Only Way To Fail

This week Ari has all the vision, James has all the passion, Garret has the “squeakiest wheel”, Darin is fully vaccinated, and Tyler wants to learn. All of that and the group discusses hiring and embracing diversity.

00:00:00 - Pre Show

Christmas music - “Carol of the Bells”

Reverse searing steaks

Oil, Butter, Rosemary and Thermapen

Smoking meat

00:04:10 - Show Start

Week 4 with Ari

00:04:20 - Follow-Ups 

Lucy Update

It’s Lucy’s 18th birthday...and she’s still kickin’

Question from Garret: Is there a correlation between a lack of clear vision articulated through the teams and teams hesitant to make decisions?

Hearing “no” may create some timidness

Maybe after so many no’s they stop trying to get yes

1000 no’s for every yes (but can’t just be a blind no)

How do we keep teams aligned with what’s most important for the company

“I don’t know if Garret knows what Follow-Ups are”

00:20:21- The Headlines

Darin

Product L10™ - 4.25 (Darin scored it a 3)

Without the V/I on product team - felt a little “at the effect of”

Tried to IDS™ an issue that’s about James

Made a decision not to release (people didn’t know)

Strategic Product Team

On track to completing a sprint

Got a plan to get back into order speed release

Started as not really a plan

Bringing more intentionality to development

Getting away from a shotgun “scatter shot” approach to UAT

Personal

Second Covid-19 Shot this week

Important to pass that message out

No side effects

Bathroom remodel coming next week

Tyler

Planning (or at least some version of planning)

Most non-standard 1 off process

At risk client stuff continues

Garret

LT L10™ trumped by planning this week

Unconventional planning but got through it all

Identified 8 Rocks

Detailed to the degree required for team handoffs

Stand alone IDS™ session for retail L10™

L10™ cut short due to some buy-in concerns and not having V/I available for the discussion

3PL L10™ scored a 4.0

IDS identified a lack of 3PL references for 3PL prospects

Ari

Vacation Ari mode is setting in

Even had my coffee delivered this morning

Quarterly planning was a 5.0 score

Ari used all the shapes and emojis during planning

8 Rocks is a little terrifying

Got to be with team leads all of Wednesday rescoring functional assignments

Garret also got to start and end each day with me...which he loved

Sales Integrator Carter is playing “Hiring Ari” this week taking over the employee search

James - Takes the easy road out 2 weeks in a row

00:37:03 - Topic 2 (1) - Ari part 4 - Hiring

  What does hiring look like for us

Especially in this high growth pivot

The next 90 days could be pivotal

How do we not become a great place for only “middle aged white tech guys”

The company James and Darin want to be at is diverse in race, gender, sexuality, background, etc…

How do we not become Basecamp?

Ari dives into how we hire

Relaunched job descriptions

Launched a careers website page

Tells the story of who we are and our people

The interview process

Screening

Team Interview

“Reverse Interview”

Reveal who we are to a potential employee

CEO and Core Values

Starts with really bad jokes then 3 simple questions

How do we continue to keep our culture as we scale?

How are we set up to attract people we want?

How do we hire more diversity?

Blind screening - remove all personal identifiable data prior to an in person interview

DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Statement

Diving into the desire for diversity (age, race, gender, sexuality) and creating the best reality

What reactions do we get when explaining how we run our company and ourselves in interviews?

Pinpoint (not a sponsor of the show) as our backend hiring tool (runs our process)

What lessons can we take from Basecamp

Not a company I ever want to be

Question from Ari: How do you as leaders of the company lean into creating diversity?

“If you don’t want to discuss tough topics at work, it implies you’re okay with the world around you”

Question from James: How much do you all feel you are being drug along in this vs have your own passion for it?

The small things matter

Seemingly small micro-aggressions add up

“One small thing, makes the next thing slightly more acceptable”

The small things we can do can create a ton of space for others

“StarTrek has shown us the way.

01:34:54- Questions and Long Answers 

None this week since Garret did them in follow ups

01:35:03 - End of Show 

We love external validation, so share

01:36:20 -  After Show - Darin found an iOS shortcut to set wallpapers on your devices

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

This week Ari brings the passion, Tyler loves the passion, Darin used to be Tyler’s manager, Garret doesn’t integrate, and James is hard to work with. All of that and Ari discusses Career Planning at Infoplus.

00:00:00 - Pre Show

Power tools: “It’s nice to have the right tool for the job”

Festool!

Is James hard to work with?

00:04:15 - Show Start

Week 3 with Ari

00:04:35 - Follow-Ups 

Listener Becca - Darin, thank you for normalizing mental health.

“If I took pills for my thyroid I would talk about that, so if I take pills for my brain I’m going to talk about that”.

Listener Becca - James, you told Darin you lost trust in him. Is that out of anger and is it still true?

…”I know exactly who Darin is and I trust him completely”

Listener Becca - Where does everyone feel they stand with the 15CoCL? Not mentioned as often as it was in season 1.

Listener Becca - You never provided a link to Support Engineer Jackson’s music

Boom - Now We Have!

Listener Becca - Lucy update?

