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S3E14 Kayvon Touran
96 Plays5 months ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Kayvon.
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We loved talking to Kayvon.
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Transcript
Introduction to Zoll.ai and Kavon's Vision
00:00:00
Speaker
All right, we are going. Cool. Kavon, thank you so much for joining. Can you tell people who you are and what you do? Yeah, my name is Kavon Taran. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Zoll.ai, and we help companies contextualize, assess, and measure their learning and development programs. So it's nice to be here. No, it's not my pleasure
Identifying the Career Development Gap
00:00:23
Speaker
to have you. All right, contextualize, assess, and measure their learning and development programs? Yes. okay Can you say that, um, can you stretch it out a little for, for the lay folks listening? For sure. I guess what I've experienced in most of the work environments that I've been in is there's a disconnect between learning and development opportunities and career development for the employee. So a lot of employees are focused on how they can progress their career. And a lot of them would like to do it at their organization.
00:00:59
Speaker
And a lot of companies are offering learning and development by way of courses, coaches, mentors, et cetera, but struggle to really connect the dots. And that's a missed opportunity both for the strategic objective of the organization, but also in retaining and engaging their employees. That's the problem to help companies solve. So when you say they have trouble connecting the dots, meaning we brought in a coach or we did some trainings on or quick course-based trainings on XYZ, but then maybe the managers aren't able to connect that exactly to helping someone progress to a new title, a new role, additional responsibilities exactly within their organization. Is that right? Like the other things help them develop professionally more broadly, but maybe not exactly in the way they need to advance. Exactly. Yeah. That's really common. So your company, Zal.ai, also
00:01:56
Speaker
I'm saying it correctly, right? so Yeah. a okay cool So what exactly are you guys offering currently?
The Role of Job Architecture in Learning
00:02:03
Speaker
The first thing that organizations really need to hone in on in order to offer effective career pathing for their employees is job architecture. When I talk about job architecture, creating job models, job descriptions that truly represent what you're going to be doing in the role and the skills and competencies that you need to be exemplifying to be proficient in that role. And we help organizations build that career architecture across their firm and visualize it.
00:02:30
Speaker
We help them share that data with business leaders in the organization so that they can refine the data and make sure that it truly represents the job and the competencies that you need to demonstrate. And then we help the employee visualize their career path at that organization with different opportunities within the org and see the learning and development that's available to them in context of their career goals. So if I want to go from, say, a content marketer to a senior content marketer, What's the gap in terms of the skills that I need? And what's the learning that can help me fill that gap? And then critically, what we help them do then is assess those skills. So this is something that's been always tricky for companies to solve, right? How can we measure the efficacy of someone's training and development? And so by having an assessment that takes place before they actually engage in that learning and development,
00:03:25
Speaker
And then afterwards, we can actually measure the efficacy of these L and&D programs in a way that previously wasn't really possible at scale. And it's not via consultation, correct? That's
AI-Driven Skills Assessment and Training
00:03:38
Speaker
right. And it's pretty integral. Look, there's an element here of strategy and making sure that there's alignment and there's a service layer here that we offer as well to help organizations think about what they're going to implement and connect some of the dots where software just isn't as effective. But primarily, this is a software solution that we've built end to end and something we're really proud of. An example of that be a leadership and development coach is brought in and the software helps assess skills before and after a six month engagement with a team.
00:04:09
Speaker
That's exactly right. Our co-founder, Dr. Stephen Costlin, has developed a fascinating way of using large language models to develop these dynamic assessments that use principles of cutting edge learning science and the power of generative AI to create things like simulations and role-playing trainings that we can use to create assessments that are really realistic to how you would have to demonstrate that skill on the job. So I can give you a specific example and then bring it back to the sort of question that you just asked. so
00:04:45
Speaker
Let's say we're about to hire a training manager who's going to come in and help all of our content marketers or let's say account managers for an agency work on their ability to handle conflict resolution with a client. That's one of the classic durable skills that you need to be able to demonstrate in a work environment to be successful. What we can do in our system is we take in consideration the role that you have at that organization the company that you work for, the industry that we work for. And then we run it through our system and we're able to create what feels like a very realistic scenario of you having to actually engage in conflict resolution with a client, but you're actually interacting with AI.
