May 20, 2024 • 26 mins
Ever thought about how leaders adapt as their startups morph into the real business world? Stacee and Ira pull back the curtain on their evolution from the early days of winging it with their teams, to mastering the art of delegation and trust in a growing company. We get real about the gnarly bits of meshing with larger corporate beasts post-acquisition and why having your ducks in a row with processes can save you from a world of hurt down the line.
Special shout outs:
Mike Fisher
Fish Food for Thought newsletter
Dani McVety
Tips of the week:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Stacee (00:40):
Well, Ira, here we are at another episode.
Ira (00:44):
Again at last.
Stacee (00:46):
Again.
Okay, so I wanted to tell youabout an email that came into my
inbox just this morning.
I follow this guy.
His name is Mike Fisher and hehas a newsletter called Fish
Food for Thought, which is sobrilliant.
Just there.
I was so jealous because I,like I, wish I had a cool last
(01:08):
name I could do something with.
But in his newsletter today hereferenced a study that was done
by a professor, a photographyprofessor at the University of
Florida, and for his class forthis semester, half of his
students were told that theirgrade would be based on sheer
(01:31):
volume of pictures submitted.
So if you put, if you submittedlike a hundred pictures, you
got an A 80 to 90, you know, yougot the next level down and so
forth.
And the other half of the classwas graded on one picture.
They only had to send in onepicture for the whole year and
(01:52):
it was to be their best pictureand that would be their grade.
Ira (01:59):
Would much rather be in group one.
Stacee (02:01):
Yeah yeah, much rather be in group one, yeah yeah.
So fast forward and what endedup happening is the best
pictures of the whole class werefrom the people that were
taking hundreds of pictures.
They dominated in producing thehighest quality.
So isn't that interesting whenyou think about iterations and
(02:24):
mistakes and failures and trying, trying, trying that you're
really getting better.
Ira (02:33):
A lot of swings to hit a home run.
Stacee (02:36):
Yeah, yeah.
Ira (02:38):
All right.
Well, what is our topic fortoday?
Stacee (02:41):
All right.
The question of the day is whatwas the leadership style like
at your company?
Ira (03:00):
So this evolved substantially along the way for
us, because we truly started ourbusiness as a bunch of idiot
students that wanted to playaround and build something cool,
and so we had almost no realleadership style at the
beginning, aside from just avery collaborative and wanting
(03:24):
to build something that workedand worked well sort of attitude
.
I think really a collaborativeleadership style would have been
where we started and then, aswe grew and expanded into having
a bigger team, I think thatbecame a sort of very trusting
(03:44):
leadership style, in partbecause of necessity it was kind
of our additional side hustle,if you will although I don't
know if that was a term backthen and so we brought on people
that we just felt really sortof got us and got our style and
would fit well and could operatepretty independently and would
(04:04):
come to us for guidance and wecertainly were always happy to
get our hands dirty and kind ofdive into whatever needed to get
worked on or fixed, and somaybe to some extent kind of
that willingness to feel like nojob is not mine or beneath me
(04:25):
in some way, and I think thatthat was certainly an attitude
that would never have flown atat our business Cause when you
have a small team, you know anyproblem we don't have, like a
person whose job title is solelydedicated to addressing that
problem, like everybody has totake on the ownership of, um,
you know, trying to both preventand fix problems.
(04:45):
So that's, that was sort of ourapproach.
I think it does get really hardto maintain that style of
leadership at some size ofcompany.
I don't know what the magicnumber is, but I've kind of felt
like somewhere between like 20and 40 people at the businesses
(05:06):
when, like, it just gets reallyhard to have that type of
connection and relationship withall of the people that can
facilitate that sort of you know.
Just, you know deeply trustingand know that you know
somebody's going to come find meif they need me and I trust
them to do a great job in themeantime and we'll connect, you
know, on whatever cadence tojust sync up and make sure that
(05:29):
we're on the same page.
But I think that does get hardonce you go from being small to,
I guess, what most people wouldthink of as a sort of more
medium sized.
Stacee (05:38):
You know you're so right , because one thing I struggled
with a lot when we got acquiredwas taking my small 30 person
company and putting it into a300 person company, and I was so
unprepared for this I hadn'teven thought about what that
(05:59):
would feel like and it turnedout to be a big problem for me
because, um, you know, whenyou're used to cross-functioning
and you just do whatever thepeople on my team were so
multi-skilled across thedifferent sales force, or zoom,
(06:20):
set up a marketing set, set up awebinar book, a hotel, we could
all do all these things andthen when we try to go into this
big company and we perceive itas being super slow, it is like
trying to turn a cruise shiparound versus a little speedboat
and you have to go through allthese channels to do this what
(06:44):
seems to be the simplest ofthings and, uh, it became so
frustrating for me and Iultimately I couldn't hang in
that company because I couldn'tstand it, and of course it has
to be that way.
I realized at first I was likeyou guys are like what I don't.
Ira (07:05):
what are you doing here?
Yeah, you don't know whatyou're doing this is going to
take.
