Learn how Austin applied his background in people management to develop a people-focused platform that caters to the needs of HR managers and business leaders scaling their business.
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Episode Transcript
Matthew Todd
Hi. My name is Matthew Todd and welcome to Inside the ScaleUp. This is the podcast for founders executives in tech, looking to make an impact and learn from their peers within the tech business. We lift the lid on tech businesses, interviewing leaders and following their journey from startup to scale up and beyond covering everything from developing product market fit, funding and fundraising models to value proposition structure and growth marketing. We learn from their journey so that you can understand how they really work, the failures, the successes, the lessons along the way, so that you can take their learnings and apply them within your own startup or scale up and join the ever growing list of high growth UK SaaS businesses.
Hey and welcome back to the podcast pleased today to be joined by Austin Kerr, founder of Humanagement. Good afternoon in my timezone. Good morning in your’s, but good to have you on the podcast.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, we’re happy to be here.
Matthew Todd
Awesome. So yeah, like I mentioned before, when we were talking before the episode, I’d like to kick things off by the founders themselves introducing themselves and their company, I think it’s always better for people to hear it in the words of the founder, rather than my interpretation. So over to you for a brief intro, if that’s okay.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve spent about 15 years in the HR and leadership roles. Having used that I found that there was a lot of problems that software wasn’t specifically solving. There were some kind of tools around the subject of leadership or HR, but nothing really all encompassing, right. So like, in a sales world, there’s a CRM, and a CRM does like all these things that you need to get your sales and or marketing and very good, integrated. So basically, he management is that but for the subject of managing employees, so it does stuff like train helping you with training employees, keeping track of production and metrics, time and time out, you know, employee profiles, and all that sort of HR data, managing request and purchase orders, all sorts of stuff like that. So it’s really a all in one solution for managing employees.
Matthew Todd
I see that makes sense. And what is it about your background that led to you thinking about creating shoe management in the first place? What was your experience around that kind of people management area being like?
Austin Kerr
Yeah, so basically, I started my journey of managing people in the music industry, were hiring, there’s a lot of people who are applying for every job in music industry. And so you can kind of really pick your pick of the letter. And then after that, I went into the complete opposite. And I was managing a theme park, where you have a lot of very like, kind of low value or, you know, low low pay employees. And you see that kind of, you know, very stark difference. And then from there going into startup, real estate investment startup, and being with that, as it grew from five employees all the way up to, you know, 40, or 50.
And what I saw was that all those companies, no matter who they were had the same employee problems, right. So when I was looking at some of the other tools, and you know, starting, especially in that last startup, to really build out custom solutions, as we had the budget to play with those things, I found that a lot of people are using tools like monday.com, or clickup, or even like custom built solutions, like Vudoo or Salesforce. And they’re building a lot of the same things. Right. So they have the same problems are building a lot of the same things, but they’re having to build it.
So when a company is going, okay, great I want something that makes managing and dealing with employees easier. They’re having to shell out $40, $50,000 and 6 months of time, and they’re having to conceptualize these ideas. And so I was trying to get out of my friends who are business owners, and they would see the systems that I had set up, and they would be jealous, they’d go, wow, I love those systems, I wish that I could customize my clickup the same way that you customize your Odoo or whatever. And I kind of realized that this problem wasn’t being solved the right way, that there could be a solution that’s pre built. So it can just walk in plug and play. And they get all the tools they need to manage to deal with employees. And so that was kind of like the the inspiration.
Matthew Todd
I see. And why do you think the existing tools that are out there don’t cater for those kinds of needs?
Austin Kerr
I think a lot of that comes from people who develop software aren’t usually thinking from an employee mindset. Right? So one thing I’ve gotten from a lot of the people who have decided to use Humanagement is that the other software that they’ve used, felt like it was built for programmers, right? So they didn’t feel like the software was built for for them. Right and you see it right. So when you’re looking at marketing software, a lot of software is built by marketing people, those people naturally think in terms of logic, and so it’s easy for them to then go and hire someone to build a marketing tool. So those tools are really well built and really intuitive.
Similarly, for like a monday.com, or clickup or one of these big giant all in everything tools. They’re kind of very obviously built also from a programmers, programmers mindset, right? The way that logic works is when you make selections, it’s kind of built to be able to build custom tools easier. So it’s built by people who are already building custom tools. And so when it comes to, like a people software, I don’t often find even when talking in the SaaS groups and a part of or fellow founders, that a lot of them are coming from a high up managerial position, they’re not having those people problems and going, I’m going to build software, they’re having marketing problems, or tech problems, or running developers, if running employees, and so are things very project management based, but for less 50% of the businesses out there, they don’t do projects at all right. So like a dry cleaner doesn’t have products, they have a person who takes something and they put it somewhere, right, or their work is very repetitive.
