Speaker 1I got a question, and this is for everyone out there that are uninformed. What does Thinking Machines do? They're just another AI lab.
Speaker 2Do values matter? Do ethics matter in this modern world? Go ask anyone who's won a championship, has anyone won it without a coach or manager screaming at the team at some point? And you will get 100% of the winners saying, no, there was never a season where there was no screaming.
Speaker 1You mentioned the extramarital affair. I love that it's nice to know that AI-native companies still have human-centric.
Speaker 2We don't know if it was extramarital. I don't know. I'm starting rumors.
Speaker 3Hi, everybody. I'm back. It's Sam Jacobs. I'm the CEO of Pavilion. This is my personal podcast. It's called Top Line. I have two very special guests today with me.
Speaker 1It's your personal podcast that you join sometimes.
Speaker 3That's my delegation, baby. Right back at you, Sam. I'm scaling. Do I want to be king or rich? I want to be rich, so I'm going to delegate to you. You're going to run my podcast for me. That would be great. I got my co-host here, Austin Zaman, the CEO of Sales Talent Agency, and AJ Brunner, the CEO of Quotapath. AJ and I just got back from a beautiful week in Mexico for Pavilion Gold. Today on the show, we're going to be talking about. It's a thing called artificial intelligence. You may have heard about it. And we're going to be talking about the release of the new Clawed Cowork platform, an agent that can do tasks for non-technical people that everybody at Anthropic and many people in the world are excited about. We're going to talk about Meena Muradi firing one, one of our co-founders who immediately goes to work for OpenAI, from Thinking Machines Lab, a company that I believe still doesn't have a product but is worth $12 billion, or they have some product, but that's a conversation. And we're going to be talking about what Cassie Young called the coming gross revenue retention or gross dollar retention apocalypse, which is going to happen in 2026 when AI companies get to the end of their POC revenue and have to move into full-scale production. Which of them will win? And which of them. will die a very sad death, but it is top line. We're glad you're here. Gentlemen, start your engines. Let's go. Sam, where are you right now? I'm at the Langham Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. I flew here from Miami and we've got a company offsite tomorrow. And then we're making a big announcement and doing a member town hall for Pavilion on Wednesday. And then I fly to Vegas for the AlphaSense SKO. Wow. Busy and busy all over the place. Love it. I'm excited.
Speaker 2Let's start with things. Thinking Machines. This was interesting. Obviously, Thinking Machines is the AI startup founded by Mira Marati, who was the ex-CTO of OpenAI. At an all-hands on Wednesday of last week, she announced that they are letting go of their. or they have let go of their CTO slash co-founder for three reasons. Performance, talking to competitors, and another internal personnel-related issue. During that all-hands, as she was making this announcement, two other employees in Slack, quit. And this took her by surprise. You could see that she was a little bit shaken during the all-hands from what has been reported. A few hours later, news came about that two other people are quitting. And so that brings the total to five people moving on from Thinking Machines, four of which then were announced as new OpenAI employees. And so we've seen a lot of turnover in these AI companies. Anthropic was born out of OpenAI. Thinking Machines, is one that came when Miramarati left. There's Safe Superintelligence, which is Ilya. There was Meta, who hired a bunch of people away from these companies. A bunch of those people left and went back. We've seen a more desire to hire from a competitor. We've also seen more appetite for accepting past employees back. Something seems to be changing in the culture of tech. Sam, how would you read this? What do you think it tells us about the culture? What do you think it tells us about the culture of tech? Are relationships more transactional now, and why?
Speaker 3There's a lot of commentary that, and especially because I've been reading a lot of market commentary recently talking about, "Hey, listen, if this is a bubble, it's a bubble with real profits and real corporate earnings." And Google or Alphabet and companies like Amazon are actually making meaningful progress as well as Microsoft. And I say that because this is more evidence for me on the other side of that conversation. This is more evidence that it does feel bubbly. It does feel transactional. Sort of begs the question of what does it mean to be a company at this point? Because you've got this group of mercenaries that could leave at any point, and there's not a lot of loyalty. And it doesn't give me a lot of optimism about what's being built, I guess. I mean, at the same time, listen, these are groups of people. They're free to do whatever they want. But something about it just feels unstable. And it feels like we're in this era. OpenAI doesn't have any vesting for corporate employees anymore. So the minute that you join, your equity becomes eligible to receive access.
Speaker 2How crazy is that, by the way? That's pretty wild.
Speaker 3I think it's pretty wild. It doesn't seem like a good thing. It feels like the purpose of a company is some kind of shared mission. If we don't have belief in that shared mission, then I'm not sure what we're all doing together. AJ, what do you think?
Speaker 1Well, you mentioned Anthropic, but you failed. You failed to say, Asad, Anthropic hasn't had any turnover at the senior levels.
Speaker 2It is a fair point. They've had the least.
Speaker 1And it's really important to note that I feel like when I hear about those companies at the AI level, culturally, I feel like Anthropic does the best job. It's all anecdotal. And so what I hear
Speaker 2from internally, they also are the most disciplined around compensation, meaning that when Meta was going around trying to hire everybody away, a lot of these other labs were matching what Meta was giving them or trying to be competitive against it. Anthropic said, hard line, no, we want to take care
Speaker 1of it, though, right? That's a part of the culture because there's stability. So stable teams are going to typically outperform in these early innovation cycles. And so when you talk about compensation, when you talk about values, when you talk about company, those things need to exist. Doesn't matter if you're an AI native company or not. And that's where I believe that we're seeing the gains now. Open AI is definitely. They've been around for over a decade, so they have that level of stability. Their challenges are on a totally different scale.
Speaker 3This is a different open AI than it was a couple of years ago. This is a more frantic, more erratic open AI. But I can't wait
Speaker 1to talk about his hot take for 2026.
Speaker 3I've already mentioned it a million times, so I don't need to go into it more. But I will say to your point, AJ, that of all of the companies that feel like they have a more disciplined roadmap and also Anthropic is the company that has products in market that has clear paths to free cash flow and profitability, certainly than open AI. It does feel like maybe Anthropic is the boring alternative to open AI and open AI is the more exciting, crazy, reckless version of all of these foundation companies. But something good is happening with Anthropic. I haven't used Cowork yet, but I've read a bunch of great reviews of it. And it does feel like we're moving into this part where if Anthropic really has a clear sense of itself. As you know, we are a B2B platform, we are for professional business users, we're not trying to be your therapist, we're not trying to be your health coach, we are trying to be a productivity optimizer that begins with a technical user base and then moves from there. That feels the cleanest and most strategic and most aligned to me and most coherent relative to what I see happening with open AI, where again, I forget who I read, you know, open AI made another multi-billion dollar commitment. Sorry, Bruce. Yeah, to like new chip design. And it's like they don't have them. Well, maybe they do have the money. I haven't looked at their balance sheet.
