The Better Way To Peak Performance, With BetterUp Founder Alexi Robichaux

Innovation doesn't just like slip out of front line, with Market forces with, with your own, doubts and struggles.

Welcome to the shake-up. I'm Alexis gay and I'm bringing Kimmel. And today, we were talking about a super important topic. A very relevant Topic in the work-life world. Right now. We are here talking with Alexi robicheaux, the founder, and CEO of better up a platform, connecting employees, with certified coach, has to work together on a one-to-one basis. Alexis. You've used that word before having you. Yes, I have. And I loved it. I use it when I was a manager at patreon and honestly if it had been available, when I was an icy, I would have used it then to, I found it really helped. I miss my better up coach. When I left the company. I was like, going to take him with me. Well, as I mean, this is something that I'm encouraging all work, life companies to use as well. I mean, even for early-stage startups, it's incredibly important to have that one to my mentorship. Like I've noticed this specifically with Jen disease and people that I'm fresh out of school that are joining, early-stage companies. It's really hard to learn through osmosis. If you're mostly on Zoom calls, and so where I get really excited about, we're better off. Can offer. A lot of help is

Yeah, the fact that coaching is no longer just for c-suite executives. It's actually for anyone at a company in this has become really important with everyone working from home. Wow, 3. And it's better if we been available when you and I first started our careers, imagine how much more successful even more wildly successful than we both are today majan using the word successful. I'm so excited to be here. This is really cool. It's always good to talk to better up members. So thank you for using the product and I'm excited to chat more. Absolutely. We just wanted to start to hear a little bit about as we know that you went on a pretty interesting Journey when you were founding better up. And we wanted to hear a little bit more about what you learned as you were figuring out. What to do. Well, it is interesting. You know, I I share your sentiment that had better up and around when I would be unprofessional.

Fortunate enough to find my way to Silicon Valley and to get on a winning startups roster and go through an acquisition. It was an incredible experience, became an executive at a fortune 1000 company. I had no idea what I was doing cuz I was 25 or 26 Brewing Company. Yeah, and, you know, like our company was probably 25 people. We got a choir and pretty soon. I had more than that in my entire order, which the world has an order of magnitude in a very pronounced. Of time, was a lot for me. And so the long and short of it is, I was pretty discombobulated to that experience of wasn't taken great care of myself. It was, yo, I wasn't feeling great boundaries to get to your question. I wasn't taking care of my well-being, my sleep. And so, I took some time off. During that time I was able to reconnect with things. I was passion.

High schoolers after school on life and Leadership skills and they have me and Eddie's not volunteering to. I just didn't know what I wanted to do, you know. And so chance, your question. What was I going to? Always this journey? I think it was a journey first to figure out, like, why I was so upset. Like, what went wrong when I did the work on it, like, you know, like what I can find doing the Camino de Santiago in Spain. What this world was. I was just trying to figure it out.

It's related to personal boundaries related to being with myself related to your question. What was that Journey? It was really a journey into myself into my frustrations and understand what could have been different, that sticks out to you as like. Whoa. I need to make a change here. You know, I think a couple moments when I was at the large organization. This was a repeating. So it happened a few times. I remember I can go down to these executive briefings and buy some technicality since they had acquired this new product through acquiring the company and I ran product for that company. I was like one of the nominal heads of product at this company and its multibillion-dollar, ours and theirs is a little

Largest companies in the world like Alexi in the corner of who's going to talk about. You know, what social network, right? And San Francisco on and just like I get hit with just like waves of nausea, right? And just like the anxiety distress and I do okay with public speaking. I just realized this was an unusual reaction injure myself. So it would repeat itself. A lot of water in the face. Like am I going to lose it before this meeting? Because a lot of people especially in

