Meeting Title: Brainforge Team Member Introduction and Support Date: 2025-12-12 Meeting participants: Zoran Selinger, Clarence Stone
WEBVTT
1 00:01:21.790 ⇒ 00:01:23.080 Clarence Stone: Hey, Zaron.
2 00:01:23.830 ⇒ 00:01:24.820 Zoran Selinger: Hi, Clarence.
3 00:01:26.900 ⇒ 00:01:28.140 Zoran Selinger: Oh, sorry.
4 00:01:28.380 ⇒ 00:01:29.530 Zoran Selinger: Goodness.
5 00:01:29.530 ⇒ 00:01:31.140 Clarence Stone: Oh, there you are!
6 00:01:32.480 ⇒ 00:01:33.190 Clarence Stone: So…
7 00:01:33.190 ⇒ 00:01:36.560 Zoran Selinger: Sorry, it’s already dark here, so I’m always gonna be…
8 00:01:36.560 ⇒ 00:01:37.889 Clarence Stone: Learn more about you.
9 00:01:38.520 ⇒ 00:01:39.070 Zoran Selinger: No.
10 00:01:39.730 ⇒ 00:01:40.280 Zoran Selinger: Just…
11 00:01:40.280 ⇒ 00:01:42.380 Clarence Stone: I think you’re talking, but I can’t hear you.
12 00:01:46.930 ⇒ 00:01:53.789 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, I mean… My camera… my… It’s showing that…
13 00:01:54.100 ⇒ 00:01:56.009 Clarence Stone: I can hear you. …picking up my voice.
14 00:01:56.010 ⇒ 00:01:56.790 Zoran Selinger: Okay.
15 00:01:56.810 ⇒ 00:01:59.699 Clarence Stone: Yeah, it’s showing to me that it’s picking it up. Okay, cool.
16 00:02:01.410 ⇒ 00:02:03.510 Clarence Stone: So, how’s everything going?
17 00:02:04.690 ⇒ 00:02:16.219 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah, good, good. I’m kind of, trying to figure out, where I fit in this picture, really. They kind of raced with me.
18 00:02:16.220 ⇒ 00:02:26.269 Zoran Selinger: two months ago, I kind of joined and started getting into… into things. I got a… quite a bit of responsibility right away,
19 00:02:26.350 ⇒ 00:02:30.559 Zoran Selinger: And I think I did well. So, yeah, just kind of…
20 00:02:30.830 ⇒ 00:02:37.270 Zoran Selinger: Seeing how this goes. I was mostly, mostly doing engineering work before, before this.
21 00:02:37.580 ⇒ 00:02:40.040 Zoran Selinger: So it is a little bit different.
22 00:02:41.950 ⇒ 00:02:50.620 Zoran Selinger: this is, you know, way more meetings and planning and people, really, than I’ve been doing for the last few years.
23 00:02:50.730 ⇒ 00:02:52.690 Zoran Selinger: So it’s different.
24 00:02:52.690 ⇒ 00:02:56.009 Clarence Stone: Or is it something you don’t like about that?
25 00:02:56.230 ⇒ 00:02:59.710 Zoran Selinger: Listen, this is much, much more suitable, for…
26 00:03:00.250 ⇒ 00:03:10.590 Zoran Selinger: For the level of experience and, you know, my age and everything else than what I was kind of doing before.
27 00:03:10.700 ⇒ 00:03:14.410 Zoran Selinger: I just… that was a really calm…
28 00:03:14.560 ⇒ 00:03:24.220 Zoran Selinger: work that’s super flexible. This is much, much more, what I’m supposed to be doing on Yeah.
29 00:03:24.220 ⇒ 00:03:31.229 Clarence Stone: That’s amazing to hear. So, okay, just really quick, I’ll tell you about me. I came from, consulting at…
30 00:03:31.660 ⇒ 00:03:55.989 Clarence Stone: I was a director of product innovation at Ernst & Young for 6 years, and my job was to take anything new that was happening and see if, you know, we can build out teams, processes, and services for those customers. So, you know, in the beginning, it was kind of dumb, because they were asking me to figure out how to use blockchain for services, and I said, hey, we can’t sell this team.