00:05:28
Speaker
And once that engagement is done, it will actually grade you on your proficiency around conflict resolution. And so by assessing you before you take any kind of training and then afterwards as an agnostic layer, whatever modality of learning you're utilizing, we can measure. And and we think that's really impactful. I think if you went to an executive and said, hey, we're going to run a multi-million dollar marketing budget, but we'll have no way of tracking anything. They tell you to get out of their office. Learning and development, it's pretty commonplace to just accept that spend that really won't have a great way of being able to measure beyond sort of basic assessment and surveys. I imagine they're not going into some. Was that Tom Cruise movie with the minority report? Yeah, it's not like a minority report at all.
00:06:16
Speaker
No, it's not that dystopian. I actually think it's frankly refreshing. Assessment is one area of education that has so much opportunity to be rethought with new technology, right? Taking a boring quiz at the end of some kind of course, or taking some kind of boring survey that asks you, how much did you know about the skill before you take it? And then afterwards, it asks you the same thing. is not an effective way of measuring efficacy. And it's not doing the organization any benefit because they're paying for it. It's not doing you any benefit if you actually want to learn this stuff. So the way it would work
00:06:56
Speaker
is you would come into our system as an employee, you'd upload your resume or bra provide a link to your LinkedIn to create sort of a first pass at your skill profile. And you can add skills to your profile as well using the skill taxonomy that we're using. That skill taxonomy that I'm referencing is essentially, you can think of it as like a hierarchy of competencies and skills. that we have a lot of data on, the the general public has a lot of data on as far as how those things relate to common roles. That data is commonly used to actually generate job descriptions. And so what we're trying to do is connect the dots between how job descriptions are created
00:07:37
Speaker
and your actual skills, because then we can more effectively recommend a role for you that might be interesting for you long term. In context of how this works for the employee, they'd come in, build that skill profile. And then for every skill that's part of their profile that's yet to be verified by, say, a subject matter expert within the company or a manager, they'd be able to take one of these objective assessments. And so they click on that skill. They go into an environment where they're interacting with this AI. And it would help them learn the fundamentals of that skill or competency. It would help go through an assessment like a role-playing assessment, along with a number of other assessments that we're developing to really measure how well you understand these concepts and then recommend more learning that's part of your L&D catalog within your organization. so
00:08:28
Speaker
I don't think it's dystopian. I think
Building Personal Branding with Medberry
00:08:30
Speaker
it's pretty cool. Hey guys, interrupting this interview for 10 seconds to talk about Medberry. We work with executives to help them build their brand and tell their stories on LinkedIn. If you're an exec, your LinkedIn profile can be really, really powerful. It can attract top talent, dream clients, and PR for your organization. And it can turn you into a magnet for opportunities that you might be curious about. like board seats, high ping speaking gigs, podcast appearances, writing projects, or even sometimes a new dream job. But you don't have to post super cringy LinkedIn content to get there. It's totally possible to build a brand with great content that you feel excited and proud to put out into the world. Our process starts with an interview. It's actually a lot like being a guest on Content People. We ask strategic questions to draw out your personal stories and expertise. Then we create a brand plan
00:09:21
Speaker
optimize your profile, and deliver a batch of content to you for a review each month. Once you approve it, we post and engage on LinkedIn on your behalf. We're on their building community and you never have to log in unless you want to. Here's a testimonial from a client. I'm reading it off of our website. She said, just want to reiterate how amazing it's been working with you and how happy I am with the content we're putting out on the channel and the credibility and engagement we're building. I've had so many people tell me how much they love what I've been putting on LinkedIn recently. When I tell them I have a team helping me, they can't believe it's not me. It's so in line with what I would write and truly crumbs from my voice.
00:09:59
Speaker
That is a great client of ours. She's a CEO and founder. To learn more, check out our website. I will throw it in the show notes and I'll also include a link to book a 15 minute call with me. Thank you so much for listening. Back to the show.
AI-Enhanced Skill Practice at Zoll.ai
00:10:12
Speaker
Sure. So for the folks who are doing like an assessment, let's say I'm a manager and I want to move into a director level role at an agency, it's account management based. Would the experience be that I'm almost, is it like, typing with the AI, the client says something, I say something, and it gives me the opportunity to practice, strategize that type of learning. Yeah. So thanks for asking that. We support texts, but we also support text to voice and voice to text. Oh, cool. So it actually feels like you're having a conversation in some of those examples with an AI.
