October 28, 2025 • 41 mins
Dan Balcauski speaks with John Peebles, CEO of Administrate, about his journey from focusing on small to medium-sized businesses to transitioning towards serving large enterprises. He highlights the importance of making tough decisions, such as changing the entire team, and the difficulty of managing mental health as a leader. John also discusses the differences in managing technical versus non-technical teams, the importance of transparency, and innovative approaches to maintaining company culture and supporting employee wellbeing.
01:38 John Peebles' Journey with Administrate
02:30 Challenges in Scaling Administrate
04:03 Transition from SMB to Enterprise
13:31 Operationalizing the Transition
21:49 Strategic Transition and Culture Challenges
22:35 Building a Company Culture that Elevates Humans
25:38 Managing Technical vs. Non-Technical Teams
27:40 The Challenges of Scaling Startups in Europe
29:55 Mental Health and Leadership in Startups
36:32 Transparency and Confidence in Leadership
39:06 Rapid Fire Closeout Questions
Guest Links
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
John Peebles (00:00):
I found it stressful.
(00:01):
It's difficult to get going.
Your feedback loop is measuredin six months or a year, I was
just sick of it.
But I've often said this likekind of the first five, six
years of the company's history.
We're really just in search ofone customer.
It's like the only AI stuff thatI trust is the code stuff,
because you're actuallyexecuting it right then and
(00:21):
there.
I had a near total breakdown ata very, we're right in the
middle of starting thattransition to go to Enterprise.
And, my personal life was a messand the company was not going
well and.
had to raise money and we missedour numbers, and there was all
this pressure and it was allthose things together.
You are not the exception.
(00:44):
Just beware,
Dan Balcauski (00:45):
you're not the special snowflake.
(01:07):
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets,the podcast that brings you the
inside stories from the leadersof the best scale up.
B2B SaaS companies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today I'm excited to welcomeJohn Peebles, CEO of
administrate, a trainingmanagement platform that helps
enterprises manage complexinstructor led training
operations.
John has built a businessserving major enterprises like
Siemens, Royal Caribbean, andMaersk.
John, welcome to the show.
John Peebles (01:29):
so much for having me.
Dan Balcauski (01:31):
Well, excited to dive into the conversation with
you.
You have a lot of very cool,strong opinions which I think
will be very entertaining anduseful for our audience.
Before we dive into your scalingjourney with Administrate just
give us the elevator pitch.
What does Administrate do?
Who do you serve?
John Peebles (01:43):
Yeah, so Administrate is a training
management system, is what wecall it.
It is designed to really helplarge enterprise organizations,
multinationals that are doinglots of training in the
classroom plan schedule.
Automate the communications andidentify issues with that.
And so, if you, customer of oursis, like you mentioned Siemens,
(02:06):
they're trying to train tens ofthousands of people all around
the world.
They want that training to beconsistent, done in the same way
we help them with all thescheduling of that classroom
training.
So it's different from what alot of us think in terms of an
LMS or clicking next on a bunchof slides.
It's the kind of nuts and boltslogistical challenge of training
at scale.
Dan Balcauski (02:25):
Well, administrates been around for
over a decade now, and you'vebeen CEO since 2012.
Is it, looking back at thescaling journey what stands out
to you as been the mostchallenging inflection point as
you've grown?
The company.
John Peebles (02:38):
The most challenging, there's probably a
list, 20 things along here.
It's hard to prioritize.
I'd say, I'd say withAdministrate, it's been an
unusual journey in a number ofways.
The first was this.
We didn't start with a cleansheet.
The software began life as aninternal tool within a company,
and we all know how internaltools are built and or not built
(03:01):
And and so taking an internaltool and getting it ready to go
out to market was a challengethat, I'd say not a lot of
startups tend to experience.
We then had a number of yearswhere we focused on serving the
small to medium sized businessmarket, and that is.
A decent market, but there'shigh churn.
There's a lot of small trainingcompanies out there that were
(03:22):
our customers, but we just foundthat over time we could deliver
a lot more value to largemultinationals that were doing a
lots of training at scale andjust be much more valuable to
them, and we could man a muchhigher value for ourselves.
And so we made a transition fromthat SMB segment to serving
these enterprises, and that wasa very.
(03:45):
Huge difficult challenge thatwe're just now coming to the end
of that transition.
It took a number of years and Ithink it's why I feel like I've
been CEO of two differentcompanies actually, because
there's such differentbusinesses and everything is
just, the whole motion isdifferent.
Dan Balcauski (04:03):
Well that transition on the serving the
SMBI, I'm, I want to dive intothat.
So what was it that you noticedgoing on in the business?
I mean, you mentioned somethinglike, high churn that may not
come as much a surprise topeople, but I guess were there
other things where you noticedthat was really sort of
impacting the ability of thebusiness to scale?
(04:25):
Yeah.
John Peebles (04:25):
Yeah, so there, there was so, so basically when
I think about products,everybody talks about minimum
viable product, right?
And there's also this idea, Ithink.
Where there's a minimum amountof complexity that is required
to solve a problem, right?
In our business and what we'retrying to do, where you're
(04:47):
trying to get basically largeamounts of people into specific
places in the world, whetherthat's a Zoom classroom where a
classroom, or a hybrid and it'sall timed and dated and people
are moving around and resources,things that you need in order to
train that class.
And it could be things like.
A simulator or a piece ofequipment or whatever when
you're trying to get all of thisstuff lined up and do it at
(05:10):
scale, there's just a minimumamount of complexity.
And what we found was that itwas the same amount of effort to
get a customer up and running onour platform, doing those
things, whether they were alarge multinational, or whether
they were two man band, SME,and, I think just the nature of
the product and the problem thatwe're trying to solve meant
(05:32):
that, if you're a two man.
A person band that's trying torun training at scale and or
trying to scale up a trainingbusiness, that complexity can be
overwhelming and it can be notworth the squeeze unless you're
doing tens of thousands ofstudents and so forth.
And so there was just this realimpedance mismatch between the
problem that.
We are trying to help peoplesolve and the scale of that
(05:54):
problem and then how much valueyou could get through that
solution.
I'm not sure if I worded thatsuper well, but it's that
concept of, you've just had todo a certain number of things
for every class that you wererun.
And if you're only doing a dozenof them or so a month, it's just
not a big enough problem thatyou're willing to do all that
stuff for.
And you'd rather just do it on aspreadsheet and ham and egg it.
Dan Balcauski (06:16):
Well, there's a couple things you mentioned
there.
So one was the you're you movedslightly out of the world of
bits and into that world ofatoms.
I used to be a head of productfor a two-sided marketplace for
as like an Uber for lawn care.
And it's amazing, how complexthose businesses get when you're
having to add logistics into themix because as, as good as you
could make the software, there'sstill real world.
(06:38):
People have to be able to showup on time and you have to deal
with things like weather, and soit just makes things incredibly
complicated.
Then you also mentioned justthis onboarding itself onto your
platform and, and being able tomake them successful.
It didn't really matter if theywere large enterprise or SB that
was pretty much a, negligibledifference between there.
And I can imagine, the largercompanies probably had a higher
(07:00):
value and higher willings to payfor, to get to that point.
I'm curious, so you, you noticethis lack of a difference
between what it takes to onboarda small company versus a large
company.
Take me back to that time.
So you make this realizationand, you hinted at the beginning
that, you're still at the tailend of unwinding that.
How what did you, would you havethis realization like what
(07:22):
happened next?
Like how do you sort of makethat decision of like, okay what
do we do now that we realizedthis.
John Peebles (07:28):
Yeah, so one of the interesting things about the
administrate journey is weactually had some very early
clues that.
We were always destined to bethis enterprise platform.
Our, one of our first customerswas a large training company
that had 27 different locationsall across the Middle East.
(07:50):
And so that was a clue that,hey, there's a lot of, and they
were willing to pay a lot ofmoney there.
Largest customer.
I think that some of my own.
baggage came into play becausethe previous company that I had
been a founder of and co-founderof and CTO was large enterprise
sales to healthcare, tohospitals, conservative
(08:12):
organizations, long salescycles, and I just remember.
I found it stressful.
It's difficult to get going.
Your feedback loop is measuredin six months or a year, I was
just sick of it.
And so when you, when I cameinto the Administrate situation,
it was kinda like.
This is cool.
We can take orders over theinternet and it was like really
(08:33):
seductive, right?
Because we put up a free trialpage and I, it was like in a
movie or something becausewithin about two minutes of
putting the free trial page upthere, somebody signed up,
right?
And it was like, oh, cool, thisis working.
And then we were getting.
But 10, 12 signups a day and allthis stuff.
And so it was like, wow, we canscale this and we don't have to
worry about enterprise sales andthis is great.
(08:56):
But I've often said this likekind of the first five, six
years of the company's history.
We're really just in search ofone customer.
We didn't know it at the time,but with like the whole point of
that five or six year period wasbasically to find one customer,
and it was a company calledForgeRock, and they came on
board as a post series, astartup.
(09:16):
In the identity management spaceis single sign-on stuff.
And there's a bunch of ex sunguys that went out and said,
Hey, there's this open sourcesoftware that Sun doesn't want
anymore, and we think we canproductize it and build a
company around it.
And they raise money and theyjust started growing like a
rocket.
And so they started as an SMBcustomer, right?
Doing not very much training.
(09:38):
And then they exploded.
And we went with them all theway on their journey to when
they went public and then weretaken private, and then they
merged with ping.
And so now we're the backbone ofall ping's training operations
with a combined company name.
