ZoomInfo CEO Henry Schuck: Sales Cycle Elongation; Gratitude Journaling; Sales Layoffs | E964

1. 0:00 – 3:28

   Who is Henry Schuck?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:00

      Henry, I am excited for this. You don't know this, but I'm like the biggest fan boy of ZoomInfo's journey.

   2. HSHenry Schuck0:05

      (laughs)

   3. HSHarry Stebbings0:05

      I've been looking forward to this for a while. So, thank you so much for joining me today.

   4. HSHenry Schuck0:09

      Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings0:11

      Not at all. Now, this direction of conversation is gonna go in a couple of different ways. But I wanna start on the founding story. How did you come to found the incredible brand that is ZoomInfo today?

   6. HSHenry Schuck0:21

      Yeah, so I actually ... This- this started when I was in college. I was a fr- I went to college in Las Vegas, um. When I went to college, I grew up in a pretty, um, sort of middle class family. My mom was a nurse. Uh, I was raised by my mom. She was a nurse, she worked three jobs. When I graduated high school, she gave me $5,000, which was the, like, remnants of a old life insurance policy, and she said, "Here's your college fund." Like, "Good luck." So, I went to college, I ran out of that money my first year, and I went searching for a new job. Uh, so I applied everywhere around Las Vegas and I ended up landing at this small SaaS, early stage SaaS company. It was the founder and one other person, he was looking for someone to do administrative work. This is like 2002. Um, and he sold an annual subscription service to a database, uh, of basically reports on the information technology departments of large companies. Uh, and then he would send out a CD that had all the reports too, to these companies. And so, I got this front row seat at a super early entrance in SaaS. It was 300,000 in revenue between '02 and, uh, '06. We grew it from 300,000 in revenue to just under 5 million in revenue.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings1:38

      Wow.

   8. HSHenry Schuck1:38

      The business was 5 million in revenue and doing like 4.7 million in EBITDA. And so, there wasn't much of a business. It was this incredibly high margin company without much of a business infrastructure. And so, I left the company and I went off to law school. And in my, after my first year of law school, a friend of mine and I said, "Hey, why don't we start something that's like that, doesn't directly compete, and actually build a business around it?" And we knew there was a market there. We understood how the business operated. Uh, we knew there was a large total addressable market. We knew what the product market fit looked like. And so we said, you know, "Won't be that hard to be better at the business side than, uh, than the company we worked at in college." And so we did, we went out and we started building what was at the time, Harry, called DiscoverOrg, which is probably like maybe the worst name in business history. Um, because people would call it Discover, and Discover.org, and Discovery, and Discovery.org. So, we started off in '07. I put $25,000 on my credit card, he put $25,000 on his credit card. This is 2006, Columbus, Ohio. Um, and so there's no like, uh, VC funding or, you know, VC appetite for these types of companies. So, that was all the funding we had. Uh, we grew the business without any outside investor through 2014 where we were about $30 million of ARR, profitable, and brought in, uh, TA Associates as a private equity investor in 2014. And l- that's where I'll pause the story, 'cause I think the rest of the question is on.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings3:12

      I- I mean, there's so many things I wanna ... I do wanna start, that you mentioned your upbringing, you mentioned your mother being a nurse, having multiple jobs. I always think that we're a function of our histories in many ways. And that separates into... First, what do you think you're running from, Henry?

2. 3:28 – 5:36

   What are you running from/towards?

   1. HSHenry Schuck3:28

      You know, if- if I'm running from anything, uh, it is, uh ... I don't know if it's running from, but when I was young, I really did believe that I could do anything. I could be anything that I wanted to. That if I worked really hard and set my mind to something, that I could achieve it. Um, which I didn't appreciate everybody didn't feel that way. Um, I thought that was something that everybody just like inh- intuitively knew. Um, and so, I guess I'm running from, uh, anything that is not, you know, meeting that full potential.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings4:04

      Can- can I ask you a weird question? I always had that same feeling of like the inevitability of success. I wasn't sure how it would come-

   3. HSHenry Schuck4:10

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings4:10

      ... but I just knew it would come. But I do doubt myself, and I have doubted myself. And suddenly that, oh, well obviously it will come, suddenly goes-

   5. HSHenry Schuck4:18

      (laughs)

   6. HSHarry Stebbings4:19

      ... "What if it goes wrong?" Like, what if-

   7. HSHenry Schuck4:21

      Mm-hmm.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings4:21

      ... what if I'm not as good as I think I am? Did you ever have that?

   9. HSHenry Schuck4:25

      Oh, yeah. I mean, I have it today. Like, (laughs) you know, like all the time. Um, and I think like part of it is, uh, you ... I think the, I think what you're saying there, I think when I think about that, it's like, what if I don't reach my potential?

   10. HSHarry Stebbings4:41

       Yeah.

   11. HSHenry Schuck4:41

       What if I do something that robs me of reaching the potential that I had, that was like, you know, navigatable? Um, I think that's the big fear is, hey, I- I believe, you and I believe, that we can be much more than we are today. And we can see a gr- we can see it. And what if we don't reach it because of something that we could have overcome? That's the real fear. That we could have learned, that we could have paid more attention to, that we made a bad decision that took us away from, that's the big concern. It's not that we're not capable of it, it's that probably we make the wrong decisions on our journey there.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings5:24

       I totally agree. I recently stopped drinking 'cause I thought I lost 25% productivity a year and compounded-

   13. HSHenry Schuck5:29

       Yep.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings5:29

       ... over 25 years, I would be fucked. (laughs)

   15. HSHenry Schuck5:33

       Yeah, yeah. Yep.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings5:34

       Okay. So, I actually spoke to

3. 5:36 – 7:58

   Henry’s Humble Upbringing

   1. HSHarry Stebbings5:36

      some of your colleagues and friends, and they said that your, you know, more humble upbringing, not being born into a life of great wealth, actually gave you a mindset of frugality building the business. But in some ways, it prevented you from going for all out growth early on. Would you agree with that? And how do you think your humble upbringing impacted your mindset to growth?

