Podcast Episode 9: The Real Cost of Success as a Founder – Pini Yakuel

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Full Transcript 

Leo Judkins: [00:00:00] Hey, Pini. Great to have you here. Welcome to the iGaming leader. I've been super excited to talk to you. 

Pini Yakuel: Thank you, Leo. Excited to be here. 

Leo Judkins: I wanted to kind of kick off with the whole OptiMove start and, and, what happened in your life that you thought, the world needs OptiMove. Like, this is what we've, we've got to do. 

Pini Yakuel: [00:01:00] To me, basically, you know, just, I, I think even as a child, I've always wanted to have, like my dream was having my own business. I can remember this movie, the American movie called the secret of my success with Michael J Fox. If you ever watched it,

Leo Judkins: Yeah.

Pini Yakuel: New York city. And he's got a little book that tells him how to take over the firm in 90 days or something. You know, I've, I've always liked this idea of, of having my own business, kind of like, being an entrepreneur that always felt like, the proper way to be a hero to me. 

So, and I had to wait, you know, I spent a lot of time in uni, spent a lot of time kind of like doing a master's degree and having a thesis, kind of like being a little bit of part of the academic world. 

And over there, kind of like I met a PhD in my department and he was talking about data mining and,  Some things I, thought would be cool and my intuition told me that that would be like something of the future. 

[00:02:00]I was right about that. and, you know, we started, basically, we set off to start the business, which we, we didn't exactly know what it was, but he, he had some data mining capabilities.

I had a lot of,  operations research capabilities and kind of like a lot of Good common sense being a little bit of a jack of all trades, kind of like a little bit of a renaissance man of tech. You, you, you would say, and we just started on a journey and I remember us walking kind of like getting coffee and I was like, Is segmentation a product? How do people do, and we started meeting banks and insurance companies and telco companies.

That was a time that telcos were all the rage. I remember like telcos would sell you the, everything, the content, the, it was very expensive. Just started, started doing that. And, and, you know, starting with it, it was kind of like a data mining agency that we later transformed into a proper product, which is.

Leo Judkins: Hey, and why gaming?

Pini Yakuel: [00:03:00] So working with those banks and those retailers in Israel, we saw that we brought like a very high level of sophistication to data and predictive modeling, and they would still ask us what's their average order basket you know, what, what's their average order value, right?

So it's like, shit, man, I just, I just spoke to you about lifetime value prediction or, or who's going to be a VIP. And you're asking me that. Can't you get it like yourself from, from your, Basic and they couldn't, I remember kind of like having a walking, my dog and one of my neighbors, he works for Google.

And it was like, Pini, have you tried internet companies? It's like, what's internet companies. It's like, you know, companies that were born on the internet. And I was like, it's like gaming and you got, you got all of these affiliates. And we had a bunch of people in Israel from the download Valley. So like Babylon and conduit names that you probably wouldn't know.

Cause all of these companies don't exist anymore. And then we met with 888 and Playtech, and of course, they took us through 5, 000 meetings and didn't do anything. But we saw that they're truly excited about what we're doing.

[00:04:00] Then basically it spawned everything. And I think the first one was Play65, which was backgammon. And another one was Neogames, which became very, very big. So those are kind of like the beginning, the few first

Leo Judkins: Love it. Pini. Hey, you know what I found really cool when I first moved into CRM, I actually didn't really know anything about it and I didn't really, I didn't really get it. And, and I, I just, you guys were so amazing with all of your, all of the content that you provided, right? Gated content.

Which is obviously going to be a funnel for you. But for me as a consumer of that, it's really helped me develop and shape my understanding of what CRM really is, how to utilize it to the best possible approach and, and how you can use it in the gaming industry. Now, I didn't see anybody taking that approach, right?

I saw it with some e-commerce businesses, I suppose, but, but nobody in gaming did that. What kind of made you take that approach and, and what did it do for your business?

Pini Yakuel: [00:05:00] I think mostly kind of like it, it depends on how, how you, you know, build your journey. And, and for us, for me at least, because I was. A very young entrepreneur, kind of like didn't do anything, didn't work anywhere, right? 

So basically out of uni I went to start OptiMove with this PhD guy. And so for me, everything was discovery and everything was about the joy of creation. So if I just had a problem that I saw with one of my clients and I came up with a solution, I was so excited about it that I wanted to write about it.

