Rob Seolas – Co Founder and CEO of ObservePoint

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Speaker 1 00:00:02 Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast with Julian Castelli. Each week, we talk with senior tech leaders to explore stories and insights about the challenges involved with growing technology companies. We hope that these stories can help you become a better leader and help you navigate your own growth journey.
Speaker 2 00:00:27 Hello and thank you for joining the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, where each week I talk to entrepreneurs and leaders in the tech industry. past guests have included CEOs and CXOs of great companies like Work Front, Healthcare, Rebecca Systems in Moment, Vox, Pop me, the San Francisco 40 Niners, and many more. this episode is brought to you by Growth elevated at growth elevated. We’re a community of tech founders, CEOs, and CXOs who are committed to working together to share best practices and learnings in an effort to become better leaders. We do this through educational programs like this podcast as well as our blog and of course, our annual tech summit up in the Wasatch Mountains of beautiful Utah. If you enjoy skiing and working and networking with other tech leaders, check us out at Growth elevated.com.
Speaker 2 00:01:20 Today I’m super excited to welcome Rob cialis to the podcast. Rob is a a technology leader and and CEO in Utah. He has a proven track record of driving, business transformations. And one example we’ll talk about today is, is the strategic rebranding of auto that that led to almost ten X revenue growth. His expertise is in talent acquisition, team building and strategic partnerships. And he’s used those those capabilities to to fuel growth and success. As co-founder and CEO of Observe Point, he expanded the company globally, securing strategic partnerships and achieving significant financial milestones. his leadership is marked by a focus on innovation, operational excellence, and cultivating a strong corporate culture. Please welcome to the show, Rob. Silas.
Speaker 3 00:02:13 Hi, Julien.
Speaker 2 00:02:14 Hey, Rob. How are you?
Speaker 3 00:02:15 I’m doing well. It’s great to be here.
Speaker 2 00:02:17 Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Great to have you on here. today, I’m looking forward to catching up with you. So, you know, tell us a little bit about Observe Point. You know, you and I got to know each other many years ago when you were the CEO of Observe Point.
Speaker 2 00:02:31 It’s a it’s a very successful company in Utah. You you raised several rounds and grew that for for several years. you know, give us a little background about that company, how you got involved in it, and what do they do with their customers?
Speaker 3 00:02:44 Yeah. You bet. Well, sir, point was just a terrific, you know, ride in a in a great company. And it’s even better company today. The company was co-founded by myself and John Pestana and we really understood that you’ve got to get your head around data privacy and governance and what’s happening on your website. And so we just recognized the need in the market and decided to kind of jump right in. And this was back in, 2011, 2012 when we really kind of got started.
Speaker 2 00:03:15 And it was it, was it the regulatory, was it driven by regulatory complexity, just cybersecurity complexity? What was the catalyst that you saw in the marketplace that said, hey, we can we can we can help people deal with this?
Speaker 3 00:03:28 Yeah, that that’s an important component now.
Speaker 3 00:03:30 But it was not a very important component in the early days. The early days when we started, the company was just around the pain of implementation and governance around martech, martech.
Speaker 2 00:03:41 So really marketing and all those, all those cookies and, and, tags that you’re putting on.
Speaker 3 00:03:45 Yeah. I mean, you better have an idea what’s happening on your website. Right? That’s that’s really what it comes down to today. Back then, it came down to you’re a marketing practitioner of an analytics team in a big digital company, and you’re trying to manage all these different martech technologies that are rapidly changing and understand what’s happening. And there’s just a need to kind of manage and govern that. And that’s kind of where we started. We’re almost at the execution layer, if you will.
Speaker 2 00:04:11 You know what? I’m remembering our conversations back then and and I recall you saying, like, hey, you might be in your second or third iteration of team leaders in marketing, and you have all the the baggage from previous teams still on the website, and you might not even know it.
Speaker 2 00:04:25 So you might have multiple different cookies or, or, automation, tools doing the same thing or maybe even working contradictory to each other. Right?
Speaker 3 00:04:34 Absolutely. Yeah. I do remember that conversation that was and still is a really standard pain point because large brands, large companies usually have a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and it’s pretty messy in there. And so who’s actually collecting what, when and where? Who owns that? has always been a real problem in the martech space on websites in particular. And now it’s it’s changed a little bit Now the market says you better govern and understand what’s happening on the website. And so part of the regulatory piece that you mentioned has really become a reflection of the growth of martech. And and frankly, at times, companies inability to not get every little piece of data that they possibly can on a, on somebody. And so that’s kind of a response to it saying, hey, you need to tell us what you’re actually collecting and make sure that’s all that you’re collecting.
