GSD Podcast - CSM CASE STUDY- Finance as a Service with Steven Byler of GrowthLab Finance

As part of a new focus with the podcast, we kicked off our first case study with Steve of GrowthLab Finance-as-a-Service. Steve dives in and talked about the move to use CSM's when their customers asked for a different engagement model. Steve talks about how having CSM's gets him closer to his goal of "making things boring again." Some good chat here around net retention, QBR's and implementation.

Transcript:

Jeff  01:10

Hey there, it's Jeff, thanks for dialing in again, today, we've got a new series. Maybe we've done a couple of these before, but haven't really highlighted, but wanted to talk to some people who were at the executive level that we're dealing with all the client success issues. But then decided to hire customer success and talk about what's worked and what hasn't worked and everything. So got Steve from growth lab, financial, awesome company that does financial as a service. And we talked about a bunch of things. And my big quote we got out of that was, we just want things to be boring again. So that was great. So having having a good listen, and I'll try and stop stumbling my words and let you guys get on to the interview. All right, and we're good to go. So I've got Steve here from growth lab financial cooking, I was on your podcast. You are a couple of us in Damn. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, it was a blast. And that was alive. She was like, just making sure I wasn't swearing.

Steven Byler  02:31

You know, we've had, we've had a few guests that, that I'll just say that that was not a problem.

Jeff  02:38

Passionate, we're just passionate for you. So tell me a little bit about yourself. And then I was fascinated when when I heard about your company and what you guys do, because it's such a need that's out there for Saas companies, but not just for Saas companies. Everybody else, it's, it's a great model, one that I've kind of modeled myself a little bit along the same lines of as well, too. So you've got the floor, and then we're gonna get into some case study stuff and talk about some actual applications of customer success.

Steven Byler  03:07

So cool. Yeah, well, Thanks, Jeff. Growth lab, financial services, or growth lab, as we're rebranding, we, right now are a finance as a service company, a marketing as a service company, and probably soon to be have some more HR services. But, you know, like, similar to you, Jeff, and, you know, comfortable the conversation that we had on our podcast, rotate for CEOs focused on startups, right, focus on those companies that, you know, because Dan and I started growth lab in a similar way that you've, you've gotten started, like, take your experience in larger companies and bring them to the small business startup world, where that experience and that that value is just not either not present. Or, you know, really, you really need to infuse that into the DNA of of your customers. So that's kind of how growth lab got started. Eight years ago was Dan and I very different backgrounds that come into the startup world comes out of more corporate corporate finance. And you know, we joined forces and brought our strengths together to Yeah, help that help startup world, especially in the early days, we've grown quite a bit, but help startup world understand how to manage finances, manage planning, accounting, and be able to have those conversations with investors with your board with your team on an ongoing, ongoing basis. So yeah, I personally, I came into the startup world in Boston, Cambridge, and I've just enjoyed being able to help lots of companies grow and scale.

Jeff  04:36

Yeah, it hasn't. Well, I was gonna say it's changed a lot. Now if you haven't been in Cambridge recently, but just a lot more restaurants I would say.

Steven Byler  04:44

It's a it's a it's amazing. I had not been in Boston in so many months have driven through it so many times. But yeah, that's it's amazing how much has changed over the last?

Jeff  04:53

Well, when what happened was that all the startups were in Cambridge, and then suddenly, it's Google, Microsoft and And then that a couple other big ones. Yeah. And then suddenly Boston became the startup place, again, where you've got all these, all these office buildings, where it's crazy. So awesome. So yeah, just a quick note on that recap, I really liked it, because it really emphasizes the fact that your startup founders, they go out, they get money. And if it's their first time through, not even the first time through, they, they might not get the products, like they get billed to get the dev people, but then it's everything else to run the company. Right? And, you know, for me, it bumps into like, Okay, now we've sold some stuff, what happens now to the customer? And then for you guys probably coming out even a little earlier, because they need all these systems in place. Yeah,

