Doist COO Allan Christensen on remote ops, perfecting hiring, designing ops for career development, the ideal employee feedback loop

00:12 - Michael Koenig (Host)

Hello and welcome to Between Two COOs, where phenomenal chief operating officers come to share their knowledge, advice and, at the very end, a crazy story. I'm your host, michael Kienig, and our guest today is Alan Christensen, the COO at Duist, a SaaS company focused on creating productivity platforms used by more than 400,000 customers with their task management system to Duist, an asynchronous communication platform, twist. Duist has been a pioneer of remote work, dating back to 2007, with people in more than 40 countries, and is one of those rare tech companies that has built a rocket ship without institutional investment. Fun fact, alan began his career making pipe workings and somehow found his way into tech, so I'm sure there's a good story there, alan welcome. Thanks for being here.

00:57 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

Thanks, Michael, and thanks for having me.

00:59 - Michael Koenig (Host)

And just so our audience knows, I'm in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You are in, tell us.

01:07 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

I'm in Copenhagen at Denmark.

01:09 - Michael Koenig (Host)

Copenhagen, at Denmark, the beauty of remote, which is definitely going to be a topic here. So, to start off, alan, give us your origin story. How'd you first end up building pipe workings, because that is not all that common, and then, second, how'd you make your way into tech and the COOC?

01:27 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

I probably have a bit of a windy career path there, because it's true I started up building pipe workings and it was actually my grandfather who founded a pipe building business, or pipe working building business, back in the 96s and then his four sons joined the company, which one of them was my father.

01:47

And so when I decided to build pipe workings I guess it was more like a natural choice for me. And so when I did that in 1996, I was the third generation and it was a bit in the cards there that maybe my turn would come someday to lead the business. And but it didn't turn out that way because actually already back then I knew that I wanted to go abroad. I wanted to experience other cultures and learn other, different languages. And then, when I was like finishing my apprenticeship at the family shop there, I applied for a job at three different pipe working building companies in California and moved to the US in 2000 and start working for a company in Santa Cruz. And the fun part here is that I was in Santa Cruz. I was like going over Highway 17, going to San Jose, being in the area, and at that time I didn't really know what Silicon Valley was, and it wasn't until a decade later, when I entered into tech, that I realized that I'd actually lived there.

02:54

And after I've been building pipe working for six years there, I went back to university and got myself an engineering degree and also actually I've always knew that I wanted to run a business, like there was something fascinating about this. So I also started my own kind of side business there selling online football merchandise and had like soccer merchandise, sorry. And then I moved to Berlin and got an MBA and actually also worked at VW in their procurement to get an internship there. And that's when I had a Chilean classmate who asked me if I was interested in coming over to Chile and write my thesis for his company. So I decided to go to Chile at that time, spend a couple of years in Germany, learn the language, time for a new adventure.

03:40

And that's actually where I met the founder and CEO of Duist, amir Salihayvindic, who was a Danish, bosnian guy living in Chile being part of an entrepreneur program there called Startup Chile with his project. So I ran into him at one of these startup parties because that was my chance to socialize a bit with people who spoke English. So I went to meetups etc. And then at some point there's this annual big expat soccer game between the British and the Danish and we had to recruit some players and I knew Amir was I just met him this one time before, but I knew he was Danish and I knew he played football Ask him if he could play and then, actually on the way to the match that day, he was sitting on the backseat and I was on the front seat and the driver asked me after I finished my thesis, he found a job and I told him no, not yet.

04:35

I was still looking. And, amir, he overheard that and asked me what's your strength? And I was like halfway joking, telling him no, I'll just tell you my weakness and we'll get over this quickly then. And we laughed and he didn't ask any more questions. We played the game and it wasn't until 10 days later I realized I was actually in a job interview because he sent me an email saying that, alan, are you interested in coming and work for my company as a business developer? Have this to do app called Todoist and we'd meet a Starbucks and then try to work from there and see how it goes Okay.

05:09 - Michael Koenig (Host)

So let's clarify this you lived in Silicon Valley, but got into tech in Chile, yes, and then you played in a soccer match or football as the rest of the world calls it with Amir. Did you let him win? Because he ended up hiring you?

05:29 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

We actually we played the British, so we're playing on the same team, so it was like it was a big match.

