How Top CEOs Achieve Fast and Sustainable Business Growth

Transcript

Jeff Bullas

00:00:01 - 00:01:57

Hi everyone and welcome to the Jeff Bullas show. Today I have with me, Tim Cakir. Now, Tim is an international man. He was born in Istanbul and then has been born to I think a French mother and a Turkish father. He's not quite sure what he is most days because he's in the middle, but Tim is a growth entrepreneur who helps companies, entrepreneurs and students achieve fast and consistent growth. He's worked with 17 startups to date, some of his best achievements including helping 2 startups achieve, received €1.7 million in a rising 2020 funding, we'll find out what that is, increasing monthly revenue run up, run up of one start up from 80k to 300,000 in less than 18 months and completing projects such the implication of OKRs, building dashboards and re branding and product launches. He loves his technology tools and platforms, so we're gonna have a chat about that because tools are one of the most important things with technology companies.

Tim's passion for helping people realize their potential is one of his focus is to bring their ideas to life, in other words, to act on their ideas. He also teaches Bachelor and Master's programs at two universities in Barcelona because one's not enough. So it's the Esiesei International Business School Barcelona and the Geneva Business School and I've heard of Geneva. During his spare time, you can find him sailing, watching Formula One, which we can talk about briefly as well. I just started watching that and re watching that again and they're in Mexico this weekend I believe. Or growing veggies in his garden obviously wants to get back to his roots instead of just playing with tick and on Saturday nights you'll find him in the DJ booth because he loves his music.

Welcome to the show, Tim.

Tim Cakir

00:01:58 - 00:02:02

Hi Jeff, thank you so much for the amazing introduction. It's a pleasure to be here.

Jeff Bullas

00:02:03 - 00:02:55

So, Tim's in Barcelona which I've never visited, but I've heard it's a beautiful city And it's 10 pm at night and it's 8am here. And this is what I love about technology, Tim, as we can have a high definition video chat from the other side of the world and record it and they can share it with our audience. I never take this for granted. It's an absolute pleasure to be able to have these fireside chats to discover. Some of the secret sauce that you've discovered along the way to help companies grow, especially in a digital world. So Tim, what got you into this growth startup area? So was there a-ha moment? What was it? Was it a religious experience? I don't know what it was, but how did it happen?

Tim Cakir

00:02:55 - 00:04:12

So I started my career in sales, Jeff, and I was selling carpets door to door in California and about and beyond. So the whole US, I did a couple of US trips in a truck and selling carpets door to door and I'm not very proud of it when you think about it now, because I sold the compass to people that didn't need competence, but I needed money and I was 18, 19 years old, I needed the cash. I was in the US, it was the American dream for me then I realized that I saw something called marketing suddenly and I was like I can find the people who actually need the carpet right? Or people that need that product that I'm selling. And that made me switch to marketing.

A few years later when I was in London in the UK, what I realized is that by mixing my knowledge of sales marketing and then I went to learn a little bit of development products and coding and I was able to call this growth and then I realized there was this movement that people were calling growth hacking. And I realized that hacking wasn't a really sustainable way of growing companies. So I try to kind of change my approach from growth hacking to finding more strategies, processes, tools that can help you achieve sustainable growth.

Jeff Bullas

00:04:12 - 00:05:06

Right. So yeah, I totally agree with the growth hacking. It's like this one off magic card, you pull out of a magic box and it just suddenly turns your business into a billion dollar. It all sounds sexy and really fascinating and sometimes you stumble upon an idea that really just works and that could be timing. So I remember that I discovered Twitter and it's early days along with a lot of social media was very organic. So you could, I worked out a way to growth hack Twitter by using some tech to actually follow automatically follow people. Then I grew up big distribution list. It was to mainly follow people. So I grew my distribution. It was a little growth hack, little opportunity and we know the stories of the A B and B. Uh I think growth hacking, I think it was read it or something like that where they a, Quora..

Tim Cakir

00:05:06 - 00:05:14

Craigslist. Yeah, there were, yeah, they're getting the traffic from Craigslist.

