2024: A Year in Review

Cole Abbott [0:00:00]

Good morning.

Mark Abbott [0:00:11]

Good morning.

Cole Abbott [0:00:12]

Little different setup today.

Mark Abbott [0:00:14]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:00:15]

Got the fire going and talking about doing this for. Well, not exactly like this, but something like this. Since pretty original format like this is called Fireside Chats. It'd be funny if it was actually next to a fire.

Mark Abbott [0:00:31]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:00:32]

So, yeah. A little end of year holiday special.

Mark Abbott [0:00:37]

So before we begin, can I pull Chris Snyder?

Cole Abbott [0:00:42]

Sure.

Mark Abbott [0:00:43]

I love you.

Cole Abbott [0:00:45]

I love you. I knew you're going to do that. Well, you already say Chris Snyder. Be funny to include that clip right here. Yeah. All right. Is that, is that all you had to say? That's all I had to say. That was good. All right. Had to get back on topic.

Mark Abbott [0:01:05]

Back on topic.

Cole Abbott [0:01:07]

So it's interesting going through, trying to figure out how to frame up this episode. Going, going through, like going with chat gbt, seeing what the ideas could be. And one of them, a couple of them, are things you already done, such as grow or Die. I was like, that's funny that that was the last episode. Is that so?

Mark Abbott [0:01:30]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:01:30]

Covered that topic, I guess, but beat.

Mark Abbott [0:01:33]

You to it, so to speak.

Cole Abbott [0:01:34]

Yeah. So I, I think a good way to, as far as this is, is reflecting over the past year. So, like, WINS lessons, all that sort of stuff. Because a year is a long time.

Mark Abbott [0:01:47]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:01:48]

Even six months ago, things were really different.

Mark Abbott [0:01:51]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:01:51]

So a year ago, things were very different.

Mark Abbott [0:01:53]

Very different. Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:01:54]

And we're, we're talking with Sean, our cmo, about the little thing you'd written in the top of the blackboard.

Mark Abbott [0:02:03]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:02:04]

The office, it said it feels like things are starting to roll.

Mark Abbott [0:02:06]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:02:06]

It was about a year ago.

Mark Abbott [0:02:08]

About a year ago, exactly. Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:02:10]

So right from there to here.

Mark Abbott [0:02:13]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:02:14]

How did you think things were feeling like they were starting to roll then? And how has that gone? Yeah.

Mark Abbott [0:02:20]

Not as well as I thought. We weren't rolling as well as I thought we were rolling for a whole host of reasons. I think that in hindsight, the moment. There was a number of things that we were dealing with last, not this summer, but last summer, entering into the fall and, and we were grinding. Right. You could, you could feel we were grinding in particular in terms of just trials and, and, and getting people onto the platform and, and, and, and getting people to take full advantage of the, of the platform, which we're now starting to call the ecosystem. And I felt going into. Right. Coming right out of Thanksgiving, that we were starting to see the efforts of all the writing and work we've been doing and all the blogs, et cetera. In hindsight, I think what we saw was Just our traditional December and January, they're always really strong because then in February, things went back to grind and Aiden went worse for a second because I was disappointed that we didn't lean more into taking advantage of the fact that we know December and January for trials are always good because people are thinking about annual planning or out there looking and they discover us. And, and, and so they're just, they're just, They've been for forever. They've been our, Our best months in terms of trials and people, you know, getting up and running on the platform. And so I was a little disappointed because I told the marketing team, you should be leaning into this. We should be allocating more capital to, to, to. To Google and LinkedIn and, and things like that. And they reacted to it with, okay, boom, right? We're going to just do a bunch of different things. And so they did a bunch of different things. And then all of a sudden, you know, trials went up like we've never seen it before. But they were not good trials. Right? So we wasted a lot of money. And so that was. And we didn't know it until like a month and a half in. So that March, April, little bit into May, period was kind of like a big bummer because we got all excited. I even told the board, I think we finally cracked the nut. And the reality was, no, we were just nuts. So that was, that was, you know, one of those lessons learned. And, and that was. So that was a hard lesson for the year because we, you know, basically threw away, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars for all practical purposes, which, which you never want to do. But even worse than that, you know, you went from this moment of thinking we finally cracked the nut to, no, we didn't crack the nut. And so that was.

That was tough. And then, you know, we. We hadn't done a price increase in a couple years. We were going to do a price increase, and then we decided not to do that. And so, you know, so that was a thing. And then we thought that we could. We've never focused on expansion, and this year we focused on expansion and we found out that it wasn't as easy to really, once we started to focus on it, it wasn't as easy as we thought it should be in order to help people understand the power of getting everybody on the platform. So, you know, in short, you know, we thought this year would be a, you know, another really strong growth year. You know, 80% and we'll end up being closer to 50%. And so that makes it, you know, not the, not the year we had hoped to have. You know, there's a lot of other things obviously associated with this past year that are, that are, you know, interesting and wonky and I think just the whole nature of the economy and the elections and people being risk off and really hesitant on hiring. We see that a

lot of companies are pretty flat this year in terms of hiring. So, you know, generally speaking, you know, I think this was a, you know, a tough year. Tougher year than expected.

Cole Abbott [0:06:43]

So what do you think the hardest lesson was of the year for us?

Mark Abbott [0:06:47]

I think hardest lesson of the year. It's a good question really. I mean, in terms of what does that mean, hardest lesson? I was probably more optimistic. I said it that when we, when we put the budget in place for the year, I told the board I thought there was less than 50% chance that we'd hit it. And, and in hindsight, I should have just said no, if there's less than a 50% chance because it's what I teach. Right. You, you want to put forth a, a plan for the year that you think you got 50% chance of doing better than 50, chance of doing worse than. Because as we've talked about on, you know, know, in these, in this podcast before, it's just as, you know, it's just as dangerous. I don't love that word, but it's just as dangerous to be detrimental, conservative as it is to be aggressive. Because if you have a, an aggressive budget and you don't hit it, you'll likely over hire. And if you have a conservative budget and you smash it out of the water, you've likely underhired and you're going to put a lot of stress on, you know, the system, on the people. Right. On the humans, as we like to say.

Cole Abbott [0:08:09]

And being 5050 is about as accurate as you can get being in the middle of the thing.

Mark Abbott [0:08:13]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:08:14]

As you're aiming for accuracy.

