female founders

magento-association Marta Molinska

Helping Ukraine with Marta Molinska

We talk with Marta Molinska (@molme) about how she has helped hundreds of Ukrainian refugees as they crossed the border during the war. We talk a little about the Magento Association and how Marta is helping with events and the community. Ukraine can still use your help!

https://www.hospitallers.life/about-us

Marta runs a sky diving business in Poland and is passionate about the Magento Community.

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this special episode of the Magento association. Talk Commerce collaboration to bring out more about the Magento association and what we’re doing to help the Magento community today. I have Marta Molinska Marta, please introduce yourself. Tell us what you do on a day to day basis.

Brent: And one of your passions in. 

Marta: That’s a very nice way of introducing myself when it comes to passion because what I do on a daily basis is my passion. So I run a drop zone. So we are jumping out of planes and my personal role on the drop zone is to teach people how to And my side job is actually involved in Magento and Magento association as well.

Marta: I’ve been organizing Meet Magento Poland for 9 years straight and now I’m more involved in Magento association and in helping with communication with some consulting and I guess that I try to be a kind of maybe not community manager because it’s for me, the community is not something that you can manage.

Marta: It’s something that you can join and be part of it. And I guess that I want to be a part of it. 

Brent: Thank you so much. And so today we’re gonna talk a little bit about Ukraine and how people can help Ukraine and maybe how both the Magento community and the Magento association can participate in helping Ukraine.

Brent: So sure. Give us a little bit of background on, on what you’ve been doing so far. 

Marta: It’s it’s already a few months since the war broke. But the first weeks were obviously the most intense a couple of days after this shocking news when when Russia attacked Ukraine we in Poland, we were devastated.

Marta: And as I said, we were just in shock, but after a few days and when the migration crisis took place on the border we saw a horrible, horrible videos and pictures from from the border. We could see that the huge crisis is coming. And I guess that the whole nation was thinking just the same, but I need to step in.

Marta: I need to do something and people just open their houses, they open their their homes and they really welcomed total strangers. Of course, if someone that, needs help you’re open to share some of your personal space, but it I think that it never happened. At this scale, it was hundreds of, and thousands of people who welcomed Ukrainians in their homes.

Marta: But I saw that it’s not enough. And since I don’t have much space in my house but I do have a lot of spaces at the airfield as my drop zone, especially in the winter time when we are not operating. We decided quickly to share every inch of space that we had and we recreated every office and the room that we had to the refugee center.

Marta: And yes, as mentioned before the first week was we’re very busy and we had hundreds of people not at the same time though. We had a rotation. So families were coming in they stayed for a few days or weeks depending on what their next plan was. And then when they left new families were coming in.

Marta: Yeah, a rotation system. And then after each family left one by one we continued to help in their settling in process. Like with finding a job or doing some paperwork with school or providing some basic supplies for the new start you can just imagine people.

Marta: coming to to Poland with all their belongings, not in the suitcase, not in even, a backpack. It were just a plastic bags like from Walmart, and they were occurring at for 2000 kilometers. It’s I don’t know, 3000 miles. Yeah, that, that was something that was obviously the most intense time of my life.

Marta: That’s for sure. And the most rewarding as well. And from this point I also wanted to thank a lot some Magento community members that stepped up really quick and helped me to continue the work because on the very beginning, it was quite easy to gather funds for running the shelter.

Marta: But since it’s not my daily job to run this kind of places I had no competencies to do this. And also not much resources. First of all Karen Baker, she was the first to help me out with covering some basic costs that we had on the beginning. And also Hyva especially Vinai and Willem.

Marta: I was touch with them from the very start and 10% of their income for two months was dedicated to the shelter that I was running. And also a lot of other people coordinated to my PayPal account. It really helped. It was not in vain. It never occurred to me that I had so many friends who wanted to help.

Marta: I really appreciate it. And you can be really proud of yourself. You help? A lot of people, we had 426 people in total at the shelter and yeah, including 270 kids. So thank you very much. 

Brent: Is the shelter still going or there was no need her things.

Brent: Okay. Yes. So things are start. I don’t wanna say normal, but 

Marta: they’re, it is still far from normal. We didn’t have to keep the shelter up and running after end of May. So we had it for three months. But I have to admit that it felt like it was three years really. But yeah, after three months it was no longer needed because.

Marta: The waves of refugees started to fade out and people found their more permanent places to stay. So that was one reason. And second reason is, was that we needed to start our operations. So we needed the spaces for our usual business as well. But on the other hand, we we still have a couple of processes that are

Marta: open and they’re constant. Together with my dad I’m not, I don’t think that he’s ever going to listen to this, but still I’m really proud of him because he’s keeping up an amazing work for the past weeks. He was able to gather funds for four ambulances. And now he just got an amazing support again from Magento community from fi and Tomic KKA.

Marta: Many of you might know them from Devant company. They were really helpful and they were so kind to donate money for two ambulances, which are going to Ukraine in a couple of days 

Brent: I saw some stories about ambulances that were coming into Ukraine and then volunteers that were going to the front line to help evacuate people, especially older.

Brent: I think a lot of elderly people that are stuck in that area are finding it very hard to leave or just even evacuate or at the time, especially, it was very difficult for them to move across that area. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, I applaud you. And I thank you so much for all your hard work.

Brent: That is so great. 

Marta: It’s something that we are neighbors. We can’t really, leave our brother nation. When they’re at war, we just need to step up. 

Brent: That’s good. Switching gears into the Magento association. I think, I think that as you’ve helped with the Ukrainian crisis, you’ve also always helped with Magento and Meet Magento, and now Magento association.

Brent: Do you wanna talk a little bit about what you’re doing for the Magento association 

Marta: now? Of course I’m happy. For we started our cooperation on the beginning of the year. It was just, it was short before the war started. So the beginning of the cooperation was a bit hectic.

Marta: I shifted my focus on on the shelter, but now we are obviously back on track and I’m pretty much involved in events. I guess this is my domain and I helped in organizing MA connect this year and also in previous year as well. We have two additions. And one addition in 2020 when the pandemic started and one in 2021 and 20 22 now.

Marta: So yeah, I was pretty much involved in, and I hope that we’ll be back in within next month with some good news about new events. 

Brent: I saw that Adobe is going to have their summit in Las Vegas in March of 2023. So hopefully we can come up with a Magento association event that piggybacks on the Adobe summit and have a little bit more Magento representation at the event.

Brent: I would love. Yeah, as I remember too, there’s a down payment at somewhere in Las Vegas, still. , that they used. That’s true. There was a 2020 event that was planned. I’m sitting on the Magento. Membership committee and I am always looking for ways that we can entice people to join

Brent: the Magento association. I just interviewed Vijay Golani from India on some of his ideas on how we can get people to join. Do you have any thoughts on encouraging people to join the Magento association and the reasons why they 

Marta: would obviously the first reason. To be more present in the community and to, for example, to be able to vote when you have the voting, you can say that you have the real influence on what’s going on within Magento association. But obviously there are also other ways You only want to get involved in in the Magento community you can reach out to Magento association and there are a lot of committees that work on a regular basis.

Marta: So it’s it’s very easy to to join or to suggest some ideas, but you are asking how we could encourage people to join. I am a fan of asking the community directly what they want, because we can think that we know, but maybe we don’t, maybe we just assume that something and if we start with wrong assumptions that we would go wrong direction.

Marta: So if we ask the community what the community really wants, then we can address the needs that really exist. 

Brent: I think you’ve been involved in the Magento community for a long time. You’ve been involved in meet Magento, Poland in the past. What is it that drives you to want to be in a in the community and organize events? You’ve done so much for the community. What is it that lies within you that makes you want to do that?

Marta: I wish I knew I don’t know. It’s I’m a very community person. And the same as in my skydiving community, we have we have a lot of connections and this is something that I really like about the Magento ecosystem. It’s not the only business, like there are a lot of different initiatives, different backgrounds, different companies.

Marta: Everyone has the same goal. Obviously we are in a business it’s it’s our way to make a living. But still it’s something more than that. Maybe that’s why I still stick with the Magento community because it’s still alive. It’s still there. I know it sounds like a cliche, but still it’s about the people.

Marta: And I like so much being around Magento folks that I can’t really describe this and maybe that’s why I stick to events, because where to meet Magento people just on the events. Yeah. That’s why we missed in person events so 

Brent: much. . Yeah I agree. There’s some sort of magic there. I don’t know.

Brent: I haven’t been in, I’ve been involved in other communities, but it hasn’t been as magical as this and maybe there’s definitely a people aspect to it. I always enjoy, I enjoy going to meet Megento Poland, meet Megento Germany, nether. All those different places and traveling and meeting all those people.

Brent: And it isn’t the event so much, it is the people. And then when you start to get to know those people and enjoy their company and having some time with them, I think that’s the important part. Do you think there’s another community that can match the vibrance of the Magento community? Do you think it’s unique in any way or is there anything that’s this magic Elixer 

Marta: I don’t know if there are any other communities which might be similar to Magento.

Marta: It has an orange vibe, and I guess this is a really unique group of people coming in and coming out also because it’s a living organism. It’s not like a solid rock, I guess That’s exactly why it is unique. It shapes our real from day one to now and to the future.

Brent: Yeah. I think part of the uniqueness too, it was born from the founders of Magento Roy and Yoav and then Bob Schwartz and even Mark Lavell really embraced the community. I saw that, when eBay did their, when they were there, there was a kind of a drop off and. when when Mark Lavell started again, he really embraced it.

Brent: And I think that’s part of it is that the, whatever the brand is that’s around the community. If there is a brand, there has to be buyin from all parties, I think is part of it. And now I think Magento’s finding its place in the world with Mage-OS and the Magento Association.

Brent: I think it’s starting to find its feet again. 

Marta: I really hope that Magento association is is going to play a major role in shaping this Magento reality. And I know that it is not always been perceived as an important player, but now when the changes are being applied, the changes that are

Marta: really going to reshape the Magento association and with the more open attitude to, towards the community. I really think that we are going to make some difference. 

Brent: Yeah. I can say that from the membership side, from the event side, there’s a lot of very exciting things happening and I’m seeing a lot more transparency, especially from the Magento association.

Brent: So we’re seeing more about what’s happening internally and we’re seeing more news from each of the community meetings and it’s an exciting time and I’m very excited for what you’re doing in events and I you’ve joined our membership committee as well. And and had some very good insight for us.

Brent: Thank you. Marta as we finish out, I give everybody an opportunity to do a shameless plug about anything you’d like to plug today. What would you like to plug. 

Marta: I think we can, we started with with Ukraine and to be honest, I would like to end our episode also with a personal request for, to each of you.

Marta: If you can find a way to help Ukraine, everyone wanted to help on the very beginning and was eager. Either send money or supplies or to help in any other way, like offering jobs and so on. But after some weeks this general willingness to help faded a little bit and the war didn’t fight that much.

Marta: Didn’t fight at all, actually. So Ukraine still needs a lot of help. So each of us can really make a difference. I can say from my heart that every single act of kindness or any single act of help is changing someone s life. So I would really like to each of you to find a way to.

Marta: Ukraine in any way you can 

Brent: thank you. Yeah it does. It starts with one person. I before this, I was talking to Dmitri from Swiss labs, Swiss up labs, and he also had a very good recommendation for a paramedic service. We will put any recommendations in our show notes today and make those links available to everyone.

Brent: Marta, what is your next event coming up? What is your next big thing you’re gonna be doing? 

Marta: We’ll, I hope it’s going to be either ma connect. So our online event, or maybe a Magento association in person event, we’re still figuring out the details, but I really hope this is it.

Brent: Yeah, me too. Marta, it’s been so great talking to you. Thank you for the time. Thank you for a wonderful evening. Thank 

Marta: you. Bye bye. Bye.

Talk-Commerce Lisa Hammett

Dare to say NO with Lisa Hammett

When you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. What are you saying no to? @lisahammett

If you’ve ever experienced burnout, it’s like hitting a wall. You’re done. You’re mentally and physically wiped out. You’ve lost your capacity to see beyond your present situation. Your life has become gray, devoid of color.

Lisa talks about her experience with burnout and how saying yes too much can contribute to this. This is a great conversational interview that covers a variety of topics that causes stress and burnout in the workplace.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisahammett/
https://www.lisahammett.com/book

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce today I have Lisa Hammett.

Brent: Lisa, go ahead. Introduce yourself. Tell us what you’re doing in a day-to-day role and maybe one of your passions in. 

Lisa: Thanks, Brent. It’s so nice to be here. I am Lisa Hammett. I am a success and mental fitness coach and I help executives and business owners reduce stress. Hopefully to prevent burnout, but I have helped others get through burnout, by developing mental fitness so they can leave a healthy, happy, productive life.

Lisa: And having been through burnout myself, I am really passionate about helping others get through that because oftentimes when you reach burnout, you feel like you have no hope you’ve hit a wall. I like to equate it to the world kind of goes gray devoid of color and it can really seem like there’s no hope.

Lisa: So I like to give people hope. 

Brent: That’s great. And I know that what sparked my interest was that you had a article on LinkedIn and I think it was about just say no. So tell us a little bit about the reasoning behind that and some of the things you found out of that. 

Lisa: Absolutely. So one form of stress management is setting healthy boundaries and that falls into the self care equation.

Lisa: And oftentimes when we think of self care, we think of what we eat, how we move our bodies, our sleep water, which are all amazing, but setting healthy boundaries is just as important. And especially for managing stress. So just say no was about how you can set those healthy boundaries and you don’t need to apologize for it.

Brent: in just say, no, your article was directed to both entrepreneurs and employees. 

Lisa: Yes, 

Brent: absolutely. And maybe speak to how entrepreneurs sometimes would say yes to everything which causes them to have more stress. 

Lisa: Oh, I can so relate to that, cuz I’ve been an entrepreneur for quite a while and when you’re hungry and you’re starting your business, you don’t wanna say no because you don’t want to develop a reputation of, oh, I can’t do that.

Lisa: Or, if you’re in the business, Sector. You don’t want people to think that you’re not a team player, but what I have found is when you learn to say no the right way and set those healthy boundaries, it actually commands more respect and you don’t need to apologize for it. In fact, apologizing for it sets a negative example.

Lisa: It’s okay to say no, in fact, it is encouraged. 

Brent: Do you think there’s some truth to focusing on a couple of things is better than trying to do everything and by saying no, you’re really just targeting those specific things that you’d like to work on. 

Lisa: Absolutely. Absolutely. So somebody explained to me and I thought this was such a unique way of looking at it is, when you say yes.

Lisa: To something you’re actually saying no to something else. So it then begs the question. What are you saying yes to? Are you saying yes to the wrong things, which ties into what you had just asked? Are we focusing on the wrong thing. So we are not able to really drive our business or move forward in a relationship, make positive change in our life.

Lisa: It really begs the question to assess and say, okay, what am I actually saying no to, and should I be saying yes to it a way to shift it a little bit. 

Brent: Yeah. And I think there’s some things in there that business owners would say yes and no to, and I want to break it into two parts right now.

Brent: There’s the customer portion of it. And then there’s the inner drive to do something new portion of it. And I think Verne Harnish calls it the shiny object where that thing is making you add something more to your list. Let’s talk about the customer first. You mentioned that they would have more respect for you for saying no.

Brent: Talk, just dive into that a little bit. 

Lisa: If you are saying no, from a place of authenticity, you’re not apologizing. And you’re being honest without providing a dissertation, people will respect you because oftentimes other people want to say no as well, but they don’t know how to, or they’re afraid of offending somebody.

Lisa: And when somebody is honest and authentic, it’s very refreshing. For example, when dealing with customers saying something to the effect that. Unfortunately, I cannot do this for you right now, due to X, Y, Z, in my schedule, I want to make sure that I am able to provide you the best service. And by saying yes to this, I won’t be able to do that.

Lisa: Somebody said that to me, I would be thank you. I might be disappointed, but I would be so appreciative because how many times have you been in a situation where somebody told you yes to something and then it surpassed, it went the deadline just kept pushing out and you never got constructive feedback as to what was happening.

Lisa: And it really developed some resentment. 

Brent: I think a real life. Way of looking at it for a business owner would be to look at the restaurants that have a list for you to sit down. They are telling you no. You can’t sit down right now because either we don’t have enough room or we don’t have enough staff to handle all this.

Brent: That no, then sets your expectation for when you’re going to be able to eat. There’s a direct correlation with that. That’s more of a quick thing where, Hey it’s gonna be 45 minutes, but I could see all these open tables. Well, we don’t have enough people to cover all those open tables.

Brent: So if we were to seat you, you would still sit there and wait. Do you think there’s a, a way that business owners can work or let me just back up a second, are there some exercises they can work through to help them to understand when they should say no? And when they shouldn’t. 

Lisa: That’s a good question.

Lisa: I think a lot of times it boils down to what is most important, and I’m gonna go to the shiny object thing that you were talking about earlier. It’s we get distracted by things that we put too much importance on, so it really boils down to prioritization. And what is of the utmost importance and when we are,

Lisa: squirrel squirrel shiny object. That is not helpful. So sometimes, it’s as simple as doing a brain dump and just writing down. Okay. These are all the different things that need to be accomplished and then start prioritizing them in need to be done now, need to be done. And X number of time can be done later.

Lisa: And. It sounds remedial, but it really does work. 

Brent: I think too, the making sure that you, from a customer standpoint, when you do say yes, looking at that entire journey that the customer’s gone through and then going back and doing a little retrospect on how did that actually go and are we serving them in a good way?

Brent: Maybe we could talk a little bit about the monetary side of that. Cause I think a lot of times newer business owners always wanna say yes, and they don’t realize where their profit comes from. And there is a actual monetary value that you could put on saying no. In economics it’s opportunity cost, right?

Brent: So every time you say yes, you’re giving up potential opportunity for a higher revenue. In your coaching, how do you like coach that into somebody that isn’t sometimes very receptive? 

Lisa: Oh, gosh, I personally went through this when I lost my lost launched my business. You almost want to be something for everybody and then just see kind of where it sticks, but that doesn’t work.

Lisa: I mean, it’s really more effective to narrow down specifically who your clientele. Is and be very, very specific because oftentimes we get so focused on, oh, here’s something here. Oh, here’s a little bit here. Well, what happens is that just takes time to prevent you from really going after that ideal client it’s just becomes like busy work.

Lisa: If it’s somebody that isn’t really going to help you develop your offering in a sense that can actually help you move forward. Do they have people that they could refer you to? Is it really the, the area that you want to.

Lisa: become involved in, as opposed to, oh, here’s just something that’s gonna get me some money. Does that make sense? 

Brent: Yeah, that’s a really good way to look at it. Okay do you think it’s harder to pivot from nos to yeses at some point? And I’ll give you the example. The agency that I run was specifically a Magento agency and Magento’s an eCommerce platform.

Brent: The name of the agency is Wagento. And a couple of years ago, we took on another brand, another partner called BigCommerce. And it was very difficult because we were so hyper focused on the one platform to get people to understand that we’re gonna add another one. So that pivot took a little bit of time.

Brent: Some may argue that, Hey, if I’m so hyperfocused, it’s gonna be harder to branched out when we’re ready to branch out what sort of advice or coaching can you give to somebody like me? Who was so hyperfocused for 10 years?

Brent: And then suddenly I’m like, oh geez. You know, I’m gonna have to do something new. How do I start saying yes again to something. 

Lisa: I think having somebody to coach you through the process is really important to have somebody who’s outside of the situation. And I’m not saying actually hire a coach. It could be somebody, a mentor that you really respect.

Lisa: A fellow business owner who has gone through a similar transition, but somebody who can look at it objectively and really provide you with some great feedback because when we are so focused on one thing, it’s really hard sometimes to shift that focus, cuz it’s been so ingrained in us and it served us well, but now we need to take take the lens back and really look at it from a different angle.

Lisa: And I think that’s a good place to start is to find somebody that you respect to help you with that. 

Brent: Yeah, I think that’s a lot of businesses do QBR or quarterly business reviews or quarterly business planning. Mm-hmm and when we’ve had a facility come facilitator, come in and help us do that. I feel as though we’ve been way more productive than if we just did it as a leadership team.

Brent: Cuz I think sometimes as you said, it’s hard to see other perspectives without somebody who doesn’t have a perspective to come in and look at it. And maybe some of those questions they ask help you to spark those new questions to ask about your business. I wanna ask specifically then about if how do you coach a business owner to not be defensive when they say, how about this?

Brent: Why aren’t you doing. In EO, we don’t should on people. You should do this. You want to sort of do some experience sharing. Do you find it delicate sometimes when speaking to business owners about some of these topics to help them through that, 

Lisa: I think they need to focus on, and I know this can’t always a hundred percent of the time be the case, but

Lisa: oftentimes when we get so focused on a goal and something that is not going right. We just dive in and focus all our energy on what is not going well, instead of really focusing on what is going well. now with that said, I’m not saying put on rose colored glasses, and if you have a problem that needs to be addressed, throw it under the table.