And so there aren’t tools built for good repetitive work where, like, when you’re dealing with developers, for instance, you’re not really training them, you find someone who has some skill set, and then give them a problem. And they’re going to do research and then figure out how to build it, but you’re not really training them, right, maybe some rules of the company, etc. When you have someone who’s like a salesperson, or let’s say, you know, someone who’s putting together chairs, right, like someone on the manufacturing floor at IKEA, these people’s job is not invented at all, there’s a lot of training that goes in, when you start at Walmart, you’re used to getting this giant manual of stuff, right? Here’s the manual, here’s the thing, if I have a problem I can write, I can figure out how to do it. And it’s all vary based on training, and then repetitive work, checking someone out. But it’s not Walmart execs who are going off and building drum tech startup. So therefore, they’re not bringing those same sorts of solutions out. So that’s kind of the mindset behind management is I’m trying to build those types of solutions out for people who have businesses that are mainly repetitive work.
Matthew Todd
That makes sense. I see. I think that it’s a really interesting perspective, I think both in terms of the kinds of platforms that software developers and technical teams build and they use to building they they build what is familiar to them. And I think the other thing you described wasn’t a lot of these other tools being like all in one, platforms are almost going too broad, where it sounds like you’ve been able to successfully identify a niche, whereby it’s, it’s not for that type of work is for this type of work and for people management. And therefore you can be really specific about the needs of those employees and managers of those employees.
Austin Kerr
Exactly. Like it’s the same reason why someone who’s the CEO of GE can then next be the CEO of Disney. Right? Even though those are wildly different companies and what they deal with the people management is actually the same. So when you’re looking at even historically, how like some of these all in everything tools came about, they usually started with, like being custom for a CRM, right. And they’re trying to be custom for sales. Because the way that that McDonald’s versus Disney versus GM does their sales that is very custom that’s very unique, the way that they manage their product, and building the product that’s very unique. So you need something customizable, but a lot of these people kind of just like as an afterthought went oh, yeah, I guess you can use it for people management. And your basic, you know, I’m a manager of people. So that’s kind of where I saw like that hole there was that it was just kind of like a throw in. But it’s a feature that a lot of people care about, and put time into.
Matthew Todd
That makes sense. And I, I have had some exposure to various different HR systems and people management tools in the past as well. But those have tended to be within really big kind of enterprises, you know, national or global companies. And then you enter the SAP, it feels very enterprise, it feels like you’re using, you know, Microsoft Windows from many, many years ago. And it’s very rudimentary and basic, but, you know, infinitely customizable, if you can, you know, spend 1000s of pounds or dollars, right on the right consultant to customize it for you.
Austin Kerr
Exactly, yeah. But, you know, obviously, if there’s big companies who are having those advantages from having software like that, then there’s a lot of smaller, newer enterprises that can use it. Like one of the problems that a startup runs into that most people don’t tell them is that the biggest problem they’re gonna have? Well, the the biggest problem we’ll be getting for sales, right? So that’s why there’s all these sales tools out there, because that’s the problem that people run into immediately. If they have a failed startup, they’re usually not understand they need something for sales, they might make a marketing software.
So the second problem if they’ve made it past that, the second problem we’re going to run into which will just stop them in their tracks, is people management. So a company who has that high growth. There was a company that a friend of mine had and it was a company that did like some construction work. And so he was a really great salesperson, he was amazing. And he took that company and he bought it. And it was doing like, I don’t know, maybe $100,000 a year. And within like two years, he was doing like 2 or 3 million, right. And it was great. The problem was that once it reached out two or 3 million, he was stretched as far as he could be.
And because no one really trains people in the ability to delegate, and how to write good hats, how to use automation to help them bring on and onboard employees faster, even how to keep track of what your employees are producing. He was struggling at that area, and he wasn’t able to get past it. Because every time he would try to take his attention off of doing the sales to train people up because everything would crash. And so, you know, eventually that company would end up imploding. And that’s something that happens with a lot of people who have that success. And so that’s why this type of solution is so important is because these bigger companies have figured it out, they know that this stuff is important. They know that it’s worth the investment. But the smaller companies just don’t have the resources. So that’s kind of where key management fits right in.
