Latest / Founder Mode / Sleep, Listen, Say No

Transcript

Sleep, Listen, Say No · Founder Mode

• 0:00
  It's pretty cool. Like it's like sleeps the
• 0:02
  ultimate performance enhancing drug.
• 0:03
  Like you got all these lines. And yeah, I mean, and it's funny
• 0:06
  because like my scores actually degraded in the last 12 months
• 0:10
  and my general, my weights went up and my sleeps went down.
• 0:13
  And it happens to me, you know? There's correlation here.
• 0:17
  There is like when I'm building startups and doing like early
• 0:19
  stage stuff, I always end in this mode where like.
• 0:22
  But like once you were acquired into Microsoft and Instacart,
• 0:24
  the sleep scores went up the like wait you just.
• 0:27
  Find out. I mean, they're just a more,
• 0:29
  it's a more balanced org. You have more people around,
• 0:31
  like you're not carrying as many.
• 0:33
  Things you're not chief cook and bottle washer and everything.
• 0:51
  Hey, welcome to founder mode. Hey, what's up, Kevin?
• 0:54
  So. We're going to talk about three
• 0:55
  things. So one, we're going to talk
• 0:57
  about the founder sleep crisis because you didn't sleep last
• 1:00
  night and I slept less. And then the 1st 90 days, like
• 1:04
  when you take over like a company or a project, like what
• 1:06
  do you do? Yeah, you're the third one,
• 1:08
  right? I was working on some of that.
• 1:10
  And then the third one was like the saying no muscle.
• 1:12
  Like how do you kind of prioritize it?
• 1:14
  To me is it is I really like the third one.
• 1:16
  So. But let's jump into it.
• 1:18
  Well, I so we both were big on the 8 sleeps.
• 1:21
  That's where we get our text messages.
• 1:22
  This is this is nasty. Look at that 36 three hours of
• 1:25
  sleep. 64 Yeah, earlier. It was earlier, it was 58, and
• 1:29
  then I went back to sleep for an hour.
• 1:31
  That's incredible. I can't do that.
• 1:33
  So that's like the first thing for me when I wake up post like
• 1:37
  1:00 AM, no matter when I went to sleep, my mind starts
• 1:40
  chunking on stuff and I'm just like, well, I got to do these
• 1:44
  six things on my list so I just better get into it.
• 1:46
  So I don't count cheap so I do wear a sleep mask that I think
• 1:49
  that helps get back. I started wearing one this year.
• 1:50
  It's it's game changer. Yeah, but I think the and I'll
• 1:53
  put the link in the show notes to the one I have like I've
• 1:55
  gotten 3 different ones. There's the the Alaskan.
• 1:57
  Amazon cheap one or is it like a nice?
• 1:59
  One, so the Alaskan bear was my Amazon cheap 1 and I, I bought
• 2:02
  many of those. I think they're like 9 or
• 2:03
  $14.00. I think they changed the price
• 2:05
  once I started giving more people a link.
• 2:06
  It used to be 9 bucks. I think they're 14.
• 2:08
  And you know, like I said, even on a long flight, you just pop
• 2:10
  it in and you're like, even if you're not in the live flat
• 2:13
  seats, you got to set up. And I took a late flight
• 2:15
  yesterday and I've just popped it on and slept for a couple
• 2:17
  hours and it's great. The other thing that's been
• 2:19
  interesting for me with sleep is I feel like, I mean, post kids,
• 2:23
  most people like give young kids, you go to sleep earlier,
• 2:25
  you get up earlier, they wake up early, whatever.
• 2:27
  But you and I started on this podcast last year and you like
• 2:30
  just jammed into my brain. Like I go to bed at 8:00.
• 2:32
  I wake up at like 5. Like I'm like, you know, between
• 2:35
  4:00 and 5:00, like you're, you're the sleep routine and
• 2:38
  like I've been really consistent, you know, last
• 2:41
  night, notwithstanding going to bed super early.
• 2:44
  And when I tell people I wake up consistently at like 4:30 in the
• 2:47
  morning and I go to the gym and I have like 2 hours before
• 2:50
  anybody else is awake, yeah, it's like it's a, it's an unlock
• 2:55
  for everything. Not just like running companies,
• 2:58
  but just life. It's pretty cool.
• 2:59
  Like like sleeps, the ultimate performance enhancing drug.
• 3:02
  Like you've got all these lines. And yeah, I mean, and it's funny
• 3:05
  because like my scores actually degraded in the last 12 months
• 3:09
  and my general, my weights went up and my sleeps went down.
• 3:12
  And it happens to me, you know? There's correlation here.
• 3:16
  There is like when I'm building startups and doing like early
• 3:18
  stage stuff, I always end in this mode where like.
• 3:21
  But like once you were acquired into Microsoft and Instacart,
• 3:23
  the sleep scores went up the like wait you.
• 3:26
  Just find balance. I mean, they're just a more,
• 3:28
  it's a more balanced org. You have more people around like
• 3:30
  you're not carrying. As many things you're not chief
• 3:33
  cook and bottle washer and everything.
• 3:35
  Exactly. And so I think, yeah, I think
• 3:37
  what I you know, the thing I would love to unlock.