Steven Byler  05:43

I find that like, I would mirror that, you know, they raising money is number one. Because if you don't raise money, you you can't continue, right. Either the founder cannot personally continue without going without a paycheck, or there's just, you know, you can't you can't move forward. But so often, it's kind of playing catch up after that. And, you know, I say, you know, some of our best customers are the ones that have been through this before, right? Because they, they know, their strengths, they know their weaknesses, they know how to assess the people around them, right. So whether it's customer success, whether it's finance, if they know what they don't know, and they what they do know, they know when to lean on you and how to leverage outsource providers, right. But our job is not not for those customers, because those are the ones that are just easier to work with. But it's the those that don't, there's a there's a first rodeo, and you know, they're navigating this for the first time. And it's a challenge. You know, because if you've whether you've been in big business, small business, now you're running a business, all the different aspects of it from from HR, to capital raising, to reporting to board management, to customer management, it's just, it's a lot.

Jeff  06:51

Oh, yeah. Does it do? Is there a place where you stop where where you're sort of like, we're tapped out here, you need like, you guys are going public? You need something else? Or do you just kind of try and ride with them straight through to an event?

Steven Byler  07:02

Yeah, good. Good question. We, our job is to help them grow. And you know, we know that we will work ourselves out of a job. That is technically our job. And you know, the good thing that I like about our business is that, you know, we have the bookkeeping, controllership. FPN a CFO tax, we have a lot of different touch points with the customers and all under one roof, which is, you know, makes for good efficiencies. But it also means that as they come on board, and as they leave, it's a process, right. So from a business risk standpoint on for growth lab, you know, I can bring them on for bookkeeping. Initially, they grow into the planning side of things, and the tax and the CFO. And then as they outgrow things, they probably go in the same order, right? They're going to bring a bookkeeper on first or controller and keep us as the CFO, so that you know, this process coming in and going out. So I think it works well for us as a business, as well as for the customer. That's great. So,

Jeff  07:53

um, you know, we were chatting on on your podcast, and I didn't expect you guys kind of went into some, some use cases where when you guys actually realize, like, oh, wait, we have to talk to our customers. So we're not even that, but like, yeah, maybe need to formalize it, I would say. And so there's, you know, getting into sort of like, almost like a case study is I'm trying to have a little series on those. Can you explain to you like what happened? Like, what made you open your eyes one day and be like, Oh, my God, we need to we need to put somebody in to fix this was a churn? Was it just unhappy customers? Or?

Steven Byler  08:31

Yeah, no, it's a good question. And we love talking about it. For us, it was it was a few, it was a few things. Back when pandemic hit, and PPP hit, you know, we, there was one Sunday that we often refer back to that. It was probably two Sundays into COVID. And there are five of us in the office. And we were there. Because we were, we were all like wondering what this thing was going to do. But we needed to plan. We need to plan for what we were expected to happen. And I think a lot of the success that we've had coming out of there was because we were we were there and plan for what customers are gonna need some help or customers are going to fail, and what customers are going to be, you know, completely fine. But one of the things that came out of that is we were like, Hey, we've got resources around the table, we got marketing, we've got we've got delivery, and they're not going to be as busy, right, because we're not we can't plan to have new business coming in the door. It's just people are not going to be buying new, new new services. So we've got to deploy them somehow. Right. So we started doing our podcast it was eventually came out of it. We start doing a lot of content development. And we started getting customers in different ways. And we've historically had right historically we've gotten referrals, we've gotten more organic growth. We started getting people that had no didn't have a clue who growth lab was. So their expectations coming in. Were a lot different, right? They didn't Oh, this is this is you know This is I've got the experience with my friend over here, he used them before. So their experiences were like, they wanted a lot more, right. And I think if I can trace it back trace back to one customer that was that was a great fit for us. But it was the ideal customer came in from straight up marketing. But it was not that not that initial customer, right. So to kind of translate this to like startup world or SAS world, right? You got your first few customers and like, you know them, well, they know you well, you're both willing to like give a little bit right, because you know, your beta customers. But that was kind of the mentality, right? Different kinds of service, right? Finances a service, but it was it was like, hey, you know, this is gonna be rough for the first few months, as we get in know, you, you get to know us, we uncover things that we didn't know about during the sales process. We uncovered like stuff that you did in the past that you shouldn't have done. We're gonna get all lined up. So that was kind of like the first mentality right? But the, the, to your question, like, when did we know we needed to, like put together customer success, it was when we started getting customers that didn't have that history with us or didn't have that relationship, and their expectations were higher. And we were not quite ready to deliver against that. And we had one customer in particular that that churns quick, and it was one of our first kind of cold, the marketing team delivered cold to us, right, and it closed quick. And it was great. We were all pumped, and then it went downhill. And that was when we really realized, hey, you know what, we need to you know, Dan and Steve, and Cory cannot be the only people that are like, responsible for managing accounts managing customer success, we need to build this as its own kind of piece of the business. And for us, it was also we were expanding our services to protect the SaaS world. So we not only do we have accounting and strategy, and now we have accounting strategy, tax. And we're differentiating accounting into bookkeeping and controllership. So customers might have five people that they're talking to a growth lab, and they're led to customer confusion as well. So we want to centralize some of that into a structure for customers.

