A career case study with Timm Ideker of GitLab

Welcome Today my guest is Timm Ideker. He is the area sales manager at get lab. Previously, you worked at Cisco and you were a director of sales at Hewlett Packard. Tim, it is so great to have you on the show. Thank you for taking the time.

wonderful to be here. I'm glad to invest.

Awesome. So first off, just like for people that haven't heard of get lab before, do you mind kind of telling me what it does, and then how you found your way there.

Got it. Get lab is a application. It's a single application for the software lifecycle. What that really means is we help companies make software better. We make. We help people create their factory that makes their software that they push out to their customers. I found get lab The first time I ever heard of it was probably two years ago when I was in a meeting and I looked over and I saw our logo is a tanuki which is kind of a company and I looked over an I saw it on someone's laptop and I said, What's that? And they said, it's get lab. I said, I don't know what that means. And shortly after that, I got a chance to learn a little bit more about it. Understand that some of the budget that I wanted was heading into the software and applications group and had a chance to interview and I've been here just about 11 months.

Cool. So were you remote before Is this your first fully remote position?

I was working from home and then I went to an office for two years while I was at Cisco, that's kind of their culture very much about being present. And being in the office. They measure nearly everything at Cisco, but they did appreciate people that were in the office quite a bit. So for me it was kind of a return to being remote. And, but it's my first true remote job versus feeling as if you're simply a satellite and you really want to get down to corporate headquarters and Houston or San Jose, etc, that so in that, in that sense, it really is my first fully remote, but I had some experience with work from home before.

It's interesting too, because you think about sales like, you know, all the way back to like traveling salesman, like in reality that is working remote. They didn't have the benefits of the technology and the connectivity, but that's kind of like the remote, you know?

Oh, geez. Yeah. That's a that's a great observation. And we've certainly seen those people, men and women going throughout the airport, and it feels like they've got their entire office with them. Yeah. I think the big difference that really resonated for me when I got a chance to understand what remote culture meant and remote work was, it's not just the distribution of the people that are perhaps doing the work. It's also the distribution of the senior leadership team, right totally how to do it at all levels.

Absolutely. It's the whole idea of remote first like it really is. difficult, and I've seen this across dozens of companies my own and ones I've worked for is that, you know, it's it's kind of either it's binary, you're either remote first or you're not. And it can work. You know, I mean, people do make it work where they have offices or whatever. But what seems to it always seems to be harder unless you you kind of pick a lane. Like we're going to be in office with a few people sprouted remote, or like it's all remote first, and you guys are fully remote first to get lab. Right.

Correct.

And you do off sites or I mean, not right now.

But normally, uh, yeah, so in our lives pre COVID. And at some point, post COVID. I have to believe there is a post to COVID and we do certainly enjoy the opportunity to get together. So this is a one of those companies that is also in hyper growth. And what that means is just some rough numbers. It's we're at about 1300 employees. And a year and a half ago, we had 400. So we find over a whole Mendis number of people, and that's exciting. But we acknowledge that remote culture is, is, I think, an adjustment for some people. And so what are they doing that we have support to do, and we were on track to do is get together about every nine months because we were hitting these significant number of employees, these sort of new gates like, Oh my goodness, we have 500 Oh my gosh, we have 800 is where everybody gets together that works at get lab and gets together at some point that makes sense, logistically and probably financially on the globe. And we were all on deck to go to Prague and get a chance to just see the other 1112 1300 people together in one place. We have certainly other instances where we get smaller and we have a chance to interface with our clients or our partners and I think at some point when we are Start to stop when we stop sheltering in place. And we don't feel quite so strange moving about the country in the world. We'll get back to it but it's definitely remote first with the anomaly of getting together periodically.

What's been the hardest transition for you going going fully remote first in your career?

