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Insights on Strong Customer Connections and Awesome Employee Experiences with Vanessa and Nate Quigley, Co-Founders of Chatbooks
4 Plays4 years ago
What does it take to be a success in the startup world? One quick google search and you're immediately aware that there are a lot of cooks in that kitchen. But there are some ingredients everyone can agree on. A healthy dose of purpose–the loftier the better–close connection to your customers and an awesome employee experience are necessary elements for growth and greatness. In this episode, we're talking with two founders who've found that magic sauce. Vanessa and Nate Quigley, co-founders of Chatbooks, a Utah-based social startup, will join us along with venture capital investor Gavin Christensen to bring you both sides of a perfect pitch. This episode will explore:
How investors view strong founders with weak products
Warning signs that a company is out of touch with its customers
Building a positive employee experience with a strong PTO policy
Why making time for personal conversations is vital for your startup
Recommended
Transcript
Essential Elements for Startup Growth
00:00:00
Speaker
What does it take to be a success in the startup world?
00:00:02
Speaker
One quick Google search and you're immediately aware that there are a lot of cooks in that kitchen.
00:00:07
Speaker
But there are some ingredients everyone can agree on.
00:00:10
Speaker
A healthy dose of purpose, the loftier the better, close connection with your customers and an awesome employee experience are necessary elements for growth and for greatness.
00:00:20
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Today, we're talking with two founders who found that magic sauce.
Meet the Founders of Chatbooks
00:00:24
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Vanessa and Nate Quigley, co-founders of Chatbooks, will be joining us along with investor Gavin Christensen to bring you both sides of A Perfect Pitch.
Exploring Investor-Entrepreneur Dynamics
00:00:40
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What is Perfect Pitch?
00:00:42
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It's a podcast from Kickstart that reveals the minds of both investors and entrepreneurs throughout a startup's journey.
00:00:48
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So whether that's uncovering what everyone's really thinking during a startup pitch or learning how entrepreneurs like you have managed their first major roadblock, Perfect Pitch offers an honest, quick, and tactical guide to help you on your startup journey.
00:01:04
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I'm your host, Karen Zelnick.
00:01:06
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Gavin, Vanessa, and Nate, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:01:10
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Thank you.
00:01:10
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It's always a pleasure.
00:01:11
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Yeah, thanks for having us.
00:01:12
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Great to be here.
00:01:13
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Great to be with you.
Founders' Backgrounds and Personal Interests
00:01:15
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So excited to get into the discussion.
00:01:17
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Vanessa and Nate, I'd just love to introduce everyone to you.
00:01:20
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So you're the parents of Seven.
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You're the co-founders of Chatbooks, a software company with the mission to strengthen families.
00:01:26
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Prior to Chatbooks, Vanessa, you worked as a professional singer and an actress.
00:01:30
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And Nate, you were the CEO of Live TV and co-founder and president of Eleven Technology, correct?
00:01:36
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I think so.
00:01:36
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Can you remember?
00:01:37
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I can barely remember.
00:01:38
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In a nutshell, that's us.
00:01:39
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Yes.
00:01:40
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Awesome.
00:01:40
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And you're both the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award recipients in 2017, which is an amazing accomplishment.
00:01:47
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What else would you like us to know about you?
00:01:50
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We have a golden streak in the New York Times crossword.
00:01:53
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51 days, guys, never been done before.
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At least, I mean, I'm sure someone's done it, but we haven't done it.
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And it's the most important thing in our life right now.
00:02:01
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Love it.
00:02:03
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I wish you guys could see Gavin's face.
00:02:04
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He's just an, as am I. I've tried doing a few of the crosswords.
00:02:08
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And after a while, I'm just like, I don't know what they're getting at.
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Like, I don't know what they're asking me for.
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It's definitely a learning curve.
00:02:14
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There seems to be a pattern we see.
00:02:16
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They will use a word, the same word in like three or four puzzles in a row.
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There's one, there are a few words that pop up constantly.
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Eno of David Eno.
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Brian Eno, babe.
00:02:27
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Brian Eno.
00:02:28
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I want to hear about the last name, Eno.
00:02:32
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I have heard that Aloe pops up a lot too because of all the vowels.
00:02:35
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Yeah, no, we see Aloe.
00:02:36
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It is weird.
00:02:37
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There's got to be some kind of UX design thing to hook you on these streaks where they give you the same answer like four days in a row.
00:02:44
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There is a crossword in competition in Stanford, every, Stanford, Connecticut, every year.
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And we're like, we're so good at this.
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We should enter.
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Then we watched the documentary about it and realized how we are such amateurs that we have a long way to go before we do that.