Speaker 3 00:05:23 And, you know, that’s a difficult thing for, you know, marketers. that’s what I observed. Point exists. And that’s the problem that we solve.
Speaker 2 00:05:32 Oh, terrific. Okay, so you’d seen this problem. obviously you and your partner were very active in web marketing historically, so you kind of in this space, you saw it. And who were you? Who were you selling to? you know, how long did it take you to find that product market fit, where you understand the buyer and who had the pain at the customer?
Speaker 3 00:05:53 Well, in the early days, the initial thrust was into large enterprise, our first real key customer that really changed the business. And this is a kind of a story into itself, was we landed Turner. So Turner’s all the different Turner properties, including CNN, which at the time was one of the most trafficked websites in the world. And with that, we were able to really, really leverage that the, the, the problem that kind of that happened, you know, when, when people in, in our tech world say, you know, that first whale customer is really, you know, a dangerous customer because they can kind of like take you places you don’t necessarily want to go.
Speaker 3 00:06:32 And that’s that’s a little bit about what happened to us. But in a way that was a little bit unexpected. It was just that by being bootstrapped and, and then raising a really pretty modest series A, I think we were really under horsepower to try to attack a enterprise company as a really small brand. So we built kind of a lightweight product that. But for heavyweight type customers. and so we experience some real pain there. I would say the product market fit is only come in the last 2 or 3 years, where the market’s really kind of come to us in the technology chops of the company have really, improved dramatically. And because of that, you know, the company is well positioned now. And and that’s an interesting story too for people. Sometimes it takes time, which is the most frustrating answer anybody ever wants to hear.
Speaker 2 00:07:20 Oh, absolutely. That, you know, you’re under pressure the minute you take capital or even even before you said you bootstrapped. I mean, let me let me be really clear that that’s not a lower stress situation, right? Because you’re constantly trying to create capital.
Speaker 2 00:07:33 How long did you bootstrap like let’s let’s start. You started this company when in 2012.
Speaker 3 00:07:37 Well, we actually started before that, but it was not a real serious priority for myself or for my co-founder, John Pestana. I had sold a company with myself and two other founders to think partnership, and so I wasn’t particularly really ready to go out and do something. And, you know, John was, you know, figuring out how his transition from, you know, out of armature would eventually play out. And so it’s just a real light discussion. We really didn’t get going until we picked up Turner. Is that launch customer. Then we really.
Speaker 2 00:08:08 It was that early before you had even.
Speaker 3 00:08:10 Yeah we.
Speaker 2 00:08:11 Do it. So you get a whale very early okay. Now I see the gravity of that situation.
Speaker 3 00:08:16 That’s right. A couple developers, you know, you know, landing away. Right. We were bootstrapped and and our in the absurd point solution is a highly technical solution. It’s a highly, complex series of problems to solve.
Speaker 3 00:08:30 Imagine every single page on everybody’s website. Exactly. All the different martech technologies that are happening, the dynamic changes that happen every moment of every day. Being able to crawl all of that, catalog that and report that back to the brand with any type of accuracy. That’s a really hard problem to solve. And that nut’s now been cracked. But it was really hard in the beginning, and it made us, you know, the way it was going, wherever it really wanted.
Speaker 2 00:08:55 Okay. Yeah. He’s working. I see the boat being pulled by the whale. Especially if you only have a few few employees. You haven’t raised any capital yet. And so, you know, before that big enterprise customer, were you thinking you’re going to have a light, a light stack for kind of the SMB market or you really we just weren’t sure.
Speaker 3 00:09:14 Yeah, I don’t think we were sure. absurd point exists for anybody who has a website. And so I think we kind of thought, well, anybody who has a website, but it really turns out that the pain points exist highest at the enterprise level, and then they have the, the budget to be able to go out and to add a solution that helps resolve and remediate that for them.
Speaker 2 00:09:35 So when you, you know, again, whether it’s by a priori strategy or you, you get a whale hooked and starts pulling your boat around, you’ve got an enterprise customer, you’re starting to focus on the enterprise customer. Is that what drove you to say, hey, we need to put some capital in this and and do full time engagement. You know, for you and John.
