Douglas Braun
eProductivity Software
Douglas Braun has been CEO five times over a 40-year career in enterprise software. At eProductivity Software (ePS), he leads 400 people across 100+ countries serving packaging manufacturers. His framework for identifying leaders who need coaching versus those who’ve hit their ceiling is simple: can you find shared vision? If not, free both of you to find the right fit elsewhere. What makes him different is how he builds trust to make that transition work—and how he keeps that trust alive when he’s not in the room.
When Doug arrives at a new company as CEO, his first task is to understand which senior leaders can evolve and which ones have hit a hard limit. He looks for one thing: can you find shared vision together? If two people are smart and well-intentioned but cannot align on direction, no amount of coaching fixes that. It’s not a failure of either person. It’s a mismatch between their mental model and the moment the company is in.
At ePS, Doug inherited a director of implementations who was extremely intelligent and had been with the company for 15 years. The director couldn’t see why implementations needed to shorten, why customers should see ROI in smaller bites, why risk should be mitigated differently. Not because he lacked ability. But because 15 years inside one operating system had become his ceiling for that role at that time. Doug and the director agreed to part ways. Two years later, Doug hired him again at a different company where his deep expertise and stability were exactly what was needed.
When you do the interaction with the senior person and you realize they just can’t move from where they are today, you have to free both of yourselves from that situation.
Douglas Braun, eProductivity Software
Every time Doug takes over a company, the organization is flooded with fear. Employees wonder if their jobs are safe. Customers wonder if the strategy is changing. The instinct is to announce everything immediately. Doug does the opposite. He makes a single promise: in 90 days, you’ll have clarity on the vision and the direction. Until then, keep doing what you’re doing.
He repeats the same message to every employee: “What you did yesterday, what you did today is what I want you to do tomorrow until somebody tells you to change.” That sentence is a tranquilizer. It stops people from panicking and jumping ship. Good people fly when uncertainty lingers. Ninety days is long enough to talk to employees, understand the business, and form a coherent strategy. It’s short enough that people can live in the fog. Doug has a 100% success rate hitting that 90-day mark with clarity.
If I give myself 90 days, it feels like people can live with me not knowing for sure what’s going to happen. Good people will tend to fly if the uncertainty goes longer.
Douglas Braun, eProductivity Software
Doug flew to Malton, a small town in northern England, to meet a director running a business unit at ePS. Something clicked. The director had leadership DNA—the kind you can feel in a conversation but can’t teach in a course. Doug told the outgoing CEO he was promoting this director to Chief Product Officer. The outgoing CEO’s first reaction was skepticism. An hour later, he came back and said Doug was right.
When they offered the role, the new CPO’s response was honest: “I’m super excited, but I have no idea what to do, Doug.” Doug’s reply was simple: “Relax. Come along, we’re going to show you.” That director is now a key leader for the company. Promotion works not because you hand someone a title and hope. It works because you make it clear that executives are not magic. They’re people with more experience who’ve seen five different solutions to the same problem. The new CPO brought fresh thinking because he wasn’t locked into 15 years of how things had always been done.
Doug promises every employee a 24-hour response to any question or email. He keeps that promise 98% of the time across 400 people in multiple time zones where Friday is the weekend in some countries and Monday morning in others. That’s not about speed. It’s about being seen.
When Doug visits the India office (which he does multiple times a year), he doesn’t sit in an office. He sits in a cube. He eats lunch in the lunchroom with the team. He calls people by their first name, not “Mr. Braun.” These small moves signal that hierarchy is theater. You’re all doing work together. When a younger employee gets nervous seeing the CEO, Doug notices and says, “Just relax. It’s just two people who work at the same company.”
Doug grew the India office from 60 people 18 months ago to 170 today. He visits in August and again for Diwali in October, bringing his own family to celebrate with employees’ families. That kind of presence builds culture faster than any memo. When the managing director of India (someone Doug has worked with for 25 years) runs the office the same way—servant leadership, freedom to fail, customer obsession—the culture scales with the headcount.
I spend 60-70% of my time on the road, and three-quarters of that time with our employees. Why? Because when I visit a customer, I never go alone. I always take an employee.
Douglas Braun, eProductivity Software
Every CEO is asked the same question now: when will AI cut your headcount by 20%? Doug’s answer is no. AI at ePS is a tool to do more, not cut people. When a support case comes in, an AI agent trained on all of ePS’s code can classify whether it’s a true bug in about 85% of cases. If it’s a bug, the system opens a ticket and routes it to development. If it’s not, a human handles it. That’s human in the loop: AI does the filtering, humans do the judgment.
The philosophy starts at the top. Doug’s Chief Architect, initially someone Doug wasn’t sure the company needed, has evolved into Chief Architect and Chief AI Officer. He’s pushed so hard on AI integration that Doug sometimes has to say “slow down.” When founders or VCs pushed him to use AI for cost cutting, Doug pushed back. The owners want a better company. Cost cutting is a side effect, not the goal. Doug offers every employee access to AI training and a dedicated AI person to help them learn. It’s a tool, like Excel or Slack. It’s not a replacement.
At most software companies, executives interact with customers during annual dinners or conferences. ePS is different. Every one of Doug’s nine executives owns a slice of the customer base. The CFO has customers. The Chief Legal Officer has customers. The Chief Customer Officer has them. The CRO has them. Doug himself has them. When a customer calls with a problem, an executive is responsible.
