Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akio and I adore this
conversation. It shows me that it's possible
to go from software engineer all the way to CEO.
Returning guest back from episode 20 is my friend Mahdi
Fani Disfani who did exactly that.
We cover his journey and everything that happened in
between. Enjoy this episode.
So what? What is like your main focus on
a day-to-day nowadays? Well, compared to two years ago
when I was basically joining IKEA as an engineer manager.
These days I'm the kind of the director of the company called
Crusoe, the branch of the Netherlands because Crusoe is a
bigger consultancy in the Nordics and and now they're
expanding to to the rest of Europe.
And the Netherlands is one of the the new markets that I'm
going to be the the CEO of that and if I'm going to now compare
myself with the daily. Differences that they had
compared to the past it's it's very kind of also kind of
problem solving oriented on on the business side I would say
because now as a consultancy it's it's very now important
that you target the right problems in the market and also
you are in the places that you should be.
So that that's kind of creative research around you that of
course it's including networking is including you be.
The top of the trends, what's happening in the market, what is
the needs that maybe would raise in the coming months and just be
prepared for that. So for example, to give an
example, I mean how my day would look like basically of course
after dropping and picking up my daughter between this time and
someone said very nicely that of course.
You can achieve a lot between drop off and pick up of course.
And I'm trying to of course still to keep that balance
between family and work. Because when you come to this
position, especially to the company that I am now going to
direct me which is in a start up here, it's it can easily get
lost the life part and you need to ensure that you get the
energy from that. And of course you get the
motivation mixture from the work, and together you can make
magic when it comes to work, and so I keep that.
As much as I can balance when it comes to the work, it's usually
starting of course with with the meetings and with some meetings
regarding that, how we're going to approach perhaps some leads
or clients we have or some projects we're going to go.
And at the same time defining the directions in the first
months for me is very important. What is the vision of this
company, where we are heading to?
What are the really the services or the thing that they're going
to provide to the to the clients or to people because?
Let's be honest about that. I always hated consultancies.
So I never liked consultancies because my whole life carrier
life was in the product side. I was working for product
companies, National and IKEA super before that and bytecode
and all those companies. I always hired basically
consultants to work for me. And one of one of the things
that I always missed was consultants are not basically
maybe behaving or acting as. As to the expectation that they
had Okay, it's not something wrong with them.
They were like amazing people, amazing engineers.
They were joining but there was a mismatch to delivery that the
outcome that they expected and what was handed over to me.
Okay. And he always felt like a piece
of information is lost when the consultant is gone.
Yeah, the knowledge that they gained.
Exactly. And then?
You need to figure it out yourself because it was always
in the scary day that the people say, OK, the consultant contract
is over and you're always thinking what's happening day
after. And of course you do your best
to do all the documentation handovers, but there's still
some of the information kind of stick to the people brain and
then be gone when they are gone. And and that was one of the main
pains and sometimes working with some companies that better to
not name them, but I mean I suffered working with them
personally because the quality of work was so low and sometimes
you feel that I'm going to save. Money to work with lower kind of
rate consultancies, but at the end you pay double, yeah.
You get what you pay for it, yeah.
Exactly. So the quality of the work is
very important when it comes to that market.
And I worked with consultancies that the quality was really
overbeating the price that we were paying and that was
basically the deal always liked and that's the value exactly.
Yeah. So when this opportunity came
along the way around a couple of months back and of course I
fought for it and and got to this position.
Because it was my dream, as we discussed last time, I wanted to
have this as startup and I was looking to find maybe the right
time in the coming two years or something to make it happen.
But then sometimes opportunity comes and you need to listen to
them. So I tried to chase it and and
now I'm here. But when it comes to them, and I
said, OK, this is consultancy, let's not be consultancy in, in
the body of consultancy and I'm going to call ourselves as value
delivery company or value delivery squad, yeah.
What does it mean is we only be present and participating in the
places and in the companies and projects that we are assured
that we can deliver value and we deliver the value which we are
assured that it's gonna have an impact on the client or on their
customers and so on. Because I think it's the word is
full of the meaningless works. And and personally, I think
this, this board needs more meaningful plus trendy things to
happen and of course can kind of remove the fears from the
technology, which sometimes you feel it yourself and you're on
the product side and maybe you're limited by the, by the
structure. Yeah.
So, and one of the things that I'm now iterating over, it's the
AI thing that came. Over the past year it's it's a
boom. Some people got it as benefits.
Everyone is building things on top of that.
Some people still are afraid of it, some people are still
ignoring it. And until there's a mixture of
feeling about this and if you are really a tech company and
you have expertise. Personally myself, I've worked
in several companies and I have that technical background.
And I brought people from product and agile and and those
kind of aspects of job families together to build this company
now as the as the foundation when you have them together
perhaps you can overcome those fears and you can convert them
to opportunities. And also sometimes you can
confirm, yes, you should be afraid, yeah, that's gonna not
mean good for you and your business.
So a good driver sometimes. Exactly.
So those are the things that I see as values to deliver so.
Some part of my day is focused on the values really they're
going to deliver. So I think the first month, so
the first two months is super PAC.
Of course you have administration.
I need to pay salaries. I need to ensure that the money
is running and the company is running the office have enough,
you know, accessories. I mean this is a start up vibe
that they love as well. And the same time, these are
overheads during your job that maybe you don't have in big
companies. In IKEA everything was set up
for me and I just hire people and yeah, you have the team and
you do the job, but now I need to ensure the environment is
also set. Yeah, which is fun.
At the same time, it's an extra work that you need to do.
But when it comes to the really focused time and productivity,
really my time with my team is a spend on on basically vision
plan, how we can be useful for clients and how we can ensure
that we are the right people for them.
So that's basically also covering a lot of my time during
the day that we think and also I do research.
And we do conversation with the team at the same time.
We of course do networking and looking for basically finding
the right spots for us to be present.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.
I'm, I'm listening to that and I'm thinking the skills that you
laid out and what your day-to-day is, is vastly
different from kind of starting out in software engineering.
And I just want to make a small bridge because, you know, I have
very different kind of the career paths.
You started out very much in product and I've been with CBL
like I think back it's almost been five years.
So I've done five years in consultancy and my career
history is not that long. So it's vastly like the majority
part of what I've done. And The funny thing is I I'd
like to think it's different than other consultancy
companies. I was always taught that when
you start an assignment you you start with the exit in mind
because at some point you have to leave off and the company
needs to go and and do the thing by itself, right.
