#9 – Podcast video new version

Transcript

[00:00:02] Let’s start today’s episode with a little riddle.

[00:00:07] What machine would be the best leader? The elevator, of course, because the elevator lifts people up and that’s what great leaders does as well. OK. Maybe not the perfect metaphor, but I’m going to stick with it anyway. So welcome to today’s episode of Becoming Great. And you might have heard me talking in some other podcasts about a specific episode, and that’s the reason why this exists. This is about finding a great leader for us. Finding a great leader for great and great is a next generation charity project where we will build a commercial business, but we will donate 100 percent of the profits to charity because we believe that that’s the most efficient way that we can help the world. And in this podcast, it’s me, Eric Burgman and my good friend Emil Ed Koch. And we are learning together and at the same time telling the story about how great is becoming great. Today we are talking about the role that we’re looking for. If that’s a CEO, CPO, CEO, whatever you want to call it, we refer to it as a great leader. And this is a very senior role, someone who will build a team that today is zero people. And in a few years, it will be a hundred. So it’s gonna be a big job for someone who is a tech lover and a great leader. And you could either listen to this episode or you can read more about this job at great dot com slash careers. And there’s a final a little note that our producer, Frederick, thought that we should put in here. Was that in this episode?

[00:01:51] It sounds a little bit like I’ve just been dumped by a girlfriend and I’m talking about her like the one who got away. So that’s a little bit of Entergy’s you will feel in this episode. Let’s dive into it. Welcome.

[00:02:07] It’s.

[00:02:14] All right. Good morning, Eric. I’m curious, how are you doing today?

[00:02:22] I’m volatile today. I thought I was good then. I was really bad for a bit and now I’m feeling a lot better again without going into explicit detail.

[00:02:32] All right. Are you my friend? Well, I’ve just seen the most incongruence chicken I ever seen anyone ever do.

[00:02:42] This area is not going to say, I’m going to say it.

[00:02:46] Eric said chicken. What? I’m doing absolutely fine today. And three second later, he’s throwing up.

[00:02:56] I did run to the bathroom, to be fair, all over the screen. Everyone was grossed. Yeah.

[00:03:06] So this is transparency.

[00:03:09] It’s all right.

[00:03:13] I’d like to I’d like to her to just address that. I’m actually feeling surprisingly well. So I’m not pushing myself to do this episode right now. And to me, that’s an important thing. If I would feel shitty, I would not do this. And I don’t want to pretend that I’m feeling shitty and doing it anyway. Mm hmm.

[00:03:32] That’s a good thing to clarify. And today, like you said in the introduction, this call is going to be focused on a role that is very important for great.

[00:03:43] It’s the role of the CEO, C, CPO, whatever you want to call it.

[00:03:49] And we choose to call it a great leader. We’re looking for a leader for this organization. And I know that this idea is something that you have very fresh in your mind, and that is something that has cost you quite a bit of pain recently and wasted.

[00:04:09] Yes. So to start to it in a bit of a different direction, I’ll I’ll get back to your question. I really like to build. I really like to find the leader of the team to build a product as the first person that we recruit for this.

[00:04:33] And the reason for that is that one of the mistakes that I did in the past with Catena was that we hired a lot of I hired a lot of junior people. And then we grow and we grow. And I had to hire a manager. And the problem was that none of the junior people were senior enough to take that role. So I had to take someone from the outside. And that was tricky for some of the people who were in the team to accept that they got a boss from the outside and not one of them got promoted. And at the same time, that manager got stuck with the team that they wouldn’t put together themselves. So it created a lot of friction and we grow so rapidly. So this actually happened plenty of times during our organization’s growth and it’s just kind of timescale stuff. So we we grew from 0 people to 80 people in the first three years, and that’s when most of this happened. So we started with 10 and then we needed a manager for those guys and then we were 30 and none of them were really good senior enough to be the manager, everyone else. So we had a lot of this kind of generation shifts and no manager had built our team. So there was never a perfect match there and no team wherever super fond of their manager for the same reasons. So with great, I would love to find the person who will be in charge of the product. You can start with being in charge of what strategy to apply, starting in that direction and then building the team they want.

[00:06:13] So the team can feel connected to the leader and the leader to feel connected to the team. So I’d love to start in that direction instead of doing it the other way around this time, because I feel that in the long term that’s a far superior strategy. And I don’t want to do the same mistakes all over again, and I think that this is the best way of doing it. But that leads to us now being in a in a bottleneck situation, because there is a lot of people who want to start working with grades and have applied for various tasks with us. But we don’t want to hire someone. We have their leader in place that will then be in charge of actually hiring them. So we can’t really progressed with anything until we find that person. And to get back to your original question then, why this is in a bit of an emotional turmoil for me at the moment and a bit of chaos is that I’ve I’ve had a friend that I really wanted for this role and I felt that he would be a perfect fit. We will have all of this trust together. We have a lot of history. I know he’s super skilled and talented. He’s a great leader. He is this loving tech guy, which I would really want for this. And in my head, he’s kind of said yes to this role nine months ago, which was just only in my head. It never really happened. I just couldn’t picture this not happening.

