Talking Leadership with the CEO of WP Engine | Human First CEO Series

Thank you so much, Nick. It's such an honor to be here. Right back at you. I love how you lead, how you communicate with your team, and the spirit that you bring out into the tech community around leading from a human first perspective. So I'm stoked about being here with you today.

I cannot wait for... basically for me, it's just like to come back with my team. One of the key cornerstones of our culture is having like big all-hands meetings at each of our big offices, and we have like info sessions and trainings and, you know, karaoke and big parties. And one of the things we're kind of known for is having a big like dance party. So I can't wait till I can dance with my team.

Yeah, well, usually the lights are really low, people can't really see. You're just melee, just having a good time.

So how about you, Nick? What are you looking forward to?

I hear you. I hear you. There's nothing like that time to think and plan on the airplane. So I'm right there with you. But yeah, and just being able to kind of again be in person with our customers, with our team. I can't wait.

Yeah, totally. So for us, I think we have a core value around being built to last, and one of the key phrases of it is making what's important to our employees important to us. And I think, you know, it's really important in these times. People want to work for a company that has integrity, that's a part of the community, and that wants to both lead and also to give back. And so, you know, we last year really launched and kind of said, hey, we're doing all these really great things, and let's just kind of pull that together under this overarching umbrella of Engine for Good. It has really three pillars to it. And the first one is around open future. We are a WordPress expert. We are, you know, inextricably tied to the success of the WordPress community. And so for us, open future means really about how do we fuel and help to give back to open source. So for example, in WordPress, there's five for the future. So it's really kind of a concept of giving five percent of your time or treasure, whatever you can, back to WordPress. So we are very actively involved in doing that. We've contributed through our thought leadership, publications, sponsorships, and we've committed 97 hours per week to give back towards WordPress. So for us, that's kind of one way is thinking about what fuels you, what communities fuel you. And for us, also the developer community, you know, making sure that developers around the world look to us as a source of free and valuable technology that help them build and create incredible websites. And then hopefully through discovering that, they may consider using our paid products. But for us, we want them to associate WP Engine with excellence and that we're giving back. And then our next pillar is really around open doors. And so for us, it's really important as an organization that we are a place that people feel can be a pathway into a technology career. So we've really opened up the aperture around allowing people without a college degree, allowing people with perhaps not a traditional background in technology to apply for and to get jobs in our sales organizations, technical support, marketing, earning different types of internships, collaborating with skilling, reskilling programs, academies, and things like that to really open it up. And then we also very much believe in being in a workplace where, you know, equal pay for equal work. And so we're not asking people for their previous salary history because we believe that sometimes keeps people behind, particularly women and people of underrepresented backgrounds. And so we've just been doing a lot of different things just to make sure that we have open doors to all. And with that, now a third of our organization doesn't have a college degree, and 35 percent of our organization identifies as being an ethnicity other than white Caucasian. So really proud of a thousand people globally to have that kind of open door. And then the third tenet of our Engine for Good is open hearts. And this is really a view for us to like, how do we give back to causes and initiatives and movements that are happening that are important to our employees, but also to our customers. But particularly to our employees. So, you know, in a lot of organizations I've been a part of throughout my history in technology, it's kind of like a top-down, like, you know, the CEO is on the board of XYZ non-profit or they're the fundraising chair of the ballet or whatever, and then all of a sudden there's this kind of pressure from the top for employees to participate in those things. And we've always taken a grassroots approach. We've said, what's important to you as employees? Those are the things we want you to fuel and that we're going to back you. And now as we've had more success as a company, we're able to do things like matching those dollars and the generosity of our employees. So year to date, through the things we've been doing, our thousand employees have already given and we've matched $220,000 of employee-led charitable contributions. So that's a little bit about our Engine for Good.

It is. And I think it's like for us around kind of basically, and we have people all the way at the VP level. And I think some of these people are like, oh, it's just going to be for entry-level. It's like, no, it's like across the company. There's been people who've been perhaps in other careers or held back from going into technology. And I, you know, just to be really honest, I mean, for so much of my career, I was part of that problem. I was like, no, we have to have top talent. Top talent means the top ten percent of school graduates. It was the top ten percent of it. And for me, coming to WP Engine, you know, it was a real wake-up and kind of coming into a team when I joined the company in 2013, and we were about 40 people, you know, already about a third of the team didn't have a college degree. And they were scrappy people, you know, who were entrepreneurs who were developing in WordPress and building agencies and freelancing and things. And then they were attracted to coming to the mission of helping to really create a really cool platform for WordPress to scale and grow it. And they were killing it and doing great jobs. And so I was like, it opened my eyes around kind of the whole thing around open source and then open communities, and that we then need to operate with those open doors. And so, you know, I'm a convert, and I can tell you that if you... I could just tell you, you know, 100 percent, please consider it. Please consider, and you will be pleasantly surprised.

