EP 5: Jon Conelias, CEO at Elevent

James Mackey  0:12  

Hi, and welcome to scale by Design. Today, we're joined by Jon Conelias . Jon, welcome to the show!

 

Jonathan Conelias  0:18  

Thanks, James. It's a pleasure being here.

 

James Mackey  0:20  

We're happy to have you. And I'm really pumped to have this conversation with you today. Before we jump into it, though, would you mind sharing a little bit about your background and what you're currently up to?

 

Jonathan Conelias  0:29  

Sure, happy to! I feel like at some point, I became a veteran of this. And I don't know when that was, but now I'm feeling more like the old guy in the room where I have more grey hair than dark hair. At least that's what my kids tell me. 

 

So my background is early on in my career, I did investment banking, and I realized pretty quickly that that wasn't what I wanted to do, and fell in love with startups. So this is now actually my fourth startup. First is CEO and founder but the other three were I was employee one at the first one and CFO. 

 

At the second one, I was CFO and VP of ops. And the third one, I was CFO. And so one was an IoT product. That was a cooking thermometer that we sold to whoever grills and now it's built right into the grills, it's called the grill. The second one was an e-commerce company called The Grommet that focused on new and innovative products. And we ended up selling that company to racket 10, and then sold it from racket 10 days hardware. And then my last stop before Elevant was a company called scat exchange, where we were an AI and machine learning marketplace, helping connect recruiters and companies to more efficiently hire, we sold that in the summer of 2022 to eight one. 

 

Now, I'm the CEO and founder of Elevent which is an events platform. So we do in-person events, we do virtual events, really focused on connecting teams and clients of some 30 and under people who can do larger events, but really a platform where you can come browse and book instantly, events of all different kinds right now we have over 700 different virtual and in-person events. And a little bit of background is that we founded the company in September of 2020 and scaled it during COVID. Now we're up to 15 people and we've done over 5000 events in the last year and a half. And we're lucky enough to raise capital before kind of the markets turned upside down. So we're plugging along and hoping that the recession isn't horrible.

 

James Mackey  2:27  

I hear you, I'm right there with you. And, you know, one of the things we talked about just diving into today is just really your experience. 

Obviously, you've gone through several successful exits and scaled teams and organizations. So I would love to talk to us a little bit about from an early stage to hitting growth stage, to planning and building toward an exit. 

 

I would love to just dive into some of the biggest lessons learned that you've learned over the past three exits, and maybe that you're now applying in your position as founder CEO, can we talk about? Are there any lightbulb moments or big takeaways that you've learned throughout the years? 

 

Jonathan Conelias  3:07  

I mean, some of them are gonna sound pretty cliche. I think, I mean, this is the most cliche one to say, but I think it's really true. Having the right team is everything. 

 

If you don't have the right people, at different stages, it's really challenging to get the right things done in the right amount of time, and in an efficient way. So the team is everything. And I spent a lot of time early on recruiting people from my own network. 

And I think early on in a startup. I mean, you're not going to have the brand name, you're not going to have the ability to spend a lot of money on their salaries. So you're, you're selling them on you and your belief in the idea and then selling them on the actual idea. So they believe it too. And so it's trying to find those, those people that really believe will buy in, but are also really talented is extremely important. 

 

I think as a founder CEO, I mean, this is a lesson where like, I think we all believe that we all have all the answers all the time, or we want to and I don't think that's necessarily true. It's not going to be, it's funny, we get these conversations with investors all the time. And they're like, if you can just grow 20% month over month, you could raise capital really well. And you'd be a really successful company. And it's like, yeah, of course, like everybody would do that. If they could like no, there's no, there's nobody in the world that would ever say no to that. 

 

So the challenge is like it's never month over month consistent. It's ebbs and flows. There are good days, there are bad days. And so I think the moral of the story is you may not have all the answers, but getting up every morning and putting your best foot forward and moving forward. You start to find what those answers are. But I think part of it is really listening to your customers and listening to your team and understanding what they're saying. And then how to apply it to the business to make sure that you are on the right track and you can accelerate what you're doing? 

 

I think the last lesson is that it's constantly changing. Like, you may have an idea, and it may work for a while, but at different stages, you have to continually reinvent yourself. So for us, at least in this venture, I mean, going from zero to a million in revenue we had a strategy. And we could do it pretty quickly, I think trying to figure out how to go from a million to 3 million. We need a different strategy. And we need a different tactic. I mean, the demand is there, it's just not, we're not able to capture it in the same way that we captured the first million. 

