David Chadwick, Founder and CEO at RealResponse, is passionate about making a difference in athletics, but not in the normal sense of what you might think of as winning in sports. Instead, David has created a tool where athletes and staff can give anonymous feedback in a way that everyone in collegiate institutions and athletic organizations has a chance to be heard. 

Join Jim and David as they explore how David is helping create a much safer environment in sports and institutions across the country, while also scaling his business. 

3 Key Takeaways

• Cash Management and Funding Decisions: In the early stages, it's crucial to control expenses and scrutinize every cost. Decisions on funding, whether through raising money from friends, family, angels, or VCs, will have a long term impact on the control and expectations around the business. David highlights the importance of staying true to his mission and controlling his destiny by being mindful of where funding comes from.
• Technology and Scalability: Ensure that technology choices are future-proof and scalable.  There is a significant focus on getting the User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) right from the start.  Mistakes in technology choices can be costly and pivoting might require substantial resources
• “Customers, customers, customers”: This is what David often tells his staff is the most important part of their business. Never have a whiteboard session with your team to workshop what you think your customers want and need. Until you get in front of your customers, it's just impossible to know what they’re thinking and feeling. 

Resources

David Chadwick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-chadwick-862570173/ 

RealResponse: http://www.realresponse.com 

About Our Guest 

While studying and playing Division 1 basketball at Rice University and Valparaiso University, David Chadwick recognized that positive student-athlete experiences had everything to do with culture, support services, academic integrity, and the relationships formed with coaches and teammates. This insight led him to launch RealResponse in 2016.

RealResponse elevates voices by offering a safe, anonymous platform for two-way communications, ensuring everyone in collegiate institutions and athletic organizations has a chance to be heard. The RealResponse community consists of more than two million athletes, coaches, administrators, and staff, and reaches across college and professional sports, governing bodies, and integrity units. 

About The Dirt Podcast 

The Dirt is about getting real with businesses about the true state of their companies and going clear down to the dirt in solving their core needs as a business. Dive deep with your host Jim Barnish as we uncover The Dirt with some of the world's leading brands.

If you love what you are getting out of our show please subscribe.

For more information on how we dig into the dirt check out our other episodes here: https://www.orchid.black/podcast

About Our Company

Orchid Black is a new kind of growth services firm. We partner with tech-forward companies to build smarter, better, game-changing businesses. 

Website: https://www.orchid.black 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orchidblack/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OrchidBlack 

All contents of this show are rights of Orchid Black©️ and are not to be used unless authorized by written consent.

David Chadwick 0:00

For the last 10 years, we've just had countless examples of very, very high profile instances of sexual misconduct, abuse, harassment, hazing, gambling, inappropriate behavior, integrity, concerns, competition, manipulation, etc. That has reinforced the need for a system like ours. You know, when I first started talking to people, years ago, the question sometimes that I got was, Well, is it better not just to know about it, right? Like, at least if I don't know about it, then I can say if I'm ever questioned, why wasn't aware, versus if I know about it, now I'm accountable for it. And I think people have really shifted now to, it's much better to know about it than to not know about it. And then the grasp, the best place to be in is to be able to say, Yes, I knew about it. And here's everything that I did thereafter. And oh, by the way, everything I did is exactly what I was supposed to do.

Jim Barnish 0:59

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the dirt. I'm your host, Jim barnish. And today we are lacing up our shoes and hitting the hardwood with a founder who's not only scaling a business, but also creating much safer environments in sports and institutions across the country. Our guest David Chadwick, founder and CEO, his company, real response, a platform focused on feedback monitoring, and anonymous reporting in sports. In this episode, we'll dig deep into the efficient use of capital strategies for tapping into proven markets and unravel the trends happening in the dynamic world of athletics. Before we start, I want to remind you all please subscribe on the dirt on your favorite podcast platform. We love hearing from you. So feel free to reach out as well. Now let's break ground and dig into the dirt. All right, David, let's dig right in Who is David Chadwick and what is real response?

David Chadwick 2:00

Yeah, my name is David Chadwick. I'm the founder and CEO real response. And our mission is pretty simple. We elevate voices, we make it easier for people to be able to speak up, share their feedback, questions, concerns, and equip the leadership of these various organizations to better understand culture and to address potential issues before they become problems down the road.

Jim Barnish 2:20

And when you say people in organizations, what types of people or types of orgs? Are we talking about?