Speaker 1Same with sticks.
Speaker 3Yeah, they're just like 50 different directions.
Speaker 2I should ask what open AI would give you on those deals because I was thinking about them last night is the following. So NVIDIA announced a hundred billion dollar investment into open AI. But when you actually go read the regulations or the regulatory filings that they made, it's basically an option to buy. But to invest at a particular valuation on a future date, right? It's an option rather than a commitment, like a core commitment. And if you are open AI and you look at these deals that they've made with all of these chip providers, compute providers, it's the same thing. It's an option to buy that in the future if we need it. So an example or a way to pull that thread is, is open AI on the hook for all of that one point something trillion dollars one way or the other? They're not. Like if their demand doesn't keep up, if they don't want it, if they don't need it, if those companies don't have the best chip three years from now, they're not tied to having that. And so what they're saying is, and this goes to something that they announced last night, which is they announced that they've hit 20 billion in revenue for the year. And their CFO in her blog post showed that revenue has scaled directly with compute scaling in the business. And so they think that scaling laws have a lot more room to run. And so they're. They're buying the option to have that compute into the future if this theory stays true. And when you look at it from that lens, it's like, interesting. I mean, I'm not I'm less upset about it. Like if you're not on the hook for it, I'm less upset about it. On this front, it feels like. The value of a technical breakthrough is hundreds of billions or a trillion or more right now for these companies. Right. If you're at AI, if you are meta, if you're open AI. If you have the next big breakthrough, let's say post-training was a massive breakthrough. If you have the next big breakthrough, you get a lead on everybody else. And that can be hugely beneficial to you from a value perspective. And so you're just willing to be more transactional with employees along the way. And employees are willing to be more transactional as well. Like it feels like both sides are just more okay with it.
Speaker 1Asit, I got a question. And this is for everyone out there that are uninformed.
Speaker 2They're trying to come up with some product. Are they building foundation models?
Speaker 3What is their product?
Speaker 2Right now, they don't have any. Well, no wonder they have her. They're supposed to be raising a new round of funding at $50 billion valuation. And so when all of this happened last week, everybody is like, that'll make it a little bit harder, a little bit harder. Ilya's safe super intelligence, by the way. The other one that came out of OpenAI, they just said up front, they're like, hey, we're trying to one-shot super intelligence. So along the way, we're not going to have much revenue or anything really going on. But we're going for super intelligence. When we have it, it'll be great. You got to give us a bunch of money to make that happen. I think it's really interesting, the lack of revenue.
Speaker 3The co-founder that left was this guy. What's his name? His name is Barrett Zoff, I believe. And one of the reasons that their Mira and his relationship broke down was because he had an inter-office relationship with another employee last summer. Does it say anything? Isn't it kind of weird that OpenAI would be like, who cares? That doesn't matter. Like, do you think it's that we just don't know the specifics? It was probably two consenting people. It's not that big a deal. But doesn't it speak to some kind of.
Speaker 2It didn't really matter to the machine when it happened, right? That was like last year. Your perspective is
Speaker 3that's just smoke. That's just noise. That actually, she just had a relationship break. Like, are you. I mean, I'll ask you this every question. I'll ask you this question every time we speak, perhaps until a year from now. But are you still extremely bullish on OpenAI? If you had a bat. If you had $100 and you could allocate it any way you wanted across Anthropic, across OpenAI, maybe across Alphabet, across Microsoft, like what percentage, what of that basket would you give to OpenAI? I would give
Speaker 2Google two-thirds, and I would split the rest between Anthropic and OpenAI,
Speaker 3probably. Okay, so that's a very meaningful moderation of your stance like six months ago, which is fine. One of the things that you celebrate is you're free to change your mind. That's okay. That's a sign of intelligence, not a sign of, you know, being stupid. As I get older, like the grid words for these things. Things evaporate in my mind as I try to say them. So I'm just like, stupid versus intelligent. It's funny how that happens, Sam.
Speaker 1I also love the drugs. I love that you mentioned the extramarital affair.
Speaker 2I don't know if it was extramarital. I don't know. Okay, we're starting rumors now. The thing I. The reason I don't think OpenAI would care all that much about that in this moment is they're going to say, first and foremost, you didn't fire him. When you said this thing happened, you're firing him now. And the other two things you've indicated are performance and then him talking to other companies. And it's probably him talking to other companies more than anything else. Like, there's that breakdown of the relationship over there based on that. And if you're OpenAI, you're going to say, hey, we'll spin it as propaganda being thrown your way to make this move muddier. And if you are thinking machines, you have to do something to save face. And so you're going to add these things. Like, here's what's happening. So I think this is like, in the grand scheme of things, it's just property. And both will just like, won't really care about them.
Speaker 3Let me ask this question to both of you. Do values matter? The sense that I get sometimes from the tech community is that values are antiquated. That, you know, we're sitting here talking about what's right and what's wrong. Who cares what's right and what's wrong? The only thing that matters is who wins. And, you know, if OpenAI violates every ethical norm, if they go from being an OpenAI system to a closed AI system, if they go from intentionally saying we're not going to be for profit and we're going to help, you know, human race avoid the calamity of AGI without guardrails, and they move to a world where they're like, you know what, we're going to build AGI and we'll charge you for it. And, you know, if you're our customer, then great, we'll work on your behalf. But if you're the rest of the human race, we don't really care. I mean, does any of that matter? I get the sense that we're in this sort of post-ethical.
Speaker 2I think it matters a lot less now than it is now. I have a lot of thoughts on this.
Speaker 3So I don't agree with that. So I can't wait to hear your awesome thoughts. Isn't this a bad thing for society at large? Didn't Plato and Socrates and Aristotle, didn't they write about all this stuff thousands of years ago and say like.
