In this conversation, Nick Freund emphasizes the need for founders to lead from the front and take on the role of evangelizing and creating content. He reflects on the influence of his family background and the mindset required to navigate the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. The conversation highlights the importance of failure as a learning opportunity and the iterative nature of building a successful company.
Check out the episode below.
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In this conversation, Workstream.io's founder and CEO, Nick, discusses his experiences and perspectives on the difficulties and driving forces of becoming a thought leader and category developer. In this discussion, Nick opens up about his move from working at Tesla to starting his own business. He also mentions the importance of entrepreneurs taking the lead and serving as the face of their enterprise. He discusses how his background has influenced his philosophy on life and his ability to manage the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur. Nick also stresses the importance of using failure as a teaching tool and the iterative process involved in starting a profitable company.
Nick discusses the influence of reading Malcolm X's Autobiography, which taught him vital lessons about succeeding despite adversity. He talks about how it's critical to pull ideas from unrelated domains in order to promote original and creative thinking. The episode also emphasises how important it is to acquire supporters who believe in your product and to have a co-founder who shares your vision and complements your talents. Nick highlights that in order to guarantee the success of your product or content, you must make an investment in a video content strategy and concentrate on distribution and awareness. Lastly, he considers the parallel paths of starting a family and a business, emphasising the development and fulfilment that result from striking a balance between the two pursuits.
Overall, Nick's ideas offer a complete view of the multidimensional nature of entrepreneurship. He recommends reading to get a variety of viewpoints. Founders may navigate the complexity of running a business by taking inspiration from a variety of sources, investing in successful content tactics, and prioritising personal relationships. Nick's experience serves as an example of the value of resiliency, lifelong learning, and finding fulfilment in one's pursuit of both career and personal development.
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 Being the Face of a Category
02:10 The Role of the Founder/CEO
03:19 Product-Market Fit and Go-to-Market Fit
06:11 Background and Early Career
10:48 Entrepreneurial Urge and Family Influence
12:31 The Pressure to Create
22:43 Failure and Learning
32:44 The Autobiography of Malcolm X
33:42 Getting success from failure
34:12 The personal journey of Malcolm X
37:01 Drawing inspiration from unrelated fields
39:05 The importance of taking breaks
40:21 The value of a co-founder
43:12 Finding people who believe in you
46:54 Investing in video content strategy
49:06 The importance of distribution and awareness
55:12 The parallel journey of building a family and a company
58:57 The little wins and personal growth
01:02:24 Offering help and support
Transcript:
That's really like a process problem and a people problem.
It's not a data problem, right?
It's not necessarily a technology problem.
Now we bring our technological solution to bear around it, but it's it's ultimately like a workflow solution.
Long story short, we built an alpha of our product that I designed and I scope and the product did not work.
Nick, welcome to the show.
Kareem, thanks so much for having me.
It's great to be here.
So what's interesting to me is that it's hard enough as.
The leader of a company to get into content creation, let alone be it kind of like a thought leader or category creator.
And I know that like with work stream like you guys are pretty much pioneers in the data knowledge space and you're you're at the forefront of it like you're you're always like the face of it and I'm curious was that like scary for you?
Did you, did you always know that you had to be the one to create the content to create that new category or to at least pioneer that new category?
Yeah, I mean great question.
I mean I I guess I would say my like role in it specifically it was, it was kind of we had no choice, right.
Like we it was just obvious that we believe we were building this new category.
It was something that was like different and we had to get the word out there about it right.
And we're still like in our journey doing that, right.
And so if I wasn't going to be the one to like step up and evangelize it like who who was going to do that right.
And ultimately, you can't hire for that.
You can't delegate that to somebody on your team.
I mean, maybe eventually you can build a team around it, but it's my vision, right?
And I've been the one driving our team on this vision.
And so like the best leaders ultimately lead from the front.
And so when we think about evangelization creating the the category and content, it just became obvious that it needed to be to be me that was that was leading from the front.
So I think that's kind of how we got to where we were with creating the data knowledge space, like building our own podcast data knowledge pioneers, investing a lot of in thought leadership and content.
Yeah, makes sense.
I know that like with the dream, naturally the dream of of many founders and CE O's is to pretty much like delegate themselves out of a out of a job eventually.
Where they're almost like this proverbial kind of like they're almost playing like a chairman role where it's like everything runs on autopilot, everything is is is fully auto.
Well, not automated, but everything is fully taken care of.
But I would, I would argue that like there are some things that truly no one else can do, at least for a period of time, you know?
Better, better than, better than the founders or better than the people who who came up with the idea, as opposed to like, trying to delegate something that is like purely in.
Yeah, like a lot more native to you if if that makes sense.
Totally.
Yeah.
I mean I think and hopefully this is relevant to like your your audience knowing you know what your audience is like.
But if you think about building early stage startup and the I've been in tech my entire career, this is my first time building a company.
But I've been in companies, you know, scale up startups for the better part of 15 years now.
And you know everyone talks about product market fit as as a founder and how do you measure product market fit.
You know how do you get there right?
But there's this other piece as you like feel that you've accomplished product market fit, which is like product market, product market go to market fit, which effectively extends like product market fit of to well.
Like do you have a reproducible strategy for getting the word out there acquiring customers effectively you're like customer acquisition funnel anyways.
Yep.
The point I'm trying to make is that when you think about that journey and directly to your question, you you want to step back as a founder to automate or build the machine around the pieces of product market fit or or a product like go to market fit, right.
But they're just things that you can't delegate on that journey.
And so when I think about my role, it's always around Okay.
Well, if I can delegate something, I need to delegate it.
I need to build that machine.
But then there are things that I just have to do myself right and that nobody else can do.
