Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com and the guy who’s been missing some interviews here. So I wanted to do this conversation here to talk about why and what’s been going on. And the conversation is with my wife, Olivia Khalili. Olivia, hey.
Olivia: Hey there.
Andrew: So initially, Olivia, I was just going to record something. I figured people are listening to the podcast feed and they should know why I’ve been missing interviews instead of just seeing me disappear for a little bit. But I hate recording on my own. It feels weird. It doesn’t feel human. It feels, I don’t know, like one of the puppet heads on television. I never want to be that. I want to be a regular person like myself. Myself wouldn’t just talk to my computer. I’d talk to someone else. So whenever there’s something I want to say to the audience, I bring someone on to say it with me. What?
Olivia: I remember from our early days of recording ads.
Andrew: Right, the very first ads I had to have you on because I couldn’t just record them by myself. I still can’t. I know that the sponsors would be perfectly happy for me to record 30 seconds or 60 seconds on my own and then kind of clip them into the interview. But it just feels so inhuman. I really just like to include the guests in the conversation. So I still, to this day, record with someone else.
So I thought we’d talk about it. And if this conversation goes on long enough, then I can probably squeeze in two different advertisers, which would make Sachit very happy because he promised the advertisers they’d get spots and it would make the advertisers happy because they would end up with more business because of Mixergy. The two advertisers I will talk about if we have time are Toptal and tell people why they can get good developers–how cool is that.
Then you and I can have a conversation, and I’ll still stick an ad into it.
Olivia: That’s what I was going to say. You’re going to make me happy because we actually get to have a conversation.
Andrew: Right. We haven’t been able to talk lately. So it’s Toptal where you can hire developers, and the second one will be about Pipedrive, and Pipedrive will help you close sales. But you’re right. So here’s why I haven’t recorded interviews, Olivia. Olivia and I just had a baby, right? Do you think I was being a little too arrogant by not scheduling time off right afterwards?
Olivia: Arrogant? I’m not sure. I think you were not thinking things through. I don’t think it was arrogance.
Andrew: I think you’re right. This is our second baby. I remember after the first one saying, “I think it’s okay. There’s not much for me to do at home. I’m just kind of wasting time.” I also thought, “We have a system here, and the system is going to make sure that everything is okay, that we record enough interviews.” But then some guests were starting to cancel and reschedule over the summer. And when they wanted to reschedule, I said, “I don’t know when I can reschedule with you because I don’t know when the baby is coming.” So I didn’t reschedule with them.”
If they needed to get back to us–actually, we were going to get back to them, but it would still be a wait before they got back on the agenda. Before I knew it, we just didn’t stockpile enough interviews to publish while I was out when the baby came. Then I said, “I’m probably not going to need to take time out anyway, so I’ll record interviews afterwards.” What I discovered was I’m just freaking beat. I’m exhausted.
Olivia: Yeah. What I noticed is you weren’t fully at work and you weren’t off on leave, so you had all these grey days in between where I don’t think it benefitted … I didn’t get the benefit of you really being at home and being available, and you didn’t get the benefit of getting your shit done so that you could either not have the pressure or be home later.
I understand. We have our toddler just starting preschool, and so there was a lot of early pickups as he acclimated and you made yourself available for that and you wanted to be around. So I get it all, but I think, in retrospect, we really could have managed it better.
Andrew: Yeah. I do regret not having stockpiled more or any, frankly. By the time the baby came, we had pretty much none, maybe one or two. Usually, the way I do it for anyone who’s listening is I record interviews on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I do about six a week, and then we publish three a week. Then there are some weeks when I just decide I’m going to go really heavy on it, so we book as many as 8 to 10 interviews in that week.
Because of the way I do interviews, it’s hard to get 8 to 10 interviews done. We’re not talking about me just sitting down and asking questions like someone who’s like the audience. I don’t pretend I’m the audience. I want to be as well informed as possible so I can ask better questions than the audience would.
And so it takes a long time to prepare for each interview. It takes a long time to get the guest comfortable. It takes a long time after the interview to make sure the guest knows even though they revealed more than they’re used to that life is still okay and they’re not going to die. All that takes a lot of time. I just didn’t have that. I didn’t have that.
Olivia: I just noticed that you didn’t shave today, and I like it.
Andrew: I know. You love that I don’t shave, and I hate it.
Olivia: I love it. There’s an area you can save time.
Andrew: I really could.
Olivia: How many men would love if their partner enjoyed their facial hair?
Andrew: You’re right. And frankly I like to maximize time, but I just don’t like the beard. The reason I don’t like the beard is I don’t like the grey in the beard. I don’t like that grey is front and center. I can’t believe I’m graying. You’re blonde. You’re never going to get this, and you’re not going to grow a beard.
Olivia: Listen, I have my own struggles.
Andrew: You want to know something, something disgusting? What did you say?
Olivia: I said don’t try to pass off male hygiene and grooming as harder, your cross to bear.
Andrew: Let me show you something disgusting. One, two–and I’ll say what this is for people who are listening–what are you thinking? That’s such a look of shock and disgust on your face.
Olivia: Just today?
Andrew: No. It was three from before I left for the trip for that last day and then one from today. Frankly, I would get another one if I had another dollar bill on me from the vending machine. That’s soda. I’ve been drinking so much soda the last few weeks to just keep going. Because here’s what happened last night. Last night the baby woke up and you let me sleep. I tried and I got like thin sleep. I wasn’t fully awake. I wasn’t very asleep.
Olivia: You were very grateful though.
Andrew: I try to show appreciation a lot.
Olivia: “Oh man, thank you, Livsie. Thank you.” If I keep looking over here, it’s because the baby is right on the table with me, and I’m kind of bouncing him as he is awake.
Andrew: So mostly I’m a pretty systemized person, not just at work but also at home. So we were really systemized with the first kid. I was insane about making sure that even though you’re breastfeeding, that you were breastfeeding a certain time. You don’t think I was? I remember I read that book.
Olivia: You’re making yourself sound to be way more regimented than you are. I’m more the structure person. You love systems, definitely. You did read the book, and you wanted me to breastfeed at a certain time, same time as last one. But beyond that, you didn’t really give a hoot about what I did.
