Focus Is the CEO Advantage - Irina Novoselsky - Hootsuite - Episode #88

I think the concept of Focus is very addictive because what they saw is through Focus, we doubled our growth.

Welcome to Not Another CEO Podcast. I'm your host, David Politis. Every week we talk to inspiring leaders and get the true stories, the ups and downs, the lessons learned and come away with actionable advice for our own journeys. Today's guest is Irina Novoselski, the CEO of hootsuite. Irina is a seasoned operator and multi time CEO. Her first CEO role was a career builder where she took the helm in 2017 and led a major modernization of the company, its technology and its product suite. Today she is CEO hootsuite, widely considered the number one social media management platform in the world. It's trusted by millions of users and hundreds of thousands of businesses. She's known for her people first leadership style and her ability to guide companies through significant inflection points. Please welcome Irina.

Wow, what an intro.

David, thank you for doing this with me. All my guests asked the same first question. What is the one thing that you've done, big or small, at hootsuite that's had the biggest impact and you do again if you're CEO of another company in the future.

So it's something I've taken with me now for almost 10 years and I institute this weekly all hands. Globally across are 1100 owls and it's this 15 minute all hands and it's very much kind of TikTok style. And I have just found in this extremely remote and sometimes difficult to stay in touch world that having this 15 minutes where they see me, other members of our leadership team and we kind of go through some wins and just have some truth conversations, sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's not positive. It's been just this string that has tethered us all together. And they know that every week on Thursday for 15 minutes they're getting their kind of espresso shot.

I like that. I have some very tactical questions. Is it a mandatory all hands?

I so this is controversial. David. I'm not a big mandatory person. I don't genuinely believe in mandatory work. Come back to the office, mandatory meetings. I don't really believe in mandatory camera on. I believe that if you bring in the right leaders and drive the right culture and the right behavior, some of those activities should happen. And so if there's people that are in a 2am time zone, which we definitely have, it's not mandatory for them to join, we record it. I will tell you that of the awake population, we have almost 80% consistent turnout and one of the didn't appreciate this because I joined. I was on this customer call, not our customer getting pitched and. And half the team had their camera off. And it wasn't until then that I realized we have a very camera on culture. But it's not anything that we mandate or we talk about. And I just think it goes back to respect. If you treat people with respect, they want to show up and give you the best of what they have to give. And hopefully if the culture's built the right way, those that don't belong kind of feel it and are off to better pastures.

What topics do you. Because 15 minutes is short. I'm used to doing a monthly all hands that's an hour long and it's know it's very produced and many people coming in and out and talking.

How.

How do you do? Like, is. Is that tightly produced 15 minutes, or is it mostly just people speaking or.

No, it's pretty tightly produced, but it's very TikTok style. So we normally have four or five speakers. They get kind of a slide or two each. I instead of playing music, I will literally say, all right, David, you've got 10 seconds. Wrap it up. Let's get it off. And it varies from when we have product releases and they want to share something, or our contract ops to team solved the problem, or our billing team put in a new system, or somebody just found this, this really exciting thing for our customers or one of our salespeople recorded a customer just being so impressed with our customer service and so they wanted to play it. And so it changes every week. We try to keep. Once a month we'll do a financial update. Once a month we'll do kind of a product roadmap update. We usually have at least one customer win every single week. So the agenda is concentrated but also loose so that if people have recognition or feedback, it's also we announce any company changes. And so people just know if you want to be plugged in, you join.

I love it. I love. You know, I have some companies that I work with where they do quarterly all hands and I push them. I said, you can't. You can't in one quarter the amount of stuff that changes. But actually, as you're saying this to me, it's as you're saying about even my monthly cadence, which is kind of what I suggest in today's world. The speed is so fast that in a week, stuff get. I mean stuff. A lot of stuff happens.

We do not have an empty jet net. There has not Been a week where it's like we have nothing to talk about. And like, also because it's 15 minutes, people are able. They walk away with three things. They walk away with a sense of energy. Right. So there's a feeling that they get. They get some updates on what's happening. And so even if you're sitting and kind of, kind of a very specific part of the organization, you're feeling plugged in. And so it feels like we're more tethered together. And then three, they get this constant pulse on what's happening in the business versus on a monthly or quarterly basis. We would spend so much time curating the content and people can't focus for that long. They just zone out. Anyway.

I love it. Last tactical question on this. Who coordinates this? Like, this is a lot of coordinate. I mean, I think it's a lot of coordination to do that every week. Who's the person who runs in the people team? Ea Chief of staff.

Yeah, it depends. So my chief of staff helps, but really at this point, my EA runs most of it. And people know that if they have something to share, they just go straight to her and they get a slot. We also usually start with some fun music. And so the music has been the most controversial. Depending on what we picked, there's a lot of countries that think it's to this centric. To that centric. This. Who said so the music has been. If you knew how much drama there was on the music that gets played, that only gets played while people are attending and back. GME has this thing where it's only the first 500 people can speak. And so it has gotten to be so aggressive that when anybody wants to speak, they have to join like two minutes ahead of time or they won't get into the top 500. And so I've had, you know, my. My C suite have to present something and they're muted because they just joined like 3:30 seconds too late.

Are there other rituals that you have? Not even like this, but just generally rituals that you've brought that you think are really important to kind of the operating rhythm of the business.

