Revealing Founder Self-Sabotage, Misplaced Intrapreneurs and Being Vulnerable - Misfit Founders Ep 1

Chris Boys: 0:00Opening up, being vulnerable, well, that's one of my biggest failures. If you go out and

‍Biro: 0:05

explore, you will know.

Chris Boys: 0:07

It took an external force for me to go internal. You keep

Biro: 0:11

20%, but you don't get the other. Yeah. You're watching the Misfit Founders Podcast. A raw conversation about the challenges of building businesses. Overcoming hardships and also feeling out of place. I'm Biro, an exited founder, investor, and advisor who failed quite a few businesses in the past. My mission with Misfit Founders? To help at least one founder every single month by unveiling the authentic stories of other founders and providing guidance and support. So I hope you enjoyed the podcast today. And get useful insights out of it. And if you do do join the conversation on our WhatsApp community, where we discuss topics like this one in this podcast in group, as well as a private sessions, link in the video description. Also, please subscribe to this YouTube channel so that you get notified when we publish new videos. Hi. Hi. So hot in here. We'll start with, uh,

Chris Boys: 1:20

some of the cheers. Yes. Cheers. Here's to a

Biro: 1:23

great conversation. Thanks for joining me. This is amazing that you've done the trip here just to see me and to have this conversation. So while I catch my breath from chasing the puppies, try to introduce yourself and talk a bit about, uh, maybe give us your elevator pitch of Umano.

Chris Boys: 1:42

Sure thing. So Umano is a team analytics tool. It's performance guidance. That combines metrics plus automated assistance to help teams know where they're at and then take obvious action to perform at their best.

Biro: 2:00

Okay. Question number two, most important question. So that's all clear. How, why, how, the first why, and then how.

Chris Boys: 2:10

I was in a role with an American enterprise running product. It was my first role from consulting to impact investing to then into a commercial role, running a P and L in product, obviously responsible for growth, and that was a combination of buy, build our own or JV. Part of the capability, the function in the organization was. Combining data science plus product plus development. And we had a team of around 150 and we had the equivalent of our Netflix teams, which were highly accountable, absolutely killing it. And we had teams that were really struggling. And for me, what I observed was that the teams that were on fire. Owned their data, they knew where they were at and they were far more empowered because of the access to that information to make the decisions, to accelerate, right? And it's this, it was this observation, a pattern of those that learn faster, grow faster. And so if I could create a product that enabled teams to learn faster, well then ultimately they grow faster. Who cares? Like, so what? Why? Um. There's nothing more exciting, I think, than working in a team that's at its best. It's just like magic. Yeah, very true. It's flow. Um, you know, amazing things are achieved and there's that sense of camaraderie, of creating something bigger than yourselves, of. Um, being unstoppable and so that was super important. And so not only from the perspective of the experience of being a team, you know, the teams that are high performing are ultimately creating more value. They're doing it in a way that's more productive, more efficient, more autonomous and shipping product that customers love. So it was this kind of double sided sword of. Experience plus productivity creates this outcome of high performance. Um, and that's why, how do we remove the drudgery, remove the inefficiency, the bureaucracy in organizations and create a really sense of lean driven outcome focused teams. That's

Biro: 4:39

why. I'm curious. So, and did you experience while you were, while you were creating this solution? Internally, privately, however, working with, um, the early adopters, which no, maybe they were your, that company that you were working for and so on. Did you experience any resistance to something like this? Because, because I think that's one of the things that I, I see quite often in organizations is people are stuck in their ways sometimes. And as soon as there's something that. Even smells like threatening their, their current way, traditional way of doing things. Um, they start putting, um, kind of like sticks in your spokes in a sense. So I'm curious if you experienced any of that. Absolutely. We

Chris Boys: 5:38

had huge headwinds when we started, I think we, we had a proof of concept, um, with an international investment bank, um, as well as KPMG and some of their. Projects, and it was a couple of years before COVID. So the context was metrics in organ in engineering or product led organizations was only really just beginning whilst Dora metrics from the perspective of, um, kind of key insights at inflection points relating to delivery. We're starting to really get traction. Um, that traction predominantly was with what I would call a native tech company where tech companies already are familiar with, um, and embrace a very transparent and metric driven culture. Where it was a real headwind was in what I would call the digital transformers being those larger enterprises. Investing a ton into digital ways of working agile practices, but to your point, there's this mindset that really hadn't taken place around, um, being product oriented as opposed to project oriented, as well as growth oriented. In the sense of a growth, the truest sense of a growth mindset where, you know, you're open, you're curious, you fail fast, you learn really quickly. And I think. In that cultural context before COVID, the behavior changes, trying to inspire or get teams to change their ways of working or to, um, at least learn about their ways of working so that they could then make decisions. Was huge. Like we were getting massive pushback, um, for the, all the reasons you suggest, right? The first is, and the obvious one is why do we need tools to create observability? Because almost pre COVID that was seen as big brother, that was literally the language. It wasn't seen as empowering teams

Biro: 7:45

for a long time. Like as soon as you. Yeah, you see teams like, oh, you're going to track me going to the, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, do you feel like that's changing or is it still pretty much the same thing? Oh, performance metrics, I'm being monitored. I don't like this.

Chris Boys: 8:05

I think it's changing. So my observation is. Companies of all shapes and sizes now, um, aspire to be data driven. I think a lot proclaim to be data driven. It's total bullshit, absolute bullshit. Um, because when you ask about practices and, um, decisions made or driven from, uh, from, uh, insights from measures, it's like, it's just non existent. Having said that though, um, the real, um, kind of focus of why it's changed, I think is. Most functions in large organizations now will have core metrics and have that quantitative, um, signal around performance, whether that's marketing or HR or finance. We just happened to focus in on software engineering and product led functions because that was what I was familiar with. So I think that's absolutely changed for the better. And I think it's a growing. Um, culture. I also think, um, coming out of a product led or tech led culture, um, engineering organizations have always really operated in a transparent way. There's peer review processes, there's, there's workflow that's mapped out on the issue trackers. Um, there is comments that occurs in, um, the pull request cycle. So there's always been that opportunity for inviting feedback for observing, um, workflow. And so I think that has also helped bring, um, a greater familiarity and also just, um, a movement around companies embracing metrics. Yeah.

