00:01.75
anikaz
So welcome, Jay, to the podcast. I'm so very excited to have you on here with us today. I don't think you really need an introduction, but for those few people out there that might not know who you are and that are listening, can you please give us a little bit of an intro of who you are? What is it you're doing at Churnkey? What your role is? Kind of just give us a flavor of of everything you've been up to.

00:24.37
Jay Nathan
Yeah, sure. and thanks Thanks for having me on. It's always a pleasure to chat with you, and Eka, it's been too long since we caught up.

00:29.60
anikaz
It has.

00:30.14
Jay Nathan
so um i So my name's Jay. I have been in and around the SaaS industry for about 25 years. um Gosh, I won't take you through the whole thing, but I started my career back in like sort of a professional services world in software companies.

00:46.66
anikaz
yeah

00:47.91
Jay Nathan
And that grew into customer success. I worked with publicly traded company for about nine years here in Charleston, South Carolina, where I live. and then moved into VC-backed companies.

01:01.12
Jay Nathan
I've worked in private equity-backed firms. I started my own business consulting in this world from 2017 to about 2020, and then I sold that business to a company called HireLogic, where I became the chief customer officer to your point earlier that we were talking about.

01:10.18
anikaz
Yeah. Yep.

01:15.89
Jay Nathan
And I left HireLogic at the end of 2020. Goodness, 2023, I can't believe it's always been a year. This year has really gone by fast.

01:24.71
anikaz
yeah

01:27.08
Jay Nathan
And now in the chief ah chief operating officer at a company called Schoenke. It's an early stage startup, smallest company I've ever been a part of, but it one of the coolest. we Maybe we can talk about it later. um So Chief Operating Officer, but I oversee sales, marketing, customer success at Churnkey.

01:42.15
Jay Nathan
I do a lot with our partnerships. So it's really more of a CRO, CCO, growth strategy kind of role that I have today.

01:48.19
anikaz
Yeah.

01:49.42
Jay Nathan
And you know, in a startup, you do a little bit of everything.

01:51.51
anikaz
It's a very big.

01:52.97
Jay Nathan
Yeah, I've been from end to end on the spectrum of large small companies.

01:53.03
anikaz
yeah

01:57.70
Jay Nathan
Maybe I'll throw this into like one of the things I did when I had my own company is I launched a community for chief customer officers and and customer success leaders called Game Grow Retain.

02:08.61
Jay Nathan
We ran that for a few years into that. We sold that to HireLogic. It's now part of HireLogic.

02:11.90
anikaz
Mm hmm.

02:13.09
Jay Nathan
I'm no longer involved with it, but one of the great um One of the most awesome professional experiences of my life being able to build that community. I think that's how you and I initially met.

02:23.14
anikaz
Yeah, exactly.

02:24.14
Jay Nathan
I've made many lifelong friends through that network and continue to to be in touch with those folks. and so

02:30.22
anikaz
Yeah, I still love those days. It was such a great community. I still remember in the middle of pandemic having these like success, what were they called customer success leadership hours? What what were they called?

02:41.19
Jay Nathan
leadership Leadership office hours. Yeah.

02:43.26
anikaz
leadership office hours.

02:44.01
Jay Nathan
block Yeah.

02:44.54
anikaz
There's the name. Yeah. And I loved it because it was like suddenly connecting with people all over the world that I don't think we would have gotten the opportunity to, which is the power of community. But it was so great.

02:54.93
anikaz
And like you said, we connected through that. But you've had so many roles. And I think even at Chirnkee, I've watched you evolve. Like you just said, growth. partnerships. I think you mentioned a few things on LinkedIn as well, and I know you also have your own newsletter now too, which I absolutely love and I love reading it every week, but there's so many little things that you've dipped into.

03:08.39
Jay Nathan
oh

03:15.07
anikaz
What kind of led into the trajectory of being Chief Operating Officer? Because I think there's a lot of people listening that are probably used to hearing Chief Customer Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, or even VP of CS, there's like that trajectory. But we're seeing more and more people move into different career trajectories in CS. Why the COO role? What led to that?

03:35.50
Jay Nathan
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a great question. We could talk about it. Um, it's funny. I'm actually writing an article for this weekend's newsletter. Thank you for like about like, what is a CRO chief revenue officer?

03:42.59
anikaz
Ooh.

03:47.11
anikaz
OK.

03:47.71
Jay Nathan
what What is that all about? Um, and you know, Really, you know my my job at Churnkey, this is a company that's been around for four years. It's run by four awesome founders that have built SaaS companies in the past.

04:02.68
Jay Nathan
They've traditionally built companies for, and Churnkey was initially built for smaller companies, really quick startups or the SMB. I'm familiar with that world, but I wasn't like really, really close to it until I came to Churnkey.

04:14.18
anikaz
Mm hmm.

04:16.82
Jay Nathan
certainly not the ins and outs of the sales motions. Where my strength is, is a little bit more up market, so like mid market, commercial accounts, enterprise. customers. and um you know Actually, even prior to Churnkey, before I i left HireLogic, I was running a business unit where I was responsible for sales, marketing, product management, and all the customer functions of the business that that I ran, the part of the business that I ran.

04:43.31
anikaz
ye

04:43.95
Jay Nathan
so you know I had sort of begun to make this evolution toward i guess you call it a gm or chief operations officer for a business unit or even maybe you can even think of it as like a ah ceo or an executive director for a business unit itself so i had responsibility for the sales number the pipeline all that good stuff so i've been My career has migrated toward revenue ever since I owned my own business back starting in 2017.

05:10.02
anikaz
Yep.

05:10.88
Jay Nathan
When you're in your own business, you are in sales. That is your product.

05:13.20
anikaz
Yeah, a hundred percent. if

05:15.36
Jay Nathan
You kill what you eat, right depending on the type of business that you're in, to be sort of crass. but um So I think the evolution has been natural for me. you I came from early days of my career being an and an engineer, hands-on developer, and they just couldn't keep me away from the customers.

05:29.47
anikaz
Mhm.

05:33.17
Jay Nathan
And so I always wanted to spend more time with the customers and that naturally led into um being part of sales team, sales support teams, even from the technical side of things.

05:43.97
Jay Nathan
So I've always sort of gravitated toward the business development side of the world. But COO, when you're in a company as early as Churnkey is, it's it's just like really what makes the most sense right now for my title to be.

05:56.34
anikaz
Mm hmm.

05:57.65
Jay Nathan
And we just landed on COO. We don't need a chief revenue officer. We don't really need a chief operating officer, but it's ah it's ah it's a good title for me right now. And we have lots of flexibility around that. But again, oversee sales, some of the marketing efforts that we do, and help contribute your product and customer strategy. And so we thought, COO, hey, it works.