Jeff  11:57

Absolutely. Now, if you don't mind me asking, Are you on a subscription model at all? Or is it more of a yearly? Or how is your sort of financial setup in that way, just just the corollary, or just for SaaS, it's always so important. Because if you sign up for one year, they're just going to pull out out the month and switch over to the next people basically. So,

Steven Byler  12:18

right. So we do, basically, most of all of our business is fixed monthly fee. And our job is to, you know, be an extension of their team. We want them to be happy, right? The last last thing we want is somebody locked into a year long contract that, you know, that they want to leave in the third month, right? So I won't I won't go out and limit state policy. But yes, we do a full month contracts. But that's for planning purposes. We have left people out of those early that were unhappy, because if you're unhappy, I'm going to be unhappy. Let's face it.

Jeff  12:50

Oh, yeah, no, in the SaaS world we call Exactly. That's just a yearly that's arr. But even though it's monthly, it's like no, no, that's just that's a year contract and everything. So it's funny, but yeah, I've never seen where you hold the contract over somebody's head. Either way, you've already done the you're not gonna get somebody's renewal if you're forcing them

Steven Byler  13:12

to leave that to leave that to at&t.

Jeff  13:16

True. So, we have you noticed, well, actually, before we even get into that, so you needed that one throat to choke, right? Because as you've got controllership accounting, just all these sorts of different financial services that you're providing for it. What did you wind up doing? Was it successful at first? Did you have to tweak it along the way, etc?

Steven Byler  13:39

Yeah. So what we did, and I think you tell me, if you see similar things at customers of your consulting business, is you find somebody internally, that knows the customer knows the business, and he's able to navigate, because it's not just being able to build a relationship. It's also some of that technical understanding of what the service is. So that when you're bringing them on board, what they call onboarding or orientation, we landed on orientation. But whether you whether you bring them on board, or you're helping them ask, you know, deliver on the technical side, that person knows how to navigate the relationship as well as knows how to help them navigate the service within growth club. Perfect. So we brought we brought somebody up to kind of move them around from from marketing into, into customer success. And actually, since we've talked about on the on our podcast, starting to kind of like move that back into more of a Production Production role.

Jeff  14:43

Gotcha. Yeah. Interesting. So how long does it take a customer to get oriented? Is it like a day, a week, a month? What's the standard expectations around that?

Steven Byler  14:53

Yeah, so kind of the orientation usually takes about a week. But we keep them in Customer Success and onboarding for probably one to two months. And so our kind of cycle typically, if you're coming in for bookkeeping and accounting, it's a monthly cycle, right? So I want to keep you in that onboarding stage for at least one cycle, if not two, because at that point, you know, I've got 80%, or 90% of the hidden stuff that you have as a customer uncovered. And I want to uncover that before I hand it to the line team, because the line team is just going to do the monthly, month in and month out anything, anytime there's a change in scope, that should go back to customer success. So if it's not in our standard operating procedures, don't do it, you know, employee, kick it back to customer success, you have to have a conversation with the customer, or just say, Nope, just keep on keep on going. Yeah, no,

Jeff  15:44

that's super smart. That's, that's the best practice. We call that the burn in period. Because there's such a pressure to get people wanting, so you can transition over to a different team. So you can then orient your onboarding, implement all one term, the next batch of customers that come on and everything. So you kind of like you guys are live in good. And it's like, no, let them get through a payroll get through, you know, that sort of two week cycle. It's usually two weeks or a month, it depends on what the business is for, that I work with. But definitely the ones that are doing anything and finance. It's it's getting through like two payrolls. And you see if you find all all that, oh, no, we pay California tax for this one person. And then we got this union law over here, and then all that stuff and everything. So

Steven Byler  16:33

we had a payroll business at one point, and we sold that, and it was it was payroll is challenging. Yeah. And it's, it's actually changing. I know, the topic of this conversation, but it's interesting how it's changing in Oh, yeah.

