I guess I'll start with where I am today in terms of what I'm doing. But then sort of walk you through the history and how I got here. Um, so today I'm a program manager at a start up called Service Titan. And what we do is provide or build software for plumbers, electricians, people in the trades. Right. Um however, before I joined service tightening, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. So just to give you some background about myself, I was actually born in Mexico, Um, to a single, you know, a single mother on DSO. I didn't necessarily have that guidance at the beginning of my life or, uh, sort of a path laid out in front of me in terms of my career, anything like that After immigrating to the United States, Um, again, you know, being being in the United States without a father or anything like that, it was very difficult at the beginning, But at the same time, I think all of those things that I went through when I was younger, I actually ended up becoming strength of mind when I'm actually looking for a career or going into the workplace. Um, so you know, the United States. And then I entered college, but at the same time of entering college, Um, there was actually ah, pretty pivotal moment that happened in my life. And that was my mom has always prioritized education. So sort of the quintessential American dream, right? Bring your kids, you know, immigrating from another country. Come to the United States and you prioritize a couple of things. There first is Children's education, which he did very well. Um, and then also our well being. So on the latter half or well being, she realized when were in high school that should do not financially take care of us anymore. And so we were put in foster care program. I'm in Texas, my sister and I, um, and this is unique because it does sort of help identify those that might be listening or those that might be watching this recording. You know, even though you have a very difficult star or you might be Australia, you don't necessarily have a fundamental understanding of what you want to be with your career, there are a lot of opportunities as long as you're you know, you have grit and you have perseverance and passion. So although all of these things happen to me, it was actually a blessing in disguise when I ended up going to college. And the reason for that, Because once you're emancipated from foster terror, you actually yet free in state tuition to, you know, a variety of colleges within that particular state. And so I ended going to new on Texas Tech University and again, just like a lot of students that might be listening to this or maybe audit professionals when I was younger. Frankly, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to either go into two main areas, the first one being financed because I realized that economic freedom and achieving that, um, it was a probably from my mom, and I also understood that it was a pirate party for me on the second one was, you know, as I was going through my college courses in finance, I realized this is a very established industry, right? I mean, there's really when a few options, you either become an investment manager, an analyst, or you go into investment banking, which is sort of the holy Grail of any sort of finance major. Um, and I realized that that structure that career path was a little bit too rigid for me. Unfortunately for myself, I realized that when I was a junior in college, and so I actually decided to pursue another major, and that was the management information systems. Now, the reason I think this was because I knew that technology was revolutionizing the entire world, right there is one area region really making. I can make a difference and accelerate your career. It's going to be in the technology space on. And so at the end of the day, I decided I'll just double major right on, and not all the people have the opportunity to do that. So I What I did was, you know, take advantage of that. That free tuition that I spoke about earlier and decided to pursue a double major, which, you know, looking back now retrospectively, I probably should just went for a masters if I had the opportunity. If I order five years anyway, Um, but, you know, after graduating again, this is gonna be a recurring theme in my story. I actually didn't have that much insight into what I wanted to do. I just know I wanted to be in finance or technology, and then I also wanted to move out to the West Coast. So right now I'm looking in the corner. But initially, um, you know, I was applying for any role I could get within California or again. Or Washington. Um and I accepted a few around the Bay Area, but they weren't in finance or technology. It was actually spurned. William, I'm the large paint company, right? Andi was around Poulter, and I was like, you know, maybe I want to go over there and be a management trainee, but also understood that you want a fundamental level that I went through all these years of school. I learned so much about technology and finance. I just felt like I had to go from one of these two areas and one of the easiest ways for any sort of students that are out there right now to really accelerate your career when you're looking for maybe a job, that technology is to really try to find smaller technology companies, ones that are, you know, quote unquote startups. And so really, you know, all these things I've been talking about My history was shipped in my tree trajectory and ultimately ended up finding a great job in L. A. With service titans. So again, a very small start up company. When I first joined, we were worth 800 million. We closed our on serious city funding round for approximately $62 million. The company at that time was with about it. No, today, you know, 2020. We closed our Serie ze a couple months ago. 70 million or so and now, um, were worth 2.5 billion. So I, you know, started at the company. Andi, I've seen it grow almost three x and you know, that's a unique experience, but it's an experience that, you know, if somebody wants to get fit or with any sort of technology company, I highly suggest that they work for any sort of start ups within their general wherever they wanted to work, because working at a start up is very different. Maybe from a lot of other speakers have hade. Or maybe that you've interviewed. Um The reason for that is is because everyone is experienced at a start up, but everything is trying to. Everyone's also trying to create new processes and your systems adopting technology. And ultimately we're trying to revolutionize the way that contractors or people in the trades ultimately perform their work. And so it's hard and I'm gonna have to wear multiple hats. But I think that's one of the best warning experiences somebody can get when they're, you know, coming out of college potentially, even if they're coming out of high school, depending on you know, if that started, need a subject matter expert know we've actually hired some no experienced X, you know, tradesmen. So people that you start on their own public companies their own H back Cos. Because we need those subject matter expert through warm, our product of the helmet sort of informer product roadmap, but also make sure that we're managing customer success. So I do all of those things sort of an or multiple hats. But I also think for any sort of person is on the same trajectory is myself or wants to pursue ah, job in technology, especially the start of space. I joined because you're gonna essentially get a taste of, you know, a little bit of everything and then to sort of figure out what to do with your career. I'm in a long term. So that's one of my story, you know, on different experiences that shaped my career today.

