Scale your business with Operational Excellence, by Ranya Barakat Director of Global Services, Avidly

[Music] Hi there! You have tuned into Fail and Grow. It's an operational excellence podcast actually season 7. Fail and Grow is for you who want to increase your revenue and become more profitable. I mean, who doesn't? So, by listening and learning and laughing, with world class leaders within OPEX. Who are just not just full of knowledge, but also humble enough to share their fuck ups and what they learn from it. And who you're listening to is me. I'm the host. My name is Wilma. I'm one of the co-founders and the CEO of the Locks-Q Configure price quote. And our tool is of course seamless integrated with your favorite Seram, reducing the cost of errors that directly affects your revenue and your profitability. But enough about that today's experts is no one less than Rania Barquette, the director of global services at Avaly. And what Rania isn't able to answer about Habspot is nearly impossible to find. So, I'm going to do some bragging now here. So, she has been, she's founded a company Seram 2.0. It was acquired by Avaly. She has been a Habs partner for 12 years. She has been a part of the Habspot ecosystem like all over the world, like Emea North and Latin America. She is a professor in Habspot Academy Discovery Colt boot camp. That would be really interesting for anyone out there want to have more first meeting. I mean, I could go on forever Rania, but it's a true pleasure to have you here. And maybe I should say something about Avaly as well. Well, it's so much bragging here. I always want to do the bragging. So, Avaly is a leading global partner. She has been here for five years running, actually, and they are present globally with over 2,500 successful implementation. Rania, it's a huge pleasure having you here in the podcast. You're a failing role. Formerly welcome. Thank you, Wilma. It's my pleasure to be here. And thank you for taking time to speak with me. Of course, of course. So, from your point of view, who is Rania and what do Avaly do? Okay, I'll start with Avaly and then I'll jump into Rania. Avaly is a global HubSpot partner that focuses on enterprise CRM rollouts in addition to mid market. We've been HubSpots Global partner of the year for the last five years running. We're global meaning we have presence in North America, in Amia, and APEC JPEC. I think I've seen my think now more than 350 people. So, yeah, long time HubSpot partner with the focus and specialization on that. Who is Rania? Oh, that's a complex question. Oh, I'm a, I'm a soul on earth, but also a global citizen. Meaning I lived worked in all continents on the planet with exception to Antarctica and Asia. I may very high energy. Sometimes considered a little bit too energetic for some. Yes, lots of. Yeah, I've heard that as well. But yeah, that's me. I take cover anthropologist by, by study tech lover by designer, I guess. By coincidence, maybe. Yeah. By coincidence. Nice. Good to have you here. And I always ask my dear guests what their favorite of the work drink is. So, of course, I'm wondering that from you at Spadler on the. Oh, so good question. If it's been, you know, one of those days of work where. You sort of felt a little bit drained. I would go for. Book a tea relax or breathe in. If it's been a. My clothes really good deal or I got a really good MPS or anything on those line. I'd probably say rum. Whatever rum. So specific rum. I'd go with whatever rum. And if you ask me when I still live in Chile in Latin America, I would tell you. Peace call Maracuyah. Yeah. Peruvian origin drink. Made from grapes. I really don't know how they make it. It's really good. And then they mix it with. Maracuyah, which in English is passion fruit. Ah, okay. Nice. Very nice. That sounds very good. Very nice. I was about to ask you like. I've never had an idea like I would go to a bar and order rum. Then the clothes I would get is like moito and then I'm also like, is this really rum or maybe? You know, my rump. Knowledge is very poor here. So I was thinking to ask you like, okay, how to enter like the world of Rome. But maybe then through that passion fruit. That's one way. And then I think the other way entry with rum is because it's so sweet. So it's really. Like hard. Efficient. So shot. Yeah. That's actually a very nice segue into today's topic. I have another question before that. But to be very efficient, operational excellence is about being efficient. So maybe that's something that comes with your core. Yeah, it's good to have a point. You know, I'm going to mix it and then I have to have five of them just. You shot so good together. A good friend of mine. We are a couple of people meeting up like every, I don't know, 46 months. You know, done that for almost 10 years or something. And he was like, he trains a lot. See, often that's a drink alcohol at all. And then what I could like, you know, being that, you know, losing a bit of the control, having that ruse. Feeling as we say Swedish, Swedish, English. But like, just being a little bit tipsy, maybe if you can translate it to that. But I don't like drinking. I don't like the taste of it. And I was like, looking at it. How hard can it be? So take a few shots. I mean, how hard can it be? But yeah, but then I have to take this shot. Please. How hard could it be? But then maybe this is something for him. Yeah. That's actually why I chose rum because of the taste. Like, I don't like the taste of vodka. I don't like the taste of whiskey wine. I think I might have had too much of it in my life. A bit too vinegary. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing. Very good advice. I will bring it forward to him. And my next question is your funniest work related fuck up that you dare to share with us. What is that? Funny or sad? You choose. You can take two. That's also okay. Okay. I think funny or sad? Well, it's relative depending how you look at it. I think my party, one of my biggest fuck ups that stayed with me for a while. And I had to reflect and process it and impacted me physically and emotionally. It was back in 2018, like before I even, you know, was anything to do with Avidli. I had my own agency. And I remember it was December 2018. And someone from HubSpot reached out and say, "Hey, there's this deal. We really need your help on." And I was like, "Oh, okay, cool." And then we started working the deal and it was a huge deal, enormous. I think probably the biggest deal I've ever worked on in my life, which is why I was so excited about it. But all through the sales process, I kept seeing the red flags. You know, when that happens, I can every single call my gut, my intuition, my brain would be like, "Oh, red flag. You shouldn't be doing this." "Oh, red flag." And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, but the MMR." They're just sharing for us. It's not red flags, really. It's like, "You share leaders." And I was like, "Maybe it's just because I'm tired. I'm thinking that way." And so we closed the deal. And it wasn't enormous deal, which, you know, and everything seems so positive, be it for revenue for the company or the HubSpot, revenue, like whatever it is. And then like three weeks into the project, I remembered all of those red flags. They become back here. They weren't she- she- a leader. It was not- no. It was really bitter harsh reality. And I thought, "Okay, I know. You have two choices. You can either just walk out now or you can suck it up like a big girl." Right. And try deal with it. You know, and sort of iron it out and make it work. And I tried that for like three months. Not good. Not one little thing about it was good. Apart from the learning of like the fuck up was not listening to my intuition, not pushing back when I saw those red flags. Everything about it was horrible. It was like verbal, mental abuse. It was bad. You know, and I think the reason it stayed with me for so long was, was like, you know, as a business owner, it's hard to sort of choose peace of mind over revenue. But that was the best learning in this, that, you know, what not all revenue is healthy. healthy. think they go like hand in hand like revenue then peace of mind but yeah we all know that doesn't have to be the case always not with the red red red exactly and I was really annoyed because like as a human being in general I have really strong intuition and I always follow it but it just in this case I was like no no no let's try something new you know who runs a business on intuition how crazy is that right so yeah I would say that was maybe this work fuck up okay thank you for sharing and not we don't have to know what customers is I think it's irrelevant I mean the learning here is the interesting parts but what why do you think was the customer very stressed where they were there's something that were in their environment and made the situation as well despite you not seeing the red flags during the way but was it something particular or particular they state they weren't I think it was two things one when there is a like the way their modus operatus the way they work the way they communicate with themselves with their own teams yeah was very different to the way we work okay right and the way my team functions so I think it was a corporate cultural misfit that would be one and I think the other one is and I don't mean it in a bad way because not not every big companies like that but usually the higher the bigger the enterprise the more complicated the relationship the more stakeholders there are the more you know what I mean yeah so I think a combination of size and in addition to just very different mindsets okay you know like we at the time when I had my own agency nothing to do with Avenue here for us it was very important to never be treated like a vendor right for a partner where is this together where on the equal sides of the table where and I think that was one that was not there very small things like good morning how are you you know the whole human centric approach the working relationship fun yeah that was very big for us but not necessarily this company okay it was like a culture culture super clash yeah way of work like I corporate culture because it's not a location culture it's a a culture of each company like we're the agency again before Avidli days it was all about a human centric that was our core of how that was our north star okay Ronnie I thank you so much for sharing I think we all could see our stuff and that situation we actually just had a discussion this morning here at VilloxQ we are a customer that are there is changing a lot internally and we have a very hard time to reaching that true decision makers and the users are like super happy but to be honest in combination we have like tricky proof what's very obvious for us like providers and using it but to prove that or actually to be to be heard and I just I talk about exactly same thing we are so spoiled I would say like being partners with our customers we partners with Avidli like partner partner but our customer relationship is like they they can call us for anything and we can call them as well for anything