Focus & intentionality | Will Stevenson

[Will] (0:00 - 0:20)

But that's the shiny thing, right? It's like we're faced with the conversation of is onboard just an AI company now. And it's the same thing that everyone was faced with.

And many people ran towards yes. And we ran towards, well, we have AI in the product, but we're not, not an AI company. We're back again, back to the basics.

We're an onboarding company. We help companies onboard their customers better.

[Dillon] (0:28 - 0:38)

What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with lifetime value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man, JP with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:39 - 0:40)

Hey, what's going on y'all?

[Dillon] (0:41 - 0:43)

And we have Rob with us. Rob, can you say hi?

[Rob] (0:44 - 0:45)

Hello from sunny Florida.

[Dillon] (0:46 - 0:50)

And we have Will with us. Will, can you say hi?

[Will] (0:50 - 0:50)

Hey, Hey.

[Dillon] (0:51 - 0:57)

Hey, Hey. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Will, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Will] (0:57 - 1:22)

Sure. Thanks so much for having me. Quick intro background is all early stage B2B SaaS.

That's kind of what I've built a career on over the last 15 years or so. A most recent project has been onboard.io, which is a customer onboarding tool that many SaaS and service-based businesses use, streamlines, streamlines customer onboarding. So happy to be here.

Happy to chat, a software and business.

[Dillon] (1:22 - 1:36)

A grizzled SaaS veteran. So you are uniquely positioned because we do one thing here, Will. And that is we ask every single guest, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success?

So can you tell us what that is for you?

[Will] (1:37 - 2:12)

Sure. So to me, and it's, it may span beyond customer success. I think it does.

It's there's a lot of things happening in the world right now. And there's a lot of noise going on on LinkedIn and everyone's an influencer and everyone has six easy steps to master this. So I think the thing that's, that's hot on my mind, customer success related and in general business related are kind of the secret, the real things back to the basics of what works and what accelerates customer success and accelerates business.

All right. Well, we're a short form podcast here, Will.

[Dillon] (2:12 - 2:19)

So I don't know how long your list is. Maybe you want to reduce it to like the top one or two. What would those be?

[Will] (2:19 - 3:14)

So the first thing that, that I think is, it's kind of like the secret hacks of, of business and what works and what doesn't. I think there's, there's kind of two things that stand out to me and are more important to me than, than anything and have helped me along my journey. The first is focus.

So long, long time ago, 15 years ago or so, I had a great CEO at a company called dot loop who created a bunch of core values. One of them was focused on a few things that matter most. And I've really held that my entire career near and dear to my heart.

Right. So a part of it is sorting through the noise, which the noise is really the topic, right? When I get on LinkedIn, I can scroll for hours and read posts of top 10 things and seven things, and the reason why your customers are churning and this and that, and you know, there's a lot of noise.

So part of it's just focus, focus on the few things that matter most. So that's one I'll stop there for now.

[Dillon] (3:15 - 3:37)

I think that might be enough. I don't know. I mean, maybe you just need to be a repeat guest and bring up more because I want to know an example of when you've been confronted with something and you thought it was something that was really important and it turned out to be one of those shiny objects that you didn't need to chase and how did you like train yourself to think that way and then to have the fortitude to kind of like follow through?

[Will] (3:37 - 4:43)

Well, so I'm going to throw out a very large topic. That's going to be very, very controversial. And I don't think it's all, it's all unnecessary because much of it is very necessary.

AI is like the most recent shiny topic, right? A few months ago, every company became an AI company overnight. And really our approach at Onboard has been AI is super great.

Like actual AI, right? Because many companies just say maybe not, but actually AI is great when applied to appropriate things. And, you know, right now AI is certainly very good at some things and not great at other things.

So focusing on the things that AI is really good at and building it into the product makes sense, but that's the shiny thing, right? Is like we're faced with the conversation of is Onboard just an AI company now? And it's the same thing that everyone was faced with.

And many people ran towards, yes. And we ran towards, well, we have AI in the product, but we're not an AI company. We're back again, back to the basics.

We're an onboarding company. We help companies onboard their customers better.

[Dillon] (4:43 - 4:48)

Yes. You almost downplay it because you don't want to get caught up in that, in that whirlwind.

[Will] (4:48 - 5:11)

Yeah. I mean, we don't want to get caught up in the, like, I mean, look again, everybody was super pumped about AI and I think they, they still are. Right.

But many of us are like, when I go to a website and it's like, you know, I'm looking for a subscription billing platform and it's like, we're AI subscription. And it's like, yeah, but are you like, I need to be able to send people invoices and receive payment, you know?

[Dillon] (5:11 - 5:30)

And if I'm paying more for it because it's AI, then it's actually like a deterrent. Anyway, JP, I want you to jump in here because so many of our conversations, you and me, philosophically, I know you think a lot about focus professionally. I think you think a lot about focus.

So tell me what, what this makes you think of.

[JP] (5:30 - 5:49)

Yeah. First of all, don't scroll LinkedIn for hours. I know Will was just making a comment.

I know he's not, don't scroll LinkedIn for hours. Let me tell you something. I've scrolled that thing for like 10 seconds.

That's the most I can make going through a feed. And then I'm out. It's like trying to like hold my breath under like some high pressure.

