Julie Zimmer - CEO of LuckyTruck: Motivating Large Groups, Aligning a Scaling Company, and The Difference Between the COO and CEO Positions

Julie Zimmer  00:00

I feel the responsibility for the business, and the people, and their lives, and their incomes, and their livelihoods, and our customers. And I'm just more in tuned and more connected to all those moving pieces than I ever was in any of the roles that I've had before.

Callan Harrington  00:22

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives, and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone, to a another episode of That Worked. I'm excited for this week's episode, I'm joined by Julie Zimmer. Julie is the CEO of LuckyTruck. LuckyTruck makes commercial insurance easy for trucking companies to buy and manage commercial trucking insurance through an all in one digital platform. Julie is an InsurTech veteran with thirty years of experience in insurance and fifteen of those years in InsureTech. She was most recently the head of insurance at Flexport and the COO of Embroker. Julie shared a ton of great stories in this episode, many of the stories were about leadership, we talked about her transition from individual contributor to leader, how she keeps everyone aligned at scaling companies. And she gives a great overview of the difference between the COO position and the CEO position. Now, the part I found most interesting was her breakdown on how she motivates large groups. If you move up the ladder in a big company, this is something you're almost certainly going to run into at some point. And I loved her method for putting this into action. So with that, let's get to the show. Julie, welcome to the show.

Julie Zimmer  02:06

Thank you for having me.

Callan Harrington  02:07

I'm really excited. You've had a phenomenal career. Tell us a little bit about LuckyTruck.

Julie Zimmer  02:07

LuckyTruck is a digital insurance brokerage focused solely on trucking risks. And we try to bring value to the trucker, not just in the insurance purchase, but managing their drivers, their vehicles and everything from soup to nuts. We can even premium finance digitally, the whole transaction. So we love the space. We love our truckers, and it's been a great adventure.

Callan Harrington  02:39

It's such an interesting space. And I am excited to get into that. But I got to hear the story of the asshole at the conference.

Julie Zimmer  02:49

All right, just as a way of a little bit of background. I sometimes do women leadership sessions. And what I try to do is take experiences I've had at my career and distill them down to memorable nuggets. So, one of my favorites is just the thought that you should always listen to the assholes. And we all, whether you're a man or woman, whatever, no matter what level you're at, there's always "that person" in the office, or at work, or customer or whatever, who's- you just shut off on, right? So in my particular case, I was working for a company and they were doing this big... This is their first big leadership conference. And they invited all the executives to get up on stage and talk about their nuggets of wisdom. And they had asked this one guy that I was working with, he was a level or two ahead of me. But he was just "that guy." It was quite a few years ago, twenty years ago. So the misogynistic, sexist, you know, whatever, all that stuff. So when this guy gets up on stage, I shut down. I mean, my brain is like, just going through all the reasons I'm absolutely not listening to him. So, he gets up there, and the first words out of his mouth is, "my nugget of wisdom is- my advice is never to let other people's problems become your problems." And of course, I'm like, see, right there. That's exactly why I don't like this guy, right? So, it goes on and on and on. And I'm driving home from that meeting that evening. And I'm thinking about it. And I'm playing it over and over and again in my head. And one of the things I realized is that he was actually right. Because the point is that you can always help people, and you should always help people. But the trap we fall into is when we take ownership of their problems. And because we take ownership of their problems, now their problem isn't their problem anymore. It's my problem. And that's when I will fail, is when I begin to collect everyone's problems and put them on my shoulders. So, the idea he was projecting out there, and it's literally the best piece of advice I ever got in my career, was always, always, always help other people solve their problems, but don't make their problems, your problems.

Callan Harrington  05:12

Yeah, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's if we make them our problems and solve all those problems for everybody, then they're never going to learn how to solve those problems for themselves.

Julie Zimmer  05:24

Well, and you'll never have the bandwidth to actually achieve what you're capable of, because you're running around cleaning up everyone else's problems. So to help, it's both those points in one.

Callan Harrington  05:34

Yeah, that's such good advice. I was- as a new leader, I fell victim to this all the time. I would just end up doing the work for them, and thinking that I was trying to do this, but you just hit it, it's bandwidth, and there was no way that I was going to be able to put them in a good position. And I was hurting the company, because I was just running myself way too thin.

Julie Zimmer  05:54

Absolutely. Absolutely. So there you go. Always listen to the assholes. So Julie, where'd your career start out? Oh, God. I started out as an account executive intern at Corroon & Black. So that really dates me. Very few of your listeners will even remember what that was, but it was the precursor to Willis.

