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The Tactical Entrepreneur's Playbook: A Conversation with Wade Anderson, President and COO of Elements
6 Plays1 year ago
Running a startup is like building a car while you're driving. We're talking with an entrepreneur who does it all while staying buckled in. Join us in today's conversation with Wade Anderson, President and COO of Elements, and investor Tanner Potter of Kickstart (a VC firm for startups in Utah, Colorado, and the Mountain West) as we bring you both sides of a Perfect Pitch. In this episode, we'll talk about:
Starters and joiners: why you don't need to be a founder to be an entrepreneur
The steps Wade took to determine whether Elements had product-market fit
How investors look at product retention and usage data when evaluating a company
Details on Wade's feedback strategy and how it helps him remain self-aware
Recommended
Transcript
The Entrepreneurial Journey
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Speaker
Running a startup is like building a car while you're driving.
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We're talking with an entrepreneur who does it all while staying buckled in.
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Join us in today's conversation with Wade Anderson, president and COO at Elements, and investor Tanner Potter as we bring you both sides of A Perfect Pitch.
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Perfect Pitch is a podcast from Kickstart that reveals the minds of both investors and entrepreneurs throughout a startup's journey.
Wade Anderson's Background
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I'm your host, Karen Zelnick, and I'm excited to introduce you to today's guests.
00:00:38
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Wade, so excited to have you here today.
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I'm going to tell the audience a little bit about you.
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You graduated cum laude from BYU with your bachelor's in computer science and earned your MBA at Harvard Business School.
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You've got an expansive career ranging from an engineer position at Lucid to a CEO and co-founder in an Internet of Things security company and a senior project manager at Microsoft.
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Today, you're the president and COO of Elements, a financial monitoring system, and we're going to get into that more later.
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But first, what else should we know about you?
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I really love entrepreneurship.
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I was thinking this morning how many companies I've started.
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Most of them didn't really get off the ground, but I counted seven different startups at different points.
Personal Insights and Interests
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And then maybe just add a little more color on me as a person.
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Shout out to my family.
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I have three boys, eight, four, and one.
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We love to play sports and wrestle.
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And then I personally really enjoy sports.
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Tanner and I played a lot of basketball at business school together.
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Tanner has a mean spin in the paint and throw it up in a way that you can never block it.
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And then I'm really into golf right now.
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I think Wade would be remiss not to mention that he can hit a golf ball 300 plus yards and bench 300 pounds plus.
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So after he sold his last company, I think he did some personal development as well.
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Personal entrepreneurship.
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We got really into health.
00:02:00
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Yeah.
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Maybe we should have an entire episode on health and you can give us all your best tips.
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So we can all use them all the time.
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And Tanner, it's of course great to have you back on the show.
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As always, we'll have a link to Tanner's bio in our show notes.
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And if you haven't yet listened to his introductory episode, check that out.
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Tanner, we've learned some really fun facts about you in previous episodes, such as your carrot-induced orange skin and your tree ballerina days.
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What's something you haven't yet told us?
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Sheesh, I am a quirky person, apparently.
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Let's go a little more mainstream.
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I like languages.
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Duolingo is one of my most used apps on my phone, and I'm on a 358-day streak on language learning.
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I'm doing Japanese and preparing to go to Japan next year.
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So got a long way to go to figure out.
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To be fluent?
00:02:46
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Yeah, yeah.
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No, to have a conversation.
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Yeah, that's amazing.
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That's so great.
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Let's dive into the discussion.
Introducing Elements: A Financial Tool
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Today, we're talking about product market fit and Wade, to color the conversation, give me the elevator pitch on elements.
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Elements is a financial scorecard for financial professionals.
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This is financial advisors, planners, insurance, reps, to supercharge their relationship with prospects and clients.
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So it's a way to have a conversation faster and easier and to demonstrate the value of financial advice.
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Okay.
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And Tanner, tell us why Wade is a good fit for the company.
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As you heard in his resume, he has done a lot of different things in his career, everything from programming to sales to CEO to co-founder.
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And when we were talking with Reese, who's the founder, and he's been on the podcast before, Reese has a deep domain experience in the financial advising arena, built his own firm.
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And oftentimes what we like to do is compliment a founder with another person that has a very different skillset.
