Venture Everywhere Podcast: Kevin Delaney with Jenny Fielding
Jenny Fielding, co-founder of Everywhere Ventures catches up with Kevin Delaney, co-founder and CEO of Charter on Episode 1: Work in Progress.
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Kevin J. Delaney is the co-founder and CEO of Charter, a next-generation media and insights company with a mission to transform every workplace. Charter catalyzes a new era of dynamic organizations where all workers thrive by bridging research to practice – giving people the tactical playbook for what work can and should be. Prior to Charter, Kevin co-founded and was co-CEO of Quartz, which was acquired in 2018 for $86M.
This episode is hosted by Jenny Fielding, co-founder and general partner of Everywhere Ventures (previously The Fund). In this interview, Jenny grills Kevin on his early influences on becoming an entrepreneur, the tipping point for creating Charter, and his outlook on hybrid and flexible work. Hear from Kevin on what it’s like to be an empath founder, challenges and lessons from iterating business models for a media company, and the aha moment for launching a return to office toolkit in the aftermath of the pandemic. Listen till the end for a speed round on productivity hack, media recs, and a tip on how to find Kevin in Brooklyn!
If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe to Venture Everywhere and give us a rating wherever you found us! To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and subscribe to our Founders Everywhere Substack. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates and news.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jenny Fielding
Hi, and welcome to the everywhere podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who have come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
Well, super excited to kick off this talk with one of our portfolio founders, one of our LPs, and just you know, someone that we're excited to have in our community, Kevin Delaney, the founder of Charter. So welcome, Kevin.
Kevin Delaney
Thank you, Jenny. So happy to be here for this conversation. I feel like I learn so much from you every time we talk.
Jenny Fielding
You know, I think the entrepreneurial journeys is like always start with a story of a long time ago. So I kind of just love to hear a little bit of your background kind of, you know, where you came from, and maybe what some of the early influences that prompted you to feel like entrepreneurship might be for you.
Kevin Delaney
I have been, I mean, to go back really far, like I've always been interested in journalism. But one of the things I was exposed to in college was very early, just saw publishing, the intersection of the internet and journalism, and I was the editor of a college newspaper. And we were using the first versions of Photoshop and PaveMaker. And I was uploading the the newspaper articles, via Gopher, and FTP, and all these things. And so that is kind of a thread through my career, I spent about 16 years at the Wall Street Journal, but I actually worked in television, at the very beginning, in Canada and I use some of the first digital video editing systems up there. And at the Wall Street Journal, I was involved in a big expansion in Europe, I worked for a magazine they owned for a while, I was in Paris, and then in San Francisco, and then I was the managing editor for digital and championing a lot of the new ways of approaching journalism having left there to start quartz, which is this business news site that was the sister publication of The Atlantic. And we I think, were known for a lot of the products and innovations that we had. The way we're using product and technology, we're very kind of web and social focused in 2012, when it was clear that that was such a big opportunity. But a lot of the traditional news organizations were blind to that. And then you know, I've done it a few different things since but then we get to Charter, which is this media and research firm that we've created that's focused on work, and we make workplaces better bring them into the future so that every worker can thrive, and part of the reason for this is that I was leading relatively big teams at the Wall Street Journal, and then we had a big team at Quartz and then, and I always felt I didn't have a playbook or the research based information to operate in coherence with where I thought the world was going around areas like sustainability and diversity and inclusion in reinventing capitalism and multiple generations workforce, tech and automation, all these things. And it was like, I've devoured Harvard Business Review, and every management book and all these things, and it was like, there's something fundamentally missing. I don't have what I need, in the space of my pretty busy day, to really have confidence in new approaches to how do you run an inclusive meeting? How do you think about compensation in a way that's fair, and not just benchmarking to how we've done it for decades, these sorts of questions that I wasn't satisfied with the answers for and that, you know, at the very, from the very start has been the impetus of Charter. It was born into the moment of a pandemic, and like, which kind of loosened a lot of corporate practices and open people's minds to different ways of doing things, which, you know, was bad in a lot of ways. But it's created this opportunity to rethink workplaces. And that, to go back to your question, like there are two threads, or maybe three, one is just this journalistic thread, which I've always been motivated by. The second thing is like figuring out how tech and audiences in different like nascent tools, you know, in today, that looks a lot like generative AI, like all of these things allow us to have impact as journalists and as people working in media. And then the third thread is like, Yeah, our playbook for how we lead organizations is okay. But we're kind of making a lot of the same mistakes that we've made for a long time and like, we need to turn to research and what other people have learned to give us confidence to actually do things better and that's the those are probably the strands that are most obvious in my career.