Andrew: No, because the rest of it doesn’t impact my schedule. But you know what? I really did believe that kind of system helped, but it was more than that system. If I was going to change diapers, and I was and I love it, I wanted to have a system for changing diapers too. Like for example, no changing sheet, nothing on the changing table at all because the kid’s going to poop and pee and all over anyway, so why bother having anything he can pee or poop on.
Let’s just got with the plastic little pad they have on there. That way when he pees, I wipe it down and we’re good to go. Then I had the great idea to put one of those plastic like bags on the side of the changing table, so everything goes right in. I don’t mess around. I want everything organized in my life. So the last few weeks have not been very organized.
Olivia: Have you been feeling disorganized outside of interviews?
Andrew: No, just that. That’s the big one. The other thing I like is I like having an office. You were talking about, before we started, about the days when we first moved to Argentina, we got married and we went on our honeymoon, and a few days after we got back from our honeymoon, we flew out to Argentina. A few days after that, I scheduled an interview because I said if I have an interview on the books, I’m going to get it done and I’ll figure out a way to get organized in Argentina.
So you and I landed, we took a day to ourselves to just have fun, and then we went and looked at it must have been half a dozen to ten different offices, right? Yeah. I want an environment where I can sit and work. I didn’t want to count on internet at coffee shops or at the house or anything. I didn’t want to count on the quietness of it. I posted a tweet online saying I’m moving to Argentina. I went on Facebook. I said, “Who can help me out? What are some good places?” So we looked at a bunch of them. Do you remember any of those?
Olivia: Yeah. I remember some co-working spaces. There was a whole range, from co-working spaces that were in converted houses to the ultimate corporate Wall Street environment, which you ended up in and some smaller … yeah, I remember a range.
Andrew: Yeah. Everything was so tranquillo. This was Argentina. They’re really chill over there, chill out. And it was all right and then we did, we got to this Wall Street-looking place and I felt like, “This is such home.” The guy who introduced us, in the heat of freaking Argentina, in the casualness of it, to some degree, he was wearing a suit and tie. He might have even had a three-piece suit on. I don’t remember as he talked us around. Then he showed us the conference room and he made sure to give us water. It wasn’t water in a cup. It was water in a bottle.
Olivia: Tell them my favorite story about that.
Andrew: What was that?
Olivia: When you were running and you tried to go to your office.
Andrew: What happened? Tell the story.
Olivia: So Andrew was, as listeners probably know, Andrew likes to run to work.
Andrew: Oh, right, right. Yes.
Olivia: In Argentina as well, he ran to work.
Andrew: This was after … wait, we find this place. This looks like the most corporate-y Wall Street-y place. Mixergy is basically making no money. All the other places are basically pay whatever you want.
Olivia: These are like in skyscrapers of Buenos Aires.
Andrew: Yeah. This is in the skyscraper, and they’re charging I forget what it was, but it was more money than we were paying for rent. It was more money than it would cost us to live. I said this is a place where serious work gets done. They’re not going to throw a party in the middle of the day. They’re not going to tell me it doesn’t matter the internet is out for an hour because it will be back soon. They’re going to take care of business. Shit gets done here and I said, “Great, sign me up. Find a way to turn this into a real business.” Sorry?
Olivia: Turnstiles in the lobby, marble floors.
Andrew: Right, turnstiles because they gave everyone an ID card, which I don’t like. I don’t like carrying extra stuff. Yeah. Everything fully organized. You’re right. So I moved into that space and I love to run to work. On my first day, you go ahead. You want to tell the story?
Olivia: No. You tell it.
Andrew: My first day I go downstairs to the lobby and I say to the woman, “I want to come to the office. I want to run into the office and I need a gym.” They didn’t understand what a gym was, really. Like why would you even want a gym? I said, “I need a gym so I can take a shower.” She looks at me in this office building, like one of the few skyscrapers in Argentina. She says, “Maybe you can shower in your hostel.” I said, “Oh no, I have an office upstairs from here. I’m in a real place. I actually live in a place with my wife.”
Because it’s such a formal environment, she was so embarrassed and upset with herself for having insulted one of their clients, especially one that actually has an office in the building and she started apologizing profusely. But that shows I always stuck out in that whole building. I was the only person that would come to work in a T-shirt. I was the only person who really had to work to not wear flip-flops to work every day.
But I have to admit it. They took things seriously. If the internet was ever out–and it was rarely out–they would not just find another office for me to go to, but they would give me a little sticky note with instructions to give the cab driver, and when I got to the new office, that other person knew who was coming in and what they were expected and they set me up beautifully.
Olivia: Can I show our baby? He’s self-entertaining so great.
Andrew: Yeah. There he is. He’s been doing great. So far we haven’t needed many systems for him. I’ll find some systems for him.
Olivia: So, speaking of systems, we wouldn’t use pacifiers with our older son, and so we don’t have any pacifiers, but we got one as a gift, kind of a gag gift. We’ve resorted to it several times. So it’s one of those hipster mustache pacifiers. So one of us will randomly walk into the room and see him sitting here with his handlebar mustache sucking away.
Andrew: We got it from am interviewee that sent it over. I’ve been thanking him so much for it. Really good guy to have sent it over.
Olivia: It’s our crutch pacifier.
Andrew: All right. You know what people ask me? They ask me what you do. What do you do for work?
Olivia: So I …
Andrew: What was that smile about? I asked you what do you do for work, and you took a pause and you smiled.
Olivia: Because I’m curious. Do people really ask you?
Andrew: Wait, there’s something going on with the mic. You were just messing with your computer. Yeah, people really do ask me about that.
Olivia: So I help businesses align their business strategy with social impact. Currently, I do that with Yahoo. So I lead Yahoo’s global social impact strategy, including employee engagement, cause marketing, employee giving, product donations.
Andrew: Give me an example, my favorite question.
Olivia: So I lead all of our employee volunteer campaigns. So we create different experiences with nonprofit partners in the community to match employee skills with …
Andrew: No. That’s not an example. Here’s an example.
Olivia: Oh, you wanted an example.
Andrew: Yeah. What did you guys do with Black Girls, what is it called, Black Girls who Code?
Olivia: Black Girls Code?
Andrew: Yeah, Black Girls Code.
Olivia: So we’ll host field trips with Black Girls Code, which is a nonprofit organization supporting STEM education for black and Latina girls, and we’ll bring them on to campus and we’ll create panels of Yahoo employees who will talk about what their work is, who will do mentoring with the girls.
