← B2B Agility with Greg Kihlström™: MarTech, E-Commerce, & Customer Success
B2B Agility with Greg Kihlström™: MarTech, E-Commerce, & Customer Success
#30: The power of gratitude in business with Brendan Kamm, Thnks
00:31:55
Are you missing out on one of the simplest yet most powerful tools for building business relationships?
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- [00:01]
Unknown Speaker
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- [00:48]
Greg Kilstrom
The Agile Brand.
- [00:55]
Unknown Speaker
Welcome to the B2B Agility Podcast where we look at the factors that drive success in B2B marketing with a focus on the people, processes, data and platforms that make B2B brands stand out and thrive in a competitive marketplace. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on MarTech marketing operations and CX best selling Author and speaker. Now let's get on to the show.
- [01:21]
Greg Kilstrom
Are you missing out on one of the simplest yet most powerful tools for building business relationships? What if a small personalized gesture could mean more to your clients and colleagues than a raise or a promotion? Today we're exploring the power of gratitude in business with Brendan Kam, Co Founder and CEO of Thanks. We'll discuss how small, meaningful acts of gratitude can strengthen business relationships, boost morale, and drive long term success. Brendan, welcome to the show.
- [01:47]
Brendan Kam
Thank you so much for having me. Greg, it's great to meet you.
- [01:49]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Before we get started though, why don't we introduce yourself, give a little background and some background on your current role as well.
- [01:59]
Brendan Kam
Sure. So my name is Brendan Kam. I'm the co Founder and CEO at thanks, which is a gratitude expression platform, a way to send small gestures of appreciation that improve your business relationships and ultimately lead to better business outcomes. I actually came originally from the advertising world and if you've ever seen Mad Men, you know it goes way back in the advertising world that relationships kind of drive that business. So I think it was always ingrained in me basically from the start that, you know, the way to really build a big business network and better business outcomes is through relationships. It's not going to be slick selling or anything beyond like making that Human connection and keeping those connections over time.
- [02:38]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, love it. Well, yeah, we're going to dive in on a few topics related to that today. So, yeah, I wanted, I wanted to start with this role of gratitude and business that I mentioned at the top of the show and really talk about how this is an essential component of building strong relationships, as you just said. So you've described gratitude as a cornerstone of building business relationships. Why is it so important? And especially in today's fast paced business environment, you'd think it would be digital this or that or whatever.
- [03:12]
Brendan Kam
You know.
- [03:13]
Greg Kilstrom
Why? Why gratitude?
- [03:14]
Brendan Kam
Yeah. So I think, you know, it's just become so transactional. Everyone's so busy and your, your zoom call after zoom call and you're just so worried about getting that next deal done, getting that thing over the line and we sort of lose sight of the, the human element of business.
- [03:28]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [03:28]
Brendan Kam
And that's ultimately what's always sort of driven a business environment. I mean, if I could go have dinner, play golf with my clients, I'll go do that a hundred percent of the time.
- [03:36]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [03:37]
Brendan Kam
It's just not feasible, cost wise and time wise to do that. So I need a way to really be able to connect on a more regular basis. And somewhere along the line we just kind of shifted to this idea of like swag, which is great. Swag is great, don't get me wrong. But that's marketing, right? That's about me giving you my swag. Right here, I'm wearing my thanks shirt now. That's my swag.
- [03:56]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [03:57]
Brendan Kam
But that's about me. If I send that to you, what I really want to do is get to know you and start to show that sort of authenticity and human element. I think the other thing we see these days is like, you know, you get a pair of AirPods if you take this meeting again, that's not really building a relationship, Right. That can get you the meeting. It might be a little low intent. That's a tactic, right. When we talk about gratitude and small gestures, it's not about the thing, it's about connecting. It's about, I hear you. It's about, you know, this isn't just this transaction, it's about building a long term relationship. Actually, my head of revenue here was my first boss 20 something years ago. In the advertising world, we had maintained that relationship. And even just a few weeks ago, I was selling to someone who was my Golf magazine rep. And I was a media planner in 2003.
