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Each episode of GAIN Momentum focuses on timeless lessons to help grow and scale a business in hospitality, travel, and technology. Whether you’re a veteran industry leader looking for some inspiration to guide the next phase of growth or an aspiring executive looking to fast-track the learning process, this podcast is here with key lessons centered around four questions we ask each guest.
GAIN Momentum episode #15 - Selling Into Service Companies Requires Customer Service | with Robert Stevenson
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[00:00:00] Jason Emanis: Welcome to another episode of the GAIN Momentum podcast focusing on timeless lessons from global industry leaders about how to grow and scale a business and hospitality, travel, food service and technology. I'm Jason Emanis here with my co host Adam Mogelonsky. Adam, how are you?
[00:00:25] Adam Mogelonsky: Fantastic.
[00:00:27] Jason Emanis: Good. Our guest today is Robert Stevenson, CEO of INTELITY. Hello, Robert.
[00:00:34] Robert Stevenson: Hey guys, thanks for having me.
[00:00:36] Jason Emanis: Take it away, Adam.
[00:00:37] Adam Mogelonsky: So, Robert and listeners, our format is we're focusing on timeless lessons. Focusing a little bit on the here and now, but mostly what everyone can learn from very experienced business leaders in hospitality, travel and technology. So it is a delight to have Robert on board today. We structure our podcast around four key questions that we ask all guests.
[00:01:00] So we're going to dive right into the first question. And that is. Robert, when it comes to scaling a business, what is the single piece of advice you would give entrepreneurs from your perspective as a professional in hospitality technology?
[00:01:16] Robert Stevenson: Great question. Thank you, Adam. Yeah, I think the first thing to do is, , the word scale, of course, has many meanings to many people. And, , none of the meanings are totally correct or totally incorrect. And I think really assessing your business, your particular thing that you're trying to accomplish and, and really digging in, and what is it that you're actually trying to scale, right? , what is it? Is it a piece of unit economics that is your sort of special formula that operates your business and drives growth or drives, , , your go to market or drives a particular aspect of your business that you believe is going to, , to carry you forward, but to really go in and figure out fundamentally what is it you're trying to scale, right? because, , you can attack scale in many ways, right? There's, , , obviously scaling up your footprint and a marketing or go to market context, or scaling up from a tech or a tech platform, , , sort of components and, , building up and building efficiently there, you can, , , scale, of course, in your core business, , what is the core thing that you're selling and the unit economics around that, but really as an entrepreneur to really assess. Hey, I'm ready to scale. I'm probably past some early stage of just trying to figure things out, get a few customers in, and I think I'm ready for scaling, but really trying to tear apart your business and really think about it holistically, about what is that, that you're actually trying to scale. And then... Backing into that, right? And, I suggest this pause and this sort of, , , self reflection before going and perhaps it's, , might be raising some capital to go, , scale more quickly, get some venture money or some private equity money to go, scale more quickly. There's plenty of folks out there that are excited about businesses that are pre scale and ready to scale, but have that self reflection and, , bring in outside people, right?
[00:03:04] Ask your staff, , go and talk to some of your customers and make sure that the component. , the part of the business that you're trying to scale and scale up is indeed, , the key thing that's going to help you and help you grow in the long run, right? It's kind of awful to go in and, , Hey, we're going to, we think this is what it is and we think this is our secret sauce.
