2025-05-16_bf_managers_meeting_-_sprint_retros_6992e63a

Meeting Title: BF Managers Meeting - Sprint Retros Date: 2025-05-16 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin, Hannah Wang, Robert Tseng, Awaish Kumar

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WEBVTT

1 00:00:48.070 ⇒ 00:00:49.679 Robert Tseng: I was taking a bathroom, break.

2 00:00:51.310 ⇒ 00:00:53.460 Uttam Kumaran: Just taking a no video break.

3 00:00:54.830 ⇒ 00:00:56.679 Robert Tseng: No, okay, that’s understandable.

4 00:01:04.290 ⇒ 00:01:05.540 Robert Tseng: How was the event?

5 00:01:07.680 ⇒ 00:01:11.699 Uttam Kumaran: I’m sorry it was okay.

6 00:01:13.437 ⇒ 00:01:20.179 Uttam Kumaran: Just like Vc, they’re all sort of useless like they just like

7 00:01:22.140 ⇒ 00:01:30.359 Uttam Kumaran: blah, blah, blah, blah, it’s actually like kind of. I just don’t like the way that Vcs talk about companies, especially because we’re running one. And they

8 00:01:30.580 ⇒ 00:01:33.489 Uttam Kumaran: they just speak about it like they’re pawns.

9 00:01:36.210 ⇒ 00:01:39.460 Uttam Kumaran: So I don’t know. I just have a general disdain for some of them.

10 00:01:39.810 ⇒ 00:01:43.733 Uttam Kumaran: There are a lot of bad ones, and there’s some decent ones.

11 00:01:44.430 ⇒ 00:01:47.269 Uttam Kumaran: Even my close friend, who’s a Vc. He’s like dude like

12 00:01:48.240 ⇒ 00:01:57.880 Uttam Kumaran: we suck, and I probably suck too honestly like I don’t know. I I try to like, kind of shut that down when I talk to people. But the the also, the lovely thing is.

13 00:01:58.050 ⇒ 00:02:05.130 Uttam Kumaran: they’re like, oh, what do you do like? Where? What’s your company? I’m like service business, not a cell.

14 00:02:05.370 ⇒ 00:02:15.910 Uttam Kumaran: Don’t, please don’t or not I I just like like it was good, though, I bet. So I I like going there, because then I I we meet. I met like one or 2 people that were in the private equity business.

15 00:02:16.326 ⇒ 00:02:21.019 Uttam Kumaran: And then I met one person who was a game animator here in town who worked on

16 00:02:21.160 ⇒ 00:02:24.350 Uttam Kumaran: uncharted. 4 uncharted, 2, 3, 4.

17 00:02:24.580 ⇒ 00:02:26.540 Uttam Kumaran: That’s cool. And yeah.

18 00:02:35.330 ⇒ 00:02:41.789 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I was like I really like. I I took a nap yesterday at like 4 30, and then I woke up, and I was like.

19 00:02:42.740 ⇒ 00:02:48.040 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to go to this. I just like took an espresso shot and we went. It was. It was good.

20 00:02:51.230 ⇒ 00:02:52.690 Robert Tseng: Yeah, the Mappuccino.

21 00:02:53.060 ⇒ 00:02:57.570 Robert Tseng: You have to. You have to do the espresso 1st and then nap, and then wake up and.

22 00:02:58.910 ⇒ 00:03:02.330 Uttam Kumaran: I know dude. I know I know the hack, but like

23 00:03:08.640 ⇒ 00:03:11.890 Uttam Kumaran: whatever it was good today will be today’s chill.

24 00:03:14.350 ⇒ 00:03:17.830 Robert Tseng: Oh, your dog is like angelic! It’s like glowing white.

25 00:03:17.830 ⇒ 00:03:21.080 Hannah Wang: He’s glowing, or she’s glowing today, too.

26 00:03:21.080 ⇒ 00:03:22.699 Uttam Kumaran: He he is, he is.

27 00:03:22.860 ⇒ 00:03:25.350 Uttam Kumaran: You’re glowing today, Finn.

28 00:03:25.570 ⇒ 00:03:27.220 Hannah Wang: He’s huge. Dang!

29 00:03:27.220 ⇒ 00:03:29.970 Uttam Kumaran: Where’s your new? Where’s your new? Where’s your new toy?

30 00:03:30.990 ⇒ 00:03:32.920 Uttam Kumaran: Where’s your new dragon toy?

31 00:03:34.010 ⇒ 00:03:34.840 Uttam Kumaran: Huh?

32 00:03:38.960 ⇒ 00:03:41.279 Uttam Kumaran: He’s listening because he’s all like?

33 00:03:41.720 ⇒ 00:03:43.719 Uttam Kumaran: No, he is a very active listener.

34 00:03:43.880 ⇒ 00:03:48.179 Uttam Kumaran: huge, active, and he’s always had big ears even from this when he’s small.

35 00:03:48.620 ⇒ 00:03:51.750 Uttam Kumaran: No, you can stay there. Don’t worry. No, don’t get up! Don’t get up!

36 00:03:53.450 ⇒ 00:03:55.140 Uttam Kumaran: No worries, relax.

37 00:03:56.310 ⇒ 00:03:57.420 Hannah Wang: Have fun.

38 00:04:00.150 ⇒ 00:04:03.270 Uttam Kumaran: Like dude. He’s like, spit it out. What do you want me to do.

39 00:04:09.500 ⇒ 00:04:11.390 Robert Tseng: Was amber actually coming on Monday.

40 00:04:12.150 ⇒ 00:04:12.910 Amber Lin: Hello!

41 00:04:12.910 ⇒ 00:04:13.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

42 00:04:15.610 ⇒ 00:04:15.970 Hannah Wang: Go.

43 00:04:16.779 ⇒ 00:04:19.929 Uttam Kumaran: Hang here, cause I’ll I’ll be out of town. I’ll be out of town. So I was like

44 00:04:20.769 ⇒ 00:04:24.749 Uttam Kumaran: she was like, Hey, I’m thinking about staying longer, I’m like, just stay here. This is like

45 00:04:25.709 ⇒ 00:04:27.619 Uttam Kumaran: you can wash the plants and everything.

46 00:04:28.020 ⇒ 00:04:34.153 Amber Lin: No, no, I was like I was like, can I walk the dog? But I was like, no dog is at Parents house.

47 00:04:34.616 ⇒ 00:04:37.369 Uttam Kumaran: You don’t want to deal with the dog, and the dog is a big.

48 00:04:39.070 ⇒ 00:04:43.689 Robert Tseng: Amber. The dog is bigger than it looks. He’s he. I think he weighs as much as I do.

49 00:04:44.440 ⇒ 00:04:45.180 Amber Lin: What?

50 00:04:45.180 ⇒ 00:04:52.370 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll try to get into the frame for reference. Like, my, yeah, like, he’s like.

51 00:04:52.750 ⇒ 00:04:53.990 Amber Lin: Oh!

52 00:04:53.990 ⇒ 00:04:55.319 Uttam Kumaran: He’s very big, like.

53 00:04:55.320 ⇒ 00:04:56.613 Amber Lin: Oh, okay.

54 00:04:57.260 ⇒ 00:05:00.539 Uttam Kumaran: If if he were to stand up he’d be taller than me.

55 00:05:01.490 ⇒ 00:05:02.430 Robert Tseng: I mean.

56 00:05:03.920 ⇒ 00:05:05.170 Amber Lin: Wow!

57 00:05:05.720 ⇒ 00:05:06.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

58 00:05:07.300 ⇒ 00:05:07.760 Amber Lin: In fact.

59 00:05:07.760 ⇒ 00:05:08.140 Robert Tseng: Maybe.

60 00:05:08.140 ⇒ 00:05:08.600 Amber Lin: So, okay.

61 00:05:08.600 ⇒ 00:05:12.159 Robert Tseng: The size of the head. It’s like bigger than his than Utam’s had, you know.

62 00:05:12.690 ⇒ 00:05:20.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, yeah, I know, just we’re doing a show dog. You’re a show dog. I’m just showing them.

63 00:05:22.750 ⇒ 00:05:26.205 Uttam Kumaran: But but he’s very, he’s very. He’s very kind, and

64 00:05:27.100 ⇒ 00:05:31.110 Uttam Kumaran: I think Robert can attest like after he he just is like kind of like.

65 00:05:31.450 ⇒ 00:05:40.270 Uttam Kumaran: not territorial. But he just like is a is. He’s a German shepherd, great Pyrenees, golden Lab, or

66 00:05:41.110 ⇒ 00:05:42.720 Uttam Kumaran: yellow lab mix.

67 00:05:42.960 ⇒ 00:05:52.200 Uttam Kumaran: So he’s like naturally like kind of wants to guard very smart from the German shepherd, but he’s very, very like playful, so it’s like a good mix like

68 00:05:52.970 ⇒ 00:05:54.410 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like a good mix.

69 00:05:55.700 ⇒ 00:06:05.370 Uttam Kumaran: and he won’t run away like my girlfriend doesn’t like. If I just leave this I leave the door open like all day, but he won’t go. He’ll just like kind of guard, just like, run or walk the grounds.

70 00:06:05.600 ⇒ 00:06:06.790 Amber Lin: It’s not a deal.

71 00:06:10.680 ⇒ 00:06:12.350 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Let’s get this.

72 00:06:12.350 ⇒ 00:06:12.960 Amber Lin: Cool.

73 00:06:12.960 ⇒ 00:06:14.090 Uttam Kumaran: Get this started.

74 00:06:15.267 ⇒ 00:06:23.580 Amber Lin: Pretty chill today. Does anyone have any other items before I dive into this massive and long initiatives list?

75 00:06:28.020 ⇒ 00:06:30.386 Amber Lin: Okay, I assume that’s involved.

76 00:06:32.660 ⇒ 00:06:35.430 Robert Tseng: This is probably my favorite meeting of the week, so I’m excited.

77 00:06:36.400 ⇒ 00:06:39.260 Uttam Kumaran: Dude. Oh, my gosh, yeah, I love this meeting.

78 00:06:39.360 ⇒ 00:06:42.480 Uttam Kumaran: Any meeting I don’t run. It’s like my favorite.

79 00:06:43.120 ⇒ 00:06:55.680 Amber Lin: Wow! Maybe that’s why the past few days I feel like every for the past few days, every time it hits around like one I’m like, oh, I’m so dead! I was like, why am I so dead?

80 00:06:55.840 ⇒ 00:06:56.649 Uttam Kumaran: It is tough.

81 00:06:56.650 ⇒ 00:06:57.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that is tough. Yeah.

82 00:07:00.290 ⇒ 00:07:01.160 Amber Lin: Okay.

83 00:07:01.960 ⇒ 00:07:03.100 Amber Lin: So

84 00:07:03.562 ⇒ 00:07:19.497 Amber Lin: I I think it might be if oh, gosh for a few of you might be the 1st time seeing this document. So I’m gonna start. Give you a brief overview from the beginning. And then I kind of want all of us to look at the

85 00:07:19.980 ⇒ 00:07:22.160 Amber Lin: the big initiatives list.

86 00:07:22.500 ⇒ 00:07:38.540 Amber Lin: and then we can all rank them by what we how long we think it will by impact and by effort, and then we can all assess priorities. Who wants to own what and then how we can track them?

87 00:07:39.040 ⇒ 00:07:49.979 Amber Lin: Right? And so this strategy, Doc, is so that we achieve our goals. So here are, this is

88 00:07:50.090 ⇒ 00:07:51.799 Amber Lin: this is a press release.

89 00:07:52.130 ⇒ 00:08:00.449 Amber Lin: And this is like a small definition of who we are. I’ll leave you guys to read the document a bit later, so I don’t want to read everything.

90 00:08:00.450 ⇒ 00:08:03.769 Uttam Kumaran: Do you want to explain the press release? Sort of reasoning, amber.

91 00:08:04.390 ⇒ 00:08:06.380 Amber Lin: Yes, yes.

92 00:08:07.330 ⇒ 00:08:14.009 Amber Lin: So the press release is so that we plan

93 00:08:14.550 ⇒ 00:08:19.189 Amber Lin: ahead. So we plan for a good result that we know is gonna happen.

94 00:08:19.460 ⇒ 00:08:24.050 Amber Lin: So we’ve read this press. Release a year ahead

95 00:08:24.470 ⇒ 00:08:43.609 Amber Lin: or half a year ahead, and we define clearly what others will report on us when we have actually reached those milestones. So we’re kind of planning back from success. And that allows us to break down step by step. Okay, if we want to accomplish that. What do we want to do?

96 00:08:44.480 ⇒ 00:08:55.500 Amber Lin: And our goal is to I haven’t read your clients up comments up there. To achieve

97 00:08:56.640 ⇒ 00:08:58.500 Amber Lin: great client of liberty.

98 00:08:59.840 ⇒ 00:09:12.400 Amber Lin: consistent, systemized, scalable and high client satisfaction. Number 1, 2. We have a people, first, st high performance culture.

99 00:09:13.230 ⇒ 00:09:20.079 Amber Lin: where we have career, growth and employee autonomy. So we keep our people and keep them happy.

100 00:09:20.740 ⇒ 00:09:29.349 Amber Lin: which we were already somewhat doing with our Friday rituals, one-on-one goal setting, etc. And then, lastly, financially.

101 00:09:30.090 ⇒ 00:09:49.370 Amber Lin: keeping these 2 things in mind. We want to have increased revenue through repeat business, expanded services, internal efficiency gains protect those margins as we gain. And further, in this paper. Later I break down. What does it mean to have

102 00:09:49.630 ⇒ 00:09:55.039 Amber Lin: great client service, great employee satisfaction, and great financial performance.

