An affinity for pain - Bobby Idogho

00:00

The way I justified it was, realistically, the most I would lose is maybe a couple months of salary. I had not huge amount of savings, but a small amount of savings that I could fall back on. Worst case, I didn't feel like it would take me a long time to find another job in a similar industry, or to get a contract. So actually how we set up Radically Digital initially was I took a contracting gig with Just Eat at the time. And my co-founder, OI, took a contracting gig with OVO. We did it under the same company name. With the money we generated from contracting, we hired our first employees. Then we got our first clients fully under the company name and kind of grew from there. So it was a relatively low risk approach to setting up the company because we knew at the very least we had money coming in. And as long as we didn't spend more than we were making, it was all good.

00:59

If we go back to start my career then, so I initially started off from a proper working world perspective. Actually, my very first job was working in Holster, which was an interesting first job, but one of the few jobs where you need little to no work experience. And you just go in and have all these parents shouting at you for why it's so dark and why it smell so strong-

01:22

Why it smells so bad. Yeah. (Laughs).

01:26

So, that was an interesting first job that made me realize I never want to work in retail again. Because even though it was fun at times, it was just dealing with the general public that closely was just quite an interesting experience, put it that way. So after that, I started off in an internship, what was initially an internship in Bank Of Ireland. And so this is all back in Ireland where I grew up. So working in Bank of Ireland in the strategy department, looking at branch strategy. So, doing analysis on what branch locations maybe needed to go more digital based off of the general demographic in the area, looking at like open source data. What locations didn't have enough footfall, maybe needed to consider closing down. What locations had more of say an older population and needed more in person tellers because that's the experience they prefer to work with.

02:20

And at the time, you're studying what? Management science information.

02:24

Yeah, exactly. So [crosstalk 00:02:25]-

02:27

Why information systems? There are so many people who perhaps, they might choose computer science or they might choose art. But, you go straight in there with, "I want to go information systems and I'm going to work at the Bank Of Ireland."

02:41

My uni course was quite an interesting one where the name, so the full name is Management Science And Information System Studies or MSISS for short. But in reality, the name doesn't actually explain the entirety of the course. It just kind of has evolved over time. Some people describe it as a course specifically created to just make sure you were able to get a job. So it has, I think one of the highest employment rates in Ireland, like 99 point something percent when I did. It's a combination of accounting, you do some economics, you do lots of management science, you do lots of statistics. There's engineering maths in there, there's computer science modules. So you're mixing with all the different elements of all these different courses. And then there's very practical elements as well, where you're actually doing case studies for real companies. You have IBM coming in, conducting fake interviews, things like that. So you're very much geared towards the Big Four afterwards. So it's a big feeder course into Big Four. So you learned a lot of skills, which even to this day still stand to me in trying to run a company.

03:48

When you first open up a spreadsheet or a PNL or a balance sheet, and you have no idea what's going on, luckily I'd already done a few modules. So a lot of it actually makes sense, even though at the time it was hell. So, worked in Bank Of Ireland, which was quite interesting. I started off as an internship, turned into a full-time, sorry, part-time job while I was finishing off my final year of university. So it was quite an interesting part-time job to have in uni where after a night out, hung over, all your friends, like, "Oh, where you going?" And you're in a suit, like, "I've just got to pop into the office real quick." So yeah, it was quite nice. They were quite flexible with my hours, so I could kind of just walked in and out as long as I got my analysis done. And it was really cool as well at that age, I think I was about 20 at the time, 19, 20. [crosstalk 00:04:40]-

04:40

Any of your peers doing the same thing?

04:42

There were a couple people in the department with me who were quite junior as well. But, because of my data analysis background, I got to have a lot of input into quite high level decision making. So again, to present to very senior stakeholders and things like that at quite a young age was quite a good intro to the professional world, to working in a corporate company, to kind of how to conduct yourself in the office, how to put together solid presentations, et cetera.

05:11

It must have been, once you get to this point, quite the decision to stay in consulting and go to Deloitte. What options were available to you at that point? What were you thinking about?

05:23

I think by November final year, just with the nature of how I describe my course, most of us already had job offers lined up. So at the time I think I had an offer from Ernst & Young, one from Deloitte, two from Bank Of Ireland. And then it was a case of trying to decide between them as opposed to, I suppose, being in quite a fortunate position of having choice, as opposed to struggling to actually find a job when you graduate. So, I suppose the question as to why I applied for consulting firms, so I did also apply for one job in a stockbrokers, where I thought, "Maybe I'll go down the finance route." And then I think I got to the final round of that, but didn't get it. And then after that I was like, "Nope, finance isn't for me. Not doing this anymore. Going down to consulting route." So that was more, I guess, chance than anything that I didn't end up working crazy hours in trading.