• 3:38
  And it's funny because, like, we literally started this first
• 3:40
  episode of this show, you know, going back, like, the original
• 3:44
  was talking about, like, sleep and the balance, hustle culture
• 3:47
  and stuff. And so it stills like a real
• 3:48
  challenge, right? Like to try to, like, force the
• 3:50
  sleep thing and totally get on it.
• 3:51
  And Topic 2 was taking over, like a new project or a company.
• 3:55
  Like, what do you do? Like, how do you sort of get
• 3:58
  your bearing? Yeah.
• 3:59
  You have way more experience here than me, My, my context on
• 4:04
  this. And then I think you should, you
• 4:06
  should kind of talk through like being acquired into companies
• 4:09
  and like your recent journey of taking over a company that you
• 4:12
  were involved in early days and then haven't been involved with
• 4:14
  for many years. But on my side, my role is like
• 4:17
  this third party consultant dropping into a company.
• 4:21
  So like I've been a fractional CMO more times than I can count
• 4:24
  on my 2 hands. And that's an interesting role.
• 4:27
  And what I've found with consulting, at least especially
• 4:30
  consulting into tech startups and like high growth tech
• 4:32
  companies is like if you hire expensive consultants, you give
• 4:36
  them way more latitude and benefit of the doubt than an
• 4:39
  FTE. It's weird.
• 4:40
  Like if somebody's like, you know, it's the McKinsey effect,
• 4:42
  whatever. And I'm not McKinsey and my
• 4:44
  team's not, but like trying to be right wannabe want to be as
• 4:47
  good as that and premium. But like ultimately people are
• 4:50
  like, well, you, you've done this before.
• 4:51
  You know what you're doing. We hired you for a reason.
• 4:53
  We're spending all this money. We should probably listen to
• 4:54
  you. We should probably do what
• 4:56
  you're telling us to do. And like, we should kind of like
• 4:58
  get in line versus my experience as being a full time CMO where I
• 5:02
  have many times times at the board of directors and with my
• 5:04
  CEO been at odds where I'm like, Hey, I think we should do this.
• 5:07
  And I'm like, well, I'm not sure we should check with one of our
• 5:09
  advisors. Should we bring in a consultant?
• 5:10
  Should we ask an agency? And it's like, it's backwards to
• 5:13
  me that like, and, and you, I'd be curious because I know over
• 5:16
  the years you've hired tons of agencies and consultants.
• 5:18
  And it's like, it seems crazy to me that that we get more
• 5:22
  leverage when we go into an organization that than the
• 5:24
  people that are like, I'm all in and I've got equity and I'm
• 5:26
  like, I'm here for the long run. Yeah, it's super interesting.
• 5:29
  And I hadn't thought of that initially when I first looked at
• 5:30
  this topic, but I do have thoughts on that.
• 5:32
  I think for me, when I've seen this happen where consultants
• 5:35
  come in and sort of seem to have like the the sort of like the
• 5:39
  wand to be able to get things done, to make changes or at
• 5:42
  least proposed changes that are off the wall are not sort of
• 5:45
  typical. I think there's this sense of
• 5:47
  security for people to say like, oh, well, if they're wrong, hey,
• 5:51
  it was just a consultant and we can fire them and end the
• 5:53
  project and like it gives you a little bit of protection, right?
• 5:55
  And I think in, in, in big companies, a lot of people like
• 5:58
  starve for safety, right? For sure.
• 6:01
  And then on the other side, when I've hired consultants and, and
• 6:04
  agencies and things like that, I always am thinking like, Hey, is
• 6:08
  there something that I can learn for you?
• 6:09
  And I always ask when I'm interviewing, even, you know,
• 6:11
  early ones is like, what are you at the best in the world at?
• 6:13
  Because many people will say, Oh, I'm good at this.
• 6:15
  I'm good at growth, I'm good at marketing.
• 6:16
  I'm going to like, no, no, what are you the best?
• 6:18
  Like, what is the best thing? Let's go start with that.
• 6:20
  And if we can find value there, then maybe we can grow and
• 6:22
  expand. And it also gets you out of the
• 6:25
  case for me when I'm like, Hey, I've got you in to go do this.
• 6:28
  You're the best in the world at that.
• 6:29
  And then when you're not crushing it at that, I'm like,
• 6:31
  well, if that's your best thing and that's your best at and
• 6:33
  you're not crushing, I'm like, why?
• 6:34
  It's makes it really easy for me to let you go because it's not
• 6:36
  like I made a mistake. I'm like, I asked you, you told
• 6:39
  me what you were the best at. And so it's really easy to cut
• 6:41
  the budget or let them go. But the initial.
• 6:43
  Easier than an FTE probably. Way easier because that by
• 6:46
  definition all good contracts, as we were told in due
• 6:49
  diligence, have an end date. So you want to talk about taking
• 6:52
  over a company or maybe first talk, you know, chronologically,
• 6:55
  like when you came in to either Microsoft or Instacart.
• 6:59
  Like what, you know, what was that experience like and what,
• 7:02
  what have you learned from that, that other founders were like,
• 7:04
  man, I really want to get acquired by one of these
• 7:06
  strategics or somebody like what should they know now?
