You Can’t Delegate the Hard Stuff feat. Audra Stanton

Mark Abbott (00:00:01)

Hello, Audra.

Audra Stanton (00:00:07)

Hi, Mark. How's it going?

Mark Abbott (00:00:08)

I'm doing well. How are you doing?

Audra Stanton (00:00:11)

I'm good.

Mark Abbott (00:00:12)

I've been looking forward to this. Your story and our story are very interestingly coming together. And so I wanted to have this opportunity to sort of give people a sense for how these stories are coming together, because I think you're a very important part of everything we're doing here. So first thing I'll do is just introduce you.

You've been with us now for, it feels like going on, what, a year and a half or two now?

Audra Stanton (00:00:50)

About a year and a half.

Mark Abbott (00:00:51)

Yeah. And you came to us by way of our CFO. Yeah. Good old Tim. And, um, and then you have an amazing sort of personal history and, you know, sort of a, an origin story, if you will. And I'd love for you to share that with folks. Um, because, uh, it is relatively unique. Um, but it's like, I think perfect for who we are and where we're going.

So if you wouldn't mind, you know, helping the founders framework audience know a little bit more about you and your background, that would be

Audra Stanton (00:01:29)

Yeah, absolutely. My background is unusual for tech. I did not start in tech. When I was in college, I really loved science. I was, you know, a straight-A student, very type-A still in my life. And I loved helping people. I really wanted to make a difference. And so I decided to go into medicine. I got accepted early to medical school when I was at GW and stayed there for eight years in D.C.

Love D.C. It's a little different now than it was back then when I was going to school there. And I was one of those people who, you know, didn't really hate medical school. A lot of people ask me, like, well, it was pretty hard, right? And I'm like, yeah, but it was fun. And I have met some of my best friends still to this day from going to medical school.

And when I graduated, you know, before you graduate, you have to decide what specialty you want to do and where you want to, and you basically go through this process called the match for your residency. And I was kind of between three things. So I was between OBE, GYN, because there was a little bit of surgery, which I kind of liked, and there was also some outpatient stuff.

And you still have, and you have that like added thing of like delivering babies, which was pretty cool. I really liked cancer surgery. And so I was thinking of going that direction. ER, I kind of liked the emergency medicine as well because you get to do a little bit of everything, but it's kind of at a superficial level and you didn't have clinics. So pluses and minuses there.

You get to see some pretty like gruesome things and also some not so gruesome things. And then psychiatry, which was inpatient, outpatient. Every patient looks pretty different, even within the particular diagnosis that you're looking at. So I was kind of torn between the three. And at first I was like, OK, let's do OB-GYN. That was the one I kind of went for first.

and decided it was just, it was a little bit too boring. I don't know, people kind of like laugh when I say like delivering babies isn't that exciting. Delivering babies when something goes wrong is more interesting, but it's also higher stakes. You know, someone's new little baby is going to have a problem potentially.

And so there were some good things, there were some not so good things, but it wasn't kind of challenging me in the way I wanted to be challenged. There's also all kinds of monkey business with malpractice insurance coverage. And there's just a lot, you know, with OB that wasn't necessarily ideal.

And so I switched to psychiatry and I did both inpatient outpatient psych at various community hospitals in Ohio. So my my program was basically my residency program was split over the over like three different hospital systems. And so we'd rotate from hospital to hospital. I had clinic with a lot of community patients. There were some really great things that I got to do.

But at the end of the day, seeing like a new patient every 10 minutes in the clinic and having like this long list of notes to dictate at the end of the day, and then realizing you have to, you know, contact Medicaid on like half your patients to try and get drugs approved that you want to give them.

It just wasn't making me happy because I felt like I wasn't really being, I wasn't able to make a difference because there was so much stuff that was kind of in the way of me really using my knowledge to influence people in the way I wanted to. So I had some friends who had gone into academics after med school. Some of them had started practicing clinically and then kind of shifted over.

And I decided to give that a try. So I started teaching at some of the local universities in the Pittsburgh area where I am from. And I decided to also start teaching or tutoring, I should say, online for a company, a new ed tech company at the time. This was what, like, eight and a half, nine years ago. And at that time, it wasn't super common for people to be doing things online like tutoring.

And so it was a little bit new. And the company was pretty small when I joined. And that was really great because it was kind of in that early startup mode where they didn't have a lot of engineers, they didn't have a lot of instructors. And so we got to kind of experiment and test and do some things that normally in a larger company, you would not get to do.