This forces executives to understand what the software actually does and what it doesn’t do. It forces them to hear feedback unfiltered. The Chief Legal Officer had never visited a customer before. After his first trip, he came back and said, “That was cool.” Doug explained: “Yeah, because you see us in action. You have a perspective different from mine. You might see something I’d miss and have a different solution.” That’s the point. It’s not customer service by executives. It’s customer perspective woven into every function. When every executive owns the top line, customer-first stops being a slogan.
You own those customers. You go visit them. Every executive owns the relationship for accounts.
Douglas Braun, eProductivity Software
A Fortune 500 CIO taught Doug one rule: acquisitions are either “slow and painful or fast and painful.” Pick fast. When ePS acquires a company, Doug ensures at least one of their executives gets a seat on his leadership team. It’s a signal: this is not a takeover. This is a merger.
When integration requires choosing people—because yes, there’s always duplication—Doug doesn’t just take the 28 people from the acquired company. In his last acquisition, he took 17 from the acquired company and 11 from his own. That ratio sends a message: we’re after the best talent that fits our culture, regardless of where they came from. The people who stay from the acquired company feel valued. The people who don’t feel fairly evaluated, not gutted. And the acquiring company’s team understands this isn’t a conquest.
The deal-making starts with a conversation about what the founder wants after the sale. Does he want to stay? Does he want to sail his boat for six months? There’s no wrong answer. But there has to be honesty. One founder told Doug on signing day: “For the next six months, don’t call me.” Doug didn’t. After the founder came back, Doug had lunch with him when traveling through his region. The founder had moved countries to be closer to family. He was mentally done with the business. That’s okay. The acquisition still worked because Doug had the founder’s trust from the start.
Doug has acquired multiple founder-led businesses. Founders are almost always exceptional at one thing: doing everything themselves. They’re the best salesman, the best customer advocate, the best marketer, the best operator. This works until it doesn’t. The wall usually hits around $10 million in revenue.
Below $10 million, Doug says a founder should be 85% tactical and 15% strategic. They’re in the weeds. They’re talking to customers every day. They’re closing deals. That’s where the energy comes from. But at $10 million and beyond, the founder has to flip: 70% strategic and 30% tactical. They have to stop doing and start directing. They have to trust people to run pieces of the business even if those people run them differently.
This transition kills some founders. They sell because the work has become more managerial and less entrepreneurial. Others make the shift and scale to 100 million. The ones who fail at this transition usually fail because they can’t let go. They hire a VP of Sales and then override every decision. That VP leaves. They hire another. Eventually, good people learn not to take the job.
Doug’s advice: respect the shift. When you hit that mark, you’re no longer a founder doing a business. You’re a CEO building a company. Different skills. Different energy. Learn to trust people. You won’t do it perfectly. Good. That’s how you learn. Other founders have made this shift too, and they’ve found that stepping back from day-to-day decisions unlocks growth.
You've been CEO five times. Oftentimes you're brought in to rock the boat and to take the company to the next level and you're inheriting a team. How do you tell the difference between someone who may need some new tools and some coaching versus someone who's hit the ceiling at that company?
What I'm really trying to understand from the senior staff is can we find common ground to work together? A leader who's an incredibly smart guy couldn't see that there were challenges to improve. And because he had worked at the company so long, he had become ingrained in how it operated. We couldn't get a shared vision. I've had people I've let go that I've rehired at different jobs.
You hire the best people and you get out of their way and you let them do things. When we promoted him he said I'm super excited but I have no idea what to do, Doug. So relax. Come along, we're going to show you.
How is that shaping how you're hiring today?
So it's a couple of things I would say.
This is Who We Hire, the podcast about how the best technology companies build their teams. I'm Louis Cent, your host and on today's show we're honored to be with Doug Braun, CEO of E2open software. Doug is a global supply chain executive who leads high-performing teams in developing software solutions that address customers' toughest supply chain problems. Doug is a five-time CEO and has done businesses all over the world from Saudi Arabia to Paris or Brazil. And we're really excited to have you on here, Doug. Thanks for being on Who We Hire.
Well, Louis, it's an honor to spend some time with you and share some stories and hopefully provide a little bit of nuggets to anybody who'd be interested in learning uh some of the things I've learned over my 40-year career in computer software.
Love it. Really excited to to dive in. So, you've been CEO five times. Oftentimes you're brought in to rock the boat and to take the company to the next level and you're inheriting a team. How do you tell the difference uh between someone who may need some new tools and some coaching versus someone who's hit the ceiling at that company. Maybe they're going to be way better off at another another company when you're inheriting this this new seat.
