A talented co-founder can be an incredible asset to an entrepreneur, providing a second set of shoulders to bear the responsibilities of business and a second opinion to test ideas against. The right co-founder can compliment your strengths, compensate for your weaknesses and make every aspect of the company better than you could make it by yourself.

But don’t just take my word from it. Instead, listen to business partners, Scott Hill and Andy Medley, co-founders of the marketing tech company, PERQ. In the last episode of the Powderkeg Podcast (that’s episode 42 for those keeping count), I talked with Scott about his strength as a visionary with unique ability to see business opportunities where others can’t. Medley, on the other hand, is a masterful integrator who harnesses Hill’s visionary ideas into detailed and effective business plans. The two have leveraged their individual strengths to build PERQ into an innovative, world-class tech company in Indianapolis, IN.

For this interview with Scott and Andy, I’m joined by my own business partner and the CMO of Powderkeg, Kevin Bailey. Together, we probe the PERQ cofounders for insights into their business partner relationship and get some incredible strategies for maximizing the benefits of any business partnership. Our guests share everything from advice on developing your roles as founders to tips for handling leadership disagreements and the inevitable days when you’re both feeling burnt out.

I hope this episode teaches you a few invaluable lessons on harnessing the power of your co-founder or business partner relationship. Enjoy the show, and then give a shout to Scott “The Cheetah” Hill and Andy “The Horse” Medley on Twitter (@bizgamer and @andymedley, respectively) to show your appreciation for their advice and expertise!

In this episode with Scott Hill and Andy Medley, you’ll learn:

  • The ways a co-founder relationship can help each person develop their role (6:49)
  • How Scott and Andy work together as visionary and integrator (13:30)
  • Strategies for co-founders to deal with disagreements, bad days and burnout (23:17)
  • Advice for building and maintaining an outstanding company culture (34:06)
  • The importance of discipline and having a “harness” for your vision (38:55)
  • Why education and guidance are essential elements of continual business growth (45:14)

Please enjoy this conversation with Scott Hill and Andy Medley!

If you like this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes. You can also follow us on Soundcloud or Stitcher. We have an incredible lineup of interviews we’ll be releasing every Tuesday here on the Powderkeg Podcast.

Scott Hill and Andy Medley Quotes from This Episode of Powderkeg:

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Companies and Organizations:

PERQ

Slingshot SEO

Aprimo

Universities:

Hanover College

Harvard Business School

People:

Scott Hill (@bizgamer)

Andy Medley (@andymedley)

Kevin Bailey (@KevinJBailey)

Jenny Vance (@jennyvanceindy)

Jeremy Dearringer (@papanewpro)

Aaron Aders (@aaronaders)

Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

Bill Godfrey (LinkedIn)

Rob McLaughlin

Did you enjoy this conversation? Thank Scott Hill and Andy Medley on Twitter!

If you enjoyed this session and have few seconds to spare, let Scott Hill & Andy Medley know via Twitter by clicking on the links below:

Click here to say hi and thank Scott Hill on twitter!

Click here to say hi and thank Andy Medley on twitter!

COMMENTS?

What stood out most to you about what Scott Hill share in this podcast?

For me, it’s the ways a co-founder relationship can help each person develop their role.

You? Leave a comment below.

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Episode Transcript

This episode of Powderkeg is brought to you by MVP launch partners, an amazing product development and consulting firm. I’ve worked with these guys myself, and I can tell you, what sets them apart is that they really partner with you to provide product leadership and advice. They take ownership of building a great product, whether it’s a website or a mobile app, or a software product. And for a limited time, MVP launch partners offering up to six hours of free consulting for powderkeg podcast subscribers. It’s an incredible deal. So go to MVP launch partners.com/powderkeg. To get started,

we overlap in terms of who we are as people by probably 98%. You know, the other 2% are what we’re good at at work. So that makes it pretty, pretty dang easy. But the more we’re around each other, it’s like that 2% is the only thing right as opposed to the 98% you can kind of get lost in that sometimes.

That was Scott Hill and Andy medley that you just heard there and are the co founders of a marketing tech company called Perk that spelled P r q. And in the last episode of The powderkeg podcast, that’s episode 42. For those of you that are keeping count, I talked with Scott about his strength as a visionary, with a really unique ability that he has to see business opportunities where a lot of times other people cannot. Now Andy, on the other hand, is a masterful integrator who harnesses Scott’s visionary ideas into detailed and effective business plans. The two of these co founders have leveraged their individual strengths to build perc into an innovative world class tech company based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and they’re growing like crazy. I’m your host, Matt Hunckler. And you’re listening to Episode 43 of powderkeg igniting startups, a show for entrepreneurs, leaders and innovators who are building remarkable tech companies in areas decidedly outside of Silicon Valley. For this interview with Scott Anandi, I’m joined by my own business partner, and the CMO of powderkeg. Kevin Bailey, if you’re an avid listener of the show, you might remember Kevin from Episode 37 When we talked about building products that people love, I love that episode, so make sure you check that out if you haven’t heard it yet. But in this episode, Kevin and I probe the PERT cofounders for insights into their business partnership, and get some incredible strategies for maximizing the benefits of any co founder relationship. Our guests share everything from the advice on developing their roles as founders to tips on handling leadership disagreements. And inevitable days when you’re both feeling maybe a little bit burnt out. We’ve all been there. I hope this episode teaches you a few valuable lessons on harnessing the power of your co founder or business partner relationship. I know I learned a ton as did Kevin, we’ve used a lot of their strategies ever since recording this. I hope you enjoy the show. Make sure you give a shout out to Scott the quote unquote the cheetah. You’ll understand this later when you hear that episode. And Andy the quote unquote horse and hit him up on Twitter. Scott is at biz gamer that’s bi Z gamer and Andy is at Andy medley. That’s me de le y. You can hit them up on Twitter. Let them know your questions, let them know you’re following and listening to the show. Without further ado, here are Scott and Andy from perk and Kevin at powderkeg. Let’s set this thing off. Welcome to powderkeg igniting startups episode 43. We are recording live from edge Media Studios in Indianapolis, Indiana. And I am so so excited for what we’ve got in store for you today. First of all, I am joined by my business partner and co founder. Just amazing entrepreneur all around. Kevin Bailey is here in the studio with us. Super excited to have you here. Kevin, thanks so much for taking the time to join me as a co interviewer. Yes, it’s

great. Looking forward to it.

