The Untold Truth: Controversy Marketing, Founder Burnout, and Selling for $MM - Misfit Founders Ep 4

Biro: 0:00

With the hip hop video. You got a lot of backlash with that. I was one of your critics in that.

‍Chris Cooke: 0:06

My apology to EZPI was a masterpiece.

Biro: 0:11

It scared me at times seeing some of the marketing that you were doing. Are you serious?

Chris Cooke: 0:19

EZ.

Biro: 0:27

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 is 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 enjoy 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 private sessions Link in the video description. Also, please subscribe to this YouTube channel so that you get notified when we publish new videos. First of all, thank you so much for actually reaching out to do this.

Chris Cooke: 1:27

Thanks for having me, man.

Biro: 1:28

I was actually surprised, but then I realized that's actually the perfect show for you. To be honest, it feels like it.

Chris Cooke: 1:35

That's what I thought. I'm such a nerd. This is what I was doing 2am on a Saturday with my second bottle of wine. I saw it come up in the suggestions and watched the episode with you and Chris and immediately was like this is a great format and I want to be involved.

Biro: 1:49

John, give me a bit of a. I mean, I know everything about you.

Chris Cooke: 1:54

Hopefully I still have some surprises up my sleeve.

Biro: 1:58

So maybe a quick intro of who Chris is and a bit about your history, getting to the business that you just sold and what your business does, used to do and does now under Tempo.

Chris Cooke: 2:14

Yeah, so my name is Chris Cook. I'm the CEO of Old Street Solutions. We make custom charts for Jira, which makes Jira reporting better prettier and easier to use. We recently were acquired by Tempo, so I'm just adjusting to that new world order. I still feel like an entrepreneur within that family but, yeah, I definitely have a bigger structure looking after me. As for who I am and my background. It is weird. I'm a serial entrepreneur. This was my first job in tech.

Biro: 2:44

You know, I've actually seen the interview with you and Alex Alex or T. Yeah, talking about the fact that you had something in Thailand before this yeah scuba diving school and then turtle conservation during eco tourism. Forgive me for asking this, but, chris, how old are you? I don't think I've ever asked you this I've lived a few lifetimes, so I'm 38. 38?, not that far off, I'm 36.

Chris Cooke: 3:11

But yeah, I mean, I started my first business when I was 19,. So, yeah, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Biro: 3:18

You know, that's one of the things, because from the first time that we met and all of the discussions that we had before, I think we have a lot of similarities but also a lot of differences. Like, I started my business when I was 17 as well, and then I've been a serial entrepreneur for a long time. Never made anything stick. That's a different story of my tragic I'm sure we have plenty of failures to discuss, if you want. Oh, yes. And so when you mention what is it that you do, what is it that Wall Street Solution does, you're very snappy at it. How many times have you had to introduce yourself like that and perfect it? Because I had an episode not long ago talking about you know what was our goal, our mission, and just ingraining that in the team ethos and culture. And, yes, we make work management easy, fun and accessible to everyone. And when you said all three solutions and what is it that you do, it felt so natural. So I'm curious about was that something that you set up in the early days or was it something that gradually became? This is what we do.

Chris Cooke: 4:34

It changes all the time, so that what I just said isn't a rehearsed line I've come up with before. That is just off the top of the dome, but that's easy when you're just always honest and yourself and like transparent. So but the truthfully, like even a year ago, I would say we have an accelerator growing multiple apps in the Atlassian ecosystem focused on non-technical uses. Like yeah, it changes month by month. My job title changes, you know, like when I again, if I wrote down what my CV was two years ago, every six months it completely changes depending on the priority or the stress. This is small business, entrepreneur 101, right.

Biro: 5:10

I think you also had it, because I remember our first interaction, our meet up at Brood Dog and chatting with you.

Chris Cooke: 5:17

Yes, we met at that crucial time where we were both just starting. We still had day jobs even, and we'd sort of started on our side.

Biro: 5:25

You're still at Adaptivist and I remember the one thing that really impressed me was the ease of discussions, like the lexicon, the vocabulary that you use, and how easy it was for you to talk about our ecosystem and what is it that you do and how you help teams. I remember we were even talking about you know the fact that at that point, you were doing the whole. Well, we can migrate apps from server to cloud. You're doing that whole service and, yeah, I felt quite impressed with how you talked about the ecosystem at that point when we met and I think, like you said, I think it may be an organic thing and not necessarily something that you trained, or is it Because you said you've been on Entrepreneur's since you were 19. Have you ever had this ease of discussing and selling? Always been comfortable?

Chris Cooke: 6:27

talking about business. So I remember when I was like 14, talking business with my dad and he was, you know, country manager in Brazil and we were going around and I was saying, oh, dad, your competitors have lots of billboards up and he's like, oh, that's good to know, chris, that's good Intel, we can go back and we'll have a see why they're targeting this area and whether there's an opportunity here. When I was in my last year of school, you have a lot of free time, a lot of private study time, and I started going to business studies class just because I was bored and I took the mock exam and got a bead, despite having never studied business. So I've always found it quite natural and fun and charming. And then, in regards to our chat, I've never wasted too much time trying to learn about Jira.

Biro: 7:09

So I think I have lots of space in my brain, me too, me too, me too. I feel that Know nothing about conference and very little about Jira.

Chris Cooke: 7:20

That's good too, yeah.

Biro: 7:22

Because everyone else has.

Chris Cooke: 7:22

There's plenty of like nerds who love Lassian and Jira and they're super fanboys for it, and I never really did. I just saw it as a business opportunity and I saw as good as they were at Jira. I was going to be a bad Jira admin if I start training down that path, so I focused on learning about the marketing and the sales side of things and again you meet devs who they don't want to do any of that and so if I could take that off their hands. But yeah, I was trying to sell any services I could, whatever opportunity found out. We did a bit of marketing consultancy for people. That was hard because most of the established vendors in this space don't have a lot of respect for marketing. That's true, it's very hard to sell their marketing services and I got told repeatedly our marketing and sales don't work in the Lassian ecosystem and I saw how they did marketing and I realized why I wasn't working for them. But as we both, discovered it works well.

Biro: 8:17

I think we both had conversations with vendors because once we started getting noticed in the ecosystem, with branding, with content, with the stuff that we were doing. people started knocking at our door, kind of confusing what we were doing with brilliant marketing. Like you guys do marketing really, really well. What is it that you do? And when I started talking about what we do, which is less about ROI, KPIs and stuff, and it's all about positioning, it's all about content, it's all about brand awareness and stuff, it started shrugging. I mean, I think that's for us.

Chris Cooke: 8:58

This is what I really wanted to talk about with you, because I think me and you always get mentioned in the Lassian space when people think of examples of good marketing in the Lassian space, whereas I think if we're both being honest and critical of ourselves and each other, half of what we do I wouldn't consider good marketing, and that's honest. People always talk about the hip hop video, right, and people say to me oh, why are you? Guys are crazy, and I'm like but that wasn't good marketing. We did that because it's fun.

Biro: 9:24

I think they misunderstand.

Chris Cooke: 9:26

where I think we both start is let's wake up in the morning and what's fun, what gets us excited? Right, and for our teams as well, just empowering them to come up with a new idea and try something. And I start there first, and sometimes good marketing comes from it.

Biro: 9:41

But I think if you wake up and go.

Chris Cooke: 9:43

How do I sell? How do I make a marketing? You're the same as everyone else and every other cheesy trashy post we've seen on LinkedIn, so I think people misunderstand that. Really, I think both of us right. I'll let you speak for yourself in a sec. But if we start with fun and creativity, good marketing will follow.

Biro: 9:59

Yes, and I agree with you. I remember because both Nicky and I come from a tech background. And Nicky comes from a product background Nothing to do with marketing. And back in 2020, when we got our seed investment from resolution, we had zero. We didn't even have a blog right. All of our sales were from forums, comments, this, that like hacking growth right. And then we got into marketing and I remember we've done the Dan Martel If you've ever heard of Dan Martel, my sound familiar.

Chris Cooke: 10:34

Yeah.

Biro: 10:35

He has a brand called SAS Academy and he also has a course called the Growth Accelerator and we've done the Growth Accelerator course, which takes you it has like 10 classes of two hours long videos with him explaining everything from webinars to paid advertising to this. And I remember how we tried everything in the early days and we were like we don't like this, this is too hard for us. Oh, we like this, oh, we like branding, oh, we like creating content. This is fun, this is lighthearted for us. And although we've done a couple of webinars in the early days, we slowly moved away from doing all of the stuff that we didn't like or felt comfortable and just do the stuff that was fun for us. And I think that's one of the things that because people forget the amount of initiatives that we started and bend Like we had a lot of things, even content wise, that we pushed out and it didn't work and we went back to the drawing board and I think every single marketer will hate my guts. Our head of marketing, I don't know. I think secretly she hates me Mainly because I would just go head first. Oh, this is cool. I've seen these influencers doing this and that and it's working. Let me give it a try. And if you go from a traditional marketing background, that's not the way you go about marketing. You do market research, you put together a plan, you put together KPIs and goals that you want to achieve. You measure things, you A-B test.

