00:00:56.98 Stan Lemon So Jonathan, first of all, Happy New Year.
00:00:59.58 Jon Happy New Year in three days, two days.
00:01:03.06 Stan Lemon Three days, yeah.
00:01:03.34 Jon Okay.
00:01:03.94 Stan Lemon this This episode will drop in 2026. This will be our first episode of 2026, which seems ah monumental, Jonathan. We have survived another year.
00:01:15.90 Jon We have survived another year, which I think was my goal for 2025.
00:01:19.74 Stan Lemon Yeah, your your're macro goal. But I meant the podcast specifically survived another year.
00:01:22.65 Jon ah
00:01:23.86 Stan Lemon So after a hiatus, we came back. We are here entering 2026. And it's a brand new year, Jonathan. We've talked about our goals. We've talked about our hopes, our aspirations.
00:01:34.26 Stan Lemon You are striving for something slightly more than survival.
00:01:39.29 Jon Slightly more than survival, which you can listen to. And what was that? Episode 175. 174, 174. Right.
00:01:45.27 Stan Lemon ah it was It was a 170. I know that much. I know that much. But yeah.
00:01:49.30 Jon um seventy four one seventy four
00:01:51.38 Stan Lemon I don't know. The the robots will, you know, listen, dear listener, if you want to know when John talked about survival, just just ask Chatshubut. There you go. So. All right. Well, Jonathan, you do you want to talk about your your New Year plans? Like you're you're not hanging around. All right.
00:02:09.43 Jon um so like my actual new year plans like celebrating new year's eve and new year's day are relatively boring yeah i i will probably be asleep before midnight right i'm not got but
00:02:14.77 Stan Lemon No, because you, no, yeah, i was going say, you're going to be in bed probably by 930. Yeah, yeah, exactly. hes He says midnight. I'm pretty sure 930 is going to be pushing it.
00:02:26.94 Jon right um
00:02:27.74 Stan Lemon Yeah, all right.
00:02:29.88 Jon But on January 3rd, early in the morning, we will head to the airport and we will fly to Southern California for a week, which will be a nice way to kick off the year.
00:02:40.50 Stan Lemon And in Southern California, you will enjoy Disneyland. I've never been there. I've been to Disney World many a time. I am looking forward to a full readout and report right here on life with a twist of Jonathan Kohlmeyer to find out whether Disneyland is worth it
00:02:46.17 Jon hmm.
00:02:56.70 Jon I will be happy to report back. And as you know, you and i think about the theme parks differently. yeah.
00:03:04.69 Stan Lemon Well, and that'll be that'll be good to discussion anyhow, right? To talk about how we think about theme parks and vacation in general. um We actually, we we had a funny text exchange. I believe it was yesterday, right? Was it yesterday where I told you everything that I was doing and you said that that sounds like a very busy day and I thought it was one of the most relaxing days I've had in a while?
00:03:25.40 Jon Yes, yes, you are you are very productive in your throwaway days, as you would call them.
00:03:26.46 Stan Lemon Yeah.
00:03:31.45 Stan Lemon Throw away days.
00:03:32.15 Jon ah
00:03:32.29 Stan Lemon Yeah. I think I was texting you from the gym, right? I was, I was running.
00:03:36.63 Jon Which was the first problem, right? Ooh.
00:03:38.58 Stan Lemon Yeah. Well, I don't know. Listen, if I got time to go to the gym, like it's a good day. um But I also had been doing a bunch of coding, which we could probably talk about too, because I'm pretty frustrated with Claude.
00:03:50.86 Stan Lemon I'm actually pretty frustrated with Codex. I'm in general just frustrated with AI this weekend. um And this is hot on the cusp of all of these systems giving us two times the credits and limits, blah, blah, blah, to basically um you know create a little, I don't know, space heaters inside of data centers as they get too creative with their work.
00:04:15.13 Jon Or they figure it's a time where most people aren't working their day jobs, so now's the time to launch that side hustle that relies upon AI.
00:04:24.34 Stan Lemon i you know I think that's the thing that could have been done this weekend, but I'm telling you, man, i I really do think that the models have just gone off the rails with creativity as of late.
00:04:28.00 Jon But not checking that one out.
00:04:35.30 Stan Lemon And i've I've watched them trip over themselves in ways that I just, I don't know. I think they're getting too ambitious. I think we need a little more tactical execution on these.
00:04:46.84 Stan Lemon Yeah.
00:04:48.12 Jon Interesting. Well, we might dive into that more. I have not been using it at all because I continue to either be working or cooking one of the two. um
00:04:58.33 Stan Lemon Jonathan, what's the most interesting thing you've cooked since we last recorded?
00:04:58.52 Jon i can
00:05:02.58 Jon Since we last recorded, i cooked a i roasted a chicken for Christmas Day
00:05:08.54 Stan Lemon Okay, and how did you roast it?
00:05:10.68 Jon in the oven in a roasting pan.
00:05:12.73 Stan Lemon Okay, but you so you just like you didn't do anything to it. You just stuck it in the oven.
00:05:16.66 Jon Uh, so I dry brined about an hour.
00:05:19.51 Stan Lemon Here we go.
00:05:20.25 Jon um okay.
00:05:20.73 Stan Lemon See, this Jonathan, this is the interesting thing. this is This is what listeners come to the podcast for.
00:05:25.24 Jon So I, I actually had chat GPT tell me what to do.
00:05:25.76 Stan Lemon right.
00:05:28.40 Jon So I dry brined it for about an hour, seasoned with olive oil, salt, and Italian seasoning inside stuffed a bunch of aromatics, um, garlic, onion, bay leaf, things of that nature.
00:05:42.36 Jon Um, but Yeah, put it the roasting pan, had some onion and stock and garlic, I think, underneath the roasting rack.
00:05:54.10 Jon Was supposed to be done an hour, took closer to like an hour and 40 minutes. So, you know.
00:05:58.40 Stan Lemon Ooh, that's a but that's a wide margin of error. Did ChatGPT have any explanation as to why it would take so much longer, Jonathan?
00:06:02.33 Jon Yeah.
00:06:06.26 Jon I think it blamed my oven, so, you know.
00:06:08.54 Stan Lemon Okay. Did it tell you how to how to test if your oven was the problem?
00:06:12.66 Jon I didn't go that far. I was annoyed at that point. So I just wanted the chicken to be cooked and to not kill any of my family members.
00:06:15.61 Stan Lemon Okay. All right.
00:06:18.58 Jon so
00:06:19.54 Stan Lemon I believe that oven calibration is probably something that every human needs to do, and none of us have done it.
00:06:27.43 Jon Right. Have you done it?
00:06:28.20 Stan Lemon Yeah.
00:06:28.82 Jon That seems like something you would do.
00:06:29.24 Stan Lemon No, I've, I've, I've not, I've not done it now when I cook outside, I have multiple ways of validating the temperature. I do a ton of calibration and monitoring and checking and verification out there. When I cook indoors, I just trust the number on the, on the screen and hope for the best.
00:06:46.36 Stan Lemon And I know, i know that I'm failing myself.
00:06:46.42 Jon Right. so The other interesting thing about this cook was it had me do it in convection mode, um which I do not actually use that often, probably because I just don't default to it.
00:06:54.55 Stan Lemon Oh, okay.
00:06:58.75 Jon But so that was the other thing about the cook.
00:07:00.41 Stan Lemon Well, it it changes. mean, it changes how you cook, right? It changes all of the math leading up to the the completion. But that's interesting that it had you do that. I would have not thought to use convection for a chicken.
00:07:14.75 Stan Lemon i In general, i wouldn't have thought about it for poultry. But I guess, were they trying to get like a crisper outside?
00:07:19.20 Jon The crispy skin, yeah.
00:07:20.57 Stan Lemon Okay. Yeah. right. That makes sense. That makes sense.
