GSD Podcast - From Special Forces to Design Leader with Richard Banfield

Jeff is joined by Richard Banfield, founder of Fresh Tilled Soil.

We covered many topics, including how the leadership training in Special Forces helped him understand the customer and the "why" more with customers. We talked extensively about building teams, selling methodologies, customer empathy, and many more. We also covered Richard's favorite podcasts and thought leadership books. A great time and I learned a ton.

Transcript:

Jeff  01:14

Hi there this is Jeff Kushmerek from the GSD getting services done podcast. Welcome back. I had the chance today I'm actually sitting in Hudson mass where Richard Banfield has a new business, he still is fresh tilled soil. But he created a new type of Office shared location. And it's it's beautiful. If you know, Richard, it's exactly what you would expect. There's fantastic furniture, everything is just spaced appropriately and elegantly. And not only that, and we touched on the this in the podcast is he's a big believer in community. And we sat down, had a nice lunch. Other people here in the space came over, we were chatting with Chef and videographer and a CrossFit trainer, and some other people as well. And it was just, he's really doing a great thing out here. For people that like to do the co working thing don't want to work directly in their houses might be remote. But they also don't want to go to a space that is incredibly loud fishbowl like and the only thing that's really thought about in those places are the the cold room and the ping pong table. So highly recommend that. We got into so many things. Richard has been a friend, a vendor, mentor everything for me along the years. And we got into it's funny, I had a lot of topics and the topics really came to getting resolved around some culture, and passion. But we definitely got into how to hire for your teams and how to be empathetic. And what customers know that you care how to scale, how to work distributed, there was a really long discussion that was super needed on the distributed workforces, and how to do that correctly. And Richard has experience in that with threshold soil going remote recently, and just thought leadership. And we really got into new business acquisition a lot too. So there's a lot of things here. And then we touched on fared podcasts and thought leadership things as well. And just just a really great time Richard's a speaker in demand and glad for the time. So sit back, enjoy and enjoy the conversation. All right, so I am recording now I'm here with Richard Banfield. And Richard I thought I'd start this off by telling you a story that I've never told you. Oh, but I tell everybody about you, really? So yes, exactly. And so as you might be aware, when I was at Bright Cove, I had a group that was designers and developers and whatnot. But the point here is I had designers, right? And so one of the designers one day was talking about something in a meeting. I'm like, Hey, that's a great concept. And she's like, Yeah, I just read it. From fresh tilled soil. I was like who and she's like fresh tilled soil. And she's like, You should subscribe to their blog. I think you'd really like it. And I was like, oh, okay, sounds great. And so I subscribe to it. And I was like, these guys put out great contents. I don't need them as a vendor. But I'm really glad I know if the service right in so fast forward a few years later, I had a project where I needed some really good UX fast. And I don't know if I ever told you this. I you know, we had a friend of ours that connected us. I didn't even get to other vendors. I knew you were the guys. And we hit it off and and I said that's it. And so when people talk about content, Jen aeration, I always use fresh tilled soil. And when I was trying to get our marketing department like we just need to put out some thought leadership, which we're going to touch on later. I always use this example. And they're like, oh, wow, so there you go. Yeah. So keep doing what you do. Yeah.

Richard Banfield  05:13

You know, it's funny, because content creation was never a marketing initiative. For us. It was always driven by curiosity. Yeah, we will always wish to talk about that thing. We don't know enough about that. Right? It's some really smart people who know about this thing. Yeah. And we would call them and interview them. And eventually, it became a podcast and a whole bunch of other things. But yeah, it, it was really just like, admitting that we didn't know what the hell we were talking about, and then reaching out to the people who didn't see it, saying, Hey, do you mind if you talk about this stuff?

Jeff  05:44

That's exactly this podcast. We talked about a little bit before this. But I used to go off and we I talk with all these people that we just when we get together, not as much as we should anymore. But we get together, we just talk about stuff. How do you do this? How you do that? And I view this podcast as and he maybe you maybe you just got promoted or dropped in? Or you ran support, and now you have a services group that needs to happen. And and then it's and then here you go, Where do I find any of this white coral? I don't think so. Right? So, so hopefully, that's what but this is for an absolutely, I think you find so much out through breaking things. Yeah. And, and we do a lot of that where we are now or we walk in and we're like, oh, well, you know, we built this out. And we made sure that we have all of these components. Like they're like, Wow, how did you think about this? I'm like, well, we kind of found out the hard way, because we didn't ask customers if they needed multi tenancy until suddenly, they're like, this is multi tenancy, right? So things like that. So actually, why don't you give us a quick history because, you know, I think we're gonna title this, like, from Special Forces to design. But I, it's a fascinating turn of events that I'd love for you to get into a little bit, not the big biography that we talked about, but for people to know, sort of how it happened, and in what you're into now,

Richard Banfield  07:01

yeah, you know, I, I'm not sure if everybody goes through this, but I suspect that even people who think about their careers from an early age, you don't really know what the hell you do when you're 16 or 17, or 18. I mean, just, you're just so stupid. You have so little insight into the real world.

Jeff  07:20

That's why we have liberal art major.

Richard Banfield  07:24

And by the way, I highly value that stuff, like everybody should do philosophy, everybody's showing you that kind of

Jeff  07:30

Absolutely. You know, I'm a mechanical engineer. I'm going to ride this rail. Yeah. Next 30 years.

07:35

Yeah. And there's definitely a place for the kind of the technical skill sets, but you should always start with just how to think Yeah, and I was dropped into the army straight out of school, it was a requirement. Okay. I'm living in South Africa, which is conscription, just like it is in Israel in other countries. And that was my first experience of the real world outside of school. And it was a great experience, because suddenly it was, I became an officer. So there was that whole leadership play? Oh, great thing. Yeah. But you really just find out where your limits are. You find out mentally, emotionally, physically where your limits are, right? And it sets you up for this incredible opening, your mind opens to a whole different place. That if you're maybe more protected environment, maybe you just go from school, to school, to school to career, you really don't always find out where the hard parts are. Exactly. Yeah. And where the scary parts are. Yeah. And where you have to face yourself in the middle of the night. Like that's, you know, like, Oh, my God, this is yeah, this is who I really am. Or I'm being asked to do these things.

Jeff  08:38

I hadn't even thought about asking this. But you're all always seemed to me very calm, right? And I'm sure there's sides, right? We all have that. Right? You know, somebody doesn't put the toilet paper roll on or something like that. And suddenly, like, it's all gone, but, but dealing with those things, you find out like, the hard stuff right in and suddenly, the toilet paper roll is not that bad compared to like navies sleeping in Sandy water and things like that. Yeah.