By biggest challenge thankfully I got over I find once in a while additional challenges and as you hire people and you bring them through the this is what it means to be remote and they sort of nod during the interview like yeah, it's it's it's remote, and then when you actually live it, I would say for me, that connectedness to the work to me, I always felt like I had to be on the exact same timeframe, the same timezone, the same phone calls, the same group calls, and I remember I brought some of that Some of that, that conditioning when I got here, and there's this idea that when you are remote, and you span almost every timezone in the globe, you have to be able to embrace brilliant concise communication. And you have to be willing to work synchronously or asynchronously depending. So there are people that are going to be distributed across various time zones and the sun might be down for them and up for you. But you can collaborate together, because they've done their work in a way that they can go to that on their timezone. And they've done their work asynchronously, and it's in a shared resource or a shared, you know, maybe a Google doc or, you know, within within Salesforce, and it's the idea that the work can be done. It doesn't always need to be done in a linear fashion and the fact that everybody can contribute and we support all those time zones. I would say that, for me was the first breakthrough.

It's like, it's kind of I like thinking about it. My team is sick. We're not I think we're maybe nine hours across from like, start to finish. But it's like a relay race actually. And once you get used to it, it's kind of magical. Like I send stuff off and then when I wake up in the morning and get on after I do some writing, like, East Coast team already has things for me and it's kind of like it's like a wrapping a little present, once you get used to it, but it really takes it takes not only it's just a mind shift, because that's not how we're normally used to working.

Yeah. And I think what we've what we've seen in the last 60 to 90 days is we as get lab and one of the largest all remote companies is we had a second platform to talk to are a second reason to engage with our prospects and our customers. Ah, historically, it's always been, we're a single application for the DevOps lifecycle. We you know, we are we put the developer in the in the center of the universe, we make better code. We make it beautiful. We make it social. But what we were feeling and we were witnessing is during the point where people had to acknowledge the global pandemic had to move into a work from home scenario. And a lot of the classic brick and mortar companies went from there is an office that you go to two now we all have to be worked from home. And once everybody got their internet and their VPN and their laptops and their secure like once that was that took about one to two weeks and everyone was just really heads down. A lot of our clients and prospects were just very heads down. But then we started to get engaged outside of what we do, and just sort of asked, tell us a little bit about how get lab handles this and we got a chance to speak to some of our premier clients as well as some prospects that we don't sell anything to because they realized that get lab is all remote. And we've written something called the remote Manifesto. And it's just all about the ways to use the tools the community And to keep that culture intact. And so it was it was a really fun second platform. It's a tragic reason, like global pandemic, but it was a it was a really great. Never waste to never waste a crisis. I guess we had a great second platform to talk to our accounts about. Yeah, absolutely. So one thing,

I always love hearing this, like you're in sales, that seems like that's been most of your career. How did you get into it? Like, what was your career journey to get here?

Um, I am a college dropout.

Did I know high fives

are good for years of undergrad and then realized that I hadn't done for linear years on anything and decided I wanted to go see the world and had a chance to do that and sort of dabbled really well, it was the undergrad biochem and computer science. Okay. And it was out. It was in Kansas and it was at the University of Minnesota and I love both of them. Like I'd love to college love the experience. It was really, really great and then I just thought I want to go do something else. So I had a chance to go and work in the service industry which I commit that everyone should do at some point in their lives. They should sell food couldn't agree more serve food, or they should make drinks or they can name our cocktail waitress, whatevs. Yeah.

You know,

makes you a better I think it makes you a person better person makes you totally consumer patient. Yes. You can always tell people are critical because you realize what it takes to give great service and when it's really, really bad. That's the only time I consider giving a lesser tip it's got to be agreed seriously bad otherwise, I assume everybody's working their hardest in the service industry and hustling so. At one point, I think I was probably three or four years into my bartending and I thought this is fun, but probably not a great long term plan. And as good luck would have it. I mean, I'd like to say my career was this artful trajectory where I had it all mapped out. And I was just simply following on the next step. But there was a period of sort of five to seven years where it was pretty meandering. And then I had a chance to take my computer science background and apply it at a software company.

And how did that suit, even drilling it a little bit like you dropped out of college? And then you go into the service industry? how that happened? Was it like you put in applications like what does that process look like to get into service or to get out of service? To get in and out?