Lisa: Absolutely not. But I think when you’re having a conversation with somebody that. They need some coaching and development. It’s really, it’s starting with their strengths and maybe they’re in a situation that isn’t leaning into their strengths and maybe it needs to be shifted into something else.

Lisa: I think that’s really what needs to be understood first is where is everybody best suited? And sometimes it isn’t the right fit and that can be addressed, but. When you’re leading from strengths personally how does that make you feel when somebody is saying, you know what, Brent, you are so talented at this.

Lisa: It’s just, it’s a real natural fit for you. You did such an exceptional job and X, Y, and Z. So if somebody were to say that to you, how would you feel. 

Brent: Obviously it makes me feel a lot better so leading with those type of questions is much better than leading with criticizing questions.

Brent: Right. 

Lisa: Right. 

Brent: We’ve talked about the kind of customer dynamic as a business owner. The other dynamic, a lot of business owners have, would be I’m gonna rescue everything. And then suddenly. If you have a team of 20 people or 50 people or a hundred people, your bandwidth becomes completely lost because you’ve now said yes to your entire team to rescuing them instead of helping to enable your team

Brent: to solve some of the problems. How do you work through that type of situation where you want to encourage the business owner to delegate some of that work? It might even come from a lack of trust in your team to solve those problems. But I, and again, then you need to lead with the strength.

Brent: How do you encourage them? Not to say yes to everyth. 

Lisa: That’s oh, that’s a great question. And I’m gonna lean into Brene Brown, who I just think is phenomenal. And she talks a lot about this type of thing in Dare to Lead, but it’s, it starts with first of all, creating a safe space for people to be vulnerable and authentic and to be able to share when they are struggling and

Lisa: if your culture does not have that type of environment then situations like you just described arise. And the manager for whatever reason, supervisor, business owner may not feel like they have confidence because they’re not having open ended dialogue with their team and they’re not encouraging that.

Lisa: So they’re feeling compelled that they have to do everything themselves. Well, that’s not an effective leader. I mean a leader is taking the spotlight off of themselves and developing and encouraging their team. So again, it starts with having that open, honest culture where you can share ideas without judgment and criticism, which can be challenging.

Lisa: But when you have that starting ground things really start to 

Brent: shift. Do you think there’s the opposite problem of somebody who’s giving credit to somebody else all the time, even though that person didn’t do it, 

Lisa: so like favoritism and 

Brent: nepotism, that type of thing, not favoritism, but I I’ll be honest that a lot of times I like to give credit to somebody else for an idea because it makes everybody look better, but.

Brent: Maybe, I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud right now. Maybe it’s not a great idea to give ever, or talk to them in, I suppose, in advance and say, Hey, this is a great idea. And I feel like you came up with it. I’m gonna give you credit for it. Well, I 

Lisa: think it’s important to give credit where credit is due, you know, and that is really, what’s going to build the authentic, open, honest

Lisa: environment, because if you’re starting, if you’re doing that and giving credit where it’s not fully due, other people are gonna start to pick up on it. They may not initially, but then it will start to cause resentment. So I understand why maybe once in a while you might want to, but it’s not a good practice to be in.

Lisa: And I’m not saying as a business leader to say, oh, I’m so awesome. I did this, blah, blah, blah. In fact, if anything, even if you did do something exceptional that shouldn’t come from you that should be noticed by other people and not, you should not. Toting that yourself, because that’s really demotivating to your staff.

Brent: Yeah. Is there something around the business owner, always being in the savior?

Lisa: Yes. It, that’s not a good thing either. They need to be there to support if something goes wrong, but if you are developing your staff the way they need to be developed then you shouldn’t have to save them if they do something that maybe they shouldn’t have, or they made an error, or it could have been done better.

Lisa: They can recognize that and learn from that and they don’t need saving. Does that make sense? 

Brent: Mm-hmm yeah, that’s a good way to put it. As a business owner, if I am overwhelmed with a certain thing, but I don’t know how to ask for help. Is there keys and is there coaching things that you could tell me to say, Hey, you know, and I think too, as business owners, sometimes we don’t feel like we wanna be that vulnerable to say, I can’t do this.

Brent: I’m gonna need help. Is there ways that I could express my myself better to say, you know, I’m a hundred percent on this. I don’t have any more capacity. How can you help me? Or can. 

Lisa: So I think that goes back into, if you’re in a situation where you can go to a mentor to help that. That’s awesome.

Lisa: Now, if you are needing to share this with your staff, you can do it in such a way where it doesn’t come across, that you are floundering because you still want to appear. I don’t wanna say stable. Don’t give a false sense of impression, but you want to be reliable to people, but you know, if you are really asking for authenticity, you in turn need to be authentic as well.

Lisa: And that doesn’t mean saying, oh, I can’t do this, blah, blah, blah. You know, but if finding a way to maybe integrate somebody else into the equation to help manage the load. so to speak Does that make sense? Yeah. And then when it actually comes down to maybe if you’re starting to feel as a business owner, overwhelm yourself, that’s where I illustrate mental fitness and how that can really help by shifting all that negative energy, which is in your left analytical side of the brain, which

Lisa: stems fear and anxiety and stress and overwhelmed that all comes from your left side, quieting it so that you can then transfer your focus to the positive right side of your brain. So you can be a little more clearheaded because oftentimes when we get in that space of being overwhelmed, we’re not clearheaded.

Lisa: It just snowballs and then we start over dramatizing in our mind and assuming that, oh my goodness this could happen. Well our thoughts are not facts. 99% of the time we tend to overdramatize them. So this just kind of grounds us. So especially if you have to have a difficult conversation with

Lisa: a person that you are working with an employer or mentor, whatever. It’s always good to come from that positive right. Side brain. 

Brent: Does that make sense? Yeah. And I’m left handed, so I’m using my right side all the time. As you know, as you were talking about that, I remember myself, let’s just say 10 years ago or five years ago, even that.

Brent: When I felt overwhelmed, I would start lashing out at people by saying, I can’t do this anymore. Or, I think that the emotional side sometimes comes out and that and employees don’t absolutely can’t and don’t understand that. I think one of the things I read was emotional EQ 2.0, which was a great book.

Brent: And going through that book and learning more about my emotions and how those emotions affect your team, helped me through some of that. And I’ve realized as we’re talking now that it’s been five, six years since I’ve experienced that overwhelmingness. That has caused me to start lashing out at people about whatever the issue is.

Brent: So, not that I’m fixed, but I can now relate to the fact that I’m not that I don’t experience that anymore. 

Lisa: right. And that’s a, oh, that’s not a fun position to be in, but you know that we are emotional beings and when all that negative emotion bubbles up, that is one of the responses that happens.

Lisa: And yeah, if that is not managed oh, that can create a toxic mess. 

Brent: So. And just as a facilitator side of things we, as a group hired a facilitator to facilitate that book. And there’s some tests. If you read the book, there’s a test you can take in the beginning and then they would like you to go through a bunch of exercises and take another test.

Brent: So it was a great experience. And I would encourage any anybody business owner or not to read the book and do some of those exercises because I feel as though. I even thought maybe anger was a good tool to use. Cuz you think about coaches and you look at a coach in a locker room and they’re yelling at their players, right. 

Brent: at some point that doesn’t work anymore. And I think that’s not the most effective way of coaching your team yelling and getting angry with them. and that the book itself, that was one of the big things that I got out of. that’s awesome. I wanna switch gears now to the to the employer, employee relationship mm-hmm and the fact that some employees work a lot and they, they tend to not say new, no to their employer.

Brent: And there is a little bit of a conundrum in there. Like I am a results person. So I would expect less. I would love it if everybody worked less than 40 hours. If we were all in Europe, we all work 35 hours when we get August off plus another two weeks. Right. But in America it’s different, right?

Brent: We’re all expected to work 60 hours a week and not take your vacation. So there is a conundrum in there and I think the specific conundrum comes down to you want your people to work no more than 40 hours, but let’s just say somebody’s worked 40 hours on Thursday already. Do you expect them to work on Friday?

Lisa: That’s a really good question. I think it depends on the business and what is happening, you if there’s been a lot of turnover, it’s not ideal. Let’s kind of go backwards a bit. So let’s just say you are starting a new position at a company and you were informed that this is the expectation of the number of hours that you

Lisa: should work in order to get your job done. Well, if you start from day one, when you’re there telling everybody, oh, I’ll work the weekend. Oh, I have no problem working over time. Oh, I’ll take my laptop home with me and do this. You’re putting this expectation on yourself and sharing that with others.

Lisa: So then they will just come to assume. Well, this individual has expressed that this is not a problem, so they will continue to hold you to that expectation. And before you know it, you have no boundaries. You’re 24 7, you’re taking your laptop on vacation. So you’re not really on a full vacation, so 

Lisa: that is one thing that needs to be established upfront, and again, I’m not saying that in particular situations that maybe you are open to stepping up, but. You’re the one who sets that expectation up front. So don’t set the wrong expectation. And then if it gets to a situation where there’s staffing issues and there’s not enough people, and you’re doing the job of three people, If it’s getting to the point where you’re starting to get chronic stress, it’s impacting your work life balance, and you are working as hard as you can, but you need help.

Lisa: Then you have to say something. You can’t just, oh, well, no I can’t say anything. That’s gonna make me appear weak. No, you have to ask for help. I’m not saying you’re always going to get it, but you have to ask for help. And it’s how you ask for help. It’s kind of with the solution in mind, it’s like if you’re presenting a problem to somebody you don’t wanna just appear, like you’re a complainer, you want to provide a solution as well.

Lisa: That solution may note be taken into account, but at least it’s going to show that you’re trying to be proactive and you’re not sitting there complaining. 

Brent: I think that there’s a dynamic there where the employee may not have the skills to be able to delegate yet as a coach

Brent: how would you encourage them to do some of that delegation work.

Lisa: I think it really boils down to sitting down with them and, okay. So where is the fear coming from? Is it a fear that, oh my gosh, I am going to look like I can’t do my job if I delegate it or is it not going to be done right. Because I’m delegating it. So it’s really looking that fear in the face and then working on moving through it because fear ultimately can paralyze all of us

Lisa: at any point in time. And that’s the, one of the largest reasons why people do not achieve goals is fear. It’s either fear of success, fear of failure. And it can manifest in very weird ways like procrastination, or you become a hyper achiever because you won’t delegate and you have to keep doing it all yourself.

Brent: Do you think the other problem in that is, is also. The employee has so much to do that they couldn’t possibly be successful at everything they’ve been. They’ve said yes to doing. 

Lisa: In some cases that might be the case. Certainly the working world is very different today than it was.

