Nick McEvily - Missionaries and Mercenaries

Think that the reality is that there's 2 types of employees. There's missionaries, and then there's mercenaries. I don't know if this is a phrase y'all have heard already, but I love that mentality. And early on, it's really important to have more missionaries than mercenaries. But it is basically impossible to keep a 100% or 95% missionaries as the company scales.

So I want everybody to temper their expectations that you're not building a cult or a church as a company, and some people don't give a shit about their job. And their mission, you know, mission of the company doesn't really matter to them. And so I live with that reality, and I'm totally cool with that reality. But I do keep a a lookout for the ratio. How many people are here because they really believe in this thing versus how many people are here because they just need a paycheck and they're good at their job and we need them.

Our featured speaker today is a designer and business advisor passionate about leading with a human centered approach. After his time as a VP of product and design agency of record for Link Bank, He grew Mode Mobile. And currently, he started Further Faster Ventures, where he polished the process for finding leading indicators of product market fit. Nick, it's so delightful to have you as our guest today. Thank you for making the time to join us.

Oh, so pleasure's all mine. Spencer and Nancy, thanks for having me. Excited to talk about my voyage. Hopefully, the relevant aspects of the community here.

I'm sure you've got lots of stories to tell. I was wondering if you might take us back and talk about some of the early parts of your life. Maybe some of the events or people that you feel were really influential in helping you take the first steps in your career.

Sure. A lot of my start came from my university experience at Cornell. I had a really exciting design program that studied product design, interior design, and building design. And then I started my first company in grad school, and I got exposed to UX and kind of digital design. So I understand the design world from multiple stages and through multiple lenses, and I've been using those for the last, you know, 12 or 15 years to build companies.

I would attribute some of those companies to really great role models. One that comes to mind in particular is named Scott Belsky. He started a creative platform called Behance, which was acquired by Adobe, and he also went to Cornell. So he kind of gave me this idea in my head that I could do what he's done, and now he's the head of product at Adobe or something really high out there. He's doing big things at Adobe.

And, there have been other influences, I'm sure, that'll that'll come up. I'm happy to mention them as we walk through the program today.

Awesome. Thank you very much. Could you give us a sort of background on what you're doing now and how the last few years have led up to where you are now?

Yeah. So as you mentioned, Nancy, I was a cofounder in a company called Mode Mobile, and I had an unorthodox origin story there. I joined as a product manager and then was asked to be a cofounder by the original 2 cofounders. Over the following 4 years together, we pivoted almost once a year, sometimes more. And I was at the helm of those pivots.

So I was redesigning the website, rebranding something, then I was going to talk to users, interview them. I was designing the product, and if it was worth its weight, I would advise and manage the product through development and into queue it. And realize that that was called product management, realize that there was a whole discipline out there that I could study and learn from, and refined that experience. I had a great time. As soon as we found some sort of product market fit, the company began to grow, and this is actually the last time I was on Discord.

One of our last pivots was in the blockchain space, and Discord is just a home to a lot of crypto heads. I don't know if we have some some crypto nerds on the call today, but we built a a blockchain technology that helps people monetize their time and attention. The security token sale did really well. We raised $36,000,000 in, like, a month, maybe a little bit more, and the company began to scale. And so I was able to hire up, basically, a product department, a proper product department, which is really nice.

After we began to scale, I realized that I really like the 0 to 1 stuff. I loved the discovery. I and I had a unique skill set in it, a perspective that was informed by my college experiences, human centered design stuff. So I started an agency called Further Faster to help founders with that process and maybe get exposure to some cap tables in the process. About 2 years ago, we ran that company or helped run that company for about 4 years.

About 2 years ago, I sold my stake to my partner, Eli Barmasel, who's currently running that company and have been back in the founder's seat a little bit, doing some consulting on the side, which has led me here. But all of it was the obsession around using what idea to work on. Ideas, I think I can speak for a few of us on the call. At least, ideas are not in short supply. It's using which one you want to invest in, and then if you're doing it in a venture context, you have to prove to other people that it's worth investing in, and that requires a little bit of data fraction stuff.

So the last 8 years or so of my career, I've just been focused on that motion. I think it's incredibly valuable, obviously, for me as a serial entrepreneur who's gonna start multiple businesses over my life, but also to the founders that I advise and consult with on a weekly basis.