Find themselves on hyper-growth tracks. I certainly found myself as a people manager at 22 years old. Why? That was a thing that we all just kind of like, hey, you're going to dispatch. You should tell other people how to do it. And I've course me, 22 was like, absolutely. I will do whatever it took a long time for me to become great at it. I think that's so relatable overwhelming because in many ways people choose to start companies because we don't want to work at Big tech companies and so you start out as an as a high-growth start up in your loving the day today, but that transition post-acquisition can be some of the hardest hitting Nets were coaching. Does really come into play. I see this a lot of the Ambassador side and even early hires that stay on board after the acquisition is like the day-to-day of your role as is night and day. The reason why you went early stage of the reason why you like being at startups, is that

Pretty different from joining a big company where you have to learn a lot, of course, scales that are fundamentally different. So there was some truth about him. Like I wanted to go smaller right where I can have more impact and, and then your big fat a big company and I think having a little context of how the world works there. So, you know, that was to your point. There was some maybe disillusionment there, but I think for me the big, like a horror person, he was just like, I don't know why I hadn't connected before, it's so obvious. And when we say it, but it's like, you know, if you don't take care of yourself, you're going to be really bad at your job. You do not work out, not exercise, not yet, and still be the greatest quarterback of all time. Does a reason that guy has a real company.

Formula for performance. He swears by. And whether or not, we all agree with his meal. We don't have to like these domains separate for so long. I just thought I could infinitely like perform and there was no need to fill up the tank. I discovered through a lot of pain that like, wow, there's a whole world of skills and behaviors and mindsets and practices on. How does sustainably fill up the tank? So you can be the best version of you as close to the Tom Brady of axes. We all may be able to be happy for each of us. Wow. That's yeah, that resonates a lot. I mean, as the CEO of a coaching company, what are some of the company values and best practices that you passed down to the rest of the team. So, you know,

Looking Valley that like, you could build comfortable and better way, you don't, there's not a trade-off between sustainable P performance and taking care of your people. And this idea that like you have to work 400 hours a week. Obviously not that many hours a week to do great. Things is just not true. I like you told me after work more than 40 hours a week. So we started with the values and by Design we have to get to the performance profile, that it takes to do something Innovative and slip out Frontline combat with Market forces with, you know, with your own internal doubts and struggles of courage.

What really speeds like this stuff is hard and they're rooted and the research and positive and behavioural science teacher, you know, you can get good at the Angela Duckworth book literally like these kind of life and this is the other side. If you're going to sustainably perform you have to have fun at some level, you have to be a different way with new ideas and you have to have a buoyancy to you, because you continually get knocked out as if you're trying, bold Brave courageous at a really high standard of Excellence.

And we're always trying to improve on is what we call in a work, which is make it part of our job. I better up to work on ourselves. Most of our concept of work is at work happens. Outside of you, you go to a you have a conversation that's outside of you. You make a PowerPoint back. That's outside of you. You do an Excel model that's outside of you. But what I had realized I wasn't investing in what was inside of me because I was so worn down in some inner work, give people time, give them resources, like coaching, give them some space. So they like, today don't work out of work. Your coach, or therapist to spend time with something that gives you Joy. I get it. That sounds real good. We like, what are you doing with your filling? Their tanks of gas? That's what you're doing.

Enumerating them to do that because not only does it drive better performance actually on Earth by saying you're not a robot that just puts all the time. I need you to have Rich Imports so that I get more creative imaginative outputs. I mean, when your at dinner with other Founders, like how do you approach the naysayers? Cuz I can imagine that. There's a whole era of Founders that are move fast to break things higher, fastfire fast, like what are some of the conversations? And how do you come up against some of these Founders that have that old school mentality? Yeah, and I think it is an old-school mentality of a fine for the most part like the founders that are much more successful than we are. We're still early in our journey. You don't tend to struggle with this as much. They usually I find have a reflection when they're like

Greatest assets, the company has, if I'm found her above. I don't know publicly traded company or something. I really have to preserve. I actually find. It's often found earlier. We still in the stage where they can be there. Early. If I told you there's a thing called a marathon and you only run ask. Your question is the date is pretty refutable scientifically. It's pretty clear which has brain research traffic stopped with Carol and the Seahawks as well. I think I was a scientific case you can baser. But what I usually start with is in her work and I just say just reflect.