Speaker 2I think it depends on what the harm of it is, right, is one way of looking at it. So why is it happening? The reason I think. I think you can actually trace a lot of what's happening today in terms of the transactional nature of all of this. I think it depends on what the harm of it is. So I think it depends on what the harm of it is. So if you look at venture capital, which is the thing that makes this all possible, they have this incentive model where they have to return capital over 10 years to their LPs, right? And at some point, their investments have to lead to that return. And so there's a lot of. They think a lot about what's the outcome, right? And so the outcome can be go public or get acquired. And there's a lot less go public, a lot more get acquired that happens in the ecosystem, even though the winning is bigger when you go public. And so I think what's happened over the last couple of decades is everybody is thinking about this outcome because it's what you are in a way working towards, an end to it all. And if you are an employee, that drives your thinking and your behavior. And over decades, we kind of get programmed to be like, I'm looking for an outcome. I'm looking for an exit. I'm going to join this company. What's the exit potential of this company? Will I really make money here? Like we think about the exit a lot at the employee level. As founders, you see more and more founders are building for an exit, for an outcome. They're not building, you know, something that they want to do for the rest of their lives. They're doing something for an end. And I think the incentive model and venture capital and how it works drove a lot of that. And for a while, you wouldn't even find anyone talking about their life's work or wanting to build that company forever or a forever type of business the way that you are talking about it now, Sam, like you say, this is a forever business. This was rare to hear a few years ago. Everybody just wanted an exit. Everybody just wanted an outcome. And I think now there's a little bit of a shift where you're seeing more and more people talk about their life's work. More people talk about the thing you're saying, but it's still a small voice in the grand ecosystem. And so I think, A, slowly culture has shifted towards this more transactional thing in tech. At the same time, the other thing I think is happening is when employees are working for an organization, if you work for bootstrapped business, I think you care a lot more. You think a lot more about leaving that company, going somewhere else, leaving them and going to a competitor. Like when people leave STA, I think it gives them a lot of trepidation going to a competitive organization. They try really hard not to. Like I've noticed this, even though they're leaving us, they're not thrilled being here for some reason, they're moving on, but they don't love going to our competitors. I think if you are thinking machines or open AI, you're like, everyone's fine. These are billionaires running the business. Everyone around us makes a lot of money. These are well-capitalized organizations. What happens if I left and go to Meta? Like, let me get my bag. You've got yours. Mira, you raised money on nothing. We still don't have revenue. You're about to raise it a $50 billion valuation. You'll be fine. And so I think because they think the other person will be fine, they're more willing to do that thing. And so when you ask the question of, are we losing values? I would say in some cases, that's horrible. But in this instance, what's the harm of these people moving around to everyone else? Not much. And so if they're working off of their self-interest, I'm okay with that to some extent. I don't love it, but I'm okay with it.
Speaker 1I've been sitting here smiling to myself the whole time. I both love and hate this conversation. And I'm kind of curious if this is going to turn into one of those episodes where I sit on one side of and you two, not because you believe that values have gone down the shitter, but that just the reality of the world. I don't think you can be successful as an organization long-term or sustainable without a strong ethos and value system, like full stop. And maybe this is just my own personal emotional tie to it versus the objective feel that Asit is giving. But if you what's been sustainable or not, yes, organizations and companies have had their challenges, their controversies, Alphabet and Google, certainly lots and lots over the years. But at the foundational beginning stages, every one of those companies had what I believe to be strong ethics and morals. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to sustain or endure over the long term. But maybe this is my own personal take and own brand coming to it. I couldn't possibly imagine Running a company and being at the top of the company if that wasn't my north star. I don't know
Speaker 2that's again they they aren't killing people you know they were they're they're recruiting each other's employees aggressively they they and employees care less about loyalty to a particular business a particular leadership team like that is you know i mean i think you're right whether that's unethical or not like i would say
Speaker 1the door was opened yeah it's also true that it's tough to tell because the door has been open for quite some time and i think back to elon musk stepping into twitter and firing half of the company and doing it like in a way where i think a lot of people were turned off or like hit a button or you're gone or letting people go on maternity leave uh those i think it was 50 50 there
Speaker 2were as many people that were very impressed
Speaker 1with what he did but i'm just saying that the the general sentiment at that time from wasn't positive wasn't viewed positively but the end result is that elon musk is worth trillions of 100 almost a trillion dollars right and twitter
Speaker 2kept running and twitter is better and that meant that there was employee bloat and like all of those things but i don't know if that necessarily like i think if what you're saying is the fact that he did that made it so that employees feel that i can be treated transaction we've been having layoffs forever right like that wasn't the first time there were layoffs i think people understand that they can get laid off um i think what is interesting right now is moving to the competitors it's like everybody has always known you can lose your job markets turn turnover happens layoffs happen etc i think that's like common like common sense but moving to a direct competitor like that is the thing that is super unique over here where you're leaving thinking machines and going to open ai and open ai is celebrating this and i'm noticing that there's more of this happening in other places so sta this year or last year helps us out a lot and i'm noticing that there's more of this happening in other places so sta this year or last year helps us out a lot and i'm noticing that there's more of this happening in other places so really large businesses hire away sales people from their competitors and some of these people were paid up till a million dollars to not sell for one year to basically get past some of the contractual obligations they had before they could start selling for the new organization but we're talking about companies spending seven figures to hire away a salesperson to put them on the bench for more than a year that's really interesting you're noticing this in more places i think
Speaker 3my point wasn't necessarily that like hiring away people represents a lack of values it was more that this guy and again i understand that people can be accused of any number of things but it was the you know it was the lack of concern about this workplace situation uh where it's like well that's obviously a smear tactic and it didn't matter if it really mattered they would have fired him you know when it happened they didn't fire him when it happened so roddy's just hearing but i guess what it speaks to is that it's not just a smear tactic it's a smear tactic and it's a smear tactic to me is not about that it's horrible for people to hire away people from competitors honestly as i tend to i'm going like much bigger picture than that and just thinking again about a group of you know uh people in particularly in silicon valley that just seem divorced from even the idea of why social values are important like why it's important why the judeo-christian christian uh you know ethos the ten commandments and all that stuff is so important to me all of the things that we've based society on are important why why would it be important for us to think about justice and judgment and fairness i think they would really argue with you on that time i think what they
Speaker 2would say is that we have our own values we have our own set of right but
Speaker 3those values are are these values are based on thousands and thousands of years of human interactions and theirs are based on the fact that they're uh largely you know that they're a group of people not exclusively but if you look at this the spectrum of intelligence they're going to skew uh to the process side they're going to skew to a lack of empathy they're going to skew to prioritizing technical skills over social or cultural intelligence or education on this one
Speaker 2they would say innocent until proven guilty as a co-tenant of the u.s way of doing things and so this person what's the public proof that what they did was so big so bad so horrible it feels very convenient for thinking machines to have slapped this onto the situation knowing that he was probably about to leave anyway and so i just get worried
