Kelly Vaughn: AI Ethics and Innovation - Balancing Privacy and Progress

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My name's Matt, and I will be talking to Kelly Vaughn about adapting skills across tech stacks

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and effective remote team management.

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Without further ado, the first question that I wanted to ask you because I check your experience,

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and I check your background.

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So you have a bachelor in psychology, 2 master degrees in social work and public health.

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And my first question is, like, how on earth you ended up becoming an engineer or a leader in this area?

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Yeah. They don't teach you how to cope when you're getting a degree in social work. It's kinda weird. No.

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I actually taught myself how to cope when I was 11.

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So I got a pretty early start, on a small website called Neopets, where I wanted to, like, build my own community.

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And to customize it, you needed to learn how to code.

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So my dad bought me a book called HTML Goodies that was very basic HTML.

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It's back when inline CSS was the way you're writing CSS.

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It's in the world of, you know, frame sets and all that good stuff when Microsoft FrontPage

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was something you you built websites in.

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So, yeah, I got a really early start in my software engineering career, really starting on on

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the front end side of things. I quickly started freelancing.

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My first website I ever built for a client was when I was 14 years old.

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It was an online catalog for a hunting supplies store up in Michigan, and I was paid a T shirt.

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So really good deal, you know, for them.

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It also was an extra large T shirt, so it's not anything that I could possibly wear anyway.

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But, yeah, I continue to code all through, middle school, high school. I sold Myspace layouts.

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I you know, all the little things that any any any opportunity for me to make some money coding, I did it.

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And then I continue to code all through undergrad and grad school as well while I was getting

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these other degrees because and I got these other degrees because I always said, if I had to

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code for a living, I would grow to hate it.

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And I have this, you know, pattern in my career where I say I'm not going to do something, and then I do it.

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That goes for, you know, turning, engineering into a career.

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That goes for starting an agency.

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That goes for shutting down my agency.

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Like, all the things in my life, all those major events in my life that took me to where I am

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today are a result of me being like, yeah.

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I don't wanna do this, and then I somehow end up doing it anyway.

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But I assume, like, the background that you have, it's really helpful with, working with people, especially as a leader. Right?

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Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's one of the biggest standout things for me in particular

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is the fact that I can rely on the fact that I'm a trained therapist to basically, you know,

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work through any particular sticky situation that happens in the workplace, establishing rapport,

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interviewing folks so you get a really good read on people very early on.

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You're basically leveraging my social work degree.

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Now my public health degree, not really useful in the work place, but, you know, it was an interesting degree to get.

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And you mentioned the the the agency that you have.

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You are you are quite a, quite a big fish regarding the shop Shopify. Right?

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So you work on a lot of projects.

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You had your own show, the the the podcast.

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So, you're quite familiar with the whole environment and the Shopify, and a lot of people know you.

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And I'm just wondering, like, how this shaped you, like, to becoming a director of engineering at the Spot AI.

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Like, how this influenced your Yeah.

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It's been your current role.

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It's been such a wild ride.

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I got into Shopify by chance back when I was in grad school because I happened to see a tweet from somebody saying, hey.

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I have extra freelance work.

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Can, like, is if anybody who's following me sees this and wants some freelance work, talk to me.

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And I was like, cool.

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I'm in grad school, and I'm obviously poor because the American school system is so incredibly expensive.

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And so I was like, yeah. Absolutely. Let's talk.

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And so he gave me some WordPress work, and and then he's like, hey.

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I have this this site that's on a platform called Shopify.

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You know, are you interested in, like, figuring it out? I'm like, sure. Absolutely.

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And I immediately fell in love with it.

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And this is now 10 years that I've been working on the Shopify platform.

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Even now, I still have a couple clients I work with in in the Shopify space.

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I'm still not as, like, deeply rooted into it, but I'm definitely still working with it.

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So I went from freelancing as a Shopify partner, then Shopify expert and got listed, which definitely

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grew my client base, to, transitioning from my freelance business into an agency.

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And then in we went through the peak of COVID through the pandemic, like, when everyone had

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to get their businesses Vaughn, and our company grew significantly. Our headcount grew significantly.