Yeah. Get in was, I think I took I know I took a summer job at the end of my fourth year of college and it was find a spot where they'll pay me just enough and I can go see another part of the country and I picked Maine, which I never been to I've never really seen the ocean so To me out of bed and breakfast, which was kind of a glorified jack of all trades job on a resort and I ended up in sounds awesome falling into learning a little bit about the sea and helping out I cut wood. I scrubbed cabins and then I started working in the dining room. And then I parlayed that two month, timeout where or timeout East into a an application at the Mall of America, which is this really big mall in Minnesota at the time and I started waiting tables there and worked my way up to bartending. And then, like I said about three and a half, four years. I was at the spa where I liked the cash in hand, but I wanted something a little bit more for myself, financially or otherwise. And it just so happened I had a person come in him and his wife, they sat at the bar and he talked to me for a little bit. It was very busy night I remember it was frantically busy. And and all of a sudden it got less busy. I got less busy and less busy and he was still there with his wife. And he said to me, I've watched you work for the last couple of hours and you got a you got an ability to deal with people and talk to people and nobody really got upset and you kind of kept everything up in the air. And I thought, well, it didn't feel like that at times. But I appreciate you saying that. And then he said, I represent a software company, and we need people that are going to go and handle upset customers, and it looks Do you know anything about computers? And I said, Oh, actually, I do. I do. I know a bit not enough but and he took me under his wing and I moved out of making a high amount of cash and essentially telling the government I didn't make anything to right now I actually have a legitimate job. And I did that for three years. And then I have another person, you know, these, these moments in your career where you just find a pivot there, sometimes yours there's sometimes someone else who sees something and think Thankfully, somebody watched me do some something else in tech or engaging with a customer. And he said, When are you going to get into sales? And I said, probably never because I just thought those were the people that just they did. They did the work that I didn't want to be a part of. And, but then I kind of saw the cars they drove. And I said to myself, alright, I gotta I gotta go try that. And he took me under his wing, and I was terrible at it for the first two years, and then I became average. And then we had a couple years above average. And then I felt the draw to management and leadership because I found myself getting more joy, helping other people strategize and work on opportunities than I was starting to get myself.

How did you get away with being subpar? For two years isn't sales very kind of like you hit your numbers or you're gone? I guess that's one of the relationship skills come in. Right. Yeah.

I think the reason that I was doing To be average, and maybe even below average is this is the point when 2000 sort of been late 90s it was when everybody had a.com idea like sad food online or whatever it was. And I went through two or three companies with this group of people. And we all just kind of were learning together. Some of them were deeply seasoned sales reps that were willing to take a risk on a chance to make a whole lot of money. And for me, I was certainly lower man on the totem pole. And I was learning a lot. I was learning a lot of good lessons. And I would say during that period of a year and a half, it was just so interrupt driven six months and all of a sudden the company's out of business and you're starting your new one down the hall. Okay, and I think during that course, it was a crash course in in business and then I found a spot with a little bit more stability. And by that time I had matured and was perhaps a little bit better at the job and then I stuck with it.

I love that I love hearing people's backstories because I just like thinking this I'm like, I'm gonna start putting all of the like, every all the questions like this is the most interesting stuff, actually hearing people's stories. And then also I think it's encouraging because like, I have a non traditional background, I dropped out. My my senior year, I also I was a mediocre student, I went to a state college, I was doing English literature and psychology and I was like, I don't know, I think that B C's I cared so little that I can't even remember. Um, and, and at some point, my senior year, I had started my first little business on eBay, and I was just like, and I was bartending I bartend it from the day I could, I was just like, why am I doing this? Like I'm never gonna, nobody gives a fig that I have an English literature degree and Okay, English literature degree from a state school. But even if I had an English literature degree from Stanford, they probably still wouldn't care. But like the Stanford part would get me in there. And I've realized like, I'm 30 Five now I've been working since I was 15. And I've been I started my first little business when I was 20. And it's only now that I'm like, Oh, I look back and I see all the pieces. And I'm like, Oh, I know what my life's work is now. I know what I do. And I kid you not like, in the last five years, like, at my 30th birthday, I was like, or 31st after my company really failed in a dramatic way. I literally raised $5 million company gone to 500 people almost, and we kind of crashed really hard. And the next three months, I was like, so I guess I'm going to go back to bartending because I was like, I don't know what else I'm good at. I'm not even good at bartending. But I'm passable. And I was like, that must be my skill set. And it's only been the last few years where I'm like I, you see, you see things in retrospect. And it's encouraging. I think for people that are early in their career, making a career pivot coming back into the workforce, even making a pivot into to remote to hear these stories, because you're like, oh, okay, like you didn't at 18 weren't like, this is what I'm gonna do with my life. You really followed a path. And and it led you there and it. Yeah, it's just encouraging. It's like even just encouraging for me to hear it. I'm like, Yeah, I don't feel like a total weirdo.