Yeah, I am really big into transparency. I think as leaders, you show up when it's good, it's bad. Anything you show up. And so for me, I think one of the hardest things is getting a feedback loop. Nobody wants to tell the CEO negative things. Nobody wants to, you know, to tell the emperor they have no clothes on. And so I don't know if this is 100% great, but at Least the time is set up. So every other week we have a 30 minute session for our senior leadership team. Once a month, every people manager across the company, we get on a call. It is open, Q and A. Literally you can ask me anything. Sometimes it's pretty controversial questions. I come from this mentality of we spend most of our awake hours at work. I joke that I'm like a grape at work and then I'm a raisin when I come home. And so if we are spending all this time with each other, I think it's on our employees and our leaders to hold each other accountable. And so I love it when an owl goes and questions, hey, why did you do that? I don't really understand that to me is such a sign that somebody's engaged. Like how amazing that they have enough guts to question a CEO in front of all these people managers. And by the way, I, I deserve to answer them, right? Like they've earned the right by showing up and giving me a hundred percent that if they don't understand like A, they might be right and B, maybe I didn't do a good job communicating. And so I think creating these communication points and sometimes like I, I've done this where we get on call and there's no questions and I'm like, okay, we're just going to sit in silence for a few minutes. And people are like, seriously? I'm like, yep, we're doing it. Because also people need to get comfortable to get into it. And then usually a few minutes all the hands start going up like, okay, well I actually have questions and I just find you can't have transparency during. If you don't establish the communication then you can't just have it during the good times. You need a system in place for when there's trouble and there will always be trouble. Because if you're not pushing boundaries then you're not trying hard enough. You know,

you joined as CEO of hootsuite and you've done done this twice where you've come in as CEO at a pretty important moment in time for the company. What is the first thing you do? Actually I literally just came from a friend who just joined a CEO of a company, 300 person company. And she, we were having this whole conversation, she's like, you know, this has been around for a while, well known and she's joining a CEO and she, she was saying she's trying to find what are those first things that you do when you arrive like this at a company? Can you talk through that?

So this is kind of my third one I've come into, even though it's a second one as CEO. And I think I've kind of perfected this playbook a little bit, mostly for making some mistakes on the other ones. And I think it's three things. One, in the first hundred days, I meet with a serious amount of customers. And so usually within the first a hundred days, I get through 60 customers or so. I just pack them onto my calendar and I just ask, are you happy? What? Why do you. Why did you come to us? Why do you stay? I do the same with our top leaders. And leaders doesn't necessarily mean people who have reports. I will ask who are the most influential, who are kind of the most regarded, whatever it is, across the whole company. I usually end up meeting probably with at least 60 or 70 people in the first few weeks. And I just do 30 minutes, get in, get outs. And I'm trying to understand a few things, like what makes the business tick, why did they stay, what keeps them going. And very quickly you get this visual map of why the customers are happy, what they're unhappy with, why the employees are happy, what they're unhappy with. And I try within the first few weeks to pick a direction on where things are working and how to put fuel on it. So I think one of the things people spend a lot of time is trying to fix things that don't work. And I think it is a very difficult thing to do. There's this Anna Karenina quote that when you open up the book, it says all happy families are similar for or are happy for similar reasons. All unhappy families are unhappy for different reasons. And it's the same thing with companies, right? If you the vast number of reasons that a company can have broken things or customers are unhappy, it's endless. Versus the things that you're really good at is usually two, three max things. And so people spend so much time fixing the things that are broken. Cool. And so you might take an F player to be a D player, a D player to be a C player. It's not going to change your trajectory of your business. But if you go and lean into the things that your A's at and you make them super A's, the leverage you get is so much stronger. So, for example, in Hootsuite, within probably the first 10 days, I asked everybody to come back and tell me what they think our strategy should be, and everyone kind of flipped out because how do you do this in 10 days? And. And that include my chief Revenue officer, my chief people officer, my chief legal officer. I was like, use your teams. And they're like, I run legal. How am I supposed to tell you what our strategy should be or what our customer focus should be? And I said, get, get creative. And everybody got a moment to present. And it went through their whole teams. Everybody kind of bubbled it up. And so my chief people officer at the time got really creative. She did a survey of our entire employee base and asked them what companies we should go after. My chief legal officer went through the contracts, right? People just got super creative how to attack the problem. And David, the most interesting thing is what people presented was within 80% of each other. Like, most people came with the same answer. And so one of the biggest things I learned as a CEO is I don't have to show up with the answer. I just have to mobilize the team and then drive execution when they come up with it. And so what really became clear is what our ideal customer profile is. We started focusing on the enterprise space, specifically in those industries that really leverage social media. And within 10 days we said, great, that's our focus. Go. It doesn't mean we don't do everything else, but we focus towards this. And everybody had a stake in building it.

There's so much in there. The first one meeting with the customers, there was a period of time when I kind of got disconnected from our customers during COVID kind of peak, Covid days. And I met with 100 customers in 100 days. And it was this kind of thing where I said I have to get in front of customers again one on one with the decision maker for an hour. Really like intense meetings. And what you just described is literally, as you're saying, I'm feeling those meetings where by the 10th meeting, 9th, 10th, 11th, it's all the same. They're all saying basically, you know, and so when you say that, I'm like, yeah, and guess, you know, you come in as a new CEO, you go do that, you're going to get the answer. I mean, you're going to know what's happening.

Oh. Cause what customers are going to tell you. And like, for me, I don't know if there's anybody in the company that meets with more customers than I do. But I don't come from a developer background. I'm not a programmer. Right. And I'm not an engineer. And so I won't be able to understand the product to that level that they will. And the only way I can build credibility with them and my Other employees is basically to say, like, I've met with so many customers, I know why they're buying, I know why they're using. I know why they're happy, unhappy. And it gives me just a pulse. I on when people kind of come up with things, I'm like, that's not really what they want.

Yeah, it gives you the credibility as someone who's new into the company. It's like, well, I've talked to 60. How many have you talked to in the last. You know, not in a bad way, but yeah.

And it's engaged. I don't know if you've noticed, but it's a little bit addicting. So, like, when people see that I'm spending time with customers, all of a sudden my. My whole ELT started spending time. Like, everybody kind of slowly started getting involved because, okay, well, if she's prioritizing it, maybe we should.

And then in terms of meeting with those top leaders, those top performers, did you. How exactly did you identify? Was it based on, like, their last review? Was it just based on who the ELT said is the top performers? Like, how do you find those? Because those people I interviewed, Alan Masterrek, who was the CEO of Vonage, he was the CEO of another company. He was a founder of film. Anyway, he talked about this Price's Law, where the square root of the number of people in some organization carry more than 50% of the load of the work. And I'd never heard that before, but when he said it again, things clicked. I was like, wow, I guess that's a pretty accurate statement where there's a subset of people who are working who are the A's who can become the A plus. But how do you actually find those people?

