The Leverage You Need to Scale a Team of 3 Into 25 (Warren Thompson​​​​​​​)
 

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 (Upbeat Music)

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Jesse Gilmore
 Hey everybody, today I am here with Warren Thompson, co-founder of Olametrics. And Warren, the first time that we talked and decided to work together, you are a team of three, with yourself, your co-founder Charles, and one employee. Where are you now?

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Warren Thompson
 Well, Jesse, it's a pleasure to be here talking with you. And I can say now we are a team of, it's about 25 people at our agency. Not everyone's full time, but we are a team of 25.

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Warren Thompson
 And we've had some great team members that have been with us for over five years. And so I feel like

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Warren Thompson
 we've been really blessed in the culture that we've created, even though we're a remote team. People still feel like there's this sense of like, hey, I'm part of this team, this is the best team I've been on. And they wanna stick around, which is I think being very beneficial for our growth, but also for my sanity as a business owner.

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Jesse Gilmore
 Yeah, and when we started working together, I remember

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Jesse Gilmore
 the first testimonial that you gave, you talked a lot about just like the mental sanity and being able to have somebody kind of talk through, especially with rapid growth. Can you talk a little bit about those first, like nine or 12 months that we worked together? So you went from the three employees to about eight or so, and then from about 15,000 per month to a hundred thousand. What was that kind of like journey like? Can you kind of bring yourself back a little bit? Cause it was a while ago.

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Warren Thompson
 I'm gonna place the timeline. It was shortly after

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Warren Thompson
 COVID,

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Warren Thompson
 and so we're a digital marketing agency. There was a lot of marketing budgets at the time shifting away from events and like in-person experiences to digital marketing. And everyone was just kind of like, they felt like they needed to get on the train.

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Warren Thompson
 So we were, at first when it happened, it was actually very scary time. We didn't know if we were gonna have to shut our doors and fire our one employee and the tides turned for us. So honestly, it was invaluable to have you as a person to as a third like impartial party to really talk through our challenges. Cause we were growing so fast and there were so many demands. We were just trying to like basically tread water to stay above the mountain of work that was coming our way. We didn't have the systems to make all of those people that we're having to add to our team useful yet. And so there's a lot of what Charles used to call mob ball. He still calls it once in a while. Where there's a lot of people that don't know what they're doing. And then there's like duplication of work and there's confusion and there's like too much communication having to happen. And so I think those are just the growing pains of like growing way too fast. And then yeah, and then trying to build the system as that is taking off.

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Jesse Gilmore
 Yeah, and then I remember you had hired somebody which would make it a team of four, realize it was a wrong person, let them go. And then we went into this really intense focus on your offer. Do you remember in like the way beginning, some of like just even the messaging and trying to figure out

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Jesse Gilmore
 how to make it to where that offer resonated and also in a way that increased client lifetime value and kind of repackage was a big one for you if I remember correctly.

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Warren Thompson
 We actually used the same offer. We haven't changed it.

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Warren Thompson
 I've simplified it a little bit so it doesn't take as much work to do. But we still use the same offer. And it was on this kind of idea of,

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Warren Thompson
 just to build some trust with new clients, we have a small, easy, easy yes. It's like the yes ladder, right? They come in, they do a sales meeting with us and it's an easy yes for them to say yes to this one week project. So at the time we called it a digital opportunities analysis. And now we've kind of tailored a couple different messages depending on some audiences, but lately we called it an online report card. And so especially with maybe more of the business owner

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Warren Thompson
 that is like wearing all of the hats and doesn't understand what all of those syllables, digital opportunities analysis mean.

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Warren Thompson
 But it's still a one week project and they get a lot of value out of it. And then that allows us to also understand, get access to their Google Analytics, which is where we can kind of like shine a little bit, audit things and go, hey, you know what? Here's your actual opportunity.