and in this specific case is so clear that like we are vendors and that is this very tricky but that's for another podcast show but I could really see that corporate culture misfit could really make up even more red flags than might exist for other reasons yep now we're going to dive into a shared topic that we are both very passionate about we're going to talk about operational excellence and my first question is what is operational excellence for you and why is this important for other companies to be as passionate about as you lie so great question operational excellence for me is doing more with less that's like how I would summarize it and then we could shut out the recording I agree I agree yeah I'm going to continue as a reason that's important for businesses is optimization which will impact your profitability and once you have you know profitability that will impact scalability and I feel those are really important sort of metrics not VV only but one of a very important metric that businesses needs to keep an eye on for that piece of mind so that you have that six months runway of you know cash in the bank if there is whatever happening it's okay right and what I mean by doing more with less it's like how can I serve more customers without necessarily the need to consistently be higher and more people for example how can I increase my team's utilization rate without impacting their mental health that's a good one tricky one it's a tricky one but it all comes down to how efficient are you right and to be efficient is tied to processes tied to technology tied to project intake try to project information like there's many moving pieces that store in pre sales you know and so as we work with companies help them become in a more operationally efficient it's like think of it as a as a business journey where what do we need to do in the pre sales so that we have everything we need to ensure that my delivery team very efficiently understands customer goals customer challenges customer plans customer options like the basic info you need to be able as a CRM consultant to actually add value then you have to look at well what does my actual sales process look like how frictionless is it how many touch points do I need to do what are the battle cards that I need to use and the less the better not say I don't want to spend time when like customer in the sales process I do but we all know time is our most valuable asset sure so if we can guard it that's not a bad thing yet maintain that really high value that you're adding and so if you think with this mindset of every single step of the way pre sales during sales handover from sales to service handover from sales to finance sales you know going from say service team picking up the start of the project to getting the kickoff books and then all throughout the project extending customer lifetime values and every stop of those ways it's always about what do I need to do to as the saying goes cut the fat yeah you know what I mean yeah that was a very long answer that's that's why we have a podcast show you know it can go for ever if you'd like that's great we can talk about how successful companies have implemented this or we can talk about common mistakes you choose common mistakes when trying to think about this so you choose the success cases or should we have some more fuck ups here I'm eager for both I think like I can start with common mistakes because that's somehow the other side of successful companies that have done this right I think one of the most common mistake I've experienced is trying to set a plan for efficiency for one three five years it's too long a window right and so successful companies on the other hand are the ones that approach it in a really agile and lean way so for example what do I need to do for the next quarter right what am I going to test what are the what metrics am I going to use to determine was the successful was it not I'm taking that data driven approach and consistently refining an optimizing quarter after quarter instead of trying to go for that long show how do you combine that with like long time strategies or long time goals or maybe that isn't the question you often receive maybe that's something they said in my head but yeah so I think it depends on the goal like if I'm looking if I keep two goals utilization rate and profitability as the two things that I'm going to look at then what I'm going to do is at every quarter I'm going to stop and say oh did the needle turn right did I manage to actually reduce the number of hours that are being spent so in turn my profitability is going to go up at the same time I can serve more customers and the utilization is also going to go up or did my service quality drop right you know what I mean yeah that said something like profitability utilization right it's not a quick fix and that's why I prefer to have these really frequent check ins and a really honest hard conversation with the stakeholders what's the data saying let's look at it what worked well where's the area's improvement rinse and repeat makes sense does that make sense yeah shorter interaction time if you will or shorter goals but shorter to often interact and see what a trend goes like. - Or multiple frameworks and communication channels for that interaction. Like not everything has to be a meeting with five or six people. - No, please not. If you don't have me. Someone told me, "Well, it's like, "Mama, you don't have to." Because I said that my schedule was a bit hectic. And this person told me like, "Yeah, but you don't have to