Speaker 3about a group of people that you know are celebrating work ethic to the extreme that are celebrating build it no matter what the only thing that matters is whether as you said asad you get the bag you secure the bag the only thing that matters is how much money you make it doesn't matter how much how you made it and uh you know the ends justify the means and it feels like a very negative indicator on social equilibrium on this idea that we're all in it together on the i i've never anyway that's it doesn't i don't need to believe some of them like
Speaker 2yeah i think it's nuanced in the sense that if you look at somebody like mosque i don't think he's as money driven as as well as the as many others and i think he does have certain like i don't
Speaker 1think he's money driven at all to be honest i don't like he doesn't it's not money what i think he does care
Speaker 2about resources like he understands that resources is power and influence and so he wants it but i think he's got other things that matter to him a lot as well and i think in a lot of these people they have they want to shape the future and i think that that supersedes almost everything else they believe in raw capitalism i think this employee thing is keeping the
Speaker 3future to what end that's that's my point to what end what what what happens when they get to the future and nobody believes anything and and we don't have a set of shared values what happens then what's everybody doing it just feels like this sort of totally disassociated society where i don't know i feel it's important that we all feel like we're in it together i've never felt i was saying this in mexico aj like i've never it's never felt less like america everybody has their own america that's their own feed and their own algorithm and everybody's doing their own thing and rationalizing why you know i have family members uh who are on the other side of the political spectrum for me and i guess you know i i skew honestly i skew right a little bit at this point but i have family members are like you know well that united healthcare ceo you know maybe um he had it coming you know and and it was like totally wild it was totally like well income inequality is a really bad issue in america and there needs to be something done i'm like well that doesn't warrant assassinating public figures you know and and and i was getting like pushback on that i just feel like on both sides across the spectrum people are just used to justifying whatever it is that feels like it's in their immediate self-interest and whatever reinforces their existing priors and uh you know hey you know yeah he may maybe had an inappropriate relationship but it's probably a smear tactic and who really cares he's a great technical founder and i don't have time to worry about that stuff let's just go go go let's get to the future as quickly as possible it's like well what future are you building what is the what is the future without
Speaker 2values i agree with a lot of what you're saying except on this specific instance of it so like i actually think there were a lot of instances where there were people that it's too easy to accuse someone and then change their life as a result and we saw versions of that you know like um it happened when things were really at the peak a couple of years ago with the dei and all this stuff and i think it's important that there's due process and that we get to that people have the opportunity to defend themselves and that objectively one comes to a conclusion whether they did something or they didn't and in this instance it feels like if we take what they're saying very seriously in a way that we're not we're saying thinking machines has the right to impact this person's life based on anything they can say and they're saying it in a way that doesn't allow you to do that because he you're saying he did this a year ago and you're telling the world today when you have a really strong reason and incentive to make this look like a bad move for open ai if you did it then you said hey our co-founder did this thing we investigated it we brought in a third party they figured out that this was horrendous and we're not going to do it again and we're not going to do it again and we're we're firing him and we're letting you all know so that you don't hire him great like i think everybody would take that very seriously i think at that point open ai hiring this person would be really really hard but i think the way that it's played out made swan question um what really happened and was there an independent third party investigation why aren't they releasing it today and saying here are all the details if the details were bad enough open ai would walk away from the
Speaker 3hire i hope so i guess i hear you i hear what you're saying i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not so all fair and i i will say my my biggest point is that to what we're talking about right i think there is a space for a different conversation i think there's a space for people like you and me and and aj and whomever to say we're building long-term businesses that are going to compound over 10 to 20 years we're not trying to flip it tomorrow uh this is the thing that we believe we believe in helping human beings we're a human first business and people that want to express a different perspective and a different perspective and a different perspective and a different perspective on what's important in life when lemkin says i'm not investing in any company that isn't growing 500 there's a space for people to say well if if that resonates with you you can go that way but by the way i'm i'm building a club over here that's focused on helping people build long-term businesses and deliver long-term value that aligns with an optimistic aspirational belief in the quality and importance of human life and human creativity for
Speaker 1those that are out there listening don't worry i still skew left so So I can balance Sam out here.
Speaker 2No problem. I think that's true, Sam. I think everything creates an opportunity for the opposite. And so I think I like both ends of it. I love working with these AI companies. I love working with the private equity side. I love working with the bootstrap side of things. We are a bootstrap business ourselves. And I think the world is quite tested. I've noticed more loyalty in bootstrap businesses. I think that's a really positive sign. I think people are looking for all sorts of experiences. And A, you need to be aware of what the different experiences are so that you can make informed decisions. And we can help you do that by explaining what's going on. And then you have to pick the right one for yourself, right? For some people, working in these AI labs is the right thing for them, for their character, for their personality, for what they're working towards. And for some people, something like what I've got is better. And I think that people being able to make those informed decisions is the thing that is what I'm most excited to feel. And I think it's required in this world right now. Do you think that this transactional employee thing, though, plays out into go-to-market in any significant manner? Like I gave you an edge case example of what's happened, but it was still like an edge case for us. EJ, do you think this plays out more broadly where HubSpot realizes that the person doing this job, I don't know, their direct competitors, like high value, bring them away. They fight more for go-to-market people.
Speaker 1I mean, I think that we make, we're just quicker to make decisions around it because AI and the market, competitive market or lack thereof, meaning that you can't just job switch, has made it much, much easier for us as CEOs to make quicker decisions, to see something and be like, ah, that doesn't sound right. I'm going to make a change or a swap. We talked a little bit about this in Chatham House Rules, Sam, so don't worry, I'm not going to say anything about last week. I mean, the way where, but we talked about the cycle of a CRO and that you're in that job for, what is the average statistics still, Asad?
Speaker 3Is it 18 months
Speaker 1for private companies
Speaker 3and about 20 months for public companies or 22 months?
Speaker 1But that feels like that that's getting even shorter. And I can tell-
Speaker 2That's for public, that's crazy.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's insane. And I can just tell from the conversations of what I'm feeling, even within my own company of like, if something, someone says something wrong, like. Oh, I'm not going to use that AI tool. I don't believe in AI. How long are they going to last? I mean, you laugh, but I saw some-
Speaker 3I only laugh because I'm like, you are really counting on a certain group of people not listening to this podcast. They
Speaker 1don't care. But like, I see that and you're, you're as a CEO going to let someone not like, they're going to be stubborn about this. No, they're gone. And they're going to have a turnover. So we've become more transactional to the point that Sam was making earlier. And like you said, there's just a small voice, a small community of people saying, I want to grow 10, 20 years from now and be a sustainable business versus flipping. Well, in that mindset, you need people now. You need this today to work. You can't wait for it. So it's become even more transactional.
