Misfit Founders
Misfit Founders
The Art of Strategic Scaling: Insights from Growth Advisor Kevin Indig
How do you scale a company from thousands to tens of thousands of employees without losing your strategic edge? Join us as we host Kevin Indig, an organic growth advisor who’s lent his expertise to industry heavyweights like Shopify, G2, and Atlassian. Kevin shares his wealth of experience managing rapid expansion and the difficulties inherent in hyper-growth environments. You'll gain invaluable insights into the balance between decisive leadership and the risk of over-consensus, along with the importance of swift decision-making when scaling up.
We uncover the complexities of navigating strategy within large organizations and fast-growing startups. Kevin talks about recognizing the shift from deciding what to do to mastering how to execute effectively as companies grow. Learn how clear communication and well-defined paths can minimize disruption during rapid pivots, ensuring that employees stay engaged and productive. Understand the nuances of maintaining an effective strategy amidst constant changes and how to manage performance plateaus, optimize execution strategies, and make high-impact decisions.
Finally, Kevin offers a unique perspective on transitioning from internal leadership roles to advisory positions, showcasing how a horizontal viewpoint can leverage past experiences across multiple clients for tailored solutions. Discover how smaller companies can compete against larger incumbents through agility and quick decision-making, and why strategic differentiation and organic growth strategies are vital for direct-to-consumer startups. Concluding with reflections on the most satisfying aspects of his work, Kevin emphasizes the value of a growth mindset, the importance of physical exercise for mental rejuvenation, and creating unstructured time to foster creativity and profound insights.
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With large companies it's often less a question of what to do but how to get it done. I had the privilege to be at Tropic-Kai when it scaled massively from maybe 3,000 to over 10,000 people in a very short amount of time. In the beginning it's all about like, what should we do and how do we get to like a post-product fit, like, how do we scale, how do we grow? And then you get there and then you hit this kind of hyper scale and then the problems. That becomes worldwide execution and all like that.
Speaker 1:The challenge is that when you're the head of an organization or even just a leader in an organization, you can drive change by command. That is not very popular these days, where it's less of a democratic, meritocratic leadership style, but more like we're doing this. Now I'm the leader, I say so. Do you think that's necessary? No, I think too much consensus can slow organizations down a lot. There's this moment when you spend a lot of time getting contacts about the company, understanding the market, understanding competitors, and then you kind of look at what options do you have for differentiation and it just kind of clicks. It's like that satisfying moment where you're like that's it.
Speaker 2:Kevin, I usually don't do this that sounds like a good start. Yeah, my podcasts are lengthy an hour and a half to two hours, so I need to be super brief now, which is a challenge for me. Thank you for doing Misfit Founders, I know we met. How did we meet? Oh, through Sastok actually. Yeah, perfect, you have your own podcast. Do you still run your own podcast?
Speaker 1:I have a podcast with a colleague, Eli Schwartz. It's called the Contrary Marketing Podcast and we just challenge general marketing axioms, things that are happening. We look at them from a critical lens.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I've been thinking of starting a podcast with a co-host and just kind of like debating on certain things, so that's really cool. Thank you for joining me. Let's start with a quick introduction who's Kevin and what are you up to?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for having me. This is awesome. I'm pumped to be here. Hiro Kevin is a organic growth advisor to fast-growing startups and enterprises. I work predominantly with hyperscalers and fast-growing startups and enterprises. I work predominantly with hyperscalers and fast-growing startups, so right now we've got Dropbox, reddit, hems, a couple of other companies, and I've been doing that for the last two years. Before then, I was an operator. I led SEO and growth teams at companies like Shopify, g2, and Atlassian, so really grew from SAS and had the privilege to be an expert and a leader in that space.
Speaker 2:And I'm curious. I mean, I think I know what your answer with this is going to be, but why large companies? What is it that attracts you to large organizations? You mean right now or in the past. Right now.
Speaker 1:Right now. You know it's a different problem. Set With large companies, it's often less a question of what to do but how to get it done At Shopify and I'm happy to tell a lot more about the frameworks I learned at Shopify and G2 and how we approach things. But I had the privilege to be at Shopify when it scaled massively from maybe 3,000 to over 10,000 people in a very short amount of time and a lot of time I mean. We brought in some of the best experts in the world from all sorts of big companies Imagine from the Facebooks to Googles, also small startups that made it really big. And we had the expertise, we had the experience and the knowledge.