06:18.98
anikaz
Cool. Love it. I just love the evolution of every customer success professional's journey. I think it's really unique. I think that's what makes CS unique is all of us come from such varied backgrounds, but we're also trying to achieve a number of things while building like building companies as we are in in the startup world. but it's really cool i love hearing everyone's backstory i think it's really unique and it's also cool to just see how you've evolved like i said i've seen you like build your business but then sell it and then all the same time like now launch with a new startup it's really exciting um and you mentioned that you're running a few different teams all under this chief operating officer umbrella so

06:56.68
anikaz
You mentioned partnerships. You mentioned operations. You mentioned mentioned customer. There's a whole bunch of growth, a whole bunch in there. Tell us a little bit more about Churnkey itself and the company and the team and what you're kind of held accountable to there.

07:09.51
Jay Nathan
Yeah, sure. So, Churnkey is a, a lot of people get us confused with Churn Zero. we're We're not actually competitive.

07:15.55
anikaz
I almost said that, by the way.

07:17.50
Jay Nathan
that

07:17.71
anikaz
I almost naturally wanted to say it, but it's not. It's Churnkey. It's Churnkey.

07:21.90
Jay Nathan
It would be totally understandable if you did. People do it all the time. We're not a customer success platform. We're actually much more targeted and focused.

07:26.71
anikaz
Okay.

07:28.64
Jay Nathan
So we are a we call ourselves a retention automation platform for high volume subscription companies. So think about PLG SaaS companies, where you can go online, you can buy, you can onboard and activate right there, like real quick, right?

07:45.26
Jay Nathan
that Those are the kind of customers that we serve. About 80% of our customers are PLG SaaS companies. But we also have other customers that sell their sort products and services on subscription. So consumer services, media, all kinds of different businesses that are sort of membership based. One funny example, actually not a funny example, one really interesting example. We have two really big car wash chains out of the the Northeast that are Let's just say one of them is an over a nine figure business, right?

08:17.17
anikaz
wow

08:17.71
Jay Nathan
In terms of ARR and they have a chain of car washes that they sell car washes on a membership basis. Well, guess what? That's a subscription.

08:28.41
anikaz
That is.

08:28.62
Jay Nathan
ah

08:29.24
anikaz
Who would have thought a car wash is part of a subscription business?

08:32.94
Jay Nathan
it It is. It is. It's part of the subscription industry. And so as this business model continues to sort of permeate the world, like we're in a really good position to be there because as you know, and as you know probably most of your listeners know, when you're in a subscription environment, in a subscription economy, retaining customers is so credible. So how do we do that? we We handle the cancel flow portion of the customer journey.

08:58.64
Jay Nathan
And then we do failed payment recovery as well. So when you charge a bunch of credit cards every month, you're going to pretty reliably get 10 or 20% failure rate. We help recover those failed payments so that you can keep the customer in good standing, keep their subscription going, keep that ARR, that MRR flowing. That's what we do.

09:16.03
anikaz
Yeah, I love that. You cover so many things as well, and both in your role, but also as a product. So I know that when we get into these metrics that matter in SaaS and like starting to talk about that, I think it's going to be really interesting because you talked about not only retaining customers, but like offboarding or possible retention of funds because of a customer not paying. So that's really interesting.

09:36.93
anikaz
um But before we dive into the actual topic, I always like to ask each of my guests a question. And I want to ask you this because you've had such an interesting career trajectory. But what is your next like career dream or ambition? You've launched a business, you've sold a business, you've gone into the C-suite. There's so many things you've done, Jay. i'm I'm just so curious. What would be next for you, really? I mean, you're now at a startup, which is opposite to what you've done before as well. so If you were to look five, 10 years down in future, what was the your next career ambition be?

10:10.12
Jay Nathan
Yeah, that's a great question. And i don't I don't know. When you say interesting career, I worry like, oh, boy, is Mike.

10:15.11
anikaz
No, no. I mean, like you have like a great ride.

10:16.84
Jay Nathan
school

10:17.93
anikaz
I would say from an outside perspective, it's been a wild ride, but it's awesome to see. Like you literally have launched and sold things. You built your own business. I think you've had great success. So it's been interesting to watch as an outsider.

10:29.90
anikaz
That's what I meant.

10:30.09
Jay Nathan
they Thank you.

10:30.62
anikaz
Interesting.

10:31.28
Jay Nathan
Thank you for the compliment there.

10:31.34
anikaz
yeah

10:34.12
Jay Nathan
and the the you know My parents were entrepreneurs. i've always I've always felt like an entrepreneur at heart. um And you know getting to see inside of ah of a smaller, earlier stage startup, we have four founders at Churnkey. These guys are awesome. I say guys, because they actually are all guys in this case. But um you know I don't know if I'm like a founder-founder like these guys are. That's a different breed. They are.

11:04.02
Jay Nathan
differently and there's a really good thing about that. But I do consider myself an entrepreneur and I've always been the sort of the the person that thinks differently inside of a bigger company. But anyway, you know, to maybe to shortcut the answer to your question, I see myself owning businesses more than being an operator forever.

11:20.88
anikaz
Hmm.

11:23.20
Jay Nathan
Maybe someday I'll go back to being a chief customer officer because I like that role.

11:23.42
anikaz
Hmm. Hmm.

11:26.96
Jay Nathan
I think there's a lot of value that a CCO can provide, but I'll always want to have my hands on the commercial side of the business too, because it's just not that interesting to me if you aren't helping drive revenue in some way, you aren't figuring out the market in some way.

11:36.66
anikaz
Yeah.

11:41.82
Jay Nathan
So I just get really, I get really geeked out about businesses and how they go to market and how they sustain themselves, how they grow. And so I don't know, we'll see, we'll see where where life takes me, but I'm having a lot of fun right now.

11:58.63
anikaz
Yeah.

11:59.07
Jay Nathan
I like to have my hands on a lot of different things, so you'll probably see me continue to to show up in maybe different ah different different places over time.

12:07.23
anikaz
I think it's going to be a huge success, whichever way you go, Jay. Because I've been loving watching it from the outside, and it's been an awesome ride from the outside as well. That's why I said interesting.

12:15.37
Jay Nathan
like

12:15.27
anikaz
So it's going to be great, I'm sure. And let's dive into the actual topic, which is metrics that matter.

12:18.12
Jay Nathan
thank you

12:23.04
anikaz
And I think that you just said something that really resonates a lot about owning the revenue piece. I think that that's funnily something that's coming up more and more in CS.