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One day, one day.
00:02:58
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That's more than you wanted to know about crosswords, I'm sure.
00:03:01
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No, like my husband is obsessed with the New York Times crosswords.
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When I try to help him, that's when I'm just like, I gotta go do something else.
00:03:09
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Allo is the only word I ever know to guess.
00:03:11
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And Gavin, we're so excited to have you here on the show again.
Building the Startup Ecosystem in the American West
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You're an entrepreneurial VC with a passion for investing and building the startup ecosystem in the Wild West.
00:03:21
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I love that you refer to it as the Wild West.
00:03:23
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I think that paints an amazing picture and really kind of sets the scene for the entrepreneur spirit here.
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We love that term because it's so much about the American West is myth making and so much about entrepreneurship is storytelling and making something happen that's not obvious.
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And that's a big part of our DNA and the individuals we invest in.
00:03:47
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That's so cool.
00:03:47
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And then anything else you'd like us to know about you?
00:03:50
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No, that's good.
00:03:52
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Come on, Gavin.
00:03:54
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Are you a cross-order?
00:03:56
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Bizarre hobbies that I might have.
00:03:58
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Yeah, this is a bizarre hobby day.
00:04:01
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Yeah, so we've been quarantining a lot, like many people.
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My latest thing is partly prompted by Queen's Gambit.
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I am doing nightly chess with my kids.
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So that's been kind of fun.
00:04:13
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Nice.
00:04:13
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That's like a new thing we've added.
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I love the time COVID has given us to explore new hobbies and interests and skills.
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So I'm so excited to dive into the discussion today.
00:04:23
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Again, thank you for being here.
00:04:24
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Let's just jump right in.
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I recently read an article in Harvard Business Review about startups and their souls, which goes beyond culture.
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It's sort of that intangible, vital, magical something that really excites people about working at startups.
00:04:38
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It's what draws top talent.
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It's what keeps them there during all the hustle.
00:04:42
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And the author, through his research, says that there are three crucial dimensions, which are business intent, unusually close customer connections, and an employee experience characterized by autonomy and creativity.
00:04:54
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And in my humble opinion, if there's any company that's nailing all three, it's Chatbooks.
00:04:59
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So I want to talk to you about that.
00:05:02
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I'm particularly interested in diving into the employee experience aspect, but I do want to talk briefly about the first two.
00:05:09
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So Vanessa and Nate, will you tell us about Chatbook's business intent and your mission?
Inspiration Behind Chatbooks
00:05:14
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I quit a really good job to start on the project that became Chapbooks, basically because I was having a, you can't even call it a midlife crisis.
00:05:23
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I was having a late stage or mid stage dad crisis.
00:05:27
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I was basically seeing the first of our seven children, Calvin, going into his senior year.
00:05:32
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And I just, for some reason, started to freak out that our family was going to start changing.
00:05:37
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Forever.
00:05:38
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Forever.
00:05:38
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Yeah.
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I mean, your kids, for all of the time when your kids are in your home, that's the center of everything we do.
00:05:45
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And all of a sudden I was imagining, wow, Cal's not going to live here anymore.
00:05:47
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And so we're not going to be this family of nine and our seven loud, bustling kids.
00:05:53
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And I just started panicking and wanting to hit like the pause button.
00:05:56
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Which of course you can't do.
00:05:57
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And eventually I got over that.
00:05:59
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But I was basically trying to start a company to deal with this nostalgia problem that was kicking in and pretty severely.
00:06:06
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Where I was constantly glum, like wandering around.
00:06:10
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But I should have been just thrilled, happy, it's Calvin's senior year.
00:06:13
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But I was too focused on the fact that I was seeing it as, okay, well, man, I can't believe we finished that and it's over.
00:06:19
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How do I stop it?
00:06:20
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How do I hold on to it?
00:06:22
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So that was a big part of what got us rolling down
Pivot to Chatbooks and Early Challenges
00:06:25
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this path.
00:06:25
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Now, of course, I wandered down a bunch of really strange paths and lost a ton of money and a ton of time doing all of the wrong things.
00:06:33
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So Vanessa Happel, you had your own little nostalgia moment that was kind of what jerked us out of some of the early miscues and then brought us into Chapo.
00:06:42
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Yeah.
00:06:42
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Nate was building enterprise software for Family Memories.
00:06:46
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based on his experience in previous companies.
00:06:53
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And all I wanted was a scrapbook.
00:06:56
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And honestly, that's what my kids wanted.
00:06:57
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That's what I wanted as a young girl.
00:06:59
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My mom did scrapbooks.
00:07:01
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I did a lot of scrapbooking as a young mom.