[00:07:40] And now this week, he well, last week he declined and. Yeah, that took me by surprise in many ways and I felt very sad about that and really looking forward to us working together. And it also meant that I haven’t even considered any other options.

[00:08:02] So, yeah, I felt.

[00:08:07] And get a bit depressed over that, actually. It set me back a lot of. Well, a knowing that. He didn’t want to work in that environment that was so obvious to me and B, we’re now far behind the planned timeline because of this, because now we need to reset more or less and look for this leader somewhere else, which then leads to this. This episode was like, what is this person? Who are we looking for? I believe that I will refer to this in various podcasts. Moving on and people will be able to find this episode and hear us talking about what we believe is a great leader and who this job would be perfect for.

[00:08:54] I understand that would be very frustrating for you because I know how eager you are to start building are different kinds of products. And maybe you are that leader we’re looking for and you’re checking in on this episode. And if you are, we are going in the end of this call to describe this role more in depth. But for now, Eric, would you summarize what is what is it we’re looking for? What is this? What kind of role are we talking about? Just briefly and we’ll get back to it.

[00:09:26] Yeah. So very briefly, we’re looking for someone who will be in charge of building the entire product side of of great. Someone who will take ownership of that from both strategic and operational perspective and someone who will build the entire team behind it. So basically. Someone who is has been on a big journey before and are looking to do a to do it themself with a lot more meaning because we’re giving away 100 percent of our profits or someone who maybe they have sold their own business and want to do this again or they’ve been employed on a journey like that. I want to go on it again. Sutt Basically someone who is the love child between Elon Musk and Bill Gates. Tech loving guy who is a great leader with a high emotional intelligence and would love the idea of building a remote organization with a lot of transparency and honesty.

[00:10:33] So let’s say you are that person. I bet you’re wondering kind of why would I want to work at great.

[00:10:46] Yeah, that’s probably a couple of things about what’s in it for for you. What’s in it for the one listening to this?

[00:10:54] I think that’s a good place of starting this up.

[00:11:00] We are looking to build something over a lifetime. So personally, I’ve been stuck in a quarterly financial cycle working in a company that’s publicly listed and that takes away a lot of the long term strategic decisions.

[00:11:17] So for someone who wants to have the long term approach to just see what can we do in the furthest possible timeline. This is the perfect job. Who wants to have that possibility to think about that?

[00:11:31] Someone who wants to be part of a meaningful project where we will do something that I don’t think that anyone has has done before. And we’re going more into what is what the product is and these kind of things in. In episode four of this podcast. So it’s shakeout that if you want to know more about the product in general, what is that episode called?

[00:11:54] The four pillars of great or something like that. Yeah. Episode four. So we’re actually describing the product more, more in-depth.

[00:12:06] But we’re trying to create well, we are creating what I believe is a unique organization where we are actually checking in like we just did and very vulnerable, talking about how we’re feeling today. We are. Doing this remotely with the full flexibility and full freedom there. These are all things that we’re experimenting with. So someone who is who want to have a lot of ideas of how they would want to build an organization in ways that they probably haven’t done before would be a perfect match in this because it will be a I want to say, playground, but it doesn’t feel quite right. It’s an experimental playground or how to build an organization in a better way and in a new way than it’s the norm out there. So, yeah, there’s plenty of different angles for this.

[00:12:54] So.

[00:12:56] What do you see and as in what what what’s the benefit of a leader to be an outspoken leader get from being the leader of the great team?

[00:13:05] Well, for me, the.

[00:13:09] The thing that I like the most about the way organization is structure is the most important thing for me is the purpose. And the purpose in this case is that great is donating all of its profits to charity. And I find that very meaningful because that means that all the effort that I put in that is worth more than the salary I get will get donated to a very good cause. And to me, the difference between that and making money for a owner is is huge. And another key thing for me, because I’m where I’m used to working from home, I’m used to have a very flexible life, is that I can choose when and where I work. The organization will be build, promote for me. Those are key differences between great and what I think it’s many other organizations. So if those things are important for you, I think this would be a interesting organization to be a leader in.

[00:14:11] Yeah, I agree. So what what what do you think it would be like to be a leader of our team?

[00:14:16] How is our team different from from the average company under.