Comforting news - Lucy’s cries are that of confusion and not pain

00:21:33- The Headlines

Darin

Strategic Team

Live with Support in Hubspot

Kicked off new sprint 

Create the sales machine monitoring system

Dashboards and metrics in Hubspot

Clean up a few things with Hubspot

Put together a proposed plan for the Order Speed changes

One on One with Tyler

Identified a potential GWC™ issue as scrum master

Managed not to speak about the fact I used to be Tyler’s manager

...but Darin’s talking about it

Virtual podcast bro hug between Tyler and Darin

Tyler

Product L10™ - scored a 4.4

Assigned a series of ToDo’s to get the scorecard back to a good place

T2 Support is stretched thin

One on Ones complete

Got into a lot of important topics that helped a lot of employees

Continued to push the Same Page meetings

Garret

Completed 5 of 6 1 on 1’s

Ranged from:

Just want some clarity on a few things

90% employees sharing

To a PrinciplesYou joint assessment

Opened my eyes to several ways Ari and I can work better together

LT L10™ - scored below a 4 so no need to report

Issues

Career Planning ToDo not done and how we can get it back on track

3PL and Retail Team L10’s™ - both scored a 4

3PL dove into good issues around sales process

Retail dove into lead quality issues

IDS™ on V/I dynamic not working within Infoplus

Garret’s not a great integrator (not a quad 1 thing for Garret)

Real time follow up: 

Why is there a negative connotation to identifying what’s not your Quad 1

“I think it comes from the struggle to let go”

Could it be fear around financial stability / health?

Ari 

Getting ready for “super fancy official” launch into funding

Taking my first vacation (disconnected from work) in over a year

Hiking and forest hot tubs

Taking on planning Monday / Tuesday for the leadership team

How to lean into Rocks only planning

Being a “one person” department - what is this trying to teach me

“Behaviors that got me here, don’t serve me at the levels I’m at and to grow”

James (collective jaws hit floor) has no headlines

00:55:03 - Topic 2 (1) - Ari part 3 - Career Planning

We developed a version one, but Ari has taken it to version 2.  

Ari what do we mean by career planning?

18 month Executive

24 month employee

How do we continue to make our employees lean into that Zone of Genius?

How do we continue to reward them?

24 Month employee

12 months to master what you are currently doing (get to all 5’s on your FA)

12 months to execute a career plan to move to the next level

⅔’s are classes dictated by the path / ⅓ are electives you get to chose

Completion = New Seat, New Title, Pay Increase

18 Month executive

We will always hire executives

Employees can apply but no dedicated / ensured path

VP and Director Teams will = Visionary / Integrator teams over a functional area or department

Executive Director = Visionary and Integrator in a single person

Tyler - “I love the passion here”

A couple of employees have an old version of a career plan or moved titles recently, how do we handle these in the new career plan launch?

“This is stupid I don’t have a career plan, I don’t need a career plan, this is the best career plan meeting I’ve ever had”

01:12:41- Questions and Long Answers 

Listener Brandy (to everyone) - Do you feel the podcast has helped you in any way?

Darin - “rubber duck debugging”

Have given us an entirely different mindset - not trying to solve problems, just sharing and talking  

Tyler - “very strange”

Employees quoting our podcast on how to solve a problem

Garret - “this would be your turn to answer”

Takes the place of the “fireside” chats

Ari - “I know Tim doesn’t like to be on podcasts”

Helped the co-founder (plus “post founder”) dynamic

Yes...Tyler and I made up the concept of post founders

01:19:32 - End of Show 

Send feedback to [email protected]

01:33:28 -  After Show - nessuna (that’s Italian for none)

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

This week James feels vindicated, Darin steps in for Tyler, Garret talks Vaccines, Tyler joins in late, and Ari has tiny pockets. All of that and special guest Ari Gerber discusses D&E’s with the guys. 

00:00:00 - Pre Show

Ari’s back

Connection vs Relationship

Vaccine updates

00:02:07 - Show Start

No Tyler has us unable to find a path to Follow Ups

00:02:46 - Follow-Ups 

Ari’s tiny pant pockets

Ari’s podcast gold moment - “claw hands”

UN mandate needed for larger pant pockets

Ari brought “cupcakes” to work

Lucy(?) update - apparently I’ve spelled it incorrectly all this time

Luci headed for an annual checkup

00:07:27- The Headlines

Darin

Strategic Sprint Release

1 for 2 on releases so far in 2021

Support migration to Hubspot is released

Not without some hurdles in the lead up

A day late, but done

“If you drag a wagon over the same dirt path the rut gets deeper”

Taking a couple days off

Darin attempts Tyler’s headlines

Product L10™ - “I don’t like that we judge a week by L10™ score so refuse to score it”

Whole scorecards a joke

Product team is lacking a vision (or vision alignment)

Real time follow up: If not the most important meeting, then what do we score

Score may determine if it’s reported

Garret

LT L10™ - scored a 4.4 (Garret did leave early)

Issues

V/I relationship isn’t working currently

Best meeting in all of 2021 with James this week

Retail and 3PL Sales L10’s™ - scored 4.8 and 4.0

At Risk Customer process

Got product enhancements narrowed down ( presenting to James next)

Ari - 

“I don’t have the most important meeting of the week so won’t report that score”.

