North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring. And as a leader, it's your job to deliver. But where do you focus?

Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy? We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose.

I'm Lindsay Pedersen, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast. Let's get to it. Today, I am so happy to be joined by Gregg Johnson.

Greg is CEO at Invoca, the revenue execution platform that connects online marketing to offline revenue. Greg, welcome to the show. Thank you, Lindsay.

Delighted to have you here. Greg, to start us off, what is the most energizing part of your job now that others wouldn't guess from the outside?

Gregg Johnson

That's hard because most people that I know would guess it from the outside, but I'll stick with that anyway. So my background before coming to Invoca, I worked in product management. And at technology companies, product management, I would say, is a uniquely positioned functional area in that you have to interact with a variety of different parts of the business.

You have to understand, I'm not an engineer, I didn't study engineering, although I wish I had. You have to know about engineering, you have to know about design, you have to know about product, you have to know about marketing, you have to know about customers and sales. And so I would say my sweet spot where I tend to gravitate in spending my time, if all other things being equal, is really sort of at the intersection of technology and what our customers are doing.

So one could argue that even though my job title has changed, I continue to do the job that I enjoyed even before becoming a CEO, which is trying to understand customers' businesses, what they're doing, what challenges they have, and then thinking about how our technology is well-positioned to help them solve those challenges.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that. So you were, even when you weren't a CEO, when you were an executive at Salesforce, you had that same, that's what you spent a lot of your time and mental energy doing.

Gregg Johnson

Yeah. I'm very biased, but I think it's the most enjoyable part of working at a technology company because I guess the other way I would phrase it is I like to think of my role as a CEO as how do I help craft the playbooks that the rest of the organization is going to adopt and go use to drive the company forward over the next two to three years. So it's about being at that bleeding edge of the company, which sometimes can be around distribution.

Sometimes it can be around products. Sometimes we do a lot of work with partners. So Heidi from Telium had introduced us and Heidi and the Telium team are a partner of ours.

So I just tend to spend a lot of my time around figuring out the things that the business that we can then go scale. And I would say that's also a lot of the work that I did at Salesforce. At Salesforce, I didn't tend to work on big established products.

I tended to work on new and emerging products that the organization was trying to figure out how to build, how to market and how to sell because just my DNA is I'm like a builder at heart. And no matter what size company I'm in, I'm always gravitating towards what is the next iteration of building, whether you're 100 employees, 500 employees, 5,000 employees or 50,000 employees.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. You say you're a builder at heart. Did that show up before Salesforce like as a kid or in college?

Like when did this emerge?

Gregg Johnson

It's a great question. My father was an engineer. And so I think I inherited some of that DNA.

He started his own company, built his own company. Ironically, I had a very odd career path. I studied international relations when I was in college.

I thought I was going to go work at the State Department or do something in foreign policy. It's still a very intense personal interest of mine. And I interned at the American Embassy in Greece when I was a junior.

And don't get me wrong, spending time when you're a 20-year-old running around the Greek islands and exploring things in Athens, I wish I could redo that again today. But I realized I think in that time there that kind of government work is not exactly my speed. And so I did work in consulting coming out of college, which was sort of a no decision decision.

And then I ended up leaving to start a software company with a couple of colleagues. That's actually, I taught myself to program a little bit. And the idea of working on building a little very basic code, I'm almost ashamed to even call it code given what it was.

But then being able to hit a button and just see something happen, I thought was like the neatest thing in the world. And I've pretty much worked in software companies ever since. So I would say there was probably an innate interest in me in building and crafting things.

And then how that came to fruition just sort of evolved over my time in colleges as a young adult.

Lindsay Pedersen

And I think I heard you say that at one point you wanted to be a teacher. How do you see that showing up now in your role as a CEO? In ways that are both good and bad.

Gregg Johnson

I would say my management style tends to be very Socratic method. I think I've been in my role now almost nine years. I was the first time CEO when I joined.

And I think I've gotten more confidence and more appreciation of the value of me being direct with people over time. But it's not my natural inclination. My natural inclination is to ask a lot of questions, Socratic method.

Even if I believe something that others don't believe, to try to help bring them to that point of view through questioning rather than direct orders. But I've realized over time that as a CEO, I have a unique perspective in our company and a unique data set that nobody else has. And I think that's given me more appreciation and confidence and connecting the dots for people rather than taking sometimes the very slow, more questioning method or approach.