And, and I started to see, kind of like, I always aspired, you know, Israel is also a very strong tech hub. So some of the best tech companies on the planet spawn out of Israel and Tel Aviv specifically.

So being in this ecosystem, kind of like meeting VCs, meeting some, I was never a part of, I never took kind of like venture money, at least not at the beginning. I was always kind of like a little bit of a renegade, but I still looked at what they were doing. It's like, oh, blogging is a thing, right? So you, what is it?

[00:06:00] What does it actually mean? Oh, you write your thoughts there. I was like, wait a second, so I can play a little bit of a journalist, right? So I can be maybe a little bit of a journalist, a little bit of a content person, which I'm not like a media person, but I have an interesting point of view about that.

Or one of our analysts just did a really cool analysis about, you know, something else. So can we just put it out there? And we started to basically kind of celebrate the things that we discovered. So I would say it's like discovery and job creation. That put and she's trying to see American companies, the best startups in a hop spot, talking about at the time, a lot of blogging, SEO, content marketing. 

So I would start setting up a marketing department. So what are we supposed to do here? Oh, you know, we're supposed to build a brand and generate leads. How do you do it? So people say, Oh, thought leadership. So thought, what is thought leadership is like, oh, you actually need to be somebody that has something to say about life and the world. It's like, I'm like that, like all my friends call me a bullshitter, so I gotta be somebody like that. 

[00:07:00] So that's basically how it started, you know, it's, it's very, and then you iterate and improve it. And at some point in time, we even issued a publication called Post Funnel. We actually had it. Have a news publication in this space.

It didn't work. It was too much of a vanity project. It didn't work, but we had it up for like three years. We had external reporters writing there. 

Leo Judkins: But I loved it, man. I thought it was so high quality and so much value for, well, just for an exchange of an email address, right? And it was, it was, it was amazing. I really loved it. So I just wanted to say thank you for that because that helped shape me as a person and got us to do business in the end.

I wanted to talk about that. I think we started working together in 2014 when I was at B. And I just remembered being on the call with you quite regularly, and you're such a hands-on guy, right? And I wanted to, wanted to ask you about that. Like as a CEO of a fast growing company, that can also make you the bottleneck, right?

If you're that involved, like your passion and your, so tell me a little bit more about how you balance those two things that the excitement of being involved, but also not being the bottleneck for your team. 

Pini Yakuel: [00:08:00] Wow. Yeah. You're touching on,  you're touching on,  the, the topic, I think,  in management and especially when you talk about,  being a manager and a founder, which is a completely different thing. 

So to me, my strength as a leader comes from knowing the details and knowing the craft. That's how I've built OptiMove, right? I got to know the craft. I didn't raise money, so I had to study HR. I had to study finance. Understand engineering because I'm an engineer, but I'm not a software engineer. So writing code and studying all of these things and just being curious and asking more and more questions and understanding being a student of the game, right?

So the game of tech, the game of being a tech founder, how does it work? What do you do? 

[00:09:00] So they always created a very problematic situation to your point that people that I've hired over the years in many situations would tell me, Pini, you don't tell us what to do. You tell us how to do it. And we hate that because why did you hire me if you're telling me how to do it

The guy from Y Combinator, I think Paul Graham, he just published something called founder mode, an article called founder mode. So that's based on a talk that was given by the founder of Airbnb. And basically what they said is all of us founders, we, at some point in time, we, we hire like senior people that help us build the business. We have investors and people always tell us what we need to do, like hire good people, let them do their thing, right? 

You know, give them the goals, give them the procedures, give them how they should take decisions, but stand aside and let them do their thing. And empower people don't micromanage. Don't go into the details. Don't tell them how, you know, it's not your, it's not your job. Right. And I was also being told all of those things by my employees. I've always had employees and, and executives that reported to me, they would tell me how I needed to do my job.

[00:10:00] Tell me that that's the goal I need to hit and tell me I need to get it. And this is the budget I'm getting. Right. So you are always being kind of like directed and that article says that the playbook for. What it means to be a good executive was built by hired executives. 

Now, hired executives don't have the privilege of a founder executive. A founder executive was there from day one, the level of knowledge and depth and ability to analyze problems, to take decisions, to understand what needs to be done is by far vaster than, than a hired executive. And that's no, that's not, not because the founder is necessarily more talented.