Mark Abbott [0:08:16]

Yeah. Just, you just got to, you just got to be honest. Right. You got to face the, face your reality, whatever your reality is likely to be. So I think in hindsight as a leader, I didn't do. I should have said no, you know, we should, we need to crank this back down to whatever we think is, is, is, is 50 50, you know, and I, and if I had done that, I probably would have budgeted for 60% because, you know, I thought we could do the price increase. But, you know, we chose not to do the price increase because we, we think that there's a better way for us to structure pricing. And that's the thing that we're working on right now. And, and that effort's been something that we've been working on for a year. It's been harder than we thought it would be to sort of change up the

model, but I feel pretty darn good about it. And we're out there talking and getting feedback on what we're thinking about right now. So in hindsight, the expansion was. I didn't have data, any data to assume that we could do better on an expansion than we were doing, other than the fact that we'd never done it. So it's like, well, if we've never done it, why, you know, I think we should be able to do this. But I think that, you know, that what the lesson coming out of the, out of the expansion was that we've not done as good a job as we should in terms of helping people understand the power of the entire platform. Right. Because, you know, relatively speaking, you know, most of our clients, on average, only 20% of their, their, their, you know, their employees are on the platform. And I just think the platform so powerful and you get everybody on it. So, you know, I just thought, well, it's obvious, but the reality is, is, no, we've got to explain it much better than we do. And, and we, and, and we also need to do things to the platform that makes it more compelling to put everybody on there. And those are things that, you know, we're working on. Right? We're working on integrations. We started to roll out integrations because that's been something that people have said, hey, guys, you know, we want more integrations. And so that's the thing. We had a bunch of people. You've been giving me grief for years about mobile. So mobile is a thing that, you know, we're working on since 2018. Since 2018, for what it's worth.

Right. And then there's also the, you know, there were, there were, there's a new, you know, we call it a learning management portal. We've been working on for over a year and deeply believing that that would also make the platform super compelling. And, you know, I thought we'd have that thing out by now, and we don't. Hopefully it'll be in beta. You know, it's in alpha. Beta is right, it's a small beta and right now, but hopefully in the first quarter we'll have those things out. So, you know, I think the platform will become the, the ecosystem will be much more compelling in 2025. And there's other things we're working on as well, obviously incorporating AI into the platform, and that's a huge, huge amount of work. But in hindsight, you know, back to expansion, I thought we could have done better this year, and we didn't.

Cole Abbott [0:11:29]

Do you think the majority of the issues. I know, I know what the answer is going to be here, but do you know what the major, you think the majority of the issues lie in us not executing what we need to execute or following what we teach, rather than not knowing what we're doing. We're not understanding what we're doing or what to do.

Mark Abbott [0:11:53]

No, I, you know, we're doing the right things. It's just the pace.

Cole Abbott [0:11:58]

No, I, I, I'm referring more like setting the right targets. Yeah, stuff like that.

Mark Abbott [0:12:02]

Yeah, well, one of them, for sure. I did not practice what I preach. Yeah, right. That's a fact. You know, I think that, you know, if you look at it, there's a product, there's a, there's a product evolution. Right. We were slower on the product evolution than we hoped to be. It took us longer to hire, you know, to go find Sean. Right. I think it took us nine months for that search. The CTPO search was six to nine months as well. So they're just hard searches. Right.

Cole Abbott [0:12:31]

We're, well, TTPO is. That's a big.

Mark Abbott [0:12:33]

Yeah. Seat, Right.

Cole Abbott [0:12:36]

On two seats. Yeah.

Mark Abbott [0:12:37]

And, and then, and then, you know, you look at it and, you know, everybody, you know, we had an investor meeting with a group of investors we met with yesterday. And, you know, there's a little bit of, giving me some grief about how fast we're moving on certain things and. Fair, I mean, it's all fair. I don't disagree with anything that, you know, that they said, but the reality is, is, you know, we build out the C suite. We hired a bunch of amazing, you know, product and engineering people last year. And it just takes time for everybody because especially with what we're doing, it takes time for even super smart people to get up to speed and truly understand it. So I, I think, you know, there's a whole host of things in there where, you know, you feel like you should be able to move a little bit faster. But, you know, it just takes time for people to get, you know, onboarded and really understand what we're doing and why we do the things that we do and, and, and, and for all the relationships.

Cole Abbott [0:13:34]

Right.

Mark Abbott [0:13:34]

You know, the communication stuff to, to get really super strong now on the flip side, and maybe I'M pushing off, answering your question completely. On the flip side with all that change, right, we got five great place to work awards. Right. So that's like I'm, you know, that's amazing.

Right? Great place to work. Parents, women, millennials, technology, small mid sized business. That's.

Cole Abbott [0:14:08]

Surprised you remembered all those.

Mark Abbott [0:14:09]

Yeah. That's unbelievable. Right?

Cole Abbott [0:14:13]

And so especially in remote work. Remote work harder.

Mark Abbott [0:14:18]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, if you put it all.

Cole Abbott [0:14:20]

Together, I'm sure work, growth rate, if you control for both of those, you can.

Mark Abbott [0:14:26]

Yeah. You know, it's like anything you can, you know, you look at a, you know, you know, you can never read the label from inside the jar and you know, I'm in the jar in this conversation and like you just said, I mean, if you, if you really stand back and look at it, the growth rate, work from anywhere, all the progress that's being made, you know, increasing the, the employee base by what, close to 50%. Over 50%.

Cole Abbott [0:15:03]

And restructuring internally in a lot of places.

Mark Abbott [0:15:05]

And restructuring internally in a lot of places. Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:15:10]

Yeah. I think this year hasn't been, if you view things like, or you view growth or speed or whatever.

Mark Abbott [0:15:20]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:15:20]

As a pyramid, velocity. Sure.

Mark Abbott [0:15:22]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:15:22]

And the, the vertical dimension of the pyramid is, is your velocity. It's like having that really wide, strong base allows you to have a taller pyramid.

Mark Abbott [0:15:31]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:15:32]

Steadier velocity. I feel like this year has really been just building a, as you would say, damn good base for the pyramid.

Mark Abbott [0:15:41]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:15:42]

And I, I feel we didn't hit the velocity as much as we wanted to this year, but I feel like our base is much, much stronger than I would have expected it to be a year ago.

Mark Abbott [0:15:51]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:15:51]

So I think that's a win.

Mark Abbott [0:15:54]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:15:57]

I, I feel like, you know, going to next year, you have that party that wants to, this is optimistic and thinks we're going to do really well and execute on certain things. But then it's like, well, you know, how many times are we saying it's going to be a rough next two quarters? And it's been saying that for like three years now. So. Yeah. Off of that point, what do you think maybe did the hardest lesson, basically going over that stuff. What do you think the biggest, what do you think the biggest win of the year has been?

Mark Abbott [0:16:28]

Well, preserving the culture.

Cole Abbott [0:16:34]

I think if anything improve. The culture's gotten stronger.

Mark Abbott [0:16:37]

Yeah, yeah, I, I think, yeah, I think, I think the culture. The culture is the culture. Right. So, you know, we're still the G Tribe. But I, I do think if you think from the perspective of if you were, if you were to grade us along each of the core values. Right. Obviously GSSD and, and, and, and, and team and resiliency and inquisitiveness and, and better and better version of the best versions of ourselves and, and, and extra mile.

