Excuses Don't Build Companies

In this episode of Elements of Culture, we sit down with Kathy Slowinski, CEO of Trilogy and Kayako, to unpack what it really takes to build a culture that executes — not one that hides behind meetings, politics, or excuses.

With over 150 company turnarounds under her belt, Kathy has seen it all — the bloated org charts, analysis paralysis, and fear-based leadership that quietly kill innovation. She shares how her “get sh*t done” approach, shaped by her upbringing and honed through years of leading tech transformations, drives results in an AI-driven world that often confuses activity for progress.

This conversation challenges leaders to ditch performative culture and create environments where people take ownership, act with clarity, and deliver results that matter. If you lead teams, drive strategy, or simply want to stop spinning in circles — this one will challenge how you think about accountability, trust, and leadership in the modern workplace.

Join us weekly as we dig into the real stories behind work culture transformation.

Not theory. Not fluff. Just honest conversations with leaders and innovators who've been in the trenches.

Transcript

Kathy’s Path To Tech Leadership

Speaker 2 0:00

If I had to redo it all the education again, I probably would have skipped the business degree or done just my undergrad in business, but done my postgrad in in technology.

Speaker 1 0:09

At Elements of Culture, we sit down with experts in leadership and team building to explore the DNA that drives a thriving organization. Welcome everyone to Elements of Culture. My name is Taryn, and I'm joined with my co-host Julie. And today we are talking with a two-time CEO, Kathy Slovinski. Welcome to the show, Kathy. She is a CEO of both Trilogy and Kayako. Trilogy is an AI forward private equity firm and also the CEO of Kayako, which is an AI-driven custom customer support system. And we're excited to talk to you today, Kathy, because you just have a wealth of information in the tech space, AI space, but also just really, really on the forefront of things. So welcome.

Speaker 2 0:55

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to share my wealth and knowledge with you guys. Hopefully we can get through the bulk of it in 30 minutes or less.

Speaker 1 1:02

Yeah. I'm sure we'll touch on lots of things today. Before we start to get into really the meat of the conversation, help paint a background just for those that are listening of your personal journey, Kathy. What's brought you to where you're at today? And just to kind of set the tone as we begin to dig into AI and what's really, you know, the things that you're keeping a pulse on as a leader.

Education, Early Tech Shift, And Career Arc

Speaker 2 1:25

Yeah, I'll give a background. My parents were uh Polish immigrants and came to America kind of with nothing, right? My dad started a business in the 80s, and we have this entrepreneurial spirit in our family. We're we're pretty hands-on. Uh, we like to get things done. I call it get shit done, GSD mentality. I definitely learned it from them. Uh, went to college for business because I knew I was going to be in business probably since the time I was five years old. I've got some funny stories about that if we have time. And while I finished business school, undergrad, worked for my dad's business actually for a few years, and then wanted to go do my MBA back in the let's call it late 90s, two, early 2000s. I wanted you to have an MBA if you wanted to progress in your career. So I went down that path. While doing my MBA, I saw the light of technology. I was already dabbling in a lot of, I was very tech forward, very hands-on, building websites, working on servers, like setting up server configurations, things like that. So I saw the technology pattern starting to emerge. This is early 2000s, like the likes of Oracle, IBM, SAP were just comp companies that were breaking into uh corporations and starting to be core uh underlying workflows within organizations. And I was like, if I don't learn more about tech, I think I'm gonna get left behind for my career. So I got a master of information technology as well, and somewhere in there I fit in a master of marketing. Um, but basically since that point on, I have been in the tech space and have had a tech thread from the time I was, you know, in my early 20s to now here uh you know, 25 plus years later. Um and it's been, if I had to redo it all the education again, I probably would have skipped the business degree or done just my undergrad in business, but done my postgrad in in technology of some sort. And what was nice about the Master of IT is it gave me knowledge in like every single component. I'm like a generalist in technology, I'm not an expert in anything, but it really helps me get my head around being in the tech space, how to build products, how to sell products, how to evolve products over time. Um, and I I really think that's the thread of how I got to be the CEO of a of a tech uh software, basically private equity firm that is very AI forward and and and trying to transform our business as well as other businesses using it.

Speaker 1 3:43

That's beautiful. Wow. So you did your your postgrad both with tech and with marketing. I love that.