In some cases, we bring students on and they actually do a design critique of Yahoo products, which is really fun. It’s kind of turning the tables. Sometimes we’ll do different coding with the students. We’ll go through an hour of code tutorial, which is a terrific resource anyone can use. That’s one specific event or activity within the larger of scope of work.
Andrew: I like that. So the goal is that there are these nonprofits that need help from big organizations and the organizations that actually want to help and people inside them feel good about helping, someone needs to coordinate them.
Olivia: So, I’ll give you another brief example that’s slightly different. We partnered with an organization called Donors Choose. Every time that if you use Yahoo Mail, we have a partnership with Paperless Post, so you can have a specific stationery that was designed for Donors Choose. If you choose that stationery template, that design, we donated $0.50 to donors choose to fund STEM education in public schools. That’s a cause marketing product integration.
Andrew: Okay. Let me take it personally. Let me go to a personal point here. I feel like lately I’m not a good kisser.
Olivia: Okay?
Andrew: Would you agree? I feel like you’re noticing you bite a little bit when I kiss.
Olivia: There was that one incident, but that was out of character?
Andrew: Really? I feel like I do that more. I’m not paying attention to that anymore.
Olivia: I do feel like maybe you don’t pay attention so much. I think maybe we just need more kissing time.
Andrew: Even to just sit and practice kissing?
Olivia: Well, it’s so tough with two kids. The amount of time we even have to make eye contact seems fleeting these days, let alone getting some good lip locks in here.
Andrew: Let me ask you this. As a girl, did you ever practice kissing by like kissing your hand?
Olivia: No.
Andrew: No.
Olivia: I think that’s the stuff of Judy Blume.
Andrew: I wanted to. That’s the kind of thing I definitely would do.
Olivia: That’s what our six-week old is doing.
Andrew: That’s what I would have done 100% as a teenager. I would have practiced it, because I didn’t know what I was doing. For some reason, this is where my systems and goal-oriented thinking gets me screwed up. I feel like if I’m going to kiss, I have to be a great kisser. Otherwise I’m going to be embarrassed that I suck as a kisser. I better do some research on it.
Now, where are you going to do research on how to kiss? Who knows? If there was a way to practice by kissing your hand, I would have absolutely kissed my hand to practice. Because there wasn’t a way to do it, I felt very insecure about my kissing. It wasn’t until I realized I was crappy at dating, I was crappy at kissing, I was crappy in bed … is this too personal?
Olivia: I don’t think you’re a crappy kisser.
Andrew: No. Here’s why I wasn’t. Then I said, “You know what? I have to just go on this personal journey to go on the non-work, non-systems part of who I am.” What I did was I went to therapy. I started like experimenting by flying to L.A. and dating girls. Is this too much? You’ll tell me if it’s too much. By dating girls that wouldn’t know each other, wouldn’t know my friends, so if I did something stupid like bite their lip in the middle of a kiss, because I didn’t know what I was doing, they couldn’t go back to anyone else. It happened once and it’s a dead thing.
Here’s what I learned from all that that really helps me in business, it helps me in conversations with people. I learned there are times in your life where thinking actually gets in the way, where thinking and structures and processes actually ruins what you’re trying to do. Like if I have a process for how I’m going to become a friend with someone, they’re going to pick up on it.
But if I just feel comfortable with myself and comfortable with the fact we might be friends or not, when we could be friends rate of return maybe not. But that’s okay because put the stuff out there enough, then someone will be a good match. Does that make sense?
Olivia: Yeah.
Andrew: I was thinking about that a lot at the Converted 2016 Conference that I went to. I’ve been advertising that a lot on Mixergy. So I should give people an update. You know what, actually, let me do a quick ad and then we’ll come back and talk about what happened at Converted at 2016 and how this whole realization that I had helped me. You ready to do an ad with me?
Olivia: I’m ready.
Andrew: All right. This is like the old days when you and I did an ad, but back then I think we scripted it a lot, right?
Olivia: Yeah, we scripted it. This is new to me.
Andrew: Actually, you know what you did?
Olivia: Use me as you’d like.
Andrew: I think what we did with FreshBooks was I said, “We’re going to talk. It will be two voices, which sounds more normal and I can’t talk on my own.”
Olivia: I think I remember because I just stood there and looked at you and afterwards I was like, “This feels really shitty. I just look like a stupid bobbing head.”
Andrew: Right. I said, “I need you talk to me because I need the second voice and I can’t talk on my own.” And then I’d just yap without you.
Olivia: I felt totally like, yeah, like a bobbing head. I wanted a role, Andrew. I want to prove my intellect.
Andrew: Yeah. And once I got comfortable with you, all I wanted to do was keep talking. All right. Toptal is the sponsor. Do you know Toptal?
Olivia: Yeah, I do.
Andrew: You do? What do you know about Toptal?
Olivia: You’ve told me and through their help with recruiting.
Andrew: Yes, they do. They will hire … actually, the way it works is they hire the people. They hire the developers and designers. And then when you need them, you call on them and you tell them what you need and they match you up with someone.
One of the past course leaders, people who I’ve featured here on Mixergy, a guy named Derek Johnson, who runs a site called Tatango, he heard me talk about this in a past ad. He said, “You know what?” I actually have notes on this. He said he and his CTO did 20 to 30 interviews trying to find the right developers, which wasted a ton of time of his CTO’s time and a lot of his time. But they said, “You know what? We’re just going to do this. This is the process as it is.” Then they heard me do this ad about Toptal and he said, “Let’s just try it.”
And with Toptal, they had to talk to two different people. It’s not 20 to 30 because Toptal has already done all this research. They’ve got a database of developers and Toptal just said, “Hey, Tatango, what do you guys need? How do you guys work? What’s the CTO like? What’s the structure? How many people at your company?” and so on. They ask the right questions like a yenta in the old movie. They bring you one person and say, “Do you want to marry this person or this other person?”
Olivia: It’s outsourcing your own recruiting or HR department to Toptal.
Andrew: Both of them, recruiting and HR, because afterwards you just pay Toptal and Toptal takes care of the developer. So they found a person and they ended up hiring this person not just for full-time, Olivia. Full-time plus, which I never heard of–I didn’t even know there was a full-time plus, but Derek says there are certain amount of hours they considered full-time. They wanted more because they liked this person. The CTO said, “This guy is so good, he’s basically like me on my level.” Think about that. The guy has to be that good for the CTO to admit it.