Biro: 9:48

You know, I definitely see a lot more of that. Although you have to kind of cut the noise out because there's so many companies that say, yeah, we're data driven and we do things modern, and it's complete bullshit. It's all for pr. Yeah. And they still do use spreadsheets. PowerPoint and PowerPoint.. Yeah. Spreadsheets would be good.'cause at least you have data to, with PowerPoints. Like putting numbers straight into straight from, you know, collecting it straight into PowerPoints is, is, is, uh, embarrassing, to be honest. Question. What made you look at what you were building the solution and say to yourself, you know, I'm going to be build a bloody company off of this. I want to help more people than this internal stuff. That's that, that I'm currently working on. That's

Chris Boys: 10:48

a very provocative

Biro: 10:52

question. I'm interesting of that trigger, right? Yeah,

Chris Boys: 10:56

like not to get too philosophical here, but the, the bigger why, if I interpret your question, I have always been fascinated by human evolution. How do we as humans grow and, and more from my own lens, right? Like how do I continue to expand and evolve and become a bigger, better version of myself in life so that ultimately I can live fulfilled. I can have abundance, um, and just go for it. Right. And so what I observed. In a corporate culture was so much of that gets lost so much of the human spirit to want to grow and learn and evolve just gets so caught up in bureaucracy and politics and buried right

Biro: 11:53

you put it you're right because you're putting to this. A lot of companies that you join, they over process things just from the pure fear of losing control. Yes. And you go into this company excited and you realize that slowly you're losing your soul because you're put through so much, so much bureaucracy and so much structure. Yeah.

Chris Boys: 12:18

And I think, so I'm all for that kind of, for structure in terms of the balance of accountability and autonomy, but not to kill a team or a person's spirit in the meantime, you know, and that's where we get professional aspirations. Exactly. It's where we get it all wrong because all of that crap is built in a way that and positioned in a way that we end up having to serve that rather than it serving us so that we can be elevated. To make better decisions, be more aligned with customers, uh, in terms of their value and the, and the desires of what we're trying to achieve here. And so I think for me, the key is how do you, how do you do it in a way and execute it in a way that truly comes back to elevating humanity at work so that we're bringing our best selves to work. And that comes back to the question. So like why it's really to help. Cut the crap away, let people just call out what's going on with facts and remove bias. Yeah. And then get on with the joy of creating great stuff. Like that's what ultimately we want to do. Not get caught in all the other crap that holds us back. And I think that for me was. That's, that's what motivates me. Like, that's what inspires me to, to keep going at this in the face of, uh, all of the challenges of building and growing a company.

Biro: 13:50

So, well, let, let's hop into that straight up. Shall we, cause that's what this show is all about. Talking how, how. Weak we are in certain things and the challenges that we face and how we learn and how we adapt from them. So you were working on this solution and then you realize I want to help more people, I want to do this properly. I want to do this my way, I suppose. Right. Um, and I'm motivated and driven this way. Do you remember the first hurdle when you, when you decided I'm going to build a company, what was, what was your first hurdle? If you can remember that. So.

Chris Boys: 14:32

It's interesting that there was a kind of a couple of jumps to get to where we are now. So the first was. The company that I was working for in this role of leading product was acquired. And that to me was a natural segue to jump out and go, yeah, okay. I'm ready to do this. And this being this kind of hankering, I didn't really know what it was, but this hankering to actually do something for myself. I didn't want to be an employee anymore. I didn't want to be. Um, I just, I wanted a more creative outlet for work and I wanted a creative expression for work. And this to me, what I knew and my experience was a way to kind of package it together to create a solution because I thought that there was a huge opportunity. Interestingly, when I did leave, I didn't start with this opportunity. I started with a company. That focused on still profiling skills, but in the context of recruitment, and it was an engineering focused tool, um, to really help the engineers understand and get a strong sense of their skill base of what they were bringing to the role as well as then the employer. Having an opportunity to, um, get a greater alignment between the skill sets being presented and what they needed. Um, that was not a successful 18 months with regard to, um, the company effectively winding down. Uh, I had a co founder, a technical co founder. Um, and we got to a point where I had left, quit the job. I was putting in all the capital. I was heavily dependent on my technical co founder who was building the product. I was focused on all of the sales, getting testing and beta customers in, um, and it, uh, there was always the basis that we would join forces. He would ultimately leave his job and come and finally deploy. His skills full time, but also capital and that deadline was moving further and further out and I just called it I just said like what's going on? We said that this was and agreed that this was going to be the road map to building getting the company off the ground And he said well actually I've decided I want to want to do any do it full time anymore And by the way, I want to be CEO now for those that have successfully co founded a business Um, I take my hats off to you because this was an experience that was new to me. Um, and it was a very, very difficult path to navigate a, because to be frank, the whole reason I was there and he was there was to bring a complimentary skillset. And then when there was kind of this discussion around actually, well, I want to do the lot yet the actions of quitting his role and deploying capital still had no follow through. I just said, no, I'm not going to do this.

Biro: 17:39

Let me, let me ask a couple of questions and I'm smiling because, because this is such a, this, this is something that I've experienced so many times. And a lot of the businesses that I filled in the past was because I, I ganged up with someone that, you know, didn't really work out the relationship and so on. And, and at the end of the day, it's. It's not an individual's fault. It's not like this person it it's, it's a specific, it's a couple of factors in, in that relationship. So let me ask you a couple of questions. Number one, how did you to. Meet and get together to to start the company. Did you worked at the previous company? No, so

Chris Boys: 18:20

friends of my husband He was if he was in he was a connection to

Biro: 18:26

have you ever worked with this person before never That's number one number two. Did you had any agreement put in place? Yeah, we did

Chris Boys: 18:33

so all of the company structure was set up in terms of shareholder agreement and Constitution and then an agreement between the two of us around our roles. So that was, um, was a very short form principle based document.

Biro: 18:50

Did you have any? Key achievements and milestones that would get you to a point where you achieved your role so that you get your full share shares allotment. The reason why I'm asking is that that's good. That's a, that's a good, um, and this, this is why I advise everyone when you, when you start with a co founder put together, uh, an agreement that specifies. These are our roles. Yep, absolutely. This is how much time we're going to invest each of us in the business. And for this amount of shares and the, the, the one factor that I think people don't do often, I know if you've done it or not put a vesting schedule. So like, for example. First year or first, first six months, we get 20% of those shares. The next year get much. So then at least, you know, that you have, you, you have these checkups every end of the period to say, right, we're still together. We're still alive. We're still getting along well. Okay. We both get our, our shares and no one decided to leave or to wind down their part, and I think that's, that that's one important aspect of it. Because, you know, I've never done that. I've always had, I've always started businesses and just started them on, you know, kind of like a verbal agreement and it almost every single time, um, went wrong and it's because one, we didn't break down what each of us are going to do, how much time we're going to invest, how much years are going to guest and how, what's the vesting. If you allocate the shares from the gate, then you have to battle it in court. Significantly. If someone says six months afterwards, and I'm done, I'm done. I'm just going to take my shares, but I'm not an active member. So you do have to investing. I mean, there are other ways that you can word and have legal structure in that agreement to say. Well, you have to put in, make sure that you put in this much energy for this much amount of time in order for you to get your shares, but vesting is, is one of them, which you say, right, every period we get this much. And if you decide to leave after. A year and only 20% of the shares have vested of your shares have vested. You keep 20%, but you don't get the other. Yeah. Cause you like, you're not going through the same challenges and growing pains that I'm have to go with the company. Couldn't agree

Chris Boys: 21:34

more. And we didn't do that. Right. So first of all, he, it was his company. So he came to me about my skillset to compliment him. So I was minority in that context. Second thing was everything was vested, fully vested up front in terms of shares already issued. So there wasn't even a structure in place for earning more, um, based on milestone achievements. So absolute, uh, mistake

