Jolie00:01.85
Welcome to Revenue Mind, a podcast where revenue leaders talk about all things mental health. I'm Julie, host, and with this is Mack. Welcome, Mack.
Mac Reddin00:10.542
Thanks for having me.
Jolie00:12.132
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So before we get started, what makes you you?
Mac Reddin00:18.972
man, that feels like a loaded question I could take the whole recording to answer. Is this a podcast recording or a therapist session? What makes me me? I don't know. I'm trying to think of what makes me me besides just like tangible attributes, because I feel like that's such a cop-out answer. always go like, here's what I like and here's what I do. And that's how they define themselves. I don't know, what makes me me? think I...
Jolie00:28.984
a little bit of both.
Mac Reddin00:47.588
probably workaholic is definitely an attribute I'd put in there, but like in a mostly good way, I think. I think I fall into that, that classic case of I've been lucky enough people to work on what I've wanted to work on for 10 years. So four days out of five work doesn't feel like work, which is always an easier hack for, being a workaholic. I don't know. like making things. I thought I would describe myself. Like, I guess it's a, people always ask the question of like, why are you a founder? Why do this? Why take the risk? And it's like, You know, it's not cause I want to be a billionaire. It's not cause I want to have my name in news articles. just, I just like making things, right? Whether it's small things, big things, physical products, software products. I just like making things like, you know, I was a big Lego builder as a kid. So I think it's just, I'm still still a fan of Lego. Got the Lego Lego brontosaurus. so yeah, I don't know. That's how I would describe myself about what makes me me.
Jolie01:46.33
That's awesome. I love that answer. So now onto the questions. Speaking of Lego Brontosaurus, that was next level. Love that campaign. When you're pulling out credits, excuse me, let me retake that. Here we go. When you're pulling off credit, I can't speak. Hold on. This is why I love Descript. Descript is like the fucking bomb.
Mac Reddin02:05.282
All good. One of those days. Yeah.
Jolie02:10.884
Because you edit it and you sound perfect and it's like you've like 50 re- no we won't have to do retakes but okay. The Lego Brontosaurus was next level. Love that campaign. When you're pulling off creative stunts like that, how do you ensure your team feels energized rather than overwhelmed?
Mac Reddin02:30.468
Maybe a bad answer, but I actually think that especially with like early stage startups, if you're not at least operating like a little bit in the overwhelmed category, you're probably not pushing yourself and your team hard enough. I think it's like there's good overwhelmed and there's bad overwhelmed, which is like a bit of a hard thing to unpack. But I think it's. It's easy for a team to feel energized. when the work is fun and the work is creative. And then that bleeds through into like our audience can like feel that fun through the campaign, right? It's like, you know, if you're asking your team to do like, Hey, go work in this spreadsheet eight hours a day, five days a week for a whole quarter, you're going to have a morale and an energized, you know, problem on your hands. But when you're, when you're finding space for those fun things, I guess the real challenge is how do you energize the team to now go do the unfun things that you also have to do? when you step away from doing the fun campaigns. I don't know, it's kind of a cop-out answer, but it's... I think it's just sort of like, when the idea is really good, when your team can feel it, the energy just comes naturally. To me, it's a great sign that you're on to something great is when you don't need to actively think about that.
Jolie03:48.922
That's awesome. And then how do you motivate your team when they're looking at Tableau?
Mac Reddin03:55.074
I think balancing it with fun stuff helps a lot. think a lot of it is like, this is, think, you know, the number one job as a founder or CEO is to basically keep that storytelling, keep that, that kind of vision of the North star and where we're going and give people a reason. there's an article that I reference all the time with questions like this called, what I miss about working at Stripe. and it's about, you know, this person who was early at Stripe, you know, they've now left, they've gone and worked at a couple other startups and they're trying to reflect on like why. Do I miss Stripe? Like what did the other companies not have for me that Stripe had? And they summed it up as a lot of these other startups had really, really nice people, really awesome people, but had an LGTM culture, a looks good to me culture. So I there's an element of like when you're always like the team has to be pushing each other, especially early stage. And I think it's fair. My context come from, I've only ever worked in early stage. So they, the, you know, the calculation is very different when it's a big, bad enterprise, you know, boring company with a lot more like, know, cog in the wheel type stuff. But if you give people ownership, you give them fun ideas to work on and let them own a problem, I have not found the morale to be a major issue. You know, everyone has their ups and downs and you got to be aware of that. But the general trend is work on fun stuff, work with good people, solve hard problems, have fun while doing it. The rest will semi figure itself.
