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By Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, James Maes
The podcast currently has 41 episodes available.
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
The podcast currently has 41 episodes available.