Biro: 22:06

101. I think that's, that's the most important thing. I think the second thing, which I don't think you were at risk that much. Um, cause it sounds like you did work for a while together on that. Yeah, we did the 18 months or something. The risk was just

Chris Boys: 22:18

the capital that I'd put in. Right. Yeah. And so what, what I did was actually put it in as a convertible note. And I, so I didn't put it in directly as equity. Okay. And actually that became my leverage because. Convertible notes primarily are a debt instrument, and so I triggered the repayment of that convertible note. Oh, okay. So that was the way that I needed to get, I had to protect the capital that I'd put in. You know, this, this was life savings and I wanted to get them out and I wanted to then go and do what was next. And so that was how I, uh, protected. The asset that I put in, um, and I was also really, really lucky. We did have a director of the board, so sorry, a chair of the board. So we appointed, um, a chairperson that could help navigate effectively the exit for both and

Biro: 23:20

that's, that's a very good idea. And that's, that's a brilliant tip, to be honest, because. If it's just the two of you, it's just the two of you's views and, and, and opinions. And so on, if you have like a third person, that's kind of like the referee in a sense, it helps smoothen out, um, any creases. The other thing that kind of tell people to do is when you look for, for a founder, co founder, it's not a, again, it's not a silver bullet approach, but it's way better than nothing is find someone that you worked with before. Or find someone that resembles the same traits as someone that you worked with and do some exercises, do some, spend some time, some quality time with that person. Even if it, that means three to six months before starting the company and before getting into a business, um, and work on various projects and workshops and so on and, and figure out how you work with, it doesn't sound like that was, it sounds, it sounds like the, the, the reason was, you know, he wanted out because of other reasons and so on,

Chris Boys: 24:28

but I do agree though. I think it's really important and cause you can get excited, right? All of a sudden you're living the dream and you know, you're creating the business. And so you kind of. I was running big teams, you know, commercial enterprise. I never would have done that, but you get clouded by the excitement of creating

Biro: 24:46

your own thing and the excitement of the other person. Cause you're like, Oh yeah, this is a good idea, let's do it. Oh, that's awesome. And then you realize, uh, we're, we don't belong together. Um, so, so then. Right. So that, that was, that was your, was that your first ever business we're talking about misfit founders and people that basically that are watching this content are going to be folk like myself that ran to one, two businesses, uh, and decided, well, you know what, like both of, I have to fold both of them, or I had to fold the business. I'm not cut off for this. I'm just going to go in and get a job. What made you after that unpleasant? Whatever experience of 18 months, what made you choose not to go back into corporate world and work and actually say, I'm going to give this another try.

Chris Boys: 25:38

Um, I'm gonna , the cynical response is, I, I didn't want to go back to corporate, ever. so my motivation levels were high.

Biro: 25:49

I was like, okay, I'll do anything. I'll, I'll, I've gotta keep going., Chris Boys: I'll, I'll sell lemonade if I need to.

Chris Boys: 25:57

But there was, um, there was the kernel though that came back to the original insight in my corporate job through. That first company where we were interviewing prospect customers around that front end talent supply chain, right of building profiles of talent and skills. With, with people coming into an organization, they were saying, well, look, that's interesting. But actually the major challenge for us is retaining and growing talent. And that was a full circle moment for me. That was absolutely my original insight and inspiration in, in the prior corporate role. And it was then validated by all of these prospect customers. With whom I was having a conversation testing an entirely different use case or proposition, but they were affirming the original proposition that I had in running and building teams and wanting to inspire team performance and team growth. So I decided that through those conversations on the first company that yeah, I've really, I've got to do this. I've got to nail a solution and test that as quickly as possible to understand. Whether there really is value in giving teams their data so that they can make decisions to level up. And

Biro: 27:30

this is, this is one of the things that I feel that is so powerful that I've never had in, in me growing up as a, as a entrepreneur and as a, you know, serial failed entrepreneur, I call myself, I've never actually had. They kind of like the insider Intel. Because I was building stuff that I would see as being successful. And I thought that I could emulate. With absolutely no research or no, no customer feedback and information. So I would just build copies of this thinking of, you know, I just, I just need to build the same thing. Yep. And I'm gonna do it better, but how am I gonna do it better if I don't have the information? In my mind it was like, well, you know, I, I can, I can picture, I can see things that are that, that these companies, these SaaS services are doing. Less than I would do. So let me build it. But I didn't have the insight. I wasn't talking to customers. I didn't have the knowledge, the research to, to do that. And that sounds like that that's for you. That was an important moment because usually so

Chris Boys: 28:45

I think, you know, I love the term misfit founders because I think organizations, corporate organizations, enterprise organizations are full. Of misfit founders are, you know, these are people that live and breathe problems every day in creating value for the company's customers. And some are inherently frustrated by the lack of momentum or ability to produce change, to produce change. Right. And so I think again, a little bit like the, the myth of data driven organizations. There's, that's pretty tough, but. Entrepreneur, intrapreneurship, the notion of building an entrepreneurial culture within large organizations is really trying to make that shift and that's great. And that will push it so far the, there are people who have an inkling or a hankering to want to do more to, to scratch that itch. And I think there's a ton of misfit entrepreneurs and founders waiting just to take that leap and actually. Come up with a way to test the ideas that they're living every single day and, and give it a shot. Right. And you know what

Biro: 30:06

happens usually if you live in an environment in, in, in a corporate environment where experimentation and exploring and R and D and being empowered to come up with solution. Is, uh, a central piece of that company's values, core values, and so on. No one leaves. You don't see that many entrepreneurs going, leaving a company like that because they can exercise and they feel empowered and they feel intrapreneurs. I've heard this, um, this, um, the new definition recently intrapreneurs, right? So people that build and are the doers and are really excited about, and they're very, um, self contained and self taught and so on, and they get excited and they build stuff inside companies. And the companies that are willing to nurture and host these entrepreneurs, they keep them. They never become, um, entrepreneurs or, or they become at a point where. You know, they feel like they've achieved as much as they can achieve in that organization and then they move on, but you know, they won't churn that many entrepreneurs because most of the times entrepreneurs are, um, basically what motivates them to move away from corporate world is that inability of the company to, um, To sustain and, and, and place them because in a way, I understand some of the, some of the organization, larger organizations, because they have these verticals and everyone has a role in everyone's, you know, okay, if that's how you want to run your, your organization, perfectly fine. There is a need for that as well in the world. Um, but again, I. There's no, there should be no surprise or hard feelings that people that want more and want a different type of home leave in order to start their own businesses, because you just don't have the facilities to help and sustain and, and grow, offer growth to these kinds of professionals.

