Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:08 Welcome to the breakout growth podcast, where Sean Ellis interviews, leaders from the world's fastest growing companies to get to the heart of what's really driving their growth. And now here's your host, Sean Ellis,
Speaker 1 00:00:24 Except so to the breakout growth podcast. My cohost, Ethan Gar, and I looked back at our key learnings from 2020. We also discuss the skills and experience we hope to gain in 20 1821.
Speaker 0 00:00:35 Now let's get started. Alrighty.
Speaker 1 00:00:47 So why don't you kick things off? You know, this, this has been an, obviously a super interesting, weird, fun tip, a roller coaster ride of a year. Why don't you start things off with sort of, uh, yeah. What, what did you find as kind of the, the, the scariest point of the year and, and how did you, how did you really navigate that?
Speaker 2 00:01:08 Yeah, you know, it's funny because I, I knew I wanted to move into this new world to start helping businesses accelerate growth, and I'd seen the success you'd had with it and what you've been doing to really help companies and how much you enjoyed it. And it was pretty lucrative for you. Um, I wanted to do that, but I wasn't expecting to do that, uh, in the heart of the pandemic. Uh, so that definitely, uh, sort of surprised me. Um, and I think, you know, when that all sort of started to happen in March, uh, March, April, I guess. Uh, I was definitely, you know, I definitely had some trepidation. I had some fear, I thought, did I do the right thing? I have a family to support. Um, but I, I actually, you know, I got really excited too because, uh, first of all, I was doing it with, uh, you know, you and I had been talking a lot and, uh, you gave me a lot of inspiration to go to just go for it and to just, you know, roll with the punches. It hasn't been easy. Um, but you know, we, you and I got involved together, uh, with, uh, online career fair right away. And I think that really helped sort of get us going, you know, it helped me kind of get, you know, believe that I can do this and do it well and really make a difference for companies. So how about you? Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1 00:02:25 Yeah, it's just interesting as you say that it really triggered for me when I made the transition to, to this time, you know, I, I made it a little bit differently where I was like six months kind of full-time with one company and then split between two companies. But I remember kind of the first time that I, that I was going in and really doing more of an advisory, um, advisory, like hands-on advisory, but it was really like knowledge transfer advisory. So I'm going to do a lot of stuff, but I want to not, I don't want to make them dependent on me. I want to be, um, kind of teaching them and setting them off in a new direction. And that was with Eventbrite. And I remember I had literally like a two day executive kickoff. I mean, there was, there were pretty small team at that point, but basically I'm going to sit down with a CEO and the rest of the team and walk them through two days of kind of like, this is what we're going to do over the next six months to really get this business on a different growth trajectory.
Speaker 1 00:03:23 And, you know, up until that point, everything I had done was, was pretty, um, you know, kinda, uh, introverted me studying data, trying stuff, and, you know, maybe, maybe helping a few people on my team more effectively do things, but this is sort of a full company transformation. And as I'm, as I'm about a block from the office, as I'm walking, I'm thinking, uh, Oh my God, I gotta call these guys and tell them I'm sick today. And I can't do this. And just, just the fear when you, when you start doing something completely different, it's, uh, it's scary. Fortunately for you, you had a bit of a roadmap with me in terms of some things that were working, but unfortunately for you, as you said, pandemic hit literally just at the same time. And so that added a lot of fear and then it probably didn't help that we basically, uh, did a bunch of pro bono work for the online career fair, which, you know, in hindsight, I don't regret that at all.
Speaker 1 00:04:20 Even, even though financially it added to the fear. I mean, I went many months without any income as did you, but I think the, um, I think that, you know, being able to being able to one from scratch launch a network effect, which online career fair was, was a network effect. And then, you know, and, and it was, you know, the, the thing that trigger for anyone who doesn't know online career fair, it was really about M it's still, still going, but it's about matching, uh, students with professionals. Like they basically, you had all of these internships that got canceled. So being able to have kind of free coaching for students about their career, it started out more general with students and then pretty quickly we saw, okay, the professionals really want to help more underserved students. And the under student underserved students really need the help because they don't have the professional contacts. And so it was something that ultimately, as we, as we did that, I felt really good about it and was excited to do that. And the, and the terrazzo team has continued to keep that rolling, but that was, that was fun to be able to get back and work with you after, after we really hadn't worked hands-on together for, uh, you know, almost 20 years.
Speaker 2 00:05:30 Yeah, I agree. It was like, it was a way for us to sort of dive into this together, really like get our hands dirty. We were, you know, you're using amplitude and we're doing all these things that we, um, we can really, uh, put our minds together and say, how do we solve problems every day? Like, how do we, how do we take our curiosity and turn that into, you know, here's a puzzle, how do we solve, how do we solve for that puzzle? Um, and it was amazing how quickly we were able to do it too. I mean, um, you know, they have a great team and I think one of the things that you and I have really talked about from the beginning is we really like working with nice people, good people. And the Toronto team was full of good people who were passionate about what they were doing. So it was really easy to feel good about what we're, you know, jumping in and trying to make a difference, especially at a time when the world was really in chaos. So I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 00:06:23 I did too. And so that was, that was a great way to kind of kick off working together was w rather than, you know, jumping in as co-hosts of, of the podcast, which we didn't really start doing together until quite a bit later, but, um, but to actually to actually have the opportunity to, to work on, you know, in my opinion, the hardest types of businesses to get going, our network effect businesses, fortunately, the coaching platform behind, uh, online career fair was something that, um, terrazzo had, had already built and had kind of been private labeling that for a long time, but launching a, uh, a business on that was, was really cool. But then, uh, you know, one of the things that, you know, it was, it was through that time that I had been working closely with Oleg on building go practice and, um, and felt my own skills developed so quickly in both product management and data, which kind of takes me back to pre 2020.
