E179: Adam Dell (Clarity Money acquired by Goldman Sachs) - Run towards what you’re good at

Speaker A: Hello and welcome. I'm Alex Grodnik, and this is Moving Up, a podcast about secrets to success, struggles along the way, and life in general. Today on the pod Adam Dell. Adam's company, Clarity Money, was acquired by Goldman Sachs 18 months after he started it. And for a really big number. It's a great story, but one that doesn't just happen by chance. Adam was so deliberate and careful in creating his startup, and the results speak for themselves. A really great interview ahead. First, I didn't mention this last week, but this episode is our hundred and first of moving up. It's pretty awesome that this little podcast, which I had no clue what I was doing when I started, has now done 101 episodes. It's been downloaded close to a million times, and it's growing fast. To celebrate the hundredth episode, we're giving away a Wall Street Oasis course. The investment banking one or a private equity one. Whatever you choose, the way you get it is just leave us a review on itunes and we'll pick someone at the end of the week. It's a big milestone, and, um, I just really want to thank everyone for sticking with me throughout the journey. I've certainly learned quite a bit about creating good podcasts, and I know it's been helpful to at least a few of the listeners who have reached out and told me about jobs and internships they've gotten from podcast guests or a new sense of motivation or perspective. So here's to doing 100 more and continuing to learn and improve and grow on the journey. I can't thank you enough for listening. And go leave us a review on itunes and get that free course from Wall Street Oasis. Okay, let's get into the interview. Adam. So welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Yeah, excited to be, uh, to be speaking with you. You've been a venture, uh, investor. You've founded a pretty incredible fintech company that had some amazing results. Uh, we'll get into those things that happened later in your career, but like we always do, let's start earlier. Uh, when Adam started to become who Adam is today, when did that start to take form?

Speaker B: Yeah, when I was in law school, I started to really, uh, think for the first time seriously about what I wanted to do with, uh, my career. Um, that may seem like an illogical time to start thinking about that, but, uh, when I graduated from college, I didn't want to go to business school, I didn't want to go to medical school, I wanted to continue my education, and law school seemed like a Logical extension of what I had studied in college, which is political economy. Um, I really like the idea of policy and philosophy, uh, as it relates to economics. And law school seemed to be uh, a logical next step. And as I, as I started to think more seriously about my long term career, I sort of discovered venture capital. Uh, and as I dug into it, it struck me as something that uh, uh, I might enjoy doing.

Speaker A: Sure. So then like most people go to law school. They go to law school to go work for some like big law firm and they do that for a little while and they say this is terrible. And then they go be like a house counsel or something for some startup and then they see a startup and like you were like, I'm going to skip all those terrible steps and just like get right into startup investing.

Speaker B: Well no. I worked for a law firm in Texas for about two years. And during the second year of my time working, uh, as an attorney, I started to put my resume together and I started to spend time with the Austin Software Council and other startups that sort of made up the ecosystem of venture and uh, activity in that market. And you know, basically started uh, interviewing with different venture firms. Was uh, lucky enough to get a job as an associate with a venture firm in Southern California, uh, called Enterprise Partners, which at the time was the largest venture firm in that market. And uh, that, that sort of launched me into the venture business. It's funny, I remember speaking with Jimmy Tribec, who's uh, one of the early founders of Tandem and kind of a legendary uh, tech guy in the uh, Austin community. And he basically said, you know, get into the venture business any way you can, even if you have to crawl in through the back window. And I really took that advice to heart and basically took uh, whatever job I could get.

Speaker A: Yeah. So can you, can you, Adam, can you elaborate on just like, because you know, a lot of people listening to this podcast, you know, people going to business school, people pre business school, like a lot of people want to work in venture. And you know, one of the things that I always talk about is like, you can't just like send in a resume. You have to find ways to provide value, do free work, show deals, provide like whatever it is. Can you talk about some of that scrappiness of breaking in?

