Building a Connected Culture in a Hybrid World | with Doug Camplejohn

Building a Coaching Culture - #92: Building a Connected Culture in a Hybrid World | with Doug CampleJohn === Doug Camplejohn: [00:00:00] Great cultures start with trust as opposed to fear. There's got to be a deeper sense of connection there. but it's also, you know, you're there to get the job done and you're there to get results. J.R. Flatter: Hey, welcome back everybody. J. R. Flatter here with my co host Lucas. Lucas Flatter: Hello, J.R. Flatter: everybody's information, Lucas and I just started working out together. So we're in the gym this morning, seven o'clock. Lucas Flatter: Yeah, so we can't lift our arms higher than, you know. J.R. Flatter: We're [00:01:00] on two opposite ends of the spectrum. I'm a baby boomer we're both like dragging. So, uh, our distinguished guest today is Doug Campeljohn and I'm looking over here to my left at your impressive resume. So we're going to let you do most of that talking and introduce yourself. Just remind you and the audience, you know, who we are and who we're talking to. so Lucas and I are all about coaching cultures, and so how do you build a 21st century coaching culture, to attract and retain the world's best talent. And so we're, we're talking to the leaders of those complex organizations, and it looks like you have been one, and are one, so, uh, it's not a stretch for you. But I will pass the floor over to you, and... One of the few times in your life that I would ask you to be braggadocious and tell people about the great work that you're doing. So over to you, Doug. Doug Camplejohn: Thanks, JR. Great to be here. Uh, so I'm the, uh, CEO and founder of a company called Airspeed, and our mission is to help employees feel more connected and [00:02:00] celebrated. Airspeed is my fourth startup. the last one was acquired by LinkedIn, so I'm an engineer by trade. At Carnegie Mellon, came out to California and fell in love with the weather, started a job at Apple and, uh, pretty much it was startups for a long time until I, ended up spending a few years at LinkedIn after, my last company got acquired. And then after that, I got poached over to Salesforce to be the general manager of Sales Cloud. I started in February of 2020 and six weeks later, the world kind of looked like this. we're no longer meeting in person. I hadn't met most of my team. and uh, while I love the not going into an office five days a week, um, I miss people. And so over the course of the, the year plus I was at Salesforce, started noodling on this idea of saying, Hey, listen, you know, all the things that we're trying to help employees feel more connected. just feel like they're, they're all these disconnected pieces, you know, central operating system for this, and that's kind of where the idea for AirSpeed was born. And we just launched, a family of Slack apps, [00:03:00] starting in March, we've done a, we're just writing up a nine month public beta, and, uh, it's going like gangbusters. J.R. Flatter: So tell a boomer what a Slack app is. Doug Camplejohn: Sure. Uh. So Slack, I mean, the way I describe Slack to people who haven't used it, it's kind of think about it as iMessage or WhatsApp for business. it's a way that internally you can, um, kind of have communications that feel more like text messages, very inter very immediate, but also you can organize conversations into these channels. and what, what you find is that companies who really go in on Slack or its competitor teams, on the Microsoft platform, end up rarely checking email. if you look a lot of, people under 35, um, they may check email in their corporate environment maybe once or twice a month, right? they're spending most of their time in Slack or most of their time in, in Teams. And so Slack was the kind of originator, not the OG, but one of the early companies in this and clearly one of the most successful. and they early on opened up their platform so you could [00:04:00] add apps into Slack. so way before ChatGPT, Slack kind of taught the world. That, hey, you can use a messaging interface to go talk to, an application, and, uh, it's been tremendously successful. J.R. Flatter: Lucas is a millennial computer scientist, so you won't have those problems with him. Lucas Flatter: I was thinking, um, don't tell anybody that I'm only checking my email once a month. J.R. Flatter: Now I know. Doug Camplejohn: But it's, you know, it's crazy, I mean, like, I'm, you know, we have an advisor, Chris Lockhead, who's one of the founders of the, Kind of category creation movement. And he kind of, terms people as digital natives or analog natives. So if you're over 35, you know, it just uses this kind of, you know, rough, rough, uh, age limit, you're an analog native, you know? So JR, well, you and I, and you know, Lucas, I'm assuming you're in the under 35 category. And, uh, you know, a great example is like, JR, you and I go to somebody's house and we walk up and we ring the [00:05:00] doorbell. If you're under 35, that seems really rude. You would just be like, text somebody, I'm here, right? You and I go on the beach and we're like, oh my god, isn't that a beautiful sunset? If you're under 35, you're like, take a picture of it, look at your phone and go, yeah, that's really