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things we saw, you know, we're very blessed, and I know I think you feel the same way, Nick, to be in a business where, you know, despite this incredible challenge of the global pandemic, for us to see it really a drive for, you know, an interest and acceleration for our business because we are a really, I would say, a very economical, low-cost way to power your digital vision through the power of open source, through the power of a whole community of tools and technologies that surround WordPress. And then to have a partner like WP Engine where you can very easily have access to free tools, you know, and as well as bundled things like how you might have themes or patches to do things very quickly, but then have all the control and flexibility of owning your site versus being dependent upon, you know, perhaps a proprietary platform with a lot of other kind of WYSIWYG site builders. And so for us, what we've found is that whether you're a small business saying, I've got, you know, I'm a church and I need to start broadcasting services, or I'm a fitness instructor or yoga studio chain and I've got to start broadcasting digital, basically virtual classes, all the way up to seeing some of our larger enterprise customers moving more of their digital workloads to WP Engine because it's more cost-effective and they can move faster. And so what we've seen is that during this time, we feel really proud to be, I feel like, a really good value player for businesses of all sizes to really leverage WordPress with confidence and be able to move fast because that's what's happening right now. You have an idea, you have an internal need to create an intranet because of COVID or an intranet because of something that's happening, or you're going to have to take your event digital because before you had it offline. You've got to think fast and who are going to be a partner where you have tools, technologies, and the service you can just bring it all to life. So that's really been playing to our strengths, and we're proud to be able to be that type of partner to our customers.

Yeah, well, one dimension of equality that I've really seen is I kind of mentioned this before, like we're very much, I would say, like we love to be together. You know, like we very much are kind of like an extrovert, and of course we have lots of introverts and you've got some Vulcan personality all the way to the world. We have the whole spectrum, you know, we're a thousand people globally. But we love to be together, we like to have fun, we like to collaborate and all those things. And so, but with that, we also have a very sizeable portion of our organization that are really high-impact employees that don't live near an office that have been quote-unquote remote. Yeah, everyone's digital now, and everyone has that. And it's like it really opened my eyes and I realized, wow, how backwards I had been around not embracing asynchronous communication, not embracing channels. I've had to change. I mean, I'll be... yeah, this is to admit, like I was not using things like Slack. I was using other community kind of intranets and things like that for communication. And I just realized I've got to go to where everybody is. I got to go where the action is, and the action is on things like Slack. And I've got to be much more communicative. But I think just in terms of how I'm communicating, videos, you know, daily, weekly updates, how we're changing the format of our weekly town hall, how we're changing the format of things like our culture awards that we do every quarter. So it's kind of like was like an equalizer around, you know, as CEO, in terms of leveling like how we communicate. Like we all have to get to a place where we meet the needs of the employee versus the other way around. And then I think the other big thing I would just say is it's been an equalizer is I think it's been very eye-opening for a lot of our team members who are parents, and particularly I think our male employees, for them to recognize the challenges of balancing work and childcare and balancing that with school. I think it's been a great equalizing moment around, wow, this is like a team sport. And why was I really rising up to my side of the team? Yeah, so I think another dimension, so those are just some of the things that come to mind around really flattening communications, really appreciating the fact that employees can be anywhere and should be equal citizens in the conversation, and then also that balance around, you know, my role as both a parent and also as a leader.

Exactly. Like I feel like some of our large-format meetings, which were so high-energy, have gotten even better because they're more interactive. Totally, you know, the chat going on, and we can just say, what do you think? We just said something, what do you think? What are your questions? We can do that much more real-time and have fun with it at the same time. I still want to get together and see everybody and feed on that energy and have those kind of conversations. But I don't see us going backwards around large-format meetings not being kind of led virtual first because I think we've kind of jumped the shark on that.

Say it again.

Yeah, I'll give you the rack and paper. Pretty cool.

