Jolie Shapiro00:06.625
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Revenue Mind, a podcast where revenue leaders talk about all things mental health. I'm Julie, your host, and with us is Jonathan. Welcome, Jonathan.
Jonathan00:16.748
Hey, hey, thanks for having me.
Jolie Shapiro00:18.591
Yeah, of course. So before we dive in, what makes you you?
Jonathan00:24.44
Ooh, big broad question. What makes me me? You know, I don't know. I think the things that people would probably say on the outside of me would probably be that, you know, highly ambitious, highly creative, very curious, always looking for a new challenge, always looking to do something different. I've always got and always had some type of side hustle, I feel like. So I'm one of those people that naturally gets a little bit bored of things. And so I need some... constant challenge in life. And so my wife is Colombian and I didn't necessarily go with that intention to meet her in Colombia. But you know, it was not as easy as for example, finding someone in the US to to be with and so we had to go through an entire immigration process and I moved to Spain for a little bit at a point right before that and because I wanted to learn another language and so I thought that would be challenging and interesting and then I got my MBA and decided to do that at the same time because why not? I was ever in Spain, I could learn some stuff and also learn a language. I also started a company in Spain as well. And so I know, I've just always had this tendency to kind of pile on more more stuff to my list. certainly I've gotten better at reaching that limit, which I think we'll get into a little bit where you definitely hit that limit and you tap yourself out. so I know with that. that feels like. And I think I've gotten a little bit better over the years, hopefully, of trying to limit that. But yeah, I think those are some things that people would say about me as a probably a good way to position that. So.
Jolie Shapiro02:00.365
Awesome. Yeah, I was talking to Mac Rudden and he was saying if you're not 20 % stressed, then you're probably not following your passions or something along those lines and probably not doing it correctly. Yeah, just like.
Jonathan02:12.59
Oh, stress is a good thing. Yeah, you need a little bit of stress. I mean, if you don't have some level of stress, you're not pushing, you're not putting yourself in an uncomfortable enough position. And we only learn when we're a bit uncomfortable, right? And I'm sure at some point when you started this podcast, you were probably a bit uncomfortable, maybe even now, maybe every episode, who knows, right? And so, but the point is like that little bit of stress keeps you on edge, keeps you learning and all those good things. So.
Jolie Shapiro02:35.757
Yeah, for sure. When I first interviewed, my first interview was Chris Walker, and I was so nervous. So my podcast sounds like a robot. But and I didn't talk, I think I just asked questions. And then before I knew it, was over. And it's
Jonathan02:41.068
Yeah, nice. Yeah. That's funny. That's funny. Mm-hmm. Right, right. And how many have you done since, Chris?
Jolie Shapiro03:04.086
You are... this episode is number 12.
Jonathan03:09.262
12. And so feeling more relaxed since it certainly seems like you are, right?
Jolie Shapiro03:14.217
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's really helped with a lot. Definitely. So we're going to dig in now to the questions. Great. So revenue roles can feel always on. How do you flip the switch and truly unplug?
Jonathan03:34.738
Yeah, truly unplug. I mean, at end of the day, guess, you know, everyone will talk about work-life balance, right, and trying to find some way to separate the two, or if you've seen the series Severance, right, this kind of complete separation between work and life, which it just doesn't exist, right? I mean, they're all meshed together. And so, you know, sometimes I'm working a little bit on the weekends. Sometimes I'm not working as much during the week. You know, it just kind of depends on what's going on, but... I'm plugging for me is typically things like working out, going for a run, things like that are good just to get out into the world and take off the headphones, not have a podcast blaring in ears about someone saying something, but instead listen to some music, right? Or nothing, or just take them off completely and listen to kind of the air passing over your ears and stuff. And so things like that, spending time with family, kids, I've got two kids, I've got a three-year-old and then a... Now a nine or 10 month year old, nine month year old, believe. So, you know, they keep me busy. so a lot of time, like they create the immediate distraction away from unplugging, so to speak, even though there's really not to me a true, like I'm completely unplugged and not thinking about work. I think I'm always thinking about work at some level, but they certainly will pull you into all sorts of different directions to make sure that they are the front and center and they are the number one person getting all the attention. So if I zone out or get a little bit distracted to look at my phone at times, they'll pull me back to reality and say, no, no, no, no, no, I'm here. Let's do some stuff. So yeah, think that's, those are couple of things that I do. Lots of, lots of little things.
Jolie Shapiro05:10.571
that's great. So I have puppies, have have two dogs, and I don't have kids yet, but they'll they'll boop, they'll boop their nose at the door. But my dog is turned three, the one that I originally had until boop with a toy.
Jonathan05:16.579
Yeah. huh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jolie Shapiro05:32.865
I guess I'll take a five minute break to play. And then my mom, who obviously is kids, me and my brother, she said, when you have kids, you want five minutes and you just don't get it. You don't get those five minutes.