But I still, I often say, I hope my last job in life will be going back to education. I would love to go teach. I've always fascinated.

I met with a customer a few months ago who she runs a marketing analytics team at a big telco. Not the person you'd think of who's a teacher. She has actually been doing guest professor work on the side.

And I spent half my 30 minutes with her talking about and asking her about that experience and what it's like. Cause I would love to go do that in the future. I do a lot of sort of informal advising or Q and A with other software entrepreneurs.

That's a way for me selfishly to keep connected to the younger entrepreneurs that are building new types of companies. But it's also, I think a lot of the people who worked at Salesforce realized that they worked really hard, they did a good job, but they were also kind of in the right place at the right time. Generally found the Salesforce community to be very open and sort of sharing and giving back their knowledge to other people.

It is a way of implicitly recognizing that they were just in many ways fortuitous to be at the right place in the right time.

Lindsay Pedersen

Sort of a, it's like a pay it forward. I was really blessed. There's like really like rare set of fortunate circumstances that led to this.

And you mentioned teaching young entrepreneurs and I know that you've written in Fast Company about AI literacy and how profoundly AI is going to change work as a parent, perhaps, or as a teacher in some ways. Are you comfortable sharing how you coach these kids on their futures in AI? Like what to study, what to lean in on?

Gregg Johnson

I'm very comfortable sharing. I don't have much to say. And let me tell you why when I'm talking to entrepreneurs, frankly, I'm in learning mode when it comes to AI.

I find, especially I live in the Bay Area, especially in the Bay Area. I'm very much in learning mode when I'm talking to these individuals around how they're building their products, how they're building their companies, how they approach things. So I would say, you know, I'll give you a perfect example.

I spoke to a CEO of an AI first company that's probably, this company's probably two, two and a half years old, maybe two weeks ago. He had questions for me around pricing and packaging, which is, there's a lot of upside in software around pricing because software doesn't have a lot of variable costs. And that's an area that I know a lot from my time at Salesforce.

So for me, he was asking, how do I think about, you know, pricing as I'm getting into bigger deals? And we were sharing some thoughts. And at the end of the conversation, he said to me, hey, anytime you want to come by our office in the city and visit, we'd love to have you.

And my reaction was like, I'd love to do that because I want to go see how a software company that was started in 2024, 2025 works today and inspire me on how to think about the future of our company. And then with my kids, you know, my oldest son, he is a freshman at USC studying film. And I'm honestly just trying to give him, and my middle son who's a junior in high school, and then the youngest son who's in sixth grade, I'm trying to give them their space to explore their own intellectual interest and figure out their own thing, which may be, I may regret in the longterm of not more actively pushing them in one direction or another.

But my general view is it took me multiple iterations to figure out what I wanted to be. When I was in middle school and early high school, I wanted to go be a marine biologist. And then I wanted to go be a diplomat, and I ended up being a software professional.

So my general view is people need space to explore their interests, and eventually they'll land in the right spot.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that. And that's almost the point, right? Like that space and that circuitousness is part of what makes life rich and humans human.

Gregg Johnson

Although, I mean, I do worry having shepherded two boys through high school and a third coming, the degree to focus and specialize early on in life, I feel pressure is getting higher and higher and higher. And, you know, I went to a liberal arts college and got a lot of enjoyment out of exploring different things. And I do think the world is pressuring people to choose paths earlier these days, which I don't think is, at least in my experience, wasn't a great answer.

But it's hard to figure out the right way to guide when the system around you is changing and trying to figure out like, where should you stay true to what you experience and where do you need to evolve with the world as it continues to change?

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, totally. You've said that AI's greatest impact may be how it redefines us as leaders. I'd love to hear more about how AI is affecting the way that you lead or not affecting the way you lead.

You know, just as importantly, what does it not touch or instruct?

Gregg Johnson

Yeah. Again, it's very different. You know, we're in a business over a decade old, 350, 375 people.

A lot of the wiring in our business has been around for a decade, right? Like, if I think about the nature of who we are and I compare it on a human scale, we're like kind of a 14 or 15-year-old who's been around, has a decently well-developed personality, still has some maturing and some evolving to do until they reach full adulthood. But let's be clear, this is not sort of the blank slate of a three-year-old or a four-year-old's And so I think for companies in our stage and leaders in our stage, you're trying to figure out how do I rewire the company's brain sort of operating system given the new technologies that are out there and available.