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So when we looked at Wade and thinking about him as being the president and COO, we thought that he was very complimentary in bringing SaaS experience, big company, small company experience, and like an insider outsider mentality.
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Oftentimes we like to have somebody that's lived within the industry.
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And so they naturally intuitively understand a lot of the unique elements of
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no pun intended, and then outside of the industry so they can come in and ask the dumb questions, but that are often insightful and help push it forward.
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Those are a few reasons why we were excited about the pairing.
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And Wade, what was appealing to you about joining a company as opposed to founding another company?
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You've done that many times.
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You've been successful at it.
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Why was joining interesting to you at this point?
Challenges in Startup Growth
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I actually think I've struggled a bit to find my own passion or something that I really love and want to solve in the world.
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I'm passionate about entrepreneurship generally, not about the actual problem that we're solving.
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And so as I've gone through my career, it's been more helpful for me to pair with someone that has a passion for the problem space.
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So I joined Elements.
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Really, I joined Reese.
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Like I dated Reese for over a year.
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Getting to know each other, figuring out if we're a good fit.
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And I really liked the way Reese and I could complement each other in that there's strengths Reese has that are really towering strengths that I don't have.
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And then there's strengths that I felt like I could bring to the partnership.
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I couldn't find an idea I was passionate enough about.
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Joining was a really great way to find someone who was feeling really passionate about solving a problem in the world.
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Yeah, Tanner, any thoughts on that?
00:05:36
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It's been fun to watch Wade on his journey.
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Him and I have had many calls over the last three years about current opportunities.
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I remember, Wade, when we talked about you joining or becoming part of the AR VR startup.
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And what I've seen from Wade is he is really interested in the partnership, as he mentioned, and he's a hyper learner.
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As you can tell from his background, he's sort of a polymath, has skills in all sorts of different areas.
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And so as he was thinking about decision, I could sense within him that for him, what was most important is that he was learning and progressing and then impacting the world in some positive way.
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What I like that we're pointing out here is that being a joiner is just as exciting entrepreneurially to some people that can fill that bug without you having to start your own company.
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Because I think sometimes people want to be an entrepreneur, they like the space, they like the excitement of it.
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They start something just to fill that need.
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But you can fill that need by joining a company and bringing really interesting skill sets to companies and joining founders.
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Yeah, there's multiple entrepreneurs that I admire a lot.
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Dave Growit Lucid is a mentor of mine and Dave is a joiner.
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But Dave is an entrepreneur of entrepreneurs, right?
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You don't have to found the company to be an entrepreneur.
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If the company is like 10, 15 people, you're definitely checking the entrepreneur box.
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There's so much to build, so much to discover, so much to still do to get the company going.
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I agree.
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I think there's these different founding stages of companies and different people come in and support those stages.
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There's a famous TED talk of a guy that's on a hill at sort of a pond and there's people are swimming and he just starts dancing.
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I don't know if has anybody seen this?
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No, but we're going to link it in the show notes.
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Yeah.
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And he's like flailing his arms and there's video of it.
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And he's the only one on the whole hillside that's dancing.
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And then slowly this other person sidles up to him and starts dancing with him.
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And you watch as people join him and it becomes a dance party, like probably a hundred plus people on the side of the hill.
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And to me, that's the perfect metaphor for a startup and how important these people are that are joining.
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Obviously, the founder is critical in getting it started, but had those founders not joined the movement, the movement doesn't often happen.
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That's for us as we think, how do we help startups improve the odds of success?
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It's getting the right people to join, continue to uplevel those teams.
00:08:01
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Wade, I would like you to tell us about Elements' strategy shift on product market fit.
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When did you recognize that something needed to be fixed and how long did it take for the team to react?
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Yeah, so I joined last September and we had just started a really nice kind of month over month growth period.
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We had launched our GA product in May and then in June we had a good month, July.
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And I felt like, oh, I'm starting right on this acceleration going up.
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And we saw it continue October, November, December, just consistent month over month growth.
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Now we're signing 12 month contracts.
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And so because we, in a smart way, had these 12 month contracts, so we were securing the revenue, we actually didn't know if people were gonna renew, because we had to wait until we would get to May or June.
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So we'd look at things like product analytics, and we tried our best to gauge account hell.
00:08:57
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But really we were anchored on revenue growth.
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Revenue growth was like our signal, do we have product market fit?