Jonathan05:38.222
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, yeah, you don't. I think the analogy for me would be my son, who's the nine month year old, walking across, because he's now crawling and everything. He'll crawl over and I've got these kind of French doors with glass in front of me right now. And he'll crawl and he'll like look at me and I can kind of see him like down in the corner. And then he'll put his hand up like this and he's got his hand, he's looking at me. And then of course, naturally he has to push the door and the door doesn't really lock that well. So it just opens right up. And then he just kind of crawls under and just sitting there looking at me, you know, sitting on his butt and he's like, well, so we're to play it. We're to do something. And then sometimes of course it's on calls. My wife's scrambling in, you sometimes in the camera and whatnot. God, you know, his name's Lucas, like, Lucas, come on, we got to get out of here. So yeah, but you know, I think those things make it kind of fun and authentic. It's even happened on podcasts before. I told our editor, not to even crop it out. Because it's like, you why? Like, why do we have to have this like perfect version of ourselves all the time? I mean, I think LinkedIn is very much that way. We're always presenting our best self. Everything's going well. We're growing. We're hiring. Everything's awesome when, because I think people like those stories more than they do the, you know, the stories of things not going well, clearly. But yeah, to your point, the dog thing is very much, very, not too far, not too distant from little babies, honestly, very similar.
Jolie Shapiro07:05.431
good to know because I'm 50-50 right now so really appreciate that. I'm gonna sidetrack, I'm gonna cut this out, but this is what's happening right now.
Jonathan07:08.908
Yeah. there you go. cute. Is that a what breed? What breed is he? Beautiful. I love German shepherds. Cute dogs. We used to have a Vesla, but we kind of got her at a time that was a little more difficult. And so she's actually with my uncle, so still in the family and everything like that, which is nice. And living a way better life because she has five acres to run around in. And I think we knew she was going to be an energetic dog and everything.
Jolie Shapiro07:18.081
She's a German Shepherd mix.
Jonathan07:42.146
knew what to expect, but it was the two kids plus Vesla without yard. And in the time farm that we were looking to have it, they kind of threw things in, but yeah, very cute. Love the German Shepherd.
Jolie Shapiro07:54.369
Thank you guys, she's a good one. Awesome, so I'm gonna cut that part out, because I was literally showing you my dog. But that's what Descript is for, yay! Cool, well thank you so much for that, expanding on that. Next question. We obsess over metrics, but what does real success look like for you, beyond the numbers?
Jonathan08:01.61
All good, all good, good. Heck yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it's a, it's a good question because it's so true. think too often we're looking at the dashboard and it's like number of conversions, number of pipeline, amount of revenue. And there's all these other little things that are happening behind the scenes that just never get brought into discussion ever, because a lot of times they're gray, they're more vague, they're hard to really put into a dashboard. But for me, those things are always like, it's like the little moments. mean, I can think of a time where this happens usually, you know, weekly or every other week where. you someone will give us a compliment, you know, and it's just a one-off thing. It's not results oriented. And they just say something they'll DM me usually on Slack and say, I just want to say like, you guys are an absolute pleasure to work with. you know, Robbie, who's one of our demand, your managers is just amazing. I'm so glad that you guys hired him and all this stuff. And, know, there's no number attached to it, but it's one of those like feel good metrics, so to speak, or qualitative things that you look at and you just know, okay, cool. Well, if those things are going right and people. ultimately like the people they're working with, right? And having a little bit of fun. Cause if not, then like, what's the point, right? I mean, we can sit here and do all this stuff with talking about numbers all day long, but if we don't like the person we're working with, not having a little bit of fun, then it immediately kind of takes everything away in my opinion. And so anyway, we try to build on a lot of personality and everything like that and have some fun at Omni, little competitions and all sorts of things like that. But I think it's those, there's like software qualitative things. And so that client example would be one, whole bunch of other things. It's just kind of the feeling, like how people feel, what are they saying? Uh, social media too is a good kind of indicator. Like what are people saying about us? You know, how are people interacting with us? Like, I think those things are meaningful as well, even though they don't translate into a conversion when someone says in DMs and say something like, man, I love your content. Uh, that, you know, last post resonated a lot with me. am exactly in the exact same position, you know, I'm not looking at that and saying, well, I think that's going to probably based off that comment, increase our revenue 23 % over the next quarter because I've modeled that and I've created some sense of this, you know, generating XYZ number. I'm just saying, Hey, at end of the day, it's great to hear those types of things, not just for the ego, but just like, Hey, there's some value there. Like someone it resonated with someone. That's great. You know, let's just figure out how to do more of those things. So I think, I think we need to bring those to service more often. And unfortunately they're not going to be in a dashboard. They're just going to have. be like, hey, let's do a roll up of all the good things our clients said about us, that we interacted with them on social media, or just not even clients, but just people in general that are interacting with our brand. I think those are the important things.
Jolie Shapiro10:52.471
Yeah, I love that. feel like in... me rephrase this, hold on, I love this script, thank god, because I can like pause, can think. Yeah, so I think in revenue and in mental health, and just across the board, maybe like Life Universe and everything, it's about how you make people feel.
Jonathan11:03.369
Thanks. yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's it's the number one thing. I mean, we first are thinking more emotionally than then we try to rationalize purchases. so emotions come first. And so sometimes we're just really assessing, like, do I like what this person is saying? Do I like how they approach things? Are they like me? Because we tend to flock together, right? It's kind of the whole idea with social proof with, you know, Dale Carnegie and for even the guy's name, some reason off the top of my head, but it'll come to me, the guy who wrote influence for some reason, his name's not coming to mind right now. Very famous guys written a bunch of books, but at any rate, it'll come back to me at some point here. But yeah, that's why those things are so important. You know, you just can't, you can't overlook them and you can't say, Hey, like, well, the dashboard says X now at the end of the day, one would say as a CEO or co-founder or whatever that, yeah, I mean, All those things are great, but if we aren't seeing the right numbers in the dashboard too, well, then there's a problem. And I would agree with that. Right. And you got to have a little bit of both. mean, one thing, if everyone sent all these nice things about you and no one's buying from you or, um, you know, renewing with you and all these other things like that. But usually those, the by-product of those types of conversations is revenue is pipeline is convergence. People that want value or trust you and your brand to do X, Y, Z for them. And so I think all of these things are just little leading indicators that. need to get filtered up more. but yeah, it's interesting.
