Business 1.0

So I’m on a train, hustling, banging out emails chatting with clients, you know the usual.  But, today we have off.  That is a problem.

Execs often build perks in their companies that they actually want people to take, but when YOU don’t take them, it makes people feel nervous about taking them. The more innovative your perks, the more likely people haven’t seen them before. I know it’s weird, but guess what? Its real.  I’ve been in my company so long that the concept of a false perk is completely foreign. For a lot of folks that is NOT the case.

When you have days off, or you are working on the weekends and you TRULY don’t want people feeling like “oh the boss emailed me, so I have to respond” you have to send out an email like this:

It signals to your company that you are confirming that you actually want people to take the time off.  The higher up you are in the org, the MORE important these emails are. Why?

Because it signals to your execs and managers that they should respect people’s time off / perk usage. It lets people in lower positions of power, say…well the CEO said, or my Director said. It empowers people from interns on up to push back on managers not living the values, it gives them a little cover to say “hey I’m confused, you were working on XYZ day, and expected me to answer but [EXECUTIVE A] send this out.

Remember you have to send these REGULARLY!!  In any fast growing company, you are bringing on so many people so fast that you’ll feel like you’ve said it 10,000 times, so say it 10,001. Before you blink 25% of your company wasn’t even here for the last time you emailed that out.

Move your seat

Crystal, our company President leaves often for kid duty, she is not in the office at 4:30 most days, when she is off, she is OFF (usually). That sends a great signal to the company.  I also advocate for execs moving their seats regularly so more of the company can see you living it out your perks, if you stay on the same floor, then those people know you live out your perks, but the rest of the company doesn’t see it. Thx hubspot for the tip.

Force other execs to do it

Crystal sat me down and said Wil, you have to pick at least 6 fridays this summer where you leave the office for Seer’s “Summer Hours” she said its important for people to see you take them this year, so I did.  I scheduled 6-8 lunch dates with my son at a park near the office.  And while many times, I ended up playing with him for 30-60 minutes before he wanted to nap, I GOT OUT, and worked from home instead.  

Track the people who don’t use vacation

The big “trap” of unlimited vacation is that people don’t take it.  Which is why I was so stoked one day when Sayf Sharif our Analytics director build a conditionally formatted sheet that tracks who has been working w/o taking vacation…he even went so far as to say, I expect you to take at least X weeks…so by the end of the month, if you are less than X, you must fill out days you plan on taking off by the end of the year.  (He did this after only being in the company for 3 months, it was great to see).

Another important thing to do…make your managers approve a minimum % of vacations, so you don’t have a “perk” that people in lower positions of power feel are false.

2 inconvenient truths about getting a late night email

#1 - I like it. I know its a contradiction, but its the truth.

Being an exec is lonely, working on that proposal, budget, launch in the wee hours, when you know almost everyone else is sleeping is lonely.  There are times, when that email comes in late at night or on the weekend that says “Man, this person has got my back, it’s not just me out here.”  That feels good sometimes.  I know it contradicts much of what I said above, but it feels good sometimes and that is the truth . No one likes to feel alone, no one. Including execs. Sometimes that late night email is just the fuel needed.  I’ll figure that out someday, but for now it is a sad truth of how it feels.

#2 I Unapologetically love my work

The last thing I’ll say is I unapologetically love my job. Therefore work on the weekends and nights is often, as weird as this might be for most…fun.  The feeling that I’m working while others are sleeping, or balancing work / life in their way is a bit addicting.  

I get off on doing the hard shit, others say they want and quit on the path to doing.  

If you are one of these people and find yourself working in a company that is saying “hey don’t work on days off” tell your manager!  Its ok to say, hey I appreciate it, I really do, but I’m a muthafuckin’ hustler, and a big girl…so I know when I need a break. That signals to your manager that you are one of us, the rare breeds who get more energy most times off of doing the hard work, and that drive for doing the hard work is important enough to you, that you don’t even think about the weekends as time to recharge, you see it as just another day to slay some shit. 

Just don’t expect others to do the same, that isn’t fair, if it goes against the perks you’ve built.

I’ve had several conversations with people at Seer now that I run strategy where they ask me how to become more strategic, I took that advice and put it together here.

First question to ask yourself is: 

Does my client / manager see me as a consultative strategist, or an execution partner?

Note: Execution partners are key to driving results, never get too far from that while seeking to improve your consulting skills, your UBER X driver is an execution partner…they help you get from location A to B, and if that is a job interview or a big pitch, its critical to be there on time, it may not be strategic but its critical. Anyone can talk, not everyone can back it up, always seek to be strong on execution!

Anyway with that caveat said…if you are wondering if your client / manager sees you as a thought partner do they ask you questions like these?

Here are sample “sights and sounds” I’ve seen when clients saw someone as a thought partner:

• What am I not seeing coming down the pike that could impact the results we have?
• How do our numbers stack up against competitors?
• What am I not asking of you to do for us that I should be?
• Should I consider solving this problem with another team?
• Can I have a strategy session with you? I’d like to discuss more than the day to day. I have a BIG idea/challenge I want your optics on.
• What else does your agency do that could help us?
• Even if you don’t have skill xyz in house, I’d like you to manage the other consults we hire.
• Note: if you are being managed by a consultant, you are the execution partner.
• I have XYZ left in my budget, how might you recommend we spend it?
• I heard about trend ABC, how would that impact me, how do I hedge against that, do you think its a risk for me?
• If I took all my budget and gave it to you instead of other partners, what do you think you could do for me?
• How big of a risk is this? Should I prioritize this in Q1, Q2, etc? Is this a 2017, 18, or 19 problem?
• Can you help to connect these day to day tasks with our larger vision?

If you have read these questions and are thinking, I haven’t been asked these and I want to be more consultative & seen as more of a consultant.  Here is the secret about getting questions like these:

The secret is that it was never executing what I was asked to do that made my clients think of me as a strategic thought partner, I had to show them something real that made them think of me as more than the guy they hired for whatever task they thought they needed me to do.

