Dan Martell - Helping Leaders Get Feedback & Grow Faster with Claire @ KnowYourTeam.com - Escape Velocity Show #20

00:00:00.000 When I was starting out, I always felt like the way you be successful is you model the patterns

00:00:10.860 for what success for other people have been. That is the surest way to get there.

00:00:16.740 And I think it works for a lot of people. But what I think I've come to realize is if you have a

00:00:22.920 different picture of what that success is, or if you want to help people in a different way,

00:00:27.100 then what you really just have to stay true to

00:00:29.320 is your own personal picture of what that could be.

00:00:34.720 Ignition sequence start.

00:00:36.740 Three, two, one.

00:00:47.740 Claire, how's it going?

00:00:49.680 Life is good.

00:00:50.600 Appreciate you coming on.

00:00:51.580 Oh, you bet.

00:00:53.100 So founder of Know Your Team.

00:00:54.740 Yes.

00:00:55.080 I've been at it for six years almost?

00:00:57.960 Almost, yeah.

00:00:59.080 Five and a half years.

00:01:00.060 Oh my gosh, yeah.

00:01:01.700 Cool.

00:01:02.280 And is home San Francisco?

00:01:04.020 Not really.

00:01:04.860 Chicago?

00:01:05.600 Yeah.

00:01:06.640 Home is always a hard thing to place for me.

00:01:09.280 I'm in the same boat.

00:01:10.380 Whenever people are like, yeah, where are you from?

00:01:12.600 I'm like, do you want the long answer?

00:01:14.020 Do you want the short answer?

00:01:14.760 So I was born in Georgia.

00:01:15.760 I lived in Ohio, Washington, Minnesota,

00:01:18.840 and spent the last 11 years in Chicago,

00:01:21.640 and then just very recently moved to San Francisco.

00:01:23.680 My family was there.

00:01:24.180 That's recent.

00:01:25.140 Awesome.

00:01:25.640 What park?

00:01:26.140 Literally, like the city.

00:01:27.540 I used to live in the Mission.

00:01:28.960 Lower Haight, right on Buena Vista Park.

00:01:32.680 Yeah.

00:01:33.420 That's really cool, and that's where your family lives.

00:01:35.200 Yeah, right now.

00:01:36.120 They're not from there.

00:01:36.860 We're not from there.

00:01:37.560 But they moved out there.

00:01:38.740 So this is a funny story, a funny aside, I guess.

00:01:41.560 My dad, he's spent his entire career

00:01:44.720 in mechanical engineering.

00:01:45.800 And he has a PhD in mechanical engineering and robotics

00:01:48.760 and decided he wanted to start a company

00:01:50.680 and move into artificial intelligence.

00:01:52.920 So he lived in Minnesota with my mom,

00:01:54.880 but was like, this is not the place

00:01:56.280 to start a company around AI.

00:01:58.540 And so he started teaching himself all sorts of machine

00:02:01.140 learning, et cetera.

00:02:02.140 And now he's the director of AI at this company

00:02:04.300 in San Francisco.

00:02:05.060 So they literally, three years ago,

00:02:06.860 packed up all their stuff, moved to an apartment

00:02:10.360 in San Francisco, sold their house on the lake.

00:02:12.160 Do you have brothers or sisters?

00:02:13.200 Yeah, and I have a younger brother.

00:02:14.320 He works at Google.

00:02:15.100 And no, and they were just like, oh, here we are.

00:02:17.320 And we don't know anyone.

00:02:18.460 I love that.

00:02:18.960 I mean, obviously, later in life, that's so cool.

00:02:21.160 Like, just, it's, I don't know if it's a weird thing to say that you're proud of your parents, but I'm proud of them.

00:02:26.740 Inspired by them?

00:02:27.520 Totally.

00:02:27.740 I mean, I'm inspired just, like, it's just so cool to know that, like, they, like, reset.

00:02:32.820 Exactly.

00:02:33.400 Like, it's never too late.

00:02:34.540 Like, whatever dream you have, whatever you want to build, just to do it, age is not what.

00:02:38.400 I love it.

00:02:39.040 But a number.

00:02:40.000 And it's cool that your brother's at Google, and you're going to be there.

00:02:43.600 So it's like your family can.

00:02:44.740 Yeah.

00:02:44.760 It's a whole family thing.

00:02:45.900 That's really neat.

00:02:46.360 I was really reluctant, though, I'm not going to lie, to move out there.

00:02:49.400 Yeah.

00:02:49.640 Yeah, and we'll get into this.

00:02:52.600 The company that I run, it's a little weird,

00:02:55.080 especially by sort of your typical tech industry

00:02:58.400 standards.

00:02:59.000 And I've always.

00:02:59.580 I wanted to ask you about, I know

00:03:01.060 that it was kind of spun out from 37 Signals AKA Basecamp,

00:03:05.320 so Jason and DHH, who a lot of my audience are familiar with.

00:03:09.020 Cool.

00:03:10.860 And your background, first time we've got to meet,

00:03:13.760 but I definitely know your work.

00:03:15.740 It's artists as a background.

00:03:17.720 And then did some consulting, and then.

00:03:20.240 Exactly.

00:03:20.740 Yeah, so how did that.

00:03:21.440 Started another company in there, too.

00:03:23.040 Yeah, it's all weird.

00:03:24.140 And you're in Chicago, so that makes sense.

00:03:25.820 Yeah.

00:03:26.320 The whole connection.

00:03:26.980 Totally.

00:03:27.480 I mean, the.

00:03:29.900 And what is the product just for those

00:03:31.520 that can't figure it out by the name?

00:03:33.380 Sure.

00:03:34.160 So we help, right?

00:03:35.220 It's an IQ test.

00:03:36.860 Wink, wink.

00:03:37.940 No, we build software that helps managers avoid

00:03:40.280 becoming a bad boss.

00:03:41.160 So we provide educational content, online tools

00:03:44.260 to help you run one-on-one meetings,

00:03:46.400 to get feedback from your team, to build trust.

00:03:48.440 And then we also have an online community

00:03:50.060 with over 1,000 managers from all over the world.

00:03:52.060 And you have some big clients as customers.

00:03:53.820 Yeah, I mean, everyone from managers who are at Dropbox,

00:03:57.340 or Airbnb, or MailChimp.

00:03:59.960 And we work with over 15,000 people in over 25 countries.

00:04:03.560 And we do it with, there's just four of us.

00:04:05.520 That's cool.

00:04:06.060 And yeah, we've been profitable since month one, not day one.

00:04:10.760 That is not true.

00:04:13.160 But definitely month one, we've been running it

00:04:14.800 for the past five years, and actually very recently,

00:04:17.980 just, oh, wow, only like three months ago,

00:04:20.340 accepted our very first investment ever.

00:04:23.340 Yeah, we accepted a half million dollars from IndieVC,

00:04:26.920 which is, yeah, for folks who aren't familiar,

00:04:30.140 it's a fund that is focused on supporting companies

00:04:33.640 that want to be profitable and build long-lasting businesses.

00:04:37.120 And that's Bryce?

00:04:38.120 And yeah, Bryce Roberts, yeah, of OATV and Tim O'Reilly.

00:04:41.460 And so, yeah, we're honored to get to partner with them.

00:04:43.600 And the story of how you know the guys at 37Signal is like.

00:04:48.320 Yeah, it's a weird one.

00:04:49.420 I've got a lot of weird stories for you, Dan.

00:04:51.880 Yeah.

00:04:53.160 So I, well, I'll back up for a second.

00:04:56.420 So I went to school right outside of Chicago.

00:04:59.820 I went to Northwestern.

00:05:00.940 I was student body president.

00:05:02.460 That's where I discovered really my love for entrepreneurship.

00:05:05.520 I took an entrepreneurship class there and was like, whoa, you can make money solving problems for people?

00:05:11.160 Like, this is a job?

00:05:12.200 What?

00:05:13.600 crazy.

00:05:14.100 Like, my mom's an artist and a designer.

00:05:16.180 My dad's a mechanical engineer.

00:05:17.400 And so I just, I don't know.

00:05:18.900 I just kind of thought.

00:05:19.720 It makes a lot of sense now.

00:05:21.140 It's kind of like, yeah, the influence

00:05:24.460 of both art, design, and emotion, and communication,

00:05:29.040 and people, and being really heart-centered,

00:05:30.980 I definitely get from my mom.

00:05:32.200 And then the sort of ability to, I don't know,

00:05:35.640 see things more systemically and really seek out truth

00:05:39.540 and answers.

00:05:40.840 And that sort of math background, I definitely

00:05:42.560 to get from my dad.

00:05:44.120 So it's always been this collision of worlds for me.