But what are the things that only I can do at this moment in time for the company that requires like the daytoday attention obsession of the founder.
And those are the things that I like step on into the breach on right.
And and I would just argue that regardless of where you are in your journey like product market fit go to market fit that being that leader that your customers can see, that the market can see.
I mean what other role is there for the founder and CEO of a company regardless of like your opinion upon the exact function or role of the CEO.
And so that's my philosophy on it and I think that's how most of the best companies are, are built.
Yeah, true.
And I mean, I guess there's this kind of like, I don't know if it's a meme or not, but like this kind of this ongoing running joke of like, hey, well, what does the CEO actually do?
Well, I think.
Like this is definitely a massive part of it, which is like evangelizing like what it is that you're looking to build a thought leadership and a niche on for your business.
Specifically, if you are not a not not a not a copycat or not like doing something that pretty much has been done before, if you're doing something that's truly innovative, then there's no one else but you to to do that.
And I guess it wasn't always like that.
Like, this is obviously where you guys are right now, but you had your career start in.
Tesla, I believe and even before that you've been up to a lot of things.
So maybe just give us like to help set the stage, if you walk us briefly through like your childhood going into like your early career and then how all that has resulted in where you are today.
Yeah, of course.
So again I'm I'm, I'm Nick I'm the founder and see of Workstream I/O where data knowledge management solution.
I'm I, I live in New York now, but I'm originally from Palo Alto and in the Bay Area.
And so in many ways like my childhood is such such a driver of my career, right?
And I grew up kind of like in the tech ecosystem.
Like I know you so many kids that were like my contemporaries in high school or whatever that had like parents that were in tech, parents that were founders parents that were investors.
And you know, I I graduated from high school like right in the middle of the.com like bust and and bubble.
And so that was like an interesting moment in and of itself.
But anyways, like, without going too much into like the nittygritty of my of of my childhood and I was just like a typical California kid who kind of grew up in this ecosystem.
Interestingly for me my SO my dad was in tech.
My mom is a is an author and so she was like a creator obviously very different type of creator then then I am as I think about or show or opportunities like this or building our presence on on LinkedIn which is like our main or YouTube like which are like main social media channels but.
What was she like with this other or she's a fiction and then more recently memoirs and then my my her name is Melinda Gray Sexton and then my my grandmother is like a famous like poet named Anne Saxon who actually like won the Pulitzer Pulitzer Prize back in like the 70s.
So anyways, there was this like this creator nature to part of my family.
It runs in the family to an extent.
Like in high school I did a decent amount of like theater acting alongside like sports, which I just I wasn't particularly good, but I found it to be like fun.
So there's an interesting like things like that that if I hop on the show, you know, sometimes when you're on, especially when you're like hosting your own show, you're yourself, but you're also playing a character to an extent.
And so and that might sound contrived, but like which version of yourself you're trying to show your audience on your show because ultimately, like if you're interviewing guests, which is what I do, I'm trying to take a specific angle with them and that comes from like a genuine and authentic interest that I have.
But if we're being honest, it's it is driven by some agenda right and and some like particular interest that that we have that's relevant to what we do.
And so what's the version of Nick that shows up on the show?
I like.
I like slightly different version of a different version of Nick.
Like what version of me shows up on the show?
Yeah, yeah, I know.
Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, no.
I think it's a it's a decent way of describing it because like people, people can see through and feel free to believe me.
Like people see through bullshit, right?
It is pretty easy today to see through it and so if you are full of it, people are going to totally get it right And so that's why it has to be some version of you, right?
Like an authentic real version of you.
But the version of me that shows up on the show is different than the version that my then my like 5 year old child sees.
And so just as I think about that, the theater background growing up or like the creator background of the family will like will appear there.
So anyways, there's some interesting like fusion of my family background and things I did and was interested in growing up that like I would say play until to kind of what we do now and then anyways like if you just Fast forward after after college.
I'll be to be honest with you, I'm almost.
I wonder like if you felt like it and this is just me, like thinking out loud, but I wonder if you felt like, you know what I should have started creating a lot earlier.
Or to say that another way, did you feel the pressure?
Did you feel kind of like the the pressure is slash motivation to be like you're like I need to create, I need to have my own things sooner than later or you didn't necessarily feel that you felt you know what let me just let me just go through the journey and whatever happens happens kind of thing.
So that's a great question And the question is, is like fundamental is like if you're starting a company or what whatever it is, right.
If you were when is the time to start creating And I'm like why does it matter, right.
And the general answer is it's never too early and you should be doing it as early as possible.
Right, Which is something I knew, but we didn't necessarily do early.
And putting like the, the, the peculiarities of our specific business aside, I think that the big question is how ready are you going to be, right?
And I think for us, you know we like any startup.
We had some like early pivots along the way, things that we do that we did that didn't necessarily work.
We'd like iterated a bit on our ideal customer profile.
I mean exactly who we're going to market for.
We didn't necessarily like have the exact message we have today.
And so I would agree, I, I, I would say that there was always an instinct that I had that we should start earlier, but I kept debating, can I use is, is my time going to be well spent now?
And that's, I think this is the question to ask yourself is can you spend your time in creating like, well, right, yeah, efficiently.
And I like, I like where you took that because I was I was always thinking of a different my question was almost like so like the fact that like you kind of started your career in in Tesla not necessarily with work stream.
Did you always feel the need slash urge to like be an entrepreneur and be a creator like that from day one and you just had something say build up experience along the way or wait or did this almost happen as a almost like as a byproduct of every of of the journey thus far kind of thing I got Oh yeah.
I mean look I think to to maybe more the the intent of your question like there is I don't know if it was the very being of my career that evident to me that I was going ahead going to go to try to go ahead and start my own thing.