00:10:51
Speaker
with tonality and real life scenarios included. I'll give you an example of one. We built a demo for a hospital that wanted to see how we could help their support staff measure their ability to handle difficult parents in a really common scenario. So a parent left the hospital for a moment. Their child was in care of the hospital. The hospital took some kind of action. Maybe they administered some kind of medication or something. And now there's an angry parent coming to the support staff, demanding to understand what's happening.
00:11:27
Speaker
And you as the support staff have to exemplify correct proficiency around conflict resolution, the same example I gave earlier. It's pretty amazing how lifelike these scenarios are and also how much more effective this type of assessment and training is because it goes beyond learning something ah in an abstract format, taking a quiz and then finding yourself in a real life scenario, having to deal with it. You've almost got this training to prepare you in a way that is really unique. I think that's so interesting. I'm thinking back to my years of agency management. And one thing I remember thinking and even saying to other people is in an agency environment, there's only 20 things that can really go wrong with a client. They get reskinned in different scenarios, but it's like the first couple of years of anyone's experience. And I'm sure this is true of other client service um models as well. You're just, it's like,
00:12:24
Speaker
You are learning how to identify and deal with those 20 different things that can go wrong and the idea of allowing staff to learn how to do that, but. in a controlled environment as opposed to messing it up on real life accounts is really interesting and appealing though. I understand it's a different use case with medicine, but I'd imagine similar in that it's, there's a flow chart of the types of things that can happen in the interactions you can have.
Founding Story and Co-Founder Chemistry
00:12:49
Speaker
And it sounds super very cool and interesting and useful and relevant and what an interesting application of AI in a way I hadn't thought about. I'd love to hear a little bit about like your background before starting this and
00:13:03
Speaker
I want to talk about how you and your co-founder met each other and what led you guys down this really interesting, very cool path. I'll start with how Joe and I met my co-founder. I've spent my entire career working in early stage technology startups and I spent the last five years working at this company Noodle in New York City that really started as an incubator with various companies solving different problems across pre-K to higher ed. I got sprinkled around the portfolio as a product manager and eventually landed at what became Just Noodle, which was an organization that would partner with ah universities to launch their online degree programs.
00:13:47
Speaker
um Eventually, I started working on this really fascinating problem, which was how do we help universities distribute their non-degree learning more effectively and more efficiently? And so I built a platform there. And while I was working on that problem and building that platform, ah Joe, my co-founder, had built this technology that was a case study engine for higher ed. So basically, It was this tool that will allow faculty members to collaborate on case studies and then publish them on online platforms, LMS platforms like Canvas. I met Joe there and we worked together for about a year, which was really important. And I started having this idea in my head about how the idea of wanting to start my own business was always in my head for my entire career.
00:14:36
Speaker
But one thing that always held me back was thinking about, have I found the right co-founder? I knew I needed someone who was technical because that was going to be what they brought to the table. I felt really confident in my ability as far as like product management and business development, but I wanted someone also who could overlap with me in the right ways. which is like a messy thing and hard to define, right? Like how do we find someone who is distinct in their skill set and doesn't get in your lane, but at the same time overlaps just enough so that there's a healthy creative tension, a healthy level of challenge so that the best ideas are constantly winning. And I felt that with Joe. It felt good. Like he was and but he was someone who was like clearly like an entrepreneur and and not just like a software engineer.
00:15:25
Speaker
Not that, yeah, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I saw that he had both, both things going on and yeah, it didn't take long. We just started jamming. I threw an idea out at him and it started evolving very quickly. And then we started connecting some dots on some of the things that I had observed in my experience in launching this lifelong learning platform and thinking about what's the secret sauce? What's the insight that I've gathered here that could be applied in a really powerful way? um Let's quit our really great high paying jobs and start this company. like What was that process like to navigate? I won't even ask you to speak for Joe, but maybe just for yourself as a founder. I know a lot of founders listen. It's something they've done and a lot of people think they're crazy for doing it. So what were your internal drivers there? Yeah, I think it was unusual in one regard, which is that I worked at a company and I worked for someone who is an entrepreneur themselves. And so they understood why I wanted to do this.
