Team Empowerment | COO, President and Board Member of Poppulo, Samantha Bufton (Podcast 261)

A great COO is always focused on enabling, empowering, supporting their leadership directly below them. And so I'm constantly dialed into them, obviously hearing where their challenges are, but figuring out how do I enable them to go solve the problem as opposed to becoming the bottleneck myself. Creating connection across the functions. Maybe it's kind of, you know, pointing them to a resource, a new framework, a new way of thinking about things.

So, Sam, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

Thanks so much. I'm so delighted to be here and delighted to meet you and talk a little bit about this wonderful role that I find myself in.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to learning a lot about that, learning some of your, I guess, the path that's gotten you into this COO role as well with Populo and also just to find out, I guess, some of the experience show that you can give us over the years, you and I, before we went live, you mentioned that you moved to the Bay Area 25 years ago, back in 1998. Really. Right. As the rise of the tech scene was really starting. What was that like for you as an experience and what kind of lessons do you still hold on to from back then?

Yeah, I mean, it was, it was a phenomenal ride and I would say, you know, sheer luck that I really managed to graduate with my computer science degree at that, that moment in time. Right. So was fortunate to jo Yahoo. When it was about 300 people went in as a software engineer and it was really transformative to me. I would say that having worked in the UK for a couple of years, it was a very different work environment. Right. I think that I was used to layers of management having very well formed requirements and very clearly understood business requirements handed down to me. And you know, at that time going into Yahoo, we were really building things new every single week as new information came along. So it was great in terms of broadening my horizons, broadening my confidence in myself and understanding the number of things that I could really apply myself to, as well as figuring out how you make decisions within a very rapidly evolving and changing marketplace with new customers, new opportunities, new technologies coming along every single today. So decision making was really. And prioritization was something that really figured large in it as well as kind of like the agility and sort of like that flexibility in terms of mindset and keeping an open mind in terms of the range of the possible.

And then when you, when you started there in the software engineering role, did you start to move into operations there or was it later in your career that you started to move from the kind of tech side or software side into the operation side.

Yeah, no. So I very much stayed in engineering. But, you know, the Yahoo philosophy was that if you built it, you then maintained it. Right. And so you had to develop this very operational mindset in terms of making sure that you were building something that was scalable and therefore you were able to manage it as that engineering lead. And you had a sense of the implications for other functions in terms like making sure you had hardware. Right. Like making sure that your sales team was aligned, your marketing team was aligned. So, you know, it was a strictly engineering role, but it started to develop that sort of, that mentality. I would say the biggest leap for me or the most transformational experience in terms of jumping into operations was when I moved to Autodesk and I moved into corporate development there and ran a series of M and A integrations. So we did, you know, about 10 to 12 transactions very, very quickly and had to figure out how to integrate those companies into the Autodesk and business and sort of corporate infrastructure, everything from people operations to cpq, getting it out into the sales team hardware that we had to bring in house. And it was there that I really started to get a deeper understanding of this cross functional alignment, the importance of the strategic lens, the tactical lens, the importance of metrics and key impact and outcomes that you were driving to, as well as the importance of communication and keeping everybody aligned with the direction that you're pointing on. So that was really the most transformational experience, I would say, in my career. And it was, it was, you know, a huge learning curve for me and I was fortunate to learn some from some really great people on the Autodesk team.

What do you think that are the critical mistakes? We've got a number of our COO alliance members are doing some integrations right now. Some are actually doing M and A, and some are actually a couple have just been acquired. What do you think are some of the things that companies do wrong when they're integrating or bringing in a company underneath them or even merging with?

Yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing is to really set the pace, right? To really align what it is you need to do from a business from an operations perspective, you know, internal efficiencies from a customer perspective, and then what you need to do from an employee perspective. And those time horizons can be very different, right. If you're buying or, you know, integrating, say a smaller entity, it might be much more important for you to do that employee integration very quickly. So that you have a smaller team who feel as if they're part of this new organization are not effective very quickly. If you're integrating somewhat of a bigger entity, it could be that actually the most important thing for you to do is to figure out how to operate in parallel for a little bit. Right. So that you can actually move past that initial diligence that you might have done preceding the deal so that you actually get, you know, each, each entity gets a better understanding of the other side, a deeper understanding, so that therefore you can plan effectively and make, have a better shot at making the integration a success. So I think the key is, you know, have a strong playbook, have a sense of what it is that you need to do for the full integration journey. But just spend some time thinking about are you prioritizing for the customer, for the employee, or, or for kind of like the internal efficiencies, and then think about how you balance across the functions with that in mind.

I've never heard of it. Thought about it from those three different perspectives as well. Something that seems to happen with integrations when you do these acquisitions is there's a lot of nervousness on the people side from both sides, the acquiring company and the acquiree. How do you calm those nerves? What are kind of the advanced chess moves you need to play on the people side to make sure that people are comfortable and okay. And then how do you deal with it when the layoffs, the inevitable layoffs because of a merger do happen? Right. You don't need two finance departments or what have you.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I would say, you know, inevitable. Sometimes you're actually acquiring an organization because of the people. And it's, you know, it's not necessarily the case that layoffs are inevitable, but there are frequently consolidation and sort of merging of two teams. So I would say, you know, from a people perspective, there are two ways to think about it. One is to be transparent, as transparent as you can in terms of laying out the people milestones. Right. So giving people visibility into, for example, my customer success organization will be running in parallel for six months. We're probably looking at kind of like a, you know, a one year horizon for bringing them together. So giving them that high level ability and some confidence in some milestones that they can come to expect. But then I think the other one is really making sure that you're integrating people from a culture perspective. So, you know, whether you're integrating a function or whether you're not, that you have a shared common language that everybody is able to use a common set of values and frameworks, you know, a common understanding of the new entities, shared objectives, the customer, Right. So that you're really educating those newer employees on the broader business context. But one of the most powerful things is just creating that buddy system and creating that peer to peer human connection. Right. So if you're somebody who's coming in net new, you may have a new business line leader, a new manager, but maybe there's a peer, somebody who kind of like has your job already in the company that you can connect with so that you have that softer integration, a safe space for you to go to so that you can actually ask some of the questions that you may be a little more timid about asking in a broader, broader context. So you need to attack it from multiple levels.

I would say this goes back to the whole Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You go that second layer of safety and security and you really have to make sure that people feel that safe. So doing the integrations pre Covid kind of free. So many companies now being remote, or certainly hybrid companies. What do you think would change now going back to those integrations and acquisitions that you did back then? What would have to change or how would you adapt based on the fact that so many people are remote?

Yes, yes. I mean, and even just it's my first time onboarding to an organization fully remotely. Right. With this new role. So I think it's all about communication, right. So setting up those opportunities for people to come together in person around meaningful sort of events. Right. So it could be that, you know, you need to drive different company kickoffs, different functional departmental meetings. You need to create the social side of it as well, so that you're creating that connectivity. Right. But being extremely meaningful and making sure that you have an executive team that is showing up in person and being there, being available, evangelizing again, sort of, you know, the mission, the goals, the value of this integration to the individual people and then just establishing this drumbeat of outbound communication from sort of, you know, your people team, your executive leadership team, so that you're sending, you know, emails, you know, you have mobile applications that are employees hands so that they have this connectivity all the time, but you're also gathering feedback. It's very important for this to be a two way conversation, making sure that as remote as people are, that they have the ability to feedback on their experience, their questions so that you have this kind of virtuous cycle of communication going on so that leadership can then again adjust, reflect back, but I don't want to downplay the importance of getting people together in person and making sure that you have a leadership team that is available, present and visibly. So for folk as they're, as they're onboarding.

How often is your leadership team at Populo starting to meet in person? Is it like a quarterly, is it monthly, is it annually? What's your thoughts around that?

