Joining the show on its debut week is a SaaS veteran and leader in the Customer Success industry. A person who believes in developing strong company values and the importance of building a community around your business. This leader is none other than the CEO of Gainsight, Nick Mehta.
Nick joins host David Politis to discuss the importance of company values. Nick reflects on how vital it was to establish values early, as well as the most important executive roles a company should hire. Discover his insights on the importance of building community, qualities that make an effective leader, and the benefits of investing in a good Executive Assistant.
Takeaways:
Building a community can be vital to establishing a strong and reciprocal relationship with customers. Communities and community events allow for direct customer interaction and a space to get honest feedback on the business.
The ability to manage up, down, across, and out are vital for strong management, as it ensures a manager is able to work with and be a positive influence on coworkers, stakeholders, customers, and direct reports.
Executive Assistants are not something to be thrifty or cheap about. An effective EA can make a world of difference for CEOs and should be well-supported to ensure retention. Sometimes they are more on top of things than the CEOs themselves.
Being CEO means you have to be yourself. Candor and authenticity are essential qualities for successful leadership, even if it means making tough decisions or telling employees that something is wrong.
Backchannel references are a great tool for ensuring you have a holistic view of a potential candidate. Asking a reference “what did others think of this person” instead of “what did you think of this person” is a strong strategy for getting an honest answer from them.
Actively reinforcing company values is an important step in getting your staff to truly live up to them in their day to day. Have your values be the focus of employee onboarding, discuss them in all-hands meetings, send out consistent emails reaffirming them, etc.
As a CEO, it’s impossible to be aware of everything as you scale. Anonymous surveys can provide valuable insights on leadership and day to day operations that a top down perspective might miss out on.
Quote of the Show:
“What I tell CEOs is the only way to have a good culture is make it something you truly care about.” - Nick Mehta
Links:
Twitter: https://x.com/nrmehta
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmehta/
Website: https://www.gainsight.com
Ways to Tune In:
Spotify:
Apple Podcasts:
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7c6328f0-9b42-41db-8fe2-d263b4fbb261
Transistor: https://podcast.notanotherceo.com/
Full Episode Transcript
David: Hello, everyone. We have a very special guest with us today. He's had an amazing career in SaaS. He started in product management and is now CEO of an iconic SaaS company. He spent time as an EIR at a couple of the best VCs in the world, Excel, Trinity. He's a board member at F5 and Pubmatic. His name is now Synonymous.
with customer success. His company is defined the best practices for how SAS companies engage with their customers. And maybe most importantly, he's a huge swifty. So with that, please welcome Nick [00:01:00] Mehta, CEO at Gainsight. Hey Nick.
Nick: you're too kind. And by the way, I'm assuming my, my mom wrote that intro or something. That's way we'll get way, uh, over the top, but thank you.
David: Awesome. Great. First question. First question. What's one thing you've done to At Gainesite, big or small, that had the biggest impact and that you'll absolutely do again if you're CEO of another company in the future.
Nick: Easy. Uh, first when we just got started creating our values from day one, making them really deep in the company, and then turning that into kind of a mission statement, which is what our mission statement is, to be living proof you can win in business while being human first. And how do we make sure that we've never forget, you know, a person on the other side of the zoom or the podcast is a human being, whether it's a customer employee, alumni, even somebody who churned you, an investor, they're all human beings first.
That's absolutely, uh, what's driven us.
David: And how, how'd you define those values? Did you define them?
Nick: Yeah, it's great question. It's interesting. Cause I feel like one of the [00:02:00] mistakes people make is not making it personal. Um, and thinking that they just need to look at what other companies are doing. So for me, it was, What do I care about? And, you know, I think at the end of the day, the CEO, the founder, it's like you're, it's that what you care about is like the DNA of the company.
Eventually, everyone that you hire cares about that. So we have five values, golden rule, treat people the way you want to be treated, success for all, drive success for all our stakeholders, childlike joy, bring the kid new to work every day. Shoshin, which is Japanese word for beginner's mind. And staythirstymyfriends, which is definitely a copyright violation from a Dose of Geese commercial, all about internal drive.
And so we've got these five values are kind of quirky, and they're very much, they're like ours,
David: memorable, very
Nick: they're my values, like my life too. So it's actually, I think that's what I tell CEOs is the only way to have a good culture is make it something you truly care about. If you make it like, oh, I read a blog post from somebody else, uh, you're, you're, It's going to be a total sham.
David: How do you [00:03:00] reinforce those values, um, you know, on a day to day basis or a month to month basis? Like how, how do you do it in hiring? How do you do it for the team that's there today?
Nick: Yeah. I mean, there's like a, some of it, what's kind of nice is over time. It just becomes in the water. So you actually don't have to even like do anything. Like if you were in a Gainsight meeting, I'd almost guarantee internal external, somebody would use one of those values, like almost guaranteed. Like my guess is it's 95 percent of meetings, but a couple of tactics that have worked well for folks that are kind of like maybe earlier on that journey.
The number one is like truly caring about it. So like, You know, whatever as a CEO you care about will naturally come out in meetings, right? It'll naturally be reinforced. It's not like you have to think about it. I've talked to some CEOs where like, they can't even recall their values. Like, I'm like, Oh my God, that's such a, right.
And it's like, no, no, no. They're, they're like, Oh, they're really important. I'm like, what are they like? I don't know. And it's like, Oh my gosh. And so you have to like, really care about them. And then a couple of things I think that are really helpful. Number one, obviously in your [00:04:00] onboarding. Like when I do the employer, we have employee onboarding.
Probably everyone does the same thing. Different people come present and all that. And mine is a hundred percent of our values and culture. That's all. I don't have anything else. And I just go through each value, what it means, why it came up, et cetera. So that's one thing that we do. A second thing we do is, um, in every all hands, we talk about them.
Uh, but also not just every all hands, those are every quarter. I have a Sunday night email every Sunday night, which I'm proud to say I've sent across Gainsight and even past companies for the last 20 years every Sunday night. So that's, that's what I do on Sunday nights, by the way, way less fun than anything.
Um, and in that, I also talk about values inherently. Um, and then, so I'm kind of reinforcing constantly onboarding, employee communications, et cetera, um, for, but then like one thing I did recently, like a couple of times the last few years, I started hearing, Oh yeah, Nick, you care about the values, but some of your leaders don't, which kills me.
And so I started doing a survey and I'm not a big fan of anonymous surveys in general. I don't [00:05:00] do them, but for this one, I'm like anonymously rate every leader in the company on how they live up to each value and give me comments. And by the way. It's not easy for the leaders to like have that happening, but also I'm like, if the leader is not living up to the values I need to know.