Speaker 3 00:09:52 That was a big part of it for sure. The other was some entry of competition into the market. that that kind of changed, I think the outlook, we felt like the market was going to happen quickly, and if anybody else came in and got a big chunk, they’d catch up very quickly to where we were at. So it was time to the market.
Speaker 2 00:10:09 Yeah, actually, I think that’s a negative and a positive. Right. Because it’s a negative. You no longer have your own ocean, but positive is your validation that this is a real problem. People want to spend money to solve. Right.
Speaker 3 00:10:20 Exactly.
Speaker 2 00:10:22 Okay. So so when did you raise your, your first round and, and, you know, tell us a little bit about your, your, your funding journey, because sometimes we use those as benchmarks in terms of, you know, when you’re ready to raise a series A and, and, and what you learn from that experience. And then I know you guys raised a very successful series B and you know, you know, I’ve grown to to to be a very meaningful company at this point.
Speaker 3 00:10:43 Sure. We the first round was 2014 with Pelion, who are been absolutely fantastic people to work with. Chris Cooper and and Blake, who generally are best probably known through that firm, are just tremendous VC individuals. I mean, they they always are rooting for you. We never had an issue at all. Super positive experience with them.
Speaker 2 00:11:10 Fantastic. And so you raised that series A like, how large were you as a company at that point?
Speaker 3 00:11:16 we just crossed a million and RR and okay, $4 million round.
Speaker 2 00:11:21 Fantastic. And then, you know, how far did you grow before you started looking and saying, okay, maybe series B, we can double down here? Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:11:31 Well, when we, we had been like really serious bootstrapping. So when we decided to go ahead and, and, you know, take the loan, we were, we were eyes open that that’s really what it is. It’s an equity investment. But it’s kind of like a loan you have to pay back. And it just kind of changed the dynamics of like, we got to go. Obviously that money was raised to grow the business, not to sit there and with that, we very quickly went into negative burn, hired a lot of people, and kind of started going down that trajectory. So we were to almost at three years before we, raised our series B with Mercado,
Speaker 2 00:12:10 And, and, you know, what was the milestones you hit that kind of gave you say, okay, now we’re ready for a series B?
Speaker 3 00:12:16 Well, there are a couple, customer count came was coming up significantly.
Speaker 3 00:12:20 We had some, you know, really great wins with kind of exceptional brands, you know, Lowe’s American Express, you know, at one time, you know, 250 out of the fortune 500 companies. I think that number probably even higher now, obviously, as the company has grown. But we had we were getting significant early penetration, like we were starting to knock off these really big brands. And we have a, you know, credible NASCAR slide, if you will. And that was kind of.
Speaker 2 00:12:49 You had you had half the fortune 500.
Speaker 3 00:12:51 We had between that and some agencies that kind of service, those, we had very early deep penetration into that market. But that but that was also that same kind of problem. We were a lightweight product in a heavyweight market, and we did a great job punching above our weight class. optically, our a partnership with Adobe, that were incredible to work with. We just did an amazing job, I think punching above our weight class, but it was a hard technology problem to solve, and we were kind of really underpowered there.
Speaker 3 00:13:22 And that that led to just not being able to retain those customers on the basis that we wanted to. That led to a not not a, not negative retention, but overall just kind of real flat to soft retention. and then the problem we the problem started getting bigger and bigger. We had more of these bigger customers and it’s very difficult to catch up. This was also at a time when the technology landscape was different too. We couldn’t scale with AWS because AWS didn’t have some of the loops and hooks that we needed, and hadn’t even built out some of the functionality we were buying servers.
Speaker 2 00:13:59 Wow.
Speaker 3 00:14:00 Yeah, we were we were buying racks, buying servers because of what we were trying to do to solve this problem, to be accurate. And so it just became a much more expensive business. It became a much more, you know, hard, hard core engineering business, deeper technology business, especially with our customer base. And we were just probably under horsepower in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 00:14:22 So with the benefit of what you know now, you know, whether it be something you might have done differently, you know, you, you, you had this great traction and, and demonstration of need from the marketplace.
Speaker 2 00:14:34 Maybe, like you said, they’re punching above your weight in terms of the size of these companies. You know, what do you recommend to someone who’s got that kind of challenge today in terms of how do you, you know, catch up from a capital, from an expertise, from a capabilities perspective, what you know, if you could, like, rewrite the story, what? What would you have told your younger self?
