Jason Taylor 0:00

Welcome to this edition of the People's Playbook Podcast. I'm pretty excited today. We have Andrew Lockhead on today, and Andrew is the ultimate entrepreneur. And what I love about Andrew is he's just such a leader that's always looking to how can he lead better? How can he change things? How can he be different? If you look at his LinkedIn posts, if you look at anything Andrew does, he's always looking for a new way to get people's attention and uh just grow his company. He's the CEO of State 22, and he transformed a simple travel startup into a global content monetization platform, which now does more than 1 billion in annual transactions and helps thousands of creators and publishers turn content into uh income. With that, hey Andrew, welcome to the welcome to the pod today. Thanks, Dick, for the advice. Happy to be here. I'm so thrilled that you're here. Let's talk about like let's just go through a bit of a bit of a journey here because uh you've tried some other things and you you've been successful and you've come up to um you know creating State 22 with your your leadership team. And you know, there's been some hard times in there as well. So if we go back to you know 2020, that was a big, big time where you had to really show some leadership there because you lost 90% of your revenue. Yet today, you know, you process over 1 billion in transactions. So I want you to think of that to the people that are listening right now. Losing 90% of our revenue to now processing over one billion in rev in transactions. Okay, so what leadership decision made the biggest difference during that turnaround? So from going from there to here, what was that big difference?

Andrew Lockhead 1:36

I think the number one thing that we tried to put in place back then was to be as transparent as possible with the team. Okay. It was COVID. Nobody knew what was going to be happening in the weeks, in a month, or a year from now. We didn't know how the government was gonna be impacted as well, when the lift and bend will be in play. So instead of telling them everything was gonna be perfect and don't worry about it, and I got this, I decided to be exactly human with them. Get to the ground floor, tell them I don't know more than others. Let's work toward what the outcome of this wanna be. And we have amazing people in place. We have great customers, and we have an amazing product too. Is there any of those things that can be actually reliable to pivot the companies or launch something new?

Jason Taylor 2:15

Yeah. I love what you said there. Basically, you you forced yourself, which probably wasn't a big ask of you based on who you are, but just be transparent, right? And when you had those honest conversations with the team, how did they react to those?

Andrew Lockhead 2:29

A bit of everything, right? Some people that were more defensive decided to leave the company, which is totally fine, by the way. Some people don't want to handle uh those types of rush. And it's like getting in trenches is definitely not for everybody.

Andrew Lockhead 2:39

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 2:40

Some of them decided to take a break and come back stronger after this. So like they decided to take away their time to think about this 24 or 48 hours and come back stronger. And others were just pop. They're like, let's get into this. We're gonna build something new, perfect time. All those people that were unrelevant, we can get rid of them and like actually get back into the uh building mode, the zero to one, which is the exciting time. So it was a big mix mag of everything.

Jason Taylor 3:04

Yeah, yeah. Everybody thinks of risk in a different way. You often say in your discussion with people that distribution was the key to unlocking growth, right? So can you take us through that and how has that philosophy shaped every decision you've made since founding State 22?

Andrew Lockhead 3:20

Yeah. My co-founder is the opposite of this. So I'll start with that. I met as a believer that like build it and it will come. His mindset, if you have a great product, people will find it one way or another and they will never turn it their way. And he tried to build it as a B2C company at the first place. I'm coming from a sales background. I love talking with people, but I'm also lazy. Whatever way I can find to get my product out there by having as less interaction as possible, not working too hard, is actually the best way for me. And that's how I decided to use third-party actually to resell my product and reach the end user. Uh my previous company was a ticketing platform, so I knew exactly how to deal with event organizer. I knew exactly what percentage of attendees were coming from outside of town. So I'm like, why don't we use event organizer and then ticketing platform and always up market to actually reach those people? And that's how we managed to build a hundred million business.

Jason Taylor 4:12

Wow. So uh for our audience, uh Andrew is very, he says it how it is. So when he says, you know, I'm lazy and I just walk the easiest path to do things, I love that about you just calling that out and not trying to be somebody you're not and saying, hey, let's let me look like I'm doing all this stuff, right? Founders struggle with knowing when to pivot, right? There's that point in a business where do I pivot, do I go this way, or do you shut down the business? We thought about this as well. Yeah, exactly. So looking back, how did you distinguish between staying persistent and recognizing it was it was time to change direction?

