Forming Great Remote Culture with Chris Byers

Remote work, it got thrust upon the majority of people and while it became a bit of a pass time to complain about the challenges of working remotely. Yet, a recent survey shows that just 4% of global employees want to return to the office full time. That would come as no surprise to Chris Byers who has been leading a remote team since 2010 as the CEO of Formstack, a company that helps businesses enhance their workplace productivity through their proprietary platform.

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Transcript

Ep. 004 - Forming Great Remote Culture with Chris Byers

[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]

Karolyn Hart You’re listening to “Big on Small”, the official small business podcast powered by InspireHUB, I’m Karolyn Hart.

Samantha Castro And I’m Samantha Castro.

Karolyn Hart We unpack the big ideas happening in small organizations for businesses, agencies,  schools, towns, charities, and teams. 

Samantha Castro Because what we know is that good things come FROM small packages and there’s nothing small about doing good.

In today’s episode we’re taking a look at whether or not your SMALL business is showing good form when it comes to adjusting to remote work and what it takes to stack your company for BIG success in the face of all this transition.  That’s right, we’re talking with Chris Byers, the CEO of Formstack,  one of the world’s fastest growing form automation software companies who leveraged a remote workforce years before there was ever a pandemic. Chris is a humble leader, and today we talk with him about what it takes to build a thriving remote culture for their over 250 employees around the world, why a leader's view on trust impacts culture, and how failure can be the launching pad to achieving great BIG success! 

PART ONE - Responding to the Call

Samantha Castro Our story begins in 1997. Chris Byers is studying for his BA in Finance at Anderson University in Indiana. It’s here that Chris finds himself wanting to explore more of his interests like technology. Up to this point, he’d had some experience fixing computers and thought it would be fun to join the IT department to learn more. Within the IT Department he met and became really good friends with computer science and mathematics major, Ade Olonoh.

Not only did they share an interest in technology, but they also shared an entrepreneurial spirit which led to Chris’ first business venture outside of college in 2000. 

Chris Byers We started a company together actually late in college. It's really probably his idea more than anything to get the business started. Bottled Software was the company. We started meeting. It was five of us. We all became equal partners and said, "Hey, let's go at this."

We started thinking about creating custom web based software. We were doing real basic stuff, like let's do a business plan and let's form our first LLC and things like that, that you might need to do. The idea was technology and really software, online software, was becoming relevant to a lot more people. We were trying to help equip people with eCommerce sites and content management systems and things like that. That was the first journey that we had together.

Samantha Castro The first as you’ll see because although Bottle Software ended up shutting down in 2002, it wouldn’t be the last time Ade and Chris would work with each other. More on that in a few minutes. 

Since Bottle Software was the first business Chris had the opportunity to be a part of, he learned a lot of things, as many new business owners do. 

Chris Byers I always take that experience as a lot of lessons. At least one of those lessons for me was, I don't think I was like aggressively in it for the money, but I was definitely motivated by some sense of I'm going to make this big and I will probably eventually make a bunch of money. That was probably why I was there. It took until a few years of doing other things to really see, at least for me, the only way I can think about actually building an organization is having a real purpose. That real purpose really needs to serve people in some way. Yes, you're going to make some money along the way, and yes, you can create a big organization even, but if your motivation is just about the money, I'm sure you can grow up big business, but I don't think it's the right way. I think you're missing out on an opportunity to have impact on people. But yeah, back in college, it was totally a more of a freedom thing probably for me, like how can I be in business, so I don't have to work for someone.

Samantha Castro Many people with an entrepreneurial mindset have had this thought. I know I have! But sometimes you have to change the way you look at things when situations and circumstances change around you, like for example, when the business you started has to close its doors.

So taking what he learned with his time at Bottle Software, Chris decides to move into the financial industry where he starts as a financial advisor at a firm before moving into the healthcare industry in 2004. At this company his role includes helping to raise capital for healthcare buildings, equipment, and operating needs. 

It was in this industry that Chris had an experience that shaped him as a leader in a major way.

[MUSIC: Tide Electric  “When Rain Comes”]

Chris Byers We had really tough challenges in raising enough money to buy the buildings or build the buildings we wanted to get operations. We built surgery centers. We needed to do this over and over and over again. Banks tended to be hard to work with and get the money that we were needed. And yet I got to work with somebody who basically taught me never to see no as a barrier and that when you hear a no, okay, fine, you might need to shift your plan or your strategy, but you can probably get accomplished what you're trying to get accomplished. You just need to keep going at it and maybe make it a little bit more creative and shift to another person or another style of lender, let's say or think about offering them access to seeing how your operations work or I don't know.