Stacee (07:10):
any of us over here could do this in like 15 minutes
and you're telling me it'sgoing to take four weeks, you
know.
But what I realized is youstart, when you start just
randomly doing things that justbecause you can you do know how
to do them, is you startthrowing all these wrenches into
the equation that trickle downway far in the future to more
(07:35):
problems, and so it is necessaryto have these processes in
place and these oftentimes siloswhere work is getting done, and
I mean it was so hard for me Icouldn't actually do it.
Ira (07:53):
Yeah, I mean, you said the P word and I have found myself
at times just being like likethe enemy, of wanting to focus
on process, because in the earlystages it's so inefficient to
build processes, because thoseprocesses change all the time
(08:15):
and so the amount of time youspend building them feels really
wasted.
But I think similarly at somesize of team, ultimately for
people to really understand howyou want things done.
Actually, what you aren'tbuilding are solutions to
individual problems, like youneed to be building the process
or processes for people to dothat themselves, and that's a
(08:39):
big mindset mindset shift.
I oftentimes find myselfactually needing to rely on
people that are really goodabout thinking about things
deeply in terms of process when,when we need to get there,
because it's really not myinstinct.
I even sometimes find myselfdisliking people that, uh,
(09:00):
really like to emphasize process, um, and you're all.
You're so stupid, you're so whyyou wasting so much time, like
we can fix this right now.
How about you, stacey?
What was sort of the leadershipstyle at Vet2Vet?
Stacee (09:20):
So my leadership style when I started Vet2Pet actually
this was something I was prettypassionate about because I was
working in this vet clinic thathad been acquired by a big
corporate group and I had gonefrom, you know, kind of a small
family owned clinic to like nowI'm part of a bigger
(09:43):
organization and at first it wasno big deal because in this
kind of business structure whenthe clinic's making money for
the mothership, they leave youalone.
But then when the recession hitand we started seeing decline
in visits and the money wasn'tcoming in so much, they start
trying to help you and I putthat in quotes and that means
(10:06):
more processes coming down andyou start setting up a culture
where people are not so muchinclined to be free thinkers
anymore and in the clinic itself, remove a corporate entity from
that.
But in a veterinary clinic,hospital situation or any
(10:28):
hospital situation, you do haveto have a lot of processes in
place.
I mean, people can't just bewilly-nilly doing things all day
because you're especially ifyou're like running anesthesia.
You have to have a process onthat.
But what ended up happening inthat clinic is people felt that
they were not smart enough orempowered enough or good enough
(10:49):
or whatever, enough to makedecisions, and they were coming
at me constantly with all these.
Hey, I have a quick questionCan I do this?
Hey, can we do this?
Can this client do that?
And I'm like come on, just makea decision, you can make this
decision.
And I realized I had set up aculture, or was part of a
culture that wasn't cherished orvalued or promoted, and so my
(11:14):
intent with Vet2Pet was to dothe opposite.
I wanted people to feelempowered and capable of just
making good decisions, the bestyou can.
So that's the culture I set outto build.
Ira (11:31):
That's great and I think it's super important.
It reminds me of in ourrelatively well sort of not
earliest of days, but fairlyearly on, we had student
representatives, students ateach school that would help tell
their classmates about theproduct offerings that we had.
And we had one of our veryfirst employees was my
(11:53):
brother-in-law, and we wanted toget shirts for all the student
reps and we'd like played aroundwith a few ideas for different
designs of the shirt and like hejust sort of like made one up
that he thought was was reallykind of funny and cool and he
ordered like a bunch of shirtswithout running it by anybody
(12:15):
and and it was actually like itwas really funny.
But we were, we were sort oflike a little bit worried about
whether it might be like alittle bit too cutesy and
offensive, but essentially, likeon the front of the shirt it's
like what animal is this?
And it's sort of just like ashadow outline of, like you know
(12:35):
, a dog, a cat, a horse and acow or something Right, it's
like and, and then like under,it's like you know, vet prep,
making board exams this easy,you know, since, whenever, right
, and I'm like, oh you, you know, like we thought it was like
really, like he's not a in thefield, right um and um, like
yeah, like I don't we don'treally know how people are going
(12:56):
to sort of take this as it'ssort of like trivializing the
fact that, like this is like thebiggest exam they've ever taken
in their life and it coverslike everything and it's really
hard.
Or are people going to kind ofsee the humor and honestly, like
if we debated it, I think wenever would have done it.
But like, since he'd orderedthe shirts and spent the money,
like we're like these are theones we're not doing it again
(13:17):
and like, thank goodness, likeeverybody loved them and I think
we still.
they might still make them today, like 10, 12 years later.
But um, yeah, it was kind ofone of those reminds like Like,
yeah, I guess we kind of hadthis culture where if you feel
like you've got an idea or asolution, like just go for it,
you don't need to ask permissionfor everything, and every once
(13:38):
in a while I guess that couldget you in trouble, but this one
didn't.
Stacee (13:41):
Well, I will tell you, it is a hard culture to
implement.
It's an easy culture to say youwant, but when the rubber hits
the road, it turned out to bevery hard to actually build and
apply.