• 7:09
  Yeah. And I think the getting acquired
• 7:12
  thing is almost not what the process that I would take would
• 7:16
  be very similar to getting hired, right.
• 7:18
  Like the first thing you want to do is you have to admit you're
• 7:21
  there's going to be things you just don't know.
• 7:23
  Even if you were hired for a role and you're supposed to go
• 7:25
  fix this thing and it's broken and they bring you in for your
• 7:27
  expertise, there's definitely things you don't know.
• 7:29
  And so trying to figure out about like the lay of the land
• 7:32
  is always kind of my first priority.
• 7:33
  And so the easiest way is literally just talk to
• 7:36
  everybody. And so in the old days, I would
• 7:38
  just book a lot of one on ones with like my team, my peers,
• 7:41
  like, you know, people at the company, like, and then always
• 7:43
  ask the people when they're meeting with them, Hey, who else
• 7:45
  should I meet? Cuz like you'll start to find
• 7:48
  you like, Oh, that was a great conversation.
• 7:49
  I'll introduce you to others. I've changed that a little bit
• 7:53
  for when I like go into a company where I have like
• 7:55
  control, like I'm taking over a company and I'll give it that in
• 7:57
  a second. But the main thing is you want
• 8:00
  to just learn what's going on and you want to get like, you
• 8:02
  know, you make your own judgement of some people will
• 8:04
  tell you all the truth. Some people will tell you like a
• 8:06
  view of what they're trying to position or politically move
• 8:09
  for. And so you but but by having
• 8:11
  that sort of full 360 ish view of all the things you say, and
• 8:15
  maybe it's not 360, maybe it's like a 280 view, you're not
• 8:18
  getting 100% clarity everywhere. But that sort of data then
• 8:21
  informs like, OK, and then as you're hearing things, you're
• 8:24
  like, I definitely want to kill that or start that or do more of
• 8:27
  this or this was interesting. But again, the hardest thing is
• 8:29
  to reserve that judgement until you've actually heard all the
• 8:33
  pictures. You know, but you're like almost
• 8:36
  doing a mental like framework, like start, stop, continue
• 8:39
  exercise in your head as you're listening to all the things that
• 8:42
  are going on. But like, you're just like,
• 8:43
  yeah, biting your tongue. Including the humans, like
• 8:45
  including the people you're meeting with, like should should
• 8:48
  they be in the inner circle or the outer circle?
• 8:49
  Or should. They be really out of the.
• 8:51
  Circle or they should they be like exited as?
• 8:53
  My friend, is that timeline, like is that 90 days?
• 8:57
  Like the bigger the company is the longer that you can like you
• 8:59
  have to wait before you can shake things up?
• 9:01
  Like is there some? Funny voice here, like these
• 9:03
  like first 90 days, first hundred day things.
• 9:05
  And I mean, to me, that's got to, you've got to kind of get
• 9:08
  the first Sprint of that done like the first week, right?
• 9:11
  Like, because the other thing, especially if you're coming into
• 9:14
  like a leadership position or something where you've been
• 9:16
  like, oh, you're brought in, a lot of people report to you or
• 9:19
  they're expecting a lot out of you.
• 9:20
  People are making judgments on you in the 1st 10 minutes,
• 9:24
  right? Of of seeing that note, reading
• 9:26
  it, it, hearing about it, and then the rumor mill starts.
• 9:29
  And then from the moment you have that first meeting,
• 9:31
  everybody's checking, Hey, what went on?
• 9:33
  What did they learn? And so that you don't have a lot
• 9:35
  of time to sort of collect raw ish information before people
• 9:39
  start to form their own opinions.
• 9:40
  And so you want to be able to say, like at the end of your
• 9:42
  first week, hey, I talked to a pretty wide swath of people
• 9:45
  already and here's my initial thoughts.
• 9:48
  And then the second week you're like, hey, you're kind of
• 9:51
  clarifying that and, and moving through it.
• 9:53
  And then, you know, I mean, so within the first month you're
• 9:56
  like, you know, week 3, you should be able to start making
• 9:58
  changes. And sometimes on week zero
• 10:00
  you're making changes like and. You're saying this universally
• 10:03
  like because that sounds fast to me, having been in some really
• 10:06
  big public companies and you have two like week 3.
• 10:09
  You're you're changing and at what level in the org are you
• 10:11
  your VP or like what, where do you sit where you're like, yeah,
• 10:15
  I'm I'm now have the authority to do this and like I'm my
• 10:18
  listening tour is over. Yeah, I mean, I would.
• 10:20
  Well, to be to be clear, the listening tour is never over,
• 10:22
  right? In fair.
• 10:23
  So you're always. Listening, have all your
• 10:25
  meetings so you like have as much knowledge as you have.
• 10:27
  And like, I know we're not supposed to talk about it, but
• 10:28
  it feels like AI can help a lot here.
• 10:30
  And maybe when you talk about coming into the latest venture
• 10:33
  or the old, new old venture, like how that's helped you
• 10:35
  accelerate that process? Yeah.
• 10:37
  So I think AI helps. I think the, you can guys refine
• 10:40
  questions or things like that that you've asked people and,
• 10:42
  and, and, you know, put your notes into a doc or something.
