September 26, 2024 • 39 mins
Summary
In this episode of the Make Work Work Better podcast, host Marc Reynolds interviews Matt Widdoes, a seasoned leader in marketing and user acquisition. Matt shares his journey from working with Red Bull to founding MAVEN, a company focused on helping businesses grow through a holistic approach to marketing and user acquisition. The conversation delves into leadership philosophies, the importance of empathy, time management techniques like time boxing, and the significance of work-life balance. Matt emphasizes the need for a positive company culture, the value of learning from failure, and the importance of accountability in leadership.
Takeaways
- Empathy and respect are crucial in leadership.
- Time boxing is an effective productivity technique.
- Work-life balance is essential for long-term success.
- Company culture reflects leadership values.
- Assuming positive intent fosters a better work environment.
- Learning from failure is key to growth.
- Accountability is vital in a successful team.
- Effective communication is necessary for problem-solving.
- Self-care should be prioritized in busy schedules.
- Leaders must do what they say they will do.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
Welcome to the Make Work, WorkBetter podcast,
where we delve deep into the minds
and experiences of some of the mostinspiring leaders in business today.
I'm your host, Marc Reynolds.
I am thrilled to introduce youto our special guest today, Matt Widdoes.
I've been fortunate enoughto be able to work
with Matt on a bunch of other sideprojects.
(00:36):
I'm just going to share thison your behalf.
You used to be a leadsinger of a group called Europe Apollo.
Check them out.
It turned out being my son'sfavorite group, but has since gone
on to do some pretty amazing things.
So tell us a little bitabout your journey.
How did you get towhere you are in the business world?
(00:56):
Yeah, I
started off working with Red Bull EnergyDrink in college, which allowed me
to grow there and eventually lead a teamin Northern California.
So was responsible for kind of eventand experiential marketing
in Northern California,based in in San Francisco.
(01:17):
I've been in San Francisco ever since,
so I've essentially been in the Bayarea for, I guess, coming 19 years,
which is kind of hard to say out loud, butended up moving into the startup world.
And in 2006 or 7 joinedone of the survivors from the dotcom era.
And we were later acquired by Intuit.
That makes TurboTax and quicken.
You know,my background is in growth and revenue,
(01:39):
and the early days at Red bullthat took the shape of of field,
an event at a company called homesteadthat was the startup
that was bought by Intuit.
That was in a more traditional salesfocus role.
I kind of realized in that process
that I didn't really like salesas much as I liked
marketing, and I hated not having the datathat we have for marketing
and the ability to really understandhow does that impact the results.
(02:00):
Whereas in sales, sometimes you're like,I feel
I could do the same thing every time,
and sometimes it worksand sometimes it doesn't.
And I don't really feel likeI have a sense for where I can improve.
And so that led me to look back into
going into marketing and mis marketing,and had an opportunity to join
a friend's company that later gave methe kind of path into mobile gaming.
(02:21):
So I joined a company called Score Streak.
It was fundedby the two founders of of bills Xcom,
and it was in the real moneyfantasy sports space.
So it was an appthat allows people to play for real money
against other people in fantasy sports.
We were going against DraftKingsand FanDuel were kind of the top,
the main two players.
It's not fair to call them competitorsbecause we were so much smaller than them.
(02:43):
But and as comparison, you know,our annual budget was half a million
and DraftKings and FanDuel,I think in the first week, the opening
week of NFL, just one of 16, 17 weeks,they spent a combined 100 million.
And so,you know, very, very different story
that led me into really into useracquisition where I've spent the last
(03:04):
so essentially decade inand went to a company called Zynga
that makes wordswith Friends and Farmville
and was managing a around 180 milliona year.
There.
And then that led me to King, which makesCandy crush and a bunch of other games,
and that was more like 250,300 million a year.
And then that led me to Mavenand started Maven back in April of 2020.
(03:24):
So we're coming up on our four yearanniversary now. So that's it.
Awesome.
And tell us a little bit about Maven.
Yeah,I mean our goal is to help companies grow.
That's a very broad mission.
And I think the challenge and opportunitythat we saw, and a lot of us
have backgrounds in user acquisition,which is kind of Facebook and Google
ads, etc..
But what we saw thatI think others don't see,
(03:47):
and that is often misunderstood
part of a business is that I thinka lot of leaders, particularly CEOs,
they think that if we just havea better user acquisition team,
we see all the Candy crush ads.
So let's go
hire the person who's responsiblefor those and we'll have equal success.
And what they're missing isthat it's also interdependent,
and that our user acquisition at Zyngaworks because everything else is working
(04:10):
really well.
So we have foundational datathat's really clean, and
we can rely on it, and we can slice it upin a lot of different ways.
And we have data scientistswho can use that data
to predict the future,and we can optimize those models.
So in the web world,
we have landing pagesthat do a really great job at converting.
And we have really smart peopleworking on that
who are focusing on every little minordetail and running clean tests
(04:33):
so that it's not okay.
Blue button does better than thanred button.
It's it's more complex than that.
And we have proper holdoutsand proper statistical significance
to make sure that that actuallyis indicative of of what's working.
And it's not just some false positive.
We have really good lifecycle teams that are doing
email and push notifications, and they'reoptimizing their part of the world.
And we have good creative.We have all these other things.
(04:55):
I've used the analogy before ofit's like teeth whitening at the dentist.
You know, people look out and they seelike, okay, well, straight teeth,
white teeth, that equals good teeth.
And the reality is, you know,there's a guy at the mall who's
got a picture with a gold chainand spiky hair and Jack
looking at his phone, who will happilywhiten your teeth for 25 bucks,
(05:18):
who is not equipped to tell youwhether or not that's a good idea?
And he's not equipped to diagnoseif you need a tooth pulled,
and then you have a real dentistand that dentist, if you come in
and you need a bunch of work,they're going to be like,
well,we're not going to wait in the teeth.
We're going to doall these other things first.
And there's plenty of peoplethat get out of that chair and go to the
they say, well, whatever,I'm just going to get my teeth whitening.
(05:38):
That's the equivalent of justjumping straight to user acquisition.
And so to come back to the coreof your question on what does Maven do
and what is our purpose?
Our purpose is to help companies grow.
But reallythat's through almost any means necessary.
And in the areaswhere we're not good, we'll just tell you.
So a good example of that is likePR is another function of helping
a company grow, and it relies ona lot of other things to make that work.
(05:59):
We're not great at PR,we know companies that are if you need PR,
we can recommend you to that companyat the right time.
But really what we do is we bring in worldclass experts in
each one of those seats, from data to useracquisition, creative lifecycle, etc.
we diagnose what you need and we reallyoperate like a full time internal team.
Unlike traditional agenciesthat are vertically focused.
(06:21):
So you have an agency that just as brandand an agency that just as PR
and an agencythat just does user acquisition
and that's not really how it worksin the real world full time.
And so you have these companies
who are hiring agencies,and they're frustrated because the agency,
they can't even put themin front of the data teams
because they don't speak data, they justspeak brand or whatever else they do.
They're frustrated because the agency istrying to sell everything that they have.
(06:44):
And it just so happens that exactly
what's going to pull you upand out is what they sell.
So you have some SEO agency telling you
you need $100,000 a month in SEO, backlinkING and all these other things.
Which might be true.
That would be the ultimate expressionof what you could do in SEO.
But that's not necessary.It's a whac-a-mole game.
You don't want tojust go all in on one thing.
And so really what we do is we bring thatholistic strategy that a consultancy
(07:07):
would we bring in experts to actually dothe work like a full time employee.
And we bring in the prioritization
and the focus that says, okay, hereare all the things that we could be doing.
Let's have a conversationwith your leadership team
to kind of map out what we would do
given unlimited budget and like,what would that sequence be?
And then now that we knowthe limitations of the business,
(07:27):
like budget or timeline or goals,this is how we would shape that.
Would you like to do it?
Which pieces would you like us to own?
Which pieceswould you like us to influence?
Which pieces would you like us to,you know, completely hand over to you
and we go from there.
So I think the easiest way to talk about
what we do isyou can think of us like an agency,
but we're we're much more like a full timein-house team.
(07:48):
So what I hear you say is really,
you're an expert in making work workbetter?
Yeah, I think so.
I want to dive into questionsabout some of the things
you're talking about in a second.
But before we do, I just want the audience
to get to know youjust a little bit better in a few ways.
First,if I polled people you have worked with
(08:11):
and ask them to describe your voiceand what I'm saying, your voice.
I'm not just meaning your spoken voice,but everything you communicate.
If they had to reallydistill your essence down,
what do you
hope they would say about you as a leader?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I think first and foremost that I alwaystreat them fairly and with respect.
(08:32):
If I can leave a trail of people behind methat all say that,
that seems like a pretty good outcome.
That doesn't mean that
I'm always telling themwhat they want to hear, right?
Because that's also not good, right?
You wouldn't want thatfor really any relationship, right?
So I think that candidnessand I think a willingness to listen and to
understand, like seeking to understandfirst assume positive intent as well.
(08:55):
And so even when something looks messedup, it's like this can't be the case.
I'm assuming I'm misreading this.
And then in a worldwhere that's not the case, it's like,
okay, well, that's not very good, right?
Like it's pretty bad.
You can still give feedbackor criticism or,
you know, things that traditionallymight be labeled more negative in a way
that the other person walks away saying,like, well, they listen to my side.
(09:15):
It was candid.
It was with respect and fair.
And so hopefully that that would summarizeit, at least at a high level.
