Fun-Driven Company Culture | COO of Persona, Christie Kim (Podcast 176)

I thought maybe I would get a lot of pushback on that kind of thing. I want this to be a safe space. I want people to feel like they can be themselves. You know, they were totally on the same page day one. That, that was actually super important to, to making people happy at work. Like, that's a big thing for us. You can have lots of jobs where you are going to make a lot of money or have like amazing work. Life balance, happiness and actually having fun at work is not always part of that. And we want it to be somewhere like you actually want to be. Here you are happy and having fun every day. And I will say, even though it sounds easy, I have fun every day at Persona.

Our guest today is Christy Kim, the COO of Persona, the identity infrastructure company backed by index Ventures and CO2 that offers businesses the building blocks to create personalized identity verification experiences for any use case. In her role, Christie oversees Persona's business and operations function, including sales, marketing, customer success and operations. She's leading the team toward the company's mission to be the identity layer of the Internet for customers including Square, Sonder, Brexit, Udemy, Gusto, BlockFi, Coursera, and Angelit. Previously, Christie was at LinkedIn, where she was the head of business development for LinkedIn Learning Solutions. So, Christie, welcome to the Second Command podcast.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

You've got a pretty cool bio, pretty cool base of experience. I want to, I want to talk about LinkedIn a little bit. I want to find a little bit about Persona. I think I'm like member number 200,000 or something on LinkedIn, which was early but still feels so late because my co author for my book free PR was member number 7,000. I'm like, how did you know about it? Like, were you like a dinner party with a couple of tech geeks? What was it like @ LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is such a lovely place to work. Honestly, they are so in touch with just the talent industry, which has, you know, become so different in the past 10 to 15 years, where people really see talent as a competitive advantage and a really core part of building a business. I think as an employee there, it was really great. Like, they are really in touch with just how to think about engaging talent and retaining talent. It is such a great mission also to really be giving everyone economic opportunity. I'll be honest though, LinkedIn was so was so big when I got there. I mean, it was 15,000 employees. I got there right after the Microsoft acquisition. My boss there had been one of the first hundred people at LinkedIn. You know, that really inspired me in terms of like I went to Persona afterwards, I thought he would talk about what it was like when LinkedIn was totally a startup. And that really spoke to me and made me think I really want to be part of that building phase. Like really early when it's just chaotic and there's so much stuff to do and you know, everyone's kind of just doing, doing that was a big part of it because when I got there, yeah, it was, it was just, I mean, full on, you know, it's just so big now. So it was, it just very different.

But it certainly helped shape you, I would imagine, because coming in, did you join Persona as the COO or did you. So LinkedIn helped shape you into that role then? I mean, you didn't just like.

No, totally. And I think one of the great opportunities I had there was to kind of build a function from scratch and realizing how much I loved doing that and I, how much I loved. Even though it was like there's no playbook yet, that's exactly what I like doing, figuring it out and especially the kind of go to market, market business development side of things, like how do we figure out our first customers, who doesn't make sense, who does our product make sense for, etc. So I love that stuff and, and LinkedIn also really shaped me in terms of. I referenced this earlier thinking about how important people are, people you bring on and you know, as you know, when you're a really early stage startup, it's everything, I mean, it's still everything. For Persona is the team and thinking really carefully about is this a good fit for you and is this a good fit for us? Not just like trying to sell people and get them to join and then, you know, maybe it's not the best thing for them thinking reciprocally about that.

So what was that that attracted you over at Persona then to leave LinkedIn and come over to Persona? What was it that grabbed you and how many people were there when you started?

Great question. I think I was the third person. It's hard to remember now. I was the third person. The answer is actually Rick and Charles. I met Rick through my sister who worked with Rick at Square. It's funny because, you know, she actually worked with a lot of. Now we, we have a lot of X squares at Persona. I had met Rick through her previously, just socially. She'd always told me he's a really smart entrepreneurial person. When he started Fursona, he said, okay, I Need someone on the business side to her. And she said, why don't you meet my sister? So I met him in Charles and honestly, Cameron, it was so small that I was like, I can't join this company, so. Too small.