And one of my first experienceswith this going to total hell
(14:03):
was okay, picture it.
We don't have a ton of money Ofcourse, we didn't raise a lot
of any money in the beginningand we're trying to market
ourselves and everything's verytight, like when we go to these
conferences and these tradeshows, we're sharing rooms and
we're sharing dinner.
We're like trying our hardestto save money.
(14:24):
And so I had, at this point Ithink I had like maybe 10 people
on the team and two of theemployees came with me to a
conference in California.
I think we were in San Diegoand we had a booth there and I
was speaking there and you knowwe're working and hustling and
(14:46):
and I had to go to a businessdinner one night and my two
employees went to get dinner.
All right, fast forward, like amonth down the road, I get the
visa bill and I'm like what isthis?
There's like a charge for $300for dinner and I'm like charge
(15:13):
for $300 for dinner and I'm like, well, that wasn't me, because
I I'm like being very consciousabout not spending money.
And uh, I reached out to my twoemployees and I'm like what
happened here?
And they said well, we justwent to dinner?
And I go well, what'd you eat?
And they said well, we had youknow oysters, and we shared a
bottle of wine and we had like areally it was amazing
(15:35):
restaurant.
And I had looked up therestaurant and I knew how like
this is a nice restaurant.
I'm like, what were youthinking?
How could this possibly makesense, that you should be dining
, fine dining, on our budget?
And they said, well, we didn'tknow the.
You never told us what the perdiem was.
(15:55):
And I'm like, okay, that istrue, I didn't tell you.
But how can this make sense?
So it starts uh, trickling downto like we need a process.
Of course, they course it's nottheir fault, they didn't know
how much to spend, and so howcan you hold them accountable
when there is no guideline?
(16:15):
So we start to craft thisprocess of this protocol or like
here's the per diem, here's howmuch a logical breakfast, lunch
and dinner is.
I mean all this crap.
And then I started thinking,all right, we have this policy
now and someone moi is going tohave to enforce this policy,
(16:36):
which means I have to now reviewevery decision that people are
making.
And up until this point, we hadnot had anybody feel inclined to
go spend a $300 at dinner.
And so I stopped and I said, no, I'm not going to have that
policy.
So I put it in the shredder.
I went to my two employees andI'm like, did you have a funny
(16:57):
feeling when you were orderingthe oysters and the bottle of
wine?
And they're like, well, kind ofI'm like all right.
That's the problem is, you kindof knew it was not a cool move
and you did it anyways and Ineed you to treat this company
like it's your company and Ineed you to understand where we
(17:21):
are financially and help mebuild this company by monitoring
our expenses and being likenormal about it.
Ira (17:32):
I would hope like they didn't say anything either until
the bill came and you saw it,like you'd hopefully be like hey
, you know, we went out and wegot a little carried away, like
you know.
Hey, just so you know, or I'mreally sorry or hey, if that's
not OK, I just I'm happy toreimburse you.
Stacee (17:46):
Like you know, there's a whole bunch of things that
could have said or could havedone.
Exactly and, and so at thatpoint I told them they're like
well, just tell us what a normalamount is.
I said you know what?
I'm not going to tell youbecause I hired you because
you're amazing.
I hired you because you makegood choices.
I hired you because I have alot of confidence.
You had a rough little patchhere, but let me see what other
(18:09):
decisions you can make in thefuture, because I'm not ready to
parent you.
And it worked out fine.
It worked out fine, but I hadto kind of set the tone there.
The easier path would have beenfor me to lay down some big
protocol which, to your point,works fine when it's a small
(18:31):
company, but you cannot do thisinside a three, or can you do?
You think you could actually dothis in a large company, to
tell people to just be an adulthere and treat this company like
it's yours?
Ira (18:46):
I think it's really hard to do.
I think I mean, there's a lotof theoretical ways of sort of
implementing that that usuallysort of come down to like well,
how do you sort of build kind ofsmall teams within a bigger
team right, so that they caneach sort of be managed with you
know their own levels of sortof true ownership?
But it's certainly I just thinkit gets really hard to do at
(19:07):
that sort of scale, and I thinkI mean some of these things just
become cultural.
You mentioned sort of like youknow, sharing rooms and all that
stuff and sort of like we werethe same way, like we're like
why in the world would we wastemoney on, like having our own
hotel room?
That's like seems so stupid,like who cares, right?
Um, and even as we kind ofinitially grew the company, you
(19:28):
know like like our, our, youknow, the person that was really
the main manager of like allthose things for us was this
lady Katie, and she was, likeyou know, more worried about
managing the company's budgetthan even the founders were
Right and um, and so, like youknow, she would, you know she'd
stay with that Like it wasn't abig deal, like it was just kind
of the way things operated.
And then I remember we once umoperated and I remember we once
(19:52):
um we started hosting this uminnovation competition for vet
students called the idea, and wehad these like mentors that
were like helping the differentstudent teams that were working
on their ideas.
And we had this event and weinvited the mentors of like the
teams that were in the finals tocome and um, and she was gonna
like not book them their ownrooms?