Speaker 1 00:07:18 That was one of the things that I, I told myself was that I really want to strengthen my, my data skills because I knew my data had always been critical for making good decisions, but I often relied on analysts to pull the data for me, um, anything that was beyond a pretty basic query. And so, as I looked for ways to learn that finding what Oleg had done with, with go practice, um, get definitely, I got excited about that idea of okay, a simulation based learning approach. And then I, you know, but, but I did see some holes in, in how he was doing it. And so being able to come together and work with him to make it something that, uh, for the shorter attention span English speaking markets than maybe the Russian market that he originally built it for, um, being able to, to, to build something that could really teach data. I, I got so much from that, that that was one of the first things that coming off the back of, uh, off of our time with online career fair, which was like, Ethan, you gotta, you gotta jump in and take this. And it was cool to see both of us taking that information and applying it,
Speaker 2 00:08:24 You were pretty clear. You were like, no, you have to do this. And I was, I can't, I remember at first I was like, you're S you're like, you need to dedicate like two hours a day. I was like, I don't know if I could dedicate to your, like, you need to dedicate time and get this done. And I I'm so glad I did though, because it's funny, uh, in my work at, at Toltec and with robo killer, I built a data team as part of our product marketing team from the ground up. And I, I always said like, one of the things that I sort of, I think accidentally got right, was I said, it's really important that our team isn't like this team that sits in the corner and does data, they have to be really integrated part of the team. They need to teach us the language of data.
Speaker 2 00:09:03 They need to help us evangelize it. If I could go back and do it again, I would have made my whole team take the go practice course before I hired the data team, because, uh, it would have made that language, that, that common language of data so much more powerful throughout the organization. I mean, we did. Okay. I mean, robot killer was breakout growth success, and I'm proud of it. Um, and I, you know, did you know, our data team went from, yeah, I think we had six data people by the time I moved on. And I really think that, um, it was a pivotal part of our success, but I do think what go practice can teach you is really how to not just, not just, you know, be able to interact with data people, but able to pull your own data to really access it and understand it. Um, we just, um, had that Blinkist interview with holder Sandman. He, um, I don't remember his quote exactly, but it was essentially, um, being able to access and pull your own data is, uh, is a super powering growth. Um, and I really believe that.
Speaker 1 00:10:05 Yeah. Um, and so, so one thing you don't need to regret not having put your team through go practice cause it didn't exist when you were building out that team. I think the, the idea of being able to really upskill the entire team to be really strong with data is something that I most people know that data is critical to success, but they, they put it on one small group instead of having everybody be really data-driven. And that was that, that was really cool to see how, how Blinkist has kind of baked that into their business from, from very early on.
Speaker 2 00:10:36 Yeah. I actually, I worked with a client in 2020, um, and the other successful established company, but data is really siloed within the organization. Then it is really a struggle. And what I've noticed is it slows things down. I mean, we talk about the power of rapid data-driven experimentation, the rapid part's really important. And it's really hard if the data is sitting in one person's head or one person's laptop. Um,
Speaker 1 00:11:03 I think what actually makes it really hard too, is not just not just that the data is not known, but that then individuals on the team have a different perception of reality when there is not sort of centralized data and centralized understanding. And so when it comes to making decisions and opportunities for improvement and just where to focus your energy, when everybody's coming at it from a very different understanding of the business, it's like just, just deciding where to focus becomes really hard, let alone how to call the results of an experiment.
Speaker 2 00:11:38 Yeah, absolutely. And I, and I think it doesn't diminish the need for professional data analysts and data scientists. What it does is it makes it so those people can really focus on the really difficult questions, the ones that really have to look forward and really have to use a lot of predictive modeling like that stuff that, you know, I don't expect myself to get to the point where I have all of those skills. Um, but at least I know what I don't know now. I, you know, I, I know what questions I can't answer and where I need help. And, um, and I think that would probably be my litmus test for an organization now is hire a data team when you reached the questions that you absolutely cannot answer yourself. Like yeah.
Speaker 1 00:12:22 Yeah. And start with just like, get, get your own team to a level where they can at least answer most of the questions. And with something like amplitude, where especially for earlier stage startups, the chances that an early stage startup won't qualify for the free version of amplitude is almost 0%. Like it's, I think it's 15 million user events track per month. That's in the free version. Like there's just no excuse not to have really good tracking right from the beginning. And it's not that hard to learn. So whether, whether someone does go practice or just literally studies all of the material that, that amplitude puts out, it's I, I think I, I just, I really wish I would have pushed myself earlier to get much better at running those grades. Because again, like, as you said, I think what you want is a data analyst who doesn't spend all day running queries for other people, but instead those people can run most of the queries themselves.
Speaker 1 00:13:22 And then that data analyst is, is really just doing the deep data dives to answer the really hard questions in the business. And then they're going to just add so much more value that way. The other piece that I, that I found was really interesting as I got better with data. So one of the things that both of us did in addition to working together on online career fair, both of us doing the hands-on coaching with different businesses, where we're, we're really, um, embedded in the teams and doing, doing a lot of work directly on the teams, is that when you can run your own queries, you become a lot more curious. You actually, you, I found that if I'm, if I'm relying on an analyst, I feel guilty every time I ask them to run a query because I'm, I'm just, I'm feeding busy work to them. But when I just, as easily as sending an email off, can, we can pull up amplitude or Mixpanel or whatever somebody is using and just, just pull that information that I need. It quickly leads to, gosh, if that's the fact, then, then what about this? And what about this? And you just, you get those kind of like snowball effect of curiosity and answering those question.
Speaker 2 00:14:26 Well, even just seeing how your events and attributes are organized, a lot of times the question that you would have asked of that person, when you go and look at it yourself, you realize there's other dimensions that you can add to it to get a better answer than you originally were looking for. I think if you just go to someone and say, can you run this query for me? The risk is that they will just run that query for you. What you thought at the beginning of that may not really be the answer you want. I mean, I, I, I did that, you know, I had that experience a lot where I would ask a question and I would get a number out of it. I would get 17%. But the question was, was that 17%, really the question that I needed to answer or did I just think it was the question I needed to answer?