00:05:47.180 But I, yeah, while I was there, I was like, oh, whoa,

00:05:51.060 I think I want to start a company.

00:05:52.400 This is my thing.

00:05:53.300 So I started a company coming out of school.

00:05:54.860 It was the first beginner-focused software

00:05:57.820 school in Chicago.

00:05:58.840 So this is almost 10 years ago, before there

00:06:00.700 were any coding boot camps.

00:06:01.800 Yeah, there's a lot now.

00:06:02.940 I mean, there's almost too many in some ways, right?

00:06:05.480 It's a total commodity.

00:06:06.440 So you started the first one.

00:06:07.240 Yeah, first one in Chicago.

00:06:08.160 It was one of the first in the country.

00:06:09.560 It was called Code Academy.

00:06:10.800 and then became the Starter League.

00:06:12.720 And the only investor was actually

00:06:16.540 Jason and David from Basecamp.

00:06:18.060 So Basecamp actually invested in us.

00:06:19.780 Actually, they invested in us after I left the company,

00:06:22.020 but it explains a little bit of my connection to them,

00:06:24.420 which happens if you-

00:06:25.420 OK, so they were familiar.

00:06:26.700 How did you guys get to know them?

00:06:27.800 So how we ended up getting connected

00:06:29.300 is I then left the Starter League because I wasn't really

00:06:32.480 sure if that's what I wanted to do.

00:06:33.720 I went to go work at another company.

00:06:35.040 So you rebranded Code Academy?

00:06:36.700 Yes, to the Starter League, which is different.

00:06:38.460 OK, because I remember.

00:06:39.300 Because is there Codecademy?

00:06:40.560 There's also something called Codecademy,

00:06:42.060 which is purely online.

00:06:43.140 Totally two different companies.

00:06:45.160 I remember I went in Chicago.

00:06:47.220 I believe I spoke at some kind of meetup for,

00:06:50.380 it might have been your thing back in the day.

00:06:52.720 Back in the day.

00:06:54.060 Yeah.

00:06:54.720 No, but I mean, if you're running a monthly event

00:06:56.600 and there's a bunch of speakers, yeah.

00:06:57.940 Yeah, that might have been it.

00:06:58.900 That might have been us.

00:06:59.680 That's cool.

00:06:59.980 Maybe we met.

00:07:00.600 I have no idea who.

00:07:01.740 That's hilarious.

00:07:02.460 There's a lot of people.

00:07:03.120 Yeah.

00:07:04.540 But no, it ended up being an extremely successful company.

00:07:07.000 I mean, we taught thousands and thousands of people

00:07:09.460 in person who flew in from all over the world

00:07:11.920 to take our classes.

00:07:13.060 But I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to do long term.

00:07:14.560 Was it like a three month?

00:07:15.400 Yep, three month.

00:07:17.500 At the time, people were like, I don't understand

00:07:19.700 who your market is, Claire.

00:07:20.980 Who's going to pay $10,000 to learn how to code?

00:07:23.480 Is that even possible?

00:07:24.980 And then again, now, today, it's like, yeah,

00:07:28.540 we were really, really early.

00:07:30.720 And yeah, learned a lot.

00:07:31.860 But I was so young.

00:07:32.760 I was like 21, 22.

00:07:35.420 And I just wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to do for,

00:07:37.860 I don't know, just, yeah.

00:07:39.320 Yeah, is that the problem you want to spend your time on?

00:07:41.740 Exactly, exactly, and really, really go deep on.

00:07:44.360 And so I ended up working at another early stage startup.

00:07:47.540 And I did a little bit of everything for them.

00:07:49.160 They were really small companies, everything

00:07:50.860 from marketing to sales to operations.

00:07:53.840 And when I was there, Dan, I hated my job.

00:07:58.340 And the reason I hated my job was because I had a terrible boss.

00:08:02.600 So this is actually very much the inspiration for me,

00:08:05.720 even to this day, of why I feel like the problem of helping

00:08:12.360 people become better leaders is possibly

00:08:15.980 one of the most high leverage sort of things

00:08:19.300 to solve for in our world.

00:08:21.700 Because it affected my happiness as an employee at the time

00:08:24.800 so deeply.

00:08:26.000 Well, I know there's a quote.

00:08:27.200 I don't know who's saying.

00:08:28.000 I should probably give it attribution.

00:08:29.420 But it's like, people don't quit companies, they quit bosses.

00:08:31.740 Exactly, right?

00:08:32.660 I mean, and there's countless of statistics,

00:08:34.500 whether it's Gallup or other polls that have seen that.

00:08:37.880 But I had started learning in organizational change

00:08:40.980 when I was in school.

00:08:41.880 And so I had known, OK, this is.

00:08:43.380 And do you think his boss was, did he know he was bad?

00:08:46.060 OK, so this is the thing.

00:08:47.300 And this is what really got me.

00:08:49.060 He had no idea.

00:08:50.080 Wow.

00:08:50.900 He's like one of those people who is a wonderful person.

00:08:54.780 And you sit across from him at a coffee shop,

00:08:57.360 and he tells you your vision, or his vision,

00:08:59.840 and how he wants to invest in you and paints his picture.

00:09:02.760 And you're like, oh, yeah, this is great.

00:09:05.320 And then you actually go into work,

00:09:07.160 and it's sort of his way or the highway,

00:09:09.900 or not asking for feedback, or inconsistent,

00:09:14.420 or playing favorites.

00:09:15.960 And it drove me crazy.

00:09:18.900 And so I was like, wow, he has absolutely no idea.

00:09:21.420 He actually thinks he's a good leader.

00:09:23.600 And here's the other thing.

00:09:24.800 It's not like this is a big company.

00:09:26.080 This is like a six-person startup.

00:09:28.040 So can you imagine the magnitude of this problem and unawareness for leaders who are running even, you know, 20-person teams or companies, let alone 60 or 600 or 6,000?

00:09:38.360 So I just was like, I'm going to make this my life's work.

00:09:40.420 I'm going to quit my job.

00:09:41.260 I'm going to start a company to help leaders become better.

00:09:44.360 And, I mean, by the way, I mean, it's just, it's like hilarious when I think about this because I was like 23 at the time.

00:09:50.700 But just felt like, I don't know what this company is going to be.

00:09:54.480 I don't really care.

00:09:55.380 I don't care how long it takes.

00:09:56.620 As long as that's the problem.

00:09:57.560 I just, that's it. This is, this is, this is like what I feel like I'm meant to do. And so I took

00:10:02.620 some time off to do a bunch of research and develop a methodology. And once I sort of had

00:10:07.060 a hint of that, I thought, okay, I'll, you know, a way for me to learn whether or not this methodology

00:10:11.820 is true around how do you create an open and honest environment for leaders to actually get

00:10:16.920 that feedback so they understand whether or not they're a good leader and then what they should

00:10:20.000 be doing better. I felt like I had to test it. So I started a consulting practice working with CEOs

00:10:24.400 was one-on-one to really test that.

00:10:26.220 And so here's where we get back to the Basecamp connection.

00:10:29.080 My very first official client was actually

00:10:32.020 the co-founders of Basecamp.

00:10:34.160 So yeah, so I got connected to, or reconnected, rather,

00:10:37.340 to Jason Freed.

00:10:37.960 They were paying clients?

00:10:39.760 My very first, yeah.

00:10:40.540 Because everybody from the outside

00:10:42.160 would assume they've got their stuff figured out.

00:10:45.320 Oh, yeah, well.

00:10:47.140 Or was it just a weird time?

00:10:48.520 Because I know that they grew really fast at one point.

00:10:50.900 Yeah, well, and fast by their standards.

00:10:53.500 Yeah, was this when they got the new office?

00:10:55.280 I knew that was like a big...

00:10:56.240 So this is after the office, but it was more about size than it was about pace of growth.

00:11:01.580 It was Jason, the CEO, felt like, hmm, we're 40 people, we're spread all over the world,

00:11:06.540 and this is the first time in running the company for almost 15 years that I just feel like I'm losing touch.

00:11:12.880 He's like, I don't know people's last names.

00:11:14.820 I feel like people don't know who I am.

00:11:18.320 He's like, I feel like I'm a stranger in my own company in some ways.

00:11:22.700 And so he and I had connected.

00:11:25.600 I told him what I was working on and he was like, whoa, whoa, Claire, Claire, this is my biggest problem as a CEO right now.

00:11:31.960 I don't know my team and I want to.

00:11:33.740 I don't I don't want to be a founder who just sort of lets go of the reins and just everything falls off the rails eventually.

00:11:40.580 It's like I would like some intentionality behind how I'm interacting with folks and helping them feel like it's an environment for them to do their best work.

00:11:47.300 So, like, how do we how do we do that?

