Tomasz Pawliszyn is the brains behind AirHelp, the world’s leading legal tech company that helps air travelers get compensation or refunds for flight disruptions. 

Join Jim and Tomasz as they go deep on air passenger rights during this episode.

3 Key Takeaways

• Build Healthy; Not Heavy: During Covid-19, when Tomasz’s staff headcount went from 700 to 200, he used that as an opportunity for restructuring, streamlining operations, and inviting the remaining staff into a new vision for a stronger, healthier company. Even in times of decline, you can lay the foundation for future growth.
• Embrace Hybrid Work: A lot of folks thought the future of work was remote, but that didn’t take employer preferences into account. Hybrid work models are what most companies have adopted. This flexibility to choose where and when to work while requiring some in-office time combines the best of both worlds.
• Product Diversity 🤝 Peace of Mind: When the pandemic hit, AirHelp had one product (focused on airlines that were no longer flying). Almost instantly, revenues dropped to zero. For Tomasz, product diversification wasn’t an option. It was a necessity. In your market, what if customer tastes shift — or a once-in-a-century pandemic shuts the world down? Are your offerings spread across enough product lines to stay alive when the unexpected comes knocking? 

Resources

AirHelp: https://www.airhelp.com/ 

Tomasz Pawliszyn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomaszpawliszyn/ 

About Our Guest 

Tomasz Pawliszyn is the CEO of AirHelp, the world's largest air-passenger rights company, and has 20 years of broad experience in leadership roles in high-growth environments. He has managed complex organizations on an executive level and driven major business transformation projects. He has extensive international expertise working with diverse cultures and has managed full P&L responsibilities as CEO, COO, and CTO as well as Managing Director and Regional Director Europe at global technology and multichannel companies.

About The Dirt Podcast 

The Dirt is about getting real with businesses about the true state of their companies and going clear down to the dirt in solving their core needs as a business. Dive deep with your host Jim Barnish as we uncover The Dirt with some of the world's leading brands.

If you love what you are getting out of our show please subscribe.

For more information on how we dig into the dirt check out our other episodes here: https://www.orchid.black/podcast

About Our Company

Orchid Black is a new kind of growth services firm. We partner with tech-forward companies to build smarter, better, game-changing businesses. 

Website: https://www.orchid.black 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orchidblack/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OrchidBlack 

All contents of this show are rights of Orchid Black©️ and are not to be used unless authorized by written consent.

The Dirt Ep 84

Raw, Unedited Transcript, with guest Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of AirHelp

Tomasz Pawliszyn 0:00

Good luck in case you know, I think the most important thing happened, and intentionally actually something we really didn't want to happen. And it helped the remaining team. So this was through COVID. We, we unfortunately, had, we had to scale down your team were above 700 people, and that was scaled down a little bit more than 200. But we've done everything we

Unknown Speaker 0:27

can to keep

Tomasz Pawliszyn 0:28

the best. Right. So prove who you know, one to one discussions, talks, Vision preaching, you know, that there is a light behind COVID that there will be bigger, better and you know, the team that remains will have a vision help us reshape a better company.

Jim Barnish 0:52

Welcome to another episode of The Dirt the podcast where we go deep into the challenges and failures that business owners face while growing their business. I'm your host, Jim barnish and today's guest is Tomash politian, CEO of air help a company that is redefining air passenger rights. If you've ever been underwhelmed by your compensation from the airline for being delayed in travel, because I know I have Tomash is on a mission to change that. My favorite part of today's conversation is when Tomash and I delve into how he navigated the turbulence of the Travel Market and both his company and his mental state. Before we buckle up and take off a big thank you to our sponsor, OrCAD. Black and an even bigger thank you to you listeners. If the insights shared here resonate with you or you think someone can benefit from the content, please share this episode. Alright, Tomas, let's dig right in who is Tomash? And what is airhelp?