Speaker 2 00:15:11 So I, I agree. I think it really, um, it pushes you to be more curious, it pushes you to learn more, um, and it gives you much more opportunity to actually have meaningful conversations around data with other people. And just what, you know, one interesting thing, you know, I think this is one of the benefits of doing the podcast, you know, you and I, we have some really interesting experience. You have the log-in in and event Brite experience Dropbox I had at TeleTech. I had robo killer and chop call a tape called really interesting things that we've we've done, but we still, our experience is really limited to this, you know, this pocket and it's, it's fantastic. And we try to take that into, uh, when we're helping companies, whether it's coaching or we're doing workshops, we try to bring that into it. But if that's all we brought into it, it'd be a very limited worldview. The podcast has been really great for, for me, at least I think you probably agree, uh, for really bringing all this different perspective to this. And one of the places like it just got me thinking about this is one of the really good examples was we interviewed, uh, Brian stoner of duck, duck go, and they have this fascinating data challenge. They're a privacy oriented company, which means that they don't collect user data. And yet, um, on a personal level yet they've built a fantastic data-driven organization. And I think
Speaker 1 00:16:29 Essentially their, their value proposition is a non-search. How do you, how do you use that to manage lifetime value on customers when you don't even know who's on your site,
Speaker 2 00:16:40 But yet they're competing with Google, right? And, and they've, they're doing it successfully. I mean, I'm not saying that they're, you know, they're trying to carve out their own niche. Uh, but it's really interesting, you know, you can go into a company. And I remember years ago, when we were at uproar, we had a guy who he basically was like, Oh, we don't have this data. So I can't help you. And later what I've realized is whatever data you have, you can learn from. And I think Dakota go really, that interview really solidified this idea, go to war with the weapons. You have, not the ones you wish you had. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be continuously improving and like building out the data structure, whether it's getting amplitude or another service like Mixpanel, whatever those are, those are all really important, but you probably have some answers available to you today. And you can probably do a lot of testing and experimentation with what you have. And that was a really important learning for me for 2020. Um, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:17:37 What's your hope, what are the things that are the things that I think is pretty interesting is, you know, it wasn't really until Q4 partway through Q3 that both of us, um, rolled up our sleeves and really with, with teams, like with, with a team each that, um, we're both that successful companies, the company I was with, uh, that, that I continued to do some work with is, uh, you know, a fortune 500 company, but a small division of that fortune 500 company. Um, you you've been working with a really fast growing company. I think one of the, the, the interesting parts that we both have found is like, despite all the success there, there were so many opportunities for improvement in how each of these companies were executing and where the blind spots were. What do you feel like as you look back on, on your most recent coaching experience, what, um, what was the, what was the biggest value add? What was the area where you were able to just go in and provide probably the most important contribution?
Speaker 2 00:18:40 I would say what I was able to do was get the whole team to understand and align around a process for growth that they had never really considered. Um, yeah, I started by saying, let's build a shared understanding of how growth is built, what it is, you know, it's like, and you know, you, and I always talk about how value drives growth and starting with this foundation of value drives growth. How, what does that mean in terms of product market fit? How does product market fit? How do you translate that into something tangible? Uh, we, you know, we, you and I both love the North star metric, and then just these building blocks, which you've defined really well with the startup growth pyramid, which has really expanded over the years. And I think, uh, we'll talk about, uh, the website we're launching, but I think it's, it's really, um, it's really key that you start with like this idea of how growth is built once you have that. And once you have that created, then it's all about execution, right? And I think when applying the principles of sustainable growth in a, in a manner that's tangible, let's execute on, this has really been this idea of saying, look, some things you can't, you have to do all at once. Like, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. The thought there.
Speaker 1 00:19:59 So one of the things that's interesting as you, as you jump, as you, as you say, like, okay, getting, getting everyone to align around growth and have a shared vision of growth. It's really interesting that that's been, that's been a lot of my focus on how I've worked with companies kind of coaching on a overall team level or even company level for the last few years. The project that I've been working on for the last few months is the first time in a long time where I didn't do that, where I basically, um, they just, they just didn't have the budget for it. They needed me to do kind of a, uh, a keynote that was company-wide, um, that, you know, across the entire enterprise. And, um, and then what they had left budget wise was, was really for the hands-on coaching with their new head of growth.
Speaker 1 00:20:47 And so it's been really interesting to skip that almost as an experiment itself and seeing, seeing how, how challenging it is when, when others on the team don't view growth the same way. And, um, and so, you know, it's something that I, I think we can retroactively do it. And I think, you know, part of what we had decided was I would do, I would do this coaching directly, and then they have a new budget cycle coming up in Q1 where I could go back and do, do more broad alignment, but it's, uh, it's just interesting to try to see, trying to build a growth team and process. And, and just that kind of learning experimentation machine when the rest of the company isn't necessarily on board or in this case, the rest of the business unit isn't necessarily on board it's. Um, and it's not that people fought it it's just that they, they didn't understand like how it fit and what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1 00:21:50 And so I just, you know, I, I think going forward, um, I'm not going to do coaching without that upfront, upfront set of alignment sessions. And part of it is just such a challenging year this year. I think you did a really good job with, with the client you're working with, to take what had been more of a workshop format, um, where it's like a single day, get the entire team together to align around growth and make some really critical decisions. You can't do a full day online and expect people to maintain, uh, their, their, uh, attention. So you did a good job of breaking it up into doing that over multiple days. Um, and getting people to that point where it's interesting that now you're saying that's, that's where you feel like your biggest value add was in the project.
Speaker 2 00:22:38 Yeah, but it's funny too, you know, uh, because in the beginning they, uh, they were sort of like, can we just skip right to the, you know, let's just jump into like the growth meeting and have you run that growth process and, and jump in. And I, I sort of, I pushed back on them and I said, look, if I do that, like the, my worry is that if everyone in the organization isn't aligned, it doesn't understand how growth is built. This has a, has a real possibility of not being successful. And I don't want to waste your time or your resources on something. That's not going to be effective. We really need to start with a strong foundation and build from that. I, but then seeing you go through this and do it, uh, successfully, I understand you're saying in the future, you probably wouldn't do that again.
Speaker 2 00:23:28 Um, but it has made me rethink how I can approach this and how I can maybe do it more things simultaneously, what I like about the sort of the workshop framework. And I, you know, we had run your workshop at tell tech years ago. So I had a sense of, uh, we had you run it, excuse me. So, um, I had a sense of, of, of what it was like, but actually running it and really making it this collaborative thing where it's not just, you know, a talking head at the front of the, of the classroom, it's really instruction and implementation.
Speaker 1 00:23:59 I had actually evolved quite a bit from, from when I had done it with your team where I was like CEO of a company, trying to do all CEO duties at growth hackers, and then doing some workshops on the side. Um, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't really figure out how to best do those, but yeah, I think that was, that was probably the biggest evolution that I made in the, in the, um, kind of two or three years since we had done it together, or I had done it for you guys. And, and afterwards was that I realized that I, I felt like to add the most value in a workshop I needed to be talking the whole time and, uh, and realize that that actually I needed to be facilitating. And if I'm talking more than 50% of the time, I'm doing it wrong. And it was when, when, when you can essentially instruct people how they should make a decision and then give them the opportunity to make really critical decisions as a group, that's powerful because then they own the result rather than, rather than just, you know, walk away with it.