09:06

Yeah, absolutely. I, I It's not like you solve the problem. And sounds like you know what calmness is, and you can always be there, right? But it's the door is opened and you get a glimpse of it. I find this with meditation as well, you get a glimpse of something. And then you go, Oh, I know what it is. And I know where it is. And I know how to get there. Yeah, but it doesn't mean it's always on writing. It's so true. Same thing happens with psychedelic drugs, actually, ya know, you have the door opens and you you're like, Oh, I see that thing. Yeah, but it's not like the problem to get solved. Right? Use a different approach on you just know that there is a solution and you know that it's available to you. And that gives you this opening this

Jeff  09:52

it's another nother event. Yeah, it was falling said the psychedelic drugs. I thought that madman episode where the really straight laced was the name of the White House. anyways, he accidentally took acid and then suddenly it just had very different perspective on things. And

10:05

so the AMI is like that it kind of opens your mind. And then my, my experiences were very unpredictable. I let my career unfold without too much of a plan. Too much of a plan. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, no roadmap, right? I'm

Jeff  10:22

aware of that scenario.

10:25

Yeah. And I think that a lot of people probably experienced that. But they, they may tell a different story, because they want their parents to believe that they actually know what they want. They want the rest of the world, the society around them to know what they want. But a lot of us are just finding up, you know, where we, who we are and how we fit into. And I was very, very fortunate I, I worked with the diving instructor overseas in a very, very remote location of the world. That was another way to kind of explore literally the depths of my being. And, and then I thought, well, hang on a second, this could be Korea could do this in a more formalized setting. So I decided I was going to become a marine biologist. And studied biology. Yeah. And was disappointed that science the way you know, I mentioned science being more like National Geographic. Gotcha. Yeah. And because I'd be working in you're actually

Jeff  11:22

doing is, especially you're probably in like a lot of theory. Yeah. And

11:26

there was like back in the lab and spending enormous amount of time in the subterranean windowless lab. And I was just like, I don't know if I want to do this for the rest of my life. Right. And so fortunately, had been exposed to to some design stuff. It was the new era of computers, everybody was had a PC by then. The way it was just starting to make its presence felt. And I was like, this is pretty cool. Got in there opened up the first I think it was like, Windows paint or something. Oh. And it just kind of turned me on. I was like, I can do really cool stuff with this. Yeah. And find it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and then people would find me and say, can you make stuff can you make, whether it's product packaging, or a logo or a small website or something like that? And, and we were all just trying to figure it out? Yeah. Nobody knows what the hell it is, you know, operating manual. Yeah. And you wouldn't, you would just, you know, find an HTML book and write yourself that stuff. And oh, I know, I just

Jeff  12:30

didn't do it. I suddenly Netscape communicators out there. With that stuff as well. I remembered, yeah, oh, my god, O'Reilly books, I probably put somebody through college with us.

12:42

Yeah, and you kind of just figure it out as you go along. And a lot of it is admitting that you don't really know. But at the same time, you also have to somewhat fake it before you make it because people are asking you to do stuff. And you're, you're putting yourself in that expert position.

Jeff  13:00

That's such a concept that I actually want to get into that, because I haven't written out here. But there's, you know, use the dichotomy Oregon, but there's like, you're faking it till you make it. But you want to show this sort of like, we know what we're talking about? Yeah. How do you and I know you guys go through this, the note that I wrote was that I first noticed this with you, because I had always been working in services with a product company, like I can get anything done within decades will load the file and like, or breakover, build video experiences for you. But I noticed you can go from context to context and within five minutes, pretty much like, Oh, you're gonna do this as marketplace manager, you're gonna do Baba, blah, blah, blah. And, and that's where I noticed that you are able to really pick up on stuff and then just kind of fill in the pieces along the way. Is that pattern recognition? Is it the fact that you make it or?

13:52

It's, it's a deep sense of curiosity. So when you're truly curious about something, and I really mean, truly, authentically curious, then people come away from the old conversations thinking, wow, this person knows a lot about that. But what you've really just done his article, an insane amount of questions. Yeah. And the, the perception is, oh, this was a conversation between experts, right. Whereas it was really just a lot of insanely good questions. Yeah. And, and very often, those questions are insanely good, because they're simple and flat, foundational, right? Like, why does this work? Like it does explain to this, to me how this thing works, or draw a picture, get up on the whiteboard and show me what the ecosystem of these

Jeff  14:36

seven levels of why like why do you want to do that? Well, because I want to put my kids through education. Well, why do you want to do that? And suddenly, like, Oh, my God, I gotta really think about that now.

14:44

Yeah, exactly. So it's not so much about presenting as the expert and then faking that expertise. It's mostly about saying, there is a thought process like of an exercise of thought that we're going to go with threw together. And that feels like expertise, right? So if you put any other profession in that seat, whether it's a doctor or a lawyer or anybody else, let's say you are meeting with a doctor, and the doctor asked really good questions that would expose you to hire the doctor, things where that doctors experience might be, and what they really care about. And it's the same with anything, right? So if you walk in and you pretend to know all the answers, and you throw solutions around, then it feels more like you're selling aware like you, these are my things, and I'm gonna sell them to you and use a hammer and a nail. Yeah. Whereas when you go through the discovery process, that leads to a different kind of empathetic conversation, which, yeah, what psychologists call accurate empathy.

Jeff  15:49

Okay, what so empathy is the big theme that I just keep popping up to? And I think there is something about doing really well in this profession of professional services. If I think that empath is truly one of those traits that is needed to be successful, but also somebody that people want to work with.

Richard Banfield  16:11

Yeah, and it has to be accurate empathy, not the fake empathy.

Jeff  16:15

Because what do you mean?

Richard Banfield  16:18

The fake empathy is actually fairly easy to learn? Yeah. You know, and it's these little things like, you know, I'm going to really listen to somebody, I'm gonna let them talk all the way through before I asked my next question, right. I'm going to repeat back what they say to me, you can learn those things without actually caring and really listening,

Jeff  16:38

because they're called sociopaths.

16:43

But that's what unfortunately happens. Yeah. Especially in the world that we live in.

Jeff  16:46

Because everybody was told the solution sell now. And it's like, well, you have to do that. Wait five seconds before they before you talk. But then wait another five seconds? And it may seem like painful silence, then that's the training. Right? Yeah.

16:59

And then that went, you know, solution selling went to challenges selling where it was a little bit more active. It was can this CO active?

Jeff  17:07

Poking? Yeah. And did you ever fall into that? Did you ever do the challenging?

