Episode 8 Nathan Usher | DealerSocket
Nate joins as employee #22 and later becomes Head of Product at DealerSocket.
Nate Usher saw a company go from 22 employees to over 1,000 employees during his 15 year tenure at DealerSocket. Starting as a traveling consultant helping dealerships install the software, then leading a team of consultants, and eventually becoming the Head of Product, Nate saw it all. See what it's like to see a startup get purchased by one of the most successful private equity firms out there - Vista Equity.
Interview transcript:
Nathan Usher:
Somewhere along the lines. I had this crazy idea when I was on the consulting side, that I could run engineering better than anybody else. I basically wrote an email to the owner of the company, Brad Perry, who was the CTO at the time, I can be your next VP of engineering. And granted, I didn't know anything about engineering and he wrote back and he said, are you serious? And I said, yeah, I'm serious. I think that, I think I could do this.
Braydon Anderson:
This is The Early Years, a show about influential early employees of the most successful companies and their stories that have made a lasting impact. I'm Braydon Anderson and on today's show how our guests helped a company that makes a CRM for auto dealers get acquired by one of the most successful private equity firms, Vista Equity.
Braydon Anderson:
Imagine coming out of college with the intent of working for a well known resume building giant company, but for fun. And because a friend of yours tells you that you should take a look at this company, you decide to take an interview at a startup, a startup that when you go to the job interview, doesn't even have furniture throughout the office. Today, we're joined by Nate Usher and that's exactly what happened to him. Nate, always plan on joining a company that would define his resume for years to come. And frankly he did, but not as he had originally planned Navy sides to me with this startup DealerSocket and becomes employee 22.
Nathan Usher:
I joined the company in 2005 and I was employee number 22. Um, you know, and, and coming out of college for me, I mean, I was a guy that, uh, went to college during the, you know, during the night I worked during the day, I worked 40 hours during the day and went to college at night. And so it's that old, you know, what is it, Tommy Boy that says, "Hey, most people graduated in 10 years, you know, and they're called doctors." Um, it took me a while to graduate. I mean, I moved from Washington state down to California and had to basically start all over again, but, you know, put myself through school. And as I was putting myself through school, I was going to work or going to school at night, studying marketing, um, and doing my marketing degree. And so coming out of college, I wanted to be a brand manager. I love design, love, brands, love, marketing, and interviewed for a few different companies. Um, Bosch was one of them. I got the tour of their, you know, where they had all the appliances and their showroom. And I thought that's where I wanted to go. And he got a call from a guy named Darren Harris, who was a consultant at the time said, Hey, there's this really cool company. That's a startup company. You should at least go take, you know, take a look at and talk to him. So I took him up on it and uh, Hey, you know, I'm a kid coming out of college and I want to get a good job. And I showed up to the office and there was no furniture. And I'm just thinking, I'm thinking about my parents, right. They just, you know, I just went through school and my, he see my parents like Harry, what kind of job are you in again, coming in to work for? You know, my dad wants me to work a year or Boeing or something like that, but I walk in and there's no furniture and there's just me and this and this in the receptionist. And, uh, you know, I looked around and it was just tables and laptops and chords. And, you know, I met, uh, you know, a guy by Brad for the first time at Jonathan for the first time, um, met a guy named Cameron Darby who would later be one of my first bosses there. And, you know, I talked to all these guys and caught the vision, you know, heard the story, caught the vision and just, you know, just that feeling, you know, overwhelmingly that I just felt like I knew these guys before. Wow. In some way. And that's really kind of what put me over the edge, um, is, you know, that feeling and then, you know, Brandon, I had this, I had this goal coming out of college and this is sounds ridiculous. But my goal out of college was two things. One was to have my own laptop. But my, my second goal was to have my own Blackberry to have a Blackberry phone paid for. And this is back in the day when it was not cool or I guess it was cool to put the Blackboard very on your, on your belt and check it.
Braydon Anderson:
But was that actually ever cool? Like, let's be honest here.
Nathan Usher:
I think it was, I think it was cool because that's just how you did it. That's how you knew you're a pro you know, it's kind of a Rite of passage, essentially. Like I had a roommate when I was in college and, you know, he was a big time lawyer for Latham and Watkins and he would come home late at night and he had his Blackberry and I'm like, Ooh, that looks awesome. That's, that's how, you know, you're, you've made it when you got your black days. So I got sold on that. You know, I got sold on fact that, uh, they would, uh, give me a laptop, a Blackberry and let me travel the world as a consultant. So, uh, you know, it, it was, uh, everything felt right and definitely was about the people.