Tomasz Pawliszyn 1:52

hygene. Thank you for having me. So yeah, I'm I'm, I'm a guy living in Barcelona trying to manage this airhelp as a company and 350 people that work for us, at help is currently the leading legal tech company helping travelers around the world, claiming their rights in form of compensation refunds or travel insurance. So in case of any disruption, we are there to help anyone there across the world. We tried to help our clients in 18 languages in 24/7. And through through our, you know, I would say quite good customer service. We're currently number one helping people from 220 countries. Way over a million people come to us ask for different kinds of support.

Jim Barnish 2:49

And is that is that pretty well spaced throughout? I know, there's a lot of different regulations and a lot of things happening in the industry, especially in the US, which is where I'm based. But you know, is it? Is it all around the world pretty evenly distributed? Are there certain areas that are hotter than others?

Tomasz Pawliszyn 3:07

Well, yeah, it's a good, it's good question. So actually, we are a US company, right, we are, we are in from Delaware. So we are one of the luminaries of Y Combinator. But very quickly, we've realized it was way before me in a company very quickly, we realized that a business is in Europe. So we centered our operations around Europe where there is quite good air passenger rights regulation that you know, that supports Trump supports travelers traveling within or outside or to Europe, you as, as you may know, very well, is a little bit behind what the customer writes. So but we do also work in us quite a lot trying to help clients, you know, to reach airlines, and to kind of talk with them around goodwill compensation and some, you know, israelita and vouchers and points. But outside Europe, we also work quite successfully in UK, that is part of Europe, but not EU. They have a separate regulation. We also work in Turkey. We've recently started to work in Canada to introduce their own regulation. We have quite good business, a lot of clients in Brazil, and now also more and more clients in Asia, traveling Muslim Middle East, but also from from Southeast Asians.

Jim Barnish 4:30

So So you mentioned the initial focus focus was in the US and you see a lot of companies that are trying to, you know, get some market entry into the US that might be based somewhere else, but not a whole lot that realize that there's no market for them. In the US what was it was that that was all before your time.

Tomasz Pawliszyn 4:49

It was all before my time. I think I think the feeling was that. Europe might be stronger from the very beginning, right? I think folks were In that naive thinking your US will be the only market. But you know, setting up company where he also the, you know, venture capital is the strongest and opportunity to grow and succeed the strongest, you know, there is always the hope that you can first be in us because of the scale of the market, and then move on outside. Well, our journey was a bit different, right, we first started in Europe, what is absolutely normal. Also, the founders were Europeans, they were from Denmark. So you know, it also helped, of course, to kind of put that market critter here first, and, and start operations out of here. And now, ironically, we are thinking, you know, where we should we open office in us and how quickly we should grow? Right? So after 10 years, you know, we we, you know, the circle goes back pretty much? Well,

Jim Barnish 5:53

because there's, there's some, there's some interesting things happening in the US around air travel and where you guys play. So talk to me a little bit about what that is, and why the timing is kind of now to start thinking about the US.

Tomasz Pawliszyn 6:07

Exactly, exactly. And we're not very hopeful of it to fix happening again. But we've inadequate and, and as a part of the What What's there for us travelers, so one, there is extensive discussions going on within, within the government and within do T with FAA reauthorization, and we are very helpful to see hopeful to see new regulations, drafts popping up, but whether it's Congress, or the house, and no proposals are quite similar to what we see in Europe. So means travelers, we get some some side of protection, we don't know how far it will reach, of course, it's very early talks about if everything's okay, this year, we should see something happening. And this is not only about, you know, family seed allocation, you know, and the tarmac delays are over a booking, or faster refunds of tickets, but also around, you know, compensation for your time lost. So imagine you are going on your once a holiday, in your one week of holidays, what you have, when a family of five, you know, have three small kids and, and you really want to go for this holidays, because he promised it to your family, and then you show up the day, but then you know, there is no plane because it got canceled. And the next one goes in two days. And you know, and in Europe, we have it covered right. In Europe, we have a compensation model is saying you know, okay, if there is deception like this, of course, everyone has to take care of you. The ticket refund is fully optional, by you know, also discouraging the nearest flight, and it doesn't have to be the same airline, it can be next next flight destination. But there is also compensation saying, okay, you know, you lost your hours or potentially days, and here is, you know, in Europe is after 600 Euro compensation. And something similar, if it plays in us will be very good news for travelers, for last time, because going going on holidays, actually, it's not so critical. It is by it's comparing to coming back from holidays. And then you see, you know, flight is canceled, and you miss days at work, kids miss school, although they can imagine you have to stay and you've just got you've just checked out from your hotel and gave back a rental car, what do you do? Go back, go back to the hotel, you know, call the employer all of this fix. So this is what the compensation model plays a very important role and in Europe has been very successful. So we hope it comes to us.

