Dan Martell - Siblings Scaling Startups with Joseph Fung & Donna Litt @ Kiite.ai

00:00:00.000 I am the only person who can help my future self and so when I think about that and I own that

00:00:04.380 then today the decisions that I make can be designed for specific outcomes.

00:00:21.980 We're here with Donna and Joseph. How are you guys doing?

00:00:24.440 Good.

00:00:25.240 So good.

00:00:25.760 yeah this is interesting so brother and sister co-founders not one two companies you guys did

00:00:33.100 tribe sold that to net suite to net suite yeah net suite uh and then started kite um what is kite

00:00:40.720 want me to take that yeah yeah we're just joking it's like fighting over the fight

00:00:46.140 fighting on tape yes yeah so we we do digital sales playbooks so imagine giving a sales rep

00:00:51.660 a single pane of glass that has their collateral,

00:00:54.680 their cheat sheets, and the tribal knowledge

00:00:57.140 they need to move deals forward. 0.94

00:00:58.740 Would people call this like sales enablement or?

00:01:01.380 It's definitely inside the sales enablement stack,

00:01:03.860 but historically, a lot of companies

00:01:06.100 just look at sending out PDFs and measuring who opened them.

00:01:08.440 So we're doing things a little bit differently.

00:01:10.340 OK.

00:01:10.720 How do you guys decide who works on what?

00:01:15.580 I talk and yammer on events, and then Donna makes it work.

00:01:17.980 Yeah, rock, paper, scissors is really it.

00:01:19.900 So boom, boom, boom.

00:01:21.060 So Donna's actually married to Michael Litt, founder, CEO of Vidyard, and one of my good buds.

00:01:27.640 So now I know who the brain in the whole operation is.

00:01:31.160 Michael, and you know it too.

00:01:32.280 He's told me that himself.

00:01:35.100 But for real, like, is there, like, are you more outward facing?

00:01:39.560 You manage the operations.

00:01:41.100 Donna, how does that work?

00:01:42.200 Yeah, yeah, it's a good question.

00:01:44.120 So the way we'll typically characterize it is Joseph, historically, our entire lives,

00:01:48.620 has always dreamed big, very ambitious, wants to change the world.

00:01:53.880 And I love executing on ambitious things.

00:01:55.840 So that works out really well for the two of us.

00:01:58.300 But I mean, being able to work with your sibling

00:02:00.300 is a little bit like working with two heads.

00:02:02.480 You share language, you share culture,

00:02:03.940 you kind of know where the other one's going to fall down.

00:02:05.940 And so you can precipitate a lot.

00:02:07.500 And that's been very productive for us.

00:02:08.840 I find it fascinating.

00:02:10.540 I'm not going to lie.

00:02:11.220 My brother and I started, well, he started a home building company.

00:02:15.920 I was the money guy, silent.

00:02:18.620 And at one point, and I actually had him on the show,

00:02:24.740 but we never talked about this because I didn't

00:02:26.480 know if he felt comfortable.

00:02:27.340 But it kind of got to a point where there was a bit of contention.

00:02:29.780 He was doing all the work.

00:02:31.220 I wasn't.

00:02:32.560 I owned a big percentage of the business.

00:02:34.760 How does that look out?

00:02:36.140 How, you know, because I remember when we started that,

00:02:38.940 my dad was against it.

00:02:41.740 And my lawyer said 80% of the time,

00:02:44.380 he's dealt with family businesses that didn't end right.

00:02:48.620 I'm assuming you guys had a successful exit

00:02:51.120 in the last company, but how have you guys dealt with

00:02:53.940 when things aren't going good?

00:02:55.980 Have you guys had fights?

00:02:59.140 Ish.

00:03:00.860 Let's say that.

00:03:01.800 Yeah, Joseph.

00:03:02.660 I want to know.

00:03:04.760 You're right.

00:03:05.460 It happens.

00:03:06.380 I think we're lucky in that we've gone through it

00:03:08.940 a couple of times.

00:03:09.540 So I think we've worked out.

00:03:10.720 What's an example?

00:03:12.020 A really good example is we.

00:03:13.600 Nobody's listening.

00:03:14.760 Just us three.

00:03:15.600 Good, just the three of us.

00:03:16.740 Um, you know, we, we're very different personalities in a lot of ways, similar experiences with great, same language and framework.

00:03:23.020 Uh, I mean, I, I tend to think a lot about the things, you know, the work, the product, you know, the, the, the kind of ideas, uh, Donna keeps us level and even in making sure that we take care of our people.

00:03:33.560 Uh, and so one of the things that could cause problems, and we've been really lucky because I think there's a lot of mutual respect there is we'll prioritize things differently.

00:03:42.400 And more often than not, it feels a little bit like me saying, hey, let's do this thing.

00:03:47.140 No, no.

00:03:47.660 It's more like Donna gives me a swift cuff on the upside of the head.

00:03:50.120 It's like, you forgot about this.

00:03:51.200 You actually feel like you're like, hey, I want to do this.

00:03:54.740 And then Donna, you're open to her saying, hey, we need to consider this aspect and this stuff.

00:04:00.140 Oh, no, 100%. 1.00

00:04:00.800 Because half of my ideas are just crazy ass shit. 1.00

00:04:02.940 And she keeps us on the position. 1.00

00:04:04.120 That's good.

00:04:04.160 Know thyself.

00:04:04.940 So you know that some of these stuff, you're just throwing something on the wall.

00:04:08.260 Have our conversations.

00:04:09.520 It starts off with, Donna, tell me if this is a bad idea.

00:04:12.880 But that's it.

00:04:13.680 I mean, no, this is fascinating.

00:04:14.780 That's a good way to know how to frame the conversation so that really there can't be a fighting.

00:04:21.860 If you're starting off by being almost like self-deprecating to like, hey, I think this is a crazy idea.

00:04:26.560 Is it?

00:04:27.620 Versus I want to go do this.

00:04:29.880 And I think part of it also is our whole team recognizes that as the CEO, as the outward-spoken person,

00:04:37.260 I get a lot of credit for the work Donna does. 1.00

00:04:39.660 We're really well recognized for having really diverse teams,

00:04:42.760 really empathetic culture.

00:04:43.720 We get a lot of people who want to come work with us.

00:04:45.440 I love that.

00:04:47.000 90% of that's Donna's work. 0.99

00:04:48.760 And that's a swift reminder every single day.

00:04:52.220 People are like, Joseph, great job at this.

00:04:53.740 And I know it's Donna.

00:04:55.260 And so that's really helpful.

00:04:57.300 And our team sees it.

00:04:57.940 They know it.

00:04:58.440 So that makes it a lot easier.

00:04:59.540 No ego, Donna? 0.94

00:05:00.440 You don't feel?

00:05:01.700 I prefer to say that it's a team sport.

