Dan Martell - Conquering a $120B Industry with Greg @ Alyce.com - Escape Velocity Show #31

00:00:00.000 The future of work is, like, even for our team, like, part of the culture that we've built is, like, you sit at your desk when you need to be at your desk.

00:00:06.860 You want to be at home? You be at home. You need to get work done, whatever it is.

00:00:09.380 There's not this, like, you need to be in this seat, you know, until 6 p.m.

00:00:12.720 And if I'm walking around, like, that's it. It is a weird idea, but there's a lot of companies that do it.

00:00:17.340 Ignition sequence start. Three, two, one.

00:00:30.000 Boom.

00:00:30.500 How's it going?

00:00:31.500 Good, man.

00:00:32.000 It's so good to have you on here, Greg.

00:00:33.000 Good to see you again.

00:00:34.400 Alice.com is your company.

00:00:35.900 It is.

00:00:36.500 Raised 11-some million in June.

00:00:39.800 11 and a half million, yeah.

00:00:40.800 OK.

00:00:41.400 Prior to that, five and a bit?

00:00:43.700 5.4.

00:00:44.900 Dude, this is great.

00:00:45.700 $17 million.

00:00:46.700 What do you do with all that money?

00:00:48.100 Buy boats.

00:00:48.900 OK, cool.

00:00:49.600 Cars, boats.

00:00:50.100 All right.

00:00:50.600 Yeah, investors.

00:00:51.100 See, investors.

00:00:51.900 Yeah, that's right.

00:00:52.300 You just send them random running PowerPoints,

00:00:53.700 and they're good to go.

00:00:54.400 That's right.

00:00:54.900 Just don't follow me on Instagram,

00:00:56.100 because you'll be pissed off. 0.74

00:00:56.900 Exactly.

00:00:57.400 Yeah, that's right.

00:00:58.600 But for real, 110 people now?

00:01:00.640 Yep.

00:01:01.640 That's a lot of growth.

00:01:02.920 That's a lot of growth, 15 people about a year and a half

00:01:05.680 ago, so a lot of new folks.

00:01:08.360 OK, for those that don't know, alice.com is?

00:01:11.680 So corporate gifting platform, specifically

00:01:13.660 for sales and marketing, we use AI

00:01:15.820 to figure out exactly who you are as a human being.

00:01:17.760 So it finds all your interests publicly available,

00:01:20.400 matches you to the best gift to send to you.

00:01:22.720 So we have a huge e-commerce marketplace

00:01:24.680 that we actually say, hey, here are all the top consumer

00:01:26.740 brands, and then match it up, and then send that option off

00:01:30.320 for you.

00:01:30.760 And then the recipient, say it's your prospect or something,

00:01:33.540 has the opportunity to be able to either accept that gift,

00:01:35.880 exchange it for anything else in the marketplace,

00:01:37.320 or donate it to a charity of their choice.

00:01:38.780 Oh, neato.

00:01:39.400 And then the key thing is that you have full ROI tracking.

00:01:42.520 So now you can actually see exactly how many meetings

00:01:44.460 that I get, because it's deeply tied into Salesforce,

00:01:46.420 and Outreach, and a bunch of other platforms.

00:01:47.920 And then do you set a budget for kind of like the gifting?

00:01:50.320 100%, yeah.

00:01:50.920 OK.

00:01:51.220 And the nice thing again is that you're not actually

00:01:53.120 sending something.

00:01:53.700 So if I'm like, oh, Dan loves to ski,

00:01:56.260 I'm not going to send you a random boot

00:01:57.320 warmer to your desk, which is super creepy.

00:01:59.740 I'll send you the option for it.

00:02:00.980 And then if you want to take it, then the company actually

00:02:03.220 gets charged.

00:02:04.120 So it's sort of this pay for performance model as well.

00:02:05.680 OK, so there's breakage in there.

00:02:07.060 Exactly.

00:02:07.680 So you might still get the meeting

00:02:08.900 because there was a gesture, but they didn't actually redeem.

00:02:11.940 100%.

00:02:12.440 Because it's all about reciprocity, right?

00:02:13.720 You're trying to build reciprocity with somebody

00:02:15.160 else by saying, look, I care about you.

00:02:17.180 I'm going to invest in something into you.

00:02:18.580 And then that's the whole entire model.

00:02:21.000 Wow.

00:02:21.700 And how long have you been doing it?

00:02:23.100 So it's going to be, I guess the original idea

00:02:24.820 was four years ago.

00:02:25.900 We really raised the round.

00:02:27.340 Was that the original idea?

00:02:29.260 No, it wasn't.

00:02:29.840 OK, because that's the long story on that one,

00:02:31.300 if you want to sit here for another 45 minutes.

00:02:32.660 No, that's all.

00:02:34.080 No, the original idea was actually a referral network.

00:02:36.560 And I'm a super geek.

00:02:38.020 So I was actually a fine arts major and a computer science

00:02:40.700 guy, so I was always torn between the two.

00:02:42.820 So I prototyped this idea where if you're saying, hey,

00:02:45.560 I want to find an SEO guy or a marketing guy or whatever, 0.99

00:02:49.460 plumber, it's a pain in the ass, because you've 0.99

00:02:51.180 got to go out there, and you've got to say, hey, 0.99

00:02:52.900 I'm going to find anyone anything.

00:02:54.720 And then you go through your LinkedIn profiles or whatever it is.

00:02:57.160 So I was like, well, let's just build a box.

00:02:58.520 You can type in what you're looking for.

00:02:59.880 And then you can connect all your first degree contacts and then hit send.

00:03:03.240 And then all your first degree contacts can then filter in all their vouchers is what I called it.

00:03:07.880 So I prototyped that in a weekend.

00:03:09.380 And then the last thing I was like, well, how do you monetize this?

00:03:12.340 So I was like, well, if I get Dan a $10,000 gig, then you can send me a gift saying thank you.

00:03:17.780 So then I showed all my friends who own agencies here in Boston over the next 10 days.

00:03:21.480 I took them out to lunch. 0.98

00:03:22.760 And all 10 of them said, this sucks. 0.95

00:03:24.720 You know, it's a horrible idea. 0.82

00:03:25.920 But how do you remind me to do that referral gift thing?

00:03:29.220 Or hey, I always have to have a hard time

00:03:30.840 trying to remember to send a gift or pick a gift

00:03:33.120 or whatever it was.

00:03:34.500 And then I went down this whole rabbit hole of like, OK, well,

00:03:37.620 there's a big opportunity there.

00:03:39.120 And then the hypothesis was, well, 0.99

00:03:41.220 every company is spending a stupid amount of money 0.98

00:03:43.140 on gifts, rewards, swag, meals, trips, tickets, events, 0.98

00:03:46.380 and all this stuff.

00:03:47.580 None of those companies that I talked to

00:03:48.960 could track that for ROI.

00:03:50.340 And then more importantly, they said, well,

00:03:51.840 it's a complete waste of money because all that is

00:03:54.480 spend is like, do you really want that crappy water bottle?

00:03:57.660 Or do you want those chocolate feet that says,

00:03:59.520 I want to get my foot in the door?

00:04:01.060 Or do you want to go to the steak dinner?

00:04:03.040 Because they just go to the steak dinner,

00:04:04.440 because they want the steak, but they don't care about you. 0.99

00:04:06.780 Yeah, it's just dumb gifts. 0.87

00:04:08.540 So I mean, does the product play in the ABM space? 0.95

00:04:11.400 100%.

00:04:11.880 Yeah.

00:04:12.500 So that's a big thing for us.

00:04:13.760 Well, think about it.

00:04:14.480 So the problem was five years ago, even two years ago,

00:04:18.260 it was like, well, I can't get enough leads.

00:04:20.240 Now the problem is, I can't get any responses.

00:04:22.660 Because we already know where everybody's

00:04:24.380 The data is out there, you can buy the list.

00:04:26.180 And you're spamming the crap out of everybody.

00:04:27.800 Every sales rep is sending 100 emails, 100 calls,

00:04:30.320 or doing 100 calls.

00:04:31.460 Do you feel like there's these trends in markets

00:04:35.180 where it's almost like the gifting,

00:04:38.360 I feel like I'm going along.

00:04:39.740 Even direct mail now is coming back.

00:04:41.660 Yeah, we consider ourselves reinventing direct mail.

00:04:44.120 Yeah.

00:04:44.620 It goes in waves.

00:04:45.980 It's like people show up, they burn it,

00:04:47.720 then we've got to go back to the other thing.

00:04:49.280 That works, we're going to burn it,

00:04:50.780 we're going to come back to this at some point.

00:04:53.000 Well, think about this is direct mail, like everyone's saying, oh, well, my inbox is full, right?

00:04:57.660 You know, my voicemails are full.

00:04:58.920 Nobody's picking it up.

00:04:59.660 My LinkedIn in-mails are full.

00:05:01.340 Oh, yeah.

00:05:02.020 The goal is not to say, OK, well, let's spam everybody on their desk.

00:05:05.000 And like all of a sudden you have 700 packages sitting on there.

00:05:07.200 And also it's much more expensive.

00:05:08.440 Like emails are cheap.

00:05:09.400 LinkedIn messages are cheap.

00:05:10.580 Yeah.

00:05:10.720 Calls are cheap.

00:05:11.540 Fractional costs.

00:05:12.260 But now direct mail, you know, there's companies that are saying, well, let's just get as many things out there to get people's attention.

00:05:17.280 And we're saying it's not about attention.

00:05:19.000 You're investing this money.

00:05:20.080 So I'm like, hey, I want to take you to a steak dinner.

00:05:21.560 That's a relationship we're trying to build.

00:05:23.640 But don't just do something generic.

00:05:24.980 Do it where it's going to actually

00:05:26.180 be an experience we can have together, right?

00:05:28.260 And if it's something I'm giving to you as a gift,

00:05:31.400 it should be about you.

00:05:32.280 It's not about me.

00:05:33.500 So we're not about creating that as another spam channel.