00:07:03
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But somewhere after the third, maybe the fourth kid, I quit.
00:07:07
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So here we have seven kids and our youngest doesn't have a scrapbook or a baby book or quite frankly, any printed photos, except for a few photos that his preschool teacher had taken throughout the school year.
00:07:17
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And we had one little teeny tiny photo book that she had given him at preschool graduation.
00:07:22
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And he was having this...
00:07:25
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fully like emotional moment where he told me he never wanted to grow up as he looked through this book and was reminiscing on that little year of his five-year-old life.
00:07:34
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And in that moment, I realized that like, yes, this big, beautiful, complicated software that Nate and his little team had been building
00:07:40
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That could do some good in the world if anyone cared to use it.
00:07:44
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But maybe we could figure a way to take my Instagram feed because I had been using my Instagram to keep in touch with friends and family.
00:07:51
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We moved around a lot as a family.
00:07:53
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I have a big family.
00:07:53
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I'm the oldest of 12.
00:07:55
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And so sharing little snippets and highlights of our family's experience over Instagram was the way I kept in touch.
00:08:00
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And I thought if I could just print that out,
00:08:03
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Declan would have more to look at for the last five years, the only five years of his life other than this one at your preschool.
00:08:09
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And so Nate, who was really passionate about the mission of helping safeguard, organize and enjoy family memories.
00:08:15
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And that's what he had been working on.
00:08:16
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That fire was burning, but new urgency to become profitable.
00:08:20
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This is the urgency that comes to you when your redheaded wife stomps down the stairs after consoling her youngest and says, hey, no one wants to use that.
00:08:31
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I don't want to use that.
00:08:32
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Just print my Instagram.
00:08:35
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It doesn't get more urgent than that.
00:08:36
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No, I got very focused that evening.
00:08:38
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And thankfully, because that's what led us to chatbooks.
00:08:41
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And what is amazing about it is the mission of the company really hadn't changed.
00:08:45
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And like sort of the big why, the purpose of what we're trying to do is still strengthen families and really help us hold on to the things that matter the most to us that try to deal with that nostalgia pain.
00:08:56
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But we were just doing it in a way that actually made sense for busy parents that didn't have time to sit down and learn some complicated software approach to that.
00:09:03
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Gavin, I'd love your thoughts on that as an investor.
00:09:06
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A company comes to you and says, our mission is to strengthen families through photo books.
00:09:11
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What are you thinking?
00:09:13
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I remember meeting Nate in the early days before it was called Chatbooks.
00:09:17
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It was called Just Family.
00:09:19
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As Nate described, the mission of Chatbooks has really stayed pretty focused on true north of strengthening families from the beginning, but the way to do it has really evolved.
00:09:29
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And, you know, I've joked with the Quickies before, this is one where I tried the product.
00:09:33
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I tried the enterprise software for family memories and was unable to even get it to load.
00:09:40
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And I told him- It was clearly user error.
00:09:44
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And I remember telling Nate, unfortunately, your product kind of sucks.
00:09:50
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But what we found so compelling is the mission and the magnetism around the team.
Trust in Vision Amid Skepticism
00:09:56
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There had been a lot of struggle.
00:09:58
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This wasn't a company that had a lot of momentum to get excited about.
00:10:03
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And this was like the magnetism around the Quigleys, which one of our slogans is we never invest in a company unless there's at least one entrepreneur.
00:10:12
Speaker
Oftentimes, we see startups with 10 people and no entrepreneurs, right?
00:10:15
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And this is one where it was clear we had multiple entrepreneurs.
00:10:18
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We had a lot of passion and vision and a lot of ability.
00:10:21
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And so we just said, okay, sign us up for the journey.
00:10:24
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Let's go.
00:10:25
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Even though, yeah, it wasn't even clear what the product would be.
00:10:29
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We knew it wasn't going to be the product that we had used because no one was using that.
00:10:34
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My mom was using that product, guys.
00:10:36
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She was the best customer.
00:10:38
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Really, really good.
00:10:39
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There you go.
00:10:39
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See, there you go.
00:10:41
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Gavin, what insights do you have as an investor here?
00:10:44
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You know, we invest pretty early.
00:10:45
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So we do this.
00:10:47
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But yeah, it's pretty unusual where a company has a product out there and we want to invest in spite of the product because we're so compelled by the team and the vision.
00:10:55
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In spite of the product.
00:10:57
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Not even without a product, but in spite of the product.
00:11:00
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I'm sorry, Karen.
00:11:00
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Do you have any other... Karen, do you have any other questions that we could... Move to?
00:11:04
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Yeah.
00:11:07
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Yeah.
00:11:09
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I'm just kidding.
