Why Everybody Unpacks the Dishwasher: Ella Brennecke, People Operations Manager at Everlab
Most people teams wait until someone with an HR background is in the room before they build a culture function. Ella Brennecke didn’t have one, and Everlab’s culture is stronger for it.
In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Ella Brennecke, People Operations Manager at Everlab, the preventative health company that has grown past 130 people across Sydney and Melbourne. They get into how Ella broke into people and culture from a hospitality and founder-support background, why she deliberately targeted startups with nobody yet in HR, and how she uses AI as a research partner without letting it write the memo a human is meant to read.
It’s a hands-on look at building culture at speed: onboarding designed to start before day one, an “everybody unpacks the dishwasher” ownership principle that runs through hiring and customer care alike, and why Everlab puts every new hire through its own health protocol before they touch the product. They also cover the real tension in AI-assisted hiring, why a genuine cover letter still beats a strong resume, and what years in hospitality taught her about designing experiences long before she had a people title.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Ella Brennecke is People Operations Manager at Everlab in Sydney, where she has built the people and culture function largely from scratch since joining roughly nine months ago. She came to Everlab via the Founder Success team at Blackbird Ventures and the guest experience team at cabin retreat company Unyoked, and works closely with Everlab’s founder on hiring, onboarding and culture across the company’s Sydney and Melbourne offices.
Building Tech Teams is produced by DayOne.
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Transcript
Auto-transcribed with AI.
James MacDonald [0:00]: Your LinkedIn title says you design experiences where people excel. I’d love to unpack that.
Ella Brennecke [0:07]: I can’t force 130 people to connect and to build this culture. What you can do is you can create the conditions for that connection. If you expect a human to read something, you as a human should write something. If you can really nail operations, then it lightens everything up to really focus on those surprise and delight and special moments. You can’t have a specific JD and go, this is the list of things that I look after. When you work at a startup, you look after problems, not tasks. And you can’t push an experience on someone. But what you can do is you can design all the elements around them that mean that they can just kind of seamlessly roll into it.
James MacDonald [0:43]: Nobody in engineering is ever asking for a people system. They’re asking for better hires, a quicker hire — just help me scale my team. Everlab raised $65 million in June. They’re backed by AirTree. They’ve now got 130 people across Sydney and Melbourne. They’ve still got the same head office here in Surry Hills. The person who built the people function here has never held an HR title before in her life.
Every engineering leader I talk to has culture somewhere on their list of things to do. There’s absolutely no way to scale a tech team or a tech company successfully without actually being intentional. And that’s what the theme of this whole episode is about today. Company doubles in number — culture is the actual glue that keeps things together, keeps the company growing, but it needs to be intentional. And that’s what Everlab and Ella have actually done.
My name is James MacDonald. This is another episode of Building Tech Teams. I’ve spent 10 years placing CTOs, heads of engineering, AI leaders across Australia, and I run NTP Talent, a technology recruitment company. Every episode I do, I sit down with technology or people leaders on how to build and scale technology teams in the age of AI.
This episode we have Ella Brennecke, who runs people operations at Everlab. She’s been in the job nine months. Before that, she spent a decade in hospitality and experience design. She ran founder experience at Blackbird, and built the guest experience at Unyoked. It’s this experience, this intentional design, that’s really had some success with the Everlab experience, and that’s what I want to share.
When she decided she wanted to work in people and culture, she sent out resumes, she tapped her network, she got some warm intros, but she never got a single interview. So what she did was she studied the people who had actually got there without the CV. She went to companies without an actual HR function at all, and she asked for the actual title on the way in. Really interesting experience, and one that a lot of people can learn from.
Today we get into what actually breaks when a company goes past 100 people, two cities. Why the work that she’s most proud of is actually a review cycle. And what happens to an engineering team when everyone in the building actually sits with a customer once a quarter — that’s one of the big learnings from this one. Here’s the conversation.
Welcome to another episode of Building Tech Teams. On today’s episode, we have Ella Brennecke, People Operations Manager at Everlab, one of Australia’s big scale-up success stories at the moment. Your LinkedIn title says you design experiences where people excel. I’d love to unpack that.
Ella Brennecke [3:12]: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve just always been obsessed with experiences. No matter what job you’re in, you’re either dealing with customers, or you’re dealing with people, or you’re dealing with colleagues. And if you can help to create these experiences where people feel good, where they can do their best work, where they can have these magical moments, then that’s what I really, really love.
I also have quite a strong ops background as well. I love solving problems. And I think people experience and ops go really hand in hand. If you can really nail operations, then it lightens everything up to really focus on those surprise and delight and special moments that you can filter in there.
James MacDonald [3:50]: You mentioned the word magic there. On your LinkedIn profile — or there might have been an interview — you’ve mentioned magic is designed. I’d love you to unpack that part a little bit as well. How does that designing of those magical experiences come about?
Ella Brennecke [4:03]: Yeah. So when we talk about magic, I’m not talking about these huge big moments. I’m talking about these almost smaller moments, where you have really strong connections with people, or it feels like it was meant to be — like you were meant to meet this person, or you were meant to go on this walk, or you were meant to connect with someone.
You obviously can’t force it. Say it out loud — we have 130 people, I can’t force 130 people to connect and to build this culture. But what you can do is you can create the conditions for that connection. And it’s all small things. You can suggest, for somebody on their first day, three people that they should go for a walk with and have a chat to, where you just know maybe they’re solving the same problems at work, but maybe they both love to run marathons, maybe they’re both dog people, maybe there are other things where they can connect with each other and build this human connection, so that when they do need help at work, they know who to come to.
Something that we really focused on when I was at Unyoked — obviously you’re creating an experience for people, but then you’re not there to see it through and to tell them what to do. So what you need to do is you need to create all of these rituals, and you need to create all these threads that people can pull on. So once people get to the cabin, is there board games already set up? Is there some writing about how to find the perfect stick? Is there firewood so that they can build a fire from scratch? What are those threads that you’re leaving people to pull on? And then how can that create these magical moments?
James MacDonald [5:20]: Everlab’s growing very quickly, and I’d love to continue to go down this route, because culture is very different at a one-to-ten-person organisation to a hundred-plus organisation. You’re also Sydney and Melbourne at the moment, creating consistency in culture across both places, consistency in culture as you grow. I’d love to get your opinions on how you’ve actually tried to tackle that as the company’s grown really quickly.
Ella Brennecke [5:46]: Well, I think first and foremost, culture is not built on more video calls. I think we can all agree on that. Again, this idea of threads to pull on — what we’ve tried to do in our team is to create all of these resources for people to use to then create culture. We, as the people and culture team, can’t create culture for the whole organisation. What we can do is we can make suggestions, so we can create rituals that happen at both offices.