Been a week of Sand

Investor conversations continue to progress

First investor call with a female

Hiring - screening and interviewing in Support

1 on 1’s coming next week

“Managers get to shut up and listen” (in a great way)

PrinciplesYou (new psychological analysis for Ari)

James and Darin have already taken and compared the assessment

Tyler showed up (questions why we’re still on headlines)

Tyler and Darin debate who’s responsible for the score of an L10™

Tyler

Same page setup with Tactical Team Leader Mo

Missing the mark on vision has led to non decisions

Meeting with Garret created lens of priorities

If everything’s important, they’ll all fail

“The power of no”

All fueled by a preceding meeting with James

Vision, Vision, Vision

James (1 to 5 headlines)

Seriously only 2 headlines

Wednesday boarding meeting was either the best, or worst meeting ever

Finally past just “kicking the can down the road”

Feeling almost vindicated (see this was the issue all along)

Haven’t held up his end of the D&E process with Tyler and Garret

Garret gives him an out

Entire situation devolves into a terrible car racing metaphor

00:45:14 - Topic 2 (1) - Ari is back discussing D&E’s™

D&E™ Deep Dive with Executive Director of People - Ari

Three parts of a D&E™

Incredible overview on executing a great D&E™

Pre-work

Issue Resolution

Identifying issues

Realtime follow up - Ari, Where do these issues come from in a D&E™?

Biggest change this year in the process…

Every issue must be resolved

Q&A from the guys

What underlying themes or issues did you see that came out of D&E’s™?

Understanding of Core Value meanings

Were there specific Core Values that came up more often?

Doing what it takes

Positivity and Optimism

Delegate and Elevate (D&E’s™) seems literal. Did you find functional assignments to actually delegate or abandon

Oh there weren’t a whole lot of cases of Delegating and Elevating in these meetings. Is a different name for the meeting,  more fitting now.

What was the biggest change vs this previous D&E’s

What’s the difference between team lead and manager?

What do you see as the biggest improvement prior to the next round of D&Es

Clarity between scrum master and team lead

Where did Garret go?

01:33:00- Questions and Long Answers 

Carry over to next week

01:33:05 - End of Show 

01:33:28 -  After Show - How weird does doing this podcast feel?

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

This week James apologizes, Darin discovers laptop computers, Garret tries to do less work, and Tyler “uses James as an excuse”. All of that and special guest Ari Gerber discusses being the only female on a leadership team. 

00:00:00 - Pre Show

“Boiled eggs” in all the forms

Executive Director of People and Investor Relations “Facilitator” ARI upgrades her Apple technology

Oh...and she’s on this week's episode

00:03:00 - Show Start

00:03:17 - Follow-Ups 

Update on spreading Jelly with a spoon

Garret’s personal experience

Scoopability vs spreadability and smash factor 

3 Real time follow ups

Why not PB&J on toast?

Darin finds spoons for jelly a “left handed” experience

He may have been using his left hand

White bread vs wheat or multigrain bread (so many factors here)

Ari may believe that toast and bread are the same thing

Darin 

Luci the Dog update...Still kicking

Wife’s core values are still a mystery

James wins the aldermanic election (failed to mention “unopposed”)

It still counts

James still playing his gold plated CEO violin

Top 5% for James - Ari in her pure Quad 1

00:17:57- The Headlines

Darin

Strategic Team finishing the support migration to Hubspot

May not be terrible at managing things after all

Product releasing (currently not happening)

Great conversation with Tyler about short term path

“Failed releases” (question the quotes)

Follow the existing rules (documented or not)

Non work related

Obsessed with Obsidian (note taking app)

Finally remembered that my computer is a laptop

Tyler

Product L10™ - scored a 4.4

Started with a Todo not done 

“Solved after playing my violin”

Support tickets not being solved within SLA’s

Support migration project carries on

…”because of James”

Client at risk project

Top priority for the company

Expected a lot of negative Zoom calls

Short Term / Long Term plans for support and engineering

Session with James on the Engineering vision

“All the things” have me a little behind

Garret

LT L10™ - scored a 4.0

Issues

Todo not done

Marketing

All the walls around budget and plan

Retail and 3PL Sales L10’s™ - scored 4.0 and 3.6

D&E’s almost done

Ari’s D&E was terrible (more from her on that)

Customer at risk project

So far great calls

Clean approach and sticking to the agenda

Organized all the feedback now onto deciding our approach

Ari - Yes she’s a full participant this week

“I don’t have L10’s™ so no headlines there”

D&E’s™

Happy to not have the same meeting all day every day after 3 weeks

Glad to see it working

No employees scored below a 12 (out of 15)

Mine was terrible

Realized that Ari and Garret IDS’ing™ about me doesn’t work

Root - Garret doesn’t have the ‘W’ or ‘C’ for managing this seat

Career planning finally got delegated

Finally got over the hump here

Renegotiated the timeline with the entire company

Ari may have just tried to throw in a teaser for next week’s episode

Investor / Funding Update

All fascinating - no conversation has been the same

James (as always, only 1)

I’m so excited to get into Garret not wanting to be your manager 

Seems a lot like engineering’s solution of “I’ll just do less work”

My one big headline... pause for a sidebar around EO Forum retreat

It’s proper background to the 1 big headline

Now too the headline “I wanted to come back and apologize for being a miserable ____ the last 8 weeks”

Feeling of tearing down others instead of building us all up together

Wasn’t the failures that had me angry

I was scared in a way I’ve never been scared before

Choice of fear or anger...I chose anger

Who not How led me to some clarity

Focusing on anything but the number one thing I need to focus on is wrong for the company

Back to the headline “I am sorry”

Second Thing (or 1.2) - The thing that needs to be done is clear

Take the emotional side and put it away when it comes to people issues

Don’t be heartless

Realtime followup

Are you now clear on, I just need to find the 8, 10, 12 areas of the company to find the “who” for?

