text stringlengths 0 1.46k |
|---|
**Adam Stacoviak:** And in all honesty, that's exactly what it was, right? I mean... |
**Mike McDerment:** Yeah, yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's true. It's not that it was not factual. That's the truth. |
**Mike McDerment:** Yeah. The part that was less obvious was that we'd built it. \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. |
**Mike McDerment:** I hate to think anyone would think we were disingenuous about that, like they were actively trying to get away from us, but... No, so we designed, built, conceived that whole thing, built it... Then we sort of acquired it, and that was the public way for people to easily understand it, and we starte... |
It took us a while to realize it could be that simple. That was a thing... And again, I think we deserve a lot of credit for -- I think we could have executed it in a much more convoluted and confusing way. It was convoluted and confusing for our experience, but we got to a place of simplicity, and that is a beautiful ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah... You couldn't do that with, say, GitHub, for example. You mentioned GitHub earlier. Let's say five years from now -- Microsoft recently acquired GitHub, and they're like "Wow, we have to replatform this thing." I don't think GitHub would be easy to replatform in the same way you had done. So ... |
**Mike McDerment:** I think that is the question, and I honestly don't know. The benefits and the trade-offs were so interesting and fascinating... I think for the team and the company and realizing what we're capable of, I wanna do it every day. But in terms of the cost and the time and what have you, it's like, "Man,... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[20:08\] How many years has it been into this transition? Because I'm a customer... So let's do full disclosure here - I'm actually a user of FreshBooks for a long time, using the classic version of it, and I know that you've had a non-classic version for at least a couple of years. |
**Mike McDerment:** Yeah, that's right. And we would have started building that 18 months before that, so call it a solid 3,5 years. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. I mean, some businesses don't even last that long, you know what I mean? And you've been transitioning and migrating for that long. That's pretty wild. |
**Mike McDerment:** Yeah, running in parallel. I think we realized we could do that without too much burden, which was good. And maybe someone else's platform - that would not be the case. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. Divided efforts, forked interests, attention spans etc. So they are two distinct platforms, and even today you still have FreshBooks new and FreshBooks classic. You still have two distinct platforms. |
**Mike McDerment:** We have customers on two platforms, yeah. We're only available as new FreshBooks. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. So when somebody buys today, somebody subscribes today, word of mouth, whatever, it's new FreshBooks only. |
**Mike McDerment:** That's correct. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What's the skew then percentage-wise, old platform/new platform? |
**Mike McDerment:** Most people are on new FreshBooks. Lion's share. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So I'm the anomaly here then. |
**Mike McDerment:** Yeah. You're certainly in the minority. \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, pre-call I did say that it was my fault, not your fault, because it's just fear of change. That's the problem here. It's not that you haven't sold me on it, it's just plain, old, simple fear of change... And that's what happens. |
**Mike McDerment:** This is the thing about replatforms, and that's why I think the mechanism in letting people go - we're trying to boil a frog, Adam, so to speak... Until you're just like "Yeah, it's just time for me to go over. I've geared myself up, and it's gonna be great." That will happen in time, and we'll have... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Let's laser in a bit more to you. I know we've been talking to you mostly about FreshBooks' journey, not so much Mike's journey... But what are your biggest challenges today as a CEO? What are you personally facing? |
**Mike McDerment:** Yeah, my patented answer to this question - but I'll get into some other more interesting things - is "Ask me in 20 minutes and I'll have a different answer." I'm just always chewing through a series of problems. |
I think if I make it really personal -- you know, we're over 300 people, we're hiring 50 right now... I think how your role changes, and how you need to change, and these kinds of things... I think I went through -- I was very much like a hands-on, directive startup founder at the start, that sort of "crazy founder guy... |
The biggest unlocking thing for me was realizing I just needed to hire a whole other level of seasoned maturity around me, and that's what I like working with... I've always been great with people who have been there, done that, got the T-shirt. It was kind of the in-between phase that was harder. |
So I built a team of those folks, and then started learning how to lead a little more, and I think this whole BillSpring thing was like "Hey, that's the job. You're leading." So that was part of the journey. And everyone still has their tendencies and biases, so I'm constantly trying to grow out of any sort of reaction... |
I mean, I think one of the hardest things for me has always been letting people make their mistakes. I'm sitting there, it's so obvious to me they're making a mistake, I just wanna give them the answer, but you've gotta let them go and do it. That has been one of the hardest lessons for me. And that's not to say I thin... |