[00:14:24] An image I get in my head is that we we’re all kind of personal development junkies. We are six people right now and we all just want to get better, better as humans. And I think it’s easy to see that in how we are communicating with each other and how all of our meetings are being run. And I notice a lot of people on this team that really value honesty. So the kind of feedback we can expect to give to each other is often very direct, but still loving. And I feel like there’s not that much hierarchy in this organization, which means that I can give very honest feedback to you.

[00:15:05] For example, even though you’re my boss, I’d like to tell a story on that one. So.

[00:15:13] So to give some perspective on this, what we’re doing right now is we’re learning a lot about public speaking and podcasting and these kinds of things. And I went up on stage and, I don’t know, October-November to tell a speech at a conference called σ here in Malta. And I didn’t show this speech to anyone before, so I hadn’t gotten any feedback from anyone. And I think it went really well. And then I recorded this. I could get feedback from e-mail and spirits results in the team and we could do a workshop on this over for Christmas when I was home in Sweden, an e-mail and spirit. They did an amazing job going through this. There’s speak that I did. It was 20 minutes long. I think we did 20 hours of workshops on this alone with so many details and so many good things. And I learned a lot from it. They’re also very demanding. And at some point, it was. Yeah. More honest them than I could handle. Man broke down a certain part of this speech and he was more like, I’m disgusted of you as a speaker right now. This is this is horrible the way the energy that you are pursuing. And honestly, I agreed with him, but those words, they they hit me like punches to deliver like a straight up and.

[00:16:44] I just got quiet. I could feel how my throat just tied together and I couldn’t really speak.

[00:16:54] And I was like, Guys, I’m gonna need a minute and.

[00:16:59] I just started crying. And after that, it was. Whoo! Oh, this was harsh. And we sat there talking about this afterwards and.

[00:17:13] Yeah, I think that e-mail went on a bit too harsh, but we’re also in this to learn, so he dared to be this honest with me. I took this very vulnerable also. I learned so much from it. And we sat there talking about this afterwards. And then I got the chance to give him even feedback on how he how he did this. And. That we are here to learn together. So he’s learning to teach in the best possible way. And next time he will find an angle of doing this where it might where might be received as harshly. And I learned all of these valuable lessons that he had to share with me. And I believe that from those workshops that we did, I became so much better public speaker than I was before. And it was a very I think that’s something that that was managed to be created in that workshops and something that we have in in great, at least to me, is. Very harsh. And at the same time, loving environment that we had, we’ve found. That kind of line where we can be drastically honest in a way that I’ve never been in any organization, I’ve been before faced anywhere before. And at the same time, it’s the most loving environment that I’ve been in before, where we where we can hug and take care of each other. So I think this explains well to me what what it would be like, what it is like to be a leader in this organization, that there is definitely not just a lot of yes. Sayers that will pat you on the back, whatever you do, and just go with it. These are people that will confront you and challenge you, but they will help you to grow up. They’ve helped me to grow so, so much. I can’t imagine growing more as a person when one leading any other organization.

[00:19:24] That was a very strong moment for me as well in that workshop. It’s like you said for me, TBM being able to be that honest and use those words.

[00:19:34] There had to be a very strong foundation of trust and care before that. That’s what allowed me to be that honest in that moment, because my judgment was that something needed to be said. And to me, I was far from comfortable doing that. It was like a ego headshop and I’ve to meet felt like I risked our friendship doing that. And to be able to take that risk, there had to be a lot of trust and appreciation for that kind of direct, honest feedback.

[00:20:09] And to me, that was that was a success for us that we were able to play on to play on that level.

[00:20:18] Yeah. It’s a big win. It’s the harsh reality. I’m great at it. But it was great. So except for ego headshots.

[00:20:30] How will how would this leader work with you? Because right now you are the figurehead, if that’s a word for this audience.

[00:20:41] Yes. Yes.

[00:20:42] So the reason that I don’t want this role myself is that there simply not enough me to do things in in Catina. I sat on all the chairs possible for a while and I got burned out doing so. So if there’s another lesson to be learned that was that I should have hired an external CEO a lot earlier, because there are a lot of people that that are better suited to be CEOs and building teams than than I am. So this role is gonna be focused on those things and taking charge of that product. And my role will be more about strategically working with this person, setting these goals, doing these kind of things. Also sharing a lot about our vision and in podcasts and these kind of things and building the foundation around us, reaching out and inspiring and hopefully getting a lot of people to want to donate money and want to challenge these thoughts that there is out there. So that’s that’s the two kind of different roles in this. And they will be working working very closely with me. They will be partners in these kind of calls and maybe work close with me even then when you do. And. I’m hoping that I have a lot to teach. I think that there is a lot from the story that I’ve been going through that I will be able to share in a lot of the challenges that I’ve had.