00:16:22
Speaker
And it was it's a weird conversation when you built a really good relationship with your boss. They understand why someone would want to venture out on their own. Yeah. On one end, they really want to keep you there. But on the other end, they know that it's a right next step for you in your development. And that can be a scary thing, I think, for most organizations, most managers, to be willing to say, you know what, the next best step for this person is outside of my organization. And I think that's powerful in a lot of ways. But so from a support standpoint, I think I have that support. I felt confident in the support that I was receiving from my boss, someone who I had developed a really good relationship with. So that's one sort of aspect of it. The second aspect was just feeling like this is a really powerful idea.
00:17:14
Speaker
And it tied back to this concept of checking off this internal memo of, do I have the right things going on here? Do I have who I think is the right co-founder? Yes. Do I have what I think is a powerful idea or a powerful problem? Yes. Has that been confirmed in some way based on my experience that's pretty niche and focused and created through some kind of insight that i only a few people have who are also willing to take an entrepreneurial leap? Yes.
00:17:47
Speaker
and And really it was a as simple as that. Like I felt like I had gone down that list and I had those things in my bag. So the last step was just like, okay, are you willing to take that leap? I talked a lot about the support I got from my management, but I got a lot of support from my partner, from my family, from friends. And so eventually it felt like it'd be silly if I didn't do it. So it's going to work. um There's a lot I want to double click on there. I definitely want to come back to you the co-founder green flags because I know we've talked on that separately. I think you have a lot of really interesting insights there. Also want to talk about and just take even quick notes. for So when you mentioned the fact that your boss at Noodle was so supportive and was like, yeah, I see this for you, breaks my heart to lose you, but I understand this is the right next step for you. I can see that being really powerful.
00:18:42
Speaker
Do you feel like having his or her blessing was, can you imagine, would you have taken the leap if you didn't
Navigating Startup Challenges and Advice
00:18:51
Speaker
have it? Because I know a lot of people have bosses who are like, you know, there's all kinds of terrible manipulative mind games there. I'm just wondering, especially I suppose it's relevant because of everything you're working on to create like helpful developmental resources that help people take the right next step at the right time in or maybe even out of their organizations. Do you think you could have done it if your boss was like, I don't think you're ready, Capon? The signals were strong enough that I would have done it. But I definitely think that validation helped. Yeah.
00:19:24
Speaker
It did help. I think part of that validation came also because he was an entrepreneur. He is an entrepreneur that I respect and that I learned a lot from. I think I have enough self-awareness to step back and think about who is this person. Are they like a career middle manager who's never taken that leap themselves and are coming at this from a totally different perspective? Or is this like a decorated entrepreneur that's had a lot of success? like It makes a difference, right? And I think so much of being a founder is that is that sense of like, how am I going to interpret this person's opinion? Who are they? There's a lot of judgment that comes with that. It's something that like I'm not super happy about, but it's critical in terms of your ability, because everyone's got an opinion, right? and so how do you
00:20:12
Speaker
disseminate that. How do you figure out like what signal, what's noise? And then sometimes how do you consider a signal that you respect and say, yeah I'm still going to do it. That's all tricky. Yes. No, I really appreciate what you're saying. I think it is tricky. And I think it's you're so articulate and able to express. I would consider the source, take a step back and think about it. I think so many entrepreneurs and founders. One thing I found is you start to get a significant amount of unsolicited advice. meant A lot of it is from folks who to your point have actually never done it. They don't really have much context or experience, but also I think because it can be a very vulnerable feeling, especially in the first year or two, sometimes it can be hard to have the strength to be like, this is challenging. I am sometimes doubting myself, but I don't think those are real thoughts or helpful thoughts.
