Unlocking growth in vertical SaaS and integrated payments with Eric Remer

Speaker A: When you think about sauna horizontal platform, it's a lot easier to target, um, a vertical customer for vertical software because you're giving them what they ultimately need. I think when the stickiness comes in, specifically in the SMB side, I think vertical SaaS and enterprise is a little bit different. Even though we do become their, we call it the system of action. This is what they use every day to run their business. There's still churn on the SMB world. Less so that they're shopping the product, more so they go out of business. They didn't use it as effectively. They didn't need it as they thought they needed it.

Speaker B: Welcome to the SMB Tech Innovators podcast, powered by Gusto. On this show we explore the intersection of fintech vertical SaaS and how software combats the rising complexity of running a business. Our goal is to share stories, advice and best practices from the leaders and investors behind today's cutting edge platforms. This episode of the SMB Tech Innovators podcast is brought to you by Gusto Embedd. Gusto has spent a decade building and testing its payroll tax filing and compliance infrastructure, which is available as a robust set of APIs so you can develop custom tailored payroll solutions. For more information, go to embedded.gusto.com here's your host, Brian Bush,

Speaker C: on, um, this episode of the SMB Tech Innovators podcast. My guest is Eric Reamer, CEO of Ever Commerce, a commerce platform for service businesses providing vertically tailored integrated SaaS solutions. And he's the host of the Business Underdog podcast, which we'll get to towards the end of the show. Eric, welcome.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me.

Speaker C: I'm excited to dive into this one. But Eric, let's anchor the audience quickly. You've had an impressive career as a founder and as a business leader, which includes PaySimple, now EverCommerce. So will you give us a bit of your background and especially what. Talk to us a little bit about the entrepreneurial journey that led you to where you are today.

Speaker A: I kind of had that entrepreneurial bug early on. I started a business, uh, in college. I was at University of Michigan and I started this, uh, fouled offering, middle foul. I sold flowers on, uh, Valentine's Day at University of Michigan and one boy, and we could spend a whole show on that one. It was kind of a mess, but it was a good learning experience. Came out of college, went into investment banking randomly. I was a history major. I have no business being hired in investment banking, but they made a mistake and got me in and it really provided me a real base of just business knowledge. But the entrepreneurial bug was really my, my passion. So few years, after about four years of banking, I went and started my first company. And it was a company focused on at the time, this is way back when, call it online marketing or database marketing. And really evolved into a behavioral targeting company where we helped call it catalogs, banks, insurance, target consumers more effectively, utilizing really high end modeling to target those catalogs that were going to be sent site unseen. This was pre E commerce and so not everybody was willing to buy site unseen. And business actually went really well. We ended up selling, we had an online division and we had an offline division and we sold both of those and transitioned into my next business because we were selling kind of consumers at US households. And what we didn't have a lot of access to at that business was getting access to apartment renters. And so I created a business that created a new mover moving guy that was sent out to apartment renters all over the country. We had about what do we sell? About 2 million of these a year, 15,000 properties across 45 states. Really neat business Clint. Scale profitable, got to it, you know, called low millions of revenue. But it wasn't going to grow further because the demographic that the advertisers want weren't really the market or the target audience that we had. So we had some core marketers, but not enough. And that's when I went to my, my properties and I said, listen, what can we do to uh, provide you more value? Love our service. What can we do? What else can we do? They said can you help us collect our rents more effectively? And I said I don't know anything about that, but let me see what we can do. And within a few months we partnered with a third party. And within six months after that I realized there was a real business and I started a company called Pay Simple. And Pay simple was focused on helping. It was my first entry into the SMB world. Helping service based small businesses build, collect, manage and ultimately grow their business. Really nice business, continue to scale. And I know we talked about this, we would talk about this a little bit later, but it was, it's, it's a really interesting transition. Those businesses, as they begin to scale the small businesses. What I realized was the needs of these businesses, these service based small businesses were becoming more verticalized, even more micro verticalized. So if we had a thousand field service contractors in Pay simple and I wanted 5,000, 10,000 or potentially today we have over 350,000. We just didn't have the workflows and that could be dispatching or all the different things. And because we're multi vertical, you couldn't be all things to all people. So that's when I transitioned. We sold majority of our Pay simple into a private equity firm. They helped with some consolidation of some industries and that's where Ever Commerce was formed in 2016 with really the focus of helping these service SMBs be more successful by providing more vertical, more micro vertical solutions to their needs so they can be served specifically what their challenges were at that moment in time.