Yeah, so as a leadership team, obviously we're getting together kind of pretty much every single month, right? So we have our board meeting, we have our leadership meetings, we have company kickoff sko. So we're making sure that we're coming together every single month as a leadership team. We're also making sure, you know, now as a global company, we have several offices and so we're making sure that, you know, there is executive leadership presence available in each of the offices at a minimum on a monthly basis. More frequently, you know, we actually have set up our sites so that we have execs in each of the offices. They're there on a daily basis. So the in person touchpoint is very, very important to us. And you know, we're, we're a couple of years along into our integrations. Right. But it still continues to be, to be there in person and to be available.

I'm going to ask you about Populo in a second and some more on your career path. But just a weird question that came up to me recently. It was an entrepreneur that I was speaking to and someone that was in his YPO forum group said that a relative was now working at three different jobs and getting full time salaries from three different jobs. And he was all excited about it. My friend was like, wait, like you're actually excited that your relative is stealing from three companies? Like first, how do you, can you rationalize that? But second, like, how do we as companies, how do we protect the company against that? Do you see anything like that? Are you aware of that? Are you worried about that?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's the potential exists for all companies to experience that. Right. The, the best way to mitigate against it is to have a compelling, motivating, inspiring strategy and for people to have, you know, jobs that are really motivating and that they enjoy doing every day. Right. As well as again, having sort of, you know, those visible touch points, those community forums, opportunities for people to actually show up and demonstrate the impact and the value that they're delivering. I think that's the, that's the number one thing, right, is be the compelling job opportunity that everybody is looking for. And if you discover these cases again, I think it's an opportunity for listening and for feedback and to understand why. Right. Because you know, if, if you are that employer where somebody isn't feeling that inspired and that commitment and that motivation.

Yeah, why not?

You need to sit down and to understand why. Right. Because that's, that's feedback. It's important for us as employers to give people that opportunity. Right. To inspire, to motivate and potentially raise expectations. Right.

Yeah, I like it. All right, so your career path kind of bringing you in. What were the other kind of key milestones or key steps that got you into this, the role now for Populo?

Yeah, I mean I would say, you know, the really the, the Yahoo one, sort of like the growth story Autodesk. As I said, integration, very, very cross functional. I would say that, you know, my time at Intuit was really powerful just in terms of they are a company that has a lot of frameworks, best practices in terms of collaboration, how you build strategy, how you think about communication and how you think about things like steering advisory, you know, how you think about doing things like benchmarking. So that was very powerful just in terms of building that sort of, that set of frameworks and capabilities. And then really it was my journey at SurveyMonkey. So the transformation, taking that from, you know, a single web channel selling to an individual consumer, transforming it, taking it to the enterprise and really coming along for the ride. Starting out in a product seat and then really ending up in a GM seat. Right. And having that very broad purview across the business as we were growing and transforming so aggressively, going through the ipo. I mean, there were just kind of like so many demands during that journey. That was a phenomenal experience and I was really, really grateful for that opportunity.

And then what was it that brought you to Populo? What was it that you saw in the company and what do you think it was that they saw in you?

So for me, I think it was the experience of going through Covid as a leader of a large organization at SurveyMonkey now Momentive and just really understanding the absolute need for holistic communication in terms of keeping employees again aligned with a strategy, focused on what's important, engaged in their work. As you know, SurveyMonkey was a global organization. I was leading a very large team and communication just became absolutely critical in terms of our ability to retain employees, to deliver customer value and to really grow that business. And so just looking at the popular value proposition, it was really a no brainer, right? That this is something that all organizations who are dealing with, you know, either large sets of workers within one place or disconnected workers or a hybrid workforce. Absolutely critical capability that needs to be front and center today. So the. The market need was there, the product really spoke to that market need. And then just the team, just interviewing with the team and understanding that this was a set of highly qualified areas in each of their functional, you know, domains that I had the opportunity to learn from, to partner with. And then really, you know, meeting with David, our CEO, and just understanding that, you know, we had an instant connection. I just saw the opportunity, really great collaboration there. What they saw in me, I think, you know, they. They really did sort of ladder to much of the work that I'd done at SurveyMonkey and Momentive in terms of that enterprise transformation and having that very broad purview across all of the functions as GM and having that, you know, domain expertise across all of those domains, such that I could bring together a holistic view across all of those functions. But maybe you'll have to ask David. Maybe he would say something.