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We had really consistent month over month growth, and then January came, February came, and we were like doing half of what we had done in the prior months.
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That was really hard.
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I think my learning there was product market fit can be really fragile.
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We needed to figure out a way to get at those renewal indicators a little bit better.
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And then as we started to hit these renewals, we'd have much higher churn rates than we were hoping.
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And so there's been a lot that we've tried to do to correct that.
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But in a lot of ways, we just feel like we're not there yet.
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We haven't really nailed the product market bit where people are having a product that they're really happy with and it's really making a difference in their lives, in their business.
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I think I would just add that sometimes from the outside, it can appear that company is just binary.
00:09:51
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They find it or they don't.
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And they're a unicorn or they're not.
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And there are these living, breathing entities that are always shifting.
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And so what I've loved about the way that the Elements team has focused on this is
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We're desperate to find product market fit and continue finding it.
00:10:06
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And it's the never ending process.
00:10:07
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And that's the beauty and the bane of being in businesses.
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You've never fully found it, but you're always searching and you start getting closer.
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And then sometimes the target moves.
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But what we've seen from you as operators here and entrepreneurs is you're willing to make rapid movements towards finding that goal because you don't have a business if you don't ultimately have that product market fit.
00:10:29
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There's such a tension to that too.
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Do we just stay the course or do we make changes?
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Okay, we had a down month or a couple down months.
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Do we make like a radical change because of that?
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Or are we just like living in a macro economy that's struggling a little bit?
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Or is there seasonality in our business?
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Early stage companies, you just don't know.
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And that's a lot of, I think, the art of being an entrepreneur is like figuring out, do we just stay the course and keep selling what's on the truck?
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Or do we make a pivot or a substantial change to what we're doing?
00:11:01
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As you're thinking about that question, what are some steps you go through to determine the
Importance of Feedback and Sales Strategies
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answer?
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I know you said you're currently in that process, but for those listening, could you walk us through what you've evaluated?
00:11:14
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So feedback systems around good closed loss data, like why did you lose the deal?
00:11:20
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Every time in Salesforce when we mark a deal as closed loss, we then send it to Slack in the description of why we lost the deal as made public to the whole company.
00:11:30
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And I think that's been really important.
00:11:32
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One, because it holds the sales team accountable to writing good notes.
00:11:36
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If you look historically at our closed loss, it would be like stopped responding to email or ghosted.
00:11:41
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Our record keeping here is actually really critical because we need to be able to analyze that data.
00:11:46
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And then every time a salesperson does a demo,
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or the CS team with the current customer, they just drop an audio note and we call it sales notes.
00:11:55
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And then they just talk about what happened in that call.
00:11:58
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And it's ended up being a really fruitful place for us as leaders to like, okay, one, are we doing the right things in the sales process?
00:12:04
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And then two, what's happening on the front lines?
00:12:07
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I do a lot of my own demos and I'm on the front lines with the team, but any given week we'll do 30 demos or something.
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So this has been a helpful way to get more data.
00:12:17
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Now, collecting the data I think is really important, but then there's definitely an art to this.
00:12:22
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So the way I think about this from an art standpoint is a lot of writing.
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And Reese is similar here.
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We both like to write to help us think more clearly.
00:12:32
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So in our most recent board meeting, as we're thinking about a new product offering we wanted to add, we wrote up literally, it was a 16-page document.
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It was very detailed.
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We spent hours on it.
00:12:44
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But I felt like that was the right thing to do because it helped us really think through the details and try to persuade our board, persuade ourselves, and then look at, okay, did we consider the pros and cons?
00:12:57
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What are the other options we're considering?
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I think that level of diligence and thinking is really important when you're in this.
00:13:04
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Should we pivot?
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Should we not?
00:13:06
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Are we at product market fit or not?
00:13:09
Speaker
And you had mentioned that you had taken on more of a sales role.
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So with that and with founder led sales, what's the importance of that?
00:13:17
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And how does that connect to the product market fit journey and the data you're gathering and the information it's giving you as you evaluate what you need to do there?
00:13:25
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I think you can only trust your sales team so much of what is happening on the front lines.
00:13:30
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And part of this is because as a business leader, you're trying to convey some vision and you want to make sure that the sales team who is trying to sell the customers is conveying that vision the right way possible.
