[00:00:00] Phil: you said that a growth marketer is not in the top 5% if they don't get at least two things. Understanding incrementality and local maximum. [00:00:09] Simon: imagine you're blindfolded and your job is to find the highest points of the terrain you're, you're on. And then you're like, great, I found the highest spots, in this area, and you take your blindfold off. [00:00:20] And you're on top of a nice little hill where you see this massive mountain, on the other side, right? And you reach this local maximum but you missed a bigger opportunity. [00:00:29] little ab testing on a page, is not how you, 10 a hundred XA business. [00:00:34] Incrementality can lead to a local maximum [00:00:36] So you need like both, very rational math brain and then you're more like creative out there marketing brain that you can't forget. If legal loves your campaign, it's not gonna be a very good campaign if, you know, [00:00:49] ​ [00:01:16] In This Episode --- [00:01:16] Phil: What's up everyone? Today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Simon Lejeune, VP of Growth at Wealthsimple. Before joining Wealthsimple, Simone held leadership roles at companies like Hopper and Bus Bud. In this episode, we explore local maximum thinking versus global maximum, the best use cases for incrementality tests. [00:01:35] How to handle ROI conversations. Why most AB testing is a waste of time and how AI is making channel expertise, less of a moat. All that, and a bunch more stuff after a super quick word from one of our awesome partners, [00:01:50] ​ [00:02:48] Phil: thank you so much for your time today. Really excited to chat with you. [00:02:52] Simon: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm sure you're a little more excited than I am 'cause I heard you're a sense fan and I'm more of a habs guy in Montreal, [00:03:00] so, but we'll make it work [00:03:02] Phil: Yeah, we're recording this in the middle of the NHL playoffs. For folks who aren't familiar, by the time this drops, both teams are probably gonna be eliminated, [00:03:10] Simon: for sure. [00:03:11] Phil: we'll see about that. Hopefully not, hopefully there's still a Canadian team, uh, kicking around, but yeah, not, not often. We get to speak with, uh, local Canadians. [00:03:20] Uh, Darrell is coworking in San Francisco today. I'm based in Ottawa, Simone, you live in Montreal, but you're in Toronto right now. Right. [00:03:27] Simon: Exactly. I try to come to our, uh, head office, uh, as frequently as possible. So I'm in Toronto right now. [00:03:33] Phil: Nice. Awesome. So when we are trying to figure out a topic for the episode today, you gave me a lot of different ideas. You, you even told me like, oh, the, the pre-interview questions were cool 'cause I got to like, meditate on, on some of these ideas. One of the things you said that I was just like, maybe we can do a full episode kind of unpacking this and, and see where those tangents kind of take us. [00:03:55] 1.1 How to Escape Local Maximum Traps in Growth Marketing --- [00:03:55] Phil: But you said that a top 5% growth marketer [00:04:00] or growth person today is not in the top 5% if they don't get at least two things. And the two things you said were. Understanding incrementality and local maximum. And we've talked a lot about incrementality on the show and, and measurements, but I think this idea of local maximum is potentially newer for some folks actually understood it from a different term. [00:04:22] Um, and so hopefully a lot of the folks are, are also in that seed and just thinking like, hell is local maximum I want to be thought of as uh, in the top 5%. So maybe we can unpack that first. Like when did this idea of local maximum really click for you? Do you remember that moment or project that kinda like taught you this third way maybe. [00:04:42] Simon: Yeah. I actually learned this the hard way from, uh, Fred Lalonde, who's the founder, and, and CEO at the hopper. Um, and so just maybe to, uh, explain what a local maximum is for folks, um, the concept is like, imagine you're blindfolded and your [00:05:00] job is to find the highest points of the terrain you're, you're on. [00:05:04] And so you're gonna do a step forward, a step back, one to the left, one to the right. And if you find a higher spot, you're gonna move there, right? And you're gonna repeat that a few times until like, every step you take is a lower, uh, position. And then you're like, great, I found the, you know, the highest spots, uh, in this area, and you take your blindfold off. [00:05:26] And you're on top of a nice little hill where you see this massive mountain, uh, on the other side, right? And you reach this local maximum and you think like you are at the highest possible spot, but you missed a bigger opportunity. And, um, so for the little anecdote, I was doing my, uh, interview rounds for Hopper, and I was at my final interview round, Fred was doing himself like every candidate. [00:05:51] So at that point, and you know, I thought, I was like, I got the job. Uh, but he actually grilled me a little bit to the point where I was getting a little nervous. [00:06:00] And, uh, one of the question he asked me was, okay, so cool, we want to hire you. Sounds like, uh, you're smart, but what's like one thing you would do? [00:06:08] What's the first thing you want? You want to, uh, change in the app to, you know, I don't know, like grow revenue? And I'm like, oh shit. Like I haven't thought of a good answer to that. And so we had at the time a $5 tip that people could, uh, toggle. And a lot of people, I, I don't remember, let's let's say 30% of people were actually giving us a $5 tip when they were reserving their flight because we got them like a nice price thanks to our price predictions. [00:06:36] And, uh, so I was like a little nervous and my, my first answer was like, well, five was random. Seems a little suboptimal. So I would probably do a $4 version and a $6 version and, you know, see where we maximize revenue. Right. Seems like an easy win. And then I saw his face, I was like, oh, I'm not getting the job. Because he was like, that's literal. What you're [00:07:00] literally doing is like a local maximum and I don't want you to do that. That's stupid. And it's like, you know, very forceful, CEO and, uh, trying to make a point and teaches me that, that lesson of like, what, what a local maximum is. And then it's like, hey, what, what else do you have? [00:07:18] And it's like, oh shit, I need to find another idea. And, um. I was working for a bus ticketing website at the time and we had built a little tool that sent you a notification when there was a $1 bus ticket that dropped. I dunno if you remember Megabus, in Europe they have like the one Euro bus tickets, you know, it's like one in a thousand. [00:07:39] So you can never really find them. But we had like built uh, like a little tool to send you notification. So I used that answer. It said, what if we created like a separate app and it's all flights under five euros? Uh, 'cause Ryan Air was also having like a few crazy deals like that. 