Speaker B: Yeah. So, um, I got every issue of uh, the red herring, uh, in the industry standard that I could, um, and started to actually, uh, it was red herring and upside magazine industry, uh, standard came later. Uh, and I literally made a list of every name mentioned, uh, in the articles in those magazines and cold called a number of them, sent uh, uh, emails and cover letters to every single one of them and basically over time um, got a little bit of a lay uh, of the land uh, in understanding who the venture players were in different markets. Kind of weaseled my way into enterprise partners. From there I was able to get an interview and they didn't offer me a job but I pretty much kind of hung around the hoop long enough for them to recognize that I was serious about this and I wasn't going to go away. And you talk about scrappiness. I basically did offer to work for free um, and they ultimately gave me a job.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great story. I mean that's what it takes to make it in competitive fields and venture when you were doing this, I'm sure it was maybe a little less competitive than it is today but always a super enviable position. So great, you say I'll work for free, I'll be here, I'll provide value, I'll help you find companies or vet companies or really whatever it is. Just like give me my first look.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I mean um, you know this, this cold calling thing is a, is a bizarre and funny exercise. You know 90 plus percent of the calls uh, or emails you'll send will go unanswered. But you know I um, very quickly figured out that the only way to really get into the main flow of the opportunity set in startups was to you know, basically put yourself in the middle of it. And so um, after working in Southern California for about two years, uh, I got an interview with a venture firm in Northern California called Crosspoint Venture Partners and was lucky enough to meet a guy named John Mumford who became my mentor, was also from Texas. Like me, um, sort of recognized the scrappy business nature of my thinking, um, and kind of took me under his wing uh and that really broadened my horizons uh, around what was possible uh, with venture capital. John uh, was the founder of four public companies, um, and really taught me about incubation, uh, really taught me about the real mechanics of venture finance, um, capital structure, intellectual property, uh, all the things that go into the basics of venture investing. Uh, and he's really the person who most formed my understanding of how this business works.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that's an incredible position to be in and create a mentor like that for yourself. That's fantastic. But I'm looking back that it all started with uh, a cold email. People have their issues with cold emailing and it can Work. It cannot work. You said it's kind of a numbers game. But if you do enough of them and they're focused and targeted enough, it can work and it can be the beginnings of a career. I mean, I cold emailed you and now, uh, we're doing this.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, there's something very interesting that exists today that didn't exist when I was younger, which is, you know, the Internet is incredibly a deep, rich well of resources and information. You know, when I walked into John Mumford's office at Crosspoint, I got up and took a uh, pen and got on the whiteboard and sort of mapped out what I thought was the business to business, uh, E Commerce opportunity of the time. I had decided that that was going to be the area that I was going to focus on from an investment standpoint. And so I walked in the door with a very specific perspective about what opportunities uh, might exist in that segment of the market. And that's exactly what Crosspoint was looking for in an associate. They liked the fact that I had done a lot of work and research, fundamental research, uh, before I got there. Uh, and so I had a point of view. And you know, often when students in the past have asked me, um, you know, how do I break into the venture business, you know, what should I focus on? I often tell them they should pick a very specific area and become a subject matter expert in that area. And you know, it's amazing what three or four weeks of research, uh, uh, can yield, uh, you know, just by utilizing this incredible resource, uh, available to all of us called the Internet.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean becoming a specialist and, and yeah, then when you get in front of someone you can go up on that whiteboard and have confidence. I mean whether you've built businesses in the E commerce space or not, like you can uh, have a point of view. And I think people really appreciate that as you're going through an interview process or just general, like a lunch or whatever, um, people, it's great when you can say yeah, m. I'll be the first one in and the last one to leave and I'm super eager. But it's magnitude's better if you can have a point of view on something and come in and hit the ground running and say this is what I would do in my first couple weeks and these are the people we should go after and these are the interesting companies and it's like, wow, there's like uh, we just need to turn this on. And uh, it could really go, yeah,

Speaker B: there's definitely, um, um, no shortage of enthusiasm. But there is a shortage of really talented people who uh, are willing to do hard fundamental work.

Speaker A: Yep. Okay, so starting to de. Risk yourself and show that you're willing to put in the work, uh, and then. So, uh, how do your early days in venture go from there?

Speaker B: Well, um, you know, I would say that, you know, in uh, 97, 98, it was quite a heady time, uh, in venture, uh, right before kind of the bubble burst, uh, um, you know, there was an incredible velocity to deal activity in the Valley. Valuations were pretty uh, intense, although they're not like they are now. Um, and you know, so I had a really fun time, uh, at Crosspoint. Um, uh, those guys were incredible investors. As I said, they taught me a ton. Um, and I just absolutely loved uh, that environment. You know, being in the Valley, it's kind of like being in uh, almost like um, a thunderstorm of activity where there's just constant energy, uh, flying around in every direction. And if you're fortunate enough to uh, find the right teams and the right ideas, you can really uh, um, do some profound things in a short amount of time. Ah, I remember one of the early investments we made at Crosspoint was uh, a company called connectify, which is an early uh, email company that did something called predictive collaborative filtering, which is basically recommended things to you based on your preferences. Very quickly, that company, after we funded it nine, um, ten months later, was acquired by Khana, which was a larger email company. And then shortly after that, Khana went public. It was a very quick turnaround, very quick return, uh, for the fund. And I remember thinking, well geez, this is pretty easy. Um, but then of course the bubble burst and things uh, got a lot harder.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. That's the function of being in a cyclical business. Exposed to the markets, there's going to be ups and downs.

