The iGaming Leader

The iGaming Leader Podcast

Pini Yakuel: The Real Cost of Success as a Founder with Pini Yakuel

The Real Cost of Success as a Founder with Pini Yakuel In this episode of the iGaming Leader podcast, Leo sits down with Pini Yakuel, Founder & CEO of Optimove, to explore the emotional and operational challenges of being a founder. Pini shares some powerful insights into balancing obsession with su

Pini Yakuel
Pini Yakuel
Founder & CEO, Optimove
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01 · Watch the episode

The full conversation

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Pini Yakuel

02 · The guest

Pini Yakuel

Founder & CEO, Optimove

The Real Cost of Success as a Founder with Pini Yakuel In this episode of the iGaming Leader podcast, Leo sits down with Pini Yakuel, Founder & CEO of Optimove, to explore the emotional and operational challenges of being a founder. Pini shares some powerful insights into balancing obsession with sustainability, overcoming leadership hurdles, and managing the evolving relationship between a founder and their growing team. From managing offsite tensions to parenting lessons applied to leadership, this episode is filled with reflections and brilliant advice for leaders at any stage of their jour

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03 · Inside this episode

Moments worth queuing up

00:00 Welcome and Introduction -
01:00 The Origins of Optimove. Pini shares his entrepreneurial journey, from childhood dreams of running his own business to the founding of Optimove. -
08:00 Balancing hands-on leadership with empowering teams while avoiding becoming the bottleneck in a fast-growing company. -
12:00 Pini shares insights on managing executive meetings, fostering transparency, and avoiding unproductive tensions. -
17:00 Building a culture where team members feel ownership and stay long-term, while also coping with the emotional impact of departures. -
22:00 Why obsession is essential in the early stages of entrepreneurship, and how balance becomes crucial as the company matures. -
28:00 How a budgeting strategy with his kids translated into a leadership lesson about delegation and autonomy. -
32:00 Pini shares his most important lessons on leadership, self-awareness, and continuous improvement. 3 Main Takeaways 1. Obsession Fuels Success but Needs Balance While it is essential in the early days of building a company, sustainable success requires evolving into a more balanced leader who knows when to step back and trust the team. 2. Transparency Builds Stronger Teams Open and emotionally intelligent communication, especially during critical team discussions, prevents misunderstandings and fosters a culture of trust and collaboration. 3. Leadership Lessons from Parenting Empowering team members with autonomy—similar to giving children responsibility—leads to greater accountability, smarter decision-making, and reduced friction. About the Guest Our guest today is Pini Yakuel, a visionary entrepreneur who's revolutionising how brands connect with their customers. As the Co-founder and CEO of Optimove, Pini has transformed a two-person startup in 2009 into a global powerhouse in retention marketing. Under his leadership, Optimove pioneered the concept of Customer-led Marketing, flipping the traditional marketing playbook on its head by putting customers - not campaigns or products - at the centre of every decision. This innovative approach has proven remarkably successful, helping hundreds of leading consumer brands boost their customer lifetime value by an average of 33%. Pini brings a unique analytical perspective to marketing, backed by his Master's degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from Tel Aviv University.

In their own words

Full transcript

I don't think that Founders at the beginning should have walk life ballots I would say that BS requires Obsession and Mania my wife would find me in a dark woman with a laptop Shining Light on my face at 2:00 a.m. I don't know comenting about some kind of a button on the screen that wasn't green enough what is thought leadership is like oh you actually need to be somebody that has something to say about life in the world it's like I'm like that like all my friends call me a bullshitter so I got to be somebody like that people that I've hired over the years

they would tell me pin 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 so just say guys I feel really frustrated about what happened in the past two months excuse me but I'm going to be I'm going to be a little freckly at points and then everybody say 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 Welcome

to the gaming leader podcast where we uncover The Human Side of some of the most inspirational leaders in our industry I'm your host Leo Judkins and as an exi gaming director term performance coach I've worked with over 200 leaders from companies like entain 365 flutter and many more to help them build the habits to achieve sustainable high performance in these episodes we share exactly what it takes for you to achieve the same so with with that being said let's dive in hey Penny great to have you here welcome on the on the igaming leader I've been super excited to talk to you thank you excited

to be here I wanted to kind of kick off with the whole up to move start and and what happened in your life that you thought the world needs up to move like this is what we've we've got to do to me basically you know just 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 it's basically like a young kid 20 years old after college going to his uncle firm in 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 at 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 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 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 operation research capabilities and kind of like a lot of good common sense sense and being a little bit of a jack of all trades I'm 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 a segmentation of product how do people do and we started meeting Banks and and insurance companies and Telco companies that was a time that Telos were all the rage remember like Telos would sell you the everything the content very expensive just started started doing that and and you know starting with it with kind of like a data mining AG gency that we later transformed into a proper product which is optimal hey and and why gaming so working with those Banks and those retailers in in

