Georgiana Laudi: belief

Transcript context

…Yes. This is one of my favorite... It was 2013, so you and I might have met in 2011, and then a couple years later I was in town for a conference and we toured the office, HQ and everything. Of course, it was all stars in my eyes because what a beautiful office too. So it was quite like, I would've remembered it regardless. But we went downstairs, very different from the very polished upstairs. We went downstairs to where your working area was, where the product team was, and there were sheets of paper taped to the wall, a bunch in a row. And it would've been easy to miss because it's kind of chaotic down there, but it was the customer journey of an Airbnb customer through two posts. What struck me, I was like, "Oh that's interesting. I'm in the middle of building one out for us." Leading marketing at Unbounce at the time. And I was interestingly with the customer success, he was also with me. So Ryan Engley was there with me, and it was the perfect sort of that him and I saw it together. It was a customer journey that was focused on the customer. So versus that pirate metrics problem or that the typical buyer's journey problem that I was talking about earlier, it was the complete reverse of that. It was illustrated. The emotional journey was part of it. The role that Airbnb played as a direct touchpoint and also indirect, what was going on in the person's life that had nothing to do outside of Airbnb, which I thought was really interesting. It was like, the beautiful little milestones really encapsulated in a sort of snapshot way, such that anybody walking by it or anybody being reminded that it existed could understand in a glance what the goal was at each of those milestones. I was like, "Well, shit, this is completely through the lens of the customer versus the business and the grossness of the funnel." It's just so far removed from that experience that I was like, "Ryan, look at this. We need this." He was like, "Oh yeah, this is good." I took a picture. Can't find it for the life of me. But we returned back to the office the following week, and co-founder and head of product, head of CS, so Ryan, Carter Gilchrist, who's head of product and co-founder, Ryan, and I, head of marketing, the three of us locked ourselves in the room for two days and made our own. It was a circle. I mean looking back, it's hysterical, but it was sort of democratized to the rest of the team in a way because it had that buy-in. Everybody was like, "Oh yeah. Okay, this makes sense and I understand." It made everybody feel a lot better about what they were doing because it was about value, delivering value at each of the points. So that grossness sort of goes away and we're like, "Oh cool." I don't want to be too kumbaya about it, but it was a bit of a moment. And also, it made communicating with especially the product team and the engineering team a lot easier for me. So we were using a shared language. e too kumbaya about it, but it was a bit of a moment. And also, it made communicating with especially the product team and the engineering team a lot easier for me. So we were using a shared language. The rest of the company who aren't necessarily customer facing really understood, I think, at a different level what we were all doing together in KPIs, yada yada yada. So it was amazing. Honestly, I mean I can't credit only that obviously to our growth, but it was a pretty impressive couple years that followed that. I think the alignment that that brought us was huge. Yeah. Anyway, that's the story. Sorry, that wasn't super short, but it was big. That's great.…

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