And even when I start assignments, I challenge if they
actually need consultants because I think for a company to
help them it's better if they have the people internal and if
they can't then we can help them out.
But if we if they can, then I I shouldn't be there.
I'm not necessary there. So maybe that's a bit, maybe
that's a bit controversial, but to kind of lead up to the point
where you are where you are now. Last time we spoke, we talked
about kind of tech leadership and that was the the focus and
the focal point. A few weeks after that, you move
to kind of an engineering management position and even
then you move to an head of engineering management position
kind of briefly. Yeah.
And now you're CEO like I feel like the position and it's fully
in line with what you said back then, which is why I think this
is beautiful. You step by step are getting new
responsibilities, right. They're more people based and
now they're even more business based.
And I think the tech part is still there, but I think those
responsibilities are more so delegated and less on your plate
as a main focus point that's not even on the plate that you
mentioned now that is on your day-to-day.
Can you talk about the transition and let's start about
from the position of being a tech lead to that engineering
management position, kind of the differences there and then we
can lead up to what you do now? Absolutely.
And of course I want to 1st trade over what you said.
Of course we had this conversation about Zebia and and
some companies I didn't have the chance or maybe the luck to work
with some of them, yeah. And and the whole thing about
the consultancy also business, we, I'm just going to say guys,
we need to change this perception.
Yeah. Because as a client that I was
for years, I didn't have a good understanding of what really the
the final benefit of having those people and at the same
time not the people per SE, I mean the companies.
Getting as kind of a teammate and at the same time don't just
see them as money seekers. They are there for delivering
value and I think we aligned on that that our vision is to make
us absolute on the client side and that's the plan.
So we don't want to stay there the moment that we get in we
want to get out as soon as possible when we are happy that
the client is fully on board and and they are self-sufficient to
do a stuff and that's that's very lovely that to be on us.
We are basically online and done and I think I also I need to be
tried over the fact that to be honest we need friendships or
partnerships over competition. I mean, competition can be
healthy, but I mean the competition can come not really
to to stealing clients or doing, but it comes to.
Making better or maybe maybe different quality of works when
it comes to different, yeah, names.
So I think the partnership and the friendship would be my aim
when it comes to this business. Now moving on to to your
question, basically what happened last time I was
basically a tech lead in NN and I moved to engineer manager role
at IKEA, yeah, which was basically a bigger size company,
a global company compared to National Adenom which is mainly
present in Europe. Then one of the first projects
that I have done apart from the big project that I was working
on was basically also delivering our solar service in in US And
it was very interesting because I was working in another
continent and and and and totally new market to 20 new
customers and and that was very nicely actually being done as
well and thanks to my team and and then that comes also to
having a wider view of basically a customer.
Experience, because then you when you go to that level, apart
from the technical qualities that you try to bring the best
of the breed to the market and so on and so forth, then you
need to ensure that really the value is delivered for the right
problem. I mean the same when it comes to
products and not only in one market.
You can just say I've done a great job, then it's going to
roll out everywhere. No.
Then you need to learn that there is a difference between
customer segment segmentation, So.
You have different Joe locations and you have different
experiences and expectations and I I learned that during the
transition as well and also played a lot and then you also
got to learn of course getting closer to business when it comes
to the genuine manager roles or those leaderships.
It's it's a very important aspects which is maybe sometimes
coming first before the technical part because if the
bridge between these two wards the IT and stakeholders and
business are not properly settled.
Then you cannot really achieve it much.
I mean, I felt it myself. I was kind of balancing.
Did you still have technical responsibilities in the projects
you did there? Yeah.
Absolutely. In in IKEA, it's AI always say
that IKEA, engineer, manager that IKEA, because every company
has its own definition, is basically an solution architect,
team lead, tech lead, people manager.
And and basically you can say yeah and hands on coder in some
ways. So this is combination of
everything. That's all the hats.
Yeah. And and also one of The thing is
you have a lot of meetings to attend, to be honest, because
you need to sync a lot of parties, especially the team
that I was energy services in IKEA, you you had several
products and you have different stakeholders around it.
As I said, IKEA is present in 33 countries.
So if you multiply them, it's by itself becomes too many people
involved in projects. I need to find the reason to
have the meetings at the same time over oversighting the
technical part to ensure that the delivery of the quality of
the technical part is to the to the certain quality and you are
accountable for delivery of the technical part, so that should
be your main role. At the same time, you were
counterparting a personal counterpart with the product
manager, with my managers, Paul, with the UX leader to ensure
that this basically we were calling them.
Job families are very sync together.
We can be a united by the business and together we deliver
value for the customers because when it comes to stakeholders,
there's always this kind of debate with them that they have
the feeling something is good for the business and good for
the customers. Yeah, but then we know that for
years we if you want to be successful in the business or
product, you need to be data-driven.
So translating that data-driven in the right way.
And message it to business is very important.
So if you miss out properly, explain that you miss out the
opportunity to deliver something together.
And of course the great things that I love about IKEA, there's
two things that was very nice, the sad and also the two values.
One of them is togetherness, like you need we are together
anyway, so that's very nice. And you the moment that you
enter to the IKEA office, you feel it that you are together.
Everyone's supportive and everyone is, is there to help.
And the other thing is about basically lead by example.
I think these two are very critical, especially when it
comes to the role of engineer manager or the leaders above.
Yeah, and togetherness, you have to really define it when it
comes to a stakeholder management as well and engineer
manager has a role there. So at the beginning I was very
focused in the first months, especially because I needed to
do some migration and do some foundational work.
I was very focused mainly on the technical solution, drafting
with my senior engineers. And also good to mention, when I
joined IKEA I had zero engineers internally and I was working
only. I guess it was 5 consultants.
OK, that team over the two years.
Let's mention that over the two years I hired around 20 people
among which seven was internals. So my team grow from zero to 7 /
a year plus. And it was amazing because that
was one of the targets I needed to hit and we discussed it
internally. And so that big team has has
been established along the the first months and at the same
time I was building the foundation, drafting it
basically on the high level and then detailing it out to be the
senior engineers. And then it slowly I was more
focused on the business side because I needed now to sell
that solution and say, OK, we have this migration.
I need to draft the values out of it to buy time to at the same
time not disappoint them and say OK we have this feature queue
and now you need to deliver them a specific time but they said
can we push it three months and then Y you need to have a good Y
explanation about it and and that becomes basically more more
to my plate of having meetings and and sinking the kind of the
overarching roads and and at the same time that was the moment
also I think after. I think 6-7 months.