00:11:49.300 Can you come in and do a project for us?

00:11:52.000 So I did that, and it went extremely well.

00:11:55.000 They actually ended up validating a lot of the methodology

00:11:57.580 that I'd been developing, which today is actually

00:11:59.920 baked into Know Your Team.

00:12:02.240 And then the other interesting thing

00:12:04.060 is they actually changed some stuff in the company,

00:12:06.060 which is pretty cool.

00:12:07.240 It's always sort of as a consultant, right?

00:12:09.340 That's like fingers crossed.

00:12:10.420 Yeah, they're paying for it.

00:12:11.500 It's like the point, right?

00:12:12.740 It's not just the pretty slide deck, hopefully.

00:12:15.180 And then the other interesting part of our conversation

00:12:19.720 was he was like, Claire, this is also highly ironic.

00:12:23.260 But we are coincidental, rather.

00:12:25.300 We happen to be building this software product on the side.

00:12:28.700 It's like a prototype.

00:12:30.780 And it's called Know Your Company.

00:12:32.120 And it's a tool that helps CEOs like me get feedback.

00:12:36.040 And I'd love for you to take a look at it.

00:12:37.700 And did they build this because Jason was in that problem

00:12:41.320 space already?

00:12:42.840 Yeah.

00:12:43.340 You nailed it.

00:12:44.140 He just built stuff for himself, right?

00:12:46.260 And it was kind of like this fun thing of like,

00:12:47.900 I don't know if we'll leave in.

00:12:48.760 question yeah he's like i don't even know if we're gonna like open it up to the public or like i

00:12:53.460 don't i don't know what's gonna be like actually originally what it was it was more of sort of an

00:12:57.140 employee crm more than anything and less of a feedback tool and actually after a lot of

00:13:02.740 conversation with him it sort of started to move in that direction but anyway we went on our separate

00:13:07.540 paths and they started building out what was then called know your company i was actually building

00:13:12.020 my own software product at the time myself and i took like a job as a part-time hostess at a

00:13:17.400 a restaurant working nights and weekends to pay myself.

00:13:19.920 And I'm trying to sell consulting clients.

00:13:23.400 And I'm building a software product.

00:13:24.960 And I'm running out of money.

00:13:26.240 And I'm just like, is this the whole thing going to work?

00:13:29.040 That classic story of just trying to build the thing.

00:13:34.260 And I'm getting to this point where I'm like, oh, man.

00:13:37.800 I'd set aside about 10 months worth of savings

00:13:40.140 when I started on this journey.

00:13:41.700 And I got paid from Basecamp.

00:13:44.500 But it's now about a year or so.

00:13:46.440 And I'm like, oh, this is interesting.

00:13:49.260 Am I going to have to get a real job?

00:13:51.060 Bank account's really low.

00:13:53.100 I have a bunch of, I have like 10 potential clients

00:13:56.440 who've all verbally told me yes.

00:13:58.320 But there's no check.

00:13:59.440 Yeah, there's no check.

00:14:00.380 Like what's, oh god.

00:14:02.760 Like who?

00:14:04.260 It's that hot under the collar feeling.

00:14:06.880 And it was right around that time, so this is the end of,

00:14:09.720 I want to say, yeah, end of 2013.

00:14:11.800 Jason reached back out to me and he said, Claire,

00:14:15.120 I have this crazy idea I want to talk to you about.

00:14:17.460 And we sat down, and he proposed that they take Know Your

00:14:22.540 Company, at the time, which they actually had then.

00:14:25.160 By then, it started selling it, actually, as a product.

00:14:28.060 And it had started getting traction.

00:14:29.460 What year was this?

00:14:30.580 End of 2013.

00:14:31.460 OK.

00:14:31.760 Yep.

00:14:32.600 And it started getting traction.

00:14:34.580 And he was like, we have this product, and it's making money.

00:14:38.720 But it has nothing really to do with Basecamp

00:14:41.560 and all of our other products.

00:14:42.440 And I'm actually trying to get rid of these other products.

00:14:44.560 I was when he was trying to, I think he had high rise.

00:14:46.900 He was trying to get rid of that.

00:14:47.660 Exactly. It was when he was truly trying to go all in on Basecamp.

00:14:51.660 And he's like, I don't know what to do with it, but I have this thought.

00:14:53.920 He's like, what if we actually spun it out to be its own separate company?

00:14:57.020 So separate LLC.

00:14:59.920 You become the CEO.

00:15:02.940 We split equity 50-50.

00:15:05.220 You don't get any team or anything, but you'll get the customers.

00:15:07.700 You'll get the product.

00:15:09.480 What do you think?

00:15:11.000 And I was like.

00:15:11.940 like how did this just materialize in my life i like yeah just i mean i was 24 like i was like

00:15:19.820 this is stupid but what's neat about jason is if you watch the arc of of his career he i mean his 0.70

00:15:25.340 the the deal with david is similar right where they're like hey let's build this thing and why 0.99

00:15:30.000 don't we become partners and you know he's done this with high rise and a bunch of other yep it's

00:15:34.460 just it's just really neat because he you know i think a lot of founders sometimes feel like what

00:15:38.060 they created this special thing.

00:15:39.320 And I'm going to raise capital and hire a GM

00:15:42.480 and not really kind of be generous.

00:15:46.880 And it sounds like he was extremely generous

00:15:49.200 with the structure.

00:15:50.520 Absolutely.

00:15:51.200 I mean, I think I've learned so much from both him and David.

00:15:56.660 But one of the things I appreciate most

00:15:59.360 is he has an incredible ability to know what he wants

00:16:04.160 and to stay true to what he wants,

00:16:05.480 while at the same time being open to the fact that.

00:16:07.460 information.

00:16:08.260 That could look like a lot of different things.

00:16:10.580 Like, why not?

00:16:11.940 Why not?

00:16:12.940 It's funny, not a lot of companies

00:16:15.220 choose even the deal structure that we did.

00:16:17.260 It was super simple.

00:16:18.340 We split equity 50-50.

00:16:19.780 And then actually, the agreement was

00:16:21.880 when we hit $1 million in cumulative revenue,

00:16:26.020 that my share would get bumped up to 75.

00:16:28.640 And theirs would actually get bumped to 25.

00:16:30.420 And so that happened a few years ago.

00:16:32.060 So he was even willing to give an incentive for upside.

00:16:36.100 And for them, it was just because he knew what he wanted,

00:16:38.220 which is, I mean, for them, they were like,

00:16:39.920 this new company thing is just like, ugh, we don't really

00:16:42.360 care.

00:16:42.860 We don't want it to go away.

00:16:44.020 But we don't want it to go away, and maybe it'd be cool.

00:16:46.360 And Claire, you seem a lot more aligned and interested in it

00:16:48.680 than we ever would be.

00:16:49.780 And just sort of getting it off his plate.

00:16:52.360 And for me, it's like opportunity of a lifetime.

00:16:54.080 It's literally exactly what I've wanted to do.

00:16:56.100 What were the features in the early days?

00:16:58.220 Dead simple, right?

00:16:59.080 So it was literally just almost like a giant question

00:17:03.020 bank around three different questions.

00:17:04.820 And it's still a big part of the product

00:17:07.100 that help you understand what's going on in the team.

00:17:10.160 So everything from culture.

00:17:11.360 And it's anonymous?

00:17:12.440 No, all public.

00:17:13.820 And then like a public anonymous or public?

00:17:16.980 Public within the, no, there's no anonymity whatsoever.

00:17:20.480 OK, so you write it and people know you wrote it.

00:17:23.120 Exactly.

00:17:23.940 And then a series of questions that

00:17:25.740 are called social questions that are around things

00:17:27.920 like, what was your first job?

00:17:29.600 Or would you ever get a tattoo?

00:17:32.840 Or do you have a tattoo?

00:17:33.920 Or how do you like your eggs?

00:17:36.620 And then a rotating question around, what are you working on?

00:17:40.100 So the idea being that the three biggest things

00:17:42.620 that most people don't know about in their company

00:17:44.760 are, what are people working on?

00:17:46.340 How do you feel about the company?

00:17:47.820 And just like, who are you?

00:17:49.160 Who are you?

00:17:49.760 And did you discover this doing your research?

00:17:51.740 Yeah.

00:17:52.240 Yeah.

00:17:52.740 It was a big part of the research that I did.

00:17:54.960 But I think, I mean, full credit to Jason, intuitively,

00:17:58.040 it was just the problems, the three biggest questions

00:18:00.080 that he faced personally as a CEO.

00:18:01.280 But he came to that realization on his own.

00:18:03.280 Yeah, absolutely.

00:18:04.480 And so the product has evolved significantly since then.

