SaaS Stories
SaaS Stories is my not-so-secret quest to learn what it truly takes to succeed in the world of SaaS—and I’m inviting you along for the ride! I have the pleasure of sitting down with brilliant minds and industry trailblazers to explore their journeys, uncovering the secrets behind their growth, the gaps they spotted in the market, and what really drives them.
It’s not all smooth sailing—there are challenges, unexpected turns, and moments of reflection where they share what they’d love to change about their journey. Think of it as a candid, insider’s look into the world of SaaS, with just the right amount of curiosity, empathy, and wit.
Join me as I dive deep, selfishly soak up all the insights, and hopefully share a little inspiration with you along the way—one SaaS story at a time.
SaaS Stories
Leadership as a Service: Building high-performing teams
What does it take to build and sustain high-performing teams in today's rapidly evolving business landscape? Gearl Loden, a leader with 27 years of experience spanning education, tech, SaaS, and real estate, brings surprising insights drawn from both classroom leadership and corporate environments.
Loden shares a powerful perspective on imposter syndrome that plagues even accomplished leaders: "It's better to be yourself than try to be John Maxwell." This philosophy forms the foundation of his approach to building robust organisational cultures that survive scaling, acquisition, and market challenges.
Leadership, according to Loden, resembles software development rather than a straight-line progression. "It's like a big spaghetti noodle going in all directions," he explains, with different teams at varying stages of functionality, requiring constant adaptation and course correction. His practical frameworks for delegation illuminate why even leaders who trust their teams struggle to let go - and how to overcome this common barrier to growth.
Perhaps most valuable is Loden's introduction of "stay interviews" - a proactive alternative to exit interviews that help retain top talent before they reach the point of resentment. His techniques for managing remote teams without endless Zoom meetings offer practical solutions for today's distributed workforce challenges. The conversation concludes with a counterintuitive yet powerful mindset shift around "selfish leadership" - why investing in yourself first creates the foundation for elevating everyone around you.
Whether you're scaling a SaaS startup, leading an established enterprise, or managing a small team, Loden's practical wisdom bridges the gap between leadership theory and everyday application.
Learn more at www.lodenleadership.com
Imposter syndrome. Definitely something we're all familiar with, I think, especially, as you know, business owners, people trying to manage teams, you know, trying to be the best leaders we possibly could be.
Speaker 2:But if you get an environment where the majority of your job is things that don't charge your battery, and even if you're good at it, that doesn't mean that's your passion. Leadership is a journey very similar to where I'm only as good as I am today. I'm the best version of Gerald Loden today. You're the best version of Joanna today, but if we keep learning and growing, then what will we be in five years?
Speaker 1:Don't be afraid to make mistakes Consistent little efforts, day in, day out.
Speaker 2:Leadership is not perfect. You know we want to think it's a straight line, but it's really like a big spaghetti noodle going in all kinds of directions and you're almost playing. In the states we call it whack-a-mole.
Speaker 1:Welcome everybody to another episode of SaaS Stories. Today I'm joined by Gerald Loden, a leader in education for over 27 years, coaching high-performing teams and high-performing environments. Welcome, gerald.
Speaker 2:I am excited to be with you today, Joanna.
Speaker 1:I'm super excited to hear your story Now. You've helped operationalize leadership in sectors from education to tech, to SaaS, to real estate. You've done quite a lot with your journey. Tell us about your SaaS journey specifically, and experience to date and you know how did you get into leadership.
Speaker 2:Well, naturally I love leadership and I've always been very curious about it and, probably like a lot of people, early on I thought, well, am I really going to be a leader? And had imposter syndrome. And you realize as you're learning and reading about John Maxwell and all the other leaders, well, can I be like them? And I learned overall it's better to be yourself than be Gerald Loughton and that's how I can coach and help others. And my journey is that I tell people I was a child in school that struggled. I walked in and my dad hadn't graduated from high school and my mom had cancer when I was little and I was dyslexic and had ADHD and had to have speech. So I was a kid that didn't pay attention, struggled with reading but was blessed to have some great teachers. And then along my journey my mom I mentioned had cancer and was sick. So it was a struggle at times and hard at times, but that helped to shape me and shape who I am today and kind of helped me to gravitate towards wanting to help other children and others and building off of that.
Speaker 2:As far as my SaaS journey, I'm not as techie as a lot of people, but in education I've embraced tech and part of our turning around school districts that have been underperforming or high performing, helping them to go to the next level, is embracing technology. And one of my best friends was a gentleman that's very tech savvy, that started his own company and ended up selling it and was managing a hedge fund of companies and now he's back at the ground level again starting over. So I've got this serial entrepreneur friend so he's helped me and we kind of mentored each other along our journeys. And then in education we use a lot of the different tools that are education-centric but just seeing the evolution of where you own your own license to now everything's cloud-based and all the innovation that's there.