Jeff Bullas

00:05:14 - 00:05:48

So there's these wonderful myths and stories of growth hacking. So what's your approach when you're engaged by a startup or a company to create sustainable growth in a digital world? Because the thing is in the last 10 years, the way we grow companies and the way businesses is a very, very different to what it used to be, isn't it? So what's your process for sustainable growth? I'd be interested in the steps and so on.

Tim Cakir

00:05:49 - 00:08:31

Yeah, I can definitely give a quick overview, it's gonna be quite a quick overview obviously, but basically what I realized is that there is one major problem in most companies, especially after the 55, 70, 75 people, after that communication becomes a big problem, even if we say, oh yeah, we have Slack, we have a workplace Facebook or whatever and everybody says oh we communicate a lot, we have a lot of meetings, we have Zoom as we mentioned and there is still an issue of communication. All the communication that we try to do is synchronous in meetings and in offices as well if we're not remote, but asynchronous, we don't have a proper way of documenting things, knowing what, who's doing what, so that we don't repeat the work, making sure that we all run in the same direction. The rowing in the same direction, I think that's why I guess I love sailing as well, you know, going into one way is definitely, I've seen this in every company is everybody's trying to do something else. We do bring some goal setting, frameworks like OKRs and so on, but people don't believe in it. So what my first thing is to make sure that we all understand the same thing, that we all run in the same direction in each department and how do I do that is by trying to bring better frameworks, not just better, but more sustainable frameworks than OKRs. Right, so we take OKRs, objectives and key results just for the people that may not know, and what we try to do is to actually start talking more about the challenges that each team member, each department has as well because right now, what I realized is that we all got into this a bit fluffy, I'm gonna call it and we're all like goals, “Revenue goals, revenue goals, revenue goals, revenue goals”. But nobody says about the problems that we have, right? And when we start talking about the problems and we're announcing these problems or we're documenting them and putting them somewhere, we always find another team member who has a solution for it that we've never expected.

So what I'm trying to mention here is my first goal is to really bring the collective intelligence and really tap into that collective intelligence that you have in your team because you've hired these people for a reason, don't put them in a box, don't put them in a box and say this is your job and that's the only thing that you're doing. No, you have to be able to actually have more cross skilled teams and this is why I create growth squads right after that. What's gonna happen is growth squads, one person from product, one person from marketing, one person from sales, one person from customer support, sometimes even a finance person, they should sit together and they should act as a team as a growth team because the things that they will find together as looking from different angles are so much better than the things that we can do as one kind of team that only thinks about marketing, if that makes sense?

Jeff Bullas

00:08:32 - 00:10:03

Yeah, I agree totally. The collective intelligence is a genius frankly of groups, especially when you bring them together without putting them in boxes, I think, is can be very surprising and they come up with ideas that I'm constantly surprised by my team and really enjoy the insights they provide and going, yeah, that's a great idea. And this happens every week and I agree with you on these synchronous because synchronous is really good because you can record something then it becomes documented, then you actually can then create a process from it. It's something to me that certainly emerged, I think, over the last especially in the last 12 months to two years it's become more in the consciousness of companies. Is this synchronous communication or asynchronous communication?

And look, what I've been doing too has been interviewing new team members, writers, copywriters, and what I do is I record the interview so I don't have to have everyone show up in the interview together to chat to the potential higher. I actually just record it and then I share it and then say tell me what you think and they can watch in their own time. So it's a much, much more efficient use of time and especially I think asynchronous becomes even more important when talking about teams just like we are in different time zones. So what are your favorite emerging tools? What are your favorite asynchronous tools?

Tim Cakir

00:10:03 - 00:10:58

I mean I love what you mentioned about recording your interviews. If you record your interview and the interview lasts an hour, you might not send a whole hour to someone so that they watched the whole hour, right? So if we can start actually transcripting that and putting tags or putting like marks in it. That's much better. So we do have softwares like platforms like Grain, grain.com. There's a bunch of them now, other ones, what it does it will record our Zoom but it will put all the text together. I can have a little note pad next to it and I can say oh that was a good moment. I can just flag it. I can just put a little comment. So when we share it we don't have to go throughout the whole video but we can just watch the important bits where our CEO on the old hands said something that we want to go back to. So I think that first of all on the synchronous, we can asynchronous that by recording about making it more digestible so any to like that it's a Grain and so on

Jeff Bullas

00:10:59 - 00:11:00

How’s Grain spelled?