00:18:07.500 Because originally, it was called Know Your Company.

00:18:09.700 And today, we are Know Your Team, right?

00:18:12.900 And yeah, the product was focused specifically, actually,

00:18:17.840 towards CEOs, right?

00:18:19.320 So Jason built this for himself.

00:18:20.420 So it was CEOs of small companies, anywhere from 20

00:18:24.100 to 75 people.

00:18:25.120 That was like the pain point for that.

00:18:26.940 20 plus is where it starts to realize.

00:18:28.160 Exactly.

00:18:29.280 And even the pricing model was really different.

00:18:31.740 So it was a pretty weird pricing model

00:18:33.600 where it was a one-time pricing per person for life.

00:18:37.240 So it was actually $100 per person for life, not per seat.

00:18:40.900 So let's say you have 20 employees,

00:18:42.860 so then it's $2,000, right?

00:18:45.180 But you didn't get a seat.

00:18:46.240 So if somebody left and came back,

00:18:47.540 they had to pay another $100?

00:18:48.680 Exactly.

00:18:49.180 So the idea is that as the company grows, it's $100, right?

00:18:53.100 And it was brilliant in some ways,

00:18:54.540 because what it allowed us to do is actually collect

00:18:57.240 sort of the lifetime value of a customer upfront, right?

00:18:59.520 And so we were able to become profitable insanely quickly

00:19:02.700 because of it.

00:19:03.420 Otherwise, we would have had to wait like 19 months

00:19:05.560 to see the same collection.

00:19:08.860 So it was really interesting from that standpoint.

00:19:10.760 And then the other thing that was fascinating

00:19:14.080 was the way it actually influenced behavior

00:19:16.760 from the customer side.

00:19:17.840 So because you are asking someone to pay upfront, right,

00:19:21.480 and you're talking to the CEO directly

00:19:23.200 in all of these conversations, this

00:19:25.780 means that the energy that the person is going to put behind getting people on board, getting

00:19:29.800 them to use it, know your company was very much a program than it was just a feedback

00:19:34.200 app.

00:19:35.340 So we actually saw higher engagement, wonderful customer success, actually because of the

00:19:41.480 pricing model.

00:19:42.020 So we stuck with that pricing model and with that very specific customer segment for a

00:19:47.420 good few years.

00:19:48.940 The sales model was also really interesting.

00:19:50.860 So for the first about year and a half, the way we sold the product is the only way you could even see it.

00:19:57.460 We didn't do a free trial.

00:19:58.960 There were no screenshots of the product online for like over a year.

00:20:02.880 And the only way that you could even try the product was you had to schedule a WebEx demo with me for 30 minutes.

00:20:11.400 Wow.

00:20:11.720 So I did in the first almost two years over 500 demos and calls with CEOs about the product.

00:20:20.200 Was it all referral-based?

00:20:22.160 A lot of it was referral-based.

00:20:23.760 And then a lot of it was from content.

00:20:26.960 So a lot of the writing and the speaking that I did.

00:20:30.060 So another thing that we focused on in the first two years

00:20:32.680 is I did just a ton of speaking, so much more than I do now.

00:20:36.380 I actually really cut back on the speaking

00:20:38.260 that I do in the past few years.

00:20:40.540 And the reason behind that is when we're just starting out,

00:20:43.840 no one knows who we are.

00:20:46.160 And if the premise of our product

00:20:48.980 is essentially selling an expertise.

00:20:50.860 Well, what's the expertise if we don't know who Claire is?

00:20:55.040 So speaking was a wonderful way to establish credibility.

00:20:57.800 It's also a great way to test messages

00:20:59.780 and understand what the real pains that people were feeling.

00:21:04.300 And then because we knew that we had a really very

00:21:06.940 sort of tight, narrow target segment,

00:21:08.900 that we could actually go to the conferences

00:21:10.520 where we knew exactly where the CEOs were going to be.

00:21:12.440 What have you learned about making events?

00:21:15.460 Because a lot of people ask, how do you

00:21:18.540 make them productive, right?

00:21:20.340 Because you see some founders, they're always speaking.

00:21:22.780 It's like, when do you actually get any work done?

00:21:24.720 You don't, though.

00:21:27.600 Like, did you just get better at choosing the ones

00:21:29.600 where you knew you had a high percentage of potential clients?

00:21:32.640 Well, I think the first thing is to define for oneself

00:21:35.460 what that productivity actually means.

00:21:37.160 So productivity in the sense of leads

00:21:40.680 doesn't mean actually closing deals,

00:21:42.140 doesn't mean influence and credibility.

00:21:44.360 So in the beginning, for me, it wasn't necessarily

00:21:46.540 closing deals.

00:21:48.260 it was actually reach and credibility.

00:21:50.980 And so it was about audience size, it was about shares,

00:21:55.000 it was about, we did a lot of sponsorships and partnerships

00:21:58.620 and then over time we could see how that translated

00:22:01.820 into actual revenue.

00:22:04.200 I think the way that I thought about it then was

00:22:12.600 what's the likelihood that I'm actually going to have

00:22:15.760 a real conversation with someone who can buy our product?

00:22:17.940 Because if I know that if I talk to them, we'll close them.

00:22:21.440 If I talk to them, we'll get it.

00:22:24.260 So if you can get on stage, you can kind of see a bunch of potential future conversations.

00:22:28.240 And what's interesting about that, too, is it doesn't necessarily mean even a big conference, right?

00:22:34.820 So what we actually ended up doing and what was a really fruitful partnership was I spoke at a series of small, intimate, exclusive, CEO-only sort of roundtable events or three-day conferences.

00:22:51.360 There's a wonderful agency-focused speaker series event called Owner Camp where you have to be an agency owner and you do three or four days, right?

00:23:03.920 And so you have this sort of cohort feel.

00:23:06.000 So we did a lot of things like that that ended up being wonderfully, you know, mutually beneficial for everybody.

00:23:12.320 And then here's here's the thing, though, Dan, like this stuff doesn't scale.

00:23:15.600 Right. Yeah.

00:23:16.580 It's good in the early days. Yeah.

00:23:18.120 Yeah. There's only one of me.

00:23:20.840 And what we started realizing is obviously once you get to a certain point, you want to you want to get things out there a little bit more.

00:23:28.180 And we started noticing a lot of really interesting signs that pointed that we needed to start trying something different and transitioning the business in a way.

00:23:40.340 Actually, a beautiful analogy that David, DHH, the other co-founder of Basecamp, he actually shared with me when we were talking this over during a board meeting is he said, comedians, Claire, when they get their start, you know, they go to the clubs and they hone their lines and they try different jokes and, you know, and they get to talk with your audience a little bit more intimately and you play the clubs for years, right?

00:24:07.660 And then you get to a certain point where you feel like you really know what your lines are.

00:24:10.440 It's like, then you take your show to HBO, right?

00:24:13.560 So there's a point in time, right, when you're ready to sort of go mass market.

00:24:18.340 So this is probably about two or three years ago where we're like, yeah, no, it's time.

00:24:23.940 Like enough WebEx demos.

00:24:25.340 Like I've picked it up.

00:24:26.740 I mean, you can imagine from each of those conversations, the amount of precision we were able to get about language and jobs to be done

00:24:33.860 and really understanding the mindset of what exactly are leaders who are struggling to get

00:24:39.660 a hold of what their teams are thinking and feeling, what are they facing? And so once we

00:24:44.060 got that, we said, all right, let's switch this up, right? So we opened it up to be self-sign

00:24:50.060 up. And then I transitioned to doing a lot more writing, which is much more scalable and mass.

00:24:54.920 I mean, but to an extent, some people would argue, well, Claire, that's not very scalable

00:24:57.600 either because we don't outsource any of our writing. I mean, we have hundreds and thousands

00:25:02.940 of people who visit our blog and read our stuff.

00:25:05.400 I mean, a hit post will easily get half a million views

00:25:10.200 and be shared on Business Insider and CNBC,

00:25:12.620 and crazy coverage.

00:25:15.140 And I am the only person writing.

00:25:18.160 We don't hire people to do it, and there's no ghostwriter.

00:25:21.040 I don't have an editor.

00:25:22.500 It's just me.

00:25:23.260 And so to an extent, too, it's like at some point,

00:25:25.600 that's not necessarily scalable.

00:25:27.480 But a little more scalable than speaking.

00:25:29.800 Right, right.

00:25:30.700 And the idea is shareable as well.

00:25:32.500 it's a little harder to transfer.

00:25:34.160 Like, oh, she gave this great talk,

00:25:35.640 and these are the main points.

00:25:37.060 And sharing that with her.

00:25:38.500 No, exactly.

00:25:39.580 So that was a big shift that we made

00:25:41.620 that started getting a lot of traction.