David Chadwick 2:25

Your question, it's changed a lot recently. So for about five years, we operated exclusively with college athletic departments. I'm a former student athlete, which I know we'll get into more detail in just a second. But in the last few years, we've expanded beyond college athletics to professional sports leagues and clubs and Olympic National Governing Bodies, various integrity groups, even have gone overseas to get expansion outside the US. And now we're even expanding beyond college athletics on our various institution campuses that we work with. So at the end of the day, we appreciate these expansive opportunities, because we can stay true to our mission, which is again, providing that safe space for people to speak up no matter who they are.

Jim Barnish 3:00

All right, so you guy, you're starting college sports, both individually and as an entrepreneur talk, talk to me a little bit about that journey from being the college athlete to now serving college athlete and other organizations.

David Chadwick 3:16

Oh, yeah. So I mean, you know, college sports is just such a rapidly evolving field with with so many emerging trends, which is a lot of a lot of good, a lot of good in that. Are there any trends in, in particular that have significantly impacted the growth and customer base of real response?

Yeah, I think most entrepreneurs will tell you that, oftentimes, there's call it luck or divine or whatever your source of inspiration is timing on your side. And you know, in the last 10 years, we've just had countless examples of very, very high profile instances of sexual misconduct, abuse, harassment, hazing, gambling, inappropriate behavior, integrity, concerns, competition, manipulation, etc, that has reinforced the need for a system like ours. You know, when I first started talking to people, years ago, the question sometimes that I got was, Well, is it better not just to know about it, right? Like, at least if I don't know about it, then I can say if I'm ever questioned, why wasn't aware, versus if I know about it, now I'm accountable for it. And I think people have really shifted now to, it's much better to know about it, than to not know about it. And then the Grest, the best place to be in is to be able to say, Yes, I knew about it. And here's everything that I did thereafter. And oh, by the way, everything I did is exactly what I was supposed to do. So I think these unfortunate, and I don't mean to not put sympathy on the victims and what they've gone through, because it's been horrific in many of these examples. But these situations have reinforced the need for people to be able to have a way to speak up and share the concerns that they have.

So how do you guys stay ahead of the curve when it comes to new developments? Let's just start with the collegiate sports space, is there. Are there any specific strategies to predict? or respond to these trends?

Yeah, it's something that I have done from day one of starting my business. And what I tell everyone in our staff is, customers, customers, customers, talk to your customers, give them the opportunity to tell you what they need. Allow them to answer your questions, test your hypothesis, because at the end of the day, they are the ones especially if they're willing to pay money that are going to help answer those questions that you have. And help you direct on where you want to go. Versus the worst thing that you can do is to sit in an office or a boardroom or a whiteboard session with your team and draw these things that you think are going to happen. But until you get in front of your customers, it's just impossible to know. So we are very intentional. I mean, I'll pick up the phone when I'm driving on a road trip and just call one of our customers and check in and we'll just be catching up. And then all of a sudden, it'll be Hey, this is an area that we're really sensitive to right now. And these are some of the things that we're doing and my head will start spinning. And we'll have you thought about doing it this way. And could we help you in that in that way? So I it is so important to be connected to your customers and really never to lose that either. I know as you scale, it becomes harder, but I think it's extremely important.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. customers, customers, customers. And there's, there's a lot of recent events that have thrust athletes mental health and well being into the spotlight. Are there any specific things that have needed to be adjusted in terms of the response due to heightened awareness around those types of issues?

Yeah, it's interesting, you know, our system creates a confidential way for people to speak up, but then it really becomes up to the organization on how they want to message and position it. As you know, one extreme would be a hotline and the other extreme would be a suggestion box. And what we're seeing now is people using the platform to raise mental health concerns. A concern about themselves obviously could happen, you know, something as simple as I'm really struggling Who can I talk to But what we're also seeing is people raising a concern about somebody else, because oftentimes, they're the ones in the weeds as a teammate, as a friend that knows what's going on in someone's personal life, you know, hey, so and so's parents are splitting up or they just broke up with their significant other or I feel I'm worried about him or her because they're really drinking too much, right? Like, those are the early indicators that can sometimes identify and prevent a bigger tragedy from happening. We had a real life example of this where one of our partners called me and said, Hey, I just wanted you to know that through your platform, we think we saved the life. And I was really curious. And I said, Well, how? And they said, Well, we had an athlete that anonymously alerted us that teammate a roommate had not come out of the room and refused in the last few days, and they were just concerned about him or her. Well, we addressed it and looked into it immediately, and found out that person was considering self harm. And we hospitalized them provided them with resources. And if we wouldn't have had that early indicator of a teammate, just saying, Hey, I'm worried about this person, because they're not coming out of the room. Who knows what could happen, right days or weeks could have passed where, you know, more internal turmoil happens, more questioning, and you know, God forbid, it gets to that point of someone really considering that or perhaps even doing it. So, yes, mental health has become a big focus of ours. And I I applaud all these athletes, you know, like Michael Phelps, and Simone Biles and other kids who have spoken up about their own mental health concerns, because I think it's it's, it's made it more normal for people to speak up, and they're more comfortable doing it. And, you know, we just want to be the conduit and giving them that way to be able to speak up or maybe they didn't previously have a way to