31 00:03:55.990 ⇒ 00:04:20.710 Clarence Stone: You know, when AI came out, there was a lot of great tools that we started building internally first, and then externally, and then a lot of data services that I ended up leading because, you know, it became a huge, you know, service and platform. And earlier this year, I decided I was gonna leave, and I started my own company, and you, Tom, had found me and said, hey, like, you just have the exact skill set that we need, to help
32 00:04:20.709 ⇒ 00:04:45.679 Clarence Stone: scale what’s happening at Brainforge. So, the reason why I’m, you know, taking all these calls, having chats with everybody is because I’m interested in helping you, Tom, with making sure that he can continue to grow Brainforge as he’s getting more business. You know, people like you who are, you know, have tons of experience in the industry are gonna move into some leadership roles that need to guidance for some transition.
33 00:04:45.680 ⇒ 00:04:49.789 Clarence Stone: And part of what I want to do is learn more about you and think about
34 00:04:49.860 ⇒ 00:05:09.459 Clarence Stone: you know, what can I do to help support you, right? Where are the tough spots in your, you know, workflow today? What’s working really well? I won’t change those things, right? So, that’s really the gist of this conversation, but also to learn about your background. So, you said you came from a lot of development work. What kind of development…
35 00:05:09.460 ⇒ 00:05:17.290 Zoran Selinger: So, initially, it was… it wasn’t development. I actually came from… from digital marketing. I was actually… I was managing
36 00:05:17.980 ⇒ 00:05:23.000 Zoran Selinger: PPC, mostly paid search, for 9 years.
37 00:05:23.370 ⇒ 00:05:24.120 Clarence Stone: Wow.
38 00:05:24.120 ⇒ 00:05:32.500 Zoran Selinger: I was doing it on a pretty high level as well, so, it just… it started in college. I don’t know if…
39 00:05:32.590 ⇒ 00:05:46.010 Zoran Selinger: So for… for college students, there’s Google La Marketing Challenge. It’s a global competition where you get some… some budget, and then you… you spin up a Google Ads campaign for… for a client, and…
40 00:05:46.040 ⇒ 00:05:53.449 Zoran Selinger: like, there’s thousands of teams across the world, and we did really, really well. And that turned into… into a small agency out of…
41 00:05:53.830 ⇒ 00:06:04.429 Zoran Selinger: us 5… 5 students, right? And then, I started freelancing as well at that time, because I wanted to have international experience.
42 00:06:04.640 ⇒ 00:06:11.620 Zoran Selinger: So I started just doing a bunch of work on… on… Back then it was AllDesk, now it’s Upwork.
43 00:06:11.830 ⇒ 00:06:19.580 Zoran Selinger: So… And this is really when I started becoming, pretty much a generalist.
44 00:06:20.000 ⇒ 00:06:34.040 Zoran Selinger: With… I was always leaning towards tech, so we had a… we had a team, pretty much, you know, same classes, same skill sets, but I was always leaning towards when something technical needed to be done, I want to do it.
45 00:06:34.040 ⇒ 00:06:48.440 Zoran Selinger: whether if it’s automation in Sheets, whether we are writing a little bit of automation for Google Ads, in Google Ads scripts, or whatever. Anything analytics, it was me, Google Tag Manager, it was me, it was always me.
46 00:06:48.450 ⇒ 00:06:50.250 Zoran Selinger: And,
47 00:06:50.820 ⇒ 00:07:04.590 Zoran Selinger: So that’s… that’s what I… what I did. In the beginning of my freelancing, it was… I accepted everything. I’ve done everything. I’ve done email campaigns. I’ve done… I’ve… I’ve written content
48 00:07:04.590 ⇒ 00:07:13.289 Zoran Selinger: I’ve done SEO work, technical, like, technical implementation audits for SEO. I’ve done keyword researches for everything.
49 00:07:13.290 ⇒ 00:07:14.170 Clarence Stone: That’s so amazing!
50 00:07:14.170 ⇒ 00:07:16.920 Zoran Selinger: almost anything. This is why…
51 00:07:17.060 ⇒ 00:07:25.080 Zoran Selinger: I have experience with almost any part of digital marketing, but PP, really, paid search, is my bread and butter, and.
52 00:07:25.080 ⇒ 00:07:25.590 Clarence Stone: Cool.
