two & a half gamers honest interviews #3 - Sophie Vo (How to motivate your team?)

[Music] hello hello hello welcome dear listener this is no gaming podcast to have Gamers with an honest interview segment so we asking tough questions but having fun and dropping knowledge with in gaming industry Peeps and today we have Sophie wall you are very well known in the industry but for those who don't know you yet could could we just please start with the very brief introduction and also like how are you today great hi mat thanks uh it's always interesting even for me running the podcast this day to be a guest so it's like I have to switch my mindset because I'm Al still still in question mode uh yeah I'm great uh enjoying the summer uh uh allowing myself a break actually I can talk about that more okay and uh yeah and u a bit about my myself uh to

summarize I I'll try to uh describe something out of my B but yeah I've been working in industry for quite some time now um 13 14 years see worth mentioning and the product and product management and Leadership of Studio teams so worked so in different places uh Berlin ninki Paris so I've seen also a bit of different culture different organization and I would say today my main focus uh throughout my journey has been really in building teams Studios uh creating a a culture effective culture to uh you know allow enable creative people to create the best game so I'm focusing more on the environment than the game itself and um on the side which is not a small part now I've developed a platform called rise and play to uh be really a

platform of knowledge sharing for any leaders in the gaming industry to first of all I think open the conversation around practices of What I Call Conscious leadership and I can talk more about what I yeah yeah I'm super excited to hear more about that yeah so I I have had the master class that I put online uh and um uh intentionally for free uh to be accessible for as many entrepreneurs and Founders as possible and it evolved into the podcast where also I focus more as well on other leaders and sharing where they share directly the practices so um I've been really supporting the ecosystem and also in I've been a part-time investor as well uh related to this mission of uh helping elevating the ecosystem of the gaming industry nice okay so so let's start with the the master class actually because uh that's really interesting well the giving it for free it's it's one one part to be accessible nice but

like why exactly you have created it and I know you mentioned like who is it for but what was the first initial idea about like okay so I need to create the master class where did it came from so I I remember when I was building the new studio um at vodu casual studio so the were also we were opening Studio at vodu was very autonomous independent like okay you hir uh we expect you to deliver a game next here good luck uh I was like okay so I was uh I was like um okay how do we hire how do I start it was a very overwhelming time because my brain was racing all Direction and as I look for resources like how to start should I hire now should I focus on the game Vision uh then I I I uh design a whole framework and process for myself to have structure uh focus and uh be effective

so I did it for myself at first and as I went through the whole process and finding out that it was there was very little materials online or in gaming to give some sort of a guide to build a brand new studio I wanted to structure it for myself document it for myself so I could teach other uh people uh who would want to build the studio so at first it was really not plan to be uh scalable and just sharing and as I uh attended many talks repeating the same thing over and over again I realized okay maybe a format that is more scalable is maybe to um create documentation template put it online and I was also highly inspired by I think Yim was doing the same with Elite game developers for Founders or how do you pitch for example yeah and so um I decided to to try so it was really

trying and I was um also following the master class so the actual Master Class platform and um it inspired me to a bit the same thinking as with game uh like an MVP let's try I released uh one first module and then the second and then I I I I got known uh about it and I got a lot of feedback from people who uh were really validating that it was needed that he didn't have this kind of material and the reason also why I made it for free because at first I was asking myself very I would say by default said like how do I monetize it and I was wait a minute like why are you doing this why are you no why are you doing this again like do you do you need to monetize I have a full-time job I have a good salary yeah it's not that I was looking to make more money so I was thinking what do I really want to achieve here and when uh getting to the core where it was I really want to support other

leaders to build more effectively teams but also focusing on the right things people culture values that's what I want to see so I thought well then I need to make it free to make it more accessible and then to see really uh the vision that I I saw to happen so nice yeah it's very similar thing happened to me um backing days when I I was working at pixel Federation and we were trying to soft launch a game and I started trying to find any resources out there like there was just zero okay let's uh yeah let's try to to come up with something and then you know all these soft lunch Frameworks came up as well because it wasn't just there and I also don't monetize it because why just let's just share as as much knowledge as possible so others can learn as well and I guess it's uh it comes we can come back to the to the podcast as well and um I've seen you're