Matthew Todd
I see it sounds like you found quite a nice, kind of sweet spot then and have clarity on exactly who the right kind of customer is then for Humanagement and the benefit that they’re going to get from it.
Austin Kerr
Absolutely.
Matthew Todd
So yeah, so when it came to deciding to take this foot, obviously, you mentioned you had experienced in doing this, you know, an individual instances and being approached by other founders and businesses to say, oh, you know, I wish we had that. What was it, then that led you to thinking okay, let’s, let’s create a business around this.
Austin Kerr
Well, full transparency, part of the problem was that I had joined a real estate startup, when it was very, very small, lots of confusion, lots of commotion, which was fun. That’s why I joined. But as it became more successful, and as it grew, the subject of getting some ownership came up between me and the other top executive. And because we were actively running the company, while the owner was, had moved on to a different business, so we had kind of made that play. And he said, you know, that was what he was looking to do.
So at that point, I kind of looked at the fact that I had very recently over the last five years, done everything to build a company basically from the ground up into a very successful award winning company. And so I kind of started to think with like, alright, well, this is probably a good time to exit then if if I’ve reached the biggest highest I can be. And you know, I know that I have the skills to build a company and manage employees, then I should go in and do that work for my own company. And so that kind of happened right at the moment that I was also getting this feedback on the systems I built for the current company. So that’s kind of where I was going. I also I did a really big look into like industries, right, so I’ve done a lot of kind of ad hoc consulting work as well. And there’s a few other passions that I have.
And I was kind of looking at all these different models and software is really attractive, because you’re going to do a lot of time and work to build something upfront. But then if you do it right, you’re basically going to be able to get a return on that investment for years and years to come. Whereas a lot of other industries, they kind of expensive scale up with the sales. SaaS isn’t like that. So I kind of figured spending two years building a software, I could afford it, I could make it work while I was having my job. And then, you know, it was worth that gamble, you know, to better myself that I could put in that work, and then it would return.
Matthew Todd
I see. Yeah. Sounds like you had quite a lot of indicators that could give you confidence that a) there was market need for it. And also, timing wise with your current position sound like you in an ideal kind of place and time to do that.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, exactly. It was definitely the right time, the right place. I mean, it had I not been able to have the free income to be able to invest, or had I, you know, not been in such a good position. It would be much harder to do this. I mean, I would have to go and get funding and, and do much differently. But I’m very, very lucky to have been in the position of him.
Matthew Todd
Yeah. So how long did it take from that point to start getting the first customers on on the initial version of the platform?
Austin Kerr
So kind of initially, just because like I said, I had quite a few friends that had mentioned my systems I was able to get I don’t know about I think it was like seven companies in felt like kind of the very basic MVP. So yeah, but six months and I had about seven companies that were in it. And then it wasn’t until about four or five months ago that I took the software public so I kind of just stayed with that seven for a while. And then now I’ve been able to, you know, get at least one or two additional companies every week or so.
Matthew Todd
I see, that sounds like a good, good size, initial customer base, I think it’s, one or two is perhaps not quite enough to get useful feedback. But I think as soon as you get to five or more, that’s when you can, you can get a lot of useful and valuable insights into what you’re doing right, what you should be, should be building as well.
Austin Kerr
Yeah. And one of the people who was my brother in law, he had a book publishing company that he had had for a while, like four or five years, and I don’t think he had ever been able to really get it off the ground, like he still had to have a day job. And I don’t know whether or not it was profitable, but you know, obviously marginally so. And so within about a year of using key management, he was able to scale this company up to, I think, four or five full time employees, it’s now his full time job. And he attributes that fully to the fact that like, humanity has taken away his worry on bringing new employees, he knows that the systems and everything will be there. So it’s not just like, a bunch of things falling on his shoulders.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, I see. So it’s kind of giving him the toolset, but also the confidence because of that to grow.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, I mean, for a lot of people, the idea of bringing on employees is very concerning, right, because you’re going to commit yourself into paying someone, and you’re gonna pay them regularly. And you have to make sure that what they do is going to return more income. And so what a lot of people, you know, and they know, like, they’re gonna get requests about time off and for perks, and lots of questions, and how will that affect what they’re doing?
