Dan Martell - Scaling a B2B SaaS Company

00:00:00.000 When I was 18, there was a guy in my town driving a Lamborghini and like lives in like the rich

00:00:06.020 neighborhood of the thing. And so I've kind of had it set in my mind. I'm like, I'm not going

00:00:09.760 to university. I'm going to follow him around until I get a job. Like trying to be not too

00:00:13.000 creepy, but probably a little creepy. But yeah, 100%.

00:00:16.000 Josh what's up man? Not much excited to be here. I'm excited for this conversation. Founder of

00:00:34.760 Estated, serial entrepreneur, real estate investor, incredibly fast runner. I've had the privilege of

00:00:42.580 running with you to help set my pace,

00:00:44.400 increase my steps per minute.

00:00:46.060 I'd say it's the other way around, but thank you.

00:00:47.920 Dude, you're so fast.

00:00:50.540 You're talking like normal at my fastest pace.

00:00:53.420 I was like, OK, this is not going to work.

00:00:55.780 But let's talk about this entrepreneurial journey,

00:00:58.580 estated, real estate data.

00:01:03.960 What does it do?

00:01:05.160 Who do you work with?

00:01:05.960 What does the company look like today?

00:01:07.760 Yeah, so we've been collecting property record data

00:01:11.700 from like public record sources which is a pretty ugly boring job for about seven years now and so

00:01:18.580 i became fascinated with real estate probably when i was like 23. i kind of had a look 23 now dude

00:01:24.740 thank you i appreciate that um but it was i had a uh a family friend who i noticed had just

00:01:32.340 generated a lot of wealth in real estate owned properties all over the world that is actually

00:01:36.900 how i ended up in colonna i stayed in an apartment of his that he just let me stay in at the college

00:01:41.460 when i first came here and so i was fascinated with real estate pretty early into my entrepreneurial

00:01:47.460 journey and previous to that i had been running a bunch of digital advertising for carfax and so

00:01:53.860 i kind of understood the carfax model i thought it would apply to real estate and it did so were

00:01:59.460 you an affiliate for carfax yeah exactly oh cool and then that's how you got the demand gen marketing

00:02:05.700 know-how and then wanting to do it for real estate and my love is like google adwords and

00:02:11.540 analytics that's where i spend most my time especially when i was first getting into this

00:02:15.640 that was like my passion i still love it today and yeah it's been seven year journey now and

00:02:22.420 it started kind of b2c where we just did these single carfaxes for homes but as that grew over

00:02:27.260 the first few years and we got like thousands of subscribers using it was that called estated back

00:02:32.100 then no it's called data nerds data nerds yes and that was carfax for homes yep is that what you

00:02:39.100 because i also went into tech stars is that what you went to tech stars with or that was a stated

00:02:43.600 so tech stars when we gave them equity took uh equity in both ideas um and that was generating

00:02:50.480 quite a bit of revenue at that time so i got a really good deal with tech stars um but yeah they

00:02:56.140 have equity in both businesses so it's kind of the consumer side and our b2b side but we pitched

00:03:00.740 the b2b side for it because our data expenses were so much at that time from like these huge

00:03:06.540 players like first american black knight core logic and so we pitched to them we think we could

00:03:12.380 go collect this information and do it ourselves we don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of

00:03:15.920 dollars every year which each with each provider and so that was kind of how the stated idea came

00:03:22.420 to be and it's been a grind for three years this has not been a walk in the park how does the data

00:03:28.240 collection work i mean do you have to build relationships with all these different counties

00:03:32.720 exactly are you north america it's like we're only in the u.s right now okay public record data in

00:03:37.600 canada is a lot stricter than it is in the u.s there's a lot more freedom there's a freedom of

00:03:41.760 information act in the u.s where we can actually send that to a county or city office and they have

00:03:46.640 to give us all the information on the properties what format are they giving it to you in

00:03:50.720 CD-ROMs sometimes.

00:03:53.820 What?

00:03:54.300 Yeah, we have yet to get a floppy disk,

00:03:56.880 but we literally have CD-ROMs delivered to us

00:04:00.020 on a monthly and quarterly basis

00:04:01.320 from some of these counties.

00:04:02.500 And PDF scans, what are they?

00:04:05.020 Yep, it's really ugly.

00:04:06.340 So how do you get that into a digital format?