I mean there there's been a long time now though that like I really have wanted to start my own company and and build my own company like more than you know 10 years let's say.
But it's definitely like part of my blood, right?
I mean, I've got like multiple other founders in my family and many of my, like, close friends are founders.
And so there's something always about just that act of creation.
Like ultimately when people ask me like Nick, what is it that you do?
And fundamentally like I build stuff, right?
And the beginning of my career, I helped build like electric cars.
I was the analyst that supported the team that was building electric cars.
Like, what inspired me there was being like the person who got to support these people.
Like building this is like the coolest products ever.
I mean that's the, that's the hardest thing about having worked at Tesla from the the beginning is a like the you're you basically worked on the sexiest product you will ever work on in your entire career was like the first product you worked on, right?
Like the first two products I worked on with the original Tesla Roadster and then the the Tesla Model S and so I then worked at a IT operations company.
It's like super infrastructure, a company called Better Cloud, which was very successful and it was an amazing journey.
I learned a ton.
But I mean, you went to like the complete polar opposite of objective sexiness of your product.
Yeah, yeah.
And now I'm building a data knowledge product, right.
But the like what we build is directly connected to my my job at Tesla, my last job at Better Cloud, either as like a creator myself building parts of a business or being an analyst and analytics professional supporting those people and solving the the workflow challenges that those people experience when they're trying to leverage data to make decisions and apply data to their daytoday like that's that's what Work Stream is about, right.
And so this company wouldn't have come about had it not been the collective sum of all of my experiences.
But I think, again, to directly answer your question, it didn't become, I think, evident to me maybe until let's say, halfway through my career that being a creator of a startup was something that I wanted to try to do and that I was going to be really passionate about.
Love it, love it.
And before we go into the the meat of the episode in terms of the key moments, I just want to go back to something important that you said or something I thought was really interesting.
The fact that you said you're not like there's a lot of founders in your family and like broadly speaking, you were always surrounded by by founders and I guess.
As I reflected that, reflect on that me and Ammon, my cofounder, like we we had like almost the opposite of that in the sense or the inverse of that where we were surrounded by zero founders and the only founders we were.
I've actually said this on on air before but the only founders as it were that we were surrounded with were like stories of the opposite of success basically.
So like my grandfather he.
He passed away like prematurely but like I mean unexpectedly.
But he was trying to be a business owner and he like he went out of school like super early I think when he was in his teens or something like that.
And he was basically working as like a like a tile maker so like ceramics and stuff like that.
And he managed to to put to to put together like a couple of loans to get like some type of like a ceramic workshop together.
It wasn't a ceramics company by any stretch of the imagination.
It was just a little tiny workshop.
And and he passed away while like midway while while he's still trying to get the thing off the ground and like he had a lot of like debt and so on.
Also my my uncle he tried like several businesses that unfortunately did not pan out brick brick and mortar stuff like slightly more traditional stuff.
And so like you know I remember like me and Emin and we're we're brothers.
Like when we when we told our parents like hey we're doing this thing four plus years ago their their frame of reference is.
My dad, I can only imagine, like, my dad was like, well, what do I know about entrepreneurship?
Well, I know that my dad, you know, didn't have the best experience with that.
I know that his brother, my uncle, didn't have the best experience with that.
So even, like, in the early years, like, my mom would still like, send me like every 5-6 months, she'd send me like, job, job post, like, hey, Google's hiring.
You sure you don't want to?
You sure you don't want to apply and stuff?
And I'm like, mom, you know, I appreciate, like, your help.
You're trying to help me but.
It actually upsets me because I'm, I'm hoping that you could be on your side, you're on my side.
And she's like, Oh well, I'm totally on your side.
But why don't you just take this job and it's like, hey, you like, we're actually working on something totally different.
So I I wonder, so coming to my point at last, did you find that having like surrounded with with founders and stuff, did that have like a positive impact and neutral impact something else?
Yeah.
I mean I would say in first of all kudos to to you, to you too for for both of you for like taking the, the journey right with with some of those like a very obvious examples of of the not like successful path, right.
And I think or not successful but like one that maybe didn't have a like amazing commercial like our financial outcome, right.
And I think that's like just the reality to put a diplomatic I mean, like, I think about this a lot, right?
Because it's, it's said as like almost a platitude, right?
Like in tech, right?
Like feel fast, fail often will like, guess what?
It fucking sucks to fail, man.
Like, it really does like, even if it's like a little like iterative thing, like you put your heart and soul and sweat into something and then you're like, you have to admit to yourself that you fail.
And we failed along the way plenty of times and we're going to fail many more times along the way, right.
And so kudos to anyone who puts themselves out there and is willing to be effectively vulnerable in in that way.
And that takes guts and that takes courage and it takes a lot of hard work, right.
And you know, you're lucky if you're you're lucky if you're surrounded by folks who've had success.
And I would say that anyone who has like success ultimately is going to have some amount of luck.
That's couple coupled with all of the hard work, right?
And now I'm forgetting like exactly what your question.
Was so was it like peer pressure of like, oh, you know I'm surrounded by a lot of I presume successful founders.
So it's like I've got to bring my a game kind of thing or is it more like like a culture of and I'm sorry, I don't mean to ask a leading question but, like it's almost was it almost like a culture of encouragement where it's like, hey, everyone's doing this.
They got my back.
I'll be OK Look.
There's some element of a culture of encouragement.
You know, they've got my back.
It'll be okay.
Yeah.
I have a, you know, my, my wife, my partner, like, she's amazing.
She has like a very, very successful career.
So there's some element that like, if this doesn't work out, I'm not like the sole breadwinner of this family.
And we have like, young kids, right?
And so it allows me to extend myself and go kind of go out there.
But like you are acutely aware that like you can fail, right.