Speaker 1:But getting things done and getting them out of the work is the biggest challenge for these large corporations. So I kind of like how? In the beginning it's all about like what should we do? And you know, how do we get to like a post-product fit, like how do we scale? How do we scale? How do we grow? And then you get there and then you hit this kind of hyper scale and then the problem is that it becomes more of an execution. You know, like that.
Speaker 2:Right, so you're the execution guy. In a sense, I'm actually more of a strategist.
Speaker 1:To be completely honest with you, I'm more of a strategist Strategist. There's more surface for strategy in big companies as well In smaller companies. Things In smaller companies, things are more tactical, things are faster and sure you have to have some sort of strategy, but it doesn't change as much At large companies, counter to intuition, the strategy can actually pivot the fight a lot, which is not a good thing, but a trap that a lot of companies fall into.
Speaker 2:And is that the most challenging part in what you do? Yes, it is Kind of like fast-paced things changing overnight.
Speaker 1:Correct. Yeah, it is a. You know, it's the pivots and, to be fair, we're just coming in. Just depends, brother. But we had this pandemic which obviously disrupted everything, right. So obviously there were lots of pivots. As companies should, they should be flexible.
Speaker 1:But I still see that problem in a lot of companies today where leadership does a lot of rapid pivots on strategy and the challenge for a big company is that you have that very long tail of people and they're getting thrashed around. So when you see even a small pivotal change at the head of the snake will cause a long wipe at the tail, if I try to make an analogy here, and that causes a ton of issues. But again, there's a lot to unpack here. But on the one hand side, from a leadership perspective, you can understand that you want to have the best strategy in place at all times. That's what matters most.
Speaker 1:But you have to take into account what that means for people who are quote are quote unquote on the ground. And that is a challenge that I constantly see at companies where you talk to the people who quote unquote actually do the work and they're like, hey, every three to six months our aims change completely and our outlook changes completely and I get frustrated and they leave and that's what kills companies. That's what slows companies down and kills them. So I'm happy to kind of take a step back and like dive deeper into all these different problem sets. But that is something that is kind of what attracts me to these large companies is you want to have the best strategy in place at all times and at the same time minimize thrash for the rest of the organization, the whole of the other teams.
Speaker 2:I think you hit the nail on the head there. I think a lot of nail on the head there. I think a lot of organizations don't large organizations don't think of the impact that people have with large-scale change. You know, we tend to prioritize and think about the change challenges, technicalities and logistics, less about the people involved 100% and I totally know how it is, where that comes from.
Speaker 1:Right? This is not a boast or a name drop, it just helps to make the point. You know, my Shopify organization was about 100 people most of the time. Big right, and even at that scale we're not talking about managing 10,000 people. I can only imagine what that's like.
Speaker 1:But even with a hundred of a hundred people, when you make a strategic pivot, even just a slight strategic pivot, that means you need to reach out. You need to make sure efforts, what everybody understands where that's even coming right. You cannot just enter the room, be like, okay, now we're doing this, drop all the other stuff. You need to help people get there. They need to pound the drum on this thing. It doesn't just help to say this once. You need to say it constantly so people internalize it, and they need to help carve a path for people to actually be effective with that new strategy. Right, it could, because I've tried to make the point a bit more easier to grasp. Right, let's just say we move from, you know, editorial text content to YouTube. Let's just pretend, right, right, okay, so what are all the people doing that have been working on the editorial content right. So you have to have a plan for all of that in place, and if you change your strategy every six months, that means you're just constantly busy updating and trying to bring everybody on the same page. Now, why does that happen is kind of the more interesting question. Now, again, let's just assume that you know we're not in COVID and we don't have to. You know, not everything is falling apart Like that's obviously an outlier, right, but usually it's due to market changes, it's due to product changes and it's due to sometimes just like a feeling of leadership, right. Sometimes it's just like they get together and offside it's like, oh, should, should we do this thing? It's like, yeah, we should do this thing. It's like, okay, let's do this thing again.