Braydon Anderson:
That's kind of what I'm curious about. Like, what was the thing that sets you over? Was it again, this connection that you felt to go and join something that was probably you're, you know, you're employee number 22. It's not big.
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. I mean, you know, what's funny is like my whole life, I wanted to work for a big company. You know, I wanted to be that guy that, you know, put in the hours, you know, climb the ladder or worked for a big name company that I can, I can really tout and say, Hey, I made it. And you know, it just, I never, in a million years wanted to, or expected to work for a smaller company. I mean, I was, I was trying to go for the bigger companies, like I mentioned, um, you know, but when I got in there, like you can feel in a startup and this has kind of been my experience, um, you know, in my career, but you can just feel something different in, in an entrepreneurial world, uh, that I really didn't expect. And when I got in there, you were all sitting in the same room, you've got your support people there. You've got your sales people in the next room over, and it's just that connection with everybody around you, working hard, very casual, but yet, you know, very entrepreneurial and this is going to sound stupid. But like, you know, when I was in the office, I could hear the support, people talking to the consultants that were either they in Texas, in New York and Arizona, wherever we were doing installs. And, uh, you know, I could hear them talking as a team together on the phone. I was like, man, I, that sounds rad like that. That's cool. I mean, there weren't any titles. There weren't any like lanes or no silos, no, no politics. It was just get the job done and do it the best I gravitated to that. And the story goes, and you know, I've told this story a thousand times and a lot of people in DealerSocket knew the story, but Jonathan and Brad went to a dealership and said, "Hey, here's a CRM that we built for your industry, for your dealerships. You can enter in these, these customers and you can manage them here." And the story goes that the dealership owner basically said, "You've completely gotten it all wrong. Like, this is ridiculous. You guys don't know the answers." And Jonathan and Brad said, "Hey, well, what if we worked for free? And we sell cars, we service cars. And all we ask is that we can ask all the questions in the world. Um, and we get to build a CRM that works for your auto dealership." And, you know, they wanted to work for free so they didn't get fired. Um, so, you know, so they can build the technology. And that's a story that was told, uh, from you and multiple well people, definitely the earlier employees at DealerSocket for years. And that, and to be honest, that story alone was kind of the foundation of the culture of dealer socket and really kind of set the tone for who we were, which was understand the customer, be entrepreneurial, be innovative, you know, Jonathan and Brad, I can't say enough good things about those guys. They're, they're just true leaders. And they saw the vision to have the foresight for what needed to happen, you know, over six months, eight months they built DealerSocket. Um, so
Braydon Anderson:
I'm curious, what did you do when you first started there? Like, tell me, uh, you had mentioned briefly about being a consultant. Tell me more about that.
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. So, um, there's about a team of, uh, six to eight people. And as a consultant, uh, we were the ones, like I said, that would go out and, and, and talk to all the dealerships across the country. We travel every week. Uh, we go set up installs, uh, we take our product, right, which was a configurable product for the dealership, train them on it, set it up, um, teach them how to use it, showing them the value. So we were those guys, we were presenting to them. We were helping them set it up. We were, you know, working with them. We're just basically selling the vision of, of the magic of CRM for our dealers. And, you know, this is during a time where it's brand new. And so I remember, uh, you know, I remember going to dealerships we're in no kidding. I would have to teach people how to use a mouse. No way. Yeah. I would say, look, that mouse, you move it and you click it.
Braydon Anderson:
And this isn't 1980, this is like the two thousands, right?