[00:22:21] And I’m hoping that this person I’m sure that this person can teach me a lot of things. Same the same way as it were, brutally honest between you and me in those kind of workshops. I think that we can have a brutally honest but still very growth focused relationship. Me and whoever this this person is, he or she and I. I would love it if this was a woman. I think that that would be amazing. I’d love a female leader in this role, but it can be a man as well. We’ll see. How else would they work together with me? Well, I mentioned this a lot of times before, but my goal with this is to create something that will last a lifetime. And I’m 31, so hopefully I have another hundred years to live. Roughly saids. It also includes a lot of friendship because to me. Working together, the most essential thing in that is actually friendship. They sure we can build something together, we could grow, we could do all these things, but if we don’t work very well together as as a team and France, I think that we’re missing out so much of the quality of life that we will spend so much time together that unless we really care for each other, we’re gonna miss out on a lot of quality of life.

[00:23:45] So I’m gonna offer a lot of friendship in this. I’m gonna offer a lot of support both within in business and everything relating to that, but hopefully even more in relationship to to personal stuff because I’m not gonna separate great in my life. This is just something that will be very closely tied together. And I believe that it will be the same for this person. So as well as great will be a big, big part of both of our lives. We will be a big part of each other’s lives. It’s. I believe that this is a very different approach to hiring a CEO. This is not someone is going to come in and say, hey, the numbers are what’s important. You’re just gonna deliver to the board of directors. This is gonna be a CEO, CPO, CEO, great leader, whatever we want to call it, who comes in and say, hey, the most important thing right now is that you love what you’re doing and that you believe in this. And then we will make this happen together.

[00:24:49] So what I hear you say now is that you’re really looking for someone that it’s not gonna go in for two years and fix something. You’re looking for someone that is looking for long projects where they were where they will be able to feel good and enjoy what they do for a long time.

[00:25:06] Yeah, exactly. Do you expect that kind of commitment?

[00:25:11] I’m hoping for that kind of commitment. I don’t think there is possible to ever expect anything from anyone in terms of long term because there are so many things that can happen in life.

[00:25:20] But my goal with creating great has been to one of my goals has been to create something that I would love for the rest of my life and that the people who who are a part of it would love for the rest of their lives. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is full time committed all the time, but I believe that everyone will have somewhat of a relationship too great for the rest of their lives. If that’s time for a while, then next to nothing for a while and then full time for a while, then I think that’s a success. I’d like to see great as as a football club in a sense, where you might have a lifetime commitment to that club. But just because you love it, not because you have to. And sometimes you spend all your time and all your energy playing football or coaching or whatever you might do. And sometimes you just read the score in the newspaper and you stay on top of things that way. But there will always be something there in the heart that that resonates and will be part of it. And yet somehow I want to build this football club doesn’t expect a lifetime commitment. But it’s just how it works. And I want to accomplish that.

[00:26:35] That’s a good analogy. So.

[00:26:41] Other. That takes a special kind of relationship between you and the leader you’re looking for. So I can see how disappointed he was for you to lose the person you had in mind for this. But hopefully the universe opens another another door here. Yeah.

[00:27:00] Definitely a feeling. It sounds like a plan to future together with someone. And then they just turned me down. I only what the fuck, man?

[00:27:09] It wasn’t planned here. I structured structured as we were gonna do this. We’re gonna live happily ever after. And you’re just saying no at the altar. What the fuck?

[00:27:18] So I think I think this would be a good time to describe more of what this role will include. And sure. So let’s start. Short term, let’s say you hire this woman or man. And what will the first week look like at this job?

[00:27:43] So right now, most of our future strategies are in my head. It haven’t really been mapped out in a completely strategic way and it hasn’t been decided upon which thing to start on. So in that episode for that we mentioned before, I go over a bunch of different approaches that we will have. But I don’t I haven’t really decided the timeline on where to start. So the first weeks on the job would probably be a lot of conversations with me and deciding upon which part of this strategy is we want to start with. Then it would be about. How to create this? So this person would start with recruitment and building this team and deciding upon what kind of roles do we want in this? How would we like the tech team to look like? What other people would we need, where where do we start? So the first part of job will be a lot of strategic decisions. And the second way would be start with actually making things happen. Deciding upon what what coding platform, what tech solutions, all of these kind of things. So that will be the first weeks or months job would be those things. And then the longer term part of this will be making all the strategic decisions together with me on on where to take these things. But then having the operational responsibilities of actually making everything happen and basically being charge of building the product and around these things.