The three ingredients you need to level up in that strategic consultant / thought partner level are:

1 - Opinions You have to be ok taking data making an opinion and saying to your client / manager, I might be wrong, but I believe (stress the word believe) that (blah blah blah).

2 - Never lose sight of the goal Understanding your clients true goal, be careful of confusing the outputs (tasks) you are doing with the outcome (why you are performing those tasks).

3 - Downside - Protect their downside on your big ideas, always find a cheap way to test, get data, refine, then go big.

With those three things, you can start asking questions like the ones below to start your client thinking of you more and more as a thought partner and an execution partner. Remember even if they say no, they will think of you differently.

Find a trend in their space and prepare a high level 5 steps to prepare for said trend:

We haven’t talked (trend) yet I’m seeing in your data, that (percentage) of your (task goal) could be impacted by (trend), which could long term have a (percentage) impact on (revenue goal). As such I’ve prepared an (duration) road map on how we can tackle this growing trend. If it remains at (percentage growth YoY), I believe (duration) works. However, if (percentage growth YoY) goes to (stretch number) then we should (accelerate/decelerate) our time investment in (trend) by x (months/quarters/years). Can I spend 5-10% of my time investigating this for you?

IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

Hi Rich, we haven’t talked about answer boxes in search results yet, but I’ve put together an analysis that shows the impact to your traffic looks to be about 20%, which could ultimately impact your revenue via this channel by 10%, meaning you’d miss your annual goals.  Here is a 12 month road map, that shows how with 2-3 hours a month we can start to understand the problem, monitor it, and take some small steps to address them.  If for some reason this percentage jumps to 30% or more (which we will be monitoring) we might want to accelerate this schedule to 9 months to take advantage of these moves early.  I’m recommending to all clients to take me up on 2-3 hours of work to take a look this month.

Find another channel that if invested in could accelerate revenue:

I know you’ve hired us for (service), but I’m looking at the entire landscape of ways to hit your (goal) and believe that an investment in (other channel) could get you to (goal) (x percent) faster.  If it were me, I’d double down on (other service) cutting back (my service) by (percentage) for (months/quarters), may I spend 3 hours this month with one of my colleagues in (other service) to see if my gut is right?

IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

Hi Jenn, I know you’ve hired us for SEO, but I’m looking at recent changes with Google and realizing we’ve lost more organic real estate. That has to have an impact on organic’s ability to hit your goal this year, to be honest I think us taking a look at your paid search opportunities could help us hit your overall goal by October this year instead of eeking it out in December.  I’d invest more of my time in finding ways for SEO to help PPC, which means I’m going to have to cut back a few hours/month on SEO tasks, to help bolster my PPC teams efforts.  I think if I can do this for the next 2 quarters, we’ll be in a position to pick back up on SEO 100%, instead of my suggested 50% for the next 6 months. Can I spend 3 hours with my PPC team to see if the opportunity is as big as I think?

Looking forward / needing more investment:

What would you need to see from me in (duration) that would make you double down on your investment in us? What data points would be an early indicator to make you reconsider in 6 months?

IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

Hi Bart, before we get started on this project, I’d love to see in your opinion what would you need to see in month 6 to make you want to double your investment with us? Also what would make you cut it at month 6?  I want to build an early warning system so that if we are not on pace to hit the goal you and I both know it and can have the conversation early, and build a plan B.

Explain an execution risk:

In my opinion, based on my experience and the experiences of (my team/manager) who have seen (number) of projects just like this one, even on our best day if you and I are commited to moving heaven and earth for (project x) we have a (percentage) change of failure if we don’t get (department/person) on board.  How could you and I work together to make them part of the solution at the onset, so we can realize (x impact) in (y time).

If we get to (duration) and we don’t have (percentage) impact, I’m going to be looking to pivot (project) into areas (a,b,c) where you and I have a greater sphere of influence, which would likely result in an impact of (x) instead of our initial project of Y).

IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

Hi Crystal, I have gotten with 3 colleagues (including my director) who have seen 50 projects just like ours to ask them what makes projects like these successful and what makes them fail, given what I know about your goals and your business climate internally. I know you and I are extremely committed to the success of this project, you and I also know that we need others to care as much as we do to be successful.  If we don’t get everyone on board in the design and UX departments, this project is highly likely to stall, even with our full efforts and the best of intentions, how might we get them involved? My manager and colleagues have given me these 5 recommendations that they have seen work in the past, let me know which one or ones you think would work for us, and I’ll get on crafting the documents, trainings, and presentations.

While we are best intentioned, I want to put on my calendar a “line in the sand” on execution risk.  I believe that if at 5 months we have not hit the following 3 milestones, that we would have gone from an 80% likelihood to a 30% likelihood of hitting your goals of 3 million in revenue by Q3.    As such, if we don’t, my plan B is to at that time do the following 4 things, which are less impactful, but more within our sphere of influence, so while I need everything to work out right to get that 3 Million, I think if we run into execution roadblocks we can get to 2.3 Million of that 3 with these other tactics you can I have more control over.

Realizing "full universe”:

Based on my experience & research, if we keep growing at (x), we’re likely to start hitting peak market share attainment, I have confirmed with (number) colleagues (or read x paper) who confirm that in the (x) industry, that is a reasonable expectation.  Given current trends we are projected to realize that ceiing in the next (months/quarters/years). I recommend I spend (x) percent of my time, sniffing out new opportunities as the marginal value of (current thing I am doing) should start to dry up and not get the lift it once did, and I want to make sure we still are on pace to attain (goal x) set by the executive team. I can get started on this in 6 weeks if we approve this week.  I’ll give you more details, just getting a temp check on this concept.

IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

Hi Sara, I have done some digging and if we keep growing at 120% we’re probably going to start running into fewer and fewer opportunities at the current ROI we’re driving.  I’ve done my digging across the web, and spoken with a few execs here at Seer who have come across this issue before.  When I ran my projections by them they agreed that there is a chance we could start topping out our impact in the next 18-24 months.  I’d love to spend 10 hours this month finding new opportunities, we’ve already hit goal for the year of 2 Million in revenue, and its 3 months to go till your fiscal year.  The marginal value of getting 10 links a month just doesn’t seem to be paying the dividends they did when we started 3 years ago, I want to make sure we start planning for the changes to come next fiscal year, so we can have a game plan to hit goal for that year. Can I deploy that 10 hours and return to you what I found & my recommendations?

Show them a new reality that destroys current reality

I know you asked me to do (task) and to hit (tactical goal), I’ve attained that (x) (months/quarters/years) in a row. However in that time I haven’t had time to research (trend), and did you know that while I’ve been hitting your (tactical goal) I’ve been ignoring (bigger trend). Who is watching your back on the rise of (consultative opp)? May I work with them (or run it myself), to spend x% of my time this (month/quarter) to build a plan to help us take advantage of (new reality).  I believe that even if I get (x) more of (tactical goal) the marginal value of that is smaller than the (wide open field) that (competitor 1,2,3) are not even seeing.  I feel that we’ll have (months) to take advantage before all the others wise up.

IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

I’ve been hooked on the TV show “The Profit” for a few seasons now. The show records a driven entrepreneur’s journey as she continues to invest her life and money into her struggling business to make it work - no matter what the costs. This isn’t another get rich fast, enlightening path to self-discovery through a start-up business type of reality show. Like Shark Tank, which basically is a show built around celebrating people “raising money” which does not mean “running a successful business”. What I love about The Profit is that you can see the real PAIN on the business owners’  faces, hear it their voices, and feel the hurt, disappointment, confusion, and fear.  To me, THIS is entrepreneurship: the never ending cycle of self doubt, the constant comparison of your startup to others, and the hope of being handed the “I’m proud of you” torch.

From the time they wake up, until the time they go to sleep, entrepreneurs’ minds pound with the never tiring, always drilling questions:

• Am I working too much? Or too little?
  
• Am I too greedy? Or too generous?
  
• Is the company outgrowing me, or am I outgrowing the company?
  
• Is there too little in the bank? Or too much?
  
• (Yes there is a such thing as too much, if you are under-investing in growth)
  
• Should I sell, should I ride it out?
  
• Is so-and-so on my team happy? Or are they looking for a new gig?
  
• Should I staff in advance assuming they’ll leave? Or wait until they leave and be strapped?
  
• Should I let person Y go? Or keep them, even though they are good for the business but not for the company culture?
  

These are the thoughts that pulse in an entrepreneur's’ mind, every year of EVERY. SINGLE. DAY

I recently read the post, Why I left my $254,895 PM Role at Microsoft. It gave the vibe of every other “break-away from the corporate grind” to find self-discovery posts that I’ve read before. But I feel like for every 100 self-discovery posts, there is maybe one, true self-discovery. In all honesty - that’s a reminder  that entrepreneurship sucks. It’s tough. Its posts like, “how quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up” that depict the more raw, turbulent challenges an entrepreneur faces every day his business is running.

The common belief that running your own business gives you time to do things on your own time was a farce for me. Back when I had my corporate gig, every Friday in the summer I’d take half of a vacation day and drive down early to the Jersey Shore, the good one, not the MTV one. I’d avoid all of the traffic and arrive at the beach before it was crowded. I’d make it to my “shore house” before my 15 roommates showed up.  It was great!  The following year, I started SEER; I can confidently say that my relaxing, care-free beach weekends never happened again. Starting my own business meant I missed a lot of Fridays with my friends down the beach,I was often the LAST guy down,and  scrambled to find a bed. It meant I took a tablet or laptop to the beach instead of a book.

It was then that I had an “oh shit moment.” Yes, working for someone else has a whole crapton of negatives - but there was also a large positive: vacation days, the ability to get to see my friends, chances to let my guard down, and opportunities to fully relax.

The biggest casualty of entrepreneurship is time and open “headspace”. With all of the pros of what this company has provided for me and wife, it comes with an additional heavy weight - lack of free time on weekends or a clear head most days. It’s not that I spend less time with my wife, Nora, my dog Coltrane, or my new son Rio. The change is that now I have placed such a high priority on our time together - I’ve had to become ridiculously stingy with the other people in my life who want my time outside of work. People at this point must be confused, thinking I’m the most social, anti-social guy they’ve ever met. There are so few days where I am not needed or wanted - that every time there is a weekend event, family gathering, wedding, or cocktail party -  I kind of hate going because it takes time away from my wife, son and dog. The free time I have on weekends I spend, learning, laughing, or trying to find a sliver of time with my GOOD friends.

That is sad, but it’s part of my first casualty of entrepreneurship. More casualties will come; they have a habit of rearing their heads slowly. My wife now drags when she has to book a wedding, because  she knows if that weekend is available, I’d much rather sit around and do nothing or kick it with her and my pooch, instead of spending my weekend at a very joyous affair. Its another mandate on my time, which if I had my druthers, would only be spent with VERY close friends and family. Every entrepreneur will have their first casualty. For me, because it’s a high priority to keep time with my wife (which I have kept), but in return, I basically look at every other non-work request as a burden on the little bit of free time I have in which I have headspace to play, read, run, learn something new, and enjoy.

Solving it..

I could make the company more autonomous, but that puts you right back into the cycle.

I could hire more people to get more time back into my life, but this could ding margins big time, maybe even put the company in a long term bad place. Or worse, maybe not get to know the people I work with. Am I too far gone where now every request on a weekend is a burden?

Do I have the $$ in the bank to afford someone who can fill in for me?

Then will I trust them, how long will that take, and what if they don’t work out?

Oh yeah, there it is again, the voices of

fear

self doubt

confusion

worry.

Push

Pull.

Get used to it, entrepreneur. This is what you signed up for and it is awesome, you’ll avoid burnout (I have) by just saying no more and more, and when people give you a hard time about that, ask yourself…am I spending time with the people who matter? If that answer is yes, you are doing the right thing.

ok, one more….if i had to offer any advice, its get in tune with where you get energy, its critical to helping you know what to say yes and no to w/o feeling overwhelmed. For me its spending time with my family, learning new things, doing work I enjoy, and watching people grow.  For others, like Nora, time with friends is a big part of how she gets hers, on top of time wirh family, doing meaningful work, etc.

