Cross Pollinating w/ Lauren Goodell | Ep. 160

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast, David and Gary have a lively conversation with Lauren Goodell, Founder and CEO at Zinnia, your sales superpower.

LINKS:

https://www.getzinnia.ai/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-goodell/

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Gary: David, you're lucky. You always get to be the dumbest person in the room.

[00:00:02] David: That one's good. I can't even come back from that one. That was lovely. Thank you very much. That's true.

[00:00:10] David: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the buSiness podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host joined per usual by Gary Voigt. What's up, dude.

[00:00:19] Gary: Your voice always goes down when you say my name. Like it's,

[00:00:23] David: Every time I see your face, I'm a little more disappointed. So it just shows in

[00:00:27] Gary: Looking forward to the vacation then. 

[00:00:29] David: what's that? It's good. You're going on

[00:00:31] Gary: forward to the vacation. Yeah.

[00:00:32] David: More importantly, we are joined by Lauren Goodell, who is the co founder of Zinnia. Hello and welcome to this fabulously high produced podcast. 

[00:00:42] Lauren: Thank you so much for having me just didn't know if I was walking into a fight with mom and dad here, but it looks

[00:00:47] David: It's pretty close. It's more like dad

[00:00:49] Gary: it's more brotherly, but yeah, like he pretends to be the authority, but no.

[00:00:53] David: dad and grandpa. He's no, I'm not going to ask you to tell me which one's older. No, I'm definitely not doing that.

[00:01:02] Lauren: in North Carolina

[00:01:03] David: Oh yeah. It's so lovely. It's so lovely. All right. You are in Charlotte. Very cool. And you're, but your company's out of Atlanta. Is that right?

[00:01:10] Lauren: Yeah, we're remote. We are a remote first company. So I'm in North Carolina. My co founder is not Lena

[00:01:16] David: Is in where? Alabama? Is that what you said?

[00:01:18] Lauren: Atlanta,

[00:01:19] David: Atlanta. That's very different than Alabama. I was about to be very surprised that you have a tech co founder in Alabama. I'm sure they exist somewhere. I'm sure there's a tech hub somewhere in, in Alabama, but okay. Very cool. So how did I know I'm jumping way ahead here, but how do y'all get connected when you're so far apart?

Did you guys already know each other? Very

[00:01:39] Lauren: went through the Atlanta Ventures Studio. So what the Atlanta Ventures Studio is, if you're familiar with Calendly or Sales Loft or Terminus they help early stage entrepreneurs come up with an idea in a market they love and then they fund it. So we went through this kind of process and I was a solo founder at the time, went through a lot of discovery, talking to customers, launching first iterations of products.

And when I was ready to bring on a CTO he was an early engineer at both Calendly and Sales Loft. So they introduced me to him and said, Hey, you should chat. And he is a rock star. 

[00:02:10] David: cool. So I want to come back to the venture studio thing, but I want to, I think I first owe it to you to tell me what Xenia is because, that's why you're here.

[00:02:18] Lauren: Yes. So fun fact the Zinnia is the world's fastest growing and most resilient flower because the way that it cross pollinates. And so our platform is an AI co pilot built for account executives. And the whole idea is to grow faster and be more resilient by co cross pollinating, getting to know your prospects and your clients better and better serving them through personalized interactions. 

[00:02:41] David: So what does that mean? Practically account executive means salesperson, right? As a, just dumb it down for me here. Okay. 

[00:02:49] Lauren: Is a salesperson specifically that sells B2B. So selling typically, software services, professional services, whatever it may be to other businesses, where there's going to be lots of key stakeholders, tons of different decision makers, more complex deal cycles versus being somewhere where you just have a transaction on a website.

It's really more about that relationship building and helping them do their job really well. Yeah. 

[00:03:15] David: keeping it dumb here. Sales people going towards bigger clients. Cause I technically speaking, we are a B2B our company sells, but we don't deal with those sales people. Large amounts of people. Maybe one or two layers at most. So that wouldn't necessarily, appeal to, or we might not need that kind of sophistication.

So your target is if you're targeting not only B2B, but B two, big B, double B, B2B, B. Hey, that's fun. 

[00:03:40] Lauren: So just to break it down and be really clear we focus on anybody that sells larger ticket items larger ACV deals. So it doesn't necessarily, does not necessarily mean you have to sell to the Walmarts of the world or the Microsofts of the world, but as long as you're selling larger ticket items that are not transactional, that's really where it matters.