Speaker 2I hear you. I'm not sure that that makes us transactional though, because like, I've been thinking about this a lot, which is that let's say you have an organization. You have this distribution of tenure within your organization. You have your best people who've been there for a very long time. And you obviously have a different level of depth in that relationship than somebody who just joined your organization, who you hope one day will be like that. But you don't look at everybody equally. Like not everybody's equal in my eyes at SDA. There's people that I've worked with for 10 plus years who I have such a deep relationship and there are others who literally just joined two months ago. And I hope one day to have that with them. But they just joined. And I think what I'm realizing is that this being forced to correct problems is you taking you being more loyal to your best and most tenured people, because the performance impact of that person who's lagging in your business, the C player is driving everyone's energy down and is impacting everyone's future potential. You know, you're if our businesses do 10 good things. And one really bad thing, more people hear about that one really bad thing than they did about the 10 really good things. That's just a reality of reputations and trust. And so that one person can have such an outsized impact on all of us and our experience and our future. And so it's important to be quick and decisive in correcting that out of loyalty to the top and to yourself and to the mission. And so I don't think of that as me being transactional. I think that's like the most minimum thing I should be. And I think when I wasn't doing that, or when somebody isn't doing that, I think that is a mistake and should be corrected.
Speaker 1How? Okay, let me ask you this, then it should be corrected. You're talking about your management team? Are you talking about anybody in the organization?
Speaker 2Anyone in the organization that is not performing at the bar that you have set as the minimum bar, at least like, you know, we have the minimum bar. And then that's where like, everybody gets to do this for as long as they want, if they hit this. bar, if they're not at that bar, you got to make that decision extremely quickly and decisively.
Speaker 3As long as you as long as you clarify the bar very clearly. And and I completely agree with you, I said, AJ, we're gonna
Speaker 1say no, I would I want to just actually ask you both a real world example or just an example where if you saw this from an individual contributor, you saw some sort of behavior that was just like, not in line with what you just said, I said, are you going straight to that individual contributor and telling them are you talking to their manager first and saying like, this isn't this is like, they're
Speaker 2not gonna corrective action comes only from the manager, I have a rule, no one can have harsh conversations with somebody that they don't, that doesn't report to them, even I don't want to be that person. Like, so if I see something, my first thing is, I'm going to the manager and being like, that's that manager's job to deal with. And so I'm going to give you signal. If I'm giving coaching, that's different. So if I see somebody make like a slight mistake somewhere, and I'm like, I can coach you through this, that that's that easy, I can do that at any given point. In the day, but if I if you need to be given a talking to that has to come from your manager, no one else.
Speaker 1I agree with that. I'm also kind of curious, like how quickly because managers a lot of times are going to defend that person. And that's just the general human behavior of like defending your team, whatever, let's say you have a first team, and you're like, get through that. How long do you wait? And what are you looking for in examples from that corrective behavior? And are you looking for examples?
Speaker 2So situationally dependent, the one thing I'm looking for is actually, you know, I'm looking for a lot of excuses being made, like I want if I'm coming to you, and I'm saying this is a big enough issue where I don't think it's a coaching thing, I don't think this person said something wrong, or didn't set the agenda correctly on a call, like this person did something bad, like this needs to be addressed. And so the first thing I'm looking for is you not to like, create excuses for bad, I'm looking for you to hear and understand. And then I'm looking for swift action. So I think within a 24, maybe in some cases, 48 hours. Our period, that manager has to come up with a point of view on like, what are we doing about this, and then go and do that thing about it. Like, I think the window of opportunity is very, very short, Chris, you've seen something concerning. And the longer it doesn't get addressed, the more chances of that concerning thing happening in other moments where you're not then the manager is not there, that opportunity, that probability is high that this thing is happening further along as well. And so you have to get ahead of this speed and clarity. And so I think that's the first thing that I'm looking for. And then the second thing that I'm looking for is that you're not looking for the same kind of thought and then action is what you're looking for from your managers that what you're not looking for is excuses of bad management.
Speaker 3I will also say exactly to your point, I said, Katie, Kevin Dorsey has some, you know, when he when he's public speaking, he's got great little slogans and mottos. And one of them is what you allow you encourage.
Speaker 1Yeah, that is 100%.
Speaker 3It's not even just that if you don't say anything, you know, with it, the behavior might persist, it's that you're in some ways tacitly. celebrating the behavior. And I've even seen that, you know, within pavilion over the last couple of years where, you know, some manager allows a certain kind of low quality activity to either, you know, happen or, or they're not investigating, they're not inspecting, because of course, the other great phrase is what you what you expect you inspect, I believe that originally came from the Navy. But the point is, so the manager stops checking. And then what happens is a new manager comes in. And they say, Hey, why aren't you doing this thing? And the person's like, Well, I don't even know that thing was required. I've been not doing that thing for four years, you know, or two years, and nobody said anything. And, and that's a moment where, you know, Danny, Danny Meyer calls it constant general pressure, right? Like, that's when you just have to say, here's the expectation. Yeah, it's not necessarily that you're getting fired. But this is the expectation. I want to be extremely clear. This is what we expect of you when you come to work every day. And, and that is, and if there's any lack of clarity about that, you can let me know. But otherwise, I'm expecting you to adhere to this standard going forward from here on out.
Speaker 1What you allow you encourage Sam, you're gonna love this. I use it all the time. I attribute it. I attribute it to you.
Speaker 3What is it?
Speaker 1What you allow you encourage that to me? Yeah, because you first said it on a top line episode, like two years ago, and I use it all the time.