But it was through that journeyof this accidental customer
essentially that.
Became an enterprise right infront of us that we were like,
(09:58):
wow, there's a ton of value herethat we are driving for them and
they are willing to pay for thisvalue and we should go find some
more customers that look likethem.
Dan Balcauski (10:10):
So what so you you started that saying a forge
rock.
Was this like the customer youdidn't know you wanted?
But I guess so, so what was itas you grew with them that you
realized that like these werethe folks you were waiting for.
What did they teach you in thatexperience?
John Peebles (10:26):
Yeah, so I think another difficult thing about
selling to SMBs, and I thinkit's just getting more and more
difficult, is an SMB customer,like let's say you or I, or
buying something for a hobby orfor home or whatever, we are
used to a high quality.
Right.
My iPhone is a high qualityproduct.
(10:48):
The things that I use often doone thing and one thing very
well.
I'm talking about things likeDropbox and iCloud and Spotify
or Apple Music or whatever.
These are polished products thatdo one thing very well it's
focused, and when.
You're selling essentially aplatform that is an ERP or an
(11:11):
Enter enterprise resourceplanning platform, which is
effectively what we are, averticalized ERP.
We have to do a lot of thingsand we have to do a lot of
things pretty well, but.
customers are grading youagainst the Spotify or the
Dan Balcauski (11:26):
Mm-hmm.
John Peebles (11:27):
kind of alternative products that they
use in their lives.
And these platform products aredifficult to get right.
They're diff, they're hard todesign.
They are.
There's a lot of modeling thatgoes into place and as you're,
when you're still early on yourjourney, our product was not
perfect, and we already talkedabout how it was an internal
tool, so it was very far fromperfect.
We didn't have the best startingspot, and so I think that just
(11:50):
what we learned with ForgeRockwas that.
They didn't care about the roughedges of the product, right?
Because they were at a scalewhere they cared a lot more
about solving their fundamentalproblem, which was how do we get
these thousands and thousands ofstudents through this training
in a very high quality way?
And they couldn't build out atraining team to take care of
(12:12):
all that.
They just needed to do withabout three or four people and.
For them.
The rough edges that we had,particularly at the time, were
less important than the missionthat they had.
Being an open source softwarecompany training was
exceptionally important forrevenue generation for them as
well.
Right.
So, in millions of dollars ofrevenue that depended on this
eventually.
It was very key when theytransitioned to to, to being
(12:35):
less of an open source softwarecompany and more closed source.
And that was just a reallyinteresting realization.
It's like.
These details or these kind ofnitpicky things go by the
wayside very quickly when you'rehaving to worry about tens of
thousands of things versus 10things,
Dan Balcauski (12:50):
So there was a, it sounds like there's certainly
a need driven by their growthand then the limitations of
their team and the, and the,with the training needs that
they had to look beyond the, therough edges.
And then there was, there was areal fit for the value that you
could provide and they werewilling to look past sort of the
rough edges.
And that's I love that.
I love that example.
I'm curious, like, so, so nowyou're in this space and you
(13:12):
realize that.
You're like, okay, these guysare really a fit.
These s and b customers are, aretaking, a lot of time.
Like do you organize, like doesthis become an explicit mandate
within the organization of we'renot going to.
We're gonna take away a freetrial.
We're going to change our, ourgo to market.
If somebody, you're like, we'regonna do hard qualification
(13:33):
upfront to figure out sort of,the scope of the organization
and say no to revenue, like, howdo you sort of take this
learning that you learn fromforge, rock and this other
generalized pattern that youmentioned in order to really
make this transition?
'cause I think it's, it canoften, it's one thing to sort of
say it and then another thing tolive it where you're like, well,
these people are.
They're willing to give usmoney.
(13:54):
So we could take that.
'cause that'd be nice.
'cause it's revenue's, revenue.
I like How did you likeorganizationally operationalize
this these learnings?
John Peebles (14:03):
Yeah, I mean, it's given me PTSD almost just
thinking back on it.
Dan Balcauski (14:07):
Sorry, that wasn't the intent.
John Peebles (14:09):
so, and the, here's the thing.
It's so.
It's so seductive, this ideathat you can do both at the same
time.
Right.
Thankfully I avoided that trap.
We avoided that trap.
We knew that we could not do SMBand Enterprise together.
Right?
I think maybe if you've got15,000 employees and you know
(14:32):
all the stuff, you're a hugeorganization.
Maybe you can try to do that.
But for a startup you gotta pickone.
and we we just realized that wehad picked the wrong one.
So that was not a, that was nota great realization to make.
And to our credit, like we wentto Saster and read all the blogs
and went to the conferences andtalked to other founders and so
(14:54):
forth, and everybody says, andsaid.
At the time and we listened,which was, you're gonna have to
change out your entire teambecause the people that you have
that are comfortable in the SMBmotion that understand it, that
are familiar with the ways ofworking.
They're just incompatible withthe enterprise motion and the
(15:14):
ways of working.
We read all that.
We thought, we listened to it,but we really didn't.
And I thought we could bespecial and we could be this
unicorn.
And I really believed in ourteam at the time and they're
great for a whole bunch ofreasons, people just have their
comfort zone and the way that,that they naturally operate.
And what we found was we justhung on too long to that notion
(15:38):
that our team, that was great ats and b could get us to the
enterprise.
and land.
And and that's a big regretbecause I think we should have,
so, so we did the right thing,which is we.
We took down the free trial andwe burned the ships.
Like we deleted all of ourwebsite pretty much.
And'cause it was all like s andb focused content.
(15:59):
And we even did things like,we're headquartered here in
Scotland and a bunch of ourteam, particularly the go to
market stuff, is in the US'causethat's our biggest market.
But we even did things like, wechanged our spelling from
British spelling to Americanspelling and all this stuff.
But that, that idea, it, itreminds me, it's one of my.
Favorite essays of all time,where guy just basically says,
(16:24):
you can't tell people anything.
Right.
It's like the fundamental axiomof this essay.
And that's, it's a painful thingfor me to agree with as the CEO
of a learning platformeffectively, but like people
just.
People just have a hard timelearning, right.
Until they've gone through andmade the mistake.
And I no exception to that,right?
(16:44):
I read all the literature, Ithought I listened, I thought,
and I just, now I'm a, I'm aspecial snowflake and we'll do
it differently.
And, and we were wrong, and thatprobably cost us a couple years,
if not more in, in that journeyand made it much more difficult.
Dan Balcauski (16:58):
So I'm curious, 'cause you said so you, you,
Ruth free trial, you, youchanged the content of the
website to be, to remove the sand b flavor.
But you mentioned also that thepeople who, you thought you had
good people.
I was this mostly on the salesside, where the sales team that
is good at closing SMB businessdoesn't, didn't translate to
(17:18):
enterprise.
Is that mostly where thatfriction landed?
John Peebles (17:21):
No, it was every piece of the business.
And so if you think about it.
Our marketing, folks that, thatunderstand how to market to a
credit card.
Swiper, free trialer, are notthe people that are gonna be
comfortable necessarily talkingto a C-level chief learning
officer at Siemens, right?
Or, who's their now new target.
(17:42):
The salespeople would not becomfortable talking at that
level, so you go from takingorders basically on the phone
and doing a quick.
30, 40 minute demo and, do youwanna sign up?
It's a hundred bucks a month.
That's a much different motionthan the long enterprise sales
cycle where you're having todevelop relationships with VP
and C-level folks.
Same with support.
(18:03):
The much more transactional kindof take it or leave it, or
here's a doc, link to, to answeryour ticket or go do it yourself
or whatever.
just doesn't fly when people arepaying you$150,000 a year or
whatever for the software.
And,
Dan Balcauski (18:17):
Hmm.
John Peebles (18:18):
then you need the kind of implementation and
executive support and customersuccess and all that.
So all of that had to getchanged to just fit the new
market and the new strategy.
And it was just, it's a bitoverwhelming even to think back
on how much everything had tochange.
But it was certainlyoverwhelming at the time.
Dan Balcauski (18:39):
Well, I'm curious, like looking back and
looking at that transition isthere anything that you would do
differently or, or advice toother folks who were looking at
that transition of, of what todo?
First.
John Peebles (18:50):
Yeah it's hard, right?
So again, we thought we weregoing in with our eyes wide open
on what it was gonna take.
And I think of the, one of thesaving graces, I guess.
That we at least did, right?
Is both myself and our COO had abackground in that type of sale,
right?
That enterprise approach.
(19:11):
And so, we at least knew what,where we needed to go.
I think that can be difficultthough for a lot of founders.
But I would say, I had a, therewas almost a replay of this
where five, six years ago.
I got asked to help out on theboard of a small early stage
startup here in Burgh, They wereselling a very cool medical
(19:35):
device to, to hospitals that itwould strap on your arm and
replace all of theinstrumentation that you'd
typically get in ICU.
And it's gonna be, it's now FDAregulated and approved.
And so it, it beats the goldstandard of all those expensive
machines.
And that's nice, but it's alsomeans the patient could be much
more mobile.
(19:55):
And also it means that thesystem could alert nurses or
doctors in the ward that apatient was degrading because
they didn't have to come aroundand actually look at the.
Instruments in
Dan Balcauski (20:06):
Mm mm.
John Peebles (20:07):
room.
So you could do all kinds ofthings like get patients home
faster, but you can monitor themremotely or have less people in
the actual ICU, but it's stillin the hospital and all these
cool things.
Well, the founder, like manyfounders, we say, well we wanna
put this up on the website andswipe a credit card and maybe
you buy one for your grandmotheror whatever.