00:05:35.640 We're about saying, take that money

00:05:37.140 and just appropriate it in a much better way

00:05:39.300 to build the relationship with the person you're

00:05:40.520 actually trying to drive.

00:05:41.100 And is there any mention of Alice on the gift?

00:05:43.820 So no.

00:05:44.660 So the only-

00:05:45.360 Because as soon as somebody finds out

00:05:46.560 that you've done it using some kind of automation,

00:05:48.700 it kind of removes the top bonus of it.

00:05:50.480 Yes, and so this is the funny thing.

00:05:52.200 So we had that as the early customers, early customers.

00:05:55.620 A couple of years ago, when we were really pivoting

00:05:57.860 the company, or not pivoting.

00:05:59.080 I'd say focusing the company much more on like,

00:06:01.080 let's go after this as a sales and marketing tool.

00:06:03.440 Then we started to realize that actually having Alice's brand

00:06:06.740 increased trust factor, because then what they would do

00:06:08.860 is they would realize that, oh, this is a real marketplace.

00:06:11.500 Otherwise, if there was just some sort of a spam

00:06:13.100 phishing thing.

00:06:14.260 Oh, that's fair.

00:06:14.720 So what we do is we make it as much about the sender

00:06:17.920 as we can, and saying, look, this

00:06:20.180 sorry, the recipient as much as you can with the sender.

00:06:23.100 And the only branding that happens anywhere on that

00:06:25.520 is just on a little card that's sitting inside of there

00:06:27.380 that has the code to go get your gift.

00:06:29.020 And then, of course, they find out about Alice

00:06:30.400 because then they go to alice.com.

00:06:32.400 So there's a huge viral loop built into the platform

00:06:35.020 because we've digitized that whole process.

00:06:36.820 And if I send you a gift, and you go there, and then you say,

00:06:39.020 wow, I want to do this for my customers or my prospects.

00:06:41.180 100%.

00:06:41.480 And even better than that is when our customers,

00:06:43.860 like a Marketo, is going out there

00:06:45.520 and then sending gifts to the folks that are actually

00:06:47.240 buying Alice, there's this awesome viral loop.

00:06:49.480 So the CAC, the customer acquisition cost,

00:06:51.340 gets driven down tremendously from that.

00:06:53.560 15 employees a year ago, 110 today.

00:06:57.820 How do you do that?

00:07:00.040 Carefully.

00:07:00.780 You buy boats, not just kidding.

00:07:03.620 So I'm at a boat party.

00:07:05.400 Yeah.

00:07:06.800 I'll sort of tell you, I ran a company prior to this,

00:07:09.980 which if you want to get into, we can get into that.

00:07:11.560 But I learned a lot of lessons in my 20s and early 30s

00:07:14.440 running that company that I wanted to take and do not

00:07:17.860 not make those same mistakes the second time through.

00:07:19.980 One of the key things that I said when I wanted to start

00:07:21.940 this company was, first of all, I

00:07:23.100 wanted to have a huge social impact on the world.

00:07:25.200 Like that last company, I walked away from it.

00:07:27.340 You know, financially, great.

00:07:28.380 But outside of that, it's like the brand doesn't exist anymore.

00:07:30.860 The websites we created don't exist anymore.

00:07:32.620 Like there's not real that big impact.

00:07:34.720 The employees, I was happy about the employees outcomes there.

00:07:37.500 But like that was it.

00:07:39.180 This, I said, if we go in and we go after a market right now

00:07:42.020 that in the US is $120 billion and globally

00:07:44.380 is somewhere between a half a trillion and a trillion

00:07:45.880 dollars a year.

00:07:46.380 It's corporate swag gifting?

00:07:47.760 It's all the categories I'm issued for.

00:07:49.500 Swag, gifts, rewards, incentives, meals, trips, tickets.

00:07:52.200 If we can just carve out a fraction of a percent of that,

00:07:55.500 and in our case, we have about 11% of people

00:07:57.540 donate the value back to charity,

00:07:59.260 we'd be the largest charity in the world,

00:08:00.500 the largest giver in the world if we're

00:08:02.220 able to actually affect that.

00:08:03.960 So when you're talking about the people,

00:08:06.300 the key thing that we've done, or I tried to do it from day one,

00:08:09.480 was like, here's the values of the business.

00:08:11.300 Here's the vision of the business.

00:08:12.780 For us, it's like totally changed the dynamics of how

00:08:15.720 people are interacting inside the business.

00:08:17.700 Don't treat people like zombies.

00:08:19.280 Treat them like human beings.

00:08:20.440 I'll give you that little analogy later.

00:08:22.800 And the second thing was like create a set values

00:08:25.080 that are unique to us.

00:08:26.380 And actually, I was going back and there

00:08:29.640 was this Stanford podcast that was done, this video series

00:08:33.180 that was done by Stanford.

00:08:33.620 Yeah, what was that called?

00:08:34.660 I used to watch all of them.

00:08:35.220 How to Start a Startup.

00:08:36.040 Yeah.

00:08:36.340 Right?

00:08:36.540 There was like 16 or 17 episodes.

00:08:37.860 Yeah, it was by the YC guys, right?

00:08:39.380 YC guys, yeah, yeah.

00:08:40.160 Like Sam Altman and Reed Hoffman and stuff.

00:08:43.680 And what was really interesting is

00:08:44.760 there was two episodes in there that really got to me.

00:08:46.800 One of them was the Airbnb one, where Brian Chesky,

00:08:49.860 Brian was on there.

00:08:51.300 And Brian was just talking about how they invested so heavily

00:08:55.760 into the values of the business.

00:08:57.620 And one of the ones I loved so much

00:08:59.200 was become a serial entrepreneur,

00:09:00.520 because the story was, and it was serial spelled,

00:09:02.320 like cereal, like Lucky Charms.

00:09:03.700 Yeah, yeah, they're a cereal box.

00:09:04.820 And it was cereal box, because they did the Obama O's 0.99

00:09:07.280 and the Captain McCain's.

00:09:09.700 And I listened to that, and I was like, that is brilliant,

00:09:12.120 because their values are directly correlated to who they're

00:09:15.680 bringing in, who they're hiring, and whatnot.

00:09:17.260 And the second thing he said in that podcast,

00:09:20.120 or that video series, was they took five months

00:09:23.440 to hire their first engineer, because they couldn't find

00:09:26.160 anybody that actually matched their same vision,

00:09:28.260 or the same values, and actually wanted

00:09:30.260 to build towards the vision that they had for the business,

00:09:32.620 which, of course, is ever-revolving, but that was it.

00:09:35.120 So I followed that same exact play.

00:09:37.200 You look at Zappos and Airbnb are my two favorite companies

00:09:41.120 to look at from that.

00:09:42.500 And once you start building the core of the business

00:09:45.620 around those values, and then you

00:09:47.420 allow people to hire people just like themselves

00:09:50.140 to come into the business, and they understand

00:09:51.740 what to look out for, it makes it very easy

00:09:53.840 to scale the business around just a centralized push.

00:09:56.960 Here's what we believe in.

00:09:57.780 Regardless of what you do.

00:09:58.920 Exactly.

00:09:59.520 Like, here's what we believe in.

00:10:00.520 Here's what we want to do.

00:10:01.520 Here's what we want to push the business forward.

00:10:02.840 So the other thing, I did take a lot of time.

00:10:06.380 So when we raised that seed round, the $5.4 million in August,

00:10:10.360 September-ish time frame of 2017.

00:10:11.360 So did you have the values then?

00:10:12.920 We had the values then.

00:10:13.700 OK, cool. 0.92

00:10:14.380 And we have them, and they're super dorky and geeky

00:10:17.420 because they have gift puns.

00:10:18.520 Yeah, but that's how they're memorable.

00:10:20.300 And that's how they're memorable, and they're unique to us.

00:10:22.120 And that was a big thing for us, right?

00:10:24.940 So give first, give consistently is our first value.

00:10:28.940 Because the first thing is, yeah,

00:10:31.040 we want people to always be giving.

00:10:32.860 And it's not just like, oh, look, I gave this one donation

00:10:35.480 place once, and that's it.

00:10:36.600 And then you feel like you're there.

00:10:38.140 The consistency part is a big part of why we believe in this,

00:10:40.920 like people that actually are giving people, right?

00:10:44.780 And we have Unwrap the Possibility, which is like challenge yourself 10x over, right? 0.97

00:10:49.160 Seize the present, which is like get shit done, basically, right? 0.99

00:10:52.120 Dude, so punny. 0.99

00:10:52.440 You know, that's there.

00:10:53.160 Yes, so punny.

00:10:54.720 Anyway, so we have these values, right?

00:10:57.040 And then those values are then matriculated to all the rest of the group and the rest of the team there.

00:11:02.660 And what I did, though, is after I raised the seed round, I was like, I want to find a real tight group of leadership.

00:11:09.720 Like, I need to up-level myself.

00:11:11.620 And at the time, my investors were like, you've got to find a co-founder.

00:11:14.120 And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

00:11:15.220 Like, I'm not.

00:11:16.200 Hard to bring a guy in after the fact.

00:11:18.000 After this and all that type of stuff.

00:11:19.700 And, you know, I understood the premise of what they meant.

00:11:24.560 But what they were really meaning was they wanted to make sure that this wasn't the Greg show.

00:11:29.760 And that was the hard thing that I learned from my previous business.

00:11:31.820 Cause I was kind of like the aristocrat,

00:11:33.000 like I'm sitting up at the top of the,

00:11:34.420 at the top of the Hill and like,

00:11:35.420 I'm the smartest guy in the room.

00:11:36.460 And I was like,

00:11:36.760 no,

00:11:36.900 I've got to hire all the smart people around me because I was an agency CEO.

00:11:40.680 And now I'm a product-based CEO.

00:11:42.140 Yeah.

00:11:42.560 Very,

00:11:42.920 very different as to how you build that business.

00:11:44.800 Yep.

00:11:45.340 So I started and I really just built that core,

00:11:47.500 right.

