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Episode #121 Building Systems to Enroute Customers from Processes to Progress ft. Emily McIlwain (Exo)

#updateai #customersuccess #saas #business

Emily McIlwain, Director of Customer Success at Exo, joins the hosts ⁠⁠Jon Johnson, Principal CSM at User Testing⁠⁠ , and ⁠⁠Josh Schachter, Co-Founder and CEO at UpdateAI, to chat about the art of building scalable processes in a rapidly growing startup.

Timestamps
0:00 – Preview
1:36 – Josh is engaged
2:50 – Exo- Overview, Products and Mission
15:00 – Importance of process documentation and improvement
17:15 – Challenges of automating processes and maintaining clear communication
20:12 – Setting realistic expectations for new implementations and product shifts

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👉 Connect with the guest
Emily McIlwain: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilymcilwain/                               

👉 Connect with hosts
Jon Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonwilliamjohnson/
Kristi Faltorusso: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiserrano/
Josh Schachter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/

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Unchurned is presented by UpdateAI

About UpdateAI
At UpdateAI our mission is to empower CS teams to build great customer relationships. We work with early & growth-stage B2B SaaS companies to help them scale CS outcomes. Everything we do is devoted to removing the overwhelm of back-to-back customer meetings so that CSMs can focus on the bigger picture: building relationships.

Listening to Unchurned will lower your churn and increase your conversions.

Emily McIlwain :
Unchurned is presented by UpdateAI. I always say everyone’s trying to row in the right direction. We gotta make sure we’re on the same river sometimes. Like, well, you’re doing something I’m doing? That’s a terrible idea. Like, we should get together and do it together. It’s the litmus test of, okay, what didn’t work? Because I always say with process, either someone didn’t follow the process or there wasn’t a process. And how do you fix it if you don’t know which one it is?

John Johnson:
What are some practices or processes that you’re putting in place that that kinda teach or breadcrumb your customers to understand that, like, yeah, this is how we do it today, but it might change tomorrow so that they don’t get that sticker shock or they don’t get that, oh my god, everything is changing all the time.

Emily McIlwain :
Unchurned is presented by UpdateAI.

Josh Schachter:
Oh, how do I pronounce your last name? McElwain. McElwain? McElwain. I would not have gotten that.

John Johnson:
McElwain.

Josh Schachter:
McElwain. The

John Johnson:
two capitals, the I and the l, that is Mhmm. Is that Scottish?

Josh Schachter:
Can you say it three times fast?

Emily McIlwain :
MacElwain. MacElwain. MacElwain.

Josh Schachter:
John? Nope. MacElwain. MacElwain. Okay. Anybody, we we we’ve, we we’ve we’ve spoiler alert. Spoiler alert.

John Johnson:
We’ve got Emily McElwain. McElwain, wackwain on the show today. Emily

Josh Schachter:
is the director of customer success at Echo. Really cool startup working on some interesting technology. You got myself, Josh Schachter, cohost with the Moe host, and John Johnson, my other cohost today. Christy is, out chatting with clients and customers.

John Johnson:
And newly engaged Josh Schachter. My name is Thank you, John. I don’t know

Josh Schachter:
if it’s the gain on your mic or you just were shouting that because you were so excited, but, yeah, it came across loud and clear. Newly engaged.

John Johnson:
Excited. Finally, you will be no longer living in sin with your

Josh Schachter:
Who said we were living in sin? Who says that? Alright. Let’s move the needle. Yeah. So I proposed to my fiance, Jessica. I say her full thank you. If I say her full name on this podcast, she will flip. So just let’s just let’s just go with Jess. Yes.

Josh Schachter:
Yes. No. She’ll keep the ring. She’ll just leave.

John Johnson:
Yeah. That’s true. That’s true. Yeah. If anybody wants to see the video, send me a text. I’ll send it to you. It’s pretty great.

Josh Schachter:
That’s true. It is a good video. And, we not really, but we, but she just kinda goes into hysterics, and I wanted to put a LinkedIn. I had this whole great thing about how I was gonna boomerang an animated GIF with her in hysterics and have a nice little meme around custom like, this is, the feeling you get when that custom your your the customer you customer you love the most renews, comma, forever. And, yeah. But, I can’t I I don’t know.

John Johnson:
It’s okay.