So things like a bi-weekly walk and coffee. It’s not about free coffee, it’s about who you chat to on the way. You’re chatting to people in different teams. We also encourage people to take selfies on those walks, so that they can post it, so that we can say, cool, we’re doing the same thing in Sydney as we are in Melbourne. We’re the same team, we’re doing the same activities at the same time, just in a different space.
We also try and really make sure that all of our people leaders can create their own cultures as well. So we provide resources for them, suggestions on how to run their one-on-ones, suggestions on team building activities, budgets that they feel empowered to use each quarter — which we encourage them, please use your budget, go do this, here’s some suggestions, we can help run it. Just providing all of these resources to make it easy for them to build their culture, and then we just support wherever we can.
James MacDonald [6:58]: Yeah, you mentioned the word human connection before, and I think that is the important part, right?
Ella Brennecke [7:02]: And I’ll just add one thing to that as well. I think with two offices, also just managing information and knowledge, we found is really, really important. Because we just want to make sure that the same information is in Sydney that’s in Melbourne, and that one city doesn’t know more about something that’s happening just because they sit next to someone, because they overheard a conversation. So visibility across the org, and just that flow of information, also is something that we focused on.
James MacDonald [7:27]: You mentioned just before about supporting people managers. You’re in an environment where you’ve got really technical staff — you’ve got clinicians, you’ve got really technical engineers. Both of those careers, not always the most people people. They’re really technical people. Engineering people don’t always make the greatest people leaders. Sometimes they do, but not traditionally, not all the time. So how do you go about working with people that are really technical by nature, maybe haven’t had a great deal of people management experience, to try to encourage them and support them along the way? Because I think in an environment like yours, it’d be as challenging as any type of environment.
Ella Brennecke [8:03]: We’re growing fast and we’re all definitely still learning. Just trying to provide those resources for people, and also just being really available.
In past roles I’ve been used to, especially working in New York, this busy, busy, busy — I’m always doing this, I’m always doing that. And it’s been such a huge shift to me that my job is actually just to be a sounding board for people, to find out how people are going. I love going on walks with people. Some days I’ll do 20,000, 30,000 steps, because getting people out of the office, standing side by side to them, not opposite them, finding out how are you feeling, how are you going, anything I can help with.
One of the leading questions I ask as well is, what’s something you’re excited about, what’s something you’re worried about, and what’s something you’re confused about. And just a few of those prompts to really drag out from people — where are you feeling really good? And then how can we use that as a multiplier across the org, and help other people feel good in the space that you’re really confident in? And then, where are some areas where you’re — I think saying confused, you’re not saying struggling, that’s a lot more open — but where are you confused, and where can we help support? And are we the right people to support? Are we contacting AirTree and getting resources for them? Are there other people in our network who we can connect you with? And just really making sure that everyone feels heard, they can nut out the problems, and then we can provide more support.
James MacDonald [9:18]: I like that. You just mentioned AirTree there. How much do you lean on them as a sounding board, as a partner? Where does that relationship sort of start and stop?
Ella Brennecke [9:28]: Yeah, so previous to Everlab, I was actually part of the Founders Success team at Blackbird. So I probably lean on them more than most portfolio companies, because I’ve seen how amazing these teams are, and how much support they can give. I think a lot of people don’t realise — a lot of VC companies, there’s an entire team of five or six people whose entire job is to help support their portfolio companies and make sure that they’re successful.
So at Blackbird, we really needed to be really clear in communicating what our value was, and how to get people to ask us questions, and not have them apologise that they were coming to us, but reward them when they came to us.
James MacDonald [10:00]: You want to say this?
Ella Brennecke [10:00]: Yeah, like, I’m so great that you came to me, let me help, I’m so excited to help with that. And so I definitely lean on the AirTree team more than other people will. And they’re incredible. They have so much more varied knowledge than we can have in one startup. They’ve seen things happen before. So, with hiring, we work with Chloe a lot on that. Even just the other day, we needed some tech in our office, and I said, hey, do you have an IT guy, can we just run something past him and get his advice? So yeah, we lean on them a lot.
James MacDonald [10:42]: You’re in a head of people role.
Ella Brennecke [10:43]: I’m at the very start of my people role — yes, my people career.
James MacDonald [10:48]: One of Australia’s fastest growing success stories. And you got that role without a people background.
Ella Brennecke [10:48]: Yes.
James MacDonald [10:56]: Your story is a great one, and I want to share that, because I think there are a lot of learnings to be taken at the moment. There’s a lot of fear in the market for junior engineers in particular, but juniors across the board, on how do I get my first job? What career path do I take? Do I need to have my career path mapped out for me? How do I go about joining one of these success stories that people are hearing about in the news? So I’d love to just share your experiences, because I think there are a lot of learnings within there.
Ella Brennecke [11:23]: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve wanted to make the move to people and culture for probably four or five years. I’ve always worked with the people experience — and it’s been customer-focused for a lot of my early career, in hospitality, hotels and restaurants, then moved into more focusing on people with the founder experience at Blackbird.
When you’re working on experience in hospitality, it’s like one person, one interaction. You might have repeat customers, but you’re not really seeing how people are coming back and the feedback loops that you’re getting. Working with founders, it’s a lot tighter feedback loops. You’re maybe inviting people to three or four retreats, they’ve come to 10 events, those feedback loops get a lot smaller and you can start to see the impact that you’re making. And then I thought, wow, what if I can bring that internally and help a people team at a company? That was so exciting for me, just to see how you can work with people even more closely and really get those tight feedback loops, and then see how you’re growing and improving the team.
But it’s really hard to make a career shift. You can say, yeah, I’ve got all these skills and they’re definitely transferable skills, but it’s so difficult to convince somebody that you have these transferable skills when they have somebody else who’s like, I have 10 years in people and culture, this is where I’ve worked, this is what I’ve done, start me tomorrow and I’m going to do excellent work.
So I sent out a ton of resumes. I really tapped my network. I got warm intros. I did not get a single interview. So then, if you’re doing something and it’s not working, you need to switch gears. So I started to think about, okay, who’s had really successful paths in people and culture, at companies that I respect, that maybe haven’t gone the most traditional route? They don’t have an HR degree, they don’t have this, they don’t have that. And what have they done that’s been successful, that I could maybe learn from?