Callan Harrington  06:02

Gotcha. And now you rose up the ranks really quickly. And you went to HUB International, and you were with HUB International for a little bit there, right?

Julie Zimmer  06:21

Yep. About- almost fifteen years.

Callan Harrington  06:24

Fifteen years. And then at the culmination of that, you had almost 1000 sales reps within your organization. Is that right?

Julie Zimmer  06:31

Yeah. I mean, we were a real decentralized organization. But all the salespeople had dotted line, had a direct-line reporting into their chief sales officers, and their chief sales officers had direct, had dotted line reporting into our head office sales organization. So there was a lot. There was a lot there. It was herding cats. It was a great group, though.

Callan Harrington  06:53

I got a couple of questions on that. So, these different field offices... do they essentially run fairly autonomously, fairly decentralized, or did a lot of this come down from the parent organization of HUB International? Because HUB International acquired a lot of companies, right?

Julie Zimmer  07:09

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I think somewhere in the area of 160 acquisitions in the time I was there. It was crazy. You know, it was interesting. And it's been a hot minute since I've been there. So you know, I can't speak to where they are today. But it was very decentralized organization. And, and it was brilliant, and frustrating all in the same sentence, most of the time. Because when people behave like owners, great things happen. But trying to get consistency, and a uniform brand, and things like that, and make change happen. It's that much more difficult as well, when you have to run consensus around all these former agency owners who are now principals of the combined entity. I learned so much through that process, about how to communicate to people about how to really think about what's important to the person sitting across the table from you. I had one agency owner, walk into my office, and slam his palm down on my desk, and say, "I'm never changing my agency name to HUB International, ever." You know, and then just walk out. And six months later, we had him completely rebranded. But I had to really think about how I talked about that, how I overcome those, how you overcome those perceptions, and realize that he wasn't a bad guy. He just really had an emotional attachment to something and wasn't seeing past it.

Callan Harrington  08:35

How did you do that? How did you get him to come around to do that?

Julie Zimmer  08:39

So there's a lot of strategies around that. Understanding how people are wired is super important. People are highly influenced, as we say, in our world today by a little bit of a pack mentality. So if you always can identify whenever you're trying to move something. If you can identify your champion, somebody who's in the group, or an influencer, within whatever subset you're trying to move, whether it's a department at company, a school, association, whatever. If you could identify those influencers, and pick a couple, and bring them around to your cause? That's one thing that's really important. The second thing that's really important, is look past what you're hearing. You have to listen to the words that people- that are coming out of people's mouths, but you also have to look to their intentions. Early in my career, I was at Aon, and they did a leadership thing. And one of the sessions they taught was trusting intentions. And that was really an interesting thing for me as well. And the theory was, it went something like this, you know, you're on a highway and it's your bumper to bumper to traffic jam. And you know, in your rearview mirror, you see this guy coming up the berm, right like he's better than everybody else. And, he's just cruising along at forty miles an hour, when you're moving two inches, you know, every twenty minutes. And you're like, oh, no, that's not happening. So you just kind of inch your nose out there, so he's not gonna be able to get by. So, you think you righted a wrong, you solved an injustice, but then you realize, dude's got his pregnant wife in the car, and she's in labor. So, the point there is that we think we know people's intentions, and we actually don't. We have to make an effort to know people's intentions and trust their intentions until we know differently, instead of assuming we know their intentions. So when you're influencing big groups of people, you have to look past what they're saying, past their objections, and look to their intentions.

Callan Harrington  10:45

How do you do that? Is it through one on one conversations? Or asking questions within the group having sessions for people can kind of talk about that? What does that look like?

Julie Zimmer  10:56

So, a couple things. I mean, you always have to be listening. And you always have to be asking questions. You have to listen and ask questions more than you talk. Which is really hard for me, because I got Italian in my blood. But when you do that, you learn and process so much, and you're able to let your empathy take over and guide you a little bit. I find this with dealing with my teenager, I find it with dealing with my employees, everywhere, into the sales process... I think that's really, really the key.

Callan Harrington  11:34

What were some of those skills that you needed to learn to go from managing a very small team to a very large team?

