Siblings Scaling Startups with Joseph Fung & Donna Litt @ Kiite.ai
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Summary
Donna and Joseph Litt are the brother and sister co-founders of Kite, a digital sales company that helps sales reps get better at their job. In this episode, we talk about how they built Kite and what it takes to run a business with a sibling.
Transcript
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I am the only person who can help my future self and so when I think about that and I own that
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then today the decisions that I make can be designed for specific outcomes.
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We're here with Donna and Joseph. How are you guys doing?
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yeah this is interesting so brother and sister co-founders not one two companies you guys did
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tribe sold that to net suite to net suite yeah net suite uh and then started kite um what is kite
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want me to take that yeah yeah we're just joking it's like fighting over the fight
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fighting on tape yes yeah so we we do digital sales playbooks so imagine giving a sales rep
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a single pane of glass that has their collateral,
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Would people call this like sales enablement or?
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It's definitely inside the sales enablement stack,
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just look at sending out PDFs and measuring who opened them.
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So we're doing things a little bit differently.
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I talk and yammer on events, and then Donna makes it work.
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So Donna's actually married to Michael Litt, founder, CEO of Vidyard, and one of my good buds.
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So now I know who the brain in the whole operation is.
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But for real, like, is there, like, are you more outward facing?
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So the way we'll typically characterize it is Joseph, historically, our entire lives,
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has always dreamed big, very ambitious, wants to change the world.
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So that works out really well for the two of us.
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But I mean, being able to work with your sibling
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you kind of know where the other one's going to fall down.
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My brother and I started, well, he started a home building company.
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And at one point, and I actually had him on the show,
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but we never talked about this because I didn't
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But it kind of got to a point where there was a bit of contention.
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How, you know, because I remember when we started that,
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he's dealt with family businesses that didn't end right.
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in the last company, but how have you guys dealt with
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I think we're lucky in that we've gone through it
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Um, you know, we, we're very different personalities in a lot of ways, similar experiences with great, same language and framework.
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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.
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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.
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And more often than not, it feels a little bit like me saying, hey, let's do this thing.
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It's more like Donna gives me a swift cuff on the upside of the head.
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You actually feel like you're like, hey, I want to do this.
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And then Donna, you're open to her saying, hey, we need to consider this aspect and this stuff.
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Because half of my ideas are just crazy ass shit.
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So you know that some of these stuff, you're just throwing something on the wall.
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It starts off with, Donna, tell me if this is a bad idea.
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That's a good way to know how to frame the conversation so that really there can't be a fighting.
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If you're starting off by being almost like self-deprecating to like, hey, I think this is a crazy idea.
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And I think part of it also is our whole team recognizes that as the CEO, as the outward-spoken person,
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I get a lot of credit for the work Donna does.
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We're really well recognized for having really diverse teams,
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We get a lot of people who want to come work with us.
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but do you ever um does it ever frustrate you when when joseph might be getting the recognition
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because he's more oh no no never in a thousand years would i want to be a ceo in the same way
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that that i've seen ceos to date and i mean you mentioned it my partner michael he's in that seat
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and there is no lonelier more difficult job so hard yeah you're not allowed to have a bad day
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everybody's looking at yeah you gotta yeah that's crazy what how did you guys
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come to the like why do kite after an HR product like what was the how did you
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guys kind of come to that yeah yeah so I'll tell my version then if I've got
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anything wrong you can that's like my wife and I was like how'd you guys meet
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I'm like whose version do you want yeah yeah yeah so I mean with tribe HR what
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we wanted to do was build tools to really help make the employees life better we wanted to
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increase autonomy increase transparency into the workplace and and we wanted to do that as as in an
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impactful way as possible so we started with the hr file so if you can imagine taking that hr file
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which when you know current state of things it's scary it's dark it's locked away in a cabinet but
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instead opening it up and turning it into an empowering artifact that's a very different way
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of thinking about it and and that's what was it what was tribe like in regards to the feature set
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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.
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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.
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So if you imagine your employee record, but more of like a Facebook profile, your employee file.
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So was there a feed that everybody could see or you had with your manager?
