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Your guided tour of the world of growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, marketing, and life.
Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and have some fun talking about data-driven growth and lessons learned!
Welcome to another edition of the Always Be
Testing podcast with your host, Tida Grange.
Get a guided tour of the world of
growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and
affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments
and their learnings in growth, marketing, and life.
Time to nerd out, check your biases at
the door, and have some fun talking about
data-driven growth and lessons learned.
Welcome to the Always Be Testing podcast.
I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and I am
pumped to talk to Nick Harris today.
What's up, Nick?
What's up, Ty?
Thanks for having me.
It's good to be here.
Good to see you.
Good to be chatting again.
Yeah, we talked plenty offline.
Might as well record it.
Yeah, let's make it official.
For those of you who don't know, Nick
is an awesome guy.
He is a CRO expert.
He worked with a team to build splittesting
.com.
They grew it, scaled it, got acquired.
He's now leading CRO at a new agency,
Acadia, and he's a badass growth leader and
excited to dive into things with you guys
today.
That's a very nice intro.
Thank you.
You betcha.
You can grade my later intros and see
how I do.
So give us some background.
What's your story, Nick?
Give us a little Nick background story.
I'll go for the quick spiel.
I started my first company when I was
12 for a very specific reason.
I grew up in a small town and
wanted to go fishing with my father.
We didn't have a lot of money growing
up, but I was into technology and the
computers.
I was already fixing them, so I ended
up saving money from odd jobs.
I bought a computer out of Computer Shopper
magazine.
It was old school.
I used to buy stuff, and then I
resold it with a service contract.
I did that a couple of times and
ended up buying a boat a year later,
a boat and a trailer.
I went fishing a lot.
That's amazing.
That's the super short version of a 31
-year career.
We can go a little longer than that.
Yeah, so then I did some stints inside
of corporations.
I was a janitor at one point.
Worked at the pet department in Walmart.
Started my own business at 18 with my
brother.
We did a million dollars in like seven
months.
We were extended on loans.
The dot-com bubble hit everybody, including us,
so that washed out.
Then I went to work at Best Buy.
I was there for like six years, I
think.
Got tired of that.
Got recruited out of that.
Did some other stints in big corporations.
Started another one of my businesses at like
26 or 27.
Ran that for six or seven years.
Got acquired by my biggest customer.
Became senior director inside of a Fortune 100
company at 32 years old, which was a
surreal experience.
It was incredibly valuable now 12 years later,
but at the time, I was very clearly
a fish out of water.
That just required too much of my time,
too much travel, so I burnt out.
Started another company, got that sold.
Then we got pregnant with our first kid.
I was told I have to have a
real job, so then I went back to
corporate America.
Then I, again, got burnt and fried after
like four years, then I ended up working
with Dylan.
Now here I am.
I probably have like 12 or 13 jobs.
Wow.
I mean, where to start?
There's so much to dive into with that.
It's insane.
I mean, you're 12 years old.
You buy a boat.
13.
It was a year later.
I started the business when I was 12,
but I was 13.
So what was that like?
Amazing.
It was amazing, man.
I'm a 13-year-old kid.
I get to go fishing all the time
with my dad.
He had a boat.
It was awesome.
What did you guys catch?
A rainbow trout, walleye, largemouth bass, a lot
of bluegills, which I guess are called crappie
elsewhere.
Was it river, lake?
What kind of setup?
No, just all lakes up in a little
town in Arizona called Pinetop Lakeside.
These little lakes.
There's a lot of them, but they're tiny.
What was that like for your dad?
Was he pumped?
I don't know, man.
My dad, we didn't really talk much.
There was a bond and a connection, but
it was sort of unspoken.
We were out there doing our thing and
just chilling, just being around each other.
That's amazing.
I think that's a wow.
Yeah.
In hindsight, I wish I would have talked
to him because it turns out he wanted
to be a lawyer and all these things.
He's still definitely the smartest person I've ever
known.
I know some pretty smart people, but my
dad was weirdly smart.
What was he doing?
He wasn't wanting to be a lawyer.
What was he doing for a job?
He was a land surveyor for the state.
He just liked to drive around and do
stuff around.
He just liked to be out doing stuff.
That's what he did.
Wow.
My dad would take me.
He's a horse trainer and worked in a
small business.
Similar thing.
Sometimes those unspoken moments are the best where
it's like you're just spending time with someone.
As a parent, child, I think that's really
cool and also underappreciated sometimes.
You don't necessarily have to always have a
great, perfect conversation, but to spend time with
your family and dad is pretty special.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Definitely formed who I am now because I'm
all about time is what I value.
Everything else is secondary.
Yeah.
Are you seeing that now with your kids
or how is that?
Probably.
