Full Transcript – Eric Johnson – Wild Business Growth Podcast #333

This is the full transcript for Episode #333 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Eric Johnson – SurveyMonkey CEO, Music Entrepreneur. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Eric Johnson 0:00
The core of the business has to be solid before you can really expand into other areas.

Max Branstetter 0:20
Do me a solid, consider yourself welcomed back to Wild Business Growth. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting, yet again, I run out of breath while reciting this. This is episode 333, and today’s guest guest is Eric Johnson, CEO of SurveyMonkey, the world’s most popular platform for surveys and forms. In this episode, we talk all the touch points of the SurveyMonkey journey, what Eric is focused on and a day in the life, so to speak, as CEO of a company that has over 1000 employees and the Beastie Boys, it is Mr. Johnson. Enjoyyyyy the showwwww!

Max Branstetter 1:22
Aaaaalrightyyyyyy we are here with Eric Johnson, CEO of SurveyMonkey, and apologize for how much we’re going to monkey around. I’ve been planning that one for weeks. Thanks. But no really, really cool, iconic company and an amazing leader, Eric, thank you so much for making time today. Thanks for joining. How you doing

Eric Johnson 1:41
today? Yeah, it’s my pleasure. Thank you. I’m doing great. Thank you very much for having me on.

Max Branstetter 1:45
Yeah, yeah, of course, and totally fair if you’re going to jump off right after that opening line. So I appreciate you hanging in, hanging in longer, but the

Eric Johnson 1:52
name lends itself to joke, so I appreciate that. It’s a very serious business and a friendly name. So

Max Branstetter 2:02
we’re gonna talk all things serious and friendly. So before we talk SurveyMonkey, I did some serious friendly stalking, as I call it, as research for this interview. And there’s many interesting points in your background that we can talk to today. But one that jumped out at me is a little bit unique. Was, believe it’s called Wolfgang’s vault, but also, now seems it’s known as Wolfgang’s but that is, uh, in the musics and music publishing space, or music catalog space. What’s your tie or affinity to working in the music space professionally?

Eric Johnson 2:34
I was a banker out of college, so I worked in investment banking for about 11 years, and I left in 2005 and decided I wanted to do something on the operating side. And my focus was really finding something that was small enough that they would let me have a important role and make some decisions. And I wanted something that was consumer centric, and I met a guy named Bill Sagan, who had bought the Bill Graham archives out of Clear Channel when they were spinning out Live Nation, and it was this extraordinary collection of live concert recordings and concert memorabilia and the intellectual property attached to all of This. And Bill had spent time with a team digitizing all these assets and building this e commerce business, and I came in, I think about a year and a half after they put the business together, and we built out what was this pretty extraordinary collection of other archives. We acquired a couple of studios and recorded new bands, and we had this amazing e commerce business. It was nichy, but it was wild how the recordings that we had, audio and video, and, you know, had this great chance to to work in music for about five years. It was fun, and it was my first real exposure to what it meant to work in a business, and not just on the advisory side. In

Max Branstetter 4:08
a business is one thing, but in a business in the music space, like I feel like the music space, especially for the past couple decades, has changed more than potentially any industry out there. What kind of shocked you or slapped you hit the face about the music industry based on that first experience,

Eric Johnson 4:22
there were probably two sides to it. One was just operating a business. And back then, when we were building building an E commerce business, you didn’t have stripe, you didn’t have these tools that you could use as elements of your platform. We had to build most of the stuff ourselves. We built a music streaming service that we had on Apple in particular, and then worked with Sonos, and had an app on Sonos, and we were Max app. Or the year that in 2008 I think, and you know, on time when they had their 50 coolest websites, we were there. And so that, running a business the. Exposure the day to day. And the fun thing of that was I was literally dealing with music labels and looking for acquisitions and folding T shirts and dealing with customer service calls and building a team that was before we had product managers building product and designing websites and thinking about what the service overall should look like. And so you had this really cool exposure to running a business and everything soup to nuts. And you had the music business, which is a fascinating mix, I’ll say, of copyrights and intellectual property and good conversations and work to get the stuff out there. And, yeah, the music business has changed massively, and we were kind of in the middle of that transition where people were starting to launch streaming services, and it’s now become the default. But we were early, and we were also this interesting live, recorded, live music version of which there are some others out there as well. But it was a really fun one, fascinating one to work on and kind of get my feet wet in the operating side.