Chris Cooke: 12:17

None of which either of us do right, yeah, exactly.

Biro: 12:20

So, yeah, I think I hope that a lot of people in the ecosystem see this and realize that what we're saying is that we're not good at marketing gurus. We're not good at it. We're bad at a lot of things, and I'm sure that there are examples in the ecosystem of people that do marketing really well.

Chris Cooke: 12:40

Absolutely, and that clever A-B testing and proper marketing is understanding your audience and the metrics Elements. I think and I know EZ, agile we talk to the marketing teams behind those apps and I know they are a proper marketing team. They do marketing well, but for us, I think it's more just. I know, as an entrepreneur, if I find something I'm passionate about and I wake up excited to do, I can't fail. I will fail, I will fail multiple times, but ultimately I will work out how to do something which converts and which is successful.

Biro: 13:10

I think it's stubbornness as well. Because, you can have the best marketing team or head of marketing telling you you should be doing things like this. I feel like, as entrepreneurs, we're explorers in a sense and we want to try stuff and we want to do things as well, and that can be a double-edged sword in a sense, so it can pan out in some cases which is done for us. I don't know if I ever told you how we actually started Monday Coffee. Did I ever tell you, no, the reason why we started Monday Coffee? Not because we found a market gap and we've done research and realized there's a gap here. I bought a piece of streaming software that I was using it for my own personal hobby and I was like, well, I need to justify spending money on this, so what can we stream?

Chris Cooke: 14:06

Just to justify the expense Exactly, your accountant said why is this on your company credit card?

Biro: 14:11

And you're like, oh, quick, do someone and I was like what can we stream? Let's use this tool. If we're going to use, I want to put it as a spending on the company. I don't want to pay it for myself. So what can we stream? And we went with Peanuts for a walk, a park walk, and we started brainstorming while walking the dog how about we do a wrap up of whatever happens in the ecosystem? Because I feel like that I could always keep getting lost. I read the clarity slack, I go on this and that and it's a bit all over the place. What if we do a roundup? Oh, that's a great idea. Let's start. And the early days was. I mean we are at the 125th episode, more than two years later, and you know we're getting decent traction with views and on a weekly basis and that has. But that had helped us in so many other ways from an exposure perspective and people seeing Jixxel as a thought leader and a brand out there and getting partnerships and connections. Pm72 came from me bombarding everyone's timeline with Monday coffee and other content all the time, because everyone was like, yes, definitely, jixxel guys. But again it just came up from from a stupid, in a very stupid way, which was can I make this, can I use this tool and even the studio like I'm doing this because I need to justify playing with technology and buying a ton of cameras. I'm also passionate about this, you know, just talking to founders and finding, because I think and that's one of the things that I want to talk to you about and find out more is your journey, cause I don't think we're the cookie cutter founders. I mean, I think every single founder thinks that they're the unique snowflake and so on. But I don't know about you, but I feel uncomfortable in many circumstances when it comes to business, to the ecosystem, to running a business, to everything, and I don't have imposter syndrome.

Chris Cooke: 16:29

I am an imposter, I am frequently surrounded by You're a fraud.

Biro: 16:33

Yeah, I am. They're straight up Me too.

Chris Cooke: 16:34

Yeah, I don't have any training in marketing right Like when I first came back to England eight years ago from Thailand. I'd had experiences as an entrepreneur. I'd had companies that employed 12 people. Some were successful, some weren't. Most all crashed and burnt and ended up in my ex-girlfriend's possession. And I came back to England and they looked at my CV and went cool, we have a cold calling job on minimum wage for you. But that was what they saw. The only reason I'm here is because Clear Vision took a risk on me.

Biro: 17:01

Was that your first job coming back from-?

Chris Cooke: 17:03

Well, no, my first job was a cold calling job Cold calling.

Biro: 17:07

Just horrible, just spamming people on the phones trying to sell them, but I feel that that hardens you a bit in conversations.

Chris Cooke: 17:14

Oh, absolutely, I mean my first, first job ever was a high street sales. And then you just get used to rejection and I don't think it's just taught me to be a hardcore salesperson, because I'm not these days. I have great salespeople that do it for me, but just rejection and failure. I think that's my main advice to any entrepreneur is just how often you fail is really gonna determine whether you succeed or not, and people that are scared of failure and desperately hope this time works, that's the wrong mindset. Right, you should embrace failure. You should be constantly getting knocked down and have the enthusiasm to get up again.

Biro: 17:50

Oh, okay, what did I learn?

Chris Cooke: 17:52

from that, because if you learn from a failure, it's not a failure.

Biro: 17:55

And I think that's probably because you mentioned you failed a couple of businesses in the past. I think that's what hardened you. That's definitely the case for me. Jekso is the first business that I can say that it was successful, although and we're going to touch on this I think, even Jekso, there are so many things that I, when we got acquired that I was thinking I'm not done, like I feel that there's so many unopened boxes and unfinished chapters in my career as a founder and owning a business and like there are so many things that we didn't do right or never done or there's still mystery boxes. In a sense, a lot of the marketing stuff, a lot of the sales stuff. There's so many things that I've not really experienced to say, yeah, my next business, sales, I know it, marketing, I know it, so yeah. So I do think there's a lot of things that are still it's tough.

Chris Cooke: 18:55

There's two things. One, you said, looking back in hindsight, knowing now what you know, what you would have done different, but again, you made the choices you could with the experience you had at the time. And that experience is harder and it's the reason why Someone once said to me if you don't look back at decisions you made in the past and cringe, then you haven't grown as a person right. It wouldn't be terrible if you peaked in high school and went oh, that was me at my best. Now I'm not doing so well, so it's good. It's healthy to look back and be like I wish I'd have done that. Yeah, there's a few things. As for unarmed boxes, well, we're not too old, but still some more opportunities ahead of us.

Biro: 19:32

But I want to rewind on something. But the one thing just to conclude on this I fucking hate when I see these entrepreneur gurus talking about and I was just watching one guy the other day. I popped up on my feed saying, yeah, I made a successful, multi-million, hundreds of millions business, sold it. You can put me wherever, in whatever circumstances, give me zero dollars and I'll make it happen Because I know the blueprint. Now I know the blueprint, I'm like what the hell blueprint are you talking about and how?

Chris Cooke: 20:10

It always ends up being a landlord, in my experience, yeah, probably, yeah, a stupid mans entrepreneur, yeah, selling property and stuff.

Biro: 20:18

I'm not bashing on that. I am, it's not like people that do it well get the rewards, but I do feel like that's the entry level into entrepreneurship in a sense.

Chris Cooke: 20:31

Yes, because you're not making something and this is what I was excited about and this is why I feel such an imposter is that I'm not like you. I'm not a dev. The last time I had a product was when I was selling scuba diving courses. Since then I've been lost and just looking for opportunities and co-founders often to sort of, who have an idea and make something. I knew that the Alasian space was desperately over, catering for more and more technical users. But there was an expanding user base of people like me who weren't technical, barely knew how to use the tools and didn't want to have to go on a four day training course to use it. So I knew there was an opportunity there, but without the dev background or even a moderate amount of gerry knowledge. I knew I needed a technical co-founder to lead me there.

Biro: 21:17

But what got you into it then? Because a lot of people that are into marketing sales and have no technical background kind of shy away or have this thought that they should stick to the services that they know because they don't have the knowledge. What gave you that? I would say that what was the inspiration for you to get into the marketplace and build products?

Chris Cooke: 21:45

Part of it's being a nerd, so I've always been comfortable being out of my comfort zone. So at university I used to love sitting around with the people studying physics and getting high with them, and they would tell me like oh, what about this? There's advanced physics and black holes and wormholes and time travel and paradoxes, and I'd understand 10% of it. But I just loved being overwhelmed and out of my depth. And so soon. A lot of the entrepreneur advice I was reading was coming from the tech world, because tech was eating the world. So I knew I wanted to be in tech and I didn't let a little knowledge get in my way. And especially when I found the Atlassian space and I was surrounded by people who didn't respect marketing, weren't good at marketing, but were doing very well despite it, I saw a huge opportunity Because these people were doing well despite not having one of the three pillars of business and they were like oh, it doesn't mark in the space. I'm like no, no, no, you're succeeding in spite of that. And if I can find someone who can do the technical and I bring my marketing and sales hunger to that we will do well.

Biro: 22:52

And I think you were also it significantly accelerated because if you look at all of the partners in the marketplace that were successful, when you and I because we kind of start in the same time- when you and I entered the market, a lot of the successful ones were there for many years.

Chris Cooke: 23:12

They had an eight year, 10 year head start on us.