Speaker 2 00:25:02 Yeah. It's funny. Cause you, you gave me that advice a while back, you said it should be, you should only be talking half the time. And I was like, you know, me, right. I mean, I don't shut up. Um, but forcing myself to do that, uh, I think was really powerful because at the end of the day, you know, a big part of, of, of that particular workshop was helping the team, uh, hone in on their North star metric. And if you just go in and you dictate, this is your North star metric and there's no, buy-in like, it's not going to help help a team. Right. The North star metric is one of those things like, okay, ours, like are this really specific like process oriented thing? And it's like, you do X, Y, and Z, but in North star making a North star metric valuable for an organization is all about individuals in the organization, embracing it and using it from, from a top down perspective and a bottom up perspective, people say, Hey, I'm trying to move this needle right here.
Speaker 1 00:25:56 And even understanding like prior to trying to come up with a North star metric, getting alignment on missing, and what is the PR the main value that people get from your solution? And I mean, the good news is that like, like those are pretty easy, pretty easy things to agree on. And once you agree on what's, what's the overall mission of the business, what are, what are we actually trying to achieve here? And then why do customers come back and keep coming back to use our product, then, then North star metrics a much easier conversation, because now it's just like, okay, how do we quantify progress on those things? How do we quantify how much value we're delivering or how much, uh, how much progress on the overall mission?
Speaker 2 00:26:38 I agree. I think even if you end up coming back to like, you know, let's say going into the, the, this conversation about North star metric, you have this idea that, well, it's probably monthly recurring revenue or something like whatever, or, you know, uh, monthly engaged users, whatever that, that metric is probably wouldn't be a revenue. Um, but let's say you have that in your mind. And then you have that conversation in the end. You say, actually, yeah, monthly engaged users really is our best metric. Even if you end up at the same point, having the conversation, I think will be super valuable to almost any organization because it gets people thinking, like you said about that value creation, how, how the end users experience value. I think that was a key thing for me that I really I learned this year is that value delivery to end users. It is so critical to growth, but the language that those users are using to understand your product or service is really important when you ask them like, Hey, if you were going to tell someone about this product, how would you describe it? The language they're using is probably more important than the language you're using.
Speaker 1 00:27:47 In fact, that's often how I try to figure out what businesses are doing. If I asked the CEO, what do you guys do? I'm often way more confused than before the conversation, even if I go to their website and study that. And like, I don't know what the hell these guys do, but when I asked that question, you know, have you recommended this product? How did you describe it? I can read 10 of those answers and know exactly what the business does. And so it's so interesting how people don't necessarily tap into their customer base for some of that language that, that, um, there's, there's shortcuts where it's just so much easier to, to, to build a picture of the business and how to describe it when you, when you're closely engaged with your customers.
Speaker 2 00:28:29 Yeah, for sure. Hey, you know, by the way you started with this question, like, what were you kind of worried about coming into the, this year? I kind of wanted to ask you that same question, like, as you went through this year, like, I mean, a lot changed for you as well. I mean, you are, you're, you're rolling the year before with all this international travel and, and speaking engagements, it all changed. Like what, tell me about
Speaker 1 00:28:51 I, yeah, this was, I think what was really interesting for me was that 2019 was sort of my year of figuring things out. I had, I had sold growth hackers at the end of 2018. And so now this was my opportunity to go out and figure out, okay, how can I, how what's the intersection of how I can help people? So what do they need, what do I enjoy doing and how do I, how do I earn a good living doing it? And so, um, I had finally figured that out by the end of 2019 to the point where I had a, yeah, I don't want to necessarily brag about numbers, about a Sam anyway, to the point where I had, I earned in Q4 2000, 19, several hundred thousand dollars. And over the course of that year traveled 150,000 miles around the world. And, and it basically just dialed in a system that was working really well for me.
Speaker 1 00:29:47 And then even going into the beginning of, of 2020, I continued to execute that process where I, um, I had, uh, I'd done a, kind of a full embedded, uh, with, uh, with a team in Lithuania where I, where I kind of embedded with a team and help them with a bunch of stuff and did some pre-work and some post-work with them, but just, you know, went over to Vilnius and spent time with them. But even, even in February, when I went over there, it was still like, Oh, okay, should I even be doing this trip? Should I wear a mask on this trip? So I was started still kind of early pandemic days. I'm glad I did it because it gave me a little more confidence in this year with, uh, with the earnings, um, to, to be able to kind of have, have done that in the beginning of the year.
Speaker 1 00:30:32 But, um, it was, you know, so, so for me, it was basically like this whole system that's based on face-to-face embedding with teams is dead. What do I do going forward if I'm unfortunately like, I live pretty well below my means. And, and, um, but I do have a, you know, a couple of kids, uh, in college now. And so that, you know, there's, there's definitely like financial needs that every month you go without earning is scary. And I mentioned that I, I went month after month. And part of it again, throwing ourselves into online career fair and women, we put in, we put in 12 plus hour days getting that thing going. So there was not a lot left to figure out, okay, how do I actually earn some income? And personally from like a mental health perspective, I'm glad we did that because if I was just sitting around stewing over, Oh, I can't do those things.
Speaker 1 00:31:24 Having to earn the money, I probably would have driven myself crazy. So being able to feel like we could really pour our energy into something that was providing a lot of good in the world that felt really good. And I'm proud of the work that we did there, but, um, it was wasn't until I ended up doing, um, an online workshop where I got some income from that. And then again, but I think by the time, you know, we, we launched go practice in, in, um, September we launched the kind of rebuilt go practice with that with Olig and me. Um, we did really well in sales with go practice. So if anything, like I came out of the year with like, okay, I've got actually some much more predictable revenue that does not rely on me being on the road that there's in 2019 with all that travel.
Speaker 1 00:32:11 I started to burn out quite a bit on the travel. So, um, I'm actually really looking forward to next year where I can start to do some more travel, but I might actually be able to enjoy it more. I could probably spend a little bit more time with teams and I can, I can do the parts I enjoy, but not, not necessarily running on like, uh, on like red in the 10 kilometer on things, but just, uh, but just, you know, doing it at a level where I enjoy it and complementing that with some of the education and other things that, um, kind of bring a little more sanity to mind.
Speaker 2 00:32:42 Yeah, for sure. You know, it's funny because as I, you know, I got my, my, my first client after moving on from Caltech and yeah, I got, of course that makes you feel good. You're like, okay, I have some income coming in. And then, you know, I start to, you know, believe, okay, I can start to make a living doing this, and then you get a second one. It feels good, but it's really, when you start getting the feedback from the clients that you're having an impact, we're helping them accelerate growth. I think that's where you really start to realize that's where you start to really believe like, Hey, not only can I do this, you know, this is why I'm doing this. I think both for both of us, that's been the really neat thing is to focus in on, like, I think, you know, we're always talking about like, make an impact, right?