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Warren Thompson
 Here's the thing that you maybe thought was the pain point. And here's the thing that maybe was a blind spot for you. And that I just having that opportunity to actually look and then show them where the blind spot is has expanded scope multiple times. They might come in and say, hey, our Facebook account's broken. And then I audit things and I go, you know what? Like your Google ads are the biggest opportunity. And that's the area that you're actually have, you're wasting the most money. So I think that was an invaluable decision for us to make because we've been using it now for, you know, I don't know. Six years. Six years, yeah. Yeah, so it's great that it hasn't changed and just makes the whole onboarding process the same for every single client. It's like this, they all start at the same place, which makes the fulfillment really predictable when we're onboarding new clients.

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 (Laughing)

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Jesse Gilmore
 By the way, for any way that's listening, I did not make sure that Warren had been using the same offer.

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 (Laughing)

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Jesse Gilmore
 That's a surprise to me, but it's not surprising if that makes sense. Because when something works within the business, especially like the offer and that introductory kind of part, you don't really wanna change it. And making it to where there's consistency and predictability in that way beginning sets up for a really good client experience. Now you're a team of 25, and I'll kind of go back and forth between these because I think that for anybody that's listening, this can be very aspirational. They're hearing about leverage for growth, and you're actually my first client.

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Jesse Gilmore
 We started working together August of 2020,

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Jesse Gilmore
 and worked together about two and a half, three years or so. And in that time, you were solo, you weren't a husband or a father, and then now you're a husband and a father, which is cool. You went from the three person to a 25 person team. When you think about just from the business side, we know that the offer has basically stayed the same, even with 25 people, which is cool.

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Jesse Gilmore
 What else have you kind of learned from that fundamental leverage for growth being built from the ground up, getting to a place where you're, is there certain things that you're still using from that time?

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Warren Thompson
 Our actual services that happen after that one week offer are a little bit different. I like their similar platforms, but there's new ad platforms. TikTok wasn't a thing back then really, or it was really in its infancy and maybe didn't have the ad side. And we do TikTok ads and programmatic, and now there's chat JPT ads, you name it. All of that stuff is shifting at all times, but that first week project where we're kind of assessing things and creating a little plan, that's the thing that stayed structurally very similar.

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Warren Thompson
 As far as life, yeah, lots of changes, lots of changes.

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 (Laughs)

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Warren Thompson
 From hustling nonstop and working into the wee hours of the evening and night sometimes to now having a pretty like, I'd say like fulfilling yet demanding personal life of when I get off work, there's a baby there.

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Warren Thompson
 So I have these constraints that I can't just work nonstop and I have to protect that time and I want to, right? And so then

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Warren Thompson
 I think like the biggest thing to get to that point, maybe there's two, like I'm kind of the type of person, I like learning new things all the time and I like doing new things and I feel like I'm pretty good at it, figuring things out, like a lot of founders, I'm sure, which is probably why you started your agency in the first place is to,

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Warren Thompson
 well, it was the book, "Dan Martel, Buy Back Your Time" is a good kind of reference point if you've never read it, of just looking at like, what am I spending my time on and how can I buy that back by training someone else or giving someone else accountability for those pieces? A big one for us was sales. So now we have a full-time head of growth and she does all of the sales. And so that was like a huge piece of my week before, now we don't have to do that. And then the other pieces is now like for our account managers, now we have kind of a senior account manager structure where they're like a senior, I say coach slash strategist for our newer account managers. And that has pulled me out of the line, I guess, working with clients much more than I've ever had or experienced before. And so like taking your week and going, okay, where am I spending my time? How can I hire that thing out? How can I hire that thing? I've also taken this personal life, like someone now mows my lawn. Because I did that last year, now with the baby, I do not have time to do that. Or if I do, it's like taking away from something else.

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Warren Thompson
 So it's just like we did with you, Jesse, like very early doing that time audit and then going, okay, how can I buy back my time or at least hire back my time with someone else who already works for me

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Warren Thompson
 is essential.

