This is literally one of those moments where I feel like I'm not doing a good enough job. And so I'm listening to Nick. I interviewed him and I remember finishing that episode going, I'm not doing a good enough job. And now I'm listening to myself talking to him. It's like podcast inception, talking about listening to me talking to him, and I'm thinking I'm not doing a good enough job.
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. And on today's episode, you're going to get to hear from Matt and Nick Mehta, who's the CEO of Gainsight and Entrepreneur of the Year of Northern California. He and Matt talk about the value of transparency as a CEO and how they're both big fans of sending out a CEO weekly email. So you're going to want to hear this episode as Nick talks about part of how they've been awarded by Glassdoor as best company culture. Also, before we jump into today's episode, want to let you know about Leader Academy, which is our manager training program that we launched this summer and already have over 30 customers and over 300 managers that are a part of Leader Academy. So check that out at leader.com. And without further ado, here's today's episode with me, Matt, and Nick Mehta.
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.
Yeah, I love that chief reminding officer term. I think there's a huge value in transparency and also to the CEO having a connection with employees, even if I can't meet all of them. You know, we have more than a thousand people, right? So there are a lot of people. A lot of them I will never meet, some of them I'll never meet. Right. And so what I do is every Sunday night, I send an email and it's called, actually cheesy, but I call it Metaphysical Musings. So my last name is Mehta, M-E-H-T-A, Metaphysical Musings. And I send this out every Sunday night and it's always the same format, which is three things you need to know about the business. And typically that's like three things last week: a great customer meeting, a new strategy, a challenge in the business. It's not all positive. And then what is my plan for the coming week so they can see transparently I'm meeting customers, I'm doing these events, etc. And then a personal highlight, what's happening outside with my three kids, a movie I watched that I loved, a book that I read, trying to work out more, you know, whatever. I'm just a human, no better or worse than all the other people in our company, right? And I write this every Sunday night. Now the key is I've run Gainsight for 12 years, almost 12 years, and before that I ran another company three or four years, before that I was running a business within a larger company for about four years. For the last 20 years, I've sent that email every Sunday night except a few times I was on vacation. So probably sent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those emails. And yeah, they take some time, but a few things happen. Number one, team gets the transparency. Number two, I get a reflection opportunity. So every week I'm like, what did I do last week? Did I accomplish anything? And it's cathartic, almost. It's very cathartic. I highly recommend something like that.
That's incredible. And do you get responses? Do people respond?
Oh, totally. People respond. It's not like Slack because I send the email and it's you know, some people respond. My guess is average three or four a week, but more if it's a thing. And yeah, I part that stunned me. I love the personal anecdote. I thought that was really special. It's like, hey, I think you said the one that I read a few years ago, you said, I went out with friends for the first time in a while who I hadn't seen in about a year, and I loved it, but I stayed up to midnight and my body didn't love that. And I was just like, that's so humanizing. Exactly. I can't do that anymore. But my favorite part of the email is you outlining your schedule and you said, here's the customers I'm gonna meet, and you listed by name. And I think one week you were gonna meet 23 customers. Is that real?
It is. I mean, I probably average... I love that. You know, I love customers, I love talking to employees, I like the human interaction. I probably average 15 customers a week or prospects. The two, yeah.
Wow. And to the CEO out there, the leader out there that says I don't have time for that, what do you say to them?
I mean, I think everyone is different on where you spend your time. For me, and I think for a bunch of people, knowing the sentiment and what's on the minds of customers and employees, I don't know how you do your job. Other people probably can do their job in different ways and more power to them, but I wouldn't be able to do my job. I also love it. It gives me energy. The biggest thing I feel like for me as CEO is being able to lead and influence and impact human beings, both in our company and our customers. For me, it's the oxygen that keeps me going.
Matt, you do something similar to this. You send out a weekly CEO email. Where did you get your inspiration for that?
By the beginning of last year, I wanted to set a challenge for myself. And I knew I didn't like writing. It's not that I don't like it, it takes a lot of energy for me. And so someone suggested, well, the only way to get better at it is to write every week. And I said, well, yeah, right, I'm not going to do that. And they basically challenged me to start a newsletter. And I think I did 50 out of 52 weeks last year. And then as I got to the end of 2023, I was really looking forward to my last one because I really didn't want to do it anymore. And then when I posted my last one, I had this realization: I can't stop now. And so now it's just part of my weekly rhythms. But it has been cathartic. What I like about Nick's is how he breaks out his schedule. I think that's so great. Self-accountability. I don't talk to 15 to 20 customers a week, so I know... I was trying to think how many do you think you would talk to? I would probably say like five.
