How We Got There: Josh Koshy, VP of Sales at Appiphony

Welcome to how we got there. I'm your host, Mike Davis. I interviewed thought leaders and founders in the Salesforce ecosystem to help ISPs learn new things to try and mistakes do a boy. This episode of how we got there is brought to you by ISV accelerators. The fractional alliances leadership company built specifically to help high potential ISV partners navigate the Salesforce ecosystem. ISV accelerators is your inside guide to co-selling with Salesforce from activating the right reps to accelerating real pipeline, uncovering new revenue, and of course closing more deals together. Founded by a former Salesforce partner strategy leader with more than a decade of experience on both sides of the ecosystem, ISV accelerators deliver senior Salesforce native guidance for partners who are looking to get more out of their partnership and test if a full-time hire makes sense. Trusted by high potential partners like Vigians, Verato, and Goldfinch, see what your Salesforce partnership could really do. Book time at ISV accelerators.com to learn more. I am here with Josh Koshy. He's the VP of sales at Epiphany. Josh, super excited and grateful for you to come on and share your really unique perspective with the ISV community. Welcome. Yeah, thanks, Mike. Appreciate it. Looking forward to the chat here. Yeah, you're somebody I've known for years and years and years. Matt, when Epiphany was purely doing PDO product development outsourced for work in the Salesforce ecosystem, and now you do that, obviously, still, but also have some apps up your own. So let's dig in. Tell me about you, how do you find your way into the Salesforce ecosystem? I'm sure a lot of folks like me found it by accident, actually. I was a tech recruiter originally coming out of school and I learned a lot about project management at the time. And so when I found out what a project manager does, I really wanted to shift careers into that realm. And so I was working really hard to become a project manager. And I got an entry-level job at Epiphany as they called a project coordinator at the time. And so I was like, yep, let me take that job. And when I got here, I got to meet George, who's our CEO, really good friend. And there's been a great mentor for me as well too. And he just really brought me up and taught me about the Salesforce ecosystem and then pulled me over to run sales with him on this side. So kind of fell backwards into it, but I have loved the journey since then. I've been doing it for about nine years now. So it's been a lot of fun. No, no jobs easy, but tech recruiter, I have to imagine, was an absolute grind. It was like, they marketed a lot as like, hey, you're helping people get jobs. But at the end of the day, it's a sales role. Like you're really trying to find your customers the right candidates at the end of the day. So a lot of like cold calling candidates and it really it sales at the end of the day. Nice. And I mentioned it a little bit by in your own words, Epiphany started as a PDO. And now as a PDO and an ISB, I guess sure with the audience who might not know what Epiphany does and how that had a evolution as looked. Yeah. So a PDO stands for a product development outsourcer. What it rate, the crux of it all is where, you know, traditional partners are size who implement Salesforce. A PDO is someone who actually builds apps for other ISVs on the app exchange. And we just have been doing this for about 20 years now. Know what it means to build a great solution that will adopt well with customers. So some of our customers are DocuSign, LinkedIn, Stripe, that we've been building apps for and have just gotten a lot of feedback from those folks over time and know how to build just great integrations in Salesforce. Nice. And how did you get started with ISB land? You're like sitting around your building stuff, building stuff, building stuff for any figured we'll build something ourselves. Yeah. Exactly. So traditionally, PDOs are both a PDO and that's why that's what some of our other competitors are out there. But we took a different route where we're like, hey, instead of like starting from zero every single year as a consulting firm, why don't we build a SaaS revenue model that's recurring revenue and build that out to help grow the business. So we took a little bit of a different path where we're like, let's get recurring revenue on the books. And to your exact point, we just knew how to build great apps for other folks. We were like, hey, let's identify a pain point within the ecosystem and go build a great solution and go sell and market that ourselves. And that's how we became to be an ISB with our initial app drive connect. That's interesting because now as you're doing the PDO work, I'm sure there's a ton of lessons learned that you've learned actually bringing the ISB solutions to market. What's that journey been like for you? Oh, man, it's been, it's been pretty crazy. Honestly, it's been, I would say us being an ISB has educated us a lot more on the PDO side in all honesty. So as an ISB, when we built it, we were like, hey, we know how to build great apps, but we didn't really know how to sell and market it. And so on the flip side of it, now that we actually have built an app and are selling and marketing ourselves, we're actually then able to take that information back to our PDO customers at the end of the day on like what's working, what doesn't work. So a little bit of a flip to your question, it's, I would say it's the inverse is like the ISB side has taught us a lot more on the PDO side. Interesting. Any examples come to mind and like the lessons learned and then they go to market front. Yeah, one of the biggest ones that I think we initially thought and had is we