The Entrepreneurs Radio Show _076_Dane Atkinson

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW

Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 1 of 30

EPISODE #76: DANE ATKINSON

In this episode Travis speaks with inspiring entrepreneur and successful businessperson Dane

Atkinson. Dane is CEO of SumAll, a company whose app helps business owners see trends and

growth in their company through the compilation of data through multiple sources. It allows its

subscribers to see all the information and gives them the knowledge on how to steer their business in

the right direction.

Valuable insights are shared in this episode as Travis and Dane talk about various topics to grow one's

business. One lesson as pointed out by Dane was as a leader, you should allow your members some

space to cultivate their creativity and at the same time giving a complement just for even trying could go

a long way. Dane and Travis also stressed the importance of KPI's in the monitoring of your business to

reveal what methods or tactics would work for the company. The use of metrics can never be

understated and should be utilized well by all business owners who want to achieve long-term and

continuous success in their business.

Dane Atkinson – Using an open book mentality

that builds trust with your team

Travis: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode number 76 of the Entrepreneur's Radio

Show, Conversations with Self-Made millionaires and high-level entrepreneurs that will grow your

business. This show is a production of Rock Star Entrepreneur Network.

Today I'm going to introduce you to rock star entrepreneur Dane Atkinson. Dane is the founder of

SumAll which is an app. It basically connects data from multiple sources and gives you the insights

needed to grow your business in a predictable way. Maybe even the word app is not the best way to

describe it as much as a tool. Now in this interview we're going to talk about what it takes to manifest

success at will. We're also going to talk about what it takes to get your entire team to work together to

achieve success much faster and easier. We'll also talk about a common problem with letting go.

Although it's from an angle that's interesting and unusual and very valuable, comes from a perspective

that I wasn't prepared for, but I think you'll be interested in how he shares it. As well as another idea

that he talks about is running your business with an open book mentality, with it builds trust among your

team. And so, all of these ideas are really innovative, different ways of thinking, and some of them I've

experienced in my own business. So lots of great information. Now I was so focused in interviewing him

about the business and his experience in things that we didn't talk about his tool. But I want to assure

you that SumAll.com is a very cool tool that really brings all the different platforms together and allows

https://sumall.com/




you to track what's going on. So I want to encourage you to go there and check that out. Although the

interview doesn't really cover much of that at all.

Now before we get started I want to remind you that there's two ways that you can take these

interviews with you on the go. The first simple option is you can go to Stitcher.com, Stitcher.com and

download the free app that allows you to stream all of the shows you like anytime, anyplace. Plus they

have a cool way of introducing you to other shows that you may like. Kind of like Amazon, if you like

this then you may like that. Then the next option is iTunes. If you're an iTunes person you can go to

rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com and click on the iTunes button and it will take you directly to the

podcast on iTunes where you can subscribe to the show there. In fact you can go to

rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com and click either the link to Stitcher or iTunes, either one. Also one

other thing, be sure and stay with us until the very end if you can because I want to share some

inspiration with you, plus I want to talk more about the contest that we've created where you'll have a

chance to win $73,000 in cash and prizes, and a Lamborghini. So be sure and hangout with me until

the very end. Now that we've got all the business out of the way and introduction done, let's get down to

business. So let me segue into the show and bring Dane on, okay. Dane, welcome to the show.

Dane: Thanks.

Travis: How are you?

Dane: Glad to be here.

Travis: Man I'm super, super excited to have you on the show; I know you're really busy so I

appreciate you taking the time out to come hangout with us.

Dane: It's my pleasure. It’s always good to share these stories to the community.

Travis: Hey, let me ask you, do you mind giving kind of the back-story of how you found the level of

success that you've had now so that we can understand who you are and where you come from?

http://www.stitcher.com/

http://www.rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com/





Dane: Well, the truth of it is I suffer ADD and an abundance of energy. I think those two things are

probably the biggest drivers to my success to life.

Travis: Uhuh.

Dane: I don't know, are you looking for my career standpoint path, or—

Travis: Well, you know both. I feel like as entrepreneurs, they really kind of merge together, the

personal and the professional, right.

Dane: Yeah, it's one lifestyle. I think the entrepreneur lifestyle is actually one of the best ones out there.

It's the most honest mirror you can live by.

Travis: I agree with you.

Dane: --is beautifully direct, you can't hide from your failures, you can enjoy your successes, there's no

distraction, and it’s a great way to grow. And if you have a certain personality type, it's almost one of

the only path. I think the best story I've heard is calling it sort of the pirate life, right. It's not necessarily

about the X that we all sail for, it's the adventure on the seas and when ships sinks or gets docked, let's

go get another one.

Travis: Right.

Dane: At least for me it's been that way. Even as a teenager I've built an ad agency, by the time I was

18 I'd started my first major company right there after. That thing at 12 I wrote my first piece of

software. It was an area that you almost cannot but get into.

Travis: What do you mean?




Dane: I mean, I think that there is certain energy levels that require the flexibility of entrepreneurship,

right? That it's hard to conform and be part of a bigger process that you just simply want to see things

get done too high a need. So you're driven into a place where you can let that energy flourish or fail.

Travis: No, that completely makes sense with me even as a young man. I felt like a caged animal

because things just weren't making sense to me. And so fortunately I made that jump as a young man

which allowed me the latitude. If you don't do it as a young man it's much harder to do it as you get

older, right?

Dane: I agree. And the more you actually conform to the process, the more complicated this lifestyle

gets.

Travis: Right. Well you know, it's kind of a paradox and unfortunately life is that way, right?

