 This is Startup and Shorthand. Approximately 20% of businesses fail in the first year and around 50% go under in the first five years according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The companies that survive do so by navigating step-backs and creating a culture with effective leadership. They build a distinct brand. This is part one of a three-part Bright Live podcast series where we break down how to build a distinct brand. In this episode, we are focusing on leadership and all that goes into becoming an effective leader. On the panel, we have Jacob Pashnik, the founder of Let Us Grow, Manu Sieve, the founder of Alpha IO, and Lauren Brocastle, the founder of Sweet Lawrence. In this segment of the series, we discuss quiet quitting, navigating the hiring process, and doing personality tests with investors only to have them back out on Christmas Eve. Hello and welcome. We are Startup and Shorthand here with Bright Live at Benny Boy Brewing in Lincoln Heights, LA. Today we have a session called How to Build a Distinct Brand. The first hour we'll be talking about leadership, second we'll be talking about culture, and the third we'll be talking about navigating setbacks. I'm Nick. This is Diego. To my right, Manu Sieve from Alpha IO, Lauren Castle from Sweet Lawrence, and Jacob Petchnik from Let Us Grow. Let's get into the topics. First one is how to hire a team. And I'm curious about your experiences in hiring your teams. Are you looking for traits that you don't have, traits to strengthens the ones that you already possess? Manu, do you want to start us off? For sure, for sure. So firstly, thank you for having me. Of course. Yeah. Thanks for being here. Always a pleasure to chat. I think a great leader should hire, you know, according to the things that you're missing. That's what makes up composing a fantastic team. But sometimes you also have to attach your chemistry with that person, especially if you're building a small team in a startup that is kind of like going to build the culture across that entire, you know, ecosystem that you end up building. You have to vibe with these people. They're going to become your family. They're going to give, you know, so many hours. So, you know, for me, yes, hire people that do things that are, you know, that you don't know how to do, but also hire people that you want to hang out with. The one thing I always focus on when hiring is, I say like hire for passion, not for, not for like position. And what that means is like, you really want someone who's going to almost do it for free. Like just be so into it, whether it's social media, like our team here, oh, and Alex here here, they're like, they would do this no matter what, because it's like almost a hobby to them. But it's really hard to find people. We call them like 120% are like people for passion. Jacob, when it came to your, obviously you have a very specific thing where it's almost like people with a green thumb should be someone who joined your team. But in that, they also have to be like really good at certain tasks. And so how did you go about either finding or like even hiring those people and getting them on board with the overall mission? Yeah. Well, the last few years, I think it's been a lot easier because people find us. And I think I can't tell you how many people have said, like, what I'm doing isn't meaningful. You know, I want to, I want to do something with purpose. I want to help the environment. I want to, you know, help people. So it's much easier. You know, there's a much bigger pool of talent. I think a lot was the pandemic made people question their value systems. And so it really brought that out. But I'd also started a number of companies in the past and in the past it was a lot harder, you know, to find that. It was a lot, you know, about the salary and, you know, all this other stuff. And a technique I had, you know, years ago is I would always try to hire a person, you know, before ever talking salary. It was just like, we're not going to talk about that. Let's figure out if it's a fit. If it's a fit, then we'll make the numbers work. Yeah. But it was really hiring on everything, you know, other than that. Like, is this your dream? You know, is this your dream job? And I like to put it, you know, on the other person. Yeah. You know, for them to tell me. What are some things that you learned just around maybe the hiring process of you teasing that out without asking that directly? Well, I would ask it directly. How would you do that? What would you say? I would say, is this your dream job? You know, or what else would you want to be doing? It's very important. Where does this, yeah, where does this rank and the types of things you're looking at? What are other things you're considering? So you can sort of see when someone's looking for a job versus, like, you know, this is exactly what I want to do. There's nothing else. There's no number two, no number three. And they might not still be the right person, but at least that really filters out. I want people that love, you know, what we're doing and want to be here, no matter what. And then historically, I've had a very low, you know, attrition rate because of just finding the right people. And Lauren, how about you? I think it's a combination of all these things. But I think definitely when you're growing a business and it's you need people that are in it to win it. So like it can't just be about the salary or even that they just love like the business because I've had some people love the concept of what we're doing, but not really be like in it to win it and focused on goals and kind of ROI. And so I think after kind of several years of hiring people, we finally have such an awesome team. And I think we've tried to find the best of the best, each kind of managing their