SaaS Stories
SaaS Stories is my not-so-secret quest to learn what it truly takes to succeed in the world of SaaS—and I’m inviting you along for the ride! I have the pleasure of sitting down with brilliant minds and industry trailblazers to explore their journeys, uncovering the secrets behind their growth, the gaps they spotted in the market, and what really drives them.
It’s not all smooth sailing—there are challenges, unexpected turns, and moments of reflection where they share what they’d love to change about their journey. Think of it as a candid, insider’s look into the world of SaaS, with just the right amount of curiosity, empathy, and wit.
Join me as I dive deep, selfishly soak up all the insights, and hopefully share a little inspiration with you along the way—one SaaS story at a time.
SaaS Stories
The Call-to-Action that changed everything: Scaling SaaS via Buyer-Led Growth
Trust in B2B relationships has reached a critical low point. According to recent research, B2B consumers—particularly millennials and Gen Z decision-makers—have grown increasingly skeptical of traditional marketing and sales approaches. So what happens when prospects no longer believe your case studies, doubt your testimonials, and avoid your demo requests?
Braydan Young - SlashExperts, co-founder and CEO of SlashExperts, has pioneered a revolutionary answer: buyer-led growth. After scaling Sendoso to 700+ employees, Young noticed a pattern where prospects would bypass formal sales channels and instead seek validation from peers in industry forums. Rather than fighting this behaviour, he built a solution around it.
Slash Experts flips the traditional sales funnel by moving reference calls from the end to the beginning of the buying journey. Their platform allows companies to place a "Talk with a Customer" button directly on their website, connecting prospects with actual users who can provide honest, unfiltered feedback. The key innovation? Giving reference customers complete calendar control so they don't get burned out.
The results speak for themselves. Companies implementing this approach see higher conversion rates, more qualified prospects, and valuable first-party conversation data that can inform everything from product development to marketing strategy. Young explains, "We're taking the reference from the end of the sales cycle to the beginning," creating authentic connections that build trust when it matters most.
Beyond buyer-led growth, Young shares invaluable insights on scaling teams, maintaining healthy friction between sales and marketing, identifying the right customers, and achieving work-life balance as a founder. His candid advice about managing remote teams, creating meaningful company perks (like their ingenious "vacation bonus"), and evolving your work expectations through different life stages offers a refreshingly honest perspective on startup leadership.
any B2B SaaS company that you really want them to take a demo. You'd see them click around and maybe they'd take a tour, but then they disappear and they would always pop back up in some society Maybe it's the marketing society or sales society. They'd be like, hey, does anyone like this tool or has anyone solved this problem? But that wasn't the biggest unlock. The bigger unlock is we allow your customers to control their calendar. So I'm sure we've all been asked for references before or we've signed a contract saying, hey, we'll be a reference for you if you give me a discount.
Speaker 2:I know people are very important to the growth of a company. So what are your hiring tips?
Speaker 1:I think that transparency with people that have trusted you and come to work for you is important.
Speaker 2:There's always a misalignment between sales and marketing teams. Have you experienced this and how do you combat that one?
Speaker 1:Friction's okay. Especially with marketing and sales, that's typically fine.
Speaker 2:If you could go back in time to any point and give yourself one bit of advice, what would that be?
Speaker 1:I think it'd be.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to another episode of SaaS Stories. Today I'm joined by Brayden Young all the way from California, co-founder and CEO of Slash Experts. Welcome, brayden.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all the way across the ocean, right, I mean, that's a direct flight though, so it's simple, so it feels close.
Speaker 2:It's a very long flight, though it's a very long flight.
Speaker 1:yes, yes, it is.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't mind taking it just to visit California, though. Beautiful place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's at least a three to four movie and eight hour nap flight it's like, yeah, it's a long one.
Speaker 2:I know let's not count the hours. Let's break it down by how many movies we can watch.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:Now this is really exciting. I'm really happy to be talking to you today because on this podcast previously, we always talk about growth and I've had people talk to me about founder-led growth, sales-led growth, marketing-led growth. Today we're going to talk about buyer-led growth and I feel like you've pioneered this buyer-led growth model that you have at Slash Experts. So curious to learn your story. How did Slash Experts come about and what is this buyer-led Growth model?
Speaker 1:I'll kind of tell a story too. So I've always been some form of a founder at least this is my third company. So I for some reason like the early pain of startups. I was in sales before that and love sales. This made sense to me and then I went from that to starting a company called Sendoso, and Sendoso was a gifting company. So we send gifts around the world. We have warehouses everywhere where we do much of sending. We worked with marketing teams and it was a really great company. We grew that to 700 plus people, a ton of revenue, which was awesome, raised a good amount of money.