PS my son is literally crying right now (and has been for 5 minutes), so I’m gonna cut this short, where’s my wife to help while I write?  Out to dinner with friends, solo. I think I’ll feed him, and take him and the dog for a walk, ahhh that’s a GREAT sunday, time with Just Rio and Coltrane.  Nora, hope you come home soon.

Almost 2 years ago Rand Fishkin and I announced that we were going to try a little experiment, swapping CEO roles and running each other’s company for a week - see how tired I am every time they cut to me? It wasn’t an easy task.

Anyway, I wanted to say thank you Rand & Moz & Moz’s investors  & Seer Execs for letting us do the swap, here we are 2 years later (My 3 week old son, Rio is literally crying as I write this on my last day, so expect typos) and I can see things at Seer that we are doing, that have impacted our company in big and small ways.

Hey Moz, Rio is wondering if there are onsies out there somewhere? :)

Ok, on to the changes we’ve made…

Moz vs Seer - Maternity Leave & Paternity Leave

In one of my conversations it came to my attention that Moz has equal maternity and paternity leave, I believe its 4 months, paid at 100%.  While I couldn’t match that (Seer was 3 months, at like 70%-90% pay), but we didn’t have paternity leave for the dads.  Me being the kind of guy I am, I said, we should do that too, and we did.  By implementing that company wide, I was just able to spend 6 weeks working an extremely reduced schedule (I was probably at 10-15 hours a week vs my typical 55-60 ish) and spend time with my new son, Rio and my wife. I am also easing back over the next 2 weeks.  I don’t know if I would have had a facility to do that w/o the swap, b/c I might not have ever been challenged on that.  

As such, I have gotten to spend SO much time with my son, and be an equal partner with my wife. It feels good to have done that and invested this time, it feels GREAT to have made it a part of Seer that every mother and father have equal access to, it costs us a lot of money, its some of the best spent money in our budget.

Moz vs Seer - Nursing Rooms

Newsflash, I don’t nurse babies as a result I didn’t know much about the process.  

During the swap Rand dropped the idea of building a room for mothers under our stairs…for Crystal and any other mothers (we’ve had a ton of babies born since Crystal’s little one). Now moms don’t have to try to book a conference room, look for a room with locks, etc.

I’m glad to say Rand, we have space for 3 stations for mothers in our new office. Without the swap, that may have never happened, and my lack of exposure would have made a lot of people at Seer’s lives a bit tougher.

Guess what Rand?  When one of our folks (Charlotte) who interviewed us both after the swap had her little one, Ryan who runs the San Diego office, rallied the team and somehow they turned a closet into a pump room, that was all them, they saw what we did in Philly and found a way in a cramped office to make a nursing area a priority.

Moz vs Seer - Google Groups

I remember when I was answering emails, that one day a Moz LGBT list popped into my inbox (as I understand it its for anyone who wants to keep on top of issues / support, etc, so its all inclusive).  I had no idea you all had such an active list, and while Seer has had a couple openly LGBT folks, if we do today they are not open.  But if we ever have a few, a group will be made if they want it.  I am pretty sure, that you also had a group for parents. Seer now does too, as a result of me seeing how you all use groups at Moz.  That list provides us parents with anything from a “here’s where to save money” to a “OMG what did you do” to a place to share pictures with one another.

Its a support system, and I never thought of creating groups like that within a company.

Thanks again Rand, you might not know if the impact was felt - I hope this post shows you that a year and a half later, not only have I made some changes (more to come in part II), but Seer has made institutional changes, we’ve learned and put things in action.

As you are aware, I try to take a mix of heart driven and data driven approach to working at SEER.

So I decided to look at our Holiday Policy with a little data after years of looking at it with heart.

In brief our holiday policy lasts from Dec 23rd - Jan 3rd (usually).It is a don’t come INTO the office, stay home with your family, but be available for your clients and co-workers if they need you, policy. If you wanna be “off-off” then just use your vacation days which are unlimited anyway.

That could be 1 hour a day, 0, or 10 depending on if a fire comes up or not.  As a big fan of Speed of Trust - we don’t monitor people’s time, we just believe that they’ll do what’s right when it comes to helping teammates and clients.  So this year many people tacked on a day or two and were out of the office working a heavily reduced schedule for 2 weeks. Perfect, it gives people time.

For some reason I wanted to see if I could get a pulse on how many emails were sent during the holiday as a one barometer of are we giving a “false” perk, but people are working all the time? So I asked our IT manager if Gmail gives reports on how many emails were sent, upon which I then found that we could go all the way back to July 9th to look at emails sent by day.

I found some very interesting data, by simply converting the dates in the CVS export from MIke. I was able to get this data set . A little pivot table magic, and voila!

First, my assumptions:

• July-January SEER had an average of 90 employees.
• Sent emails is a better gauge of what you have to respond to vs what you receive
• This obviously would miss things like working on projects / hours and updates in basecamp, but we work so much in email that this is a decent barometer.
• Let me say again, a lot of our work can be outside of email. So I am using email more as a relative scale (how much does it drop) over the typical daily workflow.

Warning: I don’t even know if we can do this at the individual level, but DONT DO IT!  This is about a barometer on the company, if you start looking at individuals and how many emails they sent, you have LOW TRUST in your team and you’ll have a lot bigger problems.

First thing I noticed:

Holy shit people’s emails sent drop by 95.81% from the peak (wednesday) to saturday at an average of .68 emails sent per employee, and 1.168 on Sunday.

Average emails sent: Saturday = 61.2

Average emails sent : Sunday = 104.4

What inflates this number is the 6 person leadership team. Anecdotally I know we work more on weekends, because I get emails from them on weekends more than anyone. To check that I used conspire to look at my personal weekend emails as you can see on Saturday Dec 20th, I sent 34 emails

The whole darn company only sent 58!