So, if you’re listening to me and you’re considering Toptal or you know someone who is considering hiring people and is having a really bad experience doing it, you lose nothing by going to Toptal, going to this special page I’m going to give you, filling out a form and talking to one of the people. You will be on the phone with them. Frankly, if you’re not a good fit, they will turn you down.
I’ve had emails from people, Olivia, from people who have heard me do this who said, “Andrew, they turned me down, these jerks.” Well, they’re not jerks. If they’re not a good fit, why should they string you along? They don’t need your money. They’ve got Andreessen Horowitz money. Andreessen Horowitz has got a lot of money. Not only that, but they’re bringing in money from their customers.
So, if you use this URL, they’re going to give us a special deal they only give Mixergy people. Frankly, if you find out they’re giving it to anyone else, please tell me. Here’s the special URL. As far as I know, all my research is showing me these guys are only giving this to Mixergy people–80 hours of Toptal developer credit when you pay for your first 80 hours. That’s in addition to a no-risk trial period of up to two weeks. Here’s the URL. Go to Toptal.com/Mixergy.
See, I didn’t let you talk there either.
Olivia: Yeah.
Andrew: But you know what? I don’t know how to properly engage you about it in conversation.
Olivia: I think you did a good job.
Andrew: I think so too. I think it would have been forced if I pushed you into that conversation. I think it was helpful to look at you to see, “Is this interesting or not? Am I doing all right with it? Am I forgetting there are human beings listening?”
One of the first tips that I got … I used to love sales growing up. I used to read books about sales endlessly. One of the first tips I got as if you’re selling on the phone, have a mirror in front of you, just like seeing another human being, even if it’s you seeing you.
Olivia: That makes me laugh. I feel like salespeople already get the bad rap of being so self-inclined and have a mirror to be looking at … I get where you’re going, but to be looking at a mirror at the time you’re selling.
Andrew: Then you know what? Here’s another approach. Put a picture of the kind of person that you’re going to be talking to or the person–
Olivia: That’s more empathetic.
Andrew: Really more. I take it a step further. I actually, if I have to talk to someone on the phone, I do it by video, Facetime wherever possible, and if not Facetime, I’ve been really enjoying Zoom lately where I can actually do screen sharing. When you do audience calls with people, you lose their attention. They go to 20 other things. If you do video, you’re there. You remember there’s another human being.
Olivia: You were doing video for half an hour we were driving yesterday.
Andrew: I know. Was that awkward?
Olivia: No. It’s unusual to do video, but it was interesting to hear your conversation.
Andrew: It’s the most you’ve gotten to hear about what’s going on at work.
Olivia: I know.
Andrew: What I was saying about this whole thing, this whole personal journey I went through is this. We went to the conference, and I said in the ads for the conference because I was promoting that I was going to speak there, I said if you’re going to come, actually text me and we’ll meet up.
So what I did was I reserved the Presidential Suite, which cost an extra $50-$80 a day, something like that. Then I went to Instacart and I ordered a bunch of cheese and crackers and I ordered some scotches and some wine and that’s it and some disposable glasses that looked nice. That’s it. Then we had all the people who listen to Mixergy come in. Because they came in, a few other interviewees came in who I happen to know. Other people just started filing in. We had 75 freaking people in this place.
Olivia: I don’t know that you just heard that, but somehow you activated Alexa.
Andrew: Oh, really? That happens a lot when I listen to podcasts around the house. It was fun. We got to get to know each other better. We got to meet people. Here’s where that old experience came in. The old me would have overly structured conversations. What do I say to people to start? What happens if the thing fails? You can’t structure something like that.
People can feel if they’re having a conversation with a robot. The new me understands I just need to be okay with myself and if someone has a bad experience, it’s okay. Let them go and have their bad experience. That inner journey, that inner work is really helpful. What do you think? Do you notice it?
Olivia: Yeah. I heard you talking to Jeremy about the conference, and then we got a chance to catch up on it. I’ve been reflecting that I really like you when you are … I miss socializing with you. I think now since we’ve had … I like engaging with you in this realm because now that we have kids, it’s so domestic and if we socialize, we either socialize independently with our friends, we go on a date with each other, which doesn’t happen as much as we’d like it to, or we go on some family activity with other friends.
You and I used to socialize with friends so often without kids. and I really miss seeing you in that element. I think you’re great there, and you’ve done a lot of work, as you’re alluding to, to be comfortable and have some processes, but also really building up a trust and just being able to go in and really listen. I think what helps is you’re an excellent listener and you’re non-judgmental and for the most part, 99%, you never have anything that you need to prove to someone. You don’t have your own agenda going into the conversation.
Andrew: I do then end up really liking talking to people, and I have really good conversations with them, like meaningful conversations because of what you said–no judgment, which is why I refuse to take a political stand ever in public.
Olivia: Also why you get along with my mom so well.
Andrew: I get along with everyone for the most part.
Olivia: That’s true.
Andrew: I can’t imagine anyone who I don’t. Who cares? Frankly, even if I don’t, I’m okay not getting along with everybody. It doesn’t have to be 100%. I think you nailed it too why. No judgment. You cannot have a good conversation with someone if they’re picking up on judgment. They can’t be themselves if they know they’re being judged. Then what they start to do is start to defend themselves subtly or start to hide themselves.
Olivia: Yes.
Andrew: Lack of judgment is really important. Then I look for little subtle clues about what they want to talk about. What’s a little personal? I always take a personal level. Sorry?
Olivia: It’s curiosity that goes through both of those. Lack of judgment is driven by curiosity and your ability to listen for those subtle clues. You always take it personal. I’ve been with you for almost 10 years, and you would think I’d be more comfortable in following your style, because I see how well it works, works meaning how well people respond to it. They really open up and gravitate and have these deep satisfying conversations with you, and yet the social mores of going too personal are still so strong I can’t even trespass them. It’s great that you do.
Andrew: Yeah. You’re right.
Olivia: I have to keep practicing. You have to feed me some, do baby steps.
Andrew: I will.