Andrew Lockhead 4:49

I'll go one step above, actually. When decided to persist versus like window the business, there's a great book by Annie Duke called Quit. I don't know if you read it. I have not. No, what's it called? Quit. Uh so she's a poker player and she's telling out actually she used early skills, but also in business when it's time to just fold and move on to something else versus wasting her valuable money and time into something that we'll never recover. Which is crazy because most entrepreneurs are going through that journey one point or the other in their life. So once we figure out that we have something great, it was a matter for us like cool, we have money, we have an amazing resource on top of like talent and product, it's worth testing it out. We have the time in front of us, we have a run-way, what we want to do. Because we could also decide to just return back the money to investor and like call it a day and like be over. Will we believe in it? So for us, we got back to exactly what I told you, Joe Sensua. Can our product be helpful in another segment right now that we're not working with? The second question or assumption we had can actually recommend customers, which were ticketing platform and event organizers, use a different solution, make money in elsewhere. Obviously, they had no money back then, so they decided to not release it. And the last one was about cross-selling. We had a way to reach users exactly at the right time in their journey when the transaction happened. And we thought maybe we can actually upsell them with a different type of complementary services or product. So if you purchase food, can I have for clothing companies and something that's gonna be a bit more relevant toward the same brand? So think RTRX and Prana and things that will be uh well fitting together. And that's how we decided to actually pivot a company. We launched those ideas on the market, we test out them over multiple weeks, and one of them stick, and that's how we actually re-invent State 22 from the ground up.

Jason Taylor 6:27

Yeah, yeah. Now, how does your partner view this stuff? Uh, because you said you're opposite. So when you when you pivot and whatnot, is it is it just good discussion on, hey, let's get it both out there? And has there been some things along the way where you've said, okay, you're right, and we're not pivoting, or how does it work? All the time.

Andrew Lockhead 6:43

We pick fight every single week. But it's always, and I'm telling you at first I was stress, I'm like, we will never be able to work together. Like, this is not sustainable after a couple of months.

Andrew Lockhead 6:53

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 6:53

And we end up figuring out that actually we're always fighting to work the same thing, which is the best for the business. We come at it from different angles, but it's never about me versus him. It's always about what we think will be the best for state 22. And usually what happened after this is like a couple of experiences through that, and like the next day or the week after, and like either I will pull back or he's gonna build down and say, you know what? Actually, you were right, this is the best way to go forward. Yeah, that only happened once or twice that we were like, okay, but I really think my way is the best, and you really think your way is the best. Like, who has more to lose, who has more to win out of this? We will be the one working for that. And that's usually the person who will have the uh winning card in there. But then we pick up fight all the time.

Jason Taylor 7:31

I've looked at the journey of your employees, and when you when you started, you you had a handful of people, and now you're more than a hundred employees, right? So that that is that is such a sign of growth. How has your leadership style evolved as the company scaled? Because it's different managing, hey, here's my core group, my handful of people to wow, we have different different people now, different titles and and and whatnot. And you can't have a relationship as much as you want to with every person as intimately as you want to, right?

Andrew Lockhead 8:01

No, no. At first I was mostly a micromanager, wanted to be involved in everything, uh, every sales call, product decision, roadmap, you name it. Like I was everywhere. Yeah. And as we start to grow, you understand that every single one of those things is happening on a daily basis at a rhythm you're just not able to uh to solve for. So you have to put the right people in place and give them enough trust, but also to imply the culture. You understand exactly the value of the business, how you actually work, what matters. And once they're ready to go, you just let them roam free and actually make those decisions from the ground up. But it took me a lot of time to figure it out because at first I wanted to do everything. I was I was overwhelmed. I was almost on the bridge of burnout. And getting into coaching, reading books, talking with people like yourself actually got me a better person over the years.