06:21

When you left Deloitte, two years later, you made the decision to join AND Digital. And that's again, another change that takes a, there's almost like a theme here. Like you're taking an element of what you've done before, but it's just that little bit different.

06:42

Sure.

06:45

What is AND Digital, and how did that move come about?

06:48

Sure. So maybe it's worth me taking a step back first to why I chose Deloitte in the first place. So the reason behind choosing Deloitte was, and I did think about this, would I go straight into a startup and just try and work my way through there and learn as I went along. But I think at the very start of your career, it's quite good to start somewhere structured. So you don't have to necessarily stay there forever. But I think it's really good to build those foundations of professional working in an environment which actually has stability and structure, where you can learn from other people. So that was my decision behind going to Deloitte. It's a well established company. It's well recognized. You can go from there. It's a really good springboard to then go into most other companies afterwards. And people would recognize where you came from.

07:40

So while in Deloitte, actually, the parts I would say have stuck to me the most aren't necessarily the training courses I did, or even necessarily say the client work I did. It's actually the osmosis of just being surrounded by very intelligent people. People who know how to carry themselves. It's sitting in a meeting room and seeing how your manager turns an angry client around, to the point where they think the idea your manager just proposed is their own idea and how great it is. So it's how they influence people, how they conduct themselves, how they speak, when they don't. When they also hold off and don't speak, you learn a lot through that, which is really difficult to learn through any module or training course or online learning that you'll get elsewhere. So I think going into a big company for me personally, was a really good foundation building step.

08:38

So once I'd had those foundations in place and had that structured, I suppose, approach to working on client projects, I then wanted to work on something a little bit more dynamic. So in Deloitte, I was in the advanced analytics team and data visualization team. And I wanted to move more into the digital consulting world because projects move a little bit faster. You can see something go from an idea straight through to a complete product that users are actually using within a few months through a year. Whereas in a lot of projects I was working with at Deloitte, it was generally longer term transformation pieces. So three, four year projects where you're either joining at the start, the middle, or the end, but you never really get to see it fully through. So I wanted somewhere a little bit smaller as well, where I can make an impact. And where I suppose there was more recognition for the work I was doing. And I could affect change as well in the organization that I joined. So, that was a lot of decision making behind moving to AND Digital.

09:42

The other driver was also, I was in Dublin at the time and also looking for a change in location because I'd been in Dublin for about seven years at that point. I just wanted to try something a little bit new.

09:52

And on a personal level, what process did you go through when you were deciding to leave Deloitte and join AND Digital? Was there a moment where you knew that you wanted to do something different at Deloitte or did it kind of appear over time?

10:14

Yeah, so I wouldn't say there was necessarily a specific moment. It was more a gradual feeling over time that I wanted to maybe try something different. But, it's a scary decision to leave something stable and take the leap into something unknown. So I completely relate to people who may struggle making that decision. I was going from quite a big, well known company, to a company that was relatively unknown at the time. And I think had about 200 people from a company that had I think 200,000 people around the world. So it's quite a big jump in terms of, I suppose, career prospect, if that decision went wrong. So, I did consider a few different companies. At the time, I think I was considering LinkedIn. I was considering Google, Facebook, a few other companies as well. But then for me, I suppose part of the decision making process was wanting to remain in consulting for a bit longer until I knew exactly which industry I wanted to stay in before actually making that move to industry as we call it.

11:19

At this time, is there a longer term plan in the back of your mind? Other than kind of going up the career ladder and going through these things, is there something in the back of your mind that your ambitions are pulling you towards?

11:33

So I think from a very young age, probably about 13, I knew I wanted to set up my own business. I just didn't know what industry or what problem I'd be trying to solve. So initially actually consulting was meant to give me that exposure to lots of different types of companies, lots of different challenges, to then identify which seemed most interesting and then build a business around that. So it just so happened that the business ended up building was around consulting itself, as opposed to any of the specific client challenges that we were trying to solve.

12:04

When you were making that call between AND Digital, Facebook, Google, the other companies you're considering, what part of your body and your intellect are you using to make that decision there? And what timeframe are you boxing this decision in?