Max Branstetter 6:13
And I’ll credit you with a very well thought out pun there with mix in the music industry, mix a playlist. So you know, well done there. And actually musics, musics, music and ticketing in person events actually ties exactly to what you were doing right before or right at the start of 2020, and eventually, before you got to survey monkey. Can you just give us a little Snapchat? Snapchat, a little snapshot of why COVID, which has been really good and really bad for some businesses that locked down in 2020 including many guests we’ve had on the show. Can you share why it wasn’t the best thing for that startup you

Eric Johnson 6:52
had? We had this really interesting business that was a joint venture between Live Nation and a group called the Azoff company and Irving Azoff and now the team there have built one of the biggest music management businesses in the world. Irving’s legend in the industry. And what we built was a digital service to power live events and focusing on the high end of the music market to begin with. And I had gotten some pieces wrong in the business model early. We kind of corrected those through 2018 and this was working really well. We worked with some massive artists like the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and Harry Styles and Travis Scott and this crazy list of a list artists. And it was working. It was a place where Lane one was the company, and people knew the name. They were using it in the I’m going to buy a lane one, the where you want to be as a brand, like I’m going to launch a Survey Monkey kind of thing. And 2020, started off just absolutely on fire. We had some huge shows. We had travel working on we had a B to B model that we were building out. And we’re working closely with AmEx and Live Nation on some of these elements. And then March of 2020, hit and just shut the door. And, you know, I think collectively managed the transition well, but there was just nothing. It was all based on live events and the Ticketmaster and Live Nation, who owned half the business, were in the place where they were preserving cash everywhere to be in the position they’re in now, or the last couple of years, which was coming out of COVID, if you could survive that winter, it’s been extraordinary, and they’ve done an amazing job of that, but our business just didn’t have the staying power at that point to make it through, which was frustrating, because we had done a lot of things right as A investor group, as a board, as a team, and we had this cool, small team in San Francisco and Nashville that had built something pretty special.

Max Branstetter 9:12
Well, speaking of Survey Monkey, which you alluded to, let’s get to a really special and and unique company that personally, like, you know, I’ve been a fan of Survey Monkey, use you guys ever since going back. I think I was in like, high school, first time I heard about you guys, and now I’m still in high school. No, I’m just going, it’s really cool to see other companies grown and evolved over the years. And what was it that brought you back? You’ve had a mix of entrepreneurial and also leading existing companies. What was it about SurveyMonkey in particular? Besides just monkeys being super cool and fun, fun and serious, as you said, what is it that brought you to survey monkey?

Eric Johnson 9:50
It was a combination of things, one of which is the brand is iconic. It is 25 year old business that is known. And worldwide, we’ve got customers on 173 countries. We have about 1000 people spread around the globe on the team. And I loved the idea of working with that brand and thinking about, what are those next 25 years look like. How does this business evolve? I really like the business model. We have this core product led growth model that feeds a pretty big enterprise sales motion as well, and the balance is really interesting, the fact that the product is the best advertisement for the company. When you send a survey, you are sending our brand to dozens or hundreds or 1000s of people, and that’s kind of the genius of the way the model works. And it’s plg before plg was a thing. When the Finley brothers created this business, 25 years ago, there didn’t exist an online survey market. There was no no one was thinking about this as an accessible tool. It was in the hands of high end researchers. But to make this something that was practical and easy to use for then hundreds, now hundreds of 1000s of paying customers, it’s amazing, and it’s endured because the basic principles have applied, which is, it’s this really powerful tool that’s easy to use for a broad set of people, that is from that startup all the way through massive

Max Branstetter 11:35
corporations and real quick. Plg, I could guess. But what does it stand for? Sorry, product

Eric Johnson 11:39
led growth. So the simple notion that using the product should drive awareness and should drive more usage, and you see that survey monkey is a great example. You’ve got DocuSign, another great example of you sign something, you get pulled into the flow, and there’s a whole bunch of others. And again, the beauty is that the product, when done well, does a whole lot of that work of acquiring new customers.

Max Branstetter 12:04
I was gonna guess it was a professional lacrosse club in Paris. So thank you for explaining that one. But yeah, so clearly, an iconic and fun brand, and the brand speaks for itself. And as you were saying, the product speaks for itself in your experience kind of leading the charge so far. What’s been the biggest difference between, like, the main goals and priorities offerings of Survey Monkey today, versus kind of like the early, early days when it started as probably purely a survey company?