Cole Abbott [0:17:06]

I think gssd, meaning get smart stuff done.

Mark Abbott [0:17:09]

Exactly.

Cole Abbott [0:17:09]

I don't think that's a. Yeah, well known.

Mark Abbott [0:17:11]

Sorry. Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:17:12]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott [0:17:13]

I think, I think we, you know, we're in total. We did better on G. We have.

Cole Abbott [0:17:26]

Been consistently improving on GSSD throughout the year.

Mark Abbott [0:17:28]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:17:29]

Like I don't think with any of the things that were.

Mark Abbott [0:17:32]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:17:32]

Nailing it. Yeah, that's fine. Right. Because they represent ideals and something you work towards. That's something that you.

Mark Abbott [0:17:37]

Yeah. Right. And then, and then in terms of resilience, you know, I think, I think some people struggled with all the changes and you know, a lot of the leaders were doing a good job of helping people understand. Look, you know, if you think this company is a place where stability is like just normal thing, that's not who we are and it's not who we're going to be for the next.

Cole Abbott [0:18:08]

You know, stability is not our goal.

Mark Abbott [0:18:10]

It's not our goal and it won't be right and it won't be for, you know, it's, it's just, you know, when you're, when you believe you can be growing at, you know, whether you say 80 to 100% or 50 to 80%. Right. Or even 25 to 50%. Because I think those are all we have what it takes. The opportunity is significant enough and the market is big enough for us to be able to do 80 to 100 for a while more and then to be able to do 50 to 80 for a while more and then to be able to do 25

to 50 out a decade at least. And so when, when you have that type of growth, stability is not a thing that is going to be in a lot of places right there. You know, you want to get it so that certain areas of the company, you know, it's very. Right, it's stable because we say this is what we're going to do when, then we work on it and then we conclude and when we celebrate and then boom. Right. So that 90 day marches. 90 day marches. 90 day marches. And you know, one of the things that I am proud of about, you know, this year is that we move the company from marching 90 days at a time to marching 180 to 270 days at a time. I mean literally that, you know, we're we're working on things that are three months, six months and nine months long.

And then next year our goal is to start really, you know, doing it. You like three, six, nine, twelve. Three, six, nine, twelve. 3, 6, 9, 12. And, and so, you know, I'm proud of our ability to sort of play that type of game as opposed to just the 90 day game. Right. So we have the talent to do that.

Cole Abbott [0:20:03]

Yeah. It's like having segmentation and direction really helps with that lack of stability.

Mark Abbott [0:20:11]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:20:12]

And I think long term it makes things more stable. But it's. When you're going uphill, it gets tiring.

Mark Abbott [0:20:18]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:20:18]

And you want to sort of be sloppy and it's like, you know, you just got to keep marching. When you're going downhill, you're running downhill. It's like, try not to trip yourself because that, that's not good.

Mark Abbott [0:20:26]

Right, right.

Cole Abbott [0:20:27]

Take advantage of those moments. But you still got to stay focused. It's just a different game.

Mark Abbott [0:20:30]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:20:30]

And when you're doing that over and over again.

Mark Abbott [0:20:32]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:20:33]

You hopefully are approaching with an antifragile mindset.

Mark Abbott [0:20:38]

Yes.

Cole Abbott [0:20:38]

Where it's. You're learning from those struggles.

Mark Abbott [0:20:41]

Yeah. Right.

Cole Abbott [0:20:42]

You're growing, you're becoming stronger, you're developing better.

Mark Abbott [0:20:44]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:20:44]

Balance.

Mark Abbott [0:20:45]

Yeah. And that's back to sort of. I think we did. We have gotten better in terms of resiliency. I think we have taken resiliency to the next level in terms of resiliency and anti fragility. Right. Understanding that, look, we know where we're going and we fall down. You know, you get back up and you're like, hey, you know, this is a lesson I need to learn because if I keep doing this, it's

going to be hard to get there. But if I'm okay, I got this lesson, it makes sense that I need to be better at this if I'm going to get from here to there. Right. It's like, I'll use a really bad metaphor. Right. We're talking, we talk a lot about two of our favorite, three of our favorite metaphors.

Right. There's the ocean liner. Right. There's. There's crossing the ocean, there's the mountain and then there's the forest. Right. And to learn how to swim better when your job is scaling that mountain. No. Right. So the game you're in, if you're clear on it, it's easier to figure out what we need to get better at from an anti fragility perspective than just trying to be, you know, every, every time you make a mistake what we got to get better. Well, some mistakes are more important than others. Some mistakes we need to learn better from. And I think being clear about where you're going and what it's going to take makes it much easier to be anti fragile because it's like, okay, no, I need, I, I need to learn this. I'm climbing. We're on a 12,000 foot mountain and we, our goal is to get, let's just say you do an 18 or 20, you know, scale of 18 or 20,000 foot mountain. These are things you just have to learn if you want to be able to go and, and take the next bigger challenge as a leader.

Cole Abbott [0:22:26]

You have to be able to discern what is useful at the moment, what's not useful. Because if it's not useful, it's not worth getting hung up on.

Mark Abbott [0:22:32]

Yeah, yeah, it's like, okay, that's fine. Yep.

Cole Abbott [0:22:36]

So moving into the broader side of things. Yeah, it's been an interesting year as election years tend to be.

Mark Abbott [0:22:43]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:22:45]

So I guess quickly sum up things that you trend. How would you categorize or name the theme of whatever of the year in the market specifically for, I mean business in general, but specifically for SaaS companies?

Mark Abbott [0:23:05]

Well, I do think, you know, one of the quips in the SaaS world was especially in the venture side of the SaaS world where, you know, people are going and assessing whether or not the business model, the opportunity is worth investing. The expression that was coined last year

was 40 is the new 80. And what that meant was that the venture capital firms, you know, you go back to 19, 19 and I mean 20, 20, 19 and 2020, even a little bit into 2021. It was, you know, they were all looking for, you know, you need to be growing at 80% in order for it to be like, for this to be compelling. But because the nature of the economy this year in particular and the last couple of years, you know, 40% is actually, you know, 80s, the new 40. So 40% is now the is, is, is a, is a more sort of realistic bar for high performance. And so, you know, I think generally speaking, you know, the economy has been with, with, especially with the elections. I think the economy generally speaking had a lot of what they, we call risk off. Right. We're seeing people were like, hey, you know, you know, you just need to be a little bit more conservative. You can't sort of be high risk oriented. Right. And so I think that's made its way into a lot of our world. Right. As I alluded to earlier, you look at our clients with, you know, 100 plus employees and they didn't grow, you know, they didn't add a lot of employees last year versus the years before. The years before it was, you know, our clients were adding 20%, you know, in, in, in, in 18 and 19 and 20 and 21 on average. Right. And I would tell you that it's closer to zero the last, last, you know, year to 18 months. And I think part of it was, part of it was just, you know, all this uncertainty around, around the elections.