'cause we, we had all this database and, and flight prices and it's probably not possible to, [00:08:00] to build, but it was like, yes, exactly. [00:08:03] Uh, that's what I want to hear. That's crazy. It's probably stupid. But that's not a local maximum idea. And uh, that's where it, it clicked for me and it put me on the right track when I started a job that, you know, I had to think big. I had to think about ideas that were potentially destructive to the original business. [00:08:23] And, um, being aware and conscious, like little ab testing on a page, uh, is not how you, you 10 a hundred XA business. [00:08:34] Darrell: I love that. Yeah, I love this concept of local maxima. I think it makes you, you know, think creatively or outside of the box or, or bigger picture. I have mixed feelings about this interview style of, and it sounds like testing how creative you are on the spot. So I, I think that that's a little bit interesting. [00:08:52] But, um, I, I think it also applies to, you know, I'm, I'm a big fan of AD an advocate of marketing operations and [00:08:59] 1.2 Productive Laziness Mindsets --- [00:08:59] Darrell: sometimes we're trying to improve the process just a little bit incrementally. Um. Trying to save maybe 25% of the time, get two hours back each, each, um, each week. And that kind of is more of local maximum thinking. [00:09:15] Whereas, you know, global maximum could be like, do we need this process at all? Like, can we do it a completely different way? And it definitely does change the game. I, [00:09:26] Simon: The fastest way to do something is not to do it, right. I always tell my team, be a little lazier, you know, uh, I, we all love the busy bees, you know, but always like doing stuff and, and their calendar's completely full and they're like, overworked and like. You could probably not do 80% of what you're doing and, and you need to take the time to find, find it. [00:09:47] I, I will say like on process optimization, don't get me wrong, like, I'm also working for an investing app, so I understand the effect of compounding impact. And I think [00:10:00] like when you can stack small wins very obviously on top of each other, uh, especially on like a process. Um, so let's say right now we do a lot of promotions and, uh, super annoying, but like you take the terms and then you create like an FAQ because clients have questions like, how do I get this for free? [00:10:20] Is this account eligible? And, uh, it's easy to do, but it, it takes a while. And so the, my, uh, coworker came up with just a little simple prompt to take in all the customer feedback that we've gotten from CS from the previous promotion to all the questions they asked, the new terms and conditions, and it spits out the FAQs. [00:10:41] Well, like, and they look great. Tweak them a little bit. Well, two or 3%, uh, improvements to our process, but we've been able to shrink recently because of the compounding effect of all these little improvements on our process, the time to market from idea to, to launch a campaign by quite a bit. So [00:11:00] on process, I, I, I think sometimes it's worth it. [00:11:03] Um, it's more like the AB tests, uh, sometimes that I have issues with on, on like landing pages and celebrating small wins. And I don't know if, like, I think if you worked in growth for a few years for the same company, like, Hey, you've had so many wins on your AB test since you started. The conversion should be at 300% by now, but somehow we only moved like a little bit, right? [00:11:28] So, um, and we all kind of, and there's no deep inside that like, yeah, that, that's not possible. I can't have a 10% increase every time I, I do my AB tests. [00:11:40] And it's, it's weird, right? Because like sometimes they're legit. It says like it has improved by 10%, the conversion rate, and you ship it, you don't necessarily see it in the top line or the results just don't stack. Um, yeah, [00:11:54] Darrell: no, go ahead, Phil. [00:11:56] Phil: Yeah, I, I was just gonna say the both examples are, are really cool. Like, [00:12:00] uh, something else that you mentioned, Simone, is that like [00:12:03] 1.3 The Psychological Trap of A/B Testing --- [00:12:03] Phil: finding out that what you were thinking was local? Maximum thinking sometimes is like a retrospective, uh, like analysis. It's hard in the moment to spot until it's kind of too late. [00:12:15] What does it actually look like when you have a team or yourself and, and you're kind of stuck in that thinking? Can you share maybe like an example from Wealthsimple or, or earlier in your career were you able to spot it in the moment? [00:12:28] Simon: yeah. Sometimes it's hard. 'cause like you, you bought in, it's a big group and we've invested a lot of like resources. Um, I think some, the things I try to spot is like when you have too many wins, you know, like you're celebrating a sm a lot of small wins in your AB desk, but doesn't necessarily show up in the top line. [00:12:48] And in the moment you're like, it's going, it's going, it's going, it's six months later, you take a step back. It's like, Hey, what did this like project do for us? Like when, when you just take a step back and [00:13:00] are able to, to see it in this entirety and you're like, Hey, we could have done like so many other things, but in the moment you're like, let's get to the next step of the funnel, the next step of the funnel. Um, and to give you a specific, uh, idea, and it's my, my bad because like I was obsessed with this, but um, if you worked in mobile right now, it's like in the past few years has been hard 'cause you lose a lot of attribution. And so it's like web versus app thing coming back on on the table. Like, are you better to send your Facebook ads to the web or to the app? [00:13:34] If people land on your homepage, are you better off letting them onboard on web or do you lose a bit of people but you send them to the app and then they're becoming higher? LTV customer. 'cause they have the, the mobile app and that can lead you to a string of a long series of AB tests of like, let's try a big QR code, let's try to text me the app, let's try to block them completely from the web. [00:13:59] And [00:14:00] we tried a lot of things and at some point I was like, Hey, why are we doing this? Like, if you want the app, click here. Go. And in the end of the answer it was just like, let people select what they [00:14:10] want. [00:14:10] Do, sign up on web, sign up on mobile. And yeah, every test was like showing a little bit of something, but uh, in the end it was better to just like ignore it. And uh, yeah. I remember from my hopper days, I was obsessed with Snapchat and it had like the most basic websites. It never changed. It had one page and it was just like, get Yep. And or I was like looking at big companies like Airbnb or Uber with massive resources. And then the app store page was like the same, outdated, and they seem to not pay attention to it. [00:14:48] And now I realize, like they were right. I think like after running hundreds of, I dunno if you run the, like Google Play, uh, Google Play Console, AB test, [00:15:00] really neat tool, you can test different, uh, uh, screenshots you get, uh, ab tests are addictive. Like you, [00:15:07] Phil: Hmm. Yeah. [00:15:07] Simon: when you have like real time Mixpanel or Amplitude or Google analysis results. [00:15:13] Uh, and then you refresh all the time. Uh, [00:15:17] Phil: I, I, I think that like most of those [00:15:20] companies, like for every company that you just name that like hasn't changed something on their homepage and was just like thinking of other stuff other than like making tiny tweaks. There is like a blog post saying that this one company changed the color of their button from blue to red and it three x their conversion rate, or they changed, like book a demo to chat with us right now. [00:15:43] And it like, so like for for every story there's, there's that equivalent, right? And I think that's what's led to a lot of people thinking too small when it comes to experiments. But when you sit down and you chat with a data scientist, like [00:15:55] 1.4 Balancing Clean Experiments with Bold Bets --- [00:15:55] Phil: I had a short stand@wordpress.com and we had a full data science team and they were involved in helping us design the experiment that we wanted to test and. [00:16:05] They always tried to roll us back to small changes. Like, uh, I was focused on lifecycle and, and email onboarding. And our whole goal was trying to increase the number of free site creations to paid site creations. And we had like seven emails in our onboarding series and we wanted to, you know, run a test to, to try to improve those. [00:16:26] And I was like scrapping that whole thing and wanted to redesign the whole thing. But the data team kept telling us like, no, we're not gonna be able to tell what was that thing in the new thing that was really better here. We need to just change that one email. And it can't be a full change in the email. [00:16:42] It has to be just one thing that we change. [00:16:45] Simon: I [00:16:45] Phil: do you fight that? Like how do you personally pressure trust or like fight back with data teams on like whether an experiment or a project is worth doing or it's just like busy work and, and, and local, local minimum versus maximum. [00:16:58] Simon: Yeah, I mean, I love my data, [00:17:00] people don't get me wrong. Uh, and it, it's great partnership, but I agree with you. Like for them, they see the world through like a pure data lens. And it's like when they tell you like, you can't run two experiments at the same time. Like, yes, you can. I, I just did it. You know, like, um, and yeah, it's not gonna be the cleanest results, but I'm looking for signal, uh, through the noise. [00:17:24] So, uh, yeah. And I think like some, sometimes I like to say I'm data driven, but I'm not data led. Like things have to make sense. Um, I'm not to the point where I don't care about the data or I don't want to have, uh, but too much data is a thing. And, um, sometimes it's like we launch an AB test or we test something, there's no impact, but it makes sense for the client. [00:17:48] Well just leave it there. I think where the data can be interesting is when, um, you don't believe in something and the data shows you otherwise, then it's like, okay, [00:18:00] interesting. Then I will, it's helpful for me to like, uh, rethink my priors if the data is, is not showing, uh, what my instinct was saying. So I think it's, it's still really interesting. [00:18:10] Um, but sometimes it's just like, yeah, I just wanna do this. I think it makes sense for the clients. It will work in the long term and I have conviction and even sometimes you can ship something that has a bit of negative impact, um, for, for the future. [00:18:27] Darrell: Yeah. [00:18:27] Simon: a future growth bound. Yeah. [00:18:29] Phil: yeah. So Darrell, you, you just mentioned, uh, in your previous or in SIM's previous answer, like marketing ops folks do sometimes like incremental changes on the process. And, uh, I, I wanted to chat about that because like, [00:18:43] 2.1 How to Use Incrementality to Measure Real Campaign Impact --- [00:18:43] Phil: I feel like there's two definitions of incremental and incrementality and from like a measurement standpoint, um, there's this idea of calculating your baseline and trying to figure out what is net new on that baseline. [00:19:00] This one campaign that we did, how much revenue was generated because of that campaign, that wouldn't have happened otherwise. That's incrementality testing. It's what a lot of measurement providers are going all in on. We also have a lot of folks that, like, they hear incremental and they think small. [00:19:16] They think of like a tiny little change, tweaking, compounding effect. So it like that, that term itself is doing a, a disservice because of the, like, the mixed definition there. Um, but you called out incrementality as the second concept that would make someone leap into that, like top 5% of growth leaders small, like for folks who think they understand what that means, how do you define incrementality and, and maybe chat about an example there. [00:19:41] Simon: Yeah, and I think like a lot of people understand the concept incrementality, and that's why I think the two things in tandem are great. Like you need someone who understands incrementality in their day-to-day, like campaigning and testing, but also that like incrementality can lead to a local maximum and, and not, you know, big thinking. [00:19:58] So you need like both, [00:20:00] it's like almost like your, uh, very rational math brain and then you're more like creative out there marketing brain that you can't forget. Um, and I think, like for me, what I'm looking for, and it's always a question I ask for hiring, and like most people think they understand it, but when you ask them like to explain the first principle, uh, they can't do a very good explanation necessarily. [00:20:23] Um, and I like when it's very simple and almost instinctive. So it's like. What you just said, Felix, it's like, what would have happened if I didn't do this test is so, you know, sometimes I'm like, Hey, what's a campaign you did? Uh oh, we launched a promotion and dropped the price by 10% and sales went up by 25% during Black Friday. [00:20:45] I'm like, okay, so what was the impact of the campaign? Well, the sales went up by 25%. I'm like, is that the impact of the campaign? And so it's fine. Like if, if you push the candidate to the answer, yeah, they understand. Oh [00:21:00] yeah. We also had another item that was not on sale and saw an increase in sale in sales, uh, by 5%. [00:21:06] 'cause it was Black Friday. So I think like the impact is probably like 10 15. And so if, if I see someone who is instinctively going there, uh, I think it's gonna be a better candidate or a better, you know, team member because that's just always. It's almost a, a meme inter, uh, at 12 simple where every time someone shares results, if I don't see the incrementality analysis, I answer the in thread. [00:21:32] Like, okay, but what's the impact? Like, yes, great, like, great engagement. A lot of people participated, especially when you start playing with like pricing and discount and incentives. Yeah, if you give free money people to people, they're gonna do something. But are you sure? Like people didn't, were not gonna do it, did it. [00:21:52] Um, you don't even need to be a marketer to, to understand that necessarily. It's like very first principle. [00:21:57] Um. [00:21:58] Darrell: You know, I've been reflecting [00:22:00] on this a a bit on, on incrementality, and on one hand, you know, if you have the scale to do it, if you have the. If you have the numbers, the volume, the number of customers or potential visitors, then what you invest in incrementality and, and even the changes that you make can actually have outsized returns. [00:22:21] So small things can lead to big things. What if you, what if you don't have the data, but like, what if you don't have that volume and like, I'm asking this earnestly. 'cause I think about this, my, myself, uh, [00:22:30] Simone, like [00:22:32] 2.2 How to Approach Incrementality Without Large Data Sets --- [00:22:32] Darrell: if you went to another company where that wasn't a thing, like you had a small set of customers, you had a long sales cycle, you know, you, you, you didn't have the data to do incrementality. [00:22:43] Do you think you would just start melting and like, you know what I mean? Like I'm, and I'm, I'm just like, I'm asking that earnestly because I, I wonder what I would do, you know what I mean? Like, like is it a skillset to environment type thing? Like if, if we went to different companies, would we need an entirely [00:23:00] different skillset or like, what do you think? [00:23:01] Simon: Yeah. No, I think you're onto something. Like if, if you're still in the early days, um, you, you're not necessarily looking for like incrementality with incremental change and you're looking for like bigger swings or sometimes you're just trying to get by, you know, trying to get new clients, trying to hit your numbers. And you don't have to worry too, too much about, uh, you know, is this incremental or not? Uh, we hit our numbers, we get momentum. We just ship. Like honestly, the one thing that super supersedes, incrementality, attribution, uh, local maximum is speed for me. And, um. If you don't have the 'cause, what I don't want is like, and what I hate when I see that in, in my team sometimes and in myself, it's like we spent so much time discussing the attribution framework before shipping the experiment. [00:23:53] I'd rather ship it with no data than like talking about it for days and see what happens. I think it's a good [00:24:00] product. I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good offer. And sometimes you get lost into the attribution, the modeling, um, conversations. So you, you sometimes you are at a stage where speed matters more and just shipping then incrementality questions. [00:24:15] Um, and yeah, if you have a lot of clients, it's a little easier. If you're doing like first, um, you know, owned channels campaigns, you email your notification in your app. It's very easy to do incrementality analysis. You just have a holdout group. If you are doing ads, you know, if you have enough budget you can do a geo holdout somewhere. [00:24:36] Um, and you know. Measure precisely what the incrementality is. Most of the times you're, you're probably not gonna have that. And so you want to do just like simple pre-post, I launched this, can I see with my eyes on the charts that it did anything right? So that's incrementality. And if you tell me to my question, if I'm saying like, so what was the impact?