were just like, we just know what great software looks like, how to easily install, implement it, someone can just find it, buy it themselves, and set it up without us even needing to talk to them. And that's the case for some of our customers, but I think the biggest lesson that we learned is that it's a myth that if you just build it, that they'll come and buy it, right, to really grow the revenue, you have to do a ton of marketing, a ton of sales behind it. And you could even have the best product out there, but you'll get beat out by other folks that have just the better sales and marketing arm because the brand awareness for those solutions are out there way more than those that are just organically put out there and you're hoping that people will find. It's such a good lesson. I've experienced that too, where you're working with even technical founders of native apps that they only sell on the Salesforce ecosystem. And they've built this great solution, but you demo it and it's like a bunch of features and functions and it doesn't resonate to the problems customers are looking to solve. So that's great. You're able to experience that from the inside. And even then I would say is like, there are definitely people who are finding us, but in order to grow the business and revenue, we had to really appeal to those folks that weren't necessarily organically finding us because they're searching on the app exchange for a solution like that. We had to really expand to like those folks maybe searching on Google or who didn't even know that they had this problem. So that's what we found out really early on is like we had to invest a lot more in that to appeal to those audiences to grow our revenue. And I assume the folks that find you or were finding you on the app exchange were lower average deals size than the ones that you're finding through Google and like other other channels. Like that tends to be the trend as well, right? Definitely there. Yeah, you said it before founder admins are typically the ones that have found us and not to say we didn't get a couple of like larger size deals because of it, but traditionally it was like anywhere from like a 20 to 50 person company. And obviously I'm not even all of those folks need the licenses. So we definitely needed to figure out a way how to go up market more than just the app exchange itself. Nice. Well, share with folks what Drive Connect is and now that it's a part of a bigger strategy, I guess just look and we'll focus more on this conversation on the ISB side just because I think that's most relevant. But I guess share a little bit about the problems that the solution solves. Yeah, so Drive Connect was our initial product. It's a Google Drive integration with Salesforce. So we when we were initially trying to figure out what type of problem we wanted to solve, we knew that file storage in Salesforce was a pain point for a lot of customers because they'd have to pay for extra file storage and a lot of folks had Google and we're like, hey, Google is what Salesforce uses. We think a lot of like companies are going to move more towards Google in the future than Microsoft. So let's go build a great Google Drive integration. We didn't see that many other options out there. And we created a great experience around the around Google Drive. And we were selling that for about two years, two to three years, I would say. And one of the problems we kept running into was a lot of larger customers were like, hey, we are SharePoint users. This app looks great, but we don't use Google. And it was really great because we just talked to so many folks that then helped pivot the direction and strategy of our company where it's like, look, we can't just say Google's centric focused. We kind of need to address SharePoint as a pain point that other customers are looking for. And then Drive Connect also had Doc Jen built into it. So we're like, why don't we build our own standalone Doc Jen solution and eSignature. And long story short, it basically expanded to a broader strategy where now we focus purely on file management with Salesforce. So we have a suite of apps that deal with all file management type of use cases such as docgen, parsing, eSignature, file management, exposing those files that are stored in Google and SharePoints on an experienced cloud site. And it's been working really well because we're starting to expand our total addressable market because of that. That's awesome. And this is your first time as a sales leader, right? Like, what's been some fun lessons learned? Yeah, it is my first time as a sales leader. One of the interesting things that I've learned is you've really got to be boots on the ground doing it yourself first before you and having a lot of license lessons by talking to customers in order to really understand what the strategy needs to be and then build a team out from there. So it's not just like, hey, from day one, let's just hire a bunch of sales people to go help me sell. It's, hey, I need to be the ones that's talking to customers, doing a couple of sales, talking to partners, figuring out what they care about, establishing a bit of a process there, and then building out the team from that as well too. So I think that that's been like great life lessons for me. Yeah, I can't like to founders who might be listening to this and thinking about like what I would call prematurely hiring a sales team. Like until you get, I don't know, the number, it probably varies based on your average yield size and number of cycles, 10, 20, 50 customers. Like I wouldn't even hire a sales person until like you as the founder have sold it a bunch because you're gonna learn so much and nobody's gonna sell it as well as you do. And I mean, I've personally taken on customers