that's incredible, what a what a cool KBI live save. Right for like, what, what a what an incredible thing to put a stamp on. So when when you look at some of the more specific and you mentioned, Simone Biles, you know, gymnastics is one of the environments that comes to mind. You know, are there any specific environments or areas where these unique environments factors and challenges have come up and, and how you've had to adapt specific to those areas?

Yeah, it's interesting. The company was seated, as I said, in college athletics. And I tell people, college athletics has such a unique patent power dynamic, where you have athletes that are many times having just left their home for the first time, that are dealing with a power dynamic of if I speak up and share an issue with, you know, someone that's much older than me, perhaps or a teammate, I'm, I'm worried about the repercussions, right, and their gold currency is their playing time, if they're dealing with the sport in that space, it could be their financial aid, where maybe they wouldn't have had the financial aid to be able to attend that university. Otherwise, it could be career ambitions, where I'm speaking about about this person who could potentially hold my life in their hands and my goals of getting into coaching or whatever. So that was the space that we knew really well and helped provide a solution for. But once we got beyond college athletics, I know we're gonna get to that story in just a second. What we realize is the power dynamics, not unique just to college athletics, right, you go to a professional sports franchise, right, a multibillion dollar organization, and you have employees who want to work there, who are oftentimes turning away jobs, that could pay them more, maybe have a faster acceleration of the career path, because they want to be in sports, or they want to work for this professional sports club. Maybe they're a fan of that specific team, and there's more emotional ties to their job. And as a result, they are more likely to perhaps deal with some of the questionable behavior of issues that are going on inappropriate comments, touching, etc. And then there's also that pent up power dynamic, right? Like, this is my dream job. I'm not going to speak up about what's going on, because I don't want to have the repercussions of losing that job. And perhaps being blacklisted after that. It's the same when you look at the NGBs now, right, like you have these high high caliber athletes who are striving to, to be in the Olympics, which is the pinnacle of success in that world. And they are more likely to deal with these types of inappropriate behaviors, deal with perhaps things that are questionable, because they don't want to have the repercussions of not being able to make that elite, that elite goal that they've had for many of them since they were a child. So I think the power dynamic and the inability for people to an absence of a system like ours have a way to speak up for without a lack of repercussions is where a lot of these tragedies have happened.

So let's talk about why you started to mention around the growth not necessarily outside of college sports but from college sports to other areas where you guys have been able to grow into, you know what, what drove that journey? You know, what is? What does that look like today, and that would be great to learn a lot about.