Yeah, I I mean, I can share a little bit of experience about taking over EPS and the former uh CEO retired and he left a strong company. He left a strong legacy behind him and you're correct, they're different every time you go into a company. And one of the things I try and do when I go into a company is there's a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt amongst the staff. What is he going to do and is my job secure and customers are wondering is he going to take the company in a different direction, whatever. And I quickly in the first couple of weeks, I make sure the message is very consistent, right? Whatever we're going after. We're We're looking to expand. We're looking to grow. We're looking to uh create a platform, whatever that is. And then we try and message that. The most important thing I do when I come in is I say in 90 days in 90 days, we'll have a good feel of what we're going to look like to go execute on our vision. And so then it's it's crazy fast. It's crazy fast. You talk to as many employees, as many customers as you can. And of course, I'm spending time with the executive team that's in place and we're having conversations and we're talking about strategies and we're talking about how do you do your job and what are the challenges in your job and how would the CEO help you, those kind of things. But the what I'm really trying to understand from the senior staff is can we find common ground to work together? So, we're not always going to agree with each other, but you have to be able to create that bond when you're working with somebody and there have been instances where people are grown up in a company and it's hard for them to actually see that something can be different. I'll give you an example. So, maybe what we want to do is one of the challenges I think we had as a company is our implementations were not as crisp as we would like them to have been. Historically, the company did a really good job. In some instances, took too long. In some instances, there were challenges, people challenges, product challenges, whatever. Um and the leader, who's a incredibly smart guy, couldn't see that there were challenges to improve. And because he had worked at the company so long, he had become ingrained in how it operated. And we said, "No, it's not really how things work, right?" And we had multiple conversations about, "Look, we should be trying to do this. We should be trying to shorten our implementations, increase the ROI to the customer. Maybe you don't try and, you know, eat the elephant all at once. You start slowly, you take a bite of the apple, you create ROI, then you come back and do the second bite, and so on." There are many ways to accomplish goals, to make sure that you're reducing risk and increasing value to customers. We couldn't get a shared vision. We couldn't get a shared vision. And so, we both agreed, you know, "Look, that's not going to work for either of us." And we did our proper transition, super good guy, and I would hire him at a different company cuz he's really smart and I know he could do it. He just couldn't do it here because he couldn't break free of the 15 years he had been here and be able to move as fast as I needed him to move. And so, that's an example where when you do the interaction with the senior person and you realize they just can't move from where they are today, they aren't going to be able to take the giant steps you need them to take, then you have to free both of yourselves from that situation. That's hard, but if you do it the right way, you know, you'll find your crossroads with that person sometime down the line. And it's happened to me. I've had people I've let go that I've rehired at different jobs um because it's the right setting.
And is it usually an urgency thing? You you mentioned they're not going to be able to adapt as fast as is that usually what it is is if you had a year, you'd be able to make it work, but you don't have a year, you have to make changes and you have to make them fast.
Yeah, exactly correct uh Luis. I think it's it's that. I I always feel like what you're trying to do is you're trying to get that vision out there. It has to be the right vision at the right time, but I give myself 90 days and it feels like if I give people people can live with me for 90 days not knowing for sure what's going to happen. And I One one of the things I say every time I take over the company is, "Look, what you did yesterday, what you did today is what I want you to do tomorrow until somebody tells you to change." So, if you hear things, please don't listen to them. What you did yesterday, what you're doing today is what I want you to do tomorrow. And I promise in 90 days we're going to tell you what that looks like. Um and I'm batting a 100, I'm getting that 90 days and getting that vision out. You could take longer, for sure, but the risk is you'll lose people you don't want to lose because good people will tend to fly and they'll there'll be opportunities for them and they'll go to other companies. And people generally just don't like uncertainty. And so, what I'm trying to do is quickly wrap up that certainty. It's the same for customers, too. Customers can't just throw out software and leave in 90 days, but you want to be sure that customers have the same vision, right? That and you're like, like just bear with me 90 days, we're going to get this done and I'll show you where we're going to go." And we've done that rather successfully and sometimes I bring in team members with me that I've worked with before. Sometimes I promote from within. At EPS, I promoted two people from inside the company into roles, senior staff roles, and that's worked really well. Um and it's just by talking to people, by spending time with people, by making sure people understand you're just like they are, you're just human. And don't get caught up in the CEO title. Talk to the person and let's figure out how I'm supposed to make your job easier because that's my job. I work for everybody who's in my company.
I love it. Yeah, I think I saw it was a a director of product that that may have been been promoted. I don't know if you got it on your your billing office, but you did mention that the CEO had left you a great company and a great legacy. That that's got to be exciting to be able to come in and promote some fantastic people into into executive roles.
It's um it's incredibly rewarding. So, our chief product officer, he's based in the UK. And they had several interactions with him. He was running a small business unit. So, to learn the business, I I flew to the UK, a small town called Malton in north of the UK. And I spent time with him. And then I I left and I've been doing this for 40 years and I said, "That guy has something." And so, you say, "Look, you hire the best people and you get out of their way and you let them do things." And it took me about 4 weeks and I had a 2-month transition with the former CEO and I said to him, "Hey, I'm going to promote that guy." And his first reaction was, "Ooh." And then he came back like an hour later and he said, "You know what, Doug? You're right. That guy will do a great job for you." And so, then we went to him and said, "Hey, we're going to And when we promoted him, he said, "I'm super excited, but I have no idea what to do, Doug." It's all relaxed. Come along, we're going to show you. And so you get nervous, right? You're in the first executive leadership meeting and you think like there's some magic happening. But we're all just people, right? We're We have more experiences than staff people do because we've been around longer and we see things so we say well I have five different experiences that know how to address that. And he's folded into the team really well and he's become a key leader for our company. Yeah, great promotion.
That's incredible. Um you had a beautiful LinkedIn that I read from a direct report saying that you had this unique ability to get people on board with ideas even when they're not initially on on the same page. Uh is that one of your superpowers? How do you do that? It Like you're coming in, you have the old CEO's mission, now you have this new mission, but you're still learn you know, learning the people. Um what how?