- [04:44]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [04:44]
Brendan Kam
So I think I've seen firsthand that sort of value of those long term relationships.
- [04:49]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, absolutely. I'm always surprised that I'm working with people that I knew like almost 20 years ago and 10 years ago or, you know, those kinds of things. And it's amazing when you can have those, those kinds of relationships, even if they kind of come in and out and of, of the picture and stuff. And you know, I, I like what you said about the, your shirt. You know, as far as, like all, all that stuff certainly is important and, and we've all, we've all given that stuff away. But I, I like what you said. That it is kind of about the, the giver versus the receiver when you're giving something with your company logo on it or you know, another thing is to think of, okay, let's spend a lot of money or do something big, flashy as, as far as gifts go. But you know, it, it, it sounds like those may be effective in some ways, but not necessarily as effective as small, thoughtful acts of gratitude. Can you kind of talk a little bit more about that? Yeah.
- [05:49]
Brendan Kam
So even gifting, right? We, we actually don't use the G word at thanks. It's, you know, four letter word. It's not that people don't use thanks for gifting, but I associate that with sort of the ABCs, right? It's anniversary, birthday, Christmas, and those are key moments to connect. But man, what an impact you can have if out of the blue I send Greg just a cup of coffee. Hey, man, I know you got a lot of podcasts to record this week. You're super busy. Thought a little caffeine could help you, you know, run your, run your day a little smoother. That little gesture that kind of came out of nowhere and it doesn't cost a lot of money. So I can do this more frequently and to a lot of people, you know, I have a, I'm in Nashville, so we've got a lot of music lovers here, right? And so you think about, I know we're talking a little bit about sort of building a culture of gratitude. A good example would be we had a manager who, rather than giving you kind of a spot bonus of, you know, $500 one time to someone who did a great job, he ended up giving her a year of Spotify. It actually cost, you know, 50% of the spot bonus, but it acknowledged, like, I know you're a music lover. I know this is something that you would have paid for out of pocket, right? And then he was able to do that. Got a bigger impact than the $500 which, let's be honest, doesn't even get noticed by the time it's taxed and put into it.
- [07:02]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [07:04]
Brendan Kam
But then, and then retain that budget where he was able to do now more things going forward with her.
- [07:09]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [07:09]
Brendan Kam
So it wasn't just a one time. This is just for the quarter. I can now more frequently send you little things so you can get these, these, I don't know, these moments.
- [07:17]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [07:17]
Brendan Kam
And ideally it's about that person, but even better might be when it's about both of you. So when the bear was on tv, I just loved the show and I would find other people who were really watching it and liking it and I would get off my call and I'd immediately send them a three month subscription to Hulu through Thanks.
- [07:34]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [07:35]
Brendan Kam
And it was just like, hey, you gotta check out the show, you know, I'm paying for you, you gotta watch the rest of it. And then it gave us a common ground.
- [07:42]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [07:42]
Brendan Kam
It was something to talk about outside of. Yeah, we got to get this deal done and we're working on this big thing in this rfp. But now we had something else we could kind of talk about and be humans about, frankly, really grow beyond just the idea of sending you something. It's like we have an, we have a, maybe an inside joke or something. We're like following together a book, a movie, TV show, all that stuff. Super valuable.
- [08:02]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. And it reinforces the relationship part of it.
- [08:05]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [08:05]
Greg Kilstrom
I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's some empathy as far as. Okay, I, again, not, not just about me trying to sell you stuff and that, you know, there, that, that happens as it happens. Right. But there's, there's an actual connection there. And yeah, like sending me, I love coffee. So like, you know, sending me a $5 thing for coffee like means way more than some $50 thing that I'll never use. Right. Or that may sit on a shelf or probably in a closet somewhere if, if, if that, you know. So it's like, it's that taking the time to understand also. Right. It's. Yeah. It's like being curious, Right, Exactly.