So on Saturday Dec 20th, 20 emails were sent by 89 people (of which most of the 20 were probably leadership team).  That makes me pretty happy.

Since that was the holiday break I picked another random date October 18th.  I sent 13 emails, the company sent 66. Again knowing that the exec team is probably 50%, not bad.  Especially on Sundays when Crystal does her updates, she’s been known to put out 15-20 emails starting on Sunday 9:00pm EST, as she gets ready for the week :)

I also decided to look at hours, even though I don’t like using hours b/c its too dirty, as getting 100 people to track their hours the same way is impossible, like I didn’t clock any hours on Oct 18th, but obviously I worked, you saw the email sends above (I’m, bad I know), so that means this number is under reporting in terms of hours, but it was a check against the issue of e-mail only work vs reporting, strategy work.

Saturday was 98.09% less hours than the peak of Tuesday

Sunday was 95.91% less hours than the peak of Tuesday

How can you use the data to check your company trends, you can also look at days of the week benchmark this against yourself.  

Hours Trend

Hours Trend

(note, someone let their timer go ape shit and forgot to stop it!)

Individual day peak email sent (holiday week) = 470
Individual day peak email sent (random selected week) = 1388

66% drop in emails during the holiday break, I like that!

Individual day peak hours work (holiday week) = 266
Individual day peak hours work (random selected week) = 775

66% drop in hours during the holiday break, I like that!

There are so many gray areas in perks, that maybe a check against them from time to time is one way to make sure you are staying true.

The next thing for us to do is interview our clients and see if we did a good job covering their bases and getting things done when they needed us.

At a time when company after company is releasing its diversity data

http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco-shares-workforce-diversity-data

http://www.microsoft.com/global/en-us/diversity/RenderingAssets/Microsoft_EEO-1_Report_2014.pdf

Maybe we could start looking at other important metrics too, vacation days used, sick days, emails sent, you name it.

I also realize that sending email is not the only way to measure but again its a barometer and a start, its why I also looked at hours.  Maybe we can evaluate every quarter @ SEER.

The goal is not to compare yourselves to anyone, the goal is to look at the numbers and as a leader ask yourself, is that what I’d like?  Am I happy with it?  Then based on that stay the course or change direction.

If you find other ways to look at this data let me know, I’d love to use it to help make SEER just slightly better tomorrow than it was today.

Thank you!

–Wil

Before I get on with the Covenant House Sleepout tonight, I wanted to just let those of you who have donated over the past three sleepouts thank you.  That is pushing close to 50k over 3 years.

There is just one thing I want to remind you all, tonight sleeping outside is going to be tough, given that we’ll get down to 26-27 degrees. 1 night is symbolic at best, but it in NO WAY means I can empathize fully with what our kids at the covenant house are going through.

That is for one simple reason…tomorrow morning when I wake up (well lets be honest I’ll never actually get to sleep much) I have a house, a wife, a dog, a support system, co-workers, money in the bank, etc. In other words, I’ll not feel that hopeless feeling tonight when I put my head down on my carbdoard box. I’ll know its temporary. 

I’ll appreciate what my life provides me a bit more. Your donations, provide more than a HOME, it provides HOPE.  That is the most valuable thing. The feeling in these young adults that homeless doesn’t define you, its a temporary state.  Hope sticks with you, it makes you work harder, allows you to brush off the bad days, and that is what your donations are doing, it starts with providing shelter that is just the first step, the money you’ve donated goes to programs that do more than keep our kids warm.  It gives them computer lessons, clothes to go on interviews, transitional housing so they have an address to put on a resume all that in a word…HOPE.

See you in the morning, thank you for your support.

You can still donate - Help me break 20k!

I’ve never been afraid to talk about turnover or hiring at SEER, I started 5 years ago writing about the stuff, never been afraid to go open kimono, after all it is the TRUTH! For me, I write about turnover for a few reasons.

1. Personally, its a record of my growth, change in perspectives, etc as I grow up.  Its funny to see how I felt about turnover at 25 people vs 100 people.
2. Not enough people write about this and share their feelings or data publicly, I’ve never been worried about that transparency, b/c the open honest data speaks for itself.
3. It helps future hires know our approach. Some people might say its bad PR for SEER, I disagree, I think we owe it to future hires, current team mates, and to ourselves to take a data driven and heart driven look at turnover and the impact of our decisions.

That post from 5 years ago still gets play- and people are still saying it helps them. About 18 months ago I wrote this part where I looked more for the data side, and learned a ton of lessons.

In that post I even talked about my early days when I wasn’t a student of the interview, how I had involuntary turnover at the 60-65% range in the early early days.  I trusted everyone in the interview, didn’t dig in, and as a result within weeks I knew I made a mistake.  I knew I had to fire quick if I wasn’t going to be good at hiring, that sucked, and I vowed to get better.

Turnover is scary and managers need to realize that, as we have all the whole story locked up in our brains, but the friends of the people you let go don’t.

So here I am 18 months later, more data, let me show you what i am tracking to see if SEER is truly getting better at hiring.

Here is a snapshot of my data set, there are some small discrepancies, but overall I feel very confident about the numbers. 

(I’ve deleted the exact #’s so people don’t spend time trying to figure out who is who as that was not my intention at all, but just to be really transparent, you’ll have to trust me on that).

First the categories.

Raw vs Adjusted Quits - If someone left to start a family or take care of a sick family member, I first hope they enjoy the time starting a family, or that their sick family members are doing better. But that, people who move for sig others jobs, to move back home, or to totally leave the industry are different than someone who moves b/c they wanted to work at a competitor, or they were a bad match for SEER, or were recruited away. Some people overlap both categories, like we have had someone move, who we both knew this wasn’t a match, those are the people who I put in the bad match category. I wasn’t sad to see them leave when they moved, which is different than those I was.

I defined a lot of my categories above
Mutual bad match is one where we and that person knew it wasn’t a great match, this happens.