Cole Abbott [0:25:27]

And you're also deferring decisions.

Mark Abbott [0:25:31]

Yeah, right.

Cole Abbott [0:25:32]

Waiting for, see what happens there and then goes one way, goes another way.

Mark Abbott [0:25:36]

And it would have been, you know, I mean, it, it would have been fascinating. You know, we don't know. Right. There's sort of an alternative world. Once, you know, if, if, if Harris won, you know, would the markets afterwards reacted, you know, the same as they did my guts, they, they wouldn't have probably react inversely. I don't know. But I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know, I don't want to totally.

Cole Abbott [0:26:10]

Is this like, right. If you're just waiting and you're hesitant on something, I don't want to get.

Mark Abbott [0:26:14]

Political, but I, you know, I do think that the Democrat, you know, when the Democrats controlled a lot of the decisions that were being made, you know, saw just, you saw more and more leaning into government being the solution rather than, you know, sort of leaning into the private markets providing solutions. And so, you know, I think you look back at the last year and a lot of the job growth was on the government side. And I, you know, I think most people, if you want to be really objective about it, would most learned people, Right. That really understand the nature of economics would, you know, would appreciate the fact that, you know, there's a reason why, you know, capitalistic systems tend to perform better over the long run because, you know, because the marketplace is much more efficient at like, that's, and no, we're not going to fund that. Right. Whereas the government just says, hey, you know, we think this is a good idea. And you know, and so it's, it's, it's not, it's not subject to the same level of positive and negative feedback loops and pressure. And so I think that Andrews is.

Cole Abbott [0:27:30]

Opening up the system a little bit more.

Mark Abbott [0:27:32]

Yeah, yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:27:32]

Whether Indian, you know, it could go in a bad direction. It's going to go in that way. Yeah, faster.

Mark Abbott [0:27:36]

But, but I, but I, I, I think the response by the market has been, hey, you know, now maybe we can start to see more and more capital dedicated to flowing into things that, you know, that may or may not work. But when you spread this around, a million or billion decisions. Right. We know that's why, you know, capitalism performs, you know, has performed historically much better than communism in terms of creating, you know, wealth and, and, and ultimately, you know, healthy society. So I'm biased, but that's my perspective.

Cole Abbott [0:28:13]

Should write a book on that.

Mark Abbott [0:28:14]

Should. Cole Abbott

[0:28:18]

A little awkward silence of foreshadowing.

Mark Abbott [0:28:21]

Well, we talked about work. I was.

Cole Abbott [0:28:23]

It's, it's there, it's on the website.

Mark Abbott [0:28:24]

Yeah, yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:28:25]

It's no secret.

Mark Abbott [0:28:26]

Yeah. Hopefully it'll be out April or May. Right now it's taking longer to get out, but we'll damn close started teasing it last April or before that.

Cole Abbott [0:28:36]

I know we're like publicly very wedge season at EOS conference.

Mark Abbott [0:28:39]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:28:39]

So that was fun. Some people are like, when's the book coming out? And they're like, well we say June. It's not coming out in June. Like what do you mean? I'm like, I know it's not going to come out in June. I think why everything I was like, I don't know. But I feel good about it now. It's a better book than it would have been.

Mark Abbott [0:28:54]

Oh, far better. Cole Abbott

[0:28:55]

Yeah. So, yeah, that's good. Obviously the election market stuff is very industry dependent. Some industries, right it's good, some it's bad. Like solar for example.

Mark Abbott [0:29:13]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:29:14]

Like that's right. It's gone down.

Mark Abbott [0:29:16]

Yeah. I actually haven't paid a lot of attention to.

Cole Abbott [0:29:19]

I haven't paid a lot of attention.

Mark Abbott [0:29:20]

Stocks in which industries or which sectors have on aggregate.

Cole Abbott [0:29:24]

That's gone up. Yeah. Solar is that. I mean I don't want to get completely this. Like solar is an interesting one.

Mark Abbott [0:29:30]

Yes.

Cole Abbott [0:29:31]

Like obviously Tesla is very involved in solar.

Mark Abbott [0:29:34]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:29:34]

So it's like that's kind of. You just want to laugh at something.

Mark Abbott [0:29:39]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:29:39]

Like that's kind of funny.

Mark Abbott [0:29:40]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:29:41]

Not obviously, not that they care, but just an interesting little glimpse into that sort of world. Yeah. But what do you think? Obviously we're in a weird period right now. What do you think is going to be the interesting things to look for market wise going into next year and things that probably will play out, you know, Q1ish.

Mark Abbott [0:30:06]

Well, I mean there's lots of things that are going to be interesting to watch. It's going to be interesting to watch, you know, sort of the confirmation processes on all the nominees. It's going to be fascinating to watch, you know, doge over the next, you know, 18 plus months to see whether or not. Because this is going to be. Right.

Cole Abbott [0:30:27]

That's big. When you were talking about the shift of, of government, like government being a bigger employer or federal government being a bigger employer.

Mark Abbott [0:30:34]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:30:34]

And this is like, I mean this the most significant act to that.

Mark Abbott [0:30:39]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:30:40]

You know, since I can remember.

Mark Abbott [0:30:41]

Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be fascinating to watch this. I'm rooting for them. I think we need to be more efficient on the government side. And I think, you know, once again, you know, it's my partisan perspective, but I, I think we need to, you know, we need to let the animal spirits, you know, do their thing as much as possible. Obviously there's laws and you know, you know, you, you, we do not want to favor companies that are doing bad things for the environment, for the world, for people, etc. Right. But there's a lot of laws already that are existed to stop that from happening.

Cole Abbott [0:31:19]

And it's, I, we talk about this a lot, but it's going to be a lot harder to do that as everything becomes more public facing information's more available.

Mark Abbott [0:31:28]

Yeah. Right.

Cole Abbott [0:31:29]

It's like you're not gonna be able to play that game very long.

Mark Abbott [0:31:32]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:31:32]

I was just talking to a friend about it recently. We're talking about, he did his levels assessment thing.

Mark Abbott [0:31:40]

Yes.

Cole Abbott [0:31:41]

And we're talking about CEOs being one out. Mark Abbott

[0:31:43]

Levels of ego. Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:31:44]

Levels of ego. Yeah. And where's typically, where CEOs typically lie on that.

Mark Abbott [0:31:49]

Yes.

Cole Abbott [0:31:49]

It's going to be a lot harder to be a lower level. Just push stuff through.

Mark Abbott [0:31:56]

Yes.

Cole Abbott [0:31:56]

To try to milk out everything in two years.

Mark Abbott [0:31:59]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:32:00]

That's not going to be a very viable option.