• 10:45
  But you know, I think that the principle is the same as you
• 10:48
  have to have an opinion because you know, and you have to have
• 10:50
  like some sort of way of capturing like what you want to
• 10:53
  do. I think the other thing that you
• 10:55
  should know upfront, whether you're getting hired or acquired
• 10:58
  or, you know, you're taking over something you buy, like a
• 11:00
  company take it over, is that what is the goal?
• 11:03
  Like what are you trying to achieve with this thing?
• 11:04
  What is your goal? What's the company's goal?
• 11:06
  What's the team's goal? What's the, you know, the board
• 11:08
  members goal, whatever. And I think figuring that out is
• 11:11
  pretty important because you're, you're weighing all of these
• 11:13
  things against that. And so, you know, very quickly
• 11:16
  when you do sort of take a new team overnight, a friend who
• 11:19
  went through a big, they were a vendor for a large public
• 11:22
  company that went through a reorg.
• 11:24
  And so their project was getting reassigned.
• 11:26
  And what did that leader do was just paused all the projects and
• 11:29
  said, everything's paused. We're not doing any new budgets.
• 11:31
  And so that was their move to sort of like pause time for the
• 11:34
  listening tour. And I think that's an OK
• 11:35
  strategy. And I think that's more common
• 11:37
  and really, really big organizations.
• 11:39
  But I also think that to me, like, you don't want to break
• 11:42
  momentum on the good stuff. And so I'm much more in the
• 11:45
  mindset of like on Week 3, I'm like, hey, I've heard a few
• 11:47
  things that a lot of people universally said we shouldn't do
• 11:49
  or we should do. Let's just try that.
• 11:51
  Because the other thing that I found is being in this sort of
• 11:54
  decision or listening to or paralysis for too long.
• 11:57
  People are like, oh, this person's never going to do
• 11:59
  anything. This guy's never making change.
• 12:01
  We're on Week 3 of you start making a couple changes.
• 12:04
  They're like, oh, he didn't even wait a month.
• 12:06
  Right. And people are like, hey, they
• 12:08
  all complained that the, you know, there was no more
• 12:10
  chocolate milk and it was only like skim or, or no fat.
• 12:13
  And they're like it was a. Smart waters at Google, but
• 12:15
  yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he brought chocolate milk
• 12:16
  back and. You're the guy that brought
• 12:19
  chocolate milk back. There was a company where that
• 12:21
  was one of the moves. Every day it was like I missed
• 12:25
  that chocolate milk. We had that.
• 12:26
  It was a team, it was a remote office.
• 12:28
  And that office had changed vendors at some point in the
• 12:32
  last year. And then that vendor moved them
• 12:34
  from like, you know, no fat milk to skim milk and chocolate milk,
• 12:38
  just to like no fat and skim. And they're like the chocolate
• 12:40
  milk has never been come back and they don't have it.
• 12:42
  So you just by way of kind of crazy circumstance and
• 12:45
  happenstance and life events have come back into ownership
• 12:49
  and leadership of this asset that you've had for many years
• 12:52
  where you were involved and now you're back and you're running
• 12:55
  it. So talk about that.
• 12:56
  Yeah, so I think so. I mean, we can just say the
• 12:58
  company. So the company search engine
• 12:59
  journal, it's a media website, marketers and publishers and.
• 13:03
  One of the OGE first SEO blog, yeah. 23 years of SEO blogging.
• 13:08
  Incredible. Yeah.
• 13:08
  So the parent company is called Alpha Brand Media.
• 13:11
  And so I started with a few friends, you know, many years
• 13:14
  ago. And what was crazy about it is,
• 13:17
  you know, I hadn't touched the company in a while or hadn't
• 13:19
  really worked on it, you know, obviously paid attention to it,
• 13:21
  but hadn't been in control. And so when I came back, you
• 13:24
  know, the first thing was pretty simple.
• 13:26
  It was meet with everybody, right?
• 13:27
  And the team was enough where I could meet with the whole team.
• 13:29
  It's less than 30 people. And so I just set up one on ones
• 13:32
  and I said, hey, here's a calendar link, grab a time.
• 13:34
  And then before answer these five questions and it was really
• 13:37
  simple. And so the first question is,
• 13:38
  what do you do, you know, what's your work behind your title?
• 13:41
  Like, what do you actually do on a typical week #2 roadblocks.
• 13:44
  Like what's the single biggest thing that's slowing you down?
• 13:46
  Process, tools, resources #3 is like, you know, 1 operational
• 13:51
  change. If you could make, what would
• 13:52
  you, what would that be? And then #4 was, you know, our
• 13:55
  favorite word, it's AI. Like, what are you doing with
• 13:57
  AI? What tools do you use and what
• 13:59
  should we be doing more or less with?
• 14:01
  And then the fifth was opportunities.
• 14:03
  What's one thing that we're missing?