   2. HSHenry Schuck5:58

      Yeah, so I don't think of it so much about my upbringing. I think of it like, when I worked at that, um-... startup company in college. One of the things I learned was just, w- what do you do with resource scarcity? So there was this moment where I met, um, m- the founder of that company. We actually acquired that company in 2015. But the founder of that company, his brother was like this big sort of grow at th- grow at all costs VC guy. And we met him one night, and he w- and it was me and the founder and his brother, and hi- his brother, the VC. And his brother, the VC, goes, "Why are you not investing in this business? It's just resource starved. Every dollar you put in, you're generating, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on the other side. Why are you not just aggressively investing in this thing?" And when we walked away from that conversation, the founder said to me, he goes, "You know, he's always like, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. I like a business that's resource constrained because it ensures that the next investment you make is always the most important investment you can be making." (laughs) And I was like, "Okay, I get it." There is like a, uh, a continuum there, where it's like you're not investing enough to where you're investing way too much and you're getting sloppy with it. And so, I think what was instilled in me was, good businesses run profitably, and you're just not really a real business until you can figure out a way to be profitable and run a business. You can't just always be fundraising the next dollars to fund your operations. So I always believed that a good business should be run profitably. I also didn't have access to the capital markets in 2007, 2008, 2009 Columbus, Ohio. So there wasn't really an option to run the business in a non, um, efficient, profitable way. And so I think that that was more the driving factor than the upbringing

4. 7:58 – 10:37

   What if Henry had raised VC money sooner?

   1. HSHenry Schuck7:58

      part.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings7:59

      Wha- what worries me more is if I look at today's environment, and I place you in it at the start, you would've got venture funding very easily and you would've got a lot of it. Do you think you would've charted your course differently had you had a lot more money a lot sooner?

   3. HSHenry Schuck8:14

      So, one of the real benefits of my journey is I started at 23. I didn't get any outside funding til I was 30. The business, d- we didn't do any really big M&A until I was 32, thir- uh, 33. And I, so I had all of this time to mature, and grow as a leader, and build an executive team, and build the foundations of a good operation, and bring in a CFO. And I think if you rewound back to 2014, where we took our first outside funding, or even earlier than that, and you said, like, "Hey, here's $40 million. Just, like, go r- you know, go spend the $40 million," I would make a tremendous amount of bad decisions along the way, I wouldn't have been as grown up and mature of a leader as I've become. And so the benefit of time has actually ... Like, the, the benefit of not being an overnight success, but being more like an overnight success 15 years in the making, I think has been beneficial for the whole business and definitely beneficial for me. When we were going on the IPO road show, I remember I sat down with this one set of investors and they had printed out all these, like, Glassdoor reviews. By the way, we're like one of... we have a really great Glassdoor rating and really great, like, uh, recommendations of me and the employees, but they obviously not interested in those ones. They wanna talk about the bad ones. And so they pulled up the bad reviews and they were like, "Hey, so we read these bad reviews, you know? Uh, some of them would say that you get, like, really angry, and, like, what do you, what do you say to that?" And I was like, "I founded this company when I was 23. We had hundreds of employees by the time I was 28. And you wanna take, like, a snapshot in time of my leadership capability and ability and style, and, you know, lay it upon me, like, seven, eight, nine years later, that's just not, like, a good r- it's not really realistic." It assumes that I haven't evolved or learned at all over those years. And if you talk to anybody around me, I think what they would tell you is I'm a very different leader today than I was five years ago, or eight years ago, or 10 years ago. And so I think the opportunity to evolve makes you more likely to spend that VC money and grow your business

5. 10:37 – 12:11

   What do you know now that you wish you knew before?

   1. HSHenry Schuck10:37

      wisely.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings10:38

      What ... This is so hard. What do you know now that you wish you could tell your 23-year-old self founding the business back then?

   3. HSHenry Schuck10:46

      You know, believe in yourself. Like, you're, the, the, probably the biggest thing I would say is along these lines, is don't worry about what the Silicon Valley companies are doing. You're charting your own course, it's unique, and it's gonna be rewarded. Just have a lot of confidence in that. Because-

   4. HSHarry Stebbings11:05

      Mm-hmm.

   5. HSHenry Schuck11:05

      ... to your point, Harry, like, when we were growing, it was really easy to look at, like, what was happening in Stanford a- w- we, we grew the business in Portland, Oregon. Um, but it was really easy to look down in Silicon Valley and see what, you know, how the VCs were funding Box and Dropbox and, you know, all of these kinda like darlings of the, like, early 2010s. Um, and then just look at our business and go, like, "Yeah, it's ju- doesn't feel like that."

   6. HSHarry Stebbings11:35

      (laughs)

   7. HSHenry Schuck11:35

      Um, you know, like, "Why doesn't it feel like that?" And then be really hard on yourself for not growing it profitably and growing it as fast.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings11:44

      Do you know what? If there's anything we've learned from FTX, it's that being on a magazine cover does not always lead to success, Henry. (laughs)

   9. HSHenry Schuck11:51

      Yes. 100%.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings11:53

       So, I think it's fine not being on it. You ment- you mentioned bringing in the exact team around you and kind of fostering that culture. I honestly hate the word culture 'cause it's so misused and kind of fluffy.

   11. HSHenry Schuck12:04

       Yeah. (laughs)

   12. HSHarry Stebbings12:04

       But I think it's important to start at home. What type of culture are you fostering within your own family?

   13. HSHenry Schuck12:10

       Yeah. I think

6. 12:11 – 17:06

   How Henry Made his Daughter Cry

   1. HSHenry Schuck12:11

      probably the biggest one, or the biggest thing that I'm fostering in my family is, nothing comes easy, and practice is everything.... um, and so my daughter actually, the one time (laughs) m- made my daughter cry with words, y- only one time.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings12:26

      (laughs)

   3. HSHenry Schuck12:26

      And we were driving. Uh, we were driving in the car. We had, like, a two-hour drive, and she was talking about one of her friends who's really great at soccer, and her friend is, like, four years older than her. She's been on, like, a club team. She practices three times a week. She's really, like, great at soccer. And my daughter goes, and my d- uh, my daughter's, like, never really played, uh, soccer, and she, uh, and she goes, "Daddy, I'm better than Colby at soccer." And I was like, "That's ridiculous. You are not better th- than Colby at soccer. You could be if you practiced as much as her. She goes to practice three days a week. She's on two teams. She's been doing it for five years. I'm sure you could be as good, if not better, than Colby if you did all of that, but you're not just, like, out of the gates better than Colby. That makes no sense." And she started crying, and my wife was like, "Whoa, take it easy." (laughs) Like, you know, "You don't have to be, like, that hard on her," but in my head, it was like, "Listen, she's gotta know that, like, you don't just walk into situations and expect to be amazing at them, but that you have to work really hard, and practice, and put in the time and effort to get really great at things." And so I, like, d- beat that drumbeat constantly. The other night, uh, probably a couple weeks ago, my wife bought this, like, uh, embroidery machine, and it comes to the house, and I'm like, "Oh, that's gonna suck. Like, you're gonna really need to learn how to use that thing. It's not, like, out of the box, like, touch and, you know, easy to use." And my daughter walks in, and she goes, "Mommy, don't worry. If you practice really hard and you spend a lot of time doing it, you'll get better and better and better at it, so you just gotta keep practicing." I was like, "Okay, great, that's landing. It is landing."