Speaker 3 00:14:55 Yeah. I think, to really understand how long the lag is between, you know, in the creation of technology. Right. it just you can add a sales person and they can go out and contribute to the business, you know, within 60 to 90 days. And that’s at the time when a, generally a developer starts feeling relatively ramped and in the business, and their contributions are still much further down the way. I think it’s it’s a different landscape now. So I don’t know if the I don’t know if the exact same lessons kind of almost apply in the same way, but it does take longer and it’s harder to build tech.
Speaker 3 00:15:29 And so it just needs more time. And so when you scale, scale with the hard stuff, first, scale with the things that are more difficult to scale first, it’s easier to add the lighter weight stuff. And we kind of added all of it once. And so one, you know, even exacerbated the problem. More of what we had, you know, being a heavyweight with the lightweight, lightweight budget and kind of a lightweight, sized business talent, headcount experience, those type of things.
Speaker 2 00:15:57 Yeah. Scaling technology is hard no matter what. But then when you, when you have to go to enterprise, I mean quite often that’s an entirely separate chapter for companies as they go along the journey. And it I’ve never seen it be a six month exercise or a one year exercise. It always takes longer than than than you think. And it sounds like you had that challenge even maybe before you were ready, which is a blessing and a curse, I guess.
Speaker 3 00:16:23 Yeah, that’s right. It is a blessing and a curse.
Speaker 3 00:16:26 And I think a lot of the companies that come through it often, I think, you know, either have a they just basically solved that technology problem sooner. They’re able to solve it soon enough that it doesn’t become a little bit of a ticking time bomb later. And we were able to kind of diffuse it barely, and, and move forward, in the last 3 or 4 years. There’s, you know, since I’ve left the company, John stepped in to really focus on technology and product. Then it’s been a complete landscape change, and now the product market fit is really there for the business, and the business is primed for a pretty exceptional run going forward.
Speaker 2 00:17:08 Oh that’s exciting. So, you know, what were some of the we’re talking about the challenges, but talk about some of the things you’re most proud of at the journey and any, any milestones or accomplishments that, you want to highlight?
Speaker 3 00:17:20 Yeah. There was a couple different things I, I thought did particularly well in the business.
Speaker 3 00:17:25 I mean, we, we won the awards that you win when you do certain things. Right. We made the Deloitte 500 list on the on the tech side that’s, you know, an enviable list to to be able to get on, you know, 5 or 6 years we were, you know, multiple years were Mountain West capital, you know, top 50 fastest growing in the state of Utah. So and that continues still. So the lot is just tremendous thing. I think we built a really good culture, a culture that people that care about each other and are dedicated, trying to solve hard problems. I think that was, a really good piece. I think the company did a good job of finding talent every place you could find it. you know, we had we have we’ve had a, you know, an amazing story of somebody that started at the front desk. And, you know, she’s now in senior leadership, you know, over at a at a public company. that’s.
Speaker 2 00:18:18 Awesome.
Speaker 3 00:18:18 So those type of things, I think we did, you know, particularly well and I’m proud of that. I, I see people that I worked with, you know, currently and because I’m still on the board and while I was active as CEO and there’s a deep connection and I get a lot of people saying that was the funnest company in the funnest place and the most enjoyable work experience I’ve had. And I’ve heard that heard that enough times to to really believe that. And it means a lot to me.
Speaker 2 00:18:47 Well, that’s awesome that that speaks to the culture you’re able to build. And and I know that special bond you have with the with with those team members that helped you, helped you build it. So that’s a that’s it’s one of the real upsides of what’s often a very challenging process. Right.
Speaker 3 00:19:03 For sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:19:05 So okay, so you had a great run there. And then you, you you jumped into a business called auto and and you, you know, it feels like the impact was a little faster in this one.
Speaker 2 00:19:15 Tell it tell. Give us the quick overview of auto please.
Speaker 3 00:19:17 Right. Yes. it was, you know, Covid year, right. Coming right off. Covid is, so, you know, a lot of different businesses were trying to find the talent and I was looking for like a next opportunity. And I didn’t, you know, have a lot of familiarity with the founder or the investors at the time. But I was I was brought in by one of investors. I did know, and it was a great little company. It was servicing independent car dealers and it was a it was a tech play. And they had actually like homegrown, some pretty interesting tech, and it just needed a kind of more experienced, I think, scaler to come in and try to help scale the business. I think the first thing, the biggest thing to mention there is just kind of getting your branding and your and your feeling right for the for the market, for what you’re trying to communicate. There was a kind of a founder name called First Period Administrators, and I rebranded it as auto.