Chris Boys: 32:20

Totally right. And there's no right or wrong way on this. And I think, um, companies. We'll create a, an awesome career trajectory for a lot of people and people will feel, uh, really satisfied and get a lot of job growth and, um, and satisfaction in their career progression. And there are people where it just to your point, it's a misfit. It's not going to work. And so in the context of we can't have models of one size fits all, we have to have opportunities where people can express themselves Through their professional avenues in whatever way suits them best. Yeah. It could be corporate, it could be their own business, it could be co founding, whatever. I think, um, what I'm loving seeing is entrepreneurship. Um, seen as equal to, um, a career pathway in a corporate.

Biro: 33:24

Oh, yeah. That, that, that has been, that has changed in the last decade. Absolutely. So much. I feel that 10 years or so ago, like that was a stigma, right? If you're an entrepreneur and you left a corporate ladder, you're a misfit, right now, entrepreneurs are not considered a misfit in the professional world anymore is actually quite. Normal, and it's as valuable as, um, the, the corporate job, um, is just a matter of, and this is one of the things that I think the reason why people sometimes feel like the, you know, kicking a can quite, quite a lot is because of. Um, not finding that right placement, right? Someone's entrepreneur is an entrepreneur, but they feel like in order to grow, they need to get this, um, nine to five specific cubicle job. And you know, it, it, it goes bust. It doesn't really work out. You're not happy. And so, and then the other side, you, you know, you might have. People that are best suited with their skills to work in a company that, you know, offers them a very specific trajectory, but they take the entrepreneurship path because the influences communities, network groups, and so on, and they don't feel comfortable and they don't feel like, um, you know, they belong. And to be honest, entrepreneurship is not for everyone. I call this misfit entrepreneurs. There's, there's definitely entrepreneurs that, that people that are made to be entrepreneurs. There's also definitely a path towards becoming, sculpting, sculpting yourself as an individual that is able to run a company and be diverse in skill set and so on, but then there's also people that. Just want to get good at this skill and have an environment that nurtures that. And that's perfectly fine. Right. It's not, not everyone should be an entrepreneur at the end of the day. Yeah,

Chris Boys: 35:29

I agree. I think again, back to the, the notion of being a misfit, primarily the implication is I don't fit, I therefore don't belong in this current context or environment. And so what I find really interesting is, um, if you have the inclination to change it up, to go and find where you fit in an entrepreneurial journey, all of the smokescreens that come up that prevent you on that way, do you know what I mean? So all of the things that. Say like you almost self sabotage that put little mini barriers up for you ever taking the leap. Um, and really discovering and exploring for yourself, whether that is something that you want to do. Like, Oh, I don't have the skills, so I've got to go and research this and do that course and go and speak to that person and be on this constant loop of accreditation before you feel like you're capable of making that jump. Or, um, I don't have enough money or I don't have the advisors or I don't have, have, have, have again, this kind of mindset of scarcity that holds people back thinking that they've got to start with a ton of money in the bank. That'd be nice. Most often, uh, the not, that's not the case with entrepreneurs starting out on their journey. So yeah, like. Name it and have the awareness that you're a misfit, but also have the awareness of all of the smoke screens you're going to put up along the way that will keep you safe and not expose you really to what this whole journey is about.

Biro: 37:22

Yeah, because you're completely right, right? You can consider yourself. I do not belong in the entrepreneurship world at a point. Where you have enough of your facts in order to take that decision. Like myself, I failed a couple of businesses and I was, I was basically going at it the wrong way, but I had, you know, tunnel vision and smoke screens everywhere, and then I realized, well. It's just not for me, maybe the corporate world, maybe get a job is for me, but I didn't have all the details, right? I was still in the dark about a bunch of things. And as soon as I went to a corporate job and started working with certain people and, um, started. Exploring, started a new business and so on on now with a completely different perception of the world. That's when things completely changed for me. And that's in a way, that's what I want people to understand, understand and take away from this. And I think you're in the same boat, right? Looking at the 18 months that you had of a business failing and so on. What, what are the things that you feel? If I knew that back then things would have been different just from your experience now with Umano. Um,

Chris Boys: 38:56

I think there's a, yeah, there's a couple of things that come up. One is it actually relates to Umano. So, um, if I focused on with tunnel vision on what I wanted to create, instead of focusing on all of the circumstances as to why I couldn't create that. I think I would be much further along, much faster. I think it's so, I just watched how easily I got distracted and in a tailspin around my circumstances of the current time and place and situation.

Biro: 39:40

Like building on the pandemic, uh, resource, lack of resources, thunders

Chris Boys: 39:46

pulling out or customers dropping away or whatever that was. And, and instead of just like, Elevating myself above it a bit more, um, not being in the thick of the emotion of it, but getting back into the emotion of the inspiration as to why I'm doing this, and just got back on with the job of building out my vision. I think that's one of the key things that I would tell myself to do differently. Also, in the same vein, um, it's just to, it's to play more. The spirit of play is huge. And I can take myself so seriously, we all can, and we can get so caught up in, um, in the doing that we forget to have fun. And I think that whole spirit of play just helps me relax a lot more and gets me back into the joy of just doing what I love. And as soon as I'm there, things just move so much more quickly and easily. And that is a huge help.

Biro: 40:54

Uh, I think, I thinks this is, this is one thing that is, I think it's different for, for everyone. I'm in the same boat. Um, like if, if you would ask anyone at Jigsaw with our offsite, and Berra is the biggest joker ever. He's, he's, he's the biggest buffoon ever. Right. But, but I love that. And even, even in our. In our meetings, just cracking a couple of jokes, uh, lighten, lightening up the mood and, and creating an atmosphere where, where your team feels. Like this is a serious kind of like mission that you're going through as a team, but in the same time, we also are a bit lighthearted and not super intense all the time, because that's not healthy. That's not healthy for and. And I know best because I can get so stressed sometimes. And I think that's one of the things that was wearing me down in Jexo's later years, years. So like in the last year, at least so much the competition, this happening in the ecosystem changes that, uh, going through a variety of challenges with development, with, uh, clients with that. So all of that has a toll. And sometimes you find yourself. After a period of time of just being stressed and intense and you step back and you think screw me like I've, I've changed from being the, the fun and engaging and motivating and compassionate founder. To being this grump that's head down, just trying to solve problems and taking every single situation as, as, um, as serious and so on. And honestly, I was getting to that point, um, with Jexo at one point, because, you know, building up stakes higher and so on. And I think that was such a big challenge because. I would have wished I could have stepped back and say, look, this is not like we're doing great. We're growing. There's a growing company and so on lighten up, dude. Yeah. I wish someone came and told me that, right. Lighten up. Like, look, although people will say, oh, you guys are doing great. And so on, but I felt that no one was in my shoes in that moment, in my head to sit me down and say, dude, look of all of the things that you've achieved. And. What is the worst thing that can happen spot on. So sit down and tell me all of the things that could happen that make you so stressed. Okay. A okay. Well, here's a reason why you shouldn't be this stress B. That's definitely not a reason to be stressed. See. You can mitigate that by doing this, right? So I think that, uh, in a, in a sense, you know, we have a risk management, uh, mitigation app, uh, on the marketplace. I feel like I wasn't eating my own dog food in that sense. I was just like, uh,

Chris Boys: 44:05

But I love hearing you talk about the shift of energy, right? Because how do you, as a founder who, when we do. Uh, get so consumed and all involved feel like we're so myopic on the, on the vision and what we're trying to do that the vision kind of goes down further down and down and down being weighed down by the circumstances. And you talked about being a grump and whatever else. And like, there's a density in that energy. You go to a movie or you have an experience and you feel that. That response, right? Whereas you talk about lightening up and that is literally like elevating the energy to a lightness where you, again, you had the experiences where you just like, you feel so vivacious and effervescent. And that's kind of where, how you make that shift out of being stressed into like just getting on with.

