaking Western democracies, and abetting mass shooters. The CEOs have sweated in front of Congress, meditated deep in the forests, and deleted the very apps that made them billionaires. Amid this drama, Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, has been like a man whistling as he bikes safely beside the century's craziest car crash.

Welcome to TechCrunch daily news, a round up of the top tech news of the day. -- Jeff Weiner is stepping down from his role as LinkedIn CEO -- Ancestry lays off staff members -- and Twitter has a mixed quarter. Here's your Daily Crunch for February 6, 2020. First up: Jeff Weiner will step down as CEO of LinkedIn on June 1st, as product head Ryan Roslansky steps up. The changes are LinkedIn's first big executive shakeup since the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2016.

The final episode of our four part series from the NEHRA Conference! Tim spoke to Dave the day after his keynote speech, discussing some of his most provocative outlooks and insights into the HR function. Tim had his 15 minutes of fame after a blog post he wrote on workplace hugging got picked up by the CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner. Since then, Tim's posted to his personal blog every day for eight years. Other topics the two touch on are: discovering HR blogging as an outlet to culture shock at a new job, the future of HR through AI, how to approach talent acquisition, and changing HR's perception, since its "job is not to eliminate risk," but mitigate and advise of risk. Enjoy!

Guest: Danielle Peretore - Director, Sales Strategy & Analytics @Glassdoor (Formerly @NerdWallet, @LinkedIn, @BCG, @HBS) Guest Background: Danielle Peretore is the Director of Sales Strategy & Analytics at Glassdoor. Prior to Glassdoor, Danielle worked in management consulting and business operations in the tech industry. She graduated from Brown and Harvard Business School and has a soft spot for the East Coast. She spends most of her free time doting on her two rescue dogs. Guest Links: LinkedIn Episode Summary: In this episode, we cover: - Biz Ops Team Structure & Hiring - Best Practices - International Markets Selection Framework - Data-Driven Executive Decision Making - Executive Profiles, Challenges, Solutions - Translating Executive Strategy & Data to the Field - Sales & Customer Success - Building Commercial Structures for Scale - Company Superpowers - @Glassdoor, @NerdWallet, @LinkedIn Full Interview Transcript: [Naber] Hello friends around the world. My name is Naber Naber, welcome to The Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented, and highly skilled sales and marketing minds on the planet from the world's fastest-growing companies. Enjoy. Hey everybody, today we have Danielle Peretore on the show. Danielle's the Director of Sales Strategy and Analytics at Glassdoor. Glassdoor was acquired back in 2018 for $1.2 billion.  worked in management consulting and business operations in the tech industry. She worked for NerdWallet, who has a $500 million valuation, and $105 million capital raised. And she also worked at LinkedIn, who was acquired by Microsoft back in 2016 for $26.2 billion. Before that, they went public in 2011. Danielle graduated from Brown and Harvard Business School, and she has a soft spot for the East Coast. She spends most of her free time doting on her two rescue dogs. Here we go.   [Naber] Danielle, awesome to have you on the show. How are you this morning?   [Danielle Peretore] I am great, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.   [Naber] Thank you.   [Danielle Peretore] Although it's actually evening my time.   [Naber] (laughs) Well happy evening, and good evening. So what I think we'll do is first talk through a little bit of your personal story, get into you as a kid, some of the decisions you made, interests you had, et cetera, and then we'll start to lean into probably 80, 90% of what we'll talk about which is your professional jumps, and some of the superpowers that you've acquired, accumulated along the way, and some of the things that you're great at, and know a lot about. And we'll talk through some of the methods and mindsets that you have around those things. Sound okay?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, sounds great.   [Naber] Okay cool. Let's start back in Jersey, where it all started.   [Danielle Peretore] Oh boy.   (Naber laughing)   [Naber] 25, 35, minutes outside of Newark it seems. Tell us a little bit about you as a kid.   [Danielle Peretore] So, I think I was the ultimate nerdy kid. I read all the time and everywhere, and I was horrible at sports. I got kicked off of six sports teams in high school, actually six.   [Naber] You counted. [Danielle Peretore] About half for skill. Oh yeah, I mean about half of them were for skill and about half of them for having a bad attitude. So, you know, kinda evened out. But yes, I read a lot of books. I went to a lot of really nerdy camps. I went to computer camp, I went to science camp, I went to math camp, all of the above.   [Naber] Yes, this is so cool.   [Danielle Peretore] Is it, is it so cool, or did I have a tiger mom? I'm not really sure.   (Naber laughing)   [Naber] Fair enough, fair enough. So maybe both are true. This is great. Tell us about a couple of the camps that you enjoyed the most and why.   [Danielle Peretore] Which camps did I enjoy, actually I loved computer camp because you could play games all day. Actually, you weren't supposed to but I did. Do you remember that game Frogger that was really big in the 90s?   [Naber] Absolutely.   [Danielle Peretore] Of course, of course. Okay great. Yeah, I loved Frogger, so I played a lot of Frogger there. I also learned how to code in HTML, back in, this must have been like 1998. So I was ahead of the curve and then I totally lost it, never became a coder, you know my mom's dreams of me becoming a female engineer just went out the window. That's a story for later, but anyway I coded these, Danielle's home page, it was always rainbow and sparkles, whatever. So yeah, I loved computer camp.   [Naber] Very cool.   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, yeah.   [Naber] And what was the first way that you made money?   [Danielle Peretore] First way I made money. The first actual paycheck I had for the summer before I went to college, my parents were, you know I'd been a nerdy kid just studying all through high school. And so they were very determined, they said that I needed to have a menial job. It was incredibly important to them that I understood what life would look like if I dropped out of college. And so they signed me up to work at a, it was like a shack that made french fries. So I made french fries and like chicken dinos. It was at like a, I think it was at a local pool. Yeah, it was at a local pool. And I spent my summer mopping floors, lots of clogged toilets. It was great, it was great. By the time I got to college, I was like, yep I'm gonna figure this thing out, I'm gonna stick it out. I don't want there to be any more clogged toilets in my future.   (Naber laughing) [Naber] That's a good story.   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, my parents had a little bit of a shock and awe strategy in terms of raising us. They were like yeah, you don't wanna do the things that we think you should do, or that you should do, let us shock you. Like, throw you in the deep end.   [Naber] That's funny. Was that the way it was for all our siblings as well?   [Danielle Peretore] Oh my gosh, yes. I think my other sisters, one of them worked, she actually, she was going to Harvard and then she spent two summers scooping ice cream. Where she got in trouble because apparently her ratio of ice cream to sprinkles was not right, and it was pretty funny when then she had to explain to them, she's like, "I promise I can do this. "I'm going to Harvard next year."   (Naber laughing)   [Naber] All right, great. And one last question, and we'll move on. What was your personality like as a kid? How would you describe it?   [Danielle Peretore] Well, believe it or not, I didn't talk really, as a kid. This is shocking to anyone who knows me now, but I was silent. I didn't talk to anyone, except my parents, and I really didn't like other kids. I was not into it. I just wanted to hang out with the adults. I basically wanted to be left alone and reading all day. I didn't wanna sweat. Sports was just a no go, I didn't really wanna be outside. I was like an 80-year-old woman as a 10-year-old.   [Naber] Interesting.   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah.   [Naber] Were you always like that, like did your parents say that you were like that when you were really small, like when you were a child?   [Danielle Peretore] Yes, yes. Yes, I was always like that. I never, there's all these pictures of me as a kid where all the other kids are together and I'm in the corner by myself not talking to anyone. Yeah, but it's funny, as I got older, so my middle sister used to be the really talkative one and so she would answer questions for me and whatever, and then we totally flipped and now I talk all the time, I always wanna talk. And my middle sister is really quiet and wants to be left alone.   [Naber] Well, you're making up for lost time with words, I love it.   [Danielle Peretore] I mean, yeah it's been about half my life that I've been making up for lost time so I should probably pump the brakes a little bit.   (Naber laughing)   [Naber] Fair enough. All right, so you're getting out of high school, you're making the decision to go to uni, why Brown University? And why cognitive neuroscience and Brazilian Portuguese studies?   [Danielle Peretore] Oh God, that's the question of the century. Why Brown, I'm wearing my Brown sweatshirt right now actually. I went to Brown, well really 'cause it was the best school I got into and as I said I had a tiger mom. So there wasn't much negotiation there. However, I loved Brown. I loved everything about Brown. Brown is just such a weird, wacky, wonderful place. There are no requirements, you take whatever you want. The weirder you are the better. I was considered so normal at Brown. And it was not cool, you know, it was not cool that I was normal. My friends from Brown are, they're just doing weird cool stuff. Brown was the best. I just had my 10-year reunion and it was a dream, I loved it. I think I got there and I was like, oh it's a bunch of weird kids who wanna sit in a corner and read, like me, great.   [Naber] Why cognitive neuroscience, and why Brazilian Portuguese studies?   [Danielle Peretore] Also great questions. So cognitive neuroscience, as I've said like 10 times during this conversation, I had a tiger mom, she really wanted me to get a science degree, and I did not wanna take Organic Chemistry. So I literally found the one degree I could get that did not require me to take Organic Chemistry and I signed myself up. But that's the funny side of the story, which is very true, it's very true. But I also, I've just always been really interested in why people do the things they do. It's part I think why I work with sales teams, which we'll get into, but I love it. Like what drive people, why do people make this decision, why do you do this thing that makes no sense, that's totally irrational. And so I got there because I was trying to appease my mom and also not do what she wanted at the same time. And then I stayed here because I really liked learning about that.   [Naber] Very cool. And you're at Brown, thinking about making your move into the real world,  your first jump out of school. Tell us about your professional ride so far.   [Danielle Peretore] Sure, yeah. So I graduated Brown in 2009  and that just goes to say that the world was ending when I graduated. It was basically like, whatever job you got you held on for dear life. And so I got really lucky, I interned at BCG, the Boston Consulting Group, management consulting, during my summer, my junior year summer. And honestly I did 'cause that I didn't know what else to do. You know that's the thing that's, I'm not gonna say all of us, but so many college kids who don't know what they wanna do, they get tricked. It's like, go into management consulting, I'm gonna get to do a lot of things. When actually you're gonna get to do one thing, which is run an Excel model and put it into PowerPoint slides. So yeah, signed myself up on that train. I did my summer at BCG, and then came back and was like, well there are literally no other jobs. So I went there full time. I joined the BCG New York office, I moved right to Manhattan after I graduated college. It was actually, a funny sidebar, my roommate was, she an amateur boxer training for the Golden Gloves and her boyfriend who lived with us was the starting linebacker for the New York Giants. So it like a real, yeah, I know. And then there's me. You guys can't see me, but I'm under five feet tall. So it was a real trip.   (Naber laughing)   Otherwise, they were great, but yeah. So then I was living in New York, working at BCG, and frankly, I just didn't love the buttoned-up culture. It just did not fit me. So I did it, I got through kind of paying my dues there, and then I was like, I don't wanna wear a suit to work anymore. And I was a kid from New Jersey, I had big hair at the time, big hoop earrings, I had a Jersey accent, and I was like, this is not my scene. So anyway. I had a great experience there, I'm really happy, I learned awesome skills, but then I jumped from there. I had always loved California and had done a bunch of trips there when I was younger and loved San Francisco, and so  LinkedIn reached out to me. They were looking, it was right before they were about to IPO, and they were looking for someone who spoke Portuguese, and I studied abroad in Brazil in college, 'cause they were about to open the Brazil office, and so I was like, all right, I'm outta here. Flew across the country with two suitcases, lived in a basically condemned apartment building as you do when you're 22 years old and moved across the country. And it was super fun. So I was at LinkedIn for about two years through an awesome period of their growth. They went from I think about a thousand employees to about five thousand by the time I left, it was over two years, it was wild. LinkedIn went public and I was still trying to figure out where the cafeteria was. It was just such a crazy experience. And I had no idea how crazy what I was living through was at the time but I had the chance to work with really awesome people there. And then I decided that so, back to tiger mom, my mom had signed me up for the GMAT when I was in college during a  break. She was basically like, you don't need time off, you're just gonna take the GMAT. And so my GMAT score expired like I had to use it or lose it.   [Naber] Oh no.   [Danielle Peretore] So I applied to business school, went off to HBS for two years,  and then came back, after HBS I was recruited by my boss from LinkedIn, so a company called NerdWallet. And then I was recruited from Nerdwallet by another boss from LinkedIn, his name is Christian, he's now the CEO of Glassdoor to Glassdoor. And here I am.   [Naber] Excellent. So let's pull up here. And we'll talk about a couple of different things. One is, you've been at some great companies. And you've been at those companies through the prime of part of their hyper-growth phases.   [Danielle Peretore] Yes.   [Naber] And one of the things that I'd love to hear from you is around, specifically the biz ops and strategy superpowers that each one of those businesses have. So let's start with LinkedIn. What was LinkedIn's superpower, what is something that they did extremely well, better than the rest, that you said like, this is the thing that they were elite at, from a business opt and strategy perspective that you lived through, that every company should have, whether it is natural or learned?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, so I don't know if this is technically biz ops and strategy, so tell me if I'm going down the wrong path, but something that I think that LinkedIn did incredibly well, and credit to their CEO Jeff Weiner, is they defined a mission and vision, and managed to use that  both in communicating externally, like it was very clear what LinkedIn was here to do and what they were looking to be, and also internally. They drove it down through the ranks internally in a way that there is no way that anyone who worked at LinkedIn, from the most senior levels down to someone who was on a contract basis, didn't understand the purpose of what they were doing there every day. And I thought that was truly exceptional. When I first started at LinkedIn I was young, it was my second job. I didn't really have much experience at different kinds of companies, and even I knew from the minute I walked in that door,  this is what we're here to do. This is my job today, and this is how I'm impacting both LinkedIn and the world.    [Naber] That's great. Okay, while we're on LinkedIn. What were a couple of the coolest projects you worked on at that time? There's a lot of different definitions for biz ops and not necessarily for strategy, but a lot of different definitions and ways that one would kind of ring fence or define biz ops. And as we go through each of these companies and talk about what they're great at, I'd also love to hear some of the really cool one or two projects you worked on. So at LinkedIn, what were some of the coolest one or two projects that you worked on?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah,  sure. So I worked for a guy at LinkedIn, he was a VP of biz ops, his  name was Dan Yoo. He's an incredible, incredible person. He's been my mentor for a long time. He wrote my recommendations for business school, recruited me to NerdWallet. And he, I think arguably, really did a lot of the definition of what biz ops is today. And there are two different types of Biz Ops teams. Biz ops evolved a bit later in the tech lifecycle, as tech was a bunch of small companies, you don't really get a bunch of MBAs running around.  And there've now been companies with two different versions of biz ops. One is the dedicated biz ops model, where you have a team that is, you have biz ops for all the different leaders of the organization. Biz ops for products, biz ops for sales, biz ops for marketing. That's Dan Yoo's view of the world, and what it looked at LinkedIn and NerdWallet. And Glassdoor is similar but slightly different. It's more of a centralized team that works on broad, cross-department initiatives instead of having a biz ops partner exactly devoted to marketing and only what the priorities are of that marketing leader or the sales leader. It becomes a bit broader and you've projects that really no one else can get done, 'cause they don't stay on all those different teams.   [Naber] What are the strengths of both of those models? Just quick interjection.   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah. I think the strengths, it's a really good question. So I think there's a lot of pretty obvious strengths to the dedicated biz ops business partner model 'cause then you are literally infusing really smart strategic thinking throughout the whole organization. What I always recommend, what I don't think is great, is when you do that and then have those teams actually report up through the functions, they report up through product or through marketing, 'cause then you lose that connection. What's awesome is to have a biz ops for marketing person thinking with the biz ops for product person, applying unified frameworks. So if you have a centralized team that's dedicated to the different parts of the business, what you end up doing is infusing that thinking through the organization, in actually a holistic way. But the downside of that model is, sometimes companies just kind of aren't big enough to bear it. If you think about the background of someone who's a biz ops or strategy person, they're someone who likely has, they may have an MBA, they've thought about leadership, they've thought about strategic thinking, they think about the path forward for any organization. Having a biz ops leader parallel with every single leader of a different business unit or a different function, it can be overkill. And so I think it's really dependent on both the company's stage and size, and also how the company functions. You know, do things really get done centrally, is there central strategic thinking, or is it more that you wanna infuse strategic thinking, but you wanna make sure that you're not overdoing it as well.   [Naber] Excellent. Okay, sorry to interrupt your thought, carry on.   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, so at LinkedIn and NerdWallet, they were both run by the same guy,  by Dan Yoo, and so they were much more the centralized team, but dedicated business partner model. Biz ops for product, biz ops for marketing, biz ops for sales, and then teams underneath them. And then at Glassdoor, it is a little bit different. So it's a stellar team, it's super smart people, but they work a bit more on cross-functional products. So we'll have someone who's biz ops for all international, they own our international expansion strategy. Then they'll have biz ops for our jobs marketplace, and our jobs marketplace under rides, it touches product, it touches marketing, it touches sales. But really no one else other than the biz ops teams could own these areas, because they're centralized, they're super smart, and they're really close to the executive teams, they can get things done.   [Naber] Okay, let's wrap LinkedIn. So at LinkedIn, can you give us maybe an example of a really cool, nerdy project, fun project you worked on LinkedIn that you think was, maybe either the biggest project you worked on or the most fun project you worked on.   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, the answer to those is probably the same. So I built our expansion strategy into Latin America, which it is was funny, I was originally hired to LinkedIn too, partially 'cause I spoke Portuguese, they were looking for someone who could work in Brazil, and then they kind of launched Brazil and let it run, so I didn't touch much of it from there, but two years later, they were deciding whether they should expand into Mexico and Argentina, et cetera et cetera, and I travelled down to Mexico, met with a bunch of different people down there to determine if we  should open up an office there. Did a bunch of research on Latin America and then eventually published our expansion strategy. But I think the coolest part of that was that I built a framework that I heard was still in use, probably not today, but a couple of years back was still in use. It was a framework to use for prioritizing markets for entry. You know to figure out where to go next. And I loved that, that was super fun. I mean it also involved me going to Mexico with these two amazing and hilarious Brazilian men and me. You know, so they were toting me around, so I'm in the back trying to take notes in these languages that I 50% understand. So that was pretty fun. [Naber] Nice, cool. And can you tell us a little bit about that framework? About the framework you built?