beautiful, right? So it's just these very different realities. And so I think that, when Slack first came out to me, it just felt like, oh, I don't need another inbox. but I've absolutely gotten the religion since. J.R. Flatter: Yeah, we're hard on teams here. Certainly I haven't led that charge, but Yeah, so now I literally just finished a 25 minute Digital conversation through email about an email chain that's two months old. We haven't responded to the guy and I'm pulling my very short hair out going, what is going on? And you've just explained to me why we haven't responded. Doug Camplejohn: And, I mean, Slack started as internal only, and I think what they've, grown since then, so obviously they have the platform that we're on. but they also built [00:06:00] something where you can have something called Slack Connect, so you can invite people into other channels. and what that's been great for is Let's say you've got a bunch of clients, you're working on projects, you can open up a channel for each one of them and you just know all the conversation thread is going to be in that one place. we're doing that for some of our top customers to have customer support thread. So, you know, if you're on our top tier of service, you get a dedicated customer support success rep. And you get a dedicated channel. So anytime you, you don't have to go into a, the front door, you've got your own private velvet, you know, rope channel where you can go have direct access to your account manager, and have those conversations. So Slack is phenomenal for all of those things. But I think the big thing that we found was in building these kind of, apps to help capture these moments of connection and culture. It's just, it's key to be in the flow of where people are spending time. The problem with a lot of HR apps is they're built. on a separate, you know, usually a web or a mobile app separately, they're generally bought tops down from HR and they're kind of forced upon the people. Like here, here's this, this tool that's [00:07:00] available. and we try to take an approach which was like, rather than having one big monolithic app that's out of your flow of work, have a bunch of these little micro apps, that can capture all these different moments in the entire employee life cycle. So we try to think about. our mission is how do we make sure employees are having a tremendous experience eventually, even from when they're interviewing all the way to when they join the alumni group. But right now we're kind of in the middle of those two bands. Lucas Flatter: I'm curious, um, I, I see sometimes the technology kind of gets put first, like, the cart before the horse kind of thing, and you say maybe, for example, I want to fix our SharePoint, but you don't say, how do we, you know, enable knowledge management how does this airspeed, how do you approach kind of encouraging this culture of feedback and encouragement and things? you know, providing the tool, for example, for [00:08:00] instance, might enable it, but how do you kind of encourage the culture to use tools like this? Doug Camplejohn: Yeah, it's a great point. I mean, you know, no piece of software just you can wave a magic wand and all of a sudden you've got a great culture or a great, you know, or millions of dollars in revenue. You have to figure out how do you use it. I think the success that we've had, and again, In, you know, less than nine months, we've gone from a cold start to over 2, 000 organizations, over 160, 000 people using the app and growing pretty rapidly every, every week. is taking all these little moments and thinking about how do you make them better? So I'll give you a few examples. and this kind of blends in, some of this blends in, uh, with what we were talking about with the coaching culture. so... Let's just take a new employee. You know, we used to take new employees to lunch when we were all sitting in an office. And we would have these, you know, five questions we'd have for my last company. Things like, what was your first concert? You know, things I'd like to do for fun. Something we'd be surprised to know about you. Most embarrassing moment, etc. and that was great. It was a great moment to get to know somebody outside [00:09:00] LinkedIn profile. but if you weren't at that lunch, you never heard the answers, right? Or if you joined after that person, you never heard them. And that person never really got to know how the people who they were going to be working with answered. So we now have a super simple app called Intros, which you just set up those questions that you want every new employee, either joining the company or joining a new project. to answer, and not only do you, you get, everybody gets to see how they answer them, even if you, you know, weren't there on the day that they, they join, but they get to go look and say, oh, here are the other people I'm looking at. Let me, let me find out who else likes tennis, or let me find out who lives near me, things like that. That's an example of like, things that are in the, the physical world that can be better done digitally. another example is, you know, at LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, the CEO, and others as well used to go around the room and say, Hey, what's a personal win for you from