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There was a company feed that had all of the peer and public recognition that someone within an organization received.
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You could demonstrate what behavior was actually moving the needle to the entire organization and broadcast that
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and have that then append automatically to their employee records that come time for their review,
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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.
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we ended up, you know, growing that organization and selling it. And in that process, we learned
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that, you know, while we had done a lot to help make employees' lives better, we really just
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focused on a subset. It was the HR professional who were impacting most. And while, yes, there
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was absolutely benefits to the employee base, it didn't have that same reach that we had envisioned
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at the outset. So when we went back to the table, you know, at the beginning of Kite, we said,
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okay, let's go back to basics. How can we make the biggest contribution? How can we impact
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employees lives in the greatest possible way and and ended up you know through a series of
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iteration and testing on where we are today with kite and how does kite work um because it's it
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feels like there's you're still kind of like iterating and learning from the market but
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i'm also seeing i guess a trend of like taking information and presenting it you know as almost
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like not crowdsource but best practices and what other people are doing is that one of the big
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of things that Kite enables is the organization
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I think the real key addition is we started in chat.
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And for a lot of people, when you think about sales,
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And we looked at almost three quarters of a billion
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messages and understood how do sales reps have problems where do they have pain points
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well our very first product to do that was a chatbot okay yeah so i mean accessing your
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documents your resources in chat but that helped us understand what's the dna and what's the problem
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in organizations uh really refined a lot of our technology so it's great we can find customer
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stories in your google docs on your website and your blog uh that helps us understand it uh so we
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We automate, but we also give people the opportunity to do that.
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And all of that machine learning then helps somebody say, hey, you know what?
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I want to know how discovery calls go really well.
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I'm going to take, you know, David's cheat sheet and make it my own.
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And the system will recommend changes and navigate all of that.
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So there's definitely a human and an automation side to it.
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I mean, in the world of the choruses, the refrax, the gong,
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where do you think the world of sales is going?
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A lot of that gets centered around automation and AI.
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I mean, what's great is I hear a lot of people say gong, chorus,
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But all of those are effectively reactive tools.
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And then a human will say, well, that was good.
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I know this organization does a great job of outbound.
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I know this rep handles inbound leads really well.
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And so we see a lot of people using not just our templates,
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but sharing best practices between organizations.
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Yeah, I was just like, OK, I'll give it to you.
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Yeah, how did you figure out who to pull stuff from?
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Because, I mean, I almost feel like unless you guys have an editorial approach to it,
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then it's just a lot of, it could be conflicting approaches, right?
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How did you kind of like look at the data set and decide what to put in the library?
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Well, I mean, stage of business, we kind of finger in the wind tested
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and identified who are the companies that we aspire to be more like.
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Who are the individuals, who are the thought leaders that we put on a pedestal
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that we said from our experience and in our networks are the best.
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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.
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And that comes from all the learning that we've seen to date.
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Do you see a day where the AI could do the call?
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When you see Google do those demos of like virtual assistant booking
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and interacting with these nuanced conversational styles, it's interesting.
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There are vendors that will use technologies to automate emails, LinkedIn messages, chat.
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I mean, if you think about a call as a placeholder for reaching out to a customer.
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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,
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that's situational awareness of what's the scenario, who's the competitor, what's the product,
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Not what's any move, but what's the right move?
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And sure, you could say, great, we've got AI engines that are winning at chess.
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And can you imagine trying to teach someone to be a grandmaster at chess by saying, hey,
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watch how Jim plays chess and pick up all the rules and just do what he does?
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So the journey to get there, that's going to be a long one.
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And if you've got somebody repping your company,
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you don't want somebody who just knows the basics and the rules.
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You want somebody who's playing at a grandmaster level.
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So I think there's going to be a long time for a role for a sales professional
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I mean, in today's world, I think the data shows that sellers are becoming younger, right?
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They have less experience in the domain that they're selling into.
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Maybe they don't stay in a sales role as long, maybe 60 months, two years.
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What do companies, what are the things that these reps need to be?
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And do you guys focus mostly on SDRs, AEs, both?