Mark Abbott [0:32:03]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:32:03]

And so I think that should, in addition to all those laws and everything, help to correct a lot of those bad practices that we see in the business world.

Mark Abbott [0:32:11]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:32:12]

So I think that will be a thing. And obviously we're, we're doing stuff on our end to promote good behavior.

Mark Abbott [0:32:21]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:32:22]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott [0:32:22]

And, and, and help people understand how to assess levels of ego and help them understand why it's important for our leaders to have relatively well developed levels of ego. Because the, the higher, the more developed their egos are, the less likely they'll be subject to biases and, and in doing things that are actually not in the long term interest of society and.

Cole Abbott [0:32:51]

Being able to do that more quickly for these. Right. Taking all that information, understand things a lot better. So you can make well informed decisions.

Mark Abbott [0:33:00]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:33:01]

More decisively.

Mark Abbott [0:33:03]

Yes.

Cole Abbott [0:33:03]

Right. I think that's a Big thing that doesn't get talked about enough in that sense.

Mark Abbott [0:33:07]

Yeah. And that's a, you know, back to work 9.0. There's a whole chapter on this in there. Right. In terms of helping people, I love Lovinger's model. And, you know, there are, there are a lot of other models out there, you know, all the way from, you know, Keegan to Gartner Cook to Wilbur's Integral Theory. There's a bunch of different models out there that helps people think about. But the reality is there are hierarchies. And I think that both on the public and on the private side, part of the reason why I wrote the book is we're entering into the age of understanding. And I believe we need to be more understanding of who we are, where we are, why we do the things that we do, and then to. I deeply believe in frameworks that help us understand and evolve. Right. This is where I am. And I want, if you want to take it to that next level. To the next level. To the next level. What do I need to do? What do I need to look at? You know, where am I, where am I deficient? Where do I have room for growth? And so, you know, this is a big, you know, you know, work 9.0 is, you know, there's. In some respects it's, you know, part of the reasons it's taken as long as it has is because there's a lot in it. And I wanted to make sure it's. People are going to give me grief over it. I know that I'm going to. Things that I wrote are not going to be as well written as they should be. I haven't thought things through as much as I have as I could, especially from people who are super experts at some of the things that I write about. But I'm, you know, I'd rather, I'd rather put it out there and suffer from the slings and arrows. Learn from the, and learn from it and, and, and, and, and update my, you know, frameworks or my thinking where, where appropriate. But, you know, I'm willing to enter into the arena and, and, and push for people to be better leaders.

Cole Abbott [0:35:05]

I think that starts with the private side of things and then that affects the culture and then, then that moves eventually over to the public.

Mark Abbott [0:35:14]

Side than the public side, thankfully.

Cole Abbott [0:35:18]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, from the, I mean, that's objective. That's clear.

Mark Abbott [0:35:25]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:35:25]

But then I also think that people don't appreciate the implications the private side has on their daily lives.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:32]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:35:32]

I think people Waited on the public side of things like the government's responsible for what is whatever.

Mark Abbott [0:35:37]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:35:37]

It's like okay, well that's downstream from other things. Yeah. And it, it's like a lot of people are, I would say most people are unhappy with the state of general politics feeling like it's more immature and.

Mark Abbott [0:35:57]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:35:57]

All those things, tribal leadership and yeah.

Mark Abbott [0:36:00]

Level, level 3.75 maybe, maybe. You know.

Cole Abbott [0:36:05]

Yeah. Around there, it's around there being interesting to ask Chat GPT how it would assess that but it's not a place where if you are a level 8 or 9 that you're, you're going to want to be.

Mark Abbott [0:36:20]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:36:21]

It's not an effective vehicle for whatever you want to do. Mark Abbott

[0:36:25]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:36:25]

For the, the problems you want to address.

Mark Abbott [0:36:26]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:36:27]

And so I, I, I think and, and private side isn't as much as it should be.

Mark Abbott [0:36:32]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:36:32]

But it's why we believe in addressing the private side first.

Mark Abbott [0:36:36]

Yes.

Cole Abbott [0:36:37]

And then. Right. It'll work its way over and yeah, we'll see how that goes in.

Mark Abbott [0:36:42]

Yeah. But years, you know, I think that, you know we, we haven't talked a lot about AI yet. Right. But I, I think that I'm an optimist on AI. I've said that before and I, and I, and I think that whether you like it or not. Right. Part of the new age is, you know, is, is, is lifelong learning. Sorry. Right.

Cole Abbott [0:37:09]

That's part of it.

Mark Abbott [0:37:10]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:37:10]

It's really part of any age. But now it's becoming much more imperative.

Mark Abbott [0:37:14]

Yeah. I, I, I, I think it's more, yeah, maybe it's more obvious, maybe it's more imperative. Right. But you know, I think that small and mid sized companies, just one of the reasons why we're building out, you know, I'm putting our money, my money, our money where our mouths are.

And part of the reason we're building, you know, we're building out the knowledge management portal is because I believe that back to the responsibilities of the private side. I believe we need to help people continuously learn and grow whether it's ego skills and experiences. Right. It's, it's, you know, it's you know, self and others awareness, you know, all the things that you know, we talk about and you know, your education doesn't stop after high school or college. It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a forever thing. And, and so you know, that's an area where, you know, I want us to help make a dent is helping people continue to grow and, and, and for us to be able to help them make that something they want and enjoy doing, as opposed to it feeling like drudgery.

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:38:42]

A path that you want to stay on, not a path you're confined to.

Mark Abbott [0:38:45]

Yeah. Right. Go find those things that you're interested in, passionate about and lean into your strengths and aptitudes. Right. And help companies help, you know, help companies become better at putting people into places where they can thrive as opposed to, you know, I'm just going to stick you in this, in this seat here. And the reality is, is, you know, if you go back to what I taught and explained in terms of structure, right, you're jamming square pegs into round holes. And it's just like you're, you know, either the peg's gonna fracture or the hole's gonna fracture, and so get better at putting people in the positions where they can thrive. And, you know, where 90% of the time they go home at night and they're like, you know, I love what I do and I love who I do it with and I love who I do it for.

Cole Abbott [0:39:34]

Do you have a. I feel like you would have some number around this, but what percentage of the general population feels that way at the moment that we're.

Mark Abbott [0:39:44]

90% of the time they go home and they love what they, they love the day they just had. Yeah, that's a great. Once again, that'd be a good chat. GPT question.

Cole Abbott [0:39:52]

We just look it up. Yeah, I would have to deal too.

Mark Abbott [0:39:55]

See if it could answer that one.

Cole Abbott [0:39:57]

Right.

Mark Abbott [0:39:57]

Which. Do you have a gut.

Cole Abbott [0:39:59]

No. 15.

Mark Abbott [0:40:02]

I was going to say 20%.

Cole Abbott [0:40:03]

Right.