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Our revenue hit 7 figures for the first time, which is super exciting.

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And I just got so burned out because there's just so much that was going on.

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And so I took a 1 month sabbatical because I basically worked myself out of a job.

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And during that time, I cofounded a Fintech startup also in the ecommerce space, but it was

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my first foray into a product based job instead of focusing on service business. And I loved it.

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I loved that it was a specific thing that we were actively working on.

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I could pitch this product to customers. No problem.

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But I didn't have to sell different services every single time.

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And so it was a big, like, eye opening experience for me.

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And, you know, things did you know, ultimately didn't work out for me there.

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The company still exists, but I ended up leaving.

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But I took this as an opportunity to be like, alright.

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Let's let's make this switch from being, you know, this solopreneur, this entrepreneur, and join somebody else's company.

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And, really, it gives me this opportunity to learn what it's like to grow at a growing start

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up, at a scaling start up because I always did 0 to 1.

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Maybe you could say 1 to 10, but I've never seen anything beyond this at this point in my career.

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The largest team I ever worked on was my own 20 people.

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So to join a larger start up was a really great opportunity for me.

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And and that's how I ultimately became director of engineering here at Spot where I you know,

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my umbrella continues to grow and my you know, as as things tech you know, typically do as you

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as you continue to grow at an organization.

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Nice. Great story. And you mentioned the burnout. This is interesting thing.

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I had it, like, 3 or 4 times.

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And I always, like, after a while, diagnose it why it was so unusual.

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It was related to the responsibilities that I had, and I really hated it.

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So I'm just wondering in your case, what was the case when you were running the agency?

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What was the thing that you really hated?

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I hated the feast of famine.

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I I loved being able to provide my team with, basically their living, and that they were able

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to grow as an engineer and grow with this company that was growing that.

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You know, I'd started from literally nothing, and that was so rewarding.

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But the fact that you constantly have to Kelly, we were moving up market as well, which means

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the buying cycles are much longer.

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You know, there's a lot more on the line where you can have a signature in hand, and then their funding gets pulled.

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Again, this is this is 2020, 2021.

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And so, you know, you never knew what was gonna happen at that point.

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And so I think that's what really led to my burnout.

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And then the second piece of it was there's just so much that was happening with the second

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startup that I had cofounded that I was somehow trying to manage running 2 businesses full time,

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which I think anybody could feel like, yeah. That's that was dumb.

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That was not going to work out.

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So that definitely contributed as well.

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Okay. Thanks for yeah. And the answer here.

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And I subscribed to your newsletter, and you and you write a lot about the leadership, like, in engineering, especially.

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So, one of the cases that many people maybe not struggle, but this is challenging, to hire the

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senior roles, to hire senior engineers.

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And in your case, what advice would you give to them?

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To those who are interviewing for

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To the leaders. To the leaders.

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To the leaders hiring senior. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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The biggest thing that is you know, from for me, by I I kinda come from this background where

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I believe that you I don't need to see you I don't need to watch you code as a senior engineer

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to know that you're going to do good work.

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What's most important to me is you know how to think through a problem.

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You know how to think through it in a way that you need to decide what is gonna be most important

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to deliver now and what is gonna be most important to deliver, you know, into the future.

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And be able to think just beyond that now kind of project based work and understand the impact of your work.

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I also when I'm talking to senior engineers, possibly, you know, interviewing, for example,

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I want to say or I want to know, are they gonna be able to mentor the team?

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Are they bringing some unique piece to their background that is going to really help this team grow?

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That's why I love nontechnical backgrounds.

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That's why I love interviewing folks who don't come necessarily from the same tech stack that

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we're actively using because they're likely going about solving problems differently from different

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industries using different text stacks, and they're gonna be able to challenge the thoughts

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and opinions of those who have been at the company and been working on the product for so long.

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So those those typically, you know, tend to be the things that I'm I'm looking for when I'm actually interviewing an engineer.

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Sorry. Thank you. Thank you for that. Let's change that. Maybe maybe not. Maybe not.