Any leader who could walk away with peoplesaying those things
should be able to feel successful, right?
That those are some key,really essential things.
It might seem obviousand like all of that happens, but
I mean, I think we both know that that isnot that's for sure.
(09:38):
It's a common, common thing.
Yeah, honestly, it'snot that difficult to achieve.
I think it's really a matter of intentand a high degree of empathy as well.
A lot of that actually comes down to tone,which is so manageable.
Right.
It's like you might have to tie something
around your finger to remind you ofsomebody has a tendency to get heated,
(09:59):
or they have a tendencyto sound sarcastic or demeaning.
I don't know some other negativetone quality, but if your intention
and empathy aren'tthere, there's no faking the tone either.
So if you are inherently demeaning,nothing's going to fix that.
But for people who are misunderstoodin that way,
it's within the ability to manage andcontrol, even if it took a little work.
(10:21):
If you deeply seek to understand
and you genuinely are putting yourselfin the shoes of this other person,
for better or for worse, it'sgoing to show the tone will be impacted.
The message will be impacted.
How you approach it,the first five questions you ask, or
if you don't ask any questions at all,you just start ripping into somebody.
That's all indicativeof how you feel about them.
(10:41):
It's all indicativeof the internal perspective you have.
If you approach that genuinelywith that intent,
then everything elsekind of falls into line
because you can't really have a negative,demeaning tone
if you're genuinely trying to understandsomething.
I know that you are one
that has routines and you do a lota variety of different things.
(11:01):
You're also very curious.
Is there anything that you do to helpprepare your mind
or prepare yourself to have that empathywhen you went from one meeting to another,
or anything that you just naturallyhave in your routine
that you found to be useful?
I will say that one's abilityto context switch and jump
(11:22):
from a really difficult conversationwith the internal employee to
the next conversation, which is maybe witha client or it's a prospective client.
You have to selland put on a happy face, coming
right out of somethingthat was really emotionally tough.
That may just be innate.
I don't know, maybe that'ssomething that comes over time
and maybe you just wake upwhether you don't.
Some people
struggle with compartmentalizing stufflike that, and they carry it forward.
(11:45):
I carry it forwardas much as the next person.
Because you're not a robot.
You end up having to take the breathat the end of the day.
One thing that I found super helpful,and it's something I've had in some way
or another for a long time,but have just recently, maybe in the last
couple of years, have really been ableto put a process to it.
And you can find a lot of resourceson this, but it's called time boxing.
Harvard did a studyand they interviewed the top,
(12:08):
I don't know, 100500 CEOs of the top companies or whatever
time boxing out is the number oneproductivity tip from those people.
And so that givesa little bit of credence.
What time boxing is, is setting upyour day to where it's not just meetings.
Right.
So yes, like todaywe both had a block on our calendar
that says this is what we're goingto be doing today at this hour,
(12:31):
but it's about making sure that that next15 minutes,
maybe after we finish today's podcast,that that's actually blocked
and that says, like, this is a time whereI'm going to get water
and I'm going to catch up on texts,and that's a 30 minute chunk maybe,
or this is that four hour periodthat we're going to be rethinking
(12:54):
brand values, and I'm going to bepreparing for this other bigger thing.
And so what happens during the day?
What happens during the day is thingshappen and stuff doesn't go to plan.
I think
the biggest, most important thingthat I didn't do until a couple of years
ago is rearranging those boxesto actually reflect what happened.
So if the 30 minute chunkI have for catching up on text
(13:17):
and getting some waterafter podcast is over,
if that ends up being 15 minutesor 2 hours,
I have to one adjust the box visuallyso it actually reflects what I did to.
I have to move boxes around,
which is likely going to meanI need to move them into tomorrow.
So it does a number of things.
One, you can look back every week and seeexactly how you spent your time,
(13:40):
even if three hourswere completely unproductive.
You have to be honest about that.And it's like, yeah, okay.
And you start to better understandwhat you can and can't take.
I also use color codingnot to come off as too crazy, but,
you know, external calls are purplepersonal events or red
internal calls or blue workthat I'm getting done
that like has to be done forthe business is green.
(14:01):
Other things that are like less pressingbut still need to be done
but are less revenuegenerating are orange.
I could take off my glasses,and I could just tell you
how much of my time is goingto which function,
and I could see,oh my gosh, I get a lot of purple.
I'm doing a lot of external calls,
and I'm not doing a lot of green stuff,which is meant to drive revenue.
Should those be inverted?
I don't know,but it gives you a point to say,
(14:21):
what did you do last weekand how is your time being spent?
You can just say explicitly,down to the minute, essentially.
But coming to your point onwhat are some things
that you can do to manage thatand kind of avoid, not necessarily avoid,
but manage that context switchingI think is altogether you can avoid it.
It also helps to have an executive adminbecause they can guard this for you.
But it's like, okay, let's
(14:42):
maybe not schedule that really difficultinternal call just before a sales call.
Why are we doing that.
That's going to set us upfor like weird setup here.
And so bringing some intentionto that schedule.
So one we can avoid schedulingthese things as much as we can to
we can kind of bundle things.
So like I have Friday is almost entirelyspent towards task stuff.
And Friday is not a great dayfor people to take calls.
(15:03):
Why even schedule calls on Friday?
Let's just not make me available on Fridayand we can avoid that altogether.
And that's a much better day for tasks.
Early morning it for me is way bettertime to catch up on email
and kind of get the day started,but having that plan as well.
And again, coming back to your question,I'm able to as I'm going to bed,
I always pull up tomorrow
(15:23):
and I'm looking and saying, okay,what does the morning look like?
Okay, I've got an early call.
I need to make sureI'm up early enough for that
or I don't have any calls until 11.Okay, that's pretty cool.
And then in the morningI'm going to be doing this task, okay.
That's mentally a heavy task.
It's going to be like cognitively deep.
Then I do this and I can kind of likesee what my day looks like in advance.
So that next morning,as I'm going through it,
(15:43):
I'm already mentally preparedfor what I'm going to be doing.
And in an event where it was unavoidableand I've got a really tough emotional call
followed by a really tough cognitive callor another call where I need to be
really bright and happy, I'm alreadykind of mentally prepared for that.
So as I'm going into it, I'm like, okay,now we're going to do this other mode
and I'm not living minute to minute.
I kind of already know what's ahead of me.
Yeah, I love it.
One thing that you come
(16:04):
to realize that you were overly ambitiouson what you think you can get done,
and that the reality isyou have decision fatigue.
The premise is like everybody can make
a certain number of decisionsbefore they just break.
Some are higher than others,
but there's some point where you kind ofstop being productive and efficient.
And so you also needto kind of figure out, do I like having
calls in the morning or in the afternoon?
(16:24):
Do I like having these moreadministrative, functional stuff
at the end of the day,beginning of the day,
do I want to stack everything on one day?
So anyways, those
you can't if you're not tracking it,you don't have the data to kind of support
what is maybe more of a loose feeling thatyou kind of can't put your thumb on it.
One of the things that I've experiencedthat executives seem to really struggle
(16:45):
with is self-care.
A lot of the time is this just go, go,go in the machine,
keep them going, and they feel thisneed to go all the time.
Is all these people depending on me?
But then they get depleted,they just get burnt.
So being able to plan through the day,hey, these are some things
where I'm just going to take care ofsome of my basic needs here.
I think more than just taking care ofthe basic needs
(17:07):
is also a psychological choiceto take care of yourself a little bit.
Yeah.
And I think to that same end,I typically try to work.
It's I try to not take anything
really before 730,but I'm typically on and at my desk
by 745 eight and I am off6:00 sharp, full stop,
always off at six because it's likeI have two kids, I've got a wife.
(17:30):
We we have dinner together.
We dinner every single night together.
We we did that. When I grew up.
We played gameevery night before, after bath.
We have a routine, right.
And so I have obligations to make there.
And again, from a compartmentalizationstandpoint, I actually know that
that will make me,by all accounts, technically,
I should be less successfulthan somebody who's able to go
(17:52):
seven at six in the morningto midnight every single night.
And when you look at the super achievers,that's pretty common
that they're not getting a lot of sleep.They're burning, burning, burning.
But from my perspective,and I'm making up numbers here,
if somebody said, okay,you can do what you're doing now
and we can predict the future
and you're going to have 20 millionby the time you retire,
(18:12):
or you can go really hardand you have 200 million.
It's not even a choice.
Now, granted,
probably everybody listening is like,well,
yeah,who wouldn't who wouldn't want 20 million?
But even if some
even if you change thatand you said you can kind of
do what you're doing now and you'regoing to have 1 million at retirement,
or you could do it this other way
and you'd have ten for me,it's not worth the trade off,
because we've all seen peoplewho've been raised with,
(18:33):
you know, parents who are really super,super busy, super successful.
But, you know, it's that classic.
Nobody's on their deathbed looking backand saying, I should have worked more.
I should have spent even less timewith my family, these things.
So to that point,I think with that intention, too,
if you really are trying to benefitor deliver for family
or the people that are counting on you,do you need to sleep?
(18:53):
I have no shame that I getabout nine hours of sleep at night.
Yeah, I actually need that.
And I think a lot of people are like,that's weak.
No, it makes it to wherewhenever I am performing,
I'm ready and like,I have the energy to sustain that.
And you don't want
somebody working on your businessthat hasn't slept in four days, right?
That's like, that's not a good thing.
It's like, yeah, we run itand we run it with really cheap gasoline.
(19:14):
Isn't that great? It's like,no, that's terrible. No.
