← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 525 - FAN FAVORITE | Anna Collins – Inside Bulletproof’s Proven Path from Biohackers to Billions
00:42:31
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- [00:00]
A
Hey there. Just a quick note before we dive in. This is actually one of our older episodes, but we're bringing it back because it's one of the most downloaded ones we've ever released. Clearly it struck a chord with a lot of listeners and I know there's so much value packed inside. So whether you're hearing it for the first time or revisiting it, enjoy this.
- [00:17]
B
Fan favorite on the Core Biohacking Customer, we had to say, well, what's required to do that? How do we grow? If our vision is to help all people tap into the potential of being human and you want to go beyond the core biohacker that we have today, let's look at that. Who is that customer and how do we serve that customer and add that customer segment in addition to the core that we have, which is growing beyond the core. Welcome to the Second in Command Podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the Chief behind the Chief. And now here's your host, Cameron Herold.
- [01:14]
A
Anna Collins is President and COO of Bulletproof, a world renowned brand that provides supplements, foods and technologies that help people perform better for think faster and live radically improved lives. Anna is responsible for the strategy, operations and omnichannel growth of the company. Her mission there is to create products and provide information that support Bulletproof's vision to help people tap into the unlimited potential of being human. She's a versatile and transformational leader who has pioneered and scaled new businesses at some of the world's most admired multibillion dollar companies. Most recently, Anna served as a worldwide General Manager of Amazon Prime Management or sorry, Membership, where she led the first two prime days, pricing and membership engagement, growth and retention programs. Prior to Amazon, she was recruited to Microsoft to build out and scale the global search advertising business from concept through launch and growth to over $1.6 billion. She's also led initiatives with CBS Health SVP Media and holds an MBA from Harvard University. When not changing the world, Anna coaches sons Henry and Cooper in basketball and keeps up with her wonderful wife Debb. So Anna, welcome to the Second in Command podcast. I'm really, really glad to have you on the show.
- [02:31]
B
Hi Cameron. Great to be here.
- [02:33]
A
Yeah, thank you. I mean, we first started talking I guess a couple years ago when Dave told me that he was recruiting you and you came in from Amazon, I guess you were the head. Former head of Amazon prime is that right.
- [02:46]
B
I was the former head of Amazon prime membership globally. So.
- [02:52]
A
Why would you leave such an amazing organization for? I mean yes, Bulletproof Coffee is an amazing organization but like totally different in terms of scope and like what did you see? What were you thinking? Walk us through that.
- [03:04]
B
Yeah, happy to a couple of things. One is I have in my career what I've done is I've gone back and forth between doing growing, building and growing enterprises in smaller businesses and startups and large companies like Amazon and Microsoft so or cbs. So that's sort of normal for me to go back and forth across and I had never heard of Bulletproof when I got this recruiting call and in 20 plus years of working I'd also never gone to the next opportunity based on a cold call kind of recruit. It's always been through my network getting referred in and sort of pulled in. So it's really unique and I wasn't looking to leave Amazon happy. Prime was my third job at Amazon and love Amazon. Lots of wonderful things. The opportunity to join Bulletproof I looked at when I learned about Bulletproof and started talking with Dave. I really saw Bulletproof as a uniform in the better for you consumer product goods space. And I started by trying some of the products Bulletproof coffee, the brain octane oil. And I'm a high performance individual and always knew coffee was a performance enhancing substance for myself and being spirit using other spiritual and practices like meditation and other athletic fitness kinds of things I could tell what changes and works for my body. And so when I started doing the Bulletproof Coffee and Brain Octane oil I could feel the difference. And so like this is real, it's not a fad.
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A
Yeah.
- [04:48]
B
And, and so I got intrigued. And then second, this the size of the opportunity to really make an impact on the world. The mission driven nature. So Bulletproof mission to create products and provide information that radically improved lives and Dave taking his really heroes journey and applying that to and making it accessible for the masses. I was very jazzed about that. And then third, it really hit the sweet spot which is I'm a builder. What I do is help take a product market fit type idea and then help scale it up and build teams and businesses. And that's what I know how to do and want to do it in a space that matters. So this really fit my, my personal passion and my mission driven nature. And then from a role perspective, from a partnership perspective, Dave as the genius entrepreneur and creative that he is, wanted a business partner to help be the business leader if you will to Help grow and scale the company while he continued his genius creation in both content product and his visionary biohacking leadership that he continues to do in the world. And evangelizing that and very spending a lot of time know externally doing that. Not just writing books like his latest Game Changers book, but also speaking to events and events and spreading the word like only he can do.