103 00:09:55.180 ⇒ 00:10:17.240 Amber Lin: And I would also like to add, in the goal here. It’s not gonna get realized in December 2025. But if we want to get acquired in the future, we will perform like the businesses who get acquired meaning. I’ll break it down. What are the financial metrics that BC looks for? If that’s the goal that we want, and

104 00:10:17.430 ⇒ 00:10:28.459 Amber Lin: we are going to model all of our internal processes, how we treat people, how we treat clients, how we treat our finances all around these goals.

105 00:10:29.240 ⇒ 00:10:30.180 Amber Lin: So.

106 00:10:30.530 ⇒ 00:10:31.190 Amber Lin: And

107 00:10:35.160 ⇒ 00:10:38.080 Amber Lin: huh, okay.

108 00:10:38.270 ⇒ 00:10:50.180 Amber Lin: I will. I will. We can. I’ll let you guys read this part. What does it mean to be us or Utam? You can actually talk about it like, what does it mean to be brain force? What is our strategic core?

109 00:10:50.550 ⇒ 00:10:51.340 Amber Lin: Oh.

110 00:10:52.470 ⇒ 00:10:55.990 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I actually like this framing. I mean, this is like what we have.

111 00:10:56.160 ⇒ 00:11:01.620 Uttam Kumaran: You know we’ve done. We’ve talked about these in many different ways. So it’s like, what do we do?

112 00:11:02.100 ⇒ 00:11:07.710 Uttam Kumaran: Why are we different, like where we headed? And then it’s the execution right?

113 00:11:09.630 ⇒ 00:11:16.559 Uttam Kumaran: And I think it’s it’s helpful for everybody to know which what they’re related to and like.

114 00:11:16.870 ⇒ 00:11:22.299 Uttam Kumaran: I think this will tie into like the initiatives and stuff. However, you decide to tie this in

115 00:11:24.110 ⇒ 00:11:26.780 Uttam Kumaran: But why do we exist? Is like

116 00:11:26.960 ⇒ 00:11:37.370 Uttam Kumaran: is, I think it’s pretty clear. I don’t think there’s much more work to be done there. I think what we’re really good at is a mix of engineering.

117 00:11:37.550 ⇒ 00:11:48.469 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a mix of what capabilities we have. How capable are we of marketing that and actually executing on that where do we want to go? I think this is really like what our vision is like.

118 00:11:48.710 ⇒ 00:12:05.410 Uttam Kumaran: What types of stuff do we clients we want to work with? And then where? What financial goals we have for the company? And then how do we win? Is pure execute execution right? This is like the way we staff our employees the way we train people up the the sort of

119 00:12:06.734 ⇒ 00:12:09.489 Uttam Kumaran: using AI like, what is our competitive advantage.

120 00:12:11.340 ⇒ 00:12:29.739 Uttam Kumaran: so I think this, I think the the way this is this is done is fine. All I’ve done is, I put a couple of examples here. And again, this is this is all this information is is, I don’t think in like 100 places it’s just in like maybe 2 or 3 other places. So having it into this master strategy, Doc is helpful.

121 00:12:32.200 ⇒ 00:12:34.950 Amber Lin: Yep, great.

122 00:12:36.130 ⇒ 00:12:51.589 Amber Lin: So before I dive in to break things down, want us to kind of understand the structure of the business that we’re in. So we are a service business. As you know, we serve different clients. We have different client projects, and our

123 00:12:52.050 ⇒ 00:12:54.879 Amber Lin: value chain goes from

124 00:12:55.676 ⇒ 00:13:05.210 Amber Lin: attracting clients, whether it’s marketing and sales winning clients, whether it’s sales, closing and onboarding and then delivering our projects.

125 00:13:05.827 ⇒ 00:13:12.370 Amber Lin: We’re going to optimize. We can adjust the wording here, optimize our internal processes.

126 00:13:12.510 ⇒ 00:13:22.457 Amber Lin: and then scale ourselves with different systems, and lastly, we retain and grow our grow, our talent. So this kind of circles

127 00:13:23.090 ⇒ 00:13:29.720 Amber Lin: goes in a circle and feeds into each other, and I

128 00:13:30.360 ⇒ 00:13:39.479 Amber Lin: modeled our 3 objectives around this book that out sent me. Unfortunately, I did not read it. Chachi read it for me.

129 00:13:39.610 ⇒ 00:13:40.110 Robert Tseng: So that’s.

130 00:13:41.310 ⇒ 00:13:45.580 Uttam Kumaran: I’m honestly not mad at that, like I feel like I’m like. I can’t be mad at that.

131 00:13:45.870 ⇒ 00:13:46.530 Amber Lin: No, it helps.

132 00:13:46.530 ⇒ 00:13:47.700 Uttam Kumaran: But like, if if I

133 00:13:48.400 ⇒ 00:13:52.500 Uttam Kumaran: go a little bit deeper, you’re gonna miss some. There’s some details in there that no, I’m

134 00:13:52.500 ⇒ 00:13:56.260 Uttam Kumaran: I didn’t judge. But yeah, continue.

135 00:13:56.900 ⇒ 00:14:07.450 Amber Lin: Yeah. So I, I’m like, if it works, it works, it gives a structure that helps me because I was so lost trying to find a framework that like

136 00:14:07.800 ⇒ 00:14:15.290 Amber Lin: covers everything. I think this does it pretty well. So one, we want our signing client service.

137 00:14:15.800 ⇒ 00:14:18.919 Amber Lin: because that’s essentially all our revenue.

138 00:14:19.070 ⇒ 00:14:27.430 Amber Lin: and we want fulfilling careers for employees because people is our product. And if our employees leave us

139 00:14:27.994 ⇒ 00:14:36.440 Amber Lin: we’re we’re done so we cannot afford to or how to reframe this. The people who deliver

140 00:14:36.710 ⇒ 00:14:38.970 Amber Lin: our core service is just really important.

141 00:14:39.260 ⇒ 00:14:47.210 Amber Lin: And lastly, tying everything together, financial success is ultimately what lets a business live.

142 00:14:47.350 ⇒ 00:14:52.049 Amber Lin: So all of these kind of feed into to each other

143 00:14:52.260 ⇒ 00:15:17.209 Amber Lin: and helps each other. I included here a little bit of tough questions to ask ourselves. I’m not gonna go into more detail. But some of those questions are a bit tough. Some of them are just Chatgp generated. If you want to go look at them feel free. Some of them say we can continue to ask ourselves, maybe, like monthly or quarterly, to just to see are we really honest with ourselves

144 00:15:17.340 ⇒ 00:15:19.100 Amber Lin: about where we’re at.

145 00:15:20.400 ⇒ 00:15:22.329 Amber Lin: So going back?

146 00:15:27.220 ⇒ 00:15:28.030 Amber Lin: Okay.

147 00:15:30.283 ⇒ 00:15:51.529 Amber Lin: for each of them, I broke it down into a section I recommend, if you have time to read these documents that I also attached. So this goes into psychologically, fundamentally, what does it mean to make a client happy? So these are the emotional needs they have. And

148 00:15:51.810 ⇒ 00:16:06.480 Amber Lin: there’s also, okay, what is the 80 20? What can we do? That doesn’t cost it that much effort, but has the greatest impact. And then I outline some principles. This is mostly for the Pm. Department to know

149 00:16:06.810 ⇒ 00:16:10.319 Amber Lin: what is our delivery standards. And what do we want to stand by

150 00:16:11.170 ⇒ 00:16:13.659 Amber Lin: to make sure that our clients are really happy.

151 00:16:14.180 ⇒ 00:16:20.320 Amber Lin: This is like a general overview. Of what does it mean to have great client service, and

152 00:16:20.550 ⇒ 00:16:23.390 Amber Lin: why is it important?

153 00:16:24.124 ⇒ 00:16:28.790 Amber Lin: I think it’s pretty obvious there, that great client service is

154 00:16:29.070 ⇒ 00:16:34.389 Amber Lin: the most apparent part of our business, because that’s everything that our revenue relies on.

155 00:16:35.040 ⇒ 00:16:41.119 Amber Lin: And lastly, I added a few metrics of what does it mean to excel at this?

156 00:16:41.250 ⇒ 00:16:49.149 Amber Lin: Because we can’t really be honest with ourselves without having numbers to support where we’re at. Actually.

157 00:16:49.910 ⇒ 00:16:55.900 Amber Lin: So I will work with you guys, develop more of these metrics to measure

158 00:16:56.900 ⇒ 00:16:59.050 Amber Lin: to measure our performance.

159 00:16:59.180 ⇒ 00:17:00.699 Amber Lin: For this objective.

160 00:17:02.490 ⇒ 00:17:07.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, can we talk about that? So this is where, like, I want us to actually focus on

161 00:17:07.912 ⇒ 00:17:11.579 Uttam Kumaran: on some of these metrics, I want us to start with, just like.

162 00:17:11.880 ⇒ 00:17:13.370 Awaish Kumar: One or 2.

163 00:17:13.569 ⇒ 00:17:15.178 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I, I think.

164 00:17:16.230 ⇒ 00:17:23.640 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I want us to really think about for each of these core areas of the business, like, if we were to look at like one thing

165 00:17:24.349 ⇒ 00:17:27.750 Uttam Kumaran: that that like indicates whether we’re doing well or not, what it is

166 00:17:27.940 ⇒ 00:17:34.609 Uttam Kumaran: to do. Nps scores or do surveys. It’s gonna be hard. So we need to think about like what’s what’s achievable for us to actually measure

167 00:17:34.820 ⇒ 00:17:38.331 Uttam Kumaran: and actually start to see that it’s working

168 00:17:39.610 ⇒ 00:17:43.790 Uttam Kumaran: right? So this is where, like there’s a kitchen sink, and then there’s like

169 00:17:43.920 ⇒ 00:17:46.399 Uttam Kumaran: the one or 2 metrics that that matter.

170 00:17:47.910 ⇒ 00:17:52.310 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, that that’d be my, that’d be my my point.

171 00:17:52.640 ⇒ 00:18:03.339 Uttam Kumaran: And if we don’t know we should, you should go ask we should ask Nixel basically. So for any outstanding questions that like we can’t answer directly or we can’t. AI, we have a way to answer it. So

172 00:18:04.280 ⇒ 00:18:07.088 Uttam Kumaran: I would just literally ping them. Yeah.

173 00:18:07.490 ⇒ 00:18:09.860 Awaish Kumar: For the clients like the feedback.

174 00:18:09.960 ⇒ 00:18:18.389 Awaish Kumar: like I saw like. I don’t remember right now, but there was a kind of bot in slack which actually sends a reminder every week

175 00:18:18.770 ⇒ 00:18:22.110 Awaish Kumar: on clients where actually client can fill in the feedback.

176 00:18:22.340 ⇒ 00:18:26.570 Awaish Kumar: So we regularly get some feedback which we can then market.

177 00:18:28.810 ⇒ 00:18:31.349 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think I think even lighter is just like

178 00:18:31.460 ⇒ 00:18:34.459 Uttam Kumaran: amber. If we’re doing retros with clients.

179 00:18:35.182 ⇒ 00:18:41.750 Uttam Kumaran: You should just ask and have, hey? I’m just gonna go through 3 questions. I have to do this as part of our internal data reporting

180 00:18:42.270 ⇒ 00:18:55.049 Uttam Kumaran: on a scale one to 5. Can you tell me, X on scale one to 5 this, and that’s it. Like, we start very, very rudimentary, right like, before looking to automate, we just look to get a gauge of like

181 00:18:55.540 ⇒ 00:19:03.360 Uttam Kumaran: one to 5, or something quantitative beyond, just like good, bad, ugly. Whatever I’m doing now that my clients are happy.

182 00:19:03.590 ⇒ 00:19:12.479 Uttam Kumaran: we will have the financial performance tied to it right? So if we see clients are happy that should go into them growing with us or them signing longer term contracts.

183 00:19:12.720 ⇒ 00:19:15.030 Uttam Kumaran: But I think something like a

184 00:19:15.790 ⇒ 00:19:19.759 Uttam Kumaran: on a scale, one to 5, like you guys feel confident.

185 00:19:20.548 ⇒ 00:19:23.589 Uttam Kumaran: On like maybe 3 different things. I don’t know.

186 00:19:24.400 ⇒ 00:19:36.110 Amber Lin: Yeah, totally. I actually have. I somewhat thought of it when I was doing the initiatives list. But I really like the way you guys broke it down. I think that’s something that we can implement really easily.

187 00:19:39.111 ⇒ 00:19:46.410 Amber Lin: I can go through. I’m starting to build out this Pm document database.

188 00:19:46.540 ⇒ 00:19:50.540 Amber Lin: It’ll take a bit of time. But we have think.

189 00:19:51.080 ⇒ 00:19:56.869 Amber Lin: okay, I’ll let you guys know, once I have like the fundamentals in place and we can go review them together.

190 00:19:58.920 ⇒ 00:20:09.270 Amber Lin: Here are some initiatives, more of them, most of them. I’ve consolidated into the it’s it the big.

191 00:20:11.430 ⇒ 00:20:18.199 Amber Lin: long list of initiatives. I broke it down by objective.

192 00:20:18.410 ⇒ 00:20:25.930 Amber Lin: and I would love us to, maybe not in this meeting to go in and see. Okay, is this.

193 00:20:26.110 ⇒ 00:20:29.640 Amber Lin: is this the right tagging. Is this the right.

194 00:20:29.640 ⇒ 00:20:36.495 Uttam Kumaran: Can you walk? Can you walk through like one or 2 line items like just end to end? Just so we kind of get something that’s like

195 00:20:37.310 ⇒ 00:20:39.609 Uttam Kumaran: that we all would be familiar.