kind of like showcasing a lot of female leaders from the gaming industry which is amazing and Kos for that I I love it like what was that the goal from the start or just uh you know some somehow evolved so the podcast is really an evolution of the master class so back again to what I wanted to create with RIS in play was really focusing on leadership practices and the master class started with my own practice I so I was sharing my framework and um when uh people were asking me when is the next master class and so on and I I put a lot of work into it and also I don't generate knowledge uh like this so I I had to experiment practice different things uh with a team so I could actually get knowledge out of it so it was not scalable as is and then I felt like if I want to keep U uh the conversation around leadership practices

there are so many other practices from other people maybe there's an overlap with what I shared maybe there other ways but the uh theme Remains the Same where we put uh you know the people really at the center of how we think about uh leading a business and a team so um when I thought of trying to bring uh speakers in the master class to create their content it didn't sound scalable to me and I think the most natural um Evolution was podcast where like what if I could try in a format of one hour an episode but they share really all the insights on a specific topic and at the first season so I approach it very as well with the product management thinking like MVP first season I commit on six month and I uh look for guests that are all around leadership practices have been visible in some way are helping the industry and uh at the end of the six months I measured the results

so I I checked with myself how do I enjoy doing it do I want to keep doing it uh what people liked uh what were the episode that got the most traction and why and the thing that uh was very clear of the episode with female speaker were much bigger yeah and of course I wonder like okay why it's like and my audience is by the way 5050 so I don't just have women but I have the when I saw that actually the focus on on women was actually maybe a gap to a f then I thought okay why not focusing as a test my second season only on female speaker and see what happens and when I did that then I had another Le level of traction where even sponsor came to me and say okay well you are really creating content on leadership and giving visibility representation of more women in executive roles and how they approach you know their position

nice okay and uh when you said you you measured the the first season like what were the kpis actually to you know we are in the in the gaming industry and the the kpi world oh how how how did you measure that in you know that's that's interesting yeah and I I got well advised actually for from other podcasters who I asked for example Mishka from The Constructor ofen how he was looking at it and youim and uh I think Mishka gave me a very good advice like don't look at numbers don't look at numbers exactly from the start it's like it Tak some time to grow and so on especially on the first year that's not so important like okay coming from uh you know someone who's like product manager very business orientis and I I didn't understand it at first um now I understand after a year and like having a you know slow but steady growth uh I think the main important metric for me was how do I feel about

yeah uh creating the content because uh we do this and you are doing this I mean for free at when we start and why again are we doing this so I asked myself what what's in it for me as well as I produce this and I think it it's uh it gave me even more um uh Clarity of my motivation of pursuing the podcast where I love to connect with other leaders in the industry so that was a so I would call them anyway and have a conversation and here I just happen to record it and okay I invest of course my own money in editing it and uh post- production and all the things you know and release it to share it with others but it's such a small part of actually the the real like you know uh personal reward for me to connect and learn also from others so since that moment is like everything is a bonus like if it grows it's a bonus it's not the go but the numbers are more um I would say an additional validation

that it's going somewhere and I'm I'm getting better at what I'm doing with the podcast but it's not the ultimate goal because it's not meant to be a business to monetize yeah yeah I'm I'm pretty I'm I'm glad you mention that because we all also like we are in in this space for like eight months maybe with a two and a half Gamers and numbers were never a kpi because well first of all we are having fun while doing it and it was exactly the same motivation like hey so we are talking to each other on a weekly basis and it's kind of fun and we share knowledge like why we are not actually recording it because we had this call and then there was one other friend who said that like hey guys like you should actually record okay why not let's try that out and it again it's uh for us it's growing as well and it's it's a very nice uh very nice feeling that actually it's it's valuable for others see that's the main motivation MH well okay in terms of the a I mean that's a

that's a nice segue because I think well I assume I've never done any any other job than just the UA management and I've been in the man manager position but being a studio lead that sounds pretty hard so how do you approach the like the people's motivation I think redefining first the position you know at a c lead your focus can be in so many things you can focus on the game performance what kind of like being acting like a creative director also more like people manager so I think it's important first like to for me to maybe explain how my personal definition and back to the goals when we as a studio lead you are responsible for the outcome at the end of the day right so you are responsible shipping the game exactly and the performance of the game in some way um and when I thought of how to get there and the most effectively