And tell me when you were the most creative.

And like what you find is do spirits are often Bound by what we would call in a work. Unstructured times, were the people weren't being productive, but they were producing a personal connection with that found over there. Like, whoa, you're right. I came up with this idea when I was unemployed people and hope they'll come with a mess of their life. But what about being unemployed? LED you to be so creative and then you can kind of work through that a hard question, but go with me on this because it seems like what you're describing, is a pretty utopic ideal of how to run a company and how to run a company. Well, and treat your people while and all that has it ever felt like you had to make a trade-off in order to do that in order to provide a company culture like that.

If we look at the New Year's Eve, better up the street into our values more and we're not perfect. Going to be on the same. Constantly courageous know what rights do by Design. These values are Evergreen and that's only like about him. But episodically sure. Like there have been moments of Time. Start a combat. We were already tired. Reaching our go-to-market. We have gone from having like a truly zero quarter when we were already probably 50 + a million + 0 quarter is not. Let me tell you to pay now going into it, cost us a lot of energy and effort. Our people were understandably beat.

Business. It was scary. Like it was for everyone or buyer is perdoname. Sucharow. They were Frontline crisis management for the first two months of covid-19. Are. It was like we are going to buy with more than you ever thought of it. Traumatik. It's like phone started. Blowing up like we just got through crisis management. We cut all of our workshops. We're giving you even though we're cutting our L&D or training or HR budget for Sarah, or we need you now more than ever on the phone. I just went through a pretty tough two-year period of corporate Yellow by two months of what's going on.

Understandably and awareness for many of us who come from different backgrounds. The busiest moment of your life. You thought I was busy before now we can't do. What do we do on? Our customers are really tired. We've been running for years and this is really inconvenient. You know, me do this next year in Triple-A. How about not right now? So we went to Angela Duckworth more gas in your tank and there's a free coaching to all front-line healthcare workers. Let's lean into this moment. Let's eat like was a lubricant.

For the motor, like, everyone came alive with like the Padre game when it was like, it was crazy. But it was that inside from service more customers. I mean, that really stands out to me. Here is so many companies talk about employee retention. They want to come up with like, you know creative way for keeping employees excited. In this case. It's so authentic and so true to the company that that passion. Like I can just feel it. When you talk about it was super, I mean, it wasn't mine already idea. You had come to us. Like we need to move on this. Like this is

We'll never know, but it was a good thing that we need as a leadership team based in someone's idea and it works it read you. The native the culture and the energy at a pivotal time and then we can let people rest. Sure. What was the next step after that? So the next step was, how do we encourage people to take more time off? How do we structure our collaboration and see how we can make this more sustainable? We started doing supper parents. Why our data show that parents were the most hit right? Boring other factors for Barry impactodan head. How do we take care of parents? How are we encouraging them to you know, take time with their children, how we normalizing? We had we had stopped wall, you know a p.m. Who didn't have kids like olives. Umm, babysit your kids so you can go join this design same. And so we're really as a community mobilized and then I think people could really like wrote.

And be like I need to take a few weeks. I need to do this. We started sabbaticals. We always honest about it when we start accelerating people like, hey, I'm not at my for years. But now we tried it. It was I can't say there's a silver bullet, but we tried it and that itself is an intervention because you show you care. And then they're very forgiving. Maybe the tactics 5% off 10% off really bothers people is when you just don't care and they know you don't care and you pay lip service to ID a much rather you care and genuinely try and fail that itself is healing as opposed to the person perfect idea, but I really don't like I'm just doing it cuz it's going to take me more.

Database is no one will care when I feel sure. It's right. Like the people work here would care. But you respect a bit like all eyes. If I like three people who follow us on Twitter, but you know, that's me personally, but you know, we have always, we've always known in a success date for better off because the nature of our work and what we do we should be and we will be held our standards. And so I think there is a there's a sobriety in our mindset about that. We know that and it's something we signed up for. It's not always comfortable, but we get it and it's good and that it actually forces us to intubate because all these companies we work with want to perform to higher standards. And so, if we can kind of take one for the team here, and have to be at the front line, innovating, if you're going to, how do you, how do you do this?