I’m looking forward to it, too. We’ve got two really good friends in here with us today. Two guys that have built an amazing company. I was actually inspired by their company back in 2007. I want to say to start my first business when I was in college after touring their office and went back to Bloomington started my company that evening purely off of inspiration and a little bit of a little bit of direction from the co founders here that we have in studio. So that is Andy medley and Scott Hill. And he is the president and co founder of perk. And then Scott Hill, the executive chairman and co founder of perk. Thank you guys so much for taking time to be here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, we’ve got we’re doing this live on Facebook. So if you’re listening to it live or if you’re listening to it in your headphones, make sure you check out the live stream and share it. We are going to be diving deep on what it means to have a good co founder relationship to be good business partners going deep going deep. Are you ready for this? Andy? All right. All right. Cool. Get your diving gear on. We’re going in. How’d you guys meet College? Kids in the library was

recruited by the same fraternity and my first impression of Andy was walking into a another dorm room being introduced by my future Big Brother and Andy was a work in the music is DJ being a little too cool for school. And then

he was being exactly as cool as I should have been

trying and then actually we pledged and then eventually became roommate Thanks and got to know each other where we

guys go to school. Hanover, Hannah. Yeah. So in the way it works at Hanover, we were all in the same freshman dorm. So he was no one above me, I was one below. And then there was a big group of friends that all kind of end up joining the same fraternity. So we were hanging out first semester freshman year kind of getting to go through that whole experience together and the awkwardness of college and, you know, think of it as awkward and I think of it as awesome right now. But you know, the all that stuff, so we got to kind of go through that as a as freshmen all the way through the end of being seniors and living off campus.

So do you guys remember the first mission you guys had together? You know, what was it? I’m assuming it wasn’t a business mission?

And that’s actually a good call, I’d say the first time we actually probably teamed up a little bit was, we both did some pledge education piece to it with the pledges and the fraternity and, and the, his partner in that actually ended up not following through on some of the things he was supposed to be doing. And so I kind of helped out because I had done it the previous year. And so probably actually thinking about it back to it was probably one the first times I’ve actually kind of aligning on how are we leading these people what needs to get done, what needs to kind of execute to have happen have that happen? So actually,

you know, you think about it. So our freshman year when you’re going through pledge ship, right. And this is typical fraternity stuff. Remember, we would have we were allowed to prank the brothers and the fraternity three times and we had this big thing that we did. That was it was massive coordination, we were stealing keys and ultimately taking cars that took about two months to do. And there was a lot of collaboration between us because we had to take 12 Guys, get them together, all coordinating without the brothers knowing that we’re stealing the keys and making the keys and then going from there. So that’s actually that was a big one second semester freshman

prop. We’re proud of that one.

That’s that is something to be proud of filter still still talk about that. So So talk to me about how your your roles evolved. Over time, you guys eventually became roommates. Right?

Yep. Roommates like to tell the story that I recognize that, you know, down the road, when you’re actually looking at partnering for business that when you live with somebody, and you know, that’s okay, all my clothes are on the closet, and Andy is walking over those. So he’s accepting my weakness, and then I’m looking at his very orderly lined out clothes hung up, you know, perfect, I could probably use that strength in my life. So yeah, we got you know, you get to know the the good and the bad, pretty, pretty closely when you’re living with somebody to that degree.

So you tell that story. Talk to me about how that aligns now to your roles as co founders, how did you decide to even go into business together,

I got the business initially going just to kind of the first part of it. But within those first few months, it was like, hey, this actually could end up working. So showed me some of the numbers of what we had going on. And it was definitely a very conscious decision to not partner up with a great friend, it was a conscious decision to partner up with somebody that I knew had a skill set that would complement mine very well. And then the benefit was also that wow, I actually know the person’s character and know that we can go through a lot of have a lot of fun together and seeing downtimes and good times. And so I had a lot of elements that I thought could end up making that work. And then from there, then we started figuring out how was it that we worked together to actually build a business. But those are some of the kind of the beginning pieces of seeing just just the overall piece. He’s more organized than I am. And I knew that I was going to need that as an offset some of the craziness that I know that I can bring to the equation,

I think early on real quick, you just need to you need to recognize that there is massive overlap. Right, there is no clear cut understanding about this is exactly what you do, Matt, and this is exactly what you do, Kevin, you you have specific opinions, and you better have specific opinions like what Scott saying where Scott is awesome creatively, he’s got a great vision, and I’m really good at building something from the beginning. Right? That’s it. And then the rest is all of us happen to be able to work together to figure out how to fill the pieces in naturally, as you get bigger, the specificity in your roles starts to take shape, especially if you’re you’re honest with each other about what you’re good and what you’re bad at. And so that’s that’s kind of, it’s not, it’s not you shouldn’t expect right at the beginning to know, this is what I do. And this is what you do,

I think over time, the strengths and weaknesses and naturally enable some of the strengths to get stronger. And some of the weaknesses to even get weaker. Because you know, you can let some of that go that if you were just a solo entrepreneur that you’d have to always constantly be trying to cover the weaknesses, which means you have less time to be able to develop and focusing on the strengths. So when a good partnership, there’s things that Andy talked about that overlap where I might be able to do some of those things, okay, well, I don’t need to do I don’t need to even try to do it. Okay. And there’s things that I know that I bring to the table that Andy could be doing a decent job at but he doesn’t have to focus it on that and so naturally over time, there’s just been a little bit more of a finding out on how to leverage our strengths weaknesses together.

About what you guys enjoy and don’t enjoy like you have anything you guys each do that you don’t really enjoy, but you’re still good at that some of those skills sometimes and it’s like, challenging for me to figure out like should I focus on the thing I enjoy the most For the things sometimes I’m best at but maybe I don’t enjoy the most I don’t. Something I’ve wrestled with personally,

for, I guess to say it broadly, I love what we do, I believe in what we do, I’m passionate about our mission and our vision I can get behind it, some of the details on this is going to be the marketing plan, or this is going to be the pitch or this is going to be how we’re going to message it. I don’t care what I care about as it is right, that there’s logic behind it, that it’s going to work. But how it said,

in his passion becomes much more fun from the enjoyment of seeing the building occur pieces to what is the building being built around isn’t necessarily as important to him as what it is, to me to where it’s more of my responsibility about be determined, where is it that we’re gonna be able to be successful to have the momentum that can enable to trigger his skill set, to really get his enjoyment and satisfaction, whereas if we’re not growing, he’s gonna get bored and frustrated, if we’re doing something that we hate, I’m gonna get bored and frustrated.

So what I’m hearing is you guys have kind of aligned more around what you enjoy.

Yeah, I think it’s also but in the beginning to Andy’s point of when you’re first getting the company started, you don’t have the luxury of not doing a lot of things that you don’t like you’re wearing 10 Hats each. And then over time you keep working on trying to remove the hats that you might not have a skill set, that you’re no, you’re not going to be the best at that you might not want to cultivate and develop that discipline. And you can start removing those as you hire people in but in the beginning, no. I mean, I’m QuickBooks trying to figure out how to Creek invoices and get them cranked out. And we’re gonna hate that stuff.