Yeah, that'd be interesting for sure.

So.

So you joined the organization and I mean, it's always a bit of. How many people were there when you joined?

Which one?

Sorry, Populo.

Yeah, so it's about 700 people.

Okay, so 700 people that were in the organization and you stroll in as like, the COO and president of the company.

Yes.

There has to have been at least a couple people that were trying to get that job or hoping to get that job. There were probably a couple of people that were thrilled that they got to work with you. And there were probably a couple people that weren't thrilled that they had to work for you because they wanted to work for somebody else. How do you manage through all that? What was your onboarding like? Yeah, can you kind of walk us through some of that?

Yeah. So as I said, you know, we are. We're sort of a global company. We have offices in Denver, Boston, Cork, the uk. It was really important for me to get into the offices and to actually meet people face to face. Right. Because I think that, you know, working remotely, it's super important to build that human connection first, to build empathy and understanding for somebody else's mission, goals. Right. What they're actually focused on, but to just to build that. That connectivity, build the trust. Right. So that was really focus number one. Then it was kind of meeting, obviously, spending time with the board and with the executive team, understanding the strategy, where we are from, kind of a performance perspective, anything that we may be steering into. And frankly, asking other people what they would want me to bring to the table in this seat. Right. And getting their feedback in terms of how I can collaborate, how I can augment the critical things that they need me to act on pretty quickly. So I would say, you know, you, you mentioned, you know, there may have been some detractors in the room as I imported. Frankly, I didn't experience it. I mean, I think that was part of my experience during the interview process that was so compelling. Right. Like, this is an incredibly supportive collaborative team and I was truly excited to be part of it. So fingers crossed, everything is going really well from, you know, from an executive partnership perspective, as you point out. I'm in, I'm in California. I'm pretty remote from the rest of the team. I've spent four months now really digging in with the executive team, with my team, establishing those connection points with kind of like the click down. So now a lot of what I'm trying to do is to jump into those more operational forums with a broader swath of the population. Right. Of the employee base so that I can really hear and understand what's going on from them and understand how I can start to add value, remove bottlenecks, provide clarity, you know, deliver any optimization that I can for the specific functional groups.

What do you focus on? What's the kind of day to day focus for you as a CEO of a 700 person company? And how do you not get dragged into so many of the details and the communication and, you know, how do you stay above that?

Yeah, so I'm really focused on kind of like the strategic outcomes. Right. So, you know, really our goal to grow the company. Are we delivering customer value? Are we focused on the right segments or go to market positioning? As I said, I think so many companies are dealing with volatility in the marketplace. Right. There are sectors like energy and finance which may be doing extremely well right now. Just coming off the back of the macroeconomics and others that may be more challenged. So making sure that we're aligning our resources with the market opportunity, but we're also jumping in to understand how our existing customer base is doing, doing right. How are they doing with the macroeconomic environment and making sure that we're focused on either enabling them to grow because, you know, their business is growing, or supporting them as they may be facing some economic challenges. So making sure that we have that, that strategic customer lens always on and then really right now focused on our innovation. Right. Like, what is our opportunity to grow in this market? Making sure that we're oriented towards building those right set of capabilities. You'll see in our product offering, we have a workplace experience offering which is all about managing your employee experience within real estate. Now, we understand that some customers are kind of like pulling back on their real estate portfolio. So what does it mean for them to rationalize that how can we support them if their employees aren't in the workplace? Right. We can pull together other capabilities that enable them to stay connected with their employees. But obviously there are some people who are bringing everybody back or manufacturing who've never stopped. So making sure we're pointing building the right set of capabilities to meet our customers where they are with the specific challenges that they're facing right now. And then obviously it's the team. It's always the team. The team is everything. Right. So to your question, in terms of making sure that I don't get dragged down into all of the minutiae, I think a great COO is always focused on enabling, empowering, supporting their leadership directly below them. And so I'm constantly dialed into them, obviously hearing where their challenges are, but figuring out how do I enable them to go solve the problem as opposed to becoming the bottleneck myself. Maybe it's creating connection across the functions. Maybe it's kind of, you know, pointing them to a resource, a new framework, a new way of thinking about things so that I'm actually, you know, it's teach Amanda fish. Right. As opposed to actually, you know, going and getting the fish yourself. Yeah.

