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
The Peril of Focusing on Problems with Steve Holm, CEO of Copper
Dan Balcauski speaks with Steve Holm, CEO of Copper. Steve shares insights into the challenges of integrating big company experience into startups, the importance of a differentiated product for the right customers, and the cultural shifts necessary for growth. Steve discusses his return to Copper to turn around the company by focusing on an ideal customer profile and reinforcing a unified vision, ultimately driving product innovation and aligning the entire organization. This episode explores practical strategies for guiding a company through transformation while maintaining a focus on customer outcomes.
01:53 Steve Holm's Journey with Copper
03:17 The Early Days at Copper
04:54 Leaving Copper and New Ventures
07:09 The Return to Copper
12:24 Challenges and Strategic Shifts
14:21 Focusing on Ideal Customers
18:34 Cultural and Product Innovation
21:11 First Moves in the Turnaround
21:38 Defining the Ideal Customer Profile
22:02 Creating a North Star Vision
25:02 Decisive Leadership in Action
27:03 Cultural and Team Changes
31:23 Measuring Success Through Customer Outcomes
33:50 Reinforcing the Vision
Guest Links
Well, I'm sure many people are familiar with this story arc where, you start to scale, you start to grow and you think you need. Big company experience within your startup and you hire certain types of people with certain type of experience doesn't always go well. And I don't think it went as well as it could have at Copper. it changed the dynamic. the soul of the company was around. The product experience and the integration with Google Workspace and making it really easy for small to medium sized businesses to sign up. churn started to outpace new business, which is obviously a huge problem. what's gonna get us out of this is an innovative, differentiated product experience for the right customers. I believe that decisiveness is very critical, especially at certain points in your company. I'd rather make a decision and be wrong, than take a year to make a decision.
Dan Balcauski:Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast that brings you the inside storage and the leaders of the best scale at B2B SaaS Companies. I'm your host, Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility. Today I'm excited to welcome Steve Holm, CEO of Copper, CRM, the Google Workspace native CRM, serving thousands of businesses across a hundred plus countries. Steve Scale copper from startup to 25 million a RR and is a rare. Boomerang, CEO, who returned to turnaround, the company he helped build as employee number four with broad industry experience. From his time at Dropbox, Domo, and podium, Steve brings a combination of design sense, product vision, and operational expertise to scaling SaaS companies. Steve, welcome to the show.
Steve Holm:Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Dan Balcauski:The excitement is shared from this side of the microphone as well. Before we dive into your scaling journey, give us the elevator pitch. What does Copper do? Who do you serve?
Steve Holm:Yeah, like you said, copper is a CRM that is built for Google Workspace users. So if you use Google Workspace, then Copper integrates with your emails, calendars, documents and actually can live inside of Google Workspace. And most recently, which we'll talk about more is we serve our ideal customers are professional services companies, so. Consulting agencies, construction, financial services, and so we've niched down in the past few years to get more vertical specific around professional services.
Dan Balcauski:Nice. And so I imagine the sort of Google Workspace integration is giving you that sort of seamless workflow so that you know you don't need a whole other UI to go outside of your workflow to go manage, kind of ingrained right in your rest of your workspace flow. Is that the idea?
Steve Holm:Yeah that's right. We called it zero input CRM when we first started out where. One of the big challenges with CRM, especially many years ago was having to copy and paste and move between applications. And so we know that a lot of people use Google Workspace and they spend a lot of time there in email calendar and documents. And so we put CRM inside there and we also have a web application that you can, and mobile applications that you can go to, and it syncs that data right into those applications without you having to go back and forth. And so that concept of zero input, CRMs always been a big one for us.
Dan Balcauski:You also mentioned the niching down, and I do want to return to that in a bit later in our conversation. But first I mentioned a little bit in the intro, you were employee number four way back in, I think 2014 when you joined the company. What drew you to, take the leap and joined as employee number four, such an early stage.
Steve Holm:Yeah I was, so, I was at a company called Base CRM, which was bought by Zendesk, which is now Zendesk cell. And I was one of the early designers there and that was my first intro into CRM. And, through my, throughout my time there, I a lot talking to a lot of the customers that we served. I realized there was a big need to integrate into, into where they actually do work instead of try to pull them into the CRM. And so, I had recently left there and was trying to figure out my next move, and I met the founder, the original founder of Copper his name's John Lee. And we chatted. And ultimately I just thought what a cool idea to align yourself with a company like Google and their workspace product. To. To realize that zero input idea that we had. And so, I just felt like it was a unique opportunity to join a small startup, which I wanted to do, to have a lot of impact and autonomy. And then I felt like the space was, I was really interested in it and the vision around Google Workspace was something that I felt was very compelling.