In some cases, founders are typically talented people, but not always. That's not always the case just because you have more repetition. If I would be hired tomorrow morning to run your business, take me a long time until I understand what's going on, until I develop the right intuitions, until I, you know, if you hire me tomorrow morning to be a gaming executive, 

[00:11:00] I'm not going to be as good as, as you know, the best, the best ones out there. Maybe I'm a talented guy, but I'm, I'm just not. So, It took me, that's been kind of like a tension I've been playing with for a long, long, long time. And as I matured, and I would kind of like, and sometimes I would, you know, I would hire executives and let them do their thing. 

And over time, you, you, you learn how to trust your intuition, you learn how to be yourself, but at the same time, be more seasoned and mature so to me, I just learned how to deal with it. Like, ultimately, what I do is I try to direct creativity and I try to give my flair from the beginning and then leave them a lot of room to make decisions. I think that's working much, much, much better. 

Leo Judkins: Yeah. And as a founder, you know, one of the things that I actually saw you recently post about as well, it's your baby, right? Your business is your baby. And so I saw you posting that story about criticism and how that, you know, how that meeting spirals. So talk to us through that, talk to us through that post and all that, that, that day and how that went and what you learned from it.

Pini Yakuel: [00:12:00] This post was about, executive offsites, right? So what I tried to say on that post is kind of like more of the emotional level of what's happening in those sessions, right? So you have an executive from a global company. So we've got people flying in from New York, flying in from London, flying in from Tel Aviv, you know, and they gather together in this room, maybe in Athens or in Rome. They're not meeting on a regular basis because they're from all over the world, right? They're meeting on Zoom, and typically what happens is discussions, it's really hard to have a very productive discussion for a long time.

It's really, really hard because sometimes, you know, you bicker and argue about minute things that don't really matter. But they matter to those two people who argue about them at the very moment.

Sometimes you vent out with a lot of frustrations that you boiled up over the year because, you know, you thought that that executive that's responsible for that department was supposed to do X, Y, and Z and they only did X, Y. And so discussions tend to be non productive. 

[00:13:00]People tend to sometimes criticize, but they criticize in a little bit of an acidic way or a toxic way. But you want to tell the truth, right? You want to be transparent. You know, for us to build, you and I talked about how you, how you grow and how you built yourself up in order to build, you know, the first step is be transparent and be clear about where you are.

So you want executives to share if they, if we suck at X, I want them to tell me that we suck at X and they say it, but sometimes they voice it. Okay. In an offensive manner that may be somebody on the other side of the table gets hurt. So. All of that has happened over the years and what I did this year, I just basically asked them to prime their emotion before they start talking.

You don't need to play games. You don't need to bullshit about, so Pini would think this, or Mosh would think that, or Eddie would think that. You don't need to do that. So just say. Guys, I feel really frustrated about what happened in the past two months. 

[00:14:00]So excuse me, but I'm going to be, I'm going to be a little, I'm going to be a little prickly at points, and then go. And then everybody says, yeah, you know, we're sorry that you feel this way. Like, but here's what happened on our side. And then we just had an amazing offsite. So it was like the best offsite we've ever had just because on the first day and the first time I did it, it's our 10th offsite and every offsite. 

We had one discussion that blew up, and then you go into this rabbit hole and like for this, this like 45 minutes of, a discussion that goes nowhere. It just completely wastes everybody's time. and now we did it in a way that I feel like was really good.

Leo Judkins:What might happen, Pini, is because you're passionate about what you've built, right, that sometimes that's going to feel far, it's almost going to feel like an attack. Right on the things that are being criticized on you, right? So how do you deal with that?

Pini Yakuel: So again, when I was, younger CEO, I would exactly feel that way. So like one executive would try to be, would try to call out the things that are wrong.

Leo Judkins: yeah,

Pini Yakuel:  [00:15:00] But it was like, I was thinking to myself, like that other executive over there, that's just listening to this one talking. He's thinking we're the worst company on the planet.

It's not that bad. Like you just, you just trash the company and the optimum brand to a degree. That's like, you're exaggerating. 

Right. So I would try to say something like, so how would you rank us overall in, in, in that field? And then I was like, Oh, probably an eight. Well, this doesn't sound like an eight. It sounded like a four.