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Let's I have a really interesting question.

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Let's start with the fun questions, let's say.

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So I'm just wondering what was the most challenging thing, most challenging task project that

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you have ever tackled tackled in your career?

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So I have a a different answer for this one than something that's actually technical, and that is personal.

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And what that is is changing my public persona from Kelly the Shopify entrepreneur to Kelly the engineering leader.

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Because as you said, I, you know, I've been in the Shopify space for a long time.

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I built up this following.

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I built up this entire idea that this is who I am.

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And I think this is a really important thing when it comes to entrepreneurship.

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Businesses fail all the time. All the time.

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And as an entrepreneur, you become so tied your identity becomes so tied to the business that

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you have built up, where if something happens to it, you feel like you've lost a piece of yourself.

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And to have something happen so much in public for me and be so visible to other people is I

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knew I've I am moving on from this idea of, you know, I'm always gonna be an entrepreneur. That never changes.

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My entrepreneurial mindset is what allows me to thrive in any company as well.

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But the fact that people have watched this, quote, unquote, failure of my agency go down in

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real time and watch me pivot my thinking of I need to move on from this.

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I've grieved this, and I need to now shift who I am and what I talk about to engineering leadership

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because this is what is actually, you know, bringing me joy in my day to day.

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That was probably one of the most difficult tasks that I had to do.

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Because people would be like, wait.

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You know, they they're not following my every single move, but they'd be like, wait.

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What do you mean you're not in Shopify, like, in the Shopify space anymore? Like, what happened?

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And then I had to rehash that story so many times that, eventually, I just wrote a blog a blog

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post about it or wrote a newsletter about it. I'm like, here. You can read this.

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I'm not talking about this again.

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If you have questions, I'm happy to answer, but I'm not going into detail again.

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Nice. Good good approach.

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Okay. And I would say you're pretty successful anyway, like, with the Shopify thing, and, like,

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being now at the Spot AI, I think it's it's going pretty pretty well when I observe it from the outside.

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And I'm always wondering, like, watching the people and trying to understand their strengths.

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Like, what do you think like, in your case, what are your strengths?

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Like, what attributed to your success?

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Like, what kind of strengths, what kind of features that you have? You know?

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Yeah. One that is most definitely a privilege is I came from a technical family.

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You know, my dad was in IT.

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My mom would, you know, tinker with computers as Kelly.

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And and so I learned how to turn off and on a computer before I learned how to write.

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Like, I had always been around technology.

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And so I also had, you know, the ability to start learning how to cope when I was 11.

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We had the means and the time to be able to for my dad to buy me this book and give me the time

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to sit down and actually learn how to do this.

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That really steered me to where I am today.

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Now on the more, you know, personal side of things, my nontechnical background is definitely a strength in leadership.

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You know, as you as you alluded to, my my degrees in psychology and social work have definitely

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played a role in my ability to thrive in a leadership type role and kind of work through you

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know, jump through all the hurdles that, you know, I had to get through to get to where I am today. I'm also very Vaughn.

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And you ask anybody who, you know, knows me personally, I'm always juggling many, you know, side projects.

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I'm always working on other things.

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I'm always asking myself what's next.

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And it's sometimes to a fault where I was I was talking to our our head of people, our VP people

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at Spot the other day, and I told her, like, I'm content.

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And she was like, oh, well, you know, we want you to be bored than just content. I'm like, no. No. No. You don't understand.

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I have not been content in 4 years. Like, content is good.

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I can finally, like, just, like, enjoy and sit and and exist in this space and be proud of what I've accomplished.

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Because that you know, being driven has allowed me to get as far as I am today. I learn quickly.

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I'm always trying to figure out you know, I I will work until I can figure out this problem.

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I'm also not afraid to, you know, ask for help if I just don't understand.

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And and to be able to just be like, yeah. I'm just chill.

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Like, I'm good is a very important step for me.

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I absolutely love it. Like, being content, I have the same problem with my cofounder.

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Like, you know, it's, I I feel like that it's it's really hard to be happy because you always,

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like, you are always you are you are always eager to go for this mastery.