I think Jenny at Canva is such a great example. She started as an EA to Cliff. She’s now, I think, global head of people and culture and talent, and so well-respected in the industry. I’ve listened to so many of her podcasts, I’ve watched so many videos with her, and she’s amazing. So I started to think about, okay, she’s done that, that works, how can I apply that? So I started really focusing on EA roles, or any of those kind of roles where you’re really close to the CEO — like founder associate roles and those types of jobs.
But also, interestingly, looking at companies where there was nobody in HR, there was nobody in people and culture. The thinking being, cool, maybe what I’ll do is I’ll get into a company, I’ll just start doing the work that I want to do — obviously I’ll do the job that I’m hired for, but I’ll also do the work that I want to do. And then when the time comes, it’s just, you know, I’m already here, I already have context, I can already do the role, you’ve seen me do it, can I move into it?
James MacDonald [14:04]: I love that on so many different levels. I’d love to just reiterate on that, because I think there’s a lot of really good career advice for juniors, or people that want a career change. We can get to the career change bit in a little bit. But juniors — you went and studied people that had done it before you. You’re finding your own path, but people have done something similar before you, you can just take some learnings from them. And whilst it might not be the traditional way, there are a lot of learnings. You don’t have to just create it from scratch yourself. I think most people don’t go about that. And it would have been very easy for you to be like, okay, I can’t get a people role, I’ve applied for these roles, I’m going to have to have a career change or something different. But you didn’t give up on the dream, you just studied a different way of going about it. And I think that’s uncommon.
Ella Brennecke [14:45]: And, you know — I’ll be humble. I was also very lucky. I really connected with Mark in my interviews. I had somebody from Unyoked who was working there. So there was a lot more at play. And going for the role now, I’m not sure — like, if I was hiring for it, I’m not sure I’d give me it.
James MacDonald [15:01]: And I’d chat with you on the lucky part, though. Because I think there is a thing where you create your own luck. You studied the organisation to see that they didn’t have a people person. You studied people that had done this path beforehand. This wasn’t pure right-place, right-time. There was an element of that there, but you created your own luck. You put those wheels in motion to give yourself that opportunity. And I think that’s where a lot of people can take some learnings again. Yes, there is a right place, right time in life, and there are elements of luck. But you’ve got to put yourself in a position to be lucky.
Ella Brennecke [15:37]: And hustle, and do the hard work, and also be confident enough to say, yeah, I don’t care about the title I’m going in with. Like, I have my sights set on this, and I don’t mind what I need to do to get there. And I’m going to be humble, and I’m going to do whatever needs to be done to see this. And also, I think with age comes a bit of perspective. So you can look at a job and go, yeah, I might do that for 12 months, and be in that spot before I can move, and that’s okay, because 12 months is actually very small. And also taking the opportunity — what can I learn from that, what can I then take on? And I’ve had so much fun so far.
James MacDonald [16:11]: And the title part — talk to me about your title.
Ella Brennecke [16:14]: Well, I actually started as People Operations Manager, because, again, I thought, you know what, I’m actually just going to ask for it. Because I’m reading the JD, I’m talking to Mark, I’m seeing what he needs, and it sounds like he needs someone to spend 10% of their time supporting him and 90% of their time doing this People Operations role, which is what I’m so excited about. So why not just ask? And if the answer was no, we want you to join with this title — no worries. But if you’re not going to ask, you’ll never know.
James MacDonald [16:41]: And I know a part of your role is still working closely with Mark. You mentioned that the real key reason for that is that ability to stay close and learn. I’ll just pull that apart a little bit, because, again, it’s something that can be an oversight. Okay, there are people roles across the organisation, but being close to the founder — being close to, it might be in a different type of organisation, to the CEO — understanding what’s happening, the intricacies behind it. I’d love to just hear about your philosophy around that.
Ella Brennecke [17:11]: It’s really great, because I’m so close to what the priorities are for the business, what’s really important to the people leaders. I can then use that to influence all decisions that I’m making in terms of people. So, what are we currently working on that we need to make happen, and then how can people support that?
So for instance, if I know that we want to launch a new product, I can look at, okay, what hiring do we need to get in place to make sure that can happen? If I know that we’re hiring in the UK at the moment, what do we need to do from a people’s perspective? And how can I front-load a lot of that work, and start working on it before I’m even told to be working on it? So it’s just a lot of insights, and also the access to him — just gets really close to bounce ideas off Mark, and to make sure that I’m really delivering what the founders want as an organisation, as opposed to being on the sidelines and going off on my own. And people is the business. You’re not going to have a good business if you’re not supporting your people. So, to me, it just makes sense to be that close to him.
James MacDonald [18:08]: I agree. And do you think, in your experience with Everlab — is culture a top-down model, is it bottom-up? Obviously you’re trying to take what you’re learning, your interactions with Mark, and have that flow through the business. Do you think it’s a two-way street?
Ella Brennecke [18:21]: I think we’re just at the beginning. I started, I think, nine months ago. So I definitely don’t want to sit here and say that I’ve solved everything. I would feel so proud if I’ve solved 5% of the things that we’re looking to solve. We’re still a startup, we’re still scrappy. But the way that I think about it is, if I can spend 80% of my time on setting up operational structures around people and culture, and then 20% of my time on, like we spoke about, surprise and delight, a little bit of magic — I’m pretty happy.
James MacDonald [18:51]: If we go for advice for other startups — you’re still in that, but you’re over a hundred people now, and you would have seen a lot going through those different challenges. I talk to a lot of organisations — 12 to 20, you have that jump, because the founder can’t be across everything, and we need some people managers or some line managers in there. And then we jump again, and double again, and another structure. Any top two, top three key learnings that you could share along the way, on the different challenges that you’ve faced and how you overcame them?
Ella Brennecke [19:20]: Having a really strong onboarding structure is something that should be done as early as you can. Whenever you’re interviewing for a role at a startup, and you say, when did you want someone to start, I think the most common answer is yesterday. It’s moving so fast. You’re with this fast-paced organisation. As soon as we decide that we want to hire someone, we want them there today, we can’t wait for the process, everything moves really fast. So once you finally do hire that person and get them in, what do you want to make sure? You don’t have this then three-to-four-week ramp-up where they need to learn all this context, they need to be onboarded.
So something that came through from my Unyoked days — the minute somebody booked a cabin, we wanted to start that onboarding process. Because we found out people were going to the cabins, sometimes they could only get away from work, or the family, for one night or two nights. So they were saying, yeah, it was really great, but I didn’t unwind till the second day, so I only had one day of that unwinding. Or, I could only go for one day, and I really only started to get the benefits of time out in nature as I was leaving.