00:05:03.580 but do you ever um does it ever frustrate you when when joseph might be getting the recognition

00:05:10.520 because he's more oh no no never in a thousand years would i want to be a ceo in the same way

00:05:16.720 that that i've seen ceos to date and i mean you mentioned it my partner michael he's in that seat

00:05:22.840 and there is no lonelier more difficult job so hard yeah you're not allowed to have a bad day

00:05:27.360 everybody's looking at yeah you gotta yeah that's crazy what how did you guys

00:05:34.680 come to the like why do kite after an HR product like what was the how did you

00:05:39.960 guys kind of come to that yeah yeah so I'll tell my version then if I've got

00:05:44.520 anything wrong you can that's like my wife and I was like how'd you guys meet

00:05:47.280 I'm like whose version do you want yeah yeah yeah so I mean with tribe HR what

00:05:54.180 we wanted to do was build tools to really help make the employees life better we wanted to

00:05:58.360 increase autonomy increase transparency into the workplace and and we wanted to do that as as in an

00:06:03.920 impactful way as possible so we started with the hr file so if you can imagine taking that hr file

00:06:09.260 which when you know current state of things it's scary it's dark it's locked away in a cabinet but

00:06:13.060 instead opening it up and turning it into an empowering artifact that's a very different way

00:06:16.980 of thinking about it and and that's what was it what was tribe like in regards to the feature set

00:06:21.500 So it was a social HRIS, and I mean, it had your full suite of HRIS features, including performance management, your booking time off, your PTO, et cetera.

00:06:31.480 But really what made it different is that it had these social elements to it that you can kind of correlate to like your Facebook.

00:06:38.640 So if you imagine your employee record, but more of like a Facebook profile, your employee file.

00:06:42.220 So was there a feed that everybody could see or you had with your manager?

00:06:46.460 Yeah, absolutely.

00:06:47.820 There was a company feed that had all of the peer and public recognition that someone within an organization received.

00:06:53.200 So you could reinforce company values.

00:06:55.100 You could demonstrate what behavior was actually moving the needle to the entire organization and broadcast that

00:06:59.920 and have that then append automatically to their employee records that come time for their review,

00:07:04.140 you've got this wonderful history of very rich, nuanced anecdotes about how this individual is actually performing as it relates to your value set.

00:07:12.080 Super cool.

00:07:12.880 Yeah, it was super magical.

00:07:14.400 And we did that.

00:07:15.160 we ended up, you know, growing that organization and selling it. And in that process, we learned

00:07:20.120 that, you know, while we had done a lot to help make employees' lives better, we really just

00:07:24.220 focused on a subset. It was the HR professional who were impacting most. And while, yes, there

00:07:28.460 was absolutely benefits to the employee base, it didn't have that same reach that we had envisioned

00:07:32.960 at the outset. So when we went back to the table, you know, at the beginning of Kite, we said,

00:07:38.220 okay, let's go back to basics. How can we make the biggest contribution? How can we impact

00:07:43.460 employees lives in the greatest possible way and and ended up you know through a series of

00:07:47.540 iteration and testing on where we are today with kite and how does kite work um because it's it

00:07:53.680 feels like there's you're still kind of like iterating and learning from the market but

00:07:58.160 i'm also seeing i guess a trend of like taking information and presenting it you know as almost

00:08:04.660 like not crowdsource but best practices and what other people are doing is that one of the big

00:08:08.920 of things that Kite enables is the organization

00:08:12.460 kind of self-learning?

00:08:14.440 Definitely.

00:08:15.100 I think the real key addition is we started in chat.

00:08:19.820 And for a lot of people, when you think about sales,

00:08:22.180 it feels like a weird place to start.

00:08:24.400 Why are you looking at Slack and Skype?

00:08:26.600 But we looked at almost three quarters.

00:08:27.820 Internal chat or internal?

00:08:29.120 100% internal.

00:08:29.920 So sales channels and?

00:08:31.480 Sales, customer success, product, all of it.

00:08:33.840 And we looked at almost three quarters of a billion

00:08:36.520 messages and understood how do sales reps have problems where do they have pain points

00:08:41.080 well our very first product to do that was a chatbot okay yeah so i mean accessing your

00:08:47.220 documents your resources in chat but that helped us understand what's the dna and what's the problem

00:08:52.080 in organizations uh really refined a lot of our technology so it's great we can find customer

00:08:57.880 stories in your google docs on your website and your blog uh that helps us understand it uh so we

00:09:04.240 We automate, but we also give people the opportunity to do that.

00:09:07.420 Here's my cheat sheet for discovery calls.

00:09:10.080 And all of that machine learning then helps somebody say, hey, you know what?

00:09:15.360 I want to know how discovery calls go really well.

00:09:17.160 I'm going to take, you know, David's cheat sheet and make it my own.

00:09:21.220 And the system will recommend changes and navigate all of that.

00:09:23.620 So there's definitely a human and an automation side to it.

00:09:26.300 That's really cool.

00:09:27.480 What do you guys see?

00:09:28.320 I mean, in the world of the choruses, the refrax, the gong, 1.00

00:09:33.180 around that sales, coaching, sales, training,

00:09:38.760 where do you think the world of sales is going?

00:09:41.560 A lot of that gets centered around automation and AI.

00:09:44.600 So when people talk about those vendors,

00:09:46.380 they'll talk a lot about AI and technology.

00:09:49.000 I mean, what's great is I hear a lot of people say gong, chorus,

00:09:52.700 others are transforming the way we sell.

00:09:54.320 And that's good.

00:09:55.260 That's a really good thing.

00:09:56.800 But all of those are effectively reactive tools.

00:10:00.460 They're looking at, what is your team doing?

00:10:02.860 And then a human will say, well, that was good.

00:10:04.720 That was bad.

00:10:05.860 Or this was the score.

00:10:06.760 Let's sit down and have a conversation.

00:10:08.820 Instead, I think what we're seeing,

00:10:11.420 and what I think we're going to see more of,

00:10:12.760 is teams saying, I aspire to be like this.

00:10:17.200 I know this organization does a great job of outbound.

00:10:19.280 I want to be like them.

00:10:20.420 I know this rep handles inbound leads really well.

00:10:23.020 I want everyone to be like that.

00:10:24.880 And setting the goals.

00:10:25.840 for bright spots.

00:10:26.800 Exactly.

00:10:27.520 And then trying to teach that.

00:10:29.020 And so we see a lot of people using not just our templates,

00:10:31.900 but sharing best practices between organizations.

00:10:34.300 Really?

00:10:34.880 A lot of that.

00:10:35.620 And that's so cool to see.

00:10:36.980 I know you guys asked me, Donna, a long time

00:10:39.180 when you guys launched for some of my videos.

00:10:41.080 I was flattered.

00:10:43.120 Yeah, I was just like, OK, I'll give it to you.

00:10:44.860 I don't know if people, I don't know

00:10:47.000 if I have the best stuff.

00:10:49.660 How did you identify that library?

00:10:53.980 Yeah, how did you figure out who to pull stuff from?

00:10:57.160 Because, I mean, I almost feel like unless you guys have an editorial approach to it,

00:11:00.720 then it's just a lot of, it could be conflicting approaches, right?

00:11:04.200 How did you kind of like look at the data set and decide what to put in the library?

00:11:09.580 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:10.340 Well, I mean, stage of business, we kind of finger in the wind tested

00:11:13.700 and identified who are the companies that we aspire to be more like.