00:25:44.020 But then we started noticing something really interesting

00:25:45.980 about a year and a half ago, I would say.

00:25:49.000 Maybe two years ago, yeah.

00:25:50.620 Which is we saw sort of really insane traffic growth.

00:25:55.060 So over a 10-month period, we actually

00:25:56.720 saw organic traffic increase by like 10x.

00:26:01.820 It's just like crazy, or like zero paid.

00:26:06.060 This is all organic traffic.

00:26:07.260 Is it keywords that just started getting?

00:26:08.840 Yeah.

00:26:09.740 Exactly, from the writing that I was doing.

00:26:11.960 And we're like, oh, this is great.

00:26:13.640 OK, well, it's great, but our sales are not 10x.

00:26:17.840 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:26:20.000 Conversion here, this is interesting.

00:26:21.580 One part of the equation is not fitting with the narrative.

00:26:25.700 Like, what's going on?

00:26:27.400 Like, at first we were like, is this a fluke in the data?

00:26:29.220 And we're like, no, this is weird.

00:26:31.240 like, sales are flat, flat.

00:26:35.480 And we said, what's up?

00:26:37.360 So we took a closer look.

00:26:39.780 And what we realized is that the people who are reading our blog

00:26:45.400 posts and visiting our marketing site were managers.

00:26:49.420 They weren't CEOs between 25 to 75 employees.

00:26:54.000 They weren't looking for a feedback tool.

00:26:55.540 These were actually new managers, in particular,

00:26:58.420 who were like starved for content about how do I run my first

00:27:03.600 one-on-one meeting?

00:27:04.720 How do you set goals?

00:27:07.000 What does it even mean to be a manager?

00:27:09.480 How do you delegate?

00:27:10.640 I have to run my first staff meeting next week.

00:27:12.580 What do I put on that agenda?

00:27:14.480 And we started doing some research and realizing,

00:27:17.500 actually, the resources, let alone tools that are out there.

00:27:20.740 It's not for the ideal customer profile.

00:27:22.380 Yeah.

00:27:22.880 just like there's when you think about how we learn anything in life right it's like oh there's a path

00:27:33.200 right and you have like a sort of like a foundation of knowledge and you practice it and there's like

00:27:38.960 sort of experts you can go to or i call them frustration flows yeah there's a path to get

00:27:44.640 better and leadership is this one area where no one's really figured it out yeah like if you you

00:27:51.920 You hire a new manager, and you're like, OK, cool.

00:27:55.300 I've never managed before.

00:27:56.640 What do I do?

00:27:57.140 People are like, oh, read these books.

00:28:00.140 And you read the books, and you're like, OK.

00:28:02.100 Reading the books and doing the thing

00:28:03.360 are completely different.

00:28:04.220 It's like asking someone to learn how to ride a bike

00:28:07.440 by reading the book.

00:28:08.300 That doesn't work, right?

00:28:09.100 Yeah.

00:28:09.600 So you're like, oh, OK, well, you can go to business school.

00:28:11.880 And you're like, that's really expensive.

00:28:13.180 And again, do you really learn?

00:28:17.780 OK, do these workshops.

00:28:19.460 Do the workshop, or you talk to the executive coach.

00:28:21.760 both expensive.

00:28:23.520 And then again, you have to go apply the things.

00:28:25.980 And there's this gap of hearing and taking in what someone's

00:28:29.400 saying or writing down in your workbook.

00:28:31.960 And by the way, we do workshops, right?

00:28:33.560 But there's still a gap.

00:28:34.700 It's not the ideal solution.

00:28:36.300 So our hypothesis was, well, could we

00:28:38.340 create a learning path for new managers?

00:28:40.560 And could it be a combination of content, online tools,

00:28:43.600 and a support of the community?

00:28:45.460 So we decided, hmm, as we look at what Know Your Company is,

00:28:49.560 we almost have the opposite problem

00:28:51.980 that most startups have, which is we have an audience,

00:28:54.940 but we don't have the product.

00:28:57.040 We have the wrong product, right?

00:28:58.240 Our product right now is for CEOs and it's for feedback,

00:29:00.500 and our audience is huge, but it's managers.

00:29:03.120 And for most startups, it's the inverse.

00:29:04.980 It's like, oh, I got this product,

00:29:06.380 and I got to find people who are going to like it.

00:29:09.060 So we're like, well, I guess we got to get a new product.

00:29:12.660 So we rebuilt the product.

00:29:14.160 You rebuilt it?

00:29:14.840 Yeah, all of last year.

00:29:16.080 Really?

00:29:16.640 Yeah.

00:29:17.940 That was the rebrand.

00:29:18.740 When did the rebrand?

00:29:20.040 We launched it in December this past year.

00:29:22.180 So it's been about eight months.

00:29:23.660 Yeah.

00:29:24.440 And we're a really small team.

00:29:27.740 We're bootstrapped, right?

00:29:29.180 At the time, we were just two people.

00:29:31.340 And we rebuilt the whole thing.

00:29:32.660 So this is product features.

00:29:34.940 This is marketing site.

00:29:36.080 We changed the company name from Know Your Company, Know Your Team.

00:29:38.180 We changed the billing system because we also thought, no,

00:29:41.240 if you're a new manager, it doesn't make any sense

00:29:44.340 for that price point.

00:29:45.640 relaunched everything and crossed our fingers.

00:29:50.140 Always scary.

00:29:51.380 Oh, my god.

00:29:52.200 I mean, in hindsight, it's been wonderful.

00:29:54.620 OK.

00:29:54.840 Yeah, it's been wonderful.

00:29:55.680 I mean, you know.

00:29:56.260 You have a product aligned with the message

00:29:57.760 of your marketing that you've been doing.

00:29:58.940 So you have traffic.

00:29:59.760 You can monetize the traffic.

00:30:01.000 Exactly.

00:30:02.300 And of course, with any sort of new thing,

00:30:05.380 you're pushing this big boulder up the hill.

00:30:07.660 And then it slides back.

00:30:08.960 And you're pushing it.

00:30:09.580 And there's so many things.

00:30:11.380 You're always your own worst critic.

00:30:12.820 So I'm always just like, oh, there's

00:30:13.900 all these things that we want to do.

00:30:15.620 But the thing that I'm most just excited about

00:30:17.840 is just the fact that the way that we are helping people

00:30:20.680 is actually working.

00:30:22.640 Oh, that's cool.

00:30:23.660 That's the coolest.

00:30:24.440 That's the reason why you do it.

00:30:26.240 And in this space, I know there's tools

00:30:28.880 like Office Vibes, 15.5, and a ton of others.

00:30:33.020 It seems definitely like a category that's

00:30:35.540 become more interesting.

00:30:38.580 How do you guys kind of differentiate

00:30:40.520 or position against that?

00:30:42.800 Yeah, it's so good to ask that, especially

00:30:44.960 light of april's talk we just saw here at business software um so the thing that most tools do is

00:30:52.600 what most tools are good at which is they give you features so they say use this for your one-on-one

00:30:58.120 meetings use this for setting your goals use this for feedback what they don't do is they don't give

00:31:03.140 you the methodology so that's the difference is we actually give you content we give you expert

00:31:09.260 opinion advice recommendations show up in the tool yes it's in the tool so in context exactly

00:31:14.940 in context. And this isn't just like, oh, Claire's experienced consultant. No, this is actually based

00:31:21.000 off all the data we've collected over the past five years with other 15,000 people. We run actually

00:31:25.760 studies on specific subject areas. So for example, for one-on-one meetings, we actually have a guide

00:31:31.160 in Know Your Team that you can read that's data pulled from over 2,000 people that'll tell you

00:31:36.160 that the most common frequency for people for running one-on-ones is actually weekly,

00:31:41.460 which surprises a lot of people.

00:31:42.800 It's pretty often.

00:31:43.740 The most common duration is anywhere

00:31:45.620 between 30 minutes to an hour.

00:31:47.820 It'll tell you that over 80% of managers

00:31:51.500 find having one-on-one meetings to be very effective.

00:31:54.580 It'll tell you that employees actually

00:31:56.820 see that effectiveness is about 16 percentage points less,

00:32:00.240 meaning there's a huge gap between how effective an employee

00:32:04.020 versus their manager thinks one-on-ones are, right?

00:32:07.200 So it's sort of like the whole idea

00:32:08.880 is you can't actually change behavior

00:32:11.580 unless you give people reason, context to do so.

00:32:16.220 And so if these tools in Office 5 or 15.5, which are excellent,

00:32:20.580 right?

00:32:21.080 Yeah, at doing what they do.

00:32:22.080 Yeah, and doing what they do, that's great.