00:21:07
Speaker
but then to not take on board other people's opinions, judgments. You seem to be very chill and level-headed about it. Is that your internal experience as well? or How's it been for you this first year of like raw entrepreneurship? you know Much feeling around the dark there is, that's mandatory to the process. and It's something that I believe strongly about for example, like figuring out product market fit. It's not about walking into a room and it's messy and accepting the mess and rolling with it and navigating your way through it. but It's like chaos theory. It's like, how do we embrace that and find peace in it and it? And with this kind of background voice in your head that's saying, this is just part of the course. And anyone who's telling you there's a get rich quick scheme that avoids all of this,
00:22:03
Speaker
is full of it. I think what happens to a lot of people that I've spoken to who want to pursue entrepreneurship and who haven't worked in an early stage company is from working in more mature corporate environments. They're used to process. They're used to organization. And it's such a delicate balance of having the right amount of those things and not being unaccountable. but also accepting that things are going to be messy at the beginning as we figure this out. And that's ah also a big part of how I think of who you find as a co-founder and are they on the same page as you? Because otherwise there could be a lot of sparks. Yeah. Yes. I love so much of what you just said there. It's funny when you said like fumbling around in the dark, my friend Liam was on this podcast and he talked about his first year at his company and he described it as like,
00:22:57
Speaker
similar metaphor most of being in a dark stairway and you just have to feel for one step and the next step and it gets easier and your eyes adjust. but That's a much better analogy. They're great. I was just struck by the the truth and the similarity of them. And I want to highlight a few other things that really jumped out at me is that your comfort with it being a process I think is very cool, very exemplary and very important because I think often to your point when someone is not expecting that and then it feels complex, very messy, the room is chaos, it can feel like they're failing and then they feel shame. And I think a lot of founders and entrepreneurs, this is my theory based off of talking to a lot of them. And I think that shame really gets some people down and holds them back from keeping going. and
00:23:53
Speaker
I just really appreciate the way you articulated that it's really helpful. I feel it sometimes just to be totally frank with you, right? Like that feeling of am I doing enough? Yes. And are things moving fast enough? And you're right, you have to catch yourself. It's always going to be a lot more apparent to you the stuff that's not going right, whatever that means. Well, let's like talk about the co-founder relationship a little bit because I love talking to co-founders. I mentioned this to you before we started recording when I talked to Chris Cantwell, who is a co-writer on Halton Catch Fire. He talked about his partnership with his writing partner. They both had basically an agreement that it was their second marriage, and they were going to work at it emotionally with that kind of rigor and intention.
00:24:40
Speaker
and tell like how to so i You guys were working together. It seems like you're a good professional chemistry. but when you were trying to figure out, can this guy and I, Joe, make this work? What were some of the things you were mindful of and looking for? And how are you guys navigating this first year of a lot of cool projects, but also like the complexity of a startup? I think so. We hit on a few of the things and I guess we can go deeper on a couple of the points. Complementary skill set, like just thinking about that for a second. My ideal set up for
00:25:17
Speaker
A new venture would be I'm in charge of sales and marketing. My co-founder is in charge of technology and we overlap on product. yeah Going into it, that was something that I was really focused on. I want someone who sees a value that I can provide in building the venture from that perspective, that I can respect their opinion on the technology standpoint. And we're constantly bickering about product. And it's my job to represent the voice of the customer and it's his or her job to represent what's what's feasible, what makes sense, and pushing the limits on technology. And so right off the bat, like that was a big box that was ticked. And so I think having started, I would have been much more focused on that, not really considering how much more important actually the chemistry of like our ability to work together was.
00:26:11
Speaker
But that's it's almost been like a ah happy accident. And we'll call it an accident because we worked together and we vetted that out and we like started slowly, obviously, with one another and just seeing like how we would like gel together. So when we go back to that feeling around the dark, is this someone who has experience doing that? Have they worked at early stage companies before? Have they started their own company before? Do they know that there's going to be a really messy, chaotic process that's going to ensue? And listen, like I don't have all the answers. So this is my perception of what it takes to be successful on a new venture. So really, it's is someone going to come in that has a similar sort of way that they see the world, similar enough where like we can get stuff done and not be constantly bickering, but maybe frayed enough
00:27:03
Speaker
and different enough where there's a healthy amount of challenges, a healthy amount of tension. And I think looking back, I wasn't necessarily like super conscious of that, but I was like poking and prodding to see if that was there. um And then once I felt like it was like, okay, like we've got The hard skills checked. We've got the soft skills checked. Are we both willing to take a risk? And what's our timelines? That's another really big piece of us. And that was aligned too. I had someone who was talking in terms of five to 10 years, not one to two years, which is a really big deal. That's so huge. And yeah, so that was like the founding team. And actually we just added another co-founder.
