Podcasts about ken it

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2020 52:46

Summary: Today we’re diving into the topic of selling yourself vs selling your business, and the challenges that come with that transition. Passing the baton of getting work done on to your team can be confusing for your clients if not done well, especially after you’ve been so involved up to that point. Whoever is the front face in the sales role needs to be intentional about how they transition relationships so that you can scale and utilize the full benefit of having a team. Today we share a few strategies we use to ease this transfer and create deep trust between your clients and your team, helping to shift the focus away from you and towards the services you can offer that will improve their business. Building intentionality around this means your business can scale beyond what you alone can offer- and you can bring deep, lasting value to your customers and clients. Top 3 Curtain Pulls in this episode: Your company, your brand needs to have a unique pedigree. You can’t just be generic. The challenge lies in scaling the things that make people come to you: your beliefs, your talent, your systems, and even your personality in a way that gets results. There are likely 1 or 2 things going wrong that work against this challenge: Either you need to step back and let go of your need or impulse to control, or you don’t have a team or quality of staff that clients trust. As you manage this scale in an effective way, you begin to build notoriety and social equity in your company, and people will start referring to you instead of your company name. This is part of that intentionality and allows you to sell yourself (and your business/ the services you offer) in a very natural, authentic way. For more tips, discussion, and behind the scenes: Follow us on Instagram @AgencyPodcast Join our closed Facebook community for agency leaders About The Guys: Bob Hutchins: Founder of BuzzPlant, a digital agency that he ran from from 2000 -2017. He is also the author of 3 books. More on Bob: Bob on LinkedIn twitter.com/BobHutchins instagram.com/bwhutchins Bob on Facebook Brad Ayres: Founder of Anthem Republic, an award-winning ad agency. Brad’s knowledge has led some of the biggest brands in the world. Originally from Detroit, Brad is an OG in the ad agency world and has the wisdom and scars to prove it. Currently that knowledge is being applied to his boutique agency. More on Brad: Brad on LinkedIn Anthem Republic twitter.com/bradayres instagram.com/therealbradayres facebook.com/Bradayres Ken Ott: Co-Founder and Chief Growth Rebel of Metacake, an Ecommerce Growth Team for some of the world’s most influential brands with a mission to Grow Brands That Matter. Ken is also an author, speaker, and was nominated for an Emmy for his acting on the Metacake Youtube Channel (not really). More on Ken: Ken on LinkedIn Metacake - An Ecommerce Growth Team Growth Rebel TV twitter.com/iamKenOtt instagram.com/iamKenOtt facebook.com/iamKenOtt Show Notes: [1:30] The Guys reflect on 2020 so far, on how much resilience has been built up this year. [1:45] Ken talks about being intentionally thankful for every season and challenge life presents him with, and how that has been an enormous challenge this year. While the year has been really great as far as business goes, as far as entrepreneurial growth is concerned. But then there has also been huge tragedy and enormous loss. [2:10] Bob shares that he and Brad lost a friend due to Covid, and how that sadness has felt different this year. [2:39] Brad talks about how a past boss often responded to his employees panic about work with “It’s just advertising,” and that statement is more poignant now than ever. The year has created very clear lines of perspective in that way. [3:22] Bob brings the conversation around to the topic of today- that clients need to buy your business and not YOU. In many cases, when clients buy into your business because of you specifically, they get unnerved when you then pass off the project to a Marketing Manager. [4:17] Bob asks: “How do you sell your business, i.e. make your business the focus, the entity that is valuable to your clients, and not sell yourself? Because you can’t be in on every call, doing the work yourself.” [4:50] Brad responds: He has a few proactive things he does to prevent this from happening. Incorporating scale and growth into your sales pitch is incredibly important- learning to step out of the role and pass the baton efficiently. [5:47] Ken says that starts with knowing what that looks like as well as being upfront and transparent about it. Most clients don’t want a one man show anyway, they want a team. Brad asks clarifying questions- does Ken specifically say that the client won’t see him again? Not necessarily- but in his experience, bringing in people during calls and introducing people in that way. Help build those relationships before you hand them off. [8:15] Brad says that oftentimes, he makes an effort to keep his mouth shut and lets other members of his team answer questions. In this way, the client begins looking to others for answers and input. There are times when he can read between the lines and tell what the client is saying versus what they mean, while younger employees on his team can’t. And it takes a lot for him to hold back from that clarification and allow them to communicate and figure it out. [10:54] Ken says that it is more convenient to intentionally and purposefully hand it over and explain who’s going to do what. “I think it’s more realistic to hand it over to your team, your team executes 90% of the work but you’re still involved from a check-in relational standpoint.” [11:40] Bob says that it’s really about your process. Whether that be a kickoff meeting with the team, introduction to the business in a fun way… something that allows your employees to build trust from the start so the client can be solid in their decision. [12:53] Ken clarifies- should you be completely out of the project? [13:15] Brad says yes- if you can take a certain portion of your clients who don’t need your input. “I think there are certain clients that you will need to be involved with… You only have so much time. And so I do believe that if you can take a certain portion of your clients and hand them over to a smaller team… you can take that risk.” This could also be a great way to build trust with your team, if you have space to take a small calculated risk of letting your team deal with smaller clients from beginning to end, that’s a great way to grow the competency of your team. [14:50] Bob talks about how difficulty in doing this means you likely have 1 of 2 (or both) problems going on: Either you need to change your behavior as the business owner and reel in your desire to control everything, or you don’t have a team that is capable of handling that kind of responsibility/ doesn’t have the leadership skills that you need. [15:35] Brad says that he often feels too available to clients, and gives an example that he answered a call for a client in the morning and it wound up turning his day upside down. They wound up looking really good at the end of the day, but now their expectation is that he will step in and make things happen for them. [17:25] Ken says that having that availability to clients can really turn things around for him, and don’t allow him to fully be present for the really valuable role that he serves in the company. Having a partner that deals with clients face to face really helps mitigate some of that, and they’ve figured out a really great balance. [18:19] Ken: “Delivering your product at an excellent level and growing your company often pull in different directions, and there’s a tension there and you have to figure it out.” [18:45] Brad talks about how clients having access to him often gives him anxiety. But now at his age and with his experience he’s gotten better at handling those stressful moments. Helping the client feel confident in the fact that they can help and handle their “crisis” is powerful, and doing so intentionally without the anxiety is an art. [20:45] Bob says that there really is something to Ken speaking about having a partner. There is power in selling your business and not yourself- there is tremendous value in differentiating the difference between being the face of the business and being the “person” that everyone calls. Being a solo owner of a business makes it hard to step away from being “THE” person that clients go to. Just because you’re the face of the company doesn’t mean that you’re going to be the client’s main point person, and that doesn’t feel authentic unless you have the systems in place to manage that transition of trust and power. [23:05] Ken says that if you don't have a business partner to help split those responsibilities, think about investing in other stakeholders or people under you that you feel safe investing in and handing power/influence over to- ultimately it comes down to team and your ability to delegate. [23:50] Bob talks about the importance of having a really, really, really good product; a product that shines and attracts clients to you. Asks Brad- are they coming to you because they know YOU or because they’ve heard Anthem does great work? [24:30] Ken says that sometimes people come to Metacake because of one thing that Ken said on a podcast or something else. “They built a company that scaled their belief, their systems, their personality in a way that gets results.” - and Dave Ramsey Solutions based in Franklin has done that well. Started as a service business, one-on-one advice. It’s scaled through a variety of products, but “if you talk to anyone at that company, you feel the pedigree of Dave Ramsey, and he’s scaled that.” [26:01] Ken continues, “Part of your uniqueness does come from… the founder because otherwise it’s not really genuine. That person, their soul… how they get results.” This way even if a client does sign on because of Brad, they also like everyone else on the team and the processes because Brad has taught them how he gets results and the team is able to mimic that. [27:15] Bob: “You begin to build notoriety and social equity in your company.” [28:00] Ken: It’s vital that you figure out how to scale YOU. What’s your system? Whats your secret? How can you scale that in your organization? [28:49] Bob shares that even Tim Cook at Apple always gives credit to his team for their new products, always “our team” or “we did this.” In this way, the client/customer immediately begins transferring trust to the team and not just the figurehead. [30:03] Brad speaks about another struggle he has. Often a client will ask to speak “in the next couple days” and his calendar is almost always full a few days out. Should he be taking the time to rearrange plans (work related and non-work related) or should he be saying “I’m the owner of the company, I have a lot of responsibilities so it’s going to be tougher to get on my schedule than somebody else.” [32:04] Ken says that being honest is where the sweet spot is in trying to get to the healthiest relationship. Be honest and not arrogant, and it’s respectable. But the second there is arrogance it’s no longer okay. Offer them a “give”, tell them a coworker or team member can talk to them today/ take care of things at this moment, but if you need the owner’s time it’s going to be a couple of days. [33:45] Bob talks about the personality differences in company owners/ managers. If you find that a client is a “now now now” person who jumps on everything as if it’s a fire, there will be more effort and difficulty in cutting those ties so be intentional about process. Ultimately, you have to train the clients in the way that you do business. “If we’re going to work together, here are the ground rules.” [35:00] Ken speaks on drawing intentional boundaries and how you need to be the long-term thinking leader. The majority of emergencies in the agency world are often just a result of poor planning, and aren’t really even emergencies.” [37:40] Bob says that often there is opportunity to coach the client towards your way of doing things. This is training in a way, but also there is a level of empathy and intuition to recognize when it might make the relationship better. [38:45] Ken says that some organizations thrive on chaos, and that may not work well for you. It’s difficult as an owner to say no to people sometimes, but if they’re going to cause more chaos in the process of doing business with you it’s important for you to draw that boundary line. Shares that he overheard a marketer at an award show years ago talking about how burnt out they were because of a client, and how right after the award ceremony they had to go back to the office to finish something up. That sense of being overworked is so normalized in the agency world, it’s expected of you to take on that energy. [42:53] Bob says “So much of what we do is subjective… digital marketing is still a new industry… we don’t always know what the results are gonna be.” [43:32] Brad talks about how 30% of agencies are inventors, they’re creating new stuff an new ways of doing things. He asks Bob about his best practices regarding client involvement and interaction. [44:00] Bob says that beginning an agency today would be a totally different experience for him, but that he always tried to hire good project managers that he could pass things off to. [44:29] Brad asks if it’s helpful having someone a bit older to filter through clients, someone who is closer to your age. [45:05] Bob says that he works with a lot of younger people who are lightyears ahead of where he was at that age, because the industry has changed so much. Bringing things back around to practicality- you can invest in a team of people getting paid $40K or two really seasoned people that get paid more- there are options. [46:11] Brad asks about having an assistant that could cover emails and be very helpful for you, but there are also instances where assistants can come off as rude or not quite on point. A gatekeeper in a way, but not necessarily a bulldog. [47:00] Ken says having an assistant to be nice/kind but also assertive in the way they communicate is the sweet spot. He suggests that Brad look into hiring an assistant. [48:10] Bob says he’d love to hear listeners thoughts on this! Please leave us some reviews and give us some feedback! [48:50] Ken says that ultimately, you need to decide for yourself how involved you want to be with clients. And make a plan that will allow you to maintain the contact that is helpful and brings value while also focusing on other things that you are truly passionate about in the business. Be INTENTIONAL about it so that clients know what to expect from you. [49:15] Brad adds that Anthem includes some details of this in their Master Agreement, including details on services, fees, who will be taking care of what in respect to different parts of the project. Sometimes clients will assume that your enthusiasm means you want to be involved in every step, so be sure to clarify that so they know what the boundaries are. [49:49] Bob sums it up: “Don’t sell yourself unless you have the system in place to do it right.” He asks for examples of agencies that have done this really really well, who have sold the visionary and scaled in a great way. The Guys mention Tesla and Ramsey Solutions, and talk about how difficult it was for Apple to make the transition to visionary after Steve Jobs passed. Tim Cook was always the one making things happen, and Steve was the visionary. But now things have shifted and it’s been a struggle. [51:36] Ken: “Everyone I’ve ever talked to- mentors, coaches, other business owners that do this successfully- all say you need to have someone who’s Visionary, and you need to have someone who’s getting it done on an operations level.”

The Decadence of Obsolescence + 2013 lost episode (Show #432/#483 as #728)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2020

Set: The Decadence of Obsolesence Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "The Decadence of Obsolesence" - Show #432, from May 11, 2012 [Live in a garage across from a park, summerish afternoon in Charlottesville. Playlist follows:] Fleetwood Mac - "Sara" - Tusk [Loop] Valentino Sound Effects Library - "Air - Air conditioner" - Volume 8 Fridge - "Harmonics" - Happiness Dufus - "Anouk" - In Monstrous Attitude La Dusseldorf - "Rheinita" - La Dusseldorf / Viva Michael Crichton - "TV captures attention, people spend their lives staring at screens" - Looker director commentary [The television can capture attention in a way, and take you away from real life. I think it's become more true as a quality of human attention, that not necessarily so much for television, but I sometimes think that more and more of humankind spends their days looking at screens. Meanwhile, kids are neglected, spouses are neglected, relationships, families, everything's neglected, we're looking at the screen. And whether it's the internet now, or whether it's DVD's, iPods, whatever it is, we're not, we're not in the present; we're in the image.] Pete Townshend - "You're So Clever" - Scooped Jonny Greenwood - "Open Spaces" - There Will Be Blood s.t. Alan Watts - "Intellectual Yoga" - Philosophies of Asia [So long as you can be pursuaded that there's something more that you ought to be than you are, you've divided yourself from reality, from the universe, from god, or whatever you want to call that.] Big City Orchestra - "A Child's Garden of Noise" - A Child's Garden of Noise [...I wish there was a sign that said, "noise, please." Yes, maybe there ought to be a sign like that.] Timothy "Speed" Levitch - "The grid plan" - The Cruise Gundecha Brothers - "Hum Sab Mahi - Raga Bhairavi" - Hum Sab Mahi Bill Nelson - "The Spirit Cannot Fail" - Chance Encounters in the Garden of Lights- (1) The Angel at the Western Window [Never let anything cause you to doubt your ability to demonstrate truth.] Fleetwood Mac - "Everywhere" - Tango in the Night [Loop] Fleetwood Mac - "Gypsy" - Mirage [Loop] Mikey - "On college bookstore" [What the guys and girls buy on their parents' accounts, unitemized] Orson Welles - "Videotape TV static" Orson Welles - "Interview" [If they don't like what you do, really...I was going to show them that they were wrong, and I've spent the rest of my life showing people, trying to prove that what is said is wrong, and that's been an enormous waste of spirit and of energy.] Strom Carlson - "NV Bell Payphone in Pahrump - March 2004" [Telephone recordings] Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - "Mexican Road Race" - S.R.O. [Martin's recording from father's vinyl] Holcombe Waller - "Hardliners" - Into the Dark Unknown Neil Diamond - "America" - Jazz Singer Joe Jackson - "Another World" - Night and Day [Loop] Talking Heads - "Sax and Violins" - Until the End of the World soundtrack Timothy Busfield and Ken Olin, actors; Joseph Dougherty, writer; Tom Moore, director - "No matter what you do, there's going to be a price (Learn to compromise)" - thirtysomething: Season 2, Episode 13 [There's a price, no matter what you do, there's going to be a price. So, you know what you do? You find out what's important and you make boxes. And in this box, you have what it takes to work with somebody like Miles, and in this box, you have what you take home to Janey and to Hope, that's how you get through. So, that's the key to happiness, a little self-induced schizophrenia? ... You want to have a life here, today, then pick your fights and learn to compromise.] Ricky Gervais - "You don't need everyone on the planet to like you" - Time Interview [More people hate it than like it. Obviously. Luckily, you don't need everyone on the planet to like you. So, you do it for you and like-minded people] Dondero High School A Capella Choir - "Fox on the Run" - Pop Concert 1996 [Sweet cover (1974)] Timothy "Speed" Levitch - "Working for a living" - The Cruise [One of the great tragedies of this experiment called civilization is the fact that people have to work for a living...] Ludwig von Beethoven - "Variation V Si prenda il tempo un poco piu vivace" - Beethoven Vol. 8 Cello Sonatas (Maisky - Cello, Argerich - Piano) Harrison Ford & River Phoenix (actors), Paul Theroux (novel), Paul Schrader (screenplay) - "America is a toilet" - Mosquito Coast [Look around you. How did America get this way? Land of promise, land of opportunity. Give us the wretched refuse of your teaming shores. Have a Coke, watch TV, have a nice day, go on welfare, get free money, turn to crime (crime pays in this country). Why do they put up with it? Why do they keep coming? Look around you, Charlie: This place is a toilet.] Harrison Ford & River Phoenix (actors), Paul Theroux (novel), Paul Schrader (screenplay) - "We eat when we're not hungry" - Mosquito Coast [We eat when we're not hungry, drink when we're not thirsty, we buy what we don't need, and throw away everything that's useful. Why sell a man what he wants? Sell him what he doesn't need. Pretend he's got eight legs and two stomachs and money to burn. It's wrong, wrong, wrong.] Harrison Ford (actor), Paul Theroux (novel), Paul Schrader (screenplay) - "It's an absolute sin to accept the decadence of obsolescence." - Mosquito Coast [It's an absolute sin to accept the decadence of obsolescence. Why do things get worse and worse? They don't have to; they can get better and better. We accept that things fall apart, but they don't have to. Things can last forever.] Steven Jesse Bernstein - "More Noise Please" - Prison [..can't live without all this goddamn noise. Maybe I need the noise to write poems, make love and eat. I'm going to hang a sign out my window that says, "more noise, please," or, "thank you for making noise." Maybe we are the kind of people who need to have what we don't want just to get along, to do the basic things... Myself, I could not sleep last night. I could not close the window, either. I tried to tear the window out of its frame.] Joe Frank - "Grace requires degradation" - Another Country Pt. 3 [...to have so much beauty, perhaps you have to have this much degradation] Ida - "My Fair, My Dark" - My Fair, My Dark [Loops] Joe Frank - "Hamburger paper waste" - Another Country Pt. 3 [The hamburger is made. 30 seconds later it's been wrapped in paper, which is put in a box. 15 seconds later, that box has been put in a bag with a napkin, and 10 minutes after that, the bag...] Fridge - "Lost Time" - The Sun [Loops] Timothy "Speed" Levitch - "Running from the cops all my life" - The Cruise [...According to them I was running from the cops for a month before they caught up to me. ...and I felt like a fugitive. But you know what? Every day I feel like a fugitive. It never occurred to them that I am running from the anti-cruise every day. And when I was up in front of the judge for my arraignment, the judge said my biggest problem with this case is that this guy, this current person we're judging, ran from the police for a month. And if I could've spoken, of course I wasn't allowed to speak, I would've said, it's been a lot more than a month. I've been running from you people all my life, all my life, and I'm going to keep running.] Ken - "My grandmother told me I was a very good child, I was very quiet" Dufus - "Anouk" - In Monstrous Attitude Belle and Sebastian - "Storytelling" - Storytelling Ken - "Scary to make without knowing what you're making" Malcolm Clarke - "Romanescan Rout" - The Radiophonic Workshop [Or perhaps 2002 remaster] Bill Nelson - "The Spirit Cannot Fail" - Chance Encounters in the Garden of Lights- (1) The Angel at the Western Window [Never let anything cause you to doubt your ability to demonstrate truth.] The Carpenters - "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" - Passage [Like a Disney cult song. Cover of 1976 Klaatu song.] Toto - "Rosanna" - Toto IV Simon and Garfunkel - "The Sound of Silence" - Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. [Simon only, thanks to Steve Fitch, Dec. 2011] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - "Requiem Introitus" - Amadeus s.t. [Backwards] The Feelies - "When Company Comes" - The Good Earth [Guitar loop] Neil Young - "Down By the River" - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere [Loops] Bob Dylan - "Series of Dreams" - The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 [Loops. Recorded March 23, 1989] Tom Cruise (actor), Paul Thomas Anderson (writer/director) - "I will not apologize for who I am" - Magnolia [I will not apologize for what I need, I will not apologize for what I want] Cat Stevens - "If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out" - Harold and Maude s.t. [Loop] Cat Stevens - "The Wind" - Teaser and the Firecat / Rushmore s.t. [Guitar loop] Timothy "Speed" Levitch - "The grid plan" - The Cruise [Can't imagine having my own identity] Ken - "Live ambient street sound" Set: Lost episode from November 2013 Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Lost episode from November 2013" - Show #483, from Nov. 8, 2013 Keith Fullerton Whitman - "Roxy Music-More Than This (1982)" - Greatest Hits (2003-) Kraftwerk - "Autobahn" - Autobahn Ken - "Soundchecking" Neil Diamond - "America" - Jazz Singer William Shatner - "AT&T Microworld" ? - "Discovering Electronic Music Part 2" - Discovering Electronic Music George Lucas - "Themes put in different contexts, character put into situation, decision to leave, take step beyond" - The Making of American Graffiti W.G. Snuffy Walden - "My So-Called Life Theme" - My So-Called Life s.t. Ken - "It's like a stand-up comedy routine, without the comedy" Claire Danes - "She's looking for someone to blame" - My So-Called Life (Pilot) Sam Harris - "Death and the Present Moment" [Even if you play your game perfectly, you're going to witness the death of everyone you love. There's no satisfying way to hold onto the past.] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Co-existentialism (holding your breadth)" - Show #482, from Nov. 6, 2013 [Live phone call] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Beginnings come out of nowhere (Trust)" - Show #468, from Aug. 21, 2013 [Live phone call] The Open University & BBC - "Seymour Papert and Logo, Part 2" - Talking Turtle Claire Danes - "You agree to have a certain personality" - My So-Called Life (Pilot) Hal Hartley - "(Closing) - Trust" - Possible Music - From The Films of Hal Hartley Ken - "Screens are secretive. Screens are filters." Adrien Brody - "How are you to imagine if images always provided" - Detachment movie Jeff Daniels, Guy Sanville - "Always two steps behind" - Chasing Sleep The Open University & BBC - "Seymour Papert and Logo, Part 2" - Talking Turtle Michael Crichton - "TV captures attention" - Looker commentary Cowboy Junkies - "Sweet Jane (live)" - The Trinity Session Talking Heads - "Dream Operator" - True Stories Scholastic - "Making Mistakes" - How Do I Learn? [Why do you suppose people make mistakes? Is it because they're not looking, or listening? Is it because they're not thinking? Could the sun make a mistake? Could the sun pop out of the sky? Do we all make mistakes? Oops, I guess we do!] ? - "Discovering Electronic Music Part 2" - Discovering Electronic Music George Lucas - "Themes put in different contexts, character put into situation, decision to leave, take step beyond" - The Making of American Graffiti David Cronenberg - "Forbidden images (Videodrome)" - The Directors: The Films of David Cronenberg (1x10) [Test] Martin Donovan, Hal Hartley - "Intimacy list" - Surviving Desire [Kissing, caressing, holding, slapping, shouting, talking, waiting, listening, hoping, encouraging, forgiving, laughing, relenting] W.G. Snuffy Walden - "My So-Called Life Theme" - My So-Called Life s.t. Ken - "Today I know that I know that nothing has been found" [A test] La Dusseldorf - "Rheinita" - La Dusseldorf / Viva Set: Today Kraftwerk - "Autobahn" [Loop] Ken - "Today" Scholastic - "Do You Forget?" - How Do I Learn? [Is losing like forgetting, and finding remembering?] https://lastever.org/show/200727

america tv live disney lost land gardens lights dvd logo tom cruise playlist guitar cruise coke ipods harrison ford charlottesville ludwig pretend greatest hits screens telephone david cronenberg paul thomas anderson loops paul schrader deca dence looker tom moore obsolescence klaatu paul theroux garfunkel the sound trust show joseph dougherty ken it ken olin steve fitch

The Decadence of Obsolescence + 2013 lost episode (Show #432/#483 as #728) | Download MP3 from Jul 27, 2020

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2020

america tv live disney lost land gardens lights dvd logo tom cruise playlist guitar cruise coke ipods harrison ford charlottesville ludwig pretend greatest hits screens telephone david cronenberg paul thomas anderson lad loops paul schrader deca dence looker tom moore obsolescence klaatu paul theroux garfunkel the sound joseph dougherty ken it steve fitch

Ep 39: Balancing Work and Life for a More Effective Existence

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2020 51:26

Summary: In today’s episode, we talk about how our home lives have shifted since Covid hit, highlighting the many positives and few negatives of working more from home with families right in the mix. We share our feelings of guilt when time is not spent wisely with family and business. We also discuss actionable ways that YOU can create a more balanced life, taking into account differences in personality and company culture. At a time when creating work/life boundaries is more important than ever, we explore that “perfect” balance for a more effective existence. Top 4 Curtain Pulls in this episode: Working HARD is a good thing. It isn’t inherently bad… it’s noble, and currently it presents a unique situation where you can teach your kids and family the value of doing good work and also being present for real life. “A life out of balance leads to burnout but a life in balance leads to fulfillment.” -Ancient Agency Exposed Proverb… If you don’t intentionally pursue a healthy balance between work and other areas of your life (and the more you love what you do, the harder this is), then you will be less effective and burn out. You must actively manage your work or it will manage you. The way you use your time is WAY more important than the way you use your money- so be intentional, budget your time, be honest with yourself when you’re leading to burnout, and invest into the right things. This will help your brain find rest when you need it! Find a passion to pursue OTHER THAN YOUR BUSINESS! That’s right- put your energy into something that truly rests your subconscious and allows you to recharge, preferably something totally unrelated to you making money. For more tips, discussion, and behind the scenes: Follow us on Instagram @AgencyPodcast Join our closed Facebook community for agency leaders About The Guys: Bob Hutchins: Founder of BuzzPlant, a digital agency that he ran from from 2000 -2017. He is also the author of 3 books. More on Bob: Bob on LinkedIn twitter.com/BobHutchins instagram.com/bwhutchins Bob on Facebook Brad Ayres: Founder of Anthem Republic, an award-winning ad agency. Brad’s knowledge has led some of the biggest brands in the world. Originally from Detroit, Brad is an OG in the ad agency world and has the wisdom and scars to prove it. Currently that knowledge is being applied to his boutique agency. More on Brad: Brad on LinkedIn Anthem Republic twitter.com/bradayres instagram.com/therealbradayres facebook.com/Bradayres Ken Ott: Co-Founder and Chief Growth Rebel of Metacake, an Ecommerce Growth Team for some of the world’s most influential brands with a mission to Grow Brands That Matter. Ken is also an author, speaker, and was nominated for an Emmy for his acting on the Metacake Youtube Channel (not really). More on Ken: Ken on LinkedIn Metacake - An Ecommerce Growth Team Growth Rebel TV twitter.com/iamKenOtt instagram.com/iamKenOtt facebook.com/iamKenOtt Show Notes: [0:35] Bob welcomes everyone to the show, and tells us about Brad’s cool ride for the day. [3:00] Brad shares about his BMW motorcycle hobby, with a peek into his early first career as a BMX racer (just kidding! Kind of) [3:50] Bob introduces this week’s episode, lamenting the joys and pains of parenthood. Finding balance between work and life is difficult always, but now more than ever there are challenges. [4:50] Ken shares that he had a business before he had kids, and now there are still both going on. The stakes have gotten higher, being able to provide and participate in parenting while working from home during Corona. [6:34] Brad asks “Do you ever feel guilt? That your kids are in the same house and that you’re ignoring them?” [6:37] Ken: “It comes up for sure.” [6:39] Brad shares the internal battle for himself, and expresses that with older children that are high-school aged, it’s tempting to hang out with them and spend time, because it’s different from when they were younger. Time together sounds fun and it can be hard to draw those boundaries while working from home. [7:55] Ken shares that this experience is had by everybody with a family, but is exaggerated when you own a business. Work isn’t an inherently bad thing, and it’s important to demonstrate that for your kids. [9:00] Bob says that it’s a great thing for kids to see their parent devoted to work for a set time during the day, there is a noble quality to demonstrating to children what that healthy balance looks like. Bob’s 2 oldest kids are out the house, but he still has one at home. He reflects on the different ways of setting boundaries that he has experienced with each child. “You have to set that culture in your work environment…” that will only demonstrate that to other people who want to suck you back into that. Set boundaries that you respect, so other will respect them too. No work on weekends, out of the office by 5:30 or 6:00. [11:30] Bob says that as a business owner, it can be tempting to hop back online after dinner and work until midnight. But you have to resist that, and know that it’s not what’s best for you or your work at that moment. [12:00] Brad shares that in the early days, he was so passionate about his business that it became his hobby as well. But that has changed, as he has found other hobbies that he likes even more! “I’m an introvert that pretends to be an extrovert sometimes, and so I’ve got to go away and get away from everything and just have clarity and clearness in my head.” This helps him recharge and have room for more balance. [13:15] Ken says that one rule he uses is not looking at his phone when he wakes up. He talks about the slippery slope of losing a good morning routine, how that results in increased anxiety and less peace of mind, less presence during tasks that require your full attention. [15:28] Brad shares that when the Industrial revolution happened, overnight shifts and continuous work was suddenly an option, and it ruined our sleep patterns and circadian rhythms. Bright lights on 24/7 means no real natural markers for rest. [17:25] Bob talks about creating intentional windows of memorable moments for your children, and the importance of that for your mental health as well as their development. [19:02] Brad reflects on how sometimes as the “hard worker” mentality of working to support your family can create a martyr mindset, where the burnout you experience becomes a direct correlation with how much you’re sacrificing yourself for them. The truth is, it's okay to recharge, it’s okay to rest. It’s necessary to be the best version of yourself that you can give. [21:00] Ken reflects on the mental strength of mental muscle building of shutting off the worry that comes with agency ownership. Your mental energy is worth the exercise in self-control, and is something that gradually changes and increases over time. [22:00] Brad shares that he schedules that down time and recharge time on a micro-scale as well. His most productive time of day is morning before noon, so the more difficult tasks that might require more brain power and/or mental energy aren’t best done in the afternoon. [24:00] Ken shares that he uses a 5-minute Journal each day, morning and night, to reset his focus on reflect on the day from a perspective of gratitude instead of everything that went wrong. Incorporating this into your morning and nightime routine is a game-changer. When planning your day, keep your long-term goals in mind and try to orient that day’s work around a specific part of your goals. [26:00] Bob adds that delegating that time appropriately between family and work is important for everyone, but especially if you're trying to grow a business. Because as that business grows you’ll just have more and more content to suck up your energy. If you don’t know how to delegate early on, it WILL catch up with you! [26:56] Ken: “How I use my time is hundreds of times more important than how I spend my money or how I use something else.” Learning to say no to things, to put your time into things that you only get one shot at when it’s important (like your family), and delegate energy for the work that you need to do- that is the true test of finding balance. [30:00] Bob stresses the importance of engaging in your kids lives in ways that they will appreciate. Find their passions and engage in those with them, create those lasting memories with them and be intentional about it. [32:35] Bob shares that different personality types mean that recharging and establishing new habits and routines will look different. For him, making time for himself and setting himself up for success means everything else around him sort of falls into place. [37:06] Brad: “One of the things that I’ve learned is that I cannot live my life being reactive. I have to be proactive.” Timelines and pressures of agency life can make you feel like you’re just reactive all the time. Which leads to feeling out of control, or you feel the adrenaline rush and get hooked on it. “I would challenge everybody, including myself, that the more you have a proactive balance the more you can dictate how you spend your time, instead of someone else dictating your time. “... it allows you to focus on what you want to do, because you might have too many things that you want to do.. But if you're inundated with fires all day you’ll just never get the time to be able to focus on things that are a higher priority.” [38:51] Bob asks what some daily rituals are that Ken and Brad have that make a difference for them. [42:26] Ken says that daily exercise is the most life changing thing for him. He’s also struggled to find a hobby that isn’t related to work in some way- that new hobby is road biking. It’s been a journey to learn more about it and pick it up, but the process of finding a new passion has been awesome. “Your kids and your family as much as I love mine, they can’t be your hobby either… because you need something that rests your subconscious and allows you to recharge.” He speaks on the importance of knowing the difference between something that truly gives you rest and something that just serves as a distraction. [46:00] Bob speaks to the importance of time and making sure you’re living in the present. In reality, there is no such thing as “tomorrow”, but only this moment. By comparing yourself to past actions, future promises, outside pressures- you’re immediately walking away from the present moment. [47:38] Ken: “The more you understand about your mind, the more that you can understand how to make it do what you want ti to do, and also create disciplines around yourself so that you don't have to worry about missing something or what might mess up in the future.” [48:26] Brad reflects on his own anxieties and says that although his business is incredibly stable, he feels an overwhelming sense of things being on the verge of collapse at any moment. “Some of the things that helped me, what you mentioned is this idea of gratefulness and writing things down.. Being grateful helps you to relieve the anxiety of the things you can’t control.”

covid-19 time learning business marketing work corona balance detroit journal agency work life balance bright industrial bmw existence incorporating bmx timelines working hard balancing work work and life bob bob ken ken brad brad ken it brad one bobhutchins

Ep 30: Media Buying is Broken (Part 2) - Rethinking the pricing model

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2020 54:43

Summary: In our last episode we started to unpack the current media buying model and discuss why we believe it’s no longer effective. In this episode we start to practically discuss what a re-engineered advertising model could look like for our agencies. We all know there is no perfect model, but there is a better one. One that takes into account the various platforms skills required, creative refreshes, budgets and more. The way we market has changed in the last 70+ years, with more platforms than ever the service structure of media buying needs to change as well. Top 3 Curtain Pulls in this episode: Are your fees really covering the work required to be successful? Can you decouple ad spend from your fees? Make sure you’re only responsible for what you can control. There are many factors that are part of the success of a campaign that you do not control. Educate your clients on this reality. Consider creating (or hiring) Holistic Marketing Team, consisting of a Strategic Marketer role, Creative Role, an Ads Engineer, and an Analyst. This way, your business can operate out of several perspectives at once and work together to provide the most value for clients. For more tips, discussion, and behind the scenes: Follow us on Instagram @AgencyPodcast Join our closed Facebook community for agency leaders About The Guys: Bob Hutchins: Founder of BuzzPlant, a digital agency that he ran from from 2000 -2017. He is also the author of 3 books. More on Bob: Bob on LinkedIn twitter.com/BobHutchins instagram.com/bwhutchins Bob on Facebook Brad Ayres: Founder of Anthem Republic, an award-winning ad agency. Brad’s knowledge has led some of the biggest brands in the world. Originally from Detroit, Brad is an OG in the ad agency world and has the wisdom and scars to prove it. Currently that knowledge is being applied to his boutique agency. More on Brad: Brad on LinkedIn Anthem Republic twitter.com/bradayres instagram.com/therealbradayres facebook.com/Bradayres Ken Ott: Co-Founder and Chief Growth Rebel of Metacake, an Ecommerce Growth Team for some of the world’s most influential brands with a mission to Grow Brands That Matter. Ken is also an author, speaker, and was nominated for an Emmy for his acting on the Metacake Youtube Channel (not really). More on Ken: Ken on LinkedIn Metacake - An Ecommerce Growth Team Growth Rebel TV twitter.com/iamKenOtt instagram.com/iamKenOtt facebook.com/iamKenOtt Show Notes: [2:26] Bob introduces this week’s episode- Part 2 of Media Buying. We’re talking about pricing, current models, and how to evolve your pricing within the ever-evolving world of digital marketing. The real question circles around the traditional 15% commission in media buying Bob asks: “Let’s peel back and be real transparent. What have you done, what are you currently doing, how do you make money on placing media right now?” [3:58] Ken: “It’s my opinion that people see ad buying, media buying as a commodity. And so we don’t try to compete on that.” You have to spend enough to be able to support them really really well. Depending on the agency, that number is different. You have to stay on top of the platforms that change constantly, and you have to be a really really good marketer. [5:10] Ken continues: “If we’re talking pricing, we separate out each platform because they’re different, they take different skill sets and there’s different intent.” The purpose of one platform may not be the same as the next, and so your philosophy behind each is going to be different. Starting fee per platform- manager fee of $3K per month baseline, with increased percentage as the projects get larger. They would like to move away from that increased percentage, but ultimately that $3K baseline is not enough to manage platforms correctly on a daily basis. Setup fee included for each platform, to allow for tracking and getting correct data in the very beginning. [7:42] Ken: Speaks about different clients and the different parts of the process they dip their toes into. “There’s a certain amount that I believe has to come from the brand. So the heart and soul of the message has to be there, whether we do it separately or the brand has it… I don’t think you can just come in and start writing for the brand and have it feel authentic and work.” Images, creative, videos, photography- all these have to come from the brand then Metacake layers strategy on top of that. [8:58] Ken: “There are certain factors that really drive cost, and reporting is one that no one talks about, but is very important and time consuming.” Metacake has a basic version of that and a plus version of that. “Once we get to heavy levels of budget, 10, 50K a month… you really need to have that expertise in analyzing and knowing what’s going on.” [10:12] Brad speaks about the importance of agreeing with your client about which indicators you’re going to work from. Often as you share information, the client will want to know more and you dig into that information and before you know it, you’ve double the hours you originally agreed to spend doing research and not getting paid for that work. Define what you’re measuring against early on, and that any additional information or strategy will be an additional cost. [11:00] Ken speaks about Metacake’s model away from that specific issue- we’re trying to adjust our model based on role. A holistic marketing team means you have the strategic marketer role, creative roles, and an Ads Engineer. Most technical mind that REALLY knows the platform well. You need someone who can just think about the customer from their perspective and then work with someone who really knows how to take that and translate it into the nuts and bolts of how we get the most out of the platform. The last role is an analyst- who’s reading the data and gleaning next steps from that information. [14:15] Brad: Some clients at Anthem are still being rebilled after the agency fronts the bill for the media, but they are trying to move away from that, as it is such a high risk. “We are definitely going to a model where every customer that we set up controls their own ad account.” Either they use their own credit card to pay for digital space, or they pay upfront before any work is done. Working with a startup is difficult here, because often they don’t have credit cards with a high enough limit. “We’re going to take away the commission and we’re goin to solely start building a model on expertise... And management costs.” [17:00] Brad continues: There is a LOT of work done upfront for most clients, a deep understanding of their brand and customers. Educating clients on this process, explaining that ads are just a small part of a strategy (the pitcher in a baseball game, but we need ALL the players to win!) and there is so much more to their growth and customer journey. Defining the customer’s emotional level of engagement in different parts of their journey is SO important to building an appropriate customer funnel. [20:25] Brad speaks about how some clients don’t have an appropriate understanding of Customer LTV or Lifetime Value. And if they can’t understand the importance of that, there is a LOT of education ahead of you to work with them and be successful. [20:40] Bob recalls meeting with a local agency recently, and he asked how many of their clients were aware of their customer’s lifetime value. Even decent-sized, older companies still don’t know what a lifelong customer relationship looks like. [22:00] Bob continues: “Logic says, if I put in a dollar, I want at least that or more out… Understanding lifetime value gives you a whole wide range of what success looks like.” [25:49] Brad talks about common blind spots with new brands. “They haven’t priced into their model the cost of customer acquisition properly… let’s say I’m selling widgets for $10. And my cost of goods is $5. They think that they should only spend 20cents to get a customer.” Actually, the opposite approach is true- you should think of your customer acquisition as the biggest cost. [29:40] Brad continues: “We do have a minimum, and it does fluctuate… our minimum would definitely be $2K a month but it really does depend on the work and it depends on the short term scope. As the campaign evolves, the pricing has to evolve as well, it has to scale up. [33:11] Bob: “I think it needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis, just as you would the creative, the packaging, the development, the way you treat everything else. [35:34] Ken talks about how your message and advertising needs to be the same across all platforms- but doing this on several platforms is a lot more work. So Metacake charges around $10-$15K a month for these multi-platform, broad scope campaigns. “You’ve got to take into account the whole customer journey to really get the most effect out of it.” This is why Metacake has moved towards a coaching model. For clients who are doing their marketing themselves, don’t have the money to hire an agency full time, coaching is a great option for these clients. [38:40] Bob introduces another model we haven’t covered yet- a model where clients don’t pay unless the agency produces. [39:21] Ken’s experience with this model has shown that it requires a LOT of trust on both ends. There needs to be proof of trust for both, and it is more of a partnership than a client-agency relationship. [40:00] Brad: “If my payback is based on their decision that I have no control over, then I’m just a silent investor.” [43:20] Ken: “I think that the mentality, if there’s not maturity around what it takes to take on investment on your company and what it means for someone to be invested in your company, then I think that it’s probably going to be a slippery thing.” [50:56] Ken: “There’s two parts to basic business success- and it’s one, having a great product, but that’s no good if you don’t have a great brand, which inherently means people know about you and care about you.” On performance-based pay model: “What I think might be better is maybe have a performance incentive versus being paid on performance.”

Ep 28: Working with Other Agencies to Grow Your Business with guest Jon Tsourakis

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 8, 2020 56:04

Summary: We all want new streams of new business, and today’s guest shares how they were able to build a healthy business serving other agencies. We’ve talked about the value of partnerships and collaboration with other agencies as a source of new business before and Oyova is a prime example of that. We also discuss the pros and cons of having business partners. And we get another look at how an agency is dealing with the effects of COVID-19. Tune in as Jon shares his experiences (good and bad) with business partners, talks about the impact that technology has had on his career journey, how Oyova has held up during the last 6 months of extreme disruption, and what he expects of the remainder of 2020. Top 3 Curtain Pulls in this episode: Consider other agencies as potential partners rather than competition. If the character is high, then risks are low. When determining whether someone is a good business partner for you, ask yourself if you’d mind getting a call from that person on a Saturday morning. If you don’t LIKE your partner in life, a business relationship is sure to fail. Maintaining steady business growth through any disruption means applying Positive, Persistent Pressure in sales scenarios. Speak to the heart of your client’s business, and remind them of the services you offer and how it would benefit them. For more tips, discussion, and behind the scenes: Follow us on Instagram @AgencyPodcast Join our closed Facebook community for agency leaders About our Guest: Jon Tsourakis: President and co-owner of Oyova, a Florida-based, full-service technology and marketing agency. He is the leader of a Mastermind for Digital Agencies and host of “The Climb”, a podcast where agency owners and marketing leaders tune in to get growth tips and strategies for growing their businesses. Learn more about Oyova Join the Mastermind: DigitalMastermind.com Check out The Climb on Apple Podcasts! About The Guys: Bob Hutchins: Founder of BuzzPlant, a digital agency that he ran from from 2000 -2017. He is also the author of 3 books. More on Bob: Bob on LinkedIn twitter.com/BobHutchins instagram.com/bwhutchins Bob on Facebook Brad Ayres: Founder of Anthem Republic, an award-winning ad agency. Brad’s knowledge has led some of the biggest brands in the world. Originally from Detroit, Brad is an OG in the ad agency world and has the wisdom and scars to prove it. Currently that knowledge is being applied to his boutique agency. More on Brad: Brad on LinkedIn Anthem Republic twitter.com/bradayres instagram.com/therealbradayres facebook.com/Bradayres Ken Ott: Co-Founder and Chief Growth Rebel of Metacake, an Ecommerce Growth Team for some of the world’s most influential brands with a mission to Grow Brands That Matter. Ken is also an author, speaker, and was nominated for an Emmy for his acting on the Metacake Youtube Channel (not really). More on Ken: Ken on LinkedIn Metacake - An Ecommerce Growth Team Growth Rebel TV twitter.com/iamKenOtt instagram.com/iamKenOtt facebook.com/iamKenOtt Show Notes: [1:08] Ken introduces our guest, Jon Tsourakis. President and co-owner of Oyova, a technology and marketing agency. John is in charge of sales and marketing while his partner handles the production and operation of the business. They’re based in St. Petersburg, FL. John also leads a digital mastermind group for agencies. [2:52] Bob asks John to tell us about his agency. [3:01] John responds: There are about 30 people on their team between two offices. They focus predominantly (60%) of their business on development. They also do marketing services for companies that are over $2 million, all shapes and sizes above that. In addition they work with a lot of agencies and help with their overflow work. [3:38] Bob: “Is it full service? Do you specialize in anything specifically?”[3:46] John responds that they are full service, although that pains him because there are so many great arguments for specialization. Biggest strengths are understanding the mechanics of technology and marketing. On the marketing side, “we can create some really impressive lead growth through third engine optimization.” [4:20] Ken: “It sounds to me like you are specialized, it’s just not industry specialization… one of your specialties seems to be this relationship with agencies. [4:50] Brad asks if the work they do for other agencies is mostly dev work. [4:58] John responds that 90% of what they do is dev work. “A lot of agencies will have one or two developers on their staff… but that’s just not in their wheelhouse, so we come in a fill that gap.”[5:25] Brad asks what John thinks the percentage is of agencies out there that don’t have deep dev in-house. [6:05] John: “I would say it’s probably 85% of agencies that don’t have a super deep tech bench. They’re very focused and specialized and they have a developer that can wear some other hats…” but ultimately most of them don’t have the experience in development that his agency can add. [6:28] Bob: “I’m curious to know of the agencies that you work with- are they typically traditional older agencies? Are they digital agencies that don’t have the depth? Are they hybrids? What does your client makeup look like?” [6:47] John: “Some of them have just moved away from paper in the last few years and have embraced what the internet is… other are very advanced platinum HubSpot partners that just run into situations that are outside of what they’re great at… there are others that are amazing design agencies that have really good front end developers who run into overflow that they will send to us because they know we can take care of it.” Other than that, many want to take on an ERP (Enterprise Resource Management) based project because they can see the revenue in that and they can bring Oyova on at the partner level. [7:45] Ken talks about recent episodes about cost and pricing. Oyova serves agencies, and one of the things they have to accommodate for is cost. Agencies are selling at a certain price that you have no control over, so cost has to be below that. “How do you make that model work?” [8:07] Jon responds- cost is definitely a factor. They sell everything in blocks of hours, so the more hours you purchase then the lower your cost will be. Some agencies buy a LOT of hours, just to have access to their team. “Others will just do it on a project basis… when agencies are white labeling someone else, the really smart ones get sick of that because they realize the inefficiency in it.” [9:26] Brad asks about billing- do they bill the client directly, or do you bill through the parent agency you’re working with?” Jon responds that it depends on the agency that they’re working with, they try to be respectful of how they want the relationship managed. [9:55] Bob asks if they have built this model intentionally and whether they aim primarily for agencies or individual clients. [10:09] Jon gives a brief history of how he and his business partner met. It was an accidental discovery at first, they were a marketing agency with two developers, they’d get overflow from other agencies and then after 8 years realized it was a great business model. [11:57] Ken asks Jon for a deeper history of his business relationship with his partner and the pros and cons of that relationship. He also asks about what Jon expects for the next few months within his company. First, Jon’s story. [12:28] Jon: His father was a master carpenter and builder, so he was part of the family business. He met a guy at school that had a marketing company that worked in the healthcare space. He worked with this guy for a while, and in 2009 he decided to start his own agency. Around 2013, 2014 he realized that partnership wasn’t working and they had a disastrous breakup, Jon was left high and dry. He decided to work with his current partner and over the years they developed a great working relationship. Jon says the best part of that relationship is that they can fill in the gaps in each other's strengths and weaknesses. Where Jon sees shiny things, his partner sees dull things and can bring him back to earth when excitement takes over. [15:16] Jon continues: “For years, we’ve just been fighting the good fight, trying to be an agency in a world of sameness, create differentiation… a merger sounded like a really good idea based on the technology depth and the strategic advantage of being a strong partner.” [16:13] The guys ask for details about that bad partner relationship. Jon responds that he was a brilliant developer but just not on the same page about a lot of communication things, there were some psychological differences in the way they thought about professionalism. The client called and strongly advised that unless that partner went away, there would be serious problems for their company. There was a huge vulnerable, humble moment that allowed him to realize that the relationship was destructive. [17:22] Bob asks for some advice based on those learning experiences. [17:37] Jon: “The direct and gentle communication… he just couldn’t deal with people.” Do business with someone who you wouldn’t mind getting a phone call from on a Saturday morning. You have to LIKE the person you’re working with. [18:12] Ken confirms that concept of direct and gentle communication- even in the face of disrespect in return, you always have to respond in a direct and gentle manner. It’s really about basic respect. [18:40] Brad asks for advice for how to approach things in a direct and gentle way while things are heated or when there is stress in the company. What does that mindset shift look like? [19:20] Jon: It’s about setting a foundation, and asking if you’re being logical and not emotional. It’s great to have those conversations with partners and asking yourself constantly what the logical next steps are. Be aware of your own tendencies and allow for those weaknesses in logic that you may have. [20:13] Brad asks how they manage clients who are very reliant on them, who are more attached than an agency would be. Jon: “We have an agreement that’s evergreen with our client, so they’re continually getting a percentage for essentially not doing anything just based on the engagement that they helped us create.” [22:25] Bob asks about the longest contract they have that an agency brought to them. Jon responds that it’s 8 years- that’s a great contract! [23:06] Brad talks about how the more you’re in bed with technology that drives revenue for your client… “there’s always a fear that you’re going to get canned… because you become a commodity.” [24:32] Brad asks “What kind of stuff do you do in the development world?”[24:50] Jon responds: Mostly websites, some entire technological infrastructure for some companies where it’s essentially their ERP. “Ranges from little website integrations, all the way to the entire technological skeleton of the company.” [28:00] Ken asks how the last few months have been managed for Jon. What was it like in the beginning of quarantine, what was it like through that process, and how has business gone since then, and if any of these things have changed how they run overall. [29:10] Jon: The theme of 2020 was going to be The Climb, and it turned out to be more true than they thought. They came up with a plan over Zoom, and decided to stay focused on clients, closing business as much as possible. They realized very quickly that their team could definitely perform and provide results from home, and have surprised themselves with their productivity. [31:52] Brad affirms that it’s been hard- and congratulates Jon on their success through Covid. [32:40] Ken: “What area of your business grew? Was it new business or existing business? Is there a difference there?” [34:14] Jon talks about how they were able to extend or increase their marketing packages, they really talked up this being “the time” to invest in online business. If you come to the table with logical, competent people and a plan, you’re set up for the highest chance of success! [36:12] Jon talks about what the next 6 months might look like. “The path forward and the recession is going to be different for everyone. There’s going to be pocket recessions based on specific industries. And some aren’t going to feel it at all.” [37:00] Ken asks how this may change going forward, and what sort of opportunities he might see. [37:12] Jon talks about how the challenge of Covid is actually exciting for him, although he feels guilty about that at times. Business owners have been really lucky over the last 10 years, so now you really get to see what you’re made of. There will likely be a lot of acquisition happening, but ultimately he feels positioned for the best chance of success. [38:30] Ken asks “How can you package up what you actually are selling in different ways?” This is something that Metacake has done well through the quarantine. [39:42] Brad asks if there are any new products or service offerings that have come up during Covid for Jon’s company. Other than rapid messaging via popup websites or email blasts. [40:20] Brad asks what sort of packages of services other than development Oyova offers. [40:39] Jon: Other than the mastermind group, one event per year that is a collective knowledge base. “I think creating that space for all these agencies to come together and just be open and share and be transparent is important.” Oyova spends a lot of time helping agencies scope out projects, helping them win those projects and making it an enjoyable experience to work with them. [50:44] Ken: “You’ve built really high quality relationship with agencies that you get a sustainable business model through… how do you do that?” [51:28] JOn: “If you connect with somebody and build relationships that are genuine, you can go a long way.” [52:31] Brad asks about generating new business, and their business development process. [52:38] Jon talks about the three P’s: Positive, Persistent Pressure. If you have the right message and continually follow up with the people on that list, you’ll find them.” [53:27] Brad asks what Jon has done to become a thought leader in his space. “What kinds of things do you do to promote yourself to new clients?

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This Must Be the Beginning (you have to speak truth) (Show #719) | Download MP3 from Jun 10, 2020

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2020 117:50

Previous DJ - "Brings up remote feed" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Live stream feedback loop" Claude Debussy - "Clair De Lune" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Live stream feedback loop" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Live radio feedback loop" Ken - "All the loops need to work" Keith Holzman - "Small clock ticking" Daft Punk - "Outlands, part II" - TRON Legacy Soundtrack Ken - "Warming up loops" Sound effect - "Ringer" George Freeman - "Fully Fashioned" Alan Braden - "Starlight Revue (a.k.a. Curtain Raiser)" Ken - "Identification: In the next moment, it sounds a different way" Claude Debussy / Nintendo - "Untitled Goose Game" Gilbert Vinter - "Mists of Illusion" Camille Saint-Saens - "Aquarium" Ronald Hanmer - "Bits and Pieces" Four Tet - "Parks" Clint Mansell - "Together We Will Live Forever" - The Fountain soundtrack Chi-Lites - "Have You Seen Her? loops" Clem Leek - "Mystery Moor clock loop" Clem Leek - "Mystery Moor" Ifny - "Howdy is the Portal to the Future" Cowboy Junkies - "Sweet Jane loop" Dustin O'Halloran - "Opus 20" Ken - "You Have to Speak Truth" [Spontaneous monologue, over Dustin O'Halloran layers & Clem Leek clock loop. What happens if I stop being silent? Maybe they see me speaking and it gives them an idea. Other people are now realizing it's OK to speak, and we're a little crowd now, a whole lot of people, who are happy to finally start speaking some truth. And the crowd is growing, the crowd is growing... ] Full transcript of spontaneous monologue "You Have to Speak Truth" Some people speak as they think, and that's their method of thinking, is to speak. Some people never speak. Some people don't believe they have a voice. Some people have a history of having been asked to be silent. Some people are afraid of what happens when they speak, because once, maybe something happened when they spoke. Maybe it was something really bad. Maybe it just scared them a lot. Maybe they were very young when it happened. Maybe they saw something happen to somebody else. Maybe they saw an image on a screen, of something happening to somebody. And they believed that it was happening to them, because that's how our brains respond to images we see. And so forever they've been a little more silent. A little more silent, maybe a lot more silent, than they otherwise would've been. Maybe they've spent the rest of their lives being silent. Although, sometimes people start...sometimes people, they stick out a little bit. They want to see what happens. What happens if I stop being silent? I mean, I know that I'm not supposed to speak, and I know that everybody disagrees with me, and I know that even though some people agree with me, they're not going to stand up with me when I speak, because they're afraid, too. And they'd probably just like to let me go down. They're glad it's not happening to them. Maybe they're a little bit happy that I spoke and said something that was true, but they're a little bit...they're not... Maybe they, maybe they walk over next to me when I'm speaking. Maybe they see me speaking and it gives them an idea. Maybe they could, well, not quite speak, but maybe they could just stand next to me, and, well, they could... Yeah, they're just nodding their head, the person came up next to me, and they're not saying anything, but they're nodding their head. They look like they're agreeing. They're expressing some kind of support. It makes me a little less afraid to speak now. And there's someone, I can see someone off in the distance, and they, they, they're kind of, almost, it looks like they're laughing at me, and I feel scared again, I feel like maybe I shouldn't be speaking. Someone over there is taking notes. Someone over there is filming me, pointing a camera, and I don't know what's going to happen next. It makes me a little nervous that I'm speaking, that I'm saying the truth, and I, I remember, I've watched a lot of people start speaking the truth, and then find a way to start qualifying it, and checking, making sort of disclaimers, and retreating a bit. And I know I could do that, maybe I would be safe then, because I see a lot of people out there in the crowd who, well, maybe they'll leave me alone if I just do that. But, two more people have walked over next to me already, and they're shaking their heads, and, I look back at the crowd, and there's still that person who looks sort of mean and unhappy. But, I look more carefully, I start to be very methodical, and I look face by face, one by one, instead of looking where my emotion brings my eyes, and I look one by one at all the faces. And, most people aren't laughing. Most people, most people are looking, and they're...they don't have a threatening posture at all, and some of them are shaking their heads too. And, there's even someone who's smiling, someone who's nodding vigorously. And I decide to keep speaking. I decide to speak more truth. Although, I see there's a person sort of inching closer to me, and they, I can't tell what they have in their hands, but it looks like it might be something dangerous. But it, that makes me more... I start to get excited, and, although I'm scared, I realize it just, it wakes me up, and it makes things seem a little more pressing. It's a little more urgent that I say the things that are true, I say the things that I know. I realize that a lot of people also think these things, even if I don't usually hear speaking them, but, as I think about it, sometimes I do hear people speak the true things. Of course, that's why I'm so nervous about saying them, because I've seen those people get punished for speaking those things, and... but, it's going to be OK, it doesn't matter what's going to happen next, because the truth has to be said, we have to speak out what's real. Of course we do. And other people are starting to speak now. Other people are now realizing it's OK to speak, and we're sort of like a little... we're a little crowd now, a whole lot of people, who are happy to finally start speaking some truth. And the crowd is growing, the crowd is growing, because the truths that are being spoken, they're about almost everyone. The only people who stand to suffer from these truths coming out are... well, there are just a few of them. People who are taking advantage of a certain amount of power that they have, by keeping people afraid, by keeping people afraid to speak basic, obvious truths all the time. Keeping people afraid to trust their own feelings. Afraid they'll be lumped in with some or another ostracized group. They accidentally say something that overlaps with something that one of those groups says. And, wracking their brains, realizing that there's nothing really true that you could say that hasn't already been coopted by some ostracized group. That doesn't seem it make it any less true, what you're saying, and so you go on and you say it, you just, you just, you have to speak truth, because, what are you here for? And, to encourage others to know that they can accept and speak truth. And you say it, you say it passionately, but you say it with a gentleness that recognizes that what is your truth might not be everyone else's truth. You say it from your heart, as you intend for your truth to be beneficial to most people. You're able to feel, still, still carefully a judgment when you noticed that somebody is very obviously not speaking truth. You can be compassionate, and realize all the reasons why they aren't speaking truth. You can realize that somewhere along the chain, they, too, are afraid. Even if they're way up at the top, and they're exploiting the most power, even if they're very self-aware of this whole process - why wouldn't they be? There are entire books on the subject, seminars, teaching, entire courseworks, films... It's no secret how power operates. It's not a secret. It's one of those things that's sometimes just like a truth that you might be afraid to speak about, but everybody knows. And, still, you can find compassion for the people who are taking advantage of their positions of power, while also still continuing to feel judgment that that abuse of power, for whatever reason it's going on, even as you can find your heart about it, and you can imagine the heart that those people are trying to come from... You can still know that it is not the best thing for most people, and you can still stop that thing from happening. You can still stop that thing from happening. You don't have to become a bad person to stop bad things from happening - not at all. It's possible that doing nothing, and saying nothing, and just taking care of yourself, and staying really quiet, it's possible that this might be the problem, in the system of problems. The problem that you have to face right now. Not the only problem. It is a problem when somebody does something that's very harmful to many people. It's also a problem when most people who have the power to do something to stop that from happening aren't doing something. Aren't even recognizing that they are most people, and, most people - that's a lot of people. That's a lot of power. So, remember that power that you have, because you are not alone, if you try to act in the best interests of most people. You are in very massive company. And it may be scary, but you will be supported, and you will be helping the world be better for most people. Not just you, not just your friends, not just the people you aspire to be, but most people. And sometimes you have to think really hard to imagine most people, because that's a lot of people. You don't usually see most people. Sometimes you see simulated views of most people that are probably not representative of most people. Maybe go around the world and look carefully, with your eyes, not with your screens, and try to learn, what is it that most people would benefit from. And then, speak your truth. And you speak it as loud as you need to speak it, and you don't let people stop you from speaking. Not if they're doing it with force. Not if they're doing it with coersion. Not if they're doing it from a place that's so obviously not true. While there's still time... Dustin O'Halloran - "Opus 20" Keith Holzman - "Small clock ticking" Sound effect - "Cuckoo clock" Keith Holzman - "Grandmother clock strikes twelve" Boards of Canada - "Wildlife Analysis" Daft Punk - "Outlands, part II" - TRON Legacy Soundtrack Ken - "It isn't planned ahead. It's possible still to express free things" [ "Find your platforms to speak from. Eschew the technology. It's always going to be messy." ] Ken - "Identification" Boards of Canada - "Wildlife Analysis" Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - "Complication with Optimistic Outcome" - The Social Network Soundtrack Ken - "I would invite your phone call" Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - "Complication with Optimistic Outcome" - The Social Network Soundtrack Infinite Third - "fr ee f o rm" Peer Gynt - "Morning" - Incidental Music [The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beech. 1998 remastered] Ifny - "Howdy is the Portal to the Future" Bright Eyes - "Clairaudients" - Kill or Be Killed Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons - "Candy Girl" Tangerine Dream / State Azure - "Love On A Real Train" Pink Floyd - "It's What We Do" - The Endless River Malcolm X - "Police use statistics to make Harlem look crimnal" Malcolm X - "Police brutality speech" Daft Punk - "Outlands, part II" - TRON Legacy Soundtrack Malcolm X - "Encouraging police to take whatever measures necessary to hold negroes in check" Lullatone - "perfectly organized cleaning supplies" - The Sounds of Spring Malcolm X - "The police have infiltrated the black movement" Lullatone - "a little song about hail drops" - Room Loops Ken - "The middle of your hypnosis session, the nature of performance, illusion, a culture that doesn't value truth" Ken - "It's completely honest; you hear the mistakes the entire time" Ken - "Qualified immunity (if this exact show has never happened before, mistakes are not possible?)" [ Qualified Immunity (if this exact police misconduct has never been ruled against in court before, then it will not be ruled against in court in the future) ] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Live stream feedback loop" Lullatone - "ambient sketch #1" - Room Loops Malcolm X - "My house was bombed" Malcolm X - "By Any Means Necessary" Malcolm X - "I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy (We have only known hypocrisy)" Cranberries - "Dreams loops" Ken - "It can't just be the few speaking to the many, it can't just be like this anymore. And don't be fooled by the online media illusion." [ Don't look up to the top. Look next to you. ] Ken - "Identification: Might be recontextualized broadcast" Cranberries - "Dreams loops" Cowboy Junkies - "Brothers Under the Bridge loop" Cowboy Junkies - "Ring on the Sill loops" Ifny - "Howdy is the Portal to the Future" Random Rab - "Rain on the World" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "This must be the beginning (show opening)" - Show #717, from June 3, 2020 [Live stream feedback of GTDR song, Ken & newest co-host song loop "This must be the beginning," Philip Glass,"This must be the end"] Lou Reed - "Street Hassle loops" Ken - "You should take your chances. We are strong when we are many. This must be the beginning." [It took its chances. You've made it all the way back to the beginning.] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "This Must Be the Beginning (you have to speak truth)" - Show #719, from June 10, 2020 https://lastever.org/show/200610

america live sound afraid bridge portal boards cuckoo philip glass sill speak truth qualified immunity eschew dustin o'halloran ken you lullatone ken it clem leek

Ep 20: What’s My ROI?

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2020 57:51

Summary: ROI is more important now yet harder to measure than ever. Because of the uncertain economic climate, time between spending and making a sale has increased for most businesses. At the same time effort and marketing activities have had to completely change course to adapt. ROI is something every business leader (you and your clients) wants to know for good reason. But unfortunately the answer is not that simple, and we are tempted to sacrifice long term health for short term reward. In today’s episode we break open the concept of brand value as a return on investment- how building brand equity has a real business case and is just as important (even more) as other activities that may have direct ROI attached to them. It’s important as an agency to have a deep understanding of this concept not only for your clients, but for YOURSELF. Agencies are so-called “brand building experts” yet often their own brand suffers and is perceived as a commodity. When it comes to building a business with a legacy that makes profit and LASTS, we have to find that perfect balance between number crunching and winning the hearts and minds of your customers. Resources Mentioned: Hubspot Google Trends Top 3 Curtain Pulls in this episode: The importance of ROI as a financial measurement will be more important for quick-growth, blitz-scaling companies, while companies that are looking to build for long-term growth should take brand equity into consideration just as much as ROI. It’s important to Practice what you Preach- as an agency, show clients and customers that your brand is about a deeper meaning and message than just making money. A simple way of measuring brand awareness is tracking how many Google searches come up for any specific brand or company. That is a real-time measure of brand recognition and audience engagement. For more tips, discussion, and behind the scenes: Follow us on Instagram @AgencyPodcast Join our closed Facebook community for agency leaders About The Guys: Bob Hutchins: Founder of BuzzPlant, a digital agency that he ran from from 2000 -2017. He is also the author of 3 books. More on Bob: Bob on LinkedIn twitter.com/BobHutchins instagram.com/bwhutchins Bob on Facebook Brad Ayres: Founder of Anthem Republic, an award-winning ad agency. Brad’s knowledge has led some of the biggest brands in the world. Originally from Detroit, Brad is an OG in the ad agency world and has the wisdom and scars to prove it. Currently that knowledge is being applied to his boutique agency. More on Brad: Brad on LinkedIn Anthem Republic twitter.com/bradayres instagram.com/therealbradayres facebook.com/Bradayres Ken Ott: Co-Founder and Chief Growth Rebel of Metacake, an Ecommerce Growth Team for some of the world’s most influential brands with a mission to Grow Brands That Matter. Ken is also an author, speaker, and was nominated for an Emmy for his acting on the Metacake Youtube Channel (not really). More on Ken: Ken on LinkedIn Metacake - An Ecommerce Growth Team Growth Rebel TV twitter.com/iamKenOtt instagram.com/iamKenOtt facebook.com/iamKenOtt Show Notes: How do your clients define success? Is ROI a part of that equation? [0:] Bob: The term ROI means Return on Investment, or the value that we provide to our clients. There is often a void between what we as agency owners value as success and what the client values as success- closing that gap is what we do. [ ] Ken: “ROI is one of those things that you can’t really control as an agency owner- really no one person can control.” [ ] Brad: Often clients see us as their financial advisor- step 1 of that process is asking “What can I expect my return to be.” Sometimes you get clients who have a different idea of success from you, so it’s more difficult to close that gap. [ ] Bob: The agency dilemma- what’s the goal of the company ultimately, and what’s the size of the company. Smaller company means the goals are going to be different, so the expectations of the client is going to be different. [ ] Brad: Startups are often quick-moving, fast-growth companies. They’re blitz scaling, and “putting the plane together while they launch it”- ultimately just looking for short term investments to get them where they need to be and create the “strong financial narrative of growth” that they need. Strategies change based on that need of the company. Startups probably care more about ROI than other more established brands. Identifying what THEY see as success is #1 with any client. [ ] Bob asks: How much of an agency's job is it to teach and push a client toward a better understanding of ROI for their business? [ ] Ken: “I think it’s required, even for your own well-being as an agency.” You can’t always control what the product is, the price, who the audience is, etc. If you don’t educate, you’re on the hook for things that you can’t control- the client’s expectations, mostly. “You have to lead that conversation.” Oftentimes you’re being asked to do things by the client that you have no control over, so you need to educate around that. “Here’s how you should be thinking about ROI from our perspective.” [ ] Brad: Sometimes you get clients whose product really isn’t being marketed to the correct market. Some companies just don’t put the time or effort into establishing market fit. “We see, as collectors of data, proof or evidence that the client's expectation isn’t right to begin with.” As an agency, you have to be able to say that you can’t help them any further. You can only guide some clients so far. [ ] Bob speaks on how often the expectation is that clients don’t really understand the process. [ ] Brad adds that oftentimes the clients don’t understand that there are many perspectives and lenses through which to gauge growth- ROI isn’t the only marker for success. And the less educated a client is about these things, the more work there is at the front end for agencies. [ ] Ken adds: Agencies have to get ROI for every activity that they do- defining the return is important. Sometimes it’s not money or sales. Having a team member that understands a more holistic view of the business model is so vital- both internally as well as from clients. Until then you’re always going to have a mismatch. [ ] Brad: Often there are specific structures within the setup of the business that are barriers to understanding and education. When part of the businesses activity takes place offline- they get bumped to a salesperson- it’s hard to measure the success of specific digital ads, etc. So it’s important to have a place (Hubspot, Salesforce) where you can measure those successes even once the process leaves a digital platform. Then you have clients who come to the table very prepared and know the digital world inside and out and there isn’t a whole lot of education that you have to provide. Then there are clients who expect you to be magic and pull ROI out of thin air. [ ] Bob speaks on the “magician” role that some clients expect. Every client, product, demographic is wildly different. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t [ ] Ken adds: Many clients are looking for a silver bullet, a quick fix to get their name out there. But ultimately as agency owners, you’re doing that service because you know more about that than the person coming to you. This is our responsibility- do NOT feed them the silver bullet misconception. Educate the reality: “There is no silver bullet, so here’s the deal: It’s finding the right experience on your team, doing the right things consistently over time, and being really smart about those so that you build your business and get to that goal you have. That’s the first thing we ask anyone that we want to work with- what is your goal? Start with a goal. Is it specific, measurable, realistic? If it is, then how do we back out of that and develop a strategy. [ ] Brad: speaks on the experience of marketing something that there is a lot of excitement and buzz around. “It was so easy to market that product, and it was so fun because there was so much excitement behind it.” It is a whole different experience when the company is in a market that’s slow or the brand new with no competitors, hs no brand equity, doesn't have the money to do what they need to do- and sometimes they don’t even know what they need. [ ] Ken responds- “So apparently it’s important for them to have a good product Well it turns out it starts with a great product, apparently. And that’s something that you can’t truly control… If you’re working with someone who says I want to get there, you ask okay how bad do you want it? Because the investment that’s required to get there may be more than they have or that they want to invest- money or time.” [ ] Brad: The biggest reason that businesses go out of business is due to capital. In order for you to be the magician that they request, they have to be willing to reframe their mindset. Steve Jobs quote: “I create products that people don’t even realize they need.” Apple not only put out products that are incredible, but they educate people about how that product will improve their lives. [ ] Bob asks about brand equity. Scenario, agency comes to the client with: “Well, we may not have hit all the sales goals, but look at all this brand equity that we’ve built.” Part of our job as an agency is to measure, report on brand equity, and prove that our process is a success with data & analytics. This might be important to a marketing manager that you’re working with directly, but maybe not the CFO who’s only looking at the numbers. [ ] Brad speaks on brand awareness vs desire to purchase. You need both to truly succeed- both are a measure of success. Brand equity doesn't happen overnight- either have a lot of money or time. Brand equity comes with a strong consumer value. Another Steve Jobs quote: “Don’t just sell us on the features of your products, but show us how your product is going to change our lives.” If you don’t have those pain points, you’re never going to create an emotional connection to your brand. Everything about your brand is brand equity- you have to take everything into context. “It’s not just marketing and driving leads, it’s so much more than that.” [ ] Bob adds: “Can you get your potential customer to see themselves in your product?” [ ] Brad speaks on the tribe mindset of becoming a brand fan. The emotional connection to the product is just as important as the product itself. Consistency of brand awareness in every aspect of the business. [ ] Ken: It seems like there is a huge focus on the direct response concept of viral brands and viral products. It’s almost discounting the brand awareness method of building a business. The balance is in between the two. [ ] Brad: It’s an important question to ask, how much human touch does a brand actually have access to? That really impacts the way that you approach the strategy. [ ] Ken: When you compare two business strategies- one company who wants to create a legacy that is around for years and year and years, another wants to capitalize on a craze that will only work for a year or two. In one situation, there is very little focus that goes into brand equity and the point is to take advantage of the ROI available. And in the other, brand equity is really the focus of what you’re building early on. “It’s easy to get caught up in the short term side of things… so you really need to define ROI for yourself, and find the balance. If you want to create a brand that will gain success longterm, you do have to measure both the ROI and brand equity.” [ ] Bob: “Our job is to measure it and deliver those analytics back to them. How do you guys measure that?” [ ] Brad shares his for a digital business: Are we creating awareness? Are we getting people excited about the idea of the product? Are we driving through an appropriate funnel? [ ] Brad expands: The next step is understanding which messages are driving users deeper into the funnel. UI issues, abandoned cart rates, fallout rates, etc. [ ] Ken shares: On the brand awareness side you’re working on creating emotions in people. How you measure that could be things like engagement on ads, etc. [ ] Brad: “You have to understand that your lens is different from your customer, as much empathy as you want to have for them…” [ ] Bob speaks about a method of measuring brand equity/brand awareness- just keeping track of how many Google searches come up in a month, 2 months, 3 months. If there is an increase, that is evidence of brand awareness increasing. [ ] Ken adds that Google Trends is another way to gain a view of brand awareness. Keywords, phrases that are bringing people to your site can be used to create narratives to further increase that interest. [ ] Ken highlight 1 Takeaway: Practice what you preach- agencies tend to not do this for themselves, tend to not push to build a brand with awareness and emotion. How, as an agency, can you build a story that is beyond the services you provide? [ ] Brad adds: We can help clients refine their product as well, based on this brand equity mindset. We see the front lines, so they need to be listening to our perspective. “You have to decide with your own agency which clients are the right fit for you.”

google business apple marketing strategy coronavirus practice brand detroit startups investment consistency identifying agency roi steve jobs cfo salesforce educate preach oftentimes smaller ui scenario hubspot agencies lasts google trends brad brad ken it brad it brad you bobhutchins

Ep 9: Is Agency Growth really a good thing?