• 14:04
  Revenue opportunities, content gaps, competitive moves,
• 14:07
  etcetera, right? And so it's like those five
• 14:08
  things and so solid list. It doesn't feel, it's not ten
• 14:11
  questions and it's not 3. Each of those, yeah, 5 questions
• 14:15
  gave me something. But more importantly, the fact
• 14:17
  that I sent the meeting out with the link and some people booked
• 14:19
  right away and sent the questions back right away, like
• 14:22
  within an hour. Other people, a week went by and
• 14:25
  they still hadn't booked the meeting.
• 14:27
  And so then I had my admin reach out and like, kind of, you know,
• 14:29
  encourage them. So a follow up question to that.
• 14:32
  Yeah, if you don't want to answer it, don't, but no, go
• 14:34
  ahead. The people that waited the week
• 14:37
  that didn't do the questions that had to be chased, what
• 14:40
  percentage of those people still work there?
• 14:42
  You've been there, like doing it like a month or so now.
• 14:44
  Yeah, it's 5050 probably. And those people that were
• 14:47
  within the hour, what percentage of them are still there 100%.
• 14:49
  But like that to me says everything.
• 14:51
  But we talk about this all the time.
• 14:53
  It's like it's more than just grab a shovel.
• 14:55
  It's like, are you in the arena? Are you on the team?
• 14:59
  Are you going with us? Like there's a new boss in town?
• 15:02
  Yeah, he's asking me to do something.
• 15:03
  Probably a good idea to do it. Yeah, I'm really, I mean.
• 15:06
  I haven't gotten the five question e-mail from Kevin in
• 15:07
  like the calendar link like hey. I just pulled up.
• 15:12
  I just pulled up the thread. Are you going?
• 15:15
  To do the actual math, you're like going to count it.
• 15:18
  No, no I'm not. You're pretty certain.
• 15:20
  Looked at the like, no, I'm very certain on the 100%.
• 15:22
  I'm very I'm very certain on the 5050.
• 15:24
  But I was just looking at the actual rough exact order of like
• 15:27
  who came and it's like almost a stacked rank of the of the
• 15:30
  quality of the team kind of crazy.
• 15:34
  And so so to me, you know, like that obviously like the ability
• 15:37
  to get back quickly follow up on something and look, some people
• 15:40
  are international. So I think there's like some,
• 15:42
  you know, they were probably sleeping so.
• 15:43
  One hour like you're asleep, but you plus the eight, right?
• 15:46
  Like whatever. It is, but by the time you by
• 15:48
  the by the time a week went by, everybody had seen it.
• 15:51
  You would have hoped this is like the back to the Elon
• 15:53
  Twitter thing. It's like, do you still work
• 15:54
  here? You like send up a Twitter?
• 15:55
  It's like, what did you do last week?
• 15:56
  And if they don't respond, you're like, well, they're not
• 15:57
  even what it what? Was the question, what did you
• 15:59
  accomplish this week, right? Yeah, very specific.
• 16:03
  Wording pretty specific, yeah. And so yeah, so I so that to me
• 16:07
  informed a lot, right. It gave me an initial thing and
• 16:10
  yeah, you can sort of put some AI to like some of the questions
• 16:12
  and answers, but then you actually meet with folks and
• 16:15
  learn. And so I think that was like the
• 16:18
  the work and the people side of things and that gave me a bunch
• 16:21
  of good information. And then on the interestingly,
• 16:22
  on the finance side, did something slightly controversial
• 16:25
  words like, you know, the we closed all the credit cards.
• 16:29
  So we closed, we shut off the ability for the company to spend
• 16:31
  money. And this is something I did pick
• 16:33
  up from the kind of the time of Twitter with Elon.
• 16:34
  Is it making it very. And again, it wasn't that hard.
• 16:37
  It was just like, hey, we have a new bank.
• 16:38
  I started at Mercury Bank and said, here's a new card.
• 16:40
  Anybody that needs an expense card, just, you know, send us a
• 16:42
  message or meet the finance person a message and we'll get
• 16:44
  you a new card and tell us how much you spend.
• 16:46
  And then what is it? And for 80% of the things, it
• 16:49
  was fine. Like it was like, Oh yeah, we're
• 16:50
  just going to change the card and put it in there.
• 16:52
  It's approval by our HubSpot, you know, upgrade this account,
• 16:55
  you know, the server hosting domains, whatever.
• 16:57
  Yeah, but surprisingly, 1520% of the expenses just never came.
• 17:01
  Nobody even asked they. Didn't come back.
• 17:04
  Nobody asked and never came back.
• 17:06
  It wasn't. Clear that wasn't being used.
• 17:08
  Some of it was stuff that wasn't needed.
• 17:09
  People had forgot about it or they weren't even.
• 17:12
  They were no longer prepared to defend it, so they didn't want
• 17:15
  to ask about it, whatever it was.
• 17:17
  So Kevin, I want to jump in on something you just said because
• 17:19
  like I'm kind of obsessed with it.
• 17:21
  It's a really smart financial controls approach.
• 17:23
  And so for founders that are listening that like, want to be
• 17:26
  smarter with their, with their cash and kind of how they manage
• 17:30
  it, I, I really suggest. So Mercury is really cool
• 17:33
  because Kevin is using it. And, and you tell me if I get
• 17:36
  this wrong, but the, the cards you, these virtual cards you can
• 17:39
  assign, so you can have specific vendors and expenses and like
• 17:43
  rules around, OK, you can't charge it again for 3031 days.
