Ep #149: Why Accountants are Ditching Spreadsheets ft. Emily Maxie (Interim SVP of Sales & Marketing, Firm360)

[00:00:02] Emily Maxie: today, the fundamentals are more important than they've ever been. And I think that there are a lot of technologies out there that can help you really nail the fundamentals and do them better than you ever could before with fewer resources, [00:00:18] Taylor Kenerson: Welcome to the Hyperengage Podcast. We are so happy to have you. Along our journey here, we uncover bits of knowledge from some of the greatest minds in tech. We unearthed the hows, whys, and whats that drive the tech of today. Welcome to the movement. [00:00:38] Adil Saleh: hey, greetings everybody. This is long time. We, we are, we're waiting for this, this episode and this conversation. You know, I know that there's so much that is happening in AI and we kind of fall in that trap as well. We have like 20 plus products coming up that are so far, like AI powered, and they are you know, AI first and all of this. So I was. You know, my entire team was thinking of something really unique, like how we can think about you know, f financial finance accounting operations. Think about you know, operations in the, you know, VP jumping a little bit about real estate tech. So there's so much that we are trying to explore. You know, today we have the senior Vice President of firm 360. It's it's it's all in one platform for accountants you know, to maintain operation accidents from project management, to billing, to booking, to you know, contact management, to almost everything that an accountant would need and dip up. So much of penetration ever since 2019. I've got Emily Maxie with me. Thank you very much, Emily, for taking the time. [00:01:41] Emily Maxie: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. [00:01:43] Adil Saleh: Perfect. So Emily, I know that your background is more towards like marketing and sales, and you've seen in the past seven to 10 years that you've you've seen how sales and marketing has changed with with the new evolution with tech and new enablements coming especially at at companies going and, and more the mid-market to enterprise segment. Not so much. So how, what's, what's your viewpoint on as a sales leader yourself, like. How has that changed? Is it more about doing more with less and, you know, optimizing the, you know, bandwidth or cost? Is it more about, you know, getting good, good parts in the pocket? And so I, customer acquisition and what's, what's your viewpoint at the point situation? [00:02:24] Emily Maxie: Yeah. It's a great question. I think, especially today, the fundamentals are more important than they've ever been. And I think that there are a lot of technologies out there that can help you really nail the fundamentals and do them better than you ever could before with fewer resources, as you mentioned and things like that. But really. Our our strategy is not to reinvent the wheel or chase shiny objects or things like that, but more so to figure out, okay, how can we, how can we do those fundamental things smarter? And so that's that's really sort of where we landed on that. [00:03:04] Adil Saleh: Perfect. And I know that you've being in as an interim role and you were more towards as a marketing leader transition into into core sales. So how was that transition be for you and how it shaped you, you know, thinking of your prior experiences in marketing and what is, what do you think? Like, a lot of people come up and say, sales is just an analog of marketing and it's not so far away, they're interconnected. You know, they, they work for each other. So how was that transition? [00:03:31] Emily Maxie: Yeah. So, I think it really depends on your philosophy as a marketer in terms of whether or not that's true, whether or not they are quite similar. I have always been a revenue focus, revenue oriented marketer that has been, just core to who I am. And there are all sorts of different marketers who focus on different things, but for me, my biggest metric of success is pipeline and ultimately revenue. And so for me it was a really a really natural transition to then start taking on the, just the full pipeline ownership and, and management. Mm-hmm. Currently a hundred percent inbound in terms of our demand generation. And so, it really appealed to me to be able to have more more ability to sort of turn the dials, not just in my little piece of the funnel, but the whole way through, you know. [00:04:27] Adil Saleh: Okay. So I mean, my team has some, has definitely have some questions that are more industry related and, you know, market positioning and competition and all of that. You know, there's so many of products in the past three years came up and say like, you know, we are project management first. We are meeting the system and, you know, we don't, so one thing made me curious about reading up more about. Firm 360. It's kind of a all in one platform only for accountants. Mm-hmm. And, and you know, I know that you, you, you're not a founder, so it's not like a question of like, how did you like actually founder to inception and then put it you know, you know, penetrate in the only in accountancy section, and why did you choose. How do you see it you know, versus the comparison to make, make this product standard? Is it, is it some product that appeals more to, to the accountants or is it is it more intuitive to the accountants? Because I know the project management can change, you know, and different organizations, whether it's hr, whether it's contente, so, how, for sales leaders, what is the biggest proposition? You know, comparing with the, with, with the, with the company. [00:05:32] Emily Maxie: So despite not being a founder, I know our founding story very well, and I know our founder well, and our founder is a partner in an accounting firm in North Carolina, right up the street from me. And he was looking for a solution, an all in all-in-one solution that was really oriented to. The way an accounting firm runs and he wasn't able to find that. And you know, there's lots of generic project management tools out there. There's lots of sort of point solutions that do a certain piece of it, but not all of it. And and so that's why Firm 360 was built. When I first started at the company, I thought this sort of tagline of four accountants by accountants was just a marketing fluff. And then I started watching sales calls. It's, it's so cool. You'll hear you'll hear prospects point to a specific feature and say, you can tell an accountant built this because X, Y, z. And so there are just specific nuances in the way that accountants manage their firms, manage projects, manage billing, all of those things. There are a lot of things that are unique to them and that are uniquely built into our platform. And so that's really, one of the ways interesting that we stand out. [00:06:51] Adil Saleh: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Interesting. And we, you talk about their day-to-day workflows be it like reporting, be it like billing, be it like project management and task management. Like it pretty much fit fits into, into the workflows that I know that all of these integrations that are core specific to the to the accountant accountancy teams and you know, by the CFOs I think this is, this is crucial in that. What about the reporting part? [00:07:14] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so the reporting is also built. Four accountants by accountants. And so you'll see things like wip which is an industry term that I hadn't heard of before I started working here. And you know, accounts receivable, accounts payable, all of the sort of standard things. An accountant would need to see to run their business, to know that their business is healthy. Reports on who are their most profitable clients, who are their least profitable clients. Because there's an interesting dynamic in this space where a lot of accountants actually fire clients because there are more, more clients out there than there are accountants to work for 'em. And so at the end of the year, they'll sort of do a roundup and say, okay. Who were our least profitable clients, who are the clients that we're losing money on and, and will, you know, part ways with those clients. And so, giving them the tools to do that and to be able to make those smart decisions is a big piece of what we do. [00:08:18] Adil Saleh: Okay. I mean, that's, that's amazing, you know, to make sure that you keep on learning with experiences because even you talk about the processes and operations within different accounting firms depending on like what kind of like whether they're corporate, healthcare, legal, all of this. Things change, like operations change, their workflow change. So you have to adapt as a, as a, as a, as a software. Like I, I'm sure it's you, you guys like work with, with like some sort of professional services or it's for self-serve model or it's like one platform built for all. [00:08:48] Emily Maxie: Can you clarify the question? Like, is it like have professional services arm? [00:08:53] Adil Saleh: Yes. Yes. You know, a lot of these platforms, they need it because you know, on the client side you need like different implementations or integrations Yeah. For their processes. It, it