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah. So you're really testing the limits of my memory, 'cause this is now like six or seven years ago, but I'm gonna try. So what the framework had, it basically was evaluating in any decision to enter a new international market, I think something that I have seen companies get wrong is basically saying, there's a massive potential in this market, and therefore we should go for it. I mean the most classic example obviously is basically Google trying to enter China. Right? It's huge, you feel like you gotta be there, but the environment is just. There are really three elements. There's like, is it a big market, but is the environment hostile, and then also what is your, what are your consumer metrics like there? You know, when companies think about expanding internationally, the first, and web companies obviously, this is tech and internet companies, but the first thing that you do is you get a domain in that country and you start trying to build up your UGC, your User Generated Content. So for Facebook, they want members there, they want people posting. For Google actually I'm not entirely sure  that they want, what their UGC might be, but they're probably trying to launch Google Photos, get people using the platform. For LinkedIn, it was getting members there. For Glassdoor, it's getting people to post reviews and salaries et cetera. So building up that UGC pool. And then at that point, you can make a decision on entry. But really if any of those three factors are off, you're in trouble. One, market size. Two, hostility. Maybe not hostility as too punitive, but essentially how friendly this environment is, both to business just generally and also to your particular brand of business. And then thirdly, what does your own consumer penetration look like there? What do you have to build on?   [Naber] Awesome, that's great. Thanks so much.   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, oh sure.   [Naber] So, let's jump into NerdWallet. What's the one thing they do extremely well?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, so NerdWallet is such an interesting business. I mean that business is just a crazy cash cow. It is nuts. I've never seen anything like it. I think I've always, the other companies that I've been at have been along the enterprise SaaS model, which I love. I love working in enterprise businesses, I think they're really interesting, a lot of people don't but I do. they get a kickback, and it's brilliant. And so it's really, what I thought was really cool at NerdWallet, they have two superpowers. One, the way you win that market, the way you win the search market, is just having, there are hacky ways to do it that everybody knows. There's Ask.com and whatever that Google's always trying to kind of take a hit at. But so, let's, assuming you don't go the hacky way, the real way to do it is you build an incredible content asset. And what NerdWallet has done, which I think is so cool, they have their head of content is this woman named Maggie, and she's super impressive. She has an awesome background in journalism. And they have hired a team of badass journalists. Really great writers, really badass people who are experts across different parts of the personal-finance spectrum. And they do two things, one is some writers have managed to marry writing on interesting topics with what that's actually going to mean for search results, like how is this going to appear in search results? How is this going to get your page truncation? And then secondly, they now have an investigative reporting arm. Which is so cool. So they've got a team that goes out and digs into personal finance issues, and potentially at their own risk in terms of not really ingratiating themselves to some of the financial players, they'll publish exposes. But they've built is amazing. I mean at least when I left it was, that team was probably almost a hundred people. A lot of them are remote, but really talented, really strong people. So that's one amazing thing they've built there. The second thing that again comes from Dan Yoo, who you're gonna hear me mention a lot, at biz ops, I'm sorry, in biz ops at LinkedIn and then of course at NerdWallet.  To some extent, we got this, by the way, from Jeff Weiner at LinkedIn. And so, just, I've never seen, or not that I've never seen in a sense I've worked for these guys for a long time, but in comparison, they are incredibly data-driven. And data-driven in a way that it flows down through the entire organization. Kind of like I was mentioning with mission and vision at LinkedIn as well, but they're data-driven in a way that every single person knows what metric they are driving towards, and what metric they are responsible for. This is really, really hard to do. Building a culture that is that data-driven. Not everyone you hire top-down throughout the organization. Data-driven executive decision making, and then translating that data and those insights and that strategy to the field is something you've had to do at multiple businesses, multiple roles, something you obviously get quite good at. Let's take each one of those one at a time. So firstly, can you explain data-driven executive decision making, and how do you think about it, what's your mindset, what's the method and process you use to go about doing that?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, no it's a great question. So that's something that we have, we have been working through really actively makes all decisions based on data, And the inherent thing about data is it will always contradict itself. Always. So you can have two metrics that are beautifully defined, the data can be clean and accurate, and I guarantee you, they will at times clash. If they're aiming to do the same thing or measure the same thing, they will at times contradict themselves. It's just how data works, and especially data in the world that we live today where tech companies collect a ton of data on their users, on their customers, et cetera. And so in the worlds where you've got a leader who wants a ton of data and a ton of metrics, you could often end up where you are both using too many resources to produce data and produce metrics. You're just spending too much time on it as a company. Two, you're actually confusing executive decision making, it's very hard to come to a consensus. And then three, you're just kind of at a point where you may truly not know what to do with the business. You need to have data limited enough that there's one or two metrics that you use to drive your  decision making, and you don't introduce all this confusion. And so I think those are the watch-outs in that first scenario. In the second, take a leader where you have someone who makes decisions based on their gut, you have to really train them to use and trust data. That's really hard to do. It's really hard to get someone who, and this I think especially happens with leaders who re founders, or leaders have been at the company and built the company for a long time. What you'll hear from them is, "I know the data says that, "but I've been here, I've seen how this company was built, "I know how customers buy X company, "how they buy X product." And so that becomes a real uphill battle. And in that instance I think what you need to do is spend a lot of time thinking about what are the few metrics that you know are indicative of the business,  and then even if it's not a focus of discussion, just bring it up, every single week, in the management meeting, we're gonna look at this metric. And then provide the appropriate level of commentary, so that what'll happen is, they'll see the business shift, and see the metrics shift in that direction over time. But that requires a lot of time, and there's really no way around just showing that this business went in this direction, remember that this metric was indicating that about 10 weeks ago, here's how you marry them.   [Naber] Okay, great. So, we talked about data-driven executive decision making. Let's say you get to a point where you're making a decision, you're going in a specific direction. How then do you translate that data, that information, those insights to the field?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah. This is something I think about a lot. And the reason I think is, so I  think I mean it's obviously important for the reasons that I talked about earlier with both  LinkedIn and NerdWallet where I thought something that was so amazing was that every single person at those companies knew what metric they were driving and how they were contributing to the business. So it is an incredibly powerful thing to roll data, and specifically, not just data on how to do your job, be data on the core business metrics and how we as a  company are driving to that, down to the field, and down to the lowest levels of the organization. It's massively valuable. What you then end up having is, you're having a conversation with executives on noticing that a metric is up or down, and you know exactly what to go do to drive that metric in whichever direction you want. So let's say one of your metrics is down, and the question becomes, how do we fix it. If let's say your sales reps, or your customer success reps, or  whoever's responsible for that metric, is not only monitoring, but also responsible for, incentivize on that metric, all you do is say, "Great, we're gonna go talk to that team." It becomes like a really beautiful loop. That said, there are a lot of metrics at the executive level that are not really appropriate for the field. And so this is where it gets complicated. At the executive level, for example, the number of calls that a sales rep makes is really important for how good they are at their job. Super basic, super important. Should the CEO be tracking the number of calls that a sales rep makes? Absolutely not.  Should the CEO be tracking the sales rep's overall productivity in dollars? Absolutely. That said, you're not gonna drive, let's say, you're not gonna say to sales reps, "Well, the team you're on "has been less productive this year, "and we need you to drive that up." They're gonna be like, "What do you want me to do about it?" What they need to know is, make more calls, send more e-mails, have more in-person meetings. And so figuring out how to balance the need for at the executive level to have macro metrics, metrics that are large enough, that encompass essentially a broad enough swathe of the business that they're meaningful, and having metrics that go to the field that are actionable, something they can specifically drive. And so I think that balance is really important. And so as awesome as it is when you can find a metric that you can drive all the way through from the CEO all the way down to the field, that's amazing, sometimes you need modifications and tweaks in order to do that.   [Naber] So when you're doing that  for different types of teams, like marketing, sales, customer success specifically, in the commercial stack, do you have to approach that translation and that rolling out in different ways based on those types of themes, and if so, what are some of the differences?   [Danielle Peretore] Yes, definitely. There, I'm laughing as I say this, because definitely. Those teams, one of the great learnings that I've had of working on the go to market world, is just how differently these teams are driven, even though they work so closely together. So the most core example of that is, what does a salesperson respond to? They respond to more pay, basically, it just comes down to pay. So tell them how to hit their quota, so they can make more money, they're on board. Someone in marketing, not only are they not on a quota, and therefore you can't just pay them more, but also someone who goes into marketing, that isn't, they're just a very different person from someone who goes into sales. Especially I think in marketing, customer success, you get a lot of people who just really love working with clients, they love working with customers. They really thrive in the environment where they're thinking about, how do we get our message out there, how do we ensure that people understand who we are, how do we make sure that someone has a quality experience? The thank-you that they get from a customer can be as valuable as an extra $20,000 is to a sales rep. And so these teams work so closely together, but they're, not only are there incentives in terms of how they're paid so different, but literally their incentives they often share clients, but they are so different. And so for salespeople, again, it just comes down to, think about their incentives structure. Think about their compensation plan. Beyond these very early days of a start-up, you're going to be hiring salespeople whose behaviour will be driven by how you pay them. So if you pay them to just go out and get dollars, they'll just go out and get dollars. It doesn't mean they're getting dollars the way you want them to get dollars. “and here's what I'm gonna give you "if you sell this product." The same would go for if you want them to drive certain activity. It might be that for example, some companies have hybrid sales reps, and it is always easier to just go and try and sell more products to a customer that's already convinced, that already buys from you, than it is to go make a new sale to someone who has no sense of your company and who you  are. You may need to incentivize reps to go and do that new business motion which takes a lot more time, is a lot harder, than kind of going and fishing in the existing pools. So my biggest lesson of working with sales teams is incentives are everything. Customer success is a whole different animal. Customer success, I mean customer success obviously takes many different  forms and it can mean many different things to different companies, but typically the people  ho take a job We had a product where we had a very strong hypothesis, which I think by the way was the right one, which is that most employees when you sign up for a healthcare plan through your employer, you have literally no idea what you're choosing. You have no idea if it's the right plan for you, no idea if it's the right plan for your family. And so we built a tool that would plug into your healthcare plan options as an employer, and that you would then roll out for employees to use in onboarding so they could select, I go to the doctor this many times a  year, I need these kinds of specialists, I have this many dependents et cetera, and it would spit out the healthcare plan that was the most effective and efficient for you. And it was really cool, I mean I loved working on it. But we ended up folding it. And the big lesson that I took from that is one, healthcare is really, really, really hard. Regulated spaces are really, really, really hard, they're also where we're going to do the most good for the world, but they are so difficult. And you need to be really dedicated to figuring that out. And then I think secondly, I just learned a  good lesson there on what companies are willing and not willing to pay for. Which is a great lesson for someone who works in the enterprise business and has been working in SaaS-like spaces. Companies, essentially if we were able to say to them, we're going to reduce your healthcare costs by rolling out this tool, they'd be like, "Awesome, we're totally on board." But this was just a way to make things easier, and the value prop was just not quite as clear in that way, right. I guess I wouldn't say the value prop in the sense that there was value, there was clear value to it, employees loved it. But the specific value to the employer we couldn't quantify. And it becomes so important to quantify. If you can't quantify, it's basically dead in the water.   [Naber] Yeah, good one. Okay, Glassdoor, what is something that, what's one of Glassdoor's superpowers? What's something they do extremely well?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, Glassdoor's superpower is actually easy, and I should say, I love Glassdoor. I think it's an amazing company, I'm so happy there. Part of this is because Glassdoor, what Glassdoor does well is they are an excellent employer. And we should be, right, we literally collect data on what it means to be a good workplace. But we truly walk the walk and talk the talk in a way that I haven't really seen any company do before. I mean again, of course, this is our product, right, our product is talking about what makes a great workplace, what makes a great manager, how to ensure you're fairly paid. But Glassdoor lives those values to a  tee. Glassdoor has an exceptionable executive team, a really exceptionable executive team, who are, they're incredibly smart, they're incredibly talented and driven, but they care deeply about their employees and their employee's experience. Employee happiness surveys, we send Glint surveys twice a year. We have a full 360 review twice a year, there's a lot of feedback and a huge focus on how to be a good manager, how to treat your employees well, and then from the HR side, Glassdoor publishes studies of its own data on whether we're fairly paid, all the time, across all of the metrics, across genders, across races, et cetera. It is an exceptional and deeply thoughtful place to work, and we leverage what we learn in the marketplace to be a great employer ourselves.   [Naber] Wow, that's great. I love the proactive transparency behind all of it too. If you need to talk speak categorically about this, go for it, but an example of a really big or cool project that you've worked on, or are working on at Glassdoor?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, something I have thought a lot about is you first, and there are  companies that have inverted this and gone for start-ups first, but often you tend to go for large enterprise-type customers first, they've got budgets, they've got money, you sell a bunch of enterprise customers, you build, sometimes even a custom product, you definitely have a super customized service motion and model that you have for them, and that's how you get out and you get product-market fit, you start to build your base of customers. And then over time, the enterprise space is finite. There's only so many Fortune 100, Fortune 500, Fortune 1,000  companies out there. And something, and forgive me if I misquote this, but something like 60% of employers in the US have less than 10 employees. So tons of SMBs out there. That goes to goes to say the SMB space is huge, and then so you start to figure out how you can sell into the SMB space. And as you do that, and that is kind of, I am equating that with when a company scales, although of course as I mentioned, some companies will start small and go big. Either way, for your first initial customers, you likely are building a relatively high touch service model. They've got two or three people who are at their beck and call, they need anything we're there, providing super superior service. But over time, and as you scale, you can't do that anymore. One, because as your company grows, you just run out of venture money, you just get to a point where profit matters. Uber is Obviously defying all of these truisms, but for most companies eventually, you need to start turning a profit. But secondly, as you start to sell into smaller companies, or you have smaller deal sizes, it doesn't make sense to have a dedicated team servicing a really small customer. So what do you do? And that's where automation comes in. And I think that this is an interesting space in that a few years ago, automation was kind of super hot. Everyone was buying tons and ton of different products. it's been something that's been on the table at all the companies I've been at, 'cause all of the companies I've been at have been in hyper-growth.   [Naber] Okay, I've got one more question for you, and then we'll wrap. If someone's looking to build out a biz ops and strategy team,  or biz ops and strategy function, do you have a couple of best practices or a mindset that they just need to nail these one or two or three things that they're gonna build out that function and be really successful?   [Danielle Peretore] Yeah, that's a  good question. So I'd say a couple of things. One, your biz op, the person that you hire to lead your biz ops team, you want them to be a strategic thinker, So you need someone who's going to be able to walk into that room and convince a sceptical executive team of the importance and the value of data. So that first hire is really important. And then also as I mentioned, of course, they've gotta be a really strategic thinker. This has gotta someone who sees the whole picture of the company and can play ball with executives and those senior levels. And the reason they need to be a really strong people leader is the kind of people that  you wanna hire on a biz ops team, they're gonna be super data-driven, super strategic like their  leader, and they're also going to be pretty intense, and going to be people who are, they're  really looking to build a career, they wanna know what their next steps are, they've gotten, the   was never good enough for them, they got the A plus. And so enabling, you want someone who's going to enable the people who do both attract really strong talent and then manage them well. And managing people who are really high octane, really high output, sometimes it's easy to let them run, but they actually, they need a lot of support. They certainly need a lot of coaching, they're going to want a lot of guidance, they're people who are going to seek out their manager for help. So having someone who's a really strong people leader is incredibly important. And then I think in terms of who you hire next, something that I've found is really useful is I send a homework assignment. Again, maybe self-evident, but I think this is something that, send, obviously clean-up the data, make sure that the data that you're sending out is not proprietary, I don't want anybody getting in trouble, so these are not things in that proprietary  data, out a data exercise, someone on my team did, again, scrubbed, can't say that enough, scrub that data. And then I ask them to both manipulate the data, but also to put together a  presentation. And I do this actually pretty mu h across all levels. You learn so much from that.  There are so many people that you'll say, oh they've got a great background. But what you don't know, and I think one of the major flaws of interviewing and hiring in general, is you just really ever know, you're just asking questions. You don't know how someone would do with the job, to actually do in the job So send them a sample piece of work. See how they handle it. It'll tell you 90% of what you need to know.   [Naber] Hey everybody, thanks so much for listening. If you appreciated and enjoyed the episode, go ahead and make a comment on the post for the episode on LinkedIn. If you love The  Naberhood podcast we'd love for you to subscribe, rate, and give us a five-star review on iTunes. Until next time, go get it.  