05:34 - Michael Koenig (Host)

Okay, so there's country countryman camaraderie there. So now you're with Amir, who is CEO of DeWest. The COO CEO relationship is special relationship. The COO role is rather amorphous and biz whatever the business needs it to be, and however you compliment best the CEO. So how have the two of you divided up responsibility and what are those areas?

06:04 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

Yeah, no, it's. It was very clear from the beginning because Amir he's a developer. He was a Python developer and he was already doing everything, except he had hired a Polish support guy and I was basically doing everything else than what was left. I was doing business development, I was doing marketing, I was doing PR outreach. So in Amir's name, I was like having Amir at to do iscom at that time and reaching out, and so first time we got on tech runs, being the first to do app supporting HTML5 was like it was a big thing for us.

06:40

But yeah, so I overlooked recruiting. I did the finance and and also support whenever there was needed. I basically had all the areas under me and the whole process has been initially like I was doing it and then it reached like a certain level of complexity or like with okay, now we need a pro and then we would hire pro to come in and lead it, and that has been so very classic for me. So my scope has reduced a bit over the years and nowadays what's what falls under operation for me is it's people, ops, it's customer success, it's finance, and then it's also we have a head of remote, so everything remote they also falls on me, and then our dues, like our project management system, like our operations. That's basically the areas right now. So compliance also.

07:34 - Michael Koenig (Host)

So let's talk about remote. You mentioned a head of remote First. What does a head of remote do? And I believe yours is chase warrington, who's pretty prolific in promoting remote. So let's start there. What does chase do?

07:54 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

Yeah, no, that's a good question. So I would start by saying it's also really interesting to see from how we've started out, when we start remote work and also like when Chase moved into this position and then the pandemic happened and remote became more for commodity these days. So it probably made his job a little bit easier because everyone was like he didn't have to do so much of the heavy lifting here when it came to promoting remote. But what he does he like beyond promoting remote work and how we work externally, and because that also catered to the kind of products we built, which also, tell you to, to our needs. He also optimizes everything inside the company for how do you create, like the perfect remote setup? We have people in over 30, I think it's like over 35 different countries and many different time zones and like, how do you like, how do you create the whole environment also of creating this kind of feeling of like also being a company and having colleagues?

09:00

So he will set up different kind of initiative internally. We will have monthly hangouts where we'll mix people up in groups of three and then they will spend an hour chatting together about things outside work to get to know each other, and then he's also he's organizing our annual, like all our retreats. We currently have three types of retreats, or off sites, if you want, inside, or at least we have the big annual company wide retreat. Then we also have like mini retreats, which is like function specific, and then for smaller teams it will will sometime bundle up and it will go like various for instance, finance and people up and product or small teams. At the moment they may go together, but and then but also be that the Apple team will go, the Android team will go on their own.

09:54

And so he has made templates for this, like in I think it's Tina so different locations in the world where he has built a full the whole package. So with core work set up and where to stay, what to see, and all these things. And then finally, we also have a leadership retreat, for it would do like once a year. He will coordinate all those two and you can say his role is like overlapping a bit, like also between marketing and people up. He will also help out there if needed.

10:25 - Michael Koenig (Host)

I was just about to ask that and we're going to dive into what you just described a bit more granularly. But I know that a lot of people, as they think about remote and the remote work experience, it ties into people and I've seen it actually get held specifically within the people to Within the HR department. Why have you at do this broken out remote as its own function? You mentioned this specifically. We have a head of remote and that was clearly differentiated from your people team.

11:01 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

Yeah, it's a great question because I think in this case it has also been about like we had someone on the team who was such a superb fit for this role. That was like one thing and chase before he was doing, before he's the head of remote, he was actually the head of business development and so it also started out discussing how we were discussing how can we evolve that role, and I felt, maybe because he had also started his own podcast about living abroad, because he's an American and he had lived in for the past five, six years in Europe. So our vision is to build the future of work, and a key component to how we work is also the whole remote aspect. So when we wanted to, let us also weigh to, double down on it and say, if we don't want now, especially with the pandemic going, if we don't want to, we just become one of those companies. If we not continue to hire near this or stay ahead of the curve, we might not have this edge that we definitely had in the beginning when we were recruiting and attracting people that come and work, for do is work remote, anywhere you want, as long as you've access to the Internet.