00:11:17.320 Who are the individuals, who are the thought leaders that we put on a pedestal

00:11:19.820 that we said from our experience and in our networks are the best.

00:11:23.340 And so we started there and, you know, cheekily it's a template gallery, it's on the internet, there's a lot of SEO value to come from that. And so you're able to borrow a lot from those brands in that context. And so that was certainly a factor when we were starting and when we launched the gallery. Since then, we are now powering almost 5000 playbooks on the product. And so we've learned a lot and we've seen a lot. And so are now in the process of revising that gallery. And you'll see in our newsletters all the time, we're pushing out new templates that are derived from those objection handling best practices, for example.

00:11:52.380 And that comes from all the learning that we've seen to date.

00:11:55.660 And anybody can register for this newsletter?

00:11:57.520 Yeah, absolutely.

00:11:58.240 To go to your website?

00:11:58.920 Yeah.

00:11:59.300 Okay, everybody go subscribe.

00:12:00.660 Yeah.

00:12:01.900 Do you see a day where the AI could do the call?

00:12:07.360 Curious what you think.

00:12:08.600 So it's interesting.

00:12:09.260 When you see Google do those demos of like virtual assistant booking

00:12:13.860 and interacting with these nuanced conversational styles, it's interesting.

00:12:17.860 So it's neat.

00:12:18.760 There are vendors that will use technologies to automate emails, LinkedIn messages, chat.

00:12:25.180 And so to a certain extent, we're there.

00:12:27.200 I mean, if you think about a call as a placeholder for reaching out to a customer.

00:12:31.760 Yeah, just adding a voice to the written word.

00:12:34.800 Yeah.

00:12:35.320 Now, the challenge, though, and I think the one thing that's really interesting is if you think about the idea of you're on a call with a customer,

00:12:41.760 that's situational awareness of what's the scenario, who's the competitor, what's the product,

00:12:47.340 What's the right move to make right now?

00:12:50.540 Not what's any move, but what's the right move?

00:12:53.240 We're nowhere near there.

00:12:54.380 Because it's like a chess game.

00:12:56.320 And there are rules to chess.

00:12:58.620 And sure, you could say, great, we've got AI engines that are winning at chess.

00:13:01.240 But the reality is chess is really understood.

00:13:03.320 It's got a really defined rule set.

00:13:04.540 Set rule set, yeah.

00:13:05.360 And can you imagine trying to teach someone to be a grandmaster at chess by saying, hey,

00:13:09.480 watch how Jim plays chess and pick up all the rules and just do what he does?

00:13:12.620 But that's what we do with sales reps. 1.00

00:13:13.900 So the journey to get there, that's going to be a long one.

00:13:18.020 And if you've got somebody repping your company,

00:13:20.120 you don't want somebody who just knows the basics and the rules.

00:13:21.940 You want somebody who's playing at a grandmaster level.

00:13:24.060 So I think there's going to be a long time for a role for a sales professional

00:13:27.520 to add that judgment into the equation.

00:13:29.720 I mean, in today's world, I think the data shows that sellers are becoming younger, right?

00:13:34.600 They have less experience in the domain that they're selling into.

00:13:37.760 Maybe they don't stay in a sales role as long, maybe 60 months, two years.

00:13:43.620 What do companies, what are the things that these reps need to be? 0.98

00:13:48.840 And do you guys focus mostly on SDRs, AEs, both?

00:13:52.640 So on that one, our customers, all over.

00:13:55.300 So we'll have teams that say we're focused primarily on SDRs with their use of kite.

00:13:59.120 Others who say primarily AEs.

00:14:00.360 A lot who do both.

00:14:02.020 So a mix, all of the above.

00:14:03.240 If you had to prioritize kind of the skill set or information that you think they need to get right first

00:14:08.500 to be better at selling, what do you think that would be?

00:14:13.400 So rather than just stating kind of our opinions,

00:14:16.780 because I mean, our opinions are as valuable as whatever,

00:14:19.480 I think a good way to look at it is

00:14:21.560 what are people putting into their playbooks?

00:14:24.000 What is the most used and what is the most created content?

00:14:27.600 Now I'm excited.

00:14:28.160 And that's a lot of fun.

00:14:30.360 So if you take a look at the content people are adding to their playbooks,

00:14:32.980 number one across the board in a topic area is onboarding.

00:14:36.420 Onboarding.

00:14:36.840 I know.

00:14:37.140 Okay, so training.

00:14:37.740 Yeah, so your teams are saying, great, people need to know onboarding.

00:14:40.300 They start that.

00:14:40.760 That's the most common content that's put in a playbook.

00:14:43.400 It doesn't even show up in the top 10 used content

00:14:45.900 when you look at what the reps are using.

00:14:48.040 The reps are using customer stories, specifically stories, not case studies,

00:14:53.940 battle cards, so competitive intelligence.

00:14:56.860 And I mean, these things are fairly obvious,

00:14:58.100 but these are the top two searches, specific competitors,

00:15:00.860 battle cards, things like that.

00:15:02.060 Third one, discovery questions.

00:15:04.900 Yeah, we're not talking about product features.

00:15:06.700 We're not talking about industry.

00:15:07.740 I don't think I would have got that right.

00:15:09.500 And so when we see our customers who

00:15:11.520 are doing things really well, and they've

00:15:13.140 got a high-performing sales team, one of the big things

00:15:15.740 that we see, and I mean, this is all pattern recognition.

00:15:18.140 This is a very consistent pattern.

00:15:20.060 They never start with product training or industry training.

00:15:23.500 They focus exclusively on the persona and the buyer.

00:15:26.240 If you're selling to a VP marketing,

00:15:28.300 they focus on, where did that VP marketing go to school?

00:15:30.860 What do they get up?

00:15:31.480 What did they eat for breakfast?

00:15:32.200 What events do they get to?

00:15:33.000 What problems do they care about?

00:15:35.400 And if you understand that deeply,

00:15:37.240 You can take any product and have a good conversation

00:15:39.360 with them.

00:15:40.460 And so if I was going to take that into it.

00:15:42.560 So it's persona education.

00:15:44.060 And so now that's what they're front loading

00:15:45.560 into the onboarding for these new sales reps.

00:15:48.200 So we're seeing that pattern.

00:15:49.300 And if I just did my opinion, I think way more companies

00:15:52.080 to just spend way more time on the personas of their buyers.

00:15:54.720 Because they would predominantly,

00:15:56.040 I mean, what I've seen is just product, product, product,

00:15:58.080 education, learn about our product.

00:15:59.740 Totally.

00:16:00.320 Yeah.

00:16:00.900 And it's software.

00:16:02.480 So your founders, your CEOs, the people who sold are engineers.

00:16:05.280 And you say, hey, sell like I did.

00:16:07.220 You have to know the product really well,

00:16:08.260 because I know what I built it.

00:16:09.640 And so it's easy to make that mistake.

00:16:11.060 That's interesting.

00:16:12.260 And I mean, when a lot of customers

00:16:13.860 are showing up in the pipeline more educated

00:16:16.400 around your product than sometimes these sellers,

00:16:20.300 I guess that's a really good way to combat that.