Craig Peterson's Tech Talk

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2020 53:47

Summary: If you’re an agency leader, you’ve got a “how it all began” story. Whether you set out to be a mega-influencer in your field, or like many, you stumbled into owning a running a company as an afterthought of following your passion. Yet we’re all inundated with the notion that we HAVE to be getting bigger. If you’re not growing you’re dying, right? While that is true, growth doesn’t necessarily mean size growth. There is a point when you have to ask yourself “Should I be scaling this?” In today’s episode we break down this question and dig into the WHY behind what we all do. Contrary to popular belief, scaling is actually NOT a necessity, and size doesn’t coincide with success or profit! In fact, it’s quite the opposite. So we all must ask ourselves, “Should I scale the business, stay where we’re at, or stop this business ownership altogether?” Top 3 Curtain Pulls in this episode: Agency leadership is innately fraught with hardship and challenges, so having a strong foundational WHY behind everything you do is what will pull you through those hard days. Growing your business to be the BIGGEST isn’t always the way to go- in fact, growth purely for the sake of growth is one of the fastest ways to kill your joy, culture, and bank account. Get mentors! Bring in outside people. Whether that means hiring someone you trust to break down the financial side of things for you or having a group of peers (like this podcast!) that can speak to your pain points and expose them alongside you- it is VITAL to allow yourself to hear and receive feedback in areas that aren’t your expertise. About The Guys: Bob Hutchins: Founder of BuzzPlant, a digital agency that he ran from from 2000 -2017. He is also the author of 3 books. More on Bob: Bob on LinkedIn twitter.com/BobHutchins instagram.com/bwhutchins Bob on Facebook Brad Ayres: Founder of Anthem Republic, an award-winning ad agency. Brad’s knowledge has led some of the biggest brands in the world. Originally from Detroit, Brad is an OG in the ad agency world and has the wisdom and scars to prove it. Currently that knowledge is being applied to his boutique agency. More on Brad: Brad on LinkedIn Anthem Republic twitter.com/bradayres instagram.com/therealbradayres facebook.com/Bradayres Ken Ott: Co-Founder and Chief Growth Rebel of Metacake, an Ecommerce Growth Team for some of the world’s most influential brands with a mission to Grow Brands That Matter. Ken is also an author, speaker, and was nominated for an Emmy for his acting on the Metacake Youtube Channel (not really). More on Ken: Ken on LinkedIn Metacake - An Ecommerce Growth Team Growth Rebel TV twitter.com/iamKenOtt instagram.com/iamKenOtt facebook.com/iamKenOtt Show Notes: [1:47] Ken: Oftentimes, people fall into agency ownership. “If you're a plumber, you’re not going to fall into being a plumber, it’s laid out for you.” You’ll be searching for freedom at first then fall into ownership. Brad: You fall in love with the craft, and either you’re good or you aren’t. And as you try to make a life of it, the process of growth and longevity become the true. [3:03] Bob introduces the topic: How, Why, and Should you Scale your Business? Cultural default is growing to be the biggest and the best. Knowing your limitations and motivations changes the way you go into ownership. [3:53] Bob’s mindset was to create a life worth living & that he wanted to live outside of work. So he wanted to create a boutique agency, keep it smaller and be a thought leader in the space & serve clients well. “My motivation was always to be a thought leader in a space, to serve my clients well, and to fund what was most important to me.” [5:00] Ken adds that that level of self-awareness is rare in this space- understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing and making sure that THAT is at the core of what pulls you through the business growth process. This goes against the idea that entrepreneurship and massive influence is the goal for everyone. [6:16] “The grass is always greener” mentality is pervasive “It’s greener if I can grow it that way.” The REASON for all of this is so important. [7:10] Brad speaks on business ownership as a young person. It includes being able to support your family and the pressure of keeping that stability underneath them. Brad went into business without a long-term exit strategy. Some people start with that in mind. It’s important to know what you want, even if it’s not an exit strategy per se. Your company should serve you as well as those who work within it- defining it early on is great and important but also knowing yourself and finding your Why is just as important. [9:23] Bob: Starting a biz when you’re in your early 20’s compared to your early 40’s is very different. [10:15] Brad: Starting biz means that as you grow there will have to be casualties in other parts of your life. Young people in biz don’t often realize that. The reality of humanity in business is that there will be sacrifices you have to make, choices you have to make. [10:57] Ken: Speaks on knowing what you’re best at and staying in that wheelhouse. Culturally, we put certain personality types on a pedestal, but truly we need all types and all wheelhouses in a business. “There is danger in having people in leadership roles who don’t need to be leaders, who aren’t aware of their limitations and strengths.” There are things you’ll HAVE to be good at in order to succeed in business. Some will enjoy that process, others will not. [13:00] Bob speaks on leadership skills, “I believe leadership skills can be developed, 100%.” [13:15] Brad says that leadership has to be INTENTIONAL about learning and growing. The more you can pick it apart and figure out where you can grow, the better. “They say the best leaders are spending 25% of their time learning and growing themselves.” [14:15] Ken: There is danger in doing something because you believe it’s what you should be doing- it’s a trend. Headcount is a status symbol in agencies these days- falling into the pressure of increasing headcount just to increase it Often what culture idolizes is wrong, and that reflects in business [17:15] Brad speaks on how growing has taken more money, growth means more responsibilities and maintenance internally. Office culture is challenging to maintain as the company grows. When asking how your business is, everyone wants to talk about growth as a status symbol [18:15] Brad: “Maybe the culture should be that it’s good to stay steady, produce great products, create great profit, and also have your company serve you and your employees well.” [18:20] Bob: Positive Growth is a metric today for ecommerce, but other things are “What’s your motivation for having the business and what are you gonna do with it? This will trickle down in culture, and it can be destructive if you’re not careful.” [19:56] Ken: “Those metrics are important. But they shouldn’t be how you measure your own success.” [21:00] Brad speaks on capitalizing on growth- “Looking at why you want to grow reveals a fear; that a client may leave, even for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and you always want to make sure you can support your staff… so that you don’t lose resources… that are part of your awesome culture. Businesses run on people, and they take a long time to grow and build into your business. I need to always have a ‘new business’ mentality.” [22:48] Ken iterates: “Your business needs to be healthy, regardless of size, and it needs to innovate. These are requirements, and then you have the choice of goals and THEN the questions of should you be scaling really comes into play. You can not scale and still be healthy and innovating.” You want to tailor your growth plan to your own agency, and understand that your portfolio of clients is as even as possible, so that you're never relying totally on one client to support you. [25:30] Bob asks if it’s a value to bring in someone that can help you understand scaling. There is great value in having conversations with third party people and outsiders to think through the health of your culture and your business. [28:13] Ken speaks on large shifts at Metacake: “I hired a friend who came in and started asking questions… that I’d never thought of before. Are you tracking time? How do you categorize your expenses?” It created awareness around what is accepted as status quo in the agency world but is very dysfunctional in the rest of the world. [30:00] It’s important to bring in third-party perspectives because sometimes you need that outside opinion to be further away from the heart of the business. It’s important because when you have someone giving you advice that you know you can trust, you begin to have the confidence to be YOU. [31:00] Ken: “Someone once told me that comparison is the enemy of joy. And that’s so true in life and in business… If you’re leading a business, you might see others and they look so cool from the outside… but turns out they all struggle with the same things. They’re NOT cool, and they’ve got the same problems, maybe even bigger problems. So don’t just do something because you see it and you think you should. For me, outside advice has given me the confidence to be who we were made to be and do it really well.” [32:00] Bob: “Finding your own individuality, and your own agency collectively who you are as a team is so important because you can try to imitate and learn best practices, but… Ken you’re always saying you can be the cheapest, the only, or the best. You need to choose which one you want to be because those are the only ways you’re going to scale and grow and be successful as a business.” [33:45] Brad: Part of the growth that agency owners go through requires asking for extra help and guidance. It’s important in making the correct decisions, learning to let your guard down at first and jump over that fear of admitting that you don’t know everything. [35:42] Bob: How do you know if you’re really ready to start a business? [36:30] Ken: “I think being self-aware and confident enough to say ‘Hey here’s what I’m best at. Maybe I should be scaling this. Maybe we should be staying right where we’re at, or maybe this is not for me.” [37:03] Brad asks Ken: “Would you do it over again, knowing what you know now, would this be the right type of business?” [37:15] Ken responds: “I have this abstract feeling that I should be maximizing talents… whatever talents I’m given, I should be doing the most with that… and that’s what drives me. I’m excited to get up and chase that.” [40:20] Bob speaks on the manifestation movement in the last 10-15 years. “Visualizing success, for athletes… works very well. If that was the key to their success, that would be one thing… People think you just get clients and hire smart people, make a ton of money and get on Forbes… dreaming and visualizing is healthy for that athlete but he’s also conditioning all day every day… that work they’re putting in is more than just visualizing. None of them would ever say it was easy.” [42:45] Ken: “I think business ownership or really doing anything at an excellent level, just being a great husband, wife, whatever, takes intentional conditioning over time… and the truth is, it’s hard work.” [43:20] Brad talks about how the decision to start a business impacts others as well. Those that are doing life with you have to be bought in and supportive if you want to maintain healthy relationships with your family. Are those people supporting you knowing there WILL be hard times? You’ll bring some of that stress home, how will that impact them? [45:00] Ken: All of this ties back into the question of why you’re doing it. “If you don’t like WHY you’re doing it, then all that stuff sounds insane.” [46:00] Ken speaks on the health of your internal team- your income must serve not only you but your team. If your business can’t serve you and your team, if it can’t be self-serving in a way, then what’s the point of trying to effectively serve others? [48:00] Bob brings the conversation back around to the love of business and the joy in ownership. “I am unemployable from the sense of- I can’t go to a corporate setting, sit in a desk, push paper all day long, check in at eight, and check out at 5… I would get fired in the first week. I have to be doing something creative, I have to be with people, I have to be having some sort of strategy and I have to be challenged every day. It’s a joy, and there are a lot of positive things to think about.” [49:00] Ken: “It’s important to be aware that you’re not doing something because someone else says you should do it.” [49:20] Brad: “I feel like I own a little bit more of my future, I determine if it sinks or floats… and so even though sometimes I don’t do well with the stress, I still love that flexibility to determine where i feel I need to go and what I want to do.” “I think that’s what makes me do what I do so well, that I have such a joy to work and feel an ownership to my clients’ products and services… I kind of live vicariously in my own business to other businesses that we serve.” [51:07] Bob: “Those things are, if we’re honest, that creativity of creating something out of nothing and… to be a part of that, to be a catalyst for that, is a huge source of joy and satisfaction.”

business growth young office forbes detroit fall in love businesses scale agency intentional reason vital contrary good thing culturally visualizing headcount agency growth brad brad bob how ken it brad you bobhutchins

AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings with Ken and Matt: Hacks, Deep Fakes, CEO, Business Email Compromise, IOWA caucuses and more

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 6, 2020 13:20

Good morning everybody! I was on with Ken and Matt. We had a good discussion about The Iowa Caucus app fiasco, Business Email Compromise, and Deep Fakes what it is, who is at risk and what we can do about it. I went into detail about Passwords and Password Managers and even two-factor authentication and why you need to use them. So here we go with Ken and Matt. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig The problem we see this daily when I get notices from the FBI. It all boils down to personal hygiene, just keeping your data reasonably safe on your part. Craig Hi, everybody, Craig Peterson here. It is Wednesday morning, and that means I was, of course, on with Ken and Matt. We had quite a little discussion because I had provided them with eight different articles. All of them were about major security problems this week. That's why we got into precisely what you can do to get yourself to the 95 percentile when it comes to keeping your account safe online. So here we go with Ken and Matt. Ken It's time to talk to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us now. As always, at this time, to talk about what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, How are you this morning? Craig Hi gentlemen, good morning. How about those Iowa caucuses? Did they try out the app beforehand? Ken Of course, that is an app that I think Hillary controlled. Craig Yes, the rumors are flying because in fact and ex-staffers of Hillary Clinton, Matt yes, yes. Craig So um, you have, I mean, story after story after story about this thing about Pegasus, and then you have this travel act coming online in the gap. Microsoft Excel security alert. Matt, Should we just stop using computers completely? Craig Oh, man. Well, good. You know it. I have thought about this a lot. What do we do? I think we've got an enormous problem. Here because it's almost like overload, right? Where every week there's new, there are new hits on us. Got Evil Corp. I don't know, did you watch it? Where's it called with Malik Mr. Robot? With one Malik, right or Yeah, that's the guy's name, an actor. Ken Anyways, or do you know? Matt What is it? Rami Malik's Craig Rami. Oh, Robbie, man, I thought the first name was Malik. Oh, yeah. Rami Oh, yes, yes. Joe, he's in this. He's a hacker right. He's all in his head. Weird things are happening, but he's battling Evil Corp., And there's an evil corporation in the news. And it's using Microsoft Excel to deliver this payload this nasty thing. So what are people supposed to do can and it's, are we getting burned out? Just like Nancy Pelosi rips up the speech and you just roll your eyes because it's yet another partisan thing. It is, however, another week with more hacks. But what I think it boils down to isn't just not using computers first of all use them safely. You know the stuff I would say your mother told you, but of course, she did. Because this is this has been many years in the coming. But the stuff you know, to use different passwords on different websites. Use a password manager like one password or LastPass the necessary things, and it's like you don't want to get coronavirus while swash your hands and don't cut your face and conference knees into your elbow. Basic stuff, and you know what the problem can we see real, and I see this every day I'm getting notices from the FBI, but it all boils down to personal Hi Jean, just keeping your data reasonably safe on your part. You know, use a few different email addresses. Don't always use the same learn, have a Google address, but have a couple of others as well. Don't use your business computer for personal things. Don't think of VPN is going to save you because of VPN does minimal things and can make your business network even less safe. Yes, I said it less reliable using the VPN. And what we see this week too, is a vast right. You know, my opinion about antivirus software? Yeah, it is zero percent effective against modern attacks zero percent. And a vast came out this week. And it turns out, and they were selling arrows. Everything you were doing online everything to the highest bidder millions of dollars, so you searched on Google thoroughly, Avast sold it to whoever wanted to pay for it. You went to a porn site Avast told them, anybody, who pays for it all about it. You did anything on your web browser, anything on your computer because remember your antivirus software has access to everything on your computer, have vastly sold that information. So I've said forever. And Matt, I heard you chime in there. But how many times have you even said we are the product when it comes to sites like Facebook? Correct? Ken Yes. Anytime is the answer to your question. Craig Yeah, exactly. And what we're talking about here is free VPN. And free. Free websites aren't free Avast. Where's anti-malware software is not free. So This is stuff I, you know, can I think we've mentioned a million times, and I keep, I hate to flog a dead horse, right. Matt We like horses. Craig But we just have to be more careful. And I bring these things up every week to try and just try and drive the point home. We got to be more cautious because now we're seeing warnings coming out again from the FBI about these deep fakes, which we've talked about before. And I don't remember I know I had this in my stack of stuff last year, last quarter last year. Still, there was a company that had been bought by a German company. The CFO got a call from his boss over in the German company, telling him to wire funds over to the German company, right? He provided him all the information. He'd met this guy in Germany before he talked to him on the phone. He got the instructions, and he did it. It is a form of deep fakes that get used in these business scams. Where it sounds like the CEO. It is not just an email that comes from the CEO's hacked mailbox. It sounds like the CEO in the video, and now we see where it looks like it too. They can't do that live yet, but it's coming. So everybody listening takes a few of just a few minutes a day and start going in changing your account password just the simplest thing you can do it are either you guys using password managers right now. Matt Frankly, No, I'm not. Ken I don't know I like to discount all the advice given to me by Craig Peterson. I have not really no. Okay, right now, go online, sorry, something comes up on my computer say do you want me to save this password? I suppose that's not a password manager, right? You're right, man, because it's your browser giving your password to Google. I trust them. Craig Go to one password dot com right now. The digit one password.com. Check it out. I want you to do this. What does it do? What it does is it ties into your browser, so it can fill out the form for you when that browser is asking you to log in. It provides the latest newest technology that's coming out that's replacing passwords slowly but surely. And it will generate passwords for you to share passwords, multi-word passwords, so one password calm now what I love about it is it works for me. It works for my family, and it works for my business, so it has multiple vaults that you can share. Because here's your next problem. What do I do? In the past, my problem was remembering the password, and once I remember it, then it changes. Craig Yes, you remember one password, and that's the one password. Now you can I have before you go any further corrections? Ken Can I ask one question, though, using a service like that the one password, if you will, what is protecting those institutions from hacking and all of your passwords getting stolen? I mean, how does that not occur at some point when some enterprise with hacker decides that they'd like to have your access to everything you own? Craig Well, one password does not keep any of your passwords unencrypted. And it uses a high level like Pentagon plus level security for all your passwords, so they never leave your computer in what's called cleartext. So there is no way for one password to get Adam last passes the other one to look at Last pass, they have a cheaper version. That's quite good as well. But hopefully, that answers your question. They never get your passwords. They're only on your local computer. You can share them between all of your computers using like iCloud or Dropbox or many other things. But they are always heavily encrypted, which is phenomenal. It is one of the simplest and best things you can do. Because having a complex password that's different on every site number by complex, I don't mean upper-lower digits, special characters, or anything I mean like a 20-30 character long password which LastPass will generate for you so well one password. Having a password like that makes it almost impossible for the bad guys to break into your town. They're not even going to bother while they might be Try, right, but it'll take some more than 100 years to crack your passwords. And they're only stored in your machine, and encrypted, it is easy to use. And with your MacBook Pro that you have can, you can use one password. And when you go to a website, you can say, Okay, give me give him to give that site my login to one password. And with your MacBook Pro, it'll do the fingerprint if you wanted to, instead of you having to type in your one password. There are some helpful integrations, and it's going to work on your smartphones. It's available for Android and Windows as well as Macs and iOS. But guys, you know, this is something you have to do. So I'm going to next week. I'm going to ask you whether or not you had it, and you got it done. Matt So what's the name of this thing again? Craig The one I like best is one password is just the digit one password pa ss w or d dot com Ken Come on, you don't use that one point, to be honest with you. Craig The other one, I like his last pass, you'll find it lastpass.com. But I prefer one password personally. So get it done to change one or two passwords. The way I started doing this years ago when I started using password managers as to when I went to a site to type in my password, I type it in, and I'd immediately go into one password and create a new password for that site. And then, once you've done that, start using two-factor authentication. And one password has that built-in as well. Where it generates a code. Have you seen these little things before where every 30 seconds the code changes, you know? So it'll let you do that, if you o do those two things, you're almost wholly guaranteed never get hacked. It's that simple. Two-factor authentication, one password with a different password for Every site and I only have to remember one password. Ken Yes, exactly. Okay, peace. Matt So Well, I think I'd add that one, check. Ken Anyway, that is your update, ladies gentlemen from Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us every Wednesday at this time to go over what's happening in the world of technology. We appreciate it. As always, Craig and we will talk to you again next week. Craig Gentlemen, take care. Bye-bye. Matt Excellent. All right. Well, why don't we go back into the newsroom? Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

An Untold Love Story (Part 2) - Ken and Joni Tada

Dennis & Barbara's Top 25 All-Time Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 4, 2020 28:33

An Untold Love Story (Part 1) - Ken and Joni TadaAn Untold Love Story (Part 2) - Ken and Joni TadaFamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Sufficient Grace Guests: Ken and Joni Tada From the series: An Untold Love Story (Day 2 of 2) Bob: Joni Eareckson Tada remembers a time in her marriage to her husband Ken when both of them were starting to drift farther and farther apart. Joni: I was fearful that I was making Ken depressed. My disability was depressing my husband. So, I would be very careful to take care of as many routines as I could possibly do before he came home from school so that I would not have to walk on eggshells and ask him to do anything for me because I knew that asking too much of Ken would plummet him into depression. For a long time, it was this strange tap dance that we both played. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, May 3rd. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We'll hear today what Joni and Ken Tada did when they realized they were drifting apart in marriage. Stay with us. And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. I've been thinking about—I have a son who just proposed to his girlfriend. They're going to get married soon. I was thinking, “If I could sit them down with anybody, for a little premarital counseling—the couple that could give them the benefits of great experience and theological understanding— Dennis: You really had thought of me. Bob: Ah-h-h. You were on the list. [Laughter] Dennis: I'm kidding you. I know who's in the studio, Bob. Bob: You were underneath our guests today. Dennis: Way underneath the guests. Bob: I just thought, “Would it be okay if we got some premarital counseling for John and Katie from our guests?” Just let them—they've written this book. Tell them about the book that they've written. Dennis: Well, this book is called Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story. So they need to hear a love story—one that's gone 30 years, plus. Bob: And that has gone through some rocky times. Dennis: Some? Bob: Yes. Joni: A few. Dennis: A few, no doubt about it. Bob: I just thought, “I wonder what counsel they would give to a couple, just getting started, on the frontend of the journey?” Dennis: Well, let's ask them. Ken and Joni Eareckson Tada join us again on FamilyLife Today. Ken, Joni, welcome back. Joni: Absolutely. It's good to be back. Ken: Thanks. Dennis: I know Ken would like to teach your son how to fly— Joni: Fly fish. Dennis: —fly fish. I don't know if Ken ties the flies. Ken: Yes, but— Bob: Would that help his marriage if he learned how to fly fish? Ken: It could, but don't do it the first year. [Laughter] Joni: But you know what I had Ken's best man tell me on our wedding day? He drew me aside and whispered in my ear, “Let your husband keep his dreams.” I didn't know what he meant, at the time; but of course, this whole fly fishing thing—about which we joke—it's really important, I think, for guys to have that space—to have those times of connection with other men. Ken: And Joni's been my biggest supporter, during that—the whole time—not that I abuse it—but she knows that I need to have time with guys. Joni: Oh, yes! You know how you abuse it; don't you? Ken: How? Joni: We're driving down the freeway and he'll say: “Hey, there's a Jaguar that just drove by. Joni, can I have a Jaguar?” “No! Of course, not!” Then, of course, that sets me up for—“Oh, then, you'll give me the fishing reel.” [Laughter] Okay. I know what you're up to! Ken: It took 30 years—but you start high and you aim lower [Laughter]—and asking for a brand-new Jaguar convertible—obviously, I'm not going that direction—but a new fly rod—that would be kind of cool! Dennis: Yes, there you go. Let's go back to Bob's question here. Let's put it on the line, here. Let's go back to your honeymoon to talk about some of the most important lessons you started out your marriage learning. Ken: Well, the one lesson we learned is—I think Joni and I have said before—but we had friends who told us to go out and experiment. We decided, “No.”— Dennis: Move in with each other. Joni: Pretty much. Ken: Well, for the weekend. Joni: Just to try it out for the weekend—for a couple of weekends. Dennis: And the reason is— Ken: Because you know, with a disability, it was a little bit different than perhaps with an able-bodied person. Joni: Expediency. Ken: And just to see whether or not it would fit. Joni: If this was going to work. Bob: See, I hear that story. I just imagine, in my head, you guys going off for a weekend and then you going, “Oh, I guess it's not going to work.” “What? Hello!” Ken: Where's the commitment? Bob: Yes. How do you break that news to somebody, “I'm out of here because this part doesn't work.” Well guess what? You may have seasons where that part of your relationship doesn't work— Ken: Exactly. Joni: Exactly. Bob: —and you'd better figure out how to love one another in the midst of those seasons! Joni: Absolutely, which is why—even before we got engaged and even during our engagement—there was no experimenting. There was no testing: “Let's try this out. How's this going to fly?” We went into our marriage, with our conscience tender and intact, with no violation of our convictions. As Ken has often said, “Of course, it made our honeymoon a little like handicap-awareness week; [Laughter] but that was okay.” Dennis: Well, let's talk about that for a second—what that was like—because you write about it in your book. I wouldn't ask this question if you hadn't put this in print; alright? Ken: Oh, there's nothing we wouldn't discuss. I think we're pretty well open with everything. Joni: I put it delicately in print, though, Dennis—as delicately as I could. Bob: And we can stay delicate right here. [Laughter] Dennis: That's the truth, but you're a quadriplegic—for those who don't know your story. You had an accident when you were 17 years old. You had a great fear, going into this marriage, that he was going to find out what it meant to care for someone who was so helpless. Joni: Okay, well let's talk about the brass tacks. Ken and I went off on our honeymoon. We took two friends—two girlfriends of mine—who stayed at a different hotel, down the beach—but they would come up during the mornings and evenings and kind of like educate Ken on my routines—not to throw everything at him at once—but just to kind of get his feet wet: “This is what it means for Joni to get up in the morning: bed, bath, exercising her legs, and then those toileting routines.” Well, I had to do a particular toileting routine in the evening. I don't know how to say this. Ken had to help carry me to the bathroom. I didn't make it. When that happened—it's funny—I choke up, talking about it now, 30 years later. Yet, it's so long ago and far away—but I was the young girl. I wanted everything to be perfect. I wanted my husband to have great illusions of me and: “This is going to be wonderful! Everything is so romantic!” Yet, I remember that first night—lying in bed after the lights were out and all was quiet. I fought back the tears: “Oh, God! This man—You are going to have to give him grace. You're just going to have to. You have to give him grace because I don't know that even I have the grace. But help him through this, Lord. You can do this! Help him through this!” It was a desperate cry of a very young bride, but I'm so glad God answered because things did not get easier in our ensuing life together. There were even greater challenges; but at every turn, I saw God's grace show up in my husband's life. That was huge, and that's growth. Dennis: There are times, in every marriage, after the honeymoon—in fact, there are seasons that occur where you move into a bit of a valley. Obviously, your marriage started in one and has continued on in one—but you move into something where there is—you describe in your book as “negotiated spaces” and “demilitarized zones” in your relationship. You guys had a plateau. You kind of had the “Cease fire”— Joni: Yes. Ken: I think it was those middle years, where Joni was going to the ministry and I was teaching high school. Basically, we were living together but separate lives— parallel lives. Not that our marriage was bad—it's just I was occupied with what I was doing, as a high school teacher; and Joni was occupied in the ministry. We would travel during the summer. So, there were a lot of connections; but during those school days, I don't think we spent the kind of time that— Dennis: You were teaching at the time. Ken: I was teaching high school, yes. Joni: And I was fearful that I was making Ken depressed. My disability was depressing my husband. So, I would be very careful to take care of as many routines as I could possibly do before he came home from school so that I would not have to walk on eggshells and ask him to do anything for me that might encroach on his emotions because I knew that asking too much of Ken would plummet him into depression. For a long time, it was this strange tap dance that we both played—where we had to negotiate these spaces. But through it all—through it all—we both recognized we were doing this, and we didn't want to live this way. So, we prayed—prayed together and prayed separately— that God would help move us beyond this emotional fog that we were in to help us see the possibilities, in our marriage, that were ahead, on the horizon. Ken: I think the other thing that happened during that time, Joni was—especially, this was earlier in our marriage—but because of your notoriety—people would recognize you when we were in public. One of the things that was really hard—that we look back on it now—was we'd go to church. There'd be a line of people, half an hour long, who would want to speak to you. I was finding my—if I had a self-image problem, it was healed when I went to school because: “That was my classroom. Those were my students.” When I was in Burbank, those were people who recognized me—not that I needed it—but it was just that self-assurance, that affirmation that I was getting through what I was doing—that I think there was a balance there. Joni: But to help move my husband past that: “Let's go to a different church. Let's get out of this big church. Let's go to some small, little church.” So, we started going to a small, very little church, just a few miles from our house. We stopped going to the big mega church, where everybody knew me, just trying to find ways, as a wife, to make it easier and finding that those negotiated spaces became smaller and smaller—to the point where we both were in it together. We weren't adversarial; we weren't on parallel tracks anymore. We were on the same track. It took a while to get there, but we did. Bob: Did you feel invisible for a long period of time? Ken: Boy, that's a great description of exactly what I was feeling. I mean, people would—we would stand in a crowd. I would stand next to Joni, and nobody would want to talk to me. Bob: Yes. Ken: But Joni has been so good about bringing me into the conversation. She would stop them and say: “I want to introduce you to my husband. He's standing right here.” She realized that, from that standpoint, that I needed that—at least, in those early years—that we were a couple. I think, over the years, it's gotten to the point where there are more people that recognize us as a couple. It hasn't been an issue. It actually has been kind of a benefit—that I think, for the both us—that we are recognized in a ministry for couples. Joni: In those early years, when you were struggling with your self-image, those were the same times I was struggling with my self-image. I would hear him on the phone with all his buddies, talking about all kinds of things that he wouldn't talk about with me. I'd hear him hang up the phone, saying, “Love ya, Buddy.” It was like, “Ahh! Gee, I don't hear that tone of voice with me.” I remember being so— Dennis: Now, wait a second— Joni: No. I felt— Dennis: —the Joni Eareckson Tada could have a pity party; really? Joni: Oh, my goodness! In the early years of my marriage, when I would hear him on the phone with Jan or Pete, I'd be so jealous of his tone of voice with his guy friends. But okay, later on in the marriage, as we're praying—as I'm seeking God, “How can I get my husband out of depression?” Boing! This light bulb went off in my head. I realized he needs his guy friends. “Don't be jealous of them, Joni—” Bob: Yes. Joni: —“Put him in their camp.” So, I began encouraging Ken: “You know, your buddy Jan has been asking you to go fly fishing. Please, really, why don't you go fly fishing? Get away from the tuna boats—you gaff tuna, blood on the decks—guys with big bellies and cans of beer, cursing, and profanity—get away from that. Go fly fishing. It's more refined. You're going to enjoy it.” I was the one who kind of pushed him—not so much because I wanted to get him away from the tuna boats—but I knew, that if he was with his Christian guy friends, that it would be invigorating—that he would get a validation, as a man, from other men that would help him and help our marriage. I think that was one of the best moves I made to help you up and out of your depression. Ken: Joni was the instrumental tool for getting me into fly fishing. I really didn't, at the time, want to go fly fishing. I didn't want another sport; but she said, “No, you ought to go.” More than the fly fishing, I have a friend—we have a ministry to men. We use fly fishing as kind of like— Bob: The bait. Ken: —the bait; exactly. It gives guys a chance to get their hearts back. Bob: Yes. Ken: We talk about all kinds of things. We use John Eldredge's book, Wild at Heart, but— Joni: But you got your heart back. Ken: —but I got my heart back. Joni is a big supporter of what I do there, but one of the things that happened was—a little exercise that we had was go out and try to hear what God had to say to us. The first time I did this, I didn't hear a thing. Two years later—I can tell you exactly where I was—on a fly fishing trip. A gentleman said, “Take this afternoon and go out and try to hear God's voice.” That afternoon, I heard God say to me—not in an audible voice—but I heard Him say, “Joni is the most important gift I've given you. You take care of her.” Dennis: And in your book, you talk about when he came back from that trip. You saw it in his eyes. Joni: Oh, my goodness! He stood in the bedroom and said, “Joni, you're never going to believe what God said to me.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. rocked back and forth on his heels, and said, “God said that you're the most precious gift, and I'm to take care of you, and I'm going to do it.” It was like a breath of fresh air had just blown through our bedroom. It was like the fog of depression is lifting—I can see the sun, the clouds. There's hope. My husband likes me! He wants to take care of me, for the sake of Christ. I began to see all my prayers answered or, at least, beginning to get answers. And now—even back then—when his buddies call the house, and I get them on the phone, before I hand it over to Ken: “Jan, God bless you. Sir, I don't know what you're doing in my husband's life. Keep it up. I know you're memorizing Scripture. I know you're doing some new Jerry Bridges Bible study together on the phone. Keep it up! I love it. You're going in the right direction.” I'm thanking Pete, I'm thanking Chris, and I'm thanking Jan—all these guys—that I used to be jealous of—they're the best because they help my husband be the man that he can be. Dennis: And that story occurred—what I want our listeners to hear—21 years into your marriage. Bob: And the next time you go out with Pete, and Jan, and Chris, we've got a resource for you to take with you—a Bible study for guys called Stepping Up™, based on Dennis's book by that title. It's a video resource, and it'll spark some great discussion with you and the guys. Okay? Ken: Great. Thank you, Bob. Dennis: One last story. Joni, this one's for you. You battled cancer. You went through chemotherapy. In the process of going through that, fell prey to pneumonia. You had a moment, in the midst of that, that was pretty grim. You had your own encounter when God spoke to you. Would you share with our listeners that story? I think that is incredibly powerful. Joni: Well, as a quadriplegic, I'm susceptible to things like pneumonia. I have extremely limited lung capacity. I had to be in the hospital for nine or ten days. My husband, bless his heart, made a little cot, out of a couple of plastic chairs. He slept by my bedside. Instead of me having to be intubated, Ken got up every night—would cough me—pound on my chest. One night, I was so exhausted. I had so flattened out, emotionally. I was crying out to God. I had no physical ability. My lungs were gurgling. I could hardly breathe. I felt like I was drowning. I just didn't want to have to get my husband up another time. I remember saying, “Lord Jesus, I need You. I need to see You tonight. I just need to feel Your touch. I need to feel Your hand on my head. I need You!” I fell into a sleep. Then, when I woke up, with the gurgling and needed to be coughed again, Ken came over to my hospital bedside. As he began to lift me up, I looked at him, wide-eyed, and I said, “You're Him! Oh my goodness, you're Him!” Jesus visited me, that night, through my husband. I felt his hand on my forehead, and it was the touch of Jesus. I felt him push on my abdomen, and it was the strength of Jesus. I felt him pound on my back to give me air, and it was Jesus, the Breath of Life. Everything about my husband was Jesus. I said to Ken, “You're Him! Jesus showed up and you're Him!” It was such a beautiful revelation of how God can answer prayer—the prayers that are desperate and show up best through them. That was a beautiful moment. You know, we've talked a lot about cancer. We've talked a lot about quadriplegia. I'm going to confess to you those things are a cinch compared to the daily grind of pain that I deal with. Through my PET scans—a couple more years, maybe—I'll be declared cancer-free. Things are looking hopeful. My quadriplegia—I kind of know that route. But boy, the daily grind of pain is so hard. My husband, a couple of weeks ago, did a beautiful thing. Before he saw me head out the door, he could see the look in my eyes that I was going to have a very painful day. He said: “Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” He quick ran and got a stick-um, and etched on it a big “C”, and put it over my heart—slapped it right over my heart. He said: “There you go, Joni. You've got courage, and you're going to rise to that challenge.” I think what I love best about my husband is that he can find the infinitesimally small Christ-like characteristics in my life—he can find them, pick them out, and affirm them. He can water them and nurture them with actions such as he did with that stick-um on my chest. He believes that I can be courageous. I don't want to disappoint my wonderful husband. I want to be courageous, in Christ, for his sake and for the sake of the Gospel. That is, honestly, how I get through the toughest days of my pain. Dennis: You both are courageous. Recently, I did a little Bible study in Joshua 1—three places where courage comes from: God's mission, being obedient to God's Word, and third, practicing His presence. As I'm watching your lives, as a couple, you're on mission. You're on task, as a couple. You're about the glory of God and running the race to finish it well. Secondly, you've both been obedient. You've kept your covenant. You're not only still married—you love each other. And third, you're practicing the presence of God, whether it be fly fishing or whether it be flat on your bed, in a hospital room, battling pneumonia. You're experiencing the presence of God, and you're bringing a lot of hope to a lot of people. May God's favor be upon this book and you guys, as you go forward. Joni: Thank you, Dennis. Ken: Thank you, Dennis and Bob. Bob: We love you guys and hope folks will get a copy of your book. It's called Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story. Thirty years of marriage—as you guys peel back the veneer and show us what real marriage is all about. I hope listeners will go online at FamilyLifeToday.com to order a copy. Again, the website is FamilyLifeToday.com. Or you can call to request a copy of the book, Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story. Call 1-800-358-6329; that's 1-800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then, the word, “TODAY”. Don't forget the title of the book—Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story. We'd love to get a copy to you. Now, I know most of you are excited that summer is almost here—got graduations happening this month and all kinds of activities during the month of May—and then, it's summertime, just around the corner. I love summertime, too. I love vacations. I love the break you get. I love the warmer weather. But for a ministry, like FamilyLife Today, summer can be a challenging time because a lot of listeners get out of the normal pattern of listening and out of the normal pattern of helping to support the radio program. Donations to the ministry fall off a little bit during the summer. We had some friends, of the ministry, who came to us, knowing that that happens every summer. They said, “We'd like to help you guys build a little surplus—a cushion before June, and July, and August hit.” They have put together a matching-gift fund of $576,000. They have said, “We'll match every donation you receive, between now and the end of May, dollar for dollar, until that fund is gone.” We appreciate their generosity; but obviously, the only way we can take advantage of their generosity is if listeners, like you, will go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click the button that says, “I CARE”, and make an online donation. Or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Make a donation over the phone. When you do that, your donation will be matched, dollar for dollar, with funds from the matching-gift fund. You will help us get ready for the summer months ahead. So, can we ask you to do that? Go to FamilyLifeToday.com. Click the button that says, “I CARE”, and make a donation; or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Make a donation over the phone. We appreciate your support, and we are always happy to hear from you. And we hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together this weekend. I hope you can join us back on Monday when we're going to talk with Laura Petherbridge about some of the challenges that step-moms face. Ron Deal will be here with us, as well. I hope it works out for you to be here. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. Have a great weekend. We will see you back Monday for another edition of FamilyLife Today. FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs? Copyright © 2013 FamilyLife. All rights reserved.www.FamilyLife.com

god love jesus christ family president lord interview bible marriage gospel wild heart parenting suffering scripture overcome redemption tragedy arkansas breath laughter encouraging love stories buddy donations thirty copyright sir family life jaguar little rock may god untold burbank cease gee stepping up john eldredge boing joni eareckson tada family life today ron deal bob lepine dennis rainey laura petherbridge bob you ken you bob yes ken it ken oh fl today joni tada ken how ken thanks

An Untold Love Story (Part 1) - Ken and Joni Tada

Dennis & Barbara's Top 25 All-Time Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 4, 2020 28:59

An Untold Love Story (Part 1) - Ken and Joni TadaAn Untold Love Story (Part 2) - Ken and Joni TadaFamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Following God Together Guests: Ken and Joni Tada From the series: An Untold Love Story (Day 1 of 2) Bob: The quality of your marriage is affected by your priorities. Here's Joni Eareckson Tada. Joni: Sit down, one time, with your spouse and just talk about—sketch it out—“What is the big picture?” Then, commit to make that your goal. For Ken and me—I trust for most Christian couples—it is heaven. It is the finish line. It is the end of the good fight. It is hearing those wonderful words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That's what we want to hear! That's what we're living for. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, May 2nd. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We'll hear from Joni and Ken Tada today about how living with heaven in mind—the finish line in mind—can have an impact on your marriage today. Stay tuned. And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. One of my favorite passages of Scripture is in Second Corinthians, Chapter 5. It talks about how Christians are new creatures in Christ; and then, goes on to say that we're ambassadors. We live as citizens in one kingdom— Dennis: That's right. Bob: —but we're living in a different kingdom, representing the homeland—representing our King. I was thinking about that today because I was thinking we're all ambassadors; but sometimes, when some ambassadors get up to speak, I cringe a little bit at how that ambassador is going to represent the kingdom. I've never had that cringe happen when I hear our guests get up to speak and represent the Kingdom. Dennis: No, there's something that resonates within the spirit that they should take the stage, and the podium, and the pulpit, and tell it like it is because they have lived in the presence of Jesus Christ in ways that we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about a great love story. Ken and Joni Eareckson Tada join us on FamilyLife Today again. Welcome back, you guys. It's good to have you. Ken: Thank you, Dennis; and thank you, Bob. Joni: Well, what an introduction, Bob. My goodness! How, I want to be a good ambassador for Jesus. Bob: Wow. Dennis: You always have been! You always have been. Joni: Oh, let me never just defame the good name of Jesus. Dennis: Well, Joni, you've written over 50 books. Ken, you are a world-class fly fisherman. You told me that yourself. [Laughter] Joni: Yes, he is. He really is! [Laughter] Ken: I am not a world-class fly fisherman. Bob: But here, I'm just juxtaposing. You've written 50 books—you can catch fish. Way to go—a great team. [Laughter] Ken: Yes, I guess there is some connection right there. Dennis: It's a great team. Ken leads these outfitter adventures. In fact, it's called “The Wild Adventure” in Montana. Ken: Yes. Dennis: I'm going to get on one of those one of these days because I can wet a fly, too. Ken: That's a lead-in to that book because this book is for men—the book that we just wrote. Dennis: This really is a book; and Joni, you said it earlier. In fact, why don't you comment on this book? It's called Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story. Joni: That's right. Dennis: Say what you told me, just before we came on the air. Joni: Well, I think the subtitle, An Untold Love Story—it is really Ken's story. It's an untold story about him. We have never peeled back the layers of our marriage quite like we have in this most-recent book; but after we crested 30 years of marriage, we looked at one another and thought: “You know—we're not experts. We've never been to seminary. We're not family counselors. But after three decades of quadriplegia—then, chronic pain and quadriplegia—then, breast cancer, and chronic pain, and quadriplegia—in some ways, that's given us—I don't know—some new fresh platform—a kind of an authority to speak to other couples about what commitment really is.” But it's Ken's commitment that comes shining through the pages of this book. Dennis: I really want to disagree with you about the seminary thing. Joni: Oh, come on. Dennis: I think you have both been to the ultimate seminary— Bob: Yes. Dennis: —every day, experiencing God and seeing Him at work in your lives, your marriage, and sharing that together. I have to say, as I told you earlier, your book really is quite a love story. It's a paradox. It's not at all the warm fuzzy that Hollywood would tell. Joni: No. When Ken and I married—well, I should say before we married, we had lots of friends—not all of them believers, not all of them followers of Jesus—who suggested, that since I was a quadriplegic, that Ken and I should go away—try it out for a weekend; see if this was going to work—“Ken, can you handle it?” But Ken and I just decided we weren't going to do that. We weren't going to violate our convictions. So, we went into this marriage, saying: “I do, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health,” really not knowing how challenging those 24/7, non-stop, daily, dreary routines of my disability could be. We call those years in our marriage the tired middle years. The first ten years—fifteen years—of our marriage were extremely difficult. Ken: It made for an interesting honeymoon [chuckle] you know, and— Dennis: And you really spell that out in the book, but I want to take you back to where you start the book. You begin with this romantic date—that you're on—where you declare to Ken that cancer had been a gift. I want you to tell that story. Joni: Well, it's hard to say it in 25 words or less; but Dennis, Ken has often said, “Joni, I don't get why God has given you cancer. I mean—quadriplegic, chronic pain—what's God doing?” I remember saying to Ken, “I think there was a time that probably the devil approached the throne of God and said ‘Okay. You see that 17-year-old girl down there, having such fun? You give me permission to smack her with a broken neck. Then, let's see if she'll name your good name.'” Okay, so God grants Satan permission. I break my neck, and I honor the Lord. And then, a few years later, I get married. Another decade later, I deal with chronic pain. “Okay, let's see if she's going to disown you now, God. Let me give her chronic pain.” And I come through, by the grace of God. And then, the devil comes back to the throne of God and says, “Okay, so she trusts you with chronic pain and quadriplegia; but you just let me smack her with cancer. Then, I know she will really give it up. She'll cave in. She will no longer follow you, God.” And I have, but it's only by the grace of God. I have no strength within myself. It's all the grace of God. I said to Ken, “It's been a gift,” because it's not only, I think, strengthened my confidence in my Savior's ability to sustain, but it's given me such a huge appreciation for this guy, sitting next to me—the man who practices Christianity, with his sleeves rolled up, every single day, when he helps me with those day-to-day routines. They're not getting easier; they're getting harder. We're getting older. Yet, the disciplines we learned through chronic pain and quadriplegia have sustained us, not only through cancer, but are now sustaining us as we head into our late 60s. Bob: That story you told about Satan going before God sounded like another story I've heard about that happening to another guy. I don't know if you're familiar with the story—a guy named Job? Joni: That guy, Job. Bob: Yes. There's a point in Job's story where, after a long period of time, he goes and says: “Okay, God. I would like some answers now, and I feel like I've earned them.” Have you ever had a moment like that? Joni: I did, early-on. I really wrestled with what God was doing. In fact, when I broke my neck at such a young age—at the age of 17—I was extremely fearful of what God might do next to refine my faith: “Oh, my goodness! If You start with a broken neck, like what's”— Bob: “Where does it go from there?” Yes. Joni: “—where does it go from there?” But honestly, Bob, as I shared that scenario, the devil going before the throne of God—and here I have quadriplegia, chronic pain, cancer—I guess I'm at the age, now, where it has become somewhat invigorating: Oh my goodness! God thinks I can really step up to this plate and swing at this ball? He really thinks I can do that, with His grace? Well, I'm not going to let Him down. I'm not going to disappoint Him. I'm certainly not going to give Satan, on the opposing team, the advantage. I'm going to swing at this ball. By the grace of God, and God alone, we're going to hit a home run because that ball is heading to heaven. It's right on the horizon, and I don't want to do anything that's going to demerit my capacity for joy, and worship, and service in heaven. I want to—I just want to trust that God knows what He's doing in my life! I think Ken and I, together in our marriage, have sensed that, as we move on, year after year, in our life together. Ken: But I have to say this, Bob. When Joni was first diagnosed with cancer, Jesus and I had some long conversations because, at 45 years in a wheelchair, I'm thinking to myself and asking God: “Why? Why Joni? After all this time, why would You allow her to have this cancer?” What we discovered—Joni is such a great communicator. She's been a great communicator for the disabled community; why not cancer? And we've seen, during this journey, how much God has used her to be able to speak to that very area—people who have had cancer. And not only that, the people we have come in contact with because of the cancer. Joni: The nurses. Ken: The nurses, the oncological surgeon, the oncologist, the— Joni: --the x-ray technician. Ken: The x-ray technicians. Joni: Blood test people, surgeons, everybody. Ken: And we always try to insert the name of Jesus when we talk to these folks. And we would have never had that opportunity without the cancer. Dennis: I want you both to comment on this because, again, Ken, this is not just Joni's disease. It's our disease—you, as a couple, okay? But as I was praying and thinking about talking with you guys today, I was taken back to Romans 8—to a passage that Randy Alcorn spoke to our staff, back in March 24, 2010. It's Roman's 8:18: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Ken: Amen. Dennis: Comment on that, Ken, because— Ken: Well, how do we, as human beings that love Christ, show our love for Christ? Oftentimes, we say it and we pray it; but we don't get a chance to demonstrate it. Here's an opportunity for us, during this time, to honor God and to be able to show, in a tangible sense, and execute what we believe—that God is the Sovereign God. I think, for us, we've just learned to trust Him more. Both Joni and I have said, at some point, there's going to come a time when either one or both of us are going to have another diagnosis. So, it's prepared us for the other side of eternity. But for this side of eternity, we are just so thankful that God has given us this opportunity just to show Him how much we love Him. Joni: I think of that verse so often, Romans 8:18, when Ken and I have a disagreement or when we get haggling over the small, petty stuff. Invariably, one of us will stop—most recently, it was Ken, when we were in the car, arguing about something. He stopped, pulled over and said, “Joni, what's the big picture?” That's a big-picture verse that you just read: “What is the big picture? Why are we in this? Where are we going? What's our goal?” The big picture for us is the other side of eternity. Ken and I, together as a couple, do not want to disappoint our Savior, Who has invested so much in us—my goodness, His own blood in us. Friends, listening, I don't know if you haggle with your husband; but sit down, one time, with your spouse and just talk about—sketch it out: “What is the big picture?” Then, commit to make that your goal. For Ken and me—I trust for most Christian couples—it is heaven. It is the finish line. It is the end of the good fight. It is hearing those wonderful words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That's what we want to hear! That's what we're living for. Bob: And Joni, there's another verse that's like Romans 8:18. It's the one in Second Corinthians 4 that says that what we're going through is light and momentary afflictions. Joni: Yes; and then, it says, “Therefore, do not lose heart.” Bob: Do you really think what you're going through is a light and momentary affliction? Joni: This is where faith really kicks in, Bob, because I have to believe that the cosmic stakes are so high—that the joy that I'm going to experience in heaven is so great, that it is so out of this world—that in comparison to that, indeed, my troubles are light and momentary. That's why I shared, earlier, how invigorated I am, and what a robust, rugged wonderful—I don't know—it's a man-sized faith that I can have if I would but not complain and trust God with the challenges. Again, it's not just me espousing this; it's Ken and I, as a couple. Bob: Doing it together. Joni: Doing it together. Dennis: Yes, it would be one thing for me to say that, but for you two to say that in your book—I've been through your book, you know. You're really talking about some of the most challenging circumstances two human beings could possibly face in a lifetime. Joni: Well, to be fair, I've got some great girlfriends who help me get up in the morning and lay down at night; but still, the bulk of the burden often rests on Ken, especially getting up at three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning, every single night, to turn me, to reposition me in bed so that I don't get pressure sores, to re-tuck my pillows, then to go back to sleep. That's every single night for 31 years of our marriage! That has not altered one bit. That's a lot! I will never forget the time I had double pneumonia in the midst of my cancer. Ken was up for nine, ten, eleven, twelve days—every single night—five or six, seven, eight times—pushing on my abdomen, pounding on my chest, pushing on my back: “Come on, you—cough, cough. Come on, cough.” I remember him whispering, in the middle of it all, “So is this the worse part of the ‘for better or worse'?” I said, “This is the worse part. This is, but we're going to get through it.” Even then, to voice our vows, in the midst of such a terrible ordeal, was invigorating and, I think, soul-strengthening. Ken: I think if we were to look back on our married life, we could not have written this book, three years into our marriage—not that we're experts now. Thirty years doesn't make an expert. There are many who are married a lot longer; but I think God has brought us on this journey together, as a couple. It's been a journey, well-fought for. The lessons that we've learned have just been lessons that I wouldn't trade for anything. Dennis: Yes. You're both hinting at a question I wanted to ask you, because in your book, you write about, Joni, how you prayed for this black-haired guy in church. You didn't know who he was. You were kind of squirming around in your chair there and decided you'd pray for this guy you didn't know. Later on, he became your husband. I mean, wow! But he told you he loved you about a year into the relationship, as I recall. Is that right? Here's the question I want to ask both of you: You said you loved her. Today, you know what it means to truly love. Do your best to explain what love is. Ken: I think, if I were to describe what love is—it's the love that I sense Jesus has for us. When Christ came and said that He came to serve, I just think how good of God to put me in this position that I could serve Him through serving my wife. Having a wife, who is of like-mind and loves Jesus, means everything. I think that's what's been sustaining for both of us, over these past 30 years—and especially, over these past few years, that we've had to deal with the cancer. She's my best friend; she's my biggest supporter. But I would say this—I would say that we don't honor our vows like we once did. You know, “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health”. We don't do that. Not that I—I'm still working at it; but I would love for this particular book to reach out and touch the lives of men and their hearts and say: “Hey, step up to the plate. Honor your vows and honor your commitment that you made to your wife.” Joni: And you'll be a better person for it. Ken: And you'll be a better person. Dennis: Joni? Joni: Well, mine's a little more romantic, I guess; but I know that Ken loves me because he likes me. He wants to be with me. I'm home for him; and as Dr. Robert Mount said, “Home is moveable.” When I'm in another room, Ken enjoys being with me. He enjoys bringing his fish magazines in and sitting with me—and that he chooses me, that he prefers me, that he wants to be with me, that he likes me—[emotion in voice] in spite of all the stuff that often accompanies what “me” is—that he chooses me, and likes me, and prefers me is so sweet to me, as a woman. It touches my heart like nothing else. Of course, that fosters so much more affection for my husband when I see him choose me, be proud of me, speak about me on the phone to his buddies, tell his best friend—who is an outfitter up in Montana, a rough-and-tumble mountain man, who shoots elk with a bow and arrow, who is an expert fly fisherman—he's just an incredible guy. Ken has always said of him, “Gee, I want that guy in my foxhole.” But to hear him say, on the phone, one night, to that man, Chris, “Chris, I've always wanted you in my foxhole. Watching my wife and her courage—oh, my goodness—I want her to have my back. I want her to be in my foxhole.” Boy, that's music to my ears. Ken: Yes. Joni says it very well; but when I made that phone call, one of the things that we have discussed is that we are all in a spiritual battle. Chris is a brother in Christ. As Joni mentioned, he is your quintessential mountain man. I watched Joni, during this cancer journey; and I saw the warrior that she is. She is truly a warrior—fighting through all these—the pain and, now, the cancer. So, I called Chris and I said, “Chris, I have to tell you that after having watched my wife, I want you in that foxhole with me if we're going to battle; but I'd like my wife in there first because I know she'll watch my back.” Dennis: Yes. “I know you're a good shot with a bow and arrow. [Laughter] I want the shield—my shield and my hero—in there with me.” Well, you guys are heroes to many. We need models, like you guys, who are running the race, all the way to the finish line of heaven—and maybe, not always with a smile on your face—but you're not quitting. I think your book is just an unvarnished look at a real relationship that has had some very, very dark valleys that haven't been momentary. They have gone on for years. Bob: Yes. Dennis: I just commend it to our listeners to read together, as a couple—both husbands and wives. Bob: We have copies of the book. It's called An Untold Love Story. You can go to our website at FamilyLifeToday.com to order the story of Joni and Ken's 30-year marriage—Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com and order a copy of the book from us. Or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to request your copy of this book. Again, our website is FamilyLifeToday.com. The toll-free number is 1-800-FL-TODAY. The book we're talking about is called Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story. Go online or give us a call to request a copy. Now, with summer just around the corner, we have had some good friends of the ministry who have come to us to help us be prepared for summer. You may think to yourself, “What do you have to get ready for—for summer, as a ministry?” Well, for most ministries, like ours, summertime is a time when there is a dip. There is a drop in donation revenue that comes into a ministry like ours. The bills stay the same, but the donations drop off a little bit. These friends of ours, knowing this was coming, came to us and said: “We would like to provide matching funds, during the month of May, so that, hopefully, your listeners will take advantage of the matching gift. Together, we can provide you with a little bit of surplus as you head into these summer months and get you through the summer in good shape.” We were very grateful for that matching gift which right now totals $576,000. That means every dollar you donate, this month, to FamilyLife Today is going to be matched, dollar for dollar, up to a total of $576,000. And we're asking you to consider making as generous a donation as you can make today to help FamilyLife Today get through the summer. So, would you go to FamilyLifeToday.com—click the button that says, “I CARE” —and make an online donation? Or call 1-800-FL-TODAY; 1-800-358-6329; 1-800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then, the word, “TODAY”. Make a donation over the phone. Keep in mind, your donation is going to be matched, dollar for dollar; and pray for us if you would, that we would be able to take full advantage of these matching-gift funds. Pray for us, through the summer, that we would continue to be financially healthy and strong as we go through June, and July, and August. And I want to encourage you to be back with us again tomorrow. Joni and Ken Tada are going to be here again. We're going to hear about some of the hard chapters that they've gone through in their marriage. I hope you can tune in tomorrow for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Robbie Neal, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. See you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today. FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs? Copyright © 2013 FamilyLife. All rights reserved.www.FamilyLife.com

第480期:The Fan

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2019 2:00

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Wendi: So I wanna know who your basketball team is?Ken: Who my basketball team is?Wendi: Yeah.Ken: Oh, my favorite pro team?Wendi: Now, like who's your team?Ken: Oh, OK. I'm from Atlanta so my favorite team is the Hawks, unfortunately. For the past six or seven years, they have sucked it up royally and they haven't been much to cheer for but they're signs of them turning it around. They've got a nice young core. Like we have the slam dunk champion on your team. A nice free agent pick-up recently. Hopefully, in a couple of years, we'll make the playoffs, something to cheer for.Wendi: Alright, in any basketball game I've ever been to, it's like, at half-time, those cheerleader girls come out and cheer. What's the relationship between basketball and cheerleading?Ken: It's not the relationship between basketball and cheerleading so much as the relationship between the basketball fan and the cheerleader and that a basketball fan is normally a man, and men like to look at beautiful women moving around I think. That's the relationship. It's just a crowd-pleaser more than anything else.Wendi: That's an honest answer, Ken.Ken: I don't think the players are any more motivated than they would be just because some girls are dancing around in skimpy outfits but the fans still love it.Wendi: Fair enough... Alright, if you think of all the teams you have ever been on, what characterizes the best type of teammate to have?Ken: The best type of teammate to have is one who is a good leader. I like good leaders, like people who know how to win, know how to get their teammates involved in the game. They motivate you. They praise you when you do well. They'll give you constructive criticism when you're not playing as well as you could be. But ultimately they know the strengths and weaknesses of each of the players on the team and they'll make the most of it based on what they feel is best for the team.

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第478期:Cool Comedians

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2019 3:11

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Wendi: Alright, we've been watching some comedy lately. I wanna know who your favorite comic is?Ken: My favorite comic? It's a draw between Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock.Wendi: Is Chris Rock really like, is he still doing something?Ken: No, he really hasn't done anything recently, but still like, yeah, he's pretty, a pretty funny guy.Wendi: He is totally funny.Ken: He's hard to topWendi: When is the last time he was totally working a lot, though?Ken: It's gotta be maybe five years ago.Wendi: Yeah, it's been awhile.Ken: Yeah. Now he's like... I don't even know what he does anymore. Maybe he's an actor now.Wendi: He's flipping burgers.Ken: Yeah, he has to feed his family.Wendi: Yeah, what about Dave Chappelle? What's his deal? He's kind of?Ken: Dave Chapelle?Wendi: He's still working?Ken: Yeah. Maybe. He was really popular a couple of years ago when he was doing the Chapelle Show, a couple of his stand-ups came out, but...Wendi: Is that finished?Ken: He...which?Wendi: The Chappelle Show.Ken: It's taking a break or something. What I heard was that he went crazy and he like checked himself into an insane asylum.Wendi: For serious. For real.Ken: Like all the pressure from work was getting to him and stuff. Like he just wanted break.Wendi: That's so amazing.Ken: Or he ran off to Africa or something.Wendi: You know what, that is just incredible because, it's like you know, the whole grass is greener concept. It's like, you think if you're a comedian and you're making people laugh all day and you're on stage and you're laughing too that you're probably having fun but at the end of the day, I guess work's work.Ken: Yeah, work's work and he was doing, like he mentioned in stand-up he was working maybe 16, 18, 20 hours a day.Wendi: Really!Ken: Yeah, so even like hard to study...Wendi: What was he doing for 20 hours a day?Ken: Uh, like just doing his show. Like I guess it takes a lot of preparation and...Wendi: That's crazy.Ken: Even with all the help in the world, I guess he's still, you know, you have to make it quality, so it takes time and effort.Wendi: Yeah.Ken: So, even if it is a comedy, it might not be fun twenty hours a day.Wendi: I guess that's like the funny thing, you just think if someone's a comedian, it just all comes naturally. It's like it all just comes spur of the moment, but I guess the real thing is that a lot of work goes into it.Ken: Yeah, I think so. Like to be creative on a consistent basis is probably isn't the easiest thing in the world.Wendi: Yeah. I think so. It sure is for me anyways.Wendi: Are you a Seinfeld fan?Ken: Seinfeld...Wendi: Not really. I'm reading your body language.Ken: No, I did watch a few episodes, here and there, when it was on TV and I was bored, but...Wendi: You're not a big fan?Ken: Like I started watching it after the show ended like you know when everybody was watching the season finale like I had never really regularly watched the show and I didn't even catch the season finale, but so, my friends were like, "Did you watch it? Did you watch it?" and I'm like, "No."Wendi: I think it's brilliant. I think it's incredibly brilliant.Ken: Yeah, it's a good show.Wendi: Yeah.

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第465期:Best American TV Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2019 2:30

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Wendi: So. I wanna know why you think The Simpsons were so successful?Ken: They have a kind of humor that funny to people of all ages. It's funny to people from all different walks of life. So I guess it appeals to the masses more than any other show.Wendi: But how do they do that? How do you make something appealing to 8-year olds and fifty-year-olds?Ken: Yeah. It's difficult. Like I haven't really thought about it all that much but like they have jokes that only old people would get and they have the fart jokes that, you know, children love at the same time, so. Yeah. So I guess that's what, yeah. It's a phenomenon.Wendi: It is crazy. The thing that I think is wild about that show, is that just the colors even. Do you know what I mean? It's so basic. Kind of like the lines and the colors. Everything is like incredibly basic, yet it's so, kind of strong and powerful. It's really weird. Do you have any idea of what I'm talking about?Ken: Not really. No.Wendi: It's just like a coloring book kind of with bright colors filling in the lines. I don't know. The animation, just the style, all of it. It's just all so simple yet, I don't know, it really works, like the characters and everything.Ken: It doesn't have to be visually stimulating, or visually...Wendi: Like sophisticated or anything.Ken: Sophisticated to be funny, just like South Park isn't at all yet it's one of the more popular shows on TV right now.Wendi: But I don't know. I think one of the really funny things about the Simpsons are like the shapes of the people and stuff, like the way like that guy has the big kind of beak, like the bartender guy.Ken: Oh, yeah, Mo.Wendi: He has like a beak. He almost looks like a duck in a way. And it's like you know. Marge's hair and then like Homer's crazy beer belly. It's all just so funny and then like the people that are supposed to be stupid like they look stupid. You know, they have the really like stupid look. Like hammerhead sharks looking.Ken: Yeah. Yeah.Wendi: It's just all brilliant.

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第464期:TV Shows

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2019 2:40

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Wendi: OK, so the next thing was when I was young, I used to watch this TV program. It was called the "Wonder Years". And I had such a crush on that kid Fred.Ken: Fred Savage was it?Wendi: Yeah, yeah, Fred Savage. What was his name in that show?Ken: I actually never really watched that show. No, I've seen a couple of reruns.Wendi: I know he had a crush on some girl names Wendi but I can't recall what his name was, but I have such a huge mad crush on him.Ken: It's that show with the little kid, but like someone else, like the adults like recounting his childhood.Wendi: Yeah, I think so.Ken: Like there's a narrator in the back.Wendi: I think so. Yeah. I think so. But then, that whole thing just broke down when I saw Austin Powers, and "Mole, Mole, Mole, Mole".Ken: Was that him?Wendi: Yeah.Ken: That was him?Wendi: It's the same guy and he's an adult and he's not attractive or cute whatsoever and so I just feel really betrayed.Wendi: OK, so I told you about an actor I had a crush on when I was young. So what show did you grow up on that you totally had a crush on - one of the actresses?Ken: Unfortunately. Unfortunately, I was banned from watching TV as a child.Wendi: Are you serious?Ken: Yeah, so.Wendi: Were you really?Ken: I did not grow up watching TV. Yeah. I was not raised on TV.Wendi: You weren't raised on TV at all?Ken: Not at all.Wendi: So, were taking Monday to Friday, no TV?Ken: I'm talking I had to, like while my mom was cooking dinner, I could like turn the volume really low on a nine inch black and white TV and maybe catch five minutes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something.Wendi: Are you serious?Ken: That's how bad it was.Wendi: That's shocking.Ken: That is, yeah.Wendi: Yeah, so then at like what age did you, because you know how to work a computer quite well, when did you learn all this stuff?Ken: I guess once my brother and sister started growing up, then my mom, you know, let me have a little bit more freedom.Wendi: Yeah. Yeah.Ken: We got our first computer. I was more into computer than TV, initially.Wendi: Yeah.Ken: And the first Tv show I watched regularly must have been like the Simpsons, probably.Wendi: How old were you?Ken: I can't remember. Probably, seventh, eight grade.Wendi: Oh, yeah.Ken: So thirteen or fourteen years old.Wendi: Crazy. Crazy. That's amazing.Ken: Yeah.

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Everything has always been there (Show #628) | Jan 16, 2019

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 17, 2019 118:41

Acousmatique Recordings - "Breathe in through tightly pursed lips" David Byrne - "What time is it? No time to look back" - True Stories [over Acousmatique Recordings] Acousmatique Recordings - "Breathe in through tightly pursed lips" Bea T'cha - "If you ask nicely" [over Acousmatique Recordings. Includes French monologue] Neil Amsterdam - "Neutral Strings #2" - Magic Kingdom WEDway Peoplemover Music Loop [over Bea T'cha, Acousmatique Recordings] George Bruns - "Monorail Song" - Magic Kingdom WEDway Peoplemover Music Loop [over other Magic Kingdom, Bea T'cha] Bea T'cha - "Evening of Light" [over other Bea T'cha, Neutral Strings #2] George Bruns - "Nation on Wheels" - Magic Kingdom WEDway Peoplemover Music Loop [with Bea T'cha, Acousmatique Recordings, other Magic Kingdom] Neil Amsterdam - "Industry in Motion #1" - Magic Kingdom WEDway Peoplemover Music Loop [with Bea T'cha, Acousmatique Recordings, other Magic Kingdom] Ken - "Intro / let go" [over Bea T'cha if you ask nicely and Nation on Wheels] Bea T'cha - "If you ask nicely" [Includes many unidentified sound sources] George Winston - "Tamarack Pines" [over Bea T'cha] Slowdive - "Brighter" [over George Winston, Bea T'cha] Ken - "It's uncomfortable (explanation/intro)" [over Slowdive, George Winston, Bea T'cha] Slowdive - "Brighter" [over George Winston, Bea T'cha] Chicago - "Remember the Feeling" - Chicago 17 [Piano loop over Bea T'cha, Slowdive, George Winston] Chicago - "Remember the Feeling" - Chicago 17 [with George Winston] Chicago - "Colour My World" [Intro looping, with Remember the Feeling and George Winston] Chicago - "Colour My World" [with other copy of Colour My World] Chicago - "Remember the Feeling" Brad Fiedel - "Come to Me" - Fright Night s.t. [With Remember the Feeling] Tax advice - "Track 15" [with Brad Fiedel, Remember the Feeling] Louis Armstrong - "We Have All the Time in the World" [with Brad Fiedel] Cowboy Junkies - "Cold Tea Blues" [with brad Fiedel, Louis Armstrong] Snap! - "The Power" [Loops, with Brad Fiedel, Louis Armstrong, Cowboy Junkies] Cowboy Junkies - "Cold Tea Blues" [with Snap!] Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now" [Loops, with Cowboy Junkies, Snap!] Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now" [Loops] Les Nesman - "Black Americans' contributions to US culture" - WKRP in Cincinnati, season 3 episode 12 [over Tiffany loops. Scratch an Allman Brother, and you have black] Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now" [Loops] Billy Corgan, Alex Jones - "The fascist war machine" [over Tiffany loops] Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now" Richard E. Grant - "People buy hydrogen bombs because they have an added new ingredient: Peace" - How to Get Ahead in Advertising [over Tiffany] Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now" Richard E. Grant - "Roads represent a fundamental right of man to have access to the good things in life" - How to Get Ahead in Advertising [over Tiffany. The right to smoke one's chosen brand would be denied] Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now" [Loops] Richard E. Grant - "Packaging would vanish from the face of the earth" - How to Get Ahead in Advertising [over Tiffany] Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now" Richard E. Grant - "I'm not a communist, you want to take everyone's car away" - How to Get Ahead in Advertising [over Tiffany] Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now" Pinback - "Anti-hu" [Loops, over Tiffany] Tame Impala - "Promo for Currents Collectors Edition" [over Pinback, Tiffany] Tame Impala - "Promo for Currents Collectors Edition" [over Tiffany] Acousmatique Recordings - "Breathe in through tightly pursed lips" [over Tame Impala, Tiffany] mathblaster - "Achromatic" [over Tame Impala] mathblaster - "Achromatic" Snap! - "The Power" [Loops, over mathblaster] Brad Fiedel - "Dream Window" - Fright Night s.t. [over Snap!, mathblaster] Tycho - "Awake" [over Snap!, mathblaster, Brad Fiedel] Tycho - "Awake" [over Snap!, mathblaster, Tiffany] Tycho - "Awake" [over Tiffany, Snap!] Tycho - "Awake" [over Snap!] Snap! - "The Power" [Loops, over Tycho] The Echelon Effect - "First Fall" [over Snap!, Tycho] Chicago - "Colour My World" [over Snap!, Tycho, The Echelon Effect] Acousmatique Recordings - "Breathe in through tightly pursed lips" [over The Echelon Effect] The Echelon Effect - "First Fall" [over Beat T'cha, Acousmatique Recordings] Acousmatique Recordings - "Breathe in through tightly pursed lips" [over The Echelon Effect] Stone Roses - "Elephant Stone" [loops, over The Echelon Effect and Acousmatique Recordings] Estiva - "Lifting Leaves" [over Stone Roses, The Echelon Effect, Acousmatique Recordings] Ken - "Everything has always been there" [over Estiva, Stone Roses, The Echelon Effect, Acousmatique Recordings (eventually just Estiva) It's all there - everything. Everything is always all there. And everything has always been there. Whether you're looking, whether you knew where to look... Everything has always been there. Everything has always been this way. It's been all these ways all at once. You can choose what you look at, what you focus on, what you see, what patterns you notice. All the things are always happening altogether, and you tune in, and you tune out, and you tune... and you see what you are, and you see what you see, and you see what you recognize. And you see what creates interference patterns, what seems discordant. And you don't notice other things. You don't notice them until they're pointed out. You don't notice them until you grow that part of yourself. You don't notice them because you don't have a name for them, your language doesn't have a way. You don't notice them because they conflict with what you've been taught, because you don't believe in them, because you've been taught to be afraid of them. You don't notice them because they're in opposition to everything you believe in. But they're still all there. They're still all around you. The thing you just learned about, it's always been there. That new change in yourself, it's always been there. Things that seem good, things that seem evil, things that attract you. It's always been there. Nothing has ever changed. Except your awareness, and your awareness is going to keep changing. It's going to keep arcing, and developing, and looping, all the way 'til the end. And the only thing that's changing in the world is everyone's awareness. All the matter, the matter, the bits, they're the same. It might be in a different order, but they're the same. So, you can change your awareness. You can notice the awareness of others. Change... you can change, you can change others' awareness. You can't change. You can't change. You can't change anything. And everything that's happening, everything that's going on right now, it's never going to end, it's never going to start. You can try to own it, you can try to make it. You can be frustrated with it, you can walk away from it, you can not look at it, but it's still going to be there. This is here. This is in the air, and you can tune into the frequency that it's vibrating at, and you can choose to resonate with it, or you can lock into different frequencies. You can turn down your consciousness. You can overdose on something. But it's still going to be here, because it's here. It's here now. You can never get away from your past. It's here now in the frequency. You can look away. Just keep looking away. Keep looking at things to help you look away. If you focus on this point, you don't have to see that one. Keep turning things up louder and louder. The hair follicles in your eardrums...everything can be used up. You can use it all up. Or you can make it as healthy as it can be. And you can responsibly choose which things you look at, and what you think about. You can realize that your attention is your own. You can think about the responsibilities you have to use it. And you can actually make everything better. And there goes the world, getting better and better, thanks to you. Thank you.] Estiva - "Lifting Leaves" [over The Echelon Effect] Tracey Chattaway - "Light the Night" [over Estiva, The Echelon Effect] Stone Roses - "Elephant Stone" [over The Echelon Effect, Tracey Chattaway] The Echelon Effect - "First Fall" [over Tracey Chattaway] Henrik Neilsen - "Outdoor Life #2" - Magic Kingdom WEDway Peoplemover Music Loop [over The Echelon Effect, Tracey Chattaway] The Echelon Effect - "First Fall" [over Tracey Chattaway] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "In Between Dates (choices all around you)" - Show #505, from Oct. 1, 2014 [Live on stage in Baltimore with Neil Diamond-America loops, and The Echelon Effect, Tracey Chattaway] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "In Between Dates (choices all around you)" - Show #505, from Oct. 1, 2014 [Live on stage in Baltimore with Neil Diamond-America loops, and The Echelon Effect] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "In Between Dates (choices all around you)" - Show #505, from Oct. 1, 2014 [Live on stage in Baltimore with Neil Diamond-America loops and other unnamed sample sources.] Neil Diamond - "America" - The Jazz Singer [Loops] Ken - "The housekeeper is going to put everything back where it belongs / Identification" [over Neil Diamond loops. They know you're going to take care of them] Ken - "I don't know why I..." [over Neil Diamond loops. Everything is always in its right place.] Ken - "Thanks" [over Neil Diamond loops] Neil Diamond - "America" - The Jazz Singer [Loops] Billy Bragg - "The Unwelcome Guest" [over Neil Diamond] Cowboy Junkies - "Brothers Under the Bridge" [over Neil Diamond, Billy Bragg (briefly)] Cowboy Junkies - "Brothers Under the Bridge" [Loop, over Neil Diamond loops] John Mellencamp - "Pink Houses" [more America, Over Cowboy Junkies, Neil Diamond] Cowboy Junkies - "Brothers Under the Bridge" [loop, with Neil Diamond loops] Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "American Girl" [Loops, with Cowboy Junkies and Neil Diamond] Schoolhouse Rock - "Preamble" - America Rock [with Tom Petty, Neil Diamond, Cowboy Junkies] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "The Great Communicator (Ronald Reagan)" - Show #317, from 6/8/2004 [with Vivaldi cello concerto (2004) and Tom Petty (2019). It's morning again in America. We can leave our children with an unrepayable massive debt.] Richard E. Grant - "They're entitled to important new ingredients" - How to Get Ahead in Advertising [with Ken's Last Ever Reagan, Tom Petty] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "The Great Communicator (Ronald Reagan)" - Show #317, from 6/8/2004 [with Vivaldi cello concerto (2004) and Tom Petty (2019)] Richard E. Grant - "They're going to get it bigger and brighter and better" - How to Get Ahead in Advertising [with Ken's Last Ever Reagan, Tom Petty] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "The Great Communicator (Ronald Reagan)" - Show #317, from 6/8/2004 [with Vivaldi cello concerto (2004) and Tom Petty (2019). Union busting] Cowboy Junkies - "Cold Tea Blues" [with Tom Petty] Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "American Girl" [No loops, with Cowboy Junkies] Cowboy Junkies - "Brothers Under the Bridge" [Loop, with Tom Petty] Chevrolet - "The American Look" - The American Look [With Cowboy Junkies Brothers loop, Tom Petty] Michael Crichton - "Decisions about life and death. Society isn't deciding. Society is leaving it up to us, the experts, the doctors" - Coma movie [with The American Look, Tom Petty, Cowboy Junkies Brothers] Michael Crichton - "A whole nation of sick people turning to us for help" - Coma movie [with Cowboy Junkies] George C. Scott - "Medical failure. People are sicker than ever" - The Hospital [with Cowboy Junkies] A real doctor - "Complications of lipsuction" - The Girl Next Door (documentary) [with Cowboy Junkies] Albert Brooks and James Spader - "You don't need a living will. Just make sure you don't have money for healthcare" - Critical Care [with Cowboy Junkies] Michael Crichton - "You probably think I'm beautiful, but I have lots of defects to fix" - Looker [with Cowboy Junkies] Ken - "You can take responsibility for your own healing, you can insist on being healthy from within" [with Cowboy Junkies loop] Ken - "Inching my way towards the door of this party. I appreciate that you invited me" [with Tom Petty, Cowboy Junkies, then just Cowboy Junkies] Ken - "We can move in together" [with Cowboy Junkies, and a dial tone] Cowboy Junkies - "Brothers Under the Bridge" [Loop] Neil Diamond - "America" [Loops, with Cowboy Junkies] INXS - "Mediate" - Kick [Loops, with Cowboy Junkies, Neil Diamond] Lemon Jelly - "Page One" [Loops, with INXS, Neil Diamond] INXS - "Mediate" [No loops, with Lemon Jelly] Billy Corgan, Alex Jones - "Was it a just purpose, they divide and conquer, wounded warriors" - Alex Jones Show 6/26/12 [with INXS, Lemon Jelly] Billy Corgan, Alex Jones - "GMO pesticides in their system, you can ask the questions" - Alex Jones Show 6/26/12 [with INXS] INXS - "Mediate" - Kick [Loops, 2 copies] David Byrne - "Since this mall opened, they'll go wherever the bargains are. They're wise to advertisers' claims" - True Stories [with INXS. The shopping mall has replaced the town center] War On Drugs - "Burning" - Lost in the Dream [Loops, with David Byrne, INXS] War On Drugs - "Burning" - Lost in the Dream [Loops] Ken - "You only have one chance to do it. We're full of hope, and we're giving up" [with War On Drugs] War On Drugs - "Burning" - Lost in the Dream [Loops] https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/83624

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I want to step across (Show #470/614) | Download full MP3 from Oct 3, 2018

