From Building Concierge to Co-Founder & Co-CEO with Alina Vandenberghe

00:03 Hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Career Ladder, your go-to source for real career stories, practical advice and actual insights from revenue pros who've been there, done that and are here to help you climb towards your dream job. Now in this episode, I'm joined by a very familiar face, I'm sure for all, Alina van der Berg, and we're going to be talking about her journey from building Concierge to co-founder and CEO, which I appreciate sounds like a wild journey, but we always talk about the first ever job, which is very, very interesting.

00:33 all the way through to the current role. without further ado, how are you Alina? Thank you for having me, Jamie. This is an exciting conversation for me and I look forward to digging into some learnings that hopefully your listeners can learn from.

00:53 Brilliant. I'm really, really looking forward to this one, not only for some of the really interesting stuff I'm reading in the notes that you've given before this, but also to learn a lot about the advice that you would give having founded a company as well, because I think some very, very interesting insights to cover off. let's start with the obvious one. Talk to me about the building Concierge. Explain that to me. The name of Concierge?

01:24 know the role, how did that come about? I know you were very, very young when you started that role to talk us through it. Oh, yes, when I was eight. So I had to start working very at a very young age because my parents had jobs, full time jobs, but they were paying not enough for us to have everything to eat or to buy things for school. So I had to.

01:54 figure out ways in which we could help our family survive. I would go from door to door from everybody in our building, making sure that everybody had everything in order, that their water was running, that their heat was working, and also figure out what share of the total bill they would have to pay based on their consumption. So I'd calculate their bills, I would go, would pay for them, and I would also take care of the reparations that the building needed.

02:22 And you were doing that from age eight, which because I commented on that particular note and I said, oh, did you mean 18 here? And then you were like, no, no, no, eight. So that's very, very young. I'm like in terms of calculating rent and things like that. Were you you literally doing all this on your own? Yeah, I did. At the beginning, I got a little bit of help from my dad. He explained to me how it worked, but he wasn't he was traveling a lot, so he wasn't there to.

02:50 be able to help me. He just showed me how I can do it and then I figured it out and I actually enjoyed it. I read online that you also sold lipstick door to door as a teen. explain that to us. It sounds like a very, very entrepreneurial mindset and attitude. So explain the lipstick to us. I didn't know it was entrepreneurial at time. I just felt it was a necessity calling.

03:20 saw that some older kids were doing it. And I saw that they had some success with it and they were not getting rich, but they were making some good money. I started replicating what I saw and I would go to also to my neighbors and to people at school and to I would do a lot to the beauty salons and I would show them products and if they would want to buy, I would get the 30 % commission at that time. So

03:49 It was good money, very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable to go people and try to sell things door to door. But I've learned the rejection very early. Which is in hindsight, a very, very useful skill to learn so early on. Were there any other interesting business ideas or sort of side hustles that you had during that period? Oh, I had many odd jobs, very, very many. would also

04:18 organize events, would teach kids math. I also had the class for adults where I would teach just some basic computer courses. I also doubled in modeling. I did a lot of things and I think that the... I remember I was at some point literally on the street.

04:43 begging people to buy my products and at the corner of the street. I remember having feeling furious with my fist very tight and feeling like tears would come out of my eyes because I felt in such a desperate state. But I think that I came out of it with a lot of resilience and a lot of tough skin. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it certainly sounds like you are one of the hardest working

05:12 uh, kids I've ever, we've had certainly on this series and, uh, I've actually come across. So very, very interesting. Now, how did you, I read a story about, um, your dad sort of getting you interested in tech, um, through, uh, when you saw your first computer and you built a computer together, is that right? Yeah. So in one of my, uh, dad's travel, cause he would travel a lot and sometimes he would manage to send some money back. And in one of his trip after he was gone,

05:42 for almost a year. came back and even though his dad was completely against it, even though my mom was completely against it, he used all his savings to buy a computer instead of my grandfather. He wanted the tractor. My mom, she wanted us to make sure that we have food. But against all odds, he bought me a computer. And oh my gosh, I just fell in love. I felt there was so much power in that little machine.

06:12 Is that what sort of inspired you to study computer science then? At the beginning, I didn't quite know what to do with a computer. I started deleting all the DLL files, all the storage files. I didn't know what the operating system kind of looked like. I started installing DOS, Windows. I started playing games, listening to music. I didn't understand like the power of it. I just saw it as a magical box that was...