[00:25:00] [00:25:00] Well, we doubled our sales, or you know, sales went up quite a bit or I can see like, clearly this changed the trajectory. It's like, okay, like that's incrementality too without all the data frameworks, uh, necessarily. [00:25:13] Phil: Yeah. [00:25:13] 2.3 The Best Use Cases for Incrementality Tests --- [00:25:13] Phil: Some of the folks, uh, that have strong opinions about incrementality have said that like some of the drawbacks are you should only do big incrementality tests for things that you don't think are incremental, and you're trying to validate that assumption because channels that you have a really good idea are incremental already. [00:25:33] There's really strong signals. Maybe you did an incrementality test last year. You don't need to keep running incrementality tests on those things because they cost money. Like the example that a lot of folks give is like, if, if we're doing meta ads and like $20 million per year on meta ads and we wanna run an incrementality task for six months, that's potentially $5 million that could disappear just to like be able [00:26:00] to measure whether this channel is incremental or not. [00:26:02] But if one of them, we have this hunch that it isn't incremental, then, you know, like the argument of the opportunity cost of running that test. So, um, maybe chat about that a little bit. Like, do you [00:26:13] agree? [00:26:13] Simon: agree with you. And I will say to me, the cost is not even, the 5 million is the time that [00:26:18] you [00:26:18] Phil: Right. Yeah. [00:26:19] Simon: running those tests. That's like the most precious thing in a startup where your default debt is like your time of year. It's a race against default debt. You're not [00:26:28] profitable yet. Right. And you have like a certain amount of time to figure it out. [00:26:32] And if you're wasting it on like too many of these like incrementality tests, like you're not doing something else. It's the opportunity cost of running these models. And it's, it's funny 'cause like a lot of people, um. They wanna know, okay, what's your attribution model like as if it's like some magical dashboard where my attribution and incrementality is measured in real time and I'm gonna have a big MMM [00:27:00] medium mix model that gives me like all the data is fed perfectly. [00:27:03] That's not my experience with it. And it's more like what you said where when either something I have doubts, like programmatic never works for anyone. Kind of funny that it's working for us, right? Or you know, something and like it's, as a growth person, you have to be very cynical [00:27:20] and [00:27:20] Phil: Mm-hmm. [00:27:21] Simon: but also be very optimistic about your company. [00:27:23] So I can talk about that. Um, but the way I approach incrementality is like if I doubt something or if we're spending a lot of money and like my fan team was like, Hey, you know, you have one budget, so if you spend it, there's no incremental, you're out. So then I think it's worth doing this one time test. [00:27:41] Build conviction, go in and then eventually of conditions change and it's two years later or whatever. And like it's not the same macro environment you can retest, but I agree with you. Test where it makes sense and then move on. [00:27:55] ​ [00:29:56] Phil: It sounds like from your answer, [00:29:58] 3. How to Handle ROI Conversations Without Slowing Down Growth --- [00:29:58] Phil: speed is the most important element in all of this, and you're saying that by leading a team at Wealthsimple, obviously a big company, I think that applies even more at smaller companies when you're just trying to keep the lights on month to month. I think that like all marketers agree and, and folks in the audience agree with you, speed is important. [00:30:19] Test. When we can test, test when we're not sure if something is working or not. But then they have quarterly meetings with the CEO or the senior management team that doesn't get this and they ask you like, Simone, awesome, speed is important, whatever. What did you add to revenue last month? What is marketing's contribution? [00:30:39] And then you spend a bit of time arguing, well, you know, like we could have spent three months putting this incrementality test together and, and giving you that dollar. But instead we ran fast and look at this like post-analysis showing us this number. How do you have those conversations with folks that are just like Simone? [00:30:55] I don't really care about anything other than telling me what marketing contributed to [00:31:00] ROI this quarter. [00:31:01] Simon: Yeah, I mean, I would hate working at that company. Uh, [00:31:06] and uh, I've been lucky enough, but also it's a bit of a selection process. That's, to me, the real head of growth at a company is the founder. And [00:31:16] sadly, I'm just a proxy, you know? But the growth has to be driven by the founders, and usually it is because they got this thing off the ground against all odds. [00:31:26] You can join for the ride when it's like starting to cruise, it's a little easier. But usually I try to, uh, navigate where with people, where if I say. If I hear it well, simple will say, Hey Mike, sorry we didn't have time to measure this. 'cause we wanted to just like ship this to the client. It'll say amazing. Like I, uh, great. And, and you want someone who has that, that behavior because I don't think, like a lot of companies, to me, it's a big red flag. If one of the executive asked you to spend your time on like, uh, presentations [00:32:00] or extensive data analysis, they're not gonna get anywhere. Um, you want leadership who understand that speed and execution and shipping and client feedback and experience matters more than, than data. [00:32:12] And that's sometimes, um, I think maybe it's the finance team to like, Hey, I just need to tell you, you to tell me what the payback is. And I've wasted a lot of time arguing and say, you don't need to because like it's already done. Or I'm telling you it's good and speed matters. And they're like, yes, but I need to like put the number in this box. [00:32:36] And then I think, like you have to realize it's just part of the, the job to, like, you can't just be the, the knucklehead that doesn't care about any other team and they also need to do their job. And then it has to become like, you need to make it a good partnership and a mutual agreement of like, Hey, I need you to give this payback. [00:32:53] And I'm, instead of fighting it, I'm gonna be like, Hey, let's simplify the model. Not to the point where you type a number in a [00:33:00] box necessarily, right? But you get the idea where, hey, they just need this to move forward themselves. It's like they, they also wanna move fast. And so sometimes you have to cut in the middle and say, okay, lemme take a step back. [00:33:11] I'll give you what you need. So it's just not, you do it for speed too. 