Speaker 3 00:20:12 And that really did just instantly.
Speaker 2 00:20:15 Tell us the before and after again, I think, I think I like the second one, but give us the the first name was what.
Speaker 3 00:20:20 First secured administrators.
Speaker 2 00:20:22 That’s a tough one. Yeah, that’s a tough one. I thought it was a lot easier to remember and logically associate with the industry. Right.
Speaker 3 00:20:29 Yeah. Auto with two T’s. It’s like it’s it’s been really great for that business. So you know grew the business a lot there. you know that’s an interesting space as well. There’s been so many businesses that have been really impacted by what’s happened in the marketplace, and that one in particular, you know everybody who’s been paying attention to the used car market and new car market knows the automobile industry is super, unstable with inventory problems for a long period of time, you know, shortages in parts and then inflation and interest rates. There was a lot of headwinds in that business. And, you know, ultimately, I thought the business could be better served by being more of a tech focused business.
Speaker 3 00:21:10 And the founder really had his original vision and wanted to continue going down that original vision. I really respect that. So, you know, we decided to spin off the technology side into a little business to see what that would look like, to kind of test the marketplace. And that’s that’s a quick company I’m involved with as a founder called metrics, metrics AI. So it’s basically pulled the tech out of out of auto enabled to leverage that into a different market, which has been it’s been a fun little couple of months doing that.
Speaker 2 00:21:40 Well, fantastic. Congratulations on that. So, you know, now you’re at a point where you’ve been through the grind at a at a business, you know, taking it, you know, through from from, bootstrap through series A through series B, getting to be a meaningful size company, you’ve been able to take some of your expertise and apply it to another, another tech company in the vertical, you know, software space for, for autos. you know what, if you look back at this, what what are some of the biggest lessons you you carry forward if you had a chance to do it again?
Speaker 3 00:22:14 that’s really hard.
Speaker 3 00:22:16 how much time do we have? Right.
Speaker 2 00:22:17 Pick. Pick 1 or 2.
Speaker 3 00:22:19 Yeah. I think anytime you you’ve been an operator, you look back. I think number one thing is, you know, find coaches and expertise. I did that observe point, but I did a little late. And so find others that you can really, help pull you out of the day to day part of the business. or if you’re the type of CEO and that is actually very outwardly facing the business and don’t spend a lot of time finding a coach that helps you integrate and pull that into the business on like an execution layer. Those are the things that are important to. And so the best. You know, we just got done watching the Olympics. Every single person that made the Olympic team that there for any major country had multiple coaches. Yes, multiple levels of performance, performance coaching, nutrition, coaching, all these different kind of things. And except for.
Speaker 2 00:23:11 That guy in the in the the handgun shooting who just kind of walked off the street and won.
Speaker 3 00:23:17 Well yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:18 Well there is.
Speaker 3 00:23:19 Yeah, yeah. He showed up late after buying a pack of Lucky’s, you know, across the street. I mean, it’s it’s pretty amazing what I love.
Speaker 2 00:23:26 Watching that again because like, you know it obviously was a was a big hit with the media. But I went and watched that and I noticed like, you know, all around him there’s the coaches huddling with all the other other people. And you know, sometimes you have just the Clint Eastwood style. He just comes and goes out and shoots. But we all look at that and say, that’s what you should be as a founder, right? Like, like that guy. But the truth is there were 50 competitors and everybody else was working with with with coaches.
Speaker 3 00:23:49 That’s right. Yeah. And it might be that he works diligently with the coach in prep.
Speaker 2 00:23:54 Yeah. Behind the scenes. Right.
Speaker 3 00:23:56 But not in performance in like in at the actual performance. And that’s probably a great lesson of coaching too, is find the type of style that works particularly for you and and what you’re particularly needing and kind of week on if you will.
Speaker 2 00:24:09 Yeah. So so okay so you’re looking back. You do that sooner. Where would you look. How do you find these people. Right. You talk to your your board. Do you talk to your your investors. Like how do you you know you’re it’s not it’s not as easy as you think. Right. There’s a reason why both you and I didn’t do that immediately.
