April 14, 2025 • 31 mins
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https://www.microsoftinnovationpodcast.com/675
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we explore the future of meetings in a hybrid world. Jeff Hardison shares insights from Calendly's research showing growing excitement about AI's role in making meetings more effective, while also noting the pendulum swing between asynchronous communication and the irreplaceable value of human connection.
Scheduling software Calendly has evolved from a simple time-finding tool into a comprehensive platform for building meaningful business relationships with over 20 million users worldwide.
TAKEAWAYS
• Calendly was founded by Tope Awotona, who wanted to solve the problem of coordinating meetings across different schedules and time zones
• The platform has expanded beyond basic scheduling to offer team-based coordination, automated notifications, and integration with payment systems like Stripe
• Calendly positions itself as "neutral Switzerland" between different platforms, integrating with Microsoft, Google, Zoom, Teams, and various CRM systems
• 54% of people surveyed are excited about AI's potential role in making meetings more effective
• The future of meetings will balance asynchronous communication tools with synchronous human connection
• Video communication skills are increasingly essential as remote work and freelancing continue to grow
• Microsoft-specific integrations include Outlook, Teams, Dynamics CRM, and Power Automate
Check out the Calendly for Microsoft webinar and integration page to learn more about connecting your Microsoft ecosystem with Calendly's scheduling capabilities.
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Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark Smith (00:01):
Welcome to the Power Platform Show.
Thanks for joining me today.
I hope today's guest inspiresand educates you on the
possibilities of the MicrosoftPower Platform.
Now let's get on with the show.
In this episode, we're going tofocus on Calendly and the
(00:27):
impact that it has added in themarket and even the future of
scheduling.
Calendly is a tool that I'veused now since about 2018, and I
couldn't live without it whenit comes to scheduling.
Being that I live at the bottomof the world and multi-time
zone, I work mainly for clientsacross the US and Europe.
It has been an absolutelifesaver to me.
My guest is from Portland,oregon in the US.
(00:49):
He works at Calendly.
He's the VP for the productmarketing of Calendly, so a
pleasure to have him on the show.
He's received a 40 under 40award for the Business Journal.
He plays drums, he's awrestling coach, he's a reader,
a writer, and are you intocycling?
Is that right?
Jeff Hardison (01:10):
Yes, I love to bike.
Mark Smith (01:11):
Awesome.
You can find links, of course,to his bio and his socials in
the show notes for this episode.
Anything we discuss or we talkabout links, etc.
They'll be in the show notes.
Welcome to the show, Jeff.
Jeff Hardison (01:21):
Thanks, mark, it's great to be here.
Mark Smith (01:23):
Good to have you on the show.
I'm excited.
I always, you know, when yourteam reached out and discussed
coming on the podcast.
You know I've been a massivefan of Calendly and I suppose,
specifically I'm a massive fanbecause I work for multiple
companies at any time and youknow I'm at the bottom of the
(01:44):
world, as I said in the intro,and I'm dealing with multiple
time zones, but not just thatnuance, I'm dealing with
multiple schedules and in thepast, let's say 10 plus years
ago, before I came acrossCalendly, I used to work at
doing automations between twoschedules so I didn't get
conflicts because people, inwhatever company I was working
for, would go, hey, I can see agap in your schedule, but they
couldn't see that gap wasn't inmy other schedule, right.
(02:05):
And so to run this podcast,which has been running seven
years now, calendly has beenwith me every step of the way.
It's the way I use to runscheduling at scale and I
couldn't live as in.
Honestly, the time savings itsaves for me is absolutely
phenomenal and so I'm excited tohave you on the show.
(02:27):
And before we start, tell us abit about food, family and fun.
I always like my guests to kindof give some background outside
of their day job.
Jeff Hardison (02:35):
Yeah, so let's see food.
Well, I live in Portland,oregon, right, and we are kind
of like a food epicenter for theUnited States.
A lot of chefs have moved fromaround the world to Portland and
so we're really lucky I canwalk just three blocks away and
be able to dine at some amazingplaces.
So that's really great.
And I'd say, probably ourfamily's favorite food is kind
(02:55):
of the newer kind of takes onMexican food right now.
We love we'd probably go dothat once a week.
You know, speaking of family,my daughters I spent a lot of
time helping them with theirsports.
They both play soccer andwrestle and so you know, you
mentioned earlier, you know,wrestling coach, and so I hadn't
wrestled since high school andthen I started volunteering and
(03:19):
next thing, I know I'm assistantwrestling coach for my youngest
daughter's wrestling team,which has been really fun to be
involved in that.
And yeah, so that's pretty muchme.
If I'm not working, I'mprobably spending time with my
family.
Mark Smith (03:31):
Nice, nice.
I'm interested to hear thestory of how Calendly got
started.
What was the origin story ofCalendly?
Jeff Hardison (03:40):
Yeah, so I probably couldn't tell it as
well as our founder Tope, butsome parts of the story that I
really love are that, you know,tope was a enterprise
salesperson for technologycompanies, right, and he had
gone to school for computerscience.
So he has this amazing brainwhere he both has a product
manager's brain as well as asalespersonperson's and customer
(04:04):
facing team's brain, and he wasworking as a as a salesperson,
uh, for large companies, and henoticed it was really difficult
to find a time to meet withcustomers and prospects and then
not only be able to meet withthat customer prospect but also
be able to bring in, like, say,let's say, a sales engineer, and
be able to figure out, you know, is it two o'clock um eastern
time or is it five o'clock, youknow somewhere else, when this
(04:27):
person is available, right, andthen you have to be able to line
that up with the customer andall the people on their end.
And so he ended up buildingCalendly as a solo founder with
an engineering team.
And here we are today, and soit's really moved beyond just
being able to kind of find atime of what works to also be
like team-based scheduling, likeI mentioned earlier, being able
(04:48):
to bring on that sales engineer, being able to bring a
recruiter into a call with youas a hiring manager, being able
to allow your customers to getemail notifications before the
meeting so that they don'tforget about the meeting, or
maybe after the meeting, sendingthem a case study, an ROI
calculator, things like that.
And then, of course, of course,we try to be this neutral
Switzerland, if you will,between all the different
(05:09):
platforms out there, and so wereally believe in our
integrations, and so that's, ofcourse, integrating with
Microsoft, like we're going totalk about today, integrating
with those other guys out there,as well as integrating with CRM
packages, not just Microsoft'sbut Salesforce and HubSpot, and
really concentrating on thatwork of building this ecosystem.
Mark Smith (05:28):
Yeah, amazing.
And I tell you what, as in Isaw a post recently where
somebody said and that wouldhave been in the last 12 months
that you know Google had comeout something that was going to
be a Calendly killer.
You know, using AI andscheduling, and I had to laugh
at that because I think it'ssomething like 82% of the
(05:49):
world's commercial email runs onM365 from Microsoft.
And so I thought you know fromyour lens of living in Google
land, awesome, but Google arenot known for owning the
enterprise when it comes to mail.
You know, if you looked, Ithink, chopped off the Fortune
100, fortune 500 companies, youwould find squarely 99 plus
(06:12):
percent of those will all berunning a Microsoft-based email
system, being M365 and Outlook.
