Todd Gagne:

Today in the podcast, I'm super excited to have Aaron Seatholm. Aaron is the vice president of customer success and operations, with a company called PropertyBuild. This came out of a conversation that he and I have been having. One of my kind of mantras with startups is you really focus on either product or sales, to begin with. And I think what Aaron was challenging me on was when do you start talking about customer?

And I think it made a really interesting conversation. We talk about, you know, kind of the gradation of when do you start to invest in the customer, when do you have support, when do you have, you know, what type of implementations make sense? And then really the customer success component of it going forward. So I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do too. Aaron, welcome to the podcast.

It's not in the tree house today. I'm in my parents' basement or actually not in their basement, their house. My mom has promised me that she wouldn't come in here and ask me to clean my roof. But otherwise, welcome to the podcast, Aaron.

Aaron:

Well, it's great. It's great to be on board. I I'm sorry I missed the tree house, but the basement thing sounds pretty on par based on Yeah. Exactly. Interactions.

Todd Gagne:

53 year old guy in his basement in his parent's basement. Doesn't get any better. Mom, just leave me alone. I'm talking to my friends.

Aaron:

That's awesome.

Todd Gagne:

Well, good. So I wanna cut this set this up a little bit. You and I have known each other for a while, and I think you've heard my pitch about startups really focusing on product and service. And I think you were like, dude, just listen to me. Like, when do you start paying attention to the customer?

And so I think, out of that, conversation, which is totally legit, this, podcast was born. So I think that's the pretense to this. I think really, listeners should get some idea of kind of what, to expect as you kinda build your organization, how to kind of phase, layering in the, customer, and really providing more and more support over time. But before we do that, let's just start with a little bit of background because your professional journey, to property meld is pretty interesting. You've had a bunch of different, experiences.

And so maybe even go back to, like, what did you do in college, before you even got to, kind of a professional gig?

Aaron:

Is that kind of a nice way of saying you bounced around a lot and didn't really do I

Todd Gagne:

just didn't say anything early.

Aaron:

Okay. I just wanted to make sure

Todd Gagne:

Just do it, man.

Aaron:

So no. I, appreciate the opportunity to talk to you, Todd. Hopefully, I've got some good nuggets along the way. So I started out chasing a dream to pay play division 1 baseball all the way to South Texas. So about as far away from Billings, Montana as you could get and still be in the US as my mom still reminds me to this day.

She did the other day. Anyway, I went down to South Texas, got to play d one baseball, kind of a dream come true. I was chasing, an engineering degree, mechanical engineering. I realized in the first pitch that went by me about 94 from a 1st round draft pick, eventual Major League Baseball player, that engineering the library was gonna be had a lot better shot to make some, you know, a career out of that than in baseball. So

Todd Gagne:

What about the curveball?

Aaron:

Could you hit that? Ball. No. Couldn't hit the curveball. I could hit an 82 to 84 mile an hour fastball.

It was about belt highs, so that's where I made my money in, junior college in Kansas. Yep. So, anyway, got to old school, went to work for Honeywell Aerospace. I had loved, you know, airplanes, all things aviation since I was a kid, flew model airplanes. So really started off as kind of a hard core, like, engineering analyst sitting in front of the computer screen all day, thought that that was gonna be my life forever, did it for 7 years, and then realized that my social skills were which were bad to start with were getting worse.

I was kinda missing I was missing you know, also in baseball, you know, I had been a team captain, and I was finding myself drawn to these leadership roles outside of work. So, eventually, started working towards that leadership management role. And the first one I got was, half electrical engineers, half software engineers, which I'm like, I'm mechanical. I have no idea what these folks do. But it was great because it forced me to really learn how to lead people because I couldn't just jump in and be like, hey, Todd.

Let me let me do that for you because I literally could not do their jobs. Yeah. So I had to really learn how to do that. And, that was kind of my first step into software. My wife and I, who my wife's from South Dakota.

I'm from Montana. We decided that we really wanted to raise kids closer to grandmas and grandpas and cousins, so we made the decision, which looking back seemed like a really kind of fast off the cuff. I don't know why we did it, but it was meant to be. So she left, moved in August of 2010 to Rapid City. I followed later, got a job with Northrop Grumman as a manager of software development, and that started 11 year journey of software and IT and technical work.

And, you know, I think, in hindsight, putting the family first for that move and then eventually landing a property meld, which was another sort of family first, was kind of an important thing for me. And, you know, entrepreneurs out there, having watched a little bit now on the start up side, there's a lot of sacrifice that goes into it. But trying to stay balanced right? I don't know if, harmony is probably a better word, between work and the start up, and the job is super important. So, all that to say, I was always kinda drawn to, like, these internal start start up kinds of things, like new projects or new development or, hey.

We're gonna build this new application. You wanna join the team? Yes. Let's go. So I was always kinda drawn to those new startup type roles.

And I think that, you know, sort of sort of shaped, eventually, me getting the courage to, like, jump to a smaller organization like Property Mode because I really like those things. Like, if it's I hear you go. It's all done. It's all built. Go ahead and run it.

I was like, nah. No thanks. But if you gotta go figure it out, design it, build it, test it, roll it out, get people to use it, that was always something that was really interesting to me. So been with Property Meld now for 3 years and have loved every second of it. It's hard, but it has been a tremendous learning experience to build kind of large companies and then a small company where your impact is just exponential.

But there's a lot there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of things to work on. So there you go.

Todd Gagne:

Well, a couple of things I think is kinda funny. So you and I, accidentally knew each other through Northrop Grumman and Concur, which I thought was kind of funny. We didn't even know that we lived in the same city. And I think you also met you were on another call with my brother, which is weird too. And so and then over time, we're like, hey, we live in the same town.

We should talk to each other. So it's kind of a small world, thing that we our 2 kind of companies collided earlier in our career. And so that that's kinda fun. The other part I think is kinda funny is you've gone from, like, rocket science to kinda leaky faucets, And I'm not sure that's a step in the right direction on the excitement scale, or maybe it is. Maybe you're, like, saying, hey, man, rocket science, that's, kinda boring.

Like, property manage maintenance? Like, that's there's some stuff to that,

Aaron:

which is true. Doesn't sound on the surface, but I joke with Ray all the time. I'm like, bombers and missiles, we've been doing for 60, 70 years. Single family property maintenance, like, 10 to 15 max. Attitude.

I love that. So I love that. You know, that stuff's all figured out. No big deal. This stuff, it's like we're reinventing all the time.

So Well, that's good. So why don't

Todd Gagne:

we go from that? Like, what do you think from, especially from a corporate, environment where, you know, it's a large global organization with a lot of complexity? What what translates well from that experience and bringing it to, you know, startups and specifically property metal? Because I do think that you have a lot of skills that you learned in kind of a corporate America setting. You have to maybe recalibrate, but I do think they're super transferable.

So, like, what would you say are some of the biggest ones that you think, have served you well over that time?

Aaron:

You know, I I kinda going back to that initial manager role, I think the people leadership piece, I got some tremendous mentors over the year that really, like, emphasized the people development, people leadership, motivating teams. I think that translates well if you've got you know, I think I had a 160 people when I left Northrop Grumman. Now I'm at probably a tenth of that. Right? So but my people your people really have to trust you first and foremost.

Like, does this person know what they're talking about? Do they care about me? Do they want what's best for me? Are they willing to push and and get the best out of me? Right?

So though those types of things, I think, are very transferable. I think, probably execution, like, just being able to lay out a plan, go make it happen. Right? That that translates to, again, if you're lots of pro projects or, you know, one big one for the organization. Right?

So just being able to sort of spec out size, you know, plan, put the team together, go execute, and get stuff done is really important. And then the other one, it's probably it's kind of understanding systems and the systems thinking is what they really called it in at Northrop Grumman of, like, being able to understand all the people process technology parts of that system. Right? And not just a system like, you know, a a computer system, like an organization. Right?

There's people, process, technology. All those things play together into what do you put in and what do you get out and what are the metrics and what are the important things to pay attention to. So I think those things have have translated pretty well. And the ability you know, the other thing I got some good guidance of don't stay in any job too long. You know, every 2 or 3 years, you know, go take on something new and learn it.

You know? So being able to adapt and learn fast is another thing too that I had some really good coaching on early at those large organizations. So while I was at the same company for a long time, I only did the same job for probably 2 or 3 years, whether that was a progression up through, you know, a a a promotion or a lateral move or just going to different parts of the organization to go help and learn was super helpful. So Yeah. I think those again, people leadership, systems thinking, the ability to go execute and get stuff done, and then being able to just learn fast, lean in, know that you're not gonna be you're not gonna know everything when you start rolling.

You just gotta fake it till you make it, I think, is one of yours that I've barbed at the top. Right? It's like, what's customer success, Todd? I appreciate you helping me out with this company. Look.

What? Here. Go watch these videos and read this book. You'll be fine.

Todd Gagne:

I think that what a lot of this though is, I think, like, execution is king. Right? Like, I mean, when you think about people and you think about systems thinking, all of those lead to better execution. So and I don't I think just to reinforce your point, I don't care if you're in a large organization that has a lot of complexity, or you're in a super small organization where, like, being nimble and delivering on what you say you're gonna do, that's where we get paid. That's where we get paid.

And so the complexity of that may be different in different environments. The trade offs may be different, but it usually requires people. It usually requires process. There's usually capital or you know, some resources that need to be expended. And the quicker and the the more predictable you can do that, the better.

Flip the other side of that coin, what was more difficult to kinda transition to? Right? I mean, I think those are ones that leverage, and you can see those being applied to every place that you ever go. When you're going from a large organization that's got kind of a north arrow, what are some of the things that maybe make it harder to, execute that you had to basically learn and adapt to?

Aaron:

I think it was just the the scale and number of resources. Right? When you when you have an organization, let's say, a 160 people, $100,000,000 budget, right, there there's some level of, you know, there there's some level of margin sort of built into that. Right? If you lose a person off a 20 person team, you're probably still gonna be able to sort of absorb that with the remaining team members.

If you have a 3 person team and you're down a person and it that person is critical to the execution and output, that's a huge, huge difference. So I think, 1, the hiring. Like, getting the people right with every early hire is super, super critical. And it took me a little bit to learn that. Right?

In a large organization, you got super well defined roles. Right? You got processes. You got whole teams of people that help you recruit and go get and, kinda, you know, hire too. So I think hiring, hiring, hiring is such was such an important thing that I didn't focus enough on early.

Had some people that really kinda slowed us down, kinda hurt the culture, just just caused a lot of impact. I think the other thing for me too was the ambiguity piece of coming in of, like in Northrop, there's hundreds and hundreds of pages of processes and policies and procedures. And, like, you wanna know how to do this? Go search command media, and there's probably an article 2 or 3 to tell you how to go do it. Right?

When you get to a smaller organization, that's it's kinda your job to come figure that out a little bit. Like, what is Yep. What is the process? What does this mean? And, probably, one I still struggle with to this day is, like, is now the right time?

Right? Is this the priority? I know these things make sense. I've done all the research and know all the what the the book says. But is now the right time to go take that one on versus this one?

Right? And what's the horizon is? You know, 3 year strategies, you know, at a large that's too long. Right? It's like, what do we do in this 12 months?

Maybe we're getting to the point where it's 18 months. It's definitely not 3 years. Right? So just really, like, picking what's the prioritization, what is the 1 or 2 things that we gotta go attack right now is something I constantly have, like, going through my head. And I know we talk a lot about, and I appreciate your perspective on that because, you know, I I know those things are important at a large organization or, like, a big group of people.

Don't think they're important now, but what is the right time? Right? You don't wanna get behind the curve too much because it gets really hard to catch back up. Right? So being a little early on things as long as it's provide you know, drive into the right metrics and KPIs that we're trying to move at the company level and understanding that relationship.

But it's just easy to fall into so many you know, Ray talked about infinite work when he interviewed me. Like, there's a 1,000 things you could go do. Right? Like, what are the things that I need to be doing today at this hour? And, again, getting really tight, I'm I'm just where do I expend my energy?

Where do I have my team expend their energy? How do I not burn them out because we're moving really fast, and I don't wanna change too much too fast and lose them either. Right? So I think the pace and just when do I do what when is still something that's

Todd Gagne:

What I hear from you a little bit is just it's it's focus. Right? You got a number of things to do. You've only got capacity and resources to do 1 or 2. How do you figure out what those things are, and how do you execute well with the teams you got so that you have the impact you want?

And it's not always clear. I think in startups, there's a lot of things that could be number one priorities. And I think you're constantly trying to figure out, you know, what's the investment versus the return at this point in time. And so I don't think that's easy. You do have kind of a clarifying, maybe saying that you use.

And so maybe why don't you talk about that a little bit because I do think that's that you use that term internally to basically help create focus and say and it may not always be the case where that's the most important thing, but a lot of times it could be.

Aaron:

You mean my catch phrases?

Todd Gagne:

I do mean your catch phrases.

Aaron:

So I think, is is this the alligator closest to the boat? It's one that comes up all the time. I use with my team. It's been kinda funny to hear them say it though too, but I think it's just the right it's the right mindset of, is this alligator gonna reach up and and eat me today if I don't address it? Right?

Or as I know it's swimming around out there somewhere, it's maybe next quarters or 2 quarters down the road problem. But that's a good one that my team seems to repeat because I think it's it's valuable. So is this the biggest problem right now, this quarter, right, really shortening that time horizon, thinking about the focus, like you said, of, you know, is this the one that's gonna eat my lunch today, right, and really eat me I don't think this is just

Todd Gagne:

your employees. I think your kids say this at home

Aaron:

Oh, okay. About what's

Todd Gagne:

the alligator closest to the boat. So I I don't know where it originated, but, like, I think you've indoctrinated a lot of people, and you're on a path. So

Aaron:

Well, thanks. Well done. I appreciate it. That's my goal, is to Yep. That's good.

Spread the spread the Spread the joys. Yep.

Todd Gagne:

So maybe we should go backwards a little bit. Like, I I didn't really do any windshield setup on kind of what property property mail does. And so I know all of this from a startup standpoint is is, kind of generic, meaning, like, you're managing people and processes and priorities. But maybe give me a little bit about what property meld does, and then just talk a little bit about, like, the customer, and then a little bit about the complexity. You joked a little bit about talking about, you know, rocket science to where we've been doing this for a long time versus, you know, property maintenance, really hasn't been.

It's it's something that's kind of been evolving, and it's being figured out. And you weren't joking. I think, you know, that lots of people are trying to, like, work on this problem, and property metal's got an amazing focus on it. But maybe just give me more context on that.

Aaron:

Yeah. So our customers are property management companies. Right? So let's say I'm a landlord that has, you know, anywhere from, let's say, 10 units to many thousands of units. But if I have a house, right, a single family resident, that is really where we started was we don't necessarily we didn't start out going into multifamily, which is apartment complexes, communities.

Right? So the single family residential space kinda grew out of the 20 the 2008 quarter collapse of the housing market. Right? So the if you think back when the interest rates or, you know, all not interest rates, but all of the loans collapsed, all that happened, it flooded the market with all these single family houses. Right?

So, you know, wise entrepreneurs said, hey. Let's grab up these residential units and start to rent them because, you know, everybody's underwater. The banks all own them. Price you know, prices got down. So, really, you know, 2008, my mountain math as Ray calls it, cowboy math.

Right? It's not that many years since that happened. So Yeah. Why is that unique or different? Because those single family residentials are not super tightly packed.

Right? You think about a even a medium size apartment community may have a 100, 100 and 50, 200 units in a in a block. Right? So having buddy on-site, going up to all these units, all the ACs are the same. You know, everything's pretty much the same.

Right? To one house maybe over here, one house is 45 miles this way. Everything is different in them. The heaters, everything is unique and different. The owners all have unique, you know, limits on how much you can spend and communication strategy.

So it was just it was this distributed, much harder sort of problem to take on than had been in the multifamily kind of apartment space. So Ray and David started the company, you know, and really around that. David was renting a house in Albuquerque, had this really horrible experience. Ray and David got together. Ray had something similar and said, hey.

I think this is a a juicy problem that we can go tackle and solve. Right? There's a good job to be done. And they've I I think to their credit, there's a lot of things they've done amazingly smart, but staying laser focused on maintenance. Right?

And that's you know, we don't do leasing. We don't do that. I mean, we get up every morning thinking about property maintenance, which is amazing. Right? But it took that level of focus and coming up on 10 years, I think, now as an organization, as a company.

Right? But it is a hard problem because there's so many people involved too. Right? I talk about the complexity of maintenance because you have a resident. You have a property management company.

You have a property owner. You have, you know, the HVAC, potentially, you know, vendors. You have maybe I have internal technicians. I have my own handyman or whatever. So there's just a lot of communication, coordination, scheduling that has to happen to make all this work in a timely manner.

Right? So it's, you know, it sounds like it's not that complicated, but then you start peeling back and just all those network effects, you know, the challenges of being across town. Do I have the right parts? Do I even know what's in that property? Do I even know if a leaky roof is a leaky roof or something, you know, that's sprung a leak in the attic, a AC unit or you know what I mean?

So I think all those things are make it complicated, and the innovation that we've been able to bring to that is pretty awesome, and we continue to do that to try to separate ourselves. So, that's kind of a long winded answer. But property management companies, it's all about property maintenance. You know, we started with single families. We're starting to get more and more multifamily, smaller apartments, you know, just more units in a single property.

Todd Gagne:

Okay. Well, it's good. So I think that's been a good job of kinda setting up, you know, kinda what the company does, maybe some of your background. Let's get back to the beef that we started on this with, which is, you know, when do you start investing in customer? Right?

Because ultimately, if you're, just working on the product and you're just working on net new sales, what happens to the guys that you actually sign? And if you basically don't pay attention to them and they start to attrit and leave, you you got a hole in the bottom of your bucket, and you're not gonna get any traction, and it's super difficult. So I, you know, I think one of the things I would like to do is kinda maybe start there is, like, saying, you don't go off and build this entire huge organization day 1. Once you get the first customer, you kind of see some sort of kind of progression in what you're thinking about. So maybe I'll just let you talk a little bit about it saying, I've had this kind of myopic approach, you know, because I go again, going back to, like, focus is basically what I'm trying to create with a lot of the startups.

But your, your feedback is dead on that once you start getting a mass of customers, you really need to start paying attention and making sure that they feel like there's value and that they're getting, the support that they really need.

Aaron:

Yeah. And, you know, I so I've been here for 3 of the 7 or, I guess, 10 years total. So I've gone back and talked to David and Ray a little bit about the thought process, but I'll I'll just kind of inject how I've continued to grow it from there. I think, initially, you're doing everything you can. It is all about product and sales.

Right? You're building the product, trying to get product market fit. You're trying to sell enough of the product to start generating some some revenue, you know, ensure that you've got that product market fit. But as you start to stack up those customers and, you know, the do you really want your CTO or the one developer maybe you have or, you know, the the the team of developers that you've got to be handling support calls or building a product. Right?

So at what point does that start to pull on product and sales are still number 1 at this point in the journey. Right? And we we can debate when 6 maybe success and support always stays 3. But, you know, to your point, you don't wanna keep losing customers because, I've been through Not a winning strategy. It's not a good strategy.

So, you know, I think just looking at that and really understanding, okay, is it time to have a support specialist and Zendesk and a tool that handles those support calls? Right? Get those off the engineering team. There's enough of them there to, you know, have somebody that's dedicated to that. Right?

And continuing as that builds out and you say, well, okay. Now I need 2 support specialists, but I'm also now adding 5 to 10 new customers every month. Is it can I find somebody that has the skills or technical support and the product knowledge, but then also really understand how to train them and teach them and get them up and running? Right? So, you know, support rolling into that implementation, that onboarding piece is so important.

Those first 90 to a 180 days is so critical, which I'm still learning the hard way potentially. Well, not potentially. I have learned the hard way how critical that 1st year is, right, especially the first 90 to a 100 and day 80 days and how critical time to value is to get them up and running, seeing value. Right? Every payment that goes by and they're not in the system, I promise you you're losing ground.

So, you know, I don't think there's any perfect answer. Right? But supporting starting with support, getting to the point where there's enough onboarding, I would say, is your next having somebody that just gets up every single day and gets customers implemented, onboarding, running, using the system to first value, you know, getting the experience to a certain level. They're getting the outcomes. All the reasons that they bought, they're starting to see those things, right, checked off the list, and then eventually into success, what that means for renewals and retention.

But another learning, I would say, I wish I would have done sooner is really understanding, like, what is 10% change in gross revenue retention mean? Right? Gross retention, net retention, understanding the metrics and how the stack up of all the different revenue streams matter. Right? And we had a a couple years ago, had an amazing lift from our customers.

We got 10% growth from the existing customer base. Right? And then market dynamics changed and interest rates and things happen, and that looked the other way to, you know, we not we didn't, you know, we didn't grow 10% of our customers. We shrunk 10%. Right?

So all that new business, all that other, and even more. Right? So last year. So understanding the relationship of that, we focus on revenue, you know, because we have such a wide range of contract values. Right?

So a logo is not a logo or a customer is not necessarily a customer when you have one that's worth, you know, $5 and one that's worth, you know, 250 grand right over. So just understanding the metrics, you know, understanding the stack up of the revenue streams and how impactful churn and losing customers can be to your your net movement. Right? We're all trying to grow and create enterprise value through that annual recurring revenue stream. So I I wish I would have spent more time earlier understanding how all that works and understanding the huge impact of both contraction and and churn has on, you know, overall growth of the company.

So it seems easy now, but Right. I was like, man, I wish 2 years ago, I would have spent a little bit more time of really, really, truly understanding that. And even where when we were getting customer growth, where was that coming from? Right? And we'll dive into segmentation, in a bit.

But, like, okay. What which segment is growing? Which one is not? And understanding where is that coming from? And is that gonna continue or not?

So anyway What about,

Todd Gagne:

you you said something a little bit earlier about just the metrics. And, you know, I think, like, almost all organizations or divisions of a group, you need some metrics to really drive, you know, the right behavior and see where there's problems. If you had to say starting with a simple, approach, to account management and even support. Right? And so even break it up and saying, what are 1 or 2 for support?

What are 1 or 2 for onboarding? What are 1 or 2 for kinda customer success that you would really start to, like or encourage people to look at. Right? Because I think as soon as you start doing this, you wanna be able to measure a little bit about what you're doing so you understand, am I doing it well? Am I not doing it well?

Aaron:

So I think, yeah, metrics is key. Really having something measurable is so critical. And we've you know, I think at one point, we got just way too many metrics to focus on, and we've dialed it really back to gross revenue retention. It's also called gross dollar retention. So you start with, you know, let's say, a $100 at the beginning of the period.

At the end, you have 90 left. You have a gross revenue retention of 90%. That's such a critical one because it takes into account the customers that have left, but also the customers that have shrunk. Right? So, you know, what did you start with?

What did you end with is super critical there. Net revenue retention as you start to move in or you if if you have a model where customers can grow through user seats, you know, we charge by the unit. So if our customers grow, we grow. Right? Aligned incentive, super important.

We always wanna drive our customers to be successful because we're successful with them. Right? So, you know, gross revenue retention, net revenue retention, you know, are super important from a customer perspective, if they're growing, if they're being successful, if you're retaining them, super good measures. You know, I've been through different phases in my career of service centers and service support, and I've seen picking the wrong metrics drive the wrong behaviors in support. Right?

Like, first resolution time, right, or, you know, time to resolve or the that's first resolution quality metric, how quickly can drive the wrong behavior. So in support, we focus on customer stats. Right? And we get you know, we have built, a support function. It was here before I started, but 90 98 to 99% every month of, you know, customers that are giving us thumbs up.

You did a great job on this ticket. Right? So we look at others' lagging, leading indicators for that, but customer experience as measured by customer sat is that's why they exist. Right? And we

Todd Gagne:

So is that binary? Is it either really up or down, or is it like a 1 through 10?

Aaron:

Nope. It's binary. Thumbs up, thumbs down. In past lives, I've done 1 through 5, and the threes are neutral. And you do a good job with this interaction.

So I think that has been a good guiding light for us. If if you gotta take a little bit of extra time to really solve their problem or make sure you solve their problem, I would rather have you ask one more question, right, and really deliver the experience versus, oh, I can't I'm at my time. I gotta move to the next ticket or chat. So I think, you know, those other ones are important. We have to have an affordable service.

Right? I can't have a 100, you know, support specialists to do, you know, 2 tickets a day sort of thing. But, you know, right tooling, right types of things, but that that customer experience as measured by customer satisfaction is is job 1 there. And we're always in this you know, I always talk to them of we're always sort of balancing that experience. Think about a teeter totter, teaching them to fish and giving them a great experience.

Right? We wanna have great help center articles that they can self serve. Right? If they wanna chat with a live agent, they can. If they just wanna put in a ticket and we'll get back to them later, they can.

So kinda meeting them where they're at too is important. Or I wanna talk to a customer supports, manage or a customer success manager and have them help me figure out this hard business problem. Right? You know, maybe boss has asked me to improve this number by 20%. Not really sure.

So later on, when, you know, you introduce those customer success managers, that's kinda vision I paint to my team is I want them I want that maintenance coordinator to think of you or of Property Meld when they're challenged to do something new in their business. Right? It's not just click this, do this, set up this workflow filter. You know, it's not just app configuration. Ideally, we understand their business.

We understand how they can solve their hard problems with what we do. That consultative piece, that's kind of the ultimate there. Right? So support handles, I need to reset my password. This is not working in you know, those sort of technical Sure.

Challenges within the application. But then excess you know, customer success as you introduce them later, how do they become that consultative, you know, resource for you, you know, to help solve hard business problems?

Todd Gagne:

What about their onboarding? Like, what is what is onboarding, and how do you measure the success of that?

Aaron:

It's there's definitely time to value. Right? We we our first milestone is resident invites. So get the Tesla out of the garage. We need you to invite your residents, your vendors.

Right? Use the system. Right? I just Yeah. We do that in 2 weeks now.

Right? From the time they have their launch call, they do some training, invite their vendors and residents, and start using the system, and then we have frequent touch points after that. We've evolved this year into really looking at, customer success as measured by the outcomes they're getting in their business as well as the experience. So customer success is customer outcomes plus customer experience, and we focus on 4 things early. Are the residents engaged?

Are they, you know, are the residents in the system? Are they getting good communication? But really sort of key business outcomes they should see in their maintenance operation, right, the reasons why they bought in the 1st place, but then also how are they feeling about it. And for too long, I got focused on the analytical side of it. It just if they're getting all the right numbers and the metrics, then they're gonna be happy and they'll never leave us and Ray challenged that.

As simple

Todd Gagne:

as that?

Aaron:

No. No. No. No. How do they feel?

You know, I've seen bad metrics, but they think we're the best thing. Right? The best partner, the best app, whatever. They feel that experience side of it. So we've really spent a lot of time this year of trying to surface those outcome metrics and experience metrics to the onboarding managers or success managers to make sure not only, you know, the the things that they bought for, we put in their success plan, but how are they doing overall compared to their peers, compared to this part of the journey?

You know, we're still kinda refining and learning that, but that's definitely critical. Right? If they they really believe in you, believe in the product, believe in what you're doing, have a they're happy. Right? I'm happy to be a Meld customer that buys you some equity, that buys you a few missteps, maybe some outcomes.

It buys you, I think, some patience. You know, if they're still repair speeds may be a little bit slower. The resident sat is still down a little bit. You know, they feel like you're the right partner. They're happy about the service.

Just buys you a lot of equity in that relationship. So

Todd Gagne:

What about even going upstream even further? You know, I think, a number of startups even we had this problem at concur of just going from service or sales to service. Right? Where it's like especially in a start startup, I think you're, you have a tendency to maybe oversell. Right?

Aaron:

Like, the

Todd Gagne:

features are coming. Right? Like, this is gonna work. Yeah. And you you do some hand wavy things, and then you say, this guy is gonna go implement for you.

And, you know, sometimes that can be difficult to set expectations properly, to be honest about the value they're gonna get in the time frame. Yeah. And so I don't think you guys have this problem at property mail, but you can see where it can be an issue. And so are there any kind of best practices or things that you think really work well to manage expectations and make sure that basically whoever's selling the deal and whoever's implementing the deal, there's a good transition of the domain expertise, maybe the discovery work that they've done, and the expectations are kind of in line with what they're gonna get and how quickly they're gonna get to value?

Aaron:

Yeah. There's so Nick Meta published it probably 12 years ago, 10 laws of customer success. And one of those laws is create an integrated journey between sales and CS. And I think that is such a good law, and it's it's an iterative thing. Right?

And they're what you you need to drive that collaboration and really making sure that all the information that we've learned in the sale is, you know, condensed, handed off to the onboarding manager. We're setting the right expectations through the sale. But there's always gonna be something post sale that they thought they heard or they thought they read or you know, we also need to teach those onboarding managers sort of objection handling. Right? You can't no product is perfect.

Right? So Yeah. The mindset is super critical of really again, why did they buy, what are the important problems they're trying to solve, bringing them back to those, right, instead of I like to call it, don't get dragged into the feature swamp. Right? Well, I want this report, or I want this button to be green.

Right? Okay. Well, let what are we trying to do? Right? Because we talked about you're trying to drive these business outcomes, and that's what I'm I really want you to do.

So we call it map. Right? Can you get back to a mutually agreed upon point and help them be successful? Right? Because if you can't do that, there's always gonna be something again in the product that's not a 100%.

You know? But you have to be that partner and help them get back to why they bought in the 1st place and then go solve those problems. So I think that's something. And it takes a little bit of assertiveness. Right?

You have to be able to be like, you know, I I'm not gonna just, you know, let us go down this path where I know it leads to. Let's map back. Let's get back on track. I'm gonna make sure that you're successful. When we haven't done that, regardless of the notes or the handoff or any of that, we we we lost a lot of customers.

Right? So Yeah. Integrated journey I

Todd Gagne:

put even a finer point in this. I mean, I just think, like, you know, they bought for an ROI. They bought for a reason that they were gonna save money. And I think that when and I think in a lot of cases, all the feature functionality isn't as important as the reason they bought. And so kind of understanding that and orienting how can I get you to that value as quickly as possible is really important?

And that journey may mean, like, the 3 implementations I have all come in with slightly different expectations about why they bought. And I think good people from an implementation standpoint understand that, and they could basically have a talk track to help them get there. And they're not talking about a bunch of features that they didn't really weren't nearly as valuable as the kind of the key reason that they bought for.

Aaron:

And I think there's very much a psychology piece just to tag on to that. Right? So especially with our smaller customers, a lot of them buy on emotion and sorta justify with ROI too. Right? So if we don't manage the emotion side of it too, right, and keep them excited, show them some wins, you know, as they go through this journey, you know, then they sort of sink into this fear of failure and this bad mindset too.

Right? So definitely delivering on IOI, but paying attention to the detractors. Just the psychology of that change is super important as well. Right? If you've gone through a 12, 18 month I mean, at Northrop, we spent 3 years buying ServiceNow.

Right? By the time we finally inked the deal, it was like, okay. Right. We're going. We've done all the stuff.

We know why we're doing it. Right? Let's go. You know, if you got these SMB sales cycles that are 7 to 14 days, there's also a lot of emotion involved with that. Right?

So if you don't get them up to running, you don't get them starting to see and feel, you know, again, even with ROI, sometimes we found that an emotional component is so important. You gotta get them up and running quickly because they see that $400 bill come through, and they haven't even used it yet. That's such a, like, just deflator. Right? So I think balancing both for the, you know, the ROI, absolutely.

But being just cognizant and pay attention to that emotional piece, you know, of the change, and you may have one person that has just not bought in, and that could be the reason why, you know, it doesn't go or they don't renew or they they wanna get out early. So that's that's something I've had to learn. I super analytical, logical. Like, here's what the numbers say. Here's what the metrics.

At the end of the day, they're still human beings. We're all That's right. Lot of emotional creatures, right, that are trying to be successful. And you're rocking their world in many cases. Right?

This is a tool that they knew how to use. And now management. Change management is huge. And the psychology of that change, I did not put enough stock in that early, and it's I've, again, learned some hard lessons because of it. So Well, let's learn from me, everybody.

Everybody that's listening, learn from me. Humans. Yeah. It's Humans. But there's emotion.

Todd Gagne:

So maybe kinda golden on that a little bit, Aaron. I think, maybe this is a good pivot to kind of segmentation. Right? And maybe what I'd love to do is maybe talk a little bit about what an SMB profile looks like for you versus what kind of a, mid market customer looks like from you. And maybe pick you know, let's not make this too complicated.

Maybe pick 3 or 4 different characteristics. Maybe, you know, the door size, the level of complexity. You know, like, I mean, there's a couple of things here that I think start to drive what the offering or the support that they really need. And then it starts to inform how your team actually engages and gives them value.

Aaron:

So I'll so our journey has been just, you know, starting with small to medium sized business. We just set a door threshold of less than 25100 is this. Right? So that's probably, you know, $30,401,000 annual contract value. Right?

Just pick wherever the demarcation is and keep it simple. Right? Small, large. I would say that as you start to get larger organizations that have multiple layers, right, you're not just talking to the broker owner of the company and selling to them, implementing to them. Right now, you're talking to, you know, the director of maintenance and then the VP of whatever and then the COO.

And those larger, more complicated organizations tend to just have longer sales cycles and more complicated implementations, onboardings. There's just a lot more to think about, to understand. Loss of a champion can be really critical in the large organizations if you haven't built that at multiple layers. You know? So as you if you move if you start there, understand that we started, you know, with smaller customers and kinda grew into the larger ones.

But, you know, the the smaller ones, you know, it's so critical. Again, time to value, understanding the emotion of the change, understanding not just who your champion is, but who's gonna be the detractor that potentially blow this up. Right? If I don't kinda win them over early, you know, is it gonna be the accountant potentially that we didn't spend enough time with, you know, helping them understand what changes in their business? They're not really even part of the maintenance department, but they're basically dependents.

Right? And if I mess up billing and and and mess with their financials, that's gonna be a problem that we're probably gonna have a hard time recovering from. Right? So, again, I think small smaller organizations, time time to value is super critical, understanding those potential detractors. But you can't spend 40 hours, you know, on those smaller contract values too.

Right? So then you get to the point where the smaller ones, how much time does it take to get them up to to speed. Right? Maybe then bust that SMB up into 2 segments, kind of a small and large there, and really start to tailor within that. Right?

So that's been our journey as we started, you know, small to medium sized business, large ones, then we've segmented both of those. And as they as you do more and more of them, you start to see the patterns emerge. Right? So, you know, this size to this size, you just need more time. Right?

It's more complexity. The accounting departments are larger, all those. So just start simple and then decompose from there. If you start with too many segments, then you have too many different processes. You have to teach people way too many different things.

They will just be overwhelmed. So, you know, again, I like the analogy from the product development world at the MVP. Like, start with the skateboard. Right? Then build the bicycle, and then build the motorcycle, and then build the car if you even need car.

Right? If the motorcycle is good enough, then stop there until you need the car. But really start with the simple minimum viable sets of things and build on from there. Because if you build the car, doesn't have any wheels, there's no windshield, and you're missing a bunch of stuff, it's probably not gonna be successful. So just continue to build and iterate on whatever you do, I think, is, you know, something I learned in other roles.

But in start up land, it has to be that way. Right? You have to start simple and build. So

Todd Gagne:

So I I guess maybe kinda building on what you're talking about there. I think, you know, you've seen in kind of your even your SMB that account management or customer success can be kind of one to many. Right? Where, you know, you're trying to find ways to educate them. When they have a problem, they have a named account, they're gonna go talk to somebody.

Yeah. But when you're trying to talk about a new feature, you're talking about, you know, somebody that's had success, that is really kind of one to many. And I think a characteristic of a lot of those kind of customers are you know, for the most part, their implementations are very, very similar. Right? They they Yep.

They they're very cut and dry, and they when you talk about something as a best practice, it does kind of apply to the majority of your kind of customers in that SMB. If you move up into some of the larger ones, their customizations, their integrations, their configurations can be different. Their goals can be different. Their scale can be different. Their mixture of single family and multifamily can be different.

And, therefore, a lot of the communication, a lot of the investment, a lot of the consultative nature needs to be one to 1. And so I don't know if you tentatively believe like, I think you believe in that, like, fundamentally. I don't know if you have any, you know, clarifications or, you know, more clarity you can provide on that. But I think that's super important to realize there's gonna be part of your audience that you can't just, like, say, I'm gonna talk to every single one of these about a new feature that comes out. I'm gonna do a webinar that gets in, and I'm gonna talk about, you know, terms and departments, versus somebody else that's trying to do it has way more complexity.

And you're gonna have to walk them through and say, what does this mean for your implementation?

Aaron:

Yeah. I think it's definitely something be and just agree with all of that. I would say, be careful too of the smaller ones can sometimes be the most demanding because they're wearing so many different hats. They can act if you're not careful, they can begin to chew up a disproportionate amount of hours for support onboarding success. So really setting, you know, what that onboarding process looks like, what support looks like, you know, what the webinars are, what the academies are.

Right? That one to many training and coaching. You know? Because if you're not careful, you can have a pretty small account that you're spending so many hours on that you'll never recover. So, you know, if if you start to feel that or sense that or hear that from your teams, it's probably another good time to really segment a little bit further.

But setting that expectation early on even in the sales process of, like, this is what your onboarding is gonna look like. Here's about how much time you're gonna have, and then manage that appropriately. But then the next group up, you may need to spend 2, 3, 4 x more time with them because of their complexities, because of the uniqueness of the business, because of the uniqueness of whatever. And that's okay. Right?

If you've got a $1,000 customer and a $100 customer. Right? You have 1 hour to spend. Alright. I talk to my staff all the time about this of, like, you know, all all of our customers are important.

But if you've got 1 hour to spend, what do you think is more impactful? Right? Is that customer less important than the big no. All customers are important, but you can't spend the same amount of time with a $1,000 customers, a $100 customers. So

Todd Gagne:

Sure.

Aaron:

How do we scale? How do we 10 x? How do we 1 to 10 on the, you know, $100 customers just making up values there? But, again, trying to drive all customers are important. Every dollar of revenue is important, but you're gonna get to a point where you're gonna have to start making those decisions.

I can do it by them and only gonna assign a $100 customers to a certain CSM. But early on, you're gonna maybe have one CSM that has to cover all different sizes. Right? So if I have one to spend, where am I gonna spend it? Right?

What's the most impact? Right? And I think even just getting down to that idea helps them, you know, make better decisions on where they can spend their time. Maybe what needs to go back to support, maybe what they need to tell them to go to the next webinar coming up on next Tuesday to talk about vendor adoption or things like that. Right?

So very much a fine line of all comes the customers are important, but we also have limited resources. So be thoughtful on where you're gonna go spend that time.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. So You kinda brought up early in the conversation that, you know, like, and and we talked about this, like, from the top. You know, sales is important and growing. And so I think if you think about this as a maturity curve, right, you think about getting your customer once you have customers, you do support. You got the onboarding component of it.

Now you've just layered on support. As you get more products to sell, that job from a customer success standpoint gets a little bit more complicated. Right? You're starting to think about, how do I increase the net value of this customer? And in a lot of cases, that means selling to the existing base.

And I I I heard something the other day that I thought was kinda funny. This is like trying to hug somebody while picking their pocket. Right? Like and so, you know, it's a it's a it's difficult to basically, be there from a satisfaction perspective and then also have the skill sets to talk to them about what's next. Right?

And so you are in this kind of consultative sale where you're trying to say, hey. Look. I know where you're trying to go as an organization. We think we have other tools that will help you get there, but they're gonna come at a cost. And so maybe talk to me a little bit about that maturity.

Right? You've recently kinda gone through that where you've built the bottom component of it where we're here to support and satisfy the customer. Now we're trying to add selling to the existing base because now we have products to to do that and cross sell and, ultimately, to make that customer more valuable.

Aaron:

Yeah. Yeah. That's been an interesting journey because I think, again, back to mindset of the team, you know, my job is to hug the customer. Right? I like that kinda like that analogy.

It's like, now you're gonna pick their pocket. It's like, okay. Nope. Time out. That's maybe that's not it.

That's not what we're trying to do. Back to Meta's 10 laws of customer success. He says that constantly drive more value or expect churn. Right? So can we flip the script a little bit to, you know, actually getting that customer expand and use more of the product and upgrade and maybe pay more is gonna help us with retention.

Right? Because if we're not constantly driving value, whether that's expansion if that's adoption within their current capabilities or expanding into different tiers, upgrades, add ons. Right? And I and I think there's importance in both. Right?

I am using more of my current offering. That's good too. Right? But, also, if I can demonstrate how this add on, this additional feature, this next tier, whatever, can provide you even more value, right, solve more problems, drive more efficiency in your business, then that's gonna help with retention too. Right?

So I I we've been struggling with this of it's 2 different things. Right? There's expansion through upsell and cross sell, and I gotta sell now. And then there's retention. And I think it's the same.

Right? Yeah. It's just it's back to understanding, discovering what they're trying to do, identifying solutions, and then, you know, helping them see the value and and closing the sale, whether that's, here, use this new capability. Why are you not using projects in our world to do turns and rentals and do to do? That's not an upsell.

You're not gonna pay more, but I know if you do that or turn on your integration or do these things that you already have access to, you're going to be a higher probability of retaining, right, renewing your contract. I can take that to the next level and say, oh, by the way, here's this analytics capability that's gonna help you get to the reason why things are not working way faster, right, and help you see things coming before you get to that financial review, and now you missed all your financial numbers and your you know, those types of things. Right? We're gonna give you the leading indicators to get ahead of that on this week, not 2 weeks after the close of the month. You know?

Those things, that's where we need to get. So I I heard this concept of, you know, retention through expansion, and, you know, I've been trying to try to refine that, but I I I think it's the same. Right? I think if, again, if you're not driving more value with your customer and they get to that renewal, it's you know, they're gonna be like, why do I need this? I can go save money, go back to the other thing I used to do.

I'm gonna it's good enough. Right? So they have to get to year 1, especially, you know, that first renewal if you're on an annual contract and be like, I cannot do this without this capability. Right? And that's the mindset you're going for.

And if it's true, then you've got a long term customer that's probably ready to expand. If you don't, then you're probably gonna be fighting for them to to stay with them.

Todd Gagne:

Renewal time. Yep. So So maybe let's, close out with a couple of more questions. Just maybe like, you've done a fair amount of recruiting in this space. You've had some turnover in your team over time as the job has changed.

What would you say if you're somebody who's looking to build this organization, for themselves? What do you look for in, candidates? I know that's hard, but I do think there are some aspects of this that are probably somewhat, generic across all customer success candidates. And so I'm curious about what you've learned from your experience and what you would recommend.

Aaron:

Yeah. And I think the evolution, you know, thinking back from the first one to the ones that we have now, especially as we start to move into that expansion idea. But right now, I think the ability to learn fast, right, is super important. Right? You're gonna have to learn the product.

You're gonna have to learn the customer. You have to learn the industry, and then you have to be able to sort of connect all those dots for a customer quickly, you know, to help them solve their problems. I think being very sensing emotionally. Right? Is there somebody that is actively detracting?

Right? Do I have somebody you know, even if they don't say anything, but I can just tell by their body language that they're not a fan of what we're talking about and doing. And if I don't spend some time with that person helping them to show and see the value, they're probably gonna be the reason why they don't stay with us. Right? So I think learning fast, I almost relate it to, like, sort of an IQ, EQ, right, the sensing emotional piece of it.

What else? I think you gotta be resilient. Right? Whether it's grit or perseverance or resilient, you're gonna have customers that come through and cancel who are super upset about something. The system was down for 2 days.

Right? Or, you know, something happened and really impacted their business that you have to be resilient, help them cope and manage through that hard time, and then start to build back up, you know, with, you know, I come relationship bank accounts. Right? You've Yeah. Wanna keep building in.

Right? And there's gonna be stuff that happens. Right? You're making those deposits because something's bad is gonna happen, and I had a mentor that used to always tell me that when something when the stuff hits the fan, you wanna make sure you have a good positive balance. Otherwise, it's gonna be a rocky Bankrupt.

Conflict, bankrupt. You're probably done. Right? So close-up shop. The other one I've come to appreciate more, and our head of customer success is really good at this.

Sometimes you have to be assertive and kinda tell them what needs to happen. Right? You're the expert. You talk to hundreds and hundreds of customers across all kinds of different sizes and scales and, you know, be that sort of a sort of consultative perspective. Like, this is the best way to do it.

We talk to the best operators in the country, and and I'm not one, but I talk to all the best across, and here's really the best way to do it. And be a little bit assertive in that way because a lot of times they want that expertise. They're not exactly sure. So I think that's another one that I've really come to see as important. If you're just passive, you're agreeable, you're kind of along for the ride with them, they're gonna lead you to a place that they're not gonna be successful.

And it's, you know, it's on you because you should've seen that coming and help them sort of steer up out of the ditch and back onto the road and take a left turn here because that's the best way. We have lots and lots of customers that have taken that path and have been successful at your size. So I need to have the gumption and, you know, to be able to just look you in the eye and say this is the best way to do it. You know? If there's something unique, we can work through that, but this is this is the way.

Right? You go over there, you're gonna end up in the swamp and flooded, and that. You don't want that. Right? So that's that's kinda where we're at today.

It's definitely evolving. You know, I think the you know, we talked about the sales piece of it, discovery, and how do you inject some of those things into the CSM and their

Todd Gagne:

Yep.

Aaron:

Ability to do that discovery. Right? Just discovery problem solving, you'll be able to close. Right? Even if we're closing a deal or just this is the best way to do that.

Right? You know, closing on the idea or process. Right? Sometimes. So, you know, I'm not

Todd Gagne:

talk to me a little bit about the comp structure. You know, I'm assuming you guys have kind of a 70% base and a 30% variable. I think this is somewhat, you know, kinda standard for a lot of CSMs. Maybe talk to me a little bit about how that variable split up. You know, again, you've got kind of 2, objectives that you gotta go do.

And so maybe talk to me about, like, how you break that up and and really measure it.

Aaron:

Yeah. There's another quote. Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome. Charlie Munger, before he passed, used to that really resonated with me, and I had been through several iterations of comp plans now where I had way too many metrics to start and the team really didn't know what to focus on and tried to simple simplify that down to the 2. Right?

Your job is to retain customers and to expand customers. So 70 base, 20% on a quarterly bonus that is relative to their retention targets. And then they have a about 10% if they're on targets for quota for upsell is that monthly commission. So 20, 10, you know, 20% quarterly, 10% on a monthly commission that's related to that upsell expansion piece. Again, even thinking through that of expand you know, retention through expansion, is that is that even driving this mindset of those are 2 different things.

Right? So I I I think what's most important there is think of your comp plans like the product or an evolving right? Continue to learn and iterate on it. You know, it's you wanna make sure and give them plenty of advanced notice before you just change that compensation. Yeah.

That that's not something you do right, you know, next month or next quarter. Here's what's gonna happen. Right? You gotta give them enough lead time to help them through the change, but it's definitely something as the business changes, as your organization changes, you need to evolve and constantly think about because it will drive the outcomes on unequivocally. It will drive behaviors and drive outcomes for those folks, and you wanna make sure that they're aligned to where you're trying to go.

Todd Gagne:

So last question for you, Aaron. You know, you've talked a lot about kind of your journey and and kind of looking at this. But if you were a a founder who's basically going, I've got a handful of customers. I'm starting to get some traction. Maybe I got the first 10.

Maybe I got the first 15. I'm still doing kinda support in in dev and stuff. What would you give me as a recommendation to, like, where to start in the whole of this?

Aaron:

I would stand up a really solid support function to start. Right? Get a good tool. You know, we use Zendesk. It's kinda best in class.

You know, leverage those partners to help you accelerate. Right? Don't, you know, don't try to find the cheapest. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Go with one that's been doing it, that's a thought leader that can help you stand it up, get it running, continue to evolve.

Definitely start there. And then get just maniacally focused on that customer experience piece and try to feedback as much information to the product team and to the sales team. Right? You're gonna have a lot of interactions with the customer base. How do you how do you actively how how are the voice of the customer concept?

Right? How do you relay the stuff that's important and sort of filter out the stuff that's not? Right? If you're just an order taker and just passing through, you know, requests, you're gonna miss out on some potentially really big jobs to be done that could lead to some innovations that could lead to some really important things. Right?

So but start with support. Start with a good system. You probably have time to implement it. You got one person. It's way easier to start with something good and train from there than have 4 or 5 later and try to Yep.

Totally. You get so integrated, and there's so many connections and stuff that you build up over time. So I I think one of the geniuses that, you know, Ray and David did here is pick the best tools, partner with the best providers. Don't try to, you know, shortchange that because you will it will accelerate your stand up of that function. And then just pick the 1 or 2 things that you're gonna be focused on and drive those numbers.

Right? Look at them all the time. Report on them at the highest levels. Talk to the team about it. Don't focus on 10 things, just 1 or 2, and get super focused on what metrics, what numbers are the things that you're gonna drive and do the best on.

So

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. It totally makes sense. Well, Aaron, this has been good. I mean, we've, talked for an hour on this. I think there's a lot of good insight that we've kinda pulled from, your your experience and going from something that's maybe, you know, just getting the first handful of customers to kind of a continuum of of kind of growth and how to think about layering on different functions here.

So I really appreciate you kinda sharing your experience, maybe some of your trials and tribulations. That's that's good. Showing a couple scars and saying don't make these the same mistakes. But I appreciate it. So thank you very much for taking the time today.

Aaron:

Absolutely, Todd. Any anytime. I appreciate the opportunity and, you know, it it is definitely a journey. So all you founders who are listening to this, just you're gonna you're gonna fall down. You're gonna stub your toe.

Just pop back up, learn, and keep keep going on. Right? I think that's most critical part, you know, and just those founders. I think they just never give up. Right?

They just keep going. Right? It's like That's right. You just gotta keep going because it's gonna be hard and you gotta be. So thank you, Todd.

I appreciate it. Okay.

Todd Gagne:

Yeah. Sounds good. Thanks, Eric. All right. If you enjoyed the podcast today, please just take a moment to like rate it or comment on it for us.

This feedback really helps us and it helps us get the word out to like helping other entrepreneurs and founders. Thank you.