17:12

So I've, I've tried all of these things, because I'm curious to see how they work, right. But there's a core part of you that goes the sons like Porsche, you would never have this conversation with a child or a wife, right? Your wife you would like they would see right through you. So why are you having it with this potential client?

Jeff  17:31

I do that to my daughters. Occasionally. I'm like, I'll sit down my seven year 11 year old, put my hands on the table like, so tell me about your day daughter, right? And what the hell is going on? It's so weird. Yeah.

17:48

Exactly. So you know, you the measure of this is would you try any of this stuff with friends? Or your family? And the answer is ridiculously? No. Like, there's just no way as you get away with it, right? The stuff that does work, however, is that genuine curiosity or accurate empathy, where you're really, really, really trying to get into that situation that they're in through genuine dialogue, right? And saying things like, Well, yeah, I don't really understand what you're talking about, because I've never been in your situation. Tell me more about that. Explain to me in a way that I would understand where we are the metaphors analogs, are there. Ways that you can explain this to me, and, and you just express your your ignorance, right? In a way that's not like, well, I'm ignorant. I don't care about you, but rather like I am truly misunderstanding this, because I haven't been in your situation. Absolutely. And if you keep talking, and I keep asking questions, maybe there's a point at which those things will intersect. And we'll know each other better. Absolutely. And so what we find, and I think this is a topic that you care about, suddenly I do prospecting and working with clients and acquisition of new work, if you make it about discovery, and discovering what the true part of the problem is, or what the pain point is, and nothing else, right, like you genuinely just want to know what the problem is. And you ignore the fact that you've actually got a solution in your back pocket. You get to a place of empathy, so much quicker than if you're just trying to force the conversation around to that moment where you can sit into quickly insert your solution. Right. You know, you said the key word.

Jeff  19:28

Oh, I have you said the platform. Well, I have something here for you. Absolutely. We're going to get back into emefiele. A little bit on the delivering the customer success, because I think there's some good models in there as well, too. In the vein of like, Hey, you just inherited this team or something like that. I've got a couple of themes. I'd love to ask everybody and one of them is the sort of, you know, I'll put it in the frame of the product of the designers, right? You're to know everybody should know, Richards teams, build brilliant UX and user experiences. Is you I mean, am I missing? And, you know, I think there's a big difference between the people that will work for an organization and work as consultants. And you know, you know, we've done these a couple times before. And I've perhaps had some drinks in me, and I'll expound on it for a while with some biases and whatnot. But I, I have this sort of feeling about the care that people put into their work. And that might not be as much when it's sort of like, Oh, I'm one of 15 designers in this group of 45, designers at this really large company. But I'm starting to show my bias again, so but there's definitely sort of like product team versus consultants, essentially. And I wanted to just chat about differences. How do you align with these people? Because I think you're probably having to work side alongside people as well, too. So

20:57

very often, we are trying to understand the why behind their organization. So if they're not aligned, it's probably because there's not a clear why there's not a clear purpose of that organization. And so, the first conversations tend to be why does this company exist? I mean, these seem like really fun, foundational questions. But, you know, why do you exist? What kind of impact do you think you're having on the world? Why do you think the people that you work for and work with and partner with should care about that thing? And I think you know, this already, but very few companies can actually explain, right, in an accurate way, or a lucid way, what that looks like, and by lucid, I mean, I use that word very deliberately. I think it's easy to hallucinate what you think that you mean, the potential vision of the company is, but really, it's just an idea or concept in your head, or the CEOs head that, that they're trying to align everybody around. Where true vision happens is when it can, somebody can take that hallucination and turn it into a visible thing. That's why the word is called Vision. Okay, actually visualize it so that everybody is looking at the same thing and saying, that's the destination. That's where we're going. How we get there is somewhat ambiguous, because we don't control everything, but we have a very clear vision of where we're going. And that becomes the why then you find that if you're dropped into a new team, or you inherit a new team, and you can find that vision, right, and it already exists already. Everybody's super aligned. Gotcha. What I find and this is something that's evolved over time, not something that I knew from the beginning is that it's a very often a company will have a clear vision for the company to go public.

Jeff  22:52

No, are you telling me to do to make people better lives with X y&z Okay, gotcha. Yeah.

22:59

But they won't have a clearer vision of the product within the company. So let's say you're working on a particular thing that the company makes, or a, an enterprise version of the thing that they make. So the enterprise customer is different. What's the product vision for that? Check? How do you interpret what is at the highest level down to the level that's really relevant to the end user and to the people that are selling to that end user? Because product vision tends to be ignored? Well, we have a vision, and we have a product strategy, right? Well, nobody else knows that. It's an internal thing. It's not being expressed externally. And that's exactly the same as, you know, a group of people, if those group of people has a reason to be, you know, go back to Special Forces, like, look, the Commander's Intent is we're gonna go and kill the bad guy is particularly really bad guy, and we're gonna go somewhere and kill that guy. And then there's 15 people on it on a team to undo that. That's the vision for the Raiders the way correct, absolutely. That's the way however, everybody in the team needs to know their role. And they need to understand the particular I would call it product vision for how they're going to then participate at each step. Because going from one place to another to another, in order to get to that final destination is going to require different sets of skills. And different people are going to be more important along that route. And as you figure that stuff out, you also need to be internally aligned, like, Oh, I know what you do. I know why you're here. I know why you valuable. And I've got your back because of that. Right? All of that alignment stuff requires conversations and empathy and, and really just, you know, right, what I would call micro alignment versus the macro alignment shared bigger vision. Yeah.

Jeff  24:44

And, and I know, I've been in the room where sometimes people don't get that and they're, like, just draw the pretty pictures. I have the vision. It's all this and I just need I need some, some designs, right? Yeah, yes. So, yeah, and I know you've bumped into this as well to do you have a good combat and as you just kind of get everybody aligning around alignment?

25:09

I look, obviously the vision is really important. Like, for me, the vision also has to be somewhat divisive in that. It's got to be a strong enough vision that people can say, Yes, this is for me or no, this is not for me. Yeah. Don't fight politics, right.