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 6, 2018 115:20

Hal Hartley - "End Credits, Simple Men" - True Fiction Pictures [a.k.a. Ned Rifle] Joachim Holbek - "Piano sound (reversed)" - Riget (The Kingdom) [Lars von Trier TV series] Joachim Holbek - "Piano sound" - Riget (The Kingdom) [Lars von Trier TV series] Ken - "There are things that you just cannot see" Hal Hartley - "End Credits, Simple Men" - True Fiction Pictures John Lawrence - "We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness" - John Carpenter's They Live Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "In Koln (Cologne), Germany (with Alan Watts, Ida, Jon Brion, Schizopolis, Wings of Desire, the wind comes a-howling, David Cronenberg...)" - Koln, Germany: 6/29/09, show #397 Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity [Layers] Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney - "I don't believe it (The Girl Is Mine)" - Thriller 25th Anniversary [2008 2LP Remaster] Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. Ken - "I appreciate that you've come along. It can be overwhelming and lonely." Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "It's All Forgotten Now (with phone calls, Explosions in the Sky backwards, Hans Zimmer...)" - It's All Forgotten Now: 2/8/05, show #355 [Chaotic, delightful, and terrifying, all at once. 12th anniversary show. Samples: https://lastever.org/...] Phone call (the guy) - "Suicide notes: Failed" Phone call - "20 artists, 4 acts" Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. [Loops] Air Supply - "Making Love out of Nothing at All (reversed)" - Greatest Hits [Written by Jim Steinman] Phone call (the guy) - "Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence" Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity Phone call - "We love you enough to be a part of you. We hate you enough to burn it down." River Phoenix - "How America treats its homeless. The US has its priorities, a police state, a pressure cooker" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Children's Television Voteshop (brief excerpt)" Franka Potente, Benno Furmann, Tom Tykwer - "(German)" - The Princess and the Warrior David Wingo, Michael Linnen - All the Real Girls Bryce Dallas Howard - "Do you wish to know your future?" - Lady in the Water Phone call (the guy) - "If I showed you a picture of a cat with a monocle smoking a pipe, you'd laugh" Phone call - "Do you enjoy mushrooms? Do you consider life a pancake?" Bryan Adams - "Summer of '69" - Reckless [Loops] Air Supply - "Making Love out of Nothing at All" - Greatest Hits [Written by Jim Steinman] Phone call (the guy) - "Horse leaning up against the wall (a crashing cymbal, a symbol of your pancake)" Noam Chomsky - "Prison Labor (slowed down)" - Free Market Fantasies: Capitalism in the Real World Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. [Multi-speed layers] Bryan Adams - "Summer of '69" - Reckless [Loops] Bryan Adams - "Summer of '69" - Reckless [Speed loops] Ken - "It used to be like this a lot more often (taking the good with the bad, food combining)" [You push me out in a little boat, you make it nice and cute, and you say, hey, you're going to a better place now, and we're going to be fine over here. We're going to have our own party when you're gone. We'll remember you at first. And then you'll just be in the leaves] Phone call - "I heard you were having a party (future Ken lives in the present)" [You didn't need to bring any presence. Do you have any favors? Do you keep your future in a box?] Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. [Slow loop] Ken - "Identification" Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. [Speeding loops] Phone call (the guy) - "Harbinger" Phone call (possibilitywaves) - "A philosophical question (paying attention with collective consciousness / transcendence is all forms)" [There's room for a lot more than we know.] Ken - "I ate dinner with Parker Posey (I have a circle I understand how to follow)" [I did not have dinner with Martin Donovan] Martin Donovan, Adrienne Shelly, Hal Hartley - "Television makes these daily sacrifices possible; it deadens the inner core of my being" - Trust [Let's move away, then. (They have television everywhere. There's no escape.)] Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton - "I see other houses, I see other lives, and they're not like mine. They could be." - The House of Yes Jack Creley, David Cronenberg - "The television screen has become the retina of the mind's eye (Soon all of us will have special names, names designed to cause the cathode ray tube to resonate)" - Videodrome [That's why I refuse to appear on television, except ON television.] Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity [Loops] Harlan Ellison - "tv on in restaurant,makes people stupid,radio wonderful,use brain,muscle atrophies" - Dreams With Sharp Teeth Orson Welles interview - "TV static" Harlan Ellison - "If you take their TV away, they'd be on the steps of city hall with shotguns. Nobody likes their dope taken away from them" - Dreams With Sharp Teeth Clarence Nash - "Donald Duck tax propaganda cartoon" - The Spirit of '43 [Written by Joe Grant] Phone call (Margaret Tedesco, KUSF in Exile) - "This show is amazing, it makes me think of air traffic control" Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity [More live looping] Ken - "I enjoy sharing radioactivity (this is the last time that this show will ever air)" Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity [Continued live looping] Neil Diamond - "America" - Jazz Singer [Ominous loops] James Coburn - "Americans of all ages submit to television. voluntarily" - Looker [Persuasion without coersion] Ruth Gordon, Alan Ormsby - "TV is a narcotic" - My Bodyguard Michael Crichton - "Television captures attention, and takes you away from real life. Everything's neglected. We're all looking at screens, and we're not in the present, we're in the image" - Looker commentary John Lawrence - "They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. We are being bred for slavery" - John Carpenter's They Live Peter Sellers - "This is just like television, only you can see much further" - Being There Richard E. Grant - "The man who conceived of big brother never knew what was coming down the line. He thought his filthy creation would be watching us, but it is us who watch it. Cutting down jungles to breed hamburgers" - How to Get Ahead in Advertising [Their greed is insatiable. They won't be satisfied, not until we're all squatting in a hatchback on a motorway] David Cronenberg - "Ultimately we did get a television set, and I watched it all the time (Forbidden images, Videodrome)" - The Directors: The Films of David Cronenberg David Cronenberg, Jeff Goldblum - "They're claiming we're having synchronization problems. Signal to noise ratio on downlink" - Into the Night Ken - "I Want to Step Across (I want to reach the other side of...) (I want to turn visions into actions)" [I want to step across the line between idea and manifestation. But I want there to be room for everything. Life goes on with us or without us. Suddenly someone comes into the room and wakes us up.] Phone call - "I have a delivery. They are boxes" Hal Hartley - "End Credits, Simple Men" - True Fiction Pictures [a.k.a. Ned Rifle] Ken - "I do really thank you. My mind and spirit are going in all directions" Hal Hartley - "End Credits, Simple Men" - True Fiction Pictures [Finally plays beyond loop] Set: 2018 play out A Diagram of Suburban Chaos - "A Black Day to Freedom" [Not in audio archive] https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/81687

tv music spirit house germany horses suicide phone desire wings cutting signal john carpenter chaotic forbidden samples david cronenberg explosions hans zimmer get ahead speeding alan watts richard e grant parker posey koln ruth gordon jon brion franka potente adrienne shelly schizopolis bryan adams summer kusf ken it

I want to step across (Show #470/614) | Download full MP3 from Oct 3, 2018

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2018 115:20

Hal Hartley - "End Credits, Simple Men" - True Fiction Pictures [a.k.a. Ned Rifle] Joachim Holbek - "Piano sound (reversed)" - Riget (The Kingdom) [Lars von Trier TV series] Joachim Holbek - "Piano sound" - Riget (The Kingdom) [Lars von Trier TV series] Ken - "There are things that you just cannot see" Hal Hartley - "End Credits, Simple Men" - True Fiction Pictures John Lawrence - "We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness" - John Carpenter's They Live Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "In Koln (Cologne), Germany (with Alan Watts, Ida, Jon Brion, Schizopolis, Wings of Desire, the wind comes a-howling, David Cronenberg...)" - Koln, Germany: 6/29/09, show #397 Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity [Layers] Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney - "I don't believe it (The Girl Is Mine)" - Thriller 25th Anniversary [2008 2LP Remaster] Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. Ken - "I appreciate that you've come along. It can be overwhelming and lonely." Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "It's All Forgotten Now (with phone calls, Explosions in the Sky backwards, Hans Zimmer...)" - It's All Forgotten Now: 2/8/05, show #355 [Chaotic, delightful, and terrifying, all at once. 12th anniversary show. Samples: http://lastever.org/...] Phone call (the guy) - "Suicide notes: Failed" Phone call - "20 artists, 4 acts" Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. [Loops] Air Supply - "Making Love out of Nothing at All (reversed)" - Greatest Hits [Written by Jim Steinman] Phone call (the guy) - "Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence" Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity Phone call - "We love you enough to be a part of you. We hate you enough to burn it down." River Phoenix - "How America treats its homeless. The US has its priorities, a police state, a pressure cooker" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Children's Television Voteshop (brief excerpt)" Franka Potente, Benno Furmann, Tom Tykwer - "(German)" - The Princess and the Warrior David Wingo, Michael Linnen - All the Real Girls Bryce Dallas Howard - "Do you wish to know your future?" - Lady in the Water Phone call (the guy) - "If I showed you a picture of a cat with a monocle smoking a pipe, you'd laugh" Phone call - "Do you enjoy mushrooms? Do you consider life a pancake?" Bryan Adams - "Summer of '69" - Reckless [Loops] Air Supply - "Making Love out of Nothing at All" - Greatest Hits [Written by Jim Steinman] Phone call (the guy) - "Horse leaning up against the wall (a crashing cymbal, a symbol of your pancake)" Noam Chomsky - "Prison Labor (slowed down)" - Free Market Fantasies: Capitalism in the Real World Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. [Multi-speed layers] Bryan Adams - "Summer of '69" - Reckless [Loops] Bryan Adams - "Summer of '69" - Reckless [Speed loops] Ken - "It used to be like this a lot more often (taking the good with the bad, food combining)" [You push me out in a little boat, you make it nice and cute, and you say, hey, you're going to a better place now, and we're going to be fine over here. We're going to have our own party when you're gone. We'll remember you at first. And then you'll just be in the leaves] Phone call - "I heard you were having a party (future Ken lives in the present)" [You didn't need to bring any presence. Do you have any favors? Do you keep your future in a box?] Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. [Slow loop] Ken - "Identification" Jerry Goldsmith - "Carol Anne's Theme" - Poltergeist s.t. [Speeding loops] Phone call (the guy) - "Harbinger" Phone call (possibilitywaves) - "A philosophical question (paying attention with collective consciousness / transcendence is all forms)" [There's room for a lot more than we know.] Ken - "I ate dinner with Parker Posey (I have a circle I understand how to follow)" [I did not have dinner with Martin Donovan] Martin Donovan, Adrienne Shelly, Hal Hartley - "Television makes these daily sacrifices possible; it deadens the inner core of my being" - Trust [Let's move away, then. (They have television everywhere. There's no escape.)] Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton - "I see other houses, I see other lives, and they're not like mine. They could be." - The House of Yes Jack Creley, David Cronenberg - "The television screen has become the retina of the mind's eye (Soon all of us will have special names, names designed to cause the cathode ray tube to resonate)" - Videodrome [That's why I refuse to appear on television, except ON television.] Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity [Loops] Harlan Ellison - "tv on in restaurant,makes people stupid,radio wonderful,use brain,muscle atrophies" - Dreams With Sharp Teeth Orson Welles interview - "TV static" Harlan Ellison - "If you take their TV away, they'd be on the steps of city hall with shotguns. Nobody likes their dope taken away from them" - Dreams With Sharp Teeth Clarence Nash - "Donald Duck tax propaganda cartoon" - The Spirit of '43 [Written by Joe Grant] Phone call (Margaret Tedesco, KUSF in Exile) - "This show is amazing, it makes me think of air traffic control" Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity [More live looping] Ken - "I enjoy sharing radioactivity (this is the last time that this show will ever air)" Kraftwerk - "Radioaktivitat" - Radio-Activity [Continued live looping] Neil Diamond - "America" - Jazz Singer [Ominous loops] James Coburn - "Americans of all ages submit to television. voluntarily" - Looker [Persuasion without coersion] Ruth Gordon, Alan Ormsby - "TV is a narcotic" - My Bodyguard Michael Crichton - "Television captures attention, and takes you away from real life. Everything's neglected. We're all looking at screens, and we're not in the present, we're in the image" - Looker commentary John Lawrence - "They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. We are being bred for slavery" - John Carpenter's They Live Peter Sellers - "This is just like television, only you can see much further" - Being There Richard E. Grant - "The man who conceived of big brother never knew what was coming down the line. He thought his filthy creation would be watching us, but it is us who watch it. Cutting down jungles to breed hamburgers" - How to Get Ahead in Advertising [Their greed is insatiable. They won't be satisfied, not until we're all squatting in a hatchback on a motorway] David Cronenberg - "Ultimately we did get a television set, and I watched it all the time (Forbidden images, Videodrome)" - The Directors: The Films of David Cronenberg David Cronenberg, Jeff Goldblum - "They're claiming we're having synchronization problems. Signal to noise ratio on downlink" - Into the Night Ken - "I Want to Step Across (I want to reach the other side of...) (I want to turn visions into actions)" [I want to step across the line between idea and manifestation. But I want there to be room for everything. Life goes on with us or without us. Suddenly someone comes into the room and wakes us up.] Phone call - "I have a delivery. They are boxes" Hal Hartley - "End Credits, Simple Men" - True Fiction Pictures [a.k.a. Ned Rifle] Ken - "I do really thank you. My mind and spirit are going in all directions" Hal Hartley - "End Credits, Simple Men" - True Fiction Pictures [Finally plays beyond loop] Set: 2018 play out A Diagram of Suburban Chaos - "A Black Day to Freedom" [Not in audio archive] http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/81687

tv music spirit house germany horses suicide phone desire wings cutting signal chaotic forbidden samples david cronenberg explosions hans zimmer get ahead speeding alan watts richard e grant parker posey koln ruth gordon jon brion franka potente adrienne shelly schizopolis bryan adams summer kusf ken it

How to Avoid Email Marketing Mistakes

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 27, 2018 38:19

Multiple streams of income bring more value to your business. One stream of income people often forget about is email marketing. Today's guest Ken Mahar, founder of Email Broadcast, has been in the sales and email marketing arena for many years. Business owners nowadays are quick to find an expert in other media marketing channels, but when it comes to email marketing, they often implement it unprofessionally, ignoring the potential for campaigns to generate income. Ken's company sets about optimizing your email marketing strategies by carefully preparing them months ahead and sticking with them, therefore nurturing that ongoing relationship with the buyer. Email marketing is the dinosaur of digital marketing tactics, yet remains one of the best. Ken has over 18 years of email marketing experience, going back almost to the dawn of the online space. Ken's experience, along with the expertise of his team, helps clients launch and maintain successful email marketing campaigns. Today he's sharing some of the mistakes people make and valuable ways to avoid those mistakes. Episode Highlights: Common mistakes people often commit with their email marketing strategies. What content planning takes place between the firm and a client before starting a campaign. How Ken helps clients bring a lead through the funnel. How often he refines the client's automation processes and tracks the campaign's performance. The importance of segmenting your audience. How personalization is important – to a degree. Tips for learning how to implement the technical side of an email campaign. Why outsourcing the email marketing side of your business can pay off. The importance of grabbing that email address! Why business should always offer something that people want (and not something they don't). Transcription: Joe: Multiple streams of income bring more value, right Mark? Mark: Absolutely. Joe: All right. One stream of income so many people forget about because it's hard, you have to learn things and it seems so old school is email marketing. But I understand you just had Ken from Email Broadcast on the podcast and he talked a lot about the benefits of email marketing. Mark: Yeah. One of the things he started out with in the call which I find to be just really poignant to so many entrepreneurs is we are really quick to hire people that are specialists in Facebook marketing or AdWords or different paid media but when it comes to email marketing a lot of us just say I'll take care of it. And then we make it like this after thought, right? It's kind of out there or is like okay we're going to send out a couple of broadcasts e-mails. In fact, the number of people I talked to that own businesses and we talk about their different marketing mix they tell me oh yeah you know if we would be using our email list that would be a huge opportunity for growth but we just haven't really done that yet. It's staggering the number of people that are doing this. And I think the reason why we are not necessarily using our email lists the way we should is because it's actually kind of tough to do. It's easy to send out a broadcast to our list of potential clients or customers that are signed up for email notifications. But it's really hard to actually sit down and say okay I'm going to segment that list. I'm going to set up automation sequences. I'm going to set up follow up sequences to these people. And I'm actually going to be intelligent about how I'm emailing my list. And so much of us just kind of give it this kind of head nod of like okay we're doing something with our email but it's not really optimized. And Ken from EmailBroadcast.com, that's what his group does entirely. They help people set up an email automation sequence, email broadcast like editorial calendar months in advance so that you're intelligently talking to your customers and your newsletter subscribers in a way that could actually nurture those relationships. One of the tidbits that he gave me which I absolutely loved was this idea of going to a conference. How many of us collect just dozens of contact cards at conferences and then what would we do with those? Maybe we send out an email after … maybe; most of us don't, saying it was nice to meet you but what Ken does is he takes all of those and he drops them into a sequence with his email system. And so we talked a lot about these ways that we can look at email marketing in probably a more sophisticated way than most of us are doing. And if nothing else this is a pitch to saying you have an email list but you probably aren't using it the right way. And so I thought it'd be good to have him on since this is all his firm does to talk about some of the mistakes that they see in how entrepreneurs are running their email lists and what we can do to start to actually implement a few changes today and actually start utilizing that email list more appropriately. Joe: Yeah, I think people that are running their own internet businesses or buying one and wanting to grow it should seriously look at this. You know I've probably done a thousand valuations over the last six years and there are only a few … a tiny little handful, a fraction of a percent of people that focus on that and it makes a difference. Michael Jackness is one of them and he now travels around the country, actually sometimes the world giving presentations on his email marketing campaign that he does for one of his coloring books. It really is something that you can and should do and the customers actually when it's done right they appreciate it. When it's done wrong it's a problem. We are imperfect ourselves in this regard Mark. I think you've sent out some emails in the last few weeks where I get it and it says that it's … it's to me, to joe@quietlightbrokerage and still says it's dangerous, right? So doing it on your own even though it's coming from Quiet Light to a Quiet Light email address stuff like that can still happen so I think doing it on your own is … it's a gamble. So hiring somebody like Ken unless you've got the resources to really study it up and do it is a pretty smart idea. Mark: Yeah I mean just to bring it up into different sections; you have the technical side which is what we were running into. I had to setup the SPF and the DKIM records- Joe: What? Mark: Yeah right. Joe: I'm so glad you do that and not me. Mark: Exactly. So we had to go there but then you look at okay you have an email list but you don't just treat it as one big blob of people that you're talking to. You need to actually set up and start to segment that list. And then how are you actually interacting with these people. These things multiply. So if you segment your list into four segments which isn't that much. And then you would consider okay these four segments are going to get distinct emails and there's going to be an eight email sequence between this four segments. Now you have to write 32 emails in order to get all of these sequences in place. And then you have to measure and go back and do these and continually improve. It's a lot of work and honestly the fact that we're doing a lot of this on our own as entrepreneurs, is it a good idea? Maybe … maybe not; maybe it's the time to hire somebody out but I think if nothing else think about it. Think about what you're doing and how you're using your email list. Are you treating this audience as one big blob of people and sending them all the same message? If so you're leaving a lot of money on the table. Joe: I agree. If you can get a 2 or 3% lift in your discretionary earnings because of email marketing as long as it's a profitable lift; it's important. That adds a lot of value to your company. Jackness I believe you a little 50% of his revenue for his website comes from his email marketing campaign so that's something serious to consider for people that have the right type of product. So let's go to it, let's see what Ken has to say. Mark: Sounds great. Mark: All right Ken thanks so much for having me. This is Ken Mahar. Did I pronounce that right Ken? Ken: Yup. Mark: Awesome. Thanks for joining me. You come from EmailBroadcast.com so this is going to be an episode really focusing on email habits, some of the mistakes people make with email marketing, and we'll also wrap into this episode hopefully things that maybe what you should do from sell side to be able to prepare for selling your business and making sure that that part of the business has good opportunity and is well set up. But let's start out real quick, Ken, if you can provide everyone just a background or a bio on you. Ken: How much time do we have? I'll try to keep it short I guess. I'm Ken Mahar. I'm the founder and CEO of Email Broadcast. I've been running this company for 18 years so back before email marketing was really even a thing was when I got started. I actually have a sales background and I used email marketing for my own sales efforts. I found it to be tremendously helpful and successful. Itched it to some other businesses that I had worked for before, I'm saying you should guys really do this and then they're like we don't know how to do it so I started serving them. So yeah my background in sales is everything from retail to business to business. And then I got into inside sales for a high tech firm, I took over a territory. It was 11 states. We sold direct and through the channel. So I've kind of done everything there is in the sales arena. And the reason that I am still running Email Broadcast is because I found that email marketing is one of the best channels to impact sales. And so I kind of combined my expertise in the sales arena along with delivering email marketing from my entire team. We have the technical aspect; the writer's, the operations and all that stuff and then I do my part on the sales and the strategy part. So I guess that's a quick background on me. Mark: You've had the company for 18 years? Ken: Yeah. Mark: Holy cow man that's ancient in the world of internet businesses. You've seen a lot. Ken: Yeah. In fact I thought about naming my business Constant Contact or they ever existed and I just thought that sounds a little too aggressive so I didn't do that. But Email Broadcast is a pretty good name. Mark: Constant Contact aka we're always going to be in your inbox is really really what we're saying. Ken: Exactly. Mark: All right; pretty cool. You've seen a lot, 18 years is a long time. I've been online for about 20 years myself … actually, 2018; 20 years. I've been online for 20 years. I started my first site back in 1998 so that's a really long time; cool. All right, email marketing; there is a lot that goes on with email marketing and I want to get from you some of the common mistakes that you see people do with email marketing. Everybody knows that you should be doing it. I know here at Quiet Light we recommend pretty heavily that people establish a good list and use this as a channel to acquire more customers. Primarily because out of all the things, all the customer acquisition channels that are available out there email is one of the only ones that you actually own and have the ability to control. Google you can't control. AdWords you can't control. Facebook you can't control. Amazon you definitely can't control. Email you can, so let's sort out some of the common mistakes that you see people make with their email marketing strategies. Ken: Sure. Yeah, I think strategy is a good place to start. I think the big picture that I see people make mistakes around is thinking that email is about them. And what I mean by that is they look at email as just another channel for them to promote and to use their sales messages. When in my mind email is more of a relationship builder and a two way communication channel. And so I see a lot of people these people do a lot of mistakes made … in a strategy where people say okay let's talk about what we want to do in our next sale and our next promotion and us, us, us, us, us, and it just becomes a channel for commercials. And if you think about it email is a media channel. And in media channels you should have content that people are interested and excited to hear; whether it's educational or inspirational or whatever. And then you might have a commercial message every now and then. But if you are only commercials how long would you listen to that radio station? And people treat their email like that. They just promote, promote, promote, and they don't add any value to their audience's lives. So one of the big paradigm shifts that our clients go through is to realize this isn't about you, this is about your audience. What do they want to learn? What are they into? What inspires them and to get them to think in that perspective. So I think that's a pretty big mistake. What else? I think the second biggest strategy mistake I see is that people think that copy writing is email marketing. And they say oh yeah we need to get an email out, we haven't had one for a while. Let's get one out today and let's make it really good. And that's just a terrible, terrible strategy because the chances you'd be coming up with a great idea, creating great, well written, well researched content; actually having something so valuable to your audience that they're willing to forward it to someone … you know one of their friends, getting your … making sure that every single link works, making sure that it's grammatically perfect all like in 24 hours is just a recipe for disaster. So we look at it and go you should be planning this stuff out weeks or months ahead. My team is already done with November and we're scheduling December messages right now. And we've been working on the November stuff for a while already. So planning ahead and having like an overarching strategy is a big mistake that people make. Mark: Let me go back actually to your first point. Mark: Yeah. Mark: We had Mike Jackness on the podcast several episodes ago and he talked a little bit about their email marketing that they do. They see crazy open rates of 30% plus on their stuff and they're emailing their members almost every single day. So it's a pretty heavy and intense email marketing strategy but really the key behind what he's doing really isn't a surprise. And he's trying to offer ridiculous value with every single email so that people look forward to it. And your point about making it all about you, there's a great BuzzSumo article where they analyzed 100 million headlines to see what got shared the most. I love this blog post. I actually go to it once every few months just to revisit some of the concepts in this. But one of the big things that they do there and I found that these headlines is that headlines that get shared, the headlines they get opened, the emails that get opened are the ones that promise something to the user. Who is the person that's actually opening this? Is there a promise in that headline? And when you decide with this headline I'm going to promise something to the user that's a much better reason to open it up. Nobody really cares about your big news for the day all that much but they do care about what they're going to get if they're going to open that email. Ken: Yeah, it's funny when people put on their email marketing hat they're like … they disconnect from their own mind about what do I want in my own inbox, right? Mark: Right. Ken: It's something that I would really appreciate in value and go wow that was really good. And in fact, that's kind of our litmus test where we ask ourselves is this so good that you would forward it to a friend? And if that's a yes then you're probably on the right track. Mark: Right, so you got to start with that value prop, make it into something about the other person and let your subscriber know what are you going to get from this is email. If you take the time to open it if you're going to take the time to click it if there's a link in there you've got to get something in return and you got to make that promise up front. I'm sorry to step all over what you're saying. Ken: No, it's okay, and I think … and this is a really important point. So it's you take a page out of Gary Vaynerchuk's book right? Jab, jab, jab, right hook. Of course you're doing email because you have a strategy in mind and the strategy is you want a return on your investment right? But you need to think about the ratio, and 3:1 is a good ratio. Do you give, give, give between each ask or are you ask, ask, ask, ask, ask and maybe give once in a while, right? Mark: Right. Let's talk about that strategy of you guys just finished November and for a reference, for people that … because this probably won't actually air until maybe first day of November, it's October 25th today. So we're not even done with October. You guys have finished out your planning for your clients all the way through November. When you're planning that out are you looking at sort of like this rhythm to the emails as far as … like you said give, give, give, sell, give, give, give, ask, or is it also kind of moving along with holidays? What sort of planning are you doing on behalf of your customers to plan that far out in advance? Ken: Right. Yeah, so that actually opens up another great strategy idea that I think people blow it on. One of the first things we do when we onboard a client is we come up with … in fact I got a meeting in about an hour on this where we come up with 50 to 100 different content ideas before we even get this campaign started. So we have this giant treasure trove of content ideas. Once we learned about the audience we think we know who they are. We think about what would be important to them. And we come up with a lot of ideas. Some of them are just plain nuts but we document everything; we put it in a document. And so as we work with our clients, the November emails aren't just planned, they're actually planned, executed and already scheduled. So they're in the can just waiting for the days to tick by until they get released. So we actually started working in November last month. So yeah probably another big mistake that people make beyond if like not thinking of content ideas ahead is not planning for email work. And it is weird people will just kind of go oh dude I tried to sneak it in between something else because that is blocking out real time and saying this is an important part of my business, it's a huge channel for me. I've got to schedule time for this and they continuously under estimate how long it takes to write brilliant copy, have a copy edited, come up with great images, get it scheduled, think about how they can enhance it. And it's one of those things that if you put it aside for a second and then you come back to it you have fresh new ideas, a fresh perspective and you can always make it a little bit better. So scheduling that time, getting on a rhythm, and doing it ahead of time is big paradigm shift for a lot of people. Mark: Yeah let me ask you, I don't want to divert too much from kind of the thread we have going here but in the world of email marketing, we have a couple of different concepts as far as when people receive emails. Well if you start off at the very first contact with somebody who just joins your email list they might automatically be put into a campaign where they're going to get different emails at certain times versus your … maybe your entire block of subscribers where you might just be sending out broadcast to those subscribers on a regular basis. I want to ask you a little bit about that. How much emphasis do you like to put on one versus the other? In other words if I come to EmailBroadcast.com and you have a lead magnet there and downloadable resource or something else, how long are you going to put me in a pre-defined process where you're going to lead me through an arc and trying I guess funnel marketing right here but bringing you down that funnel to a certain point versus taking me out of that campaign where I've got this ready written emails that everybody else has received earlier and now I'm in your general kind of flow into your general broadcasts. Ken: Yeah well, I'll speak to exactly what's happening right now on our campaign. So we have a year-long champion going on right now that is a story format. We have some brilliant writers … in fact actual published and award winning authors and so we've tapped that and we've written out a fictional story about a guy who owns an RV lot and has a huge competitor move into town and is trying to figure out how to handle it with his marketing. And so right now when you sign up on our email list we kind of thought of it as kind of a Netflix situation where you binge on episodes until you get caught up. So right now when you sign up you get an email from us once a week until you're caught up and then we do a monthly broadcast. So I'm not sure that completely answers your question but it still kind of depends on when you join but I think we're in episode eight or nine right now. So for seven weeks in a row, you would get the next chapter of the story and then once you're caught up it comes out monthly. Mark: Yeah, that makes sense. So it sounds like again when you're planning out your broadcast schedule here for November and December as you go get into those months you really need to think about the fact the person that's been with you now through that time they've already been through that. In this case a year-long journey, that's pretty significant and they've already had that exposure to your company. And so you're going to write and create that general broadcast strategy with that in mind that these are not people completely new to who you are. Ken: Right and then what we've done is we did have an interruption in the story, like a commercial interruption like the old school radio shows or something. But we had a message on like July that was like hey here are a couple of things you might think about and there were something promotional. There was a blog post. There was a different value ad but it was just kind of a little interruption in the normal sequence. So if you think about it we actually planned … the emails that are going out on November and December we planned last year; last fall when we outlined our storyline and figured out what chapters were going to go when. And so right now we're working on our 2019 campaign which is going to be all different. We've been working on it for a month and a half or so and we're kind of finalizing our strategy around that and so we hit the ground running in January. Mark: Yeah so much of marketing and I don't think really matters what the format is whether it's AdWords or Amazon Ads or email marketing, so much marketing seems to be this idea of measuring, refining, repeating. So you're going back and you're taking a look at what worked, what didn't work, you're testing things against each other. How often is your team if you have a client on board and you've drafted this this kind of initial sequence that people are going to get when they enter into one of the many different funnels that you have set up. How often are you going back and refining that for them? Ken: Well, we look at it monthly. It's part of our process where … it's on our checklist to go and review the automation for instance. So if we've built an onboarding series or a welcome series for a client we look at it monthly and we kind of track the numbers and we start and we look at it. If it's not performing to our expectations then we'll think about tweaking it. And so we'll dig in in the messages and think okay what are people on the activity that we are getting what are people most interested in? Which of these has the best open rate? What clicks are … what things are people clicking on and maybe we should refine the message a little bit. So we look at it once a month. There's a danger at looking at it too much. It's like looking at your stocks every single two hour period, things go up and down and so you want to avoid the small sample bias and look at it over time but we look at it monthly. Mark: Okay. Let's talk a little bit more about some of the mistakes people make. I'm going to throw one in and then you tell me if I'm spot on or if I'm off base here. I would say one mistake that I see is people taking a one size fits all approach to their email list. So everybody gets the exact same emails regardless where they came from. Ken: Yeah and a good example of that is we are on boarding a new client in the cosmetic medicine practice which serves 90% females but we are … and so part of our strategy is that we're going to ask people to identify their gender when they sign up for our email list. And if they do say that they're male we're going to have a completely different first message for them making them feel very welcomed as a man in what is otherwise a woman dominated consumer market. And we think that's going to be a big deal. It's going to grow their practice through male audience without much effort at all. So yeah not segmenting your audiences is … you're right it's another big mistake. People think oh I'm just going to broadcast to everybody. Okay well, there are certain messages that are good for that and that maybe most of the time but really you should be thinking about your email lists thinking about what segments can I target. For instance, another example we have a large furniture retailer in Louisiana, Arkansas in Texas and we came up with this idea that we should target the people who have their private label credit card. And we also identified another sub market of people who are on their … so private label credit card is for people with pretty good credit and then they also have a kind of a buy here pay here market. So we get a different message to each of those segments. It turned out combined they were only 7.8% of the list but in one message to each of them we ended up driving $430,000 in new sales for the weekend for just that one segment. So by targeting a message just specifically to them with a specific offer that was really relevant; that we had huge response. Mark: That personalization is a huge issue right now. I saw one thing that was really cool. It was somebody who is qualifying their email subscribers before they signed up through a quiz. And the quiz was kind of fun and it was actually in the cosmetics field. So it was what's the shape of your face? And it just had cartoon characters. It wasn't offensive or anything like that. What's the shape of your face? What's the tone of your skin? And they went through probably about six, seven questions but then you were able to break out into this really cool like super segmented this is a female with this skin tone with this shape of face with this size of eyes this sort of thing and you can really cater the messaging. And this was more than … they were doing email marketing but also some other recommendations that is super super cool. Ken: Yeah, the danger around that … well, not the danger but the recommendation is don't ask for anything you're not actually going to use. So a couple of things around like I see a blast for last name in their email sign up forms and I think that's like one step too far of getting a little too personal a little too quickly off the bat. And unless you'd actually have a use for somebody's last name why are you asking for it? Even … but also people take that in the wrong direction as they say here sign up for our email list and all they ask for is the email address. Okay well, that's not enough, right? It's like at least get their first name because if you don't you're giving up on a huge personalization opportunity with putting peoples name in the subject line and addressing them by name and actually creating a relationship. When you're saying give me your email address what you're really saying is I'm going to blast you like I do everybody else on my list and I don't really care who you are or anything about you. So there's a check for your listeners if you're only collecting email address you're doing it wrong. Mark: Yeah and I'm going to make a plea here as well, this is turning into my great show here but one of the things I can't stand with email marketers when they're … when I get on a list is the hey buddy buddy sort of approach that comes without me even knowing who you are. Like there's a point where you got one of the so corporate and stiff to the point where it just feels stale and separate. But if you come in and pretend like we went to college together that's equally off putting to me. I want to have somewhere in the middle where I can get to know you a little bit and again kind of test out to see do you have value to offer. But I guess that's where that copywriter comes in, having a copywriter who's done thousands of these emails before. Ken: Yeah, and I would actually say that I would rather somebody do that if that's really their authentic voice and that's really who they are where they want to be buddies with you and if you're not ready for that then fine get the hell off my list. I think that's a better approach than trying to please everybody. You know I'd dig into authenticity around email marketing, it's one of the things that we really drive home with our clients is to say I want people to know who you really are not who you're pretending to be. So if you've only got six people on your team let's celebrate that. You're feisty and small and responsive and adaptive versus trying to pretend like you're some mega-corporation. But yeah everybody's different and you have to realize that. So really you should concentrate on attracting the people that you want to attract. Mark: Yeah. Ken: So if that's important to somebody that they'd be buddies with you and you didn't like that then maybe they did themselves a favor by not winning your business; who knows. Mark: Yeah, absolutely the authenticity is definite. I see sometimes with these people also lack of authenticity trying to win me over by being a little hokey. But if it is authentic to me then well so be it. The rest of the people buy me dinner first. So I want to shift gears really heavily here because I want to get to this before our time is up and I want to talk about the technical side of this. Ken: Yeah. Mark: This is just the hairy issue. There's a lot of systems out there. We use drip marketing at Quiet Light Brokerage. I like the system but we also have an external CRM which means we need to get these two things to talk to each other. What tips would you have for people on that technical side? I know that's really an open ended question but I'm going to have to throw it in your part as far as just the tips of working with the technical side. How much effort should people be putting into that sort of that technical side setup? Ken: Yeah, this will tie back into the strategy question too. One of the most under-utilized aspects of email marketing is the use of automation. When you can define what your sales process is and know where people are falling out of your funnel or use an automation series to take people from not step A to step B but from step D to step E. You know there are all kinds of opportunities to use email to kind of leverage your time. Basically having the platform do what you would do if you had a million hours in the day and all you did was write emails all day. Setting up the platform to do that is important. But you're right that does take some technical integration stuff. So my tips, I would say work with the bigger players in the market is probably a good tip because they've been around for a while. They likely have the integrations for some of the bigger … so if you're trying to choose an email marking platform and a CRM go … I wouldn't go with a guy that's brand new yesterday because he probably doesn't have a very well developed API and it's not a plug and play situation. So if you're trying to save yourself some headaches go with bigger players in the market that have been established that have an API that already potentially connect. Look at the integration possibilities. But I'd also say that it's generally worth it, right? There may be some pain involved in trying to figure it out but don't give up. Get help, hire somebody and figure out how to get those things integrated because it can really make a big difference for you. You mentioned the CRM right? So we've got ours dialed in so I can fill out a single form and it populates both my email marketing to start a drip series but it also sends that exact same data to my CRM to save me from double entry. So yeah integration is the key. There is a lot to integrate; getting your sign up forms cracked on your website, getting the email thing dialed in, connecting your CRM. We're going to be connecting in a medical records system for this latest client that we did and getting an API expert on that and we have that in house so we do not have that problem but it's important. Mark: Yeah, so when we get into the actual set up of these things … I have another company that I own, I know those folks that listen regularly probably know about it but we use a lot of automation on our email side there. And even with that I mean you talked about the multiplying effect here, right? Let's say that what you are going to segment your audience into just three different segments and then you're going to set up automation sequences with a series of 10 emails in each. Well now you're writing out 30 different emails with different email copy and on top of that you have your broadcast emails that are going to go out. And on top that may be some other campaigns and you have to try to make sure that these things don't duplicate where people are receiving multiple emails because they're accidentally subscribed to two different campaigns within our system and then figuring out how to make all the technology work together. So this is the part where I'm going to just make this quick pitch for the stuff that you guys do over at EmailBroadcast.com which is you guys do all of this. You are the full service sort of provider for this email automation of marketing right? Ken: Yeah, I have a team of people and I think that's the key thing because each of my team members is a specialist. So I have an engineer that thinks in bits and bytes. I have copywriters. I have a sales strategist which is me. I have an operations manager to help keep things on track and then an account coordinator. We designated an account coordinator for each account so they truly understand who our client is, what their business is, what their goals are, what they're trying to accomplish, and can really feel like a member of their team. So in effect, we are an email marketing department. Imagine a Fortune500 firm that had an entire department to handle email marketing. Well, we are that but for much smaller businesses who can get us for the cost of a part time employee. So yeah we handle everything from strategy to the copy writing, to the design, to the engineering, the mobile optimization, integrating it with the CRM, integrating it with medical record systems, setting up all the automation. Making sure things aren't overlapping and you have people getting multiple stuff and somebody looking at it; somebody thinking about your campaign a month in advance. Thinking about the seasonal stuff like Q4 for us is heavy so we've been thinking about Q4 since July about how we're going to get ready, which of our clients are going to want to do extra messages. That's the value we add. We're the people that you wish you had an entire department … and I think this is a different … I think this is an important point because some people go okay great this email something I'm going to outsource and I'm going to look for that one guy. Well, I've been doing this for 18 years and I'm not even that one guy. I'm not … I can't be the best copywriter, the greatest sales strategist, the engineer to integrate everything, the operations manager to get it all done. I mean maybe that person is out there but you're certainly not going to get them for a song. And so I think dividing the labor … you know divide and conquer and having each person in a team that's used to working together is a great solution. And a lot of people don't realize that this kind of solution is out there. They think that email marketing is something they have to do on their own even though they struggle. They've written the messages a bit inconsistent, the branding is not where they like it, they're doing stuff last minute, they know they're abusing their audience's trust, they have low engagement, they're like hell and they know there weren't any other options. So we are out there. Mark: Yeah, fantastic. Regardless of whether or not somebody is going to use an outsource solution like what you guys offer which would be like an outsourced email department as you said it is something that I think people need to really pay attention to that aspect of the business. And you're right, I look at a lot of businesses … I look at the health of a lot of businesses and see where they're putting their time and efforts. And sometimes I see this really just beautifully built out Facebook campaigns, this really beautifully optimized Ad-words accounts, but it's only been on a rare occasion where I see that applied in the email world. And when I do see it applied though it tends to be sort of a cash machine, right? All these other customer acquisition strategies are able to just funnel in there. And once they funnel in there those people are in because the systems are set up and ready to go. It does take time to plan. It does take time to refine. It does take time to go back there but this can be one of the biggest customer acquisition channels for pretty much any business that's out there. So I think the work that you guys are doing is awesome. I love some of the tips that you had in there. I know that there are a lot more tips that we didn't cover. I mean on one of our conversations you talked about hey what are you doing with the conference cards that you get? Do you actually follow up with them and is it just kind of one quick follow up or do you drop them into a sequence of some sort where they end up getting a series of emails; that's brilliant. There you go, look at that you- Ken: I just attended a conference so I'm holding up a fan of contacts that I have and I … you know we walk or talk. I put these people into a segment in our email list and we've already emailed them twice which is more than anybody else who went to that conference has done. We have a third message already scheduled so yeah that and we advise people about their offline activities. Like we have customers … I had this customer one time, he literally interrupted my … our phone call to take a call. I only heard his part of the conversation. He sat there for five minutes helping this person out, they sell this rooftop tent deals and I'm like how many conversations like that do you have a day and he's like I don't know 15, 20. I go how many people are you getting emails from? Zero. I'm like wow okay huge opportunity for you. Ask for their email address after you just spent five minutes helping somebody. They're going to give it to you. Put them on your list and now you've got a chance to market to them and then they'll buy a tent. So yeah there's a lot to email marketing and I hope your audience takes it to heart and really goes after it and figures out how can I add value? How can I make this amazing? And don't worry about the immediate payoff. Trust me it'll it will pay off in the end. What can I offer people that come to my website to actually get on my email list? If you're saying sign up for my email okay you need to rethink that. What value is there? People don't know what your email is. They probably haven't defined how often it goes out. They don't know what they're going to get in return and so sign up for our newsletter you know who wants to do that? But if you can give me the top five tips in selling my business in the next year oh okay yeah that's why I came to your website, that's what I want to know about. So that's the kind of thing you need to offer. Mark: Awesome so if people have questions about this or just want to bounce ideas off with you how can they reach you? Ken: Yeah, ken@emailbroadcast.com the phone number is 805-316-3201. And if you want a little branding tip or just have some fun call that number just to listen to our auto-responder. It's pretty funny that we put together. You could go to our website at EmailBroadcast.com and on there there's a pretty easy to find that you can schedule a 20 minute call with me free of charge just to be asked about your email. I can give you a couple of ideas, find out if … work out something that might be right for you but kind of get your head in the right direction. So hopefully that helps. Mark: Yeah absolutely. I'm actually going to call that number because that's a pretty good tease to get them to call the number. Well put links to that on the show notes page so feel free to go to the show notes page and you'll be able to see those links as well as contact information for you Ken. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Ken: Thank you, Mark, it's been a pleasure and I hope everybody here is reinvigorated to do great email marketing. That's why I exist in the world, to get people to up their game around email marketing. Good luck. Links and Resources: Email Ken Mahar Email Broadcast Website Call Email broadcast @ 805.316.3201

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Back In The Light (Show #597) | Download full MP3 from Jun 20, 2018

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2018 118:08

Bloc Party - "The Pioneers (M83 Remix)" Ween - "The Mollusk" [Loop] Ken - "We're here now" Live phone caller - "Introducing, from The Bronx" Generationals - "Avery" [Loops] Gary Oldman - "Bring me everyone. Everyone!" - Leon: The Professional movie Anois - "A Noise" War On Drugs - "You Don't Have to Go" [Loops] Beach Fossils - "This Year" [Loops] - "If You Believe in Yourself (I feel happy of myself)" [You will get the hang of it, I know it! (I feel, I feel, I feel...)] Derek Sivers - "Obvious to you, amazing to others" Lara Flynn-Boyle - "It's like I'm having the most beautiful dream, and the most terrible nightmare, all at once" - Twin Peaks Jack Kornfield - "Meditations, part 12" - Your Buddha Nature Dan Seals - "Three Time Loser" [Loops] Orson Welles - "There is no wisdom in compromise" [I cannot compromise. My pictures don't work at all unless they work my way. They simply fall apart unless they're done my way.] Ricky Gervais - "More people hate it than love it. Luckily, you don't need everyone on the planet to like it" [You do it for you and like-minded people] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Ken's "Limits (taking care)" monologue" - Show #586, from 5/15/18 [With other bits, like Latter-Day Saints, background loops, Liz Phair Shatter] Live phone caller - "Hangs up, busy tone" Ken - "It all belongs to you and everyone" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Ken's "Limits (taking care)" monologue" - Show #586, from 5/15/18 [You may not get what you want, but it's OK to ask] Liz Phair - "Shatter" [Loops] Live phone caller & Ken - "Interruptions. How do we accept that it's all part of the same thing? Talk without thinking." [A word you haven't thought of yet. Look without knowing.] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Ken's "Limits (taking care)" monologue" - Show #586, from 5/15/18 [Take turns not giving the thing that's asked for] James Spader - "I wanna thank you with all sincerity, I've been sleepwalking my whole life and you've woken me up, and I feel alive now" - Dream Lover - "I feel happy of myself" Live phone caller (Rich) - "Have you ever had a dream?" Liz Phair - "Shatter" [Loops] Ken - "You don't have to know what it is" Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Ken's "Limits (taking care)" monologue" - Show #586, from 5/15/18 [The door] Walter Murch - "You must defend your dreams, they're your most prized possession" Lara Flynn-Boyle - "I know I should be sad, it's like I'm having the most beautiful dream and the most terrible nightmare all at once" - Twin Peaks Jane Seymour - "The man of my dreams is almost faded now" - Somewhere in Time movie [Time travel romance] Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer - "They don't hang a man for that" - Gaslight [There were times when I thought I'd only dreamed those days.] William Hurt, Albert Brooks - "What do you do when your real life exceeds your dreams? (Keep it to yourself)" - Broadcast News movie Rossano Brazzi - "I am a man, and you are a woman. You are like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat. No, you say, I want beefsteak. You are hungry. Eat the ravioli" - Summertime Adrien Brody - "How are you to imagine anything, if the images are always provided for you" - Detachment movie Genevieve Bujold - "Imagine whatever you say has impact. You can't just listen to me. I'm just a clown!" - Choose Me [Dir. Alan Rudolph] Tycho - "Awake" [Loops] Georges Delerue - "Le Grand choral" Ken - "You felt inspired. It all worked. Was it witnessed, could you capture it? How do you make any decisions? You mutate and fit your life into sections." Liz Phair - "Shatter" [Loops, more of song] Dan Seals - "Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold)" [Intro looping, then whole song] Spoon - "Can I Sit" [Loop pitch shifting, with Dan Seals] Dan Seals - "Three Time Loser" [Loops] Steely Dan - "Midnite Cruiser" [Loops] David Weinstein - "The great wall of Kenzo" Beach Fossils - "This Year" [Loops] Walter Murch - "You get things you'd be unlikely to get if you'd set them up intentionally (Li)" [You can't predict when it's going to happen. The price you pay for it is a lot of material] - "Dare to Live Without Limits" [Brief] Walter Murch - "Tapestry of mono and stereo, shifts in environment" Radiohead - "Exit Music (for a film)" [Loops] Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "I'm going to put these earplugs in right now" - Limits (taking care) [I am not available right now] Radiohead - "Exit Music (for a film)" [Backwards loops] [Monsters coming from above and below] Ken - "You can't be wrong about yourself" - Show #586, from 5/15/18 Tycho - "Awake" [Loops] Robert Redford - "Are there any questions? Any comments? Suggestions? I'd be happy to respond to anything that's on your mind" - The Candidate movie Patrick McGoohan - "It means what it is" - The Prisoner Melvyn Douglas - "There's so much left to do" - Being There David Cronenberg - "Forbidden images coming to you from a distant place that had great resonance for you" - The Directors: The Films of David Cronenberg (1x10) Hal Hartley - "You work and you work, and you make sacrifices. They don't let you do what it is that you're good at" - Ambition Walter Murch - "The power of sound" Walter Murch - "Make an alloy out of two metals that normally don't go together" Ween - "The Mollusk" [Loop] Generationals - "When They Fight, They Fight" [Loops] Hal Hartley - "No one told me, it wasn't my fault" - Ambition Live phone caller - "Guitar" Ken and live stream feedback - "You're still here" george - "Le Grand choral" Alexandre Desplat - "Mr. Fox in the Fields" - Fantastic Mr. Fox OST Alexandre Desplat - "Prologue Scene" - Birth s.t. Hal Hartley - "You know I would. How can you say that? It won't happen again, I promise. I did everything right. I didn't do exactly what you told me to..." - Ambition [I did what I could, and I did everything right.] Justin Hurwitz - "Mia & Sebastian's Theme" - La La Land s.t. Aimee Mann - "Wise Up" - Magnolia s.t. [Loops] Hal Hartley - "No matter what I achieve, I always have this irritating sensation of emptiness and futility. I want the image I have of myself and myself to become one." - Ambition [I want to change people's minds.] Aimee Mann - "Wise Up" - Magnolia s.t. [Loops, layers] Ken - "Everybody waited for everybody else. All will sparkle if you come out" [Some of the sparkles will be spikey, but they will shine.] Console with Der Dritte Raum - "Upon (Der Dritte Raum Trance Mix)" [Layers] fujitsu - "Azure" dj BC - "Nothing In Its Right Place (Roots, Radiohead)" Moby - "Grace" Ken and live stream feedback - "I guess that's it. I don't know how to make it stop" https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/79766

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Back In The Light (Show #597) | Download full MP3 from Jun 20, 2018

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2018 118:08

time live talk monsters eat dare limits war on drugs backwards console legrand azure david cronenberg hangs loops latter day saints william hurt ingrid bergman light show ken you ken it

The Exciting World of Lawyers and Accountants

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 19, 2018 48:59

In this episode of Building Infinite Red, Jamon, Ken, and Todd touch on the exciting world of lawyers, accountants and bookkeepers, as well as a variety of finance-related topics such as cash flow and different types of accounting. Be sure to listen to the end of the episode as Jamon shares the vision for Season 2 of Building Infinite Red. Show Links & Resources YNAB – You Need A Budget Saturday Night Live Highlight: First CityWide Change Bank Episode Transcript TODD WERTH: Hello, everyone. Today we were talking about which topic to talk about, and we had the idea, how can we come up with a topic that's extremely boring, that no one wants to talk about, but actually is super important? So, we're going to talk about lawyers, accountants, bookkeepers, finance, and other things. Basically, how to start a business and still feed your family. Let's start off with you, Ken. If I were starting in business and you and I are sitting in the airport and I knew you had started one and I asked, "Hey, Ken. What should I worry about first off when I'm starting a business?" What would you say? KEN MILLER: I would tell you to go find a good accountant and a good lawyer right away. You don't need to pay them to set up the business for you. You can do that yourself or you can use a service like LegalZoom or something like that. But you need to have somebody who is familiar with the kind of business that you're planning to do. We have a great lawyer who happens to specialize in digital agencies. I've got an accountant that I've personally worked with for many, many years. It's not the cheapest, like you want your accountant to be good. A bookkeeper is sort of a different matter since your accountant is not doing your day to day books, and you don't necessarily need a bookkeeper right away because you're probably not going to have a lot of transactions right away. To be honest, I found it was helpful for me to just do it personally for a little period because then I understood what was going on better. JAMON HOLMGREN: Ken, what's the difference for those who may not know between an accountant and a bookkeeper? KEN: Well, I'm told bookkeeper is a little bit old fashioned, but it's still very descriptive. Your accountant, aka your CPA, your Certified Public Accountant, that is someone who will do your state and federal and maybe even international taxes for you. They may or may not have people who will keep your books and stuff. Now, bookkeepers, they're the ones who will record transactions coming in and going out basically, so that your books are an accurate reflection of what's happening in your business. Todd, do you want to interject? TODD: Yeah, just real quick. Sorry to be pedantic, but my wife's an accountant. Bookkeepers often are not accountants. Some of them are just people who started doing books at their company and continue to do it. When you get to accountants, you have two types of accountants: One is CPA, which is a tax accountant; and then there are other accountants who specialize in corporate stuff, like my wife. She went to college for it and is highly trained. KEN: That's the kind I recommend you get, is the kind of who is trained in accounting practices. JAMON: First of all, what's the more modern term for a bookkeeper? Is there? KEN: I think Heather liked the term, what was it? Financial assistant, something like that? JAMON: Okay. TODD: I think that's what she said. Heather is my wife, by the way. JAMON: And then secondly, what does an accountant give you that a financial assistant does not? KEN: Well, A, They are literally certified by the state. And B, They have experience in tax law. JAMON: CPA does, but they're more corporate accountant. They're going to bring more like ... It's my understanding that they can bring more strategic ... KEN: Yeah, they can be more strategic help, they can help you design your practices for paying people, for collecting money, because there's just a lot of i's and t's that need to be dotted and crossed. JAMON: Yeah, that makes sense. TODD: Yeah, not to keep on interrupting about accounting. Sorry, my wife's an accountant. JAMON: We're gonna play a little game. How many times will Todd mention that his wife is an accountant? TODD: All CPAs are accountants. Not all accountants are CPAs. My wife has absolutely no interest in being a CPA, she never did, it had nothing to do with her job. However, if you need ... One of the things she specializes in is international accounting. So, a bookkeeper is someone who enters data, basically. They're gonna get bills in from the outside via mail, they're gonna enter those into the bookkeeping system, or the accounting system, they're gonna pay invoices, whatever. They're a clerk. An accountant is more like a programmer. They investigate where things went wrong, they figure out the best ways to do things. If you have a half million dollars in pounds in the UK, and you need to transfer in the US as US dollars, how do you go about that? There's very different ways. Some are very expensive, some are not. So, that's ... An accountant spends a lot of time doing strategic-type accounting stuff, as opposed to data entry, which is more what your bookkeeper does. JAMON: Yeah, so when I started ClearSight back in 2005, one of my early employees, his dad was a controller, which is like kind of an accountant, but it's specifically to a- TODD: That's really interesting, Jamon. Did you know my wife was an accountant? JAMON: I did not know that, Todd. I hope you remind me again. A controller is basically, it's a type of accountant that's kind of high up in a company and focused on ... Basically, in charge of the company's finances, and ... So, he was a controller and I went to lunch with him and I asked him for advice. And the first question he asked me, this was kind of interesting because I did not expect this, he said, "How's your accounts receivable?" And I was like, "Uh ... I know what that is, but what do you mean by 'how is it'?" And he kind of helped me think through my terms, like how long until the payment was due, and was I taking money upfront? Which I wasn't, weirdly, I wasn't taking money upfront. I was just doing the work and hoping I'd get paid. TODD: Hoping is the key term. JAMON: Hoping, yeah. And more than once I didn't get paid. And that sucked, especially when I wasn't getting paid very much. KEN: That's definitely one of the harder things to learn when you start doing this, is if you've only ever worked at a company, you don't realize how much effort goes into just getting people to actually pay you, right? 99% of the time it isn't out of any malice, it's not people trying to mess with you, it's just their processes are also run by humans. Maybe they're a small company, maybe they're a big company and something got lost, or things didn't get signed off correctly, right? There's just a million little things that have to be kept track of. And so, whoever is doing your day to day accounting, be nice to them. TODD: Yes. KEN: Be nice to them because you really need to trust them to be on top of what they're doing. TODD: You do not want to piss off an accountant if you value eating, for sure. Cause they won't do anything wrong, but they will sure drag their feet on your particular account. One other things I wanted to add, especially with larger companies or companies that have accounting departments, accounting is never personal, okay? And Ken said they probably don't want to mess with you. They may not want to mess with you, but they may actually have a policy not to pay their vendors, which seems absurd but it's true. So, in other words, if you're sitting in an executive meeting at a company that has 5,000 people, and your cash-flow ... you need some cash or whatever. The directive to the accounting department could be, "Only pay the vendors with the highest interest, the top 25% of them. Do not pay anyone else." And so, it's not ... they're not trying to get to you, it's just business. KEN: I think it's also very tempting when you're ... If you're a creative person and you're getting into business and you wanna be able to be a partner to your clients, and that's all very laudable and we wanna do that and we strive to do that. But at the end of the day, when you're negotiating a contract, you have to take it seriously. You have to take what it says seriously because there may come a situation where it's no longer you and the friendly person you're talking to, it's just you and the contract and someone unfriendly. Or you and the contract and someone not unfriendly, but as Todd says they're just ... implementing a policy. It's a lot harder to do something about it than possible which ... It really highlights how important the relationship is, as well. So, you need to have a good contract that actually reflects what you and your counter-party actually mean. And you have to keep that relationship good all the way through. JAMON: Absolutely. We had a client a while back that wanted to use their own contract, which is not uncommon. I mean, we have our own kind of Master Services Agreement that we'll send over, but in this case they had their own, they wanted to send it over. And this sort of brings it back to having a good lawyer, because in this case, something fell through the cracks and we signed it without sending it over to our lawyer. And this was a big mistake because- TODD: Big mistake. KEN: Big mistake. Did we mention it was a very big mistake? TODD: My wife, who's an accountant, by the way, said it was a huge mistake. JAMON: Oh, she is? Oh, that's interesting. But what happened was the project started off really well, and it went very well through the first month. And then, abruptly, we don't know what happened because the whole way through the client was telling us we were doing good work. Even after things went weird, he was telling us that we were doing good work, which really didn't make sense. But he wanted out of this contract, or he wanted to hold our feet to the fire. And we realized, and we sent our contract over to our lawyer, and Ken ... Wasn't his response something like- KEN: He said it was the most punitive contract he'd ever seen. JAMON: And he said that it was designed to be used as a weapon. TODD: Yes. That's what he said. JAMON: Which was not a great place to be in after we had already signed this thing. TODD: Against us, by the way. Not for us. KEN: Yeah. JAMON: So, luckily this particular client ended up taking a route ... It wasn't an easy route, but he took a route out of our contract that let us off the hook, essentially, with some work from Ken. So, thanks Ken. But we made it through that one, but not everybody would. That could be a really big problem. So, having a good attorney, which we did, and actually using him, which we did not, is really important when you're putting these contracts together that you're talking about. And then, of course, there's a certain amount of teeth to it, so they will pay you. KEN: We designed our standard contract to be, we think, really, very fair. JAMON: I think so, yeah. KEN: And so, if a client wants to use their own contract, we now ... It always goes to the lawyer. It doesn't matter what it costs. And he's very reasonable with how he charges for that- TODD: Sorry to interrupt. That's a good rule. If you don't feel that it's worth paying your lawyer the $300 an hour, or whatever your lawyer costs, it goes up from there, trust me, because this project isn't big enough, then don't take the project. And that sounds harsh, but if you can't pay your lawyer to look at the contract, then don't sign the contract. It's not worth it to you. KEN: If it's a small project, we don't accept- JAMON: Yeah, and that's why we have a standard contract, because the lawyer drafted it. And so, we can send it over and we don't have to pay him every time. Of course, it costs more to have him draft it, but then if they sign it then we know that we're good to go. But if they want their own contract, you need to have it reviewed by your attorney. And if you don't know of an attorney, you can ask around on social media and stuff, you can generally get some recommendations. TODD: One thing I do wanna say, though. And this is often somewhat shocking to people who have never ran a business, who worked for other people or other corporations throughout their career. The world for you as a business owner, is very different than the world for you as an employee. If your employer doesn't pay you, you can go to the labor board, and the government will come in and they will sue that company and they'll get that money for you. Because of that, your employer's gonna pay you. KEN: And your wages are legally privileged. So, if they're in bankruptcy, you get your money, not necessarily the very first, but it's a very high priority. It's a very high priority debt. TODD: Correct. If you have a personal contract with ... between two people or between two companies, or between you and a company, there are no such protections whatsoever. You will get paid if the person who's paying you wants to pay you. If they don't pay you, there's no government agency you're going to go to who's gonna help you- KEN: Well, there's the courts. JAMON: The court, basically. TODD: ... other than the courts. And if you're talking about a $10,000 bill that they owe you, you are not going to court for that. You can try to go small claims court, that kind of thing. But the reality is you're not going to go to court for that. And people know this. And there's a lot of people ... And you're like, "Well, you know, I did this contract with Bob, and Bob's wonderful. I mean, I love Bob. He spends his time saving orphan kittens on the weekends." That's great, but Bob's company was just bought by Joe, and Joe is a complete jerk. And Joe now has all your contracts. And Joe used to be a lawyer, bless his heart. And Joe knows that you're not gonna do anything when he doesn't pay your $10,000, so he just refuses to pay you. JAMON: By the way, this is not a hypothetical, this happened to me. TODD: And so, we changed the names, obviously. But Joe does that, and there's really nothing you're gonna do and you're just gonna lose that $10,000. You can try to do collections and irritate them into paying you. But here's the raw fact, if they need you for something they will pay you. Meaning if you still have work to do, they will pay you because they need you. Be very weary of the end of a working engagement when they no longer need you. KEN: This is not to say that everybody is like this. There's plenty of extremely honorable- TODD: Like Bob, Bob's one of them. KEN: ... companies out there. Yes, there's many, many, many great, wonderful, honorable clients who pay what they owe, and they would never screw you. TODD: Correct. KEN: But there's more people out there who, like I said, not necessarily even out of malice, sometimes just out of laziness, kind of don't get around to it. TODD: Another example is if you get a contract where you take liability for stuff that you really have no control over. So, you're like, "Well, Bob's not gonna sue me. Bob's a great guy. He has the same values as I do." But Bob gets successful and Google comes and buys Bob, trust me. Google's lawyers will sue you. If they can, they will. It's not personal, it's just business. JAMON: Beyond accounts receivable, which is obviously a big topic ... And by the way, get as much money upfront as you can. That's a very straightforward way to fix some of this stuff. But beyond that, accountants can also give you a really great insight into the engine of your business. So, they're sort of like your oil pressure. They're your check engine light. And they will give you information that allows you to make decisions, business decisions, going forward. So, an example of this is how much are we gonna pay our employees for bonuses? We need to know what we can afford and what's budgeted for that. Other examples are could we go out and maybe acquire a small business? Or can we invest a bunch of money into R&D? These are all things that we've actually looked at within Infinite Red over the past three years. And we needed to have good information from our bookkeepers and our accountants. And we haven't had always that. That has actually been one of the stumbling blocks that we've run into with Infinite Red, is that we've run into situations where we've been fed what turned out to be inaccurate information. And we've made decisions based on that, and it's caused the engine to run more roughly. KEN: Suffice to say, you really need it to be accurate. So, one of the things that we've done to help make that be the case is that we have our CPA, our tax accountant, and our bookkeepers are totally different, so that we at least have two competent people looking at it periodically. It's not a perfect safeguard by any stretch of the imagination, but it does help a little bit. JAMON: And it's tempting to have one company do both, right? KEN: It is tempting. And I would argue you should not do that. JAMON: Always keep them separate. TODD: Yeah, I would say at the beginning, you do your bookkeeping and then let your CPA do the taxes. And we get to a point where ... For instance, this is the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant. If you're setting up your books and you're setting up your own chart of accounts, and that kind of stuff, a bookkeeper will just do it. They'll do what you say. Put this in here. Do this, do that. An accountant will say, "Okay. You see how you set up your accounts here? Later, when you get audited ..." And then you're like, "Why would we get audited, what does that even mean?" Well if you need a big loan, the banks are gonna require an audit your finances. Obviously that's the audit on the tax side, but that's your tax accountant. And so, what she'll do is she'll say, "Look, I've been through many audits, this is what they're going to look for. You should set it up this way so that that audit goes smoothly so that loan you need ... Say you get a big new client and you need $250,000 to service that client, and you're gonna make millions? Delaying that loan by a week or two could be disastrous." So, that's the difference between an accountant and a bookkeeper. They know what they know, and they know what's possibly gonna happen. JAMON: Yeah. Banks are a whole other aspect about this that we could talk about. One of the things about banks is that they are generally very slow. You're just one file on their desk. They're not particularly invested in making sure you succeed. And it can really trip you up. Like if you need that loan ... We've been in a situation where we said, "Hey, we wanna borrow some money for a particular thing." And it took ... I think ... I don't remember the timeline, but it was months longer than I expected. Like it was a lot longer. KEN: It took forever. JAMON: Yes. And it felt like most of the issue was on the bank side. Now, being prepared for that, as Todd said, is really important. KEN: In that particular case, there was something that didn't get filed correctly two years ago with the ... I mean, it's ... JAMON: So, another aspect of this, and we can touch a little bit on another property of our business, and that is remote work, is the- TODD: Oh God, banks and remote work. JAMON: Banks, as well as government agencies ... Ken, you've had to set up I don't know how many states now for Infinite Red employees. KEN: Seven, and I need to set up an eighth. JAMON: Yeah. So, this is a whole aspect of kind of the boring ... We're talking about the boring parts of business. But if you're starting a remote work company and you're hiring people from all over, you need to keep this in mind that you're gonna have to set up, what's it called? Nexus? If you have nexus, you have to set up the state ... KEN: Yeah. And having an employee- TODD: What is nexus, by the way? KEN: Nexus just means that you legally exist in a location. And typically the place where you have nexus or not have nexus, as a US company, is in individual states. So, if you have ordered something online and you live in a sales tax state, but they didn't charge you sales tax, the reason they didn't have to do that is because they don't have nexus in your state. So, famously Amazon, for a long time, didn't have nexus in California, or at least they argued that they didn't. And so, Californians didn't have to pay sales tax when they ... I mean, nominally they were supposed to be paying it to the state, but Amazon didn't have to collect it for them. So, that's nexus, and it applies to all kinds of tax, not just sales tax. So, for example, basically everywhere we have an employee, we have to pay taxes. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: This is one of the less glamorous, less wonderful parts about remote work, to be honest. JAMON: There are PEOs or POEs ... KEN: PEOs. JAMON: PEOs, and those will ... They're basically companies that have all this stuff figured out already and you hire your employees through them. KEN: Yes. I believe there's some issues with that. If I were doing this over again, I probably would go with a PEO to avoid a lot of that stuff. JAMON: They're expensive, but they kind of ... They make it ... It's sort of like, in a software engineering world, using Heroku, which kind of spins it all up for you, versus setting up individual Amazon AWS servers. TODD: The other problem with banking, especially with governments in general, is their complete ignorance of the laws about things like signatures. So, I think this is a funny story. So, Ken sent over something that needed to be signed. And I have a bunch of digital signatures of mine that I apply to PDFs. Which is my real signature, and it's perfectly legal, as my wife, who's an accountant, would say. She actually worked for a company that did digital signatures- JAMON: You said your wife's an account? TODD: Yeah, my wife Heather is an accountant. I don't know if I mentioned that. But the signature's legal. So, I legally signed the document Ken sent, and Jamon legally signed it. And they're like, "Well, we can't accept this. We can accept a fax." Okay, so a fax. So, I'm going to go back to 1995 where my fax machine is, and I'm gonna fax it over. "So, okay can't do a fax cause you don't live in that decade. But it can be digital, right? But it can't be digital, it can be a picture of my signature, right?" So, you take the PDF you just signed digitally, you print it out, then you take your camera out and you take a picture of the digital signature you put on the PDF. And then you send them the picture, and then that's fine. It's this kind of ... In some cases we had to have things overnighted between the three of us to sign things. In some cases, we had to go in to the local Chase branch or Bank of America branch or wherever and sign it. And none of this is required by law, at all by the way- JAMON: It's just their corporate policies. TODD: They probably have pneumatic tubes in their offices where they send things to each other. It's crazy. I literally took a picture of ... I made it quite obvious I took a picture of it, too, just to be a jerk. JAMON: So, another aspect of finances is budgeting. So, one of the things I did was I ran a budget with my business, was very happy to hand it off to Ken once we merged. That was one of my favorite parts in the merger. But it was really, really important. So, I did it on just a straight up cash basis. So, money would come in, and I would use a program called youneedabudget.com to enter these transactions, whether they were in-flow or out-flow. And then they have this zero-based budgeting system that lets you allocate money for this and that. It's really good because then you know if you had a couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank, and you needed a certain amount of money for payroll, or you needed a certain amount of money to pay your SaaS products, like your GitHub bill, things like that, you know that you had the money or not in the bank. And it gave you really kind of granular data there. It's not quite the same as using QuickBooks. QuickBooks has a useless budgeting feature. I've looked at it. It's just not ... It's sort of like, "Hey, let's plan out the next year." Which you hardly even know what the next month is gonna be like. But having some sort of zero-based budgeting system is quite useful, I think, especially at first. KEN: Can you explain what zero-based means? JAMON: So, essentially, a zero-based budget is where you start with the amount of money that you have, generally, in the bank, and you take that money and you start moving down the line of categories, allocating bits and pieces, subtracting it from that total until you get to zero. So, such and such for payroll, and such and such for your credit card payment, and such and such for your SaaS products. And maybe you need some for team dinners and travel. And you're just moving down. And eventually, the money runs out, right? You hit zero. Or you run out of categories, and you're like, "Okay, I've got money left over and I'm gonna put this into a kind of slush fund or something that just kind of like keeps it for a rainy day." TODD: Isn't slush funds illegal? We should probably just use a different term. JAMON: Okay, maybe I used the wrong word there. Did I use the wrong word? Sorry. A rainy day fund. TODD: Ken would know. JAMON: An emergency fund. And then eventually, you could even bring that money home if you're the owner. But that's what zero-based is. You always get to zero, and you don't go any further than zero because there's no more money. If you don't get to zero, then that means there's money just kind of hanging out not- KEN: Yeah. So, the amount of cash you have determines how far into the future you can budget, basically. JAMON: Exactly. Yes, that's right. So, when you're starting up, it's really important because you don't actually know what kind of expenses are gonna be coming in. You just can't really predict that. So, doing budgeting gives you that insight into where is your money going. You have to allocate for it, and then you enter it into the system. Once you've got a pretty good rhythm going, it's less necessary because you know where the money's going and you can keep an eye on sort of more macro numbers that will give you ideas of health. I would definitely recommend it for probably the first ... I would say, probably the first three years. KEN: And to be clear, it's not a substitute for real books. But I did find it very helpful in just thinking about how money moves around. JAMON: It's also a little bit inadequate in that it is cash basis. And while cash flow is king, and we need to talk about that, Ken, there's also accounts receivable and accounts payable that will affect the money going in and out. TODD: Yeah, there's something called cash basis accounting. KEN: Yeah. Talk about it just a little bit, which is if you're starting up a business you should be cash basis. Like almost full stop, unless you're doing a hardware startup, right? If you're doing something which has a ton of physical inventory, then you might not want to, but frankly if that's true, I mean you need to be talking to a professional, already. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: The other one's called accrual basis. KEN: Accrual, yeah. So, cash basically is very simple. It's like money coming in, money going out. Period. TODD: It's what you would do at home. KEN: Exactly. It's what you would do at home. It's what you probably think accounting is already like. Accrual is like as soon as we have agreed to pay something, then it immediately goes out- JAMON: And as soon as someone agrees to pay us, then it immediately comes in. KEN: Fancy ways of accounting for inventory, and I personally don't actually understand it very well, so that's about all I can say about it. JAMON: It's useful because it gives a more accurate model of where your business actually is, versus cash which can lag or be ahead of itself. But cash is so much simpler that it's definitely worth doing for a while. TODD: Not to turn this podcast into a company meeting, but Heather actually said we probably should consider going to accrual. KEN: Yeah, well we're large enough now that- JAMON: Wait, Todd. How would Heather know to do that? TODD: Oh, Heather, my wife, she's actually an accountant. JAMON: Oh, okay. Okay. That's helpful. KEN: She's been helping us with our books lately. Anyway. So- TODD: Joke never gets old. Never gets old. JAMON: We gotta liven this up somehow. I mean, it's about accounting and lawyers. TODD: And she's gonna listen to this podcast and today's our anniversary, so this is a special "I love you" to my wife. JAMON: Oh, yeah. Well, happy anniversary Todd and Heather, the accountant. TODD: Twelve years. KEN: Of accounting. TODD: Of marriage. KEN: Oh, I see. Okay. I know this has been a very dry podcast, and I apologize but I tell you what. If you guys are thinking about doing this, if maybe you're already doing this and you're feeling the pain already, this stuff is absolutely vitally important- JAMON: It really is. KEN: ... to what you're taking on. JAMON: If you have a solid basis, if you've got some professionals working with you, it gives you so much more confidence and the ability to sleep at night if you know where things stand and what you need to do. KEN: Yeah. TODD: And here's the truth. Many of you are just gonna ignore us. Cause I heard this, too. KEN: Yeah, I know what you mean. JAMON: I did, too. TODD: It's like, "Okay, yeah. Sure. That sounds like the right thing to do. I should do that, but I'm not going to because ... " for whatever reason. And then you learn and suffer like we have, and you eventually do a podcast where you tell others about it, and they ignore you. KEN: You whistle into the wind. TODD: And the perpetual cycle of business stupidity continues. KEN: So, I'm gonna talk about cash flow last. JAMON: Oh yeah, please. TODD: Make it impassioned, Ken. We want some fire here. KEN: So, I remember my very first job that the controller ... So, the controller is sort of the chief internal accountant. Not the CFO, but the kind of hands on- JAMON: Sometimes it's called the comptroller for some reason. KEN: I think that's a British thing. JAMON: That's a British thing? TODD: In government call them comptrollers. KEN: So, they're the ones who would be doing this at a typical company. So, I remember he had a little sign on his desk that said, "Happiness is positive cash flow." And I remember a client saying, "Cash is king." And I remember hearing these things, but I didn't have anywhere to file them. I didn't understand what that meant, right? And I really understand it now. I really understand it now. Where it's basically, cash flow, it's very simple. It's literally the flow of actual money in and out of your business. So, the money you pay out to payroll, the money that your clients actually pay you, not that they have on contract, but they have actually paid you. And what we found is what you think of a business is trying to do is create a profit. And that is true in the long-term. What you want to do is create the largest profit you can. However, to get there you have to keep operating as an entity. And the lifeblood of a company is cash. The lifeblood of that company is that cash, it's the food. So, if you don't get the food in time, it doesn't matter how much you were gonna get. If you run out of money and don't make payroll, something like that, that company will cease. JAMON: I think that's actually a good analogy. If you're playing Minecraft or any other game where you have a health or a hunger bar, and if you're planting fields and fields of wheat and you're waiting for it grow and you wanna go harvest it but you die of hunger before you get there, that's a problem. That's a cash flow problem. It's the ability for you to pay your bills on a day to day basis. So, yes, cash is extremely king. KEN: Well, yeah, imagine your business is collecting Beanie Babies. And you're like, "I'm gonna buy a bunch of Beanie Babies and I'm gonna wait for them to become valuable." That's not a business. Maybe it's an investment, maybe, right? But because you don't have this cycle of things coming in on a routine basis that lets you continue to operate, you just spend a bunch of money and then you wait 20 years. Right? So, it may be profitable in the long run, but it's not really business. JAMON: So, Ken, how does that look in practical terms for Infinite Red? How do you apply that principal of cash is king? KEN: So, yeah, for example, I was very resistant for a long time to take credit cards. This is another thing you learn once you're on the business, you're like, "Holy crap, the credit cards, they take a lot of money out." JAMON: Yeah they do. TODD: Three percent. KEN: Three percent. TODD: Which is a lot on $100,000. KEN: Yeah, exactly. On a $100,000 project, that's actually a lot of money. I think I'm a little more nuanced about it now, because what they do is they make it easier to pay. They make it easier for someone mid-level in a company to pay. They reduce that friction, and it means you get paid sooner. Getting paid a month early is worth actual- TODD: Money. KEN: It's actual money to you. It is worthwhile getting paid early. And so, we're a little bit more lax about how we accept that. TODD: Why is that, Ken? Why is it when you get paid sometimes more important than any profit you made from that money? KEN: Well, for us our biggest expense is payroll. And that happens twice a month no matter what, right? And so, having that money in hand now- TODD: Knock on wood. KEN: That's right. Having that money in hand now makes a real tangible difference. It's not that you don't wanna pay attention to profit at all. It's like there is this ... I remember back in the original dot com boom, there was a Saturday Night Live spoof where they were like, this business was like, "We make change." Right? They're like, "We make all kinds of change. How do we make up for it? Volume." You can, in fact, cash flow yourself into the dirt if you're not paying attention. JAMON: It is interesting to see in situations where we're really monitoring our cash flow very closely, and we do some things that we know maybe they're not going to pay us for a few months and you're maybe struggling through. And then boom, it does come through. And you see that profit actually hit the books, and that is actually a cool feeling, as well. So, you do need to obviously pay attention to your profitability- TODD: Profit matters long-term. Cash flow matters to stay in business. JAMON: That's right. TODD: Cash flow's also power. And this is something that not everyone groks, to be honest. There's a reason that congresspeople like their job. And it's not because they may not personally be getting rich, and the reason they want to get on committees, especially the finance committee and that kind of stuff, is because what really gives you power is not wealth. Cause wealth sitting in a bank account gives no power, cause you're not transferring it. But control of cash flow gives you power. Now, in the case of Congress, congresspeople or senators, most of that's just evil. But in the case of your business, what I call power isn't necessarily a negative thing. Power means you can buy services. Power means you can give that bonus to your employees and that sort of thing. And really how much cash flow you have flowing through is how much you can do, more so than the profit. JAMON: And this is one of the things that if we can point to anything that is sort of a mission for Infinite Red, a lot of it, I think, centers around enabling remote work and the lifestyle that we all want from Infinite Red. And having the ability to pay for that and enable that through our cash flow is what you're talking about, Todd. TODD: Yeah. So, a lot of lawyers and accountants, to be honest, suck. And that's true of all professions, whether it's doctors, programmers, or whatever. So, I know it's not like you can just Google it and find a good one of them a price that you can afford. So, I know we went through a variety of stuff, a variety of people and/or companies, and I was just curious your experience in how you find a good lawyer, a good bookkeeper, a good accountant. That sort of thing. JAMON: I needed an attorney ... I forget when it was. It was during the ClearSight days. And an employee that worked for me at the time, he was my creative director, Mike [Wozezak 00:37:49], really great guy, he knew an attorney that specialized in creative agencies. And I went and met with him, and talked with him, and I really liked him. He was a former CPA, so he knew kind of the nuts and bolts of accounting, which was helpful. And he also specialized in companies like mine. I kind of brought him along to Infinite Red afterward, and we sort of just adopted him as our corporate attorney. And that was really helpful. So, it was a word of mouth thing, for sure. I think one piece of advice that I would give to people is treat it sorta like you would a doctor. It's okay to go someone, have them do something, see if you like the way they operate, and move onto the next one. If you have to do 10 different lawyers before you find one, do it. Don't settle. Do not settle for a bad one. Keep moving until you find a good one, because I can tell you, I think our lawyer is so great that he is absolutely worth every penny that we pay him. And he's helped save us from bad situations, he's helped us get out of some scrapes, and it's totally been worth it. So, definitely treat it more like you would a doctor. TODD: His name is Josh, and he is wonderful. I've had other lawyers at other companies and I wish I had Josh back then. KEN: Do some networking. Talk to other people in similar positions to you. See if they have someone they can recommend. I would also say, for both, having someone who is always willing to take the time to actually explain to you what they're doing in language that you can understand. That is vital. If you feel like you're being snowed, if you feel like you don't understand what's going on, keep looking. JAMON: Yes. And there are professionals that will do that. KEN: They do exist. They're doing a very important service for you, you want someone that you can trust implicitly, they're gonna be interested in earning that trust. JAMON: There are also specialists. So, we had looked into some legal implications surrounding some blockchain work that we were doing. And we talked to Josh, and he said, "I can't provide the insight that you're looking for. This isn't something that I have training on." And so, I did find another attorney. We didn't end up using her, because we went another direction with the service we were looking at. But she was a former FCC attorney who really understood the blockchain legal ramifications. That was helpful. KEN: Once you start getting into specialized stuff it's a little different. But that's where having that primary counsel- JAMON: Exactly. KEN: ... is very helpful, because they can help translate. JAMON: Now one of the things that attorneys do is they ... A good attorney will do, is they will inform you of the risks, but they will also let you make the decision. They won't try to control the process. So, one of the things that Josh will do is say, "There is a risk. I think it's a fairly small one, but here's the risk that I see. And if you feel that it's worth it from a business standpoint, then go ahead and pull the trigger." But he'll let you make the decision, and he'll give you the information to do that. KEN: Yeah. And a not as good lawyer, will be like, "Oh, no, no. Don't do this because there's this horrible risk." Right? Guess what. Every single deal you do has risk. Every single one. And the truth of the matter is, people will sue you, not usually because they have a case, but because they're pissed, right? A lawyer who understands the limits of the legal process is also really important. TODD: I'd like to add that some previous companies that didn't have a Josh or a good lawyer, and a couple things. And it's true of accountants, by the way. Both are true in what I'm gonna say here. So, Ken said the worst ones are ones that think everything you're doing is horrible and you shouldn't do it. I mean, they only care about risk reduction. Of course, you can reduce your risk by simply not being in business. That is horrible, for sure. But there's another one that I think is even worse. One that's doing that on their side, and they won't even tell you to begin with. So, anything that's risky that they don't wanna ... I mean, they basically just cover their ass at all times, they don't tell you anything. They only do what you tell them to do. I'm not sure how you're supposed to know what to tell them to do because you're not a lawyer, you're not an accountant. I deal with that a lot. They're just an assistant, they just do what you tell them. Well, I don't ... If I could do that, I wouldn't need you. And it's actually something that ... With our clients, we're really trying not to do. We don't expect our clients to know anything. That's our job, to guide them through, give them good, coherent options. Tell them the risk and reward of each option, and let them choose. JAMON: Exactly. TODD: That's our job as professionals, and sadly it's kind of rare, unfortunately. JAMON: Yeah. I'm glad we're taking on this topic. Obviously, it is sort of more of a dry topic, but we can only go so far with the series. And this is our last episode of the series. TODD: Of this first season. JAMON: The first season of the series. We are gonna do more seasons. TODD: Unless you're in the UK, and then in which case it is the first series. They call a season a series. JAMON: Oh, funny. TODD: A little factoid. JAMON: Yeah, I'm sure that our UK listeners will appreciate that. TODD: That sounded snarky. We have people in the UK who love us. JAMON: Do we? Awesome? TODD: Why you so mean, Jamon? JAMON: I didn't mean it to sound snarky. TODD: That's why my wife, who's an accountant, doesn't like you. No, she loves you. JAMON: I like Heather. Even if she is an accountant. No, it is good. It's ... This is what ... Well, we took on two topics at once and we were able to kind of lump them in, but it's something that everybody who's starting a business ... And I know, cause we get feedback that there are some people who are listening to our podcast and using some of our advice as a guide as they start their businesses, this is something they need to pay attention to. And when I started my business, it took me many years to get a lawyer and many years to get a good accountant. I did have a bookkeeper, or financial assistant, I guess, for some of those years because once I started payroll, I started getting out of my depth. I had no idea how to do that. And she was great, I could ask her for advice. She was actually trained as an accountant, as a CPA, actually. But she was, at the time, sort of semi-retired and just kind of doing her thing. Now, with Infinite Red, I feel like we have a really great attorney. We have good accountants. We're still working on figuring everything out, but having Heather help us has been really helpful, as well. It's nice to have professionals that know what they're doing. TODD: Thanks so much. Maybe a little dry, but I think super interesting to people out there, especially when you're starting. I've actually found- KEN: Bookmark this, like when you're actually starting this, bookmark and go listen to it again. JAMON: Yeah, it's a good reference. KEN: If your eyes glazed over, I totally understand, but trust me. TODD: I actually found it pretty interesting. I'm surprised how that flew by. And a podcast that flies by when you're recording it, it usually comes out pretty good. So, I would like Jamon in the close to explain what our plans are for this podcast going forward, since this is the last episode of this series/season. JAMON: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm really pleased with how season/series one went. And it was a ton of fun to do with you, Todd, Ken, Chris. We do plan to do more. We probably won't take a really long break. I'm hoping to maybe take a month, or at the most two, and then hit another season. This season we really wanted to kind of get our voice out there as a founder team. So, Todd, Ken and myself, as the founders of Infinite Red, we wanted to talk from our perspective on building Infinite Red. But as Todd mentioned, I think in one of the early episodes, it wasn't just us that built Infinite Red. It was definitely a team effort. It was, in a lot of ways, our vision, but there's so much impact that our team has on what Infinite Red is. So, for season two, the intention is to bring in key team members, and have them sit around the round table, so to speak, with us. They're not gonna be interviewed. We're not gonna be talking at them. They're gonna be just involved in the conversation as we go forward. And we'll be talking about more things that are, I think, a little more specific, a little more even maybe situational, or things like that. I think it'll be interesting, from a standpoint of getting to know some of our team members. They're really great. We- TODD: They are, they're awesome. JAMON: They're so awesome, and I'm really excited to give the world a glimpse into who else is here at Infinite Red. But it will probably be one, maybe two guests on, and just co-hosting with us. They're not going to be an interviewee. I also wanna say thank you to everybody who has listened and promoted our podcast, who submitted questions to us. It's an incredible honor to actually to be in your podcast rotation. We don't take that for granted. I know there are a ton of really good podcasts out there. I had one person, actually, I went to lunch with Bruce Williams, a really great guy here in Portland. And he said, "Jamon, there a lot of good podcasts out there, but I think one of the things about Building Infinite Red is that you are doing an important podcast. The message needs to get out there about our remote work and the way that we do work." Which was a huge compliment. Bruce isn't the type to just hand out compliments lightly. He's a great guy. We take it seriously. This isn't something that we're just doing as a marketing stunt, or anything like that. We really do believe in the message that we're putting out there. So, thank you all for listening. TODD: Yes, thank you.