Speaker B: The ups and downs were probably the best thing that happened to me in my career. After, um, Crosspoint. I moved to New York city, uh, in 2000. I raised my own fund, um, and invested that fund, uh, right into the. Basically the bubble bursting. And um, I was staring at a pile of investments that I had made in companies that were not worth as much on paper as they were when I had invested. And it really was an incredible, um, um, exercise in focus and in discipline, uh, and making sure that we nurtured those companies along and saw them um, uh, to their fullest potential. Among m those companies was OpenTable, um, uh, a company called um, Hot Jobs, which was Acquired by Yahoo. Company called Ingenio, that was acquired by AT&T. Um, and while the ultimate outcome of those businesses was, uh, pretty good for our investors and our LPs, it was a pretty, Pretty hairy time. And it really was just sheer hard work and commitment that resulted in the outcomes that we were able to achieve.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's a. That's a good testament to anything in life. Right? Like, stuff starts to go bad, you have to hunker down, focus, figure out what's good, what's bad. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of, uh, lessons. I mean, like, you know, the Warren Buffett line of, like, everything's good, but when the tide goes out, that's when you see who doesn't have a bathing suit on. So, like, do you have. Do you have, like, key takeaways of, you know, things you did, you know, during the lean times that kind of set you up for the next wave?

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, so, you know, uh, it was very obvious, uh, in hindsight, but, um, you know, what we did was we looked at our portfolio companies. We sort of triaged our resources against those that we thought had the highest potential return, um, and sort of cut bait on the ones that we didn't think would move the needle. And so we really picked, out of about 20 investments, we had made four companies to focus on and really just put a bunch of weight and energy behind those. Um, and that really made all the difference. Um, the dynamics, as you well know, of venture investing is you invest in 20 companies, you hope that one or two are big home runs, three or four of them are kind of moderate successes, and everything else is kind of, uh, irrelevant in terms of returns. Um, not irrelevant in terms of people and lives and commitments to opportunities, but certainly in terms of economic return, uh, for our investors. And so we focused on those companies that we thought could move the needle. And Message one, which was a company that I'd founded, was, uh, one of those. OpenTable was one of those. Uh, Ingenio was one of those. Uh, and just focusing on those opportunities and caring and nurturing for them in a way that, um, helped to ensure their success was really what caused the outcome, uh, that we achieved.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes great sense. Okay, so now, post crisis M, do you raise a new fund? Are you continuing to invest? What happens next?

Speaker B: Yeah. So, uh, after, uh, raising my own fund, I was given the opportunity to join Austin Ventures, which, uh, at the time was the largest venture firm and private equity firm in Texas. Uh, and I had always thought, uh, it would be, uh, a great thing to work at Austin Ventures. At the time, the firm was an iconic firm in that market. Um, and so that was a happy kind of homecoming for me. Um, one of the dynamics about the venture industry that very few people talk about is that the vast majority of the funds that are raised don't make any money. Um, all the money is concentrated in just a few firms who are the top performers. So, you know, the Sequoias, the benchmarks, the Kleiners, uh, the xls of the world, they gobble up the vast majority of the returns. Most of the other firms out there are sort of, you know, um, uh, just at the edges. Um, and so, given those return dynamics, I really started to believe that focusing on individual sectors and really going deep in a specific sector was the way to improve the odds there. And so I started to focus, uh, very specifically on individual sectors. Um, Clarity Money, um, was the result of, um, going really deep in consumer finance. You know, using every product out there, uh, studying every trend in behavioral economics, spending lots of time really thinking about how consumers actually think about their money, how they actually behave with respect to their money, uh, how they actually save, how they actually invest. And a lot of fundamental research led me to conclude that there was an opportunity, uh, in the personal financial space, which, uh, is how Clarity Money came to be.