00:07:23.22 Jon It turned out
00:07:24.63 Stan Lemon Yeah. All right. How did your ladies think it turned out?
00:07:29.81 Jon OK. So they liked it. They ate more of it the day afterwards because we had filled up on crackers and cheese and things like that beforehand.
00:07:37.30 Stan Lemon i Ah, yes.
00:07:38.72 Jon Classic ah holiday era.
00:07:39.06 Stan Lemon The the
00:07:42.07 Stan Lemon the age-old Christmas problem. How do I stop eating charcuterie before the main course? Yeah.
00:07:48.82 Jon I had this delicious truffle cheddar cheese. um That was to die for, Stan.
00:07:55.06 Stan Lemon can i I've got a question for you about truffles. This is like a little bit of an existential crisis for me. So I just had a Hershey Kiss that's chocolate truffle, right?
00:08:04.22 Jon Interesting.
00:08:05.14 Stan Lemon Okay. um And, you know, if you go out to a restaurant and you get like truffle fries, right?
00:08:11.71 Jon Mm-hmm.
00:08:12.28 Stan Lemon So that's a truffle oil on top. I think those truffles are different, right?
00:08:17.50 Jon I believe so, yes. Chocolate truffles are not the truffles for truffle fries.
00:08:18.90 Stan Lemon Okay. so So, okay. how How is someone supposed to know whether I'm eating chocolate truffle? Which, what by the way, like what is chocolate truffle?
00:08:29.98 Stan Lemon Truffle, when I'm talking about my, you know, the oil on my French fries, that's that's a mushroom, right?
00:08:34.34 Jon That's a matrim, correct.
00:08:35.39 Stan Lemon Yeah. So they're putting mushroom in my chocolate.
00:08:38.20 Jon I'm fairly certain not, but I do not know why that is called a truffle, but ChatGPT would.
00:08:45.56 Stan Lemon Well, yeah so yeah, and i and I could have asked it, but I wanted to see if you would know, Jonathan, do you ever find this struggle in your life?
00:08:48.31 Jon it
00:08:53.11 Stan Lemon The dance between the truffles?
00:08:54.52 Jon I don't, I think, because I car compartmentalize things. So like if it's chocolate, it's a truffle. And if it's not, then it's the mushroom truffle.
00:09:05.05 Stan Lemon see my existence is purely ether. Like I'm just out here floating in the abyss and I'm bumping into truffles of various sorts and I don't know how to categorize or sort them.
00:09:09.11 Jon ah
00:09:13.65 Stan Lemon So that's a, it's very frustrating, very frustrating.
00:09:15.90 Jon Maybe you should write an app for that, Sam.
00:09:18.20 Stan Lemon I think the app is called chat GPT and I just need to whip it out and check it, but we're not there.
00:09:25.05 Jon ah
00:09:25.43 Stan Lemon All right. Jonathan, I've got, I've got one question before you and then i think you're going to take the reins here. You and your friend chat GPT. Um,
00:09:32.65 Jon Right.
00:09:34.07 Stan Lemon Is LinkedIn premium worth it?
00:09:38.81 Jon So I have done the whatever it was, two-week trial like four years ago, um and I voted no at that time.
00:09:47.51 Stan Lemon That's the last time you've tried it.
00:09:48.82 Jon Yeah, I have not tried it since.
00:09:50.39 Stan Lemon Okay. And you've never actually paid for a subscription?
00:09:53.42 Jon I've never paid for a subscription. I think it was crazy expensive.
00:09:56.95 Stan Lemon it it is It is rather costly. Yes, that is for sure. I have done a couple of free trials. I have paid for a subscription, usually a discounted rate. I don't know that I've ever paid full price.
00:10:11.09 Stan Lemon um If I have, I don't recall. But even even at a discount of rate, it's it's pretty pricey. I'm wrapping up a two-month discounted rate, and I cannot articulate to you the value that I got from it.
00:10:28.63 Stan Lemon And I was pretty active.
00:10:28.82 Jon Which is, you're very active. And this is very sad because this was the growth play to regrow our listenership of the podcast.
00:10:37.30 Stan Lemon And and maybe maybe we gained a bunch of listeners from LinkedIn. I don't know. I don't know. But I'm i'm also not sure. Like, we looked at one point at boosting posts, right?
00:10:47.90 Jon Right.
00:10:48.28 Stan Lemon And the cost per impression was astronomical, right?
00:10:52.76 Jon Yep.
00:10:52.81 Stan Lemon Like, it it was... in in
00:10:53.78 Jon That was impressions, right?
00:10:55.03 Stan Lemon It was impressions, yeah. Not even like, I'm not asking for clicks or engagement. It's just the cost of impression. And I suspect that there are some recruiting aspects, right?
00:11:06.32 Stan Lemon Like I should pop for more recruiters um by having it. i i I tried, there's this, when you're looking at a job description, you can like indicate I'm interested or I'm open to being interested.
00:11:11.83 Jon Maybe. Right.
00:11:18.10 Stan Lemon It's like something like that. i like it's It's very specific language that is noncommittal in every way, shape, and form. And I tried that just because I was curious, like, how, you know, will I get any traction engagement, right? That's all I'm looking for. Like, will I get different people hitting me up?
00:11:33.30 Stan Lemon I saw nothing material in terms of reaching out. Um, from, companies, recruiters. and And now I will say this, this is fourth quarter stuff.
00:11:45.71 Stan Lemon So it is entirely possible that, you know, there's, there's, there's nobody.
00:11:49.63 Jon Everybody checked out for the year.
00:11:50.55 Stan Lemon Yeah. Nope. Yeah. I've been checked out for the year. So maybe was just bad time. Maybe that's why LinkedIn gave me at a discount rate. I don't know. And to be clear, like I'm not looking for a job. I'm i'm just genuinely curious. What is the value prop of LinkedIn, especially at such a premium price.
00:12:03.63 Stan Lemon And I, I, I,
00:12:04.06 Jon And like this is different than Sales Navigator, right?
00:12:09.54 Stan Lemon I don't know what Sales Navigator is, John.
00:12:09.95 Jon Or is it? So like the thing that all the people use to ah do business development research, like they get notified of a job title changes in org charts and it like syncs over into CRM and they can basically enroll people into sequences using in mail and things of that nature.
00:12:31.22 Stan Lemon I think that's totally different. I think this is just simply a premium LinkedIn subscription plan.
00:12:33.21 Jon Okay.
00:12:36.44 Jon ah Really the value proposition is you can see all the people who view your profile instead of.
00:12:42.13 Stan Lemon That's part of it So they, now they do have like, um, they've got like an education center. You can take some classes, like things like that.
00:12:49.22 Jon Come.
00:12:49.32 Stan Lemon I've looked at those. i honestly, like most of them felt dated and and not particularly, impactful for the time. Right. Cause here's the other thing Like I'm paying, I think it's, it's $40 a month is the normal price. Right.
00:13:04.57 Stan Lemon And,
00:13:04.74 Jon Which I think is cheaper than it was four years ago. Right.
00:13:07.53 Stan Lemon Oh man, that's twice my ChatGPT subscription, right? And um so yeah what what what was the thing you asked about?
00:13:12.10 Jon Chash EPT is far more valuable most days.
00:13:16.25 Stan Lemon Sales Navigator?
00:13:17.43 Jon Sales Navigator, I think it's called, yeah.
00:13:18.70 Stan Lemon That's $100 a month.
00:13:20.15 Jon Okay.
00:13:21.70 Stan Lemon Recruiter Lite is $170 a month.
00:13:23.64 Jon Oh, so they have a recruiter thing too. Interesting. Interesting.
00:13:27.53 Stan Lemon Yeah, and the recruiter version, like I would imagine that's helpful, but who knows? like
00:13:35.24 Jon I mean, if you didn't get any ah hits when you were paying for premium, then like, i don't know.
