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Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 572 - FAN FAVORITE | Sean Kim (HighLevel CPO, Former Kajabi President, Ex-Amazon, TikTok): Conquer Imposter Syndrome and Lead Powerfully
00:36:49
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- [00:00]
Sean Kim
Hey there. Just a quick note before we dive in.
- [00:03]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
This is actually one of our older episodes, but we're bringing it back because
- [00:06]
Sean Kim
it's one of the most downloaded ones we've ever released. Clearly it struck a chord with a
- [00:10]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
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 fan favorite.
- [00:19]
Sean Kim
So if we launched a product in the space, we estimate that we can improve attention by 1%, 2%. If we launched in January, we can predict out how many people will save. So we have different versions of this in pat calculator depending on where the product is launched, whether it's in the front door or the back door of a subscription service. We work with the FinOps team, kind of build it out, model it out, and then we got pretty good at predicting impact for products at Amazon. When we launched this thing, man, we were able to predict down to 5 bips in terms of
- [00:57]
Narrator/Intro and Outro Voice
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 co host, former COO of a multi eight figure remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer.
- [01:24]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Our guest today is the President and Chief Product Officer of Kojabi, Sean Kim. Kajabi is the leading platform for knowledge entrepreneurs and creators. Previously, Sean was the Head of product at TikTok, where he set the strategic direction and led teams responsible for developing and growing the company's product. Prior to TikTok, Sean was a global Head of Product at Amazon prime, where he played an instrumental role in driving customer retention for prime membership. Sean, welcome to the Second Command podcast.
- [01:51]
Sean Kim
Thanks for having me.
- [01:52]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Glad to be here. There was someone who used to be at Amazon Prime, Anna Fairly. She was like the head of Amazon prime at one time. Do you know who that might have been? She ended up going over to Bulletproof.
- [02:02]
Sean Kim
Yeah, I do know her. Yes, that's right.
- [02:04]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Yeah, she was one of the very early guests on the podcast a bunch of years ago. I can't grab her name right now, but she was. I helped recruit her away from Amazon to go to work for Bulletproof Coffee. Yeah, I was coaching Dave Asprey who was the founder of Bulletproof. I helped pry her away. How was her name?
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Sean Kim
And I can't remember last.
- [02:23]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
She was out of Seattle.
- [02:24]
Sean Kim
Another manager of my While back also went to Bulletproof as well. Okay, Jeff Hall. Yeah.
- [02:32]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
So they poached a couple people then.
- [02:34]
Sean Kim
That's right.
- [02:35]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
And you went a different direction. So tell me about that as a, you know, part of your career and going from, from Amazon, what was that like? What kind of skills did you pull from there? And then we'll go into a little bit about TikTok and then I really want to focus around what you're doing with Kajabi. So talk about Amazon.
- [02:48]
Sean Kim
Amazon was one of the best companies I ever worked for in the past. You know, I really learned what it meant to be customer success and ensuring that customers were first and foremost the most important reason why make any decisions in business. And you know, throughout that experience I've been able to see how a company can really make a difference and have positive impact on customers lives. And the revenue was not part of the discussion in the beginning. It's always like hey, what's the best way to ensure you're providing the most amazing customer experience and then work backwards from there. So that was very different thinking prior to joining Amazon. Like that was not how any of the companies I've worked at approached business. So it was just really an amazing experience. One of the reasons why I got really excited about joining at a waste way back in the day when they launched the Fire tablet, I remember seeing a commercial about it and I saw a customer clicking a button and having the chat agent appear on the screen to then onboard the customer walk through how to use the product and answer any questions and I thought to myself like wow, like the companies that I was at before would never launch that. That's just not scalable, right? That's, I mean it's an amazing experience but that's just not scalable, right. So that was a kind of a moment when I realized this a amazing company that I want to work for. I had an amazing job, learned a lot about how to run a subscription business, how to go to market with devices, very metrics driven approach and working with some of the best leaders in the world. It was just a overall amazing experience.
