Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Welcome to the breakout growth podcast where Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr interview leaders from the world's fastest growing companies to get to the heart of what's really driving their growth. And now here are your host, Sean Ellis and Ethan Gar
Speaker 2 00:00:26 In this week's episode of the breakout growth podcast, Ethan Gar and I chat with Meyer Gupta. If you are a regular listener, you'll remember a great conversation I had with Meyer a couple of years ago when he was leading growth at freshly. Now he is the chief marketing and strategy officer at Ginette. And with his broad experience, striving growth, we were really excited to reconnect. If you don't know Gnet itself, then you probably know at least some of the newspapers in its portfolio, which include the USA today network and literally thousands of other weekly and daily publications. This industry was massively disrupted by the advent of the, and continues to change rapidly in the face of digital technologies. And Meyer is really facing this challenge head on and guiding the company as it shifts from its legacy media roots in con into a content subscription business for the future. So, Ethan, what do you think our audience will gain from this discussion?
Speaker 3 00:01:22 Well, I think if the last few more hunts and probably the last few years have taught us anything, it's how much and how quickly the world around this can change. And I think this conversation is really instructive because you and I always really wanna understand how fast growing companies approach and drive growth in that state of constant change. In our last full episode, we spoke to or can who founded apps, flyer? And we talked about the change. He and his team had to overcome one, an apple changed its privacy rules and our conversation with mayor, I think offers just another angle on that same theme. Ultimately, I think mayor's success from his days at Spotify and freshly, and now to up to his work at Ginette, it really stems from his customer obsessed approach to growth. So you may not be leading a 10,000 person person company like he is, but Ooma definitely you're gonna have to deal with change around you. That's where I think the value in this episode lies.
Speaker 2 00:02:10 Yeah, definitely. You Meyer really seems to have a talent for understanding the nuances of product market fit for each of the businesses that he works on. And his superpower seems to lie in using that understanding to drive deep alignment across the so in G's case, that's pretty complex where they have a shrinking, but still significant legacy audience that reads newspapers in print and then a new generation that consumes most of its content in digital formats. Then on top of, uh, the challenges of leading in diverse markets spread across the country, the new opportunities Ettes wants to attack in sports and gaming. And certainly you can see how someone like Myers is gonna have his hands full, but I like how he simplifies things and just breaks those challenges and opportunities into digestible chunks. It, it makes everything feel really actionable.
Speaker 3 00:03:03 Yeah. You know, Sean, I always worry that our listeners are gonna see a name like Myers or a company like Ginette and think that's just another world for me, you know, I I'm gonna start up and I'm, you know, it's these learnings aren't gonna apply, but what seems to be consistent whenever we speak to leaders who are driving breakout growth, it's that they're all really good at articulating and building on fundamentals and those fundamentals don't change they're applicable at any size.
Speaker 2 00:03:26 Yeah, for sure. He's hammering home things like the importance of data experimentation and speed. Uh, and he's doing it in context of the north star metric. So accelerating that north star metric. So that's, that's something regardless us of your size of your business. Those are the things that matter. Yeah. And yes, he's integrating them into cross-functional pods and other systems that larger companies tend to employ, but the foundation is the same really at any scale.
Speaker 3 00:03:52 Yeah. You know, I don't wanna give away too much, but this was an absolutely awesome conversation. I think our audience is gonna really enjoy it. So should we jump in with mayor Gupta, chief marketing and strategy officer at Ette?
Speaker 2 00:04:03 Absolutely. There's a reason we had Meyer back is because I loved his previous, uh, interview and, and this one, um, just builds on that. He's a fantastic guy. So let's yeah. Let's dive in
Speaker 3 00:04:13 Bonafide rock star
Speaker 0 00:04:15 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:04:25 Hey, Meyer. Welcome to the breakout growth podcast.
Speaker 4 00:04:27 Thanks John. Thank you for having me work again.
Speaker 2 00:04:30 Yeah. And maybe I should say welcome back. But, uh, before, before we go into that, um, I should also welcome my or, or, uh, say Hey to my co-host Ethan, Gar. Uh, Hey Ethan.
Speaker 3 00:04:40 Hey Sean. Hey mayor. Uh, it's good to be here with both of you.
Speaker 4 00:04:44 Likewise. Great to meet you as well, Ethan
Speaker 3 00:04:46 As well. Thanks.
Speaker 2 00:04:48 Yeah. So, um, as I was just saying that the Meyer's been, did you say Meyer or mayor? <laugh> got me get me thinking
Speaker 4 00:04:56 I've actually forgotten the correct.
Speaker 2 00:05:01 Anything else
Speaker 4 00:05:02 In, in Indian homes, uh, you know, your, your, uh, official first name isn't used as much.
Speaker 2 00:05:07 Okay. Gotcha.
Speaker 4 00:05:08 But I would say MOU.
Speaker 2 00:05:10 Okay.
Speaker 4 00:05:10 Pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:05:11 Perfect. Okay. <laugh> um, so, uh, yeah, last time you were on your were one of my very first guests. When I, when I started the podcast, it's still one of my favorite episodes you were at freshly at the time, uh, before that you had been at Spotify leading, uh, growth and marketing. And so just have an awesome background. Now you're at Gannet and, uh, I think people know a lot of the brands that Gannet has, but maybe they don't know that that Gnet owns those brands. So can you, uh, and even correct me there, is it Gnet or Gnet or <laugh> okay. So it is
Speaker 4 00:05:44 Which one we, we call it Gnet
Speaker 2 00:05:47 Gnet there you go. See, uh,
Speaker 4 00:05:48 Yes, the, the us today network, because, uh, you know, one of the most iconic brands of course in us today, but also many local publications around 250 local publications, like Detroit free press ending star, uh, and so on. But yeah, some it's been, uh, around three years or so Sean, but, uh, it feels like 30 years worth of change has happen in those three years and sure. Uh, it's it's happening at a great pace, but, um, yes, the journey has, has been fantastic. And, you know, I, I often look, look back and I feel a lot of it has been accidental or coincidental, uh, but Spotify, freshly, and here at Ette, which the way I would think about what we are doing or what Ette is all about is in two ways. One what Ette has been for a hundred years, uh, as, uh, legacy media business, which typically has been driven by traffic and eyeballs and impressions.