And so I chuckled at thatbecause, you know, no time soon
will I be moving my commercialemail to Google and, as I say, I
think that 82% of the world'scommercial email sits in M365.
I think it's an amazing tooland, of course, people say to me
(06:32):
why using Calendly and notusing FindTime or something like
that from Microsoft?
The thing is, microsoft aregood if you are just working for
a single organization.
They struggle the minute you'rein a multi-tenanted environment
.
And my world and what I'm seeinga lot more with you know,
businesses is that individualswork for potentially multiple
(06:53):
companies at a time.
I work for over at least threecompanies at a time,
simultaneous, any time about totake on a fourth, and so you
know that means four emailaddresses, four calendars.
You know that I'm running, andso for me I actually use
multiple calendars, so multiplesubscriptions with Calendly and,
as I say, massive time saverfor me in how I coordinate my
(07:15):
life and make it easy acrosstime zone.
Just this week, a team ofpeople in Canada wanted to book
time with me in two weeks time.
You know, and you don't want tobe in that hockey game of
backwards and forwards around asthe morning of the state work
for you, and then, where thetimes are different, you know
I'm a day ahead of you right nowfrom a date perspective, it
gets very confusing, and so Ijust find it so easy to allocate
(07:37):
my time, and you know, theother thing that I find as an a
killer feature for me is that Ihave some people that want
one-on-one coaching around theworld, and so I can integrate
Stripe Payment Gateway straightinto there, make it super simple
for them to ad hoc buy an hourhere or there and be paid for it
, without kind of raisinginvoices and doing all that kind
(07:59):
of stuff on the side.
And I think the other featurethat is really powerful that I
use a lot is this ability to getnotifications pre-meeting.
I can send out four hoursbefore a notification, like all
that automation is just takencare of in the product.
When you think about or if youlook at your customer base, how
big is it now?
Jeff Hardison (08:20):
We now have more than 20 million users Wow yeah
all over the world and we're aproduct-led company, meaning
people can just sign up forCalendly for free and the
product will onboard them andwill prompt them to upgrade to a
paid plan with their creditcard if they will, and if they
need to reach out to asalesperson, they can.
But that's really helped usgrow quite a bit.
Mark Smith (08:43):
Are you seeing a massive adoption from the
Microsoft ecosystem?
Jeff Hardison (08:48):
Yes, yeah, I would say that the Microsoft
ecosystem is an extremelyimportant ecosystem to us,
because Microsoft has one ofeverything, right, as you know,
but they don't always go deep onsomething, and so they have a
product bookings, but they'renot going to make it their main
business, and we really careabout what we offer, and so we
can go much deeper than theymight go in terms of, like,
(09:11):
team-based scheduling, in termsof building out integrations
with competing products toMicrosoft that Microsoft might
not want to do, and so, again,we try to be that neutral
Switzerland between you knowGoogle's ecosystem, microsoft
Salesforce, et cetera so thatyou can use all those products
together, because, as you know,people are not only working
multiple jobs, or they mighthave Google Office products at
(09:32):
one company and then maybeMicrosoft at another company,
but their customers havedifferent platforms, and so you
need to be able to integrateCalendly with Zoom as well as
integrate it with MicrosoftTeams, for your customer's sake
as well.
Mark Smith (09:45):
That actually is another feature that I have been
in the transition when youdidn't have Teams integration
and so Zoom, you know, back in Isuppose 2019, 2020 timeframe
and then seeing the Teamsintegration come in, just
absolutely perfect right.
So a custom Teams link beingable to be embedded in to the
appointment, I think is superimportant.
(10:07):
Where do you see Calendlysitting in the market of tools
out there in this category?
So you know calendar managementas such.
Jeff Hardison (10:17):
So I would say, you know, right now there's the
calendar companies out there,right, there's like Microsoft
Outlook and there's GoogleCalendar and so forth, and we
haven't tried to replace that.
What we're really more tryingto do is help you book external
meetings with people that canhelp further your business.
So that could be booking ameeting with a salesperson who
(10:38):
doesn't have access to yourOutlook calendar.
They can't find that time ofwhen you're available and you
don't want to be emailing backand forth to find a time or
being able to book a meetingwith that recruit.
You know who's going to helpbuild your business, or that
investor, right?
Or, like you mentioned earlier,a lot of people are kind of
having side hustles.
So at night they're takingtheir expertise from their job
and they're booking meetingswith somebody that they met on X
(11:02):
or on LinkedIn and sayinghere's my county link and here's
a Stripe or PayPal integrationwhere you can pay me for this
meeting and you can build alittle bit of side revenue.
I would say that right now weare the Kleenex, if you will, of
the scheduling link world, butto us that's not enough.
(11:22):
I mean, our mission is to helpcompanies and people build
relationships with the peoplethat matter in their lives, and
so that could be those recruits,those customers, those
investors right, and then youknow, once they build
relationships, we've done a lotaround scheduling to help build
those relationships, butincreasingly what you're going
to see from us is us offeringother products and features out
(11:45):
there that help you, you know,build your relationships even
more I find interesting that youknow the diversification I see.
Mark Smith (11:52):
You know companies create a killer product but then
sometimes they diversify toofar out, they go away.
You know they move away fromtheir core.
And and one of the things Idon't like you know and don't
know how you factor this intoyour thinking is then you buy a
product and it comes with 50wingdings on the side and you
(12:12):
don't want those 50 wingdingsand they're being promoted is
why it's so awesome.
And listen, I wanted to be ableto cleanly schedule.
That's all I want to do.
How do you make sure you don'tcreate tons of do you want fries
with that and the Coke andeverything else, when really I
just wanted the burger?
I just want good, cleancalendar scheduling without any
fluff.
How do you make sure yourproduct team doesn't try to be
(12:35):
all things to all people butreally stay tight on the core?
Jeff Hardison (12:38):
Yeah, that's a good question.
So I've been at Cali almost fouryears and other companies I've
worked with that are making asmuch revenue as we're making
would have probably already comeout with all kinds of features
right and had a bloated UX and,like Calendly, didn't Calendly
really thought about how do wereally master scheduling?
And I think one of the waysthat Calendly did that was we
(13:01):
have such a focus on design.
And so, if you, when I look atcustomer research reports from
my team, where we interviewcustomers and so forth, why they
chose us time and time again,one of the main reasons is that
Cali is easy to use, and thatease of use really comes back to
our engineering talent, ourdesign talents, our product
(13:22):
managers and everybody that'shelping them make sure they're
not building something that'stoo complex, too bolted together
, and so our customers actuallyhave been pulling us into these
other areas outside of justscheduling, and we think,
because we have such a designforward, user experience led
culture, that we can build thesethings without it seeming too
(13:43):
rickety and bolted on and soforth.
Mark Smith (13:45):
But we want our customers to keep us honest and
let us know how we're doing you,you mentioned, you know, with
with one of the things withmicrosoft and I've worked with
microsoft for over 30 years nowand with the last 21, just you
know, being focused around theirdynamic crm product and power
platform and uh and now gettingheavily into the AI side of
things and one of the thingsyou're right about Microsoft
(14:07):
they do V1 of a lot of featuresnot products, but features and
really the calendar tool I'dcall, like their forms tool is a
feature and it definitely isnot market leading by any
stretch.