Or there's a there's many, many, many, many great books, you probably have written some I've got a couple in my head, but there's one called the accidental salesperson. And I think for me, it's it's literally the cover, and it has someone with a briefcase and they're sort of falling. And it's this idea that in the first page, they open it up in a really poignant way they say, no one who's talking to their parents about what they want to do with their lives says anything other than I want to be a doctor, I want to be a cowboy or an astronaut or a physicist. No one says I'd like to face daily rejection of filing for my compensation and potentially Be one quarter away from failure. Like no one says that, but people find a way into where they're supposed to be. And I feel and maybe it's, I think your story is better. But I remember feeling a click in the last five to 10 years, sort of personally and professionally where I thought I couldn't see it at the time where I was maybe cutting wood to put in someone's cabin that I could have never afforded in Maine. But along the along the way, there were all these great moments where I got a chance to listen and learn and maybe teach a few things and it's just an I bring a lot of those, the a lot of those stories and I just always remember that it's easy to look at someone on LinkedIn and see that they're a VP of intergalactic sales and you think they were born to do that, that's all they've ever been, you know, and and I think if you if you if you can be vulnerable yourself and find the right kind of support, and get those kinds of people to help you talk to you mentor you. You'll find that there story is not very often just a straight linear story. There were planned pivots, there were pauses, there were. I've talked to people who said, I'm going to do this job for two years and that job for two years and that job for three years, and I think, what if one of those jobs just happens to be super fun and rewarding? Yeah. Are you gonna look at your calendar and say, Oh, I gotta go. It's a part of my plan. Maybe.

So it's like, it's like being being open to, to serendipity being open to also just being open to like, like you said, the guy at the bar who came in it was talking to you like, I mean, you're gonna you know, there's a lot of things that are gonna people I mean, that's like job search. So you talk about a skill set we all need to learn is the ability to be rejected over and over and over. And instead of being demoralized by it being like, Alright, I learned something like, How can I be better? How does this inform me in my search going forward? Yes, yeah. So that actually leads me to my next question. So you've all heard obviously done a lot of hiring been through hiring all that stuff, especially thinking in the terms of people in today's environment. I mean, you know, we went from a boom economy to a kind of craptastic. One, hopefully you're getting better. But right now, it feels scary for a lot of people, especially if people are thinking about making a career change or getting a new job. So what are like the biggest mistakes that you've seen candidates make, especially people who are applying for for remote roles and like two parts in the initial application, and then later out like later in the process once they've gotten the interview.

So I will start I'll follow the question exactly as you you've laid it out, because that's how I kind of have my, my process organized. So you think about initial mistakes or biggest mistakes. So that initial application. What I'm hoping for is that we acknowledge the importance of a resume and a LinkedIn profile being ready reasonably good echoes of each other, I don't need a word and in fact, your resume I think should be perhaps a little more verbose. And your LinkedIn should be a little more concise because I'm likely going to be reading it on on a screen or reading it on my on my phone when I get a chance to see your profile for the first time. I think it's a it's a small thing, but get a decent headshot on LinkedIn. If it's the first time and the only time you've ever had a tuxedo on and it's at your wedding and you've chopped the side of your own face off to remove your wife. Just get a quality headshot. I mean, we all have decent phones in our pockets. stand outside have your friend your neighbor put a tree in the background something Yeah. Quality.

Everybody has a friend that likes to be a photographer that wants to be a photographer or is good at it, everybody.