00:32:24.600 But if you actually want to help a new manager

00:32:27.680 create good habits, become better, and not just turn on a tool

00:32:32.380 and they have to force themselves every week to do it,

00:32:36.540 Rather than actually understanding how this is valuable,

00:32:39.620 a way to integrate it into their day-to-day process,

00:32:42.320 and then understanding, oh, in addition

00:32:44.400 to just doing the one-on-one every week,

00:32:46.560 I should actually prepare for that, right?

00:32:49.340 Oh, the idea, right?

00:32:50.540 I mean, it's crazy the number of managers.

00:32:52.720 The majority of managers don't prepare for their one-on-one

00:32:54.540 meetings at all.

00:32:55.700 Most managers don't do one-on-one meetings.

00:32:57.400 Oh, there we go.

00:32:57.780 Right, exactly.

00:32:58.500 Let alone doing the one-on-ones, right?

00:32:59.940 We're already making a big assumption

00:33:01.480 here that they're doing them.

00:33:02.920 But it's, yeah.

00:33:04.200 And would you argue that that meeting is probably

00:33:07.180 the most effective tool a manager has

00:33:09.000 to align their team's productivity

00:33:12.120 and provide the space for feedback to improve?

00:33:14.160 Yes.

00:33:17.100 It's definitely the highest leverage in-person time

00:33:22.020 that you can have with your direct report.

00:33:24.780 I mean, just for context and software,

00:33:26.920 Andy Grove wrote about it in I put out with management.

00:33:29.680 Jason Lemkin said he would fire managers that didn't do it.

00:33:33.140 Ben Horowitz talked about it in his book.

00:33:35.660 One-on-ones are non-negotiables, especially in my world,

00:33:39.260 high-growth SaaS companies.

00:33:40.380 Exactly.

00:33:41.380 It's a must.

00:33:42.320 It is a must.

00:33:43.220 So the product started off as a really neat way

00:33:47.120 to know your team at scale, the context of their world, their

00:33:50.540 life, what are they working on.

00:33:52.660 And then it's evolved.

00:33:53.680 What does it look like today?

00:33:55.700 Yeah.

00:33:56.140 So today, what it looks like is really

00:33:59.000 having that entire ecosystem to become a better manager.

00:34:02.360 So we have these educational guides that are all online.

00:34:06.120 And you also, when you add your team,

00:34:07.560 your employees get a version too.

00:34:08.820 And so you can actually read guides

00:34:10.680 that I've written based off all this research

00:34:13.280 on how to build trust in your team.

00:34:15.180 So what are the most effective ways to build trust?

00:34:17.220 What does that look like?

00:34:18.000 How do you integrate that into your one-on-one meetings?

00:34:19.860 What questions should you ask?

00:34:20.920 What activities should you do?

00:34:22.360 So there's a whole guide on that.

00:34:24.620 We give you guides on one-on-one meetings on-

00:34:27.280 Quarterly off-sites or team off-sites or anything like that?

00:34:30.240 Oh, yeah, all of that, on shifting culture,

00:34:33.260 on creating context, setting direction in a team.

00:34:38.860 And actually, the one that we're about to release

00:34:41.760 for customers tomorrow is on managing remote teams.

00:34:45.480 Cool, that's a big one.

00:34:47.080 Yes, big one, and that one took, yeah, 0.92

00:34:49.800 a big chunk of time to write.

00:34:50.880 I'm really, really excited about it.

00:34:53.580 But the whole idea being that it gives you

00:34:55.520 a foundation of knowledge and context to understand

00:34:58.800 What are things that different companies and different teams

00:35:01.600 do?

00:35:02.100 Because a huge problem with most leadership content

00:35:04.040 that you look up, because there's no shortage of it,

00:35:06.220 like HBR or Forbes or whatever.

00:35:09.300 I mean, you Google leadership.

00:35:13.200 There's no shortage of that.

00:35:14.560 But the problem with most of that content

00:35:16.380 is all of it is based off a very particular,

00:35:20.440 either dogmatic school of thought

00:35:21.980 or someone's own personal experience, like Ray Dalio

00:35:24.660 or Jack Welsh.

00:35:26.120 And it's like that worked great for them and for Bridgewater

00:35:28.560 Like, when I read principles, I was like, yeah, that works when you have an industry where you can back test every hypothesis.

00:35:33.780 I mean, I don't know another industry that's got that ability.

00:35:37.640 Right. And it's always helpful to have those data points.

00:35:40.540 But what makes leadership effective is actually understanding context.

00:35:44.700 It's being able to see the broad range of what potential actions you could take and decisions you could make.

00:35:51.360 and then being able to pick which ones and tailor that to exactly that specific person in the specific situation in the specific context.

00:35:58.740 That's what that's what the best leaders are able to do is to filter that very quickly and to have a range, a broad range of that,

00:36:06.000 that like knowledge bank of potential situations and outcomes.

00:36:09.340 So that's what we try to give managers in a way that's not overwhelming, in a way that's really curated and backed by data.

00:36:16.760 So that's that's what you get with the guides. Right.

00:36:18.820 And then the second step is, well, it's nice to learn stuff, but this is the problem with books, right?

00:36:25.780 And I'm not hating on books. I love books.

00:36:28.180 But if you want to do something after you read the book, it's quite a bit of energy, right?

00:36:31.520 And so that's where tools come in.

00:36:32.560 So we have these online tools, these software tools that we've built where you can apply what you've learned.

00:36:36.700 So, for example, you read the building trust guide, and then you can turn on our icebreaker tool,

00:36:42.000 which automatically helps onboard a new employee, asks five fun questions, helps to build trust.

00:36:46.580 And because you've read the building guide or building trust guide, you understand, oh, this is actually helping to build effective trust, right?

00:36:54.840 And effective trust is, you know, different than cognitive trust because it's all about creating social bond.

00:37:00.640 And, oh, the social bond is important because it's going to have people create, you know, greater loyalty.

00:37:04.480 You know, we understand that that's going to help, you know, retention.

00:37:07.180 It's not just like, oh, I'm turning on this, you know, asking just like fun questions because it's fun.

00:37:13.640 It's like, no, it's again, it's like creating that pathway for someone to actually change their behavior over a long term.

00:37:19.680 Right. So there's that. There's the one on ones tool that people can use.

00:37:23.600 And then based off the guide, they understand how to use it better.

00:37:26.300 We have stuff on culture questions to ask to get feedback, heartbeat questions.

00:37:30.940 So people are on the same page. So you don't have to do a weekly staff meeting.

00:37:35.840 You know, if you're remote, you can just use our heartbeat feature and, you know, a bunch of other stuff.

00:37:39.740 but just to give you something to actually then apply what you've learned.

00:37:44.260 And then what you have access to is we have our online community.

00:37:47.380 It's called The Water Cooler.

00:37:49.000 And you can actually sign up for it independent of KYT.

00:37:52.120 So you can, you know, it's 20 bucks a month.

00:37:54.360 But what's really nice is if you do subscribe to know your team.

00:37:58.540 That methodology.

00:37:59.260 Yeah.

00:37:59.560 It's all a part of all the research we've done to just help you stay more accountable.

00:38:04.200 So you have thousands of managers who you can talk to and have threads about.

00:38:07.860 Hey, I'm running into this issue.

00:38:09.040 I'm like, I learn stuff all the time.

00:38:12.100 Well, there's a challenge as managers.

00:38:13.420 I just feel like, especially with these tools,

00:38:15.440 it makes so many things public, like Slack.

00:38:19.720 It's all of a sudden, they're like, somebody said this.

00:38:21.680 How do I respond?

00:38:24.280 What am I responsible for?

00:38:26.160 You mentioned the great managers have this knowledge bank.

00:38:30.520 But what are the things, if you had

00:38:33.040 to pick the three, proverbial three things,

00:38:35.500 a great leader, manager, has based on your guys' research?

00:38:40.220 Yep.

00:38:40.720 What would you, yeah?

00:38:41.920 Funny, three is the number, actually, which is funny.

00:38:44.680 So based off the research we've done,

00:38:45.940 and this is what the product is built around

00:38:47.720 in our methodologies, there are three things we found

00:38:50.020 in common that the best managers tend to do.

00:38:51.820 And so the first is around trust and building trust.

00:38:54.840 And without that foundation of trust,

00:38:56.260 then you can't do anything else.

00:38:59.380 And trust, people get really confused sometimes what

00:39:01.780 you even mean by trust.

00:39:03.040 Like, a lot of times, people equate trust with likability.

00:39:06.900 That's not what trust is.

00:39:08.080 Trust is your intention matching your behavior.

00:39:10.800 Intention matching behavior.

00:39:12.260 And that linkage.

00:39:13.080 So this means that we did a big study

00:39:16.220 around the best ways to build trust.