12:22

Yeah, it's a very good question because I think even as a generally analytical thinker, I think there is part analysis that goes into it, but a lot of it is a emotion driven. So it's, how did my interaction with everyone in that company feel? Did I feel like these are people I could really be working with? Could I imagine myself doing the job day to day? Could I see myself sitting in that office? So a lot of it is more subjective decision making, or maybe that's not even the right word. Maybe it's more emotive decision making, where it's hard to put into metrics or exact words, what it is that kind of draws you to a specific company. It's a combination of different things. And I suppose a lot of it is also how they present themselves as well through their website, their interview process, their recruitment outreach.

13:17

So, at that point you're almost hyper analyzing everything, like rereading each email being like, is the tone sort of the right tone for a company I would want to work with? Why have they taken so long to get back to me after this interview? Or maybe they're not interested. And then they respond, "Okay, thank God they are still interested." And yeah. So it is quite a rollercoaster process when you do find a company that you like, but you're not sure whether they like you back. It's almost like dating, when you go on a first date and you think it went well, but you're not sure how the other person found it. You're not sure if they're going to respond. You're not sure if there's going to be another date, whether it's going to go further.

13:58

That decision making process that you went through at that point would've been one thing. But, it would've been another decision making process entirely when your gen at the end of AND Digital came about and you decided to found Radically Digital. What was that process like for you?

14:15

I would say it was quite different in terms of the, I suppose, emotions and thinking that you're going through at the time. So for me, it wasn't necessarily a case of being incredibly unhappy and thinking, "Oh, I want to quit. I'm really not happy here." Which I know is the case for some people. Overall, I had a reasonably positive experience while working at AND Digital. It was more a case of personally that little voice at the back of my head saying, "I want to set up my own thing. I want to set up my own thing." Just got a little bit louder and louder. And I felt like I wasn't necessarily hitting my full potential or using a hundred percent of my capacity. It got to the point where the job felt easy. And one of my biggest fears is getting complacent and not achieving what I could potentially achieve essentially. And looking back and regretting that.

15:12

So, I think when I made the decision was actually, I had just gotten a promotion. I'd been promoted really quickly, one of the fastest in the company at the time, because I'd actually gone to skip a level. But I realized, I think I was 25 at the time, that if I got one more promotion, I would get to the point where it was just too comfortable and fall into that fur line mouse trap issue where it becomes too safe and too comfortable to everyone to take the risk of leaving. So didn't have a wife, didn't have kids, didn't really have anything time me down. So, decided now's the time. Just take that leap of faith. If it doesn't work out, I can always go back and work for another company. But, I had a two month notice period, so if I didn't quit, it'd be very hard to kind of maneuver and make moves quickly. So I just handed in my notice where nothing specifically lined up and then built out the concept with my co-founder from there, to plan what eventually became Radically Digital.

16:10

Wow. That must have taken a whole heap of courage to take that call when the idea and the company isn't formed yet. You must have been battling some like mini Bobby's there who are like, "No, Bobby, don't do it."

16:31

Yeah. I think it's always going to be a scary one. But I think at the time, I think the thought of staying in the company forever and very, very slowly climbing my way up to the top after like 10, 15, 20 years was even scarier than just taking the leap and kind of seeing where it goes for six, seven months. And then if it doesn't work going back. So it isn't an easy decision to make, by any means. It's also not a decision that I think everyone should make. I don't really believe in the line of thought that everyone can set up a business and everyone can start a company, because it is a lot of work, which I suppose I found out the hard way. I'm still finding out, but I love what I do, but I don't necessarily think everyone is cut out for running a company. Because, it does take a lot of, almost like an affinity for pain at times, and then grit, et cetera, which is perfect for people, but I don't think is made up for everyone. But yeah, it was a very difficult decision to make.

17:43

Is there something in your own background that means that starting a company and going through that pain and that grit is worthwhile to you?

17:51

That's a very good question. So I guess one of the drivers I guess is, so my dad actually set up his own business in Nigeria when I was quite young. So seeing that freedom of him being able to kind of travel between Ireland and Nigeria back and forth. And even though it was a lot of hard work when he was there, having that freedom to kind of move around and decide your own hours, even though he ended up working quite long hours, I always liked that idea of carving out your own destiny, I guess. And that freedom it gives you as well as on the flip side, it's also a little bit restricting in that you can't just go on holiday when you like, because the company's not going to run itself, et cetera. So, it is freedom on one hand, but then also takes away on the other hand.