Dan Balcauski:And when you joined, you mentioned you were working for the company that eventually got sold to Zendesk, or was that in a design role when you first joined the company or was that the idea?
Steve Holm:I started out as a designer. That's my background, that's my passion. I love design and so I was a product designer there and at the time we didn't have product managers and so we were, design kind of filled both roles and just really enjoyed the space.
Dan Balcauski:And so you joined 2014 and then, you helped grow the company significantly, but then like six years later you, you decided to leave. What kind of led you to leave the company at that point?
Steve Holm:Well, I'm sure many people are familiar with this story arc where, you know you start to scale, you start to grow and you think you need. Big company experience within your startup and you hire certain types of people with certain type of experience doesn't always go well. And I don't think it went as well as it could have at Copper. And it changed the dynamic. I think we, the soul of the company was around. The product experience and the and the integration with Google Workspace and making it really easy for small to medium sized businesses to sign up. And some of these folks came in and decided we needed to go after the enterprise and kind of change the DNA of the company. And it didn't quite work out. And so I felt like my, as much as I loved it and I built that from scratch, I just felt like it was time for me. It was a good time for me to go do something else. And so I ultimately decided to leave.
Dan Balcauski:So, so new management comes in, Hey, we're we got to a certain level of scale. We gotta put our big boy pants on. Let's get the people who have seen this movie before. But they come with a set of strategic initiatives and maybe cultural, practices that weren't a fit. I guess when you left, that's maybe the what push, was pushing you out. Was there stuff you were hoping to learn at the next stage of your journey when you when you left Copper for the original time?
Steve Holm:Yeah. Yeah. I had been at, start at small startups, right? With Copper being, four people when I joined,
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
Steve Holm:and then grow, had grown to 200 plus people and, and I wanted to go to a bigger company and have some, a different type of experience. I was living in the Bay Area at the time and wanted to go experience the bigger. of scaled up company experience and so ultimately decided to go to Dropbox and help lead their ecosystem team which was something I was very passionate about with integrations and automations and partnering and bringing data in. And so I felt like it was a good fit for me at the time and ultimately decided to jump over and join Dropbox.
Dan Balcauski:Well, fine company. I have a few friends who have spent some time at Dropbox and have had nothing but positive things to say about it. They've got an office here in Austin. I, and I've had to. Pleasure of sampling the cafeteria, and it was definitely top notch. But besides that you are now though leading boomerang, or excuse me, you're Boomerang, CEO, so you came back to copper. And so how did that happen? You're, you go to Dropbox you're off pursuing this leading this ecosystem team. How did you make your way back to the company?
Steve Holm:Yeah I had a stop in between. I went to a company called Podium, which I really enjoyed, which was kind of a local business, CRM and so I was there and. I'd always stayed in touch with board members and even the, they brought on a new CEO after the original founder had left and we stayed close and I knew him well and we chatted and ultimately the company kind of plateaued a bit and I think. In my opinion, what happened is the company turned from a experience and really the soul of that, of our company was around the product experience and what we were doing in terms of innovation and all of that. And it turned into a sales and marketing company where we had, that, that leadership at the time had said, well, we have product market fit. Let's just go scale sales and marketing. And kind of went in to keep the lights on mode with a product and it flattened out and churn started to catch up. And churn started to outpace new business, which is obviously a huge problem. And so I, the board and a few folks had asked me what I thought. We needed to do what I thought copper needed to do. And so I told them, I, I gave them my opinion on, on, one was figuring out an ideal customer to focus on. I feel like CRM being a generic, horizontal CRM isn't gonna work in this world that we're headed towards, especially with ai. And so I felt like finding the ideal customers to focus on based on. they're using the product based on their NRR based on certain metrics we could go find out who our ideal customers are and niche down and focus on that. And then second, it was, to me it was back to the roots of product innovation and product experience, especially in a crowded space like CRM, if you're not innovating and keeping up and even getting ahead of where cr m's gonna be you're gonna get passed up quickly. And so finding an ideal customer focus and innovating on the product. It was my pitch to them and they said, well, why don't you come do it? And I said, ah, I don't know. I don't know if if that's something I wanna do. And as I thought about it, I just thought I had unfinished business in CRM. I felt like I hadn't accomplished everything that I wanted to, and I felt like the space still has a need for. For what Co Copper offers. And so ultimately I decided to come back and help with this kind of resetting the company's vision and taking us to where, the next version of copper will be.