Speaker C: As much as I would love to dig into the Valentine's Day flowers at Michigan, especially from that, hey, you understand the customer, that SMB customer perspective very personally. This is actually a great segment at Ever Commerce. So maybe let's go one click down, talk a little bit more about what the platform offers and maybe how that shows up as the vertical vertically specific sort of tailoring that we mentioned uh, at the intro.

Speaker A: Yeah. So EverCommerce provides vertical software to the service SMB and real focus is providing all in one solutions. So we're in three main verticals. EverPro is our kind of home service. I think about a plumber, electrician, H Vac. Ever Health is our health services. So think of both traditional doctor but a lot of alternative medicine. So acupuncture, chiropractic therapists, and then Everwell is our salon spa group. Again all focused that really 1 to 10, call it employee kind of sector. So really down market is real our focus. And because we're dealing with small businesses, giving them the vertical software that they can utilize more effectively and providing more all in one solutions. So integrating things that we know they need to run their business more effectively is really how we differentiate in the verticals that we serve.

Speaker C: I'm curious, maybe are there similarities between those types of businesses? I think on the surface my home services say somebody who comes to repair the garage door versus my acupuncturist, that doesn't seem like they're very similar. I'm curious if under the hood you feel like, hey, these actually look very similar or if that vertical tailoring that you've done actually goes pretty deep in the back end and on the product.

Speaker A: It's a great question. And so I'll answer it two ways. From a usability standpoint, they need different things. So we actually have different platform softwares for the verticals that we serve. So the home field services, even within home field services, so maybe the plumber, electrician H vac can use the same service, the same software, but we have separate softwares for our alarm clients, we have separate softwares for our landscaping clients. And so when you think about across verticals, like our ever health group, they have a completely separate stack and a separate software. What is actually very similar though is how these customers buy, how they use and how they interact with our organization. And so our marketing, our service, our success teams could actually operate relatively smooth cross functional. We've actually put more of that into the verticals at this point for. For different reasons. But historically you did get a lot of synergies in terms of going after these customers. At a core level, an SMB customer, they act a lot more like a consumer than an enterprise business. And so how you interact with them, how you market to them, how you onboard them across those verticals was actually relatively similar.

Speaker C: Okay, I want to put a pin in some of the go to market and how you sell to but really support these entrepreneurs and kind of wind the clock back just a minute because you talked about Pay simple merged into you sold some assets but merged into ever commerce. And I have a sense we talk a lot about vertical SaaS on the show, but I have a sense you were seeing trends and opportunities here well before vertical SaaS was a common term. So maybe if we go back to 2016, I think you said, what was it at that time that got you excited about hey, let's tailor a software product for different verticals specifically coming out of the Pay simple experience.

Speaker A: So it's a great question because I was asking the same thing to myself in 2015. I was talking to customers and what I was realizing in these conversations were the needs of the businesses we were serving, which historically SMBs, it kind of get the last of what people are really focused on. So whatever's left over could be enterprise coming down to them, just making it sort of for them, or more of a generic horizontal platform is what they were utilizing. But their needs were becoming more verticalized, even more micro verticalized. And so as I looked at the verticals we were serving, what I saw was a bunch of point solutions. A lot of fragmentation and nobody was really connecting the dots. The crepies really dealer focused vertical softwares that integrated some core things like payments, invoicing, things they needed to run their business more effectively. But actually talking to them not as a generic platform like Pay simple was not that. It was when I say generic, more horizontal basis and instead giving the plumber and giving the electrician, give the landscaper things they need specifically to run their business that is unique to that vertical.