   4. HSHarry Stebbings14:15

      (laughs)

   5. HSHenry Schuck14:15

      So, I think a culture of, like, hard work and practice leads to better outcomes is, you know, the number one thing that I'm trying to instill. You know, at the same time, like, she's growing up very differently than I grew up, and, you know, not her fault, but like, we spend the summers in Boston where half of the ZoomInfo team is, so we have a house there, and we have a house here. And, um, you know, we have house cleaners. We didn't have house cleaners growing up. And so, really explaining to her where the lines are, like, "Hey, you don't tell your friends, 'Hey, my house in Boston, my house in Vancouver,' you know, 'my vacation house.'" Like, people don't have that. You're in a unique situation. You have to appreciate the uniqueness of that. Um, and, and don't, you know, you, when you talk about those things, it can be heard in a negative way. Um, and you don't have to be embarrassed about it, but you also don't need to, like, talk about it in a way that feels like you're flaunting it. She understands that now pretty well, um, and so making-

   6. HSHarry Stebbings15:17

      What's-

   7. HSHenry Schuck15:17

      ... her appreciate it.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings15:18

      What's the most challenging thing about parenthood and fatherhood?

   9. HSHenry Schuck15:22

      I think there's m- a bigger question, which is, I work really hard to be the best dad, the best CEO, the best husband, um, possible. Those are, like, kinda the three things. Then I have to find time to be, like, the best to myself, but those three things are always stealing from each other, right? Like, more time at work, less time at home, or less time, m- more time being a great CEO, less time being a great father. More time being a great father, less time being a great CEO. More time being a great husband, less time being a great CEO. And so the hardest thing is, um, building a framework that says, "In order for you to be a great father, this is, like, the minimum necessary time and, uh, involvement that you need to be doing. Don't ever fall below that. And then always look for opportunities to do more." Um, and so I put that in place, uh, in the way that I interact with my daughter and my family. But that was, that's, you know, it's challenging. There's, it's always challenging, because left to my own devices, ZoomInfo would take all of my mindshare, 100%. It's very selfish.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings16:38

       I always say when you're winning at work, you're losing at home, and when you're winning at home-

   11. HSHenry Schuck16:42

       Yeah. (laughs)

   12. HSHarry Stebbings16:42

       ... you're losing at work.

   13. HSHenry Schuck16:43

       Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings16:45

       I g-

   15. HSHenry Schuck16:45

       You have to figure out a way to get them both going. That's the, that's the magic.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings16:49

       You absolutely do. Uh, I, I- can I ask you? You mentioned there about kind of the, the practice, and the hard work, and then seeing outcomes. How do you think about kind of culture then at work, and is it the same values that you instill from family values that you instill at the workplace?

7. 17:06 – 18:51

   Is Frank Slootman wrong about work culture?

   1. HSHenry Schuck17:06

      Yes, absolutely. I think, look, here's the interesting thing about culture, and I've read the books, and-

   2. HSHarry Stebbings17:12

      Yeah.

   3. HSHenry Schuck17:12

      ... we've talked about Frank Slootman and, uh, Snowflake, and I think the hard part about culture is, like, you read Frank Slootman's book, and you walk out, and you go, like, "Okay, take the slack outta the rope." It's like, "Okay, I don't know really, like, what, like, what is the op-"

   4. HSHarry Stebbings17:27

      It's, "War, bring your spear. Kill someone." (laughs)

   5. HSHenry Schuck17:29

      Right, 100%. And that is, like, the feeling-

   6. HSHarry Stebbings17:33

      Mm-hmm.

   7. HSHenry Schuck17:33

      ... but, like, what do I do with that, you know? Like, what do, what do I come into work and change and do? That's the hard part. Um, like, we have a, we have a, uh, mantra that's, "Get 1% better every day." Um, that's a great part of the culture, but what are you doing to make sure everybody appreciates that and is looking for opportunities actually to improve? I think the hard part about getting a culture is, I can describe it to you, but what it really takes is really great questions about how the company operates and how it makes decisions that really can tell you the cultural story-

   8. HSHarry Stebbings18:14

      Mm-hmm.

   9. HSHenry Schuck18:14

      ... the easy thing for me to tell you is, it is a cul- culture of constant improvement. You can't improve unless you have data that tells you how the business is operating, and then that you're- you're- and then look for improvement against those. Ask questions about, "Hey, why is this worse than it was last quarter? Why is this worse than it was last year? If this is improvment- improving, why is it improving? Are we sure that the investments that we made behind it are what are driving the improvement here?" And, you know, that goes back to how you invest in the business and how you look for returns on the business. But I think the biggest thing about our culture, it is a culture of constant

8. 18:51 – 21:07

   Is it important that employees feel safe in their jobs?

   1. HSHenry Schuck18:51

      improvement.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings18:52

      Can I ask this? Trust in their safety, and I always thought in, you know, teams, you needed both actually. And th- uh, you know, Mickey from Wolt, this very famous European company that sold to DoorDash for eight billion last year said, "Bullshit. You don't need safety. I trust you, Henry, but no one's safe."

   3. HSHenry Schuck19:11

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings19:11

      Not in our company." Do you agree with that?

