This Week in Startups - Coinbase & Loom rescind job offers (strategies for managers & workers during a downturn) + OK Boomer: Mehak Vohra of Skillbank | E1475

Episode Date: June 4, 2022

Today we have a Warriors Game Recap (2:01), we discuss the new Apple emojis (11:29), and then we dive into more layoffs news: Coinbase and Loom rescinding job offers (26:34). Jason and Molly give tips on how to not get laid off (37:55), and then Producer Rachel closes out the episode with an OK Boomer segment with Skillbank founder and CEO Mehak Vohra (1:07:08). (00:00) Jason and Molly tee up today’s show (2:01) Recapping the Warriors' Finals game 1 (10:14) Embroker - Get an extra 10% off insurance for your business at https://Embroker.com/twist (11:29) Discussing the new emojis (25:02) LinkedIn Marketing - Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at https://linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups (26:34) Coinbase/Loom rescinding offers + how to avoid layoffs (36:41) Thorne - Personalized, scientific wellness. Go to https://Thorne.com/u/TWIST (37:55) How to not get laid off, the employee perspective (46:30) Layoffs from the manager’s perspective (1:03:38) Toss to OK Boomer (1:07:08) OK Boomer: Mehak Vohra, CEO + Founder of SkillBank

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Friday show. We're back. Molly and I went to the Warriors game last night. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Apple's new emojis. And then we're going to have a long talk before. What's that? We're just going to have a little fun for a minute before we get into the reel. Yes. We're going to talk about all these fun new Apple emojis. We're going to talk about our great seats for the Warriors game. That was a blast. Everybody we met. And then we're going to talk about the hiring, freezes, rescinding of offers, more layoff bad news. But. then we have a super productive discussion about how you can make yourself so valuable that you don't get laid off and how managers can reduce layoffs and how everybody can work together to make your company strong and viable through increased communications, setting great goals and everybody upskilling themselves and being super efficient. So some silver alignings here. Absolutely. Think of it as like we're filling up your prepper pantry. And then producer Rachel closes up. the episode with OK Boomer because it's Friday. Skill Bank founder and CEO and skills,

by the way, very relevant right now, founder and CEO, Mehek Vora. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This weekend startups is brought to you by Embroker. And Broker's startup insurance program helps startup secure the most important types of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle. Save up to 20% off traditional insurance today at imbroker.com slash twist. While you're there, get an extra 10% off using offer code twist. Link marketing. To redeem a free $100 off LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com slash this weekend startups. And Thorn. Thorne empowers people to take control of their long-term well-being with a proactive science-based approach to help. Through a variety of at-home tests,

Thorne teaches you about what your body needs and provides the right high-quality certified nutritional supplements for you. To get started and take 10% off your first order, head to thorne.com slash you slash twist. Hey everybody, happy Friday. You made it. Molly and I had a great time and a just horrific ending to the Warriors game. But what a night out, huh Molly?

It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. It was a great night out at the Warriors. If you are not basketball fans and did not watch this game on TV, then you did not see us. But everybody else did because I was getting texts and tweets about it all night long. It was so magical. Thank you for bringing me. It was so magical to sit that.

close and be like, Jay-Z is directly on my latitude right now. Just right across the court for me. Evan Spiegel from Snapchat sitting right in front of us. He was last week we're talking about the 46% drop in his stock. Not going to lie to. I didn't get the vibe that he's like the biggest basketball fan, which I always find to be a waste. No, I think he's not engaged. He's a little quiet at the Evan.

I think maybe he's a Lakers fan, but also a very reserved guy. I mean, he didn't clap. He didn't cheer. But he's, you know. Nothing. Yeah, but Steph again gave me the nod which was very nice.

Steph gave me the nod. You have to admit, you fan girl that moment. I did make a moment a little bit. I was like, he's not making it up at all. I told you, Steph,

I know Steph. I didn't know if you've remembered. I played cards with them a couple times. We see each other socially once in a blue moon. But, you know, he watches a show, whatever and he gave me a nod.

And so, you know, two games in a row, two nods in a row. So that was a big victory for me. Good day. But my God, what a crazy game.

Yeah. And just like a constant back in, I mean, it was a dogfight, not to keep going back to top gun, but it was a dog fight the entire game. Yeah. And then, yes, a 25 point swing at the end to choke it away in the fourth. I mean, they just, congrats to the Celtics. I was DMing with Bill Simmons to drop a name who was there at the game. And I was like, oh, hey, let's say hi. Because, you know, we've talked to each other on Twitter.

But he didn't get my message in time. So he did DM to me after. but congratulations to fellow podcaster Bill Simmons. Is he a Celtics fan? Big time, big time, you know, for decades here. And, you know, it's been a bit of a dry spell for them. I guess since the KG, you know, Paul Pier stays. Rondo, I mean, which is a hell of a team back then.

I mean, they're, you know, I will give all credit. It's a legit team. I'll give all credit to my brother, too, has been saying for the last two years that the Celtics are the team of the future. I just hope the Warriors are like, you can't have that future right now, though. Yeah, let's delay that future. I'm still going on my original prediction Warriors and six. But three of the four besties there are paradoxically the one who owns a piece of the team.

Tramoff wasn't there, but sacks in the first row. We were lucky enough to get my friend see it in the second row, who gave them to me at face value, which was very nice, considering that work three times as much. So thank you to my friend. And in the third row, Friedberg, Brad Gersner was also there. Who else was there that we saw Jason Chang, Phil Helmuth, Pokerplay. Jay-Z was there. Alfred Lynn from Sequoia was there.

Brian from Airbnb was there. I mean, it was a who's who. Travis from Uber was there. It is name drop time for sure. It was crazy name drop. Like, Nancy Pelosi was there. Like, it was absurd. It was absurd.

So when you have these like first two-row seats, you get a little wristband, people who haven't had the opportunity. And I don't know if this happens in every city. I think it's like a New York Lakers thing, but they have like a VIP area. So they just give you, sushi for free with your thousands of dollar ticket.

So we got to, you know, hang out back there. And I met Chris Mullen. We both went to the same high school. And I was kind of star-strucked. I was like, you know, you're the most famous guy. I go to our high school, but I'm the second famous. And I literally, I have never asked a celebrity for a selfie. And I asked him for a selfie.

And I looked like a goofy fool. I was so happy to. Well, I mean, when I was a kid, Chris Mullen was a hero. Yeah. He went to my high school. And then his brother Terrence was in my grade. So I knew Terrence. And then, um,

He, it's a true story. We'd be out in Breezy Point, which was like a firefighter cop, Irish community where we would summer out in the Rockways in Queens and New York. We were in Brooklyn. It's like the tip of this little point. You can look it up with a bunch of bungalows, basically houses that are weatherized. They just lived during the summer, at least back in the day he did. And he would sometimes show up and just play basketball with a bunch of kids. He would just shoot hoops with us at the basketball court by the dugout in Breezy Point.

So shout out, Chris Mullen. Great to meet you. And it's overall great time. And good for business, met a bunch of new people. So yeah, it's always nice. It was lovely.

I know it seems like we're just flecting, but we were also, we were networking. We were networking. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. It's kind of like unjustifiable.

But then I also think on a marketing basis, like those court side seats were going for 30, 40. The second row, obviously a lot less. But those court side seats, I think on a branding basis, If you see Jay-Z there, now, Jay-Z doesn't need more branding. Right. But I wonder when Jay-Z is there, does more Jay-Z ticket sell, you know, for the next concert?

Or if he had a record out, does he get more listens? Because you know how many people watch these finals games? Like, maybe not for a standard Knicks game, but... But a finals game, absolutely. I mean, just in terms of... But a playoff for finals game that's nationally televised, I think it's probably... There might be some amount of marketing that, you know, Jay-Z... the value gets out of it, right?

I think so. Absolutely. I think that's why celebrities go. It's kind of like. It's a, oh, absolutely. It's, you got to be seen at the thing.

And then it raises your own awareness in people's minds, 100%. I mean, I can attest to the fact that on a way less famous level, that happened. As podcasters, yeah. That happened.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and it's good. And then also, you know, if we're ever looking to recruit another person to be on this podcast, now it's like,

well, I don't think marketplace is taking you to the final. games, you know, let alone good seats. You've just seen poor Kai respond to the, poor Kai. No, Kai did. Oh, no, Kai respond to, sorry. Well, the photo that you tweeted of us looking all hella bummed as the Warriors were like pissing it away in the fourth.

And Guy responded and was like, what? What is happening? Oh, hey, shout out Kai Ritzel. Hey, Guy. Hey, buddy. How's how you doing? Come visit. You ever think of venture capital?

Guy Ristel would be a great venture capital. Chop it up. Chop it up. Hey, let's have lunch. So I feel like emojis are such a big part of our culture. And I feel like I've had a strong emoji game. I've always been good with the fist bump. I've been good with the hands up, Hala.

I've embraced it. And I've always felt, you know, a little awkward as an older man using emojis. But I kind of just went for it at a certain point. And, you know, for me, the hilarious face emoji is my standard, right? Because on Twitter and other places, people don't know I'm making a joke. And so to preemptively, you know, correct these people who are like, that's not funny. The literal net. I like to call them.

The literal net. The literal net. For the literati out there. The literality. Who don't read books, but who are just phenomenally literal. The literal otty. There's a mouthful. I put my hilarious foes, like the crying, laughing one with the tears are coming out.