[Dillon] (5:49 - 5:51)

10 seconds. That's all you got.

[JP] (5:51 - 8:05)

I literally get to about 10 seconds and I'm like, I gotta go. Like I can't do it. And so, you know, recognizing that unfortunately the nature of social media is, it is not really like our friend just inherently, it is also a tool.

It is also something that has metrics that someone, that someone's trying to win on. It's not just a subjective sort of like place where you can go to hear everything. So I think recognizing that, like, you know, so to use like a really stupid analogy, like don't go to like a chess board and try to play checkers.

You know, you have to understand like what is actually being had. So you can make a more informed decision with what you're being presented with. And I think that that's a big part of focus.

Right. I get on LinkedIn. I know what I'm getting on there for.

Like I'm saying, okay, I know I'm not going to do much scrolling. I'm going to promote the podcast that I'm on. Right.

Daily stand up. Great. Let's let's let's promote that.

I don't care how many engagements that really gets right. Like I just want to make sure that gets out there. Uh, I want to promote maybe some other event that I'm in.

Right. So that's an example of the promotion focus, right? Like that's what I'm leveraging the tool for.

I think in terms of if I say, okay, like I want to engage now we're in a different level of focus. So I may say, okay, who or what do I want to engage with? Do I want to maybe engage with some, maybe a company's content?

Right. Like they have a different level, sort of like a presentation and curation, or do I want to engage maybe with someone in my current space or someone, you know, so like, I think that with more focus, ultimately we can save ourselves some of the, like, ugh, that just comes with all this stuff. It's really helps us save on the backend.

And then to just quickly segue to customer success. I mean, isn't that, that's also what we want to be doing at work, right? We don't want to be chasing all these BTLs or BLTs, like we was talking about the other day, right?

We want to be chasing maybe more of the above the line, spending our time, investing our time in ways that are going to produce more of the result we want and not what we don't want, right? You got to train that algorithm, baby.

[Will] (8:05 - 8:38)

Well, and really quick, just one quick thing. If you think about it from a customer success or customer success management standpoint, you don't want your CSMs responding to password reset emails, right? You want them spending time focused on, on what matters most, building the client relationship, ensuring the client's actually seeing success, ensuring renewal, upgrades, expansion.

And that's a whole nother topic, right? The CS, uh, the CSM zone renewals and expansion and all of that. So, uh, we'll save that for another day.

[Dillon] (8:39 - 8:57)

I'm feeling inspired and maybe this is just another word, but the exact same thing you're talking about here, Will, intentionality, being crystal clear on your intentions and your, your end goal, but Rob, why don't you jump in here and, and share what all this makes you think of?

-: 10:54

Well, I actually really like where you just landed that, Will. Because I think where a team focuses is one of the core problems we're having in customer success. We don't know where we focus as an industry.

Um, and you know, fortunately there's a lot of exercises that you can do as a team to refine your focus, or I tend to call it refining your charter. And I've been working on some collateral around that to help, help teams with that. But, but I also think it was funny too.

You mentioned how like every company became an AI company overnight. I'm not, it was like, honestly, I remember that it was like so funny and it's still happening. But it makes me think of like, when I got my start in SAS, I worked with these, the, the, there were two CTOs of the company I worked at and they both had degrees in AI from Stanford, which is like, so they've got the credentials to be very particular about what they consider AI.

And we thought like our software was built on AI. We just, we like, we thought it was an AI platform. It was not.

So what, when we would do onboarding calls, when we would do onboarding calls, my friend, my friend and I, we sat next to each other in this little room in San Francisco. And we would have a competition of when we would do like our product walkthrough, who could say machine learning and artificial intelligence more loudly. And so we'd be like walking through and be like, and here we have the contact section in our software.

And, and this uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to deduplicate your contacts. And then our CTO walked by one day and he was like, we don't do that. What are you saying?

Like, stop saying that. But anyway, I'll, I'll, I'll try to, I'll, I think focus applies in many layers. I think focus applies with how we build our businesses and I think it, how we build our brands, being very focused on that.

And then specifically with regard to the instance of being on LinkedIn, you know, being focused on, I try to ask myself every day when I'm like doom scrolling LinkedIn, which I don't assume and hope most people do who listen to this show. I'm like, am I learning? And am I building meaningful connections?

If the answer to these are no, time to get out, move on to something else.

[Will] (: 10:55

Yeah. Next look, I think the next question and the next segment, maybe not now, but it's like LinkedIn really a place that people go to learn anymore, you know? I don't know the answer.

[Dillon] (: 11:05

It's got the, the long tail of this brand that people still think it is, but what has it actually turned into and is it something that we all think?

[Will] (: 11:14

It's a lot of posting and ghosting, you know, like I do, right. I post a, I post something on LinkedIn and jump off and, you know, it's like, again, do I read some posts? Yeah.

Like it suggests posts for me, but you know, are they always relevant? Not 20% of the time.

[Dillon] (: 11:31

Well, that is our time. We're going to leave that there posting and ghosting. I love it.

Come back soon. Tell us more about this, this list of hacks or tips you have and tell us more about onboard. But until that time we have to say goodbye.

Awesome. Thanks so much.

[VO] (: 11:50

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