Jenny Fielding
I think when you first told me about charter one of the things that interested me, not really about the company as much, but your story is I consider you the typical kind of Empath founder right so this it wasn't necessarily like, Oh, this is an opportune moment. It's like, hey, this has been building in your career. It's been part of your narrative way before the pandemic, which was like a great catalyst. But I kind of love those stories that started a long time ago. And we're just kind of building building and then you know, more explosive.
Kevin Delaney
Yeah, no, that's exactly. That's exactly it. I hadn't heard that heard the term Empath founder, but it makes total sense. And I tried to Quartz to start something like this. And when I worked briefly for the New York Times, like, after Quartz and like, tried to do something in this area, and then finally, I was like, Okay, I just have to do it myself.
Jenny Fielding
So what was that moment? Obviously, the pandemic hits, and you know, it's a, you know, a massive transformation and how we all kind of work and live. Was there a moment where you kind of looked in the mirror, we're like, this is it, you know, the headwinds, tailwinds. Like everything is just, you know, culminating into this like, amazing moment. I mean, there were definitely headwinds, right, it was like starting a company when you know, at the beginning of the pandemic was also kind of crazy. But the tail winds of what you were pioneering were pretty strong as well.
Kevin Delaney
I was working in the end, starting the end of 2019, into for about a year into 20, at the New York Times, and they brought me in to lead a project on economic inequality. And so in December of 2019, I was working with some amazing people Jyoti Thottam, David Lienhart, Binyamin Appelbaum. And we're like, the problem of economic inequality is so significant, but people's eyes glaze over when you start talking about it. So like, how are we going to do a project on inequality that actually has impact and really moves things forward. And then the pandemic hit, and we're like, oh, actually, this is going to impact like, the reality of inequality in our country is going to play out and be amplified by this pandemic. And so we created the series for the Times on this, and I think were among the first to really draw the connection, that race and what kind of job you had, and gender and all these things were, were impacting if people were affected by the pandemic, and then like, concretely, like how long you live, like your life expectancy, particularly in a pandemic, was linked to that. And so I was like, in very much in that mode and thinking, there is real urgency around this and had been talking to the times about trying to do something focused on work. And Alex McCallum, who was a longtime Times person who started cooking and puzzles and a bunch of stuff for them, was in one of the conversations there. And she's like, Yes, this is it, we should do it. I'm gonna, I'm there. I'm with you. And so we, in the summer of 2020, started talking about what we were going to do. And the idea was to kind of test this thesis with an email newsletter, which at the time was called Reset Work. Alex wound up later, leaving the project, but it was was really like foundational for the very beginning to like, give me confidence that this is something I should be doing.
Jenny Fielding
That's awesome. I'm someone that's always had somewhat strange work patterns, and that I wake up really early. And that's my best thinking, working time. So I've always tried to arrange a schedule, and I've been lucky, you know, for the last decade, to be able to kind of arrange my own schedule, where I stay home from early in the morning, I get to work at like, six. And I work until like, 12, at home. And it's really quiet. And it's just me. And then I usually like to, you know, meet a founder or another VC or like something that's kind of social for lunch. And so that's when I usually I live uptown. So that's usually when I like had downtown. And then I'd had into an office and people for years thought that that was kind of unusual. Not that like I worked from home, but that I like to have a lot of people like to either go in one day, or anyway, it was a little alternative then in every day. But I like to do it, you know, after I had my morning thinking time. Then the pandemic hits and kind of everyone's thinking about new modalities of working. And that doesn't seem odd to anyone anymore, when I tell them that that's actually my schedule every day. And so I'm just kind of curious, what you think, you know, the future of work looks like and how we kind of got to this new normal of flexibility. And I guess my next question is like, is it staying around?