once again it's through a solid team a team working well together uh having the right people in the right positions and having Clarity of what they're why they are here and what they're supposed to deliver and achieve in short midterm and long term so how I approach it was really first a team Focus like who is in the team uh who I need who do I hire um who do I put in which position or who do I promote as internal lead um framing the vision and Mission where are we going why so really defining crystallizing those the direction and the the values not only the values but behaviors so values are I would say the starting point of okay what do we stand for as a group but behavior is like how do we behave to each other when we give feedback when we make decisions when we plan how do we test our Games Etc how do we get

feedback from players so all the behaviors kind of uh uh set the path of the process that I'm not defining but people who are in charge of process will Define according to the values so that's how I approach it more on really putting the frame on the why and to some extent the what but not so much on the how like from the process or um the type of games we make or how we make it because this is where people have ownership and put really like have accountability as well of what what they do so those were I would say in terms of priority how I approach the studio and it gave me a peie of mind as well to not have to think of uh 100 things at the same time and just focus on the things that really have impact at the studio level which is again for people and team yeah and you know since everybody's different and I've seen that before in my previous jobs like uh how do you how

do you motivate your team because you know and the whole studio just to keep keep working keep pushing do you have any any process to you know like how to find out like who is motivated by what exactly so obviously my motivations are slightly different than my colleague like then so it starts really this thinking starts from the hiring so and this is actually fundamental to be uh align I would say from the beginning so this is something I really pay attention to on during the hiring process like you know what what's your what's your motivation where do how do you want to grow what's interesting for you and of course it's not such a direct question because most of the time people are not even aware but what I ask often is like how do did they move from a job to another and it kinds of I see a pattern it's like okay is the person more motivated by GR grow or is the person motivated more by status which is again

not nothing nothing wrong right but yeah of course yeah yeah it's just a different type of motivation that's fine exactly there are different like others are by by the team so it's like the environment for them didn't work before and they were searching for a long time this environment they would feel really secure uh you know uh where they would connect with others so for me the environment I imagine that we work well with the motivations of individual with a line that's exactly this like having a shared why why we here and the focus has always been in our motivation as a group that we are we love um figuring it out out how to solve a problem so falling in love more with the process uh rather than uh the results right so it it has never been a motivation for us to for the people I hire to become the VP in the next two three years because I don't even have a

promotion ladder like this internally so I I was very clear from the beginning if that's what you look are looking for or managing a team in the next 12 months I cannot promise that so okay it may not be a match so uh first I think the match of motivation happens on a hiring level and then of course things change as you have a team you grow so it's always being uh in touch with the team so I created the leadership system in the studio where I'm myself a studio leader but there were leads per craft and we keep regular oneon-one with everyone in the studio to stay in touch with u how is the work for them uh how is it align with their motivation individually or uh as a group and what can we do and sometimes we have things of of course where we have influence it's about assigning people on different task uh or sometimes they want to grow it's like providing training sometimes they have conflicts and it touches their m a so how can we not support them by fixing it

but by giving them the tool to fix it for themselves so there are things that can be solved and sometime people change their motivation along the way and it's also a natural conversation where you say look uh you know you don't seem so fulfilled anymore um it is noticeable and you know I want also to offer you the best environment that is motivating for you if it doesn't work out anymore should we you know should we consider parting ways and those conversation actually happen as well oh yeah of course well it's uh that's I mean nobody wants to have that conversation but it's super important so is it like you are trying to really see the patterns before they actually appear so like you said someone is apparently not so um happy anymore so you try to get to this person and try to discuss like what's what's going on and then try to solve the situation or just you know

like waiting until everything crashes so we have different system in place and uh again it's like so often I say like approaching a team like a product but this is like so true for me in my in how my brain works okay but for example using quantitative and qualitative right so quantitative is anonymous survey po survey you just put it out same thing and uh I would say uh often I have people quite honest about it when things were not going well although they wouldn't tell me face to face in the one-on-one they would not hesitate to put something low and so I see as well when there's discrepancy but it's a tool to help and my point is not like okay try to pin and find the person who put the lower score but just to be aware okay there are people who are not aligned and so when when it's I I see those sign more on the quantitative level like uh through the question I understand is there misalignment on the mission or a lack of clarity a lack of concrete

plans so something that I can do at my level or with the leads we try to uh fix it you know to give more visibility or answer some questions and if it's persisting at an individual level for example the person is not feeling like they're growing or they don't have the space because they don't have enough uh influence or power because let's say they're not in the lead position but someone else uh is and they're not this there's not the space for them to grow this is something there are some cues to see it and I it's a matter of practice I I will share can can you can you share at least like one or two yeah yeah so I will share some example that have developed more by practice right so I think one uh very clear is disengagement of a person so you barely hear from them when there's a a group conversation they don't participate they don't contribute so they seem a bit