And you have to be comfortable with that and you have to be willing to put yourself kind of out there, out there on the line.
And I think every founder and creator believes they're going to be successful.
You kind of have to convince yourself of that.
And some of the best and most successful founders out there are famous for having this like quote UN quote distortion field about like what the future is, is going to become and what the present might be.
And I think there are elements of that of of that which which I have.
But anyways, again, I'm I'm probably missing the threat of your point.
But for me, I I think I balanced the okay.
I'm encouraged.
I I have the support of everyone.
I'm adequately jealous of them and other founders that I know that I want to go ahead and pursue it too.
And it gives me some motivation while also just being like obsessive about not failing and making the failures as small as they possibly can be and ones that we can recover from.
Fair enough, Fair enough.
Yeah.
I mean, I imagine it's, I imagine like only good can come out of like having a kind of like an ecosystem or like a network like that.
And I think it's a mindset thing as well, right?
Like, I think a lot of folks, I promise we'll get into the key moment.
This is probably going to be like an XL episode, just because I can already tell where.
We might be a little bit slightly overtime, but you're just sharing a lot of things that I think are super helpful for folks tuning and watching or or listening.
I think it comes down to mindset.
Like a lot of people sometimes they see something good happen and they're either it's kind of like, it's either like they take an angle of like vicarious learning where it's like, hey, they can do that, so can I I'm excited or damn it, they did that.
Now you know it's for some reason, for some reason I can't do that.
That, or because it's already been done, kind of thing.
But I digress.
What is 1 Failure?
Oh my God, I mean so many failures right?
But I would say this is the first failure, right?
We when we started building the company I had this vision for a four work stream I/O and at the highest level was that like there are these workflows around analytics that feel very broken and they waste time they lead to like subbulb to optimal decisions.
And the way we leverage analytics and the way we leverage data doesn't let lead to like good outcomes all the time despite the fact that we have the data right.
And that's really like a process problem and a people problem.
It's not a data problem, right.
It's not necessarily a technology problem.
Now we bring our technological solution to bear around it, but it's it's ultimately like a workflow solution.
Long story short, who built an alpha of our product that I designed and I scoped and the product did not work as we spent.
This was like the first year of the company.
When you see I designed an I scope just for folks listening in are you implying that you don't have like the technical kind of like know how or well I mean it's I'm the founder and see of the company I have an amazing cofounder named Chris he's our CTO and so I'm I'm the business guy.
I I I would say I'm a pretty technical and technically minded business person.
Everything from like I can get in there with our like our engineering team and and talk through technical tradeoffs and really understand them.
But there's some limit to what I can do like I I canceling code, right.
And so when I say that I like scope the product, I was the one who like started the company and said that there is this need.
Let's go ahead and build a product that serves this need.
And then I was the one who like got all the way down and wrote like the agile stories, right, And worked with their designer to design what it was going to look like.
So it was my vision.
You know, I was the architect of the product in the same way that like Elon is the architect of all of the Tesla vehicles, right?
Or Steve Jobs was the architect of every major, like Apple product that came out while he was the CEO there.
But unlike the Model S or unlike the iPhone, the first version of our products sucked and nobody wanted to use it, right.
And so that was just like that was really hard, right?
I mean, and I'd worked at for a long period of time, 2 very successful companies.
There are always been failures that are always been a grind.
But then I had turned around to go do it myself and the first thing that we did really didn't work.
And and so that was hard.
And I think the the first learning from it was just admitting that it wasn't going to work and that it was and that we had a problem, right.
And then we had to go and pursue some type of fix for it, right, but was.
More about that for for for for folks tuning in like was it was it like a a change in the product, a change in the audience and the GTM?
Was it something else perhaps a little bit of both.
We, we were targeting you know the the term analyst takes lots of different like forms.
So we were targeting a slightly different version of our what our ICP is now which I would describe you as like mid market companies like really focused on technology companies right now, which is an interesting ICP given the current market.
But like let's say 200 to you know 500 person technology companies generally English speaking because.
Just our team speaks English and so we can like serve those customers, right.
And we sell specifically into data and analytics teams, right.
So the teams that sit over the data and analytics stack at these companies, So that's the ICP and everything formographically was very similar.
But the we were selling more into like a business operations FP and a type of role or attempting to and so that there was that and then there was an element of the the product that we offer to them.
Now what we learned with the failures should be good learning right now until we learned out of that first year or effectively was the first year of designing the product or the team building the product, putting it in the market, testing all that stuff, right.
The technological approach we proved that that it could work and so then we did is we turned that around and we applied that technological approach to that technology approach or solution to build what is now our product that we have out in the market and that we have people who pay us for.
And so that in and of itself like that was successful, right.
We turned lemons and the lemonade in the in that specific moment in time.
But it was it was hard to to see our sit our our way through that, right?
And it was like handtohand combat the whole way.
I remember like every two weeks I would turn to my wife and I would be like if this next thing that we're doing doesn't work, like I don't know what the next play is, right.
And then of course, because you're obsessed about it, you would always figure out something new to do and right And and from making that change, there's lots of new things that we've done spend a lot of time creation, like a lot of features that we've built.
But for us, the journey has been very much adding on lots and lots of like evolutionary things.
And it's been a long grind and there yet has not yet been like a single, let's say, revolutionary thing that we've done that's changed the trajectory.
It's been all of these little wins from there that we've just, you know, kept grinding at.
Yeah, which kind of what compounds I imagine, Yeah.
Yeah.
Like all the little wins compound over time, right.
And it's, it's really hard to, I'm forgetting like who this quote is from, but like if you always overestimate what you can get done in a year and you underestimate, we can get done in 10 years, right.
And I think, you know we're a few years into it now and it's pretty amazing to see what we've done as a team over that period of time.