Mark Abbott [0:40:04]

But you know, back to next year. I, you know, I am optimist. I'm very optimistic that we are in, we are, we have entered into a new age, the age of understanding that we are going to actually make life better for more and more people and that, you know, the things that some of the issues that we're dealing with, some of the tribalism that we've been dealing with is going to become less of a thing once we, you know, if we, if we obviously, if we could, if we could, if we could somehow help, you know, at least in the United States as an example. Right. Europe.

Right. Other places. If we could just, you know, help the level of ego for go from 3.75 to 4.5, that would be awesome. Right. Obviously it'd be great if we could like, that's a thing that I'd love to, over time work on, is helping us. The collective percentage. The, the, the, the median you know, level of ego across developed countries to start creeping up because I believe they've crept down over the last.

Cole Abbott [0:41:27]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott [0:41:28]

I think five to 10 years, which is.

Cole Abbott [0:41:32]

Probably, you know, it's, it's like.

Mark Abbott [0:41:35]

I think it's social media. It's the age of information. Right. We got overwhelmed and we all went tribalistic and we all got insecure and we hung close to our little groups because it's like, this is messy and I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm a little afraid of what's going on. And. And then the social media things knew how to hit our, you know, push our buttons.

Cole Abbott [0:41:56]

Which is the correlation between the rise and drop in ego.

Mark Abbott [0:42:03]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:42:03]

And also the rise and drop in life expectancy. Obviously different.

Mark Abbott [0:42:09]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:42:09]

These are both symptoms of the same four issues. Yeah. But like the life expectancy thing is. Is a thing. Yeah. That we get that data on. That's really accessible, whereas the ego thing is.

Mark Abbott [0:42:22]

But not as clear how much. I haven't studied that life expectancy stuff as much probably as you have. Right. But I'd be curious how much of that was impacted by Covid.

Cole Abbott [0:42:34]

It was before COVID Okay. That was the thing.

Mark Abbott [0:42:36]

All right.

Cole Abbott [0:42:36]

Yeah. I guess last like 20, 15 years.

Mark Abbott [0:42:39]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:42:40]

It's not like two years ago.

Mark Abbott [0:42:42]

Okay.

Cole Abbott [0:42:43]

Um, it could have gone back up. I don't know. I heard that somewhere. Makes sense, though. So this says. Okay, so one of. There's three things it gave me. One of them doesn't really make sense. So I'll ask you two. What percentage of U.S. workers report being satisfied with their jobs?

Mark Abbott [0:43:02]

22%.

Cole Abbott [0:43:04]

62%.

Mark Abbott [0:43:05]

That's awesome.

Cole Abbott [0:43:06]

Which is the highest level since the survey's inception in 87.

Mark Abbott [0:43:09]

That's awesome.

Cole Abbott [0:43:10]

And I. But I do think since COVID Yeah. That people are more generally satisfied with their situations.

Mark Abbott [0:43:17]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:43:18]

For better or for worse.

Mark Abbott [0:43:19]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:43:19]

I think there's a little bit of. It is a dimension of gratitude.

Mark Abbott [0:43:24]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:43:24]

Is like, you know what? I am happy where I am. This is cool. And then there's also on the flip side, there's a dimension of complacency. But just being like, this is fine.

Mark Abbott [0:43:34]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:43:34]

I'm happy here. I'm more risk averse now.

Mark Abbott [0:43:38]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:43:39]

There's two ways to look at that.

Mark Abbott [0:43:40]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:43:40]

And I think that both them play a role in that. And then the passion for work. What percentage of

U.S. employees describe themselves as passionate about their jobs?

Mark Abbott [0:43:50]

That's probably what I was leaning more into, like 22%.

Cole Abbott [0:43:53]

You said 20%.

Mark Abbott [0:43:55]

No, earlier I gave you 20%. But then I just said, when you asked me that first question, I said 22%. And I was probably leaning more towards the. Sure.

Cole Abbott [0:44:02]

You want to change your answer?

Mark Abbott [0:44:04]

Yeah, I'll go 20%.

Cole Abbott [0:44:06]

20%. Geez.

Mark Abbott [0:44:10]

Could I read between lines?

Cole Abbott [0:44:13]

That was very good. Social awareness. Good job. You get a gold star. I'm working on my level of ego. So that's that number. Yeah, yeah, it's a 20.

Mark Abbott [0:44:29]

That a gallop or a pew?

Cole Abbott [0:44:31]

That was zip. Yeah.

Mark Abbott [0:44:33]

Interesting.

Cole Abbott [0:44:34]

Are you going to go to the sources?

Mark Abbott [0:44:36]

No, that's okay.

Cole Abbott [0:44:37]

Sure.

Mark Abbott [0:44:37]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:44:37]

That was 20. 23 on the 20%. Mark Abbott

[0:44:40]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:44:42]

But yeah, I think it's accurate. And I feel like among Gen Z, among people that I, or my friends or whatever, it seems like satisfaction is higher, passion is lower probably relative to that.

Because I don't, I don't know, I don't have any friends that I can think of outside of 90. Except excuse things outside of 90 that I would say are passionate about what they do.

Mark Abbott [0:45:17]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:45:18]

About what they do, about who they work for. A lot of them are, you know, they're like, well, let's start this. I should start this business. I'm thinking about starting this business. And I have a lot of those conversations like, what do you think of this idea? And some of them it's like, oh, that's cool. And some of it's like you're just, you just want novelty. You just want something else to do.

Mark Abbott [0:45:38]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:45:38]

So you're not in it for.

Mark Abbott [0:45:39]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:45:40]

The reasons that we, we talk about when we speak to and about founders.

Mark Abbott [0:45:44]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:45:45]

Like, oh, is that what you want, to build something?

Mark Abbott [0:45:47]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:45:47]

And it's just like, I'm. They're just bored.

Mark Abbott [0:45:50]

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, are you willing to dedicate at least 10. Because this is another interesting one, which we, you know, we keep talking about when you do research. But I mean, if you're going to be successful as a founder, I, you know, there, I'm sure there are exceptions out there, but you got to count on it. You know, are you willing to do this for 10 plus years? Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:46:10]

And some of the founders I know that are younger or just like, they're over it.

Mark Abbott [0:46:15]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:46:16]

For, you know, a lot of reasons.

Mark Abbott [0:46:17]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:46:17]

And I think they just, they lose that spark. This kind of just beats them down.

Mark Abbott [0:46:21]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:46:22]

They're like, they had an idea, they made money off of it, and they're like, this risk is this, this burden is not fun.

Mark Abbott [0:46:28]

No.

Cole Abbott [0:46:28]

And they don't have the systems around them to support them. They don't have, you know, they really feel like they're just doing it on their own.

Mark Abbott [0:46:35]

Yeah. Which is something we want to help with.

Cole Abbott [0:46:39]

Yeah. So I think we covered the state of things pretty well, I guess, just to start sort of bringing this to a close.