checked out um and that's actually you can spot it even online through cones I have uh I have spotted it and um I would say second que is the opposite so uh uh very very active but more in the uh complaining side so pointing out that over problems but not really wanting to own any solution right so it's and this is where I see like something is uh off the person is very frustrated and they are maybe not in the place where they uh you know want even to think of a solution yeah okay and what about motivation in you know like these days where the market conditions are kind of like uncertain like uh it's most probably even harder these days right yeah I so with my team we were working quite hard condition like we were working also pandemic but uh with voodo so it's a very demanding uh

company leadership you know the hyper casual cycle it has followed us in casual development so we always like follow the deadline that was above our head um and uh something I've been very transparent with the team and it's also in the um in the context of a job market MH uh yes people can walk out and find a new job with a good salary tomorrow uh and that's not what I'm offering here with a place and uh the environment that is created uh so anywhere you go it will be uh tough and uh maybe some places offer flexibility so this is kind of standard I would say these days but what people are really craving for at least the kind of ones I'm looking for they really are craving for connection connection that you are being seen that somebody someone cares about you you know yeah and not like uh if he transactional contract where I pay you

for job work and then if you are not happy walk out and I find someone else right and I think that's another side of a coin where I would say big job market like what we call the great resignation a lot of people move to places and the reason top reason I hear about it's not so much about the salary or or like lack of flexibility but also uh not being in a environment where people really or the management the leadership seems that they care about them uh that they can connect you know with others that their personal life is respected through the work you know all those little things that makes at the end of the day the human connection of course I think they are really important and overlooked and that's how you win uh you know when I hear like how do you win talents it's like it's it's pretty straightforward but this is uh takes time it takes time to build and it it is doesn't give a shortterm gain so that's I think what is

important in the motivation when thinking of people and how do you keep a team together yeah well people don't want to be just a number in the Excel sheet it's just like that's very sad but that happens and what happened to me uh in the in the past and I definitely wanted to be appreciated and respected as you know because I worked my ass off and nobody nobody cared which is head and that's exactly like what others uh definitely don't want and you know like you mentioned now these days you can get like a Millions offers during the you know on LinkedIn we all getting these and sometimes it's it's really interesting to maybe accept them or not and you made quite a big decision moving from roio to to voodu in Berlin well like what was your thought process behind it because I mean I can imagine should could be a super hard right it was a it was a long process so

it just didn't happen overnight and uh at Rio at that time I was building a new team going to soft lunch with um it was Angry Birds Pop 2 and so it was a whole test for me like how can I build a team uh and and around a game and uh and also keep focus on the product leadership and I really uh learned to enjoy the part was really about team building hering and building this strong creative team that will solve complex challenges so I knew at that time I really wanted to explore um the position of uh Studio lead and I explored those possibility at Rio and they were there and other companies and vodu also was on the table so they came to me I was uh head hunted and what was appealing about uh uh this uh Adventure at the time was

really I I always asked myself like should I build my own company you know it's like I once in a while like my with game company and I talked to a lot of uh entrepreneurs as well building a company I have built my own as well out of gam so I I know so some reality of it and um there's a lot of admin you have to take care of you know fundraising uh you know over all things you have takes all the time takes all the time you have yeah and then when I thought really what do I want to focus on and um do I want to exit the company or do I want to grow and learn and that's has always been the crossroad question for me and I was not going for an exit or I didn't want to build a company to have an exit so I decided to go with vodo where I would learn all the experience to start a St from scratch with some Financial Security backing with vodu of course

some autonomy not full autonomy because I cannot make like all the games I want of course yeah uh but I could hire the people I wanted and decide how we would work and so I thought I would learn a lot I would grow and that's the best monetary reward if I can think of it like it's like the School of Entrepreneurship you know so it was no brainer for me to go for it because my main driver was really uh growing to this position and I can say today like now I see beyond the studio is like how can I contribute on an organization level when it comes to thinking about culture values in people okay you mentioned yeah culture and and the hiring especially like multiple times and even when it comes to uh motivation so I know I've seen it a lot like you you were trying to find a lot of people to the Berlin studio and I've seen the game designer position up there for almost two years I mean of course it's