Josh Schachter:
Keep her happy. Okay. Anyways, thank you, Emily, for being on the show today. Why don’t we great. Yeah. Why don’t we start out by by just if you could introduce us to Echo and talk about some of the cool technology that you guys are building.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. So Echo is a company out of Silicon Valley. We are a start up, and, really, our mission statement is to take ultrasound where it’s never been, which is everywhere. And so we have a 3 pronged kinda stool. We have a software, which is really a point of care ultrasound software for hospitals, large entities. We have a handheld ultrasound probe, which literally just goes in your pocket. So think of the big machines that you might have seen, and now you can just put it right down into your pocket. And then we also have an AI, portion of our company.

Emily McIlwain :
So we have AI that’s built into our handheld ultrasound machine.

Josh Schachter:
I I think it’s so freaking cool what you guys working on. I mean, to be fair, the handheld device looks like a sex toy, but it is such amazing technology, and, like, such a great mission. Because now you were telling me when we were prepping, you can now take ultrasounds, like you said, to where they’ve never been before, literally, like it’s sub Saharan Africa or other places that wouldn’t otherwise have access. And Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, talk more about, like, how you’re changing the game for ultrasounds.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. So I think, you know, I always tell the story. What brought me to echo was Money. When the Ukraine war started.

Josh Schachter:
Oh, sorry. Whoops. We’re going out.

Emily McIlwain :
You need to keep the roof open.

John Johnson:
Josh, she took that way serious for you to make a joke right over that. So

Emily McIlwain :
Ukraine war? Let’s know. But the Ukraine war when I started I’ve been here almost almost 3 years and hadn’t just started. But there was a a video of 2 Red Cross,

Josh Schachter:
you

Emily McIlwain :
know, folks trying to take an ultrasound machine over rubble. And so it was just you know, I have been in customer success for 20 years. I really have tried to have my trajectory be giving back to the world. Like, how do I do what I do, like, not save lives, but at least support those that are doing something better in the world. And so that really was not only the people that brought me here, but that was really the image that I was like, yeah, I need to be a part of that. Like, how do we make that happen everywhere? You know, we’ve been in Middle Eastern countries. We’ve been down to Mexico. We’ve been in South South Africa.

Emily McIlwain :
You know, very, you know, desolate places that they look at this and they’re just like, this is gonna change how we provide health care. And so, yes, there’s big hospitals here in the US that use it and, you know, there’s a there’s a space there, but I think where I get really excited is about how we’re, you know, partnering with our distributors and and partners kind of around the world.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Super cool. And we’re gonna talk more about AI, and, again, because I wanna hear how you’re you’re like, you you have an opportunity here with these portable devices to really and all this dab dabbing because of

John Johnson:
that what are ultrasounds, if not just data, to to really

Josh Schachter:
have some cool use cases around artificial intelligence. John, did you have a question? No? Cool. Alright.

John Johnson:
I did not. I love it. You asked the question that

Josh Schachter:
I wanted to ask. So Cool. Alright. So tell us a little bit about, like, the org. You told us about the the product, the business, but tell us a little bit about the org, and and

John Johnson:
then we can talk a little bit about your role as as director of customer success.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. So our our org is you know, we came out of Silicon Valley. We started in someone’s, you know, side not I wouldn’t wanna say a garage. It was a little nice within a garage, but it was, you know, similar, and really came from a lot of, a place where people had made a lot of things and sold them. And so there was this group of people who really wanted to think about how we change health care. And, really, it wasn’t necessarily ultrasound. It was just how do we change health care? What’s what is the gap? And so through lots of trial and error, they landed here. So we, you know, started before COVID.

Emily McIlwain :
We’ve been around about 7 years, and we started very heavily on that the probe. But those those pieces come from different parts of the world. So we really leaned into software during COVID.

Josh Schachter:
Mhmm.

Emily McIlwain :
And that I don’t know that it’s easier, but it’s it’s you don’t have to, like, buy things. You don’t have to actually acquire a a piece of anything. So it was kind of an interesting shift that they had to do, but, you know, we very much think of ourselves as a software company that is very customer focused on solving problems. And so we are very product driven. We are very customer focused in our feedback. We have a pretty strong 360 feedback loop. And really being able to listen to, you know, customers and what’s out there. I mean, that is a thing that I think a lot of companies strive for.

Emily McIlwain :
I will say this is my 5th startup. It’s hard to do. Yeah. So, you know, that is we we very much work in tandem with our sales, our product, our development teams, our marketing teams. You know, how do we how do we kind of tiger team it together to bring the best products and services to the market?

Josh Schachter:
What is the so you like, you’re a little over a 100 people, right, in New York? We are. Mhmm. Okay. And and how about on your side of the organization? What does that look like?