[00:29:20] Since it’s gonna be a.

[00:29:23] Almost like being the founder of a startup. But it’s a startup within something, in a sense.

[00:29:31] Ok, cool. I have one question, but first I want to clarify. I see in our notes here that the episode where we described a different the whole product of great. It’s episode number three.

[00:29:43] Oh, yes. Nice catch. Nice catch. You see. This is where you can give me some brutal and honest feedback and say, Hey, Eric, you suck. You just messed up. I’m disgusted.

[00:29:57] Thank you, my friend. So. In that episode, we describe four pillars of great and they’re all kind of different. Have one product that is doing that is on charity. We have one product that is casino and one product that is education. How can someone expect to be have expertise in all of these different areas? Because it’s almost like four different companies right here.

[00:30:24] It’s gonna be for very different things. And I think that in the long run, someone will we will have one person who is in charge of each thing. Each one of these things. So this great leader that we’re looking for right now will probably have one person that is in charge of the of the product side of the commercial side of things. That’s reporting to this person. One person in the charity product. One person that is part of the organizational side of things. And one person that is in charge of the educational part. So in the future, I don’t see one person being in charge of all of this, but that’s where we start until these other four people is in place then.

[00:31:09] Yeah. Did that answer your question? It did. Yeah.

[00:31:12] Yeah. So do you have something more to add on the description of the role? Khazaal would like to explore why? Why we haven’t found this person yet, but they have something more to add. Before I change direction.

[00:31:30] Well, what would basically I’m looking for here is is two things.

[00:31:38] One of these things is that it needs to be someone who’s passionate about tech and understands different code languages and these canting not necessarily the developer themselves, but as I mentioned before, the lovechild between Bill Gates and Elon Musk in a sense. And the main reason for that is that this is something that I’m completely lacking. I don’t have this passion. I don’t have this knowledge. Someone needs to bring this in and add this. So when we built Catina and I worked with my childhood friend e-mail, he was a complete techie and took side to part of that.

[00:32:13] But he’s a family man now and wants to focus on being a father of three little kids and don’t want to do this again. So that’s why that part will be essential. Second part of this is that I want someone who is a great leader, who loves people, who is really good at recruitment and these kind of things, and prefer we have worked with remote teams before because that’s new to me as well. That’s something we’re doing right now. We’re building something remotely and I believe that’s the future of any organization. So whoever is passionate about that idea or for that matter, I’ve done it before.

[00:32:51] Is is key in these kind of things and know how to. What challenges does come with these kind of things? And I believe that together we will be able to structure the casino products, for example.

[00:33:04] I don’t expect someone to know anything about that because that knowledge we already have charity and these kind of things. We either have that knowledge ourself or we know where to find it. Strategy I’d love to do together. And that’s one of my big passions is the strategy side of things. I know that’s one of your passions as well. Sure. So we will be able to add the build those things together.

[00:33:25] The first two I mentioned is something that I’m I wouldn’t say missing, but definitely would benefit a lot from that coming in from the side.

[00:33:40] Yeah, I don’t want to go in too much to detail what this role entails because I’d much rather find the person who wants to do this. And in many ways create the role around that I could create a list of tasks like this is how it should be done and then just check them off one by one, by one by one. But I’d like this to be what this person loves to do. I want to find this person’s way of doing this, how they love to do it, not me creating a box and then finding someone to fit into it. I want to find the perfect person who wants to create their own box or asymmetric symbol or whatever way they want to work in. And for them to, together with me, create to the job of their dreams. I want. I don’t want to find the person that is perfect for four. Great. I want to find a great person. And I want great to be the perfect one for that person.

[00:34:39] Well said, and that’s quite a big difference. And you’re willing to do that because you want someone to really enjoy this so that they will want to stay on for a long time.

[00:34:51] Yeah, I think that that’s the.

[00:34:54] I think that Joy is is the mother of creation. If if you’re enjoying yourself, if you’re having fun. That’s when creativity flourish. That’s when we are eager and inspired to do things. We don’t feel that we should do them for whatever reason. And that’s the energy that I believe that A is the most valuable to work from and B will get you the furthest. I think that if if Steve Jobs didn’t love technology, he would never have been able to build Apple. If Elon Musk didn’t want to go to March, he wouldn’t been able to build Space X. I think that it comes from that energy to start with. There is a playful love for whatever it is that they’re doing. And I want to be part of creating something where that is the core of where we’re going.

[00:35:49] So we are here right now. We are obviously looking for this person. We have no leads so far. So why is that? Do you see any mistakes that we have made that is causing us to be without this kind of leader right now?

[00:36:07] So one big mistake was my naivete in this. I was just.

