Zach Hoogerland: Product Strategy @ BlackLine | The Business Blast Podcast #887

Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner as always. Today's sponsor is Authors Unite, and if you want to become a successful author, Authors Unite is the place to go. So head on over to authorsunite.com to check out a free case study that will teach you how to do exactly that, and now let's jump into the episode.

All right, man. All right, here we go.

It's recording. So, um, so yeah, wait, I think where were— what were you saying? Um, so you're in LA, I'm over in Miami, and, um, and yeah, pumped to have you on the show, man.

Yeah, so I was just saying kind of the, the journey out here was, was a bit of a kind of a unique experience in that I kind of had essentially established myself in Charleston, jumped out of college, went down there, decided to try my career out as an accountant, thinking I would go back and really kind of hum in that space. And it was a bit interesting because I realized I got in, I think kind of, and you've alluded to this on your show before, it's like, You get in and it's not exactly what you expect. And I started booking journal entries and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I hate this. This is terrible." And so I kind of just started doing different things to speed up processes in our company. And it led to 3 or 4 different jobs there. I mean, I went from posting journal entries at the company I was at to talking with investors on Wall Street. So, kind of ran the gamut of back office experiences, led a team, a small team in the back office and learned about management, which was a unique experience that you take on. I think that people kind of get all caught up in leadership and like, "Oh, I want to lead a team. I want to do this. I want to do this." You should really never want to actually lead a team. There's a quote from one of my bosses. He said that you should never want to lead, a team because you just take on everybody else's problems. And you should really only have a team if your vision is so big that you can't do it yourself. And I love that. It's kind of a unique way to think about it.

Yeah, that is. Yeah.

Yeah. But anyways, I got kind of caught up in this rat race, if you will. And I just started feeling really, really comfortable. I mean, I was 200 miles away or so from where I grew up. Went to school in South Carolina and I'm in Charleston. I'm like, "This feels so just comfortable." And I'm like kind of getting set in my ways. I've got a routine going. So, then, I guess 8 months ago, I was just like, "I'm going to push myself way out of my comfort zone and do something that I've never done before." I mean, I kept listening to different I guess podcasts and reading books and kind of everybody talks about pushing yourself, right? And doing something a bit different. And I heard this quote one time, I think it was David Goggins. And he said, "Whenever you find things that you're comfortable at doing, you're going away from the journey of life." And I thought, "Man, that's pretty powerful." Right? And so, I thought, "I'm going to push myself." So, I jumped out, started kind of trying to find a job, actually used LinkedIn and ended up getting a job, a corporate job in investor relations out in LA at a pretty large company. And it was just such a unique experience because you're out here in this big city coming from the South. So everything's different. People are different. There's a lot more going on. There's a lot more people. But it's awesome because it's a blank slate. Right? And not that I had a bad reputation, but it was kind of cool for me because I had built something in Charleston on my own. But then I was like, "Well, can I do that again?" So, I jumped out here and I started rebuilding basically everything. And so, it's been an awesome challenge and experience that I've had. I wouldn't trade it for anything. The one thing I'll say that's very, very difficult though is being that far away from your family and friends because you rely so much on your social network that I don't think that people realize. And yeah, as such, I always thought, oh, I have business and I have this and I have all these things going for me and I've got, you know, I've got things to do and it won't affect me. But it really, it affected me a lot harder than I initially thought it would. So this was a humbling experience from that perspective.

Yeah, dude, I'm pumped to hear that you took kind of like a leap of faith and went out there. And I definitely can relate to that. That with like when I left school and like just all the moves I've made. Like I've always, I've maybe known like a person or two when I've moved to a place, but not, you know, not at the same level of like, you know, the amount of network we had at school or the amount of network I had in my hometown. So I definitely know what it's like. And I just want to mention real quick, just so the people know that are listening, um, what you do. So currently, uh, Zach Hoogerland, what you do is you're a product strategy manager at Blackline, and he provides quantitative analysis and qualitative research to advise executive management and drive corporate and product strategy. So just wanted to— so people know what's going on. And yes, you kind of told us like your story in some ways. So do you want to start with like the first question that I normally ask, or where do you feel we should, we should head into?

Yeah, I think, I feel like we kind of tackled most of it, kind of from my story. I think that kind of the one key takeaway I'd say from, for your first question is kind of just make sure that you know what you're getting yourself into, right? And, but don't be afraid to go out on a limb and do something that's totally different. So I think in my lesson that I've learned so far has been it'll all kind of work itself out as long as you put in the work and the time. So, I think kind of from that story in LA, I mean, I've been able to rebuild, I've been able to find some friends, I've been able to kind of build my own brand within my company, which has been unique. I've had two jobs out here. First one I came to, I was not exactly aligned with what I wanted to do, but I quickly found something else. And just kind of always keep driving and changing. I think that's kind of my big takeaway from that story.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one thing I'll say, like you had mentioned, you went on LinkedIn. Like, with the resources we have today that our parents didn't have, like, and I'm not here to say like it's easy, it's definitely not, but it is truly easier than it was in my opinion. Because like, say this job doesn't work out, like you can hop back on LinkedIn, you can hop on Instagram, like you can reach out to like hundreds to thousands of people every day.

