Unlocking Business Growth: Leveraging Gen Z Mindset with Cade Proulx - 102

In this episode of the D2Z podcast, host Brandon Amoroso and guest Cade Proulx dive into the power of leveraging the Gen Z mindset for business growth. From insights on transitioning clients between e-commerce platforms to discussions on process optimization and industry innovation, this episode offers valuable strategies for entrepreneurs looking to scale their businesses effectively. Tune in to gain actionable insights and unlock the potential for growth in your own business journey.

Timestamps

👋 Introduction of Cade Proulx and endlane (00:00:00)

📝 Overview of Sendlane's implementation program and its purpose (00:01:39)

🚀 Importance of scaling quickly and leveraging the agency community (00:03:02)

🏗️ Building a successful process and predicting growth for scalability (00:05:22)

💼 Tailoring processes and pricing based on agency and client needs (00:08:00)

🔍 Importance of questioning and refining processes for optimization (00:09:54)

❓ Challenges agencies face with new tools and technologies in the market (00:11:04)

💡 Setting expectations and providing value to clients during implementation (00:14:19)

🗣️ Communication, feedback, and setting expectations for successful migration (00:16:13)

🛒 Observations on the changing landscape of e-commerce tools and platforms (00:18:03)

📢 Importance of providing direct feedback to solutions providers (00:20:54)

🔄 Transition from Carro to Sendlane (00:25:21)

🔍 Analyzing Customer Experience (00:25:50)

🏢 Building Processes and Culture (00:26:43)

📈 Future Growth Plans (00:30:49)

🏗️ Setting Foundation for Growth (00:32:56)

Cade Proulx

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mateo-velayos/

Sendlane - https://www.sendlane.com/

Website - https://cadeproulx.com/

Brandon Amoroso:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonamoroso/

Web - https://brandonamoroso.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bamoroso11/

X - https://twitter.com/AmorosoBrandon

Scalis.ai - https://scalis.ai/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

I'm Brandon Amoroso and this is the D2Z Podcast building and growing your business from a Gen Z perspective. Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning into D2Z, a podcast about using the Gen Z mindset to grow your business. I'm Gen Z entrepreneur Brandon Amoroso, founder and president of retention as a service agency Electric, as well as the co-founder of Scaless, and today I'm joined by my good friend, cade Pru, who oversees implementation at Sendlane. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Hey, thanks for having me, brandon, pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:39

You are one of the few repeat D2Z podcast guests, so you can now add that to your resume. Namaste, that's very cool man. So before we jump into things, can you give everybody who's listening a quick background on yourself and also what you're up to at Assembly?

Speaker 2: 0:57

Yeah, absolutely so. Quick background my sort of experience in the direct consumer technology world started over with Caro. I was one of the founding members of that company investor and I was with it for about eight years Left in the beginning of last year and got brought on to Senn Lane towards the end of last year, and in Senn Lane I had a couple of different functions. Initially I came on to do partnerships as a partner manager. Couple different functions. Initially I came on to do partnerships as a partner manager, kind of got more built into this new implementation program that we've recently kicked off, and what's kind of cool about it is it's really something that I think a lot of businesses have wanted to do before, but it's incredibly difficult to pull off and the whole spirit of what we're trying to do is we're trying to be able to tap into our community. And so what SYNLANE's implementation program is, and what I lead out right now, is it's a way of tapping into our agency community to migrate over customers, predominantly from Klaviyo, attentive PostScript and, like Yotpo, over onto the SYNLANE platform. And so the way that it works is that you and agency get trained on everything you need to know around SYNLANE. We bring you into our system. You're part of the team. We bring you a client that's ready to go, get brought over into our platform and you do the actual sort of like technical configuration, the content migration, work with us there to support and guide and sort of direct the process around what is four to six weeks of absolute grabbing what you used to have and bring it over to the SendLink platform and setting you up for success. So you know it's a lot to do in a four to six week period but we get it done and people are really happy.