(20:27):
And I was like, just stop.
Don't do this.
Right?
Like, we need to targethospitals and it's gonna be a
long sales cycle and we need toput the price way up, and it's
gonna be six figure minimum toget going.
And I, there's, and I even said,we're not even deal with Europe,
right?
We're gonna focus on the USonly.
That's my advice.
Right.
And I think that was one of thevery few things that I can take
(20:51):
credit for with that company'seventual success.
And they were.
success story.
Sold for north of four$50million to Best Buy five years
later.
Saved a lot of lives in theprocess, but the, and I had a
front row seat to watch.
One of the most incredible CEOsI've ever had the opportunity to
meet.
Operate, and he is in his latetwenties, but the one thing I
(21:13):
feel like I can take credit foron that is just that kind of
nagging him and saying, no,we've gotta go up market and we
gotta target enterprises and we
Dan Balcauski (21:22):
Hmm.
John Peebles (21:22):
know, it's hospitals and large
organizations, and don't worryabout this s and b stuff, and he
fought me on it a little bit fora few months and was like, yeah
I think you're right.
And that was a, I think, a keymoment for that company.
And so a long-winded way ofanswering your question, which
is if you can find somebodythat's either had to do that
before or just understandswhat's involved as a founder, do
(21:46):
it because that'll be sovaluable.
Dan Balcauski (21:48):
Yeah.
Well, there, so that's a reallyinteresting strategic
transition.
Transition.
I think another area where maybeconventional wisdom often falls
short is around building cultureat scale.
So I'm curious as you scaled,administrate, and, and maybe
this also pertains to yourscaling at other companies.
What have you found to be thebiggest culture challenges that
emerge as teams grow?
(22:09):
I know you're you have a, astrong international background.
You've got, a lot of yourbusiness in the US you're based
in, in Europe.
So I dunno if it's for you it'sbeen culture across regions or
culture at different stages ofgrowth.
What what have you found thatmost people get wrong when they
think about culture?
John Peebles (22:24):
Yeah it's a big topic, right?
'cause it's so important.
I think
Dan Balcauski (22:29):
It's also very amorphous.
It's a, it's one of these thingsof like culture's important.
You're like, great, what do I donow?
John Peebles (22:35):
Totally.
And we even talk about this atadministrate, we say we don't
like using the word companyculture because it becomes
confusing when you're like usand you've got all these
different cultures within thecompany that are all colliding
in various different ways.
We like to think about it interms of we have this.
We have this conceit, thisdream.
(22:58):
Really I have this dream whichis, they tell you to buy the
best mattress that you can buy,right.
That, that you can affordbecause you're gonna spend a
third of your life on it.
Right?
But the same thing applies towork, right?
We spend a third of our life atwork or more and it's a huge
part of people's identities andtheir day-to-day interactions
and so forth.
And I have this dream of kind ofa company that people just love
(23:22):
to work at and they can bereally successful at.
And they.
talk about, we used to call thisthis dream, the ultimate human
organization at administrate.
And our British team would rollour eyes and be like, that is so
American.
And like, well, yeah, maybe itis, but, but we've refined it a
little bit to, to be more of astatement of just elevate
humans, right?
(23:42):
And not, that's not just ourteam, but that's also our
customers and their customers.
And we want to just be anelevator for humans in a whole
bunch of different ways.
And so for us, when we thinkabout company culture, it's
like, are we.
Building an environment that iselevating the humans that exist
within it.
(24:02):
And that can sometimes beuncomfortable, right?
And it's not everybody beingnice to each other and all this
stuff necessarily, but it's Imean, we don't need to be jerks,
but like, it's more about whatare we doing to elevate
ourselves and our customers andour investors and our
communities and all this type ofthing.
And so when we talk about thecompany culture and
administrate.
We specifically don't have ourvalues.
(24:25):
As a company written up on ourwalls in our office back when we
had an office, and we didn'thave any of that.
Those posters that you sometimessee, and I'm not criticizing
folks if they do that, but theidea was we want it to be where
if we had a journalist or avisitor or observer come in to
the company and hang out with usfor a couple of weeks, that they
might be able to write down whatthey think our values are by
(24:48):
observing how we work.
And so that's really thebarometer because we do this
onboarding and it's a talk thatI give to every new hire at
Administrate.
And I just say, think of theworst companies in the world,
right?
And people always, I thinkMonsanto comes up a lot and, of
people.
We'll talk about their broadbandprovider, like Comcast, or some
(25:09):
of the worst companies ever.
And I'm like, if we go to theirwebsite right now, they'll have
values that are probably prettyclose to ours, in terms of like,
oh, we want to do these nicethings or whatever, but they're
not living them, and so,
Dan Balcauski (25:20):
Yeah.
John Peebles (25:20):
That's.
I think for us the real test,and we don't get this right and
we fail all the time.
But I think just having thatstated goal has helped us get
through some rough times andit's been a mirror to myself and
to, to others within theorganization at times that we
need to do better.
And so that's, that's how wethink about it.
Dan Balcauski (25:38):
Well, I'm curious 'cause you come from a technical
background, if I'm not mistaken.
As you mentioned you were CTO ata previous company.
Do you see a difference betweena technical culture and overall
company culture?
I.
John Peebles (25:50):
yes and no, but I think there's definitely a
difference in managing technicalfolks versus non-technical
folks.
I used to think I was theworld's greatest manager of
people, and it turned out that.
just me and a bunch of techies,and we'd hired predominantly
from the Midwest at the time.
This is like, 15, 20 years ago.
So it was all pretty culturallysimilar backgrounds and all this
(26:12):
stuff.
And it just turned out, I'm nota great people manager and I had
to learn that.
Think for us, the, realsimilarities are just like, we
want, we wanna find smart peoplethat get things done, and.
Do the work in the right way,and I think that applies whether
it's technical work ornon-technical work.
(26:34):
I find it a little bit easiersometimes to measure and manage
the technical work, though it'sa little bit easier to ize
sometimes.
Dan Balcauski (26:41):
the code work is a pretty good metric, right?
I think that's why all the AIcompanies are focusing on
coding.
'cause it's, it's like, is thislegal brief gonna help me win?
This case is hard to test.
But, does this code run and passits unit tests?
Is a little bit more measurable.
John Peebles (26:53):
Yeah, I was literally just saying that to
somebody the other day.
It's like the only AI stuff thatI trust is the code stuff,
because you're actuallyexecuting it right then and
there.
Dan Balcauski (27:03):
Yeah, it's well, i'm, I'm curious because the I,
I think in our, our previousconversation, you were
mentioning that one of the bigchallenges, you just mentioned
like, hey, like, can people dothe job, do things the right
way?
But that we have a significant.
Dearth of really senior folkswho know what the right way is.
So I'm curious if, as you thinkabout, the, the technical either
(27:27):
both could be the hiring or justthe culture.
Like is that an additionalchallenge on that side that
maybe is not reflected in thebroader sort of company culture
practices?
John Peebles (27:38):
Yeah, so I think.
So I've got this opinion, and itmight be somewhat controversial,
but startups are hard, right?
And there's all the stats abouthow often they fail and all that
stuff.
And I think that building astartup in Europe or outside the
US is particularly hard.
(27:58):
And the reason for that is theUS is probably on its fourth or
fifth generation of folks.
That have been going through andbuilding startup tech companies.
If you go out to the valley,there have been people that have
been doing this, they'veretired, but they started in the
sixties and seventies and,that's quite a, a number of
generations.
And out here in Europe, we'reonly really on, depending on
(28:21):
what country you're in we're inour first or second generation.
And that means that there is a,a lack of folks that have.
Either done this before or doneit at the scale that, you might
want to be trying to approach.
And so here in Scotland thereare very few founders or folks
(28:42):
that have done this before andhad an exit because it's just
wasn't a thing till about 10years ago to do a tech startup.
And so that's one of the keypieces of advice that I.
To hammer home.
We made this mistake over andover again at Administrate,
which is, I just fundamentallybelieved we could, we could get
people there or people couldgrow and change and, whatever.
(29:03):
And.
problem is, is that when you'rescaling quickly and rapidly,
that the learning curve is justtoo steep.
It's just too much to take in.
And going from$5 million in a RRto$20 million in a RR is such a
big jump and everything needs tochange.
And if you're not relying on aplaybook and past experience,
and it's not like you've had tohave done all the job before,
(29:25):
but you have to at least seen itdone.
Alongside or whatever, been apart of a company.
and that's actually some of theadvice that I tend to give young
founders is I say, look don'tstart a company right outta
college or whatever necessarily.
It's probably a good idea to gowork at a startup for a year or
two and see some of the stuffand watch the mistakes that are
(29:45):
being made by other people ontheir dime, and then you'll be
better prepared.
So it, these are things that arehard to hear sometimes though,
when you got your next greatestidea.
Dan Balcauski (29:53):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Well, I, I wanna go back to atthe beginning you were talking
about, sorry, I didn't mean toprompt you into PTSD, but, it,
it does bring up this whole ideaof.
Of, mental health.
'cause you mentioned this, thisperfect storm where, you're
going through this thistransition.
Beyond the strategic challenges,I'm curious about the
(30:14):
psychological toll of goingthrough something like that as a
leader.
I think there's this mythologyaround founder resilience that
great leaders need to grindthrough everything, that showing
vulnerability as weakness.
Mental health is a personalissue rather than business one.
I guess based on your experiencegoing through that period what
do those myths get wrong?