So, as an entrepreneur, you want to do everything and you don't have the time to do it. So, you know, for years, I thought there was an opportunity outside of us for college athletics, because the things we deal with are not unique to college athletics, they're going on all over the world. It really hit close to home when I watched the issues with the Carolina Panthers with us being in Charlotte, where you had some women speaking up about the abuse that they were experiencing, and but we were never able to pin it penetrate well into it just honestly time and capacity and everything else going on in the college space that we just stayed narrowly focused there. What changed that, ironically, was COVID. In 2020, when the pandemic happened, I got connected with the NFL Players Association, who are just some tremendous people and very, very innovative. And at the time, they wanted to have an NFL season, which you might remember was unprecedented them like why are we having an NFL season when we have this pandemic, but they knew to be able to have a season, they needed people to follow COVID protocols. So wear your masks like during our away games, you can't sneak out of your hotel and go to the bars perhaps like you've done in the past, right? Like everyone has to follow protocols, because if you don't, we canceled the game that weekend. And then there's enormous revenue applications. So they asked us to build out a little bit of a custom platform for them to be able to have a way for people to anonymously alert them if folks were not following protocols or if they had questions or concerns. And we did that for them. And then went really well. The following year, they expanded beyond COVID to any health and safety concern that a player might have misconduct, abuse, harassment, etc. And once they did that, it was really the catalyst for pretty quick growth beyond college athletics. We began to partner with national governing bodies USA Swimming USA Track and Field, US equestrian and others. We had pro clubs that approached us which was awesome around implementation in their space that was even a little more unique. It was an HR focus where employees could report misconduct, harassment abuse to their leadership, partner with a dozen NFL teams in just one year, pro leagues came to us and said, Hey, we have these more similar college athletics, right like these more traditional what I call antiquated hotlines, but we want to modernize it like we want to make it easier for people to report. Could your platform do that? And yes, the answer was yes. So we partnered with Major League Baseball and NASCAR and groups like that, which was really, really great. We got into anti doping the United States anti doping agency brought in our system, they're well known for the group that helped bring down Lance Armstrong when they had that doping scandal. And similar right like you, let's make it easier for people to send tips to us, let's not make them require on the old ways of hotlines and whistleblower policies. So that that really expanded our growth quickly. But then beyond that, there was a couple of really significant milestones where we had our first international group come to us and say, Hey, we know we're not in the US, but we're looking to modernize the way that people send information to us. Can we do that? And the answer was, yes. And then having universities in a similar way, we're now seeing what you're doing with the college athletic department. Why can't this be done beyond athletics, right with Greek life and Title Nine, and bias and compliance and discrimination, like all these other areas that they deal with having a way to share those concerns, too. So I know COVID had a lot of negative consequences for many people. And and even in my own life, it did too. But to some extent, that was the business pivot, where first of all, I took a step back, and I'm like, holy cow, we can't have all of our exes in the college athletics basket, because who knows, we're college athletics, who knows where higher ed is going to be in a year, right college athletics alone. But shifting our service and being more flexible, to be able to place our bets, and some of those new areas actually ended up being a huge, positive outcome for us.

So given the variability in terms of, you know, the person you're selling to what they need this solution for specific to their niche, or their, you know, their organization, their role within the organization, all these different things I can, I can imagine it's, you know, it's hard to have one product that that serves all of these organizations. How do you how do you handle that with now more than 1500? customers or clients in your portfolio?

Yeah, we, first of all, we try to make any product decision apply across the board to all of our customers. So we don't want to make a product that's just unique to one customer unless that customer is already significantly at scale, or we could clearly predict what the return would be For every product decision, we have a fantastic product team and engineering team that helps us sort through that. We want it to be applicable across the board. But then it becomes, you know, having a really good customer success process where you're checking in with your customers on a cadence, you're listening to them. Going back to that comment I made earlier, listen to your customers, you're asking for their feedback, you're prioritizing their needs, and running them through that implementation where regardless of whether you're starting with one of our products, or several of them, we know you're going to get into that point where you're going to be able to see success once you go live.

And when you look at some of the growth that you guys have experienced since college, and what you see for the future, any any big things coming that that are important for us to know about? Yeah,

as I said earlier, our company's always evolved to what's next. And it's interesting college athletics and really sports to the greater extent, is facing a lot of challenges ahead. We've already touched on mental health. But I think that's one that's just going to continue to raise a spotlight which I just said, which has it should. Gambling and sports betting is really a new frontier for us that we've never seen before, as more and more states are legalizing sports betting. And what's been amazing there is to see student student athletes or professional athletes who are placing bets, in a very easy to use way on their phone, where traditionally, like they had to go to the bookie and more formally place a bet there, they're able to do it on their phone. If they're underage, they're using their parents log in or doing some other type of method. But what's just been honestly amazing to see and I don't mean amazing in a good way, in the last few weeks is the number of athletes that were betting on their own games. And that just raises a whole new set of challenges from an integrity, integrity perspective to be able to, again, hold people accountable and address those things when they're going on. But I think it's going to be a large task to be able to to undertake, you know, you look at a college campus where you have oftentimes athletes that are living with non athletes, and let's pretend you're the athlete and under the non athlete, and you and I are just having a casual conversation over a meal one day and you say to me, Hey, I sprained my ankle in practice today. And I'm like, That's interesting Are you going to play this weekend Are you going to be as to the to the level that your normal performing, because you don't know this, but in the back of my head, I'm going to I'm betting on your game, right. And if I know you're the starting point guard, and you're not playing, or at least you're you're, you're inhibited, like the odds are gonna flip. The lines don't know that, right? The public might not know that. But now I do. So unintended misuse of insider information, gambling threats, athletes are now dealing with huge amount of threats that are coming through social media to where there was an example in March Madness this past year where someone had a shot at the buzzer. And it took the lot, it took the outcome right within line. And a lot of people lost a lot of money. And people were going on social media and threatening the student athlete that made that shot, threats against their life, their family, etc. So that's going to continue to become an issue as well as more and more states legalized gambling. And the question becomes how do you quantify that? How do you measure it? How do you set the appropriate consequences if it is going on? Unfortunately, it only adds a challenge that's going to be able to be addressed quickly. But I appreciate Mike, President Baker, the new president NCAA, who's already said, this is a huge emphasis for us to be able to address the mental well being of our athletes,