- [06:21]
A
Yeah. And so Dave, Dave started Bulletproof. And I know a lot of our listeners will know the name Bulletproof and then a lot will be like you that won't have known the name and they'll probably like hop right on Amazon or right on the website and start buying the product. With Dave being one of those very entrepreneurial founders, how did you get him to start releasing from parts of the organization and what parts did he keep and what parts do you now run that maybe were harder for him to let go of?
- [06:52]
B
Yeah, that's a great question. It started with as I stepped into the organization, it was clear that I like to say when I talk to folks that Dave, I think Dave is an entrepreneur. And he's not just an entrepreneur, but he's actually a genius in how he can come up with. And what I mean by that is he comes up with 100 ideas and 90 of those hundred ideas are actually good. And so, you know, stepping into Bulletproof, there were many projects going on and they were all good. Most of them were very good. It wasn't. But. But a company can't scale and grow by doing everything. The essence. The essence. One of my favorite quotes on strategy is the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. That's from Michael Porter, the sort of grandfather strategy. Yeah, Five horses guy. Exactly. And so for when I started by saying, hey, how do we make trade offs and sequence? So it's not. No, but not now and not this, but that. Because how do you start making these strategic choices and to do that, what's the vision that you have? And then what is, what are the goals that support that vision? And then what are the strategies to get there? And then you, how do you execute that? And then tying and linking strategy to execution and then people that entails executing, entails linking those strategy to the building blocks of execution, which are people, product, process, customer systems and enabling tools. Those building blocks. Right. And so then you start looking at those things and say, and how do you make choices around those? And then the second thing was Dave was very much a part of how does a product get created, how does this content get created? And the things he would when we wanted, he wanted to go faster on some things, like we, like we all do. And it was, how do we take Dave and scale it out? So I brought mechanisms from other places, like tenants from Amazon, which are guiding principles and they help you get alignment at the start on how to run a program or how to build products or do innovation. And then you agree and Dave could have the input with the team, you agree on those things. And he said, okay, we're going to use these, these tenets or these principles unless you know better ones. Right. And that really helped. That was an example of one mechanism that we started to use that helped the team scale.
- [09:33]
A
And did that allow Dave to then move out when he started to see that there were some systems and processes that were going to allow you to scale faster, but didn't need him to be involved? Is that part of why you could step back?
- [09:44]
B
Yes. So those, those types of mechanisms allowed him, allowed me and the team to earn trust with him. Right. And these different areas and to see what was working and it gave him more freedom, continue to pursue and put his energy in other areas.
- [10:02]
A
And you, you killed off or not you. But the company killed off a couple of products pretty early on in your tenure, like in the first year or so.
- [10:09]
B
Yeah, I did a number of things. I came in, I mostly reduced focus. So I, we had the company the year before I came. So I joined in January 2017 and in 2016 the bulletproof had opened up international e commerce in a couple markets, including Canada and the UK and Japan. And so one of the things I did was I shut those down in my first 90 days. I also cut the SKU count in half my first year. And really that first 90 days made that decision as I was retooling, revising our operating plan. And part of that were the international SKUs and part of that was also other categories or there were other supplements and areas of new product innovation and to help focus and reduce the inventory as well as the complexity. The other thing we did was we weren't selling on Amazon. And that's a. As I said, Amazon has a lot of customers and it's a good place to go get some business. And it's hard, it's not easy to go do that. And once your product's in retail distribution, you also have some distribution control issues to work through. And so we worked on those in 2017 and started building and recruited the right folks and started to build an Amazon business which is today quite substantial two years later and continuing to grow very Fast.
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A
Yeah. I didn't understand how he could have such a strong brand and really not. He didn't have much going on Amazon at all. Was that a cognizant early stage decision to not be there or did they just not have the depth and the expertise to go after it?
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B
I think it was more about the latter than the former. It's just. It's hard.
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A
Yeah. Well, so you killed off some again, I don't mean you personally, but yeah.
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B
No, I did personally. Yeah, I did personally.
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A
How did you. And was Fatwater one of them?