And then the other thing is like thatpersonal stuff for your own mental health.
It's scheduling that as well.
That's the period of the timewhen I go and do jujitsu.
And here's a period of timewhere I go hit golf balls.
And that's as importantas these other meetings.
And again, with a family,I actually squeeze
(19:34):
most of that stuff into the workday,and I encourage our team to do the same.
So, you know, there's a lot of a lot ofstuff structurally inside of our business
that is meant to make surethat people have the space to take
that time that essentially recharges them,so that when they're having to
do work related stuff,they're at their absolute peak.
You know, I think what you're saying herefeeds into a lot of different research,
(19:57):
and it feeds into a lot of shifting
perceptions in the business worldof what success actually looks like.
Are you really successfulif you're making millions or $1 billion
a year or whatever it happens to be,and your family's a wreck,
or that you are destroyingall your employees around you and they're
(20:19):
miserable and feel terrified of youall day long because you're a monster.
Yeah.
Or is it really successthat you're able to provide what you need?
You're able to take care of your family,
able to grow and developand offer value to the world.
And on the flip side, also,research of people are more productive
when they're happy and healthyand their needs are taken care of,
(20:40):
and they're free totake care of themselves like they need to.
One other thing I'd add thereis that they feel safe, right?
So it's like they're notthey feel like they're in good hands.
They're supported.
They can take risks,they can do other things.
And that there is a net therethat will catch them,
and that there is a frameworkby which they can like, explore
and be their best self versusthat kind of example
(21:01):
of somebodywho's got like an over caring boss
and they're layoffs all the timeand everyone's like,
why are you taking a three day week?
And it's like, that's not a an environmentwhere one would feel safe.
It's not super conducive to productivity.
It's not super conducive
to people speaking their mind and saying,hey, I think I found a little thing here
that's broken that I think
if we put it all puta little effort into it,
(21:22):
we could kind of makethe building stronger.
And everyone's like the last guy that saidthat got fired because, you know,
like highlightedthat his bad manager missed it.
And like, so all of that comesdown to the culture and what you value.
And I think that the people at any companyare really a reflection
of the leadership and what they value,because those people flocked to that.
(21:43):
They they metwith those people at some point,
and those people said, I like this person.
I like something about them,
whether that's they work all the timeand they they build fiefdoms or whatever.
At a company,we take some of those negatives.
If fiefdoms are rewarded
and you look around at the most successfulpeople in the company,
and that's like watching Game of Thronesfold out, you know, with all this,
like, Machiavellian and control andall this stuff, and you're not like that.
(22:05):
And you look around and you're like, theseguys just roam the halls, no problem.
No, but everybody sees it.
We all know it,and it's almost celebrated.
But like, that person was now promotedto lead even more.
And we all know how they are.
The people who don't value that leavebecause they're like, this is disgusting.
I hate this and that. Why?Why am I working here?
The people that are neutraland a lot of people are just neutral,
(22:26):
and they're just happy to come in and
hit the clock and goand they're like, whatever.
I just don't raise my headand I don't get cut.
We can kind of ignore that crowd,but that's actually a very sizable chunk.
And then you have the otherswho are like, yes, I have to go like usurp
that person and do all these other thingsso that I can take over that piece.
It's like complete chaos.
And so if that's how people are, it'sbecause the leaders are like that.
(22:46):
And so if people are really light heartedand they're willing to take risks
and they're willing to communicateand they're willing to be vulnerable
and they're willing to be wrong,that means that the leaders
are likely like thatbecause they haven't been fired.
If somebody'ssuper market value or whatever,
the leaders are probably like that
because they haven't been fired,either for better or for worse.
And so anyways, we talk a lot about planthe work work plan.
(23:08):
And so if you don't plan the work,same thing if you don't plan your culture,
if you don't plan your day,if you don't plan any of these things,
you don't take some timeto have that intention and purpose
and like take the time to just say, okay,what am I actually trying to do here?
Or what are we trying to whattype of company are we trying to build?
Or what type of day am I trying to have?
Then everything else is just chaos.
(23:29):
So like it all comes down to planning.
I think that being intentionalthat you're talking about
makes a true leader arise,rather than a manager in your experience
and working in different companies,whether they're companies that you worked
for yourselves,run yourself or worked with,
what would you identifyas some of the things
(23:51):
that get in the way of people's workmost often?
What are the misery makers at companiesthat you see as pretty common patterns
that if, when they're shifted,make a big difference
in productivity or company culture?
Assuming positive intent is really big.
If you have people that aren'tassuming positive intent,
(24:13):
then they will hide things from you.
They will see something
and put their own spin on it and be like,well, he or she probably did that
because of these reasonsthat are probably not true.
So I think that that's a big one.
I think making decisionsacross the business
based on intuition and gut, without anyuse of data, is also a big one.
(24:33):
I think oftentimes the companieswe've seen, like the most successful
companies,are really, really busy early, often.
And so because of that,if you kind of go back to the beginning of
I take a Zynga super busyastronomical rise and same with King.
And what ends up happening is that youhire more people, get more things,
(24:53):
and like lots of things are being builtwithout the structure
and without the process that you wouldtypically find at a larger company.
And so there's a person over hereand a person over here
both trying to solve some problemindependently,
both finding a solution,standing up a solution.
And we don't realize for like two yearsthat we have two different systems
that are meant to do the same thing.You oftentimes find two.
That data suffers in the early days.
(25:15):
And so later, once you're five yearsin, you've reached some stability
and your thousand peopleand everyone's kind of
has the time to take the proverbialbreath.
Somebody starts looking around, says, man,this system is like crazy.
And like, this data is incorrectand this is incorrect.
And like, we got to marry thatand mish mash this together
and deprecate thisand kind of rip all those things out.
So basically I'm just sayingthat it's not uncommon
(25:37):
to see kind of broken data, but it'sbut you have to kind of take that serious
because if you're not using datato make those decisions or
and this especially happenswith like really strong personality
leadersthat they're almost borderline dictators
where they're like, we're going to do thisand we're going to do this.
And I was like,all right, we're going to do this.
And you know,
this isn't to say that there's somethingto be said for an intuition, right?
(25:58):
Because oftentimes you're like,I know that this is sounds crazy.
And maybe we looked at the data,but I still think there's something here
that we're missingthat the data doesn't tell us. Fine.
There's something to be said for somebody
being decisiveand making a choice and going.
But if you're not testing thatand using data to make decisions,
that's a whole pain to you.
Because if you're living within that or,or you're actively doing it,
it's like you'reyou're just kind of making things up.
(26:20):
And and so that's really dangerous.
And then I think the other piece is,you know, and there's probably a ton
I mean, I could probably put togethera hundred item list here,
but really that desire to understandand communicate
and being okay with failure
is super, super importantbecause there's a lot of organizations
(26:42):
that aren't okay with failure, and theytreat failure like this permanent state
as opposed to just part of a path.
And I've dealt, you know, with this,with my daughter in that
whenever she loses a game or something,she gets really frustrated.
I mean, it's not like crazy,but she's like really hard on herself.
And I have to talk to her like, hey, look,first off,
(27:03):
you're going to fail constantly.
So like, you're going to be wayokay with failure because I fail every day
all the time, right?
From little thingsto knocking over a drink
to really big things like,I don't know, onboarding
some really expensive softwarethat I kind of knew
we probably didn't need,but we just did it.
And then I'm like, why don't I do that?
And like, okay,
but you get better if she stays with it,she eventually gets really good at it.
(27:26):
And, you know, if a game was like,
take a game like
goldfish and we've all probably playedgoldfish.
Well,goldfish is super boring game, right?
If you're an adult.
But as a kid, when you first play it,you're going to make mistakes
because you don't know what a seven is.
(27:46):
The game becomes more funwhen you do know what a seven is.
So now we're makingwe're not making that mistake.
The game becomes more funwhen we remember that grandpa
asked for sevens three hands agoand we just drew a seven.
And so when it's our turn again,we're going to ask
grandpa specifically for the sevens. Okay?
Do you eventually outgrow that?
If I just said to my daughter,all right, I got a game you can win,
(28:08):
I'm going to flip over a cardand you tell me what color it is,
how long you want to play that game.
Things are fun.
Not because of failure, like innately,but because we overcome that over time
and we get better, right?
So you look at something like golf, it'slike golf is a miserable thing to start.
You're going to be failing constantly,more than probably any other sport.
(28:28):
Like if I give somebody a basketball,they'll probably make a few buckets.
They've never played golfor had any instruction.
They're going to not have a good time,right?
They're watching me like,this is pointless, right?
But then that's where you seeall these people kind of addicted to golf.
It's because they slowly get betterand better and better
and is this infinite thing that you'rekind of always going to be not great at.
And the difference between the Tiger Woodsand guys who were,
(28:51):
you know, really, really, really goodat golf, who were like the best guy,
you know, in golf, the difference betweenthose people is paper thin with somebody
finishing negative three on a courseversus like over by five,
like that's the differencebetween making millions of dollars a year
and there are tons of guysthat shoot five over
that are never going to compete againstTiger Woods because he's five under.
It's not a lot.
It's like one stroke, half a stroke,a hole or something like that.
(29:15):
But that's that's what brings that joy.
So anyways,coming back to that culture that
you don't want to be celebrating failure.
Yeah. Yeah. Because that's likethat's also weird, right.
But to see failure is like a necessary
piece of the puzzle and a momentlike a temporary state.