53 00:07:25.910 ⇒ 00:07:41.019 Zoran Selinger: web analytics. So, anything, anything, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, that’s my full, full specialty. And then, when, obviously, when, when, when COVID hit.
54 00:07:41.310 ⇒ 00:07:44.390 Zoran Selinger: I kind of took that opportunity to do…
55 00:07:44.890 ⇒ 00:07:53.020 Zoran Selinger: to go… at that point, I couldn’t leave campaign management, because I was managing too much And just…
56 00:07:53.230 ⇒ 00:07:56.570 Zoran Selinger: was basically… irreplaceable.
57 00:07:57.530 ⇒ 00:08:08.750 Zoran Selinger: And then, when everyone’s budgets got cut by 50% in February or March of 2020, I just said, you know what, guys? You can cover me now.
58 00:08:09.040 ⇒ 00:08:15.660 Zoran Selinger: the rest of the teams that I was working with. You can cover my clients now, I’m going, and I’m…
59 00:08:16.200 ⇒ 00:08:22.880 Zoran Selinger: if… if I want to, if I… if I need to, I’m just gonna… I’m gonna be in tutorials and… and projects.
60 00:08:23.400 ⇒ 00:08:26.629 Zoran Selinger: Yeah. For a year before I get a dev job.
61 00:08:26.930 ⇒ 00:08:27.800 Zoran Selinger: And…
62 00:08:28.020 ⇒ 00:08:35.960 Zoran Selinger: They didn’t want to hear about it, and let me leave, and I was working with a… with a backend
63 00:08:36.190 ⇒ 00:08:37.849 Zoran Selinger: Lead next day.
64 00:08:39.299 ⇒ 00:08:43.160 Zoran Selinger: So, I became a Beccandale.
65 00:08:45.450 ⇒ 00:08:47.740 Zoran Selinger: Immediately, I loved that.
66 00:08:47.960 ⇒ 00:08:50.899 Zoran Selinger: It was just, you know,
67 00:08:51.290 ⇒ 00:08:57.190 Zoran Selinger: It was… my brain is pretty much engineering brain.
68 00:08:57.460 ⇒ 00:09:00.640 Zoran Selinger: But, so, so it just suited me.
69 00:09:01.340 ⇒ 00:09:04.639 Zoran Selinger: two years after, after I switched.
70 00:09:05.300 ⇒ 00:09:11.170 Zoran Selinger: The lead, the back-end dev… the back-end lead, he left, and it just…
71 00:09:11.550 ⇒ 00:09:12.250 Clarence Stone: It’s yours!
72 00:09:12.250 ⇒ 00:09:20.819 Zoran Selinger: It was my responsibility to manage everything, and it was… it stayed like that for almost 6 years.
73 00:09:21.140 ⇒ 00:09:21.700 Clarence Stone: Wow.
74 00:09:21.700 ⇒ 00:09:23.059 Zoran Selinger: Now I’m here.
75 00:09:23.330 ⇒ 00:09:27.639 Clarence Stone: Cool! You’ve been here for, what, 2-3 months, you said, right?
76 00:09:27.640 ⇒ 00:09:32.470 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah, I think the first… I started, doing a little bit in August.
77 00:09:33.010 ⇒ 00:09:33.720 Clarence Stone: Nice.
78 00:09:33.950 ⇒ 00:09:38.460 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, and then I think, September was the first, kind of, full month, here.
79 00:09:38.460 ⇒ 00:09:43.899 Clarence Stone: So how’s it been? Is it the same? Is it different from previous organizations?
80 00:09:44.810 ⇒ 00:09:46.429 Zoran Selinger: I mean…
81 00:09:46.430 ⇒ 00:09:49.600 Clarence Stone: What are the things that are the same when it’s different, I guess, is what I want to know.
82 00:09:49.600 ⇒ 00:09:54.620 Zoran Selinger: No, it’s definitely different, because, this is, like, Here.
83 00:09:55.440 ⇒ 00:10:02.360 Zoran Selinger: I’m not an engineer. I don’t deal with technology that much. I’m… essentially, I’m…
84 00:10:03.340 ⇒ 00:10:21.720 Zoran Selinger: I’m giving those tasks away, which is very, very hard for me to do. Because I’m the guy, usually, I’m the guy. I like to solve those problems, engineer-wise, but but this other part is also really, really, really interesting, and
85 00:10:22.470 ⇒ 00:10:35.209 Zoran Selinger: I wasn’t sure how I’m going to do… how I’m going to do it, but, you know, clients here ask… ask for more of my time, so I think I’m… it looks like I’m doing fine.