'cause otherwise you drag the conversation for weeks 'cause you're fighting against like not wanting to, to create a model. Um, so yeah, it, it's an interesting tension. But the founders, they need absolutely to be the people who value shipping and speed. [00:33:33] The most and reward the growth team for it and not for like fake measurements to make everyone feel comfortable at the board meeting. [00:33:44] Darrell: Yeah, I love that tension idea too. And, um, it's, it's, uh, you know, we have this, uh, when I worked at AWS we had this thing called the email bar raiser program. And basically marketers could build emails as [00:34:00] fast as they wanted, but you had to get a specific email bar raiser, a person that was an expert to actually approve it, like qa, but also approve the content. [00:34:09] And the, the, what we were trying to go for there was that each time a a campaign is reviewed, there should be some tension, you know, because what we're trying to do is like, we're raising the bar [00:34:22] and that, and it's an interesting concept that the tension is what rises the bar versus just if it's, if it's speed, speed, speed, speed, you know, the quality could just go down, right? [00:34:32] So you can, you can, you can, uh, you can kind of see why these two teams would fight a lot or like argue a lot. But it's for a higher purpose, I think is like a really like interesting [00:34:43] Simon: And, and something I try to tell my team because, you know, I, I'm from Europe, uh, I'm from Belgium, so not France, but I still like arguing. Yeah. Canadian people, they like to agree, they like to be nice to each other. They, they don't like to disagree and [00:35:00] fight and argue. I can have like the meanest meeting and then like it beers with you and like enjoy right after. [00:35:07] Right. And it's like, it's not about you, it's about the work. And I get passionate and not mean maybe, but you know, and when you do growth, you need to be able toand, like you are going to be bringing that tension to other teams. We have this like. Growth is not natural. Like, people don't like growth. They like stability in their jobs, in their lives. They don't like chaos. They want to put things in order. The growth people, the good growth people, they, they like disorder. They like chaos. They thrive in that environment. And sometimes when everyone's like, slow down, like, you know, it's going too fast, you are the one who like, let's accelerate. You know? [00:35:45] And like, you, you almost like, feel excited about it. Um, it, it's maybe going like, uh, too far beyond your point, arrow, but, uh, you have to, if there's no tension, you're not trying hard enough. Usually [00:36:00] if [00:36:00] everything is smooth sailing and like, if legal loves your campaign, it's not gonna be a very good campaign if, you know, uh, [00:36:09] Darrell: that's a good point. Yeah. [00:36:10] Simon: uh, it's fine. [00:36:12] Like, we have this tension. Don't, don't be an asshole, right? Like, don't be, uh, don't make other people miserable. But have fights, have arguments about why you want to, like, try things that might blow back a little bit. And, um, if you don't want to be in that position, the growth team is maybe not the team that's you're gonna have a great time in. [00:36:36] Phil: I love that. That's a perfect soundbite. If, if legal loves your campaign, it's probably not a great campaign. [00:36:43] Simon: No, I mean, I'm exaggerating, like, uh, especially at WealthSimple, we have an amazing team and, uh, they feel part of, of the team. It's just, um, just to drive a point, [00:36:53] Phil: Yeah. Yeah. [00:36:53] Simon: Uh, usually they love the campaigns the most too. So, uh, if you have the, the right legal people and, uh, [00:37:00] and it's like, you know, I, and actually on this point, I think like the best experiences and campaigns I've been able to build is when we were able to bring the finance people, bring the legal people, build, bring the, bring the brand, the product people into default. [00:37:15] Get their buy-ins. And then you start seeing like your scrappy little, like experiments can become like truly a part of the product and everyone feels excited about it. And like, I want the legal team to go home and tell their friends and their partners like, oh, we hit this like, number of deposit or new clients and feel ownership and be recognized for the campaign. [00:37:37] Not like I approve this campaign. They were so painful about like disclaimer length and, uh, I don't care about the results because I'm not getting any recognition or praise about it. So, uh, I'm not the best. Like I try to be better. I think like it's definitely an area for improvement on my end, uh, if my legal team listens, but, uh, um, [00:38:00] yeah. [00:38:00] Phil: Yeah, no, makes a ton of sense. [00:38:02] 4. Why Most A/B Testing Is a Waste of Time --- [00:38:02] Phil: Um, let's chat about AB testing a little bit here because I think that some folks we've had on this show have had this like opinion about whether. Incrementality experiments are technically AB tests or if AB tests should be in this box of smaller tweaks in optimizations, um, like incrementality could mean, could, could mean like, let's just test a whole channel. [00:38:27] Let's just turn off a campaign, completely turn off a channel completely. It's harder to do that for an AB test and like the, the concept of AB test is taking one little thing and trying to optimize for that thing. If we're using BE'S physicians model, are we seeing like an uplift there? If the sample size is big enough to have 95% significance and like, I just feel like it's a bit of a different box, but some folks put it in the same box. [00:38:54] You've actually said that AB tests are a waste of time and I'd love to like have you unpack [00:39:00] that, um, because you did say that incrementality is one of the most important concepts and growth, so when is AB testing actually worth it for you and, and when do they hold teams back from real progress? [00:39:11] Simon: Yeah, I mean, I, I like to make little outlandish claims to, to make a point, like AB tests in itself, it's a great tool, right? Like if you are a test, it's, it all depends on like what your, what's your A, what's your B and I think like probably 80% of the AB test, like why, why are you testing that? This is too small? [00:39:31] If you're doing an AB test between like a big change versus like not having the feature or you, it's great AB test, right? And like AB test technically, I guess should be, you know, showing incrementality because you're literally having a control group and, and the test group. Um, but, uh, I think, yeah, it's just like, you know. [00:39:58] At Wealth Simple, we want to be the [00:40:00] largest financial institution in Canada. So we have like these massive goals and sometimes it doesn't like Square for me, where, how am I gonna get there by making this small part of the product or experience a little bit better? And it's al, maybe it's a trap, but there's almost a better use of my time trying something much bigger, something completely different, completely new, versus optimizing something we have right now. [00:40:27] Because what we have now is so far from where we want to be, that it just doesn't compute for me that we would want to get five or 10% [00:40:35] Darrell: Can you give us, [00:40:36] Simon: funnel. [00:40:37] Darrell: can you give us even like a hypothetical example of like, what would you say is too small? Like AB test, that's not gonna be, that's not gonna like, you shouldn't waste your time and like an example of something that would like, hey, this is, we should test ab test this for sure. [00:40:52] Phil: The color of homepage, CTA buttons. [00:40:55] Simon: Yeah. [00:40:56] Uh. [00:40:57] Darrell: now versus sign up here. [00:40:58] Simon: Yeah, we'll never test [00:41:00] that. Uh, it's like it's, you think about onboarding, for example. Okay, onboarding, everyone gets excited, right? It's like where you get, we only have like 30 or 50%, like half of people are not becoming clients. And, and let's go at it. And I think like the first instinct for people is like, there's too many screens. [00:41:19] Like, let's try to reduce the number of screens. Let's try to change the words on the screens. Let's try to switch the order. What if we ask them to do this before that let's, or, or KYC process. There's a bit of a drop here. Like, let's try and like, maybe that's good. Like you still want the product team eventually to own that. [00:41:37] But I'd be more like, let's, what if