00:16:22.460 Because if you focus primarily on the persona,

00:16:27.900 then it's the empathy building.

00:16:30.220 It's the, you really know my problem.

00:16:32.420 Now, I already know your product's probably the right

00:16:34.340 solution.

00:16:35.120 Now, just help me kind of understand

00:16:37.100 how this is going to impact my life.

00:16:39.620 How do you help the teams extract that from the,

00:16:47.740 and you say it's not case studies, but customer stories.

00:16:50.780 Do you guys have processes for helping them write

00:16:53.120 these customer stories, or how do you do that?

00:16:55.800 Yeah, so our templates definitely

00:16:57.960 have frameworks that people can use.

00:17:00.200 But I think, so to go back to your earlier comment,

00:17:03.160 just because it's relevant, the skill

00:17:04.680 listening ultimately underpinning all of this empathy you need to listen to

00:17:08.220 figure out how to even build that and be curious and so that same thing applies

00:17:12.000 for all of our implementations and services engagements and and we have a

00:17:16.020 series of interviews that are tiered where we speak with folks from your

00:17:19.980 sales leadership level all the way down to your individual contributor and we

00:17:23.580 ask these very specific questions to identify not only what your systems

00:17:26.820 look like but what are those kernels that actually work within your workflows

00:17:30.000 and then we distill them and we help you build your playbooks when you say

00:17:32.860 And individual contributors, do you

00:17:34.900 mean like customer support or engineering?

00:17:39.500 Yeah, great question.

00:17:40.280 So the customer-facing folks.

00:17:41.440 That would be your SDRs or your AEs or your customer success.

00:17:45.140 All right, perfect.

00:17:46.320 And so you guys have a process.

00:17:48.400 Is this kite or is this a playbook?

00:17:51.180 Yeah, so this is kite.

00:17:52.180 But I mean, we have a playbook for this process

00:17:54.560 because we are kite and we use that.

00:17:56.480 That's what you do, yeah.

00:17:57.300 Yeah, so we roll that out.

00:17:58.540 And when we kick off a customer, every time

00:18:02.000 We have our launch playbook.

00:18:03.480 We duplicate that into their workspace, and this is very tactical.

00:18:06.000 But then we follow our playbook, and we walk our customers through it,

00:18:08.480 and then we conduct the interview accordingly.

00:18:09.900 That's cool.

00:18:10.960 What companies do you look at in the space that you admire the way they manage their sales teams

00:18:17.440 in the SaaS, B2B SaaS space?

00:18:20.980 Sure.

00:18:21.880 I definitely want to hear your answer on this one, too.

00:18:25.580 It's interesting because we get to see a good mix.

00:18:27.660 We get to see a lot of CEOs.

00:18:29.840 We get to see a lot of individual reps.

00:18:33.160 Two that really come to mind, I mean, this is one of our clients, Fix, I think.

00:18:39.680 What do they do?

00:18:40.480 So they do maintenance management software.

00:18:43.300 So if you think about your car, I mean, you know you need to change the oil,

00:18:47.000 you take it in, get the tires done, and you forget.

00:18:50.320 And so it's an issue.

00:18:51.660 Now, put that onto the level of, say, an airport or a stadium and all their equipment.

00:18:56.180 So they do software to help you be proactive in maintaining all your systems.

00:19:00.580 So I guess like building maintenance.

00:19:02.580 Exactly.

00:19:03.340 Yeah.

00:19:04.120 And what I really admire about the organization is they take a very thoughtful approach to the way they run their organization.

00:19:12.080 What's the impact of all their items, not just shooting from the hip?

00:19:15.000 But more importantly, their CRO, Dan, I don't think I've ever encountered an organization with more of the managers and individual reps said,

00:19:22.600 I'm working here because I like learning from them.

00:19:25.620 What does he do?

00:19:26.320 He's a CRO.

00:19:27.180 But what does he do?

00:19:27.840 I wish I knew.

00:19:29.120 Dude, we need to get him on this show.

00:19:30.940 He's amazing.

00:19:31.800 What does Dan do?

00:19:33.600 The part that I think is really amazing is that he does all of this.

00:19:37.840 He speaks.

00:19:38.760 He coaches.

00:19:39.680 He mentors.

00:19:40.060 And he's responsible for revenue.

00:19:41.700 And I get this.

00:19:43.260 I mean, I don't know if I'm speaking out of turn here.

00:19:45.560 I mean, the whole team knows.

00:19:46.820 Just us three.

00:19:48.340 He is such a driven individual.

00:19:50.560 He'll actually commute by bike sometimes to the office.

00:19:53.480 And he lives in KW, and their office is in Toronto.

00:19:55.620 Oh, that's intense.

00:19:56.780 I mean, you need a level of intensity.

00:19:58.740 I thought it was like a 20 minute ride.

00:20:00.280 I'm like, no, that's.

00:20:01.140 And so if I think about aspiring and running

00:20:02.900 an organization where I'm achieving at his level

00:20:06.620 and my team wants to work with me that much,

00:20:09.580 that's somebody that I would brought out there.

00:20:11.060 That's really cool.

00:20:12.060 So yeah, he definitely needs to be on the show.

00:20:13.400 We need to get him here.

00:20:14.300 Who are you thinking about?

00:20:15.620 Yeah, you know, I'm, gosh, it's a toss up between Vidyard.

00:20:19.820 I was going to say, I wasn't even going to say you can't.

00:20:23.220 Yeah, I know.

00:20:23.980 Super biased.

00:20:24.880 So my number two, my hot number two would be Slack.

00:20:28.300 And it's not because of any one individuals.

00:20:30.000 It's because of all of the data points

00:20:31.440 that I've collected over time.

00:20:32.460 And every single time I hear a Slack employee speak

00:20:36.360 about their process and about their product,

00:20:39.220 it is always framed from the lens of their customer first.

00:20:41.880 It is always, we bleed over our customers

00:20:43.820 and the rest follows.

00:20:45.180 And I love that.

00:20:46.660 I think keeping your customer at the heartbeat

00:20:48.580 of your business growth is a significant challenge.

00:20:50.800 And I feel as though they've done that.

00:20:52.400 Do you know how they do that?

00:20:53.580 Is it part of their training, their values?

00:20:56.880 Yeah, well, they use Slack specifically.

00:20:59.140 Crazy idea.

00:20:59.980 Yeah, we did actually just get to tune into a recent conversation, a recent talk.

00:21:05.700 And James, oh gosh, do you remember James?

00:21:08.780 We just call him James at Slack.

00:21:10.080 James at Slack, yes.

00:21:11.320 But he was like early, after TinySpec, when they became Slack, he kind of ran marketing.

00:21:17.060 Yes, yeah.

00:21:18.840 And what he talked about was just conceiving of a deep empathy for their customers

00:21:22.960 And the way in which they were able to operationalize that is by using Slack within their environment and integrating their systems.

00:21:28.240 So would they let their customers essentially be in a Slack channel with employees?

00:21:33.360 So I don't know that level of detail.

00:21:35.040 I suspect yes, just based on the conversations and the feature sets that they've developed since.

00:21:38.920 And they seem to eat their own dog food.