Kevin Delaney
Yeah, I think I mean, first of all, I think it's awesome that you like recognized your own, the rhythm of your work, and your attention and your focus and all these things. And actually, have found a way in and, you know, confidence and the ability to actually create your workday around that. I think a lot of like, the struggles of the nine to five, five day a week, traditional office setup is they're concretely like times in there where you just kind of like, would be very happy to put your head on your desk and just kind of zone out for a bit because you don't have the energy or it's not like the time in your day when you really can handle the stuff that you should be really focused on. And so I think what's really interesting about this time and I hope that we stick with this as long as possible, but It's really clear from the research into the experience of the last several years is that for the 30ish percent of people who are able to do their jobs remotely, you know, so this is if you're not like, if you're a childcare worker or security guard or something like there's majority of workers actually have to be on a worksite to do their job. But for the people, generally knowledge workers, who actually can do their job remotely, what's really clear is that the hybrid configuration, which is a you work in an office, two or three days a week and have more flexibility about your schedule, similar to what you were talking about, Jenny, is just so much better. You know, we have researchers now at Stanford and Harvard who have actually done large scale, randomized controlled trials. And what they find is that workers are more engaged, they're more likely to be retained, some their productivity is similar or better. Their performance is after some period of time is rated, as better generally. And another interesting thing they've studied is the content of the emails that you send, and the connections that you have within organizations, in hybrid workers, more than remote are fully on site workers actually have the best, the richest emails and the richest communications with their colleagues. And so the takeaway is really that hybrid flexible schedules are probably how we should have been working for a long time and they should be how the default for organizations within the constraints of the type of work that we're doing.
Jenny Fielding
Question that doesn't go as far as the four day workweek. I know you wrote an article in 2021. And I thought it was really interesting that different political figures have had an agenda around this, like even in the 60s and 70s, that was moving and it seems like it gets a little momentum and then we go backwards. So
Kevin Delaney
Well, Richard Nixon is like the when you sell this, have you been like what really? Like, yeah, in the 1950s said that he thought the four day workweek. He was campaigning, he was vice president and campaigning, he thought that the four day workweek made a lot of sense. And then in the 70s and early 70s, around the energy crisis, there was some conversation, that it felt like the four day workweek was was near at hand. I think, you know, I've talked to a lot of organizations who have different types of businesses. That was kind of my question like, there have been relatively large scale, yeah relatively large scale trials in places like Iceland, where municipal workers have actually done this government workers have done it. And the question is like, well, if you're at a law firm, or you're at a different client services arrangement, or something else, could you really do it? And that? The answer is most places actually find that the four day work week, I've talked to those different types of companies, including a multinational law firm that trialed it, and they're like, Yeah, we're actually like, people are much happier. We get as much work done. And the the only change that we've had to make is that we have to be much more disciplined about meetings. And so a lot of the places that I talked to that were successful in doing it, having a four day work week, they had new norms and rules around meetings. So no internal meetings longer than 30 minutes, no internal meeting after 4pm, we also arguably have a lot fewer meetings. And so what we're doing in Charter, is we have occasional Fridays, you know, regularly Fridays, off for our team, it's not every Friday, but it's a few times a quarter. And then we also have meeting free Fridays. So we don't schedule internal meetings on Fridays. And they're kind of steps towards a four day work week that are, I think, are pretty straightforward for companies to try.
Jenny Fielding
I love as such an early stage company, that you're being so thoughtful, and you are a future of work company. So I guess you'd have to live the values. I find many of our startups that are just trying to get things going, keep the lights on, take the trash out. And so it's pretty cool to you know, to be so planful and thoughtful around it. I love it.