Speaker 4 00:06:44 That's what media has always been about where the core product is audience attention, to where we are going now, uh, as a content subscription platform, uh, which for the first time is obsessed with customer value where the core product is no longer audience attention, but content and content that centers around journalism, but no longer limited to it. So last year, for instance, we've diversified our portfolio. We've gotten big time into sports, into petting. We are exploring into gaming, but then the future will unlock many other content verticals. And, you know, when I was, I sat on the board of Gnet for a couple of years, which is how I got the exposure to the opportunity and what we, what the possibilities were. And I often think about ourself as the Netflix of nonfiction content, um, because we want to be when something happens in your world, uh, you know, either in your local or community or globally as, as, uh, we know some things are happening right now, we want to be the destination, uh, that you believe is, can be trusted. It's unbiased, uh, that bring facts to the table, uh, that allows you to create your own opinion because there's a lot of opinionated, uh, destinations today that unfortunately creates a lot of chaos in society. So that is what we believe our mission is. But the business model is fundamentally changing from an advertising led business model to a subscription led business model, which is more direct to consumer.
Speaker 3 00:08:16 That's interesting. And when you looking back from, when you first spoke with Sean, uh, your role at freshly, and now this role in Spotify, um, are the, are there a lot of similarities between the roles or is it completely different?
Speaker 4 00:08:31 <laugh> um, I think it's both, it's both the, um, there are many differences for sure. When you work in an organization like a freshly and then a connect, uh, Spotify and freshly were born in the last decade or so, you know, where you have a lot of likeminded people, people who have been born and grown up in a world that is natively digital. So you never even hear the word digital as such, uh, because there is nothing else, um, you know, speed and data experimentation, um, the feel lessness towards failure, uh, the appetite to take risk. These are all very natural DNAs that you will find in organizations like Spotify, freshly, and many more, you know, even Dropbox, I'm sure. Um, you know, back in the Dayshaun. Um, and, uh, and the fact that there is a constant state of paranoia to self disrupt because you believe that there is the only much you have is your ability to move faster than the competition, right?
Speaker 4 00:09:30 So you're not, you don't think that you've proven a product of market fit and you stay there, you that your product market fit is temporary. It's not, you know, it's not permanent, which means that you have to constantly evolve yourself because the consumer habits and behaviors and the ecosystem is evolving so fast. Now, when you work in an organization like connect that us and today network, I think there are two dimensions of differences you find. Um, one is the fact that a legacy media business, the function of marketing just has not existed historically. And that is not just us. You look at Facebook Facebook's first CMO was when Antonio joined and now of course, uh, you know, they have a new CMO after Antonio, but those, those media led businesses have not needed marketing way to direct to consumer businesses have because their content becomes such an organic magnetic pull.
Speaker 4 00:10:23 So at cannet in our cross our network, we bring 200 million unique human beings to our network. Every month, transfer that into amount of paid media. Somebody would have to spend to drive awareness to bring that kind of organically over and over again. So that's a big difference historically that has not been needed. So now marketing at Gnet is all about the three fly deals, which you will see in consumer brands or tech brands, which is grow the brand, grow the user base, grow the user value. And that mantra for me has not gone away because, uh, I feel that those three flywheels and the intersection of those flywheels is the formula for sustainable growth. Of course, underneath that is a lot of data, a lot of science, a lot of agility, experiments, speed, et cetera. So I would say if I have to take a bunch of things from the Spotifys and the fresh leads, it will be all of that. And if there is one thing I could inject into other startups, like freshly that are growing will be that long term commitment towards the mission and the purpose, because that tends to go away. When you are scaling from one to end, when you're trying to get to escape velocity, because your pure growth comes the purpose, as opposed to weigh your why, which is what led you to create that idea and start the company itself.
Speaker 3 00:11:46 You know, it's interesting. You said that, I think it was you, like, I think it was you in the interview with Sean, um, for the breakout growth podcast, when you're part of freshly, I think you walked us through where you said, you know, at first, when you start, you have the mission and everything is, is easy. And as you get bigger and bigger, you know, people join for different reasons and eventually, um, you know, you have to, it's your job to, to make sure that the mission stays in focus. So it's not, I, I think that was you. And, uh, I hope, I hope I'm quoting you. Great. <laugh> um, but, um, but it's, it's interesting, um, that you're bringing that back is sort of the core thing that you bring back into, um, those experiences now that you've had this Che genetic experience, which is, uh, as you said, largely largely different, but has some importance in life.
Speaker 4 00:12:34 Yes, no question Ethan. And I feel if COVID has taught all of us one thing over that two year period, and now let's say it's a little bit towards the fag end, hopefully of that global crisis, but two years back, if that taught all of us, one thing is that this is a consumer led era where you can drive short term growth. You can, can do a lot of hacks. Um, you can invest so much in performance marketing, lower for build great products, but at the end, your obsession with customer value, your obsession with your purpose and mission, because especially today's consumers, the younger generation, the, the gen Zs, they are far so much more consensus. They care about your, why they care about the impact to the environment and the universe and why you exist just as much as they care about the functional value you provide to them and startups. And, and COVID showed that the startups who stuck around with that are the ones who actually penetrated through are still growing and the ones who didn't have it actually struggled during that time.
Speaker 2 00:13:38 Yeah. Yeah. Obviously it, it depends somewhat on the, on the categories that they were in. Some, some categories helped a lot, but I definitely found, uh, that, you know, through, especially through a lot of the interviews that I did, uh, just as people were trying to adjust to it, uh, those that had a really strong, wrong sense of mission, we're able to find creative ways to deliver on that mission and to accelerate that mission while others were like a deer in headlights and, and just, just sort of like, oh, the numbers are dropping here, whackamole they just, yeah. They lost the, they lost kind of that, that sense of purpose. Um, so I want, I wanna take it back, uh, a little bit. So one of the things that's really interesting is, um, for, at least for me personally, I started my career in print media.