Jason Taylor 8:46

Yeah. It must have been such a transition to actually let go of that, like almost give them the trust and think, you know, I don't have to be there on every call. I don't have to be there at every transaction and whatnot. And it's it's hard for specifically who you are and how you behave because you just care so much. So oftentimes when I talk to people like yourself, uh they'll say, Well, they're not gonna do it 100% the way I did it. And I I usually answer, yeah, they're not. There's no way. What if they did it 80% the way you did it, right? And then we figured out the 20% along the way, and all of a sudden, you know, we still have a really cool client and whatnot, and and it gives you a little more time and you can be on the business as opposed to in the business. And I'm sure that decision and that pivot that you made there helped you grow because you now you're you're playing a game of chess, you're not playing a game of checkers anymore. You're you're figuring out how does each piece move to get to the next goal, right?

Andrew Lockhead 9:44

So of course that 20% gap that you talk about it, like it's not negative. Like the difference, or we I will have done it between them. They're coming at it from a different angle. They have different types of skills. And every work I do my life in a different business. So like I'm building everything from the ground up. They're coming with different mindsets, they're coming from different culture, ethnic, genders. So they're kind of a different point of view that is 100% of the time more valuable. That's why I would love to get surrounded by those people that challenge me. They're like, it's interesting, but have you thought about this? Or maybe we should do it this way. And most of the time, they're right.

Jason Taylor 10:15

Yeah. I often see, I love that famous saying, if you're the smartest person in the room, get you're in the wrong room. Get out. Exactly. Change, change the room. And I often think to myself, I think, hey, am I in the right room? Because I just if we if we're constantly trying to evolve, constantly trying to learn, get better, man, and get into our uncomfortable zone where it just doesn't feel right. This feels a little different, right? But you know, the the end result sometimes is just really powerful at times.

Andrew Lockhead 10:42

It is. We just hired a new CEO um for the business, and we had our onboarding meeting last week, and he came up with a bunch of new ideas. You want to change a geo, reorg, change the way we do business. I'm like, things have been working great for seven years under the same leader. Like, why switch things? And I'm like, you know what? Actually, it's good because the same feeling got when we got a new CTO coming with my co-founder, then a new CFO. And all those times I'm not being like, oh, well, this is my business. This is how we're doing how things we've been doing in the past, but every time they add more value to this. And that's why I'm so excited to have those people around, because otherwise it will be just me replicated a hundred times, and that business will be failing for sure. Like I'm not a great IC.

Jason Taylor 11:19

Yeah, and if we all people like like attracts like. So if attracting everybody that I like because it's it's me, well, there's gonna be we're all gonna have the same blind spot, and we're all gonna be thinking, okay, well, where's where's this? What's why's why isn't this coming to fruition right now? I love this conversation. So you recently recently shared that your job is no longer knowing everyone personally, but creating a a culture, I'd say, where everyone feels seen. And I like the way you said that, where everyone feels seen. What does that look like in actual practice, in actual doing it?

Andrew Lockhead 11:51

So some people think that you have the light of a voice, the person that pulls the most on Slack, the people that get the most emoji whenever there's something uh that gets shared in conference or else. It's not that way. A lot of the time in the past, we thought that the person that was the most vocal about something will be able to have the most impact on a business. And it's not that way at all. It's not that because they're doing good or bad, they're just better in terms of like extrovert. Now what we're trying to look for is different type of like uh input and point. What will be the impact on a business as a whole? We've been using the OQR system. I don't know if you know about the EOS entrepreneur operating system. Yeah, no, very well. Yep. Exactly. So we'll be putting in place OKRs, and what I tell every single employees is I couldn't care less how you do it. I don't care about the output. I just care about the outcome. Reach the end goal, take whatever shortcut you need to, as long as it's not illegal, but like make a week to get there. If you get there in 10 hours, like instead of 40 hours, we'll take you for a week, great fucking job. Go back to the beach, make those things happen. I want 50 more people like you.

Jason Taylor 12:48

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, give them the freedom to actually run their business. Exactly and be a CEO of your own division, right? So what what whatever your title is, I believe in leadership without titles. It doesn't matter what your title is, be the CEO of your own division.

Andrew Lockhead 13:02

I agree. And that's why I'm like, no matter if you're a PM, if you're a GM, if you're uh an account executive, all those people should take the best decision for the business of themselves. We try to flow the power all the way to the people that are closest to the problem. Yeah. Listen to the recommendations so that the next people above can do step of approval and move on to something else.