00:39:18.500 So for example, some people might assume, oh, building trust

00:39:22.620 like quarterly offsites and asking about people's hobbies

00:39:27.280 and being transparent with company information.

00:39:30.760 That seems like those things would build trust.

00:39:32.980 And actually, all of those things rank lowest in terms of building trust.

00:39:37.860 And the things that rank highest are showing vulnerability as a leader, admitting your mistakes, and following through on the stuff that you say.

00:39:45.500 Integrity with your word.

00:39:46.520 It's all about doing what you say you're going to do.

00:39:49.580 And then saying what you're going to do, too.

00:39:50.740 You have to do that part first.

00:39:51.540 Say what you're going to do.

00:39:52.480 And then doing it.

00:39:53.020 Do it.

00:39:53.420 That builds trust.

00:39:54.920 And that's cognitive trust.

00:39:56.260 And the vulnerability aspect.

00:39:57.480 Exactly.

00:39:58.080 Yeah.

00:39:58.260 So anywho, building trust, that's the first thing.

00:40:00.020 second is honesty and communicating honestly so the idea being that if the

00:40:07.500 reason teams exist is to get something done that you couldn't get done alone as

00:40:12.440 an individual the only way that progress is made is if the communication that's

00:40:16.700 happening is is true to what is actually happening so that's why feedback so

00:40:22.020 important that's why having one-on-one meetings is so important is to get

00:40:25.300 You're saying sometimes the communication is actually filtered or decorated a certain way.

00:40:30.920 Or not at all happening.

00:40:31.740 It's not even happening.

00:40:32.840 Yeah, exactly.

00:40:33.460 So communicating honestly.

00:40:34.940 So that's all around not even just giving feedback, but even the way you receive feedback tempers and sets the tone for how people in your team communicate.

00:40:47.780 For example, if someone gives you feedback that's like, I don't know, something you don't want to hear.

00:40:52.980 you know you're just like i just really don't want to hear that like i know that but i don't

00:40:56.140 want to hear that yeah and you just like you know did you see my body language like ah you get

00:41:00.460 defensive or you don't say anything or you don't follow up slow yeah you're like okay great cool

00:41:04.960 you know you can only imagine what that response that you just did does for the likelihood that

00:41:12.340 that person is ever going to share a similar piece of feedback to you again like people wonder why

00:41:16.180 echo chambers happen or people wonder why oh how did that person not speak up as i wonder what

00:41:20.860 happened the first time someone spoke up maybe they got yelled at maybe they got fired maybe

00:41:24.580 you know nothing happened so there's no incentive to change so we don't even think about like there's

00:41:28.780 so much around just response exactly and i'm actually giving a workshop on this on on wednesday

00:41:33.660 here about the culture of feedback that actually it's this interesting virtuous cycle around how

00:41:39.020 you ask for feedback receive act on feedback and give feedback that sets the tone for how likely

00:41:45.080 people are to say the truth and so that's that's a huge part of uh what a leader has to be very

00:41:53.860 intentional about is creating those channels of communication making an honesty right so that's

00:41:58.700 number two and then number three is context so people need to know why they're doing stuff and

00:42:05.780 where they're going and what they're doing that's right it's it seems obvious um but it's

00:42:15.240 it's so hard to do in practice because as leaders it's so we're just assuming people it's in here

00:42:20.460 yeah it's in here we've been doing it we've been telling you i told you last quarter i just said

00:42:25.260 it yesterday like isn't it obvious um and it's amazing how many times we have leaders come to

00:42:33.980 us who say, yeah, my team has no idea what we're working on, or my company has no idea,

00:42:38.420 like people may be in this group does, but they don't understand how it rolls up to the

00:42:41.260 bigger picture.

00:42:42.500 And so context is a lot of things.

00:42:44.820 It's vision, which is a big part that a lot of leaders miss.

00:42:49.160 So understanding the picture of the better place that you're trying to create.

00:42:54.240 So what does it look like when we've been successful?

00:43:00.500 And leaders a lot of times don't spend a lot of time communicating that very clearly.

00:43:04.600 And vision is extremely important for motivation.

00:43:07.540 So what does success look like?

00:43:08.720 Yeah.

00:43:09.200 And the way I frame it even is like a picture of a better place.

00:43:11.720 Because it's very much a literal illustration, right?

00:43:16.300 It's not this abstract, like, oh, it's more innovative.

00:43:20.780 That's not vision.

00:43:21.520 Vision is not, oh, we should be more innovative.

00:43:23.680 No.

00:43:24.300 Vision is like a literal description of people's interactions and how their lives are different.

00:43:29.320 or the world looks different.

00:43:30.880 So it's a picture of a better place.

00:43:31.920 A vision is a thing that gets a lot of times overlooked.

00:43:34.980 Progress is another big part of context.

00:43:37.020 We often don't share the progress that's being made.

00:43:39.720 So a lot of managers and CEOs will ask me,

00:43:42.780 Claire, what really motivates employees?

00:43:46.960 Can you tell me?

00:43:47.980 What's the real answer, right?

00:43:49.620 And it's interesting.

00:43:50.340 There's a lot of research that's done on this.

00:43:51.820 And you might think it's money or titles or et cetera.

00:43:55.280 and the number one the number one thing that motivates employees on a day-to-day basis is

00:44:00.880 actually making meaningful progress on work progress number one thing so if you're looking

00:44:06.520 for a sustainable people want to win yeah well they just want to know that like this like we're

00:44:11.320 human beings like that we matter like like on the most fundamental existential level like we look up

00:44:19.240 at the stars and we're like what is this all for like oh does anyone care like that's progress just

00:44:24.400 making some sort of meaningful progress and even on a personal level like when i reflect on my own 0.98

00:44:29.320 day of oh was today good or not yeah you know you always feel like you have a shit day when you just 0.72

00:44:34.340 feel like you didn't make any point at anything yeah like i did emails i worked but i can't point

00:44:39.200 at anything but did anything happen right so progress is a big part of it uh decisions being

00:44:43.260 shared that helps create context and then institutional knowledge understanding why

00:44:46.820 things have happened in the past um so so that's those are the three the three sort of buckets of

00:44:53.680 sort of functional skills yeah uh what i would say is a the the foundational understanding that

00:45:02.720 often gets missed um sort of that supports those three things is a lot of leaders don't know

00:45:10.560 the purpose of leadership like why what is a manager like what are you supposed to do what's

00:45:20.600 answer and well so this is interesting it's very hotly debated because the concept of leadership

00:45:27.160 was probably introduced by like aristotle okay there's a very long history of leadership and

00:45:32.380 if you look back and you reflect on the history of leadership the number of definitions that have

00:45:38.120 been attempted at leadership right for as many um uh for as many attempts that there have been like

00:45:44.300 that's the the number of definitions like literally there's so many scholars have not

00:45:49.980 agree like academics who have studied this like have literally not agreed on a singular definition

00:45:54.720 they debate it all the time it's so interesting right exactly oh sorry um so you kind of have to

00:46:03.280 do some filtering of being like all right if no one's agreed then you but you got to pick something

00:46:06.460 because how can you get good at something if you don't define what it is uh and so what what has

00:46:12.720 been just based off all the research that i've done to be sort of the best definition of good

00:46:18.200 leadership is the ability to create an environment for people to do their best work right and the

00:46:25.400 key word being environment right so it's not frame it so it's not about influence actually

00:46:31.420 it's not about setting tasks it's not about goals like you didn't hear the word um like power even

00:46:38.980 um it's all about creating an environment and the reason that's so important is because when you

00:46:47.320 actually look at all the academics who've studied motivation and how people make progress in teams

00:46:55.320 and the science of teams people you actually you can't get someone to ever really do something

00:47:01.500 like you can't ever control another person so if the whole function of a team is to get is to be

00:47:07.520 able to do something you wouldn't have been able to do on your own and the leader's the person to

00:47:11.580 get you to try to do those things,

00:47:14.400 yet you can't ever control someone

00:47:17.620 or truly influence someone to do that,

00:47:20.140 then the best thing you can do,

00:47:21.740 and actually the most sustainable thing to do,

00:47:23.380 and the thing that's gonna give you the greatest likelihood

00:47:25.020 to get to where you're trying to go

00:47:26.280 is just to create the environment to do that.

00:47:29.120 I also think that framing is important

00:47:30.780 because it helps create pathways for yourself

00:47:39.780 yourself to act on those things in a sustainable way so as a manager as a leader as a manager and

00:47:46.980 as a leader gives you a kind of um some rails to think about like how should my activities look if

00:47:51.840 my job is to create environment does that really create environment exactly and it's and and the

00:47:56.420 reason it's so important as well as to have that sort of foundation too is when you become a manager

00:48:04.600 or a leader, it's a very confusing process because your definition of success just is

00:48:12.180 completely different than what it ever looked like when you were an individual contributor.