Jolie05:19.142
For sure, yeah, I was at a couple of startups. Now I'm at an agency and there were times where we'd have, I loved it. We were having these three hour working sessions. We were working on an ebook that was ungated and it up doing really, really well. And it was awesome. I I thrive off that kind of stuff. Like when it's something that you're... that you're either passionate about work wise or personally or both it's just it's so much fun so I got that
Mac Reddin05:53.688
Yeah, it's easy, right? It's like, if you can wake up in the morning and you're excited for work, a lot of other problems that people talk about trying to solve in the workspace get solved. And it's easier said than done, but if you can find ways to inject fun into your work, it's just, it's honestly a competitive advantage, because it bleeds through from your team into the market. It bleeds through on how a salesperson handles themselves on a sales call, how a team talks about themselves on LinkedIn, how marketing campaigns get executed. I get people all the time, like literally probably five times a week being like, when you hire a comm store for whatever insert role that they want, it seems like such a great place, a fun place to work. It's like, so it's also a competitive advantage when it comes to hiring, right? It's like you, you just hire better people when you're, when you're having fun.
Jolie06:41.328
Yeah, I totally agree with that. And fun is really interesting. What do you think makes comms over fun? Like, what about it?
Mac Reddin06:53.888
Yeah, it's such a kind of a dumb word. It's like a hard word to define in this context. I think a lot of it is it's one, it comes from the people we work with, right? It's like, there's like a, you know, work hard, play hard, don't take ourselves too seriously mindset that just. It's not a thing you can force, it's sort of like a it's a classic, like it comes from the top, you kind of have to hire the right people, set that culture and like. once the ship's in that direction, like, it feels like it's sort of like Newton's, know, laws of motion. Like once it's in one, moving in one direction, like law of momentum will keep it roughly moving in that direction. I think a lot of it also like, this is like that, that, that Stripe article I referenced where it's fun isn't a thing that just happens because you're having fun. think so many people and so many companies, when they think about fun, they think about as an ad. Right? our team worked really hard. Let's do a pizza party for them. It's like, no, fun is an add on. It has to be embedded in the work that you're doing in the day to day. can't be an afterthought. Otherwise it's always going to be this like separate thing of like, here's the work that everyone hates and here's the fun that we're adding on and try to keep morale high. It's like the more you can like overlap that Venn diagram, the easier it gets.
Jolie08:09.208
I totally agree. I, and like you mentioned, the fun comes out and people, people want different. People want fun, like especially in ads and campaigns and just whatever you're putting out there, direct mail, like they, there's so much noise out there that I think you have to be different. Like, 10 Davidson doesn't break.
Mac Reddin08:32.546
Yeah, it still has to be based in real value, right? Like you can have fun all you want and market all you want, but if the product sucks, it's not actually going to help long-term. So it's like, you know, I feel like it's an obvious thing of like, have to build a thing people actually want to pay for, and then you can worry about other stuff. But I think a lot of times teams forget about that sometimes, you know, so it's a, it's a yes. And not an either or type conversation.
Jolie09:02.998
for sure. Yeah, if you have a crappy product and you do fun marketing, when they go to your landing page and there's no value prop, it's like, well, great, you gave me some popcorn, but this product sucks. Yeah, exactly. So pivoting a little bit. So hustle culture gets a little hype, but it can also be a little damaging. How do you push for big results without burning people out?
Mac Reddin09:14.818
Yeah, you still have to solve the fundamentals. I feel like this is a classic case of also like a neither answer is right or wrong. I think hustle culture gets a bad rap, but if you're an early stage startup, yeah, it's going to be hard. Like there's no, and if, and if it's not hard, it's probably not going to succeed is the honest answer. Right. And, anytime people use as examples of like, look, this company doesn't have hustle culture. You're like, yeah, but they've, know, like I had someone bring up like, you know, HubSpot does like, you know, four day work weeks in the summer and this and that. you're like, yeah. And they hustled for 20 fricking years to get to the point where they can maybe have a system to, chill things out a little bit. one of my favorite questions when hiring is, is trying to like really figure out like, or not question, right? It's a piece of advice I was taught is, if someone is debating between you and early stage startup and a bigger company, never hire them. Because if someone's not a hundred percent on board with like, yes, I want to work at a startup versus a big company, they probably aren't being honest with themselves about the expectations of what that'll look like. That doesn't mean there's an expectation of like work on weekends, at least from my perspective, there shouldn't be an expectation of work on weekends or overwork. To me, hustle culture means like healthy hustle culture is a mindset of like, I'm here to get done what needs to get done. And yeah, that might mean some days I got to work nine, 10 hours instead of eight. That might mean, Nope, I got to put an hour on Saturday to get this thing done for Monday. It might mean, you know, you have crazy days and you have less crazy days. bad hustle culture is when it's like, you need to work 90 hours because I need you to work 90 hours, right? Like that's, it's like, it's when you're measuring the metric for the sake of the metric, when you're measuring butts and seats, that's when I think hustle culture like gets perverted into this fucked up hustle bro bullshit for lack of a more eloquent term. But the other day, like very few startups succeed without some element of hustle. Like that's. The very nature of building something new is that you're gonna have to have some form of hustle to break through and make it
Jolie11:42.564
Yeah, definitely. I knew someone back in New York that was in finance and they started off in an investment bank and all of the investment banks, Goldman Sachs, the Barclays, the JP Morgan's, are, that is toxic hustle culture. to you, Yep.