Eric Johnson 12:36
Yeah, it’s a good question. There are maybe four or five different phases, if you can indulge me for a minute, in the history of Survey Monkey, which is the initial founding, which was these two brothers who started in the Midwest. And the story goes that they, one Friday night, unplugged the server, drove to Portland, plug it back in in Portland, and then really built the business out on the West Coast, and then built this really impressive self funded business. I think they took some money on later, but really had built this things themselves, and it was profitable from the early days. And then the business was acquired by a private equity group called spectrum, with Dave Goldberg back in 2009 moved the headquarters to Palo Alto and realized they had this gem that could use a push, and they invested in sort of plowed all those earnings back into growth and drove a really impressive number of years of growth. Dave sadly passed away in 2015 and a guy called Xander Lurie took over as CEO. They added and pushed hard moving on top of that, product led growth into the enterprise. So pushing for more enterprise features, adding elements that work well for security and sign on and admin authorization, plus feature sets in the product. And took the company public in 2018 and was public company up until May of 2023 when it was taken private by a group called STG, and I joined right after the company was taken private. You know, the evolution of the business has been sort of just that, which is that core has remained, which is people seeking feedback, asking questions, using that to drive value for their business. And I think there’s sort of the simplified version of we’re going to survey our softball team to see what 100 pizza but the the reality is that the usage is extraordinary. When you think about the employee feedback, the customer satisfaction feedback, marketing tests that are both existing customers or. Are panel based, and the value that people drive to make decisions is what you see in the success of the business and then the success, frankly, of the industry. And so there’s been competition that’s obviously sprouted up over the years that are going after different segments of the market. We remain, I believe the sweet spot of the market, which is, again, this balance of easy to use and a really powerful business tool, the business had gone through a shift when the market was the stock market was putting a huge premium on enterprise sales growth. There was that window of time, end of 2019 up through early COVID and into 2021 when the multiples on these SaaS companies were crazy. And so there was a really hard push towards the enterprise. And in fact, the business was rebranded as momentum, where survey monkey was still a product brand within that, but there were a couple of other pieces alongside of that within the company. And after the deal was done and we went private, we went back to survey monkey, it was kind of the first decision announcement that I got to make, which was well received in the company and the brand move made a lot of sense back then. It really was that focus and that premium, so there was good logic to it, but the brand Survey Monkey is such an interesting asset and so well known, and you were working hard anywhere to rise above the fray and get the name out there that to not leverage that as a core asset just didn’t make sense. What in this phase that we’re in now?

Max Branstetter 16:44
It makes a lot of sense. And that’s, you know, like an extreme example of that name changes. What people are talking about now with HBO and HBO Max, and then to max, and then back to HBO Max, and then, and then, you know, ultimately, a lot of people are like, you know, you have such great branding with HBO, why switch it? And I think the survey monkey name speaks to itself and speaks for itself. Monkeys around itself. But in terms of leading a company that, over the years, is known for kind of Top of Mind, doing one thing incredibly well, obviously, the survey, it’s in the name surveys and forums and everything there. How do you kind of navigate that? Like, what’s your strategy as CEO in terms of leading a company, like making sure you can be like the best of the best, as far as offering those surveys and forms, but also like finding ways to continue to grow the company, you know, with some of the new things involved,

Eric Johnson 17:33
yeah, it’s a good question. I have a very firm belief that the core of the business has to be solid before you can really expand into other areas. Otherwise, you’re trying to fill gaps that are being created on that core and you have to earn the right to go into other categories. I had an old boss who always referred it to you can’t skip levels in a video game. You’ve got to beat the boss at the end of each set to then build yourself up for those next levels, and I think it applies, which is, you need to go into categories that are either adjacent for your customers. So thinking about, what can we offer for that existing buyer that works alongside of our platform or within the platform so forms as a use case, is a sweet spot of our platform, but we still aren’t thought of as much for forms. If you read the online reviews in g2 we’re always the number one online forms provider, but because our name is Survey Monkey, people think about other forms products, when 20% of our use cases are forms, it’s just not thought of. And there’s opportunities there that’s both positioning in the product marketing, the website, the messaging. So to me, it’s a combination of you have to understand the details of what are the levers that drive the business, and make sure that there is a real strength in that core, and then find these areas that are adjacencies, find use cases that are complements to how people are using the product today. Offer those up, make those easy to find, discover, buy use. I think it’s the same for most businesses, and some you can get to a certain size and say, All right. We’re Amazon. We’re going into self driving cars, fine, but you know, you’ve got, you’ve earned that right at that scale. And again, I think for us, it’s really about those adjacent categories that work for the core buyers of the platform, whether that’s HR or CX or marketing, other use cases that we see and finding ways to reach out to them, either with new products, features in the existing product, or just ways to use the existing platform.