Speaker 1:But then the biggest challenge that we had there was we would see a ton of prospects come in, like any B2B SaaS company, like you really want them to take a demo. It's like hey, take a demo, and like you'd see them click around and maybe they'd take a tour, but then they disappear and they would always pop back up in some society Maybe it's the marketing society or sales society and they'd be like, hey, does anyone like this tool or has anyone solved this problem? So they build these back channels happening and they're asking their peers like hey, like, how have you solved this problem? Or have you used this tool? And we're like you know we should figure out a way to almost encourage a back channel or a peer-to-peer conversation directly from our main page. And that was what we were trying to solve at Sendoso and we built the system called slash experts. So if you go to a page like sendosocom slash experts there's a big directory of people that are there who are customers of the product, who are willing to have a conversation with a prospect.
Speaker 1:So your very first step in the sales process rather than doing research on your own, reading reviews you don't trust reading case studies that are all over the place you can have a conversation with the user who can be honest, who can say exactly why they bought it, what problem they're helping solve. And it was just easier and simple and that's what we built and are kind of launching out to the world. We're six months in and it's been kind of cool to see who's adopted it. Some companies have gotten even more aggressive. We're on their main page. They'll add a big button it's just like talk with a customer and you press that and there's a pop-up and a bunch of people are there that you can book a time with instantly and have a conversation with. So it's been fun. It's amazing how fast six months go.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've ever heard of this call to action in my 20 years in marketing, which I'm ashamed to. I mean, there's case studies, there's testimonials, but I guess the idea of asking your customers to be available to your prospects, I guess people are scared to ask for that. So what was your strategy? How did you get your customers to be such great advocates and dedicate this amount of time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean like talk with the customer. It is a new direction because usually you're doing research on your own.
Speaker 2:You know the phrase like 80% of the buying signal or the buying's already done, before they hop on a demo like god I thought it was 70, has it moved up to 80 now?
Speaker 1:no, it's probably like the. The goal there is just to make it easier for people rather than reading reviews that are written by who knows who. So we're trying to make that connection. So how and why do customers do it? So the first one is there's a payment to them. So a thank you. It could be an e-gift, it could be a charity type thing. Charity's big. It could be a physical gift. It's all automated to say thanks. But that wasn't the biggest unlock. The bigger unlock is we allow your customers to control their calendar. So I'm sure we've all been asked for references before, or we've signed a contract saying so I'm sure we've all been asked for references before, or we've signed a contract saying, hey, we'll be a reference for you if you give me a discount, and so I'm sure we've all done things like that. Then when you actually get asked for a reference, you're like it's kind of a pain in the ass, they're like hey like meet this person and then you got to book a time and then you have to find a time.
Speaker 1:So this adds like a calendar control to these customers. They were like, yeah, I'll do it, because here's my open calendar. I'll assign one time a month or a week where I'm open. For a reference, it might be even less, could be one time a quarter. And that was the big unlock where customers were like, yes, I'll sign up for it because that way you're not going to burn me out. And that's been kind of cool to see folks sign up because of the calendar control.
Speaker 2:It's a pretty great idea.
Speaker 1:I love it it's yeah, it's cool, it's a. It's a different way to do it. There's been a lot of demos of explaining like hey, like we're taking the reference from the end of the sales cycle to the beginning, so, yeah, flipping it.
Speaker 2:I mean, why not? You know that? Take a demo button. We all know that doesn't work, so, um, why not try something different and exciting? You're right. The the trust trust factor, I think with B2B consumers has completely diminished. I recently dived into that research and I went down the rabbit hole of like the Edelman trust barometer, and there was so much research in there about B2B consumers just really losing trust in companies and brands, and the millennials and the Generation Z specifically, that it grew for those types of demographics and we all know they're now in decision making roles as well as influencer roles. So trust is a big factor and I think that's definitely one way to gain trust. What else have you found works other than talking to customer? And also, you know, what type of research could they be doing outside of talking to customers specifically? If it's like a once a month opportunity to do that and that could be far away, what can you do in between that journey?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you make a good point that I think that trust and reading reviews and trust and going to a lot of the sites that are out there and being like, do I like this company has 3000 reviews? Should I trust any of them or are they all? Like, how old are these reviews? And so I just don't think that works as well as it used to. I think people really want to know use cases and know if it actually worked. And then when you jump on a call with a sales rep like there's amazing sales reps that are out there, but there's also some that they have a quota attached to them and they want to sell you a deal and so sometimes that's not the best way to learn and buy a product. I also think with PLG motion, like the free 14 day trial or three 30 day trial, I think those are great methods for building pipeline, but there still needs to be a conversation at some point with a human who can be like is this actually a fit for you? Now I know every founder argues that. Well, I don't know if that's true. Like, look at AWS. So there's always anomalies. There's always the cursors and the AWSs that have grown incredibly fast without any sort of human sales folks, which I think sure exists, but most new companies need to have some human somewhere, have a conversation, especially like even land and expand deals.