is so hard to build a self-served yes, core B2B SaaS platform. [00:09:07] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so we have a really robust onboarding process that we do for absolutely every client. We believe in it a lot because as you say, the, the more robust a software is, the less self-serve it is. And so, and so we do typically four sessions with new clients and help them set up their workflows, help them set up their billing and. Really are available to them than for as long as they need it. Typically, it doesn't take more than four sessions, but if they need six sessions, that's fine. If they have new employees join and they need some additional training, that's, that's included as well. So, [00:09:52] Adil Saleh: mm-hmm. Absolutely. So there, there's a new norm that is coming from a lot of marketers and sales leaders that you know, the customer success category is also evolving because of this fact. That it's so hard to retain the revenue that is sitting in an install base compared to, you know, the new acquisition. So a lot of these companies in the post COVID-19, they try to, you know, acquire a lot of customers at two, three years down when it was time to yield. You know, the contract value and the, and then of course some, some make it, make it profitable they lose them. So how you are measuring customer success in terms of usage, in interactions, success matter rates. So what kind of I'm sure you're sales leader, so you have some sort of arm that is thoroughly focused on the retention part and product adoption part platform adoption part. So how is that process look like? [00:10:41] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so we have a chief customer success officer who is tasked with all of that. Some of the things that we measure are, you know. The basics, net promoter score, retention metrics, things like that. But then we also do we have a, a process where after tax season each year we reach out and find out how did we do, how are. How are you feeling? Because when they're in the thick of tax season, they don't have time to sort of pull their head up and give us feedback or anything. They're just doing, you know, they're so overloaded. And so, there's some things like that, but it's certainly, platform usage is a piece of it. It's a, a multifaceted sort of client health metric. [00:11:29] Adil Saleh: Yeah. Health is everything, you know? And it is, it, it is not like a, it's not like a virus. It is like a, it could be an accident, like any customer can can churn any day without even, you know, giving you a real forecast. So now thinking about, like, I have. Seems like you've got like multiple plans from smaller tier to you know, the, the, you know, the tier that you, you, you can expand as a, as sales organization. So what is that process like? How data is involved, how you guys are investing into data to make sure that you know, depending on the expansion signals, how you can go about like expanding some of those customers from engagement to, you know, different touchpoint. So how's that process valuable? [00:12:10] Emily Maxie: Yeah. So, we definitely use platform metrics to be able to inform that. We also use just the interactions that our customer success team has with, with individuals to be opportunistic about, you know, our customer success team is very familiar with. What our different plans include. And, and they, you know, are the first ones to speak up if they think that a customer would be a good candidate for an upsell opportunity and things like that. So, yeah, we're, we're always interesting. [00:12:42] Adil Saleh: So there's so many platforms as well that actually enable you. You know, that like core like CSP platforms, customer success platform that actually help you get triggers or signals different attractions from quantitative to qualitative data as well, like email meeting notes, any, anything that was giving red flag, like indication per churn opportunity for expansion. So do you guys use any kind of technology? Do you know, keep keeping tip te stay on top of it. [00:13:09] Emily Maxie: So we're currently in the data collection piece of that. Um mm-hmm. We are, we do call transcripts and we are getting platform usage and all of that. And then we, we will match that up with our historical churn and start to be able to use that to predict future churn. But we're still mm-hmm. The data ga gathering sort of phase of that. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. That is, I guess it's super fun, you know, as a sales leader. There's so much that gets lost in translation and you know, you lose your you, you lose customer before, you know, know them. Like, it's, it's that simple. [00:13:45] Adil Saleh: It's always good to, you know, have some sort of predictive analytics sort of thing. But good debt. So now thinking about you know, a lot of this has has been involved like with ai. I know that you guys have been listening to a lot of these l lambs and wrappers built for internal tool. I'm not a big fan of you know, platforms forcefully building some sort of AI features that the customers may or may not, or they're not at, they're not at level. They need like, in terms of efficiency and outcomes. But I'm a big fan of teams that are trying to you know. Meet some sort of operational excellence, just like the way you guys are doing for accountants. Building internal tooling, like custom let's say for example, custom GPTs or different lms or make them specialize for your own use cases internally. So you guys doing any kind of initiatives, you guys? Yeah. So. [00:14:35] Emily Maxie: Tell us more that you saw my, you saw my face light up because this is one of my favorite things to talk about and to do. So we currently have 11 custom GPTs built for the go to market team. And we measure in terms of ROI, of those things we measure. How long would it have taken to do the thing without this tool, or would we have been able to do it at all? How many times has it been used? How long did it take to build it? And then we have a calculation of number of hours saved. And so, we're actively tracking that across all of the tools that we've built for the go to market team. I've been pretty blown away by how far we can go with. Just custom gpt and some interesting Slack integrations and things like that. One of my favorite that that I built recently was we have a lot of times where competitors will be mentioned either on a call or in or in Slack. And that information just sort of. Lives out there and doesn't get consumed by anyone. And, and then, you know, a sales rep is trying to find when did we come up against this competitor? I remember a quote. And so, what I did is I used Zapier to scrape Slack of. Competitive mentions, and then we use fireflies for meeting recording and also scrape that for competitive mentions and then feed all of that into a custom GPT that that analyzes that data. And and create something that's actionable for the sales team to use in terms of competitive positioning. And then because the sales team is not in chat GPT all day, every day, they're in Slack. I created a Slack app that connects to that GPT where they can just interact with it directly in Slack and get those answers they need right when they need them. [00:16:36] Adil Saleh: Mm. So you basically set triggers inside stack for all of those mentions and all of those critical tech touch points. Interesting. And I, I this is happening all in real time. You know, we've tried not quite, but we have like direct implication of different support and you know, dev Curious is inside Slack and, by the way, slack is cutting down a lot of platforms built on top of, and, you know, they've actually discontinued sharing the data to build the platforms, not for this cases. So that's why this gives an opportunity to a lot of teams and currently that can use all, all of these integrations with GPT and LMS that can, you know, host, reasoning models, it's a very large scale, just like you're doing for, for yourself. So now it's, it's, it's, you know, like I said, that first time I saw you know, from 360, I was thinking like, because I've seen you know, my, my brother is an accountant all my life. So he's a, he's a, he's a consultant to Deloitte. And you know, I know that he is not tech savvy. So it was so big for me, you know, some platform trying to enable these accountants to be tech enabled for the first time. I think this is one of the industries alongside like healthcare, manufacturing, all these is that are not so tech savvy. The back, the maximum that you're using is QuickBooks and some of the financial old school reporting tools. And yeah, it was quite aside for me to, you know, find a platform like from 360 now, tell. More about you know, I know that we are halfway down this year. Like what is that like, makes you excited this year in terms of, it could be or could not be connected to your your role or you know, your own KPIs as a leader. So, but overall, what makes you excited? [00:18:12] Emily Maxie: A few things. So first is just the massive opportunity in front of us as you mentioned. Accounting firms are not typically the most tech savvy. And so, whereas a lot of companies sort of modernized and moved to all-in-one systems that were built for them and