Speaker C: So you hinted at, hey, if you give, whether it's a plumber or electrician or whether it's again a health services professional, if you give them sort of a tailored product, you already mentioned, like, hey, it shows up, it's more effective for them. The, the product adds more value. I'm curious, as well as selling that product, there's a lot of talk of hey, verticals that should be stickier. You're built. Customers come to run their entire business with you. Therefore folks should stick with you longer. I'm curious if you've seen that show up in your experience with Evercommerce.

Speaker A: Well, definitely you think about a horizontal platform. It's a lot easier to target a vertical customer for vertical software because you're giving them what they ultimately need. I think with the stickiness comes in specifically in the SMB side, I think vertical SaaS and enterprise is a little bit different. Even though we do become their, we call it the system of action. This is what they use every day to run their business. There's still churn on the SMB world less so that they're shopping the product more so they go out of business. They didn't use it as effectively, they didn't need it as they thought they needed it. So churn on the down market is still going to be a certain level where we really see the difference is less on the verticals that we're served, more on the amount of products they take. So if we can get a somebody and when I say the product, you can look at it both ways. Right. So selfishly we want to sell the more products. Right selflessly is really how we look at it. How do we provide more value to the customer? And if we provide more value by providing more services, clearly they become stickier. So a customer that takes payments is three times less likely to attract, uh, they're actually generating also three times the arpu. So it's very important that we get our customers to take payments because they're going to get paid faster, they're going to have a more seamless experience. It's better consumer experience for their customers. And for us, again, on the other side of the spectrum of what can we do to help our customers and what helps us, it becomes a much, much stickier customer.

Speaker C: So that's amazing. Kind of a 3x increase in both ARPU. But in churn reduction for folks who hit that, hey, we're taking payments milestone. I'm curious, are there any Other products if you care to share that, you see a big increase in stickiness. And therefore as you mentioned this really isn't just about the stickiness piece. It's about imputed value for the customer. Are there any others where you see a big step up in customer value when they start using X type of product?

Speaker A: So the answer is yes. When they take more than one in general you just get a step up. We're much more sold through on our payments so the data is more statistically relevant. But you know we sell reputation management, we sell marketing services, we sell a lot of other things that our uh, customers need. It's just on a smaller scale. So when they do sign up for it they're a heck of a lot stickier than uh, a customer taking nothing. But uh, it's not as that it's not the scale that we have at payments that I have this fiscal relevant information to say you take reputation management, you're not leaving our company for five years. So it's still more in the nascent stage of that kind of upsell cross sell.

Speaker C: Okay, let's come back to some of the tactics on the upsell cross sell piece in a second. I uh, want to talk about product scope. I know acquisitions have been an important piece of how you have grown ever commerce. I'm curious how and to get to that on one that you've talked about, I'm curious how you have thought about where you acquire for let's call it product scope or functionality versus where you've thought about hey we want to say roll up a bunch of players in a space creating customers maybe that comes with scale and efficient. Like where have you thought about some of the trade offs or what's been your North Star for some of these acquisitions.

Speaker A: That's uh, a great question and our focus is really twofold. Either A we wanted to expand the base so that meant going into a new vertical or new sub vertical. So let's just say in home M services we were covering a lot of ground but we had nothing in the pest or tree space. Just for example which was true. We would do an acquisition to now we have a, you could look at that as a um product because we now have a core software within that vertical that we could sell more effectively. So that was one thing we did. We looked at more of an expansion. Secondly, from the way I do determine deemed products is more we had a gap, we had a gap within not just not in the vertical segment but in a product offering. So example that would be we bought A patient paid product that allowed us to integrate in our EMRs and practice management so our doctors could actually integrate their payments full stop with within that service. So that was more of a product buy versus an expansion buy. We've actually done maybe we've acquired 53 companies and we might have done one customer buy. Just bought a call it. This is early on a on prem production that was we wanted to convert them over to our SaaS solution and bought it relatively cheap and had a chance to convert those customers over. But we really very few folks, very few. Very little of our focus was focused on let's acquire this business, shut down the software, merge the customers and let's grow from there. It was really let's expand into new areas or let's provide more value to our customers by buying products that they we know they need, we just don't have right now.