• 17:46
  If somebody hits it before then it declines.
• 17:47
  If they hit for above the amount that you've set is the monthly
• 17:49
  limit, it declines. And so suddenly you go from like
• 17:52
  kind of wild, Wild West where like credit card just has a
• 17:54
  credit limit and people can just RIP on it as much as they want
• 17:57
  to. Like know that subscription is
• 17:58
  30 bucks a month. And so $31 charge declines.
• 18:01
  And we're like, no, that $30 should charge the next month.
• 18:04
  So if it tries to charge on day 25, it declines.
• 18:07
  That's pretty cool. And like, I think you know,
• 18:09
  something I've not experienced with any other bank.
• 18:12
  So, yeah, I mean, Ramp has this, Breck says.
• 18:14
  I mean, there's other companies that have kind of these
• 18:16
  approaches. Like definitely you're not
• 18:17
  seeing this at Chase. The Neobank Tech Bank.
• 18:21
  And I think the other thing that again, you know this approach
• 18:24
  and again you can implement this other ways, but like is every
• 18:26
  card has an owner like so that I try to have like me and the
• 18:29
  finance person try not to own any subscriptions or cards.
• 18:33
  So you say that everybody has to.
• 18:34
  Yeah, it's not. Just like rolling back to the
• 18:36
  like the big the big cheese or the book.
• 18:38
  Head of marketing dash, HubSpot, like their name, they have the
• 18:41
  HubSpot account, like, you know, head of infra slash hosting,
• 18:45
  they have the card for that. And so that that way the cards
• 18:47
  tied to them. It's very clear like 'cause I,
• 18:50
  there's always just been these cases and whether it's diligence
• 18:52
  or just like thinking about things and finance and kind of
• 18:54
  like, hey, who's spending this? What's this like, how do we go?
• 18:56
  Let's do an audit of all our stuff?
• 18:57
  It's like, no, it's, it's kind of made it right.
• 18:59
  Like I just say there's too much spending in this department or
• 19:03
  this card. Like I can instantly trace it
• 19:05
  back not only to the service, but to the human that sort of
• 19:08
  knows the most about it's the responsible for it.
• 19:10
  So. The last question for you on
• 19:11
  this and then we should talk about the third topic and wrap
• 19:13
  up is when you came into SCJ, how long did you wait to start
• 19:18
  making changes? I mean this one, I mean it was
• 19:20
  immediate. You had to switch banks, but
• 19:21
  like it was a. Lot quicker.
• 19:22
  I had more progress. I mean this first day, I mean
• 19:24
  the banking thing happened on day zero.
• 19:26
  So like we started making some of the changes very quickly, but
• 19:29
  I think some of the bigger sort of strategy things took a week
• 19:31
  or two. We started to say, hey, we're
• 19:32
  gonna do that. We're gonna do.
• 19:33
  This time horizon was not the case.
• 19:35
  Not big company stuff. This is small organization.
• 19:37
  Yeah, it was quick. Yeah, it was quick.
• 19:39
  I mean started like rebuilding some of the way we were
• 19:41
  approaching sales and, and, and, and thinking through that and
• 19:44
  helping out to like, hey, how do we accelerate things.
• 19:46
  So, yeah, it was, it was quick and I think and it's still
• 19:48
  ongoing. It's not, you know, there's a
• 19:49
  lot more to do there, but it's also like a lot of opportunity
• 19:52
  and a lot of like ton of good ideas came from the team of
• 19:55
  like, they were like, oh, we should try these things.
• 19:57
  We thought of these things. We haven't had time or the
• 19:58
  resources. And it's like, OK.
• 20:00
  And I mean, the high level thing is like, how do you use AI bring
• 20:03
  back, you know, some large percentage of the time and then
• 20:07
  use that time to go do other new things.
• 20:09
  And that's kind of been the, the, the routine and it's, it's,
• 20:12
  it's, it's worked. Pretty well.
• 20:12
  So in my in my sleep deprived fuke state I don't remember the
• 20:15
  third topic. So what is it?
• 20:17
  I got you. Thank you.
• 20:19
  It's the no, it's say no. Like how do you build your say
• 20:22
  no muscle? How do you prioritize things
• 20:24
  when stuff's on fire? And so it's kind of crazy
• 20:25
  because it's actually to me, it's one approach, but two
• 20:29
  topics and one, which is 1 is just, hey, how do you say no in
• 20:31
  general? And then how do you prioritize
• 20:33
  when things on fire? Because there's times where like
• 20:36
  you get towards the end of the day or you're going to like rush
• 20:38
  out to a big international trip and you're like, I'm going to be
• 20:40
  offline for the next 12 hours. What are the things that I want
• 20:43
  to accomplish before I'm like pencils down, you know, kind of
• 20:47
  machines off. And so that, so that's I'll
• 20:50
  start. So I think for.
• 20:51
  And so I think about that one a lot more, which is like, Hey,
• 20:54
  I'm going to like, you know, kind of go to sleep for 8 hours.
• 20:57
  And I do this one at night a lot of times, right?