in the past that have been pre-revenue and I thought like, oh yeah, I could do it. It's different, it's just a different motion and it's hard until you start to figure out some of those lessons. Yeah, it's definitely a grind nonetheless, but it's so worth it in the end because you're gonna have to eventually train that team up, right? And so they're gonna be looking to you on what's that process, where are those guidelines and until you go through those motions, like you can't train them until you've actually like done that work and can explain all those hints that helps to them as well too. Totally. So let's get specific. Like what's something that, as you were kicking this off or in the first couple of years, what's it go to market strategy or strategies that Epiphany and the, what's the sweet call of products? I don't wanna call it just driving. Yeah, so we call it now our flex suite. It's like basically it's our flex suite of products that deal with like the various odds within the file management space. Sweet, flex suite. What's one go to market strategy that you under invested in early? That's really started to work and you lean into a bit more now. Yeah, it's definitely partnerships for us. Like not only are we finding that they're way more qualified leads, but I truly believe nowadays that my personal opinion, like outbounding is just working less and less and you have to network with other folks that compliment what you solve in order to like get customers and you'll meet them at that exact moment in which they're looking for a solution that your app solves for or your product suite solves for. So partnerships for us was something where we had a couple to begin with. We didn't really understand what that motion looks like. And ever since then, we've really evolved that motion to where like most of our qualified leads comes from them that actually closes and it's starting to increase as like probably almost half of what our actual revenue generates a year is like how much comes from our partner now? Wow. And what do you say partners? Do you mean size, do you mean sales force? Do you mean both? Yeah, so it's a great question. So it actually breaks down between size. We have reseller partners as well too and sales force eight ease and SEs. And I'd say like a bulk comes from our SI partner network and then our resellers and then working with sales force as well too. I would say in that order is basically like what our revenue comes from and leave on you. Nice. I want to drill in on a couple of those. So from an SI partner perspective, like tell us about the mix of those. Are those GSIs or those like small mom and pop shops? Are they the regional ones and how do you find them? How'd you get them? How'd you cultivate it? Yeah, so again, it goes back to a lot of it has to be like boots on the groundwork. So what I initially did when I was building out this process was I went on LinkedIn and I first like Google searched a bunch of companies that were, I would say less than 100 because if you get any bigger than that, normally those size of companies just or like they don't have the time of day to talk to like highest fees. So we definitely wanted to set less than 100 size person shops. And then like who were specifically in regions we were looking for as well as tailored to specific customers that were our ICP. So we really avoided companies that were focused on the healthcare space or and really ones that were like focused on financial services like ITEC, non-profit is really big for us. So I did a bunch of Google searching for companies. And then I went on LinkedIn and essentially looked for connections that I had to folks at those companies so that they can make introductions for me and then just started to build out a network from there when someone clicked and it resonated when I did and outreach to them. They were able to introduce me to other folks and it just continued to start expanding from there. - It's just work, it's not glamorous. It's just work, right? - It's just work, yeah. And it's definitely really hard at first, but I will say like once you build that network it becomes easier and easier because the best thing you can do is like have a referral from someone who like trusts you a ton, knows your work and can like speak to that with other folks at other places as well too. So the introductions become easier, the ability to get new partners has become easier. The more, more time has gone on. - And what's in it for the SI? What's in it for the SI to partner with Epiphany and specifically Flex Suite? What's that with for them? - Yeah, so one of the things that I've learned is you really have to talk to each partner first and understand what really resonates with them the most because every SI partner is gonna have something that resonates differently. Some are like, hey, I want a great solution that I can offer to my customers because it gives me a competitive advantage if I'm able to have a great option for them that my competitors may not have. Others are like, hey, I'd love another revenue stream. So like if we refer you in to get some type of like kickbacks or referral fees, that's what's really resonated with them as well. And others are like, hey, how can you help me get more consulting projects as well too? So one of the things that we've really done is we've co-sponsored events with ACE and SCs with our SI partners because that helps them get more face time with the Salesforce ecosystem. We've done custom demos for them that they can help share to their customer list. So that way may stir up some more projects because it's like, hey, this is something you may want to consider adding in, and we can help you as an aside to build this out in your board. So it really is like partner dependent, but