Welcome to the Leader Pulse podcast, the podcast for leaders revolutionizing the world of work. I'm Holly Tate, Chief Marketing Officer here at Leader. On today's episode, you get to hear the raw full interview between Matt and Nick Mehta, the CEO of Gainsight. They're going to talk about what it looks like to build an award-winning culture, retention during hard times, especially during a downturn. So you won't want to miss today's episode with Nick and Matt.
All right, well Nick, so great to have you here today. How you doing?
Matt, it's so good to see you. Thanks very much for having me. Love what you do. Appreciate it.
Absolutely. We love it. Hey, so let's just dive in. I want to start by just congratulating you. You won the Glassdoor Healthiest Company of the Year, Culture Carrier of the Year award for 2023. That's kind of a big deal.
Thanks, man. I appreciate it. It was actually, I'm not going to lie, I was in Mexico at the time on vacation. My chief people officer at the time, she's since retired, she called me, texted me, she's like, 'Hey, you probably don't want to know up your vacation, but you probably want to know this.' Then she told me the news. I think I was alone on the beach in Mexico, jumping up and down, wondering what's going on. There's a lot of these awards out there that you see, 'Oh wow, that's cool,' but frankly some of those are just a little skeptical. This one was voted by the team. And by the way, it's not perfect. Gainsight is absolutely not perfect. We have so many things we need to work on, especially during this kind of tougher time in the downturn. But yeah, very grateful.
Absolutely. Well, I was going to say that the fact that you did it during the downturn, you're a public company in the midst of all the challenges that we're facing these last few years. Tell me the secret. What is it? How are you navigating becoming the healthiest, best culture tech company in 2023? That's wild to me.
Yeah, it's interesting. And by the way, I think the climate has gotten even worse, so we all have to be careful. It's tough decisions, so I don't want to pretend like we don't have the same challenges and decisions and all that. But I think there's a floor of culture even in tough times, and then people feel even better when things are going great. Same with Gainsight everywhere else, but what's the floor when things are not great? I think that's what culture is all about: what keeps people here during hard times. It's interesting, Gainsight has an off-the-charts tenure. You go to a meeting and it's like, 'I've been here seven years, nine years, five years, ten years, twelve years.' It's amazing. There are some things you have to mix in new people, which we're working on, but what keeps people at a company when things are not easy and not good? I think that is culture. And I think there's not really one secret to it, but if I gave a few things that mattered to us: one is, as you know, you and I are both friends with Dan Steinman, and I know he's on your board. Dan can attest, at the very beginning of Gainsight, we created these values. We have five values, and they're just in the water. A lot of our employees, I always ask them what's special about Gainsight, even when they're leaving, and they're like, 'The values are actually real.' I could talk more about how we do them, but then I think there's practically how do you be really transparent about the business and what's going on, and that's another big part of it.
I love that. There's this saying, 'The fish rots at the head.' Yes, exactly. Quite a spicy saying, but it's like the culture is established and set, not just defined by the leadership team but exemplified by the leadership team. So I've got a story to share from Dan, if you don't mind. He told me this one moment you had when you were building Gainsight, and I think you were hiring 150 people in a quarter, something bananas. You guys were growing like crazy. And you got a cease and desist letter from a competitor where you poached some staff from. Dan said to you, 'Hey, what if they turn around and start poaching your staff?' He recalls this quote, which I'm going to read out to you because I think it's beautiful. You said, 'Hey, if that happens, that's my fault as the CEO. If I don't give our team the best opportunity to advance their career, then they should go somewhere else. That is on me to make sure they don't leave.' That's incredible leadership, Nick. Tell me about your perspective there, because I think so many other leaders would say, 'Let's get into a fight. No way they're going to steal my staff. That's not going to happen.' Talk to me about that humility posture that you had, because that's wild.
Absolutely. Well, one thing about the story: you said poaching from the competitor. I'd say no, they applied to us. We didn't poach them. They applied to us. Yeah, I love that. But I remember getting that letter like it was yesterday. And by the way, the person that sent that letter, you know, ended up moving on to another company. He's great, we know each other really well, and it's kind of a good story how business always works itself out and you get past the emotional side. So the quote itself, for me the biggest thing was, you know, you look at what we do, which is customer success software. It's about helping your customers be successful, but retaining them by keeping them successful. It's the same thing for employees. As a CEO, you have to earn the right to have them stay. You have to win their business every day. Employees are busy. That means providing a challenging job that's helping them grow and the right values and all that kind of stuff. Every time somebody leaves, it's us not delivering what they need. Now, sometimes that's fine. They may need something else. I'm actually very close to a ton of our alumni. We text and talk all the time, and I help their careers. Some of them go on to be CEOs. That's amazing. But remembering that if somebody leaves, don't get angry at them. A lot of CEOs get really angry at the person leaving, which is horrible. When somebody's leaving, I'm like, 'Hey, thank you for what you've done. Congratulations. How can I help?' etc. So I think when you think about the competitors or other companies hiring, same thing. I'm like, more power to them. If that company has a better value proposition for our employee than we do, then they should go. And by the way, we should learn. Maybe it was fine for them to leave, maybe we screwed up. So I don't view it emotionally at all. I'm like, 'Hey, this is a learning opportunity for us.'
That sounds like something so easy in theory but so difficult in practice. So kudos.
Totally. Yeah, because I've gotten people, not competitors even, but people that are in other spaces, they're like, 'I can't believe you hired my person.' Like, they wanted to go somewhere else. That's not my fault.
I love that posture. That's so good. All right, let's change gears a little bit to something that I think is quite unique to the way that you communicate internally with your staff. So let's talk about this concept of being a Chief Reminding Officer. I hear you do a weekly newsletter to all of your team. So talk to me about why you do it, what's included in it. I've actually read one of them. It's a novel. It's crazy. So about why you do them.