And again, necessarilyif you're not making mistakes,
you probably aren't really doing anythingthat difficult or that great
(29:38):
or you're not on a crazy trajectory,you're probably doing something
that's not very fulfillingand you're probably not the best at it.
I havetwo questions that come out of this.
Number one, there's the thoughtthat if you tolerate a certain
amount of negative behavioror poor performance,
then that basically sets the barfor the entire company, right?
(29:59):
Then there's nothing more unmotivatedthan tolerated bad behavior.
I'm talking about behavior.
And then I we're talking about failure.
I know they're not equivalent.
And those are actuallytwo very different things.
But my question to you is,
say you had to have a conversationwith someone who just made a big error.
What does it actually look like to,
for lack of a better word,celebrate the failure or
(30:22):
talk with them and mentor themthrough making a better decision next time
and not tolerating things
that will ultimatelyundermine the company.
If there was,if there was no learning in the failure,
then something went wildly wrong, right?
There's always a learningfrom a conversational standpoint.
(30:43):
It's like, okay, well, let's walk throughwhat happened.
This is that seeking to understandassuming positive intent.
Right?
I know you didn't mean to just cost us$1 million.
Like you'd be a maniacto just intentionally do this.
I know you didn't intentionally do this,but the fact remains,
you did walk me through what happened.
Let's debrief on this and deconstructed.
(31:03):
Well, I looked at this and I saw this,and I saw this, and I saw this,
and I said, okay, great.
And then that made you think this.
And so you thought that this next thingthat you did
walk me through that decision. Right.
And what did you thinkthe outcome would be here?
If we just really oversimplifythis, it's like, oh, okay.
And I forgot, I forgot to check the systemB to make sure that that was correct.
If you just check system B,you would have never click that button.
Okay. Great. What should we do next?
(31:26):
It's really allowing that person to talkyou through and solve your problem.
Right? It's like,I'm not here to solve every problem.
I need you guys solving problems.
So what can we do next?
Well, okay.
One it begs the questionwhy do we have system B and system?
Might we be able to create a processby which that thing that you did
can't happenunless somebody does check system B
(31:48):
we actually make is there technologywe can use to prevent that?
How do we basically learn from itand make sure that that can never happen
again?
And then the classic case too isI can't remember that details.
Maybe it never even happened, but it was
somebody at Google, the story goes,and they pushed a button last
$1 millionand they had this type of conversation.
(32:08):
I'm sure, and somebody was like,so you're not going to fire me?
Like, I thought you would fire me.
And the reaction of the executivewas like,
I just spent $1 million training you.
Why would I do that? Like, absolutely not.
Like you're way more valuable now becauseyou're never going to do that again.
Somebody is eventually goingto push that button,
and you have to push the button to realizeyou got to put a cover on it.
(32:28):
But if we go to diagnosethat and we're like, so what happened?
Like, I don't know, I'm just doing this
and it's like, okay, what would we dodifferent in the future?
I have no idea. It'slike I'm just mashing buttons.
It's like,okay, well, that's not okay. Right?
So but again, that's lacking a bunch,a bunch of like awareness
on the person side too.
I talk a lot aboutand it's something we value is
do not bring me problemswithout solutions.
(32:49):
Your solution doesn't have to be correct.It's fine.
But like to say I've got this thing.
Like, this thing is like wheneverwe push it, it's everything is like
it breaks and we lose $1 millionevery time somebody push that button.
What should we do? That's not okay.
We think we should cover up that button.
Okay.
I actually think we should justget rid of the button.
Like, why does the button exist?But at least you have an idea.
(33:10):
So I think part of this also is culturallywhat you value in hiring people
who are problem solversand not problem flaggers.
You can be both.
Let's say thatyou know a ton about the saxophone
and you could say right nowthat this thing doesn't play
and I don't know anything about saxophone,just one button doesn't play.
And I could
still say, okay, we'll have you check
(33:32):
to see if it has all the piecesof the other buttons.
That might be a solution.
Maybe it's missing a piece.
You'd be like, man, that's so crazy.That's not what's wrong.
But I can still offer a solutioneven if I know nothing about it.
It might be wrong.That's fine. But it's the spirit of.
I have givensome amount of thought to this.
And when you have that, over timepeople get better.
And yes, if you have like loss after lossafter loss after loss,
(33:54):
and you're constantly making poor choicesthat aren't showing any sort of
when you walk us through the debrief,
it's like, well,you didn't really think again.
And like, remember how last time we talkedand you need to kind of go slower here
and you keep kind ofnot thinking about stuff
that seems to be at the rootof all these things.
Like at some point somebody's
got to be able to get themselves overthat hump and be like, here's my plan.
And that that makes sense.
(34:15):
And then that theory and act on thatso that they're not constantly making
making mistakes.
What I really hearyou saying is a form of leadership
that takes a lot of care and attention,
that requires you to not just measuremetrics and numbers.
Obviously you do, and you care about that.
You care about that feedback,but you're also focused on the soft
(34:37):
things, the the behaviors, the attitudes.
What are they bringing tothe table as a person? Are they engaged?
They're trying to offer solutions, andyou're willing to have those conversations
ratherjust like your numbers are off by your
you're willing to see this as a person.
Well, yeah, I mean, I don'tI don't even think that's an option.
We deal with the tophalf a percent in talent.
(34:58):
Right.
And this is one thingthat we've seen consistently is that
you have to be likable.
You have to play well with others.
Okay. That's non-negotiable.
I'll try to use somebodythat everybody knows.
But like, we could probably all agreethat Neil deGrasse
Tyson and Bill Nye are top
(35:18):
half of a percent of scientistsas far as like, public facing interacting.
So they have to play nicewith others, right?
If we had if we brought Neil deGrasseTyson into our business and we had
somebody talking to him disrespectfullyor kind of a jerk, he'll just leave.
He's too good. He's like,I don't need to deal with this.
I'm like, the best of the best.
And so you have to play nice with others,
or else you're going to driveall the other best of the best away.
(35:39):
And if you don't play well with others,
you're not the best of the bestbecause you drive other people away.
That's not a great trait,and you won't attract great people either.
In fact, you will attract peoplethat are just like you
because that's what you value.
And so you have to kind of naturallybe okay with people and be open
and honest, but not confrontational and,and kingdom building.
You have to be world class at what you do.
(36:01):
So you still have to deliver.It's not enough to just be nice.
The third is you have to be accountable.
You have to do what you said you would do
because, you know, if you takeI don't want to go to
too far of an extreme,but you take something like a
Navy Seals team or some special ops team,and they're going in to do something
that's really complexand dynamic and high stakes.
And the guy who's supposed to bethe guy that blows the door
(36:21):
doesn't bring the explosive,or we have to trust that the guy behind us
who's responsible
to make sure that nobody sneaks upon us, is doing that,
and then we can focus entirelyon what we're supposed to be doing.
So because of the team and the dynamicsof these things often are complicated.
The stakes aren't as high necessarily.
Certainly not in life and death.
You have to be ableto trust on those other people.
If you're breaking any of those things,you're not putting out
(36:43):
really great work for what it isthat you're supposed to be doing.
You're not doing it in a waythat you're likable
and people like being around you,
and they can trustand be be comfortable around you,
and you're not doing what you saidyou would do when you would do it.
That creates all sorts of problems.
So really everything kind of comes downto one of those three things.
And so if you know thatthat's what you need on a world class team
(37:04):
when you're hiring and somebody shows up
late or they're kind of a little snarkyin the interview or,
you know, they don't have a great answerto, something's very easy to be like,
okay, that's not the right personfor that group.
You have to understand what you value.
You have to be relentless with that.
And, you know, at some pointif you're not and it's like, okay,
well then, thenwhat are you actually building?
Because there's one thing it's even worseto like talk about it and then not do it,
(37:25):
because then it's just like,yeah, that guy's kind of full of it.
So anyways, it's it'seasier said than done at the time.
Thank you so much for the timeyou're willing to offer to come on today
and to to talk and to share some of thesevaluable lessons that you've learned
over a career.
And knowing you, you're always developing,growing and doing new stuff
and learning new things.So that kind of you come on again. Yeah.
(37:46):
And share some more.
Thank you so much forfor being willing to come on.
Yeah. Happy to do it.Always a pleasure meeting with you.
And we'll come back anytime.
Is there anything on your mind where likeif I put this in everyone's mind,
this is what I would want in everyone'smind. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good one, I would say.
I mean,
if you're talking to a roomful of leaders,it's do what you said you would do.
(38:07):
I mean, it's it'svery easy to be overwhelmed.
I still fail at this, right?
Nobody's perfect at it.
I don't have any tattoos.
I like looking at them, but I justdon't have anything that I'm like, that's.
That's what I want. I'm on myself.
If I did do anything, it would probably bedo what you said you would do, because
it's so easy to compromise on that.
And if you were forcing yourselfto do what you said you would do,
(38:29):
it also forces you to prioritize becauseyou can't do everything all the time.
One thing that you'll findif you start really using time boxing
literally up to the minuteon your calendar,
you'll start to realizeyou're terrible at predicting
how long it'sgoing to take you to do something.
Like you think it's a 15 minute problem,you spend two hours on it.
I'm sure every executive listening tothis has done that at some point.
And so you start to get better at beinglike, that's not a 15 minute problem.
(38:50):
That's a two hour problem.
I can't do that this week.
And now I'm not committing to somethingI can't do.
So part of it
is really understanding your schedule
and how long it's going to take youto mentally do something,
preparing for that, committing to thatand having that marked on your calendar.
