Claude Silver - VaynerX

Claude (00:00):
We're building the single greatest human organization in the history of time. So I was like, sign me up for that. I've always been a player coach. I've always been a person that's on the field, arms sleeves, rolled up, wanting to get dirty, wanting to understand, and also being able to see the entire chess board from up here. My superpower is my ability to feel and to trust my intuition and to think about people in a very different way, in a non-judgmental way. Hey. Hi. We made it. How are you doing?

Kyle (00:39):
Good. I'm so excited to talk to you. Sorry for the technical.

Claude (00:44):
I had your number. I was like

Kyle (00:46):
Totally. I was sitting in another studio going messing with the Rubik's cube and just hanging out and chilling. Yeah,

Claude (00:53):
Totally. Where are you located? In

Kyle (00:55):
Atlanta.

Claude (00:56):
Okay,

Kyle (00:57):
Cool. Yeah. Amazing. How you doing?

Claude (00:59):
I am good. I have one more week with this guy and it's been a long eight weeks. So good. Everything else is taking, its time to heal, but I'm grateful. I'm lucky.

Kyle (01:12):
It's good. At least it's stuff that can,

Claude (01:14):
Yeah, it can heal.

Kyle (01:15):
Go back to normal,

Claude (01:17):
Which is good. I know that if a kid broke their wrist, they'd be up in at 'em in four weeks, but the more gray hair you have, the longer it takes. Oh

Kyle (01:26):
My gosh. I tell you, it's so weird, especially when I hit forties and I just turned 46 and now it's one of those where you go out with some friends and you're going to have one or two glass of wine you're going to celebrate, but then you start to hit, I'll hit eight or eight 30 and then by the second glass and then for the next two days I'm drinking water and electrolytes and

Claude (01:47):
Oh my God, the a whole electrolyte thing. We're so funny. Oh

Kyle (01:51):
My. Oh my gosh. And all the vitamin, I'm like parsing out all my vitamin DC did I get some turmeric? I'm laying all these things out and I was indestructible in my twenties. I was just like,

Claude (02:02):
We're so funny. I know. Soon enough we'll just take one pill to do it all or some injection or something.

Kyle (02:08):
It will be, can you believe I'm 130 right now? It just look so good. Well, I'm excited to talk to you. We just on this, I don't really start very formally and they're like, let me sort of hold up my questions and ask you. It's really just more of a conversation and I'm super excited about your, to dive into your background, but also I think one of the biggest things, especially as a small business owner starting very early, but somebody that's been so conscious for so many years about culture and about building the right relationships and communication in teams to do that in startup environments and things that move really fast. And so I'm excited to learn.

Claude (02:50):
Yay.

Kyle (02:52):
If you're good to dive in, I would love to just start from Chief Heart Officer, you're the glue, you're the culture, you're the culture lead from a Vayner X and Vayner media perspective. What are sort of the key benchmarks and milestones that led up to that,

Claude (03:10):
To creating this role,

Kyle (03:13):
To creating this role and to being in this knowing that this was either where you wanted to be and what you wanted to do, and were there some key moments in your past that led to that?

Claude (03:25):
Yeah, if I look back on my past, I can see that I'm exactly where not only I need to be. I want to be. I've always,

Kyle (03:34):
Did you get that moment though, by the way? Did you have one of those moments early when you knew you fit where your puzzle piece fit, right, and you got the little hairs or

Claude (03:45):
God, exactly. Yes. I get chills all the time in this role also, which tells me that I'm in the right role, that there's something here that happens that I will say for me, it's very spiritual, it's very special. It's hard to describe because there's a bond or intimacy that is created even on screen. I mean, we're looking right at each other, and so I have no idea if you have pajamas on or sweatpants. You have no idea if I do too, but I can see your eyes and you're paying attention and I'm paying attention. But I've always been a player coach. I've always been a person that's on the field, arms, sleeves, rolled up, wanting to get dirty, wanting to understand, and also being able to see the entire chess board from up here. And it's just one of those things that I'm lucky that I'm able to do that, but the way I'm able to do that is by getting into the dirt.

(04:38):
I'm not a philosophical person that can say from on high, this is what you need to do. I have to feel it and taste it and touch it. That's very much who I am and get into the work and get into the mess of being human. And so my whole life, even when I was a strategist and working on client side business, I always managed and led really large teams. Maybe they were global, maybe they were in the same city. And I loved doing that because it's not like, sure, it's being a teacher, but I'm also learning. It's this kind of a doey dough. I'm learning every single day with every conversation I have, and hopefully I can impart something based on the experience I've had. I'm not an academic and I can't tell you that we've built a framework for X and a framework for Y, but I can tell you how to go about creating a culture that is rooted in people feeling safe, people feeling like they belong, and a great comradery.

Kyle (05:44):
Does this come from, is this a DNA thing? Has this come from family and friends growing up? Did this, what led you to be drawn towards building and nurturing culture and people?

Claude (05:57):
Yeah, so I do think part of it's DNA. My mom's a psychotherapist, my dad's an entrepreneur, venture capitalist. I come from a family that is generous in spirit. My nana, who I've spoken about many, many times who called me heart from a very young age and I called her heart. But to really break it down, I felt like an underdog for a very long time and I felt like I was missing a chip, literally missing a chip. And it wasn't until my mid twenties, late twenties that I started to understand that, oh no, actually my superpower is my empathy. My superpower is my ability to feel and to trust my intuition and to think about people in a very different way, in a nonjudgmental way. But it took me a while. It took me years of feeling like I didn't belong. I was a very poor student. I was a late bloomer I think in terms of dating. So all of those things, when you put all of those things together, what I knew I wanted to do was help people fundamentally identify and remove shame. That's literally it. And I thought I was going to be a psychotherapist as well, and I found that I could do this work without people knowing I was doing the work

(07:22):
And have a day job.

Kyle (07:24):
Do you feel like solving or understanding, not solving, understanding yourself and how your brain and your soul work was the thing that subconsciously and then probably more and more consciously that you were like, okay, I figured this out about myself. I can help other people figure that out?

Claude (07:40):
Yeah, I mean, I couldn't sit here with you if I didn't have any kind of self-awareness. That I think is the alpha of figuring, of being able to even be an empath, even being compassionate and understanding that everyone else is going through their stuff and you have to be mindful of that and going on that journey. For me, going on that journey very young in my life, I started, I would say probably around 22 of really diving into therapy of spirituality. I took many courses on clairvoyancy and chakra energy work, and I took all of that for me to understand quad and why I was a self-sabotage or why I was getting into the same relationship over and over and over again. And that was very important for me to figure out because I knew I was supposed to do something in this world. I knew it wasn't supposed to be suffering though. And that took me a while after many, many of the same relationships. Totally. Wait a second here.

Kyle (08:49):
And it's funny because I feel like there's something so similar. I'm sure we had different paths, but there are common threads. I feel like as a neurodivergent, a DHD, but also as an empath, that just feels too much. If I go to a party or something, I am taking in the emotions of everyone that's there. I'm reading everybody's face, and it's one of those things that after I could be there 45 minutes or an hour and then I leave and I am just worn because I'm taking so much in. And I feel like that was actually to your point, became a superpower that I can hopefully identify when someone's either having a hard time or they're not really, or they're struggling or something like that, and I can empathetically try and reach out. But in your younger years, it was much more of I'd have guy friends and I'm like, you just need to learn to be an asshole. You know what I mean? You just got to, and it's all that. This is the super simple sort of fix to being empathetic and understanding of other people as you just need to be a jerk, whatever. And I'm like, wait, that? Yeah,

Claude (09:54):
You're like, that doesn't fit with my chemistry. It doesn't. And you just hit on something that I can relate to and you're right. What I love about human beings is that we have very different lived experiences. As just said, you and I grew up very differently, I'm sure, and gender wise we're very different just there, but we all have very similar emotions, those it's not like you have an emotion that comes from aliens, and I've never seen that emotion. We have relatively the same emotions, which I think gives us a common language when we are aware of emotions being dyslexic and being diagnosed dyslexic as an 8-year-old, and as I said to you, I felt like an underdog and I felt like I wasn't, wasn't good enough. I really felt like I was failing, not only me, I felt like I was failing my parents. A lot of that pressure taking the SATs three times on time, all of those things that

Kyle (11:00):
I took the acts a few times, you can kind of do a little better on the acts and then it feels like

Claude (11:06):
You're like, oh, yes, I did

Kyle (11:07):
The same thing.

Claude (11:09):
But that scoring is ridiculous.

Kyle (11:11):
I know.

Claude (11:11):
So that right there gave me a different way to see the world,

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Which

Claude (11:19):
Is what you just said as well. And I too pick up on emotions, right, left and center. But what I've gotten much better at because it needs to happen is I do not take those on. I have gotten, there's no way I could and get out of bed every day, come back to work or be in this world if you think about it. And that's not to disassociate. It's literally when I'm speaking with someone I'm creating and then we are creating space here that is very neutral and that person put whatever they want into that space. When that conversation is done, I wrap that little bucket up, big bucket up, and it goes someplace and gets neutralized in the Hudson River.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yes,

Claude (12:06):
That is.

Kyle (12:07):
I love that. What

Claude (12:07):
That energy work really helped me do, which was identify when I am starting to get very webby or when I start to cross boundaries, I get a warning sign inside and it doesn't feel good.

Kyle (12:22):
Right. And obviously it's so key for entrepreneurs and to be in the entrepreneurial and startup space that as you're starting out, you take on so much of all the people that come in and I'm sure the evolutions of taking someone in and someone doesn't really fit, but then you're like, oh, but I don't want, and I just put this person on, and these are the things that sort of keep you up at night. And I imagine that being able to do some of that work early and to have those tools is so key because otherwise you're going to go through some really, really rough periods in the beginning of a startup,

Claude (12:59):
Of a startup, of being in school, of doing anything that is new. And you just said a phrase that is a phrase that gives me a rash, not in the way you said it, but in a workplace and in a workplace and in society, we deem people that they just don't fit in. What I want to say is, what do you mean they just don't fit in? Do they look different than you? Do they speak different? They neurodivergent? Is it that they didn't go to the same Ivy league that your brother went to or can they not do the skill? So one of the things I did when Gary and I created this role 10 years ago now is I changed the way we were hiring from culture fit to skillset fit and culture edition, which means we do hire for skillset. We need you to know how to come in and how to program Facebook's ad ad program. We need that. And you happen to be a great person and you're going to bring all different kinds of curiosities. To us, that was fundamental because before it was we hire apples and apples and apples and apples. So when I started, the floor looked very similar, just looked like you really

Speaker 3 (14:24):
Right.

Claude (14:26):
And that's not okay. And it's certainly not okay to be an advertising agency and have people all look the same. That's not how you get

Kyle (14:34):
Totally. Yeah.

Claude (14:36):
So same thing I think when you're thinking about a startup too, is you are hiring for skillset. You can't afford the time to waste and hire someone because they love surfing. And you love surfing too. That's an added bonus. You need to hire someone that's going to be able to hit the ground running, I believe that has enough emotional awareness and is able to regulate their emotions enough so that that's not getting them stuck or you're not spending so much time being a therapist because you all have a job to do, especially in those first hundred days, the sprints that you need to do as a startup founder. But at the end of the day, I don't see a difference between that and just hiring for skillset and getting ready to go. And what we do here other than we have 2000 people here and we probably hang on to people a lot longer than we should because we're nice guys and maybe we haven't given people clear, honest feedback with love and kindness, so many things. But I think when I think about the startups I used to be at way back in the day, there just wasn't that luxury. The money runs out

Kyle (15:53):
And for me, it's like when I say someone might not fit, sometimes there's also, and there's another layer where it is, you may have the skill, but whatever, sometimes life can be in different places for that person. And while the person sort of has the technical skill and the experience is we've had people come in and I mean just all around sort of culture and skill and everything and everything sort of fits and then it just doesn't fit whether it be coming from what was a more sort of managerial role into a more hands-on role and needing to sort of move fast and that just doesn't fit and other things like that. And so it's so interesting trying to find those things that align just right.

Claude (16:39):
But it's funny, you said in the beginning when we were waiting for each other to join Riverside, you were playing with the Rubik's cube and that's exactly what, it's exactly what it is. Because as much as you and I would love to look at everyone as an individual, and I'm sure we do, we also have to do things at scale. So I want to be able to spend time with each and every person and understand what's not working now that worked in those first six months or that worked in those first two years, but also building things that can scale is absolutely such a priority for you two.

Kyle (17:18):
Well, so what was, just prior to Vayner X and then the chief heart officer, what was the role or the period of time that led just up to that?

Claude (17:30):
Yeah, I met Gary when I was living in London and I was running digital strategy at a large advertising agency working globally. It was awesome. And my best friend met Gary over at Unilever and she said, I don't know what it is about this guy. Your two sides of the same coin introduced us. And then we started talking. I came to New York, moved to New York, and started with him in May of 2014. And I was the first SVP that he hired. I was way older than everyone on the floor. The average age was 23. And soon enough, I was kind of his right hand, even though my job was to run our accounts and strategically advise people and make sure that the teams are running and all of those things, I was also doing a lot of the hiring. I was doing a lot of the terminations.

(18:19):
I was that person that had experience. I had a team of 60, which was so phenomenal and wonderful, and I really treated it like a liberal arts school. When we would have weekly get togethers, I would have cupcakes and sparkling water and bubbly, but also it was time to read poetry and we would do that. And really I wanted to bond on a very human level. I didn't want to bond on, let's talk about the campaign that you just ran because people can fall asleep when you talk about that. So what ended up happening is I got this overwhelming feeling, which I had had before, which told me I am supposed to be of service, of joyful service, and I was no longer interested in finding out if this should be blue or green or cursive or black water. It just didn't matter to me anymore.

(19:15):
And I knew that there were people in this world that are much better at it than me. So I went to Gary and I said, thank you so much. I love this place. You're the best, whatever, but I don't want to do advertising anymore. And he said in that moment, he said, what do you want to do? And I said, I only care about the people here. I care about the heartbeat. That's how we ended up going to Hart later. So about eight months later, I actually resigned because there was no rule for me. It wasn't that I lost the love I needed to move on with life, which he'll say he took as a real gut punch. He didn't see it coming, even though I felt I had already told my boss I wasn't interested in this anymore. And then three months later we sat down at breakfast and he said, that's it. You're coming back. You're chief heart officer.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
I love that.

Claude (20:09):
I just knew what that was. At that breakfast, I said a couple of things, I'm not hr. I've never done hr. I don't want to be hr. And he said, that's totally fine. You'll create a team around you. I hired the right people. I said, what are we building here? And he said, we're building the single greatest human organization in the history of time. So I was like, sign me up for that. That's aspirational. I will be doing that until my last breath. And then I said, how do we know if I'm successful? He said, you will touch every single human being and infuse the agencies with empathy. And so each and every day, that's my job to figure out how to do that, how to scale that, how to infuse that. So other people are doing that because it takes a village. And so that was what was happening. I was first over across the pond doing what I love doing, which is strategic work. And then I was here and really building the agency with him. And then we created this role.

Kyle (21:13):
Oh my goodness.

Claude (21:14):
Yeah,

Kyle (21:14):
I wish there was a YouTube or Instagram video of that breakfast.

Claude (21:18):
Oh my gosh. I know there isn't there.

Kyle (21:22):
Oh my goodness

Claude (21:23):
Day so well, but there's a great YouTube video of the whole role and of him reintroducing me to the company, which was just one of the best days ever.

Kyle (21:33):
That's amazing. And the fact that you get to do that, especially with someone like Gary that can see things and can build things well before other people do, but just imagine trying to do that same journey at Accenture or Deloitte or you know what I mean, or whatever, where it sort of is like, well, I don't think the board's going to understand that

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Exactly.

Kyle (21:56):
Or I don't think these set of eps just don't understand what we're doing, but we're going to cut it. It's not in the budget. All the other things that sort of go into that. That's one of the things I love about entrepreneurship and building private businesses is the ability to go, Nope, we make it up and there's a new role and we're going to see where that goes

Claude (22:15):
A thousand percent. This wouldn't happen at any of those other companies or any of the past agencies I was at. And also, those companies care about different things. Quite frankly. They have to report to the board. They have a top line they need to hand in. I think they see people as commodities there, whereas people, VaynerMedia is the people. That's who we are. People, we're not a commodity. You don't have this company without these people.

Kyle (22:45):
If you were going to, and this is for the entrepreneurs that are just starting, just registered that domain name. There's an idea in the back of their brain, they're starting to get things going from a single or a set of co-founders to let's say the first 10 to first 50 employees. What are the sort of threads and through lines that you see that would be important to make sure that I think about all the ways that companies try and put culture together. We have a culture sort of notion space. You can go read all about it, the kind of operational pieces, but what are the ways that you have found to be able to infuse that and bring that empathy to all the different employees that could be used for startups in those early days?

Claude (23:34):
I think two things need to happen pretty simultaneously. I think you or whomever is the founder needs to get to know those 10 to 15 employees and spend time with them and understand what makes them tick. Not understanding just what you need them to do. Do they have families? Are they sending money back home? All those things. Do they like to leave at five and go to their kids' soccer practice? What's going on there? So who these people are, and simultaneously you need to let people know what we're building. Those two things I think can be married, but they have to be done with sincerity and consistency. You can't just be like, I'm going to meet Bob today, but I'm not going to talk to Bob for three more months, especially in those early days. And then literally there's the vision and together I brought this person on and this person on, this person on, and this is how we're going to build that. We're going to do a sprint that's going to get us to X. We're going to do another sprint that's going to get us to another round of funding. But you have to communicate. And one of the things that I think happens in a lot of startups, startup, especially with founders such as Gary, is so much of the company is here in their heads rather than shared.

(24:50):
And that can be a real bottleneck. And that can also set people up to really maybe not feel a part of, or not feel like they're successful if you don't actually know either what your KPIs are and also measured on and also where you're going. So when I asked Gary, when we sat down at that breakfast, what are we building here? I needed to know because if I didn't know, I wouldn't know. So he said, we're building the single greatest human organization in the history of time, great human organization building it. Okay, that's going to take a lot of,

Kyle (25:30):
Not the most profitable or the fastest moving

Claude (25:33):
Or

Kyle (25:34):
Whatever, just being

Claude (25:34):
Able, so what are we building? And he needed to tell me that. And then my job was to then get that into the water stream. And it is, everyone knows that at orientation when they start on a Monday, this is our vision. These are all the ways we build together to find our way there through connective tissue. So again, communication, transparency, really giving a shit who you've hired and why they're there, not only for you, but why they're there for themselves. I think that's just important. And I think time needs to be spent in that aspect. And then I'm, I'm not suggesting a coffee cold brew or foosball tables. I'm suggesting just real authentic jam and people being able to feel safe enough to express their ideas because we know ideas come from everywhere. And I have this saying on my wall from Rick Rubin, which says, create an environment where you are free to express what you're afraid to express.

Kyle (26:43):
I love it. Yeah, the environment, oh my gosh, that book by the way.

Claude (26:46):
Yeah, yeah. But that's the environment. And right there creates psychological safety.

Kyle (26:55):
I imagine that. And then also coupled with radical transparency, which is hard to get past when I think in so many environments there is this, everyone just plays this sort of back channel telephone of like, oh, this is bugging me and that bugging me goes to this person. And they said that this is, and it never sort of really gets to where it goes. And so practicing that, we've tried to Martina, my co-founder and I, we, we actually took something that my wife and I did early on. My wife and I called it reverse couch. So essentially what we do is we lay on the couch and I'll lay on one side and I'll lay on the other side, she'll lay on the other side. I'm like, you've got to give me something. Just give me something. And you can't get away with being like, no, it's all fine. And then she'll be like, stop putting the good knives in the dishwasher or whatever. I'm like, okay, great,

Speaker 3 (27:47):
That's

Kyle (27:47):
Great. That's a good one.

(27:49):
But we're in this moment where the goal and the job is to give me something. So I'm asking honestly. And then being able to be like, okay, great. Now you give me something. We found that once you do that a couple of times, knives in the dishwasher is pretty easy to lead to. You come home and you're distracted with work and you're elsewhere, come back and be here. And it's like, okay, now I get this. But if that had been shared over dinner while I was stirring spaghetti and it sort of came out of nowhere, you'd be like, wait, where's this coming from? And you're all of a sudden in a defensive position. So Martina and I started doing that too, where we have weekly catchups and I'd be like, you got to give me something. I love it. Give me something. And it's

Claude (28:37):
Like, because always something, there's always something. One of the things that I don't know how to solve, I think we're all trying to figure it out, is what that primal fear is of not being able to have that radical transparency or as we call it kind candor

(29:00):
With another person. The kindness is who we are that's already baked into this culture. You don't have to question it. It is here. And I would say 98% of the people are probably extremely kind, compassionate and generous then. So with that kindness, you already know I'm coming from a place that I want the best for you. This is my honest truth. This is the candor that there were a lot of spelling mistakes in that document and we sent it out to a client without proofreading it as simple as that. So next time I need you to make sure you spell check whatever it is, but that we still have a resistance whether or not it's because we were told do unto others as they would do unto you, whether or not we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, those types of things. But when we withhold, we just manipulate someone's growth, quite frankly, or happiness or ability to be in partnership.

Kyle (29:57):
Well, and I think also, I think about when I was in New York, I ran operations at Fjord, which was a customer experience agency. We had about 60, 65 people there, and we worked really hard at trying to do those kind of feedback things. But you also watch the organism of a team, and I think people get nervous to disrupt the water of that organization that if you tell Bill or Sue that this sort of isn't up to snuff, then it's like the waters get sort of messed with and that people take it differently and egos get hurt and things like that. Unless it's sort of done in a very, very thoughtful. So I think to your point about the kind candor is it does have to be very intentional, I think about how you sort of set that up and almost practice dry run it versus just telling everybody to kind of be open and honest.

Claude (30:57):
Yeah. Oh yeah. Some people have to script it out.

(31:01):
Some people really do. My next conversation is going to be a very difficult conversation with someone in the LA office, and I'm meeting with someone prior to make sure that our communication is, we know what we're saying and we know how we're saying it because no matter what, the person on the other end of that screen is going to feel a certain way with the news I'm going to deliver, it's going to happen. And so the most I can do is make sure I am a super present and calm and graceful and extending that to a person that isn't going to necessarily like or agree with what I say.

Kyle (31:42):
How do you try and connect and touch and have empathy with all the people that you work with? Obviously in this sort of new world where so different being in an office with everybody and being able to have quick chats over coffee and things like that. And now we're, the dynamic of how you communicate people is so easy to get it right in Slack and text and email and Zoom. And so are there any of those things that you think about being really intentional with to try and communicate?

Claude (32:14):
So I use Slack a lot or I text a lot and usually on my way to work, I might pick five random people that I'll Slack, Hey, how are you? Love to catch up. Or Hey, I hope you had a great Easter or I saw on Instagram you got engaged, or it's been so long since we chatted. When you put some time on my calendar, I do that all. I do it all day actually, but I do it with intention on my way to work when I have a clean head, a clear head, and then when I'm with a leader, if I'm with a senior leader and they say to me, oh my God, these three people are just incredible, they're in incredible. I will later on slack them and say individually,

(32:59):
Say, I just want you to know I was sitting with Rob today and he was singing your praises and really talked about your ability to conceptualize and well done awesome. And that person will just be like, oh my God, you made my day or thank you. And that's all I want to do is always be that presence for someone, whether or not it's the calm in the storm or whether or not it's literally like, Hey, you're doing great. It's still a hand on their shoulder being like, no matter what, I got you. So my communication is very intentional. It has to be because we're a global company and my conversations with someone in Singapore my morning today, their evening, I need to know, yeah, they're tired. I don't want to talk to anyone at 10 o'clock in the night. So it's the awareness of others and understanding that whatever my intention are, whatever my intentions are, I need to really be mindful of the impact it's going to have on someone's ears because you hear something from where you sit and I'm hearing something from where I sit, and we grew up very differently and we have different triggers.

Kyle (34:17):
I love trying to find these new ways of looking back at the evolution of how we sort of use tools in companies. I remember this inflection point a number of years ago where we are, it almost felt like more things were going zoom more things were going sort of early slack, and you had what felt like the sort of senior leadership that wasn't used to this process, sort of joining Zooms without video, not really getting or not really liking Slack and things like that. And you could just feel that you're going to be left out of this, of being able to connect when you think it only has to be in person. And being detached from this. I love now trying to find those ways where I use the voice notes in Slack, A lot of just, even just here, we see text all day long, and unless you're good at emojis and gifs and things like that, but trying to send a video or voice, or sometimes we'll ask each of the team members to send 10 seconds of a happy birthday message and then fuse it together and send a video, but trying to find those other ways to connect because global to seven countries or whatever, and it's hard.

(35:29):
None of us have actually met, and so figuring out ways to,

Claude (35:33):
Yeah, video is great. I mean, since I've had a broken wrist, I do talk audio all the time because I have to,

(35:42):
And it brightens someone's day or that quick video, and as dorky as I may look on camera, I still do it all that stuff because it's just a nice way. When COVID hit and we all went home, we had to figure out ways to keep this culture going. It was a big part of that, obviously being on Zoom and being on Hangouts, but I would say Slack really became our modus operandi and using all the different features and functionalities and huddles, those types of things. So COVID forced us into that. There's still people that are set in their ways and they'll never use Slack, and that's their proactive,

Kyle (36:22):
But meetings too, I remember, I feel like COVID also shifted meetings. This became the moment when you could also sort of interact in a culture perspective. So instead of like, okay, it is 12, the meeting has started, let's all dive into it, is having more either before or after and how you been, what'd you do this weekend? Yeah, yeah, this is great. I'm sharing and I show a photo and trying to find those other bookend moments when we're connecting

Claude (36:47):
Rituals, whatever those are at the beginning of a meeting or a Monday, standup, whatever. Those are just ways in which we can remember that we're human

Speaker 3 (36:57):
First

Claude (36:58):
And then we can talk about product design or then we can talk about whatever the code is that we need to go fix. Or obviously it's an emergency, you go do that, but just stopping and doing that pause just for a second, five seconds. It's just like before you go and you rip someone, a new one on email, just stand up and walk around for 30 seconds or take five deep breaths. Those things are so easy and so

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Overlooked. Yeah.

Kyle (37:27):
Where do you see, where is the Chief fire officer? Where are you driving towards with Vayner Ax and VaynerMedia, and what's the evolution?

Claude (37:38):
Yeah. We're in a really great place right now where I feel like for the first time, we have the right leaders leading the businesses and leading the departments. And when I say by right leaders, they're adults that take accountability and they don't shy away from hard conversations because I'll say for the first many years in this role and the first many years of setting up a team, which I call the people and experience team, we don't use HR here. That landed on our shoulders, and we had to be the messenger of whatever news needed to be shared, and that just wasn't fair, wasn't fair to ask people to all of a sudden manage someone in the creative team and they're not a creative, those types of things. So what I'm looking forward to is just seeing that blossom more and more because I think our work fundamentally is going to get a lot better. I think we're going to reach the excellence that we want with our creative product, with our strategic thinking and output. The more we have these accountable people at the helm, but also in the body,

(38:50):
Making sure that you have the right bench is so important. I'm very much still, while I'm focused on globalization and scaling and AI and all of that stuff, and making sure no one gets left behind, it's still very much a people focused job and making sure that people know where they stand and they know what they need to do to get that promotion or to get onto the account that they've always wanted to get to. That's what I want to be. The accountability and transparency is the most important for me right now, I would say.

Kyle (39:28):
Yeah.

Claude (39:29):
Yeah.

Kyle (39:29):
Amazing. This is so great.

Claude (39:31):
Thank you.

Kyle (39:33):
I'm thrilled and excited to meet you, and I love this discussion. I think of all the discussions I've had, usually so many times we talk about starting a business and having an idea, and whether it's the creative portion of it or what's the tam, what's the Sam, what's, how are we doing fundraising, but this is such a core piece that none of that really works if it all sort of falls apart because we're all just running so fast towards some KPIs and you may hit 'em, oh, we have a hundred thousand users now or whatever, but everyone just sort of falls apart

Claude (40:10):
And taking time for roses, taking time to say for a second, holy cow, we got a hundred thousand users. Let's take a moment here because everyone touched them. That's important. Amazing. And it's very easy to bypass that and go to the next thing, all of us. So yeah, taking time to just hand out the roses is what I want to be doing also.

Kyle (40:32):
Well, thank you so much for time here. Let's hang on for a second. We'll catch up, but I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yeah.