And so honestly, David, I like learned a lot. Uh, you learned a lot about what I don't know, which I'm, that's, I felt embarrassed. I didn't know. And, you know, definitely led to making changes. And so that's something that's really important is assessing leaders. I think at the end of the day, one way to kill the values is to have leaders who truly don't live them, even if the CEO believes in it, it kills the values and just the belief these values matter.
And then the last thing I would say is on interviewing, you were just mentioning that that's a common thing. I don't think it's actually, at least for us, it's never been like, Oh, there's one question for each of these values. But, um, it's more like when we have discussions with candidates, how are those values naturally showing up?
And then in the assessment, it has those in there, but it's not like a [00:06:00] question. It's more like a natural, our team all knows it so well. Um, one thing that where it really shows up well though, is At the end of most interviews, especially senior ones, we have people do a presentation and um, and you know, then there's a group of people assessing.
Afterwards, you can kind of see a lot of the values in that presentation, right? I think one on one is actually quite harder, but in a group setting, you can have multiple people saying, Oh, they didn't, they didn't really apply the golden rule the way they treated us, or they didn't have a lot of insights.
You know what I mean? So those are some ideas.
David: Wow. That anonymous survey. On the leaders. That's a I like that though. I like that a lot
Nick: I don't think all my leaders loved it, to be totally honest with you. But, um, I think it's the right thing to do.
David: Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, it's because at the scale that you're at it is impossible to know everything that's happened. I
Nick: hard. We like thousand, more than a thousand people. I'm like, how do I, I have no idea what's happening. It's very embarrassing. I used to, I used to know everything and now I [00:07:00] don't.
David: One one of the things you know, you you've built this Honestly, amazing community. I mean, it's something that I would say in SaaS people, if you say what's the company that's best built the best community, people will say Gainsight and it's synonymous with customer success and, and you're a big part of that.
Is that something that comes naturally to you? Did you have to try? Because that, for me, at least for me, that, it's a lot of work. I mean, it's like, it's a lot of work. And it's a lot of work to be the face of it, frankly. I mean, I think, um, so is that natural to you? Or, or was this something that you had to work on?
Nick: Yeah, it's great question. And I think it links to the first one too, because one thing I forgot to mention, which I think will help understand how we built the community. I'm a big believer that there's this like, there's this image in people's minds that is wrong, which is there's like you, as a human being at home or whatever is outside of work, you as a human being is in the company and you is as a human being with [00:08:00] your customers.
And people have these like three, three, like, I don't know, uh, costumes,
David: Persona. Yeah,
Nick: Or elements that they have. Right. And it's very, I think it's not good because number one, It's very like if you have to pretend like at work, it's not, it's not the same. You don't have that full energy. Number two, it's not authentic.
Right. And people can kind of, people can see authenticity or inauthenticity a mile away. Right. And so what happened was. We felt like the community was just kind of part of Gainsight. Um, and it's all kind of like this, like blurry line versus like, it's this one thing. So for us, it started becoming very motivating.
I'll cut, let me describe a little about how we got there. Cause people might be early in the journey. I think a lot of these things are like riding a bike or whatever. It's kind of cheesy, but like they are hard to start. And they're intimidating. And then once you start doing, uh, if you do well, you get positive reinforcement and then it just becomes easy and natural.
So today, if you said Nick is. Community [00:09:00] building and culture like hard? No, like it's just, that's what we do. Is it, uh, was it hard to start? I think so. I mean, so long ago I'd said, but I think it was. I think number one though, is there's some ingredients. The first one is There has to be a need for a community.
So that has to be like a, like a set of people who actually want togetherness. Right. Community is fundamentally more about the human side. It's about, um, there's actually the one, if you go on, you know, Google and type in community definition, it'll say like, uh, a feeling of kinship or something like that.
Right. That's, that's, I think the second definition. And so it's these people that want kinship, but right now feel lonely in their job. So in our case. Early on in the customer success world, it was new. And a lot of companies had a little CS team and there's a person and they didn't just start in the job and they don't even know how to do it.
And nobody in the company knows what they're doing. And the family doesn't know what they're doing. And so they're like, Oh my God, there's [00:10:00] other people like me. When we start, when we started Gainsight, Gainsight 2013. We were like, Hey, maybe we should try this community thing. So we literally sent out an email, said, Hey, we'll do a meetup, uh, back when like meetup was a big thing in our, in our, in our like crappy office.
We had this office above a bar in Mountain View, California. It had like the, it was cool. The carpet was peeling off the floor. There was like one bathroom, it was terrible office. I mean, very quaint and good memories. But, and so we invited these people and like, uh, just like a blast, email and co we didn't know these people by and, you know, meet up customer success, whatever, right?
And like we thought, oh, maybe 10 people show up. And like 75 people showed up. And by the way, we, we went to Safeway, which is a grocery store here and there, and we bought like the crappy cheese plate and the crappy wine. And they showed up and they definitely weren't there for the crappy cheese and the crappy wine.
They were there to meet each other and it was like buzzing till like, I don't know, 11 o'clock or something. So then we decided, oh my gosh, this is the thing that we started throwing this event called Pulse, which is a big conference, eventually thousands of people. And the key thing was we always made [00:11:00] the community not about GainSite.
We didn't, we called it Pulse. We didn't call it GainSite something. If you go to Pulse, it's not just GainSite. There's a little GainSite commercial in there, but it's mostly just People presenting on, you know, best practices in renewals or customer success, whatever. And so for us, the community took number one of learning that there needs to be a community.
That there are people that actually don't have that connection. Number two, the first time you do it, making it clear it's about them, not you. Number three, getting to know them really well. So learning what they really want, like both work and even like their own careers. Number four then is then bringing our own culture.
So it feels like there's this like warm, authentic place. And then what's kind of interesting is, Are the people in the Gainsight community, or it's not really the Gainsight customer success community, a lot of them list our values in their LinkedIn profile. Is that crazy? Um, [00:12:00] yeah, it's really nuts. And so they really, it's like they're, we're all one in the same.
I mean, it's really interesting. Yeah. It's sort of a bit of a sign of success. The last thing though, is, um, it's really remembering that they're human beings. We say human first business. So. As a human being, what are they thinking about? Well, they're thinking about like, yeah, whatever job they're trying to do.
Like in our case, it might be like improving retention, but they're also thinking about like, I don't know, how do I move up in my career? I'm worried about getting fired, blah, blah, blah. Right. And so we've done all kinds of things, you know, uh, entry level, CSM, online training. Helping exec, writing a guide to hiring a CS executive, a guide to looking for a CS job, um, informally helping.
I personally honestly probably helped thousands and thousands of people try to find their next job and do the intros and all that. Like, Hey, I know this person helping, we built a job board. And so that's one other thing about community. If people are thinking about building it, remember, think about them as a human being first, what do [00:13:00] they care about?
I guarantee it's not just your product and whatever product you have.