Julie Zimmer  11:42

I really had to get out of the headspace that I was an individual contributor or that stuff was because, you know, wins were because I did a good job. I really take it to heart that when something goes right, you have to look outward. And when something goes wrong, you have to look in the mirror. You know, I think career stage progression and things like that are thematic, we tend to talk about them in terms of skills. Like, okay, you know, if I'm reviewing somebody, or I'm asking them what they want to do, they're like, "well, I want to get better at managing people." And that's good. That's a skill set. Okay. But the real movement, in my opinion, which managing people is only a piece of, is moving from being that individual contributor to that person who's orchestrating that contribution of many. And you can't orchestrate the contribution of many, if your own ego's in the way. The only way you can successfully orchestrate the contribution of other people is just by recognizing that they contribute, right? And that's important. So you know, like, within my career, I kind of look at a, like a thematic progression. So early in my career, I was a builder. I was never in a job that existed before. I mean, literally, for the first twenty years of my career, I never had a job that existed the day before I took the job.

Callan Harrington  13:08

I'm super interested to dive into that. So these were positions that the company- did they create these positions? And then you went into them? Or did did you start to talk with these companies, and you kind of formed this position together?

Julie Zimmer  13:22

Sometimes a little bit of both. I think the reason it happened is because I gravitated towards positions that were just being formed. So I was obviously my best, most excited self in that interview or that scenario. And then when we start talking about what they were thinking, I would just start spilling out what I believed it could be. You know, whatever job you're in, you're always master of your own trajectory. People don't realize that. But it's true. It just was easier for me, because I didn't have that pre existing blueprint.

Callan Harrington  14:00

So, you had that opportunity to kind of craft what this position is?

Julie Zimmer  14:04

Yeah. And that plus, I have the attention span of a gnat and would get bored and most jobs after about three days.

Callan Harrington  14:10

Do you much prefer to have that ambiguity? And to figure it out while you're running, essentially?

Julie Zimmer  14:15

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's the thing. That's what's exciting to me. I mean, I love creating, I love innovating. And as you progress in that, that was the story of my early career. And it wasn't like massive innovation. Like I didn't, you know, send people to the moon or anything. But I did figure out how to, you know, build a pipeline at HUB or, you know, before Salesforce was out there or whatever, right? And I think as you grow in your career, it goes back to what we were talking about before innovation has to come from other people on your team and you're an amplifier. Now my job is, I've progressed, now my job is CEO. Yes, I have to have a vision, but that vision has to- I have to be the amplifier for all the ideas that are happening in my organization, and in the industry, and with my customers.

Callan Harrington  15:10

When you went to Embroker, did that position exist prior?

Julie Zimmer  15:13

No, it was a new company. So Matt Miller was starting that company and tapped me on the shoulder to come be COO with them. So it was my first true funded startup I ever participated in, and I assembled the Ikea furniture, figured out how to make the copier work, you know, all kinds of stuff. Set up offshore service teams, set up sales teams, you name it.

Callan Harrington  15:35

How did you like that? So you are in, you know, HUB International, big billion dollar company, and then going to Embroker, which so for those that are not familiar with Embroker, Embroker has been a very successful InsureTech company. You were there super early, what was that transition like for you?

Julie Zimmer  15:52

It was actually wonderful. The reason is, because you have to recognize when I started HUB, HUB wasn't HUB. We were nine people at head office, they had just come down from Canada, I think two or three of us were insurance people. And we were running around buying stuff, we were as bootstrap startup as it gets. And that's where I thrive. I was the person that the president would come in and say, "I think we need a pension plan or a 401K plan. Do you know anything about that?" And I'd be like, no, but I'll figure it out. That was my comfort zone. And then towards the end of my work at at HUB, I was trying to figure out how to drive technology into the organization. But I realized that if they have $1, to spend, they're going to spend it rightly so on acquisitions, because the return is there, the minute you end the deal. If they invested in technology, maybe they'll see the return in three to five years. Maybe. And it just became abundantly clear that if we were going to evolve, it had to be from the- in the startup sector. So that's why I was just so excited moving, not because I- I never- I make it a rule in my world, never to move away from something, always to move towards something. You always make a mistake. If you're being very self aware and honest with yourself, and you're moving away from something, then you're making a bad decision. Always, always, always move towards something.

Callan Harrington  17:20

What does it look like to move away from something?

Julie Zimmer  17:22

I hate my job, I can't stand another month of doing these reports, I'm not valued. I mean, we all know that. We all know that, we've heard it, we've lived it. That's what it does look like, what it should look like. I think people do make mistakes, because they kind of get stuck in the in the day to day emotions. I had somebody once tell me, and I would credit it, if I could remember who told it to me, but but they basically said, if you think that you've had enough, wait another six months. If you're still in that headspace, then you need to make a move and figure out what you're moving, what you want, that you're not getting where you're at. Don't let it be about the fact that you're just not happy where you're at.