So we thought to ourselves, how can we front-end the onboarding, so that they’re onboarded in the weeks before, in the months before? Then we’re really ramping it up in their drive out to the cabin. And then they walk from when they park the car to the cabin — there are little threads along that route as well, to make sure when they’re in the cabin, they’re not then starting their unwind. They’re unwound, they’re walking in, they’re lying on the bed, they are there, they have come.
And so I think the same idea can be put through to starting any new job. What are we doing from the moment somebody signs a contract, or even from the moment somebody starts interviewing — because they might be the right candidate — to really teach them about Everlab, to get them in that mindset, to give them everything that they need, so that the day that they start, they have all the context, they’re ready to go.
James MacDonald [21:06]: I think that point you made just there as well — obviously the problem you’re trying to solve is a big one, and you need some of the most in-demand talent that’s out there. It’s an oversight a lot of times in recruitment, on the company trying to sell the candidate at the start, through that interview process — it is a two-way street, especially for that top talent — to say, we’re starting to sell them on, who is Everlab, what does that experience look like? Onboarding is essentially starting there. And I think that’s something that could be learned by a lot of other organisations. You just try to take that experience and be, from the absolute start of the process, not just once they’ve signed a contract.
Ella Brennecke [21:43]: And I think that also helps with attrition throughout as well. We’re very upfront. I think people need to stop apologising for being these really high-performing organisations. We are solving a huge problem. We are saving lives. Like, we report at the end of each month — this is how many people, when we say saved lives, these are the people who had something come up on their scan, and a doctor, usually Stephen, calls them and says, you need to go to hospital right now and have this looked at. And these are the reasons, and I know someone here, I’m sending you off.
So we are doing super exciting work. We’re one of the fastest-growing companies, it’s so exciting to be at, and it’s hard work, but you can really make a difference. You’re close to leadership, so you’re making decisions, you’re moving the needle, you can see the impact of your work. And it’s hard, but it’s really exciting. And we want to attract people who want to do that work.
So we also use the interview process to say, hey, this is what we’re doing, and this is what it’s like to work at Everlab. And for a lot of people, that is exactly what they want — they want to go where they can do that exciting, fast work. And for other people, that’s not where they’re at right now, and that’s fine. That’s why we make sure, in most interviews, there’s at least 10 to 15 minutes for the person interviewing to ask questions, because we want to make sure that they are along for the ride and they’re as excited as we are.
James MacDonald [23:04]: Yeah. My favourite interview question, why I start most interviews, is around motivations. Because, especially at the moment with tech skills changing so quickly — skills can be learned, but it’s understanding where somebody’s at in their career, and whether, as you said, they’re in for this fight, they’re in for this challenge, because it’s not going to be a nine-to-five cruise street all the time. You’re in a high-growth company that’s tackling a really big problem. You want to be at that point in your career where you’re really motivated by solving this problem, being on this journey. And when you do that and you’re motivated, like you said, you’re prepared to do the extra hours, you’re prepared to challenge yourself, or go along for that ride with the rest of the company. I think understanding that motivation side of human beings, human connection, getting that part upfront changes the entire rest of the process.
Ella Brennecke [23:53]: And I think the people that we attract as well are the people who get energy from that type of work. Like, obviously we’re not asking people to do crazy hours, there’s all these things, but I get energised when I know that I can just sit at my desk and solve a problem, and I can stay there until it’s done. And then how you feel at the end — a paycheck doesn’t make you feel that way, but just knowing that you solved something.
James MacDonald [24:16]: It’s a sense of achievement, and I think most people would have achieved that at some point in their life. I got real deep into looking up flow state at one stage, because there are these times of a night where I could work from 9pm, and then the next time I look at the clock it’s 2am, and it feels like it’s just gone like that, because I’m working on something I’m really energised by. And if you do that, and you find the right people that are energised by that same thing, the amount that you achieve is significantly more. So I think it is really finding that alignment piece there.
I’d love to just understand — what does the rest of that interview process look like for you? Because you’re hiring, non-people background, non-HR background, and now you’re building a culture and a people team around interviewing really technical roles, clinicians, quite a breadth of type roles. What does that look like? How have you designed that experience?
Ella Brennecke [25:01]: So we work with a bunch of amazing recruiters. It’s definitely — I help to organise and streamline the process, but most of the interviewing and most of the recruitment happens with a few recruiters that we work closely with. And then we also have somebody in-house who does all of our doctor hiring, because we might have, at any given point in time, four to five hundred doctors working with us. So it’s big.
But I think just making sure that it’s really consistent, that everyone has a certain set amount of interviews. I love a case study. It doesn’t need to be a huge thing that’s going to take a whole weekend, it can be something that will take a couple of hours, but just seeing that person’s work, and also seeing that they are bought in enough to spend two hours to put something forward. And then I love just a final culture interview. It can be 15 minutes, 30 minutes, if it can be in person, even better. But just making sure — is this person going to show up? Does this person have the right values? Is this person going to fit in with the team? The last thing you want to do is bring somebody in and have it throw a spanner in the works for the rest of the team.
James MacDonald [26:02]: What does a culture interview look like for you? You mentioned a couple of parts just there — the values part, how they work with other team members. I think culture is such an important part of a growing and scaling company. It’s a real challenge, because you’re adding so many different human beings in, and trying to create that consistency is a challenge. So I’d love to just understand — knowing that it’s not perfect, and it’s going to continue to change — what are the things that you’ve put in place on the cultural side of it?
Ella Brennecke [26:26]: So it definitely comes down to, are they a people manager or an individual contributor, because then you’re definitely looking for different things. But it’s really just getting to know — one of my favourite questions, which I’m sure a ton of people use, is, why this role, why this company, why now? And that’s quite telling, to let you know where someone is, and what their motivations are, and making sure that their motivations are in line for what you’re looking for.
And other things as well — just asking for some examples. If they’re a people manager, how have they dealt with some difficult situations, what did they do? Just to find out, are you thinking about things in the same way that we’re thinking about things? Are your values aligned with our values? Are you people-first? Are you team-first? Are you focused on working with people to just solve problems?
And, I think when you work at a startup, you can’t have a specific JD and go, this is the list of things that I look after. When you work at a startup, you look after problems, not tasks. And so, is this person someone who can just own problems?
James MacDonald [27:30]: I think that should be something that’s taken across the board, not only startups or scale-ups. I actually think, across the board, the 10 dot points should be removed, and it should be three dot points. What are the three core things that you’re looking to do, or the problems you’re looking to solve? Let’s interview for that. Because skills change, people are going to have to learn new things along the way, but people can really shoot themselves in the foot by trying to fit an exact square peg, square hole, as opposed to looking at somebody slightly adjacent, but who has those really core fundamentals, is willing to learn the rest, has the right culture, right motivations. They’re ideally the person for the role. So I love that mentality, I think other people could learn from that.