I was also doing acting head of engineering for several months
and that add up to my meetings because I was playing two roles
over head of Engineering and engineer managers.
So together was a bit like a bit of stretch for me.
However, I loved it because it was a challenging.
And actually experience which I needed to learn a lot of things.
What is the the main difference there?
Do you oversee multiple teams from that head of engineering
perspective? Yeah, When it comes to Head of
Engineering basically some kind of companies I mean IKEA called
it Product Engineer Manager which is translated as head of
Engineering. In some companies they call it
Senior Engineer manager. It's it's the moment exactly
you're handling couple of engineer managers under you and
kind of product teams and and products.
And and it comes also to more strategical decisions.
It's also you get the the budget on top and you need to divide it
based on the focus and initiatives coming over the
year. You're responsible a lot on the
budgeting, especially at IKEA. You need to be very cautious
about costs because we believe they're that any cost coming on
the IT. Even if it's not included
directly on the product making like of course IKEA make
furniture, right? So if I don't know the cost of
wood go up, it means that we need perhaps to increase our
cost to our price when it comes to the product selling but.
There is no direct connection. If you waste two hours of an
engineering time in a meeting, how that impacts the customer,
yeah, because it's not the main thing.
Exactly. That's why in IKEA is very
important. You always be cautious about the
spendings and you always be cautious on how you spend things
and also forecasting. So that's a very critical things
you need to do. Always cost consciousness is a
value. We need to always be OK certain
that when we're spending things is not going to negatively
impact the business, which basically implicitly impacts the
customer. Yeah.
And that was very interesting because it was the moment that
all the war and things happen. I think everything was happening
at the same time. Yeah, basically I got the
acting, then the war happened and because all the companies
that start laying off, it was a really a crazy heat to the
market, right? And financial crisis sort of
started back then. And and then I'm now in the row
and all this limitation comes and I still we we don't at a key
of course we are proud of that we didn't lay off any people
during that hard time. But it still for the pressure on
the head of engineering's to have a a new budget plan how to
react on those limitation that was coming unexpected to the
plate. Yeah.
And that's one of the thing and another thing is now in that
role I was responsible to ensure that we are sync in the domain
level with other head of engineering to ensure that for
example we have a unified engineering basis that OK, we we
defined it kind of the the baselines and everyone adhere to
that and we start reusing components from each other.
So we kind of prevent redundant works to save time and at the
same time to save money. Because that's the way it go
forward, right, the modular implementation.
So you become a bit more responsible on the strategic
decision also to the technical solution and also involve other
parties maybe from other teams to come and maybe knowledge here
or the other way around. And now you found this kind of
spotlight for your team and go and present your work to others
that you've maybe found it interesting for them and you
want to share the knowledge on that.
So that becomes a bit kind of overarching role.
And at the same time, you also define basically sort of with
the business, you define the coming initiatives, priorities
and maybe, yeah, maybe the impact of them.
Because in IKEA we always plan like three years, two years
ahead at least. And you are now responsible to
city the business in the very, very primary steps to define the
initiatives coming here and also to define priorities and
budgeted for the IT was very interesting, I was.
Forecasting for two years ahead and it was the first time I was
doing that. And these are the things that I
I got to learn when I was kind of bumped to that role for a
temporary time. And that's.
That's really cool. I can imagine that at that
level, did you do any hands on coding at that point?
Because you already said it was challenging finding space to do
technical hands on work. You were still responsible in
that engineering management position.
But more markets, more aligning with people, different
responsibilities and different disciplines requires meetings
and time to align on that. And then you move over one step
higher and you oversee multiple teams.
You're now budget holder. So you were first advocating for
your team and your priorities, and now you own the budget.
So you have to give that away and align with other people what
the budget can be and what the priority should be.
Was there any space for any technical work there?
Of course no. Of course.
Yes. I was like man, no.
When I was still maybe very very much loving coding that's why.
Maybe some night and some I was doing still some line of course
or maybe practice or something with with AI stuff to just
because I'm a kind of a nerd of AI this.
I mean, I'm just looking for opportunities also for my
personal life to see how we can add it and we also do a stuff
around it. Yeah.
And but at the same time, really my work fix increased to 60
hours. I mean either in eight hours I
was doing 10 hours work or I was a bit over stretching my day
because it was too much of things and it was really
critical period. We needed to deliver a lot of
stuff. Yeah, And for me, to be honest,
I always try to be a servant leader.
I don't say I am one, but I tried to learn from the good
leaders in the market and also I tried to be one of them.
Yeah, for me it was very important that my team is
healthy, everyone is happy. And not to not to forget that
I'm there for them first of all and then for the for the company
and then for the client. Yeah, so, so that's why people
Call Me Maybe people oriented manager or something, but I
don't like also the manager name by the way.
And the main thing for me in that time was I ensured that
every week I have some time still I keep up my my final ones
with my team and also ensure that the overall team is happy,
which is not only engineering but also the UX, the mixture of
these team that's working together.
There's a good momentum because I think that's the fun part of
life of work life and and that's the the thing that take people
to work in the morning and I don't want to steal that because
I'm super busy. I'm taking two roles and then
they are getting backfired by that.
So that was my focus. At the same time I still did to
be honest some pull request reviews per week.
So I still sometimes my intuitive and expected and I was
opening it out and then going oh this is I start commenting and
then they were saying what are you doing, yeah you were
expecting to not do that but yeah they're like it.
Anyway because I also missed it. At least I said I can do some
reviews and and also a bit pull request.
Reviews is amazing to be honest. Apart from coding you learn and
you also you still get close why not coding but you still get
close to what's happening in the team.
And then also you can sometimes maybe find some rabbit holes but
and also that also give the feeling that that gave the
feeling to my engineers. Even if I'm not hands hands on
coding of which I was doing much more in NN than IKEA.
I did IKEA. I think I did nothing compared
to NN. Still the but I'm very close to
them and that was real because I really read their documentation.
I asked them to write design documents when there was a
decision. I always ensure that there is a
proper layer of the delegations. I mean that delegation isn't
really is a strong word and delegation becomes much much
more critical and important if you go up, up, up you.
You should just have the time to think about things forward and
delegate things as much as possible to to other people, and
just keep only some few decisions to make by you did.
You have any issues with that that?
I'm delegating when it comes to the delegation.