196 00:20:39.610 ⇒ 00:20:40.140 Amber Lin: No

197 00:20:40.270 ⇒ 00:21:01.699 Amber Lin: 1st of all. This is how I tagged everything. This might not be as related value chain as we walked through before. But where part? Which part of this business does it relate to? And then what objective does it relate to? Just like what we talked about as a client service employee, satisfaction or financial performance.

198 00:21:01.840 ⇒ 00:21:13.580 Amber Lin: Time horizon is how long it will take to get done. Which, honestly, I added, add another column later. That could be pretty much related is the level effort.

199 00:21:13.760 ⇒ 00:21:19.480 Amber Lin: and then the impact it might have on a scale of one to 5 5 being the most

200 00:21:20.708 ⇒ 00:21:28.990 Amber Lin: so to walk through an item, let’s say, oh, here.

201 00:21:31.190 ⇒ 00:21:34.780 Amber Lin: let’s say, here, let’s talk about what we just

202 00:21:35.020 ⇒ 00:21:38.200 Amber Lin: we’re speaking of a client feedback system.

203 00:21:38.330 ⇒ 00:21:42.580 Amber Lin: right? We want it to be light touch. We want it to

204 00:21:42.710 ⇒ 00:21:46.249 Amber Lin: help the clients feel prompt. The clients

205 00:21:46.736 ⇒ 00:21:51.629 Amber Lin: to give us feedback into weekly updates. Currently, it’s still in a backlog.

206 00:21:52.409 ⇒ 00:21:56.799 Amber Lin: Once we start planning, we can move it into different statuses.

207 00:21:58.090 ⇒ 00:22:06.169 Amber Lin: Core just means. This is our related to our delivery, which probably the should be delivery.

208 00:22:06.360 ⇒ 00:22:10.700 Amber Lin: Anyways, it’s related to the objective client service.

209 00:22:11.625 ⇒ 00:22:15.989 Amber Lin: Estimate time. It takes pretty short level of time.

210 00:22:16.470 ⇒ 00:22:21.969 Amber Lin: And this this column is

211 00:22:22.610 ⇒ 00:22:38.190 Amber Lin: the primary financial driver which I’ll go into a bit later. So it’s either. Is it related to revenue, or is it related to cutting cost or cutting some indirect cost? Or is it about like overall profitability?

212 00:22:39.000 ⇒ 00:22:41.240 Amber Lin: The tagging is not optimized, but

213 00:22:41.650 ⇒ 00:22:43.620 Amber Lin: it’s what it is for now.

214 00:22:43.730 ⇒ 00:22:46.020 Amber Lin: So where is here?

215 00:22:46.570 ⇒ 00:22:49.369 Amber Lin: It’s relative revenue, because if clients are happy.

216 00:22:49.670 ⇒ 00:22:55.710 Amber Lin: we get the feedback. It might contribute to a better more revenue. That will come down the pipeline.

217 00:22:56.120 ⇒ 00:23:01.539 Amber Lin: We’ll say that it’s very high impact, very low effort. And thus it’s a top priority.

218 00:23:01.980 ⇒ 00:23:02.760 Amber Lin: So

219 00:23:03.040 ⇒ 00:23:09.460 Amber Lin: I hope this, I hope this massive database makes sense to you all, and we can definitely cut it down in the future.

220 00:23:11.040 ⇒ 00:23:11.830 Hannah Wang: I will love it.

221 00:23:11.830 ⇒ 00:23:13.650 Hannah Wang: Session. Sorry.

222 00:23:14.370 ⇒ 00:23:25.570 Hannah Wang: How are we gonna like move all of these into linear later, like, there’s just like a lot of tracking things now. So I just, I’m just wondering.

223 00:23:25.850 ⇒ 00:23:26.680 Hannah Wang: yeah.

224 00:23:27.790 ⇒ 00:23:36.539 Amber Lin: But I think we will move the ones that we just decided to into linear, because some of these are small. But some of the some of these might be a

225 00:23:37.107 ⇒ 00:23:59.380 Amber Lin: Entire project. Once we start them, we’ll definitely start tracking them. But right now this is mostly for the purpose of. Okay, we should have an idea of all our initiatives. Linear is not the greatest place for that. But once we get started, we can link these add a column for the linear projects, and then we can have a better sense of tracking.

226 00:23:59.840 ⇒ 00:24:01.250 Hannah Wang: Okay. Thanks.

227 00:24:01.250 ⇒ 00:24:01.770 Amber Lin: Yep.

228 00:24:05.290 ⇒ 00:24:06.090 Amber Lin: Oh.

229 00:24:14.180 ⇒ 00:24:15.620 Amber Lin: oh, okay,

230 00:24:18.810 ⇒ 00:24:26.889 Amber Lin: just a little bit before I leave. The 1st objective of what does it mean for a client to feel very happy is that we have.

231 00:24:27.120 ⇒ 00:24:47.490 Amber Lin: We build the trust through clarity, confidence, a lot of communication. We show our competence we deliver visible progress early, and also very often. We make them look good internally, and then we also make them have a very smooth and memorable customer journey.

232 00:24:48.020 ⇒ 00:24:51.629 Amber Lin: So that’s a few points about the 1st objective.

233 00:24:52.440 ⇒ 00:24:59.930 Amber Lin: The second one is about employee satisfaction which we were already doing with the Friday rituals goal setting and then stretch goals.

234 00:25:00.270 ⇒ 00:25:10.819 Amber Lin: And this is a similar document of, Okay, what does it make a employee feel happy?

235 00:25:11.070 ⇒ 00:25:12.430 Amber Lin: And

236 00:25:12.860 ⇒ 00:25:20.150 Amber Lin: what is it? What makes it employee churn or makes them want to go away. So these are the psychological needs.

237 00:25:20.330 ⇒ 00:25:22.659 Amber Lin: our role, what we can do.

238 00:25:22.770 ⇒ 00:25:25.540 Amber Lin: what it feels like when it’s missing

239 00:25:26.520 ⇒ 00:25:30.170 Amber Lin: similar 80, 20 rule and why, why they leave.

240 00:25:30.480 ⇒ 00:25:35.790 Amber Lin: and what are the common pitfalls that people? Organizations might run into

241 00:25:37.090 ⇒ 00:25:44.229 Amber Lin: so very similar structure? If you have time, we’ll love you to read it to to get a better idea of

242 00:25:44.540 ⇒ 00:25:46.030 Amber Lin: where things are.

243 00:25:47.435 ⇒ 00:25:49.810 Amber Lin: My computer is very slow now.

244 00:25:58.300 ⇒ 00:26:03.259 Amber Lin: and I broke it down in a few

245 00:26:03.370 ⇒ 00:26:25.010 Amber Lin: sections of employees want to have clarity, so we should define what success looks like for them. So that means roadmaps, thresholds, and one on one kits for managers who want to support their growth, such as having career ladders having internal project marketplaces, having mentorship programs.

246 00:26:25.500 ⇒ 00:26:34.739 Amber Lin: we want to also recognize them. So the Shadow Bot is one of the initiatives that we are taking on to make sure that everybody feel recognized. To my.

247 00:26:34.740 ⇒ 00:26:41.619 Uttam Kumaran: One question. So these are all these initiatives on under these are the are these in that master table as well.

248 00:26:41.840 ⇒ 00:26:46.710 Amber Lin: Yeah, it would just be easier to explain when I have needs bigger.

249 00:26:46.710 ⇒ 00:26:47.739 Uttam Kumaran: Makes sense, makes sense.

250 00:26:47.740 ⇒ 00:26:49.099 Amber Lin: Kind of an impact.

251 00:26:50.210 ⇒ 00:26:54.119 Amber Lin: And then we have autonomy

252 00:26:54.830 ⇒ 00:27:09.000 Amber Lin: letting people play with their own products, letting them feel like they’re leading something and building something of their own building, belonging, and community make making every person feel heard and making them feel connected with others.

253 00:27:09.650 ⇒ 00:27:11.900 Amber Lin: Fair compensation.

254 00:27:13.560 ⇒ 00:27:21.929 Amber Lin: so since we’re so this is still a job. So a big part of employees why, people work partly is for

255 00:27:22.270 ⇒ 00:27:30.899 Amber Lin: like, you can’t escape money unless you’re very, very loaded. So this is also important part we should consider and not avoid when we’re designing our

256 00:27:31.190 ⇒ 00:27:39.680 Amber Lin: processes to at least know that this is something on people’s mind, and lastly, security and purpose.

257 00:27:39.890 ⇒ 00:27:47.869 Amber Lin: So all of these would contribute hopefully to making our employees happy, and we’ll always have metrics around these to measure them.

258 00:27:49.310 ⇒ 00:27:53.730 Amber Lin: And lastly, we come to the financial performance, which is

259 00:27:53.750 ⇒ 00:28:22.080 Amber Lin: what I worked on yesterday, and this is what ties everything together, because we’re a business. The 2 objectives before are all based on psychological values, as you have seen in the 2 documents I wrote. But this is just numbers. Everything here. It can be broken down into very clear metrics. They will also measuring these will also cover, measuring the 2 some of the 2 objectives above.

260 00:28:22.140 ⇒ 00:28:24.680 Amber Lin: So right here I put, if our goal

261 00:28:25.240 ⇒ 00:28:32.049 Amber Lin: is to build a scalable, profitable, consulting firm. That’s very attractive acquisition target.

262 00:28:32.340 ⇒ 00:28:42.900 Amber Lin: What are the businesses have that have got acquired? What are they like? And this is kind of I remember what you sent me before. I just could not find the slide so correct me.

263 00:28:42.900 ⇒ 00:28:44.550 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I have it. I, yeah.

264 00:28:45.690 ⇒ 00:28:46.710 Amber Lin: Or adjusted.

265 00:28:46.710 ⇒ 00:28:50.450 Uttam Kumaran: I can, I can get it to you. Yeah, I think this is something that

266 00:28:52.170 ⇒ 00:28:59.599 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I I literally am like, I’m I’m trying to get a printer on Facebook marketplace because I want to print this that slide out and put it

267 00:29:00.000 ⇒ 00:29:17.060 Uttam Kumaran: like somewhere here on my wall, because yeah, I wake up. And I just think about those. I also, there’s a couple there’s a couple of non financial targets that we also need to hit regarding our our positioning and like

268 00:29:17.270 ⇒ 00:29:23.020 Uttam Kumaran: kind of a couple of like our company structure. So there will be that

269 00:29:23.400 ⇒ 00:29:35.545 Uttam Kumaran: companies like that view. They people will view us both financially, and then some. We will want to know the story as well. So I think we can add, I can add to this, and can you tag me here? I’ll I’ll send you the slides.

270 00:29:45.310 ⇒ 00:29:45.860 Amber Lin: Great

271 00:29:46.930 ⇒ 00:29:58.210 Amber Lin: so we have say, project level profit margins year over year. Revenue growth, revenue per full time. Employee say, client concentration

272 00:29:58.510 ⇒ 00:30:07.660 Amber Lin: recurring or predict predictable revenue, non founder, revenue, ownership, and all of these margins

273 00:30:07.850 ⇒ 00:30:20.720 Amber Lin: they kind of tied together to give a finance or numbers related snapshot of, okay, what is this business? And how is this? How it is it doing, and how do I trust it to perform? Well in the future?

274 00:30:22.250 ⇒ 00:30:25.032 Amber Lin: So a few things on. Why, that’s important.

275 00:30:26.790 ⇒ 00:30:31.609 Amber Lin: okay, I’m gonna skip this for now, cause I’m a bit tired from talking.

276 00:30:31.610 ⇒ 00:30:35.660 Uttam Kumaran: Also like 1 1 other thing about the strategy piece is like.

277 00:30:35.660 ⇒ 00:30:36.220 Amber Lin: How do you.

278 00:30:36.601 ⇒ 00:30:39.649 Uttam Kumaran: Are we keeping track of like rituals anywhere?

279 00:30:41.580 ⇒ 00:30:45.621 Uttam Kumaran: For example, did doing this meeting twice a week is a ritual right? Like

280 00:30:46.160 ⇒ 00:30:59.309 Uttam Kumaran: once a week, once a month for us to put together like a 5 slide snapshot of like the company. Health as a ritual. Are you thinking about it like that? Or are we still not really in like the execution.

281 00:31:01.167 ⇒ 00:31:06.832 Amber Lin: I have not got there. I think I can add it as another initiative.

282 00:31:11.870 ⇒ 00:31:25.570 Amber Lin: yeah, I think after today, after I showed you guys. And if I got alignment on what these things are, I think we can get a lot of those things started, because before now I was just trying to sort everything.

283 00:31:26.230 ⇒ 00:31:26.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

284 00:31:30.620 ⇒ 00:31:42.210 Amber Lin: I think this part is pretty important. Of what does it mean to excel at financial performance? Of course we have all these metrics above. But ultimately.

285 00:31:42.390 ⇒ 00:31:43.740 Amber Lin: are we growing?

286 00:31:43.860 ⇒ 00:31:45.760 Amber Lin: Do we know what’s profitable?

287 00:31:45.890 ⇒ 00:31:48.250 Amber Lin: Are we controlling our costs?

288 00:31:48.460 ⇒ 00:31:57.890 Amber Lin: Do we have predictable income and not just chasing every after every single client. And do we have internal financial leverage?

289 00:31:58.140 ⇒ 00:32:01.419 Amber Lin: And we’re not just hustling.

290 00:32:06.150 ⇒ 00:32:10.120 Uttam Kumaran: So then, on the grow revenue year over year, I would make it quarter over quarter.

291 00:32:13.940 ⇒ 00:32:16.940 Uttam Kumaran: And then it’s not only grow but

292 00:32:17.360 ⇒ 00:32:20.570 Uttam Kumaran: accelerate. Right? So there’s difference for everyone.

293 00:32:21.350 ⇒ 00:32:23.699 Uttam Kumaran: Everyone who remembers in physics, right?