go on everything." And if I could just say, it was a he, he was like, "If I'm in a meeting and I don't feel it's very well, "then I can just say so." I was like, "Yeah, that's never happened to me "because I would never enter a meeting "that I don't feel beneficial for me." But I don't, I know not everyone is as bold as me though. People long-term, that's you know. - That is spot on. Like I think they really successful companies, for example, having like what you call a playbook for me to. - Right. - I'm not gonna attend it. - Right. - Yeah, it is great. - If I don't need to share my screen, guess what? I can be, could take this meeting on my phone and while I'm walking or you know, getting some fresh air. If we are going to be discussing something critical in the meeting, I'd like to receive the slides and a loom video before the meeting where we can actually go through the info. So the time spent in the meeting is actionable rather than just you looking at a screen, someone presenting something. - Right. - There's small little hacks that you can do where you're still having interactions. You're still engaging with the customer, but it's always that face-to-face time be it online or in person is always so that it's actionable. - Okay. - So that it's not just talk. - That's great. - And as of course, it's a brainstorming session then there's another topic. - Then it's clear and agenda. Okay, so what are our camera mistakes? Do you see people trying to be more efficient? - Depending on pretty slides. - We all seem that one. - And try to achieve it as well by all means. No one cares. - Very well. You just answered it. Literally no one cares. It's not a pretty slide that will make your process more efficient, but it's actually building a process with the supporting documentation. Even if it's just on a plain black Google dog, that's fine. Or I took a week here or whatever it is. But I often see companies spending hours and hours and hours perfecting the visual, but what's core and concrete in the process is lacking. So it's like visual impact versus substantial impact. - In a way, okay. That's one. Another one is, this one is quite interesting because there's like, you know, different viewpoints on it. So there's the whole school of specialization. Having resources that are specialized that only do one thing. And then there's the school of, I'll have a bunch of resources that are multi-skill. And so what I often find is some companies will go either way, but I think successful companies typically have the mix of both those kinds of resources because when you have a multi-skill team, it's quick. You don't need to keep bringing in additional people to solve one thing. Whereas there are some parts of the business or deliverable where you do need a specialized skill. That's fine because then you can hand off from multi-skill to skill and back. And so that multi-skill resource can do more. While the skill resource can focus on, only that little part. - Right. Interesting. Never thought about it. Do we have any more mistakes? - I hate to say it off of space. - Ooh, this is one. Yeah. Okay. Let me hear what's your thought on this. - I don't know if it's me or just a team that I manage, but like we've been managing fully remote teams since 2018. And what's interesting is two things. The first one is remote environment was more productive. Like what people deliver and produce in a remote environment. The data showed was higher than people in the office 'cause I think that dynamic group behavior of, oh, let's just have a coffee and chit chat in the corridor. And it's very easy when someone is sitting next to you, hey, how do you do blah, blah, blah? Or hey, where is La La La as opposed to when you're on your own and focused, you go to the week here and check it, you'll Google it, you'll, you know, how you can ask Gemini or any other AI. (laughing) That's one. - That's a very debated topic. It feels like a moment because it feels true like, the pandemic arrived and then everyone was more less forced home. So all companies had to adjust to that. And then at least to me, it feels like the trend is, like if you are a really competitive like it's company, not IT, like the company that are really, really growing or being very profitable, whatever goal they have, then they have, they are proud of having like, we come to the office, we meet here, this is where we actually build the success. And as a person, I love having people around. I'm very extrovert getting like energy from other people, you know. So when I'm at home working, I get a lot more things done being very productive, but maybe my soul isn't flourishing if I can say so. And then I've been thinking so much about this, like why does it have to be really a trend and we have the, it's work from anywhere. So I truly believe there, where you are as a person, I mean, Rania, you are a human and you also employ that avidly, but you're, yeah, foremost a human, where you are, where you thrive, there will you be most productive. That is my general belief. And then it goes back and forth. And now I've been, you know, animating this at the office. We are a small team. And I'm like, thinking all that discussion, it's like, was that really productive? Was it good maybe team building? Or you know, we got to know each other better? We can, we can be more efficient when we work together if we get to know each other better. Yes, that I, yes, approve of. But are we really more productive? I don't know. Yeah, it's, I completely understand what you're saying. I think there's a couple of sort of follow up