18:43

But I think growing up in Nigeria until I was seven and growing up in a Nigerian family also contributes to that, where the general mindset or cultural values around really hard work. It's like you study hard. The work ethic is generally quite strong. Everyone is, I suppose the closest word I can think of is like hustling to try and survive. So that sense of, if you don't work hard there, there's no safety net. There's no social welfare as such. There's nothing to really fall back on. You either work hard or you're going to struggle in life. So that mindset has kind of been ingrained in me and throughout my career as well.

19:32

There must have been a huge, the sunk-cost fallacy is something that we all experience at one point or another in our career journey where we are doing something that we then end up like doing a job that is kind of at that lower rung of the ladder, but we feel like it was the right thing. It must have been that on an extreme level for you because you go from this senior position AND Digital, to quitting, to not knowing what's going to come next. How did you formulate that cost in your mind?

20:10

That is a good question. So I suppose I never broke it down to quite that level analytically, which thinking back was surprising, because I usually spreadsheet. Actually I did spreadsheet out actually what the first few years of the company might look like. I do love a good spreadsheet. But yeah. So I suppose it was looking at the potential of where it could be, probably over clouded any doubts of the risk of what I was leaving behind. I suppose, the way I weighed it up or the way I justified it was, realistically, the most I would lose is maybe a couple months of salary. I had not huge amount of savings, but a small amount of savings that I could fall back on. Worst case, I didn't feel like it would take me a long time to find another job in a similar industry or to get a contract.

21:08

So, actually how we set up Radically Digital initially was, I took a contracting gig with Just Eat the time and my co-founder, OI, took a contracting gig with OVO. We did it under the same company name. With the money we generated from contracting, we hired our first employees. Then we got our first clients fully under the company name and kind of grew from there. So it was a relatively low risk approach to setting up the company because we knew at the very least we had money coming in. And as long as we didn't spend more than we were making, it was all good. So we managed to set it up without actually taking any external for funding or even necessarily putting in our own funding other than the contracting fees that were coming into the company. So it was a relatively safe approach to spinning up a company, which meant that there wasn't a huge amount of upfront cost that we were then at risk of losing versus the stability of staying where we were.

22:07

Yeah, I guess you've still got the kind of emotional cost of what it would've been like had it failed.

22:16

So I guess that was the biggest worry was just, I suppose, taking that leap, taking that chance and then it not working out. It'd be quite difficult to take that leap again. But, it was one of those, might as try it now, or I suppose you'll never know, because I would get too comfortable and I would never want to take that risk.

22:36

How do you help people who come to you for advice in these moments? And is there a pattern? I'd love to know, what to types of people do come to you to ask for your advice making these types of decisions, and what patterns do come up from it?

22:59

It tends to be most often people looking for a career switch as opposed to just moving jobs. So, do I do get people coming to me looking for both. But, the vast majority of people who are looking to break into tech from sometimes related, but often completely unrelated industries and have no idea where to start or how to go about it, or even what role in a Scrum or development team would be suited to them. So usually I start off by just understanding why they want to move into tech because if it's purely just for money reasons, then it's probably not the right decision. They need to have some passion for an element of it. So if it's, for example, they love the idea of creating something out of nothing, or they really enjoy working with diverse teams and seeing like really talented people in their own fields. Those are good motivations where I'm like, "Okay, let's proceed this conversation."

23:59

The next thing then is I'll usually just run through an outline, well, try and understand where they're understanding of development teams and what we do is at. And then I'll try and outline what each member of the development team generally does. So what does a product owner usually do? What does a software engineer normally do? What's a delivery lead, what's a Scrum Master? How do they differ? What's UX? What's UI? And then almost always the will spot one of them and be like, "Yes, UX. That sounds like really what I'm interested in. I just didn't know what it was called." Or, "That product owner role is actually really similar to what I'm doing in marketing right now where I'm an account manager." Or, "That engineering role is quite similar because I actually do a lot of data now, so that's probably what I'd be interested in."

24:44

Then once I identify which of the roles they're interested in, I'll usually, so I have almost like an email I've sent out so many times now. So it's basically just intro videos to understanding how software development works. So what is Scrum? What is Agile? What's the difference between front end and backend? What is the role of different people in a Scrum team or in a development team in general? And I'm like, "Okay, watch these videos. Make sure you understand the very basics of it, and then we'll have another conversation from there." So usually after watching those videos, they'll come back with lots of questions or things like, "Oh, I didn't realize I actually work in an Agile way, I just didn't know what it was called. But we actually have morning sessions. We do things iteratively. I just didn't have a structure around it."I'm like, "Okay, perfect. It sounds like this role is really what you're looking for."