Speaker 1:So the other things you can do if, like, maybe the customer conversation doesn't work, I think by looking at the communities where your ICP lives and seeing you know what questions are they asking. Maybe looking at your demos and having conversations with your customers too and recording those calls and dropping them into like a chat GPT and maybe the content, the way you move it out there, this doesn't make sense, maybe it's a bit off. Ai is wonderful for helping with that. I love just doing small webinars with prospects, like something that's just set on a weekly basis, where it's like, hey, I go over the product and it's, you can show up and I'll just walk through a demo and answer questions.
Speaker 1:You're not selling, you're more just like hey, like here's what it is, here's the problem we're solving. Like if you have a problem, like, let's talk about. I think that's a really good method. And then I always think last, like I think conferences are coming back. Like I think conferences are since covid they've already been back, but I think it's going to get even bigger. I think people are hungry for face-to-face conversations I think so too.
Speaker 2:I think there's so much to unpack in what you just said, because all I heard human ai conferences, webinars and, yes, so many questions I love that you said humans, because everyone's kind of thinking how do I use less humans and more AI? And I don't know if I agree with that necessarily. I do think AI is fantastic and it does increase productivity, but I agree with you. I think there does need to be a human in there somewhere that's still connecting with prospects and with customers.
Speaker 1:Especially if your product is expensive, like I think if you have a product that costs more than you know let's say $20,000, like there needs to be a conversation at some point with the human there. Or if it's lower than that, I'd still think you can have a good opportunity for a land and expand deal.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely. I think the human is what will bring the trust factor back, because, you know, there's been websites that I've gone on and they're quite big companies. I can see they've been established, They've been running for a while, but there's no way to connect to a human. There's a chat bot, which I know is a robot, and then you know everything else is like a knowledge base and I'm like where's the human? I still want to talk to someone. I think 20% of the buyer journey in a way, isn't it?
Speaker 1:When you do have a book, a demo button like on your site. I think that you're giving your information and you're waiting to hear, and then you're waiting to book a phone call. That's such an old like. All of us are so used to instant things and like book a demo like takes three days.
Speaker 1:I think that the book a demo button will change where it's maybe talk to a person right away. I think that you can put experts in there, where maybe there's an expert who's a customer who can have a conversation immediately. I think book a demo doesn't go away entirely.
Speaker 2:I think enterprise that works well, but I think your customer can help you navigate and close a deal which is yeah, I love the idea of talk to a customer or talk to our product team or, you know, engineering department, not the sales person just yet, because you already know I'm not going to get sold to, I'm going to get my real questions answered and I can trust these people.
Speaker 1:There was, you know, like the companies that like they're really fast growth, they'd start to like DQ accounts that come in, they might get an email. You're like, hey, I live in a demo and they send an email back. It's like, well, if you're not willing to spend more than X or if you have an approved budget more than X, we shouldn't even talk, like that's crazy. There's companies that do that. I've always found that to be crazy, because you don't know this company is reaching out to have a conversation with you, is somebody who might grow really quick.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I've always found those directions to be wild.
Speaker 2:I haven't heard of those as well. It's a bit mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah Like oh sorry, you're not a fit, you're not looking to spend time with me.
Speaker 2:I don't get out of bed for less than 10K, yeah right. Coming back to webinars, I'm excited to ask you about this because I'm actually planning on running one in late September. I've not done one in a while, so what format do you find works well? Do you interact with your audience? I know the slide deck puts people to sleep, but I mean any tips you have for me.
Speaker 1:I love webinars that actually dive into like the software that they're talking about. I think decks are fine if it's used at the beginning and at the end and it's quick. I don't think anyone cares about the vision of the company and I mean that in like the nice way, but like talking about like here's who backs us, here's the vision. It's like I don't show me the problem you're solving and the thesis you have and show me how it works. Interacting with customers is interesting because, like typically if you do a webinar, let's say a hundred people sign up, like you might have like five actually there and like then maybe the other 95 watch it later.
Speaker 1:So when you interact with customers a bit too much. I think that that might cause problems, but, like I do like the idea of having customers speak on a webinar. I think that that's awesome. I also like the idea of like, if you are at a conference, if you have at a conference, you have a customer with you. So I think like that's a better use case than this is a new use case. You can use a ton where customers are just leveraged more.
Speaker 2:Good tips, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, make sure to thank them, though, you know send them something?
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure, there has to be a gift of some sort. Yeah, let's go back to early challenges scaling slash experts and even the companies you founded before that. What were some of the biggest challenges you mentioned that you had? Was it 700?