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Warren Thompson
 The other piece is the systems thinking approach where every single thing that we do for a client, let's say,

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Warren Thompson
 and it could even be every new tool, every new shiny object is thinking like, where does that fit into our current value stream or process flow for that client? And so there's like, you know, there's like 3000 new AI tools now on the market and new ones getting added every day. So they're all shiny, they're all new, they're all like there and you feel like you're falling behind and you have to implement these new ones. But unless you have a place to put it in your operational workflow, it's just going to add more and more chaos with every single new tool. So it has to be repeatable. If you're not using that to create some sort of repeatable action that is gonna, you know, save some time, then it's just gonna create more and more chaos and confusion.

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Jesse Gilmore
 I'm sure there's more you're gonna go on a rant, but I wanna point out two things. So first off, if you look at,

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Jesse Gilmore
 we just recently doubled down on the word leverage, which always makes sense because we have a trademark leverage for growth and it's our method and so forth. But now I start seeing it everywhere. And the moment that I identified it, because you're my first client and now I've had 500. And

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Jesse Gilmore
 the actual like pattern of starting with the founder and focusing on the founder first, as opposed to all the other programs that focus on lead and sales.

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Jesse Gilmore
 And focusing on the founder and starting to look at the time and being able to understand the journey of a founder going from the doer within the business to a trainer, to a manager, to a leader, to a visionary. And like, and when you build systems, you're actually just moving the role of the founder upstream towards that. It's really interesting because our whole positioning now is based around leverage first agency scaling, which is based around what you just described as one of the biggest things that you're still holding onto. The second thing is,

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Jesse Gilmore
 when you look at systems, you look at it the right way. A lot of times people think systems are just more software, but a system is actually that repeatability side. And it also gives you the understanding of what Joey Gilkey and one of the podcasts and talked about as a singularity of focus, where you have kind of like this value stream and once it's effective, you don't really wanna like mess with it that much. You're just like, okay, it's working like the offer and keep it and start changing only the variables that need to be tweaked. Now that singularity of focus is the same way that you're looking at AI tools where naturally people gravitate towards a shiny object. And then it'll be like, how can I switch everything to make this thing work? And then all of a sudden, like there's too many variables where you're looking at it in the right way, where you're looking at your value stream. And I think that I taught you that word back in 2020.

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Jesse Gilmore
 But looking at the value stream and getting to a place where you understand that the system is only as good as the repeatability and the predictability of the outcome that's created. So very, very cool.

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Warren Thompson
 I think the reason why it's hard is because it's counterintuitive. Like you've got the new shiny object, it's almost impossible not to chase it. And

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Warren Thompson
 every single article you read is telling you why you need to.

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Warren Thompson
 Or every single Instagram video that says, "Claud just killed this." And yeah, there's so many of those. I'll give two examples. One was actually very recently, we found that there was this miscommunication in this one step of our onboarding. That's what I'm currently working on. There was another one for when we're launching campaigns. So when we're launching campaigns, we usually need to get approvals on the creative artwork and then also the copy. And then we eventually have a task that says schedule the campaigns. And so there's a dependency there. And

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Warren Thompson
 some people were scheduling the campaigns before they knew that everything else was approved. And so there's a little bit of like, I say gray zone where we're, okay, we didn't know that that was unapproved. Okay, great. So I'm meeting with the team to go through it. Instead of just talking at each other in a circle, we just pulled up the whiteboard and we said, "Which step is off right now?" Oh, it's this step. And then that person owns it. And so let's list out the challenge and let's list out maybe like a one, three, one on potential solutions we wanna do

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Warren Thompson
 to try to fix this step. Okay, now we got some ideas. Let's test this one on this step for the next few weeks and then see how that goes. And so all of a sudden we're now actually looking at this whiteboard working on it together instead of just like going around in a circle of people's opinions. So invaluable conversation, the move from this time-lacing conversation.

