Jonathan Becker: belief

Transcript context

…[inaudible 01:17:38]. I would take apart my parents' computers, I'd try and rebuild them. I was fooling around with bulletin boards before websites existed, stuff like that. Then I became a web developer and as I transitioned into a performance marketing role, I realized that being technical and having technical aptitudes was extraordinarily helpful in terms of being on the front line of what we were doing and solving problems. If you're making your first hire, you probably want them to have the ingenuity and capability to solve a lot of the problems that you're going to run into within the context of tracking, attribution, data visualization, and then campaign management. Number one, do they have a technical background? That can be multidisciplinary. At Thrive, we have someone who is a nuclear physicist that left discipline and became a performance marketer. We have people who have left mathematics and become performance marketers, people who left finance, full stack engineering, all kinds of stuff. Those are technical fields where people tend to be good at math and good at problem solving, and so that's a strong piece of evidence that they might have a strong aptitude for performance marketing and managing this. Another thing is just literally do they have experience in this discipline? Have they managed on any level Meta ads, Google ads, TikTok, Amazon, some of the things we talked about? Do they have an appreciation for some of the inputs that we just discussed today that ultimately create the conditions for success within a performance marketing environment? Do they understand the role of creative? Do they understand the role of proper attribution and are they capable of understanding the mechanics of your business and so on and so forth? I would say just fundamentally, those are some of the areas that when we are interviewing we're looking for. As an agency too, we are looking for the ability to work with people and be excellent at client services. One of the questions we might ask, I actually borrowed a Jeff Bezos question from early stage Amazon where I asked people without much warning in an interview, I'll ask them whether it's okay to do a bit of a thought experiment together and whether they are comfortable responding to a logic question. I'll ask the question of, "How many windows are there in New York City?" There's two things that I look for in this scenario. One is can they think on their feet? I'm not actually looking for the correct answer. It's a pretty difficult question to solve. But number one, do you realize that windows are not just building windows and windows are also in cars and trucks and stuff like that, so there's more than one type of window. Then can you just do the arithmetic of saying there's so many buildings per hectare or square mile or whatever it is and it's division multiplication type stuff. there's more than one type of window. Then can you just do the arithmetic of saying there's so many buildings per hectare or square mile or whatever it is and it's division multiplication type stuff. But also from a client services point of view, I'm trying to see whether in a scenario where I've asked them something that they obviously probably weren't prepared for, that is a strange thing to ask and probably makes them feel a little bit uncomfortable, how they react in that situation. Do they remain composed or do they lose their composure and get frustrated or even angry that I asked them something that's pretty weird to ask? Their reaction there is often a good leading indicator of whether or not in a client scenario working with our clients, they can compose themselves in a difficult situation.…

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