They're also the cultural carriers, and you would be surprised. So whenever you start talking to somebody, they'll mention, oh, my God, you got to meet with this person. And I'll ask who I need to meet with. Um, and some of it happens naturally because when I show up, I. I always say, I want to meet with customers. Get me in front of customers. 90% of people are scared to put me in front of customers. But then there's that 10% that are like, okay, we'll try. Let's see what she has. Right. And so they'll reach out and they'll kind of proactively. And so those people usually are kind of the fearless ones that you start with. But I pull the elt. I pull. I walk the halls. And so when I started in Hootsuite, Vancouver is a really big office for us and so I moved to Vancouver and I just would walk every day and chit chat with people in here who do I need to talk. And you just learn the culture. But anytime I visit anyone, my days are back to back of 20 minute one on ones and you just. The people rise to the like they just rise to your calendar. I don't know how else to say it, but over a minute somebody will mention the same person. I'm like great, I need time with that person. And somebody else will do something. I'm like great, give me time with that person. And there's usually 10% that drive 80% of the the culture, the work, all of it. They're also the ones that come with a list of things that need to get done. And I think that's what I appreciate the most. It's not the ones that kind of BS me or tell me everything is great. Like it's not we should be better tomorrow than we were yesterday so things should get better. And so I really appreciate those people that show up with a list of okay, here's some things that we need to improve and they have ideas on how to improve it but they just come armed and ready instead of those that just come to complain but no solutions or what's worse, everything's great. Well, it's not because we should constantly be doing something better. And so I love the people that are pointing out what we could do better.

Yeah, I, I won't buy actually did after I did the 100 customers in 100 days, I did 60 of the top people in 60 days. And and it was similar. And I remember asking people what is the greatest point of friction that's holding you back from. And people. People had list and stupid stuff that we were like really stupid things that we were doing as a company that were just wasting time. And they're like I don't know why we have to click nine times in Salesforce to approve this thing. That's free.

Oh my God. I still think I have that problem.

But it's, it's. And then the last one which I am like this is I have religion on is the ICP focus. I actually believe that when I talk to any CEO one of my first questions is what's your ideal customer profile? And most will tell me then I sell to security and it I sell to the small company and the end. And by the way, I was very much doing this myself for many years until some investor forced us to do an entire exercise and defining ICP literally changed, changed the company. So when you come in to do that, you talked about going to the enterprise and really focusing on the enterprise. You talk through a little bit more of how that process of changing the icp. Was that an org wide thing? Was that like a.

You know, I think it's the hardest thing to do, David, because I think one of the things people crave is prioritization of focus. But they don't actually, actually want prioritization and focus because if you prioritize and focus correctly, there's trade offs that happen to everything. Right. And so there's only one thing that can be in the number one spot. And so the idea of it sounds fascinating until you have to pick between Sally and Susan, right? And then you're like, well, I want both. I'm like, well, you don't get both. You have to pick one. And also one of the things that's really challenging is there's some people that are working tied to the ICP and most of the people in the are not working towards something in the icp. And so the biggest challenge usually that I have is like, Irene, you're going to go and isolate 70% of the people. You're going to tell them their priority number two. And that is the biggest kind of roadblock I always hear. And yeah, I am. But it's not that their priority number two, their job is to create a, a Runway for us. Their job is to give us space and time to go turn that ICP to be the majority. Eventually the whole company should be ICP in the majority of the focus. But you have to start somewhere. And usually that cohort that you start with is smaller than the majority. And but somebody has to basically like they're the, the silent, what's that word where they're like the silent heroes? Because without them we wouldn't have the ability to go focus and prioritize. But it is a trade off. And I find a lot of leaders are more worried about kind of the harmony in creating the perception of everyone is equal instead of focusing on the strategy. And I just think that's a really hard thing to execute.

How long did it take you to do that icp? Not, I know it's an ongoing thing, but how long to define that and kind of start the shift?

Define it. We did it pretty quickly. So by day 10, I mentioned we had it within the first, like by day 30 we were live and, and taking it across the whole business by month 3 people like the joke. That's How I know it lands is when I'm walking the hallways and they're like, oh, we signed a deal, don't worry, it's icp, right? And coming at me. But like, we're constantly evolving. So what our ICP was the first year is different than our second year is different than it is now. And I think the concept of focus is very addictive because what they saw is through focus, we doubled our growth and so then we focused on the next thing and that drove results. And when we don't focus, they see the impact of it. And so I think it's one of the biggest superpowers for a leader to be able to focus. Not just strategy, but even in my personal how do I manage my time? I find leaders just that are being run by their calendar instead of focus on the three things they have to get done are just two very different impacts. Level leaders.

Did you have some experience or something that drove this, this focus, you know, this, this idea of focus, the icp, does that come from somewhere earlier in your career? Does that come like, where does that come from?