- [04:29]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
So why would you have left Amazon to go to probably more of a startup at TikTok, right? Or certainly earlier stage company, you know,
- [04:36]
Sean Kim
built such great trust with my yearship and you know, got promoted and so on. And it wasn't something any proactive. Someone had reached out from TikTok and said hey, we had this really amazing opportunity and it was actually initially for a head of marketing role. And I was like well I'm not in marketing. I don't even know what TikTok is, so. So I downloaded the app, opened it and started playing with it. Now it's like I saw a bunch of kids dancing and lip syncing. I thought like, why the hell would I join this company? I did not understand the utility or value behind it. Well, what are you solving? Right? So that's kind of like how I was trying to think being at Amazon. It's like some big meaty customer problem. I just didn't understand it. So I actually called him back and I said, I don't think this is the right company for me. And then a few days later, the founder, Alex Zhu called me and was like, hey, let's talk about this opportunity. You know, what do you, like, dislike? And I was like, well, first of all, I'm not a marketing guy and product. And he's like, well, we can make it happen. Come to la, have a conversation with me. So I flew down, met with him and he said, sean, like the content, yeah, it sucks. You know, this is something that we're going to work on, but we have figured out something that no other company has figured out yet, or they're not very good at it, which is discovery. And that was the magic word for me as a discovery. He's like, yeah, so we got discovery Dao, which means that we can help people discover where to travel, what to eat, what books to read, what movies to watch, what's the latest fashion trend. I mean, the possibilities are endless. And that's when I got really excited about it. I was like, wow. I mean, if you can, you know, if you figure that out, there's a lot of different ways we can get approached this. And then you also mentioned, like, short form video is the way people will consume information in the future, guaranteed. So when I heard that, I was like, hey, this is super exciting. And then of course the natural question I came up with is like, hey, so are you going to launch E Commerce? And he was like, check this out. And he opens this, a version of the app. Like this was, by the way, three years ago, had E Commerce enabled already. And there was someone in the video that was, you know, just walking and you could click on her close and immediately show that, you know, show that product and be able to purchase it right there on the spot. I was like, oh, wow, this is cool. So that got me really, really excited. And like now I got like, well then, place to travel, what do you eat? I mean, what movies to watch? Like you enable that last Mile experience within that app, you enable E commerce for anything.
- [07:18]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
How many people were at TikTok when you joined and what was that culture shift like moving from an Amazon to there?
- [07:24]
Sean Kim
Then when I joined, I think maybe LA Office or maybe over a hundred, not a lot.
- [07:31]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
That's about the same size as we're like, you know, in the Amazon ware bathrooms. Yeah, I'm just completely different culture.
- [07:41]
Sean Kim
Completely different culture, very startup. I mean we. I remember walking in to the office, by the way, this was at a rental office called Spaces and walked in and I was like, hey, where do I sit? And I remember the IT guy, he's looking around and just like clearing some computers from this like desk area and said just sit here. Sounds like, okay, well all right. I'm definitely at a startup, right? So. So they didn't have anything stuff for me to shut out. I just kind of like sat down and then, then he brought me a monitor and so on. So like wow. It was a super startup experience. But I loved it. It was like this one massive room with like. And I could see everybody at the same time. And so a lot of collaboration and a lot of excitement at the company. Culture wise. Yeah, I mean like it was super young, you know, everyone was super scrappy, like working late. Obviously we had to work with our counterparts in China as well. So it was time like it was not a well known company at all.
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Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Right.
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Sean Kim
And yeah, so at that time like we were essentially building the culture, trying to figure out how to operate. And one of the things I'm kind of proud of brought from Amazon was the doc writing culture. That was not One thing at TikTok
- [08:49]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
was the what culture?
- [08:51]
Sean Kim
Writing. So writing, writing documents or product strategy and you know, business strategy overall because it was previously just a PowerPoint. I was saying we're going to do docs going forward and then brought that to the company there and then continue to push that for like everything like across different teams as well as that, you know, Bikedance. So that's like now accepted way of doing business there.
- [09:18]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
So walk us through what that means. What is the doc writing culture? Is it kind of like submit a one pager with what you're going to be doing and why? Like how, what is it?
- [09:26]
Sean Kim
Yeah, I mean it kind of depends on the purpose of the doc, but product strategy for instance will have what is the customer problem you're trying to solve for how big of a problem this is, you know, how many people have this problem, for instance. And then we'll have a solution in the doc along with what are the risks that come with that solution? What's the cost to the business? What is the MVP approach, phase approach, phase one, two, three, timeline for that? What are some asks from the leadership team? So it goes into detail that helps us, you know, ensure that we're making the best decision about, you know, an investment we're going to make. It's interesting.