It's a little bit vague, but I think that never seeing somebody saying, "Yeah, no, I'm not going to give you that money," to stop you. There is someone and there's some way to probably get it done if you've got a reasonable plan, but that just taught me a framework for just never seeing anybody's response of no, we can't do that as realistic. It's like, no, I think we can. I think there's a way, but the more and more people who have seen that no happened, like no, we can't build that style of product or we can't do it fast enough, but then ended up seeing it actually play out, I think you enlighten people to a new way of thinking.

Karolyn Hart I saw this meme and most memes I tend to either chuckle or roll my eyes, but this one I thought was really good. It just said that no stands for next opportunity. I remember thinking, "That's a great reminder." I think that there's a lot of people who've never encountered that line of thinking, of the possibility thinking, of that fact that if someone is saying to you, the answer is absolutely not. They just go, okay. They walk away instead of saying, "Well, I guess I'm not going to take that path. What's the next opportunity for me to still achieve the success that we need to have." It is definitely a mindset that it requires practice. I tell my team that the greatest lessons I've ever been given did not come from my success, it came from two things, people telling me no and my own failures.

Chris Byers I think that's, hopefully that's the real lessons that most of us learn over time. I know from, I mentioned my first business, but it was that first business that taught me. I thought we needed a cool office space. And so with no revenue and you know, no good plan signed up seven year lease or something on an office space that was just totally unnecessary. I created this longer term. I now avoid all leases as much as possible when I think about office space. 

It's basic stuff like that, that after enough of those experiences play out, I do think we really grow from them. I do think you're right. A lot of people do see that no from someone or that you can't do this as "Oh I guess they know what they're talking about, so I won't even try." I think teaching people how to really gauge is that true, or maybe keep trying, keep persisting, that can be difficult. If you can overcome it, you can see some great results.

Samantha Castro Chris was seeing great results within this healthcare company and in 2007 he becomes the Vice President of Finance & Investors Relations - and this is a big promotion. However, he’s hesitant to accept because as exciting, successful and meaningful this career path was for Chris, he was feeling called to do something different. Not long after accepting the VP role, he decided this other call was too loud to ignore. 

Chris Byers My wife and I felt called to do something totally different. We actually sold all of our belongings and moved our family. Our kids were two and four at the time. We moved to London and were there for a couple of years where we helped start a church. We helped to consulting with pastors in the UK and Europe at a broader sense. 

Samantha Castro He left the business world, moved his family to a different country, to do what he felt was important and more meaningful to his life. 

We took a moment to ask Chris about what the most surprising thing about his journey is and for him it was this moment here, the decision to leave the healthcare company to go do something different. 

[MUSIC: Bryant Lowry “Denali”]

Chris Byers We broke that career track. In fact, my wife has actually broken her career track multiple times. Yet we have both had this great opportunity to come back around to jumping back into things and continuing really, maybe even at a more speedy pace than we were on before.

What that has enabled me to do is say, "You know what? I don't have to do everything that the world tells us to do. I don't have to follow that plan and path." I can actually, even if it feels risky, even if it feels something totally off the plan, if I think it's the right thing to do, I probably should consider doing it because it doesn't mean I'm never going to get to get back to what I initially thought the plan was. 

I'd say even in business, often we've tasked vision that didn't come true. That's really frustrating and demoralizing at times. I then found years later, it comes back. It just comes back in a slightly different form or just took more years than we thought. I think never believing that I get off the track that I'm on today, that I can't somehow get back to that maybe vision or belief in the future that I had in my mind.

Karolyn Hart It's interesting. If you're in healthcare and financial services, especially early on, I mean these are risk averse. I mean, it's very stable. You, all of a sudden say, "We're going to go do this," as you call it, "we're going to break this career path." What was the response from, I mean, your wife was with you cause she's done it herself, so she obviously shares that value system. What was the response from the network around you when you went and did that?

Chris Byers Oh yeah, people have always looked at us weird and don't understand it. Sometimes even that causes a bit of a break in the relationship because they think we're abandoning them or the right path. I will say over time, people have come to accept it and say, "Okay, I get it. It works for you for whatever reason." Yeah, people's initial reactions are definitely not, it's not something most people do. I will say one change in the world today is this because of remote work, I have seen a lot more people feel very comfortable pursuing dreams, like living around the world and being able to continue their job during all that. It's been cool to see maybe the world progress a little bit there.