At the same time, one of the thing that I always triggered
me, which was critical and always double think about it, is
also how much you need to delegate to a single person.
Because sometimes you just feel I am overstretched and now I'm
going to delegate to kind of a bit and get it scoped.
But then you also I'm afraid that I'm too much delegating
maybe to people that I'm overstretching them because
engineers when it comes to senior engineers they are Also
there is this yes personality because challenges are nice and
people would like to get more but at the same time that's my
responsibility to ensure that I give the right amount of work to
ensure that they still have a good life work balance.
Because some of my engineers they were crazy and I I always
had this conversation with them. Guys I don't want you to work
after 6:00 PM or five PMI don't care if the business is going
downfall. No care go sit watch Netflix.
I don't care don't sit at. I mean some of them were like
sleeping at 4:00 AM because they were so connected to the topic.
There was no really urgency on the deadline, but they were so
connected. They wanted to really get out
out of it something. And then the day after presented
and and the second day after, they were like, we'll have sleep
and so what's happening 4:00 AM, I've done it finally.
And I said yes, I don't like that.
I mean. But it's you talked about lead
by example, right? And it's some of the challenges
I've seen also in practice that leadership sometimes stretches
themselves because you were wearing multiple hats.
So you were like, I have to, these are my responsibilities.
You go the extra mile. But then to your people, you're
like, no, no, no. But you don't do that like
you're supposed to like. Work within the hours there,
that's that's hard to balance. That's a yeah, that's a very,
very nice one you spotted. To be honest, I also always tell
them is I'm not good luck into ambitious because I always make
them more ambitious. Yeah, I mean that's I'm
ambitious and by nature I just push them.
If you talk to them, I just push them.
Yeah, I hope that is inspirational.
But sometimes they don't feel that I'm annoying, but I'm, I'm
pushing them to get out of the comfort zone because the beauty
is sitting out of the comfort zone.
I mean if you're if you're doing the same as you're doing over
the years or over the last months, what is the difference
between you and AI and something that does only task and check
the boxes. I didn't think any.
There's anything. It's repetitive.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then it's going to get and
you're going to get annoyed anyway, even if you feel very
good with the current payment and your current job.
But I as a manager or leader, that's your responsibility to
ensure that you you put the step that way ahead that they're
always going to get some spikes in their carriers that they are
always surprised but oh, there's nice challenge.
And then so that that ambitious I always injected to their mind.
At the same time, I say there is a balance.
If I work for example 10 hours, but I do my dream, I do take
care of my family, I have fun. Maybe I do 2 extra hours before
my sleep or something, but ensure that I have enough sleep.
So those critical things you need to take.
And then of course if your loved ones are asleep and then you
have a loan and then you are awake and maybe you can spend
some more time and then on your private time.
However, I just mentioned if the work is properly scoped.
If you have proper focused during the working days, the 40
days you can achieve, some people achieve in 100 hours.
Sorry, in the 40 hours you can achieve what people achieve in
100 hours and that too. Factors are the responsibility
of the leaders of course, the engineering or the engineers or
the other the the coworkers. They have also their own agenda.
They need to check their calendar and so on.
But just consider one fact that it's our responsibility to
ensure that they are secure about the context changes they
have during the week or during the day.
And that's my responsibility. If I'm gonna let their agenda to
be open and let everyone to fill in my the agenda of my team, I
cannot expect they can focus something out of it.
I mean some people always mentioned in a lot of posts that
no engineers can achieve anything 30 minutes between two
meetings. Yeah.
So my my basically base base kind of rules was we need to
ensure that there is 3, three hours gap between meetings.
So in three hours at least two hours can be focused on and
people can be productive if it comes to delivery.
So these things are basically the main thing that I'm
mentioning don't work over the night and and at the same time
if you feel the pressure of the deadline that you've and you're
a committed person and you own things and you feel that you
need to work more, that's again my bad.
As your leader, I shouldn't put the deadline the way that is not
comfortable or I should do it the way that either I scope the
work down and I still ensure that you can secure it in 40
hours. So that comes to my jobs to
ensure that what I'm feeding you is 40 hours feeding.
But if you want to do magic things, or crazy things, or want
to experience things, and you want to spend another 10 hours
per week or 20 hours per week that you'll call, you want to
wake up in the morning, 5:00 AM, two hours coding on something
new in the market for yourself or reading articles, That's your
call for me. It's important and I'm not
causing that extra works outside the working hours.
Yeah, I love, I love the ownership that you take in
there, right? Because it is what you do has
impact on the people that work with you, right?
And from a leadership position that just multiplies by the
amount of people that you're leading in that way.
So having that example role and making sure they're focused. 40
hours is as effective as possible just by virtue of
allowing their agenda for breathing room and focus time
and not being managed by other people.
I love that. And then also when they do go
the extra mile, obviously it's allowed.
Everyone has their own kind of free time and how they spend it.
But the emphasis on recovery is how it how they are resilient,
right? How it's sustainable, how they
can do it for a longer period and you're not the driver.
There they are. And I think that's the best
aspect, right? It comes from within.
And I think that is that goes hand in hand with kind of
ambitious people, people that are driven, they want to go the
extra mile, so they should also be allowed to do so.
And you can't control that anyway as long as it's healthy.
That's the important part exactly.
And also I always mentioned them I said you have 40 I'm I'm I
have to basically ensure that you have proper 40 hours
planned. Yeah of your week.
But if you are amazing performer and you finish it in three days
I ever that don't ever feed more for the extra two days that you
did you did better. You have the freedom no use that
two days as your benefit that's your bonus.
So you over achieved what was expected in the 24 hours instead
of 40 hours then you get that reward to spend that on your
personal growth and maybe try something new.
So I always, I always say, which is also one of my ideas when it
comes to to the budgeting, all the companies are complaining
about budgets. But I was asking when I'm in the
companies and and I see people complaining, I already can see
million leakages. So did you ever optimize and
kind of cover the kind of maybe cover those leakages to see
really you don't have money and I call it the empty pocket
metaphor that they always complain about empty pockets.
But did you check what you have bought in over the past three
days? You bought candy there, you
bought 2 waffle there and maybe if you save that money you can
already buy a mobile phone. I don't know something like
that. So when it comes also to people,
did we, the first question I asked myself, did I optimize
their working hours, Do they take the most out of it all the
time? The answer is no.
You can still make things better to give them more focused time
that they deliver more. So that's the my main issue if
we'd really we can say anyone dare to say that yes, we
optimize 40 hours of our employees.