Speaker 1:Lots of implications, and so I I think, actually, that two frequent pivots unless you face an emergency situation are often the symptom of a poor strategy.
Speaker 1:It means you haven't take, you haven't invested the time to make sure that the strategy you want to pursue is a long-term strategy that makes sense, and so that that time saved on defining the strategy often caused causes these ripple effects.
Speaker 1:And then you try to course correct and you try to bring the car back on track and that's where this constant thrashing burnout culture comes from, where people cannot even make an impact. They're not getting promoted because they couldn't show an impact, they cannot adjust to it, but it has all these consequences. And so when leadership and I would have included myself in that, you know, back in the days it's not me kind of, you know waving the finger at these people at the top, it's like, okay, I was part of this too. Right, we would have taken the time to make sure that the strategy is diversified, it's thought through and it's something that we can pursue for maybe three to five years. That is what not only makes a company successful, but also makes the people in the company successful and allows you to leverage their full potential, to be honest, and who do you work in an organization the most with?
Speaker 2:Who do you realize that you spend the most time with?
Speaker 1:It's often organizational heads, so, depending on the size of the company, it will be BPs, it will be C-suites, very often CMO chief growth, bp of growth, those kind of roles Right.
Speaker 2:I have a follow-up question, but actually I want to backtrack a bit. Why did you decide to go from internal to offering a service for large organizations?
Speaker 1:You know it's funny because I started my career on the service side. I started on the agency side. That's where I learned and that's where I grew. And the benefit of working in an agency is you get this for a result of you. You have many customers, or some customers, and you can work across different industries and verticals and then you can see kind of the same problems, right. And then you go back in-house, which to me was, you know, fantastic, because then you can focus, you can go really deep.
Speaker 1:And now I'm at a point where I wanted to broaden again. I wanted to work horizontally, because the benefit that I can bring to a lot of the leaders that I work with is I can say, oh, I've seen these problems before. I'm not going to name the names, but two of my other clients face the same problems right now. That's not just you, and here's what worked for them. Or I can travel back in time and say, hey, I've seen that same problem set with another company. This is how we did it and solved this problem. Let me help you.
Speaker 1:So, as an advisor, you have that benefit of being removed from the organization, removed from the trenches. You work with several companies and I just really enjoy that. I don't have that desire to be buried deep right now. I like that broad view and, to be also completely honest with you, man, I needed a break from the intensity of management. It is freaking intense and after having done that for I don't know, like six, seven, eight years, um, I just I just felt like I, you know, I'm just not not in the mind space to go back into that maybe it's a point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was. I was asking because I was talking yesterday with April Dunford, had her on the podcast talking about being internal versus having your own consultancy, and she mentioned that it's a lot easier to have a consultancy, to have your own service that you can produce change a bit better than when you have to be internal and play the company politics in a sense.
Speaker 1:Yes, you have benefits, Do you?
Speaker 2:find yourself having to play company politics when you're helping from the outside.
Speaker 1:No, luckily not. The only company politics I have to play is some of the trainings for the compliance stuff. That's the only company politics.
Speaker 1:But the benefit I have is I can come in and I can just throw tables Figuratively I haven't thrown a table literally yet, but in all seriousness I can challenge the status quo a lot better and it really helps again to not be wired in that much and to point some things out. Now. The challenge is that when you're the head of an organization, or even just a leader in an organization, you can drive change by command. That is not very popular these days. I think it's becoming a bit more popular where it's less of a kind of like a democratic, meritocratic leadership style, but more like we're doing this now I'm the leader. I say so I'm exaggerating a little bit, right, but a lot I think like, especially during, uh, like zero interest rate times, uh, and during the pandemic, there was a lot of like consensus leadership style, and now that things are tightening up a little bit, um, you have more of these quote-unquote wartimeime leaders coming out who just give the direction and again this can be done in a. Do you think that's?
Speaker 2:necessary, though Not always. Is it the times that's kind of pushing towards that, and is that an effective approach?
Speaker 1:I think it's very underrated, and I say that as somebody who loves consensus and who is a bit conflict-averse. I don't like conflict, I don't like coming in and being you know, kind of, but I think too much consensus can slow organizations down a lot and I think that it is. Do you hear that team?
Speaker 2:I think that somebody's going to turn off my mic pretty soon.
