Ep 44 - Haydee Hernandez - Building a culture of experimentation
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Episode Summary
Haydee Hernandez, Director of Product Management @ CollegeAdvisor.com
This was an episode where I talked with Haydee Hernandez. Haydee and I met at ProductCamp Chicago more than 5 years ago. Like me Haydee is an avid believer in constant experimentation to make the best products and experiences, and leveraging data from those experiments to make decisions. Listen to Haydee and my conversation around building a culture of experimentation.
Haydee’s BIO: Haydee is a product leader who melds a strategic mindset with hands-on tactical preparation to deliver maximum value. She is able to craft a distinct product vision through the synthesis of both quantitative and qualitative data. Her work setting up A/B testing frameworks and processes accelerates learning and growth cycles within large and small organizations. She has overseen million-dollar integration efforts, launched with minimal customer or organizational disruption. Her ability to collaborate with executive leadership and cross-functional teams leads to organizational alignment and enthusiasm. By deciding to optimize or slash projects based on outcomes, Haydee proves she is a person able to take ownership of the results. Haydee brings nearly 20 years of experience launching digital product initiatives in B2C and B2B companies, agencies and consultancies.
Connect with Haydee:
LinkedIn: in/hernandezhaydee
Twitter @haydee
Current Company: CollegeAdvisor.com
go Beyond the Data Ep 44 – Haydee Hernandez
Haydee Hernandez, Director of Product Management @ CollegeAdvisor.com
Machine Generated Transcript via Descript
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Have a great day! Dave
Dave Mathias: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Good to have you on another episode of go Beyond the Data with me today is a friend of mine, Haydee Hernandez out of Chicago, but soon to be Miami .
Haydee Hernandez: [00:00:09] Absolutely. Thanks for having me on Dave.
Dave Mathias: [00:00:12] Great to have you here. We actually met at a Product Camp. I don't know if it was like 2015 or 14 or something like that in Chicago some years ago. We actually did a session around experimentation and building a culture of experimentation last year.
And thought it'd be great to have you here today. And let's just talk about experimenting a little bit more and have a little fun. You have an interesting background, we always have good conversations, so good to have you.
Haydee Hernandez: [00:00:36] Thanks. Dave, what do you think your viewers would like to learn more about?
Dave Mathias: [00:00:40] I think you have that data mindset, but you also have, you're an anthropology undergrad, right?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:00:46] Yes. I was an anthropology undergrad. A background that you wouldn't think would make much sense with technology, but actually has probably been one of the most useful skill sets I've had.
Dave Mathias: [00:00:57] Well, especially as the more important aspect of user experience and product design and how we really are trying to understand the users better, our customers better. I think anthropology, which is great. I see somebody with that kind of background I get excited. So I know it may be atypical. I is, but it's great to see, but then you did a masters and it's funny because you did the anthropology on the East coast, right? Like I think in the DC area at a, was at George Washington you went to university.
Haydee Hernandez: [00:01:23] Yep. That's where I went.
Dave Mathias: [00:01:24] And then you went to the West coast, you went to Berkeley, UC Berkeley for your MIS. And so what got you from anthropology to say, okay, I'm going from anthropology, but then I want to, the MIS the masters in information management systems.
Haydee Hernandez: [00:01:39] It's I think a number of people who are starting off their careers and then they fall into something that is like magic. So when I graduated from GW, I had graduated with an anthropology degree, but I was actually working in a defense consulting firm. And so upon graduation, the firm got all these contracts and really needed to explode in terms of the number of resources that they had.
And yeah. They asked me to stay on in a full-time capacity in HR. But the condition was is that I build out all their HR needs, but without having a lot of other resources and back then over 20 years ago, that meant computers. So they were willing to throw computers, programs, training at me.
And so next thing I'm an anthropology graduate, but I'm building an intranet, designing flat file databases, then moving to relational databases then learning publishing software. And after a while, it didn't take me long to realize I really love this technology piece way more than the HR piece.