00:13:42
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We've had excellent sales leaders at different points.
00:13:44
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I think my mistake was not getting into the sales team almost from day one.
00:13:49
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If I were to go back, I think that should be almost a requirement.
00:13:52
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And I would advise it to any other startup of you've got to be consistently on those front lines because that's actually what's happening.
00:13:59
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Those are the prospects.
00:14:01
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that you're talking to, it's the objections you're hearing, how is the story landing?
00:14:05
Speaker
In a lot of ways, the elements, we sell an approach more than we sell a tool.
00:14:11
Speaker
And if someone isn't buying into that approach, maybe we need to explain it a little bit differently.
00:14:16
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So as an entrepreneur, if you're sitting back and just looking at the sales numbers, I think you're missing...
00:14:22
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a lot of room for improvement of improving the way the story is being said in the sales process and then giving you insights of what can then be brought back to the product team for things that you can then do in the product to make the story better.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, Tanner, I'd love your thoughts.
00:14:39
Speaker
I think there's a lot of interesting thoughts there, and you can see why we love having Wade is he's very data-driven.
00:14:46
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Our board updates, our monthly updates are very well done.
00:14:49
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They're articulated.
00:14:50
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Then we're able to back out and abstract and say, okay, now we have the data.
00:14:54
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We also know we have a lot of intuition.
00:14:56
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This is informing our intuition, and then we can make decisions often differently.
00:15:00
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Wade and Reese making decisions, and then we can provide feedback and help shape that as the company goes forward.
00:15:06
Speaker
And I think what you're seeing is from an investor standpoint, we often call it product promise fit or product concept fit, where a customer thinks they really want something, so then they'll buy it, but then figuring out something that
00:15:19
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really matters to them.
00:15:20
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It's a real, what we call like a painkiller for them is really important.
00:15:23
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And so that's what I've seen Wade and Reese try to do.
00:15:25
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And the entire team is go from product concept fit, where they're selling something, the vision aligns with what the customer wants.
00:15:33
Speaker
Does this really materially make their job easier?
00:15:36
Speaker
Do they save money?
00:15:36
Speaker
Do they get more clients?
00:15:37
Speaker
Because it ultimately comes down to those key metrics on retention and usage.
00:15:45
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit more about how investors look at the retention and usage data when they're evaluating a company?
Investor Perspectives on Retention
00:15:51
Speaker
Because I think that'd be an interesting perspective, Tanner.
00:15:55
Speaker
I like the definition.
00:15:56
Speaker
Actually, Mike Maples at Floodgate gave this definition of product market fit.
00:16:00
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And he says, it's what do you uniquely offer that people are desperate for?
00:16:03
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And over time, real growth is when you accumulate a set of attractive customers that are desperate for your unique solution.
00:16:10
Speaker
So when we think about retention and usage over time,
00:16:14
Speaker
Oftentimes, especially as we're investing in a SaaS company, they're paying recurring, meaning they're paying on a monthly or annual basis.
00:16:20
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They're continuing to use the product.
00:16:22
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And so what retention tells us is, one, do they really use the product on a day-to-day basis or a weekly basis or whatever aligns?
00:16:31
Speaker
such that they're going to continue paying for it.
00:16:33
Speaker
And ultimately, the money transferring hands is the best indicator that they really solves a desperate pain point for them.
00:16:40
Speaker
So it depends on the type of business.
00:16:42
Speaker
But with Wade's business, as we were looking at retention, we're thinking a lot about different cohorts.
00:16:47
Speaker
We're trying to compare that with our product roadmap and say, okay, the product wasn't as evolved as it is now.
00:16:53
Speaker
Then, so what's the difference on the cohort by cohort basis in terms of retention?
00:16:57
Speaker
And ultimately look at that as like, where does this mean they're on the product market fit journey?
00:17:02
Speaker
And how de-risked are they?
00:17:05
Speaker
To add a little bit to what Tanner's saying here too is,
00:17:09
Speaker
I've often thought about like product market fit.
00:17:11
Speaker
There's two sides to this, right?
00:17:12
Speaker
There's the product that you're selling and then the market you're selling to.
00:17:16
Speaker
And one thing we're iterating on a lot right now is who is our best customer?
00:17:21
Speaker
So we have about 500 customers that have purchased elements.