So I got to shape a lot of the product. And as we kind of started to grow, I moved into leadership and then became part of the C-suite for the last few years. And that's how I met our CFO, currently at 90. I actually still teach at a university part-time in the early mornings when they need some extra hands.

Love still the hands-on and teaching lab, but I did end up making that jump from basically academics slash medicine, clinical medicine, to tech. It's been good. I went from EdTech now to SaaS and our AI company here at 9D. Really, that change happened at a time that was just right for myself and my direct reports at my previous company. They had arrived.

They were doing the job that I was there to do, and I felt like it was their turn to step into the role that I had been occupying and they are now, which is really cool to see from another perspective. And I am here at 90, where we get to do a lot of different kinds of cool things.

Mark Abbott (00:07:39)

Yeah. Well, that's awesome. So what, what, what attracted you to this opportunity in particular, obviously, you know, you had some, you know, an amazing journey, amazing success. Um, uh, you know, when you, and, and I would say when we, let's do it in a couple of parts. So what attracted you to this opportunity?

And then we'll get into sort of, you know, Big idea is not always easy to execute, right? Talk about what we've experienced so far together trying to move this, this, this, this thing forward.

Audra Stanton (00:08:14)

Yeah, that's a, that's a good. So I'll start with the first question. What attracted me to come, to come here to 90? So I really believed in the product. That was a that was a really important thing.

Like if you're going to be part of a company that is driven by a product that you're putting out there for people and you don't love the product and you don't believe in its ability to do good in the world. then you probably shouldn't go to that company and work there. And so that for me was very important.

My husband had used EOS in his business, still does use, well, he uses 90 EOS now, but he was using EOS at the time. and knew a lot about it, and thereby I knew something about it, even though my prior company was not using it.

But a lot of the ideas behind EOS I felt like were really important for businesses, especially new businesses where founders aren't necessarily that confident in what they need to do in order to be successful. And there's a lot of failure. And some people just don't want to take that leap to be a founder because of that fear of failure.

And I felt like that, like SMB market, it's just, there's so many great people out there who want to make a difference. And so many companies I feel like now are enterprise and want to get the big accounts. And that wasn't what 90 was going after. It wasn't what 90 was about. And I felt like there's a lot of potential for the technology to grow and really make a difference for people.

So that was thing one. The second thing was you. So when I interviewed, I knew Tim, of course, from my previous life, but, you know, you have to, I think, work for a company where you really believe in the founder's vision. And I knew a little bit about you just from what I'd seen online. Tim had told me a little bit about you, just the good stuff, of course. And, you know, we had our interview.

I think our interview was pretty short. I think it was like, 30 minutes or something like that. I think you were at an offsite or a board meeting or something like that when we interviewed. But I could just tell that it was a match, that what you were aiming for and going after was going to be something that mattered to me as well.

And so I felt like that was going to result in cool stuff that we were going to be able to do. So, yeah, I'd say that that's the thing that attracted me to to 90, kind of a phased approach.

Mark Abbott (00:11:03)

Um, I don't remember the, this is, this is my memory. It may not even be that accurate, but yeah, we had a, we had a short interview and then I was like, okay, so we need to introduce you to the, to the CTPO. And then he was going back and forth. I'm like, well, if, if you don't want Audra here, I would love to have her here. Right. And I think we had that conversation as well.

A little bit later on, and then Greg wised up and brought you over onto the onto the product side. And my perspective was. you know, that ultimately the product and education were, they were the same, but we were working, we had a different group of people working on developing all of our educational material. And so it was just a question of, right, what was the right door for you to walk into?

You walk in, right? And as I said, it's, you know, what is that, you know, 18 months ago, it's been a heck of a journey, right? I would say, and you should comment on this, you know, my perspective has always been we have a relatively big vision. And You know, it seems as if it should be easier than it is a lot of times. It's like, right. But, but it's been hard, right?

In a number of regards, in terms of really being able to move things forward, because I think both of us, there's so much we want to do. But, you know, as an early stage company, and even though we're on our 10th year next year, you only have so many resources.

And so, you know, so I would say, you know, with all the things we wanted to do together, as an example, you've helped me You helped me write work 9.0. And then you and I've also worked on several books, other books together. So we got that stuff going on. Then we got the product stuff going on. Right. Then you got, because you and I are very, we should talk about this.