• 20:59
  Because it's, it's like, and I look across, you know, I
• 21:02
  basically live in two inboxes, right?
• 21:04
  I have like my slack inboxes where a lot of real time stuff
• 21:06
  is and I use later to flag stuff.
• 21:08
  So I go through all my laters and then I and that one's been
• 21:11
  harder for me. I'm not as slack.
• 21:12
  I don't naturally think of Slack as inbox 0, but I definitely
• 21:16
  think of e-mail as inbox 0. And so e-mail, I always go back
• 21:18
  and, and I'll skim my e-mail and look across and say what's
• 21:20
  there. And then if I have time, I'll
• 21:22
  actually snooze or, or park things that I really can't get
• 21:25
  to today and snooze them to tomorrow to just be like, Hey,
• 21:27
  it's actually getting to 0. So it's like clear and, and set
• 21:30
  some new deadlines. But a lot of times when I go and
• 21:33
  do that review in a more sort of holistic way, like on a weekend
• 21:36
  or something, like you're prepping for the week, the no
• 21:38
  hammer comes out a little harder where you're like, man, I've had
• 21:40
  this thing where I was going to go post this, you know, new job.
• 21:44
  And then I'm like, I haven't really posted it.
• 21:45
  It's been like 3 weeks and I started the job description and
• 21:47
  I, my team wrote a bunch of stuff and I'm just like, it's
• 21:50
  just not now. I don't have time to like
• 21:52
  because I keep thinking like, man, I haven't had time to like
• 21:54
  finish this job posting. And I'm like, if I haven't had
• 21:56
  time to finish it, I may not have time to like go do all the
• 22:00
  proper interviews and schedule it.
• 22:01
  And so I'm like, this is kind of a nice to have thing when I
• 22:03
  thought of it. And, and so I, I find myself
• 22:07
  saying no to things like that, that I, you know, not only said
• 22:09
  yes to, but actually started to work on and kind of like in some
• 22:12
  cases assigned other people to work on just because it's.
• 22:14
  Yeah, I find it really hard to even say no to some of my own
• 22:17
  ideas because it's like I have the thing I want to do,
• 22:19
  especially in the age of the third party harness.
• 22:21
  And it's like, oh, I've got my perplexity computer, my Hermes
• 22:24
  age and my opaque whatever The thing is that I'm using is my
• 22:26
  little AI chief of staff and like I can just work on that all
• 22:29
  day long. But to your point, like you've
• 22:31
  got multiple businesses you're running and I do too and people
• 22:35
  are coming to you and saying, hey, can we do this?
• 22:37
  Can we do that? I have this idea What about
• 22:39
  this? What about that?
• 22:40
  And the inbox zero thing is real.
• 22:41
  Like I am OCD about it. I would say I'm even like I've
• 22:45
  been for the last few months, I've been really good about
• 22:47
  getting inbox 0 every night on my e-mail.
• 22:49
  And I'm similarly, and this is not great with Slack got to
• 22:53
  inbox 0 on the laters. But what I'm doing is I'm
• 22:55
  snoozing them to tomorrow and I find myself with certain items
• 22:58
  that I do that too many times. I'm just like, Nope, complete.
• 23:01
  I'm just never going to do it because it's clearly not
• 23:02
  important. And that's becomes the forcing
• 23:04
  function. But it doesn't feel like the
• 23:06
  right framework. Like I think the founders that I
• 23:08
  see, they're just crushing at this.
• 23:10
  They're so good at gracefully and like very stealthily, like
• 23:15
  without hurting feelings or and I know you don't care about
• 23:17
  feelings, but like with with just out make would make people
• 23:20
  feel good while saying no. Like I don't know how else to
• 23:22
  say that, but it's incredible to watch somebody who's just like,
• 23:24
  yeah, I don't think that's like I don't think that's going to
• 23:26
  work. My daughter one time said I
• 23:28
  offered her some food and dinner.
• 23:29
  She was maybe two or three years old.
• 23:30
  She's like, that's not in my today.
• 23:31
  And I was like, Oh my God, I love that like that.
• 23:34
  Sorry, this is just not in my today.
• 23:35
  Can't do it not not wrong. Yeah, so for me, I just struggle
• 23:39
  with this and it's something I don't know, I always have to
• 23:41
  worry on because I'm like a people pleaser and I like to
• 23:43
  make people feel good and like do the right thing and like,
• 23:46
  sometimes I wish I was a little bit more ruthless.
• 23:48
  Yeah, I think part of it's like, you know, and I think there's
• 23:51
  you, you mentioned this earlier in the show, like the idea of
• 23:53
  like when you have a kid, like your time and sleep changes.
• 23:56
  Like you sort of like have to like you're like, man, there's
• 23:58
  just a lot of like uncontrolled time when you have a small child
• 24:01
  and you have to sort of make do with the rest of the time.
• 24:04
  So you sort of become better at ruthlessly prioritizing.
• 24:06
  And I think there's a version of that that we can have, you know,
• 24:09
  even now where you're like, hey, what can I do to like, you know,
• 24:12
  mentally think about it. And I've used this framework.
