Anniversary Throwback - #1: Chelsea Curtis, Seaport Consulting

As we near one year since starting In The Thick of It, we're working on a celebratory episode. In the meantime, we'd love for you to catch up on some founder stories you may have missed.

Last year, we kicked off the podcast with our first guest: Chelsea Curtis, Founder & Managing Partner of Seaport Consulting, a successful Salesforce consulting firm in Boston, MA. Chelsea shares her path to entrepreneurship, discussing the challenges and triumphs she encountered along the way. She highlights the importance of taking risks, building strong client relationships, and sticking to her values. Chelsea also provides valuable insights into the hiring process and the significance of investing in technology for business growth. Whether you're a founder or aspiring entrepreneur, this episode offers valuable lessons and inspiration for building a thriving company.

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About Chelsea:
Chelsea is a four-time certified Salesforce professional with over 10 years of experience consulting, implementing, and supporting the Salesforce platform. As Managing Partner, Chelsea oversees all aspects of the business and directly manages the consulting team. Prior to founding Seaport Consulting, Chelsea worked as a technical project manager who successfully led a company-wide Salesforce implementation, and played golf professionally on the LPGA Futures Tour. In addition to leading Seaport, Chelsea sits on the board of Mass Golf, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that is dedicated to advancing golf in Massachusetts, and serves as the chair for their diversity, equity, and inclusion committee.

About Seaport Consulting:
Seaport Consulting is a Boston-based consulting firm who helps companies implement, integrate, and enhance Salesforce. Seaport's approach marries your goals, your people, and your processes with a customized Salesforce solution that's right for you.

To learn more, visit seaportconsulting.com.

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If you or a founder you know would like to be a guest on In The Thick of It, email us at [e-mail]

Creators & Guests

Host

Scott Hollrah

Founder & CEO of Venn Technology

Guest

Chelsea Curtis

Founder, Seaport Consulting

What is In The Thick of It?

Join Scott Hollrah, founder of Venn Technology, as he takes you "In the Thick of It" with the real stories of founders who are actively navigating the challenges and triumphs of running their businesses. This podcast goes beyond the typical entrepreneurial success stories and delves into the messy, gritty, and sometimes chaotic world of building and growing a company. Get inspired, learn from the experiences of others, and gain insights into what it truly means to be in the thick of the entrepreneurial journey.

Hey, listeners, this is Scott Hollrah.

It's hard to believe that we launched
In The Thick of It almost a year ago.

As we're nearing our first anniversary,

we're working hard on a celebratory episode.

In the meantime, we'd love for you
to catch up on a founder story

you may have missed.

This week, we're going back
to the very beginning and are pleased

to share with you the story of Seaport
Consulting with founder Chelsea Curtis.

Well, I am so excited to, kick off our

our very first podcast episode
with a dear friend, Chelsea Curtis.

Chelsea and I first met,
I don't know, five, six, seven years ago.

just as I was
getting my firm off the ground

and she was kind of thinking
about doing something

and, Chelsea were really excited
to hear your story today.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm really happy to be here, Scott.

Thanks so much.

So just introduce yourself.

So my name is Chelsea Curtis.

I am from Boston, Massachusetts.

I actually grew up on Cape Cod, so,
nice summer community, but we were there

full time and I started a business
called Seaport Consulting.

And we are a Salesforce
consulting firm working with small

to medium sized businesses.

And we implement sales force
and support our clients

who utilize the Salesforce platform.

Grown up on Cape Cod.

Like, I don't know,

like I picture this very idyllic lifestyle
like everything's just perfect.

And, you know,
tell me a little bit about your grown up.

It really is.

And I think growing up there
and having that be

all you know is you take it for granted.

So you grew up in a small town,

sleepy,
especially in the winters, restaurants,

clothes, stores, clothes, and a lot of us
were just really itching to get out.

And so I ended up going to Georgetown
University in D.C.

and a few of my other friends, we were
we were like, ready to hit the big city.

You know, get out of this small town.

And we got to our cities
and we were like, wow,

we really had it made on Cape Cod.

We were right by the ocean,
you know, on the beach,

feeling that kind of sea salt breeze.

so a lot of us
made it back for the summer,

and we really appreciate it
more when we got older.

Isn't that funny?