Jolie Shapiro12:39.157
I love that. So pivoting back to your two kids, how has fatherhood flipped your idea of work-life balance upside down?
Jonathan12:40.364
Yeah. Mm. Hmm. Yeah, it's, it's definitely changed a lot. mean, yeah, I think the big thing for me, and for us, my wife too, I because she she's right now staying home with the kids full time. think the thing that's been incredibly tough is that you just realize how little time you have to get the same amount of stuff done. I mean, it's just drastic. For example, You know, I'll usually wake up in the middle of the night. I'll usually sleep with my daughter because she usually wakes up. She's having nightmares, um, a little bit more frequently right now. So I usually sleep with her most nights. And when I wake up, she usually wakes up around six or six 30. And so even if I wanted to wake up earlier, sometimes it's tough cause I'm tired of, you know, woken up a couple of times in the middle of the night. And so it's six or six 30 in the morning and she's up, she wants to do some stuff and we don't really want to turn on the TV and just kind of let her zone out. So we want to play and do things like that. So the morning hours are kind of gone and I used to do a lot of work and prep in the mornings to get the day ready. And that time just kind of gone away, which one could say maybe it's a good thing, you know, and to have some, guess, balance quote unquote. But yeah, I think that's the biggest thing. And same thing with the nights, right? mean, night routines, you know, usually end the day around, you know, four or five or sometimes earlier, but, you know, usually around there. And my wife's usually, you know, stressed out, she's tired, you know, she wants some help and all those things. And it's kind of like, you know, panic, we got to cook dinner, we got to get that on, we got to get the kids fed, we got to bathe them, we got to get them to sleep. And then it's like 7.30 or eight, and you're tired and you want a little bit of downtime, just kind of zone out yourself. But then at the same time, get a couple things done. And so I've had to kind of shift my schedule from being more mornings, like really early in the morning doing things to late night doing some things while the kids are sleeping. And then of course, just making more time during the day to kind of block out my calendar and say, Hey, these are hold times. And again, back to the whole no meeting thing from nine to 11, I don't take meetings unless it's an emergency or they're global. And I make an exception, but nine, 90 % of them, just quote block on my calendar. Don't meet anyone. And then that kind of gives me back some of that time that I would prep in the morning, but just, I just do it at a different hour. So I think it's the biggest thing to change. think every parent would agree with that. I mean, in terms of kids, it's just a huge responsibility. There's just a lot more time that needs to be dedicated towards them, especially if you want to do it quote unquote right. So.
Jolie Shapiro15:19.969
Yeah, for sure. What comes to mind for me is balance. am very all or nothing. either, I'll just spend seven days a week, walk my dog six miles, or I might be on the couch. And there was actually a post about that on LinkedIn months ago. was like, God, that's so good. He basically said his perfect day.
Jonathan15:24.707
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Jolie Shapiro15:48.269
like 430 a.m., you know, all that jazz, all the perfect like morning set up and at night I, you know, butterflies come out like, just crazy stuff. And then at the end he had, well, that's not realistic and that's not life and that's not true. And there are so many variables, including kids, including puppies, including, you know, whatever that comp-
Jonathan15:53.05
yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jolie Shapiro16:14.701
completely changed that and there's no, there's, I don't think there's a thing like a perfect day. I think we could do it.
Jonathan16:21.004
No, I totally agree with that too. There's not a perfect day. I mean, you know, we're changing preschools right now. Well, that requires doing tours and change your schedule to go visit preschools to see if they're good or they're bad, or you like them and what the curriculum is and all of those things. And so that wasn't part of the plan. Typically we don't do that. We go to the preschool we've always gone to, but now we're looking at other ones for various reasons. And so, yeah, I think you got to be flexible. I think that goes back to the whole work flight balance thing really not being a reality. I think it just kind of all meshes together. the end of the day. mean, you've got it all happening kind of at the same time. And like I tell my team all the time, I mean, at the end of the day, it's really not about the hours you work or when you work, although we do generally work somewhat normal hours. It's really the end of the day, just about results. And like, are we getting stuff done? And if you can get it done more efficiently and you can do it really quick, well, cool, you know, go enjoy the afternoon, you know, but if it's something that takes a little bit longer than, put in a couple more extra hours, get it done, make it, make it good, make sure the client's happy or whoever's doing what they need to do. those are the important things. So yeah, it's, yeah, you got to be flexible in life. Life is, it'd be nice if you could plan that everything, wouldn't it? I mean, it's like spreadsheet math and marketing world. You can say exactly what the CPCs and conversion rates and yada, yada, yada, and put it all in your little spreadsheet and things can go completely sideways on you and you've got to change plans.
Jolie Shapiro17:42.313
Exactly, I wasn't ignoring, was rewriting my question. So speaking of no meeting Fridays, how do you make them meaningful for your team?