Speaker C: So maybe the natural follow up is it seems like you and the team have had a pretty concerted and pretty strategic rationale and analysis behind the acquisitions you've done. You need the fuel for that fire. So maybe let's talk just briefly about capital and different sources and specifically if I understood correctly from before we hit record, you've worked with venture capital investors, you work with private equity, you've probably grown and just built a lot of your own equity in various different businesses that you've used to grow. Maybe I'll phrase the question as hey, if you're advising another vertical SaaS CEO, uh, somebody who wants to grow up to be where you're at, how do you talk to them or how would you talk to them about the trade offs of different types of investment capital that can help you achieve some of these outcomes?

Speaker A: I think about it a lot actually and I actually do mentor a lot of earlier stage businesses because I think capital is incredibly important. I'm really look, capital is energy and what energy you're going to bring into your business is incredibly important because there's a lot of capital out there and then the value add, they give you your contacts and then after that you're on your own. And this is going to be a partner you're going to have for many years. And so it's really important you bring in the right partner and be able to determine that is what are you looking to do? Is your goal to uh, build a, you want to take this to ipo, you want to take this and sell it in three years or you want to build an evergreen company and actually never sell? You just have an amazing platform that you want to grow forever. And the answer that a lot of entrepreneurs will say is, I just want to build a great company and we'll see what happens. And that's great, but get a little more focus, because if you get more focus, you, it'll determine what is the right investor for you. Early, early stage VCs will help you get off the ground. But people have to realize the second they cash that check, the clock's ticking. And so they need to make sure that the VC is going to bet on, um, 10 companies and two of them are going to hit it. And if your clock ticks too fast and you don't raise, you don't do what you need to do, you could be dead in a lottery at that point. Once you get to the next phase. I actually think private equity are, I've worked much more with private equity, venture capital. I think private equity actually in general are really good growth partners because you actually share an aligned vision. They can't, they're not making money. You make money, right? You go in aligned. And even with the private equity firms that you're meeting with, what is their goals? What is your real timeline? Do we have three years to, uh, flip this thing, or will you let me take this all the way? If this makes sense, essentially. And so creating that kind of alignment with your potential partners or ultimately the parties you bring on, I think is incredibly critical. And I think the biggest mistake that, uh, entrepreneurs make earlier in their growth is if you're going to sell your company, take every last penny off the table, maximize value. If you're looking to grow your business to the next level, find the right partner. And now I'm not saying get a bad value, get a fair value, but valuation is not the most important thing at that moment in time. The right partner, the right value is way more important. Because if you overvalue business early on, I think this happens way more in the VC world than the P world. You come in, you got a startup and you're doing 500,000 revenue, and you go out for $20 million valuation, that's great, maybe someone gives it to you, but good luck on your next fundraising, right? And so now all of a sudden, unless you hit every single mark perfectly, and then you're going to be at $3 million for the next raise, and then maybe you can get enough round at 30 if you do it, something like that. But most likely things don't happen like that. Most likely you're not going to be at 3 million. You're going to be At a million and all of a sudden your growth rates at. It's nice, it's 30% at a million dollars and no one's giving you 30x revenue to, uh, increase that business you're probably not giving. You get 20x revenue at that time. And so I think people overvalue the business early on and get stuck. Down rounds are fine. I mean, they're not fine. But a lot of investors don't want to do down rounds because it creates a lot of churn within, uh, the capital base and the investors. And so my advice is to be careful early on, be thoughtful of the partner you bring on and the value that you're asking for and make sure that the dollars you're bringing on, it's reasonable that those dollars will get you to a certain point where reasonably, not in a perfect world, but reasonably that will let your next round be an up round and bring in the right next partners for you. Because in the early stages you could mess up your cap table to a point where, look, we've bought 53 companies. A lot of them were small businesses. We looked at businesses that were really nice businesses and I actually would have bought them. They raised $10 million at a 40 million valuation and they're doing 4 million of revenue and growing at 30%. And they were probably worth, I don't know, 15, 20 million bucks at the time. But they couldn't sell for the level that would have made sense for their investors or themselves. And at some times they're just upside down and it happens. And I actually think it creates a lot of unnecessary churn because at the core level, they had really good businesses. They just did a valuation that was just not correct for where the stage of business was.