So you came in and we decided to organize product, uh, really, um, across four different tribes, right? One is the people tribe, which you run. Another one is the productivity tribe, which Kyle runs. And I think Kyle's been on Founders Framework. Another is the AI tribe, and it's actually AI and Delta data tribe, right? Which TJ runs, and TJ's been on, he was on one of the more recent podcasts.

And then the fourth tribe was, what was it called?

Audra Stanton (00:14:02)

Ever boarding? Onboarding?

Mark Abbott (00:14:04)

Ever boarding. Yeah. And then we really do probably have almost a platform tribe as well.

SPEAKER_01 (00:14:11)

We do.

Mark Abbott (00:14:11)

Right. So we have five tribes. And so you oversee the people tribe. And then my perspective has been that, you know, we're a, I call it a learning hospital or a teaching hospital. You may, since you actually know what those are all about, you know, have a preference for what it is.

But when I think about the work you're doing and the work we're doing, um, I also think about the work we're doing actually just building 90. Right. And talent and development. So you've been involved in helping us think through how we want to develop our, um, talent and development system, our feedback system, our, um, you know, our career development system.

So there's a lot of things that we're working on together. with limited amount of resources. So, you know, so it's been... So when I say it's been hard, I think you and I have been juggling a bunch of, you know, balls, we've been spinning plates on sticks, and then we've been putting the chicks back into the proverbial box. So there's just been a lot going on.

And to say that it's, you know, and I call it hard work because I do think it's been hard. But I also feel like, you know, we have a lot of good things that we're working on and that makes it easier to sort of. deal with some of the ambiguity, deal with some of the just the grind that's associated with the work we're trying to do. So what's your what's your experience been so far in terms of that?

And then you can weave into it, you know, working with, you know, a founders, you know, like all founders, we have our strengths and weaknesses.

Audra Stanton (00:15:53)

Yeah, that's that's a good question. So it is hard. I agree with you that it's hard, but the problems we have are good problems to have. They're the kind of problems that I think a lot of companies, once they get to them, feel like, oh my gosh, this is really, really challenging.

But it's actually not nearly as challenging as some of the other problems you could have if you weren't at the stage of development that we are at. So we have a lot of great things that we want to do that move the vision forward.

And we're kind of in this point where we need to decide what we do first, what we do second, and kind of what the order of operations is for the betterment of our customers. And also so that people see 90 in the way we want them to see 90 as really a leader in the AI space.

And in terms of resources, I will give a lot of kudos to Greg Vesper, my boss, our CPTO, because he's been really savvy about the tribes and the organization of the structure and product, and just very, very agile and able to kind of move from thing to thing. We never get kind of, you know, locked into a roadmap, and that allows us to kind of move when we need to move.

but also maintain some consistency and through lines when that's going to be important for the customer experience and also where we're headed as a company in terms of innovation. So, hard problems, yes, but good. In terms of working with you, Mark, you know, we don't always agree.

I think sometimes people have the perception that we do agree a lot, and maybe we do, but we do disagree a fair amount. It's good. You know, that's a, that's a healthy dynamic. And I was talking to somebody the other day, not someone who works at 90, like one of my husband's friends or something, and he was saying, you know, some founders just want people to say yes to everything they do.

And I said, Well, that's not what I was hired to do. And that's not what I'm ever going to do. For Mark, if he's doing something that I think is, is going to be a problem, or I think we could do it a different way that's better, I'm, it's my job to say that. And, you know, that's, I feel like, been a dynamic that's worked very well for you and I.

I think it works well for a lot of the other leaders here at 90 and yourself as well, is the sense that I have. But I you know, the best founders, I think, want people around them who are not always going to agree with them and are going to be honest with them about what they think. So it's been good.

Mark Abbott (00:18:45)

Yeah, I think, you know, the whole founder mode and how people, a lot of people perceive founders, I mean, you know, if you've bring it all the way back, right? The founder has a vision, you know, founders have, you know, good founders have visions and they want to see that vision turn into reality.

And the number one thing they, they, they care about is, you know, that, that is the company, right? And they look at the lens at the company as something that they want to see, you know, as I said earlier, they want to see that company, that vision turn into reality. And, you know, I tend to look at companies like, you know, a ship.