- [10:05]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
I created something similar called the decision filter, where I look at the cost of inaction and the cost, like, what's the benefit of doing it? What's the ROI against our people?
- [10:12]
Sean Kim
Time and money.
- [10:13]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
But I need to go in and take a look at the Amazon Doc process a little deeper. I like it. Was there any push back against that change of culture when you were bringing something in? And how did you kind of socialize that when you were bringing that system into TikTok?
- [10:26]
Sean Kim
And I think there's some pushback from certain people, but generally was like widely adopted, accepted, I think. Founder of ByteDance, Jimin really had a lot of, I guess had a frustration for Amazon. Like he talked about Enzo Pie instead. Look how successful they were. Like, look how they set up their leadership principles and really admired that company. So he actually, when I met with him, he would ask about Amazon, say, how you were there, how do they operate, so on. And so when I brought the doc culture and then I wrote some pointers down in terms of how she structured, what she include this text, how you should write. I remember he actually took that share
- [11:05]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
with us company that makes a lot of sense because they were already really bought into that whole culture. That wasn't something that they were going to be pushing back against. They were trying to bring more of that in. What do you think some of the skills were that you pulled in out of TikTok that you carried with you over to Kajabi today, then.
- [11:19]
Sean Kim
So TikTok, they work fast. They're fast, fast, fast, fast. You know, so it's interesting, like how fast they are. So I think one of the things I brought in from there was definitely the sense of urgency, being able to test something quickly, fail fast, right? And then move on. And if there's something that works for the vault and just like immediately doubled out, just like, oh, look, put the resources behind it, shift resources immediately however you see fit to make sure that you double down on success when it comes to competitors, like, they really do a number on competitors. Like anytime they feel like there's a competitor that's getting in kind of traction, they will make sure that they are not getting traction. Whether it's like, outspending them or building products around whatever made that competitor successful at building similar products. Right. And they had the reach and the deep pockets to make sure that they were the leader in the intel space. So it's interesting.
- [12:18]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
You often hear people talking about the competitors to either obsess about them or to ignore them.
- [12:23]
Sean Kim
Right.
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Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
You got Andy Grove is like, only the paranoid survive. So it was TikTok kind of playing with both eyes. Were they looking at what the competitors were doing and then also really driving ahead with their own vision as well, or were they obsessed in one direction more than the other?
- [12:35]
Sean Kim
Do you think they did it both? They did both. Like every business for you, there was a full section on everything my competitors were doing. We had information about their dau retention. We had the latest product releases. We estimated their product release adoption, had total data. Like, I was like, wow, how'd you give us all this information? But, yeah, there's a whole section dedicated. And then it moved to our core metrics. And what are we doing? It was definitely something that we look at very often.
- [13:03]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Okay, so then you flip over from TikTok over to Kajabi. How many years has Kajabi been in business? Certainly a fantastic brand. Is it five years old? 10 years old?
- [13:11]
Sean Kim
A little over 10 years old.
- [13:13]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Right, so a little over 10 years old. It was more of a. Is it a mature company? How many employees were there when you got there?
- [13:19]
Sean Kim
So when I got here, we had, I think, like, you know, including employees in the Philippines, I think around like, a little over 300. It hasn't changed a lot. Like, we haven't, you know, gone crazy and hired a ton, A ton of people. We're very cautious and responsible about how we've been hiring.
- [13:39]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
It also feels like the kind of platform that you've probably hit scale now that you don't need to add a whole bunch of people either, if you can stay cautious and stay focused. Is that true?
- [13:47]
Sean Kim
Yeah, I mean, like, oh, let's see. Like, everyone on our teams are stacked and working at max capacity, which is the way it should be. Right. So I think, like, there's always room for more work and room for people. You know, more people come in. But I think we're very cautious about how we hire. We want to make sure that the current person is, like, completely stacked before we hire the next person and then make sure that the next person has, like, you know, lots of work ahead of them. So.
- [14:14]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
All right, so you're the first guest in about 245 guests that I've had on this podcast that has mentioned that in terms of stacking and people working at max capacity. And I've always believed that as well, that it's kind of like, you know, the athlete that finishes the. Whatever race that they're in or event that they're in, they always have more fuel in the tank at the end of the race. You rarely see the marathoner collapse at the finish line and fucking get hauled off the hospital and win at the same time. So how do you know if people are operating with that max capacity? And how do you get people to wrap their heads around the fact that we need to get more done with less people faster? Right. We need to be more efficient.