Speaker A: Awesome. So this is the piece that I want to talk about, because this is how you got on my radar. I'm interested in the story of Clarity Money. I mean, if anyone's seen it in the news, I'd love to hear you describe the product and then the life cycle of it and raising money for it, and then obviously, and then selling it to Goldman Sachs for a big number. So, uh, yeah, I'm just really interested in the evolution of it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I did what I always do, which is I had a view that consumer finance was going to, um, go through some revolution. Uh, I saw Rocket Mortgage, uh, which was really exploding. People were, were making fundamental decisions on their phone about something as profound as a mortgage. Uh, I saw that big data was out there as a resource that you could mine to try to uncover insights for consumers. And I had really, um, gone very deep in behavioral economics, um, studying the work of Thaler and Kahneman, uh, and concluding that consumers make decisions about their money in a very irrational way. Could you use behavioral economics and the notions of nudging and anchoring and framing, um, as ways to help consumers make steps toward a better financial life? Those three things all led me to conclude that there was a big opportunity, uh, in the personal financial management space. A market that had been dominated by Mint for years. Most people who I talked to said, you know, you shouldn't invest in a pfm. That market's saturated by Mint and the other players in it. People don't like to budget. You know, this is not a good use of your time. There's, There are bigger opportunities out there. And I, I felt differently about it. I felt like, uh, Mint was a great, uh, dashboard about your past, but wasn't a step you could take to improve something about your future. I also felt like Mint was emotionally tone deaf. It didn't take into account the, um, the psychological, uh, barriers that consumers face when thinking about their money. It's overwhelming, it's scary, it's complicated. Uh, most of the news is bad for, you know, the vast majority of people in the middle of the bell curve of the, you know, socioeconomic distribution. Uh, and so there's just a lot of inertia and negative feelings, uh, around money, uh, for the average consumer. And so I felt that that was a very rich and interesting problem set. And um, you know, clarity, uh, was built with the idea that, uh, it's inevitable that in the future there will be a digital assistant that will help you navigate financial choice, that digital assistant will be your advocate, that digital assistant will know about your particular situation, and it will help you navigate those choices, uh, uh, in a way that really gives for, uh, lack of a better term, clarity to the decisions and choices consumers need, uh, to make. One of the things that clarity did, I think pretty well was we were obsessed with design. Design not just for the aesthetics of making the experience feel comfortable and warm and welcoming, but design in the sense that we broke finance up into digestible bits, um, individual tiles that you could look at. And even if you had relatively, ah, minimal financial education, you could look at and say, okay, I understand what this tile is telling me about my financial life. It's telling me that I made $5,000 this month, I've spent $4,200 this month, and this is how much I have left. Um, and that that was one of the core, uh, ideas behind the product.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's cool. And so, Adam, you're looking at the consumer finance space from an investor perspective. Like, where does the switch happen here from where you go from investor to operator?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I looked around for something to back, um, and I really couldn't find, uh, the product that I had in my mind, which was basically a remote control for your financial life, a Digital assistant for your financial life. There were aggregators out there like Credit Karma, nerdwallet, um, there were loan providers out there like Sofi and Prosper, and there was Mint. Um, and again, as I said, Mint was, uh, really a dashboard about your past. And what I wanted was a tool to help you plan your future, uh, and to be able to press a button and have something change about your future. And so, while it may seem simple, we, um, focused on very small tactical steps, like what subscriptions are you paying for every month? Uh, we uncover all of those. We show you them to you in one simple place. We show you how much money you would spend each year on Hulu or Audible or Netflix. Uh, and we give you a simple way to cancel those services if you deem them, uh, to be things you no longer need. And if you think about the process of presenting a consumer with a view into all their subscriptions and a button to cancel them, there's a lot that happens there from a product and relationship with the consumer standpoint. You know, when you talk to consumers about their money, particularly as a commercial enterprise, there are two things that happen. One is the consumer is convinced that it's going to get complicated really quickly. And the second thing is they're convinced you're going to try to sell them something. And so by leading with subscriptions, uh, what we showed to the consumer was that this tool called Clarity Money could help them figure out something about their financial life, would help them take tactical steps that would improve that life. That is, canceling a bill that would result in you having more money in a given month. And we would do it for free. And that completely shifted the relationship we had with the consumer from one of skepticism and doubt to, hey, this thing is actually really here to help me and is really useful. And that was a key, um, lesson that I pulled out of the behavioral economics work that I had read about with, um, Kahneman Thaler, um, Dan Ariely. Um, those individuals really helped form my thinking around, uh, what the product should do for a consumer around money. Uh, and I really have to be, uh, very thankful and grateful for the work they did and how it informed my thinking about the product.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's so interesting. And in the very, very beginning, as you're looking for the investment here, did you find the company and say, oh, this is it, I want to invest and I want to become an operator, or do you, did you start this company from scratch?