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You always see that you can be better.

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You can do things better, and it's not, you know, And then saying, like, this is really good. I'm good at something. It's really, really hard. It is.

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It is. And it's also something that I I often talk about in the leadership space as well.

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You know, everyone goes through different phases of their lives, and the phase that they're

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in is going to reflect how they are treating their career as well.

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You know, there are times in your life where you're like, I just wanna go for I will put in the extra time.

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I will do whatever it takes to get to this next step.

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And there are times in your life where you're just like, I'm going to let things coast and stay

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stable for where I'm at right now because where I'm in where I am, for example, if you, you

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know, recently moved or you just got married or you just had a kid, Like, you don't need the

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instability of trying to figure out what that next step is going to be in your promotion necessarily.

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Like, you're probably happy with where you're at right now, and you're just, like, trying to

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figure out life with, you know, a newborn at home, for example.

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And it's and so that's, like, a really important distinction to make in that engineers or, you

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know, leaders in any company, really.

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It doesn't have to just be engineers.

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But people will will pull back, and they will take a breather.

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And that's not that shouldn't be, like, seen as, oh, this person is, you know, withdrawing.

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This person is, like, stagnant in their career.

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Just, like, let them be. You know? We have high performers. We have medium performers.

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We're going to, like, teeter between high and medium all the time.

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You don't wanna be a low performer, obviously, but, you know, you get a lot of value out of

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your medium performers because you know exactly what you're getting out of them.

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Your high performers are the ones who's who are always gonna be pushing for what's next, what's next.

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And so it is okay to go from being a high performer to a medium performer, especially if you're

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somebody who will probably end up being a high performer at some point again.

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And let's get back a bit to this newsletter that you're you're you're having.

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I really like, you know, because you have those short bits and you try to kind of share your

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experience based on the things that you have experienced in your career and get some lessons out of it.

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So I'm wondering, do you recall maybe any that you could share with the listeners?

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I mean, something that works for you maybe, and it's not so obvious, like, you know, you're

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going on the right way, but the rebuking party is taking the left, left side. Right?

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So, maybe something like this if you recall.

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One of the I'm I I don't know if I've actually written about this.

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I've been writing the newsletter for so long at this point that I was just I forget what all I've written.

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But one of the, hills I will die on that I often say is you do not have to do live coding exercises

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or take home exercises for senior engineers in in interview process.

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And in the engineering space, that can be seen as, like, wait. What?

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But if you got to the point where you are in your career where you're a senior engineer and

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your resume reflects that, When you have something like a system design exercise in your interview,

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you're going to quickly read through the BS.

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You're gonna quickly understand, does this person actually know what they're talking about,

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or are they throwing out buzzwords to make it sound like they know what they're talking about?

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Like, as you start to dig into the weeds, they're like, let's actually, like, work through solving this problem.

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You don't have to write any code.

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Like, let's talk about how you would approach it.

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You can learn very quickly Kelly what somebody knows and what they don't know. You know? Are they pulling

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from past history? Are they

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pulling from, you know, an

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I read about this somewhere, but I haven't actually tried working on it.

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But here's what I would try to do.

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Like, are they like, how are they actually working through this problem mentally?

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And especially if you're working with a couple engineers on the system design problem in an

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interview, and they're able to kind of bounce off of each other.

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And, you know, you're like, okay.

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Well, this wouldn't work because this would, you know, be incredibly slow at scale.

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Like, it's, you know, let's think through if we had, like you know, instead of 10 widgets, we had 50,000 widgets. What would this mean?

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And you can you can watch that process, that thinking process Kelly play out in a system design

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interview without ever having or see them write code, which is why I really value having people

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come into the company who are not necessarily immediately, like, we our stack is, you know,

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let's say Node and React.

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If they have come from, like, a c sharp background or they come from, like, a PHP background,

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a senior engineer can learn another language.

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Like, you they're all under like, at the at the core, they're all the same. You know?

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I can I can go learn go tomorrow if I wanted to?

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I'm not going to because I have no reason to, but it's the same.

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Like, fundamentally, a language is a language is a language.