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Experience or Education?

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2018 55:27

In this episode of Building Infinite Red, we talk about the importance of education and experience when starting out in software development and how things change when you move from making your products to running your business. From books and online resources to bootcamps and higher education programs, Jamon, Ken, and Todd share their stories, insights, and opinions for every level of professional. Show Links & Resources Lambda School Austin Allred on Twitter Epicodus Airtable Episode Transcript TODD WERTH: Today's topic is education. I actually don't recall what this topic's about. Ken, do you recall? KEN MILLER: Yeah. Well, it's this question that kind of comes up periodically about developers and CS degrees and that kind of thing. I think there was a Twitter thread a little while back in Jamon's feed, because Jamon's feed is the only feed that matters. TODD: That's a fact. Yeah. KEN: Yeah, do you remember who that was, Jamon? JAMON HOLMGREN: Yeah. The question was, "I have 10 years experience developing sites, but I have no formal education. What are your thoughts on experience versus education? Been thinking of getting a front end development tech degree from Treehouse, but I'm not sure if it's worth the time and money." Yeah. That is a question that does come up fairy regularly. KEN: For that specific question, I think the answer is no, it's probably not worth it, right? If you have 10 years of experience, and you're going to go take basically a practical degree, don't bother. JAMON: Right. KEN: But there are definitely nice things about getting a real CS degree, but getting a job is not necessarily the best reason to do it. JAMON: Right. KEN: If that make sense. TODD: I would totally agree with that. Well, just to start out, the three of us, Jamon nor I have finished college, nor do we have any CS degrees. I learned to program on my own when I was a child, probably started when I was 12. And then I started programming professionally when I was about 24, and then I learned basically on the job. Ken went to Harvard and got a CS degree there. Jamon, you are similar to me, right? JAMON: I was pretty similar to you, yeah. TODD: Yeah. So what I usually tell people, A, now, when I'm hiring people and I'm not representative of everyone, so it's quite a bit different, I do a cursory glance of their resume, maybe. That's less relevant to me than what they can do. In my opinion, developers is a portfolio job, which means the work you've done is hugely more important than any kind of education. Now, obviously if you do have a CS degree, I do find people want CS degrees, they understand some concepts that you maybe don't use day-to-day, and when they do come up, they have a much better understanding of that. Sometimes it's easier to teach them new ideas, because they have the analogy in their mind already. So it's definitely worth it. I would say, my short answer and I'd love to expand on this further in this podcast, but my short answer is you need to learn what you need to learn in order to produce work product, which means develop software, develop websites, develop apps. And everyone has a different way of learning. For some people, school is the best way. For me, school always bored the hell out of me to be honest, and it wasn't the best way for me, but there's no exact right way for everyone. It's just however it works best for you. JAMON: Yeah. And I think that part of this is how much access and opportunity you have, because certainly college is one fairly proven path toward gaining an opportunity to access the job market, to get enough skills that you're hireable out of the gate, and then to access the job market and actually get a little bit of exposure, whether it's through an internship or something like that. So that plays into this as well, if your dad was a software engineer or something, and he has contacts that you can talk to and maybe get some opportunities, then maybe you don't need that, maybe you don't need to go down that road. But there are few other factors here as well. Some of them are personal goals, like what type of programming, like Todd was saying, what type of programming you want to do, how much debt you're willing to take on, how much you can take on. And then also, in some cases, very specific cases, the prestige of the university can be a factor because it certainly opens doors for Ken that Todd and I don't have. TODD: I do want to interject real quick before you jump in, Ken. Going to university has many, many benefits that have nothing to do with getting a job, and those are a super valuable if you have the opportunity. They're worth it. But specifically about a job is what I was talking about. KEN: As a life experience, college is great. If you have the opportunity, you should probably do it. Getting a job as a programmer per se is not a good reason to go to college in my opinion. Now, if what you want to do is get a job at Google, or one of the places that is well-known for preferring CS graduates, especially from elite schools, then you should do that, you absolutely should do that. You're going to have a much, much, much harder time doing that. But also, more to the point, Google has I think fairly reasonable case for it in certain ways, because they are actually dealing with the high level intense CS concepts more than your typical programmer job. TODD: Correct. KEN: Now, I think where the problem comes in the market is that if Goggle does it, then we should do the same thing and then we'll be successful like Google. And the vast majority of companies out there do not need that. And I can also definitely tell you, from my own experience, from the people that I've watched, is that getting a CS degree, they're teaching you the fundamentals of how computers work. In Harvard's case especially. They're very much on the theory stuff. But even a more typical CS degree is very much about the background, the hopefully unchanging fundamentals, and not so much how do you design a build system. Todd? TODD: Yeah. I want to rant a little about a CS degree. CS, I'm sure all of you know is computer science. It is really that, it's computer science. Scientists don't make things. They discover things, and they ponder about things. For example, a physicist and a chemist may work together to make some sort of new alloy, but they're not going to design an airplane. That's what engineers do. If you get a computer science degree, you learn the science of computers. You could actually get a computer science degree, and correct me if I'm wrong Ken, and not learn to program at all. KEN: That would be pretty rare. You do have to know some programming in order to do a lot of the things that they teach you- TODD: But you could do like abstract programming that doesn't actually work. Like, say you're developing an algorithm. It's not- KEN: Yeah. I would say that would be pretty atypical, but there's definitely classes that don't require a lot of coding. TODD: I'm exaggerating to make a point. KEN: Some of it is straight up math. Yeah. TODD: Right, which is different than engineering. KEN: Well, and a good engineer should understand the science obviously. Yeah. JAMON: And I think one of the things to know is that, in my career certainly, and I'd like to hear from both you, Todd and Ken, I haven't noticed a huge market difference between the software engineers that I work with that have degrees, versus those that do not. I often don't know which of them have degrees and which do not. It's not always a strong correlation between their ... or it hasn't been a strong correlation in my career with performance. I think there's some characteristics that are positives for people that come from a CS degree background versus others who maybe come from a bootcamp background, or Todd and myself maybe learned out of a book basically and experience, but in my experience it's not something that is ... there may be differences, but they're not significant. TODD: I think it depends on the situation. When you teach people you notice it more. For experienced people, people who have a decade under their belt, no, there's no different. For new people, someone who comes out of school with a CS degree will understand concepts, and I think it's easier to teach them to be honest, in that way. Real quick, I personally started ... well, I started programming privately, but that was just me programming games and that kind of stuff, stuff I enjoyed personally. But professionally, I started building software. So I started out as a builder, a maker, over the years formed myself into an engineer, and then during that, got interested in the CS stuff and learned that stuff too. So I got to the same result, just in a different path. KEN: That's totally true. You can absolutely learn all this stuff on your own later if you're that kind of person. I think what the reliance on CS degrees doesn't really take into account, is that 90% of programming out there is essentially business automation, for a loose definition of business, but it's basically business automation. I mean, yes, okay, there's sort of a sector on high performance computing, or scientific simulations. Honestly, the one that in some ways benefits the most from formal education, believe it or not, is games, because there you need the linear algebra and the harder math, and your performance constraint in ways that mean you're more likely to be coming up with novel algorithms than you are in your typical business program. Jamon? JAMON: It's surprising how rare it is to encounter those types of situations in typical applications, like mobile applications and web. You just don't really run into it. KEN: Right. So, the kind of people who are going to excel at your, like I said, very typical business automation, style programming, user interface design, et cetera, et cetera, are actually going to be people who sometimes were not computer people before, because they're going to have more connection and empathy with the target users. And that ends up making more of a difference to the success of software projects in many cases than your facility with the computer itself. TODD: Yeah. Let me give you a real example from myself, because I started out very practical, and then later got interested in the CS concepts and stuff. Just purely for my own interest and stuff, and that did help to a point in my engineering career, but I did a project circa 2001 or something like that, and we would display, as a website, and we would display a map for the user, and they click somewhere else on the map and we had to calculate, based on the pixel difference between where we knew they were and where they clicked, the difference in direction and distance from the original spot. Now, this required spherical geometry, and the earth actually is not a sphere. It's a little bit like a football actually, to a slight extent. In this case, someone who had a more CS background may have jumped into this easier. I actually had books on my shelf, like college algebra, and college geometry and stuff like that, and I would review these things. And I learned how to do it. It was a successful project and it was very fun, but that's an example because I came from a practical place I had to look that up. Now, on the flip side, I've worked with people with PhDs in computer science, and no offense, bless their hearts, but they would work for two weeks and accomplish literally nothing. And then you'd ask them, "Was that done?" They were like, "I didn't know it was urgent." Well, it was an hour task. That's two weeks ago. And I think they're on a different academic time, because they spent so many years in school, it's just a difference. KEN: Which is, again, not to denigrate the usefulness of them. They're just useful in very specific circumstances and not as general programmers. Jamon? JAMON: I kind of see it as, to use an analogy, like when you're lifting weights, if you lift weights in a way that is very functional, they call it functional, where it's almost like you're lifting a box or ... yes, Todd? TODD: Jamon, for our listeners who may not be familiar with this concept, can you explain what lifting weights is? JAMON: It is this theoretical thing that supposedly some people do. TODD: Can you do it inside of your own home? JAMON: I do now. I built a gym actually. But yes, you lift weights for health. And one of the ideas is that you do this sort of functional strength, where it's something that actually builds up the muscles for lifting boxes, and carrying children, and moving things. So it's very much like you're doing those types of movements, but just with heavier weights. It just makes you stronger in those ways. And then there's other things where you're isolating specific muscles in a way that you would never really do in a day-to-day basis. And university can sometimes be more like that, where you are exercising those muscles, you are making them stronger, but you're not doing it in a way that necessarily replicates what you do in real life. And I think both are necessary. If you just do functional strength training, it will get you so far, but you won't ever hit certain muscles because, like we talked about intense performance or whatever, you might not actually be using those aspects of your brain in a day-to-day basis. But they are good to have for when you need them. So I think that's a decent analogy of what we're talking about here. I think that one of the criticisms that I've had of some of the higher education programs, is that they don't do particularly great job of replicating the real world of what people will actually be doing once they actually get into the job market. You can create a binary tree algorithm, but can you move this button over four pixels to the right? Which is often your first task when you get to work. TODD: Yeah. And I would say that it really depends on the person. In an idea world, if money is no constraint, time is no constraint, yeah, of course I would love to go to university and stuff. But on the flip side, I'm a very practical person and I like to build things, I like to make things. So maybe I went for a few years, but maybe if I would have went that route I wouldn't liked it as much. I would have preferred to just jump in and start getting things done. I think for me ideally was 18, I started doing it, actually doing it for three or four years, and then go to university for maybe two years, and enjoy learning all the concepts I didn't learn. That would have probably been pretty cool for me. JAMON: I realized we're kind of leaning more heavily on the criticism side of this, but one of the criticisms of universities is that they optimize for rewards, like extrinsic rewards. Like, I got this degree, I got this piece of paper, or I did what was necessary to get an A. Where learning to accomplish something to actually expand your mind is a little bit of a different thing. When I started my business I needed to build a website, I had a website to build, and I didn't know how to do it. For me, when I was learning from a book, it was very, very applicable. Like, okay, in order to make a menu, I need to know how to do these things, and it was very, very applicable. Very, very directly applicable. KEN: Well, I'm going to make the positive case ... TODD: Please. KEN: ... for going in and doing it. One is, fair or not, it does open doors. TODD: Correct. KEN: Especially if you're in a good program, but even if you're not, it is used as a hiring filter in a lot of places. I think it's wrong but it's true. That's the very practical sort of level. But to be honest, there's definitely things that I learned there that can save you trouble. I mean, I think they said that what makes a 10x programmer is that they know what not to program. So for example, even the theory class. The theory, computability theory, computational complexity, these sorts of things are more valuable than you might think in certain ways. For example, you're at your start-up. Your boss says, "I want the optimal route to plan on this map. I want to be 100% guaranteed the best route." And you can say, "That's the traveling salesman problem, and it's actually a known hard problem," for example. And it's the kind of thing where it can steer you away from harder problems and towards easier problems. And in engineering frequently what you want to do, you're like, "Let's find a good heuristic instead of trying to solve this optimally." JAMON: It may not give you the answer, but it will give you a framework around the problems that are out there, and the classes of problems that are out there. KEN: Yeah. TODD: Yeah. And I really appreciate that from people who have a higher education than myself. While people were talking, I was thinking of this story. I interviewed for this job, and this guy was asking me technical questions, as they do, and he was a young guy at the time. I was probably 34, he was probably 10 years younger than that or more. And he asked me a question. I don't remember what it was the exact question, but basically he wanted me to accomplish a task, and what he was looking for is how I would technically approach this problem. But I've been an engineer for a long time, and I know what's really important, and I know it makes a 10 times engineer, which is often not actually programing that. So I started off by challenging the fact that he even needed this at all. And logically, he didn't, and he couldn't really explain why he would, so I gave him additional other options that would make this application or this software work much better. Not the answer that he was looking for. But it was the real answer. I used to say a saying all the time. I don't say it much anymore, which is, "There is no code as fast as no code." So in this case, I was just removing his entire problem from him. KEN: I would say it can help you avoid reinventing certain wheels, which might mean that you don't get some amazing solution, because you weren't ignorant enough to know that it couldn't be done. Everyone loves those stories, but 99% of the time that's not how the story goes. And in fact, to the point, I don't know if we're ready to segue into the business conversation we probably we will in a minute, but none of us have any business education. And I'm starting to wonder if it would be worth it to go get like an EMBA or something, so that we're not reinventing so many wheels. I don't know if we're ready for that conversation yet. Jamon, you wanted to say one more thing? JAMON: I have a bunch of other things to say, but I'll intersperse them here. I think that one of the things ... well, Todd actually alluded to this earlier, but the network that you get from going to university for four years with often some of the same people throughout, you get to know them, you do projects together, they have opportunities. A lot of them go on to be quite successful. And being connected to those people in that way is something that lasts for a lifetime. And that's definitely something that should not be undervalued. That's a big advantage, that's something that I did not have. In fact, the only way for me to access a network like that was through ... well, I shouldn't say the only way, but the way that I accessed a network like that was through open source later. TODD: It's true. There's a lot of overeducated crappy engineers doing very well out there. It's true. KEN: It is true. TODD: I mean, it is really true. CHRIS: I was just going to add too, it's fascinating when we have this conversation today. It seems like it's been increasingly becoming more popular to question whether to go to school, or rely upon the tool. So what is it about today that allows us to even question the path forward, that maybe we weren't able to in the past? KEN: We're going to queue that clip from Silicon Valley now. TODD: Yeah. I think it has nothing to do with our particular industry, or development, or any of that stuff. I think it's just because the cost of university education is so extreme right now, that you naturally have to question if it's worth such a huge burden. It wasn't that way for me in the early '90s. I could work and pay for my own college at that time, which I did. That's not possible these days. JAMON: I'm going to agree and disagree with Todd there. I think the cost is definitely a factor, but I also think that this industry is a big factor in that we don't have ... my brother-in-law is a mechanical engineer. He couldn't just go and start mechanical engineering. He can't go out there and just do that. TODD: He could. It's just governed by law. JAMON: Yeah. You have to be a licensed engineer. It's a very- TODD: But there's no reason he couldn't do that if it wasn't for laws. JAMON: There may be a path to becoming a mechanical engineer that doesn't involve university, but it's very hard. I at least know of an architect that did it without going to university and getting a degree. But that is something ... we have a lot of these professional, professions actually have degrees that sort of ... they're barriers to entry. And in order to get through that, the accepted path is to go through universities. Ours does not have that. We can start building websites, or building whatever, just by convincing someone to pay us to do that. KEN: I think there's two points actually. One is part of the disconnect between mechanical engineers and software engineers is that when mechanical engineers fail, people die. JAMON: That's true. KEN: In many cases. That's sometimes true for software engineers too, but it's more true with mechanical engineers. And as a result- JAMON: My brother-in-law works at a plant where if he screws up, there will be hydrogen peroxide blowing miles high in the air. KEN: Yeah. So the stakes are often higher. JAMON: Yes. KEN: But also, if you want to be a serious chemical engineer, there's a lot of capital requirements for any of the things that you're doing, apart from the safety concerns, and that's very real. You're not just going to work on your own because you can't get them, whereas the capital requirements for being a software engineer are extraordinarily low. The access to education materials is extraordinarily high. And you can just try in almost literally anything that you can find out there for education material, you can try with a $500 computer. So there's so many things about the technology world that are in many ways unprecedented, and that's why you're seeing this massive sea change in the economy as it starts to take over more and more of it. And one of our missions here is to help more people in more places be part of that. So getting the message out that although CS degrees are helpful if you have the opportunity, go ahead and do it if it interests you, but it's not necessary if you just want to be part of this. JAMON: Yeah. And one of the things that is very apparent, is that there's a lot more resources available now online for learning. You don't have to go to college to get the education because it's often on YouTube, or you can look through GitHub. There's all these resources, there's online courses. These are things that are very valuable, and they're self-driven. When I first started wanting to learn Objective-C and building iOS apps, I bought an iPad 2 and I went to iTunes U and started watching the Stanford courses on there, and following along with those. So I was able to basically watch Stanford lectures for free, and follow along, and do what they were doing. That was tremendously valuable to me. And all of those resources are very interesting. What's very interesting also is that very few people actually take advantage of this. Everybody with an internet connection essentially has access to these, to the same thing I did. TODD: Which is pretty much everyone in the United States at least. JAMON: Right. And yet, it's a very tiny fracture of a percent that actually take advantage of that. TODD: Well, I would like to, for those of you who have this question and don't have a lot of opportunity for various reasons to go to university, I would give you my kind of recommendation. I forget who said this, I'm not going to attribute it to anyone because I don't remember who it was, but if you want to be a writer, write. If you want to be a poet, write poetry. When you've written a million words, you're a writer. When you've written 100,000 words, you're a writer. You have to write. You'd be amazed how many people want to do something and actually don't do it. In our industry, it's very possible to be a very successful software engineer by just doing it. But even, we mentioned mechanical engineering which does have some legal constraints for sure. But I don't know if anyone's ever seen the movie October Sky. It was in the late '90s. It was about a NASA engineer called Homer Hicksam (Homer Hickam) I think. He was a son of a coal miner and he loved rocket engineering. And he just did it, and he did it, and he did it, and he did it, and eventually without ever having an education, he did it for NASA, and he was a very famous and successful engineer at NASA. So, I don't recommend that route for such things, but it is possible. And I don't care who you are, or what profession you're in, if you just spend a crap load of time doing it, you're going to rise above everyone else. Another great story I have, I read this book. It was about this guy who was really into etymology. Entomology, not etymology which is the study of the origins of words. Entomology, which is the study of insects. He came from a very poor family, and he was in Alabama, and he got into the University of Alabama for biology. I believe he got a scholarship because he couldn't afford it, but the day one he showed up, he went to the head of the biology, the college or probably ... I don't know what it was, but wherever the college of biology is. Ken will correct me. This shows my education here. Anyways, he went up to the head and he said, "For the last two years I've been cataloging the ants of Alabama." And no one had ever done this. So on day one he was put in charge of something very important at the university because of this, simply because he just did it. He didn't ask permission. He just did it. So if you want to become a developer, regardless if you have the opportunity to go to school or not, you just have to start developing. Get into open source, publish stuff, start creating your portfolio and just do it. I'm not going to recommend this at all, but if you dropped out of high school at 16 and started programming and put a lot of work into it, by the time you're 18, 19, you're going to have a high paying job. That's a fact. Don't do that, kids, but- JAMON: Yeah. If Cedric's listening to this, stay in school. TODD: But you totally could do this, but it does require a lot of ... a lot of times people go to the university and those kind of paths because they don't have the kind of internal- KEN: And by the way, if you're that person, you probably already know. TODD: I don't necessarily think so, because- KEN: I mean, if it's flowing out of you so much that you just can't stop doing it basically, that's usually the kind of person who makes it that way. TODD: I agree, but I think- JAMON: Well, that was me at that age for sure. TODD: I think a lot of those people don't know that it's possible, because they don't have an example of it being possible. JAMON: That's exactly right, and that was actually me at that age. At 16 I was coding every day. Every day I would go home and that's what I would do. I mean, I'd do homework on the bus. I didn't do it at home. I coded at home. But I had no role models that were programmers. Well, I had one but he worked in San Francisco and he had been to college, and I thought that was the path. So I didn't really have that sense. And I was doing some pretty complex games and stuff, and figuring things out on my own because I didn't have internet at that time. TODD: Yeah. Well, back in my day I had a book budget, because the only way to learn was from books. There was nothing online, because there wasn't online. I had a book budget where hopefully I could buy a book every couple of months, add to my collection. But anyways, if you get nothing else and you're aspiring to be a developer, I give you permission just to do it. JAMON: Another option is code bootcamps. We actually have at least one, maybe a few others that have been to bootcamps here at Infinite Red, and we found them to be quite valuable for getting people up to speed on frameworks, on languages, on sort of the technical skills, and just getting the familiarization and understanding that they can learn these things. Often it doesn't teach them everything, but it gets them the confidence that they need to move forward with it. I think bootcamps are definitely an option, and there's many good ones. We've worked with Epicodus here in Portland, and there's others as well. KEN: They're especially helpful I think for people who have some kind of technical or quantitative background but just need to learn to code. JAMON: Right. KEN: Per se. Yeah. JAMON: Yeah. It's a good way if you're switching to a second career, or something like that. Another one that I'm actually a really big fan of is Austen Allred's Lambda University. Now, this one's got a really unique model. It's a little more intense than a bootcamp I think. It's a fairly solid higher education option. They have a lot of success stories coming from it. But one of the really unique things that Austen's doing there is they do not charge tuition upfront. Essentially they will take a percentage of your income if you make above, I think it's $60,000 or something a year. Once you get a job that's above $60,000 a year, they'll take 17% of it for up to two years, and there's a cap. Like, $30,000 or something. TODD: That's amazing. I love that. JAMON: Yeah. And if you never get a job in that range, then you never pay it back. The debt is forgiven. TODD: That's a really cool idea. I love that. JAMON: Yeah. Yeah. It really is great. And apparently the financial model's been working for his university. It's an online one so it's very accessible and they're actually finding that they have a much more diverse student body because of the fact that someone who doesn't have a lot of means, doesn't have a lot of support, they can go to school online, they don't have to pay anything upfront. They're even good about trying to support them financially during the time that they're in the university. It's a really great model. I'm a big fan. Lambda School or Lambda University I think it's called. TODD: We'll put that in the show notes. JAMON: Yeah. And Austen's doing a good job with that. He also, if you follow him on Twitter, he's got some really great thoughts on education. I like what he tweets about. TODD: Yeah. I guess in summary there's many ways to get there. If you are a maker, like I always was ... even when I was a kid I constantly made things, I think my path might be an interesting idea. If you have the means to go to university, by all means do it for sure. If it's going to be a huge financial burden, I would definitely give it some serious thought before incurring that burden. CHRIS: I'm curious how you approach education "Once you make it." What does it look like on a daily basis to learn new things, be challenged by new things, or even challenge the people that you work with as well? JAMON: All you need to do is listen to this podcast religiously. TODD: It sounds ridiculous but it's absolutely true. Continuing education. That's a good one. Truthfully, for a software engineer, if you can't teach yourself every day, you're going to have trouble because whatever you knew last year ... I've been doing this for 22 years and I think that number changes every time I say it. I started in '96 so whatever that comes up to. JAMON: We're software engineers. We're not very good at math. TODD: Yes. That's a fact. But you have to learn new stuff. The stuff you worked on two years ago is not what you're working on today. It's constantly learning new stuff. Now, you learn certain patterns and certain ideas that you use over and over again, and you start as you get a lot of experience you start realizing how we're kind of just redoing the same thing over and over for the last 40 years. JAMON: Yeah. Ken, didn't you do an exercise where you learned a whole bunch of languages, and you wrote the same program several times? KEN: Yeah. It was fun. I had fun with it, and then it literally burnt me out of programming for a long time. JAMON: How many did you do? KEN: I got through ... I don't know. 20 or 30. JAMON: Wow. Yeah, so that's what Todd's talking about, is this sort of recurring theme that you see over and over. KEN: Yeah. And after a while it was just like, it was the same approach over, and over, and over, and over. JAMON: It became a lot easier to learn your 20th and 21st and 22nd. Yeah. KEN: Yeah. I always recommend people learn three or four languages, just for their own edification. A lisp, a low level of imperative language, C, C++, even Java, a dynamic language like Ruby or Python. JAMON: And then something like Haskell or Elm or something. KEN: Or actually something like Prolog or Erlang is actually probably more interesting than ... Haskell's great, but more interesting than that because it really makes you think about it in a different way. If you learn those, you can learn anything at that point. JAMON: I think one of the things that really helps me is I have this insatiable curiosity about concepts and computer science. I love reading about it, I'm on Twitter a lot and that's a good place to source new information. You can watch videos. Other people learn in different ways. I know one of our engineers will troll through GitHub. He'll actually jump into a package.json file which we- TODD: I don't know if, "Troll" is the right word, but yeah. JAMON: Well, trolling as in fishing. And he'll look at the dependencies of a particular well known thing, and look at what they use, and then go look at those and see how people code. It's a very cool way to learn. Other people, they'll learn by pairing with other programmers, they'll learn obviously by experience. Some people read books. We have one of our- TODD: Watch videos. JAMON: Yes, watching videos. One of our developers decided to learn ... this is Darin Wilson. He decided to learn Ecto, which is the database layer for Elixir. He decided to learn that by writing a book about it. And apparently that's been quite educational for him. He's learned a ton in teaching. TODD: Yeah. Don't do that, kids. It's a lot of work. That's kind of a lot about software engineering and that kind of stuff, but we're also, on the other side ... and we probably lost all the entrepreneurs by now, so I guess we should do this first. But on the other side is education when it comes to being an entrepreneur, running your own small business, running a larger business, that kind of stuff. JAMON: I learned first I would say by watching my dad. He was a small business owner, so I learned some basics there. I did know quite a few small business owners, and I did talk to them. I would go out to coffee with them or whatever, and just ask them questions. But it was very much a learn as I go type of a situation, learn as I had to. How do you do payroll? I had no idea. I hired a bookkeeper who taught me how to do payroll and did most of it, which was nice. How do you market? I had no idea. That was a whole thing that I had to learn. How do you do sales? I mean, I just plopped myself in front of people and tried to do the best I could, and tried to learn from it. That's probably not the way I would recommend going though. TODD: We did engineer our sales process by the way. JAMON: Once we merged companies, then Todd and I started doing sales together, and we had a much more engineery approach to it. It was good. Actually have a feedback loop, and we would try to build our experience over time. I have read some business books, I've watched some business videos, but for whatever reason software engineering, education has always been more ... I guess got more traction with education on that side. With business stuff that always seems so abstract and not directly applicable. KEN: I'm definitely at a point where I'm feeling like I could use some formal education honestly. The MBA is not what it used to be in terms of guaranteed high paying work. Even elite MBAs are not what they used to be in that regard. But I wouldn't downplay the value of the network building that they bring. But what they can't teach you, what no school could teach you, is what it's like to stare at your bank account and wonder if you're going to make payroll this month and how you handle that. I mean, it might mean that you know a good banker who can help you, but it doesn't teach you what that feels like. It can teach you about negotiation, but it doesn't teach you how to actually sit at a table with somebody who's got a lot more money and power than you. There's a reason that even regular business schools prefer that you go out and work some place for a little while before you go there. And I think that the EMBA route, if you're going for formal education, is probably a pretty good one, because then you have really embedded yourself. You have a very felt experience of what these things are like, so when you go to that negotiation class, or that finance class, or whatever, you get it. It's going to land someplace for you emotionally, that it wouldn't for a kid out of school. JAMON: What's an EMBA? KEN: Executive MBA, meaning a lot of the business schools will offer these programs frequently, nights or weekends, even at a high level, so it's right where you as a person who already runs a business can go and fill in your skillset. TODD: Interesting. KEN: And hobnob with other people like you. Yeah. And they're not cheap. TODD: Yeah, that makes sense especially if they're geared towards executives. My path was way too long. So, if you want to do it fast don't take my path, but this is my third company and I feel like I finally became a business person on my third company. That's a long time, and that wasn't three companies in three years. That was three companies in 15 years. I definitely wouldn't go my route. I think one of the things ... I mean, there's different aspects of business, right? Ken alluded to some of them. Financing, super important. If you're not making money, if you're not negotiating good deals with your vendors, or employees or whatever, if you're not keeping it cashflow where you can pay payroll, you're sunk, so that's very important. The other thing is, your management and leadership skills. As you grow, you're going to have a team, so that's very important. That's not something you super easily learned from a book. I think even things like accounting theory ... Ken, I don't know if you want me to share this story. Well, I'll just say it and we can cut it if you don't want it. This is kind of a funny story. When Ken and I first started this business, this was my third, but this was Ken's first business. And we were going over our accounting and he was telling me all about accounting theory, and he knew it very well, but I don't remember what it was, but it was something like I said, "We should get our P&L," and you had no idea what that was. It's a profit and loss report. KEN: I don't think that that was what it was. I don't think that's what it was. I don't remember what it was, because I knew what a P&L is. TODD: Maybe it was AR, account receivable? It was something very basic. KEN: Well, we had a long running argument about cash verus accrual accounting as I recall. TODD: Right. So regardless of what it was, and I don't mean to insult Ken whatsoever, but that's actually not uncommon. My wife's an accountant and she was trained at university for that and then she worked as a corporate accountant for a long time and worked her way up to a fairly high level. The day-to-day, just like in programming, you learn the concepts but once you hit the real world, the real world's so much different than anything. And I think that's true with a lot of ... KEN: I'll go into that. I was like, "I think we should do accrual accounting," and Todd's like, "I don't think so." I'm like, "Well, no. I really want to be able to ..." the benefit of accrual accounting is that you can see profit versus cashflow and it sort of gives you more information, but it's way more work, way more work. And if you haven't done it, you don't know that, so we are still a cash accounting. JAMON: Yes. TODD: Is it more work, Ken? KEN: What, accrual? TODD: Yeah. KEN: Much. TODD: Is it way more work? KEN: Much, much, much more work. Yeah. And that's something I don't really like very much. JAMON: One of the things I did well when I started my business was I forced myself to do a monthly budget. And I was doing this for my personal life too, so I just used the same skills I had there to do a budget for the business, which was much easier because I wasn't buying diapers there generally. There wasn't quite as many transactions- TODD: There's a joke in there somewhere. JAMON: Yes. There weren't as many transactions and stuff. But it was actually really great because I was able to keep a very close eye on where we were in a cash basis obviously, and then I did have accounts receivable system that I could look at to see what kind of money would be coming and do some forecasting and stuff. We've carried that forward to some extent here at Infinite Red doing the budgeting. We got away from it for a little while, but we're going to be going back and do it because it has been very helpful, even though you in some way feel like you're doing kind of double entry. TODD: Yeah. I think, gosh, business education and experience, you really have to have both. You have to study in some form, and you have to have experience. It's really challenging to be honest, compared to something more straightforward like becoming a designer or an engineer, just because it's very nebulous and very human oriented for sure. JAMON: And there's so many ways to do a business right, and there's many, many, many more ways to do it wrong. If you just follow a formula, that's not necessarily going to work. There's a lot of variables in business. TODD: And people tend to do things the way that they're comfortable with, or the way they're familiar with. It's kind of funny. My wife, she's actually a small business person now, but she's an accountant by trade as I mentioned. In accounting, they use spreadsheets to a ridiculous amount. And when I say ridiculous amount I mean they're super familiar with spreadsheets, very advanced spreadsheets, so if there is a task, they throw a spreadsheet at it. Now, as a programmer, my first thought was database. So, my first company, I did my accounting like a database, which probably wasn't great but it's what I understood. And that's what people do, they apply. So my wife Heather and I, sometimes I've went there and said, "That's cool, but you know, if we use a database this will be much easier." And I set her up with a great product called Airtable, and she switched from a spreadsheet for that particular thing to the database, and she loves it. And then looking at some of her spreadsheets, for example, as a programmer, if I needed a particular report for finances, I would assume I'd make a report and I would use a system to make a report and stuff. But for her it's super common to extract data from multiple sources, stick it into a pre-made spreadsheet and have the spreadsheet be the report. This is what accountants do all day. It seems more manual, but it's actually faster and more convenient. So as a person who's not educated, maybe not educated in starting a small business, or taking a long route like we do, you'll find that you're doing things that you know how to do. It may not be right, but you kind of get them done. And it's good to look, at some point, when you have time, to look how the professionals do it, so you can do it more efficiently. KEN: Well, and I want to piggyback on that, which is that one of the harder things that we've learned is to do some things manually, that there's real value in doing things manually and personally, and not trying to automate it. Like Todd says, when we think we need a report, the first we're going to go like, "Hm. We should write a report so we don't have to do it ourselves over and over again." Wrong. Wrong, unless you're- JAMON: We need the education- KEN: Unless you're Ford, unless you're a massive company that has already a very dialed in process, automating as a small company is sometimes counterproductive. Not only does it take a long time, a big time upfront, but then you are locked in and can't change it. You can, but now all changes are expensive. And two, there's real value to human eyes going and looking at the stuff and compiling it. And that was very hard for me to learn because, like a lot of people, I got into computers because I'm lazy, and I wanted the computer to do all the work for me. But there's no substitute for human eyes on the problem, in many cases. TODD: It's funny, because we're all engineers and designers, the way we do reports at work is we have an artificial intelligence chat bot in Slack that produces the reports for us. That's such an us way of doing things, it's hilarious. JAMON: If it's okay, before we wrap up here, I'm going to bring this back to universities for a second. I think this is actually a really important thing to get across to people who are considering that path. If your state offers ... here in Washington State it's called Running Start, but essentially the ability to go into a small community college that's nearby your high school, and get your first two years done for free. The K-12 system actually pays for your college, for the first two years. That's really helpful, and there's really no reason not to do that. That's a great way to get started. Secondly, if you are going to go to a university, unless it's something like Harvard, or maybe Stanford, you should really avoid private universities, especially for-profit universities. Those are really terrible. You really don't want to go that direction. KEN: Well, I want to draw a very clear distinction between private and for-profit. JAMON: Yes, of course. KEN: There's a lot of very good private schools. If you can afford them, go for it. A lot of them are really great, great education. for-profit schools completely different. JAMON: Todd and Ken, I'm not sure if you know this, but one of the things that ... well, you do know this. One of the things that for-profit universities do is they prey on disadvantaged students and stuff. They'll go and sign them up. And they actually did that at my school and I was actually signed up and accepted to one of these universities, which would have been an incredibly expensive education. I'm not sure what the quality would have been, but very, very expensive. And I backed out, but for a while I was thinking this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to go to this university for a computer science degree. And you just need to stay clear of them. It's not worth it. They're often predatory, they're just bad. TODD: Not to be confused. One thing I want to do mention is ... sorry to interject, Jamon. The Code Academies are for-profit also, but those- JAMON: Yeah. That's much different though. TODD: That's different. KEN: Yeah. We're not going to mention any of the names of the for-profit universities, because we don't want to get sued, but ... JAMON: They're bad, yes. KEN: They're bad. JAMON: But there're a lot of really great state universities they can go to. A really great way to go is to do ... your Running Start type program for two years and then go for the next two years at a state university and you can get a degree. And it's honestly relatively inexpensive. CHRIS: One of the things that I would love to add, regardless of what you do, whether you're an engineer, or a designer, or a founder of a company, one of the best ways to learn is actually to teach what you know to other people. TODD: Good point. CHRIS: So that when you don't understand something, you're going to dive in to learn it so that you can explain it to someone else, and that's where oftentimes I found that theory and practical knowledge combine and multiply. TODD: I think that's fantastic. I would totally agree. I've taught a handful of programmers throughout my career, from nothing into professionals, and nothing teaches you like teaching. It was a big boon. As for business education, we talked about that as a combination of education, however you get that, and experience. But if you want to be an entrepreneur, there is absolutely no excuse. Today is Tuesday when we're recording this. You can go down right no, go to Costco if you don't have a Costco card go to Walmart, buy bottled waters. They're really cheap. You're going to get 24 pack, whatever, for whatever it is. So basically you're paying pennies for each bottle. Go down to the beach, or wherever in your local town where people hang out, and sit there and sell bottled waters for about 30 minutes. KEN: Until someone calls the police on you for not doing it with a permit. TODD: Correct. That's why the time thing. But you can sell. When someone's out running, or they're with their kids at the park, you can sell one of those bottled waters for $2. You bought it for 15 cents, you sold it for $2. Congratulations. You are now a business person. And it just goes up for there, and the truth is, a lot of people who want to start a business, they really want to want to start a business, they don't actually want to start a business. So I always recommend to people, do the bottled water test. If that's very unpalatable to you, you're probably not ready. Doesn't mean you won't be ready, but you're probably not ready to start that small business yet. Little advice from your uncle Todd. JAMON: I don't think I would ever go to the beach and sell bottled water unless I had to. KEN: I don't think I would do that either. TODD: People like really successful in sales people and stuff like say Mark Cuban, he did this kind of stuff. But from a young age he was a business man and his job was to find things that he'd get for X and sell for a multiple of X. And he would do anything. He would go door to door. KEN: If you're already a programmer or designer, go get yourself an LLC and put your shingle out as a one person consulting firm. It's not the same quite as business, but it gives you a little bit of a flavor for it. It takes you down that road a little bit. That was certainly what did it for me. TODD: Don't work for free. KEN: Yeah. Don't work for free. TODD: Whatever you do, don't work for free. Everyone will try to get you to work for free. Don't do it. No free bottles of water. KEN: That's a whole another conversation. TODD: Except for the cop who's arresting you for permits. KEN: Yeah. TODD: Give him a few- KEN: What if I just slipped you one of these bad boys, officer? TODD: This fine, fine water could be yours. KEN: On that note, thanks for listening everybody. JAMON: See you next time. TODD: Yes, thank you. This was Todd, and this is Jamon. No, that's not Jamon. This is Jamon- JAMON: Thank you. This ... KEN: I had a great stopping point, and Todd just had to keep talking. You just had to keep talking. TODD: Ken, I'm not the kind of person who has to have the last word. KEN: Yes, you are. TODD: I'm really not. That's funny. I'm going to stop recording.

Fears and Anxieties of Running a Business

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 28, 2018 52:12

In this episode of Building Infinite Red, Jamon, Ken, and Todd touch on the fears, anxieties, and struggles of running a business. They share stories and thoughts on starting a business, managing stress, how success and failure impact focus, the difference between venture capital and other sources of funding, fear of missing out, and the importance of knowing what you stand for. Show Links & Resources YNAB: Personal budgeting software Four Yorkshiremen by Monty Python Episode Transcript TODD WERTH: So I thought a good topic today, one of the reasons because I'm personally interested actually, hear what Jamon has to say and Ken has to say, and of course I'm sure they're interested to hear what I have to say. But the topic is when you start a new business or you're an entrepreneur doing multiple businesses, or anything of that particular area. What are some of the biggest fears, anxieties, apprehensions, that you might have you know before the process, during the process, whenever? I find this very fascinating, because I imagine a lot of people, well maybe some people who are listening are experiencing these right now and A) it'd be great to hear someone else express the same thing so they know that they're not alone in this, and B) it's kind of interesting to think about yourself. It kind of, it's not something you typically sit down and think about, so if you two don't mind, that'd be a really interesting subject for today. KEN MILLER: Sounds good. JAMON HOLMGREN: Yeah. Well I think back to when I started by business. It was 2005, and I was working for a home builder at the time, so I had a, you know, decent job. It was an office job. I was doing I think cad design and marketing for this builder. Not really doing programming. But I decided that one of the things that ... well I had, prior to this time, I had thought, you know I'd be really nice to own my own business at some point. It'd be something that I would aspire to. And I think that part of that was my dad owning his own business and knowing a lot of entrepreneurs kind of played into that. I thought it would be an interesting thing. I've always been a little bit independent. Want to kind of set my own course. So I started thinking about doing this and talking with my wife, and at the time I had a six month old baby. That was my first kid, my son, who is now 13 years old. Around actually this time of year is when I decided that I was going to do this. What helped was an opportunity that came up. So the apprehension of how do I get my first customer was sort of already taken care of. My uncle had a bunch of work that he needed done, and he asked me if I wanted to do it kind of on the side, or as a business, and that gave me the confidence to pull the trigger and say, let's so this. Because I had a built-in customer right away. But I do remember the first month sending my bill over to him, and it was only eleven hundred dollars, and that was all I had earned that whole month was eleven hundred dollars. And that was a wake up call to me that, hey I can't just expect the money to come in, and that was definitely ... I sat up and noticed. TODD: Yeah, that's really interesting. So when you started ClearSight, that was your first company, correct? At that time? JAMON: That's right. Yeah, ClearSight. There were other points along the way where I was sort of I got kind of gut-punched. Many times along the way. One was when ... my first business was doing websites, but it was also doing CAD designs, so I had essentially two business, and the CAD design part of it, you know designing homes, designing remodels, those sort of things eventually dried up, because remember that was during 2008, 2009 the housing recession kind of came along and that impacted the designers first, because we were the first ones in the process. People stopped taking money, equity out of their homes to do remodels. They just stopped doing it. So basically the whole market dried up. I remember my uncle told me, "I don't have any work to send you anymore." And I had a few accounts myself, but they were pretty slow too. And I kind of sat at home for a few days and felt sorry for myself. But in typical Jamon fashion, I was like, well I guess it's time to go do this myself, so I went out and literally started knocking on doors at offices and stuff and handing out my business card. Wasn't too successful at that, but it was at least doing something, and then things turned around eventually. TODD: Since you had a new baby at home, and obviously you're married, and you're trying to support them. JAMON: Right. TODD: Did that add any worry to you at that time? JAMON: Yeah, for sure. It certainly did, because any worry that my wife felt was reflected back on me because I feel very a sense of responsibility that I need to be making sure that we're not losing our house. Making sure that we can keep food on the table, things like that. So that was a lot to process. My health definitely suffered because of it and a few other things, but there was a lot of stress involved with that. I think that if I were to go back now, knowing what I know now, I could very much have probably pulled out of it much faster. I could have found a better path, but you live and learn. TODD: I'm sure there's more to tell about that story, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts Ken. KEN: For me the biggest worry was always money. Right? I mean, since I came out here to Silicon Valley, I had the dream. I had the Silicon Valley dream for sure. I wanted to start my own company. And to a certain degree, the Silicon Valley dream as sold is not sold accurately. Right? It's sold as this sort of fantasy. And the truth of the matter is you have to have more resources than is reputed in order to do the Silicon Valley way effectively. You need to know VCs or people who know them. It helps to have affluent parents who can bankroll you not making any money for years and years and years. I'm luckier than most on all of those accounts, and even I found that very intimidating, challenging. And especially living in the Bay Area, once you have established a life in the Bay Area, the idea of not taking a salary for a couple of years is utterly terrifying if you don't have a big pile of money. In fact, I wasn't really able to do this until I had a little bit of a windfall from the Yammer acquisition to lean on. Basically just enough to let me barely scrape by for a year for which I'm still very grateful 'cause I probably wouldn't be here today if I hadn't had that. And there were some scary fricking moments. There've definitely been a few extremely close calls financially. So I don't ... that fear I think was justified and surmountable. Let me put it that way. Right? You can definitely figure that one out, but I'm not gonna lie. It can be super scary sometimes. For me, the biggest mental shift that got me where I am now is that I had always had in my head this sort of venture capital model, because that's what I knew. Right? Because that's the kind of company I'd worked for. I saw how that process basically worked. But it always felt wrong to me. Right? Like, I was always like, what's so wrong with profit? What's so wrong with actually making a business that can support itself fairly early on? And I think it was the Paul Graham post that was like, the difference between a start up and a small business. And a start up is specifically optimized for hundred S growth or nothing. JAMON: Right. KEN: And that's what venture capitalists want for the most part. Right? No venture capitalist wants you to be one of the nine or ninety-nine that don't make it. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- KEN: Nevertheless, the model is set up that way. The model is set up so that only one in ten or less have to make it. And so once I realized, oh no all along I wanted to make the lifestyle business, basically, the small business. TODD: I just wanted to point out that especially in Silicon Valley the term lifestyle business is a semi-derogatory term. KEN: Pejorative, yeah. TODD: Yeah to refer to a normal, actual business. KEN: Exactly. TODD: And I always found that amusing when they said lifestyle business it was insulting you, because you make a profit. I always thought that was funny. KEN: Yeah, right. It's sort of like the Silicon Valley model is for people who would rather be a billionaire or nothing. Right? It's kinda like a shot at a billionaire is worth way more to them then a pretty good path to a millionaire. Once I realized that that was the exact opposite of me, I was much happier and I could actually work towards something that mattered. Right? And not even the millionaire part, right? It's like, if that happens, that would be awesome, but it's more creating the environment that I wished that I'd had. JAMON: When it comes to fears and those types of feelings, do you ever feel maybe that you are missing out on those wild rides? KEN: Do I have FOMO for the- JAMON: Yeah, a little bit of FOMO. KEN: Sometimes. JAMON: FOMO being, of course, fear of missing out. KEN: Yeah, living here especially. I think that's inevitable. JAMON: Right. Because we're not set up for just rocket growth at Infinite Red. KEN: I've been at enough companies that ended up making everybody thousandaires or worse. Right? Or negative thousandaires in at least one case. I had a friend, he seemed like he was living the dream. This was way back when in the first boom. Right? He seemed like he'd lived the dream. Right? He was just an engineer at a start up and he was suddenly a millionaire overnight. And then within six month, he was a negative six hundred thousandaire with a gigantic tax bill. JAMON: Oof. KEN: The whole model has kind of lured a bunch of people into the stock option thing. This is what I'm talking about specifically. I think there is absolutely a place for the venture capital model, but the stock option compensation model that a lot of people have done, is kind of a raw deal in a lot of ways, but that'd be a whole other topic, so- JAMON: Yes TODD: Just real quick, I own tons of stock and stock options that are worth absolutely zero- KEN: Yes. TODD: But, if I ever run out of toilet paper, I am set. JAMON: So Todd, you started a business well before Ken or I, and you know I actually I don't know if I've ever heard the story of your very first business and how you went from being a software engineer at a company to owning your own business, and I'd like to hear about that from the perspective of the topic of this episode which is about fears, and uncertainty and things like that. TODD: Yeah. Yeah. That's great question, so I've owned three businesses. This hopefully is my last one here at Infinite Red. My first one was in 1999. We started, it was three of us, it was also a consulting company like Infinite Red which lasted for nine years. It was a little bit different. Real quick, we did mainly enterprise, not start ups, larger companies, that kind of stuff. And our model was kind of to be subcontractors. So we had a lot of relationships with other consulting companies. One of the things we did, is we did really hard things well. So all the other consulting companies, like especially at that time it's gonna sound funny, but you'd have companies coming to us saying, "Look, we're doing most of the project, but they want something on the web, and we have no idea how to do that." And we did. And we knew Visual C++ and we knew all sorts of things. And so we specialize. We were higher priced because of that, and we'd come in and do the fun parts, in our opinion, which was really great. This is circa 1999. That one wasn't ... there wasn't too much anxiety from it. It was a small company, so later I'll talk about most of my anxiety at Infinite Red come from my worry of the 25 families I'm responsible for. JAMON: Right. TODD: It's not so much myself, because I do not have affluent parents. Well, most of my relatives are dead now, but I never really worried about money. I mean worst case scenario, I can be a developer. I'm pretty darn good developer, and I can make good money at that. And I moved out of the Bay Area, so for me my lifestyle is much cheaper than it used to be. So I don't worry about that so much, but I do worry about everyone's families who work at Infinite Red. My first company, we didn't have that. It was all just high level people. There was three to six of us, depending on the time. And we kind of just slipped into it. We had our first few big customers before we even started. So that wasn't really stressful at all. The second company, which came after my first company, I went back and worked for companies, for other start ups as an employee, and that's how I met Ken. Ken was my boss. And I was doing that mainly just 'cause after nine years running your company, I was just kind of tired, and I wanted to be an employee for a while. And I did that for about three, three and half years. And Ken, sorry boss, it was super relaxing, easy. You work like seven and a half hours a day or whatever. KEN: This has been noted on your permanent file. TODD: You know, regular jobs often are pretty lax compared to start ups. As an aside, I was in a pizza parlor once, and I saw a sign behind the wall. It was obviously the pizza parlor was owned by a person, it wasn't a chain, and the sign said, the only thing more overrated then running your own business is pregnancy. Which is true, if you do it for low hours and high pay, you really should rethink that, but there are lots of great reasons to do it. Any who, my second company was venture capital backed company which means we didn't use our own money. It was intentionally designed to do the hockey stick which means go from zero to very high very fast, and we had investors. And we had to pitch to venture capitalists and angel investors, and we had all the kind of normal Silicon Valley stuff. And that lasted for about a year and a half, and I cherish that experience, because it taught me a lot about that process from the inside. It was completely a failure which is fine. The fears in that, once again, were not personal, because as I did right after that, I went and got a job with Ken. JAMON: Right. TODD: And I made plenty of personal money. And because we weren't investing our money, the VCs were, there really wasn't a lot of anxiety there. I would say the main anxiety there was performance. Meaning it's kind of depressing when you're failing, and sometimes you have a great success. We did one month, especially. And we were shooting to the moon for a whole month, and it was super exciting. So it was just kind of a roller coaster of anxiety for that kind of business. Yeah, Jamon? JAMON: I think it's really interesting to hear you and Ken talk about the idea of, well I can just go get a job as a developer. Because for the longest time, I didn't feel that I had that option. Whether that was reality or not, I don't know. I was basically, I kind of thought of myself as just building websites. I just built websites for people, and I didn't really think of myself as a software engineer. I just happen to be someone that happened to built websites. TODD: Knowing you Jamon, and the quality of engineer you are, you are completely wrong. You could have totally got a job, but I get why- JAMON: Yeah. TODD: -from your perspective you felt that way. KEN: Yeah, well and it's a matter of ... it highlights how important just knowing the scene is. JAMON: Right. Yeah, totally. KEN: If you know the scene, yeah if you're an engineer, even like an old rusty engineer, like we're going to be before too long. TODD: Too late, Ken. KEN: Right. JAMON: Too soon and too late. KEN: Even if you're an old rusty engineer, you can figure it out. Right? JAMON: Right, yeah. KEN: The demand is so overwhelming and so consistent and so pervasive that- JAMON: Yeah. KEN: -if you know sort of the ins and outs- TODD: Even you Jamon could get a job is what you're saying. JAMON: Even I could get a job. KEN: No, if you're half-way competent, and he's more than half-way competent, about 60 percent. JAMON: I appreciate it. KEN: No, it's- JAMON: 60 percent. Yeah. No, and to hear that now. It's something that is obviously more of an option now that I don't need it, but at the time it didn't feel like an option, and so especially when I started getting employees in 2009. And most of them were young. They didn't have much in the way of family, but they would obviously still have ... they needed jobs, and I felt that. I felt that in every part of me that if the business wasn't doing well, that I was failing them. And that actually drove me for a long time. I think if I'd had the option to go work for someone, or felt I had the option to go work for someone, I may have actually quit at some point. But I didn't. I kept the course there. KEN: I will say, that I'm glad that I did not know everything that I should be afraid of going into it. 'Cause there is plenty that you should be afraid of, and if I'd known all that stuff going in, I probably wouldn't have done it, and I'm glad that I did it. And if I had to redo it now, I would do it again. JAMON: Right. KEN: And that's an important distinction is that it's not that I would do it again, it's that only hearing the bad stuff at that point, would have been a disaster. TODD: Ignorance and hubris are the two best tools of the entrepreneur. JAMON: I feel like it's both more stressful and more scary than you think, but also you're more resourceful and more able to deal with it then you think. KEN: Yes. TODD: Hundred percent. I would say, talking to other people who are new to it, and I certainly had to learn this, the biggest problem is the buck stops here. Meaning in every other situation where you worked, you could always throw a problem up the ladder. JAMON: Yes. TODD: And when you're a small business person, you don't know accounting? Doesn't matter. Do it. JAMON: Someone's gotta do the accounting. TODD: Right, like there's literally no excuse. There's none, and you don't have that money just to pay for people to do it. KEN: I guarantee the IRS does not grade on a curve. TODD: No, they don't care about your excuses. KEN: Yeah. TODD: So Jamon, Ken, and I come from very different places. So Ken obviously went to Harvard. He's impressive on paper. I actually did not. I didn't finish college. I started making way too much money as a programmer to be honest. But when I first started out in 1996 as a professional programmer, you know I wasn't making tons of money, but it was plenty for me, because where I'm from, it's a lot of money. And at that time, I'd probably be more like Jamon meaning I didn't see myself as really deserving that kind of stuff, but this was in San Francisco in 1996. So I saw the first boom, and then I saw the crash, and then I saw the second boom. And after a while, you start to learn, although I don't have Ken's personal background. I do have Ken's professional background. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Yep. TODD: And so, one of the things I've noticed when talking to Jamon, because he's in Vancouver, Washington, and not around that stuff as much, is he feels a little bit like an imposter. He's totally not. And I bet even now in his mind he imagines that those people working at Google somehow have this huge, amazing, genius to them, and Ken's probably in the middle. He probably thinks some of them do. I personally have yet to meet one of these fabled geniuses. So the more you get involved with that, the more you realize they're just humans, and you're just as good as they are. KEN: That is true. JAMON: I think that's been something that I've become more and more aware of over the past several years. And it's funny because I don't usually think of myself as having imposter syndrome. I'm actually quite a confident guy, but in that regard I definitely did not really realize ... it felt like they were a different breed. They were a different type of person. And I always felt like I could probably learn anything, but there was still this degree of separation. But, anyway, coming back to the topic at hand, I think that sort of uncertainty and fear can be a motivating factor. But one of the things, so one of the things I'd like to talk about, is there are healthy ways and unhealthy ways to handle that stress, and I've done them all. Believe me. TODD: Like cocaine? JAMON: Maybe. TODD: Jamon's mother, he's totally joking. He's never done cocaine. JAMON: Yes, thank you Todd. And my mom does listen to this, so thanks Todd. TODD: He really has not, trust me. JAMON: You wouldn't want to see me on cocaine. KEN: Oh god. Yeah, that is the wrong drug for you my friend. JAMON: Yes. KEN: Oof. JAMON: But you don't want to transfer stress to clients. You don't want to transfer stress to employees. You don't want to transfer it to your significant other. To your family. And unfortunately, I've done all of those things, because I'm human and that's what happens. You get a lot of stress, and then you feel like you need to let off steam. One of the things that I actually really appreciated about this partnership is that we're able to let off steam with each other. And in a way, that is healthy. That isn't transferring to someone else who has nothing to do with it or has no power. Where I have two partners who are actually in the same spot, and they can help. It's been really, really helpful. So that is really important. I think how you transfer stress. Yeah, Todd? TODD: I agree. I don't kick the dog. I kick Ken. Which is better. The dog appreciates it at least. JAMON: You don't even have a dog, Todd. TODD: I don't have a dog, and I've never kick a dog by the way. I'd kick humans all day long, but never a dog. JAMON: This is true. TODD: Just to be clear. JAMON: Yes, Todd is the one who canceled a meeting because he had to bring a bird to the hospital that had hit his door, actually one time. TODD: It's true. It is true, and that bird is flapping happily today. KEN: As far as you know. TODD: I hope. Back to my story, because it's all about me. Anxiety at Infinite Red really does come around to team members mostly, and you two Ken and Jamon because I don't want to let you down, and I certainly don't want someone's family not to be able to have a Christmas because of something stupid I did, or because I was acting emotionally when I should have been acting rationally. That kind of stuff. JAMON: This year, me not having Christmas had nothing to do with you Todd, so I can let you know that. TODD: Jamon's house was burglarized and burnt down. Not burnt down, but set afire on Christmas Eve. KEN: Torched. TODD: So, if you're feeling good about humanity up to this point, now you can feel bad about it. So, there you go, but they're back in their house. KEN: You're welcome. TODD: Everything's good. JAMON: Yes. TODD: You're back in your house. Everything's good, and he has a wonderful family, and all is well. JAMON: Yeah, it's really nice to be back. Anyway, I cut you off. TODD: But so that's a lot of my anxieties about it. At my age, I'm 46, and I've done this a long time. I don't stress as often. Like I used to get very stressed out doing sales calls or that kind of stuff. I've done all that stuff enough where it doesn't really bother me too much. Even tough things where you have to be really tough with the client, or vendor, or something like that. It doesn't, I mean it bothers me temporarily of course you get the adrenaline going and no one likes that. But it's really the things that give me anxiety and up at night is if I make a mistake that will cause us not to be able to pay payroll. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: Now, one note. We've always paid payroll. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: But that is something- KEN: There's been some close calls. TODD: That is something that- KEN: Yeah. TODD: That makes me work harder, and it makes me worry. Me, personally, I could figure it out, it's not as big of a deal to me. KEN: Well, I think also a big stressor that I didn't ... it makes sense in retrospect, but it wasn't one that like occurred to me, is how hard it is to maintain focus over time- JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative) TODD: Yeah. KEN: -when you don't have a boss doing that for you. I was a small scale boss at my previous jobs, but this experience definitely makes me want to write a nice little note of apology to every boss I've ever had. Like, however bad they were, I have more sort of sympathy for what they were dealing with then I did before. TODD: That's so true. KEN: Yeah, and the surprising thing is how hard it is to cope with success. When you're doing well, that's when the monster of de-focusing really starts to rear its head. It's like driving a car fast. If you've never driven a car at 150 miles an hour, it's a different thing from driving it at 60 miles an hour. It takes a little getting used to that state, oh things are going well, but that doesn't mean that I get to take my eyes off the road. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- KEN: So. CHRIS MARTIN: Can you guys go in a little deeper on how you manage some of these things? 'Cause you've talked about having the feelings of stress and fear, but maybe some of the ways that you manage it, a part from kicking Ken. KEN: That's Todd's favorite. TODD: Well, Ken mentioned that success can be hard to deal with, and I have a tried and true technique I've used for many years with dealing with the problems of success. And here it is. And I'll share it with you. I normally would charge for this advice, but I'm gonna share. Don't be successful. There you go. KEN: Yeah. TODD: You're welcome. KEN: That one we're still figuring out. Having co-founders you actually trust is probably the number one. TODD: Yeah, it's hard to do, and at one time in my career I said I would never ever had a partner or a co-founder again. And here we are, so. JAMON: I think getting together in person is important. Of course, we're a remote company. So I'm up here near Portland, and Ken's in the Bay Area, and Todd's in Vegas, but we did get together a couple weeks ago to talk. And there was a stressful situation going on, and that was something that we went through together in person. TODD: Well, we also hang out in zoom a lot. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: Every week. And that's similar. But, yeah having good co-founders who are your friends, and you become almost married at a point, because when you're in business together it is like a marriage, and you know everyone's finances. You know if someone's spouse is having problems with the way the company's working. You have to deal with that- JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- TODD: -at least as an auxiliary person in that particular thing. So it's a very intimate thing for sure. I definitely choose that very, very, very wisely. I've had bad experiences, and of course I've had great experiences here. JAMON: I think that one of the things that we actually do fairly well is we will say when we're stressed. You know, we'll say, "Hey, I am currently feeling a high degree of stress." And then the other co-founders can say, "Okay, what is causing this." And we can talk about it more objectively. And just saying it out loud sometimes is a way to kind of like let go of it a little bit. TODD: We also know how to fight which takes a while. That's a hard one to learn. JAMON: It is. TODD: But we've learned how to fight. Yell at each other, and know that afterwards we're going to be okay, and that's important. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: The trust that you would gain with a girlfriend or boyfriend or your spouse- KEN: Sibling TODD: -where you can have an emotional throw up as it were and know that you're still gonna be loved as it were. KEN: Well, and also it's sort of on the focusing issue, actually. It's relevant there too which is that I'm pretty ADD I would say. I think that's probably pretty common I would say for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is one place where you can actually challenge your ADD tendencies. However, I also know it's like, "Hey guys, I'm having some trouble focusing and motivating on x, y, and z- JAMON: Right. KEN: -can I have help with knowing that there's not going to be any judgment coming along- JAMON: Right. KEN: -with that help?" JAMON: Right. Yeah. TODD: To be clear, it's all not roses. Sometimes one of us gets irritated with the other person because of these issues and- JAMON: Right. TODD: -but ultimately once we get talking to it, we're not super human. Sometimes I get irritated with Jamon or Ken and vice versa. But the whole point is, when you get to the end of that, you're supportive. JAMON: Another really important thing is to have some really core principles. Some kind of tent poles so-to-speak that you can come back to. One of the things that we really strongly believe is that the core of us three is one of the most important things about this company. And so we can come back to that. I mean, if the most important thing that we had was some technology or some financial goal or something like that, then it would put a lot of stresses on our relationship, but since we've made that relationship such a high priority, it's extremely important. And another thing, along those lines, is we recognize that we are human, and that sometimes it's actually a personal situation that's contributing to work stress. TODD: Yes. JAMON: You might have situation where maybe a family member has health issues or you're having trouble with a relationship, or anything along those lines, and we ... I was actually talking to an employee recently who talked about a personal situation that they were having and how it was contributing to their stress, and I had noticed the stress that they were going through at work, but I didn't know about the personal situation, and it's okay. I told them, "It's fine. It's a normal, human thing to have situations that arise. I understand. It's something that you can tell us, if there's something going on, you don't have to be specific. You don't have to tell us private information, but just tell us that something's going on, and we will do our best to be as understanding as possible." TODD: And it's a matter of trust. That particular person trusted Jamon. That's fantastic. It's trust that we build up between founders. It's trust with the team, and to some extent, trust with your customers, and your vendors. Especially with customers and vendors, if you can do that, that's fantastic, but the others you can do with time. Just to give you an example, trust. I try to be trusting even when I shouldn't be. I picked up this guy the other day, in my car, he gets in the backseat. I just picked him up. I didn't know him, and first he gets in, understandably he's like, "Thanks for picking me up, but how do you know I'm not a serial killer?" TODD: And I just looked at him. I'm like, "What's the chance two serial killers would be in the same car?" Pretty low. So, yeah trust is very important. Any other tools or techniques that you all have for dealing with these anxieties or stresses or whatever? KEN: Drinking. Drinking is important. Water. Water. JAMON: Lots of water. KEN: What do you think I meant? Oh, come one. JAMON: Yes, stay hydrated. KEN: Yes, stay hydrated. Yeah. JAMON: Actually, along those lines, I started working out a couple years ago, and that has been a really good help for my stress level. When I get through with a workout, I feel better about myself. I feel good. There's probably some endorphins or something that come with that. And it's really hard when you are really critically needed at work to take two hours to go workout, but it's also extremely important for your long-term health. And so you have to prioritize it very high. And you can basically justify it to yourself which I had to do with if I go and do this, I will be better equipped to handle the issues that come up, and it's so true. Working out has been a very good thing for my stress level. TODD: A lot of people might be worried about their finances or their spouse's opinion and that kind of stuff. Which can be super challenging, so you have to deal with that. Another thing that I've noticed is, and this is pretty common, especially in our world, and I have to remember that 110 years ago, Ken'll tell me a real number, but somewhere around there. Most people worked at home, and most people had their own business. They didn't call it their own business, they were just a blacksmith, and people paid you to hoove their horses or not hoove. JAMON: Shoe. TODD: Shoe. KEN: Shoe. TODD: Shoe their horses. Thank you. It's been a while since I've lived on the farm about 30 years, but anyway- JAMON: It's that a farrier or something? TODD: Huh? JAMON: Ken, isn't it- KEN: A farrier. JAMON: Yeah, it's a farrier. KEN: That sounds right. TODD: Whatever that means. Anyways, so you would just do that. You'd just offer your services and that was a home business quote unquote. But, you know, since we all grew up in the late 20th century or the 21st century, for our younger listeners, you know that has been not the normal but the minority. And so a lot of people I've talked with, they said, "Well, can I do that? Do I have the permission to do that or whatever?" And it is kind of hard to get to their skull like who are you asking permission from? There isn't ... there is the government who has rules, but despite what you might think about the government, the rules are actually fairly basic and the IRS of course wants you to pay the money, but that's actually not the difficult to be honest either. So it's just really an internal stumbling block. You don't have to ask anyone. You can go right now. Get a business license, and sell bottles of water at a popular park. Right now, and you technically have a small business. JAMON: Regarding the personal finances side of this, one of the things that my wife and I did early on that really helped was we did a monthly budget. So we used the tool called YNAB, youneedabudget.com, and we sat down every month together, and we entered all of our receipts and we had categories and we split everything up. We were kind of finance nerds during this time, and that was helpful, because it gave us a sense of control over our finances. We knew where we were. We knew whether we had enough money to pay the mortgage. We knew how much, we could specifically tell you what day we would run out of money if we couldn't bring anything in, and that was helpful. Now, sometimes the math brings its own anxiety, but at least you know where it is, and it's not this unknown out there all the time. Actually, more lately, we've gotten away from that. After almost 15 years of marriage, and I kind of want to go back to it, because there are some stresses that come from not knowing. TODD: Yeah, sometimes everything is just fine, but just don't know it, and you assume the worst because- JAMON: Exactly. TODD: -people do. So I have a question for Ken. I grew up very poor, just some background, but later in my early 20s and stuff, my family actually started doing pretty well. My mom and my step-father ran a couple businesses. My brother started businesses and has done very well for himself. So, although, in my younger life, we were almost less than working class, to be honest. Later in life, we had a lot of experience with business. So me being in business was very natural to me, and my family understood, and they actually didn't understand when I was working for someone else. It was weird to them, but Ken, I know from discussions with you, the opposite was true. From your family, there wasn't anyone who were business people and that kind of stuff, and it was kind of outside your culture. I would love to hear if maybe that caused any particular issues for you? KEN: Yeah, for sure. I grew up in what I would call kind of professional slash academic class household. Right? College degrees going very far back in my family. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, illustrators, artists, also but professionals of various kinds. Going back quite a while. There was a flavor of business being looked down upon a little bit, and that was definitely, even when I got to Harvard. There was that divide was still there even though Harvard certainly has both types. The professional type to kind of like, well I'm good at something. I'm really good at this, and I'm so good at it people want to pay me good money for it. And that's a perfectly good life. And I'm actually here to tell you right now, if you have those skills. If you are happy doing them, you're in a good position. Should you start a business? The answer is probably no. Right? I did it because I couldn't stand not doing it. Right? It was just this terrifying but enticing thing for as long as I could remember to be ... I just wanted to be on my own. I want to do this. Ah. Right. It was this dragon inside that I couldn't contain. In some degrees, it made me a bad employee. Sometimes. Right, because anybody who's not doing what they're sort of supposed to be doing is not happy. Right? Jamon, do you want to interject? JAMON: Oh, I just want to say in Ken's family if you say someone is a painter, that means that they are an artist, and they paint on canvas. In my family, if someone's a painter, that means they spray paint on houses. KEN: Yes. TODD: In my family, if someone's a painter you're like, "Oh, he's got a job. That's wonderful." KEN: Yeah, so the three of us we talk about this class stuff all the time because when you start talking with people who grew up in different backgrounds, you start to realize what your blind spots are. Like, I remember Todd saying, growing up people who went to the movies were rich or something like that. Todd, do you remember what some of your things were? TODD: Oh, there's a long list of what rich people do that most people would find amusing. KEN: For me, not only ... I grew up in a fairly prosperous town. I would say. Right, but I wouldn't call it, there weren't a lot of rich, rich, rich people, but it was prosperous. And then going to Harvard, of course you get exposed to all sorts, and you start to realize how high the ladder goes. Right? And that gave me I think a sort of warped perspective on life. And Todd's perspective was warped in a different way. And by sort of, not like the three of us, by any stretch of the imagination, now encompass an enormous swath of life experience. JAMON: No. KEN: We're all white dudes for one thing. Right? JAMON: Yes. KEN: But nevertheless, it gives us sort of perspective on things that helps. It blunts some of the fear. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- KEN: To have that breadth of perspective. TODD: I'd like to ask Ken, because your family culture wasn't business-oriented, and as you just mentioned, almost a little bit looked down upon business people, I guess for the crassness of it all. KEN: It wasn't overt, but it was definitely outside of our purview. TODD: And definitely your friends from Harvard who weren't in business school or that kind of thing ... do you, like for me. It's easy for me. The bar was so low. I surpassed almost everyone I grew up with long ago. JAMON: Yeah. Similar. TODD: I don't have to prove anything to anyone. KEN: Well, so at this point I don't care very much. At this point, I'm doing my thing and that's that. However, I will point out there is something very interesting about Silicon Valley. Which is that Silicon Valley is a business culture that was grown by people kind of like me- JAMON: Yeah. KEN: -from the professional and scientific culture. JAMON: That's true. KEN: And as a result, that is where, I think, I'm not a sociologist. I haven't studied this or anything, but my theory is that that's where that sort of disdain for lifestyle businesses comes from. I think it's seen as sort of a grind. Where you're getting paid for the brilliance of your idea, you're just getting paid for hard work. JAMON: Yeah, I think that this idea of a lifestyle business, which I don't have any negative connotation whatsoever. In my world, a lifestyle business sounds like a luxury. KEN: Luxury. TODD: Luxury. JAMON: Okay, we're gonna have to link to that YouTube video. TODD: Yes. JAMON: But some Monty Python there. But I think that's actually something that was really, really helpful was when we merged was the idea that we can design this business to be lower stress. That doesn't mean we take our eye off the ball, which we kinda did for a little while there. That doesn't mean that we don't work hard, cause we do when the situation demands it, but we can design the type of business where the general day to day things are not drudgery. They are things that we enjoy doing. That we're good at, and that we can contribute to the success of the business. And I think that that's something that's actually overlooked a little bit when you're owning a business that you do have the ability to change things. You have the ability to enact change. It may be painful. It may be hard. It might be expensive, but you can look at something and say, "You know what, this isn't fitting for me, and I'm gonna change it." Whether it's cutting off a client that's being too stressful. Whether it's hiring someone to do something that you're not good at. All of those things are things that you can do. My sister started a small WordPress website company. So she's building WordPress websites. And she asked me for a lot of advice along the way, because she knew I'd kind of- TODD: Is this Meredith, Jamon? JAMON: Yeah. That's right that's Meredith. And one of the things I told her was that you want to stay with your kids. You want to be at home. You want to build this business that does not interrupt those things, so make those very core priorities. When you make decisions, they should be based on whether they enhance that or take away from that. It kind of gave her permission to look at things through that lens. That you don't have to necessarily measure it on dollars and cents or even things like customer satisfaction. That may be a goal and you don't want to let people down, but ultimately you don't want to let your family down. And that's something that I think is really important. So for her, you know her husband's an engineer, a mechanical engineer. He makes good money. It's not something where they have to have the business, but she wanted something that challenged her while she was also able to be at home, and I think it's done that. TODD: And the people she worked with on her team are similar, correct? JAMON: Yeah, that's right. So she not only provided a business that works for her, but also for the people on her team. So she actually has people that do code. That do design. That do content. And in many cases they are people who stay at home with their kids. And that's kind of a cool concept that there could be a business that enables that. TODD: I think that super important to mention the reason why, because people think that their business has to be like they see on TV or they read about it in a magazine or a book or whatever, and it doesn't. What principles you base your business on is up to you, and then your job is to figure out a way to make that happen. I think it's awesome that she wanted to help herself and her team who want a particular lifestyle and still be able to have this business, and she's doing it, and that's wonderful. KEN: Yeah, and I think it's worth saying on the list of reasons to start a business, getting rich should probably not be your number one. If getting rich is your number one reason, well I mean that's fine, and depending on your personality, it at least has that as a possibility. JAMON: Sure. KEN: Whereas most jobs done. At least not on any sort of short time frame. The number one reason to do it is 'cause you want more control over your life. And that's why we did it. So the first year that I took off, when we were still trying to build an ap and we hadn't done the consulting yet, my daughter was two, and to save money we took less daycare. I had to still have some, 'cause we both work, but did less daycare. So I spent time with her. I cooked for the family. I found all these ways to save money, and I was sort of part-time house husband while this was going on, and even if the rest of this fails, right? Even if we crash and burn, the chance to have that year and do that will be with me the rest of my life. So, part of our mission here at Infinite Red, and something we've always agreed on is that we don't just want a successful business. We have to do that in order to make the rest of this work. And it's a perfectly good goal in itself, but that we also want to be an example of how work can work. Right? Not that there aren't others, but this is us. This is what we think work should be like. Not that it's never intense. Not that it's never hard. Not that it's some sort of walk in the park. It is not. But that it can co-exist with the rest of your life in a much more harmonious way than has been the model for 20th century corporate whatever. TODD: Yeah, there are other ways to run a business, all of them are wrong. CHRIS: Ken do you think that when we ... that struggle occurs when we move away from those principles and values and what's important to us as business owners or whatever that label would be? So like, when you move away from maybe wanting to spend time with your family or building a company where it fuels the lives of your employees. You know, do you think that fear and intention is magnified if you move away from those things? KEN: What do you mean by move away from those things? CHRIS: So that they're no longer a priority. Maybe you're making decisions that go against those values. KEN: That is definitely a source of stress. And the fact of the matter is, we are still a business. We still have to operate in the same environment that every other business does. And we have to compete against businesses that don't operate the way we do. JAMON: Right. KEN: And to whatever extent our values create, like I said, put us at a disadvantage, and I think sometimes in the short term that is true. We sometimes have to make hard choices in order to survive and work another day. And I think there's probably kind of a core, not exactly explicitly articulated, there's some core that we won't push past, but when we have to hopefully temporarily do things that are different from our stated values. Yeah, that's rough. Absolutely rough. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: The trick is to kind of figure out ... this is why it's so important to figure out what your real values are. Right? And we've had to sort of narrow it down in certain places, because if you have this long list of things that you claim to care about, but that's not actually true. Right? Then, when it really comes down to it, there are some things that are more core than others. If you die on the hill of one of the non-core ones, and it causes you to fail, that is an unacceptable outcome. And so, figuring out which hills you're really willing to die on and which hills you're not willing to die on is super important and there's not really a shortcut. It's something that you figure out as you go along. TODD: If you're getting chased by zombies through a forest and the zombies are starting to catch up to you, sometimes you have to give grandma a cookie and push her down the hill. That's all I'm saying. It sucks. It's against your principles, but grandma's lived a good life, and she loves those cookies. Fact. JAMON: I don't even know how to follow up on that one, but one of the things I was asked early on when I started my company was, what are your core principles and I kind of fumbled through an answer, and I don't even remember what it was at the time. But I actually think it was probably not reasonable for me to even know what those were at the time other than personal values, but over time, taking lumps here and there and bruises, and the stress and anxiety of various situations, it's made it very clear what is really important. At the time I was young, I was idealistic. I didn't really understand what could go wrong. What mattered. What didn't. But I think that all of those stresses and fears eventually taught me a lot of things and so in a lot of ways, even though they kind of sucked at the time, they were necessary to get me to who I am today. You know, I don't want to go back and relive them, but I wouldn't trade them away. TODD: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Well that was super interesting to me. I knew some of that. I learned some new stuff which is always fun, and I hope it has some value to the listeners for sure. You know, our experience. At least it's hopefully an interesting story if nothing more. JAMON: Absolutely.