00:13:35.33 Stan Lemon I don't know.
00:13:43.85 Stan Lemon Well, and you know the other thing too I'll say is I think anecdotally, my last 10 years in the business being on the hiring side, I think most of our applicants are direct application.
00:13:57.44 Stan Lemon And i like thinking about the last few people we hired, i think they're all direct applicants too, right?
00:14:03.75 Jon Interesting.
00:14:04.20 Stan Lemon So-
00:14:05.14 Jon What's, what's your breakdown between ah hiring internally versus externally?
00:14:10.63 Stan Lemon Oh, I have no idea. I don't know. I'm not, I'm um but probably not even privy to that. Like, um, I, yeah, I don't know.
00:14:17.66 Jon Okay.
00:14:18.66 Stan Lemon Um,
00:14:18.90 Jon Cause I feel like there's a lot of companies where like when they're posting a role, a lot of times they fill it with an internal applicants.
00:14:25.83 Stan Lemon Yeah, that that definitely happens. Like at Salesforce, that was a big thing, right? So when I was at Salesforce, entire internal movement was ah like a cultural thing. It was encouraged. There were mechanisms to promote it. Everybody got a first shot at it before it was a public listing.
00:14:40.26 Stan Lemon um But like it was it was very intentional. that it was, that was part of the thing that they did and they, they wanted to be done. Um, that is also the only place in, in my 20 year professional career where I've seen it with that level of intentionality.
00:14:55.68 Stan Lemon I'm sure there are other places that do it, right. Especially, ah I would imagine in the bigger, bigger company, uh, space, like, you know, it would shock me if Facebook doesn't have some type of internal mobility option.
00:15:06.30 Jon All right. All right.
00:15:07.49 Stan Lemon um But that that is another interesting aspect to this. Like maybe, you know maybe direct applicants are internal mo mobility. Again, anecdotally, just thinking about recent hires, that's not the case.
00:15:19.59 Stan Lemon But um here's here's the thing too. Like if you're trying to hire younger people, like you know earlier in career individuals, you're not, you don't get those through internal mobility typically, right? Internal mobility is for ah later in career folks typically, at least in technology. And um I, what I see at least in technology right now is a lot of early in career hiring listed on, you know, the interwebs and whatnot, even on LinkedIn.
00:15:49.89 Stan Lemon um In fact, if I post, if I post something about a listing that we have on LinkedIn, that, that will dominate my impressions.
00:15:57.38 Jon Okay, well that seems like a good thing from a LinkedIn standpoint.
00:15:57.45 Stan Lemon Right? So,
00:16:01.35 Stan Lemon From a LinkedIn standpoint, I have no idea if a LinkedIn premium has anything to do with that though, right?
00:16:05.25 Jon Probably doesn't. All algorithm.
00:16:06.05 Stan Lemon Probably doesn't, yeah.
00:16:07.14 Jon Which is something else we should talk about.
00:16:07.49 Stan Lemon um
00:16:08.54 Jon The algorithm of pretty much all social media being garbage now.
00:16:12.90 Stan Lemon Yeah, it's it's definitely, ah I don't know. I mean, is it garbage for the consumer? it garbage for the producer? Is it garbage for both? what do you think?
00:16:23.21 Jon I would say both, right? Because like you and i come from early days of news feeds, right?
00:16:25.22 Stan Lemon Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:33.13 Jon So, and I think we both tend toward tend to lean towards the completionist side of things. Like I very much would like to go back to seeing things that I care about chronologically instead of all this random stuff.
00:16:46.50 Jon Now,
00:16:46.85 Stan Lemon Oh, i'm i'm I'm past that. I'm with you. i was there, but I'm past that.
00:16:50.76 Jon On Instagram, maybe, ah we have found some really great Lord of the Rings memes or educational content, but that's like not even 10% of the stuff you have to scroll through.
00:17:02.85 Stan Lemon So LinkedIn, sorry, Instagram is where I think the algorithm might be working, um maybe to a lesser extent threads.
00:17:07.76 Jon Hmm.
00:17:09.53 Stan Lemon let let me Let me expand here. So Instagram has increasingly over the last year given me content that I'm interested in that I don't follow.
00:17:20.20 Stan Lemon where the other the other platforms don't, right? So ah it'll be like woodworking stuff or Pilates things or Lord of the Rings. Like I don't i didn't follow any Lord of the Rings um accounts before ah stuff popped up. And I actually, I don't think I follow that many Lord of the Rings accounts, but I get a lot of a lot of content, right? So I think i think that's actually an area where they've managed to profile my interests in a way that gives me content you know in a way that I want, right?
00:17:48.04 Stan Lemon um And I see that to a slightly lesser extent on threads, which I don't i don't use a lot, but you know,
00:17:54.47 Jon Yeah, I don't spend a lot of time on threads either.
00:17:55.78 Stan Lemon yeah
00:17:56.11 Jon I think the only reason that I actually activated threads was because he kept sending me friend requests.
00:18:01.67 Stan Lemon There we go. So i I probably didn't even realize I was doing it, but, but there, there too, we have, i think content that bubbles up for me.
00:18:04.64 Jon ah
00:18:08.99 Stan Lemon Threads is like actually interesting, sports news bites. That's what would probably gets pushed up into my threads feed. And I kind of like that. Like there's an aspect, honestly, of, of threads that feels to me like old Twitter, you know, um,
00:18:24.08 Jon Yep. Yep.
00:18:25.83 Stan Lemon I think they've nailed that. But but those i think those are exceptional because if I go over to Blue Sky or God forbid X, formerly known as Twitter, I definitely don't get that. Facebook is a sea of trash, right?
00:18:37.03 Stan Lemon ah And then LinkedIn, i i I think the algorithm is completely worthless. Like I really think that whatever they're using to decide what to show me um is beyond subpar. And some of it is so antagonistically clickbait that it it actually it actually ticks me off, you know? Yeah.
00:18:56.94 Jon Well, what ticks me off is like, there are often times where I literally have to go to your profile to see what you posted. You think that LinkedIn would show that to me, right?
00:19:04.77 Stan Lemon Yeah. Well, especially with the amount of engagement that we have, right?
00:19:08.55 Jon Right.
00:19:09.45 Stan Lemon and And, you know, I tag you periodically, right?
00:19:12.88 Jon Yep.
00:19:13.01 Stan Lemon And stuff too, like for the podcast. I think that's where LinkedIn has really just dropped the ball, at least on the algorithm side. For me, i get I open up LinkedIn and the top posts will be something that is AI skeptic in a like super antagonistic way.
00:19:26.79 Stan Lemon right? Like just a hostile. And there's nothing based upon the content that I have shared and released that should encourage LinkedIn to put that in front of me. Now you could make the argument that they want me to like experience ah alternative positions, right?
00:19:44.63 Stan Lemon That's fine. But like it it is, it is literally the, uh, over the top, super dramatized clickbait rage bait is rage bait is what it is that it it'll pop up there. And then the occasion I'll get like some random post about some super niche technology with a question at the bottom. Like, is this a good, is this a good post? Would you suggest this?
00:20:08.20 Stan Lemon Right.
00:20:08.84 Jon Interesting.
00:20:09.80 Stan Lemon Yeah, and those, most so most of the time, like it's super technical detail about something that I have absolutely no familiarity with, right? Which is the worst. So it's not like someone's asking me like, hey, what do you think about this spring boot implementation, you know, thing that somebody wrote about? No, it's it's like some like crazy edge case rust thing that someone did for, ah you know, in an industry that I have no experience with, right?
00:20:35.53 Stan Lemon I have no business telling LinkedIn this is a good post or not.
00:20:39.40 Jon Right.
00:20:40.00 Stan Lemon Um, so, so that algorithm is broken and maybe that's why premium feels like it's such a ripoff. I don't know.