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, for sure.

I think the biggest problem— sorry, go ahead.

I was gonna say it's twofold though, right? Because you do have all that, and what I think is so important in this day and age is that, which is, it's an awesome resource, but I think at the same time you have to be super focused on what it is that you want to do. Because you could get out there on LinkedIn and there's like 10 jobs, you're like, wow, these all sound amazing. But maybe none of them really kind of aligned to your 5-year goal or your 10-year goal. And maybe you take one of them and next thing you know, you're down a path that doesn't really align with where you want to go. And you're like, oh my gosh, how am I supposed to— am I supposed to restart? Am I supposed to go backwards? What am I supposed to do? And I think there's a book called The One Thing. I read a lot. So hopefully I don't reference too many books, but The One Thing talks about kind of What's your thing today? What's your thing next month? What's your thing? It kind of just builds up to that place that you ultimately want to get to. And I think it's very important in this day and age to be kind of hyper-focused on, on where you want to go. So I think it's twofold, but yes, I would agree. It's awesome.

No, I couldn't agree with you more. I think what it is too, is it's like, there's almost such an abundance of opportunity, like you're saying, where it's like, if you don't stay focused and you just spread yourself thin over like everything, and then you never actually really accomplish, you know, like you're saying, like the book The One Thing. Yeah, I listened to that a while. It was like 3 or 4 years ago. I think it was 3 or 4 years ago.

Yes, pretty interesting.

Yeah, so I feel it almost can be dampening in a sense if you cannot focus. So yeah, but yeah, so I want to ask the next question because I'm curious myself and I'm sure our listeners are as well, is within your industry and your expertise, like what's the most valuable piece of information we should know about what you do?

Yeah, so I think I'd tie it kind of into two things. I kind of in the past, call it 8 months, I've been in two mixed jobs. So I've been in IR, which is investor relations, and then now more recently a strategy role. And before that, I was kind of IR in Charleston as well, which is just again investor relations. So you're talking to Wall Street, you're kind of I think about it as just the simplest way to explain it is you're the liaison between your company and Wall Street, and it's your responsibility to make sure that the story that your company is telling is getting to investors and kind of aligned. So it ties really nicely into strategy as well, because when you're thinking about setting a strategy, it's very important to make sure that your strategy is succinct enough to tell your investors. So I think kind of a piece of advice from For me is that make sure that your business story, your strategy is really simple and easily understood by all, right? So not just your investors, but also your customers and your employees, because I think a lot of times people get so caught up in their investors and their shareholders, but they forget about the people that are really the driving force of their entire company. And I think it's interesting. It's a bit unique because you've got that responsibility to two different types of people. And some are super educated and maybe some aren't even on Wall Street, but they just think about things way differently than an employee does. And so I think it's important to just be able to communicate that easily to both. And then kind of when you're thinking about setting a strategy, Make sure that— I think this is a little bit more in the weeds of strategy, but make sure that you know where you're trying to get to again. Because a lot of people— I think it's— I'll reference Simon Sinek. He talks about— he does this talk on know the game that you're in. And he talks about how in game theory, there's two different types of games. There's finite games and infinite games. And a lot of people in business are saying, "Oh, we're going to beat the competition." Or we're going to crush this number, this Q4 number, or we're number 1 this year. But if you think about it, business isn't a finite game at all because there's no end goal, right? Finite game is defined as known players, known rules, and an agreed-upon objective. So it's usually like basketball, right? You have a time limit. You've all got to score. You want to score the most points. But in business, Really, the goal is to outlast your competition. And I think that's something that's so important. And again, it ties back into strategy because if you're not so focused on the current quarter or this one thing that you're focused on at this moment in time and you're actually focused on the long-term of your company, if you think about Amazon, they're just going to tire everybody out. Their goal is to just keep keep going and innovating and be better than they were the next day. He tells this cool story about Microsoft and Apple and how he went to both Microsoft's and Apple's business meetings, kind of their leadership meetings, if you will. And Microsoft spent the entire time, or 70% of the time, I think it was, talking about Apple. And Apple spent 100% of their time talking about their customers. So I think when you're just to take that back up to strategy, when you're thinking about, when you're thinking about setting a strategy, make sure that you're, you're focused on the right things and playing the right game.