Dan Balcauski:I don't want to scoot past that.'cause that would be, that's quite the decision. Right, like you've left this company, the growth trajectory has taken a turn for the worst of the interim. You're having conversations with, folks telling'em your advice that you're, I imagine there's a set of. Thoughts going through your head, risks of coming back, coming into that situation. I guess, how did you think about those risks and like, you said like there was unfinished business. Eventually you saw like there was, there's a positive vision that sort of got you past that. But I just kinda walk me through what your decision process was.
Steve Holm:Yeah I thought about it a lot and like I said, I, at first I said, I don't know that this is the right thing for me to do and as I thought about it more and I did more. Looking into the space and where things were headed and where things are in terms of the market and the type of customers that are out there to serve, I. I'm a pretty kind of risk tolerant type person. I think that's what's maybe helped and maybe hurt me in my career. I don't know. But but I, talked to my wife a lot and, said, a, this is not gonna be easy. This is not gonna be like a cushy job that I go take any means. I, I've got a lot of learning and growing to do in this role, but I just felt like my skillset and what the company needed. Really matched up And I thought, I need, I, what got me to a, design and product lead was just taking a chance, right? Taking a chance on a startup and kind of going after something and being uncomfortable and stretching myself a bit. And I thought, well, this is a unique opportunity to take that next step in my career to try something new. And I did feel like there were some. Some skills that I have. I don't have many skills, but I do have a few. But the skills and the strengths that I do have really, again, lined up with what I felt like copper. Needed and needs and ultimately I felt like I, I had a cast of people at Copper that could help augment the skills that I don't have around some of the go-to-market motions and all of that. And so, yeah I think those things all lined up and I said, let's do this. Let's I'm ready to go take this chance and let's do it.
Dan Balcauski:Well, there's always an interesting, situation for anyone who's ever taken any job, right? You go through an interview process, right? You try to ask really probing questions. Figure out, what's going on. You outlined a, the product investment had fallen off and pivoted more to a sales and marketing company. They kind of lost their focus on kind of target ICP and. All that may have been true, but I'm sure now, day one, you walk in and you're like, oh, then there's also all of these other things going on. So take me to that time, you were the prodigal son returned with this idea of, hey, yeah we've gotta lay out the strategic vision. What did you actually find when you walked back in the door?
Steve Holm:Yeah, yeah you.
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Steve Holm:you'd never know until you get in there and start to dig and learn. And so there were many challenges. I think set aside the, the growth was slowing down and churn was really, spiking. There, there were many cultural challenges. I think the product and sales and customer support team were at odds. They weren't the same. They weren't on the same page. Product was thinking we're a product led growth company, and sales and marketing were thinking, well, we have these, we're gonna go sell to larger customers that need high touch motions. And customer success was like, what is the product doing? They're not building anything that our customers are telling us. And so there was a huge, huge. Split between what everyone thought we should be doing at the company, and everyone was very passionate about it.
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Steve Holm:So that, and, there was cashflow pressures and some debt we had to figure out and, venture debt and, needing to raise some capital. There was all sorts of things that I was like, there was a few times where I was really questioning my life decisions. No, no doubt. But, you take it one day at a time and keep going and figure out how to, get, overcome some of those challenges.
Dan Balcauski:So I imagine I I guess, anyone who's kinda walked in that situation is probably like, well, yeah there's probably a ton of problems behind the door. I guess, you're seeing all of these problems like, but you're in the CEO here and you've gotta set this, the. Order of operations of what is most important in the company. And so kinda given all those problems, I'm just curious like how, like what was your process for really figuring out, okay, what these are the, of the 50 things that like we go, could do, these are the things, three things we actually can do. Like what sources of information are most valuable? Because, you just say like, Hey, everyone's really passionate about sort of their point of view, right? So, of course like, well, I go in and I talk to the, head of marketing and I talk to the sales leaders and I talk to the, the individual reps. Right? But everyone has their opinions and you're, they're looking to you to synthesize that. I guess just walk me through, like what was most valuable to you in like putting some structure to what seemed pretty chaotic of a situation?