But you know, week to week, month to month, year to year, you can always feel like you're not doing enough.
Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, I, I, I can imagine, like I understand what you're talking about in terms of like there wasn't like one big iPhone moment for say as much as it was just like these small wins and small kind of like learnings which perhaps somehow started as failures that kind of like compounded because every time.
Every time you you you figure out like what not to do you get closer to figuring out what to do and all these things obviously like compound in the right direction.
It's funny because like we like perhaps not not too dissimilar from Munich like when we were building chop cast the the the the AI product we like had no clue what we were doing at the very start.
It started off as like a whiteboard sketch and like the the the version of the product that we have right now is is.
The third version of the product, we had to like build it from scratch and burn it down three different times before we started to to get it right.
And like we're still, we're still pretty much like thinking of it as like a beta thing.
Like they're just there's so much stuff that we still want to build on top of it.
But in a weird way.
Like we just learned so many different things and we spent more money than I than I care to to admit today, but basically remind you like our own money as opposed to like.
It's not like VC's like we're we're we're predominantly like boots, we're like 95% plus bootstrapped.
You know, it's like like our our actual cash, like we used it on that and it was, which kind of like it definitely hurt.
But I think now that we look at it like hindsight 2020, I'm sure it's the same for you.
It's almost like the cost of tuition.
It's like, hey, like, I'm not going to learn this shit like in college.
The only way to to learn this, only way to get that tuition, is to go through the thing.
This is this is your school and you're going to learn, You're going to.
I think there's another quote that I'm blanking on who said it, but it's something like the the mistake repeats itself until the lesson is learned.
Something like that.
And we've learned so many things about like everything like like building products, having the right people in the right seats, not wasting people's time if you feel like they're better suited for like another opportunity.
So many things that we've learned along the way.
But yeah, it's crazy like when you're going through it exactly like what you said, Nick, like you have no idea what you're going to do like 2 weeks from now.
But then hindsight 2020, you're like, Oh yeah, that that totally made sense that we did A and then we did B after that.
Totally.
There is, yeah, so many.
I would if I wasn't include anything around failure.
It's just that the best, as hard as it is like the best failure should come with some type of learning about it, right about what to do next And even how we met each other was based off of that.
We were doing lots around content.
We started to experiment with with video content.
We experimented a lot with like written content and it became just very clear what was working and and where we were going to get a lot of leverage.
And so even our decisions to like invest a lot and and kind of video content and through then applying that through social channels that was based off of a lot of different learnings and failures about how we should create and how should we get the word out there.
Gotcha.
One book, one book.
I mean, so many books I I saw.
I'm like a crazy reader.
I think a lot of like, great, like founders and leaders that actually are.
So much of what I read is like completely irrelevant, like what I do on a on a daily basis.
You know, when I get asked this question, one of the ones that I actually actually go back to, which was one of my favorite books in childhood, which I've probably read like five times, is The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
And if you have not read it, immediately, go pick up that book and and read it.
It is such an amazing story.
And I mean, there's so many obvious learnings there, but just the journey that he goes throughout through his entire career, I mean it's it's like it's pretty, pretty amazing.
I mean, I mean talk about, I mean extend like this topic, like talk about getting like success from failure.
I mean, he was like a criminal in prison and he became like a leader of a movement, right.
And and then even as a leader of that movement, he like never stopped learning and never stopped evolving his views, right.
And so I just, I just think that that his personal journey and his personal story is just so fascinating and this the, the, the arc and evolution that he just goes through as a person and is so fundamentally fascinating.
And that's even before you think about the like the moment he lived in and the leader he was in, the change he helped effect.
So for me, that's one that it's been.
It's been a while since I've actually reread it, but it's one that I always think about and and go to.
Yeah, I love that.
I'm going to call Evan out on this one because we're always having this debate.
He he collects a lot of books, but he doesn't actually get to to Page 1.
And I think one of the books is is The Autobiography of Michael Malcolm X, if I'm not mistaken.
So I'm I'm actually going to his apartment later today so I'm going to steal that book from him because I'm I'm that my problem is yeah like my my problem is like maybe similar to you as well Nick.
Like I have a problem with reading.
Like I I just read so much that I need to slow down and actually like like just take a breath and actually like apply some of the things that I'm learning.
But yeah, I think it's it's interesting that like you said something earlier that I thought was really cool, that like a lot of the things you read.
Aren't necessarily foundation correctly.
It wasn't not necessarily like business books but or or you're you.
You get a lot of lessons from things that are like non business related that it reminds me of a book that I've talked about a lot of times in like previous episodes.
It's called Range Range by David Epstein and he basically goes against or or or.
He argues against Malcolm X's rule of like the the whole 10,000 hour rule thing, and he basically says that like.
That the subtitle of the book is pretty much like why Generalists triumph in a specialist world and there's a ton of great content between him and Malcolm X where I guess they're they're pretty much like friends at this stage.
But Malcolm pretty much said like, you know what?
Like this is, this is actually like this actually makes a lot of sense and the the the research holds and so on.
So he said like it never felt so good to to to be wrong about something.
And one of the key lessons that I learned from that book is this notion of how.
Sometimes, like when you when you don't get too deep into something, or rather when you get too deep into something, you almost get like blindsided and you stop seeing the thing objectively.
Whereas if you're more like T shaped in general, you can draw like references and inspiration from things that are necessarily like unrelated.
But it helps you come up with like really interesting conclusions and I'll just give you one quick story.
From that book is I think it was one of one of the one of the main guys behind like Nintendo.
I think Nintendo was kind of like a like a board game or like a yeah a board game company if I'm not mistaken.
And they wanted to get into the video space and at that time 3D technology was starting to become a thing and like like good graphics was we're starting to become a thing.