00:27:48
Speaker
that's brought in like another like huge new element to this as well. And it's a totally different thing in terms of like how we consider their sort of like background and like what they're bringing to the table and like how that relationship will work. It's tricky. Very early in our journey, Joe and I both thought it would be super valuable to have someone on our advisory board like on a few different vectors of, OK, what's my job and Joe's job? It's a little buster ass, get shit done. and We are experts in ed tech in Joe's capacity. And I feel like I really know the sort of non-degree and upskilling industry having like my past work experience. But now we're entering in a realm of management so change management, organizational design, core HR practices that like we're not
Strategic Growth and Expert Collaboration
00:28:40
Speaker
experts on. So what do we do there? And so we immediately start thinking we need someone who's an expert in that. And we also need someone who's really an expert on learning.
00:28:48
Speaker
um And so we went out and we tried to find those people. We thought of like who are the most influential people that we could get in touch with that could basically represent that subject matter expertise for us to guide us. And one of those individuals, Dr. Stephen Costlin became our first advisor. Dr. Costlin's got this incredible CV. He spent 30 years working at Harvard on faculty there. studying the human brain and what's going on in the brain as we learn things. Then did a stint at Stanford, became the Dean at Minerva, I think he was Dean at Harvard for a period of time, and then founded Foundry College before now working on his own consulting firm that does consulting services around instructional design and other sort of pedagogy best practices. At first we were working as an advisor with him and
00:29:41
Speaker
Again, it it's funny because thinking back to it, we were going through a similar checklist of, like does this person bring really interesting skills that I don't have? Yes. Do they, are they like people I want to work with? Yes. Are there people I can learn from? So it's like kind of the same checklist and everything started clicking and basically working with him, he had this really interesting idea on how to use large language models for assessment. And so as we were building him that product, and that's another thing that we can talk about, which is like how in the earlier days of Joe and I working together, we decided how we wanted to build the company, which was basically like, let's avoid venture capital as long as possible. What are non-dilutive funding sources? how How can we sell our time and services and refeed it back into the business? yeah We did this custom software development project for him.
00:30:37
Speaker
And we're immediately blown away, not only in terms of his vision, but in the application of artificial intelligence and everything that he'd been researching for the last 30 plus years. And then realizing, wow, this is such a powerful application. I could totally see how this folds into skill verification in workforce development. And sort of one thing led to another. And yeah, he agreed to officially become a co-founder, which we're really excited by. That is it's cool for him to be a part of it. I really admire so much about kind of the thoughtful and measured, flexible approach you guys are taking to this like cool product aside. There's a lot of very cool things about the way you guys are approaching it. So for the rest of the year, like for 2024 specific to Zoll,
00:31:27
Speaker
What are you guys focusing on? What are the goals or the projects on the horizon?
Proving Solutions and Expanding Reach
00:31:31
Speaker
The big thing is we're both driven by the initial impact that we wanted to create. We've ended up in a very different place than when we first ideated on Sol, but it was still around the same core problem, which is like, I'm a manager at a company. And I've got my employees coming up to me on my team and they're like, Hey, I want to progress. Often oftentimes like early stage in their career, like, Hey, I want to go from like content marketer to senior content marketer or like product manager to senior product manager. What do I need to do? What do I need to learn? What do I need to demonstrate? And from my perspective as an employee, getting like this hand wavy response of show up and work hard, which drove me insane.
00:32:12
Speaker
Because I worked at an ed tech company that cared about their employees and and was investing a lot of money in L and&D. And so it really gave me pause. I was like, okay, if it's like this here, it's probably like this most places. And then finding myself as a manager, and now I have my team members coming up to me asking me the same question and I'm doing the same dance. And that drove me insane. I'd go to HR and be like, why is it like this? And it's it's really hard to figure all that stuff out and create like such like structure around this stuff. Because typically it's just being unstructured. It's talent when you see it. it's less There's so many things that annoys me about that. It's on so many different levels from DE and I all the way to just like the side of my brain that wants to be more like structured in the way that I approach everything.