Lisa: I know when I started decades ago, it’s very different. And especially now as we still try to get through the whole pandemic issue and the whole flexible workspace and it’s just it’s constantly evolving into different things. So it, that could be. But not always. 

Brent: And just to be clear, you and I have both established that we’re both in our mid twenties, so yes, decades we’ve been working since we were five years 

Lisa: old.

Lisa: yes. We’re amazing humans that way. 

Brent: absolutely. Lisa, we are running out of time here quickly. As we close out the podcast, I give everybody, a chance to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug today? 

Lisa: Well, thank you for that opportunity. So I have a book, it’s my first book that I am publishing next month.

Lisa: That’ll be mid month and it’s From Burnout to Best Life. And it integrates my story of reaching burnout and how I overcame burnout, but it’s really a guide to your happiest, healthiest life. So after I went through burnout, I started my personal health and wellness journey and I lost 65 pounds. And I have been a health coach for many years.

Lisa: And then during the pandemic, I added the life coaching piece of it as well. So the book encompasses both areas. So it talks about healthy eating, and diet and everything, but also like we discussed fear. How do you deal with fear? Setting healthy boundaries? A lot of the topics that we discussed are in the book.

Lisa: I am starting speaking engagements. I’ve been doing podcasts, but I’m actually doing a Ted talk coming out at the end of August. So really looking at the book as a way to just get speaking engagements and just kind of open doors. So that’s, what’s 

Brent: happening with. Yeah. So let’s definitely do a another interview when your book comes out and we can dive into more of these topics.

Brent: It’s been a, it’s been very interesting and just as we close out too, I am a running coach. And so physical. And I recognize how important that mental aspect is to especially running. But even last night I had a conversation with another coach and I was asking about something and he said, I think you need to work on your mental toughness because a lot of times we think we can’t do something and as I’m running and I’m in a long run, I always say to people, I think running is

Brent: 90% mental and the other 15% is in your head. Then I wait for the reaction some, and it depends how well they’re doing or not, but it is a lot of that. And I think you’ve really illustrated how important a lot of these things are from a mental standpoint to be healthy. And how if we’re putting our employees under so much stress that.

Brent: Really degradates and it just didn’t people are gonna find a new place that is less stressful. The great resignation is telling us that people would like to be stress free rather than stressful. 

Lisa: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I hundred percent agree with you. It’s I tell people all the time it’s, if your head’s not in the game, you’re not gonna be successful.

Lisa: And you have to visualize, you have to believe that what you want to achieve will happen and really have a clear mental picture. And when you do, you can be successful. 

Brent: Lisa Hammett thank you so much for being here today at thank you. I look forward to another conversation when your book comes.

Brent: Thank 

Lisa: you so much. This has been great. I appreciate it.

magento association sushma vyas

Meet Magento Singapore with Sushma Vyas

We interview Sushma Vaya (@sushmavyas) with Ranosys from Singapore. #mm22sg Sushma has been organizing Meet Magento Singapore since its inception. We learn about Singapore’s vibrant and friendly city-state and the great event the team organizes. Listen to the entire episode and give me your feedback on the MA Pledge commercial I created at the end!

Meet Magento Singapore happens live on August 25th, 2022. Don’t miss it. https://meetmagento.sg

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this special 

Brent: Magento Association edition of 

Brent: Talk Commerce

Brent: today. I have Sushma Vyas. She is in Singapore and she is with Meet Magento Singapore. We are going to talk about the event and how fun it was and how fun it’s going to be into the future. Sushma, go ahead,

Brent: introduce yourself. Tell us what you do on a day to day basis and maybe one of your passions in life. 

Sushma: Thank you, Brent. Very happy, feeling really related to be part of this. My name is Sushma as you already shared with everyone in summary. If I would say one liner, my day to day job is to make sure people associated with us are happy.

Sushma: I act as the COO chief operating officer with Ranosys, I’m the organizer also for Meet Magento Singapore. I take care of end to end operations for the company, making sure all the departments meet their KPIs, people attached with us. I really mean it. Whether they are partners, our customers of all important people, team members, employees are happy.

Sushma: That’s the goal. And that’s what I do being in Singapore for past 18 plus years now. And yeah, I think that summarizes that’s. 

Brent: So your real role as a chief happiness. I wish . I went to Meet Magento Singapore in 2019, and it’s such a great city, such a great community. And the event was so well put on, tell us a little bit about the history of Meet Magento Singapore, why you guys started it and a little bit about the event.

Sushma: Thanks. One of my favorite points to talk about we’ve been associated with Magento per se from I’d say it’s childhood days, because we used to do those little Magento meetups when we were very young as a company, Magento also was running community editions and all, and we did see. Real good potential traction people attached around 2016,17,18.

Sushma: We did attend a lot of Magento events globally and that got us excited that let’s have one Meet Magento Singapore itself. And the thought was really well taken by Adobe commerce aka/Magento. And we got this to own and organize Meet Magento Singapore. It was really, it has been an exciting journey.

Sushma: It was when the very first event, what I’d say was the most exciting for us was that Singapore hosts and is easy for people. It attracts people, businesses, retail, commerce, especially a lot more. Easier. Sorry. If I sound biased than a lot of other countries, it has that reputation and comfort as well.

Sushma: The venue has been amazing, I’d say. And we’ve enjoyed. And of course we all know since past three years, the journey we have seen how pretty and commerce has transformed. Likewise has the event itself opening it up for online presence mix of both. So in all, I’d say it’s been insightful.

Sushma: This is something that we ourselves learn from people around the globe when they come here and everyone builds that bond, that community. So exciting journey. 

Brent: If you were to say to someone to attend the event what would be the some of the big draws to attend meet Magento Singapore. 

Sushma: I’ll talk about Singapore, right. First is really the place, because as much as it is a little red dot, a small place, it brings, it offers everything. It attracts businesses. It adopts technology really fast and well. The place itself is an attraction

Sushma: we, I would say people to come and visit and see how this is so well organized, disciplined, yet open for innovation. And it implements that. Of course, because of all these things, there are huge brands companies who have their foundation here who have their offices here. So they can see and communicate, I mean, that community bonding and they can see how these big brands are facing the challenges, implementing it via technologies, solving it.

Sushma: For Meet Magento Singapore, I’ll say, come for our after parties as well. I know after parties are fun everywhere, but I, I really Bo that some of the best after parties we’ve had the venue is great Marina Basin and it’s real fun here. Meeting people from close to a hundred plus countries and connecting, talking.

Sushma: it’s a different mode that you see them in after parties and different insights that you get during the event and talks. 

Brent: I think that we forgot about the importance of meeting people in person and everybody thought, oh, now that everybody’s doing zoom meetings and online that the live event is dead.

Brent: But I think what we’ve found is that, people desire to see people in person. And not only do you get to go to a great event, but you get to see a great city and then you get to see different cultures and all kinds of things that are wrapped around traveling to a different type of place. And I agree that Singapore is very easy to get to for us in the US.

Brent: It’s a long way. It’s halfway around the world, but yes, you know, it’s very easy. It’s very accessible. And I can say that even the customs. Everybody was so nice and it’s so easy to get through the cultures. There’s multiple cultures. We in 2019, we brought eight people from our office in Ahmedabad to Singapore.

Brent: And what did we do as soon as we landed, everybody wanted to find their Gujurati restaurant to eat at. So we all found the section of town that had a Gujurati restaurant and we ate there. So it, there, there is food for everybody. Something for everybody to offer. What would you say to a sponsor who would like to sponsor Meet Magento 

Sushma: for sponsor?

Sushma: See, I think there’s a wonderful mix of audience because there’s a very good balance in terms of merchants, in terms of technology, partners, partners, and end users customers. So with this balance, they get to have their message reach the right people. It’s not lopsided.

Sushma: So there is one real advantageand we take of it. Otherwise, even the ecosystem is such that it attracts all these different pool of people. So that’s one of the biggest advantages for sponsors plus I shared, there’s this very easy ethos reputation of delivery that its Singapore has gained.

Sushma: Its its rapport in terms of making sure businesses are smoother run. The government would say, we’ll take care of the hassle for you. We’ll make sure things are things are not full of bumps for you, and you make sure that the business is flourishing. So that kind of something is a healthy sign for someone to sponsor in an ecosystem like this.

Sushma: So usually this is also something that we hear from our sponsors and, Yes, digital marketing and all there’s a good outreach. There’s a good reach that they get from. So, yeah, that’s what we would tell them, 

Brent: From the event organizer side. So I know renos has been organizing, Meet Magentol Singapore.

Brent: If other organizers would like to organize an event in a different region, a different city, do you have some advice for them that to get started and some reasons why they would want to get started organizing a meat Magento in a different city?. 

Sushma: Why they should or why they good for sure.

Sushma: Organizers do gain a lot of publicity for sure. And learning on top of that, because something that we, even our own customers, our partners, something that we see them when they are there on the stage speaking or discussing, it’s a very different learning and insight that we get, which otherwise in day to day

Sushma: communication or interactions we don’t get each other on that level of thinking or discussion. This is something we must do because meeting and meeting them in a different mindset is together new learning. And we build a bond, a community which is memorable to us, plus helping the overall ecosystem.

Sushma: if there are any tips or anything, that we follow, or we would prefer people to follow is maintain that local touch, what that place is known for, because people would come from far away from different places to also know more about that place as it there’s nothing beautiful or ugly.

Sushma: It’s the combination that makes that place really different and unique. So I’d say maintain that, make sure people also know more about the place, know the local touch, local flavor. So that event automatically becomes very special and unique. There are many things, but this is what I feel we must consider.

Brent: I like what you said about having a different mindset to learn. And I think that oftentimes as we are pushing our whole team to do work that we forget that our team has to also learn about what’s new. If we continue to work on what’s old, then all we’re gonna do is create old things, creating new things requires new knowledge.

Brent: And I agree that you get put into a different mindset and you’re not in front of a bunch of screens. You may be in front of your laptop while you’re watching the speaker speak, but you’re not in front of 10 screens with a dog barking and somebody asking you it’s time for dinner. It puts you in a place where you are in a learning mode.

Brent: Maybe speak to that learning mode a little bit.

Sushma: If I take myself as an example, I don’t come from a technical background. But when I’m there, I listen to those even technical talks or innovations, it makes me more excited to know more Magento as a platform. I would’ve never known otherwise. Except for that. Okay. Customers need this.

Sushma: We fulfill this, the depth of it. I would’ve never known or never have been inquisitive to know that. Okay. Alright. There is this feature. So because when during panel discussions or somebody shares, you can do this, just talking about that specific feature, which to me appears like magic. And then I feel, oh, okay.