 

I think you'll see that at every stage of the business where, as an executive team, you go from, like, doing everything to dealing some stuff and setting leadership goals to really the structure of the organization becomes massively important, or you're also not the one doing but setting the high-level goals and then making sure that the company is running effectively and efficiently. And I think there was a quote from Brian Chatzky, I'm sure there are others where like, you're constantly every six months or a year your job is completely different as a founder, CEO. If the company is changing dramatically.

 

James Mackey  6:14  

Yes, I've definitely experienced that. I mean, just over the past year, for me, things are changing quite drastically. Actually, last Friday just surpassed 5 million ARR at SecureVision. And it's really interesting because, at this point in time, it's the first time that we've actually had an executive team built out. 

 

So I have a VP of Operations, VP, of Customer Success, VP of Marketing. I am just now for the first time stepping out of sales. I did all the sales for the first few years. So because my background was in sales, I decided to hire a VP of Marketing first. And now we're bringing in a strategic adviser to help us standardize our sales process so that we can plug in a salesperson and have repeatable success there. 

 

But it is 100% true. I just see my role is changing. Basically, this is what I do. I do content production. It's kind of changing into more of like a Chief Growth Officer role where it's going out, it's meeting people going to events like SaaStr, going to dinners, groups like Pavilion, and just producing a lot of content for primarily LinkedIn.  So it's definitely you have to be adaptable as a founder, and CEO, right, and just do whatever is going to drive the business forward most drastically. Right?

 

Jonathan Conelias  7:29  

Yes. And I've had a similar shift. I mean, as we've really started to, I mean, for us, we're product-led growth. And so a lot of it has been inbound, mostly through paid search and other media, but organic is starting to really pick up and one of the best ways for us to accelerate organic is to get more meaningful backlinks. 

 

And so getting out and doing press and PR and just getting the company name out there is right now one of the most valuable things is the SEO that I can be doing. And so that's what I'm doing. And it's funny because it goes all the way down to like, what blog posts, are we posting what keywords are we focusing all the way up to like, how are we generating links and generating excitement on the platform? And that's just part of our acquisition strategy. 

 

But then we're transitioning into selling an enterprise product, where myself and my co-founder, that haven't been our bread and butter. And so how are we leveraging our own networks to take something that is working? And we've already sold a bunch of times, mostly by accident, and really accelerated.

 

James Mackey  8:32  

For sure. Maybe we start from there with the demand and acquisition strategy. Because I think we could riff on that. And that's actually something that we're currently expanding as well. 

 

So I'd be curious to just exchange strategy and tactics and see kind of what we're doing. So you mentioned that the path from zero to one is very different from the path from one to three. So what worked initially from that zero to one? And then how are you thinking about expanding on that strategy taken, from one to three?

 

Jonathan Conelias  9:02  

I don't know, it was harder, zero to one. I think one of the three is challenging in a different way. I don't know if I'd ever want to go back to zero to one because it literally started with a presentation and a Wix website, and just blocking and tackling. And it was just the more than you could grind, the better we would do. 

 

And then what really happened is the platform evolved, we could then drive traffic to the site in an effective way and convert that traffic in a cost-effective way. And we could then scale up until a limit of how effective we could convert those people. And with each new feature launched, we can improve conversion, we can then kind of raise that bar more and more and more. And that's mostly on the paid side. And excited for the longer game. I mean like we re-platform to be rebranded in February and March and April. 

 

And so we're kind of starting from square one of how you slowly drive, like improve your domain authority, improve your linkbacks, improve your content, get more content on site. So you can really put together a robust strategy. So for us, it's really been, so far it's been mostly product lead growth as far as like, how do we drive people in through different channels? How do we create a robust referral program? So we're re-engagement programs and we're keeping the customers that we have? And then how do we get people that are organically looking? Because organic can be 10x? What paid to do? So there's a huge opportunity in organic, but it's a much longer road. 

 

And then I think as we look forward, that's where we get more into the outbound where I think that's where you kind of live, but where, how are you getting in front of those people that aren't actively searching? How are you then convincing them to buy an annual subscription and not buy an individual event? And so what feature sets, what do they need? And I think to go back to one of your lessons that you asked me is like, never build something before you know what it is, like, I feel like a lot of founders get to that place where we know what our customers want. And you can put a presentation together, you can put a clickable prototype together and you can try to sell it before you actually have it. 