We hang out a lot.
You getting to spend the time you want?
Yeah.
That was part of the burnout in joining
Dylan is I got most of my weekend
back.
I got most of my after work back,
but most importantly, I was happy when I
was not working.
Whereas before, I was recuperating from working, so
I was not necessarily present or happy or
motivated to play.
I was just exhausted.
To reiterate, when you teamed up with Dylan
to build split testing, you were able to
get a little bit of your weekend back
and life back in balance.
Is that what I'm hearing?
Yep.
That's awesome.
That's mostly attributed to the team that we
have that afforded me that, right?
It's like a position of fortune, but yes.
For sure.
In previous roles, if you don't mind me
asking, what was the thing that was, was
it your drive?
Was it the environment?
Was it the corporate America?
What was it that was like, okay, this
is just not sustainable?
Part of it was just being younger and
wanting to prove myself.
And I thought you did that by getting
shit done.
Yeah.
Turns out that last part of it's true,
but you don't have to grind all the
time.
In hindsight, not everything's important, right?
Something I know now is very few things
actually need done on a to-do list.
Maybe the largest portion was previous leaders just
didn't have boundaries.
They didn't have boundaries for themselves.
So yeah, they didn't have boundaries for their
team.
This might be a bit of a segue,
but some things don't need to get done.
Some things do.
In the world of testing, your prioritization is
huge and it kind of forms a lot
of growth and how do you inform experiments
and things like that?
And we've talked a little bit about that,
but how do you as a, as a
CRO lead kind of help people and for
yourself kind of say, okay, this is what
we are working on.
This is what we aren't working on.
And that prioritization exercise, can you maybe share
a bit about what you've seen and how
you think about that?
Yeah.
I think in this case, I'm much more
fortunate than most people in my position.
I've got some really great people that work
on our team.
Brittany, who's our VP of client strategy employed
ice scoring across the board for everything we
do.
So, you know, impact, confidence, ease, we use
that.
And that's, that really what informs what we
do, but from a slightly higher level where
I set things is it has to be
good for our clients, customers, not just for
our clients.
Yes.
They're the one that pay us.
Yes.
They're the one that has to be satisfied
with our work.
But if we started to go down the
line of just satisfying our clients and not
our clients, customers, it's a slippery slope into
maybe some sketchy ethics, a little bit below
the integrity bar, not really pushing ourselves to
understand their business as good as we could.
Right.
You could do a lot of like cookie
cutter tests and we know they'll win or
they'll mostly win or do good enough, but
that's not really how we want to operate.
And that's not the relationships we want to
build.
We want to really actually set their business
up for like long-term sustainable growth.
And so in that case, from me to
customer centric mindset throughout our entire organization, and
then that bleeds through to our clients.
That's awesome.
Without sharing names, are there been examples that
have popped out that you recall where maybe
some of those, Hey, this is going to
really be great for the client, but not
great for the, for the customer.
Are there things or themes that you've kind
of picked up on or like seen other
groups employ that you think is something you'd
want to avoid or maybe how do you
draw that line?
Yeah, I'll just give a homework assignment.
Just people can go look up dark patterns.
I'll leave it there.
All right.
And then they can make their own judgment
on how that's being implemented on the backend.
Sounds like there's some consumer benefit privacy conversations
that we could have.
There's a lot of sketchy behavior that goes
on.
Yes.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So you kind of said like at the
center of this, it's for like long-term
value for the client.
And maybe on the flip side of that,
on the more positive side, what's, has that
resonated with the team?
Has that sometimes not resonated with the team?
Like what is maybe examples of that coming
through?
Like what are some trade-offs there that
you've found?
With my team?
Your team, maybe past teams coming from a
very customer-centric approach that you're referencing.
I think if I just said that we're
a customer-centric team or organization, or that's
how I lead.
Yeah.
It'd be really weird.
Right.
It's like super open to interpretation, but I
make it very clear very often what that
actually means in practice for us.
And so it's always been pretty well adopted.
And I think I got that maybe from
my Best Buy days, honestly.
Like just in retail, like you're just so
focused on the customer experience inside the store
that a lot of that retail I had
just sort of translated into, okay, well, how
does that look in a digital form?
And then how does that look on a
team that executes that way?
Right.
So I can't say I've struggled with it
at all.
I will say that for people that are
on my team, a lot have followed me
here from other jobs we've had and some
that move on.
They usually do pretty well being hyper-focused
on the customer.
I've talked to you about similar themes before
in terms of our level of service, our
team, what I've experienced.
It's so cool that you brought up that
retail experience because I think like I've seen
similar themes of people that have had customer
service jobs, hospitality type jobs, Best Buys type
of level of that.