00:11:10
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Gavin and Vanessa, you guys are not wrong.
00:11:13
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The product had gotten way too complicated.
00:11:15
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In my quest to sort of solve that problem that I had, we'd added 55 features instead of removing 20.
00:11:22
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And the real answer was to remove 20 features and focus on one easy way we could deliver a lot of value on this really important mission.
00:11:32
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And the mission, I think, is, you know, it could be a 50-year journey.
00:11:34
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There probably are 5,000 features that eventually go and work towards solving this really big problem.
00:11:41
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How do you strengthen families and help them hold on to what matters most?
00:11:44
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But you can't start there.
00:11:46
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And luckily, Vanessa had the insight that I'm already doing a lot of this, but I do want it printed.
00:11:51
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And I don't want to spend any time thinking about it.
00:11:54
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Can you solve that problem for me?
00:11:56
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That's how it happens often with product market fit and insights that come from entrepreneurs and customers is that real kind of lightning in a bottle of
00:12:04
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of you reduce it down to the simplest possible version.
00:12:08
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And in this case, it was a counterintuitive outcome, which is like, hey, give me a printed product in a digital age.
00:12:13
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And we knew this problem of family memories we experienced ourselves and among people was not being solved well out there.
00:12:20
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And so, you know, one of the things we asked us, why not the Quigleys?
00:12:24
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If they don't figure this out with their seven kids and their entrepreneurial experience, who will?
00:12:29
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And it turned out to be a great bet.
00:12:32
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And that's actually a perfect segue to having those close customer connections.
00:12:37
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In this case, Vanessa was the ideal customer.
00:12:39
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And those insights led to the pivot of making physical books.
00:12:43
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And as you've grown and as you've expanded, how have you established process discipline around continual customer insights and letting that inform your growth?
Hands-On Customer Feedback Approach
00:12:53
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We started off, I was responding to all of the customer support emails.
00:12:58
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Okay.
00:12:58
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I would just go sit on this picnic table outside our office for a couple hours every afternoon and answer every customer support ticket that came in for the first couple of weeks until I got totally overwhelmed and we started desperately hiring people like literally out of Subway.
00:13:11
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The guy making the sandwich.
00:13:13
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He's like, hey, do you want another job?
00:13:15
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That is not an exaggeration.
00:13:17
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I remember that.
00:13:17
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With a side of part-time work.
00:13:20
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That is not an exaggeration.
00:13:21
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I was eventually, you know, it's what started off.
00:13:23
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I'm going to go answer customer support tickets for a couple of hours and I'll have a sense of what's happening to I can't do anything else.
00:13:29
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And these customer support tickets are getting really ripe.
00:13:33
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And I had our QA guy at the time go to Subway and I said, don't come back without someone else who can type.
00:13:38
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And he came back with someone else who joined the customer support team.
00:13:41
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Anyway, that was early.
00:13:42
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And Vanessa, the other flip side was Vanessa was answering all of the comments on Instagram posts.
00:13:48
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And that quickly became overwhelming.
00:13:51
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And so we ended up building a customer support team, building a social media team.
00:13:55
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But what we're doing now is a whole lot better than that.
00:13:58
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Well, I mean, the question is, how do we keep in touch with what our customer really wants?
00:14:02
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And to be honest, that was one of the things that he didn't do very well in the beginning, because when he was building out just family and folk story before that, we did put together focus groups where I would bring people like me, moms, busy moms with kids.
00:14:17
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And, you know, he would show the product and ask, you know, what do you think?
00:14:20
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Oh, that's really great.
00:14:21
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I should totally do that.
00:14:22
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But can I get that in a book?
00:14:24
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Every time that is what we heard.
00:14:26
Speaker
And that is what you heard, darling.
00:14:29
Speaker
No, I actually didn't hear that part.
00:14:31
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I wasn't listening.
00:14:32
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I didn't hear it.
00:14:34
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I love this thing we built.
00:14:35
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And I want to, I can't wait to use it.
00:14:36
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More features in the software.
00:14:38
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More features.
00:14:39
Speaker
No, but this is...
00:14:39
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I think it's important, though, to point that out, because there was this assumption that you got to tune out all the noise and you got to stay laser focused on this unique product idea.
00:14:48
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But as soon as we launched chatbooks and we were selling more than we could have ever imagined, we're like, well, we should have listened sooner.
00:14:56
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So we looked at every customer support touchpoint as a way to learn.
00:15:01
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We continue to build out really personal one-to-one customer support.
00:15:05
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We have an incredible team.
00:15:06
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We call them the mom force, all moms that work from home and they use the product.
00:15:11
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They love the product.