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How Should I Charge For Software Development?

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2018 55:09

The theme of this episode is centered around the lessons learned in charging for software development. Starting with a question from the Infinite Red Community, Todd, Ken, and Jamon touch on hourly vs. project pricing, the tension between time and value, how software estimating is a lot like weather forecasting, and the many experiments conducted over the years to find the right pricing model for Infinite Red. Episode Transcript JAMON HOLMGREN: We received a question from the community, community.infinite.red, it's a Slack community that we have. Trent asks, "Hey Jamon, I'm enjoying the podcast. Will you guys be covering hourly pricing versus project pricing? It's a question we're dealing with right now. Which do you guys prefer, and what are some lessons learned to bring you to that choice?" I think this is a really great question. Todd, do you wanna talk about what we're doing right now? And then we can go into maybe what we've done in the past, and what brought us to that choice? TODD WERTH: Sounds good. Yeah that's a great question, and it's actually a really tough one to deal with. So, what we do now, is we do weekly pricing. We charge per person-week, and we call it "person-week" as opposed to "a week of work" because it could actually be two people working maybe half a week each and that would be one "person-week." Because we're doing person-weeks, we have a point system. So, 100 points equals a person-week. We don't track time. We used to, and we can talk about that—we used to bill hourly. We don't track time, we don't actually know how long things take, it's just, we estimate our tasks in points, and if we've reached a hundred or more per person-week and we charge per person-week, then we're accomplishing our goal. JAMON: There's a bit of a tension between time and value, and this has been something that we've dealt with, I mean, I've dealt with, since I started my first consultancy. Of course, value-based pricing is kind of a holy grail of pricing for consultancies, and we've heard this for a long time, that you should charge for the value, not just the time that it takes. So an example, this would be fixed-bid pricing, where you're essentially betting on delivering the software in a reasonable amount of time, but you're getting paid on the value to the client. The problem is that our costs are not based on value. So, we're not necessarily paying our people based on the fixed-bid, a percentage of the fixed-bid, or something like that. There are industries that do that, but ours is not one of them. So we're paying people salaries, and our costs are over time, and so if something takes a very long time, then our profitability and the ability of the company to remain financially solvent is threatened. Conversely, you have, of course, hourly. We've done that in the past, and the nice thing about hourly is that it corresponds, obviously, very tightly with the amount of time that it takes to do. But the problem is that every hour is not equal. You have hours that are maybe really valuable, you've automated something and in a lot of cases you're actually delivering more value than the client is paying for, quite a bit more. And then there are others where the person's getting spun up, or they're hung up on a particular problem, whether it's their fault or not, and that turns into a bit of an issue, because then you're billing hundreds of dollars an hour for something where the client isn't really getting a lot of value. So I think that's why we ended up where we are, in a way. TODD: Yeah, both have issues. When you're doing hourly, it might seem to a client that's more fair, but it's not. It means every time there's a bug, or any time there's an issue, we basically are nickel-and-dimeing them, and they don't necessarily like that. We have to spin up someone, like Jamon said, where in our value system that we use now, they don't see any of that. We fix the bugs because it's part of the value of that particular feature. It does mean, though, sometimes, that we can produce a feature faster than the hourly would've been, and so they get charged, I guess, more for that. KEN MILLER: There's a couple of different ways that hourly works out sometimes, though. There's certainly the very literal, like, you sit there and you run a clock, like the way a lawyer would, you actually have a little timer that shows exactly what you're doing. When I worked for a large sort of corporate consulting company, Big Five-style, back in the '90s, I remember my first week I was filling out my time card, and I filled in the insane hours that I worked, because that's the kind of work that you do. And my project manager comes over to me and he's like, "No no no no no no no no, this is not what you do." And he took my time card and he filled in "eight, eight, eight, eight, eight." (laughter) TODD: That's ridiculous. But... KEN: Right. So that's how the Big Five work, often. TODD: So it's completely fake in that situation. KEN: It's completely fake. It's basically pretty close to what we do now, which is that weekly billing. Where an hour is just a way of measuring a week. To answer the question directly, you know, do we prefer hourly or project-based, we prefer hourly. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Hourly leads to less problems in the long term because the trouble with fixed bid, although it seems like it's appealing—It's appealing from your point of view, if you think you can be really efficient, and it's appealing from their point of view if they think you can't. But that's exactly it right there, it creates this adversarial relationship. Todd? TODD: Yeah, clients all– not all, but many clients think they would love a fixed bid. And in truth, they will hate a fixed bid. Ken's right. Fixed bids create an adversarial situation. Even if both sides are extremely... They're at the table in good faith, and they're trying to do the right thing and do their part and stuff, it still means that the client is trying to get as many hours as possible out of you for the same price, and us would be trying to do as few hours as possible. Like I said, even if you're both being very nice and very ethical in the way you're billing, that always creeps in. It also means that you have to lawyer every change. You'll have companies that have change order systems that are pretty complex. Clients hate that. When I talked to especially start-ups, one of the things I say is if the project we're working on at the end ends up exactly as you envisioned at the beginning, that's a huge red flag. That means you didn't listen to your beta testers, that means you didn't think at all during the process even after you got in your hands what could be better, it means a bunch of different things. So, we have a pretty strong process, but it's designed to be flexible. We wanted it to be flexible. So when we get to the point when we do estimation after a research phase, it's fairly accurate. The likelihood that it will actually produce your project for this estimate is extremely low. Not because we're incompetent– I'm sometimes incompetent– not because we're incompetent, but because you're gonna make a bunch of changes, and we welcome that. We don't lawyer that. But that's a little bit difficult, there's a little bit of education involved in getting people to understand that fully. JAMON: One of the objections is that, well, there are other companies that do fixed-bid, and they seem to do just fine. They're able to sustain that and their customers are generally happy, and things like that. But I think there's a hidden cost in there that people don't take into account. Which we've sort of driven a stake into the ground, we've said, "Hey, we're not willing to go down this route." And that is that those companies put the burden of hitting those estimates onto their employees. They essentially say, "Okay, well, we estimated this amount, you're not done yet, so you're gonna stay late until it's done." And they push, and push, and push, and they really, really just drive the screws in on their employees. Maybe not overtly, maybe not directly, but there's a culture and an expectation of being able to hit those estimates that puts a lot of stress on the employees. KEN: Yeah, that doesn't necessarily look like a slave driver. It can look like a "Rah-rah, sleep when you're dead," "work hard, play hard." "Rah!" But like, that kind of corporate culture. There are firms out there that I respect that do fixed-bids, and they seem to make it work, and that's fine. But in our experience, someone is paying for that somewhere. JAMON: Exactly. TODD: There's another type of fixed-bid which isn't just slave-driving your employees into the dirt. It is, you think it's gonna cost $100,000 on this project, you bid $800,000. So no matter what, unless you're ridiculously off, you're fine. The problem comes in when clients want both the lowest possible price and a fixed-bid. That just... It's not really possible. JAMON: So, our system is different. And Todd, I'd like you to talk a little bit about why our... Because, we are giving an estimate with points, and we're trying to hit those points, so it may feel like a fixed-bid, but do you want to explain what we're doing differently, where it really does change over time as you do a project? TODD: Yeah, so we do spend a decent amount of time doing research, architecture, that kind of stuff, before we estimate the points. So we're not just doing a ballpark estimate. We do a ballpark estimate at the beginning, but that's a few hours of our time. But we spend a few weeks or whatever doing research, architecture, that kind of stuff. And at the end of that, we produce an estimate in points. So those are fairly accurate. Obviously, anyone out there who does software development... By the way, everything we're talking about here is for development. On the design side, we do fixed-bids, and that's a different discussion. The gentleman who asked us the question was more towards the development side, so that's what we're talking about. JAMON: Right. TODD: So, our estimates are based on a whole lot more information than a lot of people do. And we do have clients who want an accurate estimate earlier, and we just have to push back, because in that situation we have only two options: We either push back against them and try to educate them in the process and help them do a successful project, or we lie to them. (laughter) And unfortunately a lot of companies just lie. They just come up with a number, they act like they put some thought into it– they didn't. I worked for a consulting company in the late '90s where the way we estimated was we asked the sales person how much they could afford. That was our miracle estimate. Which to me, I hated as an engineer. I just loathed it. I'm digressing a little bit here, but I don't want to make it out that our estimates are super accurate or that estimating software at all is an accurate thing at all. We know it's not. KEN: One of our sort of colleague companies out there calls them "forecasts," which I really like. People understand, like, a weather forecast is not necessarily going to be accurate. It's like, "Based on what we can see right now, this is what we think is gonna happen." And everyone understands that. So I really like that as a bit of language. TODD: Yeah, we should call it "forecasts." KEN: I'm tempted to steal that, but... (laughter) TODD: The other cool thing about a forecast is it's known: the further out you are from the date, the less accurate the forecast is, and the closer you get, the more accurate, and that's very true in our situation as well. JAMON: That's a great point, Todd, because we will definitely adjust those estimates as we get into things, and as we learn more. And I try to, I do a lot of the sales calls now, and one of the things I try to do is set the expectation that over time, the estimates will get more and more accurate, as we know more. The same thing with the weather forecast. You look at the ten-day, and you look at day number ten, and as you get closer and closer, you're gonna see a better and better forecast. And it's not uncommon for that to change even quite drastically, because weather systems can get delayed a little bit or something, and that can impact which day they land. KEN: Unless you live in California, in which case our weather never changes. JAMON: Yeah. No, I live in the Pacific Northwest near the Columbia River Gorge, and nobody understands the weather here. TODD: Our weather's hot and sunny. Tomorrow? Hot and sunny. The next day? Hot and sunny. JAMON: What if it's- KEN: And then a terrifying thunderstorm. And then hot and sunny. TODD: Once a year, we have terrifying water from the sky. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is in this very small patch– I'm totally digressing here– but it's a very small patch in the US with the most sunshine out of the whole US, and it's just basically Las Vegas and around the desert area here. I think it's something ridiculous like 300 and some days of pure sunshine. Which is nice, as I lived in San Francisco for 20 years, and it is the opposite of that. And I enjoyed that for a long time, but I enjoy this. Anyways. So one of the things I wanted to bring up is, and we should talk about estimates. Because estimates are a big part of how you charge. And it is a difficult problem, and we have all sorts of issues that, I think, would be very interesting for listeners to hear that they're not alone in, and that we're still struggling with. KEN: Nobody has a magic bullet. Nobody has a magic bullet on that. TODD: It's a soft problem, it's definitely a people problem, and it's something that I'm actually actively working on all the time. But to finish up what we were saying before, we do find that weekly billing has worked out very well. It does require education. Your clients may instinctively go, "Okay, well they're just doing this to make more money because they're gonna get it done way faster, and they're actually gonna charge me this extra money, and they're not gonna do anything." And that's a perfectly normal human reaction. But one of the ways that we added some sugar to that tea is we say, "A bug comes up, sometimes bugs take five minutes, sometimes bugs take a half a week to fix. That's all included in that estimate. You don't have to worry about that. No nickel-and-dimeing." When the estimate goes up, say we add person-weeks to the overall estimate, and then maybe we add some calendar-weeks... By the way, we have typically a minimum team of two, and most times people work on one project full-time, so if you have a two person team on a project, we're producing two person-weeks per week. From that, and the number of points we estimate, we can calculate the calendar time, as opposed to the person-week time. And the calendar time does get extended, and the person-weeks do get extended. But it's always– not always, but it's usually from changes, and we try to be very good about being very transparent in explaining, and the client should know what all those changes were. They hopefully have approved them, and that's what adds the person-weeks and that sort of thing. JAMON: There are some times where we will feel like maybe we made a mistake, in such a way that it was maybe, we're not comfortable charging the client more for a particular thing. And in that case we will adjust what we're billing for a particular chunk of a project. And we'll take on that risk. There's a shared expectation of being reasonable in this. If a client's asking for something, then we're gonna bill more. If we make a mistake, then we'll try to rectify that as much as possible. But it does have flexibility built in, and that's important. But then also, like you said, Todd, the bug-fixing is built in and things like that. That really helps mitigate the amount of risk that the client is taking on. TODD: And truthfully, it's much easier for people doing the actual work, because they don't have to constantly, "Oh, this three-hour task is now a five-hour task, I have to ask permission for those extra two-hours, and it's just a lot of paperwork and a lot of thought about stuff that has nothing to do with making a great project." But yeah, and I also want to add on to what Jamon just said, the way we deal with issues... Let's say the value wasn't there, we had some problems, we typically deal with it on the invoicing side. We tell our people, "Okay, for whatever reason we're not gonna be charging for these person-weeks." But from their perspective, it doesn't matter. They're estimating points, they're working during the week, they're getting at least a hundred points per person-week, and they just keep on going forward. We'll adjust it on the back side, on the invoicing side so that our process keeps going and we have accurate data, even if we're in a situation where we made a big mistake or something like that, and we're not charging them for, say, a few weeks or whatever. JAMON: Yeah, totally. And Ken, would you wanna talk about the chronic problem of under-estimating? 'Cause I know this is something that's near and dear to your heart. KEN: Yeah, I don't know why engineers... I don't know if they want to feel like they, you know, they're really fast, or they feel guilty, or if it's imposter syndrome, or whatever it is, but it is a chronic problem. Engineers will estimate too optimistically. So we have sort of structures and practices, and this is not an easy problem to solve, right? But we have sort of structures and practices in place to sort of counter-act that, hopefully, whether it's sort of checklists like, "Have you considered these sort of failure cases? Have you included the bug-fixing and the testing time? Is the testing time including every platform that you could possibly use this on?" Et cetera, et cetera. Todd? TODD: Yeah, this is a problem we have not solved. We really try to hire, and I think we have hired, really decent, ethical people. Which is fantastic, and that's the intention, and I very much enjoy working with almost everyone here (maybe not Ken, but that's okay). (laughter) KEN: You can't fire me. (laughter) TODD: I cannot. I've tried many times. KEN: It's a perk of the job. TODD: Actually, it's funny, because I've been working on this a lot lately. We hire good, ethical people, which I very much enjoy. But they tend to feel more guilt, and they tend to be a little... They contemplate it and worry about it a little too much, to be honest. And so we do have chronic under-billing. One of the things we do is, we ask them for estimates, and we never ever– up to this point I've ever said, "This estimate's too high. You need to reduce this estimate." Because this is the estimate they're giving us, and they're gonna do the work, and it's not fair for us to come and say, you know, "You said it's gonna take a hundred points, I think it'd take 50 points." And of course when they do it and it takes a hundred points, they've failed, but only because in my opinion it should've been 50. We never do that. We never push back on that. So you would think that just human nature, in order to alleviate stress, they would say, "Okay, that's gonna take 50 points, but I'm gonna make it a hundred and 50 points just to give me an allowance." No one does that, surprisingly. That is not the problem we deal with. It could be just our team. Probably not just our team, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who do that. KEN: I mean, I've seen this everywhere I've ever worked, right? People wanna feel like a hero, people don't... It's not as much fun to think about all the ways that things go wrong, well, depending on your personality I guess. But yeah, the ideal way that we're always striving toward is basically, the engineer gives us as accurate and conservative of an estimate as possible. And then in terms of how we present it to the client, if we feel we need to make an economic adjustment in order to get a sale, for example, then we will do that on our end. We don't want it baked into the estimate. JAMON: And Todd actually ran an experiment with our own engineers at one point. He took a screen, I think it was a login screen of a project we'd actually already done- TODD: Yes. JAMON: -and sent it to several engineers and asked what their estimate was. Do you wanna talk about that, Todd? TODD: Yeah, I've done a few of these to try to kind of understand this problem. In that case, it wasn't clear what kind of project it was, whether it was a mobile app, an iPad app, a website. I did that on purpose. I also didn't give them any requirements other than I gave them a screenshot. Which is not untypical to get from a client if we didn't do the design, to just get the screenshots. So I wanted to see A) how they approached the estimation process, and B) what their estimates were. I'll skip to the spoiler part. The lowest one was like three hours? This is back when we did hours, we weren't doing points. The highest one was like 46 hours. So the range is three hours to 46 hours. Some people, their estimate wasn't accurate for obvious reasons, they got back to me within five minutes and didn't ask any questions. And that was more on the junior side, and that's perfectly fine. Estimating is probably one of the most difficult things that we do, and so it's understandable when people with less experience do it less well. But the interesting part is that a lot of people didn't even ask what platform it was on. The person who did 46 hours, the highest one, had a huge write-up of all the reasons why it was 46. And when you look at it, you're like, "Yeah." Because it seemed very simple. Like, it's a login screen. It's two text inputs and a button that says "Login." But there's actually a huge amount of stuff. A lot of people assumed they were just doing the screen as opposed to actually making it work, like, making you log in to the backend, and Facebook integration and all this stuff. But the fascinating part is how different it was and their different approaches. KEN: It should be mentioned, though, just for the record, that the way this exercise was set up was intentionally, on Todd's part, very vague. Right? It wasn't like, "Hey, I need you to do this for a client so that we can get a good estimate." It was a very off-hand... But the range of responses to that very vague setup was illuminating. Because some people are constitutionally incapable of not treating that seriously. (laughter) And some people are like, "Whatever Todd, I've got work to do." Right? So there's gonna be a very broad range there, and the range of real estimates is probably not gonna be quite as wide. But still. TODD: Ken has a particular personality, and so does a few other people on our team, where he really didn't like the "gotcha" part of that question, the vagueness of it. And he felt like I was looking for a real answer and he was set up to fail on the real answer because I didn't give him any information. That wasn't the point of it. I actually didn't care what their answer was as much as the process by which they went around the answer. And I didn't say that, on purpose, too. And so he was a little bit like, "You're setting me up to fail, I don't like this, go to hell." Which was kind of funny. But it's funny from my perspective, but it's also illuminating. For people with that type of personality, that's the reaction they have to that, and that's a very real thing. KEN: Well, it's also, like, if you just ask me a very vague off-hand question, I'm gonna devote a vague off-hand amount of attention to it. Right? And I think a lot of other people are gonna be that way too. It's kind of like, "Oh, okay, without any further information, why am I gonna spend an hour breaking down this problem for you?" Or however long it takes. JAMON: I will point out that mine was both quick and accurate. TODD: Yeah, I hate giving Jamon a compliment, but I thought Jamon's was one of the more accurate, and he did it very fast, and it was very thorough. KEN: We brought Jamon on because he's lucky. TODD: That's right. I have a rule: Every quarter, I randomly fire one of our team. And the reason I do this is very simple. I don't want anyone unlucky working at our company. That's a joke, in case anyone thought it wasn't. We don't horribly fire people because they're unlucky. But yeah, so that's a very interesting thing on that. There's other interesting things too. Another experiment I did was, I had people estimate something simple again. Then they gave me the estimate, whatever it was– the numbers don't matter, but let's say they said 10 hours, and this is once again, back when we did hours. If they said 10 hours, then I would say, "Okay, what's the likelihood– are you 100 percent confident that you can do it in 10 hours or under? Are you 90 percent confident? 80 percent confident?" And then I would ask them, "Okay, how about eleven hours? How about twelve hours, how about thirteen hours?" And what I found is that the first estimate they gave me, almost no one was confident they could do it in that time. Which was fascinating- JAMON: Yeah, it'd be something like 60 percent or something, and then you'd have to go quite a ways up before they were 90, 95 percent confident. TODD: Correct. So I'm not sure exactly what to make of that, except for, that's a phenomenon. JAMON: I did ask some of our employees that were doing an estimate to include a confidence factor. And that estimation is not done yet. It should be in the next week or two, and it'll be interesting to go through that and see where they landed. KEN: Yeah, that would be interesting. JAMON: There are some other reasons why you might not be confident. Maybe there are a bunch of unknowns that we will have to dig into before we'll know for sure, and there's no amount of hours that would satisfy that necessarily. But I think that that's something... You should give a number... Again, we're not doing hours, but doing the point system you should have your estimate units, of course, for each task, but then also include a confidence factor. And that might be a percentage or something that you're confident. I think that's an aspect that maybe will be helpful going forward. TODD: To be clear, that's a hypothesis. Jamon has at this point, we haven't tested that. So take that as an idea. JAMON: That's exactly right, yeah. TODD: Another thing I asked them was, it's very fascinating, the same kind of line of questioning on giving them a very simple thing to estimate. And then I asked them, "Does that include tests? Does that include QA? Does that include bug fixes? Does that include any production issues when it goes out to the real world?" All over the map, whether or not they included, very few people said it included all of that. So when you asked them, "How long will this take?" They didn't take that question as, "How much time will you spend to have this completely done and you never touch it again?" Very few people took it that way. They more took it as, "I could get it done and in the app and then later we would debug it or test it or make changes or whatever, but that's not included in my estimate." So that was a fascinating result, also. Now, I don't have any recommendations for any of this, other than it's very interesting to see how people's minds work, and how different people's minds work differently when they're given a task to estimate how long something will take. JAMON: There's a couple of ways that we can mitigate that. Ken mentioned earlier, checklists. I think those are probably under-utilized. That's something that we should use more. So when you're looking at a screen, you'd have a checklist of things. And maybe some of them don't apply and you just mark them off. But some of them are definitely... KEN: Yeah, there's something else that we're trying, which I've never really heard of anyone else doing, I've never encountered it before. We're trying to keep a database of past features so that instead of sitting and de novo every time, sort of like thinking through step-by-step every feature, you say, "Does this feature feel more like this one or that one?" Right? And then you just take the number that we actually empirically determined previously. JAMON: So it gives you kind of an anchor point, and then you can determine if it's maybe more or less than that. KEN: The jury's out on whether this could work as a system or not, but. JAMON: Exactly. TODD: What does "de novo" mean, Ken? KEN: From the beginning, from new. TODD: So, you replaced "from new," which is two syllables, with a three syllable word, "de novo." Okay, just making sure I understand. (laughter) KEN: It has further implications, but whatever, Todd. Feel free to make fun of my vocabulary as much as you like. TODD: I would make fun of your vocabulary, but the word "vocabulary" isn't in my vocabulary, so... KEN: Obviously. TODD: It's a vicious circle. JAMON: So I think it's good maybe for us to go back a couple years, maybe. When we merged, we had... We try to be a little bit unconventional in our thinking. We try not to bring a lot of preconceived notions into what we're doing here, and think things through de novo, you know, start from the beginning, start from– you like how I did that?– start from first principles and kind of look at it in a way that... "Okay, can we innovate on this? Can we look at it and come up with something new?" And we did, actually. And I don't actually remember whose idea this was, maybe one of you does, but we had the idea, "We're gonna bill hourly," was what our initial thought was. "We're gonna bill hourly, and then let's have a base salary for all of our developers and designers, but then pay them per hour billed that they personally billed." And it was an interesting experiment. I think we ran it for probably a year, maybe it was two years? Something like that, with varying success. And we learned a ton of things that you wouldn't when you just start out as salary employees. I will point out that we are now on salary. But we should talk a little bit about that experiment and what we learned there. TODD: Yeah, that was... We had specific goals, and we had tons of good intentions for those goals. And like all good intentions, we fell on our face. But that would be a very interesting podcast in itself, the lessons... What we did, what we went through, what we changed to, and the lessons we learned during the process. JAMON: I think to just kind of give it a really quick little thing, since we've teased it here, one of the things that we found is that people are generally not that motivated by money. Because they can certainly bill more hours and make more money, that was one of the benefits of the system, if you were very productive– KEN: A couple people did. JAMON: Yeah, some people did. KEN: Some people took advantage of that. JAMON: Yeah, for sure, but it was not anywhere near even a quarter of those people. So that was good to know. Other people, they were just motivated by different things. They were motivated, it's not that they're not motivated, but it just wasn't purely by money. Another thing was that there were some situations that ended up not really being very fair. So, some people would be in projects where bill hours were very easy to come by. And others where we really either had to supplement their bill hours or something along those lines. It also didn't really encourage collaboration between people, so there's some silos. The benefit to the company, obviously, is that if we're having sort of a down month because, you know, it's cyclical, then your costs go down. And the benefit to the employee is if you're having a really busy month, then you're getting paid more. But ultimately, that whole system, we went away from, and went to the system that we're using today. TODD: Yeah, I can, in my opinion, it was a complete failure. That being said, it was, I'm pretty sure, originally my idea. And like I said, great intentions, but I think that was one of our biggest failures, to be honest. JAMON: We learned a lot. I think that was the big thing. And those lessons will stick with us. TODD: We learned a lot, and we changed, and, you know... But I think it was more painful than it should've been. KEN: I forget where I sort of read/heard this advice, but basically, when you're starting a new company, you're trying to do something innovative, you should limit what you try to do that's innovative. Focus your innovation where it really counts, and then don't try to innovate too much in the rest of your business practices. I think that that's part of what we learned there. Even setting aside all these sort of incentive things, there's a bunch of things that just work better when people are on salary. Right? Their benefits work better, insurance works better– TODD: Vacation time. KEN: -vacation time works better, there's a bunch of things where there's a whole ecosystem of support for how to run a business. And if you try to innovate in how you do that, you cut yourself out of all those things, and make yourself less competitive on the labor market. You make yourself... You know, you spend more time on things you shouldn't be spending time on. And so, you know, I think we've become in some ways a more conventional company in certain aspects, so that we can stretch out into places that we still want to stretch out. TODD: It's so interesting you said that, Ken, because I literally give people that advice when they're starting out producing an app or a website or whatever it is. For the things that don't matter to your particular customers, or don't matter to your particular business, stick with tried and true. That's well-known, you don't have to worry about that stuff. Put all your innovation and your avant-garde ideas into the things that really differentiate your company from other companies. So it's so funny that you said that in respect to our company, because although we didn't apply it ourselves, it's advice we give. KEN: Well, I had heard that advice before we did all of this. And the truth is, when you're there, you don't always know which one is the most important, right? So that's gonna happen. But it's worth bearing that in mind, to always be asking yourself the question, like, "What really makes us different as a company?" And if it's not this thing that we're doing and spending a lot of time on, maybe rethink that. TODD: I'll personally admit to hubris. KEN: What?! Never. TODD: "We can do anything, and we'll just apply our big brains to it, and we'll figure it out." KEN: Big brains are not the commodity that's in short supply. It's time, right? It's time and attention. JAMON: I think I'll actually disagree a little bit, here. We've actually gotten the feedback that we all agree a little too much here. So I'll play the part of the devil's advocate here. I think it was well worth trying, and I think it was actually based on some things that we... I think in certain cases, actually, it could work, I think it could be actually be something that a particular company could actually make work. It's just that we didn't like some of the side effects of it. Sort of like, taking a certain experimental medication. Maybe it works, but the side effects are not worth it. And I think that that's actually where we ended up with that. I wouldn't, like Todd said, I wouldn't necessarily classify it all as a complete failure. I think there were parts of it that were a failure. And I'm happy with the system we have now, but I'm also very much happy that we tried that. TODD: It was 90 percent a failure. KEN: It got us to the point we are now. TODD: Well, sure. JAMON: What's your confidence level on that, Todd? TODD: I am 90 percent confident that it was a 90 percent failure. CHRIS: Do you guys wanna touch on psychology and perception in the role of pricing? KEN: Oh, man. **CHRIS: That's something I was kind of thinking about as you were talking.## JAMON: Yeah, actually, I do have some thoughts on that. So, one of the questions that comes up is, "When you are selling fixed-bid or hourly, what do clients think? Is it hard to do?" And I've found that neither fixed-bid nor hourly are particularly hard to sell. Both are well-understood. Our current system takes a little more explanation, and so I think that's something we need to continue to work on, our messaging on. But most people understand them. Some people have a problem with it. They'll say, "You know what, we're not willing to do hourly. That puts too much risk on us." And that's totally cool. It's not something that... maybe they're not a good fit for us. KEN: Well, yeah, the thing is, whenever you're asking a vendor to assume risk for you... You're paying for it somewhere, right? You know, if they want you to be the insurance, then you're paying them to provide insurance. Either that, or they're mismanaged and they're gonna go out of business and then you don't have support. You know, when we switched to weekly, I was concerned that we'd have trouble selling it. It doesn't seem like it's been too big of a deal. For the most part, people still mostly care about the total number, correct? And how you get there? TODD: Correct. KEN: They're not as, they're not usually as concerned with... We've had a few cases where... We had something recently where the upstream source of funds was a grant that had rules about how it's charged, so there's things that come up around that. So sometimes we'll make exceptions. And we have at least one enterprise client that we still use hourly. But for the most part, this has been pretty popular. We feel like it has the best of both worlds in some respects, that it has more predictability than hourly, but it still has built-in flexibility that a fixed-bid doesn't. TODD: Our team definitely thinks the weekly is a success. It wasn't that difficult to convert clients from hourly to weekly, and for new clients, they don't seem to mind whatsoever. It's interesting from our team's perspective. Sometimes they could be working more than they used to, because they have to fix these bugs or whatever, but because they don't have the stress or the guilt, a lot of times of the hourly, they still like it better. It's kind of counter-intuitive, in that way. JAMON: Yeah, I think there's three vectors, or three metrics that you would go off of, you know. "How satisfied is the client?" "How stress-free is it for the employees?" And then, "How much do we as owners like it as a business model?" And from those metrics, I feel like all three have been a success. TODD: Yeah, it's definitely been a success. I think we could definitely do with hourly, but I think the weekly billing has been a huge success. I'm 90 percent sure that it was 90 percent a success. (laughter) As far as the psychology from the client standpoint? We understand... One of the things we do, we hire a people who have a lot of experience, either they ran their own small businesses, they ran teams, that kind of stuff. We have a lot of people who have real-world kind of business experience. We're definitely not business consultants, per se, but we do work with a lot of start-ups who need some basic, not basic, but need some of our business consulting. And one of the things that we do is we understand the risk involved. And there's a lot of companies like us don't talk about this at all. For example, from a client's perspective, it's a big purchase. If you're spending 100,000, 200,000, 500,000 dollars? That's a large purchase. If you're a start-up, that's a risky thing. So we try to really think about their risk. Now, we have our own risks, too. We could put five people on a project for a few weeks, incur a huge amount of money, and they could just never pay us, go out of business, whatever reason. So we have risk as well. So we're not here just to alleviate all their risk and put it on our shoulders, being the insurance risk, insurance Ken just mentioned. But we do try to figure out a way to have a nice balance between us helping them with their risk, and them helping us with our risk, and just being up-front. Like, "This is risky, you don't know us. You've had a recommendation, maybe you liked us during a sales call so you're choosing us, but you really don't know us." And we're a huge believer in gaining trust over time. So at the beginning, or whatever that word is Ken had, I forgot now, already, at the beginning, the risks are much higher. So we do put a lot of thought into that. Some clients, to be honest, aren't a good fit for our system. We're very happy to help them find someone who would better fit the system than us. So we do lose some clients, for sure. JAMON: One way that some clients have asked us to share an undue amount of risk is when they ask us for hourly with a cap. That is sort of the worst of both worlds for us. If we finish early, we make less money, but we also take all of the risk of when it goes over. So we really do refuse, essentially, to do that. Now, there have been some situations where we've put such a cap on ourselves because of particular circumstances, but we don't work for clients that demand that sort of thing. TODD: Yeah, we have a general rule where we strive not to work for free. Which sounds funny, especially if you're in a different kind of business than ours, but it's actually super common for businesses like ours to work a lot for free, for nothing. And it's actually, in my opinion, a rampant problem in our industry. So we really strive not to do that. I think that would probably come to a shock for a lot of people. If you're selling hamburgers, the concept, "Well, you know, 30 percent of the people walk through today, you're just gonna give them the hamburger for free." That would be shocking to them. But that's kind of like what people like us do, too much so, in my opinion. Anything else on the psychology from the client standpoint that we could talk to, or talk about? KEN: I mean, pricing is a huge topic. TODD: Could you talk about pricing per week or per hour, the psychology? Because I know you've discussed this in the past, Ken, and I'd love for you to tell people. KEN: Yeah, so one of the things we... We've tried a bunch of different ways of pricing. So one of the things we did before, we would only bill for extreme, like the instant we step away from the keyboard, the timer goes off. When we first started, we tried to do this. So we would charge like a pretty high hourly rate. But then, the actual number of hours burnt would be low. Nobody liked that. Nobody understood that, it was much better to bill in the way that people kind of understood about that. When we would bill hourly, like an hourly rate, we're much more likely to get really kind of angry responses sometimes. To people who didn't really have a sense for what software costs. Because what people will do is, they'll look at the hourly rate, and they'll compare it to how much they make. Right? They'll go, "Wait a minute, that's what a lawyer makes!" Or something. It's not actually what a lawyer makes. But we would get this very visceral reaction to that. But by doing it weekly, where we've kind of smoothed all that out, then they can kind of approach it more like a product that they're buying. Kind of like, "Well, it comes in this many chunks, and okay, that makes sense." So that, I think, was always one of the benefits of fixed-bid for people. Fixed-bid in sales has always been nice, because you can just say, "Here it is, and that's your price." Although, it's 100,000 dollars, they were like, "Well, my budget's 150, so I could do that." Right? And with doing this weekly, although it's not quite there, it is a little bit like... The way we're doing it now is a little bit like fixed bid plus an extremely well-oiled change request process, basically. JAMON: Yeah, exactly. KEN: And that seems to solve both of those problems. Where it's like, they can look at that and instead of being some unknown number of hours, weeks seem like they're easier to kind of grapple with. And that's exactly what we want, right? I don't think we end up charging more, particularly. But it does come in these chunks that are easier to grapple with. They know what size the check are gonna be that they're writing next week because it's gonna be a certain cadence. It's not the surprise every time. It just seems to work better. Go ahead, Todd. TODD: People will pay extra money to remove the surprises happily. KEN: Yes, absolutely. TODD: I don't think our weekly is more money, but even if it were, they would be happier. It's so funny, what Ken said is they associate their salary with their hourly, or even if they take their salary and divide it by 40 and divide it by 52 or whatever, and they compare it to ours, and they think, "Wow, these people are getting paid a massive amount." Of course, they don't see all the other business stuff. There's actually no– KEN: They're not counting the overhead, they're not counting the things that they're not having to pay for. TODD: I'm not complaining at all, but it's just a fact of our business: we actually have fairly low margins for a business type. Our team is extremely expensive compared to other businesses, extremely. Not saying we overpay them, I'm not claiming that, it's just the nature of their jobs. JAMON: Yeah, and another aspect of this, and I realize we're going a little long here, but another aspect of this that we could talk about is that with the point system, it's not 100 points for each person, it's if we have three people working on it, the whole team needs to deliver 300 points. So they work together to divide up the work in such a way that maybe someone's doing 150, the other person's doing 50 but they're doing a lot of client communication. And allow them to divvy up the work in a way that makes the most sense to them. Where with the hourly bonus structure that we had before, that would actually hurt the person doing most of the communication with the client. And that was a problem. TODD: That's huge. And that was a decision we made. And because we chose that, meaning that we don't track individual contributions. I mean, technically we could probably figure it out based on Trello cards and that kind of stuff. But we don't track individual... It's team-oriented. So if it's three people, like Jamon said, it's 300 points. And we give them the flexibility to figure it out, how to be the best, most efficient to do those 300 points that they can. And I think that's worked out really well. It has some downsides. It is harder to keep metrics on individuals that way. JAMON: Yeah, a lot of what we do for that is to simply ask their teammates how it was to work with them, try to encourage them to be honest about their contributions and things. It's not a perfect system, but we are able to track individual contributions a little bit better, just through the perceptions of their teammates. TODD: I do it more efficiently, I get 'em all in one room and I say, "Out of all of you, who's the worst?" (laughter) And then I let 'em... It's kind of like that inspirational movie, Hunger Games? JAMON: The inspirational movie? TODD: Yeah, so, and it's quite efficient, and you get right to the meat of it, literally, sometimes, to the meat of it. JAMON: Literally. KEN: And what they say is, "You are, Dad, you are!" TODD: And I remind them once again, I'm not their father, that's Darth Vader. Fact. JAMON: There's a lot more we could talk about here on this topic, this is probably something we could revisit at a future... KEN: You may have noticed that we like to talk? Especially Todd. But, yeah... TODD: My words are all very small, so I need lots of them. KEN: We get very passionate about very dry things, sometimes. TODD: There's some things to be said, too, on the subject of billing... It's a touchy subject, because although you can say that clients can be difficult in certain ways in regarding to this, it's all... Assuming that the client isn't a jerk and they're just trying to squeeze a rock for as much blood as they can, and let's assume that's the case, and most times that is the case. From their perspective– KEN: Wait, you should be clear on what you're saying is the case. 'Cause otherwise, you mean... Most of the time, they are not trying to be jerks. That's what you're saying. TODD: Most of our clients– KEN: Okay, good. TODD: Most of our clients are really great, and they're showing up, and they're partnering with us, and we're both working towards the goal of making something awesome. So if they are being difficult in a certain way that we may complain about in the background, they always usually have a reason why. It's usually a miscommunication, it's just something that they're misunderstanding on their end. KEN: And like you said, presumably they're getting the software because they need it for some reason. Right? And it's a lot of money– TODD: It's scary! KEN: Yeah, it is scary! TODD: And the last thing they wanna hear is, I mean, if you're doing a bathroom, you don't want a contract to come over and say it's gonna be from 50 dollars to 50,000 dollars. Which may be a true statement, but you don't wanna hear that, that's horrible. JAMON: Well, one of the ways that we can mitigate that is if someone does have a fixed, like, hard-cap budget, which does happen and we understand when that is, then something else has to be flexible. And usually it's scope. We're not gonna compromise on quality. We wanna deliver really quality experience. But scope can be adjusted, and if a client is willing to work with us on scope, we can accommodate a tighter budget and still deliver a quality, but narrower scope, piece of software. TODD: That brings up something very interesting, Jamon. It is a trade-off between low-price and low-risk. So, if we crank up the risk, we can give a quote at a very, the lowest price possible, because it may change. "We think we could possibly do it at this price." The easier thing to do is have a much larger price that reduces risk, but they're almost guaranteed to pay a lot more. Some companies hate the first one. They'd much rather have a much bigger price that's reliable and low-risk. Other companies, especially if they're really lean, they would prefer the first one. And the problem from our perspective is, we don't know who's who. And it's hard to get them to tell us, or they may not even know. So when you choose to go down one of those paths, do we give them as lean as possible estimate but we know it's much more likely to change? Or do we give them a much larger estimate that reduced the risk? When you're doing that, you're kind of choosing your customer at that point, too. It's all very complicated.

california founders starting las vegas san francisco focus dad startups clients charge nevada engineers ipads sort pricing pacific northwest slack darth vader assuming conversely trello tech companies estimates billing software development big five estimating login rah chris do columbia river gorge right it jamon infinite red ken you todd it ken it todd yeah ken oh todd so ken one

Remote Work Tools

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2018 56:54

In this episode we are talking about our remote work tools that enable our distributed team across the world to collaborate, design, and build software. Throughout the episode, Todd, Ken, and Jamon touch on their favorite tools—from Slack, Zoom, and Google Sheets—why they chose them, and the ways they have added custom features to really make the remote experience special. Show Links & Resources Slack Zoom G Suite BlueJeans Screenhero RealtimeBoard InVision Trello Airtable Shush Dropbox Bigscreen VR Taking the Pain Out of Video Conferences by Ken Miller Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: The topic at hand today is remote tools, and all of the different ways that you have built a remote company. Where do you even start when you're thinking about what tools to pick when you're going remote? KEN MILLER: This is Ken Miller, by the way. It happened very organically for us. To be honest, I don't know that we could've done this company this way before Slack. Because the tools that came before, Hipchat and IRC and Yammer, even though I worked there. Sorry, Yam-fam. They just didn't quite do it. Right? They didn't quite create the online atmosphere that we need to work the way that we do. Does that sound accurate to you, Todd? I feel like once we found Slack, we were like, "Holy crap, this is epic!" TODD WERTH: I think there's a few alternatives. Hipchat, at the time, wasn't good enough. There were a few alternatives we investigated. I would like to mention at the beginning of this ... This is Todd Werth, by the way. I would like to mention at the beginning, I imagine that a lot of companies in this podcast will need to be paying us an advertising fee. Like Slack. JAMON HOLMGREN: We actually adopted Slack before we were remote. We had ... I think we were using Google Hangouts or something. Or whatever of the myriad Google chats there are out there. They have like 12 apps. We were using something else in person, and then we started using Slack organically right when it first came out. TODD: Sorry about that noise you all heard. That was me throwing up a little bit in my mouth when you said "Google Hangouts". (laughter) KEN: We'll talk about video-chat in a minute. JAMON: By the way, this is Jamon Holmgren. It was ... Initially, we jumped onboard. They did a really good job marketing themselves. We had used Hipchat a little bit, but it just wasn't what we expected. We started using Slack. That was in early 2014, I think it was? I don't think it's a coincidence that within a year and a half we ended up going remote. I think that was one of the enabling tools. We got used to it in the office, but it enabled remote work. TODD: To talk about chat apps or chat services is important, but on a more general standpoint, I would say how you approach it is actually try 'em and do it. A lot of companies seem to just use whatever is available and not look for optimum solutions. If trying three or four different chat systems is too onerous for you, that's probably the wrong attitude, in my opinion. KEN: You think, "don't settle". Don't assume that the first thing that you try is the only thing, and then conclude that remote isn't gonna work because the tool that you tried sucks. JAMON: We tried a lot of tools at ClearSight, before the merger. We tried ... I can't even name them all, to be honest. Part of it is because I like ... I'm a gadget guy, I like to try new things and see how it goes. There was actually a lot of skepticism around Slack because they're just yet another tool that they had to log into and pay attention to. "We already had the email, so do we really need this." It was kinda funny, when I went back and looked at our inner-company email, just tracked ... I think I used the "everyone@clearsightstudio.com" or something email address to track how often we were using it for company communications. It just dropped off a cliff after Slack. The amount of email, the volume of email that was flying around went way, way, way down. In fact, I remember we used to send GIFs in the email threads, and stuff. There were elements of the culture that we have today in Slack going on in email threads. Slack was just so much more well-suited to that. That actually came about very organically. We had tried a bunch of different things. We tried Slack, and it just picked up steam, picked up steam, picked up steam. TODD: I don't ... I'm not even exaggerating, I don't believe I've ever sent an email to anyone at Infinite Red internally. I don't think so. KEN: Unless it's a forward from someone external. TODD: Correct. I think there's people on our team who probably don't check their email very often because they don't have a lot of -- KEN: Yeah, if you don't do sales or any kind of external outreach -- TODD: Yeah. That was a sticking point a few times, when people were sending out the emails, and we had to ... They were wondering why people weren't responding, it's because the variety of people never check their email. JAMON: It is funny, because email does still, it is still a tool that we use for remote communication with outside clients, especially people first coming to us. But as soon as we can, we get them onto Slack because we've found that that level of communication is the least friction, it's very seamless. Slack is definitely featuring very centrally in our remote-tool story, for sure. TODD: Rather than just ... I'm sure a lot of people out there use Slack. If you don't, give it a try. But rather than just gushing on Slack, I do wanna say that the important part here is we did go through a lot of different chat services. You have to give 'em some time. At first, for example ... We do love Slack, but at first it didn't seem that different. There wasn't a bullet list that's like, "Oh, this has feature X", it was a bunch of little, subtle things that made it work especially well for us. KEN: Part of the meta-point there, is you have to treat your tools really seriously. Right? Google and Amazon and all these big companies, any well-funded start-up, whatever, they're gonna lavish a lot of attention on making an office that works for them. Right? TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: They're gonna create an office environment very thoughtfully. I've been to a lot of these offices. A lot of them are very thoughtfully considered. Right? They're designed to create a certain atmosphere. For example, I was at the Square offices once. Huge, cavernous room designed to create a sense of energy. That's the open-office mantra, that sense of energy. They had these little cubicle ... nicely designed cubicle things where you could go if you wanted quiet. Clearly, noise was the default. That architecture creates a culture. At least it reinforces a culture. As a remote company, your tools are your architecture. You either need to buy them from people who design them in a way that works for you, and Slack seems to work for a lot of people, or you build things that work for you, or you create norms about how they're used that do the same thing. We've done some things on Slack, we've done some things on Zoom, to create that sense of being together. Todd? TODD: I would like to add emphasis to what Ken just said. Imagine a time that someone puts into an office: architecture, the layout, the furniture. Rearranging it multiple times, placing stuff. Now think about the time that companies you've worked for put into remote tools. Anyone out there with their hands up saying they spent about 30 minutes on their remote tools -- KEN: Ever! TODD: Yeah. It's not surprising that one is superior to other in those organizations. I would pile on, like Ken said, and take the same amount of effort and consideration of your tools as a remote company as you did with everything else in the physical space if you're a commuter company. CHRIS: I'm interested, too, because as you're talking, you're talking about the difference between physical architecture and the architecture of your tools that allow you to do remote work, and if everyone's using Slack, and it looks and functions the same way, what brings the sense of uniqueness to a company that's using the same tools? TODD: Me. Just me being around makes everything unique, wonderful, and amazing. To answer the real question, you have to take Slack ... One of the great things about Slack, 'cause it's highly customizable, you can add plug-ins, you can add all sorts of integrations. We're gonna talk about other tools than Slack. They literally just pay us a crapload of money just to talk about this. JAMON: I wish. KEN: I wish. TODD: You don't take the vanilla. The point of a tool like that is you take it and you make it your own. JAMON: I did see someone tweeting about switching remote companies. They quit one company and they got hired by another. They did mention, actually, how similar it was. You go into the same place; you sit down at the same chair; you have the same computer in front of you; you log in to a different Slack, and you start working. Right? There is some level of consistency there. In a way, that's a very good thing. You can be comfortable very, very, very soon. There are plenty of things to learn about a new company without having to also learn new office layout, new office norms, policies about who can put their lunch in the fridge and who can't. I don't know what else. It's been so long since I've been in an office, I don't even know. I think there is some level of normalcy there because people do use similar tools. Like Todd said, you can customize Slack to work the way that your company needs to, and you can customize other tools as well. Since we're programmers, since our team has a lot of programming capability on it, we do actually build a lot of glue code in the scripts and things that will help tie all the tools together. KEN: In most organizations that have adopted chat tools, whether it's Slack or something else, they are usually billed as an internal supplement replacement for email. It is great at that, don't get me wrong, but I think something that gets lost in the way people talk about in the way we communicate now is that ... Let me tell a little story. I used to be a big fan of Roger Ebert. Rest in peace. Brilliant writer, right? Super enthusiastic. He was very critical of the way people write online. Very critical of things like emojis and emoticons. I think, while I respect him a lot, I think he completely missed the point on that. The point of that is, although, yes, we type to communicate online, it's not really writing. Not in the way our English teachers taught us. Right? It's typed speech, really. Right? It's a register of communication that's closer to the way that we talk than it is to the way that we would write if we're writing an essay or a blog post. One of the things that I really like about, Slack for example, is the rich way that you can communicate without it looking junky. It doesn't look like something awful or 4chan or some of the other really junky-looking message boards that have that level of expressiveness. It gives you the level of expressiveness so that you can substitute for the lack of facial expressions and body-language, but it's not writing. You don't write ... you don't type into Slack the same way you do. It's much closer to the way that you talk. For a remote organization, where we're not on Zoom all the time, although we are a lot, it's super important that you have that level of human expressiveness in your medium, in the medium that you're using to replace spoken word. TODD: Three comments. One: Zoom is the video conferencing tool we use, and we'll talk about that in a second. Two: I don't spend much time on 4chan, Ken, so I'll take your word on that one. (laughter) Three: just to give an example, talking about customization and you might be asking yourself, "Okay, Todd, I've used Slack. I've used chat. What're you talking about?" Just give you a few flavors. The simplest is creating your own channels that have some sort of cultural significance to your organization. One of ours is called "Rollcall", where we ... It's the digital equivalency of walking in and out of the office. "I'm here this morning." "I'm gonna go get my car worked on." "I'm back." It's not just status, it's also ... not just whether you're working or not, but it's a way to communicate basic, little life things in a short way. We have another one called "Kudos", where we give kudos to people. Which, at first, I thought, probably, wouldn't take off, but it actually did. It's where you give kudos to people for things that they did well, and I'm really shocked how many people give kudos and how many people respond. That's obviously just using the base tool and choosing what content to put on there, and how to organize. There's other things, too. Obviously there's things like code-repository integration, a code bug-reporting integration. We integrate with other companies' Slacks. They have a Slack channel, we have a Slack channel, and they connect so that we can do that with our clients. All the way to we have a custom Bot we wrote for Slack. Her name is Ava. She does a variety of internal processes for us. She's kind of ... In the old days, you'd have a database and you'd have a Windows app written to connect your database for your company, you'd do things in there. We have a lot of internet SaaS-tools. And then we have Ava that integrates a lot of them together. JAMON: Todd, can you give an example of something that Ava does for us? TODD: Yes. There's some basic things that a chatbot might do. For instance, you might wanna ask her where Jamon is, and she'll tell you the information she knows about Jamon. It's a lot of operational stuff. For instance, our Project Manager, Jed, has to produce weekly reports for clients. Ava produces those for him. Stuff like that. Stuff that you would normally do, like I said, in the old days, in a desktop app personally. JAMON: Todd came up with Ava quite a while ago, actually. It was sort of a toy to start with, just playing around with it. He had some ideas where it might go, but over time we've actually invested more and more resources into this internal chatbot and it's proven to be quite valuable. It's saved a lot of time, reduced the amount of overhead that we have to have tracking things because it's able to do a lot of process things. KEN: So far, she has not escaped and murdered us. (laughter) TODD: Not so far. I'm working on that. JAMON: That's a win. TODD: There's some tiny things. She's just a way for us, if we need to program something that we have a sticking point like, here's a very simple thing that took me five minutes to ruin. We do a lot of things on Mondays, and constantly wanna know what last Monday was, or Monday three weeks ago. You can literally just say, "Ava, what was Monday two weeks ago," and she'll tell you. That's a very tiny thing. Generating project PDFs or generating project reports is a bigger thing, obviously. JAMON: Another tool we use to communicate, non-verbally in Slack, is "Reactions". Someone'll post something and we react to it. I think this is pretty common in Slack teams and this is something that Slack did a good job of coming up with a cool idea. Usually you think of up-voting and down-voting, but when you have the whole range of emojis, including custom ones and animated ones and things like that, it can be a very cool thing. One interesting example of this: we have an integration with ... Ken, what's the service we use for Chain React tickets? KEN: Zapier. JAMON: Zavier. Zapier, yeah, and it connects with Eventbrite, and that basically will post any time someone buys a ticket to Chain React, which is our React Native conference, of course, happening in Portland in July. You should buy a ticket. (laughter) We get a notification, and it pops in there, says who's coming. When we're getting down there ... We were getting down to the last few advanced workshops that were available, someone started putting a number emoji underneath it. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, like that. You can see then, at a glance, how many were left. It was very cool how we were all collaborating on that. When someone would buy the advanced workshop, Kevin VanGelder, who's our resident Windows guy, he would put a little Windows emoji on there because that's part of the advanced workshop. It was just a cool way to communicate and collaborate without even using words. TODD: I think the important part of using reactions or emojis or Slack Responses ... Reactions, if you're not familiar, Slack is ... It's simply, someone posts a message, and instead of responding to it, you can post a little image on it, like heart, or a thumbs up, or a vote-up, or whatever. Slack Response is an automatic system that, when you say X, it outputs Y into it. One Slack Response that Jamon hates is that when you say "I'm not a big fan", it posts this picture of this really, really small fan. It's hilarious. I love it. (laughter) JAMON: Really hilarious. TODD: Every time someone put ... We had some that we had to remove, 'cause they just came up too much. Every time you'd say "founders" it would show the Three Stooges, which is "Accurate", but... KEN: It was "founders' meeting". TODD: Oh, whatever. KEN: But still, yeah. TODD: It was accurate but a little too much noise. The point is, it's very important. We've probably added a huge number of Slack Responses, a huge number of our own emojis, and the emojis you can use for Responses. A lot of them have become very cultural. Just to give you a few examples: my cat, Calle, that's short for Calle Berry, I took a picture of her paw. And, of course, cats, if you just do the front part of their paw, it looks like they have four fingers instead of five because their fifth one's back further. We came with this emoji and this thing where, if someone does a really great job, they get a "high-four", instead of high-five, and that's Calle's Response. JAMON: I didn't actually know that was Calle's paw. TODD: Oh, yeah, that's Calle's paw. JAMON: That's cool. TODD: So that's a cultural thing that I created one day, and it just kinda stuck. It became a "high-four"; it is an Infinite Red thing, you get a "high-four". We have other things like that, too, that are very specific to our culture, where you have to explain to people who come in what that means. I would definitely customize it, make it fun. We don't worry too much if clients see it. We're not doing anything inappropriate. At first, there was discussion, "Is it professional if they accidentally trigger one of the Slack Responses?" "No, but does that really matter?" "No," in my opinion. KEN: It depends on the Response. (laughter) TODD: Of course. KEN: There were some that were a little over the line and that, without context, could be a little startling. We removed those. TODD: Yeah, that's true. KEN: But for the most part, yeah, just something that's quirky. Hopefully, we all have clients that, at least the people who are in the Slack room are able to appreciate that. TODD: Another one that's totally part of our culture is, there was this early picture of me looking into the camera with a stern face. That became the "shame" emoji. That's been used ever since. Every time someone wants to throw shame upon someone, my face is there. I don't know if that's good or bad. JAMON: There's another one that's quite disturbing, of you, Todd. TODD: Oh! When you say yes "yis", Y, I, S, yes that is disturbing. JAMON: "Yis dream." TODD: You have to work here to ... KEN: You had to be there. KEN: Some of the things that came from my experience at Yammer, where a lot of the company was run internally on Yammer, there's a couple of really big advantages to that. Especially, at an all-remote company, where the vast majority of conversations happen there. One is that there's very much less pressure to include people in meetings just because, just in case they might have something to say about it. Because if you've having a conversation in Slack, you just pull 'em in. Right? After the fact, and they can catch up. But the other was, there was an ethos at Yammer that was, there was this pat question which was, "Why is this private?" "Why did you make this group private?" "Why is this in a private chat?" Making closed conversations justify themselves, rather than being the default. Particularly when we invite other people into Slack, I notice there's a little period of training, where people will instinctively start DMing, 'cause it's like "Well, I need to ask Ken this question." Say we brought our bookkeeper in, right? They would ask me 'cause I was the contact. I'm like, "Ask this question in Finance." Right? "Ask this question in the Finance channel." Which happens to be one of the private ones, for a variety of fairly obvious reasons. By asking in the channel, then the other people who might be interested can just observe. That's one of the ways that you compensate for the lack of that serendipitous, overheard conversation that people are so fond of in a office. CHRIS: In Episode Two, we talked about the philosophy of remote work. Todd, you actually made a comment that was really interesting to me. You said, "When the leadership uses the remote tools, they immediately get better." Why do you think that's the case? TODD: Human nature. I'll answer your question with a little story. I worked for company ... This is circa 1999. I don't know. I didn't work for 'em; they were a client of ours. For many, many years they were very much a Microsoft shop. They had no interest in testing anything on other platforms like Mac or whatever. We worked for them for nine years, something like that. So this is all through the 2000s. It was frustrating for people who wanted to produce websites that were universal. If someone opened 'em on a Mac, it would actually look good and not look horrible. One day, one of the VPs who was above the software group bought an iPad. I think, about a year later, he bought a MacBook. Once he had that iPad, all of a sudden, it'd become very important that things look good on his iPad, which is funny and horrible at the same time. It is just human nature. If you use something, it's much more front of mind than if you don't. Even the best of people suffer this. If you have a mixed company, meaning you're part remote, part commuter, one of those groups is gonna be a second-class citizen. Period. If 10 people are in a meeting, and eight are remote and two are in the office, the two in the office are gonna be the second-class citizens. More often, it's the vice versa, right? Getting everyone on the same page gets rid of second-class citizens. If you wanna make the best remote environment, either getting the majority or getting the people who have more power in the remote situation will increase your tools' quality big time. JAMON: That's for sure. We've seen that internally at Infinite Red, as well. When we use the tools, which we do, leadership team is probably the heaviest user of the remote tools in a lot of ways. There are situations where they're just not good enough, and we make sure that they get changed, for sure. Zoom is a good ... Zoom, the video chat, video call system, is really an interesting one because it has worked the best for us in terms of video calls. We've used a whole bunch of them. We've used everything from Google Hangouts, Skype, Appear.in, which is pretty decent. Pretty frictionless, actually. I like Appear.in for how fast it is to jump into it, but the quality is still a little bit sub-optimal. A few others as well. The nice thing about Zoom is that it allows you to put everybody into a grid pattern. It has a gallery view, which is really cool because then you feel like you're having a meeting and not doing a presentation. That's something that came out of us doing sales calls and internal meetings where we kinda felt like, "I don't wanna be the person on the big screen," right? Feel like your giving a presentation. "I wanna feel like this is a meeting with everybody in an equal place." It makes people feel more comfortable. That was a situation where we were using the tools for various things and found the one that, I think, has worked the best 'cause, as a leadership team, we needed it. TODD: Yes, as far as video chat or video calls ... We actually need a name for that. What do you say if ... It's not really video chatting. JAMON: Video conferencing? TODD: I don't like ... KEN: It's not exactly "conferencing". TODD: I don't like the term. JAMON: Video meeting? KEN: Video meeting. TODD: Yeah, there needs to be a term for that. We need to coin a term for that, at least internally. CHRIS: Zooming. TODD: Zooming. Well that's ... That's not tool-specific. KEN: Slack as a tool is much stickier, in the long term, probably, than Zoom is. At the moment, Zoom is, by far, in our experience, the best quality. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: But that could change. Slack ... there's a lot we've invested in customizing and it would be harder, but ... Although, we have invested some in Zoom, which we can talk about a bit. TODD: I would say Zoom is our favorite for our situation. One of our clients is BlueJeans.net, which is not really a competitor, but they do video conferencing. BlueJeans is really great for many things. One thing is they do every platform well. KEN: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep. TODD: Which, Zoom, and a lot of the other ones don't necessarily do. Now, we're all mostly on Macs, and it works really well on that, so that works out well. Also, BlueJeans.net has a lot of additional features. Where we basically just need video conferencing; Zoom is so superior. Google Hangouts is horrible. Please, please stop using Google Hangouts. KEN: Don't use Skype. Don't use Google Hangouts. TODD: Well, Skype -- KEN: Skype has gotten better, but -- TODD: Skype's quality is great, but it does a max of six people. We have 26 people. KEN: I disagree that they're quality is great. TODD: I was being ni -- KEN: Even domestically, I've had problems with it. (laughter) JAMON: We have Microsoft people listening. TODD: I was being nice, Ken. JAMON: It crashes a lot on Mac. KEN: The point is, here, you should demand rock-solid video 99% of the time. TODD: Yeah. KEN: If that's not what you're getting, look at another tool. JAMON: This extends to the internet bandwidth that you have available at your place of work, too. Some people that were really scraping by on 20Mb or something connections, and it was impacting video quality, and -- TODD: On what tool? KEN: No, their connection. JAMON: Their internet connection, yeah. That was something that we, overtime, got everybody to upgrade to faster and faster internet. I think that was a success for, pretty much, everybody. They have pretty acceptable internet, now, at this point. TODD: Some aren't as much. We have a person who's a nomad and travels around. We have someone who's in extremely rural Canada, up above Toronto, Tor-on-toe, I'm told is the proper way to say that. Zoom does very well in bandwidth, so the people that do have limited bandwidth, that works very well. We actually have meetings, 26 people in Zoom, which before would have been crazy. Skype limits you to six, which I'm not sure how useful that is for most meetings, but good for you, Skype. KEN: The only thing it's not so great on is battery-life, if you're using a mobile device. JAMON: It sort of trades CPU time for bandwidth. KEN: It does, yeah. JAMON: One of the things that Zoom doesn't do, that we've sort of built a system on top of, is permanent conference rooms. We've found this to be very useful to say, "Hey, let's jump into this 'conference room A', or 'conference room B'." We have better names for it. We name them after rooms in the boardgame Clue. TODD: Trademark Milton Bradley. (laughter) JAMON: There's a billiard room, there's a conservatory, there's a study, kitchen, et cetera. We have different uses for those different rooms. Some are for sales calls; some are for ... One is called Kitchen, which we use for the kitchen table, it's basically where people just jump in there, and work together in relative quiet. It's a cool little concept. We actually built an online, like a website, as well as a desktop app that shows a Clue board with the different rooms that light up when people are in them, and then it puts avatars of who's in that room, including guests, which is very cool because I can go in there and say, "Hey, look! Chris and Todd are having a meeting over there. I'm gonna jump in and see what's going on." I can just click in there, and it opens a Zoom window, and I'm in their meeting. TODD: For example, currently, Chris, Jamon, Ken and I are in Study. We have Kevin and Ryan in Library, and we have Jed in the Billiard Room by himself. I'm not sure what that's about. Maybe playing a little pool. KEN: This goes back to the notion of tools as architecture. Consider the experience of being in an office, and you want a meeting. You say, "Hey, let's meet in Fisherman's Wharf." I was in an office where they named things after San Francisco neighborhoods. "Let's meet in Fisherman's Wharf." Everybody, after they've been oriented into the office, knows where that is and they just go. That's it, right? That's the experience, right? Furthermore, if you wanna know where somebody is, you walk around the building, look into the rooms, and see that so-and-so is in Fisherman's Wharf, so they're in a meeting, they're busy. Now let's look at what it's like to be remote, without a tool like this. "Where's the meeting? Okay, I gotta ask somebody. Oh, okay. Oh, did someone start the meeting? Oh, no, no, okay, somebody needs to start the meeting. Alright, gimme a second, I'm gonna start the meeting. Here's the Zoom URL." TODD: Oh, God! KEN: "Okay, you gotta invite somebody." "Do you remember the Zoom URL?" "I don't remember the Zoom URL." "Okay, hang on. Okay, I got it. Here you go." That's the UX, right now. JAMON: Yes. KEN: Of the base ... TODD: Oh, jeez. KEN: ... video conferencing tool, and it's no wonder people hate that! JAMON: Yep. KEN: Right? TODD: Can you imagine? KEN: Yeah. It turns out ... We've had to increase the number of rooms over the years, right? But how many do we have now? Eight? TODD: Eight. KEN: So we have eight rooms now? TODD: Eight current rooms. KEN: That's pretty much fine. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). For a team our size, that works well. JAMON: We usually don't fill all of ... I think, yesterday, I looked in there and there were six in use, which was kind of a anomaly, but ... KEN: In an office, we can keep adding those as long as we need to. JAMON: That's right. KEN: This is a case where I think we've created something that is actually better than what people who have an office have. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Right? Because you can, just at a glance, see where people are. Nobody has to even tell you what room they're in. They just say, "Hey, we're meeting." You go look at the Clue board, and you see where the people that you're meeting with are, and you join the room. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: It's just one more little piece of constant friction that we've eliminated. I love it. I think it's a fantastic tool. TODD: Yeah, I keep the Clue desktop app open all day long while I'm at work. It's also cool to see the little avatars and stuff. Makes me feel like I'm at work. When we first started, you did have to push ... This is a very common interaction. "Hey, Todd, I need your help with X." And I'm like, "Let's have a meeting" or "Let's jump in Zoom" or whatever. "Which one?" "I'm already there. I joined a room as soon as you said it." "Which one?" "Open Clue. (laughter) Look for my name. Click on it." JAMON: Yeah. TODD: That only took a few weeks, to be honest, of constantly just needling that to the point where, when someone says, "Hey, I wanna jump in a room," they look and they see where you jumped in. KEN: That brings back the importance of having the leadership on the tool. TODD: Yes. JAMON: That's right. This tool actually came out of a side-project. I think Gant and AJ, two of our engineers, came up with the idea and built a prototype, and put it out there. It was ... I remember being, initially, a little bit skeptical that it'd be useful and it's turned out to be a really key part of our remote experience. TODD: That's actually an important point. No one asked anyone to make that tool. No one asked for permission to make that tool. They made it. They turned it on. Now, we've had tools that people've made. For instance, my tool Ava, which, now, is very useful, originally was Dolores, which is from HBO's great TV show, "Westworld". Dolores never caught on. She didn't do enough important stuff, and so she just kinda died. Later I resurrected her as Ava, which is from the movie "Ex Machina". Excellent movie, by the way. KEN: It's still kind of a disturbing allusion, though. TODD: It is, but it's ... It's a great movie. And then the next movie he did, which was "Annihilation", was fantastic as well. Anyways, not important, obviously. The point is, no one needs to ask for permission. They can make tools. They do. They put 'em out there, and they live or die based on whether or not they're actually used. We do sunset things that just never really took off. CHRIS: You're mentioning a lot of tools that enable remote work, that enable productive work. What are some tools that you're thinking about or are in place that help with focus and eliminating distractions? 'Cause sometimes, people new to these environments can look at these tools going, "Man there's so many distractions. How do I work?" JAMON: I actually think that's one of the biggest benefits of working remotely, which is kind of counter-intuitive. You think, "Oh, there's so many distractions when you're working remotely." Actually, you can turn off Slack. You can turn your screen to "do not disturb". You can shut off Zoom. You can turn off you're email. You can close all of those applications and just have the app that you're doing the work in, you're writing a blog post, you're writing code, you can just have that open. You can turn on a "do not disturb" mode in Slack that'll actually tell people that you're currently away. If you use the tools that are available, remote work can actually be much better, because what happens in an office? Someone can't get a hold of you on email or Slack, so what do they do? They hop up and they walk over to your office, and they're like, "Hey, did you get my email?" (laughter) "Okay, I will check my email, eventually, here. Is this really important?" One of the things that we do is ... This is kind of funny, but we'll actually say "I'm going offline for three hours, 'cause I'm gonna focus on this thing. If it's really important, text me." Our phone numbers are there, right? Nobody's gonna text you, 'cause that just feels like a complete intrusion. Right? KEN: It does happen. Like, if it's a genuine emergency. JAMON: It does happen if it's like an emergency. But that is so rare. That is awesome, because you're adding a ton of friction, but you're still giving them some way to get to you. I think that's a good property of remote work, that you can actually focus more in those situations than you can in an office. TODD: Yeah, try to turn off all the noise in an open-concept office. Good luck! KEN: Yeah, an office is distracting by default. You have to use technology to get some focus. I can't think of any tool that we use just for focus. Right? It's about human habits around how they use the tools that are already there. TODD: I think there are some, Ken. I don't personally use them. KEN: Yeah, yeah. I mean there are things, but there's nothing we use as a company. TODD: No, but there are people here that use, for one thing, they'll use the various timer apps that tell them to stand up, or if they set a timer for focus -- KEN: I've used the Pomodoro timer. TODD: Yeah, there are things. What's cool about remote work as opposed to depressing cubicle work (laughter), is you can set up the environment -- KEN: Soul-crushing commute work. (laughter) TODD: Soul-crushing commute work, SCCW, I like it. In those situations, you have to go to the lowest common denominator. If 50% of the people are very productive and get focused with music, and 50 can't at all, you're gonna have no music. When you're sitting in your own environment, whatever that environment is, whether it's your home, or a café, or co-working space, or whatever it is that you've chosen to be most efficient in, when you're sitting in that environment, you can control and make it perfect for you to be able to focus. Personally, if I'm doing design work or visual work, I play music. It gets me in the groove. If I'm programming, I cannot have any music. Or if I do have music, it can't have any lyrics in it. That's a focus thing. I tend to like to work more in the dark, strangely. I love light and I live in a very sunny place, and a very sunny house, but I have noticed that I tend to get more in the zone in dark and often late at night, for me personally. CHRIS: I'm the same way, Todd. I have to fake my brain into thinking it's late at night by closing all the blinds and turning the lights off. And it actually helps productivity. TODD: Yeah, that's interesting. I used to have this problem at every company I worked at. Even, say, I shared a room with four other people. One office, and four. I would wanna have all the lights off and have a desk lamp so I could see. No one liked this. Having the fluorescent lights on ... I didn't take cyanide, but I do believe I shopped online for cyanide, just saying. (laughter) KEN: So this is in your browser history, now, forever, man. (laughter) There's a FBI file on you. TODD: Oh, there's been a FBI file. Come on. If you don't have a FBI file on you, what are you doing with your life? (laughter) JAMON: At the old ClearSight office, we had some fluorescent lights, and one by one they would burn out. Nobody would tell the maintenance guy because they just liked that they were burning out. (laughter) Eventually it got quite dark in there and everybody, they just wouldn't even turn on the light. TODD: I would like to make a confession. I have purposely broke some lights in offices. KEN: "True Confessions with Todd Werth." (laughter) TODD: You don't want true ones. No, that actually -- CHRIS: That's Season Two of the podcast. (laughter) TODD: That actually is very true. Sometimes you just have to ... KEN: Civil disobedience? TODD: Yes, I like the way you phrased that. Makes things more noble and less selfish. (laughter) KEN: Yeah, right. Guerilla productivity. JAMON: We have some other tools to talk about, too, right? TODD: Oh, yeah, we have other tools to talk about. JAMON: Should we talk about some of them, or ... TODD: Yes. KEN: But enough about Todd. (laughter) TODD: I'll be here all week. Do not eat the veal. JAMON: One of the tools that has been really helpful for us is Google Sheets. Obviously, that's the spreadsheet program in Google Apps. We ... We're having trouble ... Again, this is pre-merger. We're having trouble figuring out how to schedule people. It was just a real pain. Eventually, my Project Manager at the time, came up with a system that involved sticky notes on a board that were, across the top were weeks, and down the left side were the names of people. We could just put sticky notes. My wife went out and bought a whole bunch of different colored sticky notes. We'd put the same project as the same color across the board. You could, at a glance, see who was working on the same project. You could see how long it was going to be, as far as number of weeks, and every week we'd move 'em over to the left and add another column. That eventually migrated onto Google Sheets, 'cause, of course, that doesn't work so well when you're remote. The collaboration tools on Google Sheets are extremely good. It's very, very responsive to having multiple people on it. When we do our Friday scheduling meeting for the next week, and beyond, we'll all pull open the sheet, and we look at it, and we can all update it ... If we see something that's wrong, we can update it. We can change colors of the backgrounds. It's worked really well for, now, two and a half years. I think that's a remote tool that has actually been quite useful for us for quite some time. Not only does it give us forward-looking data, but it also gives us backward-looking. We can look at previous years and see what projects were we working on at the time, who was working on what, all the way throughout. It's been a very cool tool. We're just repurposing Google Sheets to use as a scheduling tool. TODD: Another tool we used to use ... Jeez, I can't remember what it's called. What was the [inaudible 00:43:17] tool we used to use? JAMON: Screenhero. KEN: Screenhero? TODD: Screenhero, yes, of course. I remember when Screenhero was ... It was eventually bought by Slack and is being integrated into Slack. We used to use that a lot, but truthfully, the tools in Zoom for screensharing stuff became superior and so I think almost everyone pairs with each other Zooming. TODD: Another tool we use is RealtimeBoard, which is a sticky board analogist tool; the designers -- KEN: Designers love it. TODD: The designers used it a lot, but we also use it in leadership and the developers, I think, are starting to look into it. It's great for brainstorming. It's a real-time tool, kinda like Google Docs or Google Sheets, where everyone can use it at the same time, and you see everyone using it. That's been really great. The designers use the heck out of InVision, which is a wonderful tool for showing designs, getting notes, and collaborating with clients, collaborating with the rest of the team, and that kind of stuff. Another tool we use for project management a lot is Trello. If you're not familiar, with it, it's a great project management tool. It's a Kanban board, if you're familiar with those. Not only do we use Trello, we also integrated ... Ava connects to Trello, produces reports from ... Ava connects to Airtable, which is another interesting mix between a database and a spreadsheet. We use Airtable and Trello. Those are some other tools we use. KEN: Something to mention, also, is that between Slack and Zoom we have some redundancy, because Zoom has rudimentary chat and Slack has video conferencing. It's not as good as Zoom's, but it's there, and we already have it. For example, when Slack is down, we have Zoom channels that we can all do basic communication in. That provides a certain amount of resiliency for the work environment, and that's very helpful. TODD: Yeah, it does go down every so often. It's funny because our company comes to a screeching halt when Slack goes down. KEN: Yeah, and that's a valid criticism, I think, of remote working. We do have the redundancy so that people can at least, basically, keep going. TODD: We all know now, if Slack's down ... It was, actually yesterday, coincidentally. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: If Slack is down, we go into Zoom chat. That took a while to get people ... It's funny 'cause we don't use email and stuff, and we use that so much. We could jump into a meeting. We've done that in the past, before we had this redundancy we would just jump into a meeting room and kinda like, "Hey, what do we do?" It was like the lights went out and everyone was confused at what to do. It's actually kind of amusing if you think about that. A bunch of virtual people wandering around in the dark wondering what to do. JAMON: We have a lot of redundancy of internet connection. Someone might be having internet issues, but not everybody is having internet issues. That's a pretty big deal. I remember the office internet would stop working and, even though we were all in the same place, yes we could collaborate, no we couldn't work 'cause we couldn't access -- KEN: Couldn't get to GitHub, can't get to... JAMON: ... Dropbox, whatever. Which, we do use GitHub, we use Dropbox. There's a little tool that I use that, I would say, about a third of the company also uses. We're on video calls a lot. When you're on a video call, sometimes it's nice to have a cough button: you hit a button and it mutes you for just a second, so you can cough or whatever. This one's called Shush. It's a Mac app. You can buy it for three bucks or something. It turns your function key into a mute button, so you just hit that button and it will mute you for a short amount of time. Or you can double-tap it and it turns into a push to talk button, which is nice when you're in a big group. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I don't use Shush, because I use a hardware version of that. I have quite a lot of audio equipment and video stuff. Pretty sure, in the remote podcast, we talked about the importance of having good equipment and spending a little money on good equipment. You cheap managers out there, stop doing that; you're horrible people. (laughter) JAMON: Also the background of your video call is really important. That was actually something Todd really emphasized when we first started. I will point out that he has the messiest background of all of us, right now. TODD: Well, to be clear, I have two cameras. One is a wide angle which I use for the team so I can move around and stuff; and I have a tighter angle I use for clients, in which case, what's behind me is very specifically chosen to be a background, and I keep that incredibly clean. JAMON: I just say that to tweak Todd, because he's the biggest champion of having a good background. TODD: Yes. Jamon's horizon, right now, is extremely tilted, and it's been driving me crazy the whole time, but I'll get over it. (laughter) KEN: I know. I can't unsee that. TODD: In my 46 years on this planet, I've learned not to mention that, even though I really, really want him to straighten his camera. KEN: It doesn't help, Jamon, you've still got a vertical line that is -- TODD: I'll tell you a funny story about backgrounds. Poor Ken. Ken had this very nice ... I don't know what it was. What was it, Ken? KEN: It's a bookcase, right, (laughter) but it's IKEA furniture, so it looks -- TODD: It's IKEA? KEN: It looks like a dresser. Yeah. TODD: This whole time it was IKEA? We thought it was important. We felt bad for making fun of it. 'Cause it looks like a dresser. It was right behind him, and it looked like Ken was sitting in bed (laughter) with his dresser behind him. KEN: Yes, reinforcing every stereotype about remote workers. (laughter) TODD: Right. We kept on bugging him, and he said, "It's a really nice bookcase." I didn't realize it was IKEA. KEN: I didn't say it was a really nice bookcase. I said it was a bookcase. (laughter) TODD: It looked like a dresser. JAMON: It really did, in fact. KEN: That's because it's IKEA furniture, so it's looks like that. TODD: I guess the point is, how things appear is more important than what they actually are. This is something a lot of people aren't familiar with. We have different people with different levels of quality of what they produce as far as visually or audio. I think the general takeaway is take some time. You are almost doing a mini-television broadcast, and you wanna be ... I wouldn't say the word "professional", because it's not stuffy, it's fine if you're wearing your tie-dye and your shorts, but you should make it a pleasant experience for the viewers. KEN: Yeah. You should look inviting, and it should look intentional. TODD: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: And kept. JAMON: We have some other tips for remote video meetings that, I think, are on a blog post that we created. Was that you, Ken, that wrote that post? KEN: Yeah. We could do a whole podcast, frankly, on how to have a good video meeting. JAMON: We can link to that in the show notes. KEN: We can link to that for now. TODD: That is a podcast I wanna do. I do wanna point out to the audience who can't see us now, we're recording this for your listening pleasure, and I put pleasure in quotation marks 'cause I don't wanna oversell it. But, we are actually on Zoom, so we can see each other. Jamon, thankfully moved his camera so we can't see the horizon any more, which is crooked, but right over his left shoulder is a door-line that's incredibly crooked. I appreciate the effort, Jamon, but come on. Have some dignity. JAMON: I will point out that I'm moving out of this rental in a week because I had a house fire, Todd. (laughter) TODD: Oh, jeez. You can't pull a house fire out every time there's a criticism. KEN: The only thing in my background is my Harvard diploma (laughter) because it's all that anyone cares about. JAMON: Yes, exactly. Over my shoulder, I'm thinking about putting my not-Harvard diploma. KEN: "Narvard". JAMON: It'll just say, "Not Harvard." TODD: Sometimes we just invite Ken's Harvard diploma, instead of Ken, to meetings. (laughter) KEN: Yeah, I just put it in frame and then I walk out. (laughter) I'm like, "I'm just the janitor." CHRIS: I do have one final question, as we bring this episode to a close: Is there any tool that you use outside of remote work or in your daily life that you wish existed as a remote tool. KEN: Blow torch. (laughter) CHRIS: Elon's got that for ya. TODD: Not a tool, completely, but here's something ... I have ideas for tools that'd be cool in the future. We have the concept of "kitchen table". This is a real quick story; please, bear with me. The three of us ... I don't know if Ken was, but there was multiple of us of the company who were speaking at a conference in Paris. We rented a large Airbnb apartment in Paris, and a bunch of us were staying there. It had a very large kitchen table. When we weren't doing stuff individually, we'd all sit around the kitchen table, and we'd work together. We would just sit there, like you would at a library in a university or something like that, and work. We wanted to recreate that in ... virtually. The simple solution is we dedicated one of our Zoom rooms, the "Kitchen", to the "kitchen table" and you can't use that for anything else. If you just wanna be around people, but you're working, you're not really saying anything, as if you're in a library ... I guess we should do the library, but whatever ... you'd go in the kitchen table and just be around people. Sometimes people say things and have little conversations, like you would in an office, but typically you're just sitting there working together. That's cool. It's missing a few features which I'd love to see. For one is, if you're not ... Say there was a group of people working in an open office, and they're in the center and you're on the perimeter of the office. You see them working together there, the "kitchen table", now we have that, with our tool, we can see who's in the "kitchen table" and they're there. Great. But you can also, even if you're far away and they're dim enough ... not dim, but the volume's low enough that it's not disturbing, you can still hear them, and sometimes you'll pick up on little words that may interest you. They'll mention a project you're on, or they'll mention a personal interest that you're interested in or whatever, and you can choose then to go walk over and join them, because of that kind of low-noise but informational thing you're getting by being in the perimeter. I would love to somehow integrate that into our tool, where you could have a low-murmur of people in the background of the meetings that you're not in, and listen for things that might be interesting, something like that. KEN: I don't really know how to think about that question. TODD: I find it very interesting that none of us can really come up with a tool that we wish we had. That's a fantastic answer. KEN: I mean ... JAMON: I think there's probably tools that, eventually, we'll get that will be like, "How did we live without this?" But I don't ... I can't think of one. KEN: I can imagine in the future, basically a VR setup. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. KEN: If VR gets to the point where it feels natural; it's comfortable to wear the equipment, it's not a burden just to have the stuff on your head, and the resolution is to the point where you could have a virtual monitor in space, and you can have that feeling of actually being next to people. Then you could, in theory, have the best of both worlds, where you can drop out and leave the space if you want to. You can also be in the space and be available for that. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: I think that would be pretty nice, but ... JAMON: There is a tool out there that's ... I think they're, maybe, in beta right now. It's called Bigscreen VR, it's by a guy that I know, Darshan Shankar, who's on Twitter. I met him on Twitter. He's doing this Bigscreen VR system. It's very much what you described, Ken. Right now, it's only on Windows, and of course the VR headsets are still evolving. But apparently the new Oculus Go or Oculus Now, or something, is apparently quite good -- KEN: Yeah, they're getting better. JAMON: It's also likely, they said that within the next year, that it'll come to Mac 'cause they're working on it. KEN: I think another threshold, though, is the quote-unquote "retina" threshold, to where the resolution of the headsets is such that you can't, in terms of resolution, anyway, you can't tell the difference between that and something that you're looking at. JAMON: Yep. KEN: You could actually make a projected display without any compromise. JAMON: Yes. TODD: I agree, in the future that's gonna be wonderful. I do have some current ideas on how to add spacial stuff to our tools to give us proximity information of each other, virtually. Kind of what you would get if you were in a VR situation, but without having VR. Anyways, there's some interesting things there. KEN: Yeah, we've talked about making an ambient audio device, something like that, that can just sit there and ... Kind of like "kitchen table", but without the video. There's a bunch of things we've talked about, but not of them are things that exist today. They're just things that we've thought about creating or ... yeah.