00:04:08.480 Do you have to manually do it?

00:04:09.720 Manual?

00:04:10.400 Yeah, we outsource a lot of that

00:04:12.160 and we do have a lot of OCR in the outsourcing,

00:04:14.860 but yeah, it's ugly.

00:04:16.840 Dude, but I mean, hard problems mean opportunity and emote.

00:04:20.600 What have you learned about building this company over the last,

00:04:23.640 you know, especially on the stated side, the B2B side, you know,

00:04:26.740 what have you, you know, even managing a tech team,

00:04:29.440 because if you're a marketer, I mean, the whole building products,

00:04:32.340 this whole other world, how have you learned that?

00:04:35.840 What are some of the challenges around that?

00:04:37.760 Well, going B2B is a totally different conversation from B2C.

00:04:41.360 One of the things that I constantly just kind of tell our salespeople too

00:04:44.740 is like our average sales cycle is 75 days on the B2B side.

00:04:48.160 the B2C is 90 seconds and it's a, you know, $200 lifetime value of a user. We pay a certain CPA

00:04:56.200 and you can just rinse and repeat over and over and over again. You don't really have to be too

00:05:00.240 creative with it. With the B2B and the tech side, you actually have to teach people to integrate

00:05:04.600 APIs. You have to teach them how to navigate big bulk data sets. It's pretty ugly and boring,

00:05:10.580 but that's where the opportunity is. And I think over the last year, we finally started to see it

00:05:16.160 pan out. The first two years of estate was really rocky. That's right after we got venture capital

00:05:20.440 from Foundry. And we pretty much went all in on collecting and cleansing the data. We had no idea

00:05:28.200 what we were doing. And I hired like 20 engineers to work on it. Burn rate went way up. And when we

00:05:34.500 went to market, it completely failed. So there's a lot of stories within that. Yeah. Talk about

00:05:39.000 those. I mean, what were the assumptions versus the realities? Well, the assumption was that

00:05:43.560 there's 3,144 counties in the United States. There's probably one or two sources in each of

00:05:49.160 them that record public record data that we would have to get to. And if we built the tooling to,

00:05:56.460 you know, have those relationships, the data would just come in. However often they updated it,

00:06:01.440 we would be able to standardize it and build the, you know, basically machine learning to pull in

00:06:06.340 those data sets, get them all cleaned up and then import them into our own. There's a lot of guessing

00:06:11.340 in that. There's a lot of issues with that. And so our first attempt at it, we spent about two

00:06:17.540 and a half million dollars and we got about 70 million properties. There's about 150 million

00:06:23.400 properties in the United States. And so we did okay, but the problem was, is we kind of burned

00:06:27.960 through all of our cash. So. And is it one of those things where incomplete data sets aren't

00:06:33.720 valuable or, cause then all of a sudden, you know, if somebody wants data on a thing, they're

00:06:38.660 50% coverage doesn't sound-

00:06:40.660 Doesn't work.

00:06:41.420 Yeah.

00:06:42.260 I always joke about data companies just in general.

00:06:44.640 It's not big data that's important.

00:06:46.580 It's the buzzword.

00:06:47.420 It's what everyone says is important,

00:06:48.940 but it's actually like the small actionable data

00:06:51.540 that adds value to your business

00:06:53.540 is what you have to deliver to people.

00:06:55.680 And so we're starting to see that now.

00:06:57.960 It's not about giving someone all 150 million properties.

00:07:01.320 It's the 10 million properties with pools

00:07:03.400 that your company is gonna service

00:07:05.260 that we know how the size of the pool,

00:07:07.740 when the pool was installed and when it needs maintenance

00:07:11.200 or something along those lines.

00:07:12.380 There's very small pieces of data

00:07:13.960 that we need to be able to pull out

00:07:15.480 to create value for the businesses we work with.

00:07:17.980 And so the first few attempts at selling it

00:07:22.060 was just like the more the merrier.

00:07:24.060 As we get more specific and we learn more about our users,

00:07:27.820 it's actually those really small pieces

00:07:30.160 and then being able to deliver them

00:07:31.840 in like the format that they needed as well.

00:07:33.700 So whether that's in Excel files or it's in an API,

00:07:37.260 It just depends.

00:07:38.260 How do you right size the business

00:07:40.180 after spending $2.5 million and hiring 20 engineers?