Olivia: I’m like, “I can’t ask that. I know they’re wanting someone to ask them about their divorce, but it’s going to be rude or they’re going to be sad if I ask and I don’t want the person to be sad.”
Andrew: And I don’t think they’re going to be sad. I think it’s exactly what they want to talk about and I say it. That’s one place where Dale Carnegie led me astray. Dale Carnegie’s philosophy was ask people about their interests.
I remember going home with my friend Michael G. in college and I said, “I read this Dale Carnegie thing. I’m going to ask Michael G. about what he’s interested in.” And Michael G. was really fascinated by comic book heroes. I said great. So I asked him and dude, this guy, Michael G. wanted to talk forever about it. I was so proud. I said, “This works. This is exactly it.”
I was in my head actually prepping to tell other people that this is the magic to conversation. But I also knew I was a fraud, because I didn’t care about it. I knew this was the most boring conversation I could ever imagine. There was none of me in it. It wasn’t until I realized no, I have to ask what I’m curious about that they also want to talk about. What I’m curious about often will trump what they want to talk about. If they don’t, I’ll let them back away, but I’ll ask them that.
I have to do one thing here. I have to blow my nose or wipe it down. I’m going to go off camera right now. One second. I’m embarrassed to do that but–
Olivia: That’s not fully off-camera, just for your future scoots and blows.
Andrew: That wasn’t fully off-camera, I know. That was kind of a half-hearted off-camera. But here’s the thing. Here’s why I’m proud to say that I’m doing it on-camera. Over the years I’ve told people that I’ve had a non-stop runny nose and I’ve gotten so many different homeopathic solutions for it and other like pseudo-scientific solutions. I think I’ve done all of them. I’m so desperate that I usually don’t fall for any of this stuff, but I just–
Olivia: No you don’t, Andrew.
Andrew: Really?
Olivia: All you’ve done is medication. You haven’t done bullshit on the natural front. I’ve been telling you for years to go to–
Andrew: What natural is there?
Olivia: There’s homeopathic, which you have not done. There’s net pot, which I believe you did do, acupuncture. There’s allergy testing. Maybe you did that.
Andrew: I did allergy testing.
Olivia: All you’ve done is various combinations of Flonase. So don’t tell me about your homeopathic woo-woo dismissal.
Andrew: I feel I did a little bit of homeopathic stuff. I actually had something shipped in from China with no English writing on it just because some guy emailed me and said this solved the same problem for him.
Olivia: That’s not technically homeopathic. Homeopathic is not a broad term for anything you don’t believe in.
Andrew: Actually, I’ve realized that I think homeopathic means anything that my doctor didn’t prescribe. It’s at home.
Olivia: I know what you mean. I’m calling out that it’s–
Andrew: I didn’t think of that.
Olivia: It’s a specific disciplines.
Andrew: I had a bunch of these solutions, none of them worked. I have an appointment to go get surgery inside my nose very soon. The 17th of November they’re going to take a piece of my nose out.
Olivia: It’s on my calendar for the 21st. Let’s make sure we have the correct day.
Andrew: That 21st. Your calendar is more right than mine. Yeah, so whatever is on my calendar is when I will go do it. They’re going to pull out some part of my nose, and it’s going to be exciting.
Olivia: Will it change the shape of your handsome face?
Andrew: It will not. No. I have to tell you, when I was in high school, I thought maybe I should get a nose job, I should slim it down. Even back then I had this runny nose issue and I said, “Good, this means I can get something done and I can tell people it’s because I had a runny nose.” I never had the heart to do it. I’m glad I didn’t. You know why? Because frankly looks don’t matter that much. It’s more about how much can you talk and what you sound like when you do talk. Can I say something else that … is it déclassé for me to bring up dating here?
Olivia: No. That’s one of Andrew’s tactics. Long-time listeners will know, “Is it déclassé? Is it going too far if I …” and then boom, that way the door is already open. So, of course you’re not going to say, “No.”
Andrew: You’ll say no.
Olivia: He loves the reaction.
Andrew: In this case I really do, “Did I just bring my wife on to talk about dating?”
Olivia: Yes, because that’s your style.
Andrew: I think actually it shaped me. I think in many ways it shaped me. I try to bring it up to interviews to ask about their dating to see how much it shaped them and they don’t want to talk about it, I think partially because it’s embarrassing. I’m a little bit embarrassed to bring it up right now, partially because I think they’re not in touch like I am and largely because I think they weren’t as moved by it as I was. Everyone has something that moves them.
Olivia: Yeah, yours was really a transformational or a foundational experience for you. It was a quest in a way that it is not for many. I don’t have dating sagas. If you ask me about me about my dating life, it’s like there was this relationship and that relationship, but there wasn’t this transformational element to it until I met you.
Andrew: Was I transformational?
Olivia: Yeah. For me?
Andrew: Yes.
Olivia: Well, I think I’m still the same person. But yeah, you enhanced a lot, and you led me into new things and that’s why we’ve been together and decided to have a family.
Andrew: I think it’s important for me to be transformational. This is a whole other thing that I also have. I have this need to feel greater than myself. The best way to feel greater than myself is to have the person I’m in love with see me as being greater than myself because then it feels more significant than having even large crowds think that. Does that make sense?
Olivia: Yeah.
Andrew: That’s why I was like hang on that answer. Am I there yet?
Olivia: That’s very sweet.
Andrew: Maybe that’s a need I also need to work through. I forget what I was bringing up this whole dating thing for anyway. It doesn’t matter. Let’s see what this guy asked about. You know what? Here’s what this going in the audience today emailed me and he said, “Andrew, you should talk more about yourself.” I said, “Guess what? My wife is coming on.” There, Jeremy Houtchens–I don’t know how to pronounce your last name, Jeremy.
But he was asking a few different questions, one of them was about Argentina. Let’s talk about that. I feel like Argentina was transformational for me. Was it transformational–and it was for Mixergy–was it transformational for you?
Olivia: It was for my work, actually. It was pivotal.
Andrew: How? What happened?
Olivia: So I had an interest in going to Argentina. We lived there for a year. And I had a nascent and growing interest in the work I do now, which is helping businesses have a social impact. And I used the year that we were there to really invest in that, and when I returned to the states, I had enough knowledge and contacts and content to launch a career for it.