things like that, you know. Five or 10 years ago that transformation is happening now. And so it's really exciting to be in a place where we do have such strong product market fit and it's just in a matter of sort of getting in front of the people at the right time. And so, that's exceptionally exciting for me. Also really exciting is is taking on this new role. It's something that I've wanted to do for a while and it is challenging me and growing, you know, in ways that I, some of them I imagined and some of them I didn't imagine. And and it gives me so much more, empathy for, for sales leaders. I think often sales leaders and marketing leaders get pitted against each other somehow. And we're all working toward the same thing. We're all, we're all trying to achieve. Yeah. Thing. [00:19:25] Adil Saleh: Mm. Yeah. Because it's all about, you know, the amount of adversity that you can take. And that is you know, that is an ideal scenario for someone like you jumping into a role that is new to you and you, you're, you're, you're up to different challenges and a level of different adversity. I know that when you get like. Up to the tier, like the decision making and, and, and the level of responsibility and the KPIs and everything gets bigger on your shoulder and you know, so you, you guys have, how big is your team level? [00:19:55] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so we are pretty lean. So we have a couple of account executives and a marketer and, and me, and that's it. So. [00:20:05] Adil Saleh: Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. So thinking about, what do you call yourself as a team? Like is it more you know, sort of, high touch sales organization? Or is it like hybrid? Is it like completely digital, like AI or data first? So you don't understand, like how do you see it? I know that it's different for different customers. Yeah. Depending on so many things like contract value and all of those and the size and everything. But what do you call yourself like as a, as a team? Is it more hybrid or? [00:20:32] Emily Maxie: Yeah, it's definitely hybrid. We try to make sure that the prospects feel as if it's high touch while automating. The hell out it, if I can say that. So, any, any interactions that that our team has with a prospect feel very personalized, feel very high touch and all of that. And behind the scenes, we're doing a lot of automation. We're doing a lot of just making sure that, sort of prequalification for people because, you know, when you have a limited number of reps, you have a little limited number of demos you can do in the day. And wanna make sure it's with those prospects that are, that are qualified. So it's, it's definitely mm-hmm. For us, [00:21:20] Adil Saleh: yeah. Absolutely making sure that you are, you have the right formation of team members. For the people or the customers that are of high value or rest. They can simply make it a self-serve onboarding and they can try out minimal viable or maybe restricted features. And then if they, they have any questions, they can definitely ask some support, which is also like a lot of times tier one. Now, even tier two is, can be automated. Yeah. So now the biggest thing I was thinking in my team, I like, these are some questions regarding like, how do you see this category? I, I know that it's not too specific to, you know, accounting practice management, but I know that it's, it's, I would say like workflow automation or workflow management for accounting, accounting teams panning out for heck. Like B2B SaaS, like a lot of these B2B SaaS companies, they're struggling so hard after, you know, even post-funding to get the right CFO. I know a lot of people talk about VP of sales and, you know, all these CTOs and all, but CFO is gonna be a big, big problem too, because a lot of these funded startup that have raised fund during this the, the big AI wave you know, and now they're, they need really willing, industry veterans in the financial you know, sector. So how do you see West as a like for tech, the opportunity for from 360? [00:22:39] Emily Maxie: Yeah. I think, like I mentioned before, it's a really, really big opportunity for us. It is, I mean, it. A space where most of the people who are talking to us are not coming from competitors. They're coming from spreadsheets and a compilation of different tools, or they're coming from a legacy company that just doesn't have the sort of user experience that they're the modern user experience that they're used to. And so, so yeah, I, I see it as a really huge opportunity. [00:23:16] Adil Saleh: So do you have like I, I've gone through some of your case studies. Do you have like any, any customer story to extend for Core B2B like obviously SaaS or tech company or startup that is using it for financial or competency purposes? [00:23:29] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so we target exclusively accounting firms with based in the United States. So we don't do sort of, accounting within companies that do something else. Okay. If that makes sense. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we don't have much in terms of like startups who are using it. It's more accounting firms, accounting firms that are using it. [00:23:51] Adil Saleh: Okay. So this is basically for account accountants inside accounting firms. That's right. You know, a lot of these accounting firms, they are like sort of financial consulting comes in Israel, like it's going to be they have like big customers a lot. Like, it's, it's, it's not like they're not targeting the SMBs or startup early state companies especially these, these big you know, accounting firms consulting to enterprises. So like how, like how big like. Of a, of a deal that is, you know, make sure that they they understand they adopt the sales process and all of that. Could you walk us through a little bit about, about those and maybe share some stories? [00:24:30] Emily Maxie: Yeah. So, I think a really interesting one that I just we just recorded this week is about a a firm that essentially got. Three quarters of the way through onboarding a different tool and decided it wasn't for them, and then found out about Firm 360 and started to explore sort of what we offer and was really one over by two things. The fact that we're built by accountants and are we have a hundred percent US based. Customer support that's completely e Every single one is an employee of Firm 360. I know all of their names. It's not, you know, outsourced to someone that you don't know. And and so, they were really won over by those things and since, since adopting it, have had just full employee adoption, which is really difficult to do with something like this. And and they've also gotten just great responses from their clients who are using the client portal to be able to, you know, sign in, see messages, pay their invoices, things like that. And yeah, has just been a really big success for them. [00:25:47] Adil Saleh: It is, it is. And I was also, you know, reading up some of your customer stories and how, you know, these firms are using. Platform differently. It's, it's, this is a key factor too, like, making sure that one one firm is you know, is absolutely adopt to a project management organization. The other could be more for billing financial reporting and all of this in client management, communication engagement. That's right. You know, a lot of these you know, firms that we interacted with like accounting firms, they're not so much merit to using big Salesforce, or it's not a lot of times not like CRM is not their source of truth. They want it to be connected with something that fits more into their workflow and speaks more to them in their language. You know, HubSpot is kind of, that that colon penetrating big in the last two years. But you know, again so you already have like workflow integration of all this, like all the CRMs and everything that they use the firms internally. [00:26:39] Emily Maxie: So we have I wouldn't call it a CRM, but we have a client management module that we use and they can import clients into it. It's not integrated with something like Salesforce or things like that. Okay. It's more for managing clients once they are clients, so, [00:26:56] Adil Saleh: okay. Gotcha. And that will actually demands a lot of data security as well. Like you guys are soc type one type. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. So, some questions I had regarding the team regarding the culture. I know that three, four years back, it was more about like, we are small. We don't too much care about like motivation, operating pitch for DNA or vision. We are small. We, we, we just need to get our head down and work really, really hard At that time, 3, 3, 4 years ago, I would say like that time your team, employees, team members. They had like less noise. You know, you talk about LLMs chat, GPT, like Kiki and deep seeks and chat GPTs and all of this. Now the noise is like three, four x more. Every other team member thinks that they are, they know everything like knowledge overload. And, and of course you gotta make sure that you manage that factor and you, you, you get them to execute more. Of course consume, but execute more. So how, how big of a challenge was you for setting the right operating principles? You know, you, you, you know, you the companywide culture as well. So, how is it different than your team and what's winning for you when it comes to people management? You know, getting the best work out of people? I know it's not easy, but yeah. I just go ahead and tell us more about your team. [00:28:11] Emily Maxie: Yeah. So, from a company standpoint, we have our CEO has done a fantastic job of setting really crystal clear objectives for the year and building out an operating plan that matches to that. That is something that I think companies of our size and maturity sometimes struggle with. And there are plenty of things that could be goals but if they're all goals. And they're all the most important thing. The none of them are the most important thing. And so we have, you know, five things that every employee knows we're working toward for the year. And if we nail them, then it will be a fantastic year. And so I think that helps a lot because, it gives employees the ability to sort of connect what they're doing in their day-to-day to a company goal or more than one company goal. And also helps them stay focused in terms of is this driving a company goal or is it not? And then in terms of my team I am. Very, very fortunate to have really highly motivated, just intrinsically motivated people on my team who wanna win. And my job is just to tell them what winning looks like and to remove blockers for them and to just get, get obstacles out of their way. And and that's my favorite way to manage is you know. Set the goal, add clarity, and then give support when needed. And and that's working really well for the team because they, they wanna win just as much as I do. And so, absolutely. [00:29:53] Adil Saleh: Yeah. I mean it's, it's, it's not just like, like you mentioned, like it's not only about. Aligning on the goals. It's, it's also about align internally, like going down on their level and align of their vision, aligning their personal you know, career achievements and everything. So, absolutely you know, making people comfortable in the environment is, is super important. A lot of people come up. They say like, it's your mental health is our problem, all of that. I know that it's, it's, it's maybe related to the job and function and role of manager leadership, but it has to be someone that can let them know, Hey, this is your problem, but yes, we are in this together. Yeah, I personally would help you. It might not be a job of this, let's say this company that you're working for, but we are like family like. Tell me what, what's, what's going on? And, you know, I'll understand you and, you know, we'll sort this out internally. So it's, it's more about that yeah. At a company level. And, and I think I still love, I've worked at a startup and I drew like, you know, more than 150 people and now I go and meet those founders and a lot of new faces, some of very barely, like, few of them left five, six years down. And that those folks tell us like. We, those times were different. Like we were so much connected and we knew each other's problem. We used to talk about 'em every single day. It was so much fun. Now things are like different, like, you know, so it is kind of a blessing in disguise, I would say, to work with a small team and work really closely with them and you know, achieve goals. That is, that is another adventure. [00:31:22] Emily Maxie: Yeah, I agree. And I think the really interesting opportunity that we have. At this point in time is that with all of the innovations happening, we have an opportunity to stay. My goal is for us to stay headcount wise, as small as we can while meeting our goals for as long as we can. Because because of what you just said, I think it's a really compelling team environment. I think it's a really interesting, from a business standpoint and I think it's. Completely doable in the environment that we're in, so, yeah. Yeah. [00:31:59] Adil Saleh: So two more questions. One, like you being a sales leader, being a marketing leadership to the sales leader now you know, doing dealing with customers that are serving enterprises and all a lot of these sales leader end up building platforms with founders that can code, like, technical leaders have fair share of equity and do the same for their own business with, with, with some shared. What's your viewpoint like? How do you see you see yourself in the next five years? I know it's, it might get controversial internally for your team, but you know, it's, it's your right to answer if you want, if you can. [00:32:31] Emily Maxie: Yeah, I I'm, I'm sorry. I don't, I'm not sure. Are you [00:32:34] Adil Saleh: also, like a lot of these sales leader, they think of, you know, building platforms Yeah. That come up here and building tools, platform service businesses you know, doing, doing sales for their own businesses with, with people that they can build. I know that a lot of these things are not technical, so they cannot code, even though code is not that hard these days. But, you know, they, they actually collaborate. They found new founders and they want to build something of their own, not for the sake of just getting rid of job, but, you know, just they're more passionate. So how, how you're thinking about doing something of your own [00:33:05] Emily Maxie: yeah. At this stage. It's a great question. Honestly, right now I'm so laser focused in on the opportunity in front of me that I haven't, haven't really thought about it. But I, I have always said, and I think this will continue to be true for a long time, that if I'm ever a founder, it will be because I have an idea that I just like. It will, I will go kicking and screaming. I, I don't think it's I don't think it's the life for me. I love to be in at the ground floor of an early stage startup, but as far as founding and having that idea, it would have to be a. Really, really amazing. Yeah. [00:33:46] Adil Saleh: It's more like a calling, like it's not something that you just plan and do it next day. Right. Next, like, I think [00:33:51] Emily Maxie: I'll be a founder. Yeah, exactly. [00:33:54] Adil Saleh: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, I, I, I've, I've seen you and so did my team, and they think that you're. Yeah, I think as well, like you're so big about about speaking and supporting women leadership and and you know, women that are building startups, building companies. So what inspires you? Who inspires you? Like, when it comes to women in your life, and what do you can tell tell us about that, please. [00:34:19] Emily Maxie: Yeah. Man, who inspires me? Honestly, I could get, I could run down a list of people that you've probably never heard of, and it's for me it's about the, the thing that makes me really passionate about investing in other women in tech is essentially that. For the first 10 years of my career, I didn't have those female role models in my life. And it's not to say that they didn't exist, but they weren't in my circle, in my network. And and then I started to have people in my life who. By doing small things would have a momentous impact on my career. And and something that I believe in a lot is paying that forward. And so, you know, there are, i'll, I'll roll off some names. Leonora Williamson is someone who believed in me very early in my career. Colin Baptist is someone who has coached me very recently. Adele Pool is someone who is in a completely different sector completely. Space. But just inspires me all the time with the way that she shows up at work and the way that she interacts in the space. And I mean there are countless, countless others as well. But those are just a few, I guess. [00:35:45] Adil Saleh: Yeah, I appreciate that. And, you know, it's, it's just a fact like the more. You grow old, the more you thank people that helped you when you were young and at that point you'd never you, you never know what you're, what they're doing to you. And it's, it's, it's it's, it's so precious, like, to have such people in your life. Yeah. Personally and professionally. And you, I still recall a lot of a lot of people in my life in the past and, you know. You know, I, a lot of time I think it's, it, it was never me alone. Like yeah, it was never possible alone. And a lot of these alpha men and a lot of these people say that, you know, we make it, we like, but at the end of the day, it has to be, it is some, some, some level of contribution at different timelines of your life that people came and supported you. And, and, and, and you know, it's, I really appreciate that you took the moment to thank them all. I know you've missed a lot of names. You're thinking inside. Yeah. But you know, I'm sure that all those people that are not mentioned here listening to this episode would not think that that way. Because yes, you are in a recorded policy. You can only mention a few handful of people. Thank you very much am Emily. It was really, really nice meeting you, getting to know you, your role ambitions, and, on top of everything, how you're impacting teams and you know, processes, operations within firm 360. And I wish you good luck for, for all that you're doing and you know, any, any way we can help you as a team, like we are a community and we are, we are always here for you. [00:37:11] Emily Maxie: Thanks so much. It was a pleasure. [00:37:14] Adil Saleh: Likewise. Bye-Bye. Hey, greetings everybody. This is long time. We, we are, we're waiting for this, this episode and this conversation. You know, I know that there's so much that is happening in AI and we kind of fall in that trap as well. We have like 20 plus products coming up that are so far, like AI powered, and they are you know, AI first and all of this. So I was. You know, my entire team was thinking of something really unique, like how we can think about you know, f financial finance accounting operations. Think about you know, operations in the, you know, VP jumping a little bit about real estate tech. So there's so much that we are trying to explore. You know, today we have the senior Vice President of firm 360. It's it's it's all in one platform for accountants you know, to maintain operation accidents from project management, to billing, to booking, to you know, contact management, to almost everything that an accountant would need and dip up. So much of penetration ever since 2019. I've got Emily Maxie with me. Thank you very much, Emily, for taking the time. [00:38:19] Emily Maxie: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. [00:38:21] Adil Saleh: Perfect. So Emily, I know that your background is more towards like marketing and sales, and you've seen in the past seven to 10 years that you've you've seen how sales and marketing has changed with with the new evolution with tech and new enablements coming especially at at companies going and, and more the mid-market to enterprise segment. Not so much. So how, what's, what's your viewpoint on as a sales leader yourself, like. How has that changed? Is it more about doing more with less and, you know, optimizing the, you know, bandwidth or cost? Is it more about, you know, getting good, good parts in the pocket? And so I, customer acquisition and what's, what's your viewpoint at the point situation? [00:39:02] Emily Maxie: Yeah. It's a great question. I think, especially today, the fundamentals are more important than they've ever been. And I think that there are a lot of technologies out there that can help you really nail the fundamentals and do them better than you ever could before with fewer resources, as you mentioned and things like that. But really. Our our strategy is not to reinvent the wheel or chase shiny objects or things like that, but more so to figure out, okay, how can we, how can we do those fundamental things smarter? And so that's that's really sort of where we landed on that. [00:39:42] Adil Saleh: Perfect. And I know that you've being in as an interim role and you were more towards as a marketing leader transition into into core sales. So how was that transition be for you and how it shaped you, you know, thinking of your prior experiences in marketing and what is, what do you think? Like, a lot of people come up and say, sales is just an analog of marketing and it's not so far away, they're interconnected. You know, they, they work for each other. So how was that transition? [00:40:09] Emily Maxie: Yeah. So, I think it really depends on your philosophy as a marketer in terms of whether or not that's true, whether or not they are quite similar. I have always been a revenue focus, revenue oriented marketer that has been, just core to who I am. And there are all sorts of different marketers who focus on different things, but for me, my biggest metric of success is pipeline and ultimately revenue. And so for me it was a really a really natural transition to then start taking on the, just the full pipeline ownership and, and management. Mm-hmm. Currently a hundred percent inbound in terms of our demand generation. And so, it really appealed to me to be able to have more more ability to sort of turn the dials, not just in my little piece of the funnel, but the whole way through, you know. [00:41:05] Adil Saleh: Okay. So I mean, my team has some, has definitely have some questions that are more industry related and, you know, market positioning and competition and all of that. You know, there's so many of products in the past three years came up and say like, you know, we are project management first. We are meeting the system and, you know, we don't, so one thing made me curious about reading up more about. Firm 360. It's kind of a all in one platform only for accountants. Mm-hmm. And, and you know, I know that you, you, you're not a founder, so it's not like a question of like, how did you like actually founder to inception and then put it you know, you know, penetrate in the only in accountancy section, and why did you choose. How do you see it you know, versus the comparison to make, make this product standard? Is it, is it some product that appeals more to, to the accountants or is it is it more intuitive to the accountants? Because I know the project management can change, you know, and different organizations, whether it's hr, whether it's contente, so, how, for sales leaders, what is the biggest proposition? You know, comparing with the, with, with the, with the company. [00:42:10] Emily Maxie: So despite not being a founder, I know our founding story very well, and I know our founder well, and our founder is a partner in an accounting firm in North Carolina, right up the street from me. And he was looking for a solution, an all in all-in-one solution that was really oriented to. The way an accounting firm runs and he wasn't able to find that. And you know, there's lots of generic project management tools out there. There's lots of sort of point solutions that do a certain piece of it, but not all of it. And and so that's why Firm 360 was built. When I first started at the company, I thought this sort of tagline of four accountants by accountants was just a marketing fluff. And then I started watching sales calls. It's, it's so cool. You'll hear you'll hear prospects point to a specific feature and say, you can tell an accountant built this because X, Y, z. And so there are just specific nuances in the way that accountants manage their firms, manage projects, manage billing, all of those things. There are a lot of things that are unique to them and that are uniquely built into our platform. And so that's really, one of the ways interesting that we stand out. [00:43:29] Adil Saleh: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Interesting. And we, you talk about their day-to-day workflows be it like reporting, be it like billing, be it like project management and task management. Like it pretty much fit fits into, into the workflows that I know that all of these integrations that are core specific to the to the accountant accountancy teams and you know, by the CFOs I think this is, this is crucial in that. What about the reporting part? [00:43:52] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so the reporting is also built. Four accountants by accountants. And so you'll see things like wip which is an industry term that I hadn't heard of before I started working here. And you know, accounts receivable, accounts payable, all of the sort of standard things. An accountant would need to see to run their business, to know that their business is healthy. Reports on who are their most profitable clients, who are their least profitable clients. Because there's an interesting dynamic in this space where a lot of accountants actually fire clients because there are more, more clients out there than there are accountants to work for 'em. And so at the end of the year, they'll sort of do a roundup and say, okay. Who were our least profitable clients, who are the clients that we're losing money on and, and will, you know, part ways with those clients. And so, giving them the tools to do that and to be able to make those smart decisions is a big piece of what we do. [00:44:56] Adil Saleh: Okay. I mean, that's, that's amazing, you know, to make sure that you keep on learning with experiences because even you talk about the processes and operations within different accounting firms depending on like what kind of like whether they're corporate, healthcare, legal, all of this. Things change, like operations change, their workflow change. So you have to adapt as a, as a, as a, as a software. Like I, I'm sure it's you, you guys like work with, with like some sort of professional services or it's for self-serve model or it's like one platform built for all. [00:45:26] Emily Maxie: Can you clarify the question? Like, is it like have professional services arm? [00:45:31] Adil Saleh: Yes. Yes. You know, a lot of these platforms, they need it because you know, on the client side you need like different implementations or integrations Yeah. For their processes. It, it is so hard to build a self-served yes, core B2B SaaS platform. [00:45:45] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so we have a really robust onboarding process that we do for absolutely every client. We believe in it a lot because as you say, the, the more robust a software is, the less self-serve it is. And so, and so we do typically four sessions with new clients and help them set up their workflows, help them set up their billing and. Really are available to them than for as long as they need it. Typically, it doesn't take more than four sessions, but if they need six