And so, you know, when you're getting feedback that says, hey, there's a problem, right, or there's a hole, or there's, you know, we're heading in the wrong direction, and it's gonna adversely impact, you know, the ability to do the things you wanna do or for the company to become the vision that you have, then, you know, I think, you know, the vast majority, vast, vast majority of very good founders absolutely, you know, wanna hear about things, right?

The old quote from Doc Rivers, average players wanna be left alone, good players wanna coach, great players wanna want the truth. So, you know, I do think that that what gets confused sometimes is just that strong conviction, right? And that broader perspective sometimes, it's like a lot of founders are NTs, right, using sort of the Jung-Meyers typology.

And so they have this almost sixth sense for what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. And sometimes, you know, it's maybe they don't have the patience to sort of explain the context or they don't have the words to explain why they think the way they think. But ultimately, you know, I think everybody's trying to do, you know, in a really good company, everybody's trying to do what's right.

Um, and, um, and then as, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, what's right for all the ideal stakeholders. I was in a session yesterday where there was some real interesting tension between, um, a company that I helped, that I coached from literally, you know, zero revenues to over 120 million in revenues. And they were.

um, acquired, um, uh, but still have, but the founders still has a significant interest in it. And we were having a conversation around the new owners, the new board, um, what they want. And it was clear that the, you know, the company that I coached up until the sale was very much about having high-trust relationships with all of its ideal stakers.

It did a really good job of balancing the needs of the investors versus the needs of the employees versus the needs of the customers and their vendors. And within...so they started in COVID, right, 21.

So within Less than, you know, about five years, they have an amazing reputation in the industry, amazing reputation, which is why, you know, the investors invested in it because they want to extend sort of its product offering.

But there was tension because you could tell the investors were leaning a little bit more into just the money side of the business and really pushing things pretty aggressively in terms of just how fast charging they wanted the company to be. And so we had some really interesting conversations yesterday around that tension.

And, you know, of course, the investor doesn't really think they're over indexing on just growth and EBITDA. But, you know, clearly, I shouldn't say clearly, but the founder was really, you know, and the CFO, they were talking about how, you know, the impact on the floor, right, how people are feeling a lot of stress because they're doubling the size of the operations.

And people don't really know exactly why they're doing all the things that they're doing now. And as a result, you know, there's tension that they've never experienced on the floor before, some behaviors that they've never seen before ever in the history of the company.

And, you know, so, you know, I believe that you got to sort of really figure out how to develop, as you know, high-trust relationships with all of your ideal stakeholders.

And I think that, you know, sometimes people perceive, you know, whether it's founders or CEOs, and, you know, you and I have had this conversation on several times, it's not like there's no data to support this, but that they're over-indexing on, you know, on either their own ego or they're over-indexing on just driving enterprise value at the risk of everything, and they don't really have that more nuanced and balanced perspective about the nature of their game they're playing.

Audra Stanton (00:24:05)

Yeah, there's actually what you're saying made me think of, I'm going to give everybody a sneak preview of some stuff in your new culture book, maybe. But that, you know, those kind of things do impact the culture when there's change like that and lasting effects. And knowing the level of ambiguity that your workforce is used to and comfortable with and where you are is really important.

And I think it's very easy, especially if you're a little more disconnected, like sometimes, you know, board members can be more disconnected from the operational people in the leadership. sometimes you can, you know, overshoot it and forget or not really manage through the change in a way that helps preserve the sort of culture that you want.

And it can can cause some temporary or some in some cases, unfortunately, permanent damage there. That's that's hard to walk back.

Mark Abbott (00:25:01)

Yeah. And it's it's and it's interesting, too, because I think that, you know, part of the reason I went down, I'll call it, you know, the rabbit hole on creating this book you're referring to, which is tentatively titled A Founder's Guide to Culture, is because I felt like I needed to do more work than I did in Work 9.0 in terms of helping people understand the nature of culture.

It's not just core values, right? And understand that, you know, that as I wrote about in Work 9.0 or, you know, you helped me write about in Work 9.0, you know, climate actually drove the two predominant cultures. And that's really means environment drives culture, right? And so if you think about the environment, it drives the nature of the culture.

And then if you think about what the environment is about, it's all about the nature of the opportunity you're pursuing. So if you look at our business, right? When we started it 10 years ago, because it is now 10 years ago that we started it, you know, our big idea was to start by supporting companies that were getting up and running on EOS, which is upgrading their operating system.