And what can I do with that? And so I discovered Berkeley was kicking off a new department and they were approaching technology from this interdisciplinary viewpoint where it was a combination of business meets computer science meets social science, which really resonated with my anthropology background.
And I was interested in leveraging that research. Buddy that you did from anthropology into how do you use that to understand how people can use technology for their needs versus having technology force people to adapt to how technology is created. And so Berkeley really opened the door for me to explore that area.
And next thing you know, I wind up graduating and I'm in the tech space.
Dave Mathias: [00:03:26] That's a great story. And it explains a lot as the path that you've taken after it, because even in your career you've hit on a lot of things. And like you said, you went from HR, but then you became an analyst after Berkeley eventually, and then you went to user experience and then of course, you're now in product management, you're a director of product management and we'll get into some of the things you're doing now. But one of the themes that I know we've chatted about a lot is around experimentation and the need to, learn quickly and leverage whatever's there. And certainly sometimes that's a technology and certain times it's in the anthropology world it's observing and having conversations with people and just people to people like, which of course this is COVID now. So maybe our skills are not as good as they once were.
But can you talk a little bit about like, how your journey progressed to get you now as a director of product at a pretty interesting startup for?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:04:16] Yeah. The career journey over the last 20 years is actually been pretty exciting because as you've noted, I've been in a number of different roles all within the tech space.
I've been an analyst, I've been a project manager. I spent quite a bit of time doing information architecture as well as some user research. And then most recently in the past 11 years leveraged all of that to really look at product management holistically, and to take all of those pieces and really focus on, being very user-focused then in the type of work that I do not making assumptions on what is the right solution.
I'm looking to experiment and ideally develop data to whether it's qualitative or quantitative that can substantiate the direction that we're going. And so it's a, it's been an exciting time. Each of the changes that I've made has. Been more towards trying to push myself early in, earlier in the life cycle.
So that, as an analyst, you might be coming in later, once everything has already been decided what you're going to be doing. Same thing with being an information architect or doing project management, but on the product side, you're at the forefront, you get to be at the table when conversations are being had about what is the strategy for product. How does that relate to the overall company strategy and their bottom line goals? And how do you get from, to close that gap between what the goal is and where you're currently at?
Dave Mathias: [00:05:35] Yeah and so certainly as part of that, of course is running many different experiments to help develop that strategy and to learn.
And the session we had in, I think it was last fall virtually it was around that building a culture of experimentation. And I know you, you've, obviously we experiment in many different ways and there's many different scenarios, and I'm sure you have hundreds of different stories, but maybe if there's a couple of stories that may help listeners understand better of some lessons around how if they wanted to build a culture of experimentation. What are maybe a scenario two that you went through in your career? A story that you could share with them and successes.
Haydee Hernandez: [00:06:09] Sure. I think the first thing is that I often hear concerns about, the level of difficulty and effort involved with just kicking off an experiment. If you are in an environment where that's not a common practice or maybe there's just also not very much in the way of resources, how do you get started?
And in my current role one of the things that was exciting is that at a startup you get to play a lot of different roles. But you don't have as many resources as you do compare it to like when I was at like a Hyatt or Ticketmaster. And so you have to be pretty creative about how are you going to establish whether a feature is really viable or not. And so very recently I wound up launching a new feature within our portfolio, but the feature was something that, we didn't feature flag cause that would take more development time. It was quick and easy for us to spin up, but how to release it was really the question. And in our situation, what we wound up doing is actually I launched it as an email campaign where the link is publicly available if you know the exact link. However, if you don't know the exact link, you don't know that feature actually exists in the entire product. And so we, cherry picked who our target market was and we sent out the emails and then we just did very basic tracking for like the open rates for the email campaigns and what the click-through rate was.