Israel we saw that we brought like a a very high level of sophistication to data and predictive modeling and they would soon ask us what's their average order basket value you know what what's their average order value right so [ __ ] man I just I just spoke to you about lifetime value prediction or or who's going to be a VIP and you were asking me that can 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 worked for Google and I was like Penny have you tried

internet companies it's like what's internet companies you know companies that were born on the internet like it's like gaming and you got you got all of these affiliate and we had a bunch of people in Israel from the download Valley so like Babylon and conduit the names you probably wouldn't know because all of these companies don't exist anymore and then we met with 888 in playtech and of course they 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 then basically spawn everything and I think the first one was was a play 65 which

was back gamon and another one was Neo games which became very big so those was all kind of like the the beginning the few first customers 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 uh 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 utilize it to the best possible approach and and how you can use it into in the in the gaming industry now I didn't see anybody doing 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 I think mostly kind of like 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 any

didn't work anywhere right so basically out of uni went to start optim 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 inspired 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 part of I never took kind of like Venture money at least not the beginning so I was always kind of like little bit of a renegade but I I still looked at what they were doing it's like oh blogging is a thing right so you what is it 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 onent 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 started to basically kind of like celebrate H the things that we discovered so I would say it's like Discovery and job creation that and start see American companies the best startups in know HubSpot talking about at the time a lots of blogging SEO content marketing so I we start set 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 it's thought leadership so thought what is thought leadership is like oh you actually need to be somebody to has something to say about life in the world it's like I'm like that like all my friends call me a bullshitter so I got to be somebody like that so that's basically how it started you know it's it's very and then you iterate and improve it and you know at some point in time we even issued publication called post funnel we actually had have like a news publication in the space it didn't

work it was too much of a vanity project it didn't work but we we had it up for like three years we had external reporters writing there but I loved it man I like 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 I really loved it so I just wanted to say thank you for that because that helped shade me as a as a person and got us to do business in the end I wanted to talk about about that I think we started working together

in 2014 when I was a b Victor 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 wow yeah you're touching on there you 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 yep so to me my strength and as as a leader comes from knowing the details and knowing the craft that's how I've built optim Mo right I I got to know the craft I 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 I had to study all of these things and just being curious and asking more and more questions and and 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 so they always created a very problematic situation to your point that people that have hired over the years in many situations they would tell me pin 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 why combinator I think Paul Graham he just published something called founder mode an article called fer mode so you saw that mhm so that's that was based

on a talk that was given by the the founder of lbnb 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 need to do my job right yeah don't tell me do this and this 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 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 y now h executive they don't have the

privilege of a Founder executive a Founder executive was there from day one so 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 the high of the 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 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 to more money to be a gaming executive 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 that's been a 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 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 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 Flare from the beginning and then leave them a lot of room to take decisions and I think that's working much much much better yeah and as a Founder I you know one of the things that I actually saw you recently post about as well is it's it's your baby right your business is your baby right and so I saw you posting that story about criticism and how that you know how that meeting spiral so

talk 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 I this post was about executive offsites right so what I Tred 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 companies we've got people flying in from New York flying in from London flying in from 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 discussion 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 yeah sometimes you 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 XY and so discussions tend to be

nonproductive ER people tend to be sometimes they criticize but they criticize in a little bit of an acidic way or a toxic way but you want to say the truth right you want to be transparent you in order for us to build you and I talked about how you how you grow and how you build yourself up in order to 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 wanted to tell me that we suck at X and they say it but sometimes they voice it

in an offensive manner that maybe 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 [ __ ] about so py would think this or mosh would think that or 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 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 ER and and then go and then everybody say 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 this this like 45 minutes of a discussion that goes nowhere and just completely wastes everybody's time and now

we did it in a way that I feel like was really good what's what might happen PNY 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 on the things that are being critic on you right so how do you deal with that so again when I was a younger CEO I would exactly feel that way so like one executive would try to be try to call out the things that are wrong yeah 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 over all in in that 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 you Tred to just I I think again you just try to unpack it say it say it like it is but in 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 told me that he loves that feature Leo from B Victor who's Leo from B Victor yeah one of our power users in B Victor he told me he loved that the whatever migration analysis yeah ER so I would argue and argue and argue and try to protect the brand but it wasn't the right Pro yeah difficult right difficult and um it's it's a sign of passion as well which you know you obviously don't