   5. HSHenry Schuck19:13

      100%. Yeah, 100%. 100%, yes. I trust all of my executive team. I trust that they make the right decisions. I trust that they're focused on the business. But if nothing goes right for four quarters in a row, or all of the things that we were trying to achieve are not achieved, it doesn't matter that there's trust. Like, your safety is in your performance. That's it. That's where you get safety. And, like, I think that is actually misunderstood, which is people are like, "Oh, it's like, you know, it's a- it's a hard charging environment and so I always have to look over my shoulder in case, like, you know, I'm gonna get fired or whatever." It's like, but that's not the case in any, like, hard charging environment. I think the reality is performance is what creates safety, and what you gotta make sure of is that you're aligned on what the performance expectation is. And so, if we have a conversation and I say, "Listen, here are the three things that I expect from you," like, th- "and then here are the metrics that I'm gonna look at," your ability to impact and drive those metrics, that's your safety. I don't care how you do it. I really don't. You may come to me and say, "Hey, Henry, listen. These metrics are really important. I'm not resourced properly to get to those metrics, but if I had an additional five head count here, or 10 head count here, or whatever it is, I can meet those metrics. If I don't, then the closest place I can get to your metrics is this, this, and this. What do you want? Do you want me to get this close to the metrics or can you give me the additional head count and spend so I can hit those metrics?" But being aligned to the metric and making sure like, hey, if I deliver against this metric, that's the safety. How I get there,

9. 21:07 – 22:42

   How to Talk to an Underperforming Employee

   1. HSHenry Schuck21:07

      that's the trust.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings21:08

      I asked earlier, what are you running from? I was the fat kid at school with no friends and it impacts my ability to be a leader 'cause I just want everyone to like me. And so, I struggle to deal with underperformance. So, going-

   3. HSHenry Schuck21:21

      Uh-huh.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings21:21

      ... to your point there of okay, here are the three things. Henry, I'm sorry, I've missed all three things. How do you deal with underperformance in the right way? 'Cause right now I'm too soft.

   5. HSHenry Schuck21:33

      Yeah. So, I think I talk about it a lot. No one's ever like surprised that they're underperforming. And so, uh, we're dis- we're, you know, you're seeing that happen. Quarter one, it's missed. Quarter two, it's missed. By the time quarter three or four comes up, it's like, you know, hey, listen, maybe it's not working. Um, and at that point actually the conversation's not that hard. Like, a- as long as you're constantly talking about the things that are not working and trying to help them achieve it, right? Like, w- I'm in this game, right? When things are not going right in engineering or product or sales or wherever it is, I'm totally in the game with- with my leaders and trying to support and figure out how to, uh, how to fix things and get them on the right track. If ultimately it doesn't work out, everybody knows, like, that it's not working out. They're not caught off guard.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings22:27

      Yeah. I think where you have the surprise, you have the problems. We mentioned a lot about kind of how your family values have instilled into your work values. In terms of actually your takings from your parents, what was the single most important thing that your parents drove into you at a

10. 22:42 – 24:09

    Why Henry Works So Hard

    1. HSHarry Stebbings22:42

       young age?

    2. HSHenry Schuck22:43

       Just hard work. My mom worked three jobs growing up. There was almost like, uh, there was never a day she wasn't working. Like, a day off was an eight-hour day. And so, I think like I felt obligated to work just as hard as she did. And in fact, like in the early days of success at ZoomInfo, I always felt kind of bad about it. I was like, you know, people would be like, "Man, you work really hard." I'd be like, "You know, I worked like 11 hours today. My mom worked 16 hours on a normal day on her feet in a hospital." Like, this is not really hard work. Yet the outcome on the other side of it, like way outperforms what my mom was doing. That always felt like, uh, you know, unfair. Just unfair.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings23:28

       I would always hear them say, my people would say, "Oh, Harry, you're gonna burn out." I'm like, "My grandfather shovels gravel on a golf course for $8 an hour at 80. I have an EA-"

    4. HSHenry Schuck23:36

       Yeah.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings23:36

       "... bring me a macchiato at my nice desk-"

    6. HSHenry Schuck23:39

       100%.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings23:39

       "... and patch my jumper." Like, not really.

    8. HSHenry Schuck23:41

       Yeah.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings23:41

       Do you struggle-

    10. HSHenry Schuck23:42

        Yeah.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings23:42

        ... then with this, like, entitlement culture and this anti-hustle, you know, let's have Fridays off every other week? I'm just fucking pissed off about it. I'm like, "I'm sorry, no." Like, you wanna be great? Work hard.

    12. HSHenry Schuck23:58

        I do struggle with that. I have forever, (laughs) by the way. It's just th- uh, the- the- the, uh...... the noise to signal ratio has amped up over the last

11. 24:09 – 25:55

    How to Beat People Who Are Smarter Than You

    1. HSHenry Schuck24:09

       few years. Um, I really believe that my success is attributed to how hard I worked in the business. And that all- not just the business, but growing up like in college, in law school. I always told myself, "Listen, I'm gonna..." All th- these- I would walk into- I remember walking into law school, and I all of a sudden was surrounded by a bunch of people who went to Harvard and Stanford and Berkeley. And I was like, "Okay, all of them are smarter than me." (laughs) "But I need to outwork all of them because if I outwork them, I can outperform them." And I did, you know, like, that worked for me. And s- and then in business, I felt the same way, like, just outwork these people, out-hustle these people, and then you will win. And I also think it takes away, uh... That's a pretty shitty reason to not succeed, "I didn't work as hard as the other people," and I don't wanna wake up and go like, "Oh, you know, I didn't succeed, but jeez, if I had just worked a little bit harder, then I could have succeeded in this thing." What a, like, horrible regret I feel like. So I'm gonna work as hard as I possibly can, I'm gonna have, like, boundaries in place to make sure that I'm also giving to myself and my family. But I will never walk away from an unsuccessful situation and think to myself, like, "If I just worked a little harder, the outcome would have been better." I wanna take that off the, off the table. But yeah, I think it's a weird new, uh, expectation of large rewards without the commensurate effort for those o- rewards.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings25:50

       Henry, what is your biggest regret today?

    3. HSHenry Schuck25:54

       (laughs)

12. 25:55 – 28:13

    Henry’s Biggest Regret

    1. HSHenry Schuck25:55

       Biggest regret today? Look, first of all, it is really hard to look back on the last 15 years and, like, have nothing but an incredible amount of, like, thankfulness and gratitude for what's gotten me here. Um, and so, like, is there something that I would do differently along the way? There are things that I would have changed to make things easier and better along the way. But it's hard to have, like, a real regret. You know, I actually think I'd be, like, kind of an asshole to sit here and tell you, like, "Hey, I've got these big, deep regrets." The easiest one, Harry, I'm sh- I'm certain, is I- I- I have not given myself a chance to, like, appreciate what has happened here and the success that we've had. And, like, there's no nostalgia in it. It's always just like marching to the next thing. So, like, the minute the IPO happened, it was like, "Phew, great. Now I gotta figure out how to do this for a decade." And so, like- And that's kind of like how every moment of success, people... We bought our biggest competitor in 2017. It's a company that I woke up every day for 10 years wondering about. Y- t- re- s- uh, uh, searching Twitter to see mentions of, searching LinkedIn to see mentions of. Every day, first thing, boom, "What are they doing?" (laughs) And we bought them in 2017, put the companies together, it was a great successful acquisition. Today people are like, "How did it feel?" Like, "How did it feel?" You know how it felt? It felt like a panic attack.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings27:29

       (laughs)

    3. HSHenry Schuck27:29

       Like, that's what it felt like in the moment. Like, really nervous, like, "How do you do it?" Like, "Am I gonna do it right? How many mistakes am I gonna make?" And so it would have been wonderful to have moments of, like, real, like, deep appreciation for the success we had along the way. I haven't had very many of those.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings27:50

       Do you worry that you just won't be happy, though, if you never get off the treadmill? Like, if you told me the things I'm doing now, I would be like, "Oh my God, amazing." But now I'm just like, "More, more, more." It's never enough.