Speaker 2 00:33:27 Like just try to come in there every day and make an impact. What can you do to, to help somebody do something better today? I think that's been like the fun thing for me. And I think it's been a really like the part of the pleasure of working together with you on this is that we have, it's like having a foil, like every day. Like if I, you know, if I have someone to bounce ideas off bouncing my, you know, my, my approach to things off of, and hopefully you feel the same way. It's, you know, we can, we can articulate the, you know, these things too, like our fears and where, you know, where we're not where we have blind spots, we can point them out to each other. Um, I think that's really important. And as we've been doing more coaching with individual clients, I think that's been really important is to really like, you know, identify those, help people understand here's the blind spot, here's the things you can do to, to address that. Uh, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:34:18 I personally, if I'm not learning all the time on a fairly steep learning curve, I go pretty crazy. So if I'm just like regurgitating stuff that I learned five years ago and not continue to push the envelope, that that just feels stale to me and not very fun. And so I, yeah, I, I fake with everything that happened in 2020. Like I, like I mentioned, like for 2019, so much of it was just dialing in, how can I, how can I add a lot of value quickly when I'm, when I'm, face-to-face embedded with companies and in big group workshops and, you know, diff different things that I was doing? I think one of the things that I really found, interestingly, the two key sources of learning in 2020 for me were actually working with Oleg. And he's a former data scientist at Facebook. The dude, these markets, you know, not quite half my age, but not far from that.
Speaker 1 00:35:14 And to say, okay, by far I've learned more from him than anyone in the last 10 years. That's pretty incredible. So he's, he's really, I mean, I think he's got a lot of knowledge on things, but the other thing that I, that I learned surprisingly a lot from, and this was part of the reason why I wanted to start the podcast was from those podcasts interviews. And, you know, one of, one of the, I think the key that came out from both the podcast interviews and working with Oleg was just this, this sort of pursuit of fit that you see that really leads to breakout growth that, you know, most, most people at this point recognize that product market fit is a pretty critical component of, of growth. If you don't have product market fit, you might be able to grow short term on some sort of tactics that are are clever, but if you're not providing real value for the customer, you're not gonna be able to drive long-term growth in the business.
Speaker 1 00:36:09 But I think what's what I've learned through these interviews and through working with, with, uh, Olag is just there, there's so many different fits you're doing like even pre product market fit it's it's problem solution fit, which I I'd heard in the past, but I think I did a, probably a much deeper dive into product market fit than I've ever done before in my life during this year. So, um, and, and I even did a couple of workshops on product market fit. So that was, that was pretty interesting. And then, but then once you have product market fit, there's other fits post-product market fit. So you, you touched on one, which is kind of like the, the, the messaging market fit like, or, or messaging solution fit. Like, how do I, how do I message this in a way that highlights the right attributes and benefits of the product that really drive the customer to experience it in the right way and attract the right types of customers. And then there's, there's, you know, the channel market fit, how do I what's what's the, what are the best channels for communicating that message to the right market? And so I think w we definitely saw it even in the last interview with, with a
Speaker 2 00:37:16 Voice bot
Speaker 1 00:37:18 Or a voice voice monitor, would you have been put out yet, but, um, you just, you see it in interview after interview of just like once they, yeah. Voicemail is a really interesting one for which I'm not sure if we'll put that out before this, but, uh, you know, being able to essentially say the exact same solution, no growth. And then when they found the right market for that solution explosive growth,
Speaker 2 00:37:45 And that was even, that was even like platform, market fit too. Right. They had mobile. Yeah. They were trying to build mobile and they, it was in the data that they found, Oh, it turns out that it's there, it's their, their, their desktop version that has all the value, all the value that's where user clicks. And that was after seven years,
Speaker 1 00:38:03 Our desktop version so much better than anything else in terms of retention. And, and, uh, and then being able to like hone in that it's this gamer market that really, really needed it. But I mean, I think that those patterns just come up again and again, which is part of the fun of studying really fast growing companies as to not just look at what does growth look like today, how are they maintaining it? But what were the different inflection points in that business that boom, like when Blinkist one big inflection point for Blinkus was okay. The idea of being able to read summaries of books is a good idea, but listen to summaries of books, boom, game changing, you know, and then, and then, so that was just like a minor product change led to major growth. And then their next big inflection point was when was when they really dialed in a kind of growth team and process. And just that, that systematic approach to growth where they executed much better, that became another growth inflection. But you just see that across these different companies of, of when you, most of the time that initial one happens at product.
Speaker 2 00:39:13 Yeah. I, I can't, I can't agree more like that fit is like this, it's this bigger thing. Uh, you know, it's great that we, you know, we've, you've always honed in, on product market fit. And then it seems like over the last year, you've really expanded out from that, you know, like sort of like the layers of the onion kind of thing. Um, and I've, you know, with my experience and background in mobile, I've really been focusing on, on fit, you know, it's, I guess it's channel market fit, but I was thinking about like how the app store market fit is sort of this connected idea as well. If you think about, I think, I think you said this once, but, you know, every app, every app is essentially a feature of your phone. So if you really have to think about product market fit is really it's, it's more than that. It's also, how are you bringing value to the app store? Because that's what drives the cycle of value? You know, it's like the more value you deliver to your end users, the more the app stores want to showcase you, right? I mean, that's why you see companies like, you know, like a Blinkist or Skillshare, uh, you know, all these companies that are really killing it in mobile, part of it is that they are producing value for the app stores and the app stores reward them with that. So I think,
Speaker 1 00:40:27 So you look at the trillion dollar businesses that are out there, um, trillion dollar plus businesses. They're not very many of them, I guess, you know, it's Google, Microsoft and Apple, and there may be another one or Amazon. Um, but it's, it's interesting when you look at both Google and Apple, they have, you know, Google was probably the first company that I really saw this, where they basically said, okay, short-term profits are less important to us than relevancy on search. And so we're not going to allow people to buy an ad on a keyword that they are not a very relevant result for. And that, that focus on value really helped to propel them in a really crowded search engine space helped to propel them to really like the, the dominant, you know, monopolistic search engine at this point. But at the same thing with Apple, as you said, I mean, Apple's featured apps and all of that, it's really, it's really, every time they're featuring an app, it's because they know it provides tremendous to an iPhone owner.