Jim Barnish 8:44

You know, I'm interested about particularly discount airlines, which I know is kind of big, it's bigger here in the US than it is elsewhere. But I'm just gonna take a for instance, so like, Ryan air, I probably flown 30 times in Europe. I don't think I've ever had a Ryan Air flight, maybe one or two, that I was delayed less than three hours on, and maybe I'm just unlucky. But I guess the way the way I'm looking at the business model of some of these discount airlines, it's, it's almost an expectation on the participant, like here in the US would be Allegiant Airlines, or, you know, some of some of the other discount cheaper airlines, you sacrifice the knowledge that there's a good chance you're gonna get delayed, but you're saving a little bit of money comparison with some of the larger airlines. So you know, do you do you see, you know, some of these smaller discount airlines going out of business the way

Tomasz Pawliszyn 9:44

Absolutely, yeah. No, you know what I noticed the major airline, the biggest airline in Europe and you know, what was it very, very close to number two or three globally now, right. So there are massive now and they're doing fantastically with earnings. If you see and they do respect regulation in Europe, right? Maybe in the past they you know, when they were growing they of course they had they had some more scheduling issues are currently different. They do try to operate on time. And if you're looking at on time performance, it's for sure. Not the worst. And it's improving on time, like all the other airlines in Europe. Yeah. So I wouldn't say there is a difference between low cost or non low cost airlines, I think, once you have regulation in place that protects passengers, airlines have to take it into considerations while setting up schedules, right? Because then the site have to look okay, I cannot rotate the plane in half an hour, right? You know, because it takes time, I cannot put on schedule, 45 minutes flight between I know, Bristol and and Barcelona, because then the realistic time because then everything above 45 minute starts cutting and delay. So let's put it two and a half hours. And then there is no delay, because it's flights actually two hours, right? So when I start to plan, having customers in mind, right? It's not they don't have it now in us, they for sure have it and it's very customers are extremely important for them by you know, the different departments scheduling the place of you know, government, making sure their planes are being rotated as you know, as often as possible, because, you know, the plane owners mandate only if it's flies, right. So there are some deputations. But once you have the regulation, there is rules of the games. And I think the most important thing is to keep up with the promise, right? If you then all of the airline is to bring you safely and on time from A to B. And this is what you have to deliver on. Right. And it doesn't matter. It's low cost, not low costs are the ticket was 40 euros or 400 euros, right? promises to deliver people, right? Everything else ticket prices and market forces. And you know, honestly, in Europe, you don't really see ticket prices for two years anymore. Right? Everything went up. So you can compare the prices of low costs and no low cost airlines today.

Yeah, no, that's, that's interesting. I imagine the customer experience becomes even more important as the regulation starts to shift. So I look forward to that happening in the US. Just just as a, for instance, I had two big delays over the last month that I tried to put in the air help one on Southwest one on Delta. And I feel like if I was in Europe, it would have gone through. Right, but because of probably the lack of regulation here in some cases, that's probably why a lot of the US flights will get declined if you go to airhelp. Is that is that? Is that the case?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Of course, I don't know details of your flights. But this would be probably the case. Yeah.

Yeah. Common compared to compared to the interesting variants. So, you know, as as travel continues to recover from COVID, 1990. And impact, you know, just in general, we went through the last few years what, what other opportunities do you see for companies like airhelp?