Mark Abbott [0:46:52]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:46:54]

What lessons do you think are super important that we've learned, we've experienced over the past year, plus that people going through stage four.

Mark Abbott [0:47:09]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:47:10]

What do you think the challenges are going to be given the nature of things? Given, given the way the system is working right now, it's gonna be different than challenges we faced. What do you foresee those looking like for us? Well, I'm saying for someone that's entering into the chapter that we just went through.

Mark Abbott [0:47:31]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:47:31]

What would be, what would be your word of advice? What would the things that, the hard things that we went through that didn't get us, that we don't want other people to fall victim, to, fall prey to?

Mark Abbott [0:47:43]

Well, I don't know if I, I, I, I, I frame it slightly different so I, with you. Yeah. Right. So I think, you know, the re, the reality in terms of stage four, right. Is that you're going, you know, when you, when you enter into the next stage, it's, it's inevitable that you're going to have leadership changes. Right. And some of your leaders are going to be ready for that next stage, and some of your leaders are not going to be ready for that next stage or just not. Right. And, and that sucks. It's hard. Especially they've been with you for a long time. And, and so the, you know, for some it's, you know, it's like, you know, it's like I'm okay not being, you know, that reporting to the founder or the CEO anymore. And then for others it's like, well, you know, no, I, you know, I think I should be that next person. And, and, and, and they don't get it. And you know, we, we had one individual leave us this year to start his own who didn't make it to the next level and went and started his own company. That's awesome. Right. So I, I think, you know, in, you know, as much as you love for every single person to grow with you as the company grows and to grow at the speed that you need to grow that grow, they need to grow it in order to be, you know, able to sort of lead at a senior level during that next stage. Just have to be, you know, you have to be honest about it all and because otherwise, you know, you're, you're, it's it's not fair to them, it's not fair to all the other ideal stakeholders, whether it's your investors or their peers.

And so, you know, you know, like, it's like self and others awareness stage. Awareness is really is, is, is, is, is, is, is super important.

Cole Abbott [0:49:59]

This is a version of self awareness. It is in that case.

Mark Abbott [0:50:02]

Yeah. Just a company version of self awareness. And so, you know, I, you know, I'm guilty of loving our own cooking, but, you know, I, I think understanding your stage, taking the assessment, right. Taking a look at how you're doing across the core.

Cole Abbott [0:50:22]

Link to the assessment.

Mark Abbott [0:50:23]

Huh?

Cole Abbott [0:50:23]

We'll link to the assessment.

Mark Abbott [0:50:24]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:50:25]

And the core competency is an assessment.

Mark Abbott [0:50:28]

Yep.

Cole Abbott [0:50:28]

Yeah. In the description.

Mark Abbott [0:50:33]

Yeah. Did you just break the fourth wall?

Cole Abbott [0:50:35]

A little bit. It's a little bit. Talking to the hot hands of, talking to Stephen said that. Yeah. So I don't forget after this to make that note. Yep.

Mark Abbott [0:50:47]

So, so yeah, I, I think, you know, that's, it's, it, that's my advice. It's what we teach. You know, I think that as you move from each stage to the next stage, you know, what you, what you want to figure out is, you know, how do I get sort of, you know, 80 to 90% of my team to be in the appropriate seats? Right. And that means, you know, obviously you need the stratum, you need the seats, and then you just need to be honest about what's going on and, and then as a part of that, right, having quarterly conversations, talking about what's working.

Cole Abbott [0:51:32]

What'S not working, and being very honest in those conversations.

Mark Abbott [0:51:36]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're, and they're just, they're two way conversations, right? It's how am I doing as your leader and your coach and how are you doing in terms of sort of mastering the things that are essential at this, for this particular seat at this particular time, given, you know, where we are and where we're going. And, and you know, and ultimately, you know, I, you know, we talk every single week at this, at the C suite, every single week. We talk about, you know, is anybody struggling? Or we got 190 some odd people. Is anybody struggling? What, you know, what do we need to do? And you know, we're at the place where, you know, you knock on wood.

Cole Abbott [0:52:25]

Wherever, go right onto the fire right here, right?

Mark Abbott [0:52:29]

Knock on wood. You know, we got 95 of people are sitting, you know, good, good humans believing what we're doing, good core value fits and they're sitting comfortably in their seat and, and so as you hit these stages, right, you, you have to be honest about where you are, where everybody is, and, and, and, and, and if you try to move faster than, than your organization's ready for, there's a lot of collateral damage. And I'm not, and I don't like collateral damage. I think that's bad on us as leaders.

Cole Abbott [0:53:08]

And there's in, in terms of the moving at that certain pace, which is both absolute in terms of like growth rate, but also relative in terms of the market.

Mark Abbott [0:53:18]

Mm.

Cole Abbott [0:53:19]

Because if someone I really like growing at 80% and then everything's growing at 40%, they can't just go, leave and join the place going to 80 because then that's going to be a bigger change than staying at the same place going to another place that's 40.

Mark Abbott [0:53:31]

Right.

Cole Abbott [0:53:32]

So it's all understanding that being consistent with that, Moving it right, 90 days at a time, doing that march, right, so that you can get, make sure everybody is comfortable in that environment is if you really open up the floodgates, go really fast, go twice as fast relative to what you should are normally doing relative to what the market's doing, you're going to really feel left behind.

Then you act rashly, you fire a lot of people, right? Then you go out and hire those people that really like to perform that way, and then you revert back to normal and then those people don't work and then it's, they're not happy, right.

Mark Abbott [0:54:07]

And then you got cultural issues and it's like, you know, you go too fast, you hire too fast, you don't have proper frameworks, mental models, if you will, for thinking about how the organization scales. And then all of a sudden, next thing you know, is, you know, you're doing a layoff of, you know, 20 or 30 people, 20, 30% of your people. And as you know, I, you know, that's, that's, that's a hundred percent on the leadership team, right. And yet it ends up being on those 20 to 30% of your people. That's so just, I just, that's, you know, you know, we, I, I'd, I, we, we're always thinking about making sure we're not being stupid and overly aggressive and, and, and, and having collateral damage like that. And because, because it just reflects on me. And you know, I've talked about it so much. You know, I, I, I, I worry that someday I'll be, I'll face it because I was stupid, but, and, and because I'm sort of karma oriented. But, but I think you know, this is why slow, smooth and smooth is fast, right. It takes time. Get your act together, feel like you've got your act together, relatively speaking, across the entire organization, up and down, right. Have your frameworks in place, have your systems for talking and staying connected. Get solid. Don't go too fast, don't go too slow. Because if you go too slow, right, either the market's going to, going to pass you by, you know, or people.

Cole Abbott [0:55:44]

Are going to slow down because they.