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. You know, in our demographic, which are very honest, awesome, great workers. I mean, you know, guys that just want to sell cars and we wanted to teach him how to do a better. And so they weren't using a lot of technology at the time. We weren't the first player to bring CRM to the industry, but, um, we tried to do a better than everybody else, obviously. I mean, that was the goal. And we definitely had the people to train them. So our consulting team, uh, throughout the years was, was very much the glue of how successful we can make our dealers and how successful we can be as a company. It was truly what the consultants were doing at those dealerships, building the trust, teaching them how to use it. Uh, and that's where I started. And that's really where I love these guys that I started the company with and started this consulting team with me. We were kind of just all over the country trying to figure it out. And we're growing. I mean, every, every week we'd seen the deals and we'd go to wherever we needed to go across the country to do that. And, you know, we shared hotel rooms and ate together and we went to games together. I mean, we were trying to basically change the world when it came to just making those dealerships better.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Well, and I'm curious, so you mentioned you weren't the first one, uh, like, was it a competitive landscape, right? Like it's, this, it's a pretty new idea to bring the CRM to the car dealership world, like CRMs in general were really new. Like, were you competing against Salesforce or was it other like niche?
Nathan Usher:
Yeah, I know again dating me. And this is way before Salesforce, man. I mean, it's funny because the company was named FireSocket. It wasn't actually named DealerSocket. Our goal was to actually go into multiple verticals to go quote unquote horizontal rather than vertical. Um, and this is probably a debate for any DealerSocket legacy employee. Um, I'd love to talk with Jonathan about it, but, you know, it's kind of the debate, you know, should we have stayed horizontal and gone into multiple industries, you know, like mortgages and construction and all this stuff, or was it better to go vertical? You know, I mean, we had a lot of success on that, but the reason I say that is because you brought up Salesforce sales, Salesforce was a customized CRM for everyone, right. And this is way before Salesforce, Salesforce caught wind. But to your, to your question, yeah, there was like two or three, there was like two or three big players out there. Um, company called higher gear that when we went to our first conference, uh, we didn't even have a booth, you know, we were, we couldn't even get tickets into the conference and the da, you know, we're, we're handing out free coffee tickets, just write down all out in the lobby. I mean, probably breaking all the rules there and we're just hustling. Right. And this and this, I remember higher gear having this massive booth in a, in the floor and they were the big player. And, you know, I think back on that and kind of to a lot of guys come to me and say, Hey, we gotta find a new business. You gotta have a new idea. It's not really that it's just doing it better. I think, you know, and, you know, we kinda just did it better with better technology and our people were, we're just kind of the, the thread that those consultants out there, we really touch the customer and made them feel better and everything was great. So, I mean, it was, it was just trying to, you know, give the best customer experience possible. One of the things, um, you know, that we saw early on just the adoption, uh, that kind of just stands out to me is we, I remember, uh, talking to Mazda Mazda approached us pretty early on and said, Hey, you guys are a great technology solution. And I just remember Mazda coming up and saying, Hey, we want to start booking service appointments. And that was, that was like an innovative thing. Like the book of service appointment online, you know what I mean? Like we take advantage of it so much today on like what we do, but honestly, to book a service appointment online, we had like tons of meetings with Mazda, um, had this opportunity. And I remember, uh, running point on that project to set up these appointments. And there, it was so crude and we had this like little, you know, scheduler thing on their website to book an appointment. But you know, it's funny, I think about this all the time, because it, we knew that it was a needed feature. We knew that it was going to happen in the future, but when we first started doing it, it just didn't take traction. You know, it was like two appointments here, seven appointments week. They're marketing the crap out of it. But you know, after a while, I think a lot of times it's just an education. It's just an education play. You know, when you're bringing out technology, it's just an education and an understanding. And a, it's just funny to me to look back and think about those first trickle, then appointments that happen today. It's, it's just how we do business.
Braydon Anderson:
But yeah, I can't even imagine, like anytime I go to a car dealership for service, there's no way I'm calling. Like I do it all online. I can't fathom another way.
Nathan Usher:
Yeah, yeah. And that honestly, like that was cutting edge. I mean, people were like, no, one's going to book a service appointment online. I mean, it was just cutting edge and so basic now, but that's how technology evolves.
Braydon Anderson:
Totally. That's cool. So in this process, you, you know, you're consulting, you're helping these dealerships get set up and eventually you start building a team and you become a manager. Tell me about that and what that process was.