David: It's interesting. I think community, especially like in the past, when I've talked to you about Pulse and I've talked to your team about Pulse and our team has gone to, gone to Pulse. And, um, it's this thing that I don't know how you feel. I, I have felt in my career, it's hard to put a, an ROI on the investment into the community, you know, and that has always been, I think one of the challenges for people to keep investing in community, be the way that.
You have the way that some of the most successful companies have because you have to get through years of people asking you what's the ROI on that investment, right? I mean, I, I
Nick: you know, there's this great Einstein quote, which is, uh, uh, everything, uh, uh, not everything that can be counted counts and everything that counts can't be counted. And, um, this is such a good example where you just said, Nick, what are the most important things in gainsight [00:14:00] history? It's. The Pulse community, we've written six books on customer success.
It's all the blog posts. And if you said, Nick, oh, how do you track that from there to a lead or to bookings? I'm like, we've tried, we can't. But if you ask any customer who's ever bought Gainsight, why'd you buy Gainsight? It's a thought leadership
David: Exactly, exactly,
Nick: right? So you can only know it after the fact.
And like, only if you truly know your business. So now there's still questions about how much do you spend on it? If you spend more, do you get more out of it? If you, if you, uh, get a celebrity speaker, like one year, one year, uh, I really regret it cause it would've been so fun, but one year, our first CMO who's legendary all time helped create this whole thing with me, Anthony.
He's like, Hey, we're doing a pulse. It's nineties themed. Let's get the Backstreet Boys to perform. And, uh, it would have been like 750 grand. And I, I, I nixed it. It's my greatest regret. Cause I'm like, that was venture capital dollars. I can, I can do that. Back then I can't do that. No way, you know, [00:15:00] like, and so, um, but, but, but the, like, there's some ROI of like the incremental dollars, but the ROI of the concept is like infinite.
Yeah. Um, the last thing I'd say, which is pretty interesting, kind of meta is, we did so much in community, we learned so much about community, but then, um, and these are like events and stuff like that, but then people wanted, like, make community persist, so we, we, we actually launched an online community for Gatesight, and then we were like, oh, this is really great, we know about it, and then online community software is a space, and so we bought a company called Insighted. And so it's kind of interesting because a lot of things that we've done have been extremely meta, not to make a pun on my name, but very meta because we do things, we do customer success, we do community, we learn about it, and then we build our products or byproducts to reinforce that. And that's another value of community.
Is you, in addition to ROI of let's say selling more and retention, you just learn so much, right? Like, and like, you know, you can learn stuff from like a one on one [00:16:00] customer sales meeting or whatever. You learn so much being at a community event, having the beer with the customer, thinking about like, what's really on their mind, you know, and then you get preferential treatment and deals, preferential in, you get, so these, all these benefits that come out of that deep relationship,
David: I think the number one benefit that I've seen with companies that have great community, um, and I've experienced this at BetterCloud with our leaders of customer success, is, um, when they're in a community, to your point, you it's almost like It's almost a no brainer for them. When they start at the next company, what is the product they're gonna
Nick: a hundred gonna buy the, they're gonna buy the product that, that is from the community that they belong to because they, they don't wanna, they don't wanna leave that community. Right.
it. A hundred percent. It's the repeat buyer for us is, I don't even know what percent our business is. It might be, it might be 90 percent at this point because we've been around a long time. Right. So.
David: It's awesome. Um, what, what, [00:17:00] um. When you think about your team, you've, you've built the team up quite a bit over the years. You've been through different leadership teams and, and, um, what, what is it that you look for, obviously the values, but what, what is it that you look for in leaders that you bring on?
Nick: Yeah, it's a really, uh, something. So I don't know, being vulnerable with you, David, I like, I've, I've like, my batting average on hiring leaders is low, so I've found some good ones for sure. But I'll tell you some, a few things I think about and maybe some patterns and like, again, with humility that I don't always get it right.
So, um, one thing I look for in a leader internal external is kind of, I'm drawing a little with my fingers here, a little diagram, which is. The ability to manage up, down, across and out. So what do I mean by that? Well, I'll start with managing down is pretty straightforward. They can be a great leader for their team.
The team is inspired by them. They, um, you know, their references, they have people that are People that work for them, though, [00:18:00] they, those people have followed them to new jobs. Those people have gone on to bigger jobs. They're proud when, when you ask them their proudest accomplishments, they talk about how they have this person.
And they're now like a CMO or something in a future job. So that's managing up. Managing up is actually the most straightforward and probably the most dangerous because some people manage up really well. They don't do any of the other ones. I've had that specifically. And then you get a blind spot because you're like, Oh, they're awesome.
And then nobody else thinks that, right? And so managing up is a little bit more of the kind of classic stuff, the quality of the presentations, the quality of their analysis. Can you put them in front of a board? You know, that type of thing, right? I think that's like a little more easy to assess. Managing across is their peers.
Um, so are they able to have those relationships? And that's kind of the golden rule, you know, treat people the way you want to be treated, which is one of our values. Do they have those peer to peer relationships? What's that like? Are they the person that like, they get a slack from their peer and they're like, like responding in the most minimal way possible?
Or they're like, Hey, [00:19:00] I'd love to help. Let's get on a call. Let me figure out how to help you. Right. That kind of a thing, you know, people that are truly allies to their, their colleagues, right, which is super, super important. And I think they're, um, one of the things I ask actually across all these dimensions is, um, when I, uh, interviewing, I'm interviewing for a exec role right now, and I ask people specifically, I say, if you've worked long enough, everyone has promoters and everyone has detractors, right?
Everyone. There's nobody, including me. Who I asked them specifically, who are your promoters and who are your detractors? And I want to get the names. Um, and now, by the way, like, it's interesting because if they list them very voluntarily, it's awesome. They're very self aware. If they don't, either because they don't know or whatever, they're, there's an issue.
So it's actually quite a disarming question, but it's pretty good. And then I say, um, when I talked to, I call those people. Um, I hired a president recently who's been amazing so far. And, um, I did, uh, this is, I wouldn't recommend this to many, but I did 25 back channels on them. Uh, [00:20:00] yeah, nuts. And I asked these exact questions of like, you know, first I asked the person, you know, what is this person really gifted at?
You know, how do you rate them on a scale of one to 10, that type of thing. But then I also asked that person the reference, who are this person's promoters and attractors?
David: Oh man.
Nick: So it's actually pretty interesting because people often will say, um, things that are, they'll, they'll actually like answer questions more honestly if you ask them what other people think.
It's very actually hard for people to like very directly say what they think. So for example, uh, Hey, you worked with David, like, I can say, you went to David, what did you think of David? What were his strengths? Or, you went to David, hey, I'm just curious, what did the other folks around you think of David? And the second one is way easier for people to be honest on. And then the final, final one is managing out. I see managing out meaning managing your customers, your partners, whatever. That's [00:21:00] again, a little bit more straightforward presentation skills, but also you can, you know, Hey, what customer would be a reference for you?