Speaker 2 3:49

And business. So it was like a little bit of everything, um, which you know it's dangerous. You become uh a mile wide and an inch deep. Um so it's like the perfect, I think for me as a CEO in the tech space, it was like the perfect education. And then my career progression um over the years, I worked in, I started after postgrad at a big enterprise company, uh, you know, several billion dollars in sales, you know, 16,000 people global. I traveled the world, I worked my way up the uh the ladder there. And at around the seven-year mark, I knew I was it was time to leave uh kind of the bigger, slower corporate world and move into what I love, which is like SMB slash mid-market. I love like the 50 to 300 person companies where you could still sort of know everybody at the company and be involved in a lot of things, but it's it's not so big that there's like multiple layers of bureaucracy, but it's not so little that you know you kind of you know need to do everything yourself type of thing. So that's where I've spent my time. It's all been like gross stage mid-market companies in the tech space. Uh, and that's kind of where I'm at today. We buy uh basically mid-market companies that are distressed, and we actually turn them around by using AI and a playbook that we've developed over 15 years to fix broken companies. Um and then on top of it, some of the companies that we buy, they have a like they have another life using AI. And so Kayako is actually one of those companies that we've built a bunch of AI functionality into and we use internally for our hundred-plus companies we have, and we sell, we have about 600 customers worldwide. Um, and we've sort of given new life to that product by putting AI into it and getting rid of like the repetitive tasks that customer support teams do and helping customer support teams scale the business without scaling a ton of headcoms.

Speaker 1 5:43

Wow, that's beautiful, Kathy. I want to talk a little bit. Um, first of all, let me just say I love your background because there are so many leaders that they, you know, they're out there building a company, but they don't have an understanding of the marketing side of the business, which I think that like that's your message on the forefront. I think that's so needed, but I'm a little biased. My background's marketing. So let's let's talk about the the companies that you're helping, um, that you're kind of acquiring through trilogy. You talk about the them coming in and they're very distressed. What are some of the like decisions that they're making that brings them to this point where you're like, okay, we we can help them, we can acquire these companies. What has really taken them down this path where they're at the point where they can no longer scale?

Buying Distressed Companies And The AI Playbook

Speaker 2 6:30

Yeah, they're often at the point where they no longer can pay payroll. Like that's how distressed they are. Um, or they're running out of capital and they they see the um the light. It's not the light at the end of the tunnel, the darkness at the end of the tunnel, I suppose. Um often they're you know, they're companies that got to let's say 10, 20, 50, 100, 150 million dollars of revenue because they had like a really good back to marketing, niche ICP, and they were uber focused on it and they went hard and they they didn't get distracted by the shiny things in the corner and like tangential ICPs. They were like, we're gonna go niche, we're gonna go hard. This is the thing we sell. It does the job, it helps solve a massive pain point that creates value for the company that they're selling the product into. And they get their seed funding, they get their A funding, they get their B funding. Somewhere in their B to C, sometimes even C funding, the board's like, hey, like we need you to continue growing. And the leadership's like, we're running out of ICP. Like, there's no, there's no more customers. We've saturated the market. We have the the maximum uh market share that we can get unless we buy another company, or we pivot and start to say, okay, there's this tangential adjacent ICP we're gonna sell into, and we're gonna go sell into that. And so at this stage, they're probably pretty heavy on headcount, right? Because they had they needed that headcount to grow to the stage that they're at. And they're pretty heavy on engineering. And instead of saying, hold on, like this product's just not gonna work for that ICP, they're very optimistic and they're like, We're gonna, we're gonna shoehorn this in. So their option at that point was churn it down, scale back down to create profitability instead of growth. You could still be like rule of 20, 30, 40, whatever rule you're trying to hit, but you're getting it on the EBITDA side, not on the growth side. But sometimes your investors are like, grow, grow, grow, because we want to double, triple this company in terms of evaluation. So they have this option to dial back and say, no, like we can scale back our costs and be running at 40, 50% EBITDA, or they hammer down and they're like, let's just keep throwing this cost at at uh growing uh and merge. And what ends up happening is a couple things. Like I said, they sometimes buy other companies because they're like, oh, this will help us get into this ICP, and it doesn't work. Uh often when we acquire companies, they will have a project ongoing for usually it's like a one to three year project where they're unifying the platforms. They call it Project Unify or Unity. I mean, as soon as I hear that word, I'm like, this is how they ran out of money because they spent two, three years merging something that someone's not willing to pay for, and that's expensive, right? Um, to do. Meanwhile, the sales team is like flailing trying to sell this thing, and they have a hard time messaging it. You know, they're kind of fighting with marketing saying your leads suck, and sales and marketing saying no, you guys can't close a deal. You know, it's like that typical thing. And somewhere in their leadership, ultimately the CEO didn't see the train wreck coming and didn't say, okay, we screwed up, but we have time to stop what we're doing, peel back, you know, unscale, basically shrink and go to profitability and return to return money to our investment investors through profitability versus through top line growth, right? And that's usually the decision is someone didn't want to make the hard decision of cutting people, possibly cutting office space, you know, making a pivot and just saying we're gonna focus only on the customers we have. And our job is to retain them forever. Like if we can retain these customers for 20 years at you know small incremental price increases yearly, we've got a great business that's super profitable that's going to return the investment to the investors. It's just a different way of doing it. So we actually do that. We'll buy the company, uh, we we make the hard decisions, and we try to pay back our investment into the company as fast as possible. And our goal is to keep our customers as long as possible.