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. That was a kind of a horrific process, to be honest, horrific. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's everybody, everybody wants to be a leader. Everyone wants to be in a manager and I was, I was in that boat. And, uh, I just remember, and this is funny. I just remember my friend that worked at ADP who was a manager and she told me, she was like, yeah, it's just, you have to like, worry about everybody else. Like, you don't worry about yourself anymore. It's about everybody else. And I was like, you know, it doesn't sound right, but, so I kind of just had that in the back of my mind, but just didn't think I was applying to me. And eventually I was called into the office. You can see, Oh, you want to make me a manager. And two things happened that were kinda kind of resonated. It kind of stuck with me for forever. One is, yeah. I'd love to be a manager. I mean, obviously you want to progress and Excel in our careers. And I took it and was excited about it. And I believe the next question after that was, so are we going to fire this guy? That's now on your team? I mean, do we need to get rid of him? Like, what do you want to do with that? And he instantly went into like business, you know, instantly it was like, okay, are we going to let this guy go? And I was like a branding manager. I was like, ah, I don't know for sure. I mean, how do we do that? But it instantly hit me like, okay, now, now you have to manage, right? Like now you have to make sure that these guys are doing the right thing. And I remember going back to my desk and they made the announcement via email and Hey, Nate's new manager, blah, blah, blah. And this is his team. You guys that are on this list report now to Nate. And I just, honestly, this is going to sound weird. As soon as I got, as soon as that announcement went out, I instantly started getting emails directly to me from that team that was, Hey, I'm going to need help on this, or I'm going to be on PTO, or I need you to back me up on this one. And honestly, as these emails came in that morning, I just, I think I've zoned out for like the whole morning. I just sat at my desk and process. What just happened, you know, kind of dismantle of like, you're a manager now, like you're, you're managing people and it's not about you anymore. It's about, it's about them. Um, and it's about your team and making sure your team succeeds. And I think it kinda hit me for the first time in my life that now I'm responsible for people, which I think is a good thing. I mean, I think that's a natural reaction and you know, I don't know how long I sat at my desk to process that. But after that I was like, all right, let's go. Yeah. But honestly, like from a management standpoint, I mean, I learned a lot, you know, I had almost kind of school of hard knocks and how to really work with definitely was not perfect as a manager. Um, I think one of the things I learned is you gotta give them credit. I mean, I read, I read good to great, which is a fantastic book. And you know, it's about giving other people the credit, getting them in the right seats on the bus. And I learned that giving them the credit, which is so cliche again, it's kind of hard to do because you don't want somebody to be better than you. Um, and there's still people I see in my career in it that I've done that. But at the end of the day, it truly is not about you. It's, it's about building the team, which essentially in return makes you better or makes you look better or feel better, or actually show better in the, in the industry, in the company when you can see your team Excel. And that was a, that was a huge lesson.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. It's such a catch 22 because you don't think that it will, you don't think that, but you're exactly right. Like this, the quicker you put other people above you and like praise them. Like, it's amazing what it in turn does for you, even though, you know, that's not very altruistic, but it's still, it's, it's the truth. Like it just naturally will happen. It's very interesting, but I'm actually really curious. Did you end up having to fire that guy?
Nathan Usher:
Uh, yeah. We let him go.
Braydon Anderson:
What was that like?
Nathan Usher:
Uh, I mean, it's never easy, right? Like it's um, and that's part of the learning process. I mean, uh, you really, it and the thing is you, you want to manage people, right? You want to manage people up. You never want to let anybody go. Um, or you want to put people on the right seat of the bus and what I've learned over the years as a manager and as a leader is, um, a lot of times it's trying to find their place and trying to find their place in the company. A lot of people have their natural, uh, talents or their, their bright spots. And you really just want to put them in the right seats, the bus. Yeah. Never, never fun though. I mean, I've seen even the most pro approach managers that have done this for years, you know, it's just never, it's never easy to let somebody go. It's exhausting. Yeah. You never want to do it.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. And then eventually you, you leave this kind of consulting role, um, to do something else. And I'm curious for a couple of things, first of all, how that happened. And then secondly, um, what it's like to kind of shift roles within a company.
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. So funny, great question. Funny story. Um, somewhere along the lines, I had this crazy idea when I was on the consulting side that I could run engineering better than anybody else
Braydon Anderson:
Wait, but like why, what made you think this?