super hard to find good people but when is is there any like timeline where you say just okay so let's just hire anyone because we need those people or is it just like yeah okay so I will be trying to find the proper people until I until I find them so definitely more the letter um the one of waiting so the rules that were really long and hard uh for us to find was technical artist and ux designer especially for the definition of ux designer I had uh yeah senior game designer was a hard one as well for a long time so again my thinking has always been like what a uh long term and hiring someone uh takes a lot of energy and time on boarding someone so it's it like I see like a team Dynamic it's like a blob and each time you add someone it it shapes The Blob to a certain place and then when you

have someone off boarding The Blob also changes so it is a disruption at all the level and so I thought okay if I hire really quickly someone just to uh match like the task rooll quickly Quick Fix and it doesn't work out it's going to be very disruptive and I will spend most of my time managing the onboarding and offboarding of a person and actually would take some time away from uh I don't know product strategy CIO leadership or even hiring other talents so we that thinking we've always I had this conversation very openly with the team where sometime they were like we really suffer we really need a technical artist so we really need and like I explain uh what I just explained to you and I said I think we should stretch a little bit more until we find someone we will manage it we can Outsource we can I have no problem to find someone to do the work temporarily but uh full-time hire it's a real commitment and it will

pay off by finding the right fit especially on a cultural level and I can say after three years of a studio the ones that were uh really U found for the key roles like technical artist Senor designer then they didn't leave and there were really core people in the team and they made a big difference so it was worth the wait and the long search and also for myself to understand through the uh process of uh hiring uh having Clarity who I wanted and who I didn't want you know it's like dating you yeah you you have a kind of a vague idea of what you want at the beginning and you try and then when you are almost at the end think no this is not yeah yeah and then you let go and then you learn something new through the process like actually this is so important among the criteria but now I know how to narrow my search yeah okay yeah that's that's a fair point uh if you hire someone very

quickly then he or she can join the the team but then can do a lot of harm and then just leave and then you need to repeat that process all over again which is not time like efficiently used that's true all right yeah okay okay uh and uh I know you you you are kind of like out there giving talks and then I think you also discussed this with Mishka on on uh thef podcast like uh you killed the game and you were pretty open about it which is kind of rare sometimes uh because you know you kill a game you do it quietly and just you want to really move move on so nobody nobody remembers so how do you how do you do that like uh so everybody is kind of like happy because uh I can imagine and this happened to me a couple of times like if you kill a game of someone he she can be really frustrated because well well it's it's his or her baby MH

how do you do it properly or well without a lot of harm actually that's a great question it was a whole process where we discussed uh many times during the development so it was plantopia uh during self launch if how much we believe in the game and what would be kind of a borderline Gates that we had along the way so this question was always like with us but uh what I was focusing on is like let's make it our friend you know let's make it our friend that the question in a healthy way should we keep working on this game or should we stop is not like a failure question but a healthy question where what should we be doing to avoid this situation or should we stop to focus on bigger things so um the team was actually prepared for this conversation I would say six months already before it actually happened I

was having this conversation very openly looking at the kpi and we were thinking like okay well the main thing that worried us at the time was long-term retention and we didn't see it growing as we wanted so we were very also critical about our own metrics where if we want to be on a heat level the bar is high right so let's let's be honest with ourself and if we work on some features we need to see a progress at least on the long-term retention kpi and those kpi were getting better but not at the speed we wanted and there was also the context of being at vodo where we were accountable to deliver some result in a certain window MH okay and those things didn't match fully where again like the context is important of the of the game company and the financial where maybe in another company if you have a payback time of one two years it would have been fine but at Vu it was really on the window of a year and it was really borderline which also revealed to us

like is it the right game to develop here where we will have support of the uh you know vodo machine to grow uh the game and the more like we get like closer really to uh after working almost like uh nine months I think in soft launch where we we went through a gate process and then I was already telling the team before the meeting happened with the stakeholders uh it is tight it is tight and it's not looking that that great yeah and a decision I made as well instead of giving the power to the leadership to decide for us uh I sat down with my uh colleague and also the senior product manager on the game where what is the decision we are um uh like uh giving during for this meeting and we concluded that we we did we didn't believe that uh we could uh make a big