Mac Reddin11:59.01
Yeah. That's work X hours just for the sake of working X hours, not work for the outcome. Like at the end of the day, that's all that matters, right? Like, you know, it's not about tracking hours. not about tracking people's screens, but hiring adults, trusting them to get their job done. I always tell people when I hire them that if you say you're going to get something done on Friday and on Thursday you finish it and you want to take a chill day Friday, like, yeah, take a half day Friday. That's fine. But if on Thursday you realize, shit, I gotta put an extra hour or two in tonight to get it done on Friday, then you took the ownership of I will get it done Friday, so that's on you. It's not like I expect you work on Saturdays because we're a startup and therefore you have to work on Saturdays. That's not the way to do it.
Jolie12:47.664
Yeah, and we're all adults at the end of the day. Well, yeah. We can, but it might take a while.
Mac Reddin12:49.924
Some more than others sometimes based on my interactions on LinkedIn, but you know, we don't have to go into that rabbit hole. We don't want to. We don't need to talk about those people. They're not worth the breath.
Jolie13:05.055
That's really funny. So next question. Building a community at a startup is like navigating in the dark. How do you set goals and manage stress without a clear map?
Mac Reddin13:19.284
I honestly don't know if I have a good answer for that. Like I... I don't know, I think part of it is like, this kind of goes back to just like, this is the nature of a startup is like, you're not gonna have a clear amount. Like any startup who tells you they know exactly what they're gonna be working on six plus months from now, you a small startup at least is like, that's either bullshit or they're lying to themselves, right? You can only plan so far out, but that's part of like what makes a startup able to beat. a bigger company is the fact that we're not trying to plan a year from now. Yeah, you want to have like your vague plan, your vague goals, but like, I don't know what feature we're shipping in Q3 next year or Q2. I know vaguely what I want to ship in Q1. know, Microsoft knows what they want to be shipping in Q3. They're already planning the launch announcements they're doing. And that's fine. But for us, like our advantage compared to bigger companies is our ability to adapt and iterate and be on the fly. So I think it's like, it's more about like, you need to know if you're heading north or south. Right. Cause if you, if you have to go north, but you're going south, well, you're kind of fucked, but you don't need to know like exactly, I'm going to go north this much, turn this degree, go north. know, you just need to have like your vague sort of North star direction, I think in early stage startup and like, and make sure everybody, the team understands that and they're bought into it. it's like, know, that classic saying of like hire smart people and get the fuck out of their way. I think the nuance that's missing in that is it should be higher smart people, point them in the right direction. then get the fuck out of the way, right? I way too many early stage startups create this like negative hustle, negative like, like this like detachment issue where it's like, all right, I've hired you to lead marketing. You're a great marketer. Go figure it out. And like on the server, everyone goes, great, I'm being trusted to lead it. And then three months later, it's like, you're fired. You did a bad job because I wanted you to do this. And you're like, but you never told me you wanted to do this. Like, so you have to set those expectations and align on that direction, but you have to then let people operate within the, Is it north, is it north plus four degrees, north minus six degrees? You're gonna figure that out and you need to trust people to be able to figure that out within their respective areas.
Jolie15:28.858
That's a great point. How do you tell people what you want when you hear them?