12:34.15
anikaz
at the moment, and probably more and more in SaaS businesses that are recognizing that CS are revenue drivers, not just a cost center. I think that this has been something that's been bubbling up for a number of years now as we move from like reactive to proactive CS. But there have been tons of metrics over the years that SaaS companies have been focused on. And it's been crazy to watch the evolution over the last 10 years on what actually matters when it comes to SaaS metrics. and and We're going to dive in deeper into specifically what you track, but maybe for just getting us into this topic, can you maybe break down like what you think are is the top three or five metrics that matter the most across a business, and then we'll get into the customer success side of things.

13:17.92
anikaz
but I know there's so many, but if I was, again, a founder right now and came to you as as that entrepreneur, what would but would be the most important metrics to really track?

13:18.95
Jay Nathan
Yeah.

13:28.57
Jay Nathan
Well, I mean, but even even before we sort of dive into that, you get to think about what the objective of these businesses is, okay? So every business has investors, every investor is looking for a return on their investment.

13:41.07
anikaz
Yep.

13:43.76
Jay Nathan
The investors could be the owners. By the way, Cherokee, for example, is a bootstrapped company, which means The founders own most of the company. They built it off of customer revenue, right? Which is awesome. We've taken some small investments since they got it off the ground, but that's a different kind of business. Then you've got VC firms, right? Go big or go on. Get some traction, raise enough money to go win your spot in the market, and then really put your foot on the gas and grow fast.

14:11.58
anikaz
Yeah.

14:12.62
Jay Nathan
You've got private equity based companies who come in, they might buy a significant portion of the business. They want to get it, you know, profitable, efficient, increase the value three to five times, and then they can exit in three to seven years. And then you've got publicly traded companies, right, which are We're ready for the long haul, sort of, but we have a very tight quarterly focus on efficiency, on growth and that kind of thing.

14:35.86
Jay Nathan
But if you look at the common denominator behind all of these businesses, there's one thing that matters more than anything else to all these businesses and that is growth.

14:44.55
anikaz
Yeah. Yep.

14:46.53
Jay Nathan
That is growth and that is top line revenue growth period over period, quarter over quarter, year over year.

14:50.13
anikaz
Mm hmm.

14:53.32
Jay Nathan
and So that's number one, and we all know, right your your listeners I know are savvy, they know that growth in a SaaS business is made up of a few things.

14:59.65
anikaz
Mm

15:01.28
Jay Nathan
It's made up of retention first, it's made up of expansion for your customers, and then it's made up of new sales on top of that, right new logo sales.

15:03.49
anikaz
hmm.

15:09.23
anikaz
Yep.

15:09.97
Jay Nathan
So those are the those are sort of the three key things that matter on the growth side. Increasingly, over that especially over the past you two or three years, we've gone from this mentality of growth at all costs.

15:23.34
Jay Nathan
And I like to say retention at all costs to profitable and efficient growth.

15:23.37
anikaz
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

15:28.87
Jay Nathan
So now you see also things like gross margin, operating margin, and EBITDA.

15:28.87
anikaz
Yeah.

15:35.10
Jay Nathan
Becoming more and more important because we don't have unlimited cash like we used to have right we can't spend money.

15:35.47
anikaz
yeah Nope.

15:41.16
Jay Nathan
um yeah Just we can't spend three dollars to make one dollar or five dollars to make one dollar like we used to be able to it's now gotta be closer to one to one right overtime and then we know that the lifetime value of the customer is going to.

15:46.73
anikaz
Yep.

15:54.34
Jay Nathan
you know, pay us back plus some over over time. So, you know, when you look at the fundamentals of business, that's what we're really talking about. We're talking about top line revenue, the components that make that up, the growth rate, and then underlying that the profitability.

16:09.09
Jay Nathan
And those are the things that owners of businesses that like we work in, those are things that they look at.

16:14.52
anikaz
who Yeah, definitely. I love that you just mentioned both top line growth as well as the actual revenue or profits for a company as well, because like you just said, it's no longer like cash is cheap anymore. It's no longer, hey, you know, we need to grow, so let's just go raise some money. It's now really looking at what is the long-term value of a customer what is what is our run rate when we're currently looking at the profits that we are bringing in it's so much more than that and i it's so important and crucial for everyone to understand especially cs leaders and cs professionals listening it's like you're no longer just. Running and and and serving this green service of

16:57.83
anikaz
seeing customers successfully their product, there is a revenue aspect to your role. And there's also a revenue aspect to the company that you're serving both as. And I think that that's really crucial for everyone to understand.

17:08.89
anikaz
But another metric that I know that gets tossed around in CS a lot, and you've mentioned it just earlier is like customer lifetime value. I think that that gets thrown around a lot by SaaS businesses.

17:19.65
anikaz
And I think it's

17:20.74
Jay Nathan
And.

17:23.07
anikaz
assumed that most people know what CLV is or how it's crucial and how it's calculated. Are you guys, or I'm sure you have before, but how are you using customer lifetime value to really articulate value within your CS org or even the wider business?

17:40.80
Jay Nathan
So, yeah, lifetime value and cost of customer acquisition, there's there's there's a ratio called LTV to CAC, right?

17:48.15
anikaz
Yep.

17:48.57
Jay Nathan
So, what do we expect the lifetime value of a customer to be?

17:49.25
anikaz
Yep.

17:52.69
Jay Nathan
Is it, you know, five years at $10,000 a year? And then how much does it cost us to acquire that customer? Maybe it's 10,000, maybe it's 25,000, right? You can do the math on that.

18:04.11
anikaz
Yep.

18:04.38
Jay Nathan
So the the thing about those metrics or that metric in particular is that they're not really operational metrics. They're very difficult to use to run your business. They're good for investors to look at to understand the characteristics of the business and they're good for executives to think about the investments that they can make in certain types of acquisition decisions, right?

18:25.47
anikaz
Hmm.

18:27.98
Jay Nathan
So for example, And at Churnkey, once we get a customer on and they're using our platform and they're seeing the value out of it, we're going to keep that customer for years and years and years, right? So our our retention rate is, and this is awesome.

18:39.98
Jay Nathan
Like we have a 95, actually more like 97% gross retention rate in our business.

18:44.66
anikaz
That's crazy. That's awesome.

18:48.23
Jay Nathan
Yeah.

18:48.20
anikaz
That is so cool.

18:49.53
Jay Nathan
you Once you turn us on, you do not want to turn us off because we actually, we help drive top line revenue.

18:54.54
anikaz
Yep.

18:55.09
Jay Nathan
It's it's amazing. But yeah that is much different than a business that might sell monthly subscriptions in which you can turn them off and maybe they're seasonal buyers.