Nathan Usher:
I was, I was arrogant, young, ambitious. Now what was happening is, yeah, it sounds great. Right. You know, anybody could do it. Um, so what happened was I'm always been, at least for me, like I've always been the guy that wants to learn everything. Right. I want to be able to experience different roles, different positions. I always kind of thought for the future, right? Like if I was to go either start a company or work for another company, what do I want to offer them? I just come from this background of, Hey, get as much experience as you can, um, and make it happen and make sure you can fall back on other opportunities, whether it's sales, operations, product, whatever that is. And part of that, through, through that thought process, we were seeing VPs of engineering, a dealer socket cycle every two years. And we worked a lot with the engineering team. And I basically wrote an email to the owner of the company, Brad Perry, who was the CTO at the time. And basically the gist of the email was I can be your next VP of engineering because I know the product I know in the industry. I just need you to help me understand and teach me what it means to be, uh, on the engineering side. So I, wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I could find that email. It'd be very awesome to laugh at every once in a while, but I, and he wrote back and he said, are you serious?
Braydon Anderson:
Which is probably a reasonable response.
Nathan Usher:
Oh, completely reasonable. I mean, if somebody said that to me today, I mean, it'd be like, of course I'd be like what an ambitious individual, but then I'd be like, wow, where, where is that coming from? And so he wrote back and he said, are you serious? And I said, yeah, I'm serious. I think that, I think I could do this. And, and granted, I didn't know anything about engineering. All I knew was I wanted to be, I wanted to learn the skill of technology I wanted to be. I wanted to have that skill set of developing technology. And I really didn't know what that was. But the point of the story is dealer socket. A couple of years later was looking for somebody to be the director of product management, which is, I had no idea what that meant at the time, but I got a call from Brad and he said, Hey, will you come be my director of product? And apparently the story is they were in a board meeting. And, um, when they were trying to think who could be the director of product inside of DealerSocket one of the executives, I guess, I guess my email kind of got around because their executives piped up and said, well, what about NATO? She was email where he wanted to be the VP of engineering. Maybe he, maybe he can go for it. And, uh, yeah, that email came back and they basically called me and said, Hey, we want you to be the director of product management for DealerSocket, which I didn't know what it was, to be honest at the time, but it sounded cool. And I thought I was going to be like Steve jobs. So I said, sure, I'll take it sounds great.
Braydon Anderson:
But dude, that's amazing. Like all of that came from you sending an audacious email.
Nathan Usher:
Uh, very ambitious, audacious, ignorant, aggressive pie in the sky email. Yeah. And it's funny cause you know, to not go off on a total tangent, um, I was interviewing with Nike at one point in time in my career. And uh, they asked, they told, they asked me to, to tell me, they asked me how I got in that product management role. I told them that story and the Nike guys loved it. They were like, Oh yeah, just do it. You know, you're the guy of, of course we love that. I've got a couple of call backs, but it didn't work out. But you know, they love that portion, which was, uh, you know, throw it out there. I mean, it worked, it came back and I was wondering if, if, if I never sent that email, I probably would have never had that opportunity make straight up.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. It's worth it to try is essentially what I take from that. It's like, yeah, it was probably a little embarrassing at the time when you, when he laughed at you with that response, but look what it turned into and it's, it's just, it doesn't hurt to try. How did you learn how to do this role? You had no product management background, you had no engineering background. What did you do to learn how to do this role?
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. Yeah. As you say, I'm sure Jonathan, Brad would be like, yeah, we made a horrible mistake by even giving that guy. They're all. Um, yeah, I had, no, I had no idea to be honest what a product manager was, but I thought I was going to be somewhat of the, you know, the Apple guys on the commercials talking about the phone and what they do, which is somewhat of that. Right. But, um, yeah, I, I got in there, I, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Um, the whole engineering process, the agile scrum development life cycle, uh, you know, there was no learning curve. They just taught me in front of version one and said, Hey, this is where you're gonna write stories as your backlogs. And honestly, I had no idea what I was doing. And so in the meantime, uh, more from fear, probably I just scoured books, I scoured books. I scoured articles. I scoured, you know, anything I'd get my hands on. And I think one of the biggest things that I did and which it was super cool is I just went on to LinkedIn and I reached out to guys that had director of product management and their title. I think I got ahold of a, somebody at StubHub to be honest, either StubHub or Ticketmaster or something like that. And they called me back and they talked to me and it was, it was awesome. And, you know, I've had that same experience with people that have reached out to me that I still randomly talked to that didn't had no idea who I was and they reached out to me and it was kind of the pay it forward and it was great. And you know, that probably was very, very helpful, uh, to me in that aspect.