Mark Abbott [0:55:46]

Just don't have any opportunity to grow. Right. So you got to go hit that sort of that Goldilocks level. And, you know, and that's why, you know, I think one of the things that, that I believe, I have never done the research on this, right? But I believe CEOs, founders and CEOs should set growth rates, right? This is what we're going to do and get everybody aligned and then go do it. Right. And you need to decide whether it's a 10 rate or a 20 rate or whatever it is that you think is, is, is, is doable and make sense for your culture, your market, your company, the economy.

Yeah, there are a lot of factors in there, right? But, but, you know, just, you know, not having a target to me is unhealthy.

Cole Abbott [0:56:44]

What stage do you think that people should have a clear idea of what they're rough growth. Growth rate should be?

Mark Abbott [0:56:52]

Well, obviously, I don't think they should have a clear idea in stages one or stage two. Right. I would argue that in stage three, you should start, you know, having a decent sense for it. Clearly stage four and stage five, you should be setting growth rates.

Cole Abbott [0:57:09]

So stage three is when you should start figuring out what that is.

Mark Abbott [0:57:12]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:57:13]

And then by stage five, you should be pretty solid on what it is.

Mark Abbott [0:57:15]

Because, because in state, in, in stage three, you're, you're, you know, you, you know, stages one and two is you have a business. Stages four and five is you've, you, you, you, you're, you know, in stage five, you have a company. In stage four, a lot of times you have a company.

Stages one and two, there's a business. So stage three is that, is that transition to, hey, right, I'm not, I've got product market fit. I'm capable of hiring reasonably decent talent. Right. I am now proving that I can scale. Right? That's, that's the game you start playing in stage three. Prove you can scale. Prove you're capable as a founder, as a leader of scaling, right. Of attracting and retaining and putting systems in place. And, and at that's the, that's the stage where, you know, you don't have to. They don't have to be tight. Right. But 50 to 100%, because you should be growing reasonably well in stage three.

Cole Abbott [0:58:22]

All right, wrap this up with two questions.

Mark Abbott [0:58:24]

Okay.

Cole Abbott [0:58:25]

First, if you were to sum this chapter up in a sentence, what would that be?

Mark Abbott [0:58:34]

This chapter.

Cole Abbott [0:58:35]

What chapter? This year, however you want to be 16 months for the sake of this. Whatever makes it work better.

Mark Abbott [0:58:43]

For what we talk about, we talk about the chapters that, you know, we've had as company. And, And I believe we're going into what I call 94.0. Right. So this is the end of 93.0. I would say that the last year has been getting ready for 4.0. Right. It's higher, it's hiring, you know, putting in place.

Cole Abbott [0:59:12]

It's a horrible name for a chapter of a book.

Mark Abbott [0:59:14]

I know. All right, so I'm not letting you.

Cole Abbott [0:59:19]

Get away with that.

Mark Abbott [0:59:20]

I know, I know, I know.

Cole Abbott [0:59:21]

Your chapters one, two, getting ready for four and four.

Mark Abbott [0:59:26]

I mean, you know, I don't want to say, you know, getting ready for stage five, because I think we're in stage five. We're in stage five, but not like confidently.

Cole Abbott

[0:59:36]

We haven't executed with stage five.

Mark Abbott [0:59:38]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott [0:59:38]

That's how I would think about it.

Mark Abbott [0:59:40]

Yeah. Getting ready for AI. We've been working on it for years. Right. We're not ready yet because we're taking this bloody seriously. But it's more than that, right? Because I, I think it's also we're finally getting ready. We're finally developing the muscles associated with launching new products.

Cole Abbott [1:00:06]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott [1:00:07]

Right. So I, I think, I. I think. I think if you look at 2024, it was the year of taking. Well, 2024 was the year of taking product and engineering to the next level. Without question, 2025 is going to be about not only doing that, but taking marketing to the next level without question. Right. So I don't know if that's a good chapter name.

Cole Abbott [1:00:37]

It's not.

Mark Abbott [1:00:38]

Okay.

Cole Abbott [1:00:39]

It works.

Mark Abbott [1:00:40]

Okay.

Cole Abbott [1:00:42]

So you say something like building the foundations for launching or something like that. Foundations, I don't know. Whatever. That's the idea. I wasn't thinking about anything. I was just watching you struggle, like.

Mark Abbott [1:00:54]

Me driving the struggle bus.

Cole Abbott [1:00:58]

But you also kind of answered the next question, which is going to be, what are you most excited for about 2025?

Mark Abbott [1:01:04]

I'm excited with nervousness about revising our commercial model. So that's a big, big change. I'm excited and nervous about Launching our AI companion, which we haven't talked a lot about. Right. I'm excited and nervous about, you know, starting to incorporate AI into the tools. I'm excited and nervous about work 9.0. I'm excited and nervous about our positioning, revising our positioning so that we can do a better job of helping people appreciate why we deeply believe that everybody in the company should be on the same operating system so that you can see what's working, what's not working. Everybody gets the bigger picture. And you're giving everybody the opportunity not just to participate in the game you're playing, but to lean into sharing what success looks like for them and what the company can do, what their companies can do to help them grow and feel like they're thriving. So the Knowledge Management Portal initiative. Right. It's a big year.

Cole Abbott [1:02:33]

So you would describe your current mood as anxious? Excitement.

Mark Abbott [1:02:37]

Yes. Yeah. With just as much of anxiety as excitement. Yeah, it's a big. It's a. You know, we got a lot going on.

Cole Abbott [1:02:49]

I'm not anxious. Excited. Mark Abbott

[1:02:53]

Yeah, well, I. I gotta carry it on my right.

Cole Abbott [1:02:55]

Oh, yeah, you do.

Mark Abbott [1:02:56]

Yeah. Yeah.

Cole Abbott [1:02:58]

I just kind of watch laugh. I just sit in this chair.

Mark Abbott [1:03:03]

Yep.

Cole Abbott [1:03:04]

On the tv, falls on his face. But all the things that we're anxious about are within our control. That's why I don't feel anxious about it.

Mark Abbott [1:03:13]

No, you're. And, and, and I appreciate you helping me with a more rounded perspective on this stuff. So once again, I, you know, love and appreciate you. We're ending on that.

Cole Abbott [1:03:34]

That's cool. I love and appreciate you too. All right. That wrap. That's an awful way to end this. All right. Hope this was a fun end of year holiday special. Yeah.

Mark Abbott [1:03:55]

Coming.

Cole Abbott [1:03:55]

Coming out. You know, I think this gonna be released between Christmas and New Year's.

Mark Abbott [1:04:00]

Okay.

Cole Abbott [1:04:01]

So it'll be an interesting time here. Park City is crazy in that time of year.

Mark Abbott [1:04:08]

Yep.

Cole Abbott [1:04:09]

So looking forward to seeing it.

Mark Abbott [1:04:12]

Yeah. Looking forward to 2025.