- [12:12]
B
No, Fatwater. We. Fatwater is still in distribution of still product. We did scale back. We. We scaled back our distribution of fat water or really paused it and we paused the further innovation on that so that we could focus on our ready to drink bulletproof coffee innovation and distribution, which we have done. And that's one of our core products in retail distribution that continues to.
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A
Yeah, channels. But that.
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B
But that was one of the things it gets back to. You can't do everything right. So how do you make choices and prioritize certain things over other things?
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A
So how do you sell the founder? How do you sell Dave? On killing off some of. I would have imagined he had a love affair with. Right. There were things that he started.
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B
Yeah. So a couple of things. One is I focused on the customer and the different customer and consumer segments that we have. So the core Bulletproof has been built on the core biohacker.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Customer that is super loyal and important to and continues to be important to the. To the brand and to the company and to grow the company beyond the core biohacking customer. We have to say, well, what's required to do that? How do we grow? If. Hey, Dave. If our vision is to help all people tap into the potential of being human and you want to go beyond the core biohacker that we have today. You know, let's look at that. Who is that customer and how do we serve that customer and add that customer segment in addition to the core that we have, which is growing beyond the core. And so it was really through customer focus and growth and what's required to. How do we retain the core and then how do we build both content and product and distribution to go beyond the core? And that was. That was critical to shifting Dave and getting his engagement, his enrollment really in moving beyond.
- [14:23]
A
And I don't know if this was a. I was in a hotel, but it was at an event that Dave was at. But are your. Is bulletproof coffee now? The little. The drinks Are they in some hotel chains or did he just happen to, did you happen to pull that off for the Abundance360 event that I happened to see?
- [14:37]
B
Yeah, yeah, we were. So we are, we are in Beverly Hilton, which is, I think, where you. Where you were. And that's a, I would say a unique, A unique distribution because we have upgrade labs. An upgrade labs. And so that was part of that engagement with the Beverly Hilton. So we are not in all hotels. Okay. We are in some distributed in some top corporations like Goldman Sachs and Microsoft campuses and Google and we're on some college campuses like usc, ucla. We have the Harvard women's basketball team is using bulletproof. And so we're targeting and engaging in that area. But it's more about getting out there. Those are important sort of pillars to help expand the strategic marketing of the brand.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So we're sprinkling those in as we continue to grow in sort of mainstream distribution.
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A
It's great. I mean, that's huge credibility. You mentioned something early with, with, with some of the projects. It's kind of like, I can't remember the term you use, but it's like green lighting some and yellow lighting some. Like it was like, not, not, no, but not right now or not yet or trading one off or the other. How do you get Dave? And Dave's a spectacular entrepreneur, like you said. He has a hundred ideas. 90 of them are good. How do you get someone like that to not want to start all of their ideas? What's the system you do to grab the ideas, track the ideas, not kill their spirit? How do you keep him excited and having those ideas without killing it off and without having to start them all?
- [16:33]
B
Yeah, I think it's a good question. One is where one part is. Where can we take an idea? If it's not now, then let's set a time frame to revisit. So, for example, I created a body. I know it's probably six months in or it's hard to remember now when I started, but I want to say it was about six months in. And I created a series called what the CEO Needs to Know. And I said we're going to do every month we're going to do product innovation reviews with you and spend 90 minutes on product innovation so that you're not wondering where these things are in the innovation pipeline. When we take a trade off and we say we're going to do this, not that we're going to sequence this over here and we're going to have these streams that match up to different consumer segments. We're going to then have a cadence of it's not going to just disappear. Right. And so this is a way to continue to have visibility but at the right level and with the right framework. So it's not a freeform brainstorming idea of just here are all the things you want to go do. Let's put in context where we're actually talking about implications and trade offs that we will make on the business and on customers. So it's not a free form. Hey, it's just out here which is the entrepreneurial way to do it. And hey, let's just take everything. There's all 99 ideas. Yeah, they're all great. Now let's bring it down to the reality of business and customers and what the implications are.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Does that make sense?
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A
Yeah, it does. No, it does.
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B
I want to share.
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A
I got 74 different areas to go with you on this stuff. It's awesome.