So, I mean, you try to just, I think again, you just try to unpack it. Say it, say it like it is. But in the early days, I would just fight it. I would, I would litigate, right? I would come back at you with, with,  no, it's not like, it's not true.

Like last, you know, Leo actually told me that he loves that feature. Leo from BetVictor. Who's Leo from BetVictor? Yeah. One of our power users in BetVictor, he told me he loved that,  whatever migration analysis.

Leo Judkins: Yeah,

Pini Yakuel: [00:16:00] So I would argue and argue and argue and try to protect the brand, but it wasn't the right approach.

Leo Judkins: difficult, right? Difficult. And,  it's, it's a sign of passion as well, which, you know, you obviously don't want to lose. And I wanted to talk, you mentioned Moshe there. You've had people working there for a long time, right? I see Moshe still there, Amy. Like, how do you, how do you create that kind of loyalty?

You know, like that's, what's the secret behind that? Because the industry is very fast moving. People typically stay somewhere for three years or something. You've got some people that have been there for a very long time. And, yeah. How do you do that? What's the secret?

Pini Yakuel: because we are fortunate enough to grow the company with a 500 people company today. so you can offer these, those people. New positions, new challenges, right? Something like Marshall, like Morty, right? So there's a new challenge.

So Morty is now a VP, right? So, and he's, and he's running a very large revenue organization.  At the beginning, he only managed Amy. 

[00:17:00] So you can offer those people opportunities to grow, to, to showcase their talents. And as they're growing as people and growing in age and growing in experience, their positions grow. And the culture of the company is the second thing. You know, if you have a good culture, they feel, I think in many ways they feel like it's theirs, right? So they are, you know, in many ways, co-founders, right? Because they have built this company. 

Leo Judkins: Yeah. That's something I've always noticed talking to those guys as well. It's a very, you know, huge amount of ownership, decision making power, feel very empowered. It's like talking to you really. Right. And I think that's such an important thing as a partner as well. But there's also a flip side to that, I guess, right?

It creates a lot of loyalty. You pour a lot of your time, energy, soul and love into people and then people leave, right? There's also people that have probably been there for a long time and that left. And I bet that hurts. So how do you, you know, how do you deal with that? Yeah.

Pini Yakuel: [00:18:00] I remember when, again, when I was a younger founder, I used to call it like the bi weekly punch in the gut. That you get Like every week you get like two punches and two punches to the gut from something, you know, and one of those was always like a key team member leaving, Sometimes it feels like, you know, we take it personal, you know, I invested so much in that person, I thought I thought we were friends, you know, there's there's all of these things, because obviously you spend so much time together. 

You know, with time you learn how to deal with those things and you get kind of like a bit your skin gets thicker and you understand that it's not the end of the world. And sometimes it's a change for the better. 

There's a few people that left. They also have, like, they're very, very high up today in other places. You know, very, very strong in the industry and typically a lot of them are in social games, You know, very high up in Plateka or very high up in Zynga so those are all people that came from Optim They left very early on earlier in their career,  probably having, very high aspirations and not necessarily the patience to wait and go with Optimum or even saying, you know, I need, I need more room, right? maybe they are closer to my age. 

[00:19:00] A lot of the people that stayed with me, there's a little bit of a gap between us, right? So I'm more like a big brother to them. Those things matter as well. And then you have the people that just had, didn't have the patience, didn't have the, they always have like a bone to pick or something that bothers them a bit more than the ones that you have mentioned that were able to stay. I do feel that I was able to keep kind of like the key talent and optimism I do feel, I do feel like that. I have a sense of it. And then. You follow that sense and you build that relationship even stronger. 

Leo Judkins: yeah, makes a lot of sense. 

Pini Yakuel: Did you have similar experiences, kind of like with, with folks that worked for you?

Leo Judkins: Yeah, you know, it's, it's like you said, the big thing is always that,  it almost feels like betrayal when you've,  when you've put a lot of time and effort and energy and love and passion into, into developing someone. 

[00:20:00] And like you said, because you spend so much time with them, right. It's, it's like,  there's almost, almost a process of mourning that sometimes you need to go through, right.

yeah, I think that's hard. But just realizing that that happens and that is just, you know, the way life works is I think it's really important. It's, it's, it's understanding that you have those emotions, recognizing them and then effectively dealing with it. I think that that's really the key.

Emotional regulation, I think, is such a, an important skill to develop as a leader that, 

Pini Yakuel: You feel like it comes with age.