Speaker 3That's great. Well, and I was like, Oh, Sam. to go back to Kevin Dorsey. I'm sure he stole it from somebody too, but it's you know it's this is the culture we we put we toss the ball back and forth and evolve over years and centuries everybody it's sam my co-host abandoned me for this ad read but i don't want to let our our host and our sponsor down x factor let's be honest about the ai hype generative models have read the internet but they don't understand the math of your business that's why this episode sponsored by x factor x factor uses causal ai that is a phrase i have not heard before to analyze your revenue engine it identifies the small hidden changes that will swing your entire quarter and if you haven't read mark roberge's book the science of scaling it's all about using science to improve your go-to-market execution these are x factors the gtm cheat codes hiding in your data it's there in your data but you need something like x factor to find it they give you an ordered plan of attack showing you exactly what to fix first to capture trapped revenue the revenue is trapped it's scared it's alone first of all just set up your revenue engine and then you're ready to go send it a message saying, revenue, we're coming for you. It's going to be okay. But then use X Factor to untrap it, I suppose, and set it free. It's been locked in a basement for many, many years. And we thought the revenue was gone, but it's not gone. It's alive. And finally, we have captured the person that captured the revenue. Anyway, stop drowning in dashboards. Visit xfactor.io. xfactor.io. Thank you, X Factor, for sponsoring Top Line. The leaders who rise fastest today aren't just great operators. They understand the business, they know how value is created, and they negotiate like executives. At Pavilion, our education curriculum is built for exactly that kind of career. Learn the language of the P&L with our new P&L Fluency course, so you can read a balance sheet, model unit economics, and challenge a forecast with confidence. Master the art and science of executive compensation and negotiation taught by leaders who've sat on both sides of the table and know how real offers get structured. And join a community where you don't just take courses, you apply what you learn with peers who are building companies, leading teams, and shaping the future of go-to market. If you want to accelerate your career, sharpen your operating edge, and get paid what you're worth, Pavilion is where you grow next. Asid, do you like Pavilion?
Speaker 2I think there are very few things in my life that have shaped me as a person. The gym has shaped me as a human being in many ways, physically as well as mentally. I think this is one of the things that I've been part of that has influenced me greatly I would argue probably more so than my university education. How about that? Let's go. Wow.
Speaker 3And if you don't know Asid, he runs a multi-million dollar executive search firm. He's a great business leader and a very attractive human being.
Speaker 1AJ, you're listening to Top Line and you don't know Asid Zaman.
Speaker 3AJ, give me five words about Pavilion or something nice to say.
Speaker 1No, I wanted to say, get out of here with your five words. I wanted to say, you didn't mention the new AI curriculum. I think Jonathan Moss is running that community.
Speaker 3Jonathan Moss and Andy Joles are AI at the World Market School.
Speaker 1I went to the first community, I think it was a webinar, it was two years ago, and there were 100 people on. There was 250 people in that Slack community. Today, there's over 2,500, I think, Sam. It is insane. And so if you're like, hey, I got to get on this AI revolution and learn more about it. Yes, there's an F, P and A course, but there's also efficiency on profitability, but there's also a great course on AI. So join for that as well. I'm a believer in Pavilion. Don't worry, Sam.
Speaker 3Thank you, AJ. I'm a believer in Quotapath and STA. And if you're out there listening and you're not a member of Pavilion, you should be. And we'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2I think like I had been thinking about culture a lot these days, and I'm back to thinking values don't matter. Not that having a moral and ethical core does not matter. But I think. Organizational values matter 0%. That said, I think behaviors, the ones you allow and the ones you encourage, that is what your environment materializes based on. I think those are really important. And I also think that the frontline manager relationship with employees hence becomes the most important relationship in the business because it's what impacts culture the most. It's the most conversations happening. It's the most behaviors that need to be monitored, managed, level. So really, like you, if you want to understand your culture, just sit down with your frontline managers. That's the culture. That's what's going to happen more than anything
Speaker 3else. This is an area where I found a lot of value from AI, from ChatGPT, because sometimes given my personality, I have a feeling about something. And it's not that the feeling is wrong or the opinion is wrong, but there's a tendency for me to express it in a way that can be demoralizing. And this is where even yesterday, I send a weekly email to the team on every Sunday. And ChatGPT really helped me frame this thought so that it wasn't punitive. It wasn't, you bastard, go to hell. It was, hey, everybody, we're in a new part of the company. I call it chapter three. We're in chapter three now. I'm not doing chapter two anymore. We're not doing that anymore. And in chapter three, we're expecting you to lean in. And this is what leaning in looks like. And by the way, if you think about it and you reflect on it and you decide it's not for you, that's totally okay. But- Let me be clear. This is an expectation from here on out going forward. And I found, and the way that ChatGPT helped me express that opinion made it still direct, but not so emotional. Not almost
Speaker 2like getting a negative reaction out of the person, like almost inspire, like the same thing, like I found with some of these like tricky conversations we have to have, you can, the same message can either inspire or demotivate your team, the same essence, and like it comes down to delivery and like how you, the tonality with which you deliver it, the words you pick really do matter. And it is where that tool can be really, really helpful. What happens, like, do you think anyone ever reads that and says, okay, I thought about it, not for me, and then comes and talks to you? Or do you think that this slowly evolves into a certain percent of the base churning out as they find new jobs, that are more in line with, like, how do you think it actually plays out once you set that standard?
Speaker 3I think it plays out the latter. I think some people read it. And the people that I already got positive responses, of course, you know, I got a beautiful email from Aaron Leder. And that's because every time you ask Aaron Leder to do something, he does it 150%. And oftentimes, even if it's not in his own personal self interest. And I think so he reads it. He's like, I'm really glad you sent this. This really resonates with me. If anybody gets this message as a problem with it, like, that's a clear indicator that they might not be the right person. And I think there's definitely people that got that email, and it was on Sunday, and they're hanging out or not not thinking about work. And they're, you know, pardon my French, like this fucking guy again. And, and I think that they probably are getting, you know, they've got their draft Glassdoor review. And they've got their, you know, Slack messages queued up to the people that they know are in cahoots, and that either are ex employees or whatever. And I think ultimately, they leave, you know, I think they leave, I don't think anybody raises their hand. I think that's very, very, very listen, you said, if you're lazy, and don't care to come talk to you. So this is me come talk coming talk to you, because I'm lazy, and I don't care. I think everybody, there's a lot of language that's emerged through the DEI movement over the last five, six years. That sounds academic, you know, we don't really know the true origins, it's very hard to put down language about psychological safety, like language about belongingness, language about, you know, the I and DEI inclusiveness and inclusion. There's a lot of academic jargon that can that you can use as your armor to have the conversation and just move the goalposts somewhere different, say, well, you know, when he said that, I didn't feel safe, I felt like it was violent towards me, you know, and then there's a whole counter argument. Well, it's not violent. That's not what violence my space. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So that's, you know, and you have to, I mean, that's the power of willing to be disliked. You the fault lies with me in the first place, for letting this is where I don't agree with you, I said, I think values are important. I think what happens is that if there's if behavior doesn't line up with the value, then they don't mean anything, then they're just, they're, then they're very dangerous and damaging. And I think what had happened over the last couple of years is our behavior didn't line up with the values. And we, we hired a lot of people. And I will always remember this conversation. And we still haven't even talked about the GRR apocalypse. But this has been a fun chat. I remember, and I let this person be hired. And it was during the interview process. And I said, he said, you know, diversity is really, really important to me. I said, you know, that's interesting that you say that diversity is important to me, too, but not on certain things. I don't want to, I don't want diversity around what hard work is, like, that's not an area where I'm looking for diversity. I want genetic diversity. You know, I want different people from different backgrounds. I want people from all over the world. I don't care how what they're, you know, orientation is sexually, you know, how they identify what their pronouns are. But I want us all to agree, like, this is what hard work is. And if I send you a Slack message on Saturday, you don't have to write back right away. But I would appreciate a response within 24 hours. And if that's not, and I, we had this debate, and he wasn't, he was not pliant, this person, you know, he was not, he did not agree. And we ended up hiring him anyway. And he's no longer with the company. - But I think that, yeah, my thinking
Speaker 1that's us it's point though is that value system and this has always been the great debate for most companies it is actually what you just said it's that latter category where it's dangerous the behavior doesn't actually match the values around it and values change they should change you should be revisiting them and understanding just like this is my piece of it where you talked about inclusivity of and or diverse diversity like you've you've thought about it it's evolved diversity i don't want a spectrum of of hard work diversity along hard work no like that doesn't make any
Speaker 3sense on my spelling you know i choose to spell words differently than you and
Speaker 1i but i think that that is the point of it and i do think that there's a lot of the question is really is it a worthwhile venture time investment for a ceo to really be doing that thought exercise every six months and doing it and spending a day i don't know longer and then most ceos would say no there's a lot of other high priority items that i'll tell you whether
Speaker 2i'll give you the perfect test for it pick any bucket like i i think a venture capital firm should do this like if you're in dresden pick a fund call all the companies in that fund at the middle management layer and ask them to tell you the values of that company and i i assure you no one knows anything like and i because i know this because i ask people like for a long part of my career i would ask them the value i would ask hr leaders the values of the organization and they wouldn't know all of them i've asked ceos and they don't remember all of them like i don't think people remember the values and so i think if they don't remember them then how useful can they really be um i do think that you need guiding principles like i think you need a purpose and a mission and some post core principles but i think values the way that it is done today while powerful in their best implementation undoubtedly i think are don't work because implementing them correctly is so hard getting people to remember them getting people to talk about them often enough where they become almost instinctive and how people operate where they they understand action value at an instinctive level um i think that's really hard to do and almost almost nobody gets it right and that's not to say it's not a worthy pursuit to try to figure it out because i think when they do work well they can be powerful um but they just don't work really well right now that's the challenge with it i think though that if you one of the problems with it is that we try to be really cute and very i think unique when we're coming up with these values and that makes them hard to be memorable and i think if we were trying to do simpler things like the golden rule we outsource everyone across the world know the golden rule right do unto others like you would like done to yourself like every in palestine i knew you
Speaker 1had that in pakistan
Speaker 2we had that in palestine like we all knew it like a golden rule you had that in pakistan like we all knew it like a golden rule and why do we know the golden rule everyone everyone knows the golden i think we need the golden rule version of values for them to have a shot at working well we try to outsource
Speaker 3the problem is that people like all right it's very simple don't be a jerk it's like well that's not useful that should be when i tell you to do something and you don't want to do it you call me a jerk and that's not what i think a jerk is a jerk is a very useless value yeah i think i
Speaker 2an interesting way to do values is like the the things that might feel obvious that are not like when like the opposite of that don't be a jerk like when are we allowed to be a jerk is probably an interesting like thought exercise for business to go through like i think there are some cases where you have to have really transparent direct conversations with someone and you're hiring managers who you believe have the ability to decide when to use that approach and when not to but i think it's a really interesting way to do values is like the things that might can tell you there are some people that i have worked with that are truly world beaters like amazing talent but they need to be screamed at every now and then they just need it they that's like very clear like
Speaker 1that's literally there are a lot of former athletes that i've worked with because they tend to go into sales and it was quite honestly that's how they needed to be coached they needed to be heard anyone
Speaker 2who's won a championship has anyone won it without a team at some point and you will get a hundred percent of the winners saying no there was never a season where there was no screaming but somehow in our businesses we expect the winning to happen with no screaming it is a little bit insane to me yeah
Speaker 1no emotion you can't be emotional about your business sam stop getting emotional stop it
Speaker 3when i meet with because you know sam sloven and i worked together like 15 years ago and when i meet people from those days they tell me what i did and i'm appalled and now on the other i'm impressed you're like i wish i could still do
Speaker 1that i wish i could do that i
Speaker 3wish i'd be like yeah if you come in we're huddling up at 8 47 and if you're here at 8 48 i'm gonna make you cry in
Speaker 1front of everybody i i i mean i sent people home remember this i literally if you came in 8 45 i sent you home you like weren't you're done for the day and i see people sprinting up brazos because they were like had to be asked and see but guess what 99% of the time i'm like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh of the organ sales organization was in their seats at 8 a.m not 8 45 and you sold that company for
Speaker 3220 or 200 and now i've gotten
Speaker 1soft and now i'm big soft because i've three daughters soft
Speaker 2my school when i was growing up my high school had a rule for a while that if you're late we had morning assembly and if you're late by even a minute if you're late three times you get sent home the fourth time and this is a horrible rule to have in a school where people are not very engaged we would like on purpose just be as late as possible to get sent home as much as possible um and so they eventually had to get rid of the rule i guess in the company a person feels like there's a clean line to getting fired if you keep doing that was that the thing aj if you'd send somebody home a bunch of times soon they'll be fired hence they didn't want to be late oh
Speaker 1you would never i there was one one sales rep and i'm going to make sure he listens to this he does listen to it andrew fisher fisher was late twice actually one of the times we had like these days where you had to dress up in different themes for closing week for the last week of the quarter and uh and so we would have like i mean it could be like halloween or whatever it could be hawaiian shirt day and so like it was uh
Speaker 3it was snm day and you had to wear those are my values those
Speaker 1were your values sam and so he didn't show up one day in like a theme like it was oh it was a like a dress to impress you had to be in a suit and tie for like an old 90s seller and he didn't show up in a suit and tie and i sent him home uh and then he was like late the next day and he went on a performance plan because of it he was one of my top sellers i was like not dealing with that that's what it means to have values and culture i agree i can't
Speaker 3i think that comes from being in an office we we used to have we i was very tough back then but we also celebrated you know we made t-shirts for big months like it was fun we had fun it felt like