294 00:32:24.120 ⇒ 00:32:26.210 Uttam Kumaran: It’s the velocity of the line.

295 00:32:26.400 ⇒ 00:32:31.460 Uttam Kumaran: But we want the line to curve like we want. If we if we’re pretty linear

296 00:32:31.910 ⇒ 00:32:38.180 Uttam Kumaran: this, this project is going to take a while. So we wanna, we want to find opportunities to accelerate the curve.

297 00:32:38.619 ⇒ 00:32:43.440 Uttam Kumaran: So not only are we growing, but the rate of growth is also changing.

298 00:32:48.950 ⇒ 00:32:51.629 Amber Lin: And in here I think this is

299 00:32:51.950 ⇒ 00:33:00.060 Amber Lin: pretty pretty important of all the metrics that we can use to assess our performance, broken down by

300 00:33:00.320 ⇒ 00:33:03.940 Amber Lin: revenue cost and

301 00:33:04.070 ⇒ 00:33:13.899 Amber Lin: some visibility to overall profitability, and each of them is like a section of what contributes to revenue, or what contributes to cost.

302 00:33:14.070 ⇒ 00:33:20.190 Amber Lin: So, for example, of what is our hours billed per project and client?

303 00:33:20.340 ⇒ 00:33:33.990 Amber Lin: And we can. That just means revenue productivity, and our short term cash flows. And so we can all look at these metrics and see what’s most important and what we should get.

304 00:33:34.340 ⇒ 00:33:36.099 Amber Lin: Start measuring first.st

305 00:33:37.540 ⇒ 00:33:42.629 Amber Lin: And anyways, I’ll leave that to you guys to do.

306 00:33:44.010 ⇒ 00:33:44.570 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

307 00:33:51.730 ⇒ 00:33:52.340 Amber Lin: Okay.

308 00:33:54.120 ⇒ 00:34:01.489 Amber Lin: Lastly, just wrapping up the last initiative, we have broken it down by revenue, and then

309 00:34:01.670 ⇒ 00:34:05.009 Amber Lin: costs which includes direct and indirect costs.

310 00:34:05.340 ⇒ 00:34:12.130 Amber Lin: So these are the items that composes revenue, and then what

311 00:34:12.400 ⇒ 00:34:17.049 Amber Lin: contributes to our cost of goods sold, which is direct labor pools.

312 00:34:17.179 ⇒ 00:34:25.659 Amber Lin: and then any client overhead. And then we have a lot of indirect cost that supports our operations and

313 00:34:26.330 ⇒ 00:34:32.540 Amber Lin: so breaking, breaking down the initiatives by these areas.

314 00:34:33.290 ⇒ 00:34:35.939 Amber Lin: we’ll see what we can do to

315 00:34:36.060 ⇒ 00:34:41.739 Amber Lin: grow client revenue, and have expansion. What we can do to acquire new clients

316 00:34:42.318 ⇒ 00:34:47.029 Amber Lin: what we can do to have non-delivery related and recurring revenue.

317 00:34:47.460 ⇒ 00:34:53.950 Amber Lin: And how can we reduce the cost and drive delivery efficiency?

318 00:34:54.050 ⇒ 00:35:03.229 Amber Lin: So that’s related to cost of goods sold, and lastly, to operate internally as more efficiently, so that will reduce indirect costs.

319 00:35:07.690 ⇒ 00:35:13.999 Amber Lin: And so, lastly, sorry going down here.

320 00:35:14.340 ⇒ 00:35:17.150 Amber Lin: Now we’re at this big.

321 00:35:17.150 ⇒ 00:35:22.790 Uttam Kumaran: Can you go through the can you go through the rubric piece? I just like I was reading this. But I just wanted to. Yeah.

322 00:35:23.050 ⇒ 00:35:29.750 Amber Lin: Yes, so scoring rubric, this is the impact and effort column.

323 00:35:34.110 ⇒ 00:35:37.650 Uttam Kumaran: So my my question for this is like, Oh, can we?

324 00:35:37.970 ⇒ 00:35:39.260 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want.

325 00:35:39.530 ⇒ 00:35:46.440 Uttam Kumaran: I would like all of us to do this, based on our own opinion, and then for all of us to then come and

326 00:35:47.230 ⇒ 00:35:52.640 Uttam Kumaran: like, see what we’re misaligned on right.

327 00:35:52.640 ⇒ 00:35:53.890 Amber Lin: Sure I like that.

328 00:35:54.930 ⇒ 00:36:10.499 Amber Lin: I mean everything there is currently Chatgvt generated. So I would love to have some human input on that. Essentially, that was my purpose of this meeting. I can create a column for each of the per each of the people here in the meeting, and then hopefully.

329 00:36:10.500 ⇒ 00:36:28.790 Robert Tseng: I think we should just do like a matrix like we, we can do an impact effort, matrix and then we we can. We each have our own copy, we plot it ourselves, and then we can talk about it like, I don’t. Yeah, I feel like just going down and like numbering things in a column, is like the

330 00:36:28.910 ⇒ 00:36:31.370 Robert Tseng: you don’t really like see?

331 00:36:31.560 ⇒ 00:36:34.410 Robert Tseng: Like the delineation as clearly.

332 00:36:34.730 ⇒ 00:36:40.210 Amber Lin: What is it like to have the the is there like a table you’re talking about.

333 00:36:40.870 ⇒ 00:36:44.470 Robert Tseng: I think we just go on figma and then draw like a graph.

334 00:36:45.090 ⇒ 00:36:46.020 Amber Lin: I like that.

335 00:36:46.020 ⇒ 00:36:52.100 Robert Tseng: Take the different things and just sticky it onto like a matrix thing.

336 00:36:52.100 ⇒ 00:36:54.690 Amber Lin: Okay, yeah, I really like that.

337 00:36:54.690 ⇒ 00:37:01.102 Uttam Kumaran: So you’re thinking of, like, important, non important, urgent, not urgent. Or is it just like what? Oh,

338 00:37:02.980 ⇒ 00:37:10.479 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, it’s something like that. I mean, I think it’s not important and urgent, I guess for us it’s

339 00:37:10.710 ⇒ 00:37:11.720 Robert Tseng: I mean, I’m assuming.

340 00:37:11.720 ⇒ 00:37:13.470 Uttam Kumaran: Important and urgent is the number one.

341 00:37:14.030 ⇒ 00:37:14.540 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

342 00:37:16.220 ⇒ 00:37:22.359 Amber Lin: Should we also estimate the level of effort that we need to? We need to do.

343 00:37:23.640 ⇒ 00:37:29.620 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, that’s why I’m saying to be like a a high effort, high impact. Like.

344 00:37:30.010 ⇒ 00:37:33.370 Robert Tseng: I mean, yeah, it’s just like, still, see?

345 00:37:33.370 ⇒ 00:37:36.939 Uttam Kumaran: High effort. High impact should be should indicate their urgency.

346 00:37:37.920 ⇒ 00:37:38.670 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

347 00:37:39.320 ⇒ 00:37:42.070 Uttam Kumaran: Or low F, yeah, or low effort.

348 00:37:42.070 ⇒ 00:37:51.849 Robert Tseng: It’s like low, low effort, high impact. It’s like, well, what do we do to start doing these right away and then high for high impact. It’s like, yeah, those are the things that we could focus on.

349 00:37:53.820 ⇒ 00:37:54.330 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

350 00:37:54.330 ⇒ 00:38:02.009 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a moving target. It’s this is just a snapshot of where we’re all right now. It’s like, Yeah, I mean, this, Doc has like a lot of stuff. But like.

351 00:38:02.160 ⇒ 00:38:22.979 Robert Tseng: yeah, we we have to use this to guide us and how we make decisions for the next quarter like for this. I mean, I feel like we don’t, I mean, as it’s like a 2 month, 2 year roadmap kind of thing, and we’re kind of working backwards from there. But like this, exercise is to help us like, decide what’s what’s really gonna move the needle for the next quarter next 2 quarters. Kind of thing.

352 00:38:24.160 ⇒ 00:38:27.659 Amber Lin: Yeah, exactly. We have a lot of initiatives that

353 00:38:27.860 ⇒ 00:38:34.400 Amber Lin: would be would have great effects. But we only have so much time and so much people so really want to make sure that

354 00:38:34.670 ⇒ 00:38:45.330 Amber Lin: we know everything we can do. But we know what we chose to focus on. So that’s that would be a great thing. I can make that. And then

355 00:38:45.680 ⇒ 00:38:55.359 Amber Lin: maybe we can use Tuesday’s meeting to go over these things. Or we can do it, Async, and then come back together. What do you guys think.

356 00:38:56.370 ⇒ 00:38:58.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so are you, gonna okay.

357 00:38:59.070 ⇒ 00:38:59.520 Amber Lin: Huh!

358 00:38:59.520 ⇒ 00:39:00.039 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Go. Go.

359 00:39:01.120 ⇒ 00:39:15.700 Robert Tseng: I was. Gonna say, I think we should just do it in our own time, and then we can come back together like I don’t want to spend this meeting time like going through like walking through a doc like everyone should have already like read it. And we just pick things to talk about like I think

360 00:39:16.110 ⇒ 00:39:18.330 Robert Tseng: that’s a better use of our meeting time.

361 00:39:20.250 ⇒ 00:39:21.020 Uttam Kumaran: I agree?

362 00:39:22.314 ⇒ 00:39:26.209 Uttam Kumaran: And then so for the for the scoring amber, are we gonna

363 00:39:26.920 ⇒ 00:39:31.899 Uttam Kumaran: do that? Here? Are you? Gonna you wanna do that in fig jam

364 00:39:33.950 ⇒ 00:39:34.980 Amber Lin: Hey! How are you doing.

365 00:39:34.980 ⇒ 00:39:35.670 Uttam Kumaran: Just drag it.

366 00:39:36.160 ⇒ 00:39:37.050 Amber Lin: Yeah. Dragging.

367 00:39:37.050 ⇒ 00:39:39.849 Uttam Kumaran: And are each of each of us gonna get our own basically.

368 00:39:40.540 ⇒ 00:39:48.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think so. And then, you know, we’ll come together. We’ll see the differences. And those differences are where we spend our time talking about. And we try to like.

369 00:39:49.150 ⇒ 00:39:52.239 Robert Tseng: I mean, yeah, like, I, yeah.

370 00:39:53.260 ⇒ 00:39:54.799 Uttam Kumaran: I agree. Okay, I I like that.

371 00:39:54.800 ⇒ 00:39:58.439 Robert Tseng: So it basically assembles like a master one from from our conversation.

372 00:39:59.890 ⇒ 00:40:02.263 Robert Tseng: I think we’ll overlap on most of them.

373 00:40:03.090 ⇒ 00:40:03.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

374 00:40:03.920 ⇒ 00:40:04.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

375 00:40:05.280 ⇒ 00:40:09.455 Uttam Kumaran: It’s actually the ones that don’t overlap is like what I want to spend our time talking about.

376 00:40:09.920 ⇒ 00:40:10.520 Amber Lin: Thank you.

377 00:40:11.520 ⇒ 00:40:12.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

378 00:40:16.860 ⇒ 00:40:24.280 Amber Lin: Okay, that’s all for me. I think there’s some other items we want to talk about.

379 00:40:27.654 ⇒ 00:40:28.684 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s see.

380 00:40:32.910 ⇒ 00:40:34.125 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think

381 00:40:34.640 ⇒ 00:40:37.822 Uttam Kumaran: Away she go ahead on the certification stuff.

382 00:40:40.030 ⇒ 00:40:43.280 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, sure, I’m preparing the message and answer.

383 00:40:44.670 ⇒ 00:40:50.478 Uttam Kumaran: Cool other than that. What else did we?

384 00:40:59.710 ⇒ 00:41:01.150 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like I

385 00:41:02.570 ⇒ 00:41:06.339 Uttam Kumaran: that was kind of. I’m just looking through the manager’s chat. Was there anything else.

386 00:41:07.608 ⇒ 00:41:12.989 Amber Lin: You mentioned that you thought Kyle might turn if we didn’t give him another project.

387 00:41:14.400 ⇒ 00:41:15.570 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, I mean.

388 00:41:16.140 ⇒ 00:41:23.799 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I think he’s gonna yeah. I think I spoke with the wish, and he’s gonna be on urban stems. I spoke with Luke today, and I think he’s fine with that.

389 00:41:24.299 ⇒ 00:41:27.689 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, just like again, I yeah, sorry. Go ahead. Aish.

390 00:41:28.510 ⇒ 00:41:32.080 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, yeah, I was just saying I shared the news with both of them as well.

391 00:41:33.150 ⇒ 00:41:33.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

392 00:41:34.840 ⇒ 00:41:42.199 Uttam Kumaran: cool. So I I think. I think again, as part of our the employee work that we’re doing.

393 00:41:42.400 ⇒ 00:41:48.660 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just understand, like, who’s on the bench, or who’s less thing and just understand, like how that impacts them.

394 00:41:48.960 ⇒ 00:41:52.269 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing that was really good we did this week is the allocation work.

395 00:41:52.480 ⇒ 00:41:57.490 Uttam Kumaran: So I think amber. A good thing is just to make sure that that’s booked again for the end of May.

396 00:42:00.710 ⇒ 00:42:06.080 Uttam Kumaran: So the other piece. I think 2 things I wanted to share before we end. So I sent this in the

397 00:42:07.220 ⇒ 00:42:20.919 Uttam Kumaran: in the chat. I don’t know. I like this visual. It kind of showed what I mentioned, which is just like, I think, every month, like we were taking some big swings every like 3 months, every 2 or 3 months.

398 00:42:21.040 ⇒ 00:42:23.619 Uttam Kumaran: Now, I think we’re iterating faster.