Podcast gold moment

Failing younger (or earlier) has less ramifications than failing older (or later)

When do you want to learn the hard lessons

00:55:55 - Topic 2 (1) - Ari is in town (like actually in Chester, IL with James)

3 to 4 part series

What’s it like to be the only female (young relatively speaking) on the leadership team

D&E’s™

Career Planning

Hiring

How do we avoid becoming a company of “30 year old white guys”

This week - moderated by James - An interview of Ari (Q&A - a must listen)

How are you feeling, what’s on your mind?

“I would love to not be the only female of the leadership team”

What was it like to be “just” facilitator Ari, and how has that changed moving into a full participant in that L10?

Learned the value of having a voice and making it heard in an intentional way

As you are approaching your tenth (AKA 1.5) year, you used to introduce yourself as “I don’t know anything about the business” in interviews, do you still feel that way?

“I no longer introduce myself that way… I do know about the business now”

Where are we blind as an organization or executive leadership team? What blind spots do you or have you seen in us when it comes to things that you as a female think about that we as men don’t have to?

I have 3 things...

Real time story on speaking with investors and the Ari Filter

What do you hear, see, etc. from others within our organization that you may be privy to as the only female on the leadership team? (No details needed here)

One of the few things I love being in the People seat is I tend to get news

You have one of the more interesting college degrees I’ve ever heard of. You light up talking about it. Can you share how experiences in your education have helped you?

“Creativity is taking two things that currently exist and putting them together to create something new”

At the risk of sounding cliche, what’s the biggest hurdle or glass ceiling that you have in front of you, that you are going to bust through, that we as men don’t have to worry about?

“Believe you can or believe you can’t...you’re right”

Teaser - Ari and James planted a seed for a new company today and Ari sees herself as a potential CEO (possible perfect combination)

01:27:40- Questions and Long Answers 

Carry over to next week

01:27:40 - End of Show 

01:27:40 -  After Show - NADA!

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

This week Tyler is stuck in Q1, Darin keeps having meetings without James, Garret forgets to record and James plays a questionable tiny violin. All of that and the guys discuss the Rocks and Projects planned for “Quarter 2”. 

00:00:00 - Pre Show

Pretty light...thanks to Garret not recording for the first 15 minutes

James has been a miserable ______ the last few weeks

Darin keeps having meetings (that James is supposed to be in) without James

“Fat” cats don’t catch mice

00:02:46 - Show Start - James is back

00:03:10 - Follow-Ups 

Darin follow up on natural vs “hydrogenated” peanut butter

OMG! Natural is better

Draws a parallel between genetic “MRNA” engineering and organic foods

Serious debate - knives vs spoons for peanut butter and jelly spread factor

Darin - Follow up on Luci the Dog

Darin - Did you get your wife to do her Core Values?

Short answer - nope

Follow up - “Garret you’re a terrible COO” - how is the sitting on that going?

“Shiva” is going well, got about 20 days left 

00:13:38- The Headlines

Darin

Moving support and service into Hubspot

Quad 3’ing my way through managing the project

Interesting view from the “user” side of a SaaS technology as he’s diving into it

Good lesson on expanding your sphere of product offerings

Running into pink errors - “ooohhh, that’s never a good experience”

Properly rolled back the speed epic code

Do we roll out the code written, or find a different path forward

Next up

Strategic product enhancements to curb potential churn

Tyler

Product L10™ - Score 4.2

Checked off 8 issues

D&E™ week continues

Done with all of them and wrapping up ToDo’s

“Holy ____ there’s 30 of them”

Pushing Support and KB to Hubspot project across the line

Struggling to carve out time to put some clarity around engineering and support path forward

Garret

Missed the LT L10™

James / Tyler - How’d it go

Oh, super productive when Garret’s not there

D&E™ Day complete

4 of 6 carry over to following week

Retail / 3PL L10’s™

Both got into Lead Gen numbers and team not supporting that effort

1 man show

Continuing candid conversations with James

Fear even wanting to work with me

James “let me play my violin” - 1 headline with several bullet points

Probably the best week I’ve had in the past 10 weeks

“Being a CEO is the worst job you can have”

Success is shared, failure stops with you

Only so many hours a day and very few levers to pull

“It’s always the darkest before it goes completely black”

When things are going good, it’s easy to ignore some things

People issues - we have people in wrong seats

Garret

Darin?

James??

Waiting too long to make people decision

Not driving things by trusted numbers

All that said - my successes

Q1 Rocks

Company Reorg (teams really buying in)

People processes

Q2 Rocks - super excited to turn the last 10 weeks into some good

Can we lean into “not sticking to the exact drumbeat of EOS™”

Tri-quarters? 