00:21:40.500 But specifically, they were talking about the idea of bringing in the team.

00:21:45.440 So they take a very team-based approach.

00:21:47.160 And you're going to have multiple touch points throughout the organization for one particular deal.

00:21:51.820 And when a ticket is escalated from one of their customers, it gets automatically floated to a channel where every single member of that team is a part of.

00:21:58.740 And so they get notified.

00:22:00.020 And so we know that today, selling is social, buying is social.

00:22:03.760 It's done in teams.

00:22:04.480 It's not done through individuals.

00:22:05.800 And so they've been able to really systematize that by their use of their own product.

00:22:10.220 So a ticket comes in, tagged to a certain part of the product.

00:22:13.340 The team in charge of the product gets posted to the Slack channel.

00:22:17.780 Yeah.

00:22:18.120 I'm not sure if those are the exact mechanics.

00:22:20.040 But in spirit, yes.

00:22:21.100 In spirit.

00:22:21.800 See, this is the interesting part, is that if I think too often the feedback from the customer is not, you know, as much as you want everybody to be talking to the customer, it's not as real time, right?

00:22:34.560 It's scheduled interviews.

00:22:35.900 It's, you know, it's maybe quarterly or, you know, it's a little bit more formal.

00:22:39.500 But just being able to have it go straight from customer support tickets or customer success straight into the channel of the people working on that stuff, especially if they're going to go make an enhancement to it, I think it's just so fascinating.

00:22:50.940 Buying is social.

00:22:51.820 What did you say?

00:22:52.240 Buying is social, selling is social.

00:22:54.680 That's interesting.

00:22:56.500 So just how do you, because what I'm seeing is a pattern of just even like the HR stuff

00:22:59.980 you guys did with the sales stuff is kind of creating social objects around communication.

00:23:06.480 That's totally it.

00:23:07.340 You asked earlier about sales enablement.

00:23:09.480 Yeah.

00:23:09.700 And the other lens that we'll speak about is historically sales enablement is treated

00:23:14.720 as broadcasting information to your sales team.

00:23:17.580 Is sales enablement like a new, like, is it old?

00:23:21.000 I mean, the profession is pretty old.

00:23:22.980 OK.

00:23:23.580 I just feel like it's more mainstream to talk about it now.

00:23:27.120 It's experiencing much more of a renaissance.

00:23:28.740 There's more tools.

00:23:30.360 The organization, the employees, everybody appreciates it more.

00:23:35.760 But one of the things that I think is still

00:23:38.020 at the early stages of understanding

00:23:39.920 is how the social dynamic applies.

00:23:42.000 Because the reality is, if you're relying on someone

00:23:45.300 who hears a squeaky wheel, says, great,

00:23:47.200 I'm going to turn that into a magnificent one-pager

00:23:49.280 and then send it out to the team.

00:23:50.460 That cycle, that delay, I mean, it's almost out of date

00:23:53.260 the moment you send it out, and your enablement team

00:23:55.480 becomes historians.

00:23:56.360 And that's not what we need.

00:23:58.060 But if you think about a social layer,

00:23:59.640 you might have two reps who are speaking about a deal.

00:24:01.640 One gets an anecdote here, one hears that.

00:24:03.640 If you can distill the insights from that in real time.

00:24:07.020 And these are all things that we do already

00:24:08.500 on social networking.

00:24:09.960 There's a story, because a lot of people

00:24:11.280 are talking about a theme.

00:24:12.160 Social awareness.

00:24:12.860 It is.

00:24:14.920 It's fascinating how even the early days, IRC,

00:24:20.160 people forget about this campfire, HipChat,

00:24:23.020 and more recently Slack.

00:24:24.140 But there was even Yammer prior to that.

00:24:26.700 And it was not about this information I must read.

00:24:29.700 It's just like, I can plug into if I want it.

00:24:32.300 And it's just this awareness of what's going on.

00:24:34.860 And that's where people, if they're motivated and hungry,

00:24:38.500 they can infer.

00:24:40.580 They can take insights, take action.

00:24:42.220 They can use that.

00:24:43.280 And that's what you're saying.

00:24:45.580 You're allowing people on the sales side to move faster,

00:24:48.860 to be more relevant to the customer conversation.

00:24:51.260 Yeah.

00:24:51.800 So I mean, if we're just telling it down

00:24:53.480 and using all the existing technologies,

00:24:55.880 we call them playbooks, we call them cards.

00:24:57.780 But it's a similar metaphor to, I'm

00:24:59.660 going to subscribe to a channel.

00:25:01.820 And messages and notices show up in those.

00:25:04.520 And it helps me do my job better.

00:25:06.320 And we just make it more visual.

00:25:07.220 And so we lay it out so it's pretty.

00:25:08.720 That's really cool.

00:25:10.280 Where do you think, I think it was Slack I was listening to,

00:25:14.320 their SMB sales team.

00:25:16.440 And I say sales team with air quotes

00:25:17.780 because I heard they don't even really have a quota.

00:25:20.860 Like they're essentially just concierges.

00:25:23.340 Do you think that's going to happen more as products are

00:25:26.120 more, I know Michael just, they went to freemium, right?

00:25:32.180 So the more and more that the Slacks, 1.00

00:25:34.240 you know, like the B2B apps become freemium

00:25:37.340 and customers are using things.

00:25:38.620 And we have things like PQLs, product qualified leads.

00:25:43.120 There's no selling to do.

00:25:44.980 Do you think we're going to get away from a world where

00:25:47.520 salespeople have quotas? 0.98

00:25:49.680 No.

00:25:50.980 I mean, a couple of reasons.

00:25:52.520 One, it's so ingrained.

00:25:54.760 If you tell a sales rep, great, here's the job.

00:25:56.760 Here's everything you're going to do.

00:25:57.860 And by the way, there's no commission.

00:25:59.620 You're not going to get the top sales reps

00:26:01.140 because of the expectations there.

00:26:02.640 So that aside, the people side aside,

00:26:05.900 I do believe there's a big difference

00:26:07.440 between products that can be purchased self-service.

00:26:12.440 We do this all the time.

00:26:13.440 A car is a complex purchase, but you can do it yourself.

00:26:15.680 A house, it's a complex purchase.

00:26:16.880 You could do it yourself.

00:26:18.820 There's a lot of products that fit that mold.

00:26:20.800 But there are still a lot of products

00:26:22.580 that are encouraging a better future, a better life.

00:26:25.420 And you need to help people see that way sometimes.

00:26:27.680 You need to validate that they're interested.

00:26:29.940 And there's an opportunity to sell them on that vision.

00:26:32.940 And because there's so much that's aspirational,

00:26:35.280 there's always going to be at least a cohort of companies

00:26:37.440 where that sales function is crucial.

00:26:39.600 Because it's really about painting a better future.

00:26:42.000 And see, what you say about aspirational is fascinating.

00:26:44.340 Because a lot of times, especially mid-market enterprise,

00:26:47.220 they're buying product not because of necessarily

00:26:49.500 the feature set, but because of the emotional challenges

00:26:54.460 that they in that role are facing.

00:26:56.240 They're hoping this thing's going to solve

00:26:58.020 and make them look like the hero and get the raise.