Steve Holm:Yeah, there were a few things. Number one was. Looking at our customers, who are our customers and who are our most successful customers? I think we had become obsessed with the churning customers and how do we fix churn and all of that. And I said, well, let's look at who, who are our most successful customers, and try to find some themes there and what are they doing that makes them successful? And how, what of product. do they have that makes them successful, but also what motions do we have with them, that help them become successful in terms of activation and onboarding and all those things. And so really that was. A big part of it was looking at customer behavior, trying to find themes, looking at, revenue by customer segment, net revenue by customer segment, conversion rates by customer segment and size and other like, like looking through a bunch of lenses around industries and size and annual versus monthly plans, and just really trying to figure out who are our best. And why are they our best customers? ultimately my number one goal was to align us in the same direction. Like we had to pick a customer segment to focus on, then ultimately create a vision and rally everyone around that vision to get everyone marching in the same direction, solving needs for a certain type of customer.
Dan Balcauski:Well, you come from a design and a product background. And I also come, I have a background in, in product, previously engineering and then product. And so I'm big fan of yeah putting the customer first. But it and I know that this is a persistent problem in companies because you walk in though and everybody's. Says like, yeah we know who our customer is. You even hinted at it before, right? You're like, we go to customer success, or, and they're like, oh yeah, we sell to these, large accounts. So you get the product team, say product led growth. So, what do you think was happening there that, got everyone? So like, or, this is a general pattern, but, applied specifically to what you saw at Copper. Like how is, how does that knowledge not get, so like how does it not get consolidated? How does so end up so dispersed?
Steve Holm:Well, for a couple reasons. Many reasons, but a few that I really can call out. One is, I think. The product team was so all in on product led growth. Were like, we're gonna make this a product led growth company where we don't need sales and marketing and everyone can onboard themselves and. They had an idea of what type of customers were the best in their world. Sales was like, we need a larger deal. Of course sales is like, they'd rather sell one large deal a month than 50 small deals a month. So they're like, we need large deals. And customer success was like, well, need to just focus on our largest customers and make sure they don't churn. And so all these different departments had their own. they're all right. They're all right and they're all wrong, right? They're right because they're indexing on the most recent data and the things that are coming their way and the strategy that they have. But it, no one was really looking at it holistically terms of like, number one, who are our most successful customers, like I said, but also, how can we win in the market? Like, what does the market look like? And. How can we go win long term and what's the strategy to win in terms of positioning ourselves and finding the right customers? And so, you can always index off the last customer call you had, but that doesn't mean it's a holistic view of who your ideal customers are. And so, it, it took. took a lot of looking at data and also looking at the market. Like I said, I think that was another big piece was saying, can we win against the HubSpots and the sales forces of the world? Why would someone choose us over them? And where can we go find a niche that we can dominate in? And so lining up those two things, which not everyone had thought about. Again, people were like just focused on their, my myopic world of their department versus like a bigger sort of strategy and positioning exercise.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. So, and the. Understanding the target customer profile? Huge. I didn't want to be myopic we'll put that, we'll put that on the table. I guess were there other sort of big cultural issues that you found besides a lack of focus on a coherent customer profile that you were having success with?
Steve Holm:Yeah, culturally, our product team and we call it EPD, engineering Product and
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
Steve Holm:our EPD team had been very, I don't know, content, I guess, where the previous leadership had said, we're gonna, we're gonna just go sell and market this, and you guys can ship one thing a year, but just keep the lights on, make sure we're performant. And so there wasn't a lot of urgency. Around innovation. And there wasn't a culture of, let's go ship fast and learn fast and iterate fast and really, focus on innovation and iteration and all of those things. And so, and that was something that I feel very passionate about, needs to happen. And so there was a big. Shift in how we work from an engineering and product and design standpoint. That was a big one.'cause I said what's gonna get us out of this is a, is an innovative, differentiated product experience for the right customers. And I don't care if you can sell and market the heck out of it. already tried that, but churn's catching up to us. So it's gotta be, support, but mainly the product that you're selling, what's, what problems does it solve? And how do we go from like a vitamin type product to a painkiller product where you gotta have it. It's not a nice to have. So, so it was engineering product and design really shifting that culture to be more, customer driven, iterative, innovative, differentiated. That was a big cultural focus area of mine when I first started.
Dan Balcauski:So you realize this, it's lack of focus on the customer. You realize this sort of lack of urgency or. Innovation maybe, being too happy with where you're at and just kind of keeping the lights on so you realize these things need to change what, what are your first moves? Like, what do you, like, how do you start, because you're effectively in a turnaround, right? You've, I'm sure you, you've got financial issues. You mentioned venture. You've ventured venture debt before, right? This covenants clocks are ticking. You've got equity growth targets. You've got people doing their own things like, like how do you start effect these change? You mentioned before, one thing I really liked about what you mentioned before was you're looking at data, but looking at data on people tend to do very often. I think it's just the way humans are wired is focusing on the negative. Like what's the problems? All these people are churning to figure out how to not make them churn. I did really appreciate your reframe of like, actually, like, some of that's gonna be inevitable, but if we're gonna figure out where to invest let's figure out where the bright spots are. And I think that's too often not the path, the default path. So I think that's really sharp there. Talk about like, okay, so now you realize this, like what do you do? What are your first sort of moves to like, right? The ship in this direction?