I appreciate you kinda taking us through, you know, not just, like, your journey, but also how you followed your passion. And that's something we've asked here recently. How do you decide what to give energy and time to, and maybe for how long you should give that energy and time to it and what to say no to or shut down? Like, what lens or filter do you run that through?

Definitely, energy lens. What is giving me energy? Yeah. What is what feels good? What am I comfortable sacrificing for?

Because I think that's what entrepreneurship is. It's a constant sacrifice. You're either sacrificing a higher income. You're sacrificing, you know, time with family, sometimes your health. So that's the question I would ask myself at the beginning is, do I feel good making this sacrifice?

And then after a few years of sacrificing, usually, some other part will say, hey. I think I've sacrificed enough here. There's a sacrifice ledger that I didn't know existed. I monitor that, and I look for opportunities there. And I think after I'm done with the project, I need a little bit of time to build up my reserve, so I'm ready to sacrifice again and indulge in family, health, income in between those phases.

And I've gone through a couple of those. I would say I'm in one of those right now. That's how I would describe where the decision of where to put my time and energy.

That's so interesting. I haven't heard the term like a sacrifice ledger before. Is that something you just came up with on the spot?

Yeah. That never I've also never heard of that.

Brilliant. Brilliant. I do think you're right. Entrepreneurship is a constant and changing trade off. You know?

Sometimes you're sacrificing one thing. Sometimes you're sacrificing something else to all to get whatever your goal, your ambition is going. You mentioned earlier about you enjoy that 0 to 1 phase of a startup, And I think that's something that I personally really resonate with, particularly what you were saying also about having an abundance of ideas. Could you tell me when you get to the point, like in Mode Mobile, where you have been working on your own on this, like, pretty much you are the team that you're working in and then you have the opportunity to expand it out, what do you think are the necessary steps to go from okay. I've got us to 1.

Now I need to be able to offload the capability to all these other people who don't know it so I can extract myself out to get into the phase that I'm interested in.

Make sure I'm understanding, Spencer. You're we're asking 1 plus, not 0 to 1.

Well, I'm asking how do you get the team up to do 1 plus so you can get back to 0 to 1. Okay. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think documentation is your friend here. I'm a being a designer, I diagram a lot, and I create kind of flow diagrams and road maps, and stuff that are really visual.

That's really served me because most people that I collaborate with are also visual learners or can understand things a lot clearer in a visual sense. So I've never handed off my responsibilities to someone without a really clear expectation of what I had envisioned. I give them license and autonomy to change that vision, of course, because it it needs to. But I'll often hand over, like, hey. This is how you do user research here.

This is how you write tickets. This is how you write a good year at ticket. Yeah. This is the road map, and this is where you would maintain the product road map. So, yeah, documentation has definitely been my friend.

And then I think there's a phased approach. So it's like, I'm doing everything with someone wafting me do it, then we're both kind of doing it, sharing and wafting each other, and then they're doing it and I'm wafting. And that type of phased approach allows for us to navigate things, the in between a little bit more smoothly. And then, you know, sometimes I just don't talk to that person for a year or so. And then I'll come back and say, so how's it going?

What's been going on? They'll share that things are kind of a total mess or things are going really well, and I don't need to worry. But I think, yeah, that phased check-in and check out process, along with documentation, have been really, really important for me.

I mean, it shows your analytical side. It's it's really good as far as, like, developing a process for that going forward. And I was kinda thinking while you're talking, like, you know, with your experience and with what you said about ideas or ad abundance, you really have to decide what to pour your time and energy into. Do you think that also depends on the person? Like, do you think there are certain character qualities that make the person, the founder, successful?

Like, is there anything essential?

I'm sure everyone has heard this quality before, but I think grit and stick to it iveness is super important because you've got a lot of failure in front of you. And I've been working on trying to change my understanding of failure a little bit in the last few years to replace it with the word attempt. And so I've got a lot of attempts ahead of me. I can't let my 1st, 2nd, or 3rd attempt ruin my 4th, 5th, or 6th. So I think grit is a really important quality.

I think the other is, like, resourcefulness. I think a lot of people have resources at their disposal, either their network, the Internet, books, their previous experience that they just don't realize is a resource to them and aren't capitalizing on that resource enough. So I think resourcefulness and being able to identify opportunities before other people do is another super important quality to have as an entrepreneur.