Emily McIlwain :
So we have a commercial team that’s, oh, lord, about 22. I feel like I’m gonna miss somebody, and then I’m gonna hurt someone’s feelings.

Josh Schachter:
Let’s just call it 23. We’ll round up to 23. Yeah. Yep.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s fine. Whatever. If I forgot you, you should have made a better bigger and product.

John Johnson:
Yeah. Alright.

Emily McIlwain :
Right. But we, we have our sales team, and then I have everything post sales. So I run customer success managers. You know, really, how are we getting people to adopt our product? And I would say customer success is more more than just renewals and upsells. Right? It’s about making sure that you’re listening to the customer. It’s not about being, like, their best friend. It’s really about how do we become part of their their organization so that we understand their KPIs and what they’re trying to accomplish with the tools and services that we’re providing. I also have our project managers, so, you know, implementations, you know, traditional implementation the way you think of it, our customer support team, and then I also have our sales ops team.

Emily McIlwain :
So anything from, like, you know, the really the operational part of, you know, booking deals and Yep. Dealing with not dealing with finance, but getting to work with finance.

John Johnson:
Yep. Dealing with finance is fine.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. You know, sometimes. But there’s

John Johnson:
a lot of things. Our podcast in finance, so it’s fine.

Emily McIlwain :
Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Awesome. There I mean, you gotta have a bean counter. But it’s a lot. I mean, there’s a there’s a lot of moving parts here, and we are an FDA regulated company because we have a medical device.

Emily McIlwain :
So there’s a lot of regulatory concerns that everyone in the organization, no matter what your role is, have to be a part of. So Yeah.

John Johnson:
What is how does I guess that’s one of my questions. Right? So this, traditionally, I have a SAS around very software driven. We’re talking about a physical product. We’re talking about, I would assume b to b. Though at some point, I would assume there might be an option for b to c at some point for individual practitioners in space. Mhmm. How is this different than your past experiences where you have a little bit more SaaS and software experience? Yeah. And I’m talking about renewals and adoption where it’s like, I just need you to hold the thing and put it in the Yeah.

Emily McIlwain :
So it’s really interesting because the device itself is driven off software. So it has to have software behind it, but it is different because you can be we are also agnostic to the ultrasound device. Meaning, that as long as you can have a DICOM image, which is ultrasound verbiage for the type of image it takes, just like a JPEG, those kind of things. So when you think about the device itself, it’s almost it’s almost like your renewal and your relationship is 2 pronged. You want them using the software. But depending on their subscription level, you also need to make sure that they are actually using and benefiting from the software. Because if they stop using software, this device doesn’t really work. Like, you have to it has to connect to something.

Emily McIlwain :
And and it is it is different. Like, I’ve only been in SaaS in my previous roles. I had I did time and attendance in hospitals for a gazillion years. So we had time clocks, but, like, those are not very complicated. I mean, you know, it’s a time clock.

John Johnson:
Budget.

Emily McIlwain :
And, yeah. I mean, it is what it is. So this has been really interesting because you have people you have end users who are like, we have an ecommerce site, so we do have the b to c. And those folks are very focused on the device. Right? Like, they wanna be able to put a probe down, understand how to use it no matter what their their education looks like. Right? Because if you’re in a, maybe, a northeastern big hospital, that’s different than being in the middle of Indiana. Neither is worse or better. It’s just a different experience and you have maybe less resources where you are if you’re in the, you know, middle of the country.

Emily McIlwain :
So those end users really care about that that device. But then we have, you know, larger hospitals, distributors who really wanna make sure that the software is getting an ROI for their their entities, that their their physicians are still happy with the device because if these physicians aren’t happy with the device and the software, then they have to go find a new solution. And we all know, Matt, we all know if you’ve been in SaaS for any part of time, undoing that, no matter what the product is, is a nightmare. Right? Like, I don’t wanna go create a I mean, I have SaaS products too of how we run this business. I try very hard to pick good ones so that we don’t have to go unseat them in a a year or 2.

John Johnson:
How much is the device?

Emily McIlwain :
It’s about 35100, for a 3 year. It it depends on, you know, a few things, but that’s roughly what your subscription’s gonna be.

John Johnson:
And that

Josh Schachter:
comes with the software as well?

Emily McIlwain :
It does. Mhmm. Okay.