Speaker 1:But now, in all seriousness, I think that consensus leadership is also sometimes a way to escape responsibility and say well, we all agree to this, we all said yes to it, we all aligned to it. But I think that there are times when it's necessary to come in and say look, I am the leader, I carry the responsibility and I make the decision. The way that I painted the picture here is obviously very aggressive, and I do this to make the point right. You wouldn't do this exactly this way. But I think there is something to be said about leaders who come in and say it's my responsibility, it's my shot to call.
Speaker 1:I want to listen to all of you and I take you seriously in your expertise and I want the input from you. But at the end of the day, I'm going to make the call, and I'm going to make the call tomorrow, instead of us aligning five meetings and make the call in a month. This is, right now for a lot of companies, not the time to seek at always consensus and always alignment. I think this is more the time for leaders to stand up and say I take this on and if I'm wrong and if I fail, then I should maybe not be the leader, but to stand up and say, look, I take the responsibility for this decision. I have gathered all the input I need to make it. I have listened to everybody in the room respectfully and I make that call.
Speaker 2:Okay, I think that's reasonable and again, you're right. I think we live in a period where we see a lot of waste when it comes to decision-making and decision-making processes. So your focus is on execution strategy, not direction strategy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what you mentioned earlier. What are some of the activities and some of the specific areas that organizations bring you in to help with?
Speaker 1:So it's a very small problem set, which is nice. One, it's our performance has plateaued. How can we break through the plateau. It's our performance has plateaued. How can we break through that plateau? Two is we are standing in front of several high impact, hard to reverse decisions and we want to make them with the highest confidence possible. And three things are going well, but we suspect that they could be going a bit better. Can you come in and just see how we execute, see what our strategy looks like and how we can bring it to the next level?
Speaker 2:Right, I see, and what are some of the challenges? I know you mentioned the challenges, but what are some of the challenges that you're facing as you work with some of these organizations?
Speaker 1:Let's say the most common challenge is this the most common challenge is that the strategy is not differentiated. Yeah, a lot of organizations try to out-execute their competition, and that is barely a recipe for success. Unless you have way more funding, you can just outweigh your opponent. But the reality is that if you're going up, say, your startup, you're going up against incumbents. You cannot follow the same path that they have followed to get where they are. It will work zero out of 10 times.
Speaker 1:What works is differentiation, which means you need to do something different that allows you to get to that same point or allows you to compete with companies, and something different needs to be related to your quote-unquote competitive advantage. We can dive a bit deeper into what that means, because I understand it's very abstract, but figuring out what that competitive advantage is and how to leverage that to create a differentiated strategy is what I help companies with most of the time, and very often there are scenarios where people are like, okay, this is the playbook, let's just implement the playbook, but they forget okay, is that just what everybody else does and are we just trying to, you know, like this is not a trash thing or like a marginalized opportunity, or can we actually figure out how to do something? Ben?
Speaker 2:you mentioned competitive advantage. Let's dive into that a bit. I'm gonna start with a question. You find yourself to found yourself at any point telling a company where you actually have zero competitive advantage. So you need to go back to the drawing board, because the one thing that I was talking about this um, recently, especially as founders or leadership, we're really good at kind of like hitting our chest of yeah, we're, we're better, we're doing this, but then when you unpack that, you realize that there's not much there. I'm talking about certain companies and of course, you know there are organizations out there that are really good at differentiating themselves, but there's also a lot of companies that want to think that they're different but they're not. Have you ever encountered scenarios like that?
Speaker 1:You know what Rarely, I think most companies have more competitive advantages than they realize. Sometimes that advantage can just be to be smaller and faster. So let me give you an example. With G2, right, we went up against Gartner, big incumbent in this space. And Gartner, not only are they way, way larger, way more established with companies, but they also have a lot more sites. Right, they have GetApp and Gartner Reviews and they have Chemtera. So huge organization and large competitor, but they also use way, way slower than a G2.
Speaker 1:In G2, we had the benefit that we could make product changes faster. We could make our go-to-market strategy just implement that faster. So the downside of size is often dependencies and you can leverage that as a startup. The challenge then becomes how do you leverage that agility? Where do you quote-unquote attack? Can you identify the weak points of your competitors and lean into that? And so, yeah, we did a full bunch of things at G2.