And then beyond those basic email metrics leverage something like FullStory where you can actually watch user sessions to see how people are interacting. It also tells you what the average session length time was for the feature, which was over 12 minutes so we knew we already had a winner. The email campaign performed well, but the feature just really drew people into diving in deep and it captured their attention. And then when they came back and had even longer session lengths. And so it was very exciting that in a very short window of time, we could spin something up, check to see if this was a feature that was worth building out more. And establish, it's worth the money and the investment to not only develop the feature out more, but then to add it to the overall portfolio, because as many product managers know sometimes you, I have this issue of feature bloat where you have so many features and you're constantly maintaining them, but you don't really know if they're valuable or not.
And so this was a nice way to introduce something new without having to worry about everybody being invested in it yet, until we knew for sure we wanted to maintain it.
Dave Mathias: [00:08:36] Yeah, that's a great background to let the listeners in. Now, one thing I, of course I asked that question is even before you get to putting together the test How did you go about determining what is success and getting expectations on this and aligning things or how much effort was spent there or how much was okay, this is. Not going to be too hard to put out there and let's just see what it is. That's not set expectations. How much pre strategy work was put together.
Haydee Hernandez: [00:09:04] In this case, it was something where we knew that this didn't exist at all. And then I am actually representative of one of the users and we had also done a nice survey of several of our own internal people who were client facing and throughout the idea at them. And they, it resonated with them because they thought, Oh, we've heard the same complaint.
We've heard about the same type of problem from our own clients, but we just didn't know how to solve it. We did the best to be able to provide advice and guidance. But a tool like this could really help solve that problem on a larger level. And they hadn't seen anything in the market for it.
So this was one where. Between my own personal experience, being inspired by that checking in with others who do work with clients to see, does it resonate elsewhere? And then just getting just like a general backing internally, it was worth just throwing our hat into the ring because it only took a couple of weeks for us to really get the key pieces of data together enough for an MVP. The investment that we made felt small given the total potential payoff and how easy it was for everybody to just come to agreement that this was something that they really wanted to at least try out.
Dave Mathias: [00:10:12] Excellent. That's great background.
And certainly it sounds like you had your anthropologist hat on initially and leverage that. And then of course your more analysts type hat a couple of weeks later. So that's good to hear. So how is that different now, obviously you talked about a couple other places that you had worked at.
I think when we met, you were at Hyatt some years ago, and certainly that's a big organization an organization like that, and obviously a culture of experimentation. I know we've chatted. On some of your experiences there. Can you talk about that? Because obviously a business that's been around and successful for many years, many decades.
But it's a very different industries. So how do you In an environment like that, bring in experimentation and get people bought on board, especially your folks that may not be as, as used to that.
Haydee Hernandez: [00:10:51] That a challenge, because then you're working in the flip side where you're at a very mature company who has identified a model that works really well for them.
They've been successful, right? In the market and they're one of the primary competitors. And getting people bought into the idea of experimentation can be challenging because it's different than the everyday thing that you're doing. And if everything that you're doing each day, winds up.
Still moving the needle, then why change? But this is where it really comes down to like personal passion. And I was always interested in experimentation, loved the idea of user research. And when I was at CDW they invested heavily in user research there. So when I moved to Hyatt, that was one area that I thought, Oh, this is an opportunity for us to do more in. We all have projects. We all have do deadlines that are due. But they were other like-minded people and what it turns into is finding like-minded people who are willing to use part of their lunchtime or their free time, or stay a little bit later answer some questions here, what they would seeing inside of our analytics product answer some questions as to what they thought might be some interesting ways of tweaking our current design and then creating an opportunity for the managers to say yes, easily, because we had developed a very simple business case for a quick change that could be done relatively easily without development help. And that then from there, we just piggybacked on success after success so that we each small incremental change that you make at like a major company, like Hyatt, you can see significant gains on the bottom line.
And so that was something that over time they fought. Wow, this is worth investing in. But that comes from when you're willing to put in the passion, put in some of your own time and get other people bought in who might be peers who could help you there. There's not always a guarantee that it'll work, but, in my case it was very successful.