So I can just tell you, yeah, I'mgoing to do that.
It's Thursday at four from 4 to 5
and actually doing itso that in that same example,
(39:10):
if somebody's expecting youto have that drill charge
or to be looking, you know, at peoplecoming up from behind you
that you can be counted onto do what you said you would do.
Stay tuned for our next podcastthat will be taking
some of this keyvaluable points that we took from Matt
and giving you dailypractice tips to go with it.
And we'll see you nexttime. Great. Thanks for having me.
Welcome to the Make Work, WorkBetter podcast,
where we delve deep into the minds
and experiences of some of the mostinspiring leaders in business today.
I'm your host, Marc Reynolds.
I am thrilled to introduce youto our special guest today, Matt Widdoes.
I've been fortunate enoughto be able to work
with Matt on a bunch of other sideprojects.
(00:36):
I'm just going to share thison your behalf.
You used to be a leadsinger of a group called Europe Apollo.
Check them out.
It turned out being my son'sfavorite group, but has since gone
on to do some pretty amazing things.
So tell us a little bitabout your journey.
How did you get towhere you are in the business world?
(00:56):
Yeah, I
started off working with Red Bull EnergyDrink in college, which allowed me
to grow there and eventually lead a teamin Northern California.
So was responsible for kind of eventand experiential marketing
in Northern California,based in in San Francisco.
(01:17):
I've been in San Francisco ever since,
so I've essentially been in the Bayarea for, I guess, coming 19 years,
which is kind of hard to say out loud, butended up moving into the startup world.
And in 2006 or 7 joinedone of the survivors from the dotcom era.
And we were later acquired by Intuit.
That makes TurboTax and quicken.
You know,my background is in growth and revenue,
(01:39):
and the early days at Red bullthat took the shape of of field,
an event at a company called homesteadthat was the startup
that was bought by Intuit.
That was in a more traditional salesfocus role.
I kind of realized in that process
that I didn't really like salesas much as I liked
marketing, and I hated not having the datathat we have for marketing
and the ability to really understandhow does that impact the results.
(02:00):
Whereas in sales, sometimes you're like,I feel
I could do the same thing every time,
and sometimes it worksand sometimes it doesn't.
And I don't really feel likeI have a sense for where I can improve.
And so that led me to look back into
going into marketing and mis marketing,and had an opportunity to join
a friend's company that later gave methe kind of path into mobile gaming.
(02:21):
So I joined a company called Score Streak.
It was fundedby the two founders of of bills Xcom,
and it was in the real moneyfantasy sports space.
So it was an appthat allows people to play for real money
against other people in fantasy sports.
We were going against DraftKingsand FanDuel were kind of the top,
the main two players.
It's not fair to call them competitorsbecause we were so much smaller than them.
(02:43):
But and as comparison, you know,our annual budget was half a million
and DraftKings and FanDuel,I think in the first week, the opening
week of NFL, just one of 16, 17 weeks,they spent a combined 100 million.
And so,you know, very, very different story
that led me into really into useracquisition where I've spent the last
(03:04):
so essentially decade inand went to a company called Zynga
that makes wordswith Friends and Farmville
and was managing a around 180 milliona year.
There.
And then that led me to King, which makesCandy crush and a bunch of other games,
and that was more like 250,300 million a year.
And then that led me to Mavenand started Maven back in April of 2020.
(03:24):
So we're coming up on our four yearanniversary now. So that's it.
Awesome.
And tell us a little bit about Maven.
Yeah,I mean our goal is to help companies grow.
That's a very broad mission.
And I think the challenge and opportunitythat we saw, and a lot of us
have backgrounds in user acquisition,which is kind of Facebook and Google
ads, etc..
But what we saw thatI think others don't see,
(03:47):
and that is often misunderstood
part of a business is that I thinka lot of leaders, particularly CEOs,
they think that if we just havea better user acquisition team,
we see all the Candy crush ads.
So let's go
hire the person who's responsiblefor those and we'll have equal success.
And what they're missing isthat it's also interdependent,
and that our user acquisition at Zyngaworks because everything else is working
(04:10):
really well.
So we have foundational datathat's really clean, and
we can rely on it, and we can slice it upin a lot of different ways.
And we have data scientistswho can use that data
to predict the future,and we can optimize those models.
So in the web world,
we have landing pagesthat do a really great job at converting.
And we have really smart peopleworking on that
who are focusing on every little minordetail and running clean tests
(04:33):
so that it's not okay.
Blue button does better than thanred button.
It's it's more complex than that.
And we have proper holdoutsand proper statistical significance
to make sure that that actuallyis indicative of of what's working.
And it's not just some false positive.
We have really good lifecycle teams that are doing
email and push notifications, and they'reoptimizing their part of the world.
And we have good creative.We have all these other things.
(04:55):
I've used the analogy before ofit's like teeth whitening at the dentist.
You know, people look out and they seelike, okay, well, straight teeth,
white teeth, that equals good teeth.
And the reality is, you know,there's a guy at the mall who's
got a picture with a gold chainand spiky hair and Jack
looking at his phone, who will happilywhiten your teeth for 25 bucks,
(05:18):
who is not equipped to tell youwhether or not that's a good idea?
And he's not equipped to diagnoseif you need a tooth pulled,
and then you have a real dentistand that dentist, if you come in
and you need a bunch of work,they're going to be like,
well,we're not going to wait in the teeth.
We're going to doall these other things first.
And there's plenty of peoplethat get out of that chair and go to the
they say, well, whatever,I'm just going to get my teeth whitening.
(05:38):
That's the equivalent of justjumping straight to user acquisition.
And so to come back to the coreof your question on what does Maven do
and what is our purpose?
Our purpose is to help companies grow.
But reallythat's through almost any means necessary.
And in the areaswhere we're not good, we'll just tell you.
So a good example of that is likePR is another function of helping
a company grow, and it relies ona lot of other things to make that work.
(05:59):
We're not great at PR,we know companies that are if you need PR,
we can recommend you to that companyat the right time.
But really what we do is we bring in worldclass experts in
each one of those seats, from data to useracquisition, creative lifecycle, etc.
we diagnose what you need and we reallyoperate like a full time internal team.
Unlike traditional agenciesthat are vertically focused.
(06:21):
So you have an agency that just as brandand an agency that just as PR
and an agencythat just does user acquisition
and that's not really how it worksin the real world full time.
And so you have these companies
who are hiring agencies,and they're frustrated because the agency,
they can't even put themin front of the data teams
because they don't speak data, they justspeak brand or whatever else they do.
They're frustrated because the agency istrying to sell everything that they have.
(06:44):
And it just so happens that exactly
what's going to pull you upand out is what they sell.
So you have some SEO agency telling you
you need $100,000 a month in SEO, backlinkING and all these other things.
Which might be true.
That would be the ultimate expressionof what you could do in SEO.
But that's not necessary.It's a whac-a-mole game.
You don't want tojust go all in on one thing.
And so really what we do is we bring thatholistic strategy that a consultancy
(07:07):
would we bring in experts to actually dothe work like a full time employee.
And we bring in the prioritization
and the focus that says, okay, hereare all the things that we could be doing.
Let's have a conversationwith your leadership team
to kind of map out what we would do
given unlimited budget and like,what would that sequence be?
And then now that we knowthe limitations of the business,
(07:27):
like budget or timeline or goals,this is how we would shape that.
Would you like to do it?
Which pieces would you like us to own?
Which pieceswould you like us to influence?
Which pieces would you like us to,you know, completely hand over to you
and we go from there.
So I think the easiest way to talk about
what we do isyou can think of us like an agency,
but we're we're much more like a full timein-house team.
(07:48):
So what I hear you say is really,
you're an expert in making work workbetter?
Yeah, I think so.
I want to dive into questionsabout some of the things
you're talking about in a second.
But before we do, I just want the audience
to get to know youjust a little bit better in a few ways.
First,if I polled people you have worked with
(08:11):
and ask them to describe your voiceand what I'm saying, your voice.
I'm not just meaning your spoken voice,but everything you communicate.
If they had to reallydistill your essence down,
what do you
hope they would say about you as a leader?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I think first and foremost that I alwaystreat them fairly and with respect.
(08:32):
If I can leave a trail of people behind methat all say that,
that seems like a pretty good outcome.
That doesn't mean that
I'm always telling themwhat they want to hear, right?
Because that's also not good, right?
You wouldn't want thatfor really any relationship, right?
So I think that candidnessand I think a willingness to listen and to
understand, like seeking to understandfirst assume positive intent as well.
(08:55):
And so even when something looks messedup, it's like this can't be the case.
I'm assuming I'm misreading this.
And then in a worldwhere that's not the case, it's like,
okay, well, that's not very good, right?
Like it's pretty bad.
You can still give feedbackor criticism or,
you know, things that traditionallymight be labeled more negative in a way
that the other person walks away saying,like, well, they listen to my side.
(09:15):
It was candid.
It was with respect and fair.
And so hopefully that that would summarizeit, at least at a high level.
Any leader who could walk away with peoplesaying those things
should be able to feel successful, right?
That those are some key,really essential things.
It might seem obviousand like all of that happens, but
I mean, I think we both know that that isnot that's for sure.
(09:38):
It's a common, common thing.
Yeah, honestly, it'snot that difficult to achieve.
I think it's really a matter of intentand a high degree of empathy as well.
A lot of that actually comes down to tone,which is so manageable.
Right.