Jeff  25:24

Yeah. So but I mean, like, Yes, I really want this Yes, yeah. Like,

25:28

I want this, I believe in this, I, you know, I'll not nearly die for it. But I'll like, I'll go to the mat for this day. And that's

Jeff  25:36

why or any it could be I'll perhaps give up resources and budget, I really believe in this, or things like that. So

25:42

devices like you, you must it's that. The example I use is the classified ad that Shackleton used when he was trying to get people to come to Antarctica, on this crazy this idea that he had, which was, this was like 1906, and we're gonna go walk from one side of an hour to go to the other. And the ad that he put in the paper reads, like, you're recruiting insane people, it says, Listen, we're going on this trip, the chances of you of coming back are very slim. There's very little money, there's very little recognition for we're going to do. And you know, there's a good chance that something bad will happen along the way. Right? And 5000 people signed up. It's crazy. And the reason why I think it's so good is because the 5000 people that he absolutely needed for this to be successful, were in that group. And then there was everybody else. And so a vision has to be divisive in the sense that it's got to say, look, here are the here's what's attractive to certain group of people, but not to everybody. Then once you've established that, then it's a case of understanding, what are the personal motivations within that group? And how are they aligning with that? Why? Why do they think that's important? Why do they think they care about that idea, right? And then are you willing to invest in that? Like, is it worthwhile investing at an individual level? So when it comes to making the vision happen, it ultimately boils down to yes, we've got this device of idea that some people want and some people don't don't, but then there's an individual quality to it as well,

Jeff  27:17

that's great. This will actually go really well into the next topic is how do you hire find those people that can drive those because for a while, it's going to be huge, right? Like, this is how you operate. But then that doesn't scale. And you need to find people that can be a mini version of you, or to take certain aspects of things like that. Yeah.

27:36

Again, I would use almost the same analog or metaphor for that you need a device of where to get people in and out of the organization. So maybe another good example is, JFK says, Listen, we're gonna go to the moon, you know, it's Rice University in 1962. And he's standing in the stadium, and he says, we're gonna go to the moon, half the people say, That's a great idea. And the other half are like, This man isn't saying, like, we I want nothing to do with him. Right? And, and I think that's okay. That's how you hire, then people show up and say, I want to be part of that. And those are the people you can start recruiting and saying, yes, these are the people we want inside of our organization. But we also know who that people are that we don't want to hear if they hear just for the paycheck. They don't believe in going to the moon, but that's going to help. So there's, if you inherit that it's slightly different, right, then you have to be divisive. When you get there and say, Look, you're here, but we're gonna go to the moon, do you still want it? Well, now we're gonna go to Marcus like, here's the new good point. And, and find out who's in and who's not. And I think that's a really, really powerful way to hire because people then self recruit, right? They come knocking at your door and say, I need to work here, hey, I've always wanted to go to the Moon or Mars or whatever your objective is. I mean, those are really good examples. Because who the whole thinks that that's a good idea. Right? Only a certain group of people,

Jeff  29:01

right? I see this real, you can point it to like successful products, but also successful people sort of niche based. Right. And, Nisha, I know it's it sounds a little passe right now, but it is really that, you know, this will do really well. And in this group of people will love it so much that they'll do almost anything for it. Right? And they can't live without it.

29:22

Yeah. And we live in a world where there were enough people, there was 10 billion people on the planet, you can have a very, very specific, focused, niche product, right? That only does one thing really well. Right. And be very, very successful at it. Sorry,

Jeff  29:38

that's great. How are you? This is always evolving for me. I go to sort of different ways. But you have a lot of people working for you before career paths, like do you plan those out? As in you know, here's a nice little group of Chevron's. You're going to be here and then you're going to be here. Or I know some other people were sort of like I have a different thing, I'm gonna give you a title. And people might not have heard of that title. But that's you. And it just, I don't think there's personal right or wrong way to do this. But I'm just curious what your philosophy is.

30:14

I don't think I'm thinking the wrong person to ask that question, because I haven't really had a really clear path of where I wanted to go. Except that there are certain people that I want to be around, there was a type of human that I shared to work with. And I look for that in the people that I work with, I look for people who value team have individual data. And I don't mean in like a purely altruistic way, like, Oh, I'm gonna like to sacrifice everything that I care about, just so that the team is good, right? But I'm going to put my strengths and energies and skills to work. So that's this team does better. That's what I'm looking for. Again, that's not for everybody. It's, it's not a great career path. But the when I teach and mentor, I ask people, you know, you can't do this on your own. Right, your career path is not an individual pursuit. And so it's a, it's a common pursuit amongst many people's people, you need supporters, you need employers, or where you need to employ people in order to make your career successful. What are the what are the ways that you describe that to yourself in terms of your efforts, like how do you make those connections? And is what you're doing useful towards that goal, or you just selfishly pursuing a career

Jeff  31:35

out there useful thing? Yeah, that really hits home for me, because that's always that you want. When I say to everybody, you know, I'm interviewing them, or, you know, you walk into an organization, you're trying to assess people, you are I tell people, you always need to be the person, that guy like, oh, we need Richard in the room for this conversation, right. And if you don't have role inside your group, or your organization, like, might want to, you know, see if there's something that you can pick out, that makes you invaluable. I don't necessarily mean in the like, Oh, my God, I'm gonna get fired. If I don't do this. But you, you need to feel the valuable Ness, right?

Richard Banfield  32:13

As well, like when you're super young, and you're just entering into the workforce, those things are not necessarily going to be as philosophy as philosophical as we're describing. It might be, look, I do need a paycheck, I gotta pay rent, and, and so you're willing to do certain things at that level. But eventually, you start to see where you can be valuable. And you can see where your skill set and your passion start intersect. And passion is a weird word, but it's the things that you care about the things that you want to spend time doing, even when they're hard. Like, that's the way I describe it, like, I want to be working on things that are rewarding, even when they are crap. Sure, like rewarding for me for the team for the company. So I see less, just going back to an earlier point about the consulting mindset versus working in the company mindset. I think what consulting teaches you is that you're at service to other people's ideas, right? So when you and I are working on a project, and we're designing or developing an application, we're very often doing it in service of somebody else's vision. It's not our vision, right? We're adopting that and we're making them successful, and hopefully wealthy, or whatever it is that they want as well. And, and that service mindset actually does work pretty well in a corporate environment. So if you went out of the service, consulting mentality, and went to work for a big corporation, you'd be like, oh, yeah, I, I'm in service, I'm actually very, as long as the service, you're in service to something that you care about. You can be super useful.