- [14:50]
Sean Kim
Yeah, that's a good question. Not everyone would agree with me, but. So, like, usually my team will tell me directly and be like, hey, like, I'm busy. Like. And I can see from, like, their roadmap and all the initiatives that we have going on, and we're very transparent about all the work that is on a plate for all engineers and all the PMs. And just having been a PM, I know what it takes to have, like, multiple complex initiatives going on, working with, like, you know, hundreds of engineers. So, you know, when someone says they're busy, we have this roadmap feel. They say, yeah, you're pretty busy, and say, like, I need to be able to have another pm, for instance, so that I can move faster. And we do that estimation and say, okay, if you had another pm, you can do, you know, you can get this done half the time, whatever, like. Or watch this faster or. Right. So I think that's where we do that calculation, say, okay, let's give it a time.
- [15:49]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
And I like that you do go back to the roadmap. So you're looking at exactly what's on their plate, specifically what they're working on over the next. How long? Month, Three months.
- [15:57]
Sean Kim
We can project out what we want to build for the rest of the year.
- [16:01]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Right?
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Sean Kim
So we can see, like, all of 20, 23. Of course it will. You know, it won't be exactly what we expected. Like, some things won't work with a pivot quickly. Some things will work really well. We double down. But we have a, you know, we have a pretty robust, you know, planning process where we think through what are the core meaty customer problems we can solve for, what takes the most time for customers, where's the most friction, what helps customers, you know, become more successful, reach their audience, you know, so we ask these questions to ourselves and then come up with these product strategies. And we typically, you know, typically the meatier the problem, the more complex the solution easily and requires a lot more engineers. So we have this really complex, really good, robust planning process and we can able to predict out the impact of the initiative. So we have an impact estimation calculator based on BIP improvement to conversion, activation, retention and when you launch it to see meanwhile incremental customers will say or retain or whatever it might be.
- [17:11]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Right.
- [17:11]
Sean Kim
So we have the impact calculator, we have high level estimation for engineering. So then we can like and we know exactly how engineers are on the certain teams. So we can estimate out like what we can launch within our quarter, half year, rest of the year.
- [17:24]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
And what's the impact calculator?
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Sean Kim
Yeah, so that's something I actually brought from Amazon as well. The impact calculator can forecast essentially how many customers we could acquire as well as, you know, convert and obtain based on historical data about some, you know, products we've flushed in the past in certain location, for instance within the app
- [17:52]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
where it might be.
- [17:53]
Sean Kim
And then we look at that and say, hey, this is how a certain product has improved retention and this is how many people can influence. So if we launched a product in the space, we estimate that we can improve retention by 1%, 2%. If we launched it in January, we can predict out how many people will save. So we have different versions of this in pat calculator like in the, depending on, you know, where the product is launched, whether it's like in the front door or the back door, you know, the subscription service. We work with the FinOps team kind of build it out, model it out. And then we got pretty good at predicting impact for products. Amazon, we launched this thing like man, we were able to predict down to like 5 bips in terms of how many prime numbers we would save. Wow, we got really good at it.
- [18:39]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
So you also mentioned something about the hiring more and being cautious with hiring people. It feels like when companies are smaller, kind of in the 50 to 100 range and they really have their first management or leadership team, it doesn't really have the skills yet that their answer to every problem is hire more people. How do you, how do you prevent that from happening? How do you grow their skills so they understand that it's not always hiring more people, that maybe it's, you know, becoming more optimized or automated or saying no more. How do you grow those people so that they understand that?
- [19:10]
Sean Kim
It's a good question. I don't know if I have the best answer for you. But, you know, we, throughout my career, like, we've been really good at, like, ruthlessly prioritizing initiatives so we don't stretch ourselves thin and we focus our efforts on the most impactful initiatives. So, you know, if someone says, like, hey, I'm really busy, and I'm like, what's going on? What are you working on? I have these five initiatives. I'm like, well, how important are these five? We'll stop, rank and stay. If you didn't do these two, what would happen? It's like nothing. Not really. Well, then don't do it. Right. Just focus on these three. And then of these three, which one is most impactful? Which one has the highest impact with the lowest amount of engineering work required? Right. So I think we kind of do this exercise and we prioritize the time and effort put in to ensure that people are focusing on the most impactful things.