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They all kinda have those same components. They're just presented differently.

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And so it allows you to bring in on other engineers who are maybe not necessarily writing React all the time.

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And, honestly, one of the best engineers we have on my team did not come from a Node React background,

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and he quickly learned it on the job because he's a great senior engineer.

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Let's change the topic a bit, and let's talk about the AI because everybody is talking about it. So we should too.

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I literally work at a company called Spot AI.

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So maybe you could tell a bit more about your experiences with the with the AI.

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How do you use it?

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Like, how do you, use it in a safe manner?

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Because I know this is, like, a major topic right now, right, because of the data processing

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and that kind of stuff.

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Absolutely. Yeah. So, I'll talk about Spot first because the way that we handle AI is really is is pretty interesting.

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You know, we have models that we've built and trained in house, and we do not use our customers' data to retrain models.

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And I think that's a very important thing that you need to ask whenever you're looking at any

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sort of generative AI or AI related tool.

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Are you using my data to train your models?

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And if so, I don't want to use it. You know?

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There's a lot of proprietary information, especially because SpottyEye is video intelligence.

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We are recording video, and we are analyzing that video and storing the metadata and running

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this metadata against the, you know, the models to be able to detect what's actually happening in the videos.

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And when you're doing that, you know, I should not be combining all my customers' data into

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one house to say, alright.

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Well, now you kinda know what this company is also doing because it's all the same. You know?

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And this is something I I I'm working on our generative AI policy right now. I'm updating it.

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And this is exactly one of those things, like, how is the data actually being used?

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We you know, it's been interesting watching the growth of Spot.

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I've been here for a little over 2 years now, and it's also been interesting watching the conversations

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change around the product because we're moving past the basic education piece of what is AI,

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and how can we use it, and how is this dangerous to they understand what it is. They understand the risks.

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They're asking the right questions around privacy and, like, just data privacy in general and

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security, But they're also, like, starting to think, how can I connect the dots with the other

22:33 - 22:39
systems that I'm using in house to be able to leverage this technology to better further my

22:39 - 22:45
business, to serve my customers, to keep our students safe, to, you know, whatever you're using the AI for?

22:45 - 22:51
And so this is such an interesting, you know, trajectory we're seeing our customers take like,

22:51 - 22:55
go on, which I kind of attribute to, like, I think Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

22:55 - 23:02
We've moved on from, like, the basics of, like, I need video for security to I need video for,

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you know, business efficiency, to I need video to be able to connect all my systems together,

23:09 - 23:12
to have one full model, one full workspace.

23:13 - 23:17
And as you're having these conversations as an engineer, it's really exciting because you don't

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have to go down to, like, the very basic layman's terms of, like, what even is AI in the first place. So that's Spot.

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Now on the side of using generative AI in your day to day, you know, I've already talked about the data privacy things.

23:31 - 23:36
So the way that I usually approach using generative AI, which I definitely use in my in my day

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to day is, you know, with chat gbt.

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I typically use it more for create this outline.

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You know, I'm about to, work on a new talk that I'm gonna be giving, and I'm gonna say, here's my news newsletter content.

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Turn this into a slide deck outline. It's my own content.

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I don't care if it goes into the the world.

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It's already public anyway, but it's gonna save me a whole lot of time from having to think

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about coming coming up with it from scratch.

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I've had it write policies for me.

24:02 - 24:05
I've had it write emails for me naturally.

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I think everybody has done that.

24:08 - 24:15
So, like, I'm I'm very choosy about how I use AI in a in a safe way and kind of what I'm sharing with it.

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I also most definitely use chat gbt to ask doctor related questions, which obviously is a grain of salt kinda territory.

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But mostly out of curiosity, like, what does this mean?

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Do you still use Stack Overflow, or do you ask first, like,

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You know, I still default to Slack or Slack to Stack Overflow, but I think it's most mostly,

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like, muscle memory as opposed to

24:40 - 24:40
Mhmm.

24:40 - 24:44
I know I I can get good answers from Chat GPT for the most part.

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I still think you know, the thing about leveraging AI is about prompt writing.