Jeff  16:47

No, I mean, just as a no, just when I was a virgin, we actually did touch people's paychecks just to do deductions and things like that, or actually put money back into it. And the second that, so emotional, right, and so I'm saying that from a customer success, people, that's why you need people with empathy, because, you know, somebody's calling in, and it's a bug and everything like that. It's it's affecting their, their livelihood. Yeah, they might have, they might have like, you know, written a check and all that stuff. It's just, it's a very delicate thing to be in. So you definitely need people with empathy in that role as well. So, yeah, awesome. So any net benefits? Like were you tracking? Or do you track retention and churn and things like that?

Steven Byler  17:33

Yeah, I mean, we definitely do. Overall, we have a quite a long kind of lifetime value of our customer, on average, probably five, six years. And, you know, obviously, that's kind of brought down by some of the startups that don't quite make it. But it's one of the things that kind of we we pride ourselves in over the years, which is why that one customer in particular, they came on and left within three months. Why that was so like, eye opening for us. Because we have had some just good success in in that keeping customers satisfied, happy and growing with us.

Jeff  18:12

Have you been in contact with them at all about like, because those might come in and consult sometimes and like, talk to that customer? No, no talk to these guys. Everything went great. And I'm like, no, no, no, like, I need that churn customer to talk to to see what the issue was. The the term, while you're probably familiar with the term, it's now being applied to customer success, and specifically implementation is the trough of disillusionment, right? Because you hit that thing are everything super cool. And that's the sales cycle. And then suddenly, if you don't meet those expectations, then suddenly you're that's where they are. They're like, this is terrible. I'm, I made a terrible mistake, you know?

Steven Byler  18:51

Yeah, no, that's a trough of disillusionment. It's good. I like that. So we have continued to kind of monitor monitor that, I think it's been it's been a good net net move for us for sure to bring customer success into its own kind of right, so to speak. You know, we're always our kind of motto is we want things to be boring again, right? We weren't accounting to be boring. We weren't planning to be boring, because when it's boring customers, expectations are being met, right? It's when when you're putting out fires, that's when that's when expectations are going to be highly volatile. Right? And so we want everything to be boring. Again, I think feel like for us, customer success is getting boring. And there's, you know, Cory might listen to this and be like, Screw you're stealing. My days are not boring. But you know, he's done a great job of standardizing things establishing communication from our team, to the customer, from the customer to the team. So people were kind of more attuned to how we need to deal with customer success to the point where we can bring other team members in and say here's the process. And it doesn't need Korea at the top they can have our ops And a guy who does a great job managing customers. But he's not as much in terms of like blue sky thinking, right? That kind of mindset now is where we can bring some of this customer success and say, here's the here's the process. Let's just do it.

Jeff  20:14

Yeah. And to two things. First of all, I think you've coined the podcast title would make it boring again, which is fantastic. So I totally know what that means. Because like, it's just, it's your hair's on fire all day, every day for the startups if they don't have this problem solved.

Steven Byler  20:30

And for project managers, because I think customer success is part of like account management. We've had this conversation, or project management, I think project, some project managers live on that like, oh, live on that fire, right?