Recruited away is one where someone who we wanted to stay was recruited away and in the exit interview stated such.  They were not actively looking.

Fired Culture is for the super haters, sorry to say it this way but spitting on employees while you are angry with them, sexually harassing a colleagues friends, and showing up at people’s houses at 2-3am uninvited wasted repeatedly are just examples of firing for culture. 

Fired wrong person / not enough time to train is for the people who I shouldn’t have let us hire in the first place, but I did. They then needed a ton of training to potentially add value greater than their cost, and we had to make the tough call.

Fired my mistake is the introspective view of myself.  Its someone I fired who it wasn’t the right thing for us, for us or for our clients, I jumped the gun. I shouldn’t have. I wish this person was here.

Fired performance is someone who has the skills to do a job in SEO/SEM/Marketing/Etc -  but we made the mistake of hiring someone competent just at the wrong level at that time (many people have been let go and completely leveled up later in their careers, we knew they would). This also includes promoting someone into a role that was too big for them. We should have taken it slower and give them training and support to grow into it, and given OUR growth @ SEER the amount of leveling up needed was almost insurmountable, much less without official training. it was one of those tough decision, do we train and hope they level up or alleviate the pressure on them, so they can find their next opportunity? Sometimes we train and wait but sometimes we have to part ways.

Question 1 - Are we hiring just to replace who we lost or are we really growing?

Then I wanted to break this down further, some turnover it inevitable, if that comment above was all people who quit for reasons related to not wanting to be at SEER, that would be a bigger problem.

The 50% line would have been break even (I know I could have used a better chart), but in that month I’m able to see it was still pretty bad, as only added net 1 hire.

I recommend you create an acceptable, ideal, and unacceptable range, quarters when you hit unacceptable, you must re-evaluate yourself, you company’s ability to retain, your managers ability to work with your team, after all bad managers are the #1 reason why people leave. This will help you keep yourself honest.  You must do exit interviews so you can categorize people better.

Note, as Anne Holland once said to me when we had 100% retention (minus involuntary turnover).  If no one ever wants to leave that is a problem, she said.

Question 2: Are you not seeing bad matches that are not willing to quit? Are you letting culture issues stay? Managers fire people sometimes, it sucks for all included, but it is part of the job.

Remember firing people is a time for deep-self reflection, most times, YOU missed something in the interview process or YOU promoted someone into the wrong role, or too early, or YOU didn’t give someone the support they needed to do the job at the level you expected. Yes its always nice to remove a burden on other team members or yourself, but you put your team in that position.  People don’t hire themselves, YOU DO. People don’t promote themselves, YOU DO!

People are…people.  They will interview well, they will say the right things, so hoping to have 0% baseline is not realistic for a company who wants to push the envelope.  Again, a highly innovative company might be hire than one who is OK with a certain group being there w/o innovating. 

Some big old companies have set this bar at 10%, like GE. With 305,000 employees worldwide, that is 30k firings per year.  Its their way of addressing innovation. I applaud them building something that scales (as it has to).  Sticking it to though, forces you to fire fire people who might otherwise be good people, so I’d never do that!! Microsoft got rid of their system.

Remember its good to have a quarter or two where you have 0, but if as you get bigger some firings mean you are not leveling up, as you ask your entire company to pivot or level up, its only inevitable that some people may not.

“What got you here, may not get you there”

Question 3: Why do they quit?

You can make your own categories, but fight your desire to put people in categories that make you feel better about yourself.  I do this, I stack the # of quits graph on top of one another!

Additionally you should also create a baseline.  

At SEER I see we are on Raw at an average of around 5% and adjusted at around 2%. For adjusted we’ve held down Under 2% for 20 months, I’ll take it. For raw, we are also under 5%, I don’t know how that stacks up to other agencies, but it feels right to me. A spike or dip may happen, the overall trend will tell you if you are getting better or not. We are in a highly competitive industry with a LOT of recruiters calling, so consider that.

Note: One thing to be careful of, is your numbers can be artificially low, so keep an eye on if people are just putting in “their 1 year” and leaving. If you’ve made a lot of hires recently, this could make this seem smaller than it is.

So that leads me to the next chart. You have to discount people who are staying their 1 year, so this is how I am doing it…any ideas on how to do this better?

The thing I care most about is that this is going down over the 5 quarters that matter most, however if we don’t keep growing we could run into a position where people want to advance in their careers and we don’t have roles, which is OK, or that we are not creating stronger Individual contributor tracks causing people who don’t want to go into management to leave.

I bet you feel different about your company at 25 than you do at 100 or 200, or 500?  People may opt out of that kind of company as you grow, that is also OK.  You may now realize and they may realize that something is different.  I tend to believe, and have blogged about the fact that growth is a retention strategy.

For every 1-2 few who opt out and leave b/c they enjoy the smaller company, there are maybe 6-7 who enjoy the opportunities growth opens up to them, allowing them to stay at a company and level up in their careers.

Note, people who are quitting in their first year, is a major red flag, if you see more than a few of these you should start digging in immediately, are you not setting expectations right?

Questions I can not answer yet, but have the data in the right format.

How many people who have been here for 12 months make it to 24 months trended out.  How is our retention of year 2 employees, year 3, etc, etc.  I feel like getting that info will help us understand roles / opps for people who have done 18+ months at SEER.  Any ideas?

Firing in clumps happens, its scary, but in an industry that constantly evolves, and in a company that constantly attracts talent, our clients deserve working with people with tenacity, they might not know everything about every change at Google, but they are constantly learning, improving and getting better.

You can not improve what you do not measure, and I think any exec in  a growing company must evaluate this.  We need benchmarks, I am just now making these up, but we should have benchmarks to make sure our lack of patience at times does not lead to us making rash decisions.

Also to make your company better exit interviews are key.

I’ve said it several times, but former employees, are some of SEER’s best referral sources, for business and for team mates. I wrote about it here in a post about 5 ex-employees I still have tight bonds with.