So travel, recover is, is I think, faster than anyone fought? Right? Of course, today is very easy to say for everyone in mind. Yeah, of course, I knew that. Right. When we were when, when two years ago, we're sitting down and we saw the production projections by IATA and Euro control put for a while everyone was like, isn't this really possible to recover so quick? And you could also see that you could see within the airline performance in 2022, that not everyone was really ready for it for, for what the data was showing. And yes, recovered very quickly. And I and the travel sector, as a business sector, of course, is recovering very nicely, including including air health. And there's few things that happened for us right one during COVID When you know our revenues dropped to zero we had the opportunity on look our product portfolio, I cannot rethink it and prepare for the future. We we were the ones who fought COVID will finish in a month. But we also weren't the ones who will say they will ask for two years right? Wait for the money. Okay, a few months, it will last and it's just too serious for a week or two. So suddenly, we took quite drastic actions very quickly. And and one of the initiatives we did we also looked at our products and what should develop and and we thought one of the things we really have to bet on is also travel insurance and insure tech. And this is what we tried to execute as good as we could. And now we see really this this going very, very nicely across the globe. And for companies like ours, this product diversification really worked and, and travel is such a massive ecosystem that you actually notice when it stops, right. So when everything stopped, you notice how big it is right. And then when it really started slowly, you could see the small fruits by, you know, by revenue streams popping up here and there. And, and we were hitting revenue records on all the angles today. Not only because we we, we try to be prepared as much as we could for the restart of the business and prepare revenue streams by product diversification and also geographical diversification, right? So during a COVID, we opened, you know, we grew our offices, we open offices in Spain, we've opened offices in in Brazil, right to grow. In all, we started Asia, and it was all in the middle of COVID. And nothing was happening, right. But this was all kind of putting sits when everything is calm, and nothing is happening. And then when it bought, it exploded all across. And I can only imagine it's for the whole travel ecosystem. And so all the private companies we talked to around, they see this massive demand on on the ankles.

You mentioned product diversification. So is Was this an effort in in, you know, slowing down as a business understanding, you know, trying to understand where the world was headed, and then having several products that you guys rolled out?

Well, it was actually out of fear, right. So before COVID, we were, you know, one horse pony, we had this one product in a European claim compensation, right? And, and when everything stopped in the middle of March, you know, this one horse stopped, right and so, okay, so, so very, very quickly, we decided, okay, this cannot happen again. Right. But because of the nature of where we are, you know, legal tech, travel Tech, we say, okay, we cannot go completely out of what we know. And you know, what our talent is? Let's focus on more travel products, you know, legal tech, initial tech, and we've tested quite a few things. You know, we've tested many things, I've looked on hundreds of ideas. But through all of those ideas, you know, we indentify quickly that we have to do one on product diversification. So what do we offer to clients, and not only claim compensation, but very quickly realize it has to include like, also insurance, and then what kind of insurance has to be because we are a technology company by heart, and this is what we do. We've decided it has to be parametric insurance. So no bureaucracy, no papers, we tell clients, he's eligible for compensation, not he tells us listen, you know, it's not like a classic car insurance where you know, you have incident, and then you have to call someone or Texans to let them know, actually, now we know all the flight data. So we know something happens, right? We don't need clients coming to us. So we wanted this kind of insurance systems. So this is what we developed. And it went very nicely. And so and so the parametric insurance. So this is the first first thing diversify products. And the second thing we've done was look at no geographic and see the cannot rely on Europe either. So we have to diversify. You know, we have to try more in us. In massive market, lots of people, we have to try more Canada, we have to look at what's happening in Turkey with the new regulation that was back then was just in shaping. And we've done that we went to Brazil saying, okay, Brazil, with massive travel, especially domestic market, there must be something for us. Luckily, we were right. And then Asia as a massive carp, we started to partner with big Asian companies to help the travelers in the customer service, as you know, so we diversify our offerings, but also geographic expansion, in the same time, and it all happened within you know, 1218 man, so it was really hard work. And of course, what you see now, it's only an effect of maybe 100 failed ideas, right? Because, you know, only a few survived and, you know, proved themselves. But we really looked around what can be good for us as a business and what, what can we pull out with our resources, because we couldn't get in the middle of COVID. We couldn't go to any of the VC fund or pieve and saying, oh, we need more money, because no one will look at travel. So everything we've done had been done and what we had and we're going to have March

so what are what were some of the failures of the products that you guys had to shut down and why did you have to shut them down?