00:17:24
Speaker
Are there different segments of our customers that are retaining at a higher rate or having higher product usage?
00:17:31
Speaker
And that's absolutely the case for us.
00:17:32
Speaker
We'll have certain types of customers.
00:17:35
Speaker
Now that type is interesting because it's like,
00:17:38
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What is the type?
00:17:39
Speaker
How do we mimic that type and then market to them and then find more of them?
00:17:44
Speaker
Some of our learning with Elements is our initial product market bill, where we were seeing a lot of revenue and a lot of good usage, it just ended up being a really much smaller part of the overall financial advice market than we initially thought.
00:18:00
Speaker
There's just like radicals out there.
00:18:01
Speaker
There's early adopters.
00:18:03
Speaker
There's people that
00:18:04
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want to burn the way people do financial planning to the ground and start new.
00:18:08
Speaker
And Elements was really resonating with them.
00:18:12
Speaker
I think looking back on this, it's that classic like trying to cross the chasm maybe from early adopters to the majority that has been difficult for us because we just resonated so well with that first cohort.
00:18:25
Speaker
Now, iterating on it, is there other markets that have similar types of customers we could attract that have similar attributes?
00:18:33
Speaker
And that's what we're spending a lot of time with right now, different types of customers we can sell to that maybe fit with that kind of radical early adopter that we had a lot of good success with initially.
00:18:44
Speaker
I think I would just add there, as you can see, we're working on the car as we're driving it here.
00:18:50
Speaker
And there are no perfect answers in all this, but there's a lot of startup terms that are thrown around of being agile, moving quick and breaking things.
00:18:57
Speaker
You see it when you're under the process and the road is shifting beneath you, you have to move really fast.
00:19:01
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And so we're seeing that and a lot of it's about following a good process.
00:19:05
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And ultimately, we believe that brings out good outcomes.
00:19:09
Speaker
And I want to kind of circle back a little bit to that founder-led sales, because I can imagine, Wade, that you're not just making sure that the story is told accurately or whatever.
00:19:18
Speaker
I think there are probably additional benefits to having that story where you're learning how to tell the story to investors as you
Learning from Sales Experience
00:19:26
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go enter fundraising.
00:19:26
Speaker
You're also learning how to tell that as you're recruiting candidates and you're making sure that that is something that remains strong and intact.
00:19:33
Speaker
Have you seen additional benefits to founder-led sales like that, like communicating with investors and other things?
00:19:40
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:19:40
Speaker
Those are all good, I think, second order things that happen when you're in the sales process.
00:19:46
Speaker
It's like when I'm selling from a founder-led sales lens, I'm not like super concerned about my personal close rate and my performance in the account executive seat.
00:19:56
Speaker
What I'm really concerned about is are we selling the right way and are we learning the right things?
00:20:02
Speaker
And that is like, in my mind, like the core of the job of the entrepreneur is to figure out, to discover, to be humble, to listen.
00:20:10
Speaker
And if you're not in the sales process, you're missing the actual when that transaction or the commerce conversation is happening, where the crux of the learning could happen.
00:20:21
Speaker
And as an aside, you can get this in other ways.
00:20:24
Speaker
We record all our sales calls using Gong.
00:20:27
Speaker
I feel like that's like table stakes.
00:20:29
Speaker
An entrepreneur should have that happen and then should listen to calls regularly so they're at least listening in.
00:20:35
Speaker
But there is something different when you're in the arena actually talking to someone trying to sell them.
00:20:41
Speaker
That's a bit different.
00:20:43
Speaker
And I think there's more visceral learnings that come from that.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah, you can imagine you've got to be really self-aware to be able to do that and take the ego out of it, to be able to do that process effectively and learn from
The Role of Feedback in Personal Growth
00:20:54
Speaker
it.
00:20:54
Speaker
And Tanner, I'd like to see how you've seen Wade's self-awareness manifest in this process as you've interacted with him on the board.
00:21:03
Speaker
I think the founder-led sales is a great example.
00:21:06
Speaker
Wade is always willing to jump into the fray.
00:21:08
Speaker
That's what startups are.
00:21:09
Speaker
It's not managing people from your ivory tower.
00:21:12
Speaker
It's getting in, getting muddy, because that's the only way you learn certain insights is feeling the emotions, sensing the behavioral changes.