Kevin Delaney
We've wanted to be a real laboratory for the practices that we're using. And we have been in one notable area is compensation. So we have bands of compensation. We have no negotiate job offers in terms of salary, because the research shows that when you have negotiation, it generally favors people have more information or confidence or biases in their favor. So basically, white in benefit, sort of implicitly in those sorts of arrangements. And so we can make people two job offers one which is heavier on cash and one which is heavier on equity and let them choose. But within their band, we won't actually negotiate the terms. And so everyone who has the same level of responsibility in the organization, it's the same amount of money within those bands. And we've had to figure that out, you know, we're bringing on some salespeople. And so we're, you know, having to wrestle like, what does commission look like in this, like very equitable banded salary structure. And so definitely takes more time and is more complicated and is not intuitive for people. But when we explain to people why we're doing what we're doing, and what the structure is 100% of the time, people are like, Okay, I would want to negotiate with you for a different salary terms. But I totally respect what you're doing with this. And like the idea of working in a place that has this as my first interaction with you.
Jenny Fielding
That's so cool. I have to tell you a sidebar story, which is many careers, many moons ago was was considering working at a big media company, I guess you'd call it, multimedia company, the CEO, very Hollywood. So based on Rodeo Drive, like very traditional Hollywood, and I was very much out of my element there. But I was kind of going down the path. And so the CEO told me, We like agreed on the salary and the comp and whatnot. Then I got he was like, well, we're gonna send you an official, you know, email with all of it, and everything was 20% less than what we agreed. And so I sent him an email, and I was like, thank you so much. But you know, I won't be accepting this offer. Two seconds later, the guy called me he's the CEO of like, this very big media company, and like, I'm not such a high up person there. And he's like, What do you mean? And I said, Well, that's not what we agreed on. And he said, that's how it works here at Hollywood, like, we agree, but then I give you something lower, and then we go back and forth.
Kevin Delaney
That's amazing.
Jenny Fielding
You know, I'd come from like a more traditional, like, I went to law school, I worked as a lawyer, banking, and like, I've lived in New York, and I didn't know that was a Hollywood way. And so I decided, you know, thank you so much for the offer, like I'm not interested. But my point is that like these kind of, I wouldn't even say they're cultural. But these kind of insider things that probably everyone in Hollywood knew that that was, but I didn't, is really a disadvantage, right. And so I love the fact that you're like, Nope, you say, at first, like, this is actually how we're doing it. It's just so much more straightforward.
Kevin Delaney
The research is really clear that the underrepresented groups do worse and the disadvantage accrues financially over careers and lifetimes. You know, we're still a small company, but we feel like, we can be a laboratory for these things, and hopefully help other companies by kind of pioneering some of these things.
Jenny Fielding
So cool. So obviously like great crescendo into what you're doing kind of your life's work, it seems. So I'd love to hear a little more about Charter kind of your mission and really, like, you know, what's the big picture for the company.
Kevin Delaney
So our mission is to transform every workplace so that every worker can thrive. And you know, there are a few components of this. One is that it's fair, you know, what we've been talking about that everyone. And we know that work places have actually disadvantaged, underrepresented groups, and things we take for granted in ways of managing teams actually leave people out, leave people unhappy, leave people burned out. And so that's the second part of it, there's fairness. And then there's just thriving. So what are the practices? And as organizations, you can burn people out and hate your quarter, but how do you? How do you think about sustainable high performance? How do you have a dynamic place that's creative, that's innovative, and that people over, you know, over years and years just get stronger and better? And does so thanks to your people who are thriving in their role? The very start of Charter was that we started an email newsletter