Braydon Anderson:
So I'm curious, how, how did it go? How was the experience of being the product manager or the director of product management?
Nathan Usher:
Um, yeah, I'm not sure if you can see my gray hair. I'm not sure if it's coming through on that, but, uh, that's where, that's how it went, man. Oh man. But, uh, you know, it w it's, it's one of the toughest jobs, I think product and development are easily, uh, CTO, VP of product CPO, definitely one of the two hardest positions in the company. And I'm not just saying that cause I did it, but it's, it truly is. I respect anybody that goes down that road. And, you know, I had, I had a counterpart as a VP of engineering, a guy that just lived and breathed agile scrum, and he was a driver, right. Like we got along probably 50% of the time, but, uh, but we competed how we, I think it was a healthy competition. Um, he was pretty huge. He drove me, um, early on to, to understand agile scrum, to understand what a product manager was. And I fought it tooth and nail, right. Like I didn't know what I was doing. I tried to control my world and my enterprise and, you know, it took some time. I mean, I remember going into the product management team that I adopted at the, and they just, they didn't leave. The office, never went out and talked to customers. I mean, they were kind of business analysts that turned product into product managers. And, you know, over time I brought in guys that, that I took from the consulting team that had that, just that edge for product management, that understanding of product management, um, and you know, kind of cycle the other product managers out, uh, brought this new team in and we kind of all learned together and really focused on that.
Nathan Usher:
And Brad Perry was probably so patient with me and it took a lot of trust for him to eventually give me the keys to the castle, uh, to a guy that had no idea how to develop technology. And I think the craziest thing for any product manager, the craziest thing is when you actually develop design a product and you give it to a developer and they're like, okay, all right, we'll build it. And you're like, Oh wait, wait, wait, hold on. Maybe I should think through this, I guess, build that and put it into my product. I remember I built a texting solution or designed it and they just built it. And I was like, wait, you're just going to, you can build that. And so it just, the process was amazing. It's hard, you know, cause you have to, you have to kind of meet the needs of your internal clients, which are the executives. And um, yeah, it's hard. It's hard to charismatically say no and meet their expectations.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. That's what I was going to say is like, I feel like the best product managers I've ever worked with are the ones that know how to say no. And then also how to say yes to the right things. Right. And I'm sure that process is really difficult to know what to say no to like, you know, recognizing that there are multiple data points coming at you. Did you, did you see that as well?
Nathan Usher:
100%. I mean, it's, it's so, so in my situation, nobody had ever run product before. Um, you know, Brad and Jonathan built a product, so they had their expectations. Um, again, they were both very patient with us learning and you know, it's very difficult, you know, you learn how to charismatically, like read the room and find out what the needs are and be able to articulate what those are in a care as any, I say charismatic and my product team is probably rolling their eyes right now because I said it all the time, but you can't just come in and say, no, Hey, the sales person wants this feature. No we're not going to do that. You have to kind of firmly charismatically say, no, this is what we're working on. Let me show you this. And we can get to that and we can stack rank it. And so it's just all this process terminology that when you're in the hot seat and executive boardroom, and they're asking you, when's the target date? Or when's this? I mean, it's, you're learning, you're learning a lot about business. You're learning about product, but the team that I had, I mean, we all learned together and those guys work their tails off and uh, you know, kind of, I don't want to take credit, but I love the fact that they have all these product managers that just became product managers as a team with me, they're all at Carvana and Podium. I mean, they're all over the place, uh, either as directors or VPs. And it's just cool to see that they came from DealerSocket.
Braydon Anderson:
It goes back to what you were talking about earlier, right. When you started managing a team and building them up and helping them grow, like that's what you want to see. That's awesome.
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Braydon Anderson:
So what, what happened after that, uh, after you were director of product management, how long did you do that for, and then what? What was next?
Nathan Usher:
Yeah, I did that for, I did that for four years. Um, and we built some fantastic products. I mean, we built multiple product lines, uh, that really serve the company well. And, um, you know, it was, it was a great accomplishment. And then after that, I moved into a different roles, um, of, to further along some of the experience that I needed to have and wanting to get, I moved into more of a business development role, uh, to work directly with the OEMs. Um, you know, at some level, uh, there was a new leader that came in over product. Um, and that's tough. Right. You know that, yeah, I think at the time and we will talk about it a little bit, but you know, we got purchased by a private equity company and, uh, they wanted to see seasoned or experienced or relationships and leaderships. And that was, you know, I got replaced. I think you're a place I just didn't get the position I wanted and, you know, talking openly about it. It's just, that's part of your career. Right? Like sometimes people are gonna come in and, and take a different route and it's okay. You know, it's what the company feels needs to happen. And that's a,
Braydon Anderson:
That's an impressive perspective because I don't think a lot of people have that perception.