Speaker 10:28

So, Kathy, you talked about somebody in leadership or the CEO does not make the hard decision or doesn't make the pivot. Talk to me a little bit about is that because they're unable to see it? Is that because they have high expectations for something, or is it because they do fear making the hard decision and don't want to be that person? Um, what do you think is really happening there in your experience of all the companies that you guys have acquired? Why are these hard decisions not being made? And is it multiple reasons?

Why Growth Stalls And Boards Push Too Far

Speaker 2 10:59

I think it's all of the above answers, if if this was a test. B, all of the above. I think no one likes to do the hard things. That's probably the number one thing is people want to be liked. CEOs, if if you're a CEO and you're you wake up every morning and you're like, well, you know, you're worried about your team not liking you, I think you're already on the path to failure. Um, I've worked for CEOs like that, and unfortunately their businesses have failed or not done as successful, like been as successful as they could have been. Um, you're not supposed to be liked, you're supposed to be respected. I think that's the biggest uh difference. And yeah, sometimes you've got to make a really hard or several hard decisions to make sure you can keep the business afloat and solve it. Um so that's problem number one. Uh, problem number two, we also see is there's like a combination of I don't want to be unpopular and my ego, like I'm not wrong. I'm going down with this ship. Like, I know we can get in there and we can do this. And then you'll often even hear, like, well, my team wasn't good enough. And I'm like, really? Like, if is that what the problem was, or was your decision not really thought through and now you're blaming someone else? And again, if you have a if if you're a CEO and you're blaming other people, you need to look in the mirror and be like, it all starts with you. You're ultimately the captain of the ship, you are in charge of the story. And if you can't take the blame for that, that's its own separate problem. And I think the the third one, and maybe one of my strengths and my weaknesses, is they're just not involved enough. They don't know what's happening. They're hearing things like through the grapevine. They're a CEO should still be involved in the sales cycle. They should still talk to customers, they should go out and sell. Like, that's actually one of my favorite things to do. Like, we we've launched Kay Echo recently, like relaunched it to sell to new customers recently. I had a great pitch yesterday morning for a um kind of a funny tongue-in-cheek product, uh, a company that sells sex toys. And I'm like, I am taking one for the team. I am doing this sales call. Um, and it's it's I'm super excited. It could be a very large deal for us. And I, you know, I'm hands-on demoing the product, but not demoing the product, I don't know what's wrong with it. I don't know what could be done to improve it. I don't hear and see the way the customer or the potential prospect either leans in or leans away when they see things in the product. Like, I'm here, if I wasn't involved, I'd be getting it all third party. And sometimes just being involved makes helps you like shape your tactics and your strategy. So I think CEOs have to be more hands-on and not just sitting in like the corner office looking at spreadsheets and metrics. Like, yes, that'll get you some of the way there, but you've got to be on the floor understanding what's going on, I think, to be super successful. And that's why you see these like founder-led companies do so well because the CEO knows everything that's going on or is done almost every single job and knows how to adjust things when things go off the rails. And immediately they see the problem and they hop in versus you wait till you see it in the spreadsheet a quarter or two later. It's like, oh my God, you just let this disaster go on for six months type thing. So being hands-on is a big piece.