Steve Holm:Yeah very first move was. The first, well, okay, let me back up. The first move I wanted to do was lay out a plan for the plan. And so, first week I said, here's what we're gonna do. I said, step one is, figure out who our ideal customers are and establish a compelling vision. And mission for those customers. And second was positioning ourselves. And third was, tracking metrics to know if we're successful or not. So I laid out a timeline.
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Steve Holm:here's what we're gonna do. I don't know what it's gonna yield yet in terms of results, but this is what we're gonna go do. so, flashed up a timeline, the very first outcome that I wanted was a clear. Ideal customer profile, a clear mission and vision for that customer profile and some positioning for that, how we can position ourselves to win for that ideal customer profile. And so I actually, I was like, I don't have a ton of experience in this, but I have a close friend who works at one of the big ad biggest ad agencies in the world, and he, his job is to go into companies, giant companies and create a North star. Vision for them. And so I said, Hey, you're a close friend of mine. Help me out here. You know what sort of assets and deliverables and, content do we need to pull together in order to establish a compelling direction for the company and get. Everyone on that same page, like get every single person in the company speaking the same language, understanding where we're headed. And so, he helped me with this framework, which is amazing. A North Star vision that talks about, differentiators and it talks about, the problems you're gonna solve and why you're unique. And and even down to, archetypes. What type of archetype are you in your space? You look at sort of the competitors in your space and what archetype do they take on versus you and
Dan Balcauski:What would be an example of that? Like what's an example of like an archetype in that?
Steve Holm:is the sage is an archetype, which
Dan Balcauski:Okay.
Steve Holm:about we help people. Understand their data and we facilitate them learning and growing and developing and we're like a companion to them. Running their business.
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Steve Holm:a sage archetype. And then there's, the authoritarian archetype, and I can't remember all their names,
Dan Balcauski:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Steve Holm:power archetype, where it says, we know exactly what you need to do and you need to do it this way.
Dan Balcauski:Hmm.
Steve Holm:so it, it really manifests in the way these companies talk to their customers and the way they establish themselves. And so, we wanted to find our unique archetype and that's just a part of that North Star vision. But it was a fun part of it, establishing. What is our tone and how do we speak to our customers, which influences obviously our marketing material, but also our product and how we speak to our customers and the product and the type of things it does. And ultimately that North Star is meant to not only give you purpose for now. But give you a long runway that you can go run against for a long time. And so, a lot of companies fail because they think, just think about the now or the next year or whatever, and establishing a vision for that. But if you can establish a vision that can take you out for a long time and you're, you have clear steps that you're working towards, then I think you have something pretty powerful that's lasting that you can, it's not just a. Go generate, 20 million in revenue in the next three. That's not a vision, right? That's like a tactic. And so this North Star was a very meaningful process that we went that ultimately gave us content and really a stake in the ground around who we are and where we're going.
Dan Balcauski:I love that. And just you mentioned you had this friend at this firm. Did you bring in him or a third party to help you run that? I like these type of things. Like they could look very simple if you read. About them in a book or a blog post. Then you get into the room with everyone and you're trying to like argue about what your differentiators are, or like the different factors that define the different customer segments in the marketplace. And all of a sudden things get real messy. So I'm just curious, like, did you facilitate all that yourself or were, did you help bring in like a third party to help? It is.