00:15:12
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They get the value.
00:15:13
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Their number one job is to make happy customers and then report any of the pain points or the suggestions.
00:15:21
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We've got several Slack channels where we just get all of this continual feedback.
00:15:25
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And we have a whole team that does customer research, surveys, interviews, like any way to get feedback, watching people use the product, current users, cold people off the street.
00:15:36
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We just cannot get enough feedback.
00:15:38
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But we have learned along the way that you also do need to at some point filter that because you can't build everything for everyone.
00:15:47
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You got to remember who you are, what your value is, you know, listen to all of this and then funnel it through your mission and what makes you unique.
00:15:55
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And so we've just really tried to do that.
00:15:57
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You know, I would just say a broad insight for entrepreneurs that are listening to this is the importance of
00:16:06
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qualitative, subjective, emotive feedback in addition to quantitative, generalized feedback.
00:16:12
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And I think this happens to a lot of early software companies.
00:16:17
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You get so excited about A-B testing, you get so excited about really laying the data drive that you miss the broad side of a barn in terms of insights, which happens a lot with startups.
00:16:27
Speaker
We draw a triangle when we talk about product management, product vision.
00:16:32
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The top point is intuition and judgment.
00:16:35
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The bottom left is user research and user feedback.
00:16:39
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And then the bottom right is analytics.
00:16:42
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And we try to say, this thing has got to stay equilateral.
00:16:46
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And clearly I was not a triangle.
00:16:47
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I was a bright, shining point of intuition and judgment.
00:16:51
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And that was it.
00:16:52
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And that didn't work.
00:16:53
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But we've at various times, as you described, evolved into other types of isosceles triangles where we used to get out of kilter and you kind of, hey, I just heard this in a user feedback session, so we got to do it.
00:17:05
Speaker
Or I ran this A-B test and this thing won by, you know, one micron.
00:17:09
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So it's the answer.
00:17:11
Speaker
And obviously we have that framework to continue to sort of check ourselves.
00:17:16
Speaker
And Gavin, from your perspective, what are some early signs that a company is just completely out of touch or even just a little bit and getting on the wrong path of being out of touch with their customers?
Understanding Customer Needs
00:17:25
Speaker
Obviously, there's a blatant lack of product market fit.
00:17:28
Speaker
But apart from that, what are some early warning signs for you?
00:17:32
Speaker
So a lot of great, especially SaaS companies or software-enabled consumer businesses are driven by technically gifted people who it may not be their first instinct is to go talk to people face-to-face when they can interact indirectly in more indirect ways online.
00:17:51
Speaker
And so one of the clues as an investor that there hasn't been enough investment in really building out the other sides of that triangle is they can't describe their customer.
00:18:02
Speaker
filling in the gaps around who they are, why, what job this technology does for them.
00:18:08
Speaker
That's a great framework from Clay Christensen.
00:18:09
Speaker
It keeps it really simple, but it's actually been very profound in technology to say every product we have, we don't buy a product for a product.
00:18:17
Speaker
We buy it to do a job.
00:18:18
Speaker
And is it doing it or not?
00:18:21
Speaker
It's amazing how many conversations I've had with very bright entrepreneurs that have gotten pretty far, you know, millions and millions in revenue and are still really trying to answer those questions.
00:18:31
Speaker
And I think this is one of the strengths of Nate and the Quigleys as leaders is, like I say, the vision has stayed pretty similar and pretty profound from the beginning here.
00:18:40
Speaker
But there's been a lot of learning and evolution.
00:18:43
Speaker
And chatbooks is a great example for people to learn from because this hasn't been all up in the right from the beginning.
00:18:48
Speaker
It's been mostly all up in the right, right, guys?
00:18:50
Speaker
But there's been challenges along the way.
00:18:53
Speaker
And that learning cycle gets put into practice pretty quickly at chatbooks, which I think has really benefited the culture.
00:19:01
Speaker
Vanessa, I can see that you have something you want to say.
00:19:04
Speaker
Well, I just love that idea about jobs to be done.
00:19:07
Speaker
It's also interesting that we really did feel like we finally had this aha and we landed on it and we had a really clearly defined job to be done.
00:19:14
Speaker
And now we're like six, seven years into it.
00:19:17
Speaker
And our last executive team meeting, we were hashing out what is the job to be done by every product.
Creating a Supportive Employee Culture
00:19:22
Speaker
You never get over asking that question.
00:19:24
Speaker
And that's gotten you where... That's why we've got you on the podcast today talking about the fact that you've figured out that recipe we talked about in the beginning.
00:19:31
Speaker
And I'd love to get into that third part.