Speaker 2: 2:36

And it's really within the spirit of why we're trying to do this is we're trying to give our customers an excellent experience, matching them up with a professional agency that they can retain at the end of the day for services, and so for us it helps us. Really address, like, the number one problem that we're running into is like how do we scale really, really quickly? Because that's where we're at. You know, everything that's gone on with Klago, especially in the past month, with like kind of their more recent updates and news, has been good news for us. Really, for our sort of ethos and perspective. We want to lean into the agency community A lot about the product that we're building is for agencies, and so this is how we double down on what we sort of see and value as the centerpiece of what we're building within Sunlight.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Yeah, I think that's a really smart and strategic approach because, you know, for any of the Shopify apps that I've ever worked with, one of the biggest issues with them has been, you know, adoption of the product and actually using, like, all the features and functionality that exist within it.

Speaker 1: 3:43

And especially when you're in, like the SMB, even mid market territory, it's not realistic to assume that each one of those brands is going to have that expert who just lives and breathes, you know, sendlane.

Speaker 1: 3:54

You know, in our case, back in 2020, 2021, we were living and breathing Klaviyo, and so we, you know, did probably hundreds of migrations and implementations on on that product, um, which has obviously slowed down a lot over over the last you know, year in just the ecosystem as a whole. So the other thing that I've always thought about is, if you're a software and you have sort of a all-in-one like white glove service team and the product as well, what happens if you, you know, one of your clients gets matched up with somebody on the implementation team who you know maybe they don't like, or, you know, the migration doesn't go super well. Well, now they're churning from the product as a whole versus if they were using an agency or a freelancer, they're just going to move on to another freelancer or another agency. They're not going to change, yeah, from the software provider which, at the end of the day, is where the enterprise value is for the company. So I think it makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2: 4:50

Yeah, thanks, and I think for us too, it's really like the thing that gets to be so interesting is how do you create like really good process. That is the key to success within all of this is like how do you do something that really like not only takes into account the scale of your clients but also the scale of your agencies? And how do you predict out, you know what growth is going to look like, so that you can start a process around? Hey, how do we bring on another 10 agencies? How do we get them ready to go and what does that look like? How do you have a checks and balances sort of like system in place? And how do you get really good feedback loops?

Speaker 2: 5:23

And you know, whenever I start something new, I kind of go back to the same process of like what it's like to start a company is you use the lean startup methodology. Right, and lean startup methodology is like one of the best things to ever learn, because what it really teaches you is like mentality of Okay, cool, you have an idea. How do you take that idea and bring it to market for one way, shape form or another? And it starts off by you create a hypothesis and then you get feedback and then you pivot and then you iterate and you just do this constant refinement until you really feel like you've established what is product market fit. And so really similarly with this program one of the wonderful things about this everybody's excited about this. I mean, you talk to an agency about it and they're like I'm in, there's very little convincing to have to do.

Speaker 2: 6:09

It's actually this is something that agencies have been kind of knocking on our door and asking like hey, how do we get more involved with send lane? Like we're really like not having a great time with clavio right now. We're really angry at clavio. Our customers are getting priced out with clavioo. We need to come to Sendlane. What can we do together? And you know, to my teammates, credit Nick. He started to kind of hear a lot of this because he was having a lot of these conversations with the agents and he was like huh, well then, what is the way that we get to bring these two worlds together? And so you know, the biggest thing that I've found is people think they know Simline, but how do they actually get to know Simline for real?

Speaker 2: 6:47

And so it's sort of unfolded into this entire equation, which is every agency, like every store, does things a little bit different, right? They price things differently, they have different packages. If you ask one agency, would you consider a migration versus another agency, they're going to give you completely different answers. There's going to be a few commonalities, there's no doubt. But, like, think about it, you know it's a little bit of the Wild West when it comes to how Shopify stores are set up and email marketing, retention, marketing as a whole is done differently, depending on what your strategy is as an agency, and best practices all look differently.

Speaker 2: 7:19

So we had to kind of come in here and say, okay, what do definitions and checklists look like for clients? How do we get them to be successfully migrated over? What do we need? What does great look like? Okay, let's take a look at the agencies now. What do the agencies need to know within our standards and our process in order to become really successful, to bring these customers over over?