Speaker B: No, I started it, uh, from scratch. With a blank sheet of paper, I put together a PowerPoint presentation. I shared it with my cohort of, uh, investors and friends that I've worked with over the years. Um, raised the Series A from basically friends and family and got to work.

Speaker A: So you raised the Series A on basically a PowerPoint presentation. So that's the benefit of the connections and experience that you carved out in your, uh, earlier life.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, this Clarity is the fourth company that I've started, and, um, they've all worked out pretty well. Um, Clarity was certainly the fastest return. Uh, the whole journey was kind of 18 months from beginning to exit. Uh, so it was definitely faster than anything I've experienced before. Um, but, yeah, it was, um, a fortunate outcome for all the investors.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you raised this Series A based on a PowerPoint, and then you go to work and then you build the product, which you described as being pretty complex and intricate. And then what were the initial signs of traction, success? Like, how was it going in the. The early days?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, there's. I remember one late night, it was about 10:30, there were about eight of us in a room that was way too small for the number of people in it. And we were, you know, banging away on building the thing. And I remember thinking, what if no one uses this thing? Um, and that was a very, uh, scary, uh, thought. Uh, but, you know, you push through that fear and you focus on really building something that you think consumers will like. And, um, you know, we launched the product, um, in January of 2017, and really, uh, on the first day, um, when we launched it, we had over 25,000 customers. That was in part due to the fact that Apple, um, really fell in love with our product and promoted us on the App Store. So that was a very lucky, um, uh, windfall for us, uh, right out of the gate. Um, it wasn't entirely luck because, um, Apple is obviously obsessive about design. Uh, at the time, I think we had the most, and I think we probably still do have the most beautiful view into your money. Um, the most clear and simple view into your money. Apple really, uh, that really resonated with Apple. And so they wanted to promote us because it was an example of how, you know, the iPhone could be a, uh, device to help people do things that are important about their financial life. Uh, and so, you know, from there it kind of went, you know, um, you know, kind of continued to go up. Uh, we continue to attract users, uh, uh, every month. Uh, and we grew, you know, quite profoundly, you know, over a million customers in less than a year.

Speaker A: Okay. So, uh, yeah, so we just heard about the um uh using basically Apple as the, as the distribution point. I mean this is like the key of all fintech is like how to get customers and not have to pay a lot of for them. I mean the bank you work at now, Goldman Sachs I mean I assume that their customer acquisition cost doesn't all rely on Apple and they're probably spending money to get customers but like that's the key tenant in uh finance.

Speaker B: The Apple promotions that we received on the App Store were part of it but it was only one part of it. So um, you know Apple definitely helped us um get launched and kind of get some attention. We then executed on a multi pronged acquisition strategy. Heavy reliance on pr, heavy reliance on word of mouth and referrals um and a heavy um campaign around acquisition through channels like Facebook and Instagram. The value proposition of um here are all your subscriptions, you can cancel them for free in one place was a pretty interesting hook. And you know no matter how much or little money you have every has in their brain uh a cluster of synapses that are frustrated around the notion of leaking money on things you don't need. And so again going back to the behavioral economics uh work the idea of exploiting that and presenting it to a consumer um as a solution to that problem uh really was compelling. And so we drove into that messaging and into that piece of the product suite uh quite heavily and uh it really resonated with consumers. And so while again Apple helped launch us it was really the core value proposition of the product um and presenting that through multiple channels of acquisition that led us to acquire so many customers so quickly.

Speaker A: Sure. And then I guess this lastly here on the clarity story of getting acquired by GS. How did that come about?