And, you know, EOS at the time we started had been out, been around for almost, yeah, it'd been around for 10 years. Geno made it really super simple in a really, really good way. So it, so it, so it was a really straightforward program, right? That was delivered without technology back in, in the, in the, in the, late 90s and in the early noughts, right?

And then, you know, it was relatively straightforward. We were supporting companies running on EOS. And so not a lot of ambiguity, right? And, but we knew AI was coming. We, we were envisioned AI before we ever laid an ounce of code.

And we, we knew that with AI, we could do some really cool things in terms of helping people, helping companies and departments and teams and individuals understand where they are developmentally. stages of development stuff that you and I work on a lot. And that applies stages of development not only applies to a, you know, applies to everything, right? It applies to a society.

It applies to a company. It applies to the department. It applies to the team. It applies to the individual. And and so where are you developmentally? And then, you know, what are the implications for, you know, how to take that next step forward to go from stage one to stage two to stage three, et cetera.

And so we knew from the beginning that we could leverage AI to help people understand where they are developmentally and to help people understand the priorities associated with taking the next developmental step. Now, that was the vision. Reality was supporting companies running on EOS.

Then comes along AI, and it literally does, you know, change the nature of ambiguity associated with the opportunity that we are, you know, not just pursuing, but involved in, right? And so, you know, I think for our company and so many companies out there right now, they are dealing with higher levels of ambiguity. And from a cultural perspective, that does create change. right?

And so we're dealing with it, right? We're dealing with it, you know, virtually every, you know, decent company is dealing with the implications of AI. They're dealing with it internally, trying to figure out where they should use it. They're dealing with it from a change management perspective. The employees are trying to figure out exactly what it means for them personally.

And so what can happen is, you know, a company that's relatively, things are relatively straightforward, not necessarily easy, but relatively straightforward can find itself all of a sudden involved in something that has a little bit more ambiguity.

And that's part of the reason why I went down the rabbit hole was to help people understand that, you know, that you have these dimensions of associated with the opportunities you're pursuing, some of its levels of intensity, some of its levels of ambiguity, and to understand where you are, you know, because if you don't know where you are, it's hard to know which direction you should be pointing to go where you want to go.

But I think the You know, it's fascinating right now for us and for our clients as we are, I would argue, shifting from a SaaS company to an AI company. And just even getting that different perspective and that framework and helping everybody understand it is easier said than done.

Audra Stanton (00:30:13)

Yes. Especially when when it's human nature to kind of resist change. Yeah. And I think AI has it has a ton of possibility as we talk about a lot. But generally speaking, there is fear there amongst people, founders, too, who are kind of like, I don't know how this is going to affect my company and my people and what we do. Are we going to become irrelevant?

I was actually talking to actually an employee at 90 said that that she was worried that her her job that maybe I could do her job better than her. And I said you're. going to learn to level up your game. And maybe AI can do some of your responsibilities at some point. I don't think we're there yet, but maybe at some point, you know, these two responsibilities it will be able to do.

But that's the beauty of us kind of moving into this new age of work here that, you know, the ability to learn something new where you are more valuable to companies than you are today is going to come in handy. And so that fear, though, I think is very common right now with this kind of unknown thing.

In the same way, I think like the internet was way back in the day and how we're going to do work remotely, like what we're doing right now, we would not be doing, you know, and now here we are doing it. So it's something that we'll get through as a society, but it's definitely, You know, I think people are definitely feeling the newness of it right now and wondering what that means for them.

Mark Abbott (00:31:54)

I think the, you know, and like most everyone, I think, you know, we're we're making you know, we're I don't say struggling because that's probably it's probably a fair term. Right. But, you know, we're working our way through all this right now.

And, you know, the reality is, is I think that it's, you know, What we got to do a better job of, what I have to do a better job of is help everybody understand in the company that, you know, the changes that are taking place, they're just not changes that are taking place at 90. These are changes that are taking place within society.

These are the changes that are taking place within the world of work.

And so, you know, what I think I could do a better job, and I would love your help, you know, helping me do a better job or us doing a better job is, as you just talked about, right, is what we need to do is help people understand that that things are changing and that it's important for them to, you know, you can't stop the change from happening.

So what we need to do is lean into learning new skills, right? We need into understanding the technology. We need to lean into, of course, you know, challenging the technology where it needs to be challenged because it is a tool, right? And what I've said for years, and I know you've seen me write about this, is our job is to make sure every single one of our employees are eminently employable.