Guest: Gordon Tobin - Vice President, Commercial Sales @G2 (Formerly @Headspace, @LinkedIn) Guest Background: Gordon Tobin is the Vice President, Commercial Sales at G2. Prior to joining G2, Gordong was the Director of Enterprise Sales at Headspace. Before joining Headspace, Gordon was at LinkedIn for about nine years. He had six roles in four different offices spanning three different continents. Two of his most recent roles were, one is the Global Head of the Business Leadership Program, and most recently he was a sales leader in the Sales Solutions Business. About a year and a half after Gordon joined LinkedIn, they IPO'd in 2011, and then they were purchased by Microsoft for $27 billion in 2016. Gordon is based in San Francisco, California, originally from Dublin, Ireland. Guest Links: LinkedIn Episode Summary: In this episode, we cover: - The Prioritization, Mindset and Methodology of Building Your Culture Standard (Set, Demo, Hold) - The Talent Management Mindset - Interview, Hire, Coach - Leadership Cadence - Priorities, Time Spend, Meetings - Best Practices for Stakeholder Management   Full Interview Transcript: Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to the Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest growing companies. Enjoy! Naber:  Hey there, team. Today we have my good buddy Gordon Tobin on the show out of San Francisco, California, originally from Dublin, Ireland. Gordon is the Director of Enterprise Sales at Headspace. Headspace has a $320 million valuation, they've raised $75 million in capital. Before joining Headspace, Gordon was at LinkedIn for about nine years. He had six roles in four different offices spanning three different continents. Two of his most recent roles were, one is the Global Head of the Business Leadership Program, and most recently he was a sales leader in the Sales Solutions Business. About a year and a half after Gordon joined LinkedIn, they IPO'd in 2011, and then they were purchased by Microsoft for $27 billion in 2016. Naber:  Gordon Tobin, awesome to have you on the show. Very privileged. Gordon Tobin:  The pleasure is all mine. The pleasure is all mine, I can assure you. Naber:  Cheers Buddy. The pleasantries are not just surface level, one of my favorite people. So what I want to do today is run through a bunch of different stuff. One of the more insightful business minds I've been around, had the privilege to work with, both on a few different projects, but also observe from both close and afar. What I want to do is probably start going through a little bit of your background, your personal journey. You've got a really cool, interesting family background. You've been all over the world, traveled all over the world. I've got an insert in here where one of the conversations you and I had long time ago helped change my life for the better, which is great. And we'll talk about all that stuff, but why don't we start maybe five, seven minutes around what Gordon Tobin was growing up. Maybe what you were like growing up as a kid, in school, then we can get into some interesting things you were interested in, or some jobs you had, etc. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, for sure, and thanks again for having me on. I think, where should I start? Dickens - "I Am Born."? I think, for me the first, well my early memories, if you want to go back that far, are very, very happy ones up until about the age of about six or seven. Six or seven, won't go into all the drama, but parents parted ways, things financially didn't go so good, and I think at that age, very early on, I had to learn how to be self reliant, and self sufficient, and also had to learn how to adjust quite a bit because there was a lot of change in my life, because of the personal circumstances outside of my control over the next 10 years. So if I was in characterized Gordon, up to seven as very happy go lucky little child, from seven to 17, 18, I was a wild child, not a great academic...And so for all the folks who maybe didn't get an a plus plus in applied mathematics or economics, I can assure you that that's not the be all and end all. Whilst I was not a great academic, I think I thoroughly enjoyed my education. I had so much fun in school, when I chose to attend. And I think the turning point for me, was when I had just finished up the equivalent of my leaving cert in Ireland - by the way, I'm an Irishman, so if there's a difference between what you you hear and what you see on my LinkedIn profile, it's because my mother is from Trinidad and Tobago, which I'll touch on in a minute. I think for me, at 17, it was a turning point where I could have gone down one road, which was not a good one. That was the road of I have not achieved academically, I will go into or down a trajectory or a path that's not the most bright or inspiring. Or I could double down and really try, for the first time in my life, hard at studying and then just putting in my effort. And I probably, retrospectively looking back at it, put in about 80% effort, did pretty good. Got into the second best university, best I should like to say, but apparently according to rankings is number two, in the country, University College Dublin, studied English and Sociology, then I did a Master's there in Business. And what was a big turning point for me there was growing up, particularly during that turbulent period, being intellectual or academic or anything of the kind was not something that was celebrated. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite. And so I was a closet reader and intellectual. I read every single girls children's book there is because up until the period of seven we had a big library of girls children's books, and then after seven we didn't buy too many more books. Like I read every Enid Blyton - The Famous Five, The Adventures of Babysitting Club - I could tell you them all. Everything in the shop. And I used to remember reading veraciously under my covers. But the reason why I say this is because I hit that until I was 17 when I got to University, suddenly education was something to be celebrated. Suddenly people were not talking about jobs, they were talking in the context of a career, and they were talking about meaning and purpose. And the upbringing I had post-seven years old was very much, a little bit further down the Maslow hierarchy of needs, as far as just making sure the ship was steady. And so it opened up a whole new world for me. And after some time there I went, did some travel around the world is, which I think you might be aware. I lived in a 10 for nine months in Australia. I surfed all throughout the worlds, from right through Southeast Asia, Australia. I lived in a commune, I was in New Zealand, I was in the States, I was in Central America. Came home 2008, big recession, Lehmann brothers failed around that time, you might remember, Ireland fell off the side of a cliff, and lucky little old me I got plucked out of that recession by what was at the time a little known start up called LinkedIn. I was employee number six in the Dublin office. I think they're are like two and a half thousand now or something. So, I won the lottery ticket, and I was invested in by that company, and over the next eight and a half years, I spent time in Dublin and moved down to Australia. I opened offices there. I came to San Francisco, started-up that training program globally for all of our graduates. And then went back in around the Sales Solutions business for a few years. And then most recently to present day, in my last six months I'm in my new role leading Sales at Headspace, which is a mindfulness meditation app company. So, I'll pause there. That's the brief history of time. Hopefully that was brief enough and not two verbose, but gives you kind of a flavour for my journey. Naber:  Mate, that was great. That's great. And we'll hop through a few of those jumps you made both before LinkedIn, at LinkedIn, afterwards at Headspace. Headspace, $320 million valuation, $75 million raised, a rocket ship, really fast growing, incredible product-driven company, which is really cool. LinkedIn of course, $27 billion acquisition by Microsoft - you there very early. I was actually just looking at a photo that I saw, somehow I found this on Facebook, photo of Bob Moody taking a picture, it was eight and a half years ago of you and Adrian wrapping shoe boxes... Gordon Tobin:  Oh yes... that was a a holiday time thing. But that was back in the day when we were literally taking our laptops out of their boxes and setting them up ourselves, we didn't have IT at LinkedIn those days, if you can believe it. Naber:  I do believe it. A tech company not having IT, incredible. But the caption was hilarious, "Gordon and Adrian wrapping shoe boxes. Non-revenue generating activity". I thought that was hilarious. Anyways, the point is really, really early getting onto the LinkedIn ship, and lucky we both were...Yeah. So cool. Such a cool ride and then, and then your jump to Headspace - very, very smart move as well. We'll talk about that in a little bit. So, along the way, you've made a couple of jumps. So let's talk first about your...You just got back from living in a tent for a long time, I think Gordon Tobin:  Yeah man, a commune. Naber:  Amazing. We're going to talk about that a little bit later. But was your first role BOA - Bank of America, when you came back. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, yeah. Yes it was... Naber:  Haha. Give me a short blurb on what you're doing at Bank of America (BOA). Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. I was in collections for a delinquent credit card debts, I was a collections agent. Naber:  Dream job, dream job. Gordon Tobin:  Of course. And then your primary, that was your primary remit. Your secondary remit was to, and this is part of I was an unwitting cog in a larger wheel, that was the securitization of debt against people's properties. So basically making sure that their credit card that was secured against their home and if they didn't pay their debt, they would lose their home. Naber:  Compounding effects. Compounding. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. And I mean, we all know where that led, 10, 11 years ago. But, from my point of view, the day-to-day actually was really good because I sat with a headset for nine hours, the thing we go "bunggg", a bunch of notes would pop up in front of me telling me what the person's situation was credit-wise, and what we wanted to do. And I would deal nine hours a day straight, a half hour break, in some pretty difficult conversations. And I learned how to be compassionate. I learned how to really listen and not wait to but-in while the other person is speaking. And I learned how to be resilient and that kind of environment. And I think actually working there and having some tough experiences early in life really built in me a shield of spirit that has protected me from the things that have happened throughout my life, and that has just led me to relate to those experiences differently and construct meaning around them in a positive way. Naber:  I think it's both apparent professionally and personally and when anyone spends more than one minute with you, which is I think it's an amazing testament. Very cool. Okay. So from BOA you moved to Nomads World Hotels and you lived in Byron Bay in Australia for six months, and quote unquote on your LinkedIn profile, possibly the most fun job ever. What was your favorite part about that job? Gordon Tobin:  The sense of community. There was 150 of us. We woke up, we shared our resources, we surfed together in the morning, the early morning, catching the most beautiful glassy waves. The backdrop was tropical jungle, one of the most beautiful beach breaks in Australia. And we would come back, we'd eat together, we'd work in the hostile. I'm a salesperson. So we'd find ways to make money, think broadly. We tell anything we could from cold cans of coke on the beach to whatever we could. But I think it was that sense that we were all pulling together in unison in pursuit of a common purpose, which was really a community that was based on nothing else other than looking at it for your fellow brother or sister and making sure they were well taken care of. And we did that through surfing. We did it through music and we did it through breaking bread together. Meal time was a very important time where we pool our resources, to come up with the best meal possible. And for me it was just amazing. I worked front of house at the hostels so I knew everybody nearby. And then a small part of my job, I think you might read on my profile was removing poisonous snakes occasionally when they came into the hostel. Naber:  That's so scary. Brown Snakes are no joke. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, snake capturing...So if the whole sales things doesn't work out, I do have a little bit of experience there, so don't forget that if you're watching this podcast you can find me. Naber:  Haha, so funny that I pulled the headphone jack out of my headphones. Can you hear me okay? Gordon Tobin:  Ha, yeah, I've gotcha. Naber:  That was at a Arts Factory, in Byron? Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, the Arts Factory in Byron, which I think most people who've gone up the east coast of Australia will have heard of it, if not stayed there. Naber:  It's a high traffic place. Okay, so you left there...What kind of, what music are you listening to at that point? You made a passing comment, but I'm, I'm interested. You said that music was connecting you. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, primarily acoustic. So I play guitar. I brought the guitar with me, and that was a big part of what we did together. Actually, I neglected to mention as a community we would just make music together. So I don't actually learn songs. My brain is not wired that way. I don't have the intelligence to do it, but I can make stuff up as I go along. And so, there's a few people in there and I don't know if you've ever had the experience of just jamming with people, and some people you can just, you start playing and they start playing along, and it's it clicks. And those people were there. And so, there was a lot of music, a lot of guitar playing going on there as well. That was a big part of our experience. And still a big part of my life to this day. Naber:  Do you play by ear? You don't read music...you play by ear? Gordon Tobin:  Well, no, I can, I mean I can barely read upside down tabs. And actually, to be honest with you Brandon, I don't make, I don't to like to learn songs. I'm what I would call a bedroom player. I sit in the room, and I make stuff up. Or I sit in the garden, and I make stuff up as I'm going along. And I almost get into a trance-like meditative state, where I forget how much time is going by, and I suddenly look up at us two hours, 90 minutes, or maybe half an hour, but it's a very therapeutic, private thing that the introvert in of me loves to do. Naber:  Really cool. We're jumping ahead here, but would you view that as a form of meditation? Gordon Tobin:  So I think, yes it can. It's a definitely a meditative practice depending on the state of mind. I mean, meditation is really just a tool to be more mindful of what you're doing in your life, and to be more present in what you're doing in your life. And so anything that requires or summons your full attention and brings you into what some people might call a flow state, or where all your Gamma, Theta, Alpha brainwaves are going in straight lines toward one thing. That's a beautiful place to be in. and I find I get close to that place either through the act of meditation itself or things like playing the guitar. Guitar's actually probably the closest after meditation, in terms of getting me to a more mindful place...in my own mind and remaining somewhat in control of it. Naber:  Very cool. Very cool. And then, after that you went travelling for probably another six months or so, after you were in Byron? Gordon Tobin:  Yes, so after Byron, hit the road. We went up the entire East Coast of Australia. Then we went...we met a bunch of people in Byron, so the people we met with said come stay with us. So for the latter half of the six months we just couch surfed, and surfed literally, so double surfing going on - got a combo in...And we went up the East Coast, went all through Queensland. Got up...Did Frasier Island, did the Whitsunday Islands, all that stuff - which is, by the way, if you haven't been, one of the most aesthetically beautiful places on earth. Anybody who listens to this, I would strongly recommend you take a visit there when you get a chance. Naber:  Gorgeous. Gordon Tobin:  Then I went to New Zealand, we have pals there. We surfed down there old school in much, much, much colder waters, in New Zealand as well. Then went from there to Los Angeles, spent time in Los Angeles and Culver City, of all places, backward and forward to Texas because I made a very good friend from Austin, while I was in Texas. And then we went straight down into Central America and continued surfing through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama as well. So pretty awesome. Naber:  Wow. What a journey. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, I think that the funds ran out. My father was a little bit ill. He's much better, thank God now. But all the cosmic fingers, if you will, were pointing towards Ireland and returning home and that the year travel had served as purpose in terms of my wanderlust and what I was after. Naber:  Wow. Okay. So you came back, followed the cosmic signs, and came back to work as a recruitment consultant in Dublin. Tell us, give us, give us a minute on that. Gordon Tobin:  I'll give you a bit of back context first. So when I returned back from a year of travel, as I mentioned, in 2008 Lehman fails, I think it was October 17, if memory serves. But I came home to an Ireland that was deep in a very bad recession. So if you were male, between the age of 18 to 25 there was a 50% chance you were unemployed. I have a core group of friends who I've known since about six years old. And for a variety of reasons, I'd say seven of the ten are still long-term unemployed since then. Naber:  Wow. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. And so there's a tale of two cities I think in the Irish economic resurgence depending on which side of that city you're on, North or South Naber:  I was going to say North or South, yeah. The Liffey. Gordon Tobin:  But for me, for the first six months I came back I was on social welfare. And it was a decision. It was coming from this primrose path of Dalliance of surfing, and all that good stuff I was talking about in communes to Ireland, gray, dreary. And also, a communal consciousness of...it was socially acceptable to, not give up, but to congregate with your other unemployed friends and ,drink beer or do whatever, and complain about what was going on. And I think after a few weeks of reacclimatizing to that situation, realizing that I did not going to social welfare once a week, picking up 117 euros and trying to make that stretch for my mom's house. And that was not something that I was going to tolerate. So in a previous life I boxed quite a bit, and then I decided I was going to get up every morning and getting a job was going to be my job. And so I get up, I train in the morning. I would spend several hours online, LinkedIn, lots of other places trying to find jobs and then I would go to the boxing club in the evening, as opposed to doing what other people were doing, which is the socially acceptable thing at that time which was to say, "The government messed up, and it was outside of our control. The whole country is going pitfall, so I'm going to follow that." And I'm not saying not to blow my own horn, I just made a conscious decision that I was not going to get into that mindset. And so I trained physically and mentally every day and went through some really hard times. There was 17 euros extra per month for the Internet so I could apply for jobs. And that was a real expense in our household, that my mother had complained to me about. And so for me it was the period before I went into recruitment was six months of welfare, and then when I went into recruitment, I'm trying to call people to let me work jobs that don't exist, while the whole country is being laid off. So really recruitment for me was, I'm first of all eternally grateful that they gave me that job and I learned a lot about talent, which maybe we'll touch on that a little bit. But that's where I really learned the value of resilience and also gratitude because even though that job was terribly difficult in a macro economic climate, that was the worst in the history since the start of the Irish State in 1929 and then the first draft of The Republic in 1931, I believe it was. Even for all those hardships that were part of that experience, I learned so much. And so then, I don't want to fast forward and ruin the end of the movie, but you go into a place LinkedIn and they started talking about things career and all that good stuff going on there. Culturally, for me that was a little bit of a walk in the park compared to what I had experienced in the previous few years of my life. Songs, surfing around Australia. Naber:  So, a quick question because I want to get into LinkedIn, but there's just - I mean, I wish we had 10 hours for this episode right now - so, how do you remind yourself of that experience on a daily, weekly, monthly basis now when your circumstances are vastly different from what they were back then? How do you make sure that you remind yourself, what's the mental process or peg that you put in your calendar, or whatever it is. How do you remind yourself of making sure that you're grateful, from going from where you were at that time to right now? Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. there's a few ways. One I'm engaged in, I'm a bit of a meditation guy, so I meditate four times a day. And part of that is a gratitude practice. Second thing is I've very strong connection to my roots back home. I've always felt an otherness because I'm unusual no matter where I am. Even at home, I'm slightly unusual, given my mixed race background. And, I also never want to forget where I came from, and what my family did, and the sacrifice we had, to make to get me to be on this point that you can just be on top of this podcast with you. And the last thing, and this is one that I learned at LinkedIn and even had some coaching on it this morning, is the ability to zoom out. When you are in the weeds in the problem, your mind can be a school-sized prison and inprisonment can be so total that the prisoner does not even know they're locked up. And that is a very dangerous place to be. But if you have the ability to zoom out and say, okay, my momentary struggle, trouble, or strife, or turbulence, or whatever's going on at that time, if you can zoom out and say, well look on the spectrum of things in the grand scheme of life that will happen to me - like getting married or a bereavement or all the big life events - where this really stack up on a unit sense against that? And if you zoom out far enough and you think about it, you're like actually not at all. In most cases, if I asked myself, am I going to care about this in the same visceral emotional way now in a year's time, the answer to that question is always no. And part of the reason for that is, and I don't want to belabour the point, but our default settings, they live in our own heads. And our own emotions are so immediate, so available, so urgent and felt they have to be dealt with in that moment so urgently. But the reality is they, like all things in life, are passing and transient. And so your ability to step back and observe those and let that process happen, and not become the emotion, but observe it and be curious and learn from it, can help from the resilience path and bring you through almost anything in life, in my opinion. We have a choice in terms of every construct meaning around our experience. If you're aware enough to make that choice and stop. Naber:  And everyone listening just reminded themselves of what I just said around - if your around Gordon for more than one minute, you realize this guy is enlightened and deep and amazing perspective. Gordon Tobin:  Thank you, I appreciate it. Naber:  So you jumped into LinkedIn at that time, and that means a whole lot of different things for you personally and professionally. When you jumped into LinkedIn, you had a whole lot of responsibility thrown at you from a sales, a new market perspective, a new boss and everything was young. As you grew up, as you grew up at LinkedIn, you met an enormous amount of fascinating people. And one of the things that LinkedIn is notorious for is building an incredible culture and hiring great people. If I'm thinking about the people that embody that and I'd to hear, talk about it, your very high on that list of people that I'd to hear. What are some of the frameworks or principles that you think about at both LinkedIn, that you took away...of a business that is just world-class at building culture, as you go into and as you're now in Headspace. How do you think about building cultures, especially as you're building new teams, taking over new teams? How do you think about that? What's the framework that you use in your mind? Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. So the framework that I use is one I've learned at LinkedIn. And so for me, culture and values, if you are...it's really actually a question about integrity. So there you will have a set of cultural tenants and values, and they are things that are statements of self, both your current self and your aspirational self. And it's also a set of guiding principles, in terms of how you will govern your actions and your decisions on a daily basis. And I think, particularly in a sales context, but anywhere, I think Peter Drucker might've, I'm paraphrasing, but says "culture eats strategy" for breakfast. It's so true. And for me, it's doing business through values. Just because we're in corporate America or corporate wherever you, you can run a really good business and you can also teach people really good human values. And the right way to do it with integrity and through honesty. And so for me in building that, when I came in to the team at Headspace, I asked them those questions. We sat down, we took a full day because I wanted them to understand how important cultural, the cultural bedrock of everything we do, how that affects everything. And so we took a full day where we white-boarded it out. I was like, who are we today? I don't know exactly exactly, you guys know better than I do. Tell me who we are. Tell me who we want to be, and then let's talk about some ideas that will govern actions and decisions. And so, I mean, there's a bunch of them. I could give you examples. At LinkedIn, one of the big ones was Members First. So we're always going to put the free member before we put our customers. Because without a healthy member ecosystem, you don't have a B2B business to build on your B2C ecosystem. And so every commercial decision was not made at the expense of compromising that value. And so when I say it's an integrity thing, it's a question of - there's a list of things that we believe to be true, in terms of our current state and who we want to be. And they are things we are not going to compromise on, even if that hurts us financially in the short term. And we have to have shared agreement on what those things are. And then they manifest day-to-day in different decisions that you make, often that conversation will come up, and I will actually think about the culture and the values we've created, and is there a culture or value tenant that can drive or help at least guide the decision making process? And that for me is key. If you don't have that stuff laid down, it's it's not a very nice recipe for a very tasty dish, we'll put it that way. Naber:  Nice. Good analogy. I've heard you talk about set, demo, and hold the culture from the perspective of how to apply this from a leadership, management, and ground-up perspective. What does that mean when you say set, demo, and hold? Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. So culture in a lot of companies can just be a didactic little parable that sits on a polished thing on a wall that people don't know that it is. An awareness of something is different than commitment to it. And so for me, it's, it all starts, everything from a cultural standpoint starts at the top. And so if I as a leader say that, precision in execution on something is important, or compassion in how we collaborate with our cross functional partners and some of the more complex deals we're involved with is important, and we expect folks to live by those things, you know. And so I think, if you don't have that common set of rules in place, it can be really difficult and challenging down the road to manage the business. But if you do have it in place, you're setting yourself up for the right foundation. But that is after talent, that's the starting point. Naber:  Got It. And how do you, how do you bring that into measuring engagement and performance based on culture? How does that proliferate throughout the organization, both from a leadership and management perspective, and then trickle down? Because you mentioned it's top down. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. So I think, on the top down it's, to your point, I'll just use the parlance, set the standard, demonstrate the standard, hold others accountable. Whatever cultural tenants that we agree to, it starts with me, or the CEO, or whomever is setting the culture. But if she says x is important, she's got to live that, and she's got to demonstrate them. And she can't live it and demonstrate it, then she's not in a position to hold other people accountable to it. That's where I think I'd round-out that answer. I think on the second part, can you remind me of part B of the question? Naber:  Yeah, sure. So how are you making sure that that comes out when you're thinking about measuring engagement and measuring performance of people? And then how does it, how do you make sure that proliferates throughout the business through leadership and management as well as bottom up - acting that out? Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. So I think, from an engagement standpoint, it's rewarding those behaviors that are befitting the culture and helping perpetuate, and grow, an inculcate the culture. Naber:  Can you give me a couple of examples? Can you give me a couple of examples of that on, how that would happen? What's the setting, what are you saying? What you doing? Gordon Tobin:  I can give you a really good example, only came up yesterday. So someone who was quite junior-level, not junior, wrong word, but a little bit earlier in career we'll say, wrote a direct email to the executive staff pointing out some things that she felt we could be doing a better job on. And there's a value within Headspace that I really love, which is courageous heart, and it's having the ability to step up and speak your mind if something feels a bit weird, even if you don't fully understand it, just flag it and have the courage to do that. I think, this particular individual was very brave in doing that. And just because, it's a normal human social hierarchical thing to raise the flag on something that, it takes a lot of guts, and I had a huge amount of respect. And it was called out at the all hands as something to be celebrated. And I also think then there's rituals and celebration around that. And so how do you reward that? And I do it through our staff meetings. I do it through all hands. And so if people are living out the cultural tenants of the company, I call it out first actually ahead of the results, because I believe the results follow the culture. Naber:  Culture breeds results, result doesn't breed culture. It's not chicken and egg. Fully believe it. Okay. So that was gold. That was excellent. And thank you for the examples as well. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, thanks for reminding me of part B of that question when I trailed off. Naber:  Yeah, no worries. No worries. I reminded myself after you asked. So, you had a lot of interesting cool, gigs at LinkedIn. You went from Sales Development where you're building pipeline, you were in Account Executive roles, you were in Team Lead roles and temporary management roles when were in Sales Development, then you moved to the account executive roles. You're in Dublin, you were in Perth, you moved to San Francisco leading Business Leadership Program there - which was an amazing global program that you had set up. And then ultimately moving into a sales leader role in Sales Solutions. during that time, you have both me, a lot of amazing people, interviewed a lot of amazing people, spoken to a lot of very, very smart, influential people, and hired a lot of people as well. Let's talk about talent. Let's talk about talent. So when you're thinking about hiring great teams and a set of, maybe a framework or a set of principles you use as you're going through that process, how does that play itself out for you? What are the, what's the framework? What are the set of principles that you use when you think about making sure you bring the right person in, engage that person, and retained them? Gordon Tobin:  Well, let me say this first. If there's anything that anybody takes away from this podcast that talent should be the most important thing you're always thinking about it in your business. No matter if your CEO or Sales Dev Rep, and you're making referrals, or you're making big time hires, or whatever. Throughout your entire career, your ability to have the nose to pick talent is going to be the most important thing you do. Making the right hiring decision is P-1 in Gordon's opinion. And there's a lot of energy coming through now in my voice, but please, please, please believe me that talent is number number one. And in terms of frameworks and philosophies, how do I go about Brandon? There's loads of, I've hired probably in the region of about I think 400+ people directly or indirectly, and maybe 30+ directly. Anyway, point being, you need to align on a set of beliefs and competencies that you believe that if someone possessed these, that they will be successful in this role. That's actually really hard because the taxonomy of skills versus job titles, as I'm sure some of your listeners will be aware, is not exactly a perfect system. And so I think you have, that's the first challenge. But I would say getting really clear on what are the three to five things that this person must be able to do? And then it becomes how do we objectively test for those things in a consistent manner, which is extremely important. I also think you want to give yourself as diverse a candidate slate as possible, so you can hear a multitude of different perspectives asking the same consistent answers to questions. That will really inform the gaps you can and cannot fill. And I think, the other big thing on the hiring front, after you've agreed to those things and you have ways of testing for them, and I'll give you an example. So let's say you're hiring a salesperson - one of my core beliefs, with sales people or any people actually, anybody for that moderate is coachability. And whether you're running a huge big company and you're the CEO, or no matter who you are, you have to be able to coach people around you or else you're just going to end up doing their job for them. And so the way we would test for coachability is give you a scenario and say, "Hey Brandon, you're a an account executive, you got an inbound lead coming in, qualify this person - BANT, pick your thing - and then we'll listen to the call. And so we go through, we do a 20 minute thing, you give the call and then I'll give you feedback - immediately, I give you feedback on that call. And then what I say is, okay, I'm going to ask you to come back in a week and we're going to try the same or similar role play again. And what I'd to see is demonstrable improvement in the areas of giving you feedback. Does that sound reasonable? Okay, great. So now I've given them a week to prepare and recalibrate against some of those things. First thing I do when they walk into the second round is say, "What was the feedback I gave you?" And if they don't know the answer to that question close to verbatim, that's not a good thing - put it that way. But thankfully 99 times out of 100 they do. And it's really a question for me to say - how quickly and with what level of dexterity was this person able to adapt to the coaching I gave them, and what was their emotional reaction to that coaching? Because in the interview process when someone's trying to get a role is different from when someone's in role, and you're giving coaching and feedback on a weekly basis. So coachabiliity for me is key, and I think he can test that going week over week by just keeping it quite simple - that's one thing I would test for, as an example. Naber:  That's great. And as you go through that process of interviewing thousands of people, thousands and thousands of people to hire hundreds and hundreds of people, do you have a way of...what is the method that you use for calibrating with other people, and who do you include in that process for calibrating the candidates that you're interviewing? Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, first person is definitely the Talent Acqsuition (TA) partner, and then secondary spherical is all my cross functional partners will be involved. So I think anybody they would be involved in working with, we would want them to again and go through a score card of what the things that this person would need to be able to have already done and be expected to do in that job. And that'll be different for each cross functional stakeholder. And so making sure I calibrate each one of those. First port of call is always my TA leader. Then we speak to the people that interact with most frequently in a cross functional basis, have the things you want to test for, think through how we test for them objectively so we remain compliant and all that kind of stuff. And then it's a a matter of rolling out the process. And I think the big thing there is really, really the good candidate management. I think a lot of companies get applications - I think LinkedIn got somewhere in the region a million applications last year, which is a lot of applications, and it creates a management issue. And I think a lot of companies are quite good at sourcing and finding people that they think are good, but different things happen internally or competing stuff comes up, and they push an interview or they do something like that - that's terrible, from a candidate experience point of view. I go down and I meet people down in the lobby, and I shake their hand, and I walked them him up, and I walked them out, and I talk to them. And I actually asked people in the lobby - did they interact with you? I'm curious to hear how they interact normally when not under supervision in a contrived environment. Naber:  I love that. I love that nugget. I love it. Any one to two specific interview questions, or types of questions that you ask that are very telling in the interview process for what you look for? And I don't mean against specific competencies, but a Gordon Tobin special question, where I asked this all the time because it tells me something that no other questions or very few other questions will be able to answer for me. Gordon Tobin:  I'll give you two examples. One is a Gordon Tobin, one is not a Gordon Tobin one. So the not Gordon Tobin one, which I always find very interesting to learn about people's early motivations. and a lot of this stuff happens before the age of seven - you're programmed, or so they say. But I asked people, what's the, particularly in a sales context, what's the first thing that you did in life to make money? What was the first job you had? Naber:  That is a good question. Gordon Tobin:  And I'm curious to know, was that job a function of necessity? Curiosity? Just natural innate a entrepreneurial-ism? Was it something they absorbed from the environment around them, like osmosis? So that's one. And I think their motivations for that can be quite telling in the kind of work they did. That's one big one. And I think the other one, for me, if I think about it...Just a general framework or philosophy, I think when I bring anybody in that I'll share, that it's a little bit off topic, but I think is important is this idea of near perfect autonomy and accountability when you have the talent in the door. And so this is probably my main one. And this is...early in a role, people need direction because they don't know what they don't know, and then they get to stage two and they're like okay, now I know what I don't know, and they need more guidance. And then you bring them through the guidance period, and then they know what they're doing, and they're in the flow zone. Well, most managers, and I've made this mistake myself - oh that person's crushing it, they don't need my help anymore. And then they get bored and they become an attrition risk, and you don't know about it. And so for me it's being able to recognize where people are in that curve and developing their talent along the way. And paying hyper-attention to everybody, because everybody's in a different place in the competency curve. And so when you think about autonomy and accountability, I aspire to get people near perfect autonomy to make decisions as they want and consciously trying to divorce myself from as many decisions as possible. And the reason why I do that is I cannot hold sales people or anybody accountable for the end result or the output, if I have too much meddlesome interaction in the inputs. They are free to come ask for my advice, for my counsel, for me to remove barriers, resources, or get on deals, I don't mind. But I won't insert myself directively in doing that, unless of course there's a performance thing going on. But generally how do I give this person as much autonomy to do what they need? But also let them know that with the autonomy, will come accountability at the end. And where I've seen people thrive in those environments. But it's hard. The little analogy I'll give to explain it is, it's like if you had your kid and your teaching it how to ride the bicycle. And you've got the - what do you call them, stabilizers? The little wheels? Training wheels. And their on their training wheels, and you take the training wheels off, and they start to wobble maybe just a little bit. If they're in a park and there's some nice soft ground, and some grass, you might actually let them wobble for a little bit longer so they learn the lesson of balance. You may even let them have a little spill so they learn what happens if you don't keep balance, if you don't keep the wheels straight. But if on the other hand you saw your child veering dangerously towards some oncoming traffic, you would of course jump in and step in. And the challenge with the autonomy and accountability model is knowing difference between when to step in, when to allow the person learn from the mistake. And that's really dependent on how existential the risk is of the learning lesson relative to the mistake. But that's a hard one, and I'm still a student of that and will be until my last breath. Naber:  That's a really good one. Do you have any tips for that evaluation process? Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, I think for me, you've got to think about...usually this comes up where someone says, "Hey, I want to try this thing." Whatever new way they want to sell something, or go to market, or some new thing. And for me, it's like, I've probably seen this movie before and have an idea, an inkling of how I think it's going to play out. And kind of most of the time it plays out that, not always, I'm wrong - we're only human. And the question I always ask myself is, is this a one way door or a two way door? So if they're walking into a one way door and there's no way of backing out, I try and make sure I highlight that for them. If it's a two way door, and they can walk in and be "Ooh", this might not have been the right room, let's moonwalk back out, back through door number two. And the analogy I use. And this is where it goes back to autonomy. I'm not going to make that decision for the rep, I'll provide the frameworks to allow them think through the process. But I won't tell people the answer because that's not my job. My job is to hire really smart people and coach them and bring out the potential in them, not provide all the answers. And I couldn't if I wanted to, even if...I'm just not capable of providing all the answers. Very few people are, and anybody who tells you they are - I would veer very, very far away from them. That's just Gordon's opinion. Naber:  So, you've got all these smart, coachable, brilliant people that you bring in into business. You're building culture - set, demo, hold the standard. And you've got to bring these folks into a structured environment that they're going to be able to succeed. What is your - let's start with something simple. What is your meeting structure or your cadence, whether it be daily, weekly, monthly look like? Some of the meetings that you have, conversations you have, what's your cadence? Gordon Tobin:  For sure. So I think, maybe I'll speak about it just from the front line manager perspective, which might be helpful. I think, first of all, in my opinion, the two core operating priorities for anybody is hiring and coaching. I'll repeat that again, talent and coaching. 40% of your time as a frontline managers should be spent coaching. And I would, espouse folks on the call, if you haven't, maybe Google the GROW model - there's a bunch of them, but it's a way of asking questions to get the answer as opposed to just giving the answer. So you want to teach someone had to fish as opposed to just hand them fresh fish, every day - that's the idea there. Naber:  Love Fish. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. Who doesn't love a good fishing. The other ways you've got to bring people along these curves is helping them...I see myself almost like a Sherpa that doesn't carry the bags. And so I can point the direction of up the mountain because I've climbed a bit of it, and I've seen where the pitfalls are, and I can tell people that. But I ain't going to carry your bags, and you got to walk up that mountain yourself. And you gotta be motivated to do so. I think if you find the right people and you give them the right set of direction, and you set the right cultural foundations, you're in a really good spot for people to thrive. But you must create the necessary conditions for success, which all begins with culture. Naber:  Got It. Awesome. And what percentage of your week would you bucket into each major thing that you're doing? Let's use the frontline sales manager example. What percentage of your time are you spending doing each particular thing? Either per week or per month, however you've thought about it. Gordon Tobin:  So, hour-long staff meeting once a week. That's where everyone through our operating priorities, our OKR's, and how we're pacing against them. We'll have a forecast meeting, which is your typical upside, downside, outlook - how we're pacing against that, any things we need to do to accelerate or decelerate what's going on. And then, I'll have an hour long, ideally one to one with every rep, where five minutes might just be spent, just double checking if anything changed in the forecast, if any swings happen in deals. But most of that time should be spent coaching. And then maybe toward the end of the quarter, with a couple of people, I put on my non-qualified therapist hat and support people through those moments that we all have in sales where we're like "Ooh, where's my, where's my number coming from? And the reality is nobody goes through a sales career unscarred. And so as a manager you need to be compassionate to that, and help support and guide people to those moments when it happens. Naber:  Awesome. Favourite or most impactful monthly or quarterly meetings that you have? Gordon Tobin:  Favourite, most impactful monthly or quarterly meetings we have. The All Hands meeting for sure that Rics owns. I think that gives the air traffic control point of view of what's going on. I think it's really important for a leader to, from a stakeholder management point of view, obviously up, down, and across, but down is so important. And for me, clarity and transparency are really important. And for a CEO, like Rich to build trust with 230 people, that happens with consistency over time. And so I think you get the same set of operating priorities, the same set of values or culture is consistent, and every month you're CEO, she or he is coming out and talking to those, and reminding people with reputation, reputation, reputation. Steve Gergen once said, former press secretary, "You got to repeat something until people are sick of hearing it." I'm a big believer in that. I'm a big believer in. And Rich comes out once a month, and has that meeting. And I think it's really, transparent. It's really informative, and it builds trust. Gordon Tobin:  Awesome. I think, Jeff Weiner used to say, "Only after you've said something a hundred times, people will have full of heard you." Then, after 99 times, they still may not have heard you, after the a hundred times, they may have heard you. So saying something over and over, it'll sink in. I subscribe to that. And then one of the other things, with your example - the all hands meetings - is the transparency that it applies to the entire employee base that allows those employees to go then be autonomous and make decisions because they know what's important and what are the highest priorities within the organization, all within the vein of the cultural and value tenants that, that are so important to the organization - well defined. I think that's a makes sense. It's really valuable as well. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. Typically, the operating priorities, whether it's my staff meeting, all hands, whatever, it needs to be consistent across the board or else you're just be all over the map. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Okay. And as you're, as you're going through some of the different roles that you've had both at LinkedIn and the Global Program that you ran. Actually, just give a one minute summary on the business leadership program that you ran because it was a mammoth. And I feel you skipped over that quite quickly. Give us the 30 to 60 seconds on what you did there, and then we can jump into what my question was. Gordon Tobin:  Yeah, totally. I'm happy to talk about it. Business Leadership Program, headline is we better, that's not the right word. We wanted to do two things. We wanted to up level the entry level sales talent across the sales organization of LinkedIn. And as a secondary, we wanted a longer term play in succession planning in potentially finding young talent and grooming it for more senior executive positions in the long-term. And so the idea was, if we had a different strategy where we went straight to the source, went straight to the universities, went all around the country, even we got to a point we were hiring people who hadn't gone to university - which is another big topic I'd love to get back on your show and talk about another day because talent and opportunity are definitely not equally distributed, for sure. But setting up that program was probably the six most difficult months of my career in that we were a startup within a very large company with high expectation. We were looking to compete with the Goldman's, and the people who already had very established university programs. And for me, I think coming from Australia, having little to no experience in anything akin to that role, and the remit of that role was, it was just a really hard climb. But I would posit to the folks listening today, if I can, from a career standpoint, I think, may be paraphrasing Richard Branson here, but sometimes you'll get an opportunity in life, which you may not feel you're ready for it, but you should jump on it. And that's what I did in that case. And I think, in building that out, we, I think we're, we've hired over 600 or something people now, which is crazy. Naber:  Massive, massive scale. Gordon Tobin:  The retention rate is in around 10%. You'll know millennials in college training programs going into sales, that's well below it, that's a good proxy for industry standard. And so I suppose for me it was, it was very difficult, but it was the most ultimately gratifying thing I've ever done because even now, several years later, they call me, they text me, thanking me, asking for advice, mentorship, all that good stuff. And I thrive on depth of human relationships and the quality of them, not the breath. And to have so many, which is breath, but that go so deep, it's just so gratifying. And to know that I played just a very small part in teaching them about how to go about business in a values based way. And about doing the right thing all the time, even when nobody's looking, even when it's unpopular, even maybe when it's a bad career move, doing the right thing is the right thing always. And that's what I tried to teach those folks and hopefully some of them it stuck. God knows I'm not perfect, but I'm a big believer in ethics, and values, and integrity, and sticking to those things, and that's what I tried to get across to everybody in that program. They were going to learn the skills anyway. All, most skills in almost any job are learnable, but it's the important life lessons that they'll take with them and how they'll treat their employees when they're CEOs of companies, that's what I wanted to get across. And that is when I think we had our biggest win. Naber:  Awesome. I know you only have another few minutes here and you've been really generous with your time. That program was immense, and it had a significant number of stakeholders involved, all around the world, all over the shop. And then your next role also had a lot of stakeholders. This role you're in right now, a lot of stakeholders. Regardless of the organization, you've dealt with a number of stakeholder management, both challenges, solutions, all that fun stuff. How do you think about stakeholder management and what are some of the most important things people need to do as they're managing their stakeholders internally? Gordon Tobin:  Yeah. I think it's typical frameworks - up, down, across. Know your audience. I think it's good to have a template, a format that again comes in the form of your operating priorities. It always starts with your vision, your values, your operating priorities, and then how your business is pacing. I think when you're going up the chain that's a little bit more brief and succinct. I think when you're going across, with your cross functional peers, is to make sure that they're aware of all the dependencies that exist, and maybe resource constraints that you have to have. Perhaps you have to have a joint OKR with them. And then when you're talking to the team, it's about rallying and inspiring them around any shared vision as it relates to your overall operating priorities and what you set out. And I think if you can do those things, you're in a really go place. Naber:  Awesome. Thanks Gordon. Do you have time for two rapid fire questions then we'll head out. Gordon Tobin:  Well, I have about 90 seconds left. Naber:  Awesome. I always ask this question on people's birthdays. but I'm gonna ask it - it's not your birthday today, but I'm going to ask it to you today. What's the most valuable lesson you've learned in the last 12 months? Gordon Tobin:  In the last 12 months? It's better to be loving than to be right. Naber:  Wow. That's a good one. Is that a personal lesson or professional lesson? Gordon Tobin:  Both. Naber:  Love it. Cool. Last question...Best career navigation advice you would have for young professionals. Gordon Tobin:  Build your professional life and your personal life, not the other way around. A lot of people take 30, 40 years to figure that one out. And by that stage in some cases, it's too late. If you've got the...I'll finish on this note, the loneliest, actually the wealthiest place in the entire planet, and I'm not going morose here, it's a graveyard. Because it's full of ideas, inventions, books, poems, people who loved other people who never tell them, and it's filled with those people. And so, I would say to anybody, it's never too early or too late to be who you want to be. And if you're listening to this call, don't join and don't increase the wealth of that graveyard. Give everything you've got, and follow what you want to do, not what others expect you to do. And I think if you do that, you'll live a very happy life. So build it around your personal objectives and make sure your professionalized supports those, and not the other way around. Which is unfortunate, I see a lot of people do that and go through too much undue suffering in their careers, and it's actually life doesn't have to be that, believe it or not. Naber:  Hey everybody, thanks so much for listening. If you appreciate it and enjoyed the episode, go ahead and make a comment on the post for the episode on LinkedIn. If you love the Naberhood Podcast, would love for you to subscribe, rate, and give us a five-star review on iTunes. Until next time, go get it.