Leo Judkins: Yeah, I think so. And, and I think also it comes with just your habits, right? It's just repetition.  You love basketball. It's like, it's like that, right? It's like taking a shot a million times and you don't have to think about it anymore. It's just part of the process. 

Pini Yakuel: To me, I find it's harder when you're younger. When you get older, it still hurts. But you, but you just say, wait, I've seen this like seven times before and that's what happened. So,

Leo Judkins: [00:21:00]  Yeah, I think another thing may be pinny as well is that when you're younger and as you get older, it's also it's there's also almost a fear, I think, right of this, this, having to keep an eye on your business and how it's going. And it almost prevents you from switching off.

And I think as we get older, it also, you know, just your work life balance gets a little bit better because you start prioritizing it.  We spoke a little bit before we started recording about your wellbeing and how that matters and how that really changes things for you. 

I think that's also something that, you know, you learn with age how important and what the benefits are actually of, of protecting your wellbeing and protecting your, your work life balance.

So can you tell me a little bit more about that, what that means for you and how that's changed over time for you?

Pini Yakuel: I think a key word that comes up to me is obsession. Entrepreneurship is a lot about obsession. Because you have to have a very high dosage of obsession to lift something off the ground. That's, that's for sure. And, a very high level of concentrated effort and concentrated effort will come from obsession.

[00:22:00] So, I don't think that like founders at the beginning, I don't think they should have work life balance. Like I would say that's, that's, that's BS.

Now with time, you know, when you've been doing something for me, OptiMove is, is,  almost 13 years. And before OptiMove, there's another three. So it's, so it's 16 years. Times go by, you get older, And you start to play the game a bit differently, and also your team asks you, going back to the beginning of our conversation, like when I tell them how to do things, and I'm so, so now that I'm a little bit more removed from the fine details,

So yes, I think, I think as you get older, as the company gets older, I've always liked the fact that kind of like,  you know, companies, the company's growth and, and size and stage mirrors my own personal growth and size and state, because again, everything fits right. 

[00:23:00] The company is super young. I'm young. The company doesn't know anything. I don't know anything, right? So it's like it all fits right. And gradually it grows together. But yeah, I do. I do think that yes, you can learn how to invest in yourself during that process.

Take care of yourself a bit better. We talked a lot about sports and, you know, a healthy lifestyle, which I've adopted in the past 14 months. And yeah, I think it does help, right? It's,  you can be a better example. You can focus on the more important things. But bottom line, I do think it requires,  it requires obsession and a little bit of a mania,

My wife would find me, you know, in a dark room with a laptop kind of like shining light on my face at like 2am, you know, I don't know, commenting about some kind of a button on the screen that wasn't green enough, right? 

[00:24:00]I have a friend who is like an entrepreneur and I have a few friends and I always see them one day. Are you with me at this party right now? And you're generally thinking about the party and not about your business. I never had that.

Leo Judkins: I'm really surprised when people have that. It's the same. That's 100 percent the same for me. It's the first thing you wake up with and it's the last thing you go to bed with. 

Quick break here. If you're a head of director, VP or executive in iGaming who's successful at work, but is finding it hard to achieve balance in life and switch off from work, then I've got something that's going to help. 

On the 3rd of February, we are launching the iGaming Leader Reset. A six week coaching program in which I will personally work with 15 iGaming leaders to build habits for sustainable high performance. All in just 20 minutes a day. It's limited to only 15 leaders 

So if that's something that you want to know a little bit more about, head over to iGamingLeader.com and I hope to see you there. Now let's get back to our conversation. 

Leo Judkins: [00:25:00]  So for you as a dad then,  Pini, how do you, I mean, it's changed over time.

The business has matured. You've matured as a leader as well.  but as a dad, right, how do you stay present with your family and, you know, like mentally present, I mean, without your thoughts racing and, you actually spending time there. 

Pini Yakuel: So number one for me, it's a, I'm, I'm basically a project I'm, I'm the, I'm probably the, the most successful project that my dad did.

So I was very much kind of like a child glued, glued to the knee of his father and my father would spend hours and hours and hours with me, you know, conversations, just walking on the streets and talking about life and about this and about that.