Biro: 45:05

Do you want me to tell you how I think now, just looking back at everything? Is one have mentors and advisors, very important because these people have, uh, they, they, they don't have a stake, a big stake in, in, in your work. So, you know, even if I was talking to Nikki and so on, yeah, she, she, she was able to somehow make me feel better, but she was as involved in the whole thing as I was, so. You know, you can't really not be biased on some of the things that you're living with me. Yep. So advisors can really help, but most importantly in mentors opening up. Right. Cause I had, I had a couple of mentors with me, um, at Jigsaw while it was evolving and so on, but I feel like I didn't open enough to talk about that, to be like, mate. I'm going through hell right now because a X, Y, Z, and to have someone there, basically the couple of mentors that I had, I am sure that they would be, if I would, if I would have done that, there would have been more than able to sit me down and say, okay, let's untangle this. And I would have been able to leave that meeting so much more. Um,

Chris Boys: 46:28

I think, I think what you say is absolutely like bang on in terms of one of the biggest lessons for me that you talked about having the mentors and the advisors having that objective mirror being held up. Yeah. For you, right? So that you can let someone else show you a view of who you are. Yeah. Exactly. Cause you can't see it at that point. But secondly, um, opening up, being vulnerable. Well, that's one of my biggest failures. You know, you talk about, we often talk about failure in the context of events happening or circumstances occurring. For me, failure is behaviors that hold me back. And one of the biggest behaviors is through fear, like withdrawing and not opening up and pretending that I have to fix it all myself and solve it all. And like the stress that that causes myself personally, um, you know, shutting what that does in the relationships that I have, like shutting out my, my life partner, shutting out people. In my team, shutting out advisors, that's not a healthy way of engaging and continuing to grow at all. So I love that you've brought that up because I think it's so key,

Biro: 47:46

but I think this is very important is you don't have to fix it on your own. Where we all have these, these challenges and these, um, lacks, like you mentioned, I don't open up, right? That's my problem. I don't open up. I don't talk about this. Um, enough. I think the most crucial thing is not figuring out how to solve this. But actually identifying the challenge, because if you identify the challenge, then you can find ways to solve it. But the biggest problem with a lot of people is they don't realize they don't identify. It's like. They go down a path and they have these patterns, behavioral patterns, but they don't realize that they're, and, and, and they're, they might be miserable at one point or, or fail or do this or that and think to themselves, I feel like crap, but I don't know why I know that there's something wrong, but I don't know why. When you're able to identify the challenge, like you said, and I, like I've mentioned it, I didn't open up and so on, then you can take decisions that will eventually remedy, even if it's not the remedy per se, and to give you an exact example. In this scenario, you could get a mentor, an advisor, a body that helps you open up to them and talk to them. And basically just finding someone that's really good at extracting those feelings and those thoughts and makes you open up and, and, you know, that's the, that's the solution. Right.

Chris Boys: 49:27

I think I absolutely agree. I think, you know, you cannot take a step forward until you own. Where you're standing today in terms of knowing and owning the current reality and naming it. If you're going to delude yourself around pretending maybe that the company's not in as much debt or that you've got a shorter runway than you actually have, or whatever stories you're telling yourself. And therefore are trying to protect yourself from one possible reality of something that may occur or may not occur. Um, until you do that you can't move forward. And I think that that's so, what you, what you talk about actually is one of the core foundations of the, of humano. Because the, the cycle of evolution is the faster you learn, the faster you grow. And by learning, you're not gonna, you cannot grow and you cannot know how to be most effective and efficient in designing a solution for whatever you're facing until. You name and just, and proclaim the current reality and facts. Yeah. Feelings absolutely a part of that, but facts are

Biro: 50:36

crucial. And you talked, talked about learning. I think that's, you know, people might be watching this and thinking, well, yeah, but how do I, if I, if I don't know, how do I know, right? If I don't know what's wrong with, well, what are the things that are holding me down? How do I know? How do I find out? And, and exactly is learning is exploring because, and I, uh, I've, I've had people that I've been coaching and mentoring and that, that were in a, in a, in a part of their career and they were sat there thinking, I don't like, I don't know, I have no idea what I want to do, no clue. Right. And I feel that this is the same thing, right? When you don't know what. What is causing is holding you back. And what I say every single time is explore, do something like explore. Like if you go out and explore, you will know because you talk to this person, you start a buddy group here around this, you join this community, you do this. And the, the, the amount of information that, that you start assimilating from that learning slash exploration phase will eventually. Help you start identifying patterns that could potentially keep you down. That's it. Like there's no, there's no like bullseye type of thing of, this is the method of you identifying, like, this is how you identify what is keeping you down is purely explore, learn, learn about the world that you're in and learn about yourself as a person, learn about yourself as an entrepreneur, and eventually it will come to you and you'll figure out, Oh, that's what I'm feeling. That's why I'm not, Oh, this person is actually, and fundamentally, this is one of the reasons why I'm making this, right. That's by listening to these discussions, you might, um, relate to some of these things and realize, Oh, I never thought about that. Maybe that's, what's keeping me down. Let me explore that path a bit more and figure out if that's the case or not. And like, I

Chris Boys: 52:45

think like what you just described is fundamentally the entrepreneur's journey. Yeah. Because even in the very early days of. Testing a hypothesis that you have around a solution that will solve a particular problem. That is an experimental process. You are throwing seeds out there to see which one is going to take off. You can't take or, or understand where to double down on, or what path to pursue, or um, how... To take that leap unless you experiment and it's very, if you're going to be paralyzed by inaction, then you're absolutely holding yourself back. Yeah. So get out of, for me, I know I've just got to get out of my head. I've got to come back to the basics. Okay. So where am I at? What's the current reality? Where do I want to go in terms of the desired outcome? What does that look like? And what are all the possible ways? I could get to that outcome, like don't judge, just get it all out there, and then just try. And it's only through, as you describe, that process of experimenting and trying, you'll start to get some energy around that one, and maybe that one. And then they're the two or three that you keep experimenting on to see which one starts to really blossom in the energy that it gives you, the excitement that that's the feedback loop. It's the, it's pursuing, um, and leaning into the breadcrumbs that relate to the strengths and the success. And, you know, so many people in this context of entrepreneurialism talk about failing fast. I much prefer to talk about like success. And leaning into success more like lean into the strengths don't and that's where you focus. Don't focus on the shit That's not going right focus on the shit that's going really well Even if it's a tiny tiny signal, it doesn't matter That is a source of energy for you just to keep pursuing and like take the cues from that To your point around, learn, learn, learn, that's the feedback loop.