Jonathan17:46.232
Damn. Yeah, that's an interesting question. mean, meaningful for the team. I mean, at end of the day, like, I guess what's the history of why we even did them? I kind of was alluding to it a little bit earlier, I think before we started recording. But the, um, the whole reason they originally came up was because people were really burnt out and more stressed, I'd say during the week when there were a lot of client meetings and slacks and all sorts of things that are going on. And so the idea was to kind of in internal meetings, of course, too, which we have very few of, but, you know, just wanted to create a day where like none of that existed. We don't do client meetings on Fridays. We don't do any planned internal meetings. If you want to talk to someone internally, like go for it. All good. It's up to you. but there's no planned internal meeting. And, we try to just keep kind of as a minimum, honestly, of just general chatter as well on Slack and just use it as like a heads down time, or you know what, just taking a little bit easier. You know, on Friday, it's okay to take it easy. don't need to be hustling and going crazy 24 seven. And so I think the meaning I guess came from the idea of people feeling a little more stressed and burned out during the weeks so that they could kind of regain and feel good going into the weekend a little bit and have a day to recover if you will. And so that, that that's something we've held to literally from, I don't even know. It was probably the first few months of the company being around. I mean, this is way back when Jason and I were just running the company and we had no employees or anything like that. And we just said, Hey, you know, we don't want to do that. And so we kind of thought selfishly a little bit, honestly, of ourselves and said, like, I don't know, do we want to have that type of environment for even us? And, uh, and the answer was no. And then once we of course had hired employees and it like, I don't want that environment for them either. Like, I don't want them feeling that way. And, um, so anyway, I think that's the idea with it. And so everyone ultimately, you know, uses that time that way they want to use it on every Friday and pushes back on clients when they want the time. And like we were saying earlier, I mean, sometimes people get angry about that. Like, you don't do meetings on Fridays? know, like what's wrong with you? You know, why? Like we do meetings on Fridays. We need to meet. This is important. And I think you just have to hold your ground on those things. I mean, there's really not too much that's going to burn down to the ground in a day, you know, over the weekend. And so, you know, most things can wait and are not that urgent. It's just that people are stressed. They got a lot of pressure. And so you just got to, you got to hold, hold, hold your guns on those types of things, but. Yeah, I think that's how we extract the meaning out of No Meaning Fridays.
Jolie Shapiro20:22.797
It's awesome, it sounds like you've built a really nurturing culture.
Jonathan20:27.842
I hope so. mean, you know, we try to ask all the time. I always wonder if I'm getting straight answers on those things, but I guess I'd say we have a very low churn rate in terms of employees. So I guess that would be the only indicator aside from like asking people how they feel and how they're doing and all that good stuff that we know. But yeah, I think so. I mean, lead with respect. know, Jason have always been kind of more like lead from the trenches versus lead from the ivory tower. If that's an analogy I just created, but certainly from the trenches is kind of our approach to. just about everything we do because at end of the day, it's like, you know, if you're not willing to get your hands dirty, then why should they, you know, that's the way I feel about it. You know, I just have always hated the, you know, manager that's not willing to get in there with you and help you out, you know, when you need it. And so I think that type of environment, you know, passes not only from us, but also through the other team, right? So we're gonna have a demand manager who's in the same position. Guess what? If I'm echoing that same thing, like I'm leading in the trenches, I'm going to get in, I'm going to help you. That person's going to do the same thing to say one of the paid media managers. Hey, I'm struggling here. I need some help. Guess what? They're used to the way that Jason and I have kind of set the, you know, culture, set the rhythm of the company. Now they're going to do that same thing or hopefully, right.
Jolie Shapiro21:42.145
That's great. And I think, I mean, I'm not there yet. I'm still director level, but I think when you get to a certain point, if you step out of the trenches, it also hurts you because you lose your skills.
Jonathan21:56.422
Yeah. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. I they, got to be deadly. Uh, you know, I mean, especially when you're, mean, not all founders are creating content on LinkedIn, but I mean, for me, I create a lot of content on LinkedIn as you know all too well. And so to do that requires me having the stories and getting a little bit dirty sometimes to even say anything. If I didn't do that, then I'd probably have to talk about, you know, something different, right? Running and growing a business, hiring employees, or just something different than maybe didn't have a direct dotted line back to the company and what we do. But. to be able to write content that's more SME type of content, subject matter expert, you gotta get in there and do it. And so I think unfortunately there's some leaders and managers out there that have gotten a little bit too removed from that stuff that probably should kind of take a look at getting back into it, which is tough for some. I do get there's some reasons why, especially once you get to a certain size where you just can't legitimately. jump into all these things. But I do think the direct reports, at least even in a really big organization, you can still jump in and lead in the trenches with your direct reports. Now, maybe their reports and their reports and so on and so on down the chain, not going to be that likely. You only get so much time in the day. But that type of thing, people respect that a lot. I know I did when my managers in the past did that type of thing.
Jolie Shapiro23:13.281
Yeah, for sure. You do that. There are a few other influencers I would talk to. Adam from Fiddler does a great job at the founder led, here's how I'm building it. And I think it's really good for the brand. It's also good for your personal brand. It's just like a whole spectrum of greatness.