Yeah, I think one of the things. So I originally started my career in finance, so I started in investment banking at Morgan Stanley doing M and A. And then from there I went and did private equity investing for Apollo. And when you're working in these very high intense finance jobs, time is not your friend. And you're working around the clock. And one of the biggest skill sets that you learn is how do you figure out what's the 20% that's going to drive the 80%, whether you're underwriting a deal, what are the one or two things that can break the deal, whether you're trying to underwrite it from a growth, what are the one or two, three levers that will drive the biggest impact? So you're constantly trying to figure out Pareto's principle, right? What is the 20%? What's the minimum you can put in to get the maximum out? And so that mentality has really stayed with me. And given just like my math background and finance background, any problem I try to approach is what's the 20? 80, 80, 20. Right. And it's a skill set from an execution perspective that I keep honing as a leader. I don't know if I'd ever give myself an A because I think it's one of the hardest things to do. And so this year I'm better than I was last year, than I better was before. And in one year, if we talk, I'll be Better again. But it is really hard because we're human. And I'll give you an example. We got this like several hundred thousand dollars deal that came to us in the last week. And based on the criteria that we set for prioritization, my team decided to pass on it. David, do you know how hard it is to say no to a deal that size? And the CEO in me is like, oh my God, are we really going to say no to this? Like, what is happening? But they did everything the right way because this was very custom. This wasn't going to be something that we could scale. It was going to take a lot of resources and it wasn't going to give us against our criteria. And so I didn't push back. I let them make the decision. But inside I was like, oh my God, I hope I did right. But this is the consequence of a trade off. And the first thing that happens when you're trying to focus is when that shows up. Usually what happens is okay, but we have to make an exception for this. And those exceptions, what they do is just send the message to the teams that, okay, the prioritization is just fake. It's not, it's not real. And so I think it's just hard. I don't think we're perfect all the time, but I think it's a really hard thing to do.

The Apollo part is probably where a lot of this comes from. It was Warburg that was the one who drove this for me.

Oh yeah, it helps. I mean, you have limited time and so you really have to be focused on how you allocate your time. And I think whether it's for, you know, I think we have similar in that regard, but I think that finance background is a really powerful tool.

Yeah, last question about this. Stepping into the CEO role there. I don't know the exact investor dynamic of hootsuite, but I imagine there are a bunch of investors. How do you communicate with them? I mean, all these changes and all, you know, I have not been in that situation coming in as a CEO and having an existing investor base. Like how do you communicate with them?

Yeah, great question. I think it's one of the things that I have been learning as a CEO on how to perfect. One of the things I am really good at is communicating with my team and the company and I communicate with the investors and the board. But it's been something I've really had to learn because in my mind there's two things. One, and this is a little vulnerable, but there's A people pleasing aspect, right where you want to feel like you are delivering for the people that kind of put you in that seat. And my first CEO role, I probably allowed that to influence my strategy, my leadership more than it really should have. And this time around I'm kind of taking the perspective of, okay, I'm coming in to drive the results. My job is to make sure they're on my team. My job is to get their input. But I'm not really here to people, please, they can agree with the strategy, they can disagree. We could have a healthy agreement, but my job is to go drive results. And that has been. That minor tweak has really unlocked it. But I think I can always do better on communicating with the board and investors.

My multi, the multi time CEO or founder guests that I've had have all had very similar statements to what you just made. Where, you know, I was talking to Adam Dell and he was telling me about this company and he'd made this major pivot and he said to me, I said, wasn't that hard? Like that's not at all what the investors invested. He said, well, but they want the company to be successful. And I said, but a first time founder would have continued to hit their head against the wall because of exactly what you just said.

Totally. And it's so funny you say that because the strategies usually in the seats that we're sitting in, really obvious, right? We're living in it every single day and talking to customers. If I'm doing my job right, it's usually pretty obvious. The board and the investors are checking in once a quarter. And so from where they're sitting, they're getting a very different view and you want them to have that 10,000 foot view. But one of the things that happens is first time I was so influenced by kind of their view. But that's not the role that they're in. Right. And that's not the dynamic. And so now it's like it's a key input that I need to consider, assess, evaluate. But a lot of times it's on me to make some of the really tough decisions.

Okay. So I want to transition. One of the things that I noticed, I love the content that you put out there. I think it's really thoughtful, I think it's really relevant. My question is, is that natural to you to be out like, and be, you know, the face of the company and kind of sharing all this stuff? Is that, is that a natural thing for you or have you had to work at that? Is it Intentional because of hootsuite. Did you do it before hootsuite? When you're a career builder? Like, can you talk through that? Because that feels like. I mean, it makes a lot of sense for hootsuite, you know, so it's logical. I'm just curious, like, how do you kind of approach that?

Yeah, I think there's two different parts to it. There's like a skill set where it's like, I. I am good at speaking. I'm good at kind of doing some of the public stuff. So that doesn't take a lot of energy for me necessarily. But, excuse me, putting myself out on social media is not where my natural inclination goes. You know, I am originally from Ukraine, and this Eastern European mindset is like, you don't take your laundry to the streets. Like, you just are private and you, like, it's just not something that you naturally want do. I'm not on social media in my personal life, right? Like, I never posted on Instagram. I just never posted. I'm a lurker. I'm a person that stalks everybody and is very engaged on what's happening. I started in my last CEO role, and the reason I started is because it was just such a great tool and instrument to interact with customers. And I think what unlocked for me in the past year and a half is like the progress of video. For me, writing, even though I'm very fluent in English, writing is just difficult. It's still a second language and I have to. I'm constantly editing as I'm writing, and it's just not a very efficient use of my time versus with video. I pop open a phone, I record it. If it's good, I post it. If not, I, you know, it takes a minute and I move on. And so the video aspect of it has really changed. But what's really encouraged me is, you know, there's this mentality of, okay, well, this is so vain and so egotistical. Like how, like, as a CEO, you don't really want to be out there in that way. You want to be highlighting your team and what they've done, and you want to be putting your customers and your employees on a pedestal. And it just felt very opposite of the environment and the culture that I want to create. And one of my biggest takeaways is when I started doing this, my own owls would start commenting on the post me, like, I really resonate with what you said. I'm like, I do a weekly town hall that none of you comment on. And now this you read. And so it just started. My customers I was talking to, I'd walk in and they would feel like they know me. And so I just started. And it's funny because, you know, the shoemaker wears the bad shoes or whatever the saying is, we're obviously a social media platform and our customers use it because they see the benefit. But then I started actually feeling the benefit myself and I'm like, okay, I get it.