I think it it starts with making sure people understand that you really care, right? And so we talk about being a customer first company and we talk about it has to be in your DNA, right? I can't make you be a customer first person. But when you're a customer first person and you have the responsibility for the customer, then you can do things you never thought you could do. And the company will always back you cuz we're trying to do the right things for the customer. That's one is we give people the freedom to do their jobs and do them well. The second is we give people the encouragement to make mistakes. So look, everybody makes mistakes. I make mistakes every day, every day. And I said, all we want to do is we want to be sure we learn from those mistakes. If it's a mistake you make personally, then try and learn from it so you don't repeat it. And if it's a mistake we do in a project or you do in a conversation, then we want to help share that with other people and say, I made this mistake. Here's how I would do it differently in the future. It's a great way to get better. And we talk to customers about we're on a journey to perfection, but unfortunately, we're never going to make it. But it's a great goal. And so we work towards that. The third thing is I promise every employee 24-hour response. Doesn't matter what day of the week it is. We have people who work in countries where, you know, weekends are Fridays and Saturdays. And we have people work in Asia who are literally a day ahead of us. And I say to all employees, and I'm I would say I'm I'm 98% good at the 24 hours. And so when somebody sends me an email or we use Teams um for our social channel, I respond. And I respond in a way that makes that person I hope feel valued. Sometimes the answer is no. And sometimes when the answer is no, I try and take more time and explain why it's no. And I'll always speak to somebody live through this electronic means or in person if I can about the query. We do company meetings as an example, and we say to people, you can interrupt me when I'm talking. We don't lock people out on mute and say, now, we're smaller than most. We're 400 people. But we don't lock down a company call and say you can't talk. And if somebody if there's too much noise in the background, we say, hey, can everybody check mute just to be sure you're on mute. But we say, look, if you have a question, interrupt me cuz I'm doing the meeting for you. And so I want you to be able to ask me questions. And if you're nervous or concerned, we have an anonymous channel that's monitored by HR. And then HR will ask the question for you in the meeting. And we won't know who asked the question. We do not. And they'll make sure the answer's preserved. And then we at the end of the meeting, we type up all the questions and answered. And so it's there for people to use in the future. So, it really comes down to me working for people here, right? So, my job is to make their jobs easier. They're the ones doing the hard work, and so I I feel like that's my job. I spend 60-70% of my time on the road, and 3/4 of that time with our employees.
Why?
I go to a customer, I never go alone. I always take an employee, take a project manager, take a project director, take a services person, take a support person. We encourage people to go visit customers. Now, our India team is going to visit customers, our support people who never get out, um cuz our customer our chief customer officer, really smart lady, and she sends her support team out to go lives and say, "Go help with go lives." So, we're we're all about winning as a team.
That's phenomenal. So, it sounds like you're really just creating a an environment of trust and transparency, and leading by example on on these things to give people a to buy into your vision and mission.
Yeah, I think I embrace the majority of what I embrace and I I use different leadership styles depending on where I am and what's happening. But, for the company as a whole, I try to embrace that servant leadership style, right? Where I want to be sure that you're successful. I listen to concerns. I provide, you know, solid answers. Again, even if the answer is no, I'm giving you the logic and the reason for it. And, you know, with my executive team, my leadership style sometimes is directed and more often is collaborative. We leave all of our titles out of the room when we have a conversation. Um we get together twice a year as a team in person, and we say titles are outside the room, and we're just having conversations about where we want to go. One of the things we we brought in a new HR leader in January, and she started an employee committee that actually was um initially brought to the table by the UK HR leader. And she was like, "Hey, we should do this." And I'm like, "That's a fantastic idea." And so the new HR leader and um, both our ladies got together and now we have an employee committee. We're constantly trying to make things better, right? You should never be satisfied with status quo, constantly be on that journey to perfection, even though you'll never get there.
I love it. So you you've been running teams all over the world before EPS, you ran teams in Sweden and France, Manchester. It sounds like you're traveling a lot in into the UK now. You mentioned your India team and before we started recording, you were talking about your Rio and and and São Paulo offices. What did working across these different cultures teach you about how a distributed team performs, how these different cultures um, add to your team and like what are some nuances that you had to learn along the way in in dealing with these different cultures in international global teams?
Yeah, so culture is so important, right? And understanding how people work and environments they work. See, you don't people will do this broad stroke. And they'll say, "Well, this is how it works in America and this is how it works in Europe."
Yeah.
But Europe is a continent. Europe isn't made up by you know, one thing. You know, that
is very different than Italy even though they're next to each other.
Exactly correct. Exactly correct. And so how do they work, right? And so you have to learn that. I've had the privilege of working with really smart people in my day have taught me a lot of things. But I've also lived overseas a number of times. And so when I ran a company in Sweden, I lived in Stockholm for three and a half years. Um, so one of my first days at the company, a young gentleman said to me, "You know, you you won't last." I said,
He said that to you?
Yeah. He said, "I'll wait you out." And the history was the company turned over CEOs. I think I was I I probably have it wrong, but I think I was the fifth CEO in 10 years. And so they Yeah, it was just rotated. And I said, "Okay, look, well, fair fair challenge." I said, "I'm living here. My family's in Wisconsin. I'm committed, right? I'm committed to us as a team and making us successful." And it was a a challenging job. We had a lot of smart people, a lot of smart people um helping us, but a completely different culture, right? There are so a workers council in Sweden, um how you approach things, things like summer where the sun shines literally 22 hours a day versus winter where the sun shines 3 hours a day. And you you have different things that you have to adjust to, right? And And you learn some of that while you're doing it. And if you build those trust bonds that you referred to before, which I think is a great word, with employees, they'll teach you they'll feel comfortable coming to you and saying, "Hey Doug, I don't think you know this." And if you're really receptive and open to that, you'll gather that information, um and you'll learn valuable lessons. And somehow they connect in your brain and you pick them up whenever you need them. And so living overseas a number of times, uh France, uh Belgium, Stockholm, has really helped me in terms of learning different cultures. I've probably been to India 100 times.
Wow.
And it's changed over the 25 years I've been traveling to India. And when some of my first times there, India tends to be a little bit more hierarchical in terms of organizational structure.
Wow.