What are your thoughts right now? There's, there's kind of the two sides of this where companies are wanting to bring employees back to the office and others are saying, no, we're going to be remote forever. Have you got any thoughts around that right now?

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the landscape has really changed. It is no longer the case. I think that over the last few years, what's happened is that organizations have fanned out in terms of their employee marketplace. Right. So, you know, it could be that you have started employing people where you actually don't have an office present. Right. And so it may be physically impossible for you to bring people back, or the other great outcome of this is that, you know, you may have been able to employ a whole set of people who, for, you know, accessibility reasons, for, you know, other challenges, may not be able to come to an office. And that's also fantastic. Right. And so I think that the, you know, each organization needs to look at this and say, okay, what is the business need? What is my kind of people need? What does my team need? And really come to that balance as well. Even if you have a team that is fully remote, you do need to get people together in the location that they can get together in. Right. But it's so different. We are seeing such huge differences across all of the industries, as I said, and we all read the news and we see different levels of success in it. I think if you're going to pull people back into the office, there needs to be a compelling reason for it and there has to be a benefit for the employee for them to as well. Yeah. So.

So how does this change the onboarding process and how did it change your onboarding process and coming into a company as a coo, what do you think? You know, you had to do differently via Zoom or. You said you mentioned you went to a lot of the offices and visited a lot of the offices. I guess that that's happening now.

But.

But how has the onboarding of remote employees changed? What are we doing in that area?

I think it needs to be a lot more structured in terms of making sure, I mean, what you could assume was happening casually and organically previously, you have to actually schedule in, build a capability around it. Right. So I think that, you know, for my role, it was really making sure, you know, I had had a ton of reading material. Right. Like strategy board decks from sort of, you know, years prior, all of the market intellig, all of the diligence that was done around the companies, you know, profiling of the team. So there was just a ton of kind of like reading ahead, but also married with very deliberate scheduled opportunities for me to get learning about the product, about the customers, scheduled time with kind of the team. Because I think once you create, you know, a little bit of contextual knowledge, you create the human connection, then you can start to branch off on your own. Right. But it's very hard from the outside to know who do I go to for what piece of information. So you have to balance the two.

That's amazing. Before I forget to ask you, tell us what Populo does so that we're kind of aware of what the company does overall as well.

Yeah. So it's an omnichannel enterprise communication platform, so it's really focused on making sure that you're addressing your employee communication needs. Right. So making sure that you can reach your employees wherever they are on the channel, that's meaning for them, whether it's email, whether it's mobile, whether it's on your intranet, but having this ability to essentially run, you know, campaigns of information to your employee base, to making sure that they're engaged, aligned, focused and sharing of information, customer communication. So we also do digital signage. So like as you walk through your favorite bank or your airline terminal, you'll see our screens displaying information to customers. And then finally, as I said, workplace experience. Right. So digitization of floor maps, enabling people to navigate to book desks, meeting rooms, report issues with a mobile app, again, bringing email, mobile, digital signage all together once you're actually in the office itself.