00:11:47.800 You know,

00:11:48.060 brought in our head of marketing,

00:11:49.780 brought in our head of products,

00:11:50.900 you know,

00:11:51.240 brought in our head of sales,

00:11:52.200 which I interviewed 70 people for,

00:11:54.020 you know,

00:11:54.280 because it was just hard to find the people that fit those values.

00:11:57.160 And I just did not compromise.

00:11:59.000 look at the team that's been built around them,

00:12:01.820 everybody just gels, right?

00:12:03.800 And so of course you go through all the growing pains, right?

00:12:05.940 You've got to figure out how to build the right process.

00:12:08.240 So how do you find, but just like top of funnel,

00:12:10.760 you got 15, you go to 110.

00:12:13.160 Is a first person a people person,

00:12:14.960 like just to help with that process?

00:12:16.380 Well, keep this in mind.

00:12:17.380 So only 40-ish percent of our staff is in Boston.

00:12:21.420 The rest are around the world.

00:12:22.820 Remote?

00:12:23.440 Remote.

00:12:23.860 OK, cool.

00:12:24.360 So what we have, we have a couple of other satellite

00:12:27.360 offices that are there.

00:12:28.520 We have one full big office, which is where our engineering team is, which is in St. Petersburg.

00:12:33.360 And then we have folks in Peru, Colombia, Philippines, Africa, Canada, all over the world that are actually helping with all other facets of the operational side of the business, the data enrichment side of the business, all the things that have to play into that, too.

00:12:47.680 And that's where you can actually diversify and then build out those core components.

00:12:50.860 And what we did with each of those locations

00:12:53.380 was we found somebody who actually held on to those values

00:12:56.520 and then let them hire folks around that. 1.00

00:12:58.620 Oh, like the ambassador for that area.

00:13:00.200 And then you just look at folks that have had the experience

00:13:03.040 of being able to build out those teams.

00:13:04.940 Sometimes you get lucky, right?

00:13:06.120 You just don't know how good they are going to be or whatnot.

00:13:08.660 You want to institute some of that process.

00:13:10.000 But you also have to understand there's

00:13:11.180 a different culture between those different locations.

00:13:12.980 And then how do you build the right types of three things

00:13:14.900 I tell the company all the time.

00:13:15.980 You have to have the right process,

00:13:17.400 the right accountability structure,

00:13:18.440 and the right communication plan.

00:13:19.420 And if you really nail those three things, then it's easy for you to say, OK, well, how do these teams work together?

00:13:24.820 Right?

00:13:25.080 If you know who's accountable for what and you have the right goals on them, then it's easy for you to say, well, let me make sure I'm communicating with the right people to make sure I can get my goals done.

00:13:31.380 Then I have to set the right process to make sure that I'm not just having to focus and rely only on communication.

00:13:35.960 If you had to hire those people locally in Boston, it wouldn't happen.

00:13:41.860 It's too many people.

00:13:42.960 I mean, it's not the number of people.

00:13:45.340 People have done that.

00:13:46.120 But what happens is if you're trying to scale that fast, you end up compromising on quality.

00:13:50.760 And then you're, like, companies have done that here in Boston.

00:13:53.520 And I've seen it done, but only to a certain extent where you're like, we're looking for A players, right?

00:13:59.080 And sometimes B players and whatever.

00:14:00.840 But sometimes you'll start getting those C players.

00:14:02.480 You can't get to know somebody well enough.

00:14:04.660 Well, Darmesh, I mean, HubSpot's CTO co-founder said this.

00:14:07.400 And it blows my mind because I remember Darmesh came to our office 2009.

00:14:11.760 I was building Flowtown.

00:14:12.600 and you know he was like look we're looking to acquire some companies before they bought

00:14:16.880 performable and i was like well there's all these smart people i know and he's like well they'd have

00:14:20.420 to move to boston and i was like i know them they're not moving out of the bay area and he

00:14:24.880 was just adamant on having everybody in it and just recently he's they've moved hubspot to a

00:14:29.040 distributed team because even for him he said look if our mission is to hire the best people

00:14:33.640 you know he's such a math guy statistically say like there's no chance that those people would

00:14:38.280 exists within a 60 mile of one of our offices.

00:14:40.160 So if that's your goal, then you're

00:14:42.820 just not going to be able to do it,

00:14:44.460 if that's truly your goal.

00:14:45.940 And I love that you've done that right out of the gate.

00:14:48.860 And diversity, values, yes, but backgrounds, countries,

00:14:54.620 times, the world in the future is going to be so different

00:14:59.100 from it's 100%.

00:15:01.120 So it's funny, HubSpot's also doing that

00:15:02.640 because they ran out of office space.

00:15:04.200 Like they've taken over the second floor in Athenum

00:15:07.880 building or whatever it's called.

00:15:09.180 So they're out of space.

00:15:09.760 So it's almost like a forced thing for them as well.

00:15:12.360 But the future of work is, even for our team,

00:15:15.640 part of the culture that we've built

00:15:17.140 is you sit at your desk when you need to be at your desk.

00:15:19.280 You want to be at home?

00:15:19.980 You'd be at home.

00:15:20.540 You need to get work done, whatever it is.

00:15:22.520 You need to be in this seat until 6 p.m.

00:15:25.160 And if I'm walking around, that's it.

00:15:27.020 It is a weird idea, but there's a lot of companies that do it.

00:15:29.240 Right?

00:15:30.240 And people work in different ways.

00:15:31.680 For example, myself, I try and set the example

00:15:34.440 for the rest of the company.

00:15:35.120 I come in at 7.15, 7.30.

00:15:37.680 I'm there from 7.30 until about 3.00.

00:15:39.340 I leave at 3.00, typically go to the gym for about an hour or so.

00:15:43.460 And then I pick my daughter up, or my wife will pick my daughter up. 1.00

00:15:46.200 And then I spend from usually 4.30 or 5 o'clock until she goes to sleep,

00:15:51.040 like 7.30 or 8 o'clock, with my daughter.

00:15:52.600 No phone, no computer, no nothing, right?

00:15:54.760 No slack or anything.

00:15:55.840 And that's my time, my family time.

00:15:57.380 And then I get back on the computer, and then I work till midnight or whatever.

00:16:00.480 And that's my schedule.

00:16:01.340 And I say, that's what works for me.

00:16:02.540 It's my break.

00:16:03.300 It gives me a time to clear my head and do this.

00:16:04.900 Energy management from the day.

00:16:06.280 That's what you know works best for you.

00:16:08.200 Some people, they might work out in the morning or noon

00:16:10.200 to reset for the afternoon.

00:16:11.400 But your argument is that your work and your personal life

00:16:15.640 should be you to figure out, and we'll just support that.

00:16:18.940 Right.

00:16:19.260 It doesn't make sense.

00:16:20.240 Yeah.

00:16:20.440 And that's what we say.

00:16:21.520 And that same mentality gets trickled

00:16:24.380 to all the other teams around the world, right?

00:16:26.940 Which is like, you work when you need to work. 0.99

00:16:29.120 We have to bust our ass, right? 0.98

00:16:30.260 There's times, especially right now, 0.99

00:16:31.660 we are swamped and flooded by customers,

00:16:34.320 which is a great problem to have, right?

00:16:35.600 Yeah, high-quality problem.

00:16:36.280 High quality problems, champagne problems, right?

00:16:38.440 So we know we're busting our butt, you know,

00:16:40.220 and there's times to do that.

00:16:41.020 But then there's also times of like, fine, just take a day off. 0.99

00:16:43.220 Like you busted your butt yesterday. 0.99

00:16:44.460 We can pick up the slack. 0.99

00:16:45.480 We've got enough people now in the company.

00:16:47.500 You just reset.

00:16:48.280 And you just have to recognize that.

00:16:49.760 And that's something we try and do from a leadership perspective

00:16:51.680 is identify those things and then be able to make sure

00:16:54.400 that everybody else identifies those both themselves

00:16:56.320 and that that culture is brought in.

00:16:58.180 It's a lot of new people to have.

00:16:59.900 The other challenges, and again, this goes back

00:17:01.620 to the learnings from my last business

00:17:03.360 where 80% of my staff, you know, wasn't in the US by the time I left that company, right? We had

00:17:09.060 450 engineers in the Ukraine. So I just basically followed that same model, but then I took all the

00:17:13.600 things that we screwed up in that company and I just said, let's do that right here. Set the

00:17:17.760 right vision, set the right value, set the right communication plan, accountability structure,

00:17:20.980 you know, process and, and then make sure that, that the leadership team is able to drive those

00:17:25.280 things. And so did you end up hiring a head of people? Like, do you have somebody yet? We have,

00:17:29.380 So Tori is our head of operations.

00:17:31.140 She sort of acts as like head of people at the same way.

00:17:34.900 We're starting to bring in, we have full-time recruiters

00:17:36.460 now inside the business.

00:17:39.400 But actually, what's funny is it's harder to actually,

00:17:41.220 the onboarding is actually more of an important thing.

00:17:43.480 You know, like we've heard a lot of folks.

00:17:44.660 Especially from a culture, it's like when you get them, 1.00

00:17:46.140 you want to make sure that you kind of set.

00:17:48.060 It's almost like even in sales, like the early conversations

00:17:51.440 you have with the prospect, they remember every word.

00:17:54.340 It's funny.

00:17:54.880 It's like the longer you work with them,

00:17:56.720 the less they remember in the details.

00:17:58.500 But like, so it's like the first week is really the opportunity to just set the foundation for their work with you.

00:18:06.220 So you got to get that right.

00:18:07.360 Yeah, 100%.

00:18:07.960 What do you guys do to make sure that that just rocks and roll?

00:18:10.760 I mean, being very transparent with you, it's always a work in progress, right?

00:18:13.840 It's something where we, after the onboarding period is done, like first couple of weeks or so, which really onboarding is ongoing thing.

00:18:20.480 It's kind of like product market fit.

00:18:21.700 It's always like you're constantly evolving the business, you know, and the product.

00:18:25.040 I feel like the same thing with developing employees as well.