Yeah. Well said. I think it's underrated how important it can be to be able to scrap's probably not the right word. No.

Scrappiness is a great word. Of that word.

Yeah. To be successful in entrepreneurship really requires that kind of thing. When you have been working with these other startups, have there been scenarios where you've had the early discussions and you've been like, I know I'm going to enjoy mentoring them and working with them. How do you tell if it's gonna be a startup and a team that you enjoy working with?

I enjoy working with startups that have a low ego and an organizational culture of curiosity. And that's pretty rare, unfortunately, especially in a male dominated, dare I say, white male dominated industry. There's a lot of ego. There's a lot I think I heard mister Jay mention some privilege when I joined the call. I think privilege and ego can really create a sense of entitlement and organizational culture that's corrosive, and works against the leaders that create it.

They just don't realize that's it's an issue that they're causing. I usually walk away from startups that, you know, things come directly from the CEO or CTO. There's no explanation why they're going in that direction. No proof, no evidence, no research, just intuition. I've seen the ramifications through morale on the development team, through the sales numbers.

They'll order something be built, and then it won't be sellable or someone doesn't wanna buy it. It costs companies 100 of 1,000 or 1,000,000 of dollars, and it's all because of personality. Even though I often get employed by those people to bring some order, to set up a process, to add data to the intuition, I don't usually enjoy those contracts too much. That's the litmus test that I I usually go through early on when I'm meeting a a new founder or potential partner. How much ego do you have?

You know, I think delusion is necessary for all of us. Important quality for an entrepreneur to have. You have to convince other people of your delusion. But being too delusional and being too self absorbed and entitled can really mess up the team.

Going off of that and, you know, seeing you kind of in this advisory stage of your career along your entrepreneurial path? How has that really informed how you would advise companies to go about their business building? Do you feel like you did things in the right order? I can tell you a lot of us have said no to that question. How do you persuade an excited new entrepreneur?

No. It's really better if you go back a couple steps.

Mhmm. Yeah. What's the phrase, slow is steady, steady is fast? Maybe, something along those lines. I really believe in that.

Taking measured steps, there's consensus, and everybody is is on board with the direction that we're going in. I think is super important. Start ups are meant to move fast, but I think oftentimes move too fast where the entire team can't keep up in terms of why we've just made a decision, why are we releasing this before that feature, etcetera. Going back to the visualizations and the road maps, I think those kinds of documents really provide consensus amongst multiple departments and can allow the team to move forward in unison. The number one motion that I see people do poorly or skip is customer interviews.

A lot of what I spend my time on is interviewing customers for for my clients and the companies that I'm advising because they don't have an ongoing engine in the background. I I think product market fit isn't something that you achieve once. It's something you constantly need to do because the market is constantly changing as is your consumer and product. Setting up something in the background that's kind of running on it. It almost automatically doesn't require ton of attention, time, and commitment from executives or other team members, and it's just generating smart output, insights from customers, new feature, potential new product line opportunities.

That's the fire that keeps leaders going in a direction that's defensible and combats the issue I was talking about before where it's just a top down king or queen, you know, says something and we all do it. If you have a process and some documentation and research that you can add to your intuition, your believability goes way up, morale goes up, productivity goes up. And so that's the thing that I advocate most for is good customer discovery and making sure that that's operating almost automatically in the background.

That's really great. That's such an excellent point. Getting that insight from customers is so key to success in start ups. You have actually already touched on this a bit in your previous answer, but Giovanni did want to ask how to engage employees so that they are on board in the mission of the company.

Do you have the mission and vision written down? One of the things that I do in road mapping, if you can imagine I'm gonna do some visualizations here. Imagine a timeline, horizontal line. I guess I'll do it this way for the viewers. Starting point, q 1, q2, q3.

Above those time horizons is a business theme. So retention, for instance, I'll often start in early companies with working on retention because if you spend money on a company that has shitty retention, you're gonna be blowing that those marketing and sales dollars. So let's just say for argument's sake, we're gonna work on retention. 1st retention, it ladders up. There's something above retention in the business theme for that quarter, which is the mission and vision.