And he would, I was, I was like his, his. He had me when he was older. He was 40 at the time. Today it's very common to have a child when you're 40. But when my father was born in 1937, so it wasn't that common to have a child when you're 40. So it's very natural to me, to me, like, my personal identity revolves also around me being a father.

[00:26:00]So it's very easy for me to muster up some energy to be a father. The same time, the same time to your point before, When I was, I remember I was kind of like when we moved to New York and I had to, that was 2016 to set up kind of like our New York and American presence, which is doing really well till today. 

I remember my son was a year and a half, and I remember being with him in the playground, and he's like the cutest. You know, the cutest thing. He just said something so cute and funny and his eyes. Big blue eyes and his face are so beautiful and I remember thinking he is so amazing and even all of that amazingness that he has cannot supersede all the thoughts going on in my head and all the things that I'm bothered about and I cannot see right now. 

I remember thinking about it. I cannot see how amazing he is. And of course I would say, Oh, that's great. You know, I would physically, but [00:27:00] thinking to myself that it's like a battle of Titans, right? 

So all of the thoughts in my head and the things that I find worrying, and he comes up with all of his cuteness and beautifulness being this, this, this adorable thing that's unresistible versus the nasty thoughts on my head.

That's also unresistible. And like, it's like clashing. So, but, so it happened a lot. It happened a lot. But at the same time, I've always felt that I took the time to have some quality time with the kids. 

I'm a passionate dad. I've got three boys. So I'm very passionate about it. And today I can, I can be more present. I can be more present again, being a little bit older, knowing how to shift your thoughts when needed, and knowing how to manage that. But yeah, it's,  it does happen as well. It

Leo Judkins: No, I think it's very normal. And it's just realizing that that's happening and focusing on getting the most out of the moments that you have, right? You're working long hours, like making the most out of the time that you do have. I think it is such a key message.

[00:28:00] Hey, Pini  you talk about this story about giving kids some money and like you kind of translated that to leadership and letting go as a leader. We talked a little bit about delegating the why and, and not so much the how, right? So tell me, tell me how you like, how has that fatherhood kind of translated to, to letting go as a leader?

Pini Yakuel: What I did was I took my OptiMove CEO hat and, and brought it into the household. So it actually happened the other way around. So

We had the summer vacation in Iceland. And so we went to Iceland to Burgundy County in France and then to an island in Greece. So we did like three weeks. It was a great vacation, but the element of us stopping in Iceland in the middle of this,  God knows where next to a gazer and then it's a gift shop so they want to buy the doll of this and they want to buy the sticker of that. And every time it's kind of like,  no, you just bought one yesterday. And then, and then, but then it's like four, four euros. So it's like, oh, who cares? But then they'll ask again.

[00:29:00] It's an endless, tiring discussion. We're both tired and angry about it. And I remember I'm not doing this on the next trip. I'm coming up with something. I'm coming up with something and we went to New York like,  in, in October and fall for again for like, and we used to live in New York. So it's more like,  for me, I actually went to work there.

So it's half and half. And I said, it's like, well, it's more of a location, but I told the kids I have to the older tenants. I was like, look, guys. You, you can have,  for the entire trip. It's 11 days. I'm going to give you money for all of your gifts, but you have to manage that money, right? So you both get 100.

My older son immediately said 150. I was like: He's my son. So I was like, we'll settle at 125.

Pini Yakuel: [00:30:00 So each of them got 125 for 10, for 11 days, which is not a] lot, right? It's like 10 bucks a day. So it's for 11 days. And then I told them, and you manage it, you can buy whatever you want, whatever you want.

You can buy one thing for 125. You can buy many small things. You can even if, and if you don't spend it, we come home, I'll pay you back. I'll give you this money as an allowance. So your call. and just, you know, kick back and watch the miracle happen. You know, they would, they would basically, you know, consult with one another in a store. 

It's like, Oh, you know, should I be buying this? How much is like that? How much is it? That was like 12. Oh no, no, no. I was like, why? It's actually pretty good. Like, it's not like, no, no, no, I'm not spending 12. You know? So it was so funny. It was so funny how they started to, you know, to, so you see, you just empower them and all of a sudden zero whining, Zero, you know, zero fights, zero aggravation between us, everything that's like that. So why are you asking me? I told you, you don't need to ask me. You can buy whatever you want. So, oh, okay. 