Max Branstetter 19:51
I think you stumbled onto your next huge product extension. There is Monkey driving cars like the survey monkey mobiles. I think. You know, who would say, No, I’m always fascinated by the CEO role, especially in a huge company. And it’s like the cliche, like, you have to wear so many different hats, and so I’m always fascinated what your role kind of actually looks like. You have a really interesting background where, like, you have the finance side, you have the marketing side as well. Obviously there’s music side that we spoke to. What do you think is like coming in handy the most so far in SEO? Survey Monkey,

Eric Johnson 20:26
I think it’s a combination of a lot of the background. The finance helps. The beauty of banking is you pick up some skills where you can look at an income statement, you can look at a balance sheet and understand pretty quickly what’s going on. And importantly, use that to think about what you can do next and understand where there are issues and opportunities. The trick, then, is turning that into something you can operationalize. I’m not sure that’s a word, but how can you translate that to a company? And what do these numbers mean? What’s good in them, what’s bad in them, what are the details that are important? And I am a little bit obsessive around details, and always have been. I love data, talking about data, and understanding the specifics of it, and what are the drivers of that, and my background in digital entertainment, consumer focused brands, actually works really well for our business, because the core front end of Survey Monkey is getting people into the business and using the product at scale, and about two thirds of our business is people buying the software online with a credit card, using it, engaging them finding ways to design the product differently. And I am a massive believer in the value of design and product interaction. And I think we still have opportunities where we can keep evolving what we’re doing. And so understanding how to build consumer products has been a real value for translating that to a really powerful survey platform, software product that has these use cases for you know, again, a broad array. The common theme is the user and the evolution of software, where it used to be these really bad UI that you had to deal with, and now we’re all in a place where we’re using stuff like figma and SurveyMonkey and others that are great designed products that are fun and easy to use? Yeah,

Max Branstetter 22:41
I imagine it gets pretty trippy when you think about it, of like, you know, so many companies out there need to do market research, and for you, it’s like you already, you already build the tools yourself, so you just tap into that. You You know, you know, you know the people you can make a call. But if you were to look at like an area of the business, or potential area of the business that is kind of picking up steam as like a big, big focus in the coming years. What would you say?

Eric Johnson 23:07
The obvious theme is, AI, what is that? No, I’m just going, yeah, no, no, I get it.

Max Branstetter 23:16
Yeah. You want to focus on practice.

Eric Johnson 23:20
Brooke is on the 76 years. The theme that I believe, or the trend that I believe, is that human feedback is going to be even more valuable over these coming years, that there’s these ideas around synthetic feedback, which is interesting, which is building a market research product that uses AI to simulate what customers would say to me that highlights the exact challenges of every large language model is that they’re only up to date as much as they’re up to date. And so the value of real human feedback is that you’re getting real time information from people, and they are telling you what they believe, and it’s based on changes that were made. It’s based on new updates that they understand or the way they feel that week. And machines are not doing that well, and they cannot predict that yet. Maybe, I don’t know, but I do believe that that core driver, and the use of feedback in people’s business has just grown massively, and the pace at which that’s accelerating is exciting, and the speed at which you can collect and use that information is pretty cool, and it’s one of the big pitches and push for us, which is that speed to insight, and not just so you can show a PowerPoint presentation that shows pie charts, and you know what people feel about things, but to really think about, okay, if it’s employee feedback and it’s your benefit survey, what are we doing with our providers as we go into that? Now? Next year, how are we making decisions on the dollars that we’re spending that make a difference to our employees, if it’s customer satisfaction, where are those sticking points that they’re hung up on that you aren’t just seeing in the click data, but you’re seeing in those responses that are the nuances in between, and AI is really helpful for aggregating some of those responses and offering up ideas to use and to focus on. But I think that the the value of human feedback is only increasing, and it’s, it’s one of these, you know, really cool assets we have because of our scale and the way the platform works for people