You take things for granted
when you're there,

and then when you go away,
you realize how good it was.

This has been 18 plus years now.

My wife and I've been married for
for 18 years, and we did our honeymoon in

Maui.

And I can still remember
driving from the airport to the hotel.

It was late at night.

It was I don't
I said it was 10 or 11:00 at night,

and we're looking out over the ocean,
and we saw

what looked like a rainbow at night.

And we were just perplexed at this.

And we get into the hotel
and we ask the person at the front desk,

what was that that we saw?

And they go,
oh yeah, it's called a moonbow.

Like, no big deal.

I'm like, are you kidding me?

How is this not a big deal?

But when you when you live in it
every day,

it just kind of becomes old hat.

So I get it.

Well,
so you've been in Boston for how long now?

Ten years.

I moved back to Boston in 2011.

2012.

So you've been there a while.

I imagine, like most major metro areas,
you've seen a lot of growth

and change there.

It's unbelievable the the amount Boston

has grown,
the construction, the buildings going up.

Our company
name, seaport, is the area in Boston.

And it used to be just rickety old docks.

And then you had a legal seafood
and harpoon brewery

and you could see the ocean
very expansive.

And now there's just it,
it buildings everywhere.

It looks like the new kind of almost
like Financial District.

So it's incredible.

I think we met for drinks down there
somewhere a while back when I was in town,

and that is like a booming,
hip, thriving upper town.

It's it's a it's a fun, fun area.

And I feel very lucky
to have gotten Seaport

consulting.com the domain for, Seriously.

For that area. Yeah, it's been great.

I would have thought
you'd had a arm wrestle somebody for that.

So an interesting fact,
that I think people would,

you know, want to know about you.

You're a collegiate
and professional athlete.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah.

So I, I started playing golf
when I was seven years old.

My parents

threw me in a golf camp, and that was
it was kind of love at first sight.

And I started playing in tournaments
locally and then statewide

and then regionally and nationally,
and I was lucky enough to get recruited

by different schools and ended up
going to Georgetown and played there.

And I actually
I graduated around the time of,

the recession, Great Recession, and,
you know, not a lot of job opportunities.

And I was at the peak of my golf game.

I had just come off a really
great tournament, with a lot of big names.

So I, I decided to give it a shot.

And I qualified for what at the time
was called the Feature Store.

It is now the Epson Tour, which is the
developmental tour, underneath the LPGA.

It was an amazing experience.

I played on it for two years.

My first year was able to get to the,
16th on the money list,

made it to final stage,
LPGA, Q school, and playing

with all these LPGA ladies
and a little bit starstruck

and eventually decided
to come back to Boston and get a real job.

But it was an awesome experience.

I'm just so impressed that people
like you go out and actually try it.

I mean, there's so many people that aren't
willing to to take that risk, and

and you did.

And, you know, maybe that's
why you're a successful business

owner today, that you got some comfort
with some risk like that.

When I was thinking about this podcast
and coming on,

I that's exactly what I thought about was
how much golf has given me the tools

to be a founder and a business,
and to start my own business.

The game is just it's an individual sport.

There's a lot of exposure of yourself.

You're personally
putting yourself out there to either

succeed or see, you know, fail.

And there's a lot of failures in golf.

There's a lot of things that,
you know, it's not a game of perfect.

And I've learned a lot through golf
that it's really helped me in business.

We have a couple of,
collegiate athletes at my firm,

and they're superstars.

I think that playing at that level,
it develops a certain mental toughness.

And I was talking
we have a fractional CFO, outside CFO,

and we were talking about hiring

and the kinds of candidates
that they are looking for.

And and he said something
really interesting to me.

He said, man, I think you need to go out
and find a former college baseball player

because they are used to winning
about 30% of the time,

and they keep going after it,
and they make great salespeople.

And when he said that,
something really clicked.

And so anyway,
I think that there's a lot to be said for

how sports prepares you
for life in business.

So talk to me about that transition from,
you know, traveling around the country

playing the most beautiful golf courses
that America has to offer

to, as you put it, a real job.

Well, what was that first job?

The first job was sales

and marketing associate
at Schnitzer Property Services,

and they're a

construction management firm
just outside of Boston.