06:41 completely, I was completely curious what it can do, but I just felt such a pull towards it that I just vowed to understand as much as I could. It felt so magical. So we've covered off where you first started aged eight, very, very young and lipstick or makeup sales door to door and technology and stuff. Talk to us about your first sort of proper career.

07:11 a career move. My first proper job in an office was in New York. It was actually in Times Square and I was an intern. I was being paid $10 an hour at that point because I was living in New York and my husband had some financial challenges. had close to $300,000 in debt. So I felt a lot of pressure.

07:41 to make sure that I can sustain that level of... It was a familiar feeling because I've always felt like I needed to care for my family and get out of a financial situation, but it was very challenging when I came here in US and I could barely speak the language. I could barely understand the cultural references, especially a lot of sports references.

08:13 And it was in the middle of New York. Like it felt like I was in the middle of the world, You said that was sort of $10 an hour. How long did you do that internship for? It was, I call it an internship, but it was actually, I was through a hiring agency at Deco at that time that was hiring a contractor four times from, for

08:39 for Reuters and I don't even remember what title I had like junior product manager or something like that.

08:50 I had that role for about eight months or so until something big happened that got me both fired and promoted at the same time. It's a pretty crazy story. Okay, if fired and promoted at the same time, tell us the crazy story. It's a crazy story about two months into the job, a guy with a turtle neck invited me to a basement with no windows.

09:19 and he changed the device he had in his suitcase to a metal table and said, I cannot talk to anyone about it. I mastered everything that I knew about mobile apps and together with another guy, we locked ourselves there for weeks. We only ate pizza and we did specs tested and QA'd what we had built. It was a news app with video and pictures and financial charts that we managed to build.

09:48 relatively fast in about four weeks. Ryan took his device, never told, we never heard back from it until we saw Steve Jobs keynoting our app on the stage and he was basically giving the app to anybody who would buy the iPad. Overnight Reuters all of a sudden got 30 million users and 30 million users in four weeks, you know that's in any startup or any corporation that's a lot of users and

10:17 I started becoming known in the organization for it. I even got interviewed by the New York Times. My app was in like the Times Square billboards and I thought, wow, I made it to America. I did the impossible. But my boss at the time was not based in the same location as me. He was not in New York, he was in London.

10:41 And he was not happy with how I was operating. I was very young and I was very like rough on the edges. I was like a bit of a bull in the Chinatown, not very collaborative. So he said, you know, this is not going to work out. It's not going to work out. So he fired me like, I don't know, maybe in a few weeks after the launch. So you were the designer builder behind the Reuters, the first ever Reuters app for iPad.

11:11 Amazing. that, I mean, it sounds sketchy at first. So a guy in a turtleneck takes you to a windowless basement. It doesn't sound like it's going to be a good story, but very, very interesting. So what happened after that? Then you got fired after that huge success. Like you said, you had sort of landed in America. You had made it. What happened after that? It's, I knew that I would not be able to change my boss's mind. I knew that I made mistakes.

11:40 he was right to come to that conclusion. But I knew that I had better chances if I would go to some, the boss is boss is boss. So I did and I said, hey, it appears that this might not be working out in my current role. Do you have anything else for me that I could be doing? And yeah, so I found a different position in the organization as director handling other applications in the organization.

12:09 So kind of like within a span of a few days, I got fired and then kind of promoted within the organization as a director from my intern junior level to director and it happened really fast. So hell of a jump. So what sort of apps were you responsible for? What sort of projects were you responsible for in the new role? It was at the time Reuters made a lot of

12:34 dollars from its indication products. So they were calling it agency. had the consumer product, but they also were giving news to other organization, you know, that this is powered by Reuters. So I was in charge of products that were for other news outlets. And how long did you how long were you in that directorship sort of position? I don't

12:58 trickle from the top of my head. have to check but close to two years I was in that position, something like that. And then what sort of led to the next, I guess, career move for you? So what was the case of not feeling challenged wanting something new? What was the logic behind the next move? I always felt that

13:23 I wanted to get a lot more responsibility faster, more than what people thought that I was capable of. Look, I was in my 20s. I was this young Romanian woman who didn't understand many cultural references. So I was not the kind of material that you think you'd want to promote fast in the organization. And I was also being called intimidating. And the reason why I was called intimidating is because I was very

13:53 I fastened my decisions, I had a lot of conviction, I didn't speak with hesitation. And in addition, I was very direct. Whenever I would see that certain things are not working, I would take action and I would just tell them as they are, which is like very Eastern European inside of me. I would also not make small talk and I would not smile much. I would just get directly to the point. I was...