86 00:10:35.380 ⇒ 00:10:36.250 Clarence Stone: So,
87 00:10:36.250 ⇒ 00:10:37.829 Zoran Selinger: I like the word, it’s very…
88 00:10:37.830 ⇒ 00:10:56.169 Clarence Stone: Very good. You, Tom, asked me to speak with you because he was interested in giving you more responsibility and getting your thoughts on how you would feel about that, so you’re doing great, by the way. And I guess what I want to share with you is we have very similar stories. My first job ever was doing email marketing. Okay.
89 00:10:56.760 ⇒ 00:11:00.600 Clarence Stone: for, this camera company in New York City called B&H.
90 00:11:00.760 ⇒ 00:11:05.579 Clarence Stone: And they had a email list of almost 10 million.
91 00:11:05.720 ⇒ 00:11:06.740 Zoran Selinger: I mean…
92 00:11:06.740 ⇒ 00:11:09.570 Clarence Stone: Yeah. And this was, what, 20…
93 00:11:09.570 ⇒ 00:11:11.540 Zoran Selinger: First, first job to manage that.
94 00:11:11.540 ⇒ 00:11:29.359 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I had one other person. He was, more senior than me, was, like, training me. But, he came from a marketing background, and I came from a development background, so I was coding all the emails. You know, like, the old school HTML, it’s the brutal kind of thing? And I created a…
95 00:11:29.480 ⇒ 00:11:43.750 Clarence Stone: pretty much a, you know, the concept of mail merge, but into an HTML merge. So we put all the items in one, the links and the pictures, and then I would just click one button and the email’s made, right? So I had automated my job within the first few months, and I didn’t say anything.
96 00:11:43.750 ⇒ 00:11:44.750 Zoran Selinger: Excellent.
97 00:11:45.360 ⇒ 00:11:46.080 Zoran Selinger: That’s how we do it.
98 00:11:46.080 ⇒ 00:11:54.199 Clarence Stone: Front-end development team came and said, hey, we know about what you did, and we want you to join the team. So I became a UX designer and a front-end developer.
99 00:11:54.700 ⇒ 00:12:08.689 Clarence Stone: most of my career, you know, I did that, right? It was… I think you’re absolutely right. It’s very difficult to give that away. I see people… I lead a couple other teams, and I see them making beautiful UX designs, and like, man, I wish I could do that, right?
100 00:12:08.690 ⇒ 00:12:09.300 Zoran Selinger: I know.
101 00:12:09.300 ⇒ 00:12:31.700 Clarence Stone: Instead, like, I get to sit down with them and help them with, you know, problem solving and giving them a direction, and then, you know, you’re always surprised. Sometimes when you get it back, you’re like, wow, you thought about it even more than I did. You know, this looks better than what I would have done. So, there’s something rewarding about it, yet, you know, I feel that same way, too. Like, hey, I’m giving this up, and I really enjoy doing it, right? So…
102 00:12:31.700 ⇒ 00:12:35.329 Clarence Stone: Yeah, there’s a cool factory in it, because it’s…
103 00:12:35.330 ⇒ 00:12:42.399 Zoran Selinger: You see the result. Sometimes here, like, you have to actually look at the balance sheet.
104 00:12:42.400 ⇒ 00:12:58.350 Zoran Selinger: When you’re in a more senior position. So, yeah, that’s where the result is shown the most, yeah. It doesn’t necessarily have a cool factor as much as some engineering work and design work.
105 00:12:59.020 ⇒ 00:13:22.449 Clarence Stone: So, I’ll give you a sneak peek of what I’m going to talk about in our, you know, at the week of December meeting. And really, you know, I think there’s three things that I can come and help at Brainforge with. One is improving the flow. So, instead of people waiting to get help, and not knowing where to get help, or not knowing, you know, if the help that they provided worked out.
106 00:13:22.490 ⇒ 00:13:42.119 Clarence Stone: Right? We’re gonna create better lines of communication with set roles and titles so that people know who to go to, right? I want it to be that if somebody has a question about, you know, click rates or search, or, you know, PPC optimization, to already know to reach out to you.