Jeff  33:49

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, the consulting mindset, and I've, you know, I've talked to friends or just, you know, meet new people and everything. I saw this, when we, from deca, a bunch of the developers were like, that was a good run, I'm gonna go work for a product company now. And like, those people are like unicorns, because they like this sprint, nothing gets carried over to the next sprint, like, because it's consulting mindset, like it gets done, because we said, we're gonna do it. Yes. And that's sort of my whole, you know, that's my thing on the product versus the consultants. But I really, I really liked that approach that you were talking about with the team and bring the value because that that, for me is a different way of thinking about that. I need to think about more. Instead of though, like, you're here, I'm there and type of thing. That was great. So let's switch topics a little bit. About we switch a little bit into new business acquisition. I don't want that to sound like I'm sorry what so now we get customers because like, I think we're both have the same variety where like, we want to bring on people because we like to help people do their next great thing. Right. And but we have to do it, right. It's a part of the job, too. And so, I know we've both tried a variety of different models out there and some things work and some things don't. Where are you now and your understanding of sort of, like, you know, I need, I would like to get new customers, this is the approach that I'm going to take. I know you're a big networker, I'm just sorry, you more word of mouth. Are you sort of have the marketing and the BDR? Isn't that picking up the phones and like this? There's a lot of ground to cover here. So I was sort of focusing on Yeah.

35:28

And of course, our experience is going to be relevant to consulting as a as a trade. So we've tried just about everything,

Jeff  35:38

because not everybody is looking for a project. Right? Yeah, you sound great. I might need you in two to three

35:44

hours. Exactly. Yeah, we actually just closed the deal. It took seven years. Yeah. Between the conversation and actual, that's amazing. Yeah, it's great. So because we're a curious group, because I'm a curious guy, we've tried everything, we've we've had all kinds of marketing and sales techniques, and methodologies. There's a part of me that says you got to do a little bit of everything. Although what we found works best for consulting is a little bit of thought leadership doesn't have to be like, you don't have to write four books like I did. That's overkill. You know,

Jeff  36:21

I call this the balanced portfolio, just like your financial advisors. I think

36:25

it's important to express thought leadership, in whatever ways appropriate podcast, maybe you speak at conferences, by the way, that that doesn't lead to the nobody stands up halfway through your talking says your Hi. But it does set up the opportunity for a conversation or create the awareness that's necessary, right. So it's, it's necessary but insufficient. What Works tactically, though, on a day to day basis is reaching out to your clients or your prospects and saying things like, listen, I know that you've got a regular schedule of roadmap stuff that needs to be done. There's there's just keeping the trains on time. And we're probably already working with you on some of that stuff. What's the one or two things that you would love to give attention to that you can't right now? Because you're spending too much time on that

Jeff  37:16

this tactical issue? Yeah.

37:18

Like, what's the what, you know, what's the moonshots that you would love to be working on right now with you, you don't have the resources for?

Jeff  37:28

This is fantastic. I'm going to write an email with the subject line. That's what your moonshot I'm just kidding. I'm totally.

37:34

It's not far from the truth. Because all you really have to say to somebody is, what's on your roadmap, roadmap that you care about, but that's not getting any attention, right. And it doesn't have to be the size of a moonshot. But it's normally something that people care a lot about, like, we've done some discovery work, we know that there's this potential for something here. But we've got so many resources working on just reacting to the day to day that we're not really being proactive about this, right? And then you say to them, Well, why don't we do a week or two of pro bono work on that thing for you and see, if that thing is truly as awesome as you think it was? Maybe you just elaborate, absolutely heavy, maybe it's just, you know, it's the girl across the street that you you love through the winter, you're like, Oh, my God, she must be amazing. And you never really matter, right? I don't really

Jeff  38:21

know. So then she goes inside her house and kicks her cat. That's right.

38:25

Turns out to be a sociopath. So that what would you what we're seeing is, we're going to take our time and energy and work on a very discrete part of something, right? That's not getting attention right now, to find out whether it has legs and whether it's useful to you or not. And you're signaling a bunch of things. One is, I care about the future of what you're doing, and care about your projects. But also, we're willing to spend our time and money on something that's probably more valuable than just marketing. So instead of spending a whole bunch of money on Facebook ads, or whatever it is, we're going to spend money on you, right? We're going to invest in a

Jeff  39:05

whiteboard a little bit in. And it's funny, because we do that as well. And some people when I tell them that they're like, aren't you afraid that you're going to just flush $10,000 Or even if the customer pays you a little bit for that, let's say like, they like fine, here's 5000, whatever number I don't want to get into that. But people will say, Well, what happens if you go through this thing for two weeks and they paid you you know, this number of dollars, and in the thing is gonna go nowhere? And I say, sorry, so let you answer this. I say you just saved them an incredible amount of money and heartache.

39:38

I mean, it just happened to us. Literally that exact scenario where one of our clients had a side project.

Jeff  39:49

Unprofessional excuse, fun blowing.

39:51

They had this little project on the side that they suspected would actually be pretty interesting. But they I wasn't sure. And we said, why don't we just run a design sprint on this and see what happens, essentially, some of your listeners will know a design sprint is using the scientific method to take a hypothesis and build an experiment around it to prototype something new tested, either validate or invalidate that hypothesis. Absolutely. And what happened is, we invalidate it. And instead of them being super disappointed at this pet project of theirs was now dead, zero, actually, because we proven that it wasn't worth working on, they were very excited that they weren't going to have to go through the trouble of spinning up in a team, finding the resources, finding the budget, you know, delaying other projects, so that they could do this. Because sometimes, and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but it's a very often these pet projects are executive project. So what we would sometimes refer to as drive bys, the CEO, it would be great if we could do that wanted to do something and kind of had a throwaway comment during meeting saying wouldn't be good if we did what the competitors are doing, or whatever, you know, get into this space, and inadvertently set this in motion as a project.

Jeff  41:07

And it happens all the time. Absolutely.

41:09

You know, and it doesn't always, it doesn't mean that the CEO is in love with it just means that that's something that they were thinking about at the time during that meeting. And because that person's a CEO, everybody has legs to say, on this piece of functionality. And so that's what we should find a way to do so very often. And this is why this discovery as sales work so well is because then what you're also the final signal that you're sending is we care enough that we're willing to spend our time and energy finding out where the things that you should care about are. And therefore we're good partner, right? So we're helping,

Jeff  41:49

that's all you want. You want to be known as, like, these guys are great. Like, oh, you must pay a million dollars like No, not really. But like they really helped us out. Like, that's fantastic, right? Because

41:58

ultimately, in my first ever, salesman, when I was like a junior sales guy, my first sales manager had this thing on her wall that just said, during good times, and bad times people do business with their friends. Absolutely. And what you've essentially done in a situation like that, during that discovery, or sales process is set up a level of trust that borders on friendship, this person gives a shit about me, right? And that's rare. That's super rare, like somebody, a stranger almost went out of their way to take care of my business and my role and my responsibilities on their dime. Wow, that's awesome.