That's actually an interesting thing. If you're a customer facing executive, what customer would be a reference for you? So those are the types of things I try to look at.
David: I am going to use that promoter detractor. I've heard of a lot of interview techniques. I've actually, um, I've never heard that one and I am going to use that one. Cause that is. To your point, people probably get a little nervous when you ask that question. Because when you say, who are your detractors? You know, they're not walking in ready to have that. They're ready to tell you who their references are, but
Nick: yeah,
David: not who the detractors are. Um, that's a really,
that's a great question.
Nick: interviews for, especially for leaders, I think you got to disarm them a little bit, not be a jerk at all, but disarm them. Another tactic, by the way, it's super tactical, but is if you're fortunate enough to interview somebody in person. Take them for a walk. Um, and what's interesting is it's actually like just, first of all, I [00:22:00] think it's a better conversation, but second of all, it really is a different environment.
I think it's harder to fake things on a walk. There's just some physicality to it. So, cause what you're trying to get through is the faking of things that interviews
David: Yes, yes,
Nick: unintentionally. That's what we're all trying to do. And sadly, the truth is a lot of executives, you get that point, you're good at faking things.
David: Yeah, that's a real, that is, I'm going to use that, that one is good. The other one, when you talk about the, the references up, down, sideways, one of our investors, um, they, when they were helping me go through executive search, they were very insistent that we're going to do, Three backchannel references up three down and
three, you know, peers.
And it was, it was exactly like you said, you, you may find that they were an amazing leader, but they're an amazing leader for their team because they, they, they protected their team from all the other peers and didn't do actually any collaborative work. You know, like I've, I've had a couple of those actually, you know,
where the people who worked for them, love them.[00:23:00]
But it was actually because they protected them from, from basically having to do anything,
Nick: that's exactly right. By the way, on that note too, by the way, uh, on, uh, back channels, I would highly encourage people to not outsource all the back channels to like HR or executive search or whatever you have. Some of them have done there. I would also encourage. Like, at least for me, what's worked is if you, to the extent you can find a back channel that somebody, you know, or at least you kind of are connected to reasonably strongly, they'll be more honest, right?
So, like, if I call you for back channel, I'm pretty confident you'd just give me the straight scoop and I wouldn't tell anyone about it. And same way if you called me, I wouldn't be like, Hey, the person is great. If I didn't really think so, you have to be careful about the, the back channel. All of that. I remember previous company, I hired a CFO who's super nice guy, but oh my God, total train wreck in a way that we almost ran out of money billing system implementation.
Long story. But, uh, the CEO they had, [00:24:00] uh, was like a super positive reference. Later, I learned that that CEO was just trying to get rid of him and wanted to get, like, kind of have him leave in a graceful way. I was like, and, but I didn't know the CEO. So the CEO kind of gave me like the, like, like the, the fake reference.
So,
David: yeah, I, that, that's a good, that one. And the thing about not outsourcing to HR, I actually did a reference for something, not backchannel, but I did a reference for someone the other day and it was HR and the HR person literally came on the call and said, we're going to hire the person. I just need to make sure that, you know, everything
Nick: it's the
David: is good.
Nick: And I said, thing that we can talk for hours about it. your references earlier in the process. I do some back channels, like right as I start typing, what I do is like some tech spot channels to
start. And I'm just like, Oh, yeah, I'm on literally on the phone again.
I'm like, Hey, Oh, do you know, because usually you find somebody coming. And then, um, and then if those aren't super positive, honestly, I'm like, I need super awesome people. So [00:25:00] I'm not going to waste the candidate's time or mine going deeper. So do some back channels early. It would be my advice there.
David: we've talked about before kind of your, um, you've made a lot of investment in your team and you've had a number of people kind of come out of Gain Sight into, you know, move up their, their way in Gain Sight and move on and, and do amazing things. Um, is that. In a deliberate way that you do that, or is that just you happen to hire amazing people and they, you know, they, they just crush it, you know, like
Nick: I think, I think, I think it's, there's some luck. I don't think, I think we just are lucky that we've had some great people. But, um, it's a bit of, you know, probably a self reinforcing thing. You get some people and you get more people want to work there. And if you have a culture that's strong, people want to work there.
So I think there's some of that. I think there's some element of, I forgot to mention this before, some element where once somebody's in a company, they learn a lot and then they are qualified for another job. Uh, and, and then there's [00:26:00] some element where the brand of the company helps somebody get another job, right?
Like in other words, that's, you know, you hiring somebody and if they're. Resume says they worked at Snowflake or something. You know, you're just more likely to be like, Oh, I'll take that meeting. Right. So there's some of that. I think, um, the thing we've done, maybe the two things that we've done more consciously, one of them is that Gainsight is a place that it's about grit.
It's about grinding it out. It's not, we have never had the like, We're snowflake or we're the, like, I wish, but we're not. And so we don't have this like massive tailwind that just makes us, it's more like grinding it out. I think, you know, the grind too. Right. And so I think the grinders actually learn a lot.
You know, you learn, you probably learn in some company with like unfettered success, but you may not, you may not learn. You may not, you may even think you learned, but really what you had is like a tailwind to your back. You know, we, we both probably had experiences hiring people from the like big tech companies and they just didn't have that grit.
And so I actually, I love hiring [00:27:00] people where they worked at like a company that was successful, but not just some crazy outlier success, because that means they were able to just grind it out every day. I'd like to have them had some success on the resume. So just if all the companies fail, that's like the harder thing because they never learn.
But I love it if they've just grounded out. The last thing we've done, which I'm a big believer in. Is, um, celebrate people on the way out. Um, and that's, I think something's really both. It matters to me personally, cause I want to, these relationships matter. There's some companies where the person leaves and the CEO, like basically won't talk to them anymore or whatever's upset at them.
And you know, when I, when I, somebody I talked to you two days ago, who's like an amazing person, been in Gates a long time and she's leaving. And I said, I said, do the same thing I do every time. First of all, thank I do. I tried to do calls with people and they're leaving. I said, number one, thank you.
Number two, congratulations. Number three, you know, what can we do to make this company even better for the other employees? Uh, that's it. I'm not going to be like, Hey, [00:28:00] why are you leaving? Blah, blah, blah. I'm not gonna make them feel bad. And so then what happens? They leave. They, they post on LinkedIn, the new job, some companies or some CEOs be like, Oh, I better not comment on that.
Cause other people will see that they left. I, you can see, I commented on almost every single
alumni that.