Dane: Yeah.

Travis: So walk me down the path. I know that you've had several different businesses and so--

Dane: Sure.

Travis: What brought you to the level, fast forward to the more recent years. What brought you to the

levels where you really started launching into some serious levels of success?

Dane: I think that when I was young I took the first wave of the internet, so my first company grew to

have offices in five continents. Thousands of people involved and it was a big success in the early 20's.

And then after that market changed and went through a lot of personalized growth I was able to focus

some of my distraction in the past two or three runs of taking at the market. That attentiveness and

understanding to control my own ADD has enabled me to truly carry things further faster. So, I guess in

the most recent years, the company I'm running right now is called SumAll and it's been by far the most

successful run I've had. It doubles its business every 3 months, and it's definitely one of the more high

trajectory businesses. The company I had right before that was called Squarespace which I joined in as

a CEO, was second person in the office. And the 3 years we went from a relatively small business, it's




somewhat meaningful for New York. And I think that that was just an aspect of having been around the

block. Not every entrepreneur outside of Gates and Zuckerburg gets it right the first time, a lot of us

take some bruises to figure out which way to go.

Travis: Right. So there's something interesting going on here and I want to dive into that, because now

I've been an entrepreneur for 23 years and I suffer from some of the same things that you're talking

about. Now I've built several supply side businesses which means when I sell something I put a team in

place to produce it. That can become a bottleneck itself right, because--

Dane: Absolutely.

Travis: You can cause problems in your own business by selling so much that you get everyone going

angry because you can't produce everything that you're selling. And so that's a business model

problem because no matter who you are you can't scale your business 50 fold in 2 months, just as an

extreme example. And what I hear, so based on the fact that I knew that, and it took me many, many

years to unrealized that I needed to build a business model or create a business model that wasn't

supply side restricted, where I could just continually grow volume revenue and I wasn't restricted by

supply side issues. And it sounds to me like that's what you're saying is happening with SumAll, am I

correct, is that how you're doubling every 3 months?

Dane: Yeah. In your model you obviously had a lot of high touched components.

Travis: Right.

Dane: I guess that's one of the most complex environments to scale at speed so credit to you for

managing any kind of high speed growth and environment. I think that a while ago I discovered the best

way to get quick growth is in a very low touch environment so where things are self-revision, when the

technology really supports a broader base of customers, which, you know, when we built this company

we thought-- When we steered our first thousand customers, getting to the next 5,000 customers would

be easy. We didn't expect to get to the next 100,000 customers in that same year. So even in an

environment where your technology does almost all the lifting for your customers there has been that

exact same strain. There's an internal dynamic in our team of "Oh god, please slow the machine down,"

it's because our data doubles every 40 days and that is putting us into one of the biggest data clouds

there is. And it's an extraordinary stress. We have a remarkable team that is hard pressed just to live




up to that, and you're right, it's tricky. But that's the best problem to have. That's the farewell for Twitter.

Even though they are real problems, they're the good real problems.

Travis: Yeah, some of the best problems to have. That's an elegant way-- I'm getting some weird

feedback over there, do you have--

Dane: Is that any better?

Travis: Yeah, check 1, 2, 3. Now, what it is, is I'm getting a reverberation on my voice.

Dane: Okay.

Travis: What's happening is, is apparently there's a delay in there, and--

Dane: Is that any better now?

Travis: 1, 2, 3, check check. Yeah, it's gone. Okay, perfect. Okay, so the way you explain that is

brilliantly simple and elegant, the low touch. And I love simple; it just makes everyone's life easier. And

so, when you say low-touch I agree with you, that's a model that can ramp up very quickly. So it sounds

to me like what you're describing is software, right?

Dane: Yeah, absolutely. Software as a service is probably the fastest scalable model out there.

Probably some having an individual relationship with customers, obviously go to consumer technology

again at an even faster scale. Moving the human cycle from things definitely gives you a greater

opportunity for reach.

Travis: So, how long-- Say that again.

Dane: I'm saying it's, all is great, and it makes it quite a bit harder. The nice thing about touch

businesses, and I did have a consultancy quite some time ago, is that you can smooth around the

edges of your product and your offering easily just because you have so many humans in place to take




care of it. When you rely on your technology to the everything, the required perfection is so much

higher. It's much more complicated to get the experience to do everything that you would have humans

take care of as well.

Travis: Well, it seems like you just need to build some intelligent feedback loops where you can try to

put out a potential fire before it grows into something serious, right?

Dane: Yup, absolutely.

Travis: So now, sum it up, how many years as an entrepreneur?

Dane: I would say, in a meaningful way, probably about 25 years, and probably 30 in total.

Travis: Okay. And how long before you as an entrepreneur really took flight and started finding some

serious success?

Dane: Again, I was very lucky to find rising tides early in my life. So, some of my earliest business were

quite successful. I think that it takes literally a decade to get to the point where you can manifest the

success no matter what the market conditions. So I always encourage new entrepreneurs to find those

rising tides. They will catch many of your mistakes.

Travis: Yeah, exactly. I love to hear things from a different perspective, and you're saying things from a

complete different slang and I love that. For selfish reasons first, because it broadens me as a person.

And then also for everybody listening is it encourages them to think in a different way. There's a term

that I created called a rock star entrepreneur, and I defined it as someone that has taken a series of

skills and combine them together to create success in a business regardless of the economy. And then

take that success and freedom, and pay it forward by helping others. And what you're describing, I

couldn't agree with more. It really takes 10 years of being really get in there, slugging it out, and having

some success and some failures so that you'd get to a level to where you can manifest success no

matter what's going on.