And it's interesting to see people's experience kind
of impact how they think about putting the
customer first, as cliche as that sounds, there's
a lot of nuance to it.
And it's interesting to see it play out
and see it work.
And when you think about hiring, is that
become part of the conversation or is it
more of this is our culture of how
we operate once they're in the door?
When we hire, we hire for character.
But character for us is informed through a
tremendous amount of empathy.
So I don't focus so much on the
skills that are required to do the job
that we're going to ask them to do.
At a certain point, I kind of just,
if they applied and they've got on a
resume, all right, let's just give it to
them.
Because even if they're willing to fake it
until they make it, I'm okay with that.
Totally okay with that.
So I don't know that it's informed in
the hiring process necessarily, but once they meet
some of the other team, which is usually
before they sign, or when they do start,
it's apparent from day one and every day
after.
It's just an unwavering part of my team's
cultures that we're empathetic.
We expect everybody to trust each other.
We expect people to do their job so
that I can do my job kind of
thing.
So like my leading of a team is
very strangely hands-off, right?
It's like all these things are set and
reminded and in some cases enforced, you know,
through like just like being proactive in how
I share it.
But mostly like the team, once they're in,
it's all self-guided, right?
They all have to look out for each
other because that's like, and here's an example,
time off.
I don't care if people put a request
in for time off or not.
All I care about is that they tell
their team that they need time off and
their team says they're going to support them
while they're away.
So it's like this reciprocating nature that happens.
So people take time off and their team's
got their back and does their work or
supports their clients or whatever.
And then when they're back, it makes it
easier for everybody else to ask for time
off because they know their team's going to
support, right?
Nick's not going to do the job.
They all know that.
I don't know if I could today.
I probably can't.
Yeah.
Identify with all of that.
Yeah.
So it's just a self-reinforcing culture.
When somebody enters the door and they kind
of, they go down the paths of like
not performing kind of middle range and like
really working well, like excelling, what are some
of the signals you've picked up over the
years and learned from?
Like, what are some of the things that
you're like, Oh wow, that person's really excelling.
They're really getting in the culture.
They're really dialing in on the tests, the
client experience, the data interpretation.
Like what are some of the signals that
you've learned and picked up on over the
years since you've had so much?
I only know if it's shared with me.
I'm not that tuned into the day-to
-day.
So I wouldn't really know unless it was
shared with me.
But I will tell you that if you're
not doing an excellent job, it is noticed
by the rest of the team.
And so like their direct manager or their
teammates might pick up the slack for a
while, but at some point, they're going to
get tired of that and they'll say something.
So like, I guess for me, it's easier
to, it's easier to identify like average players
over like top performers, just given the culture
that we have is damn near everybody's a
top performer.
And if you're not, you will make it
for a while until people get tired of
picking up your slack.
Right.
In which case everybody's invited to tell me
earlier or tell their direct boss earlier, like,
Hey, so-and-so is not doing all
the things and we're having to pick it
up, but that's up to them.
Right.
And again, that's that, like, that's the team
cohesion and Nick's not part of that necessarily.
Yeah.
And when you think about top performers, obviously,
you know, seen a lot of this over
the years, like in your world, how would
you try to define that?
Is there, is there a kind of a,
I know that's a hard one, but what
do you say is a good barometer for
that?
Yeah.
So my leadership style is really just about
empowerment, which is like autonomy to sort of,
well, I mean, it's just, they have agency,
they're people, right?
The people, they know the right thing to
do versus the wrong thing to do.
And when it's in question, they know to
ask.
So for me, top performers are really the
people that when they ask for help, when
they ask for support and you give it,
they run with it, right?
They're not just asking to be involved.
They're not just asking so that you know,
you're that they're thinking about the business.
These are people that when you hear from
them, it's a meaningful, thoughtful interaction and they
take away whatever it is and they do
something with it.
So I guess for me, top performers are
the people that don't really, you don't hear
much about, they don't bother you much, but
you notice when they're absent or gone or
having a bad day because they're the ones
that were doing the most, right?
So it's really, you really notice when maybe
they're having an off day, you notice versus
all the on days.
That makes sense.
In my conversations with you, it's always like
impressed me and struck me of like how
you, you seem to create simplicity out of
things that are not always simple and maybe
you can share a little bit about how
you do that, how you think about that.
Sure.
So first off, it comes with time.
It comes with patience.
So that's like number one for people not
to try to rush into being simple because
you'll make a lot of mistakes along the
way, which is fine.
Just know that you're going to make them
because you're like oversimplify or you won't ask
all the right questions to get to simple.
So for me, it's a lot of it
is listening.
On almost every meeting I'm in, even client
interactions, I'm like just quiet.
I'm sitting there listening.
I'm paying attention, right?