Nathan Usher:
Well, it's, it's taken me years,
Braydon Anderson:
Some gray hairs and some years, yeah.
Nathan Usher:
Give me so many years, but you know, it's, it's, I've seen it with new companies that I've come to you and I've been the new person that come in, comes in with the experience. And so I get it, um, you know, that person didn't last, you know, in that position, but that's okay. I mean, it's, it's just one of those things where a lot of times in business, you have the legacy employees and then you have people with experience, you know, and sometimes your legacy guys, you know, the ins and outs where they've been, they graduated from college and this other person that comes in from the outside is, has got a new, fresh perspective and it may work and it may not. Yeah, it's just, that's just the nature of business. And so that being said, I just saw my way of doing something different. You know, I definitely don't want to step on somebody's toes. It has a different vision of product. I mean, I think a product you is a VP of product or a director of product or a CPO. You kinda know how you want to drive. And I'd been building that team for four years. It was kind of just, Hey, I'm going to go do something new. And I was stoked to take on a new role is as far as business development and be kind of a national account leader when it comes through our partnerships across the country, I'm working with some of the largest dealer groups out there and the largest OEMs. Yeah.
Braydon Anderson:
That's cool. Well, at this point you now have seen a lot of the company, right? Like you start out in consulting, you then do products, you then do business development. Then from there, you even go into more of an operations type role, right.
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. That was an interesting, yeah, that was interesting time. And, and maybe, you know, um, kind of the segue to that is, you know, dealer socket kind of going back to our culture or history, you know, after a few years we got, we got purchased by private equity company, uh, Vista equity partners, and, you know, it's, it just changed the game and, you know, Vista, you know, any private equity company, they come in with their playbook, um, to, to grow the business. And, you know, Vista has a pretty amazing pedigree. I mean, they have great portfolio companies. Uh, they've had great success on selling different companies. Robert Smith is a CEO. He came from, he came from Goldman Sachs and has a pretty rad history on, you know, how he basically saw an opportunity to, to grow these smart, small portfolio companies and midsize software companies and grow them, uh, to, uh, improve them and to sell them. And he brought that, you know, that idea to Goldman and, you know, they, they turned him down and he left with his best analyst and now they're multi multimillionaires. And he's, I think the richest African-American in the world, if not the U S I'm not sure where he's at right now, but he's rich, he's got money. So, I mean, they have a good pedigree, right. And the guys that came in this, uh, you know, on the product side, I was working with guys that worked at Microsoft, you know, Martin Taylor, who is in Mark town, these guys that are just amazingly sharp, but they take a different direction. Right? Like they, they, they run their playbook. Um, they, they teach a lot of great things, you know, manage your costs, your business, uh, more of the, you know, the hardcore, like manage the, manage the business, right? Like move out the bottom five to 10%. I mean, make sure that you're really, really cutting cost and you're in, you're being efficient. So a lot of things that you would learn, but, um, definitely took away from the culture, right? Like the culture that we started in, I mean, we worked in our room together and it just kinda took a different turn. And so that being said, they made a lot of changes, um, to the operations and these changes were, you know, good and bad. And, um, uh, at the time that the COO that was running it left the company and a guy by the name of Darren Harris, who actually was the guy that I mentioned, you know, talk to me about DealerSocket he, he assumed the CEO role. And it was just kind of a, a rad time and experience because, you know, at the time it operations where they were struggling with a few things, um, they brought in some new leadership, you know, they changed different, different ways of doing business and, you know, support, you know, things are going the opposite direction. And Darren Harris, you know, I'll never forget it. He basically put together his team of leaders and his team of leaders were kind of legacy DealerSocket guides helped start the company and, and brought them in to take on and come back to the operations side of the business and me included. And so I got back into the operation side.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. That's awesome. And, and so you just, you kind of alluded to this, um, this was your last role at DealerSocket. Um, so you've obviously since left, what, what kind of led to your decision and to what you're doing now?