Uh but now one of the things we go through and have a really good managing director in India, we try and tell people, "Look, you can do what you want, right? We If you see something that's broken, please go fix it. Right?
And is that work in that egalitarian way, like moving away from hierarchies? Do you really need to push for it, or can you say it once and it's you know, they have free reign now?
Yeah, no. You You have to constantly reinforce the message.
Leadership of repetition, huh?
Yeah. See, well said. And it we we also bring in young people. They call them freshers in India. So, we hire interns out of school. The last class we had, we hired I think we hired 12 of the 13 that we had as interns. Um which is great for us, and they learn our culture. But they'll always be a little hesitant. And they'll when I visit the office, they'll say, "Oh, Mr. Brown." I said, "No, my name is Doug. We're just working together, right?" Yeah. And I By the way, one of the things that's It's just a little thing, but I sit with those people in the cubes. So, I'm not sitting in an office, I'm sitting in a cube. And when they go to lunch, which is very common to provide lunch um in India, I go to lunch room and eat with them. And so, those things are really important um because you become one of them, right? And they see you as I always see you.
when you're doing that?
Oh my gosh, yeah. Um So, one of the things that you can you know what you have enough experience. This is what you do for a living. But you'll tell when people are nervous. I'm sure when you're doing your podcast, and you're able to set people at ease. You can see it when I'll sit down next to somebody and they'll be like that. Instant. You're like, "Just relax. Just here. Just a conversation. Yeah. Just two people who work at the same company. It's so rewarding. It's so rewarding. I'm headed to India at the end of this month to We're opening a new office cuz we've expanded. We moved from 60 people a year and a half ago to about 170 people now.
Wow.
And uh it's so Thanks. Credit the credits to our teams.
Yeah.
But it's so rewarding to spend time with them. So I'll go in August and then I'll go for the Diwali celebration in October. It's one of my favorite times of the year. Is to go celebrate their festival of lights with the team. Parents come, grandparents come, young kids come. It's just unbelievably good. And it's good morale for everybody, too.
Yeah, it sounds like a a fun time and also you're you're going to be able to build the team in in in person there and then that's exciting that you're building a new office and that is a crazy growth. How do you like with that growth, how do you keep the values aligned, the culture aligned when you're bringing in so many new people that are also creating a new new culture as as you're bringing them in?
I'm fortunate to bring oftentimes I'll bring one, two, three people with me that I've worked with before. It's no different here at EPS. The managing director of India is somebody I've worked with now for 25 years. So the answer to your question is I get out of his way. Just get out of his way and I let him run. It's it's actually I think a bit more challenging for him to educate the rest of the senior leadership team than it is for him to bring the right culture to the India office. Because he operates very similar to how I operate, to how a number of our leaders operate, which is you know, we work for those people and our job is to make their job easier. And he it's just part of his DNA and so he does it so very very well. And then he has to educate our senior team, this is how you do things, this is why you do things a certain way and so on. Um so he's there every day, he's loving and hugging people. He's helping people, he's encouraging people to make mistakes. Don't be afraid. Everybody makes mistakes. Let's just work together. Let's overcome. Let's move forward.
So, you know, you've been in technology 40 years, multiple industries and companies. What I presume this is the first time like AI has really taken a a headline in in in the company. You're hiring. You've grown 3x in in over the last uh 2 years. And then you're hiring while AI is changing like what good looks like. Uh a lot of CEOs I talk to, you know, somewhere in the 2027 plan or even now, AI is doing the job instead of a person and then somebody using AI is orchestrating it. Um, what what How is that shaping how you're hiring today?
Yeah, so so it's a couple of things. I would say it's it's kind of bifurcated into, you know, everybody is doing product developments and you're hiring vibe coders, whatever your particular parlance is for whatever type of AI code you have. And then it's kind of the rest of the business. Really fortunate to have a very smart chief architect when I joined the business, who quite candidly I I when I took over the business, I was unsure I needed a chief architect. And as AI became more and more prevalent and a little bit less mysterious, he embraced AI. And now he's our chief architect and our chief AI officer. Um, and the best thing in my life is I I sometimes I have to hold them back a little and say, "Slow down." And so what we've agreed as a company is there's always human in the loop. So, AI can help us with things and make us much more efficient. AI can, for example, tell us very quickly if a support case comes in whether it's a true bug. So, we spent and trained AI agents through the AI team. We trained AI agents all of our code. And so now when a call comes in, we can quickly ascertain whether it's a bug or not. It's about what I I don't know, 85% accurate. And if it identifies it as a bug, it opens a ticket for our development team and assigns it and they start working. That is incredibly fast for our customers. Our support team don't have to spend time trying to understand it. It's already done for them. So for us, AI has helped us to our customers and a better I sorry, a better partner to our customers and it allows us to spend more time with customers. AI is not a tool where we think about how do I get rid of people and I know that's the common kind of an ocular of AI, but we're thinking about how can I do more with AI. Um our owners um are really encouraging us to use AI effectively. It's not something where you say go use AI and cut 20% of your staff. It's go use AI and be a better company. And so I think it starts from the stop and then because nobody really knows, in my opinion, everything that AI can possibly do and how to do it effectively, we have offered for people to go learn and anybody who wants to try it, we have AI people in the company who will help you. You can call one of the AI people and um we'll try and help people with AI and how they use it. Um so for us, it's a tool. It's an important tool. We see that as an important tool in the business. Um but my AI officer coined the phrase human in the loop. Probably somebody else before him did it, but it's something we always talk about to the staff and say it's really about being a better partner to our customers. It's not about cost savings. It's about being more effective in what we do.