Speaker C: And I love just, you said it a couple times. But to restate that idea of, hey, valuation on the margin versus finding the right partner, someone you're aligned with, really important one. But two, what I'm hearing you say is founders, entrepreneurs have to have a really honest conversation with themselves, with the, uh, with potential investors, hopefully with mentors like you. You have to get these and with, like you said, with some level of clarity on the table in order to even have your own North Star and, and be able to drive some of the right alignment with potential partners.

Speaker A: I can go on this forever, but two things that entrepreneurs don't think about when they're talking to a VC or a private equity firm, that I think is really important. How long has a firm been around? Uh, because firms that have been around for a long Time. Look, you're not the first investment. They've been through this roto before. You can go up and down and they're going to ride you out. That firm that it's a fund one, there's a lot more stress, a lot more energy. They need you to be successful, to raise Fund two, fund three. And the other thing to be wary of is who's your deal guy? Is this a junior partner? Is it the lead partner? Do the lead partners actually know you exist? Because if shit hits the fan and you actually need support from that partner, if the main guys aren't engaged in your business, you become an afterthought in some funds. And so it's important to really think about those factors also as you're looking at, uh, your potential funding partners.

Speaker C: Okay, wonderful advice. So let's put a pin on it. Hey, even if you have that capital, you close that round. Now it's back to operating the business and typically growing the business. We put a pin in some of the growth tactics. And you mentioned earlier, selling to SMBs actually looks a lot like consumer businesses. We mentioned, hey, there is some natural turnover of small businesses. So maybe let's dig in there. What is it about selling specifically to selling a vertical SaaS product? Like what is it that somebody not as familiar with this area probably gets wrong, even if they're coming from a general sort of horizontal based SaaS business?

Speaker A: I think the key things that we see a lot in this space, number one, the enterprise business that thinks they can just simplify their product and sell it to the SMB. I uh, think often it is, look, big business do this all the time. You'll have Comcast for small business. It's not, it's Comcast and they put a package on and call it for small business. But I think even in the software world we do the same thing. Companies that have large enterprise platforms and feel like they're missing out on a market will dumb me down their product. But it usually is still way more complicated than the SMB one. So that's one thing that we see in the market. The second thing is you gotta make your products simple to buy, simple to use, simple to onboard and simple to connect with. And if you don't do that, you brought the best point. There's a lot of velocity in the SMB, meaning you gotta acquire a lot of customers. You're gonna lose customers along the way also. So if your acquisition flywheel isn't in such a way where you can bring in these customers on, in a way that makes sense. Where they can onboard quickly, they can start utilizing your service quickly. It's very easy to use which means you need less support, less sales and less service because it's all there. It makes the economics work. 85% of our business is PLG product led growth. And so we create our products in a way that could really be focused on that end user. Can they go online, find our solution, buy our solution on board, begin to utilize a solution and then provide service to um, them if they need it, most likely be electronic. And so that, that has been huge for us to create, you know, profit in our business and we've been profitable for many years and our margins are getting relatively high for an s and P SaaS business. And it's because of kind of the motion of selling that we've been able to work within the organization.