Max Branstetter 25:40
you hit on a great point as far as speed goes, and thinking about SurveyMonkey, a couple of things, as far as, like, sending out surveys and forums, that comes to mind that you guys do so well is, like the speed and then the ease of use and, like, simplicity of it. You don’t need to reveal all your tricks, but internally, how do you kind of get those core principles across throughout such a giant organization,

Eric Johnson 26:03
it’s tricky, right? Because you get into this focus on a set of features, and the teams are building at pace and building with the user in mind and customer requests and ideas around where to take the product. And as you roll out features, you’re trying to find ways to integrate that into a core platform and make that obvious and usable for the customer, the user. And you need to have a holistic view of what does that experience and that flow look like. And so I think it is the challenge and the beauty of a design team and a product team working with their developers to deliver that balance. And there, I don’t think there’s a secret sauce. I think it really is about that tension. I think the thing that we’ve done well as an organization is building a an experiment culture into everything we do. And sometimes you can go too far, and you can do these micro experiments that are too detailed when you could just change the button or the color of something and move forward, but that mindsets really powerful and valuable and and that key is guiding people down path to test things that are going to move the needle for the business for the customer in service of that goal, which is marrying easy to use with a powerful platform. Yeah,

Max Branstetter 27:29
that’s, like, a really insightful but scary thing that you just shared, because a culture of experimentation is amazing. Like, I think that’s what any like name any successful company in the past two, three decades like that has been key. You know, it’s like there’s so many companies that incentivize employees to putting it lightly, you know, play around a little bit as far as experimenting some new ideas that are kind of outside the box. And the scary part of that is, like, if you’re working at a company that specializes in surveys and forums and market research, theoretically, you can test anything. So how do you? How do you, how do you keep that focus that you spoke of, of making sure that the testing is truly meaningful and that you know the team is being still efficient with

Eric Johnson 28:13
everything. It is exactly the right question, and it is the both the benefit of this experimentation culture and a product that is built for feedback that is really important and and also having confidence in decisions and making decisions and not waiting for that 99th bit of feedback, but that first 98 are important and valuable and, and there is some value in having people that understand what statistical significance looks like and a relevant sample size and moving forward based on a certain amount of data, is powerful. And so again, I think it really comes back to making sure the team understands. What are the levers that move the business. What are the things that our customers value? What are the things that are challenges for our customers, and are we solving those with the work we’re doing? And if not, and we’re just tweaking a button, let’s reprioritize and let’s not experiment for the sake of experimenting, but keep that mindset and do it for that customer and make changes that will make a difference again, for the customer and then for the business.

Max Branstetter 29:32
So let’s tweak the interview a little bit. I’m gonna hit a button here that’s gonna switch it up a little bit. I mean, I typically call this segment like inspiration and creativity, and I’m really curious, like, without a doubt, being a CEO at a well known company is known as being a very stressful job, and so there’s a lot you need to manage, you know, internally with yourself, in addition to not even mentioning the organization. So do you have any tips and tricks? That you’ve learned over years and your time leading companies for like, how to keep it as lower stress as possible for yourself in the day to day scenarios you’re in, I think

Eric Johnson 30:10
it’s different for everyone. I will say the absolute most important on the job stress management tip is make sure you have a fantastic team. And that number one job of any CEO is the hiring a team, and maybe compliment to that is making sure there’s space for that team to do their job well. And I do again, I think that that is the the most important thing. And I’ve got this amazing combination of people that have been at Survey Monkey for a long time and some very new people. And that balance works really well. And as people in senior roles that have either been recruited into those roles or promoted up that as a both balance that is giving you real feedback, that is feels comfortable sharing the good and the bad and and then as a point of leverage for everyone in the organization, having a confident and smart and empathetic management team makes day to day life much better. I mean, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m old enough that I really care about working with people that I like, and it matters and that so that is something that I’ve been again, both really lucky in the people that were there, and I think lucky also in people we’ve hired that that are genuinely good human beings and really good at their jobs. That that at work. It sounds obvious, but I do think that is the, you know, the great lever anybody has in any executive position, who you work with,

Max Branstetter 31:57
yeah, and you take that back, you’re not old, so I don’t wanna hear any of that flying around, but,

Eric Johnson 32:03
well, you can look at my LinkedIn, people can do the math.