I put it there. And it's kind of like a sticky thing. boomers, but I don't care. I love it. I think it's like laughing at your own joke, which I think is a funny premise to begin with. Because I think it's funny when you laugh at your... I mean, I always laugh at my own jokes. Like, thank God I'm here to laugh at my jokes because no one else is going to... It's like hilariously... Yeah. It's hilarious to laugh at your own jokes because you're not supposed to. Anyway.

Yeah. But I now have a new favorite emoji that came up. Yes. Yes. Holy fuck. I always gave people... You're welcome, by the way. Yeah, thank you. Whoever you do with the discovery. Oh, there is the picture of us. Oh, yeah, there it is. second row at the Warriors game straight across from us and whatever. So anyway, yeah, there I am, putting the crying emoji. Got it. The okay symbol. I see what you're doing there, Justin.

Yeah. David Sachs, second, Rufreeberg, third road from off, MIA. Yes, exactly. There is a literal version of me doing, putting three of them, in fact. I'm going to quickly explain one crucial type of insurance that all startups need. It's D&O insurance. You've heard of this before. You might not know what it is.

This is directors and officers in. And it helps if somebody does something dumb and you get sued. I don't know how to tell you more plainly. Or maybe you didn't do something dumb and some dumb person decides to sue you for a dumb reason. I have seen this. I've seen all flavors of it. You need to have D&O. It's just part of growing up as a startup. And if you don't have business insurance, but you're going to have failed one of the first steps of being a founder. The best place to look for it is in broker. And broker's technology is going to save you time. It's going to save your money. Prices are up to 20% lower. And you get better coverage than the incumbents. You can go from sign up to quote and purchase in just 10 minutes. When you work with Embroker instead of all those slow incumbents, you're not dealing with those giant lumbering large companies. Sign-up takes days, not weeks. And the process is transparent. There is no opaque pricing. So to instantly buy custom-built insurance for startups, go to Embroker.com slash twist. While you're there, you're going to get an extra 10% off by using the code Twist. Easy to remember this week in startups, T-W-I-S-T. Go to in broker,

E-M-B-R-O-K-E-R-com slash twist and use that offer code, T-W-I-S-T. So I used to do the okay and I used to ask people like, if I ask you something,

you know, when you're a boss, you see me bossing and being a boss, I'm just like, can you please just say to me, got it, or Roger,

or okay, or yes, captain, any, whatever recognition you want to give to me that you have heard, the words coming out of my mouth and give me an okay, please, by all means, got it, Roger,

whatever, you know, whatever works for you as the other person on the side of that conversation to just let me know. So a lot of people give me the thumbs up, a lot of people give me the okay. But now, I can't believe it, but salute is now in the emoji library. And it is a fucking glorious day for me. If I say something, it's a game changer. Just give me the goddamn. salute, man. Yes, sir, sir, yes, sir. On it. You know? There it is. There it is a little salute.

What a delight. There's a lot. And I don't like the pointing one. It's so aggressive. It's not for me. The pointing emoji is a hard no. I don't like it. That whoever did that is got years of therapy ahead of them. It's aggressive. It's completely. It really is. Super aggressive. I do like the heart. I like the toes with heart. It's very nice. I don't want to comment on the pregnant man slash man doing too much food pregnant people i'm sorry people that's what we say yeah is that what we say now i love the little i love the peeking eyes like peaking out from the behind the scared eyes so we know by the way for those of you like i'm moving off for the pregnant man i'm moving on from the pregnant people i just want to know something because my friend just said i ate

a huge lunch and he used the pregnant man emoji and i was like dude you can totally get canceled for that no that's why you text it can't get pregnant and i'm like oh my god no god no god no No, no, no. See, I tried. I just, dear audience, I would like you to know that I made a valiant effort to try. To move along. But is it a pregnant man or a man who's eating too much food? Can I mean, I'm just saying, you know what? Is it indigestion? Put it in your text. Use the man who's eating too much food. Like, use the pregnant person emoji to be like, I ate too much food. I don't care. That's what texts are for. Not tweets. Not tweets. Okay. But I did try. But I did try. I'm going to be using. You know, The troll emoji constantly such as right now. Right now.

You would have used the troll emoji. So who knew it? But Molly now has a favorite one because she gets brigated. So here you go. Look at this. A troll emoji. Fantastic. So we know.

What I wanted to do with you right now, Molly, is play a little game for what will this eventually mean? What will this eventually mean? Play some backwards. Let's do do do do. Welcome to what will this emoji eventually. what we mean. Exactly. So, the troll one, we all know what that's going to be used for.

You're trolling. Yeah. Super, super cool. But I saw there was a melted face. Producer Rachel was like, hey, check this out. Melted face. And I was like, all right, so that's when you get twisted. I mean, that's when the Zanis hit or whatever your bag is.

You had, that's when you're high AF. You're tilted. You're tilted. I mean, I think so, too. The emoji's tilted and melting. Right. Rachel was so nice. She's like,

this is like when everything, something's really embarrassing or I can't believe that happened. I'm like, no. No.

I think that's when the Molly hits or something. It's a melted face. It's a melted face. Which was hilarious. We do want to acknowledge right now, by the way, that yes,

these emoji were all released in technically in March with the release of iOS 15.4. But it's not just that we're just catching up. It's that because I have this theory, like today I was, like, what if we float this theory that every time there's a new emoji drop, culture changes a little bit. Like, culture is altering in response.

So now these have been out for a couple months. Salute is starting to like proliferate. So I'm going to make salute proliferate. Salute is going to be the new slang for okay, short, down, whatever. Yeah. So each of these will be. Like me, have seen old Top Gun 1,000 times and new Top Gun 2 times, you will know that what they do in the you will be and have a mild military fetish.

You'll know that what they do in the cockpit is they go like a thumbs up and then a salute. Ah. And so just look out for me to start using the thumbs up and the salute. Oh, you're going to double emoji yet? Let's go. Let's take on. So I noticed one here, which is the beans. They have beans.

Yeah. And these are your classic burrito beans and not the, would those be Pinto? There it is. Oh, there it is. Yeah, he goes, he gives a thumbs up. It's like a back. It's over the shoulder thumbs up. Maybe he's telling you to go backwards, but he's getting it.

me the thumbs up. I don't know what time's doing it. It kind of starts the thumbs up back here, goes forward and then salute. And it means let's launch this jet. Let's launch this rocket. That's pretty great. Love it. That reminds me of, um, there's a video of like one of these action stars and he calls it loading his guns in a fight scene. So he's got his fists up here, but he goes, and that's loading the guns. So he, it's somewhat cocking the guns, right? So there's some guy, I don't know if it's Liam Nielsen or the guy who plays Thor or something. It might be, it might be the guy who plays Superman.

Whatever that. Harry Cavali. Oh, yeah. Henry Cavalala. Henry Cavalala. All right. So in other emoji news. Yes.

Here's one for David Sachs. There you were with the beans. Uh-huh. They're beans for your burrito. They look like pinto beans, I guess. Yeah. I mean, kidney beans they look like. They look like a kidney beans.

So I kind of feel like they could be red. That could be a new, a new version of red pills. And right next to it, poor, one out for the homies. This is, uh, pouring one out for your folks who no longer are with us. Um, why is there a chest x-ray emoji again? I mean, is that like, I'm going to get a X-ray? You're seeing inside my heart? Uh, I'm going to start, I'm going to start, I'm going to start, I'm going to start using that for hella feelings. Really? Oh, maybe I'm being transparent. I'm being transparent. Maybe. Um, I don't know what's to the left of that. That's a telescope, I guess.

It's a crutch. And then to the left of that is an empty battery, like a low battery. Well, empty battery is like, I know what that's going to mean. That's going to mean. That's going to mean, I'm done, I'm going home. That's the Irish goodbye. Yep. So like, it's 4 a.m.

And you just tell your friend, you send the empty battery, it's like, we're out. Audi 5,000. Let's go. Disco ball. Sure. That's, yeah, sure. It's overdue really. Lotus flower?

Why do we have a lotus now? Is that a lotus or a, it looks, I mean, I. What is that? Oh, it's a lily. That's a lily. Oh, it looks like a succulent to me. I'm like, it's an edge area. It's a lily pad right underneath it.

It looks like that. I wonder what the word is. You type for it. A lily pad. So we got a little more in nature. We got some coral. And then you have empty nest. So you're an empty nester.

That's kind of cool for parents or empty nesters. Oh, Molly, don't cry. Don't do it, Molly. But you'll be using that in three years. Cool. I didn't do that in first. Sorry. It's going to be your number one emoji in three years.

Oh, sorry. That's so mean. Oh, but you're going to have to do that three times, my friends. That's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah. What about the bubbles? I like the bubbles.

I don't know what those are. They're just cute, though. Party. Yeah. We got an empty, we got an empty mason jar. Lovely. An empty mason jar, like, what is that for? We're going to go catch fireflies?

Like, what will that be used for in pop culture? The slide. Canning. Toby asked a good question. The Nodi is, what is the hand, Illuminati emoji? There's like an open kind of diamonds. So that's like, you know, for Rockefeller records, they would do a diamond, throw your diamonds up, like kind of situation.