Speaker 2:I've been really blessed to have our teams recognized by several companies that have had different members of my teams on national boards and advisory boards and allowed to go and speak at places about how we use technology. So that's kind of my journey and I think there's a lot of differences and similarities. But as a leader I'm wanting to take the organizations that I lead. That often are you know you're public, you're big, you've got all these layers. That often are you know you're public, you're big, you've got all these layers. I've looked at Agile and Scrum and some of the same principles that you're using when you're developing software, and try to infuse them into the cultures that I have on my schools.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry to hear about your mom. That sounds like a terrible way to try and grow up and, as you know, as a child, get through school as well. My boy also had a little bit of struggle with reading and I think good teachers make a huge difference as well as just figuring out what do they want to read, because not everyone can read the same books and, you know, drive from that type of same school environment. I suppose Imposter syndrome definitely something we're all familiar with, I think, especially, as you know, business owners, people trying to manage teams, you know, trying to be the best leaders we possibly could be. What's maybe some tips on trying to get over imposter syndrome?
Speaker 2:Well, the one thing I would say that the people that I work with that are especially startups. They're entrepreneurial, they have an idea, they have a dream. They want to make a big, big product, great product, and serve others. They start off with this pure heart, they get in it, they get involved and when they start making it, then you have to scale. Well, once you start scaling, you have different layers and once you start having the different layers, then okay, am I able to lead this? I wanted to have my own company but I didn't realize the leadership was going to be this way. And two, at times when I coach people, it's trying to help them to realize where their talents are and their team members' talents are and to look for gaps. So if they're scaling, they can add people to their team to help to complete them.
Speaker 2:You know, a good thing that I advise people is we all have crummy things with our jobs that we just don't like to do. But I try to coach people that if you have 70% of the things you're doing on your daily basis that you like and you're good at, then you're going to be okay, because everybody has certain things you just have to do. But if you get an environment where the majority of your job is things that don't charge your battery, and even if you're good at it, that doesn't mean that's your passion. You know you may love numbers, but do you really want to be in a back office running numbers all day if your passion has been around people? So you have to have a team that's well-rounded and that's part of scaling. And another thing with scaling scaling too, when you're starting off is is embracing that leadership is not fixed.
Speaker 2:Most people don't go into a business saying I want to be a leader and I think at times you're like, oh, it's natural, you just got to know it. But you don't. It's a skill that you can develop and it's very similar to software. When you have an idea and you develop a software, then you start beta testing it, then you start updating it with different versions until you release the full version. Leadership is a journey very similar to where I'm only as good as I am today. I'm the best version of Gerald Lowe today. You're the best version of Joanna today. But if we keep learning and growing, then what will we be in five years? What will we be in 10 years? We don't have a lot of limited potential. We're willing to put the time in and grow and develop and not be afraid to make mistakes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love that. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Consistent little efforts, day in, day out. I'd love to learn more from you about managing a team. My personal weakness is delegation. I do trust my team, but I, for some reason, have always struggled with delegating. What can you tell me about delegation, as well as maybe some other blind spots and mistakes you see companies make when it comes to managing teams?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll say in education we do this and in the smaller industries where I coach people, they do the same thing. You start out and you know every role, role. So you know what it should look like and you want everyone to be just like you and no one can do it your way. But you'll burn yourself out, you know you'll be so overwhelmed. So sometimes it's just sitting down and reflecting. I need to delegate things. What can I delegate? And using the situational leadership model, where I know my team very well and I know what they're good at, but also using what I've determined is the platinum rule where most people have in every religion. You're going to have a golden rule where you say I'm going to treat others the way I want to be treated and I'm going to try to treat you when I meet you the way I would like to be treated. But I really need to learn about you and your journey and how you want to be treated. If you want to be recognized with praise, I need to praise you. If you want to not be recognized by praise but just a pat on the back and a raise, let's do that.
Speaker 2:But if I learn about you and at times, one of the things people do is they don't know the people on their teams, like with me sharing my story about my mom.
Speaker 2:People look at me and go, hey, he's got it all put together, he's got a doctorate, he's got an MBA, he's doing well, but they don't see the journey and the struggles I've had and where I'm at today.
Speaker 2:So the more you know where people are passionate and if you have someone on your team that really wants to be a leader or they want to grow in a different way and they're willing to put the time in, then offering job enrichment so you can delegate by knowing the talents of your team and you'll know already you're setting them up for success. But when you delegate, be clear on the expectations but then give them the freedom to be creative. What I've learned is, if I am very clear, so the folks know what I expect and I let them go and create, they're going to come back with something far better than what I would have ever created and it helps me to just. It fills me up. When I see someone doing something, I'm like I would never have done it that way, but that is really cool, they did great and it helps you to grow your team.