You know, your friends and parents must have thought you were crazy.

Completely. And they said, things are going so well at LinkedIn and it's such a great company, why would you leave? I see what you're saying, but every time I talk to Rick and Charles, they're just very genuine. It's a rare thing to meet someone, meet people and have the kind of feeling of trust that I had with both of them. I do believe that in any work environment, but especially a startup, that is by far the most important thing, because you don't even know what's going to happen and what's going to come for you all. But you know that if you trust each other, you can work through it.

I think especially in the COO CEO role though, because you're. I think you really are that yin and yang to each other, that more than any other C level executive, the CEO needs to know that you can come to them with the bad stuff and the real shit. And really it's kind of like the emperor's new clothes, right? Like you can tell them what's really going on.

I totally agree.

So how did you know that the trust was there or was it just felt? Was it through your sister in the relationship? Like knowing them as friends?

No, that was definitely helpful. Right? She, she's worked with them, she's worked with Rick a long time and you know, you really learn a lot about someone from that. Actually, I'll tell you, I had a moment when I first met them where I was like, huh? I think these guys are onto something and I think there's. We're in the same kind of value zone, which is that Rick and Charles are very, are by both by training engineers and they're very good engineers. One of the first things they said to me when we first met was like, even though this is a technical product and even though we're engineers, in order to succeed, needs an amazing, stellar team. And that team has to be on the sales side. It needs to be marketing, customer success, engineers, design. But the way that they thought they, from day one, they were like, we need an amazing team. They were not like, we're gonna do it because we're such brilliant engineers. And then like, you know, everyone else is kind of an afterth. Were so focused on the team from day one and that made me think, okay, you guys, that's what I think too. So I felt, I felt like, wow. Yeah. I mean, even though honestly they, they did so much of the building early on, they really never ever thought, you know, this company is going to succeed because of engineering or because of the product. It has to be an all star team across the board.

But isn't that what you hear in the Bay Area every day from every startup?

Isn't that like, no, I don't think so.

Or are they more focused on the product itself and they think it's going to be the next coolest thing in the world? They're so product centric.

I think the latter is very popular and I think especially when you're working with a technical product that becomes everything and people think like, okay, we just need to build the best product possible. And then like people, you know, customers will come. And Rick and Charles from day one, even though we, we actually alone are quite capable in building, we really need these other people to help us. And just that awareness of things that you can't do and that you can't do things alone, I don't think is actually that. I think that's actually rare in the Valley.

It's funny that we're kind of talking about like that, you know, if you build it, they will come. So, so you made the decision to leave. You made the decision because you like Rick and Charles, you like their idea around the culture. You like the idea. Maybe there's something with this product. What was it like then leaving a 15,000 person company and walking in as three.

It was very different. And then I doing, you know, everything from figuring out how to do our taxes, how to file our taxes to how to try to get some new customer, any customers. We didn't have any customers at that time. Trying to write up some policies around just like employee benefits, like everything. It was so many things. But that is actually what I wanted because I really felt from day one I'm learning so many things, so many different things and that's how I learn. I learned by doing that. It was really fun to be able to, you know, like do an office search as well as go through an outbound like 100 messages to try to see if we can get some discovery calls on product stuff.

So how did, how did they know that you weren't going to be too corporate? How long were you at LinkedIn?

That's a very good question. I was looking at LinkedIn a couple of years and actually before LinkedIn I was at coursera I mean, still much bigger than Persona. But I joined Coursera when It was like 70 people.

So that's still an entrepreneurial environment. So you weren't completely a corporate salesforce to infusionsoft or wherever you were. So they did see some of that. What did you have to unlearn from LinkedIn? As great. As great as it was and not ill of the company, what did you have to unlearn or let go of that was more corporate and adapt to be more entrepreneurial?