It just fills a percentage ofthe audience that just wants
something and that's why I thinkyou're on the money around
going deep in this one area andhow you've I would assume you're
(14:29):
the market leader in thiscategory at the moment.
Would that be right?
Jeff Hardison (14:33):
I like to think so.
Mark Smith (14:34):
Yeah, tell me about in the last two years two years
ago, I think, last week, whereChatGPT became on everybody's
radar right as in the adoption,and that end of the year two
years ago blew through theadoption of television, social
(14:58):
media, all these different typesof things and what I've seen in
the last two years is everycompany out there that have been
in business for years and yearshave all of a sudden bolted the
word AI into their name andtheir AI this and AI that and AI
something else.
I haven't noticed that fromCalendly, but my question for
you how do you see AI playinginto the mix as, and
(15:20):
particularly, perhaps, agentsyou know which are going to
become a big deal in 2025?
How do you see that playinginto the mix with Calendly?
Jeff Hardison (15:30):
Well, I can't give too much information, but I
do think that customers who areinterested in AI will be
heartened to hear that we willbe releasing AI-powered products
in the future.
What I want you to kind ofimagine is all right, if Jeff is
saying that this is aboutreally helping you build those
(15:51):
relationships.
How can AI help you build thoserelationships?
You know, there's not justscheduling a meeting which helps
you build a relationship, butwhat about, you know, in the
meeting itself?
How could AI assist in themeeting so that you can really
be present and and stare, youknow, look in the eyes of the
person that have, you know,maybe, like looking down at a
piece of paper and scribblingout notes, you can be present.
(16:13):
And then what if AI could maybehelp you, you know,
hypothetically, be able tofollow up on that meeting, right
, when you know better whathappened?
And then maybe what about interms of, like, keeping track of
all the people that you'remeeting, and like how could AI,
you know, really help with allof that?
And so what I think you'regoing to see is, in the coming
future, Cali will go from whereyou're not hearing as much about
(16:34):
AI to you're hearing a lotabout AI.
Mark Smith (16:36):
Interesting.
I think there's a massiveamount of scope, particularly on
pre-research of folks coming in.
As I say, I use it a lot for mypodcast and for any kind of
just-in-time type informationthat might've been published by
that person or that guest thatI'm having coming on being
surfaced.
I think would be pretty amazing.
(16:57):
Tell me about from anintegration perspective.
Have you kind of reached theintegration limits of the tools
out there in the market?
Like, do you have a situationwhere people are going, hey, I
need an integration for this,and that you're weighing that up
against all the otherpriorities?
Do you see any kind of gaps?
Because for mine I don't seethem.
(17:18):
But what are you seeing?
Jeff Hardison (17:20):
Yeah, and one other quick point I want to make
about AI is we do this state ofmeetings report each year where
we survey and interview allkinds of people other customers
and non-customers and we askabout AI to kind of hear what
they're comforted with.
And I think it was like 54%that was up from the previous
year.
54% of people said they wereexcited about what AI is going
(17:42):
to bring, and so we look forsignals like that to kind of
give us a little bit of boost interms of you know, are we on
the right track In terms ofintegrations?
So I would say that's one ofthe things that if you were to
take us and have like a list ofall the different competitors,
there's dozens of schedulingcompanies out there and you know
(18:05):
we might do this one thingbetter around, like bringing a
coworker in a meeting betterthan this other company.
Or we might do round robinbetter, where we like share
meetings with salespeople,depending on when they're
available, than another company,or they might do some you know
little other thing better thanus.
But the one thing that we foundthat was consistently true
across the board is that no onehas more and better integrations
than Calendly does out thereand it's a lot of work.
(18:29):
Like, for those of you listeningthat have maybe worked for a
technology company before, whatis one of the main things in
engineers that are co-workersthat complain about it's having
to build a integration withsomebody else's api that they
don't like oh, it's rest, orit's it's soap or whatever right
, and so that's one of the mainreasons that technology
companies don't build moreintegrations.
(18:49):
It's it's not like they don'tknow better, it's because it's a
lot of work.
And then you don't just have tobuild that integration but
you've got to maintain it overtime, like, hey, we're changing
our API, you need to update it.
Oh man, engineering team has togo back and make that update.
Well, we as a company havereally invested in all this
engineering talent that helpsmaintain and build more CRM
integrations, our calendarintegrations, video integrations
(19:10):
, those payment integrations youmentioned, market automation,
so on and so forth.
Mark Smith (19:20):
Yeah, you mentioned your development team and when I
did some research on you, isyour development team still
predominantly Ukraine-based.
Jeff Hardison (19:28):
No, our development team is primarily
United States-based.
Mark Smith (19:33):
But in the early days, right, Ukraine companies
pretty much built, yes, and yourfounder that was the other
thing I wanted to highlight isfrom Nigeria, right?
Yes, which I think is totallyepic.
As I was saying to you pre-call, the number or the size of the
Nigerian community insideMicrosoft has absolutely you
(19:53):
know, since probably 2020,exploded all around the world.
I'm seeing more and moreNigerians in the community.
Jeff Hardison (20:00):
So I, just when I saw that the founder was
Nigerian, I just thoughtabsolutely epic and such a good
story with highlighting yes, andyou know I didn't know as much
about the Nigerian techcommunity until working at
Calendly and I, you know I writethis newsletter every month for
our customers.
It goes out to, like you know,millions of people and I have
all kinds of replies come fromfolks from Nigeria or they'll go
(20:23):
on to X and post on X, or youknow about being so proud of
Taupe, for you know, being partof the Nigerian tech community
and, like I started to study upon all these people that are
posting and there's so muchengineering and like startup
talent out there in Nigeria.
Mark Smith (20:40):
Yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
And uh, you know it's, it'saccessible across the med to a
lot of European countries thatare then, you know, setting up
development centers and stuff.
Uh, on the on the border of themed, there, um, your KPMGs and
the likes I've seen quite a bitof, tell me what's the future of
(21:00):
meetings when you think aboutwhere we'll be in five years
from now.
Will we be doing more remotemeetings like this?
Will we be doing more in person?
What do you think is going tochange in the next five, next
five years?
So, really, beyond what yourproduct roadmap shows right now
in the thinking of the space,what is it for you?
Jeff Hardison (21:22):
I mean, I think if you look back like maybe 10
years ago, well, 20 years ago,the way you got business done,
whether you were recruitingpeople or you're trying to land
a deal or whatever it wasmeetings right, it was either a
meeting in person you know agolf course flying to, you know
a customer's location Then itbecame easier to do, you know,
remote meetings via video call,and so meetings have powered the
(21:45):
business community for a longtime.
And then, about 10 years ago,some cynicism crept in,
particularly around people whomaybe were more introverted and
they didn't like doing meetingsand so forth, and so they
started saying things like youknow, this meeting could have
been an email, right.
You know what?
I've read some long emails andI felt like it could have been a
short, five minute meeting,right.