Speaker 1:Amazing, I have to say. I think delegation is something that it's a bit of a journey for me. I am getting better at it, but you're right, what you just said is like you give someone work and they give it back to you and you're like, oh, that's an interesting angle. Actually, I didn't think of doing it that way. Yeah, you're kind of pleasantly surprised.
Speaker 2:And one other tidbit I would give leaders. You know you don't think about it Like I just think, hey, I'm just an average person, but when I'm a leader, the one I speak or ask questions, it shakes the foundations of the earth in some ways. You know people like, oh, the boss wants you to do something, so if you ask someone, especially new, that you haven't been around, hey, joanna, I need for you to do this, will you? Oh, yeah, I'll do it, doc. And well, when can you have it done?
Speaker 2:Often people want to please, so they'll set something quickly without thinking about how long it takes. So when someone gives me a deadline, or I give them a deadline like when can you have it ready? Oh, I can have it for you by Monday, I'm usually going to give them a couple of extra days just to give a little pad, because often they will put a lot of extra pressure on because they'll say something too quickly. So I encourage bosses and supervisors when you're managing people, ask them to choose. You know, look at the timeframes, the things you're working on and how much time do you need and when will it be ready, and then, if it's not urgent, give them a couple extra days, and that way you'll have better quality work and less pressure on your people that you're supervising absolutely helps, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Coming back to the foundations of leadership, um, you know things like feedback, communication. What can you tell me about that? What are some foundational principles we can all take away now and implement in our companies?
Speaker 2:well, feedback is the breakfast of champions and to have two-way feedback. It's just as important for the leader to have people that are going to be honest and have people in your circle that are going to tell you things in a professional way that you really don't want to hear, but you need to hear. You need to have feedback loops where you're able to make sure that all layers are giving feedback. We use in my field, we love to use old quality circles of TQM where you go down to the foundational floor for the work's being done and get feedback there, because I've learned that if I have an idea, it's going to cause the next layer to have to do three things and the next layer is going to cause the next layer to have to do three more things. And a great idea, by the time it's implemented, causes people doing work a lot of indigestion. So being able to know how people are feeling and how much pressure is being put on and there's times where things are playing perfectly and we can go faster there's other times where we have to slow down a little and realizing too, when you're dealing with teams they're all over the place.
Speaker 2:Leadership is not perfect, you know. We want to think it's a straight line, but it's really like a big spaghetti noodle going in all kinds of directions and you're almost playing. In the States we call it whack-a-mole. I don't know if you have that in Australia, but it's a game where you've got a little baton and you hit the moles that jump up. Well, you know, you'll have one team that's going well, you'll have another team that's doing okay, then you have one team that's struggling, and you'll have all your teams eventually going the way you want them to and someone will leave and that just changes everything up and you start back over again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, I think. Um, I think one thing that happens quite often in like sas and tech companies is, you know, redund, redundancies, people leaving it definitely can shift things like culture, the ambience, the mood in the office. What are some ways to deal with that? I think you know, say, you're in the business of SaaS and tech. You've just had to make 10 people redundant. You know that the mood has now shifted. How can you deal with that? How can you lift up the people that are still there and get them, you know, to still be excited about coming to work and feeling safe and secure and, like you know, we're on a mission still.
Speaker 2:Now, when you say redundant, is that like laying people off?
Speaker 1:Yes, is that an Australian term? Is that like laying people off? Yes, is that an Australian?
Speaker 2:term. That is a challenge. The one thing I would encourage anyone to do is as a leader. I love the Toyota model, where they've never laid people off. You know they do not lay people off where other companies do, and their culture is so different because of that.
Speaker 2:But I had, early on in my career, I was an hr director at 34, 33, 34 and had over a thousand employees and the company had been hiring over hiring and hadn't been leaned out, and we went through a recession and I felt like I was a grim reaper laying off. So ever since that time, knowing that the decisions I make impact families, I've tried to be very, very lean. I've stressed cross-training and making sure that our people are growth-minded, and when you see the things turning, the tide turning, then you try to go through attrition, with normal people leaving and not filling their jobs, and cross-training and trying to get people over into other areas. Now, the one thing I will do, though, we're going to hire for culture, and that's the decision. I'm going to protect my culture at all costs, because if you're a startup, especially, and you're thriving and you're building up to where someone could come in and buy you or you could scale or buy other people.
Speaker 2:The culture is so important and I've we've had providers that were so wonderful but then when they bought other companies, things shifted because they I don't think they evaluated the culture as much as the dollars and it was like their company.