\[23:59\] Ultimately, people don't build up and get to the same level of capability if you're sort of stealing that away from them. So that was poor leadership and management on a bunch of levels from me. That I think has been one of the hardest things. |
And then, interestingly, I'm coming into a phase again now where it's like "Okay, things are operating at a scale...", I brought in a better half, who's like a president, to drive the next growth period of the business... And I actually need to go back to almost those earlier days, and tinkering and bringing some of th... |
**Break:** \[25:09\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** The next question for you, I guess, dove-tailing off of that, is how do you keep up as a leader? Where do you get your skills? Do you read books, do you have a coach? How do you keep yourself sharp? Is it just bloodied knuckles? Are you a lone ranger? Give us your personality type. |
**Mike McDerment:** Yeah, so I think it's a confluence of things, and I'll try and talk some of those and tell you where I am right now. I didn't ever work anywhere else, didn't really have a manager or boss or any of these things... So leading and things of this nature have always been a bit of a mystery to me. No rol... |
So I think I had some combination of some formative experiences, where the only profession I had before doing this stuff, so to speak, was frankly a "camp counselor." The way that manifested for me is in my last two years doing that I took people on a 36-day and a 42-day canoe trip. So it's me, in the woods, with one o... |
And what happens is -- we would travel long distances in a given day, like 30 miles kind of thing; it would not be a ridiculous day on water and land... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's a long trip on a canoe. |
**Mike McDerment:** Yeah, that's one day. We did longer ones, we did shorter ones, but on some of these trips, that was kind of an average day. We were moving. And what you get out of that is a sense of perseverance, and team work, and all these things. So I think that was a formative experience for me, where I got a l... |
Then, when I started on this road of building this company, I realized how gapped I was on business, and all these other things, and so my orientation was to collect advisors. I would reach out and network with people who knew more, and I think I had -- for whatever reason, people were always... I guess I had a knack f... |
Then I think another thing that happened was I hired these more -- I would then read the internet, and I read a lot of books... I'm kind of like an input learner, so I read it, I consume it, I digest it, I refer to it and build on it later. That's part of how I learn. So every night I'm probably reading for half an hou... |
I do like other forms of books, and I like reading in general, but mostly I'm reading about how to be a better business operator and grower. |
Then the final thing is just surrounding myself with -- and I think where most of the stuff I've gotten in the last few years has been frankly the management team members I hire, who are all more expert... I cannot do their job. But that's not my job. My job is to build the team, and to point the company in the right d... |
\[32:12\] And then the final thing I layer on top of that is I now do these things -- we have a weekly thing called Shorthands; we offer everybody lunch and we give them recent updates of the company. |
And not every time, but most of the time I'll do a thing called "Mike's Musing", which is I literally talk about something I've learned about leadership. That act of having to explain it to somebody else helps to reinforce how much -- it turns out I've actually learned a bunch... But the act of consciously saying, "hey... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What do you think gets you excited these days then? Just to rewind a little bit, some of the things you said - you said "I haven't worked anywhere else really", you've been a founder/CEO for quite some time now, so you've done (for a lack of better terms) this job; whether it's changed over the year... |
**Mike McDerment:** I think this transition to less operational was quite uncomfortable at the start, but now I'm starting to realize "Oh yeah, I'm getting back to more creating." I'm a builder, I like to create and build. If there's like three phases - create, build, scale - my super-strengths are probably in the crea... |
So it's like "Hey, know your strengths", and then it's like, okay, if I'm spending all my time, in an 18-month plus to 3-year area, and that's my area of influence, then it's like "Okay, what do I need to think about that's building, and how do I make that happen?" That's a fun problem set. Highly valuable and impactfu... |
So that's the place, and then I work with -- I've actually helped found some other companies, and one in particular that I've spent some time with, which is a good... It is at the earlier stages, and it's very interesting. And helping that team is a source of motivation outside the office. |
But the point is, I actually have some big, meaty, interesting challenges inside the office... Because this is what happens; some of the problems you've gotta solve multiple times, and that can be a little frustrating... But we've got a long way to go, and a big, big platform, and opportunity ahead of us. I think we're... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Well, you mentioned bringing in -- I believe you said a president. Is that right? ...to sort of take over more of the next phase of growth for you. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.