last week? Or what's, you know, we, we call it kudos and personal wins. How'd you like to give recognition to somebody or a team? And what's a personal win? the ironic part is oftentimes we'd be giving recognition [00:10:00] to people who weren't in the room, so they never heard it. and the personal win was just like a verbal description of, you know, Hey, I, you know, got a new puppy or, you know, we just moved into a new house. and furthermore, if you had 15, 20 people in that meeting, which we did, it was like half an hour just to go around the room and do all that stuff. So we have another app called Icebreakers that makes that process better where... Automatically, 24 hours before the meeting that I want to have, our weekly meeting, it sends out a question that says, Hey, what's a personal win for you from last week? You can choose whatever you want, but that's the one that I chose. and people can go into their mobile app on Slack and just go attach photos, videos, whatever they want. it's all opt in. I spend five minutes in the beginning of our team meeting and just, you know, kind of go around the room and get to see what's happening in everybody's lives. And I have to tell you, some of the people on my team I've worked with for over a decade and I've learned more about them as people, you know, more, more than beyond their, their, their professional profile in the last six months I [00:11:00] had in the previous 10 years. so those are a couple of examples of just how do you take a physical world process and you make it better. I think specific to the coaching piece that you're talking about. There's a couple of things. I think the, you know, as we all know, recognition is important. So we have this shoutouts app that not only helps you, helps you frame, feedback in a great way, like what's, what are you recognizing them for? What's the impact and what's the company values that represents? but also you can nominate other people to give something. So if you're like, hey, I could give this recognition myself, that'd be really effective. If it came from a CEO, I can kind of type it up and have it forwarded that way so that they can put it in their own voice and send it out. I can send reminders to myself, like I'd love to make sure I'm giving at least one shout out a week. and, you know, finally we have this notion you can turn on called Feel Good Fridays, where people are just encouraged, like, hey, today is, today is a great day to recognize any colleagues that you want to call out. So it's again, making this habit of how do you kind of, you know, have this feedback loop [00:12:00] back to employees for the work that they're doing. J.R. Flatter: Yeah. I love this. It sounds amazing. They could already see uses for it. we teach a global cohort of people we never meet and we do something similar to what you're suggesting but in real time. It sounds like this tool gives me an opportunity to do it beforehand and I'm ready rather than just being called upon and say, celebrate. That's literally what we do. We say, Somebody bring a celebration into the room. one of the things that has been mysterious to me for a long time is, when do I become a non human being to somebody in the chain of command? Cause at, at level one and level two, right? Lucas and I know each other not as well as you're describing. I mean, so I could already see use there. But at some level in the bureaucracy, I become a number on a spreadsheet. and I'm human capital. No, I'm no longer a human. How big do I need to be before I need your [00:13:00] tool? Doug Camplejohn: So, you know, we have companies that are as small as 5 10 people who use some of the apps for that. Uh, we have, organizations and communities that are thousands of people, right? and some that are tens and tens or even hundreds of thousands that are, that are contemplating going wall to wall. so I think that there's value regardless, because I think even if you're a five person shop, you know, giving recognition or, you know, another app we have, for example, is Maps. So you can see where everybody's home office is. what I love about that one is if I'm traveling to New York, I could be like, Hey, who's in the New York area? Let me tell them I'm traveling. Those people can get notified if they want that I'm coming there. Or I can set up and I can say, Hey, anybody want to go grab dinner Wednesday night? I can kind of, you know, zoom in just like I would on Google Maps. see that and kind of help facilitate that. Something I could never do at, you know, LinkedIn or Salesforce or even previous startups. so I think that, ways that we can kind of give people a sense of who everybody is, and make, make sure they, they understand that they're seen and [00:14:00] appreciated is key. another problem you mentioned though, as you get larger, you do have this problem where you're like, Hey, I might have hundreds of people in my group or thousands even, that I don't really know. So we have another app called Coffee Talk. And the goal is you can opt into it and say, listen, I'm going to carve out a little bit of time every week, two weeks, four weeks, whatever you want, just to go meet with people I don't normally meet with. and I can type in there. We use AI to kind of, you know, help you help decode