Sushma: Then what else does it do? What else does it do? Where else can it be implemented? And it gives ideas. Okay. Not necessarily here. It can be used somewhere else. So I’m a student there. Actually, when I participate or I hear the talks, the speakers talking about it. Likewise, someone whose technical may find interesting business cases, which he, or she, would’ve not thought of while working on that piece of code or that piece of integration. 

Brent: I know that there has always been a developer track or a technical track, and there has been a business track. And that just means that there’s something for both audiences. There’s something for merchants to learn about what are the new things that I can do on Magento or Adobe commerce.

Brent: And I know, especially for the developers, they can learn about the newest technology things that may put a merchant to sleep. Having that ability to see those different pieces of the puzzle and spark some interest. And I’m just gonna say that those new things create innovation because a merchant may say, oh, I saw this at this event.

Brent: I’d like to do it on my site, but I’d like to do it in this way. The pushing the boundaries. I sit on the membership committee and Meet Magento Association is trying to get more members as part of the Magento Association. What would you say to people who not are not sure or don’t know why they should join.

Brent: Do you have any good advice for them? 

Sushma: I’d say definitely join because. I’ll make it a little more philosophical if you hope you don’t mind, because at the end of the day, all of us want to contribute. All of us want to give back. In that effort, what we gain is enormous. When we join our intention was really not, oh, we give back, we do this.

Sushma: You know, okay, it’s a community we want to learn. I’m very attached to this by the way association, because we’ve gained a lot, whatever we’ve gained, I’d say from our years still now it’s because of that and because of the community it creates. So the fulfillment part is huge. In addition to what we gain in terms of repeat learning resources to knowing problems before you face it and solutions, how these get resolved.

Sushma: All this is. I always are like, I’d say golden assets of having being part of a community in which Magento association gives you so readily easily. I would not ask anyone to think twice about it because this is one of the strongest, one of the biggest, and I wish all the best because that shouldn’t die.

Brent: And even at the lowest level, it’s $1 a month, so $12 a year. And I think that allows anybody, the facility to join and they’re coming. We are coming out with some other models where companies can sponsor their employees to join as well. So there’s gonna be continued innovations from the Magento Association to help membership grow.

Brent: Sushma as we close out our podcast every week, I give the guests an opportunity to do a shameless plug about anything promotion about anything you’d like to promote. What would you like to promote today? 

Sushma: Hadn’t really thought about it so much what I’d like to promote, but, since I’m part of Ranosys, I’m part of this whole company that’s one, one thing that I can promote is that explore, recommend, refer, explore services.

Sushma: I think that’s about it. I wasn’t really that prepared about it. What, in my mind. So that’s what I can think is the first thing that’s. That’s 

Brent: Thank you, Sushma. So thanks for staying up so late for me. I really appreciate it. Oh, 

Sushma: it’s a 

Brent: pleasure. Pleasure talking to you. I wish you all the, yeah, go ahead.

Sushma: I was saying you have some really interesting questions there. 

Brent: Good. Yeah. And I, I wish you all the best in your event coming up. I wish I could be 

Sushma: there this year thank you. Thank you so much. 

Brent: I will miss you 2023. Yeah, hopefully, 

Sushma: definitely. Yes. Thank you. All right. Thanks Brent. Have a lovely day. Bye-bye.

Talk-Commerce Kate-Bradley

Looking for the patterns in your marketing with Kate Bradley

In this week’s episode, we talk about everything from entrepreneurship to employee happiness. (@LatelyAIKately) Kate talks about the pressure on a start-up CEO and how it is compounded by trying to run a successful business and raise money at the same time. Kate reveals one really cool new feature on Lately.ai. (You must listen to the end to hear the big reveal!)

What you will learn from this episode and about Kate

• Passion for floating in a pool and listening to 80s music

• CEO of Lately, an AI that repurposes long-form content

• Focus on making fans, not sales

• Educated on Black American perspectives •

White Elephant in the Room: lack of diversity in podcast

• Advice to never assume what any side wants

• Value of lifting others up

• Making a fan creates a machine

• Marketing is about getting a fresh perspective

• Overuse of words leads to dull communication

• Creative use of language to engage people and make them react

I absolutely think that people who are focused on clock punching rather than performance and outcomes are missing out. Clock punchers are focused on the wrong thing and don’t understand the bigger picture. They don’t see how their work fits into the bigger picture and how it contributes to the success of the company. Performance and outcomes are much more important than just showing up and doing the minimum. If an entrepreneur is focused on performance and outcomes, they will be able to make better decisions and find more success.

Kate Bradley

Kate is the Founder & CEO of Lately. The A.I. that learns which words will get you the most engagement and re-purposes video, audio, and text into dozens of social posts containing those words.

Kate is a former rock ‘n’ roll DJ and served 20 million listeners as Music Director and on-air host at Sirius/XM. She’s also an award-winning radio producer, engineer, and voice talent with 25 years of national broadcast communications, brand-building, sales, and marketing expertise. What she learned in radio about the neuroscience of music helps fuel Lately’s artificial intelligence.

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this wonderful episode of lately on Talk Commerce. I have Kaitlyn from lately today. Kate. Please introduce yourself. Tell us your day to day role in one of your passions in life. 

Kate: I formally was a rock and roll DJ broadcasting to 20 million listeners a day for XM. So I have a soft spot in my heart for podcasting, of course. I love the theater of the mind so much. I love radio. I love that you Brent have this I don’t even know if you know that you have it, you have this beautiful power to create what I call a two-way street, even though it’s one way.

Kate: I You wield the microphone here, but people listen and trust you and they lean in because you have this ability to create that magical kind of feeling as though they’re part of the conversation. And so that’s what attracts me to radio and podcasting specifically. And I don’t miss it.

Kate: Cuz can I swear in your show? I don’t know. Yeah. Go for it. I had a shit time. there, there’s great things about radio. I met my husband there and his record was our favorite record of the year. And of course, total job hazard. Cause I dated musicians do not recommend, found the one good one, who’ve cut his hair and wears chinos and now he’s. Sales bless his heart, but radio is a boy’s club, of course. And me too, and all that stuff didn’t even exist. And the rewards you got for participating in sexual harassment were large. It was applauded. And so we all did it, and I, not only, and I was a recipient of course, because, I don’t have a phase for radio.

Kate: Yay. And there’s no women either. So of course, like every day my boss would ask. Bradley or your hands queen, meaning could I hold this Dick while he peed? just, it was just the locker room bullshit. So that. Bizarre because what started happening? I don’t know why I’m going down this thread with you, but Hey ladies, listen up the the sexual harassment turned into a hostile work environment because of course I was great at what I did and I arranged.

Kate: The first ever marketing newsletter for any of the channels, it was ours. And it got all of this. This is before MailChimp. Okay. So I was like in outlook having to send multiple copies because you could only send it to 250 people at a time. Remember that there was like no formatting. And I got us. Just a huge amount of press.

Kate: Just because I’m a bulldog, and I was like I think we should do this. And I’m gonna ask all these people to republish it and forward it, et cetera. And they did. And and then I got shit on for my success. So that was confusing because you’re like, I’m killing it. Why aren’t people excited about this?

Kate: It’s because they’re threatened. And I dunno if that’s why I have my own company and I don’t have to deal with. Ego, except for my own. now , the mountain. What were the other two questions you asked? 

Brent: What is your day to day role and one of your passions in life?

Kate: Oh we might have covered the passion but I think at the moment, my biggest passion is floating. I love the weightlessness of floating in a pool and we have a kitty pool and in text one, thank God for those people democratizing this thing, and we’ve had one for a while. It’s 12 feet by four feet, maybe three.

Kate: And there’s just enough room for two people to float. We built a solar heater out of black hose and a black piece of wood and a there’s a pump. And it does when there’s not a heat wave. It’s usually 88 degrees, which is what I like Brent, and me and my noodles are out there just floating away every day.

Kate: I’m allowed three songs, so I bring the Bose out there and I listen to three songs on the radio. Actually, I can still tolerate live radio and by tolerate, I really mean that cause it’s. Fucking terrible. Really terrible, but there’s this one station here that they mostly play 80 songs with and I’m a child at the eighties.

Kate: So I’m like, Hooters, Eddie grant, Steve Miller. Yes. And sometimes I’m lucky and I get three great songs. Sometimes they throw in some, another seventies, crap like BGS, or I don’t really like Harry Nelson, stuff like that. And I’m just like, I’m just waiting for the next good one. But that’s my passion at the moment.

Kate: And then. Who am I? What am I doing? I’m the CEO of lately lately uses artificial intelligence to repurpose long form content like text and video and audio into bite size social posts that it knows very specifically, which parts will get you the highest engagement. . 

Brent: Yeah, that’s great. And I am a, I’m a user of lately for longly.

Brent: It’s been a great tool for us. I do want to just dip back into podcast guests, because it’s not always a two street. And when people come on as a guest that are, that have an agenda that are trying to. They are not a good guest. And I sometimes just look at the clock and think, oh my God, can this 30 minutes be over?

Brent: And now the 110 guests that I’ve had are thinking, are you one of them? Kate, you are not because this is the second time you’ve been on and I really appreciate you coming on. But it is sometimes difficult and it’s, my, my job is made much easier. when the guest holds the conversation, but it’s not a sales pitch.

Brent: And I, there’s nothing more than I hate in a sales pitch from a guest. But anyways, this is my pitch for lately because it is, it’s such a great product. And I’m falling in love with AI. I just signed up with open AI. I would I want want to get into the Dolly thing and there’s so many fun things happening in.

Brent: That I’m very interested in. But I do wanna talk a little bit about some of the entrepreneur journeys you’ve been going through and also, in our green room, I do wanna just bring up the white elephant in the room, which is me. And we did talk a little bit about, and you brought it up too.

Brent: The fact that there isn’t I don’t have a lot of diversity in my podcast and I would like to work on that. I’m part of the entrepreneurial community here in Minneapolis and Kate. I was just educating Kate, when we, before as well, Minneapolis is a city in the middle of the country.

Brent: And I know people on the coast don’t realize that there’s a part. World that between New York and California, but we don’t have to go into that. So I’m on I do sit on the diversity and inclusion committee. and I always ask myself, why should I be on this? And actually if I had some good guess, and they’ve given me some good answers on why me as a white male should be on this.

Brent: And part of it is just awareness and talking about it, because if everybody doesn’t talk about it, then it becomes something that’s back room. And I think it’s always better if we do talk about it. So not to belabor the point, but I know that there’s challenges in that. There wasn’t even a question 

Kate: in there.