Biro: 23:15

Yeah build relationships. We're selling through relationships. Basically, that's the whole premise of the ecosystem. You're selling through relationships.

Chris Cooke: 23:23

It's the amazing thing when you first go to one of that teams used to be some of that and you just see, you realize everyone knows everyone.

Biro: 23:30

Yeah, exactly, it's such an old boy. I feel that and probably this is what you're talking about You've seen an opportunity to introduce some of the marketing tactics and accelerate your growth, because you did. When did you start? In 2018, or was it?

Chris Cooke: 23:52

2019. Really, I think we registered the business New Year's Eve on 2018, just so our company would look all on paper and we'd started talking, but we didn't have an idea what we wanted to build yet. So when I was at ClearVision, I was walking around and saying I want to start up a company, I'm a serial entrepreneur who's with me and they just thought I was this weirdo on minimum wage, sending spam emails and being like can I start our own thing? But I found someone and that was Yesek, where I met him and he was up for it and willing to take the risk. And then, when I went to Adaptivist, found Tom. So then I had these young entrepreneurs and I think Tom was great because at my age at 32, life had kicked me. I'd had a few failures, but Tom was young enough that he hadn't had anything kicked out of him yet, so he had the naivety to be more enthusiastic and more gun hoe than I was, even. And so that was a powerful combination. Same, likewise with Yesen, just hungry for the glory, for the wealth, and so their enthusiasm, teaming up with them, made up for me. It was a little bit wary, still wanted to do it, but didn't have quite the hunger and eagerness to jump off the cliff and try and build a plane on the way down.

Biro: 25:09

But was it catchy, like you feel like in the first few years their enthusiast actually caught onto you and you were a bit more like yay, let's go. Mofos.

Chris Cooke: 25:20

Or were you still the?

Biro: 25:22

old kind of reluctant, more toned down. Co-founder.

Chris Cooke: 25:28

So it was great, and it moved things a lot quicker than I would have been comfortable. I probably wouldn't have taken us into half a million pounds debt I'd been in charge of things like that. But at the same point, there's no point in co-founders that agree with each other all the time. So as soon as I saw that those two were the gun hoe, let's go for it. Team, I was like cool, my job's to play the grumpy dad, so that's the role I often play.

Biro: 25:58

Yeah, I feel that that's the only way to make it work, because before Nikki, I felt absolutely every single co-founding venture that I tried to start and it was mainly because I realized later, once teaming up and ganging up with Nikki, that it was because I was teaming up with clones of mine Rather than some.

Chris Cooke: 26:21

Oh my god, bro, we have so much in common, we think alike.

Biro: 26:24

This is amazing and that always backfired, whereas having someone like Nikki that I think Nikki is you in this situation and I was, you know, yachik, and what's your Tom, tom, tom. Yes, I was a excited one, and Oiga and all, let's do this. And she would calm me down and be the rational thinking behind some of this stuff and just test me on certain things, because I would go and say we should do this campaign, that would be killer. And she would go right, let's analyze this. Well, if you do this, that's going to happen. I'm not sure about that. You're going to invest a lot of our budget into that. We also need to do this. So she would kind of put a bit of a break on certain things.

Chris Cooke: 27:14

It needs to be the right balance though right. So it's great to have dissenting voices, and I describe that creative friction, Because there's nothing worse than two people in a room agreeing. Then there's an extra person you don't need in the room right a waste of time. At the same point. I really like the idea of a culture of yes. So I thought this was my idea. At times, Amazon has it as well. I guess they copied me. So I remember working at companies where junior people would come up with an idea and I'm like cool, if you write a business case and then do a presentation to the management team and convince them, then maybe you get to do your bright idea. And I was like that's terrible, Because the average person is busy and terrified of taking that chance. And me, as an entrepreneur with nothing to lose, I would happily do that, but I hated it every time. And so what we have at Altru is a reverse business case. So if a manager wants to say no to someone's idea, they have to write the business case.

Biro: 28:11

They have to spend the time. Why that's a no, why we're not doing it?

Chris Cooke: 28:14

Yeah, because you why put the admin overhead on the person that's being creative and taking chances? It should be the other way around. So I know what you mean and it's good to have that balance. It's important. Also, you have a culture of yes, take chances, and I know you guys do.

Biro: 28:30

But I think, yes, we do. But I think we've also threaded a bit more, I would say a bit more careful with certain things, mainly because I had Nikki. That was a bit more of a caution. I sometimes can have the craziest ideas and honestly, today I'm glad that some of those ideas didn't make it out the door. And I'm getting to some of the controversial stuff that you've done as well, as old street solutions. Me, what Controversial. I said as old street solution. I paid that blame. We get it, you personally although you probably should you should, but that had kept us. We've always been the type of nerds oh this is cool, let's try this, let's talk about this topic and let's dive into it. I'm also coming from a background of project management. I was leading the technical team in the previous company and I had to learn how to structure, how to organize no-transcript. I think a lot of that has been like, for example, when we've done our first content calendar, we used, after doing the course the growth accelerator, this course from Dan Martel. We put together a content grid with all of the hot buttons, the level of engagement of leads, from cold to warm, and we started mapping ideas to engage every single level. And we've always kind of have this approach, aside from my I just fucking do this, I have this brilliant idea, let's just do it. So it's always been a balance of or let's you need both.

Chris Cooke: 30:26

Right, you need the wild ideation and then you need the structure. I often notice if you just have wild ideation, whiteboarding sessions with marketing teams, you end up with a lot of top of the funnel stuff. So for those that don't know, we dressed up as a T-Rex and ran on stage at teams in Vegas.

Biro: 30:45

Two years ago. I heard about that. I wasn't doing it, I heard about it. That's the point.

Chris Cooke: 30:48

So then, whenever I asked why, no one had an answer would it result in sales? No, and often I said we were just making noise. I described it like a dog chasing a car. But what's the dog going to do when it catches the car? It doesn't know. It's just doing it for the sake of it, and too much without the process and procedure and like proper organization that you described at the bottom of that funnel. It's very easy for even quite good creative marketing teams to be making noise, but it doesn't convert.

Biro: 31:22

It's pointless, and I think we're the same in that sense. I think we focused a lot on making noise because branding because content distributed and because fun Because fun yes. It's fun. And yes, we had structure stuff. Yes, we had paid advertising. Yes, we had tracking pixels and all of this stuff put on our articles and we would retarget, remarket and so on. But this was all happening when we hired our head of marketing, which was passionate about this, coming from a paid media world, and setting up all of this. I would still, that was when we were doing it, when Nicky and I were doing it on our own. We were very weak at it, and we were weak because we didn't really enjoy it that much.

Chris Cooke: 32:16

Same for me. Theodore being hired changed everything and until then it was just making a lot of noise. And this is my cautionary tale to people is that a lot of people see our noise. That's the point. It makes a lot of noise and they think, oh, so that's good marketing, because those guys are doing well. And I'd say, no, we've had some hits in that white noise that's been created. And it's when you hire a marketing manager and things start properly converting. That's the boring detail. I always. I hate this. You know the 20% rule, pareto principle, that 20% is the most important. I say for every person that thinks they're the 20%er, there's a team behind them that have to pick up the 80% and they think they're the superstar whose output matters. No, all of it matters. Just the guy that's being interviewed for the TED Talk is a 20%er and ignores the rest. And he has the luxury of it because he has a team of people behind him picking up the pieces.

Biro: 33:10

It doesn't. And I'm sure you know I've had so many moments of yeah, it's because of me, but I probably also had our, because I keep on putting her on the spot here. But probably our head of marketing had so many times that rolled her eyes thinking I don't know, I'm assuming, thinking fucking CEO is out there again doing wild stuff and like the trendy stuff where what moves the needle is my work, my structured work here, and the reality is is none like. It's both. Because, at the end of the day, without her ability to to structure funnels and get us more foot traffic and get us leads and getting people interested in the product through through paid advertising and through this organic funnels and so on, then we wouldn't have some of the sales. But in the same time, without me, me me on on LinkedIn's profile, on everyone's LinkedIn timeline, all the time, we didn't get the notoriety that we had and we didn't, we wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to do PM 72. And we wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to sit down with acquirers and get acquired.

Chris Cooke: 34:31

Well, I did always say that branding is very good for recruitment and being acquired right. Doesn't necessarily convert, but it's very good for those two things. I think the other thing with this noise making is it's not repeatable or scalable, so every week you have to think of a new idea.

Biro: 34:46

Yeah, that's the LinkedIn algorithm right.

Chris Cooke: 34:47

You get a post, you get a bit of a boost right and then it drops. Whereas if you set up this remarketing and the proper funnel and conversion and getting people to subscribe, that then becomes not just trading water but building a scalable base. You can grow one incrementally.

Biro: 35:03

Yeah, I think the viral stuff and the shock factor. You have to work hard to continue to do it Because if you, if you, if you try to shock people through the same thing over and over again.