And it's a challenging thing to do. One of the things I'm doing right now, we're hiring a new leader for our people organization. And I always say software companies or technology companies in general, in my mind, are really the result of kind of four key assets, your product, your customers, your brand, and your people and sort of the community that you create around your company.

People are really important, but the nature of what people do in a software company is changing. And I think it has to change. And one of the things I'm talking to people leader candidates about very openly is like, how do we evolve and make that change happen while investing in our human capital, which I believe is one of the things that differentiates us as a company.

Every time I go see a customer and I ask a customer, what can we do better? Where can we improve? What's great?

Generally, the feedback I get from customers is your product is awesome and your people are really invaluable to what we do. And so I'm trying to think like, what's the next generation of that look and feel like? And that's an act of constant iteration and sort of self-destruction and self-construction at the same time.

But that's not easy. And so today's leaders, in order to stay ahead of the market and continue to evolve, you have to be rewiring your company very actively. And that's not something I've done in my lifetime.

And the people leaders I'm talking about, they're not sort of standard. Let me go explain to you how we're going to do this next thing in your business. I've done it five other times before.

I'm really much more focused on first principles leaders who have deep intellectual curiosity and can learn because I think this time is pretty new for all of us.

Lindsay Pedersen

Tell me more about the first principles. And maybe you mentioned earlier that what your role as a CEO is to kind of write that playbook. But what are your first principles, if you can share them?

And what is the utility of those for something like, you know, hiring a head of people?

Gregg Johnson

Yeah. I mean, I think we talk about kind of our core values as a company, which really gets down to, are you willing to kind of roll up your sleeves and go figure things out? Will you stay focused on the customer?

Do you think about what you could do to support your teammates? And we're very big on the spirit of continuous improvement. And I think AI really vectors into this idea of continuous improvement and ultimately how do you go evolve and change?

But I think the reality is whether it's a people executive or other roles, the old playbooks that we have from running software businesses are instructive, but are not unquestionably right anymore. And even for me, like when I came from Salesforce to Invoca, they were things that I had learned at Salesforce, but I spent the time and effort to ask myself, what made these solutions or approaches valuable and appropriate at Salesforce? And do those approaches still resonate with the fundamental conditions here?

And sometimes they didn't, sometimes they didn't. A lot of other people are just like, you know, Hey, I worked at Microsoft. We did it this way.

Hey, I worked at Salesforce. We did it this way. And I just generally don't like that approach.

You need to understand what are the root cause conditions that made something successful in one place and would they apply somewhere else? So I think going out and looking for team members that are intellectually curious, that want to learn and evolve themselves, and then have the motivation to go do that, because it's easier to just kind of keep doing things as you've always done them. It's hard for me to rewire myself, much less do it with an entire company.

But I think to be a company and evolve into the future, you've got to take that rewiring initiative very practically.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. So there's first principles and like, what's the North Star? And there's also things are changing, and that's a good thing.

And we benefit from having flexibility within that and being really, I hear a lot about the kind of like self-reflectiveness and humility in those values as well, humility and curiosity and getting better and growth mindset.

Gregg Johnson

I would agree. I'm thankful. A lot of times feedback I get from employees and work at our company is like, oh, you do things in a very different way than CEOs of other companies that I've worked at.

And I think to go back to my earlier point around Salesforce people being grateful, I was just supremely lucky to work around a set of leaders at Salesforce who were really, really amazing at what they did. And so, I mean, everybody in technology generally knows who Mark Benioff is. And I think, you know, Mark did a lot of interesting and compelling things that I just assume, they're my bar, like they're my expectation of what a CEO does.

But I'll give you, there are many others that aren't as well-known too. So there's a guy named Scott Dorsey, who was, Scott was the founder and CEO of a company called Exact Target, which is a company that went public, Salesforce bought for $2.5 billion back in 2013. And I was on part of the team that went to work on integrating the Exact Target product.

And Scott had something very simple that he does that I did every week, which is he would write a note to the company every Friday. And he would talk about what customers he was seeing or what trends he was seeing, or some new product or technology thing that the team had built. And it was his way of keeping up a constant flow of communication with the company.

And I was really inspired by that. And when I became a CEO for the very first time, I thought, well, this guy was a really good, successful CEO, and he did this. So I guess I should try it too.

And pretty much for the past nine years, it's kind of evolved. Now I do it over a video rather than text and Slack. But people come to me and they're like, I'm so grateful that you do that.