It's like you might have to tie something
around your finger to remind you ofsomebody has a tendency to get heated,
(09:59):
or they have a tendencyto sound sarcastic or demeaning.
I don't know some other negativetone quality, but if your intention
and empathy aren'tthere, there's no faking the tone either.
So if you are inherently demeaning,nothing's going to fix that.
But for people who are misunderstoodin that way,
it's within the ability to manage andcontrol, even if it took a little work.
(10:21):
If you deeply seek to understand
and you genuinely are putting yourselfin the shoes of this other person,
for better or for worse, it'sgoing to show the tone will be impacted.
The message will be impacted.
How you approach it,the first five questions you ask, or
if you don't ask any questions at all,you just start ripping into somebody.
That's all indicativeof how you feel about them.
(10:41):
It's all indicativeof the internal perspective you have.
If you approach that genuinelywith that intent,
then everything elsekind of falls into line
because you can't really have a negative,demeaning tone
if you're genuinely trying to understandsomething.
I know that you are one
that has routines and you do a lota variety of different things.
(11:01):
You're also very curious.
Is there anything that you do to helpprepare your mind
or prepare yourself to have that empathywhen you went from one meeting to another,
or anything that you just naturallyhave in your routine
that you found to be useful?
I will say that one's abilityto context switch and jump
(11:22):
from a really difficult conversationwith the internal employee to
the next conversation, which is maybe witha client or it's a prospective client.
You have to selland put on a happy face, coming
right out of somethingthat was really emotionally tough.
That may just be innate.
I don't know, maybe that'ssomething that comes over time
and maybe you just wake upwhether you don't.
Some people
struggle with compartmentalizing stufflike that, and they carry it forward.
(11:45):
I carry it forwardas much as the next person.
Because you're not a robot.
You end up having to take the breathat the end of the day.
One thing that I found super helpful,and it's something I've had in some way
or another for a long time,but have just recently, maybe in the last
couple of years, have really been ableto put a process to it.
And you can find a lot of resourceson this, but it's called time boxing.
Harvard did a studyand they interviewed the top,
(12:08):
I don't know, 100500 CEOs of the top companies or whatever
time boxing out is the number oneproductivity tip from those people.
And so that givesa little bit of credence.
What time boxing is, is setting upyour day to where it's not just meetings.
Right.
So yes, like todaywe both had a block on our calendar
that says this is what we're goingto be doing today at this hour,
(12:31):
but it's about making sure that that next15 minutes,
maybe after we finish today's podcast,that that's actually blocked
and that says, like, this is a time whereI'm going to get water
and I'm going to catch up on texts,and that's a 30 minute chunk maybe,
or this is that four hour periodthat we're going to be rethinking
(12:54):
brand values, and I'm going to bepreparing for this other bigger thing.
And so what happens during the day?
What happens during the day is thingshappen and stuff doesn't go to plan.
I think
the biggest, most important thingthat I didn't do until a couple of years
ago is rearranging those boxesto actually reflect what happened.
So if the 30 minute chunkI have for catching up on text
(13:17):
and getting some waterafter podcast is over,
if that ends up being 15 minutesor 2 hours,
I have to one adjust the box visuallyso it actually reflects what I did to.
I have to move boxes around,
which is likely going to meanI need to move them into tomorrow.
So it does a number of things.
One, you can look back every week and seeexactly how you spent your time,
(13:40):
even if three hourswere completely unproductive.
You have to be honest about that.And it's like, yeah, okay.
And you start to better understandwhat you can and can't take.
I also use color codingnot to come off as too crazy, but,
you know, external calls are purplepersonal events or red
internal calls or blue workthat I'm getting done
that like has to be done forthe business is green.
(14:01):
Other things that are like less pressingbut still need to be done
but are less revenuegenerating are orange.
I could take off my glasses,and I could just tell you
how much of my time is goingto which function,
and I could see,oh my gosh, I get a lot of purple.
I'm doing a lot of external calls,
and I'm not doing a lot of green stuff,which is meant to drive revenue.
Should those be inverted?
I don't know,but it gives you a point to say,
(14:21):
what did you do last weekand how is your time being spent?
You can just say explicitly,down to the minute, essentially.
But coming to your point onwhat are some things
that you can do to manage thatand kind of avoid, not necessarily avoid,
but manage that context switchingI think is altogether you can avoid it.
It also helps to have an executive adminbecause they can guard this for you.
But it's like, okay, let's
(14:42):
maybe not schedule that really difficultinternal call just before a sales call.
Why are we doing that.
That's going to set us upfor like weird setup here.
And so bringing some intentionto that schedule.
So one we can avoid schedulingthese things as much as we can to
we can kind of bundle things.
So like I have Friday is almost entirelyspent towards task stuff.
And Friday is not a great dayfor people to take calls.
(15:03):
Why even schedule calls on Friday?
Let's just not make me available on Fridayand we can avoid that altogether.
And that's a much better day for tasks.
Early morning it for me is way bettertime to catch up on email
and kind of get the day started,but having that plan as well.
And again, coming back to your question,I'm able to as I'm going to bed,
I always pull up tomorrow
(15:23):
and I'm looking and saying, okay,what does the morning look like?
Okay, I've got an early call.
I need to make sureI'm up early enough for that
or I don't have any calls until 11.Okay, that's pretty cool.
And then in the morningI'm going to be doing this task, okay.
That's mentally a heavy task.
It's going to be like cognitively deep.
Then I do this and I can kind of likesee what my day looks like in advance.
So that next morning,as I'm going through it,
(15:43):
I'm already mentally preparedfor what I'm going to be doing.
And in an event where it was unavoidableand I've got a really tough emotional call
followed by a really tough cognitive callor another call where I need to be
really bright and happy, I'm alreadykind of mentally prepared for that.
So as I'm going into it, I'm like, okay,now we're going to do this other mode
and I'm not living minute to minute.
I kind of already know what's ahead of me.
Yeah, I love it.
One thing that you come
(16:04):
to realize that you were overly ambitiouson what you think you can get done,
and that the reality isyou have decision fatigue.
The premise is like everybody can make
a certain number of decisionsbefore they just break.
Some are higher than others,
but there's some point where you kind ofstop being productive and efficient.
And so you also needto kind of figure out, do I like having
calls in the morning or in the afternoon?
(16:24):
Do I like having these moreadministrative, functional stuff
at the end of the day,beginning of the day,
do I want to stack everything on one day?
So anyways, those
you can't if you're not tracking it,you don't have the data to kind of support
what is maybe more of a loose feeling thatyou kind of can't put your thumb on it.
One of the things that I've experiencedthat executives seem to really struggle
(16:45):
with is self-care.
A lot of the time is this just go, go,go in the machine,
keep them going, and they feel thisneed to go all the time.
Is all these people depending on me?
But then they get depleted,they just get burnt.
So being able to plan through the day,hey, these are some things
where I'm just going to take care ofsome of my basic needs here.
I think more than just taking care ofthe basic needs
(17:07):
is also a psychological choiceto take care of yourself a little bit.
Yeah.
And I think to that same end,I typically try to work.
It's I try to not take anything
really before 730,but I'm typically on and at my desk
by 745 eight and I am off6:00 sharp, full stop,
always off at six because it's likeI have two kids, I've got a wife.
(17:30):
We we have dinner together.
We dinner every single night together.
We we did that. When I grew up.
We played gameevery night before, after bath.
We have a routine, right.
And so I have obligations to make there.
And again, from a compartmentalizationstandpoint, I actually know that
that will make me,by all accounts, technically,
I should be less successfulthan somebody who's able to go
(17:52):
seven at six in the morningto midnight every single night.
And when you look at the super achievers,that's pretty common
that they're not getting a lot of sleep.They're burning, burning, burning.
But from my perspective,and I'm making up numbers here,
if somebody said, okay,you can do what you're doing now
and we can predict the future
and you're going to have 20 millionby the time you retire,
(18:12):
or you can go really hardand you have 200 million.
It's not even a choice.
Now, granted,
probably everybody listening is like,well,
yeah,who wouldn't who wouldn't want 20 million?
But even if some
even if you change thatand you said you can kind of
do what you're doing now and you'regoing to have 1 million at retirement,
or you could do it this other way
and you'd have ten for me,it's not worth the trade off,
because we've all seen peoplewho've been raised with,
(18:33):
you know, parents who are really super,super busy, super successful.
But, you know, it's that classic.
Nobody's on their deathbed looking backand saying, I should have worked more.
I should have spent even less timewith my family, these things.
So to that point,I think with that intention, too,
if you really are trying to benefitor deliver for family
or the people that are counting on you,do you need to sleep?
(18:53):
I have no shame that I getabout nine hours of sleep at night.
Yeah, I actually need that.
And I think a lot of people are like,that's weak.
No, it makes it to wherewhenever I am performing,
I'm ready and like,I have the energy to sustain that.
And you don't want
somebody working on your businessthat hasn't slept in four days, right?
That's like, that's not a good thing.
It's like, yeah, we run itand we run it with really cheap gasoline.
(19:14):
Isn't that great? It's like,no, that's terrible. No.
And then the other thing is like thatpersonal stuff for your own mental health.
It's scheduling that as well.
That's the period of the timewhen I go and do jujitsu.
And here's a period of timewhere I go hit golf balls.
And that's as importantas these other meetings.
And again, with a family,I actually squeeze
(19:34):
most of that stuff into the workday,and I encourage our team to do the same.
So, you know, there's a lot of a lot ofstuff structurally inside of our business
that is meant to make surethat people have the space to take
that time that essentially recharges them,so that when they're having to
do work related stuff,they're at their absolute peak.