14:22 Definitely not afraid to take leadership on things before I was asked. I was definitely not afraid to take action, but I was very rough around the edges. And I wanted to learn more about the political aspects of being in a corporation and working with a team and so forth. So after a few steps, I actually landed a VP role at Pearson in education, where I was responsible for some

14:51 big contract that Pearson had for landing education curriculum for Brazil, for Los Angeles and for other counties as well. It was

15:04 a lot of responsibility for me very early on, but it was necessary for me to get a better grasp on how I can grow in the kind of skills that are necessary in a large company to be perceived as a leader. So Pearson was for me kind of the next important milestone that led me to grasp a lot more what it takes to

15:33 climb the career ladder. And you mentioned that you were young. what age were you at that point going as sort of as I understand it, that was sort of basically like a head of product role. Yes, I was a VP of mobile at that point. I was maybe 29, something like that. Okay, yeah. So VP at 29. So talk to us a little bit about

16:03 You said you went in to learn a bit more about how you would progress the politics of things, how everything works. What were the key learnings for you in that period? I think it was roughly two or three years again at Pearson. Yes, I learned to gather consensus in large groups of very opinionated executives because

16:30 Pearson grew through acquisitions. They would acquire all these companies and we have like hundreds of CEOs that would have to agree on aligning the roadmaps to just have like single sign on, for instance, because there were all these ed tech companies that wanted to work together because they each created some value for the student or for the user in their own unique way. And my job was to integrate them all and have them all as part of one platform.

17:00 mobile and create educational experiences for our learners and getting to consensus and getting people to commit on the roadmap when there's like nobody at the top forcing them to get to that agreement and that commitment and getting that kind of alignment is extremely difficult. So I started to learn a lot more about what makes someone commit to someone or to something

17:29 and how to get executives to let go of their ego and do something because of the greater good of the platform in that case. Okay, I mean, it sounds the point you made about trying to get the senior leaders to let go of their egos. Is there a top tip or some sort of advice you can give to someone who finds it challenging to...

17:58 get a C-suite or senior leader to change their opinion or change their view that they're sort of set on? The worst thing that you can do is contradict them because then they become a lot more, even more convinced that their opinion is right.

18:18 I learned to always be curious and dig deeper to understand where their conviction comes from. So, okay, that's quite a bit. So the first starting point is better understand their viewpoint so that you can challenge it. Be there to listen, yeah. I didn't know better and I thought that if I try to convince them with a different kind of rationale and I would have to present a different perspective, then I would win the argument, but that...

18:47 It's always the wrong strategy because the more you fight with someone on their beliefs, the less likely that you're going to convince them that your opinion is the right one. There are phases. One is to understand deeply why they have that conviction, where it's coming from, where they have restrictions, where they don't have restrictions. Also understand that for most of them, decisions come from a fear of looking bad. They don't want to make...

19:17 commitments that will make them look bad in front of their team or in front of their audience. Also, they care about results, so they have the rational part, but also the preservation part. The more you understand the parts that come into play to them making a decision, and the more you listen and you are compassionate to those parts, the more likely they are that are going to see you as someone who they feel safe around and they feel that they're trusted and not labeled, not judged.

19:46 And only then you can bring a different point of view. So that's interesting. It sounds like you had to detach yourself from the, am going to win mindset and to I'm going to find a solution mindset. Is that right? Very much so. And this is the case always. Even these days I'm very involved in political topics and I bring

20:11 people from like the Republican side and people from the Democratic side in the US and you can see that it's almost feels impossible because Whenever they approach a subject they approach it in terms of winning the argument as opposed to listening to each other and understanding that they actually have both the same intention. They all just want the greater good for the country that they live in. But getting to that curiosity mindset and

20:41 the ability to listen is very, very hard for most people.

20:46 It's, think it's one of the things that you, you only tend to learn with time is, is like, I think back to when I was 21, 22, there was that level of naivety or arrogance where you don't, you, you only believe your way is the right way and you don't understand other people's points of view. And I think it's only something that you can learn over time through, through experience. So it sounds like you learn a lot in a large organization about how it works, how the cogs turns, proper processes.