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The better you are at prompt writing, the better responses you're going to get.

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And at least I know if I search for an error message and I end up on Stack Overflow, somebody's

25:01 - 25:06
seen it before and they're gonna have have it's very straightforward answer of how to fix it.

25:06 - 25:11
I'll get more details from Chat gpt, or I might get more details from, like, GitHub Copilot,

25:11 - 25:17
for example, but it's not necessarily going to prompt the the correct solution, which is quite interesting.

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We met, I think, 2 years ago or something like that in Warsaw because you were building the team there.

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And you travel quite a bit, so you have a team in in in Poland.

25:32 - 25:34
You have a team in, in the US.

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Like, how do you how do you approach it?

25:40 - 25:41
How do you manage that?

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Do you do, like, really often?

25:42 - 25:48
Like, do you want to be one time for, I don't know, 2 months in Poland to meet the team, to discuss, to do brainstorm?

25:49 - 25:51
Like, how do you make it work?

25:51 - 25:53
Yeah. That's an interesting question.

25:54 - 25:56
Because my team is fully geographically distributed.

25:56 - 25:59
I have I have 3 engineers in Poland.

25:59 - 26:08
I have 3 engineers in the US, but opposite coasts, like one in California, one in Atlanta where

26:08 - 26:10
I live, and one in Florida.

26:11 - 26:14
I also have an engineer in Amsterdam.

26:14 - 26:18
I have one in Vienna, and I have one in India. Like, truly.

26:19 - 26:23
It's super easy to find the the the time slot in the calendar. Right?

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It is 11 AM EST.

26:24 - 26:25
That is the correct answer.

26:28 - 26:35
So, yeah, I mean, I I get out to Poland about once every 3 months to, you know, spend some face

26:35 - 26:39
to face time with them, or they'll come stateside if we have, like, a more, you know, company driven event.

26:40 - 26:46
We are we, you know, we're working through the details of of getting the entire team together more often.

26:46 - 26:50
We just did an engineering team gathering in Warsaw.

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I guess it would be, like, 4 or 5 weeks ago, about a month ago, which, you know, as soon as

26:56 - 27:00
you get the team together, you you just feel that dynamic change every single time.

27:00 - 27:04
It's just like, these these people have been working together for so long, but now they're actually working face to face.

27:04 - 27:07
And the speed at which you get worked on is so much faster.

27:07 - 27:10
The idea the sharing of ideas is a lot faster.

27:11 - 27:13
And so there's a lot of value in actually getting together.

27:14 - 27:20
And now we'll always have a remote engineering team, just because I believe that talent exists

27:20 - 27:26
everywhere, and we should not limit ourselves to where that talent you know, who works for Spot

27:26 - 27:27
based on where they live.

27:27 - 27:29
I think there's a lot of value in spreading things out.

27:29 - 27:35
But with that said, it's really important to make sure you have the coverage you need for, you

27:35 - 27:37
know, certain hours of the day.

27:37 - 27:43
And that's where things get kinda tricky as soon as, you know, the clock strikes 12 EST, and

27:43 - 27:46
everyone in Europe or India is just like, peace.

27:46 - 27:51
I'm out for the day, and then I have 3 more engineers to cover everything on customer side.

27:52 - 27:54
And so that is definitely a challenging thing.

27:54 - 28:01
But, you know, as far as getting together, you know, I I'm out there seeing them at least quarterly,

28:02 - 28:06
and we have weekly meetings every Wednesday, 11 AM EST.

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All of our meetings that we have, you know, scheduled within all of engineering and so on, 11 AM EST.

28:12 - 28:13
It's just the sweet spot.

28:14 - 28:18
I think this is the greatest day of today, 11 AM EST.

28:18 - 28:21
So, like, for everybody working with your remote teams.

28:22 - 28:25
Exactly. You've got you've got 8 AM on the Pacific coast.

28:25 - 28:27
So it's early for them, but it's not too early.

28:28 - 28:34
You've got 5 PM in Europe, and that's, you know, on the later end, but it's not too too late.

28:34 - 28:38
I, you know, prefer not to have an 11 AM on a Friday meeting, personally.