If you get that then maybe you can ask for some extra mileage.
But I I don't ever think anyone can get to the 100%.
So this is basically the first aspect of optimizing what you're
doing, rather putting more in their plate because some people
have this mindset the more we put that's kind of mental
pressure on them. But I said no, the the urgency
feeling that you want to give to your team to deliver something,
it doesn't come from there as as long as you're more close to
them. That's my approach.
When it comes to critical moments, I'm closer than ever to
my engineers say I'm sitting next to you.
You need to deliver this One. You can deliver this.
No worries. Maybe I will start coding
together. Actually, one is that sentence
is a magic because the day after I say they are done, they just
felt you're not alone, you're supported and nothing going to
fall to their plate. I always say we've been
together, we learn together, Yeah, it's no individual, so
don't worry. How do you make sure that they
don't see that as pressure, right?
Because there's something unique about you that when you say that
let's do this together, they don't see it as, Oh my God, my
manager sitting next to me there.
They're looking over my shoulder and blah, blah, blah.
No, they see it as a benefit, right?
We're in this together. But something you do makes them
feel that. Yeah, because the only thing is,
I'm not close to them. Only in that times.
I'm always close to them. Yeah.
So when I'm doing that, I'm not being a strange in the world.
That's. What?
There's nothing new sitting close.
No, I'm always close to them. Yeah.
Either I'm close to them to say what's happening with them or
I'm close to them to see what what they want to do next or I'm
close to them to to deliver something together as a team.
So the problem when it comes to some leaders, I think you
spotted an amazing problem in the in this industry is the
leader sometimes feels yes, we need to be just present there on
the sad moment or the critical moment and in the happy moments,
and then everything is going well.
No one is really looking for engineers.
Where are those people? Somewhere in the in the office.
They are coding, but that's the mistake, because if you are not,
they don't feel they are close to them or you're in their team.
Your vote means nothing to me. You're an outsider.
Exactly, Yeah. That's how they will feel it.
So I try not fake it, but really later because I'm really
concerned that it's not really because of my my payments or my
rose. And no, as a friend or I, I got
to learn this new term as a professional football club.
We need to be together to win. Yeah, and.
And I need to be in frontline with them.
Maybe I don't do the code, but I can provide them the
environment, right. And providing the environment is
as equal as they're doing because the main thing engineer
wants is focus a calm, safe environment to deliver things
and to make mistakes. Yeah, so the first thing I let
them do mistakes and I also do mistakes.
To say you see nothing happens of course do mistakes and and I
think that's the maybe the trick that when I'm talking to my
teams when it comes to critical moment, I said guys this is
really that serious. We need to cut it down and then
we need to finish it. Tell me what should be out if
you need to do that, tell me what is the risk that we need to
mitigate now or tell me how confident I should be that we
can deliver it then. Really those answers are the
best answers I always get. And with that I create.
I translate them to the conversation to stakeholders or
to my peers in the product and together we create a message and
talk to the stakeholders and it amazingly work at IKEA which
lead to deliver amazing projects and and we I'm super proud of
the team and and I'm super proud of my team and what we have
achieved and all the kudos to Dom.
I think we as the leaders there just watched and and celebrate
with them and that was a very happy moment.
I love that. I love that.
I think you're when I look back to our previous conversation,
one of the things that stuck with me is just the ambition and
drive that you have. I think it's electrifying and
probably within that team people look at you and that's also what
drives and kind of fuels their own ambition.
Yet still I think and maybe hiring has a has a component
there, there will be people that just want to coast more.
So maybe coast is a wrong term, but they just want to be fed
with the work, they want to do the work.
They don't want to put emphasis on those relationships, maybe
not want to build on the team aspect as much or understand the
business problems that much. They just want to do the
technical problems and get really good at that.
How do you kind of fuel that ambition from that side or do
you take the stance off, That's all right and we we handle it up
differently. Let's convert that to a context
of a football club. Consider you have a team that
everyone would like to do pass and and one of the score
together. Yeah.
And one of them comes and said no.
Not me. I'm completely with you to win
the game. However, I'm doing though my own
way and I'm gonna. I'm more into dribbling.
So you have 11 people in the field, One is dribbling, 10 is
watching. Yeah, how that feels.
Yeah, it sucks exactly how how you as a coach will lead in the
team. I mean, you can say Patrick, OK,
did you dribble it? But they got the score.
Maybe you'll score it as well. Maybe you will score, but how
many people are gonna come really celebrate the score with
you after the US scored a goal? Yeah, zero.
It's not a team effort. There will come maybe club and
say OK, amazing and then we win the game and then but after one
or two games if you do that then people said such a yeah, yeah,
right. So they I think that's exactly
coming to the context of work as well.
Maybe you achieve and you deliver one project together, 2
projects together. But as when you're not a team
player, this system kind of see you as I think you call it
outside the OR maybe kind of it's silo.
I mean and especially when a silo is a single person, it's
very hard to manage that as I mean I don't want to be that
person being that silo, right. And I think as a manager as you
mentioned, hiring for sure has an aspect today.
So one of the aspects that I'm checking, that we were checking
all the time is about hiring people.
That matches the culture of the team and matches the value of
the team and the company. So that could translate to being
a team player. Because as long as you feel that
you are belonged, you belong to the team and you belong to this
kind of club, you will really contribute and you will do it in
any way to make it successful. But as long as you feel no, I'm
just there because my value means something.
I'm the best coder in the world for sure, there's no doubt, but
I think there's a mismatch for for my teams as it comes to
those players. And you put more emphasis on
that team feeling, because I've also been in situations where
the people that dribble by themselves, they're really good
at that, and they score over and over and over again.
They might be the best coder that I've worked with.
Yet the team aspect is lacking, probably because they're really
good at delivering. They don't feel like they have
to put that emphasis on there. And I've been in environments
where people say that behaviour is not OK or this guy's an
exception and that behaviour is OK.
To be honest, of course I don't think there was a good or bad
answer to it. You cannot say this is a good,
this is a good way of accepting it or this is the bad way if you
accepted it. I think it's a really compromise
based on what you're gonna get out of that.
Maybe sometimes there is AI don't know, $1,000,000 project
and you need someone to just deliver.
Who cares? They're gonna he's gonna talk.
No, I just need someone to deliver in a month because I'm
gonna get a million out of it. Yeah, yes, maybe I would say
yes. I will find in my network the
best one and say put it there. Deliberate.