- [20:06]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
And that is kind of when coaching meets alignment. Right. When you're just trying to align their efforts with what the results are going to be or whatever your outputs you're looking for. So.
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Sean Kim
Right.
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Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Tell us a little bit about Kajabi. What? So, because I'm sure there's a few people out there that haven't heard, even though you've got a fairly big user base. Yeah.
- [20:22]
Sean Kim
So Kajabi is the easiest way to build an online business around what, you know. So we are an all in one solution that helps creators market publishers sell their digital content, such as podcasts, video courses, newsletters, even coaching, literary coaching. We have around 60,000 customers and they've made $4.1 billion to date with an annual run rate of $1.7 billion. So they're doing quite well. We have a few creators that have made over a hundred million dollars. So these are really big legit businesses that we've been able to scale with. Creators that joined in 2022 have earned 20% more than those that are joined in 2021, Boy County. So their products and services have been getting better to make it easier to reach their audience, retain them and, you know, and earn their money. So. So yeah, the company has been around for about a little over 10 years and did quite well.
- [21:26]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
So what was the. What was the reason for you to join Kajabi? What was the reason for you to flip from TikTok over to. Over to Kajabi? And I want to focus more on not why you left TikTok, but what was it that got you to join
- [21:37]
Sean Kim
Kajabi when I was at TikTok, you know, I definitely grew fond of the creators I work with, grew a lot of admiration for the work that goes into becoming a creator and haven't worked with a lot of the creators at TikTok. And one of the things that kept coming up was not being able to monetize properly as a creator. And you know, because you become a creator in the beginning it's more about social credit, likes, comments, shares, views and followers and follower count. But then you realize you're putting in like four hours a day, six hours a day, eight hours a day to creating content and, and then you realize, well, I gotta monetize my time. I can't, I can't be like just doing this for likes and likes and followers. So we got a lot of people at the House of TikTok about helping them monetize and we, we've tried a lot of different things. There was a billion dollar creator fund we launched, tipping on profile page, gifting videos, live stream gifting, a lot of different things to try and help creators build a living, you know, earn like meaningful income. But I would say that it wasn't incredibly successful. You couldn't quit your day job and do it full time. You had to rely on brand deals and you know, brand deals are not always consistent and you can't really decide exactly what you want to create. And you know, the recession, those brand deals are kind of drying up. So I talked to my team at the time and said, hey, who's doing really well? Who's doing creator monetization really, really well. Let's look at some of the competitors, let's look at some of the startups. We looked at competitors, they weren't doing it very well either. So we looked at startups and sure enough, Kajabi came up number one. Kajabi, the numbers at the time were like, oh yeah, $3.5 billion made to date, 50 something thousand creators. I'm like what? How is that even possible? So I started researching the business and met with some of the people and at the time I was thinking like, let's just, hey, I told my team, let's just go copy them, just figure out what they're doing off of that to TikTok creators. And then we did the research and realized, yeah, you can't really copy what they're offering. You can't, you know, those social media companies gonna, you know, provide their creators all the email addresses and be able to just own that audience and take them off platform and allow them to control their business in the end. Right. So they want to keep them all on platform, you know, because of the ad revenue and so on. So it's not something you would easily copy. But meeting with the Kajabi team, meeting with the, the leadership team can realize, wow, you guys have an amazing business. This is such a awesome thing you're doing for creators in terms of empowering them to build meaningful businesses. And I actually got a job at the time and I thought to myself this is a once in a life opportunity to really help people build incredible businesses that, and change people a lot people, people's lives. I mean I hear time and time again people like join Kajabi, build a business and they'll have, they have complete personal freedom, they're able to retire, they're able to pay for their kids education, college, their family. Like, like literally changing people's lives.
- [25:02]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Yeah, it's interesting.
- [25:04]
Sean Kim
Yeah. And that's why I thought like, okay, this is the time to join.
- [25:07]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
So you said something that I never actually considered before, which is intriguing, that you actually do give them the contact information for their clients, their course users or whatever and they are able to take that and monetize it off the platform and you don't care about it or worry about that, I guess. Is that because they're paying a monthly fee and you know that if they can monetize it elsewhere that yours is lead gen for them are going to keep paying for or Kajabi offers.