Dynamite drop in by a dog, a cat, and a 7 year old

00:41:56 - Topic 2 (1) - Rocks for Q2 (2nd Tri-Quarter)

Nothing set in stone

Sales integrator Carter excited about customer facing improvements to onboarding

Sandler Masters for sales team

Career planning in the people process

Gotta be a level 5 in current FAs before worrying about what’s next

18 month executive

30 month employee

Enterprise services

Better with our customers and better support

KB Content - impacts so many parts of our company

702 articles to write (how can we turn that into sand)

How do we get to an article a day

Next version of financial and budget models

May need them sooner than a rock offers

Strategic product - talking to customers about small but impactful feature enhancements

Company clarity breaks may be the difference between 90 day rocks

Take 30 days, let the dust settle, then decide what the next 90 days looks like

We’ve officially defined quarters as things of 3

Anxious to see where a customer facing project management tool like Asana can take the onboarding experience

Tyler loves the idea of a clarity break between two quarters

...and hopes to get there soon as he’s still stuck in Q1

Sales “leave behind” assets

“God no, sales is not capable of making that happen”

James has all the creative juices around technology driven tools here

When we do get around to planning, would love to actually get together and do planning together

“I suggest Hawaii”

01:04:40 - Questions and Long Answers 

None this week

01:04:46 - End of Show 

01:05:03 -  After Show - Next weeks Apple Show

What do we think they will release/announce

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

00:00:00 - Pre Show

How Darin’s “emphamis” 3D Printer came about

00:02:25 - Show Start - Brought to you by Darin

Without James this week

00:03:01 - Follow-Ups 

Personal Values (of our wives)

Tyler’s wife

Love - “hard to find self worth without it”

Joy

Garret’s wife

Loyalty - “staying loyal to the priorities in her life”

Self Discipline

Darin’s guess at his wife’s

Compassion / Caring - “she throws herself 200% into things”

Accomplishment - “if she has a list of 4 things, 4 things get done”

“This week I’ll promise, to think about trying, to get her to do it”

Listener Jackson feedback - “Darin you might be the coolest guy I’ve ever met”

This comes after a week of Darin beating himself up in an episode 

00:12:36 - The Headlines

Darin

Strategic Product Release Failure - Follow Up

Insecurity in application server failures

Time to roll back instead of patch and push forward

“Get the ducks lined up a little straighter here and roll this forward”

Planning Meeting around Roll Back plan

Started checked out, got called out, shifted back into the meeting

Redeploy code that's safe and built that we already know

Personal Note

Luci the dog is not doing well and it’s got me down

Not working out and walking consistently

Tyler 

Product L10™ - Score of 4.0

Follow up IDS™ on Strategic Release

Product process is not up to “snuff”

People aren’t following the process we do have

D&E™ Day with all direct reports

Multiple hard meetings with great conflict

2 of 7 meetings carry over to next week

Main takeaway - People that manage others, need more 1 on 1 time with me

Garret

LT L10™ - easily the worst meeting I’ve ever been a part of

Churn not taken seriously enough

James got angry

I got angry at James

We now have 3 - 800 pound mammals in the company

Sales - Getting lighter (elephant)

Performance Release - At least rolled back (gorilla)

Churn - 14% in last 6 months (whale)

Cue the “tiny violin” - All the things are all the most important things

James (as shared by Darin)

Formally elected as Alderman in his home town of Chester

00:35:49 - Topic 2 (1) - Q1 Rocks (and unofficial rocks) - Moderated by Darin

How did we do, what got done, what didn’t

Garret and Tyler go back and forth on their rocks as Darin keeps score

Finance Project - Budget / Financial Model

Got it across the line, can actually see how we’re doing against projections

Finance Rock - Own accounts payables internally (remove all that we can from Corp Services)

Real-time scorecard from Darin “Fair to say this is 200% complete”

Knowledge Base move to Hubspot

Everything done but “forgot” the ladder to hang the banner

80% complete

People Projects

Launch new D&E™ Process

100% complete

Launch Careers Page and hiring portal

100% and first ever “WOW” moment for James around a Rock

“Even behind the scenes here is dynamite”

Honorable Mentions (not taken as rocks but still completed)

Launch with SaasWorks - proactive customer outreach

Infoplus Training Program version 1

Two 100% completions

Implement Sandler Selling System Foundations

75% Score (penalty for Sales results)

Support move to Hubspot - much more than just migrating from one system to another

In its second, hopefully last sprint

Give it a 50%

Formalize Subject Matter Expert onboarding process

Customer facing Asana, new “kick-off” presentation with QWILR

Scores a 75%

Find and hire an AWS partner

Narrowed down to 3 or 4 partners all above our unofficial budget

Put on hold - due to budget

Scores a 60% (bonus for getting on the same page with James)

Retail and 3PL Lead Generation separation

Scores a 75% due to miss on Google Ads

Launch the new Website

100% complete

Final Rankings

Facilitator Ari wins

Double R Darrin gets second

Tyler and Garret bring up the rear

Strategic Team - Performance project

We hung the banner...upside down….caught on fire...tried to re-hang a burning banner

01:02:20 - Questions and Long Answers 

On a level of 1-5, how much did you miss James in this episode (1, not at all - 5, completely missed him)

Darin - 1

Garret - 3

Tyler - 3

01:03:17 - End of Show 

Don’t miss the “amazing” Garret Richardson official show notes

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01:04:10 -  After Show - Natural Peanut Butter

Hydrogenated Oil vs Natural Peanut Oil

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

This week Tyler confirms he has a beard, Garret goes through the worst exercise of his career, Darin hangs up on James, and James struggles with two aspects around leadership. All of that and the guys discuss a failed code release in a strategic product.

00:00:00 - Pre Show

Harmonizing and weird energy

Darin hangs up on James

00:02:21 - Show Start

Tyler is back!