Mac Reddin15:35.536
I would say the thing I'm trying to get better at all the time. I think it's, starts with, I have to know what I want before I can tell someone else what I want them to do. I think a lot of founders and early stage managers are not honest with themselves about what they want and the realistic expectations and how to get there. I'm always a fan of, kind of giving two goals to the team. I think you want to have a stretch goal, right? But you also want to have a goal that people can feel like. we achieve something. you're, you're constantly only stretching and your own team's only hitting 70 % of your goals, it's like, it's going to burn people out. So a lot of it is like, I try to balance it. It's like, Hey, we want to hit a million dollars in new revenue this quarter, but also like, we're actually aiming for 1.5, right? It's like, you have to have the balance of like, of that sort of stuff. I don't know. It's hard. It's I, I, I used to be the CEO who did the classic, like someone described to me once as, the CEO drive by shootings. where you drop in and you're like, whoa, did you see this thing company X did? That's cool. And people go, shit, is Max saying that he wants us to do that too? Like, no. So it's like, no, no, no, I'm sharing, cool. We don't have to do this right now. Like literally today I shared, someone actually like commented on LinkedIn with like an idea. They're like, CommStore, you should do this. And I just shared it on her channel. was like, this is a really cool idea. We should do this. But not right now. And that extra little piece is really important because other people go, the CEO says do this. Do I drop the thing I'm already doing? that's when you end up with these sorts of problems that lead to burnout and hustle culture and misaligned expectations is like, you just have to be, take whatever you think clear is and double it and then double it again. And then you're probably maybe being clear enough now.
Jolie17:25.208
I have dogs, I have my fiance working in the other room, so I just mute so can have you be the star of the show. That's awesome. I totally get that. And are y'all remote?
Mac Reddin17:27.428
Classic. good. Yeah, I've we've been fully remote from day one and I've worked remote for 14 years now.
Jolie17:52.262
That's amazing. So remote work is definitely second nature for you. What's your advice for staying sane and productive, especially for people try, excuse me, let me try that again. Remote work seems like second nature for you. What's your advice for staying sane and productive, especially for people still trying to figure it out?
Mac Reddin18:13.956
I think the biggest thing, especially in the last two or three years, is that forced pandemic remote work is not the same as intentional remote work. And I think, unfortunately, so many people, companies, managers, employees, first impressions of remote work in the last three years have been forced remote work. that means that they're like, see, it doesn't work. And it's like, well, no, because you tried to copy paste the office into the cloud and expect the things to work the same. It's a completely different way of working. that requires rethinking strategies and structures and systems from the ground up. And if you look at the companies that have done remote work well, that's what they've done. They've rethought from the ground up what does working and succeeding in a remote situation look like compared to an office situation. So very often when a company or a team is failing remote, it's probably because they have not been intentional about defining what remote work is for them and what it isn't. At the end of the day, I think for us, it's It's a lot of the same stuff I've already talked about, right? Set clear expectations, hire smart people, give them the right direction, treat them like adults, trust them to get the job done. I think a lot of people are like, how do you expect to build bonds and socialize and whatnot? it's, I think one of the biggest mistakes we've made in our work careers is expecting our social life to be tied to our work life, right? And yes, I'm not saying you can't be friends or shouldn't be friends with people at work, but to me, remote work opens up a whole world of like, you can do stuff outside of work, right? You can take that hour in the middle of the day. And once again, it kind of comes back to my like, get things done by Friday analogy of like, as long as you get stuff done, I don't care. Like it doesn't matter.
Jolie19:55.396
Yeah, for sure. I totally... Yes. Yes, definitely. I've been remote since...
Mac Reddin19:57.9
Easier said than done, bye.
Jolie20:12.644
May, no not May, March 2020. I was the last flight coming back from a trip to LaGuardia before the world shut down, March 15th.
Mac Reddin20:28.162
Yep, so you were forced remote versus intentional remote. Yeah.
Jolie20:30.884
Yep. But it's really opened up. I think I always say this, so not on podcasts, but just in general. The silver lining, there wasn't a silver lining for COVID. Millions of people died, obviously. But if there was a silver lining, I think it completely changed the way that we view work.
Mac Reddin20:53.892
Yeah, I once that that genie was out of the bottle, right? You know, companies are trying to do the RTO as much as they can. It doesn't mean like I will say in person work has a time and a place. And I think it's like, it's not is remote better or is in office better. I think it's more about is in office or is remote better for me. For me, I know that remote is better. So I have built and designed a team and a company around that. I mean, I need to only be intentional about hiring people where remote is better for them or good for There are some people where the office is better for them. And the only way that I can fuck it up is by misleading someone and hiring someone who actually shouldn't be working remote. Like they both work. There's a time and a place for either of them, but it's the trying to force a square peg into a round hole situation where you end up with mistakes, right? And it's like, it's fine. So if you want to start a company and be in person, do that, but do not hire someone who wants to be remote because you're, setting yourself up for failure and vice versa.
Jolie21:51.354
Yeah, definitely. back to your conquer the world plan. growing fast can bring on severe imposter syndrome. How have you dealt with that? And what would you say to someone stuck in him right now?