12:21

That was a big thing for us, but obviously, yeah, it lost its edge a bit over time and we chase. We had someone else perfect for the role and it gave us a chance to invest in this area to stay ahead. And and also, since this, in the end, it's not only remote, it's also how we work, how we work async and that's wanting to like brand this, because we feel we're built this product twist that allows us to work async and have a healthy, balance lifestyle, and so it's all like investment into how can we open people's eyes to this is the future of work you working async along your people to do their core work. Because when we just had to do is then and we actually had a different platform project management platform.

13:11

We do is at that time and we've said, okay, we're not going to invest in this anymore, like we want to switch over and everyone is jumping on slack let's do that. We want to do that too, but and we just quickly realized that this is not us at all. Like you have this real time chat where it's just like a conveyor belt with information Coming at you all the time.

13:32

So we built, we want to build our own product that was just shaped to fit our needs and don't need some and yeah, I guess that's also just a natural decision to say if we have someone that's that invest in, like if that's fully focused on the remote aspect and then also async and how we work, then it's like we're getting the best from both world, plus is amazing at the job.

13:57 - Michael Koenig (Host)

There are two things that I want to dive into, because this is an audience of operators and it's about a 50-50 split between remote and in-office folks and I say that with probably 5% certainty. And I want to talk about, first, async communication, because that's something that, when done well, can span in-office, can span remote, doesn't matter. There's a need for asynchronous communication, whether it's an email, whether it's in a different format. How have you all made async work? And let's take a step back. What the hell is asynchronous communication?

14:44 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

Yeah, good question. I will actually be honest with you also, like when I heard the term the first time, which is probably around 2016 or something, because even when we built twist, initially, it was not focused on async but I had to look it up but I don't recall it by heart here but they async, is it it's about. For us, it means you, you respond when it fits your workflow, you fit things into as you say you respond when it fits your workflow, which also means like it, you have the time to do your deep work.

15:19

There's studies out there saying there, like if you get disturbed or takes 23 minutes or something like that to get back into your flow, and we really wanted people to be able to do their best work. So async is intended as give people the freedom to control their workflow and also like to have the healthy Balance in how they work. When it comes to you know, there's no green light in twist showing that you online or you're writing like it's not signed, so it's really the same.

15:48 - Michael Koenig (Host)

Give people time to think now there's async and synchronous communication and work that happens together. This is a two-parter one. How do you distinguish between the two, when one is appropriate and the other is not? And Two, do you see certain functions that are more prone and and accommodating to that asynchronous work style versus the synchronous? Is there any sort of pattern there?

16:19 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

Yeah, the thing is like when you work remote all decisions need to be documented online. Ideally, if you have offline discussions, they should be recapped in some form to To provide everyone with the same context. We don't do this by default, but we have a good habit of recapping important discussions. So I would say, for the most part, it's anything that's relevant, that's that contains Decisions, discussions or like how did you come to the solution needs to be done on in the async style, like in In threaded or in threads in twist, whereas like, the sync style will have a one-on-ones or T meetings etc.

17:09

But even they they usually Documented afterwards and decisions are always put in there. But we also we actually have a real-time chat feature and twist also, which we use for, like smaller things were. But since transparency and being able to reference previous discussions and and anything of relevance or importance connected to discussion we have there, they fit the the async style much better. So oftentimes it will be more. If you have sync conversation, it will be more like of brainstorming and Discussing things, but then more discussing. So how are we gonna Go from here? And then, okay, let's take this async and turn it into a discussion or proposal or whatever it is, the decisions are Really made in meetings? And if they are, they're still put on a platform, on the platform to to be challenged.

18:04 - Michael Koenig (Host)

So, backing up and I'm gonna give us a little bit of stage setting here, and this is really in terms of the macro perspective of remote work, emma Goldberg. She's a writer for the New York Times. She's been tracking and writing about remote work Throughout the past several years. We saw this enormous adoption of remote work um during the pandemic and essentially her figures are 73 percent of Businesses reported that their employees rarely or never work from home, which is down from 60 percent at the peak of the pandemic and quite close to the pre-pandemic figure Of 77 percent. Right, even though around 60 percent of the workforce Went remote, the vast majority have gone back. The question I have for you and there is actually one here is what is your gut instinct as to why so many businesses Ended up going back into the office?

19:12 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

great question. I think we we have to acknowledge also we human beings and you know we also like to socialize and Remote work. It's also not for everyone. We've also learned that and also the hard way, from like having hired really talented developers and who just didn't thrive in a remote setting because, like they were lacking being like close to a mentor, and so I think it's like what we do it's the extreme end of the scale, because we've done this from day one, like we don't know anything else. We have all our processes.