    5. HSHenry Schuck28:01

       Mm... Yes, totally. I think, uh, I- I don't, I don't view actually getting off the treadmill as a means to achieving that. I think it's just something we have to figure out how to do within our

13. 28:13 – 32:03

    Gratitude Journaling

    1. HSHenry Schuck28:13

       own, like, minds and our frameworks, and we should be good at gratitude journaling, we should be good at thinking backwards. By the way, I hi- Like, that's my per-

    2. HSHarry Stebbings28:22

       Gratitude journaling, Henry. Give me a break.

    3. HSHenry Schuck28:23

       Watch this. Give me two minutes and 30 seconds and I can get you on board. You ready?

    4. HSHarry Stebbings28:28

       Yeah, hit me.

    5. HSHenry Schuck28:29

       I hated this stuff. I thought, like, basically, if you tell me to gratitude journal, you might as well also tell me to drink kombucha every, like, uh, couple of hours and, like, sing Kumbaya melodies at, like, multiple breaks throughout your day. It was just BS, right? Hundred per- And, and there's this book that was written by a guy named Sean Acker. He's a, a Harvard, a Harvard researcher around happiness. They have a happiness lab. And the book is called The Happiness Advantage. He spoke at a conference, I got the book, I read it. If you read it, I guarantee it'll change your life. Uh, I- maybe I don't guarantee, but it changed mine and the way that I think about things. And here's the big premise. The big premise is, teams that are happier, people who are happier, way outperform, uh, unhappy, unhappy teams and unhappy people. That happiness is actually the biggest advantage from a productivity perspective in business. And think about all the stuff, Harry, that you do to get an advantage in business. All the little things, all the big things to get a little bit of an advantage. And it turns out happiness is the thing that drives the biggest advantage in business, and- and an out product of it is that you're happy, (laughs) 'cause like what could be a better productivity advantage? So, he went and did a bunch of studies. One of them, they took two control groups of people, and in one of them they said, "You gratitude journal every day, three minutes, write down three things from the day before that you were thankful for." Not like, "I'm thankful for my health, I'm thankful that I have food," but key moments in your day that you are thankful for looking back.... and if you do that for 21 days, if you do that for 21 days, what happens during those 21 days is that your brain actually creates a background, uh, screening application. And so while you're doing it, your brain is learning how to recognize those moments in the moment. And so instead of having to look back, after 21 days, your brain created an application that just notices it in real time. And all of a sudden, you're much happier because in the moment you're appreciating those moments of gratitude. And I, I did it for 21 days. I did it for longer. It definitely works. (laughs) You definitely are much more appreciative of the things in your life. Um, and I think, like, that is just one of those things where because it gets explained, by the way, mostly by these anti-hustle (laughs) like, uh, kombucha-drinking world, it gets underappreciated when it's actually really valuable.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings31:09

       I totally get you. Um, I find it slightly ironic having just had the conversation about you struggling not to appreciate things. (laughs)

    7. HSHenry Schuck31:17

       Yep.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings31:17

       You're like, "Gratitude journaling, baby."

    9. HSHenry Schuck31:20

       (laughs)

    10. HSHarry Stebbings31:20

        But I love that. I, I will, I will give it a try and I will be open-minded. I will do a deal with you now. I'll do 21 days. There we go.

    11. HSHenry Schuck31:26

        Do 21 days. You know what's cool too? I can go back and see what was going on. Like, the things I was thankful for four months ago are actually pretty cool to read today. So, there is a lot of advantage to it.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings31:38

        People were buying software then. (laughs)

    13. HSHenry Schuck31:41

        Yes. (laughs)

    14. HSHarry Stebbings31:42

        We're on social now. (laughs) That's so funny. Uh, man, I, I have to ask this 'cause it is, uh, an amazing opportunity. You know, you have such a fascinating purview being where you are, and, you know, when we look at the market today, it looks concerning. Yeah?

    15. HSHenry Schuck31:59

        Yeah.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings31:59

        What are you seeing in overall buying patterns, and how do you think 2023

14. 32:03 – 36:04

    How the Sales Cycle has Elongated

    1. HSHarry Stebbings32:03

       will look?

    2. HSHenry Schuck32:04

       Yeah, so I think the biggest thing we see today is people are rationalizing spend in a way very different from 2021 or even the end of 2020. And I don't think... I really believe that there wasn't like a COVID pull forward for our business and many other software businesses, but what did happen was that there was a tremendous amount of money in the economy that the government put in the economy in 20, in late 2020 or early 2021. So decisions about spending that money were very different in '21 than they are in '22 or, you know, f- from kind of after the first quarter of '22 is wha- when we started seeing it. And so today, or in '21, let's say you have a sale to a mid-size technology company. The way that the renewal would work is we'd send over the renewal paperwork to our main point of contact in the business. The main point of contact in the business would say, "Great. Thank you for sending this. Can we actually add 25 users? We're gonna grow into that. Great. Thank you." They send back the invoice, signed, done. Your renewal's done. You're off looking to upsell other clients and get your other renewals done. Today, that same renewal actually feels like this. "Here's your invoice." "Okay, thank you. We have to go take this to my VP and SVP to get this approved. Can we meet next week to discuss putting together a deck? Get me these stats on usage, get me these stats on ROI, and then let's go to my VP and SVP and present it." Go to the VP and SVP and present it. VP and SVP go, "Okay, great. Super helpful. Thank you. We're approved on this thing. We've gotta take this, this, to the CFO to get it approved. Can we build a deck and take it to the CFO?" Then we go and take it to the CFO. CFO goes, "Great. Thanks. Approved." Sometimes in the bigger companies you have to go to a global CFO, but that, that is happening in all of our businesses. In every software business, that's happening. When people say elongated sales cycles, which every public software company is saying they're experiencing, that is what an elongated sales cycle means. Now, wh- how does it manifest in your business? You know, our business, to have a high net retention rate, we upsell into the client base. We sell more users, more seats, more functionality, and we run a really efficient go-to-market motion, the most efficient go-to-market motion in software, which means there's not a lot of slack in the rope. And so when all of a sudden the same renewal takes 30% longer, you lose your opportunity to go and find other pockets of opportunity within your accounts to sell to. And so that greater scrutiny is just, it's hurting efficiency and velocity, and I don't see that, you know... I'm hopeful that by mid-2023 people understand like what the normal operating environment is gonna be like and that it softens in the back half of '23, but I, I don't anticipate it does until then.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings35:04

       The one thing I really wanna pick up there is you mentioned in '21 they'd also say, "Hey, and can we add 25?" Now they're cutting most of their teams as well. Are you seeing that in terms of the seat churn? Just, not because of the product usage, but just because of teams size reduction?