Exactly. And say I've got a great opportunity. You're gonna shoot my avatar. The second is I think there is a perception that when you that you need to know everything in order to apply. And what I would encourage people to do is know as much as you can when you apply but you really need to remember to get up to speed on the research on the product and who you're talking to in the interview panel and the candidates and all the rest of that when you get a chance to actually interview so your job is probably more of put the funnel as wide as you can IE get yourself in front of as many opportunities as you can. Because then as that funnel narrows either you get selected or maybe you don't get selected your your scope of real opportunities just like in sales starts to narrow down to those mid to late stage opportunities. And then those are the ones that you really put the time into. And and be prepared. So. So in the initial application, I would say get a quality headshot and and don't be afraid to apply for things that are A little bit out of reach. And here's why I say that. One of the things that get lab is, I think, changing, I hope in the marketplace and is helping a lot of us adjust our own. The way that we write job requirements is we may think, what's the ideal candidate, the ideal candidate has 10 years of sales experience in software. They have five years selling to the biggest companies. They went to an Ivy League school, they are left handed. I mean, imagine the crazy, crazy criteria we used to meet. By the way, I'm writing that for probably the unicorn candidate with a leprechaun on the back on a leap here, right. That's my that's that. I don't even know if I have some of those people here. But yeah, and so my encouragement would be, don't be discouraged. When you might look through a requisition and think, ah, I only have eight years of software sales experience. Apply? Yeah, absolutely apply don't don't govern based on some of the rigid criteria that you might see because in order for us to do our part, and ensure that we're being responsible, and we're listening for, at least in sales in tech, uniquely, I'm listening for female voices. I'm looking for underrepresented minorities, I think our job, and our responsibility is to keep diversity, inclusion and belonging and make it be part of our process. And so I want to soften a lot of those criterias that we're publishing, because I don't want someone who has all the potential to be a star in their own right or at our company and look at that and think forcibly. I totally, I don't have it, or I have three out of five. I would just encourage people to to apply for those jobs that are just a little bit out of reach.

They've done studies on that actually, and I noticed this so my other Company I've had for a few years as a recruiting operations company and we tag into companies and we're like their outsourced talent team. So we see thousands and thousands of candidates remote specifically every month. And I've always been blown away and then I did some research on it is that job req wise, like a job? Like you said, all these specific a woman candidate who's phenomenal will message me and be like, Hey, I have nine years experience everything else, but I didn't want to apply I don't want to waste your time. And then I'll literally get a guy who's right out of college like what up bro? I'm from Stanford, nobody like you. What are you thinking? Like, now I'm really good. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm like, and I love the hutzpah in some ways, but then I always say like, women minorities like anyone that has systemically kind of not had that just like yeah like born with that like I can do it attitude. Yeah, there's it's just funny but it's they've actually done studies on this is that people will sell themselves down who actually super qualified and then People that are not even qualified or maybe can't even do the work nearly as well. But they have this this sense of self that has been nurtured over, you know, society and whatever. It's just, it's amazing. It's always a both makes me laugh, but also kind of shudder. So I think that's a good reminder to everybody to go for it.

Yeah, I caught up with a version of that, that study in that analysis as well. And what I what I took away from it is because if I am a female in software, technology sales, or I'm an underrepresented minority, because I've had likely some negative experiences about being judged harshly because of BB perception or affinity, bias or discrimination, I look at that, and I think that's the minimum and I'm going to Yeah, whereas I think there's a wee bit of white male privilege, where I think they might look at it and say, like you said, just got out of it. College. But it was a great four years and I'm ready to jump into enterprise software sales. And I think, I think somewhere this will settle out. But I think we have to be really, really purposeful. It does not mean that we interview and only extend the offer because someone is not doesn't look like me. But those are the kinds of voices that I want to make sure I surround myself with.

Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of specifically, I guess, for sales, but just in general, what are the top skills that if someone you know, is thinking in terms of the next 10 or 20 years of their career, and they want to future prove it, they don't want to get lost in the shuffle. And they're thinking through that, like, what are the Hard and Soft Skills people need to do to succeed not only in sales, but also just in the new world of work specifically in remote roles.