Speaker 1:700. There's a lot of us.
Speaker 2:Take me through that, because I know people are very important to the growth of a company. So what are your hiring tips? You know, what do you look for in the early days.
Speaker 1:What kind of personalities, culture, all of it. Yeah, this is a quick side note. It's funny because we're hiring right now for sales and CX and at some point I got old where all my friends are now all like VPs of sales and like I need to hire a salesperson. I'm like when did this happen? I got to like when did we all? So I have to go out and find people that are, you know, younger to you know which is which is interesting to be like more entry-level sales. Yeah, I mean, like scaling's hard. We you have days and weeks and hours that are great and hours that are bad I wouldn't even go by the week or the day I'd probably.
Speaker 1:Is it remote? Is it all in one place? You need to decide what you're going to look for in a candidate, and there's going to be arguments there, and this is early. Once you kind of like establish a department, there's one or two people there that are great. Then they can kind of run their own team. You need to trust your people. Micromanaging will only kill you, and so I think it's important to like.
Speaker 1:Let those people go and grow their own teams, for sure and also have their own budgets. I think the way that I managed early of the bigger company, the 700 one, was every department had their marching orders and we had we had shared okrs but everyone had their own okrs and so it's important to do that with growth, because you can't stay on top of all of it trying to think of like other other early learnings was like know your values, know know, like have all that stuff like written down and see how it lines up with when you're doing hiring, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Do you find hire slow and fire fast? Do you believe in that principle?
Speaker 1:I do right now. I think that, like the earlier the company, the earlier I believe in that If you find somebody and they get to the interview process, they're great and they don't work the first week, then, like, people are very aware when it's not working and so, like, unless you think that something's going to turn around, you might as well be like, hey, this didn't work. Like, let me make intros for you to go find your next job. I think that transparency with people that have trusted you and come to work for you is important, and if you're both feeling that it's not working early, then yeah, like be like let's go find you something else, because right here is not it I think most founders know other founders who were hiring, and so it's very easy to make intros.
Speaker 1:If you find this person just isn't someone you want to make intros for, then yeah for sure get rid of them, because it only takes one bad person in the beginning to really cause a major distraction and you don't want that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. What are maybe some key alerts that you get from people where you know, oh, this is not going to work.
Speaker 1:I think that, like you can kind of tell when so one everyone's back channeled which is funny because we're selling a product that helps back channel software and when you're hiring candidates, it's always good to back channel them, to like their previous bosses and friends and be like hey, like you know how were they. You can typically, if you're back channeling somebody and I recommend doing that for the first. Whenever I'm involved in a hiring process, I typically would go on LinkedIn and see if we know anybody that I know well that I can ask that question to.
Speaker 1:Like hey like were they great? How was it? You need to be careful not to make sure it doesn't get back to them, but that is important and I think if everything looks good and someone comes in and like they're like an asshole, you kind of tell right away, then like get rid of it, like that's not fun.
Speaker 1:It's just like, at the end of the day, most of the softwares that we're selling and building are not curing cancer, and so I think it's important to keep that in mind. Like I said, I think it's important to keep that in mind. I get it. When you're building something or someone's just taking it too seriously and just too intense, you need to tell them to calm down, and if they can't do that, then they're usually probably not the right person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had that experience before where we've hired someone and he just wasn't the nicest person to the staff. So one question we started asking now how did they treat, you know, those that were in lower positions than them, because I think that's crucial.
Speaker 1:You know like if you hire someone in a leadership role specifically, you want them to come in, be nice and train the rest of the team as well, rather than be mean to them this is very un-hr comment, but I think it's important to have is is you need to do like the beer test with somebody, to like go and have a drink with them and just see like how they are? Like after one drink is important, like not go out and have a bunch but have one and just see like I don't know, I always think, especially in the early days, because you're going to spend a lot of time with these people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:On HR comment for all your HR listeners.
Speaker 2:They're like oh no, yeah, that's important, you're not allowed to drink, yeah right, yeah, exactly. That's a really good point.
Speaker 1:I mean, doesn't that go up coffee TLR after, like after three very strong cups of coffee.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jittery, too much though I do wonder if one week is enough to get those red flags, though, and just kind of go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not always. I think that's why it's important to have, like the reference conversations and like not just the references they give you, but to find people that maybe you're both connected to.
Speaker 2:Aside from hiring mistakes, which I know everyone's made in your experience, what are some of the common mistakes that you see early stage SaaS companies make, or even more evolved scale ups as well?