and immediate operation, to actually just kind of obsessively focus on the workplace people issues that are front of mind for so many organizations over the last few years, and look at the research and what the best practices are and do our own research and reporting. And be really close to the academic researchers and tell people like equip them to actually make decisions with that information in hand. And then, you know, our desire is that that filters through and impacts the experience of workplaces for 10s and hundreds and 1000s and 10s of 1000s and millions of people, ultimately by equipping the people who are in the position to make decisions about the structure of work to do so in ways that are much better for everybody. So the long term vision and what has happened more recently is that we now have Charter Pro which is a membership organizations, primarily the people teams become members and they have access to research and content and events and some advisory support with us where they come to us and say, Okay, we're grappling with implementing psychological safety exercises for teams because we know that teams are better when that's present. We have a hybrid work policy, but it's really not working. You know, can you help us figure it out? We are able to get diverse underrepresented groups to come work in our company, but then we're having trouble retaining them. Those are sort of issues where there is actually ample research in best practices that we're immersed in and actually can help companies apply to their own situations. So the big like dream is, I believe, because I was someone like this in my previous jobs, there are a lot of people who earnestly want to lead organizations in coherence with where the world needs to go on the vectors I was talking about earlier, sustainability, inclusion, all these things, but they don't, they're not equipped to do it. And so our goal is to help transform every workplace by activating the people who are in there and making the decisions and don't necessarily have the information that's researched-back, they don't necessarily have the confidence, they're doing a million things, don't really have a partner in figuring this out. That's really, you know, at its core, what we're aiming to do,
Jenny Fielding
So cool. One of the things I struggle with, when I meet with some of these companies that are enabling technology software for the workplace, is okay, especially at the early stage, who is your customer? Is it the employee? Or is it you know, the company manager, etc, right? And because that, you know, has a different kind of look and feel, it's just really hard, you can't kind of be everything to everyone, right? So where a manager maybe wants a dashboard that they can kind of, you know, see the health of their business, maybe the employee feels that that's a little too intimate, and they just want a tool that's going to make them better. You know, there's a lot of subtlety, I think, in some of the software companies in terms of like, okay, not just who's the end user, but you know, who are the stakeholders?
Kevin Delaney
Yeah, no, I totally agree. And there's some of these platforms that are around employee sentiment and coaching and things like that, where employees don't always realize it, but the content of their conversations is transmitted back to their employer. So it's kind of another form of surveillance. And, you know, to your point, like, who is the stakeholder who holds the power here, I think like, this is kind of trite, or conventional wisdom. But I think the slack model is super interesting, because you effectively have a, you know, an enterprise tool that was adopted by individuals and small teams that ultimately bubbled up to be paid for and adopted by workplaces. And I think that that is for a lot of tools that I'm thinking about, that might be a small team, where they might try it, you know, it could be a new video conferencing tool, or some slack plugin that allows teams to coordinate their schedules or managers to have better management practices and checking with people. If it works on that level then it gets kind of surfaced up to the enterprise for subscription and broader roll up. That's kind of the dream scenario. And maybe it's not realistic and Jenny, you know more about it than I do.
Jenny Fielding
There's sensitivities is on on all sides I now. So you know, I hear it from employees. And then I hear it from kind of companies or managers and HR people. It's definitely an interesting time, because stuffs happening in real time. But on that I'd love to hear kind of maybe it's just some of the trends that you see within future of work.