Dave Mathias: [00:12:49] I think a couple of things that you're saying out of that, which I think just to reiterate, because I think they're very valuable for our listeners is certainly start small, find your tribe and that tribe that's really passionate about the same thing . They believe in that and they're willing to spend a little extra time, spend some of those lunch hours and after work and before work and maybe even some of those weekends. There's people like that at every place, no matter how big of a company or how small of a company. And finding those folks and not trying to, try to put the tailwind in your favor as opposed to hit your headwinds. So what is the thing that you find the most enjoyable in the process? What sort of makes you thrive in that experimentation? What's the thing that you enjoy the most?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:13:27] For me, it's actually seeing what the results are. Especially when we can tell the story. You can get numbers that will show how people are behaving. So you may see, are they converting more? Are they getting through the process faster? Are they using the feature? But I also like to piggyback that with the qualitative side.
So whether it's like remote user sessions, focus groups, or one-to-one time being able to hear through their own voice as they're going through the process, what they're thinking. That opens up enormous doors, because then it provides a color to those numbers that you don't normally get to see. Sometimes you see a number and you may misinterpret why that number is the way it is.
And so when you throw on that qualitative side, you get that human aspect. And perhaps that's the anthropologist in me that I love talking to people and I like to see why they do what they do. But when I have that information and I have the quantitative data, what it does is it helps me improve every subsequent project because that nugget of gold for one project may have also unearthed, just like a small little, like rock that I could leverage to build in a different project. And so it's seeing that continuity across your users so that you have a stronger sense of what that persona is. Maybe identify personas that didn't previously exist and it just makes the whole work, very exciting. So that I liked seeing that combination of the two coming together.
Dave Mathias: [00:14:58] So for people consuming that story that you're putting together, because certainly you're good at being able to take, okay, the quantitative and the qualitative aspects and bring the information together. What's your process in trying to merge that together and relay stories to others? How do you go about that?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:15:14] It varies depending on what I have available. And normally I do the users to be able to speak for themselves. So in places like CDW or Hyatt, when we have recordings, being able to clip the recordings so that you can show your stakeholders exactly what was happening so they can see the struggle that the users have.
Or you can see how quick and easy something was, the joy that they had in doing something. And so that is huge because it really requires no effort on my part. It's genuine and authentic. Other times it's easier to combine in slides where you put the testimonials and you write out verbatims from what your users have said, and you pair that with key stats so that they can see both sides together.
It just kinda depends on what the most effective way is to tell that story. Sometimes the numbers are convincing and to themselves. So even if I have the stories, they may be things that I just speak to over the course of a presentation or share during some meeting. But I keep them all in my back pocket so that whatever is the most effective at that organization is what I try to move towards.
Dave Mathias: [00:16:22] Yeah, a you're in Chicago now, second city, of course, an improv. And so you're almost doing a little improv right in that storytelling aspect. And I think the best storytellers are able to they're prepared for different scenarios, but they're able to shift very quickly.
One of the things that thinking about is okay, obviously, When you have a lot of clicks, a lot of digital data coming in, you feel like you really understand your customer well, but oftentimes there's scenarios or different types of products or people that are not your customers.
How do you go about collecting data beyond just the click data? What are the ways that you like to gather data beyond just sorta like. The mail open rate or the click through on the website rate or these different types of digital data that we have a lot more coming, but we have our people that are not our customers now users that data, which we're not really seeing, but someone else is getting data, why they're using them.
And then also for folks that like, like you were at Hyatt and there's a lot of other things, of course, like you're using a hotel, your different formats so what's your other process of trying to gather data outside of just that straight digital data?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:17:26] There are two things that I wind up using one is focus groups.
So that's where you identify a group of people that are either like in the target market that you're already in, or maybe in an adjacent market that you want to move to and you identify those people. You invite them to somewhat informal session, right? You ask them a lot of questions to just start trying to understand what are the problems that they are facing.