- [25:35]
Sean Kim
Yeah, we offer the. Since it's the all in one solution, we offer our customers ability to build landing pages, funnels, collect email, nurture them to becoming a paid customer for the courses or podcasts or coaching or whatever it might be. So these customers are signing up to be part of the mailing list for our customers. Yeah. So that's essentially how their business runs is like hey, join my mailing list so I can give you a preview of what type of content I offer and then they eventually become a page number.
- [26:14]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Okay. So one of the things that seems to happen when companies get to be your size, especially when they're a SaaS business, is that there's almost like feature creep or past features, even like just other, other markets you can get into other services you can start bundling in and then it becomes this big, huge, massive thing that no one's using or just gets complicated. Right. Like confusionsoft or you know, so how do you as a company say no to the opportunities of what you could be bundling and building in? Like you're not creating you're not, you're not a funnel software now. You're not trying to compete with email marketing services. Like, like how do you say no to all the things you could be and say yes and stay focused on the things that you are?
- [26:58]
Sean Kim
Yeah, middle question. You know, we talk to customers on a regular basis. We have, you know, I still talk to customer service in a week. I require my team to do that as well. We have a lot of survey data. We also of course have our own internal metrics in terms of what's been most successful in terms of helping our customers become successful. Like what, what is the product that's most utilized and has the best chance of helping customers succeed? So we shift a lot of our focus as well as resources to ensure that we're constantly improving that product and then thinking about how we can take this to the next level. So hey, what can we do to make sure that we're saving them even more time, removing even more friction points out of the way? So when we have this conversation with customers, we talk through what are the steps you're taking to actually build this business, offer this product? And they say, here's where I spend most of my time. X, Y, Z. And say, okay, well how do I make that 10 hours into like five minutes, right? So that's, that's essentially how we're kind of shifting that time and then we shift a lot of the resources and parties. Doesn't give us a lot of room to do other things.
- [28:15]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
So I understand that the, at the leadership team level, how you say that and how you make those decisions to stay focused and to say no. How do you say no to the employees who are coming to you with the ideas and how do you say no to the customers that are coming to you? Ideas where it's like it's, it's either a great idea but no or it's a great idea but not now without killing their spirit and energy. You know, like, it's kind of like gen Y&DMC, they all want their 9th place participation ribbons.
- [28:45]
Sean Kim
We help them come to the same conclusion on their own. And that's through the, you know, the product strategy doc. And we say, okay, well you know, let's do the work and figure out how much, how impactful this thing's going to be. And they'll go through and do the customer problem validation and how many people have a problem and impact calculator and realize like, oh, it's not very impactful. So they'll come to the same conclusion hopefully and come to me and say, hey, this isn't going to be very impactful. You know, if I spend these eight hours a day working on this, I'll have way more impact. And then this is something that's nice to have. This other things are nice to have. We can go later.
- [29:22]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
I like that. And is that tool, the, again the tool that you were using at Amazon or is that kind of impact calculator tool that is from Kajabi?
- [29:30]
Sean Kim
Oh yeah. So we first built that at Amazon and then I brought TikTok and also bumped it to Kajabi. So it's just, and it just gets more accurate over time. So the first version of this, like we won't have enough data to feed it but like over time we have, we'll have launched a lot of products. We'll have estimations in terms of what the impact would have been versus actuals and say, oh, okay, now we know. So after we feed more data into this calculator, it just gets more and more accurate over time.
- [30:00]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Okay, so I understand why you joined them and how the fit is. Why do you think they came and picked you? I mean they've got a good team, they've got some good employees, they've got product market fit already and now they're bringing this guy in from another company over top of all this existing team. So why did they pick you? And then how did you enter into the company without upsetting everybody that's there that didn't get your job or that now reports to you?
- [30:24]
Sean Kim
Yeah, you're asking some tough, tough questions.
- [30:26]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
I mean other than, other than your seem, other than you seem to be, you seem to be a good guy. Good guy and you know, you're easy to hang out with, so that part seems easy.