00:19:34
Speaker
It's been consistently mentioned in the conversation about your mission being to strengthen families.
00:19:39
Speaker
And you really just put your money where your mouth is, especially when it comes to your chatbooks family.
00:19:44
Speaker
The employee experience is amazing.
00:19:47
Speaker
You hear about it consistently as a standard for what startup culture should be like.
00:19:51
Speaker
family leave policies, career growth support, flexibility that serves, you know, both the company and the employee.
00:19:57
Speaker
So I would love to dive into the behind the scenes of what it took to develop that.
00:20:01
Speaker
How did you run the process?
00:20:02
Speaker
Who was in the room?
00:20:03
Speaker
How did you make the decisions?
00:20:04
Speaker
And how can other companies learn from that?
00:20:07
Speaker
Well, I'll just say that our family lived through a very different looking startup in startup culture.
00:20:12
Speaker
But here we are, we had an opportunity to build from the ground up a culture that really served us, served our mission of strengthening families, but our own family, which was growing and busy and demanding.
00:20:24
Speaker
And so we just built the kind of company that we wanted to work at.
00:20:28
Speaker
We talked about how if we build a really successful company and it's really valuable and all the other metrics that people typically measure companies by, but we burned out a bunch of people and hurt a bunch of families along the way, how can you possibly call that a victory?
00:20:44
Speaker
And so in our earliest culture books, we would talk about building a special company and building the kind of culture, creating and defending the kind of culture where everyone leaves saying that was the best place I've ever worked.
00:20:56
Speaker
And I did the best work I've ever done while I was at chapbooks.
00:21:00
Speaker
You just have to be healthy and happy in order to do great work.
00:21:04
Speaker
So it doesn't mean that we don't work hard or that we take eight times as much vacation as the company down the street, but we just actually focus on and talk about everyone's kind of whole person health to put them in the best possible position to do the best work of their careers.
00:21:19
Speaker
Which does include a lot more vacation than he ever had in any other job in his career.
00:21:24
Speaker
We basically require everyone to take a week off every quarter.
00:21:28
Speaker
We call it unstringing the bow.
00:21:30
Speaker
You know, you can get so...
00:21:32
Speaker
head down working so hard that you ignore all of the other aspects of your life, including the garage that really needs to be cleaned out.
00:21:39
Speaker
We're not saying everyone goes a week away on tropical vacation.
00:21:43
Speaker
Obviously, no one's doing that right now.
00:21:44
Speaker
But just a week to do something else and tend to another important part of your family.
00:21:48
Speaker
It's good for your mental health.
00:21:50
Speaker
I think for sparking creativity and problem solving.
00:21:53
Speaker
And we've seen really, really great success, especially in this last year of unprecedented times and pressures.
00:22:00
Speaker
It's funny, we, like a lot of tech companies, we didn't ever track PTO.
00:22:04
Speaker
So, you know, you have this unlimited PTO policy, but then people don't really know what to do.
00:22:09
Speaker
And so we said, okay, well, the guidelines are what we kind of hope you'll do is you'll take a week off every quarter.
00:22:15
Speaker
I kind of thought that was gonna be sufficient, but as we started to watch what the team was actually doing, especially as the team kind of grew and kind of got refined, and we just have incredible people working at Chapbooks with tons of ambition and tons of hunger and tons of talent, they weren't taking time off.
00:22:31
Speaker
And so we actually flipped from unlimited PTO to mandatory PTO.
00:22:36
Speaker
We also talk about bonus days.
00:22:39
Speaker
you could call them mental health days, but we call them bonus days.
00:22:42
Speaker
Just like, you know, if you're sort of stressed and it's not your week that quarter, but just, yeah, there's some bunch of things piling up in your life, just take the day off and take care of it.
00:22:50
Speaker
We tell our coaches, it's your responsibility.
00:22:53
Speaker
We're not tracking this at sort of an HR team level for, you know, tracking banked PTO days.
00:22:59
Speaker
But we're saying to coaches, if your team is not taking their time off every quarter, that's kind of on you.
00:23:04
Speaker
You've got to coach your players to be ready to and taking that time.
00:23:11
Speaker
Now we really are all jealous.
00:23:13
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:23:14
Speaker
And tell me a little bit about the coaches.
00:23:16
Speaker
Are those team managers?
00:23:18
Speaker
Are those outside coaches that you bring in and they have an assigned team?
Team Dynamics and Employee Morale
00:23:23
Speaker
Talk a little bit about that.
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah, we talk about our culture.
00:23:25
Speaker
We talk about wanting to create a creative and productive all-star team.
00:23:31
Speaker
And so we just use that analogy that we're trying to find incredibly amazing players who are super talented and super hungry and all the things you think of when you think about an all-star.