How do they look at things? What are the things that they find easy? How do they go about solving those problems right now? And that I find is the greenfield space. So that's very exciting when you're working in an opportunity where you can define something that's never been defined before. So focus groups are good in that space.
When I was at Hyatt. Then there's also recruiting for people that may not be like regular Hyatt users. And so that's just going out, whether it's use a service identifying other individuals who might also fit the target market and then inviting them. With those, we did remote user sessions so that we could get a lot of feedback in a short period in time, because we could define a prototype or we could ask questions and then have them go through it, recorded on their computer and then in the morning we'd have a dozen or so to be able to look at, to walk through and hear. So we could scale really fast at hearing a large amount of feedback without having to invest a lot of our own time at night and make sure that we were also being consistent with each and every single user that we were generating feedback.
So you can do it at the individual level, or you can do it within a group.
Dave Mathias: [00:19:04] Excellent. That's some great input. obviously you've been in so many different scenarios and different roles that your experience is such a wealth of knowledge. But I think of if you're going to say the one thing or one of the main things that you did in your career, but at the time you might not have thought of how important it was. It could have been a class or it could have been a project you're on or anything like that. At the time you were probably not gun ho about it and not liking it. But at the same time you think you learned a lot from it that ended up really helping you throughout your career. Is there anything that you can think of that might fit that?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:19:36] Actually, it's funny, you mentioned that because very recently I reached out to one of my old professors at Berkeley. Her name is Marti Hurst. And so her specialty is actually within data visualization. And so she's done research for decades in that area. And I took a class with her and it was the most impactful class I've ever taken in my entire life. And I never would have expected one class to have been useful over and over again, but it has it really gave me a good grounding in the basics of user research.
And one of the articles that she actually suggested that we read and I said, I still have. In fact, since I'm moving, I actually found the article again. Just a couple of weeks ago, it's called prototyping for little fingers and the whole point of it was building low-fidelity prototypes. So getting yourself unblocked from whatever tool that you're using, you can use Miro, you can use Marvel.
They're all. There are all these cool apps. It pulls out their prototypes on the fly now. But this article was really about building physical prototypes like with cardboard or construction paper, crayons, markers and using that as a method, you engage with your user and I have to say, I.
Completely underestimated how much fun it was going through these exercises. Working with somebody after you designed a prototype on a piece of paper that they can literally move everything around. But what I found though was not only the value of prototyping in like the simplest quick, quickest way, which you can do that easily.
Paper, but that like that the tactile world is an exciting place for people to get energized and that you can draw so much more out of them and engage them in conversation more effectively. The defenses are down and it becomes more fun. And even though there's not as much prototyping in the physical world now, Especially with COVID.
It is still something that I try to figure out, how do I get that same level of energy and excitement? How do we engage people in a virtual world where they can share feedback, whether it's like stakeholders giving you feedback on what they want to see, or whether it's users giving you feedback? How do you get that from them in a way where it's fun, it's energizing and they feel open to make suggestions and they don't feel locked in with what you w with what you're presenting them.
Dave Mathias: [00:22:02] That is great feedback and I think you're spot on where it really levels of field a little bit. We all be kids again. And I think as you get older, you become more of an adult and you're like, we have more filters and more barriers. And we put up things in some of these are good, but some of these are probably not so good. And it really it's to really enhance innovation and creativity and breaking down those barriers being a kid again, this can help, asking those questions that we're more likely going to do in those situations. One of the things that we oftentimes have a hard time admitting, but we always say fail fast. Like these terms are putting out there, right? This, these embrace failure.
Like you hear this a lot but often times organizations don't really practice what they preach here. But even when they do I think learning, we learn from our failures. At least I personally feel like I've learned from failures a lot more than I feel like I've learned from successes. If there's a failure in your career or somewhere along the line that you're like, Hey, what did I learn from that? Is there anything that you could highlight that might be something that you think at the time you're like this is really a failure, but now I'm feeling like I learned so much from this and this is how I've used that.