Samantha Castro The non-profit that Chris worked for in England, Blue Door Ministries, was progressive in their efforts back in 2007. Not only did they operate and communicate with churches in the UK and Europe, but also with those in Africa - and it was this church that really helped their mission in multiple ways.  

Chris Byers We were partnered with a church called Life Church. And one of the things they did was give away all their resources for free. Some of the resources that they had were basically everything that happened on a weekend, et cetera, because they already had a concept of multiple campuses and locations. Everything got recorded and broadcast from a single location. The nice benefit of that is it turned into video content or downloadable video content. We just said, really just opened our arms to kind of anybody who was interested in learning more about how to do that and how to use those resources. In this particular case, what it enabled a lot of pastors to do, especially those in country.

If you're in the US or North America, you might be used to churches on every corner. In fact, probably enough people that are going to give enough where you can support the pastor and maybe a small staff. A lot of other places in the world, it's just not that way. Pastors need to work multiple jobs. So actually having some things like sermon content, or maybe even at times, just using someone else's sermon, just really enabling for people to reach people around them, but also not be so taxed that they burn out. We got just an opportunity to meet people across the world and do some training with them, do some consulting.

The other thing we were doing, and this was 10 years ago, was helping people participate in and be a part of a church online concept. Today, if you're in a faith community or a church, past three months or so with COVID, actually a lot of people have converted to some sort of online church, but it was what we were doing 10 years ago when nobody believed it was a thing or a good idea. It was a great adventure for us and really learning for us in our history.

Karolyn Hart That's fascinating. It informs so much when you, I think when you're looking at the cultures that you're going to build into a company, as you move through different industries, you're seeing some best practices, financial services and healthcare being very regulated, all the things that go with that and then going into a church startup environment, which, I mean, you're basically on call 24/7, just like in it. People don't realize that. You're always on call when you're doing that. Then obviously that remote work. Was that remote work with the churches, was that the first time you started really leading remotely?

Chris Byers Yeah, it's a funny. At the time, I never thought about it as a remote environment. I was both partnering, we were partnering with a church back here in the US and then doing a lot of work there on the ground in the UK and Europe. We started using Skype a lot. We'd have team meetings that included people from the US. I'd have to get up at weird hours of the night to get on the right US schedule at times. It was this great education and remote, even though that wasn't what I was thinking at the time and led, I think in a lot of ways, to our remote environment today. Just me observing and seeing that it's pretty easy really to make work work via a remote style.

Samantha Castro The work that Chris was doing within this organization - as you heard - varied in the different solutions and resources that they were providing to these churches. 

While Chris was in London, back in the states, Ade was starting to thrive with his new company called FormSpring. 

FormSpring, which would later change their name to FormStack, was created to provide an easy to use form builder for users to collect information. Something that Chris needed across the pond within his organization.

Chris Byers We took donations using Formstack. I was a user. Even the database today, I'm user number five of all that we've signed up over time. Even early on, I saw this really cool way to use the product. I think when we had our church, we let people sign up for things using Formstack. There was this appreciation of how much power it gave me as a non technical user. I'd say, that's probably the most important thing for me is I am not technical. 

I have always been in technology, but I'm not, I can solve problems, but I'm not particularly, I don't have codings, background skills. Formstack is this beautiful merger of maybe you can solve problems, but don't know how to code. We're going to enable you to do a lot of that and never have to learn how to code, but you still get to solve your own problems. Enabling that nontechnical user is an important part of the journey.

Samantha Castro This empowerment that Chris felt when using Formstack in the early days, before it was even called Formstack, shows the reach that  a well designed product can have. Not only was he using it to help churches around the world, he was also supporting a friend in his company that was solving a problem for him in his day to day life. 

I think this is important to highlight because the people you choose to surround yourself with can either help or hinder your life in various ways. They can support you in the work that you’re doing by using your product and giving you honest feedback that at times could be harsh, but exactly what you need to hear in order to make a better product. 

This was kind of the relationship between Ade and Chris and it was really the ability for them to be on the same page for what this product FormSpring was doing and capable of doing that made Ade ask Chris to come and join their team in early 2010 as Chris and his family were moving back to the US. 

You see, although FormSpring was originally created for users to create basic forms, in 2009 they launched formspring.me, a social question and answer site where users could ask questions, give answers, and learn more about their friends. This branch of the company really started to take off and it became difficult for Ade to focus on this new social media aspect PLUS the form aspect. So Ade asked Chris for help.