Doing collection calls, or I mean, like when

on vendors to be able to help get the jobs processed and ordered while you’re making a sales call, and then ultimately accountable. Yeah, all that stuff. So all that stuff has to end up being being done by somebody. But over time, if you can kind of keep looking at the organization as what you see what you want to be able to have been built, you can start recognizing that I’m not just me at this point, I am me plus 10 others hats that I’m wearing. And then where is it that ultimately that I’m learning that this is the hat that I plan to want to be wearing, where here’s how we’re leading the organization, but then here are a couple of execution kind of capabilities, we might keep for the long run and keep developing the skill set. And but then we’re the ones that we can start hiring people in to be able to let go of but the beginning, you kind of have to think like that of the multiple hat and how to lay it out, or you get away from it.

Are you trying to do the same thing for your staff?

Oh, definitely. Once you shed those hats, you’re you’re those hats are going somewhere, right? And ideally, they’re going to somebody that’s way better than you and has and can drive you and push you you know, we’ve I’ve had that conversation a couple of times this week. How about the

people on your team? In particular? Do you treat them as trying to get some of their hats off to as well?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that’s, that’s, you know, we got Muhammad sitting back there. And that’s something we talk about a lot, there’s a fine line between too much specialization and too much general, ultimately, in my role, I should be the only generalist across different departments sales, marketing, finance, I need to know enough that when I sit across from you that I can have I can have a meaningful conversation, I can challenge you, I can understand it down to a certain level, my expectation of you is that you are pushing me with ideas, strategies, tactics, that’s gonna It’s beyond my even my understanding. And then from there, my job is to put those pieces together. Right? And to say that works. Okay. Yeah, no, no, I yeah, we’re doing that. Okay. So you need to get with and as long as that’s happening, then that’s, that’s how you all grow. And that’s ultimately how you leverage true talent to come in, by helping them fit inside of a framework, but expecting them to run their business, which is sales or marketing or client success or finance. So yeah, it’s definitely from that. Yeah.

So you, you would say, a good integrator a good complement to a visionary as a generalist, somebody who’s kind of a mile wide inch deep can kind of have a good perspective on anything, but not fully deep in any one given concentration.

You got it? Like, there are things that I know that I’m not, I’m not good at, right? I think, Scott, from a from a vision perspective, from a strategy perspective is awesome, we kind of meet in that in that strategy piece. And I think what I’m really good at is getting to the bottom of a boat that it’ll float, right, I can, I can kind of, I can shove it off, and it can, it’s going to hold weight. And then I can work with the person that’s taking the boat and sailing it, and know that I can help them make sure that we don’t build, you know, a 30 foot just on one little one little pole, and it’s just gonna tip over, right, I can help them build it. But in terms of what’s getting put on it, I don’t know.

And Amy is good. Anything is good at harnessing energy. And I think that probably for entrepreneurs, they usually the founding kind of person to see the ideas usually going to be in more of the vision person. They’re going to see the opportunity, they’re usually going to be great at rallying people around to come want to work in that business and get them some things going. But usually that same strength that a vision person has have seen opportunity that that helps get something started and helps get people motivated around it. But then at a certain point, now you’re actually trying to execute upon what the original vision was. And that’s saying about strength when the entrepreneur now is not working within the organization can turn into a weakness, because you keep seeing opportunity. And that piece can become a distraction to the team and to the company. Because you’re constantly able to see, well, we can do this, we can do that, let’s do this, I’m changing that, we’re gonna make this happen now. And that energy just turns into almost being put out in so many different directions, you just stay in one place, even though the company and the entrepreneur can be putting out so much energy. What Nandy is good at in any kind of starting point, is being able to force out clear decisions to be able to say, here’s where the energy is going to be focused on to where I’m going to power the energy this way. So we can at least start heading in a direction. And then once you start having movement forward, then you can start directing where things might be able to naturally have a better place to be able to go. But without having that harness happen. You know, the entrepreneur can be more of a wild stallion, you harness you can actually start pulling a team somewhere. And Andy does a very good job with that with anyone you hire. And he’s done a great job with with me and the overall vision and the strategy of the company is being able to have that energy harnessed to be able to have value, not just energy.

Can you talk specifics about how that happens at perk? I mean, is it come in fresh off your paddleboard in the morning, and you’re like, alright, team, we’re going this direction. And and he’s like, Well, actually, we’re kind of harness the energy this way? Or what’s the real interplay between you two guys? It’s

certainly not that I wouldn’t come into the team, first of all, right? Yeah, like we have enough separation, that any of my involvement in the team at that level of execution is going to take away Andy’s ability to be able to get done, what I want him to get done and what he knows he needs to get done. And so I think the most part, we’re working together on vision changes and strategy, things that need to have happen, making sure that we have alignment, then that would end up going down to a strategy team to have a discussion, all within a big part of the process that Andy has put in place that I’d let him to speak more to, as to actually taking original as to where I think can become possible. We agree on that, you know, he’ll challenge me on that I challenge him.

How does that interplay work? The challenge, Andy

is always a cynic. And I’m always an optimist. So I believe everything’s possible. And Andy always comes in as like, well, that’s probably not gonna happen. And then from there, you know, he starts forcing out of where I truly have to be determined, like, No, this has happened, I’d say he does a pretty good job of allowing, which is the least crazy of the opportunities and ideas I see as possible to focus in energy onto one that actually has the best opportunity to be successful. So there’s a good healthy, and it that doesn’t come easy. I mean, this is it’s still ongoing. It’s been a 17 year journey of keeping trying to move into where you have good momentum, and the now, but also haven’t move in a direction that can create a bigger opportunity down the road,

even though he knows he knows when we’re gonna debate. Right? And we’re we’ve done it long enough, where he’ll send me an idea where I’m like, That’s awesome. I mean, my job in the organization in general is to always disagree. Like, you can come to me and say the sky is blue. And I’m like, I think it’s looking gray. Because if your logic isn’t good, that’s going to come out in the debate. That’s, that is the core, the

culture of the organization, get away with Andy with just having

an idea that does that constant devil’s advocate position ever burn you out?

100%. Right. But it’s also fun, because I’m a natural. That’s kind of who I am, too. I like to think natural

going to cold water.

It is. And I think you know, what’s also not getting said is that, for all intensive purposes, we share the CEO title. And there is and this wouldn’t work in every organization, but it’s it’s kind of like the WWF Tag Team. Sometimes he’s in the ring, sometimes. I’m in the ring, sometimes we’re both in the ring. And I think I think our relationship before we started makes that easier. It wasn’t always easy to but in the beginning, but there are times when he is definitely leading the organization. And there are times when I’m definitely leading the organization. I am grateful for the times that he is because I can’t do what he does. And so there’s a there’s times right now, right with launching new markets and figuring out what’s going to work and how product market fit is going to be there. I’m there to support him and he uses me as a great filter. But the reality is like, I’m going Hey, dude, whatever, whatever we’re doing sounds good to me and an X market, right? And then at a certain point, I’m going okay, you gotta

want scale starts happening. And that’s when I start passing the baton off. But I know it’s my responsibility leveraging not just doing it, but other people organization. Yep, figures, terminations and the ideas as to where that ends up going. And we definitely are at this point, more than you know, we’re talking a lot about just the co founder partnership here. It’s now much larger than that as the people that were getting involved to help them be able to make all those decisions. And that brings a different dynamic into the partnership because you always have to know you have each other’s backs. So there’s gonna be times where he’s in a meeting with some individuals that might be frustrated with me. I might be in a meeting and having somebody firstly with Andy and it’s constantly, that rarely happens. It always happened.