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B
Well, let me tell you, my basic framework for leadership is, I'll tell you, it's really, it's my favorite quote on leadership is the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. And in between the two, the leader is both a servant and a debtor. And that sums up the progress of an artful leader. And that's from Max Surprise. The art of leadership and what I love about that is the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. And reality for me, Cameron, is what's true today, what's the state of union for all facts on the ground? How many SKUs do we have, how many customers do we have, what are our segments, who are we serving, what is our cash position, Everything of the reality, what's true today? What's the team capability? So when I walked in the door I did that. What's the reality of today? That was the first thing you did. And then I said here's my state of the union report. The other part of defining reality is the opportunity, the vision, the possibility which is what I was talking about. Okay, here's the big vision and then what's the roadmap and strategy and goals that are going to take us there and both on this multi year and so that setting that reality up, both what's true and the possibility is that frame that I'm operating from with Dave and the team.
- [19:42]
A
How far out do you plan versus how far out do you allow yourself to think with Dave and vision?
- [19:49]
B
Yeah, it's, it's there, there are multiple, they're different time horizons. Right. So we're doing the big vision. When it, when again when I walked in the door, it was. And when I was interviewing with the company, it was clear that there was a strong mission and a strong vision. But actually talking to in values like gratitude is a practice is a value that we have at Bulletproof, we have seven other values. Well, if you asked different folks on the team when I walked in the door, I did. And they would give you 10 different answers for what the vision is, 10 different answers for the mission. They would all say gratitude is one of the values because you get other answers. And so again, in the first 90 days, I went through a process with Dave and the team using employee input, customer input and facilitator. And then we actually defined just definitively what our values and the vision mission to be able to say it. And everyone would say the same thing. And then we use that frame to start doing performance reviews, to start doing, to do the hiring interview and baking them into the process to help us scale. And so that's another example of creating a common reality and context for the team and us all to operate and practice business in. And so that vision, that vision is a 20 year vision.
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A
Okay.
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B
To tap into the unlimited potential. Being human.
- [21:14]
A
Yeah, yeah. So that's when you're always communicating and talking about, you're probably planning in a more granular basis than three years out, two years out.
- [21:21]
B
And then we have the strategic, strategic planning process. And those are three. Three year. Three years. I use a three year strategic planning process. We do that. And then we have our operational annual planning and we do the three year planning process ahead of the one year planning. And we're constantly doing the three year planning ahead of our one year planning. We do linear, sort of check in with that.
- [21:46]
A
Sure. If you, if you were to go back to Amazon for a bit and, and think about when you left Amazon and came into Bulletproof, what skills did you bring with you from Amazon that you still use today? Or what styles of leadership did you bring in? And then what did you have to change? What did you, what were you maybe really great at or doing at Amazon that just wouldn't work in the entrepreneurial world and you had to reinvent.
- [22:10]
B
I spent. It's hard to answer just the Amazon question because I spent seven years at Microsoft. So what I'd say is, and when I bring all of that like, and Amazon ruined me, ruined me forever with for example, PowerPoint. Because at Amazon you can't do PowerPoint. You can only write narratives it's only written word. And every meeting starts with a document and nobody talks until everyone reads the document.
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A
Wow.
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B
And a document has data in it. And so therefore you do that for any number of years and any other meeting is crap compared to that.
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A
No shit.
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B
So what I didn't want to do when I walked into Bulletproof is crush this very entrepreneurial company that didn't ever write anything down. Like a narrative, right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
And so what I did was I started sprinkling in and demonstrating some practice of the document or narrative form. And I also, like I said, I brought some other mechanisms in data, you know, increase in the data and the analytics capability, which. And Amazon has strengthened and creating a weekly business review. So I did start the first year doing weekly business review, but by the second year we have implemented weekly business review. But I did the first year was create a data analytics capability and started building that up so that we could do those other things. So creating those enabling type. And those are normal scale, you not type stages to go through, right?
- [23:51]
A
Yeah, well, they're normal, except a lot of companies don't do it. Right. You talk about the data analytics. I'm curious. I was talking to a client this morning that I coached and they were measuring everything and he was showing me all the metrics. I'm like, dude, there's no way you can ever look at all this data. Like, you have so much data, it's almost like plug. Hey, it's Cameron Herold, your COO whisperer and guide to scaling businesses. Check out my YouTube channel at YouTube.com amronherald and that's H E R O L D where I share tons of raw tips and insider secrets to have you level up as a leader and grow your company. From leadership hacks to growth strategies. It's all there. No fluff. Subscribe now. Hit that bell for notifications and comment on a few of the 100 videos that I've uploaded so far. And let's build your empire together. Let's go bring your portion at a car dealership. And looking at the 75,000 things they measure, what are the most important ones? How did you decide what to measure and how to look at it and who was looking at it. Can you walk us through some of that?