Dane: Yeah, absolutely. Outside of Zuckerberg and Gates, the rest of us had to go through quite a

process. And a combination of skills, understanding of flaws, a real grounding of who you are yourself,

to get to the point where you can build things somewhat reliable to be successful. And you see that

even from the venture community or the industry. They much appreciate those paying points, those

failures actually almost make you look better in their eyes because they know, you have to go to them

to get to the point where you can reliably build something great.

Travis: Yeah, I agree. And actually in this day and age, both you and I are from the same era. And so

I'd come from an era to where it wasn't common to share your failures and in fact they were hidden.

And one of the benefits of today is it's a much more authentic environment. And it's okay if you've had

failure just as long as you're willing to be candid or straightforward. Or maybe not candid but just honest

about it.

Dane: Absolutely.

Travis: In a way, people's BS detectors, I don't know if it's the internet and just the development of

young people in general. But everyone's BS detectors is heightened these days which is definitely a

benefit. And businesses just completely shifted. Do you agree with that?

Dane: Absolutely. I think that fortunately in a much more honest time, our community has matured

enough to know that failure is a badge of honour. I think there is still a bit of a gap between the new

entrepreneur and that understanding. A lot of new entrepreneurs I think are honest with this failure but

they don't embrace it as readily as they probably should. And I think that when you start your first

company you've got to do this as well, your first company always has a certain hook to you but you

should consider it your learning curve, right? It'll be great if it's wildly successful but what you're really

getting out of it is the first step in a long career path of building things from nothing, of creating

companies. And that should allow you to feel the gains that you've had to experience, not just the

necessarily failure in that one company. So it's not about the individual shift, it's about the total ride.

Travis: Right. And in fact for me I wouldn't have changed my ways had I not failed.

Dane: Absolutely.




Travis: I had built this business that required an unreasonable amount of my time, you know, 70-80

hours a week, incredible levels of success. I made more money than the average person. But the

quality of life wasn't there and I probably would've been stuck in that routine for another 15-20 years

had it not been taken out of my hands. And basically the ball was taken away from me and I was told to

sit down.

Dane: Right.

Travis: And so I was forced to find a better way. And when that catastrophic event hit from me, I got on

my knees, I was willing to drop the BS and figure out what I was doing right and let go of what I was

doing wrong. And until those failures happen for some reason as human beings we don't tend to let go

of what's working kind of good, right?

Dane: No, you need those moments; you need sharp, painful experiences to help you take the really

hard edits to yourself.

Travis: Right.

Dane: And that experience you want through, that's clearly one of the galvanizing moments for your

future successes. I've gone through those same moments where you can't escape the fact that you

mismanaged or you took a path in your own character that was not appropriate for a longer term

success. And that's the best thing about our job ever, is that in most environments, you never get the

moment to see those failures. Well maybe it was the team around me or it's my CTO, or something else

happened in the organization. In this particular life path you are forced to change or fail.

Travis: Right. You're not allowed to shirk your responsibilities. When you work for someone else,

exactly what you're saying. When you work for someone else it could be the other team, it could be the

other guys, it could be this. You never really have to live with that, you never really have to sit with it

and own it. Whereas an entrepreneur you do. And so in the process and I've said this several times,

I've become a much better human being as an entrepreneur than I was 22 years ago.

Dane: Absolutely, I think maybe we weren't great human beings to start with but it definitely makes us a

much more whole person later on in life.




Travis: Right. And maybe to some people they're like, "Well, duh, you're obviously better because

you're 20, 22, 23 years older. My point is, is there's a lot of people that just reach a point to where they

stop growing.


Travis: And so, you're looking at a 50-year old face and a 50-year old body with a 25-year old mentality

inside, right?

Dane: No, a great quote is it's the miles, not the years, right?

Travis: Yeah.

Dane: Those moments, those challenges move you along the fields further than anything else.

Travis: Exactly.

Dane: Feeling great crisis, having amazing highs and amazing lows that come with this path, they

change you.

Travis: Right. So let's go back to manifesting success because what I'm really interested in is tapping

this 25, 30 years of experience that you've gone through and you've manifested successful businesses

from it. What do you feel like most businesses aren't getting these days, maybe the top 5 things that

they're missing?

Dane: Uhm.

Travis: I don't mean to put you on the spot, it didn't have to be exactly 5.




Dane: I think that there are things in general that businesses are missing from an opportunity stand

point but I think that it always comes down to the leadership and there are a lot of mistakes that are

hard-earned but it's at least worth hearing them. I think that early operators hold on to things to tightly.

They struggle to remove their id from the process, they want to be involved in every aspect of the

business. They have a hard time sharing the ownership in the company and sharing the responsibility

and that is extremely short-sighted and it'll cost you at least one or two the companies along the way.

But it takes a lot of courage to step away, to hire people that are smarter than you and let them do their

job and not interfere. To understand that you're value isn't in the fact that you send an email 2 a,m,

every night and you've logged 80 hours but your value is something different. It's getting people excited

about things, it's getting people undue space, right? And understanding where you particularly add

pressure and removing the id to feel like you must do everything else so that you must control so many

things is definitely a big risk. I think that there is a huge challenge with these people these days and

understanding what they actually want out of a company and particularly in groups where there are

multiple founders. I think clarity in that conversation of sharing with your initiating partners what is

you're actually going for, you're building a lifestyle business, or you're building a fast exit, or you're

building big company, what you actually want and make sure that you're at least reasonably aligned.

