[upbeat music] Hey friend, it's David Nebinsky, the Senior Community Manager at the Chief of Staff Network.
We help chiefs of staff through the three Cs: cohorts, curriculum, and community via Slack with over 900 people in it. Learn more about our upcoming events and programs at chiefofstaff.network.
You can also subscribe to our newsletter to learn more there as well. This episode of the Chief of Staff Podcast is with Katie Mogul, the Chief of Staff at Savvy. It was recorded live at our NYC mixer and evening event.
In this episode, you'll learn about how Katie got her role and so much more. Here we go with Katie. So Katie, how did you get your chief of staff role? So,
uh, I got my chief of staff role in a way that was not necessarily super traditional, although I've heard maybe similar stories.
But I have worked at my company, which is a Series A startup for coming on four years now, and had worked at my company prior to my chief of staff role.
And previously there was someone in the chief of staff role, and I really admired her, and I was like, "She has the coolest job ever."
[laughs] She's in every single leadership conversation, has a really clear understanding of everything that's happening at the company, has a hand in the culture.
And so I felt, uh, you know, purposely like got very close to her and a lot of her work, and worked on things together.
And so it sort of became a natural, um, fit when she, she left the company, got a great job elsewhere, and I immediately called my boss and was like, "I want that role."
[laughs] I pitched myself for it, wrote a whole transition document, you know, essentially made it very easy for them to sort of say yes and, and take a chance on me. And now two years later, I'm, I'm still here. Woo.
[laughs] [applause] Um, what was in that... or what was so attractive to you? I mean, you mentioned that, like, but what, what, and so, well, like, why, why did you really wanna do it? Did you think, like, you
wanted to then do something else after that? What, like, what about the chief of staff role a- Yeah. Yeah. I- A lot of, I think, what was primarily, like, really inspiring to me is
I've always been at, you know, different companies. I've seen how much
a culture can sort of make or break the way that everyone works, the way it feels at work, the way-- the work that you're doing, like your happiness levels, and I saw her job as having such a hand in that, in
less of a obvious way per se as being an HR person.
But, you know, she had her hand in the culture from different strategy lenses, lenses, business operations, and so there was something that I felt, you know, I was like, "I could do this. I could do this well," and I
felt very inspired by it and, and wanting to, uh, you know, have a hand in and sort of shift the company culture because I know how important that is to all companies.
Um, and especially at, you know, my startup, which is, like, a Series A remote startup, which is a very hard place to create a, a culture. Um, I, uh, was inspired by that challenge.
So what were you doing before the chief of staff role? I know you said you were there for four years, so there was two years where you were kind of watching her shape this role. Yeah.
I was on our strategic partnerships team, so working with external clients, uh, on making sure that they understood what the tool looked like.
Uh, and yeah, really like client management is, is a lot of what I was working on. So you said you have a remote team. How many people on your team? We're just around 30.
And what do you find are the ways that you create culture with a remote team? And I'm curious also about the distribution, if it's global, if there's different cult- like different, you know, nationalities involved.
What have been some of the ways you create culture? What have been some of the biggest challenges in creating a culture? Yeah, that's great. Um, we-- So to answer a few of your questions, we're
distributed across the US, and so we don't have the added challenge of international time zones and, and, and different cultures in that way. But
started, you know, our, our team is around-- Our mission is around student loans, and so we started in DC, very policy heavy. COVID happened.
Everyone traveled across the country and sort of stayed there [laughs], uh, which I think had a lot of positive effects of it made, you know, people very flexible with their work and, you know, have a lot-- They, they were able to work around their, their lives a lot better.
Um,
but yeah, ma- creating culture is, is difficult, and I think one of the first things I did when I stepped into my role was, you know, we're around 30 people, so this was easy for me to do, but I had a one-on-one conversation with everyone across the team to really understand: What is it that drew you to this work?
What has kept you here? What do you wanna change? What is aspirational to you?
And through those conversations, I actually heard a lot of similar themes, which was very helpful because [laughs] then it was a lot easier to create a company culture that felt, uh, true to everyone on the team.
So, you know, one of the themes that came up constantly was growth. You know, people come to a startup for personal growth, for professional growth.
Like, they wanted to come and grow the company, and we're very inspired by that. But then they also wanted to grow themselves personally.
They wanted to grow into different-Career paths like similar to what I did, you know, moving into a chief of staff role. Um, and so I took a lot of those themes.