 

I mean, you need to be able to deliver that in the end. But like, I've seen so many people build things that just nobody wants. And if you can avoid that, avoid that at all costs. Because I think that can be, I mean, that can be a death sentence.

 

James Mackey  11:31  

Oh, yes. I mean, particularly in the early days, when you don't have particularly limited funding, right? To build your alternate initial feature set and product. 

It sounds like you were running paid search pretty early, though. So from zero to one, you already start paid search at that point in time? Or was that more of a motion? 

 

Jonathan Conelias  11:50  

No, we did. And the paid search was really a test for us to have like, I mean, it was a leading indicator for what type of supply we needed. So we have it, we're an event platform where we have to go get the supply and get them on our platform, but also get the customers. And so by at least looking at paid search data, we could see what demand was out there for different categories of events. And so that really led to a lot of our supply decisions early on.

 

James Mackey  12:16  

Gotcha. So our journeys were, I'm curious, I want to compare a little bit or just show any kind of contrast or similarities or whatever it might be. 

 

So initially, from zero to 3 million, we were primarily inbound, it was primarily referral word of mouth, which I think is pretty consistent with services, and business. So I think that's probably pretty consistent. But that was really weird. And then I also posted a fair amount of content on LinkedIn. And we would drive some business that way. Right? 

 

When we hit 3 million, we hired our VP of Marketing, on the same day.  I reached out to my financial advisor, and I was like, Okay, I got a guy. I think he's good. Can we go? Let's go. Right. So the same day, we hit 3 million ARR, I made that offer, and we got somebody in. And he just started like, opening up different channels and experimenting, not really even optimizing just like, "hey, let's just kind of try some different things and see what works. And we opened up the email, which I think has already generated close to 1.5 million in ARR, over the past like five months.

 

Jonathan Conelias  13:26  

Emails to existing customers or emails to more cold outreach?

 

James Mackey  13:29  

Like cold outreach, and I was not. I was not anticipating it being as effective as it has been, because it's kind of like this interruption marketing. And I was like, who's gonna like these are, you know, we're not doing a contingent search, right? Like we're doing RPO contracts valued anywhere from like, 180,000 to seven figures, right? Like it is interruption marketing really going to work for something that's a little bit more strategic and longer sales cycle. And it has been so that's been kind of a lesson learned, which I was kind of curious to see.

 

So we started doing outbound channels, like we also did. We got some different tools to send a lot of like mass emails, we generated some good leads and revenue from that. And then we recently started a paid search on Google. And within 24 hours, we actually got a pretty good lead, starting our Google search. So we haven't converted any revenue from Google yet. But we think it's just a matter of time, we recently started. 

 

Jonathan Conelias  14:02  

I mean, your Google experience sounds very much like our LinkedIn experience. And it's funny how it changes because when we started the business, we're like, oh, heads of HR events, people are gonna love this. And in reality, the event people focus on the bigger events, and heads of HR don't want to plan an individual event. They want a solution that truly,  like event coordinator, HR coordinator, or the EA that's actually doing the planning, and so on. So we had to kind of reassess who our customer was at that time. 

 

And so when we were doing LinkedIn ads, we were getting a tonne of people to click on these ads and give us their information in a really cost-effective way. But then we didn't have a solution to sell them. So now that we finally are getting to a place where we have a solution, now we have to go back and be like, Okay, this was working a year ago, let's see if we can get it going again, in this way to really drive people to the site. And really, what we're gonna do is we'll put a landing page on site next week, and really try to get them to come to the site and talk about the different offerings that we have.

 

James Mackey  15:25  

How do you decide in terms of splitting the budget between Google and LinkedIn? Like, what does that strategy look like?

 

Jonathan Conelias  15:32  

I mean, really, what we're doing on LinkedIn is testing. So it's a small percentage of the overall budget. I mean, right now, paid search and the other stuff we're doing are all kind of tried and true and proven. And really, what we're doing is assessing, what is our lifetime value of these customers and then backing into what we can spend on those channels to make the cost effective.

 

James Mackey  15:56  

And on LinkedIn, like, what kind of ads are you doing? Is it like sponsoring content like organic content initially that you know, performs? Well? Or is it like traditional ads, more traditional ads? And then what does that look like?

 

Jonathan Conelias  16:08  

A mix. So we've done lead ads, we've done ebooks, where we're trying to get people to download the content, we've done kind of coming by an event, which, frankly, is probably the lowest performing thing. 