You know, out there, um, so if you think about little ways to fuse proof your own career would say a couple of examples from my past will be useful because I, I failed. And sometimes that's the best learnings. I think one thing that we should probably just get out on the table is I'm looking during the interview process, I'm looking for people that are authentic. And that's that's more than a word to me authentic is they're willing to be vulnerable. That does not mean they cannot have a strong point of view. I want them to make an impression that they're proud of that that's authentic and real for them. But if they've got, for example, six month gap on their employment history, I'm not going to ask them about it to try to bust them but if I do bring it up to learn, I've heard the most amazing stories where people will say, my former employer realized that I needed to take care of my sick mother and I basically was out hospice care with her For three to six months, and at the end, when she eventually said goodbye, and she left this earth, I then reinvigorated myself and got a job account. But when you look at a six month gap, you like myself included, I have to be really specific with myself and say, don't see that as Oh, they must have gotten fired from their last job. And now they're trying to get back into the workforce I'm on to them. But in fact, ask the question, and if you're the candidate, and you've got those spots, whether you were taking care of your mother or you took a walk about or you literally just lost your job and got fired and needed to take three months to find a new job, draw that draw the hiring managers eyes to that and acknowledge it and talk about it and be real and be authentic, because instead of worrying about it making you seem like a lesser candidate, it's actually going to make you a whole lot more real, which I hope is what totally you and I You and I are conveying to each other is just this It's absolutely okay to be real. But future future proof, I would say, the term that we all we've often heard referred to as you have to network, and to know a bunch of people. I've enjoyed this a whole lot already. So I'm imagining I'm going to stay in contact with you. You might not be able to do anything for me today. And I might not be able to do anything for you today. But the connection that you can establish with someone where you don't need anything, and you can actually invest in that network and stay connected with that person. You have to spend time and energy to create that garden of networks so that when something happens and you find yourself without a job, you find yourself maybe in a spot where you're just you need some help you need a nudge, then you can reach into that broader network and it's not. We've seen people try to create the connection, strengthen the connection and then ask for something all within about two paragraphs. You've never met me, you've never heard of me. But I really need you to invest in this idea, etc. I think if you can strengthen your network, at your existing employer, and then try to map out some additional people that you can network with, you can never have enough friends in this business. Interesting.

That's a really good point. I think about that a lot, especially in terms of like, people who maybe. Yeah, it's like, how do you build a network when you don't have much of one? How do you? I mean, honestly, the reason I started my podcast, and I started a podcast like 10 years ago, when it was super janky for an old blog, and some of the best connections that I've made that I've stayed in touch with the last 10 years. And I started because I was like, I want to talk to smart people, and they don't know me, but if I can maybe interview them, learn, learn from them a and then post it out there. So it's like, I don't know, mutually beneficial, blah, blah, blah. I was like, that would be a good way for me to To start to meet people, and that was one of the things that led me to move into San Francisco, which was one of the most pivotal, you know, things of my career because I went from Reno, Nevada, all my friends were bartenders or tattoo artists to San Francisco, and everyone was nerdy tech people, but very successful or have become very successful. And it's, it's interesting too, and it's different for different people like what you're looking for, and what your goals are. That's why one of the things we're writing in the book is about, like really understanding your drivers like understanding what matters to you, not only understanding your career drivers, understanding your personal core values, and being authentic to those which all ties in, but it is interesting, it's like I think, I think with this, I, I don't mean to pick on sales, but I think a lot of times, at least in the tech world, the idea of scalable sales and like creating your drip campaign and HubSpot aboah it's like all these things. We forget that we need to the most often Authentic things. And the best networking is like, is one on one. It's not scalable. Like, I think we're seeing this already kind of a just like, an overwhelm from emails that are like, Hey, I see blank, I'd like to introduce you to my product and you're just like boring. No, versus somebody authentic is just like, Hey, I'm a college student, and you don't know me. But I read this post. And is there any way I could ask you a few questions? And I'm always like, absolutely, totally, like, send them over. So it's interesting to think through. And this just might be my problem. I think in the past, I've tried to network almost like at scale, like how can I make this scalable versus really investing in that one on one and then then figuring out you know, what you can give someone else and yeah,