    4. HSHenry Schuck35:20

       Yeah, so typically, not typically, but by, like, 99% of our accounts we're not wall to wall in those accounts-

    5. HSHarry Stebbings35:28

       Mm-hmm.

    6. HSHenry Schuck35:29

       ... and so we're, you know, much less penetrated within an account. And so the chance that a, the cut actually hits our us- user base is unlikely. But, uh, what I will say is that there is a lot of focus on the usage of the seats. And so if you didn't ha- if you bought 25 seats and you really only provisioned and used 20 of them, no one's gonna hope for the five to get, like, used in the upcoming year. They're just gonna cut those five out.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings35:58

       Yeah.

    8. HSHenry Schuck35:58

       Um, and so that's happening for sure. The other thing I would tell you is, like, we sell to sales departments,

15. 36:04 – 38:30

    SaaS Sales Layoffs

    1. HSHenry Schuck36:04

       marketing departments, and even if there is a layoff of a S- of a SaaS salesperson, I don't see them not, like, struggling to get another job. Like, there is a very strong environment for hiring software salespeople today. Any of my salespeople have seven recruiting offers in their LinkedIn InMail today. Um, and so I think what... People may be laid off-... of their existing software sales job, but they're gonna land in some other sales job, probably in software. At least today, you're seeing that happening. You know, I anticipate that, that continues. There's a really s- tight labor market for software salespeople, so I don't p- see people sitting on the sidelines very long.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings36:50

       Have you had to change your org chart to-

    3. HSHenry Schuck36:53

       (laughs)

    4. HSHarry Stebbings36:53

       ... accommodate the elongated sales cycle and also the increased requests from customer bases on data, on usage, on ROI? Have you had to change your actual structure as a business?

    5. HSHenry Schuck37:07

       Yeah, yeah, totally. Like, we had an overlay sales team that sold our sort of advanced and additional emerging products and functionality, and we ended up taking that team and instead enabling all of our sales team to sell those, uh, that advanced functionality and taking that team, it was a decently sized team, and then embedding it, pushing it back into the business and saying like, "We don't need this overlay team. We'd rather give more slack in the rope by giving our account manager, putting more bodies, more quota on the street and l- lowering the number of accounts our sales peop- our account managers have today so that they can continue to drive similar results as they were able to last year." We took a team of, call it a couple dozen SDRs who, when you looked at the leads that they were, uh, they were, um, processing, turned into very little ACV on the other side. And so we said, "Look, let's self-service those leads, put them through automation, and let's take these couple dozen SDRs and let's build a renewal team who can handle sort of low to no-touch renewals so the account managers don't have to focus on that, can continue to focus on upselling and selling through their, their different businesses." So yeah, we've made a number of tactical changes to account for that.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings38:22

       December 2023, okay? I will have done my gratitude journaling with my kombucha. Um, uh, I'll be very grateful for life.

16. 38:30 – 39:18

    Will we see a recession in 2023?

    1. HSHarry Stebbings38:30

       Um, and, uh, and we're gonna be asking the question, is it gonna be better in December 2023 or worse?

    2. HSHenry Schuck38:37

       I am of the opinion that it will be better because it will be normalized. I think today there's just like a bunch of panic-induced decision-making that's not thoughtful but just says, "Hey, trouble's a-brewing, so just stop doing a bunch of stuff," and it's sort of haphazard. I think '23, uh, at the end of '23, I'm confident it will be a better selling environment than it is today.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings39:04

       Is it a pain in the ass being a public market CEO in this environment?

    4. HSHenry Schuck39:08

       (laughs) Yes.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings39:08

       I mean, you're, yeah, just 'cause like y- you have to communicate every little thing and it's like-

    6. HSHenry Schuck39:13

       Yes.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings39:13

       ... if it was private you're like, "Guys, it's shit but we're gonna get through it in this way." Now

17. 39:18 – 41:23

    Being a Public Market CEO

    1. HSHarry Stebbings39:18

       you have to be the politician.

    2. HSHenry Schuck39:20

       There is, look, there is no question, a tremendous amount of upside to being a public company, uh, from a validation perspective, from an enterprise customer perspective, from an investor pool perspective, so don't hear me wrong about that. It is gr- it is, it is great for the company to be a public company. For a CEO who goes from a private company to a public company, you know, as a private company I had two private equity firms on my board. Uh, one had, um, one had seven, uh, before we went public, one had six years of operating history with me, the other had three years, three and a half years of operating history with me. They knew me really well. They knew how I made decisions. They trusted me. They trusted my integrity. They trusted how I made decisions about hiring and firing and strategy. Um, we were like very close, uh, confidantes basically. And then, then you become a public company and you have like, you know, hundreds of investors, probably like 40 who are really like important long-term investors and shareholders and they don't know you. They met you couple times during the road show. They don't really trust you because they're not like in the trenches with you. You talk to them like once a quarter to tell them like the update after the earnings call. Um, they all have like different questions. They're all dealing internally with their own stuff, you know, like their manager is asking them questions and then they don't know the answer and so they wanna ask you a question. And so there's just many, there's this big constituency to manage that's different from when you're managing just two private equity shareholders on your board as your constituency.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings41:06

       I totally get that. It- can I ask the other question which is like, morale in these times is tough. When team members come in and they see that actually their stock is worth considerably less than it was yesterday just because of the fucking market-

    4. HSHenry Schuck41:19

       Yeah.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings41:19

       Like, how do you think about managing employee morale in

18. 41:23 – 48:55

    How to Manage Employee Morale in a Volatile Market

    1. HSHarry Stebbings41:23

       volatile stock price environments?