19:50

Everything is just built around remote first, of being remote first, and remote work. So to us it's just it comes natural and we initially we did it because it was like we were living in Chile, like none of us wanted to stay there forever and we didn't speak Spanish. So we hired the people that were in the startup program and eventually they were also going to go back. So it was just it wasn't really like optional, we had to go for this and so what I think we have, and and then we had the other people who spent all the time in the office, and we have those. We also going back now and you say there's not a lot of different in it. But I think the thing is here that the optimal scenario for the average company out there is probably somewhere in the middle, because what really drove us in the beginning was like the flexibility, and I think we all want this flexibility.

20:43

Like I don't expect everyone to want to work remotely in the future, but I think having the flexibility to work one or two days from home is something that is here to stay and I think there will be more of this in the future, and also the next generations who went through the pandemic I don't know.

21:03

Obviously they might have a terrible experience and you definitely want to work from the office, but they might also have seen some upsides of this. But I think we will have a mixture of both. And but it doesn't change the fact that when you switch to remote, you're going to have to accost them yourself. To, like certain things move slower the quick chat over across the table and also discuss issues, whatever, like they now require that you hop on a meeting or you do it in a written form, which is slower. But the positive thing of that is anyone will. If you share, if it's something that's not sensitive and you share it internally, others you can reference it later without having to re-explain. You can. So there's a sacrifice of speed, like going remote, but the control you have over your time and and how you work? I think it will to some extent. That's that's going to appeal to, to the greater mass, long term impossible about that shifting gears.

21:58 - Michael Koenig (Host)

You've written pretty prolifically around high-ring practices like really prolifically, not just pretty prolifically, really prolifically. I wonder can you share with us the top level of your interest in it and how you've shifted over time? But then take us into what works.

22:21 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

Yeah, I would. I would love to actually for many years. That's that to me. Like the, the hiring aspect is something I found, and still find, super, super interesting. Like I am, you know, I'm a people person and there's nothing I actually enjoy more also like than seeing people join the company and blossom within. And since this fell under me and it was the last one, the last function we actually hired a head off for, so it was the last one I let go of, hung on to that one.

22:57

For a long time I've been part of this process from the early days and I was always not always, I think for the first 50 or so people I was always the last interviewer and I love just telling the whole story. And at that time it was more unique than it is these days because of how the world has changed, with remote work also the pandemic, but also being able to convince people to come and join this project, even though we were bootstrapped, we couldn't offer the biggest paycheck or the best benefits, etc. But if we could hit a home run with this project it could go really big and we were very like. Always we branded the company as being it's very flat hierarchy, best argument when, if you come and join here, you can have an impact and make a difference. What really inspired me also was this book written by. I think it's called Laszlo, something from Google. I can't remember his last name now, but Lesla Bach yeah, work rules work rules correct

23:54

yeah, yeah so, and how he had set up the system with, you know, assessing people on a scale one to four, where you had to hit a certain average to be hireable, and we built our own version of this and and tried to set up like initially also said what we really want to protect in all this, here is we while we built the company, we want to make sure that we get the right people in here. If we get the right people on the bus and the right seats, we can build anything we want. And we wanted also to make sure that if we get someone in that didn't really mirror our culture, we wanted, you wanted to deal with it so like we wouldn't get off the wrong cultural trajectory, and that's why we built the whole process and saying we need to, we need at least three interviews and a test task and then then we score them on this one and if they score above, that means they're hireable. Doesn't mean that we have to hire them, but then we will have a conversation and talk pros and cons etc. And we did that and I think it's a and I think it has served us really well and up until 2000 and what was at 19,. I think it was the first seven years of the companies that exist and there was like four people that will entirely left the company.

25:11

And nowadays then things change. You know you have to evolve and you start empowering more. You have more functional heads and you want to empower them and slowly I was moving out. I was not part of all the hiring decisions or not hiring committees anymore, and to me it's a special thing. I always told people like I can't build the, I can't build products, that's not my thing, but I really like culture and people. That's my currency here.

25:39

And I would usually tell them the story about how we went on the off-site. The first time in that was in Minorka in Spain. It doesn't matter where it was, but we were 30 people and that was the first time we got together with super overwhelming because we'd already worked for several years with these people never met, really met any of them, only very few. And then next time, the year after, we were 40 people and you could see where people was a little bit grouping the first year the Spanish and the Portuguese and the Russians, you know. Then you saw when we came to Iceland the year after that people were mingling more, you know they were, you know, across culture and languages and functions etc.