Biro: 54:54

Yeah. And, and, and basically the, the things that don't go, uh, well, those are the things that you understand, but you move on from them really fast. Yeah. Right. And that's what you're talking about. Not lingering on, on, on, in your own suffering in that sense. Take it, acknowledge it, store it in your memory base in, in terms of information that you accumulated of do's and don'ts and move on, um, focus on

Chris Boys: 55:26

the good stuff. Yeah. Cause it's really easy to be indulgent around that stuff, right? Beating yourself up. Oh, stuffed up or whatever. No, to your point, learn fast, take, take it and just like get on with the next step.

Biro: 55:38

You know, I feel that sometimes, sometimes I feel like there's a bit of a, a bit of a, um, addictive. Pleasure, chemical pleasure of beating yourself up and complaining and, and, and being miserable. And I think some, some of us, cause I've been there as well, get addicted to it and sucked in. And I think that's, it's, it's like a, in a sense, like a drug that you need to get rid of it. Cause it's not beneficial.

Chris Boys: 56:08

How did you pull yourself out of it? Like, so if you. If you were in that cycle, like what was the ability to kind of crack open a wedge to get you out

Biro: 56:18

of the. I was there. Like basically I was, I was, I was killing myself with work and I was miserable at one point because I really wanted to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or this or that. And I was seeing all of these success was I would try stuff. I would build stuff. I would fail. I would take, uh, basically, um, coffee pills. I would stay awake 36 hours coding, doing this now. I would have probably killed myself of exhaustion at one point and unhealthy living. It took external forces. To get me out of that state, I was miserable. I was always angry. I was, but, but I was, but I was in, in, in the same time I was thriving in my own misery, I would, I would be incentivized. Yeah, I know I need to push more. I need to do more. Oh, this is, um, it's like a badge of honor. Yeah. And it's like, oh, I'm so miserable. Life is terrible. I'm going to do this. So I was still motivated, but I was miserable, constantly motivated. I couldn't take myself out of it because again, it's like that, that endless loop of you get sucked in. I, I basically was talking to someone that saw me super miserable and said, dude, here's this forum thing. Here's this program. It's a three days thing. Go through it. It's a kind of like a cleansing, like an internal cleansing thing. Um, it will help you with this subconscious that kind of like constantly beats you down. And it worked. Like I left that forum after three days alongside the group of other 50 people that were attending that class, just thinking like completely changed. And that's when, that's when I stopped smoking. I stopped, started being healthy. I was literally 50 kgs at that point. Um, I decided to get a job. And, and work for change and leave all of the kind of like hustling and, uh, of the startup that completely changed my trajectory. But again, it wasn't me waking up one day and thinking, I'm going to change. I'm going to be positive now. And so, no, it was just someone that just said, look, you're not going to lose. I didn't want it to do it. And I was, you look like you will die. Eventually you, you look so miserable and you look so unhealthy. This is not good. Try it, just do it there. You can't, you're not going to lose anything. And I went there with an open mind. I was also a bit at that point, desperate. I didn't know what I'm going to do. Um, let me try it. And it worked like I, after that, the next six months, I completely changed my life. But again, I, I think it takes that external, very often it takes that external, um, factor because we are very stubborn beings and, and in our own.

Chris Boys: 59:21

Well, because that's where we're safe and you, you know, you talked about the headwinds of behavior changes in an organization. Well, it's our own, uh, mechanisms that we put around ourselves just to keep ourselves safe. Yeah. And status quo. And I think so much of the, the misfit entrepreneurial journey is there's, there's a, there's a awareness there already because you're aware that you are a misfit. There's awareness you are a misfit. Um, but I loved. The reference there of you... Actually saying it took an external force for me to go internal and so much of this journey, like you don't need to go to a self help course, just become an entrepreneur because you're going to learn so much about yourself that you like, it's going to push every single button. Of behaviors, of belief systems, of whatever else that you have constructed around yourself up until this point. And so much of the mis the misfit journey and being successful around that is, okay, actually how do I start to deconstruct a lot of that through awareness, or internal awareness, or through external forces, through those mirrors of advisors and mentors? Um, so that I can actually start to play at the level that I'm capable of playing at and therefore create a company that can mirror what I'm trying to do here.

Biro: 1:00:48

And, and fundamentally that, that kind of behavior only happens when you realize that you're a misfit and that you're not perfect and that you, you need, you need to better yourself. Cause you know, if you're. If, if you feel like, well, I'm doing everything right. I don't know what's wrong. And I know so many people like that. Now is one of them in the early days were like, Oh, I'm

Chris Boys: 1:01:16

doing everything

Biro: 1:01:16

right. It doesn't work.

Chris Boys: 1:01:18

It's fate. Yep. Yep. Yep. I think, I think, um, yeah, owning the misfit, right. Owning the, the points of difference, um, and, and celebrating them, like leaning into them because you don't pursue. The entrepreneurial journey to fit in you don't pursue something so intense to seek affirmation right from society or whatever you, you have to do it for yourself and. That whole process of, um, really being comfortable with wherever you may feel, um, you don't fit in actually becomes your superpower because the more that you embrace that and celebrate that, that actually just comes through your leadership style. It comes through your point of difference in the way that you communicate your product or service to market. Um, and it just differentiates you because. You're celebrating your whole point of uniqueness.

Biro: 1:02:20

And I like what you said about doing it for yourself, because if you do it for any other reason than yourself, then the, like you're halfway, um, it won't

Chris Boys: 1:02:33

fail. You'll start, you'll get off the starting blocks. But you won't get to the finish line because you will get so many nose blockers, whatever else, um, that actually, um, become, uh, almost like this shine a light, a little spotlight on the, the sources of motivation for you. And if the motivation is externally focused, it's yeah. Okay. It might be part of it, but not all of it. If it's all of it, you're screwed. Like it's, you're not going to survive

Biro: 1:03:06

it. But at the end of the day, because at the end of the day, it's like. You do the most and you push the hardest for yourself, right? If you're doing it for a completely different reason, which is not related to you, right? It's someone else's thing. It's you're budding up, you're doing stuff, but you don't do it for yourself, right?

Chris Boys: 1:03:29

It's which I, like, this is, this is going to be a little bit contentious because. I've done a lot of work in not for profits and in religious organizations and this notion of servant leadership, which is also so strong in agile principles and agile ways of working. So servant leadership in the sense that you're doing things for others, right? You're of service for your team, for your customers. That's awesome. But actually. My perspective on that is you're still doing it for yourself. Exactly. Because you're, you're making yourself feel better because you're helping others. Right. And you become addicted to helping and, and, and that can also move into a shadow side, but it's still an intrinsic motivation. You're doing it for you.