The more complex deal cycles, we can definitely help at a higher degree, but anybody that has those deals we add value to.

[00:04:06] David: Very cool. And you guys have been doing this for just under three years. I see. Is that

[00:04:11] Lauren: So we, we actually launched in a little over two years ago, two and a half years ago, but we were doing something actually wildly different. So we had the art of the pivot. We went through a massive pivot, learned from our first 50 customers and relaunched just a couple months ago in June.

[00:04:26] David: Okay. So you're fresh out of the oven. Very

[00:04:29] Lauren: yes.

[00:04:29] David: So were you related originally your idea or was it just a total like, Whoa, we're going somewhere else.

[00:04:37] Lauren: I will say that Zinnia 2. 0 was born out of our learnings from Zinnia 1. 0. So what we were actually doing was automating offsites, retreats, sales, kickoffs, any revenue driving events, and we were automating the sales process or the planning process for those things. Through our platform. And what we learned is it's really hard to automate the nuance of events.

And so I had a full events team that was planning these things. And while we were profitable, we were not scalable. And when you are a venture backed, it's very important to be scalable. But what happened was I would say, Oh, customer a, you're going to this happy hour and David and Gary are going to be there.

Here's a couple of fun facts about David and Gary. Here's some conversation starters, things you may have in common and give them an executive summary before they went and our clients were like, wait, these events are cool, but what I actually care about is going to have those pieces of data on all of our prospects.

So that's really where 2. 0 was born.

[00:05:32] David: Nice. Okay. I can see that. Yeah. When I was reading your bio, it was talking about events and stuff. So I was that makes more sense now. Okay. So you are four months. Five, almost six months old in 2. 0 land. And when did you connect with your co founder? Like you're the tech nerd. Was he, has he been the whole time or is he in the new version?

[00:05:54] Lauren: He joined in the new version. So we actually went through this pivot this time last year and decided this is the direction we were going. Paused. I interviewed a couple hundred different sales leaders to make sure that the direction we were going made sense was something people would pay for. And then he came on I would say February, March timeframe.

And then we spent a couple of months building together before we, we relaunched.

[00:06:15] David: So he is, so how did that get built? Is it him all alone? You have a team hiding somewhere.

[00:06:22] Lauren: He is a rock star. So he built almost everything with one other developer who is actually a developer from my first company. So he's also a rock star, also remote. And awesome.

[00:06:32] David: Very cool. So where are you guys? In terms of your finances, are you on a runway? Are you self you mentioned investors? So I'm assuming there's a runway here. Are you self profitable meaning you're making your own money. Where are you guys in that journey?

[00:06:48] Lauren: Yeah. So we did take VC funding. We raised a pre seed round of just around a million over a year and a half ago. And then we actually just took on a new investor, Hurst Media, which we're really excited about. They're awesome. About a month ago. So we are, we have. Over a year of runway left. And we are generating revenue right now.

Yeah, we're in a good spot,

[00:07:09] David: Very good. I'm always, every time I talk to somebody who is on a runway, I always, what does that, is that stressful? You've got a timeline to make this work. Now it's a year, so it's a good amount of time to, dabble and figure things out. But. I've never been on a runway, right? Well, I've told the story before when I started my company, my wife said, this is great.

Awesome. You can't lose any money though. Your salary has to be the exact same, no pressure at all. So maybe that was considered a runway, but but as a service business you make money immediately or you go away. So how is that stressful? How does that work as does the co founder and knowing this is it, this is it.

Where I'm at. 

[00:07:51] Lauren: I was always the person in undergrad who did my best work the night before a project was due. So I work really well under pressure. I feel like that's when my best work is done. But it also makes us have to make really good decisions and stay super lean and be very calculated with everything we do.

So there is no, there's no Oh, let's just give this a shot and see how it goes. Everything, every decision we make, every dollar we spend is very meticulously tracked and thought about, and, measure, measure twice, cut once, or whatever you say, we really focus on making the right decisions versus any decision.

Which I think is really healthy for a business, but I also came from sales where you, your clock starts over every single month or quarter or whenever your quota was. So in essence, I was always on a runway of I have a year to deliver my quota or I don't have a job. So it's really not that different.

I have a year to deliver my results. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to raise more or have enough revenue to keep us going.

[00:08:46] David: No pressure.

[00:08:48] Lauren: pressure.