You know, I think what you're saying herefeeds into a lot of different research,
(19:57):
and it feeds into a lot of shifting
perceptions in the business worldof what success actually looks like.
Are you really successfulif you're making millions or $1 billion
a year or whatever it happens to be,and your family's a wreck,
or that you are destroyingall your employees around you and they're
(20:19):
miserable and feel terrified of youall day long because you're a monster.
Yeah.
Or is it really successthat you're able to provide what you need?
You're able to take care of your family,
able to grow and developand offer value to the world.
And on the flip side, also,research of people are more productive
when they're happy and healthyand their needs are taken care of,
(20:40):
and they're free totake care of themselves like they need to.
One other thing I'd add thereis that they feel safe, right?
So it's like they're notthey feel like they're in good hands.
They're supported.
They can take risks,they can do other things.
And that there is a net therethat will catch them,
and that there is a frameworkby which they can like, explore
and be their best self versusthat kind of example
(21:01):
of somebodywho's got like an over caring boss
and they're layoffs all the timeand everyone's like,
why are you taking a three day week?
And it's like, that's not a an environmentwhere one would feel safe.
It's not super conducive to productivity.
It's not super conducive
to people speaking their mind and saying,hey, I think I found a little thing here
that's broken that I think
if we put it all puta little effort into it,
(21:22):
we could kind of makethe building stronger.
And everyone's like the last guy that saidthat got fired because, you know,
like highlightedthat his bad manager missed it.
And like, so all of that comesdown to the culture and what you value.
And I think that the people at any companyare really a reflection
of the leadership and what they value,because those people flocked to that.
(21:43):
They they metwith those people at some point,
and those people said, I like this person.
I like something about them,
whether that's they work all the timeand they they build fiefdoms or whatever.
At a company,we take some of those negatives.
If fiefdoms are rewarded
and you look around at the most successfulpeople in the company,
and that's like watching Game of Thronesfold out, you know, with all this,
like, Machiavellian and control andall this stuff, and you're not like that.
(22:05):
And you look around and you're like, theseguys just roam the halls, no problem.
No, but everybody sees it.
We all know it,and it's almost celebrated.
But like, that person was now promotedto lead even more.
And we all know how they are.
The people who don't value that leavebecause they're like, this is disgusting.
I hate this and that. Why?Why am I working here?
The people that are neutraland a lot of people are just neutral,
(22:26):
and they're just happy to come in and
hit the clock and goand they're like, whatever.
I just don't raise my headand I don't get cut.
We can kind of ignore that crowd,but that's actually a very sizable chunk.
And then you have the otherswho are like, yes, I have to go like usurp
that person and do all these other thingsso that I can take over that piece.
It's like complete chaos.
And so if that's how people are, it'sbecause the leaders are like that.
(22:46):
And so if people are really light heartedand they're willing to take risks
and they're willing to communicateand they're willing to be vulnerable
and they're willing to be wrong,that means that the leaders
are likely like thatbecause they haven't been fired.
If somebody'ssuper market value or whatever,
the leaders are probably like that
because they haven't been fired,either for better or for worse.
And so anyways, we talk a lot about planthe work work plan.
(23:08):
And so if you don't plan the work,same thing if you don't plan your culture,
if you don't plan your day,if you don't plan any of these things,
you don't take some timeto have that intention and purpose
and like take the time to just say, okay,what am I actually trying to do here?
Or what are we trying to whattype of company are we trying to build?
Or what type of day am I trying to have?
Then everything else is just chaos.
(23:29):
So like it all comes down to planning.
I think that being intentionalthat you're talking about
makes a true leader arise,rather than a manager in your experience
and working in different companies,whether they're companies that you worked
for yourselves,run yourself or worked with,
what would you identifyas some of the things
(23:51):
that get in the way of people's workmost often?
What are the misery makers at companiesthat you see as pretty common patterns
that if, when they're shifted,make a big difference
in productivity or company culture?
Assuming positive intent is really big.
If you have people that aren'tassuming positive intent,
(24:13):
then they will hide things from you.
They will see something
and put their own spin on it and be like,well, he or she probably did that
because of these reasonsthat are probably not true.
So I think that that's a big one.
I think making decisionsacross the business
based on intuition and gut, without anyuse of data, is also a big one.
(24:33):
I think oftentimes the companieswe've seen, like the most successful
companies,are really, really busy early, often.
And so because of that,if you kind of go back to the beginning of
I take a Zynga super busyastronomical rise and same with King.
And what ends up happening is that youhire more people, get more things,
(24:53):
and like lots of things are being builtwithout the structure
and without the process that you wouldtypically find at a larger company.
And so there's a person over hereand a person over here
both trying to solve some problemindependently,
both finding a solution,standing up a solution.
And we don't realize for like two yearsthat we have two different systems
that are meant to do the same thing.You oftentimes find two.
That data suffers in the early days.
(25:15):
And so later, once you're five yearsin, you've reached some stability
and your thousand peopleand everyone's kind of
has the time to take the proverbialbreath.
Somebody starts looking around, says, man,this system is like crazy.
And like, this data is incorrectand this is incorrect.
And like, we got to marry thatand mish mash this together
and deprecate thisand kind of rip all those things out.
So basically I'm just sayingthat it's not uncommon
(25:37):
to see kind of broken data, but it'sbut you have to kind of take that serious
because if you're not using datato make those decisions or
and this especially happenswith like really strong personality
leadersthat they're almost borderline dictators
where they're like, we're going to do thisand we're going to do this.
And I was like,all right, we're going to do this.
And you know,
this isn't to say that there's somethingto be said for an intuition, right?
(25:58):
Because oftentimes you're like,I know that this is sounds crazy.
And maybe we looked at the data,but I still think there's something here
that we're missingthat the data doesn't tell us. Fine.
There's something to be said for somebody
being decisiveand making a choice and going.
But if you're not testing thatand using data to make decisions,
that's a whole pain to you.
Because if you're living within that or,or you're actively doing it,
it's like you'reyou're just kind of making things up.
(26:20):
And and so that's really dangerous.
And then I think the other piece is,you know, and there's probably a ton
I mean, I could probably put togethera hundred item list here,
but really that desire to understandand communicate
and being okay with failure
is super, super importantbecause there's a lot of organizations
(26:42):
that aren't okay with failure, and theytreat failure like this permanent state
as opposed to just part of a path.
And I've dealt, you know, with this,with my daughter in that
whenever she loses a game or something,she gets really frustrated.
I mean, it's not like crazy,but she's like really hard on herself.
And I have to talk to her like, hey, look,first off,
(27:03):
you're going to fail constantly.
So like, you're going to be wayokay with failure because I fail every day
all the time, right?
From little thingsto knocking over a drink
to really big things like,I don't know, onboarding
some really expensive softwarethat I kind of knew
we probably didn't need,but we just did it.
And then I'm like, why don't I do that?
And like, okay,
but you get better if she stays with it,she eventually gets really good at it.
(27:26):
And, you know, if a game was like,
take a game like
goldfish and we've all probably playedgoldfish.
Well,goldfish is super boring game, right?
If you're an adult.
But as a kid, when you first play it,you're going to make mistakes
because you don't know what a seven is.
(27:46):
The game becomes more funwhen you do know what a seven is.
So now we're makingwe're not making that mistake.
The game becomes more funwhen we remember that grandpa
asked for sevens three hands agoand we just drew a seven.
And so when it's our turn again,we're going to ask
grandpa specifically for the sevens. Okay?
Do you eventually outgrow that?
If I just said to my daughter,all right, I got a game you can win,
(28:08):
I'm going to flip over a cardand you tell me what color it is,
how long you want to play that game.
Things are fun.
Not because of failure, like innately,but because we overcome that over time
and we get better, right?
So you look at something like golf, it'slike golf is a miserable thing to start.
You're going to be failing constantly,more than probably any other sport.
(28:28):
Like if I give somebody a basketball,they'll probably make a few buckets.
They've never played golfor had any instruction.
They're going to not have a good time,right?
They're watching me like,this is pointless, right?
But then that's where you seeall these people kind of addicted to golf.
It's because they slowly get betterand better and better
and is this infinite thing that you'rekind of always going to be not great at.
And the difference between the Tiger Woodsand guys who were,
(28:51):
you know, really, really, really goodat golf, who were like the best guy,
you know, in golf, the difference betweenthose people is paper thin with somebody
finishing negative three on a courseversus like over by five,
like that's the differencebetween making millions of dollars a year
and there are tons of guysthat shoot five over
that are never going to compete againstTiger Woods because he's five under.
It's not a lot.
It's like one stroke, half a stroke,a hole or something like that.
(29:15):
But that's that's what brings that joy.
So anyways,coming back to that culture that
you don't want to be celebrating failure.
Yeah. Yeah. Because that's likethat's also weird, right.
But to see failure is like a necessary
piece of the puzzle and a momentlike a temporary state.
And again, necessarilyif you're not making mistakes,
you probably aren't really doing anythingthat difficult or that great
(29:38):
or you're not on a crazy trajectory,you're probably doing something
that's not very fulfillingand you're probably not the best at it.
I havetwo questions that come out of this.
Number one, there's the thoughtthat if you tolerate a certain
amount of negative behavioror poor performance,
then that basically sets the barfor the entire company, right?
(29:59):
Then there's nothing more unmotivatedthan tolerated bad behavior.
I'm talking about behavior.
And then I we're talking about failure.