Speaker 1over everyone's desk and you got kite tails for being like the top seller
Speaker 2of the month i think my average time when i would get to the office was 11 a.m i don't think i've i rarely was in the office before 11 so it was very opposite to you guys i could care less when the person came like there was a guy who was coming to the office for like a long time at 7 a.m to be known as like the person who comes early and because i came so late no one would have i would never know when anyone came and i think it's knowing what works for you so like for you guys that discipline worked really well like we have this meeting everybody needs to be there that's what we're doing but
Speaker 1that goes to sam's point around diversity actually that's just subjective like you
Speaker 2can win in many different ways you just need to know what your way is and exactly and so we weren't going to
Speaker 1hire someone i couldn't hire someone that would come in at 11 a.m i'd fire them immediately absolutely and i didn't and i so i didn't like people's people's cycle
Speaker 3the boss the boss comes in we i mean that was that was the way it was at axial 15 years ago everybody's working their ass off and the bot the ceo comes in at like 11 with his bike helmet on are you
Speaker 1serious did that
Speaker 3really happen oh yeah of course it happened he didn't work fridays you know because you got to beat the traffic at east yeah
Speaker 1well i think it's how that
Speaker 3company do that sold for billions of dollars uh minus billions then you're right yeah correct you know minus billion
Speaker 2okay
Speaker 3this has been
Speaker 2really fun we're going back to the old top line to some extent so this is a step in that direction which means we have a question oh let's end it with and the question is what is something that you've been under prioritizing that you need to give more attention to in 20 20 sets aj time
Speaker 1i i need much i need to figure out a way time to get more time back and i was just talking to my ceo coach about this and i tend to do this situation where i schedule travel uh like let's say in six weeks i travel two to three of those weeks so the weeks in between travel gets sandwiched and compressed where i'm like meeting after meeting after meeting and i have to figure it out because i love like last week i love the like just openness for conversation and real strategic thinking and that's where i'm at my best or i'm in cancun and i can go for a five mile run in 75 degree weather uh and i need to figure out how i can do that year round um and that's that's what i under appreciate given my family commitments given my work commitments given my top line commitments i need to figure that out
Speaker 3that's a great answer um a bit of a long-winded uh answer that i'm going to
Speaker 1give you but i am long-winded no oh i mean you know sometimes it deserves deserves yeah
Speaker 3well i've been over prioritizing short-term results and i've been over prioritizing and we've talked about this so much but here's where and to acid's point i'm allowed to change my mind so here's where i'm at i've been over prioritizing short-term results and i've specifically been over prioritizing social media content creation that is clickbaity and intended to be transactional to try and either sell someone else's brand or sell something for pavilion and i am over prioritizing and i'm shifting that attention so as a consequence what do i mean by that i am not going to be posting every day on linkedin i will post most days i have um i have not i've basically cut the spend for alec my editor and he's not i'm just writing what i feel like writing and i am not gonna going to be posting every day on linkedin but i am prioritizing short-term results and i'm going to be posting every day on linkedin i will post most days on linkedin i will post most days on linkedin and i'm going to be posting every day on linkedin and i'm going to be posting every day on linkedin and even last week we had an incredible week and i didn't write i think i wrote once on linkedin and it had nothing to do with the reasons people were signing up and i am prioritizing a multi-year plan to build meaningful value for the customer even if that means in the short term there's higher churn or you know whatever the dashboards say i don't really care and i'm also going to be prioritizing a multi-year plan to build meaningful value for the customer even if that means in the prioritizing long-form content creation on substack again i'm not writing for zoom info i'm not writing for clay i don't really give a shit about those companies if we're being honest and i mean i like them and i celebrate them and they're great people but i don't i'm not going to work for them i'm going to work for expressing my own interesting ideas and playing a different game playing my own game and that's what i'm going to be doing this year and i'm excited for it i
Speaker 2really love that that's i
Speaker 3love that the writing's
Speaker 2part i think completely on the money with your social strategy by the way like i was talking to my team about this i think where we are today with social media is the best the best feeling that you can give a person is they feel like you quickly wrote this post and you wrote it and you just hit publish like it feels the most human and so in a world of ai slop where everything is so manicured and perfected the imperfect feels human and you actually give it more attention and you appreciate it more and so i've noticed this with social media like i'm going through linkedin i'm like ai slop ai slop ai slop and then i read something like this person just wrote it in press but like sometimes actually like jordan crawford who's like the most ai person on earth sometimes you can just see he's sitting there and he has like this brain fart puts it out feels raw feels real like it connects and so
Speaker 3meanwhile there's other people where it's like you know if i was the ceo of a five million dollar company here's exactly what i do the five-step plan and i'm like i cannot you're not i don't and no one cares anymore so if i was that is a way of me being transactional and saying sign up for my sub stack uh i hope that wasn't long-winded
Speaker 1either that was like a very good i can
Speaker 3keep going but it's all of it comes down to i'm building a long-term business the only way for me to create value with pavilion is not to focus on short-term results and i'm going to let the chips fall where they may as a result
Speaker 2of this mine is organizational design i think in my career i have a different not not prioritized it enough as like such an important part of running a business and trying to achieve a mission is really like looking at your organizational design and asking yourself if it's set up for communication to flow in the best way possible if it's set up so that people have the right support the right support not maximum support but the right sort of support if energy is your energy needs a structure to flow through if essentially the the structure that you've designed as such where energy will flow through correctly and i think it's just so important and i'm realizing this because last year we went through a pretty big reorg and it was so good for the business it was so good and now we are again going through another one and what i have learned in researching some of this is that if you look at some of the most high performing companies in the world you'd be surprised how often they reorg and they reorg because the world around you changes and you change and your needs change and your people evolve and so sitting down once a year and tinkering with it is probably a really good practice and maybe every two years you have to do some really fundamental changes to it um that's my new lesson and so this year i'm going to be thinking about that a lot more than i have in the
Speaker 3past i think that some of your hr moves are really quite inspired us that i have to say you have a chief of staff for communication and content that is so cool i do and uh i love that you're willing to make bold decisions on jobs that really haven't been normalized in the rest of america so it's pretty cool always a pleasure to see both of you uh thanks for another rousing edition of my podcast uh sam's rousing edition are you aroused you're at the right place if you are on youtube can you would you be so kind as to smash the subscribe button thank you so much and if you're listening on spotify or apple podcasts or wherever or snipped uh give us five stars and tell a friend about top line tell a friend tell that promote us thank you for listening we'll be back next week thanks everyone
Speaker 4okay and against all odds you're still here look if you want more top line check out the top line newsletter at topline.beehive.com beehive is spelled weird it is b-e-e-h-i-i-v.com topline.beehive.com or if you're a video person because video is great check us out on youtube topline dash media is what you want have a delightful day everybody you
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