[00:36:13] More or less sure that we will figure it out the way to work with this guy that we mentioned before. So for me, just not even looking for other options. That was a big mistake. I should have started planting seeds for this long time ago.

[00:36:28] I started looking for this in a different way. So that’s been been a struggle.

[00:36:34] Another thing is how it’s been communicated regarding to see no and why we’re doing casino. I feel that we have missed out on some parts of why that is important. So one of the things that I’ve said is we want to make the biggest possible difference in the world. And one of the parts of that will be to donate the maximum amount of money. Then we would want a commercial product that is about casino, because that’s the industry I’m coming from. That’s what I know. That’s where I believe I can be part of building something that can generate the most profits so we can donate it and made the biggest difference. I’m not gonna make any money from this. I’m not even taking a salary. So that’s just my my logic in this. If this was about me wanting to be a hero or anything else, there would be so much easier.

[00:37:22] Just pick another industry, says one part of it. Another big part of this is that I really want to change the way the casino industry is operating.

[00:37:36] So I come from the casino industry, I’ve been part in creating a lot of misery for a lot of people. By doing so, and I feel a responsibility for that. And I want to do something that is it’s a lot better for for this industry.

[00:37:52] And Great will do several things within this. For example, we will be on the inside being able to actually take the debates and about how can we take more responsibility as an industry.

[00:38:05] I’ve already been in newspapers in Sweden talking as a casino person about creating this responsibility and hopefully leading by example or if not at least provoking other CEOs and stuff in this industry that OK. But we actually need to talk about this. We can’t just pretend it’s not there. We are a reason for gambling addiction and these kind of things. I believe if I stay in this industry, I can communicate about these things and being part of changing this industry. If I’m going to another industry, I will not be able to have the same kind of impact on the other casinos. I won’t be able to take responsibility for. For whatever damage I’ve caused now, I can do that.

[00:38:46] I can change this industry while being part of it, but won’t great at more gambling addiction by being by creating a casino product.

[00:38:57] Yes and no. So we will create a casino product that will make people take us. You know that one is true. And that means that we will touch people, touch people’s life journeys in a way that might make them worse. That’s true. At the same time, we will take money out from the industry. So we will be part of all the casinos and gambling companies marketing budgets. That’s how we will make money. And this whatever profit we will make instead of reinvesting this.

[00:39:29] Could you explain that in a bit more detail? So someone might not know so much about the affiliation can understand us, OK.

[00:39:36] So our commercial product is going to be a let. Let’s make it very simple and say TripAdvisor for to see. No. Yeah. So and TripAdvisor makes money from hotels. They get paid from hotels, from their marketing budgets. We will do the same thing. So we will get paid from the marketing budgets of the casino companies. That money would otherwise be standing spent in TV commercials and advertising somewhere else. Now they will pay us. And.

[00:40:07] This will be our profits, so this will run our organization and we will spend this money on doing charity and giving it away and all of these kind of things instead of reinvesting it in more TV marketing or anything else that actually builds the industry. So I believe that we will take money out from the industry and giving it away instead of creating more money that’s actually just spinning around in this room, which will be another way of shrinking their industry as a whole, for that matter. Only a teeny tiny bit, but the money we take out will, I believe will have a bigger impact on the number of people playing than the people that start playing when we are involved.

[00:40:53] There is no way of knowing this for sure. I. There isn’t an exact math behind this, but these are the logic that I’m thinking about when I want to do this and I want to to take responsibility of being a part of changing an industry where I’ve played a major role before.

[00:41:10] All right. So you’re saying that a regular casino or casino affiliation company, they will make profits and then they will use some of that profits for marketing and that would create even more gambling addiction and great will compete with them. And the profits we make will be donated to charity instead. And therefore, less money is getting reinvested in the industry as a whole. He has.

[00:41:39] Mm hmm. And this is something you feel that we have failed to communicate clearly.

[00:41:48] Yes. One of the reason why this guy declined the job was that he he didn’t resonate with the logic of doing casino and charity. That was part of what he what is a connection was.

[00:42:02] And that ties me to questioning how well I communicated this logic. And I think that his logic is very hard to communicate. I think it’s a tricky thing to say here. I think it’s tricky to follow this. It’s math. It’s numbers. It’s.

[00:42:19] Uncharted territory in a sense, but I haven’t really tried either. For me, it’s so obvious for me. I’ve really given this a lot of thought. Really challenged this for myself. And a question is this the morally right thing to do? And I’m very committed to that. The answer is yes. So I haven’t understood how important it is to elaborate on this and explain this, because to me, it’s so obvious.

[00:42:45] How important do you think it is that this person have a philanthropic side to them, that they care about charity? For example.

