YouSaid · the spoken record

David Heacock

lines on the record: 137
first: 2025-02-18
most recent: 2025-02-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Value and what to stand for. And what that means is biased action is one of our core values in this core value that I have in my life. And sometimes if an employee makes a mistake that it's like, oh, Joe didn't call me back, therefore I couldn't.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Building out a mission statement and our values. And I spent two or three months really soul searching on that and thinking through like, you know, what matters and what do I want to accomplish and what do we as a company stand for and what type of people do we want to attract and how do we want to judge our, you know, rate our employees or whatnot? And I ultimately built out our mission statement, which to build the world's leading indoor air quality company more or less and we define what that means as well as the company values. And from an operating system perspective, the thing that I realized is the most important across all of them is your values are what allow you to coach your employees to be to behave in the way that you as a business value.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and a clear mission for the business that then has to roll down to all of the people that are working for that business. And I think one of the things that we lacked as a business, and my big takeaway from doing all of the research around these operating systems was ultimately the operating system doesn't matter as much as like what are you looking to accomplish. And I think that we had not done a great job of articulating that to our employees and to maybe to our customers or even to myself prior to this year because it's like, okay, we're an air filter company, we're an air filter brand. What is our, what is our mission? Is it just to manufacture air filters and ship them well and do that at scale? Is that your vision or is it more than that, right? And we had never or I never really put any thought into that. And so the first step for me after doing this research was.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, it is different based off departments. Every department is different. And that was kind of the nuance thing that I found. So like how we operate within our marketing department is very different than how we operate in our manufacturing facilities, for instance. And so I have one person who I should mention is I have a chief of staff named Corinne who actually gave me COVID when on her second day of the job, when I'd hired her here in New York just before COVID, just before the COVID lockdowns, and we always laughed because she gave me COVID and she was my executive assistant at the time and then was very instrumental in helping me manage the people part of the.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. I don't know that I'm the right guy to exactly walk you through how attraction works or how a Rockefeller habits work. But my general sense or my takeaway from them is you have some that are way more rigid and others that are more pushing responsibility down through your teams. You have some that are that are very rigid about recommending only X number of people can report up to one person and they hold them closely. And then I look at it in the context of a business like ours where we do so many different things that it really actually makes no sense. How I look at it is like I look at everybody has a different opinion on how you structure meetings, how many meetings you should have, how formal you should be around those meetings. So, where did”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like I'm really getting better at that and really have a solid team around me that can help me to achieve these bigger goals. But I think the biggest thing that she brought to that was forcing me to be honest with myself in conversation every week about what really the root cause of maybe a problem is or what I've maybe overlooked in the past in examples where this has gone poorly and we examined those and she forces me to articulate those. oftentimes by the end of an hour-long conversation I've come to the conclusion myself just because I have somebody to talk about it with and because I don't really have anybody else to talk about those types of problems with or in a detailed way and she's been very key in allowing me to kind of have that self-exploration In a very thoughtful way.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then the second part of it is having somebody to bounce around things that are maybe going on in my head and help me to become self-aware about, you know, what I deep down know the right answer is because I think so often we know in our gut and like the actions that we need to be taking. And, you know, they say that the easiest person to fool is yourself at the end of the day. And so it's so easy to talk yourself into believing, you know, things that you want to believe, but maybe that's a little bit different than what you know the truth actually is. And by talking it out with her every week, then it allows me to get to that truth and make those decisions quicker, I think. And so when you talk about management level hiring, she's been super important for me in figuring that out. And part of the reason why I feel so comfortable going public with everything is I feel”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most important thing that I get from her, and I would recommend for anybody to consider, is, first of all, I'm a bootstrapped entrepreneur. I own my whole business. I don't have a board of directors. And so I don't have accountability that's baked in, right? And I ultimately have the power to make effectively any decision within my business. And that's great. Super important for me, but also accountability is very important. And having her in my life was me forcing that accountability or one of the ways that I was forcing that accountability because I know if I tell her in a week that I'm going to focus on X, Y, or Z next week, that she's going to be asking about it. And the next week we're asking for an update. And I want to be able to deliver on that because that's just how I'm built. And so for me, the most important thing with her has been building that accountability.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I gravitate towards people that are high energy and really looking to grow and build something big. I mean, I'm a big believer in culture fit being super important because part of the reason why I do all these videos, I want people to know who I am and know that I'm looking to grow quickly and looking to do big things and I need people that are excited by that. And so generally what I found is people that fit that mold have had some type of recent experience of doing something similar to what I'm doing and then they are gravitate towards us because they feel a little bit stuck and they want to be able to grow and do and do more. That's really the type of person that I think I found to be most successful in working with me at least.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's been successful in his role with us so far. So I do think that historically I have made the mistake of hiring aspirationally because if I like somebody or I think, oh, they've got a lot of good energy and a lot of potential, then I have been burned by that so many times in my career. And I really had to take a step back a bit. And I think it's for me at least hiring somebody that's done what I'm looking to solve before is really kind of an important factor for me. But that doesn't mean that you cannot then grow those people or mentor those people or bring them up into other things. And I've had some success with that. But I think that I've made the mistake historically of hiring aspirationally when I think that you're much better off, or at least I'm much better off hiring somebody that's already solved the problem that I've already noticed I need to solve.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that it evolves over time, but how I think about it now and where I found success, and I worked with a lot with Dr. Gurner about this, actually, but I realized you need to find people that have done the task that you're looking to get done today or before, at least, maybe at rhymes, maybe it's not exactly, but like if you want to hire a CFO, for example, I want to find somebody that has done the things that I know we are lacking before. And so in my example, I hired a CFO that came from U.S. Foods that has a lot of distribution, managing distribution centers experience and really cost accounting and understanding zero-based budgeting and this kind of stuff. That's what we were lacking. That's what we needed. And so I went out and I searched for somebody that had done exactly that before. And that is how I chose him. And, you know,”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of our business and check, and that's really where I spent most of my time and energy. And until recently, I largely did all the higher level management functions. I built all of the systems that do our finance and accounting.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“management team for me going forward and I worked with a couple of recruiters and hired a CFO and a VP of ops to handle both the finance and the operations function that have been have been with me for six to eight months now and I'm very happy with how we're you know how that's progressing but it's really very recently that I've really started to figure out how to do what I would call management level hiring. Over the years like I have people that are in charge of manufacturing facilities when that's where a lot of our people are so like it's more hiring and then training rather than hiring people that have experience because nobody has experience doing exactly what we're doing. That's how I've done it. But I've had people that have been in place in each of our manufacturing facilities that have been important to keeping our operational piece.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then the last four years I've slowly been offloading pieces and pieces of it, but I'm still heavily involved in our marketing function as an example. But now 18 months ago, I hired a CMO to be our chief marketing officer that oversees our marketing team. And she was probably the first of the higher level hires that I actually made and she's still with us today. And late last year and early this year, I really focused on recruiting and learning how to build management teams. I studied a lot of the operating systems that you hear people talk about, like traction or the Rockefeller habits, you know, which have a lot of similarities and overlap and really did a lot of soul searching about like how am I going to put together the”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somebody's watching this, there were a few other people that came in and out, but I effectively did all of the marketing for the first eight years. And, you know, so.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Corrected me. I intend to build more than a billion dollar business, honestly. I think I intend to build the roles leading indoor air quality company, which I think is a $10 billion plus opportunity for a business easily. I scale from zero to $250 million a year. And, you know, in the next five to 10 years, I intend to take that to a billion dollars plus. I don't like putting in exact timeline on it because I don't believe that is even that helpful. But that is the trajectory that we are on. And I think we need to have an honest discussion about what you're talking about because I am not the poster child you're going to put up for great hiring practices for management teams. I don't want the poster child. I want the raw real. The reality is I've been in this business for 12 years and basically there's one person there that I hired four years ago and they were my first marketing hire. So I'd had some people that it kind of helped.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not trying, I'm going to do it, but I just hate the word trying. It's a pet peeve of mine. But yes, I intend to build a. I love that you.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I have a great team, and I've really worked hard at building a management team in the last couple of years to allow me to build, to grow and build this business. But I think as an entrepreneur, if you really want to grow a business, then it ultimately is your responsibility to go and figure out the systems and processes you need to grow. If you just want to maintain a business, that's a very different calculus. But if you really want to grow, then I think you as an entrepreneur have to take on that responsibility.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing that she and I have been talking about a lot lately is that I think that I'm at my best when I'm out there building new systems, new frameworks, and getting them started to the point that and solidified to the point that then I can bring in other people to actually manage them and improve them going forward. And so that's the framework that I like to think about it. And I only know my lived experience. I don't know how other people live this stuff. But I think the fact that I understand our finance function, I understand our marketing function. I understand our manufacturing and operations function. I understand our shipping function all with a great level of detail puts me in a position that if you want to go and hire all of that out for your business and you want to compete with me, you're going to struggle. But it doesn't mean I do all of those things now.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You, as an entrepreneur, have to really understand your business if you want to be able to scale and do anything big. And it's almost impossible, in my opinion, especially when you're smaller, to hire somebody that's going to build the systems that you need to really do something big and you kind of have to do it yourself. And at least that has been my experience. And, you know, I think that it sounds great to say, hey, I'm just going to go and hire somebody to do all of these things. But the reality is that if you really want to do something big and if you want to do something different that there's not an established playbook for, which is what we have done, then it's your responsibility as the entrepreneur to go and figure all of that out. And, you know, we have a mutual friend in Dr. Gurner and I actually have been working with her for about two years now and I've really enjoyed that.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I would stay there Monday through Friday and come back. And so for the first three years, I did that essentially every”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any time in that first four years, if you had looked at it, you would have said that this manufacturing makes no sense because we weren't making any money. In fact, we were losing potential money by doing it and it was taking up so much of my energy and we had so many employees in that and it was constantly bringing problems. But I knew that to do it at real scale that I needed to have that manufacturing. So I stuck with it. And I was living in New York City at the time. My wife was or still is a radiologist at NYU. And we were living here and I would travel every Monday morning to Alabama. I actually kept a car in Atlanta at the parking go where I would go there on Monday morning and then drive from Atlanta to Talladega's about a two-hour drive.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it really took me three to four years to get to the point where we could manufacture a product profitably. And what I mean by that is until that three or four year period, it would have been cheaper for me to buy the product we were selling from a large manufacturer of air filter and just repackage and repackage it. And so, you know, we weren't actually losing money in that, you know, our business model was different. And we were lucky that I was good with the online marketing piece of it. And it was, you know, I brought a lot of those skills that allowed us to kind of get through that period that I did it myself. But, you know.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of these things that's extremely difficult to articulate because it almost sounds far-fetched so much of it. And it's hard for me to even believe I lived it. You know, in retrospect and being a bit more mature now, when I look back on it, it was very much a hubristic move to say I'm going to go out. I have zero experience in manufacturing, zero experience in manufacturing an air filter, never been in a air filter manufacturing plant, but I'm going to start the process of manufacturing air filters at scale. So when I look back at it, you know, kind of more mature eyes, it seems quite crazy, but I was younger and I guess I was very self-confident and I knew just had the self-belief that I was going to figure it out.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of stop being scared about it to an extent and was really kind of the point that led us from where we are today. In 2019, we did about $70 million of revenue. So we had gotten to some size just grinding, but it was not super profitable and it was still just really difficult. And now in 2024, we'll do about $250 million of revenue. And so it was COVID was a big tailwind for that. But because we're in a consumable product where customers need to come back after they find you and COVID was such a good customer acquisition time for us that my decision to actually lean in and figure out a way to service those customers at scale is really a key point that allowed me to get to where I am today.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And at the exact same time, FedEx made the decision to cap the number of trailers that we were able to ship from our Taladiga location because they were getting overloaded. Basically saying, you know, we can't take any more business. And I was faced with a decision, do I either expand my geographic footprint and I made the deal with FedEx to allow me additional capacity if I would expand it out and not overload just their southeast network? Or do I just raise my prices like a lot of competitors did and milk this for what is worth and stay as we are? And I made the decision to open our Ogden Utah plant in May of 2020 because after those discussions and by July of 2020 we were shipping products out of there and that was when I made the decision to really go all in.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that people like to look back and, you know, kind of idolize it and act as if there's a plan, it was a plan all along when oftentimes it's evolution of skills and an evolution of your thinking. And honestly, for the first eight years, we only operated in Talladiga, Alabama, where I'm originally from. I knew it was important for us to diversify geographically, but I was too scared to do it because it felt like such a big risk and such a big undertaking. And I didn't have the guts, quite frankly, to go and to do it. And then COVID happened and I worked with the team to figure out how we were going to work through it. And we were getting so slammed. And about two to three weeks into that process of working with it, Amazon stopped third-party sellers from sending products into their warehouse.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to grow it and ultimately build out my vision. And that is what obsession is. I mean, there is no, like, I saw there was some controversial post a few days ago about how people shouldn't work on weekends and talking about the importance of work-life balance and stuff. And everybody's different. And that's completely fine. But for me, my lived experience is if I want to do something in a big way, then I have to be all in on that. And, you know, for me, that's burning all the boats and waking up every day, working towards one vision. And that's what it looks like for me.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have on FilterBy for 12 years more or less, and there's not a day I don't wake up and it's the first thing I'm thinking about, seven days a week. You know, if I go on vacation, there's no not checking in or not thinking about it. I actually view vacation as a great time for me to mentally reset, but that reset comes around framing about, hey, what is my next move going to be, right? So there is no other part of my business life outside of that. I mean, unfortunately, I do have a great family, and I think it's possible to have good personal relationships and, you know, be a good father and whatnot. Like, I don't think that those things are mutually exclusive, but I don't have any hobbies. It's my family and my business. And that is my life. And I wake up every single day, you know, working on my business and thinking about how.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think if you want to do anything big, you have to be obsessed because if not, you're competing with somebody who is. And, you know, it's completely okay not to be obsessed. I mean, and not to be super driven or like there's no, there's nothing wrong with not having that. But if you want to be the best at something or if you want to have a disproportionate outcome in life, then you have to recognize that you're competing with other people that It just depends on what you want out of life.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really about burning the boats behind me because I'm on a mission to build the roles leading indoor air quality company. And I don't want there to be any other option for me. And I know if I come here and I tell you that and I tell the people that are watching that, that I've effectively burned all the boats and I'm fully committed to that because I'm going to wake up every day and work towards that bigger vision. And so that was a very calculated one-way door as you put it because I don't want to give myself any other alternative.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't know that I said that explicitly, but I don't know if that would be untrue. You know, I committed to my entrepreneurial journey fully when I made that decision. And so for me, it's ultimately a decision that I knew that I was going to own completely and there was no failing. And so if I was going to frame it in the one-way door world, it would be around that. It's like I'm burning all the boats and I'm all in on my vision. And, you know, there was a long convoluted story about how I ultimately got into that business. But when I left my job at Goldman and I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I was determined to make it successful and to make it something big. And a big motivation for me going so public with my personal brand in the last couple months is.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something that was irrevocable more or less. And so I think the hyper awareness around that and living that on a day-to-day basis really accelerated the learning curve for me later on.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really, the ability to make a decision quickly and then own that decision and manage the risk of that decision. And so I fast forward to my business career, like one of the things that I think that I sell at is making decisions quickly and owning those decisions and not second guessing or not kind of like once I make a decision, I make a decision and I move on. But I also am very aware of my risk. And like if it's a decision that has a lot of risk associated with it, it's something that I make sure that I'm taking that into account. And so, you know, Jeff Bezos has this concept of Wenway doors versus two-way doors. So you have to be like, with two-way doors where you know that you can always get out of it very quickly, like I make decisions quicker than anybody and then manage that and don't pray so much about it, but I'm also hyper aware of those one-way doors where you need to be super careful doing.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just happened to be really close with like the economics professors because I was probably the top kind of economic student in college and did a paper on predicting currency crises using a diffusion index kind of geeky thing. And my professors were really impressed by it and kind of ended up forwarding it to somebody within Goldman that saw it. And then I ended up interviewing within the economics research department. So I ended up coming to New York and doing seven or eight interviews and they hired me. It was less formal of a hiring process than the traditional Goldman process. So I kind of got in through the back door that way. And it was great for me. I mean, I loved it. It was such a challenge. And honestly, I would not be where I am today without the skills that I honed in that.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm stubborn, and honestly, I had manifested my job at Goldman in a way. Like, I really, it's something that for years I had idolized and made happen in my life. You know, I didn't go to an Ivy League school. I didn't come from a rich Northeastern type family that had, you know, family and private equity and all the traditional feeders that lead to a finance career normally. I went to the George Washington University. And about my sophomore junior year, I really decided I wanted to go into finance. And the premier place to work was Goldman Sachs. And so I became very obsessed with working at Goldman Sachs. And there's no pathway from the George Washington University to Goldman Sachs, at least not at the time. It's just not how they hired and recruited. And I studied economics and statistics in college. And, you know, I was in Washington, D.C.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like to think about what I am going to be thinking about on my deathbed. And I know for me the things I will regret are things that I did not try or that I knew I could have done or thought I could have done if only I put in more effort or things that I didn't do because I was fearful. Those are the things that I'm going to regret. It's not going to be the times where I make a mistake. And so for me, there is no other option, but to see how big of an impact I can have. I'm on a mission to build the roads leading indoor air quality company. I scale from zero to $250 million a year and in the next five to ten years, I intend to take that to a billion dollars plus and I wake up every single day working on my business and thinking about how I'm going to grow it and ultimately build out my vision.”
2025-02-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source