Mac Reddin21:56.484
You I would say I haven't dealt with it. just, I think it's just a thing. You just gotta power through it. think it's, as time goes on, it's... I think it only impacts me more, not less. In a weird way, it's sort of a sign that I'm doing things right. Like, once again, it comes back to that hustle culture, that feeling overwhelmed. It's like, if you're not a little bit feeling imposter syndrome, if you're not feeling a little bit overwhelmed, if you're not hustling a little bit, you're probably not pushing yourself enough. And that's fine, right? If I wanted to live a simpler life and not have those things, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But I know me and that I thrive at the best where I'm at like, I'm at like 120%. Not like I'm a little bit overwhelmed, I'm a little bit too stressed, I'm a little bit feeling imposter syndrome. That's like the zone that I thrive in. And I know that about myself. So I think it's more about learning to just like accept it and deal with it rather than trying to like learn how to get rid of it. At least for me, that's what works for me. And once again, it's like grain of salt. What works for everyone is different. You have to just like learn about yourself and listen to yourself and figure out what you want. and I think be honest with yourself, what you want. lot of people, you know, a classic with social media, right? We read about other people's successes and we fall into this trap. Like, I want that. But it's like, if you really pause and you really think like, is that what you want? Nine times out of 10, the answer is probably.
Jolie23:46.2
Yeah, yeah for sure.
Mac Reddin23:50.148
Nothing makes it easier. Imposter syndrome sucks. But it comes in waves. Some days I'm like, what the fuck? How? Why? Who let me be in charge of this company? What am I doing? I have no idea what I'm doing. Other days I'm like, I'm a genius. This is perfect. This is working so well. I'm on top of the world. And then the next day it's like back to the bottom. You're like, son of a bitch, why am I here? So it's like, just happens. It's like the, know it's cheesy, but that I think it's Mike Tyson quote of like, it's not about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you hit and get up and keep going. And it's like.
Jolie24:07.119
you
Mac Reddin24:18.53
shit's gonna happen, you're gonna have imposter syndrome, you're gonna have depression, you're gonna have good days, you're gonna have bad days, like anybody who tells you otherwise is full of shit, right? Like, I don't believe people when they tell me they have solved imposter syndrome. just, that person's either not pushing themselves or is full of bullshit, basically, is my approach or my stance on it.
Jolie24:39.772
No, I love that. And I, I definitely have a bit of that. And I think it's because I didn't study B2B marketing. I studied PR. Yeah, I guess no one did. Probably no one studied. Yeah.
Mac Reddin24:49.892
I didn't study anything. I have no idea. Like I'm just like, like unless you want to be an engineer or a scientist or a lawyer or something like nothing you learn in school is going to be what you're doing in your career. Like you learn on the job and like at the of the day, like the best employees are the ones who can iterate and adapt and learn and have a desire to learn. Not the ones who come in being like, I know everything. I've solved these problems before I can implement it. Like those people never work.
Jolie25:20.166
Yeah, yeah, for sure. think it's about what it's taught me. So I studied B2B marketing for about four years. Kind of kind of pieced everything together. So podcasts, blogs, courses, just you name it, I did it. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me. But I think a big part of it like that 120 % that you're talking about is like, if you're not pushing yourself, you're not growing and you're not learning. you're not a little bit stressed out, then you're kind of coasting.
Mac Reddin25:53.476
And it's like there's good stress and bad stress, right? I think it's about like really identifying like what is good stress for you versus bad stress for you. how do you like, you know, it's like some people love jumping on their planes. Great. That's stressful, but it's like fun, stressful. So go do more of that. Some people hate that. Great. Don't do that then. Like it's like, and that's why it's always like, it's so hard to like, know, especially internet and social media is like other people telling you what to do or what to hustle or what not to hustle. Like only you can make that decision for yourself. No boss, no team member, no influencer. can tell you what the right amount of hustle, the right amount of stress, the right amount of imposter syndrome is, you just gotta go figure it out.
Jolie26:30.33
Yeah, for sure. It's like, here's my here's how I got to a million dollar solopreneurship and these were all the steps and it's like super high level, super basic, not tactical.
Mac Reddin26:45.764
Yep. And it's always like, mean, humans do this too. Like we always, when we look back, we always underestimate outside impact and overestimate our own impact on things, right? It's like, you know, none of those steps was get lucky with timing. None of those steps is like, get lucky that my first customer happened to be this awesome person who gave me a case study that opened 50 more doors, right? It's like, a lot of it is timing and luck. It's, I've always loved, I can't remember who told this to me. Years ago, someone said that like, you know, succeeding at a startup is like winning the lottery. But to win the lottery, you have to buy a ticket. And buying a ticket is the hard work. Hard work does not guarantee success. There is a huge amount of luck and timing involved. But if you don't buy the ticket, if you don't put the work in, your chances are zero.