Guest: Benny Gould - Global Head, Business Influencer Program @Facebook (Formerly @LinkedIn) Guest Background: Ben Gould leads the Business Influencer Program at Facebook ($517B Valuation, 2.37B MAU). With over 15 years international experience working across Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, Ben has been instrumental in the growth of SaaS technology startups and silicon valley companies like LinkedIn ($27B Acquisition by Microsoft, successful IPO in 2011) and Facebook. Currently, he is focused on giving executives the tools, tactics and best practice to share their authentic voice across Facebook's family of apps. Guest Links: LinkedIn | Facebook Episode Summary: In this episode, we cover: - Building New and Emerging Markets at Hypergrowth SaaS Companies - Great Culture Proliferation at Facebook and LinkedIn  - Global Strategic Deal Orchestration - Selling to Executives and Power Full Interview Transcript: Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to the Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest growing companies. Enjoy! Naber:  Hey, hey. What do ya' say there team? We've got Benny Gold on the show today. Ben Leads the Business Influencer Program at Facebook. Maybe you've heard of them - $517 billion valuation, 2.37 billion monthly active users. I would love to see the rounding error in millions on those monthly active users. With over 15 years of international experience working across Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America, Ben has been instrumental in the growth of SaaS technology startups in Silicon Valley. Companies like LinkedIn, who was acquired by Microsoft for $27 billion after a very successful IPO in 2011, and companies like Facebook, which he works for now. Currently, Ben is focused on giving executives the tools, tactics, and best practices to share their authentic voice across Facebook's family of apps. Here we go. Naber:  Benny! Awesome to have you on the show man, thanks so much for joining us. Benny Gould:    Thanks for having me. Naber:  All the way from London town. I've got so much that I want to talk about and explore with you today. Tons of stuff personally, tons of stuff professionally. We've known each other for a bit of time now, which I feel lucky to say, but I want to help the audience grow and get to know you a little bit more I do. So what I want to do is go through a little bit about you personally. I know you grew up in Melbourne, going through your childhood with interests like mountain biking, and playing football on the weekends, and you got into DJ'ing. And then you were at school, and you left school so you'd go into hospitality, and explore, and also do a bunch more DJ'ing. And you've lived all over the world and explored all over the world. Melbourne, London, a couple times backpacking, world traveling. So why don't we take a step back from all that and give us maybe a five minute synopsis or journey of what it was growing up in the life of Ben Gould? Benny Gould:    Yeah, thanks very much. And yeah, appreciate having me on the show again. I grew up in Melbourne, only child, Melbourne in the southern part of Australia, for those that don't know, comprises of mainly inland living. So we have a bay, but we also have the mountains. And so I grew up in the mountains as an only child, quite far from school and friends that I went to school with. So hobbies became a part of what I did. So Mountain biking, given the area that I lived in was something that I was really drawn to, and something you can do on your own and makes you buddies as well. So when I wasn't mountain biking, my dad would give me these chores that I absolutely hated. And that would be, packing the woodshed or picking up sticks on the weekend, which I still have nightmares about and fearful of doing any manual labor. Benny Gould:    Growing up was an awesome childhood, amazing family. Came from a family that ran their own business. My Dad had an entertainment company for 35 years managing initially original artists, and then went on to manage cover bands for the best part of 30 plus years. Wow. What are Australia's best well known, musicians and bands for many of which are probably over the age of 60. Naber:  Very cool. Benny Gould:    But yes, I grew up in a family where dad was very much entrepreneur and very much a sales guy, and mom was very much helping out in the business for the first 20 years of my life, and then went on to sort of support the family build houses and all those sorts of things around us. But yeah, amazing childhood. And then left Melbourne, the hills, to go and hit the big city really just prior to turning 18, actually decided that I wasn't going to go to college and finished actually high school a little earlier than, than completion. And then went to do I a apprenticeship in hospitality and was thrown straight into the kitchen for a stint working for a head chef. I learned very quickly not to any smart remarks or adolescent without being thrown something from across the other side of the kitchen. But it was the great start of a 3 year journey in hospitality in different parts of the hotel and hospitality business Naber:  The stories you have when you work in hospitality are just unbelievable, unmatched almost. Benny Gould:    Yeah, absolutely. The key learning from that was customer service, I think. Today that's purely embedded in the way I personally approach things and professionally approach things. But yeah, customer service was definitely the last skill that I learned through that journey. Naber:  Very good. And, since you moved to Sydney, well, even before you moved to Sydney, you've probably had travel in your blood for a long time. You've been all over the shop. I know that you have lived in Melbourne, you lived in London before. I think you went backpacking around Europe for six months. you've told me a little bit of story of stories about those, but tell us a little bit about your travel experiences and when that started for you, and ultimately what it means to you, up to this point. Benny Gould:    Yeah, so again, going back to family, my mom actually traveled at a very young age in the late seventies to Europe. That was sort of, consider 1977-78 you wouldn't get on a plane and have a short flight to Europe, she would take a number of stops. And so backpacking was a part of her life really when she was only 18-19 years old. So, when I was growing up, she'd always really throwing me into the direction of going to travel. And academia wasn't really front and center of our family growing up either. Neither mum or dad had gone to University. So they said, look, life skills are better learned, and the best way to do that is to get over to the other side of the world outside of your comfort zone. And so when I was 22 and had worked a couple of jobs in order to save enough money to go to London, I got my visa and settled in London working in a pub to begin with. Funny story - first job in London, obviously I was relatively nervous as a 22 year old going to a job interview...But strangely dressed in a suit, to go and work at a pub. And I think that she felt bad for me, to be honest. She gave me the job on the spot and was like, don't wear the suit to work tomorrow. You're living upstairs earning adding five pounds an hour. Naber:  It reminds me of the scene from Step Brothers. Benny Gould:    Ha, exactly. So, that was the start of the travel journey. And really, I lasted only one year in London / Europe traveling. It's probably partly the reason I'm back. It's just a proof to myself that I can last more than 12 months...So that was about life experience, and then I spent the best part of four or five months traveling throughout Europe and meeting a whole bunch of interesting people, and then landing a job in real estate - which was my first sales job, which was brutal. The worst and the best part of my life experience for sure, when it comes to work, but learned a bunch from that experience, for sure. And then found myself, after a year, bringing back to Australia a whole bunch of interesting personal life experiences and professional life experiences. And then, having a desire to definitely travel the world for the future was something that was going to be not too far around the horizon. Naber:  Awesome. I think that brings us to, does that bring us to Hays? Or were you the Acendre before that? Benny Gould:    Yeah, 2005 - Hays Naber:  So let's walk through for maybe three to four minutes a journey of your professional jumps, let's call them. Hays, Ascendre, LinkedIn, Bondi Yoga house - if you don't throw that in there I will, and then Facebook. So walk us through the journey and the steps that you took and why you went to each one, why you jumped companies as well as jumped roles - not jumping as in the negative way of jumping as a positive way, took advantage of the opportunities. And then we'll dive into a few of the things you've learned at each one of those places and talk about some of your super powers you've gained along the way and, and some frameworks that you've learned from both those companies as well as your experiences. Benny Gould:    Yeah, definitely. And, the saying that always runs through my mind when I talk through these examples - It's the man of many talents, master of none. And it completely applies to me. I'm sure in the dictionary if you had that, I would probably pop-up... Naber:  Your beard would pop up as a silhouette. Benny Gould:    There would be two photos - one pre-beard and one post-beard. Naber:  Haha, I prefer the post-beard, but I do like to pre-beard though - underrated. Benny Gould:    Yeah, probably another story we'll to when we get to the Yoga portion. Benny Gould:    So yes, I landed back in Australia, and for the first few months tried to find work as a 23 year old, having spent a year in London. Probably a little bit of the confidence out of London - oh year, it'll be easy to get a job back in Australia with the UK experience. But it wasn't the case. I think it was a very candidate heavy market, and not a job heavy market. So it was very reliant on skills, and particularly university qualifications, and all the things that I didn't necessarily carry. But I did have enough confidence, I guess, in being able to present myself in a way that I thought I could add value. And so I applied to a job, actually Hays were advertising at the time in FMCG. I think from memory, it was a sales rep for an alcohol company. And I thought this would be fun, young 20s working for big company, going and doing all the promotional nights and selling the product, that'd be fun. And some buddies that had been doing that, and I thought, great, you get a car with the job and you get a phone and all these fancy things you want in your late twenties. So I applied for the job, and then pretty much within a day, Hays the recruiting company had actually replied and said, "Hey, look, you're not of interest to the job." And so I ended up getting in touch with that particular manager that messaged me, and I ended up managing to get them on the phone and saying, "Hey, you guys are recruiting I see at the moment - I'd to apply. I have no experience. But it clearly sounds you either have no experience either because you don't understand the candidates that you're...I was probably too cocky to be honest, but called them out on the way that they were recruiting and said, well, I'm gonna apply for the Hays job, and I'll show you that when I'm, hopefully successful, that I can look at candidates in a different way. And so they said, well, fair pitch. And so within three weeks I got the job and I started my first day at Hays. So I probably talked that manager into giving me a job. Naber:  Ha, that's alright - he probably appreciated the candor. That's good. Benny Gould:    Yeah, that's right. And it was amazing because I think once I got to do the job, I really did understand the person on the other side of the conversation. And I think, being a candidate in a candidate-heavy market where it's competitive and there wasn't a lot of jobs around, I was able to, I think at that time, position with candidates that your experience on your CV isn't necessarily the most important thing. That culture and values is really important when it comes to who you are and how you represent yourself. So I felt that was sort of something that I started to learn and started to build on that muscle as part of the recruiting business. And in four years working for that company was really lucky and fortunate to have grown from a junior consultant on a very, very low wage to manage a team of seven people towards the end of my tenure. and have incredible life and professional experience meeting some of the most amazing people that I'm still friends with, more than 15 years later, today. Naber:  Awesome. We'll get back to culture and culture building in a little bit because I want to talk about that. I know that that's something that you're both passionate about and have a lot to say about. So let's go from Hays, through to Acendre, through LinkedIn. There's a few things I'm want to talk about with your experiences, both from Hays through Acendre, through LinkedIn that I think people want to hear about those key continue. So, why the jump from Hays, and so on. Benny Gould:    Yeah, so a buddy of mine now, that I worked with at Hays, he moved to this company called NGA.net, which now is called Acendre. It was a SaaS company, and the SaaS company was focused on applicant tracking systems. So the same ways in which candidates would apply for job in the recruiting business, this company built software. And they were a Melbourne-based startup. So my buddy that I worked with in the banking team at Hays moved across to this organization and said, "Hey, you should come join". And before you know it, I ended up working at NGA. What was amazing about that business, in a a short summary, was it was a small startup company in tech, in cloud. They were probably turning over a few million dollars a year, for such a small business. Had a list of clients in the government space that would blow your mind, from the Department of Defense, to the Australian Tax Office, to many authors. I suddenly learned that there was a really interesting way to learn from others that were outside of sales. And I mean that in the sense of the startup had everything from development, to engineers, to product, to customer success. A proper SaaS business as we know today. But coming from a service oriented organization, and the experience that I'd had for real estate and through recruiting, had meant that it was really taking lean in quite a different direction. And then also, the last thing about Acendre, was one of the most talented people I've ever worked with in my career, I worked with him, very closely with him at that company, and he taught me so much about presenting to a public audience, and to doing your research, and knowing your product, and a lot of things that are really about preparation and being ready to walk on stage and be your best. And so yeah, forever to this day, thankful to him, for coaching me in that way. But yeah, that was a great experience. Naber:  Let's pause there for a minute. Because you made the jump from a people services business to a software business. A lot of the sales and marketing leaders that are bringing people in and hiring from people services or non-software backgrounds, or salespeople going into software sales businesses, they're going to have to make that jump. And that is something that is either one scary for the person or too scary for the hiring manager, or the leader that's hiring those groups of individuals. Especially as I need to start diversifying, as I start tapping out some of the talent pools that are in the SaaS or software businesses that they've been recruiting from. So how does one keep the 1.) appropriate mindset and 2.) what are some of the principles or things that people should keep in mind as they're making the move from a people services business into software - as far as how you sell, and what your mindset should be while you're selling to those businesses? Benny Gould:    Yeah, for sure. So essentially for me, I look at it in a very different way. So I think, largely what we're doing business is all part of a supply chain. So when we think about process and how that works, if I'm in a service business that's a recruiting company, and I moved to a SaaS business that sells recruiting software. As part of the same supply chain, we're delivering to an end user or end customer. So instead of talking about the process to recruit talent, I'd be talking about the technology to recruit talent. So yes, they have upskilling in terms of product. Naturally, that came to me early when I was a teenager, early when I was building websites to make a few bucks here or there. So tech and internet technologies was of interest to me. So naturally learning a product coming from service business was something that I was passionate about. But fundamentally it's actually relatively similar. And ultimately I think it's more about aligning with the persona that you're working with, or managing the conversation. So if you're a people person, you're going back to the customer service experience I talked about, it's about understanding who your audience is and what resonates with that audience, whether you're selling a service or selling a product. I don't think it matters in my opinion. One of my most amazing managers gave me some advice, and he said, people buy from people they like. And that's resonated. Whether you're selling jeans at a retail store, through to know selling software, I think it exactly is the same thing. at the end of the day. And the transition seems a lot for many, but I think when you put your mind to it and you put, some of the basic fundamentals that we know growing up and the kind circles that we were working, I think that it's quite simple to make a transition, that seems quite different. Benny Gould:    Very good. Nice one. Keep going. Let's move on to LinkedIn. Benny Gould:    So one day, at Acendre, I got an email from LinkedIn. And strangely I used, well not strangely, I was in sales. I used LinkedIn a lot for business development. Strangely, I got an email from LinkedIn, and the recruiter was saying that the company at that point was only 800 employees, that they were building their SaaS business in the world of talent, and that he'd seen my background and that there was a nice balance between both service recruiting and understanding what it takes to recruit someone, also through to the technology and how to have a conversation about recruiting software. And so I was almost the perfect mix for them in terms of what they were looking for for what they call LinkedIn Talent Solutions. So, the role was to open up the office in Melbourne, back in 2011. At that point, they about 6 employees in total in Sydney - well there's, there's an argument between me and the second guy that joined, whether we're six or seven, call it...either way around, I say number six, he say number six. So when we have these arguments, when you have in a hypergrowth startup, and it's so early in the the chain, you do have a laugh about the number which means absolutely nother. Naber:  The conversations you have internally about tenure, I found, at software businesses, especially high growth software businesses, it's amazing. Someone will come in and be amazed by your tenure, if you've been there for a year, two years, three years, and it presents so much personal brand equity internally that someone's been there for x number of years. I've always found it fascinating how fascinated people are by tenure. And then putting that on the pedestal. I think there's gotta be a little a lot of good comedy sketches you can put on SNL about those conversations. Anyways... Benny Gould:    Exactly. Yeah. So I, got this email from LinkedIn. And I see myself, when I was back at his prior company as a bit of a Meerkat. I would look up around and I was hey, I think it's my time to go. And I was probably such a millennial at that point. So yeah, I'm, I've been here four years. I've done my tenure, which is absolutely no time at a company, for anyone. But, nevertheless I took the opportunity, which was incredible to move to LinkedIn. Brief story about day one, when I walked into this serviced office in Melbourne with my boss, at the time that hired me. And, in fact, another colleague started the same day as I did, and she and I walked in with a new boss, and it was a small two room office in the IBM tower, in Southbank in Melbourne. And this office looked it was from the 60s, like Madmen, but just without the liquor cart, and without all the people walking around. And we're like...is this really LinkedIn? Are we in the right office? Naber:  So all the bad stuff, and none of the good stuff from that particular scene. Got It. Benny Gould:    Yeah, exactly. And it was so bizarre, and anyway, so we walked in and we actually had no internet. So our boss had to take us in a cab to Costco, this is no joke, with a trolley, and load-up the trolley with a modem, a printer, a whole bunch of snacks, for our pretty miserable front room, within what would be our office. Although we did buy a mini fridge, we had some soft drinks. It was probably luxurious compared to the things I get offered in prior employment, but the Silicon Valley business that was... Naber:  Oh, the perks, the perks. Benny Gould:    Exactly. Though we did have a river view. So to be fair, we had windows. So, started there and the amazing thing was when I was given my laptop and my phone, plugging into the Internet and with that Costco Modem that we purchased, and having LinkedIn go live in Melbourne on day one, that was quite incredible. But starting off building a business for this Talent Solutions SaaS business in Melbourne, had no database of people that we'd worked with prior. It was purely the most fundamental baseline business development you can imagine. Right? In Sydney, same sort of team. There were a couple more, but they were pounding the pavement, getting