how do you measure it?

Well, you got to have data. So we partnered with us integrity several months ago, which is just an incredible company that's been monitoring the betting lines of activity and helping to flag potential issues. They were they became very well known, especially in the aftermath of one of the scandals this past spring that they helped uncover. They're using our tip line now. And one of their goals is to be able to have data to be able to say, you know, these are the number of tips we're receiving, present that to the state gaming associations, and for the first time have something measurable around that, but I appreciate them taking the action in the first step towards solving that. But it's, it's just one step. Right. I think there's got to be a lot of them for us to really be able to quantify it.

Yeah, I agree. So when, you know, there's there's been a lot of evolutions as you put it, and some might call it pivots that a lot of companies need to make, although years or more, you know, branching out versus pivots. You know, when when you as a leader are deciding when to move resources or hire new resources or allocate resources to new products, new areas, versus doubling down on what's already working, how do you how do you make that decision? Like what is your thought process that you go through?

You know, we call it placing bets. And I I moved Really quickly, when I know it's time to move quickly, I probably move quickly too quickly when I should be moving slowly. But the vast majority the time I try to move slow, and to be calculated with some of those decisions. So if we were evaluating, for example, expansion into a new market, what we would not do is put out a big press release, hire a sales force, tell him to go to work and start cold calling prospects. Because I would still have doubts. Questions is probably the better word of do we have product market fit? What I'd rather do is go talk to five customers, potential customers, really dig in with them deeply and say, Hey, what do you think of this? Could it work? Can you scrutinize it, tell me what I'm not thinking about. And then pilot it with them for a short period and allowed them to tell me after using it, yeah, it's working great. If you could tweak this, it would be better. And once we have kind of the equivalent of 10 raving fans versus 100 People that are ho hum, then I know we have something worth repeating, that we can begin to scale from there. But I always think it's a it's a huge missed opportunity to go too quickly without really honing in on what your customers want.

So and you nailed it, you nailed it. But I'm sure there's been cases where even when you think you nailed it, there were unexpected challenges, right? Can you share an example of a time where maybe you committed a resource or committed spend, or whatever it is to a promising area or opportunity or bet as you speak, only to face some unexpected challenge or challenges and how you were able to navigate that situation?

You know, one example that comes to mind was when we been when we began to expand beyond the athletic department. We had a university that took it and ran with it, we did not. We didn't not plan kind of the comm strategy as much around them and really set forth the best practices and they just kind of put out a press release on their own and mass emailed all their students and staff and everyone else on campus. And they were really happy with the information they received. It was working exactly as planned, what none of us expected was because of us not doing a very thoughtful communication strategy. The students weren't aware of what we were. And some of the executives at the university level were unaware of it. And the students were kind of misconstruing it of Wait a second, is this a way for us to tattle on each other? And are you inhibiting on my privacy, and making it easier for people to report on x, y, z? And the, the answer to that is, well, we've always had hotlines, we've always had people to report like we're actually making it so you can be safer by having better ways to communicate with us. But, you know, the student newspaper did an article on like, you know, why is this university doing that? And it went in the opposite direction that none of us expected. Were the client, it was a unique position, right? The client was really happy of saying, Yeah, we're getting exactly what we want. But we're dealing with all this noise on the outside. And it was a really good learning for us the learning lesson for us, okay, now, when we implement a school, we're going to follow this checklist policy. One of them now is we want your student newspaper to help break the story, right? Let's give it to the students ahead of time. So they can communicate out what this is, what the positives are, etc. And to next any potential negative consequence, like what we experienced that first time. So that was, it was very unfortunate, but it was a learning experience for us to be able to figure out moving forward the best way to go about this.