Josh Schachter:
So so that so that so that that price doesn’t, doesn’t justify or or or carry with it all kinds of, like, bespoke support. And, I mean, this isn’t like the the medical device industry where you’re going into operating rooms with, like, the salesperson is scrubbing in because it’s, like, that costly of a device. Like Correct. Correct. Scale as well. Yeah.

Emily McIlwain :
Correct. We need to be able to do it at scale. Although, I will say most of our sales teams can most of our sales team came from that environment, which has been really beneficial because they understand that space. Yep. And then I I’ve always worked with hospital admins or at least health care admins, which is a different beast. So it’s it’s kind of a good merriment of what we both brought to the table.

Josh Schachter:
So you’re all kind of in process mode right now. How long have you been there again?

Emily McIlwain :
I’ve been here almost 3 years. Just just shy.

Josh Schachter:
Hey, everybody. It’s Josh. I’m taking a quick break from the podcast to tell you a bit about UpdateAI. I started UpdateAI to solve 2 major challenges for CS teams. The first is that we save CSMs 4 to 5 hours per week with our productivity through AI. Secondly, we give leaders a window into all the conversations across each account and the entire portfolio. So we help knowledge transfer, we help increase the coverage model of your CS teams, and we help you detect emerging patterns in what your customers are telling your CSMs across all the risks, product feedback, advocacy moments, and expansion opportunities. So come check us out at www.updateai.

Josh Schachter:
It’s completely free to sign up and trial. Okay. So and you guys are growing. So you’re you’re in process mode right now, process building mode. Right. Repeatable process building mode. How is that going? Where are you in that journey? Where do you want to be?

Emily McIlwain :
Well, I always say process is is a is an open book. Right? Like, you’re never really done. I think at this point, we are at at a point where what I always say, did you write it down? Like, did we write that down? You know, we just had a problem the other day. It wasn’t really it was more of a challenge. Right? It’s like, well, we never anticipated this. We need a process for it. And so now we have to go write the process. And somebody, you know, questioned whether or not it was right or wrong.

Emily McIlwain :
I said, I don’t you know, right now, this is what’s right. We can always iterate off of it later, but at least we can test. You know, it’s the litmus test of, okay, what didn’t work? Because I always say with process, either someone didn’t follow the process or there wasn’t a process. And how do you fix it if you don’t know which one it is? I would really like our process to be more automated. That is my big challenge right now, is how do we share that process so everyone knows where we are? So for instance, in an implementation, how do we make it as easy as possible for the salesperson who sold it to see where they are in the implementation without getting a manual email? How do we automate more things to the customer? Like, they’ve provided this. How do we send it back to them? Because the next step is ready. And, yeah, there’s lots of software that does that, but you still have to build it. I mean, that’s still and you have to know what is the right order because we do an after action review after every large implementation.

Emily McIlwain :
And we always pretty much change something after that. Like, what worked? What didn’t? What do we wanna try different? What do we wanna AB test? So it’s like changing not too much so you don’t know what affected it. It’s like, I don’t know what was better, but we don’t actually know which part of it was. But, you know, staying with the process so your team doesn’t feel like, oh my god. There’s always change. Right? It’s just like, I don’t even know where the goal post is because you keep changing the process. So, you know, there’s that mixture too of making sure that you’re taking care of your internal customer, you know, your employees, and doing what’s best for the customer.

Josh Schachter:
What’s the biggest need for process improvement? You mentioned 2 cases there. Right? Like, the sales knowing what how implementation is going and then communications back to the customer. Yep. Where’s the biggest gap or the biggest desire?

Emily McIlwain :
I think the biggest it’s just like my list is always big. Right? I’m always about how do we get better even when I feel like we’re doing, you know, quote unquote great. I think it’s really that if we can automate more things, if we can really get more communication out to the right individuals that don’t require me not that I mind picking up a phone or sending an email. Right? But we’re all very busy and no one’s emptying budget to provide more people. That’s not a thing that any business is doing. And so it’s how do we really make sure that we’re continuing to work as a team. And sometimes we do need to look up and just kinda say, we’ve not done a great job communicating. We need we need to build a little bit we kinda need help with it, to be quite frank.

Emily McIlwain :
Like, how do we build that process so that we can be as good as we really wanna be? But that’s the biggest thing. How are we making sure that we’re communicating with customers so that we’re setting your expectation? No. No news isn’t good news. Customers wanna know what’s happening and

John Johnson:
You mean, like, like, what, like, what so so let’s dig into

Josh Schachter:
that a little bit. You’re talking about, like, product new feature releases or,

Emily McIlwain :
like, what what are

Josh Schachter:
you what are you talking about exactly?