- [30:33]
Sean Kim
But, but when did, yeah, I think like they wanted to become a more product driven organization and of course like seeing how wildly successful TikTok has been and the process that, that the company has launched, I think they wanted some of that magic to say, hey, what, what are you doing in TikTok to make it so successful? How, how was it so successful within such a short time? Right. So I think like that definitely did help for sure. I think like also my background in, at Amazon, you know, with Amazon Primer being a subscription business, that also was a big factor as well. So I think like just my product experience was, was, I think probably core to decision making in terms of getting me in the door. Yeah. When I was, you know, when I came in. Of course, course not. You know, there's going to be people that are happy, people that are not happy. That's just, there's no one, no situation where everyone's happy. And you know, I just have to be very clear about, you know, the, the changes are coming, when it's going to come, what's going to change, and just try to over communicate that and you can't please everyone. There's some people just, they just don't want to change and you know, and they'll leave on their own or you have to get them up.
- [31:47]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Okay, and then how about you and the CEO? So you've got a, was it a founding CEO or was it a hired gun CEO that you're then working with?
- [31:55]
Sean Kim
So, so how was the CFO/COO prior to me joining? And then he recently became the CEO and they hired me as the president and cpo. Yeah.
- [32:08]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Okay, so how did you, how did you and the two of you kind of divide and conquer and split up roles and responsibilities and then how do you kind of keep those communication channels clean with everybody else in the organization as well as to who goes to who?
- [32:19]
Sean Kim
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I report the HOD and we divvied up the responses based on what we're really good at. So, you know, I was, you know, really good at product and know how to oversee engineering and so on. So I had product engineering as well as design. And then we also put customer service on my team because I think with customer service we can really help influence some of the products we're going to launch because they have very close to the customer. We get the voice of customer on a regular basis. We made a lot of adjustments in terms of being more transparent and surfacing that voice of customer information to all the teams at Kajabi. So we have monthly meetings now to see what our customers are saying, where are most tickets coming from, what are the issues? And then that can also help prioritize our roadmap. So that adjustments has been made with our customer service team, product engineering team and design team. And then the people that report data directly are like marketing, finops, accounting, legal, and so on.
- [33:30]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
I like it. All right, how about your skill set? I mean, you're, you're clearly, you know, involved in an organization that's still scaling, still growing. It's got huge upside in front of it. And I think every day, you know, in our jobs, it's kind of like this is the biggest thing we've ever done. Right. So how are, where are you focusing on growing your skill sets right now as A leader.
- [33:48]
Sean Kim
You know, I, I definitely want to continue growing in terms of being inspirational. I think like, I would say I'm fairly demanding in terms of like, you know, what expectations and you know, driving urgency and timelines. But I think like, you know, there's, there's also, you know, being inspirational and that's an important quality to have. That's something I want to work on as well. You know, I think also learning more about, you know, the legal components as well. I mean, I get fascinated about legal. It's so unique. And usually me and Nico have a love hate relationship. You know, like, I love them, they hate me. So, you know, it's just understanding all the nuances and what's possible and it's just one of those areas that just like I'm continually trying to do more about.
- [34:44]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
So that's cool. I like it.
- [34:46]
Sean Kim
All right.
- [34:47]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
I want to go Back to the 21, 22 year old Sean Kim. You're just getting started in your career. What advice would you give yourself that maybe, you know, to be true today, but you wish you'd known back then?
- [34:57]
Sean Kim
I would say, you know, focus on. So spend the time to figure out what you're passionate about and because, you know, so I think you lose it over time and then you're like, hey, this job pays better. Or this is like the hot big thing to work on. This is out of space or the company. But I think that if, you know, if you just focus on what you're really passionate about, like, and not care about the money and all those things, right? Like, I think all that will come later, all that will follow. But I think that's, that's something that's really important.
- [35:32]
Host (possibly Cameron Herold)
Funny, I love that because one of the things I've noticed the whole time we're talking, anybody who's kind of watching this video on YouTube or if you're listening, you can't see it, but when you're watching, you can. Behind you is all of these design things, you know, like everything is kind of design. And I kept, kept looking at stuff like a plant in your chair. I don't know what that is. Behind you on the desk, something made out of wood, like your guitar in the background. You clearly have a love for design and the fact that you oversee product and design just kind of makes sense as well. So you're clearly in a niche that you love. Sean Kim, president and chief product officer for Kajabi. Thanks very much for sharing with us on the second grand podcast and thank you for having me.
- [36:11]
Narrator/Intro and Outro Voice
Really appreciate it you've been listening to. Second in Command, brought to you by COO Alliance Founder Cameron Herald. 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.
- [36:37]
Sean Kim
Sa.