Speaker 2: 7:40

And so there's a lot of this not only process sort of matching, but also this package matching right, because an agency that comes in and has an email volume of, let's say, 3 million per month in terms of sends, we price things a little bit different than Klaviyo. We charge only for sends, not for list size, right? So taking a look at it under that lens, so 3 million versus 30 million, it's a different beast. So theirations is what we call flows are going to be set up very differently. It's going to be probably a little bit more complex. How do we account for that? How do we account for the integrations? How do we account for the lists, the segments, right? These are very important factors and so, kind of getting to the bottom line, there are so many elements around what makes a program successful that it's just important to hone in on the core contingencies of your program and your definitions so that you can kind of build everything out from there.

Speaker 1: 8:36

Yeah, the process of building, I think, is important in any company, yeah, whether you're an agency or a software business, and not having single choke points when it comes to human capital either. You want as many things to be I wouldn't say cookie cutter because one of the things that I actually think is a downside to process is if people just get so comfortable with them and they don't start to question the processes that are taking place and then you end up with, you know, a whole lot of people that are very confused why shit is done the way that it's actually done. When sort of the message is put out there that like, look, we have this system in place and these processes because that's just needed for scale, but like, say something, if you think it could be done better, because it's pretty easy to change the process, you just update it and then everybody can benefit from your idea. That's going to streamline this more A hundred percent. We were super process oriented at Electric, but I tried to make sure that it was clear to the team that nothing is set in stone. It was clear to the team that you know nothing is set in stone and you're actually expected to question the process and to question. You know all the things that we're doing on a daily basis and whether or not there's ways that they could be done in a more optimal fashion.

Speaker 1: 10:00

But I think the hardest part for you know, as an agency, you're bombarded by new tools and technologies all the time, especially over the last two years. It feels like there's, you know, 85 different Shopify apps that come up every week that do something sort of similar to an existing partner that you may or may not already have, which is totally different than back in, you know, 2018, 2019, where a lot of the tools that we were getting started with were like totally net new to our tech stack. So, like when we got started with Rebuy, we weren't using anything else at that time that would give us the functionality that they gave us. Now we're in a place where nothing really is like new, and so if I'm a tech company, I'm thinking about how do I get an agency to have their first client on our product, and I think the first one is always the most difficult.

Speaker 1: 10:46

But once you have the first, then it becomes a realistic, like viable option for referrals to come the other way as well, because the team's getting more comfortable with the product. They're, you know, more familiar with the way that it works. You have that first proof point and use case and then from there you can scale into. You can scale into a much larger partnership. But it's sort of genius to just be like, hey, here you go, here's your first Senneling client, we're giving it to you, and that agency isn't going to take that client and be like, oh yeah, by the way, actually you should use this other tool instead. That's crazy. They're going to see it as an opportunity to dig in and invest in the relationship and grow with that particular tech company.

Speaker 2: 11:24

Well, I mean, that's exactly what we're hearing too, brandon, which is like, hey, we want to bring up it's wild and this is going to sound crazy, but agencies are literally telling us we hate Klaviyo. How do we bring all of our customers over to Sendlane? I'm not kidding, that's not an exaggeration. I hear that multiple times throughout the week and that's exciting. But what's so important to me, and that I kind of see right now, is that Sendlane truly is in the spotlight within retention marketing right now, and I love that and I'm so excited about it and that's why I'm so focused on, like, what does good and what is great really look like, and focusing on those definitions, because I want to help the agencies come over to Sendlane. It just has to happen. The agencies come over to send lane. It just has to happen the right way.

Speaker 2: 12:04

There's a sort of misconception around sin lane and klaviyo in that like, oh, they're basically the same platforms. Well, yeah, we do a lot of the same things, but the way that you actually construct things, especially from a workflow perspective, the end result is the same, but how you get there is a little bit different right, and that's just because we do things differently at sunlight, right. We're built by a different group of people. We think about things a little bit different. We've got features that you know, klaviyo, doesn't that really sort of like augments that experience around precision, around deliverability. And so that's when we started to kind of go, okay, wait a minute, let's take a different approach with, with, with the training sort of like Academy that we have, right. And so we created this like multi-tiered approach, which is like, if you're interested, great, you go through, you know like content training, which is okay, you take a look at you know the differences between understanding something versus klaviyo, right off the cuff. You got to understand that. Take a look at automations. How do you build automations? Um, how does the tagging system work, which is something that sunland is sort of famous for, which is leveraging the tagging to build your own sort of like retention algorithm on message deliverability. So that's been really interesting.