Jonathan23:22.36
So yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, his works really well because he is like literally I don't know how big they are now, but yeah, he is in the trenches building that thing every day. And so, yeah, he's he's done a great job just I mean, just doing what I think everyone loves is they just they want to they want to be on the journey with you and they want to understand, you know, what you're working on, what you're doing, how it's going. And they want the kind of transparent version of how things are going, not like the fluffy, you know, I type some words that a chat GPT and expand it on what I wanted to say. You know, they just want to know like, Hey, Adam, like, what's your deal, man? What's your P of E? How are you approaching this? And I think he, he talks about a lot of the wins mostly, but he also talks about some of the things that are not going so well, if I remember correctly, I don't see all of his posts, but I definitely see some. And so, uh, yeah, I think that type of thing is great. You know, anything that's, I mean, I think there's right now just a huge attack on just trust and authenticity and everything right now in general. mean, there's just so much stuff out there that click baities, spammy, we're getting inundated with more in-mails and cold calls and text messages now, especially me. And it's just like, I don't know, where are the places you go to just get a good, honest opinion and assessment of like, is this good? Is it not? What do think I should do? And I think, know, communities are certainly one answer to that. But I also think, you know, just tailoring the type of people you engage with on LinkedIn versus like, you know, doom scrolling the feed. is the way to do it. And use tools where you can say, I want to follow Adam or Alex or whoever. I want all these people on my feed. when they say something, I want to be there and read what they have to say because I know that they're just a genuine and honest person. Or even I've talked to them outside of LinkedIn.
Jolie Shapiro25:15.777
Yeah, that's great. Actually do exactly that. have a I signed up for Alex's Alex Boyd's aware platform and it is. It's amazing. Have you do you use it to?
Jonathan25:24.784
there go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's great. It's great. Yeah, yeah, I was actually I was on shield for a while and I think it was the one thing that they had that shield didn't that interested me at the time, if I remember correctly, this has been a while now because I've been using it for a bit was custom lists and aware. So to the exact thing that we're just talking about right now, it was like, hey, and replies, I think was the other thing as well. So you basically create a you know, dynamic list of all the people that you like, you follow your friends with, whatever it may be. And then it curates those posts. And so whether they post in the last day, two days, three days or whatever, you've got a whole list of those people so you can engage with them. So you're not just, you know, looking at the feed and whatever the algorithms pushing your way, which. Out of these days, I feel like, you know, the only things you should be doing are posting memes and, know, crazy, like, you know. complex workflows and guides to doing like clay workflows or something. I don't know. It's interesting what gets trendy on LinkedIn these days or something very broad. again, it's not about likes and engagement, right? It's about getting the right people, the right traffic, the right relationships because in B2B all these can be worth tens of thousands of dollars to you and also the company in terms of value.
Jolie Shapiro26:47.021
Yeah, for sure. I think I joked in a comment. was like, I get 500 impressions. It's a good day. It's a solid day.
Jonathan26:53.634
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think, you know, I think the new rule, my rule of thumb on that is to add to that is looking at engagement rate more than the number of impressions or the number of likes, the number of comments. It's more the quality of comments and it's more the engagement rate at the end of the day, because, you know, we all know that reach has, it's gone down a bit significantly for all sorts of reasons. mean, you know, one, a lot of people poured more ad dollars from X over to LinkedIn back when Elon took it over. Thought Leader ads were also launched last year, which also took up more inventory spots. A lot of people are spending more money there. And then you just have more people that are posting, you know, thanks to all the LinkedIn influencers that are telling everyone to post, post, post, post, post. No one's doing it. So thanks, thanks guys for that. But no, I think it's a good thing overall. mean, you know, getting more people active and whatnot, it's better for the platform. And so more conversations of higher quality. So yeah, I love aware back to your points. It's cool. It's great tool.
Jolie Shapiro27:52.641
Yeah, awesome. Well, I love this tangent. I usually don't get to nerd out on marketing on this podcast. So thank you. We're gonna turn back though.
Jonathan27:58.168
Yeah.
Jolie Shapiro28:05.033
All right. I'm going to rephrase that because it sounds kind of bitchy. I'm going to, I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to rephrase that. All right. So just getting back to Medzl-Hoffman revenue, you mentioned signs of burnout in your company. Were they more subtle or were they glaring and what signs did you see?
Jonathan28:12.128
Nah, think you sound great. All good. Mm. It's interesting that there are almost never glaring issues until you really dig deep and ask a couple of follow-up questions. I'll give you an example. The first sign is that things are not getting done that should have been done. So we're looking at things that have overdue dates, right? In a project management tool, that would be one very easy, just programmatic way to look at it. Because if things are not getting done, it usually means... Not in all cases, but in a lot of cases, it means that someone has got too much on their plate and they're just not able to get to it in time. So things are getting delayed. The other is we do one-on-ones with all employees every two weeks. So not too, too often where we're talking all the time, because we do a lot of huddles and other things like that. So we're kind of honestly always having the conversations of how you feel and how you're doing, what are you struggling with, what can I help out with? Is anyone else dropping the ball? Not to point fingers, but to keep us all accountable. You know, I'm not interested in accusing anyone, but I am interested in knowing if someone's not doing their job or not pulling their weight, that's making it harder for you. Because sometimes it's an issue of there's someone on the team that is just not doing as good of a job as they could be doing. And therefore that's putting more weight, AKA leading to burnout for the person that's got to own that additional responsibility. So I think a lot of that happens too, but I think all that happens through just like. good old fashioned conversations like we're having right now, you know, and asking some very basic questions and making sure, biggest thing that I see, you