so I didn't want to touch on the startup, you know, because I just want to make sure that it when you join a start up the expectations are that you know, our compensation structure works a little bit differently. And this sort of flows into the how many work hours do we perform when you go to a start up or maybe even larger companies, but especially start up? The focus is on equity compensation, right? So either provided options and company essentially stock in a company or an option to vest that stock restricted stock options. And so the whole idea of the whole premise about this sort of compensation program is to encourage behavior as if you were an owner in the business, right? Like you own a small piece of the business and said, You'll be heavily invested in And you see that especially within service time as a whole, but especially with on the on the go team that service tightened. So the main objective here is that the growth team, what we're trying to do is come up with new products and services for customers. So what we will do is a stash an entire market, right? Is it? Do we have a good product market? Fit is are actually mature enough to address this particular market. Say that we want to move Intel landscaping, for example. Or maybe you want to move in, you know, beyond residential contractors and move into the commercial space. All of these things take, you know, thousands of hours actually complete from across our my entire team. So I would say my typical work, our especially working at a start up and being an equity owner can vary, but I would say about 10 to $12 per day. Um, and everybody's on a line all the time. Right? So, you know, our chief growth officer. I received an email from him at 6. 30 in the morning, and then I could be receiving emails from him to fix the president at 6 30 at night. So it's an all day thing, right? I mean, working at a start up. It's very unique in that regard. And I just want toe sort of, you know, make sure to delineate my sort of my sort of life in the way that I work versus maybe somebody that expects to go to a job and maybe just performing 9 to 5, because it's very It's different. It's night and day. So working ever start up? I mean, you're gonna put in, you know, you can put in 100 hour work week, Um, and and at the end of the work, you can still be sitting there on the couch and say it wasn't enough, right? So, um, and maybe that's just my personality. Maybe it's the personality that you know service time has hired for. But everybody that I worked with is gritty on the growth team. They're all access management consultants. Except for myself. I'm a lot of them having years of experience. I'm one of the younger members on the team, but I'm also one of the oldest. So, um, and what I mean by that is in terms of, like, 10 year and experiencing being with service Titan because the growth team actually formed approximately a year and a half ago. And then we started really ramping up hiring as we started to go to market with a variety of different products and services that we built, Um, so in terms of, um, you know, traveling our team. We have, Ah, we have a strategic partnerships team that I was a part of. And what we do is really engage in these a large, multi faceted contracts with these multibillion dollar, you know, associations. I mean suppliers or associations or distributors. Um, and what we do is actually we fly around the United States to a chain attend different trade shows. It's all in the pursuit of becoming a thought leader or at least making service kind of thought leader in the industry, but also making sure that we're focused on customer acquisition opportunities. So we'll travel to, you know, Las Vegas. There's been trips to Hawaii that Hamas and his own fun, right? But they are work trips. So, um, there's always before we ever traveled before we ever go anywhere. We always have a goal in mind. What? What we want to get out from the show and then what? We go to that particular trade show or events. We perform a retrospective. So this is a good thing to do in general. Just in a life is, you know, you know, go into something with a goal. And then after you performed up insecure, no project or completed that particular action performer retrospective and sort of break it up. And it could be a very simple sort of high level. What did we do? Well? Did we accomplish our goals? And what could we do differently next time? Um, it's not a high level. That's what we were doing were traveling. I would say that because of the seasonality of our business and our customers business. Amato The travel before Cove It was actually, you know, in Q three or Q four. So all the way from right now, you know, July all the way through December. But now everything is essentially virtual eso not as much traveling in the interim. But before you know this, this covert environment had our business. There was a lot of travel, and, you know, that's what auto industries do, especially the technology industry, you know, I go to someone about it, so I get the beginning of the year on what to see. Yes, and the reason which of the Consumer electronic symposium was essentially because the main topic in Las Vegas was the smart home and service. I'm actually looking at integrating with a you know different. Um, I t providers and things like that. And so we wanted to go there and some suppliers and meet some you know, larger pires in the i o t space eso. There is definitely a strategic perspective to travel, but there's also more so, like the customer acquisition in thought leadership component as well. Um, yeah, I just a lot of work on very scrappy, you know, being at a start up. We don't have a lot of processes and systems that are well established yet, but that's just my job is to try to throw a wrapper around.