Biro: 1:04:14

That's, that's, and I think that's one of the things that. You know, when, when we talk about creating content like this podcast and so on, and, and, and mentoring others without charging a fee and so on, you're still doing it for you. Yes, you are helping, but you're still doing it for yourself. It gives you the, there's, there's a, there's a chemical reaction behind that. If they would, if they wouldn't be, you wouldn't be driven to do it. Right. Like you, you wouldn't do it. Like you wouldn't be doing pro bono work and helping mentor young entrepreneurs or do some charity work. If you didn't have that substance gets that infused in your brain, whenever, whenever you, you do these things, you get

Chris Boys: 1:05:02

a little dopamine hit that goes, Oh, how good am I? How safely am I? So. I'm at the stage with Umano where it's taken several iterations to get to the point of, um, really believing in product market fit. How do I know that? Well, I can start to see customer responses to the product. I starting to charge a premium. Um, price for the product because it's a premium product in the value that it's creating for customers. Um, whereas I didn't feel that sense of confidence, nor did I feel like I had those signals in prior iterations. So that's cool. Now I get to grow that. I love to understand from you in your journey with Jexo, how you went from, um, That step of knowing you had product market fit to then scaling it. What were the signals and how did you. Back to the earlier conversations around experimenting, look at different channels or experiment with different channels to really get it out there and scale that kind of core, um, loop of value that you were generating. Well,

Biro: 1:06:19

I think there is a couple of things. So if to get a tiny bit technical here, one, we, I think we were quite good at creating. Um, the value pillars of every single product and basically, um, putting together a really in depth brief of problem statement, basically hot buttons, value pillars, all of this information that would help us communicate what is it that our products do and, and, and basically what is the value. That's added to any organization or team that uses the products. And from there, we started exploring and building up one content. Um, we started putting together more organic content, but also putting together, uh, things like, uh, adverts, things like webinars that had funnels, um, to them, but it all came from this one Bible source of truth that was, you know, These briefs that we made for every single product that, that contained personas problems, uh, uh, uh, hot, uh, hot buttons, basically problem statements. Uh, value pillars, um, battle cards with competitors and things like that. And that helped us for the organic content, basically start building a, uh, content calendar, which we had, we had, we had identified in that content, uh, calendar. Um, all of the hot buttons that were related to these, basically these briefs, these Bibles for each of the products. And, um, those hot buttons meant something different for each segment of the audience from, from the very cold lead. To the warm and hot lead, they had, they would have a different connection to your brand related to that hot button. So you can't really, for example, with a, with a cold lead. So someone that has never heard about you and is just found your content, you can't really tell them how to do stuff in an article because they won't really. Trust, who the hell are you, right? Who the hell is Jexo? Why would I listen to how you're telling me how to do things? But then, you know, for the hot lead, you can do that. You know, a hot lead is someone that's already bought into your brand, into your company, into your product. You can bring them in webinars, you get them really quickly. Um, excited because they're already halfway bought into the product. Whereas a, um, warm lead, right? That's someone that has seen your content a few times, and it's now at a stage where you could, you can teach them. They will trust what you say when you teach them. So for the, for the cold lead, you, you basically create relatability, right? Oh, have you ever, do you have this problem? We've been through this problem as well. Here's how to identify this problem. Here's how, you know, but, but not very heavily. I'm the expert positioning pieces because they're look at that and say, Oh, how do I trust you that, but if you create relatability at the cold lead levels, the first time that they start discovering your content, if you create your relatability, then they'll, they'll start consuming more. Oh, I'm, I'm, I have that problem. Yeah. Oh, um, they're telling me how to solve that problem in this article. Brilliant. Okay. I kind of relate to this company. I kind of trust them now after seeing several of their content pieces up to, but again, and you can build these, you can build these funnels with remarketing, retargeting, uh, content through adverts and so on. There's a variety of things. What we've done really well is use marketing. In order to scale, to grow our business, to establish ourselves as, you know, our, um, um, you know, our, our mission with, with Jexo was to, you know, make work management easier, fun and accessible to everyone rhymes, right. And then that's one of the things that stuck into my head because. That's what we were talking about everywhere. And I think one thing that we've done really well was to, to, to identify our brand as that we make work management easy, fun, and accessible to everyone, like your work management can be boring or can be complicated at times. We make it easy for you. And the way we make it easy is through content and product solution. So solution and content. And the fact that that was part of our. Our mission and part of our goals meant that we didn't de scope it, because that's one of the things that usually happens in organizations. Oh, it's all about, um, cache ROI, right? Mainly because they don't have their, their goals around content and teaching as well. Right. Our mission is to make work management easy, fun, and accessible to everyone. And we do that through teaching and through solutions. Equally important. So that helped us by establishing that helped us by establishing what the goals are, helped us focus on content as much as focusing on the product development as a pro as proof or when we got acquired, our company, uh, was equally split between product and marketing. We didn't have more product. People are more marketing.

Chris Boys: 1:12:40

That would be my question, right? So you, you, you start out, how do you know how much to. When you're building the strategy and therefore the resourcing to achieve that strategy, how much did you originally allocate for capital, working capital, operating expenditure on marketing versus continuing to build out the value? Let me,

Biro: 1:12:59

let me put it in a, in, in, in terms of percentage. Yeah. In terms that I've actually learned along the way, when we decided we're ready to invest in marketing. We're like, if we hire one person, we're golden. If we have one person to write content and also do, um, advertising for us. Amazing. Once you hire, so you go and hire that person, the, the mar, the marketing duet all, and then really quickly you realize that the person is becoming a bottleneck and is over, um, worked and overloaded with, um, with things to do. Cause you're growing, right? So you're, you need more revenue. You need, you, you need to continue that percentage of year on year, month on month growth and so on. And it was like, okay, so we need to do more. Well, let's do more of this. And you realize that person is a bottleneck and, and you actually, well, actually let's, let's split these roles. Let's, let's just have a content writer. This person loves more content writing. It's an editor. So you go do that full time and we're going to hire an adverts person, um, paid media, you do that really quickly. If you're healthy and growing and scaling fast and getting more customers and you need to maintain that momentum immediately, you turn back to the marketing team and guys, why are we not doing more? Well, we're burned out. We're, we're doing way too much stuff. Well, it would be beneficial if we would have a creative person in the team, a designer that can take one. Cause I'm doing all of this social media now. Um, actually before that, can we get a social media person to focus and be our social media manager? Cause I'm doing social media as well, but I'm. But paid advertising and so on, I don't have time for it. Okay. Get a social media person. The social media person says, well, I'm spending too much time on designing this and doing that. Do you see where I'm heading with this? So, you know, in the early days, cause I'm a product and I'm a technical founder, right? In the early days, my thinking was like, if I only get one marketing person, I'm going to be golden for a very long time. And. Literally three months afterwards, I'm like panicking. I need another person in this team. It's the exact same situation as you would need to expand and elaborate your product team where, you know, let's say from, from the engineering team and you, the, the founder that's delegating, uh, basically, um, specs for your product and also testing it. And then you realized. Oh, but I need to, um, unblock my time. So let's hire a tester. Oh, but I need to unblock more of my time. So let's hire a product owner and so on. It's the exact same thing for marketing. So you could build up a company where your marketing team is a hundred strong and you still don't feel like they've. Reached the maximum potential of what you can squeeze from the marketing team. Right? So what I always say, going back to your initial question is figure one, never start a department without you at least having an understanding of that department. So that's the first advice that I give people learn about market, learn the moving. The, the, the core moving components of, of a marketing, of a healthy marketing team and initiative department, whatever, well, where you have paid media, I have social media, I have this, you have that, right. Get into those spaces yourself a bit, learn about it, do it for a tiny bit, just the shallow initial understanding of it, and then figure out either. Yourself or bring on, uh, uh, an advisor or a consultant for tiny bit of a, to sit down with you and say, okay, so this is my business, this is my product. Um, these are my opportunities in terms of customer personas and so on. And get that, uh, advisor or consultant. To give you the low hanging fruits, you can squeeze the most customer and leads from these two, three opportunities. If you get someone like this, but again, you could just do that with an advisor with a, um, but I don't recommend that because what it means is that you have no idea what they're talking about. And then you're like, okay, so I need to hire that person. But how am I going to hire that person? Oh, I need to pay extra for this consultant to, to hire that person. Cause I have no idea who I'm hiring. And, and then while they're doing their job, how can you enable them? How can you have a conversation about goals in this? If you don't know anything about that field, you'll just be like, yeah, make me more money. And this is where, this is where bumping heads comes in, come in a lot of these companies that I see where. Where the product founder or the technical founder has no idea about marketing. They bring someone, uh, that's that knows marketing and then,