Speaker 1:I think a big one is when you bring on a customer. It's important that especially your first 20, 30 customers are incredibly important. So to keep them happy, to keep having conversations with them, to learn how they're using your product, learn what they wish you had, what they wish you don't have, like you need to have conversations constantly with those folks. It's very important. If you're raising money, who you raise money from is very important. Let's see if. Are they helpful? Are they not helpful? Are they the ones who write you a check and say see you in six years?
Speaker 1:I think like it's important to know, like, how you want to raise money for sure. The other one is, like what internal tools, like what kind of tools you want to have to keep everyone aligned. So if you are a remote company, there's a lot of great tools out there. Like you need to figure out which ones you want to use to keep things structured. How are you going to keep your co-founders and your higher level executives in line? Like, are you going to do OKRs? Are you going to do like a North Star metric? And like, what metrics are you?
Speaker 1:Tracking across the company are important. Also, your investors need those that data too. So I think it helps if you do both like those are very important things to share a quarterly goal, like every quarter, you know where the company is moving towards. A goal not just for go to market, but also for CX, also for engineering, also for product. Everyone has a goal that they're trying to accomplish and everyone knows what the goal is of that department. And so that's an important thing to have across the company because it keeps everyone just focused on that North Star metric.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely those are like little things but you'll lose a lot of that. I think that, like if you have like cool perks internally, like we had this perk where we call it a vacation bonus, where if you went on vacation internally at some dose, so we gave you 500 bucks that you could use on like drink. The original concept came from when my co-founder went on vacation. We were like two people I've been with him like 60 bucks and I was like hey, I have drinks at the airport on me and we call it a vacation bonus, and so we scaled that for a very long time, like 10 years at Sendoza, where everyone got 500 bucks on vacation, which is great. So like know what things scale, know what things you know generate cool internal communication. So I don't know, like know that stuff early on too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like know what your people are motivated by, because it's not always more money or you know, like those vacation bonuses I. I think that makes people feel kind of special in a way?
Speaker 1:yeah, right, and like to get it. You had to post a picture of your vacation, yeah so that was that was, that was how you got it, and so we basically, we all like lived through you. If you went to like cool places, you had to post a photo yeah like on your social channels, or just yeah like it's slack there. There's like a vacation bonus slack channel. So you'd like, like when you got back you'd post a picture of you know.
Speaker 2:That's such a good team building exercise, isn't it? Because you know they post a vacation. Everyone just talks about it for a while. It does bring the team closer together, which is really important.
Speaker 1:To not talk about something other than work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, but you're talking about vacation, yeah absolutely of building teams and bringing teams together, and also the different goals within the teams. One thing I thought of is there's always a misalignment between sales and marketing teams.
Speaker 1:How have you experienced this and how do you combat that one? I mean, like you have marketing who's trying to basically build a ton of pipeline and then that goes to sales.
Speaker 1:So then close that pipeline. I think the most important number in an org is like new business, like new ARR, right, when you're looking at sales and marketing let's see, take CX off the table for a second so, like, sales and marketing both have their own numbers pipeline and new revenue. And the problem is if marketing crushes that goal and sales doesn't hit, that's a problem. And so if sales crushes that goal and hits their number but pipeline wasn't very good, I think like pipeline misses, like that's a problem too. So I think that, like, each department needs to have a specific number, but there also needs to be a shared. Everyone is gold on the overall ARR number, especially with marketing and sales, and I think that's very important to have early on with a company, especially with your C-suite to, so they just know what that number is and how they can all hit it and how they can all impact it.
Speaker 2:I agree. I think it's really important that those two teams work together on a common goal. I've also found that, like involving sales in a little bit of marketing also helps. So things like you know, bringing them in and saying who are the target accounts, who are we going after you know, therefore, everything we create for you will be with those accounts in mind, so that you've got that, you know, buyer enablement content that you can take to market with them now.
Speaker 1:I think cx needs to share that number too, like so that common, like so because they can do upsells, so because usually ams like report to like a chief customer officer or something like that. So it's important that all three, I think, align to one common ARR number and like of course the CRO gets the, he has the biggest bonus attached to it, but the other two need as well. I think that helps 100%.
Speaker 2:When we do workshops with new clients, we always try to get all those three departments in the workshop together. So, like sales, marketing, cx, and it's so interesting because when you ask questions you get different answers from all three, cause you know, this one's dealing with all the problems that the customers are having, this one is getting all the pushback, and then marketing is just like you know, oh, this has worked and that's where here's all the deals you should have closed.
Speaker 1:I mean there mean there are times when CX has they're mad at sales because sales oversold, and sales then gets mad at marketing because they brought in the wrong pipeline, they had to oversell in order to hit the number. And so I think, like all three need to operate at the same level, and I think all three also need to be tied to churn too. I think churn needs to be a number that is important across the company, because if you're bringing and selling the wrong clients, even if CX can keep them kind of happy for a year, if they leave you at the end of the year, that wasn't really successful at all. And so I think that it's important to have those three departments aligned. But I think friction's okay, especially with marketing and sales. That's typically fine. Like sales should be a little bit pissed off at marketing because they haven't brought enough leads in and.