Jolie27:30.406
I love that. I might steal that analogy.
Mac Reddin27:33.154
I I stole it from someone else, so, you know, I can't tell you not to. It's free. It's out there. It's free for the world now.
Jolie27:39.862
sweet. Yeah, people listen to this like, I'll steal that. So pivoting a little bit, a lot of workplace mental health initiatives feel a little surface level. What do you think companies need to let me try it again. What do you think companies need to do differently to address burnout and stress?
Mac Reddin28:00.984
I think it of goes back to my analogy of like, you know, adding fun, right? It's like, don't decrease burnout by like adding a pizza party or adding a happy hour on top of something you're already doing. It's like, to me, culture, stress, these sorts of things, they're not stress, fun, whatever, they're not things that you bolt on. It's like, have to change the way you approach work rather than change what you add on top of work. And that means like, that doesn't mean you can't do those fun add-ons, right? There will be weeks where you just, Like me and my engineering team, spent three weeks in person in Prague last month, just full startup mode, like working 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., six days a week, just hardcore startup mode, right? Would I want to do that for a year? No, that's insane. That would probably kill us. Is there a time and a place for that? Yeah. Can I, you know, reward them with extra stuff on top of it to make up for that extra stuff they put in? Absolutely. But you can't expect to just like always push people too much and then... add stuff on top and expect that just to solve it. Like you can have those moments of sprinting, but it's like the classic cheesy saying of like, it's a marathon, not a sprint. So the only way to solve burnout and stress is to figure out what is the like healthy pace for your team to run at, right? It's like, what is the pace? Like maybe your team can run a two hour marathon. Great. Run a two hour marathon. Maybe your team's a four hour marathon team. Cool. You got to build an operationalize around that. Doesn't mean you can't have little sprints of running at a two hour pace during your four hour marathon, but you have to figure out like, what is that healthy baseline that your team can sustain? And then, know, be strategic about if and when you do push for sprints beyond that baseline.
Jolie29:42.778
Yeah, it's like, how far can you go? Like, what's your limit?
Mac Reddin29:45.668
Yeah. And then also it's about like, you know, being focusing a lot of times it's like teams feel like they're doing too much because they're doing a lot of shit they don't need to be doing. So it's like, okay, instead of sprinting on three things, can you just like really sprint on one thing? And like, and suddenly it's like, it's not that hard, right? It's like, I don't know about you, but I I've never seen a person who can sprint two directions at once. Doesn't, you I don't think I can split my body and go north and south at once, but I can certainly sprint for a short while going one direction.
Jolie30:12.794
has a very interesting visual splitting your body.
Mac Reddin30:15.789
Yeah, just like divide into two, two mini-macs going different directions. I mean, that'd be pretty cool, but I don't know a person that can do that as far as I know.
Jolie30:23.576
Yeah, that might be a hundred years from now at this point.
Mac Reddin30:27.14
Yeah, we'll see where evolution takes us.
Jolie30:30.94
That's awesome. So you touched upon this, but you seem to focus a lot on making work fun. How do you create that kind of culture without losing the focus that we just talked about? And what impact have you seen on your team?
Mac Reddin30:48.356
I know. think part of it stems from like, just, I like, I want to build the kind of company I want to work at. And why would I want to work at a company that's not fun to work at? So it's very much, think, a thing that just like starts from the top and then works its way down. it's a class case. Like if people see me having fun with work and not taking myself too seriously, that'll give them the, the, the subconscious. Okay. To do the same themselves. And it permeates out the organ. It just, I don't know. It becomes a thing. It's one of those things of like, I always never know how answer these sort of like culture questions because it's like, it's not a thing you can like write in a document. It's not a thing you can just like tell your team to do and be like, have more fun. All right, shit, sorry, Mack, we'll have more fun. like it comes from how you show up to work. then it's like, like you have to, have to, what's the word I'm looking for? Like you have to lead by example, right? It's like you have to show by doing it. can't, I think way too many companies and way too many leaders. basically do like, you know, do as I say, not as I do. Like they do like the parent thing and it's like, right? It's like, if I tell my team to have fun with work and then I'm always like being the not fun person at work, why the hell are they gonna have, like they're not gonna do it, right? They're gonna consciously or not map to what I do. I love this analogy from the community world of like, imagine you walk into a house for a party. You walk in, everyone's going fuck this and fuck that and fuck, and you're like, either you're gonna say, cool, you're gonna walk in and go, awesome, fuck this, fuck that, or you're go, whoa, not my kind of party. And you're going to walk out, right? It's like, like the way people are acting when you walk into a party, a team, a situation, you're either going to adapt to act that way or you're to leave. Like you're going to, you're going to be the cool, this team swears a lot. Great. I feel comfortable swearing here. We're going to, Whoa, that's not my kind of company. Not my kind of party. And you're not going to, you're not going to be there. It's like a very maybe dumb surface childish example, but, like existing behavior almost always beats out new page.