And so what has kind of emergedin that whole anti-meetings
(22:09):
world is all kinds of amazing,asynchronous, or you know tools
that you can use to communicateto somebody, whether it's via
Microsoft Teams or it's via aMicrosoft doc, where, hey, why
don't you read what I have tosay before coming to the meeting
and then we can debate what wasin my doc instead of me doing a
(22:32):
readout to you for 30 minutesand you have five minutes to
debate, and so that's one of theamazing things that's come out
is all kinds of culture andtools around, maybe not meeting
as much when you could have justread about it or watched a
video about it, then met.
Well, there's kind of been acorrection to that, where people
are like man, I'm kind of tiredof watching really long, you
(22:54):
know hour long videos bysomebody who's kind of rambling
and they're not being concise,or they wrote this really long
doc and they could have beenmuch quicker with it, and so
people are returning to meetingsin many ways to try to be able
to like connect on a human leveland maybe be able to read your
body language and so forth, tobe like, oh, this is what this
person is really trying to say.
So I think that there willalways be this world of, I hope,
(23:17):
these asynchronous tools whereyou can write about things and
you can record videos about thethings or watch videos from
meetings, as well as thesein-person moments where you can
kind of really get in touch withsomeone's humanity so that you
can build a relationship for it.
Mark Smith (23:32):
Yeah, it's interesting because I see a
movement away from those type ofmeetings being around,
necessary a business discussion.
You know the boards I'minvolved with.
I'm like, hey, let's make allboard meetings online and let's
do the business, and then let'sgo meet in person and have a
drink or have a dinner orsomething like that and it's
(23:54):
just social.
We've covered the businessstuff.
Formally documented, you know,the tooling around AI and
meetings now is just, you know,the note-taking ability etc.
It's totally transformed thingsfalling through the gaps in the
meetings I'm in, like whenthere's an action on me, I can
quite clearly see that Now Iwould hate to step back two
(24:14):
years and not have that type offunctionality in my meeting.
Now, do you see and I'm probablyasking for a bias confirmation
here I mentor a lot of folksaround the world in a program I
run, I don't know, for the lastsix years, seven years now, and
(24:35):
one of the things that I thinkis becoming clearer is the need
to be very good on video, as inthat more and more meetings, the
more and more, as we, I suppose, go into a more freelance world
, even world even where there'sbeen predictions by 2035 of 50%
of the US workforce will becontractors, freelancers, that
(24:56):
type of thing, and I'm alreadyseeing it myself in that I work
for multiple companies, eventhough I'm based in the bottom
of the world.
I work for multiple companiesand they all have a segment of
my time because I have expertiseacross various areas and, as
the world goes that way, I justsee that there's a massive need
to be really good atcommunicating via camera, as in
(25:17):
you know, to be able tounderstand that you need to
engage with the camera.
You can't be looking off to theright and think that you're
going to have a meaningfulconversation.
You're seeing NVIDIA creatingsoftware that capes your eyes
looking at the camera even whenyou're not, which looks a bit
uncanny.
But I think that there is thisneed to get really good at
communicating via video forbusiness-based communications.
(25:39):
Are you seeing anything in yourresearch, your data, anything
like that around meetings inthis context?
Jeff Hardison (25:45):
I'd agree.
I'd say that you knowparticularly in marketing we
read this all the time that youneed to get really great at
video and this all the time thatyou need to get really great at
video and be able to make notjust make a high five video
where you hire somebody whospent a lot of money, but you as
an individual, have to be goodat quickly speaking on camera,
doing it in a very natural way,being able to edit on your own.
(26:05):
You know, with various easy touse, like my, my oldest daughter
is learning Adobe Premiereright, because that whole
generation has to be is learninghow to create videos right so
that they can socialize witheach other, and so I would say
that it's extremely important tobe able to be able to speak on
camera, be able to do your ownediting work, be able to publish
(26:26):
it and so forth, and not fretabout it too much in terms of
like.
This has to be perfectlypolished.
Mark Smith (26:31):
Correct.
Jeff Hardison (26:32):
I think the other thing that we're seeing is
that people are having allthese meetings virtually and not
everybody can attend themeeting.
What if the person is in adifferent time zone?
What if they were sick that day?
You need to be able to recordthose meetings right and then be
able to share those meetings.
So there's a lot of companiesout there that record all of
their internal meetings, notjust their customer meetings,
(26:53):
but they record their internalmeetings, the one-on-ones, the
all-hands meetings and all that.
And then people can go back andbe like, what was that thing
that our CEO said six months ago?
And they can go watch that oldrecording and be like, oh,
that's what they said.
And so there's this wholeculture emerging on just
watching recordings and thensharing little snippets of the
recordings, as well as learningmore about your customers, your
(27:13):
recruits, by recording them.
Mark Smith (27:15):
Yeah.
Do you think there's still afear, though, of you know, we
always preface a meeting.
Hey, is it all right if Irecord this?
You know, I still see somepeople are like are you trying
to catch me out, or is this youknow, and am I going to say
something on record that I'mgoing to regret?
Trying to catch me out, or isthis you know, and am I going to
say something on record thatI'm going to regret?
Do you think that kind offeeling within three years, five
years, won't be a thing, as in,it'll be standard that all
(27:36):
meetings will be recordedbecause, as you say, there's
going to be time offsets, noteveryone's going to be attending
, they need to watch thefollow-up or whatever, and it's
great content that could berepurposed as well, right?
Sometimes that could berepurposed as well, right?
Sometimes you get thatsoundbite that you're like, wow,
let's use that somewhere else.
We wouldn't have got that if ithadn't been recorded.
Jeff Hardison (27:57):
I think that there will be variety in terms
of who's going to recordinternal meetings, like meeting
with your boss, or you'remeeting with the whole company.
There's already variety aroundthat and different rules.
I think smaller companies do itby and large, but some of the
bigger companies have rulesagainst it.
But I think what's going to becompletely commonplace is you
recording external meetings.
So recording that meeting withthe customer, recording that
(28:17):
meeting with the recruit,because that's already happening
and a lot of customers areaccustomed to it, and so you're
going to increasingly see moreand more industries outside of
tech recording all of theirmeetings with customer recruits.
Mark Smith (28:29):
Nice.
To wrap up, anything else you'dlike to add?
Jeff Hardison (28:32):
Well, I would just say, like you know those of
you that use Microsoft you know, please check out some of our
integrations.
Some of the things that weallow you to do are you can
integrate, you know, withMicrosoft Outlook to make sure
that your meetings you'rechecking to see if you have a
meeting already, maybeinternally at your company,
before you let a customer book ameeting with you.
We got integration withMicrosoft Teams.
Now we built this with theMicrosoft Teams team where you
(28:57):
can be able to get your Calendlymeetings to show up in
Microsoft Teams.
It's really cool.
We have an integration withChrome which allows you to use
the Microsoft Edge capabilities.
And then we have the MicrosoftDynamics integration with the
CRM so that you can be able toget all of your meetings data
with, say, customers intoMicrosoft Dynamics.
And, of course, you've got theMicrosoft Power.
(29:18):
Automate integration allows youto build all kinds of things
with Microsoft and Calendly.