But my journey to get there was

it took me some months after the tour,

I felt a little lost as to
what do I want to do next.

And I started applying for jobs,

and it was the first time
where I was feeling

rejection from other people

that I didn't have the experience
or the skill sets that they wanted,

because they're looking at my resume
and saying, well, that's great.

You played golf, that's cool, but I need
someone who can jump in and start working.

So it was eye opening and I landed at SPS

and it was an amazing experience.

That's where I fell into Salesforce.

They were looking and evaluating
Salesforce back in 2011, 2012,

and that's when they asked me.

They said, do you want to take this on?

If we do this?

And I said, yeah, let's do it.

You know, what is Salesforce?

And, you know, back in 2012, I mean,

that was before lightning even existed.

It was before trailhead was rolled out.

I looked I decided to go
look this up because I remember

telling my parents I was like,
this company has something to it.

I think maybe you should
look at their stock and the stock price.

Back in 2012, January was $26.

And it's in the mid one hundreds,
but it's been as high

as, I don't know, high to 300
hundreds in the last year.

Yeah crazy.

We committed to Salesforce and I helped
implement Salesforce with a partner

and we really came out of it
incredibly happy.

We were able to see,
key metrics, data in an instant.

Whereas before we had separate systems
that were integrated,

we integrated the accounting.

From a construction management standpoint,
you know, resource

management is so important
in being able to forecast so

sales and pipeline, but then also
those closed one opportunities,

being able to see gross
and net profit against it.

So having that accounting data

come in and see that information
was incredible at the time.

How big of a company
were they when you were there?

So we had about 60 full time employees.

Plus they had, you know, subcontractors.

And that was a huge part
of what we ended up tracking in Salesforce

too, is being able
to manage those subcontractors.

And they were doing about,

I want to say 25 million in revenue.

And we exploded to 4050 in

just a matter of years
after we got Salesforce.

That's amazing.

So from there,
is that the company that you left

to start seaport,
or were you someplace in between?

Yes, I was at SPS
and once we got through several

different iterations
of implementing Salesforce, integrating it

with different tools, that's
when I said, I really like this.

I want to keep doing this
with other businesses.

And I went off on my own.

And that's when I met you, Scott.

You were one of the first people
I worked with going out on my own.

And the way that we were connected,
I think it was, man, it was

it was serendipity.

I think it was something
that was really good for both of us.

I was at a point of growth in my business
where I didn't want to keep working

nights and weekends,
and you were at a point

that you were thinking
about kind of branching out.

And and we got connected
by a random mutual associate.

And, and here we are,
all these all these years later.

So I know for me, like, I can
I can very, very easily

pinpoint that moment when it was like,
okay, I think I'm going to do this.

Do you have like that, that crystal clear

point in time that I was like, yes,
this was this was that that turning point

that made you say,
I'm going to make the jump.

And I would say that I really love
solving business problems

and utilizing the Salesforce platform.

And that was my initial jump into, let's,
let's try this.

Let's, let's be an independent contractor.

Let's go work
and see that the real moment for me

was as I was, you know,
getting into the consulting world

as I was working
with these various partners and companies,

I started to realize
how important communication was.

And while there was an incredible amount

of technical ability
and what people were doing,

it was actually amazing to me how

how much technology
was secondary to people.

And the more you can actually

really make those connections
with your clients

and be that bridge between technology
and your client,

you have that really clear communication
with them.

That was the piece to success.

That's where I saw the most successful
implementations and the best engagements.

And that was my moment of saying,
I can do this.

I can build a business around this, around
great client experience and quality.

I think that we
we share a very similar mentality.

Technology by itself is is worthless.

You know, we
we have to implement technology.

We're people and we're business process
converge with the systems.

You know, if we just go throw throw
some software out there into the wild,

it's it's never really going to be
a benefit to anybody starting a business.

You, you went from playing golf

to having, a steady paycheck.

When you start a business,
you typically, you know, don't start

with tons of revenue. Day one.

Was that a scary transition?

It was scary.

And especially living in Boston
and having more expenses.

City.

It's an expensive city, especially when
you like oysters and all the fashions.

I'm okay on the oysters, but I do.

I do love a good old fashion.

And that's another thing
that we really connected on.

Scott Whistlepig was the

you know, you were the first one
who introduced me to Whistlepig.