That's really amazing. And I say, well, that's my expectation. Don't ask me to do what is my job definition.

Well, because I saw really great leaders. So my bar is higher in terms of expectations of what a CEO should be doing maybe than somebody who didn't have the good fortune to work at as strong of a company as I did. So I feel like a lot of my humility comes from being around really, really strong leaders and that setting a high bar for me and my expectations of myself and what I should do in my role, whereas others think that's something special.

And I'm like, that's my job.

Lindsay Pedersen

Tell me about a time you've looked around and realized that you'd really gotten culture right at Invoca.

Gregg Johnson

That's a really hard one because I'll give you a very honest answer and a humble answer. Sure. When I interviewed for the job at Invoca, because I had never been a CEO before, I had no idea what questions to ask.

I look back at the due diligence that I did or did not do. And I think to myself, wow, I got super lucky because I ended up at a company that, A, had a really good product that customers loved, and B, because I stepped into a culture that very much fit my personality. And so one of the things that I've always believed about my time at Invoca is there's this very powerful synergy between my own personality and the company's personality, and they're pretty similar.

And so we're reinforcing in a way. And so there wasn't a point in time where I felt like I had to make this big, massive shift or turn in the culture. I feel like it's been more of a gradual evolution.

I would say one of the things that we're a very welcoming culture. We're a very nice culture. We probably won best places to work awards like seven, eight, nine years in a row.

But we've had to work on how do we go be more direct? How do we get better at providing performance feedback? And I think that's something that we as an organization have not traditionally been really good at.

That's something that I've had to work on as an individual. And I think as a company, as I tell people, I'm like, we're at that point where we've recognized we have a problem. We're working through that and how to get better.

But I would say that's one of the areas that we've had to consciously change in our culture. Whereas my first, I'd call it my first four or five years, it was just this little bit of dumb luck because I didn't do the due diligence to realize, oh, this company fits my personality really well. I just dumb lucked my way into it.

We were sort of feeding off of one another. I'd say that's been one of the first things where we've said we need to have more of a conscious, deliberate change in the culture of the organization than we've said about making that change in a deliberate fashion.

Lindsay Pedersen

So it started off not deliberate and more unconscious, and now it's getting more deliberate because the stakes are higher. The company is bigger. You're different.

The market's different.

Gregg Johnson

And I think it's also, we just all realize just through continuous improvement, there's a better way to go about this. I think that was part of it, too, is we listened to a lot of feedback in the organization and we realized, like, this is a way that we can just operate better for all parties involved. And so I think that was a big part of it as well.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. What's something contrarian that you do as a CEO or decide not to do that others are doing and you're like, no?

Gregg Johnson

I'm pretty open about things. If people are trying to give me credit, I think one of the words they use to describe me very often is authentic. If I'm being self-deprecating, I say I don't lie very well.

I don't play poker because I can't bluff super well. And so I tend to be pretty open and direct with people. In some ways, that can be around, like, company performance.

So when things are, I'm not just rah-rah-rah when things are great. I'm very blunt about when things aren't great. I'm a big believer in alignment of interests, that if you have people with the right structural incentives, then lots of things will take care of themselves.

So we've tinkered with our company's kind of variable compensation plan numerous times over the years to evolve it with the market and also to make sure that, like, what investors want, what our board wants, what our executive team wants and what our employees want are all very much aligned. So then we go talk about those results month to month to month and are all hands. I would generally say I'm more comfortable speaking out around company perspectives, around things that are going on in the world than a lot of CEOs are.

I would say I would credit a lot of that to my time at Salesforce. And Mark was very forward leaning in some of that areas. I think it's also just important for me to be authentic.

And whether it's outside events going on in the world, whether it's things happening in the company, I don't like it when there are elephants in the room. I'd rather just acknowledge the elephant in the room, even if it makes some people uncomfortable. And so, like, I remember we had hired a new CMO just before October 7th in 2023 and probably about a month before.

And I'd actually been out surfing on that Saturday morning when the Hamas attacks happened. And I came home and saw the news. And my first thought, I really tried to think about, like, as a CEO, my business is not to comment on things here, there, and everywhere.

Like, if I wanted to go do that, I should be a professional podcaster, not a CEO. I'd try to use a filter of, like, what's relevant for our employees? How is this relevant for our company?

And we had an individual who had moved from Chicago to Israel and four children that were all military service age. And immediately, like, I thought about Benji. And I thought about, like, I as a CEO owe it to Benji and owe it to other Jewish employees in the company who are part of this community that I need to address and just let them know I have empathy for what they're going through.

My job as CEO is not to try to convince people that this point of view is right or this point of view is right. But I think my job as CEO is to convey empathy to people and understanding of what they're going through, even though it may be between 830 and 5, showing understanding there are other things that are happening in the world that may be impacting them. And so I think kind of grounded my authenticity and my empathy, I'm probably more comfortable talking about those things than most CEOs are.

But I think if you do those from a place of empathy and a place of understanding of I'm not trying to be preachy and say, I think this is right, and I think this is wrong, I think it's more grounded in I try to understand what's impacting employees and their day-to-day lives and try to demonstrate empathy and understanding for what they're going through. And then I think employees will give me a lot of grace in that regard versus if I was coming in and saying, I believe this is right and this is wrong. And people are like, did I sign up for a political debate or did I sign up for, you know, going to church or synagogue this weekend?

Or am I in a place of work where we're trying to get work done? So I think starting from that place of empathy is my way of going about it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. What's your way of filling up your bucket after work on weekends? How do you make sure that you have the energy, mental, cognitive, spiritual, physical energy for this work?

Gregg Johnson

I don't relax well. So I jokingly say like when our family goes on vacation, you know, my wife loves to read, reads tons and tons of books, very active in her book club. And so, you know, we can go plop down on a beach and she'll pull out a book and she is content as can be. And I enjoy reading as well.

But after like an hour or two, I'm like getting fidgety. So I really need to be physically active. And so that can be, you know, like my little guy, he plays flag football.

That can be like running around, throwing the football with him in the backyard, living in the Bay Area, lots of access to the ocean. So I like to go surf and do that a lot. I like to go ski in the wintertime.

But for me, physical activity is definitely the key. And it also becomes like this weekend, I was out surfing. And usually when I'm out in the water or when I'm on a lift, I'm usually with my kids.

So I'm talking to them and we're off our phones. But like when I'm out in the water, that's my opportunity to think as well, clear my head. So it's good for me because it gets a lot of energy out, but it also becomes a place where I can reflect and think about some of the things that are going on with work or my family or life in general.

Lindsay Pedersen

So just prioritizing physical movement, engaging with, in those cases, nature, but also just moving your body. Best of all, if you can do it with your family.

Gregg Johnson

Yeah. I mean, we're a fully remote company now, but when we used to be in person pretty much all the time, my default rule for my one-on-ones with execs was if we need a whiteboard or you need to show me a spreadsheet or some slides, great. If we don't, let's go walk.

Walking one-on-ones, I don't enjoy them as much in the virtual world because I feel like not being able to see people's faces, that degrades the interaction in my mind a little bit. I still do a little bit of walking one-on-ones, but that's probably one of the number one things I miss about having an office was just that ability to say, like, let's go get a coffee and let's just go take a walk. I think it's kind of the oxygen stimulates your mind, stimulates your thinking.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, me too. There's something about that. And it's kind of like, I don't know if it's the same psychological phenomenon, but when you're driving, like your kids, especially if they're like teenagers and you're both facing forward, like there's some safety that happens when you're both going in the same direction, that just things come out and our bodies are metabolizing what we're talking about as we're talking.

And I love that. Well, okay. As we finish up, I have five rapid fire questions to ask you, like one word-ish answers.

Are you ready?

Gregg Johnson

I think before speaking, so it will take me a second. And then I will answer.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, that's okay. You take as long as you want. Okay.

What is the most recent piece of media that you streamed or read or listened to that really moved you?

Gregg Johnson

Oh, my wife's going to laugh at me. It's the most pedestrian answer. Move you can be interpreted many different ways.

I watch a channel on YouTube called Meat Church, M-E-A-T-C-H-U-R-C-H, all the time. I really love to cook and grill. I feel like that act is a way of kind of bringing people together.

And so they drop videos once a week on new things to go cook. I watch it religiously.

Lindsay Pedersen

Meat Church. The M-E-A-T, not M-E-E-T. Okay.

Gregg Johnson

I told you I would give you a non-conventional answer.

Lindsay Pedersen

I am so on this now. Okay.

What's a place where you've always wanted to travel?

Gregg Johnson

I've spent a good amount of time in Europe. So Europe is not sort of on my list. I would probably say East Africa.

My wife and I went to South Africa, gosh, 20 years ago, had an amazing, amazing experience. And we will definitely take our kids to go on safari. And I love the idea of going to East Africa, somewhere new for safari, but also somewhere that has great beaches, access to the ocean, and being able to go out to the Indian Ocean and go surf, which is one of my big passions.

I would say that's kind of a good combination of two destinations in one.

Lindsay Pedersen

Love it. What is your favorite kind of dessert?

Gregg Johnson

Oh, everybody who knows me knows I love ice cream in general, and gelato specifically. I did a year of graduate school in Italy, and I ate more gelato than the law would allow. But because I was walking a lot and playing tons of basketball, I lost weight, not gained weight.

My wife would come over, see me, and we still to this day jokingly call it the gelato diet. So when I was in grad school, getting my MBA, I almost decided to take an internship with a gelateria in Philadelphia rather than doing technology work for the summer. And unfortunately, I decided to do technology, so my gelato-making skills are not where they could be.

Lindsay Pedersen

Wow. Well, follow-up question, what flavor of gelato?

Gregg Johnson

It's actually a combination. The best, the most underrated gelato combination is you get a sorbet, so get like a mango or a raspberry, and then you combine that with either like a yogurt or one called fiordilatte, which is like a really rich vanilla. And the combination of the acid and the fat is amazing.

So anytime I go to a gelateria where you typically get multiple scoops, I'll get strawberry, raspberry, mango combined with either a yogurt or a cream.

Lindsay Pedersen

Wow. You can tell that you love food because you're talking about combinations of sweet and acid.

Gregg Johnson

The passion does not come with light engagement. I actually think about these things when I walk.

Lindsay Pedersen

You have really gotten to an engineering level of gelato. Okay. And last but not least, what is your favorite life hack?

Gregg Johnson

That's a great question. What is my favorite life hack? This is a mundane response with a profound meaning.

I do something very simple pretty much every single day, which is go get my wife coffee. And we got into this habit like after COVID. So before COVID, my wife, our first two children, she went back to work both times after we had a third child, she stayed home and it used to be that she would drop me off to go into work and I would grab her coffee as I ran in and then go hop on the train and I joke with her now when I'm traveling, I travel a lot for my job, I'll joke with her if I'm in the East coast and I call her and she wakes up and the kids are all gone. And I'll say like, did you have to go get your own coffee today? Are you doing okay?

It's kind of a weird joke, but I think it's just my super simple way of saying like, this is how I know she wants to start her day and when I'm home, I want to try to help her start her day in the right way. It's not very profound, but I feel like it's just like the small things in life that, you know, your relationship with your partner or your spouse is the most important thing in your life.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's so profound. I don't know that I've ever heard a life hack. That's kind of made me tear up a little bit.

I love, I think that is so beautiful. But it's mundane-ness is what makes it so powerful.

Gregg Johnson

I'm not sure she'd call it a life hack.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's more of a, more of a marital obligation.

Gregg Johnson

Tomato, tomato. Exactly. But you, you know, you, you realize like, what are the small things that you can do in life that make everything else just go better and she gives me a ton of grace and flexibility and me traveling for work and when I'm home, you know, part of the time I'm fully present with hers, like we're making dinner, we're doing something with our kids and then sometimes she'll look at me and she'll call me out and she'll say, you're completely spaced out right now and you're not listening to what I'm saying.

We've been married over 20 years, so she knows. But I think you just look at like, who are the important people in your life and what can you do to make them happy? And if you do that, other good things will follow.

Lindsay Pedersen

Which is what a hack is. Oh, I love that. This has been so great.

Where can we send people if they want to learn more about you online or Invoca?

Gregg Johnson

Yeah, just invoca.com. Invoca.com and then you can just find me at Greg Johnson on LinkedIn. I actually, one thing I like to do, I didn't mention, I like to write.

So one of the things that is fun about being a CEO is it gives you an excuse to write again. So, you know, like I'll have some random thoughts from time to time on things and get inspired and go write some stuff. So if people have questions or things where I can help, always happy to meet new folks and share perspectives when I can.

Lindsay Pedersen

Love it. And Greg Johnson, Greg has two G's everybody on LinkedIn. Thank you so much, Greg.

No problem. Thank you for having me, Lindsay. Enjoyed the conversation.

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