Speaker 1:Basically, essentially to dive into that, the strategies or the strategic approach at G2 and Shopify were completely different. At Shopify it was basically a Facebook-like approach. That's in part because a lot of leadership came from Meta and it was like a very kind of experiment-heavy, highly like high-fidelity kind of testing approach At G2, we ran more of an approach of big bets. What are some of the big kind of? You know, let's take some money to the casino and it's betted on a couple of different numbers or colors, and what should that look like? That really worked out for us because we were just so much smaller and faster and we could validate these bets at a higher pace.
Speaker 2:Interesting. So did you manage to, did you apply any of the tactics, the experimentation tactics at all, say, from Shopify to G2? Because it seems like, like you said, there are two separate tactics. You know, big bets versus small tests and iterations and such.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so I was at G2 before Shopify, but the point is because at G2, at the time I was there we were about, you know, three to 400 people. At Shopify, again, we're, like you know, 10,000 people. So and across all organizations I was part of the growth organization that was a bit smaller, but when you reach that size and you have high fidelity and like a highly rigid approach to anything you do at Shopify, you're able to just really focus on experimentation velocity. So do we ship more experiments over time? Because at that scale of an organization you know good ideas will come out of it. You cannot focus purely on experimentation velocity at a smaller company like G2, where you have, like you know, three to four hundred people, because you just don't have enough people to just focus on more experiments. Your bets have to be a lot more calculated, but again, you can validate them a lot quicker. We still ran experiments at G2, but it was not. We didn't focus on just the sheer velocity, whereas, again, that approach works really well at Shopping.
Speaker 2:And for these two companies, were you internal or were you consulting Internal? Yeah, internal, and tell me a bit about some examples with companies that you've been consulting recently. What did you help them with?
Speaker 1:Yep, so let me see who can I name. I have to be careful with you. Know who I name and how much I give away.
Speaker 2:Well, you've been Drill you here. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:I'll just say what category you're in. People can fill in the picture right, but, like a famous D2C startup that I'm working with right now, there it's really all about strategy differentiation, and so I help most companies with their quote-unquote organic growth, which means non-paid, go-to-market so SEO, cro, email, product-led growth, these kind of things. And so what we identified is that that direct-to-market so SEO, cro, email, product-led growth, these kind of things. And so what we identified is that that direct-to-consumer startup had a profound opportunity to not just leverage their blog for growth and the toil writers, but also lean into I have to be careful how I phrase it, not give the surprise away, but lean into a more scalable approach to SEO, where you know their product essentially, that they're selling is, you know, that's just like one of thousands of different products, and there was an opportunity for the company to scale into comparison of all of these products or reviews of all of these products and kind of give more guidance to comparison of all of these products or reviews of all of these products and kind of give more guidance. That is a new kind of growth arm that they didn't have on their radar before. That has a profound, significant impact on the business, and so it's really all about understanding, okay, what are different avenues you can go down to to scale your organic growth, scale your SEO, scale, product and growth.
Speaker 1:Another example of a company that's a company that operates in the creator space. They provide an email service, a link and bio service forms for creators and they have profound product-led growth mechanics that we can tap into that we then identified, validated and then scaled. For example, if you fill out a form say you send a form to you, have a form on your website for people, I don't know like a leave form or whatever At the end of people filling that form out, there is a new screen that can pop up to do a follow-up action or something else. Right? So that has profound emotions because millions of people fill these forms out and a small fraction will take action on that follow-up screen and you can kind of scale these things. So those are kind of the things that help companies identify and it often goes through like a very basic basically runs like a scientific method type of approach, right? Like identify opportunities, test and validate them, scale, refine, start expression.
Speaker 2:And do you have two questions here. One, how do you measure success with your customers, right? Do you have a template or something that you polished by working with many companies? I know it also depends on the type of implementation that you do, but in general and um two, how do you, how, how do your proposals look like, right?
Speaker 2:someone says I need help with this yeah you know how do you go about helping them. What does that look like, what does that process in in, basically, you selling them onto. You know your your dream of a successful outcome for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. My approach to proposals is quite aggressive. Actually, I would consider myself a problem-based advisor or a consultant rather than a solution-based advisor or a consultant. And the difference is that solution-based means you come in and you have like a buffet Like here are the 10 things that I do. I can help you stand those things up. Which one do you want?