Yeah, you know, a lot of people probably notice and they're like, Oh, wow, that person left Gainsight, but eventually you're like, Oh, yeah, people leave company. I mean, like, who's besides suckers like me, who are going to work here forever? So, like, I just have come to peace, by the way, for the CEOs watching. I think there is like a human thing that I've had to internalize. Um, I had this analogy in my head, actually randomly, it was like a dream, which again shows me the personal problems I had, but I had a dream and it was basically like, I'm this like railroad conductor on a train and I'm driving this train and then all the employees are coming on the train and doing amazing things for us, but [00:29:00] eventually they get to their destination and they leave the train because they're, on the train to get somewhere and the somewhere isn't.
Just being on the train. And so eventually I realized, you know what, eventually everyone will leave Gainsight Every single person. There'll be new people, but there's nobody that'll be here, and it's possible that nobody will be here as long as I am. Although I could easily get fired, you know, so that can happen too.
But, um, the, that's a bit of a psychic, emotional thing you have to sort of like, I think I've had to process in my head. It's kind of lonely. Um, you know, you're like, oh wow, like I'm, this is, I'm the one that's on this train, you know? And again, somebody else will take over the train eventually. Um, I hired a president who's now feels like a true, the guy I was saying was a big hire that's very successful so far.
It feels like the first person that it's actually like in the, in the drive, you know, the front of the train with me. But, um, it is a thing that you have to sort of process, but I think. To make people feel bad about leaving the train is the wrong idea. least from my perspective.
David: I agree with that. I mean, early in my [00:30:00] career, I feel like when people left, I took it truly personally. Like, actually actually personally. Like, this is an attack on me, and I took it personally. I'm not gonna talk to them. I'm not gonna, you know, help them. I'm not gonna, and then you do realize. I mean, in real life, who's staying at companies for 10 years,
and you do realize how it all comes back around. You know, when
I, when I went through and interviewed some of the best people we ever had, you know, at BetterCloud, they all somehow found the company through another person that may have worked at the company, interviewed at the company, whatever the case may be.
And. You do realize like, yeah, the human piece of it. It's it's it's not about You or me or the other ceo or the it's it's um, so I I'm I'm with you
Nick: It's interesting. Two other quick comments on it. Like one comment, one anecdote. So the comment is, um, another thing to, I guess, over time, get confident in. If you're like, if you're a tiny startup, like, you know, honestly, [00:31:00] person leaving does have a pretty big impact. As you get bigger, um, people leaving, like you really miss them as human beings.
And there is some impact. Honestly, if you said, Nick, like, how many people have left Gainsight over? I mean, over the number that statistically the number of people that have left Gainsight over 11 years is a huge number, just because like, even if
you're 50%, right? Thousand people plus. And if you said like, oh, how many of those where it's like, oh, my God, like, you never like, it really was a huge setback. I don't know, like five? Like, I mean, it's not a huge number and it's because companies become more resilient over time. Like the whole point is that somebody can leave and sign in. It's not a bad thing. And then we on the, on the beneficiary side, you're right. Like all the alumni or the people around us, like drive the whole business, you know, they become customers, they become, you know, uh, they come back to Gainside, they refer somebody in, you know, we have a, um, it's a totally random story.
I'm looking for an executive in a certain role and I, um, I, there's this person we were trying [00:32:00] to get to, and she, um, she just politely declined, right? And not because of GameSight, she's like, I'm too, I'm happy about it. She was, like, having drinks with her neighbor who happens to be, like, a webinar contractor for us.
And the webinar contractor was like, oh my god, GameSight culture is so amazing. And that's why this senior executive is now re engaged in our search. It's crazy.
every single human being you touch could actually like have a huge impact your business for the better or the worse.
So
David: Yeah. Um, so when we talk about team, one of the things I've, I've called you about before, um, is chief of staff role and, and, uh, and you've, you've given me some advice on that. You've written about EA roles. Can you talk a little bit about that? Cause I, I think for me, those two roles were at different times, but those two roles, I think changed my, My way of operating, but maybe my personal life as
well, you my God. All of it. Yeah. Let me start with EA. So Erica Mansfield is my, [00:33:00] uh, my EA for, thank God for eight years. Um, And I think most CEOs realize like, it's like the most important job. Like it's just, you get a good EA, hold on to her or him forever. And by the way, a lot of CEOs, like they'll go to the next job and they'll bring that EA.
Nick: And by the way, like sometimes I know some CEOs who've literally What if they've had some financial success? They literally personally pay for their EA in between the jobs to make sure she's not, or he is not going to get a
new job. So this is why I'm important. I was joked too on my team. I'm like, you know, I'm the second most important person in Gatesight.
The most important person is Erica. If we ever need to like fire a whole bunch of people, make me, make me the second to last person to be fired. Keep Erica, she can run it. And, and I think that, you know, each person, what they need from their EA is, is uh, is unique. But I would just tell a CEO, if you're not, if you're like in a world of like frustrated with your EA or they're not great, you got to move on really quickly.
And if they're really amazing, [00:34:00] hold on to them with everything you got, every single resource, you know, pay them a lot of money, like everything, treat them well, give, you know, every single thing you can do for that EA, do it.
David: So on the EA, on the EA front, I mean, Erika, in your example, you know, you've worked with her for so many years. I was talking to her about this podcast.
She basically could tell me everything you were going to say because she knows you so well. Um, but how do you,
how do you operate now? Like in a day to day, you know, is there some cadence to, you know, does she give you a document every morning that says, this is what you have today?
Is it just a flow that you're in? You know, is
Nick: Yeah, here's a couple things that we do. Um, and a lot of it's flow, like you said. Um, one thing is actually color coding the calendar. It's huge. Like it actually, I have, you know, red is existing customers, like kind of blue is prospects. Green is interviews. Another kind of color is internal meetings. And that actually is super helpful visually for [00:35:00] me to just even know what's happening and for, for Erica too, cause there's certain things that we do for each one, you know, for customers and prospects, there's kind of a prep process, right.
For, for interviews, making sure the recruiter knows what's going on. So there's like a color coding has a huge effect for us. There's a, like I mentioned, there's a prep process over time. She knows, you know, who to go to for different types of meetings that she to prep me on. It's not a document. It's actually all in the calendar.
So like In an invite, there's like a double invite. For example, the one we're doing now, there's a second invite internal that has all the questions you were going to ask me as an example. So that's, it's all like everything's in the calendar, which is real. And I love that. I don't go anywhere else not to go to a Google doc or something.
And then, um, a lot, you know, obviously we Slack like continuously all the time. Um, she's very good at all my people are good, good at all my cryptic responses. Often the response for efficiency is. Like, yes. Um, uh, there's not even a, not even the effort of typing Y E S. [00:36:00] And I will say that that's actually really helpful is your EA and you have like a instant, immediate and like low effort communication process so that he or she always knows what's going on.
So obviously, you know, sometimes it's text, if it's more time sensitive. Um, yeah, I think one thing that also be really comfortable with is just having your EA, just manage your life. Like just, there's a lot of balancing, you know? So on my calendar, it has like, you know, my. commitments to my kids or everything's there.