Haydee Hernandez: [00:23:07] Actually failure can be a really interesting tool to educate stakeholders is what I found. Sometimes what is with experimentation that maybe certain stakeholders have ideas already in their heads about what they think will be very successful. And what they're convinced is worth investing large quantities of development time for and experimentation I find winds up being an effective way to be able to address that because one thing that you learn in doing experimentation is you're not always right. And so you always have to be willing to just wait and see what the outcome is. You can make your best guess you can listen to your gut. But at the end of the day, it's really about seeing what the end results are. And so I find what's interesting is using experimentation to then help understand what like stakeholders are thinking, like what they feel really strongly about and what they think is going to be super successful, breaking it down into some sort of quick MVP that we can test and then throwing that out there. And in some cases, when I've done that you find that. It's a total failure, like it didn't improve conversion. It is something that didn't wind up generating any improvement, like at all, it might just be a net neutral. And so those are really eye-opening because, even if you feel that this might not be successful, somebody else may feel very strongly.
Just like sometimes you feel something's going to be really successful in somebody who's questioning. Oh, that's probably not going to go anywhere. But leave it to the experiment to see. You know how it actually does do. And then I think biggest takeaway becomes that everybody one becomes more willing to accept the fact that they don't always know the right thing and that when people believe that, then they're much more willing to try these MVPs out first, before going and investing full blown into development.
Which is a better use of the development resources. It helps us really understand like where the real value is and if something is worth investing in. And so for me, failure is actually more of the recognition that I don't know what's right. And that each experiment is going to teach me something.
Dave Mathias: [00:25:04] Excellent. That's great feedback. I think just getting everyone on board with that as trying to build that culture of experimentation and that acceptance is we're trying to learn fast, right? We're not trying to fail fast. We're trying to learn fast and getting everyone on board and just, Hey, this is what we did. This is what we learned from it. And let's move on. If it conversion is a gap or whatever it is. You mentioned one thing with the I'll have to look at that prototyping for a little fingers. So thank you for that recommendation.
If somebody has interest in getting more into learning more to be better with experimentation. What would be a good thing that you would recommend?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:25:35] Actually, this may seem a bit off topic, but it's one of the areas that I'm exploring a lot right now is like within the area of productivity. And with experimentation, I find that one of the challenges when you're successful is just how many experiments you're running. And that it's tough to juggle.
And then also within product management, it's also tough to juggle. And so I have become incredibly fascinated with this gentleman named Tiago Forte. He does a productivity blog. He also does a number of really. Fantastic. YouTube videos about building a second brain. And so how do you go about capturing all the data that's coming at you, which is massive whether it's personal or work and then how do you go about distilling that data so that you can go deeper in?
And so he has this really interesting methodology for developing the second brain and then leveraging it in order to be more productive. And so for me where I'm at in my career, that seems to be more of what's resonating is I want to be able to do more with what I've learned. I want to be able to access it faster.
I want to be able to find ways to make it more accessible for others, because as I learn more stuff, it's in my head, but I needed to be in our community's head, whether it's at my company. Or across other people that I meet in the product management world. And that's what I've been looking at right now in order to try to help me level up based on where I'm at.
Dave Mathias: [00:27:05] Excellent. Is there any technology that related to that productivity that you typically use or have been trying that you've been excited about?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:27:13] I've actually been really excited about Notion. I love databases, but it's like database on crack because I can create cool databases, link them to one another, but make them look like web pages.
And so I get that feeling like I'm creating my own personal internet, but yet it's a database at the same time. And so I find that it's been incredibly helpful for keeping track of all the books or articles that I want to read. Being able to be a storehouse for all the comments and notes that I've taken for Kindle or on Instapaper.
And it's just like a great source for me to keep track of quotes projects that I'm working on general areas in my life. And so it's it's so much fun. I'm actually using it at the office too, to help use that as like our internal Wiki as well, because it is so quick and easy for people to learn.