John Peebles (30:30):
Yeah, I, I'm not an expert on mental health and I
don't consider myself to be anauthority, but I do have a lot
of experience in startups and Ihave.
Come to the conclusion, therealization that these
(30:50):
companies, building thesecompanies is a fundamentally
very difficult thing.
And it's difficult for everyperson involved in the journey,
right?
From CEO, all the way down orfrom whatever, all the way up.
And that doesn't seem like acontroversial statement.
(31:11):
And I don't think anybody woulddisagree with that.
People are like, yeah, startupsare hard.
And even the best ones the topoutliers that we all read about
and whatever, they would saythat it was very difficult.
But what I think is strange isthat our reaction defaults and
my reaction always default,defaulted to Yeah, but we have
(31:31):
to act and we have to be.
at every step of the way.
'cause this is a confidencegame.
'Cause investors want to seeconfidence and your team wants
to see you confident and yourcustomers are placing trust in
you and they want you to beconfident.
So there it's like, we know thisis hard and yet the default
(31:53):
requirement or approach is thatwe can't act like it's hard and
we have to just put up thisfacade and everything's great
and it's water off a duck'sback.
And I've just, found, I don'tthink that's super helpful.
I think that that causes a lotof problems because inevitably
every startup is gonna gothrough a period where things
(32:13):
are not going well.
And every CEO and founder I'veever talked to, and this
includes.
Guys like the CEO of Zoom, whichhas gotta be one of the most
fairytale, rides that has everexisted.
CEO of Skyscanner here inEdinburgh, huge, huge success
story.
I've.
know, talk to these guys.
(32:33):
And I've just been like, did youever have these like w moments
where it's like, we're fucked.
It's over.
And they're like, oh yeah, wehad two last week.
And it's like, it's and it isnormal.
And the problem is that I don'tthink.
A lot of us realize just hownormal it is, or we don't
believe that it's normal orwhatever, and then that makes
(32:53):
you feel even more isolated.
And so really for me, one of thebest things that ever happened
is I had a near total breakdownat a very, we're right in the
middle of starting thattransition to go to Enterprise.
And, my personal life was a messand the company was not going
well and.
(33:13):
had to raise money and we missedour numbers, and there was all
this pressure and it was allthose things together.
And, and I just thought, man, Ineed to get some, need to get
some help here.
I we presented to investors andI almost, getting this really
bad pinch in my neck.
And thankfully we finished themeeting and I was walking home
(33:34):
and I just collapsed in thestairwell in my flat.
and I thought, thought I wasgonna die, basically.
It was just like, am I having anheart attack or what?
And it was that, that reallyhome that something's gotta
change here.
And I needed some help.
And so, I had started talking toa therapist and I was surprised
at how quickly that made adifference in a positive way.
(33:56):
And then it was well.
That's weird because I actuallyhad to get my assistant to,
schedule that.
'cause I knew I wasn't gonna doit.
And there's so much inertia, Ihad to go find the room and it
was, I was embarrassed to showup there and I didn't want
anybody to see, and all thisstuff, all these natural
feelings.
And so we just thought about itlike that was really helpful for
(34:17):
me and.
We're about 60 people right now.
That means somebody's life isusually going through something
at that scale and so we thought,well, why not extend this to our
team?
And so for the last.
eight, nine years, we've had atherapist as part of our team.
Dan Balcauski (34:35):
Oh wow.
John Peebles (34:35):
our folks can make appointments with her.
They're all completelyanonymous.
You can do'em over zoom, you cando'em in person.
And we just get the bill at theend of the month.
And then during COID there's alot of stuff going on and people
are really struggling andafraid.
And we were under a reallyintense lockdown here in
Scotland.
And people in Europe have muchsmaller apartments than they do
(34:57):
in the States.
And so, we then made thedecision that, hey, anyone in
our, anybody on our team cangive a session.
Of therapy to anybody, right?
So, if you see somebodystruggling, it's a friend or a,
whatever, just say, Hey, we'vegot this resource, and would you
like to try it out?
And it's just been one of thebetter things we've done, and I
think it's really been aninteresting thing and I've been
(35:18):
really pleased because there'sbeen a number of other startups
in Edinburgh that have alsofollowed in doing the same
thing.
It's something that we try totalk about and be very open
about, and, and I think it helpsto just face up to that issue.
Dan Balcauski (35:30):
Yeah.
That's amazing.
I have not heard of a companydoing that.
So that's a, that's an amazingresource.
I'm curious, like,'cause you didmention, it is this confidence
game, and whether that's, the,the CEO with the board or the
CEO with the employees or futureinvestors I'm curious how like,
having a therapist.
Is a strong move and that'sobviously a really good tactic
(35:50):
or support structure.
I'm curious if, you view yourability to sort of play that
confidence game any differently,right?
Is there, are there ways thatyou are able or like have grown
to be able to show vulnerabilityas a strength?
So that you don't have to carrythat.
Right.
Because I imagine, right.
Oftentimes, like, board meetingsare, are one of those things
(36:13):
where like, a lot of people arejust like, I hope I get through
without like, them like jumpingdown my throat.
But at the same time, like youdo have a, a team there that
isn't invested in seeing thecompany successful.
And so you want to like, ask fortheir help.
I guess, like how do you view,maybe it's with the board or
maybe it's with employees, likehow do you view playing that
confidence game differentlythrough this lens?
John Peebles (36:32):
Yeah, it's a great question.
I think that the default is.
And I've been involved insituations like this, right,
where you're raising money andyou got these projections and
sometimes people believe themand sometimes people don't or
whatever.
And I think the wrong way to goabout it is to just.
Kinda be confident for, for noreason or whatever.
(36:56):
And so I'm not just a big fan oflike showing, showing your work,
I was like, I sucked at math inin high school and college, even
though I got a computer sciencedegree.
So that just made it even moredifficult.
But I became the master ofpartial credit, by, by showing
all my work.
And I think that is probably theway that.
We've survived as a company,with our investors and board and
(37:18):
our stakeholders and customersbecause the board knows when
it's not going well andcustomers know when you're
struggling and, and whatever.
And so the idea, transparency isa core value of ours.
And I For me, it I've evolved tobe much more intentional about.
(37:40):
Showing the reasons why webelieve the things that we're
saying.
And so, we went, we went througha year where we had almost no
sales a couple years ago.
It was, the pandemic was reallytough.
People weren't spending largesums of money.
They're not gonna let$150,000out the door to buy software.
They'll just continuestruggling, and that.
(38:02):
Most CEOs, leadership teamsdon't survive a year of very
little sales.
But because we just reallyworked on, here's our
hypothesis, here's the work thatwe're doing and we're really
intentional about that.
I think we've managed to buildtrust and.
I still believe, like, I couldget fired at any point for any
(38:24):
reason.
That's just the name of thegame.
But I think that's just soimportant.
And that'd be my biggest pieceof advice is yeah, like, people
know when it's not going well.
And the last thing anybody wantsis bloviating and all this kind
of false confidence stuff put inthe work show, the work people
might actually surprise you andgive you good feedback.
Actually when it's gone reallybadly and we've had to.
(38:46):
Have tough conversations withstakeholders and investors and
so forth.
A lot of times they've flippedinto be very encouraging, when
they see how we've thought aboutthe problem and what we're doing
about it.
So that's been interesting forme.
Dan Balcauski (38:58):
Transparency and be a king of partial credit.
I love that.
That's a good, that's a goodlittle nugget.
Well, John, I can talk to youall day but I do wanna be
respectful of your, theaudience's time.
Thought of wrapping up with acouple of rapid fire closeout
questions.
You ready?
John Peebles (39:10):
Yep.
Dan Balcauski (39:11):
What's something you believe that most people
disagree with?
John Peebles (39:14):
Oh man.
I think that for softwareengineering, either have it or
you don't.
There's no training it and that,that hurts me to say out loud,
but I truly believe that.
I think you just, you're eitherbored with it or you don't.
Dan Balcauski (39:32):
As a, as an ex software engineer with a
computer engineering undergrad.
I, I, I, I resonate empathizeand maybe a little triggered by
that statement, but I can'tdisagree with it.
When you think about all thespectacular people you've had a
chance to work with, is anyonethat just pops to mind has had a
disproportionate effect on theway that you think about
building companies now?
John Peebles (39:49):
Yeah, so actually there's, I never worked with
this guy, but he wrote a bookcalled Conscious Capitalism.
It's the founder of whole Foodsand I thought it was an
incredible book, reallyinfluenced.
Way of thinking about what iscapitalism?
What is really capitalism?
Why is it good?
Why is it just why when wecomplain about the capitalism
(40:09):
run amuck is that's not reallytrue capitalism.
So that really influenced me.
I've been really blessed to workfor.
Just over a decade now with oneof my best friends.
He's our COO here atAdministrate, really influenced
my thinking and I think fills ina lot of gaps for me and me for
him.
So, working with your friends isnot always easy.
He is the best man in mywedding, but it's, it's it can
(40:30):
be really rewarding when you doit well.
Dan Balcauski (40:33):
Well, very cool.
Very cool.
If I had to give you abillboard, you could put any
advice on there for other B2Bsassy, trying to scale their
companies, what would it say?
John Peebles (40:40):
You are not the exception.
Just beware,
Dan Balcauski (40:43):
you're not the special snowflake.
Got it.
John Peebles (40:46):
these things in general will apply to you.
Dan Balcauski (40:50):
That's awesome.
John, if our listeners wannaconnect with you and learn more
about administrate, how can theydo that?
John Peebles (40:54):
Yeah.