Speaker C: Yeah, so I'm hearing, hey, you need to have a very efficient acquisition engine. Now I'm curious, you mentioned, hey, you see a big jump both in customer value but also in retention when folks start processing payments for you. I'm curious, it sounds like that is, hey, that's a couple products down. That's maybe not your wedge product. Does that 85% product led apply to something like payments? Like uh, are you saying hey, if you build the acquisition funnel and the product LED growth tactics correctly, you can drive adoption of something complex like payment processing as well.

Speaker A: So this is a great question and things that we struggle with on a daily basis because the reality is it is harder to sell PLG 2nd 3rd products than it is when you have a customer success person talking to somebody on a regular basis. So we actually, even though the PLG sale happens without touch, we actually have created teams that do follow up even on the down market, real live touch so we can upsell, cross sell some services as well. So the answer is, the first answer is yes. We try to create a seamless experience as possible so payments becomes a natural add on without touch. So the answer is we'd love to do that. Does it always happen? No, it doesn't always happen and we know our customers will benefit by having our integrated payment solutions. So we now have very fast follow up from Cell our team to allow them to know that this works, this is, this exists, you should be utilizing it, how to process a payment and so it's a combination of trying to make things as self service as possible and then where is the opportunity to put live connectivity in there so we can make sure that our customers who didn't take it in the flow, take it more effectively and it's. And uh, by the way we haven't cracked the code where we get better every single day at uh, that I think we'll get better at the workflows to get people to sign up real time upfront and we're getting better at the follow ups. What's the right time, what's the right messaging? How do we connect with these people? Many self service customers don't want to be bothered. That's why they signed up in the self service first place. Right. So we are testing constantly of um, how to do that more effectively and I think we're getting better. We definitely, like I said we're not where we need to be or ultimately we will be but we get better on a daily basis.

Speaker C: I can tell you Eric, many folks we talk to in this space, same as you're saying, we're testing the tactics, customer expectations are changing. That combination of where can we get signal on product, where do we need a person in loop for some of these upsell opportunities. That to me is, it's, I want to say a moving target but it continues to evolve and be very interesting. I want to be respectful of your time but before we go let's look ahead just a little bit thinking about especially your sort of customer segments. Home services, healthcare and wellness. What does the future look like? Or maybe the other way to phrase it is how do these businesses the world is moving more towards whether it's mobile, digital first obviously AI is starting to play a role. How do these businesses keep up, say especially when the bigger companies are going to be able to adopt some of these newer tools so much faster.

Speaker A: I actually think there's never been a time for the S and P world to be as competitive as they are today. And part of that is the software that has been created where if you think of SMB as a laggard in the industry of accepting but the vertical SaaS that has been created are not necessarily laggards. So they're integrating, we are integrating and our competitors are integrating AI into the workflows of our services on a daily basis. So that SMB customer who's a plumber with two trucks out there, our goal is to make that plumber look like he's got a 30 truck business out there. What you would not know as a consumer that you called John and Jim with two trucks on the road but you actually called Xcel Electric and you have no idea there's two trucks or 30 trucks. And so I actually think the technology that exists today is allowing these small service providers to bridge the gap on what larger competitors in their spaces, whatever vertical they're serving actually can do. Because the integrations of the tools that are becoming so ubiquitous within the world we live AI is so funny. It's become a ubiquitous term, but it's about a couple years old. Generative AI has been put into the ecosystem as that starts becoming more infiltrated to the softwares that they're utilizing. They don't have to do anything other than utilize what they're currently using to be more effective, to create more efficiency in their business and ultimately provide more value to their customers. So I think the SMB is in a really good situation right now, specifically with the vertical SaaS partners providing them real good value.