Because many of these companies don't make it just because the founder is running through eventual

stress. They sort of can't get around. I think that the very nature of corporations is requirement of

change. There's not the model whether it's a B corporation or a C corporation, still, it is very much

predicated on just pure capital success and today, to retain great talent you need to be broader in your

thinking. So changing your culture and putting attention to that, not just the initial strategy you have but

how do you a make a machine that continues to make great things. Ultimately, probably the most

important behaviour you can have as a leader in trying to get your company to a larger success. Not

necessarily focusing on the one strategy today but focusing on the dynamic that you've built to make

those decisions on its own.

Travis: And one of the things that I hear you saying is working on your business rather than it.

Example, sending email 2 o'clock at night is a badge of honour of how hard they're working. When

really it's proof that you have very little clarity as to how your business should be functioning.

Dane: Absolutely. That's a symptomatic sign of a-- And not in every case, right? I'm afraid I still so

some emails at 2 a.m., but the mentality that you have, that is where your value comes in. It says a lot

of bad things about your organization. It says that you're trying to control it, it says that you're trying to

lift too many things in your shoulders, you're not giving yourself the freedom to think, and inherently if

you're in that sort of, as you said, the 80-hour slot, your visibility to the bigger field is changed. So

you're not catching the pattern that the leader needs to see. You have to give yourself the space to




make smart choices and you have to give your team a space to make their own choices. And it's not

going to happen when you're doing an 80-hour week trying to be in everything, it just won’t work.

Travis: Well, you know, just like you and I were talking before the show is the-- It's easy to get-- Oh

heck, I'm looking at my notes here and I lost my train of thought on that. One of the things that I wanted

to go back to because I've taken a lot notes here. You'd mentioned something early on was market

maturation and then the reluctant to change. There are so many things that are important that you've

mentioned so far. The reluctant to change is something that I was guilty of in my business. I'd built a

model that was very successful for a while and then it started declining. And so I thought that the

answer was work more hours, in other words go faster, right? When really what was happening is the

market was reaching a maturation level and it was changing. And I wasn't paying attention to the

change.

Dane: Yup.

Travis: And I was guilty of sending those emails at 2 a.m. in the morning. Okay and that sparks the

thought that I was going to say. There's a paradox in everything. Now, we're saying, "What are you

doing sending an email at 2 o'clock at night?", when at times you need to do that.

Dane: Yeah.

Travis: I have a mentality to where I'm not too good to move a piece of furniture with my people if that's

what I need to do. And we need to get it done, by god, tell me where it is I'll give you a hand. But as a

rule of thumb I don't make it a habit that I do those things because I'm focusing on growing the

business, figuring out what's going wrong, what we're missing, customer experience, all of those things,

right?

Dane: Yeah, it's a really tricky one. One of the things that make CEO's so outstanding is they have

persistent nature to smash through any wall, concrete, steel, it doesn't matter, we're going to get

through it. And sometimes we misinterpret the challenge for that mentality, right? We see, decline our

business and we think that the way to get through is just to hammer harder at the same issue.

Travis: Right.




Dane: And you have to make sure you've got enough space and mental cycles, and freedom to think,

do I need to go through this particular wall or is there a way to get around it faster? And doing the 2

a.m. emails all of us, I think that's a great aspect of our class. There is not a single CEO who hasn't

plunged the toilet in their company at some point. We just do what has to get done but it's a matter of

not relying on that as your proof point to your team. Not thinking from an id standpoint that the reason I

am the leader is because I just work the absolute hardest. It's understanding that you are trying to

navigate a body of people to success by looking out across the sea and not just at the deck of your ship

right? You are spending the time protecting your folks in the world.

Travis: Right. And you know, I think to add a proper lens to that is context.

Dane: Yes.

Travis: Context has made me a better writer, context has made me a better interviewer, context makes

me a better leader. If I'm walking past a group of people and they need a hand I'm going to give them a

hand. But I don't obsess on that; I'm focusing on bigger picture. And so, I think that's maybe a better

way of explaining how things can be in some contrast with each other. At times you need to get those

emails out at night. But as a rule of thumb it's not something that you should be doing on a regular

basis from a big picture standpoint.

Dane: Right. You probably still are, you just have to remove your ego from thinking that you have to.

Travis: Exactly. So give some clarity on something else that I wrote down here. You said letting go of

your id. What does id mean, how do you spell that id?

Dane: Well, the concept of your ego, your super ego, the necessity that feels self-worth. Even us

apparently hyper confident leaders have to contend with, especially the early days of entrepreneurship,

that aspect of oneself.

Travis: So, go deeper on that.




Dane: Hmm?

Travis: Can you go deeper on that?

Dane: Sure, there's an example that goes across the board, whether it's Rockefeller thinking god told

them to create a massive company. Or it's a young entrepreneur thinking that their value to an

organization is their brilliancy in coding or their endless energy. Clearly, we all bring something very

special to the table but allowing an unnatural bias into what you do. It's coming from a need to feel

accepted or substantiated is risky to your business, it's risky to your own success.

Travis: So are we talking about arrogance?

Dane: Actually, I think it's less than arrogance. Arrogance might be a manifestation of somebody who's

really struggling with the id that they think that in order to command the respect of the people around

them they have to play the role of being the arrogant leader. And they are almost doing that as a way

just to feel better about themselves even though they're afraid of people around them.

Travis: Right.