those are a couple of things that we've really identified for SI partner with that as resonated. - It's super helpful. The other partnership you mentioned was referral partners. Tell us a little bit about what led you to that and what that motion looks like. - Yeah, I mean, referral partners are-- - Oh, sorry, not referral resellers, my bad. - Oh, gotcha. So yeah, so they're very interesting. Because of we're a PDO, we actually do work with a lot of partners that have built on top of the Salesforce platform, their core solution. And so because of that, we were able to also do some digging into those specific partners called OEMs or platform partners, I believe they're called nowadays, and identified those that are in like ICT verticals to that deal with files a ton. So like those that are in like the financial services space, like the real estate space, those are partners who deal a ton with files on a daily basis or their customers will be dealing with a lot of files. So our pitch to them was like, hey, you guys may not have this particular capability and feature. Why don't we work on a partnership where we heard you the reselling are sweet or you're bringing us in because it is an added value to your partners as well. And that's really resonated with those folks once we're able to show them the capability and the messaging that they're bringing us into deals that we would have never gotten before as well. - That's great too. And like there's so many talented OEMs out there that know their industry verticals so well. And like for you as Josh at Epiphany to try to learn all these industry verticals at that level of depth is just super unrealistic, especially early days until maybe a future state where you can have different vertically aligned teams. But that's a great go-to-market motion. I'm glad that's working for you all. - Yeah, and it was a very similar motion to our SI motion, I'd say as well, where a lot of it was like doing a lot of Google searching on the company's built on the Salesforce platform. Salesforce also has like partner finders as well too, where you can search for these companies. And then just like seeing those folks that are in that space and then trying to again, hold outreach or get introductions from folks as well too, is really the motion we use there. - Yeah, I like that motion that you mentioned a minute ago to like helping your SI partners. by co-sponsoring with Salesforce because SI is like, their lifeblood is getting deals referred from Salesforce. Like ISVs, I don't know what your opinion is, but ISVs, it's a little bit harder to get referrals from Salesforce Aes and SEs, but like SI's, if you're not getting deals from Salesforce, you're probably not getting a lot of deals. - And honestly, now when we do events with Salesforce, it's only with an SI partner, and we go in with the mindset of like, hey, we are like spending this money, not necessarily to like get some leads from Salesforce. I mean, obviously we're gonna do pitches and all and you know, see if we can get something, but a lot of it is to support our partners. That's really the mindset that we have going in is like, these guys are referring as deals. We want to reciprocate and help them get more deals with Salesforce by like offsetting costs and helping them take a bunch of Aes and SEs too. - That is brilliant. If you're listening to that, I haven't heard that mindset shift before, I think that's freaking brilliant. So we talked about what you under invested in early and that's worked, what on the flip side? What did you over invest in? What were you all bullish on that just kind of didn't pan out and why you think? - Yeah, and I would honestly say for us, we over invested in Salesforce events initially, and even like events with like Aes and SEs, we definitely had this mindset of like, look Salesforce draws at their world tour, like thousands and for dream force, hundreds of thousands of folks, right? And we're gonna have such great exposure and we're gonna be able to meet and talk to a lot of folks, which we did to transparently had a lot of those events. But one of the things that we definitely weren't ready for was we didn't have the sales team and sales arm till like go after all those folks we met. So it'd be like we'd be getting their names at all those events, their emails, they'd even book meetings with us. And then a lot of the times they may cancel the meeting with us that we were set to meet or hey, they just like when we sent marketing emails, it just wouldn't respond. And I just truly think that in my opinion is the folks at those events, they're not necessarily there 'cause they're looking for a problem. Like maybe you'll catch like a couple of like one or two. But like in my opinion, I think a lot of those folks are there to learn about like Salesforce and how can they bring things back to their team to you know enhance their current workflow with what Salesforce is selling. And they just weren't in the necessary like right place and maybe just trying to get some free swag. So I think that was something that we definitely over invested in at first and are just pulled back a little bit until we're ready to get back to that motion. - Yeah, I think that's interesting. I my point of view on events is like it's good thought leadership and also a really good opportunity to meet current customers and current partners to help with churn and attrition. But yeah, that top of funnel growth, if you can break even based on like funnel sourcing deals from events, then you're really ahead of the game there. - Yeah, and then it was great to get people in our marketing list, but outside of that, it was definitely something that we were like, hey, we can spend utilize these funds elsewhere. That's gonna be a little bit more