[00:08:49] Gary: at least able to roll your clients from the first attempt into the second attempt and keep them on? So you

[00:08:56] Lauren: a great question.

[00:08:57] Gary: restart from.

[00:08:58] Lauren: Yeah. Encouraging over here. We have an air of positivity and sitting out, but actually some of their customers from 1. 0 did become 2. 0 customers. The decision maker profile was very different. We were focused more on sales enablement or HR or, executive assistants before.

Now we're really focused on CROs and VPs of sales. So it's a little bit of a different persona. That being said, we had tons of contracts and we were able to hand it over to my head of events who actually left to start her own events company. So we rolled all of our customers over and they're still super happy with her. 

[00:09:33] David: That's very cool. So I want to go back. I'm going to now rewind the tape. You mentioned you're part of a, or were part are a part of a venture studio in Atlanta, right? So we have interviewed. Two different founders of Venture Studios in the Raleigh area and it, their model I guess there were two models, but the main model I have heard is a Venture Studio often will take an idea.

And they have all the, usually they're a dev studio or something on their own, and they will say, I love that idea. How about I take 80 percent of it? I'm going to make it happen. And then you're going to help me sell this thing, but otherwise get out. That was what I've seen. Most ventures when they have the title venture studio, as opposed to VC, that is generally they're going to consume most of the business.

You get a cut of it. Cause you had a great idea and you might be involved somehow, but they're going to take their expertise. and make it happen. That does not sound like what you went through. So explain the difference there.

[00:10:38] Lauren: yeah. Atlanta ventures is definitely a different model than I would say any other studio I've met. They have produced multiple unicorns and so they're, they have their own kind of strategic expertise of what's worked in the market, what hasn't worked in the market, but they actually don't have a single development asset, in their team.

They don't have any developers. They don't have any people to do wireframes. It's really around saying, we trust you as a entrepreneur, as a founder. And they choose entrepreneurs before they even have an idea. So they said, Hey, Lauren, we love, we love your work ethic. We love your background.

Let's build something together. And actually our first couple of months was really just exploring ideas and markets. And, I brought some things to the table. They brought some things to the table. And then when I was ready to say, okay, I think, we've done enough discovery here. We've done enough user interviews.

Let's start this. They gave us our first 250K in funding, and then they did all of our back office. So instead of me having to go, get a Delaware C Corp and get a bank account and file all the legal things and set up HR and how to payroll and all of that, they did all of that on my behalf.

They set up our first website. They, set up with a bunch of different interviews for potential customers or feedback calls, things like that. So there were really more of just like the business units surrounding a company. But almost nothing on the development side. 

[00:12:00] David: That is an interesting one. And do they take more of a percentage when they give you money because they are providing those services? So it's like those guys giving you money, they're going to take us a percentage. These guys take more than that on average because of that?

[00:12:15] Lauren: Yeah, they would definitely take more than a traditional VC does because of the kind of model. And then. Being part of the family of the unicorn founders to learn from and potentially get investment from as well. So they take more, but not an 80 percent like you, you would

[00:12:30] David: Yeah. Not the big chunk. So what about salesy kind of help? So you build your idea. Are they helping you now get into doors? If you've got Calendly, then that means you got a lot of doors. I use Calendly, not that my door matters but there's a, that's a very successful company. So do they help you with that?

Hey, you'll use Calendly. Why don't you check out Zinnia? Is there a lot of that going on?

[00:12:52] Lauren: Yeah, we definitely have a good close knit founders group of, their portfolio founders where we can tap into the network. I can say just like I would with any other VC, right? Say, Hey, I really would like to meet with X person at X company. And if they're connected, they open the door, which again, if anybody is taking venture capital dollars, all of your investors should be doing that no matter if you're a studio or not. 

[00:13:14] David: Yeah, that's a part of VC. I don't hear about enough. Most people are just like, I got VC. That's a check, right? But that seems very short sighted. Now I'm thinking out loud. If you're writing checks for millions of dollars, right? You're a successful individual group, whatever you want to call that, which means, people, rich people, no rich people.

It's just how it works. And to not leverage that, and there's probably a blog post in there, Gary, but I'm just saying, it's it's interesting. Cause most people just think of it. Oh, they wrote me a check that thank you. Goodbye. But man, what a, what a. Let's use that more. There's a lot there.

That's a deep well, probably, especially in your case, obviously, but and your model is more conducive to that. Cause they're not just a check. They're a part of your business.

So how often do you have to meet with them and see them in person? 