own department. And, you know, it's a combination of all those things. Like they have to be kind of that's even if they're getting paid a good salary, they're scrappy in nature, you know, like they're in it to win it. Like they love this. They're really measuring the results and the results driven and they really care and they're fun to work with. And so it does build that culture. And but then the day if they're not performing, like what are we doing here? How do you suss that out during the interview then? If they are truly in it to win it? Because anyone can say anything in an interview, but like that's the kind of thing to me that only comes through from watching someone do their work, you know, over a time period. I think it's like it's a ton of conversations to try to get to know someone like and hear their thought process and what do they come up with and how do they assess issues and what do they think success looks like. And I think tons of reference checks to like really kind of get to know this person and are they results driven kind of, you know, are they because I think again, like, I don't know, we've had a lot of people that have been like fun, but not necessarily have moved the needle on company. And I think when you're in a fast growing company, you know, just the the stakes are high and expectations are high. I have a small team. We're less than 15 people. So just everyone really, really counts. Yeah. And I think being very, very clear at the beginning, like, or I'm a very goal oriented person and goal oriented company. Are they cool with that? Like, do they like that? Or is that is that too stressful for them or not kind of what they're looking for? So I think it helps us. And I think they need to be in it to win it, but also have seen what winning looks like. That's what I look for. It's like, have they ever seen success before and do they know what it takes to get there? Because I think there are a lot of people who haven't seen success and then they don't really know that they need to, you know, put it all in and what winning actually takes. And I used to look, you know, a long time ago at people's like where they went to school and things like that. And I would actually put like more top caliber schools higher up. But I'm very, you know, I don't do that anymore. It's like, I look for people who really scrappy and they just, they didn't, maybe they didn't go to school, you know, or they, they did everything they could to rise. We actually have a question about that. Raina, let's bring you up on stage and you can ask. Raina's question has to deal with whether our guests start from within their own networks when it comes to hiring the right person and what other ways they might go about hiring the right candidate? That is an excellent question. If I knew the answer to that question, my job would be so much easier. But what I find and I've found is the people that are willing to give 120% usually come to you. They find a way, you know? I have not found that actually. I think some of my first hires were in my network and I felt comfortable with them because I had a relationship with them. I knew them. It was like a dream if they joined the company. But other hires we've actually, we've tried to do without recruiters. We've tried to save money. We've tried to, and what we found is actually the best hires have been through like very specialized recruiters who have introduced us to people that we would never be exposed to before but who are like top of the game. And I don't know, they were really able to help us like connect the dots like you guys would be a good culture fit. Recruiters, I'm a big fan of, even though they're expensive. I don't know if I know the pattern. I think we get good people from different channels like through the network, people come find us. We use a few recruiters. And then I just look for like super human acts. I remember years ago, someone applying for a job. I think it was back when we used fax machines, faxing the resume, no answer. So like finding our address somehow, from the fax number coming to the office. And I was like, wow, this person's got a lot of hustle. Yeah, agree. And so when I see that, it's like I definitely give those people an opportunity. Of course, look how hard they've worked. It's like you were not there any choice. You were there only choice. And you know it's gonna be a fantastic like exchange. Maybe you'll clash at some point, but there will be a lot of like, you always learn a lot from people that really wanna give as well, because they come informed. Like I had a designer that once reached out to us via email with a full UX UI redesign of our homepage. That was like her email to us. She's like, I would like to do this. How do you, I guess internalize that like, are you, do you take your ego out of it? Because like you've obviously put some work into your I know, I love feedback. Yeah. That's the best. You know, if you're gonna build a fantastic product, you need people that are gonna, and that's like a key characteristic on a hire for me. They have to be willing to tell me that I'm wrong every day. Even if they think I'm gonna explode. Like, you know, they have to be like willing to just say it. But LinkedIn is great. Like I use LinkedIn all the time as well to like do deeper research and find patterns, find people that may know the people that I wanna get to, the companies that I, you know, would wanna work with. So if you're looking for a tool to kind of like really go find your dream job, I'd start just researching who your network is and how you can get to these places because you'll see that we are way more connected than we think. You know, the comments you made at the tail end of that where it's like you hire people who are honest with you and can tell you like, when things