strategic. - That's interesting. - And ISBs, we've touched on a couple of them. We've touched on Salesforce events. We've touched on co-selling with SIs and Salesforce and OEMs. ISBs get a, it deals from a number of other sources. App exchange, inbound, direct inbound, direct outbound. You mentioned you get about 50% from partners. Where's the other 50% coming from these days? - Yeah, so I'd say we've built out our marketing team over the last two years where we're really leaning into SEO and now GEO, which is like AI searches for problems that our products can solve. So a lot of them are coming from the App Exchange now from folks that have like naturally Google searched us and our blog posts and videos are popping up and AI searching as well too. So the other 50% are typically coming from a lot of those marketing efforts and then combination of that and the App Exchange as well too. I'm making sure we pop top of the page when folks are searching for our problem. - Love that. What are you most proud of from building out the ISB solutions at Epiphany? - Yeah, I'm gonna give a shout out to our product team because honestly, the thing that I'm the most proud of is our product suite itself because for me and my team as a sales reps, it is actually such an easy sell for us because when we go to demo the apps, it is such a sleek and easy to set up and use experience where when we get on the call with a customer, they are just blown away and they're just like, this is so easy to use and set up which makes our jobs a lot easier. So I'm really proud of like our product team for what they've built and it just makes us a lot easier and helps us to go sell and close deals to be honest. - And maybe other than the events, what's a mistake other ISBs can avoid that you kind of fell into a trap of early days? - Yeah, I would say like one of the other ones is hosting and doing a lot of events with like Salesforce just as an ISB as a standalone. I think we took a bunch of AE teams out on dinners, boat rides, hosted a bunch of lunch and learns. And I would say if you were able to present to 20, maybe it resonated with like one and you just got to recognize like Salesforce is like super focused on selling Salesforce at the end of the day. And is an ISB, if you can come in there and help them sell their course up, they'll catch on to that and resonate and pull you in. But you know, I think it's just like something that you got a mindset you have to recognize with is like, they're not just thinking every single day, how can I sell a ISB solution? So we definitely over indexed on that and thinking that we would get like a ton of leads and deals like on a daily basis from them. But I will say our largest deals and like opportunities have come from Salesforce. It's just been a lot of trial and error and like we have hit with like a couple of folks from there that have become big advocates of ours that are pulling us into larger deals. It's just like a numbers game. So you just got to go in with that recognition of like, maybe it resonated with no one, but the next one I'll get like one out of like 20 to like resonate, but we definitely over indexed pretty early on. Well, when you're a small team too, it's an opportunity cost from like the price of doing those events, but also like the level of effort to go into those events for the output because they have 10,000 reps I think still and a few thousand SCs. And to realistically like touch a significant number of them, even in your focus vertical, this is just a bit of a fool's error in when you're starting out. And yeah, you have to empathize with these folks too. Like, forget agent force, which is like a whole additional ball of wax, but like they have marketing cloud, they've sales cloud, they've service cloud. Now it's all jumbled up, but they've so much stuff to learn and so much stuff to sell and now all these additional acquisitions that they make. Like they get 100% of that towards their quota instead of 15% of the solutions that an ISB bring. So they're gonna act rationally. - Yeah, and I know I may be jumping ahead here, but one of the things that I think is helpful for other people to listen and hear on is like, you gotta be able to speak, you know, tie your solution into what they're trying to sell and creating content around that and being able to blast that into like various channels to show how this helps them sell is been a huge key for us when it comes to the Salesforce ecosystem. We're really investing in building tailored demos that are just like two-minute demos that we can put into different channels with our PAM and send to our like tight network that really shows like, hey, you're selling agent force. Here's like an agent force use case that you can listen for, bring to customers that our solution can help sell and show off with or you're in the financial services space selling like a digital lending solution. Here's a full end to end solution on how digital lending works with files that your traditional customers are going to see. And I think people really need to visualize that in order for it to resonate. And that's been like something that's really been working with us more than just like slides or like one page or says because people are actually able to see it in action and start visualizing and sharing it with other folks. - I wanna drill in more on this in general. It's making sense to me top of mind just because like you look at like TikTok and Instagram reels and YouTube, it's the way content gets consumed in our personal lives and to mirror that professionally just to me as a layman makes sense. I guess how'd you come up with this like and let's talk a little bit about tactics in the videos too or like how much of these are marketing versus actually showing the screens