[00:14:01] Lauren: Yeah. I actually meet with Atlanta ventures every single week. Every Monday we have a quick meeting touch point. I can say, here's the biggest problem I'm facing this week. Do you have any thoughts questions asks and, they can support through that. And most of my VCs, I actually do have pretty regular touch points with, just since we're so early and.

We also have creative co here in Charlotte, who is. Incredible. They're super willing to jump in and help give intros. Anytime review wireframes, give feedback. Like I've been very lucky with our investors that they've been pretty hands on and willing to help at any time.

[00:14:38] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:15:07] David: If Xenia had five years of blue skies, right? No major hurdles, no pandemics, no crazy. Where would you be? 

[00:15:19] Lauren: We'd be taking over the world to start with. But our ultimate goal, and I believe we can get there with her without the blue skies, but is to ultimately empower people to build better connections from the get go. But also make their lives a heck of a lot easier. So what I mean by that is, have you ever been on a podcast talking to somebody or at a dinner party where you're sitting next to them for the first hour and you're like, I have nothing in common with this person.

I was like pulling teeth. I have nothing to talk to them about. And like an hour into dinner, you find out you both are Lego enthusiasts and you both collect Lego models. I don't know. And all of a sudden you're like, you can't shut up about Legos. And you're like, this person is amazing. They're so much fun.

Like you're making plans to get together with them again. And all it took was just coming across the right point of conversation. And with Zinnia, what we do is we remove that barrier of that first hour of teeth pulling small talk. And we get you to that point of finding out you both are Lego enthusiasts and you can start there and build a relationship on things that you both are passionate about and love talking about, which is so important in sales is understanding what drives someone, what's important to them.

What do you have in common? So it just makes the whole process more fun for everybody and more enjoyable. When you say, what can we do, let's make sales enjoyable, but then also removing all of the manual menial tasks that account executives have to do in putting things into CRM, writing, follow up emails, answering questions like a lot of that stuff can be automated with what we're building.

So I guess the whole answer to the question is we're making sales fun. 

[00:16:45] David: So would you be in your mind? Are you a unicorn? Are you own your, you're taking, becoming a big part of Salesforce stuff, right? Obviously there are a whole different beast, but obviously you plug into Salesforce because everybody uses it. But where do you see yourself as a company in five years, assuming you could do everything you wanted?

Like how big is the vision? Oh,

[00:17:08] Lauren: definitely unicorn. We're going to get there for sure. But no, the whole thing for me is, I spent 10 years in corporate LG and Microsoft and Salesforce and all incredible companies with incredible culture is all wildly different. But my goal is to build a company that I love showing up to work every day that I'm challenged every day that I'm the dumbest person in the room so I can continue to learn from people.

And so if I can do that while building a giant company that's my dream.

[00:17:33] Gary: David, you're lucky. You always get to be the dumbest person in the room. 

[00:17:36] David: That one's good. I can't even come back from that one. That was lovely. Thank you very much. That's true. I've worked very hard to cultivate a company that's smarter than

[00:17:44] Lauren: you're humble about it, Gary, which is great. 

[00:17:45] David: He's not one of them anyway. So one thing I learned When I started my, so this is probably one of my bad questions. I learned when I started my company, it's been 12 years that I was very good at my job, but I was a crap tastically bad business person. How do you know you're a person who can lead a unicorn company? 

[00:18:06] Lauren: this is one of the things that I say all the time is that every founder I talked to has imposter syndrome. Nobody believes they're capable or that everyone's going to find out that they're a fraud. That's a really real feeling, but what I've learned, especially from the network, from Atlanta Ventures, these founders that have built these multi billion dollar companies, nobody knows what they're doing.

Nobody knows what they're doing. Everyone is faking it till they make it. And we're all just doing our best. And so if you ask, how do you know that you're the right person for this? It's I care and I try, and that's really like ultimately what it comes down to. So I care about my people, making sure that they're happy, that they're fulfilled, that they have all the support and the resources they need.

And I try my best to be a good leader. And I feel like that's all you can really ask. 

[00:18:52] David: I find that refreshing. 

[00:18:53] Lauren: I truly say that to my team all the time. As long as you're trying and you care about what you're doing, like that's all I can really ask. 

[00:19:00] David: At some point someone sucks, right? And you got to get rid of them. You can try all you want. Gary's right there. It's just, he's there is something to be said about that. Try all you want, but at some point, if you're not good enough, you can't do it. But were you going to say something, Gary, this all gets edited out the really bad transitions.