what, what your preferences are. So you can say, these are the kind of people I want to meet. I want to meet with people outside my department who are junior to me. I can say, these are the kind of things that I want to talk about, and we use that to help facilitate the matching. And then we just basically on a, on this regular cadence, we'll say, hey, we've matched you to this person. if your calendars are connected, we've automatically picked a time for you, which you can, you know, reschedule if you want. and then we give you these icebreakers. We give you these, uh, conversation starters. So we're like, hey, Doug really wants to talk about, you know, AI and, you know, [00:15:00] snowboarding, right? so, you know, you haven't, you have some, some way to kind of get the ball rolling there. And we're also, going to be expanding that. So if you want, you can, if you're uncomfortable just having one on ones with people, you can kind of opt in to say, I kind of only want to meet with when it's like groups of three or four people. You can kind of have a conversation that way, but that's really about, like, not getting lost in employee numbers, you say, JR, and getting to know that person beyond their LinkedIn profile. Lucas Flatter: so speaking as a millennial, as JR has brought up, um, I've seen, social networks come out when they're new and people We're initially excited to kind of share everything about themselves and now I feel like People my age are kind of stepping back from that thinking like do I want to put all of this out there? and I think your your product kind of points towards this where do you see the trend kind of going towards? more of these like Isolated like almost like intranet kind of social networks [00:16:00] where You know, I can be encouraged to share because I know it's, people in my company versus the internet writ large. Doug Camplejohn: Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, I think, you know, there's, there's stuff that you just don't want to share, even on LinkedIn, you know, which is, you know, obviously a more professional network, let alone Instagram or, Facebook, and frankly, it's not even feasible. I mean, like, even if you're a hundred person company, the idea that a hundred people are all like connecting with each other on that network just makes no sense. It's just not, not practical. So having something where automatically you are in a network where you have a safe space That's internal to the company that automatically by having that, that corporate email, you're part of, and you can participate in if you choose or don't have to, if you don't want to, just makes that a much different kind of environment for sharing those kinds of things. and I've been surprised. I mean, I, I, I, You know, we're, we're, small company, but we, we have, especially the millennials who came into the company would come in and be like, Oh yeah, here's pictures of my vacation. Here's a picture of my kids. Here's all this kind of stuff. [00:17:00] And again, it just humanizes the conversation. And then people who aren't as comfortable with that don't have to participate. There's nothing mandatory about any of it. J.R. Flatter: I see in your, my notes here, the Culture Code, um, one of my favorite books. but I also, we just got back from Puerto Rico, we had our annual corporate offsite, and I was told to never call our culture familial again, because that no longer resonates, that it's, I don't know, Lucas, you can jump in here, but... That was one of the messages of Daniel Coyle was, you know, you need to create a sense of family, sense of safety within the family, and a sense of opportunity. What's the right words to describe a 21st century culture now? Doug Camplejohn: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, you know, I think the pendulum is, you know, COVID has been this amazing worldwide experiment, right? So we all, you know, kind of, for hopefully the only time in our lifetime, had this massive experiment on what remote works looks [00:18:00] like and what hybrid works looks like. And of course, the pendulum went all the way towards everything remote. And now there's lots of people kind of thrashing and trying to pull everybody into face to face. And I think the reality will be, You know, I I always say, if the office wasn't invented, if we, if this was how we met, you know, over Zoom or whatever, all the time, would we invent the office? And what would it look like? And I guarantee you what it wouldn't look like is a bunch of cubicles where you go in and put your headsets on and jump on Zoom calls, right? Because that's just a waste, right? It would look a lot more like, Hey, we got great food. We got, a bar, we've got, lots of creative meeting spaces. We've got daycare, we've got things that make it valuable for you to come in and be in a shared workspace. so I think that that's an interesting part of the conversation. I think that people used to equate culture and many still do with like, oh I've got free food and ping pong tables and swag and all that kind of stuff. That's not culture. Culture ultimately comes [00:19:00] down to. Who do you hire and fire and what are the rules by which you do that because the culture is made up of all the people in your organization. And I think