Chris Byers You needed to move to California to fund it and hire people. And so I said, "Well, let me come in and run this for six months. I'll see if I can find somebody to run it long term." About four or five months, he was like, "Will you stay?" I was just, I really loved the people that I was working with was a fun team and the product itself, I just loved what it did. I was like, "Yeah, I'll do this. I'll stay." 

Samantha Castro Chris and his family make the move from Oklahoma to Indianapolis, Indiana at the start of 2010 to go work at the newly named - Formstack. And when Chris came into the picture, the team at Formstack was still quite small. 

Chris Byers Yeah. A team of seven people all in a, in an office together at the time. We didn't go remote until 2012. You look back on the days of being smaller fondly because you knew everybody really well and just engaged quite a bit.

[MUSIC: Adrian Walther “Train Ride”]

Samantha Castro The good ol’ days. Where the team is small. Everyone knows everyone. Where you, hopefully, enjoy working together and after a big milestone you raise a glass and say ‘Tomorrow, they’ll be more of us, telling the story of tonight!’ (Shout out to my Hamilton fans).

But as with any good story, there’s lots of lessons and adjustments that happen along the way, and after the break, we hear from Chris, how he’s built the remote culture he has today and advice for you if you’re a small business wondering if staying fully remote is the right call. 

[AD MUSIC - Rhythm Scott “Old Skool 808”]

This episode of Big on Small is brought to you by us! - InspireHUB, creators of the Award winning IHUBApp, the small business digital experience platform that allows you to rapidly build websites, apps, and portals to help your small business thrive!  

Since it’s start 7 years ago,  InspireHUB, has been a 100% remote company. But even we have found working during a pandemic extraordinarily difficult. If we, who are experienced at remote work are struggling, we can only imagine how difficult it is for you. 

That’s why we published ‘Loving Remote’ a free e-book to help you create an inspirational remote culture at your small business. It’s packed with the lessons we learned the hard way: like why your exhaustion isn’t caused by Zoom fatigue, what you can do to make virtual meetings amazing, and why working remotely could be the positive game-changer your team has been waiting for!  

Download your free copy by visiting inspirehub.com/LovingRemote. That’s InspireH-U-B.com/LovingRemote.

Part Two: Forming a Remote Culture

Samantha Castro Chris mentioned before the break that when he first came to Formstack, they were not remote. They had an office where they came in everyday to get the job done. But within the first two years of Chris being there, his focus was really in wanting to build the culture and product of Formstack with this idea of reimagining the world of work in the forefront for everything they did.

Chris Byers My simple philosophy wasn't a strong philosophy toward remote. It was simply around you should work where you are most healthy basically, or where you can get the most productive work done. In the early days, that was, if you want to go work at a coffee shop, fine go or if you want to work at home for the morning and then come in, that's fine. 

Yet over time, that becomes, as we've embraced remote, it's like, Oh, you've got something going on with your family and it'd be great to go move back to where they're from. Great go. You don't need to be in the office. It's this idea that there are far too many things, we'll call them shoulds, but there are far too many shoulds in our lives that we're like, "Well, this is the way it is, and so this is the way I'm going to keep doing it." We think about the same thing with our product. 

We want the most beautiful moment that we're looking for is that moment that somebody tries our product and solves maybe that original thing they were looking for, something simple, maybe like a job application or a quote form or reimbursement form. Then they keep using the product and this moment of delight happens where they're like, "Oh, I can use this in seven other ways. I can still do it before I even have to pay more money. There's still room to get that done." 

What we hope to enable more people to do is just solve these nitpicky, manual, time sucking problems that aren't that complicated, but you just need software to get the job done. Where we can enable people to do that, we love getting to do that and get to see the delight on their faces or we usually only see that via email, but get to see the delight that they experience.

Samantha Castro This idea of re-imaging the world of work both in the product and in the culture, we’ve talked about it on the show before on the Being Human at Work with Lale Kesebi episode.

There’s a direct correlation between how engaged your employees are at work which directly impacts their performance and in turn the organization as a whole to be successful or not. As a leader, Chris was enabling the employees of Formstack to do what they needed to do in order to feel good at work. And this approach, as pragmatic as it was, it still came with its challenges. Right Chris? 