And it turns out that it's it's gotten a lot of more popularity lately. Several people that I've introduced it to have just jumped on it, like a bandwagon as well. It's what I do to basically how's my second brand that I'm building.
Dave Mathias: [00:28:21] It is it's funny. Cause I was literally going to say like Notion, but I was like, no, I don't want to like prime her at all. Like right before we got on what did I do, I pulled up my Notion where I had some notes based on before this. I totally hear you. And there's other pro I used to be a big Evernote person, like I, a premium Evernote person. But then I switched Notion and just, there's a lot of if you are somebody that's trying to find some more productivity in your life. I still feel like there's so many features in it that I still don't understand. Like I'm still like learning things all the time. So in fact, every so often, go on YouTube ads or check out the gentleman that you said, cause he probably has some videos around there. Cause trying to learn more about I'm sure I'm not using all the potential that even it has.
Haydee Hernandez: [00:29:01] Yes. Tiago Forte is great. And then Ali Abdaal I may have massacred his last name. But he is also now serving as a mentor with Tiago's classes. And I love his his YouTube videos as well, because they're good. Not only in terms of building the second brain, but also just in general productivity tips. Because it is so hard nowadays with everything that's being thrown at you, how to juggle.
Dave Mathias: [00:29:24] I totally hear you there. It's been great to have you on today. Is there anything that you before we go that you're excited about, that you think you could share with the audience on anything that you're maybe working on now, or you've seen lately?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:29:35] I'm just really excited about the startup that I'm at right now. CollegeAdvisor.com is a fantastic place. We've been scaling up really fast and it's it's a place that I just really deeply love. Not only because as the head of product I see a tremendous amount of opportunity for growth, but my own daughter has actually gone through and use the services. And so it's incredible to see that in the time of the pandemic, when she's needed helping guidance. And it's hard to do that with the lack of guidance counselors, without teachers being so readily accessible that she's had that one-to-one coaching. And yeah. Now she's off to USC with a full tuition scholarship.
And so it's incredible. So I want to be able to give more of that type of experience to other parents and to help students who are facing similar troubles, where it's just very challenging for them to imagine how they're going to go through the admissions process, even with us, having vaccinations.
And for me, that's my next really big adventure is just having a lot of fun at at the startup and seeing it grow.
Dave Mathias: [00:30:33] Yeah, that's exciting. I know we were chatting about that earlier and that you're moving in the same month your daughter's moving out, out to USC. You're going to be going down to Miami. She's going to LA. So it'll be a lot of those cross-country trips. You'll put, you'll build up some frequent flyers miles when we're back flying a little bit more. It's great to talk with you wish we were in person, but we'll the next time I have to grab this and maybe a coffee shop on South beach somewhere and have a conversation out there.
Great to talk to the hand Haydee and have a great rest of the weekend.
Haydee Hernandez: [00:30:59] Thanks dave, talk to you soon.
Dave Mathias: [00:31:01] And one other thing I should, of course I forgot to say is how would people get ahold of you if they want to learn more about you, what you're doing or they want to get their kid, a scholarship and move down that process. Is LinkedIn the best or where's the best way to get ahold of you?
Haydee Hernandez: [00:31:14] Absolutely. Reaching me through LinkedIn is an easy way. I regularly check that. So drop me a note. Let me know if you need anything, whether it's with admissions, experimentation, or if you're just looking to move into a product management career, I've helped mentor people before in that space as well.
Dave Mathias: [00:31:31] And the company you're with now
Haydee Hernandez: [00:31:32] CollegeAdvisor.com.
Dave Mathias: [00:31:34] And we all could use a full ride looking back from either the parents for their kids. So I'm sure people will be reaching out to you.
And I was like, Hey, how did you go about doing that? So congrats again. That's awesome. And have a good rest of weekend.
Haydee Hernandez: Thanks Dave. Thanks.
Dave Mathias: Cheers. Bye.