00:18:27.620 And we try and do a good job.

00:18:29.760 But when you brought in so many new people in such a short period of time, like you just

00:18:33.020 can't spend as much time as you want to.

00:18:35.020 What we have done is we've started to templatize things like, like we just did this again today.

00:18:38.840 We said, okay, here's a portion of the business.

00:18:40.720 Let's spend an hour with the company.

00:18:42.780 Anyone that wants to see it can come into this room.

00:18:44.720 We record it.

00:18:45.540 And now we've set that into a library.

00:18:47.720 And now the first thing that somebody does when they come in is they're like, here's

00:18:50.360 how this portion of operations is going to work so you can understand that piece of the

00:18:54.120 business.

00:18:54.420 It used to be, go back a year ago, and we were in this tiny room where we were all packed like sardines in there, and we can just talk and everyone just knew it.

00:19:01.380 Yeah, people figured it out.

00:19:01.660 Yeah, it was osmosis, right?

00:19:03.240 But as soon as you get to that next stage, then all of a sudden, it's this, how do you get the right information to the right people?

00:19:08.520 And how do you disseminate that down into a very concrete fashion?

00:19:11.340 In a leverage way.

00:19:11.720 In a leverage way, yeah.

00:19:12.840 So what are your kind of like cadences or meeting structures?

00:19:16.600 Like, how do you lead 110 people?

00:19:19.140 So my job has changed a lot, right?

00:19:21.060 You know, same thing in my last company, except there's a lot more gradual over 10 years.

00:19:24.020 You know, this has happened in like two years or a year and a half.

00:19:27.780 So my role is much more on, you know, it goes from, there's three things, right?

00:19:31.680 You have leadership, you have management, and you have execution, right?

00:19:34.340 This is my, one of my executive coaches always tells me.

00:19:36.780 And leadership is really just the vision.

00:19:38.660 Like make sure people understand where they are in terms of where the vision is and what

00:19:42.260 the why is, is what they're actually trying to accomplish.

00:19:45.000 Then you have the management side of things, which is the how, like, how are we getting

00:19:48.620 this done?

00:19:49.220 And then there's the execution, which is the what, like, what do I have to do in order

00:19:52.460 to get this done?

00:19:53.840 And what I've done is I've changed my role, which used to be, I'd say, 30% to 50% execution because I was still doing a lot of those, a lot of the things in the business just a year, year and a half ago, to now it's purely leadership management, like virtually no execution other than like keeping relationships alive with like, you know, investors and, you know, some of the things that key partners, executive sponsorship, things like that.

00:20:14.960 But so my job now is I just spend a lot more time

00:20:18.920 with my leaders, my leadership team,

00:20:21.140 making sure that they're aligned correctly.

00:20:24.020 And I do do things like skip levels.

00:20:27.080 I'm still doing one-on-ones with a level between,

00:20:29.960 just so I can actually keep my feet on the ground.

00:20:31.880 Pulse, front lines.

00:20:32.380 Pulse and stuff.

00:20:33.300 And so I usually do those.

00:20:34.640 I do monthlies with a lot of different folks

00:20:36.840 around the company.

00:20:37.340 Skip levels monthly.

00:20:38.360 And what's your cadence for one-on-ones with your exec team?

00:20:40.960 Once a week.

00:20:41.620 OK, weekly one-on-ones.

00:20:42.860 Yeah, weekly one-on-ones, anywhere between a half

00:20:44.900 an hour and an hour, depending on how much time, you know, we need, we need to have a structure

00:20:48.000 kind of thematically. The agenda usually starts off with like, how are you feeling? Yeah. You

00:20:52.660 know, and then we jump into either like things that we just need to get done because it's the

00:20:55.680 time together that we have to get stuff done. I usually don't like to do that, that type of

00:20:59.480 stuff. And then we always come in with a prepared set of an agenda. Like they'll come with some,

00:21:03.960 I'll come in something. It's really their meeting. Yeah. Right. You know, for them to talk about

00:21:08.380 the space, you'll, you'll kind of say, Hey, I heard this. Yeah. Talk about it. So here's the

00:21:13.140 The other thing is, you get to that point,

00:21:14.400 and give you an example, like our customer success team,

00:21:17.520 January 1st of this past year, so what is it?

00:21:22.020 Nine, 10 months ago, we had basically one and a half

00:21:25.800 people, like a new person just took over.

00:21:27.780 You know, head of CS there.

00:21:30.600 And now we're going to be a 10 by the end of this year.

00:21:33.580 And we're at seven right now, right?

00:21:36.360 So there's a lot of focus where you're like, well,

00:21:39.380 now I've got to build the process for that team.

00:21:42.060 And what happens is that you get these teams,

00:21:43.900 the different portions of the organization, which all of a

00:21:46.100 sudden decide, they start to silo automatically, right?

00:21:49.740 Especially now we moved us to a much bigger office,

00:21:51.540 like it's five times the size of our previous one.

00:21:54.000 We've got pods where the different teams sit and stuff.

00:21:56.660 And even though they're literally not much further than we

00:21:59.380 are away from each other, you still

00:22:02.160 have this siloing that happens because they're

00:22:03.740 trying to figure out and build their own process.

00:22:05.560 Here's how I believe it.

00:22:06.300 Here's the stuff I have.

00:22:07.300 Here's the expertise I'm bringing into this.

00:22:10.140 And my job is to say, OK, well, we're

00:22:11.640 trying to focus our efforts on, here's

00:22:13.620 the corporate strategy, right?

00:22:15.300 And I'm very defined on, I always use the word focus.

00:22:17.700 I'm like, if we think we're focused,

00:22:19.020 we're not focused enough.

00:22:20.100 You've got to get more focused.

00:22:21.660 Like, focus on who your customers are.

00:22:23.000 Focus on what the product value you bring into the table is.

00:22:24.960 Focus on the problem you're solving.

00:22:25.880 Focus on the problem you're solving or the solution

00:22:27.460 you're bringing to the customer, not the product itself,

00:22:30.020 right?

00:22:30.720 Because once you do that, you can get closer to the customer

00:22:32.680 and then you can actually roll that out

00:22:33.680 to the rest of the organization.

00:22:35.180 But still, that is never seen eye to eye

00:22:39.500 between all the different departments, right?

00:22:41.620 Sales will see the one thing, they're like, well,

00:22:43.280 we've got to figure out how to repeat this,

00:22:44.620 because sales is like, we want to build a repeatable machine.

00:22:47.260 But you're still trying to learn, especially

00:22:48.680 in this early stage business that we are,

00:22:50.500 in a market that hasn't really been matured yet.

00:22:53.240 There's nobody's come at direct mail or gifting

00:22:57.580 or anything from a technology-first approach,

00:22:59.560 like an AI, ML approach, where you're saying,

00:23:03.040 you're spending the money wrong.

00:23:04.480 So it's a re-education to the market.

00:23:06.900 But each department, product has to understand,

00:23:09.460 what is the market trying to do?

00:23:10.740 What are they trying to pull into, right?

00:23:12.020 Sales needs to be able to convey that message and that proposition and the positioning.

00:23:17.040 CS has to drive the value through and activate it through, right?

00:23:20.180 And build the engagement and the adoption inside the organization.

00:23:22.420 Operations has to fulfill on that.

00:23:23.540 And operations for us is super complex, right?

00:23:26.080 Because we have the physical logistics behind sending boxes and the gifts and the purchasing

00:23:30.460 and the merchants relationships that we have, right?

00:23:34.080 And the logistics between the AI and the localization and all that type of stuff, right?

00:23:40.740 So there's a lot of complexity between all those.

00:23:43.300 And then you take engineering, who

00:23:44.340 has to also understand as much as they can understand the why

00:23:47.420 behind what they're doing.

00:23:48.420 Yeah, not just building stuff.

00:23:50.060 Not just building stuff.

00:23:50.680 Because that's the other thing, especially when

00:23:52.020 they're also in St. Petersburg and we're here in Boston.

00:23:54.580 You can totally lose that.

00:23:55.460 I totally saw that happen when we had 450 engineers.

00:23:58.720 And right now we're at 30.

00:23:59.700 You're going to be at 50 in the next, I don't know,

00:24:01.620 like I said, another 12 weeks is the goal.

00:24:04.080 So with that size of a team, all these new folks

00:24:07.980 have to understand, again, do that.

00:24:10.060 So you're asking about how I manage it.

00:24:12.280 One of the things I do is I do a global meeting

00:24:14.140 every single two weeks, every Monday

00:24:16.120 at typically 9 o'clock in the morning.

00:24:17.740 Like in all hands?

00:24:18.760 It's in all hands globally.

00:24:19.900 Perfect.

00:24:20.680 So on video, we show it between everybody.

00:24:23.020 Everybody gathers around across the globe.

00:24:25.240 And then the first thing I do is I always reiterate the vision.

00:24:28.680 And it was funny.

00:24:29.320 I had one of my coaches, one of our investors said this.

00:24:32.740 And he goes, look, one of the key things you can do

00:24:34.780 is make sure everybody's aligned around the vision.

00:24:36.280 If they're bought into the vision,

00:24:38.020 they can actually have good suggestions

00:24:39.440 to understand where are we going with this business.

00:24:41.780 And if it's really sickening to you to hear that vision,

00:24:45.020 then it's the right amount of time for everybody else

00:24:47.960 to hear it.

00:24:48.560 And I said the same thing with my leadership team.

00:24:50.060 I'm like, don't say something once.

00:24:51.360 If you really want something to happen

00:24:52.760 and you want that to be an initiative that's

00:24:54.140 being driven through in that portion of the organization,

00:24:56.920 you've got to say it once a week.

00:24:58.580 So every two weeks, you reiterate the vision,

00:25:01.400 digital, global, all hands for your team.

00:25:03.680 Yeah, that's how I start off.

00:25:04.940 And then I usually have a, now I'm changing this up,

00:25:07.140 now I have a theme for an overall place in the company

00:25:10.460 where I see that there has to be,

00:25:11.600 there's sort of deficiencies in the company,

00:25:13.180 and where do we need to fix those things?