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Warren Thompson
 And then the other one was now that,

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Warren Thompson
 Google's dying and SEO is dead and everything else, right? So it's not, long story short. But so we started doing AEO packages, which is very similar to SEO packages. But before we did that, we said, okay, we're gonna create a whiteboard or value stream that identifies all of the steps and what we're doing

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Warren Thompson
 so that when we've got, we use the first project to kind of build it out. And then after that, now we've got the template for the next project. And there's some version two, version 2B or whatever, so that we'll make some changes along the way. But then that way that when we've got that next project, we've got the value stream map. I think like that's the way to think about it. And we even tie that back to, okay, now what are we saying the proposal that's going to lead to the project being sold and really connecting all of those pieces? Because I think when you're

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Warren Thompson
 just starting out, you might not have enough time to do a lot of this stuff because I didn't. So you're just trying to sell things. And as a founder, usually you're pretty good at selling things. And I've heard this jumping off the diving board and inventing water on the way down. And so you're like, yeah, yeah, we can do that. We have a name and then like, oh, let's figure it out. And the more you do that, the more as a founder, you just get sucked into solving the problem because the team won't know what to do.

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Jesse Gilmore
 This is really cool. On the value stream activity, I think for anybody that is listening right now that does not have processes mapped out in some type of visual,

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Jesse Gilmore
 that's probably step number one when it comes to actual systems thinking. But the way that you're describing it is actually the right way.

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Jesse Gilmore
 I actually want people that are listening right now to focus on a couple of different things that you just described really quickly. Number one is that within the team, you brought the team to a process flow and you started to work through it as a team. And it wasn't dictated based around you and what your thoughts are and what needs to change. That's number one. That's a leadership capability or quality that you want to kind of instill. That's number one. Second thing is that you didn't wait for perfection. You figured out how to test it. Whatever idea you guys do, you're gonna test it for the next couple of weeks and then come back and look at it. And that's very similar to the CAATA

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Jesse Gilmore
 process improvement mindset when it comes to it. And so many times people will come up with grand scheme improvements and then try to implement it. And it's too many things that are changed all at once that you don't really know if it's gonna work or not. And the way that you're doing the incremental changes and you're testing it out to see whether or not you're actually even going in the right direction is an awesome, awesome quality.

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Warren Thompson
 It's just come from years of doing it, trying it, figuring out, oh, we did a little bit wrong. Okay, we should do this next time.

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Warren Thompson
 Like I do have a few lessons that I could probably share.

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Warren Thompson
 So we tried to do SOPs and

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Warren Thompson
 in many different ways, shapes and forms over the years even after we worked together, Jesse. And one of the things that really helped us was first, always start with the value stream, which it could be a whiteboard or process flow. Sometimes like all these words are used interchangeably and pick a start point and an end point. And every single step in between

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Warren Thompson
 has one role assigned to it. So we used to have some SOPs that had like multiple people, right? So it was like, this person does this, then this person does this, then this person does this. And it just got way too confusing. It would get bogged down. So we said, okay, now this thing is owned by this person in this one setting where they do the work, that was your tip. And then it passes on to the next person. And so that you can have a clearly defined second step. So that was really key. We also broke out our SOPs into like two kind of levels of structure. One is a guide, which is like just a quick like one, two, three, do the steps, maybe a quick video. And then SOP, which is like, this is an important step. We can't afford to screw this up. Let's have a formal SOP structure for this. And I made recording a video required on every single one of them, which is very important. Because when people shoot the video to explain what they just wrote down, they often catch themselves where they made the mistakes. All of these steps that exist on this whiteboard also go into, we use ClickUp for project management, but Monday or whatever, Asana, whatever you use. All of those also go in with the exact same words, go into a ClickUp task list. And so that usually is like a parent task list for the actual like whiteboard. Or you might break it into a few different sections with milestones, but then every single item

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Warren Thompson
 has a role assigned to it, which they can just reference the whiteboard if they don't know how to do that thing. And so we created the template that just gets copied into a client project that has a referenceable, here's how to do this step.

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Warren Thompson
 With those pieces working together, it's just like this beautiful little system that works together. And then that's why people come in, they go, oh my God, like I know what to do right from the get go. And it's, yeah, it took a lot of time to get there, but it's so worth it.