Nathan Usher:
It's a great question or a little bit of a loaded question. Um, um, you know, we started to see people leave. It's, you know, I'm a sports guy. I played sports my whole life and, you know, I played soccer a time and anytime you start to see your teammates leave and you're, you were on that team, it's just hard, you know, it's, it's hard to see these people leave for different opportunities. I think I've kinda, I kinda reached, um, a little bit of my max potential. At least I felt I dealer socket. I felt like it was a good run. And, you know, I, I believe that there was just a timing to it. I just, I loved what I did. You know, Jonathan was out of the company. Some of my closest friends were out of the company and a little bit for me. Uh, I didn't have as much as the passion, um, based on things that are happening well, I was there for 15 years. Yeah. Two years is a pretty big run
Braydon Anderson:
In today's world. I feel like that's so rare to work at a company for 15 years.
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. Yeah. It goes against my dad's philosophy of changing jobs every two to three years. So, I mean, he looks at me, he was like, I don't even know how you did it, but I loved it. I loved the company. I loved what I did. I loved the people.
Braydon Anderson:
What, what is maybe one piece of advice you'd give to someone that's currently in the early years of a startup?
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the wine one piece of advice, or I guess, you know, he gave me a platform I'll, I'll give a couple, uh, you know, a couple pieces here. Um, you know, it's, it's always interesting. You always need to do something for, for your growth, uh, for your passion, what you want to do. Uh, they always say that you should actually take an opportunity for the opportunity to grow and to, to do something better rather than for salary. Right. Um, I've had a few opportunities in my years to take salary over, maybe something I was passionate about. And, you know, I've always felt that you want to do something for the experience and, and to, you know, based on what we've discussed, it's obvious that I want it to be well rounded. I wanted to gain knowledge and that's always kind of been, my mantra is to, to gain as much knowledge as you can and do it, do it because you want to learn. Um, and you want to grow, um, rather than doing it for like a paycheck and whatnot, do it because you want to be getting skills. You want to be learning. Um, and you want to be passionate about what you're, what you're doing. I know it's easier said than done
Braydon Anderson:
Well. Yeah. But you're exactly right. Like, I had a conversation with someone today that literally was saying like, yeah, he's, he's currently in his undergrad and he's like, I took a job. I had two offers. One of them was a dollar more an hour. And that was one of the leading reasons is why he took it, even though the other one was like in a private equity firm where it's more of, what do you want to do? But like, you just get so focused on, on the amount and that early in your career, it's like that shouldn't be the focus it's, let's learn as much as we possibly can.
Nathan Usher:
Yeah. Yeah. And I've always, I think it's good advice and I've, I've always done that from my career. I mean, obviously we want to support our families and make as much money as we can, you know, doing the things that we love. But I think overall, I've always tried to look for the opportunity, um, over money. Cause you know, you can go make money any which way, but I think the opportunity is there. And you know, the second thing is, um, it's, you know, I, I kind of came in at probably with a lot of maybe some pride, you know, in my career. Um, but you gotta kind of keep your ego in check, right? Like it's, you know, let things go. I mean, a lot of times we let things like politics. It's hard not to get wrapped up in that stuff. And I think as you let it go and let things play out, um, as my good friend, Darren Harlene, he reminds me all the time, the truth always comes out and I know that to be true, it might not be today. Tomorrow could be three years from now, but you know, you, you really can't, you, you really can't let your ego or your pride or somebody you using politics to get ahead. Uh, just, you know, be who you are and the truth will come out. And so if you're learning, you're looking for opportunities, you're showing your drive, you're showing your commitment, definitely in a startup company. I mean, everything you do impacts the company. You come up with a product or come up with a worksheet or a process, all that stuff impacts a startup company and some way, right? You're not in this like rat race where you came up with a cool process and it has to go 50 layers up up the mountain to get approved. I mean, in a startup, you come up with a new process, more importantly, it's going to, most likely it's going to be implemented and your idea goes there. So I really love that in startups where you really just can see your decisions being made across the board and seeing the impact
Braydon Anderson:
That's Nate usher, one of the earliest employees at DealerSocket. Thanks for listening to today's show. If you like the show, leave a rating on Apple podcast and be sure to subscribe. I'm Braydon Anderson, and this is The Early Years.