So, after we’ve got people on — this experience part, it’s a key theme to your entire career here. There’s one part we haven’t touched on, which was the New York experience from back in the days. Maybe the people experience part started there. Mind just touching on that quickly, and then we’ll go down this designing of experiences in Everlab.
Ella Brennecke [28:27]: Yeah. So I moved to New York when I was, I think, 22, and was working in a restaurant. I knew someone who actually ended up being my mentor for a few years, Lyndon Pride. He now owns all the Dante restaurants over in the US, and he’s an incredible hospitality mind. When I met him, they were opening a new restaurant. I started working there, and that was when I really just became obsessed with this experience.
People were coming in for all different things. It was like a celebration restaurant — it wasn’t just somewhere that you’d go for dinner on any given night, you were going to celebrate something. It was a special occasion restaurant. And so I just loved learning there, how you could do little things to just make that celebration that little bit more special, and how things that you could do at a table could just really make people’s night.
And in the US, you’re working for tips. Your hourly wage is nothing, you’re really just riding on tips. So, again — I love a gold star, I love a feedback loop. So you’re getting a really fast feedback loop with how much they tip. And so you can play with things, and notice that when you do certain things, they’re absolutely taken aback and they’re leaving you a huge tip. So you know that you’ve done a good job, you’ve made their night, and then they’re willing to give you money to show that.
Something that we did there was we had PPX slips. When anyone came in, we’d write down exactly — just a few notes of what happened, like, vegetarian, loves red wine from the Napa Valley, that’s a full-bodied cab, or whatever it is. You’d write down any notes from it. And then when they came back in again, you could use that information. First of all, I’d be their server on the table — they’d always be sat in my section, if I wanted them to, because I’d already had that connection with them. And you kind of bring them, oh, I remember that you love pumpkin, we’ve got a pumpkin. It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s just, I see you, I remember you, and now I’m going to bring you something that’s special just for you — whether it’s a wine from a region next to it that you think they’d really like. We could do whatever we want, we could open bottles of wine just in case they’d like it, into cans, two hours before they came in, and give them that as an opportunity. The sky was the limit, and we had so much fun with it. I’ve gone off topic. So, I went to New York.
James MacDonald [30:39]: I don’t think it is off topic, to be honest. I think this is the commonality behind your entire career. And you follow that experience, and how passionate you are about that, through a straight line, through to the Unyoked experience, where you’re doing the exact same thing, and you’re looking after their experience from the time they get out of the car to the time they’re walking up, to the time they lay down there. And now you’re talking about the same thing happening again in Everlab, where you’re talking about their experience from the first interview on, and understanding what their motivators are, and then what their onboarding looks like, and then going for walks with people, and having photos, understanding the experience with Sydney versus Melbourne.
This experience part is definitely the through-line for you. But it’s such an important part of building a team. On the podcast, we’ve talked to really technical people about how they’re using AI to code and things like this. But when building a team, it is this human connection piece, this experience piece, which is going to be the differentiator between good people wanting to join you, and then also stay with you.
Ella Brennecke [31:36]: I think after I worked at this restaurant, I then joined a hospitality group who designed experiences over multiple venues. So I honed that skill even more, because we would work with a company that would be opening like 15 fast-casual restaurants. And so you need to design a hospitality experience to make sure that it’s consistent across those 15 locations. So you’re looking at things like, how are people being greeted, how are they lining up, the entire — where are they putting their rubbish? The entire experience, from when they walk in the door to when they leave. And so it is really clear — if you can get the ops right, if you can get the nuts and bolts right, then you can go on to do really fun stuff that’s memorable. No one cares if you have this great experience if they walk in, slip over and hit their head. Ops can seem kind of dry, but it’s just the foundation that lets you do all that amazing stuff that’s memorable.
James MacDonald [32:26]: Otherwise you spend the time back in trying to fix the ops, right? I think ops, and SOPs, have become more and more important more recently, with automation and AI. So people are looking at, hey, if we go into an organisation, have really clear SOPs, really clear operational procedures, we can automate different parts of this. Where can we leverage AI to improve these experiences, and just become a more efficient, consistent organisation, which we can then add the special sauce over the top of — add the magic, add these experiences over the top. So I think this operations part — you said you spend at least 80% of your time on that — is the part that’s becoming more and more important in the age of AI and automation. I’d love to understand where you’re at in that journey, if you agree.
Ella Brennecke [33:12]: Yeah, no, absolutely. I was probably leveraging AI before AI became such a buzzword. When I first joined Unyoked, we liked to keep exactly where you’re going a little bit of a secret, to have this exciting reveal two days before your trip. You know roughly what region you’re going to, but we’d send you the map and directions two days before. And when I joined, we had someone who was looking at all of the reservations, and two days before she was sending out emails and text messages to the people staying, where they were going, a map, all of those things. It was taking her so much time.
So one of the first things that I did was go, okay, this is taking so much time that you could be spending on other work. So we used Zapier — when Zapier, I think, had only very recently launched. We didn’t have a proper booking system, so we’d manage to dump everything into a spreadsheet, have Zapier pull from there, and send out those text messages and send out those emails. And then that meant that we were freed up to then read through customer notes and go, oh, that person’s going out for their anniversary, let’s organise for the host to put a bottle of champagne in there. Or, this person’s taking their dog, let’s put some dog treats on the bed. What are these things that are happening that we can then spend our time on, going, wow.
And also, once you’re setting up these SOPs, then you go, okay, cool, we’ve got the system, how else can we utilise the system? So, great, instead of just sending them a text message two days before, let’s start sending them something a week before, with some podcasts and some recommendations of how they can end into that mindset. Let’s send them something two weeks before. Let’s send them something the day after, when they’re coming back, with recommendations of how to take that trip and mindset with them, when it’s just really fresh. How can you create these different SOPs, and these different automations, and then really make them grow and work for you?
James MacDonald [35:02]: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of negativity when it comes to — one of the negativity parts is people say, oh, automating people’s jobs, and taking people out of their jobs, that they’re no longer valuable. I think if you flip the lens on that, and you have a look at, we’ll take the shitty parts of the job out —
Ella Brennecke [35:19]: The busy work.