Speaker 1:And I often come into the spaces where it's not clear exactly what the solution looks like. It's often not even clear exactly what the problem is, and therefore I very quickly filter prospects out by price. So the first encounter is shared, just so you know this is what it's going to cost, and some people will say that's aggressive. But I just very quickly want to get to a point where this could be a potential fit, or we know it's not going to be a fit at all, and then I have the opportunity to connect them with somebody who I know is a better fit and who I trust. So I'm going to say that. And then the proposals are all very lightweight In there. I obviously have the terms in there. There is a description of the problem or the scope, but then from there it's not an exact. Here is exactly what Kevin will deliver. Here is exactly what will happen. It's a very broad agreement and the purpose of it is because I come in when things are hard to grasp or it's not exactly clear what the problem is.
Speaker 2:Right. So then that's my follow-up question how does success look like? How do you quantify that?
Speaker 1:Yep, 90% is revenue-based. So what's the metric that we measure? The North Star metric that ties to revenue At Shopify. We're not an advisor, we're in-house right, but our North Star metric was net new merchants. So whatever we do, whatever ever we do, everything has to tie back to net new merchants. Does this drive more people to sign up to Shopify, fill out the credit cards information and start selling? So I try to run that aggressive approach. There's 10% where companies are more interested in impact on brands, retention and just kind of awareness or top-up component metrics, but 90% has to tie back to revenue.
Speaker 2:Okay, and do you have very specific tooling and methods to track your implementation and your strategies back to revenue?
Speaker 1:It usually depends on how the client is set up, what tool stack they use, and I will adapt to that. But very often you know it's not uncommon that I come in and companies are like, okay, can you help us find a differentiated strategy? And we have to start by actually setting up the tracking. You ask okay, so what's the sequencing of metrics here? How do we go from an impression in Google to a click, to a sign up, to a? What's that whole sequence? And a lot of companies are not aware of that.
Speaker 1:So I worked with Ramp, for example, the fastest growing fintech startup in history, and I worked with them for a whole year and the first thing that I came in is to show them okay, what are the leading and lagging indicators, what are all the ways that we can, you know, move the needle downstream and then realize, okay, wow, there actually is a big opportunity to go more top of the funnel because we know it's going to trickle down to some degree and later on let's see what other metrics we can improve. And it was the same at Shopify. Right, like our experimentation went from very top of the funnel all the way to maybe the last step before merchants are selling and all that matters greatly right. So setting that up is something that actually do with quite a lot of companies and the tooling totally depends on what the companies run on, right.
Speaker 2:So amplitude mixed panel and some have their proprietary data warehouse or like whatever they they use for tracking right, okay, I was trying to figure out which of these companies here actually really love you because you sell their products to all of your customers.
Speaker 1:Now it's two um, awesome.
Speaker 2:So I've been signaled that we have five minutes left, so we'll close off with before we close off with the flash questions, my ending ceremony for misfit founders. I'll ask you one last question, which is what is this? What is it the part, what's the part of your job that you love the most?
Speaker 1:There's this moment when you spend a lot of time, you know, like digging, like getting context about the company understanding the market, understanding competitors, customers, understanding the market, understanding competitors, customers and then you kind of look at what options do you have for differentiation and it just kind of clicks. It's like that satisfying moment where you're like that's it and everybody looks at it and is like yes, that's it. That's the most satisfying part because at the end of the day, you try to kind of find new ways to solve big problems and when you found a solution that everybody agrees to, that is incredibly satisfying.
Speaker 2:I agree, I've been there a couple of times and, yes, it is Well. Three questions. You already know them because I sent them to you. Yeah, I'm just going to expose you to everyone here. Number one what's a quote that you like?
Speaker 1:Why. I was thinking about this a lot and I'm going to hijack your question, because I wasn't able to find this one quote.
Speaker 2:How dare you no go ahead Doing things differently, right?
Speaker 1:You should have seen this coming, but it's like you know, I'm not sure if there's this one quote that really reflects it.
Speaker 1:It's much more, you know, it's much more a principle, and maybe somebody knows a quote that I'm not aware of.