Jeff  42:40

That's also in what to hear your thoughts on this, what I tell all my teams, at some point in time, and preferably in the very first part of the project, you must you must be on site with the customer, you must be somewhere with the customer. Because on every project, something goes wrong, you know, could be dramatic or not, if you've sat there and had a glass of wine or food or whatever. That just means so much more than just being you know, you know, slacks. Exactly.

43:14

Yeah, I think we front load those, our relationships with our clients were kickoffs are always in person. I mean, unless unless it's very, very difficult and, you know, just can't happen. And you need to get the project that we I mean, we've been to like some strange places around the world, to kick off projects. And that face to face time is really important. It gives us the opportunity to establish rapport and chemistry. That doesn't again, that's one of those opening moments like it's back to the psychedelics, like you have an opening, you explore it, it's not the solution. But you now know what the solution could look like. And now know who that person is what they care about the circumstances that they're in politics, that culture that they're in Yeah, and being exposed to that gives you empathy.

Jeff  44:01

You just You just hit that right on the end, if you don't mind for one minute. I just remember a few years ago, I had a just brand new groups of project managers, they're like a year or two out of school, and and just where we were as a company, and three or four years now getting old, but and I remember they're just visibly upset. Now I will What's wrong is like, they were judged by the customer was just just yelling and screaming at me and was super upset. I said, Well, why do you think they were upset? What Why do you actually think they were upset? And they couldn't come up with it? And so I said, Did you send your status reports out? Have you been updating Basecamp and all of these things? And the answer was no. I'm so busy. I'm like, well, I'll work on the business aspect. You know, that's on me. But this person made a decision to work with us or has been given a project and if this project fails, this person's worried about the job, their job, their job, if you're dealing with the CEO, dirt could be out of business and the whole thing failed. Right? So it's not because they said I feel like tearing up a project manager today or a designer or developer. It's I'm nervous and scared. Scared. Absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, again, right?

45:20

Yeah. Fear is anger. Anger is fear, though it's the same thing. It's two sides of the same coin. So when somebody is, is expressing anger, they're expressing some fear towards an outcome, or that they are unable to do their job, or they're unable to reach that goal, or that you've let them down in some way. And they trusted you. And now they're their reputations on the line. So. So when somebody's shouting at you, it's normally because they're scared. And if you take that perspective, you can say, oh, you know what, I wonder what's driving that? And then you can get to a place of understanding a lot quicker. Absolutely. You can avoid it in the first place.

Jeff  45:57

Yes, yes, that's, yeah, but I think it's just having the tool set to be able to deal with those things is because those situations as much as you try to avoid them, right, they'll, they're there they are going to happen. So that was great, I really appreciate you going over a lot of those sorts of new business acquisition things because it gets as with everything a little deeper, right. And it gets back to that philosophy of trying to help and be doing the right things for your customers. One of the things that I I will say struggle with I don't struggle with as much anymore. But you know, if people are growing groups, and then suddenly, I noticed happened a lot to me in the enterprise software world, where suddenly, they're opening up a sales team out in Seattle and LA and London. And then suddenly, I'm dealing with a remote decentralized workforce. And I know this is a big topic for you, you actually now opened up a sort of a co working space, which we would love to get into a little bit. But I know there's some very easy passe answers that can go out there like, well, you know, you shouldn't hire the person if you don't trust them to work remotely. But I feel it's a little deeper than that. And there's cultural issues. So I'm just gonna sort of hand it over to you, and get your sort of perspective on remote working.

47:13

Yeah, so remote working is a huge umbrella. And it doesn't go by now doesn't actually reflect on the nuances or the subtleties of what people are working in. So if you've got, let's talk about some of the extremes, if you've got 100%, remote team, they're all distributed. And the original team was formed around that idea. Then company, like envision, for example, 850 people, they've never had an office ever. Right? So that's the original DNA of the company. The recruiting is, like I said, device it, people are being attracted to that because of that situation. So there are people who are also more likely to be better at it just because of that situation. On the other extreme, you've got companies that have always have an office, and we saw this a few years ago with Yahoo, right? They had an office, then people started to kind of filter out into the suburbs as working from home became possible. And then Marissa Mayer said, no, no, you're gonna come back and force everybody to come back to the office. And by the way, that's happened multiple times multiple companies. And the confusion that that sets up is what ultimately hurts the efficiency or effectiveness of our remote working. So this might sound extreme. But if your DNA is remote, the remote if your DNA is Office bound, the office bound, right, it's exceedingly difficult to do. And we discovered this as well, because we've been office bound for many, many years, and then we went remote, is that when you become remote, you have to set it up as if you're changing everything. So you have to take on the responsibility of doing that.

Jeff  48:59

And sort of like recreating a new DNA, is that sort of what you're okay. Yeah. So

49:03

the way I think about it, and I think the way that most people would not empathize with but understand is, it's like, getting ready for an IPO. So the the years leading up to the IPO, need to be in that readiness state, I think it's called readiness, actually.

Jeff  49:19

Yeah, you've been through it in the for about two or three years, like we are now running like a public company, right? Right. Here's SAP,

49:25

right and you need to, you need to audit yourself as if you're a remote run company, you have to get experts in to help you understand what the things are going to be that you're gonna have to deal with the cultural changes, the logistical changes, the operational changes, you've got to practice so, you know, just like you would do quarterly earnings calls even before you need to do quarterly earnings calls in readiness. You have to do remote work. So we had a couple of circumstantial things that forced us to do quicker. We had a pipe burst and our office was flooded for us.

Jeff  49:56

I forgot Yeah, that was terrible. I was in right after that out. Yeah.

50:00

Like, you know, the building manager was like, Listen, you got to be out of here for a couple of weeks. And we said, You know what, nobody comes in the office for a month. Everybody works from home. And that'll be our first step towards understanding whether it this is something we could do for a longer period of time. So, and I know that other companies have actually tried to do this is a really good story about how I think it was Shopify was planning to do that. And there was a gap between their two leases, and there were no characters doing it, it never actually worked out. But they practiced interesting, all of that. And I think that's actually an important thing is, it can't be a light switch, you can't just turn it on and say today remote, you have to build towards that by switching your DNA. So it's the metaphor that I have in my head is, if you've ever under cat, you know, cats feel like they have two sets of DNA, one's domestic and the other one's feral. Yes, and they're super domestic, they hang around, they'll do whatever you want. And then you open the door on that federal,

Jeff  50:57

yes. And I will, I will kill a rabbit in front of you. Yeah.