Mark Smith (29:23):
I like it.
I like it.
Those that want to learn morecan visit the Calendly for
Microsoft webinar and yourMicrosoft integration page on
your website.
We'll get the link to that.
We'll put it in the show notes,Jeff.
Thanks so much for coming onthe show.
Jeff Hardison (29:35):
Mark, this has been awesome, Thank you, and
thank you for being a customer.
Mark Smith (29:39):
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication MVP Mark Smith,
otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.
If there's a guest you'd liketo see on the show, please
message me on LinkedIn.
If you want to be a supporterof the show, please check out
buymeacoffeecom.
Forward slash nz365guy.
(30:01):
Stay safe out there and shootfor the stars.
Welcome to the Power Platform Show.
Thanks for joining me today.
I hope today's guest inspiresand educates you on the
possibilities of the MicrosoftPower Platform.
Now let's get on with the show.
In this episode, we're going tofocus on Calendly and the
(00:27):
impact that it has added in themarket and even the future of
scheduling.
Calendly is a tool that I'veused now since about 2018, and I
couldn't live without it whenit comes to scheduling.
Being that I live at the bottomof the world and multi-time
zone, I work mainly for clientsacross the US and Europe.
It has been an absolutelifesaver to me.
My guest is from Portland,oregon in the US.
(00:49):
He works at Calendly.
He's the VP for the productmarketing of Calendly, so a
pleasure to have him on the show.
He's received a 40 under 40award for the Business Journal.
He plays drums, he's awrestling coach, he's a reader,
a writer, and are you intocycling?
Is that right?
Jeff Hardison (01:10):
Yes, I love to bike.
Mark Smith (01:11):
Awesome.
You can find links, of course,to his bio and his socials in
the show notes for this episode.
Anything we discuss or we talkabout links, etc.
They'll be in the show notes.
Welcome to the show, Jeff.
Jeff Hardison (01:21):
Thanks, mark, it's great to be here.
Mark Smith (01:23):
Good to have you on the show.
I'm excited.
I always, you know, when yourteam reached out and discussed
coming on the podcast.
You know I've been a massivefan of Calendly and I suppose,
specifically I'm a massive fanbecause I work for multiple
companies at any time and youknow I'm at the bottom of the
(01:44):
world, as I said in the intro,and I'm dealing with multiple
time zones, but not just thatnuance, I'm dealing with
multiple schedules and in thepast, let's say 10 plus years
ago, before I came acrossCalendly, I used to work at
doing automations between twoschedules so I didn't get
conflicts because people, inwhatever company I was working
for, would go, hey, I can see agap in your schedule, but they
couldn't see that gap wasn't inmy other schedule, right.
(02:05):
And so to run this podcast,which has been running seven
years now, calendly has beenwith me every step of the way.
It's the way I use to runscheduling at scale and I
couldn't live as in.
Honestly, the time savings itsaves for me is absolutely
phenomenal and so I'm excited tohave you on the show.
(02:27):
And before we start, tell us abit about food, family and fun.
I always like my guests to kindof give some background outside
of their day job.
Jeff Hardison (02:35):
Yeah, so let's see food.
Well, I live in Portland,oregon, right, and we are kind
of like a food epicenter for theUnited States.
A lot of chefs have moved fromaround the world to Portland and
so we're really lucky I canwalk just three blocks away and
be able to dine at some amazingplaces.
So that's really great.
And I'd say, probably ourfamily's favorite food is kind
(02:55):
of the newer kind of takes onMexican food right now.
We love we'd probably go dothat once a week.
You know, speaking of family,my daughters I spent a lot of
time helping them with theirsports.
They both play soccer andwrestle and so you know, you
mentioned earlier, you know,wrestling coach, and so I hadn't
wrestled since high school andthen I started volunteering and
(03:19):
next thing, I know I'm assistantwrestling coach for my youngest
daughter's wrestling team,which has been really fun to be
involved in that.
And yeah, so that's pretty muchme.
If I'm not working, I'mprobably spending time with my
family.
Mark Smith (03:31):
Nice, nice.
I'm interested to hear thestory of how Calendly got
started.
What was the origin story ofCalendly?
Jeff Hardison (03:40):
Yeah, so I probably couldn't tell it as
well as our founder Tope, butsome parts of the story that I
really love are that, you know,tope was a enterprise
salesperson for technologycompanies, right, and he had
gone to school for computerscience.
So he has this amazing brainwhere he both has a product
manager's brain as well as asalespersonperson's and customer
(04:04):
facing team's brain, and he wasworking as a as a salesperson,
uh, for large companies, and henoticed it was really difficult
to find a time to meet withcustomers and prospects and then
not only be able to meet withthat customer prospect but also
be able to bring in, like, say,let's say, a sales engineer, and
be able to figure out, you know, is it two o'clock um eastern
time or is it five o'clock, youknow somewhere else, when this
(04:27):
person is available, right, andthen you have to be able to line
that up with the customer andall the people on their end.
And so he ended up buildingCalendly as a solo founder with
an engineering team.
And here we are today, and soit's really moved beyond just
being able to kind of find atime of what works to also be
like team-based scheduling, likeI mentioned earlier, being able
(04:48):
to bring on that sales engineer, being able to bring a
recruiter into a call with youas a hiring manager, being able
to allow your customers to getemail notifications before the
meeting so that they don'tforget about the meeting, or
maybe after the meeting, sendingthem a case study, an ROI
calculator, things like that.
And then, of course, of course,we try to be this neutral
Switzerland, if you will,between all the different
(05:09):
platforms out there, and so wereally believe in our
integrations, and so that's, ofcourse, integrating with
Microsoft, like we're going totalk about today, integrating
with those other guys out there,as well as integrating with CRM
packages, not just Microsoft'sbut Salesforce and HubSpot, and
really concentrating on thatwork of building this ecosystem.
Mark Smith (05:28):
Yeah, amazing.
And I tell you what, as in Isaw a post recently where
somebody said and that wouldhave been in the last 12 months
that you know Google had comeout something that was going to
be a Calendly killer.
You know, using AI andscheduling, and I had to laugh
at that because I think it'ssomething like 82% of the
(05:49):
world's commercial email runs onM365 from Microsoft.
And so I thought you know fromyour lens of living in Google
land, awesome, but Google arenot known for owning the
enterprise when it comes to mail.
You know, if you looked, Ithink, chopped off the Fortune
100, fortune 500 companies, youwould find squarely 99 plus
(06:12):
percent of those will all berunning a Microsoft-based email
system, being M365 and Outlook.
And so I chuckled at thatbecause, you know, no time soon
will I be moving my commercialemail to Google and, as I say, I
think that 82% of the world'scommercial email sits in M365.
I think it's an amazing tooland, of course, people say to me
(06:32):
why using Calendly and notusing FindTime or something like
that from Microsoft?
The thing is, microsoft aregood if you are just working for
a single organization.
They struggle the minute you'rein a multi-tenanted environment
.
And my world and what I'm seeinga lot more with you know,
businesses is that individualswork for potentially multiple
(06:53):
companies at a time.
I work for over at least threecompanies at a time,
simultaneous, any time about totake on a fourth, and so you
know that means four emailaddresses, four calendars.