Hard Decisions CEOs Avoid

Speaker 1 14:11

Yeah, that's so good, Kathy. I I love that you take that approach being hands-on and involved in every part of the business because you know, we've had some conversations recently with founders and CEOs as well. And it's like the if you can just tell a difference the way that they operate in their business when they have that type of approach. Now, Kathy, you talked about, I'm gonna go back to your background a little bit. You said your parents were immigrants, you kind of have that like get it done type of mentality. Um, so that obviously spills over into everything that you do in life and your approach with business. So, as a leader, as a CEO of both of these amazing companies, how is it like for you as an individual? You said, you know, if a CEO is not looking in the mirror at themselves and like questioning themselves. So, what are what are some of the ways that you stay motivated as a leader? What are some of the ways that you stay on the forefront just to stay sharp in the industry, but also as an individual, so that you are really bringing your best self to the table for the teams? What are, because we do have a lot of leaders, we have a lot of um you have founders, CEOs that are listening or maybe that are striving to that level at some point in their future. How do you stay motivated? Um, because it's a it's something that consumes you all the time, right? You you mentioned you work, you love working Saturdays and Sundays. So how do you keep the balance?

Speaker 2 15:31

Oh man, this is good. I've had a couple burnouts earlier in my career because I just went too hard. Didn't and I think the biggest thing was like I didn't take care of myself. Like you have to come first as a human. Um, and that's really hard to do sometimes, especially when there's a lot of stuff to do. This might sound like I'm an old lady or something, but I'm like, I really love sleep. Like, sleep to me is the foundation of making sure you're healthy. Like, you don't get sick if you're getting enough sleep, you have the energy, you're better like mental clarity, you make better decisions, you don't forget stuff. So, sleep to me is the one thing I try not to sacrifice ever. And when I do, I immediately can tell things go downhill fast, right? So I have to like get caught up on my sleeps if you can really ever get caught up. Um, I think being social, like we work in remote workplace, at least this company does, and so many other people do, is like you just got to get out of the house. Find they there's this concept of a third place, and this was before COVID. Like you had work, you had home, but you needed a third place as an outlet. Well, now when you work from home, like you only have one place, and so now you kind of almost need to find two places to get out, at least find that second place. So whether it's the gym or yoga or some kind of social book club or something that like is your passion side thing, go like make that a focus and don't feel guilty for walking away to do it because I honestly, my best ideas come away from my computer with when I have time to go for a long walk or a bike ride, um, or just even like go socialize with some of my colleagues locally, right? I I do a lot of business professional events because you hear other people's stories and you get those like aha moments of, oh, that's such a great idea. This is how I'm gonna bring it back. And that's where the motivation comes and like the recharge. Like, I recharge from those types of events. Sitting in front of your computer for 16 hours a day, like it's just a recipe for disaster type of thing. You really got to go out and do the things that make you happy and have that, I wouldn't call it work-life balance because I don't think as a CEO there's a thing. You just need to have some semblance of like fun, right? And the things you like to do outside of work so that you you your brain resets and has a chance to really think through deeply about the things you're dealing with when you're actually away from the things you're dealing with. So that's my big thing. But honestly, it's sleep. Like sleep and sleep is my superpower. I can sleep anywhere as long as I'm horizontal. So I love it.

Speaker 17:54

Kathy, as a professional napper, I'm all about sleep. Um, but I do envy the fact that you can sleep anywhere because I cannot do that. Um, but I am a professional napper. I am team team nap all the way. Um I read a study. Yeah, so I read a study actually recently that nappers actually live seven years longer than the non-napper.

Speaker 2 18:17

So I'm just saying I think CS time could be something that we probably need to incorporate into I I am not ashamed to say that almost three or four times a week between two and four o'clock, I take probably a half an hour to an hour nap. And what's super awesome about it is I wake up and I feel like it's six o'clock in the morning again, and all my energy is back at that level, which is another superpower because I can kind of restart my day and have a second day.

Speaker 18:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2 18:42

Sleep is clutch.

Staying Motivated, Avoiding Burnout, Loving Sleep

Speaker 18:44

Yeah, absolutely. Talk to me a little bit about um when you're you know, you guys Tology acquires all these companies, and you do you guys have a strategy that you guys utilize when you're going in, or do you assess the company and see what changes need to happen? Is there always a leadership change? Is there always a downsizing? How do you all navigate that for a company? And then also, um, how do you reassure um these companies as you acquire them? Um, how do you build trust with them in your leadership in what you guys are going to do going forward?