51:00

I'm a wild animal. And, and you have to realize that, you know, when you go from being remote, or from being office bound to being remote, that's that DNA you have to find and turn on, and then see how it works. Because it may not work, right? Not everybody is going to stick around. We had people who said, You know what, this is not for me,

Jeff  51:24

I need to be around people, I need some sort of socio cultural. And then there were

51:29

also the much deeper subtleties that we won't go into. In fact, we're having an event here tonight to talk about it, but it's the Okay, what about the people who need a little bit of both? And need a little bit of time with with the team, they need a little bit of time on their own? What could we do co working could be new coffee shops? Could we arrange to meet on side with the client? There are all of those gray areas, just like the open office closed office debate, which is total bullshit. There has never been an open office in a closed office, there's always some kind of gray version of it. I mean, it's just cube so high. Yeah. And, you know, some version of that works for your culture, and some version doesn't. And you have to spend as much time thinking about that, and operationalizing for that, as you would, and it's it's little details, like every call has to be a zoom call with video. Yes, you have to see

Jeff  52:20

each other. Yeah, that just does not work. It's just

52:22

Yeah, and you've also got to put into your candor, things like, we're definitely gonna talk to each other on a regular basis, we're going to see each other on a regular basis. So we're going to do in real life events that the team is going to get together or that the squad is going to get together or the entire company is going to get together on these dates. And we're going to do regular stuff with, you know, face to face communications mark some of its work some of its social. But you've got to do that, just like you would differentiate,

Jeff  52:48

right? Yeah, you have to nurture it. Right. It's because as we one of the first things, you said it's relationship. So yeah, I think we'll switch off the business stuff. Because I think we, we went through the whole thing, because you have a great way of being able to, like combine different things. And I just can't stop. First of all, I don't know if anybody heard, that was not a marble rolling across the desk, my stomach just kept growing. We haven't said yes to that. And so the other funny, lots of killer. Exactly. And then the other funny thing I just kept laughing about is that we're kind of dress similar today, which is, which makes me think of I don't even know if you remember this, oh, my god, Richard has been such an influence my life in many ways. He doesn't understand but one of them is that we had met, where I was thinking about bringing Richard on as as a, as a vendor as a sort of went into and and then I think the next night or perhaps two, there was an event there was a tug event, it was like to kill and I don't I don't want the e Tag. I don't want to be next to the NWSL. But anyway, ever was hammered. Right and, and so I just remembered that I had, you know, put on my cool hip clothes because I came out of like wearing not a suit but just like without a tie and then went into a street until like you're one of five people at a startup or something. And, and so I don't think I necessarily had all the clothes to sort of part in that shouldn't even matter. But yet here I am talking about it. And so I bumped into Richard and I'm wearing the same clothes. They were like previous two days and I'm like, I swear to God, I have more clothes. I have a dry cleaning situation right now. And then the next day I signed up for Trunk Club. Good for you. Excellent. Which is what I'm wearing right now. And I'm like, Oh my God, and just the fact that I can talk about that. But anyway, that's I just kept cracking up when I was kept looking at that job like oh my god. Yes, the goal has been accomplished, but switching into some of the more more fun stuff. I know we talked a lot about this previously, but it's been about a year or two since we've been in person biking still a thing?

55:00

Yes, I still I still race cyclocross, which is a version of cycling that remind you more like, a bunch of 12 year olds with BMX is stupid things. Yeah.

Jeff  55:14

You can still do that at our advanced ages.

55:16

Yeah, you can. And it's, it's, you're less likely to get injured, more likely to hang out with the people that you care about, because it's a close course. And then unlike road racing, which is, tends to be much more straight out. Okay, so it's a very social sport. And I'm on the board of a local team. And we were actually, I think, one of the biggest teams in New England. And super social. And we have very active slack group as well. We meet together on a regular basis. So I find cycling to be one of those things that ticks so many boxes like, it's obviously enjoyable. It's another excuse to travel. Yes. Good point. Yeah, I go to some really cool places to go and ride in. But oh, yeah.

Jeff  56:01

Yeah, that's a great destination. Yes, exactly.

56:04

But it's also super social. And a lot of the people on my team would be the kinds of folks that I would hang out with this as well.

Jeff  56:12

That's great. We tend to find and attract, you know, there's just too much into the other world stuff. But, you know, there is that undercurrent that we always get attracted to. Where are you on the coffee scene right now. So because I really nothing more I love than coming over the office and getting like, Richard, to me, we had,

56:33

we had a lot of coffee, we had all of the all of the coffees. So now, like you mentioned, we have a co working space. And we have an espresso machine and drink coffee and all the different variations on that. I did have this very fleeting idea that I wanted to have my own kind of coffee shop situation in the state and

Jeff  56:53

I live Yeah, I envisioned that as well times. Wouldn't that be great? Yeah. And then maybe all acoustic guitar in the background.

57:02

And then opportunity to actually interview some friends of mine who ran two coffee shops and a bike shop, which is the other thing I decided to do. And they run this in, in Germany and Spain. And I just saw it how insanely difficult it is. And like how, how much time and energy you need to put into that. off hours in order for the on hours to run smoothly. Yeah, sounds like I don't want any part of that. I just want to be the guy who sits and enjoys a coffee not worrying about

Jeff  57:31

exactly now. A lot of this as well, too. Oh, my God. And so have you been pulled into kids soccer at all?

57:40

No. So I don't know whether this is fortunate or unfortunate. But so I've got three boys, a 22 year old, a 16 year old and a three year old. So that's kind of like a 401k

Jeff  57:51

spread. Yeah, diversification.

57:55

The 22 year old was mostly into cross country running, okay, which is actually very different kind of sport and to the team sports like soccer, and hockey and whatnot. And the 16 year old is currently not too into any of those things. She loves riding his bike and boarding and stuff like that. But he's not like super into the team sport the team sports up, which is fine, because I also went through that phase. I was like, really into it. I was on the rowing team and played rugby and yeah, and then I was like, yeah, maybe I'll just do some of the individual things like, you know, I'll ride my bike, and I'll do some climbing and stuff like that. So I think he's going through a similar kind of experimentation. And then of course, the three year old. They're just saying, right, they're just like, 100% energy all the time. Yeah. So yeah, sorry, kicking the wall around and

Jeff  58:46

Oh, great. Well, you come to me if you have any tips on that. My daughters are there, you know, five, six days a week club soccer traveling across the country and all that stuff. So that's cool. Yeah, no, that's I even driving down here. Oh my god. I'm sure I've been down here on a soccer trip or something. But, and we've touched a little bit of but we're both just big podcast fans, right. So I'd love to hear and I'm sure after people hearing you talk if they hadn't heard you before, so we're What do you like to listen to when you don't pop the headphones on?

59:15

Yeah, so podcasts and audible books are really my go to.