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Clients and the Value of Ideas

Play Episode Listen Later May 31, 2018 35:04

In this episode of Building Infinite Red, we are talking about clients and some of the assumptions that often need to be challenged when creating software. Throughout the episode, Todd, Ken, and Jamon touch on the importance of knowing who your audience is, what they value, and how your ideas will meet their needs. Show Links Dropzones App Release by Mark Rickert A Dark Room by Amir Rajan Uncommon Sense by Derek Sivers Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: Today we are talking about clients. It's an important topic and one that pretty much every business owner inevitably gets asked a variety of questions. The question that we could start with is: what's your favorite moment in working with clients? JAMON HOLMGREN: You would think it would be when you launch their app or their site, or something like that, but I often find that actually to be a little bit anti-climactic 'cause there's so much going on. There's usually already plans in place for a version 1.1. It's not usually like everybody gather around the big green button and then the founder pushes the button, and it goes live. Although a little side note, Mark Rickert, who is one of our developers has released an app to the app store while in free fall during a skydive. That is true. We can link to it and there's a YouTube video of it. But that's not usually how it works. KEN MILLER: It wasn't a client app I don't think. I think it was one of his apps, but still. JAMON: That was a pretty cool way to do it. But no, you would think that would be the most exciting time. The exciting time is usually during design, for me, because I feel like you start getting a lot of enthusiasm, the energy. A lot of those things start coming out during the design process. And when we get a chance to use our design process—some clients will come to us with something already designed, others will come to us who need design. When they're going through the design process, it's really exciting, you can see a lot of the possibilities. The development side of things is also fun, but a little slower moving. TODD: I agree with Jamon on the design side. Once we get through the product development and start getting into design, probably past the wireframing and into some more concrete examples, it's pretty fun to see the client get really excited. Especially if it's a situation where they show people who are interested in their product, or their stakeholders and investors, or whomever, and they had a good reaction to it. I would add the second most fun time with clients is once there is a beta or an alpha available for their beta testers. And again, they send it to them and they use words like "blown away," or something like, that's awesome. I'm not gonna lie and say, that's always what happens, but those two times I think are the most fun to me. CHRIS: One of the things that Jamon wrote in Slack that was interesting is: what are some common assumptions that clients bring to the process that have to be corrected? TODD: I don't know if there's anything that's common or consistent across clients. There are some things that come up. I would say, depending on the experience level of the client with software product development, we may have a little to a lot of teaching to do. And that's one of the things we like to do is teach. I find it particularly fun when our start-up clients are newer, they're not on their series B or something. Because there is a lot of moments that you can help them and give them kind of golden information. Both from our personal experience running start-ups, but also we work with a lot of start-ups. So we've been through this before. There are some misconceptions about software. Not necessarily from our clients, but from people who weren't a good fit for us. For example, it's very common in the world at large, to believe software is orders of magnitude cheaper than it really is. People also get very used to the quality that they see in apps like Facebook or Gmail, or these kind of things. And they think they can spend less than a car to get those things. When you're in our industry of course, that doesn't seem super logical, but from their perspective it makes sense. An app costs nothing, or $1.99. JAMON: Right. TODD: Or $4.99, so of course something like that seems cheap. What they don't know, of course, is Facebook has tens of thousands of employees. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: And even a smaller app, let's not chose Facebook, which is huge. But like Instagram, for example. And not what it is now, but what it originally was, probably cost half a million to make. JAMON: Yeah, I think I saw that they put $250,000 into their MVP originally. And it's a very simple app when you look at it, compared to a lot of apps out there. I think that's definitely something that, as Todd said, it's not necessarily the clients who end up being good fits for us. But usually we get calls from everybody, all kinds of people. KEN: Well, even those prices are reflective of just how far software has come in terms of developer productivity. JAMON: Right. KEN: Because half a million dollars doesn't even get you a house in the Bay area. And the people building your house, most of them are being paid 20, 30, 40 dollars an hour and not $200 an hour, or $100 an hour. The Bay area is full of software engineers being paid $150,000 a year and up, many that are way higher than that. And you can still build software for half a million dollars, which is actually is pretty impressive when you think about that in terms of it's inputs. JAMON: Another interesting thing that the clients don't necessarily realize when they come to us is the impact that the design process can have on their product. Usually you're thinking of design as making it look pretty, making it look nice. But there's a whole lot more that goes into that. The visual design aspect of design is usually, maybe, the last 30%, something like that. It's not the bulk of the design work. But there's a lot of value that can be added there. You can avoid expensive mistakes during design by spending the time upfront to really learn as much as you can about your core customers and the features that are necessary. Because software is expensive, so you wanna build as little of it as possible until you really know the direction that you need to go. TODD: Yeah, and I wanna be clear. You can make, for instance, a mobile app for $100,000 to $200,000. It's not a half a million. But something that's larger could be millions as well. Just wanna make that note on that price there. JAMON: I think another misconception that some clients might have when they come into it, is they don't understand necessarily all of the breadth of things that need to happen to make an app. We've had people come to us and want to build an app, but they don't necessarily realize that they also need a server and they need some sort of cloud connectivity. They might need offline support. They might need access to certain APIs for GPS or whatever. And beyond that, how to get through the app store. And how to get through Google Play. What is a compelling app store listing? What does that look like? You know, what screenshots are important? And one of the most successful apps that I've ever been involved with, which is called A Dark Room by my friend Amir Rajan, he actually only has one screenshot on the app store, and it's a very uninspiring one. But he has millions of downloads. It's just, he hit it right on the head. TODD: You know which store is incredibly hard to get through? IKEA. (laughter) Just saying. KEN: It's true. TODD: We've mentioned before in this podcast, but it's worth repeating, design is not how things look. Design is how things work. And through the very first part of our design process is product discovery. And that's even before how things work. That's what product is you want to make at all. Since we work with a lot of start-ups, we also sometimes coach them, if they need it on coming up with a customer acquisition plan and a revenue plan, which their investors, prospective investors that they pitch to, will definitely ask them about, having pitched to them myself. So design is very important and it's also one of the most difficult things that we mentioned in a previous podcast was getting from zero to one. Product discovery and design really help our clients get from zero to one. JAMON: And they're starting a business, you know, it's not just building an app. They're starting a business, or they're continuing a business that they already have. And there's a lot that goes into building a business for sure. I think that's one of the things that, maybe some friends of mine who might message me and say, "hey Jamon, I've got this app idea, it's a billion dollar idea." (laughter) "Promise not to go off and rip me off. I wanna tell you it." And it's fine, you know, the ideas are a very necessary part of this, they're a spark. They're really important. But the execution side of things involves designing and building the app, which we can do. We're really great at it, we've done it a lot of times. But also, the business side of things. There's no one right answer to how to build a business. You can see that with many different business models. And that's the tough part. Now, it can be very rewarding though, the whole journey and it's been really fun to watch our clients build business models that are sustainable and come back as they grow, as they succeed, they find new opportunities and they come back to us and say, "hey Infinite Red, we need some new features. We need a new app. We need to rebuild the app for maybe a different purpose." Those things are very fun to see. TODD: Ken, you had a great thing about ideas, when people have an idea for a business. You've talked about a lot and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. KEN: Oh, and how they're not usually worth the paper that they're written on. (laughter) TODD: Yes. KEN: Where this came from was that, like back in the days of the dotcom boom, when everybody and their brother had some amazing idea. I would be at a social dinner with somebody and they would be like, they'd whip out an NDA and be like, I wanna talk to you about this idea I have and I need you to sign this NDA. And I'm like, "No. I'm not gonna sign your NDA." Ideas, per se, are not worth very much. Right? A high level idea, per se, is not worth very much. Like my idea's like, "hey, I have an amazing idea. What if you took a car, then you made it fly?" Right? And people will be like, "that's an amazing idea." Now, how are you actually gonna do that? And so it's kinda like, just because I have this amazing idea, "oh what if you made cars fly," doesn't mean that when somebody goes and actually makes cars fly that I have any right to that idea. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: Right? Because the high level idea by itself, although cool, doesn't actually get you there. It's the millions and millions of other good ideas that follow that, that really make something work. Jamon, do you wanna tell the dating with music, I could tell you wanna tell the dating with music story. JAMON: That's exactly what I was gonna interject. So Derek Sivers, who founded CD Baby, he has a YouTube video, it's very short. We can link to it in the show notes. Essentially it's talking about ideas versus execution. And the general premise is sort of this, that he met with a friend of a friend, and they were having lunch. And this guy had this billion dollar idea. And he says, okay, what's this great idea that you have? And the guy kind of leans over, very intense, and says, dating with music. (laughter) And Derek's like, is there anything else? (laughter) Is this ... He's like, no, dating with music dude. And it was ... he's like, okay, this idea is worth maybe the price of a lunch. Right? Like, the execution of it is the multiplier, you know, you can have a multiplier ... a great idea, not execute it at all, is really not worth much. A bad idea, executed really well is also not worth all that much. But a really good idea executed really well, is a multiplier that becomes your billion dollar idea. I don't think it necessarily tells the whole story, you know, that particular anecdote because there's also timing and other things like that. KEN: Well and that idea isn't even a multiplier idea. That's like a hint at a maybe multiplier idea. Right? JAMON: Yes. TODD: He was just being nice to the guy. KEN: He was being nice, right. So it's kind of like, when I say there's a chain of ideas, the first germ of the idea is the kind of idea that someone might get when high. Kind of like, "hey man, what if it was like dating, but with music. Yeah." (laughter) Right? That's exactly a high person's idea. I would almost bet money that that was a high idea. But anyway. The next thing is like, oh well you get people to put in their music that they like and we match people up. That's starting to be an actual idea. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Right? That's starting to be like, what's the actual hook. And even that, there's still, like well how does it work? What's the UX? What's the viral engine around that? JAMON: Yeah. KEN: It's not just programming. Like, we're all programmers historically, so we're gonna tend to see all of the stuff that's gonna go behind that. JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: Really, it's the product development of design that, or really, what's important. And a lot of the details that matter, are sometimes the ones that are not obviously to your competitors. TODD: Almost always. KEN: Almost always. So this idea that your super secret idea is gonna make everything work is, frankly, BS. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: You have to keep having those good ideas over and over and over again. Every techy who's been in Silicon Valley, or a similar environment, and around the sorts of people who have these sorts of ideas, every single one has a story of being approached by somebody who's saying, "hey I've got this great idea. I'm gonna get you in on the ground floor with it. But I just need somebody to make it." JAMON: Mm-hmm (affirmative). KEN: And we'll split it 50/50. Young techies fall for this. Very quickly you learn, uh, no. You'd better have a lot more than that for that to be a 50/50 bargain. TODD: I'm not even joking when I say that in San Francisco at least 50% of your Uber drivers will pitch an idea to you on your ride. JAMON: We got pitched in an Uber, us three. We were in an Uber not that long ago and we got pitched on an idea. And I think that it's kind of interesting because the apps that do tend to be more successful that we're involved with, they're often not big ideas. They're good ideas, they're not like huge ideas. They're existing companies that have a need that their customer base has kind of expressed, they can see it's fairly obvious. And they come to us and they say, hey we need really good execution. And that's what we're good at. They've identified the need. Have a lot of the infrastructure already in place. They already know how they're gonna monetize it. They already know how it's gonna impact their business. They just need a really great app. And that's where we really plug in. Now it has been kind of interesting to watch start-ups where they don't have that in place and how they develop that. And where they go with that. It's much more risky. A lot of them do fail. And one of the things that I've heard from some of those clients sometimes is, "Jamon, why aren't you so excited about my idea?" Now I'm not trying not to come across excited, I am excited about their idea. It's just that I've seen so many of these where there's certain other parts of the business that they lack. From my standpoint, if I was in the business of picking winners and losers, I'd probably be doing my own start-up, right? But, honestly, there's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of variables. And not all of them are in your control. So I think it's been really cool to see the ones that do succeed. See how they piece it all together. I have a lot of respect for them, it's a difficult thing, but it's very rewarding. And then, of course, the companies that come in, like, we just started a project recently, this week actually I think. And they are an established company, they have a very big user base. A lot of people have heard of them, but they need a much better app. And they need a better app experience. And that's really where you see the clients that really shine. KEN: There may be a few people listening who are kind of mentally going like, "hmm, is that me?" What I would say is, if you think it's you, it might be. (laughter) If you wanna know, like I wanna do this thing. And I don't program and I'm not a designer, like, I don't know how to make these things and I don't really wanna be that person. If the idea isn't what's important, then what is important? What do I bring to the table that is gonna help me succeed and help a company like Infinite Red, or even just an individual programmer who I happen to find? What am I bringing to the table that will help beyond the big idea? And there's really two things. And they're big ones. And you need at least one. And preferably two. And one is, access to capital. Not just building this, not just paying us to build this. But all the marketing and everything else. Right? You're gonna need money. And you're not gonna want to be in a position where when you run out, it just dies. You need to have a plan for that. That's number one. Number two, is access to audience. If you have one of those, in good form, then you can usually get the other one. Having both is ideal. But those are the two things, those are the things that the makers that you're coming to work with, don't necessarily have. And so, if you wanna know what you can be busting your hump to be doing right now, it's getting those things. And then, if you have those and you come to somebody with your big idea and you want them to turn it into something real, you actually have something to offer. JAMON: One of the things that I think Ken and Todd bring to this conversation that I don't necessarily bring to the conversation is I haven't been on the other side. I've been a consultant for a very long time, so I see our side of it. But both Ken and Todd have worked for start-ups, probably who have used consultants. And seen the ones that have succeeded. Ken you worked at Yammer and there was an acquisition that Microsoft made there. And so it was a successful exit. And then of course there are some other start-ups that you and Todd have worked at that failed. That's something that I, maybe, don't necessarily bring that perspective to. But the consultant's side of it for sure, I see all kinds. I see all kinds of start-ups that rise and fall. TODD: I hope no one takes this as a reason not to try, for sure. I would recommend to focus on your customer acquisition strategy and your revenue strategy. You have to remember Zappos when it came out, and if you're not familiar with Zappos, it was a large company and eventually hired by Amazon, and they sell shoes. KEN: Acquired, not hired. TODD: Sorry, acquired, not hired. They sell shoes, which is probably the second oldest profession in the world. (laughter) So, obviously not a new idea. Hey, I have an idea, I'm gonna sell shoes. And you're like, horse shoes? Space shoes? No, shoes, like you put on your feet. But they had some innovation ideas inside there. Mainly extreme customer sport, and the big one was, buy five pair of shoes, send back four. Good ideas, but once again, there's a series of little ideas, like how do we allow them to buy five pairs of shoes and send back four and still make money? There's a hundred and fifty ideas in there, maybe a thousand ideas in there that matter. So it's hard to be an A-list actor, right? But if no one tried, we'd have none. So you can succeed. We get a lot of clients and sometimes their very obvious that they'll see just because they have a lot of experience or they just really understand. But we have people who don't know what they don't know. And don't know what they know yet, and that's fine too. Those people may succeed also. KEN: The number one problem that we see is under capitalization. Over capitalization can be a problem too, incidentally. If you raise too much money all at once then it can lead you to be too profligate. I've definitely seen that at start-ups. JAMON: It's way harder to say no. KEN: Yeah, that's a problem with venture capital backed companies that have just seen a bunch of interest all at once and then they have issues with that. But, under capitalization is definitely a much bigger problem because it means that every single decision you make, you're terrified. TODD: If your problem is over capitalization, please send an email to hello@infinite.red. KEN: We can help you with that problem. TODD: Today's episode is brought to you by, too much money. KEN: I'm actually being serious. (laughter) I mean, we're joking. But I'm also serious. Like, we actually know how to make your money go farther. JAMON: Yeah, and I agree with that. And we can also help with saying no. I think that that's actually one of the things that's probably surprising about working with us, is often we are pushing for not adding features. TODD: This is sounding like a commercial this time. KEN: Yeah, I'm sorry, but we're not the only ones. I'm just saying that experienced people will tell you no. And you need that if you've got a lot of money. JAMON: I think that's an important port, you look at some consultants and their not necessarily pulling in that direction, but we want people to succeed 'cause obviously that looks good on a portfolio. It's a benefit to us. One of the things we've always said, and we tell customers this, if we finish your project early, and don't spend all of your money, I'm sure you're gonna come up with more ideas. You know? It's not like we're gonna miss out. It's never been the case. If we finish a project early, the founders aren't just pocketing the rest of the money and going home. What they're gonna do is say, what about 1.1, let's get on the schedule. Let's move. There's always something else. 'Cause during the process of building an app you learn so much. And there's always more ideas. KEN: I've never seen a software project where at the end people were like, phew, I'm sure glad that everything that we could possibly think of was in that. (laughter) Like, that has never ever, ever, happened. TODD: You never know. There was that app where you just said "Yo" to people. Yo. JAMON: Yeah, didn't they raise a whole bunch of money to add more stuff? KEN: And what happened to that app? TODD: I don't wanna rant about VC. Some VC's ... not all. Some are great. Another thing, going back to your original question Chris, which we've been talking a lot about, is, common things that customers or clients may not understand. Another one is just the pure complexity of software. It's hard to understand because it's not in the real world. You can't hold it. In your house, if you ever owned a house and had work done on the house, you'll know that doing something in your living room is relatively cheap. Doing something in your bathroom is extremely expensive. Doing something in your kitchen is extremely expensive. The reason why a tiny room like the bathroom is so much more expensive than a huge room, say like, your living room. Is because the bathroom has tons of different contraptions in it. Lots of different moving parts. Lots of different things can go wrong, from your sinks to your plumbing, fans, lighting, that kind of stuff. So the number of pieces matters a lot to cost. Because software is virtual and because we can fairly easily throw on pieces. Software tends to be an order of magnitude, or more, complex than any other physical machine. A bathroom, even a car engine, is less complex than software is. KEN: It's compensated for somewhat by the fact that our tools are also more powerful. TODD: Yes. KEN: I mean, there's countervailing things there, but your point about the complexity is right. If you run out of lot when you're building a house, then your contractor says, hey we can't build there, your lot ends there. There's no such constraints for software and that makes it easy for things to get kind of hairy. TODD: If you completely disregard our part in the complexity, meaning we have to build all the moving pieces and test them and make sure that they coordinate together. Even disregarding that, sometimes people are shocked at how much they have to think about, and they're not building it all. If you just said, I wanna login screen, for example. Every app has that. That's simple. Right? The number of questions that you could be asked by someone like us, to someone who's less experienced will be shocking. And they won't have the answers to it. And each one could be thought of. Now of course we always give people common things that they should do, or whatever. But if you were to really think through the whole thing, just that one screen is way more complex than anyone imagines. JAMON: Recognizing our experience, the fact that we've done hundreds of apps and encountered so many different scenarios, I think is important for working with a company like ours. I think back, in prior years, there have been some projects that haven't gone as well. And one of the common traits of those projects is that the person I'm working with, they feel like they kind of know it all, because they do have a pretty big picture of it, and they want to put their vision down into software. It often comes with blind spots of, what are you missing here? So having a high degree of trust and communication between the two parties is one of the hallmarks of a successful project. We certainly respect what the founders bring because they have the vision, a lot of the times they have a much closer relationship with their potential users than we do. KEN: Absolutely. JAMON: We're not trying to impose our view of what that might be. But we can often bring things, like Todd was saying about the login screen. Like, you didn't think of this aspect like what happens if you forget your password, or if you don't have access to your email or something. TODD: Or you're on a plane, or Facebook changed the rules and half the users can't login. That kind of stuff. JAMON: Exactly. TODD: Another thing too, is we sometimes experience this when we get designs outside of our company. Now, a lot of designers are great, but they're never have been trained in, or have experience in software design. Our designers are classically trained designers. They can do all the normal things people think of designs, but they chose to specialize in software and website design. So, sometimes when we get an outside design, we never used to do this, but we kind of now require it. The bare minimum is we'll do a half week of design review. And we did one recently. And from a cursory look at their design, it looked like they had everything. Looked good, seemed to make sense. The design looked fine. But after a half week of a couple of our designers reviewing it, they went through in great detail and produced a map of the whole app and how everything interacts with each other. And the flows and the different actors, different type of users. That kind of stuff. JAMON: There were dozens of screens, right Todd? Like dozens. TODD: There were a lot of screens, and probably half of them weren't in the original design at all. JAMON: It was striking 'cause you could see the outline of the screen, it was empty and there's a title of whatever that screen was supposed to be. TODD: So that's an example of, even at the design part, where you have to factor in all these different scenarios that you may not have thought about. And how the user would experience it if those scenarios happen. And also make a business decision whether or not you're gonna address some of those scenarios. Sometimes you don't because it's a very small minority of your users, edge case as we call it. And it's just not worth ... the ROI and something like that would be poor. So that's something too, where it's just half the app is really missing. JAMON: And that's where, I think having that high degree of trust is really important because then our spidery senses are saying, hey, there's something missing here. Let's spend the time up front, I know you wanna get started right now, but let's spend the time up front to map this out and see if everything is here. CHRIS: I'm actually curious when someone comes to you with an idea, how do you know when to start challenging the idea? And when to write the idea off? KEN: I wouldn't say that there's very many ideas that we would write off. Because lord knows if we knew which ideas were going to succeed in this business, we would be billionaires already. And frankly, the people who are billionaires don't even necessarily know. There is a healthy degree of luck in terms of like, who ends up on which gravy train. But, that said, there's always gonna be a variety of factors that go into whether something is successful. Some of them are universal. And some of them are highly specific. And it's a little bit of a judgment call on which is which, however. We think that things like software quality and good UX, these sorts of things, are basically universal. Like that humans are humans. In those regards, we are going to push for what we think is right. When it comes to the intimate understanding of the customer, the end customer, right, the people that these start-ups are trying to attract. That's where we defer to them. We're always looking for clients who clearly have that intimate understanding of their customer. And this sort of leads into another point, which is that, someone on their team, whether it's the founder, if they're the only ones. Or someone on their team, had better really have that intimate knowledge. And they're gonna have a full time job working with us. Basically. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Right? And that's also something that I think people have not understood. It's kinda like, hey, here you go make the software and I will dip in periodically. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Uh-uh (negative). No. Yeah, you gotta be really committed because you're the one who really understands that like, so we're gonna be working with you to go after this. And we need you, obviously. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Not just to write the checks, but also to tell us who this person is and what they're really gonna need. And sometimes our idea of a universal solution won't work for something specific. But that tension is really important. We're always fighting for those sort of universal values, but we're also listening to hear what specific values are and the ways that they might override universal value. TODD: Yeah, and there's not one right answer and one right design to solve any particular problem. I would pile on with Ken, the people coming to us, the founders or the department heads or whomever they are, coming to us. They really wanna understand the end user and be able to articulate that to us. And over time we learn them too. And some industries have very strong cultures that you have to be within, and if you don't speak that cultural language it instantly turns off those people. It's not just culture, but for example, we did a project for a company called PRO-TREAD, which does training for truckers. I don't know if they're the largest, but if they're not, they're probably closest to the largest in the country. And this traditionally was done if you had a trucking company, you would set up computers in the corner and then when that driver was by their home base, they would sit at that boring computer and do the forced training that they're required to do by law. Not fun. No one wants to do it. The people at the company don't wanna pay for it. Truck drivers don't wanna do it. Of course it does increase safety and stuff, so it's important to do, but it's just human nature not wanna do something that's, you know. JAMON: And I believe, Todd, that PRO-TREAD was one of the first to even computerize it. Before that is was paper tests and in classrooms. So they were kind of moving that direction already. Now this was another iteration of their platform. TODD: Correct. And this is a great example of an idea because it's simple, everyone understands it and it's obvious. Truck drivers spend a lot of time in the sleeper cabs of their trucks. At truck stops and whatnot on the side of the road and stuff. So, obviously making the training mobile was important because the training materials being on a tablet or an iPad was important. Making it not so painful for the person, so that it's not ... If you're the manager telling the drivers that they have to take this testing, getting 50% less push back because it's not as painful is a big deal to you. And also, they do need to not just get through the training material, they do need to understand it and internalize it. It actually does help, even though no one wants to do it. So the basic requirements was, it has to be mobile, it has to work inside of a sleeper cab on the side of I-80. And it still needs to maintain their already high level of guaranteeing that people actually pick up the information, and they had a variety of ways to make sure that happened. And also, be more engaging and not as painful. That was the directive to our designers. JAMON: I believe that when they first came to us they sort of envisioned the app looking basically like their web version and no real changes other than that. And we talked to them, this was a situation where we had a great rapport with the owner of PRO-TREAD and we're able to talk with him and explain where design could really add a lot of value to a touch interface. TODD: Yeah, so we actually did re-design it, not just to make it more mobile appropriate, let's say. But to really push those goals they had. Now, designers and us and them now understood the goals. I just stated them. Fairly straight forward, the goals. However, we can take those goals and we can design to those goals for sure, but we probably don't know truck drivers as well as our client PRO-TREAD does. So them having been in this industry for a very long time, really understood the nuances that would make meeting these goals through design possible. Having them really understand their users, having us really understand how to solve problems. Us having the problems be both simple, straightforward and well defined, that was a successful project and although maybe not as exciting as Uber for gerbils. Because gerbils have to get around too, and no one likes to walk. JAMON: Well gerbils do, actually, don't they? TODD: They kind of do, yeah. And they like tubes. So maybe be like Elon Musk's ... JAMON: Hyper loop. TODD: The hyper loop for gerbils. JAMON: For gerbils. TODD: Yeah, so that's a very exciting, so if we had a client came and said we want a hyper loop for gerbils and we respond, "of course. Who doesn't?" But it's just funny, but teaching truck drivers important lessons is more fulfilling when you know, when it rolls out, there's gonna be tons of men and women out there on the road having a slightly less painful day because of something worked on. And probably saving some lives. It's not as sexy, but it is very satisfying in my opinion. JAMON: Yeah, I totally agree. I actually have five uncles who are truck drivers. Very strong truck driving kind of familial influence. And maybe one or two of them might actually listen to my podcast here. So, hi uncles. (laughter) But what I think is kind of cool about this is I do know truck drivers. I didn't get a chance to work on that project myself, but there's totally a personal connection there. I understand what they go through and the types of things that they care about. TODD: I only have one brother and he owns a shipping company and he has lots of truck drivers, so I'm going to trump your four uncles. (laughter) JAMON: Let's have them fight. They're all six foot four. TODD: Although in the past he did drive, so, but anyways. Yeah. Ken, how about you buddy? JAMON: Any truck drivers there at Harvard? TODD: Aww, pick on the Harvard kid. KEN: No, I don't know any truck drivers. (laughter) You got me. TODD: Today, brought to you buy Captain Obvious. You can cut that, that was a bad joke.

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Cultivating & Nurturing Community

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2018 31:21

In this episode of Building Infinite Red, we are talking about cultivating and nurturing community, specifically what goes into forming a healthy community, such as setting boundaries, avoiding neglect, and not taking your community for granted. Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: One of the things that has impressed me with Infinite Red has been the value placed on cultivating and nurturing community. So to start, from your individual perspectives, why is community important to you? JAMON HOLMGREN: I think it's important because that's sort of how we met. We were all part of a Ruby Community, we were contributing to the open source within that community, and we were collaborating on some things. So from the very beginning, it was like, the community itself was kind of the fun part. I mean the technology was fun too, you know, don't get me wrong, but community was such a great part. It allowed for some opportunities including the ability for me to meet Ken and Todd and then of course, eventually get to know them. And so, we saw the value of community right from the very beginning, even before Infinite Red came to be. TODD WERTH: I would agree with everything that Jamon said. Obviously, it's how we met each other. Open source community, speaking at conferences, which is a community event. I met a lot of my, I would call friends through such communities. But more than that it's a way for us to be part of something that's bigger than ourselves, bigger than our little company here and associate ourselves with like-minded people. And I tend to choose communities and hopefully I'm building communities of people that I respect and feel good associating myself with. CHRIS: How would you define community? Because community is one of those words that, we all use the word but do we all mean the same thing when it comes to using the word? TODD: I don't know what the definition of community is. Ken will know exactly I'm sure but to me it's just people who've decided to group up together around a particular ideal, a particular subject, a particular interest. I guess I could sum it up for myself, when I need something or want to express something, this group of people is the first people I want to express that to or ask for help from. KEN MILLER: It's a tough thing to define right? It's one of those sort of squishy concepts, you kind of know when you see it. But trying to pin it down to what exactly is community, what isn't community is pretty hard. For us, community has largely been centered around open source. That is a very particular kind of community. But I'd say it's narrower than that too, right? It's not like we're talking to Linux developers, we're talking to people who have similar professional experiences to us. And that has always been the case. Like you kind of flock to people who can kind of understand your pain. And so, for us, contributing back to the community in the form of sharing insight, in the form of sharing code has always been about saying, "Hey, you know what? We feel your pain, let's make it better together." JAMON: And one of the unique things about the community that we have been a part of is, it's never been about location. There's a community here in Vancouver, Washington. There's a larger community in the Portland metro area. And we're certainly a part of that. I go to meet ups, I go to events here in Portland. And they're good. And you do get to meet people and you have a commonality of location and also to a great degree, interest or technology or whatever it is that you're centered around in a meet up. But our community hasn't been about that, with the Infinite Red origin story. Ken and Todd, did know each other because of location, but it had already become remote before that. I remember when I first started building some open source, one of the people that kind of quickly became a part of my little community there was a guy that actually still works for us here, Mark Rickert. He started contributing and he was over on the East Coast and I believe, South Carolina at that time. And he came in and contributed and we had a lot of great conversations and bonded on some things. There are a lot of interests that were similar at that time. And it was really great because the community could be centered around something other than just location, which I think is something maybe a little bit more new in the past. TODD: It was kind of interesting. So you asked that question, which is difficult to answer, but as we talk more, which is a great thing about conversation, new things are coming to my mind. Community can mean very different things and we all belong to many different communities. One is around physical things. Jamon meant some location, but it could be, you belong to a community of men over six foot four, and you have your own, I'm speaking about Jamon here (laughter), you have your own problems and when you discuss things, there's a camaraderie that comes from a shared experience of a real thing. JAMON: Hash tag, tall people problems. TODD: Yes, a lot of communities, they've grown from a seed of an idea or an ideal and that's probably more common in a lot of the communities we, well, most of the communities, from a professional standpoint, that we either contribute to or belong to or even, in some cases, create are around ideas and shared interest and that kind of stuff. CHRIS: In what ways have you intentionally grown community? You've talked a little bit about open source projects, but what are some of the other ways that you have done that? TODD: We use a product called Community Miracle Grow. JAMON: It works great. One of the things that occurred to me, I think it was, I don't know, a year and a half ago or something like that, was that we had this community. It had already kind of come to be, but there wasn't really a standard place for them to congregate. There were people who were kind of fans of our open source work, who understood what we were doing. They were interested in our conference. We created a Slack team. Slack of course, being the chat system that we use and we created a community version of the Infinite Red Slack. So people could sign up at community.infinite.red. They could go in there. There were different channels that kind of group people based on what they were interested in. Of course, there were some that were more popular, the Chain React channel, the Ignite channel, which is our open source React Native, boilerplate CLI system and also just React Native in general. We pushed the community just to see if there's interest. And there was a lot of interest and we are able to also do some things like, people had some questions about Ignite. In this Ignite CLI, it actually directs you to our Slack channel and we have gotten to know some of those people and also have been able to lean on some of our community members to answer questions and diagnose issues. And things like that. TODD: It's totally off topic. But I love how effortlessly Jamon inserts plugs first off into the podcast. It's inspiring. (laughter) JAMON: My Twitter handle is @jamonholmgren. (laughter) TODD: Well done. KEN: That was not quite as smooth, but I still like it. JAMON: Once you edit it, it will be smooth. CHRIS: One thing that is interesting is, how to you view Twitter in terms of community building as well? KEN: Double-edged sword. Well, actually like the handle is a double-edged sword to a double-edged sword. JAMON: Twitter is an interesting one. KEN: Yeah. Twitter is an interesting place. TODD: I, personally, don't have an answer to that. Back when I used to promote my own personal brand, I used Twitter a lot and that seemed straightforward to me. But I got to a point, this being my third and final company, hopefully, for my life, where I'm much more interested in promoting Infinite Red than myself, and I have not figure out how to do that. I think Jamon does it much better so he probably has lots more interesting to say. KEN: Jamon does it by being genuine, is the thing, right, he's just there, he's being genuine. He's not shy about promoting stuff that we're doing, but he's also not a spam feed. JAMON: Yeah. If I am spamming something like I have been this podcast, to be honest, I will kind of acknowledge that upfront. Like, "Hey, I was spamming this. It was just released. Give me a break." I'll back off after a bit. I enjoy Twitter. It's opened up a lot of opportunities for us. Twitter's been a platform for us and it's been good. I love showing off my team's work and I had a one of my team message me the other day and said, "I love how you're always promoting your team. Telling other people about what your team's doing." That was someone on our team. I feel like there's a lot of really great work being done and nobody wants to talk about it at Infinite Red. So I guess have to because I want people to know what we're doing. It's very cool. You know, this podcast in a way sort of came out of Twitter in some ways. It initially started with my friend, Kyle Shevlin. He and I were chatting a little bit and I was kind of lamenting that, "I don't do much code anymore, so I don't have a lot to talk about when it comes to answering questions on Twitter or kind of talking about various things." He was like, "Well, what about the business stuff that you're doing? That's interesting to people." He was just like, "You have a lot talk about." And so, I put out a tweet saying, "Hey, if you have a business question, if you have anything. You know, I've learned a lot in the amount of time that I've spent doing this." And I got a really good response. A lot of people asking questions. It was really cool. And then the best part about it was that I could bring it back to Todd and Ken and show them the tweet and they would monologue for a bit or dialogue for a bit. And we would go back and forth and at the end of that, we would have something really interesting to say. And I could put that out there. It had my name on it, but I try to be careful about always tagging Ken and Todd in the tweets and saying, "this is kind of a amalgam of all of our responses." And it worked really well and then once we kind of you had that experience then we said, "Well. you know what? We do have a lot to say. And so, since we have a lot to say, why don't we actually say it in a little different medium." I mean that's this podcast. So Twitter has been very influential in a lot of ways and some ways, responsible for this podcast. But definitely a shout out to my friend, Kyle Shevlin for sparking that idea. KEN: Jamon is like my Twitter agent. (laughter) Like I have more followers because Jamon has like quoted me than from anything I've ever actually tweeted myself. JAMON: Ken's a pretty private person and he has a lot of incredibly insightful things to say that will forever die in a Slack channel somewhere, if I don't go out there and say it. (laughter) So. Yeah. I can't help myself. KEN: Honestly, I feel very lucky to be co-founders with Jamon. TODD: Yeah. I agree with that. JAMON: Awww, thank you. KEN: Because you'll go out and do that kind of thing and it's just totally natural for him. It's not like we're pulling teeth to make him do it but it means that it gives us the kick in the behind that we need in order to get out there and talk to people. TODD: I agree. CHRIS: I think what's interesting though is as you're talking though, Jamon's one type of person that you would need in community. Ken, you're obviously the other type. And then there's Todd, who's the jokester that that brings the lightness and levity to the community so it's like, I guess community makes sense in this context with the different personalities. KEN: I was seriously hoping that you're going to say, "Well, nobody really needs Todd." CHRIS: Well, Todd has feelings. And so, we want to make sure that we acknowledge those. KEN: It's not true. We totally need Todd. But Todd...it would have been amusing. (laughter) JAMON: In that context. Leave the jokes to the professional. KEN: Leave the jokes to the jokester. JAMON: But one thing I want to say before Todd jumps in here, is Todd is the sort of you know, he keeps things light and stuff like that but he always has very strong convictions, very strong things that drive who he is and that comes out in our community very much so. That's a very core piece to our community that I appreciate about Todd. TODD: So I want to clarify a few things. A, Todd does not have feelings. (laughter) No, I'm just kidding. You know, it's interesting because I'm a very outgoing introvert, which is funny. And I have no shame whatsoever, but for some reason, I don't promote as much as I used to in the past. I don't know why. I'm glad we have Jamon to do that. This is inside baseball so maybe not very interesting to people but ... JAMON: Todd, you were pretty good about promoting Infinite Red before I joined. TODD: That's true. JAMON: Infinite Red from our perspective. Because we were kind of first to the RubyMotion scene. I think Todd and Ken came in a little later, but they quickly kind of grew like a plague all the way throughout. (laughter) Okay, that's the wrong analogy. KEN: No, keep that. JAMON: They grew very quickly throughout. And it was a very intentional thing now that I know Ken and Todd, I know it was intentional. It wasn't just a happenstance. TODD: I guess this podcast is lot about us. I always feel weird talking about just our perspectives and stuff but Jamon's comment about us, growing like a plague is true. And I think one of the things that I've learned being a ... So I started out pretty shy, introverted person, but one of the things I learned is don't wait for people to invite you to communities, invite yourself, wedge yourself in every ... And just keep on wedging and until a point where they're like, "Was Todd ever not here? I don't remember." Even though I was one of the last people to join, I feel like I was always there just because of shamelessly, endlessly, relentlessly wedging myself into every every situation. KEN: Well, we live in a world where, for a lot of things you don't really have to ask for permission. You want to make a library, make a library, publish it. You want to make a newsletter, make the newsletter, start publishing it and invite people to join it. I think for a large stretch of my career, I would kind of sit around thinking, "Well, I'm not sure if I'm the right one to do this." There's this sort of, I guess it's kind of an imposter syndrome. It's kind of just the shyness, just the laziness to a certain degree. And what we found was like, if you just show up, and you start you know sharing what you have, sooner or later you're going to find people who are interested and that's what's happened. JAMON: And I think there are a lot of people on our team that are more like Ken than Todd and I. You know, Todd and I don't have imposter syndrome in that same way. (laughter) We tend to be maybe a little over confident in some ways. But our team is probably a little more, at least many on our team are more like Ken. But it's great because they add so much value and we can kind of bring them in to the community through their association with Infinite Red and the things that were doing. That is a way of building a community, is to bring people along with you and kind of promote and show them that ... Show other people that they do belong. TODD: I agree that Ken represents a lot of people in our community, in the development community. Not necessarily the designer community. We talk a lot about developers but we also have designers and stuff. You know, I'm 46 years old I've been doing everything in this industry for now, 20 some years and I have evolved a lot over time. The truth is I'm never going to be invited to the country club. Never gonna happen. Just reality. My attitude always been, "Fine, I'll just buy it someday." (laughter) You know that's obviously just kind of a metaphor, but the point is: invitation is overrated. That's all I'm saying. KEN: I was always a very shy kid. I have a six-year-old daughter and there was something that I have observed about her because she's actually kind of different from me. It's a bit of social skills that seems to come naturally to her that I am a little envious of, but it represents what we're talking about here. So I remember there is an occasion where we are at a playground and they had one of those tires swings, where the tire is horizontal and it's got like three chains that support it so you could kind of go in every direction. And there was some kids there, who were playing on it and they were, I don't know three, four years older than her. There were calling over to their parents to come and push them, the parents were like talking and ignoring them. And so Luna just comes up and starts pushing them. Doesn't ask. She just starts pushing them and the kids are like, "Oh, okay." And they invited her to come up on the swing with her after that because she didn't ... She just did it. But she did it in a way that was like, "Hey, I'm gonna help them." Or she didn't ask to help them, she just helped them and maybe that doesn't work in every circumstance but it seems like it's going to work in a lot of circumstances, where if that's how you introduce yourself to people, they're going to trust you in a way that they wouldn't otherwise. TODD: So that brings up a great point. One of the things for instance at our conference, Chain React. One of my kind of high GAFOs or one of the things I cared about a lot, was to actively try to include everyone in the conference in the conference. A lot of conferences I see is just a small group of cool kids and the rest of people sitting in the corner and inspecting potted plants, myself included. So since I was part of creating a conference how do we minimize the cool kids and maximize the majority. And so when we're building community, the people like Ken‘s daughter, don't need our help. They'll just naturally join and be part of it and that's wonderful. But I gave a lot of thought on how to get the rest of the people because you could go to a conference and you could have the worst presentations, the worst content in the world, but if you are actually included in a way that you naturally aren't, you're going to go away loving that experience. And so, that's actually one of my personal goals in life is how to bring that experience that the cool kids get naturally to the majority of people. KEN: Well, and I think the most advance version of that is to enlist the cool kids as social instigators. Take their natural social skills because that's usually what that is, right? And have them come and bring everybody else along on the fun and games. JAMON: I read an article a little while ago, where a grade school student was kind of bullied and sort of kind of ostracized at her school. And she ended up moving to a new school and someone said, "Hey, come sit with me." at the cafeteria. And it was one of the cool kids. And she ended up making an organization that promotes come sit with me and basically go out and find these kids that seem ostracized, that nobody likes, whatever and just invite them to come sit with you at the cafeteria because it can change lives. And I actually sent that over to my son just saying, "Hey, you know ... " Because kind of ... He's looked up to at his school and he's a very kindhearted person. And he really liked the article too. And I think that that was something that he can do at his school. That's definitely something that we still, as adults, there's still that dynamic of come into the group. So we really cared about that with Chain React and that definitely came across I think. TODD: And our Slack community and some other communities. The great thing about out community is whether it's a developer community, the designer community, we belong to the open source community. We tend to be, I think more than the average human being, we tend to be a nicer group of people. I don't know if that's true, but it just seems that way. When recruiting a team, I invite people over to the table. That's how, this is going to sound horrible if our team's listening and they're not all that way. But I always look for people who are underappreciated in all aspects of life. And it makes for such a fantastic team because those type of people tend to be more appreciative, they think more about others. I love our band of misfits that we call Infinite Red. And we've got a variety of different misfits and I highly recommend finding people who don't naturally walk up to the tire swing. CHRIS: I'm interested too, with that philosophy of the band of misfits: How does building this greater Infinite Red Community impact the internal culture of the team? JAMON: I think internally people didn't totally get why we were doing it because it did seem like a lot of time that we had to spend doing it. We had to be out there answering questions and fielding requests for help and things like that. And we're still kind of figuring out what our role is with that; I think we've gotten a little better at that. Also the community is starting to become more self-sustaining, where there are people who are answering questions who are not Infinite Red people. But we've also made some really good friends there. And I think that the Infinite Red team has benefited from the community in that way. We don't get full participation from everybody. We get some people, you know, Kevin, Steve and some others who are a lot more active in the Infinite Red community Slack especially. And that's okay. We're not expecting everybody to be kind of the social butterflies, but we do get a lot of value from that. I think people see that. And they also see, I think Chain React probably had a bigger impact than the Slack community in a lot of ways. Almost everybody was there and they got a chance to see how we are regarded in the community and how they're sort of looked up to as Infinite Red employees. They're a great team so I think they should be. CHRIS: What do people or even companies get wrong with building communities? JAMON: I know that one thing that definitely comes in is neglect. Communities will die if you don't continually spend time making sure that you're paying attention to them, making sure that you're keeping the core principles alive. Things like that. So neglect is a really big one and you are sort of signing up for an obligation at that point. You need to make sure that you adequately pay attention to what's going on. Now, I have other communities that I've started and still maintain outside of Infinite Red for personal interests and things like that. One has 4,000 members. It's kind of an interesting one. And that community, we started it, grew very quickly and then it sort of became more self-sustaining in a way, which lends itself to maybe taking it for granted that it will continue to just kind of keep rolling right along. But luckily I was able to get together a really great group of core moderators that all have very similar goals, although very very different backgrounds. And that was really great way to handle that because they all, at different times, have time to make sure that the community is going strong. So neglect is very much a big one. Make sure that you don't neglect the community. TODD: I haven't done as much as Jamon, for sure, but it seems a very challenging endeavor. So if I'm a listener and I want to create a community. I'm going to run into lots of problems, I imagine. What are similar kinds of problems you've run into Jamon? Were you able to solve them? Are they still problems? That sort of thing. JAMON: In some communities, and actually in many communities, there's like dynamic that happens where people will try to find the edges. They will try to find what the moderators will allow and what they won't. Often what they do is not explicitly against the rules. Like if it is, it's easy. You just delete the comment, you let him know, whatever. Often what they're doing can be kind of sort of defended as being within the rules, but is still a toxic behavior, when it comes down to it. It will turn into something that's much worse. And usually moderators are under moderating. That's usually the way that people deal with it. They under moderate. You know you don't want to stifle people, you don't want to get calls of censorship and things like that, but really you should probably moderate more than you are and it's a really key aspect of maintaining a community. I've found that that's definitely the case. Early on in this other community, there was someone who was sort of misbehaving and I posted a very strong response to them and told them if they did it again that they were going to be banned. And it was helpful because it kind of set the boundary. This is what we're not going to, we're not going to allow this. It has been good because from that point on the group sort of started self-policing in a way. They kind of understood where the boundaries were. KEN: This topic of boundaries is super important. Another place that shows up particularly with anything open source or any other kind of content that you're maintaining, is an incredible sense of entitlement that you'll run into. And the burnout that can create in your team or the people who are working on that software with you. People will be like, you know, "This sucks." Like, "Why haven't you fixed my bug?" Like, "I submitted it months ago. You people are amateurs." Kind of like, "This is free. You paid us nothing for this." Keeping a healthy boundary about that and figuring out how to be responsive to the community without being a pushover is really important, if you're going to have a long-term software project or any other kind of thing that falls in that category of kind of collaborative content. JAMON: Yes. I agree with that a hundred percent. CHRIS: What are some other characteristics of a thriving community? So you've talked a little bit about moderation. You've talked about boundaries and policing, entitlement. And so, what else is there? KEN: One thing that isn't probably obvious if you've never done it, is how much promotion it actually requires. And you want to do it in a way that's consistent with the rest of your values but you have to put the word out and it's not going to happen on its own. That was definitely a sort of a stumbling block I had around open source, in particular or blogs or any of these things. Like, you have to tell people. It can feel really uncomfortable to a lot of kind of maker types. It feels weird that you have to convince people to let you give them stuff for free. But you totally do. You absolutely do. It's really important and finding the right, "Here it comes. Here comes." You got to find the right balance. (laughter) Finding the right balance is really hard. I think we're getting pretty good at it, but it's a non-optional part of this kind of work. JAMON: Well, because it's not really free, right? Because you only have so much room in your Slack sidebar for another Slack team. You only have so much mind share available for various things. And also people have been bitten in the past, where they've join communities that have either died, have been toxic or are just so noisy that you can't keep up. It just sucks all your time. KEN: Yeah, well, any of these things. Whether it's you're trying a new library. It requires some time and effort on your part. And you have to know that you're not going to get sucked into it. I mean there's probably this question in the back of a lot of people's minds kind of like, "Why on Earth do you do all of this? If it has all of these challenges and nobody pays you for it, like, why is it worthwhile?" Todd, you want to answer that? TODD: No, I want to say a bad joke. KEN: Okay. Go ahead and say a bad joke. TODD: I don't know if you're aware of this, but the Hoover Corporation is actually working on a vacuum cleaner that sucked time, never mind, I did that wrong. (laughter) KEN: You're right. That is a bad joke. TODD: I gave the punchline in the joke. KEN: You're right. That's a terrible joke. TODD: The project team was ... Eventually, they gave up on the project because it was too much of a time suck. I just messed that up. (laughter) KEN: I think we have to keep that in. TODD: Let me do it again. I don't know if you guys know this, but the Hoover Corporation was working on a temporal vacuum cleaner, but they eventually gave up on the project because it was too much of a time suck. CHRIS: I think I liked the failed joke attempt better. KEN: I like the failed joke better. Yeah. TODD: Well, yeah. Because that makes me the joke. KEN: I mean okay, so let's address the elephant in the room. Is there promotional value for us in terms of the rest of our services? Absolutely. Almost any attention especially if you know, basically positive attention is going to be good for us. It's a really expensive way of getting that attention. JAMON: It is. KEN: Let me be clear about that. If that's the only reason you're going to do it, go buy Google ads. Seriously. Like, don't do it. If it didn't have any promotional value, I don't think as a business person, you know, me, as the person who looks at the finances that I could justify the amount that we spend on it. If that was our only goal with that. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: So we have to do it partly because it's just who we are. JAMON: Absolutely. It gives us an audience and it gives us the ability to ... Like I did when I promoted this podcast there. If you join the community, by the way, I'm going to insert one of these seamless advertisements. If you join the community at community.infinite.red, your get access to things before the public does. We actually will go in there and and announce things and say, "Hey, you know, come check this out." And we get early feedback and stuff that way. It's really cool, but it also gives us an audience. So we had you know 2,000 people that I could "@channel." (laughter) And yes, I did it and we put enough money and time into the community that I didn't feel bad about doing it once in awhile, once in a blue moon. And I said, "@channel you know, we have a new podcast and go check it out." So that's definitely the promotional value, the built-in audience that we have that we've already built a rapport with because we have put in the time to actually show them who we are and they buy into that already. There's a lot of value there. KEN: It's a great source of folks that we already know or are sort of somewhat aligned with our values to go and find freelancers and that sort of thing. So we'll frequently get people just emailing us saying, "Hey, can we work with you?" And we usually don't have openings. So it was like, "Hey, you know, we don't have openings right now, but if you go hang out here that's usually where we go first." JAMON: Yes. KEN: We've gotten a lot of great contributors that way. JAMON: We have. KEN: Hopefully that's win-win for everybody. CHRIS: I'm still a little curious about this idea of, should every company build a community around their products, employees, and way of thinking? KEN: Not necessarily. JAMON: Wouldn't you say that one would kind of arise naturally though? KEN: Maybe. There's probably something to be said that, if you don't intentionally create the community, you're going to get a community whether you like it or not and it may or may not be aligned with what you're trying to do. But there's so many different kinds of companies out there that some of them are going to make more sense that way, some of them are going to get less sense that way. For us, given how collaborative what we do is, it makes perfect sense but there is plenty of companies that are just like us that don't cultivate that. So it's kind of up to you but this how we did it. This is how it works for us. And I think there's going to be people who resonate with it. CHRIS: Putting on your future facing hat, in what ways would you like to see the Infinite Red Community grow and mature? TODD: Upwards. (laughter) Oh, you didn't say direction, you said ways. Sorry. JAMON: I think from my standpoint, I'd like to see a little more deeper interaction beyond the more active channels. Something that's a little more beyond that. We have some ideas. We're not ready to announce anything yet but if you go to the community, you'll get first access. (laughter) I'm just relentless, aren't I? (laughter) But the deeper interactions, the more value, the better connection between everybody. I think that there's going to be more of that coming. We are going to continue to invest in the community in a way that is very meaningful. Keep an eye out for that. It's already pretty awesome, but we have some ways to make the directions deeper. I'm not looking for numbers. Like we have 2,000, I think almost 2,100 people in there right now. I'm not necessarily just looking for 100,000 people. What I want is for those connections to be more meaningful. TODD: It's not just our Slack community. I would consider our React Native Newsletter, which we have about 10,000 subscribers to be part of our community, the people who interact with us on open source. We have a variety of open source projects to be part of our community and of course, the listeners to this podcast is also part of our growing community. Community is a big umbrella, I think. JAMON: There are some things that we still need to work on with the community, for sure, but I think we do this probably better than a lot of people, a lot of companies. TODD: Ken's absolutely right. If you're doing community for promotion, good on you. Probably not the highest ROI. It's like general branding. You can't put a number on it but I think clearly from a business standpoint, it has its values and ways that we can't quantify or articulate. It's not for everyone. I think every company should find things that they can do to help the world and their business, but for us, it dovetails well with our culture.

community google earth technology washington open startups portland south carolina vancouver cultivating communities roi east coast slack nurturing ignite linux cli react native jamon chris how chris well kenso chris one infinite red rubymotion todd it ken it todd yeah chain react todd so ken one

Hiring & Maximizing Your Team

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2018 34:45

We are discussing all of the considerations that go into hiring and maximizing your team: from culture fit and making sure that people are enjoying their work, to what it means to be a leader and why the best leaders bring out the best in each person, not for the sake of the company, but for the betterment of their lives. Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: Where do you start this process of hiring and maximizing your team? TODD WERTH: Hello, Chris. This is Todd, CEO and founder of Infinite Red, for those who don't recognize my voice. It's a super important question. We run the company as a Council of Elders. The three founders all have equal power and equal responsibilities, but we all choose various parts of the company that we focus on. And one of my main focuses is the team, so this topic's very interesting to me. I would start out defining our opinions on what different roles of management, leadership, coaching are, so people have kind of a frame reference. There is management, but that's a purely logistical thing. For example, we're a consulting company, and we have a lot of projects, usually six to eight projects going on at once. And we have to schedule those. So, that means putting blocks into holes on the schedule, figuring out resources, that kind of stuff. That is management. There's no real leadership going on there. There's certainly no coaching. I mean, there's some, of course; it's not a perfect science. But those kind of tasks are management, in my opinion. We manage what's necessary, but we don't manage what's not necessary to manage or what would be better served by being a coach, to use a sports analogy, or being a leader. That's kind of the primary thing. We can talk about later what bad leaders do. One of the things they do—just to highlight what I just said—is they only manage; they never lead, and they never coach. And then we have leadership and coaching. Could be the same thing, but I'm gonna break those up just a little bit. A coach's job is to find the best teammates that they can at the time with the resources that they have, and put people in the jobs that they're best at and maximize those people. Coaches don't say things like, "All players suck. I'm losing because you can't find good players," because it's literally their job to find those players and to maximize them and to put them in the best spot possible. That's what I consider coaching. Leadership is everything else. Leadership is you're leading, and you're guiding people to where they'll be most effective. You're guiding people through problems. You're the first one on the battlefield, in my opinion, and you're the last one on the battlefield. You lead by example. It's everything else that goes in, all the soft skills of helping a group of people accomplish tasks and goals. JAMON HOLMGREN: Yeah, thanks, Todd. This is Jamon, founder and COO of Infinite Red. I think one of the key aspects of maximizing your team comes down to trusting them and providing the right level of support. So, a lot of companies will put in place restrictive policies that are more along the lines of trying to kind of shoehorn their employees into behavior that they want to see. And we take a very different approach here. We're very resistant to putting in place policies. We may give some guidelines that are more along the lines of ideas of how you might approach something, but we rely more on trusting them to make the right call, and if they don't make the right call, to respond the right way. And we can provide support for them if they need help, if they need encouragement, if they need course correction, whatever, we can do that in a supportive way and not so much in a management way. And that's what Todd's talking about when he's talking about the leadership. But, yeah, it's about trusting your team. And it's about putting them in places where they can succeed and not putting them in places where they're not well suited, finding the right path for them. You can put someone in place as, let's say, a programmer. And if they're struggling, you can just sort of like flog them. You know, not literally, but just sort of put a bunch of pressure on them to get their job done faster. And that's how a lot of bad leaders approach maximizing their team. From our standpoint, it's a very different approach. It's more of an open approach. It's about trying to find what they're really good at, and then letting them go, letting them do their thing. There are many examples within Infinite Red, which we can talk about, where people have taken the initiative and done things that are outside of their normal job description, but which they're interested in and which they're good at. And that is more where we see the maximization of the talent that we have. CHRIS: How do you hire for culture fit within Infinite Red? KEN MILLER: Ken Miller, CTO and founder. I would say the easiest way is always a referral. Always, right? I bet everybody's gonna tell you that. The hardest, almost impossible way, is just an interview of somebody off the street. One thing we've kind of done that's sort of in between is we've hired freelancers. So, from time to time, we have more work than our core team can handle, and we'll bring on a freelancer or two. And on a couple of different occasions, we've liked them so much we're like, "Hey, do you want a job?" And that's worked pretty well. TODD: It's actually pretty difficult to hire for anything, much less culture fit. I am still dubious that getting a bunch of resumes, doing interviews, and choosing one of those people is any better than randomly picking someone. I'm sure people have done studies, and it's probably better, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it's better. What we are particularly good at is we have a strong culture, and we have a strong idea of what our culture is. And we have a strong idea on what attributes that our people to have. We let a lot of our team interview. For instance, Chris here, when he was interviewed ... I don't know how many interviews he had, but it's probably like 10. We let anyone on our team -- and we're a team of 26 people -- interview everyone if they want to. We try to get a lot of people to interview them. Different people are looking for different things. For example, I am solely looking for culture fit. I assume that the people that came before me, like Jamon or Ken, if it's a technical position, already interviewed them for technical stuff. I assume by the time it gets to me that they're qualified for the job. So, I really just chitchat with them and try to see if they're a cultural fit. JAMON: Yeah, and one of the dangers with trying to hire specifically only for culture fit is that you can end up with a monoculture, and that can be a problem. And so that's something that we watch for. When Todd's talking about cultural fit, it's very much more about specific values that are kindness and helpfulness and things like that that are more about humanity and the type of person that they are, more so than maybe a specific culture, and I think that term probably needs to be defined a little better as we go through here. KEN: No rock stars. JAMON: That's right. TODD: Or ninjas or unicorns. KEN: No, yeah. No rock stars or ninjas. CHRIS: What about gurus? TODD: No gurus. KEN: Well, we'd have to see about a guru. I don't know, we'll see. TODD: Yeah, so just real quick, our main cultural fits, the soft stuff, is supportive, kindness. I would say even creative would be one of mine now. JAMON: Absolutely. It doesn't matter whether they're a technical person or not, creative is absolutely one of our values ... Todd, you've talked about ... What was that that you sometimes say about creativity? TODD: I do believe very strongly that the company and day-to-day work life should be fun, and as little stress as possible. And the reason I say that is the most creative and the best work comes out when you're having fun. Like, I like to joke around a lot. People sometimes say, "This is more of a serious matter, don't joke." I don't agree. If someone's doing brain surgery on me, the doctor, I want him to be having a great day, feeling good, making bad, inappropriate jokes about my tiny brain, that kind of stuff. Because you know what, when you're in that mood and you're having fun and you're in that mode, you do your best work. I can think of almost no place where that's not true. I don't know if that's what you're talking about, Jamon, but when you're having fun, you're being creative. When you're being creative, you're solving problems with more than just pure nose against the grindstone. JAMON: Yeah. And some of the other attributes that we evaluate on are productivity, leadership, being pleasant, being a good communicator; those are all soft skills. And it's kind of interesting because I sometimes get questions on Twitter, "What do you look for in a developer?" And my answers are usually probably more soft skill than people would expect. I'm not necessarily looking for hard technical skills. That's not what we value as much. KEN: It's always been very important to me that we make the work fun, that we find people that enjoy what they do, find as many as ways as possible to make them juggle. It's not always possible. Different clients are going to be different ways. Different projects are gonna be different ways, but as much as possible make the actual work fun as opposed to, what a lot of startups I've seen do, which is a lot of booze and free food to numb the pain of the work that you're doing. That's a very, very, very strongly held view for me. TODD: It only takes about a week to build culture at a company because that's how long it takes to get the ping pong table delivered. (laughter) KEN: And we have to deliver a ping pong table to every single employee's wing and we have this elaborate system for simulating the trajectory of the ping pong so you like hit the ping pong ball and you kind of measure where it went- JAMON: That's what we spend our time on. KEN: You have somebody send you the ... That's a lot of work. TODD: That's a typical startup. JAMON: We put together a presentation for a change in some of our strategy and showed it to the team when we're all together in one location last fall. And one of the things we had was this sort of like seven points that we were looking for, and I actually pulled it up on my computer so I can remember what they were. It's creativity, productivity, quality of work, communication skills, being a pleasure to work with, consistency, and leadership. Now not everybody is great at all those things obviously. Some people are more strong in the communication side of things. Some are more productive. Some are really, really great at quality. It's a mixture of those things that makes Infinite Red. But that's what Todd's really talking about when he's saying that he optimizes for the culture fit, what he looks for, the things that they do well. And all the technical stuff, I mean, it's important but people can learn the technical side of things. KEN: The reason that we don't focus as much on raw technical skills ... I wouldn't agree at all that we don't focus on it. We definitely want people who can do hard things. It's just that the world of software development began its life in a world where humans had to contort themselves into the world of the machine very heavily. You had to really, really intimately know how the machine worked, and that was a pretty rare skill; people who could kind of form the mental model that they needed to in order to work on these old machines. Steadily, over the decades, the slider between the machine and the human has gotten closer and closer and closer to the human side where your job is not as much to mind meld with the machine, it's to really to intimately understand the human's problem and translate it into the high level languages that we use now for the kind of software that we do, application-level software. Like, we're not writing operating systems or databases. We're not writing Google-scale, massive data-crunching applications, that kind of thing. For things where the human factors even all the way down to the technical level are the most important. So like manageability, that's a human factor even though it's highly technical. Having people with the soft and social skills who can also think in the abstract where you need to to be a programmer or in the way that you need to be a designer as well in this sort of breaking problems down in your mind. We've seen many more project go awry because of soft skills than because of hard skills. JAMON: Yeah, I agree with that. There's a line at which, of course, all of our people have to be competent in their jobs, whether technically on the engineering side or on the designer side. TODD: Yeah, I think it's a lot easier to test if someone who you are looking at to be on your team, whether they have technical skills, it's a lot easier to look at someone's portfolio and see that they're a great artist on the design side. These kind of real, tangible things. The reason we're not talking about it as much is not because it's not important or that we don't have these great skilled people, because we do, it's just a lot easier to determine that part. And by time, it gets to us determining if they're in our culture, we've already assessed that they have these skills. I feel like that doesn't give us a competitive advantage to figure out the easy things that everyone can figure out. So I don't want to give the impression that we just don't care about them, we totally do. The soft skills or the cultural fit is where I think you can have a competitive advantage and where you can as a coach part of your job, select the best players for your particular team. It's a sports analogy. I don't know why I'm using all these sports analogies. I'm not even a sports person. (laughter) JAMON: The truth is that as far as hiring is concerned, I wouldn't say that we're necessarily great at it. And that's not to say that we've hired a bunch of people that aren't good, they're really great. I think in some ways maybe that reflects more of our ability to intuit what will work well and what doesn't. But I think that you get good at something by doing it a lot. And we haven't actually hired a ton. We've purposely have kept the team small. KEN: I don't know if there's a sweet spot some place. I feel like being very small it's harder to do hiring because as Jamon says you don't get a lot of practice. Being large, I think it's also hard to do hiring because you have to have so many layers of filters that you get lots of false negatives and false positives just by virtue of the scale. But like, I wanna believe that there's this place in the middle, but I don't even know if I believe that. Hiring is just hard. There's no silver bullet. JAMON: There's also the turnover is a factor in this too. And we really don't have turnover. Pretty much everybody that we started from 2015 has stuck around until today and that's something that we're very proud of. That may change at one point, but we're very proud of that fact. It does mean that we don't hire to replace, like we haven't. And we only hire to grow and we're growing very slowly. CHRIS: Jamon, that brings up a really interesting point in which, when Infinite Red merged from two separate companies into what it is today, there were two different cultures where, as a team, you had to learn new personalities and learn how to work with new people so how did that change this dynamic? JAMON: Yeah, from my perspective, it was ... It actually kinda floors me how well it went considering what we had to deal with. At ClearSight, we were a ... That was my previous company that I started in 2005. We had a long history, so some people had worked with me for a very long time. I mean, I hired everybody as a brand new junior. I mean, I didn't hire hardly anybody who had experience. We were not remote as we discussed in our previous episode. We were not remote at the time. And we had a different business model the way that we worked at ClearSight versus Infinite Red, LLC, which was Todd and Ken's company at the time, they were very senior-heavy. They had all seniors. In fact, I think almost everybody at Infinite Red, LLC was older than me, and I was the oldest person at ClearSight. So that was an interesting aspect. TODD: There was a lot of Metamucil at Infinite Red. (laughter) CHRIS: This episode of Building Infinite Red is brought to you by Metamucil. Get your fiber in today. (laughter) KEN: You have to keep that in. JAMON: Yes. So that was an interesting aspect because it was very different. We were in Vancouver, Washington area most of us and they were down in the bay area, a little different style there. It was just different vibe in the two companies, but it went really well, and that's something I think we should talk about. TODD: I'll not paint as a rosy picture as Jamon did. It did end up very well through a whole lot of effort and going forward. I do want to interject real quick on the last thing. One of the qualities we look for, and it also plays into Jamon's comment about monoculture, I consider us a little band of misfits, and that's on purpose. And we're misfits in a variety of different ways all over the spectrum. I won't go into different ones, but we have a wide variety of misfits, and I think that's a very important part of our culture, which I enjoy very much. KEN: We're the island of misfit toys. TODD: Correct, except for we're not toys and we're not ... KEN: Yeah, there's no island and we're not toys, but otherwise, we're a totally the island of misfit toys. TODD: Exactly. CHRIS: This episode brought to you by competing metaphors. Metaphors; the things that we compete against. (laughter) TODD: Yeah, the culture was quite a bit different. We put a lot of effort and this is a team effort as well as a leadership effort for sure, and it took a while, but the end results I do agree with Jamon, it came out really well. Obviously, we didn't have anyone quit, which is fantastic, which is a major accomplishment. And, of course, the two cultures changed each other, and we came out as a third culture. JAMON: Yeah, totally. TODD: Which was very hard, but very exciting. KEN: One of the things that happened when we merged was Vancouver, Washington is for the Pacific Northwest anyway, a relatively kind of conservative area. And obviously, we were here in the Bay Area, which is not a conservative area, and we were a little worried about that. Like we were a little concerned like, "How's that gonna play out?" JAMON: Especially during the time that it was, 2015, all of the stuff that was happening back then. KEN: Yeah, and I think that we managed it pretty well in the sense that I think we set standards for how you interact with your colleagues. We created special Slack rooms. People wanted to argue about politics, they can go and argue about politics in certain places and it was pretty much banned anywhere else, saying like, "You know, if you want to talk about these hot button topics, that's fine. Here's the ground rules, right? Like, you're always respectful, and you do it over there where people who don't want to have to interact with that don't." And that's worked pretty well. I don't go to those channels, and I don't really see it come up very much. And people generally ... Like, we will see people who we know have completely different viewpoints working together great and having a great working relationship and having mutual respect, and that is sort of the core value that we brought to that. And I think that's also the core anecdote to any of the monoculture concerns if you set the grounds rules that like, "Hey, you can disagree, but like this is how you can disagree. When you're at work, this is the way you that can disagree." Part of the reason we wanna grow slowly is so that as people come in with their different perspectives, which we really value and we want people to be able to share their perspectives, they abide by these rules about how we get along and make something together. CHRIS: Is this an instance where policy is actually a good thing where you're setting-* KEN: Yes. CHRIS: -maybe rules of engagement for how people should interact in certain arenas? KEN: I mean, it's the exception that proves the rule a little bit. It's not that we don't have policies; it's that we don't want to manage by policy all over the place, right? It's sort of like, "Here's a few ... Here's the constitution, right? Here's a few rules about you interact with each other," but then the rest is like common decency. **CHRIS: Todd, you mentioned something in the Slack channel in preparation for this episode about the question, "what do engineers and designers care about?" And you included some fun things, but the question I have is what do engineers and designers care about and are they similar things or are they different things? TODD: The short answer in my opinion is, no, I find engineers and designers to be very similar. A lot of people think of engineering as math. I think of engineering, and I'm an engineer myself, as much more creativity, at least the kind of engineering we do, than more like mathematics and that kind of stuff. To answer that question, what do they care about? I would love to actually hear Ken talk about what engineers really care about as opposed to maybe some other professions, what they care about. And I'm referring to stuff like money- KEN: You mean, like what would motivate them? Is that what you're asking? TODD: Correct, yeah. KEN: So I always said that like you have basically three levers to pull when you're hiring. One is money, which is not as important to engineers as you might think. I think it's important that they feel that it's fair, but I've seen very few engineers ever be motivated by more money than the fair baseline. I mean, everyone wants more money, right? Don't get me wrong, right? Everyone would like as much as they can get, pretty much. All else being equal. But all else isn't equal. And so lever number two is interesting work. That's a really big one for some engineers. Not as big for some other people, but for some people that's a huge lever, and you could like throw money at them, but if you have to work on a finance system or something that they just don't happen to find interesting, they're gonna be like, "I'll pass." I was always that way. I think most engineers frankly are that way or they'd be working at hedge funds. And the third lever is lifestyle. How close are they to work, like do you have the ping pong table if that's what you care about, do they give you free food if that's something you care about, and for us obviously, the remote work piece is the big giant pillar of our working environment. JAMON: You know, it's gonna be hard for us to compete with Google or Microsoft or something just purely on amenities and dollars and things like that, but when our engineers maybe look around, they have lots of choices. They're great engineers and they have a lot of options, but they look around and they say, "Well, they're not remote work. They don't have this particular culture. They don't put a high emphasis on it." Maybe some of them do have remote work programs, but they're not a core part and piece. And so that's something that we lean very heavily on and the lifestyle part of it where families are part of what we do. If I have my 4-year-old daughter bust in and wave at the sales lead on the video call, that's fine. That's just a part of how we work. KEN: And a huge part of our mission, I think, is that returning people to their families and communities so that they don't have to live in San Francisco Bay area or New York or wherever. They don't have to come in to commute. They can live in the town where they grew up. They can live rurally. We have a number of people that live rurally. They can live nomadically. We have one guy who lives nomadically. That's the closest thing I think we have to like a real mission, like a guiding star for like what we want to see in the world. And it's been central to our belief in remote work, that people's living situation should be based on their personal life and not on their professional life. TODD: It's not just our remote work. We respect people as humans, more importantly as adult humans. I personally have an aversion to people controlling my time. KEN: Well, controlling for no reason, right? Controlling just to control. TODD: We don't own people's time. We don't own people's location. In my opinion, that stops being acceptable after childhood. Now, of course, if you have a responsibility and you've agreed to those responsibilities and you have a responsibility to show up at a meeting at a particular time, that's different. But we don't control people's time or place and I think time is actually a very important part to lifestyle which I agree with Ken, our team especially finds very important. JAMON: So the title of this episode is I think Maximizing Your Team or something along those lines, and when I look at the word "maximizing", we even thought about changing the title when we were first starting this, but because it feels a little bit off in some ways to our core values. It just occurred to me why. We do believe that we should maximize our team, but not in a way that is purely Infinite Red serving. It's more about maximizing them personally, their particular lives. So we give up some productivity in order to maximize their flexibility. We give up some high bandwidth situations so that they can live remotely in other cities. We give up some things that maybe if we were strictly optimizing for maximum productivity would be better in certain cases. And although, even some of those are arguable. I think we'll probably talk about those in future episodes, but maximizing them is more about maximizing them as people and not just as employees. TODD: I'm really glad you brought that up because, yeah, the title's a little weird to me as well. But our job is to lead people towards their best version of their work self. Obviously, everything we're talking about is an ideal and nothing's perfect. But I used to ice skate, for example, and some coaches would just tell me everything's great all the time. Those coaches didn't care. Their job literally is to help me improve. So if I'm doing everything wonderful, then that's not helping me improve. I take the same approach with people and my job is to, in a supportive and kind way, as often as I can given my time help people improve. Well, a couple things for that. One is you want to find the right places for people. Getting angry at a dog because it doesn't climb a tree as well as you wish it would is stupid. You can take a dog and push it towards the best version of a dog, but you can't make a dog a cat. I know, I've tried. (laughter) I'm just kidding. And that's super important. I think a lot of leaders ... Let's call these people managers just to be derogatory. (laughter) A lot of managers will try to make dogs into cats and they complain to all their manager buddies over their cheap beer that employees all suck. And I've said this in a previous podcast, I'll say it again, employees don't suck, you suck. You're a bad manager. Just stop trying to make dogs into cats and try to optimize, make it the best dog that is possible given the time and the particular point of the path that that particular person is on. I don't know why I'm calling the team dogs, I'm sorry about that. I love you, team. KEN: I was gonna say, this is probably the reason we don't have any ambitions to become a very large company because, frankly, once you're at a certain scale, it becomes impossible to do what we're talking about. Like the company needs people to fill particular sized round holes, and they will expect people to shave off their corners in order to fit into the round holes. That's just reality. I don't even think that there's anything wrong with that exactly and some people thrive in that sort of environment, but we try to look at, yeah, what's the best version of this person and like how can they fit into our team rather than doing it the other way around? JAMON: And because of that we tend to hire a little more generalists than maybe a large company would where you can afford to hire a bunch of specialists that only do one thing. Even though we hire generalists, we're still looking for their particular set of properties, what they're good at. TODD: Also, from a leadership standpoint, a leader enjoys working with people who have issues to work on. A manager, which once again I'm using as a derogatory term here, only wants the good people that they can be lazy about and just works. But think about that for a fact. Like I want to be a painter where all the canvas I get already have the paint on them. I want to be a house builder where when I show up to the work site, the house is built. Your job is to literally to help people improve in their work and to help them be the most efficient and the most creative and the most fulfilled that they can be. Why would you complain about team members who have problems? That's literally your job. Team members who are awesome, they don't need me. We have them and that's great, and I still try to help them move forward, but, of course, the further along one's path to their ideal craftsperson or whatever, the less they need you. And, in that case, its more just morale and that kind of support. But what makes me excited as a leader is the people who have quite a few issues to deal with and how to creatively come up with a way to help them deal with that. CHRIS: You're kind of hinting at it, Todd. And I think there's this underlying thread that in order to maximize your team, it's really about being a leader not a manager. So what are some of the ways that people can approach building a team? What does it look like to be a leader? TODD: One, care. Two, work hard. Three, who knows? Four, profit. KEN: That's basically it. I wish there was like a nice summary, a nice silver bullet going, "Hey. Be a leader trying to this one weird trick." The CEO at a startup that I was at for many years where I built a team, he was like, "You know, I don't know what your magic is." I'm like, "There's no magic. I just care." And it can be exhausting at an intense startup. It can be emotionally, physically, super draining to do that really well. I had to rest like to the point like I went and took just a regular engineer job for a couple of years because it took a lot out of me, and so the hard part is not how do you be a great leader. That is, you care and you pay attention. The hard part is how do you be a great leader sustainably over time without it destroying you. And I think having co-founders really helps with that. This is what I've definitely discovered. JAMON: I agree. Some of my most draining weeks have been working on team issues, working on developing people and kind of working through all of that. It's something that you're not really trained at as a software engineer. You end up being, in some ways, kind of a psychologist or something along those lines where you're having to think about a lot of issues and melding personalities and competing priorities and all of those things. I actually talked to my brother-in-law last night and one of the things he mentioned about his job is he went from doing some kind of individual contributor type work to managing a team. And he actually built the team. It was a design team. And he said that it took years off his life doing that because it's not something that came natural to him. And he is the type that absolutely cares. Like he is a very kindhearted, very nice person, and he really cares. And because of that, it was absolutely draining. So I think it's across industries, across disciplines that sort of leadership is ... It's hard. It's not easy to do, so that would definitely up on my list of things that tire me out in a given week. TODD: One thing I want to interject real quick before I go on to my next point, never confuse kindness with weakness. That's a pet peeve of mine. It's sometimes the kindest thing to do is grab their hand and yank them forcefully out of the traffic of oncoming cars. Secondly, I don't ... I guess this is why one of my focuses is team, it doesn't drain me that much to be honest. I really enjoy it. Any day where I'm only interacting with our team as opposed to worrying about business problems or maybe interacting with outside people is a good day for me to be honest. I feel good about that. As far as what does it mean to care and what does it mean to work hard? Well, one, get to know your team. If you can't say your team member's spouse's name whether it's a wife or their husband or whatnot, that's a problem. One of my goals is for us to all to be in a meeting with someone from the outside, and I can go around the table and introduce every single person, know about them, talk a little bit about them. That's huge; just simply knowing people. Also, the other thing that's super, super important ... And, gosh, we could make three podcasts out of this to be honest in my perspective. But one of the things that's super important is when someone does have a problem or they make a mistake or something like that, they feel comfortable coming to you. I had some person recently come to me and say, "Look, I overslept. I missed my alarm and I missed a meeting." It was a client meeting, and that's one of the things that is kind of no-no here at Infinite Red. But they came to me and said, "I just wanted to let you know so you heard it from me first." That's awesome. Well, in this case, I didn't actually say much to be honest because they already knew what they did. They brought it to my attention. Like the end result was done by them. My real job was making them feel comfortable to come and tell me that. If you can have people tell you when they did something wrong instead of hiding it, that's a gold star day for you as a leader in my opinion. That's hard to do, but you have to make people feel comfortable. When they make a mistake, you almost celebrate the mistake because mistakes are what we learn, and you don't beat them up for it but you are firm, fair and kind in response to it. KEN: And on the subject of mistakes, we make tons of them. What we're expressing is our goals and our practice. Just like engineering or design or any of the tasks that our team does, this is our ideals. Sometimes we fall down, and we try to sort of notice and correct. I'd much rather have a system that's built on that feedback loop than on one that is built on never making a mistake. That's part of our kind of our ethos of resiliency that we hope that we are instilling in our employees by embracing ourselves. TODD: Yeah, we make lots of mistakes. One of the things I tell clients is, "Look, we're human. We make mistakes. I would ask you not to judge us on the mistakes that we make. I would ask you to judge us on the speed and the effort we make in correcting those mistakes because that is something we can control. We can't control this being perfect. We're not." And I think the same applies to our team, and hopefully if the team feels it applies to us because I would imagine we make more mistakes than most.