- [25:01]
B
It depends on which areas of the business you're talking about and what the framework are the input outputs. So a lot of, you know, some companies and practices look at outputs like revenue is an output, what are the inputs, the number of customers. On an E commerce business, you have customers Average order value ahead of and what are the inputs there? There are inputs to the number of customers have to do with new customers and return customers. And then for an E commerce site you have traffic coming in, right? So how many visitors are visiting? What's their conversion? So conversion visitors and traffic or visitors and conversion are input metrics to average order value and revenue and revenue in units sold. And so you start like I'm just giving an example on an E commerce business how you would start looking and saying, well what matters? Those are all metrics that matter inputs and outputs for the, for the daily business. Then you, you can drive and say, well what impacts conversion on a website, on a product detail page? And then you start talking about okay, load time, speed of the page, usability, what information or content is on the page, where it's positioned on the page. I could go on and talk about. There's advertising. So it depends on what area you're talking about that's different than supply chain or retail distribution.
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A
So then how about from. So and I love the whole inputs through the outputs and then kind of dive in on the areas. What do you look at? Is there a dashboard that you look at more than others? Is there specific numbers that you focus in on to know the health of the whole organization or do you, you.
- [26:49]
B
Yeah. So that is a weekly business review. I'm looking at, I'm not looking at anyone again as, as, as president looking at everything. I'm not in any one area. So I think I'm, I am looking at the health across the business. I'm looking at customer. So we have, you know, there's customer service metrics, there's product quality metrics. There, there are inventory, you know, supply to demand and inventory metrics that are important. So their financial metrics are important. There are marketing metrics that are important when we do field marketing and we do demos and return on investment for demos. So I can go on and on about what it looks, but there's no as being responsible for the entire business. I don't not look at anything. And there's no one dashboard. We're not that sophisticated. By the way, Amazon doesn't have any one dashboard either. It's a set of things that we're looking at.
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A
Can you walk us through your weekly business review and how that meeting runs? What the pulse or the agenda?
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B
There are defined metrics by team that are driven by the goals for that team. Again, these are the key inputs and outputs that matter for those goals. And then it's the trend, the Last weeks, the last eight weeks, you can see and against. And then you do the trend to prior weeks and prior year comparing for that metric and then against the goal. And then you talk about, and then you look and you talk about variances that are out of bounds. That controls it. So it's an exception based conversation. And then the presenting owner of that metric slide is reporting to me and the other extended leadership team that's reviewing this. Right. And explaining the variance from the exception except for reporting a few up.
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A
And how long are they presenting for? Is it 5, 10 minutes per business area or.
- [28:59]
B
You know, it depends because we're building that muscle and we're, we're, we're as we're doing that, we're adding, you know, we're continuing to build the muscle and add the different areas. So we're not perfect yet. But you know, again, on average it would be, depending on owner, it could be two minutes or it could be five minutes.
- [29:18]
A
Sure. I remember we used to run weekly business reviews. I called them the bar meetings at 1, 800 got junk. And I loved when you'd get some, some different business areas would all of a sudden challenge someone. Like you'd have the person running the call center would all of a sudden challenge finance on something that's fucking awesome. But they were doing it as a team like everyone arguing and challenging for the good of the company. And it was, it was a really. Is it a stressful but good stress kind of meeting?
- [29:45]
B
Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly right.
- [29:47]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I loved it. It was my favorite. We only did about 40 of them before I was company as COO. And I love doing it because I really felt that, that kind of stress and pull. What are you focusing on day to day? What do you, you had like that, you know, that old adage of if you were sick and you can only focus on two hours a day, what would you be doing? Do you have the core things that you focus on or obsess over?
- [30:11]
B
I think about my time and sort of the stakeholder, the stakeholder buckets more than the to do list, if you will.
- [30:17]
A
Yeah.