00:21:21
Speaker
You start to intuit things.
00:21:23
Speaker
And so I think I've seen
00:21:24
Speaker
Wade do that.
00:21:25
Speaker
The other thing that Wade I've seen does really well is he asks for feedback.
00:21:29
Speaker
And he asks for feedback a lot, actually, more than I think any other founder or operator I've worked with.
00:21:36
Speaker
And I think it underpins what he is trying to do, which is
00:21:40
Speaker
make an impact wherever he's at, and then learn in the process.
00:21:44
Speaker
I've really appreciated that.
00:21:45
Speaker
And it's been fun to see a friend on the investor side, he's on the operating side, learning that quickly and rapidly.
00:21:52
Speaker
Because anytime we're assessing an investment, one of our key underlying questions is, what is this founders or executive teams refresh rate?
00:22:01
Speaker
How quickly are they going to learn?
00:22:02
Speaker
How quickly are they going to adapt?
00:22:04
Speaker
That's where you build this cumulative greatness.
00:22:08
Speaker
Wade, have you always been good at requesting feedback?
00:22:12
Speaker
No, I have not.
00:22:14
Speaker
I suspected that might have been the case, but I didn't want to assume.
00:22:17
Speaker
So tell us about how that became a strength for you.
00:22:19
Speaker
This has been a learned skill.
00:22:21
Speaker
I actually will give a lot of credit to going to business school for this for me.
00:22:25
Speaker
Business school was an incredibly humbling experience of just being around a lot of other really smart people and realizing that
00:22:33
Speaker
I'm like in the shallow, shallow end of a vast ocean of experience and learning and capabilities and skills.
00:22:41
Speaker
And I had it drilled into me by a really good professor.
00:22:45
Speaker
She would just talk often about how important it was for leaders to like check their blind spots, to look for feedback, to be proactive about it.
00:22:54
Speaker
So after business school,
00:22:56
Speaker
When I was the CEO of this company, OSP Insight, and I started this process where I was realizing we're just too small to have a formal performance evaluation process.
00:23:07
Speaker
So every 90 days, I wrote up this Google form and I would just send it to the people I was working closely with and ask them for feedback.
00:23:15
Speaker
It's grown, it's like maybe 20 questions now, some quantitative, like, way makes the business better, scale of one to five, like strongly disagree, strongly agree.
00:23:25
Speaker
I know how I do quarter by quarter.
00:23:27
Speaker
And then I take the results of that form, and then I come up with kind of three themes I'm working on that quarter.
00:23:33
Speaker
And I feel like as an entrepreneur, that's how I judge my own success.
00:23:37
Speaker
is thinking about, am I becoming better day over day?
00:23:41
Speaker
And entrepreneurship to me is just like the best playground for learning to be a better leader, a better business person, and just a better human in that way, interacting better with others.
00:23:52
Speaker
That type of process I think has been really important for me and the values that I try to bring.
00:23:59
Speaker
Tanner, any thoughts?
00:24:00
Speaker
I wish I was as bold as Wade in that way.
00:24:03
Speaker
I remember when I was managing a team of about 10 different employees and I sent out a survey to get feedback on me.
00:24:10
Speaker
And when you actually read the feedback and get perspectives from every different team member, it's humbling.
00:24:16
Speaker
It really puts you out there.
00:24:18
Speaker
When you're joining a startup, you're a risk taker and it's being willing to do that on a personal level.
00:24:22
Speaker
Like that's taking risks on a personal level saying, I want you to tell me where I could improve or what blind spots I'm not seeing.
00:24:28
Speaker
And then
00:24:29
Speaker
In a startup, you're doing that all the way up on a team level, on a market level.
00:24:33
Speaker
And so, again, I appreciate the willingness to do that.
00:24:36
Speaker
And my philosophy of feedback is what's often most helpful is just understanding the other person's perspective and their observations.
00:24:45
Speaker
When they say, hey, when you were in that room, the way that you discussed this, it made me feel X or it made me feel Y.
00:24:52
Speaker
And sometimes they'll append like, here's what I think you should do different next time.
00:24:55
Speaker
But oftentimes what I've seen great founders do is they take that feedback and then they decide whether they want that outcome or whether they don't.
00:25:03
Speaker
That's something that we continue to work on.