So fortunately, for me, I have the experience of running large teams, large and small teams. So I really look forward that to that myself. I’m like, just waiting for the days that I can hire more and more staff, because I know that that’ll bring so much more momentum. But for people who, you know, have never had a role in leadership of that volume before people who were a great salesperson who were granted woodworking and decided to start doing some woodworking and now they have started to expand and they’re getting more orders than they can fill in. They’re thinking, Okay, now I’m gonna have to hire someone to make chairs the way that I do. That’s a terrifying thought for so many people. And so being able to give that confidence that it’s not going to be that bad that they’re going to be able to have things organized from day one really does help people propel themselves.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, absolutely. No, I can, I can definitely see that. And I know a lot of startups that have certainly gone through a lot of those growing pains and businesses, not just technical businesses, businesses in all different sectors. I know the founders do take on too much they want to delegate but in some cases, they’re just you know, they don’t have confidence in delegating someone because they know that they can do it best. And they don’t know how to train people. And like you say the the thought of managing other people and being responsible for them as well just gives so many doubts and questions. Well, how do I even do that? Like you say, there’s the time off question. There’s so many things you have to consider that are just part and parcel of managing people.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s a, it’s a whole challenge. It’s a whole field, that I feel like so many people, unfortunately, are just not really trained up in. And one of the unfortunate things about the way that the world kind of deals with this code kind of people management subject is that I feel like had a lot more people understood fully what it means to own a business and have employees, they might have made different decisions before they got in or how they got in whether or not to have a partner, because it’s something that has been crippling for a lot of people. I mean, you see ads all the time for the business coaches that are talking about how CEOs are not able to take vacation, how they don’t spend enough time with their family.
And that’s kind of the opposite of what a lot of people go into business thinking they’re going to do, they think they’re going to have so much more free time, so much more flexibility, and instead of just kind of controlling their life. So it definitely doesn’t have to be that way. I mean, one of the things that is really important about key management is also customer success. So we always make sure that the people have not just someone to help them with the software, but someone that they can ask questions to about managing employees, you know, kind of not a business coach, but like, you know, able to have a terminal there who can help you kind of think through some of these problems, how to best set up the training, and these sort of things. Because yeah, I mean, people need help.
Matthew Todd
Absolutely. And I think it’s, it’s always interesting for me to look at SaaS platforms that have that element of service around them, as well, no matter if it’s kind of a very light touch, or in some cases, it’s more involved, but I think it shows a genuine commitment to the success of their customers and a deep understanding of their customers and the problems they can solve for them versus, oh, I’ve got a great idea for a tool. Let me create this and see if I can get some people to use it.
Austin Kerr
Exactly. Yeah, so that’s also been a an interesting challenge because a lot of startup companies, a lot of sasses kind of go off of this like, big kind of pivot like really based on like finding market fit, which is definitely a big factor. I wouldn’t say that that’s not important at all. For Humanagement, though, because I have such a certainty about the product, it’s been a little bit more about kind of figuring out how to market the product that I have tried to figure out, you know, which feature to put forward first, and kind of that for the product market fit as opposed to like, changing what I what tool I have, in general, because I do have the track record, I do know that this specific tool is something that people need.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, I think that’s massively interesting. I think that shows a real confidence driven by experience, in terms of, you know, as you say, you know, what the problems are going to be, you know, some of the things to have to solve them. So you’re not going to find some people that can hopefully tell you what the problem is, and then infer a solution from that you’ve already got confidence in knowing that. So yeah, it’s up to you then how you take that forward to deliver whew, management as a successful product and business. So I suppose my kind of question leading on from, from what you just said, that will be how have you approach generating new customers growing and marketing the platform.
Austin Kerr
So a lot of things still have been on the kind of word of mouth sense, obviously, because of the rap that I’m going it does mean a little bit of a slower start, but more momentum as it grows, and kind of educate the people to these types of solutions. One of the big things that I’ve done, you know, subtle pivot, at least for like, the marketing sense is a rich, like, there’s a lot of features a lot of things that it does. And so the feedback that I was getting, for a lot of people who went in, were kind of that they saw the solution, then they saw how much they needed it. But the barrier of integrating 19 different features into their staff at once was too much. And so I’ve had a lot of success by allowing people to turn on and off features, marketing, one specific feature, like, the main thing that I usually explain to people when trying to get them into the software is the knowledge base. So which is also for training. And it also works as an LMS.