00:33:03
Speaker
I think coming back to what we want to accomplish this year, we haven't lost sight of that mission. It's been about eight months since we cut our jobs and I've been focusing on this and a lot's happened in that time, but we're still driven that feeling in a way. That is what's so powerful because I know there ambitious employees, and I know there are frustrated managers. And I know there's also executives that wish there was more strategic alignment between how their workforce, their number one asset is developing, and the objectives of the organization and to be able to
00:33:37
Speaker
mold that in a more agile way to the different goals and market conditions, et cetera. And so that to me is still this powerful calling of there's a huge opportunity here, not only like financially to help position ourselves as an organization that can help companies, managers, employees execute against that, but also just intrinsically, there's this really powerful like mission behind that to help everyone in this sort of process be more focused around this. so I say all that to say that we're really focused this year on proving that and proving the efficacy of what we're doing. That's really important to me that it's not just slip service. We're excited that we've built what we've built so far with about 15 pilot partners. Wow. What I'm really hoping to see through the course of this year is deeper implementations with more partners, deeper proof points around the efficacy that we've been able to drive.
00:34:31
Speaker
And like being able to speak to people who feel like they're more fulfilled in their work because they like have the guidance that they so desperately have been seeking. like Those are all things that are really
Reflections on Startup Resilience
00:34:42
Speaker
big to me. What are some of the highs and then what are some of the lows you've experienced as you start out with this project? I think we're constantly surrounded by people telling you good jobs and this is like directionally correct. Everything is sugar coated in a way that's built to make you feel like this is good. And startup land is just not like that at all. It's just nonstop.
00:35:04
Speaker
everyone you speak to, like the default is probably going to be no, but of course you can't let that come off in the way that you present yourself and the energy that you put out. yeah so That resilience that everyone talks about as far as being like mandatory for a founder, I I've definitely experienced that firsthand in a way that I've always knowing is different than internalizing kind of thing. Like I've definitely internalized it at a different level now. But I think like on the high aspect, it's also been really nice to just like on the flip side of that. So every time you get a yes, it's like tremendous. It's an awesome feeling.
00:35:41
Speaker
It's like all of the feelings that I had earlier in my career when I was working in sales and you get a yes and it was such a high without the lows of what like after a while doing a sales job, it became very redundant and repetitive. And that's definitely not the case in the position that I'm in now where it's constantly evolving and what I'm doing every day is almost a little bit different. So that's definitely been a high in terms of foiling those negative emotions with really high highs. And then the other thing is just the ability to look back and see you in eight months.
00:36:16
Speaker
what we've been able to accomplish and the excitement about what can be accomplished over the next eight months and the next eight months and the next eight months. That is really fueling for me and it's fueling in a way that I never felt before working for someone else because I always felt like those next eight months It was out of my control, whether right or wrong, that was the way that I thought of it. And also that regardless of the outcome, it wouldn't really change things for me. So more highs than lows. Yeah, that resonates a lot. And I love what you said about rejection. I really liked that. I saw some clip on Instagram or something and it was the actress, I think it's Bryce Dallas Howard.
00:36:59
Speaker
And she was talking about her audition process. She read somewhere before she started auditioning that an actor on average has to go to 68 auditions before they get their first role. And she said that just that fact helped her build up so much resistance because she almost thought of it as like checking the 68 rejections off the list. yeah As a founder, I was like, Wow. I love this. This is helpful to me too. And so I appreciate so much what you said about rejection. I think that's really true.
Podcast Support and Engagement
00:37:28
Speaker
If folks want to follow you, I will put your LinkedIn in our show notes. Not yet. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Good to see you.
00:37:42
Speaker
Hey content people, do you mind if I call you that? If you like the show, there are a few ways you can stay in touch and support us. The first is you could subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. The second is you could leave a five star rating and a review. Those make a really big impact. I know they're a pain and they take a little bit of time, but if you're feeling generous and you've been listening to the show, I'd appreciate it so much. And the third is you could sign up for the Content People newsletter. The link is in the show notes. We share news about the show and episodes. And I also write a lot about the intersection between work and creativity, which is at the heart of so many of these Content People conversations. We also love feedback. If you want to request a guest or a topic,
00:38:27
Speaker
pitch yourself to be on the show, advertise with us, learn more about Medbury's social media, or otherwise just be in touch, shoot me an email. I would love to hear from you. It's Meredith at medburyagency dot.com. That's M-E-D-B-U-R-Y, agency dot.com. I will throw that in the show notes too. All right, until next time.