Back I mean, In my past experience with slingshot, we had a whole lot of different situations as well. Do you guys ever have a situation where maybe Andy, you have something you’re working on, kind of Scott comes in Monday morning quarterback on the side is that something ever happened in the past, and maybe he starts to change something and it kind of throws it out of alignment for a minute. And you got to talk with Scott about it kind of get it back on track. It’s, it’s kind of a typical typical visionary thing. I had a, I worked with a good visionary who sometimes would do that every once in a while. I don’t know if you guys ever struggled with that. Or if you guys were really good at understanding the lines.

How do you understand this woman?

I think an easier in an anecdote that, that Jenny, our sales or sales leader, I heard her say at a at a public gathering. And then she talked to me about it afterwards. And one of the reasons she chose to come come to us was because she’s never heard us, say a bad thing about each other. Right. And I think that translates into a public setting where we’re not working, we can disagree and debate in front of a team. I mean, we we did that a lot more back in the day than we than we do today.

Why is that? Not as mature?

That’s it? Yeah, it’s it’s not there’s no lack of professionalism back in the day. But the reality is that we we pride ourselves on staying on the same page, and any disconnect in the short term immediate action steps of what’s taking place like in the next week, we’re way past that. I mean, that’s, you know, anybody walking in and one of us walking in and going, No, no, no, we’re not doing that this week, we’re doing this. It’s like we’re trying to be yours.

I think it’s just a mutual respect as to develop for what the person’s role is. And knowing that when you’re in a team setting, if Andy is leading something, and I have some challenges on it, I’m coming into his office later and talking to him about it and adjusting it that way that if I do it in front of the team, that I’m doing a disservice as to what our partnership and what his requirement in that partnership to build to get done is I’m making his job harder, which then makes my goals harder. And vice versa. If he’s had some vision challenges and stuff. If we’re not in the appropriate setting. He’s not going to come in Yeah. So just kind of takes time. But, you know, right now, I was actually just telling my wife last night, I mean, Andy, and his partnership right now is on fire. I mean, we are, we are doing great on challenging each other, advising each other pushing each other. And we’re both working our butts off right now. But that’s a you know, it’s like any marriage. I mean, look, we’ve been a 17 year marriage, he hates when I use that term. That’s basically

that’s a hard one to get out of, like I didn’t add sign up for that.

But there are peaks and valleys in any relationship in any marriage. Mine, we’re talking my wife about it. And there’s times where it’s just like, wow, this couldn’t get any better. And there’s times where you accept, like, Oh, we’re in another valley. And we know why it is. And here’s how we’re going to work through it. While we got a newborn, this kind of we’re struggling, you know, all that kind of stuff. In business, you have the same kind of peaks and valleys. And it takes a healthy communication, to work through a lot of the things that you’re talking about, to enjoy the good times, but also to be able to have communication to where you’re able to work through the valleys and understand that then any kind of relationship that you’re together that much there will be those dynamics. And when you hit those not to think that you know, this is maybe this isn’t what we should be doing or not working like no as a real life relationship where you’re challenged every single day to make something happen.

When you’re in those moments that are maybe more trying times in the business, is there something that you guys do to kind of help bring you back to baseline like the especially when things like emotions can get high? You might be grinding it out, you know, longer days than normal? Is there something that kind of helps get you back and in alignment? Because it seems like you guys spend most of your time in alignment? But you know, with any partnership with any marriage, not that I’m married, but any any relationship?

Something’s come in here?

No, oh, you’re gonna work.

17 years.

The way I thought he might jump into it, because he hates it when it’s like the marriage talk, but usually it ends up triggering with if we can tell one of us this game will be times where you can start feeling the tension between each other. And it takes somebody to be like, hey, is there anything that I’m doing that’s bothering you? Is there anything? And usually that’s like, Okay, well, what is it that you’re wanting to tell me that I’m driving you crazy on but that’s usually how it happens is first, you know, I want to make sure like, what can I do to make something better here? And then Okay, awesome. Now that now that you’ve told me that I’m really here’s what I want to tell you. Here’s how you’re driving me crazy. But usually, I mean, that takes time. It doesn’t happen very often anymore. But in the beginning part is where I talk about the communication. You have to have that openness and the reality around each other, which we’ve had that we had the good fortune of being friends, Andy is a very, very direct, I’ve actually got a hold people like don’t care what somebody else thinks he is actually literally the only person in my life that truly, like doesn’t care what people think, especially on the business kind of piece to it. He is there to get the most out of somebody’s talent and energy and drive for their own performance. He’s like an amazing coach. And so I’m more of a person that really does care what people Think. So that dynamic in the relationship can, you know is good, but it also can kind of create some different like, Oh, I’m feeling Andy’s energy, or it’s and he’s like, I don’t even know you’re upset. You know, it’s like, Okay, I gotta sit down have a marriage talk here,

it’s because it was mean doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.

So you really not care what people thinking?

Oh, I mean, that would be, that would be way too easy to say that I think I’m less aware. And I’m aware when I might I know that I’m that you might be walking away, what would bother me as if I thought you were walking away and I challenged you incorrectly, right or unprofessionally? Or not in a way that was going to make you better.

He’s not ever going to leave something unsaid because your potential feelings if it needs to

be said, okay, so you’re consciously aware, but you value truth over harmony. So

yeah, there’s a you know, we talk a lot about it at work with the team, which is the hardest thing, the hardest thing about starting a difficult, the hardest thing about a difficult conversation is just starting the conversation. And at that point in time, if the end result of what you’re after is, is good, right and correct and beneficial, then the difficult conversation isn’t difficult, you’re just working through something that might be a little bit challenging. And I think that is, the faster you can have a team that that all kind of works that way, the faster you kind of cut through this, this BS layer of like, I don’t want to hurt you know, Kevin’s feelings right now, because I’m going to tell him something that now I mean, we’re not.

26:28
And a lot of things that would happen I think on a as an entrepreneur vision is what you use to be able to get somebody to want to come work there to be energized by the company to feel that energy, this is what we’re going to do this is what’s possible, it’s tough to have that same person also be the person to be in like, Okay, now now I’m gonna get the most out of you, in order to have that occur.