that, I love a lot, I don't love all of it, but I love a lot of the Netflix approach they've talked about in their culture. And the way Reid described it was more of a sports team, right? We're trying to really go create the, the Warriors at their peak or the Bulls at their peak or the Niners at their peak. You know, we're trying to put the best person in every position. you know, sometime that goes to an extreme where they're like, oh, you know, you had a bad week, we're cutting you, we're going to go put somebody else in. So you have to go invest in your people, you have to believe in them long term. But I do think that there's, it's not like, you know, we're here to guarantee you lifetime employment or we're here to guarantee you, a fabulous spa environment, you know, in your work. You know, it's really about, you have to come in and get the work done. But you need that psychological safety, that clarity of communication, and the resources. What I always say is that, the best cultures and the best environments I've ever [00:20:00] been in have been obviously great people who have a very clear shared sense of mission and purpose and then have built this connective tissue between themselves so that there's it's not, there's trust, right? Great cultures start with trust as opposed to fear. And I think when you, when you're worried somebody else is trying to undermine you for a job or withholding information or that, that's when cultures just go, go all to hell. So I, so I do think that, it's not a family per se, but there, there is an element of There should be getting to know somebody beyond just back to back Zoom meetings. Because if work is just your back to back Zoom meetings, I can just go check out and go work for somebody else for the next higher paycheck and do back to back Zoom meetings for them. There's got to be a deeper sense of connection there. but it's also, you know, you're there to get the job done and you're there to get results. J.R. Flatter: you're singing our song because almost verbatim what Lucas and I talk about a lot. People flinch when I hire, [00:21:00] when I'm involved in the interview process because I tell them, you know, you're joining a championship team and do you want to work this hard forever? I guess that's what it's required to be on a championship team, but... You're up front about it, and even the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we work with DOD a lot, is saying so in June, June or July, I forget, first of this year was the 50th anniversary of the All Volunteer Force, and uh, his, one of his messages is you're joining us. We didn't join you. And so, that's such a powerful statement that one of the first things we teach is principles and you have to have some rules and are you willing and able to Live by those rules and one of them is you're gonna work really hard. We're gonna we're gonna take care of you But you're gonna work really hard. Doug Camplejohn: But I think there's a, in some places it's [00:22:00] implicit, but there is a contract you're basically entering into. And I do think you know, Lucas, you can speak to this. My sense in the younger generation is they don't want work to just to be a paycheck, right? Or work just to be a title. it's really about finding meaning. They want to go work for some place where they're, saying I believe in what I'm doing. they're saying I want to, find something where I have some sense of connectivity connectivity and community that's coming out of that. It's not just I go into my cubicle, I collect my paycheck and I go home at 5:00 right? So it is a. higher set of expectations than have been there in the past, but I, always loved, you know, LinkedIn used this phrase next play. so if somebody left the company, it wasn't like somebody quit or they were fired. It was about, they've gone on to their next play. And what I kind of liked about that is the message that was conveyed was, we know you're not going to be here forever. our contract is you're going to come and give us a few, years, of great work. We're gonna [00:23:00] help you, advance your skills, and really get to take it to the next level. And then we want to see you go on. We want to see you go on and do great things in a new company. Part of the satisfaction, for me as a CEO, is not just, hey, come, come to my startup and make a bunch of money on your stock. It should be something where you, I always say, if you're going to join us, 1 you're passionate about the mission. 2 you're really excited about the people you've met and feel like you could really work well with them and learn a lot. You know. 3 you're going to get challenged and you're going to grow. And then 4 you're gonna make money. And it kind of should be in that order. If money is all you really care about, I say, don't come to us, right? That's not who I'm looking for. I'm looking for missionaries, not mercenaries. Yeah, J.R. Flatter: Well certainly if you're thinking about joining the military, you're not fighting for the money Doug Camplejohn: sure. Lucas Flatter: Oh yeah, I was just going to say, I resonate that it's, it's that feeling of what's in it for me and the paycheck is, you know, you can obviously tell [00:24:00] what you're going to gain by that, but what else am I going to gain, what skills, what experience, you know, all of that. J.R. Flatter: I'm really intrigued by this sense of, um, purpose driven work. I mean, Lucas and I have it, you have it, but of the eight billion of us walking the globe, it's available to us, but maybe not immediately. I just spent... Nine nights in Puerto Rico and I doubt seriously if the young men and women cleaning my room were finding joy in their work. They found joy in each other. so I wonder what's the message to the 7. 