Steve Holm:I I don't know if this is right or wrong, but this is what I felt like had to be done, was that I had to make some decisions and I couldn't design this by committee. So I got data from everyone on our team, but ultimately I brought him in and he's a close friend, so I just went to his house every day where I'm like, Hey, I'm coming over. We're gonna hang out and you're gonna help me with this. And I, I help him with whatever things he might need and just a close friend that was excited to help out in any way he could. And he did it for large companies. So he was like, well this will be a fun experiment to see how this works for a smaller company. And so, I led it and decided the outcomes that I wanted because number one I, like I said I don't, it wasn't a time to design by committee. It was a time to, to be decisive. I do believe that decisiveness is very critical, especially at certain points in your company. And I'd rather make a decision and run after it and be wrong, than take a year to make a decision. And so part of me was like, we just gotta make a call. We just gotta go make a call. And now it wasn't, I didn't want to ignore any data or come up with something that wasn't, rational or rooted in some, information. And we had that information and I got enough information to say, let's go create this and let's just do it. And so him and I sat together and did it, and we pulled in people as needed, but it wasn't a thing where we got everyone together and collaborated on it and, that, that, that was just what I felt like needed to happen at the time. There is a strong time and a place to collaborate with everyone on the team and jam and get stuff done, but this was a moment where company was in chaos. We had to make a decisive to create a, a stake in the ground, a mountain. We needed to climb up and so I just took the reins and did it.
Dan Balcauski:I think the kids might refer to that as founder mode these days. But.
Steve Holm:yeah, maybe that's probably, yeah. Fair enough.
Dan Balcauski:Well, I, so, that definitely has there's no one way to do anything in the world. So I could definitely see the appropriateness of acting, especially in that those critical moments and needing to move forward even if the decision is, is not optimized and is not full. Kumbaya consensus building. I'm curious though, like whether it was that or, you also mentioned as it pertained to like the product design engineering teams, this urgency as you roll this out, right? You come with this plan and you realize, you have this other cultural issue of urgency how did you manage, how did people react to that to that change? And how did you manage through through the folks who were there? Like, was it, was this like, I, you hear some turnarounds where it's just like, alright, all the, we're clear the decks, everyone's gotta get off and we're putting everyone back on. Like, was it that approach or like how did you think about changing the cultural dynamics that we were talking about?
Steve Holm:Yeah. We I had to let some people go, there was some people that in, in leadership and otherwise that just weren't, I felt like they were and they're great people, smart people, but at that given. in time for what we were trying to do. They were more part of the problem than part of the solution. And as I observed how we were gonna move forward, it became very clear, very fast who was gonna be, part of the solution and who wasn't. And so we made some decisions quickly to exit some folks and promote some folks and hire some folks and get the right, right team in place. And some of that happened right away. And some of it happened over months of time and all that. There was. There was some people, even some people that I was, that I felt were that had, that really were aligned to where we wanted to go and very passionate about it. And so I had a clear space for those people to come in and take more of an active role. And so it was kind of. Feeling out the culture, feeling out, the people that I felt like could go on this journey with me and that were gonna be really instrumental in this journey and creating the team to do that. And, that was a challenge and we did layoffs and we got to cashflow positive and extended all those things. But ultimately it was about the right team and the right resource allocation and all of that. And then. You asked how did they
Dan Balcauski:Yeah.
Steve Holm:That part was tough, but they, everyone was starving for a unified direction that not only, was not only a marketing message or a positioning message, it was a vision and a mission and a strategy that informed everything from marketing to how we handle our customer success programs, to what our product roadmap is going to be. And so they, they were. So excited to just be on the same page for once. Even if they didn't agree with what page we were on, they were like, at least we're on the same page and we're rowing in the same direction. And I don't have to fight cultural battles that I was fighting all the time. You know what I mean?
Dan Balcauski:There's nothing worse. You get in a room and everyone has, everyone thinks that the top level direction is something different, right? It's like, all right, well, at least we agree. Maybe this is not the ideal, but at least we're all aligned on what we have to get out this meeting for you said something else about, finding those folks inside who wanna step up. I was chatting with the CEO on the show. I don't know. 20, 30 episodes ago who also was doing a turnaround and he kind of talked about, I dunno if this is a term he used, but almost like hidden gems in the organization. Maybe you have a IC product manager, they're like, they've got a VP of product and a director of product and it's them. And he found out that like, Hey, this person is awesome and they're getting, all of, none of their ideas are making it to me because they're all getting, intermediated by these other layers of management. So like, how do I move that person? So like, oh, we're gonna put you in a box here and you're just gonna report to me so I can leverage your full. Talents and ability. So it's not necessarily about shipping people out, but like moving the org structure in a way that like gets the people in the right chairs, right? That's not even necessarily give'em a promotion, just like let them do their job without, spending 50% of their time making PowerPoint decks to justify to their third line manager why this is a good idea. And then, going through endless revisions before you get some, watered down version of that six months later. Right.