399 00:42:23.920 ⇒ 00:42:28.689 Uttam Kumaran: and the amplitude of the waves that we’re trying to do are faster, right? So are are higher.

400 00:42:28.830 ⇒ 00:42:31.209 Uttam Kumaran: So this is where, like I want us to not

401 00:42:31.730 ⇒ 00:42:47.260 Uttam Kumaran: consider just like staying at the same level, but to punch like harder and harder and harder and harder on the marketing side. This is like, okay, we’re good with. With any sort of document. I throw the team’s wire diagram. We can knock those out

402 00:42:47.420 ⇒ 00:43:03.489 Uttam Kumaran: cool. What other mediums do we have? Okay, we. We’re we’re now good at posting every single day on Linkedin Cool. What else? It’s that’s the acceleration. We’re gonna see and and really, this is where a lot of companies get bogged down is they’re able to push.

403 00:43:03.590 ⇒ 00:43:07.719 Uttam Kumaran: They’re able to sustain. But then they need to jump again.

404 00:43:08.127 ⇒ 00:43:13.300 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s the thing is I want us to always think about how do we accelerate

405 00:43:15.010 ⇒ 00:43:33.397 Uttam Kumaran: you you like you jump to the next level. We take on the challenge of posting something every day we take on the challenge of of, you know, a new initiative. We solve that. And then we move to the next thing. The faster. These iteration cycles are the the more separation we’re gonna have.

406 00:43:34.110 ⇒ 00:43:35.610 Uttam Kumaran: from our competition.

407 00:43:35.740 ⇒ 00:43:46.539 Uttam Kumaran: And the more separation we’re gonna have from the people that are bigger than us. Because their challenge is gonna be the fact that they’re too big, and that they can’t change fast enough. Right? So

408 00:43:46.960 ⇒ 00:43:49.050 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’ve done a ex like

409 00:43:49.520 ⇒ 00:44:15.310 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve been in as part of the companies. I’ve been part of. We’re moving extremely fast. Right? But of course, I think like, it’s sort of a jobs not finished mentality. So I think we all know that some, some things were really like probably 1 30 min meeting away from from finishing or figuring out. So I urge you to. If you’ve identified things like that have a meeting, throw something on, get things done like every day really really matters

410 00:44:15.877 ⇒ 00:44:21.910 Uttam Kumaran: but we’re getting better like, I can see that every week we are moving the needle on several items.

411 00:44:22.335 ⇒ 00:44:27.069 Uttam Kumaran: We’re we’re spending a lot of time and effort, and our punches are are getting noticed.

412 00:44:27.477 ⇒ 00:44:30.480 Uttam Kumaran: But I just want to kind of leave with that. And then the other thing is.

413 00:44:30.610 ⇒ 00:44:36.340 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna be out the end of next week, like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

414 00:44:36.640 ⇒ 00:44:40.689 Uttam Kumaran: and then I think, Robert, you’re gonna be out Monday, Tuesday.

415 00:44:41.600 ⇒ 00:44:42.199 Uttam Kumaran: Is that right?

416 00:44:42.200 ⇒ 00:44:43.980 Robert Tseng: I’m out the week.

417 00:44:44.740 ⇒ 00:44:50.209 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, you’re out the week. Okay? Cool, then. So that’s then that’s the that’s the drill. So.

418 00:44:50.210 ⇒ 00:44:50.690 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

419 00:44:50.690 ⇒ 00:44:53.569 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is also a good test for us to see

420 00:44:53.690 ⇒ 00:45:03.039 Uttam Kumaran: how things go. I don’t. I’m not particularly nervous about anything. I think probably the biggest thing is like Eden.

421 00:45:05.025 ⇒ 00:45:15.600 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s I’ll probably leave it to you in a ways to figure out the other clients. I feel pretty good. You being in person here. Amber is gonna help like smooth ABC for that week.

422 00:45:17.900 ⇒ 00:45:22.680 Uttam Kumaran: And then I’m I’m sending the proposal over to urban stem so we can lock that down. And

423 00:45:23.180 ⇒ 00:45:29.770 Uttam Kumaran: and I think the biggest thing there is just to to try to own the that relationship. But

424 00:45:30.420 ⇒ 00:45:38.400 Uttam Kumaran: overall like I feel like a month ago, I probably would have been more nervous than I am now to to sort of like, take a break, and especially for both of us to be out.

425 00:45:39.370 ⇒ 00:45:42.340 Uttam Kumaran: But I think it’ll be. It’ll be a good test. I don’t know. What do you think.

426 00:45:43.750 ⇒ 00:45:46.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Well, I mean, this is kind of a.

427 00:45:46.590 ⇒ 00:45:48.680 Uttam Kumaran: Like. You’re more nervous than I am.

428 00:45:48.680 ⇒ 00:45:49.946 Robert Tseng: Oh, yeah.

429 00:45:52.240 ⇒ 00:45:58.549 Robert Tseng: we’ll see. The last time I took a week off was in October, like, so don’t know how this is. Gonna go. We’ll see.

430 00:45:59.910 ⇒ 00:46:09.069 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m glad I think this this crew like, really, I think the the existence of this crew is what’s giving me a lot of faith.

431 00:46:09.230 ⇒ 00:46:13.770 Uttam Kumaran: Without this kind of group I don’t know. It would have. It would have been very difficult.

432 00:46:14.175 ⇒ 00:46:18.909 Uttam Kumaran: In fact, it like, I know, cause I’ve tried to take time off before. It’s very. It’s it was very hard. So

433 00:46:19.437 ⇒ 00:46:22.080 Uttam Kumaran: I trust that everything will be fine.

434 00:46:23.980 ⇒ 00:46:27.450 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, think about this anything else.

435 00:46:28.510 ⇒ 00:46:30.740 Uttam Kumaran: guys that we can move forward today or.

436 00:46:31.564 ⇒ 00:46:39.590 Amber Lin: Can you talk a bit about the AI new AI engineer, Mustafa? How’s that gonna go? What is he gonna take on

437 00:46:39.900 ⇒ 00:46:46.990 Amber Lin: like? Is? Is he gonna be coached by Miguel and Casey? Or is he gonna be like

438 00:46:47.210 ⇒ 00:46:49.340 Amber Lin: taking over some of their work.

439 00:46:50.790 ⇒ 00:47:07.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so it’s just a pure capacity. Ad, so yeah, I I think one thing that kind of like in the last 2 weeks kind of like removed. We did a lot of work on the AI team side. I think one is like, I’m I’m no longer. I kind of no longer see

440 00:47:09.200 ⇒ 00:47:32.629 Uttam Kumaran: like no longer relying just on Miguel and Casey to sort of run that I think it’s helpful for me to be involved there, I think. Second is both of them are working on internal stuff, but also on client work for pool parts for off the record for ABC, and there’s kind of a couple of initiatives that are top of mind. One is getting the slack agents done as soon as possible.

441 00:47:32.740 ⇒ 00:47:34.939 Uttam Kumaran: Second is getting the demo site up

442 00:47:35.120 ⇒ 00:47:39.220 Uttam Kumaran: with all of our demos. And the 3rd is automating sales.

443 00:47:39.420 ⇒ 00:47:44.719 Uttam Kumaran: So Mustafa is gonna be not like 100% of his time, which he’s starting part time.

444 00:47:45.118 ⇒ 00:47:50.189 Uttam Kumaran: He’s only starting with 10 h. So 100 of his time will be on sales. Automation.

445 00:47:50.773 ⇒ 00:48:11.130 Uttam Kumaran: So this will be anything from automating lead list generation to helping us automate upwork applications. Whatever the other one was the other site applications. So we’re just gonna systematically check every box of things that we want to automate for for sales team.

446 00:48:11.290 ⇒ 00:48:13.899 Uttam Kumaran: So he’s gonna be 100% dedicated there.

447 00:48:15.450 ⇒ 00:48:21.887 Uttam Kumaran: Casey and Miguel are, gonna continue to rip through this, the the original agents, and then

448 00:48:22.830 ⇒ 00:48:39.749 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a couple of other of other items in the backlog that I want them to work on for example, I want them to Vibe code, basically a very simple Zoom Meeting organizer that we can chat over our Zoom Meetings. Because Google drive is like a complete pain in the ass. Do that.

449 00:48:41.566 ⇒ 00:48:47.739 Uttam Kumaran: the other thing is like, I want to get like, you know, like 20 or 30 Demos out the door on that demo site. Soon.

450 00:48:48.780 ⇒ 00:48:57.180 Uttam Kumaran: Hannah and is and is like, I think, take doing a couple of design iterations on that and web flow. These guys are gonna rip the Iframes.

451 00:48:58.840 ⇒ 00:49:04.130 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I I just like everything all their time is gonna go towards

452 00:49:05.170 ⇒ 00:49:08.790 Uttam Kumaran: like helping with sales as much as possible. And then

453 00:49:09.060 ⇒ 00:49:13.033 Uttam Kumaran: they’re gonna we’re gonna bring on a 1 or 2 more data clients. So they’re gonna

454 00:49:13.750 ⇒ 00:49:14.890 Uttam Kumaran: take that on.

455 00:49:16.290 ⇒ 00:49:17.070 Amber Lin: I see.

456 00:49:17.661 ⇒ 00:49:20.020 Amber Lin: Okay, we have 10 min.

457 00:49:20.440 ⇒ 00:49:25.826 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I wish, I asked also on the AI creating bots, or do you work as well? Yeah. So

458 00:49:28.310 ⇒ 00:49:52.689 Uttam Kumaran: the. So they’re gonna make bots that that should again, their work they should do is to lower our cost of goods, sold and increase our project profitability. Right? So I want the automations they work on to enable our engineers to move faster for us to deliver faster. And then, of course, we make a higher margin on the projects. That’s the measure of roi, so that profit the project profitability. I want to see that.

459 00:49:52.810 ⇒ 00:49:53.730 Uttam Kumaran: Bro

460 00:49:55.320 ⇒ 00:50:07.720 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t. I think they’re I don’t know. I I want them to both do the Dbt certification. So I think they’ll both do that. And then, yeah, for the scraping projects from out work. Yes, like, I’ll work on the soft on something like that. Nice thing, is he?

461 00:50:07.970 ⇒ 00:50:19.320 Uttam Kumaran: He? He got a did a lot of his sort of individual work on upwork. So he’s familiar with the platform. And I’m basically, yes, we’re we’ll build a platform to find, qualify.

462 00:50:19.460 ⇒ 00:50:22.269 Uttam Kumaran: and generate the copy for proposal.

463 00:50:22.700 ⇒ 00:50:29.440 Uttam Kumaran: and we’ll measure the number of proposals we’re sending out. Yeah.

464 00:50:30.400 ⇒ 00:50:33.440 Uttam Kumaran: simple like that’ll that’ll move the needle. That’s like a

465 00:50:33.790 ⇒ 00:50:38.200 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know in like a 1 week sprint. I want it. He’ll he’ll basically. I’m hoping he’ll get that done.

466 00:50:38.520 ⇒ 00:50:39.410 Amber Lin: Okay?

467 00:50:40.297 ⇒ 00:50:51.240 Amber Lin: Last question, I have since we already were talking about employee satisfaction. Can we go over each person? Do we think they’re happy with with what they’re at.

468 00:50:54.630 ⇒ 00:50:55.909 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think

469 00:50:57.830 ⇒ 00:51:02.650 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll let you go. I mean I and I think it’s probably more valuable to talk about who’s struggling.

470 00:51:05.210 ⇒ 00:51:12.530 Amber Lin: Can we start from start from the marketing team? Because there’s less people.

471 00:51:14.150 ⇒ 00:51:17.259 Hannah Wang: I haven’t had a 1 on one with anyone. But

472 00:51:18.330 ⇒ 00:51:23.790 Amber Lin: In general like, do you think they’re facing like, how do you think they’re feeling.

473 00:51:24.820 ⇒ 00:51:31.050 Hannah Wang: Oh, I feel like I mean, I brought this up kind of casually, but I feel like Ryan’s gonna

474 00:51:32.250 ⇒ 00:51:37.469 Hannah Wang: burn out again, especially cause we’re doing so much like video stuff. And this is just like.

475 00:51:37.470 ⇒ 00:51:42.210 Uttam Kumaran: What can we do about that? Because I try to tell him that I’m trying to tell.

476 00:51:42.210 ⇒ 00:51:42.709 Hannah Wang: Hold on! One.

477 00:51:42.710 ⇒ 00:51:51.879 Uttam Kumaran: Like not not not not do everything all at the same time. Right? Even this all labs thing I was trying to be like. Yo, we don’t need to record this. We don’t need to edit this this week.

478 00:51:52.110 ⇒ 00:51:53.479 Uttam Kumaran: You don’t need to.

479 00:51:54.410 ⇒ 00:51:56.429 Hannah Wang: Did you tell him that directly, though.

480 00:51:56.430 ⇒ 00:51:57.719 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

481 00:51:57.720 ⇒ 00:51:58.130 Hannah Wang: Okay.

482 00:51:58.130 ⇒ 00:51:59.440 Uttam Kumaran: But he was like I already started.

483 00:52:01.980 ⇒ 00:52:02.330 Hannah Wang: Yeah.

484 00:52:02.330 ⇒ 00:52:06.956 Uttam Kumaran: Again, like I don’t. And this is like, Yes, it’s tough. I’m I’m curious, like what we should do.

485 00:52:07.440 ⇒ 00:52:34.009 Robert Tseng: So I was actually thinking about this yesterday, not necessarily because of Ryan, but I was just thinking we thought maybe we should. I mean, I don’t know. Like Mary Ann is like, I’m just thinking about like Marianne’s role and like thinking, okay, well, I think, okay, well, I’m just gonna put it out there. What if we got like an ea like an executive assistant that was more like content.