sessions, that's fine. If they have new employees join and they need some additional training, that's, that's included as well. So, [00:46:30] Adil Saleh: mm-hmm. Absolutely. So there, there's a new norm that is coming from a lot of marketers and sales leaders that you know, the customer success category is also evolving because of this fact. That it's so hard to retain the revenue that is sitting in an install base compared to, you know, the new acquisition. So a lot of these companies in the post COVID-19, they try to, you know, acquire a lot of customers at two, three years down when it was time to yield. You know, the contract value and the, and then of course some, some make it, make it profitable they lose them. So how you are measuring customer success in terms of usage, in interactions, success matter rates. So what kind of I'm sure you're sales leader, so you have some sort of arm that is thoroughly focused on the retention part and product adoption part platform adoption part. So how is that process look like? [00:47:19] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so we have a chief customer success officer who is tasked with all of that. Some of the things that we measure are, you know. The basics, net promoter score, retention metrics, things like that. But then we also do we have a, a process where after tax season each year we reach out and find out how did we do, how are. How are you feeling? Because when they're in the thick of tax season, they don't have time to sort of pull their head up and give us feedback or anything. They're just doing, you know, they're so overloaded. And so, there's some things like that, but it's certainly, platform usage is a piece of it. It's a, a multifaceted sort of client health metric. [00:48:07] Adil Saleh: Yeah. Health is everything, you know? And it is, it, it is not like a, it's not like a virus. It is like a, it could be an accident, like any customer can can churn any day without even, you know, giving you a real forecast. So now thinking about, like, I have. Seems like you've got like multiple plans from smaller tier to you know, the, the, you know, the tier that you, you, you can expand as a, as sales organization. So what is that process like? How data is involved, how you guys are investing into data to make sure that you know, depending on the expansion signals, how you can go about like expanding some of those customers from engagement to, you know, different touchpoint. So how's that process valuable? [00:48:48] Emily Maxie: Yeah. So, we definitely use platform metrics to be able to inform that. We also use just the interactions that our customer success team has with, with individuals to be opportunistic about, you know, our customer success team is very familiar with. What our different plans include. And, and they, you know, are the first ones to speak up if they think that a customer would be a good candidate for an upsell opportunity and things like that. So, yeah, we're, we're always interesting. [00:49:20] Adil Saleh: So there's so many platforms as well that actually enable you. You know, that like core like CSP platforms, customer success platform that actually help you get triggers or signals different attractions from quantitative to qualitative data as well, like email meeting notes, any, anything that was giving red flag, like indication per churn opportunity for expansion. So do you guys use any kind of technology? Do you know, keep keeping tip te stay on top of it. [00:49:47] Emily Maxie: So we're currently in the data collection piece of that. Um mm-hmm. We are, we do call transcripts and we are getting platform usage and all of that. And then we, we will match that up with our historical churn and start to be able to use that to predict future churn. But we're still mm-hmm. The data ga gathering sort of phase of that. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. That is, I guess it's super fun, you know, as a sales leader. There's so much that gets lost in translation and you know, you lose your you, you lose customer before, you know, know them. Like, it's, it's that simple. [00:50:23] Adil Saleh: It's always good to, you know, have some sort of predictive analytics sort of thing. But good debt. So now thinking about you know, a lot of this has has been involved like with ai. I know that you guys have been listening to a lot of these l lambs and wrappers built for internal tool. I'm not a big fan of you know, platforms forcefully building some sort of AI features that the customers may or may not, or they're not at, they're not at level. They need like, in terms of efficiency and outcomes. But I'm a big fan of teams that are trying to you know. Meet some sort of operational excellence, just like the way you guys are doing for accountants. Building internal tooling, like custom let's say for example, custom GPTs or different lms or make them specialize for your own use cases internally. So you guys doing any kind of initiatives, you guys? Yeah. So. [00:51:13] Emily Maxie: Tell us more that you saw my, you saw my face light up because this is one of my favorite things to talk about and to do. So we currently have 11 custom GPTs built for the go to market team. And we measure in terms of ROI, of those things we measure. How long would it have taken to do the thing without this tool, or would we have been able to do it at all? How many times has it been used? How long did it take to build it? And then we have a calculation of number of hours saved. And so, we're actively tracking that across all of the tools that we've built for the go to market team. I've been pretty blown away by how far we can go with. Just custom gpt and some interesting Slack integrations and things like that. One of my favorite that that I built recently was we have a lot of times where competitors will be mentioned either on a call or in or in Slack. And that information just sort of. Lives out there and doesn't get consumed by anyone. And, and then, you know, a sales rep is trying to find when did we come up against this competitor? I remember a quote. And so, what I did is I used Zapier to scrape Slack of. Competitive mentions, and then we use fireflies for meeting recording and also scrape that for competitive mentions and then feed all of that into a custom GPT that that analyzes that data. And and create something that's actionable for the sales team to use in terms of competitive positioning. And then because the sales team is not in chat GPT all day, every day, they're in Slack. I created a Slack app that connects to that GPT where they can just interact with it directly in Slack and get those answers they need right when they need them. [00:53:14] Adil Saleh: Mm. So you basically set triggers inside stack for all of those mentions and all of those critical tech touch points. Interesting. And I, I this is happening all in real time. You know, we've tried not quite, but we have like direct implication of different support and you know, dev Curious is inside Slack and, by the way, slack is cutting down a lot of platforms built on top of, and, you know, they've actually discontinued sharing the data to build the platforms, not for this cases. So that's why this gives an opportunity to a lot of teams and currently that can use all, all of these integrations with GPT and LMS that can, you know, host, reasoning models, it's a very large scale, just like you're doing for, for yourself. So now it's, it's, it's, you know, like I said, that first time I saw you know, from 360, I was thinking like, because I've seen you know, my, my brother is an accountant all my life. So he's a, he's a, he's a consultant to Deloitte. And you know, I know that he is not tech savvy. So it was so big for me, you know, some platform trying to enable these accountants to be tech enabled for the first time. I think this is one of the industries alongside like healthcare, manufacturing, all these is that are not so tech savvy. The back, the maximum that you're using is QuickBooks and some of the financial old school reporting tools. And yeah, it was quite aside for me to, you know, find a platform like from 360 now, tell. More about you know, I know that we are halfway down this year. Like what is that like, makes you excited this year in terms of, it could be or could not be connected to your your role or you know, your own KPIs as a leader. So, but overall, what makes you excited? [00:54:50] Emily Maxie: A few things. So first is just the massive opportunity in front of us as you mentioned. Accounting firms are not typically the most tech savvy. And so, whereas a lot of companies sort of modernized and moved to all-in-one systems that were built for them and things like that, you know. Five or 10 years ago that transformation is happening now. And so it's really exciting to be in a place where we do have such strong product market fit and it's just in a matter of sort of getting in front of the people at the right time. And so, that's exceptionally exciting for me. Also really exciting is is taking on this new role. It's something that I've wanted to do for a while and it is challenging me and growing, you know, in ways that I, some of them I imagined and some of them I didn't imagine. And and it gives me so much more, empathy for, for sales leaders. I think often sales leaders and marketing leaders get pitted against each other somehow. And we're all working toward the same thing. We're all, we're all trying to achieve. Yeah. Thing. [00:56:03] Adil Saleh: Mm. Yeah. Because it's all about, you know, the amount of adversity that you can take. And that is you know, that is an ideal scenario for someone like you jumping into a role that is new to you and you, you're, you're, you're up to different challenges and a level of different adversity. I know that when you get like. Up to the tier, like the decision making and, and, and the level of responsibility and the KPIs and everything gets bigger on your shoulder and you know, so you, you guys have, how big is your team level? [00:56:33] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so we are pretty lean. So we have a couple of account executives and a marketer and, and me, and that's it. So. [00:56:43] Adil Saleh: Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. So thinking about, what do you call yourself as a team? Like is it more you know, sort of, high touch sales organization? Or is it like hybrid? Is it like completely digital, like AI or data first? So you don't understand, like how do you see it? I know that it's different for different customers. Yeah. Depending on so many things like contract value and all of those and the size and everything. But what do you call yourself like as a, as a team? Is it more hybrid or? [00:57:10] Emily Maxie: Yeah, it's definitely hybrid. We try to make sure that the prospects feel as if it's high touch while automating. The hell out it, if I can say that. So, any, any interactions that that our team has with a prospect feel very personalized, feel very high touch and all of that. And behind the scenes, we're doing a lot of automation. We're doing a lot of just making sure that, sort of prequalification for people because, you know, when you have a limited number of reps, you have a little limited number of demos you can do in the day. And wanna make sure it's with those prospects that are, that are qualified. So it's, it's definitely mm-hmm. For us, [00:57:58] Adil Saleh: yeah. Absolutely making sure that you are, you have the right formation of team members. For the people or the customers that are of high value or rest. They can simply make it a self-serve onboarding and they can try out minimal viable or maybe restricted features. And then if they, they have any questions, they can definitely ask some support, which is also like a lot of times tier one. Now, even tier two is, can be automated. Yeah. So now the biggest thing I was thinking in my team, I like, these are some questions regarding like, how do you see this category? I, I know that it's not too specific to, you know, accounting practice management, but I know that it's, it's, I would say like workflow automation or workflow management for accounting, accounting teams panning out for heck. Like B2B SaaS, like a lot of these B2B SaaS companies, they're struggling so hard after, you know, even post-funding to get the right CFO. I know a lot of people talk about VP of sales and, you know, all these CTOs and all, but CFO is gonna be a big, big problem too, because a lot of these funded startup that have raised fund during this the, the big AI wave you know, and now they're, they need really willing, industry veterans in the financial you know, sector. So how do you see West as a like for tech, the opportunity for from 360? [00:59:17] Emily Maxie: Yeah. I think, like I mentioned before, it's a really, really big opportunity for us. It is, I mean, it. A space where most of the people who are talking to us are not coming from competitors. They're coming from spreadsheets and a compilation of different tools, or they're coming from a legacy company that just doesn't have the sort of user experience that they're the modern user experience that they're used to. And so, so yeah, I, I see it as a really huge opportunity. [00:59:54] Adil Saleh: So do you have like I, I've gone through some of your case studies. Do you have like any, any customer story to extend for Core B2B like obviously SaaS or tech company or startup that is using it for financial or competency purposes? [01:00:08] Emily Maxie: Yeah, so we target exclusively accounting firms with based in the United States. So we don't do sort of, accounting within companies that do something else. Okay. If that makes sense. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we don't have much in terms of like startups who are using it. It's more accounting firms, accounting firms that are using it. [01:00:29] Adil Saleh: Okay. So this is basically for account accountants inside accounting firms. That's right. You know, a lot of these accounting firms, they are like sort of financial consulting comes in Israel, like it's going to be they have like big customers a lot. Like, it's, it's, it's not like they're not targeting the SMBs or startup early state companies especially these, these big you know, accounting firms consulting to enterprises. So like how, like how big like. Of a, of a deal that is, you know, make sure that they they understand they adopt the sales process and all of that. Could you walk us through a little bit about, about those and maybe share some stories? [01:01:08] Emily Maxie: Yeah. So, I think a really interesting one that I just we just recorded this week is about a a firm that essentially got. Three quarters of the way through onboarding a different tool and decided it wasn't for them, and then found out about Firm 360 and started to explore sort of what we offer and was really one over by two things. The fact that we're built by accountants and are we have a hundred percent US based. Customer support that's completely e Every single one is an employee of Firm 360. I know all of their names. It's not, you know, outsourced to someone that you don't know. And and so, they were really won over by those things and since, since adopting it, have had just full employee adoption, which is really difficult to do with something like this. And and they've also gotten just great responses from their clients who are using the client portal to be able to, you know, sign in, see messages, pay their invoices, things like that. And yeah, has just been a really big success for them. [01:02:25] Adil Saleh: It is, it is. And I was also, you know, reading up some of your customer stories and how, you know, these firms are using. Platform differently. It's, it's, this is a key factor too, like, making sure that one one firm is you know, is absolutely adopt to a project management organization. The other could be more for billing financial reporting and all of this in client management, communication engagement. That's right. You know, a lot of these you know, firms that we interacted with like accounting firms, they're not so much merit to using big Salesforce, or it's not a lot of times not like CRM is not their source of truth. They want it to be connected with something that fits more into their workflow and speaks more to them in their language. You know, HubSpot is kind of, that that colon penetrating big in the last two years. But you know, again so you already have like workflow integration of all this, like all the CRMs and everything that they use the firms internally. [01:03:17] Emily Maxie: So we have I wouldn't call it a CRM, but we have a client management module that we use and they can import clients into it. It's not integrated with something like Salesforce or things like that. Okay. It's more for managing clients once they are clients, so, [01:03:34] Adil Saleh: okay. Gotcha. And that will actually demands a lot of data security as well. Like you guys are soc type one type. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. So, some questions I had regarding the team regarding the culture. I know that three, four years back, it was more about like, we are small. We don't too much care about like motivation, operating pitch for DNA or vision. We are small. We, we, we just need to get our head down and work really, really hard At that time, 3, 3, 4 years ago, I would say like that time your team, employees, team members. They had like less noise. You know, you talk about LLMs chat, GPT, like Kiki and deep seeks and chat GPTs and all of this. Now the noise is like three, four x more. Every other team member thinks that they are, they know everything like knowledge overload. And, and of course you gotta make sure that you manage that factor and you, you, you get them to execute more. Of course consume, but execute more. So how, how big of a challenge was you for setting the right operating principles? You know, you, you, you know, you the companywide culture as well. So, how is it different than your team and what's winning for you when it comes to people management? You know, getting the best work out of people? I know it's not easy, but yeah. I just go ahead and tell us more about your team. [01:04:49] Emily Maxie: Yeah. So, from a company standpoint, we have our CEO has done a fantastic job of setting really crystal clear objectives for the year and building out an operating plan that matches to that. That is something that I think companies of our size and maturity sometimes struggle with. And there are