Chris Boys: 1:18:20

or vice versa. Right. Yeah. Where the non technical founder has no idea about the tech and just puts these unrealistic expectations on the tech side of the

Biro: 1:18:29

business. That's the same thing. And, and, and the conversation is so shallow and so. Meaningless that you're like, yeah, we need to increase sales by, by this much. Right. Oh, but we have, we need to increase the sales by this much, but I need control. Like I need to know, like. You put in front of me, all of the options and, and the marketer, the marketing person puts it off and he's like, Oh no, we shouldn't do that. Cause it, for me, it doesn't really sound good or it's not. Oh, let's, let's do this one. So that's one challenge, which some of the founders have, which is they don't know anything about that field, but they're still opinionated on what needs to be done, which is horrendous. And second is. They just don't, don't communicate what they're trying to achieve to their marketing person enough for the, that person to get a deeper understanding of what's needed and come up with good solutions for that low hanging fruit. And, and that, that. That is not a, that is not a short transactional thing that needs to happen for the entirety of your business, right? It's not like, okay, so I'm hiring a marketing person. I'm going to tell them what I want, and I'm going to have a couple of conversation at the beginning with them. And that's it. No, that's not how the world works. Right? So how are you going to be sat in that room knowing absolutely nothing about that field? And be able to motivate and guide and empower your team if you don't know what they're talking about and what they're doing, but there's, there's, there's extremes, both ends, right? On the other end, if you, if you learn a bit about marketing, cause I've seen this as well, and I've been guilty of doing it a couple of times with my marketing team, I know a bit about marketing. I've done this, this, this, I've done courses in that. And I go in and, um, you know, think that I know better than my marketing, head of marketing or things like that. So that needs to be avoided as well. You need to know as much as to have a valuable contribution to the discussion, not to hinder, cripple your marketing team. Cause you have this very biased opinion about things.

Chris Boys: 1:20:53

Awesome. Thank you. In scaling through marketing and other forms of delivering more value to customers, you, we have to build out teams in all different markets, different time zones. Um, what advice have you got around creating a culture that connects and sustains distributed teams?

Biro: 1:21:26

It's going to be very controversial. You don't, you don't create one culture. That's not, there there's no such thing. I think. If, if you're dealing with people across multiple, and this is one of the things that we need to realize, if we want a remote team and we want to be truly remote, we must not hinder remote talent by enforcing certain ways of being. If you work with a team in India, they would have, they will have their own way of looking. And, um, understanding work life and they would have their own habits and their own culture and so on as, as a leader, you need to embrace that and make sure that the rest of the organization, the rest of the remote team, um, and the people that you're bringing on are inclusive and embrace that as well. So. It's not as so much as building a culture that fits to everyone is around. Um, being inclusive and allowing people to, yeah, one lights down and allowing people to, um, to basically exercise and be themselves and have their own culture in the organization. Awesome. Awesome. Well, with that light dying, it's a sign, it's a sign, it's a sign. We've been talking too much, right? So I close this usually with a, um, with three questions, right. Um, that I want to hear from you. What is a quote? That you live by

Chris Boys: 1:23:12

where's the power by that I go back to the earlier conversation around where am I focused am I focused on? problem solving on circumstances on everything that's not going right or and giving my power away or am I focused on what I'm trying to create and the end result and the joy of What that is in its end state as I perceive it If that's where my power is, then I know I'm powerful and I'll get through anything.

Biro: 1:23:49

Perfect. That's a really good one. Where is the power that you should, we should ask us ourselves that all the time. Second question is what is, what is a book that really influenced? It's

Chris Boys: 1:24:04

actually one that I've just finished reading, um, called the creative act by Rick Rubin. So producer to the musical stars of the world. Um, and they call him the guru, uh, in California. Um, has produced and supported artists like Adele, like, you name it, he's worked with them and he's created, it's, I call it almost, I read it almost like a manifesto on the act of creating, which is what Misfit, uh, founders and entrepreneurs are doing. We're creating, it's not music, it's not artwork, it's companies that deliver value in a particular way to solve a problem. The the truths as I call them in that book. I just awesome It's one of those books that I couldn't put down I was kind of I was interested by what I'd read about this creative genius himself And his way his own practices and I kind of I picked it up and I just literally I think it was three days I was Go for it. It was dumb.

Biro: 1:25:11

Oh, I must admit I've not heard of that book, so I need to pick it up and read it as well. Uh, and the last question, What is a good habit that you advocate for others to pick on? Pick as well.

Chris Boys: 1:25:25

For me, well, just for me, it's, um, It's meditation, and I, that's a loaded word. Cause it means so many different things to so many different people

Biro: 1:25:37

for me means being in the gym, pumping iron.

Chris Boys: 1:25:40

Exactly. Awesome. And so for me, it's about like this awareness around reviewing and previewing. And I, if I do that on a daily basis, review the day preview tomorrow, review the day preview tomorrow, or whatever that is, but it's kind of just trying to create more awareness around the stuff that really sparks the joy so that I can actively choose that. And the stuff that pulls me back so that I can actively let that go, that's my habit. If I don't do that, I'm like a bull in a china shop and get out of my way because it's not pretty. But if I do do that, my days just hum and flow.

Biro: 1:26:20

That's perfect. Thank you. Perfect answers, uh, with a perfect ending to a perfect podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. Nice to be

Chris Boys: 1:26:26

here. Thanks for having me on. Cheers.