486 00:52:34.480 ⇒ 00:52:41.980 Robert Tseng: I kind of just like got like kind of the scaffolding in place for messages and

487 00:52:42.100 ⇒ 00:52:51.739 Robert Tseng: like on on the content side. And I’m on some of the go to market operation side like there I can just think of. I was just like doing like a mental checklist of like all the things that I

488 00:52:52.020 ⇒ 00:53:10.089 Robert Tseng: all the manual stuff I spend my time on, and like the back and forth that goes between us and Ryan. What Ryan waits on for us to be able to do stuff like, I think what happens is we give our feedback to him and like waves, and then all just like lands on his plate at the same time. So he’s not really like planning his workout that much.

489 00:53:10.450 ⇒ 00:53:11.090 Robert Tseng: And

490 00:53:12.210 ⇒ 00:53:18.130 Robert Tseng: yeah, I mean, like, I always thought like Mary Ann was gonna eventually be that. But I don’t know if she will like.

491 00:53:18.590 ⇒ 00:53:21.439 Robert Tseng: I I guess I can be more specific. So like,

492 00:53:22.780 ⇒ 00:53:32.389 Robert Tseng: yeah, like I, you know, I’m we. We both want to try to post content consistently, just like somebody who’s getting all of the content drops into like.

493 00:53:33.080 ⇒ 00:53:43.100 Robert Tseng: like kind of doing some of the pre processing work. And then Ryan can just do more of the last last mile, or like, or that, you know, and I.

494 00:53:43.100 ⇒ 00:53:49.170 Uttam Kumaran: I’m down to get. I’m down to get him. Somebody like this is where I wanted one of the interns to just work directly for him.

495 00:53:49.170 ⇒ 00:53:50.539 Amber Lin: Yeah, yeah, he.

496 00:53:50.540 ⇒ 00:53:51.580 Hannah Wang: His brother.

497 00:53:51.580 ⇒ 00:53:53.319 Hannah Wang: Excellent. Yeah, let’s just.

498 00:53:53.440 ⇒ 00:53:54.480 Amber Lin: They’re close.

499 00:53:54.480 ⇒ 00:53:58.360 Uttam Kumaran: No, his brother, yeah. But like this is also where, like

500 00:53:58.790 ⇒ 00:54:01.839 Uttam Kumaran: his brother’s, like, it has an engineering background.

501 00:54:01.840 ⇒ 00:54:02.440 Amber Lin: Oh!

502 00:54:02.440 ⇒ 00:54:06.220 Uttam Kumaran: And I don’t know I wasn’t feeling.

503 00:54:06.220 ⇒ 00:54:10.640 Robert Tseng: I’m writing out like what this person should be doing.

504 00:54:10.640 ⇒ 00:54:13.360 Uttam Kumaran: Ryan Ryan should go hire that person like

505 00:54:13.470 ⇒ 00:54:16.710 Uttam Kumaran: Ryan should find that and Ryan should go hire that person. This is like.

506 00:54:16.710 ⇒ 00:54:19.630 Amber Lin: Okay, awesome. Let’s.

507 00:54:19.949 ⇒ 00:54:32.400 Uttam Kumaran: He’s like one of the few people, I think, who are like. He’s a monster. But you’re right in that, like I think if he could go direct someone to do the the really, the basics that he needs.

508 00:54:32.700 ⇒ 00:54:38.860 Uttam Kumaran: and then continue just to scale his time up. I think he would appreciate us thinking about him in that way, too.

509 00:54:39.080 ⇒ 00:54:46.099 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, I mean, I don’t even know, Robert, how much you have to write up. Or maybe you just want to write up like a quick thing about like

510 00:54:46.300 ⇒ 00:55:00.899 Uttam Kumaran: what the goal is and why. But I would just hand that to him to be like, go find someone because he’ll go. He’ll go find someone, bring us couple of candidates we can interview, and I’ll and I’ll be them like this. Is your person right like Mary Ann. I don’t know. I don’t think

511 00:55:02.070 ⇒ 00:55:08.770 Uttam Kumaran: She is like really a big fan of this like admin process work like I just don’t.

512 00:55:08.950 ⇒ 00:55:15.230 Amber Lin: Very set systems, and it’s great for making sure business fall into play like fall into the right place.

513 00:55:15.230 ⇒ 00:55:23.220 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I’m gonna have her take over payroll any interaction with the finance team. She’s gonna basically be. She’s like my right hand person.

514 00:55:24.730 ⇒ 00:55:29.600 Uttam Kumaran: Because that’s not a area for creativity. That’s an area for like check every box

515 00:55:29.710 ⇒ 00:55:32.059 Uttam Kumaran: and like, make sure that things are getting done.

516 00:55:32.920 ⇒ 00:55:33.530 Uttam Kumaran: So.

517 00:55:34.010 ⇒ 00:55:45.369 Amber Lin: I have a comment on creating the river for Ryan. I really think we talked about last time we should get him to at least spit out some of the pain points. I really think we shouldn’t

518 00:55:45.890 ⇒ 00:55:50.209 Amber Lin: write his pains for him, like we kind of know where he’s stuck.

519 00:55:50.210 ⇒ 00:55:51.110 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.

520 00:55:51.110 ⇒ 00:55:52.949 Amber Lin: It really should come from him

521 00:55:53.610 ⇒ 00:56:00.229 Amber Lin: like we’re also another task, and he would wouldn’t really feel like he’s owning like, oh, this is gonna help me, we should definitely.

522 00:56:00.230 ⇒ 00:56:03.779 Uttam Kumaran: So then why don’t? Why don’t Robert just write the hypothesis.

523 00:56:04.270 ⇒ 00:56:04.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

524 00:56:05.550 ⇒ 00:56:10.070 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ll have him have a section to articulate like yo. Do you agree?

525 00:56:10.300 ⇒ 00:56:14.500 Uttam Kumaran: In? What ways do you think you can scale your time and like.

526 00:56:15.530 ⇒ 00:56:20.510 Amber Lin: Yeah, ways struggling right now. And what ways is not sustainable.

527 00:56:20.510 ⇒ 00:56:22.520 Uttam Kumaran: He, yeah, yeah, I agree.

528 00:56:24.210 ⇒ 00:56:24.950 Robert Tseng: Okay.

529 00:56:27.900 ⇒ 00:56:29.310 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I think that was.

530 00:56:29.310 ⇒ 00:56:31.497 Uttam Kumaran: He’s getting. He’s getting really good at

531 00:56:31.980 ⇒ 00:56:40.440 Uttam Kumaran: our process and helping me scale our stuff, and I need him there like I I don’t think his time is most useful in like spending 6 h editing and

532 00:56:42.020 ⇒ 00:56:44.589 Uttam Kumaran: like doing stuff that he should hand off.

533 00:56:44.970 ⇒ 00:56:53.810 Uttam Kumaran: But I would like him to. I I agree with you am right, like him to us, to help him come to that conclusion or find, and I’ll find what like

534 00:56:54.270 ⇒ 00:56:58.080 Uttam Kumaran: plug the hole in another way, if that’s not the same conclusion.

535 00:56:58.250 ⇒ 00:56:58.729 Amber Lin: Oh, my!

536 00:56:58.944 ⇒ 00:57:03.020 Uttam Kumaran: And then basically be like, Okay, cool, go find someone or like, I’ll help. I’ll help them find someone.

537 00:57:03.300 ⇒ 00:57:04.290 Amber Lin: Okay.

538 00:57:05.150 ⇒ 00:57:13.649 Uttam Kumaran: I interviewed like 10 people to find Ryan like 10 random, like content, like growth hack people.

539 00:57:14.713 ⇒ 00:57:16.019 Uttam Kumaran: And so

540 00:57:16.230 ⇒ 00:57:24.300 Uttam Kumaran: I think, giving him the reins is is a lot better, and he can scale his time more cause I know him. He has a high bar for expectations. So whoever works for him.

541 00:57:25.200 ⇒ 00:57:29.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, he’ll get. He’ll get. He’ll get the money’s worth for sure.

542 00:57:29.750 ⇒ 00:57:32.640 Amber Lin: I think he’ll be a really good manager. He’s very patient.

543 00:57:33.280 ⇒ 00:57:33.920 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

544 00:57:35.800 ⇒ 00:57:40.300 Amber Lin: Any. How’s Hannah? How is you and Ann doing?

545 00:57:40.830 ⇒ 00:57:45.479 Amber Lin: I I remember last time you said you feel a little bit pressured or overwhelmed.

546 00:57:47.600 ⇒ 00:57:57.626 Hannah Wang: I think that’s just because there’s like a lot of other stuff going on ex outside of work. I can’t keep my head straight and like juggle all these things.

547 00:57:59.460 ⇒ 00:58:01.500 Hannah Wang: I mean, I feel like I’m

548 00:58:01.750 ⇒ 00:58:08.270 Hannah Wang: I’m okay. I’m doing a lot less design stuff which I don’t know how I feel about cause I’m focusing more on promos.

549 00:58:08.470 ⇒ 00:58:12.660 Hannah Wang: which is fine, like well, not fine. I like.

550 00:58:12.800 ⇒ 00:58:14.750 Hannah Wang: I like designing, but.

551 00:58:16.430 ⇒ 00:58:21.979 Uttam Kumaran: Do you find it like you’re do you? Is does it help to frame it like you’re designing a new like

552 00:58:22.400 ⇒ 00:58:29.700 Uttam Kumaran: because the stuff we’re doing for the interviews is you’re designing like that whole process, and that whole flow just a different medium.

553 00:58:29.700 ⇒ 00:58:32.640 Hannah Wang: But it’s not visual, like, I, yeah

554 00:58:32.640 ⇒ 00:58:36.479 Hannah Wang: stuff and make things look pretty. I feel like I like doing that.

555 00:58:37.674 ⇒ 00:58:42.149 Hannah Wang: So I guess I just feel like I’m more like trying to

556 00:58:43.000 ⇒ 00:58:50.630 Hannah Wang: like Pm, stuff now, and just like reach out to whatever and like coordinate stuff I see.

557 00:58:52.260 ⇒ 00:58:59.430 Hannah Wang: which I mean. If that’s the need, then I can fill that. But that’s not necessarily what I want to do. I think

558 00:58:59.790 ⇒ 00:59:05.249 Hannah Wang: I don’t know. I I have to give it a couple more weeks. It’s only been like what 2 weeks since promo stuff.

559 00:59:05.530 ⇒ 00:59:07.669 Amber Lin: Yeah, keep that in mind.

560 00:59:08.009 ⇒ 00:59:18.879 Amber Lin: I think it’s really important that you enjoy the work you do. I think, from what I hear, you don’t detest the promotional stuff. It just you really like the design stuff.

561 00:59:19.850 ⇒ 00:59:29.060 Hannah Wang: Or I just like my, I think my strength is like nitty, gritty, like detail oriented stuff. So big picture

562 00:59:29.210 ⇒ 00:59:38.670 Hannah Wang: kind of like creating stuff is not my strong suit like I don’t necessarily enjoy it. I can do it, but I don’t like it as much. So I like.

563 00:59:38.670 ⇒ 00:59:40.110 Uttam Kumaran: I think, yeah.

564 00:59:40.110 ⇒ 00:59:44.580 Hannah Wang: Yeah, reviewing stuff like making stuff like, I don’t know.

565 00:59:44.690 ⇒ 00:59:45.190 Hannah Wang: So.

566 00:59:45.190 ⇒ 00:59:59.779 Uttam Kumaran: I think part of it is like growing is growing pains, though, like we took on promotions, the new channel there’s going. We’re not gonna know until we do something. It’s gonna be 80% unknown. Once we do the 1st one right as soon as we did our 1st one pager.

567 01:00:00.030 ⇒ 01:00:03.380 Uttam Kumaran: we’re on the race. As soon as we do our 1st deck. We’re on the races right then.

568 01:00:03.380 ⇒ 01:00:03.730 Hannah Wang: Yeah.

569 01:00:03.730 ⇒ 01:00:05.549 Uttam Kumaran: I think it becomes more like.

570 01:00:05.790 ⇒ 01:00:09.700 Uttam Kumaran: you know. I think it’s helpful to understand whether you actually don’t like

571 01:00:09.850 ⇒ 01:00:13.340 Uttam Kumaran: the promotion stuff, or you don’t like the unknown.

572 01:00:13.810 ⇒ 01:00:14.550 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the difference.

573 01:00:14.550 ⇒ 01:00:15.180 Hannah Wang: Oh, there’s a.

574 01:00:15.180 ⇒ 01:00:20.409 Uttam Kumaran: Difference there, right? Cause there’s this is where it’s like. Again, I think part of it is like

575 01:00:20.520 ⇒ 01:00:26.469 Uttam Kumaran: we go into the promotion world. We’re only like I’m only like I have 10 conversations. Couple said, this is worth it. Let’s try it.

576 01:00:26.740 ⇒ 01:00:38.290 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna mess up 100 things. We’re gonna mess up totally fine. The lovely thing is, there’s no risk, and the only risk is our time. And so I think part of it is like, if it’s helpful to know that, hey?

577 01:00:38.740 ⇒ 01:00:42.369 Uttam Kumaran: Whenever there’s like a lot of unknowns, I feel nervous, that’s

578 01:00:42.600 ⇒ 01:00:50.960 Uttam Kumaran: that’s 1 thing. But though every everything when we start is gonna feel like that right when we start doing promotions is gonna feel like that. Then

579 01:00:51.510 ⇒ 01:01:02.110 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna start running one of these a week, and it’s gonna be slick, and there’s gonna be execution steps, and we’re still gonna thrive on our on our design and our ability to execute

580 01:01:02.240 ⇒ 01:01:03.660 Uttam Kumaran: and have quality. You know.