28:39 - 28:41
But, you know, you're able to, you know, shift things around.

28:41 - 28:44
It's a little bit harder as soon as, you know, get India into the equation.

28:44 - 28:49
There's no really good time when they're literally 10 and a half hours different from the East

28:49 - 28:52
Coast, but, you know, can't win them all.

28:55 - 28:58
So I have I I promise this is the last difficult question.

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I I highly believe in learning from mistakes, and especially I believe that you have a entrepreneurship background.

29:06 - 29:11
So I I feel that entrepreneurs are really open about the mistakes and the learnings from those mistakes.

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And I'm just wondering, in your case, do you recall any, like, a significant mistake, decision

29:18 - 29:22
that you have made, And how did you and what what did you learn from it?

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I alluded to this one earlier.

29:26 - 29:29
I bit off more than I could chew with trying to run 2 companies at the same time.

29:30 - 29:34
I thought that everything was going so great with the Taproom that, of course, I can just kinda

29:34 - 29:38
leave it on autopilot and start this new company.

29:39 - 29:47
And in doing so, I realized just how it it was it was a a perfect storm, unfortunately, because

29:47 - 29:52
I was also dealing with, you know, the pandemic, obviously, was was part of it.

29:53 - 29:59
And so the shift in the markets and how how people were, you know, paying for projects and how

29:59 - 30:03
budgets were shifting around was absolutely a contributor to this.

30:04 - 30:12
But I my biggest mistake is I think I could have probably sold the taproom for a cool $1,000,000,

30:13 - 30:15
and instead, I ran it to the ground.

30:15 - 30:18
And that's because I was not ready to let go of it.

30:19 - 30:21
And instead, I ended up having to let go of it anyway.

30:22 - 30:27
And instead of getting a $1,000,000, I ended up with, you know, couple 100,000 in debt, which is now gone.

30:28 - 30:29
I paid it all back, so I don't care

30:29 - 30:30
about it anymore.

30:31 - 30:34
But, you know, that is one of those things that kinda sits with me.

30:34 - 30:39
And as I said before, you know, a as an entrepreneur, your business is your baby.

30:39 - 30:41
Like, you you tie your identity to it.

30:41 - 30:46
It is you know, you put your blood, sweat, and tears into making sure it succeeds, and it can

30:46 - 30:49
be really hard to recognize when it's time to step away.

30:50 - 30:54
And that I I fell I fell victim to that as well.

30:54 - 30:57
And I think there's a there's a way that I could have approached.

30:58 - 31:00
And the reason is not just for, like, yeah.

31:00 - 31:02
I could have walked away with 7 figures. Like, that's cool.

31:02 - 31:07
The problem is everybody else lost their job in the process of me having to wind down the agency.

31:08 - 31:14
And with that, you know, relationships were lost as well, which is unfortunate. Like, truly, truly unfortunate.

31:15 - 31:18
And so I think that's probably the biggest mistake that I I made.

31:18 - 31:22
And, you know, when I when I tell people now, you know, if I were to do it again, would I?

31:22 - 31:25
If I were to start over today, would I do this again?

31:26 - 31:27
And the answer is no.

31:28 - 31:33
I think it was a right place, right time of of starting the agency, growing the agency, scaling

31:33 - 31:37
the agency, and then I got very ambitious and very confident.

31:37 - 31:41
And I got overly confident in a time when everything was absolute chaos.

31:41 - 31:47
And that is what really drove me to the downfall of the agency and ultimately, maybe leading

31:47 - 31:50
to me leaving the start up as well and joining Spot.

31:50 - 31:54
But, I mean, I'm happy at I'm at Spot, so at least something good came out of it.

31:56 - 32:00
But I'm always like, I'm I'm seeing the the entrepreneurs on LinkedIn are talking with some

32:00 - 32:03
guys, and they are running 2, 3, 4 businesses.

32:03 - 32:06
And I'm always, like, impressed.

32:06 - 32:08
Like, how do they manage?

32:08 - 32:12
Like, I I know how about you, but I focus so much on one thing. Yeah.