Jeff  20:41

Trust me, I had that gig for a couple of years. And, you know, it's boring when it's boring, I'm bored. And then what am I doing? Like, oh, there's a thing I'm gonna go chase down, I gotta do X, Y, and Z. Well, interesting. On that note, I'm not sure if it came up on our podcast, but when I usually come in for the startups, there, people are doing everything right. And customer success is everything post sale. So Zendesk tickets, implementations chasing down, you know, product features, you know, because the right, absolutely, you know, been promised. And then, you know, when are they when do they find the time to do the QBR, and in the good customer success stuff. And so that's actually one of the first things I do is like, let's try and decouple these roles, because also for scaling purposes, since I'm on my soapbox, like, you know, CSV resources, they cost a certain amount. And if you're gonna go to x in a year, and you've got four people, and you will get eight, you're like, Oh, my God, but like, well, let's take a look and make sure that they're only doing the most valuable work and management aspects. Yeah, you can get some lower cost resources. I'm not saying they're, you know, the bottom of the barrel but, but there's some people that can come in and manage a project, and make sure that everything goes off smoothly and chase stuff down so that your CS people can do that more, more valuable work. Yeah,

Steven Byler  22:04

yeah. No, I think it's so interesting, because where my where my head's going right now, Jeff is, is yeah, there's, there's two ways to make money, right, you leverage people or you leverage capital, right. And in what you're just talking about is leveraging people right, those the reason you need customer success is the founder can no longer be the person that's doing everything. And so they need to bring somebody else on, they need to bring somebody else on that has that higher level of customer success, they cost a certain amount of money, so that they can try to establish establish processes and trying to get boring, so that you can bring somebody in, that's more entry level to manage the Zendesk tickets, and only, you know, run two of them up the flagpole out of every 10 instead of 10, out of every 10. Right. That's, that's leverage and it, and then you get to the point where for small startups, and I've got a customer that's like, going through this in the last year, you know, they're small team, but they got a lot of potential. And they don't have the management framework or that organizational structure yet to be able to manage those, like entry level people, right. And so that's, that's the, that's the challenge, right is trying to bring on and not spend too much money, keep your burn down. But bring on a high enough level people that can establish management framework, so that you can bring lower level people to do the do the work.

Jeff  23:13

Yeah, I would probably hit pause on this just to continue, but I'll let it roll. And then I'll see if I need to edit it out. What I like to preach for startups ago, what they like to do, so I've adapted to it, I should say this is when I come in to work for them. They get that process where and this is not an advertised. And this is just to explain the concept that we're talking about, like so. So they can i If the process has been created, they can bring in somebody that's maybe a director level player coach to follow that process, and then they can manage people underneath it, versus saying like, Oh, no, we've got to bring in a big, expensive VP, SVP C level person, and then that person is going to put the process in place, and then be super bored. Like, yeah, super bored. Not enough for them to do where it's like, no, I've got this massive team and 10 VPS reporting to me and things like that. So and I found that that works better, because it's like, it's it's nothing it's, it's it's a process, right? Like, it's not it should not be all those startup founders think it should be like, it's they're not super unique for what you need to do to customer success, right, you need to get them launched, you know, in a sustainable manner. And then you need to keep them happy by listening to them with empathy, and responding and then making sure that they see one most important thing I should have said from the top is making sure that they see the value in your product or service. Right. So so that's the most important thing there. So

Steven Byler  24:40

that's one soapboxing. I think what founders don't typically do is they they do their financial planning and they do their their product planning, but they don't do their aid their org structure planning. I think it's so it's important to hit in five years. Here's what I need my customer success department to do. look like, if I want to be there in five years, here's what I need to do to get there, right? Because in three years, I can bring that VP on. But in this year, I just need to bring on a director.

Jeff  25:10

Absolutely. I'm so I love talking with finance people, because they it's just such a different perspective. And usually I work really well, because I deal with financial numbers and things like that. They don't think about that. So usually they get support iron supports, usually in the dev p&l, and so it kind of like, oh, okay, we got a little bit bigger p&l for the dev and everything. Like, literally, you see, like, okay, we can spring out like 80k, right? And you're like, Okay, to be fair, one resource to be hired to 40k resources, like, what do we need to do? And then, you know, you have to kind of prove to them like, since we're talking finances, right, like, what's okay? What's your what's your average? What's your average? Sale? Right? What's your air? normal, average? Arr? To be right, like, are your monthly, right? So let's say, customers, 100k a year or even better startups are 50k a year, and you're losing 10% of them? Okay, well, then you get some easy math. They're saying, if we can even save a 50% reduction from that, you could you should at least spring out to 300k to break that is my math good on that one. I get a it's not. I

Steven Byler  26:18

have a spreadsheet. But

Jeff  26:21

for all those you take notes, I'm not a math expert. But I Yes, spreadsheets on real life and everything. But yeah, that's, that's, that's a great insight that you've provided there.