Callan Harrington  18:06

Is that more of like trying to figure out how to make it work, or changing a mindset, or what's kind of the driver behind that?

Julie Zimmer  18:13

I think with everything you have to give yourself headspace to figure out what's really happening. When you're so close to something, we're human, emotions come into play. Frustration can override logic all day long. So if you could step away from it and say, what's really happening, you know, what would make me happy? What do I want in five years? Everybody talks about what's your five year plan? Right? It's a classic interview question. Nobody really gets what their five year plan is, we always contextually think of it in the context of I want this position, or that position, or this economic, or that economic outcome. The reality is a five year plan is what you want your life to be. And then you make your decisions and build your your life that way, in that direction. Your career is only a piece of it.

Callan Harrington  19:07

Yeah. And it's one of the it's some of the advice I give to people all the time is: know what your end goal is. Like take the longest term goal that you can possibly think of, and it just makes those shorter term decisions so much easier. Or it doesn't make it seem as if this is- if I make this one decision, everything is dictated. All my goals are done if I go into this, and I screw it up. Doubtful.

Julie Zimmer  19:29

Can I tell you another story?

Callan Harrington  19:30

Yeah, of course.

Julie Zimmer  19:31

So, you remember I was talking about those talks I give with those pearls of- those little nuggets? One of those nuggets is always look to your corners. And I came up with this because my daughter when she was young showed horses, and anybody who's familiar with that, when you're in a ring with a horse, your trainer will always tell you to look to your corners, and that's because you don't want the horse cutting, trotting around and cutting its way over to the other side of the ring halfway through the array. The interesting part About that is and the reason they say that is because your body weight shifts where you look. And a horse can feel that shift. And a horse will go the direction of that shift. So people think we steer horses with the reins, and you do. But the reality is that your bodyweight goes where you look. And I started thinking about it. And I'm like, that's something you have to apply in life. Because you may not realize, I might say, I want to go there. But if I'm looking over here, I'm moving over here. It emphasizes the importance of understanding where you want to go, and being somewhat deliberate about it. If I want to go here, I need to look here. And if you're running an organization, people see that too. Because if I say, this is our target, or this is our goal, but every single one of my actions is not in support of that goal. They pick up on that, and they say, "she said this, but her actions say this is more important. So this is what I'm gonna do." You we have to be- as leaders we have to be very careful about that. So, always look to your corners.

Callan Harrington  21:05

Yeah, I think it's such good advice. And well, it's kind of like, you know, when people say, what do you really care about? Well, where do you spend your time? Where do you spend your money? And that's gonna be a pretty good objective view as to what you actually want to be doing, what you want to be focused on. When you went to Embroker to get back in kind of the startup? How did you get clarity that that was the right move for you?

Julie Zimmer  21:26

I knew that this is where the industry needed to go. I knew that that's what I found intellectually challenging, exciting. And to a certain extent, I knew it would keep me young. If that's kind of a silly thing to say, but it does. And it it has. I'm always best around new ideas. I'm best figuring things out. I'm not good at rules. And this was a space that allowed me to create and to break things and rebuild them. So, I think it took me all of about half an hour to make that decision. Sounds crazy.

Callan Harrington  22:09

What were those? So Embroker,, super fast growing company, raised hundreds of millions of dollars, what were the biggest challenges that you faced in growing  Embroker just as a whole?

Julie Zimmer  22:22

So, I think this kind of goes back to that transitioning Embroker is a fabulous company. I think at that point, you know, I was transitioning from an individual contributor and innovator to an orchestrator. And it was the first time anybody had ever looked at me and said, "okay, what you've built this great, now scale it." It was terrifying. Literally. Scaling is something you can't bluff your way through. Innovating, you could bluff your way through. You could try something, and if it doesn't work, pull off the duct tape and reassemble it. But scaling and delivering numbers and delivering results. That was a real education for me.

Callan Harrington  23:06

What did you find were the key things that you needed to do in order to scale? Either, what did you need to learn? Where did you find success? And what mistakes did you make along that route? What were some of the biggest mistakes that you've made and learned from as you started to do that?