Well, I realized quickly, you know, there are a lot of things that are not glamorous about the early days of a startup that is everyone's job at the startup. You know, like anything that needs doing, anything that will unblock us and let us keep moving forward, we just. We just gotta do. You know, at LinkedIn, I realized in retrospect, there was someone that did everything, like down to the slides that we use, internal meetings that could. I remember I was making like our first pitch deck and I was like, trying to find like, higher quality logo images or, you know, like the slides at the end that was like for.

Free with an unpaid ones too. You got to get through.

And I kept getting the ones with the watermark and I'm so frustrated.

Yeah.

And then Rick was kind of like, you know, the fonts aren't consistent. And I was like, oh, man. Like, someone did this for us at LinkedIn. Yeah, I think just. Just learning that like this, your job is now everything we need to do.

I just got off a call with about 10 CEOs from all over the world, and we were just chatting on something and I said that when I do job postings now, where I have the list of responsibilities, the number one responsibility above the others is always. And other duties. And then there's the real ones. It's not on the list. It's your job, man. Like, I would. But I would do it too. I would do it too. Right. But yeah, I just, I want it really, really clear that in an entrepreneurial environment, it's like, yeah, let's all grab this and run versus having to teach. So you were already that dn.

Yeah. And I will say that is another thing I, I learned quickly about Rick and Charles and that's why it was easy for us to. To get started is we all had that spirit and, and you know, really like people who joined Persona early were really different. Some was we had someone who had never had a job before. We had someone who had way more experience than, you know, the three of us combined. We had really different people, but I think the common thread was like wanting to was actually like a passion for like and other duties. You know, like whatever we do, let's just do it.

Do they operate as CO CEOs or what are their roles Today?

Charles oversees engineering, so he's the cto.

Is everyone call them Rick and Charles or is it just you because you joined? It was Rick and Charles.

I called that because of what you said when I joined that was kind of the unit but also, you know, their best friend and they actually live together as well.

All right, let's back up. What's Persona give us? Give it to us in layman's terms. What's this layer?

Persona is solution that helps companies verify that their users are who they say they are online.

And how does that happen? What does that mean? What are you doing? Is it like not. It's not a password? Is it that you're scanning our history or is it that we have to answer question? What does it do?

Yeah, good question. You're and you're on to it. The answer is there are many different ways to verify through that verification. A super popular one is using your government ID and using your face.

Okay, so it's more the login or the setup. So if I'm setting up my crypto account and it needs my a driver's license or my passport and a facial recognition, it's using that. It's not so much that it's going to identify that someone's on an Instagram account posting pictures that are me and not them. It's more security than someone. You're not preventing fraud or people using or are you?

Oh, we are, we are. I mean the beauty of Persona and kind of what we're very intentionally trying to do, we do a lot of different use cases. So we do everything from account opening for fintech career or gig economy worker onboarding online degree. Like before you get your online degree, like verifying that you are that person to like you're locked out of your, your HR account and you need access to your W2 very common use case and you move jobs so you don't have that email anymore. Like everything from account recovery for those types of situations to fraud. I mean fraud prevention is actually huge across all of our industries. It's just such a problem for so many, for every kind of, almost every kind of online business.

You guys are clearly funded. Then how. How much you've raised money? I want to ask.

Yeah.

How have you series BC where are you?

We did, yeah. Index let our series B for $50 million. And so we are a venture funded company.

All right, so Persona, that security layer, you raised money, you were there through the funding then as well through. They had, they raised money the first, the first round or were you there for that too?

I was there for the A and the B.

What was it like for the A?

The A was led by CO2 and CO2 was in our scene too. It was great. Rick actually knows Andy who is the partner at CO2 from waiver a long time ago when Rick was a K fellow and Andy was like Claire Perkins. So it, we've been very lucky in the funding because it feels like people we know.

And so it was easy working with them as well. They weren't like intrusive.

They were, oh, it was very easy.

Did it change the culture at all?