Speaker 2 00:14:23 Um, I was, uh, selling advertising for business journals across central Europe. And, um, I, so I've seen, and maybe paid a little more attention over the years to kind of the blood back that has happened in imprint media, just with, with the Dawn of the internet and, and kind of the, the news spreading through a lot of different sources. And so I think just to touch on one of the things you talked about, like product market fit is not a permanent state product market fit is, is definitely fluid. And even as you were introducing, Gnet, you, you were talking about, um, you know, we we've, we've got this, this sports piece here and we've got, you know, there, there's, there's a lot of different parts to the, to the business than just that, that traditional, um, core print media yet at the same time, it's a huge asset in the brand that's there and the loyalty that's there and, you know, USA today, I think in particular has such a, an accessible brand where there's, there's just a lot of good visualizations with things and, and where so much, so much print media is, is not accessible for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 00:15:40 It's, it's either too opinionated or it's really dense in information. And so, um, I'm curious as you, as you approach growth there, how much you think about sort of, you know, protecting that core building on that core, getting that flywheel going, and then, and then particularly as you launch some of these new businesses tapping into some of the, the startup skills that you've got to, to really make sure that product market fit is dialed in, and that you're, you're, you're, you're building on, on a strong foundation as you, as you launch these new things and just how you balance your time across them.
Speaker 4 00:16:14 Yes. Um, it's a beautiful question, Sean. And, um, we could spend the whole podcast just on that question.
Speaker 2 00:16:21 <laugh>, that's fine with you.
Speaker 4 00:16:23 <laugh> um, I, I was writing down something because I feel, um, the response to that is, uh, again, a little bit of two time, two different dimensions. Uh, one is that purely from a customer standpoint, AR TA consumer habits and everything, uh, it has dramatically changed and shifted. Uh, but there are two fats. One while the Tam for print product is not growing in terms of raw volume is still substantial. Um, you know, the RPO for a print product is still substantial. The margins of a print product are still substantial for any business, which means that it is still a very significant part of many businesses. Um, some that have transformed and some that are still transforming. So it's something you can ignore. And if your customer obsessed, you can't ignore a massive part of the population that still appreciate. It's a ritual, it's a habit for them to sit in the morning, uh, you know, open the paper, have their cup of tea or coffee, and that's how they start.
Speaker 4 00:17:29 Um, so we are very respectful to that, but where we have to get better is we know that the next generation, our nephews and nieces and our kids, they aren't waking up trying to buy a paper, or they aren't paying for that. They aren't even sitting and having a coffee they're already on the move and consuming content sitting in the subway and so on. So how do we make sure that we don't share eyes? Cause that's, that's where the growth is. So how we translate that is one, we have to make sure our projections are realistic to where the world is heading. But two also, how do we disrupt that traditional category to continue to give what that, uh, lining audience base still needs, but appreciates very highly loyal high retention rates, uh, high margins. So we can't ignore it. So that's part one, and the challenge for us, or for any business is how do you keep innovating there to make sure you add incremental value?
Speaker 4 00:18:23 The ground reality or the harsh reality is in that category in the last 15 years, unfortunately, value has gone on and the prices have gone up. So it has been the contrary of a typical customer obsessed ecosystem that the other part of our lives are used to where businesses like Amazon are giving you more for the same price, because they're trying to create these value mode. So they prevention. So we are trying to bring that back on that category, but at the same time, we also know we have to catch up very quickly in the digital part of our ecosystem to become a digital native, to understand the needs of a younger audience, where the time is growing. And that is where that content exception, where we have to think about diversifying a portfolio. We have to think about what else should we be providing beyond news, um, that is going to be relevant.
Speaker 4 00:19:16 And that is where you can have gaming sports education history. Like for instance, at us USA today, we believe we have the, uh, the most in depth catalog of, um, science content, uh, you know, space, content, historical moments in formats and mediums that you won't easily access. For example, when the unfortunate incident at capital hill happened last year are teams within a few hours, created an AR experience to, uh, to show you where the mob actually went in a whole 3d model of cap hill. And I was thinking when my daughters are consuming that content two years later of, of the kids who are gonna be born now and yeah,
Speaker 1 00:19:58 In history class,
Speaker 4 00:19:59 In history class to to understand the, of what had happened. So that's the journey for us. The moment we shift gears and shift our mindset from a media business media businesses are trained to produce content, throw that away, produce more content every day. You're a content producing engine, but you don't monetize content as an always on destination. And that's the shift that you're bringing on,
Speaker 3 00:20:26 You know, it's in, it's interesting mayor, when you say, is there an opportunity in leveraging that ebbing population, that ebbing audience, um, to drive interest in the, what will be the new, the new world for Ginette? In other words, I mean, is it a, are there referral loops that you can actively drive from one generation to another that you're focused on?
Speaker 4 00:20:50 Yes. Yes. A great question. And, you know, there are ideas like, uh, you know, you can have a family plan where grandkids buying a product, uh, and you create a family plan so that you are organically. You're creating a little bit of the network effects, uh, as well, because now it becomes a point of, of discussion and a dialogue, uh, you know, between and whether that is your family or your friend circle. Um, and, and some of that, as well as, um, you know, how do we make sure that the print users, when they decide they don't want to pay this much for print, which are higher RPU products in general, that we give them an opportunity, a seamless way to give access to digital, um, and, and many of the ways, but even that notion of virality, viral loops, network effects, shareability, all those are new variables for a category like this, which has been rather linear, uh, you know, in, in a very unengaged channel like print.
Speaker 3 00:21:46 But I imagine someone like you, who, who grew up in the freshly and the, as you said, the Spotifys who've only existed in the last 10 years. I, I think you're somewhat pre-programmed to start thinking that way and bringing that to the organization, which is probably something that would be interesting as you, as you, oh
Speaker 4 00:22:04 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:22:04 Move into your tenure.
Speaker 4 00:22:05 That's been, that's been the mission every day. So we've to give you an example in the last, uh, 20 months or so of course our digital subscriptions have grown 50 year we've. We are now inching closer to 2 million subs. Uh, there are only, you can count on a single hand, uh, how many publications around the globe have 2 million subscribers for, um, and we've entered these, you know, product growth ideas like referrals, refer a friend, uh, massive focus on retention, brought on some incredible talent, uh, invested massively in data and data science to understand leading behaviors of retention. You know, what are the leading indicators that, uh, that tell us that a user who goes through this aha has percent higher propensity to come back, um, investing a lot in understanding science behind our content, what type of content actually drives higher conversion rate? What type of content is actually, uh, a hook content that brings an offline platform user or an inactive user back to the platform?