9 billion people? That we potentially are, want to be you, want to be Lucas, or want to be me. because I think that's one of the common criticisms of younger people. I, I hesitate to go to the intergenerational conversation because I see the same themes. [00:25:00] I'm in my fifth act of life, and when I was in Lucas's act, I think he's still a lover, if you read Shakespeare, I thought like he did. Even though I wasn't a millennial, I still had the same challenges, and it was the beginning of my working career. So I know I'm rambling a bit, but, I think there's an arc to get to where you're describing, and the people that you're talking to didn't just show up one day and find purpose in their world. Doug Camplejohn: listen, we're very fortunate to do what we do, and I have, you know, I'm very, I have a lot of gratitude, that I express on a regular basis for, you know, being able to be in this position that I'm in. but I do think that, our generation there probably wanted more, was thinking more about the career ladder. then a lot of the younger generation is now where they're, they're looking for more of that, like, does my work have meaning, right? So companies who are the most successful in attracting, folks, certainly in technology, are the ones who say, Hey, you're serving a higher purpose, you know, Tesla is, is not because everybody loves working for Elon Musk.[00:26:00] It's because they're like, oh, wow, we're actually going to make the planet sustainable, right? That's something I can wake up every day and be excited about, you know I looked at airspeed and said I could spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to help companies be More connected and help employees feel more appreciated. That's that's something I feel very passionate about So I think there's an element of that and I do think Even in a lot of, other skill trades, as you mentioned, there's opportunities for leaders to differentiate their company through that culture and through how they take pride in their work. So I think it's one of those things that, you know, certainly know. companies that I've worked with that are, you know, handyman, cleaners, things like that. The ones that are, that are, I think, often do the best work are ones who come in, have a great service attitude, really have a great pride of work, are asking for feedback along the way. And that just doesn't come on an employee by employee basis. That's got to be instituted at a kind of [00:27:00] culture level across the company. Like, this is what we stand for, this is what we're trying to do. And I think... In any role or position, that makes a difference. J.R. Flatter: I just want to say out loud, uh, as a 40 year married man, I've been trained well, and so I was scrubbing my own toilet. as the cleaning lady was coming today. so, uh, I'm not one that I want, I still pick up, uh, a toilet brush, uh, when needed, as we all do in small businesses. Lucas Flatter: so I think about a lot of modern companies in terms of You know, what data are they collecting and how can that be leveraged? So I look at your slack tools and think about all of these data points. Is there some way or are you thinking about it now or maybe in the future that you could maybe use AI to interpret all this data that says based on these interactions between [00:28:00] people Here is your culture summed up in a paragraph, or vice versa. Here's the culture I want. What data should I be looking for? Doug Camplejohn: Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. yeah, and I think we're, we're in a very, advantaged position relative to most HR apps, because again, as I said, we, we have this tremendous, engagement because we're in the flow of, of work already. So most HR apps, if they get used on a monthly basis by a quarter of the people or, you know, even, even, less than that, that's considered successful. We have, you know, over 75 percent of our users are in there on a weekly basis. and so we have a lot more in engagement, a lot more data that's coming as a result of that. and that starts, and all the apps are collecting that in a way where it starts to lead to some pretty interesting outcomes. so very simple, we're using AI in some very basic ways already in the products. So if I want to write, you know, JR a, you know, work anniversary card, you know, congratulations on X years of service. and I don't really know what to say. You can [00:29:00] go into our app and say, you know, have AI help me. And I happen to know, you know, JR likes, good wine and and golf, right? And I can say go write him a work anniversary card in the voice of a pirate or, you know, do a Sirius or whatever you want. And I can, you know, AI can help me craft that message in a way that's better than just saying You know, happy anniversary, happy work anniversary. we're