Yeah, and AI is not going to get on a plane and go shake a customer's hand uh to to your point earlier.
Amen. And and that that's a big thing, right? Because we you know, I have grown kids. We chatted a little bit about that. And you know, going to meet somebody isn't as common as it was when we were young, right? And we you were like you were on the road. You went and met people and you shook hands and you spent time with them and you had coffee and lunch together. Um it's you know, our chief customer officer myself, our CRO, they're all out in the field. My chief my CIO, they all go meet with customers. Indeed at our company, every executive owns the relationship for accounts. With almost a thousand customers, there's no way for me to go visit a thousand customers. So, we've divided it up amongst the nine of us. And we say, "You own those customers. You go visit them." So, the CFO has customers they're responsible for. My chief legal officer has customers they're responsible for. And for those guys, it's brand new. They say, "Yeah."
I I thought I was thinking. I was like, "I've never heard of this. I've never heard of executives having It's a account manager, but but you're coming in and you're saying, 'No, we own this top line.' Even though if they might have a team and support and and the product folks and implementation, you're saying, 'No, you as the executive own these 200 customers.'"
100%. So, our chief as a small story, I'll embarrass him if he watches this, is he went and did his first customer and he visited a customer on the East Coast. And he came back from that and he said, "It was really cool." And I said, "Yeah, man. That's exactly it cuz you see us in action, right? So, you have a perspective that's different than mine. And you might see something completely different and have a different solution for the problem. And that's why you own customers."
I love it. I love it. I heard you you say uh in another podcast where like you're great at building the software, but your customers are the ones that are great at using it. So, it makes so much sense to do this. It's It's such solid advice. Would you recommend every CEO go and do this and say, "Look, every executive on your team needs so and that customer relationship. Go get on a plane, visit your customer. It's the most valuable thing you can do."
Yeah, what I would say is I would say it works for us and it's worked for me at other companies. Um and and I think there's no harm in trying it is what I would say. Um and you know what I what I would say is you'd have to talk to my my leadership team, but I think for them it gives them a different view of the business, right? And so, when the chief legal officer went out to visit a customer, I mean, he got a full flavor, right? Good, bad, indifferent, whatever the meeting was. And you walk the floor and you say, "Would you mind giving me a tour?" And then he sees our software in action. And when you do a tour, one of the key things I always say to my my team is, "Don't just do the tour. Stop and talk to people. Say, 'Hey, I work at EPS. How's the software working?' And I always say, 'Be candid. Tell me tell me what's good, tell me what's bad, tell me the one thing you would do differently if you were in
Wow.
Yeah. And I think that's that really
Your competitors aren't doing that.
Yeah. And if You know, it's it goes back to when we first started and I said we're a customer first company. We make mistakes. Of course, we do. That's That's life. If If you hear somebody say, you know, they're a great software company, I I'm not sure what that means, right? Every day we have this desire to be perfect, but we're not. And what I say to customers customers do references for us. We're blessed to have good customers. But I say, "Tell them the truth. Tell them you had problems. Just tell them we stood beside you, right? Give them that." Because everybody's going to have a problem. If you tell a If you tell a prospect, "Oh, it's going to be great. Sunshines and roses, unicorns. It's going to be great. But, it's not really true. There's ups and downs in every project, no matter how good of a company you are. And I want to be sure people understand we're business partners, and our focus is on you as a customer and getting the return off of our software. And we do that because we treat our people really well, and they all embrace it.
Were were there ever a time um maybe not EPS, but even before where it was like pulling teeth to go get somebody who's never visited a customer to go and and do that cuz it was really really hard for them. And is that an ultimatum? It's like, "Hey, if you want to be in this exact team, this is this is a prerequisite. This is this is non one of my non-negotiables."
Um I have had executives who don't enjoy um you know, going to do the visit. I
Yeah.
I wouldn't say it's a non-negotiable for me, right? But, I I'd work with the executive to say, "It's a holistic view, right?"
Mhm.
Um For example, we have user conferences every year, like most software companies, and we invite all our executives to come. And talk to customers and enjoy them. Again, you own customers, so you should come and spend time with them, eat breakfast with them, eat lunch with them. I don't want you tucked off by yourself. I want you interacting with customers. Yeah, I mean I mean it's a fair question, and I'm I'm being a little cagey, but what I would say is if I had an executive who didn't want to interact with customers, I would say, "That's I would have to work really hard with that person to change that style because it's not a style that I would suggest works because then his team is the same way or her team is the same way, right? Because then leaders wrap their teams, and that's not the kind of company we want to be. So, if we're going to be successful, I need accounting to be customer first. I need HR to be customer first. I need, you know, uh to be customer first. Uh because if you're not, then you don't expose the right view that we're trying to expose as a as a group. Um so if I had a leader who did it, is it a non-negotiable? I'm going to say no, but I'm going to talk out the other side of my face and say, "But it's something I'd work really hard with that leader to say we should do it." I might go with him or her the first two or three times and say, "It's okay. It's okay. Here we go." Yeah.
Don't be nervous.
Yeah, exactly, right? Yeah.
So, you know, across the five companies you've been CEO at, what what's something that you build into every hire even when you leave so that that it survives when you're on, you know, when you're solving your next big problem, uh you can say, "Hey, I instilled this in this company." Um is it this customer focus or does that, like when you leave, do you see that also um move away with you and only works while you're there?
I'm sure it happens, right? And so I've run companies that are large, a couple of thousand, 3,000 people, and companies that are small, 100 people. I think what's important is that you're kind of creating that DNA. So somebody will ask me, just actually happened earlier this week, one of the account managers sent me, he was struggling with a customer. So they got this email, here's how I want to respond. And I said, "You know what? Your response Your response is spot on. I wouldn't change a word, but I wouldn't send the email. I would call him."