19:00.94
anikaz
Hmm.

19:05.12
Jay Nathan
You know you see a lot of maybe be training and education companies that fall into this category where you know people may come on, and use the platform for three months and then they cancel. That's not really a full blown recurring business.

19:17.27
Jay Nathan
If you're having to replace your customer base multiple times within a year, yeah it impacts

19:20.50
anikaz
Yeah.

19:23.65
Jay Nathan
what you can spend on going to acquire those customers, right? So, you know, we look at things like in our business, we look at things like, where do we need to go show up?

19:27.67
anikaz
Definitely.

19:33.20
Jay Nathan
do Can we go to events and you acquire customers at an event? Well, events are expensive, right? They're really expensive to go attend. But, you know, looking at the types of of companies that might be there that may become our customers,

19:47.98
Jay Nathan
We can justify it because we know if we pick up two customers and we keep them for the next seven to 10 years, they're going to pay that the event expense back many, many, many times over before they leave us, right?

20:00.75
anikaz
Yeah, yep.

20:01.67
Jay Nathan
And so those kind of things, if you understand the lifetime value of your customer base, and you you can use that information to make decisions on how you go get more customers, essentially.

20:12.00
anikaz
Yeah. So do you think it's a strategic decision-making metric? i be like Or do you think it's more around the retention piece that you were talking about earlier, about how like you're really concerned about retention revenue and then again, building that retention playbook.

20:27.20
anikaz
But is that would you consider customer lifetime value more for high level business decisions and then retention rate for more of those strategic daily decisions?

20:33.58
Jay Nathan
Yeah.

20:37.76
Jay Nathan
Yeah, I would. Okay, so let's, let's, let's pick lifetime value apart a little bit, right? Because that's a metric, that's a compound metric.

20:42.06
anikaz
Yep.

20:44.29
Jay Nathan
Compound metric means it's made up of multiple metrics.

20:45.06
anikaz
Yep.

20:46.79
Jay Nathan
And by the way, this is what makes it not a great day-to-day operational metric, right?

20:51.23
anikaz
Yeah,

20:51.91
Jay Nathan
Because if you get too many things coming together to make one metric, well then like, what is it? Right? So lifetime value is made up of typically gross margin, meaning we're we're not counting the top line ARR, we're counting the gross margin.

20:57.01
anikaz
yeah definitely.

21:06.77
Jay Nathan
and we're counting the retention rate. So if you, let's see, do the math, it's like the the gross margin adjusted revenue, so AR minus the cost of goods sold, and you divide that by the churn rate,

21:16.00
anikaz
Mm hmm.

21:22.27
Jay Nathan
then you will get the lifetime value, okay? So how do you how do you control for that? How do you use that to do something meaningful? Well, you really can't, right?

21:33.47
Jay Nathan
You could control your gross margin and you could say, hey, look, I need to make more wrote i need to make more gross profit per customer, so I need to reduce my cost of goods sold. I might have to have fewer people delivering it.

21:45.43
Jay Nathan
Maybe my product needs to be more efficient and use less of our AWS and Google Cloud services, right?

21:50.25
anikaz
Yep.

21:52.43
Jay Nathan
Or the other way to extend lifetime value is I can make the retention rate longer because remember I divided by growth retention.

21:58.03
anikaz
Yep, yep.

21:59.29
Jay Nathan
So, sorry, i'm getting we're getting mathematical here.

22:00.53
anikaz
I know we're getting really geeky now here on this equation here.

22:04.61
Jay Nathan
like This is what people need to understand. When people throw around terms like lifetime value and LTV to CAC, these are not operational metrics that you can just manage against day to day. What you should be thinking about, what I should be thinking about every day is, what is our gross retention rate?

22:17.56
Jay Nathan
right and What is the leading indicator to gross retention?

22:17.65
anikaz
yeah

22:20.68
Jay Nathan
Well, it's probably renewal. right renewal so And then what is the leading indicator to renewal rate?

22:22.37
anikaz
Yep. Yep.

22:26.29
Jay Nathan
Well, it's probably What's the value the customer is getting? How often do they use the product? you know All the things that we start to think about from a customer success perspective then become begin to come into focus as leading indicators to renewal and retention.

22:41.41
anikaz
Yep.

22:42.34
Jay Nathan
That's how you impact lifetime value. A lot of these things are determined, you know they really aren't determined by the customer success team, and that might be a little bit of a controversial thing, but They're determined by where you decide to play.

22:55.75
Jay Nathan
What market are you in?

22:56.38
anikaz
Mm

22:56.71
Jay Nathan
Are you serving a B2C industry? I once worked for um worked with a company that sold their product to real estate agents.

22:59.50
anikaz
hmm.

23:06.00
anikaz
Okay.

23:06.79
Jay Nathan
Those are businesses, right?

23:07.76
anikaz
Yep.

23:08.66
Jay Nathan
But they they're more like prosumer businesses. They behave a lot like B2C.

23:12.12
anikaz
Mm hmm.

23:13.68
Jay Nathan
Okay. So retention rate was not anywhere near where we would want it to be in a sort of a quote unquote healthy SaaS business. You want 90% plus gross retention rate, right?

23:24.02
anikaz
Yep.

23:24.80
Jay Nathan
Well, by some

23:29.64
Jay Nathan
The retention rate is only going to be so high in that business because of the end market that they served, right?

23:35.48
anikaz
Yep.

23:36.24
Jay Nathan
There's a ceiling on it. Will they ever get to 90%?

23:38.58
anikaz
Yep.

23:39.76
Jay Nathan
Probably not, right? And a lot of it is out of their control because a lot of those people come in and out of the market.

23:40.89
anikaz
Yeah.

23:44.98
Jay Nathan
A lot of those customers come in and out of the market.

23:45.20
anikaz
Yeah.

23:47.49
Jay Nathan
They're not even businesses a year from now, much less your customer. So, some of this is baked into the market you serve, some of it's based in baked into the product that you deliver to the market, and it's a question of you know product market fit and business viability in the long run.

23:51.44
anikaz
yeah

24:02.82
Jay Nathan
Does that make sense?

24:03.07
anikaz
Yeah, it does, it does. And I think we talk more about ah customer lifetime value as again, like the overarching and then there's levers that you can pull to make your customer lifestyle value either longer or extended or change it depending on what the metrics make sense. You mentioned gross revenue retention and renewal rates and just again,

24:23.46
anikaz
how you can upsell or maybe renew your existing customer base. And I think that that's really where SaaS businesses need to play, like you say, in an operational day-to-day level to make sure that you're driving that customer lifetime value in the long run. But thinking of the day-to-day and the operational metrics and key metrics to track in that way, would you say GRR and ah like retention rate is more critical at that point then to really define how you're working as a customer success org or are there other potential expansion metrics that matter at this point?