And we're like you know, like,why not?
I was like no, no, like youknow, like these are people that
are, you know they're doingthis because they want to treat
them like really well.
(20:12):
And and um, all the rooms thatlike the hotel that she'd been
reserving rooms from got likebooked up, oh, no and yeah, and
so she's like okay, no problem,like there's other hotels there,
I'm just gonna book anotherhotel for them.
And we're like great and um.
And then, like a couple weekslater, we're looking like how
come you got this room at thislike shitty hotel?
And she's like, well, like theother ones were like 500 bucks a
(20:36):
night and like that was theonly one that was affordable.
Like well, who's staying there?
She's like it's Dani McVetylike the co-founder of Lap of
Love.
Stacee (20:46):
You put her up in a shitty hotel?
Ira (20:49):
And I was like, oh, my God, we can't do that.
But we're like, okay, well, nowwhat do we do?
Like you know, like she'salready like emailed her the
hotel information and I was like, I mean, like I would trade
rooms, like like, but I'mstaying with the other, like I
don't have my own room you'resharing I was like well, if
you'd like to stay at a nicehotel, you could stay with
mauricio and steve, uh and umand so she was, so she was
(21:12):
probably totally understood youknow, like, well, this is like a
confession, like I don't thinkI've ever told anybody this
story, really Like, like we justlike we're like well, I mean,
like we like hopefully it's notthat bad, and like you know,
like let's just not make a bigdeal about it.
And she never complained, ofcourse, but, like you know, we
went to go like pick her up, youknow, for whatever it was, and
(21:33):
like it wasn't as bad as we sortof imagined it might be, but,
um, it was just sort of one ofthese things like, yeah, like
you know, certainly we didn'tfeel the need to micromanage any
of those decisions, but yourealize, like, oh, yeah, like
the way that we've kind of donebusiness internally, like once
you're sort of like a little bitbigger and like there's
different people, like maybe itwould be really weird for
somebody to say like, oh, ofcourse you're gonna share a room
(21:55):
with somebody, or you know, um,have you know people that are
not, you know, both of the samegender in the same?
like you know, I like people ohyeah, it starts getting
complicated I do need to say,just in case she listens or
finds out about this I'm reallysorry, Dani.
I lost a lot of sleep over thefact that everybody else was
staying in this nicer hotel andyou got put up in the other one.
(22:18):
I tried to think of some way tosort of resolve that issue and
I've been embarrassed about itfor probably eight years, so
hopefully you'll forgive me.
Stacee (22:28):
You need to buy a room at the Hyatt for the upcoming
movie Like the Ritz or somethingAll right.
Well, now we're at the part ofthe show where we'll share a
(22:50):
favorite tip, tool, quote personinsight.
What do you have for us today?
Ira (22:57):
Continuing the trend of embarrassing and exposing myself
.
I want to mention a tool that Ithink everybody else in the
world probably already knowsabout, but, for whatever reason,
I never really used it muchuntil the last month or so, and
it's because one of the thingsI'm not any good at is anything
(23:17):
related to trying to makesomething look nice, and so I've
always had people that are goodat making things look nice make
things look nice when I needthem to.
But, for whatever reason, I havehad a number of projects that
I've started doing in Canva andI was like, oh my God, like this
is actually pretty easy for adesign list nerd like me to make
(23:39):
something that certainlydoesn't look as nice as an
expert can make it look, butmakes it look a lot nicer than
anything else I would build in,you know, powerpoint or any
similar sort of tool, and it'sactually kind of fun.
So I've been having a good timedoing a lot of things in Canva,
(23:59):
and I speak very highly of it,and so if you, like me, are like
I don't do that type of stuff,I don't need Canva, you might
want to check it out.
It's actually, you know, sortof.
It probably has more value topeople like us than to people
that are actually really good atdesign.
Stacee (24:18):
Oh, it makes it so easy for beginners.
I mean, they really set you upfor success in that program.
They even tell you what colorschemes to use together, so
you're not left to your owndevices.
Tell you what color schemes touse together, so you're not left
to your own devices.
My tip this week is going to bea software tool called Tango,
and if you Google it it's tango.
(24:38):
us, not com.
And what Tango is is it allowsyou it's like a plugin for your
Chrome and you just turn it onwhen you're doing a task on your
computer, like maybe you'regoing through how to set up an
account for something, and itautomatically captures
(25:00):
screenshots as you click yourmouse and puts the screenshots
in sequence with the URLs.
So if you're flipping webpagesor whatever, it builds out a
workflow for you.
So when we're talking, aboutprocesses today and you need a
process, or you even just needto document how to do something
(25:23):
for because you'recross-training a colleague or
you're trying to help a customerout it just is so quick and
magical, and then at the end youget a URL that you just kick
over to someone and it'sbasically here is the recipe and
here are the steps to gettingthe cake.
(25:43):
So that's a great one.
Ira (25:48):
Pretty cool, all right.
Well, I suppose we need to spinthe wheel of names to figure
out what we'll be talking aboutnext time.