want to lose um and and I want to thought you mentioned M there uh you've got you've had people that work in there for a long time right I see m still there Amy how do you how do you create that kind of loyalty you know like that's what the secret behind that because the industry is very fast moving people typically stay somewhere 3 years or something you've had some people that have been there for a very long time and um yeah how how do you do that what's the secret because we are fortunate enough to grow the company we a 500 people company today

so you can offer these those people new positions new challenges like somebody like mall like Morty right so there's a new challenge so m is now a VP right so and he's and he's running a very large Revenue organization the beginning he only managed Amy right so 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 like a a good culture they feel I think in many ways they feel like

it's theirs right so they are are they are you know in many ways co-founders right because they they have built this company yeah that's something I've always noticed talking to those guys as well it's it the very you know huge amount of ownership uh 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 as a partner as well but there's also a flip side to that I guess right you create 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 probably been there a long time and that left and I bet that hurts so how do you you know how do you deal with that it does it hurts a lot like as a Founder I remember when again when I was a younger founder I used to call it like the the bi-weekly punch in the gut that you get like every week you get like two punches 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 you take it personal all you know I I've invested

so much in that person you know I thought thought we were friends you know there there all of these things because obviously you spend so much time together you know with with time you learn how to deal with those things and 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 it's a change better there's a few people that left and they also have like the very very high up today in other places you know very very strong in the industry and typically a lot of them are are in

social games you know very high up in pla very high up in in zingga so those are all people that somebody came from Optimum they Liv very early on earlier in their career H probably having very high aspirations and not necessarily the patience to wait and grow with Optimum or even saying you know I need I need more room right maybe they're closer to my age a lot of the people that stayed with me there's a little bit of gap between us right so I'm more of like a big brother to them those 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 optim move I do feel I do feel like that I have like a also a sense of it and then you follow that sense and you build that relationship even stronger yeah makes a lot of sense did you have similar experiences kind of like with with folks that work for you yeah I you know

it's it's like you said the big thing is always that uh it almost feels like betrayal when you've uh when you've put a lot of time and effort and energy and love and passion into into developing someone and um and like you said because you spend so much time with with them right it's it's like uh 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's you feel like it comes with age yeah I think so and and I think also it comes with just your habits right it's just repetitions um 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 you it just is just part of the process to me I find it's harder when you're younger when you get older for sure it hurts

but you but you just say wait I've seen this like seven times before and and that's what happened so yeah I think another thing maybe Penny 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 and it it almost prevents you from switching off and I think as we get older it also you you you know just your work life balance gets a little bit better because you start prioritizing it uh we spoke a little bit before

we started recording about your well-being and how that matters and how that really changes things for you um and I think that's also something that you know you learn with age that 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 I think a key word that comes up to me is Obsession I I think I think entrepreneurship is is a lot about Obsession because you have to have a very high dosage

of OB of obsession to lift something off the ground that's that's for sure and and a very high level of of concentrated effort and the concentrated effort will come from Obsession so I don't think that like Founders at the beginning I don't think they should have walk life balance like I I 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 optim move 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 I like as you get older as the company gets older I've always liked the fact that kind of like you know company's the company's growth and and size and Stage mirrors my own personal growth in size and state because again everything fits right the company is super young I'm young the compan the company doesn't know anything I don't know anything right it's like it

all fits right and and gradually it grows together but yeah I do I do think that yes you can H you can learn how to invest in yourself during that process take care of yourself a bit better we talked a lot about him like in 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 a you can be a better example you can focus on the more important things but bottom line I do think it requires a it requires Obsession and a little bit of a Mania my wife would find me

you know in a dark wom with the laptop kind of like Shining Light on my face at like 2: a.m. you know I don't know commenting about some kind of a button on the screen that wasn't green enough right I have a friend who's like who's like an entrepreneur and I got a few friends and I always see like when they I how are how are you with me in this party right now and you're generally thinking about the party and not about your business I never had that I'm really surprised when people have that it's the same that's 100% 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 ahead of director VP or executive in high gaming 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 third 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 sustain 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 igaming leer.com and I hope to see you there now let's get back to our conversation so for you as a dad then Penny how do you I mean it's changed over time the business has matured you've matured as a as a leader as well um 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 right you actually spending time there 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 conversation and just walking on the streets and and talking about life and about this and about that and he would I was I was like his his he he had me when he was older he was 40 at the time today it's very common to 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 be me being a father 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 to New York and I had to that was 2016 to set up kind of like a New York and American presence which is doing really well till today I was I remember my son was a year and a half and and I remember being with him in the