    2. HSHenry Schuck41:25

       Yeah, I think, look, first of all, people have to understand like, uh, what, what is going on, which they don't, right? Like, there isn't a fundamental understanding of how the stock market works and what's happening. So, you know, w- if you track our peer group, there will be a day where our peer group goes up 7% and there will be a day where our peer group goes down 7%. And n- those days don't matter at all, right? Like, they are just like, "The market's doing a thing and I'm not ever gonna pay attention in any situation where we're not, uh, where we're in line with our peer group." It's when we fall outside of the peer group, which is usually around earnings time, um, where we will either go up or down relative to what the peer group is doing. The employees don't know that's how it works, and so they're like, "Oh, I think it's the shorts. The shorts, there's just a lot of shorts on this thing." Or, "Hey, I w- do you know what happened? I wonder if there's like a thing that happened and that's what's taking it down or up." So the biggest thing is you have to first of all explain, like, "This is how the thing works. You get valued on growth and profitability over time. It's our job to execute on the strategy that we told the market we're gonna execute on. That's how we get rewarded is we execute well for a long period of time." They have to understand those fundamentals so like I, I'll send out emails that explain, explain that and like, you know, we had an earnings call-... where we reset guidance for 2023, and you know, the day after, the stock dropped differently than the rest of our peer group, and people still didn't totally understand why, and so I spent the next week just kind of like building a communications plan to explain like, "Here's what happened." You know, b- going into that earnings report, on a relative basis, we were the third most valuable software company in the world from a valuation perspective. Snowflake, Cloudflare, us, (laughs) you know like, and so there is an expectation of perfection, and so if you show up with anything less than what can be perceived as perfect... And by the way, we grew 46% with 41% operating margins, um, so look, we showed up good. We just didn't show up perfect, and in moments where you don't show up perfect and perfect is the expectation, this is what happens. "Here's the stuff we're doing to- to- to address that, and here's sort of like what the chart looks like today after that drop." So I think a lot of it is act- uh, education around it.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings44:00

       Can I ask... We all have egos. The thing I get like upset about when I look at Zoom info is that like, as you just said, the third most valuable. No offense, not as famous a brand as Dropbox, as Box-

    4. HSHenry Schuck44:13

       Yeah.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings44:13

       ... some of the darlings who've been on magazines. Do you ever go like, "Seriously, like we're here smashing it, like bringing big dollars in, killing it as a comp- where's our fucking love?" Do you ever feel that, and does that ever hit the ego?

    6. HSHenry Schuck44:28

       S- there is no benefit in feeling that, and so, uh-

    7. HSHarry Stebbings44:32

       (laughs)

    8. HSHenry Schuck44:32

       ... the way that I think about it is that the people who matter know, and I actually think that you can quiet a lot of noise when you get upset about just about anything like that if you just think about like, do the people who matter know? And if the answer to the people who matter know is yes, then nobody else really matters, um, and you don't get worked up about the universe of people who don't matter. You should be focused on the universe of people who do.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings45:02

       I- I totally do. I think that's probably why you have a healthy mindset and I see a therapist so often.

    10. HSHenry Schuck45:07

        (laughs)

    11. HSHarry Stebbings45:07

        Um, I- I do wanna ask one final question, then we'll go into a quick fire, and it's just, uh, you know, circumstances change. Um, financial profiles change. Uh, we chatted a little bit before about it, but how do you think about your relationship to money today? It's one I think about and struggle with often.

    12. HSHenry Schuck45:25

        Um, (laughs) how do you mean, Harry, my relationship to money?

    13. HSHarry Stebbings45:29

        So like, I always thought that money was everything actually, um-

    14. HSHenry Schuck45:33

        Uh huh.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings45:33

        ... and then, and then it kind of was. I got it, and I was like, "Oh yeah, it does make you happy," and then, you know, you got to a little bit more, and you were like, "Huh, with, you know, four or five million, I'm not like much more happy than I was with one or two," like, I'm s- the, hmm. Actually, I just kind of like hanging out with my mom and my brother-

    16. HSHenry Schuck45:55

        Yeah.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings45:55

        ... and there's this kind of awareness that it- it does to a certain point, and then it doesn't, and then it really does again when you can buy the Gulfstream. (laughs)

    18. HSHenry Schuck46:06

        Too much. (laughs)

    19. HSHarry Stebbings46:06

        But there's that middle ground where it doesn't, and that's why-

    20. HSHenry Schuck46:11

        Yeah.

    21. HSHarry Stebbings46:11

        ... I struggle on it.

    22. HSHenry Schuck46:12

        Yeah, so let me- let me- let me talk about the Gulfstream thing, because I think it's an interesting, uh, it's interesting because I can afford a Gulfstream, um, or a plane, and I don't have one, and I don't fly private very often because I think at some point, when you get to that other point, you're making more values decisions than you're making like, uh, spending decisions-

    23. HSHarry Stebbings46:34

        Mm-hmm.

    24. HSHenry Schuck46:35

        ... and I don't... It's very hard for me to square my values with, "Fly back and forth to Boston. It costs $100,000." Like, that's just like- it's just very tough to say that that's the best way that I should spend $100,000, um, and so I've never really been able to rationalize, um, the spending on like a private plane and probably a lot of other things underneath that. Here's what actually happens with wealth. (laughs) You have a limited amount of time, and so you can't do everything, right? There's only a certain amount of things you can do. Like, I'm not on vacation for 12 weeks a year, and so I can't like... It doesn't make any sense for me to have multiple vacation houses or a yacht or any number of things. There are things that I... There- there is a set amount of time that I'm gonna have to, uh, go on vacation or really just like spend my money, and- and so what you end up doing is funneling sort of your energy around those probably three or four times a year where you can have a big experience, a- and they're just not that expensive when you go do those things. You don't need hundreds of millions of dollars to have a nice vacation in a nice hotel somewhere. So- so my relationship with money is that I expect it to provide cool experiences for me, and I will use it as a resource to provide great experiences for me, um, but those experiences are always, uh, are always sort of, uh, tempered by value-based decisioning.

    25. HSHarry Stebbings48:22

        I have to be honest. I really love flying private. (laughs)

    26. HSHenry Schuck48:26

        (laughs) It's... I don't know. It's- maybe that's part of it, like in and out of a very tough place to get in, I get it. Like, flying cross country when there's a JetBlue plane going the same place, I actually prefer first class in a commercial plane.

    27. HSHarry Stebbings48:42

        (laughs)

    28. HSHenry Schuck48:42

        (laughs)

    29. HSHarry Stebbings48:44

        Okay, Henry. Um, (laughs) so yeah.