But also high performance. So yes, I will say, is a Bounder when I talk to other conference bike. You probably don't deal with this. No one has a magnifying glass in your culture all the time. We've given the nature of the business where I from Italy, try to be very open about it. Take the feedback, get better. Last 12 months have really shown how important company culture is. Like we saw the coinbase memo. We saw the Shopify memo increasingly. There's so much pressure on CEOs to really declare what the company stands for and how the internal culture actually works cuz that's something where there's been this late, this age-old question. You know, are we a family? Are we a team and how would you describe what you know, that the better up team and sort of how you think about your internal culture? I think good teams feel like families is the is is my reconciliation to that. Have you ever been in a great team? How would you describe it?

10 * talk to game when he came to Boston, psycho demising in the valley, and it turns into, you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, and I am your teeth where I was always used to say family are Leon cuz it's the best things I've ever been. On. Like family like yes at my core. I know it's a team. So here's how we try to reconcile this very specific. We're very clear. We're big fans of conscious business. Fred. Kaufman has been a big influence to help shape. Jeff wieners leadership style in the culture at LinkedIn with Reed around you. No compassion. Conscious leadership job is not your job. That is a core tenets of conscious business. Your first job is to be an extreme honor. You've literally on the company. You're the owner, shin Megami you say, I'm customer success, but do it, but you're

The problem you can't say. That's not my job. It is your job. If you see something, the second thing is, you you're a citizen in our community. Whether this is a family or a team is a bunch of humans. So, it's a community and in this community, just like in the world we live in, we have some rules and the rules in our community. Are you have to be a good citizen, which means you have to intentionally. Try to get better at our values and behaviors. You have to respect, you have to honor them. You have to Value them, they are valued. So, if you don't value these values, you can't be a citizen of our community. You should be a citizen and another community. And you have to respect your fellow community members, and then you have a third job, which is called Your Role, and that's what you probably apply for a mine and that job as you choose. And so that job is the least important and our promise to you as if you're good at the first job and you're good at the second job.

You will probably change your third job a lot. But if it turns out you're not good, at your third job and you're good at the first two, then we will go the extra mile as your partner, an employer to find the right for a job and we can't guarantee. It is a business. We can just make it but we will go the extra mile and we do this all the time but here is the reciprocal if you're good at your job and you're bad at your first or second. We also go, the extra mile to injure employment immediately. You will be probably, will be given feedback. You will be given a real fair chance, but if it doesn't improve, we can't tolerate that because that's how we create a conscious culture. With everyone caring about the values and leading into the answer to your question. That's how we tried to reconcile. And so far. It's been a it's it's it's honestly why? Because people feel taken care of, right? There's that there's a they're going to give me a chance. If this doesn't work out. I'm not just gone. That's the family part. I get another chance, but there's also Go Hard Knocks in business.

We have to actually create value in the world and it's over time. That's not happening. We just can't find the right will ever. Describe it, just not a steam family feel where we know performance is the standard but it's not ruthless performance. Is very compassionate? Awful performance. Absolutely. That sounds like an amazing place to be. You know what, we're talking a little bit about right now, even not intentionally is how companies signal to potential employees, what they're about. They can do that with words on the wall words on the website CEO and founder Zone podcast interviews, for example, but, you know, one of the things that now people can do is offer better up coaching to their employees and signal that and say we're investing in you.

And I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about like what you think that signals when a company is engaging and offering this type of coaching and investment to their employees. I think it's the word you said its investment but I think first and foremost like that communicates as an employer to your employees, how I would have felt if someone tapped me on the shoulder at Disney and said, hey, we're going to rethink your high-potential. We're going to give you a like a real human expert coach, by the way. This person will be in your pocket. And I mean that would have spoken volumes to me who I am.