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Jesse Gilmore
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Jesse Gilmore
 I'm kind of geeking out, because obviously I'm like now in my mind thinking about your workflow and your failure proposition and then like knowledge management system, like the how tos and how it's connected to a project management system, all operational kind of like geeky stuff. But what it ended up doing is it sets up for a really good experience. Not only for the client, which is obviously what most people focus on, but more actually on the employee side. And I remember when we first started working together, those first employees took about six or nine months to get to independence. And even like they're really, really good, it just, they weren't set up for success. And I remember during the growth, we got to a certain place where we minimize that from six or nine months down to about three or so. And then you got it so

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Jesse Gilmore
 structured that you could actually do like a training system and assign the training system. Do you still have the training system?

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Warren Thompson
 Yeah, it's a 30, 60, 90

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Warren Thompson
 template that we would give new employees. So we have them for like a couple of the primary roles where like a new marketing coordinators is kind of our number one entry point to the team, but a new one of our new like ad specialists or a new account manager, they also have, we've got them built.

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Warren Thompson
 And then so along with that were some courses. And one of the things that like I started out was creating some onboarding courses for the team, because when we went to a remote team, I was like, okay, I need a way to like, you know, automate this and onboard people.

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Warren Thompson
 And like, can't do it with them sitting beside me at the desk anymore.

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Warren Thompson
 So they still use those courses. We've just made updates on the videos that are out of date. And then that's it. And you know what, honestly, what I tell new people is, hey, by the way, some videos are gonna be out of date. Just let me know which ones. They don't always know, but they've got a pretty good idea once they start seeing some of our templates and they're like, oh, these things have changed. So I use every new person as like a way to like audit which things are out of date. And then we just go and like update those. So

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Warren Thompson
 like in a perfect world, I would just have someone doing that nonstop, but we get, we're busy and doing flat work and stuff. So they're all pretty close. But yeah, like those onboarding courses, I think one of the things for me was figuring out is like, that is different. Training is different from your systems. And so you've got your onboarding training. Maybe we have a 30, 60, 90 day guide for things that they're like, they should be doing in those first, especially the first six weeks. Those are really mapped out. And then it gets a little like choose your own adventure a little bit after that. But it's very different than the documentation that you need for your systems and your steps, like with SOPs and in our case guides is what we call them.

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Warren Thompson
 And like those two things can work together, but like some ones about like creating some training on how to be successful in this role. The other ones about how to do this specific process properly.

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Jesse Gilmore
 I think it's a clear distinction that a lot of people miss. They always think that SOPs are the training and being able to make it position specific where it literally is like you have your arm around the person in your training and going, okay, here's what we need to do. Here's the resources you have. Here's how you're gonna use these certain things to accomplish what you need. I think that distinction is very crucial. The other part that you had said that

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Jesse Gilmore
 I really want people to understand is that there is always a system that's being improved. And if you can find that kind of repeatability where like a new employee that's going through and looking at training videos and giving you feedback in order for you to improve it, I think that's like super crucial. You can also do the same thing with operations and people using SOPs and then realizing that something might have changed with the SOP and then raise their hand and improve it that way.

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Jesse Gilmore
 And I think that that system thinking, this is a really, really good segue because I think that setting up the business to be able to be that system, be that repeatability, have that predictability,

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Jesse Gilmore
 most likely lets you sleep better at night.

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Warren Thompson
 Sure does.

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Warren Thompson
 And

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Warren Thompson
 so now if I think back to like 2020,

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Warren Thompson
 2021,

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Warren Thompson
 there was always something extremely stressful that I had to deal with. And there were some periods of time where, like I'd be just burning the candle both ends for months. And so like now in my personal life, like we've just had a lack of sleep to the last six months with our new baby, our daughter.

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Warren Thompson
 And so to not have that in the business has been, I feel like I wouldn't have been able to do it. I wouldn't have been able to do both. And so it was like, I'm so thankful that I had those years where I was building all of that stuff to then get to this point. And yeah, and I know that that doesn't always work out. It doesn't always work out that way for everyone. Some people just gotta, they're like, I'm doing both at the same time and it is what it is.