[00:42:57] I think that everyone has that so.

[00:43:02] I believe it. I think it’s important, and at the same time, I think that that’s something that everyone has. It might be a sleeping side of some people where it hasn’t gotten the priority. But if people I think anyone who looks inside genuinely wants to help other people, I think that’s to our human core. At least that’s what I want to believe. So if they come from a philanthropic space and have knowledge about these things and done these things before and really value this, then that’s super if they haven’t.

[00:43:38] I think that to.

[00:43:41] They are at court. Any way to really love what we’re doing and really benefit from this?

[00:43:51] I think that it’s key to see this as a big part of the role, and at the same time, I don’t think that anyone, if there are people that wouldn’t benefit or value that, I don’t think they would be interested in this to start with. I don’t think that what we’re talking about would resonate with them. But I believe that everyone has this in their core.

[00:44:14] I agree with that. And that makes me think about. So we’re talking about donating 100 percent of the profits.

[00:44:21] But how are we thinking about salaries in this organization and for this leader?

[00:44:33] It’s a long term vision of create an organization that sets their own salaries, but that’s a bit of a side note. But it says a bit the where where I want this to go in the future. As of now, we will. How I see it in my head is that we will have lower salaries than the commercial regular businesses. At the same time, we will have higher salaries than I believe pretty much any charity organization. So we will end up somewhere in between and we are something in between. A commercial company that giving away all the profits. We’re not a regular charity. We’re not going to take on donations. So we’re not gonna pay anyone salaries with donations. We will make the money ourselves or I will put the money on the table.

[00:45:20] So the salary is going to be lower than it would be if someone went all in on our commercial business. We’re not going to pay the same salary that Applewood or any other tech company well, any other big tech company out there.

[00:45:35] But we will definitely pay more than that at regular charity shops. It’s important that that.

[00:45:45] This person value the purpose and see these kind of things and wants to be a part of something that’s that’s going to change a lot of people lives for the better.

[00:45:56] Mm hmm. Yeah, don’t make sense.

[00:46:03] I think we’re wrong. We’ve gotten most of the things we want to talk about so far. Do you have something that you feel we have missed or something you want to?

[00:46:11] Yeah, I’d like to touch on a few things on the experience of this this person.

[00:46:17] So this is a very, very senior role. This is not something that anyone can just jump on. I preferrably this is the role of someone who is either built a big company before sold it and now looking to do the same thing again, but with a lot more meaning and purpose to it. That’s where I’m coming from. I built a big company. I put it on the stock exchange. And now I want to start over with a lot more meaning. That’s the main reason why this is happening, or it’s someone who’s been a part of building something big before, who has either been the CEO, CFO, CPO, these kind of person, and managed a team of 10 self. It no, not hundreds of people before. So it’s very important that this kind of seniority is in this role. It’s not for someone. It’s not someone’s first manager call preferrably. They have this tech experience that I mentioned, preferrably. They have built remote teams before and on these type of things. And they have this passion of of building a product and they have built product before. They know data, they know statistics, they know online marketing, Google analytics and all of these kind of tools and things to map up from their day on the stand. MCO, they understand. E-mail marketing, whatever it is, they’ve been a part of something like like this before and can see all of these things and understand this this strategy.

[00:47:49] This is a very senior role. I state that again. So it’s basically like coming in.

[00:47:56] Sure, we’re a small startup, but we’re a startup where the first thing we did was buying a domain name for nine hundred thousand dollars. So it’s not that we’re a regular small startup doing regular things.

[00:48:08] We have the ambition of building something very, very big. And this person is preferrably going to be on that journey for decades and be part of something very, very big. So it’s it’s a very senior, a very advanced role.

[00:48:26] So that’s something I’d like to highlight once again.

[00:48:28] And I felt that I probably missed out earlier in this.

[00:48:38] Is there something that allows you all summer this? You can also read about this role in a great dot com slash careers and find this role in more elaborate description? Well, maybe not more elaborate, but more detailed description and more ordinary way of of doing things, what it is that we’re looking for.

[00:48:57] Awesome. So please. I mean, what have you learned from today? Mm hmm.

[00:49:04] Man, we’ve been talking about a lot of things, but I guess my I have gotten because I heard you talk about this before, but I have gotten a clearer understanding exactly of how advanced this role is and how much knowledge this kind of person needs to have. And I can also really see the benefit of placing the top piece of the pyramid before building the foundation. And how much how if a leader comes in first, how a team can be more customized to that person and how that would allow the organization to unfold in a more harmonious way.

[00:49:50] It’s a really shitty analogy to say that you should start with building the top of the pyramid. Tell that to the Egypt’s like, hey guys, we should start with the top. That’s good. You could levitate stuff. Don’t you know? Of course they can. So we’re levitating organization just like that.