21:15 building relationships and things. What was, I see in your notes, you wanted to move faster. So at VP at 29, that wasn't fast enough for you. So explain that. So the fascinating part is that the more I learned to listen, the more powerful I felt because the more you take the time to understand about people needs, then it's no longer becomes a help.

21:44 helpless case, a hopeless case where you can't take action. You start learning that you can take action and you can get people to see what you see. However, the process is very slow. So I would have to spend a lot of time listening and being more of a therapist. And when you have like 300 CEOs that you have to be a therapist of, and a lot of red tape, it just takes a lot of time to build things. Me, I just wanted to get this thing done. I didn't want to be the therapist. I wanted to...

22:11 be the builder that I've always felt like I was. So I went to, I started seeking for opportunities that would get me that opportunity to build fast. So it was less about you wanted to your career to move fast, but it was you wanted the actual day to day, the building, the work to move faster.

22:36 very high thirst for seeing things live very fast. And I have a super high bar on the quality and the speed of which things get developed. And I was miserable at how slow things were moving in large organizations. Yeah, it's unfortunate. I've done 10,000 headcount, 35,000 headcount. the more the heads, the slower it goes. it's just, it's so crushing and demoralizing when you...

23:03 like you breathe something in and they're like, I 16 week lead time on a campaign and it's just like 16 weeks to deliver a campaign. Are you joking? Okay. So I can understand the wanting to move faster. And so what was your next move that you thought would enable you to be able to build, learn, work faster? I got what I thought was my dream job. I was working in this company that was a joint venture from

23:31 opera, Dr. Oz and this guy that started WebMD, Jeff Arnold. I thought that I would learn so much there because it was a health tech company. I loved health tech. kind of a biohacker and I love experimenting things on myself all the time. I do a lot of longevity treatments. I test all my organs. I do a lot of crazy things in this space. So I thought, wow.

23:59 This is like perfect alignment for me. I'm obsessed with the space. I can take a stance. I'm working with like the best people in it. So I took a job as an SVP of product there. And I started working on what I thought was a platform that would change health outcomes for people using it. they would take stress markers, you take all sorts of markers and you would understand what you can do to improve your health. So

24:27 I started working with the team. started prioritizing the things in the platform. I was extremely excited and extremely bought in. I would work nonstop. I don't remember ever taking any breaks in the weekends or anything of this nature. However, I started butting heads with the CEO because he understood that for the business to make money, you'd have to sell to the hospitals and to insurances and to companies that make pills.

24:55 The goal was to sell as many diabetes pills and patients to hospitals. It was not beneficial for the company to prioritize the features that would actually improve health because there was no money in that. But me, I was naive and thought, okay, we just tell everybody to eat a lot more vegetables. I was such a naive. I had such a naive mindset and I just couldn't wrap my head.

25:23 to build a platform that was selling diabetes pills. I just couldn't get myself to it. So I kept batting heads and eventually the guy gave up on me. Rightly so, because when you're the founder, you want to make money, not save the world. Maybe both at the same time, but it's harder if you don't make money. So I got very delusional with the health tech space.

25:51 disappointed, but that's when I said, fuck it, I just kind of start my own company and see how it goes. being, living in the UK, don't, I obviously we're not, we don't have the same sort of healthcare system. So we have a national healthcare versus a privatized healthcare. So it's completely different, but we do see a lot of the, let's say the Netflix programs that are produced off the back of these big stories with American health tech and

26:17 Yeah, it's very, very interesting. Like they couldn't see the value in pushing things that would make people healthier. Cause there's probably, there's arguably just as much money available in making people live longer rather than treating illness like long-term. Well, the reality is that healthcare in America is extremely broken and the insurers and the costs for healthcare are

26:45 of this world. You've probably heard stories of people getting, calling emergency and getting $11,000 bill just for calling the ambulance. So it's a very messed up system. And I somehow imagined that single-handedly I can fix healthcare in America by just getting people to be healthier. But the reality is that

27:11 being a health tech startup is just a lot more complicated and he wanted to prioritize where his revenue was coming from, which was hospitals. And, um, I just couldn't wrap my head at that time. I was too young to fully understand the complexities of it. And you were what? 32 ish at that time. So yeah, it's still very, very young. Cause I was going to ask, what would you attribute?