are going wrong. That's a good segue into our next little topic of trust and transparency like within your team. So like obviously as the founder CEO of a company you are expected to, you know, be a leader but you also need people like that to tell you we've got a problem here or like this isn't working. How is that set up within your company and like is that anyone can bring up a problem like that or is it just like, you know, you have a chain of command like how do you approach that? It's so funny like it's so funny because there's different personality types, right? Even there's no chain of command, that's the short answer. It's like it could sometimes just be the intern and the intern just has like this voice and they're like, no, this is wrong. We need to change it all. And sometimes it could be like your right hand but then they'll pull you into an office and have a conversation. So it's like, it varies but you have to let them know that regardless of being angry because everybody gets angry. I get angry all the time like on and it's usually more at myself than anything else that your, that their job is never at risk. Okay. That they have like that open door. Yes, yeah. So they're expected. Lauren, do you have any? Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, the whole reason why I hire a team is to hire people smarter than me and in different ways. So like just today we had a meeting and you know, the team kind of proposed something and it cost a lot of money. And we were like, you know, it wasn't an easy yes. When I could see the team was really upside that it wasn't like an easy yes. And like I have a call with a couple of people after and then I hear like all the reasons why like they've been researching this. They're fighting for this. They're sure about this. And then, and I love that. Cause it's like, I'm normally sold as long as they outlay kind of the argument, you know in a really compelling researched way. So I was like, okay, well, you didn't say X, Y and Z you know, now that you say that it totally makes sense. So I think like hire a team to help guide the company and be specialists and I don't know the answers to everything for sure. All I have is like a deep passion and gut for the business. And I just kind of go between all of those. Yeah. I mean, back to hiring like a key thing for me is self-consciousness. And I'd like to hire people who aren't that self-conscious that are going to be very free to speak their mind. And I want to have an environment where no one ever gets ridiculed. There's no, there's never anything personal and anything can be questioned. Anything could, anything can come up. So, you know, we're doing something new that hasn't been done before. So I don't know the answers. You need the team, you know, to think through. And I don't want to think of all the answers. I want the team to think of it. And I want them to be comfortable to throw silly things out, you know cause only one out of 10 ideas or fewer might work but you need to hear all 10. So I try to encourage that, you know in terms of the chain of command, I think as you get to be a bigger company then that starts, you know, to matter more. And I think we're, we've gone through this transition of like a founder led, you know, company where then the founder is really, you know with all the employees and has that dynamic. And then, and it's easy to kind of run point on everything and to kind of give everyone just like what they need to do to go and do their jobs to once you, you get bigger than you need to go I think to more of a team led company where you have your team members who are head of each, you know, area and you have to share philosophy with them but let them, you know, run with it and then it gets harder if somebody works under them. You know, you want to talk directly and hear that but you have to kind of allow this natural process to occur. So, you know, maybe not step in and do it as, you know quickly, you know, address things but kind of let the team nurture their, their viewpoints on things. How many people are you guys? We're 50 some. How was the transition from like 20 to 50? It's tough. Yeah. It's really tough. That's where you have to like really start setting the culture down. Yeah. And then it's all, it's totally different because when you start small, you need generalists, right? You need people who can do all different sorts of things. And then you need specialists, right? As you get bigger. And so there's like a natural change over and then the leadership again, it's like you're not telling everyone what to do really. You're, you have to really more set a course and maybe change it every quarter or more often, right? But these are initiatives and so it forces you to as a leader to get all that out on paper rather than just have it in your mind and go with the flow. But you have to spell it all out and then hope, you know, hope your team is, you know, following that. And that usually the people who were attracted to you, I think at first, they were attracted to that hands-on leadership. They're not gonna do as well without you telling them, really guiding them every step of the way. It's a different type of person who's gonna come in and say, you know, let me do this. And I think you want that because as a company gets so big, you can't be, as a leader, you can't be overseeing everything. Right, yeah. That brings us to our next topic. Like how do you set guidance? Like you just break it up quarterly, yearly, whatever it might be, but there's not always a clear and set path that you need to take. Like, you know, there are things that you might guess it's a 60% chance that this is the right call, 40% chance it's not. And in those moments, like, you know, you as the CEO, it kind of falls on you. Maybe other people will take credit