Steven Byler  26:32

So we've, we've definitely doubled down on customer success and tried to try to make it boring again, for us. And I think, you know, for our customers, it's helped us see kind of some of their challenges in different way. So for me personally, at least,

Jeff  26:46

that's awesome. So is it gotten boring? Again?

Steven Byler  26:49

It's getting there. Yeah, actually, this week, we had some of those conversations. It's like,

Jeff  26:55

I'm sorry, I laugh because they haven't like on a weekly basis, the of the stressed out teams, and I'm like, You're gonna wake up in six months, three to six months from now. And you like, remember how terrible it was in March? Like that was terrible. It's not terrible anymore. You're gonna be bored. You just got another mean. So a couple of quick things, we want to wrap up. Are there any things you would suggest not to do?

Steven Byler  27:17

I think it's a really strong strategy to hire your first customer success person internal. Okay. So I would say, for me, I would always say, look internally first, I want that. Yep. Secondly, on that same line, if you can't do anybody internally, look, you know, try and poach somebody, something like you need somebody that knows your business. Yeah, you don't need somebody that knows customer success. Need Somebody that knows your business, that's more important than like project management account management, in my in my view, because they're going to be able to be more successful if they know if they know your business.

Jeff  27:51

That's yeah, I was on a panel yesterday where that exact same thing came up. And there was a startup founder, and he was debating that exact thing. And he's like, I just wanted somebody to come in who's passionate about this space. And then the the alternative viewpoint was, you just need to you need somebody who's really good at customer success. But if you're on fire, and then they don't know the industry, oh, my God, it takes a while. A couple of my customers, they're in there six months, and they're still trying to like, understand the use case. Why are they using our software? Like they get the basic marketing bullet points, but not that, like, I've lived this life? I know your pain, so I'm gonna make it better. No, that's a great point. That's awesome. All right.

Steven Byler  28:30

In terms of what, what else not to do? It's a good question and what not to do when you're when you're starting in customer success. How do you I'm curious how you answer that question?

Jeff  28:41

Well, I like give

Steven Byler  28:41

it to its two seconds. I

Jeff  28:43

thought, okay. Yeah, sure. I mean, everybody, sometimes people say we just need a better tool, right? No, yeah, right? tool should we be using? It's like, okay, well, do you know, okay, so then it rolls back. Like, don't focus on tools focus on the process, right. So if you are a sustainable business, and again, soapbox stuff, but it should be kind of like little waterfall you like you can show it in a nice little spreadsheet, like maybe a little Gantt chart like this happens, then this happens. Maybe they're not all in here. But at the end of the day, we'll hit this 30 day mark, and everybody's going to be happy, right? So if you haven't flushed out, like what your actual onboarding steps are, like, you know, that needs to be number one. But everybody focuses on tools. What you said again, about domain knowledge is the other thing. The other thing I say is also focus on the pre sales process, right? Are you qualifying the right customers, because if your churn is because of you're bringing the wrong customers on board, just adding CS isn't going to help it. So, you know, if you're selling this big enterprise thing, and everybody's coming in at like 5k a month and you can't sustain it, they're churning because they're not seeing the value and you're very commoditized like, you've got to qualify better so so that's that's the other thing I look for the Other areas? Are you bringing the right customers on as well, too?

Steven Byler  30:03

Yeah, I think I would second that, from our own experience, it's better to reduce the number of customers, you're bringing on board, like, get rid of those customers that are not a good fit. When we're when we're all starting out, we just take revenue, right? But it's better to call your pre sales, right? And not bring on as many customers do that before you start customer success. Otherwise, you're just giving them a, you know, a, you know, somebody that is already kind of going downhill. Oh, yeah,