Jason Taylor 13:20

That's awesome. Let's talk about AI. Have you heard that AI is around right now? Have you No, never?

Andrew Lockhead 13:27

AI?

Jason Taylor 13:29

So you've you've been open about uh being a little skeptical of AI replacing parts of the travel experience, which I totally agree with you, by the way. So, where do you think AI creates, let's say, the most value, and where should humans remain kind of at the center?

Andrew Lockhead 13:44

I believe we're as of today, AI creates most value is in the back office. So, in terms of like reducing costs, not increasing revenues or sales or like anything else. It's really the back office. In the future, I'm definitely not an expert, so I'll let everybody else uh point of view on that.

Andrew Lockhead 13:59

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 13:59

On the travel side of things, travel is a special beast. Like it's been going on for like years, it's a massive market of over $300 billion in terms of sales, and there's dinosaurs in place, like GDS that have been at it for like over decades, but they're hard to get rid of because they own the distribution. And as I told you, Jason earlier, distribution is king of the leaf in most industry. 100%. Will those get replaced? Will there new intermediary coming through? Will agents speak with agents? Uh, we'll see. Now, surprising enough, we see more and more people actually creating their own travel itinerary, travel app. Yeah. Which back in the days, like this is a failure. Most people don't want to do this, there's no money to raise over there. It's really hard to make a living. Sure. But if you're passionate about your own travel plan, you want to share with your friends, you're like, hey, by the way, here's what I did. Now people just use MCP and they use AI on the cloud to create their own app. And we just see those more and more happening over Teams. And creator economy is a big boom, so we kind of see a different trend happening on that side. It might slay, it might die, but this is where we've been the latest we've seen over the past six weeks.

Jason Taylor 15:01

Okay.

Andrew Lockhead 15:01

Yeah, good stuff.

Jason Taylor 15:03

Let's talk about your LinkedIn. Because that's what actually drew me to you, to be incredibly uh transparent, open, and honest. So your content on LinkedIn consistently tells honest stories about failure, about pivoting, about leadership lessons. And it comes across as extremely authentic. So why do you think authenticity resonates so strongly with founders and people?

Andrew Lockhead 15:27

Twofold. So first off, it might do a difference on LinkedIn because most of the LinkedIn messages are just full of shit. So people telling how great things are, and my journey is great, and everyone's amazing, and I'm doing it. I think this is the yes. So it kind of like not resonates as much with LinkedIn. Number two, we're surrounded with other entrepreneurs. So I'll give you an example. When I meet someone, I always ask her a question, like, how you doing? How's the business in L's? And 95% of the time, I don't know if for UB people where it shows, oh, it's great. Like numbers are amazing, my growth is on stage, uh, my team is on fire, I'm closing customer left and right. And I know for a fact this is like bullshit as well. Like, there's no way everything is fire. So why do you start with the good stuff and then I have to hint and work? When I talk with people, when and their first question is always how's it going? I'm gonna tell you about something negative. Like most of the time, because I want you to understand, like, this is not an ego play. I'm not gonna tell you how great I'm instead I'm gonna tell you about an issue or a challenge I'm facing right now, which hopefully will make you more open and so we can have a true, honest conversation. Yeah. Otherwise, it's just where we have the biggest ball on the table. I don't think it's related anymore.

Jason Taylor 16:33

Yeah, I agree with you. So many people, they're scared to say, hey, I'm struggling a bit, or yeah, I'm having some problems right now, or I haven't hit budget.

Andrew Lockhead 16:41

So you're wasting your opportunity to ask for advice, have a conversation with someone else that can add value, maybe point you in a direction, connect you with someone else that will be able to help you out, and you just talk about the good stuff. Like, how is this a good use of your time?

Jason Taylor 16:54

Yeah, I I agree. It's uh I have a I have a running joke with one of my colleagues, and I say, ask any real estate agent uh how business is, and they're all great, unbelievable. It's amazing. And I'll be just like, how can that be? Like the you know, how could every real estate agent be crushing it, right? When you look at stats and whatnot.