out there meeting and networking with folks who had we done business with prior and and building a network of conversations in order to start selling this SaaS product that no one knew about. And so the other thing was, I guess back in 2011, the internet was very new to companies in terms of LinkedIn selling a SaaS product. They weren't used to bringing social media into organizations where social was going to be a part of how your employees and how your executives would show up. And so it was quite scary because they knew that social media was for social life. It wasn't for professional life. So we were building a business around a licensing model and building a successful hypergrowth business that, probably with selling one of the best products I've ever seen because no one had a competitive product. It was hugely impactful for an organization and it would save companies a hell of a lot of money. Naber:  So, this is a common theme. You've done this at multiple businesses, software businesses now. You were earlier stage at LinkedIn, you're a little bit later, proportionally, stage when you joined Facebook. You're coming in and positioning something that is on the, one of the polar ends of the scale of disruption - in that people are trying to think about using the same thing for a completely different purpose and using something that's personal, or in their professional-personal life or their personal life - and then using that in the business. Or said another way, they don't necessarily even know that they have the problem that you're trying to solve, let alone that the solution exists to solve it. How do you go in and sell differently when you were on that end of the polar side of this disruption spectrum? A lot of businesses are selling way before the time of the general adoption. So they're on the really early part of the curve. Benny Gould:    Yup. For sure. So I think the narrative that I was carrying into the LinkedIn role was just another chapter in the book. If you think about the recruiting chapter and then the SaaS recruiting chapter - when I go to LinkedIn, and I was sitting in front of HR managers, and they were saying, so you want me to buy this particular product off you, why should I buy it? And I would share with them, well I've spent four years working for recruiting company, charging companies yours tens of thousands of dollars to find talent. And then you're using technology in order to determine which talent is most important to you and then to prioritize of thousands of applicants, how you can determine which is important. And then still you haven't got a result on great candidates. So sitting here today and you still can't find a solution to the problem for the jobs you're trying to fill. So it was the narrative that was easily flowing, and I fairly passionate about it because that's what I believed in, right? It was my purpose. And I hate to say I like to help people find jobs, because helping people isn't really the direction...people already have the capability, the experience, the knowledge, and the purpose - it's just about unlocking that. So when I would be talking to HR leaders about purchasing the software, it was more a case of well do you want to personally have access to the best talent out there? Let me show you how you use this thing. If you think it's an interest then let's talk about it. But if not, then there's plenty of recruiting companies that will take your money. There are plenty of applicant tracking system companies that will tell you their software's better to find the right people. So at the end of the day, this is your decision. And not making a decision is a decision. Naber:  Yeah. So do you stripline like that? So striplining on any being that you say, you can do this if you want to. You don't need to do this one too. Or maybe you're not ready for this. Do you actually do that in your conversations with executives, and with buyers, and budget holders as you're having these discussions? Or are you more generalizing informally about how you had the discussion? Benny Gould:    So, I do now and I'll tell you when that changed. At that point in time, and I was probably, in that LinkedIn role, I probably wasn't as open and honest and as thoughtful. I probably was focused more on sales targets. You've got x dollars to meet before the end of the month, and you need to sell these licenses, so you would sell the licenses, right? Otherwise you wouldn't hit your target, and you wouldn't be successful, and you wouldn't have a job. So there was that pressure of the hypergrowth company, which, going into four years, I've been super fortunate it was an amazing business, going through that growth. But when I was the 6th employee through to the 356th employee, where it didn't matter what number you were, or what your tenure was, or essentially how loyal you had been to the company, to some it was really about what your number was. And I think that's fundamentally when I started to think differently and my behavior started to change. But yeah, we can you talk a bit more about sort of today my thinking. Towards the end of the LinkedIn stint, I was burning out and I was starting to see my purpose change, and that sort of shift in understanding between why you show up to work and the narrative that you're writing the book for, and the book starting to take a different direction, and when you start to lose control of the narrative. And so that happened more towards the end of 2014, and the opportunity that presented itself, at that point, was to take some time off, and to enjoy some of the time that I'd had at LinkedIn - putting some savings aside to go and travel. Benny Gould:    Awesome, so we're going to get into traveling in Yogi Ben for a minute here, in about three minutes. And I'm very excited about that because it's a really good jump in you taking advantage of an amazing enlightenment opportunity that you saw for yourself, both and your your partner, which is awesome - who's also amazing, Amanda...Quick step back, when you're thinking about...One of thene of the superpowers that I see you having, many, but one of them I see is that multiple times over you have built satellite markets and satellite offices from the ground up for businesses that have a relatively established either brand or entity, in let's call it America or their hub. So how do you think about the framework of building out that satellite market and building out those satellite offices for a hub that does have a brand in their local market at home, but doesn't necessarily - maybe especially as American businesses - doesn't necessarily understand that you don't have the same brand equity, you don't have the same product equity in the marketplace. What's the framework you think about or the principles that you think about as you want to build out those satellite markets and satellite offices? Benny Gould:    So, I'll talk about mainly the approach on mindset. Let's call it the mindset first, and then I'll talk about the practicality of that framework. Going into the job or any role - I think of taking a job - you need to align with your purpose. And I'll come back to this a bit later on when we talk about the other journey, but your purpose is how you show up, why you jump out of bed every day. You need to also understand the company that you're going to be working for and the role you're going to do and how you believe in that purpose - if you truly want to have impact. If you just want to take a job, and work nine to five, and rock up, and go home feeling accomplished, then there's plenty of jobs to do that, don't get me wrong. But if you want to have a super impactful career with a company that is there to support you and help you grow and push yourself into a direction that I focus on, is really life changing. So that alignment on purpose and values really then matters to how you build out your approach to build the market because you're the face of the brand at that point. So when I started at LinkedIn and I plugged my computer in and there's no, there's access to a CRM with no people in it. It's going back in the 70s where you would pull out a yellow pages and you would go through almost one by one and start calling people. But of course we had the network LinkedIn, and I'd been in the industry, and so you generally start hitting the phones. So the people that you use to have relationships with and networks with, you would call them and say, "Hey, I'm now on LinkedIn, and this is what we do and I need to talk to you about this amazing platform that we have. I think it'd be very much an interest. Let's grab a coffee." Now what's amazing, and super fortunate with the companies I've worked for, is that people know the brand. So you can easily get a meeting. So that's a huge advantage if you work for a smaller business that you don't have any brand equity, it's very challenging to get a meeting. The good side to that is that everyone wants to meet with you, and those that actually want to buy from you, can be very limited. So you end up spending lots of money, drinking lots of coffee, and having really nice lunches, but actually not getting much cut-through. So if you're focused on the framework, you've got the value proposition on where your product fits to market, you're focused on the purpose, and you're passionately aligned with the purpose. Then it's a case of, okay, how do you then go to market? And then how do you start to build a network and start to sell the product? And then you start to think about, okay, well who's the customer? Who's the actual buyer of the product that I'm going to be talking to? Who signs the check? Who's the key decision makers? How long does it take to sell the products? How can we speed up the sale of the products? All these things...deal velocity, and sales cycle, and conversion, how many meetings do I need to have in order to sell the product? How many proposals do I need out? These are all fundamental sales things, which you want to, as a sales person, you want to have the basics - for forecasting and all those things that are important. But once you fundamentally understand the basics, then it's a case level, and how do I influence the sale. And that comes down to you, and that comes down to your understanding, your research that you do with the customer, how you show up, how you present yourself, how you articulate yourself, all those sorts of things. Because at the end of the day, people buy from people they like. So you can read all the sales books in the world and, and believe me, I've got buddies that just don't put sells books down, and they're successful salespeople. and that's fantastic. So there's two ways, but I think fundamentally for me, at the end of the day, what I found successful in helping these satellite businesses grow from the ground up, is just getting the basics right, getting some wins on the board. The other thing is testimonials. So, very early when you win your first two or three deals in any market, whether you have zero customers or a thousand customers, get really close to those testimonials and have them tell 10 people they know in their industry to buy your product, or the reasons why, or the impact that it's had to date on their business. Because those testimonials will fundamentally help you scale your business. And the other we can talk about is channel partners, which I've more recently come to know. Naber:  On testimonials, do you feel it's more important to have them written down and documented, or do you think that just that they're out there with happy voices in the market - that's enough? Benny Gould:    Definitely note them, for sure. Anecdotal - I heard a comment, or a line here, or they said this particular thing. So anecdotal feedback we can provide in a verbal way, nothing that you couldn't put on the front of the newspaper. Of course, it doesn't have their approval. But generally speaking, people are comfortable, if they've said at a conference or over a dinner table, "What you've done for our company has been 10x valuable", then you can share that story. So those are the stories about the things that really matter. And storytelling is another incredible skill in people that I've come to learn do very well in terms of being able to sell a product or a service. Naber:  All right, let's make the jump. You're at the end of your tenure at LinkedIn. Benny Gould:    I'm on a beach, yeah. So burned out and wondering what's next, Amanda and I decided to go and take a journey overseas, starting with a yoga retreat in Nicaragua, in a tree house with no power, no Internet, and no running hot water for a month. And also becoming yoga teachers which I had no intention of whatsoever. Amanda says, "I thought it would be really cool. I thought you'd really enjoy it." Whereas I had no choice once we go to Nicaragua. Benny Gould:    What was the best part about living in a tree house in Nicaragua? And what was the worst part about living in a tree house in Nicaragua? Benny Gould:    The best part is living three feet from the ocean, jumping out of the tree house and being in the water. Worst part was not showering properly for a month, without bees and a whole bunch of other creatures. Benny Gould:    Nice. Okay. So that was the start of your journey. Keep going. Benny Gould:    Yeah. The four weeks, 200 hour teacher training, for me was not to become a yoga teacher. It was to really clear the mindset of a previous 10 years, 15 years in personal life, professional life, just to wipe the slate clean of all the different things that are blowing up in my mind and also bringing me back to the person that I probably was when I was back in working in a hotel, and and learning is an adolescent I guess. And being playful and all those sorts of things. So, yeah, kicked off the journey and then it basically became a 9-10 month journey of just knocking around the world backpacking, and just meeting amazing people, and cultures, and really being out of your comfort zone, a lot, practicing yoga along the way, which was a great opportunity to stay fit, but also to get yourself in a good mindset. We did amazing things climb Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail, as well as a whole bunch of other adventures, crazy stuff diving with the sharks in South Africa, and hiking through jungles, and all these sorts of amazing things that many of us do through a midlife crisis. Benny Gould:    Midlife excitement, midlife crisis. So let's break down some of the personal side of that. What has yoga brought for you to your business world? You're building sales and marketing engines, your sales mentality. What has it brought to work for you that has given back to you the most? Benny Gould:    Yeah. The Yoga Journey teaches you a lot about your internal voice, what I refer to as the way that you internally interpret yourself. And it unlocks that within you to then have an impact on your external self. So, we did philosophy for yoga. I didn't pay that much attention to it. So those that are listening are probably like that's the worst explanation Ben could probably give after 200 hours of teaching. That's how I would articulate that. The practice, the physical practice itself, gives you no other choice than to focus on present moment. And that present moment is incredibly important in personal life and professional life. But, when you then sit around a table for the next four weeks with people where there's no internet, you have genuine conversations and you get to meet people in ways that you get to understand who they are and the relationships that they've been through. And everyone at the table had been through some sort of traumatic experience. Whether it was a personal or professional thing or they were about to go through a big life changing moment. So it was quite interesting that everyone took this amazing journey to go and get out of their comfort zone to learn something completely new, in which, definitely changed the personal direction for me in the way that I thought about business afterwards. So what I shifted from in the last four prior years was this real business mindset around sort of numbers, And performance, and success. Opposed to what's important to you? What are your goals? How are you achieving them in your life? I think that that's the shit that that particular 12 months taught me. Benny Gould:    Awesome. So, one more thing on taking this journey. Because I think there's a lot of nose to the grindstone, hardworking, extremely savvy, elite sales and marketing leaders or future sales and marketing leaders that are on the grind right now trying to get to that next step, next two steps, next three steps in their career. Always telling themselves - it's a deferred happiness or a deferred mindset mentality - I'll be happy later when I can be. What would you say to them about what it's to take that break, have that mindset reset, and how that's helped you become even better than when you were before you took that mindset break? Because there's so many talented people that want to do that, but they do not. You have done that. What would you say that gives you when you come back, what's the reset like? Benny Gould:    So the reset - one thing that I learned out of the year off was vulnerability. So vulnerability is something in which people see in business as a weakness. The truth is, I see it completely the opposite, as a strength. When in business your told to sell a certain way, to be in business in a certain way, to show up in a way that in many ways is actually an authentic, and to present a mask of who you are isn't necessarily showing your true self. And so what the year out with the Yoga really started to teach me is to unlock that vulnerability. And the vulnerability when you come out of that, looking back into business, is then focused on actually authenticity, connection, mindset, love, compassion. So those sorts of things then play into - "Well, okay, this is an interesting direction. Now I've opened myself up to be more transparent. What actually do I want?" And so the second thing that we learned from our trip is Amanda and I were sitting somewhere on a beach, around seven or eight months into the trip - so towards the back third. And we were sitting on a beach somewhere, and I said to Amanda randomly, "Hey, what are the five things, three to five things that you're passionate about in life? That you could jump out of bed for and, and go and do a yoga class? Or you could go to work and do this job? What are the five things? She told me her five things and I shared my five things. And so we argued about you copied my five things, and you wouldn't have had those unless I said them. But we had our own five things. So specifically out of that, they all resonated from when I was a kid all the way through to where I was today. We both said to ourselves that we'd make this commitment that of these five things, professionally where we'd go and take the next job that would encompass one of those five things. Because we've just made this commitment to ourselves that you would jump out of bed and do this job without any problem. And yes, you have your good days and your bad days, and all that sort of stuff. But fundamentally, if you agree on this purpose, and this passion around what's most important to me, the individual, then that's going to be a commitment, and that's going to be something that is going to be easy for me to do, and something that I'll have no problem doing. So, the next step, and I'm not sure if you're ready to get into the Bondi Yoga House. But, what the next step for us was getting back to Sydney, and after we'd done this yoga journey, we wanted to take a punt into a startup. And so that was on one of my five things was, in my life I want to launch a startup. Going into all the odds that you hear about - nine out of 10 aren't successful, etc - we thought, well, let's give it a chance. We've been out of our comfort zone. Well, let's continue to go on that journey. So we launched a business called Bondi Yoga House, and we had no business plan. We had no financial plan, but it was bootstraped and it was mad, Crazy now that I look back on it. There were plenty of lessons, which is another way to say what stupid decision. But no, it wasn't, it was one of the best life decisions we've had. But we launched a business, which was essentially a boutique hotel in Bondi Beach. And what we wanted to do is recreate what we call an urban retreat, which is instead of going to Ubud in Bali, or in Mexico, or Costa Rica for a yoga retreat, you could go to what feels a yoga retreat in a city, but close enough to the great things that the city could offer. So you could still feel you're in Bali, but you could go and visit the Opera House, and you can visit Bondi Beach, and all those sorts of things. So we recreated this interesting concept of Urban Retreat, and it was a five bedroom house. And, we went and bought a whole bunch of really awesome furniture and really yogi stuff to fill out what was a studio of about 12 mats, which we didn't teach any local Yoga. It was mainly for particular events or for people that are staying. And we built a program over 12 months of people coming for these packages, and people coming to meet one another from around the world. Naber:  You must have met some really interesting people. Benny Gould:    Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, really interesting people. Different people around the world - one weekend to a girl getting married and hosting her fellow bridesmaids and her mom, and all these amazing different types of life experiences, to then hosting the community. One of the things that wasn't out on our radar but ended up becoming fundamentally the DNA of what Bondi Yoga House was all about, was the community that we bought into the space. So we found that there were a lot of people, entrepreneurs in the local Bondi Beach area, that wanted a space to be able to showcase their talent. And so for some it was a Reiki Master, for others it was Lunar Nights, where one lady would come in and talk about the particular moon - Lunar Nights. And it would