We try. One of the things we try for example, refund for the refund for Cabot COVID canceled flights, that we at the beginning, we fought very strongly, we have to help clients to refund for COVID, canceled flights. airlines were very reluctant. And it even though we try very hard, because we had 1000s of clients coming to us, and please help us with refund, as you may remember, airlines were really delayed refunds. But then, you know, we also talked to a many airlines and they you know, candidates saying, Listen, we are losing millions of euros a month, right? We basically have, you know, we cannot Right. And, of course, you might go into the whole reasons what happened with the airline earnings before COVID. But, but it was the reality that airlines are not going to do it quick without government push on them, or bailout or different mechanism in different countries. So in the end, we realized that everything would we would be doing was, was pretty much ping pong with airlines without effect. So in the end, we couldn't really help our clients. And we've been massively frustrated with trying to negotiate it with Aaron's right. So we had to say, Okay, I'm sorry, this is not something we can do. Because that is not we don't see any effect. So we can stick to other products. But there was many products, you know, there was, we were preparing one, the whole product line around tax refund for international clients. As you know, when you're traveling to Europe, you can refund your VAT value added tax. So this was one of the initiatives. And that, in the end, we fought all of this receipts and expenses. It's quite of manual work around it. And you know, it doesn't fit to our technology first approach, where we want to automate as much and use humans actually only to deal with direct clients to help them to understand the issue, but the back processes are gonna have automated, so this does didn't fit our, you know, our way of doing business. And then we try different compensation models, you can say, in countries where the law exists, but it's not enforceable. It didn't prove it can, we can help clients win. So we also talked it, but there were hundreds of ideas. And so someone to find the test. So went through MVP, and drove them, but I think this is a part of the part of the experience as well.

Yeah, got it, you gotta have some failures in there, otherwise doing something wrong. So when when you guys when you guys look into the future, and, you know, obviously, there's some really interesting things going on, around, you know, around travel right now, two that come to mind for me are, you know, the kind of the rise of digital nomadism of people living, you know, wherever they want, whenever they want us, but which, which is kind of in tandem with, you know, remote work culture, right? When you look at these business trends, you know, how do you how do you think that affects air helps growth and strategy.