32:12 - 32:17
And I believe that the focus on one thing and make it big and then jump to another thing. Right?

32:18 - 32:23
But they some guys can do, like, a few things and quite a big things. Right? Absolutely.

32:23 - 32:24
Like, you have only 24 hours.

32:24 - 32:27
I'm always like like, how they do it.

32:27 - 32:30
Yeah. I think offshoring allows you to do a lot.

32:31 - 32:39
And and and talking to some folks who run multiple businesses, that has definitely been a tool,

32:39 - 32:45
I'll call, I'll say, that, that they've used to unlock the opportunity to build multiple businesses at the same time.

32:46 - 32:55
To me, it then becomes a bit of an ethical question of what do you what do you value most in in building a business?

32:55 - 33:00
Are you in it to just make money with the understanding that, you know, you are likely underpaying

33:00 - 33:05
people because you want more profits from more businesses, or are you going all in?

33:05 - 33:07
And this is you know, it's not a blanket statement.

33:07 - 33:07
It's not black and white.

33:07 - 33:09
Like, there's definitely you know?

33:09 - 33:15
Again, we've hired internationally because we know it's cheaper, but I also recognize talent there too.

33:15 - 33:16
Like, this is a decision.

33:16 - 33:19
This is a, you know, a a well thought out decision we're making.

33:19 - 33:25
But, you know, I I see people brag about hiring somebody for, you know, $5 an hour.

33:25 - 33:29
And I'm just like, I my dude, I wouldn't brag about that.

33:29 - 33:32
That's not something to be proud, like, pride proud of.

33:34 - 33:41
But I I still think, like, it's the worst KPI that you can have to start the business to do it only for money. Right?

33:41 - 33:45
Like, if your major KPI is that, it's, like, a really bad approach.

33:45 - 33:47
You're gonna be really upset.

33:47 - 33:49
You're gonna be really disappointed in the end. Yeah.

33:49 - 33:55
There's there's so much energy, like, mental and physical energy that goes into running a business

33:55 - 34:00
that most people don't think don't really think about, and they see it as an opportunity, especially

34:00 - 34:03
during a time when so many people are getting laid off.

34:03 - 34:05
And everyone's like, here's your opportunity to become your own boss.

34:05 - 34:07
I'm like, they literally just lost their job.

34:07 - 34:13
They don't have stable income anymore, and you're saying, let's make it even more unstable by starting your own company.

34:13 - 34:20
Like, if you're ready to do that, by all means, but go in for the right reasons, for sure.

34:22 - 34:29
Okay. The last question that I wanted to ask is about, like, some books, resources, maybe conferences,

34:29 - 34:36
something that was, really influential for for you, like, as a leader that you learn a lot and

34:36 - 34:37
you had those moments maybe.

34:38 - 34:45
Yeah. Yeah. So I I cohost occasionally, as I mentioned, with a podcast called Dev Interrupted. I love their content.

34:46 - 34:48
I think there's a lot of really valuable content on there.

34:48 - 34:50
There are a lot of really great interviews.

34:51 - 34:57
I also have a page on my newsletter website for all the books that I recommend to everybody.

34:58 - 35:01
Crucial Conversations is one that's very high highly up there.

35:01 - 35:05
The culture map is definitely one. Let's see.

35:06 - 35:10
I read atomic habits every single year.

35:10 - 35:16
I think it's just always that's my my good January reset reminder of just like, hey. Break things down. Do you wanna change?

35:16 - 35:20
Like, break things down significantly. Yeah.

35:20 - 35:25
I would say take a look at the the page that I have on my, it's engleadership.xyz.

35:26 - 35:30
And if there's a book there's a link that just says books. See that.

35:30 - 35:36
You'll you'll find a bunch of my my reasons for recommending books and who I'm recommending them to as well.

35:37 - 35:39
Awesome. Thank you very much, Kelly, for today's talk.

35:39 - 35:45
It was really honest, answers, I have to say, so I really appreciate it.

35:45 - 35:47
Thank you so much. Appreciate the time.

35:49 - 35:54
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