James MacDonald [35:20]: The busy work, right? The work that nobody really enjoys doing anyway. And then you can spend more of your time doing that creativity, the designing of the magic. That’s where companies can really progress, and that’s where experiences progress. You get more of the human-to-human part of it, as opposed to the stuff that can be done better by machine.
Ella Brennecke [35:38]: And I think AI also helps really fasten that growth, that knowledge curve. As we discussed, I’ve gone into an HR role, I don’t have HR experience. I don’t think that AI replaces an HR degree. What it’s meant is that, if I’m looking into a new area, I can get all of that knowledge out of AI, do a little bit of a back and forth, use it as a thought partner, really front-end that. So then, when I am going to a lawyer, or I am going to an HR specialist, I’m saying, cool, hey, this is my thinking, this is the research that I’ve done, this is what I’m thinking we should do, what do you think — as opposed to coming to them with nothing.
James MacDonald [36:17]: And this is where I’m seeing the significant growth — and we’ll put software engineering, or pure engineering, to the side for a second, but just more traditional roles. It’s the core skills, core experiences, overlaid with using the right tools, which just allows you to level up and allows you to be significantly better at your job. As you said, you can go to a lawyer — rather than spending the first X amount of billable hours with you trying to explain something, you can actually come with some form of solid context to start with. So it is this overlaying of skills and experiences, overlaid with this new information or access to information, that allows everyone to really level up.
Ella Brennecke [36:54]: I would say, though, to challenge that — you have to be really careful with it. I’ve seen a lot of people also use AI to level down. I think it’s really important to appreciate that it doesn’t replace a human, and it doesn’t replace your thoughts. And I personally believe, and this is something that I’m trying to really roll out to the organisation, that if you expect a human to read something, you as a human should write something.
So it’s really great for initial research, it’s so useful as a thought partner, it’s very, very useful to help you to do a brain dump and then condense your thoughts. But if you’re going to send out a memo to the team, if you’re going to list a job description online — you can tell when AI’s written it, and you can tell when a human has written it. And I just think that if we expect an AI to read something, yeah, we can give them something another AI has written. But if you expect a human to read something, you as a human should be the final person writing that.
James MacDonald [37:52]: I completely agree, on multiple aspects. I’ve got my middle child, my middle daughter, who was doing a school speech, and she chose to do AI, and whether they should be allowed to use AI for homework. I asked her opinion, and she was like, oh, we’re going to use it in the real world, we should be allowed to use it. And I challenged her on that part of, also using your brain. It is that part of, use it as a thinking partner, or a thought partner, but go back and challenge it. Don’t expect — don’t leave all the thinking to the AI. You’ve got to be able to take what it gives you, challenge it sometimes, go back, and not replace your entire thinking. And for her, it was like, ah, but it’s easy if it just gives me the answer, right? So it is that understanding of back and forward, on how to use the tool.
Ella Brennecke [38:31]: And I am worried about kids coming up, that they’re going to forget — they’re not going to learn how to think, and how to solve problems. It’s like, when you do maths at school, you don’t deliver an answer, you need to show all of these workings and how you got there. And unless — you know, you can use AI for that, often. If I do ask AI something, I’ll say, how did you get there, because I want to understand how it got there, A, to fact-check it, and B, because if it’s knowledge that I don’t have, I want to be able to get there next time. Because maybe I don’t have my computer with me, maybe I don’t want to type something in. So it is still so important to learn how to think, and to learn — if AI is getting somewhere different to you, and if AI is right, what did it do that you can learn from, and how did it get there?
James MacDonald [39:13]: I think that problem-solving is one of the key skills of the future. The different jobs are changing, but communication and problem-solving are two of the most common core skills for all jobs of the future. If you do those two things well, you’ll probably find a job that you’ll be okay on, just using the tools. And then, back to the other point, I think it’s a respect piece, on respecting other people’s time. If you are going to send them something — you have to respect other people’s time. Like, if you’re asking them to read something that you haven’t even spent the time on.
Ella Brennecke [39:44]: I mean, it’s the same thing. There was a trend at some point where people were sending me like 10-to-15-page resumes, and you were thinking — and I understand, like, my sister’s in research, she has an appendix that has all these amazing things she’s published — however, if you are, you know, me, one page, you can fit it into one page. And I think what AI slop has done is it creates these 25-page memos. And I don’t think the person who’s sending it to me has even read it, because you read things in there — there’s like internal notes to the person, it’s wild. I just think we need to not just produce more, we need to use AI to produce better. Whenever I’m using AI, often if I’m feeding what I’ve written into it to make it better, I’m saying, make it half the length, make it pointier, make it shorter, get to the — what am I actually trying to say here, and let’s make sure we’re communicating that, and not much else.
James MacDonald [40:39]: Yeah. And it’s just tightening up your thoughts. I’ve started writing a Substack newsletter, and Substack introduced a new tool where you click on it, and it can let you know what percentage of it was written by AI, which I think is a great thing. It’s the same as the Claude watermarks and things like this that are coming. I think people using it as a research partner in particular is the best part, and then offering your opinions over and above that is the real value.
AI in the job at the moment — as you said, you’ve gone from no people experience to creating SOPs, creating everything from the ground up, and you’re still working on that. You’ve used AI as those toolings. Do you see that being a continual part of the role in the future? There are a lot of roles being looked at in talent and HR, like a talent engineer, or a HR engineer. How technical do you have to get?
Ella Brennecke [41:29]: Not very technical. I think AI in my role, I’m finding, is a nice-to-have, but definitely not the be-all and end-all. It’s very interesting to synthesise data. For instance, we did a pulse survey, and I read through every single response. I don’t think that you should use AI to pass that, or anything. But what I’m not as good at as AI at doing is looking at trends. So what’s really great is, I can load all of the pulse survey responses into Claude, I can then load everything on Slack from public channels into Claude, I can then load all of my conversations into Claude, and any AI note-taker they’ve done. And then I can say, hey, what are the trends that we’re seeing? And then, can you pull out some actual quotes, and let me know where they’ve come from, so I can investigate it a bit more. So it’s good for synthesising data.
James MacDonald [42:27]: And research, right? And then you’re using it to then have your personal experience overlaid on that, and what you’re going to design because of that data.
Ella Brennecke [42:37]: I just see AI as an “and”, not an “instead of”. And, like we were talking about — if you expect a human to read something, you as a human should write it — I think it goes the other way as well. If a human is taking the time to write a cover letter, I’m going to read it. I’m not just going to run all of the resumes and cover letters through and only rate the top 10. Yes, I’m going to use AI to pull out, this is what I’m looking for, these are your top 10 candidates, so I can have a starting point of, these are the people I should definitely investigate, these are the people that I should maybe investigate, and these are the people that probably aren’t meeting the requirements of the role.