So it all gets edited.

[00:19:16] Gary: No, I was going to say that it's refreshing to hear a good human real answer for that question instead of that I've studied this and listened to him and watch

[00:19:25] David: Read this book.

[00:19:26] Gary: I know where I'm going. Yeah. 

[00:19:27] David: This is

[00:19:28] Lauren: I've read all

[00:19:28] Gary: point of everybody having imposter syndrome is for real. And that doesn't matter if you're running a business or not.

I think it's just across the board. 

[00:19:35] Lauren: I think that's that goes back to what David was saying though, with these videos of these young people that have very little real life experience sharing their knowledge or expertise, some of them, I'm like, I don't know where you learn that because I don't know that you've actually experienced it firsthand, but some of it, it's still good advice.

[00:19:53] David: still good advice. They read the

[00:19:54] Gary: They're just mimicking the other videos that were, that they found as good advice. Do you remember when, 

[00:19:59] Lauren: sorry, go ahead.

[00:20:00] Gary: Okay. Do you remember when like the 

[00:20:02] David: up, Gary.

[00:20:03] Lauren: okay, third time's the charm, but no, I'm like, if these people that, these kids right out of undergrad that have never had experience are out here, Like spitting wisdom and doing this, then like, why can't I do it? And so that's where that imposter syndrome should go away. It's people are out there just trying and they're doing it.

And so we all can fake it till we make it. It's a reality. 

[00:20:22] David: My new way of saying, if I see your video come up on my LinkedIn thing and you're telling me about how you've solved the marketing or advertising or whatever problem of the planet. And then I look at your profile and you have 200 followers. I'm like, dude, come on, man. Clearly you're brand new at this, which is fine.

You got to start somewhere. But I think. I do think that, what's his name? Alex Hermosi, who he's a young guy, but redonkulously successful. He comes at it from now when he was earlier on, he would start talking about what other people said, and rather than this is my experience, cause I don't have any yet.

So either I'm going to prove to you, I know how to do it because I'm going to give you something I did, or I'm going to talk about something someone else knows so that I don't look like the wannabe imposter guy. Which I, that's not bad. Again, you're 23. I don't expect you to be a Ninja. You're still squishy in the head, as I say, my kids are you're still learning.

Heck I started my company at 34 and was a complete moron. I'm 46 now and I'm only half a moron. It takes time, a lot of cooking, a lot of cooking.

[00:21:30] Lauren: look, okay.

[00:21:32] Gary: I'm keeping my mouth very tightly closed right

[00:21:35] David: of restraint there, Gary. I appreciate that very much. All right. Why don't you give us our question there, Mr. Gary. 

[00:21:41] Gary: All right. So through your experience with now two companies, what would you say are your top three pieces of advice for a new entrepreneur or a new business starting up? And

[00:21:53] Lauren: Yeah. I feel like there's so much advice that I've been given over the last five years, but ultimately it comes down to some of the things I've said before. One, no one knows what they're doing. You got to fake it till you make it and just try things out and some things that won't work, but just continue to push through and don't get imposter syndrome Two one of the things, one of our values, the company is having a learn it all mentality instead of a know it all mentality.

And so what that means is we're going to be wrong a lot. So never stop learning, whether that's, reading books or listening to podcasts about how to be a better leader, a better team mate or talking to your customers. We have visions in our head of what our products should look like, what our service should look like.

But unless you're learning from your customers, what they love and hate, Your business will not be successful. The last thing I'll say is we're all in this together. As startup world or, founding your own company, small business can be super lonely. And I have found that anytime I've asked another entrepreneur for advice, for help, they've been Always stepped in and an offered guidance or mentorship anytime I've needed.

And I've done the same in return and it comes around, comes back around. We're all here to help each other. So we're all in this together.

[00:23:08] David: Love it. 

[00:23:09] Gary: if anybody wants to learn more about Zinnia or yourself, where can they reach out and find you? 

[00:23:14] Lauren: Yes. Our website is get Zinnia dot AI and you can find me on LinkedIn at Lauren Goodell. 

[00:23:20] Gary: All right. We'll put those links in the show notes for everybody to 

[00:23:22] David: Thank you so much, Lauren, for joining us. This has been a lot of fun. 

[00:23:26] Lauren: It's been a blast. Thanks so much for having me. 

[00:23:28] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net.