If you're asking me about our experience in, in this new concept, it's been difficult journey for us, because when, when it COVID started, of course, we had to close our offices and move on remote. And, and we personally been completely against working from home, I never believed in it, right? I'm, you know, I'm over culture, you have to be in office, you need to have a mentor, you need to sit close to your boss, and mentor, sometimes the same. And your colleagues, you know, and you have to constantly brainstorm, you have to constantly exchange ideas, you have to constantly adjust and correct yourself in order to grow. And this is probably still very valid, right? But I didn't think I didn't think you can be efficient and effective out of it out of this kind of office zone. And especially, you know, from the culture of Japanese culture, when my first jobs were in Toyota in Japan, right? When you say no, this, you know, go and see and test and try and get the theory. And this is what was so deeply in my brain. But but luckily being you know, we have a technology company, we have set up different kinds of monitors and, and screens on the efficiency of the systems and and people are working and how the claims are, you know, are insurances going through the system? Are they going slower, faster, quicker, the result of success? And we realize through through COVID that actually our F efficiency per employee. That metric I don't really like, but it is what it is. So, throughput per employee is growing, right. And this goes from different angles. One, people are more focused, less meetings, right? No travel. So of course, they have more time because they don't have to go for coffee, then go to printer, you know, they don't do many things. So they have more time to actually sit and focus on the core job. But it also comes from from, from us being we have to help people now actually, we really have to help them, because they are stuck at home. So we've invested in them even more in automations, right, we missed in we invested more in tools that help people perform and jump better, because we had to do it right. There was no other choice. And this proved me actually, this can work. So now, Erica, everyone works on hybrid mode. So we have people who comes to Office five days a week, like myself, because they want to, you are absolutely fine to come one day a week. And we also have a number of people who come only when that is important meeting and meeting being in a workshop or a brainstorming session. Right? So and this proved to work. So now we I wouldn't say we are massive fans of remote work as such. But we've we find a solution for it that can work. And we also see, you know, various other companies that can you know, they also work similarly, and it work for them. Of course, there are some industries, that is not acceptable completely. And I also get it quite in our capital, the business, but we are a technology company, it doesn't matter so much and actually makes it easier for us in many cases, you know, we operate 24 718 languages, right? So it's easier for us to have people you know, living in Brazil or in US covering different time zones. And, and speak or speaking the languages, they're within their own timezone, right. Versus in the previous model would be so focused on having everyone in, in the, the, what we called claim processing center was like a massive office speaking in 18 languages. And we would bring people from all of the countries of this one office and make them move and sit there. And then after two years, they would be unhappy because we brought them there, and they don't really like it anymore. And now seems like everyone's happy because everyone still had the same choice, they can still go and relocate if they want to. This office is still the biggest office we have. But more and more people decide to work from the destination, whether they feel comfortable in their personal life and also effective at work. It has to be also effective at work, right? Otherwise, it doesn't you know, there is no weed weed weed anymore, but it worked for us. And I see the works for other companies.

Yeah, no, that's a good point. When when you look at those same trends, in line with, you know, maybe the increase in people traveling because they're being digital nomads, or because they're going from place to place a little more often do you see that affecting air helps business outside of your own workforce.

We,

we see a little bit we seal it a bit, but it's not massive force, right? remote work is not dominant type of work in a majority of the businesses has to stay put in a warehouse employees, you know, road construction, and you know, retail, it has to stay. So actually the business that can work remote is probably around 10 to 15% of the workforce. And then what we see growing the fastest currently what is surfing, what do you call it? V F F. So visiting friends and family, right. And within this, it's a lot of nomad workers within this group. So but it's not the entire group, but within this group is a lot of people who are remotely and they take advantage of the opportunity compared to company gives them and, you know, being you know, we have several Brazilians are working for our office in, in Barcelona, you know, they can now go home for a month. And then why don't we go ahead and get invocation free weeks of work out of them, right. So we see this behavior coming quite quite a lot is still a dominant travel. But within the bigger group of visiting friends and family, it is the grow the fastest growing travel group.

Interesting. You mentioned a little bit about your own evolution and thinking about remote work and you know, being against it completely right and then eventually evolving in your own you know, your own perspective. Are there any other called them leadership or management style evolutions that you've experienced in the way that you drive growth in the team? I think

what I'm trying to be focused is on two very simple aspects, right? One is performance of the of the individual or the team. And another thing is trust, right, trust that the person makes the right decisions, and trust that the person governs its own team in the right way. Right. And, and, and this, also, you could see those approved remote work experience, right, in one moment, I had to trust that this will work and people actually will keep working from home, right, they will not have, they will have potentially more distraction, but they will keep working. And I had to trust it right at the beginning, can our completely trusted that they know what they're doing, and they will keep working, and they kept working, and they make all the decisions and if needed, if needed, I trust them, they come to the office, because you know, the in person experience on the workshop, you cannot replicate online, at least not today, maybe in the future, you will. So this is about so it's all about trust that the people are with you and the right people and of course, a lot is my own choice, right, because I hire a lot of people and but the other aspect that is equally important is the performance of the teams and individuals that that you have to be able to measure right through values, values, KPIs, OKRs, whatever you call it. But you know, one, you have very emotional trust, and then you have this very analytical performance. And if you if you strike a good balance with with, with the people that work with you, I think this is this is a winning solution. And and also, I know whenever I go also bring some people from my previous company or people I know it is because of the trust to them, I trust them that they will do their job, basically. And this is as simple as this, right? There is no anything that is you know, that you have to write or read a business book about it, right? It comes down to hardworking people who you who you know, and you know how they work, and you know, the pluses and minuses, and you try to balance with the new hires, you try to balance the amount of minuses so they can't sell out, right, and et cetera, et cetera.