Andrew Lockhead 17:11

And I look at the number in the GTA area, like greater Toronto. Yeah. And the number was like astounding. I think like over 10% of population like were real estate agents or at their hard license.

Andrew Lockhead 17:21

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 17:22

But if you take the amount of money they make from sales and you divide it by everyone, it seems like everyone's making like $50. So such a big like gap, like in like obviously you have big, big earners, and everybody else is not making a living out there.

Jason Taylor 17:34

I love that. So you are a person that tries different things. You are a person that actually has, you know, it been in different genres and sectors as well. So let's talk about failures. What a great segue based on that LinkedIn conversation. So looking back at your entrepreneurial journey and road, let's say, what failure, what failure taught you something that success never could?

Andrew Lockhead 17:57

Well, all the failures taught me something that success never could. Because if you get it right on a first shot, like there's no learning. You're just like, oh my god, I'm doing so great, right?

Andrew Lockhead 18:05

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 18:06

So I think all those learn all those failures are a great uh way to educate yourself.

Andrew Lockhead 18:11

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 18:11

Um, the latest one could have been like there's so many of those. I mean, having at least a failure a day. That means you're trying things though.

Jason Taylor 18:18

And that means you're trying things, right?

Andrew Lockhead 18:20

We're having tunnel meeting at the office. So every month we gather together, the team, and I wanted to have those moments on Friday afternoon, so NF day.

Andrew Lockhead 18:29

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 18:29

After this, we can get a beer together, people can relax and leave for the weekend. It is actually not a good time. Because my mindset, I'm gonna put it on Friday afternoon, because it's a time where nobody's actually active, people are not doing their best work. But when you announce a bad news on a Friday evening or afternoon, there's no way you can recoup it back. So there's no way you can go through back chilling, you can reach out to people, you meet them the next day, try to massage a bit the conversation. Yeah. So now we're gonna move a bell-dollar meeting from a different moment during the week. We might miss some opportunity in terms of like active hours where people can work. But this way, if we have good or bad news, it's gonna be a better time for those people. And also for people around the world to join at the same time.

Jason Taylor 19:07

I love that. Yeah, that's so that's that's actually inspiring and it actually makes me think it's gonna be okay and I can get to the next level, right?

Andrew Lockhead 19:13

Exactly. Versus leaving for the weekend and our people are just adding their brain like, oh shit, am I going to use my job? Is there a problem? Is there a risky? Like where and it's just like going a whirlwind. Like, this is not a good idea anymore. So this is my latest learning from uh two weeks ago.

Jason Taylor 19:27

I love that. Are you part of any um CEO groups, Andrew? You must be. Yeah, I do uh EO uh and YPO. And YPO, okay. Yeah, I was just gonna say because I'm part of a CEO team as well. And sometimes, you know, you have to challenge each other each other and say, hey, it's it's not perfect right now. And it's okay to say it's not, and and you've got a lot of people in the room right now that will will help you, right?

Andrew Lockhead 19:48

I love those groups, like the forum from like C100 and L's, like where people can actually talk their heart out, yeah, it's so great because of the Chatham rule, nobody's allowed to talk about those challenges outside of that specific session. I think it's just so uh refreshing versus once more, everything's great, I'm killing it, and like cool, moving on.

Jason Taylor 20:05

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If you were mentoring or helping a founder or an owner or a president CEO who is currently facing their own, let's call it a 2020 moment like you had with COVID, what's the first piece of advice you'd give them?

Andrew Lockhead 20:22

Involve your team. We all think that we're amazing, that CEOs got the best idea, that they have the biggest brain. I know for a fact I don't, but like most of us do.

Jason Taylor 20:32

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 20:32

And I'm so far away today from the decision maker. I'm so far away from my customers. There's so much touch point and level between me and this, and they get the filtering. I will tell them like, get back in the get back in the trenches, talk with your team, involve them in the decision and the planning. They will have a different angle at it than you have, and most likely you'll end up in a better position instead of just figure out by yourself, which is almost impossible.

Andrew Lockhead 20:56

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 20:57

Isn't it amazing?