also using it as kind of a, a natural language query tool for all of our apps so that, you don't have to go look through a whole bunch of reports. You can just, you know, type a line. As I said, Slack has already taught people to do what ChatGPT has now got us, everybody else doing, you know, years ago. and so I, we're going to just going to open up the messaging interface in all our apps. You can ask questions like, who hasn't gotten any recognition in the last six months? Or, how many people do I have in the Chicago office? Or, what are the most popular interests from all the people who introduced themselves, you know, this year, right? So things like that. and then eventually, as you said, the, the, the grail for us is how do you start to use all this data and bring it together along with data that's [00:30:00] sitting in HR systems and other stuff to answer more existential questions like which teams are most effective? Which teams have the greatest risk of churn? You know, things like that. And that's the stuff that we want to be able to surface for leaders and HR teams alike. what I really want as a, as a manager is kind of a co pilot that says, Hey, it's Monday, Doug, right? Here's, you know, a handful of tasks that you should do this week. Just to, you know, really stay connected with your team. You got three, three people you haven't given a shout out to in a while. You've got two work anniversaries coming up. You've got a new employee starting on Monday. You know, just, it's kind of like my, how to be a great leader, right? You know, and some of that culture thing. And that's a great, example of where AI can be pulling all this data and serving it up to me in a really efficient manner. J.R. Flatter: Yeah, that's an amazing use of AI. we're small enough where we have an Excel spreadsheet that shows all that data. But yeah, how cool would it be just to [00:31:00] have somebody tell you here's what you got to do this week to demonstrate. We talk a lot about communicating, but then also demonstrating, and you're talking about how do I demonstrate that I have a culture. Lucas always gets the last question, so I'll jump to one that's been on my mind since I saw. Your bio, and you opened with this. You're a serial entrepreneur. I'm always amazed by people like you. I did it once and I can't ever imagine having to do it again. I won't say why because that would appear judgmental, but what are the steps to being a four time successful entrepreneur and probably more in your future? Doug Camplejohn: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think that there's some weird hormone that floods entrepreneur bodies. It's probably has some genetic relationship to the hormone that floods a woman's body after childbirth that says, Oh, that wasn't so bad. I'll do it again. Kind of forget all the things that were painful. And you're like, you just remember the good stuff. so for me, this is my happy [00:32:00] place. I love starting with a blank sheet of paper. Putting a team together, figuring out the problem, you know, making mistakes, readjusting, you know, startups are just a big bundle of hypotheses and you start off you go I think, I think this is a problem. I think this is a way to solve it. I think they'll pay this I think this is what the customer looks like and you're wrong on, you know, some of it. Hopefully not all of it But I really enjoy that challenge So for me, this doesn't feel like work. This is really like what I love doing And I think that, even, you know, in the inevitable setbacks, I used to, I used to tell my wife, you know, he'd say, how was your day? And I said, do you want the 10 a. m. version, the 1 p. m. version, or the 4 p. m. version? that's the life of an entrepreneur. And for me, I just enjoy creating things. I enjoy working with Really creative people. You know, I said, the greatest satisfaction for me is not just people who've worked for me, have made money. It's that they've been able to change their life. You know, I have people coming to me and said, you helped me give my fiancee [00:33:00] the wedding of their dreams. Or we just bought our first house. Or I just, you know, I'm now a VP of sales at this company. You know, I never would have been able to fast track my career this much. and that for me is really some of the greatest satisfaction I have out of doing it. J.R. Flatter: Wow. That's so crazy. you almost said verbatim why I'm still semi retired. I've unsuccessfully retired twice and you just hit the nail on the head that the opportunity to continue to create those opportunities just keeps, I don't know, I'm going to be that person laying on my deathbed going, I wish I could have done it just one more time. if you're a manager or a reader of management books, Peter Drucker died at his desk writing his last book. Doug Camplejohn: Yeah. And, and, and listen, I, I, my, my first premise is, are you having fun? Like when I talk to employees, you know, we have, we have kind of three tests for employees. Like how do we think about. Who we bring on, you know, checking that they're doing okay, and then who do we let go. and the, the test we have for bringing people on is what we call the awesome test.