Yeah, that's a great strategy. I love it. I love it. When you, you know, obviously growing a business growing your business has included taking on risk, especially financial, and I know you've largely bootstrapped to date, so Bravo on that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, with that comes, obviously managing capital efficiently to ensure growth, but also, you know, manage cash burn. So how do you how do you balance that as as a founder and how have you, especially as you started to invest in growth, or a new business areas?

Well, capital is way more expensive, early on versus now. And what I mean, when I say that is in those early days, like I remember, I'd get a check for a few $1,000. And I'm like, holy, holy, thank you, Jesus. This is amazing. Like, now we can pay off this bill we have that I didn't have the cash to be able to do so. It was a little bit of an extreme, but you have to keep your expenses as low as possible. In hindsight, I maybe would have changed a few of these, but one of them was I moved in with my parents, which was a tough question or that question, a tough conversation with my wife coming out of college. When we had just been married of, hey, can we go live with my parents for a while I'm not going to have a salary, we can't afford rent. Let's do it for six months that ended up becoming over two years. It was a little bit long, but at the same time, right, it was like to be able to keep our burns super, super low. Like that was one of the things I had to do. I never paid myself. And she worked, which allowed us to be able to live alongside not having the rent responsibility. So I'd say early on, like, question, every expense, spend as little as possible, and spend most of your time testing your hypothesis with your customers, right? Like we did, and we made mistakes, I wish we could go back and change. But the best thing we did was to get a MVP that we put in our customers hands. And I know some people disagree with this, but I still think it's the right route. Like, I don't mean MVP, like it barely works. And it's shaky wheels, and they're gonna deal with bugs now, like Get, get a good product out there. That fits what the customer is expecting. But then work with them. Like, even if it takes a little bit longer, right, like, let them tell you what's working well and what's not. And then go build something, don't do it, we made some mistakes of like building this shiny new feature where you spend 10s of 1000s of dollars doing it. And then you find out later like, it's not what the customer wants, or maybe even it's, it's, it's worse for the customer, right? It's not, it's not what they want. And it's making their problem, there's problems even greater. So I say in the early days, it's just so important to control your cash. If you're going down the path, we did write, we raised a little bit of money from friends and family have done nothing since then. If you raise an angel round, or a VC, whatever, different ballgame, I'm not your person to talk about that because I've never done it. But I will say, Now, almost 10 years later, that decision allowed me to control my own destiny, versus having an expectation from a group of investors that we have to have an exit soon, so they can get a return on their investment. I'm not knocking that at all. But that's the reality, right? It's like once you take someone's money, they're expecting a return. And we haven't had that pressure, like we've been able to grow that pace we want listen to our customers and stay in stay true to our mission and where we want to be.

So you mentioned question every expense when you look back at your expenses or or your investments into certain things? Is there one that that completely paid off that you're so happy you invested in? And maybe one that looking back, if you had you would have invested maybe in something a little bit different versus what you initially invested in?

Yeah. You know, one that comes to mind is we completely outsourced our technology already early on into a third party. And not being technical. At the time, I didn't realize that it was being written in a very outdated code. It was heavily on the back end database, database focus versus front end, let's get the UI and the UX, right, let's make it a good customer experience. And then we'll figure out the back end later. So we actually came to a halt, where we're like, this is not what we need. This is not doing what we needed to do and flush the code down the toilet. So it was, you know, six figures easily of money gone, that we had to just let go because it was not going to get the job done. So I'd say when you write code, make sure that you know what has been written in and that it's going to be scalable, and that there's a heavy, heavy, heavy focus on the UI and UX, right, like the back end. Yes, it matters, and it needs to scale. But if the customer doesn't like what they're dealing with, but none of it matters. So that was an expensive mistake. You know, one of the best decisions I made early on, and I'm very blessed in that being in Charlotte, we have a hub of an airport that goes to a lot of places. You know, if I had someone early on that I knew was interested. And they wanted to have a meeting. I go in person, like even if they say, Oh, we can do it via zoom, that's fine. I said no, I want to come. And you know, I spend three or $400 on a flight. I spend a couple $100 on a hotel. At the time actually, I should probably I should probably clarify. I didn't do hotels I did Airbnbs was cheap as possible. Like I was staying in someone's room in their house and it was 50 bucks that night or whatever. You know, a little bit of food or whatever i i said to myself, hey, if I spend 500 bucks, $1,000 whatever on this trip, but they land as a client like I'm going to easily especially if it's a multi year contract, make that up. So I would just fly everywhere I drive anywhere if it was local to get to meet these people because I knew at the end of the day, this was going to be a relationship business. And they were going to trust me more than anything. I'm the best person to sell my vision. I can do that in a room better than a zoom. So if I had the opportunity to get with anybody in person, I did it Across the country, local wherever. And honestly, Jim 10 years later that's reap debit dividends for us where I'll have people call me who I met 10 years ago and say, Hey, I just got this job at this place, we're ready to do something, can you help us and talk about like a good sales model like zero marketing, zero sales, just good customer relationships and strong relationships that lead to that based on someone's prior experience?