Speaker 3 00:24:26 Yeah, I, I think there’s there’s a perception issue, that hopefully I think is changing, for, for a lot of, you know, CEOs, you know, I grew up with a and understanding CEOs like, you know, like Steve and, you know, nobody thought Steve We’ve needed a CEO coach because he didn’t need a CEO coach. But he you know, he’s a pretty unique individual. and there’s other parts of his life that, you know, maybe in with some hindsight, we don’t look at in the same glowing way that we did maybe at the time, especially with the work life balance that I think a lot of people have come to understand is a real high value to them.
Speaker 3 00:25:07 so finding performance coaching and doing that and there’s they’re all over the place. you know, that’s one of the things I’ve started to transition into because I just so believe in it. I’ve started, coaching with Petra. Petra is a been a tremendous, you know, group to join. There’s only about a dozen of us, to even, like, possibly come a coach. You have to have a pretty amazing track record as a 20 year plus, type of executive. And, you know, we come in to really try to help businesses, scale up into bigger, better, more performant businesses. And we really sit there at the execution layer. And it’s been that’s my favorite layer of the business. It’s kind of the most interesting to me, so I’ve really enjoyed doing it to basically sharpen my skills as well. And it makes me a better, better individual and a better person as a coach because I don’t want to stand in front of people without knowing and believing in what I say and what I do and and how I live my life.
Speaker 2 00:26:12 Well that’s awesome. That’s great to hear that, that you found that and are paying it forward through your experience and, and in partnership with this group like Petra and, I, I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying it.
Speaker 3 00:26:25 It’s it’s been pretty incredible experience. I’ve been in front of companies. I never thought I would buy asphalt companies, veterinarian, pharmaceutical supply companies. But you very quickly understand how important it is that executive teams scale and grow with the business. And so for, you know everybody that listens to to you, Julian, in this podcast, you know, you have to find people that work for you now and in the future. And that doesn’t mean that they’re along for the ride forever. Some people in early part of businesses that are amazing Swiss Army knives, you know, that’s where they should stay in the business on the executive team. And that’s probably one of the hardest things to learn as a CEO is there’s a time and a place for just about everybody, including yourself.
Speaker 2 00:27:12 And that is a huge that is a huge lesson.
Speaker 2 00:27:15 And it’s almost impossible to to come in with that expectation, right? Because there’s so many forces that are trying to emotionally and circumstantially and, and pressure wise, you know, causing you to fall into that trap. And it’s one of those ones that I find is the easiest to recognize. Looking backwards.
Speaker 3 00:27:33 Agreed. It’s certainly hard to see in the moment, isn’t it? And that’s why sometimes, you know, coaching or advising, whether you’re talking to your board and you hopefully you have that kind of VCs that I was lucky enough to have, that I could do those type of things and have those conversations. But that’s really important to be able to to, you know, get out of the weeds and really understand what’s working in the business and what’s not. And it’s tough to do that when you’re in there hacking away, building the path for everybody else. But that’s what you have to do at times as a CEO. So you know that going in between those altitudes, I think, has always been the most difficult challenge for CEOs trying to scale companies.
Speaker 2 00:28:11 I think that’s a great, great lesson. And, I’ve heard it many times before. I think that’s that’s something that, would be really valuable to learn. the other thing, going back to the Olympics, you’re very passionate about about mental and physical health and longevity. Yeah. I’m going to embarrass you a little bit, but I think you you you shared that, you know, you looked at your biological age, and it was it was incredibly impressive and better than mine. So, you know, talk to us a little bit about longevity.
Speaker 3 00:28:40 Well, I think if you know the future is going to be very different. And for one of the reasons is, I think longevity science is very quickly figuring out how we dramatically slow aging. my most recent test is, you know, I’m I turned 53 this year, and my DNA test, which not everybody believes in, says I’m 43.
Speaker 2 00:29:02 So congratulations. I just got ten years there. That’s fantastic.
Speaker 3 00:29:06 But, you know, being healthy is a great part of performance.
Speaker 3 00:29:10 If you can’t, if you want excellent performance on the outside, you have to have excellent performance I think on the inside. and part of that is having a focus on, you know, longevity and, and overall health and my sense of what longevity science is going to do is it’ll change the landscape. I mean, we might have a CEO who’s 100 years old on the inside, but we’ve done so much with the longevity that they, you know, function like a 35 year old with that kind of drive. And what does that mean for the future of leadership? I think that’s a big part of what’s going to be answered here in the next 20 to 30 years, because I think we’re that close.