Speaker 1:Like sales should be a little bit pissed off at marketing, because they brought up leads in, and marketing should be a little pissed off at sales. They can't close anything, and so I think I think it's okay to have a little bit of that, because I think you're pushing one another, but alignment's good for across those three departments?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's true. They hold each other accountable that way and you know, if there's no pushback, there's no growth. So they're too comfortable in a way. So that's that is good. You mentioned the wrong customer there and I just want to touch on that for a second because I think this is a very common mistakes a lot of businesses make, especially in the early days, where they're just desperate for more customers and they'll take on anyone and everyone. And I always find you have to niche and you have to know exactly which customer is going to be crucial to your scaling and your growth. How do you tackle that at Slash Expert?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean like we've for sure brought on the wrong customer. Every company I've done, especially in the early days, because you're one, you assign yourself targets and you think you know your ICP, but it might not be who you're selling to, and so it's important to be aligned with your CX team who is ever onboarding them to say where you missed it. Because if someone comes in, they're onboarding and they find multiple problems or maybe you oversold something or maybe an integration you thought was done wasn't done yet. We have a weekly CX meeting where we cover every now we only have like 40 accounts we cover all 40 accounts to where they are and what their metrics are, what their MPS scores are. So it's important to go through that because we're also learning who we should sell to, and so I think that's incredibly important in the early days to know exactly who your ICP is. You're going to make errors, which is fine, and like if you make an error, then like let them out of their contract. You're like, hey, you weren't a fit and like that's okay.
Speaker 2:Like things that you see, that make you think you know, but the measurement of how do you know this is the right customer?
Speaker 1:what are the metrics that you're looking at the right fit I think onboarding is so if you take sass like someone closes and then it's like let's onboard and so onboarding happens and like how engaged are they? It's like a very easy one like. Are they like hey?
Speaker 1:like the next couple days. Let's make this happen. Is it one person or they? Hey, these are the multiple teams you want to get aligned so we can install this in multiple places. Cool, so then you go through that and then they're onboarded and then usage Like are they logging in? Are they? Are they using it? Are they not using it? Like are they asking questions? Have they had bugs? Like how has Like to monitor? That is going to be incredibly important. The first couple of months, you might find that somebody comes in, they sign a contract, they onboard a couple of weeks later. That's bad.
Speaker 1:And then they finally get in there and then, like, they've kind of used it you can see how many times they've logged in. Maybe they bought a bunch of users and they've only used one out of the 10 users. Those are all signs that someone's going to leave you and it's a hard combo to have with your sales team to be like, hey, this account you sold, it's not onboarding correctly, and then maybe you re-engage that salesperson. A lot of the time across companies, sales has already been paid on the deal and so I think sales is like no thanks. Like I sold the deal, it's your problem. So I think it's important to get that salesperson involved again because, like you don't want them to churn and you don't want them to be a clawback for the salesperson. So I think you're going to align commission plans there a bit and then you have some cool plays to try to get them moving and then you figure out where, if they don't ever re-engage, what happened.
Speaker 1:And there's excuses where maybe people were laid off, but a lot of the time it's because they never should have bought the tool in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good point. We talked about AI, or we touched on AI earlier. I want to come back to that and find out what are some cool ways you're using it, what are your thoughts on it, what excites you about the future, as well, of AI?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so much of it. Right, I think there's a new tool every two days, I think. For us, a lot of the phone conversations between a customer and a prospect gets recorded. Those recordings it's first party data. We use an AI to evaluate those phone calls and we give the data back to the company and it's gold, because you have a prospect and a customer talking about your product and you're not on the phone and so like it's such good content that you can use for testimonials, for case studies, for all that fun stuff.
Speaker 1:So we do a ton of that in our system. We also like help actually connect an expert. So you might go to a website and you're a CMO or some weird title and you like to talk to a customer but you're not sure who. So we can actually recommend people there too. So that's all AI components, which is awesome. The data that we're collecting on these phone calls is going to be huge. The data that we're collecting on these phone calls is going to be huge. That'll be a very interesting thing as we grow the company. That'll be remote, for sure.
Speaker 2:Do you find that AI is replacing brains a little bit? I mean just the way people are using it.
Speaker 1:I find that Like how to write emails.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm right, I'm guilty of that too or text messaging. I do A lot of like I'm not a very good speller, that's the best way to put it and like all of a sudden.
Speaker 2:That could work for you actually, because now people see spelling mistakes, they know that was written by a human and they love that.
Speaker 1:Like when I get messages, sometimes from, like, my co-founder, I'm like I know you're using an AI to write this email, like I'm well aware that something's plugged in here, cause this does not sound like you at all, so I think some of the authenticity is gone for sure.
Speaker 2:I don't know how that changes. Yeah, no, I agree. I've got my business partner sometimes sending me research and I can see this was written by AI and I almost don't want to read it. I'm like I'm not reading this. Let's have a conversation about it instead.
Speaker 1:I was arguing with my co-founder today over like hiring in like San Francisco where I am, or doing a hiring across the US, and he, like cited three essays about like work at home versus like I'm, like I know for a fact. This is not how you talk and like don't cite references at me Like you're a dictionary or not dictionary, but the internet drives me crazy.
Speaker 2:I think it's going to be an interesting one. I think people don't trust it. They use a lot of it, but they don't trust it. So I think, when it comes to content, it'll be interesting to see how it evolves and you know what content they end up engaging with. I think video might still be good because, you know, I think AI still has quite a long way to come when it comes to video. So video, you know it's the real person, it's authentic. You know it's the real person, it's authentic. It's in podcasts as well. It's something you want to listen to and watch, whereas you see a blog or a guide or an ebook and you're like this was written by ChatGPT.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hope so. I think that's why conferences come back or, like I know, they're already back become even larger. I guess I should say We'll see. I mean, we're going into conference season now, like it's like HubSpot's big show and Dreamforce's big show. We'll see, like, what the attendance is like.
Speaker 2:See if they. No, I think here in Australia as well, especially post COVID, I think everyone had, you know, that digital fatigue and they're just desperate to get out at events, at conferences, meeting people, and you know it's conferences are getting a little bit more fun as well, so um, yeah, and especially, they get celebrities at their ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so does salesforce they get. There's a bunch of them that come in like they always have like a show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, like will I am somebody you're like okay, there's nothing to do with sass, yeah right like you're like.
Speaker 1:They get like celebrities to come and talk, which is funny. They're both in the same place hubspot's having their show in San Francisco, right in the shadow of the Salesforce tower, so it's nice to remember it. Yeah, right, yeah. So we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as a founder of multiple ventures. What's one belief that you hold now that has changed over the years?
Speaker 1:I think that, like how you manage people, when I first started, I thought that you had to be not connected to your computer but you had to be in one place all the time, like with your team, and you had to put in the long hours and you had to work. You know 6am to 6pm every day and I think through the years I've learned in startups that people work differently and to not manage that like to manage for what the outcome needs to be. But I think that, like when you try to manage someone's day to day, it doesn't work and I think you need to manage like hey, like here's your goal, like go crush it.
Speaker 2:Like it took me a long time to learn that Like cause.
Speaker 1:I thought like my, my first job at a school or at a university. I was like strapped to my desk and I was like this is that guy didn't care. He was like you have a goal, like you're an adult go hit your goal.
Speaker 1:If you need help along the way, like I'm here. I think that was a big one that that I learned. And I read a book called like let my people surf. I was written by like the Patagonia founder, like an old, old book, but like I read it early on in my career and I used to send it and I I loved it is because it was all about like, hey, like we're building things that were meant for surfers and for climbers and if the weather's great, go climb and do your work when you want to do your work. And I think Google figured that out a long time ago.
Speaker 2:I love that Cause I I agree with it because, um, you know, we've now gotten into a habit with our employees. We say look, are you a morning person or are you a night owl, in which case you can kind of pick your working hours if you want to, as long as they kind of fit with. You know when the clients are awake and when the rest of the team is awake. There's going to be a little bit of an overlap there, but if you want to start really early in the morning and then finish by three o'clock and then you know, go and be with your family, pick up your kids from school, whatever that may be, it does make them so much happier and so much more productive and committed to the company as well. And I do find that like tying someone to a desk from nine to five, you're not getting the best out of them. Anyways, I think any human could probably just give you five hours of real productivity per day, and the rest of the time they're like glazing over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I like the in-office culture, like a couple days a week, I think that's great, I think it's important to see people face to face. If you're all local, I don't believe in spending two hours commuting, and so I think that, and so it might be you go in later and, like you, leave earlier, but whatever the your driver is that keeps you grounded and happy is what you got to incorporate in your life.
Speaker 2:But it's definitely a challenge I've had as well. In fact, I still feel guilty to this day if I don't put in the hours and I just have to keep reminding myself like creativity happens when you're not chained to a desk. So do go for a walk, do take that time off, because I've never gotten my best ideas sitting at this desk. It's always been somewhere else doing something else.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, I totally agree with that. I think that has to happen in order to have any sort of creativity.
Speaker 2:What are your thoughts on work-life balance? I know a lot of people have different opinions on the topic. I'm curious to hear yours.