know, honestly, so many conversations are superficial, right? And you even shared something that was pretty vulnerable even before we got recording on this, which I won't repeat, but, know, I think the, the difference between you sharing that and what most people would say is that most people might say, I'm so sorry to hear that, you know, and then they might just start talking about themselves or move on. And then I think there are some people out there that would say, well, what do you mean? Well, tell me more or what are some of those things that are not so bad? And I think that's where like the cool opportunity is. Cause then like, you know, we get to know each other better. We, it means I'm actually listening to you and I'm not just thinking about something else. I'm trying to get to the next topic and say things true for employees too, with burnout, you know, then, then you're saying, Hey, great. Like Robbie or Jackson or whoever it is on our team. You know, they might say, no, no, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. Don't worry about it. It's nothing. And I'm like, no, like, tell me like what's going on. Like, you know, and I might even do something. Um, this is an interesting little, I know if I'd call it a hack because I hate the word hack, but something that's, opens up the conversation a little bit more. And I'm sure you've done this too, but situations where I might be with someone and I know they're not really wanting for some reason to share everything that's going on, but I can tell they're stressed out about something. And I might just share like a little like quick thing that I'm going through. Like. you know, hey, like, if you're stressed, like, I get it. Like, I'll tell you, the other day, I was working with this client, they were chewing my head off about XYZ thing. And I had to sit here and like take a minute to collect myself before I actually came back to them. And that stuff is difficult, right? And so, you know, an example of share something that you're going through that's a little bit stressful and a little bit vulnerable, so that then they can actually say, all right, well, I've got the space to actually share how I'm really feeling here. Because I think sometimes the whole employee and manager thing, I think creates this weird middle layer of not being as honest as I think you really would be. And so I always try and Jason does too. We try to break that down and say, there's no middle layer. We're just two people, two humans talking. Forget that like, you know, there's any type of hierarchy, which there really isn't a lot at OmniLive because we're still pretty small. And let's just have a chat, you know? And I think those things do help to, you know, address the burnout issues and make sure that we kind of, you know. handle them if there is an issue.
Jolie Shapiro32:17.869
And it's funny because when we had, right before we started recording, I noticed that you asked that follow-up question. And I was really impressed. Because the log really, sorry. But that was cool. I like that. Yeah, and I'm sure you bring that to your leadership style. that's, or it sounds like you bring that to your leadership style.
Jonathan32:26.648
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. Try to, I won't say I'm perfect. I mean, no one's perfect with anything, but you know, certainly try to, try to make sure that the followups are there. mean, sometimes you get rushed and you're in a hurry and you just can't, you know, operate in the same way when you have the time. But I think, you know, we should all try to do that. I mean, it's the good old like, Hey, how are you? I'm good. You? Good. All right. Moving on. I'll even do something kind of funny. Some people probably don't like this, honestly, but I know. do cause it's kind of funny. But I'll say like, you know, how was your weekend? If it was much. right? Yesterday was Monday. How was your weekend? And I did this with a client the other day and they're like, yeah, good. You know, normal. We didn't really do much. It's like, well, you're watching new shows. Severance came out last Friday, season two. Did you watch it by chance? And I'll just try to pick on something that's very specific to get into the weeds on something. Cause I think everyone naturally just doesn't, I mean, I don't know. How was your weekends? A very broad question. So you could say it's a bad question, but But I think sometimes you just offer up like, no, I'm actually really legit interested in what you did this weekend. Like, and just like, not a weird way, just like, hey, what'd you do? Like, did you go hiking? Did you go bowling? Did you do something kind of fun and different? Like, I don't know. I mean, like, let's have a little fun with this. Like, we don't need to just jump into the programmatic nature of this meeting and make this all businessy, right? And so I think those little things help. So.
Jolie Shapiro34:00.895
Yeah, for sure. And something that I've been thinking about a lot since COVID, it's been a couple years now, but I think people are really craving connection. just across the board.
Jonathan34:20.034
A hundred percent. think we all are. I mean, you know, we're stuck in our houses. A lot of us, most of us are working remote. Probably seeing friends less, traveling less. I mean, certainly I know I am in that habit ever since really even before COVID, but certainly since COVID. And I think it's been a harder habit to kick, which is why I think there's a lot of smaller events that are kind of coming back and people are wanting to get back out there and meet people. I was just an event actually this last week in DC with the Nevada team. Natalie and team. which is really fun. Some also sad news at the same time, unfortunately, in DC, the airline crash. But yeah, anyway, think getting out there, just like, you know, being around people and stuff like that is so important. And I don't do it enough, I'll say it's one thing I do struggle with. I've gotten in a very bad habit of kind of doing my thing and just, you know, family, as you know, takes up a lot of time. And so I think it's just been a know, when I've got the opportunity, I can go in and do this thing or travel here. Like I just know that's time away from family, time away from my wife a little bit. And so I've just kind of made them a little bit more of the priority versus traveling all around trying to meet people. But I think you're right. I think people are, are, are craving that a lot more and not just this, you know, like this is fine. This is great. It's virtual. think we're all doing this. Like, mean, where this isn't going to go away, but if you can, you know, augment that with a little bit of time, we're like, Hey, cool. Like, are you going to be in town in DC? Like the next three months, like just hit people up next time you're traveling around. put it on LinkedIn, hey, I'm gonna be here if anyone's around, like love to meet, or if there's some people you know that are there, like just go meet them, like go have coffee, you know.
Jolie Shapiro35:54.349
That's great. I love that. I'm just pausing for a sec, I'm figuring out which question to ask you. That'll like flow. I usually say, just pivoting a little bit. Go ahead and let it look completely unrelated.