there's no onboarding in the app and you have to call us? You know, what if we called every person instead of like getting them to do it themselves? What if we had 60 questions? Uh, about like all their financial situation and lives a little bit. Like you remember Noom, [00:42:00] they were the first one where like, no, let's make a super long onboarding. And, uh, everyone's like, what? No. And then it was like, amazing apparently. Or maybe it was great marketing on their, on their end. Um, but so that, that would be an example or, um, I think also as a growth team, I'm, I'm very excited about like, so we spend a lot of money on, on pay channels on Facebook and Google and like, what can I do with that money to get the same results? [00:42:28] And so we've done a lot of like incentive campaigns, uh, offer free Apple devices, and I compare like that money invested in, in channels into like other ways to reward or influence the behavior of my clients that would not typically be considered like marketing channels. Um, something I would love to do. [00:42:49] Um, it's not, it's not a project yet, but for example, what if we organize the concert? And use all the tickets to pay, like, I dunno, 500 K million dollars. Get a amazing [00:43:00] artist everyone wants to see. And then you use the, the tickets as like your referral incentive instead of cash. And it's like, wait, like do you wanna organize a concert? [00:43:09] Why? It's like, well first it's cool, like, I wanna do, it's fun. It's more fun than like onboarding, optimization and uh, maybe this gets viral. Maybe like, there's like just, and, and it started by like, um, a reflection we had. Okay. Our clients love Apple products. Every time we do a promotion with like a free icon AirPods, the, the response is insane. [00:43:30] And we're like, what's better than a free iPhone? And then there's not that many things that are better, but you know what's better? Uh, Taylor Swift's uh, tickets, right when the whole craze happened last year. So I was like, how can I get Taylor Swift tickets? I was like, what if, like, we just had the Taylor Swift concert, how much does it cost? [00:43:50] You know? And like, what's the, the growth model to make it work? And then I saw Revolut in London. They threw a concert with [00:44:00] Charlie X, CX as, uh, the headliner. And yeah, you think like it's for brand, the Revolut is an amazing like growth operation. Like, I don't know who's running that, but they're doing a terrific job. [00:44:12] And I think like you could win the tickets by upgrading, by doing like a few things in the app. And that's amazing because then you turn this into something scalable and repeatable if you can prove it has like a positive return on investment, and now all of a sudden you have a new marketing channel that's concerts as a channel. [00:44:30] And not only that, it's do you prefer like annoying TikTok ads or pre-roll YouTube videos or going for free to a show with your friends thanks to this brand. It's like no debate, right? Um, and yeah, so I'd love to spend more of my time on those type of ideas and initiatives and, and. Like most of them die, uh, in the Apple Notes, you know. [00:44:59] But, uh, [00:45:00] uh, one thing I, I, I do, uh, at wealth simple, uh, that I think others can, can try to do, but usually when I have like these little random ideas, I tell a few people, Hey, we're doing this. And I see how quickly like I hear about it from someone else, [00:45:20] like finance being like, Hey, we're, we're not research. [00:45:22] Like, is this budgeted? Or CX being like, uh, can we be looped in for this promotion? And so I can see how viral ideas get internally and that's kind of a good signal to know if I should keep pursuing the economics or the feasibility. Uh, or if, if, uh, and some stuff like are very sticky, like I have a campaign idea right now that I'm super excited about. [00:45:47] I wanna, um, spoil, give any spoilers. The minute I said it, like, you know, a few weeks later, everyone at the company heard about it and wanted to do it, and you're like, okay, that's where I can like, spend a bit [00:46:00] more of my energy and forget, uh, the other ones. [00:46:03] Phil: Very cool. I, I feel like you're, what you're describing is like nightmare fear inducing for marketing ops folks. Just like, um, what crazy ideas are is not talking about now we went from testing button colors to doing a, a swifty promo and putting on their own concert. [00:46:21] Simon: is funny you say that, but yeah, I think at first, uh, it was like, well, we're not like, how are we gonna sell tickets or, so we did like an amazing, uh, iPhone promotion was the most successful promotion we did. But now we had to, to ship like tens of thousands of iPhones and we had to set up like a entire operation of like, you know, buying from Apple, the shipping people complaints 'cause like their package was dropped in front of their door. [00:46:51] And like, they can't find it. They write to us. And it's like, but eventually it's like, uh, you find the people with Embrace, they're like, oh, [00:47:00] what's the next crazy thing we're gonna do? And have fun with it, versus like, oh my God, like another, you know, new thing, you know? And, and you want, it's like to get more of the first type of people around you, uh, and uh, yeah. [00:47:15] Darrell: Yeah, yeah. Well, [00:47:17] 5. When Natural Language Becomes the Interface, Channel Expertise Stops Being a Moat --- [00:47:17] Darrell: we better talk about AI before we run outta time. So, uh, I, I think you said something around, you know, AI's leveling the playing field, um, from a channel perspective and like even for marketers. Um, like what do you mean by that? What's, what's your take on, on ai? Like, and maybe some, [00:47:34] uh, maybe some examples about, uh, what, what you're doing at what. [00:47:39] Simon: Yeah, yeah. I'm obsessed with it, uh, because I think that's where you can get out of, of a lo a lot of local maximum, uh, thanks to AI in the future. But, um, yeah, I had this bit of an analogy. I don't, if you remember like a few years ago when Facebook launched, um, a EAA campaigns, automated app ads campaigns [00:48:00] and like most notoriously maybe Google app campaigns where you just started to like give them creatives, tell them like your desired level of return on investment, feed the right data, and then you don't have to do anything. [00:48:12] And it's like, before I had to create via the Facebook ads API like hundreds of campaigns, like creating script to optimize my bids, et cetera. And you had an edge. If you had like a bit of a, you know, growth hacking technical team, uh, competitors and then Facebook and Google sort of level the playing field, like one person. [00:48:31] Could run like a pretty big budget in an operation versus a bigger team. And you couldn't get a net of like bids optimization as much as as you used to. And then the edge became like, um, you know, uh, creative probably like everyone's, like creative is the new optimization because that's where you can still find big swings and have become really good or become average. [00:48:56] And, uh, with AI, I find [00:49:00] like maybe we're gonna have a scene first on creative. Like, if, you know, AI probably needs like another year or two, but you can like create u GC ads in a click and all you need is a good idea. You can like, have a lot of variations of your creatives. You can have a lot of copy created by ai. [00:49:18] So first everyone's gonna have like really good creatives. It's gonna be hard to to compete against each other again, or it's gonna level a playing field. But even in terms of like expert expertise. So in the past, maybe, uh, right now it's good to have like one SEM expert, one Facebook ad paid social expert, one email marketer, like someone really good at, uh, using apps flyer or whatever. [00:49:45] Um, but because of ai, you can learn, imagine like you can learn everything almost instantly or become an expert or having an expert in almost every channel very quickly. Um, does that mean you mostly