Speaker 2 00:29:46 So I can’t think of anything more exciting. Right? It’s the it’s literally fountain of youth at the same time. I’ll use myself as an example. I get excited about that when I, when I hear the success someone like you has had. And then I get intimidated by the, the mass of information that, you know, and people trying to sell you this supplement or that, like, do you have a recommendation of one source? If I wanted to learn about longevity and something that has some practical but but, but you know, in a busy lives of CEOs.
Speaker 2 00:30:14 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:30:15 The guy who’s the guy who’s probably got the most noise, but and the most accomplishments and the most science, while at the same time probably having the biggest number of detractors is Brian Johnson, who’s actually a Utah ex Utah. He’s ex Braintree Venmo.
Speaker 2 00:30:29 Okay.
Speaker 3 00:30:31 and it’s a fascinating story on its own, but he’s probably done the most to try to take this amount of knowledge. He’s like, he’s hired an entire staff and spends millions of dollars a year trying to analyze the information, and then he makes it all free. And then he says, this is what he’s doing. He’s now he does now have a product and supplement that he sells, but he encourages you to do it other ways to only do it that way if you’re too lazy to do it any other way. and I kind of like that approach. I think he’s honest in his approach and is about as good a source as anybody. Doctor David Sinclair and of the Harvard MIT lab, he’s probably the best. If you really want to get to right to a technical source.
Speaker 3 00:31:10 He’s been on Rogan most multiple times and multiple podcasts. So David Sinclair is a is a good initial taste of what longevity science has in the future as well, because he’s on the cutting edge of what they’re doing on the actual lab side of it. Brian Johnson’s on the actual cutting edge of how we practically apply that to our lives, which is really the really easy fundamentals. Sleep sleeps. The most important thing that you do if you don’t sleep for 24 hours, you’re basically blowing like a point one. You’re you’re essentially be DUI. That’s how bad our decision making is without 24 hours for most people. That’s number one. Number two is basic exercise. Nothing crazy like the for longevity. It’s the minimal amount of exercise with the maximal, input towards health and lifespan. So you’re not saying let’s go run a triathlon. That’s bad for the body. The longevity experts say let’s go the minimal with the most impact. So it’s efficiency which everybody in this audience will love.
Speaker 2 00:32:09 So what’s an example of that? What do you what do you what’s your go to.
Speaker 3 00:32:12 Well so like you can do like an hour workout and just do a like a light dumbbell hit workout and get kill two birds with one stone. You’re doing some weight training and you’re raising your heart rate in an interval type, hit oriented way. that’s like 35, 40 minutes a day. And between that and then a good diet. Mediterranean is probably the easiest. But there’s a lot of good diets. That’s where most people get hung up. Most people get way too wrapped around the axle of diet.
Speaker 2 00:32:41 Right. And the supplements and this and that powder and pill.
Speaker 3 00:32:45 And that’s why doing like the blueprint kind of way is easy, because you said, look, this is three years and millions of dollars of research. Use it this way if you don’t want to figure it out yourself. But if you want to buy it yourself, here’s how you do it. and then the last, the last couple that I think have to be mentioned is just a mental and emotional health. We are now, after living through Covid, really understanding what’s happening with mental health.
Speaker 3 00:33:10 And I think, you know, there’s questions on social media and all these other types of things. I think it’s much more aware than we’ve ever been, and it should be a healthy, normal part of our discussion in our health is our mental and emotional health. Because who wants to live forever if you’re not happy? Who wants to live? Who wants to live a long time? If you feel depressed or anxious all the time, right? So everybody has to be healthy, healthy mind and body.
Speaker 2 00:33:34 And the impact that it has on your team. Who wants to work for a grouch or someone who hasn’t slept for 24 hours, or someone who’s not happy meant, you know, mentally and physically. So I think that’s a great point and I’m grateful for you bringing that up. So, Rob, this has been a fantastic conversation. Where can people find you today?
Speaker 3 00:33:53 Easiest way is probably LinkedIn. Or if you want to send me an email. Feel free Robert Tsai.
Speaker 2 00:33:59 Awesome. Well, Rob, thanks for taking time today.
Speaker 2 00:34:01 I hope we’ll see you at the The Tech Summit in January. And well, appreciate appreciate you joining us today.
Speaker 1 00:34:12 Thank you for listening to the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, would you please follow us and subscribe on your favorite podcast player and we’d be grateful if you recommend it to a friend. If you’d like more resources on how to become a better leader in business, we invite you to visit us at Growth elevated.com. We’ll be back next week with more insight from another great tech leader. Thank you.