00:25:16.900 Sometimes it's just a celebration sometimes.

00:25:19.920 We had a huge week last week.

00:25:21.960 We hit a huge revenue milestone.

00:25:23.300 So it was like a great congratulations

00:25:24.840 and letting everybody know how well things are going for us.

00:25:28.000 Other weeks, it's like, look, I'm noticing

00:25:29.540 that it's a stressful time.

00:25:30.840 Let's pull everybody back and sort of look at this

00:25:32.860 from a different view.

00:25:34.420 And so I'll just come into the meeting with that view

00:25:36.360 and then focus on that as a thing.

00:25:38.020 And obviously, we go through the goals

00:25:39.000 and like, hey, here's where we are as a company,

00:25:40.680 everything down to how much cash is in the bank.

00:25:43.400 Transparency is key, right?

00:25:44.820 And what about cadence for meetings

00:25:47.340 and strategy and planning?

00:25:48.740 Do you guys do?

00:25:49.440 So we do right now, and we're going to change this,

00:25:51.680 but we do two leadership meetings a week.

00:25:53.500 Wow.

00:25:53.780 So we do two one-hour leadership meetings.

00:25:55.200 Monday, Thursday?

00:25:56.080 Monday, Wednesday, actually.

00:25:57.260 Monday, Wednesday.

00:25:57.860 Right now.

00:25:58.380 Pulse, man.

00:25:59.120 Just go.

00:25:59.920 It's the pulse.

00:26:00.660 And again, because things are changing so fast.

00:26:02.600 I mean, that's really, the faster you grow,

00:26:04.780 the more frequently you got to re-reset, yeah.

00:26:07.380 Right.

00:26:07.680 And so I think we might change it to one a week

00:26:09.500 and then do more of like individual.

00:26:11.500 Yeah, departmental.

00:26:12.340 Departmental things.

00:26:13.080 Because what happened was, and this

00:26:14.800 is something you realize in any company,

00:26:16.840 I'm sure you realize with your company too,

00:26:18.540 is you use meetings as a way to, as almost a crux, a crutch.

00:26:23.640 Yeah.

00:26:24.140 Crux, crutch, whatever.

00:26:25.240 You know, as a crutch, because you're saying, look, oh,

00:26:27.200 we're just going to get in there.

00:26:28.020 We're just going to start brainstorming.

00:26:29.360 It's very easy for you to then do no work leading into the meeting

00:26:32.180 and then all of a sudden having this meeting and then saying,

00:26:33.840 look, there's nothing.

00:26:35.460 Let's just start hammering out stuff.

00:26:37.000 And then you walk away from that being like, well,

00:26:38.220 that was a complete waste of an hour.

00:26:39.340 Yeah, what did we actually accomplish?

00:26:40.600 We could have written stuff up and done that.

00:26:42.620 So we're trying to push more right now for less meetings,

00:26:46.740 more documentation, and more work between departments

00:26:50.400 to make that happen.

00:26:51.180 Because you know if you bring up a topic

00:26:52.600 and it's really not relevant to everybody else,

00:26:54.660 half the room checks out.

00:26:55.620 Yeah, that's expensive.

00:26:56.820 Right, it's expensive.

00:26:57.480 And so every meeting now, we always say, you're optional.

00:27:00.120 Here's what we're planning on covering inside these meetings.

00:27:02.520 And then the right people show up.

00:27:04.340 And we record it, post it to Slack.

00:27:06.460 And then if people want to check it out later on because they're busy or they got a sales

00:27:09.120 call or a customer call or something.

00:27:10.640 They can watch it on 2 or 3X.

00:27:11.760 They can watch it on something.

00:27:13.040 Yes.

00:27:13.380 That's the way to do it.

00:27:14.300 I do all my podcasts.

00:27:14.920 Yeah.

00:27:15.280 Not this show.

00:27:15.620 I can't imagine. 0.99

00:27:16.000 If anybody listens to this on 2X, you're crazy. 0.85

00:27:18.420 Yeah. 0.88

00:27:18.600 I talk very fast.

00:27:19.680 We're very, yeah.

00:27:21.220 It's information dense.

00:27:24.180 You've mentioned a couple times now you're a coach.

00:27:26.300 Walk me through, or a coach is.

00:27:27.720 How do you, when did you start engaging with the coach?

00:27:31.040 What are the different things?

00:27:32.140 I've had an executive coach almost my whole career.

00:27:34.740 You know, you just want to have somebody that's outside.

00:27:36.480 And also, you know, you probably noticed this, too.

00:27:38.980 A lot of your friends end up being in similar positions, you know, like we were seeing Patrick, you know, before, right?

00:27:42.720 You know, like you sort of work around the same circle where there's a lot of folks going through either the same problems or a lot of my friends have, you know, had much larger companies.

00:27:50.260 So those are good people to build data points off of to help you make decisions.

00:27:53.960 but my coaches have ranged from like more general executive coaches, right? That I've almost

00:28:01.220 considered like work therapy, you know, to like structural, you know, coaches as well.

00:28:06.840 Specific problems.

00:28:07.260 And I've very much lucked out with the coach I have right now because he's actually a dual 1.00

00:28:11.440 investor in Alice. So he's an investor in, he's an LP.

00:28:14.600 He's a coach and he's an investor?

00:28:15.900 And he's an investor. Yeah.

00:28:16.900 Wow.

00:28:17.140 So, and he's typically only coaches fortune, you know, 500 companies. Like all of his

00:28:21.740 customers are typically fortune 500 companies, but he's an investor in Alice. And so he's been

00:28:26.460 helping me to think about this stuff and bring a much bigger lens, you know, to, to the problems

00:28:30.900 as we continue to scale. And that's where I get a lot of these frameworks. And, um, what I've also

00:28:35.080 started doing is I have him also coaching our leadership team. And the next step is I'm going

00:28:38.620 to have him actually coaching a coach company. Is he going to do it or is he going to, so we're

00:28:42.800 going to do like more like classes, like, like a classroom style thing, you know, that's there,

00:28:46.640 but you know, you have to invest in your employees and you have to make sure that I did this. I mean,

00:28:49.860 they had an executive, I think they call it a talent development team. And they had like all

00:28:54.420 anybody who was like deemed as like potential future leaders had a coach. And I mean, it's

00:28:59.900 anybody that's ever worked with a coach that was, was good, realized like the ROI is ridiculous

00:29:05.720 because like just perspective is just everything, right? It's like, you know, um, just having

00:29:12.420 somebody see, and it's interesting for me to hear that it's, it's an investor. Cause I've always felt

00:29:16.680 But some people can bring some bias to their advice.

00:29:21.340 Investors typically are like, spend, spend, spend.

00:29:23.100 And you're like, I'm still going to get these things right,

00:29:25.920 because they want you to have to raise more money, et cetera.

00:29:28.240 I'm not saying that's the case.

00:29:30.720 So he is a very, he's a detached investor from the business.

00:29:37.420 He's an LP in one of the funds.

00:29:38.740 Yeah.

00:29:39.440 So the percentage of what the impact would be

00:29:43.020 in the decisions that he'd be telling me or helping me make

00:29:45.100 on this thing is not really impactful to his bottom line.

00:29:47.440 Like, you know, there's whatever, 14 or 20 other companies

00:29:49.720 that are in that same portfolio.

00:29:51.220 It's not an issue there.

00:29:52.720 And how many coaches have you had in total?

00:29:55.240 I think I've had four, four different coaches.

00:29:57.460 Yeah, so about 16 months, two years per coach kind of thing.

00:30:00.820 So one coach was probably four years.

00:30:04.640 There was a time, actually, between when I sold my last company

00:30:07.100 and when I started Alice.

00:30:08.600 And even the first year or so of Alice,

00:30:10.400 like I didn't have a coach during those.

00:30:13.000 I had the coach that I would talk to,

00:30:14.260 but not on a regular basis like this, where it's like, hey, here's the problems.

00:30:18.120 Tell me what's going on.

00:30:19.320 You can be talking about everything from like, how's home life affecting this?

00:30:22.480 Or is this working well?

00:30:23.780 How's the working between the different departments working here?

00:30:27.440 And that's been huge.

00:30:29.680 But this one has been, what, now two years or so.

00:30:33.200 Yeah.

00:30:33.540 And what have you learned about the impact of your coach on you, you on your leadership team,

00:30:39.640 and then their impact on their team?

00:30:42.400 because that's the cool part is that they're

00:30:44.320 going to model your behavior.

00:30:46.640 So how do you work through your people?

00:30:49.300 How do you build the team that builds a business?

00:30:51.300 Well, yeah, it goes back to some of the tough things

00:30:52.940 we were talking about before, which is you have the,

00:30:56.900 so when you look at those, again, leadership management

00:30:58.800 and execution.

00:30:59.600 Yeah, LME.

00:31:00.500 Right, LME.

00:31:01.580 So you have management, which is the key thing, the how.

00:31:05.240 If you can nail the how, and you build the right execution

00:31:07.640 team underneath you, the whole thing really

00:31:09.640 starts working together, assuming the vision is there.

00:31:11.760 And honestly, as you know, as a business,

00:31:13.220 the vision is always evolving, right?

00:31:15.240 You're recognizing and learning more about the market,

00:31:16.920 especially when you go into an evolving market, right?

00:31:19.340 So the management side of things, he

00:31:21.200 helps me most on the management side.

00:31:22.640 And then what he's also done is helped the leadership team

00:31:25.780 understand that there's three ways of managing.

00:31:27.680 This is the thing people always mess up and forget.

00:31:29.780 There's managing down, which is the easiest one

00:31:32.700 for everyone to think.

00:31:33.240 When you say management, you're like, well,

00:31:34.560 who are my peons and my subordinates that I get to,

00:31:36.600 you know, like push around.

00:31:37.200 Who are the people that have to?