00:23:42
Speaker
Because we think one of the main things that leads you to think, wow, I really love working here is you just love being around the people that you work with.
00:23:50
Speaker
And they're constantly amazing you.
00:23:51
Speaker
And you're like, I cannot believe I'm on the field with this person.
00:23:53
Speaker
They're so good.
00:23:55
Speaker
So we just use player coach as a
00:23:57
Speaker
effectively, someone that reports to someone that is a player and they report to a coach.
00:24:03
Speaker
That creates a really great visual though, and sets a really high bar, which is really cool.
00:24:08
Speaker
And I love the freedom you've provided within a framework.
00:24:10
Speaker
I think that establishes a really great culture.
00:24:13
Speaker
And Gavin, as you're looking at companies in the diligence process, as you sit on boards and you kind of see them grow, how important is employee experience to you?
00:24:23
Speaker
How do you look at it?
00:24:24
Speaker
Well, when you think about the basic value proposition of joining a startup for an early employee, so much of what you're joining is a vision, is a story, is a hope for the future that doesn't exist.
00:24:38
Speaker
And so the Quigleys have created an amazing culture at Chapbooks, which is durable.
00:24:44
Speaker
It attracts amazing employees, amazingly, and diverse employees.
00:24:48
Speaker
And they buy in and they feel like it's their own.
00:24:51
Speaker
But in the earliest times, you know, in some ways that's the trickiest.
00:24:55
Speaker
You don't have a lot to offer employees in terms of benefits or pay or really anything that you would normally associate with employment.
00:25:04
Speaker
And so that's where I think, and I think Nate,
00:25:08
Speaker
gave this to his crew in spades and Vanessa, which was vision and purpose and meaning.
00:25:15
Speaker
And so even as the company grows and can provide the tangible aspects of employment that we can measure and you kind of sink our teeth into, you still have to go back.
00:25:28
Speaker
And there's been a lot of academic studies on this.
00:25:30
Speaker
Those basic
00:25:31
Speaker
Components that were so compelling in the early days of meaning and purpose and vision and meaningful work are probably just, if not more important to continue that.
00:25:42
Speaker
And I think as a leader, sometimes we lose track of that.
00:25:47
Speaker
One thought that stuck with me now for all of building chatbooks and even running the company that I was running before was a thought that Joel Peterson shared.
00:25:56
Speaker
Joel Peterson's a professor at Stanford, a great investor, locally founded Peterson Capital, which includes Peterson Partners, Peter Ventures.
00:26:04
Speaker
Anyway, he boils it down to this.
00:26:06
Speaker
Like, you're going to have great
00:26:08
Speaker
morale on your team.
00:26:09
Speaker
If people feel like a respected member of a winning team doing meaningful work.
00:26:14
Speaker
I don't know where Joel got that.
00:26:15
Speaker
Maybe he wrote it, maybe he heard it somewhere, but he said it in a setting that was really impactful for me and I've never forgotten it.
00:26:21
Speaker
And so meaningful work, we started there.
00:26:24
Speaker
Respected member of a winning team.
00:26:26
Speaker
If you have those three together, people are going to, as long as they're compensated fairly, they're going to stick around and they're going to give you their best.
00:26:34
Speaker
And I keep thinking that Chatbooks has really done a good job making meaningful work relational instead of merely transactional.
00:26:41
Speaker
From everything to the way you interact with your customers and the way you handle the culture for your employees.
00:26:45
Speaker
And I think that's a takeaway that I'm taking from this.
00:26:48
Speaker
I also wrote down unstringing the bow.
00:26:50
Speaker
I really like that.
00:26:51
Speaker
I might put that on my letter board in my office.
00:26:53
Speaker
So yes, we also do play a lot of VR in our team.
00:26:58
Speaker
It's kind of a team bonding thing.
00:26:59
Speaker
And we do, we shoot orcs.
00:27:01
Speaker
with our bows.
00:27:01
Speaker
So there's a lot of tie-ins here.
00:27:03
Speaker
So it's really perfect.
00:27:04
Speaker
So thanks.
00:27:05
Speaker
Thanks for bringing that up.
00:27:07
Speaker
And on that note, orc slaying bows, all that that entails, Vanessa and Nate, I have one final question for you.
00:27:15
Speaker
And that is, what is the most effective practice you've implemented in your work and your personal life that's had the greatest impact on your success?
Importance of One-on-One Communication
00:27:23
Speaker
For me, it is my calendar.
00:27:25
Speaker
I literally schedule everything from when I'm going to get up, when I'm going to work out, go through my email, when I'm going to pack the kids lunch, everything, when I'm going to read my whatever, anything that I want to do, it's not on my calendar.