Speaker 4 00:23:08 So a lot of, a lot of those lessons that we all have learned in very fast paced growth companies, uh, is what we are bringing on, uh, ad connect or, uh, coming with bundling strategies, uh, you know, a lot of testing and learning happening on pricing, uh, and, uh, and how that shapes as well as, you know, the, the strength that at times can be a challenge is when you have 250 brands, which are so localized, every market doesn't operate the same way, the quality of content can be so different, uh, as well as, uh, the consumer needs in community one versus his community. Two, the Heartland of America was his course. The behaviors are so different and unique that you have to take different approaches to even engage those audiences.
Speaker 2 00:23:58 But I, I have to assume that there's an advantage in the sense of, uh, you can still have informed hypotheses as, as something works well in one market. When you have that many markets, there's so many testing loops that you can go through. And just because it worked in one doesn't mean it's gonna work in the other, but also doesn't mean it's not going to. And so, um, if you, if you can build the right skills on, on the growth level in each of those markets, I think that that cross publication learning could be super high.
Speaker 4 00:24:29 It's, it's massive. It's, it's almost like we have created archetypes of markets. So while we have two 50, uh, not all two 50 are unique. Um, and also not all two 50 are one, but they also, you can pretty much create cohorts of markets based on year, uh, and many different levels. So they are perhaps five or six cohorts of markets beyond the volumes that we have. And what we try and do is we try and experiment. So when we are doing AB tests, we wanna make sure that we are testing two markets that sit in the same cohort, uh, to make sure you have better understanding. Um, and also like most businesses, the 80, 20, 20 rules still applies, you know, top, uh, top 20 markets for us contribute, you know, 70% of our growth. Uh, but what we are trying to do is, as I've mentioned, growing the brand, growing the user base, doing the user value, one five view, which is very relevant to us is creating new demand, which is, yes, the top 20 are billion markets for us, but how do we create the next 10 markets, which are going to become the top markets for us?
Speaker 4 00:25:33 And that's where the top of funnel investment in marketing, where do we invest the brand dollar? Should I invest a brand dollar in the markets where we already killing and we are penetrating and the grocery time, or should we invest in an markets that could become the future growth markets for us to create that emotional connection and then bring a lot of growth strategies there to scoop up the volume?
Speaker 2 00:25:58 Yeah. So, um, I'm, I'm sure Ethan, you're probably, uh, yes. Pins and needles with a question or two, but, uh, I just wanna get one in here. Just, um, I'm, I'm assuming that, uh, that when you came in, probably there were some blind spots in the data, and I'm, I'm just curious, uh, curious how much, how much you've needed to sort of invest and up level the data so that you can make some of those decisions.
Speaker 4 00:26:22 Yes, I was smiling because, um, were they blind spots or we were just blind,
Speaker 3 00:26:27 Uh,
Speaker 4 00:26:28 Which is, uh, not surprising because, and, and we don't shy away from it because when you are in advertising business, you don't think about the consumer. You know, what, what we thought about is there were four human beings who came, but now what we have think about, wait, hold on, there was Sean and Ethan who came, and this is what Sean likes to consume was that this is what Ethan likes. So it's a whole, everything shifts from the data model to the app instrumentation, um, to the kind of tools you use to ingest that data. Because very tactically that analytics is no longer enough. Now you need an AMPL user or mixed panel because you need to see, wait, what are they doing differently? Right.
Speaker 2 00:27:09 The user level view. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:27:10 The user level view. So it's a paradigm shift that we've had to go through. So to answer the question on how much we've hired chief data officer, who came from HBO max, and take to interactive, so gaming and content, uh, that happens to sit in my organization because I wear two hat strategy and growth. Um, but the, the remit is horizontal across the boat. We are in the process of adopting a CDP, which is a must have, we've had a CDP, but not world class that is already piped with every single part of our, uh,
Speaker 2 00:27:41 Can you explain for the audience, but a CDP is
Speaker 4 00:27:43 Yes, like a customer data platform, um, that becomes the ju universal, uh, repository for every single aspect of customer behavior data on platform off platform, but not an, not a static repository, a live repository. That is, uh, that is an, that has inbound and outbound data flow, your content engines, uh, into your, um, content management systems, every and everything. Um, we've built a data science team. We've hired folks from growth companies who, who are coming and telling us and challenging the status you are telling us what needs to be done on day one. Historically the data has been focused on what happened, which is look back and report the massive shift that we've been in the journey in the last 20 months or so has been why it happened. So that's one that's analysis and then predictive models on how do I prevent it from happening in the future. So that's data science, right? So all those levers, but one of the big takeaways for us, uh, has been because as an organization, we've grown with so many mergers and acquisitions underneath that has been disparaged set of data sources. So when the world talks about data, I know there's so much infatuation with ML, AI, data science, predictive model, propensity score. There's such little conversation about data engineering and the quality of data.
Speaker 2 00:29:10 Mm-hmm <affirmative> data silos, the
Speaker 4 00:29:12 Data silos, and because it's garbage and garbage out. So we focused, especially in the last 12 months, we have now focused a lot on first of all, up leveling the quality of that data, having the data pipes in place. So we now have a VP data in the same global organization, uh, because we are trying to make sure that we first have the right foundation because otherwise the quality of data science, the quality of predictions will only be just as good or bad as the quality underneath.
Speaker 2 00:29:40 Yeah. So Ethan, sorry, I'm gonna do one more. <laugh>
Speaker 3 00:29:43 I got it. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:29:44 I seem like tee up to ask a question. Ha has that, have you been able to execute in the meantime while you get the data house in order, or has it really kind of put a, put a put limitations on what you could do from an execution perspective?