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So we'll have teams that say we're focused primarily on SDRs with their use of kite.
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If you had to prioritize kind of the skill set or information that you think they need to get right first
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to be better at selling, what do you think that would be?
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So rather than just stating kind of our opinions,
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because I mean, our opinions are as valuable as whatever,
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What is the most used and what is the most created content?
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So if you take a look at the content people are adding to their playbooks,
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number one across the board in a topic area is onboarding.
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Yeah, so your teams are saying, great, people need to know onboarding.
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That's the most common content that's put in a playbook.
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It doesn't even show up in the top 10 used content
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The reps are using customer stories, specifically stories, not case studies,
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but these are the top two searches, specific competitors,
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Yeah, we're not talking about product features.
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got a high-performing sales team, one of the big things
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that we see, and I mean, this is all pattern recognition.
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They never start with product training or industry training.
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They focus exclusively on the persona and the buyer.
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they focus on, where did that VP marketing go to school?
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You can take any product and have a good conversation
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And if I just did my opinion, I think way more companies
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to just spend way more time on the personas of their buyers.
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I mean, what I've seen is just product, product, product,
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So your founders, your CEOs, the people who sold are engineers.
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around your product than sometimes these sellers,
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I guess that's a really good way to combat that.
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Now, I already know your product's probably the right
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How do you help the teams extract that from the,
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and you say it's not case studies, but customer stories.
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Do you guys have processes for helping them write
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But I think, so to go back to your earlier comment,
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listening ultimately underpinning all of this empathy you need to listen to
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figure out how to even build that and be curious and so that same thing applies
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for all of our implementations and services engagements and and we have a
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series of interviews that are tiered where we speak with folks from your
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sales leadership level all the way down to your individual contributor and we
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ask these very specific questions to identify not only what your systems
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look like but what are those kernels that actually work within your workflows
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and then we distill them and we help you build your playbooks when you say
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That would be your SDRs or your AEs or your customer success.
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But I mean, we have a playbook for this process
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We duplicate that into their workspace, and this is very tactical.
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But then we follow our playbook, and we walk our customers through it,
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What companies do you look at in the space that you admire the way they manage their sales teams
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I definitely want to hear your answer on this one, too.
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It's interesting because we get to see a good mix.
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Two that really come to mind, I mean, this is one of our clients, Fix, I think.
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So if you think about your car, I mean, you know you need to change the oil,
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you take it in, get the tires done, and you forget.
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Now, put that onto the level of, say, an airport or a stadium and all their equipment.
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So they do software to help you be proactive in maintaining all your systems.
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And what I really admire about the organization is they take a very thoughtful approach to the way they run their organization.
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What's the impact of all their items, not just shooting from the hip?
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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,
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I'm working here because I like learning from them.
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The part that I think is really amazing is that he does all of this.
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I mean, I don't know if I'm speaking out of turn here.
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He'll actually commute by bike sometimes to the office.
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And he lives in KW, and their office is in Toronto.
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an organization where I'm achieving at his level
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that's somebody that I would brought out there.
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So yeah, he definitely needs to be on the show.
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Yeah, you know, I'm, gosh, it's a toss up between Vidyard.
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I was going to say, I wasn't even going to say you can't.
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So my number two, my hot number two would be Slack.
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And every single time I hear a Slack employee speak
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it is always framed from the lens of their customer first.
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of your business growth is a significant challenge.
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Yeah, we did actually just get to tune into a recent conversation, a recent talk.
00:21:11.320
But he was like early, after TinySpec, when they became Slack, he kind of ran marketing.
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And what he talked about was just conceiving of a deep empathy for their customers
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And the way in which they were able to operationalize that is by using Slack within their environment and integrating their systems.
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So would they let their customers essentially be in a Slack channel with employees?
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I suspect yes, just based on the conversations and the feature sets that they've developed since.
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But specifically, they were talking about the idea of bringing in the team.
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And you're going to have multiple touch points throughout the organization for one particular deal.
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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.
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And so we know that today, selling is social, buying is social.
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And so they've been able to really systematize that by their use of their own product.
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So a ticket comes in, tagged to a certain part of the product.