Or you hit our website, getadministrate.com, or I run a
very infrequently updatedpersonal blog@pebs.org, so happy
to always check in with folksout there.
Dan Balcauski (41:06):
I will put those links in the show notes for
listeners.
Thank you John.
That wraps up this episode ofSask Gay League.
Seeks.
Thank you to John for sharinghis journey and insights.
For our listeners who foundJohn's insights valuable, please
leave a review and share thisepisode with the network.
It really helps podcast grow.
Thank you network.
It really helps podcast grow.
Thank.
I found it stressful.
(00:01):
It's difficult to get going.
Your feedback loop is measuredin six months or a year, I was
just sick of it.
But I've often said this likekind of the first five, six
years of the company's history.
We're really just in search ofone customer.
It's like the only AI stuff thatI trust is the code stuff,
because you're actuallyexecuting it right then and
(00:21):
there.
I had a near total breakdown ata very, we're right in the
middle of starting thattransition to go to Enterprise.
And, my personal life was a messand the company was not going
well and.
had to raise money and we missedour numbers, and there was all
this pressure and it was allthose things together.
You are not the exception.
(00:44):
Just beware,
Dan Balcauski (00:45):
you're not the special snowflake.
(01:07):
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets,the podcast that brings you the
inside stories from the leadersof the best scale up.
B2B SaaS companies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today I'm excited to welcomeJohn Peebles, CEO of
administrate, a trainingmanagement platform that helps
enterprises manage complexinstructor led training
operations.
John has built a businessserving major enterprises like
Siemens, Royal Caribbean, andMaersk.
John, welcome to the show.
John Peebles (01:29):
so much for having me.
Dan Balcauski (01:31):
Well, excited to dive into the conversation with
you.
You have a lot of very cool,strong opinions which I think
will be very entertaining anduseful for our audience.
Before we dive into your scalingjourney with Administrate just
give us the elevator pitch.
What does Administrate do?
Who do you serve?
John Peebles (01:43):
Yeah, so Administrate is a training
management system, is what wecall it.
It is designed to really helplarge enterprise organizations,
multinationals that are doinglots of training in the
classroom plan schedule.
Automate the communications andidentify issues with that.
And so, if you, customer of oursis, like you mentioned Siemens,
(02:06):
they're trying to train tens ofthousands of people all around
the world.
They want that training to beconsistent, done in the same way
we help them with all thescheduling of that classroom
training.
So it's different from what alot of us think in terms of an
LMS or clicking next on a bunchof slides.
It's the kind of nuts and boltslogistical challenge of training
at scale.
Dan Balcauski (02:25):
Well, administrates been around for
over a decade now, and you'vebeen CEO since 2012.
Is it, looking back at thescaling journey what stands out
to you as been the mostchallenging inflection point as
you've grown?
The company.
John Peebles (02:38):
The most challenging, there's probably a
list, 20 things along here.
It's hard to prioritize.
I'd say, I'd say withAdministrate, it's been an
unusual journey in a number ofways.
The first was this.
We didn't start with a cleansheet.
The software began life as aninternal tool within a company,
and we all know how internaltools are built and or not built
(03:01):
And and so taking an internaltool and getting it ready to go
out to market was a challengethat, I'd say not a lot of
startups tend to experience.
We then had a number of yearswhere we focused on serving the
small to medium sized businessmarket, and that is.
A decent market, but there'shigh churn.
There's a lot of small trainingcompanies out there that were
(03:22):
our customers, but we just foundthat over time we could deliver
a lot more value to largemultinationals that were doing a
lots of training at scale andjust be much more valuable to
them, and we could man a muchhigher value for ourselves.
And so we made a transition fromthat SMB segment to serving
these enterprises, and that wasa very.
(03:45):
Huge difficult challenge thatwe're just now coming to the end
of that transition.
It took a number of years and Ithink it's why I feel like I've
been CEO of two differentcompanies actually, because
there's such differentbusinesses and everything is
just, the whole motion isdifferent.
Dan Balcauski (04:03):
Well that transition on the serving the
SMBI, I'm, I want to dive intothat.
So what was it that you noticedgoing on in the business?
I mean, you mentioned somethinglike, high churn that may not
come as much a surprise topeople, but I guess were there
other things where you noticedthat was really sort of
impacting the ability of thebusiness to scale?
(04:25):
Yeah.
John Peebles (04:25):
Yeah, so there, there was so, so basically when
I think about products,everybody talks about minimum
viable product, right?
And there's also this idea, Ithink.
Where there's a minimum amountof complexity that is required
to solve a problem, right?
In our business and what we'retrying to do, where you're
(04:47):
trying to get basically largeamounts of people into specific
places in the world, whetherthat's a Zoom classroom where a
classroom, or a hybrid and it'sall timed and dated and people
are moving around and resources,things that you need in order to
train that class.
And it could be things like.
A simulator or a piece ofequipment or whatever when
you're trying to get all of thisstuff lined up and do it at
(05:10):
scale, there's just a minimumamount of complexity.
And what we found was that itwas the same amount of effort to
get a customer up and running onour platform, doing those
things, whether they were alarge multinational, or whether
they were two man band, SME,and, I think just the nature of
the product and the problem thatwe're trying to solve meant
(05:32):
that, if you're a two man.
A person band that's trying torun training at scale and or
trying to scale up a trainingbusiness, that complexity can be
overwhelming and it can be notworth the squeeze unless you're
doing tens of thousands ofstudents and so forth.
And so there was just this realimpedance mismatch between the
problem that.
We are trying to help peoplesolve and the scale of that
(05:54):
problem and then how much valueyou could get through that
solution.
I'm not sure if I worded thatsuper well, but it's that
concept of, you've just had todo a certain number of things
for every class that you wererun.
And if you're only doing a dozenof them or so a month, it's just
not a big enough problem thatyou're willing to do all that
stuff for.
And you'd rather just do it on aspreadsheet and ham and egg it.
Dan Balcauski (06:16):
Well, there's a couple things you mentioned
there.
So one was the you're you movedslightly out of the world of
bits and into that world ofatoms.
I used to be a head of productfor a two-sided marketplace for
as like an Uber for lawn care.
And it's amazing, how complexthose businesses get when you're
having to add logistics into themix because as, as good as you
could make the software, there'sstill real world.
(06:38):
People have to be able to showup on time and you have to deal
with things like weather, and soit just makes things incredibly
complicated.
Then you also mentioned justthis onboarding itself onto your
platform and, and being able tomake them successful.
It didn't really matter if theywere large enterprise or SB that
was pretty much a, negligibledifference between there.
And I can imagine, the largercompanies probably had a higher
(07:00):
value and higher willings to payfor, to get to that point.
I'm curious, so you, you noticethis lack of a difference
between what it takes to onboarda small company versus a large
company.
Take me back to that time.
So you make this realizationand, you hinted at the beginning
that, you're still at the tailend of unwinding that.
How what did you, would you havethis realization like what
(07:22):
happened next?
Like how do you sort of makethat decision of like, okay what
do we do now that we realizedthis.
John Peebles (07:28):
Yeah, so one of the interesting things about the
administrate journey is weactually had some very early
clues that.
We were always destined to bethis enterprise platform.
Our, one of our first customerswas a large training company
that had 27 different locationsall across the Middle East.
(07:50):
And so that was a clue that,hey, there's a lot of, and they
were willing to pay a lot ofmoney there.
Largest customer.
I think that some of my own.
baggage came into play becausethe previous company that I had
been a founder of and co-founderof and CTO was large enterprise
sales to healthcare, tohospitals, conservative
(08:12):
organizations, long salescycles, and I just remember.
I found it stressful.
It's difficult to get going.
Your feedback loop is measuredin six months or a year, I was
just sick of it.
And so when you, when I cameinto the Administrate situation,
it was kinda like.
This is cool.
We can take orders over theinternet and it was like really
(08:33):
seductive, right?
Because we put up a free trialpage and I, it was like in a
movie or something becausewithin about two minutes of
putting the free trial page upthere, somebody signed up,
right?
And it was like, oh, cool, thisis working.
And then we were getting.
But 10, 12 signups a day and allthis stuff.
And so it was like, wow, we canscale this and we don't have to
worry about enterprise sales andthis is great.
(08:56):
But I've often said this likekind of the first five, six
years of the company's history.
We're really just in search ofone customer.
We didn't know it at the time,but with like the whole point of
that five or six year period wasbasically to find one customer,
and it was a company calledForgeRock, and they came on
board as a post series, astartup.
(09:16):
In the identity management spaceis single sign-on stuff.
And there's a bunch of ex sunguys that went out and said,
Hey, there's this open sourcesoftware that Sun doesn't want
anymore, and we think we canproductize it and build a
company around it.
And they raise money and theyjust started growing like a
rocket.
And so they started as an SMBcustomer, right?
Doing not very much training.
(09:38):
And then they exploded.
And we went with them all theway on their journey to when
they went public and then weretaken private, and then they
merged with ping.
And so now we're the backbone ofall ping's training operations
with a combined company name.
But it was through that journeyof this accidental customer
essentially that.
Became an enterprise right infront of us that we were like,
(09:58):
wow, there's a ton of value herethat we are driving for them and
they are willing to pay for thisvalue and we should go find some
more customers that look likethem.
Dan Balcauski (10:10):
So what so you you started that saying a forge
rock.
Was this like the customer youdidn't know you wanted?
But I guess so, so what was itas you grew with them that you
realized that like these werethe folks you were waiting for.
What did they teach you in thatexperience?