like super interested. - Yeah, so I would say like a lot of this came into where when we get on calls with our partners and visually show them like the technology working together or like in a scenario they typically see that that's when we saw people really latch on and resonate. And so when we were able to see that just on broader enablements where we had the idea of like why don't we condense this into like quick two minute videos and start sharing this out with the relevant audiences sales force or even using it as a way to get new partners right as well too. do. So that's kind of how that all came to be was just seeing how people are predominantly visual learners in order for it to click and get to like how this helps me and match the two together. And so that's how that came to be. And then for us, we do have our marketing team that's heavily involved that uses, I'm going to forget the software, but a video editing software. But we have some folks on our side that are able to just savvy folks that are able to spin up Salesforce orgs, install our apps, and then I self as a leader, I'm able to talk through what I'm hearing or work partners or eight ease and S ease are saying they typically deal with and can coach them on how to build and configure an org. And then our marketing team is able to like condense and down and shoot a two minute video off of that. So it really is a team effort of like marketing with myself and George or CEO's like sales leaders influencing on like the videos that need to be made, how it's being utilized, and then our other folks that are building out those demos for us. So that's interesting. How do you measure the success of those because like that's multiple people are working on those and it takes effort. Like how are you thinking about measuring success on those videos? Yeah. And I think that's the one thing they say is marketing. It's like impossible to truly measure the exact metrics on success of content. But how we typically doing it, like, Hey, it's like the content that we're using to get new partners or new people involved, like, Hey, I we're able to get into this account or this eight year S actually responded or this S I responded because of this content we put together. So it's much more like physical evidence. And then on top of that, the other thing that we have is we actually have dedicated channels where we have one channel for Salesforce eight ease and essays or eight ease excuse me of one channel for essays. So when we post that content in there, we're just adding a bunch of eight ease and essays and we'll post content like once a month, so we're not like overwhelming them with content. And then we're also able to track like reactions or comments on that as well too. So that's the other like more empirical metric. We're able to track. But the cool thing is is like, we'll literally get an eight year in SE reach out to us maybe like five months later after we post a content saying like, Hey, I have a customer who can utilize something like this. Can we hop on a call? So sometimes I think the other thing is patience is kind of key is it may not directly correlate to someone coming up to you with like, Hey, I have a customer that needs this in this moment. But you know, six months to even sometimes a year later, like you can pay off as well too. Love that. Can we can we talk a little bit about your sales org as well? Like size roles, a ease, essays, marketing people. Like just get a feel because I'm always intrigued at ISPs like when to add different roles like BDRs, SDRs, a ease, essays. Like, could you give a feel for what that what that group looks like? Yeah. So the evolution of how are like sales and marketing organization has gone as like I talked about before myself was the one who was predominantly doing the selling at first. And then we hit a point where we're like, Hey, we need to go figure out how do we get some more leads coming in, right? Like it wasn't overwhelming for me doing the sales. It's not like my whole day was completely booked and I couldn't handle sales. So I was like, I want to get to that point. Let's get some more leads going. So we hired a marketing person first before I hired any other sales people. And that's when we started to see an influx of more leads come in. And then the next level was still like, Hey, I would love to get some more leads coming in. And I know our marketing team is working tirelessly to put out content there. But let's try and expand our partner network. And how do we get more leads from our partner network? So it wasn't directly going to getting an eight year BDR. It was continuing to increase that funnel. So we hired two Alliance managers originally, one who focused on SI partners and how do we get, you know, not only get new size, but enable them a new features, new products, make sure we're talking to the right folks who will pull us in. And then we hired an Alliance manager who ran only after eight years and essays. And so I will say like after that, after about a year or two of doing that, I think we did pivot him into more of an eight year role after that point because while he was seeing some success, it was like not nearly the amount we wanted. And at that point, now he's running with at least like five opportunity calls a day, chasing down leads that helps take off my play because we've built that pipeline up a lot more. And then we just recently hired another marketing person and a implementation engineer and customer success because we're just like, how do we make sure we're very sticky with our customers after we've sold it? So just the evolution of how our sales organization is gone in the nutshell. Love that. So all your bad, because you didn't say a sales engineer or a solution consultant, you hire and