27:37 your rapid rise to in terms of I think it was six years between moving to the US and being in that role, sort of as a senior leader. So what was the main driver for that huge progression in six years? Because that's it's a lot of progression in a short space of time. was always very convicted on my goals. And ever since I can remember I wanted to I had on a sign on my door at home.

28:05 I just wanted to be a CEO of a large organization. I just wanted to run a company and do things better because I was observing my parents being extremely miserable where they were and a lot of bad decisions that were affecting them and impacted them. They were so poorly paid and they were exploited in my opinion. So I figured that only if I can be at the top of the pyramid, I can fix the system, then I can fix the...

28:33 how businesses are created. But I never thought that I would start my own company. I just thought that I would just climb the corporate ladder. Interesting. So how long did you manage to stick it out in the role, sort of the broken healthcare system? Like how long did it take you to say no? A A year. was, yeah. Fair enough. That's still a good amount of time to stick it out. Okay. So you said, fuck it. I want to build my own thing, which is...

29:02 where we move on to Chili Piper. So I'm really, really interested to understand how you decided what you would build, what you would create. Tell me the story about that. didn't really know what I'm going to do. So all entrepreneurs say, I have the big grand vision. I'm going to change the B2B buying world and I'm going to pioneer a better way for B2B buying.

29:28 The reality is that my husband is a brilliant salesperson, one of the best salespeople I've ever met in my life. He was doubling into the sales space at that time and he was not doing well. He had already spent all the investor money and he didn't really have a product because his competitors got acquired by Salesforce, so he didn't really have a space anymore.

29:56 And he said, come with me, you have a talent in product. You're obviously very good at it. Because every time I would build a product, would get massive engagement. He said, you have talent, let's do something together. And I said, I'm not going to start something with you. It's going not end well. But if you agree that I'm the CEO and I make the decision so we don't have to butt heads, then I join. And being the wonderful human he is.

30:23 that he said yes without hesitation. He just wanted to have me part of the journey. And we started going to every possible sales event in New York City, every SDR event, every Ops event, any thing that had to do with sales, we would be there in person. And I had the notebook, I had the pen, and I would go and I would ask, do you have a problem? Do you have a problem I can fix? Do you want to pay for me if I would solve this problem for you?

30:53 Eventually enough people said that they had a problem with routing their... At the beginning, way we started, they were closing the contract and they wanted to route to the onboarding specialist. And it was complicated when you have a large team, you have to do a round robin, you have to schedule the appointment, etc. And there were enough people that wanted to pay $20,000 upfront to want to solve for it. At this point, we were not paying ourselves and we were prioritizing cash. And we started building with...

31:22 with these people, I would just kept showing them my mockups and they would say, no, make it like this and make it work like this and the whole bar like that. And I would have something the next day and the next day. And eventually the product was ready in about three months and we started getting revenue out of it. So I was going to ask because I've been a user of Chili Piper before, absolutely loved it. I had a previous company and in terms of leaving that SVP position, I take it a very good salary.

31:52 And then going, right, I'm going to build my own thing. I mean, it sounds like it only took three months, but was there, how did you deal with the, the unknown of when a salary was going to come? It's, I was actually crazier than that. I, so at that point I had a very substantial salary, but we also managed to pay our debt and get a house and we sold the house to start a company.

32:18 So we burned all the bridges to make the company work because we had to pay these developers and we started with three employees.

32:29 I burned the bridges because I felt I do not want to have any regrets for not doing it right, not giving it my all. I didn't have children at the time, so there was no risk. And being in the street doesn't scare me because I started working when I was eight, so I know that I'll figure it out. I'll find something to do, even if I'm in the street. I was not afraid of the bankruptcy. was not afraid of any bankruptcy of any kind. I just wanted to see if

32:59 I'm masochist

33:26 really, really well or really badly. Do you enjoy that like trepidation? It's not, it's not that what I really enjoy is the complexity of the puzzle. If a problem is too simple to solve, then to me is not that attractive because it means that somebody can, somebody else can do it and somebody else can take on that challenge. Whereas my brain gets only excited if the complexity of the puzzle is, um,

33:56 made up of lot of variables that you don't have control over. And yeah, the more complexity is the more attractive I am. Interesting. Okay. So things have obviously gone well in that it's nine years, nine years now, is it? So this could potentially be a big question or a big answer. So what are some of the key learnings from that nine years? You can break it into chunks or just think about some of your highlights.