John Peebles (10:26):
Yeah, so I think another difficult thing about
selling to SMBs, and I thinkit's just getting more and more
difficult, is an SMB customer,like let's say you or I, or
buying something for a hobby orfor home or whatever, we are
used to a high quality.
Right.
My iPhone is a high qualityproduct.
(10:48):
The things that I use often doone thing and one thing very
well.
I'm talking about things likeDropbox and iCloud and Spotify
or Apple Music or whatever.
These are polished products thatdo one thing very well it's
focused, and when.
You're selling essentially aplatform that is an ERP or an
(11:11):
Enter enterprise resourceplanning platform, which is
effectively what we are, averticalized ERP.
We have to do a lot of thingsand we have to do a lot of
things pretty well, but.
customers are grading youagainst the Spotify or the
Dan Balcauski (11:26):
Mm-hmm.
John Peebles (11:27):
kind of alternative products that they
use in their lives.
And these platform products aredifficult to get right.
They're diff, they're hard todesign.
They are.
There's a lot of modeling thatgoes into place and as you're,
when you're still early on yourjourney, our product was not
perfect, and we already talkedabout how it was an internal
tool, so it was very far fromperfect.
We didn't have the best startingspot, and so I think that just
(11:50):
what we learned with ForgeRockwas that.
They didn't care about the roughedges of the product, right?
Because they were at a scalewhere they cared a lot more
about solving their fundamentalproblem, which was how do we get
these thousands and thousands ofstudents through this training
in a very high quality way?
And they couldn't build out atraining team to take care of
(12:12):
all that.
They just needed to do withabout three or four people and.
For them.
The rough edges that we had,particularly at the time, were
less important than the missionthat they had.
Being an open source softwarecompany training was
exceptionally important forrevenue generation for them as
well.
Right.
So, in millions of dollars ofrevenue that depended on this
eventually.
It was very key when theytransitioned to to, to being
(12:35):
less of an open source softwarecompany and more closed source.
And that was just a reallyinteresting realization.
It's like.
These details or these kind ofnitpicky things go by the
wayside very quickly when you'rehaving to worry about tens of
thousands of things versus 10things,
Dan Balcauski (12:50):
So there was a, it sounds like there's certainly
a need driven by their growthand then the limitations of
their team and the, and the,with the training needs that
they had to look beyond the, therough edges.
And then there was, there was areal fit for the value that you
could provide and they werewilling to look past sort of the
rough edges.
And that's I love that.
I love that example.
I'm curious, like, so, so nowyou're in this space and you
(13:12):
realize that.
You're like, okay, these guysare really a fit.
These s and b customers are, aretaking, a lot of time.
Like do you organize, like doesthis become an explicit mandate
within the organization of we'renot going to.
We're gonna take away a freetrial.
We're going to change our, ourgo to market.
If somebody, you're like, we'regonna do hard qualification
(13:33):
upfront to figure out sort of,the scope of the organization
and say no to revenue, like, howdo you sort of take this
learning that you learn fromforge, rock and this other
generalized pattern that youmentioned in order to really
make this transition?
'cause I think it's, it canoften, it's one thing to sort of
say it and then another thing tolive it where you're like, well,
these people are.
They're willing to give usmoney.
(13:54):
So we could take that.
'cause that'd be nice.
'cause it's revenue's, revenue.
I like How did you likeorganizationally operationalize
this these learnings?
John Peebles (14:03):
Yeah, I mean, it's given me PTSD almost just
thinking back on it.
Dan Balcauski (14:07):
Sorry, that wasn't the intent.
John Peebles (14:09):
so, and the, here's the thing.
It's so.
It's so seductive, this ideathat you can do both at the same
time.
Right.
Thankfully I avoided that trap.
We avoided that trap.
We knew that we could not do SMBand Enterprise together.
Right?
I think maybe if you've got15,000 employees and you know
(14:32):
all the stuff, you're a hugeorganization.
Maybe you can try to do that.
But for a startup you gotta pickone.
and we we just realized that wehad picked the wrong one.
So that was not a, that was nota great realization to make.
And to our credit, like we wentto Saster and read all the blogs
and went to the conferences andtalked to other founders and so
(14:54):
forth, and everybody says, andsaid.
At the time and we listened,which was, you're gonna have to
change out your entire teambecause the people that you have
that are comfortable in the SMBmotion that understand it, that
are familiar with the ways ofworking.
They're just incompatible withthe enterprise motion and the
(15:14):
ways of working.
We read all that.
We thought, we listened to it,but we really didn't.
And I thought we could bespecial and we could be this
unicorn.
And I really believed in ourteam at the time and they're
great for a whole bunch ofreasons, people just have their
comfort zone and the way that,that they naturally operate.
And what we found was we justhung on too long to that notion
(15:38):
that our team, that was great ats and b could get us to the
enterprise.
and land.
And and that's a big regretbecause I think we should have,
so, so we did the right thing,which is we.
We took down the free trial andwe burned the ships.
Like we deleted all of ourwebsite pretty much.
And'cause it was all like s andb focused content.
(15:59):
And we even did things like,we're headquartered here in
Scotland and a bunch of ourteam, particularly the go to
market stuff, is in the US'causethat's our biggest market.
But we even did things like, wechanged our spelling from
British spelling to Americanspelling and all this stuff.
But that, that idea, it, itreminds me, it's one of my.
Favorite essays of all time,where guy just basically says,
(16:24):
you can't tell people anything.
Right.
It's like the fundamental axiomof this essay.
And that's, it's a painful thingfor me to agree with as the CEO
of a learning platformeffectively, but like people
just.
People just have a hard timelearning, right.
Until they've gone through andmade the mistake.
And I no exception to that,right?
(16:44):
I read all the literature, Ithought I listened, I thought,
and I just, now I'm a, I'm aspecial snowflake and we'll do
it differently.
And, and we were wrong, and thatprobably cost us a couple years,
if not more in, in that journeyand made it much more difficult.
Dan Balcauski (16:58):
So I'm curious, 'cause you said so you, you,
Ruth free trial, you, youchanged the content of the
website to be, to remove the sand b flavor.
But you mentioned also that thepeople who, you thought you had
good people.
I was this mostly on the salesside, where the sales team that
is good at closing SMB businessdoesn't, didn't translate to
(17:18):
enterprise.
Is that mostly where thatfriction landed?
John Peebles (17:21):
No, it was every piece of the business.
And so if you think about it.
Our marketing, folks that, thatunderstand how to market to a
credit card.
Swiper, free trialer, are notthe people that are gonna be
comfortable necessarily talkingto a C-level chief learning
officer at Siemens, right?
Or, who's their now new target.
(17:42):
The salespeople would not becomfortable talking at that
level, so you go from takingorders basically on the phone
and doing a quick.
30, 40 minute demo and, do youwanna sign up?
It's a hundred bucks a month.
That's a much different motionthan the long enterprise sales
cycle where you're having todevelop relationships with VP
and C-level folks.
Same with support.
(18:03):
The much more transactional kindof take it or leave it, or
here's a doc, link to, to answeryour ticket or go do it yourself
or whatever.
just doesn't fly when people arepaying you$150,000 a year or
whatever for the software.
And,
Dan Balcauski (18:17):
Hmm.
John Peebles (18:18):
then you need the kind of implementation and
executive support and customersuccess and all that.
So all of that had to getchanged to just fit the new
market and the new strategy.
And it was just, it's a bitoverwhelming even to think back
on how much everything had tochange.
But it was certainlyoverwhelming at the time.
Dan Balcauski (18:39):
Well, I'm curious, like looking back and
looking at that transition isthere anything that you would do
differently or, or advice toother folks who were looking at
that transition of, of what todo?
First.
John Peebles (18:50):
Yeah it's hard, right?
So again, we thought we weregoing in with our eyes wide open
on what it was gonna take.
And I think of the, one of thesaving graces, I guess.
That we at least did, right?
Is both myself and our COO had abackground in that type of sale,
right?
That enterprise approach.
(19:11):
And so, we at least knew what,where we needed to go.
I think that can be difficultthough for a lot of founders.
But I would say, I had a, therewas almost a replay of this
where five, six years ago.
I got asked to help out on theboard of a small early stage
startup here in Burgh, They wereselling a very cool medical
(19:35):
device to, to hospitals that itwould strap on your arm and
replace all of theinstrumentation that you'd
typically get in ICU.
And it's gonna be, it's now FDAregulated and approved.
And so it, it beats the goldstandard of all those expensive
machines.
And that's nice, but it's alsomeans the patient could be much
more mobile.
(19:55):
And also it means that thesystem could alert nurses or
doctors in the ward that apatient was degrading because
they didn't have to come aroundand actually look at the.
Instruments in
Dan Balcauski (20:06):
Mm mm.
John Peebles (20:07):
room.
So you could do all kinds ofthings like get patients home
faster, but you can monitor themremotely or have less people in
the actual ICU, but it's stillin the hospital and all these
cool things.
Well, the founder, like manyfounders, we say, well we wanna
put this up on the website andswipe a credit card and maybe
you buy one for your grandmotheror whatever.
(20:27):
And I was like, just stop.
Don't do this.
Right?
Like, we need to targethospitals and it's gonna be a
long sales cycle and we need toput the price way up, and it's
gonna be six figure minimum toget going.
And I, there's, and I even said,we're not even deal with Europe,
right?
We're gonna focus on the USonly.
That's my advice.
Right.
And I think that was one of thevery few things that I can take
(20:51):
credit for with that company'seventual success.
And they were.
success story.