Speaker 2 19:18

Just running those both down because I will forget the second question before I'm done with the first one. Um, we have a playbook we've developed over, I think, since 2010, so 15 years. We've acquired about 150 companies in that period of time, and there's been some failures, there's been some successes, and we've refined a playbook, and it's very similar. There, there always, always is a leadership change. Um, we take over. I do, I we immediately uh swap out leadership. Um, we always have a reduction in headcount because that's the number one drag on these companies. Again, these companies are typically negative net profit margins, so you can't exactly turn them around uh without some cost reduction. So there is cost reduction, headcount, office space. A lot of it comes from like um poorly managing technology infrastructure as well. So, you know, just having way oversized servers, having like three or four data centers that you don't need because you need four redundancies, right? Or three redundancies, like it you need one at the end of the day. So it's there's some like really basic things going through vendors, like you're just paying for seats of things that no one's using, you're paying for stuff that no one's using. So you kind of really you gotta go through um it with rigor. And then a lot of it too is you know, some sometimes these companies do no headcount or sorry, no price increases, right? They haven't um at all for years or very minimal, and that sometimes kills them too because the cost of living goes up. You're paying your salaries, you're increasing your salaries three, five, ten percent a year, but your revenue is staying flat on that increase. So you all you're doing is chewing into your margins. Um, so that's that's some of the major changes that we have to do to make these companies successful again. Um, and then in terms of reassurance, a lot of it is trying to get quick wins right away for the customers, showing them that we are going to no joke, almost every single customer company we we buy, it's the same story because they've been doing project unity for two years, they haven't seen an innovation in the product that they've been begging for for years. And sometimes it's not even innovation, it's like super basic like workflow enhancements that they're like, we don't want this to be seven clicks, we want this to be two clicks. Can you fix it? And they're like, Yeah, it's in the backlog. Project unity is our number one priority. So just getting in there and getting some of these quick wins for the customers to say, like, we are right, like writing the ship, we're going to innovate in these products, and we try to get a few things out the door as fast as possible so that they see a big change in the behavior. Because they're like, we've been paying for this forever, and like it's the same thing it was seven years ago or five years ago. Um, and going back to focus on the existing customers, here's the the mistake is everyone focuses on new customers and they kind of forget the old customers, the ones paying the bills. And we actually go back and we say, no, like we have a customer success team. They're gonna call you, whether it's quarterly or half yearly, they're gonna work with you. Here's their their details. If you have a problem, please contact them. They're responsive. So it's a lot of that of being like, hey, you're not the red-headed stepchild anymore. Like you're our number one focus because we want you to stay here as long as possible. Um, so that's sort of how we go about it from a playbook perspective.

Speaker 1 22:32

That's so good. I think sometimes, especially I think about on the marketing side of things, Kathy, where a customer has been a customer for so long and like you set it and forget it. Um, and so that customer is not getting that optimization, the results along the way. And so, you know, that just in turn turns into customer's churn and you're losing the revenue that way when you're not having that customer success team. Um, but I think sometimes at the higher level on the sales side, if you don't have that customer support team, you're just out of touch with the customer and you really you can't afford to be as a business.

Acquisition Playbook: Cuts, Focus, Quick Wins

Speaker 2 23:08

For sure. Uh, one of the first things I do within a few days of acquisition is I meet with all the whole customer base. I do a big webinar. I ask them what their pain points are. So we quickly figure out how to solve for that. Um, you know, and I try to make personal, like personally, I get on the call on calls with as many customers as I can in the first 10, 15 days to because everyone, no one likes change, right? They they have questions. So it they get some one-on-one time with me, and then the rest of the customers get covered, like who I can't get with, get custom covered by our customer success team, ideally in the first 30 to 60 days post-acquisition. It just depends on the volume of customers. Like sometimes we'll acquire something that's three, four hundred customers, you can get through that in a month or two, but when it's 2,000 customers, it takes a little bit of time to get through the customer list. Sure.

Speaker 1 23:54

You know, you said um spending that time with the the customers, um, getting a pulse on things. I think sometimes when change is needed, not everybody likes change. It's not welcomed. And so I do tell me a little bit about that, you know, how you go about managing like the team of people at these places, because there is a hesitancy to trust the process, right? So other than getting in touch like with the customers directly, how do you navigate that like with the people side of things?