Speaker 4 00:29:59 Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant question. And I, I, I would always expect you to ask that question cause
Speaker 4 00:30:05 We're all start of people, right. So what do you do, uh, when you are baking all of that? So the answer is absolute. Yes. And my push to the organization has been, I don't care about a table dashboard. We, we don't wanna care about, uh, an online version. I want most of my leaders to live in spreadsheets and to make pivots, to make decisions, to look at what's, you know, what's going on. And also very importantly, building that critical thinking where you focus more on, um, not getting the right answer, but what are the right questions to ask? Right. So, so we've done a lot of that. So we've, we've we know we now waiting for perfection. So there is a lot of analysis happens every day. And the focus has been while we get more advanced sets of data, what we, what we have to build, which we have, I think successfully is the mindset to apply the data, the rhythm.
Speaker 4 00:30:59 So there are scrums that now happen every other day in data teams. There are Friday sessions that happen where our, uh, research and insights team is doing share outs, uh, trying to get the why we've launched, uh, ethnographies. We've done call and con studies in different parts of the organization. And while we have so much more to do so many dots to connect, we, why don't we first dive deeper in each isolated piece? So it's okay with content analysis is not connected to consumer behavior, but that's okay. In the short term, let's understand what content is working, what is the funnel performance and what is the customer data analysis that we have. And then we will gradually connect the dots as opposed to waiting for all dots to be connected first, before we start to do the analysis.
Speaker 3 00:31:49 So that actually ties into what I've been trying to get to ask actually tired <laugh>, which is it's interesting. When you, you look at the, you, you're talking about getting this mindset, I'm looking at just giant organization that spans across the country. How do you get that mindset, that culture to take across the entire organization? Is it important that it takes place at that local level or is, or does it just work at your level at the corporate level?
Speaker 4 00:32:19 Um, well, first of all, evolution and transformation, like that require every single ounce of energy and every single human being in the organization to believe in it. Uh, so the answer is, first of all, that, that it's not one person or one team's transformation. It is the entire organization evolving from its core, but in ground reality, how did we enable that? Or how are we trying to enable that for 16,000 people in opposition in a rough multibillion in revenue, but a hundred year old that had a very different business model. So the first thing we did and I had the benefit because I sat on the board. So I understood the organization, the leadership, and, and trusted each other, the first step was, and I know that Sean and Ethan, you guys we've exchanged a lot of notes on this, on LinkedIn as well. It was very clear that we first had to determine what a north star was, what the end destination is so top down, right?
Speaker 4 00:33:17 Because there are a million place we could go, but we may not have the right to go to those, um, million places. So what is the one place we would roughly like to go, not voting about how we gonna get there, because there is no finite GPS to get to the end state, but if you not, don't have the end state you're extremely bottom up. Okay. So we have to have that. So we've defined that in a very quantitative way, there are five, no priorities. Each no priority has a quantitative destination or definition of success in a certain amount of time that we've quantitatively defined and actually publicly shared. Then the journey is okay, that's top down now, how do you transfer that into Baltimore? What is your organization going to do in the next quarter? What is the OKR and how does that OKR translate back down?
Speaker 4 00:34:04 But that becomes a lot easier because we have 16,000 people. Now look in one direction, may not be one spot, but one direction, as opposed to 160 directions back in the day. Now we've translated. We using OKRs as one of many tools to figure out that everything you do has to ladder up to those top five, no star priorities and an organization like us that is evolving. Oftentimes it's about trade off calls. It's prioritization it's choices, because in some cases we have to say no to high volume revenue, which is less value to low volume revenue, which is high value, like trade off between an advertising dollar versus a subscription sent, you know, or to print $10 to a digital subscription, $2. Those are trade offs that we have to constantly make, but having the prioritize set of north stars enables everybody in the organization to build that autonomy, to make those choices.
Speaker 4 00:35:06 Uh, and then one of the other things, Ethan, to your point, I did, which I learned at Spotify is the concept of cross-functional pods. Uh, as Spotify, we called them the squads, the chapters, the tribes, and which was one of the first things that I brought on here by we first created a strategy and ops function, which is very atypical in fast growth companies. And then we introduce the concept of cross-functional ports that basically has members, staff, staff from a data science team, product engineering, performance, marketing, brand content, based on the mission of the poll. But then you have this cross-functional group of people who actually have a shared outcome. They have one set of OKRs that they aiming to us, and they have autonomy. They have a port leader. So there are a lot of those changes that we had to make in our operating model, in a clear definition of success for the whole company that then translates back down into this set of parts, but also the functional areas like content marketing, growth engineering. And, and now it's all about just test and learn and, and just continuously make pivots.
Speaker 3 00:36:07 Yeah. When you look at OKRs and north star metrics, I think they're not, they're not, um, mutually exclusive. And I think they, they work when, especially when you put those together, they can be super effective when you're, you see people create, uh, OKRs all the time, but they don't actually have a clear north star metric that actually excites the, the rank and file, um, that they can, they can lean into. And I think when you, when you tie those together like that, it gives your real opportunity to, uh, to drive impact.
Speaker 4 00:36:40 Totally. And I'm a firm believer that in all modern companies and, and in all functions, especially in marketing and growth, you have to be a system thinker because when you're a system thinker, you go top on and bottom up, you can't be just top on and you can't be just bottom up. And sometimes in, in early stage startups, everyone's trained to be very bottom up. You're living deep by beat. You're just looking at that, but you lose sight of where you're going. Sometimes you can tend to spin off a lot of stuff, a lot of good chaos, but you exert yourself too much. You over exert yourself and you lose energy and oxygen. Whereas in big companies, you're too much top up it about strategy and planning for five years out. Well, wait, who's talking about what's gonna happen in the next three months. So is that system syncing that converges it too? Exactly. Like you said,
Speaker 2 00:37:28 So I'm, I'm curious, I assume that, um, that it sounds very challenging in terms of, uh, in terms of what you've needed to do over the last few years. Um, what, is there any part that just stands out as being like more frustrating or, or just just harder than you even thought it would be?
Speaker 4 00:37:51 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:37:52 I know that's a sensitive question cuz you never wanna like throw someone under the bus if it's, if it's, uh, more, more kind of departmental focus, just high level speaking anyway.