But they recognize that they don't necessarily have that technical know how in house, nor the budgets for it.
And so during the time where like 3D and everything was like taken off, they purposely almost sarcastically went the other way and they created all the the intender games that we know and love, like the Super Mario's and the Pokemons and so on.
I don't think a lot of people realize that these graphics like you could have done so much better than that, but they purposely wanted to make it all pixelated and everything because this is something that.
They thought would help them stand out from everyone else was trying to like kill each other to get like the best possible like video game quality.
And as a result they attracted a lot of developers who were familiar with this kind of like older way of of of creating games and as a result they they exploded in in success.
Super cool.
Yeah, I mean I like, I I'm with you like there's there's a role in you know the 10,000, the 10,000 hours.
Like, I'm an expert at just the specific thing, but I I do, I do agree with you and I would argue that range is is most one of the most important things right?
And and ultimately, especially as a creator, you have no idea what your what skills you need right?
And for me, a lot of the best ideas for the business come from something completely different or come from an activity that is, on the surface, completely unrelated to what we do.
And the one of the big things I do to distress as I go running, it's the thing I've done for a long period of time and distress from work, distress from the kids, any of that stuff.
And there are times where like in the middle of the day I'm like, you know, I got to get out.
I got to go for a run and sometimes I feel guilty about it.
And then I come back and I've had like the best idea of the day came like on that run.
I'm like, well, that was that was worth that hour that I spent like away from the computer.
Because that one thing that seemingly was completely unrelated actually makes an impact.
It's one of those little things that I talked about that like help us chip away week over week, month over month at the business.
Yeah, you're yeah, you're not going to get.
The best ideas on the zoom call as opposed to like a run or something like that.
So I totally read you on that, like reading some like boring business book that's like you know how to call 500 customers or whatever, you know?
That is so true.
And I think there's a lot of like, research that backs this up, that like when you give your brain your brain freaking break it.
It's not.
It's almost like an active break of sorts.
It's like or even like when you sleep or whatever, like your brain is not like.
Not working like it is.
It's just super deep in your subconscious and it's making connections and so on totally.
But yeah, I think this next one is going to be hard.
One person.
Yeah, I mean one person.
I mean, that's like an impossible one.
I mean, I can get super touchy feeling and talk about my family.
I'll try to.
I'll try to avoid it.
You could you could tell us about about any one person.
Yeah.
You know I'll I'm going to I'm going to cheat.
I'll talk about two people The the first person I would talk to my cofounder.
Right.
And I mean what I was just so lucky and and choosing Chris are like my cofounder and our CTO and he has, he just like is a perfect compliment to myself.
And that's I would say not only skill sets, right like he can do the things that I can't do, like he built the entire back end like the initial back end of our system.
But he also like just even soft skills wise, he's like very and he's very good at not only like running our team and still the majority of our team like rolls up through him and reports to him, we're a technology company.
We're like a technology product.
And so it's the delivery of that and the execution of that.
I mean that's that's up to him.
So like and he's done that in spades and our team continued to do that over and over and over again, right.
And so it's to say like the selection of of that has been or just of of him as my of my cofounder and the be able to rely on somebody like that.
And and in a lot of ways like he had, he hadn't been a cofounder before but he had been like the head of engineering at like a zero to 1 startup in the past.
And so he he had seen pivots.
He had seen iterations along the way and he's a more of a steady Eddy personality than me where I'm like like more hot and cold, right.
Probably the yeah, not that they're not like high for him or low for him, but I think he had probably has a little bit more perspective on it than, than, than necessarily I do and I'll, I'll get, I'll get jacked up one way or the other more for them.
And so in that way we're like a really, really good partnership and I think there's a lot of data that talks about so like that cofounders are more successful normally than then solo founders.
And for all kind of all the reasons I'm talking about.
And also just like it's just a hard journey and so just taking it out by yourself is it going to be feel is going to feel pretty lonely so.
I love that shot out, Chris, so shout out Chris.
Thank you, Chris for everything you've done for for me personally and then for our company.
Yeah, I would say the because I'm cheating.
I'll say the other one it would be there's.
We we we've had a lot of folks cheat before.
I'm trying to get a control of the situation, but I'm, I'm failing.
So sorry Sir.
I'll just, I'll just quickly say that, yeah, there's there's a couple of key like customers that we've had that we would not be here without.
And so to like huge, like shout out and thank you to them, Ted being one, Danielle being the other.
If they're listening to this, they know who they are, Shawn, me, another one, like literally believed in us when we had nothing but an idea and like helped us design the product and have been super helpful in like a million other ways.
And so you kind of just have to go and find those people who are going to believe in you and and and bet in you and actually deliver upon the things that you said they're going to do.
Like you go and build a product and you put yourself out there.
And then they're like, yeah, we're going to use this thing and we're going to roll this out and we're going to buy it and all that good stuff.
So how do you treat shout outs and?
How do you find people like that?
Yeah, great question.
I mean I think this is like this is interesting as relates to the show too, right?
Cuz like you're probably not going to find those people because they listen to your podcast.
Like let's be on like I think the podcast or the the act of creation, it's for me and my perspective it's it's it's about getting the word out there and it's about more, it's more of like a scale motion and like a growth motion.
I think finding a lot of those early, it's a very retail and for me it was a combination of my network and just like putting on my sales ad and like the business development hat, right.
And so there's some of those folks that I knew personally, which is good because you've got some of that, it's bad, you got some of that before you start.
It's bad because it's not as they're like arm's length, right.
There's a personal relationship there in a way that is it maybe the best test for what the market is going to say more broadly.
And then others who I just language that kind of along the way and but I think the what might unify that with some of the creation stuff is the like what's the version of you that convinces them that they should, that they should like invest in the product, right.