- [08:44]
Brendan Kam
I had a, I love the story, but it was just a. We didn't end up doing a deal together. But I've become friends with her. It was a potential prospect and we were having a, you know, a talk like we, we are now. And her dog just was relentless in the background barking and eventually was like almost embarrassed by it. She's like, I'm sorry, I don't know. The landscapers outside. And after the call I just almost absentmindedly was like, hey, it was a little something for, for the dog and it was like a Petco, you know, like little mini makeover for the dog or something. She was just so like blown away, you know. And it's, it just hit me because we do this all day here, right? We are constantly encouraging our people like look for that moment or that thing where you can make that connection. But you realize it's absent in a lot of people's lives, right? In a business lives. And that idea that I'm grateful for you, it's just, I don't know, it's missing in a lot of elements because everyone's so focused on it. I got to get the thing done, I got to get the deal, I got to get the transaction. And it just can be more than that. It doesn't require a lot of money or effort in order to make it more than that.
- [09:40]
Greg Kilstrom
Well yeah, and to, to get to the, the economics of, of all this too because you know, again, at the end of a for profit business, you know, got, got to make money. I, I, you know, I know personally the, the power of, of relationships and how that drives the, the business as well. But you know, let's talk a little bit about, you know, how are monetary incentives like raises or promotions different here? You know, I've, I've dealt a little in like extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation and things like that. And there's a point where those things work and, and all that. And, and then there's a point where there's other things work better. Right? So like where, um, you know, when, when, when do you, when do you know what to do? I guess.
- [10:25]
Brendan Kam
Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think about it a couple ways, right? There's sort of the, there's always the hard roi, right? I spent this and I got that return. Um, and we do things in our product that connect to Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics can show you, right, I spent this much on this deal. But I always usually try to lift that conversation up. I say the coffee is a good example, right. If I said 10,000 clients or prospects of coffee, you think about what that would cost me if I got one deal that happened that wouldn't have like I probably paid myself back at least 2x right, based on an average contract value of you know, what SaaS might be. So it's almost like a moot point on me to that immediate roi. It's going to be there. There's almost no way it doesn't just by having these little things. So what I try to tell people is go that next step. We've talked a little bit already about sort of that longer term. You know, even if you don't get this deal done, it might be a future deal. But there's another element at play, especially when you're talking about sales, where when we give people a tool like thanks, it sort of forces them to look for that human element.
- [11:25]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [11:25]
Brendan Kam
To look for. Does Greg love coffee? Does Greg have a dog? Does he. Is he a big sports fan? I'm going to send him the Alabama shaker, you know, football season. And. And it sort of can make them better salespeople in a way that, like, I have to sit and be a little more thoughtful.
- [11:39]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [11:40]
Brendan Kam
My discovery is not just going to be 50 questions about your business. I also kind of need to find out, like, well, you got kids at home? Do you, you know, what do you do on the weekend?
- [11:48]
Unknown Speaker
Right, right.
- [11:49]
Brendan Kam
And it sort of, it increases their humanness and their ability to sort of connect on a level, knowing that they're required or their boss is expecting them to find some appreciation, some gesture of appreciation that they can send after. So there's all these sort of little elements, even the tracking of how people use a tool like thanks, where your best salespeople tend to use it, you know, frequently throughout a month as they're having meetings. And then you see this long tail. People generally aren't as successful and they're like, end of the month, oh, shoot, I still have budget left. I better fire off, you know, 50 of these things on the last day and they a little more generic. Right. I'm just going to send a, I don't know, Amazon shopping spree or something, which is, you know, a little against the point. So I think there's like, the hard ROI is actually easy. I can always show that. Like, man, yeah, this is going to shorten a sales cycle. This is going to bring more people back, you know, to the table. But it's that long tail that I think is the thing I want people to look out for and say, wow, there's a lot of. A lot of benefits here that are sort of on top of just the hard. I spent $6 and got back 60.
- [12:49]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. So you. You touched on this a little bit in, in explaining this, but I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about, you know, how do you operationalize this? Well, you know, it sounds like maybe the high performers, they're already motivated. I. I'm going to go out on a limb. Like I think the high performers might be doing some of this stuff intuitively anyway. But that's a, that's a hypothesis. But like how do you, how do you operationalize this way of, of, of behaving and thinking and all that?