107 00:13:42.120 ⇒ 00:13:52.709 Clarence Stone: set up, like, 15-30 minutes with you, and, you know, ask good, informed questions, and then, I want you to be able to give your expert opinion, right? And then hear about, from them, how it went.
108 00:13:52.930 ⇒ 00:14:12.550 Clarence Stone: Right? That way, people aren’t stuck, and kind of, like, in their own circular, you know, conversations. Two, I want to improve focus, right? There’s a lot of meetings, I hear that a lot, hey, like, you know, you guys have way more meetings than the average development teams. Let’s bring those down, right? Let’s give people
109 00:14:12.600 ⇒ 00:14:31.839 Clarence Stone: more space to kind of connect outside of meetings. So instead of, like, discussing things right in the meeting, let’s create more separate meetings so that you guys can at least have one-on-ones and learn about each other. And as a whole, that should create more focus time for the entire organization, right? And then three is, like.
110 00:14:32.240 ⇒ 00:14:39.350 Clarence Stone: you know, Burning Forge is growing, people need to have growth titles, and we need to show, you know, where the growth could be for people.
111 00:14:39.600 ⇒ 00:14:40.200 Zoran Selinger: Yeah.
112 00:14:40.200 ⇒ 00:15:03.359 Clarence Stone: and goals they could take, so I’m starting to refine those things out, and, you know, your thoughts, your experiences, and your insights of, you know, being at Brainforge, are very helpful for me to, like, formulate this. So, that’s, that’s, you know, the main point of the conversation, and you’ve already given me a lot of insights. So, I don’t know what you think, let me know, like,
113 00:15:03.360 ⇒ 00:15:05.559 Clarence Stone: What’s your take on what I just said?
114 00:15:05.590 ⇒ 00:15:21.070 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it makes sense. I’ve been… I’ve been through agencies that are basically just starting before. Usually when I join, it’s early on, because I’m… I am a generalist, and I can help a lot.
115 00:15:21.250 ⇒ 00:15:30.440 Zoran Selinger: You know, many different areas, so that… that fits me very well. And I’ve seen this process of… before, of, you know, right…
116 00:15:30.680 ⇒ 00:15:51.989 Zoran Selinger: right at the beginning, we don’t really have as defined roles as… as… because we don’t need to, really, but as we grow, obviously, we start… we start defining roles and, you know, procedures and all of that. So, absolutely, this is necessary, especially if you want to grow, and we do. So, yeah, we need to do that, that’s clear.
117 00:15:52.290 ⇒ 00:15:54.039 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, right thing to do.
118 00:15:54.540 ⇒ 00:16:07.669 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so, I kind of split leadership in three different tracks. In my mind, there’s one, the connection and the happiness that the client has with the project. So, it’s…
119 00:16:07.670 ⇒ 00:16:31.810 Clarence Stone: Did you communicate with them? Did you show the value of the product? Did you effectively ask good questions so that we built the right things, right? So it’s the client relationship piece. And then two, planning and strategy, right? Now that you know what you need to build for the client, are you planning the right milestones? Are you doing the right tickets in the right sequence, right? Are they well-prioritized? Are they well-defined features?
120 00:16:31.810 ⇒ 00:16:56.199 Clarence Stone: And then three, the third is, I think, just technical expertise and domain knowledge, right? So somebody who is a service leader that’s going to lead daily stand-ups, and then give direction, and, you know, assign out tickets on a daily basis. So, I think those are the three core pillars of things that you, Tom, and Robert have been doing on a daily basis today, and I’ve split it into those three things so that, you know, people are… only have to pick one of those three
121 00:16:56.700 ⇒ 00:17:01.900 Clarence Stone: categories to get into. What do you think about those three categories? Am I missing something?
122 00:17:08.010 ⇒ 00:17:18.849 Zoran Selinger: So we have, we have the client communication bit, we have the, we have the technology and domain knowledge bit, and what… what’d you say in the middle?
123 00:17:18.859 ⇒ 00:17:28.409 Clarence Stone: Strategy and planning. It’s, I know this is what the customer wants, how do we create a plan to build it, right? What are the milestones? How many resources do we need at each point?