00:25:05
Speaker
And I see Wade working on and evolving even since he's joined over the last year.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah, there's a skill set to receiving feedback.
00:25:12
Speaker
And I'm not just taking feedback and then doing what everyone says.
00:25:17
Speaker
I'm my own operator here and I'm listening to it.
00:25:20
Speaker
That's why I come up with three themes.
00:25:22
Speaker
I'm like, here's the things that I'm agreeing with and I'm saying I'm going to really focus on.
00:25:27
Speaker
The other thing I do, I had an executive coach that taught me this.
00:25:31
Speaker
I ask everyone specifically for one thing they can do to help me this quarter accomplish those three themes.
00:25:38
Speaker
Like one of my themes this quarter is I'm trying to inspire with more positivity and optimism.
00:25:44
Speaker
And so what I've asked a few people directly is, can you help me with this?
00:25:48
Speaker
When you see me doing this, I want you to encourage me.
00:25:52
Speaker
It helps bring people into this idea that it's not just like me trying to improve.
00:25:56
Speaker
It's us trying to improve together and helping each other out and
00:26:00
Speaker
This is the culture we've tried to develop elements, like being curious, trying to improve together.
00:26:06
Speaker
I think it's helped us gel a lot as a team.
00:26:09
Speaker
And one thing that you each pointed out, if someone asks you for feedback, it's a little hard to know, like, how do I deliver that?
00:26:16
Speaker
What do I say?
00:26:17
Speaker
Tying an opportunity or tying like a specific example of what you're saying is really helpful.
00:26:22
Speaker
So instead of saying, hey, you can be pessimistic, you can say, hey, in the last meeting when you presented on this, and then also stating the impact is really helpful.
00:26:30
Speaker
You both pointed that out and I wanted to do an extra call out on that.
00:26:33
Speaker
Giving feedback can be just as hard as receiving it sometimes.
00:26:37
Speaker
Just to add to that, the way you ask the questions matters a lot.
00:26:41
Speaker
So I've gotten a lot better in the feedback form.
00:26:43
Speaker
So if you think your, I don't know, grade one level question is like, what feedback do you have for me?
00:26:50
Speaker
That is terrible.
00:26:51
Speaker
Unless someone is really good at giving feedback, you will not get good feedback from that question.
00:26:57
Speaker
But this, and I'll give credit to the executive coach on this too.
00:27:00
Speaker
She helped me with this.
00:27:01
Speaker
A question like, when is Wade at his best?
00:27:04
Speaker
When have you seen Wade at his best?
00:27:06
Speaker
What does Wade do that reduces your energy?
00:27:09
Speaker
Those questions get really good responses.
00:27:12
Speaker
Because that allows people to not just say, oh, I'm giving you a positive and a negative feedback.
00:27:17
Speaker
It's they're visualizing, okay, when do I see Wade doing good things?
00:27:21
Speaker
When does Wade do something that creates a little more frustration or lowers my energy?
00:27:26
Speaker
And now we need to make a feedback form and put this on the show notes too.
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:32
Speaker
I had just a template.
00:27:33
Speaker
I'll share it with you.
00:27:34
Speaker
We would love that.
00:27:35
Speaker
Thank you.
00:27:36
Speaker
Wade would do that and he would not be afraid to do that.
00:27:39
Speaker
Wade, can I ask a question on this?
00:27:41
Speaker
How do you think about real-time feedback versus more longitudinal feedback?
00:27:47
Speaker
That's something that I've often thought about.
00:27:49
Speaker
I'm curious to hear your thoughts as our feedback guru.
00:27:52
Speaker
The right cadence for me has been the 90-day cadence.
00:27:55
Speaker
Every 90 days I go through that process.
00:27:58
Speaker
I haven't personally used a good real-time feedback tool, but the reason I'm pausing and thinking about it is go back to what we talked about with feedback we're getting from customers to make the business better.
00:28:09
Speaker
It's a similar paradigm, right?
00:28:11
Speaker
And getting actual data point live in real-time, like the sales notes, we're hearing what's happening on the front end.
00:28:17
Speaker
It's been really helpful to our business.
00:28:19
Speaker
So it feels like it could be really helpful to me personally, just haven't been able to execute on the real-time as much.
00:28:26
Speaker
It's often something that makes most sense.