Jonathan36:00.322
Yeah, yeah, all good, all good. Yeah. You know who Griffin on our team, you would have loved Griffin on our team. He's not with us, unfortunately anymore. went on to start a food truck business, but we used to, we used to give him a lot, a hard time because he was like the ultimate hard segue guy. And you know, he'd be talking about the week and all of a sudden, all right, so let's talk about the CPL last week. It's down 23 % and he did it kind of in a really funny, self-deprecating way that everyone just loved, loved him for that. So.
Jolie Shapiro36:14.975
okay. Yeah That's awesome. Yeah, it's like, for sure. What is it? I'll be taught. have like, I don't have ADHD, but I have a lot of features. So am I Beyonce's ADHD? This is off record. I gonna cut this out. But my fiance has ADHD. So we'll be like, I don't know what the topics will be. I'm like, what do got for dinner? And then
Jonathan36:37.038
It's a hard segue as you know. I think sometimes you lean into it, right?
Jolie Shapiro37:05.445
by the way, or he'll like be talking about something. I'll completely ignore it and then I'll switch topics. But I feel like that's just our culture. feel like, you know, it's just we're so
Jonathan37:12.344
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yep.
Jolie Shapiro37:19.861
Maybe I'll put this in there. But we have so many, there's so much going on. There's so much stimuli that it's constantly thinking and I like it's honestly created a lot of ADHD, even if you don't necessarily have the diagnosis. sorry, go ahead.
Jonathan37:31.694
Well, there's way more. yeah. yeah. Don't interrupt you. Yeah, there's way more. I mean, you think about, you know, our parents and whatnot. I mean, we're talking, you know, pre-internet. Like, you didn't know, certainly in a fast manner, what was even happening in Israel or China or any country around the world. And now there is a pressure to an extent, especially in D.C., to understand, like, globally, like, what's happening on in the world. Like, that's a lot to keep up with. And I've honestly given up. I mean, I try to... Fall the news as best I can, but I think you need to pick your topics and pick your areas that you're going to spend time reading. And then the rest of it is just, you just can't know it all. There's too much. And then of course you've got, you know, the amount of ads that are out there. You've got the amount of people posting on various different social media, Tik Tok, get Instagram, you got LinkedIn, you got all these people saying tons of stuff. mean, more content's being produced every single day. There's some crazy stat. I forget the number, but it was something just like nuts about the amount of. terabytes, petabytes or something like that of content being generated, not just from B2B, but just by brands in general. And it's just like, no one has the time to read all this stuff. I mean, it's just so much noise. just show me something good that I can get a read that's reliable, that I trust. And so I think sometimes it just requires more digging, unfortunately. You just need to, you pick your media sources, you pick your articles, you pick your people that you follow. And then, don't know, the rest, maybe you kind of open up. a little bit of time to someone here and there, but the rest of it you gotta ignore and just move on.
Jolie Shapiro39:01.911
Yeah, for sure. One of my rituals in the morning, I have my coffee, sit on my couch, and I'll read something called 1440, which is a, have you heard of it? It's a digest.
Jonathan39:06.871
Hmm. yeah. I have heard of it. haven't really, I really dug in and read much of it, but yeah.
Jolie Shapiro39:19.713
Yeah, that's awesome.
Jonathan39:20.046
What do you like about it?
Jolie Shapiro39:22.573
I like that it goes by topic. It'll have like finance, politics, and world affairs. And then all these awesome articles at the end. Actually, speaking of marketing, so what I'll do is only occasionally, I don't do it all the time, but there'll be this awesome article. Like for example, there was this quest love 50 years of SNL.
Jonathan39:30.744
Yeah.
Jolie Shapiro39:48.853
which is a really cool video, not sure if you've seen it, but it's awesome. I'll send it to you. But I sent it to my entire list. So, or my entire context. So it's like that nurturing, hey, I'm still thinking about you. Yeah, so it's funny, I apply marketing to my personal life.
Jonathan39:50.934
No, no, I haven't. Yep. Totally. I think that's great. think it's great. Yeah, it's similar to me. I'd love to take a look. Yeah, I feel like I've gotten so out of the know with a lot of various things, especially football and sports and whatnot. I wouldn't say I'm like the biggest sports fan in general. I mean, I enjoy watching them in a social environment, but I'm not one to spend my whole Sunday watching football or anything like that, nor do I really have the time, which is the other thing. I mean, like my kids don't want to watch football. They're too young. And so we just do other things. And so I was like, who's playing in the Super Bowl? I don't even know. It's in a week. It's this weekend, think, right? Or somebody's in the ninth. I don't even know who's playing. And then I finally said to Google it. I oh yeah, right. Yeah, the Eagles got it. Yeah, okay. That'll hopefully be a good game.
Jolie Shapiro40:50.062
Yeah, Eagles versus the Chiefs and of course, Tay-Tay is gonna be there. oh, sorry, not Tay-Tay. That's a singing of Timothee Chalamet. I meant Taylor Swift. Yeah, because has this living like flasher.
Jonathan40:52.63
Yep. Easy. OK. Cool. Taylor. right. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So naturally. yeah. yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think the chiefs are lucky to have Taylor Swift, even though she's not, you know, directly assisting. I don't think, maybe I'm not a loop there too, but just the relationship itself is enough for them to get, I'm sure all the publicity in the world. So.
Jolie Shapiro41:22.465
think she made them hundreds of thousands of dollars, that program. There was something like that.
Jonathan41:26.126
Easy. It seems like it's got to be more than that, but I'm sure it's a lot. mean, she just has so much star power. So big. I mean, her audience is huge. So, I mean, anytime she does anything, everyone's looking. So.