Stacee (25:57):
All right, let's do it.
How did you gather feedback onyour product?
And iterate.
Ira (26:08):
Great question feedback on your product and iterate.
Great question.
Super important to do andsometimes hard to get from the
right people.
So good question.
Happy to talk about that.
Well, Ira, here we are at another episode.
Ira (00:44):
Again at last.
Stacee (00:46):
Again.
Okay, so I wanted to tell youabout an email that came into my
inbox just this morning.
I follow this guy.
His name is Mike Fisher and hehas a newsletter called Fish
Food for Thought, which is sobrilliant.
Just there.
I was so jealous because I,like I, wish I had a cool last
(01:08):
name I could do something with.
But in his newsletter today hereferenced a study that was done
by a professor, a photographyprofessor at the University of
Florida, and for his class forthis semester, half of his
students were told that theirgrade would be based on sheer
(01:31):
volume of pictures submitted.
So if you put, if you submittedlike a hundred pictures, you
got an A 80 to 90, you know, yougot the next level down and so
forth.
And the other half of the classwas graded on one picture.
They only had to send in onepicture for the whole year and
(01:52):
it was to be their best pictureand that would be their grade.
Ira (01:59):
Would much rather be in group one.
Stacee (02:01):
Yeah yeah, much rather be in group one, yeah yeah.
So fast forward and what endedup happening is the best
pictures of the whole class werefrom the people that were
taking hundreds of pictures.
They dominated in producing thehighest quality.
So isn't that interesting whenyou think about iterations and
(02:24):
mistakes and failures and trying, trying, trying that you're
really getting better.
Ira (02:33):
A lot of swings to hit a home run.
Stacee (02:36):
Yeah, yeah.
Ira (02:38):
All right.
Well, what is our topic fortoday?
Stacee (02:41):
All right.
The question of the day is whatwas the leadership style like
at your company?
Ira (03:00):
So this evolved substantially along the way for
us, because we truly started ourbusiness as a bunch of idiot
students that wanted to playaround and build something cool,
and so we had almost no realleadership style at the
beginning, aside from just avery collaborative and wanting
(03:24):
to build something that workedand worked well sort of attitude
.
I think really a collaborativeleadership style would have been
where we started and then, aswe grew and expanded into having
a bigger team, I think thatbecame a sort of very trusting
(03:44):
leadership style, in partbecause of necessity it was kind
of our additional side hustle,if you will although I don't
know if that was a term backthen and so we brought on people
that we just felt really sortof got us and got our style and
would fit well and could operatepretty independently and would
(04:04):
come to us for guidance and wecertainly were always happy to
get our hands dirty and kind ofdive into whatever needed to get
worked on or fixed, and somaybe to some extent kind of
that willingness to feel like nojob is not mine or beneath me
(04:25):
in some way, and I think thatthat was certainly an attitude
that would never have flown atat our business Cause when you
have a small team, you know anyproblem we don't have, like a
person whose job title is solelydedicated to addressing that
problem, like everybody has totake on the ownership of, um,
you know, trying to both preventand fix problems.
(04:45):
So that's, that was sort of ourapproach.
I think it does get really hardto maintain that style of
leadership at some size ofcompany.
I don't know what the magicnumber is, but I've kind of felt
like somewhere between like 20and 40 people at the businesses
(05:06):
when, like, it just gets reallyhard to have that type of
connection and relationship withall of the people that can
facilitate that sort of you know.
Just, you know deeply trustingand know that you know
somebody's going to come find meif they need me and I trust
them to do a great job in themeantime and we'll connect, you
know, on whatever cadence tojust sync up and make sure that
(05:29):
we're on the same page.
But I think that does get hardonce you go from being small to,
I guess, what most people wouldthink of as a sort of more
medium sized.
Stacee (05:38):
You know you're so right , because one thing I struggled
with a lot when we got acquiredwas taking my small 30 person
company and putting it into a300 person company, and I was so
unprepared for this I hadn'teven thought about what that
(05:59):
would feel like and it turnedout to be a big problem for me
because, um, you know, whenyou're used to cross-functioning
and you just do whatever thepeople on my team were so
multi-skilled across thedifferent sales force, or zoom,
(06:20):
set up a marketing set, set up awebinar book, a hotel, we could
all do all these things andthen when we try to go into this
big company and we perceive itas being super slow, it is like
trying to turn a cruise shiparound versus a little speedboat
and you have to go through allthese channels to do this what
(06:44):
seems to be the simplest ofthings and, uh, it became so
frustrating for me and Iultimately I couldn't hang in
that company because I couldn'tstand it, and of course it has
to be that way.
I realized at first I was likeyou guys are like what I don't.
Ira (07:05):
what are you doing here?
Yeah, you don't know whatyou're doing this is going to
take.
Stacee (07:10):
any of us over here could do this in like 15 minutes
and you're telling me it'sgoing to take four weeks, you
know.