Speaker 1:I work best when I'm fulfilled in my life. So I have a four-year-old my wife's here too and life. So I have a four-year-old, my wife's here too, and so, like, it's important for me to spend a lot of time with them because I'm when I'm fulfilled, their work's easier because I know I'm working to support them. So I think it's important to have both. I don't think you need to work 12, 18 hour days in order to have success.
Speaker 1:Now, early in my career, in my twenties, I did a lot of that. I think I could say work-life balance is important now, because I worked in my 20s 18 hours a day. So I think that it's kind of a two-sided sword there, if you will like. Like, work-life balance is important, yes, but I did put the time in in order to be able to say that. So I think that's kind of a, not a direct answer. So I think depending on where you are in your life is probably like how many hours you should be working. I think if you're coming out of college and you're new to, let's say, the tech world, you're going to work more than somebody who is maybe in their forties and like that's okay, cause I think that you're trying to learn. You have to put the time in and then, as you get older and as you have more success, that's able to open up more time for you to do other things have a family.
Speaker 1:So that might not be the answer that everyone wants to hear, but like that's, that's kind of like yeah, but for me I need a balance, like, as I'm older too, I know my day now like what things I need to do to work smarter, cause I used to not work smarter, so I've gotten better at that too.
Speaker 2:It's so true In your twenties, work hard, learn as much as you can. Once you've learned it, in your forties, work smart. And you don't have that balance, cause you know you do want to spend time with your kids and and your hobbies as well. And one thing I've also seen, cause I'm at the same time in my life as you are in yours I've still I've got young kids. So there is a fine line and balance there. But I'm looking at, you know, my co-founder, whose kids are now adults and he's gone back into those working longer hours because he can and he enjoys it and he doesn't you, you know he doesn't have a family that he needs to constantly be there for when I first graduated, and then I met my wife at a bar hilarious, I remember like she was like what do you like?
Speaker 2:we were talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, like we were having a conversation around like you know, what do we want to do with our careers? And we were like 23 and I was like I want to be a consultant and she's. And she's like for who? I'm like a consultant for CEOs? And she was like, yeah, because the people that are CEOs are really wanting a 23 year old's opinion on, like, how to do something. And it's funny, like I knew I needed to put the time in in order to learn if I ever wanted to go there and like, so that was always my weird driver. Then I went and became a founder, which is interesting, but now I've been a CEO, so maybe someday I could end up as that consultant.
Speaker 2:Work one day a week. That's the life Brayden. My last question for you a bit of a tradition on this podcast, as our last question is if you could go back in time to any point and give yourself one bit of advice, what would that be?
Speaker 1:I think it'd be cool to go back in time, like right when I was going into college, and say, like, not to worry too much about the major that you're choosing.
Speaker 1:I remember stressing about that a ton, being like do I want to go into business, do I want to go into philosophy, do I want to go in like, and I spent so much time thinking about that. At the end of the day, a lot of college is not education in the classroom, it's education outside of the classroom, and you learn how to navigate your time, you learn what excites you, meeting incredible people, and so it's all about that, the more of the education. So I would say not to stress about that. When I was very young, high school to college would be a big one. And then I think probably the other one is when I was first starting Sendoso, a weird mindset or like thought you always have and I still have it is I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop, like I wasn't, like things to just fall apart and like even at Sendoso we had like hundreds of employees and hundreds of customers.
Speaker 1:I was like it's going to end any moment, any moment they're going to call and I want their money back. And like I'm at that now too, this new company, and it's weird that like I always thought that for 11 years at sindoso that it was always going to implode and so to not worry so much because, like you're just losing calories over stressing about that were the two biggest ones for sure I keep thinking that about myself is when I am old and gray I'm just gonna look back on this part of my life and go why did you worry so much?
Speaker 2:But I think it's such a founder mentality. I'm lucky my co-founder has, like this massive positivity. He's just positive about everything and anything and everything's going to go right, and I'm just the negative one in the corner, going what if this goes wrong and what if that goes wrong. I feel like it's a good energy between the two, because sometimes things do go wrong and it's good to have a plan yeah, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:Or just figure it out to shoot from the hips. See how it goes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as he likes to say, quoting marie furlough is everything is figureoutable I mean that's, that's a perfect partner to have, for sure. Yeah, thank you so much for being on the show. I really enjoyed that. And where can anyone find you slash experts? Yeah, check out slash expertscom.
Speaker 1:I am the only Brayden Young on all of LinkedIn. My name's spelling B-R-E-Y-D-A-N, so like my parents that have creative spelling, and so I'm the only one on there. So find me on LinkedIn and let's connect Brayden Young on there too.
Speaker 2:Thanks, brayden, thank you.