Speaker 4 00:38:01 <laugh> yes, yes. Look, first of all, I think one thing that we evolved as an organization, as a leadership team is having, uh, being open, being, being open to being vulnerable, you know, and being able to talk about it. So because unless you do that, you're not gonna drive change. Um, so that's not a challenge, but I would say the challenges that we have aren't team specific, they're cultural, they're still mindset. And, and the biggest one I would say is the velocity of decision making. You know, there's a lot of other stuff that we are, we've come a long way. You know, the, the cross-functional partnership, uh, the better understanding of the core priorities and the choices we need to make. Uh, we've created an operating model that should drive a lot more autonomy, but there are still a lot of places where I would love faster decisioning, you know, with a belief that if the decision failed, you make another pivot as opposed to preventing that subsequent pivot or in the, or in other words.
Speaker 4 00:39:06 And this is a quote that somebody shared with me, which I thought was spot on that your job as a leader is to stop people who think that their job is to failure in big organizations. When you have people who've been around for so long, they believe that their job is to prevent failure. And when you're driving change, your job is to stop those people. And it is that fear of failure at the end of the day, that pretty much inhibits or stalls your growth as a company. And I don't mean to say that, Hey, everybody start failing. Because EV when I've said this before, and even in a startup poll, I had a leader who said, I know you, everybody keeps saying that, but nobody likes to fail. Uh, and I kept thinking about it for a long time until I realized that the only person who thinks that failure is bad is because you haven't tasted insane success after you have failed.
Speaker 2 00:40:04 Right. So I think Amazon has, has really tried to embrace that mentality. And, uh, you know, you think of things like fire phone and, uh, you know, there's, they had like an Instagram kind of in based purchasing. They had they've, they've got, you know, these, some of these huge failures, but I was just analyzing 'em in the last couple of days. And they have, I think they have six different kind of distinct businesses that are 20 billion a year businesses. And you don't, you don't do that without, without taking somes and, and, uh, be, be willing to take on some failures along the way.
Speaker 4 00:40:42 Yes. Yes. And that's the, I would say that is the one thing that we have to keep getting better at, um, you know, and keep improving.
Speaker 2 00:40:50 Yeah. And so just, uh, we're one just quick question. Sorry, Ethan. They come in bursts. Um, but the, uh, yeah, I, I'm really curious as you, as you, as you've gone from the, the Spotifys and freshly of the world into a company like Ginette, that's been around for a long time and, and, you know, has some great assets to leverage, but has a lot of opportunities for improvement. Um, do you think, do you think that, uh, that there are just hoards and hoards of these, um, more legacy companies that are out there that, um, that that could benefit in similar ways with, with a lot of the things that you're doing now in, in, in kind of borrowing from the startup world and applying those same, uh, those same massive shifts in how they approach the business and think about the business?
Speaker 4 00:41:43 I, I think I, I don't think that's a choice, um, because if they aren't doing it, uh, then they're going to perish. And the good news is that we aren't the first one and we won't be the last, in fact, we, I look up to personally other organizations that have dramatically shifted at one point, they were about to perish Microsoft. I mean, I, I, I know about it because I read, hit refresh, um, one, a big fan of that book, but that showed how Satya, as he came on board in that role, uh, at that scale of an organization, completely shifting the business model, investing so much in cloud when it was barely a drop in the ocean back then, but to be able to see the future and the kinda change look at best buy, um, was totally transformed, uh, what the company is today. It's not an apple, but it it's a growing business. Um, and, and so many great examples, even I remember even at one point with Amazon's insane growth people thought Walmarts out. But when I look at Walmart eCommerce, you know, it's been a fantastic, you know, so
Speaker 2 00:42:48 Some of that is cause and effect though, cuz it's even like the Microsoft one, it's easy to look at a lot of the things that they've done that have driven that success. But I actually ran a workshop there about eight years ago. And I think that probably had the biggest impact on their outcome. No, <laugh>,
Speaker 4 00:43:04 I would believe that <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:43:07 But uh, but yeah, I mean I, the one, you know, and all seriously, I, I think that the, uh, the, probably the, the cultural change is, is, is the hardest one. And that's, that's the feedback I've had on my book, uh, for, for years is that, you know, one person will get excited about, about what they read about. And then, then they go and they try to apply it. And the organization just, just rejects it because there's so much inertia how they've been doing things and, and, you know, being able to being able it, to drive a company through that cultural shift and, and, you know, cross-functional, can't happen one function at a time. It's, it's gotta be a collective decision and, and, and it's hard. So I think, uh, and
Speaker 4 00:43:49 Yeah, I, I will say one thing I missed adding was, um, that you can't all also drive all the change with all the people you already have. You have to believe that you also need disruptive thinking. You need diversity. Um, and I don't mean diversity just in the sense of ethnicity and gender, but at diversity, from an experience standpoint, diversity from who these individuals are. So I I'm a form booth lever in that. So invested a lot myself having in the last couple of years, we brought people from companies that are absolutely out of the category from, uh, the likes of Spotify. Of course, uh, we've hired people from peacock. We've hired a few people from hardcore tech companies from PayPal, from eBay, uh, you know, aura, very disruptive startups, very small shops here in Brooklyn and New York, for example, because those are the people who bring no baggage. They come and they break down the windows on day one, right? And they're asking the question, why not? Uh, on day one itself.
Speaker 3 00:44:51 So that leads me. I want to go back to, I, I love what you said about failure, that the only person who's afraid to fail is the one who really hasn't experienced and tasted huge success. Cause I, I feel like there's, there may not be a truer statement out there, but leading a smaller team, you know, 10, 20 people, I, I found it was really easy to model the vulnerability and to say, like, just say, look, here's a mistake I made. Why are you afraid to make your own right? Um, but how do you do that at scale? I mean, you're in a 16,000 person organization. I think <laugh> how do you do that at, at that size?
Speaker 4 00:45:26 You, you do exactly what you just said. Exactly what you just said, which is when you are on a town hall and our town halls have not 16,000, but 45,000. You talk about the failures that you've had as a leader. First of all, because I don't believe that that leaders can create a culture of taking risk and environment where people feel safe if they only talk about their successes. So it all begins from that one individual or a set of individuals to say, this is what I did. I was the one who made that choice. I realized it ain't working. We are going to pivot how much we talk about that. And then how do you celebrate failure is also nothing. Okay. With failure. How do you, which means that when a team fails, what do you give to them in the next situation? Do you give them more budget? Do you give them one more person to try something? Do you give them two more areas to try and test and experiment on? And when you start to do that, it spreads like wildfire.