Nice. I love it. All right. Before we went live, you talked about kind of changes to constant and, you know, having to navigate uncertainty and being agile. Can you speak to some of that and how you communicate that to how you kind of socialize that with the employees and how you get that to be understood and become the norm so that they don't get stressed out during this change? Because I agree.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's the most important thing is about building trust and giving people the line of visibility that you can. Right. So for example, I think, you know, we, we kicked off this year defining our OKRs for the year, right. And sort of saying these are the company goals for this coming year. This is how we're going to measure success. But being upfront about the fact that, you know, we expect to experience different marketplace dynamics during this year and that could vary by geo. Right. And we are not able to read that crystal ball and just being transparent up front, this is our plan. These are all kind of, you know, these are objectives. We are all going to be leaning in and focusing on these very clearly, but we're going to be coming back on a quarterly basis sharing with you how we're doing on these OKRs and reserving the right to kind of pivot as we get new information. Right. And it's that thing setting up the expectation that we are going to steer into this set of objectives because we believe in them. The information that we have today signals that these are the right things to do, but just that little transformative piece of kind of like we reserve the right to kind of change some of these decisions and to do some realignment, some refocusing as we get new information. And then the key is really figuring out what are those listening posts that you're going to be keying into. What are those, you know, those key metrics that you're going to be looking at that are going to be telling you, giving those early warning signals that you might need to revisit a situation and then bringing that back to your employee base and being upfront and saying, you know, this is, this is the change we're making. This is the new set of information that came along. This is what it means. It's okay for you to set aside that piece of work. Right. And to focus on these new things and giving people permission to sort of, you know, to. To make the pivot and to. To move forward optimistically on the new set of objectives.

Yeah. I told. I told a group of employees one time that, you know, building the company is like sailing a boat from, you know, one point to another when the sailboat gets hit by a wave, like, yes, I said we're going to here, but I didn't anticipate getting hit by every other wave was we have to kind of bob and weave a little bit. Like you can't completely go straight.

Yeah.

So there's a. There's this weird saying that's been around forever. You know, the whole slow to fire or slow to hire, quick to fire. And I've been tormented by that a bunch of times recently. I sometimes I subscribe to that and sometimes I'm like, well, I don't know, any thoughts around that whole mantra? And how do you approach, you know, people when. When you're in that. I think we need to fire them. How do you really approach that?

Again, I think it's just sort of like it's transparency and, you know, a conversation with the person. Right. I mean, I think, like, oftentimes when you find yourself in that sort of gray zone, the. The person themselves is probably feeling some of that too. Right. And so I think that. That the most important thing to do is to have an upfront conversation and sort of say, how does it feel from either position here? Do we feel as if this is a relationship and sort of a role that is working out from both sides? Right. And have that transparent conversation. And it could be that that individual is already feeling that same tension and has some idea of how to course. Correct. Right. Or may raise their hand and ask for a different seat at the table, a different opportunity. So I do think that the transparency is important because it creates optionality for you in terms of how to solve the problem, but it's also treating the other person with respect. I've always. And if any of my team listen to this, they will recognize this. I firmly believe that direct feedback is the greatest gift that you can give anybody in their career, because it's only if somebody is telling you what you could be doing differently and be doing better, that you really have the opportunity to do it right. Otherwise, you may be sort of, you know, sailing along to your point, you know, weaving a little bit, but thinking that you're generally headed in the right direction. And sometimes you just need somebody else to tell you that you're, you're off course and there's a set of things that you need to do differently. So I think, I think. And then, you know, you have the conversation and if you're misaligned, right. In terms of somebody thinking they're doing a great job and perhaps you're on different sides in terms of opinion here, then I think you have to steer into, is there an opportunity for coaching? Is there an opportunity for support? Because we invest a lot of time, money and cycles into finding great candidates. And I think having made that investment, I think you need to do that diligence in terms of, is there a safe opportunity here? What is the, the cost of us actually mentoring and growing this person as opposed to having to go back to the market to essentially fill that seat again? But again, it's a trade off.

Yeah, I agree. That's kind of where I am as well. Very similar. So we're in this strange time right now. It's kind of the second time in the last three years where we've had a bit of a market meltdown. The first because of COVID and second, just because of the economics of where we are in inflation. You've navigated companies through the 2000 tech crash, you know, with the NASDAQ fell by 78% and then the. Probably the 0809 global financial crisis, but a lot of employees today, you know, specifically anybody who's like, I don't know, 22 to 35 have never been through an economic downturn. And the news is all about, you know, so and so's laying off 50% and so and so laying off, whatever. How do you, how do you keep the open communication and the. To help them with their confidence and help. What do you. How are you navigating this time with. With people?