00:27:38
Speaker
It doesn't happen.
00:27:38
Speaker
So I live and die by that.
00:27:41
Speaker
I am the exact opposite.
00:27:42
Speaker
I routinely forget the things that are already on my calendar.
00:27:46
Speaker
I don't put anything new on it ever.
00:27:48
Speaker
You've got to put an alarm to remind yourself to pick up the carpool.
00:27:51
Speaker
I learned that the hard way.
00:27:53
Speaker
This is our carpool week and we both been like, was it your turn?
00:27:56
Speaker
Wait, who's speaking of carpool?
00:27:58
Speaker
What are we...
00:27:58
Speaker
No, Vanessa is really, really good at planning out her day and executing her plan.
00:28:02
Speaker
And I'm very much not great at that and constantly driving people crazy.
00:28:06
Speaker
So I would say the thing that's most effective for me as I roll back the tape and think of what things actually really mattered, it's always a one-on-one conversation.
00:28:16
Speaker
Obviously, meetings are great.
00:28:18
Speaker
You need to have meetings to bring people together and make sure everyone's seeing things the same way.
00:28:22
Speaker
But I think if I go back through my experience at Chatbooks and my experience outside of Chatbooks, just in my family and other community involvement, it does boil down to there's just no substitute for talking one-on-one with the human being, looking at each other if it's on Zoom, walking around the river.
00:28:39
Speaker
Walk and talk.
00:28:39
Speaker
The walk and talk is one of my faves.
00:28:42
Speaker
Tennis.
00:28:43
Speaker
I do love tennis as well.
00:28:45
Speaker
But I think it's that it's just making time to have individual conversations with people on the team, people in your family, people in your community that you're worried about and care about and are trying to help.
00:28:56
Speaker
Because that's I think that's how we got built.
00:28:59
Speaker
Like we're sort of programmed to have a lot of that.
00:29:02
Speaker
And if we don't, it just doesn't work nearly as well.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:06
Speaker
Gavin, any response?
00:29:07
Speaker
So just speak to what the Quigleys are saying between being organized and meaningful conversations.
00:29:14
Speaker
I definitely see this playing out as a real strength for chatbooks in terms of the relationships on the team and the relationships with investors and with customers that there is a lot of people around this company who feel seen and heard and feel a personal stake in success of the company because of that.
00:29:33
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:29:34
Speaker
And I have loved this discussion.
00:29:36
Speaker
I already mentioned I loved the unstringing the bow.
00:29:40
Speaker
I really am going to write that and put that up somewhere.
00:29:42
Speaker
And I've also really loved the triangle analogy.
00:29:45
Speaker
I think that's great.
00:29:46
Speaker
I think we'll create a diagram for that.
00:29:47
Speaker
And if you're okay, we'll share that on the show notes.
00:29:49
Speaker
I think that was very insightful and will be very helpful.
00:29:53
Speaker
So thank you so much, Vanessa, Nate, Gavin.
00:29:56
Speaker
Thanks for being here and spending the time with us today.
00:29:58
Speaker
Thanks for having us, Karen.
00:29:59
Speaker
It was great.
00:29:59
Speaker
Thank you.
00:30:00
Speaker
It's been amazing.
00:30:01
Speaker
And of course, thank you for listening as we dive deep into what it takes to create the perfect pitch.
00:30:07
Speaker
If you want to learn more about our investor, Gavin Christensen from Kickstart or co-founders, Vanessa and Nate and their incredible team at chat books, we'll have a link to the company and a longer bio in our show notes at kickstartfund.com.
00:30:19
Speaker
You can listen to more episodes of perfect pitch, wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:30:23
Speaker
And if you like what you're learning, leave us a review or a rating.
00:30:26
Speaker
We'll be back next time with more insights from entrepreneurs and the investors who fund them.
00:30:30
Speaker
So be sure to subscribe.
00:30:32
Speaker
So you don't miss a thing.
00:30:35
Speaker
I would encourage you guys to join us in VR.
00:30:37
Speaker
It's time to... Oh!
00:30:40
Speaker
We need to get some equipment.
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:41
Speaker
And then just meet you in the arena.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker
I'm interested.
00:30:47
Speaker
I have to say, I heard orc slaying and I was like, I mean, I'll do it and I'm sure it'll be fine, but it's surprisingly fun.
00:30:53
Speaker
Like, I love it.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think you'll be surprised, Nate.
00:30:57
Speaker
Can I make myself look, you know, fit and handsome in VR world?
00:31:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, you'll be.
00:31:03
Speaker
I'm there.