Speaker 2: 13:09

And so you kind of start at this like gradient, where you go, okay, here are the basics, give me feedback. And then, as we get the feedback on it, we do these breakout sessions between you know, the agency, and usually our founder, jimmy, to do a one-on-one, and what's really cool about that is they actually get to know Jimmy, have a one-on-one with them. He answers the questions, gives them a demo on any of the features that they're still wanting to get further clarity on, and then they come back to us and they do a little bit more, and then we have that same feedback loop system and so we get them into a good place where we say, okay, good, you feel ready, let's bring in your first client. And that's kind of like that magic moment where we're in slack, we're all together and we're like hey, I want to introduce you to your new implementation partner, so and so from this agency and we do a big kickoff call. And what's been so interesting about that truly is not only is this like been such a such a point around process and why process is so important, and training and why training is so important, but setting expectations up the right way and setting up the value right. And one of the things that I kind of like experienced recently around this to kind of like like paint the picture around, like what this program was like is I sit in on every meeting, which is it's hard to do because it's not a lot of time in the day, but I do sit in on every meeting that there's a handoff between sales to implementation, right? So contact is signed, you're good to go. Everybody's in Slack.

Speaker 2: 14:27

I jump in and I say, hey, let's have a quick connect and just hang out for 30 minutes between me, one of my implementation managers and a client, and I get to know them and I talk to them. I find out where they're from, I found out what they're into, I find out a story about why they even started the brand in the first place and I try to really understand where are they in their journey within email marketing? Do they do the email marketing? Do they have a team that does the email marketing? Just help me understand that. And then I basically run them through what this implementation program is really about. Hey, over the next four to six weeks of implementation, here are the four phases and here's what goes into it and here's what you need to know and here's what you're going to be responsible for in this journey. Here's what your partner is going to be responsible for.

Speaker 2: 15:08

The thing I really hone in here is that, no matter what you do with us, we're gonna make sure that you're taken care of like we got you Right. And so what we tell people is like hey, look, you know, we're gonna be pairing you with an expert implementation agency. They've undergone hours of training, so when you come on board, you're going to be in good hands, and these people are expert email marketers, so they're going to be doing X, y and Z for you and if, at the end of your journey, you want to retain them, you totally can. Each one of these partners that come on board at Sendlane have a special offer for Sendlane clients. But if you say to me, cade, I really do need an agency because I'm wearing too many hats and I'm just not sure about this fit, it's okay. Like we've got a network of so many agency people that we can connect you with and we do that for you as well. So if it's not this one but there's another one that we can connect you with, well then we got you. But if, like, for example, you or the bandwidth or whatever it is, and you can't, you know, retain an agency partner, well then we actually do have a CS team that can put together a plan for you for the next 12 months and, kind of like, carry you through a success plan to get you to your retention goals.

Speaker 2: 16:13

And so it's about this communication and this feedback and setting these expectations up front so that they can understand what is this experience that they're about to embark on. And what's great about this is I find that every single time I do this and I talk to the customer about it, they get so excited. Brandon, I mean like genuinely. Sometimes people will show up with the camera off, kind of disengaged, kind of like all right, whatever procedural meeting, why do I got to be here by the end of it? Cameras are on, people are excited, they're asking me about the program they're going oh, this is really cool. About the program they're going oh, this is really cool. Like I can't wait to meet my partner. And that's the experience that we want to bring. We want this to be an exciting thing. You just had this incredible journey with one of our account executives for the past like two weeks or two months, whatever it was.

Speaker 2: 16:53

Let me make sure that you feel the value of that relationship as you're getting brought over to some lane. Nobody likes a weird cold handoff. You know that doesn't feel good to come onto a new platform and you just made a relationship with this. You know guy who brought you to this point and then you never see him again and then you're off with some strangers. That's lame dude. That's that's not. That's not how you do this and that's also not how we like to do things in like sunlight. In the first place, it's like why do people come to sunlight? Well, one, it's value, and two, it's because support is really good at sunlight. Those are the common complaints that we hear about, and so those are the things that we double down on to make sure that people get that with us. So, anyhow, I'm honestly so excited about this program and there's just so many good things happening. I could talk about this for hours.