Kate: I have a comment though, if you don’t mind. My friend, please, Jen. God, what’s her last name? Vander something, sorry, Jen. Vander. Awesome. I’m just gonna call her that. So she, we were on a panel once and she. express this in a way that was the first time I got it, which is this, when you are the underdog, you can only be lifted up by those who are on top.

Kate: And the mistake many people make is not including the people who are on top in the conversation and we rely on them to lift us up. So in your case, it has to be white men in the conversation because they hold the power in the world. They. For the most part. And not excluding them is just a stopper right away.

Kate: So I get that on the, just a flip side and we should go into politics cuz that’s dangerous. But I did, I was a marketing consultant for a company called the perception Institute for about a year and their mission in the world or a nonprofit is to change the way that black men are portrayed in the media, black men.

Kate: And. . And so I learned a lot about people, about black Americans specifically and how they feel about white people of intervening in their business. And it was mostly not nice, which was interesting, and the overall reaction was like, stay out of it with your woke perceptions. Because what you think is right is not what we believe at.

Kate: And I’m generalizing. So forgive me there, but just a perspective, like it’s the S U right? You have to never assume what the other, what any side wants. Everybody has to be at the table for the magic to happen for the two-way street to happen. Let’s get back to that. And the second comment I had related to that was.

Kate: You touched on what makes for a good guest, so I believe it or not, I was a terrible interviewer on radio for a long time. I would get very nervous and I was young. And so I didn’t have a lot of experience, doing that. I was, it was the me show. I was great at the me show , I didn’t know how to make people shine or ask the right questions, cuz I was so nervous about pushing all the buttons and getting things right at the same time. Cuz you’re in my day you were managing like the whole show, just like you are with your podcast. So there’s a lot to do behind this in the green room, as you’re saying.

Kate: So to tie in what makes a good guess is when you are able to lift others up. Number one a and that’s I think that goes both ways, but as an entrepreneur. what we say is make a fan. Don’t make a sale right now. The value there might sound corny, but I believe in the long tail, this is the radio that I grew up in is all about the long tail.

Kate: The album cuts, not the hits, right? Get people to buy the records, make fans who are loyal to the death. And I saw the power of those people because when you make a fan, they work for you for free and they can’t help the. And so you get multiple banks for your buck because you make the sale and you make a machine, 

Brent: right?

Brent: Yeah. No. And I really apologize for what I’m gonna say now. because I do feel like now I want to change the name of my podcast to ceiling. Because I would love to get ceiling fans but keep going. I know. I’m sorry, Brent. that was so bad. Hold your nose, 

Kate: everybody. 

Brent: Yeah. So I, my wife and I had this conversation about ceiling, the Mar Marcia Beski talked has a song about a hundred tampon.

Brent: And in, there was there, there was the first lady in space. They gave, she was gonna be in space for a week. So they gave her a hundred tampons and and she has a she’s on Ted. She has a Ted talk anyways. So they, she talked about the fact that she has this song. And then all of a sudden, all these men started berating her about, you shouldn’t make fun of these engineers at NASA.

Brent: Like who knows, like you, you need a hundred tampons right. For a week. And it was, we had a very good convers, my wife and I had a very nice conversation about it. And I, for me, I thought it through and I’m like, yeah, that doesn’t really make sense. I don’t, I don’t know any better, but her point was, there was a lot of men that came out and were.

Brent: Hit Eric making her feel bad that she’d come up with this song or not making her, I don’t know the right words, but sounds funny. They were ham whatever social media, what social media does, that’s what they were doing. 

Kate: I have a segue 

Brent: for this.

Brent: Okay. Yes, we need a segue. Yes, go. 

Kate: So one of my favorite lines is Catherine Hahn in. the, we are the Millers when she calls it a Tanin and she’s from the Midwest. She is in this movie anyways, and so around my house, it’s called a Tanin and we laugh every time cuz it’s so funny to us, but that’s that ability by the way to take so.

Kate: and spin it in a new way, which is really what our jobs are about. This is marketing. How do you get fresh perspective? Whether it’s a hundred tampons in space or throwing a hot dog down a hallway, as she says, right? There’s I love that. I love. we, I just did a post on LinkedIn. I don’t know why I was inspired by somebody on Twitter.

Kate: And I said, words that make you like wanna bar. And I said, I’ll start. And the word was trousers. And so everybody piled on with not only just words that they don’t like the way they sound moist, got a lot of votes. For example, salacious got some. But then also biz lab was all over the place. So people were like partners and utilize at the end of the day, like all that kind of 

Brent: stuff.

Brent: I’ll reach out to you later. Yeah. 

Kate: Yeah. So I was just thinking about the, how we. how we can overuse words to death. So they don’t mean anything like awesome, which I am guilty of as well. All of America overuses. Awesome. But the whole point of communicating well is to don’t only communicate well, but to communicate with meaning.

Kate: and to hear some biz bla drive engagement, to make people lean in is to take something very familiar and just turn it just enough so that somebody is you catch the ear and you make them react. It’s the reaction that we all want. And I love thinking about that. I love so my husband is great at this he’ll he has all these isms one.

Kate: The hammer lane and the granny lane. That’s what he calls the fast lane and the slow lane on the highway. Or dirt nap. That’s like obviously dying 

Brent: dirt nap. Okay. 

Kate: Or booger sugar is cocaine , which we were just watching that Tom cruise movie American made, which is a great movie, by the way.

Kate: Even if you don’t like Tom cruise, it’s a 

Brent: great movie. I agree. I’ve seen it. Very good. Okay. Alright, so let’s move into little, let’s talk a little bit about entrepreneur entrepreneurship. My daughter just got a job with a CRM company called endear and they’re based outta New York, a very young entrepreneur lady who started it with a partner and te.

Brent: Did you have any struggles as an entrepreneur? 

Kate: oh, so many. I think the one that’s ever present for me is it’s, I don’t know if it’s confidence I, I don’t have an imposter syndrome per se, but I take things personally, that, that whole. Bullshit about it being work and business and not personal it’s it is bullshit, to me it is of course it’s personal, it affects people’s lives, right?

Kate: I That’s, it has to be right. And I’ve had to make decisions. I’ve had to let people go. I know how all that, how hard that stuff is. But I,

Kate: the pressure that I put on myself is pretty sprint. I perceive that there’s pressure being put on me by others as well. That may or may not be true, but there’s certainly that there’s that perception whether it’s my customers, like I wanna succeed for you. Whether it’s other women entrepreneurs, my investors, my fam, my family my team, obviously Lauren and Brian and Kristen, Jason and everybody, Kristen and Katie, Greg, I think that’s all.

Kate: Did I forget anyone, Emma Alex , and I, the problem is I don’t know what failure looks like. So let me just put this in the ground for everybody. We’re bringing it down. Brian, my CTO is very good at being positive and PR and practical. He’s an engineer. So he, he, he shoots pretty straight and I’m always.

Kate: wallowing in the negative. And he’s dude, like you have to really understand this, the odds of what lately is. So the chances of startups succeeding at all is already ne it’s negative. The fact that lately still exists. The fact that we have revenue, that we have hundreds of customers, we’ve had thousands before, we’re figuring out how to do it all here.

Kate: He’s like lately should have died a million. So you really need to acknowledge this, but it’s not that I don’t acknowledge it. It’s that the road to getting to the next level, like the levels, the goal post move a lot, which is very frustrating to me. Like I’m trying to figure out Brent constantly not how to win the game, how to beat the machine.

Kate: Okay. That’s all I think about how do I beat the fucking machine? Beat it into the ground. That’s what I. That’s all I see. And it’s not enough for me just to have a nice little business here. That’s not the game I’m playing, right? That’s not this game. And when you do everything that’s prescribed and you do it like to the fucking awesomeness of awesome platinum level superstar, galactic awesomeness, which is what we do.

Kate: And you still can’t hit the milestones. That’s defeating debilitating to me personally. I take it personally, cuz then I think, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I fucking do this? And I hang my head in shame, honestly. The buck stops with me. It has to be me. It’s not I can, there’s all, there’s the great resignation.

Kate: There’s, COVID, there’s the market. There’s all these things to blame, of course. But I don’t think of any of them. It’s always hard. There’s always some shit out there. So it’s me. I’m the one where that can control. What’s happening or figure it out. And, I think just generally that’s the biggest hurdle is my, is myself in a way.

Kate: I don’t have an off button, cuz I want this. It’s not that I want this so bad, but I know it’s I know it’s not even possible. I know it’s probable. I.

Kate: And so I also, that means, I know all the pieces are in front of me here already. I know that they are, this is a matter of assembling the pieces. I have the right. Is which is a blessing and a curse. It’s right here. But the fact that I can’t figure it out makes me feel like an idiot , and none of that’s true.

Kate: I rely on you. I rely on our customers. We’re always asking for feedback. I’m terrible at taking criticism, but my team is great at it, which is why I had them, and we’re always looking for ways sorry for rambling but entrepreneurs, here’s a great tip. Someone told me, and you get a lot of tips that are garbage, cuz everybody wants to give you some advice.

Kate: But a friend of mine said, look for the patterns. So if you can look for the patterns in everything, whether it’s the way the funnel works or how much MRI you’re making or what customers click first, right? All these little patterns are macro and micro patterns. You can double down or then fix them.

Kate: and my, I joke all the time. My, my great skill is seeing the glass half empty. That’s what I do. I look for problems, patterns of problems, so can you imagine being my husband? He’s a nice guy. 

Brent: yeah I am. I am the glass half full and my wife is the glass half empty. So we actually balance each other out.

Brent: We’re either full or empty at the same time empty we’re empty. So I definitely can empathize with your struggle. And I do of want to talk about as a leader that empathy part that you have to have for your employees do you see a difference in differe? Styles of leadership that work or don’t work, or I don’t know.

Brent: I I see sometimes that some entrepreneurs want to like they assume that your employee feels some way and if you feel differently, it doesn’t matter to what it’s not it, the feelings of your employees don’t matter. And I feel like that I’m I believe they matter, but that some of that empathy isn’t there in a lot of entrepreneurs.

Kate: I had a shitty job, so I know what it feels like to have that kind of panic attack and go to work and dread every day. And I don’t want to any make anyone feel that way. I am very lucky because all of those people on my team are very kind and they’re very loyal and they’re also very smart. I forget sometimes.

Kate: That they can’t read my mind. I try to apologize for that. Luckily they have a high tolerance for my bitch. That’s ano very lucky thing, because I can be an asshole. I can be, of course, and I’m so grateful. I have to surround myself with people who have that tolerance because I.

