- Hey, everyone, today we have Ayman Al-Abdullah,
who is the president of AppSumo,
which I've been using for years and years.
We talked about processes earlier, so we got process, goals,
and now I wanna talk about culture too,
and I think there's a big story
around the culture of AppSumo.
I mean, you guys, there's tacos, there's a sumo,
all this kind of stuff.
So what do you guys do from a cultural perspective?
What are some stories you can share
that are you know, pretty amazing?
- Yeah so I mean, for us like we're only at
nine employees right now.
Culture, I think all too often like CEO's are thinking
about like what is the culture of the business?
How can we improve culture?
I know we'll have happy hours and we're gonna do trips,
and we're gonna do all these things.
And they think like by saying those things
that that's going to impose culture.
Ultimate culture is just simply who you hire, right?
And so for us when we're going through the hiring process,
we are looking for people that are like us.
We want people that are super humble, that work hard,
that are super smart, that simply have
a results-oriented attitude, that are very team-oriented.
They don't have, that's not my job, in their vocabulary.
That don't believe in a nine to five work set.
They don't mind coming in at 10, 11 but then also
don't mind working, 10, 11 at night, right?
And so the very first thing, from a culture perspective
is hiring the right people.
If you try ta, you know, shoehorn a square peg
into a circle hole, and they're just not gonna
be a good fit for the team.
And so, before we hire anybody, we make sure we go
to lunch with them, we make sure to bring them in for a day.
Some of them are working two, three weeks with us
before we finally pull the trigger.
That's number one.
Number two is,
also acting like the culture, right?
So like, we got a text last night, 10 o'clock at night,
like "Hey is the site down?"
Two or three people immediately jumped on Slack,
double checked everything, everything was fine,
the site was running a little slow
and we got it back and ramped up.
So just constantly working towards that culture.
And the last thing is like, recognizing
that everybody has a goal and being able to work together
towards that goal, I think is super important
for that team embodiment.
- Got it, makes sense.
How about in terms of team activities, what do you guys,
you've mentioned you know, outings and things like that,
what do you guys do?
- So just two, three months ago, we did a half-yearly trip,
we do two trips a year, to Seattle.
It is a great time for us to just sort of kick back.
- [Eric] Why Seattle?
- So it's the middle of Austin and it's 100 degrees.
It's a great time to get to Seattle, for those
that don't know, Seattle is like the best kept secret
in America in the summer, right?
It's like 70 degrees and sunny for 100 days straight.
There's like sailboats everywhere.
We went out there and we ended up renting two Airbnbs,
one in the woods, we spent a couple days there
just hiking and doing some bonfires, enjoying ourself.
And then we did another three days in the actual city,
where we went out and just partied together.
And you know when you're spending that much time together,
that's really when you get to know someone.
You can be working, and it's like all about work,
but once you get out of the office and you're having
more personal conversations, you're able to bring
that unity back into the office.
So we'll make sure to do another one in December.
- Got it, so I think these team outings
are really important.
What typically goes into itinerary, you know what kind
of budget goes into these kinds of things?
I mean can you shed any insight into those?
- So, you know we're lucky enough, that the business
is doing pretty successful,
and so we're able to like afford something
that's a little bit more fun,
where we are able to fly out of town,
and do all these things.
But even for like someone who's like budget bootstrapped,
it's like hey, let's just spend a weekend at an Airbnb,
maybe like an hour away from town.
You know, we're gonna cook the meals in house,
we're gonna spend some time maybe just game-planning
the rest of the year.
I think I'm a big fan of T3s and B3s, which is your
top three things that happened in the last year,
and the bottom three things that happened in the last year.
So we do T3s and B3s where we analyze,
hey like, what's working really well?
And perfect example, like for us,
like lifetime software deals have been selling very well
in AppSumo, so we just decided to double down on that.
And that has resulted in a huge increase in revenue.
- Good to know.
- And then some bottom three things
that just simply weren't working, we decided
to cut off the plate.
We spent a little bit of time there, we spent a little bit
of time interviewing each other, right.
Asking more personal questions, like asking about
how they grew up?
Where did they go to school?
Asking them about their parents.
Like being able to learn, just becoming friends right?