Speaker 2 24:21

Communication, overly communicate and don't like lie and say you're not gonna make changes, right? Oh no, we acquire this and no one's gonna get let go. We're very transparent and we literally give people numbers like the day we acquire the company, and we're we we say this is the problem. Like, I don't know if this has been shared from the Pv previous uh leadership team, but this place was distressed. We are here to fix it. It doesn't mean everyone's gonna get to keep their job because you know one of our biggest problems is this. But we we try to communicate with people as fast as possible what the plan is because no one wants to sit there in a state of unlike unknown future. Like if they need to go be looking for a new job, we want them to know almost day one. And we might say something like we we literally will say, you're you've been identified as part of transition team. You you're transitioning over six months. We're gonna pay you, we're gonna pay you a bonus to stick around at the end, right? And you can go look for a new job, but we want you to stick around to such and such date. So it's like a planned transition versus you you've heard of stories where companies acquire a company three months later, they just cut everybody with like a two-week severance, and that's about it. And no one wants to live in that, like you don't want to cooperate, let alone live in that state of uncertainty. And then all you're doing is spending your energy being stressed and scared about your future versus, hey, we're very transparent. Here's your future, go start looking for a job, but we need you to finish this transition thing with us, and you know, here's the window of time you have. So we try to be um, our chair of the board calls it the difference between Dr. Spock and uh Mother Teresa. Like we try to take the Mother Teresa over approach of like being empathetic and knowing that no one wants to live in that state of uncertainty for more than a day or two. I mean, company employees usually know when a company's being sold. Like you, there's there's signs, right? People, the the spidey senses go up, the red flags start to happen, and everyone's already in a state of uncertainty before the sale. They want to know the second the sale happens, like what their future holds. So we try to give them a game plan immediately.

Speaker 1 26:26

Yeah, that's so good. I think sometimes in like more of the unhealthy um work cultures, it's almost like they like that element of surprise. I'm not really sure, but it's just such an unhealthy way to go about business. And when you think about the employees that are in this plate place where they're scared, they're not sure what's going on, you completely lose all productivity of the organization for weeks just because you don't have a game plan for clear communication. And so I do think that all of that can be avoided. You can actually retain some of the good talent with clear communication. Um, you know, for sure.

Reassuring Customers And Restoring Trust

Speaker 2 27:00

For sure. We've all worked at places that have had that uncertainty culture, and everyone spends time having like side chats on each other. You know, it's the water cooler chat of like, holy crap, I think this place is for sale. You know, CEOs just totally distracted. We haven't heard from them for months, like what's going on? Um, you know, they know what's happening and the think about all the cycles being spent. So that's actually like another pattern we find is like leadership's not telling employees that there is change in the future. So it's like a, you know, they get clobbered when they get the announcement and they they're dying for information. So my goal is to give them as much information as possible day one that we do the acquisition.

Speaker 27:39

Yeah, Kathy, I love the fact of we keep seeing, hearing the same trend, over-communicate, over-communicate, over-communicate. It is buying in people's trust, and I can definitely see that this uh old way of keeping secrets, which create conspiracy theories at the water cooler, I just want to say. Like it's like the conspiracy theory people are all at it. And um, and I think it just creates a very unhealthy culture. So I totally agree with you. Um, we always talk to leaders about um, you know, what are the great things that make a good team, a good company, a good organization, a good culture? I want to ask you a question. What are some things that do not make a healthy culture? What are some things that you're seeing and you that's trending that may even look pretty on the outside, but is not leading to building of a healthy culture?