Speaker 3 00:46:31 Yeah. I think when the, the message you convey is that the, the cost of making mistakes here is that you get to come and make a new mistake tomorrow. Yes. Um, I think it's a, it's it can be incredibly powerful for teams.
Speaker 4 00:46:43 Yes. Yes. You know, one trait that big organizations have to learn is when to say no or when to, delink an idea when to do determine that it isn't working. It's very similar to people as well. You know, when you're in a big organization, we don't fire people. We take a lot of time to hire them, but they just stick around and sometimes it's not a match. Sometimes you're not a value match. Right. And those are some of the traits that we have to pick organizations learn, uh, from faster companies, younger, more disruptive. Whereas like I said earlier, the culture, the mission, the purpose is what younger companies have to take from these big organizations, because there's a reason how and why they became so big.
Speaker 2 00:47:29 Yeah. Yeah. It it's, uh, it's something I, I, I was talking about looking at Amazon and seeing some of the, the, the failures they had. I also looked at apple and it is actually interesting though to see that they, the, the big failures seem to get smaller over time with, with those companies. And I think part of it is just exactly what you're saying is that they, they start to incrementally approach some of them and, and, and figure out when to pull the plug before it becomes such a noteworthy failure instead of the, you know, the Newtons and some of the things in the early days of apple that, uh, that really hurt 'em.
Speaker 4 00:48:09 Yes. Yes. And, and that's a, that's a muscle that we are learning to build too is, and we we've changed the taxonomy. So we talk about product market fit a lot, uh, in our world now, which is fantastic. But how do you define product market fit? How do you, when do you know that the world is telling you that you don't have the right to play here? Right. Because is it a tough choice? Hey, sh is it my job to continue to optimize, to reach product market fit? Or what signal is telling me that maybe I've tried enough, maybe we don't have the right to play there. Maybe it's a complete shift. So it's a, there's no finite answer, but you're right. I think the companies that have done it well are the ones that have figured that out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:48:49 And I, I, uh, and I think it's one of those things that the bigger the company, the more that they, that they feel like they can, they can almost sort of jam a, uh, a solution down the throat of the market that they have the, they, they, they start thinking about leveraging distribution before they think about getting the solution just right. And, uh, and that's why you have such a high failure rate. <laugh>,
Speaker 4 00:49:13 That is such a brilliant point. Um, which is, um, and that's why I challenge myself and the teams always to define the product market fit because the product market fit isn't about how do I bring another a hundred million people to consume this content. It is about how do you bring the thousand, but bring them more often, keep them there. That's the signal because scale will happen. But the quality of how they're engaging for a new idea is quintessential.
Speaker 2 00:49:43 Yeah. I was, I was talking to a CEO yesterday and I, I kept talking about premature scaling is what is what kills startups is, what kills new products. And then he finally said, what the hell is premature scaling? And, uh, you know, like, so am I not supposed to get people on this? And, and so the way that, you know, it was a good question. And, and so, uh, the way that I, that I kind of went back to him, I said, do you have financial forecast for the business? And he said, yes, uh, is you have a single paying customer? No. How in the hell can you build financial forecasts on a business with zero paying customers? You know, so step one start charging like now, now that you've got good engagement on, on the product for free. And then from there, how do I, how do I get enough customers who love the product while paying for it, that it tells me now I can start to scale this and, and I can scale it based on, on real numbers. So I, I think that's just kind of an example, and obviously that's a lot longer a conversation on, on the whole product market fit journey, but it's a, it's a muscle that is definitely not one that is, uh, strong in, in older established businesses.
Speaker 4 00:50:57 Yes, yes, yes. And for us as a subscription platform, now, you know, that that level that you just gave, the example for Sean is retention. And the time spent platform, because before I bring 10 million people, I just wanna know are hundred people spending two weeks more time than they will spend on another platform with that much scale. How often are they coming back? Are they bringing other people along with them and so on?
Speaker 2 00:51:21 Yeah. And I, I literally had a, a conversation with a founder right before this conversation, a company that I'm advising where, um, you know, the, the runway's getting short, I gotta, I gotta get enough traction to raise that next round of funding. So different, different situation from, from more established companies. But to me, it was like, you know, he's like, I need a hundred thousand active users. And, and I said, you, you could get a hundred thousand active users pretty quick, but what you may find is that one month later you have 30,000 active users and then 10,000 and then zero, you know? So, um, what I would instead focus on is have a target that says, I need 30,000 active users that have been retained for at least 45 days. And use that as your target, even if that's a per a proportion of the overall a hundred thousand, but, but focus on the cohorts and not on the aggregate number. Yeah,
Speaker 4 00:52:18 Totally,
Speaker 2 00:52:19 Totally. So, yeah, again, longer, longer conversations, but it's, I, I personally have been really fascinated that, um, I've had more large enterprises re reach out to me about product market fit workshops than startups in, in the last 12 to 18 months, because I think they are realizing that the failure rate of innovation is so high in, in larger companies that they need to tap into that startup, uh, mentality and skillset.
Speaker 3 00:52:50 So I have this question teed up in my head, um, you know, you're the chief strategy officer, and I thought, interesting question to ask you would be in five years, if you look back and you say I've been successful and we've been successful as an organization, what will that success look like? And I want to ask you that question, but I want to, instead of giving you that five year 10 timeframe, I wanna go back to the beginning of this conversation where you said big companies have the tendency to look at that at too far ahead. And small companies maybe look too, you know, too short term, what's the right. So let me ask that question, but give you the option to say what's the right term to look at your strategy and execution and how that, that look back period.
Speaker 4 00:53:31 Yes. Um, I, I don't know if there is any finite, but I would say three to five years still sounds right. Uh, only because you can have all kinds of data science and project, but the world's gonna be dramatically different. You know, like I, our role today is so automatically from even two years back. So it's almost impossible to fathom what it's gonna be three to five years. But I think for the, for the investors, for the street, you do need to have that foresight the three to five years. So, uh, I would say that's a pretty reasonable, um, timeframe to know where you, you are going, because if you don't have that much, and you're just driving, you're driving very well, but you're driving not to a destination you're just driving well. Right. So that's a challenge. But if the question Ethan is, so when I look back three to five years from now in my journey internet, um, where would I like to be? Is that,
Speaker 3 00:54:22 That's the question?