Chris Byers Definitely, I think the challenge is, I mean, take a remote world. The challenge that you might quickly run into is the very basics are pretty simple. Zoom or Slack are these tools that help you work remotely. Those are pretty straightforward. Anybody can adopt them overnight. It's fast. What you might learn though is months in you decide, "You know what? We need to start a new department. We need a new, we're kicking up a new initiative." All of a sudden that collaborative, very collaborative, like we need to bounce back and forth in conversation pretty quickly for rapid feedback, that stuff gets a lot more complicated, because you can't sit right next to each other. As we all know, now we can't sit on video all day either because that's super taxing. We've had to overcome those challenges in different ways. Sometimes for instance, you do need to physically meet up.

And then other times we found creative to say, "You know what, it's very taxing to sit on video staring at the camera all day," but you actually can turn on Zoom for hours at a time, but just with the agreement with your other person, we're just going to be here, but go do work and forget that the camera's on. But you know that when you do have a question, just open your mouth and start talking. We're kind of working beside each other in a way. You'd have to just come up with these ways to how do you collaborate differently? Because in a remote world, productivity goes up, but collaboration goes down.

Karolyn Hart Did you have any leadership challenges when people are coming into your new culture? You have to have a high level of trust to have a remote workforce, right? For you to say, "Hey, if you want to go work at a coffee shop, knock yourself out. If you want to come in, knock yourself out." But really how do you train new employees that have come out of an environment where there's low trust and now suddenly bam? Is that, I know in my company, I actually jokingly call us recovery hub, because I have to spend time training our staff on that our new employees. Is that something that you've encountered at Formstack?

Chris Byers Oh, 100%. Early on in remote, I think there was a strong feeling of distrust of yeah, I don't know what somebody is doing right now. If their work is not getting done in the way that I might expect it, then I start to have these feelings of maybe they're not getting the job done. Somewhere along the way, I did discover that at least a big chunk of that as my own mindset. I did have to move to this. I mean, it took a lot of frustration to finally wrestle with it and accept this phrase we use, which is give people your trust and let them earn your mistrust. Start by saying, "You know what? I think they're probably doing the right thing." They can prove that that's wrong and they do some times, but until they do that, just start with that level of trust.

Then there did become this foundational communication challenge. We actually turned it into a cultural value called communicate status. If you think about status on your social media profile, it's this quick, "I'm eating lunch right now." Not super important. It doesn't even have to be that much content. We had to teach people, you need to be very proactive in just dropping quick notes to your manager, notes to your team. It can just be working on some stuff. Here's how it's going. Here's where it needs some help. Because if you don't do that, you become this drag, because that makes everybody else's job harder. I got to go find that person and what are they doing? Then I do start to develop this lack of trust.

I would say, I think you'd have to build a very high trust environment. For those who are coming out of a non high trust environment, it can be unnerving. Frankly, sometimes people love a lot of very specific directions. They claim they don't, but at times they really do. If you give them that freedom, sometimes they have a hard time finding what, okay, where are those boundaries and how do I work within the system?

Samantha Castro Working within a remote environment is not for everyone. In many ways, being in remote work you have to have a little more of the drive and motivation to get up every morning, put on clothes (yes that includes pants) and go to the ‘office’ only to sit down with none of your co-workers physically beside you. 

It can be hard. But as Chris was just speaking on, there are ways you as a leader within a remote organization can help your employees feel part of the team and help the company by doing little things like letting people know when you’re at your computer and when you’re not. 

[MUSIC: Tide Electric “Cascades Of Love”]

One of the things that we do at InspireHUB is always keep our calendars updated with whatever project or meeting we are currently working on. Right now as I’m recording this, in my calendar it says ‘Recording Episode Commentary’ and I have my time blocked on my calendar and my notifications snoozed so I can focus. No matter who’s looking for me right now, if I’m not responding, they can look at my calendar, know what I’m working on, and when I’m next available. And of course if it’s an emergency, they know how to reach me. 

With the world in the state that it’s currently in, many people have found themselves moving into these remote environments maybe not knowing some of the things that we’ve been talking about which helps to navigate in this new reality. Karolyn was interested in hearing Chris’ thoughts about people facing this very issue. 

Karolyn Hart What do you think right now about the big conversation pieces that people are saying, "There's Zoom fatigue. Everybody's exhausted. This is too hard." What's your observations on that? I think when you get to do something voluntarily and then you also have, there was that element of people like, "Oh, you're so lucky you get to work from home," it makes it even feel better. But now everybody has to do it. Now everybody's saying how hard it is. What's what's your take on it?