Yeah, I mean, I think it is. You have to continually reiterate the positives. Right. I think of, you know, the, the framework that really comes to mind is the. The zone to win. Right. Like Jeffrey Moore. Right. Like when you're running your business, you have the set of things that are core and foundational. Right. And those are kind of typically going to continue and do well. Right. So kind of like your cash Cow the thing that has just been that repeatable thing for a long time. You just need to kind of like orient employees around that and just remind them that you have this healthy core of the business and this is stable and you're going to continue focusing on this thing and growing it. A lot of companies today are really focusing on retaining and expanding their existing base, right? Because that's the most efficient area for them to focus on right now. And, you know, it's fair for you to have conversations around those innovation areas, right? Like those, those areas where it may have a very steep growth curve, but you're potentially not so sure in terms of how that's going to trend out of the market. You just have to be clear with people about that, right? And you have to point out where you're strong, where potentially, you know, you're actually going to be listening to signals a bit more closely and balancing your resources and adjusting as you get more feedback from the market. But it is just kind of like that drumbeat of kind of celebrating the work, reminding people of kind of like the positives and really reminding people and sort of like, hey, it's good for you to question this area. We should all be asking questions about whether this is the right resource and empowering people to ask those questions. Empowering people to really engage, inspect their own portfolio of work and ask the question about whether it is something that they should be pursuing and being open to that conversation. It's a really positive thing for employees to kind of like, you know, for the team to raise their hand and say, hey, I'm not so sure is this the right thing for me to be doing and to have those conversations?

I love that. Are there any lessons that you think that, you know, the smaller entrepreneurial organizations, you know, the, let's say the 25 employees to 200 employee kind of enterprise can learn from the larger medium or enterprise companies. What are the bigger companies doing better that we can embrace at a smaller scale?

Let me think about that. I think that's sort of like the strategic. It's developing that set of options, right. I think that when you're a smaller company, a founder, you may have conviction around a single idea, a single set of customers, a, you know, a single business line or product opportunity. I think it's to always be considering, what would I do build those scenarios, right. What would I do if kind of, you know, my churn rate really spiked dramatically? What would I do if, you know, my, my bookings were to drop 25% next quarter? So that you're actually doing that scenario planning and you're not having to make sort of a knee jerk reaction in the moment, right? You've already thought through the range of possibilities, you've built them out. You understand where your key levers are in the business. Is it headcount, is it marketing budget, is it kind of a specific geo investment? Is it the currencies that you allow people to transact in? Understand those key levers, understand the options that, that you have available in a range of scenarios. Be ready, right? Because in this market you need them and you need to understand what they are.

It's one of the things that's always driven me crazy about companies is they talk about strategic planning. I'm like, there's no such thing as strategic planning. You've got strategy, right? And you have planning. And strategy is all those questions that you're asking yourself and thinking about and what if ing and, and you know, running scenario plans just in case so that when it happens you're ready, right? But, but you're right, because companies just don't take the time for that. So then they're reactive to it, right? They're constantly having to react and plan. React and plan versus thinking ahead. All right, I want to go Back to the 22 year old Sam Buffton. She's just getting started in her career. What advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today?

Yeah, it's always been the same. It's, it's do the hard thing, right? Like I, you know, whenever I was given the option to, you know, take the, make the incremental change, take on the incremental set of responsibility or take a leap. Go do the harder thing that, you know, other people might not be willing to do that you definitely didn't have a level of comfort in that you weren't sure if you could succeed. Go do the harder thing. You will learn. You will learn so much. And even if you fail, you will learn, right? And you will, you will learn from that experience and it will grow you, it will grow your confidence, your resiliency. Do the harder thing.

I love it. Sam Buffeton, the President and COO from Populo, thanks very much for sharing with us on the Second Command podcast.

Thanks so much. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for the opportunity.

Yeah, it was great.

Be very frank in what it is you need, the job description, the geography, the experience, everything, so that they're now spinning their wheels and wasting time giving you candidates that are not what you wanted or needed. Also, like, be open to their input because they're the experts, right? If you've hired them to help you, let them help you.