00:27:02.500 So it's not necessarily a feature thing.

00:27:04.860 Right there, I think you hit something

00:27:06.840 that we see a lot, even within our clients,

00:27:09.040 the idea of being customer-centric.

00:27:12.040 We talked about customer stories earlier.

00:27:13.860 Everybody's got a customer story that they can talk about.

00:27:16.120 But the companies that we see really get it right

00:27:18.600 recognize that in that hero's journey,

00:27:22.060 the classic Shakespearean one, the hero's got a problem.

00:27:24.660 There's adversity.

00:27:27.600 They get advice from the wise person on the road.

00:27:29.760 They make a change, and they win.

00:27:31.680 The hero's not you, the sales rep.

00:27:34.400 It's the customer.

00:27:36.180 And if you have a product or a system

00:27:39.600 that helps someone realize that hero's journey,

00:27:41.960 there is absolutely a role for a salesperson in that.

00:27:45.000 And that's the skill set.

00:27:46.380 Yes.

00:27:47.160 See, that's fast.

00:27:47.820 I remember even in my own coaching,

00:27:49.920 somebody said, stop being Luke Skywalker.

00:27:53.580 Your customer is Luke Skywalker.

00:27:55.380 You're Yoda.

00:27:56.040 Yoda, Obi-Wan, anyone.

00:27:57.620 And I was like, oh my gosh, all my stories,

00:28:00.260 I just keep telling my own stories.

00:28:02.080 But that's not what's interesting, right?

00:28:05.240 And I guess I see what you're saying

00:28:06.860 is that the person who can do that,

00:28:09.000 there's always going to be a need in the market for somebody

00:28:11.420 to allow that to shape up.

00:28:15.140 How are you guys approaching this business

00:28:17.180 different than Tribe?

00:28:21.240 I'm having trouble picking, so I'm

00:28:22.460 going to let Donna speak first.

00:28:24.080 Yeah.

00:28:25.180 Yeah.

00:28:26.420 Eyes wide open, I think, is the biggest difference.

00:28:30.420 But there are so many differences.

00:28:32.720 And 2011 is very different than 2017

00:28:36.140 from just global trends alone.

00:28:40.720 And so that's forced some different decision making.

00:28:43.640 And being able to know what you're getting into before you

00:28:47.540 get into it allows you to overcome or navigate

00:28:51.340 around potential pitfalls proactively.

00:28:52.880 What does that mean?

00:28:54.700 So that means not necessarily letting bad data

00:28:58.640 go for longer than you would.

00:29:00.900 So in the past, maybe you'd see something and you weren't sure, maybe not confidence.

00:29:06.980 Now you're like, no, I now know that doesn't.

00:29:09.600 Yeah, you now know that if you don't clean up your recurring billing system early enough, you end up with a lot of recurring problems.

00:29:15.640 So, you know, you do it differently that time.

00:29:17.940 So tool selection, data hygiene, that's certainly something that we've approached very differently.

00:29:21.440 But I think for Joseph and I now, we're also at different stages of life.

00:29:25.800 and we have to make sure that we continue to preserve the sibling relationship

00:29:30.280 but also the co-founder relationship.

00:29:32.000 And so I think we're both bringing to the table

00:29:34.160 a certain degree of expectation management and transparency

00:29:37.040 that we didn't know we necessarily needed the first time out.

00:29:39.980 How does that show up in the day-to-day?

00:29:42.740 I think, I mean, Joseph's earlier example around setting my expectations

00:29:45.700 prior to throwing a crazy idea at me, that's always nice.

00:29:48.300 But then also, you know, there's some scenarios

00:29:50.820 where we'll be having a conversation

00:29:52.540 and my thoughts aren't necessarily as teased out

00:29:55.940 or linear than they need to be.

00:29:58.480 And so I'll do things like say,

00:30:00.640 okay, I've got this idea, I'm working on it,

00:30:02.960 it's half-baked, don't get frustrated

00:30:04.240 if I'm going to go down this very cloudy path.

00:30:07.200 It's just not there yet, but I need some feedback.

00:30:09.040 Yeah, you want to talk your ideas out loud.

00:30:12.040 Right.

00:30:12.320 And it's important, I think,

00:30:14.020 that founders know that that's a thing

00:30:16.320 because I'm the same way.

00:30:17.960 And if it's a team member and they don't know you,

00:30:20.380 they think it's gospel.

00:30:22.360 Yes.

00:30:22.640 Super dangerous.

00:30:23.660 Super dangerous, yes.

00:30:25.100 Yeah, that's the CEO effect.

00:30:27.080 Yeah, we've got a name for that.

00:30:29.240 But those are examples of where we've done it a little bit differently,

00:30:32.980 just, I think, a bit more deliberate this time around.

00:30:35.100 Okay, more thoughtful, more deliberate.

00:30:36.640 What about capitalizing it or funding or revenue,

00:30:41.980 quicker to rent, anything around that?

00:30:44.280 I mean, there's certain things that just take time.

00:30:47.120 Customers buy the space that customers buy.

00:30:50.100 Customer discovery is a real thing.

00:30:51.680 You need to do that stuff.

00:30:52.360 So some things you just can't speed up too much.

00:30:55.040 There's a lot of things we're doing more efficiently.

00:30:57.580 The capital question is an interesting one,

00:30:59.400 because if I thought about one big thing

00:31:01.080 we're doing differently, I'd say we're

00:31:02.280 investing unapologetically a lot more.

00:31:05.440 When you take venture money, when you take investment,

00:31:08.060 there's certain expectations.

00:31:09.420 And it's really easy to get caught on that flywheel of,

00:31:13.020 hit this number, do this thing, appease investors,

00:31:15.500 do all that.

00:31:16.420 And that's a great learning experience,

00:31:18.100 and that can be a specific journey.

00:31:19.260 But we definitely feel like we have more permission

00:31:22.380 to invest in the things we know that are important,

00:31:24.640 not today, but in two years, three years.

00:31:27.620 So instead of like being so reactive

00:31:29.040 to the investor's needs, you're saying?

00:31:31.940 We're spending more time on the anticipating

00:31:34.100 client's needs team.

00:31:36.200 So things like we invested in security and compliance

00:31:39.600 processes and technologies way earlier.

00:31:42.560 And that's paying dividends.

00:31:44.020 Whereas a lot of startups, they go through,

00:31:46.160 they land the first enterprise customer,

00:31:47.280 and they realize, oh, crap, we can't do this.

00:31:50.060 And that pattern of investing early has helped us

00:31:52.560 in the way we build our team, the way we build our culture,

00:31:55.140 the way we service our customers.

00:31:56.620 And feeling confident doing that is a lot easier,

00:32:00.340 I think, having gone through it before.

00:32:02.220 Why are you guys entrepreneurs?

00:32:06.120 Why do you guys build?

00:32:07.620 I can't imagine doing anything else.

00:32:09.440 I mean, building something, seeing somebody using it,

00:32:14.620 impacting their life.

00:32:15.540 We had a client.

00:32:16.540 I love this.

00:32:17.080 We were at a meetup a couple of weeks ago.