26:20

And the third time we had our off-site there, it was just so cool to see how people just came into the bus and sat down wherever there was a free seat or into the restaurant wherever there was a chair. There was not this kind of group hanging out together all the time, like there's just this really intrinsic curiosity about wow, there's all these different people and culture and you know, I really want to get to know them kind of spirit. And that's when it clicked for me. It's like, at least it felt like we built something unique here, also in terms of the group we brought together, and so I would undertake, like I can't, you know, I can't build products, so it's more, you know, I can focus on the people that's, you know, that's my currency than the culture and the people.

27:06 - Michael Koenig (Host)

And you've developed quite the playbook. I'm pretty sure it's online. We can link to it. You mentioned flat hierarchy. With that flat hierarchy, though, how do you all view career, career progression and professional development? You have such low attrition figures amongst your employees. How do you ensure that everyone's moving forward and developing their careers in a way they want to?

27:32 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

I would say this has also been a long process and we've had made several attempts at finding a career framework, because I think this is also back to 2019. Like, we didn't have any career path or framework. It was just like, and one thing is sure like once you you add one, that's where you're asking for troubles.

27:52

But in the good way we started out building like because right now we actually only have, we have four levels we have the C level, then we have heads, and then we have leads, and then we have individual contributors. And we built our own kind of mastery track where there were five levels and then there was various functions, but in the end it still became a little bit like subjective and it quickly felt a little bit dull and people weren't super excited about what we had set up. So we actually just adopted a new platform. So here's a shout out to Pando for what they've done, the platform they've built, and now we have built a proper framework that we actually use. So it's not just now.

28:37

You don't only have conversation with your, with your head, about your career, like with Pando. Now have this option like you follow it. You have your own rubric with different, the different competencies and levels you work on and at the same time, you can request feedback, their goals or achievements, they're all these things. That kind of gives your manager much better content for looking at, like, how you're developing, because that's another thing to help we work, because we work in with what we call stable squads, so you will be on a squat working on a project for six months in most cases, which mean, like your manager might not even be in that one. So that way it's harder to see what is the kind of work you're doing and getting feedback on that from your manager.

29:25

So, and that was some of the feedback we've gotten, but I think we've found a solution now where people can invest in their career and it's also people driven in the sense. If you don't care about it, yeah, you probably not going to request assessment of your competencies and and feedback etc on your work. But also we're going to implement some. We are implementing some forced feedback session from on a monthly cadence for the work we do to build this content. That both helps the individual with their professional growth. At the same time, it also helps the manager to help their team members grow in whatever direction they want. And, yeah, and then we have the additional feedback on top of that.

30:08

I think we have found a solid solution to this at this point, and the cool thing about Panda is that you know they build it for company like ours. That would remote them, that's just. Documentation is just such an essential element in a remote environment.

30:24 - Michael Koenig (Host)

Okay, so let's back up. There are managers who are managing folks that are working on projects that the manager isn't involved in. How does that feedback loop, how does that feedback mechanism work? How does a manager evaluate someone's performance, give feedback on their performance, how they can improve what they're doing well, if that manager isn't necessarily managing that project? Or is your take on management completely different from how we think about the normal role of a manager?

31:02 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

Good question. It may be. I have to say here that one of our core values is independent, the kind of people we look for also people that are very proactive and they're really picking up the ball and go get it. So I don't know what the classic expectation is to a manager's job, but we also have working managers. We have this hands-on manager philosophy, so it's expected that every manager within the company is also hands-on and working on different projects there.

31:34

But initially when we were working on the projects, we rotated the squats once a month as a rule of thumb. But we lost so much in the context switching that we early or beginning of last year decided to switch to this new system where we're going to say, okay, we're going to work with stable squats, to stay together for six months, and that's when the feedback started to come in that managers were also challenged by this that they could provide feedback on what they saw with use engineering as an example engineers. They could see communication and contribution on twist, but they couldn't see what did their code look like or helped them there. That meant again that it would be on the individual to take initiative or our practices. We do mandatory monthly one on ones with all direct reports. Then the individual would have to bring something to the table there and show I need some feedback on this and that.