    30. HSHenry Schuck48:48

        (laughs)
19. 48:55 – 49:15

    Henry’s Favourite Book

    1. HSHarry Stebbings48:55

       okay?

    2. HSHenry Schuck48:56

       Yes, it sounds great.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings48:57

       Okay. So what's the favorite book and why?

    4. HSHenry Schuck49:01

       The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, 'cause it changed the way I think about happiness as an advantage in business and made me a happier person.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings49:08

       You've really sold me on this one. I'm actually writing down Shawn Achor. Uh, what's n-

    6. HSHenry Schuck49:11

       I'm gonna send it to you anyways. I already wrote it down.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings49:14

       Oh, you're too kind.

20. 49:15 – 49:45

    Henry’s Biggest Strength/Weakness

    1. HSHarry Stebbings49:15

       Thank you. Um, I'll send you a Gulf Stream. Uh, what's your-

    2. HSHenry Schuck49:17

       (laughs)

    3. HSHarry Stebbings49:18

       (laughs) I've lost that battle. Uh, what's your biggest strength, and what's your biggest weakness?

    4. HSHenry Schuck49:23

       Uh, I, my biggest strength is that I'm a great communicator, written and verbal. Um, my greatest weakness is that often my passion for any topic may come across as anger or something other than being really passionate about a point.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings49:43

       Yeah. Uh, mine, mine can

21. 49:45 – 50:13

    Henry’s Biggest Mentor

    1. HSHarry Stebbings49:45

       come across as arrogance. It's got me in trouble before.

    2. HSHenry Schuck49:48

       (laughs)

    3. HSHarry Stebbings49:48

       Um, tell me, what's your biggest mentor, and what have you learnt from them?

    4. HSHenry Schuck49:53

       (sighs) I would say my biggest mentor is a guy who's on my board, Todd Crockett. He's been on my board since 2014 from TA Associates, and he taught me how to think about creating value in business and how to lay out how to communicate how you're gonna create that value, um,

22. 50:13 – 50:44

    Henry’s Favourite Board Member

    1. HSHenry Schuck50:13

       with business writing in a really cohesive way.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings50:16

       Who's the best board member and why?

    3. HSHenry Schuck50:19

       Uh, Todd, Todd's a great board member. I will say right now, uh, the, the, the person who gives us the most insight is a guy, uh, Mark Mader who's the CEO of Smartsheet.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings50:32

       Smartsheet. Mm-hmm.

    5. HSHenry Schuck50:33

       Yeah. He's really great because-

    6. HSHarry Stebbings50:35

       I had him on the show.

    7. HSHenry Schuck50:35

       Oh, you've had him on the show. Okay, awesome. He's great 'cause a lot of the things that we're dealing with, Mark maybe dealt with a year ago or two years ago, or he's

23. 50:44 – 51:49

    Henry’s Guilty Pleasure

    1. HSHenry Schuck50:44

       just like has a really unique insight on running a software company, and so he brings those insights to bear. And he's always the person you're like, "Hey, you know, Mark, can you tell me what you think about this?" And he always has an insightful perspective.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings50:57

       What's your biggest guilty pleasure?

    3. HSHenry Schuck50:59

       Uh, cheeseburger. I'll eat fast food. Like, I don't have any control over my desire for cheeseburgers. (laughs)

    4. HSHarry Stebbings51:06

       (laughs) Do you, do you have an exercise routine?

    5. HSHenry Schuck51:08

       Every day. I work out at least 30 minutes every day.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings51:11

       What do you do? Run? Bike?

    7. HSHenry Schuck51:13

       I do, I run for, I usually run like two and a quarter miles, and then I do some set of strength training, push-ups, sit-ups, bench press, something, like strength after that.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings51:23

       Do you get up early?

    9. HSHenry Schuck51:25

       Uh, I do get up early. Um, but I, I get up early. I take a couple of calls, then I take my daughter to school every morning, and then I come back and I exercise. I'm in the office at 10:00.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings51:36

        What do you want your legacy to be?

    11. HSHenry Schuck51:40

        You know, let me answer this in a little bit of a different way. If, if there's a time where I'm not here, I would like people to say, "He was a really great

24. 51:49 – 52:43

    What do you believe that few around you believe?

    1. HSHenry Schuck51:49

       person."

    2. HSHarry Stebbings51:51

       I like that. What do you believe that few around you believe?

    3. HSHenry Schuck51:57

       Oh. Uh, that, um, that if we work really hard, our potential continues to open up and open up and open up and maybe set another way. I believe that, that if you get the right people around you and they're all committed and hardworking that you can outperform and out achieve anybody else in front of you or around you.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings52:23

       I love that. Don't know if I agree. I think you also need to be really good. (laughs)

    5. HSHenry Schuck52:30

       (laughs)

    6. HSHarry Stebbings52:30

       Um, some people say that to me. I'm like, "I don't know if you're good enough." Um, but uh ... (laughs)

    7. HSHenry Schuck52:34

       Yeah, that's fair. You also have to be good.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings52:36

       Uh, uh, penultimate one, what would you most like to change in the world of SaaS?

    9. HSHenry Schuck52:41

       (sighs) Um,

25. 52:43 – 53:02

    What Henry Would Like to Change About SaaS

    1. HSHenry Schuck52:43

       that, that's easy. I think that the way companies go to market is really inefficient and is that growth is solved by adding more heads and not adding better processes and systems for go-to-market. And I'd love to see a more forward-looking and thinking

26. 53:02 – 53:50

    Henry’s 5-year Plan

    1. HSHenry Schuck53:02

       and sophisticated go-to-market motion in SaaS.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings53:05

       December 2027, so five years' time, where's Henry then, and what does the world look like?

    3. HSHenry Schuck53:12

       Uh, I, Henry is, uh, s- assuming I can continue to do my job well, Henry is still CEO of ZoomInfo, um, and he's really happy. And the company is growing 30% a year, year over year. Uh, and the world, uh, the, the world of SaaS, I think, is, um, back to, uh, really fast paces of growth or rates of growth.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings53:38

       Henry, I've loved doing this. Thank you so much for putting up with my shit questions.

    5. HSHenry Schuck53:43

       (laughs)

    6. HSHarry Stebbings53:43

       Um, but it's been so much fun, and so really appreciate you joining me.

    7. HSHenry Schuck53:47

       Awesome, thank you, Harry. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Episode duration: 53:50