Jolie Shapiro41:40.973
Yeah, seriously. Well, this is one of more conversational podcasts I've had. Usually I'm like very, so I'm trying to figure out a question. Okay, so there are a couple questions left. We can narrow it down. I have another recording in about five minutes. So I'm gonna let's pick like maybe two. Yeah, let's see what I like. We talked about T-Swift. Let's see if we can, let's see if we can.
Jonathan42:00.578
Yeah, yeah. You drive it. What do you feel like?
Jolie Shapiro42:10.593
tie Taylor Swift to a question. Let's see. Actually, I like this one.
Jonathan42:14.914
Yeah.
Jolie Shapiro42:29.101
So something I'm really curious about, and I don't know if I've asked this in a podcast that we love to hear you take, if you could shatter one big myth about mental health and high pressure roles, what would it be and why does it persist? Oh shit, oh no, we're good. I paused, sorry. I paused the podcast by accident. Let me mute myself.
Jonathan42:51.692
cool. Cool. Cool. so we're good. We're back. Okay. one big thing from a mental health perspective, I mean, I think it comes back to what I said before. I mean, I think it's, I do a couple of things. I mean, so it's really not one so hard to narrow down. I mean, exercise for me would be the number one, I think is the ultimate thing. So I try to work out, I don't know, four or five times a week if I can. if we're sick or my kids are sick or something happens occasionally I get off the rocker. But four to five times usually running, weightlifting, I've been thinking about getting even into jujitsu a little bit just to do something different that I've never done before. And so, and to have some type of community as well, because the gym is a little bit more, go in and do your thing, go out. But I do feel like exercise is something that is just a great way to release endorphins and... You know, get out there, stretch your legs, be out there with people, not behind a computer, at a desk, or running out of nature, whatever it may be, is probably one of the bigger things that I think has certainly helped me. But outside of that, I don't know. mean, one thing, I don't know. I you know, I try to take breaks during the day. You know, I think there's the old general lesson of, every hour, take about a 10-minute break or so, especially for your eyes. try to look out something out of your window, get some distance on it. And so I just try to get up and walk around, stretch my legs. also occasionally will do either pushups or squats and stuff like that during the day. And so just like a good way, like even if you don't have time for the gym, you can still just literally step out from away your office, get some space and like do something kind of physical so that you can get your kind of brain going. Cause occasionally I'll get I mean, incredibly cold just sitting. I mean, it just happens because your body's not moving. And so you'll sit there like all day and it's been really cold outside. Our house is not that cold, but I mean, you you sit down long enough and you're in a t-shirt and it starts getting cold. And so, so I think that's why it's nice reminder to say, Hey, you know, I'm going to do something to actually warm myself up. But those are probably the biggest things. mean, there's probably some others that I can think about, but, you know, reading, taking breaks, exercising, nothing fancy, nothing fancy.
Jolie Shapiro45:09.495
Yeah, for sure. What I got from that is I think that the big myth is that you have to work from seven to midnight to succeed and to go from zero to million ARR in six months and be funded by XYZ advisor, investor, or whatever, know, whatever the case is.
Jonathan45:24.12
Yeah, yeah.
Jolie Shapiro45:38.411
You just have to completely burn yourself out. But I think to your point, having that consistency and
Jonathan45:41.422
Hmm.
Jolie Shapiro45:50.921
Ex... no let me rephrase that. Having that consistency and taking care of yourself is really, the key.
Jonathan45:59.628
Yeah, I think one thing I've always said is, you do have to be a little bit selfish. You have to take care of yourself first from a mental perspective and from a physical perspective before you can really help others. I mean, I've always said that to my team. And if you don't, you're not mentally right and ready, or you physically just don't feel well and you're sick or something's going on, like you just need to go take a couple of days, go get better and come back because you're not doing anyone good. And all that's going to happen is you're going to get more sick or more stressed out or whatever the you know, the emotional reaction is. so, yeah, you just need to, I think, you know, the hustle environment, I think is a really dangerous one. I mean, I don't know, know, Gary Vee is probably the biggest proponent of the hustle movement. And I think there is a case for working hard. And sometimes you do need to work some more hours. I mean, depending on what you're trying to achieve and in what timeframe, right? You know, but I do think you got to listen to your body. And so at the same time, like if you're reaching that limit, and I know I've, I put myself, I think we were talking about this before. I've reached that limit many times. And so know what it's like. I mean, I feel this like intense amount of stress during the day. Sometimes I get blurred vision. I'll get a headache. These things will happen. And it's a physical response to the stress for the point where I know I got to turn it all off. And, you know, I've gotten good and better about it now and managing it and making sure that I don't get to that point. So I don't need to take a day off or something like that to get myself back on order. But, yeah, I think you're right. think you're right. You need to listen to your body, make sure that that's the priority first, and then you push yourself to whatever limit you're comfortable with.
Jolie Shapiro47:37.527
Definitely. Well, this was awesome. Thank you so much. Where can we find you?
Jonathan47:40.561
Yeah. Easiest place is LinkedIn for sure. So Jonathan Bland OmniLab, DME, if you've got questions on this and or other things. And yeah, that's easiest place to find me. on there, you know, pretty much 24 seven.
Jolie Shapiro47:57.869
awesome saying, definitely to a detriment. Well, thank you so much. This was great.
Jonathan48:04.588
Yeah, yeah, thank you for having me.