So you can put your policies in there, you can assign those to different employee groups, when employees added there’ll be assign those policies are those courses automatically, it tracks on the policy level, who’s ready each one like at the stations, so instead of it being one whole course, which has many modules, and you may be need to know just one specific thing, or maybe one thing update, yeah, it handles updating and updating staff and getting them to acknowledge the new versions, all that stuff automatically, really, really well, I see. And that’s something that doesn’t take a lot of time to set up, you just add your employees, and then put a few articles in, and then the automation is there.
So doing that, and explaining that part has been a lot easier to get someone to come on board, and then just use that. Now all the other tools are there. And then I can do the job of continuing to educate them on those tools, as they’re using software because their employees already in and they didn’t have to confront the whole thing, they can roll out things one by one. So that’s accessible for people. And they, they, they like knowing that those features are there, because they know that it will grow with them, and that it will handle the problems they need. But it also allows them to just kind of, you know, start slow and start at their own pace, because the last thing a business executive needs is to try to integrate their whole company into a new software for the next two, three months. Like, that’s not going to say them.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, absolutely.You’re trying to make their lives easier. So you don’t want to go in and overwhelm them by your month’s worth of solid work in order to get the proposed benefits. You’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t you?
Austin Kerr
Yeah, exactly. So they can just take all their Word files that they’ve been ignoring, because they’re confusing, and they can just upload them in their other organizations there. And then right there, they’ve gotten value. Because yeah, I mean, from from a sales side to one of the really great things about my software is that it’s very sticky. Sticky is the term they use, meaning that like someone can’t leave super easily, because so much of their data ends up being in there and integrate so well into the processes, that stickiness is really vital for me as the product owner. But yeah, yeah, kind of trying to, like I’m saying merge that area where they’re not having to commit so far in the future, when they just start but able to integrate fully.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, yeah, that makes the most sense. I can see how carefully managing that onboarding process really does set them up for success and set you up for success with them as well as sounds like that has to be quite carefully and intelligently managed so that as you say, they do get that value. There is that stickiness, but it’s it’s done in a controlled way. That’s that’s easy for them to get on board with.
Austin Kerr
Exactly, yeah. So that’s probably most of what the attention units are on right now is just making that onboarding, making that first month, two months as easy and as comfortable as possible. And that’s kind of like the, what I mean, what I was saying earlier, the pivot is a little bit different in this software, because I know the features and everything are what’s needed. But then the, you know, I’m still listening to the market and still going, okay, well, what is those useful? What’s going to give you the most value? What’s you know, and I’m making those adjustments for that pivot, while not changing the whole product, just because I do, like you said, have that faith and that knowledge.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, and I think that’s something I think people should take away from this conversation is something that I think a lot of people can neglect, which is the importance of the quality of that onboarding process, a lot of people might say, oh, I’ve got this platform, it’s got all these great features, you know, 25, different features, whatever it might be, I’ve got good marketing, I’ve got a good sales team. And they’re like, oh, great, we’ve got a new customer, let’s celebrate and throw the platform at them. And maybe when asked them a little pop up when they first log in, or something that ask them some questions to get them started. But that’s very different from an onboarding process that’s designed quite specifically to give early value.
Austin Kerr
Exactly.
Matthew Todd
And how much of your time in marketing then is spent teaching them about platform features, versus teaching them about ways that they can solve the kind of people management problems that they’ve got, because imagine if you’re introducing people to new ways of working enabled by your platform, there’s got to be a balance of this is the platform and how it works versus this is actually how you should be setting up your teams for success when managing people in the first place.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, so definitely, more on the side of this is how you can successfully manage people. I’m almost at this point, as I’ve kind of, you know, continue to listen to the market, I basically ignored most of the features that the software does in marketing. Because, yeah, if I’m going to market something, I’m almost going to market it as only one simple tool. And then I’ll kind of, as after mentioned, say, it also does lots of other things, just because my main goal is it really on selling them on the whole concept, my main goal is providing a value that they can obtain right now. And so then like the kind of further education of features is more set up through the email follow ups or additional pop ups that will go a month or two later going, hey, you know, are you doing this or you know, an email from customer success? Kind of, once they get used to one feature, kind of delighting them?
Matthew Todd
I see. Yeah. So when someone is coming on board to Humanagement, or they’re interested or the right kind of customer and business to come on the platform, then how do you kind of identify how they typically presenting themselves, or their kind of common problems that they are describing that they might not realize are kind of indicators that they need the kind of help that you can offer?