Chris Cooke: 35:17

It just becomes the noise in the background and yeah it, yeah.

Biro: 35:20

So, and I think that's that's what we've seen with everything that we we were doing because we were doing an event and it would be so much noise around it. But if I would do the second edition of that event, like you know, it's, it's, it's, it's getting on you have to top yourself up in order to get more noise than you got with the first, because it was a novel thing. I don't know if that makes sense.

Chris Cooke: 35:48

Well, yeah, we haven't done another hip hop video, we haven't done another cartoon making fun of our competitors. For that very reason.

Biro: 35:58

So with with the, with the hip hop video, I felt I feel like you got a lot of backlash with that and I don't know if that's true, but I was one of your critics in that and I remember me sending you a message about it. Did you was? Is it valid? Did you get a lot of backlash? Or people were mainly like, oh and this, this is cool, well done.

Chris Cooke: 36:22

Interesting question. I like it. So the backlash was quiet. It wasn't as public as I hoped. I was hoping to provoke an argument in the comments. A few people PM to me went. I had to provoke my own drama. So I got Tom to pretend to be angry at the waste of money, and he was, I was on his link in the comments being like well, this is a dumb idea, this is a waste of money just to kind of stoke up some drama. The first version of the hip hop video we saw was, yeah bad. We had some dancers and as soon as I saw their CVs I knew we'd have a problem, because it was their skills were like twerking, pole dancing. I was like are these the answers?

Biro: 37:06

we've hired.

Chris Cooke: 37:07

What's going on here, and I think it was just a classic case of just too many men boys in the room. They got a bit excited. Finally, once we edited the video, it was better and I was a bit happy with it, but to this day, morgan won't talk to me about the hip hop video, and I think, as a recruitment tool, I'd be very surprised if it actually helped us recruit anyone. What it did, though, in terms of you know, branding, there's not a partner that doesn't know about us at this point. Right Again, does that convert to sales? Probably not, but because we have all the other stuff. They're like oh, I know those guys, they're the weird hip hop guys. Kjm eats I'm, has no idea that we make apps, because it wasn't there for me to do the music video, which is why I don't recommend it as a marketing technique. What it was genuinely was a team building exercise, right.

Biro: 38:02

I bet that was a really cool experience Of all the things we could have done.

Chris Cooke: 38:06

Remember this is middle of COVID lockdowns. I hadn't ever met half of the people that had, so this was our first time together and of all the things you could do, go karting, paint bowling this felt like a really good team project to work on.

Biro: 38:21

You know, I can definitely see how that was very creative and very bonding as a team, because you're literally filming a music video and it's fun, you do it, you learn about these things, you get to clown around on camera, which again it's a really good experience, and you know, in a sense, like I would love to do a music video with my team. I think where the world was divided was you had half of half of people at least that I talked to. I don't know how many people talk to you directly. You know, I kind of came directly to you and then said and I didn't want it to go in the comments and be because we know each other and I would have this is the thing people are too polite in the secret.

Chris Cooke: 39:07

I would have preferred it. I was trying to kick up a storm in the comments.

Biro: 39:10

Yes, but the thing is that I know you right, we have conversation and we have a relationship. So for me to have gone and said and told you, look, you know, that seemed like a bunch of dudes on camera, it seemed not very inclusive. Yeah, that was coming from both me and Nikki, like I grew up with Nikki in the business world and started the business and so on, so that felt and I wanted to tell you directly and not go in the chat, because then it signaled well, you know, well, biro's not my bud, he's going publicly to talk about these Sure, and those people would be offended if you you know, douse me in the comments and that's strange guy I wanted it. But I think that I think the ecosystem was split on it, at least from from from what I've heard and the discussions, because, like you said, people were like have you seen, have you seen that? And half of people and I think the half that were excited about this and they were like oh, that's such a cool thing and then seeing the good part of it, as in this, is a good bonding exercise, and you guys made such a such a high end video with music. What I've seen were people that didn't had that much in their leadership and so on, female co-founders or leaders, or there is a run by dudes, run by developers, right they're a bunch of dudes in a company. But I think companies that like mine, which were like a bit like where's where's all the female rappers, no, no.

Chris Cooke: 40:54

I think it's a great point and I think, as someone that embraces failure in lessons, I took that criticism immediately. I mean, I wasn't blind to it. As soon as I thought saw the first edit of the video, I was like, yeah, we've got a problem. I think that's what happens when you just have a room full of guys. Right, this is why you need diversity, because if you just have a room full of guys, none of the guys in that room came up with that idea, even Barry, who is a feminist who doesn't like hip hop as a genre. No one felt comfortable saying hey guys, does anyone think this is a stupid idea? And, to be honest, at that stage of our company, we were a BroTech startup. That was the output. I think we've done enormously well since then.

Biro: 41:42

I think you know and again not in time, got rid of the beer fridge and everything, the ping pong tables, and we never had any of that nonsense.

Chris Cooke: 41:51

But no, I think and again this isn't wasn't part of a diversity drive, but just, you know, we were a very small company and our first hires were in our immediate circle and friends of friends, recommendations, and so naturally and this happens with a lot of companies you just end up with people like you kind of a homogeneous group. And then as we grew thankfully not even intentionally, if I'm honest, because it wasn't like we were like we must hire more women. It just got better and we hired some great women, and now that sort of thing wouldn't fly and we would have to send in voices. Morgan, wouldn't, let me get away with it.

Biro: 42:27

And good, yeah, it is, and I completely agree with it, and I think I've seen this repetitively, and it's not because I am the I'm a dude, right, I'm a white dude. I know that I am part of the problem. In a sense, brighton's changed you, bro. But, here's the thing I was super lucky. The reason why I was lucky was because in the previous company, when I was working in London, I've spent five years polishing myself as a professional and mainly because I came in there, I knew nothing right. I would mansplain in a chair in a meeting, be like red robbing my belly, whatever in a group of they, in a meeting with a diverse group, and I had to be told off right. I had my manager a couple of times saying hey, you know, you know, there's certain things that behaviors and postures and words and things like that that you need to make sure that you're not, you know, impacting and affecting others around you that might not have the same culture in the same background. Because I'm coming from, from Eastern Europe, right.

Chris Cooke: 43:42

Yeah, not famous for its wokeness? Hey, exactly. And even though I have good intentions, I wasn't coached and trained in certain but you are given feedback and what I find really interesting is many men in our position, when that happens, hate it because I'm a nice guy. What?

Biro: 44:01

are you saying about me no?

Chris Cooke: 44:03

And, and this is it, and this is the learning from failure mindset that people need to embrace with all kinds of things. Right, You've got that feedback and it would have been very easy for you to get sensitive, defensive. Oh, this is the problem with fairness right Ruining the officers. We can't be men anymore. But instead you listen and thought about it and dug a bit deeper and learn, and I think that's really important. It's very easy in these circles for it to be sort of college educated preaching to the choir, right Is they? sit around the table and everyone agrees with each other. Oh, we're all on the same page, right? And it's really important for people like us that are on the journey, that aren't perfect examples of paragons of woke, to have those conversations, because there's a lot more people like it's a guy's, it's okay. I got some criticism. Some of it was a bit heavy handed, some of it was spot on.

Biro: 44:49

Yeah.

Chris Cooke: 44:50

Like I made my mind up, I didn't immediately get defensive and reactive and go no, biro, you're wrong. I know I'm not a sexist, so leave me alone to make my twerking hip hop videos. I think I thought about it and that's important.

Biro: 45:04

Put yourself in, in like kind of like putting yourself, and that that was for me I don't know if it's for you as well the reason why I was understanding and immediately I was like holy shit, I'm that, I'm actually. Yeah, that's a shitty thing to do or say or be like was because I was instantly when I was being told I put myself in the shoes of the person that I was in the meeting with when I was doing a comment that was a bit off, or that I had a stance that was like mansplaining or something like that and I would be like oh yeah, like, if I would see that, I would be like what do you call two men mansplaining to each other A podcast? Thank God I'm not inviting only men, because this would be yeah, but I've seen so many podcasts out there with bros talking about that's anyways. It's cringe. I want to shift gears a bit because and this is one of the things that I'm like are we, in a way, the same person, although we're quite different? We started very in the very similar times. We had a similar approach to business, which is let's do the, the shit that we love, and we we got to partner up with very the same people like we. We both partner up with resolution and we got acquired in very similar times. So, it feels like a bit odd. Now I know that we have different. In a sense, we had, we had different visions and goals for our businesses and such like, and I've been public about this. Nicky and I always wanted to sell, to be part of a bigger team. We've always been, we're going to build it until it feels too stressful as a little guy and at that point let's find the best home for our team and get acquired. And I want to hear about your journey and where you are with that and how did, how, did your, you know your, your story with your buyer temple got to be.