I'm not, I close all the windows on
my screen and I'm focused and I'm, I'm
in.
So to get to simple, it's usually already
in there.
It's in all of the complexity that's being
shared.
It just needs boiled down to its essence,
right?
So somebody on the team or some client
might share everything, just free thought, right?
It's just like a mind, like a brain
dump.
But if you listen intently and you know
the goal, you can usually parse it together
from whatever they said into some slightly tweaked
diversion that's actionable, right?
Because I'm not, listen, I'm not going to
pretend that all of my thoughts are original.
There very few are, right?
Most of it is I pay attention very
sincerely.
I listen to what's being said.
I ask questions that help me get closer
to understanding the goal or getting us to
the goal.
And then I bring back in all the
stuff that was shared, but only the pieces
that are pertinent.
And then that's, so it's like, it's really,
it's just like an exercise and listening and
patience, but all that comes with time.
People aren't great listeners when they go, it's
fine.
I wasn't either.
It's also interesting because you work in a
very, there's like technical aspects of CRO, there's
data aspects of CRO, there's design aspects.
How does that play into it?
Do you find that it's harder to bring
that out of certain individuals in those areas?
Or is it more of, hey, we've got
our account managers that are adept at this
to really hone in and listen and be
the empathizers.
And then we have those that are maybe
not that way, kind of flipping it from
you to the team a little bit, but.
I don't think it's hard.
I think the team does a great job
listening.
So we're data informed and data led.
So, cause not everything is, you don't, you
don't always get a binary out of data.
Sometimes you just get a direction, right?
Which is data informed.
So there's that, but also the team is
very good at asking questions, right?
And they're very good at understanding where we
need to get in a given test to
understand its impact.
And so like, in this case, you know,
we would treat a hypothesis as our goal.
And if it's shared and agreed to by
the client, then we have our, we have
our target.
And in that case, listen, ask, and then
we just plan from there.
It's actually pretty easy.
There you go.
Simplifying things again.
But again, it's just, it's listening and asking.
Maybe an interesting segue is like, where do
you think folks get it, get it wrong
either on the client side or the brand
side or the agency side in terms of
the, the CRO process, where there's some of
those, maybe some of those misconceptions.
Cause it feels like an area, it can
be confusing.
It can be challenging to kind of like
prioritize and launch.
And what are some of those things that
you've come across?
You're like, I wouldn't do it that way,
but.
Yeah, I'm going to try and boil it
down to two buckets.
So there are short-term goal-oriented people.
And then there are long-term goal-oriented
people.
Oftentimes those are at odds with CRO as
a practice, at least as we do it.
Right.
So short-term might be, we want to
make big, huge changes.
We want new landing pages.
We want new, whatever, constantly.
Right.
And that's fine.
As long as you understand that you're not
going to know why it won or why
it lost.
Right.
So if you're willing to take on that
debt of just hammering stuff out until you
luck upon a winner, fine.
That's not for us.
Right.
I would consider that like more of the
short-term.
Long-term is really listening to the data,
listening to your customers and making iterative changes
along the way.
And then you will eventually get to the
new design that you wanted or the new
branding that you wanted, but it will be
strategic in nature and better in the long
-term.
And like we've, we call that like on
our side, we call it evolutionary site redesign.
So we're slowly section by section, piece by
piece, building out what you wanted in the
short-term mindset, but it takes, you know,
nine to 12 months to get there.
And for the brands we've done that with,
who have stuck it out, we're seeing crazy
growth, 7X, 9X, tremendous, tremendous growth for them.
Your rear.
So I think that's, that's like the way
I would think about it.
Wow.
Does that allow you to, now, are you
kind of letting that section of the site
experiment bake before you're moving on to another,
or are you running other tests in addition
to.
No, we'll concurrently run a handful of tests.
It really depends on the customer's journey, right?
Cause we don't want like a test to
interfere with another test, but most brands we
work with, there's enough particular sections of a
journey that we can run multiple tests at
a time.
When a brand comes to you for help,
what are some signals that you say, Oh,
wow, this is like great, great signal.
And what are some factors that you hear
that you say, okay, this probably isn't a
great signal kind of going back to that
approach thing, long-term short-term approach.
What are some aspects of that that you
find come up?
Well, I don't have a super long answer
for this.
It's really like their appetite as a culture
in their business for experimentation and trusting data.
If they are about experimentation and they're willing
to trust data, fine.
It will get along great.
But if there are a lot of feelings
over facts or reactionary, it'll be a tough
relationship for a little while.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and
resonates for sure.
When you have results that are pretty mixed,
you kind of alluded to this earlier directional
data, data-informed, I think you said, when
you have mixed results, it's not a super
black and white conclusion.
Obviously you're weighing that with speed, revenue, other
experiments to run.
How do you think about interpreting those results
in a way that's super helpful for the
situation?
How do you think about that?
This is where we end up just, we're
very collaborative with our clients and we'll just
talk it out very plainly.
Like, hey, we all thought this was going
to do X.
The statistical significance didn't quite reach it.
What do you want to do business?
We don't find any data that says it
hurt you, but we can't give you our
stamp of approval that it definitely helped beyond
a shadow of a doubt.
So what would you like to do?
Or if it's really low on statistic and
we really feel good about it, we might
just tweak it, run a variation of it.
Maybe it was poorly designed.
Maybe there was a bug.
Maybe the functions were off.
It really depends on a case-by-case
basis what we do with it.
I would say eight out of 10 times,
usually we just hand it off to the
client with the most forthright conversation we can
have with them and then let it be
their decision.
Yeah.
Defer to them when it's that ambiguous and
you kind of let the data inform their
decision and say, hey, we'll go with what
you want.
That's where we're data-informed and we just
try to help them like, listen, directionally, probably
okay.
There's nothing that says it hurt, but we
can't contractually, we can't say it reached our
barrier of statistical significance.
So can't give you a yes or no
here.
So we're just sharing with you.
That makes sense.
You kind of touched on team multiple times
in multiple ways, right?
And it's such a key piece of building
what you were able to build with Dylan
and split testing.
It's a key piece of what you have
now.
How do you kind of optimize for that
culture efficiently?
How do you kind of identify those great,
because it sounds like character is really like
a big part of it, right?
As opposed to like, I need this specific
detailed skill set.
Like how do you kind of interview and
source for that?
So my interviews are like maybe seven minutes,
maybe 10 minutes if they go long.
I need to follow your recipe if that's
the case.
Yeah, I can burn through them.
And I usually identify good people.
It's really just a matter of, I just
want to know you, right?
Like Ty, I just want to know you.
I'm not worried about the work, none of
that.
That's not even for me to manage, right?
That's for somebody else who's going to interview
you to talk about technical skills and that
kind of stuff.
I just want to get to know you.
So like, how are you?
Tell me about your family life.
Tell me about your personal life.
Tell me about how you got here.
Why are you looking?
Is it just for a paycheck?
That's okay if it is, because everybody works
hard for a paycheck.
Well, not everybody, but some people, right?
But it's like, I'm so open to just
letting them be who they're going to be
that I know within moments if they're going
to fit in or not, if they're going
to carry their weight or not, if they're
going to be a drag, right?
Like, whenever I hire, like in my position,
whenever I'm talking to somebody who might join
the team, I am solely looking at it
as an impact to the rest of the
team.
That's it.
I just want to know if they're going
to fit in.
And so for me to know they're going
to fit in, I got to take all
these personalities I know and try to blend
them into some average so that I know
if this person can hang or not, or
if they're going to be able to joke
or not, right?
Because like, I get teased all the time.
They got all kinds of stuff going on
behind the doors that I don't know about,
but it's fine.
I think it's funny.
I think they should crack jokes at the
boss.
I am a proponent of that too.
Yeah, it's fun for everybody.
At my expense.
Totally.
It's hilarious.
When you're in those conversations, those quick conversations,
you're getting to know somebody, how do you
kind of gather that they're going to be
able to pull their weight?
You seem like you have a great read
on this.
They have the cultural stuff dialed.
Yes, just how they react to me.
So like, I will tell them, depending on
the person, but most people hear something like
some form of the following.
Listen, you're going to hear from the team
that Nick's expectations are wildly, totally unachievable, right?
So, okay, so great.
So now you know we're on that.
And then there's doing nothing, which is unacceptable
as well.
So somewhere in the middle there, we have
to land and just seeing how they react
to me saying wildly, totally unachievable, completely nonsensical,
completely off base of reality, right?
Just seeing how they react to that.
If they laugh, if they joke, if they
come back with, well, that doesn't seem right.
Like it's really like in the moment, how
do they react to some things I'm saying
that let me know, okay, they're going to
react to basically how the rest of the
team reacts, which is like Nick's being a
jackass.
Great.
Like, so it's like one specific example, but
that's what you're hoping for.
Yeah.
That's what I'm hoping for.
I want people that challenge.
I want people that joke.
I want people that can have a good
time because those are all things that fall
into our culture of like, failure is totally
okay.
Trust is paramount, but it's trust in a
lot of ways, psychological safety, right?
Can I tell my boss or Nick that
I'm having a bad day and I can't
give it my all, right?
Like those are things that I'm just trying
to filter out in a short, fun conversation
of the very first time I met somebody.
It's like speed dating.
Yeah, for sure.
We talked about this a little bit, but
in like a remote team culture, how do
you emphasize that and build that?
I just say it often, right?
It doesn't have to be a meeting.
Like, listen, every day or every Friday, my
team knows it's coming.
I'm sure to some of them, they're just
like waiting for it and it doesn't mean
much, but to others, it might mean something.
Every afternoon on a Friday, I tell the
team, thank you for this week and I
hope you have a great weekend, right?
So like Nick cares, Nick's thinking of you,
Nick's around.
When I do get a chance to talk
to people one-on-one, I always talk
like we're people.
Like, hey Ty, how are you?
How was your weekend?
Right?
And I don't rush it.
I'm not, we'll get to work.
Work's not going anywhere, right?
We'll talk about work, but when you're remote,
there are few moments to actually have genuine
connection.
And if you're a business where you're forcing
that, it doesn't work.
It's just odd and uncomfortable and people feel
obligated, which makes it work, right?
It's like the opposite of what you're actually
trying to make.
So when I get a message in the
morning from somebody who's a bit stressed, a
bit rushed, whatever, and they just go straight
to work, I force a pause and I
reply, good morning, how are you?
And then I'll address whatever it is they
needed, but it's important for them to read
those words or to hear those so that
they pause and go, oh, I'm just a
person.
Nick's just a person.
I don't need to be stressed out.
This is not the worst thing that's ever
going to happen, right?
And so like doing that a lot every
day and reminding people to do that, like
senior leaders to do that, it all just
became normal.
And so now everybody on the team treats
people as people first and then work gets
done.
I love that.
It's a real valuable, I think there's a
lot of elements of that in terms of
how we try to operate, like regular reminders
of like, hey, what is going on in
your life outside of the work is really
important.
And I think it's easier said than done,
but when it comes from a very just
human, genuine place, I think it really works.
And it's what, it's what we're kind of
all striving for.
Everybody's outside of work life is way more
important to them than their work life.
Absolutely.
A lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of leaders
and a lot of businesses get it wrong.
They think people care about the stuff as
much as they do the business.
They don't, they're getting a paycheck.
They're doing enough to get a paycheck most
of the time.
And that's okay, right?
The people that do more are the ones
who get more eventually.
Like that's just how it works, but you
gotta be okay understanding that work for them
is literal, it's work.
They're just trying to clock in, clock out
and go have a life.
So if you are interested in their life
outside of work, you are going to get
so much more inside of work from them
because you care, which means they'll care.
It's very simple, actually.
It's really just, just don't treat people like
tools.
Treat them like people.
You're just, you're simplifying all the things, Nick,
just keeping that up.
I don't feel like I'm simplifying them.
I think I feel like I'm just pointing
out the obvious.
You're going to be the title, obvious simplification.
No, I don't think it's always that obvious.
And I don't think it's always that natural
to people.
And I think the good ones are doing
that elements of what you've highlighted, but a
lot of people don't, unfortunately.
Is that fair?
Would you agree?
Maybe.
I mean, I would say that actions are
that way.
Yes.
Yeah.
Everyone says it.
Yeah.
But you gotta get the benefit of the
doubt.
So like, if you're the business owner, you
have a lot more on the line likely
than anybody you employ, right?
Debts, pressures, stress from running a business, lack
of sleep, like all these things, like actual
physical toll, right?
Like there's all these things that are impacting
you.
So I'm not giving a pass.
I'm just saying it's sometimes excusable that they
forget their role is chosen and not a
requirement.
Nobody told you to build this business and
take on all this pressure and stress and
debt.
You chose to.
So own it and don't be an asshole,
right?
Like you can be both things, you know
what I mean?
But it's very hard to remember that because
listen, I've been a business owner a handful
of times, and I've caught myself when I
was younger, slipping, treating people like tools or
like, hey, how are you not answering my
call the moment I ring it?
How dare you go see a movie?
You know what I mean?
Like silly things like that, because I was
in a position where I was cutting my
pants down.
I didn't hand them an answer.
I know they did.
I'm getting yelled at.
I have a risk of money not coming
in, which seriously impacts my livelihood and their
livelihood by proxy.
That's what I mean.
That's what I was saying earlier about it
just takes time.
And it's like wisdom or patience or whatever,
right?
It's just, if you take a moment, who
is it?
I think it's the Navy, like slow is
smooth and smooth is fast, right?
Like if you could just kind of beat
that drum constantly with yourself, then you don't
need to.
The way I say it now is I
tell people don't react, respond.
That's kind of how I teach my team
now.
And I'm hearing you say this throughout, right?
It's a empathy.
It's a human centered kind of natural human
approach that is smooth and relates to fast.
If a great relationship with someone, you're going
to be more likely to know how to
provide solutions.
You're going to be more likely to get
to the right answer.