Clearly are making a different shade on investment in me. You you actually believe in my potential to grow and you want me here for the Long Haul. So I think first and foremost, it just signals to people. Like, I still see you heard, and I feel respected because the ultimate sign of an employer respecting, an employee is investment you more. If I never promote you and I don't give you more responsibility, you know, like do I respect you? I'm a respect your Humanity, but I'm clearly not putting you in the first-string and everyone wants to be enough for a string on a team. Like that's when you really feeling best of it. And so I think that's the first thing it does. I think the other thing, it does, especially with a lot of our deployments are design. It's really inspiring to see what companies have gone on the platform be on, but we ever expected by you in a weird now, seems very calm and appointment type is where members a certain resource groups are getting access to better up. Show populations. That people are really. So it's like,

Company X, you get better off, you're in the, you know, African-American TRG or you're in the Hispanic or talk, you know, your identify by Bach and you're a manager. You're immediately eligible for a better future for you to say. These are populations. We feel in good conscience. Be up under invested in and better up is not a silver bullet. You can just do that and do nothing, but it's better than doing nothing and it's really meaningful to those people. And then we try to pipeline that investment into business outcomes promotion things, to recruiting things like that as well,. I mean, you mention earlier is at the start of covid is you don't have people and culture. Does that mean now? I mean, do you have certain parts of the go-to-market or really?

Pakistani argies. And on some of these use cases that have a lot more urgency is, especially over the last 12 months or so, has an Enterprise customer there, all compatible, and our court is Lucien was what we. Now, it's our talent solution and we had systems solution. And absolutely. We have a lot of customers who are buying the specific solution and solution comes with a special assessment, special reporting. It measures being the best predictive indicators of performance and include custom.

Has an opportunity, and a representative coaching diversity for itself. Meaning of you're more likely to encounter, rhythms me, back. That's going to happen on the platform writ large, but no stove, or we prioritize coaches who come from different walks of life, to really make sure that people are feeling that they are able to show that experience with someone who may have been in their shoes before an experience that my well-being. And it's a fitness for companies that potentially have a longer sales cycle. It's awesome to hear that you've been able to identify a few urgent, use cases to really accelerate your go-to-market. I think that's something that we're seeing, you know, when certain teams are either having spend that gets cut or the sales Cycles feels fairly long, I think for an early stage.

Company, that's a really great Insight where if you dig deeper into the data and you really identify, these are some use cases that you can close much faster than maybe a company-wide contract like that to me, feels like a really smart move for even early and companies to identify. Absolutely, too long. I think anytime you're one of these, like, you know, new category defining platforms. What you're dealing with is like, people don't actually know how to use you. And so we found this in our quarterly sales process, 70% of our platform session. This includes countries were people don't go around like Americans. Everything's amazing saying that their coaching session, not their individual session.

That's really hard to do. But if we get through this people, be blown away and we get to this, where do I start? And so to your point man. It's kind of like the flip side of being in some ways so they can make a purchasing decision. And we found for us they were used to be supercharged with more product Solutions and we're seeing that. That's exactly. What is it increases deal size. We seen an increase in town and are ACV pills show up in the past 24 months, which is awesome. I really, credited better Packaging.

That's that's truly amazing. I'm actually not that surprised to hear about you mentioned. The. I think you said the AC went out like the cell cycle went down. I mean, I think when you're offering a more specific solution for what people need, I think it can definitely lead to an easier. Yes, and especially especially when your buyer right now is so inundated with like, what are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing a super helpful? So that's I mean that's awesome that you all were able to Pivot and leaned into some of the more specific use cases. You were seeing a question that I have for you is a little bit about what better up, reflects for me, which is this idea that technology can be used as a tool to democratize. Something that previously was reserved for only the most elite levels of whatever that is. We talked about Tom, Brady at the most elite athleticism, overseeing the CEOs of major companies or a very top people in the military and technology has historically in the last, let's call it a few decades, but many people, I'm sure would argue. It was for decades.