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B
And so you know, some stakeholder buckets. One of the big stakeholder buckets are customers. And so every day, every week there's some amount of time I'm spending with customers. And so for example, this morning I had a customer call with the president of one of our top retailers as an example. Earlier this week I was actually observing some consumer focus groups that are part of our product led by our product team. And I'LL stop there on the customer. The other one is team. So I spend time on the people the hire and develop. And so I've been hiring. I earlier this week I wrote a launch plan for my new cfo. It's going to get announced that we won't steal the funder coming up here. But I finished her launch plan that that's like you know here are her goals. Priorities that give her the start here. One on one. She'd start with here. The team meetings that I want you to start with December out for success. You know, here's your. Here's your get started bulk of launch plan. That's an example of people thing and another call on recruiting. MVP of marketing. We missed you know interview loop. I've got that rescheduled. Spend some time. So I'm giving you an example of that. And then the other is the daily operations and running the business with how are we meeting and driving whether it's new customer launches, product innovation and financial and how are we progressing along our plans. Whether it's financial, operational. So it could be forecasting, could be senior leadership team meetings where we're reviewing different capabilities across those buckets as well as operational and financial. So I'll stop there but I think then there's marketing. So there's PR and I had a usually have some amount of PR stuff going on so I have some of that to respond to another marketing. So it's really the thing I love about my role is it really spans. There is no. It's just this bucket just right.
- [32:35]
A
When are you going public like and I'm making this up on the assumption. I mean I'm asking because I actually want to buy stock. Like you guys are starting to execute so much better than the company was before you got there two years ago. And Dave was running a good company but holy shit, you guys are on fire right now. It feels like.
- [32:51]
B
Yeah. Thanks camera. That's sweetie to say. And we have been exploding and it's a total team effort. And Dave, it's a partnership where we're locked arm right going at it and with the team and we've brought a lot of great folks on the team like Pat Brown who's our leader in retail distribution. Retail sales and Karen Hug who's been our product leader and brand for over three years now. But she's just product innovation and consistency and lights out. Ready to drink bulletproof coffee that we haven't had the dark chocolate collagen collagen protein dark chocolate ready to drink bulletproof coffee it is, it's amazing. And it is really lights out. Like you drink that and you're just like, oh my God, that's such a treat and it's good for you. And so like, it's, it's, it's just exploding. And our collagen protein bar, our bars are amazing and we keep coming out with more and more flavors. The chocolate chip cookie dough chocolate chip is my favorite for that.
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A
But you know, what's happening is those are ridiculous.
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B
Aren't those good? And so when they get on the shelf like they are, you know, customers are just, the demand is continuing to, to grow because as people taste it like, oh my God, they taste good. They're good for you. And you know, no sugar. So anyway, those are, those are the, the products and the, so the team, the business continues to grow and, and then Dave continues to, you know, both do his creative genius only content and help us with the product and continue to guide us as, you know, overall strategy and business. So I think to answer your question, we, you know, and IPO is a financing event and that's how we, you know, look at that at some point. That's a, a financing event. That is a possibility. But we're really focused on the growth and the customers and what's going to, you know, what's going to meet their needs and how do we create more and more access for the masses?
- [35:01]
A
What do you mean?
- [35:02]
B
How do we simplify? And how do we simplify it? Because, you know, it's very. Bulletproof can be the life. It can be intimidating and unapproachable.
- [35:11]
A
Right.
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B
As a lifestyle. So really simplifying it for.
- [35:14]
A
Yeah.
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B
When someone comes to say, you know, how do I become bulletproof? I'm like, here, eat this collagen protein bar. Now you're bulletproof. Drink this. Great tasting. Ready to drink bulletproof coffee.
- [35:24]
A
Yeah. Versus having to understand biohacking at the level that Dave understands it, which it is terrifying.
- [35:30]
B
Exactly. Exactly.
- [35:32]
A
Where do you struggle? I mean, you're clearly super strong as a president in second command. Where do you struggle on a day to day? I mean, at the end of the day, this is, I think we're all still trying to figure this out, right?
- [35:44]
B
Yeah.
- [35:44]
A
Where do you struggle?
- [35:47]
B
Where do I struggle? As a leader?
- [35:48]
A
Yeah, as a leader, as a business person, what are you working on to get better? You know, like, it's kind of like the best golfer in the world still practices and still game.
- [35:57]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Gosh.
- [36:00]
A
What are you working on for yourself and your skills?
