Latest / The Chief Customer Officer Podcast / EP029: Do You Actually Need Forward Deployed Engineers?

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EP029: Do You Actually Need Forward Deployed Engineers? · The Chief Customer Officer Podcast

• Jeff Breunsbach: All right, welcome back to Chief Customer Officer Podcast. It is gonna be coming out on August twentieth. Jay, how's it going? Jay Nathan: Going good. How are you? It's supposed to be a hundred and fourteen degrees heat index today. I don't know if you saw that. It's gonna be a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. For those in in Jeff Breunsbach: I didn't. I've I've I've Jay Nathan: Europe, this is hot. It's just very hot and muggy where we live. So Jeff Breunsbach: I've just become become resigned to the fact that it's hot. This is my I I keep telling people I just had my team here for their offsite and I was like, I'm I'm really sorry, but I invited you here during my least favorite time in Charleston. It's like the the six week Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: stretch basically from like August to like just after Labor Day is like my least you can't go outside. It's too hot. Like yeah, it's pretty Jay Nathan: It's it's brutal. Yeah. And l I mean, let me let me put it in like very visceral terms. Like if you've never spent time in this kind of humidity, just imagine walking out your front door and somebody's standing there with a towel that is sopping wet and they just like have it completely flattened out and they sling it as hard as they can and they smack you in the face with it. That's what the humidity in Charleston's like. But anyway, I digress. That's not what we're here to Jeff Breunsbach: That's a good, yeah, yeah. Jay Nathan: talk about. Jeff Breunsbach: That's a good that's a good visual though. Hopefully everyone everyone can get that. Jay Nathan: No Jeff Breunsbach: well I think it's been another fun, fun week for us in in both of our businesses. I think exploring different things. but maybe the first place to start was we talked we I not even last week, but or I guess last week and beyond, we've talked about the forward deployed engineer. It was really you know, developed as a concept by Palantir and and been used for many, many years. And I think many software companies have adopted that for deployed engineer model as something to hold on to or I guess bring into their businesses to in order to help the advent of like AI solutions and how they can get ahead of that for their customers. And I think we've talked, you know, about how teams can adopt those and and why like they could be important. But it sounds like you know you read an article recently where Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: you know, that that take might be changing. So what what are you thinking about now with Jay Nathan: Well, I I don't know that the take it I so I mean, yeah, the FDE continu I see, you know, every day, you know, on X and LinkedIn you see more like, Hey, we're gonna have a panel discussion about FDEs. Like it's the new hotness for sure. And I can't remember how far we actually went into this last week. So stop me if we are are like re re plowing all ground here. But I think like there's just some critical thinking that needs to be done about for deployed engineers. They they originated at Palantir. You know, we've we've had that conversation. But for those who don't know what Palantir does, it's really important to understand their business model. They are singular in terms of what they do for customers, right? they they work with defense and military and policing units and you know other, you know, government services kind of Organizations, they work with highly regulated organizations. They their deal sizes are seven to eight figures, or probably nine in many cases, right? So when you're doing deals that big and that complex with as little competition as they have, remember they've been doing AI since 10 years ago, 15 years ago. They've been deploying these kind of systems. They're singular. They do not have competition like a freaking video recording app or a product analytics app. Like there is no other, you know, there is no other palantier to do what they do at the scale at which they do it. Right. So I just want you to think about that, not you. I want the, I want all of us to think about that. and so they're solving very difficult problems and they're, they're, they're doing it. You know, with with with a very robust platform. And what they're what they have as as FDEs are not sales engineers who are relabeled as forward-deployed engineers or CSMs or TAMs who are relabeled as forward-deployed engineers. They have real AI engineers, guys that have been in the trenches working on this stuff as engineers for a decades. And Not only do they have that deep technical talent, but they have this unique blend. Again, like all this is what you read, right? So there's probably a little nuance here, but they also have the ability to sit in front of an executive and describe and explain what they're doing. So I would ask you, is that what your Ford deployed engineer team looks like? I've seen some for many forward deployed engineering teams at this point. And I can tell you that's not what they look like in our world. So your little go-to-market product or Yeah, whatever app you're pushing. might not need forward deployed engineers in the same way, right? It needs something, but but maybe not forward deployed engineers in the way that they were sort of initially conceived. So the question is like, what do you do instead? Jeff Breunsbach: It's yeah. And I think like the the thing that comes to mind for me is and and this is like the conversation I feel like we have many times a year of like, you know, is this something that actually