Tim Cakir

00:11:01 - 00:12:12

G. R. A. I. N. and Loom video I think it's one of my favorites. Yeah, absolutely. You know, just record like sometimes we try to write an email and we can explain what we're, what we're trying to say. You just do a two minute Loom video and that's it, right? So these are more on the bringing the synchronous to asynchronous and trying to do a better communication. But right now I'm obsessed about one tool that I'm gonna bring it right now if you don't mind. It's a Notion. Yeah, if you've heard about Notion, I think they've got valued now at 250, you know, they got 250 million and they just got valued at seven billion. They're a note taking tool. They started as a note taking tool, but they've taken that power into something that what we call it became a no code tool so we can do things like building almost platforms, a notion to do our day to day work, to do our weekly sync to ultimate many many processes and so on. And I've been obsessed with it since the beginning of Covid. So it's been about close to two years that I've been learning inside out and it just really saved, I think, my sanity.

Jeff Bullas

00:12:12 - 00:12:18

Okay. And what do you typically use it for?

Tim Cakir

00:12:18 - 00:13:31

What I don't use it for? I learned about this framework called P A R A which is Projects - Areas - Resources - Archives. And what I've done is I've built a second brain as some people call it. And my second brain basically is I'll have all my projects. I have all my areas, I have all my resources. Everything comes into one platform where I can find anything that I need when I needed. We have so much information out there, Jeff, as you know it, we bookmark things, we put it on different links, bookmarks and folders. We tried to copy and paste things and so on. We use every night, we use so many of these tools that I realized we had so much information in so many places or we try to keep in our brain and our brain. I think it's definitely not made to store information. Right? Low cognitive work of remembering things now should be stored somewhere. Right? So Notion really taught me that and this P A R A methodology. So I'll have even things like our family finances. We have just a three month old baby. We even have all her paperwork and everything on Notion, you know, so I'm trying to really centralize it to become my professional and my personal area.

Jeff Bullas

00:13:32 - 00:13:36

Okay, so with PARA and that stands for methodology of process.

Tim Cakir

00:13:37 - 00:13:40

I know it's Projects - Areas - Resources and Archives.

Jeff Bullas

00:13:41 - 00:13:42

Projects Areas

Tim Cakir

00:13:43 - 00:13:44

Resources and Archives

Jeff Bullas

00:13:44 - 00:13:48

Resources and Archives. Sorry about taking notes here, but

Tim Cakir

00:13:48 - 00:13:50

That's all right.

Jeff Bullas

00:13:50 - 00:14:25

We're here to learn apparently. So Notion is one tool that you're using, which is great because that's the big problem isn't like you end up with so many tools I think. And then the other problem tools is when you subscribe to the tools, forget to use them and then suddenly you're paying for them every month and you check your credit card and going, Oh my God, it's $2,000 in expenses of tools I'm not even using because try to remove yourself from subscription products is sometimes very difficult or hard to find or even though so

Tim Cakir

00:14:25 - 00:14:30

Retention, that's the retention strategy, rough people.

Jeff Bullas

00:14:31 - 00:14:42

So your growth strategy is asynchronous. Okay. Getting better communication on the same page. Okay. Where do we go from there?

Tim Cakir

00:14:43 - 00:17:40

Well, where we go from there is it's getting, as we mentioned, one of these frameworks, if it's OKR or something that I'm inventing a new one that is gonna be hopefully soon next year, I'm gonna write a book about it. It's the GCO. Goals, Challenges and Opportunities and I've been starting to talk about a little bit out there. It's basically goals is what OKRs does with the objectives and the key resource, qualitative and quantitative data and then the seas for challenges and this is where I mentioned about the problems, the issues and so on. Some companies will have an issue log but it's just an issue of somewhere you never see it again. Maybe the CTO sees it, a couple of people in engineering will see it, but that's it. Instead challenges is something that even a customer support agent can raise a challenge and say, Hey, I keep fixing this thing 10 times a day, right? And then somebody suddenly can bring the opportunity from a different department and say, Oh, that's a very easy fix, I can do that in an hour's time and then they fix that. And that opportunity becomes a quick win and a really good hack if you want to call it, which is not a hack, but a nice little thing that is done there and and then for growing the company.