So I really kind of legitimized my interest during that time and working independently while I was there. So, for me, that put me on the path that I desired to be and where I am now. It was awesome. It was hard. It was lonely. It was super … What words would you use to describe? There was a lot of lack of confidence in myself and confusion in what I was doing and where I was going, because I felt that I was trying to create something in a vacuum. But ultimately, I did what I needed to do to get where I wanted to go.
Andrew: Yeah, I sensed that because what would happen is I would go off to work and then you would be one at our place. It didn’t make sense for you to get an office because you didn’t crave an office.
Olivia: We had this huge beautiful place.
Andrew: We had such a beautiful place there. So you’d just sit there and you’d work trying to figure out what the future is for you, and you’d write a blog post every day and there was no immediate positive feedback from any of it and no clear path for any of it.
Olivia: Yeah. And on top of that, we had moved there. So our social circle was very small. It took a while to develop friendships. So it was very isolating.
Andrew: Which is what helped me. I needed that isolation. I felt like I needed to get away from everything and just go and hunker down for a little bit. I think that’s how I … I think when I heard about one of the founders of Toptal, I heard that he basically went into a cave and just hatched this idea and that he just spent time in isolation working on it. That’s how I found out about him and asked him to do an interview and years later he became a sponsor. I think that’s helpful at times in our lives.
So, for me, for Mixergy it was helpful because I got away from everyone else’s opinions of where I was and what I was doing and comparing what I was doing at the time to what I did before, what I could have been doing. There was just a lot of that.
Olivia: When we were living in L.A., directly prior to moving to Argentina, you did so many events and so that was a lot of social stimulation. It wasn’t necessarily putting Mixergy on the track that it needed to be.
Andrew: I still did them in Argentina, and I met a lot of people by doing them in Argentina. I think my first week or two, I did a Hacker News meetup where I met a lot of people. The thing is that I didn’t have to see people. There was no force. It wasn’t like I would go down to the corner store and see someone. It wasn’t like someone would say, “Hey, Andrew, I’m in town. Let’s get together,” and I’d have to go see them. I could decide when I wanted to see people and that helped a lot.
So that kind of break from people helped me think through Mixergy, but also being in a new environment kept me from being in my rut physically, going and having the same bagel at the corner store every day and the same cup of coffee and the same everything, freeing myself of the physical rut also freed myself of the mental rut. I didn’t go through the same thought process. I was dealing with different ones. Also there tends to be more time when you get away.
Olivia: Yeah.
Andrew: We also have other questions from people in the … we have this Mixergy community, Premium members have access to all the old interviews and the courses that we’ve done, and we also created a community for them. So five minutes before you and I got on this call, I went on there and I said, “Olivia is going to come on with me right now to record. Do you guys have any questions?”
I’ll ask the questions that they asked in a moment, but first let me do my second sponsor. It’s a company called Pipedrive. Did I ever tell you about Pipedrive, Olivia?
Olivia: No.
Andrew: No? Funny, I don’t talk about that at home. I talk about it endlessly at work. What Pipedrive is, it’s a way of keeping track of your contacts with a goal in mind, which is what I love about it. When I was dating, I would have probably started out with this. It says, “What’s your end goal?” For us, the end goal is getting a guest on Mixergy. For other people, the end goal is closing a sale and they say, “Great, whatever it is, just make that the goal.”
Now, lay out all the different steps that it takes to get to that goal, give each one of them a column and title the column with the name of the step. So, for us, it’s find a potential guest or find a lead, then it’s find their email address, all those different steps each have a column. So, when someone on the team comes up with an idea for a potential guest, they create a little card for them in the software and put it in column one, found a guest.
If we have a system that automatically puts guests in, like when we hired a virtual assistant, the virtual assistant would just type it in there and her suggestion would go in column one. Column two is to decide whether the guest is appropriate and so on, column three, find their email address, then ask them to do the interview and then ask them again and all that. All that stuff is in the system.
So we can all work together to drive towards the same goal. Everybody on the team knows exactly where every single person we want on Mixergy is within our process. If someone hasn’t been talked to in a couple weeks, there’s no way to forget them. We used to forget people, Olivia. It would go like a couple months we didn’t hear from them. You remember that?
Olivia: Uh-huh.
Andrew: It was freaking awkward.
Olivia: Yeah.
Andrew: So here we have the card turn red if they haven’t been talked to in a while. That way we know that we need to come in and talk to them. I said in a while instead of giving a specific amount of time because each step of the process has a different deadline before it goes read. So, if someone has done a pre-interview but they haven’t booked an interview yet, I think we turn it red in a short amount of time, something like a week.
But if we ask them to do an interview–where is it? There are some parts–oh, I know. If they did the pre-interview and they still haven’t done the interview, we wait a little bit longer before turning it red because sometimes it’s my calendar that’s too full and I don’t want to jump in and ask them what’s going on.
Anyway, it helped us so dramatically. This is one of the things I did before Shepard, our first son, was born. I implemented Pipedrive and I had a document written for each part of our Pipedrive system so that anyone new who was faced with a decision of what to do because a card is red could go into our Google Drive and see exactly what they need to do.
Anyone who wanted to suggest a guest knew exactly where and how to add that guest into Pipedrive. I wanted to organization our company and I did and now it makes it easy for us to book guests. It changed the way that we do business here at Mixergy. If you’re selling, it will change the way you sell. I guarantee it.
One of the coolest things about it is after you move someone from one card to another, it ties into software like Zapier so you can automatically trigger an email to someone on your team. Or using Zapier when someone emails you, you can automatically add them into your Pipedrive–so many different integrations. If you’re listening to me and you’re doing personal sales, meaning one on one via email or phone, you have to investigate Pipedrive. You owe it to yourself.
I’ll tell you this. If you don’t think that it makes sense, then I should have no credibility with you. Frankly, if you go to Pipedrive.com/Mixergy, they’re going to give you two free months of Pipedrive, Pipedrive.com/Mixergy. If you think this is a stupid piece of software, I should have no credibility with you, because I’m telling you right now this is really good and I’m not doing it because they’re paying me. I’m telling you because it’s really good. Go check it out. You will thank me if you have any personal sales that you do at your company.
Let’s go into the questions, Olivia, that we got from people. Rachel Kirsten says, “Olivia, how has your relationship evolved as you’ve added a family into this mix?” You’ve talked about that, feeling disconnected from me.