124 00:17:28.410 ⇒ 00:17:41.619 Zoran Selinger: Oh, you’re right, those, those, yeah, that’s, those three ones, yeah, that makes sense, yeah. I think any, every, every, every action item, you, you can, you can put in one of those three baskets, yeah.
125 00:17:41.620 ⇒ 00:17:59.369 Clarence Stone: That’s good to hear, because, like, what I said to you, Tom, is, this should only take a few extra, you know, hours, and if we bring people on full-time, they should pick up one of those three things and also do it on top, right? So, maybe you’ll spend an additional hour just planning out the project.
126 00:17:59.370 ⇒ 00:18:10.860 Clarence Stone: Right? Maybe you’ll host stand-up, maybe you’ll do the client conversations, right? But, you know, that gives you some ownership, some leadership, and also a reason to talk to other people in the organization.
127 00:18:11.890 ⇒ 00:18:27.270 Clarence Stone: So that’s sort of my thinking and planning. You know, I’m wondering which one of those three you think you’re most interested in? By the way, you’re not, you know, this is not a commitment or anything, you can move back and forth. Just what sounds most interesting to you right now?
128 00:18:27.450 ⇒ 00:18:33.310 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, it’s, I think, unfortunately, I think…
129 00:18:33.560 ⇒ 00:18:42.919 Zoran Selinger: what clients… client sees from me, what clients see from me, and what’s kind of the most interesting to me is two different things. I think…
130 00:18:43.060 ⇒ 00:18:50.839 Zoran Selinger: I’ll… Clients generally trust me and give me a lot of, and give me,
131 00:18:50.990 ⇒ 00:19:00.779 Zoran Selinger: they take… they take note of what I’m saying in… generally. That’s… that was generally my… my experience of working.
132 00:19:01.250 ⇒ 00:19:09.499 Zoran Selinger: So, I think this first part is something that they’d like, but like I said, I’m always leaning towards technology.
133 00:19:10.450 ⇒ 00:19:15.460 Zoran Selinger: And that’s… that would be my, this is where I’d be most comfortable.
134 00:19:15.570 ⇒ 00:19:22.729 Zoran Selinger: But… Even with accepting this one, this job here is…
135 00:19:23.500 ⇒ 00:19:31.040 Zoran Selinger: I already kind of set my goal at, okay, my work is going to change now,
136 00:19:31.240 ⇒ 00:19:37.639 Zoran Selinger: And I’m going to have to change as well. I’m going to have to develop, maybe, more soft skills and all that.
137 00:19:37.640 ⇒ 00:19:38.050 Clarence Stone: reality.
138 00:19:38.050 ⇒ 00:19:55.120 Zoran Selinger: I… for example, I was never very good at over-communicating, which is sometimes, almost always actually necessary. So… and I want to improve, and I know I’m going to have to do those things. So…
139 00:19:56.030 ⇒ 00:20:00.370 Zoran Selinger: at least I’m gonna be, I wanna be in the middle there.
140 00:20:01.310 ⇒ 00:20:09.620 Zoran Selinger: With strategy and planning, but really, I mean, what I can do definitely on this tech side is…
141 00:20:10.040 ⇒ 00:20:12.840 Zoran Selinger: is where I’m really, really comfortable.
142 00:20:13.060 ⇒ 00:20:26.630 Clarence Stone: That’s what I hear a lot, by the way, Zoran, most of this organization says, hey, I’m super strong, I can totally be a service leader, I know my topic really well. I know my technology, the things that I work on, but it…
143 00:20:26.630 ⇒ 00:20:42.899 Clarence Stone: it’s very interesting that you say, hey, but I’m very good at that, but what I need to grow is in these, you know, other places, right? I mean, here’s the thing. I’m here to help coach everybody who’s interested in doing that. So, you know, that’s very great to hear.
144 00:20:42.900 ⇒ 00:21:06.099 Clarence Stone: you know, I think planning is a great place to start, because you already understand the technical strategy, and you already have been talking to clients. You know, it’s really that mental change of, you don’t have to do that work, but if somebody else did it, how do you write the details out, right? And I think you’ll pick up on that really quickly. Yeah, yeah, and it’s amazing to hear about your… that you have a
145 00:21:06.100 ⇒ 00:21:13.510 Clarence Stone: a great growth mentality. So, yeah, I mean, those were all my questions. Did you have any questions for me? Do you… do you want to know anything about me?