Scaling...or not scaling

00:02:39 - Follow-Ups (James saves the day)

Tyler does have a beard

Garret - no new update for Sandler Sales (with an update on Sandler Sales)

Main Sandler Foundations training complete

Continue on the mentorship and coaching calls

Follow up from Listener Becca: 

Did Garret miss the week in 2nd grade we learned about bodies... (worth hearing the entier question verbatim) 

Just completely caught off guard by his daughter’s question

Did anyone share the personal core values sheet with their wives?

Short answer...No

But most of us will for next week's episode

Shenanigans that James doesn’t feel joy

James gets external joy

Darin is internal joy...including food (when in his belly)

Listener Brandy 

Completely agree with James on quad 4 or 5 when calling people

James defines the 5th “quad” 

Garret and Darin, did either of you understand a single number James mentioned about espressos?

00:13:59 - The Headlines

Darin

Strategic Product Release

Release night when “OK” Thursday

Friday went terrible (errors coming from everywhere)

Firefighting mode of emergency releases

Back to stable as of this episode

“Not needless to say, I have worn this poorly”

A week of emotional turmoil and self reflection

Now questioning personal core value choices

Darin shares very real emotions around fractured relationship with James

James

“It’s ok if we fail together. It’s not ok if we fail individually.”

James recalls advice from Darin

Struggling as a leader with two big headlines

“I’ve been angry and at the effect of”

What is the right mix between delegating and holding on to things?

Real time follow up from Darin

How do you score yourselves for meetings with numbers like 9 and 6?

Tyler (cue mumbling transition)

What a week to return to

People sharing their small wins has been important during a rough week

Product Team L10™ - scored a 3.4

2 ToDo not done issues to IDS

Darin and Tyler rated the meeting as a 4 (even with IDS™ focused around “them”)

D&E™ Time

Came back from vacation...immediately picked up 6 prescriptions for the family

Garret

LT L10™ - scored 3.17

Tough IDS™ around FUD in sales

3PL Sales L10™ - scored a 3.5

Exploring should we shift this meeting away from late Monday afternoons

Retail Sales L10™ - scored a 4.2

IDS around quality of leads for calls

2 Adhoc D&E™ meetings both went great

Had the worst experience of my professional career

00:44:17 - Topic 2 (1) - Another 800 pound mammal to discuss (Order Speed Release Failure)

Where we are now

No one is using the new code we’ve written

Errors are still popping up

Question we ask is “how can we roll this back if needed?”

Never crossed our mind that can’t simply “roll” this one back

What does Darin see here?

Insufficient testing

We assumed automated test coverage was sufficient and complete

Manual testing can never be as broad a net as automated testing

Development and production environments are different

Too much of “just a Darin thing” owned in a vacuum

“I’m a careless bumbling idiot”

Real time follow up - Darin, for a guy who doesn’t get joy from buying things, you sure spend a lot of money on puppy dogs.

“Processes, processes, processes”

We have a process but we didn’t follow it

The one we have is nowhere near where it should be

Engineering doesn’t understand the power that we have and the responsibility

Question in Tyler’s head, “do we really want to change”?

Quick to blame people, things, etc…

Any trust the company had left in engineering has been completely lost

Maybe even trust in ourselves

“This is an opportunity to learn” puts James into a pure rage

“If this was 1692 in Japan and I had a samurai sword, I’d cut everyone in half”

Path forward isn’t to regain trust in engineering

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice...can’t get fooled again

“Fool me 19 times you lose the company”

“Can’t do the audit, and also be the bookkeeper”

01:02:44 - Questions and Long Answers 

N/A This Week

01:02:44 - End of Show 

Follow @onlywaytofail on Instagram to see Tyler’s “newly” bearded face

01:08:50 -  After Show - Darin’s dog has a GPS collar

Direct parallel -  Doggy GPS and current release issues

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

This week Tyler is in Tennessee, Garret discovers his Quad 1, James gets to be a bulldozer, and Darin sends an all company email (almost). All of that and the guys discuss an 8 week slide in sales.

00:00:00 - Pre Show

Morning routines mess with Netflix habits at night

Using “daylight savings” to your advantage

00:01:57 - Show Start

Making things awkward trying to move forward without a Tyler to cue Follow-Ups

00:04:18 - Follow-Ups (James saves the day)

Garret - Sandler Update

Cookbook for Success

What do you want and need

What money do I need to make to achieve it

How does that look at a daily activity level

Prospecting Cookbook

Prospecting Worksheets

Realtime follow-up from “literal” Darin

“Net New Conversations means?”

00:08:53 - The Headlines

Darin

Reached the end of the Q1 Epic in Strategic Product

Darin sent “Level 10 Overview Email” to the entire company (in a special Darin kind of way)

Fill in project

Helping support team move into Hubspot as new support system

The Tyler and James monkey has landed with “DIM”

Level 10 disaster of a planning meeting (recovered with a second planning)

Kicked off successfully

Darin tells a Story (just like C-3PO)

Darin vs James on “fear of the unknown”

Depends on your definition of what’s “hard”

Garret

LT L10™ - Scored a 4.2

Single issues discussed and not solved

FUD around sales

Sales lost its fun

James is a couch and Garret’s “cute” when he’s angry

Retail and 3PL Sales L10™ - both scored a 4

Put everything in the light

Pressure of sales has everyone down

Acknowledge the failure and take the opportunity to create value within it

Garret gives the team a “Braveheart like” speech

“Once you put light on things, they lose their power”

Put the gorilla in the light

James

Midwest Tech Connection

Conversation with 30+ Venture capital firms

Used some commitments during a “rough” call (it ended early)

EO Mentor meeting

Communication styles (good, bad)

Who not How book recommendation

Quad 1 work in Hubspot

Bulldozer style cleanup

Now slowly building back up

Hubspot health Dashboard

Darin was “very mean” to James

Worst meeting James has had

Garret takes proper credit for the failure

Tyler’s not here, so its his fault

Darin (round 2)

Product team L10™ was “OK” (without both James and Tyler

00:41:09 - Topic 2 (1) - 800 pound elephant (Sales stopped 8 weeks ago)

Sales fell flat on its face from a 30 story building

Took weeks to come to light

Question 1 from Darin

What Broke?

