Environment Dictates Performance | Garrett Smallwood, Wag VP of Product

Cool. I'm really big on environment, like where you work, how you work, what you work in. Just super into kind of like what the culture is in terms of like people around you. To me, it's like the driving force forward. Like, you guys are living here, right? So like everyone here is like working with the same people, has the same mission, feels the same pressure, hopefully working really hard, starting really great companies. And so what that allows you to do is like all think kind of the same and work on similar problems. It's a culture. It's an environment thing, right? So, like, environments I really like, I really like headphones. Super big into headphones. I wear headphones 90% of my life, especially when my wife's around. No, I'm just kidding. And so, I work from home a lot, actually. Like, I'm big on work from home. I wake up at 5:30 every morning. I work from home for 2 hours. Hour and a half, I'm hitting the gym. And I just love it. I get so much done that first hour and a half of the day. It's awesome. I'm big on vacations. I just went to Bora Bora for 2 weeks. I'm going to Palau in February for 2 weeks to dive. Like, I love it. I take vacations all the time. It allows me to recharge. Everyone here is like all work all the time, 90-hour weeks, right? 100-hour weeks. How many hours did you work last week? None? Cool. How many hours did you work last week? Yeah, you. How many hours did you work? How many? 20. 20 hours? Oh boy, you really— you want a vacation or what? What happened? Just busy? All right, well, I never worked that little, but I think generally you wanna like really work hard and then play hard, right? Like work really hard, don't burn yourself out, but work really hard and then like go vacation and like go relax and go enjoy your life because like life's too short. And I'm really big on snacks. None of you guys are in your own offices yet, but you will. Hopefully everyone here will raise money, be super successful, make fun of me, like it'll be awesome. And so like have snacks. People love snacks. I love snacks. I love healthy food. Keeps you focused, keeps you excited. Anybody burned out here? Like, actually burned out? You just couldn't do it anymore? You're like, oh, I'm so tired. What was it like? Who raised their hand? Someone raise their hand. What was it like? How'd you feel? Not right now, but in the past. I know, I'm not saying right now. No one will judge you. What happened in the past? I mean, I just, like, can't focus. It just sucks, right? You feel like you're, like, in a haze. You're just, like, in a stupor. You're done. You're not getting anything done. You, like, don't wanna do anything. You don't wanna respond to email. You don't wanna talk to people. Burnout is the worst. It's gonna happen. Like, you work 100-hour weeks for weeks and weeks and months and months and years and years, which is a lot of what a lot of founders do by necessity. Like, you're gonna burn out. Force yourself to take a break. Force yourself to take a vacation. Force yourself to take a Saturday. Do something you really like. Have something you really enjoy. Do it. Like, go out and do it. I don't know what you're super into, but just go do what you're super into. Those 4, 6, or 8 hours, like, you're gonna come up with way better ideas. I'm huge into cycling. Like, I love it. I love cycling. And then people used to be like, why are you cycling at 8:00 in the morning? I'm like, man, I get like 20 ideas when I'm on my bike. I feel like a new person. Like, I come back, I'm ready to roll. I'm like, I get way more effective. Like, those things are totally worth it. Visibility and transparency equals motivation. So like, if you're not being transparent with what your company could be worth, or who you're talking to, or metrics that matter, or things that aren't working, or more importantly, people that didn't work out, no one's gonna trust you. If they don't trust you, they're not gonna feel motivated, 'cause that's the worst thing that can happen, right? They're like, hey, I worked with them and they have integrity issues. That's like literally like the only thing in Silicon Valley that'll screw you, integrity issues, right? If you're not integritous, if you're not trustworthy, if you're not truthful, you're done. Like, goodnight, sweet prince. Like, that ship has sailed. And so my advice is to always be trustworthy, Trustworthy. Always create visibility on the things you're concerned about, and that drives motivation. It's like when things aren't working, that's okay. Like we have this stigma; it's like we really want to say that everything's great. Like nothing's ever great. Like my shit sucks all the time. Like I'm down on numbers sometimes. I have people problems. I have problems. I might wake up in the morning, have a fight. I don't know. Things just aren't always great, right? I can get my cup of coffee. I don't know. And so basically, that's okay. I don't need you to tell me everything's awesome as you're. Advisor, as your angel investor, as your co-founder, as your employee, it's okay to be transparent. Like, hey, we had a really crappy month. Our month sucked. We got to get better. That's a motivating factor, right? Oh my god, I need this to work, right? Sold my car for this. I got to do this. So I think it's all about transparency. You guys using Slack? Everyone's using Slack here? Slack has so many cool plugins. It's awesome. You can create tons of transparency. Every time when I first started a company, Every time you push to GitHub, boom, Slack notification. It incentivizes pushes, right? It's awesome. Every time a new sales lead came in, or we closed a new lead, Slack notification. Everyone would celebrate. Awesome, oh my God, you're amazing. Every time we had a payment process on Stripe, Slack notification. $700, $300, $200, whatever it was. Awesome, money, people, someone's paying money for your crap, that's insane. Zeplin, people love design. I don't know, how many designers here? Woo! Getting the lay of the land here. One designer, cool, good for you, that's awesome. Anytime you do like a Zeppelin mock or anything, Zapier or whatever, awesome. InVision. Sure, InVision, even cooler, good for you. Excuse my language, but like, I really hate micro work. Like, I'm just super anti-micro. Like, if you are gonna come up to me after this and brag that you spent 12 hours yesterday going through a Google spreadsheet to sort through leads, you have failed. Like, please do not brag on that. That is like a terrible waste of your time. Unless there's literally no other option. Anybody here know what Mechanical Turk is? Oh man, Amazon started this company because they had so much micro work that their employees would be wasting their time if they had to do. You can literally hire somebody to task for you for like dollars an hour. Sort through spreadsheets, manage leads. Anybody here use like Expensify or any sort of online expense report? No? Expensify literally is the entire business is built on Mechanical Turk. It's amazing. You submit leads to Expensify, you pay all this money to through spreadsheets, and they do it through Expensify. Get a virtual assistant, it's like $30 a month. Use Upwork, it's like $10 an hour for amazing people. You can hire sales reps on Upwork. I don't know, you can hire engineers, you can do all kinds of cool stuff. But please, do not brag about the micro work you're doing. That literally means that you have failed to drive the business forward. I thought, if you wanna not drive business forward, do micro stuff. Now, there are times where it's essential you do little tasks, you really get in the weeds and sort through that spreadsheet, or do your own Excel formula to figure out your financial burn for the next 6 months. Totally valid. But generally, please do not waste your time on microtests. Cool? That's it for me. Happy to take questions. Hopefully this was helpful. A lot of, a lot of yawning. Thank you.