Speaker 1 00:41:35 And if it makes the iPhone more valuable than then they're getting better. Lock-in. And so, yeah, and that was, I may have communicated that to you, but for what it's worth, I really got that from old leg. That's one of the many lessons I got from all leg was that, um, you know, your, your product market fit works on a feature level as well, just as an app is a, has to have product market fit, to work with, with Apple devices, a, a feature in your product. If you don't retain usage on that feature, you do not have product market fit for that feature. So all the same process that you went to get product market fit and your overall business and retention cohorts, and the rest of it, you're doing the same thing with a feature. So it's not just, okay, you're going to have no retention of no one sees it. So you have to, you have to expose it to people. But if you look two months later, everyone who's tried, it stopped using it. That's a useless feature, get rid of it. You know, it's just really, it's an interesting, there's, there's definitely a set of principles that I think guide all of these things. And part of it is understanding those principles. And then how can you execute within those principles to maximize
Speaker 2 00:42:45 Your growth? Yeah, actually, uh, you know, in those principles of sustainable growth, I think those are, uh, that's going to be a, like a key focal point of breakout growth.net, which, uh, we're going to be launching, hopefully, maybe even before this podcast goes live. Um, we've been working on it for awhile, but I think, uh, you know, we have like a PDF that people can download with those principles. And I, I think it's, it's been great for us to really focus on those and really kind of look at what's common between companies that are successful in growth. And then, you know, there's no, there's no, there's no formula, one size fits all formula for growth. I mean, that's the thing about the podcast is every company we talked to large, small, um, they're all doing it in their own different ways. I mean, universe is like a 30 person company that's killing it.
Speaker 2 00:43:31 And then, you know, we looked at companies like V box and there, you know, 600 people or whatever, all these companies are growing in different ways, but these principles that we've identified, they apply to all of them, uh, unique in different ways. So I think that's been the fun thing about the podcast, uh, working on growth articles together, uh, and now the, the, the website that breakout growth.net website, I think it's really been fun to sort of like close the loop on all of this stuff in different ways to take these principles and, and like, I think for you and I, and so it's about like, how do you take these principles and put them into action, right. If we just, you know, say, you know, here's this, you know, this esoteric idea, it's not really useful for anyone. Well, we're trying to, you know, w what we want to do is say, what can you do with that? Like, how can we apply that? You know, I think that's the,
Speaker 1 00:44:17 So I, I want to address those principles because obviously, like we could read through, we, we, we came down to eight of them and deciding on which eight are the principles that matter, or, um, I think a, a, a challenge of what, what do you narrow it down to, but, um, rather than read through all of them, what, what, and, and rather than stating the most obvious of the principles, what do you find was the most surprising of the principles?
Speaker 2 00:44:46 The most surprising for me, uh, I think it's about building brand through building brand through experiences for me was, uh, the one, you know, like, I think on our list, it's probably like number seven, right? Like we didn't put it as the top one, but, you know, we we've talked to some really interesting companies like mirror, right. Which built this brand, you know, before they built a product kind of, you know, like before they really, uh, but what they really, what all of these companies did that, that we see real success with in growth is they really focused on the brand, the experiences, right. Getting users to experience value and experience it quickly. You go, you've referred to that as speed to value. And I think
Speaker 1 00:45:28 It is another one of our principles,
Speaker 2 00:45:30 But, but yeah, if you, um, getting people to actually engage in experiences is a great way to grow your product because when people love your product, they talk about it. I mean, I was talking about with robo killer answer bots, we used to, I kind of, I remember you calling me up and being like, you have to hear what the telemarketer did with our answer, with my answer bot. And I was like, Oh, if Sean talking to me about that, he's talking about his friends, his other friends about it. That's, what's growing this business. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1 00:46:05 Right. So, so I think one caveat on the build brand through experiences is that that particularly applies to digital experiences that, um, so mirror is an interesting one in that, like, you, can't just sort of randomly have an experience with mirror. You're, you're not going to really experience it until you tell you, take out $1,500 and then you experience it. And so they did do kind of more traditional branding before they launched that. But I think, you know, withdraw Dropbox was really my aha moment on that bill brand through experiences, which was, we did not focus on building a brand at all. We did focus on, you know, brand consistency and, and, and a brand look and feel. So some of the things that are associated with brand, but we spent the majority of our time of just, how do we, how do we cost-effectively acquire and retain customers?
Speaker 1 00:47:02 And it was by building a machine that could get to millions of customers very quickly, where, where it was not only cost-effective, it was, you know, up until we did paid referrals, it was almost all just organic, viral driven, but to be able to take a product like Dropbox, that, um, you know, I think within one year of launching it, I went to, I went, uh, Japan and I, you know, in my mind, Dropbox was still this kind of pretty small thing. Like I, I had just left log me in that had filed for an IPO, the business you and I worked on initially uproar had, had gone public on NASDAQ before being acquired. Um, so I've been with these businesses that seem big, you know, Dropbox to me still, still seemed like it was just getting going. And, you know, when I was presenting to this group in Japan, they asked, uh, okay, well list.
Speaker 1 00:47:57 Some of the businesses you've worked with. So I list the ones I expect them to know and, you know, crickets in the room. And then, and then I mentioned Dropbox on the offhand that maybe they would know that one and everyone, Oh, Dropbox, they were just so excited about it. And it, just, to me, it just showed that when you get this organic word of mouth engine, based on a great experience, that solves an important problem and does it in an elegant way that that's just so much more powerful than trying to spend money and break through the thousands of advertisements people see on a daily basis and trying to say, okay, this is the brand and the brand awareness that we're going to build by breaking through that on a little startup budget would be impossible, but to have this kind of worldwide brand spread like wildfire, usually it's freemium digital products that can leverage and take advantage of that. But it's, I agree. That's a surprising one, but a really powerful one in terms of building a super valuable business.