26:46
I talked about that a little bit, Scott, I mean, you holding kind of a Fire Keeper, keeping the energy of that company,

it’s very exhausting. If you’re the Fire Keeper all the time I went through that I don’t ever want to go through it again. So I try not to do it, I try to kind of like be the provider of an energy of when it’s needed. Be a lightning rod or some being the energy piece to it to where when something new has to have happen, or when you can recognize that people might be not seeing where we might be able to be going and how do we get people motivated to go have that happen? That is a different skill that has to be developed over time. There’s some natural kind of pieces to it. But you work on knowing when to do it, how to do it. But it’s also very difficult to be that person who’s trying to be able to be the motivator and the energizer, but then also be the accountability person at the same time. So that’s where Andy ends up coming in on being a much more of accountability kind of part two, I’m not good at it. I probably value harmony, a little bit too much over the directness of what needs to have happened. I’ve learned to try to be aware of it. But I also have learned how to how to avoid situations where that weakness may even hurt the organization.

How do you deal with your down days? Like I’m reflecting on my own experience? Like, you know, I remember when I was CEO, slingshot, like, there would be days, I mean, I did my share of the fire keeping and there would be days sometimes I was like, how am I going to get myself in a position to go in there knowing everybody, all eyes will be on me. And it’s gonna be you know, assessing how I’m feeling

we were we were talking about this last night. The short answer is you got to suck it up. The benefit of a partnership is that that Scott and I can be upset, not excited, depressed with each other questioning what’s going to happen in the future? Is this the right move? I’m not right. Sure. Because we’re right in the beginning pieces of it. I mean, we can do that with each other. But when you’re inside with the team, Muhammad’s job other executives jobs, their job is to is to be 100% Confident, 100% excited and 100% believing in what it is that we’re trying to accomplish. Because the people that come to them need to feel comfortable to say sometimes when they’re having their bad days, they’ve got to have somebody to talk to. And that person is their rock and it kind of works up. It’s okay, I am a sounding board for the executive team. When they come to me they want to talk to me about I don’t know this right, you know, like the total, you know, I love those conversations. That’s exactly the right conversation I should be having and I love the fact that they feel comfortable having those conversations with me, my job for them is to is to get them back to the point where they feel good about what it is remind them about what it is that we’re trying to do and how that fits into the bigger picture. And then they leave hopefully reenergized and they don’t that doesn’t translate to the team itself. We’ve said that we’ll say this intermittently, where it’s like thank God we’re doing this together because it I can’t imagine being by myself it would it would be

that was actually something I want to key in on or from Scott a couple couple of days ago that you guys do a practice I was highly curious about which is two months sabbaticals for each of you. Every now and again. I told him that I take

crap I haven’t taken much.

But in our roles are different that way. I think it’s good for him from a creative standpoint. And I know that when he leaves and comes back it’s exactly what what the organization needs. And he’s gotten incredibly effective at understanding how to channel that energy. I mean, It’s what we have as an opportunity wouldn’t be wouldn’t be what it was, you know, I wouldn’t have the same opportunities in my life if it wasn’t for, you know what Scott’s what Scott’s skill sets are. And I also am fully aware that what his role is, is necessary for him to be away,

it also enables me to get out of the way for me to do his job, too. So there is a recharging kind of piece to it. That is awesome. That enables me to come back full of energy and have time to get away a lot of the stuff off my plate that I’ve gotten more into execution mode than creative mode, to be able to know what things might pop up in the head when I’m not grinding on me the execution part. But it also forces things off my plate. So just the most recent time, I had two executives reporting to me on the product side, and I had hired them in, help me get everything going with them. But we had reached the point to where my involvement with them was causing more frustration for everybody. Rather than having one team unified were underneath Andy. And so it made it easy to have that two month kind of piece to it and be like, Well, alright, you’re reporting to him for two months, I’m not even here. And then by the time it come back, enables me to be able to say everything is totally off my plate. Now, where’s the best within the framework of the business strategy we have put in place? Where can I now best apply myself in execution mode, within that harness to say, now I’m working in the organization, not on it, but I’m in that harness to be able to say no, here’s how I’m pulling as hard as we can within it. Do that for a period of time, I use the cheetah and the horse analogy, I am much more of a cheetah, I can run extremely fast, I can make some amazing thing happened that I will need, I will crash and I will lay in the sun and need a chance to be able to recover from that Andy is much more like a horse and when she can carry people on his shoulders for a long period of time consistently over and over and over again. And to me that sums up probably the best way as to where our roles come into play of, by the time I’m ready to fall down, I need a break. And he is there to be able to pick up and be able to have that on his shoulders in some fashion, I’m able to continue that momentum moving forward. While I set up to be able to know where is it the first next place that we can have a major impact on moving something forward.

Interesting. I still wonder if you’ll take a vacation at slingshot we did. We kind of did that not two months, probably more like two weeks to a month. But we would kind of cycle on that. And we did have a understanding that each of us were capable of running the organization for a short period of time. That was that was great sometimes get that chance to recharge to just look at things a little differently. I

32:19
think he I mean, we talked about him doing that. But it wouldn’t come back to me. It’d be Hollywood groom somebody else in the executive team to be able to have a shot at just organizing that kind of heart to it, I would assist that person. But I don’t think that’s something that we would, at this point, it would confuse the team too much. If I were to step back into that role.

My funnest experience, or my the funniest experience experience for me on that was I did that early in the slingshot days and came back and we had a four day work week and German air and we’re like, hey, we do the four day work. I’m like, we’ll give it a try.

20% productivity

come back and be like, do you think we could get a six day work?

In all laws, yeah, I could be gone for a month right now. I mean, our team strong. And there is it’s funny for word of we’re at an inflection point where my role is changing. You know, there’s always that uncomfortableness that takes place. So it’s, you know, there. But when I when he first said that I instantly went to what Scott was thinking, and I’m also in the back of my mind going these guys, these guys got it. I mean, they, you know, we’re at a point in our organization now, where they certainly joined for the mission, right, and they believe what we’re doing, and they love the culture, but they work for their boss, and their boss isn’t me and their bosses and Scott, we might help in the recruiting process. And we certainly do with a tremendous amount of recruiting, but they come in, they work from Mohammed, or they work for Paul, or they work for Jenny and getting

that transitions that have that occur and getting the company to a size where that was possible, helps out with a lot of that energy piece, not being the fire for that first 4050 people where you really are like making everything energy possible, and happiness, just it. And there’s a certain point where you have to get out of the way of that otherwise, you just will burn up.

Yeah, talk to me about how you guys approach the culture because you walk into the park offices, you talk to anyone at Park, you feel that energy of the culture. And my guess is that that was very intentional, not just sort of like something that evolved on its own, especially when you’ve got a cheetah and a horse. You know, it’s like, which culture are you going to be? I imagine it’s some combination of the two. So it’s like how did

that tensional from day one, first hire do an open book management.