So after you have this framework and everybody agreed, we've tapped into it. It's collective intelligence. So it's the ideation sessions being able to whenever you have an idea, a place to put it, if this is called a mirror board, if this is called a Notion document or even if you want to G Suite drive, I don't mind. But I want everybody in the team to be able to do ideas and to bring ideas, as you mentioned, your team. They have brilliant ideas and it comes every week, but sadly, we're not shocked anymore. It's in many companies, this doesn't happen sadly, right? People don't, they don't speak up sometimes, so we have to create a space for speaking up is what we have to create the space that everybody feels comfortable to speak up and to say what they have in their mind. So it's very psychological and it's very HR, the first things that I do, I think from their own, it's definitely going back to the tools, Right? So what tools do we have? Do we have a proper marketing automation platform where everybody knows how to use it? Even sales can help marketing to the right campaigns, right? How many times marketing and sales will blame each other for the quality of leads, are not closing the leads and so on, so to get rid of these, it's great to bring people together into the same platforms.

So these are really the first approach that I do, but then it really goes into, okay, who are your leads? Where do you find them, as you mentioned, the Twitter hack, that's fun. It's not sustainable, but we can find many other sustainable ways to do that if you bring value, you can automate LinkedIn and making sure that it's the right people. So those will be little strategies that will put in place, but then the overarching really, it's making sure that we're all speaking the same language and that we're going into the same direction.

Jeff Bullas

00:17:40 - 00:19:18

Yeah, it's very interesting. So, and you know, right, the entrepreneurs all the time. And the big thing too, despite all the tools and great communication, bring them on the same page, is that turning those ideas into action. And I was interviewing Stephen Sommers from Ireland recently, got behind marketplace superheroes, amazing young man, mid thirties, several businesses, Facebook, fulfillment by Amazon, businesses training, owning $20 million turnover e-commerce platform. He said one of the things that changed his life and helped his team was a book written called The 12 Week Year and a very interesting book about that, the growth happens out of action rather than specifically just goals because in other words, we're going to take action on priorities. Obviously they've got to be priorities. Okay, So, but keeping everyone accountable to having completed action, but do it in sprints. Yeah, not stressful sprints necessarily but keeping everyone accountable. So now, I think, you know, the big thing I certainly hear as I talk is that a successful entrepreneurs, the ones that have actually acted on the ideas, and I suppose keeping the team accountable and that as well such, that's certainly a great book that I recently read The 12 Week Year,

Tim Cakir

00:19:19 - 00:20:11

I will read that one, thank you and since we're talking about books, I'm just going to talk about Atomic Habits by James Clear. I love that the simplest thing is 1% growth every day, right? We don't have to, we don't have to do such life changing things every day. But by doing a little bit, little bit, little bit, little bit every day, we will grow, right? And this is where I think we forget we get stuck so much on planning what we're gonna do that we actually don't execute it right? So when we execute it, even if it's a mistake, that's great. If we're gonna fail, that's great. But we will know why we failed and the next time we'll do it better, right? But if we don't do anything, nothing happens. And we're just talking, we just keep talking. We just keep planning and strategizing five year companies and then nothing happens, right? Don't strategize five years, strategize the next three months, in the six months, go for it. And you learn as you go.

Jeff Bullas

00:20:12 - 00:21:10

Yeah. The learning happens from doing. The house will reveal themselves in the action. That's really, and because a plan is just a prediction of the future and in a faster and if you think about it, this is really fascinating. It's like, oh yeah, I'm knowing, I know what's going to happen in five years time because I've written a five year business plan and going, you have no idea you are going to get like everyone has a plan to get hit in the face. It's a famous Mike Tyson quote. So, but the marketplace is going to tell you, so that's the only way and I've, I've just read a great book also by MJ Demarco’s The Millionaire Fast Lane and Unscripted is quite raw and real though. And so I try to agree, for me, if the business plans are longer than one page you've over planned because you just don't know.