Dane: I think it more naturally manifest itself in necessity for control, feeling like you have to insert your

decision in every process because clearly that's where you add the most value. A lack of trust around

the people that you brought into your organization, and a lack of honesty with yourself and what as you

said before, what you're doing that's good and what you're doing that's bad. Because it's not at all the

case that the thing you do most it's what's actually the most important. In most of our cases it's the few

choices we made in a course of a year that actually make the meaningful difference, not all the million

small things we've done, right? But finding this self-awareness, and again you're in the best field to do it

as a leader in a company, but it is extremely important. And being aware when you feel-- It's sort of like

that old Goldman story that they end up sitting there to 4 a.m. at night because they don't want to be

the first one to leave the office. They're measuring on a vector that's not actually impactful but they

think that that's how they're validating their own self-worth.

Travis: Yeah, like quantifying the value of a book by the number of pages in it.




Dane: Yeah, exactly. It happens all the time though. How many friends you have, all that kind of stuff.

It's amazing how the human mind works.

Travis: Yeah, and it's amazing how shallow we can be, right?

Dane: Yup. And I'll say about how magnificent we can be too. Once you get past those barriers in

yourself you'll find yourself doing so much more. And here's an interesting thing that whole jobs idea

about creating your own reality. The only limit that you have for changing the world from building the

biggest business, from building the most successful thing ever is your own brain. There's no difference

between you physically and any of the other leaders out there. If you can continue to hone yourself, you

can chisel at your own being. You'll find the success to come, right. It's a matter of making yourself a

better person that makes for better outcomes.

Travis: Right. You know what came to mind for me when you were going deeper on the id is the

person that has to be right rather than getting to the correct solution. And now, I've reached about 5

ago, maybe 8 years ago I reached a point to where if I was-- I love a good debate with someone, I can

disagree with someone and still be civil and have an intelligent conversation. Now if the person is

arguing to be right, then for me that's a lost cause, okay. Because nothing, no matter how much proof,

no matter how much empirical evidence I can give you, you're not going to agree.

Dane: Yup.

Travis: And what I heard you explaining in the id is kind of that. I've been at a place in my life when I

was a young man to where I think I leaned a little bit towards that direction. And then you walk away

from a situation you think, "Why am I being like this? What's my deal?" And only me holding myself

accountable and being frustrated and asking why did I grow to a point to where there's times when

obviously you need to just close your mouth, listen to some intelligent advise and get to the solution

rather than hanging on to what you believed was the answer, correct. And that's what you're saying.

Dane: Absolutely. And you more than not leaders feel the necessity to be right because they want to

prove to their team that they're always right. And that creates a culture where your team manipulates

you to thinking it's your idea versus actually just having a quick conversation and debating what's really

going on.




Travis: Right.

Dane: And it's hard, I think that one of the things-- Obviously, our point in the career path we do a lot of

coaching and trying to help others get to this understanding. And a big tool is just to forcibly accept

other people's opinions too. Even if you think they're wrong, just to take them on and goes to the ark of

how that is actually not deteriorating from your own brand in the organization, how that actually earns

loyalty from the people around you. How that encourages them to spend more time in suggesting

decisions. If they come to a decision too every day and you cancel it, the energy they're going to put in

those decisions changes, right? They're just going to presume you're going to remake the decision

anyways. So even if they're wrong-- A friend of mine who's the CEO of Getty, he once said that if

anyone gives him an 80% answer, he always says it's perfect. Just because he doesn't want to

discourage the behaviour of doing that. Have you remember that x story with trucks on the runway?

Travis: Remind of it, it doesn't ring a bell yet.

Dane: It's one of my favourite business stories. So there's this FedEx guy, he asked to get his

packages out, he goes to the containers, a padlock on, he doesn't have the key, the airplane's leaving

in a few minutes. He's desperate to get it. He takes the truck, he drives halfway down the runway and

he smashes into the container, destroying the truck, destroying the container, destroying every single

package in it. The CEO flies out, promotes him, makes him a VP and said, "At least he tried." At least

he struggled to make something happen even though the answer wasn't right, he fought for it. And that

is what we as leaders need to get around us, people who make those choices, who do those things.

But it's so easy to feel like you need to be the right one, you need to show the people around you that

you have the right answers. So you fight to always be right, in which case you kill your environment.

Travis: Right.

Dane: It is a big obstacle to that growth curve.

Travis: And I want to add to that. I've got a history of having employees for 20 years. And one of the

key pieces of that is they know that they can come to me and disagree with me and get a fair shake.




Dane: That's awesome. In our company now a third of the team has been in the list for that kind of

length of time. It is a testament to the fact that you've created an environment where people trust and

can grow, and feel that their value is appreciated. But if you look at the companies out there, that is

such a rare indicator, right? Almost every company is stacked with new employees and not people that

have been around them for decades.

Travis: I know when I work for someone; I wanted to feel like I could get a fair shake. That didn't work

for people for very long. Maybe the first 7 years of my adult life I worked at different places. But at the

corner of our being as a person we need to know that we're going to be treated fairly regardless of

whether it's the owner's son making the decision, or whoever is making this decision that we're going to

at least get a fair shake. And I believe that that is kind of an element of what you've been explaining.

Dane: Yup.

Travis: Walk me down the path. One of the things that you talk about is making pay an open book. Can

you walk me down that path and tell me more about that?

Dane: Yeah. So we are at the stage where we're experimenting greatly in our organization. And a

couple of things that we've inherited is this philosophy of transparency which means that our cap table,

and our salaries, and almost every major piece of information available for the entire team, which is an

amazing and excruciating process. But it seems one that I would never go back on. There is a market

naturalization when you have those figures open. It allows people to feel less stressed about the

negotiating that happens around a hire, they maybe they didn't handle things as well, it prevents this

sort of nuclear bomb that goes off when somebody accidentally prints out the payroll and leaves it in

the machine. And everyone runs around and shares the data but can't voice their frustration; they just

start taking staplers home, or yelling at somebody in the office because they're making more money

than they think they should be.