Speaker 2 00:48:55 Yeah. And it's especially like, as we've talked to a lot of, uh, companies recently, we've, we've heard like how paid, you know, paid acquisition has really been a strong driving force for a lot of these. And it's not to say that, like, you know, we're anti paid acquisition, but I think you and I both believe that the best kind of paid acquisition is paid acquisition that supports a, you know, uh, a viral model of growth, you know, where people are excited about. I mean, of course that's dependent on the kind of business you're in there, you know, but, um, when you can get the, your viral engine going where people are becoming raving fans of your product, it makes everything easier. You know, it just people, you know, when people light up when the, at the, at the sound of your, your product, it's not because you put out a TV commercial, usually it's because they know what that product is. Right. They know that that product brings value in their lives. It's made their lives materially better, and they want it
Speaker 1 00:49:51 For anyone who's listening and kind of thinking, well, of course, Dropbox is going to spread virally. It's, uh, you know, you're, you're sharing files, you're setting up collaborative folders like that. My product's not like that. What I can tell you is that every business I've ever worked on, like log me in was a very sort of individual experience. Um, eventually they added join me, which, which was a shared experience, but log man was really, um, I'm remote, controlling my own computer, but despite spending millions and millions of dollars profitably with a very fast payback, our number one channel by far was word of mouth. Like 80% plus of our new customers were coming in through recommendation from really satisfied customers. And there was no incentive tied to that. So to me, it is, you know, and, and, and again, I think the reason is because we had a free version of log me and they don't have it anymore, but it was, it was a really powerful engine for a long time that when you have something that's truly valuable and it's free, you're going to tell people about it.
Speaker 1 00:50:52 And so I think, you know, it doesn't have to be only a free product. I, you know, I've definitely spread the word about paid products and like mere being a good example of that. Um, but you know, at the, at the end of the day, it's, if you, if you can, and the, and that's like, I, I think one of the big learnings that you had told me about Nate, maybe you've referenced it on here, but for you, it's just like, you know, and again, it's maybe not a new learning, but it's like just a reminder of how important it is. It's that value sits in the middle of that growth engine. And part of that is that value is what leads to that retention. If I don't, if I don't provide something that's extremely important and valuable to people, they're not going to come back and keep using it. And so I'm not going to be able to grow over time if I can't retain people value is what unlocks that word of mouth speed. The value means you're going to have a lot more people that are part of that engine. So, so value really drives a lot of that, for sure.
Speaker 2 00:51:48 Yeah. And I think, I think, like I said, all of these principles sort of, they roll around, you know, they, they revolve around that, that concept, you know? Um, but, but yeah, I think, you know, ultimately, uh, we, that, I mean, that's been the thing that as I've been coaching, as I've been training, you know, doing these trainings, that's the thing I've really focused on is let's really deeply understand how our users experience value let's and then let's just work concentric circles from there to really build this engine of growth around it. And then of course, there's the nuts and bolts of how do you run experiments quickly? How do you do these, you know, how do you make sure the team is cross-functionally aligned all that stuff is built on there on top of that, but ultimately you and I haven't had, haven't seen a business yet didn't start off with great product market fit, and that was built on great value.
Speaker 1 00:52:46 Right, right. And so, yeah, like one of the things I think we both do when we're coaching is, is, uh, how do you, how do you get a team building that rhythm of learning and experimentation? So that kind of test driven learning model, but that test remote learning model is pointless. If, if you don't have a really firm grasp on what is the value you're providing, who needs it, why do they need it? What's the untapped part of the market. That's a, that's a big theme from, from go practice, sort of like, where are people coming from that are going to become your customers? So a lot of times people think of the direct competitors, but, you know, for, for a company like Eventbrite, it was spreadsheets, you know, so, so much of it was just like, we were getting event organizers who had previously been just managing their lists on a spreadsheet where now we could not only help them manage their lists, but we can help them sell more tickets. And then you, you build value on top of that, that core need, but, you know, in the beginning, for sure, it was, it was spreadsheets and Dropbox, it was thumb drives, you know, as people who, you know, they're, they're, they're carrying around a thumb drive.
Speaker 2 00:53:53 Yeah. How do people solve this problem today? It may be with a competitor, but like, especially like, you know, in mobile, once people download an app, they don't usually go search for a bunch of other apps. Right. So it's really like, you know, understand,
Speaker 1 00:54:05 Well, it is once they download an app more likely than not, they try it once they never try it again. And it just, you know, I have more apps than I can imagine on my phone and I use 5% of them. And so you still, yeah, you don't have that like competitive that they're not going to download five apps and figure out, which is the best it's, it's really that speed, the value that we talked about and that speed to actually relevancy and mattering and, and, uh,
Speaker 2 00:54:33 And that starts with like, you know, that starts with, how does the, you know, discoverability, how did people find it? How did you know that? Did they hear about it from a friend? What's the message. Yeah. Cause I always think of like this promise continuum, right? Like you have, you ma you make a promise to your user. If it's an ad, the user probably has some skepticism. If it's their best friend telling them, they probably have less. I, that was a great quote, I think, from the TransferWise, uh, interview where he said, we had a lot of trouble getting people to trust us. We had very little trouble getting people to trust their friends, you know? So, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:55:07 Exactly. So when you, when you think about 20, 21, what are, what are, uh, what are some things that you're looking forward to? Like what, uh, do you have any specific learning goals around 2021?
Speaker 2 00:55:18 Yeah, I think I want to continue this journey with data. I want to continue sharpening my data skills, but it's really now about really helping team using the data, that skills that I've learned through go practice and these other things to really help teams apply that in meaningful ways. So I want to learn how to help teams apply that more effectively. Um, and I, you know, on the mobile side, just, you know, I'm always curious and I'm always trying to learn. I want to, you know, even deeper understanding of not just, you know, ASO essay at how like, but really how all these things play together. There's so many moving parts. Um, and then
Speaker 1 00:55:52 You've even talked about some of the new challenges that you're expecting in mobile. And, you know, I think, I think with all of these things that said, like, who can figure out first, how to overcome the new emerging challenges and a channel and a, whatever it might be becomes becomes a really valuable skill to share with others.
Speaker 2 00:56:13 Yeah. And absolutely. And then, uh, finally I think, uh, as I'm helping teams, it's organizational process is really critical. So I think that's one place where I just, I keep learning from, from the podcast interviews. There's so many different ways to skin the cat, how to, how to get teams to work. Cross-functionally I want to really dial in my skills there and just keep getting better and better at that. So I can really help teams, uh, apply those correctly in, in their, in their specific situation. How about you? I know we're running out of time here, but what are the learning goals for you?
Speaker 1 00:56:48 Yeah, so I think, um, you know, obviously pretty similar to what you went through, but yeah, I it's growth is just such an interesting, you know, there, there's definitely the very tactical important side of growth. Like, you know, being able to, being able to get really deep into understanding Google for both like a paid and a, an organic level, like all of it's a moving target all the time. And so whether it's whether it's Facebook and I bring up Facebook and Google, because those are, you know, if I'm working with a company that has, has a lot of people already, those, those are really some of the only channels that can provide a meaningful flow of people that, that really matter. So continuing to, to stay sharp and develop those, like just very tactical skills. Um, but at the same time, you know, that, I think one of the things I've really enjoyed with the podcast is the growth interviews that we do with CEOs.