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 is so beautiful and I remember thinking he is so amazing and even all of that amazing n that he has cannot supersede all the thoughts are going in my head and all the things that I'm bothered about and I cannot see it 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 I but thinking to myself that that it's

it's like a battle of tightness right so all of the thoughts in my head and the things that I find worrying and he comes up with all of these cuteness and and and beautifulness and being this this this adorable thing that's unresistable versus the nasty thoughts on my head that's also unresistable 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 I took the time to have s quality time with the kids i' I've 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 knowing how to manage that but yeah it's a it does happen as well it does happen as well no I think it's very normal and it's just realizing that that that's happening and and focusing on and getting the most out of the moments that you have right you're working long hours like make most out of the time that you do have is I think is such a key message hey and pinny um you talk about this story about giving kids

money and like you kind of translated that to leadership and letting go as a leader we talked a little bit about delegating the 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 let go as a leader actually in this case I think what I did was I took like my my optimal CEO head and and brought it into the household so it it was actually happened the the other way around so we had the summer vacation in Iceland and so we went to Iceland to the burgundy County

in France and then to an island in Greece so we did like three weeks it was a great vacation but that 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 EUR so it's like oh who cares but then like ask again is it's an endless tiring discussion where both Tire sced

and angry about it and I remember I'm not doing this in 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 for for again for and we used to live in New York so it's more of like a for me I actually went to work there so it's half and half and I said it's at more location but I told the kids I two the older ones tenant I was like look guys you you can have for the entire trip it's 11 days going to give you money for all of your

gifts you have to manage that money right so you both get $100 my older son immediately said 150 I was like he's my so I was like We'll settle at 125 which we did 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 H 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 come home I'll pay you

back I'll give you this money as allowance so you co and just you know kick back and watch a miracle happen you know they would they would basically you know consult with one another in a store like oh you know should I be buying this how much it's like Dad how much is it I was like12 oh no no I'm not why it's pretty good let me so no no no I'm not spending you know so it was so funny was so funny how they started to you know to so you see just Empower them and all of a sudden zero whining zero you know

zero fights zero aggravation between us everything that can 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 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 with in the company you use budgets to basically have other people take decisions but you want to cap those decisions so they're not completely abnormal and so same thing like a budgeting mechanism that worked love it super easy great approach CEO dad I like it um it's it's you I think

everybody should do it like because actually the funny thing when something is correct the value grows from all sides so they loved it they loved it you know they bought something great they they had a sense of of Independence they loved it they love it much more than me yeah so that's great amazing hey py thank you very much um last question from my side uh for any of listeners any anybody tuning into this this interview what's your um 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 hard performance leader wow that's a big question I know it's a big question I 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 getting a dog right where I started optim move and he was like a very kind of like Alpha is or an aspiring Alpha let's call it like that ER 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 less sophisticated it's it's a simpler operating system but I used to live that thing and I remember like trying to train him and then like he wouldn't follow me and I was say oh my go if he if he's not following me how can I lead a a company you know you have those thoughts with yourself yep and you're trying to you know I me can I be leader of the dog before I'm the leader of the people and I think look first off everybody's got a different vessel

you know your style of leadership versus my style of leaders it's GNA be different so number one you got to make it your own it's 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 rated the craft right is Artsy and like great at the art so the way you do it is 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 obviously one of the great pillars is lead by example if you're telling your people that they need to stay up late and you go to have beer 5m like that's that's not great ER but those those are those are the classics right you don't need me everybody you can get it in any 101 leadership book or something and I still have my my things I need to work on for sure it's about getting comfortable with yourself and you know accepting what 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 from what you are today how can you be a better leader like like be a student of that game that's a big one for me because if you have that Curiosity how can I be a better leader and you have that that openness because I cannot say one formula right because the the formula would change per person things that works for me and not necessarily good for you Leo so because because we are different people who we wir differently so if somebody wants to be a better leader first thing you should do is study that how do people become better leaders what

do they do what leadership what's you know there's the famous Jim Collins 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 although you know greater than life type of people that they would be super unselfish and and in many cases what they they basically sacrific themselves you know Braveheart thing to say or or you know 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 is it's just going to

follow him to the moon like like no matter what happens he's just so you know when you sacrifice yourself for the for the group I think that's that's the ultimate level but below that there's there you know obviously your charisma your ability to articulate a vision your ability to communicate this and that your ability to seal your people to trust them to to appreciate them appreciation goes a long way a a lot of things but but but I would say just try to study that thing what does it mean for you to be a better leader yeah love it make yourself an self-optimizing campaign I

like it um a self-optimizing leader yeah I like it hey Penny thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts and being on the podcast really love talking to you thank you very much thank you Leo I've enjoyed it thank you for joining me on the igaming leader podcast if you enjoyed today's episode head over to igaming leer.com for more conversations and insights don't forget to subscribe to this podcast I'm your host Leo Judkins and I hope to see you next week [Music]

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