00:20:46.63 Jon Yeah. So basically review of LinkedIn premium is we don't really know what we're paying for or two thumbs way down.
00:20:55.36 Stan Lemon Two thumbs way down at this point. Like I would love for someone, I would love for someone at LinkedIn to explain to me what the value prop is for someone who is a not actively looking for a job to not actively looking to use their, you know, rip off masterclass implementation and, and three just wants to drive engagement around written content, you know?
00:21:17.03 Jon Right.
00:21:17.83 Stan Lemon Um, and, and that would be great.
00:21:21.03 Jon Just crafting posts for LinkedIn, i have no idea why something takes off and why something doesn't.
00:21:27.37 Stan Lemon There's no rhyme or reason. I, it really, yeah.
00:21:28.77 Jon It's like.
00:21:30.92 Stan Lemon Cause I, I think like some of my best content has not you know gone anywhere. And then some of it, some my weakest content. one of the posts that I had that was off the charts in terms of engagement was a little quippy satire piece I did on Robinson Crusoe, right?
00:21:49.81 Stan Lemon And like the life the life of an engineer.
00:21:50.01 Jon Right.
00:21:51.33 Stan Lemon That thing blew up and there was no reason for it because honestly, it was a stupid post, right?
00:21:55.46 Jon Right.
00:21:56.61 Stan Lemon um I did have some...
00:21:57.61 Jon And nobody's read Robinson Crusoe except you and I.
00:21:59.33 Stan Lemon no yeah no nobody has read Robinson Crusoe, right?
00:22:00.55 Jon So. Yep.
00:22:02.45 Stan Lemon Like I, the fact that I got comments on it too, still blows my mind as well.
00:22:03.11 Jon but
00:22:07.55 Stan Lemon Right. Uh, and you know, like, if okay. So then I tried, I think a little later to do the same thing with Jane Eyre. That one fell flat, like completely fell flat.
00:22:19.89 Stan Lemon Right. Um, so I don't even think it's the, like the style of post, uh, the podcast ones,
00:22:26.75 Jon It doesn't seem to be time. Right.
00:22:28.77 Stan Lemon No, it doesn't seem to be time because I've tried everything time wise too. um Yeah. I don't know. You know, I i don't have a problem paying for a service that adds value, that contributes value, but I just don't think this is it.
00:22:40.21 Stan Lemon And, and I, I kind of, I want to be wrong. I don't know why, but I want, I want to, I want to be wrong on this one.
00:22:44.38 Jon Yeah.
00:22:47.85 Jon Yeah.
00:22:49.35 Stan Lemon So, yeah.
00:22:49.56 Jon Oh, well, maybe another social media platform will present itself because that's just what the world needs.
00:22:55.97 Stan Lemon Yeah, right. That's what, you know, so here's here's the thing. The thing that I, I want to like about LinkedIn is the idea that we're talking about professional career oriented things in technology, right?
00:23:08.72 Jon Right.
00:23:09.38 Stan Lemon I love the concentration, the potential for concentration of content in that regard. um along with folks who i have I have built relationships up with that are, quite frankly, singularly scoped to my job.
00:23:24.34 Stan Lemon ay And and i like um ah I think that's why I want it to be better than it is. Yeah.
00:23:30.79 Jon Right. I agree. I completely agree. This kind of moves into the topic that ChatGPT that I chose from the options ChatGPT gave me is to talk about taste.
00:23:42.69 Jon And part of this...
00:23:43.24 Stan Lemon Yeah, hold on I got to just rail on this a little bit, okay? So you you should explain.
00:23:48.00 Jon LinkedIn? Taste?
00:23:49.61 Stan Lemon No, no, no, no, no. ChatGPT. So you explain how you set this up.
00:23:55.05 Jon ah Basically, I told ChatGPT to, hey, dive deep into our website, look at transcripts um for our recent things and suggest topics to talk about ah for this next episode.
00:24:06.12 Stan Lemon Okay, and then you shared it to me as a group chat, right?
00:24:10.04 Jon I did.
00:24:11.17 Stan Lemon Now, I...
00:24:11.75 Jon Well, I shared it after I ah forced it to, um you know, actually give me new ideas and not just to continue talking about what we have been talking about. Hmm.
00:24:20.26 Stan Lemon So it shows up on the mobile app. It shows up on the web. But the desktop app on the computer that I'm using right now does not show group chats. If it does, it is super weird.
00:24:30.09 Jon Which is so weird, because it's probably just a wrapper for a web version, right?
00:24:35.40 Stan Lemon Yeah, like I don't know if it doesn't have the section header and it doesn't list them there. i would In fact, I don't even like the fact that the group chats are in their own separate section, which I could rail about too.
00:24:46.10 Stan Lemon Because if you notice, I left three group chats that we had previously because, yeah.
00:24:49.80 Jon I did. And you know what it did, Stan? It gave me a notification like it had been updated.
00:24:52.41 Stan Lemon Go
00:24:54.88 Jon And then I look, and it's like, oh, Stan left.
00:24:57.51 Stan Lemon So here's here's why I left. It's at the top. It's pinned to the top, right? So when I open up the app, I got to scroll past the group chats to get to the stuff that I'm actually working on.
00:25:01.44 Jon can't move it. Yep. It's
00:25:06.19 Stan Lemon So those those are old chats. They should have like fallen down the list. And I couldn't figure out any other way to make them go away than to leave the group chat, which is stupid, right?
00:25:13.55 Jon leaf. Yep.
00:25:15.69 Stan Lemon That's stupid UX. Now, I'm over in the desktop app, and I can't even see the one that you opened up, and I want to. So like... these these feel to me These feel to me like solvable problems that chat GPT should be able to figure out, OpenAI should be able figure out.
00:25:31.88 Stan Lemon But i don't know, man. it's like It's these little things that that they they gnaw away at the usability of the tool that drive me frigging nuts.
00:25:42.89 Stan Lemon And, you know, Claude, it's got its own issues. But I will say this. Conversation navigation in the app, whether desktop or mobile, far superior.
00:25:53.45 Stan Lemon It just works.
00:25:55.40 Jon Interesting. So OpenAI, if you're listening, you need a user experience, user interface priority instead of just trying to keep ahead of all your competitors.
00:26:07.85 Stan Lemon And I'm happy to sit on a design call and talk to you about how I use the application and my frustrations. Also, my loves. I love this app. I use this app all the time. I can't imagine life without it.
00:26:19.56 Stan Lemon And yet it annoys the living crap out of me.
00:26:19.83 Jon Right.
00:26:23.85 Jon If only they knew what value you just threw out there for them to take.
00:26:30.09 Stan Lemon You know, and and they probably would if it wasn't for the fact that LinkedIn Premium is never going to show the post that I'm going to write about this to any of the people that I know who work at OpenAI, which there are a few.
00:26:30.26 Jon But.
00:26:33.14 Jon Yeah.
00:26:39.70 Stan Lemon All right.
00:26:40.33 Jon Okay. Taste.
00:26:43.87 Stan Lemon Now the substance, the substance of the chat.
00:26:48.11 Jon Anyways. ah So, yeah, the first response was like, hey, just keep talking about all these things that we've talked about for the last four weeks. And I'm like, no, we've covered those topics. Give me new ideas. And it gave me a few. I landed on taste.
00:27:00.27 Jon were the other ones it gave me? You can't open the thing because you use a desktop app, not the web in your interface.
00:27:04.66 Stan Lemon No, I've got to open the web. I've got open the web.
00:27:05.89 Jon Okay. Okay.
00:27:06.55 Stan Lemon Yeah.
00:27:08.45 Jon um So basically, threw out taste. Stuff we're actively opting out of, um which I think takes more preparation than we can just do on the fly.
00:27:18.89 Jon What feels over-engineered now, which could be another good thing to ah chew on a little bit. The difference between luxury and comfort, not overly interesting to me, maybe to you.