Max Branstetter 32:07
No calculators allowed. So that’s kind of like in the business, in the day to day. From that standpoint, how about when you’re like, are you able to find any sort of way to unplug or, like, have room for any hobbies in your life? Yeah, yeah,

Eric Johnson 32:21
for sure. I mean families first, and I’m super lucky. I’ve got a wife. We’ve been married for. I should know this 22 years. I was gonna just look at your LinkedIn. Yeah, exactly. And and two awesome kids who are 14 and 11 and a little dog, and it’s great. We’ve got a pretty tight knit family. One of the great things coming out of COVID was, as bad as it was for my business, I had a lot of time on my hands, and we started doing family dinner every night, and we don’t quite do every night. Now, my wife’s busy. She’s got a big job, but we make it a priority. That’s the most important for me. The other thing I do, just as a hobby, is I like to run. I ran with a group, a team, for a little bit in my 30s and early 40s, and have not kept it up at that level. But I try and run five days, six days a week, and it is my great stress reliever as a sort of daily I just I feel better, and starting my day with that makes a big

Max Branstetter 33:32
difference for me. How early is your wake up? Typically?

Eric Johnson 33:35
540 is my typical? All right, that’s not bad. I don’t

Max Branstetter 33:39
know you hear some stories about runners waking up at three or four.

Eric Johnson 33:42
I know some of those people, and I am not running far enough these days to need to get up that early. So,

Max Branstetter 33:50
yeah, they’re inventing, inventing longer and longer marathons. Exactly, exactly. What is it about running those morning runs that helps you prepare yourself for the day. Work Day,

Eric Johnson 34:01
I have either my most productive or least productive 45 minutes of the day when I’m running, and both are super valuable. I either get an ear worm song stuck in my head that loops for 40 minutes, or I start thinking about an issue at work, an idea that I want to talk about, presentation I’ve got to give, and I can work through that on a run. And like I said, those days where it’s next to nothing is amazingly valuable, because the physical side of it’s great. And there’s a little bit of a release in not thinking about things for a period of time again. It’s, it really is just a hobby I love and keeps me in decent enough shape where it sort of helps day to day and and then there are some productive moments in there that are pretty useful. I hate

Max Branstetter 34:59
when productive. Of moments are useful, yeah. What about on the as far as like people you look up to, like, Are there any other CEOs out there, past or current that are kind of big inspirations, or you try to model some of your game after? I’ll cite

Eric Johnson 35:16
an old boss and a good friend of mine, a guy named Jim Lanzone, who is the CEO at Yahoo now, because he was a friend, we had a really good relationship as as a boss. And the basic principle he he had was, you know, you hire experts. They will hire experts that you solve for that, and you give people space to run their business, do their job. And he was a detail oriented guy that, you know, I think really changed. He was running CBS interactive when I was there, running a group in his division, and then running Yahoo. They’ve done an amazing job of turning that business around. And I think that the balance of detail oriented and providing that space for people to work and run is a really healthy lesson for anyone. As you grow in manager ranks, it’s hard to let go, it’s and you have to realize that you have to, and I struggle with that some days where the details are important and you need to back off on some things, and finding that and treating that the right way is really important. So there’s a number of others. I’ve got a good friend also, who runs a business called bell ring brands, which is a very different business, which is in the consumer products, food business, Darcy Davenport, and she came up from the marketing side, and this business was spun out of posts, and is a, just a monster on the market now. And I just, I think the way she leads, the way she thinks about managing people, you know as humans, is so powerful and that you can see the success that comes from that.

Max Branstetter 37:11
All right. Well, we’re about to see you as a real human here, the most human you’ve ever been. We’re wrapping up with rapid fire, Q, A, you ready for it? Let’s do it. All right, let’s, get wild, as wild as a monkeys of the survey variety. All right, I know you went to school at Princeton. We live in New Jersey. Shout out, jersey. You know you’re based in Bay area. Now, I’m always interested, like the love hate about some people love Eastern time. Some people love Pacific time. What’s your take on it? Like the biggest other than the three hour difference, what’s the biggest difference about living and working in those worlds?

