Rob Castaneda – Founder & CEO of ServiceRocket

Speaker 1 00:00:02 Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast with Julian Castelli. Each week, we talk with senior tech leaders to explore stories and insights about the challenges involved with growing technology companies. We hope that these stories can help you become a better leader and help you navigate your own growth journey. Speaker 2 00:00:27 Hello, this is Julian Castelli. I’m the host of the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast, where each month we talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders in the tech industry. Past guests have included CEOs and CXOs of great companies like Work Front, CG healthcare, Radical Systems, and Moment, Vox, Pop me, the San Francisco 40 Niners, and many more. This episode is brought to you by Growth Elevated. Growth elevated is a community of tech founders, CEOs, and CXOs who are committed to working together to share best practices and learning an effort to help all of us become better, better leaders. We do this through educational programs like this podcast, as well as our blog and of course, our annual Tech Summit, which just so happens to be at the base of beautiful Park City Mountain. Speaker 2 00:01:10 So if you enjoy skiing and winter sports and talking tech, check us out at Growth elevated.com. You can subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and please consider joining us this winter. Today I am super excited about talking to Rob Castaneda from Australia and service rocket. Rob is an Australian entrepreneur who has lived in Palo Alto since 2008. The company he founded in bootstrap service, rocket, is behind some of the biggest names in our industry, none of them bigger than Atlassian, and we’re going to talk about the role Rob has played in making Atlassian one of the leaders in the software space. Rob and his team have been working with Atlassian since 2003, and helping to build the Atlassian ecosystem from Australia. Since then, Service Rocket has helped dozens of software companies and thousands thousands of enterprise customers across the chasm drive adoption and revenue growth. Outside of service, rocket Rob serves as the president of EO Entrepreneurs Organization, is an active member of Ypo, and serves on the North American Board for the University of Technology, Sydney. Speaker 2 00:02:20 Now, he claims he’s a lousy triathlete and has a family who tolerates his intense passion for software and bad jokes. Please welcome Rob Castaneda. Hey, Rob. Speaker 3 00:02:29 G’day. Thanks for having me. Speaker 2 00:02:32 Just to start with a with a lousy joke or one story based on based on, you know, the background. Speaker 3 00:02:40 Well, I, I, I am a lousy triathlete, proudly. And, I, I was challenged in 2018 to do the Santa Cruz, half Ironman by one of my, my team members, one of our rocketeers, and I, I said yes. And then after that, I realized that I couldn’t swim. And so I had to learn how to swim. And it’s been an amazing journey. And I’ve learned a few tips and tricks, for triathlon. And the first one is, you you don’t talk to people who do triathlon about triathlon. You talk to people who don’t do it. So when you say you do a half Ironman, they don’t know the difference between a full and a half. Speaker 3 00:03:24 that’s still pretty intense. Speaker 2 00:03:25 What for? For a non swimmer. What’s the what’s the swim on a half trial. Half Ironman. Speaker 3 00:03:29 It’s a 1.2 mile swim. it’s a 56 bike, 56 mile bike and a half marathon, but, the. I guess the real trick is when you, when you talk to people who do triathlon about your time, the lower the time, the more impressive. And when you talk to people who don’t know triathlon. That’s right. The longer the time, the more impressive. Speaker 2 00:03:50 And so I can’t believe you’d be gruelling for that long. You do it, my God, man. And are you crazy? Speaker 3 00:03:57 That’s right. So that’s what I learned. And the other one is to always just doesn’t matter how how fast your your walking or jogging or whatever. You just have to know where the photographers are so you can flex your muscles for the camera so you can get the photos. And there you go. If you do that and have a good time and have a smile on your face, yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 00:04:14 If you have that photo on the shelf and then you can remember the positives, right? Speaker 3 00:04:18 That’s right, that’s right. Speaker 2 00:04:19 Well, you’re you’re a better man than I am. I tried to run a marathon once, and I had a last minute injury that prevented me from from doing that. But I certainly admire your work there. So. So, Rob, I’ve enjoyed getting to know you over the last few months. we know each other through ypo. And then we’ve also done some work where I had the chance to learn about Service Rocket. And so I’m so grateful that you came on today to tell us a little bit