Speaker 1: 17:39

Well, one of the I'll go back to one of your previous comments the sort of I haven't been in e-com for that long. Well, I guess it's getting kind of long at this point it's coming up on five, maybe six years but the thing that I've noticed is about like every year there's sort of a new app that everybody loves to hate and it can also be a category a category as well. But when things are really starting to take off between us and clavio, um, everybody hated attentive and you know, in postgres taking a lot of sms marketing share, because attentive was like you know, the big bad enterprise company that would send airpods to you know, its own team members, basically as sales outreach, because it was just spraying and praying all of its money everywhere and had a white glove team that really didn't work well with agencies, and that was probably you know three, four years ago at this point. Then it became, you know, yopo. You know everybody hates Yopo because Yopo has 19 different products and none of them are good. And you get onto this annual contract with them with all these different solutions that you know kind of work but don't work very well. And then it moved on to recharge. Everybody hated recharge for a good period there and moved off to, you know, skio or protection, or I mean there's like a thousand subscription apps at this point.

Speaker 1: 19:06

Um, and now, with Klaviyo going public, they're just at a size and scale that no other Shopify app has ever even touched, and so I can't even think of another Shopify app that's gone public, like a true Shopify app. You've got big companies for sure, like a Yotpo or Attentive, but they're all still private, and so they're dealing with a completely different set of constraints, but also just a whole different set of expectations as well. And you see that in the way that they develop product but also go out and target markets that are beyond e-commerce, because e-commerce is just a. You know markets that are beyond e-commerce because e-commerce is, you know, it's just a. In our little bubble here it seems giant, but if you look at the, you know the broader sort of market it's, it's tiny, and so things like you know, a square integration or, you know, entrance into net, new verticals, that's where they're going to get growth. And so you know, I'm sure in, I'm sure in six, nine, maybe 12 months, you know it'll be a new app that everybody is, you know, loving to hate at that point or a new you know type of of product.

Speaker 1: 20:19

But it's just been interesting to see you know the, the ebbs and flows, which is why I've just tried to remain as direct as possible in my feedback with any solutions provider ever. I think that's the only way that you can go about it. You know I have. I think so too. It has nothing to do with the.

Speaker 1: 20:37

You know the person itself, because people change companies. Obviously. You're at Caro, now you're at Sendlane. No, I can look at somebody like like Ben, who was at Attentive, then he was at Akendo and now he's doing his own thing. Yeah, exactly, there's no love lost between the interpersonal relationships if things sour or go very well with the particular tech, because let's not disillusion ourselves here in thinking that that person is the company. That's crazy. It really just comes down to what is the tool at that time that's best for the client that's going to set up my business for success with that merchant. I'm not going to go out of my way to recommend a solution because my buddy works at this particular company. That would be crazy.

Speaker 1: 21:23

But then the second thing is Jimmy, compared to a lot of the other email and sms marketing platform founders is very uh, vocal, like socially active. Um, yes, you can look at a retentioncom founder as another example or the post-pilot uh founder as examples of founders that are out there, you know, sort of shouting from the mountaintops on linkedin, twitter, et cetera, and really actively engaging. Whereas you look at Klaviyo, attentive, omnisend, you know you don't really see that same level of interaction or output, not to say that one is better than the other. But I think, as things get more and more sort of social media oriented and I see this a lot with the brands, like the e-com brands that are successful or aren't successful the ones that are are the ones that are founder led, who have that person, who's that voice for the company.

Speaker 1: 22:27

People, people shop a story. They shop, you know, because they relate to a person. I think the days of you know, like from a brand standpoint, you know Nike is Nike, so like that's a totally different example. You know people shop Nike, but now all the new startups that people are shopping from, they're shopping from it because the founder has a story that they can relate to and like that's why the product came to market. Like one of our former clients, emmy, you know their whole thing is around healthier ramen and that came out of an entire sort of childhood and background and family story around the product and people connect to that. If you removed the two Kevins from that business, it wouldn't be a business.

Speaker 2: 23:08

Nobody would nobody would give a shit.