Chris Byers I think I just had the advantage of probably experiencing a lot of what people are experiencing now, starting years ago. Funny enough, even when we lived in the UK, we didn't have any friends or family in the very beginning. In a lot of ways, we were quarantined. Now we could leave the house and do stuff, but we didn't know anyone. We couldn't dump our kids off somewhere at school or somewhere. Then we were trying to work at the same time. It was almost that exact same balance that people have been working on real recently.

What my lessons that or let me say it this way. I'm talking to some people next week who are thinking about, "Hey, our office lease is coming up. Maybe we should cancel it.' My experience for us, at least, "It's like no way don't do that." Absolutely embrace elements of remote, but there are so many things that you're not thinking about if you just straight up abandon ship and go remote. 

Those Zoom fatigue is absolutely real. Even for me, I have to limit, basically, how many hours of video I'll do a day. If that's over about four hours, I know that that's going to be really bad long term. I can do that a day or two or somewhat infrequently, but got to keep a cap on that. Then we'll go to audio. The phone is actually, funny enough for a lot of people, if they'll pick up the phone these days, they'll find it's actually a really much less taxing way to have a conversation with somebody. You can pace around your house, you can do whatever.

I think, the other thing for us is relationships are still super important. Those will get taxed in a remote world. And so at a bare minimum, I encourage people to at least think about keeping an office as a hybrid moment to say, "Yeah, maybe you don't need to fill it every day. That's probably smart and fine and helpful to people, but as a good convening place. So if you can get people together or if you need to go through a project or a process, that's like, 'Hey, let's get together for a week long period,' you can do that still really easily." I think there's a lot of great benefits to remote, but I actually love the, I don't live near our office, but we do have two offices around the country. It does become a great place to meet at times.

Karolyn Hart Yeah, and just even having a place to store all the things that you need for business, whether that's your trade show booths or different things like that.

Chris Byers Absolutely.

Samantha Castro And another thing for small business owners maybe considering going fully remote, you have to consider whether or not your team would want to continue doing their job remotely because it’s a different mindset. It’s this independent mindset that’s entrepreneurial in a way that when you’re working in a remote culture you almost have to have.

We wanted to know how Chris onboarded new employees who were coming to Formstack from a more traditional environment where you may have more dependency on your team rather than yourself. 

Chris Byers The most important thing that we teach people is that we are not very good at handholding. We put it on ourselves that it's our problem, not yours, but it helps you see that, yeah, you're going to have to do something to overcome it. 

What we mean by that is we're not going to come alongside you very well and say, "Hey, let's go on this new journey to start a new initiative or start a new project. Let's kind of micromanage along the way." We're going to say, "You think you've got a new way to grow sales or build product or support our customers. Great. Go work on it. Let us know how it goes. Come back to us at some point and say, 'Here's the plan. Here's where I'm going.'' 

We'll give you feedback, but you need to be very proactive about that. We're not going to be very good at inviting you to do it. We need you to opt in. Some of it's just saying it. That can tend to be helpful. Then just continuing to give people opportunities to do that. Just that and say, when they bring you, cause people will bring ideas often to you, so when you can turn that around and say, "All right, that's a great idea. I'd love to see what you want to do with it. You've got a week or two weeks. Let's see what it looks like."

Karolyn Hart Yeah, I like to tell my staff, "That's a fantastic idea." The way it works is if it's your idea, then you get to do all the work.

Chris Byers That's right. That's right.

Karolyn Hart Congratulations. Step on up. They're like, "Oh, oh." Especially when they first start, they're like, "That wasn't exactly what I was expecting." In most companies they take your idea of, "Oh, we're going to go let these other people work on it." No, my whole, my whole premise is if it came from you, then you might be the right person to actually implement, so go get it done.

[MUSIC: Sounds Like Sander “Endless Bliss”]

Samantha Castro And that cultural way of thinking is exactly how this podcast started. Karolyn and I took a business road trip and I introduced her to the world of podcasting and when we were done listening to some of my favorite episodes, she was super hyped to listen to more. And that made me happy because I said, “I’m glad you’re enjoying these podcasts because I want to make a podcast for InspireHUB. I don’t know what it’s going to be about but here’s how I envision the format being and one day we’ll make it happen.” A year and a bit later, here we are with Big On Small. I brought the idea forward, and when the time was right, implemented it and now it’s one of the things that keeps me energized and engaged every day because we get to share stories like Chris’ and maybe even one day your small business story. (1-844-967-2428 if you want to just give us a ring and tell us. Thanks.)

Chris will tell you that seeing people’s ideas come to fruition within Formstack, is one of the things he loves the most about their culture.

Chris Byers I don't want to be at an organization where I have a wonderful idea, I think. I deliver it to somebody. They go execute on it. Then it comes into the wild. That's okay. That needs to happen at times. Where I have people coming to me and saying, "This is what I want to do. I've spent some time on it. I've done some research. I'm ready to go put a plan behind it." Then when it gets out in the wild and then a customer adopts it and says, "This is great," that is the most wonderful thing. I think that's where we start to enable people to really grow their leadership. That's when we can release our organization to grow faster than maybe we do as individuals and as leaders. I think that becomes a beautiful moment.

Samantha Castro Your people are your tools as a small business. So use them! Ask for their ideas and then listen! If you’re a leader or you want to be, that’s the best way to develop a more diverse and a more dynamic organization. Chris spoke to us about his own personal mission and what makes him get out of bed every morning. 

Chris Byers Simon Sinek talks about the five whys or finding your why or why you're doing something. For me that why statement, that mission statement is developing leaders into great leaders. I've got to start there. I've got to remember what is it I'm about. Even if I got fired tomorrow, what would I probably end up doing somewhere else, maybe in a different format. For me, it is that leadership development. When things are bad, when things are frustrating, when I want to give up, I go back to that and say, "All right, do I still have leadership development that I can do? Can I still be effective? Can I still help others grow?" I start to rebuild from there. That then turns into company vision and the motivation.

[MUSIC: Be Still The Earth “i've seen you in all your light”] 

I always tell people, I think you have to find that personal thing about yourself, the way you were built, that is going to be true about you whether you work here forever, or your employment ends tomorrow. What's the thing that you're going to carry with you, what's the way you like to interact with people or how you like to help people or types of problems you like to solve, because it's going to stay the same. If you can figure that out, that will give you so much energy for the work that you do.

I love building and having personal, engaging relationships. For me, the thing that keeps me motivated is I know that again, no matter what goes on, I will get to get on a one-on-one with somebody I've come to love and care about next week. I'll do this with multiple people, but at least one person I'll be able to get on. I still feel like I've got an ability to help pull barriers down for them, encourage them, give them advice, give them feedback. That ultimately is going to make them better. That ultimately keeps me in the game and makes me want to keep doing what I do. If the people were not there, that would eventually fade away and I just wouldn't want to do it anymore.

Samantha Castro Chris and the team at Formstack also wouldn’t be where they are today if not for their customers and the multiple problems he’s seen their product solve for organizations of all sizes. One company in particular Chris remembers having a big impact early on within their organization was in 2015 with the team at this company called Crossroads Hospice in Memphis, Tennessee.

Chris Byers I got on the phone with one of them one time. They started to describe this call center they had. The call center was all about getting nurses and doctors to patients in a hospice moment. That kind of conversation turned into, "Can we just come visit you?" They just seemed like super friendly people and great people. We wanted to see how they were working.

We hopped on a plane and took a group of people down there and got to sit with them for a day. As we sat with them, saw how they used our product to solve getting to that patient as fast as possible. They could have probably bought something, but it would have cost them a lot more money, and it wouldn't have actually operated quite in the speed that they wanted to work. 

They wanted something that they could click submit on the form and that nurse or that doctor is notified immediately. It was just really amazing to see somebody who took our basic building blocks, which wouldn't have gotten them where they got building this basically a EMR or just management system for their business and all on top of Formstack. 

That was just a wonderful moment to both see their delight and see people, frankly, of all ages and all walks of life using the product and loving using it and just seeing the smiles on their faces was so encouraging.

Samantha Castro We have linked the full case study to Crossroads Hospice on the podcast page for this episode if you’re interested to see what exactly the Formstack solutions they were using included. I found it interesting that this was the story that impacted Chris as it ties so nicely into his journey up to that point - solving problems for people that are motivated to help others in the healthcare industry. Talk about a common themes!

With COVID happening around the world, the team at Formstack have been constantly reminded how much their product is helping other organizations throughout various industries. Especially small businesses who’ve had to overnight basically shut their doors and go digital. 

Chris Byers One of the cool stories that I know we got to work on together was this story of Cooper's Hawk, a winery in Canada. They, all of a sudden, needed to shut their doors. You've got a thriving business that no longer has the stream of income that they were used to. What do we do? They were able to work together with all of us, get an order form up for their wine, and all of a sudden they're still in business. 