Austin Kerr
Well, a lot of times right now, I mean, it’s more in my targeting than in their thing. I mean, when you’re doing a one on one onboarding, you’re kind of gonna ask a lot of questions, and then to make sure that you’re able to solve those, but a lot of the people that I’m working with our HR people, kind of like, the moment when someone could really use my software, and it’s more of a need versus a want is the moment when they’ve hired like their first HR person.
So a lot of lot of first HR people are at companies are usually not very experienced, you know, they’ve maybe held HR and a junior role, or just kind of used to the idea, or often there’ll be a family member or a friend of the owner, you know, trying to get a company that has, you know, 30, 40 employees, 20, 30, 40 employees. So, a lot of my kind of targeting has been to those people, because they’re looking at a lot of the problems that I’m solving, like, right now. They’re right now going, ooh, well, I mean, I guess maybe I could sign up with a bamboo. But that seems really robust. And I have all these Excel sheets everywhere that I just created, or I’m thinking about creating.
Austin Kerr
A good owner is going to be empowering their HR to find solutions that will work in the long term.
And so, you know, a good owner is going to be empowering their HR to find solutions that will work in the long term. And so when I can find someone who’s right at that exact moment, it’s a very, very easy sale, sometimes CEOs, but most, most of the time, I found that, you know, it’s kind of tying to HR and going well, it does all this stuff for the training and everything that bamboo HR does, it does that stuff too, but it also has these other features that your whole company will find useful.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, I see. I think that’s really interesting I always like to, when talking to funders always like to kind of see how they perceive the needs of their market and audience, I think it’s really good that you, you have those kind of clear indicators and signals and clear idea as to the types of people in the stage they’re at and, and where they are and what they’re trying to achieve. I think that’s definitely something that will certainly make any kind of sale process and the ability to add that value during onboarding so much easier for you, I imagine.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m a really big believer in surveys. So I’ve spent a lot of money on paid surveys, there’s some great sites like Usability Hub, or respondent.io, where you can get really great insights from people you’re paying, you know, there’s money you’re spending. But if you’re going to waste that money anyways, on some ads that, you know, as you’re trying to test things out and figure out, then it’s not really that big of an expense. But because you know that someone signing up for feedback, you can get a lot more insights. And it’s really, really valuable.
You can build products better that way you can build things better that way, as well as talking to the customers. I think that like, one of the instincts. I mean, I’ve had Antonio Hallett is that they will kind of decide that they know what someone wants, right? Yeah. And so I’ve done that a little bit, obviously, with the actual software itself. But even that is based on talking to a lot of people and verifying that this is a problem that’s common for all these people that they currently don’t really have a solution in mind for. But when it comes to the marketing and stuff like that, yeah, I mean, asking questions is always gonna be better than making a decision on the marketing side.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, I think that’s interesting. I don’t hear many people using paid surveys as a route to do that. That kind of research. I think that’s definitely, definitely interesting. And yeah, something I would I would be inclined to look at and encourage others to take a look at as well.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, absolutely.
Matthew Todd
Yeah. Interesting. So um, yeah, in terms of, of what’s next, and for Humanagement, how you, what was the kind of vision for where you want to get it to, or what how you, you’re looking to kind of grow over the next few, a few months or so.
Austin Kerr
So yeah, like I said, the biggest thing right now is just continuing to work on that onboarding processes, more help dots, more hints, you know, when you hover over something, it’ll tell you what it is more kind of customize flows based on different user permissions, you know, building so that an employee is getting completely different information than an owner in the company, and so forth. So, you know, better ways to kind of send and onboard new employees, so be able to send an email, and then they’ll kind of get asked all the questions that will fill out the information, fill out their, their preferences, and stuff like that. So that’s the main area integrations.
Overall, where I’m planning on taking the software is basically, because I have such a kind of built for you platform, that is able to make a lot of the decisions on how things are going to run, the main idea is to, in the future, bring up more AI stuff to be able to make more business predictions based on the data that’s in there. So once I have enough data, enough employees, I’ll be able to take that and then build out some really great models that we’ll be able to make actionable suggestions for companies. And I think that once I have the data and because I the way that have been set up, it’ll make an even bigger change into the software world.
Matthew Todd
And what kind of decisions do you see that being able to get involved in?
Austin Kerr
Well, so I’ll kind of explain that from another one of the features that a lot of people find useful, which is business metrics, right. So kind of similar to how someone might use a Power BI to build a dashboard, my stats thing is a lot simpler, because a very, very low barrier to entry, you can kind of just go in there. And it’s basically just a graph that’ll keep track of something. So you say, your, I don’t know, I get orders in every day. So I’m going to get some automation, or I’m going to manually put in and make a graph of that.