Yeah, it's. I am of the opinion in today's world. I've been really vocal about this recently. It's like, I think there's not a lot of moat or differentiation when it comes to product anymore in general. I mean, sure, in some cases the very deep tech stuff, but generally speaking, it's just, it's too easy. It's too easy to copy, it's too easy to start a company. It's too easy. And I think the only moat is trust, in my opinion. I think, like, at least for this generation of buyers and everything, it's trust. And I think actually this is a big part of that trust, totally being able to see the person, the CEO, who you're going to go buy their product and believe in their vision and invest in that, you know, by becoming a customer. And so when I see that, I try to push people all the time to do what you're doing. And I think we all feel, I, me too. I feel uncomfortable a lot of times posting and saying, who gives a shit what I have to say?

That's the key part because all of us have that thought of, like, does anyone even care what you're saying? So it's such a universal thought. But David, that so aligns and resonates me. And you know, out of our Fortune 1000 kind of CMOs and CEOs that we work with, I have seen how much more in the past year they put themselves out there for exactly that reason. Especially with Gen Z coming in to being a main buyer. They go to social first. They won't buy from a company whose leadership team isn't on social. They want to understand what you stand for, your authenticness. And for us at hootsuite, like, yes, our products, especially our listening products, are the best in the market. But when I look at why customers buy from us, stay with us, refer us, they love the relationships they build. They love our owls, they feel like they're part of our nest. We show up for them. And that is something that is so AI defensible, those relationships, and it's hard to build them. And Social is one of the only places where you can actually build this two way connection.

I didn't actually think about the Gen Z aspect that, that, that, that that generation which I guess at this point are starting to have buying power in the workplace and they, this is their like their natural inclination is going to be to go here.

They sort of social over Google. Like they don't buy in the way that me and you have bought. And you know I used to think I'm a millennial so I'm like, just like Gen Z or the same person. And then I did all this research and interviewed like 500 of them and I realized we are not the same person. They grew up with a phone in their pocket but they don't use it to, to talk. They don't want your cold emails, they don't want your cold calls, they will do anything to avoid talking to you on the phone. They don't really know how to use email and they do intense research on social. I think there's this perception that they're this TikTok generation where they spend six seconds looking at things. On average the majority of them download almost 13 pieces of long form content to do their research. Like they dig in to understand and one of the key criteria is your CEO or your leadership team on social. Wow. Wow.

Yeah I, I, this part, this part of this interview is like so important I think for people to hear because in today I, I what I'm seeing is in this AI world and everyone's raising all this money and everything, it's like well we're gonna, we have this really amazing product from like yeah, but tomorrow someone will have that and tomorrow someone and, and, and people say you know, why do you, why put myself out there? Is anyone going to listen to what I have to say? And I, I've told people which is back actually this is full circle to the ICP conversation which is if you know your ICP and you're speaking to your ICP, if only 20 people read your post, that's fine.

That's what's that Adam Grant? Like your thousand customers are like the most right. Isn't there like this? Yeah, I know that, yeah, I forgot the exact thing. Basically keep find your most loyal thousand customers. They will set up the growth for your business and that all about targeting the right customers.

Yes. Okay, so we can talk about in this case hootsuite or career builder. Again a question that I ask every, every person I have on the show which is what is the biggest challenge you've faced as a CEO throughout your career, and how have you overcome that if you did overcome that challenge?

I think one of the things that makes good leaders good is that they don't view things in kind of these big moments. I think they're just more resilient in nature. And so when things come at them, they're kind of like, okay, this is the tackle of the day that I have to do. And so the way I would flip that a little bit is where did I grow the most, maybe, and what was where I felt the most vulnerable or most painful? I think whenever you have to make people decisions, it's just like, never easy. And so I come in a lot of times and I end up replacing the majority of my leadership team. And at that level, most of the executives are really good, right? So it's just they might not be the right fit for what we need to do. And I think that is really hard, especially because I've had to make changes to people I've worked with for years that were really great. And then over years, they just. The skill set wasn't the necessarily the right skill set for where we needed to go. And I don't think that ever gets easier, David. So I don't know if I'll ever overcome that. I don't know if I ever want to overcome that. I think there's just some humanity that you need to keep to that. I think, too, one of the things that's really difficult, and we talked about this a lot from an ICP perspective, but when you pick strategy in a direction, you're inherently saying no to something. And there are trade offs to that. And a lot of times there's financial trade offs and consequences. And it feels really easy to kind of keep spreading the peanut butter, but that's just not how you get to the results you want. And so staying focused on the decision that you made and honoring that, I think is just really difficult because every day you feel like there's another reason on why you're wrong or you shouldn't have done that. But you know, inherently that that's right. And then for me, one of the biggest kind of vulnerable moments I had is we bought this social listening enterprise, kind of AI LLM, social listening business, about a year and a half ago. And I ended up doing the deal myself. And there was moments where, you know, I was negotiating. Obviously, I had my team help me, but there was no bankers. There's kind of nobody. It was just me. And there's this moment where you're like, isn't that? Is an adult gonna come and help? Like, is the adult coming? Until you realize, wait, you're the adult. And so I think these moments where you're a little scared, I think people think because you're a leader or CEO, you don't get scared scared. And I get scared frequently. Like, I'm constantly putting myself in these vulnerable moments. And I remember it was Saturday morning before I was getting on the Zoom call, and it was four guys and me, and I was about to jump on, and I'm like, I am slightly terrified. It's a little scary. But I also think those are the moments where you realize think you can do hard things. And when you get through that, it's just like this resilience of, okay, I'm capable of doing hard things the most.

You know, one of the things that's probably the most common amongst every. Not just he on the podcast, but that I've met and spent time with, at least beyond closed doors, is the imposter syndrome. You know, and it's. It's that feeling of, do I really know what I'm doing? Why am I the person who's in this seat? Why am I, you know, was that just lucky? You know, I talked to one CEO, they sold this company for 2 billion. It was a public company. And then he. He. He was like 60. I think he retired for like two weeks. And then he has to start a new company. I said, why? He's like, because I just. I want to prove that I can do it. And that wasn't just love.