Speaker 2:Then, a year or two later, they're really struggling and, as a leader, your culture is so important and not just having fancy words on the wall. But you know, you're the chief culture officer, you're the leader of the culture. If you're the leader of the company, policing that culture, checking at the different levels about how people feel about the culture, what the culture means to them, and trying to allow a little bit of deviation where different departments can celebrate the culture in their own ways, but still you have the same common goals because your culture that helps everyone to be in the same boat, rowing together. And I would say they have someone that leaves your company because someone offers them a raise or a promotion and they may leave. But if they get into a bad culture, they'll be knocking on your door to come back. But if someone leaves you for culture, you're not going to get them back with more money, because the culture means everything absolutely I.
Speaker 1:I've heard the word culture quite a bit, but I'm going to ask a really silly and basic question, because I feel like it is a word that's used quite a lot but maybe not, you know understood in maybe different ways. So what is culture in your mind?
Speaker 2:I'm going to use something that I use and usually gets laughed. But the Supreme Court in the United States defines pornography as something that you know it when you see it. Well, I think people would judge that in different ways. My wife and I we're not watching this. It's rated R. We don't watch R-rated.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to culture, you know everyone wants to go and speak about their culture and how healthy it is and what it is. And you can have a mission, vision and value statement. But there are a lot of places that have the statements but they don't revisit them, they don't look at them, they don't know them. Your culture is going to be what you can feel it, you can sense it, you can see signs of it, but it's hard to describe. And that goes back to, if I have, my vision. This is, you know, our purpose. This is the vision we have for the future. Our mission is how we get there and how we go on our journey together, and then we sit down as a team and decide what are our core values, what's important to us, what do we believe in?
Speaker 2:And one thing a lot of people leave out is setting up norms so you can kind of police each other. You know, like with meetings, if we have a team meeting, are we going to have a soft start because we never get to see each other? Do we want to have 10 minutes just to chat and catch up or if there's someone you need to ask questions, or do you want a hard start? If someone's on their phone or not paying attention, how do we police that? And what I've learned is, with teams that have good cultures, each the team polices and honors that culture and trains the new folks on the culture. But I would say, revisiting your norms and then also talking about your culture and celebrating your culture.
Speaker 2:You know, if a failure is, you know, not being afraid to fail is something you celebrate and you look at failure as the first opportunity or first attempt in learning. Then have a different times and meetings. Ok, let's celebrate failures. What have you tried that didn't work? What did you learn from it? Now, I know we use after action reviews. I know when you have scrums or sprints you'll have a kind of an after action review or debrief. That's a great time to celebrate what didn't work and what did we learn. How can we get better for the next time we're working together?
Speaker 1:I love hearing about cultures that you know kind of celebrate failure and mistakes and you know saying that this is just a part of succeeding. I actually think Snapchat and Light Studio do this. They've spoken out about, you know, this being an important part for them. Apple too, I believe. Coming back to two things you said that I thought were really interesting, one is hiring for culture and two is the Toyota story. They've really not laid anyone off. That's amazing. I'm just thinking they must be really good at hiring. So, question on hiring how do we do it right?
Speaker 2:Oh goodness Now you know, there's many mistakes there, where you check all the references and someone checks all the boxes that don't work out.
Speaker 2:Then you're like, okay, I think this person can do it. They don't have the perfect resume and they end up being the best hire. So we are dealing with humans. But I would say, making sure that you have committees of people that understand the culture and they hire. You hire for culture and, of course, someone's got to have a skillset too.
Speaker 2:But, like with us, one thing that's helped me in the district I'm in now is is we have moved from being in the top 10% to the top 2% in our state, academically and anything you can measure. But I was blessed to walk into a system where the tool that we used, the company, recommended you hire at this level for personality, people and relationships. But we actually hire a lot higher than that threshold. So we're set up to work in teams and work together and we have people that want to know their purpose and their why. But when you hire for that and you create a special environment and you can make it your own, you can look and say, well, google's got some fun things, apple has fun things.
Speaker 2:These other cultures are lean. You know, for years people studied Zappos culture. But look at the culture that you want to have and make sure you hire people that fit into the culture and then onboard them in the culture too and have mentors and coaching around the culture. Often we lose our best hires at the very beginning just because they don't fit in or they don't understand the culture. But having a system in place where you develop on them and shaping new people and also protecting the culture is a part of what you do every day.
Speaker 1:Do you think culture is something that also changes throughout a company's growth journey? For example, I always felt like with startups the culture was kind of started by the founder. You know their personality, their mission, their values. But as a company grows, surely that has to change as more and more people come into the mix and you know there's different types of um, I suppose personalities that are changing things I believe there's companies that do well with that.
Speaker 2:As they're large, become larger some of your big tech titans even though they were started 20 years ago by some guys in a dorm room or whatever, now they're big, they still have a fun culture. And then, too, there's probably a lot of startups probably more startups that have messed things up. But you know I'm buying other companies and I don't look at the culture. So I would say, if you're mindful of protecting the culture and you really hire for the culture and protect it, you can keep it.
Speaker 2:O'reilly's Auto Parts is in our area and one thing that's different about them and you know they're not a SaaS company but they have thousands of stores. Every supervisor of a store or region had their own store and then every supervisor's supervisor had their own region and every vp. They've all even the president started out at a store and they worked their way up, so they all understand the culture and they strategically hire outside of o'reilly's auto parts for people that can help them to grow and stretch in different ways, but still, when you are able to train internally and have your own leadership pipeline, that helps a lot too okay, and so as you scale and grow and this happens maybe, what are some signs that the culture is starting to crack or, you know, not work?
Speaker 2:oh, you're gonna see. One of the biggest telltale signs that's probably really bad is when some of your backbone people that are not just trying to climb the ladder to be a VP or a manager somewhere else, but they leave you for lateral moves. That's a big time sign because there's something going on. When people have been loyal, been with you for years and they're not really making a lot more money but they're leaving. That means dig into your culture. If you start seeing people not giving you feedback and being silent, that's a sign because you want people that are not afraid to share. But if people feel like they're not being listened to or heard or they can't see that some of their suggestions are being implemented and you're voicing that you need them to give feedback, that's a sign.
Speaker 2:If you see productivity going down, things going down or people saying they don't understand, and that's probably one of the biggest things that happens is Deming's work, and Deming's you know the TQM founder, his work. He believed that 85% of the issues you have are processes. I would say if you're a SaaS company and you're scaling, you may have people around you that understand how the process should be and you'll implement something and you'll have a new program, but you don't understand the ramifications and the implementation process on the line, where the work's being done and you'll think it's the box is checked and people understand it, but they don't, and often people when you have performance going down, what happens is you start blaming people, but it's usually not the people. They're doing what they think you want them to do. It's the processes in place.
Speaker 1:You're right, there's so many processes. I was just thinking we have so many processes and systems and frameworks, but what we actually don't have is we haven't defined what our culture is, and I wonder if it's worth doing that and telling everyone in the organization you know this is, this is the culture we believe we have here.
Speaker 2:I believe it's good and I would say, when you do that, that it needs to be a cross-section of your stakeholders. You know, find people that are goodwill, that are good employees at all levels, and have your group and ask them about the culture what, what is the culture?
Speaker 2:and get them to be honest and do a gap analysis, cause you know it's funny. But if the leadership team were all sit down and say this is our culture, is that the same thing that all the different layers are saying? And you'll see, though, there'll be nuances where, even if you have a great system in place and great people, you'll see that there's many cultures in different places. And you may go okay, this line over here, this group over here that's developing this product, they really have the culture we want. So how do we support that across the system so we have a consistent culture?
Speaker 1:Interesting. I know what I'm doing on Monday.
Speaker 2:then but if you think about all the different employees you have, you got some that can pick up things, some that are phrased, some that are jump right in. But if you have any kind of new software and you have a training here, oh, it's easy. It's a webinar. You know everyone, everybody's not gonna get it and learn. You really won't. Teaching doesn't happen until learning occurs and you won't learn, and so you want to know. Everyone understands it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, but also people wanting you know, having a growth mindset and wanting to learn. I think is important. Coming back again to hiring for culture, but then also some key skills in there. Do you have kids?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, I have two.
Speaker 1:How old?
Speaker 2:I have a 23 year old that's actually in his second year of teaching, and we'll have our first granddaughter this week too this next week. We're excited. And then I have a 16-year-old that's in the 10th grade.
Speaker 1:Say, a 16-year-old comes to you and says Dad, I'm going to be a teacher. I'm not sure what I want to do in the future, career-wise. And you know this AI thing is we don't know where it's headed and what skill sets we're going to need. What should I be learning? What should I be preparing for? What are you going to tell him?
Speaker 2:What are some of?
Speaker 1:the fundamental key skills that you think are going to last well into the future and stand the test of time.
Speaker 2:And I'll say this goes back to my philosophy as an educator, because in our area you have a lot of employers are saying we need employees now and my philosophy is different because in the next 10 years. There's some futurists that are saying we'll have more innovation in 10 years than the last 100. Most will agree in the next 20. So the jobs that we're seeing now are going to totally change. The skills that we focus on is we actually use a system called Skillsoft that's used by the Fortune 500 companies most of them and it's out of videos, but we train our students in our schools on soft skills, how to work with people.
Speaker 2:Your emotional intelligence book, emotional Intelligence 2.0, people that have high emotional intelligence are going to outperform people of high IQ 70% of the time. So realizing that if you're willing to work with others, if you can work independently but then you can work in teams, if you have good communication skills, if you're able to use the resources you have because I mean the people that use chat, gpt and AI effectively are going to be the ones that be the ones that don't. And there are employers now that are starting to interview people and ask them to demonstrate how they can use AI to lighten their loads. But I think the people that are willing to be adaptable and learn and realize that I may love a profession and it totally changes where there's not a career in it, but I can still go to something else, and this is something we've always had. I mean, you had the debate during the industrial revolution what would happen with all the people that were working on the farms by hand when the tractors? Well, they.
Speaker 1:There's jobs for people that are willing to work and learn and grow yeah, yeah, I love that you said that I know what I'll be teaching my kids, um, actually just the other day he was telling me about you know, probably not, not the best reader, not the best at maths but I did say to him yeah, but you really have a skill for making people like you. He's quite popular, you know, with people, and I said that's, that's a skill that you know you can hardly teach um, or is it teachable? Is what are some of the key principles of you know, getting people skills and communication skills but the good thing is, emotional intelligence is not fixed and you're a reflective learner and you realize, hey, I'm, I need to work in an area you can develop habits.
Speaker 2:You can, you know, start off with micro habits and develop new habits and new skills. And, uh, you know, I've I've realized myself the power of listening, not for responding but for true understanding, asking lots of questions, paraphrasing that's something I am really good at and just naturally evolved in as a leader. But, you know, you go into a situation and I know what Janet is thinking, I know why she's doing it and I may not be thinking she's doing it with goodwill. Then you go into this situation. You realize it was totally different than what I thought. So I've been able, as a leader, to calm my mind and there's something going on that doesn't look right. I'm not going to assume anything. I'm going to go in and talk and learn and that's helping me to be a much better leader. But I wish I could have figured out that way 20 years ago. But that's why we have to learn and grow and develop Absolutely.
Speaker 1:You mentioned. One key sign of a culture cracking is people starting to leave, and actually retention is a growing concern in the world of SaaS, especially for companies that take on the teams. They train them quite well, they develop over time and then to have these people leave is a huge cost to the companies. How can companies retain top talent, keep them engaged and motivated? Um, is it about money? Is it about something else? I actually I had a friend tell me just last night um, he's leaving, he's planning to leave the company he's working for and he's been there four years. And when I asked him why and what if they offered you the same amount of money as the new one, he said it's too late, I'm already too resentful.
Speaker 2:And that happens, and once you reach that point, you've got someone that's toxic, that they don't want to stay, no matter what. One tool I would encourage people to use and I've actually got an article about it is the stay interview.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Often we'll use exit interviews when someone's leaving to find out why they're leaving, but they're leaving. But if you find and do different levels like your employees have been with you for a couple years, do the people been with you for a while and just have an honest conversation with them? You know you're here, you appear to like your job. What do you like about it? Why do you stay? What can we do to make your job better? What can we do to support you? And I think we'll all find out.
Speaker 2:Like for me, we try to get feedback from our employees and what they like and we try to offer a variety of things. But there's going to be some things that you would not like and that's okay. But we want to know, at the end of the day, there's things that you can see that we're doing that add value to you, that you're like. I really appreciate this. This benefits me. I enjoy it. They care about me. The other thing would be going back to pulling back the layers and still having a normal evaluation where you know you check in a few times a year. Here's your formal, here's your kpis, you're gonna get a raise.
Speaker 2:Actually have honest conversations so you know what they're dreaming about you know, you have a very good employee that is in a situation where they want to lead somewhere. Well, you may not have a position coming open, but you can keep them longer by giving job enrichment and give them opportunities to learn and grow and develop their skill set. Well then, if you have an opening, then you have someone in your pipeline ready to go and be a leader. Or if they do go somewhere else and add value, that doesn't mean later on they might come back because you helped them on their journey. I've watched people before where they've helped out, even though they know you want to get a degree and do something else, where they've helped you by paying part of the cost. So you'll be there three more years while you're getting your degree, or four more years, and that's a way to retain someone while you cross train other people to help out with their jobs. But the biggest thing is every company is different and people are different.
Speaker 1:Find out what your people want.
Speaker 2:You may be totally happy with your situation in life where you're like I just want to be supported here and allowed to do my job. But then you may be at a stage where, okay, my kids are in school, I've got more flexibility because they're about to graduate and I really want to go into a leadership role. So do you have a leadership training program, or do you have a program that can help me to advance to the next level, because I may need to get my master's degree in accounting?
Speaker 2:yeah, I love that train you and invest in you and you stay with me, then to hire someone on the outside that doesn't understand our processes.
Speaker 1:Now, I absolutely love that Stay interview. That is the first time I've heard of that. I actually did a six-month review yesterday and we did ask a lot of questions around. You know, what are your goals, what are your personal goals, what do you want to achieve? But I wish I had asked a question what would make you stay here another two, three, maybe five years?
Speaker 2:um, that's a really interesting one I'm definitely gonna adopt that if you look, I mean I don't know all the certifications that you guys use, but if you've got some people that are really sharp, they need to add the CompTIA certifications or whatever you know. If you pour into them and you pay for it and you give them a raise, but but then just ask them to sign, hey, I'll stay three years because I've gone through this Well that you know, you've helped them to make more money, provide for their families, elevate their skill set, and you've got them for three years. I mean that's. I said nobody can get a return on your investment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, coming back to leadership and culture, I think it becomes a real struggle for teams that are completely remote, and I think more and more SaaS companies are now completely remote or even just hybrid teams. How can you maintain leadership and culture and how can you stay connected and make sure you know the work is still quality and people are still feeling connected to each other? Is it a case of just lots of meetings online, because those can be very draining oh, they can be very meetings in general.
Speaker 2:You know you can be very. I mean meetings in general. You know you can be, they can train you. But you know, the thing I like is most people are going to have tools like Asana or you know there's several others where you can actually do the emojis and other things there and celebrate.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's Asana forever. My team does not like when I'm at a conference, because that's when you have time to think and I'm adding tasks like when I'm at a conference, because that's when you have time to think and I'm adding task Just like in a normal environment where you'll have a Monday morning huddle or the weekly huddle where you kind of go over what's happening?
Speaker 2:over the next few weeks when you have the big like once a month we're going to have a big rocks meeting. What are going to be the big things this next month that we're working on? You can do that with the tools that we have, With Slack and other tools. You can keep open questions going all day long if you just have an open question channel if someone has a problem. But you don't have to stop everything you're doing. You can get to it in a reasonable time. The other thing is, I would say, having your one-on-ones and not just a normal. You know Gerald Logan's working online. I can see he's on task in asana and the monday morning meeting went well. But just if you've got a small team, check in with each one once a week. If not, it's a little larger team every couple weeks just doing a 20 to 30 minute check-in how you doing, how's everything? I'd ask a few questions about the family that are truly honest. I want to know and just make sure they know they're a person.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're appreciated. And then, but just to celebrate and to build in celebrations in your meetings so I would say the weekly huddle, you know the meetings you have add some celebrations and fun, celebrate virtually, I guess, with a coffee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do weekly lunches at my agency. But I mean, I've heard different companies do different exciting things. I think Amazon started out with ringing the bell every time an order got made, which I guess gets people excited.
Speaker 2:One of my teams during COVID. We had a leader that was going to dress crazy at the very beginning of every day. I mean he might have some kind of crazy redheaded wig or whatever, and just everybody's looking like, okay, what's was going to dress crazy at the very beginning every day. I mean he might have some kind of crazy redheaded wig or whatever, and just everybody's looking like, okay, what's he going to do this week? Because he's going to have something. Just having fun, yeah, and still, you can still do your job, you can still be productive, but then at because you know you want to have fun. You want to work hard and you want to be productive, but at the same time you want to play together and have fun too.
Speaker 1:For all the SaaS founders listening right now, all the business owners or anyone really just trying to get growth in their career and get somewhere what's one mindset shift that you would recommend they adopt?
Speaker 2:The one that connected with me, that I like sharing and I have a module that I use with my clients is called being selfish. Oh, you know and I'm not going to get preachy with it but you know there's a section in the Bible where it says love others like you love yourself. Well, you're taught love others more than you do yourself. Love other people. You're always taught help others. When you're in leadership especially, you can put so many hours in starting up a company, not delegating, not taking care of yourself. Then you'll be in meetings and you're not present because you're thinking about the next meeting. Or you go home and you're not present with your family because you're thinking about the next day or that difficult conversation.
Speaker 2:But being selfish enough to realize that you've got to elevate your leadership and you've got to grow yourself, and when you are at peace and you're filling yourself up with growth and you have an accountability partner, a coach, a mentor, people around you that want you to thrive and you lift yourself up, then that elevates your team because they can see it in you.
Speaker 2:And as the leader goes, everyone goes. If we're going through turmoil and crisis in the world but I'm calm and reassuring people, that calms my organization If you see other people making crazy cuts but you dig in and your employees are digging in with you and you're able to be productive and not have layoffs or turnover and you're able to thrive when other people are not. That builds your confidence. But number one is, as a leader, invest in yourself. If you invest in yourself, that's going to help you to elevate your team and then make sure you're also investing in your team. There's a model that I teach people how to manipulate a model, but the traditional model is you learn 70% on the job, you learn 10% in classrooms and really if you're in class in an hour, you lose 50% of it Within a week.