Jeff  30:30

I was shocked I, the smartest board member I've ever seen was at a startup about a year or two ago. And they the company had hit that point where they took a ton of revenue, and they pivoted, and they moved upstream. And they were constantly getting churn from these mom and pop shops, basically, which another Yes, mom pop shops, but they're just like, we're not we're not seeing the value because they're like, Okay, we're not going to charge 5k a month, now we're going to charge like, 15. Because the you know, that's what it looks at, they were actually seen as being cheap. And, you know, people weren't signing up, because it's like, only 5k, you know, production value issue there. And so the board member said, anybody that is have these, you know, facets, or these, these, these sort of variables here, don't count them as churn. Because we need to flush out these customers. So if you've have all these people dropping out, because they signed up for $1,000 a year, and now we're charging X, Y and Z, it's not churn, track it, but like we're not, we don't want to see that as net negative churn. And I was just like, blown away. Like, they're basically saying, Don't focus on these people, call them up, be friendly to them and say, Hey, listen, you know, you know, this is the deal. But like, you know what, no, no, no, but we're going in a different direction, and we very much value your business and everything. So I was I had never heard that before. And I was like, That is super smart, if you pull it off, but it was there, they had way too many of these of these, you know, smaller non tear people, they wouldn't be selling to any more, they wouldn't qualify, but the same product, but it was different products. And I think you know, you need people that are further have some perspective on your business. Because when you're in the business so much, you're like, I'm just selling the same thing, I'm just charging three times as much for it. And yes, you are selling the same, then you're charging three. But because of that, it's a different, different customer persona.

Steven Byler  32:18

And therefore, you know, if this was a SKU product, it'd be two different skews, right? And so don't think of it as churn. It's more like we're going to have churn on the old products and turn on the new product. But they're two different metrics. And we're expecting turn on the old products to be 100% in three months. Exactly. Because we don't want that customer,

Jeff  32:37

right. Yeah, exactly. And they sell one year, like in this year, this is what we expect to see. And then after that, we'll we'll focus back on that. So So those are my sort of QuicKutz is that it's not always the obvious thing. Everyone thinks it's a bad person or a bad tool. And then sometimes it's you gotta kick over some rocks to figure out some of the real issues. So

Steven Byler  32:55

yeah, I think those are some good nuggets. I'm a big proponent, like tools, don't make change. Enable it. They don't make it.

Jeff  33:03

Yeah, absolutely. It can also tool like, every everybody wants to really operationalize the CS function. And these people are busy. And you know, you should be looking at tools to reduce the workflow. So I keep seeing posts, like, oh, what's the new CS stack now? And I'm like, Oh, my God, like, it should be like the CRM, maybe something else. But you know, not all these bells and widgets and tools and things like that. Because otherwise, if you're spending too much time doing data entry, and you're just taking time away from focusing on your customer and stuff, so yeah, totally. Great. Anything else any other wise words of wisdom? Before we wrap up?

Steven Byler  33:47

You know, it, just keep on keepin on. Yeah, they want once you, once you, you know, once you can kind of come, you know, take into account the unit, you as a business owner need to make these changes, you need to make these investments, it's you know, take the time, as always spend the time in the business, but make sure you take a step back and spend the time on your business, whether that's at board meetings, or whether that's, you know, Fridays, or whether that's every other week, you take a day, but make sure you focus on the business, because if you're in it, putting out fires, you're never going to be able to like design it to get to the next level.

Jeff  34:23

Able to see what the competition's doing, you won't be able to, you know, to have that big picture view of things because you're just looking at in the weeds. And I was hoping you would say that because that's exactly what I want to wrap up because some people are just like, No, nobody's as passionate about as I am. I need to keep in touch with the customers and everything. It's like, there's so many other things that you need to

Steven Byler  34:43

challenge yourself to get out of it. Right? Challenge yourself to get out of it. Because that's the only way you're gonna be able to grow.

Jeff  34:49

It's harder to do that. It's easy to get into that, like, you know, you know, mousetrap, and just looking for the cheese all the time. So awesome. Well, that's been fun, Jeff. Yeah, same here. Have a great weekend. I tend to do a couple quick logistics things. So I'm going to stop here but stop the recording. I'll just wrap up on one quick thing. So thanks so much and anybody that wants to hear more What are you guys doing? Where's the best place to find you?

Steven Byler  35:13

Growth lab financial.com or any of the social channels feel free to reach out to us there. Me personally Steven at growth lab financial.com love to hear from you.

Jeff  35:24

Awesome. Okay.