Chris Cooke: 47:23

There's a lot to unpack there, but I'll start with our differences because I think they're the most interesting. I did always announce I wouldn't sell.

Biro: 47:30

You're very public about it. Yeah, two years ago I worked around things telling every vendor.

Chris Cooke: 47:35

Do not sell do not sell, we need to form a pirates alliance against the evil empire, the people with money buying us all up, and we need to be strong and independent. At the same point I did. You resonated with me when you said you knew at a certain point it would get too big and too tiring. I always knew that. So I've seen coming up various companies that there were leaders who were out of their depth. They might have been the right person to take the company from zero to one, or one to ten, or ten to 100 employees, or 100 to 200. But those are all different job titles and different specs and different types of people and different interests. For me, I've always been acutely aware that there would be a time when my time was up and I always said as long as, as soon as I was getting in the way of the success of my company, it would be time to leave. So my plan was to never, ever sell. The problem we really had was Tom, our technical co-founder, decided to leave and he got really burnt out and unfortunately he did this a month before my first born son was arrived.

Biro: 48:49

Oh wow, I didn't knew that actually.

Chris Cooke: 48:52

Yeah. So despite you know us building this together and saying we didn't have a plan to sell, he just did that classic young, hungry entrepreneur thing of grinding himself until there was no more, and that combined with being not only in lockdowns but lockdowns in London. I escaped London as soon as lockdowns hit because I'm like, well, the city has lost all benefits, tom.

Biro: 49:14

I'll be on a beach in Thailand. Yep Right.

Chris Cooke: 49:17

Tom remained, yeah, and then went through two really bad breakups and work was his salvation. And so he started working even harder and maybe with my experience I'd done. It's funny because I told Tom all the times I'd burnt out when we were first talking co-founder dating as a cautionary tale, like careful Tom, because here was a time when I nearly died of heat exhaustion on a beach because we were cleaning it getting ready for the turtles. He's like I told him that as a cautionary tale. He took it as awesome. This is why I want to partner with you. You sound just like me.

Biro: 49:52

Like no, no, no, that was all to me Not. Yeah, I'm saying you should do less about the silly me, not the current me.

Chris Cooke: 49:58

And he was like oh, that's what I need to be for this company. Then, and you know, I saw it coming and it's. You know, it's very hard once you've burnt out and lost the joy and just feel you're stressed to hell and despondent. You've put the weight of the world on your shoulders and then your back has cracked. It's, there's no coming back from it, and and and.

Biro: 50:19

How long was he doing that? So when? When? After what? Was it two, three years, four years? When did he decide to?

Chris Cooke: 50:27

It's probably three years. I mean the tough thing. We didn't all join the company at once, because why do you need a marketing manager before you have a product? It doesn't?

Biro: 50:36

make sense yeah.

Chris Cooke: 50:38

So first time had to, you know, work on a product idea. True story we made custom charts as a test. We made ColourPie to pick up for Jira as a test. It was going to be just a proof of concept, learning experience, and then we accidentally made a multimillion dollar business out of it. Whoops, custom charts yeah, that's what it grew into, but it really was just what's the simplest, easiest app we can build to learn from. And then people started buying it and we were like well, I guess we have to support it.

Biro: 51:12

And making money out of it.

Chris Cooke: 51:14

And then a few more features down the road.

Biro: 51:16

It's like God damn it. Why are we making money out of it?

Chris Cooke: 51:19

It's not meant to happen. So, yeah, yeah, Tom, just from the start it was a hundred miles an hour. He approached me to join his business, which was a services company.

Biro: 51:31

And.

Chris Cooke: 51:31

I said, oh no, I want product and I have a dev team in Slovakia who I've known for years, who I trust, I respect and we can partner with, and the students he had that. He was like I'm coming to Slovakia with you, booked a flight later that evening and he went to Slovakia I think 40 times in a year. It was just constant. It got us where we were. I can't complain, but it was just that classic. And he'll say this and I haven't spoken to him in a while. I hope I get the chance to. Maybe this interview is me reaching out to him. There you go, classic, zero to one. He loved that he described how he used to feel like he was scoring goals and now he feels like he's designing flyers to sell tickets to the stadium. Right, and he enjoyed scoring goals and he doesn't enjoy the admin of running a football stadium.

Biro: 52:20

That's, that's where business that leads to eventually, right and you mentioned this right so once you, you can be a startup founder or you can be a CEO, right. And to be a CEO, you have to have that ability to, to not just adapt as your business grows, but to let go and structure your organization in such a way that you become obsolete in a sense, right, and you're the guiding star, but in the same time, you have bright people that take, take over your business in a sense. And for me, I don't. I don't think I enjoy that, at least at this stage. I don't think I would be able to have a 100, 200, 300 business, because it Places me in a position that I don't enjoy as a role. Yeah, so you're talking, you're having meetings with middle managers?

Chris Cooke: 53:27

Yeah, you have meetings with their sub teams, and so you're just hearing everything from that. You're looking at spreadsheets and PowerPoints, yeah, and you're talking strategy that hopefully gets enabled by a team you've trusted. I mean, it'd be interesting Like, and this is why I sold later than I should have and I'm going to stick around at tempo longer than I'm welcome because I'm learning, because I'm learning, but is that, something that you want one day to, to experience, which is a 100, 200, 500 people company where you're the CEO, the founder and the CEO that evolved into that. I don't know, but I wanted to take it as far as I could this time. So the next time, if the business blew up, I wouldn't be like oh, I've never been here before Starting at zero. So I stuck on for a bit longer than maybe I should have. I don't know. In hindsight I think I played tricky hands quite well while juggling a one month old baby. So having Tom, decide to leave was nightmare and we were really struggling to fill that void. And then resolution came along just at the right time we're brilliant partners and took us to a point where we could get acquired. And even though I said no, I'll never sell, it was just obvious that then my choices were and Christian said this as he often does, very plainly, very bluntly, but entirely precisely you have two choices. You can either scale this down and make it a lifestyle business Right, so you just limit its growth and enjoy, make it as little work as possible, the four hour work week sort of thing right. You have a manager that handles that, manager that handles that. You don't go for aggressive growth. You kind of just like a dying star, right it?

Biro: 55:08

just slowly gets colder and more boring.

Chris Cooke: 55:10

And what was the other one? So, give it someone else.

Biro: 55:14

Okay so right, there's something missing here, right? Because normally in a regular setup you'd have okay, you wind down and make it a lifestyle business, which is one extreme. You sell it, which is another extreme. There's another option, which is you build it into a multi-million billion, billion, billion, billion billion dollar business, which is still an extreme, because, at the end of day, when you reach that point, it is extreme. Why was it not in the discussion? Was that your?

Chris Cooke: 55:52

Because I would like you, I don't want to run a 300 person company. I'm not the right person, and you know. Unfortunately, then selling is the most obvious thing, because otherwise I would be cock blocking my own company and its own its own success, its own possibilities. It just seemed sad. I would like the lifestyle version, but lying to yourself that no, it's not that I won't be limiting it, I'll still be hanging around, but in a, you know, advisory capacity. We've all worked at those companies and it is a lifestyle business where the CEO or the chief of the board is fooling himself and lying to himself and is restricting the growth and the possibility. So I think you know it's not something I'm an expert talking about, but just for me personally, once Tom left, the fuse was set Right and I think there's a cautionary tell there about not getting burnt out, like making time for the work life balance, putting that in from the start, listening to people when they tell you and give you that advice. And I think there's also cautionary tell about co-founder dating and I have this thing where you know co-founder dating, choosing the right co-founder.

Biro: 57:05

Right, yeah, yeah.

Chris Cooke: 57:06

But in hindsight, was Tom the wrong co-founder? I don't think so.

Biro: 57:11

Right, he was amazing.

Chris Cooke: 57:12

Right. He was what we needed, from zero to one scale and what I've got good at despite those dramas and emotional conflicts, differences I'm good at handling that. I have the emotional intelligence to be like okay, tom, we'll get you out. I talked to five different options. Here's the one I think is best. They're going to take over from you Now. It's time to sell to Tempo. You know I keep fleeing at the moment between should I just become a sole co-founder and not partner again, despite all the dramas and the troubles? No, I think I will just keep trying this and even if it doesn't always work and sometimes with the relationships, they have their time in their place.

Biro: 57:49

Yeah.

Chris Cooke: 57:50

And that's okay.

Biro: 57:51

I completely agree. I think I've found it quite daunting because I've been through so many. I think I've had five or six businesses with co-founders and they all fail before Nikki. And every single time I would think to myself should I start alone? Because people are like I hate people, because you get, you get disappointed in a co-founder relationship and you know it's. I mean, I'm not the snowflake and the perfect person, right, but from your own perspective you're like oh, that was disappointing. That was a disappointing relationship. Yeah, we're both at fault, but it was a disappointing relationship, and maybe for theirs too.