ceo new york founders google washington leadership coaching microsoft team leaders startups llc hiring vancouver coaches council coo bay area cto controlling pacific northwest elders slack maximizing team building tech companies metaphors san francisco bay jamon metamucil chris how chris todd infinite red chris is ken you todd it ken it todd yeah ken one

Starting Chain React — Our React Native Conference

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2018 43:08

In this episode, the founders of Infinite Red—Jamon Holmgren, Ken Miller, and Todd Werth—are talking about Chain React, Infinite Red’s React Native tech conference this July 11-13th in Portland, OR. Hear the story of how the conference came about, how Infinite Red's remote team worked together to create an in-person event, the value of hiring people with diverse interests and backgrounds, and all of the things that go into making the best conference possible. Show Links Chain React 2018 Derek's Food Report Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: In 2017, Infinite Red started Chain React, a conference devoted to React Native. So the question that I have for the three of you to start is: why start a conference and what was the need that you saw? JAMON HOLMGREN: This is Jamon and I was on Twitter and I was looking for a React Native conference because we had been doing React Native for about a year at that point. And I was thinking, well, it'd be really nice to see if some of our team could attend a conference and potentially maybe share some of the things that we had learned along the way. So I actually put out a tweet saying, "is there a React Native conference around? I'm not seeing one." And got no responses, which partially had to do with my very small Twitter audience at the time and partially just because there wasn't one. Now, it turns out there was one over in Europe, React Native EU, put on by our friends over at Callstack. TODD WERTH: But that was after. JAMON: I believe it was after that. KEN: We didn't learn about that until after. TODD: Not at that time. JAMON: Right. I was just kinda chewing on that. Wow, I didn't get any response to that. I would normally get two or three options if I were to put out something like that. And I woke up one morning, I'm like, you know what, maybe we should do a conference? And what is funny is independently two or three people contacted me after that, that same week saying, "Do you think we should do a React Native conference?" Just independently and it just seemed like that all kind of came together all at once. TODD: And this is Todd, Todd Werth, by the way. Some background here. We've never done a conference at all. We've of course all attended conferences. We're familiar with that. Although Shawni Danner, who ran the conference had never attended a conference, which was funny, but anyways, so Jamon came up with the idea, talked to some other people in our company, they liked the idea and then pretty quickly we decided and then we started building the conference. KEN MILLER: At what point in there did Gant ... Because Gant, who is our social butterfly... TODD: Gant Laborde. KEN: ...so he asked around various people to see whether they would speak. And I don't remember if that was before we decided or after. I feel like that was before. We were kind of mulling the idea around and he was like, "hey, we're thinking about doing this conference. Would you want to speak?" And when a bunch of people were like, yeah, hell yeah. We were like, okay, sounds like the stars are aligning, and it was very much a feeling of the stars aligning to be honest. JAMON: It really was. KEN: This signal is kind of like once we started putting the idea out, it just gathered momentum from a bunch of different places and we're like, okay, and then once you commit, the momentum increases. TODD: And as far as I know, it was the first React Native conference in the world. JAMON: As far as the first one that was held, I think Callstack announced their conference before we announced ours. But yeah it was right in that same time. TODD: Correct, they announced, but theirs came after ours actually. JAMON: Yeah, theirs was in September, ours was in July of 2017. CHRIS: So when you're putting on a new venture, like a conference that you have no experience in and you start seeing the stars align and you start seeing this momentum form: how do you really go from zero to one? KEN: I don't want to say it wasn't hard because a lot of work went into it, but it wasn't super difficult. At the end of the day, the hard part about making a conference is making a good conference. You get a venue, you get speakers, you get food, you get swag. I mean, I don't mean to oversimplify it, but if you've planned a wedding, you can plan a conference, right? It's probably not even as hard as a wedding because it's not quite as emotionally wrought, but where we put the most effort into well how do we make it a good conference? And we sort of came up with a list of things, some of which I think turned out to be true. Like getting good speakers, making sure that there's at least a certain amount of diversity. I think we always want more, but there needs to be at least enough that people can kind of go, look, hey, there's someone like me there. I was big on having good food. I think that wasn't as important as I thought it was. It's important to me, but the things that people cared about it, we're actually different than what we thought. So there was definitely things that we learned from the process, but the process of getting it organized—and a lot of credit goes to Shawni for being an amazing organizer of things—but the process of getting it made, while stressful and hectic at points, went off pretty smoothly overall. TODD: Yeah. So that's all true. One thing we did do though is as a leadership team, is we decided to put a decent amount of resources into it. I think a lot of people are like, this is a little side project and it was a side project for us. But we're 26 people, so we can put a little more wood behind the arrow of a side project like this if we decide to. And we'd probably put a little too much resources in to it, to be honest. And we'll talk about this later, but the results were well worth it. JAMON: Yeah. One of the things you have to remember is back in 2016 when we were first starting to do this, we had been doing React Native for a year. We weren't necessarily quite as well known back then, we were still fairly new player in the space. We had done some things in other technical realms that we were more known for, but React Native we were still a relative newcomer. So for us this was, it was a bigger, maybe bigger deal than just necessarily putting on a conference for the revenue or something along those lines. We wanted to be connected. We want it to be in that space. And so we did put it, as Todd said, we put a lot of resources behind it. We put a lot of thought into it. As a founder team, we put a lot into it. TODD: And it was probably a half of Shawni's main job, which is a significant amount. JAMON: Absolutely. And another person I'll point out here that who was instrumental was Gant Laborde. He's typically the most active in the conference circuit from Infinite Red and he's been to a lot of conferences as both speaker and attendee and he had a really good sense, good instincts about what worked well at those conferences and what didn't. And early on I read an article about how you should really treat your speakers well and I brought it up to Gant and he absolutely agreed with that. The speakers are so key to a great conference and so we spent a lot of time, energy, and money, making sure that the speakers felt comfortable, that they had a good spot, that they were well supported all the way up to the conference and that was definitely time well spent. It was a good investment. All of the speakers that we've talked to felt like they had a fantastic experience. Some said that it was the best conference that they had ever spoke at, which was, a lot of them were very accomplished speakers so for a first time conference, we felt that was very good. TODD: That's a good example of making decisions that produce good quality products, whether they're a conference, software, whatever. A lot of people read those articles. The article says the most important thing is treating your speakers right. They read it, they think about it, they talk about it, they don't actually do it. We accept that we knew nothing about throwing a conference, so we took Everyone-on-the-Internet's advice like that very seriously and we asked our team and then we put resources behind that and we went way out of our way for the speakers. I've spoke at conferences and it is true. Some are very well organized and you feel very comfortable and it makes for a great presentation and some are not. So I definitely think the number one lesson we learned, spoiler alert, was treat your speakers well. CHRIS: Todd, I have a question for you in terms of a follow-up. When you are reading these articles and they say what to do, what is the difference between just reading them and not acting on them and choosing to act on them? Was there just a moment where you're like, okay, we're actually going to do that? TODD: We make make decisions fairly quickly. We do make decisions as a quorum of elders. All the leaders make decisions together. We have no king here at Infinite Red. So we do make decisions pretty quickly, especially if one person doesn't have a passionate opposite position. So when Jamon brought that up and then Gant and some other people, Darin Wilson, for example, other people who spoke at a lot of conferences, agreed with it. We decided almost instantly. Well, I mean there's a lot of things that get in your way. The first one is admitting you don't know anything about something you actually don't know anything about. And so listening is tough for people and especially tough for companies. The second thing is hubris. I've never done a conference. It doesn't stop me from doing the best one I can do and I'm not gonna listen to anyone and you know that happens. And the third one is making the right decision fairly quickly, listening to your team, and then actually putting no one in charge of that, giving no one actual time to work on it, and putting no money into it. This is basically Congress's full time job doing that. (laughter) So we try to avoid that. I mean, I'm not just, it sounds like I'm just cheerleading the leadership team, which is kind of self-serving as I'm on it. But it's not just us, it's just the whole team. When we say we decided, Jamon read this article, a bunch of people have talked to agree with this concept of treating speakers well. We're gonna treat speakers well. The team doesn't roll their eyes and go, "sure." The whole company culturally said we're going to do this and they're going to do it. And truthfully, the leadership, we helped the decision-making but we didn't do much of the actual work for the conference. KEN: I think there's conferences where their idea of treating speakers well is to just throw money at them. And that was not ... I mean, I don't think that's the feedback we got from speakers. I mean everybody likes money. I mean don't get me wrong, but it's about making their experience smooth because no amount of money will stop the nerves or the feeling of not being appreciated. TODD: If you make it easy for people to shine, that's what they remember. People remember the way they feel about things way more than they remember what was said or the logic to it. CHRIS: So when you're doing something that's outside normal business parameters or normal business operations, how does something like putting on a conference cause distractions or disruptions and how have you worked through it as founders and how have you seen the team work through it as well? JAMON: That's a great question and I think one of the early pain points was just in process because ... we're a consultancy and so we have a certain process that's set up for clients. And in this case we didn't have a client. We had an internal project, we had an internal champion, Shawni, but it's still a very different feel. Shawni wasn't handing us all of the requirements and saying go build this thing. We had to do it as a group, so we had to develop processes around that and that was something that was very interesting that took time to develop and in fact, we're still kind of working through some of those things, but I feel like we've learned a lot and there's a lot more shared understanding around how we make those decisions and things like that. So I think process was a pretty big adjustment for us. Another thing that comes to mind with that is allocating actual team time as a consultancy. If anytime that you're spending on that, you're obviously not billing and you're not making revenue for the company. Obviously the hope is that the conference pays for itself by the revenue that comes in for it, but we still had to put a lot of time in on speculation that this was going to work. That's a very different thing than: give us a deposit and we'll start working and we'll send you bills. Again, internal allocation of resources was another adjustment that we had to make and also planning for the future and making sure that we had the revenue, the cash flow to make that happen. And Ken was really good at kind of identifying what we could sustain and what we couldn't as a company. KEN: Part of the initial "should we do this" consideration was like okay, how many people would we need to do to break even? And we were prepared to be happy with break even and that turned out to be a smaller number than we thought. That made it something that we could grapple with and be like okay, if we can get 150 people into a room where, we think we can do that even if we have to go and individually invite 300 people in order to get that hit rate or whatever. And so it ended up being a lot more than that and that was awesome. But it gave us this margin of psychological safety when we went into it. It's kind of like, okay, yeah, we can do this, and we know at what point were losing money, what point where we're making money, at what point we can up the experienced because we've got enough margin to do that. TODD: That's super important. What Ken just mentioned is any time we have an idea we go to Ken and say the main thing is what's our worst case scenario goal to make this viable? That helps us make a decision whether or not it's even a good thing to even try. Because obviously if it was 2000 people we'd be like probably not going to do that. You can tell me Ken, but I don't think it's super accurate. You do it for a couple of hours and come back and tell us what. Is that correct? KEN: I can't predict the future. I don't actually know exactly what's going to happen, but if you can give it enough margin to be like, yeah, I think we'd be safe at this point, then you can usually get to a model like that pretty quickly. TODD: I'm a little confused, to be honest. When we hired Ken, Jamon, he said he could predict the future. JAMON: Yeah, this is a little concerning. TODD: The weird part is Ken was here before Jamon and our companies merged, but doesn't matter. It's time travel. So anything's possible. Just watch Star Trek. Knowing kind of the base goal gets us all a point to reach to. And then going back to Chris's question, how to get from 0 to 1, which is actually a very difficult problem. If you're an engineer, it's very difficult problem, if you're building a company and is just a very difficult problem period. But having a goal and then determining at least the first step direction and then you can see if it's kind of leading towards that goal is very helpful for taking that first step. I do want to mention something else, as well. We did put a lot of resources. We have a tendency sometimes to put too much resources because we're designers and because we're software engineers, we like to build things and so we put a lot of resources into our app that was used for three days. We had beautiful design done and that kind of stuff. Not to skip ahead, but we're re-doing the conference this year. We thought, well, we could just reuse a lot of our designs and stuff and just change it to 2018. We didn't do that. (laughter) We decided to redesign the whole thing again because we just simply can't help ourselves. JAMON: Yeah. And going back to the concept of if it's only 150 people, I think that was our initial number. It rose a little bit later because we had some additional expenses, but if we only had to sell 150 tickets we could literally go and individually pitch people and say, "Hey, come to our conference," and try to sell them tickets. And we kind of actually did that in some ways. We went to our community, our Infinite Red Community Slack team, which is community.infinite.red and if you're listening to this podcast you should definitely join it. And we went through and kind of just said, hey, have you heard about our conference? Is that something you'd want to look at? Individual direct messages, individually crafted. We weren't trying to like spam everybody, but it was just more, let's get the word out there and the response from that because we had built a lot of goodwill with the community up to that point by helping them a lot of times with React Native problems and by releasing open source and doing all the things that we do in that community channel that a lot of people don't realize. We had built a lot of goodwill and so the response was amazing and we were able to, in my opinion, just through the community Slack efforts that we were doing, probably sell that minimum number of tickets. We had obviously sold a lot more than that, but that was more additional beyond that. So it was definitely a factor. Well we at least know that we can go sort of virtually door to door and say, hey we have this conference. Hey, do you want to come? CHRIS: What's interesting is like you're painting this picture that everything worked out perfectly. There were no hiccups in the process at all, and so what popped up as you're going through that was like, oh my gosh, didn't anticipate that one, or was it all just perfect? TODD: Everything's perfect here at Infinite Red, Chris, any other questions? (laughter) KEN: It really was pretty smooth. We were a little surprised by that. Some of the feedback that we got, we definitely overdid it on the food in some ways. That what people want from food is like fast and convenient and not terrible and we went for good but somewhat inconvenient and nobody wanted that, really. I mean they were like the food is good, but this was a pain in the neck and that was a pain in the neck, so that was something that we screwed up. That was partly my biases to be honest. I take responsibility for that one, but in the run up, in the planning, there wasn't a ton that really went wrong. Right? We didn't get major speakers bowing out. The things that we've heard of going wrong at conferences. To some extent we may have just been lucky, but there wasn't a lot of disasters along the way. There were things that we didn't do as well as we could have done, but we didn't get major disasters. JAMON: Yeah. And obviously this is from our perspective, Chris. And Shawni and Gant and some of the others that were more deeply involved in the process may have other perspectives and I think that—no promises, but maybe this isn't the only podcast we do here at Infinite Red and if there is another one, then maybe the team can share some of those more kind of operational things that happen—but certainly from our perspective, it went super smoothly. There was an energy to it and things did kind of align. I do think we probably got lucky. We probably got lucky in a lot of ways and the timing was right and the mood was right. Everything seemed to come along pretty well. KEN: And Shawni worked really hard. I'm really trying not to swear so that Chris doesn't have to edit me as much this time, but Shawni worked really, really hard at the end of it. So a lot of it was that, to be honest. TODD: Yeah. I want to do a quick couple of shout outs. Shawni worked really hard. Gant was our emcee, he's amazing in front of audience. Frank Von Hoven, which is one of our intermediate developers, he has a background in stage, which we had no idea and he ran the stage like a clock and he took care of all the backstage stuff, getting the speakers set up. It was amazing. That was just serendipity. You don't just happen to have that person. So I do want to shout out. There's more people we can shout out later, but yeah. JAMON: And I do want to give a shout out also to the Armory - The Portland Center Stage. It's a great venue and they did an amazing job. They made our lives a lot easier. There were a lot of things where we could just kind of pay them to do it and they did a great job. That was definitely a good find. Actually, Jason Brown who lives in Portland, a developer who I have been connected with for awhile, he was the one that recommended the Armory and it was a great choice. TODD: There were some things that went wrong. The food was good, the situation and how it was served and stuff was a little bit problematic and stuff. And we learned from that. So that was a problem. KEN: That was not our caterer's fault by the way. That was how we set it up and- TODD: It was a little bit our caterer's fault (laughter), but I won't go into that. Another thing is we really tried to take the time to do a proper code of conduct and we are really going to enforce it and we took a lot of time and I think we did a pretty good job. We gave numbers out to text, if there's anything people to approach, if there's any problems. The snafu was we forgot to actually put a link on our website to it. So, that's just a really minor little thing. Another problem of course is resource allocation when you have a bunch of client work. So we had our internal people, who aren't designers or developers working on it and that's just carving off a section of time for them, but we also needed our designers and developers to do work, which means they wouldn't be doing client work. And so sometimes there was resource allocation issues where someone was really busy with a client project and so that's very challenging for a company like ours with the people you have to bring off the field. And then the last thing I would love to talk with everyone is we did have a little debate and issues around do we have our whole team there. We're 26 people. It's basically going to be a week. Do we have our whole team attend? Do we make our whole team attend? Do we ask them, do we have volunteers? What do we do? So that was one of the most challenging things in my opinion. JAMON: Especially since we're a remote team and some people are going to have to fly from Florida or Toronto or all over and so it wasn't just a matter of hey, you're here in Portland, can you make the drive down to Portland? But yeah, that was an interesting thing and I think that it speaks to how much we really cared about the experience of the attendees and the speakers that we did bring most of our team. There were a few that couldn't make it, but most of our team did go and we had roles for them. That's actually something we're going to I think we're going to do better this year where we're going to actually provide some training for our team. Some expectations around how they'll work and stuff, but they wore a specific T-shirt so people could identify them. They weren't just necessarily venue people or volunteers or something. They were actual Infinite Red employees and I actually feel pretty strongly about that representation because this is representing us to the broader technical community in a very strong way. And going back really quickly to the code of conduct. Prior to our conference, there was an incident I think at Facebook's conference, I forget what it's called, and one of our speakers was affected by it and- TODD: Was it F8? JAMON: Yeah, F8 I think. And so I kind of put a stake in the ground on Twitter saying, hey, this is not going to happen at Chain React. We're not gonna allow this sort of thing. It's gonna be a very strong stake in the ground. And so in my opening remarks I said, we have a code of conduct. You need to read it. You need to abide by it. This is not negotiable and I'm six foot four and I will find you. (laughter) TODD: And it's even more challenging because you have to guess the URL. (laughter) JAMON: And by the way, quick shout out to React Native. We were able to deploy a very quick update to our app to get that URL on there and have it working. TODD: Yeah, I think it was the app it wasn't on. Not our website. JAMON: And we're able to get that deployed in a hot fix. That was very cool. So we did stress that we made that very much a centerpiece and we were very, very happy that there were no incidents that were reported or anything like that, which was nice. TODD: I do think assigning roles during the conference for our own team was something we didn't do as well as we could and we're going to work on it this year for sure. Some of our team was much more interested in working it. I mean they've worked it, but they weren't as jazzed about talking to people and that kind of thing. For me personally, it was great because my role was photographer. This project was a project I didn't personally work on internally. Jamon and Ken did, but I didn't. I was working on other projects at that time and so I wasn't really involved. I was the photographer and it was kind of funny because people saw me for the conference as a photographer, you have to constantly get in front of people, look at them with a camera, crawl under the stage to get a good shot and that kind of stuff. I'm just an amateur photographer by the way, but I have good equipment and whatnot. So everyone saw me and sometimes people will talk to me like, Oh you're the photographer for Infinite Red. I'm like, yes, I am. (laughter) JAMON: This is our CEO crawling under the stage to get a photo. TODD: Yes, but what's very cool, I would go, well, what do you think of the conference? And they would tell me the truth because I'm just the photographer. And that was actually kind of cool. CHRIS: That is pretty cool. And now that you've blown your cover, it's not gonna happen this year. TODD: Oh no one's listening to this, Chris. (laughter) CHRIS: Jamon you touched on the fact that Infinite Red is a 100 percent remote company putting on an in-person event. What kind of challenges went into making this event happen as a remote company? JAMON: We cheated a little bit in that we held it in Portland, which is where half our team is. But I will point out that our primary champion of the project lived in ... Did she live in San Diego at the time or was it Reno? KEN: She moved from Reno to San Diego while planning it. JAMON: So this is happening. She wasn't there to look at the venue. We sent some people in-person to the venue from the local area. And then we also flew Derek up. So this was I think it was actually Todd's idea. Did you come up with this idea, Todd? TODD: Did it work out well then? (laughter) Then yes I did. JAMON: I think it actually did. TODD: Then of course it was my idea. JAMON: Talk about Derek's experience there. TODD: This is an example of putting proper resources. Derek Greenberg is one of our senior engineers, which from a business standpoint means one of our most expensive engineers, but he's a super foodie, kind of like Ken. KEN: He's way beyond me. TODD: He is beyond you. And Derek is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful chef. I've been at his house multiple times and him and his lovely family hosted me and served me ridiculously good food. So he was the obvious person to choose what food we had. Now, the question is there's a lot less expensive people. That's horrible to say, but true. And Derek does not live in Portland. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area. So anyways, well we sent him up for, I think a day or two, and he went around and tasted all the food. And then typical Derek-style, he gave us an extremely detailed information about it. And that's how we decided on the food. KEN: Amazing, he had the entire company hanging on his every word as he lovingly described this experience. It was actually pretty amazing. JAMON: I'm going to see if I can dig up the description and we can link to it in the show notes because I kind of want people to see this. TODD: If you listened to our previous podcast, we talked about this a little bit. This is one our core tenants of Infinite Red is find where people shine best and don't judge them for things they do poorly. Judging a dog by how well it climbs a tree is not an appropriate judgment for a dog. KEN: Carve the hole to the fit the peg. TODD: Yes. Now none of us are the dog in this scenario. Well, just to be clear. But anyways, having Derek do that, finding out that Frank has stage experience, of course he's going to be there being the stage manager and that kind of stuff. We have such a cool creative team that have so many different personal hobbies. We really had a grab bag of awesome resources. It's really amazing. JAMON: Even Derek with his incredible attention to detail, one of the things he brought up in one of the meetings was that he was very concerned that we make sure that there isn't garbage around during the conferences, very clean. That we make sure that we keep the garbages emptied and stuff like that. So we made sure, I think with the venue staff, that that was going to happen. So just little touches like that I think go a long way and the team really stepped up to it. They took ownership really of the conference in a way that was maybe a little surprising even. KEN: This is yet another benefit of hiring a team with with what we call nontraditional backgrounds, is that you end up with this much more interesting diversity of life experience and talents and skills, and it enables you to do things that you weren't originally planning your company to do. It's awesome. Honestly, it creates this opportunity for serendipity that is harder if you're full of Stanford CS grads. JAMON: Nothing against Stanford CS grads of course. KEN: Nothing against Stanford CS grads. They're awesome, right? But any monoculture is going to have that issue. JAMON: Like Frank's background, I think Frank was in sort of a corporate America. He has an MBA and his background, he's done a lot of, like Todd mentioned earlier in the podcast, he's done a lot of stage work and performances and things like that. And he actually started coding fairly late. Well he had, he had been coding when he was a teenager and stuff, but he wasn't coding professionally until much later in life. So a lot of times you look at someone who maybe switches careers like that and they're kind of behind in some ways in the technical realm. But what is amazing about that is that they bring all of these other outside experiences and skills to our industry. We kind of need that. KEN: That brings up a really interesting sidebar about career changers, who I think sometimes have a hard time breaking into tech because everybody wanted a cheap person straight out of college or not even college. I think we found that the career changers, the later quote unquote juniors, although it'll take them a little while to ramp up, but once they ramp up, they can accelerate. Once they hit third year, they can pull ahead of a regular junior junior because of all those other experiences that come to play. JAMON: Didn't Robin, one of our software developers, didn't she work for a paper company, like a Dunder Mifflin-style paper company? (laughter) KEN: She had a math degree and she worked as an analyst I think for a paper company for a couple years before taking a coding class and people love to rag on the coding classes. But to be honest, if you're good and you just need to learn to code, they're great. It's a very efficient way of doing that. TODD: This is totally off topic, but we'd look in nontraditional areas and we find sometimes overlooked people who are truly awesome and frankly, I'm glad other companies are blind to this. JAMON: Well, this is a reflection of certainly Todd and my background. Ken came from a little more of a traditional path in that way. TODD: Just a whee bit more? JAMON: I'm Jamon Holmgren and I did not go to Harvard. I worked in construction. I have a thousand hours on heavy equipment like dozers and excavators and stuff. Most people probably don't know that. I spent a lot of my career packing boards in construction sites before I started working in technology and so I was certainly a career changer and I think Todd, you had that experience as well? TODD: Yeah, a little bit different. I started professionally programming at 25, I think. So I did not go to school for it. KEN: Well, it helps that my own father was a career changer. He was physicist, meteorologist, like an academic meteorologist, and just kind of found his way into programming. A, I have some sympathy for that track, but B, honestly my experience with elite institutions also showed me that there's plenty of people at elite institutions who are not that good. It's actually no particular guarantee. It's not, as a gating factor, it's not all that. And when you take into account how much competition there is for those elite people, it just makes sense to look harder. TODD: Just to clarify, we really don't discriminate against elite people. We just don't stack the weight on that side of the scale. CHRIS: Ken, I have a quick question? You said your Dad was an academic meteorologist. Did he have a stage name for like all meteorologists? Like Jackson Hale, or something like that? KEN: He wasn't a weatherman. He just had, he just had a degree in meteorology. TODD: Jackson Hale. That's comedy gold right there. CHRIS: Bringing it back to Chain React a little bit. So was the conference worth it in terms of the investment that you put in and if so, what will you do differently this year? TODD: I don't know financially if the ROI was worth it. Ken can talk to that because we're a consultancy that does a lot of development in React Native, even if we lost money on it and Ken can talk to that, it would still be worth it as long as we didn't lose too much just for the marketing, the goodwill and the branding part of it. I feel we ended up selling out, for example, we never told the end of the story. JAMON: We actually did not sell out. I think we got close though and we certainly almost doubled our prediction, so that was a really good thing. This year we probably will sell out. TODD: We made every speaker wear a bunch of logos. That's how I think we sold out. (laughter) KEN: They all look like NASCAR drivers. JAMON: That's actually a good idea. I'll send that to Shawni. KEN: Financially, it worked out fine. I don't think we ever are going to treat it as a massive profit center. I think the more money we're able to make, most of that we want to pour back in. We do have to account for our own opportunity costs as well as direct outlays, but I think we're fairly confident that we can run it that way. But I would say it was a success, sort of all the way across the board. We're not doing that much different. Like I said, we've tweaked the food. We've dropped a couple of things that no one seemed to care about. So like the social, nobody wants to stick around for the social. They just want to go out and interact socially with the people that they've met or the people that came with or whatever. And so we just gonna let them do that and not waste money on that. But I can't think of anything really big that we're doing differently. Can you guys? TODD: I want to make one quick comment about the social. The cool thing about the Armory in Portland is it's smack dab on a street where you can literally go across the street to good restaurants. You can go down two blocks to good restaurants. So in that scenario, at some conferences I've been to, they're kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So you definitely want some social events. But in this case everyone wants to go out. KEN: Yeah. For those of you who know Portland, it's in Pearl District. For those of you who don't know Portland, it's one of the best sort of visitor friendly walkable neighborhoods in the country, not just in Portland. I mean it's a really, really great neighborhood and that helped. And so our little catered thing probably was not as exciting as the other opportunities out there. TODD: Now we did have a sponsor, Squarespace, who threw a before party. And that was actually a lot of fun. So that's the caveat on that. We're just talking after, I think the first day we had a social immediately after the conference. JAMON: I think bringing it back to the financial side of things, I would actually, from what I looked at, I would actually consider it a financial loss. Maybe if you just look at hard expenditures, we were probably in the black, but we also spent a ton of time and if you look at opportunity cost, we probably lost money on it. That again, like what Todd said, it wasn't necessarily the focus of what we were trying to do as far as making a profit center. And I think there's a little bit of a perception maybe in the tech industry that the conferences make tons of money. I don't think that's the case. If you think so maybe you should make a conference and see what you think. But at the same time, part of that was due to our refusal to kind of let anything be substandard, we kind of overdid it in a lot of ways. I think that this year we will probably sell more tickets. We have some things figured out already. We've sorta refined what we're doing. We might actually do okay on this year, but we're also giving more concessions to the speakers and things like that to try to make it easier for them. So there's a little bit of a mitigating factor there too. TODD: Yeah. Even if it didn't make an actual profit, that's not super relevant to me. I think the return on investment is many fold. CHRIS: Looking into the future, how does Chain React and starting your own tech conference, create a model or framework for maybe future ideas or big ideas that you might want to accomplish? TODD: One thing it did, because we're a consultancy, because we do client work, we have that process down pat. We've redone that process over the years many times and keep on refining it. Internal projects for us is challenging. We don't do that very often, so this is our very first big internal project, so purely as a training or a learning device for our team it was awesome for them. KEN: The first big project that isn't an open source project. JAMON: We actually regularly point to Chain React lessons and experiences when we're talking about other internal projects. It's actually been really good as a reference point. Do you remember this with Chain React? You remember that with Chain React? And it kind of gives a reference point for other internal projects. It exposed certain aspects of our team that we hadn't really considered before. Because it was such a different thing. I know that we as founders had a meeting after Chain React and talked about some of the lessons learned from that and I don't think we'll necessarily go through every last little detail of that, but it was very kind of eye opening to us about the way that we had structured Infinite Red. The title of this podcast is Building Infinite Red and I think that Chain React was a key forcing mechanism within Infinite Red to expose some things that we hadn't been exposed to before. If we just did consulting work, you tend to get some blind spots. So Chain React was amazing for that. It was really, really good for that because it was so different from what we had done otherwise. TODD: Worse case scenario, the team had a lot of fun doing it. JAMON: I think my favorite memory from Chain React was when it was done. (laughter) KEN: I think that's Shawni's favorite memory. JAMON: Thanks a lot, Ken. KEN: Sorry. JAMON: When Chain React was over, I think half the team went to a nearby restaurant and we were all exhausted. We had been up for two days just working from pre-dawn to dusk and there was kind of this feeling of let's just go get some food to eat and let's collapse into bed. We went to a restaurant and we sat in this booth and there were probably, I don't know, nine of us, 10 of us, something like that. And some spontaneous kind of reflective conversations started happening that were just amazing. One of our developers said, this is nothing I expected signing up at Infinite Red. This was an incredible experience to be involved in this. TODD: Was that Kevin? JAMON: Kevin was was certainly on those same vein, but the person who actually pointed this out was Frank and I remember that very clearly. His wife was able to come and help us with the conference. It was really great. TODD: Camille was awesome. JAMON: She was great. And then also my son Cedric, who at the time was 12 years old. He of course was on summer break from school and and he helped out. He had a t-shirt on. He was able to- TODD: Cedric was awesome for a 12 year old. It was amazing. JAMON: Yeah, he's a good kid. And he helped out. He was great. He would talk to people, he would give them directions. If someone needed someone to run and get something. He was very on top of things and he was there at that table as well and kind of just kind of absorbing the vibe. It's one of my favorite moments at Infinite Red. It was kind of a result of all of the work that we had done and what we had accomplished at that point. TODD: Correct. And Robin Heinze's father came and did some volunteering and we had a lot of people come and want to help. It was really, really fun in that regard. One thing I would like to bring up is the Armory is a very cool intimate setting. I'm not using that as a nice way to say small. It's actually not that small and it has a big theater, but it only holds about 500 people, which is about what we sold. So we're redoing in the Armory this year and so we have a cap on how many people can show up because it only holds 500 people. We actually had a big discussion after the first Chain React on whether or not we wanted to get a bigger venue because we could probably sell more tickets. We decided against that because we sent out a survey to all the attendees. We sent a survey to the speakers and we got some feedback. Everyone loved the intimacy of the Armory. And the Armory, just real quick, it has a bottom floor where we had vendor booths set up. It's like an atrium. There's a big hole cutout of the top floor, so the top floor is like a donut. There is a staircase in the middle of the bottom floor that circles around and goes up to the top floor. So we had the whole bottom floor. We had a whole top floor. Up to the top floor, there was chairs, there was the coffee station, an alternative food station when we were serving lunch. And there were some vendors out there as well. Even if you were on the second floor, you're always in this room where all the action's going on. You could look down and see people. So although it's large enough to hold 500 people, which is a fairly large area, you can't put 500 people in a very small area. Fire marshals am I right? Because of the structure of it now and then you left that room and went into the theater, which is more like a traditional theater, like a movie theater, but it was course has the stage and stuff because it's for presentations, but when you weren't in the theater you were always within earshot and always within line of sight to everyone in the conference and so although it was 500 people, it felt like there was 20 people there and I personally got to talk to at least half the people. Anyways, long story short, it was a big decision to say no. We want the feel of the conference to be the same, so we're going to cap on how many people we can attend, which does affect finances and that kind of stuff. Obviously when you scale higher, all of the little expenses get smaller and it's always better financially to be bigger than smaller.

america ceo founders europe starting internet fire toronto dad san diego startups conference congress portland harvard mba star trek roi honestly internal individual nascar slack judging reno conferences squarespace san francisco bay armory gant jason brown react native dunder mifflin ken miller jamon chris so chris todd pearl district shawni infinite red gant laborde todd it ken it todd yeah chain react callstack

Why Remote Work?

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2018 51:16

Show Links The Day They Invented Offices Episode Transcript TODD WERTH: Hi, I'm Todd Werth, the CEO and one of the founders of Infinite Red, and I'm located in a very sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. KEN MILLER: I'm Ken Miller, I'm CTO of Infinite Red, and I am based in the east bay, the bay area. JAMON HOLMGREN: I'm Jamon Holmgren, and I am just north of Portland, Oregon in Washington state in Vancouver, Washington, and I am the Chief Operating Officer here at Infinite Red. CHRIS MARTIN: Excellent, so let's start with just defining from each of your perspectives what remote work is. JAMON: For me, a lot of people think remote work is like working in your spare bedroom, or something like that. Which it often is, it can be. But remote work is really more about the ability to be able to do your work at full capacity kind of in a place other than one centralized office. A lot of companies are built around having an office in an office building. I had a company like that before, where everybody is in physical proximity. But remote work is about being elsewhere, and distributed. TODD: Remote work is not, as Jamon said, working from home. Although, I work from my studio here in my house in Las Vegas. Really remote work is working on whatever you're particularly working on at this time in the most efficient place that is efficient for you. For example, some of our team members work in co-location places, because they enjoy being around other people. They work maybe in coffee shop, or that kind of stuff. Personally, I need pretty quiet environment. KEN: I would actually shift the rhetorical frame around this slightly, and say that for us, work needs to happen someplace where you have the resources you need. And what we're calling remote work is just an acknowledgement that for certain kinds of work, a growing segment that I would say is kind of centered around the tech industry, where being next to the people you're working with physically just doesn't matter. Not that it can't be helpful, but that it's no longer required. To the point that we have started referring to non-remote work as commute work. JAMON: Yeah, I love that term. KEN: Meaning instead of saying well there's this normal kind of work where you drive into an office, which we've come to accept as normal. And recognizing that that's actually a phenomenon that's less than 100 years old. It's saying that like there is this thing that developed when you have a car, and before that, the train, where you could live some place that's relatively far away from where you work. Move yourself physically into that office during the day, and then move yourself physically back. And we're saying let's move the office out to where the people are, instead of moving the people to where the office is. That's really the core for me, right? That it's more to do with do you have the resources you need? Meaning do you have a good internet connection, do you have someplace quiet to work that is conducive to the way that you think? And less about where your body is. JAMON: Ken's exactly right. And what we found is that people sort of gravitate to where they work best. One of the things that's a little challenging is this perception that people just kind of slack off, and things like that. But really, people want to work efficiently. They want to find a place where they feel comfortable, like Todd said before, it's quiet. It's not a lot of interruptions. CHRIS:So when Infinite Red started out, was it a remote company to a certain degree? TODD: Yes. JAMON: No. TODD: Yes. KEN: It depends on where you start counting. It depends on which of us you're asking- TODD: Yeah, because- KEN: Because we were two companies before we started. TODD: Yes, there was Jamon's company, which he ran for 10 years. They were not remote. Infinite Red, the previous Infinite Red before the merge, and we became the new Infinite Red, we started out as 100% remote company on purpose, and our intention was to remain that way for the life of the company. JAMON: Yeah, and it was kind of an interesting transition for us. Because we were not remote for sure, and we were all working in an office here in Vancouver, Washington. It was right about the time that I met Todd, and I don't remember exactly to be honest, whether it was influence from Infinite Red that kind of moved us toward remote, or whether we were ... I know that I had some employees asking about it already, so that was certainly a factor. But the other Infinite Red, the original Infinite Red being a model was really helpful to us, for ClearSight, because Todd and I shared a lot of information, and he would tell me about things that he was passionate about, and one of them was obviously remote work. And we were able to start transitioning that way, and by the time the merger happened, we were pretty much all remote, except for me. Because I was building a home, and living with my in-laws. So I didn't really have a great spot to work, so I ended up staying in the office for another year. TODD: Yep. Ken and I originally discussed, I've worked throughout my 20 years of being a software engineer, I've worked in the office full-time. I've worked partially remote, and I've worked 100% remote. I personally feel that in the office full-time, or 100% remote are the two superior options. I don't like the hybrid view for many reasons. So we were very specifically going to be 100% not 99, not 98%, but 100% remote for everyone for all time. KEN: I feel like I should mention something ironic, which actually proves the point a little bit, which is that as we speak, I am in the same room as Todd, which is in his house, and we are here because it's my daughter's spring break, and we just decided to come and visit. But as far as the team is concerned, there's zero difference. They don't care, it doesn't matter, the only hassle is that we had to set up fancy microphones set up in order to make this work. Right? Which kind of proves the point, right? Which is that when everybody's in their own room, there's actually a lot of things are much simpler. Yes. We don't discount the benefits that can come from being in the same room sometimes, it's just we don't value it so highly that we're willing to sacrifice everything else on that altar, which is what tends to end up happening in commute-oriented companies. JAMON: Ken wrote a really great article on our blog, The Day They Invented Offices. It's a hypothetical conversation between a real estate developer, and a knowledge worker, like an engineer. KEN: It's satire. JAMON: And it talks about a world where basically if offices were not invented, people worked remotely by default. But the real estate developer's trying to convince the knowledge worker that they need to change to a commute company. And all of the benefits that that would entail, and all of the costs as well. TODD: Yeah, it's interesting, because when you do that thought experiment, you realize how ridiculous it would be to go from default remote working situation into a commute working situation, because you'd have to build trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure to make it work. So it was fascinating. I do want to say one thing, Ken mentioned that he was sitting in my office, which he is. I feel him breathing down my neck at the moment. Even if, and we actually have a physical office in Vancouver, Washington, which is in the Portland area. Very few people go there. KEN: It's a mailbox with a couple chairs attached. TODD: But sometimes people will go there and work, and anyone on the team is welcome to do that. Or Ken is in a situation. But we have a basic rule where even if you're physically next to someone, we still work the same way. Meaning we don't have a meeting where Ken and I are talking to each other in person, and everyone ... All the remote people are second class citizens where they're not seeing our conversation. We're looking at each other, and we're making body motion, that kind of stuff. So we still work as if we're remote, even if we're physically in the same location. CHRIS: That's really interesting too, I mean what kind of discipline goes into keeping things where everyone can be a part of it, not just defaulting to that person to person conversation when you're in the same room? TODD: I'm in charge of discipline. We tried writing things on the chalkboard many times, it did not work. Detention seemed a little juvenile. So we went to the old classic of cat of nine tails. KEN: Keelhauling. JAMON: Yes. KEN: Yeah. As an escalation. TODD: To answer your question seriously, which I have difficulty doing, there are a lot of difficulties. Fundamentally, they come from the fact that a lot of people have not only never experienced remote work, have never seen it. We're too many generations removed from the 1800's, when almost everyone worked at their house, basically, and their house was downtown. Your parents didn't work that way, your grandparents didn't work ... they've never seen it in existence. So they really don't know how it works. Not only they don't know how it works, their family definitely doesn't know how it works. And probably the number one problem we have is family, and friends, local family and friends not respecting that the person's actually working. One of the tricks I tell people, and it works pretty well, is just tell your family member that your boss is getting mad at you, or your boss wants you to do something. Because even if you're remote, everyone understands the boss. And just throw me under the bus, it's totally fine, and that seems to work. But that's part of the biggest challenge, is family not respecting your space. JAMON: I think Todd touched on something really important, and that's that this is actually not that new. That was the default way to work. People didn't commute to work. They worked on a farm. KEN: Maybe they walked down the street, but in most cases, not. JAMON: This idea that we have gigantic super highways, and huge transit systems and stuff, just to move people from one location that they could work to another location that they could work for no apparent other reason, it's a little bit mind boggling. Now I understand, I understand why it came to be. Remote tools, which we're not going to talk about much in this episode, but remote tools have not historically been that great, and the experience has been pretty bad. But that's changing, it very much is changing. TODD: The industrial revolution when people started working at factories, and started commuting, and the transportation revolution that facilitated a lot of that. Most of human history, work was not separated from life. Their work life didn't make sense, because you're either relaxing and drinking lemonade, or you're making dinner, or you're sweeping your house, or you're pulling out the potatoes in your backyard, if you're a farmer. The reason we have work life balance now, is because work can be fairly distressing, and you need a break from it. But typically back then, let's say you're a blacksmith, your shop would be on main street, and your house would be behind your shop, or above your shop. So your children would live within feet of where you worked, and where your spouse worked. Whether your spouse worked in the home, or did other things. So your children would eat all your meals with you, they would go to school, school is probably pretty close if they were older. If they were younger, they would eat your meals with you. They'd be around your work, they would see work going on all the time. It just wouldn't be work, it would just be normal, for instance, if you're done with your particular task today, and there's a customer coming in who wants something built for their wagon at two, you might hang out with your children, do some housework, or just play games, or whatever. And then when your customer comes in, you go into the shop, and you service that customer. The industrial revolution made it where adults had to start to pretend to work so they didn't get in trouble. JAMON: So my six year old daughter had an assignment at school, and one of the questions was where does your parent or guardian go to work? And she wrote, "The gym." Because to her, that's when I left the house, was to go work out at the gym. TODD: That's so awesome. KEN: The phenomenon that you're talking about Todd, where the industrial revolution began this process where people started working out of the home, there was a really good reason for that, which is that it was the beginning of humans having to collaborate in a large scale way on bigger problems than they had had in the past, right? Before that, the only place where you would see really large scale collaboration like that would have been I suppose- JAMON: Warfare? KEN: What? JAMON: Warfare? KEN: Warfare, yeah. That's the place where people would leave the house, and collaborate in large numbers, that was really it. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Maybe large farms, I don't know, you could kind of consider that. But culminating in the 20th century, where that was the norm for people to go and collaborate in relatively large numbers some place away from their home. It enabled them to solve problems that you couldn't solve without involving that many people. And of course, we don't want to give that up, and so that's what the modern remote telecommuting company does, is it creates this new kind of collaboration layer, and we've been very deliberate about how we construct that. And I think that's one of the places where companies that kind of dabble with remote tend to fall down, which is that they have all these inherited ways of collaborating that you do when you're in an office together, and some of them don't work anymore. You can't just tap your coworker on the shoulder, you can't just go and like sit next to their screen. You can't all pile into an office on an impromptu basis. So you have to reconstruct habits, technologies, whatever, that can replace those things, and augment them. And we think that, overall, you end up with a better result having gone through that effort of being deliberate about that. And that in a generation, no one will think about these things anymore, because they will simply be the inherited defaults that people who work in an office together enjoy today. And we sometimes meet in person, right? Once a year we get the whole team together, the executive team comes together more often than that. It's not that we don't value that, but we think of it is as a luxury. TODD: Well, it's not necessarily a luxury perhaps, it's important socialization. So Ken and I actually discussed, we went over a pros and cons, like what's good about working in an office? Or in a cubicle, or in hell? What's good about that? Well, you're around other people, and every answer we came up with that was good was all social. It had nothing to do with actually producing any kind of work product. And I basically tell people I commute to socialize, as opposed to commuting to work. So instead of commuting to work five days a week, and socializing one of those days in the office at an office party or something, I work remotely, and I commute to the office party once a week. Not our office, but just local friends, and that kind of stuff. JAMON: It's kind of a funny thing, but yeah, you want to hang out with your friends, not necessarily just with your coworkers. And that may sound kind of weird, and the environment we are now, where often you do make friends with coworkers, and that's all great. But your social life can be something that is a little more deliberate outside of work. KEN: It's not like we discount the social value of people working together in an office, like I enjoyed that when I did it. But I think you're seeing with the rise of WeWork, and similar places, like just in the last five years I've seen the number of co-working facilities explode. And I think that that's part of the same trend, which is that you can have that experience without having to drive for an hour each way, every day. TODD: Yeah. One of our team members, Darin Wilson, he works every day out of a co-location place, and he walks for 10 minutes to the co-location area. That for him is the most efficient, he enjoys that, and that works out well. It's a great example of what works for one person doesn't work for others. I would not like that personally. I also don't like listening to music when I work, other people do. When you remote work, if you like to listen to death metal at extremely high volumes, well have at it. It's great, it's wonderful. KEN: Just turn it off before you get on Zoom please. TODD: Yes. So one of the things I think we shouldn't overlook is some of the great benefits of working say in a cubicle. I would probably estimate 99% of all the funny videos, cool things you find on the internet, were created by extremely bored people sitting in a gray cube. I call them employee fattening pins. So the zombies will appreciate this lifestyle. Not that I dislike commute working, I hope I haven't given off that vibe. JAMON: Not at all. CHRIS: How does remote work make a more engaged worker? JAMON: You know, you have to work at it. There isn't just this appearance of working, right? The only thing that really surfaces is what you actually do, not what it looks like you're doing in your cubicle, right? And because of that, the only way to tell that you are working is to actually work. TODD: Well to actually produce work product, to be more specific. KEN: Yes. JAMON: Actually produce work product, exactly. And we go to great lengths to try to not tie work specifically to time. Because while an eight hour work day is pretty normal, and generally okay, if there are ways to accomplish your work more efficiently, you should be rewarded for that, and not penalized for that by having to sit in your seat for another two hours. It's more about stripping away the appearance of work, and turning to the actual product. TODD: One of our team members moved from Reno, Nevada, to San Diego, California. She moved over a weekend, Friday she worked, and Monday she worked. From the team's perspective, absolutely nothing had changed. Although, she moved I don't know how many miles that is. Hundreds, tens of miles. So that kind of stuff is uber cool. One of our new team members said, "I'm going to New York for a week, can I still work?" And I said, "I assume you can still work in New York. I haven't been there in a few years, but I imagine they still allow that." Turns out they do. Strangely. So I'll tell you a personal story of mine. After I eat at lunch, I don't know if it's my digestive system, or whatever, it sucks the energy out of me so bad. When I worked in a smaller place where people trusted me, I would just kind of take a little nap in my chair. When I worked for bigger companies where such things were frowned upon, I would sit there for two hours from say 1 o'clock to 3 o'clock, trying my best to keep my eyes open pretending to work, and sort of reading Facebook. It's just stupid, and I did that when I was 34 years old. It's just stupid to have adults behave in this way, it really is. JAMON: Yeah, we don't look at that as some sort of a weakness. TODD: Nowadays, I did made a little bit of fun, that's fine. I really enjoy the siesta. I'll go take literally an hour nap after I eat, and then I come back refreshed, and I get lots of work done. And I tell people, I'm going to take siesta, there's no shame in that whatsoever. JAMON: And I think that's important, when the CEO's doing it, it kind of gives people permission to work in the way that is most efficient for them. TODD: Exactly. I personally believe it's super important to have 100% of people remote. The CEO on down. A lot of companies out there that claim to be remote, they're partially remote, and that's fine. I'm glad it works for them. But when you're CEO, and your other executive team have to use all the same tools, remote tools and everything that everyone does, it's not fair, but it's true. Those tools get a lot better. It's true. So if you have the CO sitting in an office, and they don't have to experience the horribleness that is a poly comm conference call, then it's never going to improve. CHRIS: What are some of the common misconceptions of remote work that you often have to explain, or even defend? TODD: Oh, there's lots. One, you're not really working. That's the biggest thing. Two is that you're probably doing your laundry, playing video games, and other such things that people imagine. Those are the kinds of- KEN: Sometimes you are, I'll get to that. TODD: Well sure, sometimes you are and that's fine. But the biggest one if you're at home, people can bother you. Like my mother, which I love very much, she's funny. She comes to visit, and I've worked remote off and on for a long time, so she should understand this by now. But she'll be like, she'll come in and talk to me. And she'll say, "Oh I know you're working," and I have a separate office, so it's very apparent that you're walking into my office. And she goes, "I know you're working so that's fine. Finish your work up, and then we'll talk in an hour or so." And I'm like, "Mom, remember," my mom's retired. I go, "Remember when you worked? You had to go there for eight hours? It was like from 9 AM to 5 PM? It's the same for me, it's not exactly the hours, but it's not like one hour." And so bless her heart, she's going to give me an hour to get my work done, and then we can talk about whatever she wants to talk about. KEN: I think one of the misconceptions that's not a misconception is that it can tend to blur your work time and your personal time. Then one of the things that people say that they like about having a commute and an office to go is that their work time is over there, and their personal time is over here. And I wish I could say that that's not an issue with remote work. It is kind of an issue for the reasons that Todd mentions. Right, it takes a certain amount of discipline to set that boundary. I'm going to make the case that that's not a problem. It is a problem if you hate your work. If you need to like recover from the boiler room that is your work, or the boredom room, or whatever it is that makes your work uncomfortable. That is a problem. I think of this as a feature of remote work, and it echoes what Todd said about it needing to be the CEO on down. Because if it is the CEO on down, the CEO is going to have the same problems that you are. Right? The three of us have the same pressure about when does work begin and end? Are we kind of always working, are we never working? What is that boundary? And it forces the company to either become a good enough place to work that people want to work, and they're not bothered by the fact that it kind of mixes in with their personal life, or die. Like as the evolutionary pressure on the remote work niche, is that you have to be good communicators. You have to be respectful, and you have more ways that you can be respectful, because you're not having to share as much space with people. You don't have fights over what people put in the damn refrigerator. You don't have fights over who's playing what music, and who put up what offensive poster, or all of these things that come when you're forced into this little box together. TODD: The one I really miss is when someone leaves the company, and everyone kind of looks at each other and says, "Is two minutes too soon to go raid everything out of their office?" KEN: Yeah. TODD: And you see these 50 year old people scrambling around like the hunger games, trying to get the better stapler. KEN: The chair, it's always the chairs and monitors. Those are the real prizes. TODD: Yes, and I've worked for places, like I like a very nice monitor. And I always bring my own, because companies never provide that, typically. I've been told, "Oh, we can't have that because if you have a big monitor, other people will be jealous, and so you can't have that." And I'm like, "Well, okay, I'm going to have it. So either this conversation's escalating, or you have a wonderful lunch." JAMON: I think that's something really insightful about this that we'll probably touch on a lot in our podcast, but that is that we're purposely putting these constraints on ourselves that require that we become a better company. That we become a better, we continue to work on culture. We don't have the easy outs that many companies do. And people will look at that and say, "Well, but you can't do that easy out thing that we all do." And we say, "Exactly, we have to do it differently, we have to do it better. We have to work on it." Remote tools are terrible, exactly. We have to go find better remote tools, we have to work on that. Those constraints are good. They're very good. They're healthy. There's something that forces us to continue to innovate, and to self reflect, and look at how we work. I mean the blurring of the lines between personal and work as Ken said, I totally agree. It's about loving your work. And it brings up some positives too, I mean I just spent two weeks in California. We're not at the stage right now where I necessarily want to take two weeks completely offline. I still want to be somewhat available for Todd and Ken. But I was able to be on Slack on my phone at various times. Let's say waiting in line at Disneyland, or something like that. And that may sound terrible to some people, but it wasn't a big deal to me. It was totally fine, and I loved that I could actually take two weeks for my family to be away, and enjoying the sun, which we don't get a lot of here. KEN: In a way, it also makes your vacations more enjoyable, if you know that you're not coming back to two weeks of email. JAMON: Exactly. KEN: Or things that have fallen apart, or who knows, right, where ... yeah. TODD: I love that spin, that's fantastic. JAMON: I don't see it as spin- KEN: Not for me, anyway. I think some people might not feel that way. JAMON: I understand that. KEN: Yeah. JAMON: A lot of people don't, and I am speaking personally here. This is not for everybody, some people totally on the uninstall Slack when they go on vacation, that's fine. For me though, I was on the plane, and I was basically archiving a bunch of emails, and I get into work this morning, and I could hit the ground running, and I'm good to go. What is the real cost of totally disconnecting? The real cost would have been I couldn't take two weeks. I couldn't be away that long. That's what it would have been. I was able to benefit from that, you may only see the downsides, but there's positives there. KEN: And to be clear, this is how it is for us as founders. Right? When it comes to our employees, we pretty much encourage them to mute, or uninstall Slack while they're away. JAMON: That's right, that's right. KEN: They don't have as much need to be sort of always on that we do. Yeah, but for us, it's actually ... I mean from my point of view, it's a benefit. JAMON: But even that, we have some employees that want to travel, and they want to be gone for a couple months. Three months, even. Taking a three month vacation, that's pretty tough, that's pretty tough to do. So with some of them, they may work in the early mornings, or they may work in the late evenings to coincide with their time zone, and then they can be out on a trip for three months. So they are able to continue to be productive during that time. KEN: And that's a perk that Google cannot match, period. That is just something that you cannot do if you work for Google. TODD: Yeah, screw you Google. KEN: Or whomever, right? Any of these companies that expect a physical presence. TODD: We're coming for you, Google. KEN: The point is, so we have one person who doesn't have a permanent home. Right? He moves around pursuing his hobbies, and makes it work. We have other employees who have done exactly what Jamon has said, and they've gone on extended workcations, right? Where they're able to get their work done, and they have the experience of frankly, actually living in another country, as opposed to just being a tourist. And we have high standards for how they get their work done while they're doing that, but because we've had to develop standards that really measure people's impact rather than their face time, it works. TODD: Copyright Apple. KEN: There was a space, you couldn't really hear it when I said it- TODD: Space? JAMON: Face. TODD: Face. KEN: So there was a face, space time. Yeah, right, anyway. TODD: Yeah, we talked about people who want to take longer physical trips around, whether it's around the US, around the world, what not, the benefits. But there's a benefit for another set of people, and I would probably consider myself in that group, as well as some of our other team members, and that's people who choose to live rurally. JAMON: Yes. TODD: We have one person who lives really rurally, and he has a lot of land and stuff, and he can have the lifestyle that he enjoys, and still have a very productive and successful career. Myself, I do live in Las Vegas, but I live in rural Las Vegas. I have a little bit of land. It allows me to live in this way, when I used to have to live in San Francisco, which I enjoyed for a long time, but as I got older I wanted to go back to living on the land and stuff. So for people who want to live rurally, or not just the typical urban or suburban lifestyle, it's fantastic. CHRIS: So when it comes to the client experience of working with a 100% remote company, how do they respond to this way of work? TODD: That's a great question, Chris. Various ways depending on the client. Some clients, that's the way they work, and they love it. Like they see us kindred spirits, that's the way they like to work. Other clients especially if maybe they're more enterprise city type clients and stuff, maybe aren't as familiar with it. We kind of insist on it to be honest, even if the client's local to some or many of our employees, our team. And we just explain it, and we are very articulate in the way we describe how we work. And sometimes they have to have a little faith in us, but after they work through our process, they probably never seen a remote company that works well. I think our company works as well as I've seen. We work with a few companies who are both I think do a good job like we do. A lot of them do not, and I'm very proud to say that quite a few customers who maybe have part-time remote work started opting our procedures, which is a fantastic compliment, and it makes me proud. Because we do spend a huge amount of time thinking about this stuff, and working on it. JAMON: That's actually more common than you think, that we influence our clients in the way that they work. TODD: Can you expand on that Jamon? JAMON: When clients come in, and they experience the Infinite Red way of working, and they see the thought and care that we put into it, and how we're all kind of bought into it, and how we also iterate on it, because it's an ongoing process. We don't have it perfect yet, we're continuing to work on it. They see that things get done, that it can be done well, and that they have the flexibility that remote work affords. It's a pretty neat thing to see them working the way that we love to work. TODD: I don't want to digress, but we use Slack quite a bit for chat communication, that sort of thing. We use email next to nothing. But we have a channel we call rollcall, and the channel is very simple. It's just kind of describe where you are, and if you're working or not. It's analogous to walking in the office and saying, "Good morning everyone, gosh my back hurts, I've been at the gym." And it works really, really well, because it's not forced on people, and people really enjoy the back and forth. So let me just go through this morning's rollcall. One of our team members signed on at 3 AM, and then she went out for breakfast at 6 o'clock. Other people started signing in, one person signed in. It said they laptop issues that they fixed, they explained why. People gave some reactions. Other people just signed in, I said, "Good morning." One person said, "Short break," this is at 9 AM, "Picking up the car from the mechanic." We won't have exactly specific times people have to be working, or available, we want people to be so many hours a day where they can coordinate with other people, have meetings, have work sessions, that kind of stuff. But it's not uncommon people say, "My daughter's having a recital, I'm going to leave after lunch, I'll be back and probably work some this evening." No client meetings, no one's being impacted by that, great, we all give him thumbs up, we say, "Hope it goes well." No one asked if they can do that, no one says, "Hey Todd, can I go to that?" And then around lunchtime, everyone says they're lunching. They might talk about what they ate, some sort of friendly conversation, and you just kind of get a feeling of your team going about their day. And I will finish this long story up by saying it's kind of fascinating. So one of the people I work a lot with is Gant Laborde, who lives in New Orleans. And we work a lot during the day. And when he comes and visits me physically, or I go to New Orleans and visit him, it doesn't feel like I'm visiting a friend I haven't seen in a while. There isn't a lot of chat about how things have been going, it's nice to see you again. Because I've seen him every day for hours, and I just saw him this morning. And by see him, I mean interacted with him either in a video call, or on Slack, or whatever. It doesn't feel like I'm just finally meeting him, it's like we're just continuing what we were doing this morning, it's just we happen to physically be in the same space. It's very interesting phenomena. JAMON: I find it kind of flabbergasting in a way that companies would care about someone taking a break, or going to pickup their daughter, or having to go pickup the car from the mechanic. TODD: Lazy leadership. JAMON: That's exactly right. TODD: I recommend if you're a lazy ... for the lazy leaders out there, or the bad leaders, yeah, don't do remote work. Stick with cubicles, make the cubicles as comfortable as possible to get the worst employees so the rest come to us. KEN: It's probably worth talking about people for whom it wouldn't be a good fit. Obviously there's still plenty of jobs out there where physical presence is implicitly required. Anybody who works in retail, anybody who works with their hands, has to actually physically manipulate things. I think our point has always been that there's just not as many of those as people think. And to be honest, I suspect that over the next 20, 30 years, as robotics and telepresence, and that sort of thing start to really come into their own, that even those sorts of jobs will start to diminish. You already have that even with like medical, the medical field, legal field, things that used to be sort of a high, high physical presence will become more low physical presence. TODD: Surgeons right now are doing surgery with a DaVinci system, both physically, and I think they can do it remotely now. Like they're standing next to it typically, but I think they can do it remotely at the moment. JAMON: What's kind of funny about that is my dad owned an excavation company, and he was one of the first people to get a cell phone, because for him, everything was remote. Like he had to be remote, because he was driving his dump truck to the job site, he had to be there working, and he had to do his office work, because he was like the only guy. He didn't have an office, he didn't have someone handling the paperwork, he had to create invoices on the fly and stuff. So in some ways, some of those blue collar jobs had some of these things figured out way before we did. TODD: That's actually a super interesting point. Logistic companies, or shipping, truck drivers and stuff. They've had to deal with this, I don't know how old you all are out there in listening land, but if you remember Nextel phones, with the automatic walkie talkie feature- JAMON: Totally. TODD: They're useful, very useful. Kind of like an analog Slack, really. So yeah, it's fascinating. A lot of the so called blue collar work has had to deal with this for a very long time. KEN: And it's worth mentioning that even for the core of jobs that will always be physical in person, if you took every office out there that didn't need to be an office, and you converted that to a remote job where people can live anywhere, the reduction in pressure on the real estate market, on the transportation system that would ensue, would make life better for everybody. TODD: Right. KEN: Right? The people who have to commute can commute, because I mean you have this phenomenon as cities grow, where they'll build a new highway, and for five, 10 years if you're lucky, things are great. Because there's all this extra capacity, but what happens in the meantime, is that further down that highway, developers start cramming new houses in, because suddenly it's a doable commute. And then within that five, 10, maybe 20 years, it's back to the way it was, maybe worse than it was, because now there's even more people trying to cram into this road. But if you just snap your fingers, and moved all of those offices out so that that knowledge workers, the people who are working with their brains, and with words, and with digital images, and that sort of thing. And they all scatter to the winds, and live where they want to live, and not in Fremont, or wherever it is that they're living to commute to San Francisco. I feel like, right, maybe like I don't think I've ever seen a study like this, but it seems like it would stand to reason at least that the pressure on transportation would reduce to the point that everybody's quality of life would improve. I don't know, we'll see I guess. JAMON: Yeah, even when you look at something like a dentist office, which is probably extremely resistant to this sort of thing, there's just the robotics are not there yet. And maybe even if they were the trust isn't there yet, with the general public. But how many other people are in that office that don't need to be drilling on teeth? They could be elsewhere. And you're exactly right, the infrastructure, and it's actually kind of happening in some ways. You look at some of the high rises in downtown Portland and stuff, people are coming and living in the city because they want to live in the city, and not because it's next to their office. And a lot of these offices are now being converted into apartments and condos, and being kind of near offices, where you can work from your house. And what would cities look like if every job that could be remote was remote? KEN: I mean yeah, can you imagine a world where the city center is the bedroom community, right? JAMON: Right. TODD: That would be awesome. KEN: Where people live because they want to be next to the cultural opportunities in the city. And the minority of people who actually have to physically work at some job in the city, can live next to their work, because there's just more housing, because like much less of the city is taken over by the kind of white collar workplaces that have been traditional for city centers. TODD: That's actually really interesting to think about. KEN: Yeah. TODD: I imagine somewhere in hell, there is an eight hour bumper to bumper commute, and you're not in a car, but you're literally in a cubicle with a steering wheel. CHRIS: One of the things that I want to go back and touch on is this idea of leadership, and how remote work isn't for the lazy leader. So let me ask the question of the three of you, how has being 100% remote made you a better leader? JAMON: Well, I can speak to my experience going from ClearSight not being remote to being remote. I'm kind of in some ways a forceful personality. I'm kind of a person who likes to move fast, and bring everybody along with him. And in an office, there's actually a sort of almost like a physical component to that. Like the leader's right there, and he's enthusiastic about something. He's moving fast, and he's doing his thing, and he's talking about it where everybody can hear. When I look back at it now, that was sort of lazy leadership. It was. It wasn't necessarily the type of leadership that was people coming along because they were enthusiastic about it, it was more that they were just kind of following the force of nature that was moving that direction. Now that I'm remote, I don't have those physical cues, verbal cues, things like that, to bring everybody along. And it requires a lot more thought and planning around how to get people on board with concepts, and how to get people moving in the right direction. It's a really interesting thing, and it's not something I've totally figured out yet, but it's something I'm moving toward. KEN: I would say that it has forced me to be more explicit about expectations, since you don't have this inherited set of defaults. You have to say, "This is what we expect from you." It's not, "We expect you to come in the office at nine," it's, "You need to be available to clients during an agreed upon window," for example. Or as we had mentioned before, "Here's our productivity benchmark, and this is what we're looking at." You might have to develop some of those in any kind of company, and you should. But our setup, it exposes any fault lines in your expectations, and you have to address them. As Todd said, like if you want to be a lazy leader, don't do it. TODD: I would pile on what Ken said, you have to be able to measure what people, their work output, their work product. That is not easy, even in industries where it's obvious what their work product is. Say they paint paintings, you can see that they painted a painting. That is probably the most challenging thing, and then there's the emotional part. Where if you can't measure their work product, and you can't see them sitting in a seat, you're just going to have to have faith in them, and get over yourself worrying about it. But it is challenging to make sure that you have a semi-accurate view of who's actually being efficient, and who's not. And just not 100% thing. JAMON: That's more on the management side of things. Leadership side of things too is difficult, because getting people to see a vision is much easier when you can just say, "Okay," kind of the Michael Scott thing. "Everybody in the conference room in five minutes." That's a very different thing than what we do. TODD: I think it's challenging, but to be honest, I'm not staying awake at night worrying about those challenges. I find them fairly straightforward, you just have to put effort into it. Keep on walking down that road, and I think it works out really well to be honest. It's not a big deal to me. JAMON: You just have to strike the right balance. TODD: There was a tweet last week where basically it said, "During any meeting, you don't have to listen, just at one point you have to comment and say, 'I think the solution to this problem is just striking the right balance', and then everyone in the meeting nods, and you were involved." KEN: Because it's always true. JAMON: It's always true. TODD: Yes, so that's a running joke here at Infinite Red, where in the meeting at some point someone says, "We just need to strike the right balance." We all laugh. CHRIS: Looking into the future, do you see more and more companies adopting remote work? TODD: It's one of our missions, our side missions as a company, to make it more. It's probably other than software engineering, and software design, which is obviously our main focus of our company. Other than that, probably the number one thing that we're interested in promoting in the world is remote work. So I hope the answer is, it's more I don't know, I'm sure Ken and Jamon have some good insight in what they predict. JAMON: I think that one of the factors that will influence this is I look at my kids, like generation Z. And they don't know what it's like not to be connected, and they don't know what it's like not to be able to just talk to their cousin via FaceTime, no space, and who lives in South Carolina. This is normal to them, this is a normal thing to them, this is a normal way to live and to work. Well, they don't really work, but just to do things. KEN: We'll fix that. JAMON: Obviously for my kids, they're around remote work all the time. But it is a way of life, and I think that you'll also see other things like there are more ways to learn online, versus going to a university and sitting in a classroom. There are plenty of other opportunities for them to get used to this way of doing life. And I think that will have an impact. It may not be moving as quickly as we would like, we would like to see a lot more industries move into being remote work for a variety of reasons. But I think that that is a factor. KEN: I will echo that and say that both my wife and I work from home. And my daughter makes the same face when you say that some people have to like drive to a special place, as when you say that you used to have to come to the TV at a particular time to watch your show. Right? But even before the generational shift, I think it is happening more and more. Ironically, Silicon Valley, which should be at the vanguard of this, is one of the most resistant to the idea. I think that's partly because they've had so much money flowing through, that they've been able to afford the enormous luxury of moving everybody to this expensive place, and then putting them in an expensive office. And to be honest, for a company that is chasing a multi billion dollar idea, and trying to beat their competitors over the next six months, there's a case to be made for doing that. But I think way, way more of those companies think that they are doing that than actually are. JAMON: I actually have a question for you Ken, do you think that this will ... you know you said Silicon Valley is resistant to this, and that's a very location based geo fence there. Do you think that the revolution of remote work will happen irrespective of where people are located, but maybe in a different cohort? A different type of people will bring remote work to the forefront more so than a specific place. Let's say for example Detroit, or something, decided it all of a sudden is all remote. That's probably less likely to happen then- KEN: I think that that's one of the key pieces of this, is like it's like it's creating it's own virtual location. That there's a set of people who don't have the same relationship with place, and that sounds really pretentious kind of. But like they just don't think about physical locations in the same way. The cost aspect of it has caused it to grow in more cost sensitive industries than venture backed startups. And it's not that they don't have those, but I think it's also a certain amount of bias on the part of the venture capitalists themselves, and the kind of people that appeal to them. This is my guess, they will crack eventually. TODD: Having worked in Silicon Valley for 20 years, I do love Silicon Valley, and love San Francisco for sure. But when it comes to remote work, they have an inherent bias against it, because when you endure the heavy cost of relocating to Silicon Valley, and you've got your foot into that door, and you're part of that community, anything that would diminish the rewards from that suffering diminishes you. In other words, it's wonderful being there as an engineer. Everyone you meet is engineers, they're all working on interesting projects. There's a real benefit, I think there's other cities too. Especially some secondary cities like Portland, Oregon, or- KEN: Seattle. TODD: Seattle yeah, and Texas. KEN: Austin. TODD: Thank you. Austin, Texas. I think these are up and coming and stuff. And there's still benefits socially to it, but I think a lot of times they resist it because it diminishes their specialness in many ways. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: And really when we started Infinite Red, and we decided that this will be a remote company forever, and that this is my third and hopefully last company I build, it allowed me to move back to my home state of Nevada without worrying about my career, and that is an incredibly powerful thing.