00:32:19.260 And we had a client who, to speak to your earlier question, fully self-service, you know, was using the product, great work.

00:32:28.580 We wanted to talk to see how we could help them get more out of it.

00:32:32.280 And we were having trouble pinning them down just via email and messaging.

00:32:36.880 And one of our team members was chatting to that customer at the event and called her out and said, hey, we want to chat, we want to help, what can we do?

00:32:44.060 And her comment was, I'm not avoiding you.

00:32:46.420 And our rep said, well, I don't fully believe you.

00:32:50.800 She's like, it's true.

00:32:51.680 And so she stood out in the crowd by the bar.

00:32:53.440 She's like, I love Kite.

00:32:56.060 And that type of response and feedback, as a founder,

00:33:00.160 when you're building product and you see that happen,

00:33:02.200 it's this constant dopamine rush.

00:33:03.720 You're like, they've got a problem, you solve it.

00:33:05.220 You've got a problem, you solve it.

00:33:06.260 And that feels so good.

00:33:07.920 So maybe it's because I've got an addictive personality.

00:33:10.560 You're addicted to that dopamine.

00:33:12.140 Yeah.

00:33:12.400 But I can't imagine doing anything else.

00:33:15.300 Don, what about you?

00:33:16.420 um I think mine's a little less noble yeah I really just don't like doing it any other

00:33:23.580 anyone else's way I like figuring out for myself I don't like it when people tell me what I have to

00:33:28.220 do and then do it I like to come to the decision on on my own terms and so I think that that has

00:33:33.540 probably shaped a path for me which is the hard path and that is the do-it-yourself way to be

00:33:39.420 fair I think that's been true forever so that that's definitely a real one that's not new that's

00:33:43.600 That's very true.

00:33:44.880 Interesting.

00:33:45.620 So your big thing is that you are opinionated

00:33:49.920 or you like to choose the problems you go after.

00:33:53.900 The latter, I'd say, more than the former.

00:33:56.600 I like to be the one who makes the decision and commit myself,

00:33:59.500 and that's because I take my commitments very seriously.

00:34:01.440 And so I believe in follow-through.

00:34:03.020 I think that is one of the primary reasons why we do things,

00:34:07.860 and so I hold that near and dear,

00:34:09.740 and I think that that's probably defined me a little bit more than I'm comfortable.

00:34:13.600 what do your parents think like have you ever asked your parents about kind of like have you

00:34:18.640 ever asked them you know recently i interviewed my uh my wife and my brother and uh it was just

00:34:25.300 fascinating just like asking them what's it like being married or my brother you know and not

00:34:30.980 knowing what they're like i would love to have both you know your parents here and just be like

00:34:34.580 you know how do you guys feel about i'd enjoy that too to watch their faces as we give answers

00:34:39.560 to those questions.

00:34:40.580 That would be a lot of fun.

00:34:42.540 Our parents are both entrepreneurs.

00:34:44.280 OK.

00:34:44.880 That explains a lot.

00:34:45.820 Not tech.

00:34:46.540 Yeah.

00:34:46.960 No, no, no, but entrepreneurs.

00:34:48.000 So you grew up around it.

00:34:49.240 Very much.

00:34:49.840 And huge enablers.

00:34:51.620 OK.

00:34:51.960 That's a really big example.

00:34:53.360 So my first business was a graphic design business.

00:34:55.720 This was in high school.

00:34:56.740 I mean, aside from cutting lawns and newspapers and that stuff,

00:34:59.560 graphic design.

00:35:00.900 And I mean, you can only do so many business cards

00:35:03.060 and so many brochures and things like that.

00:35:06.760 My mother was the first one who said, hey, great.

00:35:08.600 I'm going to help you sell the services into the company.

00:35:10.880 They're going to be doing this campaign, or I'll introduce you.

00:35:12.620 And so open that door.

00:35:14.140 Didn't say, are you sure you want to do this?

00:35:16.500 Or here's how you do it right.

00:35:17.420 Just open the door.

00:35:18.700 And if I screwed it up.

00:35:19.560 They didn't make it easy, but they didn't make it hard.

00:35:22.920 But they gave us the opportunity.

00:35:25.380 I mean, the reality is.

00:35:26.220 What else did they teach you guys?

00:35:28.440 Leaning on each other.

00:35:29.560 I think it's a big one.

00:35:30.360 That's crazy.

00:35:30.920 I just love that.

00:35:32.300 My two boys are six and seven.

00:35:33.960 They're like best friends.

00:35:34.820 And I always joke with them that when they're 17, they got to go.

00:35:38.600 and i'm just like look it's like i love you but at 17 you're done you got to move on and they look

00:35:44.300 at each other they're like okay we're getting an apartment and i'm just it's so cool it's cute like

00:35:48.660 they're like i love that i got two kids three and eight and i know there's a number of things that

00:35:52.600 i'm gonna do that my parents did and what are those things so like one of them is like when

00:35:56.560 we get into a fight uh so we have we have a another sister a middle sibling and if we got

00:36:02.360 into a fight or an argument you know our parents wouldn't tell us here's the way or here's how it's

00:36:06.920 going to work they would just toss us into one room and say you got to stay in there until you

00:36:11.000 sort it out really yeah totally all right renee if you're watching this you'll know why i'm doing

00:36:16.960 this yeah yeah it's so funny i hadn't thought about that in so long but yeah and it and what

00:36:21.940 and then ensues is a bunch of really angry glares for a really long time and then it's well

00:36:26.540 do you want to build the tree for it or not do you want to get out of the room or not

00:36:30.020 it self-manages itself what else donna from your point of view do you think that you're 0.97

00:36:34.800 what's a principle that your parents um yeah you're on the entrepreneurial side our parents

00:36:40.160 very much ran their lives by you stick to the plan till the plan changes and the plan will change

00:36:44.280 and that was something that they communicated to us stick to the plan till the plan changes the

00:36:49.120 plan will change but stay focused until it does until you have new information stick to the plan

00:36:55.220 yeah and the reason why is sometimes you're changing your mind nothing changed and you feel

00:37:01.340 like you're not committing so I think for them it was embrace change and don't let that don't

00:37:08.240 let the fact that you don't have control stop you from moving forward because the reality is

00:37:13.260 everything is changing control yeah man so cool that's really neat um I want I would love to hear

00:37:19.900 both of you guys's answers from a very personal point of view when you look back at the individual

00:37:27.540 you were before tribe to the person sitting in front of me today who have you had to become

00:37:34.260 to be the person successfully even though everybody's self-critical but let's just say

00:37:40.020 you've obviously grown from a mindset character point of view who have you had to become what

00:37:46.580 have you worked on to become the person sitting here joseph when when you say kind of who's the

00:37:51.800 person are you talking about kind of what are the characteristics yeah a specific individual

00:37:55.860 Well, I'm not sure.

00:37:56.620 Just like we're all on this growth journey, right?

00:37:58.740 Entrepreneurs are typically growth-minded.

00:38:00.840 I'm always fascinated, like, what are the things that you

00:38:03.420 might have did or beliefs that you had in the early days

00:38:05.680 that when you look back, you're like, wow,

00:38:08.580 that you don't do anymore, right?