about the company. Yeah. Speaker 3 00:04:42 Thank you. Speaker 2 00:04:44 Tell us about, Service Rocket. What do you do? Who are your customers and how do you help them? Yeah. Speaker 3 00:04:48 So, you know, maybe a little bit about how I got started. I was working I started off at the the help desk of a company called Borland Software and working in the Delphi C plus plus and the initial Java J builder days. Speaker 3 00:05:04 and from that I got into enterprise Java, but I worked on the helpdesk and when I got into the enterprise Java space, there were these parallel worlds of the the commercial side of things, WebLogic and, and things like that. And then there was the open source world, JBoss and others. And so I was. Teaching courses. on on WebLogic. And at nighttime I was hacking on open source in JBoss. And I got to really understand the, the the beauty of an open source community and how those relationships work as well as, hey, what drives commercial success and kind of working that that intersection between knowing the technology training and getting people to adopt it and use it and how it all works. so that was that was kind of my background. And then in 2001, I went back to Australia after working in the Valley, and I started the company, teaching training courses, for WebLogic and Web methods and Java and Sun Microsystems back then and then we, stumbled across through, through a connection in Silicon Valley. Speaker 3 00:06:18 a friend said, hey, do you know, do you know Mike and Scott? They’re they’re doing some work in the same open source Java area. And it turns out we’re on the same block in Sydney. And, we had kind of heard of each other and we, we met together. And then I learnt, what they were doing with Jira at that stage. And it was still very early days. They, they were actually a services company that started building, Jira to manage that business. And we were doing a bunch of project work back then, and we were using Mantis and Bugzilla, and then we said, okay, let’s switch in and start putting in Jira. And very quickly we, we developed a great relationship where they were very, very disciplined and focused in the beginning of like, no, we’ve done a little bit of the services thing. We don’t want to do that. We’re going to build a product. And there was a very clear boundary for them of what they wanted to do and, and didn’t want to do. Speaker 3 00:07:16 And so, we quickly became a bit of a case study that they could push their customers to. It’s like, okay, yeah, talk to Rob and his team. and, have a look at what they’re doing. And so from there, we just. Speaker 2 00:07:33 Were you kind of still evolving and the founding of the business, did you? So you kind of were right there at the early stage of. Yeah, I’ve been running and as service rocket on the stage at this point, or is it just Rob and friends, we were. Speaker 3 00:07:46 Called we were called customer back then. Okay. And I had started the year before they started. Okay. And so I had a, I had a a profitable small growing training and implementation business. Okay. So I was teaching Java and Tui and doing some, doing some projects. and so we were already running as a business. Okay. And so then meeting up, meeting Mike and Scott was like, okay, great. How do how do we use that technology and replace and replace some of the things we were using. Speaker 2 00:08:20 And so you became a customer of the product itself? Speaker 3 00:08:24 Yeah, we actually became a customer. and we were doing so as an extra. Yeah. Customer of JIRA. And we were doing work for a small pharmaceutical company called Johnson and Johnson and, Speaker 2 00:08:37 Just just a small one, Speaker 3 00:08:39 Yeah, a small company. I’ve heard of them. We needed a little workflow engine for a project. And back in those days, if you bought Jira, you got the source code because the last one had a bit of an open source heritage. Okay, so if you bought the enterprise version for 2000 bucks, you got the source code. So I remember talking to Mike saying, hey, I need a workflow engine for this project for for Jay and Jay. I’m going to buy Jira, and I’m going to just use the workflow engine for non bug tracking purposes. And so it was really the genesis of a few things one. We from that deal. We co-wrote the resale program to say, okay, we’re going to resell it, right? so we needed an agreement and. Speaker 2 00:09:27 You had to give J&J a license of the tool as well. Yep. Yeah. Speaker 3 00:09:30 So, so that that was the genesis to actually create the resell agreement. and so we did that. And what it also started I think now, which is very relevant if you look at what what they’re doing is non non bug tracking use cases. Speaker 2 00:09:48 Yeah. Speaker 3 00:09:49 Right. So now it’s the system of work or work management. Yeah. And so so that’s how that Genesis or the how that, how that started. over time though the repeatable pattern has