And this gets back to we need to be having honest conversations about how to help them evolve. We need to take into consideration, you know, where I come from on this one, too. We need to sort of take into consideration what their level of aspirations are. You know, I like James Root's, you know, employee archetypes book.

And so, you know, some people, they just want to learn how to be really good at doing their job. And, you know, he would refer to those as an operator. Other people are very much driven towards striving to take on more and more responsibility. And that's awesome. And then you have other people who just love pioneering and trying new things.

And so you have them go and help you work on sort of pioneer-like work. And then You have other people who are more explorers. So, hey, help us explore these opportunities over here and other people who are givers. And it's like, OK, so how do we make sure that we're all working really well together? We're aware of each one another.

We're leaning into the moments where empathy is important because there's a lot of change going going on. And then, you know, we have a lot of artisans in our company. They're not only, you know, the obvious ones, which I would say, like, you know, um, Dylan and Jeff, you know, on the design side. Um, but you also have a lot of, uh, a lot of engineers and product people who are artisans as well.

And so just right, leaning into understanding who they are, leaning into helping them, um, uh, sort of, uh, evolve. how they would like to evolve given their aspirations and personal situations. Because by the way, those archetypes can change over time.

You know, you could have a situation at the family where it really requires you to be just predominantly just, you know, sort of not worry about career progression. It's I just need to do a really good job of being a good employee, nine to five. And then I have other things that I've got to focus on, family, community, whatever it is.

but helping people, you know, sort of gain the confidence and competence to, as I said earlier, to just be eminently employable. And so that's, I think, one of our big obligations and helping them understand that, you know, this isn't just about life at 90, this is about life in 2025 slash 26 almost.

Audra Stanton (00:35:57)

Yeah, I think that's a that's very well stated. A lot of. Not just founders, leaders, I think sometimes forget that and they kind of selfishly want to think of the employees as theirs and they're going to stay with me forever and, you know, they do a great job and I'm never going to let them go.

But it's our responsibility, I think, as strong leaders to think past that and think about their career along with them and partner with them to

Mark Abbott (00:36:23)

to make sure that they are employable and they are able to get where they want to go in terms or or, you know, I, you know, and intellectually, it's easier to say than emotionally. It's easier to. to emotionally to accept. So I have had now, I want to say at least somewhere close to 20 people who've worked for me who now run businesses, right?

And some of them have gone and run someone else's business. Some of them have gone and started their own businesses. I mean, very, very successful people. Very, very successful, right? And every single time one of them left me, it kind of hurt, right, on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm very proud of the fact that I have, let's say, 20 people who have are now, you know, leaders, founders.

And so, you know, it's not just about, you know, it's not just about them leaving, going to doing something else or, you know, going working for someone. It's about, you know, giving people the skills and experiences that ultimately lead to the confidence and competence to go start their own thing. And, you know, we, you know, our prior CTO is a great example.

Now, I didn't even include him in my numbers of my 20s, right? But Randy, you know, has now started his own company and talked to him recently and it's going really, really well. And so, you know, just giving people, like I said, the confidence and the competence to take that next step when, you know, when they're ready for it.

In terms of the, you know, I always like to say the moment we're in right now, given your background,

SPEAKER_01 (00:38:30)

which, you know, includes psychiatry, right? These transitions, right?

Mark Abbott (00:38:44)

So that people are moving from a place of insecurity and fear to, okay, so this is the new world. Do you have a gut on from a societal perspective, is this like take years?

Audra Stanton (00:39:04)

I think, yes, some of it depends, I think, on how rapidly the technology evolves. The speed is pretty it's pretty fast right now. I think we're going to see it kind of level out here a little bit where we won't see dramatic changes unless you're using AI on an everyday basis, very and working very intensively with it.

I do think it will take years, which is not like—and people are probably listening to this thinking, oh my goodness, years, that's going to be hard. But we've done hard before. Like, as a society, we've had things that have taken years for people to kind of get used to. And it's okay. Like, people make it through at the end of the road, but their job might be a little bit different looking.

I think one of the things that we're seeing a lot is just resistance to it, like, oh, it's not happening. My job is fine. It's not going to be replaced by AI. Well, it might be. That's OK if it is, because you have a ton of potential for your skill set to grow and you can learn new things.