Julie Zimmer  23:21

I think the biggest mistake I made at that point in my career was not embracing what I talked about at the beginning of the program, not listening enough. I had a tremendous amount of experience, resource, people I could tap into to get advice. One of the biggest mistakes I've made all through my career is underestimating the line of people that are out there ready and willing to help me if I just ask. I don't think I realized that or tapped it as quickly. My life would have been a lot easier if I figured that out earlier on. And I think that stands true for everybody.

Callan Harrington  24:02

Yeah, there's no question. Especially I think it's even harder when you're in positions like you were: COO, CEO, founder. It's almost like I didn't ask for questions when I first became an executive just because it's like, well, no, I'm the one that's supposed to have the answers. Well, nobody has all the answers. Was that more what it was? Or was something else?

Julie Zimmer  24:22

No, it was more testing my own theories. I didn't stress test them enough. I'd wake up in the morning and be like, okay, if we just do this, then this will happen. When I should have picked up the phone and called the three people who I knew had been in that position with different companies or whatever, and said, here's my theory. Tell me if you've experienced this, and what happened, and what I should look out for, or what would position, what I can do to make sure it's successful?

Callan Harrington  24:51

When did you start to do that? When did you start to kind of get out of your comfort zone and start to do that?

Julie Zimmer  24:57

Yeah, I mean, I think a couple years into it, I I started to realize. And somebody actually, a friend of mine actually said to me, because I was struggling with something, and he's like, you know, I have a whole company that does this. Why don't you ask me? And I was like, it was like, well, there's an idea.

Callan Harrington  25:16

So what were some of the things that you did as you were scaling? Because I hear what you're saying, right? And that, in the early stages, you can do a lot of guess and check. You can try it, see if it works, the stakes aren't as high. But as you're starting to scale, you kind of got to get that right. Because there's a lot of capital at play. What were some of the things that you needed to do to feel competent in the moves that you are making?

Julie Zimmer  25:38

Well, remember, and it's actually been a very interesting transition. Remember, I was COO. we had a fabulous CEO. There was always that one person who was more accountable than me. It sounds wrong to say, but for me, that was a little bit of a security blanket. Right? We're moving into this role. It's all right here, baby.

Callan Harrington  26:01

So let's talk about that. What do you see as the major differences between the COO role in the CEO role?

Julie Zimmer  26:07

You know, if you had asked me that a year ago, my answer would be way different. I think a year ago, I would have said, the CEO role is about strategy, direction, orchestration, resource allocation, and certainly it's all of that. But having stepped into the role, it's about fundraising, health of the ecosystem, everything from soup to nuts. I mean, I feel the responsibility for the business, and the people, and their lives, and their incomes, and their livelihoods, and our customers. And I'm just more in tuned and more connected to all those moving pieces than I ever was in any of the roles that I've had before. It's because I feel the responsibility for them.

Callan Harrington  26:58

Absolutely. Just prior to this, you were at a company that raised almost a billion dollars in a single round. What was it that said, I got to go back to the early stages?

Julie Zimmer  27:08

Again, I never move away from something. Flexport was an amazing experience. I learned so much. Ryan Peterson has built an amazing team. He brought over some tremendous executive leadership from Amazon, this is an interesting thing, who brought over some of the management theory. And I'll be the first to admit, I was kicking and screaming through the whole thing. We have to do what reports? We have to do what metrics? We have to do quarterly business review, monthly business review, weekly business review, long range planning, short range... I was just like, I can't do this. Right? The reality is, it was incredibly valuable. I learned so much from it. So yeah, I've been in the business thirty years, and I'm still learning. And God, the day I quit learning is the day I have to get out of it. But I learned so much from from that leadership team, from that organization. And I would still be there doing it, if they'd have me, except for the fact that this opportunity came up, and I just really felt that it was my time.

Callan Harrington  28:13

I want to dive into that. But just to circle back a little bit, is a lot of these kind of new management theories that were getting brought into it. What were some of the ones that you were like, this is pretty incredible? I didn't like this at first, but I get it. What was that realization? What were those specific kinds of tactics?