been. Listening to the customer base. And being able to respond to their needs in a very service oriented way that we have an eye on how to scale. And so, we, you know, multiple programs we did. But, you know, one would be training as an example where, there were a couple of requests coming in for training. And, you know, you would think, what do you need to do to train customers on how to log bugs, right? And, what we did is we built a short three hour training course. Speaker 3 00:10:41 And back then in like 2004, 2005. Training was done in person, and doing training over webinars wasn’t wasn’t a common thing like it is now, right? And so we built a three hour course and we have to do three hours because we were in Sydney training us customers. We could do them in the afternoons, us time. And what we realized was that, if you go back to Geoffrey Moore’s work on Crossing the Chasm. Yep. jeera was absorbed. Really quickly. It was eaten up by early adopters. Right. Every every engineering lead would have a computer under their desk running Jira. And that’s how they were running their team. And that person actually didn’t need training. What we realized was that the person that wanted the training was kind of like the late, the late adopter or the early majority on the other side. Right. Speaker 2 00:11:40 Yep. Speaker 3 00:11:41 And they were asking this person hey I want to use Jira too. Right. And so we actually built and marketed the course in a way that the early adopter could refer the course. Speaker 3 00:11:56 To the early majority. Speaker 2 00:11:57 Okay. Speaker 3 00:11:58 Right. Speaker 2 00:11:59 You were a bridge for the chasm. Of course. Speaker 3 00:12:01 Was the bridge for Jira? Speaker 2 00:12:03 Yeah. Speaker 3 00:12:03 We ended up teaching 80,000 students. Speaker 2 00:12:06 Holy cow. Speaker 3 00:12:06 How to use Jira. And. And none of them were early adopters, right? Yeah, right. So what? Speaker 2 00:12:13 Early adopters don’t use training. Speaker 3 00:12:15 Usually they figured adopters don’t want training. But what we built, we built the training as a bit of a shield for the early adopter, because the one thing we realized with early adopters is they they love talking about their successes. But they don’t like helping you do it. Speaker 2 00:12:30 No, they don’t want to. They don’t want to. They don’t need training and they don’t want to be trainers. Speaker 3 00:12:33 Yes. They don’t have time. They want to move on to the next thing. And so I think as a, as a, as a solution or a software or product, once you’ve got the attention of an early adopter, you’ve got to use their energy. In this case, it was through training to push to the the early majority. Speaker 3 00:12:50 And the early majority was like, yes, I want to get my all my teams trained and we all want to do it properly. And, you know, it’s a different cadence but in a different tempo. But but we successfully did that. And you know, you would think teaching 80,000 people how to, how to log bugs and do that stuff would be, you know, not necessary, but it really helped, turn one instance, you know, at a large bank into, you know, 12 instances, right? Because you have 12 project managers. All right. You start scaling. Right. And so that that kind of network effect then happened, you know, there are many things running in parallel. But that was one example of. Of doing that as training. And what we also realized was that I have a big training background, but, you know, the. The free training isn’t as as valued as paid training. Right. And just like if if Harvard put all of their courses online on YouTube, which you can get most of the material for things, it doesn’t have the same value as someone going to do a degree. Speaker 3 00:13:54 Right. And so we put value on these courses. And and you know, we realize that, you know, companies have training budget that they want to spend. And how do we tap into that and use the resources of the enterprise to pay to deploy product? Sure. And through learning, is one way to do that. So there was that there was a really smart, API and plug in strategy that, that, Atlassian had, which turned into the App Store eventually. And we built the, you know, some of the very first apps were open source and we nurtured those through. We had the first commercial apps to prove that model. and I moved back to the US, you know, in 2008. And to help build out, let’s. Speaker 2 00:14:43 Let’s book in. You started working here, you know, incredible story. You were you were kind of, you know, peers and colleagues or the founders of Atlassian in Australia, one of the best Australian success stories in SAS ever. And that’s around 22, 2003. Speaker 2 00:14:58 You started working with them? Speaker 3 00:14:59 Yep, yep. Speaker 2 00:15:00 Okay. And when you started your company, how large were you? Speaker 3 00:15:05 it was just myself when I started. So that was me. And, I bootstrapped