And then obviously, scheduling a lot of time
for just fun activities.
We did hikes, we went out to some clubs, we went out
to some nice dinners.
So just being able to do things together, where you can have
that shared collective experience, I think is super critical
to building that culture.
- AppSumo is the thing that funded Sumo,
so you have two businesses now, do you guys hang out
with each other when you guys do these off-sites?
Is it together, or...?
- Yeah so the actual businesses themselves,
we don't do the actual events together anymore.
But we do happy hours together all the time,
we do events together all the time.
They're coming out to SumoCon to help out, so there is like
you know, the businesses are operating independently,
but there's also a lot of shared resources.
- Got it.
And you guys haven't raised any money,
neither company has right?
- Correct yeah, fully bootstrapped.
- So what's your take on that?
- So you know, I do think that raising money
has it's time and place.
I think the problem when you raise money,
is that you end up changing the trajectory,
or changing the actual goal.
And you're thinking about, when is the next time we need
to raise money, versus for us, like we needed
to hit profitability on day one, otherwise we couldn't
pay people's salary.
And so I think the focus for a bootstrapped company
is always on the customer, whereas like the focus
for an investment-backed company, at least in the beginning,
is on the investor as the customer,
'cause they're the only one really giving you money.
And so I think the second you can make that transition
back to the customer is really when the business
is gonna start benefiting.
- Right and you're building something real.
Right? - Yep, exactly
exactly. - Got it, cool.
So from a personal perspective for you,
what are your daily habits?
What are the things that make you kinda, who you are?
- So I'm like, hugest geek when it comes to that.
I'm constantly analyzing, I'm measuring everything,
and just trying to figure out what's the best way
for me to be a better asset to this company,
and a better asset to myself.
So, couple things that have worked really well for me is,
having a really just good management system
for my email, my inbox, my Slack.
Knowing what tasks need to come on plate.
I've got like a huge to do list,
it actually has over three thousand items on it,
and then Sunday night, I completely ignore that list.
Usually that list is like, hey make sure
to cancel this monthly recurring charge,
and like make sure to unsubscribe from this newsletter.
It's all these small things that don't have an impact
on the business.
So Sunday night, I go on full airplane mode
and I just have a Moleskin and I just write down,
what the three things that I need to nail down this month,
that is gonna help us reach our goal
for the end of the year?
And so, when I wake up Monday morning, I'm looking
at my three things and I'm making sure
that that's getting blocked off in my calendar.
Because the problem is, if you don't do that, you end up
just answering the latest email,
responding to the latest Slack message, getting sucked
into a couple meetings.
But if you know you need to do these three things this week,
and they're usually pretty big things.
Then you make sure that you're pushing back meeting invites,
you're pushing back on things that just aren't a priority,
because those aren't things that are gonna help
move the business forward.
That's, to me, one of the most critical things.
The other thing that I make sure to do is,
we're constantly looking at and analyzing
what is the highest ROI items that the business can do
to move forward.
So every three months, every quarter, we do a stack ranking,
where we list out all of the ideas for the business,
we measure them by impact and how long it's going to take.
And we just create an ROI score.
And so the highest ROI items get pushed to the top,
and we assign those individual items
to people across the team.
And so at our Monday meeting we can simply discuss,
hey are we moving forward on those projects.
We were just talking about Daniel, like our Facebook reviews
was taking a hit, we were like around 4.1,
we'd had zero Google reviews, and so Danny in charge
of our customer success, that was his initiative
for the quarter and he ended up ramping up our reviews
significantly, both on Google and on Facebook.
And now anyone that sees our deals, they're like,
"This looks too good to be true," and they Google us,
they can see, 50 plus five star reviews on Google,
they're like, "Okay, this is legitimate."
- Got it, you talked about the Monday morning meetings,
what do you guys do in those meetings?
- So the Monday morning meeting is a great time
for us to do three things.
Number one, it's an update on the goal, right?
How are we tracking, both on the monthly goal
as well as the yearly goal.
The second thing is just tracking
everybody's individual goal, everyone provides an update
on how are they moving forward on their individual goal,
whether that's Facebook ads,
whether that's the deals closed, whether that's the
average revenue per deal, average revenue per email.