Oh, it's so good.

But it was incredibly scary.

I but I do go back to golf and think about
I was not getting a consistent paycheck.

I had to go perform to get paid.

And so it was a familiar feeling.

Golf is all about controlling
what you can control,

and you have to let go
of the things you can't control.

And you have to focus on the here
and now in the process.

And it's tough

not to think about outcomes at the time,
but you, that's how you succeed.

And so that's I really took again,
a lot of my learnings from golf

and put that into the business
when I was getting started.

And if I remember correctly,
tell me if I'm wrong here.

But when you were playing golf,

you definitely weren't flying around
on private jets, sponsored by Nike.

And I don't even think
you were flying around at all.

I'm pretty sure you were, like, literally
driving your car from city

to city across the country each week
to get to your tournaments.

Yes. Yeah.

So being on that, on that tour
just below the LPGA, it was not glamorous.

We would pack up
our cars and I had a Honda CRV.

I put the seats in the back down
and I organized.

It was basically a closet
and then some golf clubs

and we would drive around the country
from about

March or April
all the way until September.

And the way they had the tour structure.

You start in Florida and then you drive
down the south to Texas,

and then you go back up into the Midwest
to Iowa, Michigan, Indiana,

and then you start driving back
east through Kentucky or Ohio,

over to the northeast,
and then back down to Florida.

So as eastern half of the country,
you didn't make it out to the Pacific.

At the time.

The tour did not make it past
kind of that Texas

line, but, I believe they have
some tournaments out there. Now.

Once you've been to Texas, I mean,

you really don't need
to go anywhere else anymore.

Barbecue, beer, bourbon, all any.

All all good stuff.

So what fears did you have going into it?

And did any of those fears
actually come to, to pass?

Did any of those things actually,
that you were scared of or worried about?

Actually happen?

Even though I was comfortable
in that unknown,

I still had that fear of failure.

It feels just more personal
because you are starting the business.

It's if you don't make it, it's your fault
or you did something wrong.

And so there was that fear of failure.

As we were getting started,
the fear of not

knowing what was going to happen
or what to do next.

A lot of it was really learning
on the fly, which I loved.

But it's scary.

And as far as coming to pass, I

bring it back
to kind of the moment of communication

and you realize the importance of it
and, you know, starting out

seeing some of those travel projects
or seeing things that happen

and really learning from where
can you be better clear and simple.

Just because you say something to a client
doesn't mean they understand.

Same with an employee.

You know, just because you say something

to anyone doesn't mean
that they're going to understand

or that they understand the way
you were trying to communicate it to them.

That's for sure.

Have any of those things
led to significant hurdles

or problems in the business?

hurdle for us has been hiring.

I think one thing is that
I think I could have been

more aggressive with our growth plan,
but at the same time,

hiring has been a huge hurdle for us
finding the right people,

finding people with the same values as us.

And obviously, you know, the skill sets
of, of and people who are passionate

about working in Salesforce
and, helping our clients.

So it's it's been,
I think, more challenging and more time

consuming net
than I even expected for that piece.

So you talked about hiring
being a challenge

and you're not hiring
if you're not growing.

So talk to us about your
your kind of growth trajectory.

You know,
you don't have to give specific numbers

or anything like that, but kind of what
what has the growth been like.

So we are actually we're going to double

our headcount and revenue from last year.

So we're on track to do that for 2022,
which is pretty incredible.

That is awesome.

How did y'all fare
during the height of the pandemic?

It was a really interesting time.

I would say initially when the pandemic
first hit, there was a clear

pause that a lot of people took and said,
what's going to happen?

How is this going to shake out?

We're not going to commit or spend money.

But it didn't take
long for people to realize,

oh no, we are

working remotely now and working on paper

and spreadsheets on a server
is not going to work moving forward.

And being that my background
is in construction management for my

previous job, we found a nice little niche
of construction,

manufacturing, industrials,
and we saw a huge increase in interest

and need for Salesforce,
a cloud platform, to be able to work.

And so that actually has really

pushed us forward through the pandemic.

Also, we're working with companies

across the country, and initially

we had a real focus to
the northeast, were based in Boston, but

people are more open to working with us
because everyone's remote anyway.

And so we have clients
all over the country now,

and we some of them
we've never met in person before.

Isn't that crazy?

In our business,
we started some projects that

that have turned into a huge, huge

ongoing relationship and engagements
with with certain customers.

And a lot of them
spent a lot of money with our firm.

And until six months ago,
I had never met them.

And something about that
just didn't feel right.

Like you paid us a lot of money,
and I haven't had a chance

to actually shake your hand or sit down
and have a cup of coffee with you.

And so, thankfully, you know,
the world has started opening back up

and people have been receptive,

and we've been getting on planes
and going to visit people wherever we can.

And that's I don't know about you,
but that's been really refreshing for us.

There's some there's something
about the human connection

of being there
with someone that you just can't replace.

And I don't think we'll ever go away.

You know, people during the pandemic,
I think

thought, well, does this mean conferences
don't need to happen ever again?

And I think we've come to the answer
of no.

If I have to sit through
another virtual conference,

I don't know what I will do,
but it won't be pretty. I mean,

is this not sustainable?

When you start a small business,

at least in the early days,
most people have to do everything.

And I think in doing everything,
you quickly figure out

what are the things that you like doing
and what are the things that you

loathe doing.

What are the parts that you like the most

and what are the parts that you like
the least?

Great question.

So it is true.

I was doing everything.

I was the accountant, I was H.R.,
I was working on projects,

I was managing consultants, I was sales,

I love working with clients,
solving problems,

being able to show business outcomes,

KPIs, reports, dashboards,

being able to see clients touch something
that we help build every day

and it becomes the backbone of their
organization is just so rewarding.

So that's what I love
from a client perspective.

And then with our with our people,
with our team,

it's just I mean,
we work with such great people who care

so much and work so hard,
and you go back to the sports

and athletes, there's a level of grit
that I think is necessary

with consultants to be able to do this job
and being able to give them the

the space to learn
and grow has been awesome.

And so the things that take me away
from those two things

are the things that, you know,
some of them are tedious.

I might loathe
some of them I'm okay doing,

but I don't like that
it's taking me away from things,

having to learn accounting,
having to learn all the tax filings

and things that a business needs to know,
you know, insurance, all of that.

It's it's quite the black hole of things
that is just

expansive in its knowledge.

You mentioned having to learn accounting.

What was your degree in college?

I was a biology major.

Yeah, because, you know,

Salesforce Consulting and accounting,
they're so close to biology, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I've not used my my degree once.

I will say that.

But I think, you know, the science is
you think very

logically lots problem solving
which has been great.

But man, the first time
I got into my QuickBooks, I was like, I

don't know what this is.

Yeah, debits and credits, you know.

Yeah.

Journal entries.

I don't have a card for that. Yeah.

You talked about
you're going to double this year.

What do you attribute your success to?

What has caused that?

You know, straight up
curve in your business.

So going back to our values,

our guiding light of great

communication, great client experience
quality, we've done an amazing job

of retaining clients
and working with them.

After our initial project
or implementation.

70% of our business is recurring
clients, existing clients.

And so having that base to
then just grow upon

with new business is really
what has accelerated our growth.

We really love working long term
with clients and being there.

So you work on a project
we maintain with managed services support,

and then we figure out what
that next project is.

That's a huge part of it.

Outside of hiring, what do you see

as hurdles to that continued
level of growth?

That is a great question.

It's also is the people
organization of it, and having individuals

grow into managers to be able to hire
those people underneath them.

So a lot because we are small
business is still on me.

So being able to have people move up,

to be able to manage others
and start to grow that.

But another piece and I'm

very proud of this, is we've been able
to grow the business organically

without taking any investment money,

any taking on any debt or any loans.

I've not taken a single loan
and it's it's been amazing.

I mean, that gives me the power to say
we are going

to make decisions based on quality versus
having to think about growth

in a way that a tech company
who's taking VC money would have to,

but that that does mean
cash flow constraints.

And do we continue on that path,

or do we eventually take money to help
grow faster?

That's something that a lot of,
a lot of small business

owners are going to have to grapple
with at some point?

Like you, we've been able to grow

organically without taking outside money,

and you do get to a certain point
where when you get to a certain

critical mass, 1
or 2 of months can be really difficult.

But you also look out and you go, hey,
I know that this is just a season

and we've got to maintain
our staffing levels,

we've got to maintain these other things,
and we've got to make it

through this lean period,
because we know there's something great.

On the other side.

And that's a difficult thing.

When there is money available.

Do you do it?

Do you do it or do you not do it.

And that
and then that's one of the challenges

of being a business
owner is we're not given the right answer.

We don't know what that right answer is
until we get to the other side.

And so you really have to look at all

the information provided
and make that decision and commit to it.

That's a great segue
into another question that I have.

You said you don't know the right answer
until you get to the other side.

You've been at this for several years.

If you could go back and talk to yourself

right as you were starting seaport,
what would you tell yourself?

I would say that it's okay

to really just jump in and go for it,

and that it's really important

to find what your value is
and stick to it.

And again, use that as your guiding light

to be able to make decisions
based on that.

It makes it really simple to say,
is this the right decision?

If our goal is to have great client
experience and quality,

and we have walked away from projects

that we didn't think
we could execute on 100%,

and we've walked away from clients
who we didn't think

had the same values as us.

That had the right expectations in mind,

who didn't see us as a valued partner
and a mutual respect

and more of like a client vendor and
and that's what we're always looking for

is that partnership with our clients
and that mutual respect.

It's refreshing to hear other people
say that because we're the exact same way.

There are times that we have walked away
from huge,

huge projects
and I have slept better at night

knowing that that money wasn't
going to hit the bank, but also that

I wasn't going to have to,
you know, guide my people through

what was going to be a difficult project
or a difficult client.

And I think that what that speaks to is

how much you, Chelsea, value your team
and you want to create

a great atmosphere
and a great environment that they want to.

They want to get up and
and work hard for each day.

And that's really hard
when you've got that client

that just doesn't
have realistic expectations.

I totally agree.

What surprises have you had along the way?

Is there something that was like, well,
I just never really thought of that.

I think the big surprise

and I kind of already mentioned this,
one of the biggest surprises for me

was the fact that I could grow this
without taking money.

I really did think that even to get it off
the ground,

we would we would need some sort
of funding to make this work.

But we've been able to bring on people
and have, you know, the benefits

and everything that we need for people
to feel like they have security

to do this job
and work with us on our team.

That's really been the biggest surprise
so far.

Where do you see
the company in 3 to 5 years?

I see us continuing

to grow and continuing. Our.

Mission and our values of being able
to work with great clients,

continuing that process
of being able to bring on new clients

and work with them
long term on their entire plan.

With Salesforce as the platform.

We've worked
with so many other applications

and systems because Salesforce integrates
so nicely with other tools.

So we're learning a lot of tools as well.

What tools outside of Salesforce
do y'all use internally

that you are at a point
now that you just couldn't live without?

We use Konga right now
for DAC Gen as well as E sign,

although we also have pan to doc working

and then we use form assembly

for different forms
and time tracking as well.

And were evaluating
DevOps tools at the moment.

So we're looking towards getting something
that will really help us save time.

Most of

my focus right now is on acquiring tools
that can really create efficiencies

with our consultants,
just because that is finite, our time.

And so the more we can save people's
time, the better.

I think it's important,
even in a small business,

to really invest in technology and systems
that can help you grow in scale.

And I think that a lot of small businesses
tend to overlook that in the early days,

and they find themselves
having to invest more

by doing things manually
than if they would,

you know, put the money into tools
that that would automate things.

So one of my favorite podcasts,
it highlights businesses

that have typically grown
into these massive, massive companies.

They've been bought out or gone public.

And almost every one of those stories

has a nearly catastrophic moment.

Have you had any of those at support,
or have you been able to to escape that?

We have not had a moment like that yet,

and I say yet so we can chat for
years to see what happens.

Fair enough.

Well, if somebody came to you and in fact,

I imagine that people have come to you
that were thinking about

starting their own businesses,
what advice would you give them?

I think this is something
that people say a lot,

but it's so true, is
you can't be afraid to fail.

You got to put yourself out there.

You have to be vulnerable.

It's just part of what you need to do.

You really need to start that business
and you have to go all in

if you want to be successful.

And it goes back to finding that value.

What's going to be your guiding light
to to really make

those decisions, focus
on that and push forward.

That's sound advice.

