Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
00:07:34 · Brian Halligan, Chase Lochmiller
[00:07:34] S1: Trust is an interesting where we talked about it on the call. Actually, I just finished a call before this. I kind of said to everybody, like, how many people in your organization do you deeply trust enough to say you're the DRI in this thing that cuts across the whole org and have deep trust? And it was like three to four people on average. Are you just a naturally trusting fellow? Did you have to learn to let go? [00:07:59] S0: I don't think my team would describe me as like a just naturally very trusting person. Look, it's not that I'm like, you know, hands off, go for it, you know, go do whatever you want. That's not really my approach to management. It's really, I want to understand what we're doing in this vertical. We have alignment on a direction we're headed. I get it, and I get how it influences the other pieces of the business. And then I hold, you know, my team accountable to go execute on what we agreed upon, you know, from a plan perspective. [00:08:33] S1: Okay. On the DRI topic, it seems to me as CEOs grow, like, they've got their orgs, those orgs get bigger. They struggle with getting things done across the orgs. They, at some point, are like, we need DRIs, we need to entrust those DRIs. And the bigger the orgs get, the harder it gets. And you're... You've got, like, four different major orgs underneath you. How do you get someone that cuts across? How do you have many versions of you?
00:09:03 · Chase Lochmiller, Brian Halligan
[00:09:03] S0: You know, we we struggle with this problem just like any organization. Right? Anytime you're trying to do something that is cross org, you know, pulling in resources from one team to work with another resource from another team, you know, it it just is complicated. You know, we we we do have a program management function, which helps. But, who's ultimately accountable for delivery of a lot of these things? The way I find is, like, you know, I run a I run a staff meeting once a week that, like, has, you know, a lot of the, you know, key executives and and my direct reports in the meeting, and we cover things across the whole business. And when there are pain points of how teams are working together, they surface in those meetings. And we try to address them. But there is an inherent tension to doing things that are cross functional or cross organization. We've sort of had to figure it out, though. Just being a vertically integrated business, having collaboration between those layers that are where you're transitioning across the stack, I think, is a critical function if you're going to be successful as a vertically integrated company. [00:10:11] S1: And then what have you learned about that? You must have skinned your knees on it. Any ahas other than the staff meeting?
00:10:11 · Brian Halligan, Chase Lochmiller
[00:10:11] S1: And then what have you learned about that? You must have skinned your knees on it. Any ahas other than the staff meeting? [00:10:18] S0: I was always used to just working in smaller teams and smaller organizations. And if I said something once, people kind of listened. And we worked in a small group, and it all kind of worked itself out. I I found it that as soon as I'm sort of getting sick of hearing myself say something, then we're just scratching the surface of when when I'm just hitting the the point where, know, I'm saying it enough times. And so just that whole communication layer about getting people on the same page to march in the same direction, it's sometimes, like, painful the amount of times you have to remind people of what we're doing and why we're doing it and who's doing what. And... But, you know, that's sort of what it takes to get alignment. And I think that is one of the challenges of running a bigger organization, and it's why there are opportunities always for startups, is that they can be more nimble, they can move quicker than bigger companies. And we're trying to fight that inertia of a bigger company to be able to continue to move fast and capture the opportunity at this moment in time when it's sort of required to be a dynamic organization to succeed in today's business age? [00:11:37] S1: Yeah, your business is such that you have to go fast. Like, you can't take your time. Most CEOs complain that as they get bigger, they slow down. Have you figured out ways to keep the pace up, or have you slowed down?
00:11:50 · Chase Lochmiller
[00:11:50] S0: I mean, it feels faster and crazier than it's ever been. Like, at at Crusoe, there's a lot of big things happening on a daily basis. So I I I would say we are we are continuing to move with incredible urgency. You know, I I think Elon's probably, like, the best in the world at this, but, like, you know, just trying to eliminate any sense of entitlement or eliminate any sense of, like, hey, you should be comfortable. We made it. We're here. Now we just have to coast. Elon has this superpower of, you know, simultaneously enabling people to believe that if they're successful, they're going to change the world, and there will be this incredible financial outcome and this incredible outcome that's driving massive impact, while also holding people accountable through the high pressure of, like, we're going to go out of business tomorrow. And if you don't act within, you know, the the greatest degree of urgency that you're physically capable of, we're gonna we're gonna die. And, you know, that that... Like, holding that tension is is is quite a quite a superpower. I would say that I'm not quite as extreme as Elon, in in in driving this tension of we're gonna go out of business tomorrow versus, hey, the opportunity we have to change the world is... You know, should inspire you to work hard. But I I do think that, you know, threading the needle of that is is an incredibly important thing to be able to drive a large organization to move quickly and with a high degree of urgency.
00:13:25 · Brian Halligan
[00:13:25] S1: This is your first time running a company like this. Do you study other CEOs and try to borrow pieces of their playbook? And is Elon your guy? You're trying to borrow big pieces. Who do you look up to?
00:13:37 · Chase Lochmiller
[00:13:37] S0: It's kind of funny. Crusoe is now the largest company I've ever worked for. And, you know, we we we recently surpassed, 2,000 employees. And I used to read a ton of books across fiction, nonfiction, kind of whatever I was interested in, sort of a wide ranging things from science fiction and technical books to novels and whatever the latest and greatest, you know, economist book was. But, I shifted... When I started Crusoe, there was, like, a period where I just binged on, like, every, you know, every good business book recommendation anybody would give me. I would, like, you know, binge those things. And I got to... You know, I had the fortune of having a number of great mentors. I had a great coach, that that really helped me grow into becoming a leader of of people, because I'd never really been a leader of a big organization before starting Crusoe either. And so it it it definitely took work. It took effort to, you know, get to where I'm at in terms of, like, what is it... What does it take to be a good manager? And it took making mistakes and failing and learning on the job and just, like, going, you know, on my own personal journey and my own personal path to to to, like, embed a lot of scar tissue that I could then, you know, leverage in the future. I do think that there are certainly mentors and people that I look up to that I have closer relationships with. I do very much look up to guys like Elon that, you know, I think is just one of the the greatest entrepreneurs and greatest business builders and, you know, greatest visionaries that, you know, humanity's ever, ever had. Mhmm.