00:27:31.53 Jon But yeah. ah What are we still bad at on purpose? um We could talk about why that's just a bad idea overall.
00:27:42.34 Jon And yeah, so I landed on taste. So because this has been a theme for probably the last six months in my work life, Stan, um it's how do you develop a sense of taste? Why can I look at a website and know, hey, this is a good user experience versus this is a bad user experience? um When I don't remember necessarily learning that, so how am I supposed to teach ah people who are early in their careers how to develop the sense of taste?
00:28:14.21 Stan Lemon So would you say in the last year your sense of taste has has fundamentally changed? Okay, all right.
00:28:20.58 Jon I would not.
00:28:22.76 Stan Lemon right But you would describe yourself as having a sense of taste.
00:28:26.71 Jon In aspects that I care about, yes.
00:28:29.57 Stan Lemon how How would you describe your taste?
00:28:33.29 Jon In what aspects, Stan? I don't know.
00:28:35.79 Stan Lemon No, I'm...
00:28:35.97 Jon i don't know if I would describe my taste even. um Because like if if we zoom out and we look at this in the food realm, right? So like my taste has definitely evolved ah since I was in high school, right?
00:28:49.43 Jon Where I didn't eat eggs or mushrooms or things like that, right?
00:28:50.25 Stan Lemon Well, sure. Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:53.64 Jon And like what changed there was exposure.
00:28:56.49 Stan Lemon Mushrooms or truffles or both?
00:28:58.34 Jon I mean, and generally, I can't afford truffles, so, you know.
00:29:00.90 Stan Lemon yeah
00:29:05.41 Jon Now i you completely threw me off my train of thought. um But exposure is what changed the taste there, right? um I went on choir tours to different parts of the country. i didn't have a lot of option to not eat something if I wanted to eat. I traveled across the country with you um in a nonprofit we worked at every summer. Exposure with some people who really, really love food and trying different things. Like that's the first time I had Vietnamese food or things of that nature. Sushi.
00:29:34.95 Stan Lemon Yeah, exposure is a key word there. I think just getting in front of things that are different gives you an opportunity to identify what is good and what is not, right? And i here's here's where I'm going to be arguably a little controversial.
00:29:48.32 Stan Lemon I think there are things that are objectively tasteful and objectively tasteless, right?
00:29:54.31 Jon Oh, I absolutely agree.
00:29:54.43 Stan Lemon I think,
00:29:55.43 Jon I believe that there is objectivity to beauty as well.
00:29:58.95 Stan Lemon yeah, yeah.
00:29:59.17 Jon There are things that are objectively beautiful versus not.
00:30:02.82 Stan Lemon And, and, uh, so you saw me, the, the listener obviously can't see us, but, um, you saw me take a step back to my bookshelf and grab a book as you were starting this conversation.
00:30:10.47 Jon Yep.
00:30:12.74 Stan Lemon And then I was checking in, uh, Amazon, how long ago I bought this book. Um, this book, Jonathan, it is titled get your house right. And I bought it in 2014. It is by Marianne Cusato and Ben Pentriath with Richard Sammons and Leon career.
00:30:29.13 Stan Lemon Right. That's a mouthful. Um, The subtitle is Architectural Elements to Use and Avoid. This is not normal reading material for me. In 2014, I bought this book and I was um stunned at how it talked about the angles on houses, the angles in roof lines and the ratios of the height of a wall to a roof line and things of that sort.
00:30:56.36 Stan Lemon and And the the reason im bring it up is because it made it clear to me that there are certain things ah because of geometry and the human body and the things that we see that are like good, right, and salutary that are objectively beautiful, right?
00:31:12.93 Stan Lemon And so you can design an ugly house and this book would actually explain to you why it's ugly, right? It would explain to you why I don't like the roofline of my home, for example, right?
00:31:23.59 Stan Lemon And that's,
00:31:24.63 Jon Which would be interesting because I don't really like the roofline of your home either, but I have no idea why.
00:31:30.41 Stan Lemon Oh, interesting. So um there there are, but but this book really like framed that for me in a way that I had not ever conceived of before. And so I think that there's, you know, yeah you you talk about magic numbers or magic ratios and things of that sort, right? Yeah.
00:31:48.07 Stan Lemon There are things where the aesthetics translate to natural occurring beauty, right? And we have taken the ratios of those naturally occurring beautiful things and translated them into things that we create.
00:32:00.22 Stan Lemon And that helps make them beautiful versus not, right?
00:32:03.21 Jon Interesting.
00:32:03.33 Stan Lemon That's the that's the premise, right?
00:32:04.39 Jon So my exposure here was in photography um when I learned the rule of thirds, right?
00:32:10.66 Stan Lemon Ah, there you go. Yep.
00:32:11.24 Jon um So like instead of everything being dead center, ah you see the grid on some camera interfaces and you line up the areas of interest off center.
00:32:21.50 Stan Lemon Yeah.
00:32:22.18 Jon on either a third line or where the thirds intersect.
00:32:25.57 Stan Lemon Yep. Yep. So, you know, there's, there's um I think there's something to that. So when I think about taste, right, I think about finding the objectively beautiful ah aspects of a thing. And, you know, I've been talking about visuals, but I think this translates it into food as well.
00:32:41.45 Stan Lemon Right. a piece of meat that has no salt is probably not going to be fantastic, right?
00:32:48.49 Jon Correct.
00:32:49.00 Stan Lemon The best cuts of meat, as fantastic as they are, are typically salted, right? Because salt does a thing to the taste that draws out even more flavor, right?
00:32:57.87 Jon Mm-hmm. Right.
00:32:58.95 Stan Lemon um And I think you can like look at objectively, like if if you cook a piece of chicken right now, and you don't salt it, like no no one's going to like that, right? Unless you, unless you you know, COVID-19 killed your your taste buds, whatever. I don't know. Like, there's this objectivity to that, right?
00:33:16.93 Stan Lemon I think also, you know, you can have foods that are too rich, or you can have foods that are too greasy, you know, things of that nature, right? Or nobody likes a piece of gristle in their chicken nugget.
00:33:28.47 Stan Lemon I'm sorry, it's just not good. so So there's objectivity in that. i think you start to think about like what what is the basis for those and you will start to develop a sense of taste. Like I think a sense of taste is understanding those things that are objective and then figuring out beyond the objectivity, what do you prefer or not?
00:33:50.57 Jon Right. Okay.
00:33:51.43 Stan Lemon Okay. Okay.
00:33:54.18 Jon So you're more advanced in your career um than you were initially. um
00:34:00.93 Stan Lemon yeah as one tends to do.
00:34:01.48 Jon how let's Let's talk about your taste in code, maybe starting from the code you were writing in high school um to now what ah kind of the expectation that you would hold your engineers to today.
00:34:15.65 Stan Lemon that's fascinating because I actually think that my taste in code quality has diminished significantly. a Yeah, this is this is this this discussion may not go where you think...
00:34:22.89 Jon Okay. ah ah I wasn't expecting this, but okay.
00:34:26.41 Stan Lemon he goes
00:34:29.25 Stan Lemon So when I started coding, first of all, I didn't know what was good code, what was bad. I only knew the thing that did the work that I wanted it to do, right? um As time developed, I learned how to write code that had certain organizational characteristics, right? And the way that I would maybe describe this to someone who doesn't know anything about coding is if you open up a junk drawer and you can find the thing that you want, right, predictably,
00:34:56.90 Stan Lemon That is a well-organized junk drawer, right? If it is literally a C and you have no idea how to get to it, and in the process of trying to get to the thing that you're going to to yourself with scissors, right?
00:35:07.37 Stan Lemon Maybe brush up against an uncapped Sharpie so that you have permanent marker on your hand. And then as you're so you know spilling blood across an heirloom that you've tucked away in there and ruining it forever, you will achieve the goal that you want. You'll get the outcome, but you will have have done a lot of awful stuff along the way, right?