How is this business theme supporting the mission or vision? There's a product management tool called I churned because it was a little bit too much in terms of administration, but they did a really great job of building a tool that ladders up a small sub task on a ticket all the way up to a a vision or a mission statement. Since seeing that tool, I've not stopped trying to relate what we're doing on the ground. Exploration in UX design or some prototypes for a new feature, and how that leads to an improvement in vision or the actual engineering task for the week. I think it's important for maybe you as an engineering manager or someone who's responsible for executing the mission and vision to keep it in mind yourself.

It could be a post it note on your computer. It could be something that is said routinely at the at the top of a call if your mission and vision is broad enough. I think it's a couple of different ways. I I remember when we had office culture, we had our mission and vision on the office wall. And since we don't have those specs as as much in technology companies these days, I think we have to be creative about how we keep it top of mind for folks.

But revisiting it regularly is important because I think early on, especially, the mission and vision can change. Even though it's supposed to be this, like, immovable guidepost for us, it's okay if it changes or if it feels out of alignment with the product. Sometimes the product is most in touch if if it has the right product discovery process, is most in touch with the customers in the market. So sometimes you have to adjust your mission and vision to what your product is doing, and that's totally fine. I think that we have to give ourselves some some grace in terms of these documentation habits and, you know, organizational culture habits that we have.

So hope that answers the question.

Yeah. I appreciate that answer because, you know, when you're saying the mission vision should evolve, I agree with you, but I'm also kinda thinking about it in a couple different ways because I'll just say personally that once I realized that it was more about finding the why, you know, going back to Simon Sinek, that was so much easier for me because then even when I was working for a corporation, I could find my why in their mission and vision, if that makes sense. Hello, all. I hope you are enjoying this episode. I want to ask you, our listeners, if you could give us a review in your podcasting platform of choice.

We don't have sponsors, and we don't run ads, but we are looking to grow. So if you feel we bring value to your listening experience, please drop us a review when you get a chance. Thanks so much. Now on with the show. Well, before it was just words on a wall, and it was annoying at companies where you had to memorize it.

And then a new CEO would come in and change it. And that did happen. And I I don't think that's an uncommon experience because just changing the words doesn't change how you feel about the company. So I think adding on to Spencer's question, how do you get employees in your opinion to ideally, like, really buy into the why? Even if the mission and vision kind of evolves, like, buying into the culture and what this company is really about so that you do have that retention?

How do you think that's done, like, in the best of circumstances?

Yeah. I mean, you can read a lot of this stuff out in during interviews, but I think that the reality is that there's 2 types of employees. There's missionaries, and then there's mercenaries. I don't know if this is a phrase y'all have heard already, but I love that mentality. And early on, it's really important to have more missionaries than mercenaries.

But it is basically impossible to keep a 100% or 95% missionaries as the company scales. So I want everybody to temper their expectations that you're not building a cult or a church as a company. And some people don't give a shit about their job, And their mission, you know, mission of the company doesn't really matter to them. And so I live with that reality, and I'm totally cool with that reality. But I do keep a a lookout for the ratio.

How many people are here because they really believe in this thing versus how many people are here because they just need a paycheck, and they're good at their job and we need them. It's really hard to be the missionary police or whatever. That sounds sexual, but you wanna make sure that you're policing the right things. It's like you wanna keep people on task. Simon Sinek's great.

I don't know how many times he's been a CEO, but I'm guessing not very many times. I think we should be I think we should be cautious in trying to integrate these kind of, like, touchy feely, emotionally resonant management philosophies. At the end of the day, maybe I'm too much of a a a boomer here, but, you know, it's a fucking job, and you have to do it. If you feel like you're outside of, you know, resonating with the mission, that's on you, and you can choose to go and find a different job. That's great.

Go and find something that resonates, feels good every day when you wake up because that's important to you. For companies, I would just keep a lookout for the ratio as you grow. You know, have more missionaries early on than mercenaries, and manage mercenaries with grace as the company grows.

Well said. I really appreciate the way that you've been talking with us has been, like, you're willing to engage with discussions that are conceptual and missionary focused, but you're also willing to engage with the realities of situations. And I think that's super powerful, super important.

Yeah. There's a lot of books written for us out there, telling us about how things should be done. And I don't know. I sometimes I feel like it's a net negative because we feel self conscious that we're not doing it like Simon Sinek does it or, you know, Brene Brown or all of these thought leaders. But the reality of this stuff is, like, you just do your best, and you just kinda love the person that you're working on something with.