Tell me about open book management. What

does that so we share all the financials with the company, they’re able to see all the financials that we look at on a profit and loss piece of it. They’re able to see what we’re trying to work with on cash, how we’re trying to make those investments pay off and they’re involved in hearing the strategy and execution and being able to see a lot of those components come together. Our goal, as from originally started out was I wouldn’t want to work in a company which I wasn’t also been able to kind of Do a part of the game being played. And so everybody has to understand there’s different roles within that game that’s being played. But we at least want people to feel like they’re aware of that piece of it and understand how it might be coming together, that also encourages someone to be able to see how they might feel to have a better impact, be able to seek out a role to have more of an impact and into that game. But at the very least, we want everybody to feel a part of that whole process. And we try to share as much as we possibly can. But that’s another example. I think, on the partial partnership piece. That vision on that culture was definitely something from the very beginning laying out as to what I wanted that to feel and be like an Andy has put in the process and place in which I’ve very little have to even think about culture at this point. He has put together the process, the systems, the accountability, the people involved that have an ongoing process, ensuring making sure that the team now has more ownership of that culture that we set the original foundation for in place. So if I was still the one trying to make, that’d be an awesome place to work, I mean, it’d be less like a do and go get something else made to get started in a good way.

So so it was sort of like you came to the table with this open book management piece together, and then from there, and he kind of created the systems making sure that you know, we’re not just showing you profit and loss, we’re explaining what that means, and how that drives into key performance indicators and how that drives into your quarterly.

I’m very good at talking about what could be possible, we would still be talking about all the things you could learn and do as a part of the pull culture, part culture. That would sound amazing. But if I was the one doing it, you would get in there and be like, Well, we’ll see a lot of this stuff actually happened. Andy, actually,

it’s not, it’s not like you just know what to do, right? I mean, there’s a lot of selling for a couple years. And what it is that we do, and there’s not a lot, you know, there, there’s not much, there’s not much depth to that pool. So it’s a constant evolution. It’s a constant evolution. I mean, the way we think about it today is that we have three core tenants, right, it’s all wrapped around the idea that we treat business as a game. The first is that you have a meaningful mission, which points everybody in the right direction, what’s your meaningful mission, creating meaningful engagement between consumers and brands, that’s what we work towards every single day. That’s what our product is. And the second thing is that we want to make sure that every single person in the organization understands how their role on a minute by minute hour by hour basis impacts and ultimately allows us to accomplish that mission. Because you’re spending your time here, that’s a choice, right, and you’re giving a lot of your work you’re giving you’re giving a lot of your time of your life, and you’re committing it to perk in this instance. So it’s it needs to be meaningful in you need to understand why it impacts this grander vision of what it is that we’re trying to accomplish. The last piece is that we as an organization promise that we’re going to continue to bring in talented and like minded individuals, those are the three core tenets of our culture. Now, once those are kind of in place, really my my responsibility inside of the culture, if we’re calling accountability, another way of thinking about it might be in the terms of the of the word urgency, momentum keeps me up at night, and the fickleness of that is what I think about a lot. Complacency because we have a good quarter, too much upsetedness If we have a bad quarter, you know, the idea is that that just that write them out, write that write them out where you can have fun, but you’re working your butt off, right? And for me, there’s a there, it’s a feel a little bit you have systems and you have metrics, and you can you have it, but you can walk into that organization, and you can either know that people aren’t working very hard, or you can know and we’re feeling way too good about ourselves. Or you can go guys, all right, let’s loosen up a little bit, okay, I mean, one bad month, let’s, let’s let, it doesn’t no big deal we’re gonna get, we’re gonna get hit in the face a lot. And so that urgency is something that you’re constantly kind of bouncing around the structured environment, if that makes sense.

It makes a lot of sense

and cost to evolution on that piece to it. So he talked about the vision, I mean, the mission and then the vision, we just recently adjusted to be kind of stealing from Elon Musk’s master plan is that the company we felt was beyond the standpoint of just having here’s a mission, we’re trying to accomplish this goal. It was actually we felt we had gotten to a point to where our vision was clear enough to be able to say, here are the multiple steps we plan on taking as a company in order to be able to help be able to have this big goal we have in place turn into a reality. And so that was Andy coming in. And I was working on being able to how to communicate some of the plan that we had to have happen. He was the one that put it in the structure of saying, let’s just let’s just borrow from what Elon Musk did just lay it out like this. And then I played lead on a lot of that content with him challenging back as to what that is but for me to feel comfortable that I can stand behind saying this is what we’re going to go do. And Andy feel comfortable with. Yes, I’ve had my input into it. And that is what we’re going to go do is stand in front of the company and say it that is the harness. That is what causes me to wear when we’re now looking at a salesperson comes in and says man, I just got off the phone with his real estate company. And this is going to be awesome and we can really do it, they want to buy it. And I’ve already determined that real estate is not a market we can take on right now I know they want to buy it, I know you want to sell it, but that is outside of this harness and we’re we’re gonna be able to get to where we want to, if we accomplish these next things, real estate will be there. And if real estate passed us by that point will, there’ll be another opportunity that we can pursue. But if we start trying to take that on now, along with all that we’re already trying to get done, we’re not gonna get anywhere, having that written down, having that be forced out. And I do like the harness kind of piece to it keeps me from just bucking around anywhere, which way I can go, and actually cause me to know, while I don’t want to get in front of Andy and have to be like, outside of what we talked about, I don’t wanna be in the front of the company, and be outside what we talked about. But there are times where changes do happen. And it’s in a written word, which means there’ll be times as a strategy company will be getting in here and be like, let’s review what we have here. Do we all still agree, this is actually what we should be doing? Or if things adjusted to where we can adjust the harness, but you don’t go outside the harness unless you’ve adjusted it to where you know that as a company, you’re all pulling in one direction? Have you

naturally kind of learned how to develop the discipline to stay focused as a visionary or is that constantly challenging for you,

I always feel trapped. I mean, we are spending a ton of money, we have 110 people in there, and we’re not touching remotely have the opportunity of what I want to go after what I see as possible. So very much in the discipline of I very much don’t want to be perceived as the crazy idea entrepreneur who’s just full of ideas, but is a little too chaotic to be able to get value out of it. So there’s some self awareness that took place, you know, usually be on playing alone long enough, you kind of get some more self awareness. Having a great friend and partner challenged me on those things you get more aware of it. Certainly being aware of it has helped make Andy’s job easier, I would hope. And it’s still a constant challenge that I’m sure at times I get outside of it. Even what I’m saying

yes, it’s fun, right? Yeah, hell yeah, let’s do that out kick ass. Right. And I mean, and then you realize that you’re nowhere, right? All you’ve done is you’ve just pressed the gas pedal and just having to be in mud. You go, Whoa, we’re gonna go well, we just wasted gas, which just cost us money. And we haven’t we haven’t. We haven’t gone anywhere. super strong. And it takes I mean, and that is, I mean, the in the in the in the balance, and that is that part of what he needs. We have to we have to make airs, right? We have to test stuff. But you have to understand the reasons behind what it is that we’re trying to accomplish. Just randomly testing, just randomly testing stuff.