Speaker 4 00:54:23 That's the question. Okay. So I, I think I would love for us to have established ourself as that trusted destination, where we are top of mind for people today, they come more organically. They're on the source. They're looking for us. I mean, two and a million of them do come every month, but I want us to be a very conscious choice. I want us to become ritual for, like I set of people, some who are coming to consume, um, every day what's happening around the world. We want younger people to come because we are providing them entertainment with great quality gaming and content. Uh, we want suppose to come, we wanna drive education. So there are many different facets, but I would've, I would love to have become a conscious choice, a destination where you, every day you think about us, um, where something happens in your life, you think about us, um, in terms of the business model would have, would have love for more than 50% of our business, of course, to become more repeatable subscription, which we are publicly shared.
Speaker 4 00:55:26 Uh, we would love way more than 50% of our audiences to consumer digital products. Uh, but we do believe our print products will still stay because there's a reasonable amount of population that still respects that that still needs it. But that's what I would say. And, and we have a big power of our business. That's supposed to local communities, the local businesses, that's a SaaS business. And, uh, would like that business by that time to have become a SaaS platform that is enabling and inspiring these small businesses to thrive in a digital economy to thrive in that digital world. So, um, become close to that. It would've been a successful journey and us accomplishing our mission in was
Speaker 2 00:56:09 Awesome. So, uh, one of, one of the questions that I asked you at the end of our last interview, um, I didn't get a chance to go and look at the answer that you, that you gave last time and you done, um, you probably didn't either, but it'll, hopefully it won't be the same answer <laugh> But it's it's uh, what do you feel like you understand about growth now that you may not have understood a year or two ago? And it's okay if it's the same answer, cuz then it just means you understand it even better. <laugh>
Speaker 3 00:56:36 Well, if you say a year ago, he wasn't back, it was at least a year ago.
Speaker 4 00:56:42 Know I would, I would say that growth is not a tactic, uh, growth. Isn't a hack. They work, right. Sometimes you come across, but outside in, um, when you are looking for a hack looking for a tactic, it'll never work. I think growth is a foundation. It's a mindset, it's a set of capabilities. Um, you know, it's, it, it is a combination of a lot of things and growth is an outcome. You know, it's not an input, but I think some of what happened 12, 30 years back with the growth team being created, it became a tactic, it became an input, uh, and that led to some tactics. But I think every business is realizing that growth happens at the intersection of all functions. Um, and while you may have some sporadic spikes, sustainable growth is a mindset, it's a culture, it's a behavior and you have to keep at it, you know, every single day
Speaker 2 00:57:35 Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Absolutely. Yeah. I, uh, I couldn't agree more with, with everything that you just said there. Um, so yeah, some of my key takeaways from our, our today are really, uh, the, that the focus on, on data getting, getting the data house right, is, is super important to being able to support that long term execution that leads to driving that flywheel of growth over time. And then, and then working on the culture and, and giving people the, uh, ability and permission to, to make some mistakes, but having that feedback loop with the data and, and, and, and ultimately stepping out of the comfort zone of, of, uh, of maybe how they've done things in the past, and that's gonna require some mistakes, but that, that will hopefully develop the culture to where that test learn you motion, um, becomes a much more important part of, uh, of what's happening at Ginette and, and clearly with the growth in subscriber numbers that you talked about, good things are happening now already. And, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm excited to see them continue to improve as some of the longer term investments in, in the data and, and that cultural transformation, uh, start to start to take even more hold Ethan. Any, anything that jumps out at you beyond that from, in, in terms of key takeaways,
Speaker 3 00:58:55 I was definitely, as I said, really drawn to your, your take on, on failure and mistakes, the same thing, Sean, just, uh, echoed. But, um, I also thought, um, what you said about, uh, tying, uh, those north, that north star to the objectives and, and the OKRs, um, I thought that's really meaningful and that's something our, our audience can really take away. I think, uh, teams are always trying to find the right tools so that they can, you know, lever up growth. Um, but when you, when you put things in perspective like that, this is where we're trying to go. It's very clear it's mission-driven and here's a tool set to get us. There seems like a, a winning approach.
Speaker 2 00:59:36 Awesome. Cool. Any, any last thoughts, anything we didn't ask you about that you, uh, that you're, uh, wanting to share? Or are we ready to wrap things up?
Speaker 4 00:59:44 No, no, this is great. Thanks for having me over,
Speaker 3 00:59:47 But I, I do have one last, last thing. Uh, it sounds like as you're, as you're growing, there's probably lots of opportunities are there is for any of our audience members who might be looking for, for new roles. Is there anything that,
Speaker 4 00:59:58 Oh my God, man, we are, we are on, we are on the hiring spree across all teams, data science, uh, you know, analytics, our growth teams, looking for people to run retention, um, our creative team, you know, hiring people there, um, our content organization, I know that our chief product officer looking for a insane amount of engineers. Um, and
Speaker 2 01:00:21 So it sounds, sounds like what we need to do is get a, get a link to your, uh, key hiring and put that in the show notes. And then, uh, somebody, once this comes out, somebody can get the latest snapshot of exactly what you're looking for, but it sounds like such a, such a cool, exciting journey. And it seems like you would be an amazing guy to be working with along the way. So, um, I, I think, uh, and, and I gotta assume that the, uh, the team that is coming up around you is, is equally inspiring. And, uh, so yeah, I'm, I'm, I think you'll, you'll get a lot of interested people reaching out to you yeah.
Speaker 4 01:00:56 Forward it. Wonderful.
Speaker 2 01:00:57 Perfect. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out to, to share with us how you're approaching growth GED, and, uh, it's, it's so awesome to compare it with, with what our previous conversation was about. And, uh, I'm, I'm, uh, hopefully, hopefully we'll be able to get you back on at some point, cuz they're always such, such great conversations.
Speaker 4 01:01:16 Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks Sean. Eat wonderful to meet you guys again and thanks for having me over. Thank
Speaker 2 01:01:22 You. Have a, have a good one.
Speaker 4 01:01:23 Thank you.
Speaker 6 01:01:29 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.