Jeff  59:20

To expert, I believe.

59:21

Yeah. And I'm not particularly even though I've written a lot of books. I'm dyslexic, and I'm not particularly good with the written word meeting. So I trust and spellcheck and edit tends to make me look around always fantastic. Yeah. So when it comes to just kind of instant you know, how do you understand a market in half now? a16z is just just killing it.

Jeff  59:47

I mean, then you'll get topics for like, I don't need to know about crypto for the next three weeks. But but then they they come out with there's a one API as a marketplace or something like that was about a year ago. And that was amazing. And they've braid. It's just really good stuff.

1:00:01

Yeah. So AC Cindy a16z. And pretty much anybody they interview who has a podcast, I'll, I'll do the cross. Oh, sure, check and see what that's like.

Jeff  1:00:11

Yeah, I bought that book, high growth handbook after they had interviewed somebody that was really, really good. Especially, I'd recommend that for a lot of people.

1:00:19

There was one where the guy who runs bulletproof coffee, I can't remember the name of Yes, I know. He's talking. He has a podcast and there was some there was a cross pollination Yeah. So I found out about, I found out about him, Dave Asprey, Dave Asprey. I'm not sure I like his style of interviewing, but I do like his guests. And so they'll check it out. A way to introduce me to new people. Sure. Michael Gervais. Is it seeking wisdom?

Jeff  1:00:48

I have no I've seen the title now that we just didn't I did not know the first the name when you said it. But I saw when he said seeking wisdom I've no I've seen that title pop up. And

1:00:56

yeah, so he he is sorry, finding mastery, finding mastery. So he is a sports psychologist, and a high performance he works for the Seahawks. And has the most interesting interviewing style. I don't think any of these guys have an also crazy variety of gear. So everything from like the best athletes in the world, and their coaches, all the way through to physiologists. And that just kind of speaks to my biology background. And I love to actually, like the psychology and physiology of performance. It's sort of

Jeff  1:01:34

more of an in depth version of like the Malcolm Gladwell tried to do with the because I feel like with Gladwell, I'm trying not to be too divisive here. But like he gets that one concept is nails the crap out of it home. Like here's another example to prove my point, right? Where this sounds like a more be like, just exploring a little

1:01:52

bit more. And I think as somebody who has their own podcast, listening to Michael Gervais interview, you'll be like, Ah, that's a really interesting way to set up the conversation. Absolutely. Okay, values because the news is talks about coaching, cycling and all that stuff and so run by a very very close friend of mine guy called Chris case. And so love to listen to him he's a crazy smart guy, PhD neuroscientist who then became a journalist and now runs the part of the better news story which is the shirt produced the the website and and he is somebody that we go I travel around the world with and cycle with, and he's just a really interesting guy. Oh, the other one that you should definitely listen to just out of like, complete history. Like if you just want to change a scene. Oh, yeah, he's armchair expert. Okay. Okay. So

Jeff  1:02:52

I love these recommendations. Yeah. So,

1:02:55

Dax Shepard, do you know

Jeff  1:02:56

Oh, yeah. So I so the pocket when you soon as you said that the podcasts that I go to for the was lighten stuff up. I don't listen to Jocko willing right now is is Conan O'Brien. Yeah, index was on and those two are just Yeah, so

1:03:10

DAX is amazing. And he's always got great guests. I always love what he has to say. And then there's it's called Work Life by Adam Grant. Okay. So Adam Grant is the guy who wrote a bunch of books about, you know, just careers and work. So, and then he partnered with Ted. And, and again, really, really high value production stuff, like 2030 minutes of podcasting, and you're just like, whoa, whoa, I feel like I've got an MBA after that. You Wow, that's great. And he's a great personality. He's just as kind of Oh, sure. Sure. Well, you've seen guy.

Jeff  1:03:44

I'll try to get some more together. But this is great.

1:03:49

I've kind of dabble with Tim Ferriss. Sometimes he's irritates me a little. Yeah. And the knowledge project is something I've just started listening to. So Shane Parrish. Just great. Yeah. It's a little bit more in depth. Shane has a more invested, it's almost like a Charlie Rose kind of thing, more investigative style. And, you know, there's an hour of depth as opposed to the a16z, which is kind of like 30 minutes. Yeah, yeah. But it's very, very cool. And then tons of books on audio. So I that's my preference. I'll probably go through easy 4050 books a year.

Jeff  1:04:36

That's great. Wow, that's awesome. I do need to turn my speed up, then. They're not joking. Joking aside. But because,

Richard Banfield  1:04:44

you know, to that point, the, some of the feedback I got on that post that I put out there about, you know, how I consumed literature. Some people like will look at reading and, you know, they kind of make it out as if this is like art versus sciencing Yeah, look, if I'm reading a book just for the sake of reading it's fiction, and I just want to enjoy it. Yeah. You know, I'm gonna just read it at my own speed,

Jeff  1:05:09

right? You're gonna put your pipeline and put your place. Exactly. I think mutual friends are de Baltar. And yeah, I just got into a big back and forth on this on Twitter where they're like, audiobook doesn't count as a real book. Right. And then like, you know, Katie, from HubSpot, like absolutely, you know, I mean, just starting off, but I'm like, knowledge is knowledge. Right?

1:05:31

Yeah. And again, it's like, it's these stupid umbrella terms that screw people up, right? If you if you are consuming a book for just the facts and the knowledge so that you can make better decisions, then it doesn't really matter how you consume, right? Like, but if you're trying to lose yourself, like, you know the same thing with watching Netflix, if I watch a documentary on a certain thing, I might just like skip through to the parts that I want. Whereas if it's like, you know, the new Avengers movie or whatever, I just want to lose mice. Absolutely. Just

Jeff  1:06:00

turn the mind

Richard Banfield  1:06:02

theater and I get a big bag of popcorn. Yeah. I drew on my

Jeff  1:06:07

Oh, absolutely. It's funny on that note, because like, I will go with my brother. But he's a huge comics guy. We got all those movies together. And he's like, Well, I didn't like how the plug in them. I don't even think of it like the mind is off. Yeah, it could be a swatch in a movie. I don't care. Like I just wanted to be entertained. Just

Richard Banfield  1:06:22

enjoy it. And I think that's the whole point is that not all these things are created equal? Yeah, purposes for why you consume them. Why not equal to don't have a perspective, just like, do what's appropriate. Back

Jeff  1:06:33

to the diversification. Awesome. This has been a blast a little longer. But I really appreciate it and this is great to catch up. It's good chatting. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for coming up. Oh, absolutely. Love the space.