Speaker B: Yeah so we were in the process of um launching a ah loan offer uh to our customers and reached out to Goldman Sachs uh and the Marcus business around having uh loans uh be one of the providers on our platform uh the Marcus loan business be one of the providers on our platform. And through that discussion uh the topic of an acquisition uh emerged. Interestingly we were in discussions with a few strategics uh all almost within a 90 day period um around um an acquisition um and it was a pretty um wild and fast moving uh set of discussions with again a number of large strategics. The reason we settled on Goldman ultimately was really their commitment to and their alignment with our ethos around advocacy Marcus by Goldman Sachs Even though Goldman Sachs is a very large financial institution um you know it really has no Legacy in consumer. Um, Marcus by Goldman Sachs is a new entrant into the personal, uh, finance market. Uh, we offer savings account, we offer loans, uh, personal loans. Both of those are offered with no fees. Um, if you open a deposit account, we'll pay you 2.25% interest with no fees. If you need to borrow, we'll lend to you at a very reasonable rate compared to, say, your credit card company. And the ethos of giving consumers lots of free tools and resources a la the Clarity Money Suite, as a way to help consumers genuinely understand their financial life and understand their options and is at the core of the Marcus value prop. So you'll see us offer loans not just from Marcus by Goldman Sachs, but from other loan providers in the marketplace. And we'll present those offers in an open marketplace, uh, rationalized view for you as the customer, uh, to allow you to make the best choice for yourself. And the idea behind that is again, advocacy, transparency on behalf of the consumer, uh, is in our estimation, inevitable. And in the same way that retail and transportation have been transformed by virtue of technology and that has, as a result, been better for the consumer in terms of options and prices that they pay. We think the same thing is going to happen in banking. And it is our aspiration to be at the forefront of that evolution and to, uh, present again to the consumer, uh, a set of options that are, um, um, the full spectrum of their choices in the marketplace.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you, Adam. I've got a Clarity account and a Marcus account. They're both so well designed and delightful to use that. You're right. It's so interesting when an incumbent bank who doesn't have a presence in consumer or doesn't have a market there and they can come out and build something like that. I don't think many other banks could do something like that.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: Pretty cool.

Speaker B: Well, we have a long way to go, but we're, uh, um, thoughtful and hopefully, uh, humble in our aspiration. But, uh, um, we're working hard to try to deliver value to consumers. Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, that's great to hear. So last, um, question here on, uh, advice for someone early in their career kind of trying to carve out their place in the world. And we've heard about how you identified venture capital as being an interesting place for you and then basically did whatever it took to get in and became a subject expert. Uh, what do you tell someone? Maybe they've identified a specific industry and they know that that's what they want to do, but maybe they haven't what kind of guidance, uh, could you give someone based on your journey?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, one is to figure out genuinely, um, and this requires some degree of reflection and introspection, but figure out what you're genuinely good at. If you're a technical, analytical person, um, engineering might be the right path for you. If you're more social, uh, and more outgoing, uh, maybe marketing or business development is right for you. Um, but figuring that out early, running as fast and as furiously toward the thing that you are good at is a good first step. The second is that you need to take action, get feedback, iterate and repeat. Um, so often, uh, I run into individuals who ask for advice. They say, I'm really interested in becoming a venture capitalist or starting a company or whatever it is that their aspiration is. And then I'll say, okay, well what are you doing? Uh, to make progress toward that goal. And they say things like, well, right now I'm working this company or I'm doing this, and I'm not really able to work on that. And I understand the constraints of having a job and a boss and bills and the reality of life. But even with those constraints, if you're not proactively taking steps and getting feedback and iterating on those steps, you're never going to make any progress. And so that feedback loop, uh, is critical. And, um, the third thing I would say is don't be afraid to map out trajectory of your career. You know, I want to do this for five years, then I'm going to do this for three years, then I'm going to do this for six years and I'm going to end up in this spot. And it's okay if that path changes over time. Inevitably it will, because the best laid plans. But having a goal and working toward that goal in a very mindful, specific way is much more rare than you would think. Um, and so, you know, when I am trying to identify talent, and I'm always trying to identify talent, um, I look for people who are, you know, marching up that hill and their march up that hill is purposeful and it is clear. And while they may take detours, where they're going in their mind is very, very specific. Um, those are the folks that I think tend to do best, uh, in their pursuit of a goal. And so those are the things I would encourage, uh, uh, folks to think about.

Speaker A: Adam, I love thinking strategically and laying out what a career path can look like for you. And yeah, it's going to go up and down and left and right, but but having some type of guiding force and goal through it all is super helpful. Well, this was awesome speaking with you, and, uh, I just really want to thank you again for, uh, coming on.

Speaker B: Sure. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening today. If you like moving up, the best way you can support us is by telling your friends, helping us grow. Thank you.