Julie Zimmer  28:30

The evolution of a startup is, you know, in the early days, you build things, and there's a lot of duct tape, and everything's a hot mess. But it's a great hot mess, because everybody's energized and pumped, and it's neat, and it's new. And then all of a sudden you get funding, and you have this oh-shit moment where you're like, it's a hot mess. And you got to clean things up and figure things out and kind of start hashtag adulting and being a real company, right? And then you get more money, and you're under your investors, you're under a microscope, you've got more accountability, more moving parts, and you can't control them. So, it's like those metal pendulums that people used to have on their desks, right? The pendulum goes from hot mess to over organized and over structured because you're just trying so desperately to get control. And when you're trying to get control, you have a couple options. You buy really expensive, highly experienced generalists who tend to cost a lot of money, or you hire less experienced really smart people and give them narrow silos to control. Problem with that, and I think the right thing is a balance between the two, but the problem with the silo strategy is really good people will always fill up their narrow silo with a whole lot of stuff that doesn't need to be there. So if you're looking at HR, you got twelve different systems, one for payroll, one for reviewing people, one for keeping people motivated, one for data.... And all sudden you filled up your silo, you have a really, really good person, you've done the best job, you know, but your shit isn't talking to anybody else's shit, and it's a hot mess again. So you're back to hot mess. So the whole idea is you have to bring it back into the middle and bring the organization back into balance, right? Flexport was in that space coming back into balance, right? And I think some of the things that they brought that were brought into the organization, and like, I'm so grateful for the fact that they did long range planning, they did monthly business reviews. So this is all written in books about Amazon, right? Six pages for any business plan, and things like that. All of which was extraordinarily painful for me, because I have a little ADD, but at the end of the day, made me realize how critically important having a direction, talking about the direction debating the direction, getting other people's input on the direction, communicating the direction down to your teams, and communicating the direction up to your executive team, and eventually to the board, and eventually out to investors. And having real numbers that feed that direction, not just a pie in the sky, made up story, that tends to be what a lot of people's business plans are. So everything had to have real numbers behind it, had to be well thought out, be commented on. And then you take that and you monitor consistently the same things weekly, monthly, quarterly, and you're accountable for making adjustments and reporting on those. So when you do this plan, it just doesn't go in the drawer. So that's one of the things that I've done with LuckyTruck is bringing a light version of that to the chaos that was the startup. The productive chaos, if that makes sense.

Callan Harrington  31:42

100% It makes total sense. And now I'm super curious, right? Because you were at Embroker really early stage. And then you went to Flexport, and learned a lot of this, and probably learned some of this my guess is  at HUB as well. I didn't realize that you were at hub at the very early stages as well. That's pretty incredible. Do you feel that you can get control of that earlier on in a startup? Or I guess, what's the balance at this stage between too much control and letting kind of that chaos dictate a little bit of the roadmap?

Julie Zimmer  32:12

I'd say, and honestly, Devin, the founder of LuckyTruck, and I, have talked about this a whole lot. This is about founders. This is about surrounding yourself with the right team. It's about laying foundations and designing with scale in mind. So, you know, we've talked about the fact that when you're starting a company, it's great to have ideas and visions. And that's absolutely critical. But when you're selecting the team around you, you just recognize that the work you put in right now to make it scalable where you can. You can't always do that with duct tape. And that's what startups are, a lot of duct tape. But just think forward into that and organize. And it's not just about physical organization. I mean, you don't wan to see my closet, I'm the most disorganized person on the planet. But it's about community. Organization happens when you get everybody pointed in the same direction, looking to their corners, right? And when you do that, you've got a better chance of success. Great founders are a lot of the time great individual contributors. And you can't abdicate. You know, if I have a vision for the company, I articulate that. I can't move away from that and go on to the next thing. I have to continually make sure that the people under me are delivering all the things that need to happen to make that vision a reality.

Callan Harrington  33:40

It makes complete sense. If you could have a conversation with your younger self, what would that conversation be? What advice would you give them? Age is totally up to you.

Julie Zimmer  33:52

I mean, there's spaces, you know, like I would have invested more earlier. I would never work without equity. I would keep my mouth shut more. Not even kidding. Seriously. When I was young, I was pretty convinced I knew everything. And if I would have learned to listen, like we talked about when I was twenty-five, thirty. It would have been awesome.

Callan Harrington  34:21

Oh, I love that. I love that. Julie, this has been a ton of fun. You've shared so many great stories. Thanks for coming on the show today.

Julie Zimmer  34:29

Thank you for having me. I've had a ton of fun as well.

Callan Harrington  34:31

I love it. Thank you.  I hope you enjoyed Julie and I's conversation. I loved hearing about the system she put in place to keep everyone aligned. The bigger the company, the more essential this becomes. If you want to learn more about Julie, you can find her on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know, and if you really want to support the show open a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening and I'll see everybody next week.