25:00.98
Jay Nathan
Yeah, great question. So we throw around gross retention rate. We also throw around another one, right? Net retention rate.

25:07.14
anikaz
and Yeah, I almost forget NRR.

25:07.94
Jay Nathan
I mean, you know, RRA is a big time compound metric, right?

25:09.32
anikaz
Yeah.

25:11.75
Jay Nathan
Because it's not just one thing.

25:11.61
anikaz
Yeah.

25:13.27
Jay Nathan
It's your gross retention rate. And it's your expansion sales to existing customers added into that. So I think all of these are lagging metrics, right? Anything that shows up in your financial statements, like your income statement, is sort of a lagging metric.

25:22.92
anikaz
yeah

25:29.42
Jay Nathan
The question is, like, how do you, how how can you tell as a leader if you're going to be able to make an impact on that?

25:29.30
anikaz
ah her

25:35.19
anikaz
Yep.

25:37.29
Jay Nathan
That might get measured once per quarter for a lot of companies, right? Maybe once a month if your business is higher velocity.

25:42.95
anikaz
Yep.

25:43.98
Jay Nathan
But even then, how can you tell that you're making an impact on it?

25:46.51
anikaz
Yep.

25:49.28
Jay Nathan
So, I would say that for most leaders, for most leaders in customer success, you need to have something deeper than gross retention rate that drives your day-to-day, right?

26:02.84
anikaz
Mhmm.

26:03.42
Jay Nathan
So, I'll ask you this, and I don't know if you can share this or not, but like, what is the thing that you could go do with your customers today

26:05.98
anikaz
Ooh.

26:09.32
anikaz
Yep.

26:12.50
Jay Nathan
that would be a good leading indicator, the activity that your team could go do at scale that they could do that you know would move the needle.

26:16.51
anikaz
Okay. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

26:22.65
Jay Nathan
If everybody did it and did it right and did it well, what would move the needle on renewal rates?

26:25.21
anikaz
yeah

26:29.03
Jay Nathan
First of all, we know that leads to retention, right? should be What would that activity be?

26:32.41
anikaz
sir Yeah.

26:34.73
Jay Nathan
And you don't have to answer for your current company, answer for another company. but i would

26:37.56
anikaz
No, it's okay. I love that you're asking me questions. now This is a great podcast. ah I would say time to first revenue is what we are tracking. And the main reason is, I mean, we're a financial institute, we're tracking, like, again, consumption or transactions. And for us, when we see our customers transact quickly as possible once they're onboarded onto our platform. that is when they're true Because when they transact, they get a piece of that revenue, and so do we. And for us, that just makes sense. And so getting them there quicker means they're seeing value quicker. So I think a lot of businesses usually call it time to first value or yeah time to first revenue, whatever it is. But that is, for us, the very key first metric operationally that we're able to really tell

27:21.80
anikaz
Okay, if they're seeing it in 30 days or less, we know that there's there's no issue with the renewal at that point.

27:27.60
Jay Nathan
Okay. Love it. Now, what could you go do to make sure, like what is the one thing your team could do? If they go do one thing, you say your only job is this.

27:34.35
anikaz
Yep.

27:36.55
Jay Nathan
What would be the one thing that gets them to that 30 day activation target that you just noted?

27:43.03
anikaz
I would say that they probably make sure that they're showcasing and engaging how to get on the product as quickly as possible and how that that getting on the product and using those ah transactions would lead to their business growth, meaning like they're going to see a revenue impact in their company if they get to that first metric as soon as possible.

27:58.22
Jay Nathan
okay

28:04.36
Jay Nathan
okay and you show them that how you get them on a webinar you get them on you on a one

28:07.63
anikaz
On a call, we usually do it in calls we have or an enterprise base. So it's, it's a one-to-one call with each one of our customers to really walk them through our platform, but also the value of once they start to transact as well.

28:18.20
Jay Nathan
Okay, so there's a conversion there, right?

28:20.08
anikaz
Yep.

28:20.30
Jay Nathan
Somebody stole them, right? They came across the line, you're gonna onboard them.

28:22.10
anikaz
Yep.

28:25.02
Jay Nathan
And now your number one job, and you just told me, your number one job is to get them activated within 30 days.

28:24.90
anikaz
Yep.

28:31.35
Jay Nathan
And the most important thing you could do, I'm not trying to be a consultant here, but i right but the most important thing you can do is get them on a call and convert them again, right?

28:31.62
anikaz
Yep.

28:34.75
anikaz
You kind of, you are at this point, but it's all good.

28:43.21
Jay Nathan
So you the the leading indicator that I would choose for that team

28:43.17
anikaz
Yep.

28:48.00
Jay Nathan
probably like a an activation, or for first, can I get people to show up for the call?

28:53.73
anikaz
Yep, yep, yep, step one.

28:54.77
Jay Nathan
Metric number one, right?

28:56.46
anikaz
hu Yeah, for sure.

28:58.42
Jay Nathan
Time kills all deals, right, is what you're telling.

29:00.84
anikaz
if If you don't have an engaged customer, that's a real problem.

29:01.19
Jay Nathan
I mean, we all know that.

29:04.12
Jay Nathan
That's right. So, get them on the call. That's milestone number one. Milestone number two, get their commitment on that call. When are they gonna go live, right? When are they gonna do the configuration thing?

29:14.72
Jay Nathan
You and I, it seems like we have so similar businesses. If we get our customers on these calls and we have them walk through the steps and they do the steps, they're gonna be sticky for a long time.

29:21.75
anikaz
Yep.

29:23.24
Jay Nathan
It seems like...

29:23.21
anikaz
For a long time, because once they're transacting, there's no it's the ah ROI just shows itself.

29:28.49
Jay Nathan
You don't go backwards, right?

29:29.24
anikaz
Yep.

29:29.61
Jay Nathan
You don't go backwards, yeah.

29:30.57
anikaz
Yep.

29:31.13
Jay Nathan
So I think we have very similar businesses here. But so that is the level of... detail that customer success leaders need to be getting into. Because if you if you try to track GRR, what is that going to tell you of what really matters?

29:44.91
Jay Nathan
We just talked about what really matters, right?

29:45.05
anikaz
Yeah.

29:46.83
Jay Nathan
The leading integrators.

29:46.72
anikaz
Yep, yep, yep, yep.

29:48.50
Jay Nathan
So I would encourage people to think about gross retention and to systematically back up. What is the what is the crux of the problem? like What is the crux of getting the customer across that threshold to doing the thing you need them to do, that you know that if they do it, they will be successful and you will activate them on time and have them as a customer for life.

30:11.16
anikaz
Yeah, I love that.

30:12.01
Jay Nathan
That's the only thing about metrics.

30:12.72
anikaz
I love it. I love it. I love how we just reverse this podcast and you kind of helping consult and give an answer while consulting with my team as well.

30:17.47
Jay Nathan
you

30:20.32
anikaz
So I love that. But I agree there. There's so many things that we think about that are like the big picture like NRR, GRR, top line, revenue growth, everything that we've talked about so far in this podcast, all very important, all great for your board reports, all great for

30:33.76
Jay Nathan
Yeah.

30:35.15
anikaz
high-level reporting and understanding.

30:35.50
Jay Nathan
yeah

30:37.07
anikaz
But sometimes you've got to get into the the nitty-gritty and the very basic steps of reporting and metrics that matter, which is, for my team, it was that first time to revenue. But like you just said, even that first milestone of getting a customer on a call, that is a milestone.

30:51.87
anikaz
And if you can get that done, then you know you're affecting ah GRR down the line or NRR down the line as well. So I love that. That was a great example of that, Jay.

31:00.52
Jay Nathan
yeah yeah yeah And I would say like every day, like that's the level of detail and focus.

31:01.38
anikaz
um

31:07.29
Jay Nathan
If customer success leaders want a seat at the table and they want to be seen as business leaders, which I desperately want all CS leaders to be seen as business leaders today, then that is what you do.

31:17.49
anikaz
Definitely. Yeah.

31:20.18
Jay Nathan
You've got to get into the weeds. So you anyway, like sorry, I'll get off myself.

31:22.37
anikaz
Yeah, no worries. I love that. I love how we veered off there. But also, I think a lot of times, like you just said, getting that seat at the table and customer success leaders are often probably overwhelmed by like metrics and operational metrics and also business metrics. Like EBITDA, I knew it, but I think that there's a lot of people out there that are like,

31:41.10
anikaz
What's a P and&L? What's EBITDA? There's just business overall operational and business metrics that matter that CS pros should at least know or maybe even educate themselves on outside of work or even in work. I think it's the best place to learn. But what do you think are some of the metrics outside of the bubble of customer success that are important to measure and track within SaaS businesses and and CS leaders should look to track?

32:07.51
Jay Nathan
Well, we've we've talked about the high-level stuff, but every every part of the business has different metrics. So you look look at the entire customer life cycle, right?

32:21.51
Jay Nathan
And I'm talking about, when you think about it, when I say customer there, I really mean the kind of person, the kind of company you want to do business with, right?

32:21.92
anikaz
Yep.

32:26.42
anikaz
Yep.

32:30.55
Jay Nathan
So it's not just customers' prospects, too. You've got to go get their attention.

32:32.96
anikaz
ye

32:34.97
Jay Nathan
You have to... get them to you have to you have to capture them as somebody who's got an interest. but You have to be able to convert them when they do show interest.

32:46.06
Jay Nathan
So like even just that alone, now we're getting into like the go-to-market funnels. How do you get their attention, capture their attention, and and walk them through a process?

32:56.62
Jay Nathan
Very similar to what we just talked about, right? The onboarding process is a funnel in and of itself, but there are funnels way upstream of like, okay, how did this person even hear about us, right?

33:09.01
Jay Nathan
In the first place, and how efficient was it to get them to hear about us?

33:08.85
anikaz
Yeah.

33:14.47
Jay Nathan
And then how efficiently did we get them to convert from being somebody who understands the problem we solve, understands that they have that problem, understands our solution to that problem, is willing to put their trust in us as the solution provider for that problem,

33:29.38
Jay Nathan
and then convert into the onboarding funnel from there, right? So that's just one part of it. I mean, there are funnels all over the organization if you get it out of that way.

33:40.56
Jay Nathan
I mean, on the back end, you've got renewals, but you've got product development funnels. You can look at product development the same way, right? You can look at HR and compliance and enablement for your team the same way.

33:46.81
anikaz
Yep.

33:50.25
anikaz
Yep, yep.

33:53.65
Jay Nathan
um But so it really I think you get we're gonna be more specific like what part of the customer journey or what part of the business are we talking about and then you dive in at the very deepest level like we just did.

34:07.58
anikaz
Yeah, and the granularity.

34:07.94
Jay Nathan
and one

34:08.97
anikaz
Yeah, yeah, I love that.

34:09.69
Jay Nathan
Yeah, but it matters everywhere. It matters everywhere.

34:12.13
anikaz
Yeah.

34:12.46
Jay Nathan
you the people People think that strategy is something you come up with up here and then you like roll it out and then it's just working. That's not how it works.

34:22.37
anikaz
I wish.

34:24.39
Jay Nathan
not

34:24.27
anikaz
I'm just thinking, like, how great would businesses be if that's the way you actually run them?

34:28.79
Jay Nathan
no

34:28.98
anikaz
Like, one big strategy that's like, oh, snap your fingers, and we're all good. But that's far from how strategy is built.

34:35.10
Jay Nathan
Right, strategy is actually built. you You can have ideas, but then you have to find ways of Executing, right? You have to execute, measure, repeat, and iterate.

34:41.84
anikaz
Yeah, exactly.

34:44.60
Jay Nathan
You can look at all of the businesses that we all you know look at and revere. Look at Amazon, look at Apple, look at, you I studied Costco and Walmart a lot.

34:53.98
anikaz
Yep.

34:55.72
Jay Nathan
there's These are amazing businesses. They didn't just come up with these things and get it right the first time. They executed every single day and trying to solve the problem, finding the crux of the problem at the moment.

35:08.95
Jay Nathan
solving it and then incorporated that into how they operate his business when they got it right and then went on to the next problem. So, you know, I always encourage it. There's a couple of books. there's ah There's an author named Richard Rammelt who wrote a book called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, which I would highly recommend to all of your listeners.

35:20.98
anikaz
Mm hmm.

35:26.43
Jay Nathan
He wrote another book called The Crux during the pandemic, which is a great, actually check this out. I got Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. I like it so much that I listened to books, Anika.

35:35.74
anikaz
yeah

35:37.40
Jay Nathan
But I like this one so much. I wanted a copy of it sitting on my my um my desk here. But it really goes into this idea that you know strategy is not something that just comes out of the ether.

35:50.60
Jay Nathan
It comes from doing. It comes from actually executing.

35:52.03
anikaz
Yeah. Yep.

35:54.53
Jay Nathan
And so you know no matter what part of the business you're talking about, you have to go actually do the work.

35:58.84
anikaz
I love that you said that because a lot of people think it's just like, oh, fluffy and you've got it. And then you just go with it, which I think in startups, it's really evident. Like you have to go in and get into the weeds. You've got to get your hands dirty. You've got to just get involved to really come up with the metrics that matter within your business at a startup. But you've had the unique,

36:20.76
anikaz
career experience that you've just shared with us where you've been at startups, you've been at major organizations, and you've seen from the whole evolution of like scale of startup to enterprise and beyond. And I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about some of the metrics that maybe either change or evolve or adapt as you grow as a business? Because I'm sure what you're tracking today, like you said, the strategy you have today is not going to apply five years from now. So how do you go in with the mindset of changing or adapting or really making sure the metrics matter at the moment that they do as you grow as a business?

36:58.51
Jay Nathan
great Great question. So the the the top level metrics never change. right The top metrics are always going to be same growth, profitability, and the key components of that.

37:02.65
anikaz
Hmm. Yep.

37:08.09
Jay Nathan
Now, what does change is the metrics that you use to measure the strategy that you have at any given point in time. right We know that the world is changing around us constantly, ah especially in SaaS.

37:14.51
anikaz
Okay.

37:17.98
anikaz
Yep.

37:19.46
Jay Nathan
We have so many competitors in a SaaS business.

37:21.08
anikaz
It's crazy.

37:22.38
Jay Nathan
Right?

37:22.80
anikaz
It's wild.

37:23.14
Jay Nathan
New calendars, the market changes, you're in a regulated industry, right? So regulation changes, things change around us all the time.

37:28.94
anikaz
Yep.

37:30.83
Jay Nathan
So, you know, you know I won't get on a soapbox about change, but what you've got to figure out what your plan is. So the strategy is nothing more than like, what is my plan to win this year?

37:44.69
Jay Nathan
And what does winning look like? Well, it might be hitting a number. It might mean um you know getting a certain penetration into a new, portion of the market, but whatever the plan is to drive that growth or to drive that profitability, then you figure out what to measure underneath it, right?

38:01.11
Jay Nathan
So you might look at your, let's go back to your onboarding piece or you even the gross retention, right?

38:01.21
anikaz
Mm hmm. Yep.

38:06.82
Jay Nathan
You might look at those top level metrics and say, okay, like we came into this year at 85% gross retention. We really want to try to push that up to 87%. So what are we going to do? We're going to go peel apart all the churn you've had for the past 24 months.

38:17.84
anikaz
Yep.

38:20.71
Jay Nathan
And we're going to say, OK, what's controllable? What's not controllable?

38:22.42
anikaz
Mm hmm.

38:24.43
Jay Nathan
What's controllable? What are the components that make up the controllable? Is it product feedback? Was it service issues? Was it slow onboarding? Was it competitors that were coming in and eating our lunch?

38:35.88
Jay Nathan
Like what was it? Like specifically, there's probably only four or five of them. It's not that many, but we need to know every account we lost, why did we lose it?

38:40.11
anikaz
yeah Yeah.

38:45.43
Jay Nathan
So our goal is to get that GRR number up, but once we know what the actual problem is, then you build the metric around how do we go solve that problem.

38:51.29
anikaz
Yep.

38:54.22
Jay Nathan
So let's say it was, okay, 50% of our customers aren't getting onboard within 30 days, and it's causing retention to suffer.

38:57.26
anikaz
Yep.

39:01.69
Jay Nathan
We know that that's a factor, right, in customer success. We know if you don't, like you've said, If you don't onboard your customers on time, chances are higher that they're going to fail.

39:10.96
anikaz
Yeah, definitely.

39:11.66
Jay Nathan
So then what are you going to go measure to say, okay, we're going to solve that problem over the next two quarters. What are we going to go measure to do that?

39:19.02
anikaz
Yeah, um I love that you mentioned change, by the way, because I think that, like you just said, it's the only constant.

39:19.42
Jay Nathan
Right.

39:24.55
anikaz
And SaaS is changing so much, but so is customer success. Sometimes I feel like it gives me whiplash year to year what we're tracking and what we're measuring.

39:31.85
Jay Nathan
Yeah.

39:33.28
anikaz
But I think that there are lots of early tells or, let's say, trends in the SaaS world that kind of give us an idea of what to start to pay attention to and what to start to track.

39:44.97
anikaz
You mentioned a few things that are lagging indicators. What do you think would be like the future leading indicators of a successful SaaS or CS organization that we should start paying attention to now? what Are you seeing anything bubble up in the in the industry?

40:01.90
Jay Nathan
What I'm saying to you, Anika, is that it's different for everybody.

40:04.42
anikaz
yeah

40:05.75
Jay Nathan
The leading indicators are different for everybody. We know that there's some standard ones, right? Time to value is a leading indicator.

40:09.65
anikaz
Yeah, definitely.

40:12.09
Jay Nathan
um You know, one of the things I think is interesting that's happening right now is there's a lot of companies that are flipping from subscription model to consumption-based models.

40:20.80
anikaz
yeah

40:21.72
Jay Nathan
One trend, right?

40:21.92
anikaz
gang

40:22.48
Jay Nathan
We know AI is playing a role. and how quickly products can be built and rolled out, that kind of thing. So, but as we go to more of a consumption-based model, I do think some of the leading indicators are going to change, and they're more akin to adoption and value than we probably even them probably even make sense on the subscription side, right?

40:44.28
anikaz
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

40:45.23
Jay Nathan
Because we know if it's consumption based or metered usage of some sort that we're not going to get paid unless the customer is really doing well with that product. So then it becomes all about adoption.

40:53.85
anikaz
Yep.

40:56.74
Jay Nathan
How do you get them to use more, right? How do you get them to run more transactions through your product? How do I get them to run more transactions through turnkey, right?

41:03.90
anikaz
Yeah, yep.

41:04.70
Jay Nathan
it's not be price I don't have to tell you price either but so then that becomes the leading indicator and then if you have people doing this kind of work which customer success teams often do.

41:16.15
Jay Nathan
Then what is the thing that you need them to do to get the outcome that you want is it get on the phone calls is it convinced them to give you a date.

41:21.50
anikaz
Yeah.

41:25.62
Jay Nathan
on which they're going to start production usage of your product then those are your leading indicators so if you take sort of abstract everything that i'm saying here i'll make a bigger point

41:28.44
anikaz
Hmm.

41:34.91
anikaz
Yep.

41:37.46
Jay Nathan
To me, the most important indicator of whether a ah team like this is going to be successful or not is how agile they are at doing this process, which I'm talking through right now, which is taking the end goal, figuring out why we're not hitting the end goal, and then building a strategy over for the next two to three quarters that say, okay, we're gonna go do this and try to move the metric, and we're gonna measure it.

42:00.06
anikaz
Yep.

42:00.75
Jay Nathan
like It's that cycle that's important. more so than any one given metric because that's going to change all all the leading indicators are going to change all the time.

42:04.42
anikaz
I love it.

42:10.49
anikaz
yeah Yeah, definitely.

42:10.67
Jay Nathan
Right? And so you really.

42:11.94
anikaz
Definitely. I love that you said the golden thing there of like, it all depends, ah which is I know what we say. It's like a broken record in customer success. It totally depends on your business, the maturity of your customer, the maturity of your product.

42:25.17
anikaz
It all really depends on Again, where you're at and the and the top line metric won't change, but what you just said every quarter, the activities you're doing, the tracking, you the things that you're actually measuring, and what you can do to move the needle on those measures will change based on, again, the operational tactical things that you are doing. so I love that you shared that and it'ss it's really important for everyone to to hear those things because those big metrics that matter always will matter, but the things you're doing today, tomorrow, next week are what's really going to drive those those metrics forward.

42:46.08
Jay Nathan
Right.

43:00.74
anikaz
um Listen, Jay, I have loved all the talk around metrics and we could keep talking, but I do have one more question before we go into to quick fire, which is, Looking back at your career and also the businesses you built in the teams you built like what's one piece of advice you give yourself when it comes to selecting or tracking or acting on some of the metrics and and topics that we talked about today what if you look back at your career what would you give yourself advice on.

43:30.83
Jay Nathan
um

43:33.82
Jay Nathan
It's very easy to get overwhelmed with too many metrics. I've been part of companies before where they had you know this OKR dashboard of 600 metrics, and it's just yeah exactly across all the business.

43:45.05
anikaz
Oh my gosh.

43:47.56
Jay Nathan
It's just too much. right I think at any given point in time, Find the one thing that matters most and focus on it and don't ever take it for granted would be the other advice I would give you or I would give listeners don't ever take that one metric for granted just because somebody handed you a metric you should validate that that is still the right metric to be looking at because

43:51.47
anikaz
Yep.

44:09.94
Jay Nathan
it's It's easy to just operate with the assumptions we've always had while the world's changing around us like we've talked about in this something, right?

44:19.06
anikaz
Yeah.

44:20.41
Jay Nathan
There's one more quote that I think is really, I love this quote Jeff Bezos said, If there's a discrepancy between the metric and the anecdotes, I only want the anecdotes.

44:32.17
Jay Nathan
So if yeah people are telling you, hey, the metrics look good, support's running fine, or onboarding is great. Well, and I hear you know somebody on the other side saying, well, you know we've got all these challenges, and the customers are complaining.

44:44.79
Jay Nathan
They're giving me anecdotes about how poorly it's actually going for them.

44:48.28
anikaz
ah

44:49.27
Jay Nathan
You dig into it. So that would be the other thing.

44:50.43
anikaz
Yeah.

44:51.84
Jay Nathan
Don't be afraid to dig into the anecdotes.

44:54.86
anikaz
I love that. There's so many good takeaways there, Jay. Thank you for sharing. Okay, we're going to wrap up with a quick fire questions where I challenge all my guests to try to answer these next questions in a sentence or less.

45:07.00
anikaz
It's tough, I know, but I'm going to challenge you, Jay. Are you ready?

45:10.06
Jay Nathan
I'm ready, I'm doing it.

45:11.81
anikaz
Okay, one sentence. First question. If you could predict the future, what do you think is next for CS next year?

45:25.85
Jay Nathan
um

45:29.14
Jay Nathan
CS is going to become more of a business function and less of a customer function.

45:36.19
anikaz
We can have a whole podcast on that topic, but I thought that i have to stick to one sentence.

45:38.20
Jay Nathan
yeah sir

45:42.30
anikaz
There's rules to these questions. Okay. Cool. The next question is, which app or software do you use every day, every week, either on your phone or your laptop and why?

45:52.57
Jay Nathan
um I use the Notes app on my iPad.

45:55.29
anikaz
Okay. It's great. It's a great app. It's super simple and it captures everything.

46:00.32
Jay Nathan
Everything is so good on it now.

46:03.95
anikaz
Awesome. Next question is, if you could change one thing about customer success, what would it be?

46:11.24
Jay Nathan
um It would be that people need to realize there's a dual mandate, one to the business and two to the customer.

46:20.30
anikaz
Okay, I wish I could just like clap out loud to these these answers.

46:22.82
Jay Nathan
right was he

46:26.65
anikaz
I love it. I love it. I say it all the time, like to my CSMs. I'm like, you're serving two needs, one for the business and one to your customers. I love it. Awesome. Last question, Jay, is who should be my next podcast guest?

46:40.77
Jay Nathan
Oh man, I wish I had time to prepare for that one. Um, let's see. I've got a little recency bias going on right now, but I was just on the phone with my buddy, Dave Jackson out of the UK.

46:52.76
anikaz
Oh, it tastes great.

46:53.89
Jay Nathan
Right. Have you had him on before?

46:55.61
anikaz
I've never, but I should have Dave on.

46:57.97
Jay Nathan
Yeah.

46:58.00
anikaz
Dave's just down the road, I should call Dave.

47:00.45
Jay Nathan
yeah All day.

47:01.73
anikaz
Okay, sounds great.

47:02.71
Jay Nathan
All day.

47:03.75
anikaz
Thank you so much, Jay for sharing all your insights, your transparency, your just ah knowledge is amazing with everything that you've shared. So I really appreciate your time.

47:14.29
anikaz
If our guests have any other, sorry, if our podcast listeners have any other questions and want to reach out, what's the best way to get in contact with you?

47:23.37
Jay Nathan
Sure, you can reach me on LinkedIn. I'm on there every day. I respond to messages there. I will also plug growthcurve.io, which is our newsletter.

47:34.47
Jay Nathan
And by the way, we have a financial intelligence course that we built for folks there. whatll We'll give your listeners a discount if if you're if you want to pass that off.

47:40.91
anikaz
Yeah, of course. Yeah, definitely.

47:42.70
Jay Nathan
i

47:42.55
anikaz
I'll link everything in the show notes for everyone um so that you can follow up with Jay. Subscribe to the newsletter. I love it. I read it every week. And then also check out his course as well. But thank you so much, Jay.

47:53.36
anikaz
Again, really appreciate your time.

47:55.47
Jay Nathan
Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Good to see you.