Chris Cooke: 58:28

but who cares? I'm stuck with myself. I can't change that relationship.

Biro: 58:32

You're your own hero in your storyline, right, but every single time I was thinking about starting something alone. That was very daunting. It's like that's bloody scary, like I can't really do that, because who's going to help me with this? Who's going to be my voice, my bouncing board? Who's going to be my voice of Russian Although I've rarely had voice of Russian, because this is one of the reasons why I failed every single startup with other co-founders, because no one. Everyone was a sounding board, not a voice of Russian, right? So you talk and you'd hear the echo and they tell you your ideas are great and you're like awesome, love it. Yeah, or they would come with an idea and you'd be the same. Oh, that's awesome, let's try it, because you're the exact same person, you're a clone of each other. But I still felt no, I can't do this alone. It feels daunting to me and I really appreciate people that can go on a path on their own and make it happen.

Chris Cooke: 59:34

That's most of the advice in the entrepreneur forums. They say partnerships are the most fraught and most likely to fail, most precarious form of business, but for some reason I keep putting myself through it. I mean partly it's because I don't have a choice. So I always used to call myself a non-technical co-founder and I kind of hate that term because you know everything can be technical right, like marketing. Done well should be very technical.

Biro: 59:55

Is that the information? Yeah, of course it's technical, right.

Chris Cooke: 59:59

I'm not a product guy, not since I'm no longer teaching scuba diving, I can't make a product, and so, for that reason alone, I need to find a technical or product person to team up.

Biro: 1:00:12

Have you ever considered getting into? Is that something that you like or is it just because you don't find it appealing? Not technical, not to say you're becoming an engineer, but becoming a product person. Let's say you do some studying around product ownership and you learn about what it takes to build products.

Chris Cooke: 1:00:33

Kind of no, because how I believe product should be done well is a lot of listening to customers and gathering updates on patients and empathy and things that aren't my forte. I think what I do much better with is finding a product person that hates everything I excel at, hates everything I have a passion for, right. So someone when I talk about marketing campaigns and how to send the best spam email and when to use cold calling, and I see the look of horror on their eyes, I'm like, cool, I will do that for you, I will handle that. Yeah, and that's why it's a good division of labor, because you don't need me as a below average product manager and you don't need them as a below average marketer. The world, especially the Elation ecosystem, has enough of that already. But, yeah, if I can team up with someone who what lights their fire. I mean, it's funny when you talk to an accountant or someone and you're like you enjoy this work.

Biro: 1:01:32

It bonkers to me.

Chris Cooke: 1:01:33

But when I describe all my marketing and all the spam, they hate that and that would be their nightmare. So yeah, there's all kinds of weirdos out there and you just kind of need to find someone who's the ying to your yang.

Biro: 1:01:45

But it's good that you're confident about this approach and you know that you need help here and there. And one thing that I usually preach and I don't know if you agree with this and I will actually one your thought on it is Learn a little bit about the other things that you don't know about. Yes, at least if you don't have a co-founder that you really trust about it and say you're hiring someone on the product ownership side of things, right, learn a tiny bit about what it takes to build a product engineering, scoping of I don't know, research wise, and so on. Learn about the other areas that you're not prolific in, at least a little bit, so that you can have those conversations with your team and you understand what they're talking about and you can. You can collaborate and guide without being completely oblivious of around the work that they do, and I want us, I want to get your thoughts on this.

Chris Cooke: 1:02:49

It's a good point because I would say, you know, mine was a company split. There was technical and non-technical. Tom had his domain, right, right, and then that was replaced by Morgan, who it's now, yeah, hers, and last year in Berlin was kind of the first time me and Morgan had a frank and proper chat about we should talk more, because Tom had trained me not not to disturb, right, he was in his laboratory, no dad's allowed, and I left him the hell.

Biro: 1:03:21

And I thought that was fair, because I've seen the, the dev CEO, who starts having an opinion on marketing and ruins everything right, right with their terrible ideas and they're all in a very ugly direction if you're too opinionated about these topics.

Chris Cooke: 1:03:33

But I do think we went too much the other way and, honestly, like I, have had very little interaction with the product side of the company, with the dev side, the engineering side, none. The product side, more and more because you need their influence to have good marketing. I need to be informed by the product team.

Biro: 1:03:50

I do feel like, as a CEO, you should be close to your team and people, especially when you're at a 10 20 right and you're not that big.

Chris Cooke: 1:04:01

I went too far, but I mean that was OK because we had co-founders. So, yeah, tom had people who he cared for a lot and cared about and made sure they were happy and do everything for them. So they've been 10 car. But yeah, as soon as Tom left, it became apparent that there was just this vacuum and I just didn't know much about those people or what they were up to and their trade there.

Biro: 1:04:25

They're. Basically they're a bread and butter, because, at the end of the day, yes, you can connect with people on a personal level, but I found it so difficult to build relationships with team members, either be it in the previous role or in my own company Team members that I have no idea what they're doing like I don't know their craft at all and it's very hard for me to have a proper deep conversation and a relationship building conversation with someone when I don't know anything about their industry.

Chris Cooke: 1:04:59

The only reason I'm a good sales or marketing director is because I've done those jobs. So when someone tells me what's possible and what's not possible. I'm like I have a bit of experience doing what you've done. You're right. I'd say that's definitely like my next company. I'd like to build closer alignment, on the condition that I'm clear. I'm here to learn, I'm not into interfere. I don't want to be that hippo you talked about, but having an opinion and I think I'm really aware- of that more than most. I have to be very careful with my opinions and I'm very selective how I deliver them now because it's very easy for a marketing team, even though I'm always the fun, loving, chill guy. We embrace failure. Everyone's opinions valid here, doesn't matter. Feel free to correct me any point. It's taken a long time to train my team and a long time to train myself not to interrupt, not to come up with suggestions, because quickly it just dominates and especially marketing people, sales people to very sensitive to feedback and has to be delivered very carefully.

Biro: 1:06:04

Very true. I feel like with our product engineering team you go into a room, bam bam bam. This never runs like Yup contributing here's how about we do this? How about this with marketing? You have to have a lot of tact with how you approach conversation and direction, meetings and things like that. It's I've trained my team hard to take me aside so I can't say I'm not a good person.

Chris Cooke: 1:06:28

I've trained my team hard to take me aside sometimes and say, chris, I didn't like how you said that, I thought you're on my own and I was like thanks for that feedback. That's great, it's necessary. But yeah, the devs devs who become co-founders get this wrong all the time. Like you need to talk to a marketing team, especially in public, in front of each other. Yeah, how you would talk to a four year old. That was on the verge of tears.

Biro: 1:06:51

But it's it. I think it's it's both ways, right, because so we had show and tell Session every month where we put everyone in the same room and everyone should Was supposed to talk about what they've been doing, show the stuff that they've been working on, and again it's the same thing. You have to dumb it down. Even if you're Marketing individual talking to the engineering or the product team, you have to dumb down this type of stuff that you talk about in order for people not to fall asleep In that show and tell session. Right, they have to make it engaging for them. So, in a sense, when we're doing those show and tell, that the people that were sales, sales people as in naturally not necessarily in the sales team- would get the room a lot more engaged Because they knew how to talk about the cool stuff that they are doing. So you were working for an adaptivist and had your two years, three years of the business and then build that. You know I'm Chris, founder of all three solution, identity and now you're working full time. How has that transition been for you? Different to how you'd?

Chris Cooke: 1:08:05

expect. So when I was at Clare vision adaptivist, I was always very much my own man. I was always an entrepreneur temporarily trapped in a company.

Biro: 1:08:13

You're like an entrepreneur. Yes, yes.

Chris Cooke: 1:08:16

So yeah, like I would always be coming up with ideas and suggesting, I found it was most frustrating. An adaptivist no offense, great place, but my job there was a sales person. My wonderful sales manager there just told me one day Chris, if you wanted people to listen to your ideas, you're in the wrong job. What they want to do here, you're not here to think OK. So that was tough. But at Clare vision I very much you know, came at it as an entrepreneur and never let my job description limit what I could do. I was there to do marketing, which resulted in sales, and that was a pretty broad remit and they gave me a long enough leash to try all kinds of weird and crazy things. So I didn't feel it changed too much and even now at Tempo, I'm still doing the same thing day to day, looking after my team, making sure they have everything they need in the service management capacity and I'm making sure we crush it and sell lots. So it hasn't felt too different in terms of job function. Where it's really different is just what I'm looking for and that feeling of being a bit lost, and I think for many people they imagine that selling for you it was a goal, it was a dream, it was a destination For me. I said I never would. I mean it wasn't just a negotiating position, although it's a good one, but it really was. I will ride the ship as long as I feel I'm the best captain for it. And yeah, in a bit of a middle point in life, I let go of one branch and I don't know what my next branch is. Is it a bit of an identity crisis in a sense, because I'm pretty much there as well, although it, you know, because I don't think the goal has had a better or more lenient.