So looking back in your years
of doing this, what has been the absolute

pinnacle that the absolute highest high
that you have experienced?

I think I'm in it right now.

The fact that we're going to double
in both headcount and revenue

this year based off of our projections,
I mean, even if you look at just

the first half of this year,
it is more than double last year.

So I'm in it right now.

We have, head of operations, we have
a head of sales and we have consultants.

And it really feels like
the team is coming together

and we're ready to just continuing
to grow and grow and grow.

That's awesome.

Is there anything that you have tried that

you expected to work that didn't?

And I guess, conversely,
is there something that you have kind of

taken a risk on that has turned out
better than you expected it to?

Something that I tried and didn't work?

Let me start with the other question.

So I think our managed services
has done really well,

and it's something that I didn't

I wasn't sure if that was going to work,

but I think we're going into a new era

where systems are becoming

a lot more challenging
to maintain day to day,

and it feels like there's

a lot of need for sales ops, rev ups.

Those are becoming incredibly
important roles, but maybe not necessarily

a lot of people who have been
in those roles as we start to expand that.

And so we've been able to take a chance
there.

on trying to figure out
how to manage that.

And, sell
that business has worked really well.

Something that hasn't worked.

I'm blanking.

Anything come to mind for you, Scott?

I can think of, a couple things
that we probably rushed into that,

probably should have taken a little bit

more time
and due diligence to to work through.

We've implemented some systems internally
that on the surface looked great,

pulled the trigger a little too quickly,
and, we get partway through our own

implementation of an expense management
tool, for example.

And it was very clear very quickly
that it was not going to to work.

There have been a couple of

product partnerships
that we have stepped into.

And to your point earlier about

like you said, you
you really have to jump in with both feet.

You can't really kind of

hover on the surface or dab want something
you really, really got to commit.

And there's a number of
of these partnerships that I've gone

into probably
with unrealistic expectations about.

Yeah, we're going to

we're going to join this partner program
and things are just going to

magically take off.

And I've got people internally
that are reminding me

that we really do have to
to jump in with both feet.

We can't dabble and expect things
to really take off and be successful.

And I want to look at the parts
of our business that have been successful.

It is because we have just fully,
fully thrown ourselves at those things.

That makes a lot of sense.

And you did make me think of one thing
that we've been struggling to do,

which is implement a really great way

of tracking time against projects.

I think as consultants, that is something

that is important and is a challenge.

And so

as much as

we make recommendations to our clients,

sometimes it's hard to practice
what you preach.

And we're still a small business
just trying to keep our head above water,

and we're still working through our own
internal operations as well.

Well, Chelsea, thanks so much for being
our first guest and so proud of you.

It has been awesome to to get to see you
grow your business over these years.

I love our check ins periodically and wish
you just nothing but continued success.

Scott, I, I feel so honored
that you would even think of me

for your podcast
and you have been an amazing

sounding board, someone who
I really respect and look up to.

I think van is an amazing organization
and we would be so lucky to,

you know, follow in your footsteps
of what you've been accomplishing.

And actually,
that's a great point to make for future

founders is find your mentors.

It's so important to find mentors
and to have people who can give you

that advice and listen to them
because they've made those mistakes.

And so and they can give you the inside
tips on on how to not do that

and move forward and learn
from what other people have done.

Thank you so much
for those those kind words.

and B, I just want to second that.

And when it comes to mentors, mentorship

doesn't have to be anything formal.

I have dozens of people

who I would consider to be mentors,

which I meet with with regularity.

Others, it's infrequent.

Sometimes it's circumstantial and it's,
oh my gosh,

what do I do about the situation?

I'm going to call this person.

But it is absolutely crucial
as a business owner,

as a founder, to surround yourself
with with other like minded individuals.

You talked earlier so much about values
and how you want to work with customers

that share your values.

You want to hire employees
who share your values, and

I think the same is true in terms
of finding mentors who share your values.

So well said. Totally agree.

Well, Chelsea,
thank you so much for joining us.

And, checking again down the road.

Sounds great. Thanks, Scott.

That was Chelsea Curtis, founder of Seaport Consulting.

To learn more, go to seaportconsulting.com.

If you or a founder you know would like
to be a guest on In The Thick of It.

Email us at [e-mail].