 

We're Google like you have a very high intent to buy for searching for something on LinkedIn, if you're just browsing LinkedIn, like your intent to buy is much lower. And so we haven't effectively been able to get them on-site to buy. But that's, again, I don't think there's a mismatch between intent from the platform and what we're offering on our platform. 

 

So I think that for us, it's a little bit different. And then I think that the other thing that we are looking at doing is, how do we get in front of all these people that mean, right now, there's only a portion of people that actually search Google, when they're looking to do stuff, either in prior relationships, or they're figuring out a different way to do it. Or they don't want to just click on paid ads. We know who our customer is, now, we just need to get in front of them in cost-effective ways.

 

James Mackey  17:07  

Right. I mean, that's why our VP of Marketing wants to optimize Google prior to getting involved too deeply with LinkedIn paid because of the high intent. Like he really likes the fact that it's like, okay, we can get in front of really high intent buyers. And he feels like it's like a little bit more of a straightforward, repeatable motion to get in place. And once we figure that out, then we're going to be going more.

 

Jonathan Conelias  17:35  

I mean, it all depends on like, what is your landing experience? How are you getting them? I mean, then you can play the whole organic game as well, where somebody's out searching for RPO recruiting, like, where do you show up in the organic search? Another interesting nugget is always being as well, like there's, like, Google owns most of it. But there are some other opportunities as well within that kind of environment. As far as the kind of inbound search traffic.

 

James Mackey  17:59  

For sure. Right now on LinkedIn, I'm doing a lot of organic, just content. And I'm really focused on just optimizing my content strategy. So I have, like, gone through all my posts from the past several years and looked at all the highest performing content, and then quite honestly, focused on dumbing down that message to make it really easy to consume. And not getting too tactical or operational in my posts, and just like being very clear, with simple takeaways, and that's really helped drive a lot of reach. 

 

So, like, more consistently getting viral posts, where, I mean, last week, I did a post that's been viewed like 450,000 times. And it's like, it's in front of tech. Like most people engaging, it's all tech. So it's like, obviously, if we ran paid, like that it would cost 1000s of dollars. So the cost is my time really. Is my you know, there's opportunity calls there but we're investing a lot in organic and that is paying dividends because like there's a lot of times we'll get leads where a VP will say, Oh, my CEO told me to reach out and I'll look up the CEO and I don't know who that is. 

 

So obviously there are conversations happening in the background that are leading to leads, and a qualified pipeline. So that's been a really interesting motion and now that we've seen success with that I'm really doubling down on just LinkedIn organic for now. With the hopes of getting into again, like the paid side probably later this year.

 

Jonathan Conelias  19:28  

That's awesome. Yeah. That sounds like a good strategy.

 

James Mackey  19:34  

Yes. So far. 

 

Jonathan Conelias  19:36  

What kind of content do you share? Is it like a blog post? Is it just posts from you just talking about sharing relevant data? What did you find when you went back and looked at the engagement like what type of content were people actually engaging with?

 

James Mackey  19:50  

There are some certain topics that people really seem to like and usually, they're not topics that I find interesting, quite honestly. Like, I'd rather either write a post about, its post, by the way. So it's just organic posts that I just do on my LinkedIn profile, not on the company page or anything. It's just online. 

 

But I would love to do a post about things like greenhouse implementation and optimizing data workflows and, in analyzing what you know, what, what report we should be using at scale to optimize talent acquisition. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that I like, which is not the kind of stuff that most people like. 

 

So the posts, for instance, like that got, you know, around half a million impressions. It was very basic. It was " hire people that have done around 70% of the job before, the 30% they haven't done is why they accept your offer. A players in the tech industry don't accept offers for roles that they've done 100%. Obviously generalization, obviously, there could have been more context to put in that. But again, kind of like simplifying the message to make sure it's consumable, within, you know, three to seven seconds. That I mean, that post is one of the best performing posts I've ever had. It's only three sentences, and it's close to 5000 engagements and 450,000 impressions right now. 

 

So the other thing that I did was I actually researched other influencers and talent acquisition, and I reviewed all the topics that they're posting about. And whenever they have a post that gets like over 1000 engagements, I'm like, Alright, I'm gonna talk about that stuff. But I don't try to reinvent the wheel. Like, sometimes it's just like, what are the things that people care about? Right? It's mobility, it's mobility, its flexibility. It's, you know, those types of things, right, for my space, specifically. So I've just kind of found out what the audience likes. And then, I just tried to really provide a simple message around that. And that's actually interesting. 