00:31:39.200 And that's the typical, like, when

00:31:41.140 people think of management. What he's done though, is he's also helped to help to open up the fact

00:31:45.080 that the number one thing when you're dealing with management is not figuring out how to manage

00:31:48.800 down because you can tell people what to do. It's teaching them how to manage up because if they

00:31:54.220 know how to manage you, then you've totally changed the game because now the expectations

00:31:58.400 and all that stuff is, is totally changing, changing on that front. Right. And then more

00:32:02.200 importantly, there's also, then there's also managing horizontally, like managing to the

00:32:05.180 side, your peers. Like if I'm head of sales and head of customer success, like how do you manage

00:32:09.620 each other, different personalities and stuff. And that's where you build that symbiotic,

00:32:13.340 you know, relationship. And that's where you can build autonomy in a business

00:32:15.580 to grow and to be able to push, you know, to, to push the envelope and also grow,

00:32:19.660 you know, grow that business. So I'm always looking at the relationships and people in terms

00:32:24.020 of, am I helping them manage me? Yeah. Am I managing them the right way, which I can always

00:32:29.040 do much better, honestly. Um, and then am I helping to manage them together? And actually

00:32:33.420 a big chunk of my time has been spent actually a horizontal management amongst the different

00:32:37.880 between the different departments.

00:32:38.760 Because when you're scaling it again, as I said before,

00:32:41.080 like, you get all these folks, they start saying,

00:32:42.700 well, I need to build on my team.

00:32:43.980 All of a sudden, they have a team of, you know,

00:32:45.800 seven, eight, 10 people, you know, or 50 people, you know,

00:32:48.760 in, like, the operation side of things.

00:32:50.320 Like, there's this natural tendency of, like, you know,

00:32:53.840 defensiveness and, like, hold on to my own laurels

00:32:56.540 because everything you're trying to sell is that's it.

00:32:57.640 We've got to get our stuff done.

00:32:59.440 You can figure it out yourself.

00:33:00.700 Like, we're busy.

00:33:01.620 Right.

00:33:01.960 How do you teach people to manage a job?

00:33:04.920 So it's tricky, right?

00:33:07.260 I think one of the ones, and I haven't employed this strategy yet,

00:33:09.880 but I think it's something I'm going to look into.

00:33:11.800 I forget who it was.

00:33:12.560 It was Claire Johnson, I think, was saying this.

00:33:14.340 I got it.

00:33:15.160 How to work with Dan.

00:33:16.500 Or for mine, it's how to work with Dan, how to work with Claire.

00:33:18.700 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:33:19.340 Right?

00:33:19.540 And so that's one thing I think would be really cool.

00:33:21.560 Do you want to unpack that for people?

00:33:23.000 Yeah.

00:33:23.400 So the whole entire theory behind that is you write-

00:33:26.500 High Growth Handbook, by the way, by Eli Gill.

00:33:28.180 Yeah, Eli Gill.

00:33:28.880 Yeah.

00:33:29.600 Great book.

00:33:30.560 And so that's mentioned in there, which is like create a page that just says,

00:33:33.920 here's who I am.

00:33:34.500 Here's what I expect.

00:33:35.280 Here's how I learn.

00:33:36.000 Here's how I expect my best way of communicating,

00:33:38.740 and hand that to somebody.

00:33:39.880 Preferences.

00:33:40.600 It's awesome.

00:33:41.140 Preferences.

00:33:41.440 Right?

00:33:41.940 And so it's sort of like your cheat sheet on like,

00:33:43.600 what am I looking for?

00:33:44.500 Like for me, I'm a visual learner, right?

00:33:46.520 So even though Jeff Bezos might want

00:33:48.060 to have things written down, that would drive me nuts.

00:33:50.720 I couldn't read six pages of like, you know,

00:33:52.500 the press release or whatever.

00:33:53.760 Yeah, the product stuff, yeah.

00:33:55.060 No, no, that's a different thing, right?

00:33:56.940 That's like, if I'm going to release something,

00:33:58.280 create a press release so that you know that that feature's

00:34:00.360 going to, like, how is that feature going to be told

00:34:01.940 in the market?

00:34:02.440 Going to be communicated, yeah.

00:34:03.060 Yeah, which is super smart, because you're

00:34:04.240 positioning and messaging and then building to the positioning and messaging and testing that.

00:34:08.480 This is more, um, Jeff Bezos has every single meeting when he walks into, you've got to have

00:34:13.040 a six page memo written up as to what are all the things I need to know about stuff to make

00:34:18.240 the decisions in the meeting. And then the meeting is super short. Wow. So he does that and forces

00:34:23.040 that on everybody. He's like, no PowerPoints, you do a six page memo. And they just sit there while

00:34:26.960 he reads it. Everyone comes in. And the first thing you do is you just sit there and you read

00:34:29.840 You read it, and then you have a discussion.

00:34:31.220 And everybody reads it, and then discussion.

00:34:32.620 Yeah.

00:34:33.900 So that's how Amazon does a lot of their stuff.

00:34:36.860 I don't know if they follow that religiously

00:34:38.240 throughout the organization, but that's something

00:34:39.960 because they banned PowerPoint, right?

00:34:41.900 For me, I like PowerPoint.

00:34:43.780 I like the not so much PowerPoint in terms of the stuff,

00:34:46.980 but I like the story that you're forced to tell,

00:34:49.880 and just the information so it's consolidated

00:34:51.480 because I'm a visual learner.

00:34:52.460 You have auditory learners, visual learners, and, you know,

00:34:55.080 kinesthetic learners, right?

00:34:57.560 So you have those three learning styles.

00:34:59.580 you have to understand how somebody wants to communicate

00:35:02.460 and how they need to actually learn, right?

00:35:04.740 So as we're talking about, like,

00:35:06.880 So you haven't implemented this yet.

00:35:08.340 We haven't implemented that yet.

00:35:09.380 We've talked about some of those things, right?

00:35:11.620 I talk about that in the one-on-ones

00:35:12.840 on, like, what's the best way to communicate these things

00:35:14.880 back and forth?

00:35:15.380 Yeah, so you've been doing it just

00:35:16.380 through those conversations.

00:35:16.880 So a lot of it has just been done more theoretically,

00:35:18.820 but now it's codifying.

00:35:20.140 Everything, when you're growing the business like this

00:35:21.980 and the business is scaling like we are right now,

00:35:23.820 Especially when you hire people, it's nice to,

00:35:25.780 I can't even imagine if I was an employee

00:35:29.000 and I joined a company.

00:35:30.180 And they were like, here's the videos

00:35:31.840 you're going to watch on day one that's

00:35:33.020 going to give me context for the business.

00:35:34.580 Here's the documents that's going to tell you how everybody

00:35:37.560 likes to communicate.

00:35:38.780 Here's the vision, our strategic plan, all the data.

00:35:43.320 How crazy is that that that happens,

00:35:47.220 but yet for 98% of the businesses, you just get hired.

00:35:50.840 Here's your login.

00:35:52.000 Somebody will come along to tell you what you got to work on.

00:35:54.620 So let's make sure we understand this.

00:35:56.540 My company is not even close to that yet.

00:35:58.280 But that's the goal.

00:35:59.100 But that's the vision.

00:35:59.720 That's the vision.

00:36:00.160 You want to get there.

00:36:00.880 And so what we're doing is we're investing a lot of time and effort and bringing in resources right now to help with the onboarding, to help with setting up the recruiting.

00:36:08.440 And again, the teams are being built, so a lot of that information is just getting codified now into a written or visual or auditory format.

00:36:15.880 But you're doing that, and you anticipate, like, you know.

00:36:19.000 You have to do it now.

00:36:19.900 You have to, not when you need it.

00:36:21.600 We did that where, you know, the previous company, when we were at, like, 15 people, next year we got to, like, 25.

00:36:26.600 Next year we got to, like, 40.

00:36:27.640 Yeah, it's slow enough that it's growth.

00:36:30.520 But we didn't recognize the problem

00:36:31.980 until we were like, man, when we were like 20 people,

00:36:33.980 we should have done that.

00:36:35.320 We started that when we were like 20 or 25 people here.

00:36:38.500 And then it's just been so fast.

00:36:41.020 You just can't have the resources both to grow the business

00:36:43.660 and take care of customers, customers first.

00:36:45.080 You can get away from you.

00:36:46.080 And you can get away from you very, very quickly.

00:36:47.580 So you have to be focusing on that process and, again,

00:36:50.320 accountability, and then making sure people are focused

00:36:52.540 on improving that.

00:36:53.580 And what are you doing to help the horizontal management?

00:36:57.620 To be truthfully with you, a lot of it

00:37:00.160 is just almost forcing people to work together, right?

00:37:04.080 By saying, here's a goal.

00:37:05.680 Do you guys talk?

00:37:06.740 Yeah, and it's not so much like blame game.

00:37:09.080 It's just saying, hey, here's a concern

00:37:11.220 that I think we should be looking out for.

00:37:13.220 More importantly, here's something

00:37:14.840 that the business has as a issue either now.

00:37:18.260 So we have this other framework that we use,

00:37:19.600 and we call it oxygen items, aspirin, and vitamins, right?

00:37:23.720 What's the first one?

00:37:24.560 It's oxygen, like breathing oxygen.

00:37:26.560 You have aspirin, which is nice to have.

00:37:30.760 And then you have your vitamins, which are like.

00:37:31.880 I'm sorry.

00:37:32.240 No, it's the other way.

00:37:32.680 Must have.

00:37:33.320 So oxygen is like, what's going to kill the company tomorrow?

00:37:36.020 Yeah.

00:37:36.520 It's a priority framework, right?

00:37:38.160 Oxygen is like, what's going to kill the company tomorrow?

00:37:39.980 Aspirin is like, what headaches do we have in the business?

00:37:41.780 And eventually, those might turn into like desperate things.

00:37:45.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah, critical.

00:37:45.440 And then vitamins are the things that like, these are really nice to have.

00:37:48.540 But yeah, that's not a priority right now for the business.

00:37:51.020 And maybe we have like side projects, like I have a couple right now that we work on,

00:37:54.280 which are like the vitamin things.