for it if it succeeds, but everyone will look to you if it doesn't. Are you surrounding yourself with peers in maybe other industries or former founders? Do you have a board? How do you go about choosing the direction to take when the direction's not always clear? I think it's a mix of all of that, right? You have advisors that you speak to about certain matters, you have trusted people that you talk to. Yeah, you're gonna have to have a board at some point and sometimes it's not gonna go the way you want it to go. And you know, and sometimes the people that you started the business with are not the right people for you to continue doing business with because the company may have outgrown them. It can happen to anyone. And so it's, you're always being pulled in a million directions. So there's no right way to know which way to go. At the end of the day, you just have to always prioritize the company in every decision that you make. Like what is the path for highest long lasting growth? And you know, pray for the best. Well, in that vein, like when it comes time to part ways with someone, like that's not an easy thing either, especially if they've been with you from the beginning. And so like, have you had that moment and what is that conversation? Yeah, I'm going through it right now. It's horrible. It's really sad, especially when you see that, you know, sometimes the logic flies out of the door, you know, for many people and you're just trying to be logical and just trying to, you know, expose the best scenario. But like the person is just coming out of it, out of hurt. And so you just once again have to continue thinking what is best for the company in this moment in this situation and just like remove ego and remove any emotion from it and just go forward. And it'll clear up, like it'll make you, you know, sometimes actually have to step up your game when it comes to governance. It'll make you have to find other outlets, as you said, like other board members have to find investors. My investors have been amazing during this whole thing. Like they've been a resource of information. They've been a resource of time. They've intervened several times. They've, you know, they've just been there to be on, be neutral and listen, because, you know, we're in the same team. Yeah, yeah. We want the company once again to be as big as it can, yeah. You chose them for a reason. I would say it's hard, but like as we were just saying, like the business, you know, grows and its needs grow and the type of personality of the person who the company needs or is attracted to the company changes too. So, you know, for sure we had people the very early days that aren't with us anymore because they love the idea of a business, but like they didn't really, they weren't in it to win it. Like they, like, you know, this isn't easy. Like sticking out with a company for several years to go from idea to, you know, Uber's success, it takes a certain personality type and also at the beginning, you know, needed more generalists that just like, you know, lead a small team. So like, hey, you just kind of, you're the person that does everything in the office, you know, and there's some people love that. And then, you know, as a company grows, you know, you're like, wait a minute, I need like the best salesperson possible or the best marketing person. So I think when we've had those conversations, I mean, it always sucks and feels weird to mix up the team, but at the same time, like, you want what's best for that person too. Like they want to be in an environment where they're going to thrive and become their best. And there's so much, there's so many businesses out there and opportunities. So I think you do have to be a little bit less emotional about it. And it's like, it's to a point where it's like, it's just a business decision. It's not about, I like you, I don't like you. It's like, there's, if there's not a fit happening, like, you got to make a change. Yeah, but sometimes there's like contractual obligations, right? Sometimes the person holds a lot of equity in the company. And so it's not a one-sided situation, which means it can also escalate for no apparent reason. Yeah. Well, I think also that's why we try to get really clear on like OKRs and goals for everyone for the year. So it's very black or white. Like here are our expectations. You've signed on to do X, Y or Z. They've helped even set up these goals. So we're not just like giving it to them. And so if things aren't starting to be met, even if they have a lot of equity or not, it's like, okay, like there's something missing here. You know, like we're upset about X, Y and Z. And so we hope to try avoid it. Have you gone through a co-founder breakup? No, I don't have co-founders. Yeah, it's different. I was referring to a co-founder situation. Well, that's different than employees. Yeah. But I think that was just the question. Sure, difficult all the same. Yeah, difficult. No, for sure. But employees, even though it's like, it could be somewhat emotional of someone that was a very, very early hire, they don't have much to do about it. You know, like the contracts are very clear. So why did you break up with the, we just, we turned into a massive tech company. We were an art company before. So the idea of the company changed. The idea of the company was always to be a giant tech company, but I think there was some romantic elements of being an art company at the same time. And which at some point we just had to break away to once again do what's best for the company. And to be one of the earliest blockchain players in the market, because we built the certification tech as a tool to certify our artwork. And we unwillingly came up with an incredible API. We have questions coming in. Susanna, we can see one of you, you can see