Speaker 2: 23:16

But having that founder there, I think, is becoming more and more important, um, especially in the social spotlight, totally, and I think there's a few different things there to unpack too, which is, like you know, as a company does go public it, it it's priorities are completely different, and I have friends who work at Klaviyo and I know it's an excellent product. There's no doubting about that. But the way that that shakes out and creates an experience for the customers really changes. And that's kind of one of the strong advantages about being at Sunlane right now, which I found is the sort of attitude that we all have across the board, and it really also, to your point, kind of comes from this really unique angle that Jimmy's taken on being so accessible, so vocal and so honest on social media. It's why people gravitate him so much, but it's also why we get the feedback that we do. And, going back to that same sort of like mentality of like lean startup, it's like we do a pretty decent job right now. More importantly, it's like how we're planning on getting the feedback loops in place so that we're really making sure that not only is the product what people need it to be thinking about what features don't exist today that could exist tomorrow, that it's not even a clay versus something thing. It's just a general like retention and email marketing thing right Exists, but also, what are the products that we offer?

Speaker 2: 24:33

From an internal standpoint, how could implementation be the best that it could be? How can success be the best it could be? What do you guys need from this as a program and as an experience? And so the way that I really think about implementation is it's one piece of the puzzle in terms of the whole customer experience and what what we're really talking about internally and trying to optimize for is how do we create the best customer experience humanly possible, from the moment you're engaging with the team or jimmy that you're, you're working within the product, to when you come over to our side to join the actual company. It's it's a really communitydriven approach where we're actually listening to people and we're actually taking that and we're actually building things around that, and that's the best dude. It's a great feeling because it makes people happy at the end of the day. What more can you ask for?

Speaker 1: 25:21

What would you say has been the biggest transition for you from Caro to Sendlane? Because obviously, different products, different companies, but also a different role for you as well. Um, you know what's it like being a part of a vision that was architected and created by somebody else before the time that you started with it, versus it being sort of your. You know your, your child as well.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Yeah, good question. I think there's a lot more similarities to this than I expected. You know, when I kind of joined Sunland at first, I was excited to really just focus in on partnerships and join the partnerships team and really do partnership driven engagements. And then the way that I kind of got built into this is I started to take a look and analyze the customer experience, because for my own sort of like training on being somebody who was doing sales with clients and talking to customers, I need to know what I'm talking about, like through and through. I want to know everything that they're going to experience with coming to the same lane side of things so that I can talk to them honestly about what their expectations should be and what it's going to be like. And so I built like this big mental map of process of like hey, you know, we're talking engaging with a potential customer over here to down the line, they're engaging with customer success, right, and what goes on and does that. And so in doing so I created this lucid chart that was rather big, and then it got leaked and then they're like, hey, wait a minute, you like to build, don't you? And I was like yes, and so when I reflect back on my background at car and what I was really doing a lot of the time is I was the go figure it out guy. Right, it's like, hey, we got the funding, let's go figure this out now. Let's go break into hey, we got the funding, let's go figure this out now, let's go break into the drug consumer market, let's go build this product. It's like I remember building the first version of Caro on a Google Sheet. I called it the book of business and then that led me to create the Airtable that then turned into the directory that people use now for Caro today, and obviously it's just a whole built-out product and it what I love about Sendlane and what's so unique and special about Sendlane is how much leadership really cares about doing the best that we can possibly do and really making sure the customers win and succeed.

Speaker 2: 27:50

And that sort of mentality is so baked into our DNA and it's baked into everything that we do, such that I find myself really excited to figure out ways of knowing that I can build things to make the experience as great as humanly possible, because that is the mission number one, right and? And so you know, adopting this sort of mentality of like hey, I'm new to the team actually hasn't been very difficult at all. I would actually say that I feel as close to the sin lane team, if not closer than I did working at caro in a fraction of the time. Because what's? There's this really weird thing that's happening at sin lane right now where there's so much conversion around the same thought process and the same idea. It's like we're all weirdly telepathically connected on like what needs to happen and leadership is so strong and shows so much thought into everything that we're doing that it just naturally pulls the whole team together. And so I think one I'm surprised at how much I'm putting my builder hat back on and building things all over again.