Doing Difficult Work

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2018 49:29

Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: To kick off this episode, let's start with introductions and the hardest project you've ever worked on. JAMON HOLMGREN: Hi, my name is Jamon Holmgren and I'm one of the co-founders of Infinite Red, Chief Operating Officer. Chris asked what's a difficult project that I've worked on in the past and I think early on when I was first sort of getting outside of just building marketing websites, I took on a project for a social media platform. Of course, this was probably 2009, Facebook was sort of coming into its own and they wanted to build a social media. It was a guy that really didn't understand what social media was. He was on no social media platforms himself. He was an older dude who was annoyed that his daughter-in-law kept inviting him to the Facebook and he did not want to deal with that. So he decided instead that he was going to build his own, so he wouldn't have to join Facebook. It was ... it sounds kind of ridiculous and made up, but I swear this was an actual project that we did. KEN MILLER: Well, that is my kind of lazy. (laughter) Really, I mean I'm serious. Where you will recreate the site, from scratch, in order to not have one annoying experience. Ken Miller, CTO/CFO, founder of Infinite Red. I'm trying to think about a hard project. For me, the hardest projects are the ones where you have to keep at for years. A massive, blast through it, kind of hard project is much easier. I've always been a little ADD and I think that some people thrive on that emergency situation, but a long haul where you have to keep at something for a long time is harder. In terms of work technical things, a couple companies ago, we had a very email dependent company and so we had to get a huge number of emails sent in a very narrow window every day. That was a very long back and forth process because you have to keep up with the amount that you are sending out physically, you have to manage the deliverability, you have to monitor your changes and make sure a small change in your rendering doesn't completely blow up your delivery window. And so the process of managing that over time definitely taught me a lot about how you set something up so you can do it over time. TODD WERTH: How many emails did you send out Ken, just curious. KEN: I think we were at 3 million. This was pre-Mailgun, pre-AWS. This was, we had to actually size the hardware- TODD: Is that per week? KEN: Appropriately. Every night. And it had to be finished in about a two hour window. TODD: So you're responsible for most of the spam in the early 2000s. KEN: Yeah, that was me. I'm sorry. (laughter) My bad. Delivering legitimate email is actually pretty tricky because of all the anti-spam measures that are a necessity of modern communications. So that was probably, in terms of the technical project, that has been the most challenging. That, organizationally, was the most for me. TODD: Hi, I am Todd Werth. I'm the CEO and the founder of Infinite Red; long time listener, first time caller. So Chris asked us to talk about a hard problem we've had in the past. So I think most hard problems I've dealt with in the past haven't necessarily been technical, because even though they're difficult, they're fairly straight forward to go through. Some just take a little longer. KEN: That's true. TODD: Most of the problems have been human related. One that comes to mind, and I'm sure there are better examples but, circa 1998, 1999 or something, I did a project for the San Francisco 49ers. The scouts would go out preseason and they would scout out new people and they would go all over the country and they would take notes. Traditionally this was done on paper and then when they finally made it back to the home office they would go over their notes with whomever and what not. So we were developing a system where we gave these peoples laptops for them to take out and then when they got back to their hotel room they would hook up to the phone line and use a modem and upload the data to the database; which was hugely advantageous to the San Francisco 49er corporate office. The problem is, none of these gentlemen have every used a computer before. Didn't know how to use a mouse, didn't know how to use a laptop, so the challenging part there ...actually, a colleague of mine, his name was Milton Hare, he did the training and taught them the very basics of using a computer. That was actually quite challenging. The user interface that we designed had to be geared towards that. It had to be, not just simple, but absurdly simple. It was very fascinating. The bad part of that project was that I got to see a lot of data on professional football players, including things like their criminal records and I will not go into it, but it's not a pretty picture. CHRIS: What we're going to do in this episode is we're gonna look at the art of doing difficult work in three main areas: extreme personal support, collaboration, and transparency. But before we get there, what is difficult work? We've had a couple of different responses. We've had technical, we've had human, but what is difficult work? TODD: I would say...that's a hard question. KEN: Difficult work is work that is not easy. (laughter) TODD: Yes, Ken. That's why we have you here. It's tough to say. As far as from our culture and our perspective, difficult work is what's difficult for individual people. So for example, I'm an engineer and designer, not a sales person. Jamon is also an engineer, not a sales person, but Jamon and I for a long time did sales together. That is difficult work for us, we didn't come natural to it, we didn't have any experience with it. So one of the things we decided early on is, we have a couple of rules. One, you don't have to do something the way other people in the world do it. We're engineers, we're doing sales, we approached it from an engineering standpoint and we engineer our sales process. Later we can talk about that. Two, is anything that is difficult for individuals, they shouldn't be doing alone. They should never be alone on an island. If someone, whatever it is, talking to a tough client, dealing with a tough technical problem, doing something that's outside of your comfort zone such as sales or maybe giving a presentation or whatever it is, we do at least in pairs or more. It's one of the things I really, I beat the drum beat with our team is, if there is something you're dreading, use the buddy system and get people to be there with you because that helps a lot. For example, in our sales calls, Jamon and I would do this thing where if I'm talking and I'm starting to fumble, he would interrupt me and take over, or if I felt like I had nothing to say and I was having a particularly anxious moment or something, Jamon would take over and we would support each other that way. Eventually we became pretty decent sales people. KEN: If I were to take a crack at defining difficult, I would say, something like work where you don't already know how you're supposed to do it. As distinct from hard work, for the purposes of discussion, I would define as more you know how to do it there's just a lot of it and you need to do it quickly or intensively for some reason. One of things that we actually like to do around here is turn hard work into difficult work. Find a way to automate in terms of process or literally automate in terms of code, things that would otherwise be hard work. It's not always possible, but we try to when we can. JAMON: I have a personal example of this, wasn't done within Infinite Red per se, but on Christmas Eve I suffered a house fire and it obviously was quite traumatic but one of the things we have to deal with as sort of a fall out of this house fire is submitting personal items to insurance for reimbursement, to kind of restore what we had. It's a very labor intensive process, to go to the insurance company's website and individually type in items because most people with a normal sized home would have thousands of items. The restoration company had done a spreadsheet for us and they had done a lot of the work, where they had gone through, and I would characterize that as very hard work, where they had to go through a bunch of soot-stained things and inventory them, take pictures of them, describe them in a spreadsheet. They did a really good job with that and they put it into a spreadsheet, but to put those items in was still a manual process of transferring from a spreadsheet over to the State Farm website. I decided that, maybe what I'll do is I'll figure out some way to automate that and that took me like an hour. I could've gotten a lot of things done during that time, I could've entered quite a few items in that amount of time. It took a lot of frustration, of like going down the wrong road, and kind of reverse engineering the web app. But once I had it done, I got it to work and I ran this cURL script for like 45 minutes and at the end of 45 minutes we had 3,000 items entered into the website. So this was a situation where we could've just buckled down and done the hard work, but instead of doing that I did more difficult work of thinking of a way to automate it and that was a net positive. KEN: And if the FBI or State Farm are listening, we had no knowledge of this. (laughter) TODD: State Farm is definitely not listening. KEN: For the record. TODD: Jamon, two questions. One, do you think State Farm intentionally makes it super hard to enter items that they're going to reimburse you for? Two, how long do you think that would take you if you hadn't automated that? JAMON: You know, we've been asked that before. I don't actually think that's the case necessarily, because I've been involved in enough software projects where you're not intentionally making something difficult for users, but when you don't use it, when you are not the end user, when you are not the person sitting there whose been through a fire who has to go through it and do it. It's not as easy as it seems when you're testing it with 14 items, 14 test items. I think actually this speaks more to a lot of what we do where yes, entering 8 dummy items in the course of testing it on localhost, it's actually a pretty good experience. They've actually done a pretty good job of making that pretty decent, but the overall user experience of a real person in a real position of needing to do this- KEN: For a large loss, not just like hey someone stole my bike, but yeah ... JAMON: Exactly, it falls on it's face. So I actually don't think at all that this was intentional. I think that it's entirely within the realm of possibility that this is simply they haven't user tested. It's a fairly new system, hopefully they'll add bulk import at some point. As far as the second question which is how long do you think it would've taken to enter those items. I think I'd gotten through maybe a couple hundred in the previous hour. It was taking me probably between 15 seconds to 30 seconds to enter each item. It would've taken a long time and been very tiring. TODD: We'll give State Farm the benefit of the doubt. KEN: I think this impulse, this is exactly the kind of impulse that leads some people to computers, to programming. This allergic reaction to tedium and repetition and when you find computer programming for the first time, if you're that kind of person who hates that sort of tedium, you're like 'this is the best thing that I've ever seen in my life,' right? I only have to think in enough clarity about what's happening to describe it to the computer, and then it'll do it for me. That's a really powerful feeling and as you get into it of course you discover that you've just traded one problem for another problem, but we're the kind of people who find that to be a higher class, more interesting, better, more rewarding problem. CHRIS: There was an intriguing phrase used the other day: We make difficult things doable through extreme personal support of each other. So can you paint a picture of what extreme personal support means to you at maybe the founders level and then maybe at the Infinite Red team level? TODD: Who said that Chris? CHRIS: That was the brilliance of a guy named Todd Werth. TODD: I do not recall saying that. I wouldn't phrase it that way, even though I literally phrased it that way. (laughter) I don't remember saying that, but it makes sense. It's not only do we give people support when they're doing work that's difficult for them including all of us, and including the three people here as well. Let me tell you a little story. When I was a young man I worked in a warehouse, I drove a forklift around at a job. One thing I noticed in that job, it didn't suit me very well because I like to talk and I like to think about stuff and it was just very tedious. What I noticed a lot of the people in the warehouse, all different ages, young person like myself all the way up to older people, is a lot of people in the warehouse were not in the right job. This one gentleman would constantly get in trouble and the bosses did not like him because he loved to chat and he was really good at it and he was really personable and I have no idea why he was in the warehouse, it made no sense at all. Later on he went to become a successful real estate agent, which is completely appropriate. Now this company I worked for, it was a big company, it was one of the largest companies in the state, so it's not like they didn't have a place for this gentleman to work well, so he ended up leaving. The reason I tell that story is because you have to know everyone individually and what's hard work for one person is not hard work for another. If it's not hard work for another person, one way they can support people rather than just direct interaction is for them taking on jobs that other people find hard. So that's kind of support and of course there's just day to day, I will show up with you on the battlefield, type of support and that kind of stuff. JAMON: I think one of the ways that this manifests itself is how we deal with failure and the inability to get something done here. We're not quick to reach for blame the individual who's there. Sometimes that's the case where someone just falls down and they kind of do their own thing and that needs to be corrected and move forward. TODD: We so don't look to blame. JAMON: We don't look to blame. No it's really, let's look at this from a collaborative approach. How can we, as a group, do this better in the future? How can we adjust our systems? One of the things I don't like is to identify a gap in our system, for example, and then say that the answer is that the people involved need to just try harder. I really don't like that answer. Unfortunately that's something that a lot of lazy leadership will do. They'll just be like, 'you need to get your act together,' and that's the answer. The reality is that's often not the answer. The answer is usually to work with the system until it's at a point where doing the right thing is the easy path, where doing the right thing is the natural and intuitive path. That takes thinking, that takes understanding the problem, it's harder for leadership to accomplish that. KEN: It is occasionally the right answer though. TODD: It sometimes, sure. KEN: But not very often. It's rarely that simple, but I think one of the hard things that I've found in leadership was actually saying to somebody, 'Look, you need to step up. You have what you need right in front of you, the next part is up to you.' Actually saying that is part of it. I think what Jamon is referring to is that if the support is not there, then saying that is meaningless. JAMON: Yes. TODD: Well, I mean, it's like someone is pushing a rock up a hill and you're just saying you need to push harder, push harder. When the person's telling you and you're not listening, why don't I just walk over the hill and get the rock that's already over there? You know what I mean? So- KEN: Yeah, I completely agree with that. TODD: I do agree that asking somebody to step up in a real way, not just a nose against the grindstone type of way. KEN: When you get to the point where you've got all of the easy rocks on one side and what we actually need to do as a team is get this one huge freaking rock on the other side of the hill, and some people are not pushing with you, that has to be addressed. JAMON: Right KEN: But it's much smaller part of the pie than I think some management philosophies would tell you. TODD: I personally convince everyone that pushing rocks is one of the neatest things in the world, it's a rarity, and for a low price they can push my rocks for me. (laughter) JAMON: I think one of the things Ken has said in the past is what we want to be is a high support, high expectations company. Low support, high expectations is just toxic. KEN: That's a sweat shop. JAMON: Yeah, it's a sweat shop. High support, low expectations is a nursery and low expectations, low support that's- KEN: I don't even know what that is. CHRIS: How does this picture of extreme personal support enter your relationship as the three founders? JAMON: I can kind of personally attest to this. There are certain tasks that I'm well suited to, my personality, that I enjoy doing. There are other ones that it's like pulling teeth to get me to do and that's just been exacerbated since I had the house fire and am kind of displaced from my normal routine and I really just want to focus on the things that I really enjoy doing. What we did, actually earlier this year, up until this point we've made a lot of decisions together, we've done a lot of things together and that's was appropriate for the first couple years of Infinite Red. But we've gotten to a point where we kind of understand each other, we kind of have a lot of aligned shared goals and we've actually started to specialize. This was a way for Todd and Ken to support me, in that Todd could focus on a lot of team-oriented things and Ken's been doing a lot of things with the financial and bookkeeping side of the business, which I am not good at. I can focus more on business development and that's actually the part of the business that I find really interesting, so rather than just telling me, 'work harder at managing your projects, work harder at being an account manager, work harder at doing these other things,' which yeah, I could work harder and do a better job. Instead of doing that we've found a solution that wasn't centered around just working harder it was centered around doing things that we felt effective at. TODD: As we are three founders and we govern as a quorum of elders as it were, as opposed to a hierarchical company, supporting ourselves, each other, the three founders, is just as important as supporting the team in my opinion. When there is a financial problem, thankfully we haven't had too many of those, we all have to step up and so we tend to understand each other's personal finances, each other's personal stuff. It's almost like a pseudo-marriage in a way, although there are three of us so it'd be a polyamorous marriage in this case. It's a requirement to be more, I don't want to use to word intimate, but intimate in each other's lives and I think we're really good... What's cool about three as opposed to two or one, for example, because Jamon's done one and I've done one, I've been in another company ...but what's cool about three is, typically it's one person having a communications problem or arguing or having difficulties with another person and the third person mediates. It's either Jamon and I are having an argument and Ken mediates or Ken and I are having an argument and Jamon mediates. Hey wait- KEN: Wait, when do you mediate, Todd? (laughter) TODD: I don't think I've ever mediated, that's funny. KEN: I don't think you have actually. I'm noticing a pattern here, yeah. JAMON: That's not true. TODD: But it is totally true. But it's okay. I tend to draw lightning as well away from people and because I deserve it. I don't know if that answered your question, but I think it's uber important, sorry, it's Lyft important that we do that. (laughter) You know, it starts and then we can all support the team if we are supported ourselves. JAMON: It sets the tone, all the way down and we have to. We have no other way of working. We have to support each other and it's not just when we're having interpersonal problems with each other, but also when someone's just literally having a tough time. What I think we've done really well as a founder team is go into our shared channel and post, 'I'm having a tough time.' It can be for any reason, it can literally be like, I didn't sleep very well last night; I just am so bored with this task, I cannot get started with it. All those things are valid and the answer is never just suck it up, or if it is, it's one of those things where it's an empathetic suck it up. If that makes sense. It's like, I totally get it, I understand where you're at, we really just need to get this done. And sometimes that's what you need, you need a little boot in the rear and that's something that you can take from the other side too. It's been great, really, the last two and a half years having that. TODD: Obviously we're talking about supporting each other as founders, but it's the same with the team. One key thing is if someone is vulnerable, they say they've made a mistake, they say they're having a problem, even if you personally think 'is that really a problem?' Or whatever, it doesn't matter. Whatever your personal feelings are is irrelevant. If you stomp on that person, if you make fun of that person, if you tell them to suck it up buttercup, everyone, not just them, the entire team will contract. They will put up a little more walling around them and they won't do that in the future. They'll do it, they just won't do it around you. It is hard because we're all emotional beings and sometimes you have an emotional reaction to something. But you have to be super careful to not ...when that flame is just starting you need to be very gentle with it and not blow it out. KEN: It's more than just avoiding stomping on people, not that Todd was saying that's all it was, but you have to go out of your way to solicit, to get people to talk about what's going on with them, to check in with them, to reiterate that you're available for that. You can't say it once and assume that everyone will remember that, they won't. Right? People's own internal dialogue about how worthy they are, all that stuff will keep coming back if you don't actively do it. Also, we will make mistakes sometimes, right? So you have to keep doing the active things as well to keep the ship steered in the right direction. TODD: When we make mistakes it's important that we apologize to the team. Not fakely like 'oh, I'm so sorry.' Everyone can smell fake, but if you're genuinely made a mistake because you had an emotional moment and you didn't act appropriately, you have to apologize to them as well. CHRIS: So the interesting thing as you're talking, I get a sense that this isn't something that you just read in a book and you're like, 'I'm an expert at this.' I sense that there are some really real stories behind learning what it means to be not only supporting others but to feel supported. TODD: Yes, for sure. Ken actually is super good at advice in this kind of thing, having been a leader in the past. Typically, leader of only senior people in the last two jobs. Actually, the last one I had some more junior. Infinite Red, when we first started, we had quite a few junior people, so that was a little new to me. One of the things you have to learn ...leadership is hard by the way, I just want to interject that. Leadership is very difficult, it's hard work and that's why we get the support of each other. We not only get the support of the three founders, but the entire leadership team here at Infinite Red and there's a variety of people: Gant Laborde, Shawni Danner, Jed Bartausky, Justin Huskey. It's difficult and not only are we supporting each other, we're coaching them, especially the more junior leaders on how to do it and one of the things Ken said and it's just one of the great gems of wisdom that he gives, is he goes "you have to remember you have very wide arms, when you swing them you hurt people." So you don't have the luxury to be how you were when you were as an employee. I could say things as an employee, I enjoy making people laugh, it's one of my things. I can do a lot of things as an employee that I simply can't do as a leader because when I say something it's taken much more seriously, whether I meant it or not. When I hear other managers, let's call them, say something like employees suck, it's like, 'no they don't, you suck.' Employees don't suck. That's crazy, that's like the coach of the San Francisco 49ers saying my players suck. Well, you chose the players, you're coaching the players, so they don't suck. KEN: One of the things that we do when we're working on a difficult project as a team is make sure there's an owner. One of the things that will kill any difficult project is diffuse responsibility. Partly what we're striving for is that everyone can take responsibility for something. Everyone can be like, 'I'm going to execute my part of this as skillfully as I can,' but if there's not one person who owns the whole vision, it's going to fail. Almost guaranteed. Creating an environment where it's okay for that owner to say, 'hey I need your help to get this done.' Where the culture is like, somebody needs something from you and they specifically ask you, that you try to do it. And that makes ownership less scary. One of the things that I've seen go wrong, if someone is given responsibility but no power, no ability to actually follow through on that responsibility- TODD: That happens all the time. KEN: That is the most demoralizing position, possible. TODD: That's toxic. KEN: Yeah, so that's how you kill your budding leaders by saying 'hey get this done and by the way, all these people over here have their own priorities and they're not going to help you.' That is the worst. So, assign ownership and then back them up. That's been one of the keys to getting certain things done. Chain React is a good example of that. Chain React is our conference for React Native in Portland this July 11-13. So we did it first last year and now we're doing it again this year. Shawni, who basically runs it, had ever run a conference before, had never been to a conference before, but is good at just marshaling resources and taking charge and that's a great example where she could pull on whoever she needed for help. When it came to actually knowing specifically what to do for other peoples' expertise, like we flew somebody up who was a serious foodie, to go and test the caterers, for example. JAMON: That was our team member Derek Greenberg and Derek is such a foodie and it was just a joy to watch him work on that. KEN: He had the most comprehensive report for that kind of selection process that I have ever heard. It was amazing, anyway. None of these things that we're saying are we perfect at. We're not, we don't hit this every single time and I hope that we're not saying that's the standard. What we're saying is here's our guiding star, here's what we try to do, here's how we evaluate whether we're doing the right thing or not. So this is how we nurture leadership within the team, is to say 'here's what we need you to do, and by the way, the team is your oyster.' You can go and pull in what you need in order to make this happen. **CHRIS: This is really bringing up a really interesting point now, we've got this extreme personal support but then when you add the component of leadership and helping each other out, it introduces the layer of collaboration. So how is collaboration different from extreme personal support? TODD: You can have a group of people who hate each other and they can collaborate if they're given the proper motivations. This happens all the time in corporations every day. Sadly, many people work at those corporations. So I don't think those are necessarily required for each other. I do want to digress just for one second. So Ken was saying how we try to give people in leadership positions or in a leadership role in a particular project, whatever it is. We try to do empowering stuff, but we're not perfect at all. One of the coolest things about having Ken and Jamon around is when I do something boneheaded, typically Monday-Friday, they let me know and they help me get through it and they identify it and on the flip side for whatever reason the team is pretty comfortable talking to me. It's just my personality, I talk to people a lot. And so if they have a problem with say Ken or Jamon, they'll let me know, and then I go talk to that person or we talk and try to do it in the most supportive way possible with the goal of improving that person's, how they're performing as a leader and that's awesome because we're all human so having the support. For the team it's the same way. A lot of programming, I wouldn't say design because design's a little different, we do design and development. A lot of development shops are kind of little dog eat dog, kind of situation. People can be arrogant, they can make fun of other people's work, and that kind of stuff. We really hire and try to promote a, you can be critical and explain problems, but do it in a supportive way and that can't be in a mission statement, it can't be something you announce in a meeting. They have to live it every day and especially new people, it takes them awhile to get deinstitutionalized and understand that you can make mistakes, you can put your head above the fray and it will not get chopped off. Every once in a while someone does and I have a private conversation with them and let them know how they were really not being supportive and our team's awesome, they all want to be. It's almost never malice, it's always just they miscommunicated and they didn't understand what they were doing. KEN: Well people are messy, right? That's just the nature of the beast. JAMON: This highlights one of the aspects of almost everything within Infinite Red and that's where we try to design things for iteration over perfection. So even things like support, supporting our people we are iterating on how to do that. We're trying to have a feedback loop, there has to be some level of learning from our mistakes and then continually getting better. There are some things where someone will take on a task as a group that we decide, were going to do this thing and it's actually a very difficult technical thing or it's a very difficult societal thing, where we're going to build a new AR system or something and the tools are not there and we have to build all that. So there are hard technical things that are... KEN: There are, but- JAMON: But I think you're right Ken, in the interpersonal stuff kind of always comes back to that, as far as the things that end up feeling very difficult and very hard. KEN: So just to take that, so let's take like, the Manhattan project. TODD: Why not, take it... JAMON: And of course that was the project in World War 2 where they were developing the nuclear bomb. KEN: Right, so definitely some complicated ethical angles on that one, but how do you do that? Well, you attract the world's greatest scientists and put them in one place in New Mexico, and then you give them the tools that they need to work with and you give them a goal that you can align on. In this case, win the war. TODD: Kind of like Breaking Bad. KEN: Boy, our examples ar going really dark here. (laughter) TODD: Well they brought world class scientists to New Mexico- KEN: Let's pick a better one because it still works, right? If you're not just one person sitting in a room, working on something hard. Not to take anything away from that because a lot of amazing things have come out of one person sitting down with a problem. I think that's a different question than what we work with ever, right? I think we could probably have a whole podcast on how do you recognize a good engineer for example and I think that's an interesting question but it's a little different from the question of how do we as a company work on that. Because that really is about: how do you set up an environment where people can do their best work? And how do you hold people accountable? But also make sure that they are not held back by lack of resources. And those resources can be physical, tangible but in many cases they are emotional resources or organizational resources. Especially in a software business, I think that it's exaggerated in a software business and that dynamic also is worth a whole podcast because of the dynamics of software and how they're different. Because there's nothing to buy, right? Once you have the computer, you're done. What that leaves is all these other kind of softer, squishier resources that people need to do their best work. JAMON: One example of this is an internal tool that we've been working on that is intended to increase the efficiency of certain types of tasks. It's not something that's open source at this time, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but I asked the team that was behind it why we weren't necessarily realizing some of the gains that we had anticipated to start with and interestingly, a lot of the responses were, really had nothing to do with technical issues or anything like that. It was policy related things. Some things that we were doing that were sort of handcuffing them in some ways and there were reasons behind those, there were sort of organizations reasons, strategic reasons behind some of those policies, but it allowed us to look at the end result of this difficult problem that we were trying to solve, and make some decisions based on values and trade offs that were more strategic in nature that we didn't realize were holding them back as much as they were. So that's an example where we had a hard problem and, unbeknownst to us, we were making some decisions that were making it more difficult for them. CHRIS: When does extreme personal support diverge into collaboration? Todd mentioned that you can hate the people that you're with and still collaborate, but what does successful collaboration look like? TODD: I would say successful collaboration is a multi-faceted thing. One, is the stress level of the people doing the collaborating. Two, the most obvious, is a successful work output of that collaboration. Meaning you accomplish your goals, hopefully in a creative, high quality way. And then three, from a business standpoint, that it was the return on an investment of that collaboration was good. JAMON: I think those are good kind of high level metrics that you can use. Another way to do this from a more granular level is to watch how people interact. So some people, for example me, may come into a meeting and may want to kind of expose that this other person is not doing their job or something like that and that's not a very particularly constructive way to approach this. But if you watch the successful collaborations that happen, they go into the meeting with a question and they go into the meeting, we have a challenge in front of us. How can we solve this? They get the people involved that need to be involved and don't make the meeting too big, but they make it just big enough and that's a characteristic of a good collaboration when everyone can go into it with an understanding of a problem, be able to provide their perspective and then the group can come to a conclusion. It's part of this overarching concept of psychological safety that we talk about a lot at Infinite Red that leads to better and better work. CHRIS: We've got extreme personal support, we've got collaboration, what about transparency? How critical is transparency in difficult work and in doing remote work? JAMON: One of the things about transparency that's important, or why transparency is important is this idea of trust. Because trust underlies a lot of dynamics within a company and if people feel like you're being purposefully opaque, they may feel that you're hiding something, they may feel that you don't trust them with the information, you don't trust their opinion, you don't trust ...and then when you don't have a high level of trust than a lot of other things fall apart. You don't get that collaboration, you don't get a lot of other things that you really need. So transparency is a prerequisite to building that trust. When we're able to be open and honest with our team about struggles or how we approach things or issues, were not necessarily saying wide open, everything is just hanging out there, but at the same time we do want to have a high level of transparency and ultimately we have to actually trust our team in order to do that. It can't just be something artificial, it has to be something where we actually do trust our team. Again, it's like there's not this formula where you just say do a whole bunch of transparency and everybody will trust you. No, what you have to do is do the hard work to build that trust. The transparency is a part of that and then that is something that you continue to do. There was a situation where we implemented some new business policies, business way of doing work. Todd was intimately involved with that throughout and all of us were really and some feedback we got afterward was that they didn't feel that there was quite the transparency that they had expected. Felt like a bit of betrayal of trust, and we heard that, we heard that loud and clear. We told people we heard that loud and clear and we changed the way that we implemented larger company-wide changes in that way. It can be a little difficult, just being wide open sometimes will expose you to knee jerk reactions, or a lot of different things that can sometimes bite you, but it's worth it in the interest of establishing that sort of trust. TODD: In what ways are we transparent and what ways are we not transparent? JAMON: Well one obvious way is that for most of our engineers and designers, we actually have a transparent pay scale. People actually know what other people make salary-wise. We get this feedback sometimes, someone will say, 'I think this person is leveled too low, I think they need to level up, I think they've been doing good work.' Without that level of transparency we'd never get that feedback because people wouldn't know and you could easily have a situation where someone is underpaid and we're not getting the feedback that that's the case. KEN: Chronically underpaying someone can be extremely expensive. TODD: Ironically. KEN: Because you can lose your best people that way. So we try to be super involved and see everything. Of course, we try, but that stops being scalable after a while so we have to have mechanisms in place that encourage the right information to come forward. TODD: Jamon mentioned our transparent pay scales. If your company is telling you not to talk to your co-workers about how much you make; A, it's ridiculous because you're going to do that anyways, especially with people you're close with and B, it's a red flag because why? I know why they do it because it's easier. Having a pay scale, everyone can look at a spreadsheet to see where everyone is placed and that kind of thing. It's much more challenging from our perspective because you can't just, such and such you know we want to give them more money for whatever reason, maybe a political reason or whatever, it doesn't matter. You can't just give them that because that's not the level they're at, so it's very fair and the transparency is nice but, I'm not going to go into it right now but we've had many situations where that's been difficult for us. Would've been easier just to have a normal secret pay for everyone, but not all of our team enjoys that as much as some other people. Some people really enjoy that and it also gets rid of problems like inequity between say genders, or race or anything like that because everyone knows what everyone makes. So that kind of transparency is great. Some transparency, I don't think we are transparent, not because we don't want to be, we'd love to be, I personally am a very open book person. Literally if someone asks me a question I'll answer pretty much anything. I won't answer about someone else, like if someone's told me something in confidence, or I won't talk about my wife or whatever but anything about me I'm very open. But, I know not everyone is that way and there are various reasons why but as a company, we try to be as transparent unless it's actively going to hurt people and sometimes that happens. You have to weigh hurting people against transparency sometimes. Sometimes people really, it's not good if they see how sausage is made, just because they may not have the full information. Let me give you an example. So let's say, this is hypothetical, this isn't really what's happened, lets say we're going over financials once a month and we understand what's going on and we've had lots of conversations about financials and then one month we're going to be drastically under and us founders are going to have to put money into the company to keep it rolling. That's one of those things where, if you just announce that we're doing really poorly, we're going to put money in so we can pay payroll, it can make people very nervous. Not because they're not smart enough to understand, they just haven't been sitting in those meetings and they don't understand the big picture. You can say all you want that it's totally okay, it's fine don't worry about it, but when someone's doing a bank robbery with a gun, you don't pay attention to what their wearing, you're looking at the barrel of the gun. It's just situations like that where we choose specifically not to be transparent. We default to transparency, but there are time when we choose not to be. KEN: The first time I really extensively used what I would call social media at work was at Yammer, who semi-invented that. JAMON: Ken, what was Yammer? What was the product? KEN: Yammer was, I think it began life as basically Twitter for companies and it kind of turned into Facebook for companies. It's very similar to that, so it's, you have threaded conversations and notifications and likes, but it was aimed at organizations. It's still going. They were bought by Microsoft, it still exists. Slack pretty much came in and sucked all the air out of that market, but, nevertheless, they had some pretty good norms for how you use a tool like that in business. One of them was, they had private groups, but they would always ask the question: Why is this private? Why is this conversation happening in private chat and not in a channel? Not that you couldn't have things private, because there are certainly cases where you'd want that, but those cases had to argue for themselves, whereas, the prevailing mindset before had been private by default unless you needed to collaborate and so our default is: default to open, default to open channels and we do that in Slack too. The things that we keep private are: client channels are private so that they don't have to worry that random drive-bys are coming in and looking at their stuff. Few things like HR and finance are private and anybody on the team can make as many private groups as they want for themselves. In terms of the official channels, they're as open as we can make them and that's been part of that ethos is that it's not all transparent, it's transparent by default. JAMON: But that even extends outside the company. On my Twitter I'll answer questions and I'm often quite transparent about some of the challenges that we face. This podcast being another outlet for it, where we talk about what we do. It's even outside of the company itself and I think that helps, it's a part of who we are. Todd, Ken, and I initially started on some open source software and that's the height of transparency there. CHRIS: So kind of bringing this episode to a close; What advice would you give to other founders who are looking to build a culture of doing difficult work together as a team? TODD: I would say the number one tip is just try, and keep on trying. There's no magic bullet, I don't know of any particular books you can read, every organization's different and different type people and different type jobs have different needs, but if you just keep on trying and keep on making an effort towards it, if you stumble and you have an emotional moment and you swing your arms too strongly, get back up, apologize, and keep on trying. JAMON: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. You start there and you start in a way that is, you don't have this master plan where you have to follow it exactly all the way through. You design something that has a feedback loop. Feedback loops are extremely important. You'll hear us talking about that more, very often. You start with the first thing, then you start with the next thing and you keep working at it. We've never done a podcast together, for example, so we start with the first episode and we iterate on it and we look at what we've done and we see what we like and what we don't like. We provide feedback and we provide feedback in a way that hopefully is constructive and is something that we can learn from. Todd mentioned another time when he and I collaborated on sales and how we would engineer the process. We did it that way. We started with the first sales lead and we evaluated how we did and we continue to chip away at it. Any company that is going to take on a hard problem like that, start with the first bite and see how you did, and have a feedback loop and have a way of iterating, getting better and by the end of that elephant, you're going to be pretty dang good at eating elephants. KEN: That's terrible. TODD: Yeah, we apologize to the elephants out there. KEN: Can we eat Republicans? (laughter) TODD: Can we eat people at Google? JAMON: I get the reference: elephants and GOP. TODD: I don't understand... KEN: See, this is why we had to bring Jamon on because Todd wasn't smart enough to get my jokes. (laughter) TODD: This is all going to be cut anyways so ... I know Chris. JAMON: I hope not. (laughter) TODD: We eat Republicans, really? KEN: Yeah, no you're right. They're probably tough. (laughter) TODD: It's all the wrinkles from too much makeup.

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The Story of Infinite Red

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2018 31:32

Show Links Management by Walking Around Herman Shooster, founder of Global Response, on "management by walking around" GAF-o-meter Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: Gentlemen, welcome to the first episode of Building Infinite Red, welcome. Why don't each of you take a minute to share your background and what your role is at Infinite Red? TODD WERTH: Hey, there, I'm Todd Worth, I am CEO and co-founder of Infinite Red, along with Ken and Jamon here. This is my third business. This is a traditional business, meaning it's not investor backed. My first business was also similar to this, and my middle business was a venture capital backed business. So, I went through all that fun Silicon Valley interviews with the VCs that we get to see on HBO. I've been a developer and I did some design as well for the last 22 years. So, I spent most of my time in the Bay Area working at various startups, some enterprises and that kind of stuff. KEN MILLER: I'm Ken Miller, I'm the CTO and founder. I've mostly done startups in my career. A whole long string of venture-backed startups and that's what convinced me that I wanted to do something different this time. JAMON HOLMGREN: I'm Jamon Holmgren and I'm the Chief Operating Officer here, and the other co-founder here. I started my business in 2005 and some variation of that has persisted all the way to today, obviously with the merger that we'll probably talk about at some point in this podcast with Todd and Ken. But, I've been coding since I was 12 but really professionally since then, since 2005. So, 13 years now. CHRIS: How did the three of you meet? TODD: Actually, I met Ken when he did a phone interview for me about 10 years ago. Ken was my boss at one point. We worked together at a company called Mamapedia / Mamasource. So, I met him on the phone. He asked me a bunch of very tough technical questions. That was interesting, and then we had an interview, at which he sat behind me, over my shoulder and watched me program. That wasn't uncomfortable at all. KEN: Yeah, he's never let me forget that. JAMON: And I met Todd and subsequently Ken ... I think in person we met in 2014 at a conference down in San Francisco, Fort Mason. We were all three of us were speaking at conferences about iOS development. Todd and I had kind of heard of each other, maybe done a little bit of communication at some point. TODD: We had been chatting at that point because we both ... you did digs at me, and your speech, and my speech came a couple of people later, and I digged back at you and we wouldn't have done that if we hadn't already been chatting a lot. JAMON Some friendly banter. We had kind of hit it off right away, which was kind of cool. Then we ended up a little bit later collaborating on some open source work, which was really fun. TODD: Yeah, I do believe I won that banter war, during that 2014 conference. JAMON: The jury's still out. TODD: I got more laughs. CHRIS: So, you all get together and you all meet and you all have familiarity with each other. Why merge companies and form one company? TODD: That's a great question. That was a fairly long process. Jamon and I started knowing each other pretty well in the particular tech stack that we were all in. The three of us had very popular open source libraries. JAMON: That was called RubyMotion back in the day. It was an iOS framework and since we were all Ruby developers it kind of brought us in. TODD: Correct. We worked with each other in the industry in our local little culture. Not local physically, but meaning in the RubyMotion community. And then Jamon and I just talked a lot. We chatted a lot on Slack or whatever it was at that time, and we just got to know each other pretty well. Then what happened was in an industry where you're doing client work, it's very roller coaster-ish often, which means you're either slow or you're really busy. When that happens, after a while you start looking for partners who can help shave off the high and low points. We started doing with ClearSight Studio, which is Jamon's company, and they were helping us work on some projects when we were a little too busy. JAMON: Yeah, and then we ended up competing on one project, which was ... this industry is kind of interesting because most of the time you don't end up competing directly with people you know. There's enough work to go around that people tend not to shop around a ton. But, we ended up competing head-to-head on a project and both of us agreed that we didn't really like competing against each other. We would rather work together, which was kind of cool, and what was interesting was, Todd's the glue guy here. I mean, he's a guy that kind of brought everybody in. I didn't really know Ken. I'd met him at Inspect briefly, talked to him a little bit about ... TODD: Inspect was a 2014 conference we spoke at. JAMON: Yeah, that was the one in Fort Mason there. I got to know Ken a little bit later when Todd invited me down to San Francisco. KEN: It's a little funny because of that dynamic that those two knew each other, but I was a little apprehensive when we started talking about merging. Because Todd and I had a pretty good dynamic. I was a little worried that those two would outvote me, since they were both a little more front end than me. But, we find when we disagree, it's more often Jamon and I are the ones who are in agreement. JAMON: Knowing you now Ken, I don't know how you ever agreed to the merger. TODD: Yeah, we did work well together, which mainly consists of me telling bad jokes and Ken rolling his eyes. JAMON: This is true. KEN: It's still how we work together. JAMON: Yes. TODD: That is true, and Ken is absolutely right, most often it's Ken and Jamon voting against me. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: That's fine, though. KEN: And to be clear, we always have kind of a consensus process, so it's not like we have a vote and one person walks away unhappy. It's really more like we just keep at it until we can find the place that we all agree on. JAMON: Yeah, totally. TODD: Yeah, I'm technically the CEO of the company but we're actually all three have equal power and we run the company as basically a council of elders. It's not just us three, we have some other people on the team that also help us make decisions, plus the whole team also helps us makes a lot of decisions. This system is chaotic. It's like democracy, it's messy and chaotic but it's the best thing we have. It does sometimes require us to vigorously debate each other before we get consensus, but I think it works out really well. JAMON: One of the things that I think we're gonna be able to delve into in this podcast that will be interesting to the listeners, is some of the things that we've learned being more of a council of elders, like Todd said. So, this sounds very kind of self reflective, here we're kind of talking about how we met and how we started the company. But I think it's interesting background. It kind of sets the stage for why we operate the way that we do. What has worked, what hasn't worked. I think it'll be an interesting aspect of this podcast. TODD: Yeah, there's a lot more to the story of our merge, of course. It was over a long period of time. Maybe we can talk about that more in detail at some point. CHRIS: What are the benefits of having three founders? Because there's ... oftentimes I imagine that there's one, so you have that one person view of the world, but now you have three people and you have to come to consensus. JAMON: Well, I can speak to this probably because I did run my own company as a sole founder for 10 years. And certainly being by yourself has certain advantages because you can kind of pull the trigger and say, "Okay, we're gonna do this. We're gonna shift direction. We're gonna go this direction." And you can do it very quickly. I'm not very risk averse, I just kind of like dive right into things as Todd and Ken can attest. TODD: That's another way of saying, "There's a China shop, no need to open the door, let's go through it." JAMON: Let's go right through the door. That's me. It allowed for certain really great things in my company, like being able to go from, hey, we're a Ruby on Rails shop to we do iOS apps, never having done one, but yeah, sure, we do them, and jumping right into it. Had some downsides, too. Being on a wild ride like that is very stressful to most personalities, and I had 12 people with me. And it wasn't just me. Not to mention my family. So, I can tell you that the difference, the main difference, is that, it forces me to slow down a little bit. It allows me to kind of lean on the strengths of Ken and Todd, which I've learned over the past two and a half years, three years really, they're very strong in certain areas that I'm not. Honestly, I don't know at this point what I would do without that. It's really great to be able to say, "Okay, Todd, what do you think about this particular issue, because it has to do with team." Or something like that, something he's really good at. Or Ken, for strategy and kind of understanding the deeper implications of what we're looking at doing. So, it allows you to kind of add additional strengths to the leadership, to the ownership team without necessarily adding weaknesses because you can kind of identify what those weaknesses are, and say, "Okay, this is a weakness of Jamon. Let's avoid going down that path." Let's do the things that I am good at instead. TODD: Yeah, I agree with that. Jamon also is our engine. He keeps on going and pushing and going and pushing and going, pushing. So, that's one of his main strengths that he brought. KEN: And to be honest, that was a big factor in deciding to merge. Seeing how he just has this natural energy and productivity, that Todd and I are not as much that way. So we saw it as a pretty natural complementarity. TODD: To answer your specific question, having multiple people. Basically all three of us have two other people we can't tell exactly what to do. We have to convince them to do what they do, and I'm a big believer that the best leaders are reluctant leaders, and I would consider myself this. I think I'm a pretty decent leader. I certainly work hard at it, but I don't particularly ... it's not like something I seek or particularly like per se. The reason I think reluctant leaders are better is because they don't really enjoy the power like enthusiastic leaders do. So, because of that I'm perfectly happy to do things in consensus and that kind of stuff. All three of us can and have in the past led individually. CHRIS: So, what about the challenges? You've mentioned a lot of benefits but what kind of challenges present itself when you have to convince two other people? TODD: Sometimes there's yelling. Not too often but it's happened. Jamon came up with something ... I don't know, I'm sure you didn't come up with that but Jamon's company, they did something where they have a gafo, which is give a frick... JAMON: G-A-F-O. TODD: But basically this system works really well because a lot of times if you're discussing any subject and your job is to add your opinion to it, whether you're particularly interested in that subject or not, you do. And a lot of times people argue with each other over things that one of them doesn't really care about and they're arguing as if both of them have equal degrees of their opinion. So, what we'll often do is say, "What's your gafo on this?," which is one to 10, and if I'm arguing, not arguing, but if I'm expressing my opinion on a particular subject and Jamon says "What's your gafo in this?", I'd say a two, and his is a nine, then Jamon automatically gets that. JAMON: Yeah. And what you find is people don't really abuse it. Like, most of the time you find out that two people are arguing over something that they both have a two or a three, versus once in a while you'll get a situation where both are a nine or a 10. In that case you know that you're dealing with something really important and it actually, even just saying that, like we both really, really care about this, is still an aid in doing this. It actually came from an article, I don't remember who wrote it but we can put it in the show notes, Chris. I'll give it to you after the show and we can put the link to the article in the show notes. TODD: Just to give you an example, I brought up the other day that I deserve a much, much larger salary. Now, I had a high gafo on this, about a 10. And it turns out Ken and Jamon both had a one. So, I won. And now I have twice the salary. It's a good system. JAMON: I was not informed of this event. TODD: This may or may not have happened only in my mind. I rarely can tell. CHRIS: Has there ever been a moment where the gafo on all three of you was very high? JAMON: Yes. CHRIS: And, in that case what happens? TODD: We have a very large closet where we keep the dead horse, and since we can't agree on that and there's lots of vigorous debate we bring that dead horse out and beat it regularly. Which is fine. That doesn't happen too often, to be honest, but we do have some things where it keeps coming up over and over again. KEN: We have had some pretty heated conversations, sometimes, and I'm not gonna call it a disadvantage of having three people, because I actually don't think that it is. So, I'm personally fairly risk averse, and tend to sort of make decisions cautiously. So, for me, having three people, and we can hash this out, actually makes it easier for me to make decisions with more confidence, but sort of ironically. Right? Because, having sounding boards whose perspectives I know will be different and yet exist in the context of some shared values, from my point of view that's pretty much unalloyed positive. Even if it doesn't mean that there's a few uncomfortable conversations. CHRIS: So, Ken, how do you deal with uncomfortable conversations and disagreements that inevitably happen? KEN: Well, I think the emphasis there is on relationship building and after care, as it were. We treat the tripartite relationship as one of the most important things that we can work on. So, we make a point to meet in person more regularly than the whole team meets. We have founders' meetings on Zoom several times a week. Sometimes those meetings are just kind of chatting about the news of the world or something like that. I mean, often there's plenty of business but we also make some time to just shoot the shit, as it were. That creates the container in which that happens. So, even if, in the heat of the moment, as people do, you might forget that these people are on your side. There's that container to return to, so that when the fight is over and when the sort of tempers have died down we can come back and say, "Hey, you know what? I get where you're coming from." We're all on the same side here and we can kind of take that and look through the ashes for the refined bits of ore that we wanted to take out of that conversation. That's pretty much how it always happens. JAMON: One of the other things that we do is, we know that if things are starting to get heated in Slack, because we are a remote distributed company, and we use Slack a ton, if things are starting to get heated in Slack, we're supposed to increase the bandwidth, which means essentially go into Zoom, get face to face, look each other in the eye and talk. We don't always do that. There are situations where we look back and we say, "You know what? We violated our rule there where we were supposed to go to Zoom and we didn't do it." TODD: That actually causes quite a few ... not quite a few, but I would say a majority of our intense arguments came because we didn't switch out of Slack into Zoom, which is what we use for our video calls, which I highly, highly, highly recommend over the rest of the crap out there. One show note for the audience, if you're listening, if you feel like you have to look up many of the words Ken says, don't worry. I do that all the time. JAMON: Before I met Ken, Todd told me, "Don't worry if you feel dumb. He talks like he swallowed an encyclopedia." TODD: Which is great. We love Ken just the way he is, but ... JAMON: I don't know if people know this, but Ken went to Harvard. Todd and I did not go to Harvard. TODD: I liked how you phrased that. I will now say, I am Todd, I did not go to Harvard, which places me much higher than what I actually did. CHRIS: So, how do you think the relationship that you've strived to continually build as the trio affects the greater culture of Infinite Red? TODD: I think it's paramount. When you get to a certain size, well, even in smaller, but especially when you get to a certain size, the entire team has just as much power to set the culture as we three do. Ken said it really well that basically we're like a black hole, where we kind of set the culture and we pull the team in and they orbit around and if we put in a little extra effort we can pull them in tighter to our culture, but ultimately it's not a destination. We simply pull them in a direction. So, the way we interact with each other, the way we interact with everyone else, and the way we interact, really, in public, I think completely sets the tone for everyone else. KEN: I'd say we pay more attention to emotions than your typical tech company founders. In terms of like the whole health of the organization. We talk about feelings. It comes up in the work we do in design and that sort of thing, but we certainly value intellect and litigal ability very highly, but we also will check in with, like, "Well, how does this feel to you?" Like, "How does that land?" How does it ..." right? And we value the subjective and emotional as coequal with the intellectual. JAMON: Yes. KEN: And that probably doesn't make us unique but it is a little unusual. JAMON: I think to the degree we do it, it's fairly unique and that stems out of some decisions that we made early on in this partnership. One was obviously what we talked about before, that the biggest existential threat that we face is that us three, Todd, Ken, and I, is that we would have a falling out. And then coming out of that is we have to be talking about our feelings a lot. We have to be talking about how we're interacting, we have to be thinking about it. We have to really resolve differences because if we don't, we kill the golden goose. It's gone. Beyond that, then we've also made some decisions around what kind of company we wanna be. One of the big things is we wanna be the type of company that we would wanna work at. It's an easy thing to say. It's a much harder thing to do. TODD: I think a lot of people wanna be that, but they don't actually put any effort in. I want to have the body I did when I was 24, but the amount of effort I put in, I have the body I will have when I'm 84. The short of it is tech bros need not apply. We each have different skills. I'm definitely the heart of the company. Ken's more the brains and Jamon's the muscle of the company. I would say, I don't know if you guys agree with that, but, I talk about feelings more than some people, I'm sure, like. CHRIS: So, building on that heart, mind and muscle analogy, how do you inspire and empower one another throughout the day and throughout the weeks and the months and the years? JAMON: One thing that I think is important is that we understand that we're not always going to have a high level of energy, individually as well as a founder group. We'll have periods of high energy, where we're really pushing hard on something, and then we'll have periods of time where we're kind of coasting a little bit more, and that's okay. That comes out of our decision that we wanna have a company that we would wanna work at, that we can stick around for a long time, maybe that everybody can retire at. This isn't a company that's here for the short term. TODD: I'm super proud of the fact that since we merged and became Infinite Red we've had no one leave. No one's quit. A few people we let go for various specific reasons. But, I'm super proud of that. My specialty is dealing with the team and I do something called management by walking around, which I try to say good morning to everyone. KEN: From HP, right? TODD: I don't know ... I saw this elderly gentleman talking about how he did this to his company on YouTube, and that's where I got that term, but I'm sure other people used to... we're 26 people plus, some freelancers. I try to talk to everyone at least every couple of days, if it's nothing more than just saying hey and that kind of stuff. I take great pride in that. However, what I'm not sure I'm good at is things like strategy, and Ken, as you've all noticed, talks a lot less than Jamon and I. But, when he talks about strategy, and truthfully, when he talks about anything, it's pretty gold, and I really pay attention. I know I ran a company for nine years, and I'm not particularly good at the strategy at all. So, I really wouldn't want to do, any company, this company or any company, without Ken and Jamon, to be honest. JAMON: That's an interesting point. Todd's our CEO and he doesn't feel like he has to be the strategic mind. A lot of times you think, okay, CEO, has to be like setting the course, leading the way, at the helm. But, it goes to our priorities. Our priorities are our team, and Todd's really great at that. That's our important thing. Strategy, it's a supporting thing. It's not the main thing. KEN: One of our inspirations, I remember Todd talking to me about this, was Richard Branson. He at one point said that your shareholders don't come first. Your customer doesn't come first. Your employees come first. And the reason is, it's their job to take care of everybody else. That ethos kind of starts with us, which is that we take care of each other and make sure that we're supported, right? And we take care of our employees, make sure they're supported, because they're the ones, who, at the end of the day, are taking care of the customer or not. And if the customer's taken care of, then the financial health of the company is taken care of. In some ways that's a harder way to work. It's much quicker and easier to just sort of feel the customer, okay, yeah, well, we'll do whatever you want, and then take it out on your employees. And that is a very typical way that consultant companies end up. JAMON: I think we're gonna do some more talking about that in future episodes, for sure, because that- KEN: We can bookmark that and talk it as a whole topic unto itself. JAMON: I didn't mean to cut you off on that, Ken, I just kind of wanted to make a note that that's something that's really core to who we are and- TODD: It really is. JAMON: ... and we need to do more time than we have right now, but where there's a lot of discussion that needs to happen around that. KEN: It is, but in terms of like ... I said that shared values, that container of shared values is also partly what makes this work, and that's one of those values, that taking care of your employees is never bad for business, and it's never bad for your customers. TODD: I would pile on to something Ken said. It is much more difficult. I have a lot of problems. I had a lot of problems as an employee, of leadership, and I still have a lot of problems with leadership. Some people are just literally jerks and they're just sadists, they like to abuse their power and make people miserable. But disregarding those people, in quotation marks, just disregarding those, most leaders fail just because they're just lazy leadership. They take the easy route. The easy route is to make processes and jump on people, and be what we call seagull manager, which is you fly in and you crap all over everything and you fly away. We're not perfect, we're human, we make mistakes and stuff, and sometimes our team points out mistakes and we try to take it super seriously. But, it takes a constant weekly, if not daily, effort to put your team first. It's not easy but I love it. I love our team. I consider them family, to be honest. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: Sometimes talking about clients, they have a problem dealing with clients, that can be nerveracking and I don't look forward to that. I never dread talking, having any meeting or having any conversation with any of the team. JAMON: This is also why we haven't added a lot of additional people to Infinite Red. We're 26 right now. We could add a lot of people. We've had the opportunity. We have the work. We have people in some ways beating down the door to work with Infinite Red. We're a consultancy and people wanna work with us because of our reputation. We also have a lot of developers coming to us. Every week I'm getting multiple messages saying, "Hey, do you have any openings there at Infinite Red? I'd love to work with you. I love the ethos. I love what you do." And yet, we're only 26 people. TODD: Plus some freelancers. JAMON: Plus some freelancers, for sure. Freelancers is one way that you can kind of increase your capacity without necessarily bringing on a huge commitment. That's nice but they're also very hard to find, as far as reliable ones. TODD: And it's challenging. That's not an easy route. JAMON: Right. We've had a few misses on that and ... TODD: That's another show. JAMON: It is. KEN: Yeah, that's another whole topic. JAMON: But that's why we're not much larger, is because we wanna grow very purposely and we wanna make sure that we're making the right choices along the way. KEN: We don't wanna grow any faster than our culture can absorb. TODD: Yes. KEN: I've been at enough startups, and watched them grow from small tight-knit, great culture, and then there gets this point where there's pressure from investors, usually, to grow as fast as possible. And there's a rate at which that happens, that the culture gets overwhelmed and diluted and destroyed, and you can never get it back. So, we're very, very keen to stay out of that trap and grow only as fast as the culture can absorb and as we as leaders can adapt to the increase in scale. TODD: My arms aren't very large and whipping the team all day, it really gets sore. I couldn't handle many more. In all seriousness ... I don't think I've ever been all serious ... JAMON: Never. TODD: ... but I'll try. Ken and I, when we first ... one of the things, having worked at startups, having owned startups and that kind of stuff, there's nothing against VC, venture capital based startups and investor startups. It's a different type business and it's a very specific business that works very well for certain type businesses. Ken and I enjoyed doing that for a long time. We just got a little tired of it, and we don't have an exit strategy for our company. We always say that our exit strategy is death. We also want a company where people can retire in, whether designers, developers or people in leadership, that kind of stuff. JAMON: This is really unusual, by the way. If you talk to other tech companies. TODD: Yeah, and they don't have to switch to management, which isn't moving up. It's a different job. You should be able to be a designer, developer your entire career and become a master and retire. So, long way of saying we're not going anywhere for a very long time. As far as what direction we're going in, I'll let these two talk about that. JAMON: I think that kind of flavors the decisions we're making. I'm not a huge fan of making, like, very specific targets way out in the future, because just like building software, it doesn't work very well. You're making your decisions when you have the least amount of information. The further back you can delay decisions, the better, but you really need a framework to make those decisions in. That's the important thing. So, we work on the framework. We work on how do we make decisions when opportunities arise? How do we decide whether to do something, whether to not. I think it's Steve Jobs said that one of his greatest strengths was the ability to say no, and that's important for us, too. But, like Chain React, our React Native conference we had an opportunity to create that, to make that happen. It fit our framework and we went for it. It was a success, and we have the second one coming up here in July. That's the sort of thing that I think I really focus on, is the framework through which we make decisions. We obviously have some longer term plans, some of which the team knows about, some of which not, but the main thing is that they will look at the decisions we make, and know why we're making the decisions, because of that framework. TODD: Yeah, and if the team doesn't have buy-in or they don't agree, it won't happen, because Jamon, Ken and I aren't gonna do it. JAMON: Yeah, we don't do it. KEN: Questions like this are sort of like, on this long car voyage that you're planning to take, when do you plan to turn left? Right? When the road tells us that we should turn left is the answer, right? Jamon happens to be right that it's about setting a framework, it's about having a certain set of values, it's about being prepared for certain kinds of opportunities so that when luck comes our way we can take advantage of it. But we don't have a five-year plan. We don't have a master script for where we're going, and that is very much on purpose. TODD: Well said. CHRIS: Any closing thoughts? TODD: I would say that Ken's extremely good at making very eloquent remarks on why he didn't do his homework. KEN: It's worked well for me so far. TODD: It's true. JAMON: It's actually true. TODD: That's a fact. JAMON: I think that what Ken said about our company will also apply in some ways to this podcast. We're not necessarily going to have a very specific thing that we hammer every single time that we release an episode. There will be a little bit of kind of organic turning left and turning right as we go, but we have a framework around this podcast. So, I'm hoping that the listeners got a lot of value out of this. I think that this is gonna be a lot of fun for us, as a founder group, and hopefully they'll join us for the ride here. TODD: I would also like ... the reason this podcast came into existence was Jamon was reaching out to new founders or founders that have been around it for a while or entrepreneurs or business owners, and he just said, hey, if you have any questions about that, fire it off, and a lot of people did ask Jamon, and Jamon and Ken and I would discuss it and kind of come with an answer and we'd post it on Twitter. People really seemed to enjoy that. You think you don't have too much to share, but then when you share and people give you a good response, you're like, "Oh, I do have more to share." So, this is a direct result from that, and the reason I bring it up is, I think we're gonna continue doing that, so feel free to reach out on Twitter. JAMON: My Twitter handle is @jamonholmgren. Todd's is @twerth, and Ken's is @seriousken. We'll put those in the show notes as well. TODD: Yeah, and Jamon's a great person. He's a great person to reach out to, and the three of us.

ceo founders china strategy san francisco zoom hbo harvard silicon valley ios honestly bay area steve jobs cto vc slack chief operating officer richard branson freelancers vcs rails tech companies startup founders inspect ruby on rails business challenges react native gaf jamon right because chris how chris so fort mason infinite red rubymotion todd it ken it todd yeah chain react chris any ken one

Ken Long /// It’s Fun To Be Nice and Face Blindness /// E015

Your Turn to Be Happy (Show #525/#553) | Download full MP3 from Nov 1, 2017

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 22, 2017 116:41

Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "Your Turn to Be Happy" - Your Turn to Be Happy: Show #525 from 6/14/17 Garth Stevenson - "Dawn" - Flying [Layers] Ken - "I'm sure we can do everything" Polly Draper - "There's always a problem" - thirtySomething: Season 4 Mel Harris, Ken Olin - "I've made mistakes" - thirtySomething: Season 4 Radiohead - "Daydreaming" [Layers] Bill Cosby - "Conflict" - To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With Rebecca Tilles - "Every day I miss you (live)" [Layers] Patricia Wettig - "I'll be back in a second" - thirtySomething: Season 4, episode 9 Tarot card caterer - "Party is like a child" - thirtySomething: Season 4 Nina Simone - "Feeling Good" [Loops] Tarot card caterer - "You can be right or you can be happy" - thirtySomething: Season 4 Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten - "This night will be a long night" - Gaslight [Sometimes it's hard to believe there ever was a night] Kathryn Beaumont - "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense" - Alice in Wonderland [Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't] Ken & niece Chutney - "Childhood field recording" [Get away, Kenny] Mel Harris - "You don't have to do everything exactly right" - thirtySomething: Season 4 Christine and the Queens - "Christine" [Loops] Mazzy Star - "Fade Into You" [Layers, of course] Luke Rossi - "A second's really short, it's gone" - thirtySomething: Season 4, episode 9 Nina Simone - "Feeling Good" [More loops] Christine and the Queens - "Christine" [Further loops] Chutney - "Unwrap it ('cado?)" - Childhood field recording [Avocado. (It's like a pickle?)] Ken - "It's all one thing (Right inside the sea)" Kathryn Beaumont - "Contrarywise, what it is, it wouldn't be (in my world. Oh but you would!)" - Alice in Wonderland Ken - "We're not separate from the atmosphere" [Everything that's all around is here all the time. You are your child self] Chutney - "Yayyyyy" Chutney & Ken - "Childhood field recording" W.G. Snuffy Walden - "Interview about thirtySomething music" [I was always very sensitive to my surroundings. I was hypersensitive to what they were thinking about the work I did, because I was sure they were going to find out anyway that I didn't know anything about the work I was doing.] Stan Dale - "If I do nice things for you, maybe you'll love me?" [You're trying to be a good person. You are this wonderful, sweet guy. It's not by doing anything, it's by being. Just be the best Frank you know how to be] Kathryn Beaumont - "A world of my own (Everything would be nonsense)" - Alice in Wonderland Fleetwood Mac cover - "Rhiannon" Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" Mazzy Star - "Fade Into You" [Layers continue] War On Drugs - "Thinking of a Place" Albert Brooks, Debbie Reynolds - "I represent what you had to stop" - Mother [No wonder you liked Jeff better] War On Drugs - "In Reverse" - Lost in the Dream [Loops!] Peter Horton - "Maybe there's no problem at all, and it's just your turn to be happy" - thirtySomething: Season 4 Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer - "Why should I lie? Come closer..." - Gaslight [It was a part of my life I didn't care to tell you about. They don't hang a man for that, do they?] War On Drugs - "In Reverse" - Lost in the Dream [Loops, atmospheres] Patricia Wettig, Mel Harris - "It's not a good idea to need someone who barely exists" - thirtySomething: Season 4 [Haven't you noticed I'm a missing person?] Ingrid Bergman - "He said I was going out of my mind!" - Gaslight Ken's Last Ever and Fareed Armaly - "Interviewing Ken" - July 5, 2009 Ken's Last Ever Extravaganza - "Daft Punk, Antony and the Johnsons, Chicago, Magnolia, trees, War On Drugs, a lot more" - Show #513, 11/19/16 #2 of 2: Ramu Misses You Bill Cosby - "Gorilla loop" [You get a gorilla and then the old gorilla... The skipping record that launched Ken's Last Ever over 23 years ago...] Rolling Stones - "She's A Rainbow" [Loops. See also: Terminal Sunshine] U2 - "With or Without You" [Loops. Brian Eno] Garth Stevenson - "Hourglass" - Flying Ken - "Station ID (they all go into the stew)" U2 & Brian Eno - "With or Without You" - The Joshua Tree [Loops] Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "American Girl" [Loop] Leslie Morgan Steiner - "Isolate the victim" - Domestic Violence TEDx talk [The last thing I wanted to do was leave New York (I thought you made sacrifices for your soulmate)] Peter Horton - "Maybe it's your turn to be happy" - thirtySomething: Season 4 [(Maybe there's no problem at all)] Ingrid Bergman - "This night will be a long night" - Gaslight Nina Simone - "Feeling Good" [Fish in the sea loop] Van Morrison - "Tupelo Honey" [Loops] Ken - "Atmosphere appropriate for midnight and 6pm simultaneously" Van Morrison - "Tupelo Honey" [Loops] Van Morrison - "Everyone" [Loops] Melanie Mayron - "I'm out of therapy, I'm fixed, I'm sick of these problems" - thirtySomething: Season 4 [These problems never get solved, do they? (The mother suffers from acute narcissism...) Act in spite of the problem. Everybody's got problems] Van Morrison - "Everyone" [Loops] Joseph Cotten, Ingrid Bergman - "You're slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind" - Gaslight [But why, why?] Luke Rossi - "She doesn't know what a second means" - thirtySomething: Season 4 Chutney, with Ken sneezing - "Introduced to microphone" - Childhood field recording Polly Draper - "Terminate (I just want to leave here and never come back)" - thirtySomething: Season 4 [Could we keep in touch with each other? (I think I'm doing it for the right reasons. I just realized something, I'm going to miss you. Isn't that odd?) There are no rules.] David Wingo, Michael Linnen - "Factories, skies, trains, rivers" - All the Real Girls [Loops] Walter Murch, J.S. Bach - "Changeable loop" - THX-1138 Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, David Wingo, Michael Linnen - "Kissing" - All the Real Girls Kate Winslet, Jim Carrey - "This is it, it's gonna be gone soon. What do we do? Enjoy it." - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Jon Brion - "Spotless Mind" - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [Loops, reversals, layers] Jon Brion - "Main Title" - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [Loops, reversals, layers] Bill Cosby - "Forget all about it, I never hit you" - To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With [Loops] Bill Cosby - "You fell out the bed" - To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With [Loops] David Cross, Tom Kenny - "Flag scene" - Mr. Show with Bob and David: Season 1, episode 4 [Can't we just put the flag up on a pole where no one can get to it?] Jon Brion - "Main Title" - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Ken - "How creation works (it doesn't look like perfection)" [400-minute tracks, 200-page books, 90-minute cassettes, 2 servings per container, sorted binary tree] Ken - "We fill the container" David Wingo, Michael Linnen - "Kissing music" - All the Real Girls [Loops] Vangelis - "Chariots of Fire" - Chariots of Fire [Loops] Ken Olin - "Crying" - thirtySomething: Season 4 Kevin J. O'Connor - "Why would you travel? You've never done it before!" - Equinox Lara Flynn-Boyle - "She had an opportunity to be with him once" - Equinox Tyra Ferrell - "Your whole life is about searching for one thing" - Equinox Vangelis - "Chariots of Fire" - Chariots of Fire [Loops] John Lennon - "Mother" [Loops] Ken - "Nothing more to say" John Lennon - "Mother" [Loops] Ken - "That's it (I used every last moment)" Clem Leek - "Memories of Japan" https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/75629

chicago japan childhood act war on drugs alice in wonderland antony avocado eternal sunshine my brother johnsons zooey deschanel last ever thirtysomething david wingo ken it

Your Turn to Be Happy (Show #525/#553) | Download full MP3 from Nov 1, 2017

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2017 116:41

chicago japan childhood act war on drugs alice in wonderland antony avocado eternal sunshine my brother johnsons zooey deschanel thirtysomething david wingo ken it

(Show #421) A Series of Dreams (it's a hard-knock life) | Download full MP3 from Oct 4, 2017

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2017

Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza - "A Series of Dreams (it's a hard-knock life)" - Show #421, from July 4, 2010 [Playlist/samples here] Explosions in the Sky - "Your Hand in Mine" [Loops] Ken - "I'm almost ready" Don Pedro Colley - "How shall the new environment be programmed?" - THX-1138 CocoRosie - "By Your Side" [Loops] Malcolm X - "I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy" Julie Andrews - "For every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and...snap! The job's a game!" - Mary Poppins - "Some political thing" Fleetwood Mac [Loops] Malcolm X - "Encouraging the police to hold negroes in check" Annie - "It's a hard knock life" Malcolm X - "When a criminal starts misusing me, I'm going to use whatever means necessary to get that criminal off my back." [Don't blame a cracker in Georgia for these injustices. The government is responsible for these injustices.] Bob Dylan - "A Series of Dreams" Annie - "It's A Hard-Knock Life" - Annie musical and movie soundtracks Kyle MacLachlan - "Every day, once a day, give yourself a present" - Twin Peaks Bach - "Matthew's Passion" - THX-1138 [Loops] Dr. Seuss - "Sneetches" Arvo Part - "Spiegel Im Spiegel" THX-1138 - "This is your last chance, you have nowhere to go" - THX-1138 Wayne Dyer - "We become attached...my happiness depends on those I love being what I think they should be" Wayne Dyer - "Why our relationships are not as successful as we'd like them to be..." Ken - "Dial tone" Elton John - "Tiny Dancer" [Loops] Wayne Dyer - "...is that..." Ken - "It's terrible and obvious. There are screens everywhere" Aleksandr Sokurov - "Dialog" - Russian Ark Sergei Yevtushenko - "Closing piano music" - Russian Ark Wayne Dyer - "Even as a child you take over very young" Wayne Dyer - "Don't blame your parents for what you could or couldn't do in life" Wayne Dyer - "The wake is not what drives the boat, the wake is just a trail that is left behind" - 10 Secrets Bob Dylan - "Series of Dreams" Elton John - "Tiny Dancer" [Loops] Leonard Nimoy - "There are many who are uncomfortable with what we have created, the artfully balanced atmospheres" - Star Trek TOS-The Way to Eden (Season 3 episode 20) Meg Ryan - "Who is the dog? I am the dog." - When Harry Met Sally [Loops] Shelly Duvall - "You appreciate all the pain. You always resent the cause of pain, just the necessary turmoil, by the end our means met" - Making of The Shining William Shatner - "Am I afraid of losing my job to that computer?" - Star Trek TOS-The Ultimate Computer (Season 2 episode 24, #53) Donald Sutherland - "You all know why we're here" - Little Murders Donald Sutherland - "Nothing can hurt if you do not see it as hurtful" - Little Murders Leonard Nimoy - "It is almost a biological rebellion. They regard themselves as aliens in their own world" - Star Trek TOS-The Way to Eden (Season 3 episode 20) THX-1138 - "This is your last chance, you have nowhere to go, you cannot survive outside the shell, we only want to help you" - THX-1138 Donald Sutherland - "He is at peace with himself because he tried society's way" - Little Murders Morgan Freeman - "Forget about the way it used to be, this is not a damned democracy. We are in a state of emergency and my word is law" - Lean On Me Harlan Ellison - "They've got smog over the polar ice caps, can you believe it?" - Dreams With Sharp Teeth Keith David - "The golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules" - They Live Elliott Smith - "Needle in the Hay" Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - "Southern Accents" - Southern Accents [Loops] Fridge - "Lost Time" [Loops] Keith David, Roddy Piper - "They close one more factory, we ought to take a sledge to one of their fancy foreign cars" [(You oughta have a little more patience with life.) Yeah, well I'm all out. The whole deal is like some kind of crazy game. The name ofthe game is: Make it through life. Only everyone is out for themselves and looking to do you in at the same time. You do what you can, but I'm going to do my best to blow your ass away.] Ken - "Identification with Tom Petty loops" Fridge - "Lost Time" [Loops] Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - "Southern Accents" - Southern Accents [Loops] Liposuction patient - "That's the great thing about plastic surgery: If there's something you don't like about yourself, Dr. Fisher can fix it!" - The Girl Next Door (documentary) Don Pedro Colley - "How shall the new environment be programmed?" - THX-1138 David Lee Roth - "Runnin' With the Devil (vocal track)" [I live my life like there's no tomorrow] William Shatner, DeForest Kelly - "Time for another stimulant. How long do you think you can keep taking that stuff? It'll keep me together for another 7 minutes. That's all I need." - Star Trek TOS-Immunity Syndrome Wayne Dyer - "It doesn't do you any good to look back with blame, look back with responsibility. It's never too late to have a happy childhood." Wayne Dyer - "Take responsiblity, then you don't have to spend endless hours in therapy" Wayne Dyer - "It isn't doing you any good to toss out a lot of blame. Be effective within the constraints of the relationship you are in right now." Wayne Dyer - "Even as a child, you take over very young" Wayne Dyer - "How can you get the things you would like, and not always be in conflict, and blaming someone else? Why not focus on a solution?" Boston - "Foreplay" [Loops] Donald Pleasance - "Things don't seem to make sense. Sometimes I see that things are left out, people don't see them. Sometimes a little adjustment can make all the difference. I want to do the right thing." - THX-1138 [I can start again. I can change. I can help. I just need to rest up for a little while.] Roddy Piper, Keith David - "So how you gonna make it? I deliver a hard day's work for the money. I just want the chance. It'll come. I believe in America. I follow the rules. Everybody's got their own hard times these days." THX-1138 - "Be sure to report all searches" - THX-1138 Boston - "More Than a Feeling" [Loops] Christopher Lloyd - "You must not leave this house, you must not see anybody, or talk to anybody!" - Back to the Future [Doc Brown] Dolly Parton - "Jolene" [Loops] Ken - "Identification" Kyle MacLachlan - "Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen" - Twin Peaks Elliott Smith - "Needle in the Hay" [Loops] Diane Cluck - "Beatless Wonder" - Monarcana [Loops] Live phone caller & Ken Malcolm X - "Before we go back to Africa, we must do whatever is necessary to get this criminal off our back" Live phone caller & Ken - "Am I talking to a real person? A lot of people are seeming unreal. I feel unearthly, and unearthly is good." Bach - "Matthew's Passion" - THX-1138 Live phone caller & Ken Live phone caller Live phone caller - "I'm not going to go into it" Live phone caller - "Narrating behind everyone" [What makes you an expert? Let's all hand it to 1776.] Live phone caller Alan Parsons Project - "Eye in the Sky (instrumental)" [Loops] Live phone caller - "You're doing a fine job" Live phone caller - "Am I on the air?" Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) - "Anything you do could have serious repercusions on future events" - Back the the Future Live phone caller - "Child not speaking loud enough for narrating caller" Mark Mothersbaugh - "Mothersbaugh's Canon" - Royal Tenenbaums Soundtrack [Loops] Live phone caller - "Yelling" Live phone caller - "Jersey in July makes me nuts. I must have cooler weather." Mark Mothersbaugh - "Mothersbaugh's Canon" - Royal Tenenbaums Soundtrack David Cronenberg - "But ultimately we did get a television set, and I watched it all the time" - The Directors: The Films of David Cronenberg Live phone caller - "There's a person out there who needs to go to bed" David Cronenberg - "So, I would watch until there was no more TV. They would be very tantalizing. Perhaps you wanted them to be sexual..." - The Directors: The Films of David Cronenberg David Cronenberg - "You never knew whether you were projecting your own fantasies" - The Directors: The Films of David Cronenberg Wallace Shawn - "I get to talk to people who at long last know what's important. The living make such meaningless distinctions" - Critical Care Patrick McGoohan - "This... farce... This twentieth-century Bastille that pretends to be a pocket democracy... Why don't you put us all into solitary confinement until you get what you're after and have done with it?" - The Prisoner: Episode 4 Live phone caller - "I've overeaten. That darn kid has got to go to bed. I have to announce it on the radio. Maybe I should duct tape him to the bed." Live phone caller - "Never forget that this is a free country" Ken - "Outro with Matthew's Passion from THX-1138" Tori Amos - "Frog on My Toe" http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/75192

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(Show #421) A Series of Dreams (it's a hard-knock life) | Download full MP3 from Oct 4, 2017