And so that Erica will know, Hey, yeah, Nick, you can't really fly this trip to Europe because you've got this thing going
on. Right.
Dance recital, whatever it is. Right. And so everything is there and it's incredibly valuable. The chief of staff, because I think this is like a triumvirate of chief of staff, DA and CEO, chief of staff is varied a lot of gainsight over the years in terms of like, it's like kind of.
Because it's like, whatever the CEO needs to get done. Right? That's kind [00:37:00] of theoretically
David: Mm hmm.
Nick: thing or whatever. In the early days, my chiefs of staff were basically mostly former, like two years out of school, banking, consulting. I think all of the first three or four were that profile. And then they all kind of came into the company and then eventually they took on other jobs, which is amazing.
Like one of our chief staff became our head of sales ops for quite a while. Uh, one actually still at Gainsight, and he's our head of FP& A, uh, years and years and years later, uh, he's amazing. Um, you know, but then some of them have gone on. My, the, the sort of all time go, you know, uh, Allison Pickens was like
my, you met Allison, right?
And she was my chief staff and she was our. Director of something. Then she was our head of customer success. Then she was CCO, then she was CO, and then she started her own venture fund. Right. And she's doing amazing. We just emailed yesterday. And, um, and so, you know, there's an amazing opportunity for people to go out and do things as well.
It's a great role, but then I evolved the spec. So then my next one was more an [00:38:00] experienced person named Robin Merritt, who's now my chief people officer, and she's freaking probably the best person I've ever hired in my life. And, um, and so that became somebody who is a little bit more experienced. She came from a, uh, comms background.
Box. So she had sort of done that type of role. And then my current one, Erin, is actually again, more comms kind of person. She was doing it internally and then she became my chief of staff. So I think you have to kind of figure out like the reason it was more comms now is because so much of what I do at this scale is podcasts and presentations. and
you know, and so I have kind of that. I have a separate person, so it's actually probably four people in this thing, configuration, who's my head of strategy. And so she's the one, her name's Megha, that does, um, the strategic planning, the OKR equivalent, you know, that
David: Oh, okay. Is that a new role? Is that
Nick: a new world.
I used to have like my chief of staff do it, but now it's just become more complicated and important and you need somebody who's really deep. So MAGA is a firm of consultants. So what I have now is I've got [00:39:00] MAGA strategy. I've got Aaron, chief of staff. I've got Erica. My EA and then actually in sort in, in this group too, I think you can't separate out your chief people officer cause that person's sort of so tied into all this too.
So Rob and my chief people officer. So that's, that's my ride or die crew. Honestly, that's the, they all know that like if I did another company, uh, at some point there, they're my, like the first calls that I make, uh, I would work with all of them again in a heartbeat. So.
David: of those four role of those roles Which is the one that you would hire for first when if you were a 50 person company right now?
Nick: Yeah, it's funny. Um, I would hire an EA, a great EA. Now, I know some companies, they like avoid hiring until later, and I respect the like thriftiness, I really do. I think in many cases, you're shooting yourselves in the foot. Like if the CEO is working on their expense reports or their Booking travel or whatever, or they're not prepared for a meeting.
Like, I just think you're just doing yourself a [00:40:00] disservice. You're really, then I'd go chief of staff. Then I go strategy, you know, chief people. Also, you, you need an HR person no matter what. It's just like the Sydney Rooney at 50 is probably just a director or something. So,
David: Yeah. I, I, the EA role for me was one that I was trying to be thrifty and not, and not, not invest in that. And it was one of our investors, it was Excel actually, who, when I was there and I was like redoing one of our meetings and then I was. Had to change my flight. And they said, you do all of this stuff.
And I said, yeah, of course I do. And they're like, well, why don't you get an ea? I said, an ea an ea. It's expensive. It's this. And they're like, they're like, please, please, for our sake, get yourself an ea. And I went through, I went through one that was really bad. Um, and then I got Danny who was with me for, you know, seven years.
Same kind of story, you know,
where at the end
it's, it's an amazing, I tell people, you know, the, the CEO of us. 60 person company who's doing their calendar and like trying to rearrange their calendar every day. It like it's just and people just you get [00:41:00] emails from someone and there's no barrier between
you know, the it's it's uh, So I'm with you on that and I think that's an important one that I talk to people about and I think a lot of people feel like no, it's 50 people 60 it's it's too early and it's like man that is a game with the right person.
That changes the game.
Nick: it's all totally does a hundred percent.
David: Um, let's, before we transition, I want to talk about you and your, your background. Um, but before we do that, what, what are you most excited for when it comes to the future of Gainsight?
Nick: Um, pretty straightforward AI. I mean, who isn't, who isn't going to answer that way? In 2024, AI is completely going to reshape everything from customer success to software, to business, to humanity, all levels. I can't control all those, but if you just look at like the way software companies work and a lot of our Target market, not only, but a lot of it is [00:42:00] software companies and B2B more generally.
And if you look at B2B companies, just the way they work with the number of roles, and you probably felt this, David, at your companies like CSM, Salesperson, Account Manager, SE, TAM, Services, and Support. And you're like, Oh my God, like first off, it's super inefficient, but also the customer experience sucks.
And also the employees don't love it because it's like this very like frenetic and disorganized thing. So I'm super excited about AI, like letting us get things more efficient, making things more self service, pooling knowledge so everyone has a kind of idea of what's going on. Being able to collapse roles because you don't have these silos of knowledge anymore.
So like reshaping companies through AI is going to happen and I'm working hard to make a big part of that story.
David: It's awesome. Awesome. All right. Let's talk about you. Tell me where, where are you from originally?
Nick: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
David: What, uh, where do you live today?
Nick: Palo Alto, California. Still a Steeler fan,
David: Um, What did your parents do [00:43:00] growing up?
Nick: , he was an immigrant from India, uh, actually grew up super poor. Uh, came here with like nothing in 69 and went to school. And then, then he, um, worked in some kind of randomly kind of got into the early days, like technology, like long time ago and worked at some kind of tech companies, bigger ones, and then he went to, Start.
He actually went to a couple of startup company companies that were okay. It didn't really take off. And then he eventually like started like a bootstrap, small computer consulting company. And that's basically what I kind of grew up around. So I kind of grew up around a small family run business. It wasn't anything big.
It was very middle class lifestyle, but. Still get to see all that. A lot of computers, a lot of programming, a lot of rebuilding my own computers. It's for you to say that's cool. It means you're nerdy too, by the way. So I don't think most people thought I was cool back then, but I appreciate the sentiment, David.
A
David: think it's because of that that you're doing what you're doing today?
Nick: percent. Yeah, no doubt.