No, it did not. I think that's a very interesting question because, you know, I think that is something that, you know, now looking forward, that will be a, something we are going to think hard about. But.

And it can change the culture in a few ways. Right? Like it's, it's the unintended ripple effect. You drop a boulder into a pond, it'll cause ripples. And they could be good ripples or bad. Right. It either have everyone work harder because they're more excited or it could give us the resources which changes the culture because we get to work with smarter people. Or it builds the CNBC squawk box. Watch the ticker culture, which is toxic.

Right, Right. I mean, I was just going to say one thing I think we've emphasized too. We call them Persona, our employees, nerds about identity. One thing we really emphasized is the funding is great and it is necessary to achieve our vision. But don't get it twisted that that is how we should be measuring ourselves. Because as you were saying, like I think you can get caught up and especially being in Silicon Valley, you can really get caught up in it. And at the end of the day it's like, are we building a great product? Are our customers successful with us? Does it add value to them? That's what we need to be focused on versus like any of the, the venture stuff. Even though it is, you know, important.

Are you focusing on making money as a company? Are you focusing on, you know, profitable?

Well, we're focused definitely on revenue growth and customer usage of the platform. But no, we're an early stage, you know, VC company at this point, which is interesting.

It's interesting because there's this to, you know, in business, you learn about the P L and it's about driving to the bottom line and it's like, no, that's not what we do. And I get it. It's not a cavalier1998.com approach. It's just that you have to use that money to grow as fast as possible and take over the market before anybody else does. And as long as you understand the lifetime value, do you have an eye to profitability? Is it something that you're looking at five years out or is it even discussed?

Honestly, we haven't really discussed that because we're so focused on the product and the customers right now and making sure and especially at a product led company, it's as said, it's a little bit of a later stage, I think. Topic and kind of puzzle.

Have you seen the TV show the Vow about the cult Nexium?

Yes, I have seen that.

I'm. I'm friends with Sarah Edmondson who is this one of the central figures. She's the female from Vancouver that was the big recruiter. It was her and her husband Nippy that basically broke the whole cult. So she and I are friends here in Vancouver and I was talking to her about her pot. She has a podcast with her husband called It's a Bit Culty. And I was saying that kind of. We were back channeling, talking and I said when does a company go too far with its culture? And I don't think you're there but I worried at, at 1, 800, got junk we were such a cult or Google is such a cult. Like at what point do we go too far that we're manipulating employees or at what point, or what point are we like working them so hard that we forget that they're actually humans with lives, with kids, with families, that, you know, that stuff does matter. Do you talk about that stuff at all?

Oh, absolutely. What we always more often talk about when we're talking to candidates before they join and after is there's your life and there's your work, Personas, work. And everyone has and should have a life beyond it. I am really proud of the things that we do to acknowledge that because I actually think at a lot of startups, and maybe this is what you're referring to, Cameron. People don't really acknowledge that you have families, that people have lives that your fellow coworkers don't necessarily know everything about, that it affects you and it affects the way, the way you show up, what you can do all these things. So I like that we're really open about that. Like, this is not a Silicon Valley startup where people are like, you just need to work, work 12 hours a day and never complain or anything like that. That is not what we subscribe to at all.

And I just think that that's so much more normal. In building that culture, do you allow your team to know you, like, outside of the written world?

Oh, I think we all know each other. I mean, again, like, I think a really important thing is to know app Persona and in general is just to be like, you don't know everything about everyone. And especially during COVID that's kind of been thrown into relief. Right? You don't know what everyone's situation is. And so you need to. Everyone needs to be respectful of everyone else's comfort limits. Right? What they're comfortable doing, what we encourage is bringing your whole self to work and really just recognizing that people are people. That it is one of the first things we did, actually, even though we were only like six people, is we agreed that parent parental leave would be 16 weeks. Which people were like, that's crazy for a startup. We were like, that is the bare minimum that we should be doing. I remember it because one of our first engineers, they were expecting a baby and he was really stressed, and I could tell that he was thinking, like, am I going to get in trouble because I want to be with my family and the baby? And that's why we put this policy. We made it all formal and said, like, no, that's absolutely what you should be doing. And if you want to take more time, take more time. You know, like everyone, I think we definitely try and, you know, I'm sure we could do better.