Speaker C: Yeah. What I hear you saying is if we do our job, I. E. The folks building the software tools for SMBs, those SMBAs should be able to do their job that much better, compete that

Speaker A: much more effectively on the cold are uh, the ones that are not doing anything. So you need something. If you don't bring on some sort of tool, you know, automated tool, some software within your vertical, I think the gap between you and your competitors, even your small competitors, is going to get larger and larger.

Speaker C: This Eric, is a wonderful segue to your podcast, the Business Underdog podcast. Tell us briefly, who's that show for? And I'm particularly curious, why did you decide to launch that show?

Speaker A: We have at uh, Evercommerce, we have over 700,000 small business customers and those customers range from, I told you, the verticals. You have your plumbers, electricians, your therapists, your salon owners, your sponsors. And within our verticals, as I talk to our customers, a lot of podcasts interview people like me. Right? I have a, ah, start a company from scratch and now I have a multi billion dollar public company that I built over the last 18 years. That's awesome, that's great and I appreciate you guys having me on the show today. But what I wanted to create the podcast for was ah, what I kind of call business underdogs. Where you were a plumber, guy was a plumber and decided, you know what, I want to do more than this. So he went on his own and created a truck. Now he's got 10 trucks and he's got a multi million dollar business within his community and, and he did it from scratch. He's a genuine entrepreneur. He or she could be a genuine entrepreneur. And they're crushing on a relative basis to what they're doing. They're Never going to be a unicorn company. They're never going to go raise a bunch of private equity or vc. But within their world they have the same challenges of hiring, of firing, of uh, almost going out of business, of cash flow and being inspiration for that, that H vac guy or electrical guy or that therapist to say, wow, look what Jim did, look what Jenny did, look what they've created, look what Krista did, look what just did. Those are a couple of people that I interviewed, Jess, who I just kind of brought on and just did uh, a podcast with. She's a therapist. She built a 10 person therapy practice and then she built up therapy software to help her practice more effectively. And so I just wanted to create something that would really focused on originally our customers. How do we celebrate the custom, the kind of small business success stories that are and I believe are true success stories. Not uh, that this isn't a success story, but I think they often get overlooked within the overall business success. So that's what business Underdog is all about and it's for anybody because I think there's a ton of relevant business advice, really interesting stories of perseverance and overcoming obstacles. And I think a lot of people in the trades or even people are just building businesses in general will get a lot out of it. I've learned a lot and even in the few episodes we've done and, and the goal is to get that going m much more faster. So thanks for asking.

Speaker C: Yeah, Eric, I feel like in our industry we hear a lot, especially on the product led growth side. It's numbers, it's conversion rates, it's how many customers follow a common flow. And it reminds me of that phrase that every business is fascinating unto itself. I think what you're doing is bringing forward the stories of how unique every single small business is. Every entrepreneur is. There's a much richer story behind some of those. The numbers we see that show up in our usage data. So I hope folks will check that out. Eric, want to thank you so much for taking the time, sharing your insights. You gave great advice for founders, for folks building, selling these products. Before we wrap up, if folks want to connect, have additional questions for you. What's the best way to reach out to you.

Speaker A: I'm, um, somewhat active on LinkedIn. I'm not that active in social media in general. My website, evercommerce.com, my email address is on the website. It's just ericcommerce.com but I'm not a social fiend. But LinkedIn is the one area where I do play a little bit.

Speaker C: Okay, we'll make sure to link to your personal, uh, handle on LinkedIn. And Eric, thank you again for taking the time to join the show.

Speaker A: I really appreciate you having me. Thanks so much.

Speaker C: Thanks again for tuning in to this episode of the SMB Tech Innovators podcast. We'll make sure to link to any resources that were mentioned in today's show in the show notes. Please. Also feel free to leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcast or to connect with the Gusto embedded team via LinkedIn. In particular, we'd love to hear any future guests you'd like us to have on the show. Thanks again for listening and keep a lookout for the next episode.

Speaker A: Uh,