David: Was he intentional about kind of having you see the [00:44:00] business and what he
was think, I He always wanted me to work in his business, like the family business. So I think there was some, something there. I think it was more though, just like literally, I think he brought home all these computers and I remember my first computer on the IBM PC. Most people wouldn't have no idea what that is, but, um, I remember programming on it and stuff and I just loved it.
Nick: And so, yeah, I think it was like ambient exposure versus a intentional. I don't know, but for sure.
David: Yeah. Yeah. What, um, what was your first job ever?
Nick: would love to say I work at the lifeguard or I was You know, whatever. I, my first job was programming like an internship, programming computers in, in like high school, there was University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. It's a huge like hospital system and they had an MRI machine and they needed some software that like controlled the MRI machine.
Somehow they're like, let's give this to the intern. Like, what are they thinking? So yeah, that was fun. But that was the first time I saw a web browser too. So that was pretty. Interesting. Like somebody [00:45:00] said, Oh, this is thing called Mosaic, which for folks that don't know is like the first Yeah.
Yeah,
David: Wow. Wow. That's, um, do you, do you think you knew that you wanted to be a CEO or like, do you know, you knew you wanted to work in tech, I assume, given
everything you just
Nick: be. No, I'm pretty sure it's kind of, it's funny. I wish I could have some like story about the serendipity, but randomly I was with some friends and stuff like that. I was like, you know, they're like, Oh, what did you want to do when you grew up? And I was like, I think it's what I wanted when we do now, let me see.
And so randomly on my phone, I brought up Dropbox and somehow through some miracle, I like have the essays for my college application. In like some, I don't know how many computers and how many file formats and somehow, and I, and I, I like, I ended up like finding something to even open the file. Anyways, it said like, I want to say like, what do you want to be doing in 20 years?
I'll like be a CEO of a tech company or whatever. And yeah, yeah. That's what I'm [00:46:00] doing. Apparently what I wanted to be is what I'm
doing. It's pretty rare. to post, you have to post that.
David: that That's that's, you
have to post that. That's,
Nick: It's embarrassing, but I'll find it. Yeah. I'm it's like one of those like letters you send to yourself, you know, and like open up 20 years later.
David: Um,
that's a great, what, what do you think in your career? Um, what was your, Biggest break, what was?
Nick: Easy. Um, I was working for this company called Veritas Software and it became Symantec. You know, Enrique, who used to be a CEO of Symantec a long time ago, now a great investor. And, um, I, we had bought a company and it was like a small business. And, um, my boss, like, uh, was just such a great boss and Mike Spicer.
He's like a legendary investor now. Sutter Hill, he was a snowflake guy and others. And Mike said, Hey, we bought this business. You want to come run the product management team for it? And, um, and so I was like an individual contributor, [00:47:00] product manager at that point or something like that. And he's like, you want to, you want to take this on?
And so I went to run this. It was like, um, Uh, business in England, great business. And, uh, but I was living in San Francisco, so I kind of like fly there a lot. And, um, I started doing, I guess, doing well. Then the second break though, which is kind of funny how life is. I'm Ryan PM and there's this other guy running engineering.
And the other guy, for whatever reason, was totally not doing a good job. And they fired him and they didn't have a plan. So they're like, Hey, Nick, you want to run both of them? And then that, Cheryl was like, sure. And so then I, then it turned into like, Oh, now you're the general manager of this. And then that business did really well.
So you talk about the lucky breaks. My boss was like, Oh yeah, you know, what's the bet on me? The person I'm collaborating with was not going to job got fired. Right. And then the business did really well. And then that translated into, okay, Nike. Started a company, be a CEO, whatever. So yeah, that was it.
That's the Wow,
David: yeah, it's and when I ask people this question it everyone has that break, you know, everyone has [00:48:00] that that break It's not it's you know, unless you start your own company when you're 22 years old or whatever, you know And you still have some break somewhere along the way but but um
Nick: Yeah. It's funny because when people, sometimes when people and their bosses fired or their peers, it's natural as a human thing to be like sad and maybe scared a little bit. And then, but you forget, like there's a lot of opportunity when that happens. So.
David: Exactly. Um, what, what is it deep down, like deep, deep down for you that drives you, that motivates, you know, to get up every day, to do the, you know, to hustle, to fly all over and meet with all the customers? Like, what is it that, that
Nick: No. Now you getting, now you gotta call my therapist. Um, so my, I've got a great CEO coach. Uh, so it's, you really, you have to have a team. So I have, I'm fortunate to have a really good coach, which I'd highly recommend having a coach. And, you know, we've done a lot of work on that exact question together.
And, um, there's a tool called Enneagram, ENN, EEA, GRAM. It's like a, it's kinda like Myers-Briggs. You take a, you take a test and you get a number one through nine. I'm a three, which [00:49:00] is basically called Achiever and Achiever. The theory behind Enneagram is like, it's a lot about your childhood. And unfortunately, like what happened was I've got like, I mean, not unfortunate.
I have amazing, or my dad's passed by, had amazing dad and have amazing mom, immigrant parents, classic, like. In addition to having all these ambitions for my job, they have the poster of, you know, the Harvard poster above my bed, the Einstein poster above my bed. It was very clear. It wasn't subtle at all.
My mom was very, still is, very intentional. She texts me all the time. She texted me a couple days ago and said, Hey, I'm watching the Tour de France on TV. First of all, I'm like, why are you watching the Tour de France, mom? You don't even know what that is. But then she says, are you, um, are you going to be able to do it one day?
Meaning riding it one day. So I had all this, like, parental energy around achievement, which especially for immigrant children or others, people relate to that. And then that, um, what I get on the Enneagram is a three, which means you believe your self worth is about your achievement. [00:50:00] Like how people perceive whether you're successful or not is what drives your self worth.
Now over time, like I've tried to develop that or say, Hey, I have my own self worth regardless of whether Gainsight is successful or whatever. But it's also good to know that that's like the thing that is there. Some people are driven by other things. This Enneagram model, like they're one of the numbers is called is eight.
Which is like being driven by just believing, you know, you're doing the right thing. And then one is being driven by always doing, being perfect. And two is being driven by helping people. And seven is driven by trying new things. So I think understanding, and Enneagram's pretty good at this, like what drives you is actually quite helpful.
David: Hmm. I I actually have not done that before. I'm curious what I, I may be in a similar,
Nick: do it and send me a similar, fun to talk about it. yeah. it.
David: Yeah. That's, um, okay. Uh, let, let me, uh, could just a couple more questions. If you know, what is one [00:51:00] thing you've learned, a new thing you've learned about yourself in the last year?
Nick: Yeah. Huh. I'm a lot, uh, pulled. Some of this is definitely a beer conversation, but, uh, I, I've gone through this thing and my, my chief people officer, Robin, who I mentioned is amazing. And we're really close. She said, uh, you're finally a Nick 2. 0 and Nick 2. 0. Um, you know, some folks probably can tell, like I, the stuff about like connecting with people, caring about people, it's sort of, at least at this point comes pretty natural to me.