But what I realized is youstart, when you start just
randomly doing things that justbecause you can you do know how
to do them, is you startthrowing all these wrenches into
the equation that trickle downway far in the future to more
(07:35):
problems, and so it is necessaryto have these processes in
place and these oftentimes siloswhere work is getting done, and
I mean it was so hard for me Icouldn't actually do it.
Ira (07:53):
Yeah, I mean, you said the P word and I have found myself
at times just being like likethe enemy, of wanting to focus
on process, because in the earlystages it's so inefficient to
build processes, because thoseprocesses change all the time
(08:15):
and so the amount of time youspend building them feels really
wasted.
But I think similarly at somesize of team, ultimately for
people to really understand howyou want things done.
Actually, what you aren'tbuilding are solutions to
individual problems, like youneed to be building the process
or processes for people to dothat themselves, and that's a
(08:39):
big mindset mindset shift.
I oftentimes find myselfactually needing to rely on
people that are really goodabout thinking about things
deeply in terms of process when,when we need to get there,
because it's really not myinstinct.
I even sometimes find myselfdisliking people that, uh,
(09:00):
really like to emphasize process, um, and you're all.
You're so stupid, you're so whyyou wasting so much time, like
we can fix this right now.
How about you, stacey?
What was sort of the leadershipstyle at Vet2Vet?
Stacee (09:20):
So my leadership style when I started Vet2Pet actually
this was something I was prettypassionate about because I was
working in this vet clinic thathad been acquired by a big
corporate group and I had gonefrom, you know, kind of a small
family owned clinic to like nowI'm part of a bigger
(09:43):
organization and at first it wasno big deal because in this
kind of business structure whenthe clinic's making money for
the mothership, they leave youalone.
But then when the recession hitand we started seeing decline
in visits and the money wasn'tcoming in so much, they start
trying to help you and I putthat in quotes and that means
(10:06):
more processes coming down andyou start setting up a culture
where people are not so muchinclined to be free thinkers
anymore and in the clinic itself, remove a corporate entity from
that.
But in a veterinary clinic,hospital situation or any
(10:28):
hospital situation, you do haveto have a lot of processes in
place.
I mean, people can't just bewilly-nilly doing things all day
because you're especially ifyou're like running anesthesia.
You have to have a process onthat.
But what ended up happening inthat clinic is people felt that
they were not smart enough orempowered enough or good enough
(10:49):
or whatever, enough to makedecisions, and they were coming
at me constantly with all these.
Hey, I have a quick questionCan I do this?
Hey, can we do this?
Can this client do that?
And I'm like come on, just makea decision, you can make this
decision.
And I realized I had set up aculture, or was part of a
culture that wasn't cherished orvalued or promoted, and so my
(11:14):
intent with Vet2Pet was to dothe opposite.
I wanted people to feelempowered and capable of just
making good decisions, the bestyou can.
So that's the culture I set outto build.
Ira (11:31):
That's great and I think it's super important.
It reminds me of in ourrelatively well sort of not
earliest of days, but fairlyearly on, we had student
representatives, students ateach school that would help tell
their classmates about theproduct offerings that we had.
And we had one of our veryfirst employees was my
(11:53):
brother-in-law, and we wanted toget shirts for all the student
reps and we'd like played aroundwith a few ideas for different
designs of the shirt and like hejust sort of like made one up
that he thought was was reallykind of funny and cool and he
ordered like a bunch of shirtswithout running it by anybody
(12:15):
and and it was actually like itwas really funny.
But we were, we were sort oflike a little bit worried about
whether it might be like alittle bit too cutesy and
offensive, but essentially, likeon the front of the shirt it's
like what animal is this?
And it's sort of just like ashadow outline of, like you know
(12:35):
, a dog, a cat, a horse and acow or something Right, it's
like and, and then like under,it's like you know, vet prep,
making board exams this easy,you know, since, whenever, right
, and I'm like, oh you, you know, like we thought it was like
really, like he's not a in thefield, right um and um, like
yeah, like I don't we don'treally know how people are going
(12:56):
to sort of take this as it'ssort of like trivializing the
fact that, like this is like thebiggest exam they've ever taken
in their life and it coverslike everything and it's really
hard.
Or are people going to kind ofsee the humor and honestly, like
if we debated it, I think wenever would have done it.
But like, since he'd orderedthe shirts and spent the money,
like we're like these are theones we're not doing it again
(13:17):
and like, thank goodness, likeeverybody loved them and I think
we still.
they might still make them today, like 10, 12 years later.
But um, yeah, it was kind ofone of those reminds like Like,
yeah, I guess we kind of hadthis culture where if you feel
like you've got an idea or asolution, like just go for it,
you don't need to ask permissionfor everything, and every once
(13:38):
in a while I guess that couldget you in trouble, but this one
didn't.
Stacee (13:41):
Well, I will tell you, it is a hard culture to
implement.
It's an easy culture to say youwant, but when the rubber hits
the road, it turned out to bevery hard to actually build and
apply.
And one of my first experienceswith this going to total hell
(14:03):
was okay, picture it.
We don't have a ton of money Ofcourse, we didn't raise a lot
of any money in the beginningand we're trying to market
ourselves and everything's verytight, like when we go to these
conferences and these tradeshows, we're sharing rooms and
we're sharing dinner.