so I would say one of the major challenges and run a very competitive space being in a technology start up. But one of the larger challenges, which is mawr internal versus these external challenges. And that's how I like to sort of bifurcated to in terms of internal challenges. I would say the growth team or my team were one of the most cross functional teams at the company, so we won't engage with marketing with products with the RAV ops with no engineering and one of the most important components. But also one of the most difficult pieces of the job is making sure that everybody is wholly aligned on our vision, right? So if we're working on odor marking, if you're really saying your product or service, I was one of the most difficult things. Just try to make sure that everybody is aligned, that the project is formally organized and that you're getting formal sign off. But also one of the key sort of exercises that I perform that I notice worked pretty well, is always revisit roles and responsibilities, roles and responsibilities. And you do this in your day to day, right? I mean, maybe you're in a relationship and somebody supposed to take out the trash one week and maybe somebody forgets the other week, right? You always want to sort of come back and make sure that you're sort of revisiting roles, responsibilities. So at the outset, we try to say, Hey, this is your responsibility. This is what you know. Ultimately, you should you should be accountable for But we're sort of everything shift so quickly that those things can actually change week over week. And so, you know, having a weekly meeting, a monthly meeting and always bringing every everybody back and making sure that you ground everybody Really Dr Cross functional alignment, but also making sure that you identify everybody's responsibilities in the best way possible. I would say that's a massive challenge for a start up. And, you know, when I first went up and about 600 employees and now we have about, you know, 1000. So as your team's grow and azure at a fast growing company, it becomes even more important to sort of manage the chaos if you will. Um, and I would say that's one of the one of the sort of key pieces of advice I would give to students. Is that what your first start working your job? Just really make sure that you're organized, that you really develop these cross functional relationships as soon as you join a particular company. Because sometimes there's cross functional stakeholders will be some of your largest proponents in terms of accelerating your own career. Onda also making sure that you're successful in whatever project you might be working on. Um, another thing which is very difficult, is focused on your own personal career development. And what I mean by that is, you know, by working at a start up, there's always something to do in terms of helping service time in making sure that we're, you know, assisting our customers and really helping the company build value. Right? But I would also say that one of the largest, our most difficult things being on the growth team here is really learning and development and more so personally so always be reading about your particular industry or whatever industries were interested in attempt to, you know, get certification. So being a program manager, one of the largest you know where the Wonder Mother, when the most important certifications is probably the cap hammer that PMP eso always. You know, talk to your manager. Maybe talk to whoever your direct reports are and always be thinking about. You know, what is the next sort of? What is the next sort of step in my career trajectory Look like getting another should be getting another certification. Should I be acquired in your skill and just to give you an example? Um, you know, I work heavily within a few different pieces of software, but when I didn't know was Tab Oil, which is a data visualisation software. Um, and my team began to really require a lot of, you know, dashboards in tableau and stuff like that. And instead of just reaching out to cross functional stakeholders because I knew they were busy, I just decided to, you know, take a terrible course and end up warning tubal myself. So there's a lot of things where you can actually take initiative so long as you communicate that with your manager with your team and say, Hey, you know, I think this is heaven men right now And can I have some time to, you know, develop my own skills that that would certainly help the company but also helped my own crew. I would say those are the two things are cross functional alignment and then making sure that you developed a career because, you know, in the modern in the modern day, a lot of people don't stay at companies for longer than two or three years, especially in the start of space. Um, the whole philosophy is that there's a one year, you know, equity vesting cliff. Because a lot of people we have after one year, Um, but you know, no matter how long or how short your out of company, just make sure you that you're continuing to build your skills, especially the technical skills that can help you succeed. So that's that's what I would say some of the challenges, but also some of the sort of some of the things that are potential solutions for the challenges as well