00:35:23.18 Stan Lemon Yeah. And so that that is that is like disorganized code, right? Poorly organized code. So well organized code allows you to do the thing that you want to do quickly, efficient efficiently, effectively without side effects.
00:35:35.40 Stan Lemon And... um There is a huge amount of gray in that. ah you know Some people want to put the pens on the left and the pencils on the right.
00:35:45.64 Stan Lemon Some people want to put the scissors in the middle.
00:35:46.12 Jon Sure.
00:35:47.68 Stan Lemon Others want to put the rulers in the back. I don't know. like you You choose. But the point is that like you get to... I become much more tolerant of those choices than I would have you know when I started.
00:35:59.69 Stan Lemon Where I had become more militant is like, you have to write a test for the functionality that you're developing for everything, right? And the thing that your code does is the most important attribute of it.
00:36:15.17 Stan Lemon right And so, in some respects, it's like a reversion to where I started where it's like, I just wrote some stuff that did a thing, it was what I wanted it to do, and I'm good. um And you know not to flip this back to the AI-centric stuff, but the quality of code that I'm willing to tolerate from something like Claude or Codex is is much lower than I am from a human.
00:36:41.16 Stan Lemon Like a thousand percent because it took me no effort and I was able to just do it and the outcome was right.
00:36:45.46 Jon Sure.
00:36:46.73 Stan Lemon Right. um But I think there, you know, to drive this back to taste maybe is, is I think the thing in software I find technologists who do technology for technology sake to be utterly irritating.
00:37:02.28 Stan Lemon And ah I think the the tasteful thing in software development is building product for customers. So the quality of the code is secondary to did it get a job done for someone who needed something done.
00:37:16.01 Jon Interesting. I don't know if I knew you were going to end up here, but I don't know that I entirely disagree either. So... so In my line of work, I think I'm going to be taking a che a heavy focus on marketing going into 2026.
00:37:32.59 Jon So I'm thinking about this from a marketing perspective, which is what the customer is interacting and what the customer sees. But to that end, like there are fundamental design rules, right alignment, repetition, things of that nature, visual hierarchy.
00:37:47.15 Stan Lemon I think
00:37:51.88 Jon So I think that early in your career, you learn those rules, you follow those rules, um and the result is adequate but boring, right?
00:38:04.14 Stan Lemon that's fair.
00:38:04.68 Jon And then as you get more exposed or you try different things, you figure out when and how to break those rules effectively, and then that's where the gray area starts to come in.
00:38:04.96 Stan Lemon That is fair.
00:38:16.60 Jon We're like, hey, one designer may do this where another designer may do that. um But the fundamentals are still there about ah what makes good design. um So there's my marketing segue there.
00:38:30.69 Stan Lemon Okay.
00:38:30.87 Jon You're typing, but.
00:38:32.20 Stan Lemon I am typing. I'm taking a note. taking a note.
00:38:33.41 Jon ah
00:38:34.60 Stan Lemon um Yeah, i you know I don't think we're too fundamentally different right in terms of what what we're describing in terms of...
00:38:45.96 Stan Lemon the outcome. I like i really, you know, not to make this into, um, like a exit interview for 2025 here, but I, if I look at my focus as a technologist in 2025, it was on outcome orientation.
00:38:59.72 Stan Lemon Right. And, um, really taking this thing that we do in software and trying to reframe how we talk about it. ah There are still things that I care above all else, right? There are, there are non, I'll call them non-negotiables, right? You can't lose customers data.
00:39:17.89 Stan Lemon You have to be available for the mission critical things that depend on you. um And you ah can't do, you can't make risky choices that compromise those.
00:39:29.67 Stan Lemon there there is, um especially in in the era that we live in, being available and being ah reliable, at least in the in the like the primary use case, is so stinking important that when we talk about quality code quality, right I am willing to lean on that so far as it plays into those things.
00:39:51.14 Stan Lemon like i don't I'm not comfortable doing stupid stuff that risks the business or the customer or the outcome. Yeah. But other than that like I don't know that I don't know i care that much.
00:40:02.38 Jon Interesting. So how detailed do you get with those non-negotiables?
00:40:10.33 Stan Lemon I mean, as as detailed as I need to be, right? like So it's it's risk mitigation, right? Like I feel like sometimes where I'm at in my career as a technologist, risk mitigation is the thing. So i look I look at a thing, a plan, right? Or a pull request, whatever it is. And the question I'm asking myself is what part of this is so risky that it jeopardizes the business?
00:40:29.72 Stan Lemon you know, or what, what part of this is so risky that, uh, someone in mission critical industry, uh, might not get the outcome that they need. And, and, you know, I will go to the mats. I will die on a hill for those things.
00:40:45.46 Stan Lemon Um, you can ask some of my, my colleagues and my engineers, I have, I have lost my mind on phone calls, zooms, whatever, over the lack of test coverage, right. For things.
00:40:57.81 Stan Lemon Um, And, and I, I'm, I'll die on that hill a thousand times, like no regrets. Right. Um, but like, you know, your, your function was 60 lines versus 120. don't know. Like I'm, you know, old Stan, pretty militant about that.
00:41:16.34 Stan Lemon New Stan, not sure. i really care.
00:41:18.100 Jon Okay, so that's the risk mitigation side. um When you start thinking about customer experience, like, okay, maybe in your world, just being available and reliable and trustworthy is the differentiator. But are there ever moments where you dive into, hey, what are the details that would really make this a enjoyable customer experience?
00:41:43.44 Stan Lemon Yeah, I don't know that I always use the word enjoyable, but I like i definitely care about the customer experience. I do a lot of API design work. like That is all customer experience work. I think the thing, I've got this mantra that I i um rattle off a lot. of like it It should be easier for our customer than it is for us.
00:41:59.61 Stan Lemon whatever this thing is, like this this feature we're going to go build, it should be easier for the customer to use it than it is for us to build it, which means that like we will absorb all of the complexity, all the difficulty, right?
00:42:00.08 Jon Sure.
00:42:09.33 Stan Lemon We will make the experience simple, easy, and intuitive, even if it requires six-fold the work, right? um And, you know, maybe it's six-fold ugly work, I don't know, but it's it's still like
00:42:27.41 Stan Lemon There's no satisfaction in giving customers a bunch of knobs and tubes and dials that they can change that will work against them. Right? Like I, that, I don't want to ship that.
00:42:43.35 Stan Lemon And, and so, um, I think good taste means that the customer can do the thing that they want to do without having to go and, I don't ask ChatGPT how to do it, you know?
00:42:57.93 Jon I agree. The next question is, and how do you bring other people along to this way of thinking?
00:43:07.97 Stan Lemon ah I mean, there's a component.
00:43:12.49 Jon You hire for it or can you develop it? um
00:43:15.91 Stan Lemon You can definitely do both, right?
00:43:15.91 Jon Things like that.
00:43:17.07 Stan Lemon Like I think if you have the opportunity to hire for someone who cares deeply about the customer experience, like you're never going to go wrong there, you know? um Someone who thinks about like, how is a customer using this? What is the story? um And and let let me let me sidebar for a moment here.
00:43:30.22 Stan Lemon ah You know, I worked at Salesforce for a long time. I worked in the MarTech space. When I started that job, I did not care about digital marketing at all. And i would I wouldn't even say like, I cared about it at the end, but I understood it.
00:43:42.02 Stan Lemon And so part of my...
00:43:43.01 Jon Hey, I was your favorite digital marketer at that time.
00:43:45.35 Stan Lemon you were my favorite you're my favorite You're my only digital marketer. um but But I would find myself like just not caring what the experience was like because it was too removed for me, right? And there's a certain element of like if if you are hiring people who have no interest in using the software you're building, and I'm not saying like they have to use it day in, day out, but like like actually understanding the product. like If someone can't show you how to do the thing that your your software does, like that that's probably not a good hire, right?