We're like trying our hardestto save money.
(14:24):
And so I had, at this point Ithink I had like maybe 10 people
on the team and two of theemployees came with me to a
conference in California.
I think we were in San Diegoand we had a booth there and I
was speaking there and you knowwe're working and hustling and
(14:46):
and I had to go to a businessdinner one night and my two
employees went to get dinner.
All right, fast forward, like amonth down the road, I get the
visa bill and I'm like what isthis?
There's like a charge for $300for dinner and I'm like charge
(15:13):
for $300 for dinner and I'm like, well, that wasn't me, because
I I'm like being very consciousabout not spending money.
And uh, I reached out to my twoemployees and I'm like what
happened here?
And they said well, we justwent to dinner?
And I go well, what'd you eat?
And they said well, we had youknow oysters, and we shared a
bottle of wine and we had like areally it was amazing
(15:35):
restaurant.
And I had looked up therestaurant and I knew how like
this is a nice restaurant.
I'm like, what were youthinking?
How could this possibly makesense, that you should be dining
, fine dining, on our budget?
And they said, well, we didn'tknow the.
You never told us what the perdiem was.
(15:55):
And I'm like, okay, that istrue, I didn't tell you.
But how can this make sense?
So it starts uh, trickling downto like we need a process.
Of course, they course it's nottheir fault, they didn't know
how much to spend, and so howcan you hold them accountable
when there is no guideline?
(16:15):
So we start to craft thisprocess of this protocol or like
here's the per diem, here's howmuch a logical breakfast, lunch
and dinner is.
I mean all this crap.
And then I started thinking,all right, we have this policy
now and someone moi is going tohave to enforce this policy,
(16:36):
which means I have to now reviewevery decision that people are
making.
And up until this point, we hadnot had anybody feel inclined to
go spend a $300 at dinner.
And so I stopped and I said, no, I'm not going to have that
policy.
So I put it in the shredder.
I went to my two employees andI'm like, did you have a funny
(16:57):
feeling when you were orderingthe oysters and the bottle of
wine?
And they're like, well, kind ofI'm like all right.
That's the problem is, you kindof knew it was not a cool move
and you did it anyways and Ineed you to treat this company
like it's your company and Ineed you to understand where we
(17:21):
are financially and help mebuild this company by monitoring
our expenses and being likenormal about it.
Ira (17:32):
I would hope like they didn't say anything either until
the bill came and you saw it,like you'd hopefully be like hey
, you know, we went out and wegot a little carried away, like
you know.
Hey, just so you know, or I'mreally sorry or hey, if that's
not OK, I just I'm happy toreimburse you.
Stacee (17:46):
Like you know, there's a whole bunch of things that
could have said or could havedone.
Exactly and, and so at thatpoint I told them they're like
well, just tell us what a normalamount is.
I said you know what?
I'm not going to tell youbecause I hired you because
you're amazing.
I hired you because you makegood choices.
I hired you because I have alot of confidence.
You had a rough little patchhere, but let me see what other
(18:09):
decisions you can make in thefuture, because I'm not ready to
parent you.
And it worked out fine.
It worked out fine, but I hadto kind of set the tone there.
The easier path would have beenfor me to lay down some big
protocol which, to your point,works fine when it's a small
(18:31):
company, but you cannot do thisinside a three, or can you do?
You think you could actually dothis in a large company, to
tell people to just be an adulthere and treat this company like
it's yours?
Ira (18:46):
I think it's really hard to do.
I think I mean, there's a lotof theoretical ways of sort of
implementing that that usuallysort of come down to like well,
how do you sort of build kind ofsmall teams within a bigger
team right, so that they caneach sort of be managed with you
know their own levels of sortof true ownership?
But it's certainly I just thinkit gets really hard to do at
(19:07):
that sort of scale, and I thinkI mean some of these things just
become cultural.
You mentioned sort of like youknow, sharing rooms and all that
stuff and sort of like we werethe same way, like we're like
why in the world would we wastemoney on, like having our own
hotel room?
That's like seems so stupid,like who cares, right?
Um, and even as we kind ofinitially grew the company, you
(19:28):
know like like our, our, youknow, the person that was really
the main manager of like allthose things for us was this
lady Katie, and she was, likeyou know, more worried about
managing the company's budgetthan even the founders were
Right and um, and so, like youknow, she would, you know she'd
stay with that Like it wasn't abig deal, like it was just kind
of the way things operated.
And then I remember we once umoperated and I remember we once
(19:52):
um we started hosting this uminnovation competition for vet
students called the idea, and wehad these like mentors that
were like helping the differentstudent teams that were working
on their ideas.
And we had this event and weinvited the mentors of like the
teams that were in the finals tocome and um, and she was gonna
like not book them their ownrooms?
And we're like you know, like,why not?
I was like no, no, like youknow, like these are people that
are, you know they're doingthis because they want to treat
them like really well.