Wait, the one with the Illuminati eye in the middle? Wait, where's that? Next to the, next to the disco ball. Oh, okay. I thought you're talking about the hands up. That was a heart. I think that's just, yeah. I think that literally is that literally Illuminati?

You know how people are always like Illuminati what? And it's sort of a joke about like, oh, it's a conspiracy theory. I guess that must be that. Yoga people use it. Yeah. There you go. A blue, oh, it's a thing. It's like a real, oh, geez, it's a really important.

Wait, to represent the hamsa, a blue hand with an eye in the center of the palm, an ancient symbol important to multiple religions, including Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity. I've never seen that before, but I love it. I'm a devout Christian, or I was for three years from the age of seven to ten. Okay, sure, it's the Hamasa. Sorry we didn't know. Hamasa. Sorry we didn't know. Cool.

See, look. Emojis. We learned something. Emos educating people. So what is the, I know the big red lips for like a kissing kind of thing. People use that. But is this one biting your lip? Yeah.

Is that just, it's biting your lip? It's like, super second. So somebody said something and you're biting your lip. Mm-hmm. But it's a female biting it. It's like a hot one. It's like it's a hot biting your lip. Oh, okay.

So that's different. Biting your lip like I don't want to say something. Right. No, this is not that kind. This is like, ooh, sexy. Mm-hmm. Or like, ooh la la la. It's like, ooh la la.

Yeah, just belabor it. Just make it as awkward as you possibly can. Just keep going. Sorry. I mean, I'm sort of like, yum yum. He's like, oh, okay. So it's like, I mean, you could use it for yum yum. You could use it for yum yum, yum, if you want.

It could be yum, yum, yum. I stopped using yum yum yum. It is. Thank you, producer, Justin. Let's just go all the way here. It's eggplants for females. It's the egg plants. That's it.

Yes. Got it. Got it. Like, hmm, aroused in someone. Got it. I understand. All right. Well, there you have, folks.

Here's a new emoji. We've just discovered the new emojis, but what we really want to know is how is this going to change the culture? Because it already is. Somebody tell us what to do with the, if you have a clever idea for the mason jar, the bubbles, the lotus flower.

Lotus flour, yeah. I think those ones we don't understand. All your eggs in one basket, because you could say don't put and then put the eggs in the basket. Don't put all your. Yeah. You kind of be more efficient. I don't want to talk about the basket.

I don't want to talk about the basket. I don't want to talk about the basket. Combine these things. You could combine these things. You could put the basket and then next thing you can put a flying bird, Molly, as the bird flies away. Three times, my friend, it's going to hurt so much more. Three birds.

A little nest and three birds flying away. Three little birds. Yeah. Are off to college. Jay Cowles broke now. College in 10 years is going to be $6 million a year. J-Go needs to keep working at 65. It's going to be free by then.

It's going to be free. by then. I've been telling myself that for a decade. I'm like, maybe college will be free by the time he gets to be a P. I'm doing the, this is, we'll end on this. I'm, uh, I'm doing the power move of my daughters. I'm going to say, here's what you have for college. You know, let's just pick a number. Uh, if I had one million dollars. No, I mean, today's dollars, I think if you, 150K would do it, maybe 250, something like that for like a private school. Public school, obviously, you can get away with 50 probably to 100, I think today, right? Is that about right? Like cities, so. City school, city is like five.

Not for the whole four. State is like 20. Yeah, do it per year. Five, 20 per year. So it would be, you probably get away with 50 with room and board for city, college, 100, something like that. So anyway, putting it all together, I'm going to give them the move, which is like, here's $250,000.

Spend it on school and your first business. Or, or you can pick the percentage. It could be 100% school, 100% first business, 50-50. Like, then the child. has to be going, wait a second, if I go to state school for a hundred, I graduate with 150K to do my first business, or they could say, you know what, I want to go be an angel investor like you, pop. Can I invest 10K and 10 companies and then put the 150K into the one that does best or two that do best, put 75K in each of the two of the winners? I'd be like, oh my God, my heart

would just explode with joy. So that's what I'm thinking is the right move for kids and then explaining to them what a rip-off college can be, not always is, but how overpriced it is. And you need to make your, because there's no decision-making here, right? Unless you're taking loans. And then really, loans are, it's the first loan you're ever going to take in your life. So, um, that book. There's a great book. But I like that New York Times economics guy called How Not to Raise Spoiled Children.

Oh, yeah. I heard about this. It's all like money lessons. Yeah. It's really good. Yeah. Lieber, Ron Lieber. and he

I got from his book an idea that's similar but for like when you go on vacation we started this really really early with my son when I go on vacation

he gets a budget up front like you have $150 for this 10 day it's usually like for a while it was like $10 a day yeah whatever you have this budget

that's it yeah none of that we never have that fight in a store about I want this thing and I'm having a meltdown crying about it

or whatever the opposite of spoiled. There it is. Oh, wow. I need to read that. Looks like a good book. And you have the jars, give them a give jar, a save jar, and a spend jar. Like for charity, for saving and for allowance. It's actually, it's a wonderful book. And it's like, I love the idea of doing a version of the vacation budget, but for college and life. Like that is.

Yeah. First five years as an adult. Hey, Tom Eshbacher is here with us again. He's a senior sales manager at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. And we're talking about their amazing report today in startup marketing as well. as how to use LinkedIn to grow your startup as an angel investor. I like to see revenue early and often from startups. How can LinkedIn help with that? Yeah, the short answer is LinkedIn forums. 89% of our startup advertisers utilize them. And I'll tell you why. Think about all the

effort that goes into creating interest within a prospect. You have to nail the value proposition, create compelling content, find them, and then message them with enough frequency so that they engage. You do all that. You get them to your sign-up page and you know how many of them are going to convert, just 2%. That's so much value that marketers are failing to capture, and it's a big reason why LinkedIn marketing and specifically LinkedIn LinkedIn forms are so popular with startups. So people know, a lead gen form lives on LinkedIn. They click one time and boom, the email is sent to the company. By using LinkedIn forms, you're ensuring they're coming from an audience that you care about, and then we're pulling the information right from the member's profile. So it's great.

Your SDRs are going to be thrilled with that info. They're going to want to follow up. That's the improved lead quality. And as you say, Jason, it all takes place in just two taps in the LinkedIn news feed. And so if you would like to get this incredible report, you can go to LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups. And not only can you get the report for free, you're also going to get $100 off your first marketing campaign from Tom at LinkedIn.

Way to go, Tom. Let's move on to the, I don't want to get repetitive here because we're going to have layoffs announcements every day. Some of them will be more important than others, but basically you can assume every company is going to either put a hiring freeze on at this point or do a modest layoff. That'll be the majority of companies. We'll do some version of that. And then there'll be outliers, people who are hiring because things are going bonkers for them and maybe they're understaffed or they didn't overstaffed during this period. And then there'll be some people who do, you know, let's call it greater than 15% cuts, a noticeable cut.

So, but I wanted to talk about, after we wrap up, you know, all of these layoffs announcement today, which is take a minute or two to tell you what's going on. You should know, because it's probably a packed your business if you're listening to the sweetened startups. But I don't want it to talk about how to avoid layoffs and then how to make yourself as an employee, the one who doesn't get laid off. And I don't have ideas yet for what to do if you are laid off. I mean, I do have some, actually. but I want to focus on those two things

because they did talk a little bit about being more efficient the other day but I wanted to continue that so maybe we just run through these the breaking news here we should and then I want to add that I think that there's a little bit of a twist that appears to be spreading

in the tech market downturn there are layoffs hiring freezes and I'm sorry to say it seems an increasing number of rescinding of offers oh right that is the next shoot-ed drop which is intense and it's intense it's that's intense And I think like, so when we talk about avoiding layoffs, we should also talk about rescinding offers because I do think that's probably, let's get to the news first and then we can discuss these very different.

So the latest is. So let's go right to them. Right. The latest, you know, of course there was breaking news today. Most recently about Tesla, pausing hirings and potentially Elon Musk saying headcount would need to be reduced by 10%. Yeah. Coinbase yesterday said that it was extending its hiring freeze and. rescinding some offers,

citing crypto market volatility that may test the company. The insurance marketplace policy genius laid off about 25% of its staff, about 170 employees. Toby, one of our noties in the chat, said Loom rescinded an offer

to one of his friends. Yeah. And I mean... So it's happening. It's happening. And what I really want to ask you about is this rescinding. Because I think like on the most,

in the most mercant interpretation, rescinding an offer is cheaper than a layoff. You don't have to pay severance. Right? That's right. It's more efficient. But also, talk about a reputational hit. Because then these people are out on Twitter.

I mean, there was a tweet today from someone who turned down like multiple PhD offers, chose to go work at Coinbase instead of pursuing a PhD, said no to all these opportunities that were really competitive. And look, there is nothing this person did wrong. Nothing. Like, I always sit here and I'm like, and you never get off the bus without a transfer. You make sure you have signed paperwork before you make a move.

And people are getting signed paperwork. In some cases, with visas attached to them. Okay. Which is what this person was tweeting about today. And are having their offers rescinded. And I feel like long term, that is not a good move. It's a tough one. And so I think, well, let's talk about Coinbase for a second, and then we'll get into, we're sending.

The thing I thought was interesting in this memo is market volatility that may test the company, may test the company, is a very strong statement in my mind. If that is accurately, if I'm accurate in what I just said. So we'll double check that, but I'm reading it now in our notes here. It says, you know, crypto, they cited that the crypto market volatility may test the company. Now that means it came from a news story. Yeah, no, yeah, that's in the letter. It is in the letter. Okay, word forward.

May test the company. You know, may test the company means like, I don't know, that means existential, like we're going away. But it means like prepare for war. Like, this is going to be very hardcore. And that directionally, I think is super candid. I mean, it's not directionally. It is super candid, straight up. And so I applaud the team over there for being super candid.

about that. What they're saying is like, this may not be the last of the layoffs and the crypto market could be coming apart. I suspect people are not trading crypto in a moment like this. I think people are hodeling, but I can't imagine there are new entrance into the crypto market right now, right? I would not. I would not think so. And I think that what this shows, and we talked about this a little bit in our group chat is Coinbase makes its money on transactions. And so if everybody's just hunkered down, even if they're not selling, that's probably still. bad, right? And so if they're just hunkered down and holding on for the long term and for due life, Hodel doesn't help. Hodel doesn't help, exactly. They don't make money on Hodel, which maybe they

knew, maybe they have to move to it's five bucks a month to have an account there. Right. Right. If you have over just like a minimum charge, which is, I don't know. Somebody. I think they have a paid tier, right? They do have a pay tier, but I wonder if, like, all of this like free accounting now. Right. You know, maybe people have to say, listen, it's like a bank. You know, you have to pay a, you have to have a minimum to deposit size, have a free account, and there'll be fees for other things. So I think because they were venture backed and had all that venture money, were not public, they probably didn't have to have a lot of fees. And so they didn't want to put any friction there, but maybe they have to start adding some fees here. Maybe there has to be memberships like Peloton has and they're

raising their prices here. So perhaps that will happen. Now, on the rescinding of the offers, man, that is a super bummer. Would it be worse if the person came for three to six months and then lost their job. Arguably they might get a couple of weeks severance. So which is worse, you know, not starting or starting knowing that like everybody's leaving at the same time and you got people showing up for orientation while the other people are leaving it. This is just kind of, man, you know?

I mean, it is chaos. And I just, I think there has to be a better way to handle. I like, I think the idea of making a written offer to someone on which they, you know, it's like it's one thing to say, have somebody in an interview process. I just feel like at some point someone's going to get sued. there are going to be these stories that come out that totally tug at your heartstrings, even if it's one out of a thousand stories.

And it's just a, it's, you know, like that's something I would be thinking very, very, very carefully about. And like you've been saying, there are other ways for, you know, layoffs become contagious. It becomes almost, I think in some,

I think for some CEOs, it becomes like a lazy way out, like an easy way to cut, a quote unquote easy way to cut costs and make it look to your boss like you're really like you're cut and cost. When the fact is, you could probably stop spending money on a lot of things.

Yeah, and so that's what you'll see is that the next thing will be the entitlements. So I think we're going to see the free lunch, literal free lunch in Silicon Valley concept, the massages, you know, just a lot of stuff is going to be a lot of belt tightening all around. Now, this is overall good for the economy. So it sucks for the people who are involved in it, but overall, very good for the economy because we have too many companies that maybe aren't providing enough value and they're going to go away. Then the talented people from those companies will go to the stronger company.

the stronger will get stronger, which means they're more profitable, which is good for the economy. The weaker companies will go away because the work they're doing producing products and services, those products and services, maybe because they're not growing are actually not good products and services. So this is what's supposed to happen in a healthy economy. But the last five years have not been healthy because a lot of companies that should have died were propped up because there was too much money in the system. And maybe a lot of people who were not becoming better at their job, We're not as focused on their career. We're not focused on productivity.

Maybe they'll get back into the workforce and focus on career and productivity and providing value to, you know, the economy. Now, we can argue that like, you know, Pee-Hub personal choice, whatever. But the truth is, an economy is driven by employment. And employment is driven by products and services that are produced and bought and sold. If you don't have great products and services and you don't have people who are good at their jobs and getting better at them and who are focused on their careers,

you're just not going to have monetary velocity, which means you don't have a growing economy. And if you don't have a growing economy, standard of living goes down. So this is how it works, folks. I think you're going to see, and I would be wary of,

like, we're going to be talking about this a lot because in the tech industry in particular is where this is going to hit the hardest, right? So when you had the dot com crash in 2001, late 90s, 2001, 2002, that it really impacted the broader market

because we were talking about the crash of a lot of public companies. There's a sense that this time a tech downturn isn't going to have this sort of widespread impact. I think it is, though, because it's having this psychological impact. People are like, oh, the economy is terrible because the tech sector is crashing. And there's inflation and there's all of these things. But if you look at sort of market fundamentals separate from the tech industry, we have now apparently record low unemployment. The U.S. economy has regained in a year and a half.

98% of the jobs that were lost during the pandemic. That's remarkable. Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished in some ways. The Fed is maybe now out ahead of itself in terms of the economic recovery because things do seem to be somewhat improving. Supply chains may ease. OPEC is going to actually make more, release more barrels of oil, thereby easing the somewhat

artificial energy crunch. But you are seeing, conversely, the things that make you feel like everything is falling apart is that there's a huge crash in the tech economy. And that's because once again, there was a huge bubble. Right? So, like, the further you expand, the harder you're going to contract. And that's going to give this, like, outsized sense of disaster when really it is somewhat of a localized disaster.

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slash twist. That's thorn.com slash you slash twist to save 10%. Yeah, it's like the trimming of the fat is going on here. People are just getting healthier. So it can have the optics of looking like massive chaos. Like they're sending the offers, the numbers, the number of playoffs. And it is. And it is chaos in a way.

But it's localized to our sector. Yeah. And I don't think it should be pursued. It shouldn't be construed as like a broader economic disaster. It's not a broader economic disaster. And when you look at the companies themselves, they will be healthier because of it. So if you were eating too many calories every day and gaining weight and you weren't working out and you just weren't being thoughtful, which let's face it, when there's tons of money,

tons of calories around, people just go yolo. And it's been five years of maybe people overspending and people maybe not focused on their core business building other businesses. Maybe people not working as hard as they should be. Maybe, you know, too many people in a department when there's 10 people in a department and really five of them are doing 90% of the work. And anybody who's worked at a big company or a mid-sized company knows, you'll look at the 10 people in the department,

and you're like, those five people are doing 90%, and then these other five are either a drag on the everybody else, they're negative productivity, or they're doing 2% each on average. It's just, so when you make these cuts, you're obviously going to cut the weakest people, people who are not the best contributors, or people who are overpaid,

which is another thing. You could have somebody who's a great contributor, Molly, but they're getting paid three times as much as an equal contributor. So this is where I think we can pivot into this discussion of how to avoid being laid up. Yep. Don't be the sitter. Be the hitter. Yeah.

I think what you have to look at is take a self-assessment. What value are you providing for your company? What projects are you responsible for it? Not that you work on, but you're responsible for it. And what I encourage you to do is take the things that you're busy with, email, and Slack, you know, meetings. And then maybe unless you're in sales and like your closing deals, those meetings are obviously an input.

But the things that are not inputs into an output. So an input, if you're a salesperson, is finding leads. And then taking meetings, the output would be closing deals, right? Which is money in the register. If you were a producer on a podcast, the input might be finding guests that come on the podcast, that increase the ratings, the output, right? You get a better. you find a better guest has an output.

Now, in both of those cases, being on email and checking Slack might be necessary to get those functions done, but you have to have a candid look and say, how many hours did I put into the sales calls and the lead gen as a salesperson or in this hypothetical producer position? How many great guests did I get this week? And then what did they do to the ratings? And these are the kind of things where you actually look at your inputs and outputs. That's how you're going to be judged by your boss. So people have in their mind, Molly, I'm busy, I work 10 hours.

Okay, that's valid. I know that's how you feel. But at a time like this, people are looking at more of an input output here. And if you were going to look at a 12 person sales team, you would say, here's a 12 salespeople. We need to get rid of three. Give me a list of their sales. and then give me a list of their renewals. And they will literally, because I've been involved in these discussions as a board member and as a CEO and as an investor and a confidante of people, they'll go through it.

And they'll be like, hey, this person is like the number nine person on the list. And we're getting rid of, you know, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. So we're going to get rid of three. We've got 12 people on this hypothetical sales list. The last three, last four, it turns out number 11, it's just an incredible. incredible culture fit. Everybody loves them. They help each other out.

But 9, 10, 11, 12, they all are underperforming 20 to 25%. But you know what? Number 11 is really positive and hardworking and ask for help. And number nine is, you know, doing better. They sell 5% more. They're real pain in the ass. And they're negative. And they're a drag.

So it's not a popularity contest, to be clear, people are not going to make these choices on popularity in almost all cases. There could be some edge cases where it's like, hey, that's my guy. You know, I went to college with him. And there could be his little insider trading and favoritism that goes on. But by and large, it's going to be input output. Who's got the best output? We're keeping them. But on the margin, now you're down to that 25% that are going.

If all things being equal, they're going to pick the person who is the most enthusiastic, who asks for help and they see professional development happening with that person. So you have to then ask yourself, what's my output for this company? What am I actually accomplishing? So this company is Google Search. How am I increasing the number of searches? How am I increasing the search quality? How am I increasing the number of ads?

You know, whatever it is. How am I making the server as fast at the output? And then how is my output in relation to everybody else? And so there's a trick here, which is increase your output. or you're not very good at your job, be realistic and say, hey, to your boss, preemptively, I see my output is in the bottom 25%.

I want to be in the top 25%. Can I get five minutes with you? You know, today, tomorrow, this morning, anytime to just tell me one or two things you can just do by email that would make me get into the top 25. Is it, do I need to find more leads? Do I need to work harder?

Do I need to come in on Saturdays? Just give me whatever piece of advice you can give me. Because I actually realize that I'm new here. Other people have had a time to build up their book of business. What do I got to do? Just tell me. But what people do at a time like this is the thing is time to put their head down. Classic mistake.

If your head's down, you have no relationship with the person making this decision for layoffs. You're going to make it easier to cut you. As opposed to the person who says, listen, I don't want to get cut. I want to be on the team. What do I got to do? If I got to run laps, I got to do a thousand free throws. I know my free throw shooting isn't the best on the team. I'll be in the gym every day throwing at that.

I do a thousand free throws if that's what you tell me I need to do to be on this team. So be that person who is realistic about their output and then says, how do I become elite? That is super, super engaging for a manager who, if you have empathy for them, is having a really hard day. Not as hard as you getting laid off. but boy does it suck. No one wants to do it. Nobody wants to do it. So anyway, there's my framework.

I don't know what you think of this framework, but poke a hole in it or tell me what you think. I'm trying to be super candid with the people who are on the other end of this, having a bit on the other end of it briefly when I was young and then having 25 years experience running companies that do layoffs. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that's really good advice

because fundamentally there may be a reason that you, some people are just not good at their jobs. some people are in the wrong job, right? There's sort of an epidemic, I think, and middle management of like just putting people someplace to plug a hole and then have them do the work and they're in the wrong job. And so having a proactive learning mentality

about how can I contribute better or even contribute in a different way in the role that I'm in like, hey, I have an idea for a project. I'm big on a moonshot. Let me pitch this thing. It is mutually beneficial for both of us. Let's see if we can make

something out of it. 100%. And some of it might be unavoidable. Like at some point, it might be like the Great British Baking show where you're all really good. But that's the show. Like the deal is they have to cut. Yes. It is possible you could have in this theoretical 12 person sales team,

11 people all did a million dollars plus or minus 10% last year. It's a negligible difference. And the 12 one isn't easy because they did 500Ks. So that's an easy cut. And so it's, this is what you'd be doing. Now, on the other side, conversely, and for the people watching live at YouTube.com slash this weekend, 250 people watching live right now. Thank you so much.

I think that people want to hear about this conversation. And go ahead and give us a thumbs up. If we had a hundred thumbs up, I'll send somebody an ember mug maybe or something fun. So let's go to the other side, Molly. You're the manager. You're running the company. Who do you want to keep? Okay.

Now, this is the big secret. There's output. And then there's your salary. People don't want to talk about this. When the cuts happen, you've been at the company for 30 years and you're Molly and Jason and your high paid podcasters. And there's, let's say we were at a podcasting company. We're the ringer. where, I don't know, what was the other one

that did all those shows that got bought? Gimlet Media. Gimlet, yeah. Let's say you're Gimlet. Better because they have, like, such a diverse array of shows. And I don't know anybody over there. I know Bill Simmons, I don't have this clip inside to them. So Gimlet.

Some, it's no fallout for me with Gimlet. Like, let me see somebody else. You're not going to meet the Gimlet family. Whatever. Take out. Okay, bleep out the app. So, you're Gimlet.

You got a roster of 25 shows. You look at the 25 shows. And let's say you got a podcast host, you know, of the 25 shows, top five podcast hosts are, you know, their shows make millions, are making 250K each, you know, two hosts per show. And then you go down in the middle and you got people making 150 as a host, 100, that's 75. So you got a big range there. And let's say there's some hosts that are solo and some that are three hosts. and then you look at the revenue of the show. Literally, somebody's doing this.

Here's the cost of the show. This show makes us $3 million. Two hosts, getting paid $250. Okay, you know, that makes sense. We're spending 15% on the host. We've got a profit margin. We've got the salespeople taking 30%. And they're just looking at that spreadsheet.

You might get down there and you're getting paid 150. You're a mid-tier podcast. So somebody's getting paid 75. The 75 host, you know, they have 25% less revenue. you, but they're growing and you're overpaid. And then the formula, just somebody's doing a formula. So your salary divided into your output, what's the number? So in this example, if those two podcasts did a million dollars each, somebody's

going to pay $250, okay, it's $4x. You're making four times your salary. But the person getting paid $100 is making, they're 10 times more profitable, right? They're a 10xer. Spending $100, making a million, spending $500, making a million. You're making the profit margin is completely different. if the sole cost was the host, let's say, in this example. 50% margin versus 90, they're going to get the 90% margin.

They're going to cancel the show that's not profitable. So this is where people who fought for raises and who, let's face it, might be overpaid because they were, you know, they had the company over the barrel, the company had a bunch of money. It was easier to just go with the flow and suspend disbelief. This podcast is going to add a bunch of advertisers. It's going to go 10x. That's what, those are the hard decisions that are also going to be made. So you have to include your cost in this.

And you probably saw this at CNET when they, because you were there for their layoffs. So. Or did they have layoffs? All of them. So many layoffs. So many layoffs over the years. Like so, so many.

And I get. Did you see that trend though? It was like underperformers and then highly paid high performers. People who are expensive. Yeah, exactly. Expensive people. But they might be high performers. You could.

Well, yeah. I mean, look, when it gets deep enough, when you, at some, point you're to the bone. Right. And that's when you have to, you've got, that's when you're down to your four bakers and they're all freaking great. Yeah. They're just great. And so you have to go with the more, the most expensive one in the, or before you're to the bone. Yeah. Like, I really want to highlight the investor mindset that you're using here, though, which is like, because there are managers. Again, like some of this becomes contagious. It becomes a lemming effect. It becomes how can I

impress my boss by cutting people? Yeah. That's right. There are companies with that culture. And And so then you have managers who just look at the top line and go, most expensive cut, most expensive cut. And they do that before they're to the bone without taking into account what you just said, which is the ROI. So like, don't cut talent before you have to because talent is an investment in a business. So make do, if you're going to cut your high paying people, make sure that they're not returning 100 X. Right. Now. First, right?

Like at least do the math before you cut them. And I don't think everybody does that. Now take the two cons. arguing for my job, by the way. You're good. We'll have that talk later. I mean, who knows? Anything could happen, but I think you're good.

Now, you overlap these two phenomena that are going on, the output, and then the dollar value, people, the ROI. And what I said, I think on Wednesday's show when I was talking about, you know, people being productive, well, let's face it, work from home, you know, COVID, people. being a little depressed, anxious, you know, maybe productivity hasn't for certain people been great, maybe for other people it's been better. Let's all just say like everybody got a little fat during the, you know, really fat years that we all had. Everybody took a little extra vacation, everybody spent a little more money. This is where all the sides can come together and have this

discussion. And I think this is where you're at the elite level, which is, and hopefully at this point in my career, having done this a bunch of times, I'm taking my own advice on an level, which is how can we as a team look at maybe not hiring new people, looking at the team we have and being 10% better each, we hold each other accountable as a team, 10% better each in two or three verticals. And so this is what I'm doing at my companies. I did it at launch. I'm going to be doing it at inside. So inside people watching will be doing it with you. I asked you all for your calendars as well. I'm just going to say that. I am going, surprise. I mean, this is basically how I communicate with my employees.

It's through the podcast. It's efficient. But we will be looking at everybody's calendar. We're not planning cuts. We're profitable. We've got tons of cash in the bank at inside. But heart to heart, we're all a little nervous about the economy. If Tesla's cutting 10%, that's Elon Musk, and he's the best in the business, right?

And, you know, Coinbase was a star just a year ago and was the most important company in Silicon Valley. And now thinks it's basing existential. risk. Peloton was the star. Now it's like, is Peloton going to be sold for spare parts? It's a serious business, folks. Now I was more conservative running, both my businesses, so, you know, good on me for seeing it coming.

But for the inside, folks, we need to look at everybody. What's your output? You know, like how good are your job? How good are you managing your time? Is there more you could do? So if you're doing one newsletter a day, could you do two? Do we need to hire another person? if three people can get together and they're doing one newsletter each and the three of them could

produce a fourth newsletter, then we don't have to hire the fourth person to do the fourth newsletter and yeah, you got to work a little harder or a little smarter, hopefully. You don't have to add hours, but you can cut some things and be more efficient or the product could be more efficient. Great. Can the sales team make more money and be more efficient? Can we support them in being more efficient? All of those things will result in you avoiding layoffs and then having this sort of espri

to corpse, you know, a team spirit here. And I think this is the upside of this down market. If you are thoughtful as a leader and you're thoughtful as a team member, as a soldier, and you take this approach, hey, listen, we're going to war with the recession. And we know when you go to war, a lot of people don't come back. That's the nature of war. Let's try to leave no executive behind. Let's try to win the war with as few casualties as possible. Now, I know people don't like when I use war or, you know, samurai metaphors or team sports metaphors, it seems, whatever. Some people are uncomfortable with that, but it's the best metaphor possible. And if you have a better one about picking flowers and daisies in a field while doing yoga, I'll use it. But I don't

have one. I don't know how to translate this into yoga babble and picking daisies. But based on What I've learned, the teams that are realistic and they collaborate on how we're going to win the war with the least resources with the most efficiency, they kind of win. These Ukrainians, they seem like they're better fighters. They seem like they're getting more out of each fighter and each weapon and each drone and they're more nimble. And the Russians in this equation seem like the ones who are maybe not as efficient or not as driven or not as coordinated or don't have the Espreda Corps. And that's why they're, if apparently they didn't win the war. I mean, there's my speech. Well, let's right.

Let's like boil that down now. Boil it all down. I went off the rails a little bit there about the Ukraine. Well. Comparison and the war comparisons. But it's relative. Well, it's horrific and also relevant. And what it comes down to ultimately is leadership.

Like it really does. And, you know, there are a lot of good men. There are a lot of bad. They're probably way, way, way more bad managers than good. 100%. But, you know, everybody's, sort of has to take this advice from the manager side and the employee side. It is really, look, we've all been that, like, young person who's at the mercy of the meetings that we're not in.

It sucks. That's a bad feeling. But it's true that as you get older in the work world, you understand the bad position that managers are in also. And, like, I think everybody's got to sort figure out the realities of the situation. There are a lot of feelings about work. And it's hard to I think especially in America, like we don't separate our feelings from work, right? Because everything is work. Yeah. Yeah. Also, we can just continue to hope and not get sucked into the propaganda of this is going to be the worst recession ever.

We don't know yet. There's also the really important part that we don't know yet. And I really do think that a lot of companies, look, if you're Coinbase, I get it. Right. You literally have a business built on trading an imaginary asset. So, like, if people stop trading that asset, that's a big problem. Tesla, you know, respectfully, that stock is halved. Right.

It has gone to half. There is just not as much capital as there used to be to run that business. Of course, there are going to be layoffs, right? Like Peloton apparently didn't know that pandemic was going to end. There are like individual cases that make things seem worse than they are, but we do not know how broad this is. And so maybe while you're contemplating layoffs because you think it's going to make the short term bottom line look better, take a step back and ask if that's what your business really needs because it might not. And if that's the case, this is where monitoring situations daily, weekly, and just, you got to

understand, like, you may see some panic, you know, selling, you may see, like, if you were running a SaaS company, you might have three or four companies all of a sudden stop using your SaaS software and you don't have that revenue. I have to look at those three or four companies. Are those companies out of business? Well, that's not the fault of your SaaS software. software, it's just companies went out of business. And, you know, you're going to have a certain level of attrition. And those four people who canceled in the last two months, they're, you know,

SaaS software. Let's talk about each one of them. Are those terrible businesses that should have never existed or are these your lighthouse clients, right? So you have to really have your eyes wide open. You have to be super present looking at that dashboard. You know, if you think about this like flying a plane, which is another analogy I use a lot, because it's super complex. and you're in the storm and you're off course, your navigation systems going in and out. You know, what data do you have? And that's what I always ask me.

What do I have here? What do I have control over? Well, I have control over the productivity of each of the team members. Okay, so that's good. Let's make sure everybody's super productive. Okay. What else do we have? Well, I can pick what direction we're going to go.

Hopefully this theory is working. I can pick how fast we're going to go. And, okay, I can pick how many passengers we're going to take. What can I know? Okay, what is our altitude? What is our speed? What is our heading? You know, what's the pitch of the airplane?

You can start to just figure out what the reality of the situation is and then check it constantly. And when you see those plane accident videos that I watch on the Blanco-Lerio channel on YouTube, you know, a lot of times, pilot, like sometimes they have recordings of the cockpit. Yeah. And he zooms in on something. He's like, the pilot did not see this. Yeah. He's not watching this pilot. Like there was some pilot, this guy was not watching his.

his angle. And he didn't realize he was in the dense spiling. He's like, you know, anybody who looks at this can see this thing is tilted and, you know, he's going faster. And so he's trying to figure out like going up. But he's really got to just, you know, stop tipping the wing, even out the wings. And, you know, now you're going to have control of the plane. Anyway, all these crazy things.

And this guy was in, you know. It's a panic thing. Right. Just trying to keep your head. Not being present. You know, not getting all the signal you can. So I think, I'm looking at it right now, feel like the inflation. is going to work itself out over the coming months

because it's so high, there's really not much more room to go before people just stop buying stuff. So if, you know, the people selling oil want to keep prices as high, people are going to start riding bikes. People are going to stop filling their tanks. They're going to take shorter rides.

They're going to take one car instead of two. Somebody's going to take the bus. Like this stuff, if you push people to two high prices, people stop going. I went to a restaurant. I couldn't believe it, but I have this great place, New England Lomster Company. by the airport at SFO.

And I love going there, but it was $40 for a lobster roll and it used to be like $25. And it was like, oh my God. I just bought, you know, I had my family. I bought like eight lobster rolls, you know, eight people.

Everybody gets a lobster roll. I was like, whoa, I got the bill. And then oysters went from $2 to $4. What's going on in the world? I'm rich. I was like, I promise I'm not making this up, but after Top Gun this weekend, we went to five guys.

Well. So like, but literally it was like a five guys burger is 850. Like what the hell? Yeah. I know they were always like six bucks because it's a good burger. It's like always been six or seven. It's like a 1500 calorie burger or whatever.

It's a whole meal for 850. But I mean, it's like, you know, 30% more expensive now. I mean, it was really startling and noticeable. I think it's something for people to just think about. But yes, the cure for high prices is high prices. I really do like I don't. Oh, that's well said. Yeah.

People will band. Increasingly, I am starting to feel like we're top. We, we, we, we, we, we, we, always talk ourselves into a recession, right? And now it feels like we are talking ourselves into a recession that maybe does not have to be as bad as we're saying that it is. And yes, I am aware that more Americans are in food lines than at any point since the pandemic, maybe even more, right?

Like the high prices are very, very, very real. And yet there's nothing systemically wrong. Even on CNBC today, they were saying, like, it's hard for me to believe we're in this massive consumer recession when like every single airplane going anywhere in America. and it was packed. Sold out. Hotel sold out. Hotel sold out.

You know, it's like really weird. Like, well, where is this recession happening? I still bought the lobster rolls. I'm still going to go see Top Gun this weekend. Like, it's a little bit weird. So the other thing is all these jobs that are available and all these people who are leaving, for everybody leaving, there's other companies hiring. So I feel like this is going to be like, you know, 10% cuts at companies that got too big

and we're hiring for 2023, 2024 growth. and now they're just going to be more conserving they're going to hire as they go. One of the big things in boardrooms was hire for what you need next year or hire for what you need in two years. You got the cash laying around. Why wouldn't you get people online?

Everybody loves having the extra resources. You go faster. Is it as efficient as hiring as you need people? No. But that was the approach people took because it was a competitive market and that made it more competitive. Now you're going to have the opposite.

And people might take jobs and they might take a salary cut, just like companies are raising money at lower prices, you might get those cuts. So that's going to be a very mixed bag. My current thinking is we're in quarter two of the recession. I'm going to go ahead and say here, I think this is going to be four,

three or four quarters of negative growth. And then it's going to be like, you know, whatever it usually is, two or three quarters of kind of like flat growth. So in other words, I think we're two thirds or halfway there. I think it's going to look much different in Q1 next year. I think Q4 is going to be like this mixed bag. We're going to like, is it getting better? Is it not getting better? And then I think next year, I think we're going to have some smooth selling. I don't think it's going to be gangbusters. I don't think stocks are going to return where they are. Which is fine. But we'll have clarity

because people will have taken the medicine. Yeah. Yeah. Back to normal. Yeah. All right. So next up is everybody's favorite segment. Okay, Boomer. All right, everybody. It's time for your favorite segment of the week, along with other famous segments, but this one is truly carved a niche for itself. It's O.K. Boomer, where Rachel, Braun, of Rachel reporting, meets with a millennial, a Gen Z, hopefully. And we get some insight as when we're Gen Xers, but okay, we call us boomers. Rachel, who's on top for this week? Tell Malina. I got to speak to the Skill Bank founder and CEO, Mehekfora. You actually already spoke to her on episode 1202 as a part of office hours on this weekend startups,

but I wanted to hear a little bit more about her background and her thoughts on being a young founder. Yeah, and tell us about Skill Bank. I'm actually really, really into this idea of upskilling and skill matching. And this is like upskilling for a specific type of job, right? It's really awesome. So what got me really interested in Skill Bank was I did one of those Google certificates in college to skill up.

And the biggest problem I had is I thought it was really difficult to hold myself accountable. So it definitely did take me longer than if I did it with like a cohort. And SkillBank is kind of like a boot camp, but for marketing. So we see a bunch of coding boot camps. But this one really helps people get jobs at ad agencies and things like that. So basically, Skill Bank's a platform. It helps people get jobs in marketing by scaling them up to land these jobs. And it doesn't focus mainly on startups.

It does focus mainly on those like agency roles, which are pretty well paying after college. So I thought that was really awesome. Yeah. If you go and you go to, and we're investors in SkillBank. They went through our accelerator and she is a force of nature as a founder. Also a DJ. I saw on her social. She's doing a little DJing, which is always interesting. Amazing. She's attracted to DJ. She's so sick. She's actually also, I found out after I met her at the Allensum and I found out after she's my friend's roommate. And I was like, what the heck? I know. I was like, wait a minute. I was getting dinner with a friend. Brooke was like, oh. And there, we did talk about this on the show, but she was with two other founders. And they call

their little like founder house, the federal reserve, and the nickname is the Fed. And I thought that was really cool. So we did talk about what it was like living with other founders as well out in LA. Ah, what a great idea to motivate each other. And if you're, I mean, this happened in L.A., Laurel Canyon, which is a really groovy area that I lived in for a little time, where Jackson Brown and other musicians lived. I think George Harrison, and even to this day, you know, modern musicians live there. Jenny Lewis, I think Moby, a bunch of other folks had lived there. And there's a documentary about it.

And so there is something about being around your cohort, making each other better. That's why Accelerators work. You mentioned it yourself in terms of being in a cohort. So, you know, marketing, I just want to make a note for anybody listening here who wants to break into startups or, you know, have a great salary and doesn't know where to begin and doesn't like coding. My lord, marketing is really easy to learn. It's hard to perfect and be good at it, but it's very easy.

The entree into being a marketing manager is very easy. I think maybe three, four, five months of just doing basic marketing and you'll find an entry-level job. And man, if you get good at it and you can become a growth manager, you know, like a growth hacker, you can be invaluable. So highly recommend checking out SkillBank and this amazing, okay, boomer, let's listen to the interview with Mahat. Thanks, guys. Okay, Boomer. I understood the assignment. Thank you so much, Mahek, for being on a segment of OK, Boomer.

But this isn't your first time on this weekend startups. You actually have spoken to Jason before. Can you give us a little bit of a background about yourself? You're the CEO and founder of Skill Bank. I'm a big fan of Skill Bank. I think it's a really great idea. Yeah, Rachel, thank you so much for having me on. Yes, I'm the founder and CEO of Skill Bank.

My background is kind of all over the place. I dropped out of college at 19, moved to San Francisco, ran a marketing agency there for about three or four years, ghostwriting for investors and CEOs on LinkedIn. And it was really hard for us to find great talent. And I was looking at what were some different ways for us to create a scalable agency. And I realized we couldn't scale the services that we were giving because every client of ours was an edge. case. You know, someone's coming in, even if you can standardize your services, everything that you're working on with a client is going to be specific to that client. Yeah. So I realize if we couldn't scale the services we were giving, maybe we could scale the people that were giving the services.

And I was really interested in the boot camp space. I think it's really exciting to be able to train people and take them from point A to point B. And yeah, that's what I decided to start Skil Bank. Very cool. So can you let us know why you were on? on an episode of the speaking startups and your affiliation with Jason a little bit. Yeah, so I was on, the very first episode I was on was an office hours episode. And I think SkillBank at the time was called on Delta. We were about like four months old. At the time, I was teaching classes from my apartment in the tenderloin.

And I was like waking up at like 6, 7 a.m. in the morning to teach classes. Oh, man. Like coding. It was, it was crazy. It's kind of nostalgic going back and watching that video because I can see just I had no idea what was coming like just in terms of like what the next steps were what we were going to be doing.

My work was definitely cut out for me. But yeah, I came on the show and I asked Jason a question just about like how do you manage everything when you're a solo founder and you're working on a team by yourself. And yeah, it was my first introduction to Jason and to the team. That's awesome. Did he give you any good advice? Yeah, I think so. I remember as well. I think my question was like, I was trying to just be like, oh, hey, like, look at my company and like look at how well we're doing.

Like, come check us up. But yeah, I think I remember his advice being pretty good. That's good. That's good. So to give everybody a little bit more context, we met at the All In Summit a few weeks ago. And Jason was there and everything. And it was really cool getting to meet him a person because I've definitely already checked out that episode before. I think it's really inspiring, honestly, for lack of a better term, to see founders that have directly worked with Jason in that matter. I'm meeting them in person. I think it's really cool to see the people he's like actually directly impact. I love remote work, but sometimes it does get a little bit draining, feeling like you have so many inputs that you're putting in.

And you can't directly see your output sometimes because everything's just over a screen. Is your entire team remote? Yeah, we're completely remote. I actually don't think we have any team members in California anymore. So we're close to us. Yeah. Wow. What's keeping you there?

The weather, I would say, probably the biggest thing. I mean, there's also a lot. There's a really big tech network out here in L.A., so I'll probably be here for another couple more years, but definitely open to switching things up a little bit in the future. Maybe I'll come to New York. Yeah, dude, you're going to have to let me know. Definitely have to.

There's a lot. I just saw. your roommate, so you live in a little bit of like a tech house situation, Brooke LeBlanc, who is absolutely wonderful. I met her in person too, but I met her not at the Allensum, I met her out for coffee while she was stopping by. I didn't have this prep before, but do you want to talk a little bit about like what it's like, I know, so I guess I haven't read any notes about this, just spoke to your roommate in passing, but basically you live in a house or apartment with three founders. So there's three of you and are all working in different spaces, all pretty early on

your journey as founders, which must be really interesting. How is that going? It's great. So it's really funny. So this house was originally the skill bank house. So I had originally brought in a couple of like my employees. And I was like, right, we're all going to work here in this house. And I realized very quickly that it was just the worst possible thing I could do.

Like it would just be so much better if I like, we separated work and personal. So yeah, then I ended up moving in my girlfriends. And yeah, right now it's, we're all founders. We've called the House the Federal Reserve. So our Instagram account is at Fedhouse, LA, if you want to see photos. Oh, I love that. It's so much fun. And we'll host poker nights on Thursdays, dinners.

And we're really just trying to curate more of a scene here in L.A. for founders. Totally. Yeah, it's been super fun so far. I think Brook and Back are both incredible founders. And, you know, it's nice living with people that are also in a similar stage that you are, because we can bounce ideas off of each other, whether it's like we're working out together in the morning or we're going to grab a coffee at the local coffee shop. Yeah, it's just really nice to be around people that are in that same stage as you.

I am so jealous because right now I have two amazing roommates. They're great. They're some of my best friends in college. However, they both work East Coast Times. And as I've mentioned before in the podcast, we work West Coast Times. So a lot of times we're working like 11, sometimes a little bit earlier to nine, sometimes a little later. Those are not traditional hour. So me hanging out with my roommates is a little bit like saved for the weekend in that aspect.

So it must be really nice just having people understanding like that that same mindset for you. How much, how important do you think it is as a founder to be friends with other founders and like engage in your community? Do you think that's something that's like important that people should do? Or do you think that's like too overwhelming? I find, you know, tech San Francisco vibes. Like, I feel like that's, like, in your face all the time. Like, how do you know when to take this step back? And how do you know when to, like, keep engaging with that community?

Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And I think when I was in San Francisco, it was one of the things that I really liked was when I was deep in the weeds working on Skill Bank. I was surrounded by people who were also working on their company. So it was easy for me to stay in the zone. I think moving to a place like L.A., there's so many different distractions. and I found during COVID, it was really hard to stay inspired when it's just me working by myself in my house, trying to figure out the next step.

So, yeah, I think it's been really great living with other founders. I'd highly recommend that if you're living in a place where you're not surrounded by a really big startup community to find people that are within the same stage as you or maybe even a couple stages ahead, because it's just a lot easier to visualize and figure out that next step and stage that you're trying to get to when you have people around you that are also chasing after that same dream or yet trying to

accomplish the same thing. Got you. And you and your roommates are all around the same age, correct? Yeah. Okay. So how old are the people normally then going through skill bank? Are these people that are also like around our ages like in their 20s? Or is this even younger?

Is this even older? Yeah. This varies. Our youngest student has been 19 drop out of college. But I would say our sweet spot is probably. 29 to 32 working in the service industry. Okay, very cool. Why do you find that the service industry is such a pivot into marketing?

People working in the service industry have incredibly strong communication skills. You know, they've learned how to do customer service. They've learned how to make sure their customers are happy. They've learned how to build relationships. And going into a marketing agency, it's really important that you also have those skills. Mm-hmm. And the barrier to entry in terms of the tech behind. it actually isn't that high.

It's just about knowing what you need to learn. So within 12 weeks, we can take someone with a really strong customer service background and teach them those technical skills that they need to know to go land a job at a marketing agency. Gotcha. And do you guys have like, how often are you actually able to place these people into marketing agencies? Like, do you guys have any statistics on that? Yeah, it's most of our students.

Like, I would say right now we're looking at like three or four students. like probably in the last six months that haven't gone to go work at a marketing agency, but most of them do get placed at marketing agencies. And that's where our funnel is. So why don't you try funneling them into other startups of why marketing agencies? Marketing agencies are, I would just say, like, probably more fitted for what we're teaching. We're teaching a very specific skill. So compared to other boot camps in the digital marketing space, if we're looking at other

competitors, they're teaching everything across the board from, digital marketing to paid media, to organic. You're becoming more of a jack of all trades, whereas with what we're teaching is we're just teaching paid media marketing. So over the span of 15 weeks, you're going to get certified across Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple Ads. And those skills are really great for going into an agency and being able to provide immediate results.

Going to work at a startup, you need to have more experience being in the field and actually seeing results come to fruition, especially in earlier stage startup. They want to see probably a little bit more results. What we have started to see, though, is students that have gone on to work at marketing agencies will start to take up part-time jobs,

also doing consulting at startups. That's been pretty normal to see. And then we've had some outliers with students that have maybe tried things out in the past and have gone to go work at a startup after. That's awesome. So why would people, choose to do a boot camp rather than go through like a specific platform's like free learning option.

So by that I mean I did, I think it was called like Facebook Blueprint. I did the Google one at the time. Google now has some pretty awesome career certificates that came out my senior year. But before that they had a different platform that I was able to learn and was able to leverage those into like social media jobs in college where I took like photo. I was really, really scrappy in college. I like one of those people had like a million jobs. And one of them came out of doing one of these certificates where I helped a local boutique downtown,

like just run their social media, their Instagram, and like do Google ads. What is the difference between doing a boot camp and doing that? So we will actually help you get certified in those certifications. Like we'll pay for your Facebook Blueprint certification. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel there. Really what you're learning within our program is how to create strategies based on how these platforms work. So we're not only just going to run you through, this is how Facebook ads work, and this is how the certification works, so you can go and get it and then pay for that certification.

But we're also teaching you how do you actually put that all together to then create a strategy and provide results to that company that you're working with. So starting week one, we go into content, then we go into the platform, we go into bidding. You cover every piece of it. And the pieces outside of not just how the platform works, but how to actually help a company start to get results. That's awesome. One big problem I had with like the Google digital marketing certification was the lack of structure that I personally gave myself. And I feel like if I had maybe a real person, like not just a computer to tell me, you know, when things are due, I think that would have helped a lot. So just the community aspect seems like I would have

been a big contender for skill bank, honestly, when I was in college. Because I also worked in the service industry because I worked in food services. I was a caterer. person for a wedding venue in Annapolis, Maryland. And now I treat everybody that works in a restaurant with the most respect ever, because that was probably one of the hardest jobs I've ever had. And I was really happy when I moved over to working at that boutique and taking their Instagram photos. It wasn't that glamorous, but it was surely a lot better than working in the food industry. At what point did you decide, I guess, to, why didn't yourself? Like, why didn't you just start working in the food industry, not just start working in the food industry. Why didn't you?

you work in the food industry in college and continue to go. What made that big pivot into creating a marketing company and then eventually creating a startup? I, so it's funny. Growing up, I used to ref soccer games and that was like my first introduction into getting a job. And then my like sophomore junior year of high school was when I started coding. I made my first out my freshman year, but I didn't really start taking it seriously until later on into my high school career. And by the time I graduated high school, I knew I wanted to do something in software.

So I spent my freshman in sophomore year actually just trying to build websites for people. So that was like my first job. And then yeah, it's just like it just slowly went from that to how can I formalize my relationship. And my first agency, Jamoka, was really just a vehicle for me to learn as much as I possibly could. So it would be like, okay. someone wants to get, have me do Facebook ads for them. I'll charge them a little bit less to be able to take on this contract and learn. And I spent a lot of my first year and a half just like Googling and trying to figure out how do, how do these things work?

Like, I also would have been a very great contender for Skill Bank at the time because you don't know what you don't know. And it's also so hard to know what is the industry actually looking for. So like if I'm going to go do Facebook ads for someone or Google ads for someone, I can take a, U-To-Me course on how the platform works, but I have no idea on what are those actual strategies that I need to use to start providing results and what are these hiring people looking for whenever they're looking to bring on people to do contracts. And that's the one thing I think Skow Bank has over all the other boot camps that are out there is our curriculum was developed in tandem with a lot of these marketing agencies that are also investors of ours that have

given us feedback into the curriculum and have really made sure that we're teaching the relevant skills that they want to see when they're hiring. That is so freaking cool. So you said, going back a little bit in the conversation, you said that you were in high school when you first started coding. I was also in high school, but probably for a very selfish reason. I took a coding class, a web design class taught by Mr. Edom. Shout out, Mr. Edom.

My first coding teacher ever doing HTML and CSS. And the only reason I did it is because I wanted to make my Tumblr look a lot cooler at the time. And that was like the sole reason why I took a coding class. But how do you think? Obviously, marketing is a very awesome skill to have. But I guess starting even earlier than that, going back to high school, how do we get more, especially women, to code besides just telling them,

yeah, you can make your Tumblr look a lot nicer, which as far as I'm concerned, Tumblr is not that cool anymore. So that excuse isn't going to work. I've thought about this a lot. Not only just in terms of how do we get more women into coding, but also how do we make it cool to go into tech or go into marketing? Not influencers. I saw this one thing.

It's like how crazy is to think how many people want to become YouTubers and influencers now. Remember when we were kids, people wanted to become like astronauts. Not that being a YouTuber influencer isn't like a job. It's not a career. That's wonderful. But there are so many options out there. There's definitely a little pitch and hold it feels like. Yeah.

And I think there needs to be a shift in the way culture thinks about working in a marketing agency or working and learning how to code. It's not a nerdy thing that people. do. I think that there's actually a lot of freedom and being able to build an app. And I think it would be a really exciting day when we see someone who wants to become a

beauty vlogger coding their own app to showcase their own products. And I think that's what we really need to see is the shift in, oh, it's like actually really cool to build something that your friends are using. And yeah, I mean, I think that's the first step, but like that's a really big cultural

shift. Yeah. We see it with with Carly Clause, I mean, who is a model and everything like that. She's a big spokesperson, excuse me, for girls who code, which I think like that's really cool seeing people, you know, speak out against or speak for programs specifically geared towards young people to help them get into the space because I think you're right. I think a big reason that people aren't coding or aren't going into tech or aren't trying to, you know, break into a marketing position at a really young age just because maybe that's not cool. So definitely the cultural shift is a huge part of it. And I also,

I wish that when I was younger, I was definitely afraid to code when I got to college because I was like, oh my gosh, like I never, I didn't touch Java until I got to college. Python didn't touch that until I got to college. And I wish I knew about tools like Figma or no code tools in general beforehand because it's such a good introduction, like the pipeline between learning a no code tool to then like slowly

dipping, you know, into coding and then understanding like from a visual aspect first and then going into the technical aspect like that pipeline, I feel like needs to be a little bit more secure. Press, who is our chief of staff, is Jason's chief of staff, created the entire All-In Summit app on a wonderful no-code platform. I believe it's no-code. It might be low-code, but I think it's called glide, G-L-I-D-E. I'm like, I wish I knew about that in high school.

You know what I mean? Because the more interested you get in the space, the more you want to know about it. The same thing goes for marketing. Like, yeah, it starts off probably taking really cute photos, putting them online. But the deeper it goes, it's like, okay, how can you monetize this? how can we get more people to see it? What is, what can I be selling with this?

And I think, you know, those are just, you need to figure out, like, what to put in front of people initially to get them, like, hooked to get them through. I guess, what is skill banks hook? Like, how are you getting, putting skill bank in front of people and being like, this is cool, this is what you should do? The really big thing that we're selling to people now is we want to help you take that next step in your career. So if you've been working 40 hours a week in the service industry, and it's not super sustainable long term. We want to provide more stability to our students and people going through our program. And there's a lot more growth opportunity for someone that's going to go work at a marketing agency.

You can either progress within that marketing agency. You can go work in-house somewhere. And yeah, you know, that's the really big thing that we're selling is, is we want to be that next really big step in your career and help you create a life for yourself that you're really excited to get up in the morning and go work somewhere. My favorite stories to tell are we just had a dad go through our program. I love that. He was in the Army for the last 10 to 15 years and wanted to be able to work from home,

stay at home with his kids. And he can do that now. He works remotely for an agency. And that's been really cool to see to give people that autonomy. And he hasn't been able to spend the last 10 years with his kids. but now he can do that and make enough of a wage to make sure that they have food on the table. We also had a student that was a paraplegic from the waist down and had trouble paying off medical bills going into our program. And within a month of graduating, landed a 75K job with health care and benefits.

So that's the really big thing that we're trying to sell and to get people into is say, like, hey, you can create a really sustainable life for yourself if you stay the course. and we're not like other boot camps. We're not going to take 10% of your salary. We're really trying to set it up in such a way where, yeah, if you're willing to put the work and effort into it, we're going to help you get to that next stage. That's so awesome. So do you have any advice for people that are looking to go into the world of marketing

that you've seen be really applicable across the board? Yeah, I think the really big thing is just start testing and trying out different things. I think that there's a lot of power in having a voice and having people listen to you. And I think it's one of those things that you're not going to try out the first thing and it's going to work. I think people have this idea of like, oh, it's only one video. And if that one video goes viral, then I'm going to become famous or this thing's going to work or I'm going to blow up whatever I'm working on. I think the thing with marketing that's super important is it's a lot of small hits to actually get someone to recognize you.

And I think it's just a lot of practice. Like get yourself out there, try different things, see what sticks. and stay consistent. I think consistency is super important. I totally agree. The consistency is definitely key. Back, thank you so much for being on the segment. Where can people find you?

Is it Twitter? Is it LinkedIn? Yeah, Twitter. I'm at the Mehek Vora. And then if you want to check out SkillBank, we're joined SkillBank.com. Amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you.