That's the advice I would give. I think a lot of people just choose to fight against the we're family culture because I think that that's bad and detrimental to itself. Like, we're family. We're all family here. I think that's kinda bullshit.

But I do think love is real, and loving the person that you're building with is really important. Coming from a place of generosity and thoughtfulness as you do with love can change the way a person responds to you. And if you lead with that, I don't wanna sound too much, like, sympathetic, but lead with love, it'll come back to you. And I've been really fortunate to to genuinely love all of the partners I've built businesses with and a few of the teammates that I've either hired or have worked with. That's the most part that I'll end with there.

Much appreciated. Much appreciated. As I said, I really appreciate how you're talking with us. I really like the honesty. That means a lot.

Now you've worked with a number of different teams and groups now that you've loved, which is great. But how do you think your leadership has changed from like when you really first started being in a leadership role? And I at least had no idea what the hell I was doing to where you are now, where you can really engage with it.

I've tried to be less interested in being right. I think being right is something that's ingrained in us from school. You wanna you have to have the right answer. Maybe if you're taught argumentation and debate, you have to win. But if you think about argumentation debate from a more philosophical standpoint, it is quite collaborative.

You have to understand your opponent's points almost before you understand your own. You have to see it from their perspective so that when you tell your narrative, it resonates with them and the audience as well. So I think making an effort to listen more and listen first, ask questions first, has been a really big beneficial change for me. And not jumping in and saying, well, that's not right. It's like, this is the right decision.

Because I've been wrong enough times as well, where I thought I was right. And so bringing a little bit of humility into it and saying things I could be wrong, but I feel good about this. Or would you mind if I go out and test this a little bit so we could be more certain? Let's try that. And then if that doesn't work, can we try something else?

Asking for solutions. Because I think, you know, as a manager, people, teammates, and employees will come to you with problems and not solutions, which is one of my most frustrating most frustrating things to the manager. And so asking them what is the solution instead of trying to recommend something and hiring them to kind of come up with a solution, graining that behavior and habit in their own mind is super helpful. So, yeah, I think that's one of the leadership qualities that I've been working on more recently, and I I have a newborn at home. He's teaching me patience.

So listening and patience, definitely top of the list for me these days.

Excellent answer. Yeah. I really appreciate you sharing. I think it's not an easy thing to say that you're working on not needing to be right. I didn't even realize that I had that need, to be honest with you, until, enough people pointed it out to me, and then you kinda just need to figure out what you need to feel comfortable with being wrong, in my opinion, anyway.

And I have to say your reaction to Simon Sinek was interesting. I personally would not just put all I know that there are plenty of thought leaders. I don't put them all in a bucket. I would say that I think what I found helpful, not new, but helpful about the way that he helps people find their why is that if you're a person, kind of how I've seen my own journey, who is more chameleons like and can take yourself, you know, into all these different roles and not really know what you stand for, I think it's hard for you to buy into how you wound up at a company like that you think you believe in. But when you find that at the lower level and this, you know, this is what I would love to see change in American work culture personally.

When you find that at the lower level, it's so much easier for people at the higher level to do these big moves and switches without that big exodus. But, I mean, you're right. I'm not a CEO either. So I'm not in that sense. Feel free to prove me wrong.

Oh, no. I don't mean to.

I really do think it's an interesting topic too. So I'm actually gonna go to a question from someone that joined us today. And just their comments on your response to what I said too. A 100% on the we're all family is b s. You're not family but yes, love and appreciation of the team's ability to contribute.

So the question is, how do you build that beginning transformation in an entrenched culture of fear, obligation, guilt and shame top down, especially when this work is so bottom up?

Raise your hand if you're a raised Catholic. I would say it's 2 things. Part of it is leading by example, and I think the second part is questioning it. Being vocal and saying, hey, I recognize this, and I think it has these downstream effects that are really bad. Like bad morale, we then need to hire someone because they quit.

That costs, like, 5 to $20, maybe $50. If you use an HR or an outsourced talent agency, that cuts our burn by, you know, a 10th. So, like, your choice to call out Darren in the engineering meeting has a $50,000 implication or more. Trying to put it into numbers for managers and having a discussion about the ramifications of this negative culture. And then the second part is really just trying to lead by examples.