I would call him and I would have the conversation. Cuz you can tell that they're not happy. And so call him and say, "Hey, I own that. And you know, we we don't want you to feel like this. And so how do we work together to overcome? Give me the three problems that you have and I'm going to go try and help fix those for you. Again, sometimes the answer can be no to a customer, too, right? But, I think when you teach people to fish, as they say, I think it becomes part of them. You can't change everybody. I'm as you said, I've been around for 40 years, which is still a long time, and I I understand that there are people who work in our company who are collecting a paycheck, because that's what they want. And by the way, that's okay. If you do your job and you do your job well and just want the paycheck, it's fine. What we try and do is we try and find what do people want, right? Where people do annual reviews and stuff. That's We do reviews on a regular basis by talking to people. We get managers to talk to people. We get create some goals. I create goals for my executive team. Talk about what do you want to accomplish and how do I help in that, right? You want to accomplish you, I'll make something up. You want to get your MBA? I'm going to help you do that. I'm going to encourage you to find a school. We're going to set a date. Next February, you got to have a school. Next March, you got to be enrolled. Got to get your books. Got to get classes. And we're going to set up monthly calls so we can talk about how you're doing in it. I think that's what you have to do. You have to own that person's success. Um and I think when you do that, people absorb that. And then they become people who teach other people. That's part of being a servant leader, right? If you do it well, then the people that you're mentoring and coaching will mentor and coach other people, and it just continues down that line, right? So, it's there's no way for me to touch 400 people and make that influence. I can meet all of them, for sure, but I don't have enough time to spend with each of them. So, I have to make sure my executive team and their leaders and their leader leaders all understand that. And we're probably 85 to 90% good at that. But yeah, there'll be people who don't and who don't want to. And that's okay. And then we say, "It's okay. You can be here and we'll love you and when you're ready, if you want to make a change and you want to grow a career and not just a job, we're here." And if you want a job and you do it really well, we're also here for you.
Love that. Love that perspective. You So So I listened to another podcast that that you're on. Uh it seems like you're everywhere, Doug. Uh you do something interesting that I hadn't heard of before. I've been in M&A, you've acquired many companies, and you said that you give a seat to every executive from the company that you acquired and you put them in the leadership team. You give them a seat on your leadership team. Like, who who taught you that or, you know, did you learn that the hard way through acquisitions?
Yeah, so just uh clarify. So we acquire a company and at least one of their executives has to come over, right? So one of them gets a spot on our team. Um I learned that a long time ago from a really smart customer actually who said to me, "Doug, there's two ways to do acquisitions, slow and painful or fast and painful." And he said, "Do it fast and painful and make sure that you embrace the company you acquire as equals." And he was the CIO of a multi-billion dollar company. And they're buying $25 million companies. And he's saying, "Okay, maybe they don't get a seat at the executive table, but they get a seat at the senior leadership table." And he says, "You have to talk to those and you have to make them feel like they're part of the team." And so he taught me a lot, and then the other thing I learned is there's always duplication of efforts. That's unfortunately part of the good and bad of M&A. So you'll have two CEOs, you'll have two sets of accounting departments, you'll have two HR departments, and you have to figure out how to make that fit. And sometimes people will be victims of that process, right? You have to treat them the right way and make sure that they're um feel they understand the process and you know, you're giving them an opportunity to be successful someplace else. Um but I never take from one company or the other. Um so my last acquisition we had, I think it was 28 people company before this. And we took I don't remember exactly number. We took 17 out of the company we acquired and we took 11 out of the company, our own company. And I think it's a strong message. Besides putting somebody on the leadership team, it's a strong message to say, "Look, we're just going after the best talent." Right? That fits our cultural model. And if I just took 28 people out of the company I acquired the rest of the people who work in that company are going to feel like that's all I did, right? Is I just got rid of their friends. And you know, that's not what we want. We want to say, "Look, this is this is a combination of equals and the goal here is one and one is three." And that's why that's why we're combining together. Um now that isn't always true in M&A. Sometimes a company you buy a company that's struggling badly and you're buying what they call a customer list. And then your approach is different. But where it's possible, I want to make sure it's a merger of equals. Forget about the size, the revenue size, the people, all of that. If you treat it as a merger of equals, I promise what will happen is you'll have more success with that acquisition than if you treat it as somebody you acquired.
That's fantastic advice. It's uh yeah, cuz there's so many acquisitions that go wrong and if they embrace it like that, I don't I don't think many will, right? If they're if they're the billion-dollar company acquiring a $25 million company but if they change that mindset, it's going to make that acquisition so much more successful. I love it. So, for a founder, you know, as we're wrapping up here, for a founder who's building their team right now and they're looking to grow from 50 to 150, what's one piece of advice that that you can leave them with on this journey?