Garret’s answer: The sales oversight machine (broke or...didn’t exist)

Step 1 put out the fire (manual and effort)

Step 2 build the machine

James’ answer: 

Missed contracts for 1 week

Missed contracts for 2 weeks

Started some conversations

Missed contracts for 3 weeks

This is bad

Started digging in week 4

Week 5 comes

Contracts signed is a great “trailing” indicator to track

Plenty of vanity KPIs

Leads is great leading indicator

So if you have the beginning and the end (what’s tracking all the middle steps)

TL;DR: Leads were coming in, the machine in the middle stopped, nothing was coming out the other end

Half million dollar (mess) up

“Can’t change that. We’ve done bought this. How do we get a half million dollars of value?”

James learned 3 things

Need the sales oversight machine

He let sales get too far away from him

This is a quad 3 for Garret (sales management)

Question 2 from Darin

If we haven’t had the machine, how have we avoided this historically?

Question 3 from Darin

How much of this is my fault for being removed from the leadership team?

Garret discovers his Quad 1 (with a little help from James and a sales slump)

01:08:03 - Questions and Long Answers 

N/A This Week

01:08:04 - End of Show 

“God those show note are good and the email is maybe the best part”

01:08:50 -  After Show - James’ Espresso

WARNING - It goes full coffee nerd

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

00:00:00 - Pre Show

The things 9 year old girls say

Twitter and dogs

00:02:50 - Show Start

00:03:05 - Follow-Ups 

Co-host Darin - Garret you used the word TEAM (in all caps) last week, any reason?

Garret - Sandler Update

Success Triangle

Behavior / Attitude / Technique

“Success Triangle may have been a good place to start Sandler”

00:05:50 - The Headlines

Darin

Wrapping up final sprint for Strategic Product Team

Bulk order edit with co-founder, co-programmer, best friend Tim

Wrapping up caching work

In app caching

Redis cache

What’s the next epic

Updates to Mobile Applications

Quick diversion launching new support system

Mean-nice Darin

Lesson learned “shut up, don’t talk” (may not be the right lesson)

Tyler

Product L10™ - Scored a 4 (good mix of 3,4,5 scores)

Started with 2 ToDo not done issues

One lacked a full body yes to the ToDo

Started the week heads down on the “monkey” James gave back

2 New support agents came on board

Who actually owns their training and success

Slowly entering vacation mode

Garret

LT L10™ - Scored 3.83

Got into a sales IDS issue again

Bluntness from James lead to a great root issue

3PL Sales L10™ - Scored a 4.4

Got through quite a few issues in IDS

Retail Sales L10™ - Scored a 4.0

Joel as retail team lead took over running the L10

Sales - 1 piece of good news

Pipeline is built back up

Heads down digging into the details with Sales team

Sales call reviews with the entire sales side of the business

James

Ari hits a homerun with her rock

New careers website for hiring

Vision + Execution + Conflict with James = Home Run (not yet Trademarked)

James may have mean to Dim (Darin and Tim)

Envy / Jealousy comes from - Fear, Sadness, Anger nope Joy

“Tyler is getting really good at monkey business”

Took his monkey back and handed back out

Board meeting around Fundraising

We got the answer (or non-answer) we needed to move forward

The Change Formula helped color the path forward

(Vision X dissatisfaction) + First Step > Resistance = Change

00:33:46 - Topic 2 (1) - Our Personal Core Values

Last week we discussed people and finding the “Right People”

Right People = Core Value Match

We all recently went through a process to discover our own values

Start with a sheet of 60 and cut it in half

Come back later, cut it in half again

And Repeat (until you get your 1, 2, or 3 core values)

Depending on your ability to listen to directions

Garret’s has 3 core values (maybe more than the directions called for)

Authenticity - “just be yourself”

Openness - “I’m open to the authentic version of who somebody is”

Generosity - Can be good or bad depending who you are in my life

I’ve lived a very privileged life

Tyler came up with two (the actual directions given)

Integrity - “being and honest person and sticking to my principles is a big part of who I am”

Joking is not a lie 

Family - not what he thought would end at the top of his list

Darin (also following directions) came up with 2

Started with a WIP - authenticity, caring, creativity, curiosity, intelligence, joy, optimism and uniqueness

Joy - “when something is not joyful for me, i feel it through, let it out, and get back to the joy I want to be in”

“Darin just has a core joy that I’ve never seen in anybody else”

Intelligence - Always been a part of Darin’s identity

Just so we’re clear - Garret never said he was the best shortstop in St. Charles County

TL;DR Darin is a joyful chess hater

META discussion - Do you have a scale, or are all humans of equal value?