So how caring you can be to your teammates. Ask them real questions. I think, you know, take interest in their lives. Be concerned about what they're working on. And if someone is low to output or the quality of their work is declined, a lot of times it's because they're going through something in their personal lives, and no one at work really understands this.

So you could be that person. Yeah. Definitely lead by example as much as you can change your corner of the company and watch that expand, but have a very open conversation. I don't know about how public they make it, because you can create a little bit of a corrosive environment in that effort, which could be bad or good. But I would definitely have a conversation in 1 on ones and with management teams about how you're feeling and that that you have noticed this.

Because I'm guessing they've noticed it too, but they just start kinda turning a blind eye to it in an effort to keep moving. That'll catch up with them at some point.

Absolutely. I think it's probably if someone were to do a study, I imagine the economic impact of those negative work cultures on businesses is way, way larger than people sometimes think they are. We've talked quite a bit about what you've done in the past and a bit about sort of your philosophy on different things. I'd like to jump a little bit into the future for you. You know, you've said that you're in a stage where you're sort of getting back some of the sacrifices you've made.

What do you now see as like or do you have anything that you now see as a particular problem you wanna solve or a particular area you wanna wanna jump into next? What's sort of the future for you looking like, do you think?

Yeah. I got really disillusioned by the venture capital world and investors and how investors put money into companies and how those companies then then it. It's fucked up. And I've also been behind my desk for a decade and a half. So I've been looking into ways to get out from behind my desk and having real three-dimensional relationships with people.

And so that took me to the consumer packaged goods space, like physical products. And I live in Mexico City, and Mexico is going through kind of water insecurity moment right now that's a cause and an issue that I feel a little bit inspired to solve. As I mentioned, I I have a a newborn son and he was born here, so he's Mexican and has a future ahead of him here that is a little uncertain. So I thought with my a friend of mine, like, how could we help can we help with this water insecurity issue? And it's a big problem.

So it wasn't an easy question. We only have a limited number of strengths. I have some strengths in product testing, right, and branding and go to market stuff. And my friend is a big branding guy, so we were like, what brand could we start that could help with this? And we're really inspired by liquid death.

So we're starting a canned water company here in Mexico called Pincha Agua. I don't know if anyone on the call knows Spanish, but there's some humor in in the name. About 30% of the profits from that canned water will go back to water security projects. So we're using an ingrained consumer habit that exists and is not going anywhere, purchasing water. We're trying to use that capital and handle it into a more beneficial space.

And I have this idea in my head that it's actually not a water company. It's an innovation company that uses a water brand to fund itself. So, yeah, that's the scheme I've got going on these days. And I'm just about to put in my first order for 5,000 cans, and they should be coming at the end of November. And I'll go out to a couple of parks and start doing some product testing with my can, with my brand, side by side with other consumer water products, and asking consumers how they're making their decisions.

What matters most? Is it flavor? Is it origin or source of the water? Is it the history of the brand? You know, all the different aspects that go into the consumer psychology behind purchasing water.

And then, also, how important is the water security issue to you this year? Did you go through any water restriction, or did you lose access to water this year? And those kinds of questions. So we'll be getting out into through some Mexico, asking some questions, interviewing our users just like I would if it was a software product.

You're right. Those questions are the most important. I mean, honestly, we know someone from our class who's done an amazing job with water solutions in Brazil. I remember when she was part of my team at boot camp, going out and asking some of those user questions just like, do people perceive this problem that you see? Because even if it's what's, you know, making them ill, it depends on their perception.

As crazy as it is, it's something that we all deal with. And, you know, thank you just as you're talking about, you know, all these different things that you've done. At this point in your life, how do you define success for yourself? And do you still I kind of feel like sometimes it can be easy to hide behind business metrics. But apart from that, do you have a way that you measure it personally and professionally?

Do you feel like that's kind of melded into 1 and the same?

Well, especially now that I have a kid, brass taxes, am I making money? Or is this investment going to bankrupt me or, you know, put me in an insecure safe? So that's definitely the realistic answer. I think the second kinda goes back to the first. It's like, am I willing to sacrifice for this?