And the thinking never stops. It's so funny because, you know, every week I. This, this mentor of mine who's amazing, she, Jen Morgan, she's the CEO now of ukt, was the co. CEO of SAP. And she said this, that in one moment, sometimes you feel like, I am so good. I'm the best that there ever is. Then the next moment you're like, I'm terrible. How can anybody even hire me? Then you're like, you know what? I'm so good. No one even deserves me. And you just, like, go through this roller coaster, and I've never felt so seen before because there are days where I'm like, you know what? I'm really good. And then there's other days where I'm like, anybody could do better than me. Like, literally anybody off the street. And I think that for me, at least, it's healthy and it drives me. I think there's a way where it can be unhealthy. For me, it's constantly like, how do I. And I talk about this a lot with my team is every kind of 12 to 18 months, depending on kind of the cycle of the company. I fire myself and I spend the weekend basically thinking about, okay, if a new CEO came in that had no emotional attachment, that had no. I built this. This is kind of my thing, what would they do? And whenever I do that exercise, it literally is like the water parts because it becomes so clear on what I need to do. And then immediately I'm like, oh, but I can't because of this reason, or I can't because of this reason. But if a new person's coming in, they don't start with the but why I can't. And every time I do that exercise, it's so freeing. And I view my job as constantly trying to grow faster and stay ahead of it, so. So I can keep kind of pulling the team for growth as well.

That's a very good exercise that. And I would argue that founders need that more because you're even more connected to the inner workings.

And, you know, no, it's like a step parent in some way. Like, maybe I didn't give birth to the. To the child, but, like, I'm using it. You know what I mean? I wake up every morning, like, how? Like, it's mine, of course, mine. And so then you. It's hard because sometimes when I did this exercise in June, I had a real kind of moment where I was like, okay, I'm not doing some of the things I need to be doing right now.

Where is hoots tweet in 3 years from today?

So we talked about Gen Z a little bit, and I think it is a really powerful generation that is coming to disrupt everybody's playbooks. And I don't know if people are paying attention to it. And so this is a generation that this year, for the first time, there's more Gen Z ers in the workforce than boomers. They are now starting to become the majority of budget holders. And over the next five to 10 years, they're going to be the ones that are running the show. And they buy completely different than me, you, and most other buyers. And our approaches have not changed. Our playbooks for them have not changed. They're not linear funnels anymore. It's collapsed. They are, in one moment looking and buying. Other moments, they're looking at 12 different places and getting their decision. And their day one list is not created in the same way that, excuse me, any generation before. And it all starts on social they make their financial decisions on social, their health decisions, their where they go to school, where, I mean, whether you want it or not, whether it sounds crazy or not, that is where they're making decisions. And so if companies aren't investing in social and understanding how to build those relationships, they're going to get left behind. And so from a hootsuite perspective, we are spending a ton of time and investment really empowering our enterprise customers with essentially a social listening AI agent. So we can tell you, here's what people are saying about your company, here's the sentiment, here's what your market position is versus your competitors, here's how your brand or your campaign did, here's how improve it, here's if you put in your campaign, here's how we think it's going to work. And so I think that there is just so much power behind what social intelligence can give you, whether it's product launches, market launches, customer feedback, brand development, and those customers that leverage that and are really leaning into that, we're seeing them grow faster, get feedback faster. It's pretty powerful.

So now, so, so it's more and more on the analytics and analyzing and insights. Insights.

It's insights and turning it to action. So it's not enough. So now that you hear what's going on, how do you marry it and run a campaign? So like I think I or that you're a Matcha drinker, right? Yeah, I can, you know, make sure that whoever is trying to pitch, they know that you love Matcha and they, they heard this, you talking about Matcha and the campaigns they're giving you are really targeted that say, hey David, other, other people that run, that run podcasts love Matcha also love this. The chances you click on that, the chances you engage with that, the chances that you form relationship with somebody who sees you is so much higher than just some spam that you're going to get.

All right, all right. Okay. And is this, was, is this taking existing technology that is there and kind of leveraging AI to put it in a different way, or is this, was this new?

This is the acquisition and sometimes you just get lucky in life. We bought this business and they've been building this for the past seven years and before the AI craze. And so they have, they built this social media LLM model that basically is the only software in the tool that does this. Instead of sampling data, they go and listen to the entire universe of social media data and with extreme accuracy can tell you what is happening for your Brand your company, your product. And I got lucky. And we bought this business before kind of the crazy of AI and they've been doing this. And so we have all these different agents that are out there that can work for our customers. And so we've been just putting it out there and raising the profile.

Very cool. Okay. I want to transition to your background. You mentioned you're from Ukraine, you were born there.

I was born in Kyiv.

And when did you come to the

U.S. i came in the late 80s when it was still the Soviet Union. And for a really long time, I think most of my life, I never really told people I'm from Ukraine. I would just tell people I'm from the Soviet Union or Russia. Because explaining to Americans the difference between Russia and Ukraine just got exhausting. But we came as refugees. And it really just influenced my entire life because I had these really highly educated older parents. They were in their 50s when they left everything and started from zero. My dad was a PhD in engineering. My mom was a very high level chemist. And they showed up with 300 bucks and go start over, learn a new language, learn all this new culture. And so I just have this appreciation of the lottery of the geography you're born to, David. And I don't think people appreciate just how lucky you are to where you're geographically born that you have no, no control over. And so I wasn't born in the right geography, but I, I won the second lottery, which was being born to the right parents. That moved me to the right geography. But I just have a lot of appreciation for being able to what you love.

Did you. Were you always like a natural leader in your, like growing up? Was that something you felt like you're gonna. Not necessarily be a CEO, but were you a natural leader?