00:28:28
Speaker
If you're a baseball player, you want feedback on your swing real time so you can adjust it for the following pitch.
00:28:34
Speaker
But it's often hard to be in a receptive state of mind and process that.
00:28:38
Speaker
So I haven't found the perfect solution for that either, but something that continually striving towards.
00:28:43
Speaker
And now I'm like, yeah.
00:28:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:45
Speaker
Sorry.
00:28:46
Speaker
I was like sitting there thinking about like when I want to do, I'm like, should I do 90 days or do I like real time?
00:28:50
Speaker
Or how do you become more receptive to real time feedback?
00:28:53
Speaker
That's really made me think a lot though, but okay.
00:28:56
Speaker
So Wade, we like to ask everybody on the show the same question.
The Impact of Reading on Success
00:28:59
Speaker
And that is what's an effective practice you've implemented in your work or personal life that you think has had a great impact on your success?
00:29:07
Speaker
I just love to read.
00:29:09
Speaker
I read so many books, like dozens a year.
00:29:13
Speaker
I do a lot of audio books.
00:29:15
Speaker
So if I'm playing golf or I'm running or something, I'm listening to books.
00:29:19
Speaker
And I've got this really smart person just telling me all these stories and anecdotes, and then I can figure out how to apply them.
00:29:26
Speaker
I think that's been one of the best habits I've been able to get into in my life is just loving to read, loving to listen to books or podcasts to learn and improve.
00:29:37
Speaker
What are you currently reading?
00:29:40
Speaker
I just started Simon Sinek's second book.
00:29:42
Speaker
His first one was Start With Why.
00:29:44
Speaker
It's the second book in the series about how to get to why or something like that.
00:29:49
Speaker
Tanner, you're a big reader too.
00:29:50
Speaker
What are you reading right now?
00:29:53
Speaker
I am wading through.
00:29:55
Speaker
Jeez, I didn't... All of them today.
00:29:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:30:00
Speaker
Going with the dad jokes today.
00:30:01
Speaker
I'm doing the biography of Elon Musk right now.
00:30:04
Speaker
Oh, how is it?
00:30:06
Speaker
It's awesome.
00:30:06
Speaker
It's awesome and crazy.
00:30:08
Speaker
I lived in South Africa.
00:30:09
Speaker
So hearing about his boyhood and how he grew up and him describe how he had SpaceX and Tesla going at the same time in parallel as CEO of those companies and how many times they almost died and the impact that those have had.
00:30:25
Speaker
Obviously, there's a lot of opinions about him as a person, but the impact on those companies is just...
00:30:31
Speaker
spectacular for my opinion.
00:30:32
Speaker
It's so inspiring.
00:30:34
Speaker
I read that a couple of weeks ago too.
00:30:35
Speaker
And oh, so good.
00:30:37
Speaker
Walter Isaacson does a good job.
00:30:39
Speaker
It's on my shelf.
00:30:40
Speaker
I'm finishing a fiction book right now.
00:30:42
Speaker
So I'm definitely not reading this right now, but I'm a big fan of the Thursday Motor Club series.
00:30:51
Speaker
Anyway, Wade, it's been so great to have you on the show today.
00:30:53
Speaker
We've really enjoyed it.
00:30:54
Speaker
We really appreciate your insights.
00:30:55
Speaker
Tanner, thank you for everything that you brought and all your insights as well.
00:30:58
Speaker
And appreciate you both being here.
00:31:00
Speaker
Thanks, Karen.
00:31:01
Speaker
Thanks.
00:31:01
Speaker
Thanks.
00:31:02
Speaker
Thanks, Wade.
00:31:03
Speaker
Wade, Tanner, thank you so much for all of your insights and for being on the show today.
00:31:07
Speaker
And of course, thank you for listening as we dive deep into what it takes to create the perfect pitch.
00:31:12
Speaker
If you want to learn more about Tanner Potter from Kickstart or Wade Anderson from Elements, we'll have links in longer bios in our show notes at kickstartfund.com.
00:31:20
Speaker
You can listen to more episodes of Perfect Pitch wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:31:24
Speaker
And if you like what you're learning, leave us a reviewer rating.
00:31:26
Speaker
We'll be back next time with more insights from entrepreneurs and the investors who fund them.
00:31:30
Speaker
So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing.