We are in Seattle for a team offsite.
So you're going to need to see how we plan our strategies as well as throw an awesome offsite.
All right.
So I thought we'd get the blood flowing first thing in the morning.
So taking the team on a hike right now before we actually get into the actual work of the day.
Cause I figured one physical activity is really good for getting the brain pumping.
And then two, as you can see here with the team and they're all hanging out.
And so we'll see how it goes.
Also, we should talk about why having an offsite is so important in today's day and age of remote work, where all these big tech companies a couple years ago made this mistake of sending everyone home rather than having them in person.
And they've realized now, since then, that being in person is super important for two different things.
Number one is for just building culture.
And then number two is actually really, really critical for just getting good work done.
And so there are two things I want you to take away from this offsite.
Number one is how we creatively problem solve in person when we bring both of our teams together.
And you'll see that through our strategy meeting.
And then number two, which I think is actually the most important part about an offsite and why we spend so much money flying everyone in, is because that in-person connection that we facilitate through things like this hike, as well as our scavenger hunt that I'm super excited about for later today, are really, really critical for just having our team mesh together and just love working with each other.
So I'll see you on the other side.
All right.
So we're about to start our Q3 strategy meeting and y'all are about to learn what an OKR is.
Vitaly, what is an OKR?
OKR stands for objective and key results, and that's how we run the whole company.
Basically, your objective is your North Star goal, and your key results are how you actually hit that goal.
So we'll put an example here, but the objective can be like grow the company by 20 in terms of your sales.
And then the key results are going to be like how you're actually tactically going to get there.
And so the reason why we use this is because of John Doerr, a really famous VC back in the day.
This is how they build, actually Google.
And this is the goal setting system they use.
And we have full intentions on being the next Google.
So yeah.
All right, let's kick off the meeting.
So the whole point of what we're going to do today in this exercise is we always want to start with a North star of an objective.
Can you guys do that?
Basically, we need to set and agree on what we want to do for Q3.
And within that, we're then going to have a couple of what we call key results, or KRs, which are going to feed down from that.
Basically, what we want to say is if we want to grow the company by X percent, what are the things that we need to accomplish in order to actually get there?
And the fun of this and the rest of the meeting.
What we'll do once we get around what that objective is is.
It'll flow down from here.
And we'll talk about how that actually relates to our creator success organization and support.
It will also rain down into our product and what we want to do there.
And then lastly, how that all feeds into our creator community.
And so what I want us to align on for this meeting is exactly what we want to do for our Q3 strategy through the lens of an OKR.
Make sense?
All right.
So we just finished our planning meeting, so I want to debrief with you guys what actually just went down.
So basically, what you see in this meeting is all of our different team leads, including myself, actually going through and talking about how we did in Q2 and really making sure to do an honest reflection on what went well and also what didn't go so well and what our learnings were from that.
Because then we take that and we use that to plan out our Q3, so our four looking goals.
Where this is really important for a team collaboration perspective and how we actually have the best answer and best solution possible, is when we lay our Q3 goals.
What you see is like our team within and of itself.
We're constantly pushing back on each other and really asking questions of like are you sure that's the best way to think about it?
Because, how we see it is, we're all a team building towards this one mission and we all want to be on the best team possible and see all of us succeed independently, but also as a group.
And so the only way you can do that is if you have a really open and honest environment where people are comfortable pushing back and giving criticism, but in a constructive way and also always with best intentions in mind.
So, to make this really concrete for you guys, I think we should call back to Alyssa's session, where she was actually talking about creator success where, when we think about our organization, our key insight is that our existing customers are actually our best salespeople.
So the reason why Stan has grown so fast we've grown from zero to now almost 4 million in recurring revenue in just a year and a half is because of our organic word of mouth, because our customers love us so much.
That's why Alyssa's organization is so important.
So, as we think about our company level objective of like, we want a 2X signup growth.
Well then, how have we grown so far?
It's organically through our customers.
So we need to make more of our customers even more successful and even more happy.
And so what Alyssa was breaking down within her goals is that we actually have a lot of drop-off in our initial 14 day free trial, where a bunch of high quality customers who we know for a fact could be successful on Stan and could love Stan actually dropping off at somewhere between 30 to 40 of our total ideal leads actually coming in and not being successful on Stan, where we're like shoot, like these are people we could help.
And so Alyssa's laid out, basically a game plan of how she wants to first analyze the situation, understand why that segment of our customer population isn't actually working out, and then now she's gonna put in place a game plan where we're all pushing around like, is this the best idea, what have you?
And then we're all gonna support her in that to actually address that 30 to 40 of the population and actually make them successful.
So that's how you set effective goals as a team, but you've gotta keep in mind that none of this matters unless you do one other thing, which is actually successfully execute as a team, which is why the whole second part of this off-site plan is actually about just building teamwork and building connection between all of us.
So I've done that through the lens of this really cheesy amazing, race-style scavenger hunt that I've planned for us, where we're actually gonna all compete, doing really corny, embarrassing things throughout downtown Seattle.
So I will see you guys on the other side.
I think it's gonna be really fun.
All right, so scavenger hunt.
Are we excited?
So we have team John.
And then we have team Vitaly.
What?
Team John.
So the rules of the scavenger hunt are simple.
There are four or five tasks, I can't remember, but there's a couple tasks.
We're gonna go through, you're gonna get to see all of downtown Seattle as part of this.
Whoever finishes first wins.
We can decide on a prize as we're driving, but the default one is whoever loses right now, until we decide on a better one, has to take the SAT.
So, that being said, the very first task of this amazing race is at a very special place in Seattle Pike Place Market.
And the very first task is that you have to do a street performance in public and ask some random stranger to film you as you're doing it.
All right, ready, set, go!
We could do like a stand-up routine.
We could do an improv scene.
We could just pretend to be an acapella group.
Okay, the only thing that I can think of would be like the Macarena that we would all know.
Or we could do...
Sir, we're a professional hip hop dance crew.
Can you actually film us do this?
If we're going to sing a song, we can improvise a dance, but we should all sing the same song.
Can we chat GPT then?
Chat GPT idea?
That's so funny.
That's so engineering team of you guys.
I'm going to ask someone.
Hi, excuse me.
Could one of y'all help us by chance?
We're, uh, here.
We're, uh, we're...
We're a professional dance group, and we're just hoping to get, like, a really quick TikTok.
Is that something you can help us with?
We have it on record already.
Okay.
Yeah, we're just going to do a really quick dance.
But we've been practicing it for a really long time.
Okay.
It'll be quick or, like, two minutes?
We're talking, like, 30 seconds.
Okay.
You ready?
Wow.
Let's see that in a minute.
You guys wanna join ahead?
Alright, thank you.
Alright, we gotta go.
Wait, we gotta find the Starbucks, we gotta find the Starbucks.
We're just running through the streets.
Oh, this really long line.
Do you think this is it?
What is he doing?
What is that sneaker doing?
I was gonna offer to buy someone's coffee so they let us go.
Hi, question.
Is there any chance that I could give you my credit card and buy you guys some coffees if you got a couple more?
If we got a couple more coffees?
Yeah.
Sure.
Cool.
Awesome.
I hope you guys don't run off with it.
These are the homies.
Hi.
Thank you.
The condition is to check the coffee in order to pass it.
So they're going to get the coffee before us.
But if you can keep them away from drinking it.
How are they going to get it first?
We will call the Lisa hostage and we will make sure that she doesn't get to drink it.
Yo, y'all are the homies.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
You're so kind of you.
Okay.
Yay.
Nice.
Took one for the team.
Nice.
Chugged.
Next task is to make a logo of gum on the Seattle gum wall.
So we'll beat them.
Awesome.
Thank you so much.
You too.
Take care.
Got the gum.
Got it.
I'm not going to lie to you guys.
It's not that appealing.
Gross.
I'm going to do the dollar sign.
Okay.
Nice!
Alright, let's finish it out.
This is so bad.
I'm gonna touch your guys' slime.
Oh yeah!
Team bonding!
Team bonding!
Team bonding!
Alright, we did it.
Let's get out of here.
Let's go!
Oh!
Ew!
Oh wow!
You gotta stretch it out.
Yeah, you gotta stretch it out.
You just stretch it out.
We're making like an S, you know?
I would give you a high five, but your hands are probably gross now.
We're off to the final step.
We're going to the Space Needle and the task is to take five creative photos.
So, as we round out this last step and we're clearly going to smoke Vitaly's team the whole context behind why we do stuff like this is actually one of our core values, which is spark joy.
And the whole premise around sparking joy is like, you know, all of us work so hard.
If we're going to work this hard, we basically, we might as well have fun.
So that's the whole premise behind this.
I think it builds a lot of incredible teamwork and just like team kinship.
But then also I think our customers also just really enjoy that we're actual human beings as well and we're not just robots trying to build a business.
So anyways, we're gonna go finish this out, beat Team Vitaly, and take home the prize.
This actually looks really solid!
Is it gonna work?
It has to be perfect, yeah.
Was it fun?
It was a great experience.
I really appreciated the sedia touring while at it.
It was a great idea.
Thank you.
Thanks, John.
All right, well, cheers to the winners.
Us.