points. Like picking up on people's energy, getting to know everyone that is team building. Yes. You can start to understand this human being better, like their facial expressions, their body language, and so on and so forth. Will that make you more productive? Maybe not, maybe yes. I don't think so. Will it make you a better team player? Potentially. So there's a difference between productive as an individual. And where I fit in the wider org versus I understand my teammates. So I know how to push or pull back a little bit because I've met this person in presence. Another thing that I found is when you said COVID came on companies were forced. There's a huge difference between companies that were forced to go remote, who never wanted to be remote, who never thought of being remote, who never had their processes built for remote versus companies that wanted to be remote. Therefore, the mindset was, what do I need to do for my company to function in a productive, efficient way in a remote environment? Those are very, very different experiences. Yeah. So that's one. And then the other thing that I find is, and this could be another topic for a really long podcast. But what I feel is in a remote environment, it gives every individual in the Zoom call or the Google mean or whatever what technology is, it sort of democratizes everyone's opportunity. And what I mean by that is it's literally a face and a brain and a mouth. And that's it. There's no what I'm wearing, how I'm moving, my jewelry, my perfume, how cool my shoes are. That of the extra sort of things. That's right. In a group environment that contribute to either a psychological, social or emotional hierarchy. Right. That's very true. I also, you know what I mean? I also find the remote environments enable specific types of personalities to be more productive, for example, introverts. Correct. Put an introvert in an office that's like, woo, you're not coming at our hands, you know. Yeah, it's like this is way too much for me, right? Neurodivergent team players, you know, there's a lot of neurodivergent people in teams where lighting, scent can impact their productivity. Yeah. So if you look at the, if you sort of zoom out a little bit and you look at what do I need to do to provide a human being? with the ability to be most productive and content. That's, it varies like you were saying from person to person, but the formula is a nice workspace, healthy food, healthy life habits. - Right. - Can you have those three things in an office? Maybe. (laughs) But I don't know, like from, you know, just our experience since 2018, we found that, "Oh wow, 'cause we had both, "we had remote team and we had in-house team, "and if you just look at the data, it was fascinating." So that would sort of led us to the decision of, "Let's just go for your remote." - Right. - Right. And then I added to, we added another layer when COVID hit, like we weren't remote before COVID, and with COVID because the whole world became online, like you were saying, we were like, "Okay, let's look at the data. "If we go to our team and we say, "Listen, "if your sprint is complete by Thursday, "you can get Friday off." - Interesting. - And that was an approach to combat mental health, Zoom fatigue, all of that. And what we found was, because we had a remote first approach and process and documentation and then and and and. And because we worked in sprints and had the structure for it, everyone owned it. So that's what I wanna take Friday off, right? And so that increased efficiency and productivity because you have to do more, in less, more work, five days worth of work in less time, four days work of, "How am I gonna do that? "I need to be really efficient. "I need to not waste time. "I need to be highly productive. "I need to make sure I have all of the requirements "for whatever it is I'm working on, "really well documented and structured." And so all of this leads to, and even more efficient way of work. If you look at it from a sort of the other side of the coin where we don't like remote work because we can't manage or control our team, of course we're not going to do a four day week because who's going to pay for the fifth day? There's something wrong in your operational efficiency. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think it's very interesting. It's good also, you know, when one can back up stuff with data as well. And maybe someone would say, "But then they get even more stressed "because they work more the four days." Yeah, but yes, optional and so forth and so forth. But it's very interesting to take some of it. So if we look at operational excellence, I mean, it's a very broad expression. And we should, I mean, come up with three things. Like, okay, you have understood that this is important. Maybe the company you're working at or leading or it works with this on a recurring basis. Do we have like one, two, three things? Like, this is the recipe to actually make it work. Processes that are refined every quarter and what I mean by process is mapping out your whole business process every single touch point along it. Just like looking at your sales funnel and identifying, where does it leak? Where does it get jammed? Same idea. Documentation. And what I mean by documentation is enabling every single person on the team to be efficient by finding what they need quickly and easily and in multiple formats. Like you cannot assume that, oh, yeah, just because I have my knowledge base in text, it's sufficient because people learn differently. So you need to have your documentation in