Kevin Delaney
Yeah, I think I mean, there, there are a few big things I would say like just to start on flexibility, I think like the research has shown and if if people don't have access to the research, or please like, find me and I can help you, if you need to make a case for your workplace, that flexibility is better for both you and your business. The cases is pretty clear. So that's one thing. I think that there are a lot of questions around productivity slash performance, and culture, and what new ways of working actually mean. And I think that we're kind of working some of those out. But there are practices there that I think are really interesting. One of them. I just talked to Paul Bennett, who's the Chief Creative Officer at IDEO. And he was talking about teams coming together in person for boosty moments and gnarly moments. So the moments where you need to, like, enact in person with your team to get the energy to keep going or start on a project and the gnarly moments where it's like, this is kind of tough, like I would benefit from being around other people and talking to them, you know, as I'm trying to get through this gnarly moment. Really, the trend there is like we're all kind of figuring out some of the specific details of how to be a good manager how to lead a team, how to energize teams. So that's another thing I guess I would say two more things quickly. One is in people circles, there's a lot of discussion around a focus on skills over jobs. And the idea is that, you know, traditionally we have a job title, product manager, we're an editor we do different, you know, have those job titles, but it doesn't speak to the extent of our experience and our specific skills. And so companies are increasingly trying to be more granular about what your skill is, you know, and it might be the type of projects you've worked on, or industry you worked in, or a specific bit of technical expertise, and then allowing you to see where the gaps are for you to advance or work on the types of project you want to work on. And then in a kind of self serve way, try and upskill and train. And that kind of brings me to the last thing, which is something that Jenny you know about so well, too, which is this, the the accelerated application of AI, you know, sort of clear significance for all of our jobs and all of our workplaces that entail that our jobs are going to change probably most of our jobs will not go away. But the majority of jobs, knowledge working jobs, especially will be changed as a result of these technologies, as we figure out how they integrate into a lot of the tools that we're already using, in addition to new tools that are being developed and this connection to skills is that we need to keep upskilling and probably need to have a more granular sense over skills rather than an abstract sense of what's needed for us to move forward in our career, that a over burden middle manager can provide us when we ask them to tell us like there's gotta be another way. And the skills part is really exciting also, because it opens opportunities to people who may not have traditional careers, traditional degrees, who've been effectually, blocked from roles that they're more than capable of, because a credential like a university degree has been a requirement, rather than the skills that are needed to do the job.
Jenny Fielding
I love that I teach undergrads and my students, there's always a module on creative destruction. And the students, they're undergrads, they're seniors mostly, and they start like ripping their chairs, as we got to go through the, you know, the Schumpeter reading, but one of the things that I like to say to them is like, you know, our class, you know, we run it like a business school class, it's like, half your grade is class participation. And, you know, we really are trying to tease out stuff that a lot of students aren't getting at universities, right. It's like you study especially like STEM students, right? You study, you get your grade, and my class, there's no test, right? I mean, it's all about like, what's your contribution? And so I always say to them during the creative destruction, like that's why we have this class, because I want you guys to make connections and be able to, you know, articulate and express yourselves, because I'm not sure that that's going away anytime soon.
Kevin Delaney
Are they excited by that?
Jenny Fielding
I think I get it. I mean, it's a pretty big glass, there's about 85 students, and I think they're in that class, because they want to, I mean, the class is on entrepreneurship. So they want to learn about entrepreneurship. Right? I think that resonates. And that's why they're pushing themselves. Many of them. We have a lot of engineering students and people that don't feel comfortable just always raising their hand and talking about things that are more personal to them. I love that dialogue. But I'm glad you I'm glad you mentioned it.
Kevin Delaney
Yeah and I think that there's like it just connects to things that it's something we talked about earlier, like I you know, was uploading university newspaper articles to the earliest versions of the web, and, you know, using mirrorless, digital video tools, and I always found it like, really pretty exciting. The truth is that, like some people were put out of work by these tools, they were really exciting to me. And I think that, you know, it goes back to the project that I was doing for the New York Times, and I think the broader context for this, like, you can be really excited about this stuff, and see ways in which it can accelerate what we're doing. We also need to be honest about the ways in which it is impacting people and increasing inequality. And I feel that workplaces are and companies are powerful engines of social societal change, if we want them to be. And that's got to be part of how we enter into this next phase of Business and Technology.
Jenny Fielding
I'd love to kind of talk a little bit about Charter and some of the challenges that you've had, one of the things that I kind of loved was you had this newsletter, and then you were doing a conference, and then you had the subscription and that year, I mean, it's it's a challenging business model, right. And I know when you are fundraising, right, there are a lot of people that were like, Okay, this isn't software though, right? And that's what I'm used to investing in, you're like, No, this is something, you know, bigger than that or different. What have been some of the challenges getting Charter off the ground?