Excellent, dude. When when you look at the role of feedback from the athletic community will save you all organizations. What how is how has any event shaped, feed shaped shaped any decisions that you've made, either internally, or areas where you've invested in whether that be internal or external, anything stand out in terms of customer feedback, not not generating like product changes, but generally, maybe the way you went to market or shifting some of the things, some of the areas where you invested in any anything like that come to mind.

We know we just brought on a new cmo who's been fantastic. And it's been interesting to watch her kind of audit our go to market strategy, our communication strategy, our marketing strategy, etc. And one of the ways our customers have really helped us is to figure out where we need to show up, we need to show up at this specific conference, right? Like this is the conference every year that everyone goes to, you need to have a booth, you don't need to have a booth, you need to have a client dinner, right? Like we had someone tell us that early on, like it's a good idea to have a dinner, invite your customers and invite prospects, and I can really help sell it to someone that's maybe on the fence. Yeah, you're going to spend 1000 bucks on food and drinks or whatever. But first of all, it's going to keep all your current clients happy. And if you learn one new client off it, it's going to pay for itself, you know, based off multiple, so I'd say being really strategic on where you're spending your money digitally in person, etc, has very much been shaved off of our customers helping us and again, it's relationships, right? It's like, Hey, Jim, where do I need to go this year? What conferences are you going to be at? Where do you consume your information? And then us being able to respond appropriately based on what you share with us?

can really sense. Last question, before we hop in our founder, five. So, you know, the there's a lot of founders, a lot of business owners listening in today, you know, looking for ways to make their business the most valuable version of itself, right? And what advice would you give to set business owner that's looking to make a difference in an established industry, like collegiate sports, right? Not necessarily one where the industry is growing with you. But one where the industry has been grown is is mature, in its essence, and, and a way to navigate that situation?

Yeah, you know, I'm going to beat a little bit of a dead horse, but I just I'm so I'm so passionate about this focus, it's people and relationships. And if you look at an industry like college athletics, and I had people telling me this early on, but I don't think I understood the significance of it until I got into it. It's a small industry, and people are constantly moving from different universities to others as they get promotions, new jobs, their staff changes, etc. So you know, over the course of that happening at scale, you can be pretty confident that any school you're talking to has a connection to someone that you know, so I'd say like, it's going to take more time. And I've been doing this 10 years, and I'm the image of this, but what you don't want to do is come in and just start scaling, like cold calling cold emailing, right, I would say find one that you can, that's going to take a shot on you work like heck to service them, listen to them, get on the plane, get on the car, whatever you have to do, right, like sit with them as much as possible, take them out to lunch, take them out to dinner, like really focus on what their needs are. Nail it, and then scale it right, like nail it with them. And then you can begin to go to others and feel confident that you have a repeatable process, versus trying to balance a bunch at once. And if you do 10 Things hohem you're gonna get 10 hohem results versus if you do one really well then you have the opportunity to do the next nine in a similar way.

Awesome. All right, let's let's hop into founder five. So first question, top KPI or metric that you are relentlessly focused on.

Yeah, I know this is the the buzz metric for SAS. And I don't mean just to use the simple one, but for us, it's really ARR and I love annual recurring revenue because it encompasses all facets of our business, right? If we're not retaining customers ARR suffers if we're not adding new customers ARR doesn't grow. So to me, I'm constantly tracking AR Because that's really the North line of, are we retaining customers? Are we doing new revenue with those customers? And then are we growing our customer base? And if that continues to go up, then I know what the company is in a healthy state, if it's not going up, and I'm going, alright, are we losing customers? Is our sales not doing what it needs to do? etc?

All right, yeah. I was expecting maybe you would say live saved, but maybe that's in 10 years.