Um, and I think that kind of answers the next question or it ties in very well. So we'll move to the, to the next one. So if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Oh man. I think I like this question. It's a bit challenging. I think I would say probably to invest in myself a little bit earlier. I think a lot of people are— take you for example. You spent some time in college, but maybe your whole passion was writing and putting out important content for people. And I think people sometimes are afraid to make that that jump and invest in themselves and take that challenge. Or maybe it's you want to learn something and you're afraid to start that class because it might counteract what you're doing in work. Personally, I think when I got to my first job, I started learning and picking up different things that I hadn't thought that I wanted to learn before, and I just kind of kept challenging myself. And as such, it played over into my work. So my first job, I taught myself SQL. I grabbed a guy that I knew at work and he started teaching me. And then I went out on my own and got some books and started learning SQL. And I was like, I don't really know why I'm interested in this, but maybe it'll make its way back into my work. And it did. And it ended up helping me get promoted. So I think the thing I would tell myself is just to do that sooner. If I had been in college and known some of these things or tried to, instead of just studying accounting and finance, maybe I'd been like, oh, I want to I want to study something totally off the wall that maybe doesn't have anything to do. Maybe I wanted to study game theory. Maybe that would have been cool. So I think investing in yourself is really important. And then reading. So getting different perspectives from different people I think is really important. And there's so much good stuff out there now. Again, it's probably hard to know what's the right thing, but just picking something up is probably great.

Absolutely, man. I don't know about you, but I'm huge on Audible. I just listen to audiobooks.

Oh yeah.

Like 2, 3 hours a day. Like, it's crazy. Yeah, but I love it.

I kind of go back. Yeah, it's such a great— it's such a great tool. I mean, you can do all your Spanish at your desk, right? I mean, the cool thing about, about it is I kind of go back and forth, right? I mean, I'll be sitting in LA traffic and I'm like, oh, let me pick up an Audible book. Um, and then sometimes I'll read like a different book at night if I just want that tangible feel. But yeah, you're right, it's so cool how you can do all this and get forms of entertainment so many different ways now.

No, we're— dude, we're so similar in that. Like, that's— I do audiobook like in the mornings when I'm like working out, and then during the day when I have like, you know, a couple minutes in between meetings or something. But then at night to like go to sleep, like— and I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I just put on Netflix at night. Like, that's just the truth of it all. But, but, um, other times it is— it's a lot easier for me to fall asleep like reading a book, um, like a paperback or something, than like, you know, listening to, to audio with my like earbuds in or whatever.

So yeah, absolutely.

So yeah, but it is, it's— and there's so much information out there now. I've just found Audible to be the best because you can do it while you're doing other things like going for a walk or working out.

Absolutely. Yeah, same thing with podcasts too. I think a lot of people Yeah, I love picking up a podcast or two and like just listening to something. I'm a big believer in those as well.

Um, and so my next one for you, this one's a little deep, a little different. In your opinion, what's the key to happiness?

Yeah, so I thought about— I think about this one kind of, um, have you ever heard of Shawn Achor?

I'm not sure if I have, no.

So he's a happiness researcher, interestingly enough. So I have a baby, I'm a bit more of like an analytical answer to this one.

Maybe not.

But he puts a lot of great content out there. I think he has a company and he has a blog and then he posts his books and he does a great TED Talk as well. But he talks about how 25% of your success is contingent upon your education and your IQ and the other most percentage of it is actually based on how you view the world and how you perceive things and how happy you are and how positive you are. So, I think the key to happiness based on his research, and I think it's actually pretty true from my experiences, to just choose to be happy, right? He talks about it being a competitive advantage and how everyone kind of set this formula, "If I do X, then I'll be happy," or, "If I get this promotion, then I'll be happier." If I If I do this with my kids more, with my family more, I'm going to be happier. And what you do essentially, what he talks about in his research says is that you keep changing the goalposts of success, which is fine, but you also can change where happiness lies in that equation. So, it's always out of our cognitive reach because you can't ever— if you keep changing, oh, I hit this sales target, I have to hit the next one. And when I hit that one, then I'll be happy. And if you keep changing it, you just never actually hit that happiness level. And so he talks about how there's a couple of different ways to actually be happy, like deepening your support networks, your social support networks, just generally raising your optimism. And I think the third one is changing the way you view stress and just making it a— kind of creating a challenge out of it rather than it having such a negative impact on you. And when you do those things, there's kind of all these numbers that he's got, like productivity rises about 30%, and I think he said sales rise about 40%, which is pretty cool. I mean, it's neat to think that happiness can tie into that stuff so nicely. And I mean, I've personally seen it myself when you just go to meetings, right? If you have a If there's a contentious thing happening and you're just like, you back up and you say, "Oh, well, hey, nice to meet you," right? If you haven't met the person before. So just doing something maybe a bit different that's positive in their lives or sending somebody an email thanking them, right? Doing something that isn't maybe on the path of normal business because everybody's go, go, go, go. Go, but doing that stuff really makes a big difference in people's lives. So to me, it's just kind of being aware and choosing to do it, making it a choice.