However, if all of these people who haven’t met the requirements of the role have written a cover letter, I’m still going to read through every single one, because they’ve taken the time to write it. And you just never know what you might find. Like, six months ago, I added someone to my team, this amazing guy who’s sort of like a people coordinator, and he didn’t have the skills I was looking for. Based on his resume, I don’t think I would have given him an interview. He just wrote a killer cover letter that just made me want to know more. And then at every step through the process, he interviewed and did a case study that made me want to do more. And then I got someone else to do the final interview, and he actually said to me, if you don’t hire him, I will. And so at that point, I was like, no, he’s mine. So I think you just — whereas if I was just using AI, I wouldn’t have got there.
James MacDonald [44:02]: And you wouldn’t have been hired into your role —
Ella Brennecke [44:04]: — if you just threw AI at it.
James MacDonald [44:05]: And I think that’s where there is — a bunch of recruitment, there are some yuck aspects of it at the moment, where you’ve got AI-written job ad, AI-written CV, AI sitting in the middle matching things, and there’s no human element. But I think it’s the same thing with that creativity you’ve mentioned before, with the writing. When everything is pushing digital, and everything’s pushing AI, you will get a bit of a disdain with it. And that real creativity — whether it be creativity in writing, creating video, creating experiences, writing a cover letter — that’s the part that now stands out. I think that’s the big differentiator going forward. What is that human-level element to it?
Ella Brennecke [44:43]: And it’s interesting, because I think when AI first came in, and its ability to create these beautifully crafted sentences that are structured in such a way was a differentiator — because you’d read it and you’d think, wow. But I think it’s now swung to the other side, that reading something that’s a little bit more messy is more exciting, because you can feel like it’s actually come from a human.
James MacDonald [45:05]: Yeah, “if it’s not X, it’s Y”. You read that for the first time, you’re like, oh, that’s a well-structured sentence. And for the fifth time in the one paragraph you read that, it gets real — not a great experience.
Ella Brennecke [45:16]: Yeah. The first time I saw em dashes, I thought, wow, what great formatting. Now, when I see em dashes, I’m like, no, thank you.
James MacDonald [45:22]: I used to write with the little one, not the em dash.
Ella Brennecke [45:25]: The little one’s great. I still use the little one, but I can’t use the long one, because that’s a dead giveaway.
James MacDonald [45:30]: Definitely. So — join an organisation without the people experience, Everlab growing and changing pretty significantly, you’re building these SOPs, building operations. Can you just talk to me about any wins along the way, which have kept you moving forward and thinking, okay, this has been something implemented that’s had a good effect on the rest of the team?
Ella Brennecke [45:49]: When I came in, the first thing you want to do in a new organisation is just listen to people. What are people struggling with? You can’t just create systems and then pop people into them. You need to start with the people, and then create systems that support them.
And something I just kept hearing was, there was no process around — people are there to do a job, but people also want to be compensated for it. And so people were just feeling really uncomfortable. When is the best time to ask for a raise? When’s the best time to ask for a promotion? Can I get more ESOP? Oh, this person got this, how do I get this? This whole, if I don’t ask, I don’t get — when’s the right time to do that? And I just noticed that it was taking up so much of people’s mental load and their brain capacity, both individual contributors, but also managers trying to navigate these conversations. They were coming to me — they weren’t even sure, when are we doing this, how are we doing this? So just a lot of noise taking away from people focusing on the job.
And so we have now implemented annual review cycles. And I’ve just noticed that, as soon as we announced that, as soon as we said, okay, when you’ve been here for 12 months, this is what’s going to happen, these are the questions you’re going to answer, this is how long it will take us to make a decision, these are the decision makers — just being really transparent with all of that has just meant that all of that noise goes down.
People need to feel safe, and people can do their best work when they don’t have a split focus, when they do feel safe in their role and their compensation, and when decisions are going to be made and how they’re going to be made. And so just being able to bring that in has meant that people managers have something to say back, people know where they stand, we can even explain it on the way in during hiring. It’s just giving people these parameters to exist in, and these safety nets, means that people have definitely relaxed, less noise around it, and then they can focus on their work.
James MacDonald [47:38]: Like you said right at the start, the listening part — you came in and listened first, as opposed to coming in and just starting to roll things out. Because I think there’s a danger in startups of wanting to put that structure in place, because you need structure as things change and grow pretty significantly — taking that step back and listening first. And I think that ties into what you said earlier today, about being really close still with the founder, to make sure that you’re listening and you have that really strong understanding of company direction, and then having that information before rolling things out.
Ella Brennecke [48:07]: You’re just not going to be successful if you don’t have buy-in from the team. And also — I’m reading this great book at the moment on employee experience design — but, who are you designing for? I think that’s so important. In a restaurant, you’re designing for the customers that come in. At Blackbird, our customer was not Blackbird, our customer were the founders and the companies that we were investing in. And that was what was so exciting about it. We were creating these retreats for the founders, not for the partners of Blackbird. They were coming to create it for the founders. And so at Everlab, we’re trying to create these processes for the people, so that the people can do their best work. So if we’re not listening, and asking questions, and then designing for them, I’m not sure what we’re doing.
James MacDonald [48:49]: No. But I think this understanding — getting the processes in place, and then designing for the people. And, again, it’s this common theme that’s gone throughout your career. You told me off-air about another commonality — an expectation, maybe, of people within the organisation, around a dishwasher. I’d love you to share that one, because it runs pretty true with a book I’ve read in the past as well.
Ella Brennecke [49:15]: We try and say, everybody unpacks the dishwasher. We have raised quite a lot, but we’re still — we want that money to go far, we’re absolutely still a scrappy startup. We didn’t move into a new office, we’re still in Surry Hills in our little office. But, everybody unpacks the dishwasher.
And what that’s about is not the dishwasher. It’s, if you walk past a problem, it’s on you to solve it. It doesn’t matter what’s in your job description. It’s not in anyone’s job description to unpack the dishwasher, but everyone needs to do it. If you see a customer problem, you need to fix it. If you see a problem in the team, you need to fix it. You need to have high ownership over every single problem, be it small or big.
One of the initiatives that I did roll out — we noticed that a lot of people were so far from the customer and seeing what the customer goes through. So now every single employee at Everlab, before they start, is encouraged to go through the full Everlab protocol. A slightly expensive thing that we’re giving away for free to our team, but we believe in it so much. So we’re like, go get your bloods done, get your DEXA scan done, find out everything you can about your health. Because we’re saying it’s the most important thing — so if it’s the most important thing for other people, it’s the most important thing for you. And tell us about the experience, let us know what our customers and members are going through, and then report back to us.