Jolie32:47.622
Definitely, and I think it's an interesting analogy because when we're kids and we watch what our parents do, kids are very perceptive. So if they tell you one thing, but they're doing another, it's a disconnect that doesn't work.
Mac Reddin33:04.514
Yeah. So you have to, you have to lead by example. That's the only way to do it. You know, it's like, if you want people to have more fun, have more fun yourself. If you want people to work harder, work harder yourself. Right. It's like, people are going to subconsciously adapt to what the person next to them is doing. Right. If like, if the person next to me, virtually or physically signs off at Slack at 3pm every day, subconsciously I'm going to be like, why am I staying till 5pm every day? Right. It's like, you have to be the example and set the example of what you want your team to be.
Jolie33:32.314
Yeah, for sure. That actually brings me to my next question. So the move toward more human, respectful marketing is refreshing. How do you think that shift affects not just the business, but also the mental health of your team?
Mac Reddin33:53.092
Good question. mean, it affects the businesses as of just like, no, it's like the kind of people buy from people at the end of the day, right? So even if Logo X buys your product, it's never actually Logo X, it's person or team at Logo X bought your product. So at the end of the day, like all marketing should always have been people first. And I think a lot of companies just kind of lost sight of that and B2B kind of moved away from that. As far as that impacts the team, think it... It helps in making things fun. makes things just more, don't know, it's easier for empathy to exist when things are done in a people fit first way. It's easier to understand your buyer and your market. It's easier for your team to make connections with them. And it's just like, don't know, like humans are social creatures. And I say that as a hardcore introvert, right? I like working remote because I'm like, I don't want to be surrounded by other people talking loudly. That's my fucking nightmare. I hate that shit. Like the sound of an office makes me want to like jump out of a window. but at the same time, like we're still social creatures, right? And like, still want to connect on a personal level, on a human level, right? It's like, you know, as much as people talk about like, it's so dumb being like, you know, the house, the weather day on the beginning of a sales call. Like, yeah, there's better ways to connect, but like, how often do you find yourself starting a call and you don't start with some little side conversation? It's almost impossible because it's, it's, it's just, we are naturally people first people. So why should our businesses not be people first businesses?
Jolie35:25.796
Yeah, definitely. think Mark and Nick from TAC do a great job at that.
Mac Reddin35:30.946
Yeah, they do a really good job of it. Their whole model around People First is great.
Jolie35:32.878
and yeah, for sure. And I read a few months ago, Near Bound. That was really interesting.
Mac Reddin35:41.602
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I it's like Nearbound, People First, our whole concept of GoToNetwork. They're all very similar, you know, core principles. They're based on something different, maybe like perspectives on the same coin. but it's fine. lot of this stuff, Nearbound, GoToNetwork, People First, like none of it's actually that new. In a weird way, it's actually the way business worked in a pre-internet era. The internet just made it somehow really easy to stop being People First. And then it got like over the top. And now we're like, over, like we're re-correcting back to what it was 20 years ago.
Jolie36:17.828
Yeah, my gosh, that's such a point. I think about that all the time. I'm like, we're going back to people. We're going back to connection. And especially after COVID, everyone wants to connect, whether that's in a community or on LinkedIn or, you know, insert platform here. It's, and I love, I love your go-to network strategy too. think yourself and TAC. com sorry, excuse me, we're gonna do this.
Mac Reddin36:48.418
No, no, it's me. It's all me. There is no team. It's just me. Give me all the credit. I'm just kidding. Don't do that.
Jolie36:53.483
No, just going to say, so I think CommSort, Tac, other companies like that, think you all do an amazing job at empowering people to have that sense of connection, which is hard. Yeah.
Mac Reddin37:09.86
Thank you. Yeah, it is hard. And it's also, I think, it's hard for companies to adopt it because it's a lot harder to measure. And it doesn't happen overnight. But it is one of my favorite analogies is this people-first mindset, it compounds over time. It builds on itself versus other sales and marketing initiatives. If you stop paying for ads, you stop getting results from ads. You stop paying someone to make cold calls, you stop getting results from cold calls. If you build a network and you pull people in around your business, guess what? You take a break for a week, they're still there.
Jolie37:48.888
it becomes a living breathing thing.
Mac Reddin37:51.148
Yeah, which also is what makes it harder to measure and understand, which is exactly what a lot of managers hate. So it's, it's an interesting, like sort of thing to try to balance. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't get rid of the other tactics as well. It's, know, it's, once again, it's a yes. And type type scenario. but yeah, I think a lot of sales and marketing are struggle to wrap their head around these more sort of like fuzzy indirect channels.
Jolie38:19.056
Yeah, it's like, it's on MQL? What?
Mac Reddin38:22.126
Yeah. Right? It's like, it's like either they buy or they don't. It's like, well, actually there's a lot of like in-between outcomes that happen too, but nobody ever tracks that in the series.
Jolie38:32.206
Yeah exactly. Going back to a little bit of work-life balance and mental health, this is actually our last question. So balancing ambition with real life, let me redo that, balancing ambition with real work-life balance isn't easy. How do you make it work and how do you help your team do the same?
Mac Reddin38:54.436
I don't know if I do, is the honest answer, as much as I would love to say. It's like, I... My answer to this is like kind of bullshit, I think. And I guess what I mean by that is like, I'm very well aware that I won in my own boss. So there's a different perspective on this than other people, right? It's like, my expectation of hard work for myself is not exactly the same as a team member, because the incentives are different, right? Like it's, and I shouldn't expect them to work like I do. Like I still want to push them and there's, you know, there's still like barriers I want to break through and stuff. For me, for work-life balance, because I get to work on a thing that I like working on and it's a problem I want to solve, for me, I don't feel like I have to consciously create this work-life balance. It's sort of, to me, like, when you have to go out of your way to balance work with life, to me, that's a sign that you're working on something you shouldn't be working on. Which, once again, I realize is easy for me to say when I'm my own boss versus, like, you people need to just, sometimes you just need a job. and it can't be the job you're passionate about, but it pays the bills. And yeah, you have to balance work and life, but I think everybody should be trying to find the thing that for them unlocks this ability for work and life just to be balanced by the very fact that you're working on the thing you wanna work on. Which once again, easier said than done, not everyone will find that, not everyone knows how to find that, not everybody knows what they're looking for. But for me, it's just like... If I, whenever I, for me, whenever I find that like work life natural balance, like getting out of whack, that's usually a sign for me that I'm like working on something I shouldn't be working
Jolie40:38.16
Yeah, I love that Mason Cosby was on the episode and we talked about purpose driven marketing and purpose driven, just having a purpose. And it's really tough to find and make money off it. So.
Mac Reddin40:54.934
It's the, what is it? Ikikagi, is that the Japanese term? Wait, I think I said that wrong. What is it? Ikikagi. So I said that, I had an extra syllable in there. But yeah, it's like the, it's that, that concept where I have the overlap of like what you love, what the world needs, what you're good at, what you can get paid for. Like if you can find that thing, for me, I have found that when I'm in that space, I don't have to think about work-life balance. It just...
Jolie40:59.46
I think so. Yeah. you
Mac Reddin41:23.83
It just is.
Jolie41:26.406
Yeah, it's just like a natural progression.
Mac Reddin41:26.85
Like it naturally balances itself out when you have found that.
Jolie41:32.378
Yeah, for sure. Sorry, I just got slack. Can you say that again?
Mac Reddin41:35.492
I was just saying, think when you find that moment where you found something at the intersection of all four of those, it naturally balances itself out. And then you don't have to go and seek work-life balance as an active thing. When you find yourself working for your next vacation, that's usually a sign that you're not working in the thing you're meant to be working in. once again, I am really, really well aware that not everybody can find that. It's easier said than done. But if you ever get the opportunity to go and find that thing or do that thing, You need to do it. End of story.
Jolie42:09.85
That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. Where can we find you? It's going to be in the show notes, but we'd to hear from you.
Mac Reddin42:16.13
Yeah, I I think I'm Mac Redden pretty much everywhere. I think on LinkedIn, I'm the only person with that name, which is, guess, a cool claim to fame of some sort. I'm the guy with a dinosaur in my name, so usually pretty easy to find. If you send me a message, I'll send you a DinoFac. It's a fair trade, I promise.
Jolie42:35.206
That's awesome. yeah, I think you sent me one at some point when we first started talking. Well, this was great. Thank you. No, it's awesome. Hey, it establishes connection, Well, this was great. Thank you so much.
Mac Reddin42:40.674
That's sort of, for better for worse, my thing. And it does. Thanks for having me.