[00:50:09] What did you learn today?

[00:50:13] Yeah, I think that this was granted start picturing this in my head and mapping this up in another direction. It challenged me why I really wanted this person overall. What kind of qualities was it that I saw there that just made this feel obvious? Yeah, the importance of stating the seniority of this role I think is is key because I think it’s easy to make it feel like it’s something fairly junior that might have put some very senior people off because it’s a small taxation. Yeah. Yeah. Because it’s a small thing because we’re trying out things because we’re fucking around and playing in a podcast which might seem unserious to two people. And it is unserious in a lot of people. But it well it is some serious in a lot of ways. But it comes from our joy of creating culture, our joy of learning. It comes from the energy we want to build us. It has nothing to do with around goal. Our end goal is immensely big. That’s like part of this. And that’s why we want to have fun creating this, because otherwise I don’t think that we would go on for 50 years. So we need to continuously challenge how do we enjoy this the most? How can we get that energy out of this and keep going for 50 years? Mean all the companies, more or less that are 50 years old, if they’re they’re getting begue at some point because otherwise they would just not do it.

[00:51:39] I agree, I also see him performance in this role. How key that is for great right now. So what is it? Just to wrap this up. What is your plan then to define this role? And then we then we wrap this up.

[00:51:53] So one of my one of the most underrated marketing strategies there are out there, I believe is podcasting. Not necessarily maybe having your own podcast, but being guest on podcasts because there will be such a reach. There are tons of podcasts out there with hundreds of thousands of listeners being able to communicate with a listener for an hour about whatever the topic is. I think builds a connection, builds a relationship, build something that you can’t do in in text. At least it’s very, very hard to do it in text. So my plan for for the next quarter is to to visit a lot of podcasts, to be guest there and talk about our journey, what we want to do. Talk about all kinds of other things that we’ve been talking about in other episodes of this and share share this role and see does whatever we do resonate with you. Please check this out. And I think that’s a way superior method of doing this than it would be to reach a regular headhunting organization to try and find someone that way. I want. I believe that we can find people who are passionate about what we’re doing by listening to us talking rather than trying to just knock on people’s shoulders and say, hey, look at this. Hey, look at this. Get this job. Because really good people, they are being chased by headhunters anyway. So why be one of those people just chasing them in the same way as everyone else?

[00:53:21] Especially when this organization is so purpose driven. So let’s say someone once thinks I might be a dry person for this job. How can they reach out? How can they apply? What should their first step be?

[00:53:38] So the first thing I would do is listening to more of our stuff, reading about what we’re doing. I think that that’s it’s an easy way to see. Is this something you want to do? Because we’re very weird and different in many ways. I believe that either you love our purpose and what we’re doing or you simply don’t. So I would start there rather than applying for something the first thing I did and then reach out to me at Eric at great dot com and we can have a chat or we’ll see and we would take it from there. So I think that’s the easiest step moving forward and obviously visiting great outcomes, such careers and reading about this to see if this makes sense. Is Eric at great dot com? Yeah. I’m the only one who have. Eric has great outcome. I have Eric Bergman at Great Control, but I’m the only one who will have. Just my name.

[00:54:30] And the reason for that is that you’re assuming you’re better than all other Erics.

[00:54:36] Yes. That’s a long side story. But yeah, I have Eric. Great. But it’s just redirecting to Eric, not. It’s great for God. It’s just easier to say. Eric, that’s great. Dot com in podcast.

[00:54:49] I actually was with both I K at greater com an e r. I see. That’s great because people want to spell my name with a C.

[00:54:58] Awesome. All right. How do you plan to wish all of our listeners a good week.

[00:55:05] This is a. Don’t start your day. I’ll give a piece of advice. Don’t start it. But throwing up its doesn’t feel so do something else than throwing up.

[00:55:17] The first thing you do and other than that, I would say ask two people a good day. That’s something that I’ve been doing most mornings lately. I ask. I just wish one person from my current life, someone who is around just thinking about them, see them smile and ask them a good day. And one person from a long time ago. I’m just seeing those people in front of me and asking them. Have a good day. So today, this morning I did it for an old school friend that I haven’t met, and I don’t know how many years. And I called ELEANOR. I just thought of her as like, hey, I really hope that she has a good day.

[00:55:56] And I asked was once, was someone from my everyday life today as well? That’s not my mind. It wasn’t long hours ago. I just think it’s a good way of doing it. Be nice.

[00:56:06] Don’t up. Solid advice. All right. Nice fish container. A mess of the day, my friend. Stereo shop.