customer success should be doing? But like the question that comes to mind for me right now is how do you get somebody ingrained in your customer's business? make sure that like you can workflow, you can build workflows and re-architect things in a new way. And like to me that, like you said, like I I think there is the extreme example of Palantir, right? Where like I guess what that means in that sense is probably very deep AI technical expertise. Like they are coming up with highly specialized examples and like that they're rolling out for those specific environments of those customers in like I I think probably a very, very deep way. but then I think on the other end, right, like where I think and maybe like where I am right now in terms of our our junction business is like I'm like step one on that roadmap before deployed engineers. Like we right now, like one of the the biggest challenges we're trying to solve in our onboarding experience is like what I just described. Like we need to help our customers actually understand their own workflows and how those how those actually get into our platform and then how those can operate at scale. And to me, like, yeah, like I I don't necessarily need a like you said, I think a a full forward deployed engineer like down to the the depths, right? But I need somebody who's curious who can dig into those things and actually bring domain experience with our platform experience and then be able to talk about that in a way that the customer can like relay their information to us and we can use our domain experience, use our platform to basically say, Okay, here's the right solution for what what we need to build for you. Jay Nathan: How much do you how much do you think you could spend on a single client, given your business for on a on a on that kind of role? Jeff Breunsbach: In terms of like money or time. Jay Nathan: let's put it in terms of time. So it's not we're not talking about money. Let's just talk about time. How much time, like a percentage of an FTE, could you allocate to every single customer to do that work and over what duration? Jeff Breunsbach: So I guess for for instance right now, like one of the things I'm trying to cut down is our onboarding time. So the way I think about that, or the way I've thought about this is how many days do we think we could eliminate off of our onboarding by deploying somebody to to go do this? and right now I think I can cut out an entire week, like five five days I could cut out five working days of our onboarding time. Jay Nathan: Okay. Jeff Breunsbach: In order to do this. And if we deploy and so like in the reasoning behind this for me is that the better we understand their business, the faster we can bring a solution to the table. And so we should that's the first the critic most critical thing we should be doing is doing that. But the second thing there is like, you know, the faster we can onboard a company means that we can start recognizing revenue much faster. And like that is just like the pervasive feeling for us is that like the longer this takes, sure the customer's gonna be upset. But also like we're then we're our forecast that we had is just no longer accurate. And therefore, like we can't rely upon it. But so to me, I I've looked at this as like the I guess like eliminating entire week. Is that something that we can do if I'm able to deploy a person? and now we've essentially taken onboarding from one one hour call now to about three hours of time. so I've actually increased the amount of time I'm spending with a single customer, but I'm not necessarily specifically saying it's a call that we're doing. Like the example that I think I was giving to you earlier is like we're spending time building solutions that can be asynchronous so that our customers can be working on this, they can be deploying things, and then we can be testing it in the background. And we have Slack. And so we should we should be able Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: to async this. So like I guess my time per customer is actually going up from what we were doing. But I think it's actually in the long run going to reduce the amount of time that onboarding takes. I don't know if that makes sense, but like this is the way I've Jay Nathan: It does. It does. Well, and so okay, now I'm starting to think of this in terms of like even the way we think about historically customer success for enterprise all the way down to SB, right? It's you you wanna scale that motion digitally and with tools, just like you do. So FDE is on the far end of the spectrum. If you're doing eight-figure deals, by all means. Give give them four FDEs because it makes sense. And by the way, the other thing that Palantir does is performance based contracts. So they have a platform fee and then they they're very sp specific about the outcome that they're gonna go drive, whether it's a cost savings or probably in some cases a revenue uplift. And then then they're gonna take a percentage of that and their platform is gonna measure it so they know how much to to go bill. I'd be interested to see that and how those conversations go, right? But I guess but my point is like if you're doing deals that big, you can afford to throw those kind of bodies at the situation. So then if not, then you have to throw you use the engineering capacity to create the tooling that scales, which just sounds like what you're doing. And that makes a lot more sense Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Yeah. Jay Nathan: to me. Jeff Breunsbach: And so we yes, and so we like recently got a solutions engineer. And to your point, like, you know, his his whole role here right now is to make sure that we can do these things efficiently and effectively for our customers. And we've actually deployed him in the customer success org. Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: and so there is some scoping, right? Like some of his job is going to be kind of scoping new use cases, scoping new integrations and things for our product and engineering teams to to run with, right? Hey, our customer wants X, Y, and Z. but like right now, I think he can be deployed very specifically against like onboarding, because we're you know closing enough deals right now that it can be impactful. And and again, like to your point, like we again we've we've spent most of our time in terms of like onboarding customers right now, kind of on synchronous calls. And now I'm trying I'm trying to figure out, you know, maybe it goes from one hour to three hours, but the one hour synchronous calls still stays the same. The extra two hours is really just async. And so we're actually able to take on more customers in terms of the capacity because now we've actually got again kind of reducing it by a week, which means we're getting to revenue faster. And then also we've got async solutions that we've built that we can rely upon. and so You know, over time, Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: does the does the three hours actually start to optimize as well, right? Where it's actually, okay, we in the early days we're spending a couple hours building these solutions, but then like does that time go away and now, you know, you have an you still have a synchronous call, but then also, you know, you've got these things. and then the other the other thing I think we've we are looking into as well is just the I think the the problem that probably everybody faces in onboarding of of we kind of throw everything at the customer. You know, we can't hey, our platform can do everything versus like w honestly, like what what is it to get us to to first result? So results is a a big thing in our business. Like we need to get to a patient result, is like, you know, kind of number core use case or core metric number one is we need to get a result for a customer, which means that like their patient goes to Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: a lab, they get a a blood draw, and then they get the actual result back. and so like to me, what Can we can we better have conversations with customers too about like how do we get to the result as quickly as we can? because Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: then we can expand beyond that, right? Like I can then tell you about all these other things that we can do and all these other workflows and other pieces that we can start stacking on top. But essentially we we like throw this whole thing at them first. I think versus like, I guess, architecting towards that first result and then saying, okay, let's layer these things in over and over and over Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: and kind of build on top of them. Jay Nathan: And and so okay, so what I what I'm sitting here thinking is your solution engineer, you're probably way ahead of me on this. Like his job is to build the onboarding agent right now, right? And the onboarding agent can literally like optimize for time to first result, which I love because it's like time to first value, but it's actually specific to your business. And then Can sort of optimize on a client by client basis, personalize the onboarding to say, hey, look, like, you know, here here's we're gonna get you to this result. This is the thing that matters for all of us. But from there, your journey might look a little different. So one of the things that we're actually starting to experiment with now, like we so my company, you know, we're a consulting firm, we deploy other people's software. And one of the one of the things that We have done a very good job of in my opinion is just be AI. I I would I would be a little critical of myself and I'd call it AI second, not AI first. But what we've done is we've done a really good job of giving our team the tools of sort of rallying internally. All the things that we talk about is like a stage one maturity of of AI. Like we've distributed the tools, we talk about it every other week. You know, we have sessions to share, what we're working on, what we're doing. We've built some shared agents, but not a lot yet. you know, we've talked about some of those on this on this podcast. We've built some shared context. But what we have not done yet is flipped our delivery model to where it's AI first delivery model, meaning the first interaction an individual has with our company is going to be working with our agent to. Help us get the context of what they're looking at in a way that feels natural. It might not be a a, you know, an automated phone call with some AI voice on the other side. I don't think we're going that far yet. But it could be, you know, sort of a back and forth with an agent via email or a back and forth with an agent via chat to say, hey, we're going to ask you some questions just to get some grounding. So that when we all show up for the first working session that we're going to do together to talk about how we're deploying this software in your environment, we already have. We're already way ahead of the game, right? So all the stuff that we used to do, send surveys. Remember, we used to do this for in our old consulting business. Like that's all done a little bit more elegantly today and a little bit more personalized with tools. And then we're starting to show our customers how to use AI in the motion. Right. And I don't I'm not claiming that we know how to do all this yet, but that's where we're going with all this. And you can it's the same thing with onboarding in a way, right? Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah, so you're so I think there's a couple things that you'll appreciate. So the first thing that we're starting with is just mapping out these onboarding steps and like some of this Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: motion in just a a Google sheet. What steps do we need to do to certify somebody basically to get something up and live and that gets us to a result? And there's a series of steps that we should check those technical steps and we're developing tools to help us do that. but that was I mean, I again I I can't I guess like I can't emphasize enough how many people it seems skip the basics of just writing stuff down, mapping it out. So we have literally a Google Sheet, we have a Figma board that shows steps and process. And like those two things are, I think like to me are the most critical thing to like shifting what you how you work and how you operate. So like those two things exist. but we had our offsite last week and so. To your point, like what we started to break down was like, okay, what do we actually use the first onboarding call for? And of course, the answers come back. Well, we're validating what happens, what happened in the sales process. We're using the sales handoff sheet to validate these things, right? Like just, hey, we're we're asking configuration questions so that we can then, like you said, that we can then build the test plan that is customized or personalized for them as a business. And and again, like you kind of hear these things out loud, and like, okay, so the first iteration that we're going to do is like. Google Sheet, Figma board, we're just going to start to run this process, like, you know, boots on the ground, hands-on. But like Jay Nathan: Yep. Jeff Breunsbach: what you can, what we started to talk about as a team and like where you're going, right, is like, well, actually, what if, what if the first interaction that somebody has is we send an agent via Slack, right? We have Slack with all of our customers. Can we actually stand up an agent that goes to them and does all that validation async? So on their terms, hey, we're about to have an onboarding call next week. The agent deploys to them and just starts having a conversation. Hey, Want to validate some details from the contract? Here's a couple of things. Can you validate or invalidate these things? Make sure send corrections, right? Okay. Hey, we're gonna start to ask you some account configuration things. Okay. What do you think about org and team setup? how do you think about which physician network you're going to use? Like, let's validate some this information. But like all of those account configuration decisions have downstream effects to how we basically get to first result. Right. And so, like Jay Nathan: Yep. Jeff Breunsbach: that can customize the testing plan. But like basically, can can an agent actually be doing all this stuff async with the customer? In a way, I think like you were alluding to also that like feels natural, feels easy for them just to have a conversation. We collect all the right information that we need. And actually, by the time we show up to the first meeting, now we've got like a much stronger point to start from, which is like, hey, we've already validated all this information. So like let's not go rehash whatever. Let's actually just talk about from now going forward what's going to happen. And yeah, here's your customized test plan and here's what we're gonna need your engineering team to do. But let's actually like almost like get into the product, get into the deployment. versus like spending time validating the details. so yeah, like I think moving in a similar direction to what you're alluding to. And again, I think like we're you know, our solutions engineer, like over the last couple of days, has just stood up this Figma board and this Google Sheet. And it's like, okay, let's just start there. Like start running this with the team. And then, you know, we can get we can get to the where does AI fit into these steps? But now that we've got it mapped, like it's much easier for us to understand, okay, how can I inject AI into this step? What does it mean if the if we look at this differently? so anyways, that's that's how we've thought about it right now. And I think like we're on a to me, it feels like a really good path of like, okay, we're gonna start to I guess like think about how do we get agents involved in these processes so that they're running and they're capturing and bringing back information to the CSMs, to the solutions engineer, so that we can then react Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: in those situations. Jay Nathan: Yeah. I'm sitting here thinking the the way to think about AI is probably not as like we would traditionally think about a separate system. You know, it's like we're gonna think about the technology underneath everything we do and we're gonna have all these processes that run over to the side. It's really no, no, no. How are we like blending the entire the entire experience and the entire service blueprint like we've talked about before? Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: How how are we blending that with all the tools that we have now? Because yeah, I don't know, it's just I don't know where that thought goes, but th th it's like it it's it it strikes me it's just not a technology problem. Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah, it's almost like you don't have to think about it as like I don't know, as like a a a separate living over here. It's really just like, okay, Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: yeah, how are we baking it into these steps in this in like what we deploy? but you know, one of the things that I I guess hit home for I think the team and our offsite last week and the reason we spent time going down this path is you sent me a deck that you built around those those seven capabilities. Jay Nathan: Yeah, yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: And one of the slides that we actually spent a lot of time on was you had this idea of like the seven capabilities and then different deployment methods essentially, like how you can actually deploy. so there's, you know, enterprise gets a high touch human. there's, you know, agents that are running, like there's just all these little and then there's like nuances between all these things. But we spent a lot of time just talking about how, almost, I guess, like in a safe way of like, Just because we're talking about agents and AI and we're talking about automating things does not mean that like our jobs are going away. Like it it sounds like that, you know, everybody should be past that conversation. But I think again, when you're in businesses and you're working with teams, like sometimes you kind of have to go through that. Like, cause people just get caught up in the myopic, like, my gosh, we're talking about an agent that's doing my job that I'm doing right now. Like, what does that mean? Right. And Jay Nathan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: like, so, so One of the things I keep telling to my team is the job you do today is not the job that we're going to be doing in three months. It's not going to be the job that you'll be doing six months, not not nine months, Jay Nathan: That is so good. Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: not 12 months. And and so far, so much so I've been saying this that I now say this. I I'm actually, and I don't know if if my HR team would appreciate this and if I'm like, you know, d doing something as a disservice in our in our interview process. But one of the things I do in our interview process pretty specifically is actually talk about what the job is today. And how it's not the job that I want my team doing, nor does the team want them to Jay Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: be doing right now, too. Right. Hey, we're actually pretty reactive right now. And I I don't like that. And our team doesn't like that. But I'm just telling you, when you Jay Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: walk in the door, I don't want you to get this conception that, like, hey, I'm gonna be doing this enterprise high fly and CS job. Like, no, no, no. Like we're still like in the trenches, like getting out. And like you're Jay Nathan: Roll up the sleeves. Jeff Breunsbach: so if you want to get out with us and you want to help build and like you want to help us figure out how to, you know, build the build the plane while flying it, build the car while driving it, whatever analogy. Like great, that's the type of people we're looking for. But like if you come in and expect like to be handed this, like it's not like that is that is probably twelve months down the line for me. And like if you want the job then sure, come back. But like, you know, like you've you essentially like this job is going to evolve and continue to evolve, and we all have to be comfortable with that. But like it's just not the job that, you know, it is today. Jay Nathan: Is it twelve months from now though? Either? Like I I think I Jeff Breunsbach: true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Jay Nathan: mean, I think you know, you we have two or three years ahead of us where there is no status quo, right? At least two or three years. And then Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Stuff shifting, yeah. Jay Nathan: who knows? Like who knows what's gonna happen next. I love that. I I I tell people that too that are that are looking at our team. In fact, so yesterday we rolled out to our team our we did a first half of the year in review, kind of rundown of you know what we've accomplished as a team, as a business. and where we're going in the second half. And we rolled out this whole vision of AI first engagements with our, you know, with a with our customers and or our we think of as clients. And and sort of the same thing. I didn't use that line, but I I now wish I had. but I mean, let what one of the things I did assure my team of is that this does not mean fewer jobs at Balboa. I don't think by any stretch of the imagination. Jeff Breunsbach: Same. Yeah. Jay Nathan: It it it means over time many more jobs at Balboa because Balboa is going to is going to grow significantly as a result of the way we're we're thinking about the world and implementing our our service blueprint, right? For our our customers as an AI native blueprint. But you know, to today your your job is much different than it will be in in six or twelve months is a really, really good way to put that. But, you know, luckily well so I I think You know, through this whole thing, we talk about leadership a lot, but I do think leadership and having a strong vision for where this stuff goes and finding the right people who are in for the ride, like you said, is so important. Like you have to be really passionate about it and you have to be you have to be willing to adapt literally on a weekly basis, right? Because things aren't gonna be the same this week to next week. So that that is a core hiring criteria, I think, right now. If you could build Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: a team full of those people, you you will have a better chance at survival in the long run. Jeff Breunsbach: there's two things that I I keep thinking about right now as we like talk about this. So one is a sense that I've been having, I guess, is I don't think I've had enough influence on my team in a way that is like the vision setting. It's been a little too kind of in the day-to-day, helping them fight in the trenches, which I think is like of what we need, right? Just they need help understanding, okay, we shouldn't be doing this. We need to figure out where it goes, right? Like we need to kind of get this stuff off our plate. But I think to your point, like one of the things I walked away from our CS or our offsite last week is that like I've got to be better at helping to set the it out. I guess vision I I think of like the rally cry like just like what is like how can I get you guys excited to come to work every day and paint a vision like you said of where this stuff is going. For us as a CS team, like I think, you know, we do a good job. We have all hands every two weeks. I think as a business, we kind of understand where we're going and like the trajectory we're on. And that's pretty that's pretty easy. But I think if you were to show up in my team meeting on Mondays, I'm pretty you know, we have a half hour to start the week and I'm pretty just like, I don't know, focused on like, okay, what are we doing this week? And I think like that's just Yeah, Jay Nathan: Operational. Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: yeah. And I th so I think that is like a c a critique on myself that I want to try and like over the couple of weeks, like, can I Yeah, can I help the oper can I translate the operational into like some of the, okay, where are we going? What's the rally cry? How can I help you guys see the larger vision? Cause like I think that's hard for them to grasp right now. So it's like one thing that as you were just talking, you know, it kind of reinforces for me. Like you just said, like you guys have this whole kind of like AI first. And I think one of the honestly, like I am not trying to blow smoke, you know, up your up your ass, so to speak, but like I I do think one of the best things. Jay Nathan: Do it. Let's hear it. Jeff Breunsbach: One of the best things that you do, I think, is the rally cries. Like I I think you have a great sense of like persuasion in the in in like a gr in the great sense of the word of like you can rally people to a problem and say, Okay, this is where we're going. This is how we're going to get there. Here's how we're going to operate those things. Like in that vision setting, I think has been something I've I've like picked up from you. So I think like hearing you say that you just did that with your team is like another validation for me. Like, okay, I should spend some time there to help my team see that. So that's one one thing. The Jay Nathan: Can I say something about that real quick? Don't forget your second point. The the I think the important thing there is that you as the leader don't necessarily have to know how it's gonna get done. You just need to know what's got to get done, right? Like what this thing has to be a year from now. Think about I I was just thinking as you were talking about, you know, Kennedy and his speech about going to the moon, right? He's like, We're going to the moon in this decade, right? Compeller high water and he stood in front of everybody and did that. You think he knew how to engineer a rocket to get to the moon? Like, no, he was Jeff Breunsbach: I don't think so. Jay Nathan: he was basically high, right? Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: so there's but but like that I I will tell you that is one of my one of my shortcomings is I th all I I I I have an a aversion to not knowing how something is gonna be done too. And I think it it makes me like probably drag my feet on the vision setting too much. ver and and not be bold enough in the storytelling. so anyway, I know you're a how guy too, and so that's Jeff Breunsbach: It yeah. Jay Nathan: my encouragement for you, you know. Jeff Breunsbach: Well, it it also reminds me, I don't know if you remember this back in the day, Wayne McCulloch, I forget which business he had s he had just gone into, but he essentially was a chief customer officer coming in and he said it Jay Nathan: Yes. Jeff Breunsbach: I think he said he spent the first handful of weeks, and he put together a document that essentially started to shape the vision of where he wanted the team to go. And Jay Nathan: Yes. Jeff Breunsbach: he essentially was just having meetings with people and updating the document. And anyone could go look at it in real time. Anybody could make comments and he kind of said, Hey, I'm gonna be doing this. I I'm probably butchering this whole thing, but like it was like a two week or three week exercise. Jay Nathan: That's no, you're right. That's right. Jeff Breunsbach: And I think he kind of said, okay, by the end of this kind of like two or three week stretch, like get your comments in or whatever. But then I'm basically based off of what you guys say in this document, then like I'm gonna kind of like have a moment where like, yeah, we finalized this and this is what we're doing. And and so I d I also kind of think back on that, which is which is also like, I guess what I'm taking from that is also including the team. I think too often I I try to go solo and and I I feel like I have to figure it out for my team versus allowing us to do it together. And so I like that's a Wayne McCulloch thing that I'm I'm also some kinda I'm gonna pair together you and Wayne to like, let's go set the vision and like I think Jay Nathan: That's a real I'm really glad you I'm really glad you brought that up. The we did a podcast with him on that. So if you really want to go recall it all, Jeff Breunsbach: the in the depths. Yeah. Jay Nathan: yeah, yeah, it's way back. That's in the that's in the way back machine. That is in the GGR days. I'm yeah, I think it is. It should be. Yeah, well, I hope so. If not, it's a tragedy. Jeff Breunsbach: That's in the GGR days. I wonder if that's even around. If that if that feed is still up. so yeah, so that's one thing. the other thing, and we've talked about we I think