25:36

And the next steps is trying to understand, or for them is trying to understand how they actually get into that role. So do they go off and do a bootcamp for three months? Do they just apply for a very entry level job and work their way up? Do they go off and do a masters and completely reeducate and come back and apply for jobs that way? So it really depends on the individual. My general steer is a masters probably isn't the right way because at least we, as a company and most companies I know, don't necessarily look or value specific university courses as highly as we value experience now. So even if you have experience working in a startup or building your own product, generally speaking, I know I may just be speaking for myself or my company here, we'd value that much higher than if you went off and did a one year masters in computer science or something because that's very, very theoretical. It doesn't really show that you can actually apply it in practice.

26:46

What type of more personal obstacles do people tend to face? There's an education piece where they kind of need to know what those things are. What things do you think hold people back making these decisions on a personal level?

27:03

I think a big one is uncertainty. So it's going from a very safe, certain career path that they've been on or career trajectory that they've been on for a while now, where they were very much in their comfort zone, to really jumping into the unknown. So it's different career levels. It's different titles. It's different day to day roles and responsibilities. And that safety of structure and routine completely goes out the window. So uncertainty is generally a big emotion most people are feeling at this point. There is also excitement, but there's also quite often a bit of anxiety as well.

27:57

I think once people understand which of the roles they're going for, it then becomes a case of sometimes imposter syndrome almost. So even if they already have the right experience, the right skills, there's this feeling of, because it's not like for example, in law where you pass the Bar and it's like, cool, you're a lawyer. And you have this definitive certificate saying you are a lawyer or you are now certified accountant. With most engineering roles, it's quite difficult to know when you're actually ready to start applying for jobs. I really see this time and time again, even with people that join us, where there is this imposter syndrome that still lingers where they feel like, "Because I haven't gone to computer science or because I haven't come from X, Y, and Z background, I don't feel like I belong here. I feel like I'm just pretending still. Like I'm still, whatever my previous career was, pretending to be a software engineer."

28:59

Have you ever felt that?

29:00

Personally, I would say occasionally, because I'm not sure how you find it, but occasionally when you're running a business and you have a lot of people waiting for you to make decisions. And, in my mind when I was in companies and I'd see CEOs making decisions, always felt like there was tons and tons of research and analysis and massive teams and data behind these decisions. But in reality, sometimes it's just a gut feel. So sometimes it's data driven, sometimes it's just your instinct, your gut feel, and you make a decision and decide we're moving in this direction. So sometimes it feels a little bit like you're, or at least feels a little bit like I'm playing at being a CEO. Other times I feel like I'm right in my element. So I definitely would say there are those hints of just creeping doubts of, am I just playing at being in charge of the company or do I actually know what I'm doing here?

29:52

It's funny how some of the advice that we get is surrounded to try and I think alleviate some of the pressure that we fear in these moments or that type of imposter syndrome. The example that pops in my head is that we should search for clarity, not certainty. And I think in some ways that phrase is just designed to enable you to get over the immediate barrier that you've got. And it probably is, and I'm sure it is the same experience that you have in general when you are making longer term decisions. I guess the tricky part is when you're making a decision that it is so meaningful to you and you don't have the information available to you, what do you do? That's really tricky.

30:53

Yeah. It is a challenging one. Yeah. So I do think running a business isn't quite as analytical as a lot of people think it is. A lot of it is more instinct and emotion, not quite emotion, but more intuitive. What's the word? Intuition driven, I guess.

31:15

Interesting that there's a parallel there between deciding where to work too, because on the face of it, you would think, there's a big decision, you would use data to do that. But actually you end up not being in that scenario. And in some ways an overload of data and input into your decision making can kind of drown out the core voice that's trying to tell you what direction to head in. Do you spend any time trying to more deeply understand your motivations?

31:47

Yes. So, I'd say I'm quite self analytical at times, not to the point where it's paralyzing or anything. I can do it while I'm still moving forward. But more of just always checking, why did I think that? Or why did I feel that? Or, why did I decide that? So yeah, I definitely do take some time to self-reflect on, I suppose, the reasons behind why I make certain decisions or why I decide to go in certain directions, but not always.

32:23

Do you have any tools to do that? How would you go about doing that?