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The team in charge of the product gets posted to the Slack channel.
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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?
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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.
00:22:56.500
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.
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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.
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Is sales enablement like a new, like, is it old?
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I just feel like it's more mainstream to talk about it now.
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The organization, the employees, everybody appreciates it more.
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Because the reality is, if you're relying on someone
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I'm going to turn that into a magnificent one-pager
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That cycle, that delay, I mean, it's almost out of date
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the moment you send it out, and your enablement team
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you might have two reps who are speaking about a deal.
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If you can distill the insights from that in real time.
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And it was not about this information I must read.
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And it's just this awareness of what's going on.
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And that's where people, if they're motivated and hungry,
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You're allowing people on the sales side to move faster,
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to be more relevant to the customer conversation.
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Where do you think, I think it was Slack I was listening to,
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because I heard they don't even really have a quota.
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Do you think that's going to happen more as products are
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more, I know Michael just, they went to freemium, right?
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And we have things like PQLs, product qualified leads.
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Do you think we're going to get away from a world where
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If you tell a sales rep, great, here's the job.
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between products that can be purchased self-service.
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A car is a complex purchase, but you can do it yourself.
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that are encouraging a better future, a better life.
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And you need to help people see that way sometimes.
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And there's an opportunity to sell them on that vision.
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And because there's so much that's aspirational,
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there's always going to be at least a cohort of companies
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Because it's really about painting a better future.
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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
00:26:58.020
and make them look like the hero and get the raise.
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Everybody's got a customer story that they can talk about.
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But the companies that we see really get it right
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the classic Shakespearean one, the hero's got a problem.
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They get advice from the wise person on the road.
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that helps someone realize that hero's journey,
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there is absolutely a role for a salesperson in that.
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there's always going to be a need in the market for somebody
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Eyes wide open, I think, is the biggest difference.
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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
00:29:00.900
So in the past, maybe you'd see something and you weren't sure, maybe not confidence.
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.
00:29:17.940
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
00:29:32.000
And so I think we're both bringing to the table
00:29:34.160
a certain degree of expectation management and transparency
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that we didn't know we necessarily needed the first time out.
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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.
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But then also, you know, there's some scenarios
00:29:52.540
and my thoughts aren't necessarily as teased out
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It's just not there yet, but I need some feedback.
00:30:17.960
And if it's a team member and they don't know you,
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.
00:30:36.640
What about capitalizing it or funding or revenue,
00:30:44.280
I mean, there's certain things that just take time.
00:30:52.360
So some things you just can't speed up too much.
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There's a lot of things we're doing more efficiently.
00:31:05.440
When you take venture money, when you take investment,
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,
00:31:19.260
But we definitely feel like we have more permission
00:31:22.380
to invest in the things we know that are important,
00:31:36.200
So things like we invested in security and compliance
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,
00:31:56.620
And feeling confident doing that is a lot easier,
00:32:09.440
I mean, building something, seeing somebody using it,
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?
00:32:46.420
And our rep said, well, I don't fully believe you.
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,
00:33:03.720
You're like, they've got a problem, you solve it.
00:33:07.920
So maybe it's because I've got an addictive personality.
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
00:33:49.920
or you like to choose the problems you go after.
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.
00:34:03.020
I think that is one of the primary reasons why we do things,
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
00:34:53.360
So my first business was a graphic design business.
00:34:56.740
I mean, aside from cutting lawns and newspapers and that stuff,
00:35:00.900
And I mean, you can only do so many business cards
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.
00:35:19.560
They didn't make it easy, but they didn't make it hard.
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
00:37:56.620
Just like we're all on this growth journey, right?
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
00:38:11.620
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,
00:39:47.960
And it's really easy to put your own preferences and needs
00:39:52.400
And I had to learn how to give myself the space
00:39:56.960
And then learning that language was really tough.
00:40:07.320
and really gets them to a breaking point very quickly.
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
00:41:15.520
No, it's the idea of, I mean, I am the only person
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
00:42:28.360
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.
00:42:52.820
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,
00:44:17.560
But we're also both super accessible on Twitter, LinkedIn, email.