32:32

But otherwise they were pretty much relying on other people reaching out. We have squats, leaders providing feedback, but we didn't have the framework for this, like you would have to go direct and ping, you know, the person's manager or the person's self and give feedback. But that's also why we say, okay, we need a different framework for that. We need something that has this proper feedback component that can help resolve this problem. Because we're remote, you can't just walk over and ask the person what he's working on she's working on, so we need something else here.

33:04 - Michael Koenig (Host)

You all need to put out some of your practices so the rest of us can learn what you all learned, either the hard way or the easy way, but maybe save us some time from recreating the wheel. Okay, Alan, time for my last and favorite question. In the COO seat, we've all had those moments where we've seen something completely off the wall, something we never imagined happening and thought I really never thought I'd see that that is a new one. Do you have one that you can share with us? And I realized that this is very much. Some of those scenarios are confidential. You can't publicize it on a podcast, but perhaps there's one that you can share with us.

33:47 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

We have a few, but actually one of my favorite one is related to trademarks, because we were a little slow to register our trademarks in the EU and in 2018, we suddenly got two like accusation of trademark infringement from two different people in Switzerland and at the same time, which per se, would have a little bit odd. And one was from a woman claiming her last name was Todoist and who had coincidentally registered Todoist and also do is actually as a trademark the previous year in Switzerland. But we managed to resolve that one fairly quickly and settled on a smaller amount and we were thinking since we initially thought this was connected to the other one also that we would resolve this also for twist. But it turned out to be a whole different story, because this company claimed to have registered the trademark twist in the EU back in 2010, but they didn't ask for any damages or anything. They just asked us to remove our apps or twist app from the app store. So when we started to drill a bit deeper, we learned that they didn't own the trademark in the EU. That only registered the trademark in Switzerland and also the previous year.

34:57

We went quick registered in the EU. Plus, we also found out that Siemens owned it for Germany. And we reached out to them and acquired that. And now, all the time, here they were communicating to us through lawyers. So we thought come on, we decent people and let's sort this out. So we thought, let's just reach out to them directly instead of using lawyers for this here. And we did.

35:18

And the guy just wrote us back. He was so disappointed with our actions and having rolled out twist in Switzerland without asking permission and eventually telling us he wanted 220k euros and even wrote in preventaries not USD, and we're not going to accept that we have so few customers in Switzerland in it. It makes no sense. They ended up taking this to court and that's when we'd learned like they had no product, they didn't have a business, they just had a one page with a mockup of what should look like a SaaS product. You say like basically a flyer.

35:57

So the whole thing seemed like a scam and we thought again is this a joke? So we decided let's really make another attempt and talk to these people and we did Okay, let's offer them 10 grand, which apparently insulted them so much, so they raised their requirement now to 350k and things just founded there and eventually we had to go through the whole process. We went to court and Mia had to travel to Geneva for hearing and ultimately the court ruled if our favorite, declaring that this trademark registration as throttle and then invalid. And even then they attempted to appeal it to the Swiss Supreme Court, which was projected. But I'm just so amazed how far people are willing to go despite not really having a case. Yeah, that really surprised me.

36:48 - Michael Koenig (Host)

That's fantastic. Every now and then, you get one of those crazy lawsuits, that, or threats of a lawsuit, even sometimes you just go. You know what. This is so outrageous. I'm going to make this person pay. I am taking them to court because they need to not do this again. This is not how it works. So you do. Coos do tend to learn quite a bit about IP law. It's a pretty common thing, and I've been in that same sort of trademark process in the past and we actually went and just avoided it altogether and we're just like you know what. We're just going to change the product name. But it was a bit earlier on and we knew that the company that we were going to go up against is quite litigious and relishes the opportunity to make people pay. Definitely something I can relate to very much. Alan, thanks so much for joining me. Where can people go to keep up with you and learn more about? Do us.

37:51 - Allan Christensen (Guest)

They're welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm not so much on social media these days. I do have a Twitter profile, but otherwise you can reach me at alan, at do uscom.

38:00 - Michael Koenig (Host)

Perfect. Thank you everyone for listening to between two COOs. I'm your host, michael Canig, and a very special thank you to Alan Christian for joining us. Tune in next time for our next COO chat on between two COOs, and be sure to subscribe on Apple podcast, spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode. Just visit between two COOscom for more and, if you have a minute, leave us a review on Apple podcast and tell others about the show so they can get great advice from phenomenal COOs like Alan. Thanks for listening to this week's episode. Tune in next time. Until then, so long,