Biro: 1:09:57

I don't think it's a goal. I don't think it's a goal. I don't think it's a goal. It has had a better or more lenient, you know. Outcome to me not feeling a bit lost.

Chris Cooke: 1:10:15

Right, I feel lost as well and it's hard to complain because by most people's standards, we're successful People are like what are you talking about?

Biro: 1:10:21

You got the negative. Rich white man tears fuckers.

Chris Cooke: 1:10:30

I'm just between things and I don't know what, and I was expecting to feel some sort of everyone's come out to congratulate me and then you get the ping of the big money in your bank account and and and I just didn't hit me and I kind of know why, because to do this when I had half a million debt in my bank account. Had I looked at that and it moved me, I would have quit then or jumped out of a window or something, and you just develop such a steady poker face and steady hands that you just become immune to these big swings of these big feelings. Unfortunately, you have to, otherwise you wouldn't be able to sleep and you would be able to survive. And so, likewise, when the big money came in, I celebrated with my friends in Vegas. But it wasn't about the money, it was. It was what we'd achieved together as a team. That always felt more for me, and I'm an entrepreneur. I will be looking at my next thing. A few months ago, I felt a bit lost and scared and that sense of loss, which was weird and counterintuitive. But having spoke to a few people like you in this space, that's natural and what I need to do is give myself time. Yeah, enjoy, you know, this hard earned success. Enjoy, like the next phase, learn what I can, working with tempo, and yeah, I don't need to hurry into another thing.

Biro: 1:11:54

That's the thing. And if you're a manic and formal type of person, like I am, I'm like I am super formal Like it felt so uncomfortable to just pause to just realize that I do have time. And you talked about it's never been about for me. I've always had this moment in time picture in my head, this title of an exited founder Like I wanted that title. I wanted to see a business from from its beginning to its outcome, final goal, right, and I've dreamt of this happening for so long that when it happened, it did opposite to you. It did feel to me like fuck, yeah, it happened, yes, I've achieved that goal, and it was. It was a really big moment and for me that like I weeped like a baby at one point. So mainly, because, mainly because I feel so much in the past and I've spent so many years just trying businesses and failing and misery and so on, so it was a big moment. That being said, these big moments are moments in time. They never define who you're going to be tomorrow, or, yes, they do have a contribution, but they're not a definition of who. You are Right and as as this moment passes, right, it will remain as a contributing factor to who I am. But I am in that moment where I'm like, okay, now what?

Chris Cooke: 1:13:39

Yeah, success is a destination. A journey, not a destination.

Biro: 1:13:42

Yeah, exactly and that happened, but that's not defining me. That was something that I really wanted, but I have so much more that I want to do in life and I am in that identity crisis moment where I'm like now what?

Chris Cooke: 1:13:56

Frankly, I hope it doesn't define you, because in my experience, success is a terrible teacher and the reason we're doing well now is because of all our failures and all we learned from this, and I really do worry that we'll take the wrong lesson from the success and go cool. See, now I know I'm awesome, Because what's been my success today has been when I go into a room not imposter syndrome, an imposter when someone comes up with my idea A misfit, let's call it a misfit. A misfit. Perhaps I will listen to them with an open mind and an open heart and really I hope they have smarter ideas than I can come up with, because otherwise we're in trouble and what I'd hate to do is next time I go into the room, close my ears and be like I know what I'm talking about. I'm a smart, successful ex-co-founder, right? It's really important that we keep the same humility that God has here, because in the eyes of society, we've checked the box Still the same people.

Biro: 1:14:55

I haven't changed that much at all, but that's why I'm doing this. That's why I called my podcast Misfit Founders, and not like extremely successful and wealthy individual that will give you the secret formula of how to become successful. No, because I still feel out of place. I still feel like I have so much more to learn and I feel like we were talking earlier about I have some, some regrets around Jixxo, which is just things that I wish I would have done that more, I wish I would have done a lot more of this and so on. I still feel like I'm not done. This exit feels like a half baked thing for me, because there's so many things that I haven't learned yet to do as an entrepreneur and as a founder.

Chris Cooke: 1:15:43

Speaking of regrets. How come we never collaborated? Because I always assumed we would and then it just never really happened.

Biro: 1:15:52

There's so many variables around that, but I think probably one of the biggest for me and the reason why I've never reached out that much. Actually, there's two things. One was you're doing really well, you've exploded since our conversations, and so on. One it didn't feel like we needed to kind of balance each other in order to support each other.

Chris Cooke: 1:16:29

It was a crossover that didn't need to happen.

Biro: 1:16:32

Yeah, it didn't feel like, oh, if we do this together we're going to at least in my naive mind. Oh, we're building and things are going our ways. Old Street Solution increase seems to be growing and things are going their way In my mind. Trying to figure out things felt forced to try to figure out ways for us to do things together because we were already growing successfully as individuals. That's one I don't want to give you a cup out answer. The other reason was we were very different, at least in my mind, with how we approached marketing and these kind of campaigns and initiatives. I think even with the PM72, we had a bit of. The three of us you, me and Chris had a bit of a discussion.

Chris Cooke: 1:17:30

This is three co-founders in a room and you're going to have an argument, we're all princes of our own small domains.

Biro: 1:17:35

And I think I'm a heart-headed person. Put you and I in a room. We can share a lot of great thoughts and ideas, but we can also have differences on what it means and how to approach this and how to do that. I think I am very proud as well. In a sense, it's been a bit different with my team and the people around me.

Chris Cooke: 1:18:08

I was going to say I bet how we speak with our team very gentle, and listening is not how I speak with another co-founder because, frankly, we're both busy and I want to find the points where we disagree the most interesting. Which is great for a brainstorming session, but actually executing and finishing a project?

Biro: 1:18:25

Probably not, I think. To me, it felt it would have been hard work for us to collaborate and it seemed like we were in a world where we were both successful and that it just didn't materialize. I felt that it would have required quite a bit of energy for us to work together, especially with the back and forths that we had with PM72. I had a different idea of where I wanted to take it and how I wanted to structure it, and you had as well your own values and your own beliefs that you wanted to be involved in a certain level and so on, and I think that was one of it. And again, we had really different approaches to marketing. I think we were a bit more of the nerds that were putting together nerdy pieces. I got a bit at times intimidated by some of the stuff that you're putting out as content Interesting, like the guerrilla marketing or however it's called, with being a bit more rough with competitors and so on Aggressive, Aggressive yeah.

Chris Cooke: 1:19:48

Making noise.

Biro: 1:19:49

Exactly, and again, I don't have anything against it. I know so many companies that do this, but it's just never been our style, in a sense.

Chris Cooke: 1:19:59

And again, there's two things, I think, things like Monday Coffee. That is very open, supportive community moderator.

Biro: 1:20:09

So sort of mind right.

Chris Cooke: 1:20:11

Whereas I've always been trying to bring a bit of wrestling to marketing, and we stayed away from that.

Biro: 1:20:18

If I have to be the bad guy, that's fine, as long as it's getting attention. Yeah, we stayed away from it. I'm not a good guy. I have my own thoughts. Sometimes I might be a bit more ranty about a topic that Atlassian, an update that Atlassian does, but in a sense we did want it to stay away from that. With Monday Coffee and that has been a lot of our brand online as well Positive, uplifting brand out there we kind of stayed away from being controversial.

Chris Cooke: 1:20:49

It's morning TV. Right, it's Monday morning TV. Yeah, exactly.

Biro: 1:20:53

We stayed away from being too controversial, and why? Because it scares us. Like both Nicky and I, we were not comfortable in being too upfront out there it's a fine line.

Chris Cooke: 1:21:05

And again, this is why I caution people not to try and copy other people, like people see what I'm doing and go oh, is that the key to success? And you've just been asshole on LinkedIn.

Biro: 1:21:12

It's like if you look at what I, do.

Chris Cooke: 1:21:13

I'm very often pushing it, but I know where the line is. I thought that my apology to EZPI was a masterpiece. It's the best piece of marketing I've ever done my apology letter and it went more viral than the dinosaur cartoon did. And I think yeah, not on a. Yeah, if you're going to play that game, you need to know what the line is and how to tread on it the right way, and so, yeah, I think that's my main advice is. But again, for me that's fun. I've been playing on social media like that for years. I've been picking on my competitors for years, I know, and I've sometimes gone too far and learn from that mistake, and so now I'm pretty good at dancing on that line and I don't think someone should just try and emulate that behaviour at all. It would probably go very wrong for them unless they were prepared to fail and learn from it and pick themselves up and try again, as I have for the last five years Moving on, because this is a bit.