written form, in spoken form, in visual form, and examples so that it's for the use of the term, don't be proof. We can call it a playbook. Okay. Exactly. And you need to, and the third thing you need to have is transparency on the shared metric. How is this process that we are implementing impacting that metric? Where can everyone in the team go and see it? To understand, well, is it working? Is it not? Is my contribution helping or is it making it worse? Right. And for that, you need to have, I put emphasis on transparency. The out of fourth one, an enablement plan, a personal enablement plan for every individual in the team because people learn and function and produce at different places than others. And so anyone who's in a leadership position, who's managing a team that is trying to be more operational efficiency, the burden is on the leader to make sure that, you know, everyone in your team is supported as needed instead of having that general approach. Is it the fifth or are we happy with four? No, it's the rough again. Okay. And if we see company size, where you think you should start making those processes, I mean, it's whether you're like it or not, it takes some time to actually make all the documentation and visions and things you mentioned. Like you should start here and it's absolutely critical you're doing it here. If that is the number of employees or turnover, whatever, what would you say? I would say like as you're building your company and, you know, start up going through growth and scale up, you need to start from day one, build it to be efficient. So that you don't end up with a mess that you need to sort of reverse engineer. But if I look at company size, maybe using like a spot definition, I'd say starting mid market and up it. Well, actually now that I think about it, all sizes need to be efficient, operational efficient because the smaller the company, the less humans you have, but the more you need to be doing, that's where that multi scale of the jugular, right sort of comes. Then when you go with mid market, you're sort of going from growth into scale up. So 200 to 200 people. So you need to be really efficient there to ensure that scale up. And then with enterprise, like what I've generally seen is, because there's so many more people, then that efficiency somehow drops down. But if I use Tesla as an example, like they're very efficient, just using robots to build cars and now they have the self driving actually takes the car out of the factory and puts it on the tractor. So now what actually you said is the fifth one, there is technology. I knew it was something more. You need the technology to enable all of that without it's like not going to work. Very interesting. Okay. Anything else on the topic that you would like to have that I mean, we haven't addressed or I haven't asked about when it comes to operation excellence. There is one thing I would like to add, just because a company is becoming more operationally efficient, does not mean that the quality of work goes down. Just because a company is spending less hours customer facing time does not mean they care less about the customer. It's it's it's none of that. It's you can still deliver a world class solution without standing results, while continuously becoming more operationally efficient, so that your profitability is consistently and that nice. Do you have some clear data on this like some KPIs successful companies, you mentioned Tesla, I'm sure there's many, many more out there that you actually can see if they grow more quickly or if they have higher profitability, do we have some clear numbers? I don't have clear numbers, but I would also use HubSpot as an example. I would like to talk about the number of customers that are in the team, because if you look at the number of customers that are HubSpot serves versus the number of people in the team, they can't be doing something super well if they're interesting. In podcasts or read books or whatever to learn more yourself about operation excellence, where do you turn to? Easy. Who is easy? I turn to easy. Easy is my life partner is where I live, my business partner for the last 20 years. He is a master of making everything and life more efficient. Isn't that hard to live with someone who is like that, even though it feels right nice as well. I don't know, we don't do that. I'm in control here. We do this more efficient. I think it's a superpower somehow to be able to do it. It's almost like it's his passion in a way. So yeah, I would definitely choose easy for that one. Okay. Good. Interesting. I'm very curious. Now we're doing some other questions here. I'm going to prepare this little bit high and low. What are your main challenges in your business that are avidly right now? Problem that you are addressing or trying to solve in a better way. Smirror way, more efficient way. I don't know. Maybe cross continental level. team collaboration. So having 350 people or more across three regions across 18 or 20 hour time zone. There's a lot of variables there. So you just work 24/7 and go out for a walk when you get to any so many G or how do you how do I tackle that? Really, it must be challenging, for sure. It is challenging and then also as companies grow through acquisition. Right? So every company you acquire has a way of work. So the magic becomes when you streamline all of those processes for many different companies and cultures and languages. So that's a constant. I don't think it's a challenge that will one day be like, oh, okay, we found a solution because it's like evergreen. There's