Steve Holm:Oh, a hundred percent. I like that. Hit Hidden Gems. We have had few many of them and, our product leader now was one of those that was kind of reporting down in the chain we had to clear space for him to take a leadership role and give him some autonomy to, to go after it. With guardrails with this new North Star in mind, with that direction, let'em go, let these people go. And, we owe it to them to give them space to go innovate and try new things. And I feel like that's such a important part of someone's career to have that ability to go try some things. And some will, will succeed and some will fail. But we're taking a lot of shots on goal and that was the culture that we wanted to create.
Dan Balcauski:You mentioned earlier that, you laid out this plan for a plan. I'm curious, like, you, so you start making these cultural changes, you refine this ICP. How did you know that this reset was finally working? Like what change told you that this was like really taking hold?
Steve Holm:Yeah, it's a good question. I think a few things. Number one was, Our team was aligned around it and their OKRs and their initiatives started to line up towards it. So like our roadmap reflected what our strategy was. That was based on our new ICP and our new vision. Sales and marketing started to. Demo the product in a different way. And our customer support team started to onboard people in a different way that was based on this new direction. And so it started to become clear that everyone knew, and by the way, we have a weekly playback that I would repeat it once we had it. I would, I said, I want everyone to tattoo this on your foreheads. We're gonna repeat this. We're gonna know it everyone, I don't want anyone at this company to ever feel like. I don't know why we're doing what we're doing. Like I've been at so many companies yeah. that's the. That's the feeling, that's the vibe, is like, why are we doing this? What's going on? What, how does, how is what I'm doing helping contribute to, at the highest levels of the company? And so, I wanted everyone to know it. And so we repeated it every single week. And so, number one was I felt internally we had all aligned based on our behavior, based on the way we were talking and the projects we were working on. That was huge. And then number two was we started to talk to customers. I went on a, a. Just a initiative to go talk to as many of our customers as I could, especially those ICP customers, and tell them the new vision and tell them this new direction and tell them what our roadmap was and get their take on it. And it became very clear that they're excited and we were, we had, I don't know if we'd struck a bullseye yet, but we were like really close to the bullseye and people really liked what we were saying in terms of. What jobs to be done. We were focused on what the roadmap looked like, how we were gonna position ourselves, how we were gonna specifically verticalize our automations and integrations for these specific types of customers. And so getting confirmation from existing customers, multiple times over and over again was like, okay we're onto something. We're onto something here.
Dan Balcauski:And I, going back to this. This plan. So talking to customer, getting the feedback from customers, the conversations internally were happening in, in a way. I guess, kinda just thinking about like the in internal conversations or you said you were repeating it every week. Were there any rituals or. Kind of practices that you found effective for reinforcing that message of that direction? A lot of folks maybe have like a weekly all hands or, some CEOs write a weekly, newsletter. Like, I dunno, like how did you think about really ingraining that, that message in the organization? There's always a one of the things about being a product leader, product strategy is like. If you feel like you told them the product strategy this week, it's like you need to say it again. Like, then you need to say it again. Right. So it's it tends to be one of those things that you are saying all the time, but like, potentially Right. Those folks aren't in direct meetings with you. Right. And, especially we're in a remote environment now, maybe, folks aren't, hearing it at the water cooler because they're, they're only communicating with their teammates via Slack or in Zoom calls. Were there rituals that you found effective in helping to ingrain that message?
Steve Holm:Yes, absolutely. One, one that I spoke about was our weekly playback just literally. Repeating it and maybe to make this more concrete our strategy and our ICP and all that came together, but we, it, the outcome and the asset that really helped was we had a. Four jobs to be done framework that came out of it, that made us different, that made us unique, that we could rally around, and that was we help our customers connect with leads, win new clients, deliver projects and services, and create repeat customers. And so we feel, felt, and feel like that's unique because most CRMs focus on just closing the sale, winning the deal, versus actually delivering the project or service and creating repeat customers. And so. That framework. We said we're gonna take those four things. And that's a framework not only for marketing, where we can go talk about those things on our website and our campaigns and marketing material, but when we onboard customers let's go and say, okay, how do you connect with leads? Let's help you connect with your leads this way. How do you win clients? How do you. Deliver your projects. What project management tools do you use? We can maybe replace those, and then how do you create repeat customers? And so that those four pillars that, that framework we could use in every part of the business. Our roadmap changed where we had those four things and we said, here's the things inside those four buckets that we're doing to. that those jobs to be done to, help further our mission. And so we had a really clear framework to, connect with leads, win clients, deliver projects, and create repeat customers. And we could all repeat that verbatim. And we knew what it meant for our teams.