difference uh in um I don't know like we were given three months and we knew that it would be hard to do it and so we say if really we need to make a drastic change how is our time better spent in the next six months and we were leaning more to new projects with all the learnings we got rather than trying to really make the DraStic change at the risk of actually losing all the metrics and the performance of the game so it was a very risky move and we were more recommending to stop it because we believe that we would have maybe more um I would say contribution shortterm that was the goal by doing new project so we own the decision of killing and then I also announced to the team yeah this decision that we will bring to the leadership and everyone understood the reasoning didn't necessarily agree with it of course that's noral of course but uh they trusted me and trusted me and Marco a lot so they knew that we cared

about the right things about us as a team um about working on the right game uh putting our efforts in the right place and so even if it was tough decision they trusted my decision and that was very powerful actually for me to come at a stakeholder meetings like you don't need to make this decision for us we are making the decision and and then it was funny because the counterpart happened they were actually like are you sure you want to kill know but maybe you should save and then we had all the argument to say we thought about it and we are set on our decision yeah can you share at least like one one argument like what was uh in your case that people can just imagine like okay so where did you draw a line okay so they try to convince you or ask like are you sure and then you said I'm sure because I don't know you can't do it we already yeah so the the homework we did as well before making a decision was uh

really uh pushing all the scenarios so one was we had I would say uh decision we made uh in the core design and system of the game that didn't uh were not so thoughtful in terms of scale of the complexity of the project and so we knew we had to address this so the game becomes more accessible but the big risk was really that we changed so much the nature of the game that it changes a CPS everything and so on and when we make the production plan as well so we we met some pre-production estimates we saw that it's minimum a work of six months so making this whole calculation we saw if we work on new project we can deliver prototypes put to Market already in the first month because now we have a whole process we we're very fast and so when thinking of aroi actually of future cost and opportunities it was very clear that the the odds for plantopia to become in

the year of 2022 or 2021 would generate uh revenues quickly is unlikely to happen so that was really the factors uh and for them it was an easier position to take the counterpart and say well maybe we can still grow it so the game was making good revenues and so on but could it go to the next level um and and this is where by sharing those numbers estimates we've done like they agreed on the decision right so it was actually based on uh data like it was an informed decision and not just gut feeling and uh yeah yeah yeah I like those uh way better than the gut feelings or the emotional driving yeah yeah decisions but it's you know thing is uh like you said uh maybe for other Studio this would be kind of like a good game to grow because uh well other companies different cash flow and of course different expectations and you know like I'm hearing a lot all of these

like well but supercell is in the soft lunch or was in the soft lunch for one and a half years yeah look so it's supercell they have a lot of money on their bank account and they can afford it if you are in the soft lunch for a year and you're not moving anywhere like hey so you know TR try to think about either a pivot or you know how actually can you can um improve the game so yeah okay so I have a I have this like model situation I already briefly touch it so we have a game in a soft lounge and um our kpis are really really close to our goals but they're just not quite there yet and we released a new version with our last feature that we had in the in the product road map the kpi still did not meet a goals but we're almost there so uh so what should we do any any any IDE any any pointers like what should we do should we kill the

game shouldn't we what should we do yeah and then what you describe I think it's probably 80% of the situations of yeah exactly yeah um I uh and it it's kind of a hard truth um is I reflected a lot on this and if you have something that really takes off you know that it takes off right so I think it's about it's about being honest with yourself so as a team like are you persisting really hard on on on the wrong direction and it's human to want to figure out and crack the problem and sometimes you can and sometimes you don't understand and you just have to decide to move on so a question I ask myself often in any game development or what what I do and also with the team uh how should we spend our time you know how should we spend our time are we spending spending our time in a minute F way uh of impact and what I look at is

growth right so are we uh getting better from iteration to another and sometime you can take a step back and yeah a step forward but I would say giving at least two tries and if you see uh it's going nowhere it's really time to ask yourself maybe you want to do a first try but this is the last call right so yeah because you can go in circle for forever and it's it's it's reallying to until you run out of money yeah yeah exactly and I think selling your time so when you are a small business where uh your cash flow dictates how how long how much you can you know uh fail this iteration and it's much easier to think about this because you think how many iteration or how many months do we have and uh if we make a decision now with the month we have left we still have some time to rebuild I would rebuild actually more based on the core of what you've built before so not start from zero but instead of trying to