I know they're not equivalent.
And those are actuallytwo very different things.
But my question to you is,
say you had to have a conversationwith someone who just made a big error.
What does it actually look like to,
for lack of a better word,celebrate the failure or
(30:22):
talk with them and mentor themthrough making a better decision next time
and not tolerating things
that will ultimatelyundermine the company.
If there was,if there was no learning in the failure,
then something went wildly wrong, right?
There's always a learningfrom a conversational standpoint.
(30:43):
It's like, okay, well, let's walk throughwhat happened.
This is that seeking to understandassuming positive intent.
Right?
I know you didn't mean to just cost us$1 million.
Like you'd be a maniacto just intentionally do this.
I know you didn't intentionally do this,but the fact remains,
you did walk me through what happened.
Let's debrief on this and deconstructed.
(31:03):
Well, I looked at this and I saw this,and I saw this, and I saw this,
and I said, okay, great.
And then that made you think this.
And so you thought that this next thingthat you did
walk me through that decision. Right.
And what did you thinkthe outcome would be here?
If we just really oversimplifythis, it's like, oh, okay.
And I forgot, I forgot to check the systemB to make sure that that was correct.
If you just check system B,you would have never click that button.
Okay. Great. What should we do next?
(31:26):
It's really allowing that person to talkyou through and solve your problem.
Right? It's like,I'm not here to solve every problem.
I need you guys solving problems.
So what can we do next?
Well, okay.
One it begs the questionwhy do we have system B and system?
Might we be able to create a processby which that thing that you did
can't happenunless somebody does check system B
(31:48):
we actually make is there technologywe can use to prevent that?
How do we basically learn from itand make sure that that can never happen
again?
And then the classic case too isI can't remember that details.
Maybe it never even happened, but it was
somebody at Google, the story goes,and they pushed a button last
$1 millionand they had this type of conversation.
(32:08):
I'm sure, and somebody was like,so you're not going to fire me?
Like, I thought you would fire me.
And the reaction of the executivewas like,
I just spent $1 million training you.
Why would I do that? Like, absolutely not.
Like you're way more valuable now becauseyou're never going to do that again.
Somebody is eventually goingto push that button,
and you have to push the button to realizeyou got to put a cover on it.
(32:28):
But if we go to diagnosethat and we're like, so what happened?
Like, I don't know, I'm just doing this
and it's like, okay, what would we dodifferent in the future?
I have no idea. It'slike I'm just mashing buttons.
It's like,okay, well, that's not okay. Right?
So but again, that's lacking a bunch,a bunch of like awareness
on the person side too.
I talk a lot aboutand it's something we value is
do not bring me problemswithout solutions.
(32:49):
Your solution doesn't have to be correct.It's fine.
But like to say I've got this thing.
Like, this thing is like wheneverwe push it, it's everything is like
it breaks and we lose $1 millionevery time somebody push that button.
What should we do? That's not okay.
We think we should cover up that button.
Okay.
I actually think we should justget rid of the button.
Like, why does the button exist?But at least you have an idea.
(33:10):
So I think part of this also is culturallywhat you value in hiring people
who are problem solversand not problem flaggers.
You can be both.
Let's say thatyou know a ton about the saxophone
and you could say right nowthat this thing doesn't play
and I don't know anything about saxophone,just one button doesn't play.
And I could
still say, okay, we'll have you check
(33:32):
to see if it has all the piecesof the other buttons.
That might be a solution.
Maybe it's missing a piece.
You'd be like, man, that's so crazy.That's not what's wrong.
But I can still offer a solutioneven if I know nothing about it.
It might be wrong.That's fine. But it's the spirit of.
I have givensome amount of thought to this.
And when you have that, over timepeople get better.
And yes, if you have like loss after lossafter loss after loss,
(33:54):
and you're constantly making poor choicesthat aren't showing any sort of
when you walk us through the debrief,
it's like, well,you didn't really think again.
And like, remember how last time we talkedand you need to kind of go slower here
and you keep kind ofnot thinking about stuff
that seems to be at the rootof all these things.
Like at some point somebody's
got to be able to get themselves overthat hump and be like, here's my plan.
And that that makes sense.
(34:15):
And then that theory and act on thatso that they're not constantly making
making mistakes.
What I really hearyou saying is a form of leadership
that takes a lot of care and attention,
that requires you to not just measuremetrics and numbers.
Obviously you do, and you care about that.
You care about that feedback,but you're also focused on the soft
(34:37):
things, the the behaviors, the attitudes.
What are they bringing tothe table as a person? Are they engaged?
They're trying to offer solutions, andyou're willing to have those conversations
ratherjust like your numbers are off by your
you're willing to see this as a person.
Well, yeah, I mean, I don'tI don't even think that's an option.
We deal with the tophalf a percent in talent.
(34:58):
Right.
And this is one thingthat we've seen consistently is that
you have to be likable.
You have to play well with others.
Okay. That's non-negotiable.
I'll try to use somebodythat everybody knows.
But like, we could probably all agreethat Neil deGrasse
Tyson and Bill Nye are top
(35:18):
half of a percent of scientistsas far as like, public facing interacting.
So they have to play nicewith others, right?
If we had if we brought Neil deGrasseTyson into our business and we had
somebody talking to him disrespectfullyor kind of a jerk, he'll just leave.
He's too good. He's like,I don't need to deal with this.
I'm like, the best of the best.
And so you have to play nice with others,
or else you're going to driveall the other best of the best away.
(35:39):
And if you don't play well with others,
you're not the best of the bestbecause you drive other people away.
That's not a great trait,and you won't attract great people either.
In fact, you will attract peoplethat are just like you
because that's what you value.
And so you have to kind of naturallybe okay with people and be open
and honest, but not confrontational and,and kingdom building.
You have to be world class at what you do.
(36:01):
So you still have to deliver.It's not enough to just be nice.
The third is you have to be accountable.
You have to do what you said you would do
because, you know, if you takeI don't want to go to
too far of an extreme,but you take something like a
Navy Seals team or some special ops team,and they're going in to do something
that's really complexand dynamic and high stakes.
And the guy who's supposed to bethe guy that blows the door
(36:21):
doesn't bring the explosive,or we have to trust that the guy behind us
who's responsible
to make sure that nobody sneaks upon us, is doing that,
and then we can focus entirelyon what we're supposed to be doing.
So because of the team and the dynamicsof these things often are complicated.
The stakes aren't as high necessarily.
Certainly not in life and death.
You have to be ableto trust on those other people.
If you're breaking any of those things,you're not putting out
(36:43):
really great work for what it isthat you're supposed to be doing.
You're not doing it in a waythat you're likable
and people like being around you,
and they can trustand be be comfortable around you,
and you're not doing what you saidyou would do when you would do it.
That creates all sorts of problems.
So really everything kind of comes downto one of those three things.
And so if you know thatthat's what you need on a world class team
(37:04):
when you're hiring and somebody shows up
late or they're kind of a little snarkyin the interview or,
you know, they don't have a great answerto, something's very easy to be like,
okay, that's not the right personfor that group.
You have to understand what you value.
You have to be relentless with that.
And, you know, at some pointif you're not and it's like, okay,
well then, thenwhat are you actually building?
Because there's one thing it's even worseto like talk about it and then not do it,
(37:25):
because then it's just like,yeah, that guy's kind of full of it.
So anyways, it's it'seasier said than done at the time.
Thank you so much for the timeyou're willing to offer to come on today
and to to talk and to share some of thesevaluable lessons that you've learned
over a career.
And knowing you, you're always developing,growing and doing new stuff
and learning new things.So that kind of you come on again. Yeah.
(37:46):
And share some more.
Thank you so much forfor being willing to come on.
Yeah. Happy to do it.Always a pleasure meeting with you.
And we'll come back anytime.
Is there anything on your mind where likeif I put this in everyone's mind,
this is what I would want in everyone'smind. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good one, I would say.
I mean,
if you're talking to a roomful of leaders,it's do what you said you would do.
(38:07):
I mean, it's it'svery easy to be overwhelmed.
I still fail at this, right?
Nobody's perfect at it.
I don't have any tattoos.
I like looking at them, but I justdon't have anything that I'm like, that's.
That's what I want. I'm on myself.
If I did do anything, it would probably bedo what you said you would do, because
it's so easy to compromise on that.
And if you were forcing yourselfto do what you said you would do,
(38:29):
it also forces you to prioritize becauseyou can't do everything all the time.
One thing that you'll findif you start really using time boxing
literally up to the minuteon your calendar,
you'll start to realizeyou're terrible at predicting
how long it'sgoing to take you to do something.
Like you think it's a 15 minute problem,you spend two hours on it.
I'm sure every executive listening tothis has done that at some point.
And so you start to get better at beinglike, that's not a 15 minute problem.
(38:50):
That's a two hour problem.
I can't do that this week.
And now I'm not committing to somethingI can't do.
So part of it
is really understanding your schedule
and how long it's going to take youto mentally do something,
preparing for that, committing to thatand having that marked on your calendar.
So I can just tell you, yeah, I'mgoing to do that.
It's Thursday at four from 4 to 5
and actually doing itso that in that same example,
(39:10):
if somebody's expecting youto have that drill charge
or to be looking, you know, at peoplecoming up from behind you
that you can be counted onto do what you said you would do.
Stay tuned for our next podcastthat will be taking
some of this keyvaluable points that we took from Matt
and giving you dailypractice tips to go with it.
And we'll see you nexttime. Great. Thanks for having me.
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