 

Have you heard of Scott Leese, by any chance? He's big on LinkedIn. So he's like a revenue advisor, I think he's like a four-time VP of sales, you know, successful exits, Board of Directors probably, you know, 15/20 companies. 

 

So we brought him on as a sales kind of strategic adviser. And one of the things that he's helping us with is standardizing our sales process. So that we can make it more repeatable and more enterprise business hire for salesperson, that kind of stuff. And what one of the main takeaways was like, I was going into my pitch and how we position our company, and he was just like, just stop, stop, stop. Like, your job isn't to convince people that you're smart, or that you know, you have all this tactical insight, he's like, You need to simplify your message. 

 

So I went from like this long-winded like we provide an embedded recruiting solution that has a similar point of impact to an internal recruiter has an internal slight, you know, that whole all that things to "you can borrow recruiters from us. Like, just really simplifying it right? And so I've basically taken that philosophy into our content. And the content is now blowing up. As a result of just making it really simple for people to understand.

 

Jonathan Conelias  22:59  

I had a pretty similar experience when we were first doing venture racing, where I had this deck that had what I thought was really strong value, prop, and positioning. And an advisor of mine was like, cut it down by half, one, cut it down by half, but also simplify it like simplify the verbiage. Not because they don't understand but because you need to be able to portray what you're doing in a really simplistic way. So they get it really quickly.  I mean, it's funny, there's so much stuff in there. 

Like we believe in emotional elements in there like this. Get like your events platform. What are you? And one of the things too, is we were talking like, are we in an event marketplace? Are we events SaaS, and we just started using the word platform. And like everything clicked, all of a sudden, my close rate went to like 30% on VCs. Oh, that's awesome, which is from like, zero, I probably close one or two before then. But like, it was pretty early on. So the way that you describe things, and the simplicity is extremely important. I totally agree.

 

James Mackey  24:07  

Yeah, like, what are the mistakes I was making was going over too many differentiators and value adds like I always just had this desire to explain like everything about why we're better. Like I gotta go, you know, and Scott was just like, just like, pick one of them. Like, what's the top thing? Just Okay, say that, and then just don't say the other stuff.

 

Jonathan Conelias  24:26  

Yeah, it's, it's something that we have to continually correct ourselves on. Like, we want to be cute and fancy with words like team building experiences to create a bond. It's like events for connection. 

 

Like if you can be succinct and direct and people can get especially with product lead growth like people need to be able to instantly understand what you do and who you are when they land on that page. Otherwise, they're going to bounce.

 

James Mackey  24:56  

I totally agree. And I want to kind of just work on backward. So the second point you made was, you know, founder CEOs, we don't have all the answers right? And just kind of figuring things out as we go. 

 

But I would kind of like to dive into how to go about, scaling out an executive team, and how to bring on advisors. I mean, I think that that's like a critical skill set. I mean, this is also about getting the right team in place, but knowing, knowing when you know more about your business than anybody else. And so you need to make the decision versus Okay, it's time to bring in the advisor or the specialist. Can you talk to us a little bit about your view on that?

 

Jonathan Conelias  25:42  

Yeah, I mean, I think one, and this sounds cliche, too, but surround yourself with people that you think are smarter than you. And that's, I mean, I tried to do that every day. And also not just smarter than you, in general, but smarter than you in this specific discipline. 

 

I know my strengths, and I know my weaknesses. And so I try to surround myself with people that can backfill my weaknesses more so than my strengths. If I surround myself with people that are just like me, we're going to be a pretty one-dimensional company. I think as far as recruiting, I mean, I think it's hard. It's like, somebody told me, if you hire the wrong executive, it's six months before you realize it, maybe another three months before you fire them, and then you have to hire somebody else. And so it sets you back a pretty exponential amount of time. So how you go about recruiting people in that process and understanding that, like, there's no easy way around it.

 

I mean, I think the ways that I've found that I can kind of squeak around is if I've worked with people in the past, leveraging my network, getting referrals, but again, that's still somebody could be amazing at one place and just not be the right fit and another and it's nothing personal against them. There could be a whole variety of reasons why, why that doesn't work out. 

 

So, I would figure out ways to validate and test upfront like, I mean, for like our engineering talent, we make sure we do tests or even virtually like code assessments. So like, are we getting who we think we're getting? I think as you get into leadership positions, there are a lot more kinds of less tangible skills, like how do you exhibit leadership qualities over time and motivate your team and hire the right people? Like, those are things you can't really test for in interviews? So I'm not sure I have a silver bullet on that one. 

But it's more of just understanding where your gap is the biggest and starting from there. Is probably what I would say.