OK thanks. Handshake.
Bye. Yeah but if you want to go long
and you want to repeat the same success that was the that's the
moment that you will get to problems having those players in
the team. Yeah.
I mean that's a very interesting things also to mention again and
I was a from to the to the football it's always hard it's
always interesting to have one star in a football club.
You can have Cristiano Ronaldo like now in in Saudi Arabia he's
a he's a superstar of the league right.
And now of course, more people coming, but you can be a
superstar, but then you're alone.
I mean you can score and people can celebrate and people be
happy that you own, they own them.
But how far you can go with that, You know, the team of
superstars is what I'm looking for.
What I'm building also with in Crusoe is I called it best of
the breed or the performance team, Performance squad.
That's what I want to do, like bringing the best of the breed
together. It doesn't mean that it's the
same personality, no these people that we did my team, when
we sit around the table, we a lot disagree and I love it and I
say yes, challenge more, challenge more.
But the moment in we make a decision, we make a decision
together. Maybe it's a compromise, maybe
know someone reasoning is much more stronger than the other and
then we get that. But when we leave the room,
everyone is happy and we said yeah score.
So that team, team, player feeling is basically giving me
also as the leader or the owner of that business alongside of
success because those people also can get bored easily.
I mean if you're not, as you mentioned, I'm a best coder and
I want to just do work. I don't care about anything
else, just leave me alone, give me the work, give me the
tickets, I burn the tickets. Like you're going to get bored
in some point. Yeah, right.
Yeah, so I need to. And that's this basically the
2nd aspect of that what we are evaluating.
So how are the skills? Soft skills?
If you miss one of those, you need to go to a different ladder
in your career to fix it, basically.
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. How do you put or what do you
look for in those hiring conversations?
Because you, you built up the team at IKEA and now you switch
to crusade and you're building up a team there as well, right?
Hiring is such a big aspect of that when it comes to who's
sitting in front of me, who do I, who do I want to have next to
me within this team? Who do I want to pass the ball
to? Who do I want to win this cup
with? And it requires trust, and
especially if it's people that you haven't worked with before
in the stack environment, it's very hard to gauge that from an
interview perspective. How do you do that or what you
put emphasis on? I think I learned this question
from a smart person which was about actually this question to
yourself. After the interview, will you
sit needs next to this person for 8 hours flight?
Yeah, I think it says a lot. And it's it's coming not only to
the hard disk because one of the thing that as you mentioned, I
hired a lot of people when I was in IKEA and also before and now
it's basically repeating the cycle again, maybe in different
context when it comes to to hiring over this team that I'm
super proud of them. They are now an amazing strong
club together. Yeah, without me.
I was basically the aim for me also as a leader was always to
be redundant to get to the point that I'm I'm feeling that I'm
redundant and that's the best feeling that I can get because
the team is autonomous enough that they don't need me.
And in IKEA I'm happy. When I left was the moment that
really I felt that I'm I get to reach to that point.
It doesn't mean. I mean don't either be afraid of
OK, we are redundant so they're going to fire us.
No. When you're redundant that shows
that you have a good quality to lead other initiatives and then
you can spend your time on other things because this part is this
micro service is running by itself.
Just focus on another micro service maybe or the connection
between micro services and that's basically that hiring was
critical question that I usually ask about how to handle
conflict. How do you see conflict in
general? And I always ask of course
conflict doesn't mean that we're going to just get neck to neck
and then have a conversation. No, also conflict on a pull
request. Consider you have a code and I
start writing a comment which is totally against what you wrote.
What is your reaction And a lot of good insights coming from
that question. Sometimes people are also
surprised. Well, I never had conflict in my
life and it's a can we review it again?
Can we review it again? And then when you go, as I
consider the pull request, consider a meeting that if
you're sitting around, you have an opinion two ways.
You have an opinion that there is person or the rest is kind of
against that or the others have something and you're against
that. How you'll be behaving that.
And of course, when it comes also to person to person
conflict, that's another level of conflict.
So I asked how they react and really I rejected some people
easily with that question. OK.
Yeah, for example, one of them I remember sad.
Yeah, the moment I have conflict, I'm going to just to
talk manager and tell. You push the problem away to
someone else. Yeah, that's you.
It's very nice talking to you. Yeah.
Good luck with the carrier. I mean I'm I'm that's maybe my
kind of a deal breaker question at the same time at least of
questions came together over that.
But one of the things about also how they react when it comes to
to new technologies like OK, apart from what is, I mean
sometimes maybe you cannot evaluate this case because I was
doing the the hiring manager part, right.
So the technical assessment was after me so my senior engineers
were doing assignments with a candidate.
Yeah. So I was kind of high level
focusing on tech but mainly on the personalities and and also
asking when you have a new technology how you will
implement that new technology. What will be your criteria to
evaluate that technology? When you're gonna bring it in
what are the aspects you consider about it or if you have
a month of which technologies are you gonna use to deliver
something. And and it's very interesting
simple question. I give you one month and I ask
you to deliver it with any technology that you think it
suits the case. What what technologies you're
gonna choose or what tools you're gonna choose.
And some people directly start answering the question.
I will pick React. I will pick node for the back
end And then I said, but I just need a static web page And then
OK, yeah, tell me your comment. And that's a break deal breaker
for a senior engineer. OK, then I would write some
notes about it. Yeah.
So this sort of question when it comes to behaviors maybe
sometimes connected to text, sometimes to personal behavior
in the in the conversation. Those are for me our main
detailed things that I get from the answers and I think the
people that passed those processes not only me.
After us there are amazing talents and people that we had
to interview people together. We came up to the decision to
hire someone, yeah, but I think the filter was very nice because
now that team is really binded together.
Different personalities, different qualities, but
together they are just one strong arm and I love that.
I love that. I love hearing that.
I think those are some great examples as well.
And it makes me even more curious because those are very
much from a technical perspective, right?
And you have the most experienced career wise in the
technical domain. Now you've gone into a position
where you're building kind of your own startup.
You have to hire people with skills that are you might know
some stuff about marketing or sales, but it's not your core,
right? Your core is still the technical
side, yet you have to hire these people and you have to trust
them that. They value the same values that
you do as a company, and you have to trust that they then
hire the same people as well down the line because you're not
going to do their hiring process.
No, absolutely. This is like make or break to
find the right core team. I feel like, yeah, how do you do
that? Because that I feel like is
different. First of all, I don't think I'm
the the most experienced and the carrier.
I still learn need to learn a lot in that.
But thank you for that compliment there.
The main thing about this of course, moving on to Cruise.
So for years, to be honest, I had a golden squad and I said
when I'm opening a company, I'm gonna just start with those.
You're 18 people, yeah? Yes, My A-Team.
And these three people now, two or four people now are kind of
friends that we made over work. And of course one of them is
Anuk Tatiana and more to come. Anuk is is an amazing she's
she's our transformation director.
She has done big projects in government and you know so in
commerce companies to do digital transformation at the same time
do agile leading and also of course all this and she's very
hands on even you say OK hostel retro she doesn't the best retro
ever I would say And then she has that quality debt pillar
about basically governance people processes and then we
have found a product that you know with years of expense in
big companies like booking and she is fantastic.
And so those people I had in mind and when this opportunity
came the first thing is I just called them and said guys such
an opportunity to come. It's not still yes or no we
don't know. But I'm gonna do homeworks and I
wanna do assignments and I wanna basically fight for for getting
a chance to get in. They all said sure OK we resign
tomorrow. Really.
And I said this is it's beyond. Yeah yeah what I expect.
And I love them they know it. So I'm super lucky to have that
squad and we over the past the years we talked about it when we
were the moment we get together again and all of us, it was very
interesting because all of us diverged and then now converging
and we get also to a new harmony because now we have different
experiences different point of views and now it's still being
the same people. So the first is called the core
team is build up like this which I'm lucky that it's done and I
trust them to to my basically blood and I if they said this
person is right without question I accepted it.
That's why because we know each other quite well and we know the
culture we're going to build that we are going to just do
hand picking people. I mean for Crusoe I don't want
to have massive hiring from all over the world because I want to
compete with the price and know are people going to be
expensive, are our quality going to be top notch Because I'm
going to handpick people and just do the top things on a
faster way and the envy will be perhaps cheaper because these
people that I'm bringing they are really on the top ten, top
three in their own business. And if something takes people
like 2 years to deliver they can deliver in two months.
They are that efficient and and I've worked with them and we
also already delivered some projects in cruise even if you
are alive for two months but we delivered project and that show
the quality So that's my luck. At the same time one of The
thing is still you need to define the the values and you
need to define a vision. Yeah and for me the values for
this company are called it FTT which is inclusiveness,
fairness, fun, transparency and trust.
So these are the five values that we are gonna that which are
basically my personal values and at the same time my team,
initial team also they believe in those five they added one of
them and and I think with those values which I found them the
foundation of a of a professional team.
Yeah, I think we would perhaps have a criteria when we hire
people. And at the same time, this is as
I said, our aim is to do an effective, efficient fun work
for a problem connected to a company, to a human, to
whatever, just doing positive for the for the planet and for
for people. That's why one of the project
also we recently started is about sustain creating the most
sustainable upsides in the Netherlands For Vanicare, which
is an NGO, they are doing NGO work for for animals in
Indonesia and they are, they're doing fantastic, Germany are
doing fantastic thing, even if that really from the budget
perspective of money, transparently there is nothing
there. But I think we feel it as a
mission for us. We said we promised to deliver
value and nothing can bring more value to maybe to planet
contributing to such projects, which for me are very heart
warming. At the same time, I hope it's
gonna just expand our kind of positive impact in this world.
Yeah, that's amazing. I love that you say you had the
luck that you found those relationships, but it's it's a
testament to the relationships that you built up doing like
over time, right. It and luck might be a factor
probably right time, right place was a component of that.
But the fact that they said yes and they joined you kind of kind
of fairly immediately. Says a lot about you as a
person, the trust that you've built up and the stream team
that you put together. I feel like it is kind of a
cheat code because you don't start with a blank slate.
But yeah, like that's that's the history that you've built up,
right? You take that with you.
People always say don't burn any bridges.
And this is what happens when you don't burn any bridges,
right? If you value those
relationships, if you are the people person that I think you
are, that's what happens. That's the result of that.
Yeah. That's very nice of you to be
honest. Over the years that I learned
and I learned about people. I got a lot of friends over work
and in the sport. Yeah, I think my contact list is
personal. Phone contact list is around 809
hundred people that I know when I work or that's crazy.
Yeah, I was in a football club with them for years.
I mean every name I check I said I I couldn't remember memories
about them. So that network that I had I
have seen every person has a talent.
Every person can be delivering more than what they're doing
today. And I think in crucial what I'm
looking for handpicking doesn't mean that I'm going to just pick
maybe the top people know the people that can bring a specific
values to the maybe to this word.
Maybe we have a project that I know someone is enthusiastic
about that topic and maybe doesn't have the quality of a
senior engineer, but he's that enthusiastic, can get to that
level to deliver the best value for that project or for that
work. I think that's what I'm calling
hand picking to put the right people for the right projects.
And of course those when you put people to things that they love
to do, they go to the extreme productivity and if they
deliver, I didn't know, maybe I don't burn tickets, burn 10
points per week. They're going to burn 100 points
per week because they love to see the end of it, because they
love the top subject. So and at the same time of
course I'm going to bring the top qualities because I want to
remember names. I don't want to go big like some
big names in the consultancy. I don't want to name anyone but
those one are massive and they are millionaires and
billionaires. But I think I'm going to scope
it to to limited people that I can remember names as the maybe
the director of that company that I can have a personal chat
with them and of course having one of one.
But they still when we see them, I don't look a stranger to them
or not them to me. So that's the I think the club
that I would like to build. And of course if you're gonna
scale and of course we will scale it, but I have, we have I
have a different plan how to scale it up to maybe even
thousand of people. But for me it's very important
that that club is it's not just a name but it's when people go
home, they want to come back tomorrow to work.
Yeah. And one thing that I also
mentioned about all these things that we are now doing about
qualities and staff also over the past the years I learned
that one of the things that we miss when it comes to any level
from the engineering to leaders, it's an economic view to things
because now the economy is really putting pressure on
everyone. It's about companies, people,
the groceries already the 40% expensive.
So everyone feel the the crisis and it's not the first time in
the history it happens and of course it has ups and downs we
know that but let's make it more sustainable But by giving
especially in crucial I want to give everyone and myself to take
an economic view on things when it comes to delivering qualities
and we need to ensure why I'm saying economy because it has a
direct impact on people live and and it can bring when you have
when you take an economy in mind you can also be more efficient
in your working. So for me it's very important,
apart from having a team, the best of the breed teams together
is also giving them that view that they do the most efficient
work for themselves, for the companies and for the clients.