Eric Johnson 37:46
I lived in New York for about five years after college, and loved it. I wouldn’t trade living in New York for anything, and I’m glad I moved

Max Branstetter 37:54
that’s what everybody says, yeah, the

Eric Johnson 37:57
West Coast, I feel like, has a little more balance to life. And there’s certainly parts of the East Coast that have that good balance, and certainly parts of the Bay Area and other places that don’t have the balance but but I do feel like the lifestyle on the West Coast, it’s better suited for me. There’s winters, aren’t really winters, and you can be outdoors as much as you want. From a time zone standpoint, it’s interesting. I mean, if you just go time zone, East Coast is better. From a time zone standpoint, you can work with more of the world you’ve got. You know, there is the center of the world in New York, and that’s real. But I grew up on the West Coast, and I’m kind of partial, so

Max Branstetter 38:41
there’s that. So my brother in law shout out, Adam lives in, uh, Orange County, and we went out to visit him a few years ago, right before you started Serbia. No, but you know, it was like my first time in California in a long, long time, and lived on eastern time my entire life, except for one summer in Texas. And when you’re so used to Eastern Time, and then you go out there, I had the sensation of, like, always feeling behind, unless you wake up super early out there. Was that an adjustment for you at all

Eric Johnson 39:11
it was and in, you know, it was in the banking at the time, and so you sort of work a little bit of market hours. I wasn’t trading, so I didn’t have to be on right away, but day is starting at nine east coast, whether you’re up or not, yeah, and so it’s important that you are up early and you adjust your schedule accordingly. I had a good friend who was from Jersey, lived in New York and would make fun of the west coast because of the football times. He’s like, it’s not a real place if you’re starting an NFL game at 10am He now lives out here and realizes how great it is that you’re starting those games at 10am and importantly, the last game ends before midnight. So you know, there’s some benefits for

Max Branstetter 39:55
sure. Yeah, Adam always talks about like, NFL Sunday brunch. It’s the best. Thing, but that would be the biggest adjustment for me is, like, what you know, if there’s like, a playoff game and it starts at like, 4pm or something, I’m like, Oh, wow, that’s a lot different. So all right, enough about time zones, credit standard time for sponsoring this episode now, just kidding, what is an ear worm that’s been stuck in your head on one of your runs recently?

Eric Johnson 40:21
That’s a great question. I have a pretty broad array of music interests. Well, the one that always gets stuck in my head is a Beastie Boys song Paul Revere, which came out when I was in sixth grade. And I can still sing every lyric of that song. If I have a go to karaoke song, it is that you’re welcome to if you want. We’ll do that when the video.

Max Branstetter 40:49
Yeah, exactly. All right, no sleep till Brooklyn. What was like? The biggest thing that surprised you about moving from the finance world to like a more marketing company,

Eric Johnson 40:59
the challenges that come with managing and managing people. Well, was interesting. I worked with a lot of people, obviously in banking and managed teams of people, but it’s different. It was deal related, and it was specific to a project versus the day to day. That sometimes can be a grind, because sometimes you’re working on something for eight months a year, the core of what you’re doing and keeping people motivated and keeping people focused on what makes a difference was a really interesting learning to me. I thought I knew what that looked like, and I learned a lot actually being in there and making mistakes and getting some stuff right and realizing what your own management style looks like and not needing to define that, but you sort of get a sense of what works and doesn’t for you.

Max Branstetter 41:49
And then last one clearly the most important. If you were reincarnated as an actual monkey, what monkey would you like to be?

Eric Johnson 41:57
I do not know enough about the primate family to give you a good so I’m going to say howler monkey.

Max Branstetter 42:04
I’m howling along for that one, howling for you another song, The Black Keys, that gets stuck in your head. So Eric, thank you so much. Really, really appreciate you sharing your time and insights and wisdom and Beastie Boys love just big fan of what you’re doing and SurveyMonkey. And I know if anybody wants to learn more or do some survey monkeys themselves, they can do SurveyMonkey.com Eric, where, if somebody wants to connect with you online, where’s the best place

Eric Johnson 42:28
for that? Yeah, on LinkedIn is the best place to reach out. And SurveyMonkey.com as you said, is the best place to find more about what we’re doing.

Max Branstetter 42:36
Perfect. Awesome. And then, what’s your second favorite type of monkey? No, just kidding. Last thing, final thoughts could be a quote, just kind of a mantra, words to live by, whatever you want. Send us

Eric Johnson 42:44
home here, the mantra that I live by for work is better is better find ways to make a difference that are small, that build over time. And it’s a core principle that we operate by at SurveyMonkey, and one that I try and live by,

Max Branstetter 43:02
true. Words To Live By. Thank you so much, Eric for coming on Wild Business Growth sharing the survey monkey story and your story, and thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow wild business growth on your favorite podcast platform and hit Subscribe on YouTube for the video versions. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter You can also learn all things podcast production and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter and learn more about the podcast at MaxPodcasting.com Until next time, Let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!