SaaS Boss

This episode is part of a webinar recording that Natalie Luneva and Tracy Washington did early 2020, where we talked about the following things:

How to gain more clarity

How to setup SMART goals

How to become a more effective leader

How to get your team to buy into your 2020 vision

How to motivate yourself and your team to achieve these goals (and why financial incentives may not be the best way to do it)

In this episode Natalie Luneva shares why we need to embrace the 10x mentality. While incremental change is still very important, I'd to encourage everyone to welcome the 10x mentality and see how it can help drastically rethink the problem instead of making small improvements.

My name is Natalie Luneva, the host of SaaS Boss show and in this first episode I wanted to share with you a little bit information about who I am, the reason I decided to launch this podcast, who it is for and what you can expect from these episodes.

6 years ago I was helping an early stage SaaS solution for medical practices with their go to market strategy, primarily I was in marketing and growth, but soon started doing demos and walk throughs, this was my very first exposure to working in a SaaS. I have built marketing and support teams from scratch where I started being the only person department and ended up with a full team of more than a dozen full time employees and a few dozens of contractors and freelancers.

Fast forward few years and I've worked with more than a hundred of companies helping them grow.

My husband is a SaaS founder as well and I'm helping him with marketing and operations. Drawing from this experience, I see first hand the struggles of founders.

This podcast will be best suited for SaaS founders who already generate some revenue and are past MVP stage. You likely have a small team of or are planning to start hiring people to put your project on a growth trajectory.

The 3 main reasons I thought that there's a need for this podcast is because:

1. I see founders who get discouraged when they listen to podcasts where other founders share their successes because they are not there yet, and instead of focusing on what they can and should do to fix the situation, they get discouraged.

2. Because the interviews are a mix of founders in different stages, industries, different setup and so the advice may not be applicable to everyone. The stage where you generated some traction and getting some revenue, but you have a long way to go is crucial. You either stay small and grow very slowly, or you think strategically about what needs to be done in order to push this forward and grow at a much faster rate.

3. In order for a SaaS to grow, the team usually needs to grow and so founder's role within it will need to change as well, and without previous experience leading a team and organizing processes, you may become bottle neck to your own success without even knowing it and blaming other problems, not realizing that it's right in front of your nose.

The format will be a mix of interviews with SaaS coaches and consultants and solo episodes with just me where I'll be sharing some actionable advice, or just give a good old kick int he but. The reason why I interview SaaS coaches and not founders is because I find that the advice from founders may not necessarily applicable to everyone and is very situational, so that advice for another SaaS in a different industry, different stage and different setting may not work. Coaches on the other hand worked with dozens and dozens of founders and saw how the same advice can work or backfire in various situations and so can provide some additional insight or word of caution.

Lastly, I would really appreciate your feedback. This is my first podcast and while I'm still finding my voice, I'd love to hear things you found helpful or some results that you got from implementing some ideas you got from the podcast, or if something is complete BS I would really want to know that as well. If you know someone who you think may be a good fit for me to interview, please reach out as well.

In this episode of SaaS Boss, I interview Jes Osrow about designing and implementing strategies to build high performing teams and what is a high performing team. As Co-Founder of The Rise Journey, Jes works with growth stage companies designing and implementing strategies to build cohesive teams while developing a sustainable organizational culture.

1:15 Why team culture is important

4:00 Why you can not do everything yourself and the reason to hire.

9:30 Why you should consider hiring and not look for a co-founder

10:50 What is a high performing team?

15:00 Why do people leave companies?

18:40 Why and how to create a job description for your new hires

21:00 How to make your first hire and things to have in place before even making the hire

24:00 How to motivate employees

27:00 Onboarding, how to create instructions and SOPs