save you know so uh instead of peot sometimes it's just you know you take the core the pieces that work and you rebuild something yeah and and uh you're right about like this is 80 to 90% of the conversation I'm having almost all the time with the with the companies and it's really hard I mean of course because what if the next iteration is the one that we you know we hit the goals and then we we start to grow but I'm I think like it's it's never happened like it's never the the last one it's always like oh well we should try this and that I always say like if you are stagnating or just your kpis are not moving up or down or not improving for three iterations in a row it's just like yeah that's the time like hey just stop think about what what you've done what do you have in the pipeline or what are your next plans and then just if if it's not enough then just kill it and move on I mean it's hard but you know

like yeah how do you want to spend time you want just run in circles or you want to build something that can actually grow maybe yeah exactly yeah and it's very motivating for a team right when they're yeah they they want to work on something that matter right so exactly yeah yeah so I have like three last questions but before we go into that you you mentioned at the beginning just very briefly like you taking a a break or a time off is that uh that I understood correctly can you elaborate a little bit more on that if if you want yeah sure sure it's it's not official yet but I'm happy to um share it here in this podcast so I've been in transition as well in career at the moment where I'm no longer with voo but I've been also exploring different path and uh I actually share about it in the the newsletter I'm starting this month uh uh it is an interesting phase because you know when you take you force

yourself to take a break and not just go with your your script um like what you know you do you're good at and then you take a step back it's like okay where am I in this phas what do I want to do where can I be uh useful you know uh it's an interesting phase uncomfortable at first but yeah I'm exploring different path whether it's with a company independently with rise and play and I don't know where it will go but I'm I'm just you know embracing the uncertainty game development you know and uh settle when there's something as well that feels right yeah because you know all the magic happens soon as you're out of your comfort zone that's that's that's always that's always like that so I guess I mean that's kind of connects to my question like what keeps you up at night these days a little bit you thinking about those I so I have to say something that made me really happy with the like time off uh like when

people ask me like you must be so happy to have some time off and chill like I've been working hard I like I don't think I've worked as hard since I can't remember last time although I'm technically free but I've been a lot on the podcast I think it's like one thing I found like really um writing to people where I find really interesting or I I saw some mention about uh them in some article success we achieved and uh that's what uh you know it's the creative thinking and I like I think like oh it would be great to talk to that person or oh I could imagine maybe focusing something that uh really was a spark uh out of those uh creative nights yeah I want to do a session an episode on a financial coaching literacy so uh how can you how do you think about uh financing uh wealth management assets uh what is asset liability and giving a financial literacy to the listeners uh

because it's very helpful for a business uh if you want to start something but also helpful if you want to start to be an investor and I see it's missing in the space so I want to make it more accessible as well so I've been very excited about this nice okay yeah that sounds that sounds super interesting um one last question and then we have this like rapid quiz like call Bon segment so what's what's your favorite book and and why I took this from yakim actually because it was super interesting and I I love the question so thank you Yim so a book I come back often to to also check with my leadership practices is the 15 commitments of conscious leadership and that's what inspired me a lot actually with the uh name of conscious leadership with rise and play and the offer is really uh thinking holistic basically like as as a leader like be you know

really more human so connected with your emotions understand how emotion work uh instead of uh seeing the world that happens to you it happens by you so how can you uh control you know more your reaction your perception uh your yeah your your actions to the events that happen to you and so it's also inspired a lot from stoicism which I have other books also insired me here but that really gave me uh focus and structure in my approach to leadership and and life uh I would say in general and that what I try to Advocate with rise and play nice well it's I will I will share the the link in the show notes for for that book all right so this is uh is kind of like fun at the end which is a bonus segment rapid quiz so you I have set of multiple questions which are super simple don't worry you have one or two seconds to to answer I it's just like black or white what would you choose and

you say black or whatever so let's see let's see don't worry it's fine so it's iOS or Google play or Android iOS or Android iOS right ma your master class or podcast podcast Berlin or Helsinki Berlin ah nice uh books or movies that's tough fun that's tough fun all right all right last question it's it's too crazy what do you prefer remote work or on site on site nice okay well so it's really a part of the brain super intuitive I didn't think about it and but it's the one that I trust for those moment so I'm I'm yeah yeah I'm okay what I I answered nice okay perfect oh thank you Sophie this was uh it actually pretty amazing uh I'm glad you you were here and I'm glad that I could talk to you thank much and uh any any um where

can actually people find you or contact you can you share your details so my most active Channel I would say again I'm about focus is really LinkedIn or then all the material are on ryzen play. so everything like we can find resources Master Class podcast that's also another way perfect thank you very much thank you m thanks a lot for chat [Music]