always something you can do better. There's always a process you can optimize. There's always a colleague on the other side of the world that could do it better than you. Yeah, I suppose it is. Yeah, it's that's one. And I also see it like not only from the avidly perspective, but because we serve a lot of global companies. So a lot of the time when I'm in the sales process having discussions with them, it's like, well, okay, what are your current needs struggling with? Oh, you know, team Amia and the scandex are doing a different than Iberia, doing a different than UK, doing a different than the US. It's a very normal thing because you're trying to build a global culture and it's not that easy. No, no, okay. Thank you for sharing. And I could like with that. I think it's challenges being as small as we are just, you know, back to that, you know, the remote dialogue we have. That is actually itself. So, could I see you guys? And what, who would you like me to invite? Easy. I was like, is it easy? You want to dive deeper into the operational efficiency, definitely, is it would be your go-to? Like he's, he's, he's, we're welcome. We're pleasure. We sleep, dream, technology, processes, like, yeah. But you're still working together? Yeah. Do you see, yeah, the avidates well? Absolutely. Well, do you talk about avis or something else about avidates? No, that's a good podcast. Others, others show I'm just fooling myself here. Mattias Einstein, co-founder of Sales Unomics. And I'm curious if you would choose one thing that businesses needs to change within the coming two years. What's the single most important thing that you use that business in general need to change? I would say leading or having a working culture that's not human-centric. And what I mean by that is I find in a lot of companies or in a working relationship, the norm or the stereotype or the expectation is to not really show who you truly are, but just be a role. You know, you have to speak a certain way, you have to address a certain way, you have to think a certain way, you have to not think a certain way. And I find that when companies are role-based rather than human-centric, you don't get the most out of everybody. And the reason I believe that is if we can tap into each individual's uniqueness, not only in a role, but in a role and as a personality and what they can bring to the table, it's a very, very different outcome. Do you believe so internationally or have you been like influenced by the very strict Swedish culture? No. I believe so internationally. Definitely internationally. We manage a team that spans across three different continents, speaking eight different languages. So that's a lot of culture and problem-solving style and and everything is different. And if we did not tap into that, I think we would not be the successful team that we are today because it's a superpower. I think that one. We're interesting. We're interesting. That one and if I could add another one, of course. It would be showing away from the type of team player or resource for the use of a term that is considered challenging. You usually people who are challengers are sort of sidelined. They're out. They're cancelled because they keep poking and it gets very frustrating. They're hard to maintain. And there's a book Adam Grant by Adam Grant. Think again. Brilliant book. It talks a lot about why you should embrace that challenger role. You should always have somebody in your team that is consistently challenging everything you say. And the reason is it is forcing you to think again and think again and think again because the more the more people challenging you, the more your mind or solution or idea gets refined. If you support yourself with people that you know are very compliant or always uploading and clapping, then you'll have to have all the answers yourself. I think those two are tied together. Yeah. The human centric, the let's not pretend at work. Yeah. And I allow people to challenge. And that's just it's not easy to manage, but it's the outcome is beautiful. If you're confident in what you're doing, you'll have an amazing team. Okay. And now the best part. So depending on the day, and I think I mean, I think it's always time for celebration if you can find something to celebrate. So we ordered that rum with passion fruit. I don't really recall the correct maracoya. And this song's come up and then you become even more happier. Maybe you start dancing or something. What are we listening to then? What's your favorite of the work? So if it's rum, it will definitely take me to reggaeton, which will definitely take me to Jay Balvin. Which will probably take me to the track Asul, which is blue and Spanish or Blanco. Both of them are very big on earth beats and drum beats. Yeah. It's all in that version. Exactly. I was born and grew up in Kenya. So I think drumming is like wow. You know, was everywhere around me. So it's easy. You start. I'm fortunate to people can't see us when we do these things. Or if you look at YouTube, you can. But if you're listening to podcasts, you don't know that we look like two olds now like moving around the internet. Okay. Definitely beautiful. Those beats. As it's the reason I would choose that is that movement, which the energy in your body slow. And I think it has. It brings out a lot of feminine power. Interesting. Maybe another podcast show. Thank you so much for joining today, Rania. It was a such a pleasure. Cheers and have a beautiful weekend. Thank you, Irma. Lovely. Speak with you and speaking with you. Have a great day. [Music]