34:24 Oh my gosh, Jamie was such a roller coaster. I went through the bottoms of the bottoms many times, to the highest of the highs many times. I think as an entrepreneur, you're completely on a high or like in a complete low, there's like nothing in between with very little sleep. thing is that I probably don't recommend it to most of my friends or to most people that I know because I don't know that.

34:53 The pain is worth it for most people. I find it still very exciting and I still think that I'm going to do this until I'm 150 years old and I'm going to be with a crutch on a podcast talking about NRR or God knows what else we will be talking about in 100 years. Because to me, even though it's painful,

35:18 I'm finding a lot of joy in cracking the puzzle and understanding the small pieces of it. The biggest lessons I probably learned when I was bootstrapped, because it forced me to be a lot more intentional about what I built and how I approached my customers and my prospects. When VCs turned cash at us, I became a lot more comfortable in taking large bets without having...

35:48 a good theory behind those large bets, but I would not take the VC money back either because it allowed us to sell some money on the secondaries and made me feel financially comfortable and allowed me to have a better lifestyle. At the beginning, I was in a studio above a gas station with four people in it, so it was not very comfortable. So I think that

36:19 All the stages have taught me something, but the bootstrap probably was the most insightful out of all. You said that you enjoy the puzzle, like the more complex, the more enjoyable. if do you see the product as an ever changing puzzle as it have you not already fixed the problem? Oh, the problem is never fixed right now because of what's happening with generative AI and Manus and OpenAI.

36:49 and complexity, like all these tools that are changing how we operate with the world, with knowledge, are completely changing the game in SAS. And the complexity of the puzzle is just 10 times, maybe 1,000 times more complex than it was like even two years ago. And I would imagine that the acceleration to which

37:17 we're all going to go through is just... The acceleration curve is going to be even steeper. So I'm going to enjoy it probably even more. So it's not that you're trying to fix the original puzzle. It's a new puzzle every year because of how quickly things are changing. Interesting. Okay, so I'm really, really interested from a...

37:44 founder and CEO's point of view with the whole point of this series is we talk about career progression and advice that we can give people to help them progress and develop in their career. are there any like what have you learned about scaling a business from a hiring point of view? Because with, you know, Stephen Bartler, Richard Branson talk a lot about the CEO's job is to be an amazing hire of people that are better than them at things that the gaps that they can't fill. So

38:14 What have you learned about hiring and career progression, career frameworks and that sort of stuff? I can tell you, I still make mistakes on hiring. I made a lot of mistakes and I still make mistakes on hiring. We just did the retrospective three days ago on like a hire that we made that didn't work out. The talent, the skills in the market that are needed to make this kind of business succeed are ever changing.

38:43 because these days you can deploy AI agents that work for you. can have like 5,000 interns basically working for you as an employee. And it's no longer about...

38:59 It's no longer about being extremely fast at understanding things. It becomes more about being able to be a system thinker and being able to connect the dots really fast, but also being able to execute without fear. So for sure, I look a lot at fearlessness, how comfortable they are with regenerative AI and with AI agents. I actually have interviews and I have people like

39:29 their hands up so that I know that they're talking with their head, not with Chagy Pity, and they don't give me the responses that they get from the internet. And another part that's become a lot more important for me in the hiring process is the ability for people to be present and connected with me on the call. What I mean by that is that

39:53 I find that it's getting increasingly harder to concentrate because you get bombarded by so many sources of information. You have the entirety of the world at your fingertips and you can constantly get distracted by so many things and the political landscape is ever changing and the macroeconomics are quite scary. So the ability to be present and focused is going to only give you superpowers because then you can execute.