Over-Communication And Humane Transitions

Speaker 2 28:30

Um, great question. Well, we've all heard the 996 trend. Yes? You guys are aware of the 996 trend? It's like China. Uh okay, so in China, apparently it's common culture for employees to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. Um, and apparently this is becoming hot in in Silicon Valley. Um sure, if you're 23 years old, have no family, have no pets, like have no life, you don't have the second or third place uh type of thing that I talked about earlier, you might be able to get away with it for a period of time. But I I'm worried that's like a it's a recipe for disaster. There are some people that are wired to do it, but when you expect it at a culture, I think you're gonna have massive churn. You're gonna have people that are really unhappy. And I actually don't know if they're gonna be super productive because I don't I'd rather have like six, seven, eight hours of like insane productivity than 12 hours of lollygagging around the office and you know being exhausted because you never have any downtime and being miserable because you haven't seen your family or your friends for a period of time. I want like the best productivity versus uh, you know, 12 hours a day, six days a week. Uh, don't get me wrong, some people will grind it out, but I I don't think it's for everybody. Um, and I don't I don't think it's sustainable for for companies to to think that that's gonna work. Um I would say another thing that probably irks me the most is like not giving your people a little bit of Leash to go try and experiment with things. Like everything's micromanaged, and you know, you've got to get like 15 approvals to get anything done. I had a I had a call with someone today who's who has a really good idea. And I was like, hey, how's the project going? You told me you'd have like a POC today. And he's like, it's stuck in compliance. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You don't need to go through compliance for a $20 version of the product to get to a POC. Like, I'm like, just go and run with it. If we decide we're going to use that product long term, then we'll go through that process, right? But like don't slow yourself down because that one demotivates people. And two, just it creates like this weird bureaucracy. And I just want people to sort of experiment, move fast. If they see a problem, I want them to be able to just solve the problem themselves without asking for permission. Um, I want them to feel enabled to be to be one, like fairly autonomous, but enabled to like feel like they own the place. And when there's something's broken, they're allowed to fix it and not, you know, go ask someone for permission to fix it, type of thing. So anytime you get that bureaucracy or you've got to like ask for approvals for like super basic little things that you're not even putting into like SOPs or like production level environments, you're just stifling people's ability to feel like the culture is get shit done. And that's the culture I I try to do. So funny enough, I grabbed my red cup. I don't know if you guys will be able to see that. That is one of our little logos we created a couple years back. We put it on cups, we put it on t-shirts, you know, uh swag that we give out to the team. And I we totally believe in like the get shit done culture. Just flex your muscle and go. And if you screw up, that's fine. At least you didn't sit there staring at the problem for weeks. Like you tried to fix the problem or come up with a solution. So it's um it's a culture I've probably embodied at three or four previous companies. I literally created a logo at this company, and uh, it's like we we literally literally call ourselves team get shit done, um, which is fun. GST.

Speaker 1 31:58

The marketing, the marketing coming out, right?

Speaker 2 32:01

It is, it is.

Toxic Trends: 996 And Bureaucracy

Speaker 1 32:02

I want to touch it. That's so good. And I think that the we've talked with so many people too about just creating a culture where people can really have that autonomy, you know, to go after the things that that they have within their sphere to contribute to the overall growth of the company without having to get approval. Because you're right, it does it did stifle people, it slows the process down, and ultimately it can be really discouraging when they're not experiencing that win. Um, as we before we wrap up, Kathy, you are in um just a space that's consumed with tech in AI. Um obviously, AI is on the forefront for many companies. Maybe some companies are just kind of stepping into some things, not really quite sure where they need to have a pulse on with AI in order to plan for the next couple of years. What would you say, Kathy, from your experience and what you're looking at for the next six months, year, next two years, what do businesses and leaders really need to keep their eye on as far as tools, resources to implement into their current um culture or to be considering as they continue to scale?

Speaker 2 33:10

Yeah, this kind of goes back to my get get your hands dirty as a CEO. Like if you want to implement and become AI forward at your company, you as a leader need to understand how it works and be involved. Don't just say, like, we're gonna be AI forward and then expect you know people to figure it out. Um we started our AI journey in 2023 and we have not stopped. We have a weekly um kind of hackathon with our team. The whole business unit gets together. They break off into groups or sometimes individually, but it's it's constant, it's iterative. Every time a new product comes out, we like learn to use it. It is nonstop. You just can't take your foot off the pedal in terms of becoming AI Ford, as you guys have seen yourselves. The space has changed so much in two years. Like, I could give you some tools today, but I don't know if they're gonna be the same tools you'll be using in 12 months, maybe not even in three months. I think familiar familiarize yourself with the tools, stay on top of the news, keep experimenting, don't stifle your team with like all this governments and rules about AI. Kind of give them a little bit of carte blanche, but say, like, hey, if you wouldn't, if you if it's in the internet policy, it's pretty much the same as the AI policy. Like, don't go sharing company data, things, you know, don't do silly things, um, but let people experiment and let people learn. I there's um, you know, the bell-shaped curve is on this is like you're gonna have people that are early adopters in your business and let them run and they will sort of drag people with them as well, but you have to do it in a group setting. You can't do what I like to call nerds in the corner. You can't have like four super technical people doing all the AI and everyone's left behind, right? Because then it just creates a bigger delta in who knows how to do it and who doesn't. You got to take the whole group and just keep iterating and showing them ways, let them practice and try things, experiment, and then let them show everybody. So we have half a day of like go and try something and then come back for an hour and demo what you've done. And even if it's the sales team demoing to the engineers, which literally happens sometimes, right? They're like, it gives people ideas and it shows people that it's not just a tech like enablement thing. It's not like techies only do AI. Everybody can use AI in their day-to-day. Um, but you've got to take the masses with you. You can't just nerds in the corner it. Um, and I I think it's gonna be an evolution, right? Like you don't see typewriters in offices anymore, right? Because eventually everyone got on a computer and then eventually they started using the internet. This is just the next big evolution of technology, and you've got to take your whole workforce with you. Otherwise, you'll have the people left behind, you know, it's gonna be really hard for them. And and there's fear that they will be left behind, right? So um that's how good I I'm more like the carrot than the stick type approach, if you can. Like, give them a carrot so they're learning something. And these are skills they're gonna need in the future. Any job that they go to is going to need AI skills, whether it's five years or ten years from now or even a year from now. Like AI skills are gonna be very valuable.