00:37:56.240 But that helps us also to think about the business

00:37:58.540 in terms of what are the key things

00:38:00.040 that we have to focus in on?

00:38:01.220 What are the oxygen items?

00:38:02.140 We call them that all the time.

00:38:03.240 What are the oxygen items that we are trying

00:38:04.540 to focus the business on to make sure

00:38:06.720 that we are targeting the focus?

00:38:09.660 So it's funny, because it's the power of threes.

00:38:11.940 Like, everything always comes down to threes,

00:38:13.460 except for our values, which has four.

00:38:14.760 But that's fine.

00:38:15.780 Dude, that's not bad.

00:38:16.460 Somebody recently said, our 10th value is.

00:38:19.020 I'm like, oh, that's a lot of value.

00:38:21.140 It's something where you have to have it

00:38:23.520 where it's a digestible format.

00:38:24.920 you know, for people.

00:38:25.960 My head of product always says that, you know, Josh is always

00:38:27.800 like, he always says, there's three things.

00:38:29.960 And he'll actually come up with the third thing

00:38:31.300 as he's actually talking.

00:38:32.100 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:38:32.600 First, second, third, yeah.

00:38:34.680 If you can make an alliteration in real time,

00:38:36.140 that's just impressive.

00:38:36.920 Yeah.

00:38:38.460 As you look back over previous company, current company,

00:38:42.620 who did you need to become, Greg,

00:38:44.280 to be the CEO that's leading today from a mindset belief

00:38:48.140 point of view?

00:38:48.680 So I think back, my first company

00:38:51.100 I started when I was like 19, right?

00:38:53.160 And that was sort of freelance, trying to figure things out.

00:38:56.300 I was kind of forced into having to do that while I was in college

00:38:58.520 because of family reasons.

00:39:00.200 But I incorporated that when I was 22.

00:39:03.500 And I never took any, you know, I tell all the entrepreneurs now

00:39:06.260 that I'm mentoring right now, you know,

00:39:07.660 and also a lot of the other friends of mine

00:39:09.920 or like, you know, friends of friends of mine and stuff.

00:39:12.480 I wish I'd worked at a bigger company.

00:39:13.980 That would have made it very helpful to understand this process stuff

00:39:16.540 because I think it would have helped me tremendously, like, you know,

00:39:19.020 skip over a lot of the mistakes I made early on in the business.

00:39:22.000 So my first business, I started when I was 22.

00:39:23.780 Really got it going when I was 24.

00:39:26.580 I'd only had a couple of quick stints at a couple of companies prior to that.

00:39:29.920 And then made every mistake possible.

00:39:31.860 I never took a business class, a marketing class, a sales class, operational class, finance, statistics, none of that stuff.

00:39:39.820 I was a fine arts major.

00:39:41.660 So as I always say to everybody, I'm like, I drew a lot of naked people for like three years.

00:39:44.880 You know what I mean?

00:39:45.420 That was like my life.

00:39:46.460 I'm qualified to start an entrepreneur.

00:39:47.040 I'm qualified.

00:39:47.640 Yeah, let's just go start a business.

00:39:48.920 But I did fall in love with computer science my sophomore year.

00:39:51.360 And then I started building websites.

00:39:52.600 And again, this is the mid to late 90s.

00:39:55.060 So it was a great time to be getting into the technology

00:39:58.420 as the web was really starting to take off.

00:40:01.660 And I learned a lot from that.

00:40:03.540 And a couple of the companies I was working for

00:40:06.520 also taught me a lot around one of the companies, for example,

00:40:09.740 was 35 people.

00:40:11.040 It was in their Series D.

00:40:12.260 It was post the bomb, dot bomb.

00:40:14.500 And they were just holding on.

00:40:15.680 And then they had 15 people left over in the business,

00:40:18.160 nine of which ended up starting really successful companies.

00:40:20.540 So you're like, that's why.

00:40:22.300 They only hired themselves, which are all entrepreneurs.

00:40:25.120 Nobody wanted to actually do anything.

00:40:26.420 They just all want to theorize throughout.

00:40:28.040 So that was a really good lesson there.

00:40:30.420 So who have I become?

00:40:32.240 I ran into every cash flow issue during this stuff.

00:40:34.640 It was a lot of these, how do you stay persistent?

00:40:37.520 And how do you not die?

00:40:39.440 So the whole entire, I'm a super competitive guy.

00:40:42.420 We've talked about that previously, right?

00:40:44.760 And I was just like, I am not letting this fail.

00:40:48.160 And naivety plays a lot into those early days

00:40:50.740 as you're building a business.

00:40:51.600 You don't know how hard it is.

00:40:52.500 You don't know how hard it is. 1.00

00:40:53.920 The stupid things I was doing at the time 0.99

00:40:55.180 was I still was under the mindset of like, 1.00

00:40:57.660 I think I knew everything.

00:40:59.720 So it's funny now.

00:41:00.540 Some of my best friends were my biggest competitors back then.

00:41:03.500 So a couple of my friends that own agencies here in Boston,

00:41:05.540 we go to the Bruins games or the Celtics games and whatnot.

00:41:09.160 And I was like, I should have just opened up.

00:41:10.860 I should have had conversations with them.

00:41:12.440 Like we were, yes, competitors, but we weren't really

00:41:14.500 competitors.

00:41:16.000 And I was like, no, I don't like them.

00:41:17.660 I'll just be in that competitive mindset,

00:41:20.580 where now I take a much different approach to that.

00:41:24.660 So that's one lesson that I wish I had done.

00:41:26.540 The second one is that I wish I had taken more time

00:41:31.340 to open up and talk about the things

00:41:34.580 that I was having problems with at the time.

00:41:37.160 I thought I was talking about those problems,

00:41:38.780 but I really wasn't.

00:41:39.500 I was doing a lot of busy work around that.

00:41:41.780 So I would say like, oh, yeah, things are going great.

00:41:44.000 Everything's going great.

00:41:44.880 Meanwhile, I'm like, I got three weeks of cash

00:41:46.580 left in the bank, and I'm freaking out about how I'm

00:41:48.740 going to pay, at the time, $40,000 payroll.

00:41:52.280 That was a huge moment in 2006 or so for me,

00:41:55.940 where I'm like, none of my employees knew that.

00:41:58.100 But anybody asked.

00:41:58.800 You said, doing great.

00:41:59.360 Everyone's like, no, doing great, doing fine.

00:42:01.280 And I just figured out how to do things myself

00:42:03.900 instead of opening up and really asking people.

00:42:06.740 So then what do you do now?

00:42:08.940 Polar opposite.

00:42:10.160 My wife hates it, which is she hates it. 1.00

00:42:11.760 But I talk about everything to everybody.

00:42:14.900 It's just the way I like to discuss things with people.

00:42:17.740 And also, there's a really good TED talk on this,

00:42:19.940 like vulnerability.

00:42:21.320 Yeah, Brene Brown. 1.00

00:42:21.860 Right, Brene Brown, right?

00:42:23.000 And it's so true, because when you're vulnerable with people,

00:42:25.660 then they open up to you, and it just

00:42:27.020 creates a much tighter bond instead of it being that.

00:42:28.560 Well, it's your first value in some ways, right?

00:42:30.020 That's right.

00:42:31.360 Always give.

00:42:32.120 Yeah, give first. 0.96

00:42:32.940 Give first, give consistently, right?

00:42:34.400 So once you learn to open up, and once you're

00:42:39.840 comfortable in your own skin and being like, no, it's

00:42:42.020 good to talk about things.

00:42:43.240 And it's good to say that the business,

00:42:44.800 these things are going wrong in the business.

00:42:46.780 These are the things I'm scared of.

00:42:48.480 People will band with you.

00:42:50.080 Biggest lesson I learned, so it was 2000,

00:42:52.420 I think it was like 2009 time frame.

00:42:55.000 My company at the time, we turned over 75% of the staff.

00:42:58.360 Whoa, in one year?

00:43:00.140 Even less than that.

00:43:00.760 It was probably seven months.

00:43:02.580 Because we were two reasons.

00:43:03.700 Voluntarily?

00:43:04.600 Well, so there was a strategic reason,

00:43:07.080 but there was more of a culture problem that happened there.

00:43:10.760 So strategically, we're like, well,

00:43:11.980 we're going to shift over to being just an e-commerce agency.

00:43:14.220 So we went from like, oh, we'll take money from anybody,

00:43:16.120 guerrilla marketing, websites, apps, all that type of stuff,

00:43:19.060 to like, no, we're only doing e-commerce

00:43:20.740 and we're only doing at this time a platform called Magento,

00:43:23.080 which we became one of the top companies in the world

00:43:25.500 around Magento.

00:43:26.740 And almost everybody left the company at that time.

00:43:31.600 And it was a good thing because we got to rehire people in.

00:43:35.320 But what I started to notice was I just

00:43:37.260 wasn't in the business enough.

00:43:38.680 Like, I was perceptive, but I took no action. 0.99

00:43:41.180 like zero action to say, here's something I need to nip in the butt. Like your gut is telling you, 0.99

00:43:46.120 your gut is telling you, you know, and then your brain's just like, your cortex is like,

00:43:49.060 eh, it's fine. It'll be, it'll be fine. Just don't worry about it. You know, they'll figure

00:43:52.380 it out themselves. And now I'm very perceptive and I like walking around. You just, you can

00:43:57.040 tell people's, you know, you know, uh, reactions and stuff. And I'm just happy. Like things are

00:44:01.900 going well in the company. I'm happy. Even when things aren't going well, I have a bad day. Like

00:44:05.060 you come and you smile. You're just, you, you like take a new, a new approach to the, to the

00:44:09.060 as you walk in, and I'm trying to push that.

00:44:10.820 In the previous company, it was very much like,

00:44:12.480 hey, you can tell there's more of this bottled up.

00:44:16.080 You at the top, sitting at the top,

00:44:17.940 completely have so many things.

00:44:20.100 My coach also says this.