And so using all that in one area, you can then make additional calculations, you know, sales divided by his forecast will are by some is or are my supports scaling up with my income. And that sort of data gives you a more powerful indicator of how well you’re scaling your company. If you’re getting way more support quest than your income is increasing, then you know that you’re kind of facing a problem coming up. And so yeah, some people don’t do business like that, right. But yeah, you kind of hear it, you know, that would probably be smart, right? Your number of followers compared to your number of subscribers compared to your sponsorship, income, all those things matter. Those numbers all matter to together.
And so someone just using system now can very easily go in and find out how different employees are affecting different numbers in different metrics by comparison, and looking at graphs. In the future, it would be cool to integrate more statistics and numbers based upon use of the software. And then you could make suggestions like, oh, maybe Bob should be getting a raise, because he’s been producing more regularly at this level, or this, how much is affecting your total income, even if I was in a salesperson, maybe he’s a support person. But you know, software could, with enough kind of pre built knowledge, and maybe a little bit of answering some questions, be able to tell this poor person is really affecting your way that your income has been generated? And so if, hey, I could kind of do that, again, I’m not there now. But being able to do that with this sort of system, I think could be really powerful for people.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, I think that’s fascinating. I think a lot of people when they look at similar metrics to that could be looking at it from a finance and accounting perspective. Or they could be looking at it from like a projects based perspective. And I think it is certainly very rare in my experience to see anyone seeing that from a people perspective and a people management perspective. But yeah, I think maybe that is the perspective that many businesses are actually lacking.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, I mean, one of the problems that I have found so many businesses have, and it’s so it’s so saddening, because it really does create an issue is that people don’t know the value of their employee. Right? This is a primary question that if you ask, even people at large companies, what’s the value of this employee? How does this employee affect your income? They’re not really going to be able to tell you with any sort of certainty, right? With with a sales person, yeah, you kind of understand but form your HR person, how much is your HR person affect your income? Right?
And so, so many people, because some people don’t know that when that HR person says, Hey, I need a raise, I want an extra $5,000 a year. It kind of creates this concern in the pit of a manager or a owner stomach going, I think that makes sense. I have income coming in. Or maybe they don’t have income coming in. And they know that this person is valuable. And they’re going well, I mean, maybe if I give them more money, I’ll make more, maybe I can tell them to focus more on training the salespeople, and then that will create them.
But unfortunately, businesses are pretty complicated. There’s some parts that are simple, right, and especially when you run things around, I think that’s why so many people decide to run businesses just for themselves and not really expand past that one two mil Mark, is because in their head, it all made sense. They know what the valuable actions are, what to put attention on. If they’ve, especially if they made it past that first 100 or $200,000 mark, they’ve kind of figured this sort of stuff out there, it’s in their head, and they understand it.
And what a lot of business owners don’t do well, is when they start bringing employees, they don’t continue to have that same control the knowledge that they had over their own body and have that overhead for people. Because if you do that, you know that this job is five, right? So this job, making sure that the kitchen is stocked the right way is a vital activity that increases productivity by 5%. Right? That’s the sort of data that like, you would expect, like a Google to pay like some billion dollar analysts to come in and tell them the sort of data.
But if you kind of start just keeping some metrics, right, so I wouldn’t say like worry about that sort of data when you first start, because that sounds overwhelming, I probably overwhelmed anyone who’s listening. But if you start by just keeping track of a few simple things, right, so let’s say you, you start, like, for instance, on humanity net, you can sign up for and get six stats and a public knowledge base, that you can send you any bowl for free, that’s free forever, right? So you can just go and do that might suggest it. So if you go in there, and you just go, Okay, I want to keep track of a few things. So I can like, make sure I continue to think systematically as I’m scaling, right. So you should keep track of your gross income, you can integrate with like Stripe, or Paypal or whatever, so that it will keep track of that automatically. So you can get gross income, you should always keep track of your number of stuff. Right? You can just keep track of that weekly. And then you’re going to create a calculated stat where you’re going to divide your gross income by your number of staff. And that’s going to tell you right there, as you’re adding employees, are they adding to the bottom line, right to say $600 per employee, then you add a new employee within a month or two, it should still say 600 Because when you first add them, it’s going to drop to 500. And then you’re going to have that income increase, hopefully, because what they’re going to do is bring it in, and just that one piece of data that tells you at least at that small stage, how you’re Hiring is done. Are you hiring people correctly?