And then, similarly, it’s not just something that happens at the beginning, it happens every single quarter. Every single person who works at Everlab sits with somebody in customer care, and sees, what are our customers asking? What are their pressure points? For engineers, it’s been amazing. So they’re like, I didn’t realise that that one bug was having this huge flow-on effect. And it’s just getting everybody into that customer-first mindset.
If you can encourage people to see things — like, see the dishwasher, it’s full, you need to unpack it. See this customer who isn’t having as seamless of an experience as they should be, help make that seamless. See someone else in your team who’s having a hard time, and don’t look at it like, they’re having a hard time, they’re bringing us down — it’s, what’s that person going through, what can I do to help lift them up, what can I do to help them? Because if we win, we win as a team. And our team is the people in your immediate pod, your team is the people in your office, your team is the people in the company, your team is every single customer who’s part of Everlab, making it successful and making it grow. So, yeah — unpack the dishwasher, but also grow an amazing company.
James MacDonald [51:41]: Yeah. “Unpack the dishwasher” reminds me of the book Legacy, which is about the All Blacks culture. And it was about leaving the place better than you found it — leaving it better than when you came. And it was about sweeping the sheds after a game, and it didn’t matter if they were playing away, they’d sweep the sheds and leave the place in a better place than when they came.
But what you just mentioned there about understanding the customer — I think right now in particular, everyone can build, and I use the word “build” lightly, but everyone can build something. The building side of a product, or a company, or software in particular, has become easier and easier, there’s nearly no barrier there anymore. The real challenge is go-to-market. The real challenge is understanding the customer. And I think what you’ve just said there around understanding the customer, going through the actual customer experience, especially from an engineer’s perspective — understanding what that looks like for them completely changes the game. And I don’t think many organisations do that. I don’t think many organisations go to the depths of putting yourself in the customer’s shoes, because it changes your mindset around what you’re building, how you’re building, and what that experience looks like.
Ella Brennecke [52:47]: I think it’s the most important thing in any business. When I was working in restaurants, we would go and dine in the restaurants, and you just pick up, oh, my server did this, that’s so interesting, I’m going to try that with my tables. When we were at Unyoked, you were literally sleeping in your job. We were all encouraged to go to a cabin at least once a quarter. We wouldn’t put a new cabin live, at least in the beginning — obviously once we got to 200, 300 cabins, it was harder — but at the beginning, someone had to have slept a weekend in a cabin, or two nights in a cabin, for it to be able to go live. So we were in it, and you just see so much more.
And I remember how many times I would say, I’m too busy, I have too much work, I can’t just go and stay in a cabin for two nights. And then every time I went, I thought to myself, what were you thinking? I learned more in those two days — the notes that I would take were insane, the ideas I would come up with were just some of my best ideas. Because stopping and putting yourself in the customer’s shoes just gives you so many amazing insights. To your point on AI, asking AI for ideas about how to make a cabin experience better — it’s just not going to get you there. You need to, as a human, go and actually be a customer, and experience things how they would.
James MacDonald [54:05]: I think it also just gives you a perspective on working through hard problems. Because hard problems, sometimes you can be working through, some of it might be quite tedious — like, why am I actually building this, does this actually have a big effect? But having seen it on the other side just changes that perception, and potentially the way you look at actually building, or designing, or not taking shortcuts.
Ella Brennecke [54:25]: Everything is just all these experiences that come into your day. And so no matter what it is, if you can just make those a little bit better, that’s what gets me out of bed every morning.
James MacDonald [54:34]: I think that’s pretty close to a closing point, because that is the key theme. You mentioned at the start it was around designing experiences, and the magic doesn’t happen by accident. If you left people one piece of advice around that designing of experience, the designing of magic — there’s definitely this key theme of getting the operations done right first, but for that magic part?
Ella Brennecke [54:58]: I would say, whenever you’re doing any type of experience design, it’s not designing something that’s crystal clear, this is the product and this is what it is. It’s designing a bunch of resources, and a library, and threads that you can pull on. So it’s saying, what is in my toolkit, what can I make available to people? And then I think the magic comes when you leave it up to them what they want to draw out. So, what is in the cabin that you can pick out to give you that experience? At Everlab, what systems and processes have we made available to you that will make your life easy, that you can use to get to that next level?
One of the most basic ones is, how can we lower the lights at a restaurant, light a candle, and play some really good music, so that you can lean into that romantic space with your partner and have a meaningful conversation? You can’t push an experience on someone. But what you can do is you can design all the elements around them that mean that they can just kind of seamlessly roll into it.
James MacDonald [56:04]: I think that’s a perfect answer, a perfect way to finish. Because the theme of the podcast is around building teams, building technology teams. And you don’t build great teams, attract the right people, have them stay, retain, have them perform at their best, without creating that experience for them to do so, or creating the environment for them to do so. Often it’s overlooked, and we talk about technical skills, we talk about different parts, but this designing of an experience to have people excel is a really great thing. And I loved it, it was awesome to just share your experiences and wisdom around this topic.
Ella Brennecke [56:37]: Cool. Thanks for having me, this was a lot of fun. Appreciate it.
James MacDonald [56:42]: Here’s what I’m taking out of that conversation. Everlab’s raised $65 million, and the thing Ella’s most proud of is a review cycle and an onboarding flow. And they’re all about the dishwasher. The team at Everlab have been intentional about the way they grow their team, and they communicate for culture.
The biggest takeaway, the biggest learning — and I think it’s becoming even more important in the age of AI, because everyone can build now — every person at Everlab, their engineers included, sits with a customer once a quarter. And one of them came back from one of their experiences and said they hadn’t realised the bug was actually having the flow-on effect that it did have with the customer. That understanding of the customer experience, closing that gap between engineering and user experience, I think is going to be more and more important in the age of AI. We get more upside, more positive product experience for the customer, better product-market fit. Engineers and a team better understanding their end user, better understanding their customer, only has a positive effect for both the company and the internal team themselves.
So here’s my question for you and your week: name the last time one of your engineers actually sat with a customer. Not an internal stakeholder, not a project manager, but an end customer. I think that can be a key win for any team going forward.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of Building Tech Teams. If you’re currently building a technology team, having some challenges, or interested in what’s happening in the market, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn, forward slash James MacDonald, or look on my company website, ntptalent.com.au. We’re helping companies up the East Coast of Australia find and recruit the best technology talent into their teams. This episode was produced by Day One. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode.