On to 2022!

It's become a yearly ritual for me to publish a documentary blog post in the period between Christmas and New Year's. A professional and personal life breadcrumb trail. Who'd have guessed that three months after recapping the decade in December 2019, the world would be turned upside down by COVID and it would still be continuing!

It is vividly imprinted in my brain when everything got shut down…

The Oklahoma City Thunder game being called off after tipoff, Coronavirus being declared a national emergency, and a million more what-if scenarios. The days of the stock market tripping the circuit breaker and living the roller coaster daily. Throughout it all, it seems that change and financial markets are always in permanent overdrive. Investments that were formerly deemed low risk, are now struggling, while stocks that were once considered growth are now safe investments. Crypto, NFTs, and the Metaverse are all hot topics nowadays. If you're still ignoring this, don't do so any longer! This is now what growth investing looks like.

My family had some of the most exciting life changes in 2021. This year topped every career decision and move, I’ve ever made. I joined the amazing leadership and team at a hypergrowth advertising technology company, Omneky. I am so thankful and appreciative to Hikari and Aaron for bringing me on board to join Omneky.

Omneky's ambition is to raise money via an IPO within this decade. I'm saying it right now, and you'll hear it again next year. We're still in the earlier stages of scaling and growth. Every day presents a new challenge, and you tackle it knowing that the world is there for the taking. There is one big pie, and surely, we can get a nice slice of it. In our market, being an AI-driven technology firm is a major differentiation, and it's where we'll continue to move the needle to scale and to help our customers scale.

Everything here is in the agile framework, no need for agile terminology because that is the only way of life. The days go by in exciting blurs of sales calls, investor calls, CX calls, creating frameworks and playbooks, and product calls. Time and resource capacity are the main constraints.

After joining a technology start-up from a Fortune 100 company, I wanted to offer some key takeaways:

1.????Make growth levers complimentary - Paid and organic digital advertising is essential; it may serve as the lead hitter or the closer. All of your messaging, including outreach and advertising, should aim to bring clients from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, where they become paying customers. People need to see/hear things 7-12x to remember them.

2.????Networking becomes even more important - I am ecstatic that reconnecting is such an important aspect of my job. There are so many old friends and coworkers who are doing incredible things. Congrats! One of the best elements of social media is being able to keep up and root for all of you, friends, and family. If I can help you in any way, please reach out. I will be reaching out to reconnect!

3.????Fast-paced trial and error is the only way – You will see this over and over if you read the book “Invent and Wander”, most doors are reversible. I love this book because Jeff Bezos's annual letter to shareholders repeats the same messaging over and over to hold the company accountable and to keep everyone in unison.

4.?? Sales has changed, big time! – To think, sales used to be cold calling by phone. I think there is still some opportunity there, but with people working from home, it is so much harder to get someone’s mobile number than work through a business the old school way. This is why, not just for B2C, but also for B2B, digital advertising is more important than ever. You'll need a mix of inbound and outbound lead generation through advertisements and direct. Once again, people need to see/hear things 7-12x.

Finally, one of the best things about working for a worldwide, distributed technology company is that we were able to relocate closer to our families. Our daughter, who is almost three years old, just spent Christmas with her family and her grandparents at our house. Working from home helps all of us get to see our young ones grow up daily even if it is short spurts between Zoom meetings. I love it! Our daughter is my pride and joy, and it melts your heart when you do things together and she high fives you and says, “Daddy and Sophia, Teamwork”.

I am so excited for 2022 and to see the continued momentum of Omneky. We are working so hard to enable all companies, big and small, to grow through digital channels.

Stay tuned for our podcast called, “Talk Growth” in early 2022. I've been looking forward to launching a podcast for years, and we’ll be sharing how to enable all the channels of growth with help and stories from exciting guests. See the initial launch here:

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!!!

-Matt Swalley