Autonomy, GSD Culture, And Ownership

Speaker 36:11

So, Kathy, do you think a business that is right now like, hey, I don't want to do it the AI way, I want to do it the old-fashioned way? Like, are those companies gonna make it? Because I I know some. Um, and or they're trying to wait till AI, um how it all plays out, but you're saying it's evolving and it's innovating and it's gonna be more implemented in daily life. Is that correct? Because I can I know some businesses that are very hesitant in even incorporating it. And I my question is what happens to those businesses in five years?

Speaker 2 36:41

They're gonna have really expensive uh consulting engagements with companies that know how to help them implement AI. The digital transformation we saw in the late 90s, early 2000s, where everyone wanted a website and everyone wanted e-commerce. Companies made bazillions of dollars off of that just consulting, right? There are gonna be companies that lag and then they're gonna have to pay for it to catch up later. I don't know if they're gonna disappear completely. Some of them might, right? That just don't want to deal with it. Uh, you know, when was the last again, when was the last time you walked into an office and there everyone didn't have a computer, right? You eventually have to teach everyone to use these tools. I think the companies that take more of an aggressive approach with it, they're just always gonna take advantage of like little increments of productivity and efficiencies, and they're just going to get more and more efficient and be able to do more with less people, right? Which is for most companies the number one cost, right? So they can get more profitable and then they can use that profit to grow, right? So they I don't know if they're all gonna get left behind, but they will have very expensive bills to pay for consulting companies to help them get caught up, right? And I also think a point a point in time will come for these companies where people that want to be AI Ford will get frustrated and leave, right? So they're gonna start losing their talent as well, which we all know talent is really a tough game. Like once you acquire great talent, you don't want them to leave, right? It is so expensive to lose good talent. Um, and I don't know if people realize that that's gonna be one of the factors that will um hurt them in the future. But I also think some, you know, people will come in with innovative ideas and totally eat people's lunch too, and be like, you can't do it the old way anymore. You have to do it this way. So they will be forced to evolve or die.

Speaker 1 38:27

Yeah, I I agree with that. And I think I loved what you were saying earlier about like those that might be the techie people really seeing and enabling the different departments within an organization to be able to present the AI um solutions for their department specifically, but just giving room for learning um and developing within the organization and how that impacts you. I totally agree. I think, you know, if companies are not adapting in the space of tech and AI, you're really stunting the growth and productivity as the company, but also the talent as well. Kathy, I think we could chat on so many topics, and we might have to have you back on. We might have to have you back on to dig more into some of these details. You are a wealth of knowledge, and this has been so fun. Um is there any one last nugget you want to leave with everybody before we sign off?

Becoming AI-Forward: Group Learning Over Silos

Speaker 2 39:18

No, this is great. This is great that you guys are doing this. Thank you for having me, like getting some of this information out of my brain, other people's brains, and sharing it with others so they don't feel like they're alone. Maybe, you know, this is the third place for people where they this is the place they go to learn new things and you know find new uh ideas. Hopefully we've sparked an idea for someone today that they didn't have before. So thank you for making this happen. It's it's no uh small task to operate a podcast like this. So keep going. Don't stop.

Speaker 39:49

Thank you, Kathy.

Speaker 2 39:50

Thanks so much, Kathy.