need like generalists now who are smart [00:50:00] and curious, but can flex into any channel instead of hiring channel specialists? [00:50:06] So, I've reorganized my team a little bit at Wealthsimple, where instead of having like the, a team, the lifecycle team, the promo team, they focus more on like specific KPIs or targets, like growing clients, growing assets, growing direct deposit or paychecks. And every team can use like any tool. And, uh, I want people to be comfortable launching an email campaign, testing a Facebook ads, a campaign the next day, and then run maybe like a write a small script, uh, to, um, test something in the app, thanks to like an in-app model that they created. [00:50:47] Like a bit of, you want, like folks who are, uh, comfortable with technical stuff and, uh, the next day also write their own SQL queries thanks to cloud is really good for [00:51:00] sql. And most of my team now go directly in query the data thanks to to sql. So they're becoming like expert at a bit of everything. And if you just fast forward that, I wonder if like it's leveling the playing field in terms of like technical and tooling expertise and channel expertise. [00:51:17] It's just like more pure like growth skills that are gonna be, uh, valued versus like deep expertise in [00:51:25] Darrell: did you get any pushback on that? Um, because the o the most obvious one is, you know, if you're removing the specialization, you like, um, you know, there's like a skillset set thing, but there's also like an efficiency thing that I always hear like, well if they're, if, if these people are experts on, on meta ads, they're gonna do it faster and better. [00:51:42] You know? So how did you, did you deal with that pushback? [00:51:46] Simon: Uh, a little bit, but first I found like people are excited to learn and to diversify. Everyone's a little worried about ai and so I think like you want to be in an environment where you're gonna learn more stuff. And also, actually, I [00:52:00] do not really want them to be specialized because I think that's where you can fall into a bias where, well, my job is running Facebook ads for this company and or paid social ads, or, my job is running search. No, your job is growing. Clients is growing the business. And if you're a little too narrow and like, this is my era of expertise, again, you might miss like a bigger opportunity. And I find some people, they don't like it. They, they build like 10 years of experience and like being really good at, uh, ads and attribution and, and mobile and, and be social. [00:52:35] And now I'm asking them to do concerts. Um, but, uh, I think, I dunno. Yeah, that's, that's, [00:52:44] Darrell: It is kind of funny. [00:52:45] Simon: see it. Yeah. [00:52:47] Darrell: No, but I, I think, I think you're right. It, it's on that I think you, you painted the most exaggerated version, uh, to make your point, [00:52:55] Simon: but, [00:52:55] I think they, they they love it because they work here. And what I want for my team is you work [00:53:00] with me for a few years and if you move on, hopefully you stay with me, you're gonna like bring that mentality into another company and you're gonna be very successful because you won't have like the tunnel vision. [00:53:13] You're gonna make big swings and propose like big things. And, and I think like I've seen like a lot of, uh. Great development and growth from, from the, the younger people on my team, feeling a little bit liberated. And you know, this, this, the meme right there is like high agency and you want to hire people with a lot of agency. [00:53:34] And I really like that. So I always tell my team like, Hey, you can just do things you don't need to ask me. You don't need to ask anyone. Don't do stupid things. But, um, and like we're a financial service company, so we can't break the trust for, from our clients. But, uh, they also love that some people especially love that they, the freedom of, like, I, I'm not confined to, to a specific channel. [00:53:56] Phil: Hmm. So I, I don't fully disagree with the, the, [00:54:00] the, your idea of, um, like generalists becoming more important. I, I, I definitely agree with that. I think that there's still, maybe not always, but for the next five years going to be a place for the specialists. And maybe I'm coming more from like the marketing ops background, the person who's like thinking in systems and architecting. [00:54:21] All of these tools and connecting them together. So like your example of, Hey, I want someone to be able to send an email out themselves and I think like from the high level standpoint, service level tasks, a lot of tools do that really well already. Uh, like one of our sponsors is Knak. [00:54:38] And Knak allows you to have like guardrails in place so that people don't do dumb shit. Just like, oh, Chad GT says it's it. These are the steps to send out an email. And Braze, you log in, you follow that step, you send it and it's like, oh shit, I actually forgot to like do that one thing. And we sent the email out to way too many people and now we have 17,000 emails to customer support [00:55:00] that are pissed because we sent the email to wrong people. [00:55:02] Or I created a new flow to automate this one email or this push notification if someone does this. Oh shit, I didn't realize that that same action is also used for triggering these three other flows, and that blew up our whole system. So like, I think that I get your point and, and it is exciting because people who don't have a specialist background can be a lot more dangerous, but that danger comes with a certain level of responsibility and those guardrails and the systems level, people behind the scenes that are just like, yes, marketer go off and send out emails and Braze, but here's a list of shit that Chad GPT doesn't know about based on how our system is set up and the nuance and the context. [00:55:44] So there's like a balance there of um, I don't know, like uploading contacts and making sure that like, hey, if, if the marketer is using chat d PT to figure out how do I do this, how do I do that? We're also feeding it proprietary data on how braise is set up and the existing flows that we [00:56:00] have and some of our data nomenclature, blah, blah, blah. [00:56:03] That's, that's my counter [00:56:04] Simon: on that sim small point, um, Wealthsimple, and I hope like other companies now have like these internal lms, it's pretty cool. Like, uh, we have all the tools, all the models available to us, uh, and in the, like, let's say like, you know, LLM Tool for World Simple that I can connect to in similar interfaces, cha GBT. [00:56:25] So we're not feeding anything into Taji BT. [00:56:28] Um, but I, I, I agree with you, like, especially with, um, emails and like CRM, uh, you can't do much wrong with a Facebook ad. Uh, you can do some damages in other areas. So I think like giving access to everything, to everyone, I like. I hate, like gate keeping and like I'm only sending the email, et cetera. [00:56:50] Um, I do like to have some experts, right? So, and you know, in reality that's how it works. Like not everyone is really sending email in, in the team. Um, but you, you will have [00:57:00] like one or two people who are getting really good at it. And then you have this just simple collaboration where, oh, I'm trying to do this in bridge, where, you know, if it's sunny outside, I want to like, promote this. [00:57:11] You know, go and buy an ice cream with your cash cards. So I imported this like little weather API and can you check my work? [00:57:21] And so we, I see a lot of that and, um, it's actually, it's great to see people collaborate. Uh, and so you have like little positive people who like help each other, but it, it's not like, Hey, this is my tool. [00:57:33] Like why are you doing this? I really don't like this attitude. And, and I try to reward the opposite behavior of people like teaching others and even other teams. Product marketing, they want an email, we're overloaded and they'll complain like, growth doesn't want to help. I'm