• 24:15
  It's like some days it's like, well, I'm going to end work at
• 24:17
  this time and pretend I'm getting on, you know, a 14 hour
• 24:20
  flight. Like what would it look like to
• 24:22
  get my work state where I'm not worried about that for the next
• 24:25
  14 hours, the next two days. Or hey, I can go chill out and
• 24:28
  be like, things are covered and if they're not, they'll be fine
• 24:30
  when I get there in 16 hours because honestly, most things
• 24:33
  are. And it's more like.
• 24:34
  Does founder mode ever shut off? That's like the 14 hour thing.
• 24:37
  Like even hearing you say it gives me like my skin crawls a
• 24:39
  little bit and I get a little bit of anxiety.
• 24:41
  But like, oh, if I had to shut my phone off for 14 hours, I'm
• 24:43
  not sure I could. Yeah, no, I, I definitely have
• 24:46
  like addiction to Internet and all that stuff and and like want
• 24:48
  to not shut it off. I think the, The thing is that
• 24:50
  like I think of it in two modes, like 1 is like if I have my
• 24:53
  phone and I can snack on things that are coming in, like, you
• 24:56
  know, like, hey, this thing, you know, I can kind of like work on
• 24:58
  a little bit delicious. But it's not like there's like a
• 25:02
  project or the other thing that this is an interesting one
• 25:04
  because so Benny Hoff runs Salesforce famously, it's been
• 25:08
  written about like from his iPhone, right?
• 25:09
  Like at his level, he has a lot of help.
• 25:12
  Every single minute. And he has, he has some like
• 25:14
  body people with him that are like, you know, handling things
• 25:17
  that have laptops and stuff. But there's still things that I
• 25:20
  do that are very, very tricky to do on a phone.
• 25:23
  And and that's the one thing I'm always trying to figure out a
• 25:26
  solve for. And in the past, it's always
• 25:29
  been like EAS or admins or team members to do that.
• 25:31
  And I think there's an opportunity without talking
• 25:33
  about AI too much, that more of those things, we can find ways
• 25:38
  to execute things only on the phone.
• 25:39
  And I think that's what I like talking to clawed code and
• 25:41
  talking to open claw type things and like being like, hey, did
• 25:44
  these things. They actually and have enough
• 25:46
  context to you can almost kind of delegate stuff to them and
• 25:50
  and again, if it's a small enough and concrete enough
• 25:52
  stuff, then you can delegate more complex stuff that you
• 25:54
  could have delegated to. So maybe the take away there is
• 25:57
  like you can start to say no to more things because now we have
• 26:01
  a little bit more leverage with the tools that can empower us to
• 26:05
  say like I don't want to do this, but maybe this thing can
• 26:07
  go do a lot of it for me. Yeah.
• 26:10
  Should we leave it there? Or the time pressure.
• 26:12
  The time pressure of when you have to do it is because it
• 26:15
  because a lot of times it's like, man, if you can get back
• 26:16
  an 80% solution really quickly, that'll buy you time to go, then
• 26:20
  do the do the rest of it in three days.
• 26:23
  Feels like a good spot to leave it.
• 26:24
  I like it. All right, Kevin, we just did
• 26:27
  body roll and time, the three things every founder pretends
• 26:30
  that they have under control. Yeah, and I think the through
• 26:33
  line was kind of fun sleep as the base layer, the 1st 90 days
• 26:36
  as the roll layer and then say no muscle is how you actually
• 26:39
  protect the yeah, the. The part that's stuck with me
• 26:42
  was your week 3 framework. Everyone here is 1st 90 days and
• 26:46
  thinks they've got three months to sit around and listen and
• 26:49
  you're basically saying by week 3 you better have an opinion and
• 26:52
  be making changes or people start writing you off.
• 26:54
  And the listening tour never really ends, you just stop
• 26:56
  getting clean data the longer you wait down so.
• 26:58
  The thing that blew my mind on the SCJ takeover?
• 27:02
  The order your team replied to that five question e-mail?
• 27:05
  Almost perfectly stacked, ranked to the kind of roster quality.
• 27:07
  Setting aside time zone differences, that's a leadership
• 27:10
  hack kind of hiding in plain sight.
• 27:12
  Yeah, I think it works, you know, for for certain
• 27:14
  situations. I think it'll be trickier at
• 27:15
  bigger orders, but I do think there's a there's a sort of a.
• 27:18
  All right, Kevin, what are your what are your five key takeaways
• 27:20
  from the episode? Yeah.
• 27:21
  Sleep is the ultimate PED performance enhancing drug week
• 27:24
  3 not day 95 questions. What kind of stack rank your
• 27:27
  team. Every card needs a named human
• 27:30
  owner right and you think of like buying things subscriptions
• 27:32
  and then you know sort of the 14 hour flight test right.
• 27:34
  Can you really set things down and just be offline if this one?
• 27:37
  Hit share with the founder who's been running on 4 hours of sleep
• 27:39
  and a packed calendar. They need it more than you do.
• 27:42
  And subscribe to Founder Mode if you haven't already.
• 27:44
  Leave us a review. It genuinely helps other
• 27:47
  founders find the show. That's it for today.
• 27:49
  Because the real Founder Flex isn't hustle.
• 27:52
  It's the discipline to sleep, listen and say no.