I think that's just so encouraging to me. Most days, I don't really think we're solving world problems at work, helping people save time, save money. That's wonderful. But just to be able to see businesses actually survive and thrive in the middle of all this has been really cool to see. 

I know we've used that story internally so many times just to remind people that we get to do something that's a little bit special and not everybody gets that opportunity. Cool to actually be able to help in the middle of a world crisis.

Karolyn Hart Yeah, and I'm so glad because for us, it was inspiring to get, well, it was heart wrenching to get the phone call. They were just like, "What are we going to do?" We just leaped in. We were like, "We can do this. We can get this done." It was two days later, we had all of their, everything, their entire product line in and up. 

They were, I remember, and you will want to hear this, Chris -one of the things that warned my heart was the excitement in the owner's voice, tom, when he called me to tell me that he had gotten an order at three in the morning. They had never gotten an order at three in the morning before. It was a frontline nurse who had just come off shift.

I thought, "Wow." You don't think about digital. We think of it in bottom line and sales and different things like that. But to all of a sudden have this story where one, we're helping this beautiful business keep open, keep their employees employed, which is really important. But also on the other side of it was this nurse coming off shift of, you can only imagine, and one of the very first orders is being done at three in the morning after she's probably had a very long day and she's just like, "Everybody else in the world is already asleep." Here she is on this winery being like, "You know what? I'm going to order myself a nice bottle of wine." I just thought, "You know that's ..." I said to Tom for so many different reasons, I said, "That is exciting." It's not small. It's not silly. It's beautiful.

Samantha Castro It was and still is beautiful the way business across the world have innovated and made digital transformations to keep their business going. Whether that be opening their store online like Cooper’s Hawk, using forms and processes to take care of patients in hospice care like Crossroads, or working remotely to follow social distance guidelines, there’s so many stories out there. We want to know how you’ve adjusted to working in this new world. Go to Bigonsmall.biz to contact us or call us on our toll free number, 1-844-967-2428. 

Before we end the show, here’s Chris’ advice to small business owners that may be hesitating to take a risk, whether that be in their business or in life.

Chris Byers I think it also comes back to, I see a problem in the world and I just have, I want to see it solved and that at some point your motivation has to be enough to want to solve it. Yet if you will begin down that path of wanting to solve it, and this goes back to though, I don't think you can be super motivated by money and motivated by these things that won't last. You do have to have something a bit deeper in mind. I think persistence has got to be the least motivating word ever, but one of the coolest things we ever saw was a couple of years in, it was like, "Oh, everybody's growing faster than us. There's these huge success stories. We're behind." Then all of a sudden, we wake up seven years in and we're like, "Oh, we've actually grown to a decent size. This is meaningful. People know who we are, organization." I think that persistence in continuing after it, if you can keep solving that problem and figure out the vision where you're going really can drive you forward to just a great organization.

Samantha Castro There’s a lot happening at Formstack as they continue to add to their suite of products that helps companies of all sizes be more productive and we love how easy and affordable they’ve created their product to be for small businesses. If you’re interested in how Formstack can save time and automate parts of your small business, InspireHUB is a Verified Formstack partner and we’d love to help you. Go to InspireHUB.com and contact us for more information. 

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and then go check out Ripple Effect a Formstack podcast where Chris connects with professionals from all over the country to reveal how making simple, yet smart business decisions can create lasting change. In one episode he chats with Ade about his unique perspective on current times as a Black tech founder and investor in America. It’s a great episode and highly recommend you check it out.

CREDITS

[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]

Karolyn Hart Visit bigonsmall.biz to join our community of small businesses and find helpful resources. To learn more about what we talked about in today’s episode, read show highlights, and more, go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast and visit the post for this episode. 

Samantha Castro We’re working on new stories where we need your help. Call and tell us how you’ve had to make small or BIG changes to the way you do business since COVID started. The number to call is 1-844-967-CHAT. That’s 1-844-967-2428

We listen to each and every message. 

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @Bigonsmall

The Big on Small podcast is powered by InspireHUB - creators of the award winning IHUBApp Digital Experience Platform.

Big on Small is produced and directed by me, Samantha Castro

Karolyn Hart And me Karolyn Hart. Additional support by Sue Braiden, Richard Brashear, Audrey Duncan and Sue Jenks. Music by Noah Smith. Mixed by Samantha Castro. 

For the full list of credits visit the podcast page for this episode. 

Thanks for listening!