00:48:15.320 So if you're an employee, you are rewarded for solving problems. You are rewarded for being on

00:48:23.040 time, if not early. You are rewarded for having the answers. You are rewarded for being just on

00:48:31.820 top of everything, right? That's what you are. Exactly. Being everywhere, right? Popping your

00:48:37.240 hand up and you got the answers, you're doing it. Yeah. Put, you know, rolling your sleeves up.

00:48:41.760 And what's so interesting is when you're a leader, right? Actually, if you are doing your job well,

00:48:50.420 you're not doing that. You should be asking all questions and be having no answers. You should

00:48:57.120 not be busy, you should be having an open schedule in order

00:49:00.300 to help other people think through problems for themselves.

00:49:03.620 And that definition of success is really hard to get to

00:49:06.760 unless you actually frame the job as creating

00:49:11.520 an environment for people.

00:49:13.020 If you're stuck in this mode of thinking

00:49:14.940 that success equals you executing on the thing yourself

00:49:18.320 and getting the credit for it and being rewarded for that,

00:49:20.880 then you're not going to be successful as a manager.

00:49:23.000 And it's why that transition is so hard for so many

00:49:26.460 individual contributors who become managers,

00:49:28.740 people who are so excellent at their craft.

00:49:30.840 And maybe they're even good with people.

00:49:32.380 Like, it's not even like a, you know, some people are like,

00:49:34.660 oh, it's a social skills thing.

00:49:36.360 And some people just aren't charismatic,

00:49:37.920 or they just can't, they don't know how to run a meeting.

00:49:40.180 And it's like, well, is that it, or is it?

00:49:41.880 I know the book, One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey.

00:49:44.760 Oh.

00:49:45.260 It was so transformative.

00:49:46.140 Yeah.

00:49:46.380 Because it's like, that's somebody else's monkey,

00:49:48.260 not your monkey.

00:49:48.960 You're not supposed to actually do the work.

00:49:50.900 Exactly.

00:49:51.400 Buy some insurance on the monkey.

00:49:52.900 Yeah.

00:49:53.720 One of my favorite, I mentioned this to you earlier,

00:49:56.040 I run a podcast, it's called The Heartbeat,

00:49:57.540 and I invite leaders who I look up to and respect.

00:50:00.140 And one of my favorite guests that I've had on the show

00:50:02.800 is Michael Lopp, who he goes by RANDS.

00:50:05.220 He's the VP of engineering for Slack.

00:50:07.520 And I ask every guest on the show,

00:50:10.260 what's the biggest thing you wish you would have learned

00:50:12.000 earlier as a manager?

00:50:13.560 And he said, I wish I would have learned to not be busy.

00:50:18.420 And he's like, we, as people-

00:50:21.480 As an engineer, he probably is just always busy.

00:50:24.240 Yeah, it's like when you're busy, you feel like you're doing a good job.

00:50:28.000 You're knocking things out.

00:50:29.280 You're saving the day.

00:50:33.120 We live in a society where we're sort of rewarded for that.

00:50:35.860 Yeah, for being busy.

00:50:36.780 Yeah, and he was like, when you're busy, you actually can't do your job as a manager.

00:50:41.660 Because if your job is, and I'm inserting my own framework here, right, creating an environment,

00:50:46.240 you can't create that environment if you're the one answering support tickets or talking to the client or fixing bugs.

00:50:51.460 Exactly.

00:50:53.080 You're going to completely miss the fact

00:50:54.660 that you have someone who's thinking about leaving the company.

00:50:56.960 You're going to completely miss the fact

00:50:58.660 that someone actually disagrees with the strategy.

00:51:01.060 Like, you can't, like, the way the human brain even works

00:51:05.460 is we can't find salience and make sound decisions

00:51:08.920 when we're distracted.

00:51:10.720 And being busy means being distracted.

00:51:12.360 It's fine.

00:51:13.060 I mean, being busy is great if you're executing, right?

00:51:15.060 And you're doing the things.

00:51:16.160 But that's not what being a manager is about.

00:51:17.600 It's not about doing the things.

00:51:19.400 As you kind of look at your journey last five, six years,

00:51:23.480 who did you need to become to be CEO?

00:51:27.820 Oh my god, right?

00:51:29.280 Yeah.

00:51:29.780 I love that question.

00:51:30.700 I don't know if anyone's asked me that question.

00:51:32.400 I love asking that question.

00:51:34.020 In that form.

00:51:42.440 I think I needed to become more myself, which is,

00:51:45.900 and I don't know, it's like if I feel like if I ever rewatch

00:51:48.960 this back and be like oh god that sounded so cheesy can you retake that but I guess what I

00:51:55.240 mean by that is I I think I'll speak for myself when I was starting out I always felt like

00:52:05.000 the way you be successful is you model the patterns for what success for other people

00:52:13.520 have been that is the surest way to get there and I think it works for a lot of people but

00:52:20.260 what I think I've come to realize is if you have a different picture of what that success is or if

00:52:26.000 you want to help people in a different way then what you really just have to stay true to is your

00:52:30.460 own personal picture of what that could be and so i think the more that i lean into

00:52:44.060 my vision for how i want to help people the more that i listen to the like what people are actually

00:52:50.060 needing versus thinking oh i see this entrepreneur who's doing this or i see this company that's

00:52:55.660 doing this or this is a popular thing to do um sort of i mean the more kind of measurable success

00:53:02.520 we see whether that's customers or growth or you know hiring certain people or exposure etc

00:53:07.580 And I, yeah, I think it's convenient to feel like other people have it figured out.

00:53:28.580 out because it means that there's something like tangible that we can grasp and work towards

00:53:36.880 versus understanding that it's inside yeah it's inside like all the answers you kind of have you

00:53:44.680 already know like that's a lot more scary yeah then takes courage exactly that's a lot more scary and

00:53:52.440 it's a lot more frightening than like oh if only i do a b and c and i just gotta wait and i just

00:53:57.100 got to do these things.

00:53:57.940 And I just got to try a little hard.

00:53:58.900 And we just got to raise this money.

00:54:00.220 I just got to hire these people.

00:54:01.860 Versus it's a different thought.

00:54:04.420 Well, I think listening to yourself.

00:54:09.420 So I do a ton of writing, obviously, for Know Your Team.

00:54:12.080 And one of my favorite books around writing,

00:54:16.280 it's On Writing Wall by William Zinsers.

00:54:18.100 It's so great.

00:54:18.760 Yeah.

00:54:19.220 And he talks about, and I remember this blowing my mind

00:54:22.540 when I first read this, like, I don't know,

00:54:24.100 over 10 years ago, as he said, the person

00:54:27.040 you're writing for is for yourself.

00:54:29.660 I was like, really?

00:54:30.560 But it's not.

00:54:31.480 No, I'm writing for, you know.

00:54:33.160 Customers.

00:54:35.720 And in many ways, and this is going to sound really weird,

00:54:38.540 I think, to some people, but in many ways,

00:54:40.380 you're building your business for yourself.

00:54:42.380 And not in the sense of like, oh, it's this ego thing,

00:54:44.840 or I need my face on magazines, but just in the sense of like,

00:54:48.340 there are a lot of ways to make a living in this world.

00:54:50.500 There's a lot of ways to make an impact in this world.

00:54:52.840 The decision to do that by building something from scratch

00:54:56.200 taking an idea to to reality and doing it with software like this is a very intentional decision

00:55:00.120 and to to do that without sort of centering around the fact that like you have your own preferences

00:55:06.460 or ideas or opinions or way that you think you could help people like to not listen to that

00:55:10.620 would be almost doing a disservice to why you're even taking this journey to begin with because

00:55:14.340 if you want to make a bunch of money there's a lot of easier ways if you want to help a lot of

00:55:17.880 people there are other ways to do that too yeah um and i'm not trying to like put entrepreneurship

00:55:23.220 like on this pedestal just means like you're doing this because it's you like there's something about it.

00:55:30.540 You're doing it for you and not in a selfish sense, but just in a like, let's get real like this is a scary thing to be comfortable with.

00:55:37.620 And so I think the more that, yeah, I've listened to myself, the more I just try to be more of me.

00:55:43.380 You do you. Yeah. So awesome. Claire, thanks so much for coming on.

00:55:47.060 Thank you so much for having me, Dan. I appreciate it.

00:55:49.780 Cheers.

Dan Martell - January 30, 2020

Helping Leaders Get Feedback & Grow Faster with Claire @ KnowYourTeam.com - Escape Velocity Show #20

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