[00:03:23] And then two, three years later to realize that you put all this effort in and, your business is really no better. And maybe it's, maybe it's grown a little bit, but not in the way that it, it, it potentially could. So, there's this kind of mentality around startups or younger companies of, bootstrapping and the lean startup and kind of this aggressivity and move quickly, break things, , all the sort of Silicon Valley like phrases that pop out. And all that's good and all that's great. And I think, , there's merit in those things, but also being cautious pre scale, , about where you're going to put your energy, where you're going to put your effort. Because once you've kind of left the station and you're saying, hey, I'm scaling my business and it is around these two or three things that I'm going to be focused on. My capital is going in there. My staff are going to be focused on it. once that train has left the station, you can move around, of course, right? You can, you can pivot and some companies can be more nimble than others, but you do begin to build a momentum around that scaling effect and, , making sure that you land. , months or years later in a zone that you're, you're really happy with, right? You can look back and you can look at your P& L, you can look at your financials or whatever your measurement of the business health is, perhaps it's the number of customers, perhaps it's daily active users, whatever it is that you're happy with the, KPI outcome on the other side of that sort of scale push. , to build a little bit on it, , I, I would say the self reflection, making sure you're scaling in the right area, your unit economics, if that's the core thing that you're trying to sell, if you're selling a widget, , to hotels or to restaurants and, , that widget involves the sales process and it involves a installation process and it involves a customer success process and that little , virtuous cycle that you could replicate over and over and over if that's the thing, , make sure that you understand that sort of like in a 360 fashion as best you can before you start applying a ton of energy on it, right? if your, your widget or your, your secret sauce is like, look, I just, I just need footprint, right?
[00:05:15] Like I might be running a business that is, , , negative cashflow and I'm okay with that. Or I'm okay with losing some money because I'm going to be able to raise money, , for the foreseeable future, but my scaling effect is, is really grabbing a lot of market share. Maybe you have a unique widget that goes into restaurants and it's better than everybody else's widget. , restaurants will adopt this. And if , if you wait that, , competitors will come in and, and muscle you out. Perhaps your scaling effort is really on to go to market and, getting your product out there and getting the footprint out there and you're pushing off some of the, , the cashflow considerations, maybe some of the P& L considerations . make sure you're making decision between the one business case that I described. And the other business case that I described, you making that decision consciously, , before you apply that sort of scale push as I call it.
[00:05:59] So easy to get it wrong and, , be prepared to get it wrong and, and correct of course. I would say self reflection, make sure before you scale, you're ready to scale, what it is you're trying to do and, , you're marshaling your resources to do that so that on the other end you have a very positive outcome.
[00:06:15] Jason Emanis: Yeah, that's been my experience is once the train leaves the station, I like that it's too late. It's hard to turn that thing around or go left go a little bit more right or whatever and you're gonna get it wrong you can't get it all right right and then it's it's being able to adjust and not just you as the CEO or maybe the top three execs it's being able to Push it down everywhere.
[00:06:40] It's like, okay, we were going that way, but now we're just going to give it just a little bit more over here because it's just not happening. It's tough.
[00:06:49] Robert Stevenson: Once you have, if you've got a team of, , above 20, 30, and you've got the entire, , tree of all the way out to the leaves of everybody moving the same direction on a scaling process, it is hard to change that momentum, right? , the outer leaves are not going to get the message even if you change. , for you can get up and have an all hands and be in front of everybody. But if they're already marching in a certain direction, they've already got customers moving in a certain direction, or they've got processes moving in a certain direction, , unwinding that takes time, right?
[00:07:18] So, but be prepared, right? Like, you're probably going to get it wrong a little bit. And like you said, tweak it, , and try to adjust and be pretty quick on that because once that train has got the momentum, it's, it's hard.
[00:07:30] Adam Mogelonsky: I'm going to pick out one little thing from what you said, talking about negative cash flow and sort of to dominate the market or the grow or die mentality. When do to switch? How do when to change goals to really focus on getting that positive cash flow?
[00:07:47] Robert Stevenson: Yeah, that's a great question. And it's unique to every business and unique to every entrepreneur and, and management team, right? , you're in negative cashflow, unless you're funding that yourself, you're probably taking on, , , equity based funding or debt based funding, and that's obviously going to dilute your, your future value.