And I feel very committed to this water project and have a really strong confidence that it will work in some degree. Even if it doesn't work, I guess the real success metric for me is have I learned something? Can I apply these learnings to an another go, another attempt? And the beauty of having experience in multiple different industries and multiple different stages of the business is I've been able to take something that's worked in, you know, an early stage health tech company and apply it to a late stage publishing company or something that works in CPG and apply it to Internet. And so I'm just looking for opportunities to learn some new stuff.

Sometimes about myself, mostly about other markets and business building tactics. And just because I'm a consultant, I get to share those self lessons with other folks, and that helps me keep the roof over my head.

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I can't imagine how clarifying it is having a kid and being like, this is now number 1 de facto priority. Definitely, I think, strips away a lot of the fat, so to speak, on,

Yes. Definitely, Spencer. I would agree.

Now, the origin of this community is the MIT boot camp, which is into venture leadership. Are there any particular frameworks or books or resources that you found particularly useful in your journey that you'd be like, this is one of the number one things I'd recommend to people?

Yeah. I've got 3 that I'll share. Aside from, like, lean startup and, you know, startup owners, many of those things, check those out. They're good. They have some good ground rules.

But, Hooked by Nir Eyal, a habit forming how to make habit forming products, something along those lines. He creates this really great framework, like a 4 quadrant framework of trigger investment, variable reward, because of course, Matthew, you've read it. I don't know if you can chime in there, but there's there's a good cyclicality to his framework. So definitely Hooked Jobs To Be Done by Tony Ulrich has changed the way that I conduct user interviews and and gather data from from customers. And that's a pretty strong framework.

I don't apply it religiously, but I definitely use it to inform my strategies. And Sprint, which is written by Jake Knapp and the guys at Google Ventures, they they kinda codified how to go through a design sprint in a week or 5 days. And, again, I don't do it in 5 days because I don't have the resources that Google Ventures does. I do it more like 3 weeks or a month, slow it down, but I go through all the steps in a very similar way. I kind of combine all of those and a couple of other books to do the framework that I practice on a regular basis.

Thank you so much. Yeah. I definitely agree with you on Hooked and the the Habit Loop Experiment. Even just that part, I think he has on his website is really fascinating, and it is something that I use with clients. It really is interesting to try it out for yourself even if you're not a behavioral science nerd.

There's a question that we do like to end with and really it's, you know, just looking at your journey so far, what words of wisdom would you like to leave us and kind of the greater entrepreneurial community with?

Stay curious. I think curiosity, and humility, and looking to be proven wrong is the best secret weapon that a delusional egomaniac can employ. If you're an entrepreneur, you think you're right. If you're an entrepreneur, you think you've got what it takes. And questioning that and allowing other people to give you feedback, staying curious about yourself, but also staying curious about your customers is the number one most important mental framework that I've used in my career.

That's awesome. Thank you so much. Everyone here is gonna really appreciate everything you've shared with us. It's been really, really great talking with you today.

Thanks, Bruce. Thanks.

Myself and everyone behind Founders Voyage feel fortunate to be a part of this community with everyone and for the opportunity to bring this cooperative learning experience each week, each Saturday. Nick, obviously, if you have anyone you want to recommend for us to come on and become part of the community, we'd love that recommendation. I

I have a couple of MIT grants, actually. It might be a perfect fit.

Perfect. Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, you're very welcome to come and join us next week or any following week at the same time for another inspiring conversation. In the meantime, we have our edited podcast under Founders Voyage on your favorite podcast platform or directly on our website, foundersvoyage.org. And if you'd like to support The Founders Voyage podcast, we're working so hard to edit, you can do that directly through our Patreon.

Once again, Nick, thank you so much for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure talking with you.

Likewise. Thanks, Ken.

Have a great day, evening, morning, wherever everyone is.

Day is always safe because it could be the next day too. Right?

It could be. Very true.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Nick. It's a pleasure getting to know you. And if you have need for help, inspiration, what have you, definitely call upon us too.

Absolutely. I'll see you in the halls of the Discord.

Alright. Sounds great.

See you, guys.

You've just finished another episode of Founder's Voyage, the podcast for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. The team at Founder's Voyage wants to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We We hope you enjoyed your time with us. And if so, please share this with someone else who might enjoy this podcast. You can also support us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and by donating to our Patreon.

Outdoor music today is something for nothing by Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.