Speaker 1:But this whole idea of like a growth mindset has been pivotal, pivotal to pivotal to my life, for the reason that I had this like moment when I was like 24 where it was one of these kind of click moments where I realized, oh shit, I can learn most things and I can, if I really put my mind to it and invest the hard work, I can learn most things and I can, if I really put my mind to it and invest the hard work, I can solve most problems that are in front of me.
Speaker 1:And I thought maybe most people have that moment, but for me it was. So it was such an epiphany and it took me to move to Silicon Valley to realize that maybe it's the kind of mindset you have there, but it's that you can figure things out type of moment. So the growth mindset I don't know what a good quote is that hits that, but that to me is probably the deepest value that I have from and I did a lot of exploration of that like inherited from my family of origin personally as a value and also the value that I instilled in my family.
Speaker 2:Perfect, we'll take that. We'll take that answer. Value that I instilled in my family. Perfect, we'll take that answer. A book that impacted your life Principles.
Speaker 1:Principles. Ray Dalio, codifying the operating system you run by has been not only super impactful for me personally, but also for companies that we work with. We spoke about Shopify earlier. In Shopify, we had an operating system for our organization which is basically a codification of your principles, and just having that clarity is a massive game changer. We're talking about leading large organizations. Clarity is an antidote to slowing your organization down, and codifying your principles is a way to bring clarity brilliant.
Speaker 1:And then habit, good habit, good habit that you advocate for working out, uh, yeah, I, I kind of it's sacred to me um spiritual working out, and it's mostly these days for the mental benefits. I get my best ideas when I work out. That is my form of meditation that allows me to step back and reflect. And so, yeah, as cliche as it sounds, I work now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had so many sessions where I've completely zoned out because I'm thinking everywhere and then I realize, oh, my workout is done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because I tried meditating, I tried all these different things and it kind of gamified it for me and it never really brought the benefit that I was hoping for. And I think it's because all my work is all the stuff that I do most of the day is mental. And having that balance to do something very physical where you just focus on like moving that freaking weight right or kind of keep running, uh, that to me is is the best meditation, because you just you just focus on something else. Uh, you know, by definition, and uh, you can let your mind wander a little bit and all of a sudden all sorts of good things start to pop out yeah, and I would say, even if it's not workout and such, just taking a step back and doing something else.
Speaker 2:When my co-founder in the past realized at one point that we were so stuck in the now that we didn't have the time to decompress and just think a bit more holistically about things, so we kind of implemented once a week just going out for a beer, with absolutely no context, no purpose, and a lot of good stuff came out of that man, that's like that's so.
Speaker 1:That's one of the biggest lessons that I I still have to learn and that I'm that I've been learning throughout my life is, uh, space I give. How to prevent space again coming back to yourself, where maybe not your whole day needs to be scheduled right, or maybe, uh, maybe, it comes back to organizations as well. How do you, how do you create slack in the system so that big organizations can adapt, can pivot when necessary, without causing thrash, and it's the same for yourself. And it's exactly these kind of things creating space by doing something unstructured, like going for a beer and just see what pops up, and you'll see, oh my god, as most of the time brilliant things pop up. Either you're deep in your relationship or you think of something and you come to the same conclusion that is super profound. But you know that's another kind of vice of large organizations there's no slack in the system.
Speaker 2:I tend to call it white space, and it's very important for organizations as well. Thank you so much. I have a gift for you for being on my podcast. You are the 45, 45th guest on the podcast. I love it and, honestly, I think we need to have a follow-up. Because you know my style is lengthy conversations an hour and a half to two hours. I really want to dig into your path of getting where you, where you are, your entrepreneurship journey, the challenges along the way, but I think this was a good taster.
Speaker 1:That's a good appetizer. Thanks for having me and take this as my commitment to come to your podcast. I would love to continue the conversation and thanks for the amazing gift. 45 feels like a nice round number. If you give me 46, I'd be like that's cool, but it's 45 is round number. If you give me 46, I'd be like that's cool, but 45 is the number. Yes, brilliant.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much and thank you for everyone tuning in. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thanks, we definitely need to do a part two, yeah dude, when you said five minutes, I was like I was surprised.
Speaker 2:I was like what the hell?