Sold for north of four$50million to Best Buy five years
later.
Saved a lot of lives in theprocess, but the, and I had a
front row seat to watch.
One of the most incredible CEOsI've ever had the opportunity to
meet.
Operate, and he is in his latetwenties, but the one thing I
(21:13):
feel like I can take credit foron that is just that kind of
nagging him and saying, no,we've gotta go up market and we
gotta target enterprises and we
Dan Balcauski (21:22):
Hmm.
John Peebles (21:22):
know, it's hospitals and large
organizations, and don't worryabout this s and b stuff, and he
fought me on it a little bit fora few months and was like, yeah
I think you're right.
And that was a, I think, a keymoment for that company.
And so a long-winded way ofanswering your question, which
is if you can find somebodythat's either had to do that
before or just understandswhat's involved as a founder, do
(21:46):
it because that'll be sovaluable.
Dan Balcauski (21:48):
Yeah.
Well, there, so that's a reallyinteresting strategic
transition.
Transition.
I think another area where maybeconventional wisdom often falls
short is around building cultureat scale.
So I'm curious as you scaled,administrate, and, and maybe
this also pertains to yourscaling at other companies.
What have you found to be thebiggest culture challenges that
emerge as teams grow?
(22:09):
I know you're you have a, astrong international background.
You've got, a lot of yourbusiness in the US you're based
in, in Europe.
So I dunno if it's for you it'sbeen culture across regions or
culture at different stages ofgrowth.
What what have you found thatmost people get wrong when they
think about culture?
John Peebles (22:24):
Yeah it's a big topic, right?
'cause it's so important.
I think
Dan Balcauski (22:29):
It's also very amorphous.
It's a, it's one of these thingsof like culture's important.
You're like, great, what do I donow?
John Peebles (22:35):
Totally.
And we even talk about this atadministrate, we say we don't
like using the word companyculture because it becomes
confusing when you're like usand you've got all these
different cultures within thecompany that are all colliding
in various different ways.
We like to think about it interms of we have this.
We have this conceit, thisdream.
(22:58):
Really I have this dream whichis, they tell you to buy the
best mattress that you can buy,right.
That, that you can affordbecause you're gonna spend a
third of your life on it.
Right?
But the same thing applies towork, right?
We spend a third of our life atwork or more and it's a huge
part of people's identities andtheir day-to-day interactions
and so forth.
And I have this dream of kind ofa company that people just love
(23:22):
to work at and they can bereally successful at.
And they.
talk about, we used to call thisthis dream, the ultimate human
organization at administrate.
And our British team would rollour eyes and be like, that is so
American.
And like, well, yeah, maybe itis, but, but we've refined it a
little bit to, to be more of astatement of just elevate
humans, right?
(23:42):
And not, that's not just ourteam, but that's also our
customers and their customers.
And we want to just be anelevator for humans in a whole
bunch of different ways.
And so for us, when we thinkabout company culture, it's
like, are we.
Building an environment that iselevating the humans that exist
within it.
(24:02):
And that can sometimes beuncomfortable, right?
And it's not everybody beingnice to each other and all this
stuff necessarily, but it's Imean, we don't need to be jerks,
but like, it's more about whatare we doing to elevate
ourselves and our customers andour investors and our
communities and all this type ofthing.
And so when we talk about thecompany culture and
administrate.
We specifically don't have ourvalues.
(24:25):
As a company written up on ourwalls in our office back when we
had an office, and we didn'thave any of that.
Those posters that you sometimessee, and I'm not criticizing
folks if they do that, but theidea was we want it to be where
if we had a journalist or avisitor or observer come in to
the company and hang out with usfor a couple of weeks, that they
might be able to write down whatthey think our values are by
(24:48):
observing how we work.
And so that's really thebarometer because we do this
onboarding and it's a talk thatI give to every new hire at
Administrate.
And I just say, think of theworst companies in the world,
right?
And people always, I thinkMonsanto comes up a lot and, of
people.
We'll talk about their broadbandprovider, like Comcast, or some
(25:09):
of the worst companies ever.
And I'm like, if we go to theirwebsite right now, they'll have
values that are probably prettyclose to ours, in terms of like,
oh, we want to do these nicethings or whatever, but they're
not living them, and so,
Dan Balcauski (25:20):
Yeah.
John Peebles (25:20):
That's.
I think for us the real test,and we don't get this right and
we fail all the time.
But I think just having thatstated goal has helped us get
through some rough times andit's been a mirror to myself and
to, to others within theorganization at times that we
need to do better.
And so that's, that's how wethink about it.
Dan Balcauski (25:38):
Well, I'm curious 'cause you come from a technical
background, if I'm not mistaken.
As you mentioned you were CTO ata previous company.
Do you see a difference betweena technical culture and overall
company culture?
I.
John Peebles (25:50):
yes and no, but I think there's definitely a
difference in managing technicalfolks versus non-technical
folks.
I used to think I was theworld's greatest manager of
people, and it turned out that.
just me and a bunch of techies,and we'd hired predominantly
from the Midwest at the time.
This is like, 15, 20 years ago.
So it was all pretty culturallysimilar backgrounds and all this
(26:12):
stuff.
And it just turned out, I'm nota great people manager and I had
to learn that.
Think for us, the, realsimilarities are just like, we
want, we wanna find smart peoplethat get things done, and.
Do the work in the right way,and I think that applies whether
it's technical work ornon-technical work.
(26:34):
I find it a little bit easiersometimes to measure and manage
the technical work, though it'sa little bit easier to ize
sometimes.
Dan Balcauski (26:41):
the code work is a pretty good metric, right?
I think that's why all the AIcompanies are focusing on
coding.
'cause it's, it's like, is thislegal brief gonna help me win?
This case is hard to test.
But, does this code run and passits unit tests?
Is a little bit more measurable.
John Peebles (26:53):
Yeah, I was literally just saying that to
somebody the other day.
It's like the only AI stuff thatI trust is the code stuff,
because you're actuallyexecuting it right then and
there.
Dan Balcauski (27:03):
Yeah, it's well, i'm, I'm curious because the I,
I think in our, our previousconversation, you were
mentioning that one of the bigchallenges, you just mentioned
like, hey, like, can people dothe job, do things the right
way?
But that we have a significant.
Dearth of really senior folkswho know what the right way is.
So I'm curious if, as you thinkabout, the, the technical either
(27:27):
both could be the hiring or justthe culture.
Like is that an additionalchallenge on that side that
maybe is not reflected in thebroader sort of company culture
practices?
John Peebles (27:38):
Yeah, so I think.
So I've got this opinion, and itmight be somewhat controversial,
but startups are hard, right?
And there's all the stats abouthow often they fail and all that
stuff.
And I think that building astartup in Europe or outside the
US is particularly hard.
(27:58):
And the reason for that is theUS is probably on its fourth or
fifth generation of folks.
That have been going through andbuilding startup tech companies.
If you go out to the valley,there have been people that have
been doing this, they'veretired, but they started in the
sixties and seventies and,that's quite a, a number of
generations.
And out here in Europe, we'reonly really on, depending on
(28:21):
what country you're in we're inour first or second generation.
And that means that there is a,a lack of folks that have.
Either done this before or doneit at the scale that, you might
want to be trying to approach.
And so here in Scotland thereare very few founders or folks
(28:42):
that have done this before andhad an exit because it's just
wasn't a thing till about 10years ago to do a tech startup.
And so that's one of the keypieces of advice that I.
To hammer home.
We made this mistake over andover again at Administrate,
which is, I just fundamentallybelieved we could, we could get
people there or people couldgrow and change and, whatever.
(29:03):
And.
problem is, is that when you'rescaling quickly and rapidly,
that the learning curve is justtoo steep.
It's just too much to take in.
And going from$5 million in a RRto$20 million in a RR is such a
big jump and everything needs tochange.
And if you're not relying on aplaybook and past experience,
and it's not like you've had tohave done all the job before,
(29:25):
but you have to at least seen itdone.
Alongside or whatever, been apart of a company.
and that's actually some of theadvice that I tend to give young
founders is I say, look don'tstart a company right outta
college or whatever necessarily.
It's probably a good idea to gowork at a startup for a year or
two and see some of the stuffand watch the mistakes that are
(29:45):
being made by other people ontheir dime, and then you'll be
better prepared.
So it, these are things that arehard to hear sometimes though,
when you got your next greatestidea.
Dan Balcauski (29:53):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Well, I, I wanna go back to atthe beginning you were talking
about, sorry, I didn't mean toprompt you into PTSD, but, it,
it does bring up this whole ideaof.
Of, mental health.
'cause you mentioned this, thisperfect storm where, you're
going through this thistransition.
Beyond the strategic challenges,I'm curious about the
(30:14):
psychological toll of goingthrough something like that as a
leader.
I think there's this mythologyaround founder resilience that
great leaders need to grindthrough everything, that showing
vulnerability as weakness.
Mental health is a personalissue rather than business one.
I guess based on your experiencegoing through that period what
do those myths get wrong?
John Peebles (30:30):
Yeah, I, I'm not an expert on mental health and I
don't consider myself to be anauthority, but I do have a lot
of experience in startups and Ihave.
Come to the conclusion, therealization that these
(30:50):
companies, building thesecompanies is a fundamentally
very difficult thing.
And it's difficult for everyperson involved in the journey,
right?
From CEO, all the way down orfrom whatever, all the way up.
And that doesn't seem like acontroversial statement.
(31:11):
And I don't think anybody woulddisagree with that.
People are like, yeah, startupsare hard.