42:16
What do you guys do when you get into gridlock where you’re just not going to come to resolution on something? You got two people that three at slingshots. So we had a third it’d be tough. Well, we at least wait a third to say, Hey, I’m citing this way or that way. With you guys being too when you guys are just like not seeing eye to eye? What do you guys do?

Keep talking? I don’t think we’ve ever not taken that second longer times than others. But you keep working it out until there’s some,

like, stay in the room until there’s resolution? Or will you be like? Yeah, who would win? I’m just kidding. Now I know why you boast. I said he’s such good shape.

It would be you should make it a reality TV.

A couple of scrolls fighting? Maybe I

know, I mean. So what we’ve gotten good at is that we know when the other person isn’t in isn’t open to discussion. Right? I’ll come back later. Yeah, I’ll come back later. Right. And I think that’s one where we haven’t used as the the concept of self awareness in the form of partnership. You know, Scott is much better about bringing feelings to the table than I am, I’m just not good at that. Else doll, just, you know, let it eat me up on the inside. And he’s better at making that making that possible. I also have to be aware of how stubborn I am that self awareness. I mean, that’s just one minor example. We know each other very, very, very well. Right. And the reality is that we overlap in terms of who we are as people by probably 98%, you know, the other 2% are what we’re good at at work. So that makes up pretty, pretty dang easy. But the more we’re more around each other that’s like that 2% is the only thing right as opposed to the 98% you can kind of get lost in that sometimes. So that self awareness allows you to know when times aren’t going well and in I know and I mean, you know, it’s like morally I don’t know how you guys are but when my mom’s in my head right when I’m when I’m when I might do something and I you know, what would my mom think of that? Right? I think when it comes to business decisions 100% of the time Scott’s in my head and I know that I’m debating Scott in my head when I’m when I before I go to him, right? It makes the decisions better in general when I’m working with our team, it makes us it makes me better when I’m prepared to have a conversation with him when I’m trying to sell something and I think that’s the ultimate partnership is that I’m I’m constantly debating him in my head which sucks but having him in my head

sounds like you’re pretty consistent.

Same type of thing. You know, I’ll be looking at things and knowing what I want to say and do and knowing that I have to go review that with Andy so I’m not even gonna let myself say what would be easy talking about Harmony thing, I’d rather have the battle here and not have to go and do the harmony here, but then have to go back to Andy and talk about what just kind of took place because I chose to have harmony over sticking the course of what we already committed to or whatever it might be.

Talk to me a little bit about education. I know that you guys went through pretty crazy period a few years ago, just in terms of what the business was doing. I mean, when I went and toured Park back in 2007, I think it was your third year as best company in Indiana to work for maybe fourth year on the Inc 500 fastest growing companies list. Talk to me about how you guys continue to grow, even when you’re growing like crazy, like, how do you how do you continue to push yourself to get better, so that you stay on that trajectory?

Well, yeah, the first growth ride where the business grew so fast, and we accomplish so much. And then what we thought was impossible, when we first even started, the business got ahead of both of our ability to lead it, we Andy wasn’t as good that time and organizing and structuring. And I certainly wasn’t as good to be able to know where to take the business now that we’ve achieved this level. And so the believer in that when the students ready, the teacher appears. And so the Harvard Business School Program appeared to be able to go seek out that knowledge and awareness. And it had a tremendous impact on me to be able to understand how to get some of that ability to self control, you know, when he starts seeing all that layout, you pay that kind of money, you have that kind of education of understanding, this is what a good business strategy is made up of it forces me to have, okay, there’s only you only need so much vision. And then you need to focus around the strategy to turn that vision into reality, not constantly getting turned on by all the things you see as possible. I think it had tremendous impact on Andy, even more so on just being able to have the organizational pieces of the business to be able to have that value be able to be attained. Then we went through the recession. And we learned a tremendous amount from that piece. So you’re always constantly i i like to say I was wanting to feel like I’m challenged because there was a part in that business to where I got bored. And I was bored. Because I wasn’t being challenged, I wasn’t being challenged, because I didn’t know what to do. And so I always want to be able to feel like I’m ahead of the business. So that way I can challenge and push to where I can feel that challenge and opportunity. And don’t ever allow myself to get complacent because of confusion or boredom or lack of vision.

Yeah, that education was we’ve all done sales, right? And so when you when you get done with your first sale, and you can look back at the whole process, and you go, Oh, that’s a to b, right. Okay, I got it. Because when you’re when you haven’t gotten to B, you’re looking at you’re standing, are they going like how do I and so Harvard was getting yourself above the business and going, Oh, okay, these are all the pieces. And this is what it looks like if it’s complete. And this is how it works, and harmony, and this is how you scale it. And this is what huge companies are doing. Okay, well, who the hell are we? And that was one of the nice things for us is that when we went there, we thought we were pretty cool. And then we got there. And we were a spec, you know, I’m sitting next

to it’s always nice to have the poorest house in the neighborhood. Yeah, that was Article

Three, I got a guy from India that’s running a $3 billion family on business. Right. And you’re going okay, well, we did 30 million last year. You guys did that? We

thought we were pretty cool.

No, no. So that was nice, too. I mean, the humbleness aspect of it. And I mean, if you’re a naturally competitive person, you wouldn’t be in this business. If you weren’t in the business. If you weren’t, that also is like, and then you get known you’re like, you know better than me. I can do that.

Well, it sounds like you’ve really pushed yourself to surround yourself with people who are steps ahead of you. I mean, do you each have your own sort of mentors that are helping shape you as either the integrator or the visionary type of the business?

Yeah, from a vision kind of standpoint, that’s not something that I usually need more help on harnessing the vision part, then I’ll read and find different ways to able to get the inspiration to see different things I need to surround I need to meet in environments to where there’s if I’m trying to be able to learn more about what we can do on a marketing technology, because I need to be around more of that. And then ideas inspiration will come. They’ll Godfrey has had a big impact on us as a business. So for those that are Indianapolis, can you explain co founder of a primo here when the first marketing tech platforms sold it for a very large amount, and we were able to sell him on getting on board and believing in our dreams and being able to help advise us to build to make possible he is very much Thanks, Bill. And I think that he is more of an he’ll say that he is more of an operator in the mole mole. And he is than vision type of person. So it was a CEO, right? Yeah, I’ve met with his co founder as Rob as well, who is definitely more of an idea product kind of person. So being able to see that kind of partnership and all that kind of, you know, getting to know them as individual separate. I’ve never even seen them work together. But I can imagine. And so he’s had he’s had a big influence for sure. On

both of us. biggest lesson you’ve learned from Bill.

When Bill when I laid out everything that we were going to do is accompany the software and all that it was going to do and here’s how all businesses are going to pay for it. And he went up and erased 90% of it and said if you just do this, you’ll accomplish all the goals that you need. And it’s like, he’s like you have no idea how part is going to be just to get that 10% piece done. And so that’s another piece to it. I mean, that was that was just four years ago, right? So

how did how did that feel immediately as a visionary, you know, being like, I want to do this, you want me to do that?