32:27

So I wouldn't say I necessarily follow a set framework or a set process. It tends to be more of an introspective thing where it's within my own head, just running through this situation has happened. Why did I take a certain course of action over another one? And then just self realizing it may have been because speed was maybe the most important thing over accuracy, or it was because there was a need for some someone to just take control of the situation. Sometimes it's better to make a decision than to be paralyzed by trying to decide for too long. Even if it's the wrong decision, or there is no right decision.

33:17

How do you reflect on your mistakes of omission? How do you look back and say, "Okay, I can only see history from the point at which I made that decision to this point, but I am not privy to the history where if I had made this other decision or if I had said no, or yes, in this scenario, that something else would've happened"? Like how do you figure out how to reflect on the decisions that you decided to kind of not to jump in and run on versus the ones that you did?

33:46

I think this is where spending too much time looking back can sometimes get dangerous because it's [crosstalk 00:33:51] moving forward. Yeah. So I try not to think too much about the parallel universe where I've made a different decision and what would've happened there. But generally speaking, if I do make a course of action, I do like to take just a second to look back and think, was this actually the right move? So for instance, I think one that comes to mind is going hybrid as a company versus everyone coming into the office or being fully office based. So, there's pros and cons to both. There's definitely times where communication breakdowns will occur or just lack of engagement. It's rare, but it pops up every now and then.

34:36

And then, well, it will make me question, would it have been a better decision to just have everyone come into the office? Yes, there'd be pushback. Yes, some people would be annoyed initially, but in the long run we wouldn't necessarily be seeing these issues. But then the other half of me is thinking we could have lost some good people who maybe just wanted that flexibility. Would've made it more difficult to recruit great talent, and would to be the environment we want to cultivate as well. So I guess it's one of those things where there isn't necessarily a right answer and you don't know what you don't know. So, unless we go back and try it again, there's no idea how it would've played out.

35:17

It sounds like underneath all of the decisions that you're making is this underlying current that's moving at a certain pace that you don't want to jump out of and that you want to keep moving forward. Why does that exist?

35:37

I think right now as a business, we are in a growth phase. So we have been for the last probably two and a half years. We've grown very quickly, very, very quickly for a consulting firm without any external funding. So from two people to 70 people in about two years. Still growing at quite a fast pace. So by the end of this year, we'll be much higher than that. So with that comes a need to try to be proactive while also being able to respond to situations as they change. So spending too much time, almost like a waterfall project planning front would make it very difficult for us to respond as situations change. So for instance, when we set up the company, we didn't necessarily predict the global pandemic starting a couple months later, but we had to be able to respond to that.

36:41

At least I feel like if I spent too much time, and this may just be a me thing, analyzing historically what I should have done differently or the different directions I could have gone, it reduces my capacity to be able to respond to what's happening in front of me as well. So it needs to be a balance, absolutely. Like in an Agile project, you do still need to have a retro, you need to be able to expect and adapt. So we do have checkpoints where we'll look back monthly and see how our metrics looking. What did we actually do this month? How we actually perform as a business, et cetera. And personally, probably about once a month as well, I'll kind of have a little bit of a look back and think, am I performing as well as I could be as a CEO?

37:32

Because one of the things I think is actually quite challenging, I don't know if you find this is getting feedback when you're running a business. Because, most of your employees just assume you know exactly what you're doing. They don't really necessarily feel the need to give you feedback. But, we're also people and we do need to get that feedback where we need to know, are we doing a good job or should we be doing something different? So we try to encourage this as much as possible. So we have open two-way feedback happening as well. But sometimes without that feedback, you kind of need to do the self-analysis yourself as a business owner to understand, do I feel like I've made the right decision with that call there, or do I feel like I could have done something differently here or I'm performing as well as I could be, or I'm being as efficient as I could be?

38:17

But, the underlying current to move forward as you describe it, I think is driven by that hunger, I guess, to get to the point of where I feel I could be, and not selling myself short by underachieving, I guess.

38:38

Do you feel like you are doing your best work?

38:39

Most of the time, yes. Not all of the time. That's how I would answer that. So I think it's difficult to be in the flow and working at peak performance the entire time when you are running a business. There's months where something just pops up out of nowhere, that completely derails all your plans. You need to go back to the drawing board and start again, which can sometimes knock your confidence a little bit or even just knock your motivation or your morale a little bit. But then it's about that self drive that gets you right back on and moving forward again.

39:16

I think you've got a lot of it.

39:17

Thank you.

39:20

Yeah. Thanks for sharing.