Not really, is right now with what they are.

Alright, so the second one is top tip for growth stage founders like yourself.

It really what I've found in the last year, especially as we've grown beyond college is you're gonna get to the point where you're used to doing everything, and you can't do it anymore. And one of the best decisions I made was to hire really good seasoned senior people enrolls into let them thrive. So I mentioned the CMO person earlier, she's been fantastic. And she's done this before. She knows the playbook and she's executing it. I'd also say salespeople are gold. So if you can find really good salespeople, they pay for themselves and they grow arr. And from a SaaS company that's valued off multiples of ARR. Like they are. They are some of the most important people within your organization. Everyone's important, right. But salespeople can keep a leaky ship moving forward, they can help buy you time to figure things out. So I'd say what the position I am now find really good seasoned leaders and really set up a sales process where everyone can thrive. But what I'll end with is, I still do sales. So I've not gotten away from that. I love it. At the end of the day, I have to sell the vision sometimes. And I think founders sometimes step away and remove themselves from sales and that's where issues can happen.

Revenue can cure all problems.

It can, it can.

Alright, what is a favorite book or podcast that has helped you to grow as a founder? Yeah.

I'm gonna give you one but I'm just gonna say quickly that I've really in the last couple of years enjoyed autobiographies. I've read Elon Musk's. That wasn't an autobiography. But biographies. I guess I should say more generally, I enjoyed Phil Knight's Shoe Dog. So I'd say as much as possible. I've really enjoyed reading about people's stories, because I can probably relate to it on my own. I'm still working my way through it. But James clears, you know, atomic habits. It's just been amazing. And I've been able to apply that to my life and not just the business world, right? It's Hey, having a consistent bedtime and setting a routine of what you do in the morning. I've seen enormous benefits, just as a result of clearly defining my habits and making sure that I'm staying true to those every single day.

Good for you. All right piece of advice that counters traditional wisdom.

Raising money is not as success always. I think oftentimes, like you see the press releases and announcements of a this company raised a bunch of money. And what I've realized after doing this for so long, is that's not the goal, right? It helped me help you get to your goal. But that's not your goal, you have to figure out what's your goal, and what's going to get you there. And for me, that was never going to get me to my goal. If anything, it might have inhibited me from getting Michael, because I'm nine years in, right, that's a really long time for a fund to have an investment, we would have had a return a long time ago that may or may not have been what I wanted. So I'd say like, in your world, if you are a business owner or trying to scale, don't seek funding initially, unless you are very clear on what your repeatable process is. And what you're going to do after you get the money, like a much better route is to focus on what you want to do, and to be very nimble with how you want to get there. And then maybe you get to a point that you raise money, but it doesn't have to happen in that initial part.

All right, last one, what is going to be the title of your autobiography when people are reading it?

That's a good question. You know, the the word that I've always applied to myself is determination. And I just think that in life, keeping your head down and staying after something over and over and over against all odds when things become hard when you're questioning whether you should be doing this, you're not. Luck is great, you know, other things that might affect your outcome are great, but if you're not determined, and you don't keep your head down, then it's just not going to happen. So maybe determination is not the word but that's immediately what came to mind. It's just some type of focus on what you're doing and relentlessly pursuing it through through throughout all the odds, no matter what, what comes to your way.

Nice. i Oh, you've given a ton to our listeners today, David, so thank you for that. But also time for a little bit of self promotion. How can those listening help you out?

Yeah, I'd say if you are looking for ways to enhance your communication within your organization, better ways for people to be able to share feedback concerns, etc. We work with companies of all sizes, not even unique to just sports anymore. would love the opportunity to be able to work with you. I'm sure many of you have, perhaps children and youth sports too. That's another route that we're going and providing a service to that group as well. So our website is www dot rail response.com. Please feel free to give us a shout. We'd love to hear your ideas, your questions, your feedback. And certainly if there's a way that we can partner with you, we'd love to be open to it.

Excellent. All right. David Chadwick, real response, great things happening, great things continuing to happen. Thank you for joining us on the dirt. And thank you, David, for joining us.

Thanks, Jim. appreciate all your hard work and raising a spotlight to this area that I know a lot of founders and business owners like myself.

You bet. Absolutely. Take care. If you love today's episode of the dirt, make sure you rate it on your favorite platform. And if you really liked us, go ahead and leave us an honest review. Thanks again for tuning in to the dirt