Kate: Always apologize for it. There’s too much to go on, but I have to also obviously reward and acknowledge. And so I need also the kinds of people who either don’t need that all the time can get it from each other. My re I feel my perception is the reward is to provide a workplace that is fun, which it really is.

Kate: It’s we have like unlimited vacation, no one ever takes a vacation. I don’t know why they don’t, but they don’t. You can, you don’t have to ask to go to the doctor or anything. You just, nobody cares. Get the work done. We don’t really care what you’re doing during the day. If there’s. And everyone is very autonomous.

Kate: There’s, some things I’m a micromanager about. I know this, but my aim is to not be that way and to, to a fault, honestly, like sometimes I’m trying to figure out why these people, these two people, maybe aren’t getting along or hearing each other. And then I realize , I don’t bring them together enough.

Kate: cuz we’re all just out doing our own thing. We’re running and running. And one thing sometimes I forget that. Because we’re, know, we are dispersed and we always have been dispersed and I like that because I feel it’s so much more productive. I hate being in office when people are coming in and talking to me all the time.

Kate: I hate that. I can’t get anything done, and. , I will forget how smart they are. I’m like, shit, Chris has really good ideas. I need to ask him these questions more often and then utilize them, or Lauren is, I think she’s 15 years younger than me. I forget, but she’s younger than me.

Kate: And I forget that she is because she’s so 

Brent: she’s 10

Brent: And I talked to Lauren. Lauren is fantastic by the way. Isn’t she great. Keep going. Sorry. Yeah. She’s didn’t mean interrupt to you. 

Kate: No, I’m sorry for she’s so smart. And my, for all of them, my expectation is I, these people are on a scale of one to 10. They’re twelves. They’re all twelves. And so when they’re only tens, I get on their asses about.

Kate: Shame on me. Because I believe in them I respect them and I’m so impressed with them. And Lauren is certainly one of those people, and but she can tolerate my shit, which I, that this is also what I appreciate. So the way I try to reward, money is not the thing that motivates my team because.

Kate: We often can’t pay each other or the salary isn’t very high, but I try to create a workplace where there’s like a ton of flexibility and a ton of autonomy, because these are the things that I need personally. And I know there’s people out there like me, and I think to providing a safe place, like I call it where people can be themselves.

Kate: Like we don’t, we don’t really have a lot of rules, the golden rule, our biggest rule. And. a lot. We have two meetings a week, one for sales and one for the whole team, cuz we’re small enough. We can do these things still. And at those meetings we have what’s called the rolling agenda. And so the rolling agenda is a Google doc that goes on and on for years and everyone’s name is on it and you’re supposed to write what you’re doing, what you’ve done and what you’re doing there.

Kate: And everyone reads it an hour before the meeting and at the top of the meeting is the actual agenda discussion items. And the discussion items are the things that we all actually need to talk about together. Cuz I don’t need to have a report of what you’re doing and plus I can see it all in slack. Our slack channel is I don’t I poo threads because I want everybody, I want it to bleed over for everybody.

Kate: It saves me the time from repeating myself from silo to silo and it makes everybody sympathetic or empathetic. And so the rolling agenda what’s so funny is there’s almost never dis any discussion items cuz we’ve already had the discussion. So it’s a hang we get on the phone and we find out that.

Kate: Chris’s son, Zach just performed at a comedy club and killed it with amazing jokes. A couple of Dick jokes, in front of his grandparents, but I guess they were killer. Awesome. Katie’s daughter, Ruby just scored some major role in a play. I think it was beauty. The beast she’s the lead, which is pretty great.

Kate: Kristen’s getting ready to go to Paris with her two children. For the, and her husband. So the first family vacation and maybe the last one, cuz everybody’s going to college, this is what we talk about, I love that about them, Brent, how lucky am I? 

Brent: Yeah. That’s building a team like that is, is like the dream of any entrepreneur.

Brent: It I think you’ve talked to a lot about, about that team building and how you’ve been successful in it. What would you. If you were gonna say something to an entrepreneur who was hung up with instead of that mentality that you have for performance I don’t care what you do all day, just so you deliver what we’re expecting.

Brent: The opposite of that is I, all I care about is that you come in and punch the clock. right there. There’s a dichotomy there and there’s a big swing, right? If you’re just assembling something and you’re punching the clock, you know what you get because you’re assembling something.

Brent: But the same thing is you could come in and assemble something very poorly. Or, if you’re not checking, there’s gotta be a balance between performance. I’m a firm believer in performance and the outcome of that. Do you think people that look at clock punching, miss the outcome part? 

Kate: Sure. I’ve been that I worked in retail in the mall.

Kate: I know what it’s like. it sucks. And I hated it. Sorry, dad. I worked for my dad for a while. I love my dad. I think, so like begets, like when you are around other people who are working at a superior level and you’re not, it’s obvious and you feel bad and you want to catch up. So that’s one thing, right?

Kate: And I’ve surrounded myself. I’m very lucky to have these people who are, these are amazing people. Please never leave me please. And I’m always concerned when, like one of them, if someone’s gonna get married, Girlfriend moves in or something like that. I’m like, is my productivity gonna go down?

Kate: It’s so mean, that’s my first thought. Then my second thought is I want joy for this person. Hello. What’s wrong with you, Bradley. But I think that I think we were saying earlier, like the work life balance is bullshit. Like work is life and life is work. And if you’re not having a great time during what you’re doing, you’re not feeling fulfilled and joyful.

Kate: and like you’re doing something to improve the world or yourself, then you really need a different job. I It’s so important. I think, for entrepreneurs, the objective, I always think, and I think about this, especially when I’m like arguing with my husband is what is money? What is the outcome that I want here?

Kate: What’s the outcome. So let’s back into it is the outcome to make someone feel wrong because they fucked up is that the. that you want, you wanna make them feel bad. So then they don’t sell shit for you all day long. Cause they feel bad and they’re done. I’ve done that before. I’ve done that. I like making PE people feel wrong.

Kate: Like I do. I like calling them out on their shit. I’m trying to go to therapy to improve this, but it’s there, it’s the thing. And I, but I’ve learned not to do that because what is the point now? Now sometimes you have to correct someone on what they’ve done in order for them to improve.

Kate: I’m not great at this, but I, that is my aim, Poor Lauren. She, I like people to write copy for me. So we’re always, we work together on sales. And so she is in charge of the follow up with the sale, right? So we have a call. We have to email them, she’ll draft an email and Google I’ll take 95% of it apart and rewrite it and then be like, okay, here you go.

Kate: Now her feeling can be defeat defeated, like thanks for wasting my time. I explained to her, I was like, you don’t know how much time you saved me just by starting this. And my point of taking a part isn’t to shit on you. My, my point is to give myself something to play, where I can move around.

Kate: And I said, this was a, like earlier last year or something. And I was like, I will do. I promise to do a better job of telling you why I’m rearranging these things and what, why I’m putting these things in here. If you wanna learn how to do it better, but at the same time, I have to remember.

Kate: Lauren came from she. So she has a she’s smarter than all of us. She has a master’s degree in psychology analytics. And she came from working at the cancer ward in a hospital, God. And took the first job at lately as head of customer service, which she killed it at. And then she ran our sales team and now she.

Kate: Chief operations officer. So she has some very deep legacy knowledge of the company, but she didn’t come from sales. That’s not her background. None of us actually have come from sales me the most. I have the most experience in sales and we have a 98% sales conversion. Brent, Kristen come from sales.

Kate: Chris comes from radio like me,

Kate: the reason, of course the product is awesome, but we. Fucked up that demo 50,000 ways sideways to Minneapolis. Okay. I’ve seen it. Me too. And the demo does sell itself, but it’s the people, it’s the people that sell it. And it’s because Lauren, her ability to read the room and by the room, any room in a room, an empty room on a camera, in a zoom call or a room full of 85 people at SAP.

Kate: Like she has those nuances. And that, and Chris has the same thing as well. These guys this is about being nice, right? It’s about being thoughtful. It’s about listening. It’s about they know both of them are, I’m talking about them cause they’re my chief salespeople specifically, but like they can stand on stage any kind of stage, whether it’s just a call or actually on a stage and lead a room, they have that capability to do.

Kate: But at the same time they know when to listen. I don’t have that capability. I just like to be on stage and hear the sound of my own voice. Sorry.

Brent: So what would you say to To an entrepreneur then that is that they’re building this team and they’re, they seem to be getting a lot of turnover. Is there a magic formula in that team building model or is there yeah. Something to create community or is there anything that somebody could start.

Kate: I think the first thing is just to really think about how you wanna be treated. That’s just the most important thing. And that’s very hard cuz like you’re trying to get shit done, so you have to be very reflective constantly and to not just how you wanna be treated, but when you’re at your best, when you’re in the zone, right?

Kate: What are people around you doing to facilitate that for you? And then try to replicate that? I think that’s the first thing I. the second thing is to know this is so important. You have to ask people about their fucking lives, right? There are so many times where I just wanna get the meeting on and get stuff done, but I don’t, I make sure, Hey Brian, how was your trip?

Kate: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, Hey Jason, I saw that me is on Instagram and she’s like doing this whole abs routine. She looks amazing. What is that about? So he’ll tell me. You have to start that way. People want to talk about themselves. Obviously look at me. I’m someone who talks over people, Brent and I have no patience for people who are offended by that.

Kate: Honestly I believe in passion and I believe in the power to express your passion and that an interruptive culture should be celebrated because people are so excited to share their ideas.

Kate: and I don’t believe in democracy. Lately is not a democracy. I’m the leader. Although you have to make people feel as though they bring listened to right now, you can only do that with people you wanna listen to. So if you’re hiring people, you don’t wanna listen to, then you are an idiot, you’re, you have to really think about who you’re.

Kate: And we’ve made mistakes. Lauren will know, and she rolls her eyes and she tells me every time and I still make this mistake. I constantly think we need an experienced salesperson to come in here. And so I hire these fucking dudes. They’re always dudes. And. some dudes. I love they’re some of them are dudes.

Kate: I love some of them are dudes. I don’t love, and it never works out because they’re probably bold 

Brent: white dudes. They’re the worst 

Kate: is that where, how was, yeah. Or so one mistake we made by the way, which I didn’t know, this was, you cannot hire a salesperson to be both a manager and a salesperson.

Brent: Yeah. Very true. Absolutely. You can’t hire anybody to be either to do dual jobs. They’re gonna do two jobs poorly. 

Kate: Yes. And that is a mistake that I made. I didn’t. I do that. So I don’t understand why someone else can’t do that, to be honest with you. And Lauren does that. There are Brian does that.