Tim Cakir

00:21:10 - 00:21:22

Absolutely. And this is why I don't even do business plans anymore. I'll do a business model canvas at BMC. A very quick business model canvas go with it. Business plans are for investors who doesn't know where to invest in

Jeff Bullas

00:21:22 - 00:22:32

Yeah, the magic is in the doing. It really, really is. And you talked about, you know, Atomic Habits by James Clear. I've read that book. Great book. I certainly agree is the thing I ask myself every day if I'm on a new project, new product, we're launching a new product soon. I said, what did I do today to move that forward to create momentum? Just even if it's just one thing because we're all getting, we get busy in life in our business running it, managing it. But then if you want to launch a new aspect of business, new product, what did I do to move this forward today? And I think that's something that, and you think about it if you did that every day, that's 365 actions in one year and you got to be playing a long game. Yeah, that's growth. So what other insights you learn along the way with growth that have surprised you? What surprise have you had the last, I suppose 12 months to two years?

Tim Cakir

00:22:32 - 00:24:21

I mean maybe I should not say this because I'm a Growth Consultant, but is that I don't believe in what we call growth because I think that everything should be growth, we're doing something to grow to do better. We grow, kids grow now I'm seeing, you know like with my baby and I was writing it on my news that there was really hilarious, I was like with my baby, I was still, I'm still experimenting and learning because the first time father, but obviously there is more at risk now, right? So I have to be careful about the experimentation and not, that's what I really realized that growth became at this buzzword and we will see very soon that we won't have sales department or marketing department, everything's gonna be growth right now, as you see in the movement, product led growth, sales letter growth, everything's growth led something or whatever. So what I really realized is that at the end of the day, what we're all trying to do, it's is growing a company or growing ourselves or growing whatever we're doing, but if we focus on revenue and this is where I saw the great CEOs or the bad CEOs differences is the great CEO doesn't focus on revenue right? The bad CEO does focus on revenue and their only goal will be revenue and they won't grow and this is what I realized, the great CEOs that I have seen that I had the chance to consult and advise and help and learn from actually alone. It is the one who actually are obsessed with the problem that they're trying to solve and they don't think about the money. The money comes, the money comes if you're solving something. If you're solving a real problem that does come. So I think that, now lately, especially the last couple of years I'm really starting to also be obsessed about this, about what is the problem that we're solving, what is the solution that we're bringing to that.

Jeff Bullas

00:24:21 - 00:25:28

Yeah, I totally agree with it. If you think about you know the likes of Uber that tried to solve rate actually Uber adds a lot of value because it solves so many problems like they basically show up when they say they're gonna show up. It makes payment easy. That was a problem to stumble with your credit card. So the value they add that fixed the problem of the taxi industry which was just you know have been basically like a protected species for in many countries and now no longer there and then everyone is screaming that Uber is breaking all the rules. But sometimes the only way to make things happen is to break rules. And these man made rules right? These are rules of government, rules of men and why should you play the game by everyone else's rules? So that's what I love about MJ Demarco's book, Unscripted. Okay so why follow everyone else's template?

Tim Cakir

00:25:28 - 00:26:22

Innovation will happen just, sorry I cut you there, but innovation will happen even if we wanted or we don't want it right? Innovating the taxi industry. What's going to happen? It happened. They didn't like it. It's still happening. Other things are going to happen. So many of the industries are going to be changed. They're gonna be optimized. Innovation is going to come. We have to embrace it now instead of saying “Oh they're gonna take my AI machine, learning is going to take my job.” No, it's not gonna take your job. Actually, it's going to take the low cognitive power things that we don't need. The human brain fall, in the human brain it should start thinking outside the box more and start creating again and focusing on that intelligence instead.

So I think that we need to embrace innovation now. I mean if we haven't yet because it's happening in every day. Problems that we see in everyday services that we use and it's just the beginning.

Jeff Bullas

00:26:23 - 00:27:14

Yeah and what's excited me. You know the silver lining and Covid despite the loss of life which is very sad. What the silver lining is dragged us kicking and screaming into the future and solved a lot of problems that would have taken 10 years of natural evolution to solve an innovation? It's like asynchronous communication Zoom, like remote work. Right? So everyone's rethinking the workspace. How do we work? Do we need to work in a city? Do we need to drive an hour each way? So, I read a really interesting quick snippet this morning. The news about someone saying is driverless cars and all the tech for that necessary. Why don't we go, why don't we ask the question? Do we really need cars? Why don't we actually create cities that don't need cars and are walkable?

Tim Cakir

00:27:16 - 00:27:18

And that would be incredible.

Jeff Bullas

00:27:18 - 00:27:29

Yeah. So, and you know what I love about European cities, is there much more walkable than most because they were designed and built before the car?

Tim Cakir

00:27:30 - 00:28:21

Yeah. Since you read the snippet, I just saw an image that actually quite impressed me. It was some cities in 2050 and there was the image that looks like a postcard image of these cities and Barcelona, Madrid actually looks very green. Very innovative because it is happening here. Sadly, some cities in South America look very dark and gray or in Asia as well. There were some other amazing cities in Europe that were looking very, very, very attractive for 2050. Right? And what is this? As you mentioned, it's we're walking everywhere. We don't have to go to the office. Maybe we do have to do some meetings to have face to face, but we're living according to that, wherever we have to be. And that shows you a better future. Running to Mars is not the solution, in my opinion.

Jeff Bullas

00:28:22 - 00:28:24

Yes. Of fixing the problem.

Tim Cakir

00:28:24 - 00:28:28

Yeah. It's not fixing. We're just running away from the problem. We're gonna do the same exact thing there.

Jeff Bullas

00:28:29 - 00:28:45

It's like giving a pill to actually fix something. But not fixing the underlying symptoms because we got, we need more planets to rape and pillage rather than actually, why don't we work out how to live on the one we're on. So that'll be pretty cool, wouldn't it?

Tim Cakir

00:28:45 - 00:29:45

That’s really one of the things that, you know, on this big, you know, big profiles, big businessmen, you know, that I'm getting a little bit sad and we all want to go to space. That's great because we were obsessed about it because we don't know what's there. Let's go. And we're forgetting to help here. We're helping a little bit, but we could do so much more and we can actually fix the problem that we have at 10. And Covid, just before the Covid were becoming much more conscious about this. Then Covid hit. We completely forgot about this because we got obsessed about our health and we got very sad. Very and very scared. And it is that a lot of lives were taken and it's very very sad. But we got back to plastic, we got back very easy to plastic to masks on the streets, gloves in the beginning. And that very quickly took us back on the tops that we have about saving the planet. And if we don't save the planet, it is not just the virus that is going to kill us. Mother earth will take us.

Jeff Bullas

00:29:45 - 00:30:27

I totally agree. And one thing I did enjoy about lockdowns for example was the simplicity. I didn't have to worry about the planning, the busyness, the commuting and the travel. You're able to focus on what mattered. And that was even Zoom calls with friends and family and exercising more. Look, I exercise normally quite a bit. I keep active. Need to move. You don't move, you die. That's gonna happen anyway. But the reality is that we need to keep moving. So now I'm gonna quickly go back. We need to finish up here shortly because I'm aware of your time because you're gonna fall asleep cause it's nearly 11pm. in Barcelona.

Tim Cakir

00:30:27 - 00:31:17

That's something before, Jeff, if you don't mind because you're open something great there about how Covid. And I think that I had some people telling me, oh networking is dead or like they had some problems about networking. I used to network in Barcelona for the free beers right after meet up groups and so on. All right. And now suddenly I was able to network with all around the world, right? There was not a clubhouse but a lunch club. If you're aware of it, like it would introduce to people randomly from all around the world. When we were locked down inside the house, instead of traveling in hour where you know, you're in the metro, stuck with some people sweating. You sweating. I was able to sit at home, meet people, meet people in Australia, meet people in Asia and I met so many more people in my network. It got so much wider during Covid than just living in the city.