Travis: Right.

Dane: It creates a much more fluidic organization that has those stresses removed. And the

counterpoint is it creates a huger tax on the organization to explain the thinking around a lot of those

hires. And it handcuffs the leadership from being able to do things that are stupid. Which is great,

because stupid things are really good, but it is a somewhat painful handcuff.




Travis: So, how does that handcuff them or prevent them from doing some things that are stupid, walk

me down that path.

Dane: So, as a leader you're perspective is usually very far down the field, right? So you may go up to

somebody and say, "This individual has a book of business that's just exceptional. So I'm going to pay

him twice when I'm paying my next same staffer because I want that one victory, because I'm trying to

finance the company, or something else is happening." So you'll make you a mistake that gives you a

short term victory or plays to a different framework, and then you basically walk into your closet and

shove the giant skeleton and pray to god no one finds it, because somebody eventually will. And I've

done it more times than I can count, I've made choices that weren't necessarily fair to the organization

but then it cheated from goal. And when you have a transparent environment you just can't do it. You

can't explain to your team why you think it's worth paying this one engineer three times the amount of

anyone else because you need to pay that one right now, right? So you prevent those mistakes. On the

contrary point, it's a lot harder to rationalize higher is that people can't understand now so you're hiring

for R and D in 6 months down the road. Because it's a little less clear then rises a little less visible for

everybody else. But I think the net effect is definitely better.

Travis: So do you also go down the path of open book just as far as profitability, and profit sharing,

things like that as well?

Dane: Oh yeah, absolutely, everything. Our board meeting is broadcasted out of the whole company.

Travis: Yeah, now that's something that I recommend. I work with a lot of business owners and it

brings the team together because I see a lot of businesses that are creating incentives that are driving

down the margins and the business is not even making money, right?

Dane: Right.

Travis: And so the business is pulling itself apart, right? And they're pulling their self apart because

everyone's goal is different.




Dane: Yeah.

Travis: And so Peggy over here is pulling in one direction, and Dave's pulling, and everybody's

posturing for something. And so I have found, and I'll give you my experience and I want to hear your

perspective on this. What I found is let's put everybody into the profit sharing net profits of the month.

The end of the month we talk about how much we've made, we create a scale that is based on their

pay, and it's a percentage of performance. So basically we get everyone focused on profitability of the

month and performance. And we put performance metrics in place also to see who's doing what, in that

way it's not subjective. And then we have candid open conversations and report progress on a weekly

basis.

Dane: Yeah, that's fantastic and unfortunately rare out there. In our environment right now our

technology is very oriented around delivering KPI's people. And the beauty is when you put a metric in

front of humans they tend to deliver a lot more on that metric. The risk is misalignment of that metric is

extremely toxic to an organization, and it's very easy to shoot for a number that doesn't actually create

the right kind of value. So making sure that you've done, in your case, the right alignment for the overall

objective of the company coming down to the individual's involvement allows people to feel like they're

touching the bottom line, they're moving the organization the right way and they're getting a reward for

the right kind of efforts. It's great. It's something that requires a lot of art and sensitivity especially as

you scale down into big organizations, how you have micro-goals that people feel like they achieve

against, affect those ultimate compensation goals. But it's an area of art, and we do the same thing.

Out team gets rewarded organization-wide as we hit sort of organizational milestones, whether you're

the receptionist or the CEO, you will literally get your compensation partly based off of the larger

success of the business.

Travis: And by the way, KPI's for those that don't know is key performance indicators.

Dane: Yeah, sorry.

Travis: No problem. Some people know that term, some people don't. Some interesting things happen.

Now, something that I find is most employees think that the business owner's rich anyways, right? And

so a lot of businesses that I go into are losing money and the staffs doesn't know it. And so when

people are brought into the fold and they're explained, this is what our problem is, this is why we're

having this problem, and in fact, this is the impact on this problem, we've been losing money. And we




need to pull together and we need to focus on this, and we need to perform at this level, and when we

do we'll get back on track. And so something amazing happens, a lot of the nonsense goes away.

Dane: Absolutely.

Travis: You're able to get rid of the troublemaker so what happens is the people that are in, they're in

this, they're serious, they're looking for an opportunity just like this for profit sharing. They're going to

get rid of the bad people; the bad people are going to be ousted off the team, right? And people are

going to be inspired to get off their duff, make a difference and grow the business. All this clarity just

takes tons of weight off of the business owner's shoulder and there is no guessing. And so, so many

business owners that I talk to are reluctant at first because they think, "Profits, numbers, we don't share

those." I said, "Well trust me you want to," right?

Dane: It's insane not to. Again, it comes back to those earlier issues. You are clearly not trusting your

team. Do not think you gotten people that are smart enough to handle that kind of news around you if

you don't share that stuff. Absolutely, you want people to know what's happening to the organization so

they can wire themselves to its success.

Travis: Right. And how can someone care about the organization when they're kept in the dark

anyways?

Dane: They don't, they don't care.

Travis: Right.

Dane: They like the pay check, they like being there, but they don't care. How can they, they haven't

been trusted with it, they don't know what their impact has in the world, they have a job.