You know that I'm running, andso for me I actually use
multiple calendars, so multiplesubscriptions with Calendly and,
as I say, massive time saverfor me in how I coordinate my
(07:15):
life and make it easy acrosstime zone.
Just this week, a team ofpeople in Canada wanted to book
time with me in two weeks time.
You know, and you don't want tobe in that hockey game of
backwards and forwards around asthe morning of the state work
for you, and then, where thetimes are different, you know
I'm a day ahead of you right nowfrom a date perspective, it
gets very confusing, and so Ijust find it so easy to allocate
(07:37):
my time, and you know, theother thing that I find as an a
killer feature for me is that Ihave some people that want
one-on-one coaching around theworld, and so I can integrate
Stripe Payment Gateway straightinto there, make it super simple
for them to ad hoc buy an hourhere or there and be paid for it
, without kind of raisinginvoices and doing all that kind
(07:59):
of stuff on the side.
And I think the other featurethat is really powerful that I
use a lot is this ability to getnotifications pre-meeting.
I can send out four hoursbefore a notification, like all
that automation is just takencare of in the product.
When you think about or if youlook at your customer base, how
big is it now?
Jeff Hardison (08:20):
We now have more than 20 million users Wow yeah
all over the world and we're aproduct-led company, meaning
people can just sign up forCalendly for free and the
product will onboard them andwill prompt them to upgrade to a
paid plan with their creditcard if they will, and if they
need to reach out to asalesperson, they can.
But that's really helped usgrow quite a bit.
Mark Smith (08:43):
Are you seeing a massive adoption from the
Microsoft ecosystem?
Jeff Hardison (08:48):
Yes, yeah, I would say that the Microsoft
ecosystem is an extremelyimportant ecosystem to us,
because Microsoft has one ofeverything, right, as you know,
but they don't always go deep onsomething, and so they have a
product bookings, but they'renot going to make it their main
business, and we really careabout what we offer, and so we
can go much deeper than theymight go in terms of, like,
(09:11):
team-based scheduling, in termsof building out integrations
with competing products toMicrosoft that Microsoft might
not want to do, and so, again,we try to be that neutral
Switzerland between you knowGoogle's ecosystem, microsoft
Salesforce, et cetera so thatyou can use all those products
together, because, as you know,people are not only working
multiple jobs, or they mighthave Google Office products at
(09:32):
one company and then maybeMicrosoft at another company,
but their customers havedifferent platforms, and so you
need to be able to integrateCalendly with Zoom as well as
integrate it with MicrosoftTeams, for your customer's sake
as well.
Mark Smith (09:45):
That actually is another feature that I have been
in the transition when youdidn't have Teams integration
and so Zoom, you know, back in Isuppose 2019, 2020 timeframe
and then seeing the Teamsintegration come in, just
absolutely perfect right.
So a custom Teams link beingable to be embedded in to the
appointment, I think is superimportant.
(10:07):
Where do you see Calendlysitting in the market of tools
out there in this category?
So you know calendar managementas such.
Jeff Hardison (10:17):
So I would say, you know, right now there's the
calendar companies out there,right, there's like Microsoft
Outlook and there's GoogleCalendar and so forth, and we
haven't tried to replace that.
What we're really more tryingto do is help you book external
meetings with people that canhelp further your business.
So that could be booking ameeting with a salesperson who
(10:38):
doesn't have access to yourOutlook calendar.
They can't find that time ofwhen you're available and you
don't want to be emailing backand forth to find a time or
being able to book a meetingwith that recruit.
You know who's going to helpbuild your business, or that
investor, right?
Or, like you mentioned earlier,a lot of people are kind of
having side hustles.
So at night they're takingtheir expertise from their job
and they're booking meetingswith somebody that they met on X
(11:02):
or on LinkedIn and sayinghere's my county link and here's
a Stripe or PayPal integrationwhere you can pay me for this
meeting and you can build alittle bit of side revenue.
I would say that right now weare the Kleenex, if you will, of
the scheduling link world, butto us that's not enough.
(11:22):
I mean, our mission is to helpcompanies and people build
relationships with the peoplethat matter in their lives, and
so that could be those recruits,those customers, those
investors right, and then youknow, once they build
relationships, we've done a lotaround scheduling to help build
those relationships, butincreasingly what you're going
to see from us is us offeringother products and features out
(11:45):
there that help you, you know,build your relationships even
more I find interesting that youknow the diversification I see.
Mark Smith (11:52):
You know companies create a killer product but then
sometimes they diversify toofar out, they go away.
You know they move away fromtheir core.
And and one of the things Idon't like you know and don't
know how you factor this intoyour thinking is then you buy a
product and it comes with 50wingdings on the side and you
(12:12):
don't want those 50 wingdingsand they're being promoted is
why it's so awesome.
And listen, I wanted to be ableto cleanly schedule.
That's all I want to do.
How do you make sure you don'tcreate tons of do you want fries
with that and the Coke andeverything else, when really I
just wanted the burger?
I just want good, cleancalendar scheduling without any
fluff.
How do you make sure yourproduct team doesn't try to be
(12:35):
all things to all people butreally stay tight on the core?
Jeff Hardison (12:38):
Yeah, that's a good question.
So I've been at Cali almost fouryears and other companies I've
worked with that are making asmuch revenue as we're making
would have probably already comeout with all kinds of features
right and had a bloated UX and,like Calendly, didn't Calendly
really thought about how do wereally master scheduling?
And I think one of the waysthat Calendly did that was we
(13:01):
have such a focus on design.
And so, if you, when I look atcustomer research reports from
my team, where we interviewcustomers and so forth, why they
chose us time and time again,one of the main reasons is that
Cali is easy to use, and thatease of use really comes back to
our engineering talent, ourdesign talents, our product
(13:22):
managers and everybody that'shelping them make sure they're
not building something that'stoo complex, too bolted together
, and so our customers actuallyhave been pulling us into these
other areas outside of justscheduling, and we think,
because we have such a designforward, user experience led
culture, that we can build thesethings without it seeming too
(13:43):
rickety and bolted on and soforth.
Mark Smith (13:45):
But we want our customers to keep us honest and
let us know how we're doing you,you mentioned, you know, with
with one of the things withmicrosoft and I've worked with
microsoft for over 30 years nowand with the last 21, just you
know, being focused around theirdynamic crm product and power
platform and uh and now gettingheavily into the AI side of
things and one of the thingsyou're right about Microsoft
(14:07):
they do V1 of a lot of featuresnot products, but features and
really the calendar tool I'dcall, like their forms tool is a
feature and it definitely isnot market leading by any
stretch.
It just fills a percentage ofthe audience that just wants
something and that's why I thinkyou're on the money around
going deep in this one area andhow you've I would assume you're
(14:29):
the market leader in thiscategory at the moment.
Would that be right?
Jeff Hardison (14:33):
I like to think so.
Mark Smith (14:34):
Yeah, tell me about in the last two years two years
ago, I think, last week, whereChatGPT became on everybody's
radar right as in the adoption,and that end of the year two
years ago blew through theadoption of television, social
(14:58):
media, all these different typesof things and what I've seen in
the last two years is everycompany out there that have been
in business for years and yearshave all of a sudden bolted the
word AI into their name andtheir AI this and AI that and AI
something else.