meandering, but I love it. I think the four most powerful words that you can say to another good human is I need your help. doesn't necessarily mean they're going to buy your product. But if you do it in a way that you think it's less about selling something and more about I want to blossom my network. Maybe I'm in tech sales. And my goal is to become to maybe get out of sales and get into, I don't know, operations or work on someone's campaign. I think if you can walk up to another human being, and have the strength and grace and vulnerability to say, I need your help 99% of humanity will stop what they're doing. And they will lean back and they'll say, what's up? How can I help? They will all do it, but they wait, right? And we have these sort of not not quite awkward, but we have these sort of circle around each other where it's sort of you're unclear on your motivations. Am I trying? Are you trying to sell me something? What's going on? And I think if you can just do it, if I'm looking for a job right now, and I tapped into my network. I would like to think that more than half of the people if I got him on the horn and said I need your help, they would probably probably at least trying to help. You talked about one other thing, and that is I think you talked about maybe trying to create relationships at scale. I think the connectedness and the tools that we're all pretty, hopefully getting really good at. They make it seem temptingly easy, right. You're only four links away from Bill Gates on link fascinating to this, like, click the links and just make it all happen. But I watched the speaker named David Knorr maybe 10 years ago, and his was all around this concept of relationship economics. And he had these four things that had to go in linear order. And it was no me, like me, trust me, pay me. And he said, LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook and all these other mechanisms that you can use to connect to a potential buyer doesn't mean you get to skip know me and like me, you don't suddenly get to have someone's trust and their money in a transaction unless you actually spend the time to invest in them whether you're selling something or not but I really for me when you were talking I thought that's a better way than I usually recapture it. But I I was drawing on kind of that you have to know me then you get to like me hopefully then you then you trust me and then you pay me.

I like that and I think that also ties into let's say someone is super earlier coming back into the market and they they don't have a lot of professional connections you know, maybe they've been raising their kids for 10 years. I think what's awesome in so like, let's say you're in winnemucca Nevada you don't have a lot of professional connection you've been a stay at home mom plus decade and you're you're coming back into the workforce and understanding what you're good at understanding what you're interested in understanding what you can give, you know, say it's sales or say maybe you're particularly keen on content and marketing. I love the idea of the know me and like me. Bye trying to be helpful like, in like putting something out there into the world that's that you're trying to be helpful. So let's say you start a curated list of like, all the best, like the newest marketing. Like what you've learned, what you've learned on your journey, even if you start just talking about your journey to find a new job or a remote job or blah, blah, blah, if you document that and you're authentic people who who interact with it are going to start to get to know you. And then as they get to know you, they start to like you. I mean, it's like how a lot of influencer brands are people like Gary Vaynerchuk. You know, they they've built people feel like they they don't actually know him, but they feel like they know him, they like him that's developed that trust and then it makes it so much easier to sell. So it's like it's like anything in life. It takes work, building the foundation, but there's a lot of unique ways of going about it, even if you're, you know, in the middle of Nairobi, or you're in the middle of nowhere. Or something like that you can still the internet in a lot of ways why I love remote work so much I'm so passionate about it. I think it's the great equalizer. It allows you you know with certain ability you know, some computing power and some internet speed and allows you to access knowledge and people and I think that's, that's super important if we're going to democratize opportunity. Yeah.

I love that. You think about the you've seen the triangle and you're you were in psychology, right? You remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Oh, of course. Yeah. Have you seen the redraft? Right? It's not academic. But the redraft is so Maslow's hierarchy of needs you know, you need shelter and you get all these other higher you get to the higher functions but at the base of it all was Wi Fi. Interesting at the base of that on someone else because the world iterates is right underneath that was battery. Right?

Maren Kate 39:55
Yeah. power source. Yeah.

Yeah. I laughter Out Loud when I saw it for the first time, and I thought, you know, I thought about it later and certainly not as long as Hierarchy of Needs was probably not aware of the time we're living in today. But you think about your your Nairobi in person who wants to start a business, get better health care, whatever it is, if he or she has a mechanism to be able to tap into the gathered grid. Yeah,

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