146 00:21:14.750 ⇒ 00:21:22.139 Zoran Selinger: Oh, yeah, so you said, you said Big Four, is that, one? Or have you, have you worked on… on… in more… more companies?
147 00:21:22.380 ⇒ 00:21:46.999 Clarence Stone: Yeah, yeah, so, when I first graduated college, I actually got into an accelerator-backed startup. It was a, Andreessen Horowitz-backed, and I was the CEO of that startup. We were all, like, 20-something, and we obviously failed. And by the way, I had a… I have a biochemistry degree, so I didn’t even know how to code then. But I realized that we just didn’t have enough front-end developers, right?
148 00:21:47.000 ⇒ 00:21:47.380 Zoran Selinger: We had…
149 00:21:47.540 ⇒ 00:22:06.499 Clarence Stone: you know, one back-end, one, you know, like, full stack. I was like, I need to learn. So, and this is so long ago, Zoran. Like, I was… after everybody leaves at work, I was staying up at 5 o’clock all the way till 8, learning how to code on Lynda. Like, front-end code using Lynda.
150 00:22:06.500 ⇒ 00:22:08.069 Zoran Selinger: I remember Linda, yes.
151 00:22:08.070 ⇒ 00:22:12.499 Clarence Stone: Yeah, that’s how I learned how to front-end code HTML, CSS, Angular, all that stuff.
152 00:22:12.500 ⇒ 00:22:36.639 Clarence Stone: So, I was self-taught, and then, going into, you know, working as a, you know, the first job ended up being that email marketing into UX, and then, I was a front-end lead for a long time. And then EY became the first time I went beyond, you know, just being technical. I became a leader that had this future state vision and started building things out below me. So, there is, like, a…
153 00:22:36.640 ⇒ 00:22:56.499 Clarence Stone: I think in every engineer’s journey, a decision point. Do you want to be a super-duper expert at what you do, or do you want to start leading teams and being able to, you know, make more of yourselves, right? And there’s no wrong answer there, right? But, you know, each one… each of those paths opened a different door, right?
154 00:22:56.720 ⇒ 00:23:03.210 Clarence Stone: Of deep expertise on one side, and then leadership, and the opportunity to scale what you know to other people on the other side.
155 00:23:03.210 ⇒ 00:23:27.599 Clarence Stone: So that’s sort of the decision I made, and by the way, I was also a reserve army officer, so for 12 years, I worked in Army Cyber, and I did two deployments in between, so I do know a little bit about networks and OSI stats and things like that, so I have a weird, holistic view of technology, even though I, you know, haven’t really directly touched a keyboard on, you know, back-end things.
156 00:23:27.820 ⇒ 00:23:40.170 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, of course. And you said you, you’ve driven technology. Is there anything that you’re super proud of that you, that you were leading on? Something that I would have seen, maybe?
157 00:23:40.480 ⇒ 00:23:55.920 Clarence Stone: So they have mentioned our, so Adorama.com, B&H.com, those are the two websites that I worked on. And this was early 2011-2012. We created one design system that’s used across 6 different e-commerce stores.
158 00:23:56.660 ⇒ 00:24:02.489 Clarence Stone: O’reilly, it’s… there’s a book on data architecture and design,
159 00:24:02.600 ⇒ 00:24:11.900 Clarence Stone: for three editions, they talked about different parts of the website and how good the display of data hierarchy is on that website. Oh.
160 00:24:11.900 ⇒ 00:24:36.749 Clarence Stone: Because as a UX designer, what I want to do is explain the complexity of data in a very simple way to users, and that’s always, like, a very challenging thing to do. So, I want to say that, like, a lot of the things that we built out, the patterns that we built out in usability for those websites, are being stolen, reused on sites like Best Buy and Amazon, so I’m quite proud of the fact that, you know, those things became
161 00:24:36.750 ⇒ 00:24:55.959 Clarence Stone: not just things that were my ideas, but industry standard patterns, right? So, yeah, like, when I see certain things, I’m like, hey, we used to do that, that was very cool, and I’m glad it works for you, right? So, yeah, I would say those are crowd moments, right? When I build technology that people enjoy, and enjoy so much that they’re using it somewhere else again, too.