People leaving or getting fired is part of life, how we treat each other after is up to us.  Whats most awesome is that is what my role and our managers role is, people will come and go, that is inevitable, how we treat each other on the way out, how do we set people up for their next opportunity that is all that TRULY matters!

NOT EVERYTHING IS going to show up in your spreadsheet!! That is why the combination of heart and data is always the way to look at turnover.

Managers remember to check the qualitative parts too, how do people leave? Are people referring you employees or business, how much notice are you Of our last 6 departures we had:

• (1) 3 months notice
• (2) 2 months notice
• (3) 1 month notice
• (1) 3 week notice + consulting

I wanted to look back and see if we are really loving the employees who leave, like I said in that post, well in the last 6 weeks (as you saw) we have had a good amount of departures, some aren’t recorded yet but when I went to check that gut I found all these opportunities to ask, are we trying to do the right thing?  Given what I saw below, I think we are getting better every day!

Here is me, introducing one to a client for a job opp in SF!

A little birdie who just left, referred us a new team member:

The adios emails as people leave are often pretty touching!

or this one:

or this one

Heck even some we had to let go the first one, and someone who mutually realized we weren’t the right fit even wrote us days ago!

Heck, sometimes we even refer them business for their new consulting business or keep them on as consultants!

Being a  good “boss” is about one of my core beliefs, Kaizen.  

You must seek to get better everyday, you need to repeat yourself more, and just when you feel like everyone in your company knows how you feel about something, repeat it again! 

You never become a good boss, everyone is different, every situation is new. Use a mix of data and heart, and you can keep working on being a good boss, but its not a destination, its a journey. 

Every hire you make that is wrong is YOUR FAULT!  Start with that belief, whether they quit or you have to fire them, start with it being your fault.  Look for what you could have learned then work backwards.

Sometimes people leave for family, could you have given them 6 month unpaid leave?

People want to move, could you have let them work remote?

Then ask yourself if that the kind of company you want to build?? If the answer is no, there you have it…management.

No solution is ever 100% so have a guiding principle and stick to it, it’ll make tougher decisions easier to make. 

Like Ron Garrett commented on this post, Jeff Bezos says…“Be stubborn on the vision and flexible on the details”. I couldn’t agree more.

I look forward to updating the data and updating my journey, this job is tough, keeping 10 people happy is hard, 100 is impossible, so be prepared to be stubborn on your vision.

“The only person that doesn’t care about titles is the CEO.” – Stephen Gerard

It hit me like a ton of bricks over a year ago. One of my advisors said that to me, and I let it sink in, the man has a way better than anyone else I’ve worked with to get me to be less pig headed about my “ideals”.

Before I get into my new take, let’s go back to why I didn’t have a title when it was just me, and where we have evolved to.

I didn’t want a title, ever. When SEER was just 1 person my cards said “associate”.

• I never wanted people to think I was “important” based on my title.
• I didn’t want to get attention because of my title.
• I never wanted my team to confuse a title, with having a tangible impact.
• Lastly, I never wanted to overweight my importance to SEER.

That last part was most important. I believe we’re like a group of people in a boat rowing, we all play a different role, and maybe at times roles become more important in certain situations, but the role becomes more important, not the person..

See, that there is a team that wants to win, that there is a team who picks up the QB, and you better believe that there were times when I needed my team to pick me up.

Your clients are going to want a Senior in the room

For years advisors would tell me, Wil, you need titles because clients will want to know they have a “senior” so and so in the room. I scoffed and hated that concept. It was the easy way out, I’d rather people show their talents to the point where no one cares what their title is. Might that mean SEER gets “smaller” clients? Great! If they believe what we believe and vice versa that is all that matters to me.

Titles grow margin w/o giving a riase

“See, if you give someone a title, they’ll stay longer and you don’t have to give them as much of a raise.” - Unnamed Advisor

Ouch that was even worse advice than plop factor. Are you serious? To me while the psychology of this is true, and I LOVE behavioral psychology with every fiber of my being, I don’t want to be manipulating my team with that. Nor do I care about adding 1-2% on margin b/c I’m giving titles.

Why will SEER move to titles in 2014?

Ben Horowitz that’s why. Somewhere between Las Cruces, NM and Tuscon AZ, while my wife and dog and I did our annual pilgrimage cross country for me to work from our other office for a few months.

I put in Ben Horowitz’s book on audio, the Hard Thing about Hard Things. It was recommended by an advisor.

In the book, I learned a ton. But one of the many lessons, was on titles.

Ben talks about how when you don’t give titles, you don’t show peoples progression at your company. OOOOH now we’re talking.

I care a lot about people’s path AFTER SEER, if they have been good to us and have helped us achieve our goals and objectives, why the heck wouldn’t we help them on the way out?

Anyone hiring a solid 2 yr PPC'er in Boston? Got someone leaving @SEERInteractive to move back home & want to find her a GREAT place to work

— Wil Reynolds (@wilreynolds)

October 17, 2013

Its why we often get 4 weeks and sometimes as much as 3 months notice. People know we will invest that time trying to help them on their new journey / new path and that they can tell us they are leaving w/o us acting like this:

But if I we TRULY cared about people’s path post SEER, are we making it harder for them to articulate the great things they’ve done and their advancement by not using titles? That is what Ben said to me, 3 months ago, and today I know Titles, like other absolutes I had at SEER are going to go. Being in this role is about growth and keeping your mind open, even to your “absolutes”, testing yourself, messing stuff up sometimes, and learning.

If your company doesn’t have titles, wear that proudly. But ask yourself one thing, when someone’s path takes them away from your company, and they have done great work, are you making it harder for them to stand out in that next job? Have you handicapped them in the eyes of HR who will see one person who got three promotions on their resume, and your team member got 3 “internal promotions” but their title never changed. Might that keep them from getting their next dream job, I think maybe. That risk is too great to me, so we’re gonna change some stuff @ SEER.

Hey Ben, who did the audio for that book? Dude had a f’ed up voice…hearing him quote Nas and Game, was gut wrenching.