Yeah, well, one of the things I think is just I always say is transparency is the currency of trust. And it's just so important to just be really real with people. Like, don't... if people know that when you're telling the truth, or they know, you know, they just want you to tell them what's straight. And there's been a lot of really hard things that we've had to go through in this last six months since March, you know, when we kind of went into battle formation on March 9th, March 10th. You know, we just had to tell my leaders, like, you've got to just be real with people. We got to tell them what we know, we don't know, and just keep a really consistent drumbeat. I think the other thing is I always say is like kind of the four V's of... you always, you know, just reinforcing vision, value, your core values, what does victory mean? Victory could change because of circumstance or condition, but people need to know what is victory. And then, you know, also vulnerability, so that you're always operating from a place of vulnerability. So I think for us, like when we first got into the battle formation, it was all about protect the house. Protect the house, protect the house. And so that was our rallying cry. And therefore we had very specific things we said, these were the things we were doing, now we're not doing these things, we're doing these things differently, and we're stopping these things such that we can protect the house. And just having to reinforce that and share the why behind it was really important. Then from a standpoint of vulnerability is that, again, you know, we're all now having to share a lot more and be a lot more flexible. And I think if our leaders are operating from a place of being real and human about what's happening with their families, how are they feeling... you know, I'm doing updates a couple times a week on a Slack channel that I just kind of post things like, these are just thoughts from Heather, like this is what's on my mind today. Could be something about the business, could be something about something that's happened. You know, my husband's family has had really terrible time with COVID. I've had, you know, my husband's had 12 members of his family have COVID. And so we had... yeah, it was a very nerve-wracking time. And so just sharing those things with the team and just saying, hey, I'm just like you, I'm a human, I'm a mother, I'm a wife, I'm a daughter, a daughter-in-law, and I'm dealing with these things and I'm with you, but I've got your back and I know you've got mine. I think being real like that and being vulnerable and being, you know, say human first, you know, in terms of us recognizing that we are all, you know, parents and wives and husbands etc. first, and also but we're also leaders. And so how we bring that all together. So those are some thoughts around what I've been telling... and again, just always kind of focusing people on focus on what you can control.

Totally, yeah. The basic idea was not to depress any entrepreneurs, but my experience is that it's very hard in the early days, and it's still hard, and it's hard forever. And I think especially if you care a lot, it just never stops being hard. But at least you can have... it's bigger and it's more meaningful. So as an example, the impact you can have when 30 percent of your employees don't have a college degree, and that's 300-plus people, you know, that's different than when you were 40 people at WP Engine right in the beginning. And so I feel like that is the thing I try to take solace in is it's always hard, it never gets easier, but like you can feel that sense of meaning. You know, like in my world, one of the things that I've felt proud of is that we're kind of fomenting this new career of customer success, and we've been the champions. There's, you know, hundreds of thousands of people out there who have CS jobs, and that feels awesome.

Well, I think you're doing a great job, Nick, on social about really being real both as a CEO and as an entrepreneur and just as a leader around sharing just insights and just kind of asking for ideas and help. I think that's awesome and something that other people... and I get a lot, I know that I get a lot of inspiration from.

Yeah, sure. So first for us around our hero customer, you know, for us as a company that, you know, we're serving everyone from, you know, a small freelancer who's cashed out their 401k and they're trying to build a small digital agency and live, you know, kind of have this entrepreneurial dream, all the way up to some of the world's largest brands like Uber, Campbell's, Marriott. And so we have a very wide spectrum. And as we've grown, one of the things we have found is that it was very easy for us to start to get peanut butter spread. And so one of the things we've been on this very conscious journey to basically say, to be declarative that, no, every product has to have a hero size of like a segment size of customer and a hero type, you know, persona or customer for that. We can maybe attract with that product other sizes of companies or other personas, but we need to make sure that we're going to just delight that one. And that's brought a lot of energy and focus because I felt like we were trying to do everything with everyone in a fast-growing business, and it was really starting to kind of wear us down. So kind of going back to our roots, like when, you know, Jason Cohen was founding WP Engine and he went out and interviewed, you know, 50 WordPress developers to help him shape the company, and he offered to pay every single one of them their hourly fee, and none of them wanted any money. They just were so excited that somebody had offered that and was so thoughtful to value their time. And then giving those people the ability for them to kind of weigh in on product and our roadmap. And so it's kind of like really kind of saying, hey, we got to go back to our roots. Who's buying our products for what jobs to be done? And let's go delight them. And I think that's been a really great energy source for us and our teams to do that. Then the other thing around kind of embedding in our core values the whole ethos behind customer-inspired, all builds up to this concept of advocacy, which I know is something that's really important to you. And so the way I always kind of build out or talk about this customer-inspired is this kind of the sense for us in our business, we don't lock customers into any contracts. You know, kind of like, you know, our view is like we're a monthly recurring business, and so we have to earn and re-earn our customers' business every day. So with that mentality, every interaction matters. And so every interaction is an opportunity to earn your customers, you know, on a journey of earning credibility to then earning respect to then earning trust over time. And hopefully we do all those things right and we amaze our customers with our service and expertise every day and we act with integrity and take responsibility when things don't go right and be humble for the fact that we're earning their business every day. Then hopefully we can earn their advocacy. And advocacy is how I define that as when I'm willing to associate my brand with your brand. And for me, that we have fueled our business based on customer advocacy, referrals, references. You know, over 50 percent of our business comes referred by an agency partner. And so for us, you know, that's a huge lever for us is just treating customers that we want to earn their advocacy.