And even the best ones the topoutliers that we all read about
and whatever, they would saythat it was very difficult.
But what I think is strange isthat our reaction defaults and
my reaction always default,defaulted to Yeah, but we have
(31:31):
to act and we have to be.
at every step of the way.
'cause this is a confidencegame.
'Cause investors want to seeconfidence and your team wants
to see you confident and yourcustomers are placing trust in
you and they want you to beconfident.
So there it's like, we know thisis hard and yet the default
(31:53):
requirement or approach is thatwe can't act like it's hard and
we have to just put up thisfacade and everything's great
and it's water off a duck'sback.
And I've just, found, I don'tthink that's super helpful.
I think that that causes a lotof problems because inevitably
every startup is gonna gothrough a period where things
(32:13):
are not going well.
And every CEO and founder I'veever talked to, and this
includes.
Guys like the CEO of Zoom, whichhas gotta be one of the most
fairytale, rides that has everexisted.
CEO of Skyscanner here inEdinburgh, huge, huge success
story.
I've.
know, talk to these guys.
(32:33):
And I've just been like, did youever have these like w moments
where it's like, we're fucked.
It's over.
And they're like, oh yeah, wehad two last week.
And it's like, it's and it isnormal.
And the problem is that I don'tthink.
A lot of us realize just hownormal it is, or we don't
believe that it's normal orwhatever, and then that makes
(32:53):
you feel even more isolated.
And so really for me, one of thebest things that ever happened
is I had a near total breakdownat a very, we're right in the
middle of starting thattransition to go to Enterprise.
And, my personal life was a messand the company was not going
well and.
(33:13):
had to raise money and we missedour numbers, and there was all
this pressure and it was allthose things together.
And, and I just thought, man, Ineed to get some, need to get
some help here.
I we presented to investors andI almost, getting this really
bad pinch in my neck.
And thankfully we finished themeeting and I was walking home
(33:34):
and I just collapsed in thestairwell in my flat.
and I thought, thought I wasgonna die, basically.
It was just like, am I having anheart attack or what?
And it was that, that reallyhome that something's gotta
change here.
And I needed some help.
And so, I had started talking toa therapist and I was surprised
at how quickly that made adifference in a positive way.
(33:56):
And then it was well.
That's weird because I actuallyhad to get my assistant to,
schedule that.
'cause I knew I wasn't gonna doit.
And there's so much inertia, Ihad to go find the room and it
was, I was embarrassed to showup there and I didn't want
anybody to see, and all thisstuff, all these natural
feelings.
And so we just thought about itlike that was really helpful for
(34:17):
me and.
We're about 60 people right now.
That means somebody's life isusually going through something
at that scale and so we thought,well, why not extend this to our
team?
And so for the last.
eight, nine years, we've had atherapist as part of our team.
Dan Balcauski (34:35):
Oh wow.
John Peebles (34:35):
our folks can make appointments with her.
They're all completelyanonymous.
You can do'em over zoom, you cando'em in person.
And we just get the bill at theend of the month.
And then during COID there's alot of stuff going on and people
are really struggling andafraid.
And we were under a reallyintense lockdown here in
Scotland.
And people in Europe have muchsmaller apartments than they do
(34:57):
in the States.
And so, we then made thedecision that, hey, anyone in
our, anybody on our team cangive a session.
Of therapy to anybody, right?
So, if you see somebodystruggling, it's a friend or a,
whatever, just say, Hey, we'vegot this resource, and would you
like to try it out?
And it's just been one of thebetter things we've done, and I
think it's really been aninteresting thing and I've been
(35:18):
really pleased because there'sbeen a number of other startups
in Edinburgh that have alsofollowed in doing the same
thing.
It's something that we try totalk about and be very open
about, and, and I think it helpsto just face up to that issue.
Dan Balcauski (35:30):
Yeah.
That's amazing.
I have not heard of a companydoing that.
So that's a, that's an amazingresource.
I'm curious, like,'cause you didmention, it is this confidence
game, and whether that's, the,the CEO with the board or the
CEO with the employees or futureinvestors I'm curious how like,
having a therapist.
Is a strong move and that'sobviously a really good tactic
(35:50):
or support structure.
I'm curious if, you view yourability to sort of play that
confidence game any differently,right?
Is there, are there ways thatyou are able or like have grown
to be able to show vulnerabilityas a strength?
So that you don't have to carrythat.
Right.
Because I imagine, right.
Oftentimes, like, board meetingsare, are one of those things
(36:13):
where like, a lot of people arejust like, I hope I get through
without like, them like jumpingdown my throat.
But at the same time, like youdo have a, a team there that
isn't invested in seeing thecompany successful.
And so you want to like, ask fortheir help.
I guess, like how do you view,maybe it's with the board or
maybe it's with employees, likehow do you view playing that
confidence game differentlythrough this lens?
John Peebles (36:32):
Yeah, it's a great question.
I think that the default is.
And I've been involved insituations like this, right,
where you're raising money andyou got these projections and
sometimes people believe themand sometimes people don't or
whatever.
And I think the wrong way to goabout it is to just.
Kinda be confident for, for noreason or whatever.
(36:56):
And so I'm not just a big fan oflike showing, showing your work,
I was like, I sucked at math inin high school and college, even
though I got a computer sciencedegree.
So that just made it even moredifficult.
But I became the master ofpartial credit, by, by showing
all my work.
And I think that is probably theway that.
We've survived as a company,with our investors and board and
(37:18):
our stakeholders and customersbecause the board knows when
it's not going well andcustomers know when you're
struggling and, and whatever.
And so the idea, transparency isa core value of ours.
And I For me, it I've evolved tobe much more intentional about.
(37:40):
Showing the reasons why webelieve the things that we're
saying.
And so, we went, we went througha year where we had almost no
sales a couple years ago.
It was, the pandemic was reallytough.
People weren't spending largesums of money.
They're not gonna let$150,000out the door to buy software.
They'll just continuestruggling, and that.
(38:02):
Most CEOs, leadership teamsdon't survive a year of very
little sales.
But because we just reallyworked on, here's our
hypothesis, here's the work thatwe're doing and we're really
intentional about that.
I think we've managed to buildtrust and.
I still believe, like, I couldget fired at any point for any
(38:24):
reason.
That's just the name of thegame.
But I think that's just soimportant.
And that'd be my biggest pieceof advice is yeah, like, people
know when it's not going well.
And the last thing anybody wantsis bloviating and all this kind
of false confidence stuff put inthe work show, the work people
might actually surprise you andgive you good feedback.
Actually when it's gone reallybadly and we've had to.
(38:46):
Have tough conversations withstakeholders and investors and
so forth.
A lot of times they've flippedinto be very encouraging, when
they see how we've thought aboutthe problem and what we're doing
about it.
So that's been interesting forme.
Dan Balcauski (38:58):
Transparency and be a king of partial credit.
I love that.
That's a good, that's a goodlittle nugget.
Well, John, I can talk to youall day but I do wanna be
respectful of your, theaudience's time.
Thought of wrapping up with acouple of rapid fire closeout
questions.
You ready?
John Peebles (39:10):
Yep.
Dan Balcauski (39:11):
What's something you believe that most people
disagree with?
John Peebles (39:14):
Oh man.
I think that for softwareengineering, either have it or
you don't.
There's no training it and that,that hurts me to say out loud,
but I truly believe that.
I think you just, you're eitherbored with it or you don't.
Dan Balcauski (39:32):
As a, as an ex software engineer with a
computer engineering undergrad.
I, I, I, I resonate empathizeand maybe a little triggered by
that statement, but I can'tdisagree with it.
When you think about all thespectacular people you've had a
chance to work with, is anyonethat just pops to mind has had a
disproportionate effect on theway that you think about
building companies now?
John Peebles (39:49):
Yeah, so actually there's, I never worked with
this guy, but he wrote a bookcalled Conscious Capitalism.
It's the founder of whole Foodsand I thought it was an
incredible book, reallyinfluenced.
Way of thinking about what iscapitalism?
What is really capitalism?
Why is it good?
Why is it just why when wecomplain about the capitalism
(40:09):
run amuck is that's not reallytrue capitalism.
So that really influenced me.
I've been really blessed to workfor.
Just over a decade now with oneof my best friends.
He's our COO here atAdministrate, really influenced
my thinking and I think fills ina lot of gaps for me and me for
him.
So, working with your friends isnot always easy.
He is the best man in mywedding, but it's, it's it can
(40:30):
be really rewarding when you doit well.
Dan Balcauski (40:33):
Well, very cool.
Very cool.
If I had to give you abillboard, you could put any
advice on there for other B2Bsassy, trying to scale their
companies, what would it say?
John Peebles (40:40):
You are not the exception.
Just beware,
Dan Balcauski (40:43):
you're not the special snowflake.
Got it.
John Peebles (40:46):
these things in general will apply to you.
Dan Balcauski (40:50):
That's awesome.
John, if our listeners wannaconnect with you and learn more
about administrate, how can theydo that?
John Peebles (40:54):
Yeah.
Or you hit our website, getadministrate.com, or I run a
very infrequently updatedpersonal blog@pebs.org, so happy
to always check in with folksout there.
Dan Balcauski (41:06):
I will put those links in the show notes for
listeners.
Thank you John.
That wraps up this episode ofSask Gay League.
Seeks.
Thank you to John for sharinghis journey and insights.
For our listeners who foundJohn's insights valuable, please
leave a review and share thisepisode with the network.
It really helps podcast grow.
Thank you network.
It really helps podcast grow.
Thank.
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