it, teaching training courses. Okay. there was no, you know, I had a one page plan of, like, hey, you know, teach people how to use technology and, do that through Asia Pacific. That was that was going to be my focus. but pretty quickly we got pulled back to the US to, to to do that. Speaker 2 00:15:33 So and so today, 20 years later, you know, you, you, you, you obviously managed to grow with it last year and provide all sorts of professional services for them. But describe your company just in general today. Service rocket. How large are you. And and you know, how do you typically, who do you work with and what do you what problem do you solve for them? Speaker 3 00:15:54 Yeah. So we’re just under 300 people now, operating in ten countries. Speaker 3 00:15:59 So we spend the world, and we the goal is not to grow headcount crazily for the sake of just growing headcount. and I would say we we have two main customer bases. The first one is. We we get called into a lot of fast growing technology companies here in the Valley or around the world who, hey, we need to build ecosystem. How do we do it? And you know companies we’ve done that for would include Metta. We were very early on in the Facebook at work program. there’s a lot of other, you know, open source slash tech that we’ve done. we’re doing some work in the Miro space right now. And The when we approach any particular space we’re trying to work on. Okay, what is unique about this space and what is the customer base and what what are they trying to do so we can help grow adoption? and I think a lot of founders look at Atlassian and say, I want that. And what that is right now is might be a thousand resellers on their website. Speaker 3 00:17:12 And. Just trying to recruit resellers, right. And I think rather than copying anyone’s particular program, what you would want to do as a founder is copy the journey of how they got there. But it’s your journey of how your customer base is working and how you take your early adopter customers learn from them. And how do you get your product from those early adopter customers to their early majority in those enterprises? So that so that you work out what those scale patterns are? and I think Atlassian really mastered doing that themselves and also leveraging the pieces that they definitely didn’t want to do. Speaker 2 00:17:53 And training was the first one that you, you found. Speaker 3 00:17:56 Their training was one. Support was one. apps is another. And you know, from there obviously professional services and we do a lot of professional services and managed services now. Speaker 2 00:18:09 what type of professional services? Speaker 3 00:18:11 Yeah. So professional services, the what we what we do in. And the way we think about it is, essentially how do you enable a customer to, to get started, get quickly launched, and then how do you empower them to keep going? So our mindset on this isn’t get as many projects from a customer as possible. Speaker 3 00:18:35 The the goal is get a project, get platform in. And then what we look to do is build what we call a center of excellence and a center of excellence. is effectively how do you help the customer run a program? Right? So if you’re putting in any infrastructure, the early adopter will will get it going. But then how does the how does the enterprise get ROI? The cost? The enterprise will get ROI if they roll three, 4 or 5, ten, 15, 20 initiatives through that platform. Speaker 2 00:19:14 So let me let me back up a little bit. When you talk about enabling, you’re talking about it, IT services, helping them create integrations, create customizations. Do do you know do work to make sure that that platform, delivers the value that, that ultimately is, intended, but based on the custom circumstances of that client. Is that a reasonable. Yeah. Speaker 3 00:19:39 You. Yeah. You have to lean in and get very specific. Yeah. So that you can pull back and identify the patterns. Speaker 2 00:19:48 Yes. Speaker 3 00:19:49 And, you have to go in. You have to build the success stories. And in every in every case there’s new ones. Right. And I think there is our industry on the product side in many ways is, doesn’t like the nuance and doesn’t like hunting for the nuance. Right? Because it’s not generic, it’s not perceived scalable. And I think it’s a case of I think you need to know it, learn it, grab it, because that that becomes the secret sauce in your whole product solution, whether that be product service, whether. Speaker 2 00:20:24 You’re talking about a good partner that has someone like yourself to work with so you can capture that nuance. But I think, just let me just dumb it down to language that our listeners will understand. If you’re a SaaS company, you’re your venture capitalist is probably telling you that we’re going to value you based on subscription revenue. Yeah. You know, you know, you are a SaaS business with one platform, and we’re not going to do custom software, right. Speaker 2 00:20:49 You know, and, we, we, we want to solve the customer’s problems, but they, you know, their, their specific needs will go on to our roadmap and we will roll those out in a scalable part of the application over time. But I think that while that is conventional wisdom and it suits one set of ambitions, it leaves the customer often with gaps, right? Yeah. And you’re talking about is filling those gaps. And not only, you know, the not only the obvious ones that are there up front, like we need to integrate to the API or whatever it might be. But when you just talk about discovery, you’re saying, you know, I think you’re talking about a really refined understanding of, yeah, we’ll do the first few things, but then more importantly, we’ll understand what’s needed for them to go and cross the chasm within their organization. Is that hearing you correctly? Speaker 3 00:21:36 Yeah, totally. You’re like spot on, right? The the. If you don’t get it across there, I think we’ll just chatting before. Speaker 3 00:21:46 Right. It becomes like tech enabled. Self-Aware. Right. Speaker 2 00:21:49 Say that again. Speaker 3 00:21:50 Like tech enabled. Self-Aware, right? Yeah. Speaker 2 00:21:53 Because if they can’t use it in their ecosystem the way they do, they do business, right? Yeah. Then you know and that’s and that of course will lead to churn. Speaker 3 00:22:02 Correct. So that’s that’s basically I think the way I think about it in our company is logos don’t buy software. People, right? Yeah. So when when our sales team comes back saying, hey, we we close this customer and they give me a logo, I’m like, that logo didn’t buy it. Somebody at the company bought it. Right. And if that person isn’t early adopter that’s great. You now have a window to expand that. Otherwise they’re going to move on to something else. Right. And and that’s okay. They might renew a few times, but if no one’s continually expanding then something else is right. And so I think understanding who the early adopter is or the champion. Speaker 3 00:22:51 Right. Another word for that. and these concepts are in Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm book. I think a lot of people just look at the, the, the curve diagram and that’s it. There’s another diagram which is the it looks like a pizza. Right. And it’s a, it’s a round circle, looks like a pizza or a turtle shell. And it’s basically in the middle. It’s two concentric circles in the middle is the core product. And on the outside is basically what what Jeffrey Moore calls the whole product. Right. And it’s basically your your SaaS product in this example and all the things the customer needs to make it successful and get and. Speaker 2 00:23:27 Run in their ecosystem right. Speaker 3 00:23:29 Inside of their business. Speaker 2 00:23:30 Right. And that’s and just to be clear, there’s all that stuff that needs to be discovered and provided for. And so you’re a natural partner for a SaaS company because they’re going to provide the platform. They might have a customer success team, but they probably don’t have the professional services to do all that custom work. Speaker 2 00:23:46 And that’s where Service Rocket is available in a flexible fashion with your, your 300, engineers to really both, you know, how much do you do discovering versus just fulfilling what’s been discovered by the customer? Speaker 3 00:24:00 I think there’s a lot of discovery. the. You know, in trying to build an ecosystem like it, logically, it fits right. Oh, grab a partner, they’ll go and do that. And I think the, the, the double click into this is. How do you build an ecosystem? Speaker 2 00:24:18 And what’s the ecosystem? Speaker 3 00:24:20 And an ecosystem is when you have many partners. That are. And I think of it like a forest. Right. You have some foundational trees, right? That that are really the backbone of what that is. But then you have other partners doing niche things that, you know, you don’t go to a forest and there’s one tree, right, right, right. Speaker 2 00:24:42 So it’s more complicated than you think. Speaker 3 00:24:44 And you don’t go to a, you know, a bunch of bushes and go, great, look at this ecosystem. Speaker 3 00:24:49 You kind of need a combination of things. So I think there’s some foundations that need to be planted and the ones that have been successful, and the model we work under is where you. Where you can work with a partner and understand that that first 1 or 2 foundational partners, and usually you have enough bandwidth for one. You need to help them build a profitable business. Right. So a lot of what happens is that, and I’ll simplify. Right. SAS company sells customer wants more and more and more. The SAS company says stop. We can’t do any more of this custom stuff. Right? Because my investors don’t want me to do the services work. We’re going to do the the product only. and so at some stage you’re like, great, let’s bring someone else in to do that. Right. Now, the initial bootstrap of that relationship is really important. And the and it’s natural to be like, oh, let’s try a little bit and see how it goes. And so oh we could do that ourselves. Speaker 3 00:25:57 Or someone can do that in engineering in their spare time, you know. Or or hey, let’s hire a services lead so we can do the ones we want to do, and then we can give out the other ones. And so inevitably, there’s not a lot enough clarity. And when working with a partner, right. Whether it’s us or anybody else, the if you don’t build enough of a book of business. For that partner to actually run a PNL. Then. Then they’re going to give you. A limited amount of investment before they have to go and make money somewhere else. And so the one of the biggest pieces of advice that I would give if you’re going to build a partner ecosystem is pick the foundational trees or tree. And invest in it. Right? Have some visibility about what is the PNL that makes this work and make sure that it it it can actually work. Because if you know that that PNL is working, then what happens is that that partner will give you all their attention. Speaker 3 00:27:05 If that pal isn’t working for that partner, they have to make up the numbers somewhere else. And so you end up becoming not a partner. You end up becoming a client. And when you become a client, they’re like, great, I can give you half of a person’s time, but that you’re, you know, if you if you cut up somebody’s time, they don’t give you the best of everything. They’ve got wholehearted. Right? So the one thing we did with Atlassian is we we managed to do enough work together that we made money from the customer base together. Yeah, funded the work we did. Right. That enabled us to fully focus on expanding the ecosystem. Right. And so it wasn’t like, oh, I’m going to go and do a little bit there and see how it goes. and, and the role that we then played inside of the ecosystem. Comes back to my open source roots, which is you have to pay it forward and build an ecosystem. And if the ecosystem is successful. Speaker 3 00:28:11 Hundreds of companies will be successful. Right. So the mindset that we take into these partnerships is, hey, we might be the first partner, we might be the preferred partner, but we know we are the first of many, and our role is to make a great PNL and then show how we can help others create that PNL as well, so that we create an ecosystem. And when you create an ecosystem and enterprises are adopting and expanding with software, everyone wins, right? There’s no point being like the exclusive partner provider. You know, a long time, you know that one partner does all the work. That doesn’t work. It’s impossible to. You know, you’ll limit your scale, but there there are some patterns to go through. Speaker 2 00:29:00 Can you describe one of those ecosystems like, you know, because you’re so familiar with those terms, but make it tangible. So explain a PNL and an ecosystem with one of your partners where you have helped enable that. Speaker 3 00:29:12 Yeah. So and I’ll keep on the same example. Speaker 3 00:29:15 Right. we a lot of the early partners. in the Atlassian ecosystem. We helped and still help each other and still keep in touch. Right? And we understand, okay, what’s working, what’s not. And we have a great open relationship in terms of like understanding. The health of how the ecosystem itself is working. Right? Because if there’s one player that. You know, it was like, hey, when it all cost, it actually doesn’t do well for the customers. It doesn’t do well for anybody. And even even like we had the the Atlassian conference earlier this month. And, you know, many thousands of people there, like, I was running a session for some of the newer partners that came into the ecosystem to really get their mindset right about how we think in this ecosystem and that we’re not out to kill each other. Okay. Speaker 2 00:30:19 So you’re talking about the dynamic between multiple parties in a huge multibillion unicorn like Atlassian. Yep. Okay, so I get that. Okay. You know, our customers are in that 5 to $50 million range. Speaker 2 00:30:31 So they’re much earlier stage. Yep. They’re trying to figure out how to just work with one partner, let alone maybe find a second. But they’re challenges in how to manage 50 partners. So so scale it back and let’s let’s talk about how they you know what what’s what’s the critical advice you would have for for the the SaaS company who’s trying to meet the customer needs by having professional services to customize a product and make sure that their product can. Their roadmap can benefit from the learnings that are part of that. And they can also, you know, work with the partners and the partners successful. I heard you say the partner has to have a good PNL, so has to be good for both the partner and the and the SaaS company. And ultimately, both of those parties have to solve the problem for the customer, right? Yeah, but but they’re they’re probably not thinking about ecosystems at that stage. Right? I mean, no, they’re trying to get, you know. Speaker 3 00:31:23 Solving a problem. Speaker 3 00:31:24 I mean. Speaker 2 00:31:25 It’s back to the crossing, the chasm. They’re trying to, you know, expand within that customer or expand within their customer base. Speaker 3 00:31:33 Yeah. The, the I think the if I, if I’ll answer it in like the biggest dysfunction that we see is lack of clarity, internally to be like, okay, A lot of what tends to happen is that a combination of support, customer success, pre-sales, or whoever worked on the deal end up doing the consulting work or the project work, or getting the customer over the line. And I think there’s a role for the CEO to play about being deliberate, about. How, how or the outcome that they’re looking for. Because. In the trenches further down. Even though like from a company perspective, hey, we we want to do some of this work or we’re getting this customer over the line. sometimes the people doing the work really enjoy it. As well. So the clarity from top down saying okay this is the direction and this is what success looks like. Speaker 3 00:32:39 And what we’re building I think is really important. And I’ve seen a number of times where that clarity isn’t there. And so the partner is not successful because they’re not given the full support. Because the internal team still wants to do it, or isn’t clear about how they’re trying to prop up the. Speaker 2 00:32:58 Clarity as to who’s doing what. Speaker 3 00:33:00 Yep, clarity. And the second one is actually, I would treat the partners if they were another employee. Speaker 2 00:33:08 An extension of the team. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So. Speaker 3 00:33:13 and I’ll give an example of what you don’t want or an example of what typically typically happens. Someone internally obviously has a lot of context and a lot of a lot of their own internal support and is working with the customer. The partner doesn’t have any of that. Right? Right. So they come in cold bandaged. They’re gonna make mistakes. Speaker 2 00:33:33 Yeah. Speaker 3 00:33:34 And so it’s like if you treat them as if they’re internal, you’re actually going to enable them, onboard them, support them. And the when that’s not done you get the scenarios where it’s like, well, you’re supposed to do that. Speaker 3 00:33:47 That’s not my job. And, it’s easy to well, the partner is supposed to do that. Right. And I think the the enablement. You know your smaller up and coming SAS company doesn’t doesn’t necessarily even have onboarding done internally properly. Speaker 2 00:34:06 Right? Right. Probably not. Especially not for these custom services. Speaker 3 00:34:09 Oh I’m definitely not for that. But even just internally. Right. So so I think onboarding is a really big key in treating treating the foundation partner or partners as if they are internal. And so I think establishing sea level to sea level communication and accessibility. Right. Like when I work with, with any of our partners they have my phone number I’ll answer I’m on, I’m on available all the time as if I was the VP of services for for that CEO. Right. That’s that’s the mindset I’m the chief customer officer or I’m, I’m reporting to your chief customer officer. That’s where I fit in the organization. And yes, now we’re going to build out what what we need to build out there. Speaker 2 00:34:53 So that’s a very healthy level of connectivity. Absolutely. Great. Yeah, I. Speaker 3 00:34:56 Think I think you need that, and you know, customers are also smart. They kind of know how to play things too. Sure. So the you want to be working arm in arm with that, with that partner and having that strong communication. because you are working with people. Yeah. Right. So folks on your side, folks on their side, folks at the customer side, you’re going to have all ends of the spectrum. You’re going to have people who are really involved and want it to happen, and you’re going to have people that want other initiatives to happen. Right? Or, and things that go on. So building those communication links. So clarity is a big one. and then having those communication links at the right level, and there an understanding of like, hey, you may be the first partner, but we, we were actually counting on you to build a model with us that we can help with. Speaker 3 00:35:51 You replicate to other partners. Right. And I think that’s a really a really key mindset to have. Speaker 2 00:35:59 That’s. Those are great. Great. nuggets for sure. And working with a partner and making it a win win. Tell him. Tell me about the journey, about building your own business. What’s been some of the challenges that you’ve learned from? Speaker 3 00:36:11 Yeah. Oh, many. You know, I, I think many, many of us, like, read these stories of like. Oh, well, just up into the ride. I mean, I probably almost killed the company 3 or 4 times in its journey. and I think the journey of a company is really the journey of leadership of the, the CEO, right? Or the founder or whoever’s running the company. So, you know, I personally have been caught up times trying to please everybody or trying to make everything. Work without coming back to the panel. Right. And so I think typically in my journey, it was always like, oh wow, I’m either a. Speaker 3 00:36:58 Really great friendly company to work with. Or I’m really ruthless and financially driven. And I think that as a. Speaker 2 00:37:06 Leader, as the leader in terms of as your relationship leader. Speaker 3 00:37:10 Yeah, yeah. And I think a big, big lesson is just making sure those things work. And I think, you know, there are times when when we’ve gone all in on things. and I think you need a combination of gut feel and reality check and keeping a plan and keeping those things consistent. So, so I’ve learned a lot about that. Learned a lot about, working with different cultures around the world and what what makes people tick. And, so it’s a real blessing to be able to get to work with great technology and great people all over the world and solve some interesting problems and, and do it in a way that’s, that enriches people’s lives, and gives people opportunity to learn and grow so. Speaker 2 00:37:59 Well. You’re doing a lot of that, right? You’ve you’ve built a great business. You’ve gone from one continent to the other. Speaker 2 00:38:06 You’re in the heart of Silicon Valley. I know you’re giving back through your leadership through IPO and EO. anything you want to talk about there that’s been part of the journey. Speaker 3 00:38:15 yeah. I mean, that’s that’s also I think mentorship is is a big thing. And that’s how we met. Right? I was looking for an example of reaching out to network, saying, I want to find great examples of really good. How do I how to assemble a board and run a board. And actually, you came top of the list of highly recommended board members, right? So that’s how we met. So I’ll give you some props. and just I think in many of those organizations, what it’s really taught me is. Pay it forward and help. And and good things happen. Yeah. And I think we do live in a world sometimes where we think of ourselves as consumers, like what’s in it for me every day or every week. All right. Very transactional. And I will say like one of the reasons why I love being being part of, you know, EO in San Francisco and Ypo is, being down in Palo Alto, right where we’re, you know, a little bit out of the city, but it forces me to go and meet people and do things. Speaker 3 00:39:23 And and the biggest thing is not, hey, what is the topic of the discussion or that’s not interesting or what have you? The topic actually doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that you’re connecting with everybody and you’re learning about something, whatever it is. And that’s the side conversations and connections that, that, that’s. Speaker 2 00:39:40 Where the magic happens. You can’t predict it. You can only. What is Steve Jobs that you can only connect the dots when you look backwards. Speaker 3 00:39:45 Right. Only connect the dots backwards. And so the more the more you get out there and help, the more you’ll be helped. And then you’ll be able to trace back and say, wow, this is this is how that that fit together. So I. Speaker 2 00:39:58 Love it. That’s a great that’s a great, lesson for everybody listening out there. Well, this has been great, Rob. Thank you. I’ve learned a lot about partnerships and and, your journey. And I look forward to continuing to work with you and learning more. Speaker 2 00:40:10 where can we work and people find you? Speaker 3 00:40:13 Yeah. So we we’re on, Silver Circuit comm. You can hit me up on LinkedIn. I have a small little Substack that I’m building, called Leadership Behaviors, which is at Leadership behaviors.org, and I’m just writing different articles about how I’ve been building and rebuilding the company and trying to share knowledge. and so if there’s any any questions people have or things that they might want to input on, I’m happy to happy to to share the knowledge so. Speaker 2 00:40:43 Well, fantastic. Thank you so much for your time this morning Rob. Speaker 3 00:40:46 Thank you man. Speaker 2 00:40:47 All right. We’ll talk soon. Speaker 1 00:40:52 Thank you for listening to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, would you please follow us and subscribe on your favorite podcast player and we’d be grateful if you recommend it to a friend. If you’d like more resources on how to become a better leader in business, we invite you to visit us at Growth elevated.com. We’ll be back next week with more insight from another great tech leader. Speaker 1 00:41:13 Thank you.