Yeah, well, I'll bridge off what you said first, which is for folks that are in the customer success community watching, I think one of the most important things in customer success is having a persona that you can just totally delight, right? And not spread peanut butter. That you really nailed it, Heather, of like the challenges of trying to be all things to all people. No matter how many customer success people you have, no matter how much you throw at them, you'll never be able to drive true delight and advocacy. So I love that, and I think that's timeless advice, pandemic or no. I think inside this pandemic, the thing that I've seen the most, and something your team does really well, is this focus on saying, okay, we are right now, there may be a little bit more limit on hiring people, you know, we may not be ramping people as fast, but our customers need more than ever. It's a weird paradox, right? And so therefore there's never been a bigger time for digital customer success, which is basically things like creating a virtual customer success experience through like very personalized automated emails, or doing methods in your product to kind of guide users to do the right thing, leveraging what some people call tech-touch, you know, high-touch but with technology. That's been the hottest thing right now in this pandemic because customers need more help than ever and we have to find ways to do it without throwing people at it, right?

I totally agree. I think that's fantastic. The other one I would add on that is just, I just call it business acumen. So like really understanding the levers of your customer. Like how do they win? What does success look like for them in terms of their key KPIs or business financial performance? Or, you know, in terms of like what is, for example, from a Gainsight perspective or if you're in a customer service role for whatever your software is, that you actually know what is the business impact that your technology and solution is going to create. And that you're having a conversation with your customer about, are you achieving that result and that outcome? So really that kind of business acumen, driving value, because ultimately, you know, there's a lot of software out there. Yeah. And if it's not implemented, getting adopted, and driving the value, then it's just... then you have, you know, for all of us, you know, in terms of that risk of retention risk. And right now every customer matters and every interaction matters and making sure that our customers are getting the value and we're delivering on that promise.

I view them as being inextricably tied. So the way I always describe it is, you know, my role, you think about the MBA definition around what is the role of the CEO. The role of the CEO is to maximize resources to drive enterprise value. That would be like the textbook definition. And I kind of say that, I say, well, the way you're going to get there, I always say EV to the power of P. And the power of P is really purpose. Because you have to have people who are like, our team wants to see our customers win. They want to see them when they get their website up and going and that satisfaction of it actually getting traffic and meeting their business objectives and dialoguing with them about things they want to do. Like, we get hyped up about that. And so, like, your customers feel that. And so, for me, it's like we want to create an environment where our employees can come to work and be like, I love the vision, I love the values, I have clarity on victory and what we're doing every day, I can be my true authentic self. And so, like, put me in, I'm gonna go freaking delight the customers. And that energy you give your employees comes right through to your customers, comes right through to your products, and then there's that energy exchange. And to me, it's like, great employee experience equals great customer experience, which then creates incredible financial impact and results. And then, of course, then returns. And so we're very, again, very fortunate that we've had really high growth. We're serving now almost about 150,000 customers globally, incredible growth and opportunity to build and start to launch and build more products for our customers. So again, to me, but it's all inextricably tied. I would say your core values in action is your culture, and then bringing that in with the vision and what is victory, and then that's kind of how you keep everybody aligned and focused on driving financial and business performance. And then hopefully, then as we talked about before, the ability to then have the right to be able to give back to your community, to give back to your employees, and then also for us, a big part is giving back to WordPress because it fuels our business.

Speed.

Equalizer.

Essential.

Evolved.

Thank you so much, Nick. It was a pleasure.