I usually don’t argue with logic, when it’s there. If you don’t have logic, and we’re just going off opinion, then I’m gonna take my opinion, I’m usually gonna win that opinion battle in my head. And so what’s gonna happen, are you it was a relief. It was early. I mean, Bill, you know, he came,

you’re behind Bill like, yeah, that’s that

stage to listen to Bill Godfrey, at that point that I certainly hadn’t gotten to the point of the self awareness that I said that I had, I might have argued with him at 27. And thought that like, well, you just, that’s why you limited yourself. self limiting beliefs. I certainly wasn’t doing that at 37. It was like, Okay, I got it, I’ll erase 90% of that. But now what’s great is that we’ll be focusing in on that what we’re gonna focus in on isn’t even the product that we ended up creating, we actually found out what we truly were needing to actually create by focusing on that one piece. And now that we’re having great success momentum with that, then we’re now able to start seeing how some of these other things that I initially had laid out, could become possible. But we wouldn’t have gotten there by tackling all of that it was by saying, just doing this, and now it’s adding one little thing at each time and recognizing that there’s a long journey. And that you don’t have to see exactly what is going to be down that road, you have to have an idea of where you’re going. And then you have to see exactly as to what you’re going to be doing on this next quarter, next year to make that possible. And

51:33
the trickle down effect is across the organization is huge, right? It makes everything so much easier to align. And everybody’s responsibilities inside of that small. And I have air quotes up here, right? Small idea, right, which is a brand big, huge vision. But comparative, what we thought is smaller. Everybody goes, I got it, right. And then it just works, right, especially if you have talented people in it. So as specific, right, remove the word small, it’s about idea about word specific, as specific as the idea can be, makes you incredibly, incredibly focused, and free to move very, very fast.

So you guys have talked a little bit about the vision of what you’re working on the culture. That is perfect. Talk to me about what you’re doing now, what you’re excited about. We have a few minutes left. And and I want to make sure we’re talking about what you’re doing at Park because I think it’s really exciting. We’ve used the technology ourselves, to drive engagement with our product and our audience.

And so everything that we’re working on right now is in improving the consumer experience to increase website engagement and conversion for those business verticals in which their prospects or customers are online doing research. But then there’s usually a next step to a physical sale. So those business verticals don’t really have a great marketing software that helps them be able to get the value of even their website, it’s almost totally disconnected, because so much of their business is still in the physical side. So automotive furniture and multifamily apartments is what we’re focusing on right now. And then we’ll keep moving on to the different verticals that have good budgets, good sales price, and consumers are doing a lot of time on the website. And then sales occurring, but there’s just not been a technology that makes that consumer experience much better to cause a consumer to want to spend more time on site, engage become a lead and actually take that next step to be on sale are able to track that all to really give somebody a be able to look at their website as well look at the money I’m making from my website, not just the traffic I’m seeing go from Google Analytics.

It’s an exciting product. Exciting company. What what’s next for the company? Andy?

What’s next for the company? Yeah,

what are the things that

we are in? What’s next? Yeah. So again, focus boys, what we’re what we’re working on has a has a significant addressable market. And we are going vertical by vertical. And our job is to continue to increase those verticals while improving the product that we have in the existing verticals. So we get in with a product that we think is the best it could be to to make ourselves successful in that. And then we add on and we learn and we get feedback and we add additional services but we stay focused at the core and tackle more and more and more.

54:03
I’m not looking for a job but are you guys hiring?

Of course we’re hiring Yes.

Yes. Many positions on our website perk.com with a Q P

X slash culture.

Cool. If people want to find you guys online individually, is there a social platform that you each have a preference for using?

Twitter, big gamer with a Z bi Z gamer?

How about you, Andy?

And seemingly nobody in the planet has Andy medley is the name so Andy medley

awesome. We’ll link that up in the show notes. We’ll put all of this with links to some of the resources we talked about on powderkeg.com. Kevin and I really appreciate you guys being as candid as you are helping us you know, as we’re figuring out our co founder relationship and how we can best grow this organization at powderkeg. And I’m sure all of our listeners here on powderkeg. If you’re still listening still watching, I hope that you will share this through your Facebook feed share this with Friends, share this work with potential entrepreneurs because there’s so much value in in what you guys shared. And I hope you’ll come back and join us sometime. Thanks

for having us. Yeah, this is awesome. Thanks, guys. Absolutely, thank

you. That’s it for our interview with Scott Hill and Andy medley, the cofounders of perk, but it does not have to be the end of the conversation. Again, you can find both of these amazing entrepreneurs on Twitter at at biz gamer that Scott bi Z gamer. And then you can find Andy at Andy medley that spelled M Edley, you can find out more about perk at P r q.com. We’ve used it on our site to drive leads and engagement for content. These guys are amazing partners of ours. So I really hope you check them out. We love these guys. It’s amazing what they’re doing. But if you want more of Scott Hill, you can get it right now just go back one episode. And listen to him the one on one interview with him. I’ve already really listened to it myself. So many good nuggets in there. That’s episode 42. When we talk about building a visionary skill set to help identify and capitalize on all kinds of business opportunities. I love that conversation. But if you want more of Kevin Bailey and trust me, I cannot get enough of Kevin Bailey. I have a literally in the office late tonight with him doing a little after hours work on a couple of projects. But Kevin is my business partner. He’s the CMO at powderkeg. We’ve worked together in the past he is amazing entrepreneur and visionary himself. And if you want more of Kevin Bailey, my business partner and the CMO at powderkeg, amazing entrepreneur and visionary and talented integrator and implementer. Make sure you check out episode 37 when he and our CTO Robert Harris, also amazing serial entrepreneur. The two of them are discussing building products that people love. One of my favorite episodes. Again, that’s episode 37. And for more stories on entrepreneurs, leaders and professionals outside of Silicon Valley, make sure you give us a little subscribe on iTunes, you can find us at powderkeg.com/itunes. It’s a handy dandy link we created just for you. You want to subscribe there because we have some amazing guests coming up. So please don’t miss that. And while you’re at it, please please, please leave us a review on iTunes. This is how we reach new people. And the positive reviews we’ve already received have helped us dramatically grow our audience, we’ve got a helpful companion website@powderkeg.com. You can find show notes for this episode, as well as all of the past articles, and interviews and even events. So if you’re interested in events and meeting me in person, or maybe some of the rest of the powderkeg community come on out to one of our powderkeg pitch nights we have them all over the United States right now. But at those pitch nights, you can come and connect with other tech entrepreneurs, investors and professionals that are just like you we also live streaming those events. So if you can’t make it out in person, or if we’re not in your city yet, you can check us out at facebook.com/powderkeg. Again, you can learn all about those events as well as new articles and episodes of powderkeg igniting startups@powderkeg.com I’ll see you there or we’ll talk to you in the next episode.

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