One of the first things I did was create, uh, company values that felt, again, true to all of those themes that, that came up consistently and infuse those among the team. Uh, we've done
a lot of different engagement, fun, you know, happy hour type things around milestones that we've hit as a team. So, um, when we hit a certain number of users, you know, doing a, a big happy hour.
But then I think another important piece of this culture aspect was making sure that we had really clear goals that we were all driving toward and, and trying to hit.
And so that was another one of the, the first things I did. I... We created new Savvy values and then also made sure, you know, we had a certain...
We had goals that we were all going toward as a team, but if you asked any single person at the team, you would have gotten 10 different goals and 10 different understandings of that goal.
And so worked really hard on creating a new, uh, framework where we had five goals that everyone on our team knew, everyone on our leadership team knew, our investors knew, uh, advisors knew, and so everyone became fluent in the same language around what our goals were and it became a lot easier for everyone to be driving towards something and feel very inspired by, you know, we're here together as a team, we're growing, we're growing the company, and we're growing one another professionally.
Um, culture's kinda tricky to measure sometimes, but chief of staff might even be more so. Yeah. How do you, how do you think about what makes a good one? That's a really good question. It's one I ask myself quite often.
Um, I've done some things in terms of measurement that I don't think are... They capture like a very, very small glimpse of what, you know, I, I've, I, I have done or like a chief of staff has actually done.
But I look a lot at... Because I came into the role really focused on our culture, uh, looked a lot at turnover, um, how have I impacted turnover in the past two years since I've, you know, been in the role. Um,
a lot of what I do is anecdotal. Like I, I've had those conversations, those one-on-one conversations with the team, and we've done engagement surveys.
Um, and we have done those over time so that I can get benchmarks and then understand, you know, over time, okay, are people more invested, less invested? Um, and so that's been something that I've tried to measure.
But I think a lot of what a chief of staff does is make things, make sure things are just working, and [laughs] so it- that's a hard thing to measure of like the absence of bad things happening.
[laughs] Um, but I think generally when things are running smoothly and,
you know, m- my co-founders, I, I have two co-founders, my co-founders are, you know, running smoothly in their job and, and there aren't a lot of complications coming up, then, then I'm doing my job.
There, there's so many tasks you have to make sure things run smoothly. Um, how do you prioritize your time? Do you have like routines, uh, planning routines? How do you do that?
Yeah, that's another really good question. I, I mean, I do a few things every day, but it's definitely a challenge [laughs] of... You know, every evening I sit down, I write my to-do list, uh, for the next day.
I block off parts of my day. I know that I think really well in the mornings, and I'm able to do deep work in the mornings.
And so I block off a few hours in the morning where I have to take time to do really like mindful projects.
And then I know in the afternoons it's a lot easier for me to answer Slacks and get to things that are a little more mindless. Uh, and then I also spend time at the
beginning of the week, one of my first meetings is with my co-founders, and we set priorities for the week.
And that helps me whenever I'm at a point where I'm like, "I have 10 million things to do and I don't know [laughs] where to start."
I go back to that list and sort of understand, okay, these are the main things that I, that I have to focus on this week, um, and how do I make sure that those get done.
So what are some examples of the kinds of projects that you work on or are working on or that you've accomplished, uh- Yeah... in your role? Yeah. One of the things I'm working on right now, um... Again, I, I
came in and was really focused on wanting to create a culture of growth professionally, uh, personally, you know, in, in a lot of dif- different ways.
And one of the ways I sought to do that was we have a pretty traditional end of year review cycle where at the end of the year we go through reviews, we check off a box, and that sort of wraps it up. Um,
and I tried really hard to sort of create a more of a mentorship, more of a feedback-rich culture.
One of the ways that I did that was implementing mid-year check-in points where we s- you sort of check in toward the end of your goals, and it becomes a more formalized process.
So, you know, frankly, it's less hard to, to put off [laughs] when it's a process where, that you really have to go through. And it is more focused on...
whereas the end of year goals are focused on did you hit your goals, um, you know, where, where are you along the way, this mid-year progress point is, is a check-in on where are you with the goals, but it's also how are you feeling, how can I as your mentor support you, how can th- the Savvy team, the Savvy leadership support you, um, and it's a
formalized point in time where people are having those conversations.
So one of the things that I'm working on right now is I'm creating worksheets for those calls, um, which are informed in part by how the calls last year went, how people liked them, uh, and, you know, are, are hopefully a way for people to have formal conversations that will help in their growth.
Let's give it up for Katie. [clapping] Thank you.
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