And that’s that’s, that’s almost automatically takes like no time. But just having that you’ll kind of start thinking, and then as you go new hire another employee, you’ll think, Oh, well, maybe I should also keep track of my expenses. Maybe I should integrate with QuickBooks and get that expense data, and then also do a calculation with that. And then now you can continue to think, oh, okay, I understand what, and they ask for a raise and go Well, yeah, I can see that because my income by staff is increasing. So yeah, it makes sense to give them a raise. Well, no, it doesn’t. Because it’s not increasing, I can actually bring that up as a powerful metric. And right there, that concern on bringing new employees has been lessened.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, I think that’s really, really interesting. And, yes, excellent advice for for anyone to take in this starting that hiring process, you know, certainly the startups stage and starting to scale is, yeah, start approaching it systematically start thinking about your business in that way. Because I think that that shows, as you say, whether the people you’re bringing into your business are adding value.
Austin Kerr
Yeah. Yeah. Another reason why it’s so important to keep track of a metric, I would say at least one metric per employee, right. So for instance, my sister who I help run her company a little bit, she’s a voice teacher, and she has quite a big voice practice. She has about 10, full time instructors, they do like 300 lessons a week. And so she has all of our instructors just keep a stat of their number of students. Right? This how many students have this week? This is how many students that the next week, very simple number, anyone can input that right. But so many businesses, wouldn’t have it.
So because she has that she can have a meeting with them. And if they ask for a raise or ask for something, she Okay, well, here’s your graph, I can see that it’s decreasing slightly, or it’s increasing slightly, or over on this week, you had this big spike, what was that? Maybe you can duplicate? Yeah. And right there, she’s kind of taking this pressure off of her when someone comes in, and they are demanding something or asking somebody to change, she can then go okay, well, let’s look at your graph. This shows actual data. Now we’re able to make data driven decisions. And now that process is easy and not stressful. And you know, you’re able to give instructions.
Matthew Todd
Yeah. And there’s reason for it as well. You can make informed decisions rather than Oh, does that sound about right? Or, not? Or is that risky? Or is that not risky?
Austin Kerr
Yeah, we’re another point. He goes, Oh, well, I find that I get got a $5 Raise, I should get a $5 Raise and go, Well, look, there graph has been doing like this. And your graph has been going like this.
Well, how can I get there? Right? Oh, simple. Get your graph going like this. Okay. And then they’re on their way. Right? Would that would have been a very, that’s a very negative experience. A lot of people that were there, they’ll get one good race to someone who’s a high performer, it’ll come out because you know, you can’t really keep that stuff separate, or a secret. And then you’re gonna get that question, and people are going to come to you now demanding the same treatment. Business owners run into that all the time. All the time.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, a very stressful situation for business owners. So yeah, definitely good to be able to have even just simple metrics, like you say, that contribute towards making that decision, but also communicating that decision when you have to as well.
Austin Kerr
Exactly.
Matthew Todd
Yeah, no. Interesting. I think, yeah, I want to be respectful of your time. And I think was, yeah, we’ve already discussed a lot of really interesting key points I think people should take away and I could probably talk for, for hours about I think it’s a really interesting subject. And I think what you show is a really interesting perspective that I think especially a lot of people in technical businesses as well will come from that project background or agile background, or whatever it is, that’s probably not lending itself towards thinking about how best to manage different kinds of employees within a business, especially as it scales and you start to have to get different people involved and different disciplines as well. So I think it’s been fascinating talking this through and yeah, I hope we do have a follow up conversation that we kind of see you know, a little bit further down the line, how the the platform has developed and the kind of customers you’re helping as well and how far you are towards that, that AI as well.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, absolutely. Sounds great, man.
Matthew Todd
Yeah. So thank you very much for taking the time I’ll make sure that we do put put links into Humanagement in the in the notes for the podcast for people that want to check it out for themselves as well. But thank you again for taking the time today. Really interesting conversation.
Austin Kerr
Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much.
Matthew Todd
Thank you for joining me on this episode of Inside the ScaleUp. Remember for the show notes and in depth resources from today’s guest. You can find these on the website insidethescaleup.com. You can also leave feedback on today’s episode, as well as suggest guests and companies you’d like to hear from. Thank you for listening.