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Warren Thompson
 And but just for me, it was a lifesaver.

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Jesse Gilmore
 Random question off the cuff. You still work on the weekends?

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Warren Thompson
 No,

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Warren Thompson
 no. Where I work in my house,

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Warren Thompson
 gonna

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Warren Thompson
 do some landscaping and all that stuff. If I do work on the weekend,

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Warren Thompson
 it's usually for something like a speaking gig or something that I've got coming up that is a little bit more like work, like let's say adjacent, work adjacent. Like I did a conference recently. So, I

[00:26:51:18 - 00:26:57:23]
Warren Thompson
 think on Sunday, I took some time and was just working and practicing my presentation, like that kind of stuff.

[00:26:59:14 - 00:27:05:20]
Warren Thompson
 But like on a consistent basis, yeah, I didn't work at all this last weekend or the weekend before I don't think.

[00:27:05:20 - 00:27:15:09]
Jesse Gilmore
 The speaking gig and stuff like that, that's more of like for necessarily the agency itself. It's more based around your choice, more on a passion side. This is really cool because

[00:27:16:14 - 00:27:31:04]
Jesse Gilmore
 the systems that you built are in the way beginning of working together. And I've gotten into where you have the weekends basically free, it's your choice if you wanna end up working on those. You sleep better at night, you have a team of 25.

[00:27:32:13 - 00:27:37:13]
Jesse Gilmore
 And have you been able to take either family vacations or did you take time off

[00:27:39:01 - 00:27:46:17]
Jesse Gilmore
 anytime in the last six months that you normally wouldn't have been able to do when you're obviously a team of three or trying to grow fast?

[00:27:46:17 - 00:27:58:00]
Warren Thompson
 So I took about three weeks completely off. And then I think I jumped in and answered a couple of messages here and there from the team,

[00:27:59:03 - 00:28:03:05]
Warren Thompson
 but not until at least after the first week and a half, two weeks.

[00:28:04:10 - 00:28:11:06]
Warren Thompson
 And then I took about another couple of weeks where it was kind of halftime coming back and then I kind of started to get into it.

[00:28:12:10 - 00:28:40:22]
Warren Thompson
 But it's also being super helpful because I work from home, so I have some flexibility. I don't have to commute to work. This is a day that I need off early because we got an appointment with the baby, able to, my schedule's pretty fluid. And so I can just kind of move things around and make that work. For example, I still play in a band, Jess. He still plays music as a guitarist. And so Monday, two days ago, I took the whole day off and we went to the studio and recorded guitars on one of our new songs. So

[00:28:41:22 - 00:29:02:12]
Warren Thompson
 yeah, we have team members that can still do that too, though, right? Because they've got some vacation days. We do wellness days for our team if they need it for something personal and stuff. So I feel like maybe that's another reason why the team feels like, hey, this is a good place to stick around because they also feel that flexibility. One of my team members, she just went to Australia

[00:29:03:13 - 00:29:44:07]
Warren Thompson
 for like a wedding and she's working there for like the next three weeks. I know that she's awesome at her job and she's going to not miss any of the things that she needs to do. So we just adjusted her time schedule so that she's working within these hours. And then she's also working before like the rest of our day starts. And you know what? She's gonna do everything amazing and get everything done. And she's come back. She doesn't have to feel like a prisoner that can't do the things that she wants. I think that's how I felt when I was an employee, even though I worked for a pretty good company and stuff, I still felt like a little bit of a prisoner. I felt like I had to leap.