Travis: Well, I think it stems back to something in human nature. And you've got to have skin in the

game. When it's your own finger that you're slamming in the car door you're going to be careful. And so

that's a very crude, cruel example but it's a fact. When people have skin in the game they treat things

differently. My father's extremely ethical and he told me early on, he said, "Son, soon as I had an




opportunity to make part of the profit myself. I've always felt like I gave them everything I had, and

when I had this opportunity I found a new gear." And so they come into work happy, excited, all of

those other things. And a super productive employee can produce a whole lot more than an unhappy

employee.

Dane: It's almost immeasurable, the difference between someone who's giving you 90% and a 100%.

Travis: Right.

Dane: It's a quantum lift. And it goes back throughout all of history, right? If you're surf you don't care, if

you own your own farm you care. You have to feel a sense of ownership in the work you're doing. You

have to feel that that has an effect to your life and then you have a part of it. And then you'll give your

blood. And you'll make a choice; you'll make a decision some Sunday night at 8 p.m. that will change

the whole company's trajectory.

Travis: Right.

Dane: Because you care.

Travis: Yeah, exactly. Imagine a group of 10 people, caring, passionate and excited versus 15 people,

one's excited, the rest are just looking for the time to get off. The difference is beyond belief when you

see it in action.

Dane: Even more dramatic than that, I would take 10 engaged people over a hundred not engaged,

right? They'll run circles around them.

Travis: Right. And you know, there's also some other things that I believe most business owners don't

realize is the collateral damage that an unhappy employee can have.

Dane: Oh my god, it's crazy.




Travis: Yeah, on your clients, on your business, on everything.

Dane: Yeah, the rotten apples, not a strong enough analogy. It's more of a radioactive isotope sitting in

your office, it's horrific.

Travis: Right. Hey, would you mind going deeper on some of your KPI's, your key performance

indicators, just from an illustrative standpoint? I'd like to spark some juices for the people that are

listening so they say, "Ah, I need to add those into my business."

Dane: So KPI's it's-- We've had a lot of courses about this. You need to scale them with your

organization, right? So if yours is a small organization you should have one KPI. It should be overall

value to company, or money brought in, or profits made, or something to that nature so you can get

everybody rallied about one point. And then you can obviously have Lumbar indicators to help drive

that. As the organization gets bigger, you kind of push down the visibility KPI's. You have a major KPI

which is probably something in the standpoint of revenue creation, and you have a secondary KPI.

That's the primary, leading indicator. So if you're in a sales environment, it's the number of open leads,

or it's a number of returning customers, or it's something that is the best indicator to lead towards that.

If you're in an online environment, it's possibly registrations, or DAU, daily active usage, some sort of

engagement metric. And then, again as you hit sort of the scale above that you can start to draw those

connection points even further down. So you can have, in our world for instance, you have the total

value of the organization, it's mostly driven by the number of registrations and the engagement that

those registrations have. And then inside of that, the number of registrations is based off of people who

create deeper and more meaningful accounts versus less account. But there's always a way that

somebody who is driving towards a lower KPI in you environment sees how there is a direct impact to

the number one issue that the organization's trying to get to. So their efforts travel the very short stream

to change the world that they live in, right? The world of your business.

Travis: Right.

Dane: It's very dangerous to sign dozens of KPI's across a team, slow level KPI's. We need more

friends on Facebook; we need to have more people walking in the office like those KPI's are always just

game-able. They create the wrong kind of, "Oh sure, I'll go buy friends. I'll get people to come to the

office." They have to draw into a very clear path to impact.




Travis: And so the sum total of these KPI's that I want to point out here is these metrics allow you to

predictably grow your business by figuring out what is or is not working.

Dane: Yup. It allows you to say, "Is this choice going to help this measurement?" It allows you to focus

your organization to do just the things you have to do and not all the things you can do. To do the great

things and not just the good things.

Travis: And this is the secret to manifesting success.

Dane: Yeah, I think that from a management standpoint it is one of the brilliant tools you have to work

with.

Travis: Right. Yeah, the importance of KPI's can't be underestimated or understated. And again, it's

something that is missing with so many of the business owners that I sit down and talk to them about

tracking leads, conversion rates, all of those things. And it sounds like I'm getting really geeky on them,

and I'm really not, it's just simple, basic metrics.

Dane: Yup.

Travis: And when you track these things, it makes me think of the old cartoon that says, "Half of my

advertising isn't working, the only problem is I don't know which half," right? And so, when you track

these things what happens is you can take the half that's not working, get rid of it, and then double up

your money on the half that is working, right?

Dane: Absolutely.

Travis: And so that's a very simple example of measuring and tracking something. Because even

today, I'll write a headline, I'll write an ad, I'll write something, and I'll think, "This is going to do well." I

test it and I'm wrong.

Dane: Yeah, the data doesn't lie. It's again that mirror that makes you grow. It allows organization to

follow over the path it wants to get to and not abstract itself and say, "Oh, you know what, maybe I got




less viewers in this article but it was more meaningful viewers where I had a deeper impact." Having

metrics, you know drives to a success you ultimately want to get to, allow you to evaluate the things

you're doing and the things you want to do.

Travis: Right. Do you think we're getting too geeky here Dane?

Dane: But setting them is really important.

Travis: Say that again?

Dane: Setting them correctly, it takes some expertise and understands that you'll have to move them

around in the beginning if you're not a KPI-driven organization.

Travis: And it starts step-by-step, just with some little, simple things. I agree with you. Let's don't get

12, 15 things of, you know, "We need 500 more likes," well, that's the wrong metric to drive your

business. As a matter of fact everybody's chasing likes. I was going to ask you, do you think we're

getting a little too geeky here?