Then the final thing that we end up doing is,
we talk about our weekend, it's a great time
for us to just catch up like,
hey are there any highlights from the weekend?
We crack jokes for the first five minutes, it just sorta
sets the mood for the team, and then we're able to game-plan
what are we gonna do for the rest of the week.
- I love that because, okay you have your metrics in there,
the other part is, you show that you actually care
about each other and not a lot of companies do that.
I mean when you hear about,
the kind of Silicon Valley stand-up
that you typically hear about,
is just one thing that you're struggling with,
one big thing you're working on,
and then that's basically it right?
So I think it's really important to get human aspect
in there, where you're actually hanging out with each other,
you're asking personal questions, things like that,
because you are working with humans at the end of the day.
And you don't want to go to work with people
that you don't like right?
So, the other thing I want to ask,
so you have your daily habits, how do you get better?
What do you do?
- Every morning, I make sure that I'm reading,
I have a daily morning ritual where I'm making coffee,
reading for 30 minutes to an hour, making sure I'm hitting
in box zero, so that way my mental head is clear.
And then just game-planning for the individual day.
And then the other thing that I love to do,
is I try to schedule
at least two or three conferences a week.
I think like, when you look back on the last
four or five years, the real difference
in your trajectory was really like,
the books you're reading and the people that you're meeting.
And sometimes when you're going to these conferences,
which is one we're throwing this weekend, SumoCon,
which is why you're here, right?
It gives you an opportunity to meet like-minded people,
these are the people that you're going
to be shooting ideas with, that you're going to be adding
on Facebook, that you are going to be potentially hiring
in the future, potentially starting a business together with
in the future.
And so when you're able to share those ideas, you yourself,
will continue to get better.
- Okay, so you sign up for two to three
conferences per week?
- Per month, sorry.
- Per month, okay. - I mean, sorry, per year.
- Per year, oh okay, got it got it got it.
Okay cool, so what's the best conference
you've ever been to in your life?
- I'm part of an online entrepreneur group called
Dynamite Circle.
- [Eric] Never hear of it.
- [Ayman] So it's actually thrown by Dan and Ian
from Tropical MBA.
- [Eric] Okay, yeah.
- And in 2013, they threw one, while I was living
in Munich, Germany in Berlin, Germany.
And so I was just randomly following them on Twitter,
I tweeted at them, I didn't even know
what the Dynamite Circle was at the time, and I just asked
"Hey, can I come to the event?"
They were like, "Well, it's sold out, it's typically
"only for members only," and I'm like
"Members, members of what?"
I just kept pinging them, bothering them, and then all
of a sudden they were like, "Hey we actually have one
extra spot available if you want to come up this weekend."
Bought the ticket, went up, and it was amazing,
I ended up meeting like a ton
of really awesome entrepreneurs.
But the best part about it was it was a small event,
it was only 150 people.
Which we're trying to recreate with SumoCon,
keeping it really small.
And it gave a lot of chance encounters to run
into the same people, over the weekend and create a lot
of life-long friends.
Some of them I'm still friends with to this day,
some of them are actually now working at AppSumo.
- Key takeaway, it's not what you know,
it's who you know, right.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
- Yeah you know, I think for those that are just going
on the entrepreneur journey, I think it's a great way,
to just make the world a better place.
In your own little world.
I think the key takeaway for them is just,
constantly analyzing, over the last year, two years,
what has been your top three wins, the top three things
that have helped you move forward closer to your goal.
And just go do more of that, entrepreneurship is
not that difficult, it's not that hard to uncover,
we don't need to complicate it, if you simply just analyze
what's worked really well, don't read the latest blog posts,
just look at what's worked well for yourself,
and just go do more of that.
- Makes total sense, so there's a book I recommend,
it's from Peter Drucker, it's really short,
it's called Managing Oneself and it basically tells you
how to audit yourself all the time,
and all these other things.
So I actually have a final question for Ayman.
What's one book you'd recommend to everyone?
- You know, right now I'm actually reading this one,
the Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, it's actually a
really really good one,
so that's one I'm really enjoying right now.
- Cool, well Ayman, thanks so much for joining us.
- Eric, appreciate it.
- Yep.
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