00:44:10.53 Stan Lemon And likewise, if you can't foster an energy and excitement with your team to use the thing that they're building, right? Just understand it. Again, not not like I'm not asking, I'm not a digital marketer. I was never going to use Pardot day in and day out, right? But I understood the software and, um,
00:44:32.61 Stan Lemon I knew how to leverage it. And so I could, I could wrap my mind into the persona and say, no, that's actually going to be a really lousy experience or it's not, you know, but, uh, you know, I think that that in most people is easy to cultivate just by watching it.
00:44:49.86 Stan Lemon Right. So if you're on a team where nobody cares about the experience, you have no incentive to, you know, care about it either. If your technical leaders, your people leaders, right, have that excitement and they're getting passionate about it, that will multiply.
00:44:58.65 Jon Right.
00:45:07.97 Stan Lemon And so, you know, there's a certain aspect to this that's cultural, right? Like you have to, as ah as a company, as a cohort, as a team, as a group, have to care about the thing you're building being good for the people who are going use it, right? And you have to care enough to understand how they're going to use it so that you can validate that it's good or not.
00:45:26.48 Jon Okay, crazy. um So do you think that the most impactful people then would be the leadership level displaying lists? Or do you have really strong ICs that make in private?
00:45:39.50 Stan Lemon I don't know. I think it all depends what you what you mean by leadership. But here's here's what I'll say. i think
00:45:43.24 Jon but You said specifically technical leaders and people leaders in this example.
00:45:46.73 Stan Lemon Yeah, so when I said technical leaders and people leaders, I was thinking more at the the team, the atomic level. um
00:45:51.22 Jon Okay.
00:45:52.23 Stan Lemon The distance between the person doing the work and the person being passionate about it is important. Like if if the people at the top don't care about the thing you're building, that's going to bleed down. But honestly, like the people on the line are looking at their most senior engineer, their most, you know, closest people manager, right? And those are the directly responsible individuals for the team and the product and the thing you're shipping. And so if they're not engaged or they're disenfranchised or whatever, um I think that's actually more detrimental to a team and engineers on the line than, you know, and, know, triple EVP of engineering, not giving a rip about what you're doing online.
00:46:35.66 Stan Lemon So the folks that I have who are like, I think about on my team right now who are most motivating,
00:46:35.87 Jon Interesting. Okay.
00:46:41.54 Stan Lemon to ah the rank and file are not the most senior engineers. They're staff, they're senior engineers, maybe a principal here too, right? These are all folks who are just dealing with ah a scrum team or a couple and their customer centric focus is the thing that is like gasoline on a fire for the team, right?
00:47:04.97 Stan Lemon um a
00:47:05.38 Jon Is there a way to cultivate that? Like you said, you were able to wrap your mind into the persona when you're rebuilding at Pardot. um Like, is there, are there things that you've seen successfully cultivate that in yourself amongst the team? um Things of that nature.
00:47:23.62 Stan Lemon Well, i think I think you'll appreciate this. I think the voice of the customer is is the, it's the cocaine for software engineering, right? um So, you know, at Salesforce when I started, i don't i don't think, actually i know this isn't the case anymore, but when I started coming up through Pardot, it was very common for the engineers to do support rotation, right?
00:47:43.88 Stan Lemon We'd be like a tier two support.
00:47:44.13 Jon Mm-hmm.
00:47:45.80 Stan Lemon And that meant that we interfaced with customers. And we got to very much experience their pain and articulate why something was broken or you know whether or not it can be done or not. right That changes how you look at your customers and you look at your experience.
00:48:05.22 Stan Lemon um When I joined during my orientation, it was standard procedure for me to sit in on a couple of sales calls. So while i was there physically in office, I sat in a couple of sales calls.
00:48:15.85 Stan Lemon Um, and you know, I attended a customer advisory board at a dream force one year, uh, you know, got to listen on some customer interviews. Those things are, um, how I think you win the hearts and minds of the rank and file who are building for this, just giving them exposure, right?
00:48:35.08 Stan Lemon Just, just letting them hear and understand and internalize all of that. Um, and I think this is a good segue for you because you've, you've been on the, uh, uh the other end of this for hubspot quite a bit right
00:48:47.82 Jon Oh, absolutely. um So I'm just coming off a term on HubSpot's Customer Advisory Board, which I think was like 45 people here in 2025. I had the opportunity to sit in a room with the CEO of HubSpot and her chief of staff um at Inbound this year. But I'm probably on calls with HubSpot's product team every other week and all across the org. So all the different hubs, things like that. And they actively ah go out and want customer feedback, sometimes on very early things, sometimes after we've launched something internally, and saying, hey, how did this go? What friction did you run into? And things like that. So they, it's built into their culture very much really from the top down. I've talked to several people where they're in like, oh, this is my third week at HubSpot and they're on customer calls. So.
00:49:44.62 Stan Lemon Now, when you get in those calls, right, I'm articulating that i think that those are fuel for building good products. But I suspect that they also are pretty exciting and encouraging for you as well as a customer.
00:49:58.86 Jon Oh, absolutely. um Because it basically it is showing across the company now um that they actually believe in their mission. HubSpot's mission is to help companies grow better.
00:50:13.13 Jon And like they really want to do that, even though I currently work at a business that doesn't fit probably their largest customer segment, which would be in SaaS or services or things like that. We're retail. We sell lots and lots of things. So it's it's really cool to kind of see, especially when they say, oh um yeah, this part of the product isn't designed for you.
00:50:37.83 Jon and Things of that nature, too.
00:50:40.49 Stan Lemon So, okay, this is interesting because, what we're describing here is a conversation as it were between customer and ah producer, you know, whatever you want to call it, right?
00:50:54.63 Jon Provider.
00:50:54.74 Stan Lemon And I provider customer and provider.
00:50:55.41 Jon Yeah.
00:50:57.35 Stan Lemon And I think to come back to your macro theme about taste, a good taste comes out of conversations.
00:51:04.11 Jon right.
00:51:05.03 Stan Lemon So I think I'm me dialoguing by myself about wine probably has me drinking, um Well, probably beer, to be i completely honest with probably wouldn't be drinking wine if it wasn't for the conversation. And and I think, you know, i look at what we're describing here, um good taste in software, good taste in product.
00:51:26.22 Stan Lemon And i think I think there's something to it i think it's ah a larger conversation, a two-way dialogue, as it were. Because I don't think those customer experience, or excuse me, customer advisory boards um are valuable if they are a one-way panel, right?
00:51:40.33 Jon Right.
00:51:41.42 Stan Lemon And um I also don't think like the empty feedback channel is particularly useful for the provider side either. Right? Like if you're just pummeling feedback in and i don't have the ability to talk to you about it, understand your use case, understand how you're using the software to feel your pain, to develop some empathy.
00:51:58.89 Stan Lemon um i don't think that comes out with the same same outcomes either.
00:52:04.07 Jon So I think my two takeaways here are one, ah you said this before, i don't know if it was on the podcast or LinkedIn or just in conversation, but one, talk to real customers.
00:52:15.30 Jon Like we aren't talking about, oh, this software Sally persona thinks this. No, go talk to real customers and figure out what their real points of friction are, what they love, what they care about, what isn't working well. like A customer very often isn't going to tell you um what you should build next right directly, because that's not their job. Their job's not to think about, hey, this is the next cool feature. But they are very acutely aware of what their pain points are.
00:52:51.69 Stan Lemon Yeah, and on top of that too, like if you just ask a customer what to build next, they're only going to be able to articulate that within the context of what they already know, right?
00:53:01.16 Jon Right. Mm-hmm.