40:21 And I can test for that in the interview process because I can tell if they're connected, if they're looking at me in the eyes, do they have a thousand tabs open? Because then I know that they're easily distracted and that presence is something that I pay a lot of attention to. Even in person, when I go, I make sure that they make eye contact, that they're fully there, that they're calm. And that's a trait that I respect a lot and I see very, very rare, very rare. No, I think I'm,

40:50 it's something that I'm looking to improve on because I you know, when you're having team meetings and things and something pops up on Slack and then you start you're like, Oh, well, I could this is two birds one stone. Yeah, I'm fixing a solution over there whilst we're talking about priorities over here. And it's some it's some feedback that I had and something that I'm working on where basically, like I do when I'm recording podcasts, I will close Slack or close all other tabs. And it will literally just be that tab full screen. Because I've got a big screen and I tend to

41:20 split the screen as well, which obviously is more distracting. You spoke about the hiring process. Now I've spoken to Tristan and Heather. I know Heather's moved on now, but they were both great. Heather told me about one of the interesting things you do from a hiring point of view is like a buddy system. Can you tell me about the buddy system if you, if you still do that? So we're

41:46 obsessed with making sure that our culture is the kind of culture that

41:54 We ourselves would want to be part of if we no longer had the founders, but we would join another company and the kind of culture that my kids would want to be part of because they're having fun. And it's very hard to create that kind of culture because you want people to be aligned with what makes them happy with their zone of genius and with the kind of things that get them excited to come day to day to work to be better version of themselves.

42:21 and give them the ability to delegate as much as possible the things that they dread. And it's not always possible to find that kind of sweet spot between what the business needs and what the person needs. In addition, we also have a very transparent decision-making process in which any decision that we make, any decision, like even purchasing a company, everybody has.

42:47 opinion on it and everybody weighs in on the options and on the decision tree. Our pricing decision memos are completely wild, completely wild. The reason we want to do that is because we want people to understand the ripple effects of their jobs in the bigger context and get all the data to understand that it's not just like a small change here. There's change management that comes in for their options and there people who might view something very different. It can become overwhelming because

43:18 You can see a hundred decision memos flying through your desk and that might affect you when you don't have the time to go through it. So yes, they need the buddy in the onboarding to navigate the unusual culture.

43:33 because it's something that they've probably never seen before. you still, Heather mentioned that a good proportion of the hires are from referrals because you value existing Piper's opinion in terms of someone else's skill and cultural fit. Do you still do a lot of hiring through referrals? Yeah, we have employees in 40 countries and they all know that our company is quite unusual.

44:02 we operate and they know that not everybody is going to survive. It takes a certain kind of self-management and ownership.

44:13 ability to move fast so they know that they won't be able to, we won't be able to keep everybody. And so they only refer the kind of people that they know would be resistant to that kind of crazy adventure we're on. Okay. And so, um, we've spoken about how your sort of values and traits, um, works very, very well in terms of progression. So we're going to do some just quick fire questions. Uh, the first of which is your top three tips for someone to climb the career ladder. So I guess,

44:42 There's two angles we could do this at top three tips from your experience of climbing the career ladder and top three tips that you would give someone in your company to climb the career ladder. Would they be different? No, they would be the same. OK. So what would be your top three tips for someone to progress in their career?

45:04 Numbers and results are more powerful than any other driver. The ability to be ruthless about getting results is, in my opinion, the number one thing that one should focus on. Second is to take leadership before you're being asked to. Take a leadership position before anybody tells you to, even if you don't have it in title. That usually gets rewarded very fast.

45:34 And the third one is being maniacal about who it is that you're serving, understanding who it is that you're serving. If you're serving internal stakeholders because you're in operations, deeply understand where they're coming from and where the bottlenecks are. If you're customer facing, be the detective that you never thought that you want to be to the point where you know your audience better than they know themselves. And it's not about the...

46:01 things that are spoken, it's about the things that are unspoken. And it's oftentimes about the emotional things that don't get said in a Zoom call, for instance. Most of my intelligence doesn't come from Zoom calls with customers. They will never tell me the truth. Most of my insights come from happy hours, from dinners, and it often has to do with an emotional struggle. It's never about...

46:30 So those are the three things. It's interesting. Your second one there of doing the job that you want before you've actually got the title. actually, that comes up quite a lot. So it's definitely a trend that we've noticed that people who have progressed quickly or people who have learned the hard way that they could have done it a lot quicker. That's a definitely a top tip of you have kind of, sometimes you have to do the work before you get the title and pay for it. And unfortunately,

46:59 more often, I think we're seeing more often that the younger generation nowadays are less willing to do work that they're not paid for. That's not in their exact job description, which is, which is unfortunate, but very, very good tip. So do you have any regrets about your career? Obviously you've told quite a few stories about you learn, you had to learn the hard way and you had to change the way you thought. So do you have any regrets from your career so far?