[00:08:03] , so it's a measurement between, , current value and future value against the dilution. And what are you willing to do? Right. And, , really looking at it, through that lens. It's difficult in the moment, right? If you're looking at something and you're like, you really believe in it, you've got a lot of passion and you've got negative cash flow, but you believe you can dominate a market or get out in front of competitors or perhaps gain enough market share that you can partner with some bigger folks and that will propel your business into a second phase. All of these are very valid strategies. I mean, , , all our giant tech companies basically started in this way at one point, they were building their businesses, , in some, some cases, , decades ago, but they all started with, , Hey, I'm not sure if this is going to work and I'm going to take on some funding, or take on some risk to build my thing.
[00:08:46] And then, , lo and behold, you have quote, unquote, a unicorn. And then later on, 10 plus billion dollar valuation type companies. So, , very common way to do it and, , very appropriate, but, it really is, I think the risk tolerance and management tolerance of each team in each unique situation. , my personal advice is Greg, , Think about what it is you're trying to do personally, , particularly if you're a founder, CEO, or you're on the founding team, , where you're at in your career, where you're at in your, sort of life cycle of, , in my, in my early twenties, you feel a little differently about risk profile and money than you do. Later in your career, , when you're in your fifties and, , like, well, you might want to take a little less risk and, focus on cashflow and a tighter business plan. Maybe it might be more appropriate for, , an older founder, but everybody's unique everybody's different, in what they want to do. If you run a negative cash flow business, run out of money at some point, right? You can only raise money so far, right? It's going to exceed your valuations are going to be underwater versus what you can raise. If you've got, you're running into that problem, , you should obviously slow down and figure out how to get cash flow positive.
[00:09:49] But, , most people have a pretty good signal of when that's going to happen.
[00:09:54] Adam Mogelonsky: Rob, we're going to dive into the second question, which is, what are some of the common pitfalls and or failures you have witnessed that business owners should look to avoid when scaling their business?
[00:10:07] Robert Stevenson: Yeah, no, it's a great, great, great question and I think we touched on it a little bit earlier. You do find people, , quote unquote scaling a business and, and they're not scaling the right area. They're way down the train, , two, three years later and , they haven't solved, maybe the go to market, they haven't solved, perhaps the cashflow, like, they've got a widget out there. that's, you've got some market share, but, , the competitors have a similar product, and you're able to muscle your way in, but you're losing money, , faster than, can be printed. All those kind of things we said is that self reflection up front too is where you're trying to get to. So when you get there, , your KPIs, your metrics, those goals are really, , holistically met. , you could look at it and say, okay, if I land at this place, I'm going to be in my phase two or my next rise in the business or next chapter, whatever, analogy you want to use and, , making sure that, you're not going in a, in a direction that it's going to trip you up long term difficult to see, right?
[00:11:02] , you're looking at it and, , this is the challenge always for entrepreneurs and, and startup management teams at young companies is you get myopically focused on it, right? , Hey, here's what we've got. And you're probably passionate about it, right? You may be, maybe it's probably your own baby, right?
[00:11:16] Maybe like step back and look at it and, determine, like I said, that sort of self reflection might be obscured by a passion that will definitely, , sort of trip you up. I would say, , if you get to sort of a mid market type company, , you've got 10 million, 15 million in revenue, recurring revenue, , or, or pretty reliable, , year by year sort of growth, on sort of non recurring type revenue, , at least, , 15, 20 percent type, type of growth. If you can get yourself to that sort of phase, just, , outside of the startup phase, it's probably, , lower middle market kind of phase.
[00:11:49] If you can get into that zone. And you've met that sort of scaling, , sort of criteria that you had laid out at the beginning, you probably had to win. You're probably in a, in a good spot. And obviously you can get above that, right? You can, , go from zero dollars on day one to, , 30 million plus, , you're, you're, probably on your way.
[00:12:08] Jason Emanis: And you're talking about, , focus on the right thing so that you can, you're aiming at the right thing. A lot of people are solving the same problem. , six different companies all trying to solve the same problem. And. And I think that kind of what you're talking about, , it's, it's hard to see, , it's hard to see through the forest, right? , I just wonder how many are truly able to see the problem they want to solve and how they can do it differently. Because if they're doing it like everybody else, then it's just the who's better race, and that's hard to grow.