00:44:21.240 He's like, was it 78% or whatever the heck it is

00:44:24.820 of how you influence a room is in how you're holding yourself,

00:44:28.800 your body language, your eyes, how your stuff.

00:44:30.660 Regardless of what you're saying.

00:44:31.560 Regardless of what you're saying or anything.

00:44:32.760 You don't say anything.

00:44:33.640 Nonverbal communication.

00:44:34.180 If I'm sitting there at my computer,

00:44:36.160 and I'm sitting there, and I'm like,

00:44:37.380 I've got a furrowed brow and stuff,

00:44:38.500 when people are looking at you, that

00:44:39.620 says way more than you saying something like that.

00:44:41.920 And then I turn around being like, oh, hey, how's it going?

00:44:43.660 What's going?

00:44:44.160 It's going great.

00:44:45.100 They're more worried about why you have a furrowed brown.

00:44:47.260 Why did you make that face?

00:44:48.060 So I'm very, very conscious right now about, not fake,

00:44:50.740 but I'm just very conscious about, you know what?

00:44:52.880 The energy you bring into a room.

00:44:54.180 Yeah, the energy you bring into a room.

00:44:55.220 And the company that acquired us,

00:44:56.480 this one thing I learned, and it was funny.

00:44:58.480 At the time, I was kind of like, I shoved this off,

00:45:00.580 but I remember this one piece of advice

00:45:02.180 that the guy that bought my last company had told me.

00:45:04.460 And he goes, the problem's never as big as you think it is.

00:45:08.340 Right?

00:45:09.080 It never is.

00:45:09.660 And he goes, because I'm like, dude,

00:45:10.660 you just lost like 20 engineers or whatever the heck it is.

00:45:12.760 You know what I mean?

00:45:14.260 It's like, you know, that's it.

00:45:15.320 We'll figure it out next day, and it's not

00:45:17.320 going to kill the company.

00:45:18.360 If it's not going to kill the company,

00:45:19.260 then you have an opportunity to be able to right the ship

00:45:22.560 and be able to make things right,

00:45:23.760 even if there's going to be more of a lull that's happening.

00:45:26.180 I heard this other one, and it was another TED Talk.

00:45:28.180 I'm a super geek when it comes to TED Talks, as you know.

00:45:31.560 And there was another thing.

00:45:32.520 I forget which one it was, but the person was saying that,

00:45:35.120 you know, you spend a majority of your, oh, no, it wasn't.

00:45:37.480 It was Hidden Brain.

00:45:38.900 Have you heard of the U2.0?

00:45:41.060 It's a really good podcast.

00:45:42.220 It's a really good podcast.

00:45:43.960 And it's all about the psychology of people and stuff.

00:45:47.200 And again, we're very much a psychology-driven business,

00:45:49.780 especially with reciprocity and what not gratitude.

00:45:53.760 And they were talking and they were saying, actually,

00:45:57.040 a person will spend 48% or 50% of their time in their life,

00:46:02.080 not including sleeping and all that other stuff,

00:46:04.000 worrying about things in the past or in the future,

00:46:06.280 and not focusing on the things

00:46:07.360 that are happening right now.

00:46:08.140 And what happens is you end up focusing in

00:46:09.640 on all the things that are happening in the future.

00:46:11.600 It's never as bad as you expect it to be.

00:46:14.200 So you're sitting there going down this catastrophic,

00:46:16.300 you know, mind trail as to what's happening.

00:46:19.000 And I wish I'd listened to this like years ago, obviously.

00:46:21.760 And, you know, you just never live in the present.

00:46:24.840 And if you're actually able to live in the present,

00:46:26.440 you can make much better decisions.

00:46:27.800 I can live and like appreciate my daughter

00:46:30.260 and like, no, I don't have to worry about that.

00:46:31.840 Like, what's the worst thing that happens?

00:46:32.900 My phone's off.

00:46:33.680 Like, if somebody really needs to get ahold of me,

00:46:35.500 the company's not going to die, you know what I mean, if that's it.

00:46:38.600 And of course, I'll be available if something is critical.

00:46:41.480 But that's the other attitude that I'm trying to take, too,

00:46:43.420 which is how do you really focus on now, right?

00:46:47.560 How do you focus on making the decisions in the now,

00:46:50.960 understanding and foreshadowing to the future?

00:46:52.980 That's the job of a CEO, obviously.

00:46:54.540 That's the vision, right?

00:46:56.000 But more importantly, not going down this catastrophic mind

00:46:59.800 trail, worrying about that stuff.

00:47:01.860 So that's another thing.

00:47:03.220 What's some of your top books, top three?

00:47:05.500 I'll be honest with you, I don't read.

00:47:07.740 I read TED Talks.

00:47:08.780 TED Talks.

00:47:09.320 I'm a visual guy, right?

00:47:10.300 So I watch a billion videos.

00:47:13.040 I'll listen to books, although not as much.

00:47:16.320 The last full book was probably actually Eli Gill's book,

00:47:20.780 the growth handbook.

00:47:22.040 But the other one, obviously, Ben Horowitz,

00:47:24.900 Hard Thing About Hard Things, which was really good.

00:47:27.140 He talks a lot about one-on-ones.

00:47:28.400 Right, a lot of one-on-ones stuff.

00:47:29.940 But I listen to a million podcasts.

00:47:31.340 I love startup podcast.

00:47:34.080 So it was just the whole Gimlet series is awesome.

00:47:37.800 So I listen to all their stuff.

00:47:38.980 I listen to at least one or two podcasts a day.

00:47:41.420 What about, have you ever listened to Revisionist History?

00:47:43.880 I have not.

00:47:44.560 It's on my list.

00:47:45.280 So good.

00:47:45.780 Yeah.

00:47:46.380 You know what the problem now is there's, of course, I'm on a podcast, but you're like,

00:47:50.620 it's so saturated.

00:47:51.720 You've got to find a breakthrough.

00:47:53.760 Yeah, signals through the noise.

00:47:55.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:47:55.680 Like we're talking about with direct mail and gifting, right?

00:47:58.640 How do you change the dynamic of that channel and then take it to the next level?

00:48:04.080 Because you go back five years, it was like barely could find any really good content.

00:48:07.660 It's kind of crappy, like recording.

00:48:09.100 We've got these fancy mics now.

00:48:10.080 I heard this peak content the other day.

00:48:11.540 We're at peak content.

00:48:12.440 It's interesting.

00:48:13.000 Well, they say the same thing with inbound marketing.

00:48:14.900 They're saying the same thing with content.

00:48:16.540 Right?

00:48:16.800 Yeah.

00:48:18.000 How do people find you, Greg Online?

00:48:20.620 What's the best place to follow along?

00:48:21.980 You can do email, you know, gregatallis.com.

00:48:24.220 Boom.

00:48:24.980 L-Y-C-E. 0.98

00:48:26.360 A-L-Y-C-E. 1.00

00:48:27.660 Yes.

00:48:28.280 Just go use the product.

00:48:28.800 That name was very calculated, by the way, right in the beginning.

00:48:31.800 Was it?

00:48:32.480 Yeah.

00:48:32.760 My last business was called One Pika. 0.66

00:48:35.540 Nobody could pronounce it, right?

00:48:36.860 They were like, Una Pika?

00:48:38.140 I'm like, no, we're not Pikachu.

00:48:39.800 Like, come on.

00:48:40.580 You know, that's just not the right reality of it.

00:48:42.620 So this, I was like, no, I want to go in there.

00:48:43.920 I had the vision, like what we wanted to build.

00:48:45.440 And I was like, I want to be an A name, because I want to be at the top of the alphabet.

00:48:48.280 I want to be a female name, because we're trying to personify this whole, like, humanizing,

00:48:52.480 you know, humanizing the world and, like, giving gifts and, like, having this concierge

00:48:55.700 aspect to it.

00:48:57.640 I'm a sucker for domains.

00:48:58.820 I have a ton of domains.

00:48:59.780 I'm a squatter.

00:49:00.440 Oh, yeah.

00:49:00.840 Nice.

00:49:01.580 Anytime I think about business ID, I'm like,

00:49:03.120 I'm going to go find a domain for that.

00:49:04.260 Yeah.

00:49:05.440 Even if you don't want to pursue it.

00:49:06.860 Even if I want to pursue it.

00:49:07.400 I have like hundreds of them.

00:49:09.000 Good.

00:49:10.500 I love five-letter domains. 0.95

00:49:11.840 I'm just like a sucker for them.

00:49:12.800 I love Alice because anyone that I asked,

00:49:15.800 when I was asking about the name,

00:49:16.940 it was only positive connotations.

00:49:18.520 Alice in Wonderland, Alice in the Brady Bunch,

00:49:20.700 and those things.

00:49:21.900 I like the why, because at some point,

00:49:23.300 I feel like we can use why for a marketing convention.

00:49:25.780 Like why, because you're trying to drive pipeline.

00:49:27.440 Why, because whatever.

00:49:28.940 It's your customer's milestone.

00:49:29.780 Wow, you really thought through this.

00:49:31.580 And then I wanted to be able to acquire the .com,

00:49:33.580 because originally it was alice.co,

00:49:35.760 and I had talked with the owners,

00:49:37.680 and they're willing to sell alice.com to me.

00:49:40.580 That's amazing.

00:49:40.780 So I bought that right as soon as we closed our angel round.

00:49:43.260 I put in a bunch of the money,

00:49:44.400 but as soon as I put that money in,

00:49:45.780 that's the first thing I did.

00:49:46.560 Domain was bought.

00:49:47.340 Yeah.

00:49:47.980 Dude, Craig, really appreciate you coming on, man.

00:49:49.780 That was incredible.

00:49:50.460 Thank you so much.

00:49:51.320 Thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity.

00:49:54.480 Be sure to like and subscribe,

00:49:56.260 and leave a comment with your biggest insight

00:49:58.460 from our conversation.

00:49:59.780 Be sure to check out the next episode.

Dan Martell - July 02, 2020

Conquering a $120B Industry with Greg @ Alyce.com - Escape Velocity Show #31

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