be part meditation, part storytelling, in a really amazing inclusive experience. And so, we were just amazed by the fact that people wanting to come into our particular property and run these events. And so we were running them at no cost. We would literally lose on these events. But that wasn't the point of the business. And by this point we realized this was a more of a short term pop up, than it was really a long term real estate investment or, or a brand that we were looking at building. Just after buying multiple domains, London Yoga House, and LA Yoga House, and I probably need to get a refund on those at some point. Ambition and ideas had always outweighed my ability to probably execute completely, when it came to this concept of a startup. But the key learning out of this was, we didn't have the experience in running financial plans, in PR, or marketing. But, we did manage to be featured on CNBC Global Documentary, that featured 180 countries, alongside a seven star resort. The Virgin Australia magazine on in flight entertainment. All of these amazing publications ended up picking up this unique brand, so we knew we were onto something. But we realized that we were probably popping the idea too early. And I think that sometimes some of the best startup ideas, you're either really, really early or really, really late and, those that are right in the middle of are those that are probably relatively successful. But since then, it's actually become quite an interesting phenomenon. And there's many, many businesses that I've seen globally since we've launched that business, that have gone on to do much bigger and better things in that way. But, for whatever it's worth, we were that that small piece of the puzzle that, curated, hopefully an idea that we think is something that's valuable and worth sharing, and also had an impact to people in the community, which is the biggest takeaway for that business. Naber:  Love it. Very, very cool. All right. So, let's hop into that jump to Facebook. How did that decision work? And let's go through what you're up to. Benny Gould:    Yeah, so going out there looking for jobs - I talked about the five things that were important - those five things also focused on a few different aspects. So for me it was tech, that there was music, community was one of those, and a couple of others I've shared. So for me it had to be a tech company. My dad had been involved in music industry, so that was something of interest, and I DJ'd , through the late parts of my teens, early twenties - failed DJ by the way, in many ways. DJ Swift is somewhat retired. But we can get to that story another time... Naber:  What was the DJ name again? Benny Gould:    DJ Swift. I had a Suzuki Swift as my first car, for lack of a better DJ name, and then there was DJ Suzuki from Japan that was incredibly successful, and I couldn't steal his name. So I went with DJ Swift. Naber:  I don't know if there's a better or worse story out there about picking a DJ name then your first car's name. Benny Gould:    And it's not a great car, let's be honest. The range of Swift's, they haven't changed much in 20 something years. But yes, the short lived DJ career. So music was important. But then looking for a job, specifically having been a recruiter, I think backwards a little bit. So I would then focus on, okay, what are the companies that represent these five things that I focused on, and let's target 20 companies. And then I would reach out to the 20 companies, if they didn't have live jobs, and then I would reach out, introduce myself, and then start to hustle to get a conversation. Now I thought I would be relatively comfortable in doing that with the approach, but then I looked back on the last three years, I left LinkedIn pretty much three years to the day. So I've been doing the startup for three years and travel with the yoga journey. And then I'd realize, well no recruiter really wants to speak to me because I basically been schlepping it for three days with a backpack. Living with no shoes on. So they were probably wondering why in my professional experience? Naber:  Well, luckily Facebook and several of the businesses were smart enough to have that conversation. Benny Gould:    Yeah, so Facebook advertised a job, this job based in Sydney, called a Growth Manager for Workplace by Facebook, which is a product that they've built from within their company about companies better connecting internally with employees. And so it was a way to build a more connected company bottom up, and top down. And so I had applied for this job a couple of times, and the reason I applied for it was because I truly believed in the purpose and believe in the purpose. And the purpose was that they fundamentally want to change the way that employees can share their voice. Because companies, many companies have today still have traditional means of communication, and it's still very controlled in the way that employees can share their thoughts. And I think from the journey that I've been on, I've seen it so many other people have great stories to tell. And so if there was potentially a way that culturally we can shift the mindset to allow people bottom up to share their voice, and create ideation, and to be doing that at scale, and for executives in their companies to hear the amazing ideas and their contribution and their recognition, that would be something magical. And so that was what I'd read pretty much in the job description. I was like this is amazing. This is something I need to be a part of. The fact of building it is something else. So I applied three times. The first two times I didn't get an application response other than thanks, but you're not of interest, after four weeks. The third time, through my network, a guy that I used to work with at LinkedIn, was close buddies with someone that worked at Facebook, and so he referred me as, "Hey, I think you should chat to this guy. He's got this amazing journey, I think is be quite a fit. And then within 10 days, I had a few interviews and managed to land a role. And so yes, hugely thankful, for landing the opportunity at that point. And so for the past 18 months I've been focused on, on exactly the Workplace business. And so helping companies realize and, educate actually in many ways, that the importance of sharing your voice as an employee is important. And going back to the examples and anecdotes that other companies that adopted the platform, would share, it would blow your mind in the fact that - a particular supermarket in New Zealand uses the platform, and they've been using it for some time, but they've got stories about a lady in her sixties, actually saved somebody's life by running across from the supermarket to the gym across the street and this guy and having having a heart attack. And she was able to, based on first aid experience, able to put him in a good enough state until the ambulance arrived. Then shared that particular story on the platform, which then other people in the company we're sharing similar stories about how it's impacted their life, how it's been such a supportive network for people that have lost in their family, and it just opened up this can of worms, in a positive way, for people within the business to create commonality and connection amongst one another. That was something that I thought was, wow, this is fundamentally, phenomenally changing the way people work, and actually show up to work in a positive way. So, that's been sort of an incredible journey. And then, as you know, I've recently moved from Sydney to London in a different role. Naber:  Yeah. Very, very solid, abrupt quick summary that I'm going to have you expand on a second there, to end that. So this is a good pause point. When you're, when you're talking to businesses in your first role at Facebook and your last role as a Global Account Manager at LinkedIn, these businesses you're talking to are global, massive businesses. One of your other super powers that I think a lot of people - first of all, so many people love Ben Gould. There a seven degrees, you know seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, seven degrees of people who love Ben Gold. You can find someone, that can find someone, that can find someone, like tons of people just love you. But one of those groups of people that just love you is your customers, and not just people that have managed you, and not just people that have worked with - your customers love you, adore you. I'm going to guess that's part of this answer, but one of the super powers you have is doing global deal orchestration and decentralize deal orchestration, and working with companies that are very, very big on either local budgets or global budgets and orchestrating the entire thing. Do you have a mindset or a method that you use, or go about, in order to orchestrate and put together these amazingly successful, global deals? And is customers absolutely loving you, part of the ground up of you doing them? Benny Gould:    Thanks very much for the compliment. I also send that $50 later. I appreciate it, very kind of you. So I think that, in terms of the complexity in the way of selling, I think that you can't do it alone, first of all. So it's not down to me, it's down to the team. Down to the people that you work with, and also really just navigating the relationship and navigating the complexity in which people buy, the way people purchase. So in terms of these global companies, for others that are working in similar complex environments, there's so many stakeholders that get involved in deals. You never really have one central buyer, at least my experience, I've not had one central by that's has the wallet and they're able to just pay you for that product there and then. There is other influences when goes into any deal. So whether it's a huge, large multinational - it's procurement, it's the actual CIO, it's the CEO in many instances depending on your product. So from my experience, maybe the lack of a super power, but maybe the skill that I've tried to refine is, is just networking. Just the ability to build a relationship with people in your business and externally in the client business to better understand how to navigate your path through this sort of crazy, maze in many ways. So those relationships really matter because then you can start to, and naturally and authentically those relationships matter, because then once you start building that relationship, then you can help each other grow. Whether that's empowering somebody to be a champion to help them be promoted, or to help them gain a skillset. So one of the most important things that I've really focused on is how is this going to impact their career? Because that's important to them in many ways. Or how is it going to impact them personally? Maybe they've learned something out of it. That sometimes is more than enough. So provided that you can empower others to be their best selves and to show up as best they can, then I think we're all in it to win together. And then if there's not a commonality in that, then going back to the vulnerability example, there's a problem in the connection. There's the mask that someone's wearing, all this stress, or the pressure, or the anxiety that is overwhelming who they really are. So I think the better conversation to have sometimes, is just getting to know them better. The best leaders that I've ever had, have been those that talk less about the day to day more often, and more about the non work day to day. Because the closer relationship you can have with that leader, and they really understand you as a person, you are more than happy to show up and jump out of bed every single day to fight for their team. So I think that's one of the main key things. And I think going back to your point around navigating these complex businesses and multinational companies, the same applies. When I today meet with executive of some huge global companies, they are humans too. And quite frankly, they don't get treated humans, they get traded as big egotistical CEOs. Some of them are, don't get me wrong. but arguably at the end of the day they are humans too. And so it's just finding a commonality and a connection with them that you can appreciate where they're coming from. Benny Gould:    Nice one. Okay. That's a good segue into what you're doing now. And the global program, it's fascinating, that you're running right now and getting into. Why don't you give a bit of a summary of the program that you're running right now, and then I'll get into a couple things that I think people would want to ask you about this. Benny Gould:    Yeah, for sure. So really fortunate to be offered an opportunity to lead at Facebook globally, what we call Facebook for Business Influencers. So it's a program that was launched about four years ago, from an idea that Sheryl Sandberg, presented in terms of the same way that we would represent and manage partners - like athletes, celebrities, musicians - we also have a desire to support business leaders that want to be able to share their voice and share their story at scale. So for the last four years we've been running this program and launched over 400+ business leaders - like Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington Bill Gates, Sara Blakely, others as well Naber:  Small names, small names. Benny Gould:    Ha, yeah, some relatively small names, right?...with some of the amazing talent that the program support. So fundamentally, what the program's about is, is coaching these executives on really what social is. Because many of them use social media in their personal life, probably to connect with children, or grandchildren, or friends, but they're not so familiar with how they solve this in business. And so it goes back to the LinkedIn example, years ago, when I was talking about LinkedIn, when I brought it to companies, they weren't used to how social media would impact their business. It's kind of similar, but this is more from a Facebook and an Instagram perspective. So, today I look after a range of Global CEOs and coach them on why they should have a social profile, and the meaning behind and then the purpose behind connected leaders. And so when you look at some of the research, recently, Brunswick Group over here in Europe, brought out some research that two in one employees want to see their CEO on social media. And more than half of them actually use social media to research whether they want to work for a company. When you think about the demographic of the types of people that are joining their company, they're millennials mainly. The first time in history that we have five generations of people in the workforce. And so there's a different mindset to the way that we perceive information and the way that we see relevance in information. So there's different channels in which we are able to articulate that. So there's traditional media, there's of course professional media, and then there's social media. And so the benefit that we have with social media is, particularly with Facebook and Instagram, we have billions of people who are using our products every day. And so executive leaders either have two types of personalities - they have a very shy personality and not used to being a voice of their company, they're used to the PR engine or the communications engine and the teams that would support them in getting that message out; And then we have executives or startup founders that are the voice of their brand and that are passionate about leading change for their business, societal change, and having a real dent in the world. And so many of those leaders today, if you look at Jeff Weiner from LinkedIn, he does a fantastic job with that. Mark Zuckerberg does a fantastic job, of course, at Facebook. And then you've got other startup executives, Sara Blakely for example, from Spanx. Amazing founders that are so devil in the detail in of the importance of growing a business and want to go out there and have a huge impact on the world. And so that is more than just running a company, that is more about being able to empower other business leaders or, or women in tech is another example. And so the role that I'm doing is expanding on that, not only just to support their external presence, but also to coach them on their internal presence. And so when we're showing up with Workplace in some of the greatest companies in the world like Walmart, and Starbucks, and Virgin Atlantic, and National Australia Bank, and many others to name a few, use the internal platform to communicate and have a better connected company, but the executives also don't know what best practice looks in order to have an internal brand. So coaching them on what an internal brand looks at scale and giving them the framework around how to do that effectively. Naber:  Really interesting. Really interesting. It's just sounds like...I'm going to guess that it was a relatively smooth transition for you talking about this particular product and coaching and supporting executives to solve one of the internal challenges, as it was when you were selling to them in general, other products, or not even similar products, but just selling to power and selling to executives. Do you feel like...What is similarity between having those conversations you're having right now with executives at some of the best and biggest companies in the world, and the way that you should sell the power and sell to executives in the way that you structure those conversations? Benny Gould:    Yeah, definitely. So again, putting yourself in their shoes, that they're running a big company, they are busy, that they have no time for anything else. All those things are completely understandable given the roles that they do. So firstly you've got to understand in a very short amount of time what the business priorities are. Now you would have done your research and understand how to tackle that question, but from a framework perspective, understanding the business priorities and what's important. Then what's going to maximize their business value, but then also understand their personal impact. What is the contribution or the legacy that you wish to have on the company. And so we can understand that. Naber:  Are you asking that question explicitly or you navigating through and ask a couple of questions to get there? Benny Gould:    Sometimes. It would depend on who the person is. If they're a leader of a Fortune 500 company, some may be offended with the approach of the legacy you wish to live in the company. Some people you need to frame your questions with in the right way, for them the business priorities may be so important to them that their personal viewpoint is less important. Or their personal path is less important. So it depends on who you're talking to. But yeah, once you understand the what's in it for them or why should they be interested, is more the question, then we need to align on, well, if these are the true business priorities and important aspects that you're looking to elevate and to scale, then here's how I can help you. This is why you should be interested. And you've gotta be really clear on exactly what that value proposition is, so you're not wasting that time. And then for those that you're having to I guess, educate and influence. That's the approach I take. Others that are probably over enthusiastic with, more interested in learning the how, it's the opposite in me understanding why do they want to show up on social, what I refer to as their social purpose statement. So what is your social purpose statement or your purpose that you wish to articulate as to why this is important? Because having x amount of followers isn't necessarily, as an executive of running a business, the most important goal that you should have. It's aligning on the most important goals that you should align to and the objectives to reach them. And the objectives to reach them are focused on some of the key themes. So objectives could be, I generally break it into three, three themes. So company, self and world. So how would you articulate your storytelling when it comes to your company and what are the key things that are important? With self, how do you want to articulate what's important to you? Is it family time? Is it the books you're reading, or the podcast you're listening to? And then impact on the world - so is it sustainability or social impact? One in five millennials, won't stay at a company for more than two years, unless I have a social purpose. So unles

Jeff Weiner is intrigued by the future of work and the dramatic changes that have occurred in the workplace in recent years. Weiner has been the CEO of LinkedIn for a decade, and under his leadership the company has grown from 338 employees to over 10,000. Annual revenues now top $3 billion. In his View From The TopView From the Top conversation at Stanford GSB, Weiner spoke with Al El Badry, MBA '17, about immigration in the United States and why he models his management style after the Dalai Lama. Stanford GSB's View From The TopView From the Top is the Dean's premier speaker series. It launched in 1978 and is supported in part by the F. Kirk Brennan Speaker Series Fund. During student-led interviews and before a live audience, leaders from around the world share insights on effective leadership, their personal core values, and lessons learned throughout their career. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Read more > Listen to the podcast (duration: 28:53) > We speak with two leaders on the forefront of applying AI techniques such as automation and machine learning in the business world. How can CEOs stay ahead of the curve in training and developing their workforce for using this technology? Since companies are doing the hiring and creating the jobs, what role do they play in talent and development? How should companies think about hiring as work changes? John Donahoe, CEO of ServiceNow, and Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, tackle the tough questions facing companies today.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information