- [13:17]
Brendan Kam
Yeah, well you hit the nail on the head, right? It's good for me because there's always that correlation where I go into a big organization and the top salespeople are the top. Thanks users. But you know, I'd love to cause say it's causation but it's correlation. Right. They just know intuitively how to use a tool like this. So the best thing we find is sort of build playbooks based on what those top performers do. So a good example, Several years ago LinkedIn did a B test where you know, they've got hundreds and hundreds of salespeople having all kinds of meetings. So inevitably you have tons of meetings where the person doesn't show up and you find out they were sick or their kid was sick and they couldn't make it.
- [13:53]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [13:53]
Brendan Kam
So you just took all those meetings, nice simple use case. And we said split them up half and half and half. You're going to send a bowl of chicken soup through thanks. After the, you know, see if you get the meeting back and half you do your regular sort of follow up to try to reget it. And it was just a clear demarcation and this was something we had seen their top people do a few times and they were like, this is great, I'm getting my meetings. We're like, let's institutionalize it.
- [14:14]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [14:14]
Brendan Kam
And it worked. They got actually 100% of the meetings back, which was amazing.
- [14:18]
Greg Kilstrom
Oh wow.
- [14:18]
Brendan Kam
But they were also getting back like on a, I don't know, it was like 70% faster on the calendar.
- [14:24]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [14:24]
Brendan Kam
It was just that acknowledgment of like this person's having a tough time, tough day. Even if they were, you know, I'm sure sometimes people are just kind of saying they were sick when they missed it. That acknowledgement still was like, I've never.
- [14:34]
Greg Kilstrom
Done that by the way.
- [14:35]
Brendan Kam
Yeah, right, me neither.
- [14:36]
Unknown Speaker
Of course.
- [14:37]
Brendan Kam
But that reciprocity kicks in, right? Like man, that person is thoughtful. You know, I really shouldn't have skipped out on that call or I feel bad about it and then they come back. So I love that idea of sort of let your people use it for a little bit. See how they're using everyone's unique, you know, in their use case. And it might be in sales customer Success marketing. Okay, what's working now? Let's build a playbook around it and sort of try to not automate. I'm not a huge fan of sort of the automation and even the AI stuff. Like we're working on some AI integrations that's more about who and when to send. Not so much like this is the right item.
- [15:13]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [15:13]
Brendan Kam
I don't, I don't think that's appropriate to take away from the human element. So I don't love the idea of just oh, I just trigger, you know, a new sales stage in Salesforce. It triggers a thanks. We've got people who do it. But I think it should more trigger the note to send it.
- [15:27]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [15:27]
Brendan Kam
Like it's better for me if it just triggers the thanks. But I think the right solution for the actual end user is hey, you should be thinking about this client. You know, this just moved along. You should be grateful for that.
- [15:36]
Unknown Speaker
Right?
- [15:36]
Brendan Kam
Not they don't have to go with you. There's inevitably a competitor. So you should be thinking about what, what's appropriate. And appropriate is big.
- [15:43]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [15:44]
Brendan Kam
You don't come out of the gate with some big huge thing. It just feels icky.
- [15:48]
Unknown Speaker
Right? Right.
- [15:48]
Brendan Kam
But if it starts with a cup of coffee, it might end with a nice bottle of wine, you know, as you've built a relationship. So it's that that sort of learning is really important as you move along.
- [15:56]
Unknown Speaker
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- [18:43]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. Well, you know, and you, you touched a little on ROI as well. But I, I wonder if we could go back there as far as, you know, you mentioned this at least. My understanding is it kind of maps to just doing better, like being better and more empathetic and more in tune with your customers. Like, how do you recommend measuring ROI of like your product integration and stuff like that?
- [19:10]
Brendan Kam
Yeah, I think, look, the easiest is if you can connect it to your CRM. You know, we can write to it. We never read the data, of course, but we can write to it and help you kind of set up those reports. I think the thing you find the easiest sort of thing to notice is that you start to see those calls come in quicker. The callback, the email back.