Dan Balcauski:You're making my product management heart go a flutter. Because, I don't know, just put it into context for our listeners or make it the contrast clear. We help our customers deliver services, get repeat customers, how that sounds, versus we're gonna grow a RR 20% next year by going into the enterprise. Right? Like those are those because,'cause exhibit B is what most companies talk about as their company strategy. It. It's a total eye roll. Like you don't know, like, what do I do with that? Like I, I can't execute. But like with those job stories that you've outlined? Yeah, I'm sure there's nuance and everyone has slightly different takes on it, but it's, first of all, it's grounded in the customer and their outcome, which. Generally, maybe it's just me, but I always found inherently more motivating than, some revenue target. Like, oh, revenue target's great for the investors or for Wall Street, like, whatever. I guess the CEO's bonus is tied to that. But like, it doesn't motivate me like as a product leader, as a designer, or and it's just, it's so much more actionable at every level of the organization. I think it is beautiful. I love it. So.
Steve Holm:you. Just one thing you said, we started to change our success measurements to not a RR or churn necessarily. It was we shipped a forms product. Not how many customers implemented that form, but how many leads are our customers getting from that contact form that's on their website, right? Like, we wanted to measure our outcomes as our customer's outcomes. Like you're successful as a product and customer success team. If they're getting the outcome that your, the thing you shipped was trying to get them. have right in instead of use that thing, who cares if you use it if it's not getting value? It's like, the forms product, again, it was the OKRs were around getting our customers to get around 30 leads per month from their website based on the forms that we're putting on their website. And that tho that's how we changed our mindset around measuring outcomes that we're customer focused. That's big. I think that's. I don't think a lot of companies do that, and I had a good leader at podium that helped establish some of that in my mind previously.
Dan Balcauski:And, a lot of times in B2B, the amplitudes mix panels of the world don't want to have you say this, but usage can be an anti metric. Like, I don't wanna use QuickBooks more as a business owner. Like, that's not my joy. Like, I would prefer if QuickBooks just sucked it on my bank statements and generated a p and l that I could use for taxes. Like, I don't wanna log in. More. Right. And we get very excited about that, and I think that just opens up the domain of how could we, whether it's, you see that with Intercom and their Finn AI component, right? Of like, Hey, it's not that we're like adding more bells and whistles for your customer sport agents. We're having our AI resolve tickets before it ever hits a human. Right. No one ever has to log in, right? But if you're focused on like how many users logged in and press these buttons in a sequence like it, it grounds you in a product world versus a customer focused world. So, you have all all my love and for that whole process you just outlined there. Thank you for going to such depth. Steve, I can talk to you all day, but we are running up on time, so I wanna be respectful of yours. Do a couple of rapid closeout questions. I, there's so many topics we didn't even get a chance to, but I think it was well worth it for the deep dive on that transformation turnaround that you work through in copper. And I'm sure that the work never end. So, best of luck as you go forward. But just let's let's close out with a couple rapid fire questions. Maybe it's this gentleman at podium that you mentioned, but, I'm a big believer knowing if success gets there on their own. Who's someone who's had a disproportionate effect of the way you think about being a leader or growing companies of all the spectacular people you had a chance to work with. I.
Steve Holm:Yeah, maybe this isn't the answer that, that you're looking for, but I, I. I think my wife, maybe this is a cheesy answer, I don't know my wife is probably the person I'm most grateful for because. She's been supportive and provi, she's been my rock as I question my life decision sometimes, right? And I'm like, we're gonna do this and this could have this impact on our family. And she's like, let's go for it. And I think you're capable. And she's there every step of the way. And I am most grateful for her as my. Therapist and my partner and my, she helps me with strategy on things and she's not a tech person, which helps me bounce ideas off her that brings it down. Us in tech, we're in this bubble where we talk certain way and think things resonate with customers when they absolutely do not. And so she can help me come down to earth and talk the way normal people talk and so I'm probably most grateful for her.
Dan Balcauski:I was not looking for any particular answer. That is perfectly acceptable response. Look Steve, if listeners want to connect with you, learn more about copper, how can they do that?
Steve Holm:We are@copper.com. That's probably the best way. Go to copper.com. Look us up on LinkedIn at, copper, CRM and you can see what we do. And sign up for a trial if you'd like and check us out. That's probably the best place.
Dan Balcauski:Awesome. Well, I'll put that link in the show notes for our listeners. Thank you so much, Steve. That wraps up this episode of SaaS Scaling Secrets. Thank you, Steve for sharing his journey and insights. For our listeners who found Steve's insights valuable, please leave a review and share this episode with your network. It really helps the podcast grow.