Jeff Bullas

00:31:17 - 00:32:41

Oh it's fantastic. Without knowing, I actually planned and launched the podcast like one week before COVID hit in Australia. So I've interviewed 100 fabulous awesome people, entrepreneurs all around the world over the last 18 months. It's just been fantastic. It's like and I get all these insights and ideas that I sometimes steal and use in my own business. But it's just been fabulous to actually have this medium and technology platform to do this. Now, the question I had was you said that growth is really just see the best people that know how to grow their businesses. CEOs are obsessed with problem solving. In other words, how can they solve that big problem they're trying to solve for their clients? We mentioned Uber is part of what that idea came out of solving the whole range of problems actually. So beyond that, what are some of your maybe a couple of quick takeaways to finish up here? What are some top tips you'd say to people that want to grow apart from the one to be obsessed with problem solving for your clients? What are some of your top to a couple of tips for you to leave with our audience today?

Tim Cakir

00:32:41 - 00:34:00

Absolutely. I think maybe it's gonna sound ridiculous but be obsessed about that, that customer be obsessed about that persona that you're trying to solve the problem for. And really don't be obsessed about your product because a lot of us were like we built this product, forget about the product. The product will change, the product will become something that is, it wasn't what it was in the beginning at all. You'll pivot a lot. I think that the other kind of tips that I might have is, you know, use technology for the good cause you know, and make sure that you know why you're using that technology. I come to companies that as you mentioned, they'll have 50 tools, 20 of them are useless. They don't even know why they're using it. It's just they have it for a reason. They tried to centralize it. More tools doesn't mean that we're fixing the problems inside our company. So, you know, be a bit more selective. Be a bit more selective because I know there's so much options out there. And the other thing is, you know, build something that is sustainable itself. Build something for a mission for a vision, right? Don't just build a company because you want to also make money because you're not going to go very far. But if you do build something cause you have a vision, you will have a bunch of people that will follow you and there's a bunch of people will do a lot of things for you and you're gonna have a great time and you're gonna enjoy every day and it's not going to feel like it's work

Jeff Bullas

00:34:00 - 00:34:05

Fantastic. I think. So, what you're saying is have a vision and bring people with you and start a movement,

Tim Cakir

00:34:06 - 00:34:57

Make sure to find the right people who has the same vision, right? Because a lot of us have vision, and we don't know some. The leaders know how to speak about it and are charismatic and they know how to publicly speak, right? Public speaking. Some introverts, we don't know, they won't know, but that's okay. They also have a vision and the second they found that vision that matches their vision, they will follow. They will code, they will do the marketing, they will do everything at their best. But this is why in the US, there was the big resignation right? Everybody's leaving companies that they don't believe, everybody wants to create their own businesses and so on. Right? It's because the world is switching so please please please please let's forget about the industrial age and how we industrialized everything. But let's talk about, you know, let's think about how we're going to innovate the problems and how we're going to create a better future with our companies.

Jeff Bullas

00:34:58 - 00:35:01

Yeah. And that's to bring people with you and look after them along the way.

Tim Cakir

00:35:01 - 00:35:04

Yeah. Absolutely. And then look after you,

Jeff Bullas

00:35:04 - 00:35:06

Look after you and we look after each other. I'll take this.

Tim Cakir

00:35:06 - 00:35:13

Yeah exactly. That happy world a little bit. But is what we need though, right?

Jeff Bullas

00:35:16 - 00:35:20

What's that? All the world needs is love. Okay, that's cool. All right. That'll do. Problem solved.

Tim Cakir

00:35:20 - 00:35:22

We’re going back in the 70s.

Jeff Bullas

00:35:22 - 00:35:46

Problem solved. Okay, thank you, Tim. It's been an absolute pleasure. I look forward to catching up in real life sometime in Barcelona and have a beer or a wine. I don't know what your favorite drinks are in Barcelona, but I'm sure they fit all those categories. Glass of water. It doesn't really matter. So thank you very much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Tim Cakir

00:35:47 - 00:35:55

Jeff, thank you so much. It was a great chat and a lot of learnings here as well. And as mentioned, hopefully you're coming to Barcelona soon. There will be wine, beers, all of it.

Jeff Bullas

00:35:55 - 00:35:56

Looking forward to it.

Tim Cakir

00:35:56 - 00:35:58

Okay.