- [19:31]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [19:31]
Brendan Kam
The sort of the time and the sales cycle decreasing is probably the easiest thing I've been able to point to.
- [19:37]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [19:38]
Brendan Kam
Because sometimes it's tough. Like, hey, great, you closed this $20 million deal and you had Sent them, you know, an ice cream cone when it was hot out three months ago. It's pretty tough to be like. And that's the reason why the deal happened, right? Part of it. Right, right. So, so that can be hard to get like the direct roi. But where you do see it is different. And again, we try to run these sort of tests and playbooks.
- [19:57]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [19:57]
Brendan Kam
But like depending on where in the sales cycle I start to, you know, implement the gratitude portion, I can start to see where I do that.
- [20:05]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [20:05]
Brendan Kam
I actually have a better connection. Because ultimately your goal is just if I pick up the phone and call someone, I want them to pick it up.
- [20:11]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [20:11]
Brendan Kam
And today more than ever, like nobody picks up the phone. So I know I've made a real impact on someone. If I can make a call, they pick up the phone and I can ask my question. And we actually start to see that in the data where, hey, even this just very small things, it wasn't about the item. It was like, oh yeah, that's a good person that, like I want to help too. I actually tell people, even sometimes you'll send a thanks and it doesn't get redeemed.
- [20:33]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [20:34]
Brendan Kam
There's value in that because you might not be where you think you are in your sales cycle. So it's not just about, well, I, you know, I built this great relationship. Sometimes it's like, hey, there's. They won't even take a cup of coffee from you or donate it to charity. We have a feature like that that might be because they're thinking, well, we're going with a competitor. Right. Or I don't want to take this because so there's actually value in both sides of that and understanding sort of where you're at and how maybe that person feels about the relationship as well. So lots of different angles you can take within that sort of roi. There's metrics I've seen people use like pipeline influenced, you know, they're a little squishier. To me, I prefer kind of that, that hard data married with that sort of general understanding that long term this is going to, you know, drive a lot of value. But I'd rather be able to show specifically look, when you use thanks, you're going to see shorter sales cycles. You're going to get people getting back to you quicker. It's just going to move your pipeline sort of a little fatter to the end.
- [21:30]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, Love it. So, last topic I want to talk about, I mean we've kind of circled around this, but I want to want to talk more specifically about creating a culture of, of gratitude. And you know, you, you were saying earlier, you know, some of this stuff can be automated and you know, it can be, you know, the thought process can be taken out of it, but we kind of lose something when we do it. Like, I'm a huge fan of automation and personalization, all that stuff, but I think what we're talking about here is a little bit different and maybe personalization can augment that in some other way on some other channel. But you know, to, to really ingrain this and, and, and build a culture of gratitude where people are thinking of this stuff and, and, and being creative about it as well and listening for those things. You know, what steps can a leader take to, to build that kind of culture?
- [22:23]
Brendan Kam
Yeah, I think about it in two ways, sort of the internal and external. And I think they go together. I think the, the obvious one that most people think about is that internal. What am I going to do internally to build a culture of gratitude? Because you will have a more effective team and a happier team if you can get there. One thing I sort of coach teams on, and we definitely do here, a lot of times it sort of gets centralized within hr. And to your point, that's a good chance to automate things like, you know, thank you for your work, anniversary, your birthday.
- [22:51]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [22:51]
Brendan Kam
Like those can and probably should be automated.
- [22:54]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [22:54]
Brendan Kam
We just want to acknowledge everyone in that capacity. But when you start to centralize the things you've seen, programs, I'm sure where people earn points or can kind of acknowledge someone with, you know, a thumbs up. And I don't think those things are necessarily bad, but again, you're losing that personalization.
- [23:10]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [23:10]
Brendan Kam
So I always encourage, just, even if it's a few dollars to the manager, right. 20amonth, and let them sort of, it's almost like little spot thank yous that are a little more, you know, music to the music lover, coffee for the coffee lover, like they know their people.