And ultimately, like people are going to listen to you as a creator because they think you are a real person and you have something maybe unique to say.
And people are going to want to work with you as a founder or a creator of a product because they're interested in your product.
But I think they want to do business with you.
They find it interesting to work with you.
And a lot of that first year of working with any one of these people, they're doing more for you than you are doing for them.
And so be careful of what you ask for, and be mindful of who you are as a person asking.
Yeah, I mean I think, I think that makes that make that that is so honest.
That it's true, right?
Like specifically for for.
And I'm imagining like folks listening, like if if they're still trying to figure something out at the start, don't be surprised when you realize you're actually getting a lot more value than you're giving in the early days.
And you could use that to propel you to obviously reciprocate and do the same thing for so many other people.
So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm with you on that and maybe fast forwarding to a little bit closer to now what was one.
Decision that you made recently that you think really changed the the trajectory for you.
Yeah.
I mean and this is not like placating placating you like I I think us landing on investing tons in video creation and and our kind of our whole video content strategy it's we are still relatively early but like we can see the benefits of it.
And so again it came from like we knew we needed to create when you we're creating this we were creating this category.
But what's the best way to do it going forward like what's going to.
I mean if we're just being like bruly on us like what's going to engage people and like attract eyeballs today right in the in the current market of of content that's out there.
And ultimately, like any eyeball that you're trying to get is this competing with other content and other stuff that's out there.
And so we played around with a lot of other strategies.
And but kind of just by happenstance, I started just doing like a weekly show on LinkedIn where I would just talk with people.
And just that one decision, that one experiment, that first episode of the show probably yielded more engagement than all this other effort that we had put through, right.
And so we're just looking at that and we're like, wow, it's pretty amazing.
What just just that is done, why don't we take all of this energy we're putting into to content more broadly and just pointing at this and that was the context by which you know we ended up getting to know each other.
And so our relationship has been a great relationship.
But I would say that realization of this feels like a good, like a niche for us.
And in many ways like this feels like the direction that people are going to be headed in in the future.
And so like, let's like, let's like double, triple down on that, right.
And there's like the Wayne Gretzky, Wayne Gretzky quote of skates where the puck is going, not where it is today.
And so as soon as we landed on the video content strategy, it, it felt very much obvious and it was one that would not only was engaging but also there's something that's very human about our product, it's a workflow product, it's about connecting people And so by doing video we get to put the people like at the forefront, right.
And ultimately the format of the show is me like it's similar to this, but it's it's about data and knowledge, right.
And it's me talking to people about data knowledge.
And I think the reason it works is I'm generally interested to hear what people have to say, right.
And you can't, you can't think that.
And and I'm learning alongside our audience.
And so I think for that reason it works.
And it's the reason our show, we call our show data knowledge pioneers.
It's about the people right of thought about anything else.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's interesting like we never, we never get tactical and on on on this on the Key Moments podcast in general.
But since you went there, Nick.
I would argue that like these days like just going back to that that quote of like skate to where the puck is going.
It's interesting like these days brands that are not asleep are starting to realize that building building a show is almost like your second product, not even secondary but rather just second like of of almost like equal value because you know you I think a lot of brands and this is what we're learning as well like we're.
We're like eternal students and one one thing that we've been learning is that some of the best brands out there are really almost building like some type of a media platform where they're creating this kind of like Disneyland for their niche where people can come and hang out and they're at at the at the core of that is 1 show or perhaps two or three different shows targeting different like different you know, different use cases or different like personas and so on.
And I think that.
Even for people who are like not ready to like, quote UN quote buy right now, I think it just creates a super cool hangout spot.
It creates an amazing bedrock to start building, found to build a strong foundation, to build a strong, to build strong trust in general.
And you're doing so in a way that is very akin to how people are consuming content right now.
So like, you know, like, you know, people are consuming.
Short form video and one of the most efficient and effective ways to create short form video is through these long form episodes and you're you're also building relationships through that.
So I mean it's it.
What saddens me is that it's not as obvious for some people as it is to others.
Specifically in the tech space.
I would argue like I think that there's still this and and I'd love to.
I'd love to get your opinion on this like there's this.
Sometimes like there's this kind of like mindset of like Oh well it's just cuz the product's not good enough yet like if the product is good it's gonna sell itself and and that's and that's the end of that.
What's your take on that?
Sorry, the take on like is the product matter more than like?
Yeah, like, if the product's probably enough, it's gonna sell itself.
Right.
And like, if we build it, they will come, period.
Yeah.
I mean, I I would say I suffered from from that to an extent, right.
There's a investor I met along the way, right, who had a great, had a great quota learning he had been a previous founder or was like first time founders.
You know they they think all about product, right?
And they really should be thinking like 70% product, like 30% like distribution.
It was whatever the ratio is, there needs to be that mix And look, ultimately, it's like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, it doesn't exist, right?
And I think that's true around anything.
And customers of the Lifeblood and you could have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows that it exists, it does not matter.
It just doesn't matter.
And you know, for us, while we're building a new category, we're doing something different.
We're doing something new our our space, the the data space in general, like it's a very busy space and it's a very loud space And so there's another creator who's actually been very successful.
He doesn't really do a lot of video.
He's Vic very, very big on like LinkedIn, but he's been successful on it.
His name is Ethan Aaron.
Now he's the founder and see of this company Portable and he he, he, when I was chatting with him once, he was like look, I just have realized that if we're not almost embarrassingly loud, we just don't exist.
And I I think that's generally true regardless of of of who you are and what your exact strategy is.
And for us the way that we've gotten really loud and what works for us is video because of what I'm good at and what our product is and our product is ultimately about people.
And so I think the learning or the insight that yes, like the you have to think about distribution, you got to think about awareness because like no people, no, you're not going to be successful just by building product that 100%.