Speaker 1 00:57:43 Cause we, we, you know, w we cover all the kind of key stakeholders in growth. We've had great product manager, C uh, product manager conversations. We've had great heads of growth, heads of marketing, CMOs, um, conversations, but then the CEO conversations often, I think one of the, if I, if I sort of just thinking out loud of some of the themes that I've seen, I think that the CEOs in the really fast growing companies are definitely not saying, Oh, I need to hire a great head of growth. Those CEOs are often more talented with growth than most heads of growth. Like they, they may also be complimented by a even more talented head of growth, but they're not abdicating growth to someone else. They're essentially saying the value of this business and the impact of this business is our ability to cost-effectively reach the people who need this and get it into a lot of their hands while continuing to make the product better, make it easier and more accessible to get started with it.
Speaker 1 00:58:47 And there are so many moving parts to that, that a CEO who truly understands holistically how the business grows and how the business provides value can, can really help the team coordinate and build a, uh, a snowball effect of, of growth. I don't, I guess, snowballs go downhill. We want growth to go up. So maybe, Hey, uh, a rocket ship of active growth, but, but something that essentially builds, um, builds momentum behind all of that knowledge. And so I, and, and it's not just like super seasoned CEO. So like even looking back my career. I remember when I was working with lookout in the super early days, having a CEO at lookout who was in his mid twenties, and I had already helped take two companies public at that point had just come off of bringing Dropbox to market and Eventbrite. And so I had this track record where he, you would think he would just say, okay, whatever you say, Sean, we, I trust that we're going to do it, but he would, he would educate himself and go deep enough with things where he would literally question me on things and keep me on my toes and make me like, okay, I'm not going to be able to bullshit this guy.
Speaker 1 00:59:58 And half-ass anything I need to, I need to literally make sure that I've done all the research that I'm bringing the right answers to the table, cause he's going to call me out on it. And I ended up respecting him a ton for that. And I, and I think that's what the best CEOs do that they're strong enough in all areas that they can really coordinate the parts of a really effective growth machine. So that's, I want to spend a lot more time this year, looking at both that top level, what is a really successful gross CEO look like? And at the same time, not remove myself from the day to day, roll up your sleeves, try channels. How do you, how do you, how do you push the envelope within a channel and everywhere in between? So essentially I want to learn everything from everyone, but
Speaker 2 01:00:43 I'm with I'm with you. And I, uh, uh, what I can say is I'm really looking forward to, uh, continuing on this journey with you. It's been, uh, it's been awesome for me to, to join you on the breakout growth podcast I've been sort of, yeah, I think I was your first interview for it, but, uh, you know, I've been working behind the scenes, we've done some growth studies and stuff together from it, but, uh, I think the more, the more I have participated with you on it. Um, and now as we're building out breakout growth.net, um, it's been just an absolute, incredible year of learning. And I can't can't imagine what the next year is going to bring. So I'm excited to bring our, our listeners on the journey with us to, um, you know, they, we really, we need them to help us, you know, tell us who we should be interviewing what we should be learning, like help us, help us, you know, we we're here. Our goal is to help, help teams grow. Um, but we do it by working with everybody to do it.
Speaker 1 01:01:38 And that's, and that's one of the things I'm excited about having actually a web presence beyond the, beyond the podcast where we can hopefully build that feedback loop a little bit more where people can say, I really love this interview. This is why I didn't get much value from this interview. So the more that we can kind of build that feedback loop, we can, we can hone in on, on more valuable interviews. The other thing that, um, I want to get back to doing, I did it a lot in the beginning was I was really deliberate about having a set of growth people and CEOs that were really, um, you know, brought in types of experiences. So more women CEOs and heads of growth, more minority, it just, you know, kind of particularly tech is so by men and, uh, you know, white men. So being able to get it,
Speaker 2 01:02:25 No
Speaker 1 01:02:26 Is anything wrong with that? Cause I'd be throwing us under the bus on it, but just making sure that we hear the stories of, of people from, from all, um, you know, there is something wrong for it being dominated, but, but essentially, um, that, uh, you know, D doing more to, to basically bring some of those inspirational stories out, because I think a lot of times whether it's fundraising or others, that, um, you have to overcome some additional challenges when you don't fit the traditional mold of, of tech head of growth or tech CEO. And, um, and so being able to hear those stories, there's probably more interesting learning there. So it's, um, you know, the more we can tap the audience to help send those stories, but, you know, in all cases we want to get the really fast growing companies and, um, but the people behind those companies, uh, if we can have more diversity in those stories, um, I think so much of this year was literally just trying to, trying to keep our heads above water with a lot of things. Um, but going, going forward, I want to make sure that we, we continue to broaden the types of stories, but then get that feedback of where where's the real value coming from so that we can, we can get, uh, a lot of the right types of,
Speaker 2 01:03:34 Yeah, I like to, to do that as well. I think we've, we've had some really great guests and, uh, some diverse guests, but I think we can, we can do more there and we should really continue to try because we've gotten some of the best learnings from some, some of those stories. So, um,
Speaker 1 01:03:49 And the other thing that I did in the beginning, as I mentioned, I did so much time on the road last in 2019. So in the early parts of the, uh, the podcast, I actually did a lot of face-to-face interviews live on the road. And so, um, I think those, yeah, there's this connection that happens. Face-to-face, that's, that's better than, than over zoom or, you know, the internet. And so being able to, as I, as I get back on the road in 2019, uh, I, I think I've gotten some pretty good representation or we, we have of, of people from different parts. So we don't have too much Asia at this point, but a lot of European companies, Australian companies, uh, and as well as, uh, us companies, but get more South American and, uh, and even, you know, there's gotta be some great African growth stories and, and Asian growth stories. So, um, I think there's, there's just, there's so many cool learnings around the world that as long as, uh, as long as we, we are constantly going after the best learning out there, I, I'm going to be a pretty happy guy that continues to push the envelope for me, but, um, fun, fun journey to be sharing with you, Ethan. And, uh, and for everyone tuning in fund to fund, to be sharing the journey with you as well, and looking forward to more interaction on breakout growth.net as that site becomes available. Thanks everyone.
Speaker 0 01:05:13 Thanks for listening to the breakout growth podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform and while you're at it subscribe. So you never miss a show until next week.