I think I was naturally independent and I really didn't like people feeling left out because I came from this kind of background where I was kind of living not a double life, but at home it was very Soviet. I was eating salami and speaking a different language and listening to different music. And then I would go to school. School. And you'd have to fit in with a very different cohort of people. And so I. And then my parents spoke with thick accents that. And many times growing up, I would see how people would judge them because they thought that if they spoke with an accent, they thought with an accent. And it would make me so angry when. When people of influence or power would in some way degrade somebody. And so I just grew up with this desire to make sure there's equality and consensus in that. The kind of underdog gets heard and then just fierce independence. I grew up mostly by myself. My parents went to work, and so in the morning at 5, I had to, like, make my own breakfast, get myself to school, come back, feed myself. There was no. If you left a book at home, you were leaving it at home. There was no telling me to study for a class. Like, if I missed my alarm, I just didn't make it to school. Like, this was just. And so I think the combination of that has really given me kind of strengths to build teams.

Do you. Do you. To do all the stuff you've done to date, especially in the early career and finance, probably the most is the work ethic. You have to have to grind through that. Like, does that come from watching your parents? Does that come from your own experience? Like, where does that drive come from?

Yeah, I think I work harder now. I'm not gonna lie. Mostly because I. I love what I do now. Before, it was kind of, you needed to do it to have the job. Now I just feel like this accountability to my team and to our owls and to our customers. And so, like, I want to show up in the best way. I, you know, I just didn't have another option in my brain is I feel so grateful to be able to do the thing that I love. I felt so grateful to learn and to have a job. And I just grew up in an environment where a lot of people had to take jobs to pay bills. And I don't think. Let me say it in the positive, and I won't say it for you. I'll say it for me. I think people like me that in any way have roles that are mine. It doesn't even come close to some of the jobs that people have to do to put food on the table. And so working hard for me in the luxurious, like, office building and being able to go to a warm bed and have food, to me felt like that's. It wasn't even a thought that went through my head because I would see the alternative of how hard people really had to work, very much less. And so I never really thought of it that way.

My first job ever was working at a moving company here in New York City, Big John's moving. And it was like halfway through the summer that I was working there, this guy who I was working with said to me one day, this older guy, and he'd been at movie company for years, Immigrant. And he said to me, he's like, do you go to college? I said, yes. And he's like, and why are you doing this job then? And I said, well, because I need a job for the summer. And at the end of the summer, he said, just promise me that going forward, you'll work with your brain and not with your body. And I'll never forget that conversation, because the amount that we work, the amount that they work is not even like, it's. It's just at a different level. And then you think about it, you're like, yeah, so what? My brain is tired. Okay?

Like, well, not having that experience, I don't know if you would appreciate it. So my. My CMO shared the story with me that one of his first jobs was actually being part of a garbage collection company. And he's like, I got such a perspective on what hard work is that after that. Like, working hard just wasn't the same thing.

Yes, exactly.

And I just think in life is just so important.

What you mentioned before, this. This mentor of yours, did you meet her early on? Like, when. When did you meet her in your journey?

And I have lots of mentors. This is just one person. I think one of the things. And I have this whole mentor speech. I think two things. One, whenever you get to a certain leadership level, you have to spend time to put people that you admire that you want to become, like, around you, quote, unquote mentors. And I didn't do a good enough job my first time as CEO, and I thought, oh, I've been president. I was CEO. Being a CEO is going to be easy. I've already essentially done the job, and I just didn't set myself up to have an outlet to learn from people or to push me or to question me or have a soundboard. And so halfway through it, I really started to get very focused on putting people around me. The second thing I would say is this concept of mentorship, people go. And I've had so many people come up to me, like, irina, can you be my mentor? That's not really how it works. Like, you can't just cold call someone to be your mentor. It's a relationship, it's chemistry. It's a value system that has to be aligned. And so the best way. And I spend so much time mentoring people because I appreciate what it's like. Like to not have it. And I think in so many ways, my understanding of why you started this podcast is. Is to get back in that way, especially when you felt it on your own bones, like, you know, how painful. But for me, it's the best way to create a mentor is to show up with a problem. You show up with a problem that you're having and you ask them to solve that problem. And you learn a few things as they're giving you advice. A, you learn how they think, do you align to how they're solving that problem? Does it feel natural? You hear about their leadership style, does that align to the leader you want to be? They might be very effective, but it just might not be your can of Kool Aid or whatever it is. And so by asking them to solve this problem and work through it with you, you learn so much about how they think, their value system, and then at the end, you're also bringing them into your world. And the people that want to give back will say, hey, let me know if you want to catch up again. And that authentic relationship, quote unquote mentor building is what's really precious. And I have a person in my life who's literally dropped from thin air and I had problems and kind of walked through them and he spends, you know, an hour every week with me and it's motivated so much to do the same back. So I have three first time CEOs that I spend time with on a weekly, every other week, monthly basis, giving back. And so I again, it gives back to the relationship world, David. Like we're all creatures in this world. We got one chance and you want to leave an impact. And building relationships and giving back is one of the best ways to do it.

When you, when you think about your whole career, was there a moment that you can look back on that was kind of the break for you? Like that, that, that, that job, that manager that. Like there was this one moment that you think changed the trajectory of your career.