[00:31:00]And then it was just beautiful, just beautiful. And I think for me, I just took it from,  yeah, it's like you do budgets within the company, you use budgets to basically have other people make decisions. But you want to cap those decisions so they're not completely abnormal. So it's the same thing. It's like a budgeting mechanism that worked

Leo Judkins: Yeah. I love it. Great. Great approach. CEO dad. I like it. 

Pini Yakuel: Yeah, no, I think everybody should do it. Because actually, the funny thing is, when something is correct, the value grows from all sides. So they loved it.

They loved it! You know, they bought something great, they had a sense of, of, of independence. They loved it. They loved it much more than me.

Leo Judkins: Yeah.

Pini Yakuel: So that's great. 

Leo Judkins: [00:32:00] Amazing. Hey, Pini. Thank you very much.  last question from my side.  for any Listeners, anybody tuning into this interview, what's your,  what's your one piece of advice for being a better leader? What's the one lesson, the biggest lesson that perhaps you've learned over your career or like an actionable step that somebody could take in their, you know, in their journey to becoming a more high performance leader?

Pini Yakuel: That's a,

Leo Judkins: big question, I know.

Pini Yakuel: That's a big question. I think, I think number one, you know, it's funny, like I would always be, I would, I would have a lot of debates with myself about this topic, especially kind of like being younger. I remember getting a dog right where I started OptiMove, and he was very kind of like alpha-ish, oh, an aspiring alpha, let's call it like that. 

[00:33:00] And the way I, I would, I would even learn from him how he would approach situations, which is very,  graphic, right? He's a dog, but it's less sophisticated. It's a simpler operating system. But,  I used to live that way. And I remember like trying to train him and then like, he wouldn't follow me.

And I would say, Oh my, if he, if he's not following me, how can I lead a company? You know, you have those thoughts with yourself and you're trying to say, well, you know, I mean, can I be a leader of a dog before I'm a leader of a, of people? And I think, look, first off. Everybody's got a different vessel. You know, your style of leadership versus my style of leaders is going to be different.

So number one, you got to make it your own. It's not going to be the same. One leader would get a lot from being the smartest guy in the room. Another leader would get a lot by having a very high EQ, right? So he sees his people. Another leader is a, I mean, It's great at the craft, right? It's artsy and like great at the art.

So the way you do it, it's like you work with your people and you get the joy out of working together and trouble troubleshooting things together. It's very, very different, I think. of the great pillars is led by example.

[00:34:00] If you're telling your people that they need to stay up late and you go to have beer at 5pm, like that's, that's not great. But those, those are, those are the classics, right? You don't need me,  everybody. You can get it in any one on one leadership book or something. And I still have my things I need to work on for sure. It's about getting comfortable with yourself and, you know, accepting what you're going to be good at and bad at.

And just always, ask those questions. So how can you be a better leader for what you are today?

How can you be a better leader? Like, like, be a student of that game. it's a big one for me. Because if you have that curiosity, how can I be a better leader?

And you have that openness. Because I cannot say one formula, right?

Because the formula would change per person.

Things that work for me are not necessarily good for you, Leo.

So, because, because we are different people who are wired differently. So, if somebody wants to be a better leader, the first thing you should do is study that.

How do people become better leaders?

What do they do? What's leadership? What's you know, there's the famous Jim Collins [00:35:00] book from good to great and he talks about he's got like level four leaders and level five leaders and level five leaders are all of those, you know, greater than life type of people that they would be super unselfish and in many cases what they basically sacrifice themselves. You know, brave heart thing to say.

I don't know if it's real life exactly like that, but people that, you know, you're looking like, Oh, my God, like this guy, what this guy is doing for me, it's just going to fall into the moon, like, like, no matter what happens, it's just so. You know, when you sacrifice yourself for the group, I think that's that's the ultimate level. But below that, there's, you know, obviously your charisma, your ability to articulate the vision, your ability to communicate this and that your ability to see your people to trust them to to appreciate them.

[00:36:00] Appreciation goes a long way. A lot of things. But I would say just try to study that thing.

What does it mean for you to be a better leader?

Leo Judkins: Yep. I love it. Make yourself a self optimizing campaign. I like it.

Pini Yakuel: A self optimizing leader.

Leo Judkins: Yeah. I like it. Hey,  Pinny, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts and being on the podcast. I really loved talking to you. Thank you very much.

Pini Yakuel: Thank you, Leo. I've enjoyed it.