Um, but there's another thing you have to do as a CEO is be really candid. Like make the tough, candid decisions. And that's something that I have developed on about myself in some ways, being totally vulnerable. I went through a lot of stuff personally. And that like led me to almost like, this just is naturally happening, which is like becoming more candid, not holding back, uh, you know, even funnily enough.
Um, [00:52:00] I was such a prude. I would never, ever, ever swear. I would say. H E double hockey sticks, right? Literally. And as a 40 something dude, like, I would say that. And now I'm much more comfortable swearing, because even swearing is like, like, just being more candid about things. And I don't get angry or upset or anything, but I'm just much more candid.
And I learned that that was really holding me back. And how, um, that lack of candor was a fear of people not liking me. Um, and that's certainly like a huge drive. Actually, despite how extrovert I might be now, I was very lonely as a kid, didn't have any friends or anything. And so like, I had this like huge, like ongoing desire that people don't really like me and fear.
And so kind of getting like developing awareness of that, developing my own ability to be candid, comfortable, whether people like me or not, I'm trying to do the right thing. That type of thing is, has helped a lot. I always tell people I gained sight, like my job is not, There's thousands of people at Gainsight.
My job is not any one of them. Like it's not, like as much as I care about each [00:53:00] one of them, that's not my job. My job is Gainsight. I'm going to defend Gainsight to the core. Even if it means parting ways with somebody being super candid with somebody or whatever, I'm going to defend Gainsight. That's the thing I'm responsible for.
Not any one person, not even including myself, by the way. So,
David: It's interesting because, you know, I think, I kind of agree. I feel that it's exhausting to not be candid.
Nick: oh my God, now that I'm being candid, I'm kind of a monster now. So I'm nice about it, but the candid monster has been unleashed. So
David: It's, it's, uh, it's an interesting, someone else said to me, another CEO said what they kind of have learned or their advice is like to be unapologetic more because at the end of the day, you know, you're, you are the CEO. And to your point, you care about the, you can't really question whether you care about the company, you know, and, uh,
Nick:
I love that. Exhausting. And all the people I've mentioned, my new president, my type of strategy, Robin, my chief of foster, they're such badasses. And they all are like, [00:54:00] they want Nick 2. 0. And like, every time I put something on Slack, that's a message to my leadership team. When I put some nice CDs in front of it, like it's, it'll be something like this, it'll be like, You know, this is just my opinion and I think you're all working too hard and blah, blah, blah.
So I'll just say this, but it's just my opinion. But you know, everyone did everything wrong in this thing, but you know, it's just my two cents, right? And Robin's like, cut out the beginning, cut out the end, and just say you did everything wrong in this, like in cheese. And so it's so funny, but it's disarming to people.
So it's, it's a, it's an adjustment.
David: what, uh. Let's quickly just give us a little bit of the Taylor Swift
Nick: Ha!
David: Love that you have and I think Bruce Springsteen also Is give us a little bit of that backstory Mm
Nick: And I'm having a weird thing where I'm not like that good at many things, but I can absolutely, probably in my brain, like, give you the lyrics for like 10, 000 songs or something like that. And I just, I mean, I, I'm like, I'm [00:55:00] really good at naming that tune or whatever.
Play that, play that one note and I will tell you the song. And it's across crazy genres from like, to Gen Z music today, to Chapel Rowan, to Taylor Swift, to Bruce Springsteen, to like Beatles, Led Zeppelin, jazz, classical, like I love all country, everything, all music. And so I'm just, I, it's for me, it's, I'm one of those people that like music, especially the lyrics really matter.
And so, um, I think I love art in general of reading. I love movies, musicals, et cetera. And it's the art people put the heart into it. And when songwriters, singer and songwriter, they put the heart into it. Some people are great singers. and performers and they don't write the music. Like Beyonce is amazing.
Right. Or Mariah Carey, actually, yeah, Mariah Carey too, she didn't write, but you know, Taylor Swift, Bruce, what they do is they write their heart and their soul into the song and you read the lyrics and it's, first of all, they're amazing lyrics, they're poetry, but they're just, their heart and soul is in it, and I'm the person who.
Somehow late at night, I'm listening to music. I'm Googling [00:56:00] like the meaning of it and I'm on the Reddit thread, people analyzing the meaning of the Taylor Swift song. So yeah, I can tell you. And by the way, whenever somebody ever questions me, if I'm a real Swifty, cause I'm a 47 year old dude, way out of their demographic.
I just pull my sleep up and I just show them this, which you, you probably can't read. Well, you probably can't read if they're listening. They definitely can't read, but this is a Taylor Swift lyric. It says to live for the hope of it all. It's a tattoo and it's from August. I've heard one of my, my favorite song and on my favorite album Folklore.
So yes, I am a real fan. Two
David: many of her era tours concert, you know, how many of the concerts
Nick: two so far, one planned in November. Trying to figure out how I can go to one or two more. I've been to, on this current, uh, tour, I've been to two Bruce Springsteen concerts in his current tour, and I'm going to one more. Um, if, if there's any human in the world who is in the Venn diagram of three heiress concerts and
three Bruce Springsteen concerts, because those demographics are very different, it's me.
David: Have you ever met either of them?
Nick: Oh my [00:57:00] God. No, because first of all, that'd be amazing. And second of all, I think I'd die on the spot. So I, it would be very different though. Bruce, I think is like, he's, he's actually like the most down to earth dude in the world. Taylor's like a true celebrity. So I've heard, I actually know, I know a guy who he grew up in Jersey and Bruce is famously from Jersey and he worked in a bar in high school, which I don't know how you work in a bar in high school.
That's a whole different thing. Um, and he said, Bruce Springsteen come every day and like, Like he just hit the bar and by the way, Bruce would give him a hundred dollar tip every day. Um, so I'm sure that kid is working hard. Yeah. So anyways, Bruce is really approachable. I would love to meet Bruce.
David: that would be amazing. Okay. We'll try to work on that. Um, all right, cool. Nick, tell me, tell us, you know, if people want to connect with you, learn more about Gainsight, how, how do they do that?
Nick: Yeah. I mean, LinkedIn, you can probably, you probably can't even avoid me on LinkedIn if many of you probably want to, but I post a lot pretty much every day on there. So, uh, feel free. And you can send me a LinkedIn message or whatever.
David: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, Nick. I [00:58:00] really appreciate you making the time to share your story. And I really appreciate just how transparent and vulnerable you've been. Thank you.
Nick: Thank you, David. It was really fun.
David: Awesome. And for those of you that are listening, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. You know, there's a lot to take away from this, whether it's creating the mission driven culture or being candid or how to create community.
Um, so much here. So would love if you shared this with your network and, um, thank you. And we'll see you next time for another episode of Not Another CEO Podcast.