When I left finance to move to the operation side, I quit this high paying, glamorous is the wrong word, but hard to get finance job. And when I quit, at the time I wanted to find someone that would kind of take the skill set that I've learned at a really young age because most people there are under 30 doing kind of amazing things and would recognize it to let me learn the operational skill set. So I had a strong finance background, a strong strategic background. I could build, you know, all these different things, but I've never managed people before. I never did a quote unquote deal. I've done big deals, but I didn't actually sign with a customer, a briefcase deal kind of thing. And so there's all this stuff that I was aware that I Didn't even know, but I knew the things that I was uniquely good at, that it was the 1% of that finance world that you could get to. And so I was looking for this person that would take a shot at me. And I probably interviewed over 500 CEOs to get them to kind of see, like, can you transfer my skill set? And three months in, I was still really hopeful, David. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna find this person. Six months in. Even my immigrant parents are like, okay, maybe you go back to private equity. Like, we've tried this. Like, this is it. By month nine, they're like, that's it. You like, this is it. You're never getting a job. And it's also really lonely because at the time I was living in New York. And anytime you go anywhere, the first thing people say right after your name, what do you do? And I'm like, it's nothing. I'm unemployed. I'm working. And then you get tired of getting into this whole story, right? And so by month nine, I met this CEO who ended up being the CEO of Xerox. And he just believed in investing in people and just saw my skillset and started. I didn't have any direct reports, but gave me a huge amount of responsibility. And every six months would just kind of keep throwing stuff on me until I kind of drowned. And I would just keep stepping up. And every day I would show up in his office and I talk about this a lot, where I would show up with my list of questions and say, okay, how do I email a customer? How do you write that email? Like, basic things? And he had this ability to know that the silly, stupid stuff I was asking wasn't a reflection of what my brain or what my could do. But that takes a lot of vulnerability to put yourself out there, right? Like, I've done multi billion dollar deals, but I never actually emailed a customer before, right? And so. Or in finance, the hierarchy is really flat. You can go like an MD would talk to an analyst, and nobody thinks anything. And so I started going to junior people to ask them for things. That is not what you do. And I learned really quickly that people are like, stop stepping on my. I'm on my toes. And so it was just really eye opening to have somebody, you know, invest that way.

So last question is, knowing everything you know today and all the experiences that you've had, what is the one piece of advice you would go back and give yourself at the very beginning of your career before you started your first job ever.

I think naiveness is a superpower for young people that you just don't know what you're not supposed to do. And I think leaning into that is so strong. Like, I didn't know you can't go to an MD and knock on his door. I didn't know you couldn't just ask somebody to take a meeting. Like, you just don't have enough awareness yet of how the world works to think that you're doing it wrong. And it just opens up doors. And so I would say just push more. Like be as vulnerable and open as you possibly can. Look stupid, like, do the things that you're like, should I, shouldn't I? Yes, you should just go do it. And then I think the second thing, and this took a little bit of time for me because again, I came from just this refugee immigrant status of scarcity. But I didn't appreciate in my personal life I would do this, but in my professional life it took me a few years to do this. Where the world is very relationship centric and I think you're taught to be very transactional. And so when you're doing a deal, how do you maximize the deal? Get the last dollar, get the best thing that you can. And I think what I've learned is some deals I'll lose, some deals they'll win. Like it's how do you build the relation, how do you do what's right on a 50 year timeline instead of just this one moment? And that mentality was just a very different mentality that no one explained to me that I didn't understand that I just had to kind of mature into. And especially because I started in finance, like the, the pie doesn't grow right? So if I get a piece, it comes from your mouth versus in the operations world and I think in the broader world it's how do we grow the pie. And that mentality has really changed my entire perspective on everything. And I'll give you a very tactical thing that when I first started leading, if somebody left in my mind, they're burned. How could you do this to me? Like, it was so personal that you would leave me. And now I will proactively go to people who I really respect and say I don't have enough growth opportunity for you. You, you've kind of tapped out of what I can do. Let me help you find the job somewhere else. And others will be like, you're going to let a great person leave? I'm like, well, I'm not letting them. But it's the right thing for their own career and I'll meet them again somewhere else or they'll come back in a different form. And so it's just completely changed how I conduct business, how I lead, how I invest in people, how I mentor. And it just, it's, it's this giving mentality.

Yeah, I love those. I actually think the naive one is really, that one really strikes a chord with me because I think about my early days working and I looked at my emails recently from 20 years ago and exactly to your point, I would just, I would ask things to people and say things that I would not do. I would, I'm like no, I can't ask that today. But I would so. And I have people who join the companies I've been a part of who are right out of school and they'll go, they're like I'm going to go do this. I'm like really? I don't know if that's how it's done, you know, but in reality, why who care? Like who cares what the rules are? So I, that one for me, that one really. I can think about all these examples but if I, by the way, I think it's hard for multi time founders to do it the next time. Multi time CEOs to do the next time. We know too much.

Why. Yeah, your ego gets in the way. It's like oh, I'm now this at that. I can do that. Well lower. No, I'll look stupid. I'll do. And I like I feel it all the time and every time I'm like who cares about your ego? Go be vulnerable. But it's tough, they'll start showing up.

Yeah. And the other one you said, you know, when you mentioned people kind of when you were saying at the very end they're leading, you know, the company and, and, and helping them find those growth opportunities. That's another one that is a good example of you know, the first couple of people who quit my first company that I was a part of, I literally hated. I thought that was. I'm like I'm going to do everything. These people are never going to get job but I can't believe they would leave me. And you do realize that, you know it's if, if there's not, if there's not alignment what they want in their career and what you can give them, then they're not going to do their best work. It doesn't even make sense to keep them. So anyway, those two things, I'm happy you did too because those two things resonated well.

Also, like, similar to you, I feel like so much of why you do this podcast is to give back and to have people grow and as leaders. Yeah. Do I want a players to stay with me on the team? Always is why I'm ahead of the team so I can have opportunities for them. But I. I've spent a disproportionate amount of time investing in people and helping them with their growth and trying to be as selfless as I can because, like, that's also really satisfying for me to have them unlock their. Their strengths.

Yeah. Irina, thank you so much for doing this. I've been looking forward to this episode for a long time, and there was a lot, A lot in here that people can take away, and I. I just don't. The transparency is like, this is why I do this. And. And you've been very, you know, really transparent and open. So thank you for doing this.

Thank you. David, you have such an easy way about you of just making it such a safe space, and your curiosity just comes through in every question. Like you're. You're clearly just learning and eager and it's. It's honest. Well, you have a very unique skill set to do this. I think it's hard create these conversations and create a space that feels authentic and it's not kind of interview reporter, kind of dynamic. And you. You create a really amazing environment.

Thank you very much for those listening. I hope you enjoyed. If you did. Please share this out with your networks and we'll see you for the next episode of Not Another CEO Podcast. That's a wrap for this week's episode of Not Another CEO Podcast. Thanks for joining. For show notes and more, please Visit not another CEOPodcast.com we'll see you next week.