00:38:11.620 I think one of the big things that I've spent a lot of time

00:38:15.180 and energy on is my understanding and internalization,

00:38:21.540 internalizing? Whatever the word is. On diversity, inclusion, empathy, it's something that's always

00:38:29.240 been profoundly important. I think coming from a mixed race family, it makes it an easier thing

00:38:33.920 to point to. But being an engineer, I've always really wanted to understand, you know, why am I

00:38:41.120 experiencing things? Why are my colleagues? Why are my friends? Why can some people get those

00:38:46.200 things when others can't. And we've always made it a priority. But it's an evolving conversation.

00:38:52.940 So if I reflect on where I've spent deliberate time trying to grow and mature, it's around

00:38:59.060 internalizing those issues and challenges so that we can do better by our team, by each other,

00:39:09.040 by our customers. I think that's one that really sticks out for me.

00:39:13.940 you know more selfishly I think the other one is better appreciating kind of what I need out of

00:39:21.360 life and this this is less about the entrepreneurial journey than more the founder journey

00:39:25.960 the process of growing tribe selling it put a lot of stress on kind of me personally and our marriage

00:39:33.060 you know between my wife and I and one of the things I had to do become better at is being a

00:39:38.220 better advocate for what I needed in life putting yourself first yeah when you're a CEO you're kind

00:39:43.820 of like everybody's employee, your investors, your team,

00:39:46.340 your family, all of that.

00:39:47.960 And it's really easy to put your own preferences and needs

00:39:50.840 aside for those.

00:39:52.400 And I had to learn how to give myself the space

00:39:54.620 to do that kind of thing.

00:39:55.340 And the permission to do that.

00:39:56.480 Yeah.

00:39:56.960 And then learning that language was really tough.

00:40:00.140 And I mean, these are basics.

00:40:01.000 A lot of people have these challenges.

00:40:02.720 But I think the entrepreneurial lifestyle

00:40:05.180 really applies some unique pressures

00:40:07.320 and really gets them to a breaking point very quickly.

00:40:09.560 Totally.

00:40:10.140 Yeah.

00:40:10.500 That's really cool.

00:40:11.660 Thanks.

00:40:12.500 Donna?

00:40:13.600 Yeah. Yeah. So I've definitely become a self-talker and that will continue to persist

00:40:18.920 throughout my entire life. What does that mean? Yeah, that's the idea of, you know,

00:40:24.140 there's past Donna, present Donna, future Donna, and each one has a perspective and each one's

00:40:28.320 valid and you can be friendly with each. And when you support those different versions of yourself

00:40:34.320 in terms of providing very explicit advice, you can actually change your outcome a little bit

00:40:39.420 more. So self-talk is literally that idea of I'm going to tell myself a thing as though I were a

00:40:45.640 friend, and then I'm going to believe it because I'm okay believing that I could be my own friend.

00:40:50.260 And that's, you know, that's a bit of a fluffy way of thinking about it. How does that work when you

00:40:53.580 say the past Donna, current Donna, future Donna? Is it acknowledging that there was a past and a

00:41:01.200 present and a future? Because I don't even think I would have self-identified. Makes sense once you

00:41:05.520 say it, and then you're kind of like third party

00:41:10.500 talking to those people?

00:41:11.720 How does that?

00:41:12.900 No, I think it's fascinating.

00:41:13.760 It sounds very noisy in my head.

00:41:15.520 No, it's the idea of, I mean, I am the only person

00:41:19.220 who can help my future self.

00:41:20.600 And so when I think about that and I own that,

00:41:22.900 then today the decisions that I make

00:41:25.240 can be designed for specific outcomes.

00:41:27.960 Because I can tell myself that tomorrow you'll wake up better.

00:41:33.100 You'll wake up resting easy if you eat your frogs

00:41:35.140 morning if you deal with that troublesome thing right now tomorrow you're gonna wake up better

00:41:38.980 and i know it because present donna has future donna's back and she's not gonna tell you know 0.54

00:41:45.380 she's not gonna sabotage herself and it's letting yourself do that and then following through and

00:41:49.620 then saying hey it worked thanks past donna solid and then doing it again and building up those

00:41:54.180 patterns and it just creates a a healthier for me anyway way of thinking about myself and supporting

00:41:59.540 myself and that's something that's evolved through over time but ultimately like you said it's a

00:42:06.200 journey that we're all on and it never changes just the continuing continuance of learning and

00:42:11.800 growth and for me it's I think the the biggest challenge that I continue to face to this day is

00:42:17.520 not being fearful of success and not being frightened of what it could mean to to win

00:42:26.120 And I know that's very separate.

00:42:28.360 Yeah, how does that, when you say don't be fearful of success?

00:42:32.600 There's a lot of, you know, potential negatives that could come from success that, you know,

00:42:38.420 undue attention, judgment, spotlights, things like that, that add constraints, that make

00:42:44.080 you less free, that mean you can't be as mobile or make your own decisions.

00:42:46.660 And so as somebody who's always been very driven to do things my own way.

00:42:51.480 Independence, yeah.

00:42:51.900 Yeah, very independent.

00:42:52.820 All of a sudden you have a team, you're responsible for them.

00:42:54.820 Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. That's exactly right. And so not being frightened of that and embracing it and recognizing that it's, again, it's up to you to decide. It's up to future Donna to make sure and present Donna to make sure that it's going in the direction that is the most beneficial. And owning all of that is ongoing and a challenge.

00:43:13.220 that's super cool i appreciate you guys both coming on here um i don't know if you know this

00:43:19.860 donna but my uh my dad one time asked me about sending videos because youtube was being blocked

00:43:26.260 and i said well my friend this is like six seven years and my friend michael lit has this company

00:43:30.060 it's called vidyard he still calls it vineyard i don't know why uh it's my dad and uh to this day

00:43:36.160 he tells the story of victor because he still does support and he goes i also married one of the first

00:43:41.720 customers he goes we take customer support very seriously here at vidyard uh so that's just a fun

00:43:48.300 little story about uh victor and i know your story so um where do people find you online if they want

00:43:53.780 to kind of reach out and check out kite sure yeah so the uh the best place they can take a look at

00:43:59.220 our website kite.ai uh it's spelled a little atypically it's got two i's in it yeah k-i-i-t-e

00:44:08.540 And the reason is it's a Japanese word, to listen.

00:44:11.760 And if we're trying to help people perform better at work,

00:44:13.840 listening is the first step.

00:44:15.540 So kite.ai.

00:44:17.560 But we're also both super accessible on Twitter, LinkedIn, email.

00:44:22.260 Our emails are easy to guess.

00:44:23.520 Joseph and Donna at kite.

00:44:24.920 Yeah, every founder, it's very easy to guess.

00:44:27.040 Exactly.

00:44:27.580 Appreciate you guys so much for coming on.

00:44:29.200 Thanks a lot.

00:44:29.500 Thanks, Ash.

00:44:29.780 Thank you.

00:44:30.320 Cheers.

Dan Martell - May 10, 2021

Siblings Scaling Startups with Joseph Fung & Donna Litt @ Kiite.ai

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