Yeah, man, I agree. Um, and then I'm excited for your answer on this next one because you read a lot just like myself. So what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

Yeah. So I've got, I've got a backstory to this one too. I use— do you use Goodreads at all or no?

I actually do. I more use it for, uh, for kind of like marketing for my clients, actually. So I kind of— I probably use it a different way than most people use it.

Yeah, so I, I try to keep it updated, up to date, but, um, one of my friends kind of— he and I follow each other, we kind of push each other to read more. And I don't— we're, we're both doing a lot of stuff, so we don't always keep it updated. But he always jokes with me, he's like, hey Zach, every Every book can't be 5 stars. And so, I think that it's funny for me because I tend to just think that the best book is kind of the one you're reading because there's so much great content out there, Tyler, that what connects with me might not connect with you, might not connect with your listeners. And so, I think that it's important to just I encourage everybody to read and just get out there and try to see what resonates with you.

Yeah.

I'll say the book that I'm reading right now to give you the answer to this question, I'm reading Never Split the Difference with Chris Voss.

Great book, man. Great book.

Great book. I've read it twice. I mean, this is the second time I'm reading it because I just want to make sure that I'm really taking everything out of it. And the other thing I try to do too is that I have kind of like a, I don't know, I would say set list of books that I try to pick up every year because I glean something different out of them every time. Or I think, hey, I missed that last time. I should pick that up. But I think that it just kind of depends on what you're trying to learn at that point in time. So right now I would say for me, it's Never Split the Difference because I'm trying to hone in some negotiation skills.

I totally agree with you. I really do. For somebody like you and me, it's a very hard question because like when people ask me, that question, what I tell them is I tell them The 4-Hour Workweek, and that's just because that was actually the book that got me to drop out of school, which was for me a good decision. So that's me, but I agree with you where it's like different. And here's the thing too that's interesting is it's like you're reading it a second time, so it's like reading a book, it's not just what you read, it's also when you read it. So like a book at a certain point in your life could be like completely irrelevant and not like really help help you at all, but then maybe like 5 years later you're in a different position, your business is at a different level, whatever. And that's the biggest eye-opener, you know, ever. For instance, like Never Split the Difference, like that book, like, you know, I wouldn't necessarily, eh, I don't know, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that book as your first like entrepreneurial book, you know what I mean? Um, whereas though, if you are, you know, obviously looking, uh, if you're, if you're kind of been in business for a while and you're looking to up your negotiation skills, then that book will be a very amazing book for you. Yeah, exactly.

It makes a lot of sense. I think too, the other thing that's kind of cool is that books, like I said, giving you different perspectives, right? Because I've read— I don't know if you've ever read The Rational Optimist, but I've read some of these kind of off-the-wall philosophical type books as well. And they give you such a cool view on the world to bring back to to business. I think The Rational Optimist is unique in that it talks about how we're in this great time of our lives and of humanity because you can get anything you want in a day. I mean, we've gone from having disease and not knowing about any of this stuff to actually knowing about what's going on. And so, I mean, even just books like that that just give you a totally different perspective and take you out of maybe out of the business world, and just say, wow, this is a pretty cool time to be alive. And we should be— and tying back to your question, we should be happy where we're at. We should enjoy this and actually savor the moment because it's pretty cool.

I agree. And then what is your favorite quote and why?

So this is a tough one, just kind of like the book question, right? But I would say it's probably by Satya, the CEO of Microsoft. He says, To be a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all. Yeah. I think that's a great one because I think oftentimes in business, people want to be that expert in their industry and they really want to know everything that they can. But unless you're constantly learning and trying to improve, you're never going to know everything. So I think it's important. I mean, even when somebody comes into a meeting that Maybe you're like, I have no idea what value this person is gonna add. Maybe they bring some totally different perspective that you didn't quite think about. And maybe that changes your outcome of what happens in your business. And so I think kind of applying again those same methodologies and trying to learn everything. Again, it's—

Dude, thank you for coming on. This was an awesome conversation. And the last one I got for you is where can our listeners best find and/or connect with you online?

I would say LinkedIn. I tend to just kind of use that as my ultimate driving force in social media. I don't have too much content out there that I've produced myself. So I'd say LinkedIn. Perfect, man.

Thanks.

Feel free to ask me anything.

Perfect. Thank you again for coming on.

Thanks. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. This was awesome. I enjoyed it. The podcast you just heard was made using Anchor. Ever thought about making your own podcast? Anchor makes it really easy for anyone to get started. It's a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts. Best of all, it's 100% free. Sign up now at anchor.fm/new. That's anchor.fm/new to get started.