So when you're looking at talent development, how do you ensure that your team members and your your team leadership and, you know, everyone on the team continues to grow and level up in their abilities?

Yeah, so I think some of the things happened, like in our health case, you know, I think the most important thing happened, and intentionally actually something we really didn't want to happen. And, and it helped the remaining team. So this was through COVID, we, we unfortunately, had, we had to scale down the team were above 700 people, and we had to scale down to a little bit more than 200.

But we've done everything we can to keep

the best to handle right. So through through, you know, one to one discussions, talks, Vision preaching, you know, that there is a light behind COVID That will be bigger, better. And, you know, the team that remains will help help us reshape our health to the better company. So the core of the team, that's they really helped us to progress on the bearish topic, as we discussed, but also, you know, you know, we initiated with the team values, other topics, like, you know, data mining and the whole data driven culture, you know, so we kept really the best people very analytical, hardworking, committed, and we've we've potential to grow fonder, right. So, and we've said something, what we didn't think about happened, the performance level of the team, by virtue of who stayed went up, right. So you can say, the average average throughput of the person, of course, because the best the better part of the team state went up, right. So then when we started to hire people, new people what we've noticed their benchmark, it's completely in different place than it used to be right because then benchmark they have to now meet the average of the existing team, right? That is in a few points higher than it used to be before COVID. So that they every New Hire that comes to the company, you know, have has to kind of level up to the average. So the entire performance of the company keeps up, of course, our job is to make sure it stays there. And so that so the company doesn't, you know, average down again with because of the number of people hire. And and it's, you know, it's a lot of work, it's difficult. But this is one of the things that happen in our company. And in a, we've noticed that only when we really started hire people after after, after the COVID stopped and let's say since since last year. And then And then last one and your question on what do we do today on it? Well, I think is to constantly challenge challenge people and Challenge Challenge the solutions, constantly ask yourself, you know, why do you think this is good, right? And asking question also within the team or workshop, what is good, what do we judge good? And for different company good is different thing right? What is what is good for us, right? And this can be on values, it can be final conversion, it can be SLA of the important system, it could be brand recognition, it can be market share, right? It can be OKR delivery, it can be employee survey, right, responding, some emotional questions, what is good? What do we charge as a group? And what do we get is not good? And it's an important question, because there's a lot of companies I've met in the past that say, Well, we are perfect, but then when you look at what they did was like, Yeah, okay, your notion of perfect is probably not what my notion of perfect is, right? So it's also very important to kind of have this collaboration within teams.

What What lessons did you learn from from all of that around attrition, or, or just around anything, you know, any, any key lessons that other founders can learn from?