Jason Taylor 20:57

You you touched on something there. A lot of times C-suite CEOs, founders, they all think they have to have uh all the answers. And I'm a big believer, it's really powerful when I hear a CEO that's authentic and transparent just say, you know what, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to that. I can find out for you. I can find out for you, but I don't know the answer to that right now. And but it might be stressful, right?

Andrew Lockhead 21:22

Put yourself in the shoes of like the people that got hired last week or last month or a year ago, and the CD person in charge at the top of it saying, We're facing an issue right now, and I don't have a solution for it.

Andrew Lockhead 21:32

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 21:33

It's a double as much I think it's good because you're being transparent and you involve them in the process, and I think it's gonna create a stronger brand because you guys will be working day and night and fixing that issue. Yeah, it also comes with a side of like, oh, well, if he's not knowing how to do it and he's the biggest person out there with all of the context, how is anyone else will be able to figure out that solution?

Jason Taylor 21:54

So Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. So and where do I go from here?

Andrew Lockhead 21:57

You're supposed to know, right? Exactly. Like, shall I update my resume at this point? Should I apply for a job? Should I talk with someone else? This is where you've got to find the right balance between saying, like, there's a problem, we will figure out how to get there, but together.

Jason Taylor 22:10

Andrew, when you were if you're looking at your younger self in your low 20s and you're just starting out, based on who you are today and the lessons you've learned along the way, what would be the advice the Andrew of today would give the Andrew of you know the past in when he was just starting out in his 20s?

Andrew Lockhead 22:29

Do some yoga. Flexibility. That will be much better, no?

Andrew Lockhead 22:36

That's the best, that's the best quote we had on the show. Do some yoga. Yeah. Absolutely. So short by back, I will be in a much better shape if I started back in my 20s instead of in the 40s. I love it.

Jason Taylor 22:48

I love it. Is there any piece of advice over there where you'd say, hey, listen, like this is how you are now, but if you just shift this or change this a bit, it might help you out a bit, right?

Andrew Lockhead 22:59

So it's gonna go a bit on the opposite, but trust your gut feeling. Like at first, when I'm really, really started in the first uh couple of years as an entrepreneur, I was gathering feedback left and right from mentor, coaches, successful entrepreneurs, everyone that's really was inputting. And I was trying to solve, like to go exactly what they told me. Because they've been at it, they're smarter than myself, they have more context. Like I thought they were praising the uh prison choir and they were having the answer to all those questions.

Andrew Lockhead 23:27

Yeah.

Andrew Lockhead 23:28

And it was bad, like super bad. Because most people don't want you to succeed, or whatever they've seen is successful in the past will not be successful now. So, inner self, I should like to trust myself and beginning rabbits. So, like, you know what? Trust your guts feeling. You know better than they are, better than they do. You have a different point of view at this, and that's how you manage to be successful instead of just listening to advice.

Jason Taylor 23:49

Well that, yeah, and and move with some urgency as well, right? Always speed kill everything. It does. Andrew, you've been more than generous with your time today. I have one more question before I let you go for the day. And uh man, you've given us some really good nuggets today. If I were to ask you, when people, you know, think of Andrew Lockhead years from now, what impact do you hope your leadership has had on the entrepreneurs, the creators, and the companies that you've helped build?

Andrew Lockhead 24:18

I don't have an ego, but this is gonna sound dumb, so heads up right ahead. Yeah. Since I was a kid, I always wanted to change the world. And there's no like uh range, there's no ballpark, there's no way how I'll be able to be able to do that. But I hope that in 10, 15, 20 years from now, I would have changed uh the world if it's not the people around me, the people and the families within my team, the creators that we work with right now that are getting millions of dollars to travel the world. I don't know how far I'll be able to get this happening, but yeah, I hope I'll be able to change the world uh one way at a time.

Jason Taylor 24:49

I love that. That is inspiring, and it is an excellent way to end this podcast. Andrew, thank you for your time today. I appreciate you. Uh very grateful you came on the uh podcast today. Some great nuggets there. Yeah, I wish you nothing but the best with your company, your partners, stay 22, and uh look forward to doing loads with you in the future. Thank you, Jay. I appreciate it. Have a good one. Cheers. If you love that session and that conversation as much as I did, would love to have you join our People Playbook community in the link below.