I haven't noticed that fromCalendly, but my question for
you how do you see AI playinginto the mix as, and
(15:20):
particularly, perhaps, agentsyou know which are going to
become a big deal in 2025?
How do you see that playinginto the mix with Calendly?
Jeff Hardison (15:30):
Well, I can't give too much information, but I
do think that customers who areinterested in AI will be
heartened to hear that we willbe releasing AI-powered products
in the future.
What I want you to kind ofimagine is all right, if Jeff is
saying that this is aboutreally helping you build those
(15:51):
relationships.
How can AI help you build thoserelationships?
You know, there's not justscheduling a meeting which helps
you build a relationship, butwhat about, you know, in the
meeting itself?
How could AI assist in themeeting so that you can really
be present and and stare, youknow, look in the eyes of the
person that have, you know,maybe, like looking down at a
piece of paper and scribblingout notes, you can be present.
(16:13):
And then what if AI could maybehelp you, you know,
hypothetically, be able tofollow up on that meeting, right
, when you know better whathappened?
And then maybe what about interms of, like, keeping track of
all the people that you'remeeting, and like how could AI,
you know, really help with allof that?
And so what I think you'regoing to see is, in the coming
future, Cali will go from whereyou're not hearing as much about
(16:34):
AI to you're hearing a lotabout AI.
Mark Smith (16:36):
Interesting.
I think there's a massiveamount of scope, particularly on
pre-research of folks coming in.
As I say, I use it a lot for mypodcast and for any kind of
just-in-time type informationthat might've been published by
that person or that guest thatI'm having coming on being
surfaced.
I think would be pretty amazing.
(16:57):
Tell me about from anintegration perspective.
Have you kind of reached theintegration limits of the tools
out there in the market?
Like, do you have a situationwhere people are going, hey, I
need an integration for this,and that you're weighing that up
against all the otherpriorities?
Do you see any kind of gaps?
Because for mine I don't seethem.
(17:18):
But what are you seeing?
Jeff Hardison (17:20):
Yeah, and one other quick point I want to make
about AI is we do this state ofmeetings report each year where
we survey and interview allkinds of people other customers
and non-customers and we askabout AI to kind of hear what
they're comforted with.
And I think it was like 54%that was up from the previous
year.
54% of people said they wereexcited about what AI is going
(17:42):
to bring, and so we look forsignals like that to kind of
give us a little bit of boost interms of you know, are we on
the right track In terms ofintegrations?
So I would say that's one ofthe things that if you were to
take us and have like a list ofall the different competitors,
there's dozens of schedulingcompanies out there and you know
(18:05):
we might do this one thingbetter around, like bringing a
coworker in a meeting betterthan this other company.
Or we might do round robinbetter, where we like share
meetings with salespeople,depending on when they're
available, than another company,or they might do some you know
little other thing better thanus.
But the one thing that we foundthat was consistently true
across the board is that no onehas more and better integrations
than Calendly does out thereand it's a lot of work.
(18:29):
Like, for those of you listeningthat have maybe worked for a
technology company before, whatis one of the main things in
engineers that are co-workersthat complain about it's having
to build a integration withsomebody else's api that they
don't like oh, it's rest, orit's it's soap or whatever right
, and so that's one of the mainreasons that technology
companies don't build moreintegrations.
(18:49):
It's it's not like they don'tknow better, it's because it's a
lot of work.
And then you don't just have tobuild that integration but
you've got to maintain it overtime, like, hey, we're changing
our API, you need to update it.
Oh man, engineering team has togo back and make that update.
Well, we as a company havereally invested in all this
engineering talent that helpsmaintain and build more CRM
integrations, our calendarintegrations, video integrations
(19:10):
, those payment integrations youmentioned, market automation,
so on and so forth.
Mark Smith (19:20):
Yeah, you mentioned your development team and when I
did some research on you, isyour development team still
predominantly Ukraine-based.
Jeff Hardison (19:28):
No, our development team is primarily
United States-based.
Mark Smith (19:33):
But in the early days, right, Ukraine companies
pretty much built, yes, and yourfounder that was the other
thing I wanted to highlight isfrom Nigeria, right?
Yes, which I think is totallyepic.
As I was saying to you pre-call, the number or the size of the
Nigerian community insideMicrosoft has absolutely you
(19:53):
know, since probably 2020,exploded all around the world.
I'm seeing more and moreNigerians in the community.
Jeff Hardison (20:00):
So I, just when I saw that the founder was
Nigerian, I just thoughtabsolutely epic and such a good
story with highlighting yes, andyou know I didn't know as much
about the Nigerian techcommunity until working at
Calendly and I, you know I writethis newsletter every month for
our customers.
It goes out to, like you know,millions of people and I have
all kinds of replies come fromfolks from Nigeria or they'll go
(20:23):
on to X and post on X, or youknow about being so proud of
Taupe, for you know, being partof the Nigerian tech community
and, like I started to study upon all these people that are
posting and there's so muchengineering and like startup
talent out there in Nigeria.
Mark Smith (20:40):
Yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
And uh, you know it's, it'saccessible across the med to a
lot of European countries thatare then, you know, setting up
development centers and stuff.
Uh, on the on the border of themed, there, um, your KPMGs and
the likes I've seen quite a bitof, tell me what's the future of
(21:00):
meetings when you think aboutwhere we'll be in five years
from now.
Will we be doing more remotemeetings like this?
Will we be doing more in person?
What do you think is going tochange in the next five, next
five years?
So, really, beyond what yourproduct roadmap shows right now
in the thinking of the space,what is it for you?
Jeff Hardison (21:22):
I mean, I think if you look back like maybe 10
years ago, well, 20 years ago,the way you got business done,
whether you were recruitingpeople or you're trying to land
a deal or whatever it wasmeetings right, it was either a
meeting in person you know agolf course flying to, you know
a customer's location Then itbecame easier to do, you know,
remote meetings via video call,and so meetings have powered the
(21:45):
business community for a longtime.
And then, about 10 years ago,some cynicism crept in,
particularly around people whomaybe were more introverted and
they didn't like doing meetingsand so forth, and so they
started saying things like youknow, this meeting could have
been an email, right.
You know what?
I've read some long emails andI felt like it could have been a
short, five minute meeting,right.
And so what has kind of emergedin that whole anti-meetings
(22:09):
world is all kinds of amazing,asynchronous, or you know tools
that you can use to communicateto somebody, whether it's via
Microsoft Teams or it's via aMicrosoft doc, where, hey, why
don't you read what I have tosay before coming to the meeting
and then we can debate what wasin my doc instead of me doing a
(22:32):
readout to you for 30 minutesand you have five minutes to
debate, and so that's one of theamazing things that's come out
is all kinds of culture andtools around, maybe not meeting
as much when you could have justread about it or watched a
video about it, then met.