plenty of things that could be goals but if they're all goals. And they're all the most important thing. The none of them are the most important thing. And so we have, you know, five things that every employee knows we're working toward for the year. And if we nail them, then it will be a fantastic year. And so I think that helps a lot because, it gives employees the ability to sort of connect what they're doing in their day-to-day to a company goal or more than one company goal. And also helps them stay focused in terms of is this driving a company goal or is it not? And then in terms of my team I am. Very, very fortunate to have really highly motivated, just intrinsically motivated people on my team who wanna win. And my job is just to tell them what winning looks like and to remove blockers for them and to just get, get obstacles out of their way. And and that's my favorite way to manage is you know. Set the goal, add clarity, and then give support when needed. And and that's working really well for the team because they, they wanna win just as much as I do. And so, absolutely. [01:06:31] Adil Saleh: Yeah. I mean it's, it's, it's not just like, like you mentioned, like it's not only about. Aligning on the goals. It's, it's also about align internally, like going down on their level and align of their vision, aligning their personal you know, career achievements and everything. So, absolutely you know, making people comfortable in the environment is, is super important. A lot of people come up. They say like, it's your mental health is our problem, all of that. I know that it's, it's, it's maybe related to the job and function and role of manager leadership, but it has to be someone that can let them know, Hey, this is your problem, but yes, we are in this together. Yeah, I personally would help you. It might not be a job of this, let's say this company that you're working for, but we are like family like. Tell me what, what's, what's going on? And, you know, I'll understand you and, you know, we'll sort this out internally. So it's, it's more about that yeah. At a company level. And, and I think I still love, I've worked at a startup and I drew like, you know, more than 150 people and now I go and meet those founders and a lot of new faces, some of very barely, like, few of them left five, six years down. And that those folks tell us like. We, those times were different. Like we were so much connected and we knew each other's problem. We used to talk about 'em every single day. It was so much fun. Now things are like different, like, you know, so it is kind of a blessing in disguise, I would say, to work with a small team and work really closely with them and you know, achieve goals. That is, that is another adventure. [01:08:00] Emily Maxie: Yeah, I agree. And I think the really interesting opportunity that we have. At this point in time is that with all of the innovations happening, we have an opportunity to stay. My goal is for us to stay headcount wise, as small as we can while meeting our goals for as long as we can. Because because of what you just said, I think it's a really compelling team environment. I think it's a really interesting, from a business standpoint and I think it's. Completely doable in the environment that we're in, so, yeah. Yeah. [01:08:37] Adil Saleh: So two more questions. One, like you being a sales leader, being a marketing leadership to the sales leader now you know, doing dealing with customers that are serving enterprises and all a lot of these sales leader end up building platforms with founders that can code, like, technical leaders have fair share of equity and do the same for their own business with, with, with some shared. What's your viewpoint like? How do you see you see yourself in the next five years? I know it's, it might get controversial internally for your team, but you know, it's, it's your right to answer if you want, if you can. [01:09:09] Emily Maxie: Yeah, I I'm, I'm sorry. I don't, I'm not sure. Are you [01:09:12] Adil Saleh: also, like a lot of these sales leader, they think of, you know, building platforms Yeah. That come up here and building tools, platform service businesses you know, doing, doing sales for their own businesses with, with people that they can build. I know that a lot of these things are not technical, so they cannot code, even though code is not that hard these days. But, you know, they, they actually collaborate. They found new founders and they want to build something of their own, not for the sake of just getting rid of job, but, you know, just they're more passionate. So how, how you're thinking about doing something of your own [01:09:43] Emily Maxie: yeah. At this stage. It's a great question. Honestly, right now I'm so laser focused in on the opportunity in front of me that I haven't, haven't really thought about it. But I, I have always said, and I think this will continue to be true for a long time, that if I'm ever a founder, it will be because I have an idea that I just like. It will, I will go kicking and screaming. I, I don't think it's I don't think it's the life for me. I love to be in at the ground floor of an early stage startup, but as far as founding and having that idea, it would have to be a. Really, really amazing. Yeah. [01:10:24] Adil Saleh: It's more like a calling, like it's not something that you just plan and do it next day. Right. Next, like, I think [01:10:29] Emily Maxie: I'll be a founder. Yeah, exactly. [01:10:32] Adil Saleh: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, I, I, I've, I've seen you and so did my team, and they think that you're. Yeah, I think as well, like you're so big about about speaking and supporting women leadership and and you know, women that are building startups, building companies. So what inspires you? Who inspires you? Like, when it comes to women in your life, and what do you can tell tell us about that, please. [01:10:57] Emily Maxie: Yeah. Man, who inspires me? Honestly, I could get, I could run down a list of people that you've probably never heard of, and it's for me it's about the, the thing that makes me really passionate about investing in other women in tech is essentially that. For the first 10 years of my career, I didn't have those female role models in my life. And it's not to say that they didn't exist, but they weren't in my circle, in my network. And and then I started to have people in my life who. By doing small things would have a momentous impact on my career. And and something that I believe in a lot is paying that forward. And so, you know, there are, i'll, I'll roll off some names. Leonora Williamson is someone who believed in me very early in my career. Colin Baptist is someone who has coached me very recently. Adele Pool is someone who is in a completely different sector completely. Space. But just inspires me all the time with the way that she shows up at work and the way that she interacts in the space. And I mean there are countless, countless others as well. But those are just a few, I guess. [01:12:23] Adil Saleh: Yeah, I appreciate that. And, you know, it's, it's just a fact like the more. You grow old, the more you thank people that helped you when you were young and at that point you'd never you, you never know what you're, what they're doing to you. And it's, it's, it's it's, it's so precious, like, to have such people in your life. Yeah. Personally and professionally. And you, I still recall a lot of a lot of people in my life in the past and, you know. You know, I, a lot of time I think it's, it, it was never me alone. Like yeah, it was never possible alone. And a lot of these alpha men and a lot of these people say that, you know, we make it, we like, but at the end of the day, it has to be, it is some, some, some level of contribution at different timelines of your life that people came and supported you. And, and, and, and you know, it's, I really appreciate that you took the moment to thank them all. I know you've missed a lot of names. You're thinking inside. Yeah. But you know, I'm sure that all those people that are not mentioned here listening to this episode would not think that that way. Because yes, you are in a recorded policy. You can only mention a few handful of people. Thank you very much am Emily. It was really, really nice meeting you, getting to know you, your role ambitions, and, on top of everything, how you're impacting teams and you know, processes, operations within firm 360. And I wish you good luck for, for all that you're doing and you know, any, any way we can help you as a team, like we are a community and we are, we are always here for you. [01:13:49] Emily Maxie: Thanks so much. It was a pleasure. [01:13:52] Adil Saleh: Likewise. Bye-Bye. Thank you so very much for staying with us on the episode. Please hear your feedback at adil@hyperengage.io. We definitely need it. we will see you next time and another guest on the stage with some concrete tips on how to operate better as a customer success leader and how you can empower. Engagements with some building, some meaningful relationships. We qualify people for the episode just to make sure we bring value to the listeners. Do reach us out if you want to refer any CS leader. Until next time, goodbye and have a good rest of your day.