You're going to get more insights collectively as
a team than if it's transactional, right?
Yeah.
Funny enough, you just made me think of
something too.
This is like a fault I see a
lot of, especially with like new bosses, new
leaders, new managers is, and I don't know,
I usually chalk it up to all those
books that everybody reads about six types or
whatever, or 15 types or whatever, right?
I think that's like funny enough.
I think it's like an oversimplification of who
people are, right?
Like six buckets, six works.
I don't know.
There's a bunch of bullshit out there.
I never expect my team, all of them
to be managed the way that I would
want to be managed.
And I never expect to be able to
manage them all the same way I manage
each one of them, right?
So it's like really on the leader.
I think Harvard Business Review did a thing
on emotional labor of a leader, right?
Like you have to be able to know
how to manage each person that you're supposed
to be managing in your organization, how they
need to be managed to excel.
That's a lot of damn work.
Let me tell you.
Yeah.
It's a lot.
Could be six different, 10 different, 30 different
styles.
Yeah.
But it's important.
And again, you're in a, you're in a
very fortunate position.
You're the man, you're the woman.
That's your job.
Tough.
Yeah.
100%.
You talked a little bit about being a
son, spending time with your dad, spend a
lot of time with your kids.
How did that change for you as a
leader?
Did it change?
The only thing it did is I recognized
people are people no matter what age they
are.
And what I mean is my kids will
not listen sometimes.
I have adults who don't listen sometimes.
I have kids who will react and lose
their mind.
Adults who react and lose their mind.
Right.
And so it's like the universal lever that
I have is to not react and to
be patient and to ask questions and then
to work towards a solution together.
Right.
Cause like my kids, especially, it's not even
my kids, especially it's everybody.
If they are in a mood that is
unfavorable and I just listen.
And then I ask a simple thing like,
okay, how can I help?
Or oftentimes it doesn't call for that.
They just wanted to be listened to.
And you being solution oriented means you didn't
listen very well.
So you can just respond with, I got
it.
I heard you.
Let me know if you need me instead
of how can I just let me know
it's on you.
Right.
I heard everything.
Yeah.
Got it.
You got it all out.
Hope you feel good.
But it's like being able to identify those
situations where you should lend a hand and
where you should not, I would say that's
probably the thing I found out from having
kids.
I love it.
What are some things you're, you're working on
actively building towards trying to improve, talk about
growth, talk about growth mindset, always be testing
all this other stuff.
But like, what, what is that for you?
I've already got it built pretty well.
So now I'm just trying to maintain it.
And that's boring, literally boring.
Like I'm trying to build a boring.
So the reason for that is, is it's
predictable.
I can plan for it.
Not a lot of surprises come my way.
And this is in work and outside of
work, try to build structures and schedules and
stick to them.
That doesn't mean that it's not fun.
I don't mean boring that way.
I just simple man.
Like I'm trying to like, I'm really just
trying to simplify my life towards happen.
And for me, that means those things I
just said, built a boring.
I like that.
So it sounds like you're saying it's like,
okay, how do I create in my work
life and my home life, repeatable structured systems
to take out the stress?
Yeah, maybe a better way to say that
is stability.
And by stability, I mean, not a lot
of surprises.
Which turns out it's a tremendous amount of
work to do, by the way, I should
have, I should have not, I should have
just signed up for chaos theory and just
let life roll out.
But I'm trying, trying it anyway.
Is there any tips from your brain or
your experience for the audience that in terms
of like software book, just something you do
basic every day or every week or every
year, that kind of moves you closer to
that in work and life?
Yes.
So I don't stress.
I refuse to stress.
I am excellent at not stressing out about
situations, right?
Like someone told me recently calm is my
calling card, right?
Like I just don't, I will get excited,
joyful, and all these things.
And I have ups and downs like everybody.
But I, I'm patient with myself in that
I don't react in the moments.
So I, I just say, oh, well, I've
sucked.
See how I can, what I can do
about that, right?
Versus flipping out, reacting to it like a
blown tire in 119 degree heat.
That will seriously F up your day.
But instead I just leave the car running
with the AC on and call a tow
truck and just wait for him to get
there, right?
I'm fortunate enough to be able to pay
somebody to just do it.
In that moment, I just ended up listening
to music.
It's fine.
It was like, I found a break, right?
It's a relaxing thing versus a traumatic experience.
So I think it's things like that, where
I just have patience with myself and understanding
with myself.
And I did that when I was, I
think I was like 24, 25.
Like I actually called every friend I had
at the time and told them like, I
wasn't hanging out with them anymore.
Like I was doing something else with my
life.
And that's mostly because it was just like
a time suck and not super valuable.
And then I made an agreement with me
around the same time that when I go
to bed at night, I have to like
settle my day with myself.