00:07:43.880 Well, the funny thing about,

00:07:44.880 you asked the question of what adversities

00:07:46.620 have you went through.

00:07:47.460 And so yeah, I did my first layoff.

00:07:49.100 I vividly remember this like March 10th of 2019.

00:07:52.940 Arguably 2019 was the worst year for the business.

00:07:56.420 2020 came as a breeze though, which was kind of nice.

00:07:59.460 Yeah, because a lot of people had a rough 2020.

00:08:01.380 But what happened in 2019?

00:08:03.220 If you could walk us through that, how did it feel?

00:08:07.260 Well, so it would have been January 2018, we got the 3 million from Foundry. You're

00:08:15.120 kind of a hotshot when you come back to Kelowna from Techstars with a few million dollars from

00:08:18.860 a tier one venture capital firm. So I was a little bit enamored in that, you know, lots

00:08:23.580 of talking to people, not really focusing on my business as much. We were scaling. We

00:08:28.440 knew what we needed to do. We weren't sure we could do it. I think the measurements and

00:08:33.540 KPIs that we had were a little out to lunch. And after about, I'd say, yeah, it was a year and a

00:08:39.180 bit, a year and a quarter in March, we went to sell the entire data set to Remax and Compass.

00:08:45.380 Both deals fell through. And that day, the lead on that project, who had about 10 staff, I ended up

00:08:52.660 firing. No, we had to fire his entire team and he quit. And that was a really rough day. As a leader,

00:09:01.600 it was a really rough day because there's a lot of instability for the next six months. So we were

00:09:05.420 32 people, I think. So within one day, we went down to 19. After letting all those people go,

00:09:13.200 which was really, really tough. First time entrepreneur, first time running a business,

00:09:17.160 all this is new to me. After coming off the high of being, you know, feeling like you had the

00:09:21.920 special touch. Exactly. And the business before the like Carfax for Homes had always performed

00:09:26.880 really well for the first three years. Like running that business was a breeze for me.

00:09:30.700 I never had to hire really technical people. It was more like customer support and staff.

00:09:35.200 So now I had a bunch of really smart technical people, had to let them go after working with

00:09:39.740 them for a year and a bit. And it hurt the confidence. It hurt a lot of the leadership

00:09:44.880 qualities. I think I've grown a lot from it. We had an employee who's moving on and let me know

00:09:50.360 last week. And I asked for feedback just on like, what did you think about me as a leader of this

00:09:54.720 company? And his feedback was so dramatically different than the feedback that I had gotten

00:09:58.920 in 2019, I was like really proud of myself.

00:10:02.520 But yeah.

00:10:03.360 What did you work on?

00:10:06.400 Well, you asked about a few books that really helped me.

00:10:08.260 There's probably two that I think stand out the most for me.

00:10:10.360 The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker.

00:10:13.800 I think I've really learned to manage my time better.

00:10:16.140 I managed to, you know, focus on my strengths

00:10:19.640 and not as much on my weaknesses.

00:10:21.900 And then the second book,

00:10:22.940 which is arguably the most important

00:10:24.320 and I reread it this year,

00:10:25.580 was The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey.

00:10:28.920 And so having to redevelop trust in a environment where you've broken it all is a really challenging

00:10:34.820 thing.

00:10:35.440 And so I kind of looked at it as my favorite analogy was, you know, trust is like a glass

00:10:41.240 full of water.

00:10:42.200 You know, you, you add little drops to it and it's full.

00:10:45.300 It takes forever to fill up, but it takes five seconds to knock it over.

00:10:48.980 I think there's a Warren Buffett quote about that too.

00:10:50.740 It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and an instant to ruin it.

00:10:53.880 And so, you know, it's been a couple of years now, and I feel like I've completely changed.

00:10:59.100 And the feedback that came from this employee was really, really good.

00:11:03.920 Really happy with the company culture, really happy with my participation.

00:11:07.840 And I felt like a lot of those practices that I'd read about, I finally were putting into play.

00:11:14.300 It takes a long time, though.

00:11:15.480 A lot of hard work, too.

00:11:16.820 You have to look in the mirror and face some of your weaknesses and some of those things that you're not good at.

00:11:21.520 And that's a good learning experience for me.

00:11:23.280 Do you have any co-founders to kind of be the yin to your yang in those situations?

00:11:30.420 I have a number two who owns about 10% of the company.