Well, there's kind of been acorrection to that, where people
are like man, I'm kind of tiredof watching really long, you
(22:54):
know hour long videos bysomebody who's kind of rambling
and they're not being concise,or they wrote this really long
doc and they could have beenmuch quicker with it, and so
people are returning to meetingsin many ways to try to be able
to like connect on a human leveland maybe be able to read your
body language and so forth, tobe like, oh, this is what this
person is really trying to say.
So I think that there willalways be this world of, I hope,
(23:17):
these asynchronous tools whereyou can write about things and
you can record videos about thethings or watch videos from
meetings, as well as thesein-person moments where you can
kind of really get in touch withsomeone's humanity so that you
can build a relationship for it.
Mark Smith (23:32):
Yeah, it's interesting because I see a
movement away from those type ofmeetings being around,
necessary a business discussion.
You know the boards I'minvolved with.
I'm like, hey, let's make allboard meetings online and let's
do the business, and then let'sgo meet in person and have a
drink or have a dinner orsomething like that and it's
(23:54):
just social.
We've covered the businessstuff.
Formally documented, you know,the tooling around AI and
meetings now is just, you know,the note-taking ability etc.
It's totally transformed thingsfalling through the gaps in the
meetings I'm in, like whenthere's an action on me, I can
quite clearly see that Now Iwould hate to step back two
(24:14):
years and not have that type offunctionality in my meeting.
Now, do you see and I'm probablyasking for a bias confirmation
here I mentor a lot of folksaround the world in a program I
run, I don't know, for the lastsix years, seven years now, and
(24:35):
one of the things that I thinkis becoming clearer is the need
to be very good on video, as inthat more and more meetings, the
more and more, as we, I suppose, go into a more freelance world
, even world even where there'sbeen predictions by 2035 of 50%
of the US workforce will becontractors, freelancers, that
(24:56):
type of thing, and I'm alreadyseeing it myself in that I work
for multiple companies, eventhough I'm based in the bottom
of the world.
I work for multiple companiesand they all have a segment of
my time because I have expertiseacross various areas and, as
the world goes that way, I justsee that there's a massive need
to be really good atcommunicating via camera, as in
(25:17):
you know, to be able tounderstand that you need to
engage with the camera.
You can't be looking off to theright and think that you're
going to have a meaningfulconversation.
You're seeing NVIDIA creatingsoftware that capes your eyes
looking at the camera even whenyou're not, which looks a bit
uncanny.
But I think that there is thisneed to get really good at
communicating via video forbusiness-based communications.
(25:39):
Are you seeing anything in yourresearch, your data, anything
like that around meetings inthis context?
Jeff Hardison (25:45):
I'd agree.
I'd say that you knowparticularly in marketing we
read this all the time that youneed to get really great at
video and this all the time thatyou need to get really great at
video and be able to make notjust make a high five video
where you hire somebody whospent a lot of money, but you as
an individual, have to be goodat quickly speaking on camera,
doing it in a very natural way,being able to edit on your own.
(26:05):
You know, with various easy touse, like my, my oldest daughter
is learning Adobe Premiereright, because that whole
generation has to be is learninghow to create videos right so
that they can socialize witheach other, and so I would say
that it's extremely important tobe able to be able to speak on
camera, be able to do your ownediting work, be able to publish
(26:26):
it and so forth, and not fretabout it too much in terms of
like.
This has to be perfectlypolished.
Mark Smith (26:31):
Correct.
Jeff Hardison (26:32):
I think the other thing that we're seeing is
that people are having allthese meetings virtually and not
everybody can attend themeeting.
What if the person is in adifferent time zone?
What if they were sick that day?
You need to be able to recordthose meetings right and then be
able to share those meetings.
So there's a lot of companiesout there that record all of
their internal meetings, notjust their customer meetings,
(26:53):
but they record their internalmeetings, the one-on-ones, the
all-hands meetings and all that.
And then people can go back andbe like, what was that thing
that our CEO said six months ago?
And they can go watch that oldrecording and be like, oh,
that's what they said.
And so there's this wholeculture emerging on just
watching recordings and thensharing little snippets of the
recordings, as well as learningmore about your customers, your
(27:13):
recruits, by recording them.
Mark Smith (27:15):
Yeah.
Do you think there's still afear, though, of you know, we
always preface a meeting.
Hey, is it all right if Irecord this?
You know, I still see somepeople are like are you trying
to catch me out, or is this youknow, and am I going to say
something on record that I'mgoing to regret?
Trying to catch me out, or isthis you know, and am I going to
say something on record thatI'm going to regret?
Do you think that kind offeeling within three years, five
years, won't be a thing, as in,it'll be standard that all
(27:36):
meetings will be recordedbecause, as you say, there's
going to be time offsets, noteveryone's going to be attending
, they need to watch thefollow-up or whatever, and it's
great content that could berepurposed as well, right?
Sometimes that could berepurposed as well, right?
Sometimes you get thatsoundbite that you're like, wow,
let's use that somewhere else.
We wouldn't have got that if ithadn't been recorded.
Jeff Hardison (27:57):
I think that there will be variety in terms
of who's going to recordinternal meetings, like meeting
with your boss, or you'remeeting with the whole company.
There's already variety aroundthat and different rules.
I think smaller companies do itby and large, but some of the
bigger companies have rulesagainst it.
But I think what's going to becompletely commonplace is you
recording external meetings.
So recording that meeting withthe customer, recording that
(28:17):
meeting with the recruit,because that's already happening
and a lot of customers areaccustomed to it, and so you're
going to increasingly see moreand more industries outside of
tech recording all of theirmeetings with customer recruits.
Mark Smith (28:29):
Nice.
To wrap up, anything else you'dlike to add?
Jeff Hardison (28:32):
Well, I would just say, like you know those of
you that use Microsoft you know, please check out some of our
integrations.
Some of the things that weallow you to do are you can
integrate, you know, withMicrosoft Outlook to make sure
that your meetings you'rechecking to see if you have a
meeting already, maybeinternally at your company,
before you let a customer book ameeting with you.
We got integration withMicrosoft Teams.
Now we built this with theMicrosoft Teams team where you
(28:57):
can be able to get your Calendlymeetings to show up in
Microsoft Teams.
It's really cool.
We have an integration withChrome which allows you to use
the Microsoft Edge capabilities.
And then we have the MicrosoftDynamics integration with the
CRM so that you can be able toget all of your meetings data
with, say, customers intoMicrosoft Dynamics.
And, of course, you've got theMicrosoft Power.
(29:18):
Automate integration allows youto build all kinds of things
with Microsoft and Calendly.
Mark Smith (29:23):
I like it.
I like it.
Those that want to learn morecan visit the Calendly for
Microsoft webinar and yourMicrosoft integration page on
your website.
We'll get the link to that.
We'll put it in the show notes,Jeff.
Thanks so much for coming onthe show.
Jeff Hardison (29:35):
Mark, this has been awesome, Thank you, and
thank you for being a customer.
Mark Smith (29:39):
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication MVP Mark Smith,
otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.
If there's a guest you'd liketo see on the show, please
message me on LinkedIn.
If you want to be a supporterof the show, please check out
buymeacoffeecom.
Forward slash nz365guy.
(30:01):
Stay safe out there and shootfor the stars.
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