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. It could be a new feature release or, you know, customer a has given us their, you know, packet. You know, we have our implementations in sections. Right? So they’ve given us section a back. We’ve gotten it. This is where we are. We’ve now done this with it, and it’s time for you to do section b, for example. And I’m we don’t actually call them section a, b, and c, but for this purpose, I’m calling them that.

Emily McIlwain :
I think, you know, sometimes customers it’s just like, well, I sent it to you. What can I expect back? And sometimes I find that teams are so busy doing that they forget

Josh Schachter:
Close-up.

Emily McIlwain :
Oh, I should have just sent a really quick email. Like, received. Received and you will hear from me by Friday.

Josh Schachter:
Yep. You know,

Emily McIlwain :
it’s not even like I’ll have everything done on Friday, but my next update will be Friday. And it comes everyone and I think, overall, people who wanna do a great job, which I think ultimately most of us do no matter where we work, we just that is the part that we just get it and we’re like, oh, we got it. We gotta go move move move. We kinda forget about that piece of the housekeeping. Like, they’re kind of over there going, did you get it? Did I give you everything you needed? Did it look good? Was it the format you wanted? Is there anything missing? So I think that’s the biggest piece because we just get a you know, there are questions about, well, did they send it? Did you get back to them? Where’s this? Where’s that? I would say everyone’s trying to row in the right direction. We gotta make sure we’re on the same river sometimes. Like Well, I

Josh Schachter:
like that.

Emily McIlwain :
Doing something I’m doing? That’s a terrible idea. Like, we should get together and do it together.

John Johnson:
I love that. Every I love that. Making sure you’re rolling in the same direction, but first, making sure you’re on the same river. That’s good. One of the thoughts that that I was kinda hearing as we’re talking through this. Right? So you talk about, testing and and iterating, and at the same time, also setting expectations correctly. Right? So this is kind of like that that interesting that interesting dates that we do with customers where we want everything to be perfect, but we also know that we’re gonna have to learn. How are you working through this? We’ve got a small team, so I feel like that your hands are really in the weeds here.

John Johnson:
How are you what are some practices or processes that you’re putting in place that that kinda teach or bread crumb your customers to understand that, like, yeah, this is how we do it today, but it might change tomorrow so that they don’t get that sticker shock or they don’t get that, oh my god, everything’s changing all the time.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. I think we do a couple of things. One is we bring in our product team when it’s appropriate. Meaning, like, we just had a conversation this morning. We have a customer who has some questions. We understand their ask. We believe that we’ve communicated that appropriately. But we’ve asked them to join our customer call because, 1, we’ve never done one of the things.

Josh Schachter:
Mhmm.

Emily McIlwain :
And, 2, we want to make sure that our because I mean, we really do. But we want to make sure our customer knows we internally are aligned. So if you have some technical questions, I’ve got the technical expert on the phone here. And even if we never have to utilize that person, it’s a matter of they got my back. Like, they’ve engaged the right people. The people that they’ve told me they’ve talked to are not make believe. They’re really on this call. I think the other thing that we try to do, and I actually think we’ve gotten really good at this, is when we are in the middle of planning something, like, we’re gonna change something.

Emily McIlwain :
Like, the products used to do this, and now a lot of people have asked for it to do additional things. We’ll actually go out to the customers who have asked for that and show them the beta version. Like, this is kind of our mock ups. This is what it looks like. Give us your feedback. So they get a chance to give us feedback before they get it in their hands. So small things like, why did you put the log out button on the bottom left? It should be in the upper right hand corner. Like, no one looks there.

Emily McIlwain :
So I think sometimes that’s, you know, really working with people who are asking for things. But, you know, sometimes when like, we’ve done a few things in the last 6 months that we’ve never done before. Some API connections, worked with some vendors we’ve never worked before, and literally we’ve said to the customer, we are happy to do this. We feel confident we can do it. This is a team that’s gonna do it, but we’ve never done it. So we’re gonna need additional resources from you. You can expect that things may take a little bit longer. We’re gonna have a you know, this is what the touch base is gonna be.

Emily McIlwain :
You will hear from us at least once a week, or we will at least have a weekly meeting. So it’s, you know, sometimes just

Josh Schachter:
That’s presale or post or post sale?