- [23:26]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [23:26]
Brendan Kam
And the centralized, when you have thousands of employees, especially that sort of centralized program, it's just naturally going to lose some of that personalization. So if you could take some of that budget, give it in the hands of your managers and it does not have to be a lot of money, but just let them on the spot. Not be monetary, but be a thing that you know that person's going to love or that they talked about or that they learned about them. I think that's super important internally, maybe even more important. And I think people skip this the best way to actually build an internal culture of gratitude is to make sure you have that external culture of gratitude. What I mean is I've worked at a number of places where there's sort of a culture of like complaining about clients, which I never understood. Like you don't, you're not here without those guys.
- [24:09]
Greg Kilstrom
Right, right, right.
- [24:10]
Brendan Kam
And we try to tell people that, especially the pain in the butt client, the one that is constantly complaining and telling you what you need to do better. That is the client you are most grateful for because they're the one who cares. Right. They want you to be better. They want to show you what they think is working, what matters to them as a customer. So while, yes, it's painful on a day to day basis to have that, that client that makes you roll your eyes when, when they're calling you, they're actually the ones that are making you better. And so really nipping in the bud early, that idea of a complaint culture about anything like vendors or clients, like, it's just not productive. We got to be grateful even if we don't always love them. You gotta be grateful for that person and that client and know that, you know, you don't exist without them.
- [24:49]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. I mean, feedback is a gift, right?
- [24:52]
Brendan Kam
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So it's easy to kind of take that as like that, that client again or that vendor again.
- [24:57]
Unknown Speaker
Right. Man.
- [24:58]
Brendan Kam
If you can bring yourself to be grateful for it, that will trickle down internally as well. And because those are the hardest ones to be grateful for but super important. And you start to see, I think that that makes people more grateful for their colleagues. And you know, even if they don't love their manager, they always going to have those situations. But maybe there's a piece of. I am learning this, right? Let's focus on the things where I am grateful. It's not that there's not things I want to improve or have an issue with, but I should be able to find something to be grateful for. And if we can just get to that point, it grows on itself and it snowballs because it feels good and people want to do it. They just have to get me the exercise of it.
- [25:32]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. And I mean, I think that's, that's definitely a place where leaders can lead by example. Right. It's like, you know, how many times have, you know, a manager of people is defensive about feedback that they get? And you know, so what do you expect? You know, it's like. Right, I totally agree. I mean, you know, I ran a marketing agency for a While, and you know, we, we just, we, we didn't complain about our clients. Like once in a while there was just that like oh my God, the, yeah, I can't believe that happened or whatever. But like we did not have a culture of, of doing that plenty. You know, there's plenty of other things we probably could have improved. But like that was, that was one thing that I took very seriously and, and tried to at least lead by example there as well. And. But I, I do think it's, it's maybe starts at the top or at least it starts with managers and, and, and, and trickles down. Right?
- [26:23]
Brendan Kam
Absolutely. I try not to. You know, I'll find myself occasionally with the. I'm grateful for but you know, take that back and say it's not that we have to just only focus on the positive, but stuff goes wrong all the time. Let's acknowledge it, let's work on it. We can even fight it out. Like it doesn't have to be. It doesn't mean a soft culture.
- [26:42]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [26:43]
Brendan Kam
I think people almost had a misconception over that. I don't think we have a soft culture. I think we're hard charging startup. But we will take that moment at the end and be like, well, what did go right? Something went right.
- [26:53]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [26:53]
Brendan Kam
Like right. At least, you know, I don't know, maybe you're having a good hair day. Cool, let's be grateful for that. There's gotta be something. Right?
- [26:58]
Greg Kilstrom
Right.
- [26:59]
Brendan Kam
And just forcing yourself to have that moment and it's better, you know, like I said, it's, it's almost bad to start with. I'm grateful, but it's better to have, well, we gotta do this, this and this. But I'm grateful for, right end with it because you just wanna have that positive note each time and that like even if you have to force yourself to think through it, if you can come up with something, anything that you were grateful for, it actually makes a huge difference in sort of your attitude going into that next meeting or that X day. Yeah.