162 00:24:55.960 ⇒ 00:25:07.980 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah, that’s really cool. Okay, cool. So I, I didn’t understand, so you are now… are you, consulting for us, or are you joined?
163 00:25:07.980 ⇒ 00:25:12.259 Clarence Stone: So, that is a good question as well. You know, I…
164 00:25:12.260 ⇒ 00:25:13.950 Zoran Selinger: But still to be answered, Daniel.
165 00:25:13.950 ⇒ 00:25:35.039 Clarence Stone: Yeah, still to be answered. When I first left EY, I started picking up a lot of consulting work, so I already have a bunch of consulting work that I’m doing, but I do very much enjoy working with you and you, Tom, and the team, so when you, Tom, ask me, I’m like, hey, I’ll come on temporarily, I want to help you make sure that you scale to the next level, at least, and then we can have a conversation about where you think I fit into all of
166 00:25:35.480 ⇒ 00:25:36.090 Clarence Stone: Right?
167 00:25:36.400 ⇒ 00:25:57.850 Clarence Stone: because, by the way, like, I still have all this other work from other clients, so, like, I don’t know what to do exactly with all of it, so… Sure. Yeah. But I think, you know, I’m very tactical in the focus of, hey, let’s relieve that pressure from you, Tom, and give them, like, 20% of their time back, and start creating leaders at Brainforge, right?
168 00:25:58.140 ⇒ 00:25:58.690 Zoran Selinger: Yeah.
169 00:25:58.970 ⇒ 00:26:17.020 Clarence Stone: Yeah, and everything else will settle in place, I believe. It’s, you know, those things are just, you know, like, niceties. I’ll figure it out once, you know, the way I view it, when you see my value, we can have a conversation of what do you think it’s worth. Like, before that, like, you know, we’re just talking numbers, what does it matter?
170 00:26:18.380 ⇒ 00:26:27.440 Zoran Selinger: Sure. Okay, cool. That makes sense. I’m, glad you’re on board. Seems like,
171 00:26:27.840 ⇒ 00:26:32.290 Zoran Selinger: what you have so far, I agree with, makes perfect sense.
172 00:26:32.430 ⇒ 00:26:42.620 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, you’ll get that done. I think you’ll… you’ll… that 20% to get… getting back those 20%, I think you… you’ll do that. I think you’ll.
173 00:26:42.620 ⇒ 00:26:58.930 Clarence Stone: And Zoran, I have one request of you. Sometimes, you know, we’re always working, and we forget to, like, chase down a problem, or we notice something’s wrong, we don’t have time, or we notice something was amazing, we don’t have time to celebrate it, right? When those moments happen, send me a ping.
174 00:26:58.930 ⇒ 00:27:14.409 Clarence Stone: It’s like, hey, the team just did this, I thought that was super cool, check it out, right? Or, hey, didn’t work well, but I don’t know why. Right? Feel free to tell me too. Because to me, I want to capture the moments that are, like, instinctual.
175 00:27:14.410 ⇒ 00:27:24.259 Clarence Stone: Because if we have a good system where people automatically know what to do, those moments shouldn’t happen. Those micro-decisions should be automatically, you know, decided.
176 00:27:24.260 ⇒ 00:27:43.779 Clarence Stone: But I… I can’t capture those… what those micro-decisions are unless people tell me in those moments, so I’m trying to narrow down those focuses. So, you know, by the way, like, no one’s getting fired. In fact, people are getting promoted, so don’t be afraid to talk to me. A lot of people are, so that’s the first thing that I have to explain. But yeah, that’s my ask.
177 00:27:44.370 ⇒ 00:27:45.600 Clarence Stone: Cool. Cool.
178 00:27:46.420 ⇒ 00:27:47.920 Zoran Selinger: Okay, great thoughts.
179 00:27:48.410 ⇒ 00:27:51.410 Zoran Selinger: I’d love to have you on board here if you need anything.
180 00:27:51.700 ⇒ 00:27:52.220 Zoran Selinger: And yeah.
181 00:27:52.220 ⇒ 00:27:55.489 Clarence Stone: Awesome, thank you. Yeah. Well, I’ll see you soon.
182 00:27:55.490 ⇒ 00:27:56.290 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, of course.
183 00:27:56.290 ⇒ 00:27:57.700 Clarence Stone: Yep.