James (believes he followed the rules) landed on 1 main core value

First time around

“Garret’s obviously a caricature of a villain”

Authenticity - “Probably my greatest strength and my greatest weakness”

Courage - “One I didn’t expect”

Openness - “It’s a big part of who I am”

Personal Fulfillment - “probably the closest thing to Darin’s joy”

Pride, trust, integrity

Ultimately landed on Authenticity

01:07:40 - Questions and Long Answers 

N/A This Week

01:07:41 - End of Show 

James nails it

01:08:05 -  After Show - Thoughts on bringing Facilitator Executive Director of People and Special Projects Ari in for a 4 part series?

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott

This week Tyler becomes a “bobcat”, Garret is a “beat puppy”, and Darin and James are terrible managers and employees - making them perfect co-founders. All of that and the guys discuss the People component of EOS™ (Right People / Right Seats).

00:00:00 - Pre Show

The world's most amazing turkey sandwich

“Icicles don’t have milk in them”

00:02:45 - Show Start

00:03:00 - Follow-Ups 

Darin - Larry Walls three virtues of a programmer (this time all 3)

Laziness

Hubris

Impatience

Listener Becca - Loving Darin’s “attempt” at tech headlines, could he switch headlines with Garret?

Darin’s recruiting lunch with Garret

Expect to gain the Infoplus 20 lbs

Garret - Sandler Update

Fulfillment and Post Sell (Closing the sale)

Demo of the product

The Ultimate Upfront Contract

Darin’s parents discovered OWTF

“Boy you guys sure are using a lot of business talk”

00:11:10 - The Headlines

Tyler

Product L10™ - 3.5 Score this week

Order Bulk Load speeds

IDS had lots of talk-talk-talk

Little rough and needs to get better

New Website has launched for Infoplus

James may have been backed into a corner and forced to launch it

A case study on how NOT to do a project

Product is doing great

Got a monkey back from James

Too many meetings - time to cut back

More bobcat work than bulldozing required

Real time follow up from James

Shifting from Google to duckduckgo.com as search engine

Don’t search for “bob cat”

Back to Tyler 

Two new support hires starting next week

Darin

Moment of crisis - Pain in his right hand

Could this be an RSI (repetitive stress injury)

Kicked off final Strategic Product Sprint

Two weeks out from quarterly release

Q from Garret - Do you feel more prepared having a quarter to plan a release

“Uh. That’s a great idea Garret (note to self, plan the release)”

Identified some sins through the first strategic epic to change next time

Don’t carry over stories

Better upfront planning

Starting to think about next quarters epic

Tech note of the week - AKA Listener Becca’s favorite part of Darin’s headlines

New caching servers

Garret

LT L10™ - 4.0 Score

“Fun” sales IDS

Tried my best not to personalize that discussion

Don’t carry that weight yourself

3PL Sales L10™ - 4.75 Score

Team has really come together and embraced the TEAM mentality

Retail Sales L10™ - 3.8 Score

Team still slow to embrace the TEAM identify

Decent IDS® issues and solutions

Clarifying roles

Started L10s™ for the both teams with a conversation around every person being involved in every part of the team

Maybe a little too harsh in the delivery of that message

James

People

Garret looked like a “beat puppy” in that L10 this week talking about sales

Talking about performance issues on the podcast when people aren’t present

Shared it to provide context around an already resolved issue

If you’re scaling a company, many struggles are getting people to level up

Normalize people struggling, normalize failure, bring it to the light

Facilitator Ari’s actual title - Executive Director of People and Strategic Projects

Yes - I did tell Darin he’s a bad manager and employee

That’s what makes him a great co-founder

Returning Monkeys

Gave Tyler his Support monkey back

D*mn it - Scorecards

What you don’t measure and respect will fail, every time

Quad 3.4, maybe 5 for Garret

Sales Management

James as a new employee Mentor

Full body NO

MMLT Holdings giving away millions and millions of dollars?

Welcome Tyler and Garret into the partnership

01:04:49 - Topic 2 (1) Part 6 (but #1) of EOS™ - People

Without the right people - the other 5 parts are impossible

Right people equals alignment with core values

Gotta have a process to improve and ensure you keep your people healthy

Gotta have a process to help you part ways with people

No attrition of people is a huge red flag

36 hours of pain is key to parting ways with employees

Garret’s likes

Infoplus has a complete focus on it

Constantly monitoring right people / right seats

Delegate and Elevate Process

Absolutely loved the new process we use

Career Planning - everyone knows their path forward

Facilitator Ari as Executive Director of People

Garret’s Dislikes

Our lack of consistency around it

Doing it differently, not doing it at all

Tyler’s Likes

Finding and Hiring the right people

Putting a lot of focus and effort in our hiring process

Keeping the right people in the right seats

Career plans - knock it out and here’s your title and pay

One on Ones - Managers shut up and listen

Tyler’s Dislikes

People Processes not up to the “bar”

LMA - Giving each employee a number, setting clear expectations

Darin’s Take - Who better to finish the discussion on people

A small group of great people can accomplish great things

Bombshell Insight: Finding great “A” players is key

“I like computers, I don’t like people”

James somehow cares about everyone around him being great and excelling

01:16:28 - Questions and Long Answers 

N/A This Week

01:27:51 - End of Show - brought to you by Darin

I won’t talk about Garret’s show notes (that you can find on onlywaytofail.com)

Hosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James Maes

Show Notes by Garret Richardson

Proofing and Title by Darin Kelkhoff

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott