SaaS Scaling Secrets
The SaaS Scaling Secrets podcast reveals the strategies and insights behind scaling B2B SaaS companies to new heights. Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility, leads conversations with successful SaaS CEOs, exploring their challenges, triumphs, and the secrets that propelled their businesses to the next level.
SaaS Scaling Secrets
Secrets of Channel Growth with Robert Johnston, CEO of Adlumin
Dan Balcauski interviews Robert Johnston, CEO and co-founder of Adlumin, a cybersecurity company. The discussion traces Robert's journey from his early cybersecurity interests at the Naval Academy to pivotal experiences in the Marine Corps and NSA. Robert details the challenges and sacrifices in launching Adlumin and highlights the company’s evolution, focusing on mid-market security operations. Key topics include achieving product-market fit and scaling through an optimized channel strategy. Additionally, Robert shares insights on effective leadership, decision-making under uncertainty, the crucial role of early investors, and strategies for maintaining personal and business well-being. This episode offers valuable lessons on the intersection of military discipline and tech entrepreneurship, emphasizing the significance of distribution in B2B SaaS.
01:04 Robert's Journey in Cybersecurity
02:07 Founding Adlumin: The Early Days
03:41 The Reality of Starting a SaaS Business
05:36 Military Experience and Leadership
08:50 Adlumin's Current Form and Strategy
10:53 Challenges in Scaling Adlumin
11:24 Nailing the Go-to-Market Strategy
14:37 Success in the Channel Market
18:56 Adlumin's Channel-Only Strategy
19:35 Transitioning to a 100% Channel Model
20:39 Evolving the Channel Program
21:32 Leadership and Military Background
22:13 Hands-On Leadership Approach
26:21 Delegation and Decision-Making
30:10 The Importance of Product Management
32:57 Defining Success and Key Influences
36:00 Advice for SaaS CEOs
36:20 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Guest Links
Adlumin.com
Robert Johnston on LinkedIn
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast that brings you the inside stories from the leaders of the best scale up B2B SaaS companies. I'm your host, Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility. Today, I'm excited to speak with Robert Johnston. Robert is the CEO of Adlumin, a cybersecurity company he co founded in 2016. With a background in military cybersecurity and counter espionage, Robert has leveraged his unique expertise to build Adlumin into a leading provider of security operations and threat intelligence solutions for mid market organizations. Before joining the private sector, Robert served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. Let's dive in. Welcome Robert to SaaS Scaling Secrets.
Robert Johnston:Thank you. Thank you for the kind introduction.
Dan Balcauski:Well, I gave folks a little bit of a taste of your background, but could you please just briefly introduce yourself? Tell us a little about your journey in the SaaS world.
Robert Johnston:Yeah, absolutely. I I got started in cybersecurity in college. So I went from Florida originally. I went to the Naval Academy for my undergrad, and that's when I first got into the or was exposed, I would say, to the, to, to the sector. It was a sector that I always, I came to really love while I was in college. And then I went to the Marine Corps, I served eight years in the Marine Corps and Based off of my experience in college, I wanted to shape a career doing something similar in intelligence or in cybersecurity while I was in, in the Marine Corps. And so I did, I had the opportunity to shape my kind of career while I was in the Marines. I worked at The Network Security Center for the Marine Corps. I worked at the National Security Agency. I worked for, got to do some work for various intelligence community, organizations. And so that's where I really kind of really cut my teeth. And then I left the Marine Corps after eight years, I went to a firm called CrowdStrike for a little while. It was a CrowdStrike. For eight, nine months, and then left and founded Adlumin. My Adlumin story begins at a very small incubator actually here in the DC, Maryland and Virginia area called called Mach 37, where I left CrowdStrike and I went to incubator was a promise of, come here for three months, we'll give you a little bit of money, not a lot, 50K or whatever. And come here, we'll give you a little bit of money and you get your business up, up and off the ground and see if we can't, incubate it with the hopes that back then it was funded by the state of Virginia with the hopes that you would bring jobs to, to, to the area, right? The DC, Maryland, Virginia area, which we did do. We did, we brought a lot of jobs. So, that was my, SaaS startup journey, right? The company has taken many forms over the years. It's changed, several times in the startup world, they might call this pivoting. Right. But really they're just modifications to the business that that you're doing to kind of better serve the market. That's really all it is.
Dan Balcauski:Well, I appreciate you giving us that bit of an arc in your background fascinating that, your love of this space started all the way back in university. Maybe it's one of those moments, or maybe it's some other moment in your life, but I think we all have these transformational moments, sometimes I refer to it as a superhero transformation moment where one, one day you're just normal Peter Parker, high school student you get bit by a radioactive spider, you wake up and the next day you're Spider Man. You look back over your life. What's been your superhero transformation moment?
Robert Johnston:Yeah. Starting a SaaS business. It came at the right time, I think, in my life as well. When I first started Adlumin, I wasn't married, I didn't have any kids. Not that you can't do a startup when you have those things, but your perspective definitely changes. Your ability to sacrifice also changes. And in the beginning, in the early years of Adlumin, we had to sacrifice a lot, right? We had to sacrifice a lot. And so that was easier just with that point in time in my life. Also, I think I was young enough. I was in my maybe early thirties when I started Adlumin. was probably a little naive on how hard it was actually going to be. From the outside looking in, it's all, glitz and glamour. But when you're in there doing the work, especially in the early days, like things are much different. The reality is much different. Like it is a lot of hard work and no matter how much success you find, that actually, that hard work never goes away. It always remains. And so that's another common misconception is, Oh, it gets easier. You're at some point you're living in an ivory tower. This is not true. Like the hard work and sacrifice. Kind of never stop. It does get a little easier certainly that Than the first year and a half. But it just, things get more complex as things get larger. So, that was that that's my take on that.
Dan Balcauski:I certainly resonate with that story. I've told people more than one time that regarding the naivete of starting your own thing. I tell people if I go back and tell myself five yerequired. Maybe I would have turned around and done something else. I'mired. I'm glad you know that at the same time, I'm glad I did it. I wouldn't trade it, but you know, the the expectations versus reality could be quite shocking and there are differences. You do have an interesting background, coming from the military, like, has there been anything that you've gathered your skill or experience or sort of mindset from your military experience you think has been helpful and proved valuable in the, being a tech startup leader?
Robert Johnston:So there's the tangibles in the intangibles, in, in the industry that I'm in. I did have direct, I did gain a lot of direct domain experience from, the military because I was doing the job of cyber security while I was in, in the Marines, right? So, that, that was fortunate. Like I got a lot of training, a lot of education. I was doing it. I was doing it. No kidding for my job. Right? And so. That was helpful. Having that education and experience. So that's like the tangible, right? The tangible side. The intangibles did help a lot in the form of, confidence, leadership, public speaking. These things are incredibly important being in CEO. Leadership probably, Probably at the top because when you're a junior officer the Marines does a good job of training its officers at, to be leaders, right? They actually, they have got a template for doing this and they've been doing it for a very long time. So when you come out as a young officer, you're 21, 22 years old. And everyone that you're in charge of is older than you, more experienced than you, and in large part better than you at doing whatever function it is that, that you serve. This is especially true in such a highly technical arena where you are the man in charge, but you're having to, you're forced to lead people at a very young age of 22. Like I was a platoon commander and there were 60 people in my platoon that worked for me at 22 years old, for which almost every single one of them was older than me. And every single one of them was more experienced than me, especially when I first got there. So, over, that, that kind of experience does carry into the, I think into the business world. Because. When you come in as a young 30 something year old startup CEO and the business grows, like you get, CRO, CMO, everyone that's. Usually older than you, more experienced than you but doesn't necessarily know how to piece everything together, which is part of your job. But the leadership aspect I think was helpful. And now our organization's like nearly 250 people. So, it's gotten quite large. But that, that I think from an intangible perspective was helpful. Yeah.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah, that blend of the intangible and the tangible, the hard skills and the soft skills. Yeah, I mean, it's a, that's an interesting acceleration of maturity in that that a lot of people don't have the advantage to, lead groups that big, especially in the private sector for quite some time, B to C, chuckling, Dan Balcauski, CEO, B to C, Richmond Connections, Dan Balcauski, CEO, B to C, I do want to pivot a little bit to, uh scaling and to start the, set the context for everyone you mentioned Adlumin had gone through a couple of pivots, I guess, could you give folks maybe sort of the 30 second overview of what Adlumin is in its current form, just so we have a sense of the ground we're covering.
Robert Johnston:Adlumin is a security operations as a service platform built for the channel. So we have a. Channel go to market strategy and that security operations as a service platform has multiple widgets that live under that umbrella. But what's important is we build this Product and these products and services for our main customer, which is the channel that services their end customer base. And so that makes its way into one, how we do business, but two, how we build the product as well.
Dan Balcauski:Got it. And so, and if I'm correct, so you said it's product and services. So, am I understanding it's not sort of a pure play sort of software. There actually is a a human sort of component as well that the folks hire Adlumin for, is that correct?
Robert Johnston:That's right. There's a we run a product called Managed Detection and Response out of our software. So AdMob has a combination of software only. We, Microsoft only solutions like our, next gen SIEM solution or XDR software solution. And then we have managed security products like, like managed detection response.
Dan Balcauski:Got it. Got it. Okay. And so, so we've got, so we have the pure play sort of, software space. And then if folks for example, wanted to extend their capabilities of their own operations personnel, is that sort of a way to think about it, right,
Robert Johnston:That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So, essentially what you're asking, if you buy our managed detection response service is for the Adlumin services team to operate the software on your behalf. The
Dan Balcauski:Got it. Well, so I appreciate that context. And, I've wanted to make that distinction because sometimes we're talking to folks who have both and sometimes it's pure play product. And the IT operations world can be muddled if you're sort of an outsider looking in and we have all sorts of folks in different industries in the audience. Look, every CEO faces challenges sort of scaling their company. Like, is there, as you've scaled them? Is there been a particular challenge you faced during your growth that you found particularly difficult to overcome? A crucible moment that kind of has made the company to what it is today?
Robert Johnston:first, the first thing you have to nail is the product, right? Product, get, product market fit find a customer, right? Hopefully that customer is a large enough segment that wants to buy your product. Okay. So that's step one, but step two is really. Nailing Go to Market, and I think the crucible moment for Adlumin was that, was nailing Go to Market. And to really understand that and have that is incredibly important because you won't transition to the next level unless you can nail Go to Market and you have a viable and repeatable route to market. And this is where, many companies fail at product market fit. Okay that, that's common knowledge, but the, there are many companies even after that nail product market fit, but are not able to nail go to market. And they're not able to get over that hump. We took a long time to get product market fit, to really find a customer and segment that we resonated with. And then the real crucible moment though, was finding a go to market that they could actually, that we could build and that we could scale and that made sense for us. And for us, it ended up being a channel strategy. Because that's how we could best serve our, that middle market segment in a scalable and efficient way. So that, that is, that was our crucible moment. The minute we nailed, the minute we nailed that, it was all, it's all gravy.
Dan Balcauski:So, that's fantastic. I love that example. If we could zoom in on that time period where, it sounds like you had a product or service that people, had demonstrated. Need for willingness to pay for. But you're struggling sort of with this go to market, like what's going on where you're sort of sitting there being like. This is just not it. We've got to do something else. Like what was the decision process that led to, okay this channel strategy for you in the go to market.
Robert Johnston:It was. It was growth and velocity, right? And so at the time, we were looking at our growth and velocity and we were out getting customers. We were doing like two new deals a month, five new deals a month. Like we were getting it done, but we weren't, the velocity wasn't such that we. We were really gonna be a company that could do, 100 million, 200, 500 billion. Like it was just never gonna get there because we had yet to nail like a go to market that was repeatable. That velocity, like we were out there finding customers one by one, one by one, right? And that can work in an enterprise sales model. But when you married that up to like the market that we were serving, which is the middle market, It's a very expensive way to go capture customers on a one to one basis. And so we kind of recognized as a management team that, look we've, we have a customer, like we have a set of customers that want to buy our product and services. And now we need to kind of scale that thing up into the right. And get a go to market that, that is machine like that can grow and get bigger and kind of have a compounding effect that just gets bigger and bigger and builds on itself, right? And that for us was a channel strategy. We got in there, started recruiting channel partners, success. Success created more success and it just kept building larger and larger.
Dan Balcauski:What do you think were your, what enabled that success in your mind? Because I asked this because I've seen a lot of SaaS companies try to set up channel. Go to market and just totally whiff on it for one reason or another. What do you think it was about your approach or was it the market that like really enabled it, that allowed you guys to succeed?
Robert Johnston:And to succeed in the channel, you want your business to be as transactional as possible, right? And by transactional, it means easy to sell for the channel partner because the partners that are sitting in between you and the customer, they don't want to spend a lot of time like educating the end customer. They just don't have time for that. The margins are too thin for their business. And so they needed to sell and move quickly. And so there are aspects to our product that enable that success. One is we, when we took a look at our product, we took a zero configuration model, which created a really fast time to value, right? So there were no rules to write. There were no toggles to switch. We just we made decisions that were in the best security interests of the customer, and we auto configured the product to enforce those configuration standards. And then gave them an opportunity to, of course, maybe roll that back or make slight customizations to it. But what that created was like a very fast time to value for the channels customer. And then that created a very fast convert high conversion rate, but a fast turnaround time, right? It made the business very transactional where they kind of. Sold the product and then move on to the next and now to the next and so on and so forth, right? And so that became You know key to being successful in the channel because It shows the channel that this is a, selling your product is something they can make money doing and make money quickly, which is all they care about. Companies that you know, companies that don't succeed necessarily in the channel are ones that probably have long integration times. The products are complicated. If they don't have product market fit, there's not like a significant amount of pull and demand from their customers. If, if they have to spend a lot of time educating the customer on why they need why they need the product, that stuff sucks up time, right? A channel partner is not interested in going through their cycles because they've got plenty of other things they can sell that they don't have to educate the customer on, that they don't have to sit there and convince them that they need it. And so to operate successfully in the channel, I do think you need a product that, that you know, that the end customer already has demand for, right? They already know they want it. It's already on the shopping list. Right? You just got to be, you just got to put your product in the right pricing packaging and show the channel partner that you can win and you can win selling your product. And there's no education that they have to do on the backend to the customer.
Dan Balcauski:Interesting. So, so a couple of things there was you're tapping into existing demand. You're not asking your channel partner to go create demand on your behalf. And then also this quick time to value zero configuration where they're not, the end person, not only they have demand, but you can, you could show them that you could satisfy that demand in relatively short amount of time without needing any sort of extended engineering or setup time to, to actually make that happen. You did just mention as well kind of the pricing and packaging aspect, like, how do you think that fits into a good sort of channel go to market?
Robert Johnston:You do. So the last piece of it, other than convincing the channel partner that by selling Adlumin, they can do it quickly and they can sell a lot of it. Right? The last thing you have to show them is it'll be profitable to do so. Right? Like the channel has no interest in selling a widget that costs 5. Their margin on five bucks is, it's a waste of their time, right? Even if they sold a lot of it. And so you've got to, be delivering it at average contract values that are meaningful. You have to show the partner that it can be a profitable endeavor for them. And you've got to show commitment to the channel too. So Adlumin is a hundred percent channel. We don't take any paper direct, which means. They're never, we're never going to compete against each other in the field, right? So you'll never and channel partners do hate that. And it just ends up causing price erosion, frankly, for yourself, right? Because you end up competing with yourself or multiple people that they're all selling the same thing, but they're just angling. They end up angling for the best price. Right? And so we erase channel conflict. We provide a deal protection for deal registration. We have a program that, that ensures the competitiveness and profitability of the partner in a deal.
Dan Balcauski:That's super interesting that you're, so you're a hundred percent channel. So I guess kind of zooming in on, when you're going out this time period where you're saying, we're doing a couple of deals a month, maybe five, but things aren't really taking off. We start looking at channel. Was that. Was there sort of a phase transition where you're, I mean, I imagine you didn't just flip a switch overnight and go a hundred percent channel. How did you make that decision to say, okay, this is, we're going whole hog on, on, on channel a hundred percent?
Robert Johnston:Yeah, we started a channel strategy and we knew we had to commit and to do it, you need people, processes, and technology, right? So you got, we got those things down, right? And then and then it took a couple of quarters And we realized after a couple of quarters that, look, this is the go to market for us. This is the go to market that's going to be meaningful and it's going to work for us. And so, we, we just executed on that, right? It's, it took about two quarters, probably two quarters to, to realize like, this is where we need to place our bets. And then from that point forward, it was an easy decision to just begin. Placing an increased bet, a larger bet.
Dan Balcauski:Interesting. And no, yeah, cause that channel conflict is a huge problem as you think about like the, going back to that pricing and packaging that you mentioned, were there any things that you had to change or evolve over time as you've sort of gotten evolved this channel program on that point?
Robert Johnston:We've had to change our, partner program, make, change different little aspects of it. We've added things to it that, that are more beneficial for the partners. We've added a more robust direct acquisition business. So it's not that we don't acquire customers directly, we do. The difference is what we do is we take those customers that we acquire directly and we hand them back to our channel partners. We feed our channel deals, right? We feed our channel leads so that they can, so that they can have net new opportunities. And so we, we've made it more robust and a better, more rounded out go to market.
Dan Balcauski:Interesting. I want to pivot a little bit in the conversation because going back to something that you were talking about in the intro when you were talking about your sort of military background and leadership was it sounded like you had some pretty early military background? Good experience in leading large groups, but even more so leading groups where there are many individuals who are maybe older or even better at, whatever they were doing than you were as the leader, which, as you scale a company, I imagine becomes a pretty invaluable skill. How has that, if at all, translated to how you think about bringing in your senior leadership team around you as you scaled the company.
Robert Johnston:Yeah I'm pretty hands on in that I do make it my business to know all the different little aspects that are going on inside of the company, whether it's mainly you can just divide it into four buckets and I'm pretty deep, as deep, as I can be in all four of those buckets. First is product. Of course, I'm very deep into that, reading the market making suggestions on what we should do next to build and expand and grow larger, right? Finance. Understanding the financial aspects of this, knowing my way around, the P& L and the balance sheet and accounting has been very important. Sales, I'm very deep in understanding our sales and go to market and all the different dynamics of that and marketing, right? And so it's those. It's those four buckets and I'm in, and do keep myself very knowledgeable on what's going on in all four of those buckets. And what that allows me to do is bridge those buckets or other people that are responsible for those domains may not understand how to bridge. Like if you need to increase gross margins. You got to reach into product and find out how, right? If you want to increase sales efficiency, you have to reach into sales and marketing and find out how. And so that's been important as you really got to know your business inside and out. And I, I try my best, I try my best to do so. And you have to learn things like I went to business school. I consider that another critical training ground where, well, it's not like I got an A plus in all the accounting and finance courses that I took, but I did my best. I worked as hard as I could, and I had a fundamental understanding and a foundation, a foundational understanding on how to traverse those financial analysis metrics, KPIs, and financial docs. That's been critical in my mind as well.
Dan Balcauski:Got it. So, so you're, it sounds like you're staying, or you're getting pretty deep in, in keeping abreast of all these, functional areas as a leader. I imagine as a founder, your role has had to evolve as you've grown. Brought in more and more experienced leaders. I guess, how do you ensure that, you're adding value while also allowing these experienced leaders to, lead in their areas of expertise?
Robert Johnston:Yeah, you do bring new people in that are experts in their functional areas and you take their, you lean on them for their experience. Like you bring in a chief marketing officer on marketing or a chief revenue officer on revenue and run sales. And so you do have to lean on them. And you're there to Continue to paint the vision and make sure the whole band is marching in the right direction, right? The whole band is marching forward and going the right way. So that becomes your job and your job is also to, to, sanity check and pulse check because each one of those individuals may not be able to make the bridge into finance, into product, into marketing into sales, right? You've got to be deep into each one of those. So that you can fundamentally understand how you need to make changes in each one to achieve the outcome that you want to achieve. And I do think a founder is uniquely positioned to do that because they know everything from the beginning, right? They're deep into product. And then maybe as you switch to a more go to market focus company, now you're becoming deep in go to market.
Dan Balcauski:I'm curious, like how do you decide when you're thinking organizationally about what problems you want to solve versus problems that aren't actually problems, meaning like, you have a lot of people and a lot of those people, they want to do different things or people are complaining about different things this or that could be done better and it takes a certain amount of. Resolve and clarity of thought, in what you're doing. Like, no, there's a bunch of unhappy people about this thing but I don't care, like, how do you sort of think about, really what to focus on when you're driving organizational change across the business?
Robert Johnston:Yeah. You do need to delegate and things begin to kind of happen at a lower and lower level which helps you get good managers and they take care of their business and they run their side of the business. Being CEO can oftentimes be a tough job in that you almost never hear anything good, right? Like, why would something, if things are going well they of course reflect in certain ways, but you know, it's not like anyone's beating down your door being like, Oh, I did this great today. I did this great today. Like it does come up. What really bubbles up though, is the, is issues, right? The issues that are too big to solve at a lower level that require your attention. And that's what you end up hearing like all day, right, is the issues that are coming up That you need to resolve because no one else is in a position to resolve them. So, it happens less and less as the as the organization gets bigger. But I think as the organization gets bigger, the issues and complexity also get larger. And so it can be a tough job sometimes, a lonely job that you'll hear oftentimes people say. It can feel like that, like you're on a little island at moments. You
Dan Balcauski:So yeah, so you've got this situation where yeah, if a problem was small, it would've got solved before it got to your desk. But you know, you're hearing about, a bunch of different challenges. Do you have ways that you. North stars or guiding lights that you use or decide like, okay, this is actually a problem we're solving, or is this is just, yes, this is a problem, but like, we're not going to dedicate our attention to it now because we've got these other priorities. Like how do you sort of think about making those prioritizations and trade offs?
Robert Johnston:You know a lot of things will come to your desk or anyone's desk that you just look at it. You'd be like, this is outside of my control. There's a lot of things that maybe issues are created, but it's not really in your control. And you do need to learn to just let those go. Cause if it's not in your control, you're wasting time on it. For those things that are, that you are in control of, it's often important to be decisive. There's there, there's a time and a place to like wait and see and to get more information and to get more knowledgeable. But usually it's best to just execute an act quickly in in, in my experience, we got a famous saying in in the Marines that like a 70 percent solution right now is better than a hundred percent solution too late. And oftentimes, a 70 percent solution is something you can just ram through as opposed to trying to wait around for perfect. Never let perfection be the enemy of progress.
Dan Balcauski:I love that. So, so being decisive and not waiting for the 100 percent solution, 70 percent solution is usually sufficient. And I agree. Right. That you're constantly in that position where you're having to make decision under certainty and, you're never going to have a hundred percent. You're never going to have 100 percent information or the hundred percent solution is often has a lot of waste incorporated into it. Have there been, as you think about sort of, scaling in your leadership team, has there been, roles that maybe you were sort of unsure that you needed, but you ended up bringing them earlier that expected into the organization and, had an outsized impact?
Robert Johnston:There are there are definitely roles. On, the leadership team that I can remember bringing in some, I feel that I brought in too late. Like we could have benefited more by bringing those roles in actually earlier. And so there's some places we were late to the
Dan Balcauski:Well, where? Yeah. Was there a specific example in that comes to mind of like, yeah, we should have brought someone in this type of role in earlier?
Robert Johnston:Yeah. Specifically product management, we should have brought product management in earlier. And in, in my opinion, and we tried, but product management is a really tough job. And I got a lot of respect for people that work in product management just because it's like a game of influence, right. Where you've got, engineering teams that are, they're building stuff that don't report to a product manager, right. But product managers are really driving the train. And so, before things get too big, it's good to bring in and build. Mature product management organization. We eventually did that and that's great, but I wish we would have done that a little earlier in hindsight. Marketing is another one. We ran marketing on our own for a really long time. And I wish we had brought in and invested. In a more professional, mature marketing organization or earlier, I think that would also
Dan Balcauski:What were, if Yeah. If you look back at either of those situations, were there kind of telltale like symptoms or red flags that you think other, maybe there's other SaaS leaders would sort of be able to sort of notice in an organization that sort of, it seems like clear in hindsight now, but like what, what was going on where you're like, Oh, Hey, yeah, like these were, I should have noticed then that, that this sort of, this was happening and that's why I needed to start bringing those more professional organizational structures.