For that has offered the opportunity to take this Elite Education or whatever it is and bring it down to the math level. And I'm wondering, is that something that was going through your head? When you were thinking about founding better up? Or is that a corollary that you found along the way that I was reading while I was going through this personal experience, but like philosophically just kind of three books that are the DNA proteins a better supervisor is here, but the first book is the experience economy and that's going to pick up on what you're talking about. They were not in the services economy more anymore where they experience is economy. And a lot of experience economy is making experience is more accessible that used to be very experienced expensive to more people. There's the democratization component. The second book is Blue, Ocean strategy which we love which is

It's not about competitive differentiation. It's about value, innovation, and taking people who historically are non-customers. I see all of us and not, not competing with customers, but innovating to make non-customers your unique, customers your existing Executive coaching program. That would be us trying to win. Customers said, all those people, you think you can't coach there for coaching? Today. We have invented a way. We have the patent on it, for virtual coaching. Literally. We've invented the first to make it affordable and even possible for you to coach them. And then there's the one caveat, which is the third one, which is Shawn achor, The Happiness Advantage. But if we do this, we are not watering down the Kool-Aid. If we do this, we want more science because one of the problems with coaching as it's not data driven enough.

Not scientific enough therapy. We want more science. We want more rigor and we actually want to be measurably better than the high luxury expensive coaching that you think is better. And we've we've been able to do that in all of our studies of better up first traditional coaching from customer after company, not only attend the class. If we drive much better, scalable outcomes than coaching, the cost ten times as much, right? And back. If you don't do that, then I would argue what I would just hate for Eddie and I we would have been interested in this company. If we were just watering down the Kool-Aid in like a little coaching and using technology, the analog version not just steal the analog version if you just a marker play. Something that's like Step 1 step to make it better than it ever could have done without digital. And

Journey. That's amazing. Honestly, that I love her. So I can't wait to read all three of those books. I haven't read any of them. I was thinking, I was like, maybe I'll have one out of three, maybe to change my life hacks for the experience economy. Down for blue ocean is hbr articles. You can read and amazing but you can get lie. You can get the whole framework in an article for the Happiness Advantage. There is an hbr article by Shaun but the book is you need like the instrument for my life so you can get the business strategy. Investment firm works, just amused articles and, and you can save yourself to Bucks. Thank you for recommending, 3. And then saving me to, that's math. It really was hell for my schedule, and I have reflected on as we discussed amongst.

Sal's is the way that it feels like shifting Market forces, have made it possible in a lot of ways for better up to achieve the type of growth that you seen. I'm thinking specifically about the shift in perspective and in my opinion, reductive stigma around mental health and around some of these, what will call liefie no traditionally softer skills or softer to effects and then what we just discussed which was Tack. And I'm wondering if you could you speak a little bit to how you've seen the market shift, as a result of that reduce stigma. Or if you have or if I'm way off base or what else? I might be missing their I often tell the team. I I really believe time will only tell but from where I'm standing on a timeline today. Frog in a while. I really believe we're at the Dock Cam of mental health. In human history is just like we look back at two thousand and say that was the Advent For Better or Worse.

Internet as a basic platform for business. That's what we all say. That's fifty years. We have grandkids and great-grandkids. And we're going to be like I was there. I was in Silicon Valley in 2020 when covid head. And to your point. I have seen more walls, come down and stigma, Awakening and positive ways in the first 12 months of covid-19 in the 34 years of my life prior, right? And I've heard this from people have a lot more than 34 years by. And so, I think it was before, but we were weirdos in 2013. I mean, no one like this, like a small part. What are you talkin about? You guys are crazy. Thought you were smart and we're going to do something cool. This sounds like the world's worst business. You found a way to lower your

Gross margins at scale. Good job like that like really critical feedback and I we got some really hard to find which is like, you know, we miss this the first time but now we get it like better up is really for like the weaklings on every team and I'm like, oh my God.

Yes, that's right. Yes. Yes. Don't find us please because it's really smart. You immediately passed on them. They didn't pass on you yet.