- [36:03]
B
I think that the, honestly, the main thing is staying in. It's managing up. And with Dave in the day to day, my leadership style is let's take the hill and let's go like a bat on hell up the hill. And if you're not in line of sight, if you're not on the hill in that moment, the amount of effort to continue to take the time out and bring everyone along is the thing that I struggle with. And so really part of that is slowing down and making more of an effort to engage as I'm going like a bat out of hell after stuff. What that shows off to, you know, to someone if, if they're on the team or today is I can be, I can be intimidating and, and, and really overbearing. And I think that's the thing. It's not a new thing. That's the thing I've been working on for, you know, 20 plus years. But, but in an environment where there's so much to do, it's super stressful. Yeah, we're going like crazy days. Going like crazy. You know, those are the points that will create friction, you know, for me. And up, down and around. Yeah, that would be one of the biggest ones.
- [37:39]
A
I had something similar. I'm, I'm 6 foot 4 and so when I come in with that batter to hell feeling around people, they feel like I'm kind of running at them when I'm just walking into the room quick. And I was told to just physically slow down as I was approaching people because I scared the shit out of them. So with your people, the stuff that you are the best at, if your team was to describe you right now, I mean, we've certainly got a huge glimpse of it. But what do you think? How would your people describe you?
- [38:09]
B
How would someone on my team describe me?
- [38:11]
A
Yeah, your team. And are any of them remote or is your team all office based in Seattle?
- [38:17]
B
Your combination of remote and based in Seattle. Although we've continued to create a critical mass hub here in the headquarters in Seattle, my direct reports are mostly here. A couple of them are remote, if that's the question.
- [38:34]
A
Yeah. And how would they describe you as a leader?
- [38:36]
B
Direct. Direct and demanding. Direct. Demanding and likes data.
- [38:47]
A
And then you said, you said earlier that you kind of finish everything with that thank you. Right, with that gratitude. Is that, that's natural for you or is that, do you have to.
- [38:57]
B
You know, I did, yeah. No, I'd say, I'd say that. No, no, the gratitude, I do. The thank you. The other thing, it would be Connected and caring. I think my, you know, I sort of think about leadership. My leadership. If you say what my leadership style is, what people say distinguishes my style is high. I'd say character, competence and caring. And the, the character is, you know, high integrity, high intention. That shows up like, sure. And also don't. The confidence part is, you know, strong basic capability. And also don't. And this other part, I'd be like, don't suffer fools. Right. Like very quickly have a, have a strong point of view and communicate it directly around whether we're interviewing somebody. Right. On an interview loop. That, you know, create clarity and have a strong, strong point of view on that in communication. And then the carry part that I do care about each individual and I care about them professionally and, and as a person. And so what that means is I've invested in their success as well and work to be that leader. That is not only helping to provide clarity on the reality, but also a servant in helping to unblock and be of service. What can I do to help with them and their team?
- [40:22]
A
You're clearly one of those exceptional leaders. Like the ability to straddle or go back and forth between the corporate world and then the entrepreneurial world back and forth is. I don't see it virtually ever. It's pretty amazing to watch and to have seen you over the last couple of years. If you were to have that kind of one final word of advice, not for our listener, but for yourself. If you were to give your 21 year old self a bit of leadership advice, what would you wish you'd known at 21 that you know to be true?
- [40:49]
B
Yeah, I did, I did. At Microsoft. When I was at Microsoft, there was a woman who wrote a book, Ellen, I can't remember last name, but it was letters to her younger self. And I did a panel on this. So I had a whole letter I wrote to my younger self. But I think the number one thing would be don't take myself so seriously.
- [41:03]
A
Seriously, right. Yeah.
- [41:05]
B
And I, and I, and I can say that and, and I still, I still struggle with that one because I, I overdo it, I think on the serious part of responsibility. Back to one of my opportunities.
- [41:17]
A
That's awesome. Yeah, I've, I've been trying to go with that as well. That whole don't take ourselves so happen seriously. I went out for Valentine's last night and my girlfriend and I wore heart onesies and we went to a super nice restaurant and we walked in with these pink and purple onesie outfits and everybody in the restaurant's like, what the fuck? And we're just owned it, man. We were like, we walked in like we were wearing tuxedos and ball gowns. We owned the place.
- [41:42]
B
All right, guys. Fun.
- [41:44]
A
Anna Collins, President for Bulletproof Coffee thank you so much for sharing on the Second in Command podcast. Really glad you were able to share with us today.
- [41:51]
B
Thanks Cameron.
- [41:52]
A
Appreciate it.
- [41:55]
B
You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.