Yes, I've I've acquired a number of founder businesses. I think one of the one of the the good things and it also happens to be a flaw of a founder is they try and do everything. And so, you'll find founders who are the best sales guy, they're the best customer guy, they'll be directing marketing strategy. You're like, that just isn't going to work long-term. You can't scale. You simply cannot scale by doing that. And so, you have to learn how to scale properly. I think that's the first thing is a founder has to be Founders who are successful are people who push other people forward and say, "It's okay. Go do that." And it maybe it's not the same as I would do it, but so what? There's many journeys to success. So, go do it and try it and figure it out. I think that's probably one of the most important things and then we all know businesses fail for lack of cash, right? It's one of the key reasons businesses fail. Not because of desire, not because of hard work, not because the market isn't good, not because the product isn't good, but you end up running out of cash. And so, one of the things you know, I would recommend to founders is you remember that cash is king as they say, right? So, you save for a rainy day just like people should do. Should people fund their own retirements? And that gives you a comfort and you know, we always say the best laid plans you never have to use because you plan for the worst, then you go after the best. So, that would be my small advice. I've never been a founder. I have great respect for founders who start businesses and go off and do stuff. I think it's really hard. It's really hard. You're putting yourself on the line. You start your business day one and it's you. Um and then you grow and you have to learn to trust people and you have to learn how to do things differently and customers you you might chase the biggest customer or the second biggest customer and do things. Once you hit that kind of $10 million mark, you're a real company. You're a real company. You've you're not just a founder anymore. You're a company. That's the other mindset you have to switch over is founders have to understand you hit a certain level and you have to be able to have those people work for you and you move from when you're first excuse me, when you first found a business, you're 85% tactical and 15% strategic. When you hit whatever mark it is for you, 5 million, 10 million, 15 million, you should be 70% strategic and 30% tactical. Um never lose that tactical side cuz that's your interaction with customers. That's your source of the truth. Um but you're much more strategic. You're much less hands-on. You have to trust people to go out. You understand they're going to make mistakes and you don't get people the answers. You give people ideas and let them implement.
Love it. So, you you you mentioned you acquired several of these founder blood companies. Uh did they just reach that threshold where they were really great at zero to 15, but to get from 15 to 100 they needed more CEO know-how and and and that's where you would come in?
Yeah, I think that's the founders sell for a couple of reasons. One is certainly it's become more work than they want, right? Because you know, getting to getting to 10 million is hard. It's not easy. But going over 100 million is you're typically you're breaking regional barriers, right? Maybe you're US only, now you're starting to be NAFTA or you're starting to be North America or all the Americas. It's more complex and you need different skill sets and you have to hire people. So, it's a lot more work. Um the other is a founder might just want to enjoy the fruits of what they've done. And they say, "You know what? Now is the time for me to give it to somebody else to run it." And when we talk to founders, one of the things that will make an acquisition fail is a founder will say, "I'm not sure what I'll do if I sell you my company." So, we always ask right up front, "Like if you sell us your company, do you want to stay? Do you want to do stuff?" Cuz we'll find a spot for you. Or do you want to leave? And you tell me what you want to do. Not written in stone, but just as we start this journey of exploring whether we're good partners for each other, I have to be sure that you've thought about what life is after we're combined. And what do you want to do? Um I remember coming to you know, the proverbial end of an acquisition. We've We submitted a letter of intent, kind of a handshake on price, and then the founder asked me to come have dinner with him. And he said, "I'm not going to sell." He said, "Cuz I don't know what I do. I don't know what I do. You can't play golf, Doug. I don't know what I'll do." And your initial reaction is you're frustrated, you spent a lot of time, effort, and money. Of course, then I said to him, "You know what? Bless your heart. Don't sell. Don't sell. Then it has to be right for you. And because those people who work for him or her, that's a family. That's how they grew the business. Yeah. So, it's hard. It's hard. I I think it's no different than being a leader of a company. You have to build those trust bonds that you talked about, and you have to build those with the founder. Um people buy from people, people sell to people, right? You have lawyers and people and stuff. They're just doing contracts, and your goal is to stuff that contract in a drawer never see it. You get to people and people. And that founder, even if he wants to leave, you need to be able to talk to him because a customer will say, "Oh, Jimmy said this." or "Tammy said that." And you're like, "Okay." You need to go back and find out. And so, you go back and find out. Um a a small story. We bought a founder's business, and uh he's he said on the day signing, he said, "The next 6 months, I'm sailing my boat, so don't call me." And he left, and he sailed his boat for 6 months. Uh and okay, that's great. Bless his heart. Go do that. Uh so, it takes all kinds of people in the world. Uh but I think in the end, it's people and people. Trust and trust, right? Be a good servant leader. Um live live the leadership that you want people to see and do themselves. Um and you'll get people to spend time with you and enjoy working with you.
Amazing insights. So, did you call him on uh day 181? "Hey, we got we got a list here."
I I did not call him on day 101, but I did have lunch with him. It was probably almost a year. Um and he had moved countries. He was a European guy, and he had moved countries closer to um a daughter or a son, I forgot. And uh I happened to be traveling in that area, and I said, "Hey, do you want to grab lunch or dinner?" He said, "Oh, I'd love to." And it was good to catch up with him, and I I told him a little bit about the business, and he's like, "Oh, that's good." But he he was gone. He was mentally gone. He was like, "It's yours. You run it. You do it, and I'm enjoying the fruits of my labor. And for him it was great. And for us it was great.
Yeah. That's amazing. Doug, where can folks go and find you and your software?
So where our website address is EPS SW kind of EPS software EPS SW.com. And then you can find me on LinkedIn Doug Brown B R E W N. And anybody can hook up with me through LinkedIn and I'm happy to have conversations. I love learning from other people and sharing experiences. So anybody who'd like to reach out I'd love to hear from you.
Fantastic Doug. Thank you so much for joining us in Who We Hire and sharing your wonderful stories and and and knowledge. Really excited to watch this back cuz there was so many insights there that that I'm going to take away and implement in our business as well. And I'm sure many founders will too. So thank you thank you so much for being on Who We Hire Doug.
It's an honor and thanks for taking the time with me and thanks for sharing some of your experiences which were also very valuable. Thank you.
My pleasure.