Everett Everett, everyone passed. Don't worry, it was cool. Anyway. You going. I mean probably some level of frontal lobe, compromisation, sizes, probably have her compromise risk-reward Center and my car place. We have this great story of we, we, we were setting Elite performers and all factors life. And so, we had a buddy who was an Olympian who also went on to be an officer in the Navy, Seals. So we asked him, if he could pull together a focus group, focus group, the week before of Mary, Kay sales women and the bear, which is Awesome. By the way, you talk about alley performers like a credible. Then we go down to Coronado to spend the day with me.

Officers and we're asking if we bring some off. Peace, offerings of Costco Liquors. Those go way faster than ever shut. These guys, and we're saying, hey, why did you pass Buds? And someone else did it? It's the hardest training program on Earth that we know of into a man. I'm literally they don't have too many men to a man, like the question didn't compute and why you were someone else and they're very well-built obviously in a very smart. And so you like, why you and they all were mystified and then finally kind of clicked.

Like, what do you mean you chose to not like when you going to Bud's you up to Joyce's?

You either die or you pass like you just have to resolve that in your head that you have to quit. You have to crawl up on that Saint and ring that Bell and you have to quit by default. You won't get kicked out the water. What you want it checked out. So you choose to quit and Eddie and I left my wife, if the world won't let us keep doing better. But we're never. We just put it out of her mind. I'll be honest. I have never and we probably should have had many of them. We have never in eight, nine years, had a conversation about quitting, never entered Parliament and I don't see that to be tough. It could just be a really stupid but like in for some reason that got in our bones and it just like we put it out of our heads and it just never became a choice rust.

What was the obvious choice for many years? It just never happened. So, sorry, I forgot your running around. So we were, you surprised. I thought it was already happening in 2013, and I woke up everyday. Think I was going to miss the way that's how you feel as a Founder was so clear, tagged? And I did. This is the future. They were like,. We had hired as I do every day. We're not going fast enough. We're going to miss him. So I was surprised it took something like code in to do it and shame on me and I'm sad. It took something like Tober to do it. I'm happy, it's done or it's happening, right? It's a good moment. For Humanity. May be just a proxy of being her as a function of being a Founder. I've been waiting for it.

Smoke up everyday, in those early years.

Only motivated by that vision and the idea that if we don't go faster and the wave just took a lot longer to Creston. We thought is not just a platform for people that work at startups. But this is something that can apply to a lot of Industries. And so while I feel like the Bay Area is getting comfortable with talking about mental health in and talking about you actually taking or unlimited time off and and using it effectively, I can imagine you're seeing some really interesting examples and other sectors as well where it's still very taboo to talk about mental health, or to even take one day off of work, my favorite customers. We really thought this was for Millennials because we were Millennials. We were coaching Millennials after school. You're both right? Like

Why do you say Millennials in your marketing? Like every one of my co-workers, like traditional businesses? We have government agencies like, NASA. We have, you know, Southern California, Edison, utility workers, who have? Because we have people in oilfield, in some of the largest energy companies in the world. Makes it more of a lifesaver cuz it's the only told you can get that are mobile enable. We really thought that it would initially

Really we started as direct-to-consumer and professionals bought it for themselves cuz we never thought companies. We didn't know if they make the investment and that was the first place we realized, what is one of they want to partner and they want to invest, and they want to spend this money to make this free for their employees because they know it makes them better at their jobs and better at life.

Whenever Trail. Wow, I love talking to you today. Alexi. This was amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. You two are great at what you do. Thanks for having me. This was super fun. And I look forward to seeing how it comes out.

Where can people find more about better.com? Okay. Thank you.

Hey, man, are you ready to that thing? We practice? Oh my God said the time. I'm ready. Okay, 3 2 1, don't forget to subscribe and leave us view. Today's episode was written and produced by Matthew Brown production support comes from Lauren, Shield car engineer is William Lowe with research from Corey, broccolini and special things to Kyle denhoff and Lisa toner. We have two amazing gas coming up to season that you won't want to miss. See you next time.