I think that a lot of people are you know, kind of tainted by bad educational experiences they've had, like going to school and ending up with a degree they don't use, or, you know, the thought of going back to school to learn new skills, and the assumption that that is what you must do is kind of an antiquated view of learning, in my opinion.

Not that higher education doesn't have its place, it does, but there's a lot of ways you can learn new things without doing that, without going back to school. But having that open mind is, I think, that that thing that people have to kind of adjust to in the next couple of years. And as long as they have that open mind, they're going to be OK.

But those who kind of resisted and just refused to not do the job that they're doing now, they're going to have a harder time.

Mark Abbott (00:41:03)

think, you know, one of the things you and I have been working on, not as much as I'd love to, but is assessments back to, you know, understanding who you are and, you know, sort of where you are developmentally and where you are sort of in terms of, you know, just the journey of life and where you want to go.

And then, you know, the beauty of what I believe AI is going to help us do better and better and better is help people understand, you know, where they are and who they are and where they want to go, and then help present the opportunity to them in a manner that is is highly effective, right?

So the way that you present an opportunity to a giver is different than the way you present an opportunity to an explorer, it's different than the way you present an opportunity to a striver, it's the way, you know, an operator, an artisan, you know, et cetera.

And so, you know, I think that, you know, part of our vision is to help people and teams and organizations and ultimately society look at what AI can do with a half-full lens as opposed to a half-empty lens, and then over time, we could become more and more effective at this. And then it's like, OK, so now you can explore things. Right. And that really do resonate with you.

And and then recognize that, you know, this thing called life is a journey. And, you know, what we want to do is help people just genuinely be in love with the journey. Right. And to be looking at the journey as a learning journey, like lifelong learning, and to help companies help their employees appreciate and love the journey, especially the journey of work, because it gives us freedom.

You know, ultimately, it gives us freedom to pursue other opportunities if you want to, because we've done financially reasonably well. It's given you the ability to pursue other opportunities because you have a better, broader perspective on what these opportunities would look like for you, et cetera.

So I'm a huge optimist, but I'm also pretty impatient with, you know, I think we should be doing more better, but I think that's just classic founder mode, right?

Audra Stanton (00:43:35)

Yeah, you can be impatient, I can be impatient too. So like, it's not, that's an uncommon trait in tech especially. I think a lot of people are, who are innovators naturally just want to innovate quickly and not get hung up on other things.

You mentioned a lot in Work 9.0, you talked about adaptive systems and how, you know, people, and what they do and their work and their life are going to merge into one thing. And it's going to be just kind of one blended thing and the ability to kind of adapt to what's happening in your environment is going to become a more important and critical skill.

And I think we're starting to see that a little bit more here, where, you know, 90 is going from a SaaS company to an AI company. And that requires the employees that we have to adapt, not just in terms of the company, but in terms of what they do in the company with regard to other things they do in their life as a whole.

And Some people are going to feel like that's really uncomfortable and getting them to a place where they're OK with that discomfort and able to work through it in a productive way that gets them where they still want to go or maybe where they want to go looks a little different than it did 10 years ago or five years ago, which is, again, OK.

But it's that kind of working through that that we're going to be seeing here, I think, in like 2026 a lot.

Mark Abbott (00:45:04)

Yeah. And, and, you know, back to hopefully, well, not hopefully, you know, the things that we learn by running our own company. Um, you know, we will do our best to help other people learn from some of the things that we, we learn. Um, and, uh, you know, and, and, uh, you know, my hope is that we can continue to just help, you know, more and more companies and their employees.

Um, as I say, confidently and confidently move forward in a way that they love the journey. Um, they appreciate the moment they're in. They're not overwhelmed by it. And these are moments you can look back and say, wow, that may have been hard, but that was super, super cool.

Because I think that more and more people, I deeply believe over time, more and more people are going to genuinely love the work that they're doing. And that's why we exist.

Audra Stanton (00:46:01)

Yes. Agreed.

Mark Abbott (00:46:03)

Well, I have a funny feeling we're going to do a part two and a part three, but I so appreciate having this opportunity to spend some time talking about this stuff with you.

Audra Stanton (00:46:11)

Yes. Same. It was great being on. I look forward to next time to part two.

Mark Abbott (00:46:15)

Me too. Thanks, Audra.

Audra Stanton (00:46:17)

Thanks, Mark.