train your sales people to be able to demo. Exactly. Like we are big believers here. And this won't work for everyone, but we're very big on how do we teach our sales team to become as technical as possible. I'm not going to say you can get like developer level, but how can you speak to the technology and here and interview customers and understand how the solution and apps work to way they can then explain that to as much as they can without needing to pull someone in. And so it's worked out really well for us. Like I'm very impressed with how much our sales team have really latched on to understanding sales force and our apps and talking to customers and explaining how the two can work together well. Yeah, it's interesting because like sales people might not like this comment for me, but I just think it's BS if you're a sales person and you can't run like at least like a light to medium level of depth demo for your customers. Like if you're doing a custom demo and you're maybe even installing in sandbox or like working in a partner order or something like that or an SDO idea with sales force and co-selling, then you need a sales engineer or something like that as you're getting larger enterprise deals and presenting to a large team. Like there's definitely time and place and a need for S.E.s. But like man, doing that first and second demo, if you're in A.E. like come on, come on, man. Yeah, we definitely have, when I said we just hired an implementation engineer, we're now utilizing her to help a lot of our sales team with some of the bigger calls, but you know, anybody like a specific siphons and below, they're not doing anything super complex or sophisticated, but sales force quite yet to where like our A.E. isn't able to like talk through it. So we now have like a specific threshold of size of company where we'll pull her in at this point, but anything below, you know, she's pulled in so many different directions with implementations, support demos. It's like, hey, as an A.E. team, we need to be able to take those like smaller size ones on ourselves, which they do great, I will say. Well, I like that evolution. You invested in marketing early and then partnerships and then added additional A.E.s when the cup run it over. I like that strategy. Now C.S. and implementation and the S.E. talent, I like that path that you all took. I'm sure it was a straight line. I'm sure it was no mistakes that were ever made there. Exactly. Well, Josh, let's wrap up with the final three, three questions, 10 second answers. Are you ready to go? Yeah, let's do it. Perfect. Who is one company or person in the ecosystem that you track or follow? Yeah, we've become like huge fans of left main R.E.I. We're really close with both Stephanie butters over there. And we just love her story because it really mimics us where she is a founder who boots on the ground, wants to build great software, great technology, listen to customers and she's on calls where she's doing the selling herself, she's technical herself doing all this. So we just love what they're doing over there because it really resonates with how we believe in building great solutions and products out there. Nice. And Andrew Albert over there, long time friend, I'm sure too. Cool. What would you tell yourself day one of working in the ecosystem? It's going to go back to my previous point where it's like, Hey, if you, you know, don't just think that you can build a great solution and it's going to, people are going to come. It's, you got to put a lot of time and effort into the sales and marketing side. Like we thought like we can build a great store where people would just purchase themselves and we'll build this great business. And like I said before, it does work where we get people just buying orders without us even having to talk to them. But to really grow the business, you got to understand how to build that sales and marketing arm out and what works well and what doesn't and lean into that from like day one. And lastly, what gives you energy in your personal life? Yeah, I'm a big social butterfly. So I love being active, just doing something at the end of the day to my wife's sugar and she's more of a home body. But I love just going out and going out walks or socializing with friends, just some type of activity. I'm not one who wants to just sit on the couch and want to show at the end of the night. So that and then I love problem solving. So I love just challenging my mind, just thinking through problems. So I love playing chess actually, like just sitting on, after we're playing chess on chess.com and just strategizing and thinking through solutions that way too. So that's a big passion of mine as well. I don't play chess. I know every chess player has a score. What's your score? Oh, man. I'm still like feeling 1500 rating on chest.com, you know, you get into that groove where you're, you know, you're climbing, but chest is one where you've really got to stop and think is like one small thing, you're just going to continue to drop from there. So I've been like hovering around that area of rating for a while because you got to really like sit down and focus and can't be distracted. Otherwise, you're just going to keep losing games. So, love it. Well, Josh, thank you for joining. I'm so stoked for you and the team for the growth and thanks for sharing. Yeah. Thanks again, Mike. This was a lot of fun. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to today's episode of How We Got There. I hope you found something that you could try or a mistake to avoid at your ISB in the future. If you like what you heard and want to get notified of the next episode, please go over to Spotify or Apple or YouTube like follow maybe even drop us a review. It would mean a lot. Take care.