 

James Mackey  27:45  

Yes, I have an opinion that I think a lot of people don't like. It's somewhat unpopular. But I think at a startup level, particularly for a seed Series A, in some cases, maybe Series B, I think it's just incredibly important to get people that come from a similar environment. 

 

So if you're, you know, a startup, SaaS product company, positioning toward an enterprise buyer, like, ideally, you have people on staff that come from that type of similar background. So for instance, sometimes people ask me like, yeah, okay, but if we wanted to hire somebody from an enterprise company, how would we vet it, see if they're going to be good in a startup? 

 

And my response is, like, I just want to do it, the risk is too high. And I know that there are exceptions, and there are people that can make the transition, but I see it as like, we need to remove as much risk as possible. And we need to get this higher, right? And we're more likely to get that higher, right? If they come from a very highly relevant environment, which again, I think a lot of people push back on that philosophy.

 

Jonathan Conelias  28:58  

But I would say like, you need them to have the relevant experience, but also the relevant stage as well. Like, if they were at, say, we're doing an E-commerce company, and they were at Amazon or Wayfair like that, that is hard to translate to a seed series ten to fifteen person or organization like maybe they had. I mean, it would depend on what projects they worked on, did they ever create an environment in that way? They probably have really valuable skill sets, but like, what else did they do in their career? To give you a sense of security, can they integrate into the team? And are they actually going to do what you need them to do versus Amazon, I'm sure they have an exponential amount of resources and support and barriers and maybe Amazon's not the best example but it's a great example that is challenging. 

 

And then I think the other religions and pieces like the people that got you there are not always the people that take you to the next step. And that becomes really challenging as well. So the people that got you from the seat to the series A are probably not the leaders that you need to go to your B and C and D round like it's just the beginning. comes such a different environment where you're managing 100 people on a team versus four.

 

James Mackey  30:07  

Yes, you're right. That is challenging. One thing that I do with leaders too, is I like, early growth stage, I like to hire people that still have something to prove and are kind of punching up. 

 

So, for instance, like, I might give somebody who's truly a director, or VP title, if they're an experienced director, and I think that they have the right foundation, give them that shot as the first VP, but then also setting an expectation. And typically, these are individuals that you know, are gonna have access to stock options and stuff like that. But like, Look, our goal is to grow this organization. And if that means you continue to lead the function, then that's what we'll do, but also be open to the fact that if we continue to grow, and we feel like it's going to be better for your professional development, and for the company's development to hire someone more experienced, like, I need to make sure you're okay with that. 

 

Obviously, that's easier said than done. But I think sometimes expectation setting around that, can make it a little easier. But obviously, depending on how big the egos are, and how experienced if it's like a highly experienced VP that has, you know, like, this is their third fourth startup, I think they're going to be a lot less okay with that, than somebody that's kind of punching up, leveling up their skill set. 

 

Jonathan Conelias  31:24  

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important early on to create the leveling structure that you want at scale because that avoids painful conversations down the road. And so letting somebody punch above their weight and lead the team, maybe give them the title, maybe you don't, but at least create that flexibility for yourself, where if you do have to hire over them, you're not doing it in a way that you have to reset a bunch of stuff, or you're overpaying to people on that team. 

 

So, I've learned that the hard way, like where he made mistakes early on in the structure, and then you have to figure out how to deal with them.

 

James Mackey  32:00  

Right. And it's like just another thing to deal with when you just want to focus on growth. You want to focus on the front of the experience, the customer experience retention, and you want to focus on the demand side, but then you're focused on all these org things that just become incredibly complex and just take the focus off growth and retention, and all that kind of stuff. 

 

Cool. Well, look, you know, I know we're coming up on time here. This has been a really fun conversation. I would actually love to continue it if you enjoyed this. Like we should just do this. 

 

Maybe like once a quarter just have you on the show and just carry jobs. This was a lot of fun. Jon, thank you so much for joining us today. This was a blast.

 

Jonathan Conelias  32:40  

Thank you. It was great. Anytime. Let's come to yeah, let me know.

 

James Mackey  32:46  

Let's do it. Hey, real quick before we jump off, and people want to follow you, your company online like work or can they find you?

 

Jonathan Conelias  32:54  

Our website is bookelevent.com. So you can check us out there. I'm on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn. My name is Jonathan Conelias. So you can look me up on LinkedIn. Feel free to message me.

 

James Mackey  33:08  

Okay, cool. Well, for everybody tuning in. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next time.