like, no. Hey, get on the tool. [00:57:51] We'll give you a seat. You know, running Facebook ads is accessible to everyone now. Uh, go in like we're not gatekeeping and uh, [00:58:00] it just creates a great collaborative environment. But [00:58:03] Phil: I love that. [00:58:04] Simon: my homework before I submit. [00:58:06] Uh, it is, is good. [00:58:08] Phil: Super cool. Yeah, I, I, I think for the marketing house folks listening that are just like so used to getting a ticket or a request that's just like. We want to send out an email or a notification based on, you know, weather changes and marketing ops team go off and, and figure that shit out. [00:58:25] And it's like a, a long list of things to, to figure out versus someone now doing the research, having an LLM that can, they have a conversation with, they brainstorm with it. And then when they create that request, instead of just saying, I want this thing, they say, here's a potential scenarios of doing this. [00:58:43] I found this weather API, I've connected it to this and I've tested it. Like, can you just double check my work? That's [00:58:50] like [00:58:50] Simon: And I think for, [00:58:51] Phil: about speed. [00:58:53] Simon: for creative as well, right? Like when I joined Wealth Simple's, like marketers were not writing a single line. [00:59:00] And I was like, what? And you know, I, we have the best writers in the business. They're amazing. Or, or TLDR newsletters amazing. And, uh, they're very creative, obviously, but, uh, they don't need to write like every single line in email. [00:59:14] But again, it's like, check my work. It's like, oh, this is cringe. Let me like workshop a quick, like headline or these AI generated subject lines. Do you really need that one? I would like kill it. And so this, that level of of work, so you get faster, uh, you go a little faster and you keep some sort of quality check, uh, on on the, um, the work. [00:59:39] Phil: Yeah, makes sense. I'm A-T-L-D-R subscriber, by the way. Uh, one of the few newsletters that I open as say I love it. [00:59:47] Darrell: Yeah, it could be something like, I came up with this pithy way to put it, but it could be like the future of MarTech operators is more of like a mindset than a skillset or a tool set, you know? And I think that [01:00:00] that might be right because gosh, if you think about like 10 years ago, all the tools that we had, you know, like Siebel Systems and all of these like on-premise things, that was a skillset, a skillset of how you do that, that is like almost useless today. [01:00:17] Like completely useless. But, but the people and like the problem solving ability and their creativity using tech, that's always gonna be [01:00:25] Simon: Hundred percent. And, um, I think like, you know, Phil, you were saying like maybe you go into IPT and like, how do I sense an email in Braze? But I think what's gonna happen is more that the bra and the MO engage and the apps flyer and, and all these tools, they better get going because the, the future of these tools, like, I go in the tool and I say, Hey, I wanna send an email to clients who have not used their card for the past seven days and live in Toronto. [01:00:54] And, uh, I would like the email to promote this deal that I got with this ice [01:01:00] cream vendor and I want BRACE to do it and to show me before I sent. But like, they have to build the just like natural language querying and capacity into their tools so everyone can become an expert. And create the tool. And then maybe you have like someone says like you have a queue of, of emails. [01:01:21] And I think like this is kind of, uh, make me think. So like one thing that I worry about ai, um, is that if everyone is, can like create campaigns so easily and every single idea and, and abuse of deep research, it's like, I love it because all these like stupid ideas that I have when I like go for a little walk, like, oh, we should like do a concert. [01:01:47] Like, just to keep on that example, it's like two lines. I don't have the time to like go and do research. Has anyone ever done this? What's the 10 obvious risks? Pr, I don't know, whatever. But if you [01:02:00] ask deep research to you build the business case for it, now you have like the best business case and like writing the Amazon. [01:02:07] Style of like writing and like, you know, darl, I, I heard you are at AWS, um, and yeah, it's like all of these are great ideas. I want to do all of them. And, um, so first, like, it can fool you almost into, because before, like if the idea is not sticky enough, you're just gonna forget it, then it will die in your notes. Beautiful death. But now, like every idea I wanna pursue, because like, it feels so good on paper and I share it and people are like, wait, this is really impressive. The one pager is really crisp. The financial model seems correct. And so you have an abundance of ideas and campaigns and projects, but you can't ship them all because the scarcity we were gonna have is the [01:02:51] client's attention, right? [01:02:53] And so the, the so prioritization and like, is gonna be almost a key skill rather than like [01:03:00] production and speed, et cetera. Because. So having great ideas and then like being able to sort through them and prioritize because building the campaign and shipping it is going to be compressed into like a few days instead of like, maybe a few, couple of months before. [01:03:17] Phil: That's a really cool concept. Uh, Simone, we're running short on time. I feel like there's a couple episodes we could do just on AI and, and your thoughts around this. Um, yeah. Exciting times to be in growth and, and MarTech really appreciate you joining us. [01:03:31] 6. How to Use Game Thinking to Stay Energized in Growth Roles --- [01:03:31] Phil: We got one last question for you. Uh, you're obviously a VP of growth, you're a team leader, you're also a speaker. [01:03:37] You're also a fun uncle at home. Uh, one question we ask everyone on the show is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the stuff you're working on while staying happy? [01:03:49] Simon: Um, I think like, you know, I, I would take my work very seriously, but, uh, I try to, and this maybe in piece of eyes, like I try to not take myself [01:04:00] too seriously. The priority means to have fun, spend like eight, 10 more hours at work every day. So like, just try to have fun. Don't be miserable, don't make other people miserable. [01:04:14] Tiny spec floating in space doesn't matter. You know, I'm most simple. This is great. So exciting. Like the most incredible FinTech we have a shot at, like, going after the big banks, it's amazing. But sometimes I just remind myself, Hey, I'm selling bank accounts, you know, not like saving lives, you know, it's fine. Uh, so don't take yourself seriously. And, uh, I think another piece for me, the, the way I stay happy is like, I see this as a game and I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but, uh, it's fun. Like, and, and I like to play this game. It's like a big board game. I have resources, I have a timer, I have opponents, and, uh, I. [01:04:55] Then everything becomes a little more fun. 'cause I want to know the results. And I see good growth people when they [01:05:00] ship something and they like refresh. And I want my dashboard and I'm excited to see the turn by turn play. And, uh, if you frame it this way, it's a, it's a really exciting way to go through work without feeling like you're, you're working. [01:05:14] Phil: I love that life is a game play with play it with purpose. Forget who said that, but, uh, yeah. I really appreciate that, that, uh, that thought there, Simone. It's been a super fun conversation. We'll, uh, we'll link out to the TLDR newsletter folks on, find you on, on LinkedIn. Uh, I know you said you're doing more, uh, speaking, uh, speaking tours and podcasts and stuff like that. [01:05:34] You got a ton of stuff to share with folks and I appreciate you, uh, spending an hour with us here. Thank [01:05:38] you [01:05:38] Simon: Yeah. Thank you so much. It was a lot of fun.