581 01:01:04.970 ⇒ 01:01:10.900 Hannah Wang: Yeah, so I don’t. I don’t know at this point, like what which one it is.

582 01:01:14.600 ⇒ 01:01:23.350 Uttam Kumaran: I think also, we’re gonna like events is gonna be 60 like we talked about this before, like events is gonna be a huge part of our marketing journey.

583 01:01:25.110 ⇒ 01:01:28.259 Uttam Kumaran: So this isn’t a flash in the pan. Item.

584 01:01:28.690 ⇒ 01:01:30.390 Uttam Kumaran: In fact, like I think

585 01:01:30.750 ⇒ 01:01:38.560 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna we, we will continue to put out one pagers and visual assets. But we are going to ramp up

586 01:01:38.930 ⇒ 01:01:43.529 Uttam Kumaran: the events the Pre during post

587 01:01:43.920 ⇒ 01:01:48.800 Uttam Kumaran: managing our own events. Virtual webinar conference like, that’s gonna

588 01:01:49.410 ⇒ 01:01:54.359 Uttam Kumaran: that’s our advantage. Because we can talk about the work we do and, like, you know, meet people that way.

589 01:01:54.680 ⇒ 01:01:56.460 Hannah Wang: Yeah.

590 01:01:57.522 ⇒ 01:02:03.687 Hannah Wang: so ask me, next week, I guess. Well, next week, I’m, out of office next Friday. But

591 01:02:04.610 ⇒ 01:02:14.950 Hannah Wang: and I haven’t talked with her in a while. I talk with her way less because I’m not designing anymore. So I know she’s taking on like analytics stuff. I don’t know? Does she seem like

592 01:02:15.120 ⇒ 01:02:16.040 Hannah Wang: excited to.

593 01:02:16.040 ⇒ 01:02:16.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s all culture

594 01:02:16.960 ⇒ 01:02:24.770 Uttam Kumaran: this week. Yeah, she’s she seems like pumped for all the stuff we’re doing. I mean, I I really grow people. If they tell me they’re they’re doing fine, I’m like.

595 01:02:25.600 ⇒ 01:02:27.490 Uttam Kumaran: can’t be true, like what’s going on.

596 01:02:27.490 ⇒ 01:02:28.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

597 01:02:28.190 ⇒ 01:02:34.639 Uttam Kumaran: but for the most part everybody I’ve talked to feels good. I think Kaya was the only person that I felt I was a little bit nervous about.

598 01:02:35.000 ⇒ 01:02:37.029 Uttam Kumaran: and he’s also good at being like

599 01:02:37.640 ⇒ 01:02:43.499 Uttam Kumaran: yo. What’s good same with them a lot. They’re both very direct, and if they’re like what they’re doing or don’t like what they’re doing

600 01:02:44.090 ⇒ 01:02:46.259 Uttam Kumaran: for some of the folks, whether it’s.

601 01:02:46.260 ⇒ 01:02:46.790 Amber Lin: Yeah.

602 01:02:47.460 ⇒ 01:03:02.460 Amber Lin: on that note. I’m concerned about our Asian people like they I don’t. They’re not gonna say it as often like people I work with here. Annie will just say with her concerns very directly, and as you said them a lot, and Kyle will also say that. Okay, bye, Robert.

603 01:03:03.212 ⇒ 01:03:04.980 Amber Lin: But like I’m concerned.

604 01:03:04.980 ⇒ 01:03:07.059 Uttam Kumaran: But what makes you concerned about them.

605 01:03:09.840 ⇒ 01:03:14.360 Amber Lin: I I think, recalling from my experience when I was still on the AI team like I

606 01:03:14.630 ⇒ 01:03:17.949 Amber Lin: I don’t. I don’t think they were they were.

607 01:03:18.260 ⇒ 01:03:23.529 Amber Lin: They felt a bit pressed, but I don’t think they ever said anything like I know they.

608 01:03:23.530 ⇒ 01:03:26.030 Hannah Wang: That’s just the culture of Asia. I feel like.

609 01:03:26.030 ⇒ 01:03:26.889 Amber Lin: They just like.

610 01:03:26.890 ⇒ 01:03:28.670 Hannah Wang: Song, day, stuff.

611 01:03:28.670 ⇒ 01:03:37.159 Uttam Kumaran: But this is also the thing is like, if you have that suspicion, you should call them, and tell them that, because what I do is I call them, and I tell them, Hey.

612 01:03:37.420 ⇒ 01:03:42.660 Uttam Kumaran: cause, Casey, I call Casey. I call these guys all the time. They’ll be like, everything’s fine, and I’m like.

613 01:03:43.130 ⇒ 01:03:51.469 Uttam Kumaran: Well, Dude, what are you nervous about? Tell me, give me something to work with, and then they’re like, Well, you know, I just like wanted to work on this thing. And I’m like, Okay, great. Let’s talk about that. So

614 01:03:51.590 ⇒ 01:03:54.470 Uttam Kumaran: part of it is like, I think, culturally sure.

615 01:03:54.600 ⇒ 01:03:59.250 Uttam Kumaran: But at any moment I think there’s someone who’s struggling.

616 01:03:59.410 ⇒ 01:04:21.720 Uttam Kumaran: But our job is to also the people that are doing well, just to keep pushing them forward, you know. And so for the Asian people. Yeah, I do think that they have some resistance towards that. But I you just have to poke. You have to really get it out of folks because it’s they’re human. So it’s not like they don’t have the emotion. They are just not apt to sharing that as

617 01:04:21.840 ⇒ 01:04:22.890 Uttam Kumaran: freely

618 01:04:23.030 ⇒ 01:04:29.149 Uttam Kumaran: for one reason or another, but it’s there, and so our job is to get it out and have a conversation about it. That’s it.

619 01:04:29.300 ⇒ 01:04:34.000 Uttam Kumaran: Whe, whether we could do something about it that’s up to this crew to figure that out.

620 01:04:34.644 ⇒ 01:04:42.420 Uttam Kumaran: But everybody has their reservations, their nervousness. And so you want to pull that out of them and talk about it versus it like

621 01:04:42.660 ⇒ 01:04:59.220 Uttam Kumaran: festering. And they’re building some resentment which will happen, not it will just happen automatically, right? So part of it is like the one on ones, and things like that are good to get that out of people like it’s like going to the Sauna for your brain like you just get like, get a lot of that stuff out, you know.

622 01:05:00.016 ⇒ 01:05:05.179 Uttam Kumaran: But we’re I know we change frequently, like we’re changing every week. 2 weeks, 3 weeks. We’re changing

623 01:05:05.460 ⇒ 01:05:16.380 Uttam Kumaran: like. And so people are. People are here are used to change, which is good. But now we want to start to do some things that aren’t going to change right? Think about security. Think about like

624 01:05:16.770 ⇒ 01:05:22.170 Uttam Kumaran: what the next year or 2 years is gonna look like you know.

625 01:05:24.920 ⇒ 01:05:29.170 Uttam Kumaran: but I don’t know. I think my only recommendation is, try to have get your own pulse on the company.

626 01:05:29.822 ⇒ 01:05:31.939 Uttam Kumaran: I think if you can generate that

627 01:05:32.070 ⇒ 01:05:36.229 Uttam Kumaran: you’ll find that your gut instinct is probably right about people or about projects.

628 01:05:36.830 ⇒ 01:05:41.650 Uttam Kumaran: If you have a feeling, things are kind of weird, you can’t put your finger on it. That’s a great

629 01:05:41.990 ⇒ 01:05:48.599 Uttam Kumaran: thing to bring up, and not wait until you have the perfect words or the perfect like hypothesis.

630 01:05:48.940 ⇒ 01:05:52.450 Uttam Kumaran: I have, like a very good spidey sense, for, like.

631 01:05:53.070 ⇒ 01:05:58.559 Uttam Kumaran: well, how things are going when I read people’s messages, when I read messages that don’t get sent.

632 01:05:59.130 ⇒ 01:06:05.750 Uttam Kumaran: I see people online or not online. So I have ways of like, just like.

633 01:06:05.880 ⇒ 01:06:19.500 Uttam Kumaran: if I don’t talk to someone in a few days, I find some reason for me to just say something to them and see what the vibe is. That’s it right? So I think for everybody here, for the folks that you work directly with. See if you can generate a little bit of that like

634 01:06:19.810 ⇒ 01:06:20.970 Uttam Kumaran: 6 cents

635 01:06:21.447 ⇒ 01:06:27.169 Uttam Kumaran: and and if you, some people always think there’s something going wrong like for me. I’m always like

636 01:06:27.430 ⇒ 01:06:37.880 Uttam Kumaran: I’m more pessimistic. I’m optimistic in a lot of ways, but very pessimistic in that. I I always feel like someone’s having a bad day, and so my job is to find out who that is, and see if I can help

637 01:06:38.400 ⇒ 01:06:44.360 Uttam Kumaran: there. May. That may not be true, though it may, stuff may be going well. And so this is where it’s just helpful for you to

638 01:06:44.580 ⇒ 01:06:50.330 Uttam Kumaran: find that answer for yourself, and the more the more of us that have a pulse on the business.

639 01:06:51.112 ⇒ 01:07:00.230 Uttam Kumaran: And again, this doesn’t have to be data driven at all. It just needs to be like, I have a feeling that it will help to bring it to this crew, and then we can. We can decide what to do

640 01:07:00.600 ⇒ 01:07:06.600 Uttam Kumaran: this, maybe also yourself, right for this crew. I think this this crew needs to be the most candid out of everybody

641 01:07:06.810 ⇒ 01:07:09.859 Uttam Kumaran: with your feelings about how things are going

642 01:07:09.990 ⇒ 01:07:12.159 Uttam Kumaran: with the way the company is being run.

643 01:07:12.688 ⇒ 01:07:19.700 Uttam Kumaran: You know, with things that are being said or aren’t being planned for right cause. We’re we’re setting the example for everybody.

644 01:07:20.310 ⇒ 01:07:22.830 Uttam Kumaran: So I think, Hannah, it’s important that you shared

645 01:07:23.330 ⇒ 01:07:26.790 Uttam Kumaran: what you just shared, and for everybody here to be able to do that.

646 01:07:27.315 ⇒ 01:07:31.899 Uttam Kumaran: I think there are things we can do in this moment, and there’s things that

647 01:07:32.040 ⇒ 01:07:35.450 Uttam Kumaran: we just have to do to grow the company right. There are.

648 01:07:35.960 ⇒ 01:07:44.010 Uttam Kumaran: There are a million things I do that like I have no negative interest in, and we do as part of the larger goal of like

649 01:07:44.270 ⇒ 01:07:45.930 Uttam Kumaran: making this a success.

650 01:07:46.550 ⇒ 01:07:52.140 Uttam Kumaran: So I don’t think it. I don’t think we will ever get to a hundred percent. I love everything I do every day.

651 01:07:52.672 ⇒ 01:08:09.480 Uttam Kumaran: However, it certainly can’t be like 2030%, right? There’s still a lot of things I do in my day that gives me a lot of joy. And so it’s helpful for you to have a pulse on yourself where you’re like. Yo, I’m not liking this, and, as you can tell, there’s things we do, we hire. We hand it off like

652 01:08:09.800 ⇒ 01:08:12.789 Uttam Kumaran: we make moves around here, you know. So

653 01:08:12.960 ⇒ 01:08:19.660 Uttam Kumaran: that’s the hopefully. A good guarantee is that if you have one of those like trust that this crew will make a move and and do something.

654 01:08:24.390 ⇒ 01:08:25.807 Hannah Wang: How’s everyone else?

655 01:08:28.529 ⇒ 01:08:31.679 Amber Lin: Yeah, I guess. Amber. Away she goes. Yeah.

656 01:08:33.990 ⇒ 01:08:39.460 Awaish Kumar: In the data platform team like are the any, however.

657 01:08:39.590 ⇒ 01:08:46.570 Awaish Kumar: terminal, array loop, things are going well. So it was. Only Kyle was much more

658 01:08:47.350 ⇒ 01:08:52.390 Awaish Kumar: like worried about the the work because I was not getting anything

659 01:08:52.550 ⇒ 01:09:01.020 Awaish Kumar: related to client work. So. But after I like we we told him about the urban stems.

660 01:09:01.210 ⇒ 01:09:03.209 Awaish Kumar: He seems to be quite happy.

661 01:09:04.160 ⇒ 01:09:07.979 Awaish Kumar: so I’m hopeful that we’ll again start liking the work.

662 01:09:11.600 ⇒ 01:09:18.104 Hannah Wang: I was more so asking, like, How are you guys doing individually? But that’s a good update to hear.

663 01:09:18.439 ⇒ 01:09:20.739 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, how are you doing away individually.

664 01:09:21.760 ⇒ 01:09:26.469 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I’m doing great, like, I’m learning lots of stuff.

665 01:09:26.630 ⇒ 01:09:28.970 Awaish Kumar: Started reading the book you shared.

666 01:09:29.080 ⇒ 01:09:35.249 Awaish Kumar: And what do you think? Yeah, it seems to be.

667 01:09:35.620 ⇒ 01:09:43.299 Awaish Kumar: I’ve read only the introduction part yet. It seems to be exciting. I will dive in in the 1st chapter today.

668 01:09:46.210 ⇒ 01:09:47.960 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a good one. Dude. You’ll like it.

669 01:09:54.920 ⇒ 01:09:56.389 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, for me.

670 01:10:00.740 ⇒ 01:10:02.219 Uttam Kumaran: How do I feel?

671 01:10:03.010 ⇒ 01:10:04.639 Uttam Kumaran: I feel better?

672 01:10:07.150 ⇒ 01:10:11.050 Uttam Kumaran: I think March was very March and April.

673 01:10:11.050 ⇒ 01:10:11.470 Awaish Kumar: Bye, bye.