I agree with that.
I think the question then becomes Okay, well who are you as a founder, who are you as a company and who are you as a product?
And then how do you get out the word out there in a way that works for you and is authentic and real?
Yeah, I love that.
So we're coming up close to time.
So for the final key moment, what is 1 accomplishment That meant something to you that wasn't Speaking of loud, Like, not, not not necessarily the loudest thing or the the flashiest thing for others, but for you, it just hit different.
So again, I'm going to cheat.
So I've like, I've been at it for a while.
I've had two kids since I started the company.
I have three children.
And for me there, like the the journey of building a company has been like this parallel journey of like building a family and half of that during like the acute parts of the pandemic as well.
And so there's so much, you know, as hard as, like the day can be and as hard as like having kids can be, they're like really interesting compliments to each other.
And so I think in some ways the, the act of building a family and a building a company have kept me both sane and insane at the same time.
And you know, I don't know.
I'm not going to ask which made you sane and which made you well, I mean, they both, they both make me sane and insane at the at the same time, right?
It's how do you how do you manage that dichotomy right.
But look I just think like the the the little things in in in life is is ultimately what makes it about like what it's about.
And for me on the work front, like truly people using our product makes me so happy.
And it's something that we've put like blood, sweat and tears into and seen it doing what is designed to do having it make an impact on people is just like so much is so satisfying and more customers and more users and more sales and all of those things are important.
But it's about that like individual impact.
And I think that's not what I think I probably would have said three years ago, 4-4 years ago.
Like, I don't think four years ago said, like the things I'm most proud about are people using our product and that like I've raised a couple kids here over the last few years.
But that's like ultimately where where I'm at.
And I think to maybe tie this all back to some of the stuff that we we were talking about and like you are being brutally on us with about like your, you know your examples of founders and entrepreneurs like growing up.
You know there's no, there's no outcome.
There's no guaranteed outcome, right.
It's like what success as a creator or a builder.
Like I think the success is ultimately like the journey and it it's not just that that that you're like you're on a journey and it's the like some of those experiences.
It's like does the journey make you better, right.
Like are you better on the other side of that journey.
And I feel that I've not always been better but as a person, as a professional all that like I've experienced growth and for me that makes all of the failures worth it and everything that that's worth it.
And so and ultimately regardless of what your outcome is if you can become better in your journey, you can control that, right.
And and it doesn't matter what the, what the rest of the outcomes are and hopefully you have a have a good outcome.
But for Lee, me at least that's where where I've I've landed on.
And so there's lots of like little wins along the way that that make me feel successful in that way.
And that's what I that's what I think about a lot, at least right now.
Yeah, it's crazy how like in in just four years like what you thought you would define as like success or something changes so much.
And it's, it's true like I think with with the journey of of being a creator or.
And the founder is a form of a of of creating perhaps in in in many regards as well you know like the success is not guaranteed as as I think you said.
But one thing that you can do to continue ensuring that you profit along the way.
Profit, no pun intended, is to really just like get get.
Whatever value you can from that journey and like use that to make you a better person because I'm literally, literally repeating what you said.
But like so many times I talked to my wife about this and you know what I mean?
Like I I tell her, hey, I thought I'd be like a multimillionaire right now, even a single millionaire by now.
And she she's like total opposite.
She works in in LinkedIn corporate job leadership like totally different path completely.
And I keep telling her like, hey.
I had this like timeline in mind but but I'm but I'm falling behind like I'm not I don't have you know what I mean like I don't have XY&Z.
Like like I don't have a boat yet.
I don't have this.
I don't have that.
And she's saying, well, yeah, you know she like, she would always remind me that.
I guess she would she would, she would be she would definitely be my one person that like I've grown so much as a person and there's so many different things that I've even learned throughout this journey that like for.
Professional stuff, professional like skills and stuff like that aside, just like as a as a person.
I think it's just been such a fulfilling journey and and rewarding journey overall that even if we don't get to the proverbial like Finish Line, even even though we are trending in that direction, it's like like you it was it was not a waste of time, like it was all still worth it kind of thing.
You know what I mean?
Totally easier to say than it is to do, I think, as as you're pointing to.
But I do think it's true And yeah I'm losing my, my, my last the the last point that that I was going to make.
But I think yeah if it is, if it is ultimately about the if you if you can buy that it's about the journey think about how the journey is is is it going to make you better and make you grow.
And oh, and now I'm remember what I was going to say is is like, and that's in some ways what I enjoy the most about like.
Creating content and and creating video content because like at least the form in which we do it, it's about me talking to other people who are know more about whatever our topic is, right?
And so just the act of doing that means that I'm learning something new and building a new relationship.
And even if it's a small little thing, that's something I get to do every week, that that makes me better.
Yeah, I love that.
So Nick we're coming up to the end of the episode.
So for real this time I'm, I'm sorry that I that I dragged this on a little bit.
It's just you've had so many interesting things to share and so this is definitely one of our our longer episodes but I'm I'm glad it turned out this way.
Who is who's someone that you can help or anything that you wanted to to give as as yourself or as as work stream?
Yeah, I mean, if I can be very helpful, just e-mail me.
I'm Nick at workstream dot I/O.
Or anything we've talked about, feel free to just reach out.
I mean if and I would say if you're listening to this and you have a data team, you're a data leader and you want to empower everyone to use the data that's available to them.
Like check us out, there's a free version of our products.
So that's the like the easy get you get from.
Or the easy win or giveaway that you get from from checking us out right?
Go check out our free product and hopefully it's helpful.
And if it if I can be helpful, just e-mail me.
Awesome.
Well, Nick, thank you so much for being on the show and we'll see you soon.
Thanks, Kareem.