[00:12:44] Robert Stevenson: Yeah, absolutely. , myself personally, my career spent a lot of time on competitive analysis. I would say in restaurant tech, hospitality tech, , it's a friendly , sort of cooperative competition, , , most of the tech companies in this space, for Intellity. , we have to integrate with one another, , there's not a hotel on the other side or, , partner on the other side that's going to be like, well, , we just want Intellity and, we don't want a PMS, right?
[00:13:09] That conversation doesn't ever happen, right? So you, you need to be Friends with everybody, but at the same time you need to study them, right? , and I would say outside of hospitality tech, the same advice, right? If you're out there doing whatever your widget is, and you feel like there's competitors, point competitors are more full direct competitors, , in your space. I definitely would advise studying that, trying to figure out what they're doing, , follow them on CrunchBase, , follow their website, sign up for their newsletter, , if you see them at a show.
[00:13:39] One of the things I did joining, , Intellity or formerly Keeper before we, , acquired Intellity was I went to high tech, my first high tech, and ... I had only been on the ground about a month and I signed up for high tech, , under a fake. I mean, I use my real name, but I signed up under a fake company and had a fake badge. And I walked around the show as a hotel guy, , trying to, , buy hotel software from various vendors. And nobody knew who I was.
[00:14:05] Nobody knew my face. This is, , seven plus years ago. And so I was able to like, listen to the pitch that everybody was doing, right? , here's some guys doing something similar to what we're doing.
[00:14:14] So, , be clever and try to, , , exactly follow your competitors. And I think, , Jason. So what you're driving at, , once you understand them, and what they're doing, there probably is some variation. If they are going down a path of, their widget and you've got your widget. What, what's the difference between yours and theirs, right? Like don't go down to the price.
[00:14:34] Like, oh, mine's cheaper. That's always, not always, but usually a bad decision because you're just going to destroy value for yourself and you're going to destroy value for them.
[00:14:42] So don't start with a, , a price kind of attack approach, but, , think about how am I different? How am I better? And perhaps you're selling very similar things and perhaps the, the marketing messaging and just how you're positioning can be a major, , determining factor about success or failure.
[00:14:58] I would say, , What's interesting in hotels and in restaurants, , it's always the industry's accused of being sort of slow to adopt tech and those kinds of things. And I, That's very true. , certainly not cutting edge in terms of technology. I think from the standpoint of companies that are competing in the space, particularly, , tech vendors, doing stuff, I think that actually kind of works to your advantage. You're not required to be on the cutting edge and, , such an R& D, bleeding edge that, , the only way to win is that your R& D is, slightly better than everybody else. It's more than that, right? , hotels and restaurants are looking for exactly the kinds of things that they provide to their guests. They're looking for service. They're looking for hospitality. They're looking for those kinds of components in your business. And so being smart in that area can be a, , a winning formula.
[00:15:47] Like if you've got a competitor who's weaker at it, then, , go to market with, Hey, I'm, I'm really the best hospitality player here, right? I understand your business and I work on work with you just like you work with your customers. Right. Thank you.
[00:15:57] Adam Mogelonsky: really interesting point to look at it because a lot of tech companies might not immediately see that there have to also be service companies as well, because they're dealing with service clients, so the culture sort of exudes into it. So, we're going
[00:16:12] do you have any quick pieces of advice for tech companies to really orient themselves towards being a service culture?
[00:16:21] Robert Stevenson: knew this from the beginning of, of Keeper and, probably would have taken the SAT question and answered it correctly, but then it's a little hard to execute on it, but your customer success effort really matters in a service related, , , customer base.
[00:16:35] Right. So that post sale. Not tech support, right? The customer success effort of here's our platform. Here's our widget. Here's our thing. And making sure that that, partner on the other side is making good use of it, , taking it and, , getting maximum value out of it. All of the things that you intended when you scaled up your business, that those are being translated on the other side. The service industry, , it's notorious for people change jobs, , people that might have purchased your widget, are not there, , two years later. And you need to re educate them. You might need to reacquaint them. You might need to resell essentially what you already did.
[00:17:13] So I, I would say the customer success effort, probably not the first thing you need to do, , as a startup when you're lean and mean and, three guys in the garage. But when you get to the scale level, , if you're forgetting about customer success, I would say it's going to be very hard in a service world to be mindful of your customer.
[00:17:30] Adam Mogelonsky: Robert, on to the third question here. Talked about the common pitfalls, now we're looking at the opportunities. So what do you see as the key opportunities and challenges for hospitality technology companies in 2023 and beyond?
[00:17:48] Robert Stevenson: Yeah, it's a great question and something we think about all the time. I would say, , the question we talked about before, we talked a little bit about hospitality, , tech being not necessarily cutting edge R& D, , , while we see, , chat GPT and all kinds of AI stuff out there making headlines on, TechCrunch and, , the Wired and all these kind of places. All that's great, , it's not necessarily a application that is needed in an immediate full effect in hotels. There's time, right? There's plenty of things that can be done, between now and when there's an AI bot running the, , the front desk, , virtual front desk or something like that in the, in the future, right?
[00:18:27] Those things will come and those things will come in other industries, frankly, faster and, more quickly and that's okay. So I think, , As an opportunity for hospitality tech companies, that, that is it, right? You have time to develop and take what we talked about earlier. What's your unique, unique differentiator, what makes your widget special? And you have time to work that tech and product angle in a way that is effective. You're not under the extreme pressure of, , Hey, I gotta be first to market with my VR thing, or I gotta be the first to market with my cool chatGPT, , AI based, , the movie, her, , assistant that walks around with me all day long.
[00:19:05] Right? You're not in that kind of rush. It's just a very different kind of rush, right?
[00:19:09] So take advantage of that. And I, I do think, , obviously you should put time on, on new r and d type things, , Ignore them, but, , relieve yourself of some of that pressure and then focus really on.
[00:19:21] The thing that benefits to, , hotels, restaurants, and, , sort of generally in hospitality, they're trying to solve pain points day in, day in and day out.
[00:19:28] Those pain points do change. They changed after the pandemic. They're changing even now. , people wear all QR codes and, , on the app and all that kind of stuff. And you can see now you can go to restaurants now and it's drifting back, right? It's drifting back to more in person service. And the workforce has stabilized quite a bit.
[00:19:45] People are getting, , paid decent levels, maybe not what they should, should totally be earning, , quite yet, but we're getting back into a kind of stable career minded kind of workforce in hospitality. And we're getting away from that sort of pandemic mindset of everything's got to be digital.
[00:20:00] Everything's got to be on the app, , kind of mindset. And so that, that opens up new things, right?
[00:20:05] , As a hospitality tech company, you can step right into that, right? Understand what is the latest pain point. Well, how can we drive efficiency for those staff members? , how can we do, things that are better for them day to day? I love to listen to the customers. , that's one thing. To provide opportunity for the company is always listen to the customers. I love going on site to a customer, not, sometimes I don't tell the staff, I've done this probably a dozen times in my lifetime at Keeper and Intellity. Just stay at one of our properties, right? Download the app. , for us doing mobile check in and all those kinds of things are key. Do all that stuff. Undercover boss at a little bit like. Wow, that didn't work quite right. Boy, that dialogue box was kind of clear, but maybe we, we could reword it, those kinds of things.
[00:20:49] And, , I'd recommend doing that and that, that right there will help you improve, improve and, provide you opportunity to continue to make your, , your product better. , tech in, , hospitality, as we said, it's not necessarily, , , the top of mind necessarily for all customers. They're worried about their guests, worried about, , obviously the cashflow of their, their hotel businesses and restaurant businesses. And so, , being top of mind is, sometimes a little tricky, right? You might be bringing a great widget that can really help them, but making sure that, , You're in, in front of them, and proving out the necessity for your tech, is always a challenge.
[00:21:23] , last thing I'll, I'll say in that area too, right? We talked about customer success and, and being service minded. It's not easy, right? When you're looking at a company that's in hotel tech, You got a lot of engineers, right? And engineers and, , hotel, , front desk people, they're, they're not the same. They're not cut from the same cloth.
[00:21:39] They have different like aspirations. They have different, , approaches and, you're dealing with, , some momentum that is very techie. And then you're dealing with the momentum that is also very service minded. And so, , I think that is always a challenge trying to find that right balance, right? When's the right time to, , to bring the engineer in? When's the right time that customer success needs to address something and, striking that, that, that balance as you go.
[00:22:02] Jason Emanis: Yeah, I wonder how many applications Need to spend time re familiarizing their clients with their application versus CRM, chatGPT in there.
[00:22:14] Robert Stevenson: I, I would say, probably We, we expect to revisit our customers and kind of re educate them, particularly the top ones on, on a pretty recurring basis, right? , QBR, , kind of, kind of style, like check in, make sure that you're visiting them, make sure that, , because on a large, like one of our large casino resorts, I mean, there's, there's hundreds of people working there, right? Many of them will be touching our application, using our product and if you're not on top of the change in that, and just in that flow, right, , out of those, , 500 people, a hundred of them changed in the last six months. , that right there, 20 percent of people don't, don't know your product perhaps.
[00:22:54] And then, so you do need to be on top of it, , with regular engagement.
[00:22:58] Adam Mogelonsky: You talk about the intersection of staff changing and engagement, and I'm wondering if you can speak to how technology specifically can help with staff engagement and staff retention.
[00:23:11] Robert Stevenson: Yeah, I, I think, , a lot of hospitality tech companies, in all the different forms, , that's one of the things that I think everybody's tries to get to is like, look, my application can be really great at checking people in or doing some upsell or perhaps, , managing the staff calendar or whatever, right? But everybody tries to dive in and make it so that the staff can get into the application and understand, and see benefit from it pretty much right away, right? If they're not going to see that, or it's going to be difficult to use. , like people are busy. right? And, and again, The main focus of somebody working at, , , a restaurant is getting out quality food and making sure that there's a great meal on the table and, and courteous and quick service. Same thing at a hotel, making sure people are, , feeling like they got the service and hospitality that they deserve for the type of hotel and class that it is. I'm not really interested in messing around with your weird software, right? If you're going down, , an approach of selling almost anything, this, the staff have to be able to understand it and use it and be effective with it. And if you achieve that and you make their lives easier, right? That it's huge, right? Like, Oh, wow. I was able to offset , some part of my workday through this piece of technology, or I was able to make my guests experience better through this piece of technology. And that right there, , benefits the staff, right there, they can see the benefit on the other side, right?
[00:24:38] As long as it's easy, right? Like, so you took your 30, 35 steps to make the guests experience marginally better. Like that's, that's Probably not a great widget that you built. but , if, if you're able to effectuate a good outcome. And the staff can easily do it and achieve a result. You found the win, right?
[00:24:55] I also sort of say is like, the staff, , they work in pods, they work in teams, and think about that always as well, right? , if you're delivering something that, that needs to be operated by, , more than one person person.
[00:25:07] probably making sure that you facilitate that you know, that's all I can say about the, the WDJ, , but I'm hoping that, the infrastructure and, , what other things are coming onto the, but with the, , the, , the digital transformation. And so, , I'd like to just kind
[00:25:32] Adam Mogelonsky: Awesome. Robert, we're going to shift into the fourth question here. What are the key things innovative leaders and entrepreneurs should prioritize and focus on to gain traction for their business?
[00:25:46] Robert Stevenson: We talked a little bit about scaling earlier, and I, I think you do have to find that scaling point, but, , before scaling, right, you, you really do need to get your product market fit right, your widget right, your core product, in the right zone pre scale, and, , I think you must, , prioritize in that area and try to drive innovation in that area.
[00:26:05] We talked a little bit, Jason mentioned, , you've got a lot of competitors, a lot of people may be doing the same thing, making sure that you've built that widget properly. And, , it, it's not easy, right? You, you, you're going to have probably, some product focus. You're going to have to have some, some go to market and sales and marketing focus. The people that you're building in your team to kind of get that going, , the first people in the door, around that is priority number one, right? Like, who are these people? What is the widget that we're building and making sure that you really get that right.
[00:26:35] And being really, , mindful of Look, I've got this team, and this team can scale up or maybe this team can't, right? And so prioritizing that careful mix of your minimum viable product, if you want to call it that, your sort of lean product and the people that are building it. And then the next wave of people that are going to need to, , to potentially scale it up.
[00:26:57] I would prioritize and focus on that almost right away, right? That's where you, you've got to start.
[00:27:02] If you fail on the people side or you fail on the product side, there's nothing to scale. At the end of the day, you might set up something to scale, but , nothing's worse than, oh, we got a great product, but that foundational team that we put together. Isn't all bought in on it, or they're fractured, or , Joe believes we should be over here with the product, and Sally believes we should be over there with the product. Not going to work, right? In flipping it around, Joe and Sally might be perfectly aligned on the product, but the minimum viable product doesn't have a chance in the market because, , it's very similar to competitors, , you're going to be everywhere and nowhere, right?
[00:27:34] So prioritize on those things. I think as you, as you mature the company, the focus does change, , , we talked about scaling quite a lot at the beginning. If you're the CEO or the founder, your, your focus is going to shift more towards the people. It just has to, you're going to be, , big picture strategy, probably involved in various tactical areas as you mature the company, but you have to, Hire people to do those things, right?
[00:27:56] You can't be involved in every tech support call, you can't be involved in every customer success call, you can't be involved in every product meeting, you can't review all of the code that's being submitted, to Github, right? So you just, you're going to as a founder, entrepreneur, really, as you get out of that sort of young startup stage, have to figure out where you don't want to spend your time, and then the rest of the time has to be on managing the people.
[00:28:19] And I'm really excited to see how they're doing the other parts, right? So maybe you're a techie kind of person, stay with the code, stay with the engineers, but leave customer success, sales, and go to market to strong leaders that you're, watching them, you're working with them, but you're not in there doing it. And then as you get bigger, like you get to, , the scale of multi hundred people. It's all about the people, right? It's your management team. You're going to be setting some big strategy. You're perhaps going to be coming in and changing direction, those kinds of things, managing the board, maybe managing investors, those kinds of things.
[00:28:48] But your focus is going to be very much on your management team and guiding them and providing them appropriate incentive, appropriate admonishment as needed, , to, to really steer the ship. But it's all about people management at that point.
[00:29:02] Jason Emanis: Yeah, you've heard it all before, right? Hire people smarter than you, get out of their way.
[00:29:06] Robert Stevenson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're like, it's a, it's a young entrepreneurs, , mistake as I've advised people many times over the years. And, , often it's like, well, I know a lot about this and so I'll just hire the junior person that can kind of like do the dirty work for me. And that can work for a small company, right?
[00:29:24] Because , you're omnipotent and you can manage a team of, , maybe you'd be able to get your team up to 15, 20, maybe 30 people tops in that kind of style. But that's not going to get you to, , 200 people. It's just not right. You need to hire people that are better than you at different areas.
[00:29:39] Adam Mogelonsky: that's the perfect point to end it.
[00:29:42] Robert Stevenson: Great.
[00:29:43] Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, Robert, just fantastic words of wisdom, really applicable to any, any company. So I can't thank you enough for coming on to the show.
[00:29:53] Robert Stevenson: Thanks for having me. It's been great.