your questions that we're gonna bring you on stage. Susanna asks, before you have to fire someone, are there any strategies that you can take to see if you can get them back on track before you make the final decision to let them go? I know Manu's answer, so we'll let Manu. Manu's gonna say there's no way out. What's the ideas there? We did two and a half years of counseling. I set out very clear goals. It took maybe four or five years for the whole thing to complete itself. So you gave them a chance to show their value. I think for me as a person, I need to have clear conscience that I tried everything in a situation that I knew that I could sometimes bring some sort of solution to it. And so that's how I approach every problem. And it's like, it's the nature of founders. They're like relentless. We don't wanna let go. It's like, it's never giving up. And it was, I do not regret doing any of the programs. I recommend all of them. From like understanding or enneagram to see if you're compatible or not, to actually doing some counseling because you'll learn a lot about yourself and about your leadership styles, which was like really unbelievable. And yeah, and just really keeping the lines of communication open. I think when the lines of communication shut down, that's when you know there's no path forward. You've never dealt with this? Yeah, I've never dealt with a co-founder or something, but a high level employee or something where you really wanna make it work. Again, I try to set really clear goals and okay ours with everyone so that it shouldn't be a surprise of like there's a disappointment here or there, but I always like to do like a warning, like have a meeting and having this not be a surprise to the person, like okay, like we're seeing this issue. Are you seeing it too? Are we on the same page about why it's happening? Do you wanna fix it? Like really understanding like, are they already like one foot out the door or like they really wanna fix it and then trying to get really clear about what I'm expecting, what my goals are, get them to sign on and say okay, in the next 90 days, like if X and Y happen, then I think we'll both feel like this is moving in the right direction and if it's not, then we're gonna have to make a change. And I think, I don't know, then I feel like I'm being as honest as possible. I'm giving them a real opportunity to turn around. There's no confusion about what I meant or what we thought and it's up to them. I think communication is definitely key and handling the situation immediately. One of my tenants is, yeah, correct hiring mistakes immediately because that can fester and, I hate breaking up with anybody or anything and that's like one of the worst things that I could do but if you hold off and you don't do anything about it, the other person, let's say in the work context, they realize they're not adding value. You realize that and then there's like resentment or frustration builds and then that just gets to be, could be destructive. So I think communicating and we'll do like a performance improvement plan, something like that. But I would say generally, like for me, when I have the gut feeling it's not gonna work out, it almost never works out. You know? So then I agree, I think it's hard. I think it's impossible. Every time I've had a company and I've had the situation, I think the better senses of being a human are put them on some path to success or like try to work something out, but it's never worked. It's always eventually failed and so it's always just kind of a big bummer, unfortunately. Also, there is a bad apple, like if there's someone who's just like- It poisons the whole bunch. Yeah, like not really happy or like they will start talking, they will start nitpicking the company instead of looking at all the positives, they look at the negatives and like that really kills morale. Like we've had bad apples and then like we let them go and all of a sudden I'm like, oh my God, I feel lighter. Like the whole energy is better. So it's really important. You have to protect the culture and the vibe of the company because people are influenced. Thank you for your question. We have another one coming in from Claudia. Claudia asks that sense strategy is always changing in startups. When you have to make the call to change course, how do you optimize that in a way that doesn't affect the team in a negative way and also keeps them motivated? When I had my first startup, we went through Y Combinator and we went through Y Combinator, we had all these amazing people giving us all this advice and the team was basically a bunch of coders and me. And so at one time, we have this very clear conversation where we're trying to raise capital and we're trying to work on our product at the same time. And so what's happening was three people were coding, one person was doing sales, me. And as soon as we start getting to this level, Michael Siebel, who's this amazing YC partner, basically said, how many customers do you guys have? To all of us, and we go zero. And he goes, great, you're all sales people now. And the coders were all very scared about this situation. And Michael was like, or you're gonna fail, up to you, get out of my office. And it was this very clear moment of, the company, especially at an early stage, will have very pivotal moments where you have to do the one thing the whole company needs. And his argument was, if you have no customers, then you're coding for no reason. And the coders' argument was, we can't have customers until we have a product to let's code. But Michael Siebel looked at it very clearly. We're at the time, at that specific moment of our company, it was about getting customers first and building a product for them instead of coding something that we thought they would like, but in reality, we