That's a huge, huge, huge step, though, that most companies never. That doesn't even come up in their discussion, let alone the first person you did it for was a male, which is even more progressive. Right? Like, I almost said, how can you go 16 weeks? But to do that, that's really strong.

That's another reason I kind of knew I found my people with Rick Charles when I was talking to them for, you know, a long time before I actually joined was that I thought maybe I would get a lot of pushback on that kind of thing. On. I want this to be a safe space. I want people to feel like they can be themselves. You know, they were totally on the same page day one.

That.

That was actually super important to. To making people happy at work. Like, that's a big thing for us, is you can have lots of jobs where you are going to make a lot of money or have like amazing work. Life balance, happy to happiness. And actually having fun at work is not always part of that. And we want it to be somewhere like you actually want to be. Here you are happy and having fun every day. And I will say, even though it sounds cheesy, I have fun every day at Persona.

What have been the tough times? What did you guys have to go through? That's kind of the lessons from the edge or where did you go where you were like, what were some of the oh, shit moments that you got through?

Covid has been terrible. Covid has been difficult, you know, for everyone. We were kind of like really humbled by it because we were walking around before COVID saying, we don't ever want to be remote. We're all in person. And then Covid hit and suddenly we were all remote, all fully distributed. When we had been so tight.

Yeah, you were like a tight culture.

And we kind of kept emphasizing it saying like, oh, well, it wouldn't work if we were going to be distributed. And then suddenly we were like, oh crap, we have to make it work. And I think, like, that was a really humbling thing for us to realize. Like, we need to make it work. We can't just rely on all the things that we thought were going to be possible before COVID Are you going.

Back a office based culture? Are you going to be staying remote? What's your. Are you hybrid?

We're gonna do hybrid. We're gonna do Hybrid, like have an office that people can go into. But you know, before the expectation was everyone would be in the office. And now we've not only made remote hires, but also even if you're in the Bay Area, there's much more flexibility.

Did you have the culture where it was like a 9 to 5ish kind of culture, or was it just we're like a hub of energy and activity and you can come and go whenever you want, but we're always working together. It was, it was more at the ladder. It sounds like totally the lat now. How are you. What are you doing to build that culture now that you're more distributed or hybrid? Are there systems or any specific tactical things you're doing to keep that culture and energy and team together?

Well, we've been trying new things, like different things on Zoom Chat, having kind of Zoom activities that are very suited for Zoom in particular and, and just enabling people to, if they can get together safely outside especially, you know, like enabling them and empowering them to do that. But no, we don'. Really have specific, to be honest. We don't have specific systems in place.

Nothing yet.

We'll really need to like, we'll need to work on that.

I, I, I coached a company years ago called Acceleration Partners and they've got about 140 employees and they're 100 remote and always have been. And they ranked as the number three company to work for on Glassdoor last year. Those super strong cult. Right. And digital, you know, lots of techies. Yeah, they've had to work really, really hard at it to because culture was so important to them. But the CEO from day one was like, but there's no freaking way I'm going into an office. But he wanted Google kind of culture without the inner office. So you do have to work at it for sure. My sister started a company in Covid called jam. They run online interactive fun events for companies. They're doing it all over the world and she's just hit seven figures in her first like eight months. Yeah, she's crushing it. It's kind of cool. They're actually legitimately super fun. I've run some for the CEO alliance and I'm not pitching you, I just, I thought it because I was asking the question. So what have you had to grow at as a CEO and how many employees do you have now?

We have 80.

80. So real company, 80 employees. You've raised 50 million in funding. This is not a small company anymore. You're, you', you're not quite at the politics stage yet where you hit, I think at like a hundred. Right. At 100 employees, you tend to get political or art. Do you have some politics creeping in yet?