[00:29:46:04 - 00:30:34:08]
Jesse Gilmore
 One really cool thing that you're talking about because leverage for growth, obviously for anybody that's studied our method, focuses on time first, systems offer a pipeline and then empowering the team, empowering your people. And what's cool is in the conversation over the last half an hour, we've talked through pretty much every one of those. And what you're describing right now is an organizational culture by design, where what you experienced as an employee, you didn't really wanna create the same experience in your own business. And you wanted that same type of freedom where you could take off time for the things that really matter. And then you wanna be able to create an atmosphere for your team to be able to do it, not to take advantage of it, but to more, just understand how to work within what you have there. And that organizational culture

[00:30:35:12 - 00:31:11:16]
Jesse Gilmore
 is so, so, so important and being able to understand what kind of values you want within the brand, overall branding, and then also like as an employer, what you wanted to create. And you're talking about it like it's second nature, which is cool because it's kind of just ingrained in you over the last several years. But I think it's really, really important because you freed up time, created the systems, you did the offer, you figured out based around the demand, how to increase that demand, but then most importantly, you empowered the people to be able to run the business without you, which is huge.

[00:31:11:16 - 00:31:14:06]
Warren Thompson
 Wasn't easy, it's still not easy.

[00:31:15:15 - 00:31:20:18]
Warren Thompson
 Nothing that's worth it is, but I do get to come to work and work with

[00:31:21:20 - 00:31:36:16]
Warren Thompson
 a team of people that I love and love working with. And then we get to work for clients that we also love working for. It kind of feels like we're working with them sometimes, for the most part, there's always difficult clients and you'll

[00:31:38:03 - 00:31:39:14]
Warren Thompson
 never get away from it completely.

[00:31:41:02 - 00:31:41:02]
Warren Thompson
 But

[00:31:42:18 - 00:31:56:21]
Warren Thompson
 sometimes the difficult client creates just the right enough amount of tension and challenge to make you sharpen the pencil a little bit more or sharpen your systems and really bring your A game. So, and it kind of tests you.

[00:31:56:21 - 00:31:58:21]
Jesse Gilmore
 Two things and then I'll wrap up.

[00:32:00:01 - 00:32:19:22]
Jesse Gilmore
 First off, I just wanted to thank you. First off for trusting me and being my first client. I think that I learned a lot from the experience, taking leverage for growth, which is kind of like a rough method of what I really wanted to know in my first businesses and being able to apply it and being able to do that in such an awesome,

[00:32:21:07 - 00:32:35:21]
Jesse Gilmore
 like first case study, first client, and then now serving 500 of them based around the lessons that have been learned. And it always comes back to the fundamentals of what we learned together starting in August of 2020. So that's number one. And then second off,

[00:32:37:01 - 00:32:49:02]
Jesse Gilmore
 I just wanna say, where are you going? Like, so you got the 25 person team, are you gonna keep on scaling it to the moon? Are you at a good spot? Like, have you thought about what's next for you?

[00:32:49:02 - 00:32:57:18]
Warren Thompson
 And Olaf? We still wanna grow. Growth means more opportunities for everyone on the team. It also means that

[00:32:58:21 - 00:33:06:17]
Warren Thompson
 we get to have more fun, win as a team together, push ourselves, challenge ourselves, do bigger and better things, work with more exciting clients.

[00:33:08:05 - 00:33:52:19]
Warren Thompson
 I've used this quote before from one of my books. It's called "Finite and Infinite Games." But the finite game is play for the purpose of winning and infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. And so for me, because we've gotten to this point where I just love coming to work, doing the work, working with the team, and it truly feels like a team sport, the goal is to continue the play and keep great people motivated and great people like help to see them rise up and grow in their careers. So I think the building more towards that is the path for us. And I think that we still got more to do, more to grow.

[00:33:54:04 - 00:33:54:17]
Warren Thompson
 Awesome, man.

[00:33:54:17 - 00:34:02:07]
Jesse Gilmore
 Thanks a lot for sharing your story with us at Lovers for Growth. And we'll just have to have you come on when you hit the 50 people.

[00:34:02:07 - 00:34:11:18]
Warren Thompson
 Yeah, that was good, Jesse. Thank you for having me. And yeah, it's been a pleasure to be part of your journey as well. Thank you.

[00:34:13:02 - 00:34:14:03]
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