Love that. One of the final questions I
still have has to do with kind of this vision that you're
talking about, right? Because I also love that you
admit that it's not perfect and you still make mistakes.
I think that's that's a great mindset to always have.
But it is there, right? You're able to vocalize it, you
have a vision there. You already have ideas for the
future, those you've probably built up throughout your career,
but now you you get the opportunity to execute on that.
Like how, how have you honed this vision of yours?
Is it by having a dialogue with people that have done it before
by doing your own research? How can you do that?
And how's it still growing in that way as well?
Yeah. So when it comes to to this
region which I mentioned our our region is to make us obsolete.
It's that we we need to empower people that's coming from that
learning I had over the over the years.
Maybe myself and I love to have that empowerment myself.
So empowerment can be translated to basically I'm empowering my
engineers, I'm empowering my employees or I'm empowering my
client. What if my client gets empowered
that everyone will be happy at the end of the day and of course
from the business wise, it's going to still pay back more
than just stay there for the sake of the money.
So that empowerment is something that I had it for years
personally, which I guess everyone has something to be
empowered and to be loved by. And and I hope with this
position that I have now, which is also I need to mention about
the pitfalls of these positions. When you are started, when
you're a CEO, I'm, I'm just feeling it after two months
maybe I don't have the authority to judge it a lot.
I need to still explore. But I think that's the feeling
that every morning you wake up you can really jump from
branches to branches. But you should again remind
yourself I am basically the the head of this of this car and I
need to ensure that I don't really go a lot because I can
confuse myself and I can confuse others and maybe I have the
privilege that is based due to exploring.
However it needs to be connected to each other.
So and if you make a kind of tremendous opposite decision
there should be a very good reasoning and and the good thing
about this initial team that I have which are as I mentioned my
locks and the carrier, it's also what I do with them.
I just said this is what I'm thinking what do you think And I
get very good echoes on the on the idea and together we change
it. For example, this idea of we
make ourself obsolete and that's the plan I just came with the
idea that I said consultancy to redundancy and we I just said
guys I'm just thinking about consultancy to redundancy and
they say yeah, redundancy is very negative and and it you
what do you mean and explain yeah what it means that to
empower the client and so on. And then they come up with this
nice actually vision. So I think the vision for me at
the end would be the empower people at the end don't just
focus on the traditional things or the things that already
worked out. For example, as a company we see
this service that we are doing is working out and the earning
from that and you're running but at the same time also be ahead
of the market and be on the trends to explore before people
hitting that to have a good answer for people.
Because one of the thing that I guess it's also would help if if
you are ahead of the trend you can help and maybe kind of push
the the conversion of those on adaptation of the technologies,
new technologies on the right way because anything can be bad
and and positive. So that's that's come to the
vision of empowering people, empowering technologies and mix
them together. And I believe in magic.
And I think if you do that, that can happen perhaps.
Amazing. I think that's, for me, that's
awesome, right? Because people talk about having
a shared vision or creating a shared vision.
And I think just by virtue of having it laid out like that,
someone starts with an idea, people emphasize on it, people
give critique and people hone it.
And then it becomes ownership of a team, right, A core team.
And then it translates into a shared vision.
I think that's that's very important.
Division is not one person vision.
Yeah. And and of course when I'm
that's why when I'm sometimes I also shoot some ideas and they
completely against you that I just forget about it and say OK
so we need to be aligned and then not only the the five of us
or the four of us now it should be the company And I'm already
thinking about how to ensure that if we have a lot of people
in. I ensure everyone has a share in
that conversation and has a voice to even get be against
that. You guys you said the vision is
there but your daily work doesn't reflect it.
Yeah. If my schedule as a leader
doesn't reflect the vision of the company or the strategy of
the company, then this is just on paper.
Exactly. And that's what you see in
companies that usually division basically division is the
destination, right, sort of and the strategy is the way to get
to that destination. And usually people talk about it
especially on the high level and then it's top down coming to
everyone and you need to follow it.
And at the same time you said OK, wow, let's accept it and go
for it. But then you see the the top
level even don't adhere to that and then they jump in and then
they their decision doesn't match with that or match with
the values of the company. So then it comes to very less
credibility of those values and visions and becomes none none
less nonsense. And then you you leave it or
maybe you say you just accept it because you signed the code of
contract of the country of the company.
So for me, it's very important that I have ideas about
companies and how to run that and so on.
But I need to put it to the blend to see what comes out.
Because when we put something there, everyone should really
feel it with all themselves and they fight for it.
Because if I'm gonna do that, then it will create a hierarchy
that someone dictated that and I hate to be that person.
Yeah, same. Here, yeah, I I love the build
up. I think it makes a lot of sense
kind of the relationships you've built up, the trust and the
environment that you create. And to do it at the highest
level, right with your football team at the World Cup, let's
say. I think that's really cool and
some one of the smart things. And last thing about that that I
love to heard it from a vice person that was my friend and
I'm stealing it from her and I told her I'm gonna steal it from
you and and I never thought about it but this mindset means
what we are doing here because she's also similar like me and
whatever she when she talks I'm just feeling I'm talking but I'm
just a lady and it's very very aligned in the line of thinking
when it comes to leadership and she had really a similar carrier
growth as I have She said you know what what I have done is
when I'm presenting in the onboarding we have the the flip
chart from the CEO coming down right.
She said. I just turned it back, said
These are the the heroes, these are the people, just the
servants, and the the, the, the most servant is me at the
bottom. Yeah, carrying it.
I think this is amazing. That's genius.
Just flip the chart, Yeah. And that's basically what I'm
talking about. Yeah, I think that makes total
sense. Man.
This was, this was a blast. Like, I I can't believe first of
all that it was two years ago when we had this conversation,
like episode 20 and and time flew.
But I love. How we did kind of a check in
and I think I'm, I'm very excited to see what the future
holds. I think it should be shorter
than two years when we do this again.
But yeah, I really enjoyed it, man.
Thank you so much for coming on of course the same year.
I'd I'd love to be again on this stage together and again seeing
you and I really appreciate your time and also having me over.
Thank you very much. Same man.
Thanks. Then I'm gonna round it off
here. I'm gonna put all Marty's
socials in the description below, check them out, let them
know you came from our show. And with that being said, thank
you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.