No, no, we don't. But I'm laughing because I agree with you. It's like, you know, we're in this beautiful, magical phase.

Yeah, you're, it's like the buttery haze phase of dating. Right. Everything's great. I love him so much. Something's good. Until he just. Yeah. Leave shit lying around the house. Yeah, I think it's between 100 and 300 employees, the politics starts to creep in in the company. But you're running a real business with 80 employees. How have you had to change and adapt as a leader? From kind go from three to 10, 10 to 30 and 30 to 80. How have you been different in those three different sections? From three to 10, when you were building a management team, how did you have to adapt?

Well, I mean, that three to 10 phase was what we were talking about earlier. Just everyone knew Everything, you know, I did every single sales call. I mean, hell, Rick was in every single sales call. And we were all, you know, I knew everything that was happening on the roadmap. We talked about it every day, and we could. Right? And then 10 to 30, so you're.

Now hiring, you know, you're hiring your first management team at the 30. Right.

But, you know, 10 to 30 was. It wasn't that different because the, you know, we've been fortunate in that we've been growing so much from a customer perspective that even then I still did every single sales call. I knew every customer. And even though we were hiring, you know, we got customer lead for customer success, a lead for a couple salespeople, it was still very much like, I think I could do like, everything from very in the weeds to, you know, like, okay, let's talk about the board deck or the investors deck, blah, blah, blah. And then I think the real change was after 30, they were starting to build out their teams. And then I was trying to figure out, okay, more about how do we onboard these people better, how do we enable them? And then also we started having more conversations about hiring and that, that became.

More of a more strategic.

And now it is, it is, it's different again because it, you know, I don't know every single person that works at Perceptro, which is wild to me. It feels very odd. I mean, honestly, I'm trying to get to know her. I still think I can.

You know, it's drops between 100 and 300, you can't. And then you get to the point where you don't even know what they do. It's not only do I like, it's not only like, who are you? Like, do you work here? And how that's. That's really weird times then.

Oh, my God. I can't imagine that.

Oh, I. I was COO at 1-800-got junk. We had 3,000 employees system wide. We had 248 at the head office. And I was sitting talking to a guy in an elevator, and then he goes, oh, do you work here? And I was like, it's okay, dude. Yeah, I been here for a long time.

Yeah.

Yeah, I work here.

Yeah, I've done some stuff here. Yep, Yep.

Been around. Yep. Oh, my gosh. You're Cameron. Yeah, I'm Cameron. So have you had to change then your skill set? Have you had to slow down? Have you had to become less entrepreneurial again? Or do you just stick hard to what you're doing? And is. Are you more evolving than having to change.

I've definitely learned a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff about myself, and I'm learning a lot every day. I'm pretty good at prioritizing. I will say the chow challenge of Persona so far, more, most recently is how good can you be at prioritizing and how much more kind of ruthless can you be? And I'm realizing I need to be more. I need to get even better. I certainly do, you know, and realize, okay, what are the most. What's the highest and best use of my time? Or what are the things that only uniquely I can do? Because there are a lot of things where my impulse is still, like, I want to be in there. I want to be in that customer conversation. I want to read every single document about customer. I want to. I want to read every slide about the roadmap. There are literally no. No longer enough hours in the day for me to do that.

So what. What have you boiled or what are you starting to boil down to? The critical few areas that are kind of your unique ability as a leader or they give you the most energy?

I do. I still love scouting for people for new Persona. I love it. I've loved it since day one. I still love it. Certainly something that the whole. There's a whole team now behind talent and recruiting, and they're amazing. And so it's certainly not just me, but I still love that because I am very. I feel like I can really back up what I say about the company. I'm not selling things that I don't really feel or believe or I'm like, is that true? You know, it's kind of like a salesperson who has a really good product.