“Wil, stop looking over the hood. You look over the hood with your peripheral vision, your eyes should be pointed out of the driver side window!”

Was kindly yelled at me again and again, by my driving instructor as I raced a few super cars around a mini track at Leguna Seca during my driving school.

It was fighting instinct…you are supposed to keep your eyes straight ahead right? WRONG!  

My instructor Jeff, a burly man, with more broken bones from years racing bikes and cars had to repeat that several times to me, and in my 1 day it still didn’t sink in.  I was fighting instinct, and 20+ years of driving.

I never actually got that right, but it did start to sink in on the way home. (note: if you go to a racing school and push cars to their absolute limits, have someone else drive you home, the cops wait right outside of the school and write tickets like mofos).

I digress.

What sank in is the metaphor, don’t look over the hood, see the hood in your peripheral, but keep your eyes looking out the drivers wide or passenger window. It rings over and over again like an echo in my head now. You need to trust your peripheral to see what is ahead, and use your eyes for what is coming up next in a split second, think 1-2 turns ahead and trust the car and your training to take you through this turn, but never keep your eyes off of the next one.

I’ve run the operations of my business looking over the hood, and the vision of my business with my peripherals.  I spoke about this at LENGTH here in this video, the link starts at the right point to talk about mistakes I made in hiring too late or as my instructor Jeff would say, looking over the hood.  

Are you looking over the hood of your business?

I’ve put my company through some sharp cornering we weren’t prepared for. I hired every position that would help SEER run better operationally (President, HR, IT, Finance) way too late. I realized that our clients were leveling up at a rate faster than my team was 18 months ago, leading to some rough patches, out of blind loyalty I worked with clients who I lost money on for months and months and months. All of that is looking over the hood with your eyes, not preparing for what was coming. I wasn’t looking far enough out to see processes that wouldn’t scale, I was getting through the “turns” just really slowly and with a lot of friction.

or

Are you looking through the drivers window?

See, when comment spam, keyword stuffing, link networks, and directories worked, I used my peripherals to rank well today (aka, did the least possible) with my eye 2-3 turns ahead (hiring journalists, direct marketers, web marketers, PR people, etc) as SEOs.  It prepared us for the turns we knew were coming well before they were right on us.  That meant we were accelerating out of the apex, not breaking because we took the wrong angle. Today that means that we’re the RCS company, heck people use RCS or real company shit/stuff as a terminology. RCS was looking out the side window, not over the hood. We that shifted, pivoted, saw the turns and got out of them a bit quicker, not much quicker but a bit. Remember winning a race is a matter of shaving ½ a second on 10 turns per lap, over 50 laps.  

Today, when I see the Cooper Tires foot bridge at Leguna Seca I no longer see a straightaway…

I’ll always see a forgiving right turn (meaning I can get more aggressive) a little straightaway and a mildly sharp left, I’m still working on remembering the next one, but I’m getting better. Minds eye first, real eyes second.  Thanks Jeff, that’s gonna stick with me.

Oh for those watching the video here is my slideshare too:

Look around us, we all like supporting the “good guys” - there is a resurgence in Farmers Markets, Eat Local, Supporting Artisans (who wouldn’t want to buy a bike from this guy or a knife from this guy).  There is something about watching those videos that makes you say, hey if all things are equal, and prices close why would I NOT buy a motorcycle or a knife from those lovely gents.

We are all commodities

Every business benefits on client service when you think of yourself as an easily replaced commodity, you’ll have to differentiate on caring about your customer.

Now think, in markets where all things aren’t always equal, many of us will pay a little more for going with someone / or something we believe in. Again,  all things being equal, wouldn’t we like to fly the airline with this awesome pre-flight video or this one (I’ve flown with this guy once from PHL-LAS Vegas) versus this company’s Video? I’ll support Zappos over Footlocker, regardless of the difference in price, and I know some others reading this do too. 

The inspiration for this post came from reading this about dropbox’s founder. As I read it I must say Drew Houston started feeling like a normal regular guy, in a world of CEOs who think they are awesome, Its great seeing some humility. To check that sentiment I went to twitter. I really like his tweet stream, the way he talks about new people, newly acquired companies, etc. 

Welcome Guido, the creator of Python, to Dropbox! https://t.co/EN7gCFGy

— Drew Houston (@drewhouston)

December 7, 2012

Welcome Matt and Sean of @TapEngage to @Dropbox! http://t.co/2gWqqoBK

— Drew Houston (@drewhouston)

July 17, 2012

I feel like he’s a human.  For a long time I’ve been watching his competitor Box and their CEO the highly successful Aaron Levie, whom I have been a customer of for probably 6-7 years.  Drew seems so much more like a guy who fits my beliefs, one of my big things are “normal” CEOs that no matter how many people say they are great, they continue being, well … NORMAL.

Just watching the first few minutes of this video, I just go yeah his guy feels normal - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUxBdBexmFI

So today after spending hours researching him I decided it might be time to switch from Box, file storage is something I see as mostly a commodity, box, dropbox, etc they are all just a place to put my files, but they are critical to creating the type of company I want to work in.

I’ve always admired Box’s consistent innovation getting me features before I even thought I’d need them, but for the most part they aren’t much different than the others. All things being equal, guess what?  I’m going to go with the CEO who seems to be building a company that reflects my values most, for the same reason why I feel better buying from my local farmers.

I’m going to have to put together a team to re-evaluate that I’m not crazy here, but I can say that I expect to be a Dropbox customer in 2014, purely because I think he’s my kind of guy.  For some reason I feel that following Drew will help me become a better manager, founder, and company-leading guy, following Aaron won’t.  So why not put my money with the guy who can solve my needs as well as the incumbent and help me become a better CEO.

So lastly this whole thing got me thinking about SEER, and I thought all things being equal, when a client selects SEER over several other great firms out there, our clients should know that the money they invest and trust in SEER goes to not only us, but it enables us to do great things in our community for various non profits, it enables us to share what we learn in the marketing community, it enables us to build a company that can employ great people, who get together and kick ass.

Dropbox, we will see you next year!