00:53:01.78 Stan Lemon um I've got a, this is ah a thing I've written that i've I've never published, but I've got a thing called, why don't we build exactly what customers ask for? And it literally says, because customers typically describe solutions based on their immediate experiences or perceived problems rather than the underlying needs or root issues. Right?
00:53:20.04 Stan Lemon Right. So customers tend to describe symptoms, not root cause root causes. They aren't always aware of what's possible either. That actually goes back to a Steve Jobs ism that floats around like what was it's a line about the the iPhone, right? It would have been if we'd asked customers what they wanted, it would have been smarter iPod, something like that.
00:53:39.11 Jon Oh, absolutely.
00:53:39.72 Stan Lemon um or an iPod with more storage. And then i also think like if you build just exactly what a customer articulates to you, it actually limits your innovation, right? You've limited your ability to what you can do next based solely upon what someone else can articulate to you.
00:53:49.64 Jon slowly
00:53:55.59 Stan Lemon And that that is like... Super limited, right? um I also think that customers tend to prioritize short-term convenience over long-term value. And that's where that conversation will suss that out, right? And give you some sense of um priority. And ultimately, that plays into customers have a bias towards familiarity.
00:54:13.48 Stan Lemon And, you know, then the other thing to keep in mind is they always those provide conflicting feedback. So the the angriest customer still loves your product.
00:54:18.57 Jon Sure. I do that. Right.
00:54:21.02 Stan Lemon Right? Right. Um, so, you know, i like, again, the dialogue is important. The conversation is important, but, uh, you've got to be able to like parse it and to understand it and interpret it and to internalize it really.
00:54:35.94 Stan Lemon Um,
00:54:36.78 Jon So that leads into my point too. So one, talk to actual customers. Two, talk about the stuff internally and carve out time for it and kind of force the conversation in the rooms you're in. I don't think it matters what position you hold. Like nobody is going to yell at you for talking about, hey, how does the customer actually use this? How does this affect the whole customer experience?
00:55:02.69 Stan Lemon Yep, definitely. um You know, as a, let me, let me ask you this. I don't know if this, if this translates into your world or not. I like to keep the names of not don't want say big, but don't want important either, but like just names of relevant customers on the tip of my tongue. And I will use them in conversation quite regularly. In your retail world, I know you, you do, you do a lot of schools and stuff.
00:55:27.11 Stan Lemon Do you have like the big customers? Like, Hey, you know, what will so-and-so think about this if we make this change?
00:55:31.62 Jon um So i have not articulated it like that, but I think I'm going to now. um But like very often so part of my role is I run of kind of admin the CRM.
00:55:42.31 Jon um So whenever I'm looking for an example of a customer with really great data, yeah, I generally have three large customers that we can actually go in and see real live data and use that as those examples.
00:55:53.86 Stan Lemon this This jumped out to me because you were talking about the abstract Sally customer, right? Which I think is so easy to do.
00:55:57.65 Jon Sure.
00:55:58.96 Stan Lemon But if I tell you that, ah you know, Joe's Pizza Shop, right, has a pepperoni shortage and our service is the only way they're going get pepperoni before Friday when they're, you know, hitting peak.
00:56:11.98 Stan Lemon I think it changes the nature of the conversation. i think I think if you have customers, you should be able to articulate the relevant ones, right?
00:56:20.14 Jon Nice. I like that. um We're coming up on an hour, but in your world, when you talk about that personas, like you aren't necessarily ah just designing this experience for the developers using the API. either There are other stakeholders involved, right? Like at Joe's Pizza Shop.
00:56:40.83 Jon Right.
00:56:40.90 Stan Lemon Yeah, yeah.
00:56:41.93 Jon So like, Do you prioritize one of those over the other? Does it depend on the use case? um Do you articulate those?
00:56:49.13 Stan Lemon i I mean, it depends on the use case. I think i think in nature sometimes, you know, prioritizes some of these too, right? So I'll just give you an example. If I have a company in the health space, right, that is using my product and there is some process, let's say in a hospital that requires it.
00:57:07.72 Stan Lemon um that's a more important use case, right?
00:57:11.21 Jon Mm-hmm.
00:57:11.27 Stan Lemon Because now you're now you're in like life or death stuff versus, ah you know, ah i don't i don't I don't know if West Music is a customer, I have no idea, but say West Music, right, is trying to send flyers out about new trombone sales.
00:57:16.87 Jon Running an SMS wall.
00:57:25.19 Stan Lemon Right?
00:57:25.46 Jon Yep.
00:57:25.58 Stan Lemon Like that seems less important to me than a healthcare thing, as an example.
00:57:28.57 Jon Yep.
00:57:29.51 Stan Lemon um So you prioritize like like that naturally. But I think the the thing, um if you only stop and you think, well, i'm building APIs, so those are just for developers, that's super short-sighted, right? um It's the people who are on the other end of what that developer's building that you have to keep in mind.
00:57:46.66 Stan Lemon So that person in the hospital or that person looking for a good trombone sale deal or whatever it is. And I think that that's important too. you know So there's there's layers to your customer base, especially when you're doing something as a service.
00:57:58.18 Stan Lemon In retail, you probably have less of this. I guess yeah i guess there's a string saying you have school, like you got students, right? And teachers.
00:58:04.39 Jon Yeah, so in my use case, like generally it's the music teacher who is who we think of as a customer. They aren't always the one making the purchase, but ultimately the music teacher is a is like the fundamental tool to help us accomplish our business.
00:58:22.50 Jon mission and bring about our vision, which is to get everybody playing music for life. And like, if you start that in kindergarten with a really great music teacher and it carries on through middle school, when you're doing your first band rental and on to,
00:58:40.07 Jon bringing your kids in into music. um like The music teacher has this compounding effect, but within our customer base, like we're also thinking about principals or district fine arts coordinators or purchasing agents and things of that nature too. so it's It's always a balancing act, right?
00:59:00.70 Stan Lemon I was bouncing on that. And you just made me think, Mrs. Rexelius, if you're out there, I'm sure you're listening to this podcast right now. I want you know still think of you every time I see a recorder. Okay.
00:59:10.67 Jon Nice.
00:59:11.53 Stan Lemon All right. Jonathan, I think that's as good as place as need to end. Welcome to 2026. I hope your travels go smoothly. I think we'll record before you actually travel so we don't miss an episode because we wouldn't want to do that.
00:59:20.39 Jon We will.
00:59:21.99 Stan Lemon But I am increasingly excited to hear more about Disneyland customers and I guess taste. I want want to know what your taste is like after SoCal...
00:59:33.10 Jon I am hoping that it will be some In-N-Out burger.
00:59:37.08 Stan Lemon there you Will, will you, uh, so if you had your daughter In-N-Out Burger, would you make her eat a burger or would you do chicken tenderders
00:59:49.29 Jon um I wouldn't make her do anything, but I don't know.
00:59:54.38 Stan Lemon you would You would absolutely offer up a bite of an animal-style burger there.
00:59:54.41 Jon Probably let her choose.
00:59:58.73 Jon Oh, absolutely.
00:59:59.53 Stan Lemon Yeah, okay All right, that's what need to hear.
01:00:00.54 Jon Yeah.
01:00:01.41 Stan Lemon You know, hot take here, I have never actually had and in an In-N-Out burger.
01:00:09.64 Jon Interesting.
01:00:10.87 Stan Lemon Yeah, not once.
01:00:11.11 Jon Well, you should probably change that sometime.
01:00:13.06 Stan Lemon On an infinite timescale, I will. so
01:00:15.72 Jon When you go to Disneyland after I give you the glowing review.
01:00:15.88 Stan Lemon But all right, when I go to Disneyland, when whenever that is.
01:00:18.99 Jon All right.
01:00:20.35 Stan Lemon All right, Jonathan, until next time, my friend.
01:00:22.82 Jon Until next time.