we've alluded to this, and I'm curious if you're I'm curious how you guys are thinking about this at your company, because I think this is gonna start to become, I guess, or maybe this has already been something and and I just haven't solved for it in the right ways, but One of the other things that I keep going back to, I think I mentioned this Claire Vaux idea that we're we're basically not creative enough to like use AI to the to the limits. Like we don't have enough kind of like product thinkers. And and so I'm kind of taking that idea. But one of the things that I walked away with last week too is like our teams are just stuck doing things because we're close to the customer and we've just always done it. And we we didn't have a pathway to to articulate. What we were actually doing, why we didn't think it belonged to us, like kind of in like a product format. And so like I don't know the right, like one of the things I'm I'm working on right now is a skill for my team to use, which is basically like go into Cloud. If you're doing something that you think you shouldn't be doing, like manual work or something that should be on a different team or something that should be built into our product, go in and use this little PRD skill to basically like architect a narrative that's basically like, here's what I'm doing. Here's why I don't think it, you know, I should be doing it. Here's what like the ultimate outcome is, like some of those things. So I don't if like I guess like one of the things that I walked away with last week was, man, we are still just doing so much work that they just don't think twice about. And like I need them to think twice about it. And I need them to start like being in inquisitive and curious. but then I also need to give them an outlet that says, like, okay, once you identify that you're doing something that we shouldn't be working on, something that's too manual, that's not built into the product, whatever. Okay, like where are we actually gonna push those things that actually get cataloged and that we can like groom or give to a product team or whatever? Yeah. Jay Nathan: Prioritize, yep. Jeff Breunsbach: So I I so I don't know how you've thought about because I would imagine that this comes across like I I would imagine this is like the type of work that you guys come across, which is like, okay, what are what are these solutions to these little problems, right? Like you guys are probably going to consult with companies and you guys find not only the big problems, but probably all these little small, like, okay, I've got, you know. I don't know, little things that the team is doing here and there. So I don't know if you have a solution for this, but that's like one thing I'm trying to think about is like in a programmatic way, how can I like still allow my team to move quickly, but like document something and say, okay, like let's catalog that away. Jay Nathan: Yeah, well, I mean, it's all about putting work where work belongs. Right. I mean, I've been a part of, you know, SaaS companies. I think back to my People Matter days, we had, you know, I ran everything post sale there and I would look at some of the stuff that our support team did and the volume of like really simple things that they would handle, support like password resets, right? That was a big thing because we served employers and employees. And the employees were like, you know, blue collar, you know, getting a part-time job, like that's the kind of end user it Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: was. And so these were not the most tech savvy people on the planet. It was it was pretty, pretty tough actually. And so password resets were a major issue. And you know, it was a perennial discussion. Like, do we actually go in and fix that problem or do we Do we use do we use people to cover it up, right? Or not even to cover it up, but do we solve the problem with people for now? And that was the choice we made for the entire Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Yeah. Jay Nathan: life of that product, right? And I think, you know, your job as a leader is to catalog those things and have the meaningful discussions about what we're gonna solve systematically and what we're not, right? And that involves your working with your partners. That's where your leadership time should be spent, right? Is is Helping get Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: things done across the rest of the or we always talk about how, you know, our you know customer success is really an integration of you know the product, the go-to-market, the the back end delivery and all the resources around, you know, how we how we how customers make use of the the platforms that we provide. But so I don't think there is a silver bullet for it. I think in the early days. It's the manager's job to sort of aggregate those things, give them visibility throughout the organization, and then help get those things prioritized. Just one win at a time. Just pick one thing per quarter. Right. It doesn't, you don't Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: have to move mountains all the time. That's what the stake, the mistake I made early on in my career was I would walk into a company and have a new leadership role and I'd see all these problems and I'd say, okay, we've got to go fix all this now. Right. And I'm going to go bang on the engineering team and the product team and the my Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: The people in sales who are selling things the wrong way. I'm gonna do it all at once. And you spread yourself too thin, you become like a you know, you you become noisy, which is not helpful. But it's like, Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: what's the most strategic thing that we could get solved this quarter? So that would be, you know, my encouragement. But I I don't think there's a simple solution. I think you have to actually collect that information, organize it, spend time, you know. working with your peers to get those things solved. there is Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: yeah. Or or solve it yourself Jeff Breunsbach: It's Jay Nathan: with an engineer, right? Like like you have an engineer on your team now. You could do some of that too. We did a lot of that. Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. and so that's so th yeah, and I think I think what I've been doing is is doing that without like the source information, so to speak. So I think like it's been happening naturally 'cause I just listened to what my team complains about a little bit, you know? Okay, what's what's noisy and then like should we go fix it and spending time? But I think to your point, like we still have to capture we we should be capturing all the things and then figuring out and prioritizing, right? Like it Like that's the a necessary step. And so I think like what's an easy way that my team can capture this? Like, can I create a bot in Slack that they can chat with that basically just like captures the thing that they're doing that they think they shouldn't be doing and like cool, logs it in linear ticket, but like they can stay in Slack, right? Like they can stay in their their environment. And I think that's the that's the that's the thing Jay Nathan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. Jeff Breunsbach: I'm just thinking through is is that part. And I think that just helped me. But I I think your point is still the right one, which is the 'Cause I'm going to have a tendency to try and I forget what I'm I'm an activator by in in nature. So like once I see the list, I'm gonna start going through the list being like, Hey, we should we should yeah, Jay Nathan: Yeah. Jeff Breunsbach: this is a simple solution. We should go build this. This should we should go do that. But I think to your point, right, like just because we have the list doesn't mean we need to go solve the list. Jay Nathan: Well, and to your point of being an activator, I was just thinking of the of Patrick Lunciani's widget framework and the the the working genius. Jeff Breunsbach: Mm. Jay Nathan: And back to also back to the other conversation we had, like my one of my top two working geniuses is galvanizer, which is the G in widget and or galvanizing. And but y you went immediately to like, okay, how we can actually collect this stuff? Right. How are we gonna collect the data? Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: Like you had a very clear picture in your head of how you wanted to go do that, which I think is cool. That's why you and I always worked well together, right? Because like we fit together really really well in terms of the the work that we naturally gravitate toward. So Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. all right. Well, this has been fun. This is like a helpful business therapy for me at least. We just talked a lot about about my my business, which Jay Nathan: Yeah, me too. This is this is good. Jeff Breunsbach: is like helpful, like in validating some of the I think the things that I'm thinking about. which just goes back to like the idea of of I think also that like in most of these things we think we're alone or we think we're uncovering something that's like never happened before and you're like, actually no, every every other chief customer officer, every other VP of CS is like going through the same questions in the same like decisions that they're trying to make. Jay Nathan: Totally. It's so important to have community. I've I I've been thinking here recently, now that our business has grown a little bit and we actually are not, you know, sort of hand to mouth anymore. I've been thinking about getting into like Vistage or one of those CEO groups that I dabbled with back in the day, Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. Jay Nathan: and that, you know, CEOs that I've worked with have been a part of. And it's just so important to be able to have external people to balance. ideas. That's why we do this, right? We talked about we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Like that's that's the whole premise behind why we started GGR and why we're doing this is that, you know, get the get some outside perspective. You know, now there is a point where outside perspective can be too much, especially if you like let the all that flow into your team. You're sending them articles constantly and you know bombarding them with other people's opinions. But like if you can use it to sort of shape your worldview, I think it it it helps to it helps at a minimum Maintain your sanity. So Jeff Breunsbach: Yeah. well this is also a good plug then for I've got some work to do this week, but I'm gonna try and get us launched. So we had a couple beta users in Uncommon, our community, and that's like been a fully pl a platform we've just fully developed from scratch. And I think like it's at a good spot to try and and get more people in there. we've had some good discussions. I've I've gone to simplify a bunch of things. we've got some some agents that are working on our behalf to help, but But I think it's you know, we got the itch a couple of weeks ago to get kind of the community going again. And I think we're getting to a place where on Sunday we'll we'll launch it back to our newsletter and to the broader community and get more people in there engaging, interacting. Jay Nathan: Yep. Love it. All right, man. I guess we'll call it our call it a day. Have a good week. All right. Jeff Breunsbach: Cool. All right. All right. You two. All right, we'll see you soon. Jay Nathan: Talk soon.