[00:34:00] And I found like if you can't say, Oh my god, that person is awesome, with full enthusiasm, keep looking, right? Because it's easy to say, oh, they're a four out of five, or they're a thumbs up, you know? What's that? The The test that I apply to myself as well, is I just will randomly ask people when I see them in the company, are you having fun? And I found people are really bad at lying about that, right? Their voice goes up an octave, or they hesitate, they're like, something's wrong, I need to go dig in. and then the, last test is, maybe the most important one. This is, one I just stole from Netflix, which is they called the Keeper Test, which is if anybody in your team told you they were going to leave tomorrow, how hard would you fight to keep them? If the answer is not that hard, well, you probably got the wrong person in the position. And if the answer is, oh my God, we'd be screwed if that person left. You should think now, what would you do in that situation? Would you give them more responsibility, more title, if you could, more stock or more salary, and just do it now, right, Lucas Flatter: I think a lot [00:35:00] about, like, how your outside work life, like your hobbies, um, what does that communicate about? How you might fit into a team and maybe let's take it from the AI perspective. Like I, I might say I started learning guitar in my late 20s and you know, now I'm regularly playing. So maybe the AI says, he's okay with frustration. He's a lifelong learner. His strengths are X, Y, and Z. So. Do you have a hobby or a skill or something that you practice outside of work and what is, what do you think that communicates about you in the professional setting? Doug Camplejohn: Well, it's a, it's a great question. and I like to be a beginner, which goes back to the earlier question that you said, JR. So I've always played ac I've played acoustic guitar for years, but just, like, had it in the, uh, house and it was mostly a piece of art. I didn't pick it up that much. And so, for my birthday last last at the end of last year, I got myself a [00:36:00] very nice electric guitar. It's a nice thing about hitting the point in our life, JR, where we can buy ourselves nice stuff. but I knew myself well enough to know if I just, you know, put it on a stand and, and tell myself I'm going to practice, it's not going to happen. So I joined something locally here called, I think it's across the country, called School of Rock. and it's a program for kids and adults. And the rule is you can take, you take lessons, but you have to perform on stage. Every four months. In a real club. Like, so, we just performed at, Sweetwater in Mill Valley, which is where, like, you know, The Grateful Dead played, and, you know, Dylan played, and stuff like that. And, um, it is, uh, terrifying. Like, I've spoken in front of thousands of people at developer conferences and things like that. Getting in front of 50 family members and friends. That are all, that don't care if you suck. I was sweating on stage and terrified by that. But I have so much fun kind of being a beginner again. So, yeah, that's whatever that says about me. I, that's what I enjoy.[00:37:00] Lucas Flatter: I just wanted to chime in. My secret is, um, it's always within arm's length. So I have a guitar stand right here, and I also draw and I keep paper right on my desk. I think that stuff is essential, because if there's any friction, then it's not going to happen. Doug Camplejohn: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, so it's, I think it's great to have those kind of, um, outside interests and I think the thing that we're over time going to find, I mean, it was crazy to me when I joined LinkedIn. Here's a company of 10, 000 plus employees and if I wanted to put a band together, I have no idea who plays what. If I want to go sailing, right, there's, there's, I love sailing, but I can never find, you know, people who go sailing. There's probably hundreds of people in the, in the office who want to do that. So how do we help facilitate those connections? know, we, for example, don't have an office, we're just a completely virtual company, but once a quarter we put everybody on a plane and we go somewhere fun, so we'll go like, in February we're gonna go to Park City. and I guarantee you there's more work conversations and things getting accomplished on the drive to [00:38:00] the ski resort and on the chairlift. And we'll be if we were sitting, you know, in a, in a one hour meeting. Lucas Flatter: I think you're recruiting some people right now with all the nice things you're saying. J.R. Flatter: Yeah. Where's the next cool place you're going? Because maybe you'll get it. Your Doug Camplejohn: we've had some fun ones. The last one we did was, uh, we were just up in Vancouver. the next one we're doing, the team decided to skip the Q4 one, with all the holidays stuff, so we're doing Park City in February. J.R. Flatter: Yeah. Be brave. What is it? Be courageous enough to suck at something Doug Camplejohn: Yeah. J.R. Flatter: It's my life story. I've been married to a native Spanish speaker for 37 years or 40 years and I can't speak Spanish and every year I tell myself I'm going to learn. It's actually a case study in our training. I actually, in every cohort, I let the class beat me up for it. Lucas Flatter: Thank you. Bye bye. Bye [00:39:00]