Speaker 2:You've lost 90%, if you don't apply. And the other part comes in by having mentors and coaches. But if you really focus in on having people on the job, coach your teams, mentor your teams. If your leader has someone doing the same with them and they're doing others, that puts learning in overdrive. So when most people be going at this level, your company's accelerating their growth.
Speaker 1:Being selfish, interesting Putting your oxygen mask on first right. It all comes down to that first right.
Speaker 2:It all comes down to that. That's another thing I've said. You always hear that in leadership classes You're like you've got to take care of yourself first, but no one ever really shows you how to take care of yourself first. And there's some things that a leader can do with their time where they're able to build in learning opportunities and growth opportunities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Interesting. My last question for you if you could go back in time and give yourself one big piece of advice when you were first starting out, what would that be?
Speaker 2:You know. Going back to what I just said about learning, learning and being able to build your capacity, I've always been a learning leader. I love learning, so I learned for the sake of learning. I love growth, but I would have balanced two things out. I've always been able to make decisions and move at a fast pace, but I would have actually probably pulled the trigger, moved a little faster if I could go back early on. And the other thing, though, is, by being able to go faster, I would have slowed down and focused more on reflective practice being able to reflect, as you know, the power of being able to visualize and now I can do it like.
Speaker 2:We'll roll out things that people are like how did you do that? But we'll build in, we'll visualize. What is it going to look like when it's successful, and what will it feel like? What will we see Well on our journey if things are not going well? Probably, what will get in the way and what will we see? What will we identify? And when we feel like we've got about a 75% chance that we're going to really do well or at least two-thirds we go for it. And when we do that, we're able to slow down and speed up because of the triggers we built in Well early on.
Speaker 2:I didn't have the skill set to do that that, but the thing that's helped me is modeling, reflection, encouraging leaders around me to reflect and really have time. Because we can get so busy, we don't reflect. But if you can get quiet, have time just to think, that's when a lot of the big ideas are going to happen and the things you'll see. Other people can't see like you can see a mistake that you didn't even realize. There's going to be a mistake and you can prevent it because you're just having time to slow down yeah, I love that model reflect.
Speaker 1:I think this is why more and more leaders are starting to wake up earlier in the day, like you now have people waking up at 4 am, for god's sake. But I suppose that's the time that they can reflect and, you know, journal and model and just really think about their day before the noise starts.
Speaker 2:And there's a different model. I'm the opposite of that. I used to beat myself up over that. But there's a couple models where they're based on colors. But you identify when you're creative and you make sure you do your creative work. When you're creative and for a lot of people it's early in the morning For other people they're not out. I've always been. I get this burst of energy at night after everything calms down, so after I've had family time and all, instead of watching tv, I'm reading, I'm studying, and that's where I do a lot of my creative work. And two then I reflect to practices before I go to bed and 95 of what we do is in the subconscious. So if you're feeling in your mind good things, that helps it all to saute and then it helps you to cement it in your mind yeah, you probably have really nice dreams as a result um a horror movie, you know before you get a bed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't do that. I think a lot of people watch crime documentaries before bed. I couldn't think of anything more scary.
Speaker 2:I'm having dreams all night someone breaking in my home. I've enjoyed being on your show and I love the fact that, even though it's SaaS, you have a lot of different people on and you're lifting people up and adding a lot of value.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate that. I mean SaaS stories. You know it's about everyone's journey and it's really designed to help people in SaaS, but I think it can be relevant to lots of people trying to run a business, manage a team. You know scale and grow, looking at marketing and sales and hiring, and you know all the challenges that really come with scaling and growing. And thank you for today. I think we've got some really amazing insights into. You know. I know I'll be going to work on Monday with questions around. You know culture and hiring and stay interviews and the reflecting thing. That's something I was kind of doing already in the mornings, but I think I need to do a bit more of that. So thank you so much for your insights today. Really appreciate it. Where can people find you and your work?
Speaker 2:I have. I mean, I'm Loden Leadership, L-O-D-E-N leadershipcom, I'm on LinkedIn and I have a biweekly newsletter and then I do coach on the side, so and been doing that for a while too so I'm in a good position where I'm able to coach people and, with the ability to go virtually, that helps out, because it's fun when you're coaching people from other countries and all Leadership is leadership and it's different because of different fields or different industries, but still we're working with people. And it's different because of different fields or different industries, but still we're working with people. You have the financial side, the sales, the marketing, conflict, team building. All that goes back to a core set of principles that most people can work together and learn from each other with. So I'm here. If someone can help, I'd be glad to have a strategy session and help them.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you. I'm sure lots of people might be reaching out. Thanks so much for being on the show.