674 01:10:11.470 ⇒ 01:10:16.407 Uttam Kumaran: Very difficult, sorry, March, and April was very difficult.

675 01:10:17.470 ⇒ 01:10:19.969 Awaish Kumar: I think we brought on a lot of people.

676 01:10:20.130 ⇒ 01:10:22.319 Uttam Kumaran: We had to move some people off

677 01:10:24.280 ⇒ 01:10:27.960 Uttam Kumaran: like we changed some pricing. So money was tight.

678 01:10:28.450 ⇒ 01:10:33.309 Uttam Kumaran: Like we had. We moved people to full time. Right? So money was tight. We had to make some of those changes.

679 01:10:35.910 ⇒ 01:10:44.180 Uttam Kumaran: So like super difficult, I think. Probably like probably March was like the hardest month

680 01:10:44.990 ⇒ 01:10:46.980 Uttam Kumaran: on the job so far.

681 01:10:48.670 ⇒ 01:10:54.320 Uttam Kumaran: so that’s like a pretty big tool, I think. Now, with this crew being active, I feel a lot better.

682 01:10:56.170 ⇒ 01:11:01.060 Uttam Kumaran: it makes you really happy that you know more people are thinking about the company as their own and

683 01:11:01.761 ⇒ 01:11:05.189 Uttam Kumaran: as you can. You guys know that the more free time

684 01:11:05.720 ⇒ 01:11:11.449 Uttam Kumaran: we have, like the more sales calls. I Rip, you know, we just got to do as much as possible. So

685 01:11:11.890 ⇒ 01:11:19.789 Uttam Kumaran: it’s a very linear relationship. Our ability to get get us out of the the day to day and spend time growing revenue. So

686 01:11:19.950 ⇒ 01:11:23.976 Uttam Kumaran: all I wake up every day is thinking about getting more money in the door. And so it’s

687 01:11:26.130 ⇒ 01:11:34.209 Uttam Kumaran: that’s it. I think. Also like a big risk. The business as a whole is Robert, and I like ability to sustain pace.

688 01:11:34.620 ⇒ 01:11:39.829 Uttam Kumaran: And so I’m I’m aware of that. I I think in March in particular.

689 01:11:40.010 ⇒ 01:11:43.210 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, this is like kind of a lot like too much.

690 01:11:45.060 ⇒ 01:11:51.100 Uttam Kumaran: Now I feel a lot better, especially because I think I have. I usually have like 2 h of free time per day. Now, which is helpful

691 01:11:51.300 ⇒ 01:11:53.570 Uttam Kumaran: because I can actually like think and do stuff.

692 01:11:54.070 ⇒ 01:11:56.959 Uttam Kumaran: So the more free time I have, the more like

693 01:11:57.240 ⇒ 01:12:00.830 Uttam Kumaran: you’ll see our our surface area of luck will just increase. Because

694 01:12:01.090 ⇒ 01:12:04.110 Uttam Kumaran: we’re we’ll we’ll be able to do a lot of things. So.

695 01:12:04.750 ⇒ 01:12:16.770 Amber Lin: How do you even have capacity during your free time? Is that that’s kind of something I’ve been trying to figure out recently of after I finished my work I was just like, Oh, gosh! I had things I want to do. I just don’t want to do them right now.

696 01:12:18.780 ⇒ 01:12:22.939 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, if you talk about like professionally, I mean these days

697 01:12:23.500 ⇒ 01:12:28.480 Uttam Kumaran: these days, it’s tough, like, I usually work 7 to 7, 7 to 8, usually

698 01:12:29.091 ⇒ 01:12:32.749 Uttam Kumaran: in one way or another, right? Like working for me. Working now is like.

699 01:12:33.000 ⇒ 01:12:36.270 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll go for a walk. If I walk the dog. I check

700 01:12:36.420 ⇒ 01:12:41.873 Uttam Kumaran: someone, Craig, or someone or or someone would have been texting about like trying to

701 01:12:43.140 ⇒ 01:12:47.819 Uttam Kumaran: have us work with them. And I’ll call them so like I find find opportunities like that.

702 01:12:48.260 ⇒ 01:12:49.810 Uttam Kumaran: Just me. It’s just me

703 01:12:50.420 ⇒ 01:12:58.249 Uttam Kumaran: I think outside of that, though I don’t know. It’s hard, I think, only until only the weekends is where I really get some downtime to think.

704 01:12:58.380 ⇒ 01:13:03.499 Uttam Kumaran: But I’ve been blocking off my calendar, so I I don’t really do much outside of sales until, like around 11,

705 01:13:04.070 ⇒ 01:13:05.749 Uttam Kumaran: which has been helping a lot.

706 01:13:06.271 ⇒ 01:13:11.550 Uttam Kumaran: I think you. What you’ll find is meetings really hurt the brain

707 01:13:12.140 ⇒ 01:13:16.090 Uttam Kumaran: like meetings are are the biggest attractor to productivity.

708 01:13:16.430 ⇒ 01:13:24.920 Uttam Kumaran: So my, my continued pressure would be, do as much non client stuff Async, as possible.

709 01:13:25.040 ⇒ 01:13:27.660 Uttam Kumaran: If, unfortunately, if you’re talking to a client

710 01:13:28.440 ⇒ 01:13:31.540 Uttam Kumaran: not worth doing it, Async, sometimes, because

711 01:13:31.920 ⇒ 01:13:33.990 Uttam Kumaran: if you if you don’t talk to him for 3 weeks.

712 01:13:34.160 ⇒ 01:13:35.949 Uttam Kumaran: then we’re like ghosts, you know.

713 01:13:36.160 ⇒ 01:13:39.530 Uttam Kumaran: there’s some stuff that we can scale up. There’s some stuff we can’t

714 01:13:40.448 ⇒ 01:13:46.210 Uttam Kumaran: but you’ll see amber as like as the project management function grows and you you get, you’ll get more people

715 01:13:46.510 ⇒ 01:13:49.398 Uttam Kumaran: like you can offload some of that stuff.

716 01:13:51.410 ⇒ 01:13:59.710 Uttam Kumaran: but but like, you know, even the things like even be able to think about doing the interview series doesn’t happen unless I have like 2. But that took 2 or 3 h of like

717 01:14:00.350 ⇒ 01:14:07.099 Uttam Kumaran: free time thinking to put something in that. So think about like, if if you just had a couple more hours to do that, what life would be like.

718 01:14:07.500 ⇒ 01:14:15.509 Uttam Kumaran: There’s also a laundry list of like legal, financial, like random housekeeping, things that need to get done that are sitting there. So

719 01:14:16.690 ⇒ 01:14:28.210 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I find that just the last 2 weeks. I’ve had more time in particular, and that’s helped my life out a lot like just like my general state of mind, and like, go to the gym and

720 01:14:29.259 ⇒ 01:14:33.149 Uttam Kumaran: but if it’s during working hours, I mean, I’m thinking about work. So

721 01:14:33.450 ⇒ 01:14:39.970 Uttam Kumaran: it’s really hard. It’s really, really difficult for me not to which is a just a different problem. But.

722 01:14:40.220 ⇒ 01:14:41.430 Amber Lin: I see.

723 01:14:44.760 ⇒ 01:14:54.220 Uttam Kumaran: The other things I’m just like I’m just not taking like a lot of my time people would call me for like Job, or call me to like test out a new product. So I’m saying no to every single thing.

724 01:14:54.759 ⇒ 01:14:58.550 Uttam Kumaran: Or I’m looping one of y’all and off clearly. So

725 01:14:59.950 ⇒ 01:15:02.950 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s it. Yeah.

726 01:15:02.950 ⇒ 01:15:06.909 Hannah Wang: Make sure to rest. I feel like if you just keep working.

727 01:15:07.020 ⇒ 01:15:12.020 Hannah Wang: you’re just gonna burn out and your brain’s gonna get slower. So I think.

728 01:15:12.020 ⇒ 01:15:12.709 Uttam Kumaran: I agree.

729 01:15:12.710 ⇒ 01:15:17.309 Hannah Wang: I have is like, Oh, you rest in order to work well, like if you don’t. Resting is a part.

730 01:15:17.310 ⇒ 01:15:18.790 Uttam Kumaran: We rest just as hard.

731 01:15:19.000 ⇒ 01:15:20.779 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s what make it making use of time.

732 01:15:20.780 ⇒ 01:15:21.740 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, active.

733 01:15:22.310 ⇒ 01:15:26.860 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Make. You used to say, you work just as hard, and then you rest just as hard.

734 01:15:27.310 ⇒ 01:15:28.900 Uttam Kumaran: and so try.

735 01:15:28.900 ⇒ 01:15:35.630 Hannah Wang: Your productivity like, if you rest and actually like block off time to rest and don’t think about work.

736 01:15:36.985 ⇒ 01:15:41.060 Hannah Wang: It makes a difference, and just your happiness too, so.

737 01:15:41.060 ⇒ 01:15:41.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

738 01:15:41.600 ⇒ 01:15:45.809 Hannah Wang: Because, yeah, I don’t want people to be sad and working. That’s that’s not.

739 01:15:45.810 ⇒ 01:15:50.959 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, it’s that’s that’s, in fact, like the one thing that I’m finding so interesting is that like

740 01:15:51.070 ⇒ 01:16:00.880 Uttam Kumaran: this is all I want to do 24 HA day like I love this stuff. It gives me so much joy. And of course, like, Look, we started the company, and so like.

741 01:16:01.140 ⇒ 01:16:03.820 Uttam Kumaran: maybe it feels a little bit different. But like.

742 01:16:04.337 ⇒ 01:16:09.220 Uttam Kumaran: okay, thanks. A wish. I I think part of it is like, I don’t lose. It’s like.

743 01:16:09.560 ⇒ 01:16:13.969 Uttam Kumaran: even if I sleep for 5 HI wake up, pumped to do this, wake up, respond to slacks

744 01:16:14.800 ⇒ 01:16:18.050 Uttam Kumaran: like, rip it for 12 h, go like

745 01:16:18.170 ⇒ 01:16:26.800 Uttam Kumaran: I it does. I don’t really like it. I just like it’s really enjoyable for me. So I just think you’re right in that. It’s the stuff around like that.

746 01:16:27.140 ⇒ 01:16:36.050 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like, it’s like, just like I gotta eat. I gotta like, do basic stuff like, I gotta take some time away to not be on slack for for all that time.

747 01:16:36.280 ⇒ 01:16:44.730 Uttam Kumaran: But again, I really think, if you look at my schedule in March and early April, brutal schedule.

748 01:16:44.730 ⇒ 01:16:46.249 Amber Lin: Yeah, it’s a lot better now.

749 01:16:46.250 ⇒ 01:16:47.380 Uttam Kumaran: Way, better.

750 01:16:47.380 ⇒ 01:16:48.340 Amber Lin: Meetings.

751 01:16:49.230 ⇒ 01:16:53.509 Uttam Kumaran: Like I was in. I was in almost 7 h of meetings.

752 01:16:54.240 ⇒ 01:16:56.110 Amber Lin: 2 or 3 days out of the week.

753 01:16:57.670 ⇒ 01:16:58.980 Amber Lin: Oh.

754 01:17:00.550 ⇒ 01:17:04.650 Uttam Kumaran: And I. And I use Vimcal. So I can actually probably look at the analytics.

755 01:17:09.360 ⇒ 01:17:10.740 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I mean it.

756 01:17:10.940 ⇒ 01:17:12.370 Uttam Kumaran: Like, if I look at.

757 01:17:14.340 ⇒ 01:17:24.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I I generally feel like it’s not nearly as bad like it says, 30 meeting hours.

758 01:17:26.360 ⇒ 01:17:31.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. There was a while where I was averaging 6.6 h of meetings per day.

759 01:17:31.820 ⇒ 01:17:32.470 Amber Lin: Hmm.

760 01:17:34.170 ⇒ 01:17:34.969 Hannah Wang: Where is it?

761 01:17:36.440 ⇒ 01:17:37.250 Hannah Wang: That’s tough.

762 01:17:37.250 ⇒ 01:17:38.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, stop.

763 01:17:38.340 ⇒ 01:17:38.670 Hannah Wang: Yes.

764 01:17:38.840 ⇒ 01:17:40.560 Amber Lin: I can’t! I cannot.

765 01:17:40.990 ⇒ 01:17:41.800 Hannah Wang: Yeah.

766 01:17:42.310 ⇒ 01:17:44.230 Uttam Kumaran: 60 meetings a week. Yeah.

767 01:17:44.230 ⇒ 01:17:44.930 Amber Lin: 5.

768 01:17:46.140 ⇒ 01:17:50.279 Uttam Kumaran: But you’ll see like I’m I’m making an active effort to decline and get out of that. So yeah.

769 01:17:50.280 ⇒ 01:17:56.760 Amber Lin: Yeah, that’s good. And I think at at some point I’ll get to that, too. Something I want to think about today as well.

770 01:17:56.910 ⇒ 01:17:59.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay.

771 01:17:59.080 ⇒ 01:18:00.039 Amber Lin: Thank you all.

772 01:18:00.920 ⇒ 01:18:01.649 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you. Guys.

773 01:18:01.650 ⇒ 01:18:02.000 Hannah Wang: Tress.

774 01:18:02.000 ⇒ 01:18:02.490 Amber Lin: Meetings.

775 01:18:02.490 ⇒ 01:18:03.719 Hannah Wang: Weekend rest. Okay?

776 01:18:04.186 ⇒ 01:18:07.914 Uttam Kumaran: I will! I will! I will! I will!

777 01:18:09.230 ⇒ 01:18:10.280 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks you guys.

778 01:18:10.280 ⇒ 01:18:11.530 Hannah Wang: Peace bye.

779 01:18:11.530 ⇒ 01:18:12.660 Amber Lin: Yeah, anything.