Biro: 1:22:09

I think. But to summarise it, I think because you asked me the question, I think it was a mix of all of these things from you know, I would say if, let's say, you wouldn't have been as successful as you were and there would have been some opportunities midway through, oh well, you know, all street does this. Let's gang together and this. We can help each other, we can lift each other and so on. And also, we didn't bump heads on, I think, one single time. We bumped heads, every single discussion that we had on. Zoom, and so on it kind of felt like it was a good vibe. Oh, and you were very important.

Chris Cooke: 1:22:52

I don't think we would have gone with resolution had I not had the chance to have a chat with you and told me what it was. So that was a really. We've had really important chats not often, but very important parts of our careers, right.

Biro: 1:23:04

Very like micro interactions in a sense, but I think it was quite valuable for me as well in a lot of the marketing stuff that we've done. But again, it's been we were doing great on our own. It felt to me a lot of work for us to collaborate, just because we're very like big personalities, both you and I. And also it scared me at times seeing some of the marketing stuff that you were doing, mainly because Nikkei and I weren't comfortable with a lot of the you know being more raw online and so on. And this is why I'm doing this, because I want to I kind of want to start becoming a bit more open online and publicly and so on. I want to push the boundaries of what we share as founders online, because I did feel as we were doing a lot of cool stuff with our brand and with our content, but you have to, like I had to be a bit more refrained with what I put online because we had a certain language and brand that we were building.

Chris Cooke: 1:24:17

Yeah, and that's why I love the format of this show and I reached out, because if you want to have a frank discussion sharing some real secrets, an hour and a half YouTube channel is perfect, because almost no one's watching this lady in the show.

Biro: 1:24:29

Exactly. However, this will be snippeted a lot of this stuff. So there will be stuff that will go on social media.

Chris Cooke: 1:24:39

Is this when we do the bit where I pretend to be offended and storm off?

Biro: 1:24:43

Yes, go ahead, go ahead. Are you serious? Well, that was a great acting. Okay, I kind of started laughing a bit, though, because I'll edit it. I'll shut my mouth in the edit. So before we close off I don't know if I mentioned there's three questions that I had. At the end. There's like the ending ceremony, but before that, is there anything that you want to talk about? So we talked about the collaboration stuff. Is there any other topics that you want to talk about or anything else that you want to ask me?

Chris Cooke: 1:25:20

Well, just quickly, how do you find mentors? Because obviously we don't have a lot of peers. There's not many people who've been through what we've been through, and I had mentors a couple of years ago who told me last year Chris, you've got further than I've ever gone, so I don't know how to advise you at this point. So how do you find mentors once you're getting to this level?

Biro: 1:25:42

Well, I'll give you an example. So one of my mentors is my boss from my previous company from Mudano, who sold to Accenture and been helping me and advising me quite a lot along the journey of building but also on the exit and all of that happening and so on and positioning, and I think that's one place to start. You have bosses You've had like Adopt-Avis, clear Vision and so on, people that have.

Chris Cooke: 1:26:15

They've been great, very instructive along the way Clear.

Biro: 1:26:17

Vision sold right and he's in the same position currently with an Exited founder. That's kind of like the support peer and mentors, and I think people often think that mentors should be these individuals that are 20 years ahead of you and so on. No, mentors can be your support peers of like-minded people that are in the same path or journey, or maybe one, two steps ahead, and those are the people that can become mentors and usually mentors. What I've learned along the way is you have a mutual relationship and it's not this person is teaching me, but we're teaching each other, so you and I can be mentors for one another, your ex-boss. You can sustain the relationship and make sure that you have gradual catch ups, and what usually happens is you get to a point where it's like we're having often conversations, so we just make it official once a month, booking in our calendar and do that, and that's the first step. And then you also have like platforms and such, but that feels a bit unorganic to me when you start looking for mentors on platforms that are specifically for mentorship, and I had a great one.

Chris Cooke: 1:27:39

It's called Baby Bathwater and they did this holiday in Croatia. They do it once every two years, I think, and that's like 200 or so people. I felt very middle of the pack. I'll put it that way. I met this 27-year-old who just sold his company for 470 million and was like cool.

Biro: 1:27:56

You know very well that we shouldn't compare ourselves to others, but just yourself, no sure.

Chris Cooke: 1:28:02

But it is great to have people who have been there done that and you can talk through things. It would suck if I went there and just you know we were a dick measuring contest. That would have been a waste of a holiday, but thankfully most people were there to share and really contribute and give each other advice, so that was wonderful.

Biro: 1:28:20

And then there's things like these groups and communities and syndicates, like, for example, I'm part of an angel investor syndicate here in Brighton and we meet once a month, we have dinners and there will be people there that I kind of sync a bit better. So we go out for coffees and then we make it regular and again those become your mentors and, like you said, you have to just mingle around people that are kind of the same path and journey, be it going on holidays or doing groups or events or whatever it might be.

Chris Cooke: 1:29:03

Awesome.

Biro: 1:29:03

Thank you. So what's next? Are you going to be in? Are you moving away from UK soon?

Chris Cooke: 1:29:11

Not soon, I think. In a year's time I'll probably look to head back to Thailand. I've started up a weed farm and a comedy club out there, so that is awesome. Yeah, I know it's going to be good fun it's going to be.

Biro: 1:29:22

We did the comedy club launch next month.

Chris Cooke: 1:29:26

So we're under construction right now on Khao San Road.

Biro: 1:29:29

You better share everything on social because I'm curious to see. You know I will Shame of myself. Promoter on social media, so awesome. Are you planning to invest in anything in UK?

Chris Cooke: 1:29:41

I'd love to. So that was the main advice I got from these people at Baby Bathwater. As they recommended, I do like join an accelerator or an incubator or a VC group just to meet young entrepreneurs and give them advice and help them, because that's the great thing to do when you're in this transition period, not sure what to do is help others, pass on some knowledge and it's also fresh, right?

Biro: 1:30:02

You've just exited a company, been through a couple of years of a ton of stuff. It's fresh in your mind, so that's the best time to share with others, right? So last I have three questions as the exit interview. Number one what is a quote that you live by?

Chris Cooke: 1:30:30

A ship is safe in the harbor, but that's not why ship's a belt.

Biro: 1:30:35

That is a really good one. A ship is safe in a harbor, but that's not why ships are built. I'm going to steal that. Okay, have a bit. Whenever I have to motivate someone, I'm going to apply that. That's a really good one, right. Next, tell me a book that has had an impact to your personal or professional life, whichever you prefer.

Chris Cooke: 1:31:04

Crossing the chasm. I think Newt Attack, it was just the fundamental book that I've read fourth time now. I think too often people try and read 100 books, that Bruce Lee said he's scared of the man that's trained one punch a hundred thousand times, rather than someone that's trained 10,000 punches once. So I think people need to know the fundamentals and crossing the chasm. It's really important at that. Just talking about targeting your marketing, finding a niche, listening to your customers and making something good enough. That word of mouth makes you go viral. I think if people nail those in any industry, with any product, they probably can't fail.

Biro: 1:31:42

I need to read that and, to be honest, repetition is important, so I don't like that relates to me. I've read a book that I love three times as well, so it's important because it sticks better. And the last question what's a good habit that you promote? Find the things you love.

Chris Cooke: 1:32:05

Motivation is really hard. If you've ever tried to motivate yourself to stay in a relationship that's not working, it's a failing venture. And likewise I see people in jobs that they describe like prison sentences. If I just stick it out for two more years, that'll look good on my CV and then I'll get a promotion. You'll just end up in another job. You hate working with people that don't inspire you. They're saying, if you don't want your boss's boss's job, then you've got the wrong job Right. And so, yeah, I think it really is a cliche for a reason. Find something that you're passionate about. It doesn't all have to be not every day's joy, but if there's just enough passion and fun there that it gets you through the bad days, then you will win. A lot of people are chasing success and money in the short term and they're really frustrated because they never quite get there and they're always competing with people, and the reason those people beat them is because they love what they do. Exactly, and they were prepared to fail and get knocked down and get back up again and try again, because they just didn't want to do anything else more.

Biro: 1:33:12

Yeah, very true, and that was the same for me. I failed so many times because I was doing it for the money, for the fame. I wanted to become this and once I learned to let go of all of that and just be my true self and enjoy the activities that I do, that's when things turn complete. So thank you so much. May such pleasure, pleasure, awesome, to have you part of the founding team of Misfit Founders. You're the first, the fourth person joining Season one.

Chris Cooke: 1:33:44

Season one. Yes, I hope it goes well. I can't be the only person it resonates with. I have a feeling it's Misfit. Founders is how we all feel. I think we are slightly broken toys.

Biro: 1:33:54

Oh yeah.

Chris Cooke: 1:33:55

It's just nice to find our tribe.

Biro: 1:33:57

I will send you an invite to our community on Slack as well and maybe we'll do. Let's see if, once we publish this episode, we might do and ask me anything if you're up for it. Absolutely For people in the community to chat with you about your experience. Happy to share Awesome, thank you, thank you.