Robert Johnston:yeah, when the organization was small, right, we could you had a lot of people focused on product, myself included. Right. And then as the organization got bigger those people that were kind of covering that product management hole. We're pulled farther and farther away from the product. And then that left for a period of time, like a vacuum or a gap. Right. And then you go and build a product management organization, but it's in its infancy. Right. And so it doesn't quite have the maturity and know how everything's supposed to work. Right. And so there was a time when you know when there was a vacuum there. But, and what happens is it's like. Engineering teams might become like, Lord of the Flies, right? Like, they don't really have like a direction or they necessarily they're getting a high level vision, but they don't have kind of the next level of taking a high level vision into tactical execution. And then, making sure that they're driving outcomes. And so that's think one aspect
Dan Balcauski:As soon as you've seen the conch shell in the engineering standups, it's time to time to get involved with a product manager.
Robert Johnston:recognize pretty quickly, and it's not just a product manager, it's like building a product management organization, right, a function, an actual function. And that, then that becomes very important.
Dan Balcauski:Robert, I could speak to you all day and there's a bunch of other questions that we didn't get to that I wanted to ask. I do want to close out with a couple of rapid fire questions if that's okay with you. Are you ready?
Robert Johnston:Yeah. Ready.
Dan Balcauski:Awesome. Well, Robert, how do you define success?
Robert Johnston:How do I define success? It's supposed to be rapid fire, but that is a tough question. The goalposts always moves. I don't think you can ever define success. Like you reach one thing that you thought you would mark your key to success. And then once you get there, the goalpost moves forward. I think ultimately, success is never achieved. It's, the goalpost is always moving and you're always redefining goals for yourself.
Dan Balcauski:I really actually love that answer. When you think about all the spectacular people that you've had a chance to work with and learn from over your career, is there anyone who just pops to mind who's had a disproportionate effect on the way you think about building companies?
Robert Johnston:Yeah. I've leaned on a lot of the early investors we had, like the angels that That invested in Adlumin in the very early days. A lot of those folks were really really mature businessmen. They had started multiple companies. They had done this before. They had seen this all before. And still today, I'll call them on the phone with a problem. And I'll just ask them, like, what should I do? How should I handle it? And to this day they'll still, they take my phone call, right. And they answer my question. And usually when they answer my question, what's nice to hear is like, Oh at this company that, that we started back so and so great business, we sold it to whoever. And we had a similar problem and this is what we did, right. And so they've been experts that I can just lean on over and over.
Dan Balcauski:so, so your early angels and have been a good support network for you. If you think about like one of those calls that you've made to them, is there been, is there one that stands out in your mind in terms of a piece of advice that sort of is crystallized in your brain of how to look at situations you faced as a CEO?
Robert Johnston:The human component because there's a human component to, to, to doing business and working with people and making sure that everyone's aligned and everyone's motivated and excited about doing the job and being here. And so there's a lot with the human component that's important. That is, is. Is the hardest component, I think, actually, of running a business is in fact the human component.
Dan Balcauski:well, look, being a founder, CEO can be incredibly taxing emotionally, physically, spiritually. Are there any habits that you've cultivated to help you stay on the top of your game?
Robert Johnston:Yeah I I try and keep a good workout routine. That's, something I've always done for my Marine Corps days to, to even when I was in college I played division one sports in college. And so that, that helps me decompress, like I like to go for runs. Spend time with my family. It is hard to break away oftentimes when you're the founder of the CEO, like it's a seven day a week, 24 hour a day job, it feels like, that you learn to enjoy. And so, it's to find moments that, that you can take a, that you can take a break, I think are important and find a hobby for me. It's like working out and stuff like that.
Dan Balcauski:Keep physically active. Love it. If I gave you a billboard and you could put any advice on there for other B2B SaaS CEOs trying to scale their companies, what would it say? First
Robert Johnston:It's a it would say someone told me this as well. First time entrepreneurs talk product, second time entrepreneurs talk distribution. And there's a reason for that is because you could think about product, but really think about distribution. First,
Dan Balcauski:time entrepreneurs think product, second time entrepreneurs think distribution. Fantastic. Robert, this has been amazing. If listeners want to connect with you, learn more about Adlumin, how can they do that?
Robert Johnston:just go to Adlumin. com, reach out. We've got a fancy little chat bot on there. And yeah, thanks for the opportunity.
Dan Balcauski:I absolutely appreciate that. And we'll put those links in the notes for our listeners. Everyone that wraps up this episode of SaaS Scaling Secrets. Thank you for Robert to sharing his journey insights and valuable tips for our listeners. If you found this conversation as enlightening as I did, remember to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes.