Like, am I satisfied with what I did
today?
If I'm not, then I have to get
up and do something about it.
Or if I, or say I'm not, but
I'm now I'm okay.
Or I'm okay with my day.
And since I've done that, man, I get
like eight and a half, nine and a
half hours of sleep.
I don't stress at all.
Nothing really shakes me, you know?
And that's just because I'm like mellow, but
I attribute that to refusing stress and learning,
like teaching myself what that meant for me,
how to not stress and then making sure
I get proper sleep.
You call.
So let me get this straight.
You called all your friends and told them
you're going to not hang out with them
again.
I broke up with them all.
I broke up with every one of them.
Broke up with them?
Except for two.
When was this?
I was like 24, 25.
So 20 years ago.
Can you, what was the deal breaker for
you?
I just didn't find the relationships to be
reciprocal.
And I wasn't always looking for them to
be reciprocal, but it was like, Nick had
money, Nick had the cars, Nick had the
boats or the jet skis or whatever.
And so it's like, yeah, I bought those
things to definitely use them.
And I bought those things to definitely use
them with my friends.
But when the relationships, I guess, turned to
like transactional, like the only time we talked
or the only time we hung out was
to use some of that crap or something.
Then I was just like, well, I'm not
getting anything out of this.
I can take my jet ski to the
lake by myself.
They all became transactional.
And so it just wasn't worth it.
Yeah.
It sounds like this has been a developed
skill over time of the calm that is
you.
You definitely are admitting that, hey, there's some
moments where you're up and down.
I certainly feel that.
I know others do.
How did you get there?
What was their one experience?
Was it going through shit and going, I
can't, I'm not going to do this again?
Was it like physical, mental, like Yoda meditation?
How did you get this calm?
Yes, it was all those things.
Here's what it is.
When I see people freaking out at a
situation that I think does not warrant it,
I don't have all their context.
So maybe it does warrant it.
But because I lack the context and I
see what's happening to this person, and I
find it somewhat amusing, right or wrong, I
just don't want to do that.
It's really that.
I just don't want to be seen as
out of control.
I don't want to be seen as, all
right, here's the real reason.
When people are reacting or acting, period, out
of fear, it's really easy to get them
to do stuff.
It's also really easy to know what they're
going to do.
It's the same kind of thing happens when
people are really excited.
They become malleable.
And so if my demeanor is constant resting
this face, well, guess what?
You don't know what I'm going to do.
You don't even know what I'm thinking.
I just want a million dollars and I'm
stoic.
I didn't change.
What the hell is he going to do
with a million dollars?
Why is this guy not screaming from the
rooftops?
Someone just stole my car.
Same reaction, right?
Those are both edge cases.
But in both those cases, I guarantee you,
I'm not reacting.
I will react in private or with my
wife or my family, but outwardly, nah, people
don't need to know what I'm up to.
And when you let your emotions fly, boy,
it's so easy to know what you're up
to.
And it's even easier to make you do
stuff.
So that's really why.
Great answer.
Cat's out of the bag now.
I think it's a good segue to ask
you, what are you up to?
And I mean that, you know, you've obviously
had tons of experiences.
You started the entrepreneurial journey super early, giving
you a ton more reps than a lot
of people our age, I'll say.
You built up a Sierra agency that kind
of took the world by storm, got acquired.
Amazing.
It's a whole nother pod.
You've got an awesome team building.
You're leading with the current agency.
What is, maybe not what is next, but
what are you kind of eyeing for the
future?
What does the future look like for Nick?
Sure.
So right now it's about doing as many
of these as I can, podcasts, and sharing
information.
I'm not going to say altruistically, but I'm
not charging for it, right?
There's selfish reasons behind it.
But I really just want to like, listen,
I'm 44 and I've got 31 years of
career in me between a mix of, you
know, Fortune 500 and entrepreneurs, lots of failures,
lots of pain, lots of success.
There's a lot of things that people can
take from what I'm trying to convey to
cut the line, avoid mistakes, and find success
much earlier than I did.
And that's really what I'm trying to do.
The takeaway for like the part of that
for me is I get to make sure
that me and mine are protected because there'll
be opportunity and options, but that's not, that's
not what I'm after right now in this
moment.
And for the next while, I just want
to share and help.
For sure.
That's awesome.
That resonates with me a lot.
The education piece, you've got a lot of
good knowledge to share and drop and give
back.
I appreciate that.
But there's, you know, obviously reciprocity and folks
that want to reward you and pay you
and support you in that endeavor.
It gives in all the ways, right?
It feels good to give value.
It feels good to help people.
It feels good to coach and mentor people.
That resonates with me.
Dude, I think you're amazing.
That was awesome.
Thanks for having me.