Kevin Delaney
You know, I think, to that point that you just said, you know, we initially thought of ourselves as a media and services company, and we talked to one investor and he's like, okay, you've now shot yourself in both feet, because no one wants to invest in media. No one wants to invest in services. And so the thing that was there all along and we probably weren't talking about it right is that we do have this business we have the media activity, which has the advantage reach, you know, so we have this email newsletter that has about 80,000 subscribers, we have a partnership with Time. So we reach a much bigger audience we publish onto Times home page and you know, throughout their, to their community. So we have this big reach and the first party relationships that come with having email subscribers and so forth. But then what we've done with the membership is to have a model that scales that is actually very technology reliant, that has much more stable and superior economics to the media, even the media activity. And so you have like the sort of very refined version of this business model is Bloomberg, where you have a news and data subscription, that is very premium, and that is very profitable. And it supports a media activity of Bloomberg, that allows them to have reach with their brand and kind of with their audience. And so just to your point, like, one of the challenges is like figuring that out. We want to have impact. And we have businesses that wanted to work with us, but like, how do we structure it in a way that makes sense as a business for us and for investors. So that's definitely one of the challenges that we had. Another challenge that we've had is the timing of return to office. So in the summer of 2021, we launched an offering, like very quickly a return to office toolkit for teams, basically. And it was, if you think of, you know how sometimes teachers borrow, or buy, like lesson plans from each other, if you're teaching American history to second year high school students, they're these great marketplaces where you can learn like, what's a good lesson plan for this, we tried to create lesson plans for managers and leaders for the return to office. And we made that part of a consumer subscription. And the way history played out is that there was Delta and Omicron. And some companies came back at certain times, and others didn't. And it was not this single moment. And that was, it just meant that it became quickly clear that the market for what we're doing, even though it made so much sense, we can give you the equivalent of a lesson plan as a manager, you get your team ready to come back in the office with exercises and emails, you send them in, like, we're gonna make you the best manager possible. The history like put it out in a much more diffuse way, that meant that that wasn't the right product. And we quickly realized that, stopped marketing it. And then that precipitated the thinking about that I just explained before about our business model and how that should work.
Jenny Fielding
Nothing like being an early stage iterative startup. And so I love that I could talk to you literally all day, we have to wrap things up, I want to get our speed round that just quick answers on these, a book or a podcast or some type of media that you're enjoying recently.
Kevin Delaney
So I, as part of my job, I read more or less weekly, a business or management book and then do a briefing on it for our readers, something that they've been interested in. And one of the ones that I read recently that or that I like was surprised to like so much, is a book called Tranquillity by Tuesday, it's by Laura Vanderkam, she has a popular TED Talk.
Jenny Fielding
If you can live anywhere in the world for one year, so you could take your family on this like amazing year adventure, where would it be?
Kevin Delaney
So I did have this adventure and it was six years and we lived in Paris. And both of my kids were born there and had an incredible time. That was a while ago at this point now. And I would say I'd love a rerun of that. Send me back to Paris for a year.
Jenny Fielding
All right, let's do it. A favorite productivity hack?
Kevin Delaney
I would say there are two things. One is, Jenny, kind of to your point really early on. I have a bicycle. I live in Brooklyn. And when I get to the point where I just can't focus, I come up with an errand for myself and I get on my bike and ride. Clearing your head and actually stepping away from the work is probably the biggest thing. And then the second one is just writing things down, keeping notes going back through them extracting things.
Jenny Fielding
Okay, and last one, where should listeners find you?
Kevin Delaney
Okay, they literally can find me in Brooklyn and maybe trying to clear my head and distracted. They can find us a charterworks.com, which is where charter lives we have a free email newsletter, which I mentioned before. And so if anyone wants to follow what we're up to, you can sign up for that. It's a low commitment thing. And we'll share with you every week the latest research on the pressing workplace problems and you'll get book briefings from me on some of the latest business books.
Jenny Fielding
And if you're a company and you want to engage with Charter, you can chat with me and I'll hook you up.
Kevin Delaney
Exactly. Charter Pro is our membership offering and we have a bunch of companies that we're working with already and are looking to help out more.
Jenny Fielding
Awesome. Well, this was a treat. Lucky to be involved with Charter and love all the work you're doing. So Thanks.
Kevin Delaney
Jenny. Thanks so much.
Scott Hartley
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Check out Kevin Delaney’s feature in Founders Everywhere!