could be totally wrong. And so that's just a quick story of a very early stage. You kind of do what's required as a team in that moment. And those priorities shift over time, but... I think if you're in a startup, it's expected. And I tell this to everybody that I'm gonna hire, that if you need structure, a clear definition of your role, a set of things that you're gonna do in a daily basis, you are at the wrong place. That is not what we do. We are running around like headless chickens with processes, of course, but we are always listening to the customer. So if the customer is telling me to build a sports platform today, which I am doing, but at the same time, there's someone down the street telling me that I actually wanna use your exact same structure and do a restaurant loyalty platform. I'm gonna do that too, which means my team is gonna have to figure out how to make it work between those two very adverse use cases and that's okay because we gotta listen to the client, right? We gotta listen to the market. I mean, strategy changes. I think of like, this Let Us Grow and my previous companies probably went through three or four iterations of the business plan until we got it right. And that's just a part of it. And you need people who are flexible to do that. As you then start to get to be, I mean, I would say we're startup but more a little bit past that where we're getting, where we have to set the vision and say, this is what we're doing this year, which seems like so long for me, but then if we change strategy, that's a little bit of a bigger deal. It's really navigating a bigger thing, but it's just part of it. And that's also what makes the successful company successful that they read what's going on and they adapt quickly. Marky Andreessen has a great quote. He says, strong beliefs loosely held. And I think that's like that startup in a nutshell. You have to kind of know where you're trying to go, but in that, be very willing to be wrong and then be very willing to apply the new thing. And until you have like product market fit, like it really is like humming and you figure out exactly what, how to market it, package it, what the product is, with all of that, like, you know, there's just so much tweaking. So again, the early years, like you need a team just like obsessed with the customer and like improving the product and okay, switching all the time and learning. And then once you have product market fit, it's really like, I think there's more than a strategy of like, okay, let's focus on this and grow. But yeah, I think you always need to be flexible because like the world's crazy. Look what happened in the last two years. Like no one expected COVID, no one expected supply chain issues. Like you just gotta like, you gotta be able to roll with it. I wanna touch on this fun topic that's all over the headlines, which is quiet quitting. Have you guys dealt with this? Have you guys seen this in your organizations? I just learned of this myself two days ago. Oh yeah, Nick had no idea what this was because he's been quiet quitting for four years now. No, but have you guys gone or like, does it worry you, this thing in the marketplace where I just had a high level, right? People can now be remote, which means if your managers aren't managing, you know, it's easy to hide, so to speak. And so how do you guys as like a leader kind of go without micromanaging people? Oh, I think I've gone through it. Through quiet quitting? Yeah. You had somebody do it? Okay. I say it like it was, you just feel it when the person isn't there anymore. And like, regardless of you having to like, be up to ask if they stopped delivering things is what she was saying about setting clear results and goals. Quiet quit all you want, it's still quitting. I think like our team is still small enough and like to be attractive to the company, you have to be a passionate go-getter. So I think those people aren't attracted to the company and I think it'd be, it's quite obvious if someone's kind of not in it to win it and then we really immediately kind of close that because we need winners. I could imagine it with much bigger organizations where like people can do the bare minimum just to get by and they're not really passionate about what they're doing. They're just trying to get a paycheck and they really want to spend their time traveling or with their family or whatever brings them happiness. So like, I think, I don't know, we're probably all attracting people that are probably pretty passionate about their jobs because it requires that to build something, I think. There's a subjective line to, you know, early on in my life, I was like all in. I mean, I'm still all in, but just like, are you quiet? Why didn't you take us out? I wouldn't ever. Are you out? Oh man. You're quitting on stage. Yeah, I'm quite quitting. I'm quietly quitting. Yeah, I mean like our brand and everything that we do is about like improving the quality of life, right? And so it's kind of hard also to say, well be in the office, like our work, so much more. I naturally as a leader, and I have a lot of, I'm so much passionate for the company. I want things to happen faster and do more. You know, but I also want people to have like a healthy life, right? In balance, and I want them to have vacation and time with their families and things like that. And sometimes it's hard to tell like, is somebody fully in or should I push more or should they, you know, have this time? And so I think that's, I know I think then when you have remote working that just gets a lot more challenging. Yeah. And it can be demoralizing if you actually do think someone might be quite quitting and they're not. You know, it's just like you're not seeing their work product. But normally if multiple people comment, I think on someone or