47:25 I don't know that I have regrets per se. I always want to have been able to make better decisions and learn faster. wish I'd know how to be a better collaborator. I wish I would be a better manager. I wish I would hire better so that I don't make mistakes. There was like a desire to have known everything already, have had the knowledge that I have now like 10 years ago so that I don't make the same mistakes. But the way I've been.

47:55 thinking about it is that there's no error really. It's just a learning. whenever there is an error, there's obviously some impact that I own, some mistakes that I made and the impact that I own. But at the same time, I understand that I was born a human with limited capacity, with a limited brain that can only focus on a few things at the same time.

48:22 So I'm learning to give myself a little bit more grace in the aspiration to be a perfect human that I know I will never be. It reminded me of some reason that made me think of, I don't know the exact quotes, so I'll paraphrase it, but Elon Musk said when the rocket blew up, someone asked him, said,

48:45 Uh, you know, it's not a great result. The rocket blew up again. He said, well, not at all because he said, we've just learned another way how not to launch a rocket, basically how, how not to learn what they shouldn't do the next time. And I think it like having, yeah, having that mentality of, know, you learn a lot more from mistakes than you do from success. Um, it is very, very good. So what would you say, um, now you spoke about the fact that you want to be doing this when you're 150. Um, and it'd be.

49:15 I mean, if you get to 150, I know you said you're into all these longevity things. It'd be a great result. What's next on the ladder? don't know if it's if you want to stay with Chili Piper, I guess it may be what's next for Chili Piper. Yes, for sure. I want to stay here. I love the market space. I think that at 150, I still I would still say that I don't know much about marketing because I'm learning every day and marketing is hyper complex.

49:44 I love that there's no shortage of things for me to learn. But what I want to do, at least in the next 10 years, and everybody says I'm crazy, but that's what I want to do, is get the company to 500 million, whatever we can get on a 10-year time frame, and then put the company on good standing in US, and then move to Asia, where I want to start.

50:13 that sector and see how we can grow that arm in a very challenging cultural, a very different culture that I know nothing about, that I'm very, very inspired by. So I'm moving to Asia. yeah, I mean, that sounds like you spoke about challenges and puzzles. That sounds like a very, very big, huge opportunity, but very puzzling.

50:38 Very puzzling. And the biggest challenge will be to convince my husband who does not want to move to Asia. we'll see. think it's slow. Well, I mean, look, if you're at 500 million, then you can you can live in both places. It's all good. I think that's what's going to convince him. Yeah. OK, then. So what would be again? You've said you want to be doing this when you're 150. So do you have an end goal? Like what is the is there a finish line?

51:06 Will you ever be done? I don't have that because I find the journey to be a lot more exciting than the destination and I do not want to get either too enamored with the goal or too disillusioned if I don't manage to get to 500 million or whatever we would be able to in the next 10 years. for me,

51:29 The journey is an interesting one. a very complex puzzle because I have so many stakeholders and I have my board, I have my customers, I have my employees, and I want to make sure that they all have a good financial outcome of it. I want to make sure that my employees are millionaires, that my board is getting their 100X on the investments and so forth, and doing all of that while...

51:54 building a company that has a social impact and is mindful of how it treats its employees and creates a culture where everybody's striving. It's like so freaking complex. I don't know if I'm going to be able to, but it's beautiful to try. Well, I look forward to keeping an eye on how things are going on LinkedIn. Even in the time that I've been in SaaS, it's been amazing to see the growth of Chili Piper and sort of where you've come from and where you are today.

52:22 Thank you for joining me. I think there's been loads and loads of good little nuggets in there for those listening or watching. And I think I feel sorry for the editor. We've had quite a few issues with connections and stuff. So if you are watching and you're wondering why the backgrounds changed three times, that is why. But like I said, there's some good nuggets in there and we hope to catch you in another episode. And for those of you that are listening and you found some...

52:50 part interesting. Don't hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me what resonated with you. I post all my traumas on LinkedIn. I'm an open book. Thank you very much. think there's so much out there. So many more stories about your journey so far and then Chilly Piper as well. I would definitely encourage people to reach out or go and read, do a bit of deep research on Chut GPT because they have so much to learn.

53:17 But yeah, thanks again for joining me and we will catch you in the next episode. Thank you, Jamie.