Dane: Possibly.

Travis: We need it, everybody needs it, right?

Dane: There should be more course work on it. Even just the power of a metric in front of people, the

studies we've seen from the data we come across is that it lifts an organization 20% just by having a

number, nothing else. Just by putting a number in front of people and allowing them to focus their

energy has an impact.

Travis: Right. One of my clients, we put a goal on her numbers and she recently hit in and she says it's

amazing, actually exceeded the goal. She said it's amazing, it's crazy, like the universe, once you get

crystal clear on what it is you want, the universe parts ways and gives it to you, right?




Dane: It helps-- She's not, "Maybe I'll do that next month," she's not thinking, "Maybe I should build

some other areas that'll help me in the long term, she's thinking, "I need to get that number to where it

needs to be."

Travis: Right.

Dane: That's a better thought pattern. As long as she's appropriately created that goal, and you need to

review your goals because sometimes actually more sales is horrible. If you decreased your margin

you'll be killing your business, you have to be very smart in how you align those things.

Travis: Well you know Dane, what's the paradox here is most right-brainers start businesses. Now

some left-brainers start business and most right-brainers start businesses and a lot of times we suffer in

the left brain category of analytical data. Yet it's the analytical data, left brain stuff that determines the

level of success we have. How's that for a paradox, right?

Dane: Yeah, it's ironic for sure.

Travis: Hey listen, we're running close on time so let's segue into the lighting round, are you ready?

Dane: Sure.

Travis: Cool.


Travis: What book or program made an impact on you related to business that you'd recommend and

why?

Dane: I would say, Neuromancer.

http://amzn.to/1cgr9Yi




Travis: Cool. Spell that.

Dane: N-e-u-r-o-m-a-n-c-e-r. It's not a business book, it's science fiction but I personally draw a lot of

axioms from those models.

Travis: Interesting, I love it that you're coming out of left field here. Who is that by, do you know who

that is?

Dane: William Gibson.

Travis: William Gibson, okay. I want to make sure that I get the right one there. What's one of your

favourite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently discovered if any that you'd recommend to

other business owners and why?

Dane: We've embraced HipChat and Trello board, it's two technologies for collaborative communication

and organization. They've been pretty good and they're both new.

Travis: How is HipChat different from Google Chat or is it?

Dane: Google Apps is obviously the base plate that most of us live in so that's a clear place to go, we

haven't gotten on already, HipChat is a significantly better way to have team communication. Hyper-

assisted history, that's searchable, allows for the creation of rooms that are hangouts that are

persistent. It allows for inclusion of media. It's a much better format for having internal team

collaboration, it's better than EM or all that kind of crap.

Travis: Okay. What famous quote would best summarize your belief or attitude in business?

Dane: Well, there's a poem I could recite to you but the last line is, "Good friend, I'm building this bridge

for him," which I think is one of my favourites. Outside of that I believe in Jobs' that's, "Stay hungry, stay

foolish."

https://www.hipchat.com/




Travis: I like both of those. Do you know the poem off the top of your head?

Dane: The poem is called The Bridge Builder, it's worth finding.

Travis: Oh yeah. Do you know the poem off the top of your head?

Dane: Yeah, of course. Do you want me to recite it?

Travis: Oh yeah, if you want to, if you're comfortable with that.

Dane: An old man, going on a lone highway,

Came, at the evening, cold and gray,

To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,

Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;

The rapids held no fears for him;

He turned when safe to the other side,

And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," cried a pilgrim near,

"You're wasting your time in building here;

Your journey will end with the closing day;

You never again will pass this way;

You've crossed this chasm, deep and wide-

Why build this bridge at an even tide?"

And the builder lifted his old gray head:

"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,

"There follows after me today,

A youth, whose feet must pass this way,

This dream which has been naught to me,

To that fair youth may a pitfall be.




He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

Travis: Wow, gives me chills.

Dane: It's a great poem and I think a friend of mine while he is serious, he's the CEO of a single

platform introduced me to it and said, "It's an amazing thought that what we do in part is to make the

road easier for those that come next."

Travis: Right. How do people connect with you Dane?

Dane: I'm pretty accessible. I think a lot of us are surprisingly accessible. You mean from an email

standpoint, a communication standpoint?

Travis: Well, I mean just online anywhere.

Dane: Yeah, I'm on Twitter, @DaneAtkinson. It's probably the easiest way.

Travis: How about your website, is there Facebook or any of those?

Dane: We use Facebook. The best way to sort of anchor around us with all of us. I'm sort of half my

company in the sense that where I put my energy. So SumAll.com, and our blog, [email protected] is

a good place to catch my energy.

Travis: Very cool. Can you hangout for a couple more minutes?

Dane: Yeah, of course.

Travis: Excellent. I've really enjoyed talking with you. I love how you come from a complete different

angle. You've really added some incredible value and I want to personally thank you for that.

http://sumall.com/




Dane: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you.

End of Interview

Travis: Okay. Remember that you can find all of the links to the books and resources mentioned in the

show in the show notes. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, .com. It's a brand new site that

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Now the reasons for these grandiose prizes are to generate some good-spirited fun because I know

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promotion. My quote for today comes from Evan Esar, and the quote reads, "Success is the good

fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration, and inspiration.” This is Travis Lane

Jenkins signing off for now. I want to personally challenge you to dream bigger and take constant

action, because as an entrepreneur, you are the role model that people are watching. To your

incredible success. Take care.


http://rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com/




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Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show

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http://www.rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com/biz-accelerator

http://theentrepreneursradioshow.com/

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