I think you also have a very innate understanding of the needs of the company as well. And you can see it, like, you know, the opportunity or, you know, the person when you see it, because you're so clear on. I think you're so clear. I feel like you're really very, very clear on the company and you just. You can see the round peg when you need it.

I agree. I think that is actually something I really enjoy and something I do feel like I can bring to the company because I've been here and because, you know, I just get so much energy from that. And that is seriously still the best part of my job for sure, is just figuring out, hey, okay, what do we need? Could that person be good for it? What are their strengths? What are their areas of growth? That kind of thing. I love that kind of Thing.

Where does Christy need to improve? If you were to self assess or your team was to give you an assessment, where would they, where would they say that you need to, to improve? What do you know you're improving on or working on right now?

Honestly, it goes back to that impulse. I have to want to know every detail. I need to not only let go, but also I think I need to realize, like not everyone's going to know every detail on my team either. Like that's just something that's going to happen because we're moving so fast. And you know, I was telling someone the other day that is something I have really learned about myself and I do need to work on is the it's too sides of one coin in my mind. One side is I have very high expectations. And I like that because I think that setting the bar high is good for a startup and it's good for attracting the right talent. But the flip side of it is sometimes I'm really focused on these like, small things that, you know what, we can't know everything. We can't do all that because we gotta move. We gotta 80 20th because we are a startup.

You're not doing brain surgery and you're not flying planes. Like no one's actually gonna die.

No, exactly. And, but part of me is like. And it's kind of like that big company part of me, I also started out in finance.

No, but you're also, you're also a straight A student. Like you're a very smart. You were a straight A student, right?

I was.

All right. I want to go Back to the 22 year old Christy Kim. She's just finishing college. She's getting ready to start on her career. What advice would you give Christie at 22 that you now you know to be true, but you wish you knew it earlier.

I know this one. I know this one follows me. I actually, and I say this all the time, I have a little sister. So I, I keep, keep always. I'm sure I'm an annoying broken record to her. What I would tell young Christie is careers are not linear. And I really thought that when I was young, like when I was fresh, I thought, okay, I got to do this. And then that, and then that and then that and then I'll get to here.

Of course. Yeah.

And it is just so not that way.

Yeah.

And you will drive yourself insane if you try to make it that way.

Yeah. If you try to figure out that path in advance. You can't. Someone I recently had on the show Said that they feel like it's all about picking something, working as hard as possible, and putting all your energy into it, and then when the next thing comes, doing the same there. But. But the path. You can see the path backwards, but not in advance.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I would also tell young Christie, it's so easy to be caught up in, like, title and kind of level and reporting structure and all those things. I. And Persona's been an. I really, like, really hit this home for me. It doesn't really matter. Like, it doesn't matter as much as you think it does. As in, it sounds really cheesy, but if you optimize for those things in your career and job, probably not going to make you happy. And, like, at this point, you know, I really think. I think when I was not. Not 22, but I think after my first kind of operating role, I was like, I really want this, this title, and I want to report to this person. What I realize now is, like, you don't have to report to XYZ person to be, like, doing really good work and to be happy. Happy.

Right. You can do that in any role.

Yeah. And now I kind of see people and I'm like, you know what? I would report to them. I like, there's this flexibility I have now in my mind of just, like, doesn't have to be. Don't prioritize that. Like, sometimes you. It would just make sense for you to just not. For you to not report to.

Yeah. Now you want to do cool shit with cool people, but it doesn't matter. Title is.

Yeah, exactly. Like, I don't care what your title is. And it's funny, I see that in a lot of. In some interviews, and I get both sides of it now.

Well, this was a good, good one. Christy Kim, COO for Persona. I really appreciate you sharing with us today and spending time on the second grand podcast. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Cameron. One of our concepts that we've been teaching on for years and years is the marketing hourglass. And so it's basically, how can you get someone to know, like, trust? Because from there you can say, okay, what do we need to do in these stages? What's our opportunity for improvement? And then that will help determine, like, what channels you should be on with what messaging, because it gives it focus ultimately.