Olivia: How’s my relationship with you?
Andrew: Sorry?
Olivia: My relationship with you?
Andrew: Yeah.
Olivia: Yeah. So there seems to be less space for it. It’s grown in some areas, because all of a sudden we get to see each other a whole other dimension. I see you as a parent, an individual parent, a co-parent, a family unit. So that’s a whole other area it’s grown into, but clearly thinking about Argentina makes me reminisce, all of that luscious, delicious time we had to have our breakfast routines and our going out and exploring new restaurants and seeing friends and just jaunts around the city.
So that’s challenging. I think we work well together as a unit, but it seems to be much more logistical rather than … I feel like less connected to what Mixergy’s doing, you’re less connected to what my work is doing. We have fewer overlapping interests, because one reason is I don’t have time to pursue a lot of my former interests. Those are some of the things I miss. Remember when our first son was born, the first couple of weeks just really mourning the loss of our relationship and that really shocked me. I felt like I really missed you and missed having you to myself, essentially. I’ve grown into that.
Andrew: I think that’s on us to figure that out. It’s just a tough thing to figure out, because I don’t know that there’s a good path here. I know there’s an option to be able to do it and here’s why. We have friends who have one kid. I won’t say their age. I don’t want to give it away. They’re married and they’re dating. They’re fitting not just time with each other, they’re fitting a dating life in. They’re fitting travels to go to date other people. So if they’re finding that, then we should find a way to see more of each other. It’s just that we haven’t figured out our system for it.
Olivia: Yeah. It’s true. That’s interesting with them because they–
Andrew: Don’t say anything that gives them away because I can’t edit it out. They’re going to hate me the way some other people do. Be careful.
Olivia: No, no.
Andrew: Okay.
Olivia: All right. You shut me down with that little innocuous comment.
Andrew: You just said I was a great listener and then I shut you down.
Olivia: I said you had no agenda.
Andrew: I said what?
Olivia: I said you had no agenda.
Andrew: Yeah with people in conversation.
Olivia: I understand.
Andrew: If there’s something you were going to say …
Olivia: No. I think it’s all about … It’s an obvious statement, but it’s about the choices, right? The choices they invest–they have more childcare support than we do. For me, they’re more comfortable being away from their kids. This is not a judgment because I don’t know how they lead such full lives, but I have a job and a really long commute. So I don’t know if I’d make the choice to carve out more time for myself as much as they do to be away from my kids. It sounds like judgment. It’s just harder because you think, “Of course I would.”
It comes down to it like, “I’ve been gone for 10 hours at work. Do I really need to take this class tonight, or do I want to go home and see my kid?” That wasn’t something that I understood before experiencing it myself as a parent. I thought it was like, “Of course you make the time for yourself.” I think it’s really important.
Andrew: I still think we do. I think we make more time for ourselves than other people do, but not for each other. I still get my runs in. I do four runs.
Olivia: You do an excellent job of making time for yourself.
Andrew: I really do. All right. We have more questions here. Rachel also says, “Do you think,” and I have an answer to this question, “Do you think being married to an entrepreneur makes co-parenting easier or more challenging?”
Olivia: I think it’s … Everyone is different. Everyone’s situation is different. Right before we started recording, I got a text from a friend with a baby who’s the same age as our baby and both parents work for large tech companies and they’re on parental leave together for Thanksgiving. So, for two and half months, two parents get to be home together with the baby.
Andrew: And still get paid full salaries.
Olivia: Like how fucking dreamy is that? Not only do I have more time for myself, but we have time together. Essentially it’s like a two and a half month date. That’s how it feels to me.
Andrew: I was going to answer differently. I think you’re right, that that is a big loss. There’s some sense of obligation all the time when you’re an entrepreneur. I wasn’t thinking of that. What I was thinking of was if Shep suddenly was sick and someone needed to stay home with him, it’s my company so I could just Andrea to let people know my son is sick, I need to take the day off. I think that’s helpful.
Yesterday someone cancelled the interview on me, which was so disappointing because I needed it. We don’t have any banked. But because they cancelled and then one other person cancelled, you said, “It would be nice if we could go out today,” and we did. I had my phone call with Jeremy from the car using video Skype. And then we got to where was it? Muir Woods or something.
Olivia: Yeah. I don’t think it’s a net loss or a net gain. I think it’s awesome to model entrepreneurship to children. It’s awesome to model good stuff.
Andrew: I think so too. I think it’s a net gain. I disagree. I think it’s a net gain.
Olivia: Net gain. Okay. Know your audience, Olivia, net gain.
Andrew: All right. Jeff Manning is saying, “For Olivia, what do you miss most, if anything, about the East Coast?” Jeff, you could have gone more personal? See, this is why I should be asking the questions. I would have gotten more personal. This is why I should be asking the questions. I would have gotten more personal. Do you miss anything about the East Coast?
Olivia: I miss some of my family. I miss the old cities. I miss the seasons but not winter.
Andrew: Here’s what I miss. I think a lot of people here in San Francisco pretend that they don’t care about money. I think they just pretend that they care about changing the world and in many ways, I think they actually genuinely do. Many people genuinely just want to change the world and that’s it. But they’re hiding their avarice or hiding their need for more money and if anything, they have a heightened need for it, a heightened desire for it.
One of the things I loved about the book “Chaos Monkey” is that he calls bullshit on that and he talks about his need for more money and talks about other people. I really miss being in New York where people could just express everything openly, including that, including the fact that they want more money or that they’re working for money. I miss that.
Olivia: I feel like that’s pretty prevalent in Silicon Valley out here.
Andrew: I don’t know.
Olivia: Your answer is so much more interesting than mine, which is like old cities and seasons. That was so trite.
Andrew: All right. I think yours was a good answer too. I didn’t read any of these because they just came as I was putting this in. Alex Tveit, Alex, thanks, “I see you worked at Ashoka in the past. You did. Do you see a recent shift where people with entrepreneurial drive take on social innovation more often, given that there’s less funding for these types of ideas and organizations, how can we help support them? Is hero x-type competitions the best solution?”
Olivia: I think it’s a great question.
Andrew: You take it anywhere you think is best.
Olivia: Just read the leading question again, Andrew, so I can make sure I’m on point.
Andrew: Do you see a recent shift where people with entrepreneurial drive take on social innovation more often?