I think you, you always should try to retain the best employees, right? This is this is number everything, this is no brainer, hiring new person is so much more expensive, and Mr. Servers, but if someone mentally decides to leave and comes to us, like, listen, I found that the job, I almost never tried to keep the person. And, and there's always this, you know, this bunch of, you know, people behind me, who helps people potentially reports to, like, Oh, you have to keep him I have to give him salaries, we have to give them this, here's the stage has to say he's so critical. First of all, no one is critical, right? Second, if personality, the mental move, keeping him probably is giving him or her for another six, maybe 12 months, right? This person is on the mentally explore different ideas. And it will stay in the end. And it's only right for the person to explore it. And and then I'm completely fine is the spirit if this person comes back, right after the 12 months, or whatever it is, have you experienced the comments like, okay, the grass is not greener on the other side. You know, I, you know, I had a good experience, but actually I like people here, right? So, absolutely, absolutely happy to see people coming back. But yet don't keep people don't force them to stay. But this is what the attrition we know. currently unemployed, we have actually the opposite problem, we have no attrition. So, so now we are battling this what to do, right? Because you can manage like, of course for the year, probably maybe two, but then you have to think how to bring fresh blood to the teams, right? So how to, so there is of course many options. One option is to start mixing people start mixing people between teams, right? So this, you know, cross divisionals movements, between people, maybe looking back on their performance and saying, Okay, maybe the bar became too low, but even though we know is already high because of our experience. And so we should probably rethink something about this, or should we force new recruitments to just for the flesh blood kind of thing and new ideas. And so we have now the separate another problem and the lack of lack of attrition. So, but with very, very high attrition. For us. It was a devastating if he, if I remember COVID Right. I had probably several calls a day trying to explain people that you know, why we have to go separate ways, and it's probably one of the worst experiences in my life. Because in a lot of times So they were, you know, people who have given the car for the company, and years of service. And, and but you know, we were facing bankruptcy very quick if we don't do anything, right, so we had to protect what we coat every day almost every day we've been. I've been counting people, it's like how many more I have to have to have I know those calls we have, and it was devastating cause right. So it's so much better to be in a growing and especially if you if you can grow profitably like we do now we try to now try to stay healthy, profitable. And is also then you have a story for the employees that are, of course, also believe in the future of the company, especially that, you know, after all they went through in the past years.

Yeah. Now, well, well said well said. All right. Let's close this off today with quick founder five, five quick questions about you and your growth. First one is the top metric or KPI that you are relentlessly focused on.

Yeah, it's a tough question because I probably manage like 100 KPIs. And the very quick scan, and because because we are have b2b business how b2c, I do put a lot of effort on focusing on b2c, or b2b Once you set on b2c, I look very carefully on media gross profits. So this is revenue minus CAC. So it's, the trends are always stable, ideally up, but for sure, not losing money on b2c front.

Awesome. All right. Top tip for growth stage founders like yourself.

I think it's cliche, but the team is everything you can have whatever vision you want to whatever plan for the NFL, if you don't have the right team to execute it. And you don't make sometimes cars decisions aren't the team is a lot to nowhere, I tend to miss everything. And then and then the second one is preach and mentor and and focus this team on real practical problem solving and too many times we don't sell solve problems, but we saw results or effects. Something we see but actually is not underlying problem. So focus and preach and mentor team on practical problems.

Right, favorite book or podcast that has helped you to grow as a CEO?

Well, I'm, I'm close to 45. So I'm from the generation that still read books about the book, I think I remember the most and make a very strong impact on me very, very early, I think, during my APA or just before my MBA was good to gray. Because and and I think for me, this was eye opener. I was working for Toyota back then. And I realized actually, I'm lucky working for Toyota. And of course, the following book. So as well was great.

Excellent. All right, a piece of advice that counters traditional wisdom.

Again, cliche don't overcomplicate simple and SIEM solutions, but this is I would say it's traditional already I would say always look for problems. It doesn't mean you have to solve a problem right. But always look for problems problem as you know also definition of the problem is tricky sometimes right problem is is a gap between IDL sin scenario and where are we today? Whatever it is, right? So there is a gap. So every problem is opportunities of served, right? So look for problems because you know, then you look then you will see all the opportunities. Then of course you prioritize with the team, what to bite, but look for problems. That's great.

All right, what is going to be the title of your autobiography?

Probably I would say Family Guy, but non non cartoon edition so

not Peter Griffin.

I don't think my autobiography I would like it to be about my work. I think it's there is much more hopefully to be saved later on. And I would I would like a lot of this is around my family.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, you've given a ton to our listeners today to March so time for a little bit of self promotion. How can how can those listening help you out? Thank you. Thank you very much for

having me. It was it was a great pleasure. I mean, I'm becoming a big fan of your podcast. And, and if you're out there listening, if you're new then you have, you know, please reach out. We are here to help as well. Doing great job, dude. Thank you very much.

Hey, thanks for coming on. And to those of you out there, thank you for listening to the dirt. Tamasha story is a wonderful one and a lot of good lessons learned today. So thanks for joining us tomorrow.

Thank you for coming.

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