Kate: I have superior people in the world who can do that. So it’s of like why, but it’s not everybody’s nature, so I think that’s the first thing a very easy tell for us is this is if your company, if the PE, if your employees aren’t saying. you’re doing something wrong. 

Brent: Yeah. If they’re saying you Kate, that then also you, and I’m, they don’t because I’ve talked to your employees.

Brent: If they are though, just always referring back to you, that’s also could be a problem. 

Kate: I do that by the way on purpose. So I rarely, I don’t like it when people call me the boss, I correct them and say, don’t say that I don’t like. I say we all the time, my team I rarely say my employees, I rarely do.

Kate: I need them and I don’t like the word need, this an needy team is needy, but I cannot live without them. And so they know that

Kate: I send them gifts often, like little surprises, even the. Some T all guys like pocket knives, you can give them endless pocket knives. Am I right there? 

Brent: send ’em a box of tampons. A hundred figure out what to do with these . I do, I want to just go back cuz I you talked about re you’re editing Lauren’s copy when she started it.

Brent: And I think that and it sounds like you explained to her. Why you’re doing it, I’m trying. Cause I think a lot of times a lot of times leaders will jump on they’ll just take it and they’ll do it, but they don’t give any feedback on why that happened. And that just leads to narratives in people’s heads.

Brent: And I think 

Kate: I made that mistake actually, because I assumed that she would understand and know right. And I assume that she would take the time to read it and think about it. But of course, Lauren is busy and she’s just trying to check shit off her list and get, cuz she’s the queen of productivity.

Kate: She knows that. I respect that. And so either one of us weren’t both of us, didn’t want to take the time to do what you just said, which is a very important thing to do cuz who can learn if you don’t do that. And. , know, like I said, why can’t someone read my mind? What the fuck when it’s so obvious to me, but I’m sure at the same time, she’s thinking why can’t Kate read my mind. 

Brent: So yeah, I, I have definitely got, I’ve gotten into the habit of explaining I’m always now trying to play chess with Anticipating the way somebody’s thinking. And I realize that people that are happy are more motivated and that they’re gonna be more productive when they’re motivated and that when they’re happy and productive, they’re gonna get a lot of work done.

Brent: So if I’m gonna be critical of somebody, I would like to explain all those reasons why that’s gonna. and I maybe now do it to, is the word in nauseam or something like that where you do it too much. Yes. Ad nauseum, whatever in nauseum I’m nauseous. Just that, that verbal feedback, because I think we do I also suffer from that same thing.

Brent: Of course, everybody should know what I’m thinking and yes, everybody can do this. Everybody can be a great salesperson. They can also be a developer. I fall onto that trap because I used to be a developer and I would. Of course, you can do that in AWS. I can do it in 20 minutes. Let’s watch me do it.

Brent: And everybody’s oh God, this is the worst time of my life. You can see everybody’s eyes are glazing over and pretty soon, like they’re, anyways, so to read the room, right? Yeah. Read the, yeah. And then it makes it worse on zoom, all everybody’s camera goes off and then you get done with your demo.

Brent: And then, so what did everybody think? And nobody’s there, it’s silence. Everybody’s gone to the bathroom. Oh, I’m sorry. And then one person leaves the mic on and the flush sound comes out and your zoom call was ruined or saved yeah. Or saved exactly. 

Kate: yeah, I think I oftentimes I wish people would ask me why I do.

Kate: and they don’t. And so that, that is frustrating to me because I want the initiative to, to be there and that’s, my problem is that’s why I’m the entrepreneur and these other people are not right. That’s a different skill, so I have to constantly readjust my perspective to reality and think about.

Kate: What’s gonna, what’s gonna get the job done. Like you said, like, how do we get people to be happy and motivated and successful all at the same time? I think that

Kate: it’s important to ask people. Do you like working here? Sometimes you, I brace myself for the answer. You still like working here? Are you leaving? I just wanna know. I think that. knowing what your weaknesses are really important. Like I said I’m not a great cheerleader, but Katie Jordan is, she’s amazing.

Kate: She does it for me. And Chris is great at that. Everybody is there everybody piles on, but you need a cheerleader on the team if it’s not you that bubbly. When, when Lauren’s on vacation, slack is quiet. And you feel that energy gone like that. It’s so important. She she doesn’t even real.

Kate: I don’t know. She realizes that she probably does that. How. Much that energy. Slack is our workplace, right? That’s our work environment. And so it’s the, you can see the thermometer of how things going now. When I like last week, an investor who had hard, committed first to a smaller amount, and then to three times an amount hard commit pulled out for no reason.

Kate: I just was like, mother, fuck. I said every swear word of the thing like that could be. And no, I don’t do it in the general channel. I just did it with Lauren, Jason and Brian because I don’t wanna upset everyone else, but I need them to know cuz they’re my they’re. We are running the business together.

Kate: We’re running the numbers, we’re looking at all these things, but Brian and Jason are co-founders like, they do need to know what happened with this investor. And I need the ability in a place to express. Frustration. I also need them to have sympathy for me because like, when I have to ask them to not have a paycheck, they need to know exactly why, and I’m not doing it on purpose and it’s not cuz I’m selfish or I’m money grubber, there’s a real reason and it’s very painful for me.

Kate: So that sympathy, empathy thing here I think is so important. Like I’m just a person, Brent, I’m trying to do this thing. and they are these people’s lives are in my hands a little bit. Cuz a paycheck is a paycheck. I 

Brent: Yeah I want to just jump on that happiness thing. I had a post on LinkedIn recently that I just put out there.

Brent: I meet with every person on my team every quarter. one on one, just for 15 minutes to get to know them. And we have team members in India and Mexico . I do that and I’ve always had this. I’ve always had a question that I’ve asked and I think I’m asking, are you happy in your job or something like that?

Brent: And I been thinking about it and like I was thinking like does anybody ever ask, are you happy? And period, because yeah. Are you happy period? Because there is. And maybe happy in your job or happy, whatever it’s different. And knowing if you’re happy, if you’re not happy.

Brent: Again, people probably aren’t gonna tell me in that short time, hopefully, maybe over time. In fact I recently did have an interview that I did where he said that I’m very intimidating and it’s hard. Like you had said, you want people to tell you the things that like if they don’t understand something and I think people don’t tell people things because leaders can be intimidating.

Brent: I can get very impatient and then become very I can be an asshole. And and especially when something going the way it should go and. I’m gonna assume you can relate with this. This is something that’s so obvious. Why aren’t we all doing this? Whatever that thing is oh my God, this is obvious. We should know this. You always get French fries at McDonald’s what thing? Yeah. Which I don’t, it’s the thing I don’t, I’m just making the insane, but it’s come on, everybody knows that in. As you’re driving on the freeway and you stop and you get a burger, you get fries, right? You get a Coke and a fries. Everybody does that. What the heck is going on with our team?

Brent: You guys are only getting chicken sandwiches. This is ridiculous. Everybody knows it.

Brent: It’s true. So I don’t know, is there, I think it’s a hard that’s, it’s gotta be one of the hardest things as a leader to give that space to somebody to allow to to open up and tell you, cuz it is a little bit of vulnerability from that person. And and maybe that’s I’m dealing.

Brent: Three different cultures. It used to be four. We used to have an office in Bolivia. But we have three cultures now. So I think culture’s a little different, right? 

Kate: Yeah. I think, one thing is I always, and I’ve said this before, like I expect them to go to to complain about me, to each other.

Kate: I expect that happens to all managers and bosses. That’s part of the role that you’re accepting. And so good. Do it complain to each other, get it out of your system, certainly. The same way how many times you be, are you like fucking Brent? I say that of course, about myself, about, oh, whoever it is that’s just your, and it’s not you mean like you, you have to know that, like to and express a frustration.

Kate: because someone isn’t perfect in this second moment. It’s meaningless it’s just this thing, evaporating the world. And when you have people around me sometimes I’ll complain to Lauren about other people and the company and just cause I need that outlet with somebody and the validation that I’m not alone in this thought, and I’m sure they all, I know they all do this to each other, which is fine.

Kate: And I think they’re, that’s part of the culture that you wanna encourage, right? People are gonna vent it’s. This is human nature. And I think of it as if lately if everything about lately was. Just smooth sailing. Boy, we have no fun whatsoever. This is part of the adventure.

Kate: Are we gonna make it, are we not? So it, that ups and downs, it keeps it interesting. Like I, I think that’s why they come to work every day is cuz they’re wondering what’s gonna happen. I don’t know. 

Brent: That’s it’s often said that without stress, without contention, without arguments, that you don’t move anything forward.

Brent: If everyone is always on the same page you could be going in the right direction, but you may not. And having a dissenter, there is always a, it was always, it’s always a having a dissenter there to ask those questions is important. And I think that essential. Yeah, it’s essential, right? We, as a leader we need to make that space.

Brent: I know that we’ve sent people we’ve sent Indian developers to Germany in onsite to work. And one of their, one of their things that they’ve said was that they were surprised that other team members on the German team would. Hard pushback to the boss in the room. And for them, that was an eye opening thing.

Brent: Cause their culture more is more around. And I’m sure I’m gonna get a whole bunch of Indian developers not telling you. No, it’s not like that here. But their culture is more about doing what you’re told. And you don’t often. It’s not a strong cultural trait to question the boss and to say this I’m a white guy anyways.

Brent: I don’t know, concern that because that’s my perception of the culture. I’m gonna I’m making a disclaimer. I’m gonna put a little asterisks in my transcript. Don’t get back to me on this, but I digress. 

Kate: Yeah, I gotta go do shit, Brent.

Kate: I’ll say this one thing, we just released a new feature where the AI is rearranging what it finds to pull out into wholly new content. Okay. it, we just launched it like the other day. We haven’t told anybody. We haven’t even told our customers like so you’ll just start to see it suddenly the surprise you’ll be like, who wrote this?

Kate: Oh my God. The AI. and it’s pretty good. All 

Brent: right, I’m gonna go try it. 

Kate: Yeah. Keep an eye out. Yeah. 

Brent: Kate, I always give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug at the end of the podcast. So what would you like?

Kate: Oh Jesus, I’m gonna plug forgiveness today. Forgiveness. 

Brent: all right. Thank you. 

Kate: Yeah, I think we all 

Brent: need a little mark. Kate Laly Kate . 

Kate: This is why just so you know, I’m on the air. I stopped saying my name because I mispronounced my own name once in an interview with the guys from we. And so I never said it again.

Brent: Yeah. Did you wean yourself off that? 

Kate: About a thing on me. Oh my God. I love you. 

Brent: Yes, you’re so funny. Kate Bradley co founder of lately, CEO of lately. Thank you so much for being here today. 

Kate: Thank you, Brent. 

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