Olivia: Yes. So, definitely. I think there’s a transferability of thinking of social needs, bringing an entrepreneurial lens to social problems and social needs. So, that’s one element. That’s where you see the rise of social entrepreneurs versus what we consider to be like a traditional nonprofit and unfortunately negative connotations that sometimes brings.
But then you also see tried-and-true entrepreneurs who are getting into philanthropy and social innovation and that’s from the Gates to the Zuckerbergs and lots of other–who’s the company that does–Evan Williams on Twitter who’s doing the meatless products. There are just a lot of examples of the more traditional entrepreneurs who are going into. . .
Andrew: A little distracting now to have the baby cry. He’s asking me if I’ll have social entrepreneurs on. Will I ask them different questions than for profit entrepreneurs? I will not. If you’re not into making a profit, you’re a nonprofit. I think you’re doing great for the world. I’m not going to have you on Mixergy. It’s just not the focus, unless you’re doing something that we should in the for profit world be copying.
Olivia: Andrew and I can have a longer conversation about that next time we go out.
Andrew: All right. Emma Vega Malta is saying–I’ve known her for a long time. Actually, she came here. We had drinks together. She helped me with Mixergy a lot. She was part of the true mind course, which she says you advised and coached and she loved. She’s asking, “Will you be a part of any future Mixergy projects?”
Olivia: Ooh, TBD. Emma, what do you have in mind?
Andrew: Emma, what do you have in mind? I will say I don’t know.
Olivia: Let me pick him up. I don’t know.
Andrew: Go ahead. I will answer that question while you do it. I think my preference is to have … What did you say, Olivia?
Olivia: Can I bring him on camera?
Andrew: Yeah, bring him on camera. My preference is that we have our own lives apart from each other and both of us have full working lives where we’re working on something that we care about, even if it’s a nonprofit, even if it’s something that doesn’t bring us any money. One thing we each work on that we love that takes a lot of our time and energy and passion and then at the end of the day we come back and talk about different things instead of having seen you during the day, come back home and argue it or continue the work conversation.
Having said that, working with you on True Mind was a lot of fun in every way. I loved True Mind. If I could do anything other than Mixergy, I would not give up the interviews ever, but if I could do anything other than the rest of Mixergy, it would just be the True Mind process. The True Mind process is–go ahead, what are you going to say, Olivia?
Olivia: I always admire couples that collaborate really deeply on projects and work together. I liked doing True Mind with you a lot. I wish that we would collaborate on something deeply but I also feel like it’s nice to have our independent interests and discuss and enhance them.
Andrew: Yeah. And I think it also helps to have a break from each other a little bit because then we miss each other more. All right. One more question–this is from Ben Nesvig, who shot these beautiful Mixergy courses and who I got to see in Minnesota. He actually came out for that scotch night I did. “What’s the most interesting thing about Andrew that most Mixergy members don’t know?”
Olivia: The most interesting? You’re such an open book. You do like to smell your socks after you take them off, but that’s not the most interesting.
Andrew: We’re getting close to the end. That’s what you’re going to leave people with. I’ll say this. I like my stink on anything. I hate to admit it. This is the kind of thing that people are going to remember and it’s going to be associated with me, but who cares? I do. I don’t know what it is but I have to be very aware of it, that if I think I smell good and I think it’s my natural smell, I have to jump in the shower and launder my clothes right away.
Olivia: I don’t know if this is interesting but I think it’s powerful. It’s that Andrew wants people to succeed and wants people to be their true essence and that’s so important for him to nurture in our relationship that he has said even if we split up, even if we have to have time apart, neither of which he’s advocating or on the table for discussion, but it’s so important for him to help support me reaching my true essence that he would sacrifice what he wants, which is our relationship.
Andrew: Right, that if there’s something better for you outside of us, then I would urge you to do that and help you do it. That’s like personal confidence that I got to later in life. And by the way–
Olivia: I’ll give you one more example of that if I can. When we were dating in LA, Andrew had gone through a good portion of the city dating before he and I got together. So, our social circle had included many of his exes who would come to our house for parties. Sometimes I would count. There would be four people he had slept with at our house.
Andrew: This is very personal, Olivia, but go ahead.
Olivia: People said, “Well, how is that for you?” And for the most part, it was fine because Andrew is really open about how he feels and I feel like genuine. He always made me feel loved and trusted and safe in our relationship. So, it removed the treat of other people. I don’t know if that’s interesting to people, but that’s something that really stuck with me and I feel that trait and that care that he has, he doesn’t have anything to prove is really beautiful and certainly helped me cement our early relationship.
Andrew: I think it’s largely because I never felt comfortable dating the way people talked–the way guys did, which is like, “I want to just go and have sex with that woman.” I always felt left out in the world because I didn’t have that feeling. I wanted to get to know that person. So, I think I had really good relationships with people that maybe happened to include dating. I didn’t get sucked into whatever–I didn’t know this was going on, that there was a whole pick up artist thing. I’m so glad I didn’t get into that. That’s not genuine. I want genuine. I want to fully be myself around you, around everyone else. Are you going to have to nurse that baby?
Olivia: Yes, I am.
Andrew: We should really get off then. Ben, that was a good question. Thank you. All right. I really liked this. I think we should do this more often.
Olivia: I always wanted to have a podcast show with you. We need to get in a rhythm and I need to get more comfortable on camera.
Andrew: I didn’t know you wanted to have a podcast with me.
Olivia: I always wanted to have a podcast show with you. What?
Andrew: I didn’t know that.
Olivia: Yeah. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Andrew: Yeah. I wonder what it would be about. I’d be into that. All right. Well, look at this. This is like a date and a podcast and we made some money off of it because we ran two ads in it. So, thank so much for sponsoring my date with my wife, Toptal. If anyone needs to hire a developer, remember others who have listened have gotten so much including Derek from Tatango.com if you ever want to look him up. Go sign up if you need a good developer or designer at Toptal.com/Mixergy.
And if you need to grow your sales, you have to check out Pipedrive. I promise you are going to love it, at Pipedrive.com/Mixergy. Oh, this offer ends December 31st, 2016. Pipedrive.com/Mixergy, the offer ends. Olivia, I love you. I’ll see you at home. Thanks.
Olivia: Bye, baby.
Andrew: Bye, sweetie. Thanks.