say, hey, what's this person doing? Then it's a pretty good. Yeah, hey, what's this person doing is good. Yeah, it's a pretty good career. What's their role? But I think also like not that it's, like I take responsibility for it, but I think as the leader, like you do need to make sure you're constantly like pumping people up and like figuring out what makes people passionate or what they're most interested in to get the best out of them, you know? And so, and if you can't do that and this person is not the right fit for you, but you know, I find that like, that's probably what one of my best assets is. It's just like being the passion and the vision and like, you know, the reason that we all work so hard, you know? Do you guys do any personality test? We're starting to. You are starting to, okay? Is it Myers-Briggs or are you doing something else? We're doing something else. We're doing with the leadership team right now, but I'm curious like maybe we should do it with everyone. But I think it's already, I just hired a president. Like that was one of the first things we did because, and then the coach who gave it had a session with him, had a session with me and it was like, she likes to work like this, you know? And he likes to work like this. It helps both of us like really understand how people like to be communicated with and their strengths and how their brain works and how to appreciate, you know, how we work together. I just joined a board and it was very much like that, which was really interesting. It was like the very first board retreat was personality test. And then we set up into four groups of each different personality and it kind of blew me away, honestly. Because I was in Myers-Briggs, it was, yeah. But I just like associating myself with the people that have my personality, which is so self-serving, but it really taught me like the value actually of having every different personality type, which I think prior to that board meeting, I would have never valued it. And so it was actually eye-opening to me, very eye-opening. He had a crazy fond once that only invested in women. Call us in for a week of due diligence in Boulder and their headquarters. And so we get there, it's a bunch of women. And first thing they do as well is before we get there, everybody has their enneagram. So we have our numbers and we're arriving, et cetera. And it was a week of kind of like a crazy, like psychological pushing of boundaries. Everybody cried. It was like, you know, they brought a bunch of women down to Boulder to like, you know, to see what they were made of. What we're made of, it was like, it was crazy. But I learned a lot about myself during the process. Did they invest? The worst part was they invested and then on December 24th, they called me up and they're like, we're gonna have to cancel the investment. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. This is a final question we'll take. Rachel, if you wanna come on stage and ask your question. Rachel wants to know if there are any books or documentaries or anything in any other medium that inspires us or that we just really enjoyed. Jacob, we'll start with you and then we'll go this way. Favorite book or documentary or just media? Inspiration. Back when I started my first company, I was 24 and there was a book called Rules for Revolutionaries. It was like the top 10. It was Guy Kawasaki, who's one of the marketing. Yeah. 10 simple rules. Correct hiring mistakes immediately is one of them. That was like immensely helpful for me and I think it still holds a lot of value. And there's only 10 things you need to remember. So. Two, my two favorite books are the biography of Steve Jobs. It's just such a good book and then also Shoe Dog, which is a story of Nike. And I just, you just hear about all of the issues and problems that these founders face and like they figure it out and they keep going and it's inspirational. I feel like I have to go a little poetic right now. We're living a very, very interesting historical moment with everything that's going on, the technology and what blockchain means in terms of creating these decentralized organizations that could really change the way that we think of leadership as a whole, right? So I have to say Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, because it could go either way. Read it and you'll understand. I'll say, I just read The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz and it's very instructional in a way that other entrepreneurship books aren't necessarily. I love Shoe Dogs. It was very story-based as opposed to Ben's book which is just like, look, you're gonna come up with this problem, this problem, this problem. Here's how I dealt with it and here's how I recommend dealing with it. And so I thought that was like a breath of fresh air in terms of reading material. Mine's very different. Mine's called The New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. It's a book more about personal development. The thing I take into business is more about, it's about your journey. And so if you unlock your things, like your traumas, the way you view yourself, your product is really a testament of how you view yourself. And so I kind of start with the work being about you. The business stuff I think is like more clinical. It's like, I can learn math, I can learn accounting, but the hard work is the mirror. So that's, I don't know, that's what I go with. So that'll wrap it up for this leadership topic. We have culture coming up and navigating setbacks coming up. Please stick around and tune in for our next topic. Hey you. Yeah, you listening. Thank you so much for making it to the end of the episode. Make sure to follow us on Instagram, subscribe on YouTube and we cannot wait to see you next week for another great episode. Cheers.