Speaker 2: 29:00

I love to do this. You know I love building people, I love building process, I love building departments and really getting it to a point where it's like it's flying and it's succeeding. And I think too, I love the fact that, for me at least, sendlane is kind of where I left off with Karo. I did the whole Karo journey from the very beginning up to here, and then I joined Sendlane and Sendlane's over here, thinking about this next big phase, and so from a sort of personal arc, I feel like I'm picking back up where I left off, in a little bit of a different space, and so I would say the biggest challenge in that, ironically, was just learning the tech and learning more about retention marketing and getting into email marketing and learning the art and the science behind it.

Speaker 2: 29:47

But I got to tell you, man, it's funny, we do this thing called marginal gains internally, which is like we have these different groups that we break up on in teams of five and everybody is going through this and it's an internal training program that we're all doing and there's these modules, and so at the same time, I'm out there and I'm putting together these training modules for partners. We're also looking internally. We're building these training modules for ourselves because we all need to know the tech and email marketing deeply and, again, it's because we want to be able to be a very nimble, very interchangeable like organization. It's like people can always jump in to help the customer move forward. There's a sort of like product expertise and knowledge that we all have to get, and so there's just so much thought process and leadership and insight that's being driven to the touch points along the way that it's all to build the foundation to help us really, you know, rise to the occasion of doing that 10x moment right, so it's been interesting. I'll say that for the least.

Speaker 1: 30:43

Where do you see you know Sendlane, going Like what is the ideal future look like for you?

Speaker 2: 30:49

Yeah, well, I mean one. The big pattern that we see today is that agencies are coming to us in droves, and with that are a lot of clients, and so the biggest feature right now is we're rolling out this new implementation 2.0, as I call it, and the 3.0 within the next 45 days, which is really, really exciting. A lot of cool stuff that's happening over there, and so we're going to make it so easy and so accessible for agencies to come on and learn how to use the sending platform and become absolute and total experts in it, so that they can feel comfortable about bringing the brands over. We're going to be doubling down on the agencies and, of course, by proxy, the brands, through a lot of the future development that we have underway. It's, like you know, for us the future is very much like agency centric, and so I see our agency community continue to grow at a very accelerated pace, and with that our clients are also growing. The average size of our clients are also growing as well, which has been very interesting.

Speaker 2: 31:46

In the few three months that I've been actually doing implementation and building this department, our client size has increased by a pretty substantial amount, percentage wise, and that's been, that's been. We knew about the numbers from a total client sort of acquisition perspective, but also from just a ICP average contract volume perspective. That going up as well, that's been really interesting. So I think that's going to get to a point too. And so, you know, I would say this is the year where we like two X, three X, with a prep being that next year is going to be the 10x, and so everything that we're building right now is so that we can do it a thousand times over without, you know, doing more than just blinking an eye. It's supposed to be repeatable, it's supposed to be intelligent, it's supposed to have the right feedback loops in place and so that we can adjust to where the market is.

Speaker 1: 32:37

So it's an exciting time to be at Sunland, for sure. Yeah, it sounds like you joined at a pretty pivotal moment and setting the foundation for what could be. You know you're already growing pretty quickly, but a hyper growth year next year, that won't kill you, because you have thought through the processes and systems that need to be in place in order to handle that. Yeah, scale can definitely, can definitely kill a company. Uh, albeit sort of counterintuitive. But if you can't handle the client volume and agency volume and whatnot, then it's not going to be a good customer experience. Yeah, that's exactly it. Well, I'm super excited for you. I'm excited to get to work more closely with you and your team as well. But thank you so?

Speaker 2: 33:20

much for coming on yeah, dude, thanks for having me before we hop, though always a pleasure you, let everybody know where they can find you and Sendlane online yep, absolutely. You can always go to Sendlane at sendlanecom or find me at LinkedIn. Slav, just look me up, Cade C-A-D-E-P-R-O-U-L-X, and just feel free to ever shoot me a message. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Shoot me a DM comment on my stuff. Whatever. Happy to always grow the network and make new friends.

Speaker 1: 33:52

Awesome. Thanks again for coming on for everybody listening. Thank you, awesome. Thanks again for coming on for everybody listening. Thank you, as always. I'm Brandon Amoroso. You can find me at BrandonAmorosocom and ElectricMarketingcom and we will see you next time.