Emily McIlwain :
We do it both. So we’ve had situations where we’ve had a sale and then something came up, and it was like, oh, we never even knew to ask that question during the sales process. So that’s a new thing. But then we just really did have to partner with the salesperson. We brought them back in and said, you know, really, I just want you there as support. Right? Like but it’s really about just saying, sure. You know, I’ve done the due diligence. We feel really confident about it.

Emily McIlwain :
But just so you know full honesty, you’re the first one ever doing it.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Emily McIlwain :
We’re really excited about it. Oh, I see.

Josh Schachter:
It goes a long way.

Emily McIlwain :
People are very kind about it. They’re just like, thank you for not overpromising. Like, we’d rather you tell us that than be like, this is not gonna be a problem. And then it sort of doesn’t go as well as they expected.

John Johnson:
Yep. I

Josh Schachter:
make my vendors pay when they overpromise. You do not, John. You do not wanna be an overpromising vendor of UpdateAI.

John Johnson:
I I will heed your warning.

Emily McIlwain :
Heed the warning. Yeah. Yeah.

John Johnson:
Of course, I never overpromise myself.

Emily McIlwain :
No. Never. Never. We ever never do that. I mean

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Never.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. That’s just human nature, I think, sometimes. But we try real hard. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone’s working really closely together to make sure we don’t do that.

John Johnson:
And I I believe even just like with early stage startups, you said this is, like, your 5th startup. Right? Like, I mean Yeah. We all come out of those incubators in those moments of, like, I’m gonna change the world. You know? And all of our parents told us that we can be, like, the best that we could be. Right? So it’s kind of in our nature to be idealistic. And oftentimes, to the pragmatist, the ones that’s actually, like, in the in the trenches, it’s like, why are you telling me these 100 things that you can do, but you can only be the one? Right? So bridging that gap of, like, yeah, we’re gonna get there. And I like the way that you said that. It’s like, this is our first time.

John Johnson:
I’m a big fan of that too if somebody’s like, I need to do this project or whatever. It’s like, this is outside of anything that we’re used to. Happy to jump on board with you. Like, we’re gonna learn something with this, but, also, like, we cannot give you any guarantees, on timeline or or function or format.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. Like, we’ll keep you updated. We’ll have a project plan. It will change. We know because we’ve never written a project plan for it. But I you know, that that has been the most useful, I think, piece is just just being it’s almost like brutally honest in a way. It’s just like, this is what it is.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. I like to I like to think that the truth shall shall set you free.

John Johnson:
I’ve heard that before, Josh. Did you coin that yourself?

Josh Schachter:
I I made that I made that up myself. Yeah. Okay. Yep.

Emily McIlwain :
We should cross this

John Johnson:
family, Josh is brilliant with one liners. Like, he has some of the best, like Mhmm. That’s some, like, free knowledge there. Yeah. The truth shall set you free We all

Emily McIlwain :
have to have a talent.

John Johnson:
Yeah. It has to be a bumper sticker.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. But but it is true. It is true. I mean, especially, honestly, as a a start up founder, like, there’s many situations where do

John Johnson:
you tell the truth or do you tell the

Josh Schachter:
the or do you admit it or

John Johnson:
this or that? And I found that every time I reveal the full truth, then it’s always very liberating, and

Josh Schachter:
it keeps everybody aligned on the same page.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Absolutely. Well, this was great, Emily. Yeah. I really appreciate your coming on the show. Yeah. Best of luck with your with your

Emily McIlwain :
Thanks for ruining my time, though.

John Johnson:
I don’t know. I haven’t updated

Emily McIlwain :
your review.

John Johnson:
No. No. No. We need

Josh Schachter:
the 5 stars. We need the 5 stars.

Emily McIlwain :
Yeah. Yeah. I No. No. No. No. I appreciate it. Yeah.

Emily McIlwain :
It’s awesome.

Josh Schachter:
And, for 2025, I I wish you the greatest in scalability and process

John Johnson:
building. Yeah.

Emily McIlwain :
We’re building goals right now. It just makes me wanna, like, either drink or jump off of a cliff. I can’t decide which one. Dude,

John Johnson:
they help.

Josh Schachter:
That’s it.

Emily McIlwain :
Oh my god. It’s painful. But go get on your, welcome email or welcome call or

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Whatever. You gotta get it automated. It’s more important than me.

John Johnson:
I’d love

Emily McIlwain :
to meet you, John. And, Josh as well. Nice to your day.

Josh Schachter:
Thanks, everybody.

Emily McIlwain :
Have a great day.

Josh Schachter:
Bye.