00:11:34.260 But when I first started my entrepreneurial journey, I went 50-50 with someone, didn't work out.

00:11:41.100 And so the second time around, I gave 10% to my technical.

00:11:45.640 You could call him a co-founder.

00:11:47.280 But yeah, total yin to my yang, complete opposite human.

00:11:50.520 Been my friend for over a decade, though.

00:11:52.160 ups and lots of ups and downs through it all but we're still we're still working on it and what

00:11:56.980 is it about doing b2b that that you've had to discover and figure out from a go-to-market

00:12:02.140 point of view that was different the sales process is significantly different you know

00:12:09.280 when you're doing that direct to consumer stuff it's instant there's no sales support there so

00:12:13.900 that's one of the reasons we're huge fans of sass academy is like the on like kind of that

00:12:17.760 the discovery side of things was something we were never very good at we're getting a lot better

00:12:22.000 Like we hacked our way to a little over a million and a bit in revenue last year

00:12:26.040 But we know that this is a probably twenty five million dollar a year business when we look at our competitors the market who we can work with

00:12:32.620 um, and so

00:12:34.500 Now we're really starting to implement a lot of these things from sas academy on like the prospecting side of things

00:12:39.920 To actually running them through a true sales funnel and then actually getting to closing and onboarding and

00:12:45.560 Actually, our customer success is just mind-boggling to me right now the amount of people that

00:12:50.160 get started with a stated and don't leave.

00:12:53.460 Our retention is really high.

00:12:55.560 Our churn is really low.

00:12:57.200 And yeah, the B2B side of sales is just,

00:13:00.760 it's a huge process compared to the world I came from.

00:13:04.560 Totally different.

00:13:06.660 In regards to,

00:13:09.040 cause I've got this image in my mind of the Josh

00:13:11.920 that came back from Techstars.

00:13:14.960 And you know, cause I grew up in a small town

00:13:17.420 and I remember moving to the Valley

00:13:19.000 and raising venture capital.

00:13:20.760 And, you know, you just feel like, wow,

00:13:22.760 I've done something that very few people can do,

00:13:25.160 especially at a young age.

00:13:28.060 And, you know, it's easy to get distracted.

00:13:30.620 And you see a lot of these founders

00:13:31.760 that are always out at events, they're being recognized,

00:13:34.240 especially in Canada, there's a lot of like,

00:13:36.740 honestly, if you apply, you'll probably win kind of awards

00:13:39.660 and different things.

00:13:40.500 Oh yeah, it's really easy.

00:13:41.340 Yeah, like there's the filters

00:13:42.760 and the criteria isn't as high.

00:13:44.340 They just really want to recognize anybody.

00:13:46.500 Um, you know, and it sounded like you had to eat a slice of humble pie, um, when kind of those

00:13:52.780 grand visions and workout, you know, what, if you're going back now, what would you have done

00:13:57.860 differently? Say no to a lot more things. I think you really hit it on the, on the nail there. Um,

00:14:07.220 there's so many distractions. Your time is so valuable. And another great kind of like learning

00:14:13.520 for me was, um, kind of when COVID did hit and we went work from home, I've spent my whole life

00:14:18.740 working in an office, even when I was like 19 and went to my first advertising job. Um, I was in an

00:14:25.120 office from, you know, 7 30 AM till six or seven at night. And I kind of emulated that and my boss

00:14:31.720 there and I brought it to Kelowna and I did that here, got an office like right away, was there

00:14:36.220 all day, every day, six, seven days a week. And it was just kind of like the way that it was.

00:14:41.200 And so I think once Techstars happened, a big thing that I had to get come to like grips with was a I was in Boulder for four and a bit months.

00:14:52.940 So I didn't know what my team was doing here.

00:14:54.800 I didn't know what the work ethic was like.

00:14:56.380 I completely lost pulse on that.

00:14:58.140 And then when I came home, I was kind of like more comfortable with that.

00:15:03.180 And so I wouldn't have been more comfortable with that when I came home.

00:15:05.680 Were you spending more time not at the office?

00:15:07.820 Yeah, exactly.

00:15:08.520 Exactly. And so now that COVID hit and all, or I guess we had to go work from home in the last

00:15:15.460 year and so many tech companies have went work from home and digital and remote. Now I actually

00:15:20.080 look at it as an advantage and it has forced me to A, measure my time better, focus my time better.

00:15:26.980 And there's so many more things that I've been able to do in the last year and a half since

00:15:31.320 working from home. And I've been incredibly more productive and the results speak for themselves.

00:15:35.240 and so what what do you say no to now which change around how you manage your time

00:15:40.740 i definitely don't take as many just like random vc calls as many like just you know do you want

00:15:49.100 to chat about xyz business opportunity like none of those things when they hit my inbox i don't i

00:15:54.040 i might respond pretty curt candidly just get it over with but yeah i don't really like to open my

00:16:00.560 calendar up to too many people to be honest and that's different than it was before i would have

00:16:05.120 said yes to anything and every opportunity that ever wants to talk oh yeah let's go yeah yeah

00:16:09.780 um in regards to some you mentioned a few books is there any other books that have kind of shaped

00:16:14.180 your thinking around personal development or entrepreneurship that that have been meaningful

00:16:18.480 for you well the bible for me is um measure what matters yeah i'll put this away uh measure what

00:16:24.820 matters by john doer we tech stars did teach us about okrs our entire company runs on okrs now

00:16:30.460 and I love them so much. And it's allowed me a lot of freedom, especially with now that we work

00:16:35.800 from home with the fact that I can just set an objective, put key results, put dates with them,

00:16:41.300 and I can just trust my people to measure themselves against them. And now it's actually

00:16:45.840 at a stage where my best leaders are stepping up and they're doing them themselves. And so

00:16:51.060 measure what matters, I think is kind of a Bible for us. Predictable revenue, another great one

00:16:56.920 for sales. I know that we have a whole Monday board right now of objectives that we're going

00:17:02.040 to just be constantly implementing and split testing on the sales and success side with that.

00:17:09.520 The five dysfunctions of a team. Yeah. Lencioni. Yeah. Always a good one. You know, the power

00:17:15.380 habit on personal development. I also just love biographies. Like I just read Stephen

00:17:19.940 Schwarzman's again. Then you have really anything by Walter Isaacson on Steve Jobs.

00:17:26.000 His Jeff Bezos one, it's pretty epic.

00:17:28.780 Yeah, I haven't started that one yet.

00:17:30.100 I'll have to get that.

00:17:32.440 Sam Zell.

00:17:33.960 I can't remember what they-

00:17:34.580 Real estate legend.

00:17:34.920 Yeah, legend.

00:17:36.940 Anything on Buffett and Munger.

00:17:39.800 I feel like Sam Zell we'd hang out with and we didn't, like-

00:17:42.660 Keep you up in a leather jacket.

00:17:44.100 Yeah, we gotta get him a cloth.

00:17:45.420 I'm putting that on my, like, I want to get him from Chicago to Kelowna and to hang out.

00:17:50.160 I think he would love the energy and the vibe.

00:17:52.700 um but you know when did your journey start as a as a reader like how did that how'd that come to

00:18:00.540 be well i only have like a high school education and then when so kind of like when i was 18 i

00:18:08.220 there was a guy in my town outside of edmonton that was like two or three years older than me

00:18:14.220 i'd seen him at track meets and stuff throughout the years went to a high school i grew up in town

00:18:18.300 like 60, 70,000 people. And he's like driving a Lamborghini and like lives in like the rich

00:18:23.700 neighborhood of the thing. And so I've kind of had it set in my mind. I'm like, I'm not going

00:18:27.420 to university. I'm going to follow him around until I get a job. And I worked with him for a

00:18:31.160 while. And how did you get that job? Literally like just followed him around, like trying to

00:18:36.660 be not too creepy, but probably a little creepy, but yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. And I started

00:18:41.400 in customer service who's selling lots of like total digital advertiser. Uh, I learned a lot

00:18:46.180 from that guy, but avid reader, super hard worker. And so I guess it would have been like 18, 19 when

00:18:53.140 I really started picking up books. And then once I got into entrepreneurship, when I was like 23,

00:18:58.540 24, I just realized there was always a solution in them. And when you come across a book at the

00:19:02.600 right time in your life, there's a, that's a really good feeling. And so I spend at least

00:19:08.060 a couple hours a day reading and it's just, it's part of the routine. That's amazing. So you,

00:19:12.940 you see this guy that has the car, lives in the big house.

00:19:17.740 No idea how, why.

00:19:18.880 Yeah, I wanna learn from him.

00:19:20.300 But this is a good point.

00:19:21.200 I mean, you decide to go work with him

00:19:22.740 and then through osmosis, watching him execute,

00:19:25.400 you see that he's not only a hard worker,

00:19:27.460 but he's educating himself.

00:19:29.480 And that's a big part of your life.

00:19:32.700 Is there other people that have kind of shaped

00:19:34.540 your entrepreneurial journey that,

00:19:37.180 and how did they, what did you learn from these people?

00:19:41.120 There's lots.

00:19:42.280 Well, number one, I'd probably put Jason Mendelsohn from Foundry.

00:19:45.120 Like I kind of did the same thing with Foundry.

00:19:47.180 Like when we got out of Techstars, we had multiple venture offers,

00:19:50.480 but I was like, I want Foundry.

00:19:51.740 I want Jason Mendelsohn.

00:19:53.200 He taught me a lot.

00:19:54.180 Brutal honesty, delivered kindly is like something that like a motto

00:19:57.380 that I'll never forget.

00:19:59.420 He was the fastest response.

00:20:01.220 He never took more than 60 seconds to respond to an email.

00:20:03.860 I don't know how he did it.

00:20:04.820 He was extremely popular CEO of Foundry Group.

00:20:07.960 he could respond to an email in less than two minutes, 24 hours a day. Um, I don't know how

00:20:13.160 he did that. Brad Feld as well. I love reading anything about Brad Feld, even the way he speaks

00:20:18.300 and talks about kind of like the, just the landscape of the world is fascinating. Larry

00:20:23.720 Smith from Kelowna, um, accelerated Okanagan, uh, Fraser Campbell, all of these people help shape

00:20:30.700 me. I'm totally like a chameleon to like put me in with these people and I'll learn and absorb as

00:20:35.740 much as I can. And I'll take a lot away from it. It's one of the reasons I kind of got connected

00:20:40.380 with you as well. So as soon as I kind of saw the Sass thing, I was like, oh, this is what we need.

00:20:43.940 We don't know how to run a B2B company. We need coaches and we need to be surrounded by companies

00:20:48.580 that are doing this and we'll learn fast enough. We might not be the fastest, but we'll get there.

00:20:54.340 And yeah, then there's just also people that you never meet, but that become mentors. Yeah. You

00:21:05.740 tech companies that you assumed was different when you started versus how it really is?

00:21:14.540 That's a good question.

00:21:18.380 Well, I think one of the things I thought, I thought engineering was arguably the most

00:21:22.540 measurable thing ever and data was the most measurable thing ever. But when you really

00:21:28.860 get into it, there's often, well, as kind of everything, there's always two sides to the story

00:21:34.380 and it's kind of how you perceive it and how you look at it like one thing can mean something to

00:21:38.620 this person and totally different to the other person and so you kind of have to i think i used

00:21:44.140 to be really fast to jump to conclusions when my engineering team would give me responses and now

00:21:50.220 i'm more at a point where it's like i kind of feel like there's always another side to it

00:21:55.500 and it's allowed me to kind of be less decisive on a lot of matters within the company growing

00:22:01.260 the tech side like for example we might be evaluating a data set um from like one provider

00:22:07.740 versus the other provider and like you know we will have debates on our team of which one is

00:22:12.140 better and why and it's really hard to choose nowadays we kind of just will buy both um and

00:22:17.500 figure it out because that's the way i see my company going it's like the more the merrier

00:22:20.940 we'll do that part but it's the small part that we can sell to someone where we become value add

00:22:26.700 but i used to be pretty decisive about what i thought was right and wrong and now i just

00:22:30.540 It's just always a learning curve.

00:22:32.280 It's just keep absorbing as much as you can

00:22:34.460 and form an opinion,

00:22:35.220 but very rarely are you gonna be like perfect.

00:22:37.600 It's not binary.

00:22:38.580 It's interesting, yeah.

00:22:39.840 It's essentially getting to a point

00:22:41.620 where your initial response isn't as poignant.

00:22:49.140 Like it's like knowing that there's more

00:22:50.780 and you just don't know what it is.

00:22:52.300 So you don't have to like treat it as fact.

00:22:55.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:22:55.960 Yeah, but I mean, that's a lot of founders,

00:22:57.720 I think struggle with the fact

00:22:58.980 that they are reactive, right?

00:23:01.900 Very.

00:23:02.620 Yeah, and I mean, there is two sides

00:23:05.220 and there's the quantitative side of it

00:23:07.340 and there's the kind of like,

00:23:08.720 what's the right decision for the short-term

00:23:10.080 versus long-term?

00:23:12.620 You know, as you've developed as a leader,

00:23:15.460 what are kind of some of the ways

00:23:18.280 that you have changed the way you build your culture

00:23:21.240 and communicate with your staff

00:23:23.300 to try to, you know, gain that trust back?

00:23:27.340 as you mentioned, you felt like you kind of lost. Yeah. Culture is a great thing. I don't remember

00:23:32.960 who told me this, but it's like, it's a direct reflection of the CEO, the culture of the company,

00:23:37.180 it bleeds down. And if you're having issues with it, like the best place you can look is in the

00:23:42.060 mirror, in my opinion. And then the next place you have to look as your leadership team and what's

00:23:46.080 going on there with a stated and data nerds, the things that we've done that have been really

00:23:50.960 valuable. And we're constantly experimenting with these things, but one that stuck through

00:23:55.020 is a thing we called retrotude and it's every Friday at 3 p.m. And it's a retrospective and

00:23:59.780 gratitude together. When we had the office, we literally had Kleenex boxes with post-it notes

00:24:04.880 on them that you could drop little gratitudes in. And on Friday at 3 p.m., we would sit down as a

00:24:09.320 team and read them. Gets really hard when you go virtual. So now it's, and you kind of have to pry

00:24:13.780 it a little bit more because it's not throughout the week, people would just put them in and then

00:24:17.520 they'd come up again. That's one thing that's been amazing for our culture, for people to get

00:24:21.760 to know each other too. And just to say, thank you to each other. Um, another thing we've been

00:24:26.620 doing is kind of like, we just do a weekly hour meeting and we either do like a 15 or minute

00:24:32.080 video on YouTube about mindset or mental health or something going on in the company at that time.

00:24:37.760 Maybe it's real estate or data. Maybe it's one of our comp, like one of our clients that have

00:24:42.400 raised a bunch of capital. Like we had blend raised 300 million and half my staff didn't

00:24:46.620 even know what blend was um you know this company literally hits our api millions of times and

00:24:51.580 they're like what is this i'm like oh yeah they're a multi-billion dollar company that's you know

00:24:55.260 gonna go public here soon and they're a customer yeah they love us i know you guys don't know that

00:24:59.800 but um so we do little things like that uh and then yeah culture is just kind of like

00:25:06.400 i think okay ours is is we've made it really clear that this is how our company runs

00:25:10.940 we have like our onboarding is mostly just you know read measure what matters and and this is

00:25:16.060 how you're going to see our company run. And you have to get used to that. Yeah. So using the

00:25:20.820 content to almost onboard and activate new hires and then see if they resonate with that or not.

00:25:26.620 It's pretty quick, but we know that we have some core values. And I think the most prominent one

00:25:32.840 is you have to be able to thrive in autonomy. And I've really learned that just from me,

00:25:38.560 I need autonomy. If you put boundaries around me that I don't agree with, it gets,

00:25:42.560 it gets ugly for me. And that's something I've had to go to therapy for, for a long time,

00:25:47.360 but you learn a lot about yourself through that. And so there, there's a lot of autonomy in our

00:25:52.580 company. We don't want to have tons of meetings. I don't think like, you know, Foundry has this

00:25:56.540 thread going on right now about death by meeting. Like when you go virtual and you have a team of

00:26:01.700 20, 30, 40, maybe a hundred people, that's a lot of meetings for a CEO. And so you have to learn

00:26:06.880 how to get rid of those things. And autonomy has kind of been my best thing. And with OKRs,

00:26:10.780 It's like, here's the objective

00:26:11.880 of what we're trying to accomplish this month.

00:26:13.280 Here's the key results and the dates

00:26:14.660 that are attached to them that you need to deliver by.

00:26:16.840 And if you have issues, we're here to help.

00:26:18.820 Like, you know, my calendar is ready

00:26:20.880 for anyone on my team at any time,

00:26:22.940 but yeah, that's an interesting one.

00:26:26.500 Yeah.

00:26:27.340 It's ongoing, never ends.

00:26:28.580 It doesn't stop.

00:26:29.460 And I think that's where as the CEO,

00:26:31.460 we get the most leverage, right?

00:26:32.860 Like how we show up for our team,

00:26:34.360 setting that cadence and also modeling.

00:26:38.600 I mean, I think leadership,

00:26:39.920 I think it was Vince Lombardi or somebody said,

00:26:42.200 you know, like it's not the only form,

00:26:44.620 the best form of leadership is by example.

00:26:47.000 And it's like, the culture is gonna be set from up top.

00:26:50.480 Josh, as we wrap up, I'd love to hear your answer

00:26:54.200 to a question I ask all my guests,

00:26:55.600 which is, you know, looking back again

00:26:58.520 to the 20 year old version of you

00:27:00.460 and the one that sits before me.

00:27:04.400 Who do you feel like you had to become

00:27:06.740 to achieve the level of success you're at today?

00:27:09.920 who do I feel like I had to become?

00:27:13.240 Yeah, what are those beliefs shifts that had to happen

00:27:16.400 for you to be able to lead the team today?

00:27:22.640 One thing that I'm proud of myself is through even the ups and downs,

00:27:26.740 I've managed to maintain a lot of that confidence.

00:27:29.040 And as a CEO, you often get beat up.

00:27:31.100 You have to take the blame.

00:27:32.020 And if your company is failing, it's on you.

00:27:33.700 It doesn't matter who, you can't point the finger.

00:27:35.520 If you point the finger, you look like shit.

00:27:37.300 and I believe that so strongly and so I'd say there's kind of the person that I I've become

00:27:44.280 over the last especially five years is I've become a lot more reflective um maybe one of the reasons

00:27:49.760 I could run so fast is because I typically run without music and I run a lot of hours during

00:27:54.860 the week I don't know how many um every I used to be super data driven I got to a point a couple

00:27:59.700 years ago I was just like I don't even care like I just want to go out and run no headphones no

00:28:04.040 phone and unplug for a while. And so I've become a person where like I reflect on everything pretty

00:28:09.800 deeply now. And I love that two, three hours a day of silence that I can get, um, just to be with

00:28:15.600 myself. And so it's allowed me to be more productive. It allows me to listen better to

00:28:20.440 other people, absorb that information. And I wasn't like that in my twenties, more decisive,

00:28:25.100 jump to the conclusion, just get this done, work really hard until it gets done. Now I'm really

00:28:30.780 strategic on like, can we get this done faster, working smarter rather than working harder.

00:28:36.300 And, you know, as you grow older, I think you don't try and rush the process as much.

00:28:42.160 It starts, I feel a lot more comfortable now knowing that things aren't going to get, I mean,

00:28:46.440 if it's going to be a day late, but I know it's going to be done properly, I'm okay with that.

00:28:50.380 It used to drive me nuts. And so I think I've slowed down, learned to reflect a lot. And if

00:28:55.500 I could have told myself that when I was 20, it's like, it's going to work out.

00:28:58.240 that would have been a nice thing to know. That's interesting. So essentially

00:29:03.640 the understanding when to be patient, knowing that, you know, if you can control it, you will,

00:29:12.680 but a lot of stuff you can't. And then I think it's just even the discipline

00:29:15.720 that you talk about of just reflecting on action. A lot of entrepreneurs don't build that feedback

00:29:22.680 loop. And I think that's what has set you apart amongst my clients. Honestly, Josh, you're

00:29:27.060 somebody that's humble. You're willing to do the work. Um, you show up, uh, you're eager to learn,

00:29:33.580 you're curious. Um, and those are things I think that, uh, other people want to follow your team

00:29:39.280 wants to follow that. So it's been really cool watching that journey. Um, where do people find

00:29:43.200 you on the internet? Stated.com. It's probably the best place. Josh had a stated, if you want

00:29:48.600 to chat, you want to give people your email. I hope. Yeah. Everybody asks Josh for his time.

00:29:52.080 We'll see if he says no. Someone on my team will give you their time. There we go. He's got help.

00:29:55.980 I appreciate the time, Josh.

00:29:57.540 Thanks, Dan.

00:29:58.000 Awesome.

00:29:58.400 Cheers.

Dan Martell - August 30, 2021

Scaling a B2B SaaS Company - Josh Fraser @ Estated

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