- [27:23]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, Love it. Have you seen changes with, you know, with more remote work, more remote meetings? You know, it's like most of my, I hardly ever meet with a client for consulting in person anymore. It used to be always, you know, every meeting or every important meeting or whatever work is, you know, hybrid, if not completely remote, like what have you seen? Like how does that change what we're talking about here?
- [27:49]
Brendan Kam
Yeah, I honestly, I think it makes it even way more important.
- [27:53]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [27:53]
Brendan Kam
Because you don't get to see everyone like we used to. It is more why, oddly, you have almost a bigger network now because you can actually do a lot more going zoom, zoom, zoom than you could when you were flying out, you know, across the country to go shake hands and have dinner. And again, I still love those things, but they're less and less, I think, in a lot of ways. And I see this with our clients, and I believe it too. Food has always been the connecting element, right. I think it's just part of being a human. So I send a lot of sort of dinners. Like, if I can't be there, I still want to send you like one of our most popular is just called a night off cooking.
- [28:27]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [28:27]
Brendan Kam
I can send it to you. You can get an Uber Eats or doordash, whatever you want. And it's just an easy thing that I can constantly like look through my list and say, man, I know everyone's so busy and everything's so transact. If I can just say, hey, you take the night off on me, you know, tonight, tomorrow, whenever you're ready. I was just thinking about you. I know you've been busy and I hope all's well. Super powerful. And I can do that again for not a ton of money to 5, 10, 15 people like that. You know, that's gets to your point of like, you have to be able to kind of do it scaled right. But still feel personal.
- [29:00]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [29:01]
Brendan Kam
And so in a lot of ways it helps what we're talking about because the expectations are different, the amount of sort of meetings and people you're meeting are different. Even just going back, I guess, sort of. Right. Pre. Pre pandemic. It's changed a lot since then in terms of sort of acceptance of the type of thing like thanks and how often I might do this and what it means to do it.
- [29:23]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, love it. Well, before we wrap up here, I want to ask you one question. I ask everybody here. You know, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [29:37]
Brendan Kam
Yeah, it's constant first principles for me. We actually have a standing kind of every six months. Okay. If we were starting the company today, what would we do?
- [29:47]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [29:47]
Brendan Kam
Forget if we need how much money we would need or anything else, Would it look like it does now? How would it change? And that's really informative thing to do. We do it with the management team. We solicit everybody in the company for their sort of input and it forces you to relook at the business and it's hard I find so often we kind of, we say, oh, if we were restarting, we would do this. And then as we dig in we're like, no, actually we wouldn't. We've just been doing that because that's how we did it nine years ago. So I find that that exercise is super important. And then the other thing for me is just constantly, you know, listening to podcasts like yours, reading, taking in what's happening and not, not that I'm, I'm a little non conformist, I think, I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably are. So it's taking all those inputs and then thinking about, well, how do, how does this reflect my values and what would I change out of what I'm hearing to sort of reflect my value? And I think that's how you get to something new or exciting. I think it drives my team absolutely bonkers because I will absolutely come in and be like, I know we've been doing it this way. What if we did it this way, right? And it's like completely opposite. And you got to, you know, I've learned I can't just, you don't want to be a dictator on it, but you got to be able to communicate that vision of why, you know, and why we need to be agile and why we can't just rest on our laurels. So it's something I work on constantly. I don't think I'm great at it, but I'm constantly trying to find better ways to do that because the worst thing you can do is just tread water, right? You've got to be moving forward.
- [31:09]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. Love it. Well, again, I'd like to thank Brendan Kam, co founder and CEO of. Thanks for joining us. You can learn more about Brendan and thanks by following the links in the show notes.
- [31:20]
Unknown Speaker
Thanks again for listening to the B2B Agility podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show more easily. You can access more episodes of the show at www.b2bagility.com. That's b2bagility.com. While you're there, check out my series of best selling agile brand guides covering a wide variety of marketing technology topics. Or you can search for Greg Kilstrom on Amazon. Until next time, stay focused and stay agile.
- [31:55]
Brendan Kam
The Agile brand.