(20:12):
And and um, all the rooms thatlike the hotel that she'd been
reserving rooms from got likebooked up, oh, no and yeah, and
so she's like okay, no problem,like there's other hotels there,
I'm just gonna book anotherhotel for them.
And we're like great and um.
And then, like a couple weekslater, we're looking like how
come you got this room at thislike shitty hotel?
And she's like, well, like theother ones were like 500 bucks a
(20:36):
night and like that was theonly one that was affordable.
Like well, who's staying there?
She's like it's Dani McVetylike the co-founder of Lap of
Love.
Stacee (20:46):
You put her up in a shitty hotel?
Ira (20:49):
And I was like, oh, my God, we can't do that.
But we're like, okay, well, nowwhat do we do?
Like you know, like she'salready like emailed her the
hotel information and I was like, I mean, like I would trade
rooms, like like, but I'mstaying with the other, like I
don't have my own room you'resharing I was like well, if
you'd like to stay at a nicehotel, you could stay with
mauricio and steve, uh and umand so she was, so she was
(21:12):
probably totally understood youknow, like, well, this is like a
confession, like I don't thinkI've ever told anybody this
story, really Like, like we justlike we're like well, I mean,
like we like hopefully it's notthat bad, and like you know,
like let's just not make a bigdeal about it.
And she never complained, ofcourse, but, like you know, we
went to go like pick her up, youknow, for whatever it was, and
(21:33):
like it wasn't as bad as we sortof imagined it might be, but,
um, it was just sort of one ofthese things like, yeah, like
you know, certainly we didn'tfeel the need to micromanage any
of those decisions, but yourealize, like, oh, yeah, like
the way that we've kind of donebusiness internally, like once
you're sort of like a little bitbigger and like there's
different people, like maybe itwould be really weird for
somebody to say like, oh, ofcourse you're gonna share a room
(21:55):
with somebody, or you know, um,have you know people that are
not, you know, both of the samegender in the same?
like you know, I like people ohyeah, it starts getting
complicated I do need to say,just in case she listens or
finds out about this I'm reallysorry, Dani.
I lost a lot of sleep over thefact that everybody else was
staying in this nicer hotel andyou got put up in the other one.
(22:18):
I tried to think of some way tosort of resolve that issue and
I've been embarrassed about itfor probably eight years, so
hopefully you'll forgive me.
Stacee (22:28):
You need to buy a room at the Hyatt for the upcoming
movie Like the Ritz or somethingAll right.
Well, now we're at the part ofthe show where we'll share a
(22:50):
favorite tip, tool, quote personinsight.
What do you have for us today?
Ira (22:57):
Continuing the trend of embarrassing and exposing myself
.
I want to mention a tool that Ithink everybody else in the
world probably already knowsabout, but, for whatever reason,
I never really used it muchuntil the last month or so, and
it's because one of the thingsI'm not any good at is anything
(23:17):
related to trying to makesomething look nice, and so I've
always had people that are goodat making things look nice make
things look nice when I needthem to.
But, for whatever reason, I havehad a number of projects that
I've started doing in Canva andI was like, oh my God, like this
is actually pretty easy for adesign list nerd like me to make
(23:39):
something that certainlydoesn't look as nice as an
expert can make it look, butmakes it look a lot nicer than
anything else I would build in,you know, powerpoint or any
similar sort of tool, and it'sactually kind of fun.
So I've been having a good timedoing a lot of things in Canva,
(23:59):
and I speak very highly of it,and so if you, like me, are like
I don't do that type of stuff,I don't need Canva, you might
want to check it out.
It's actually, you know, sortof.
It probably has more value topeople like us than to people
that are actually really good atdesign.
Stacee (24:18):
Oh, it makes it so easy for beginners.
I mean, they really set you upfor success in that program.
They even tell you what colorschemes to use together, so
you're not left to your owndevices.
Tell you what color schemes touse together, so you're not left
to your own devices.
My tip this week is going to bea software tool called Tango,
and if you Google it it's tango.
(24:38):
us, not com.
And what Tango is is it allowsyou it's like a plugin for your
Chrome and you just turn it onwhen you're doing a task on your
computer, like maybe you'regoing through how to set up an
account for something, and itautomatically captures
(25:00):
screenshots as you click yourmouse and puts the screenshots
in sequence with the URLs.
So if you're flipping webpagesor whatever, it builds out a
workflow for you.
So when we're talking, aboutprocesses today and you need a
process, or you even just needto document how to do something
(25:23):
for because you'recross-training a colleague or
you're trying to help a customerout it just is so quick and
magical, and then at the end youget a URL that you just kick
over to someone and it'sbasically here is the recipe and
here are the steps to gettingthe cake.
(25:43):
So that's a great one.
Ira (25:48):
Pretty cool, all right.
Well, I suppose we need to spinthe wheel of names to figure
out what we'll be talking aboutnext time.
Stacee (25:57):
All right, let's do it.
How did you gather feedback onyour product?
And iterate.
Ira (26:08):
Great question feedback on your product and iterate.
Great question.
Super important to do andsometimes hard to get from the
right people.
So good question.
Happy to talk about that.
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