Natalie Luneva: Making Your First Hire When Building and Growing Remote SaaS Teams

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akhil Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about making your first hire, building and growing your remote SaaS teams. Today we have our guest Natalie Luniva joining us. Natalie is a marketer, podcast host, and a growth and leadership coach for SaaS founders. She has worked with over 100 companies where she mainly helps SaaS tech founders keep motivated and continue growing their startups. Drawing from her 10+ years of marketing and team leadership experience, she mainly helps bootstrap SaaS founders scale their tech startups, get unstuck, and grow as successful leaders. Welcome, Lally. Glad to have you on our show today.

Glad to be here, Akeel. Thanks.

Awesome. So, you know, talking about hiring, you know, when you're building and growing remote teams for SaaS startups, in your opinion, when is the right time to make that kind of first hire?

Well, I think right now we talk about really 4 founders. The founders that I work with fall into 4 different categories. Founders that say, I don't know what— I don't know why I need to hire anyone. So, those are like hardcore one-person show. Then the second type is they're only planning to start hiring. So if you are on this stage, then lucky you, prepare for a wild ride because, you know, it is going to be fun. A lot of things that you are not aware of, you're going to learn a lot of things. And then the third kind of founder, if you probably don't even think that you struggle, you probably already have a couple of people on your team, you're looking to hire a few more, you think everything goes fine. And if that's the case, then think again, because I find so Many founders think that everything is fine, but then there are so many things to uncover, and this is hopefully what we're gonna talk about later today. And then the 4th kind of founder is they know that they struggle, they are already experienced, they just don't know the way out of this. So when we're talking about— your question was who it is, at what point do we decide to hire, right?

Mm-hmm.

So I think to answer that question, it is really When founders say that they probably like, they struggle, they spend a lot of time, maybe they do like a lot of $5 to $10 jobs, $5 to $10 an hour jobs, someone who could do that easily for them. Maybe there's just too much context switching that really drains their energy, or maybe they're just trying to be a jack of all trades, and this really hinders their growth. So, I would usually say that I see the problems where the founders hire either too early or too late. Many times I do see that it's too late. So, you know, the sooner that you realize that yes, you do have a problem and you need someone else's help to grow your business, that's the time to start thinking about this.

And then, you know, speaking about, you know, who you're hiring for the position, what position should you be looking to hire first? I mean, some people suggest you either hire Do you hire a sales rep to take over the sales position, or, you know, the customer success manager when you have a lot of customers to deal with? You know, what is the first position SaaS founders should be looking at to hire and why?

I think it depends on the stage, the founder stage, and there are different stages. So, if you're just starting to hire, let's say this is your first hire, then surround yourself with a team that fills your gaps, right? So, it can't be, you know, maybe you're not a good marketer, right? Or, you know, there's a lot of customer support tickets and you're not happy doing that, then surround, you know, with the people that are going to help you with that. This is not your strong side, for example. But think about what are your own skills and abilities, and also what do you feed on? What gives you energy? Like, if doing sales is something that really gives you energy, then do not hire someone to do sales. So kind of, there's no one answer for everyone. So think about your situation. And first of all, which role can help and just surround yourself with a team that fills your gaps. And then do not outsource or do not give the— tasks or projects that give you the energy to someone else.

Got it. And, you know, I guess one of the most important parts when you're building a company to be able to scale is your team. And, you know, part of that is having a high-performance team. So for you, what's a high-performance team mean to you? And how can we know when our team is performing at a high level or whether they're considered low performers?

I actually, I've done a study, and I've asked many founders, including founders that are in my mastermind groups, I run a mastermind group for SaaS founders, and some of them say that But it is knowing what your people are supposed to do, or some people say that they work well together, or they have fun, or they're self-motivated. A founder of MailerLite said, if the company passes the jungle test, and that's when a founder goes away for like 30 days, and they're nowhere near to be found, if the company can survive the 30 days without the founder, that's a high-performance team. And then another founder said, it is an empowered and highly focused set of team. All of those are true. I'd suggest to distinguish between— there's a difference between a working group and a performance group or like high-performance team. So, the working group, really, they do communicate well. There are well-defined roles. The processes are effective and well-defined as well. There is accountability. So, all of those things that usually we think a high-performance team is are already in the working group. So, this is kind of a differentiator.

Yes.

So, the working group already has all of those. But what distinguishes the high-performance team is, well, they have a shared purpose. They also have a self-enforced discipline. And then, you know, when they say the results exceed the sum of individual goals or the parts, this is the high-performance team as well. And then, what I like most about this is they have strong individual and mutual accountability. So, it's not just that they're accountable to, you know, by themselves or to the founder, but they're accountable to each other as well. So, there's no one answer, what's a high-performance team? But at the same time, it's like in sports, you know, that the high-performance team in sports that are winning, they're not a newly formed team. So, you cannot expect a newly formed team to be high performance because they need to practice together, then they need to play multiple games together to be a winning team. And by the way, everyone wants to be on the high-performance team. They want to be on the winning team, and they want to see that they're winning as well.

And is there a way to identify that early on, whether, you know, in the hiring process upfront, or, you know, is it early on when you first onboard them to whether to know whether they're going to be high performers or not, or you just have to kind of wait and see how they, they work with the team over time?

I'd say it's more on the founder and not on the people that they are hiring to see whether the team is a high— is going to be a high-performance team or not. It is really the track record of the founder. So, I say if a founder, if your team sucks, it's the manager or the founder, the leader who really sucks in managing and leading the team. So, it's not necessarily about the people. You can have a bunch of C-level people, but you can work with them and manage them and coach them and lead them to become top performers, A type of people. So I'd say that it's more on the founder. If you don't have experience, like I said, you know, the 4 kind of founders, you're only the first or the second type of founder, or you're not aware that you have leadership problems, then think again because Your decisions and the way that you lead the team is really what's going to be the outcome, whether the team is going to be high performance versus not.

And I don't see a lot of founders actually speaking about this, not a common topic that comes up about how to increase team performance. Seems like most people are pretty happy with, they feel like what they hire is usually good hires. In your opinion, why do you feel that's important to speak about more?

You're so right. Just like you probably hear that so many founders talk about, uh, you know, top of funnel, middle of funnel. They talk about getting more traffic, more leads, more demos. Some of them talk about, you know, go a step further and talk about, okay, how well does the machine that we have convert those people? But no one really talks about, you know, everyone else who makes the machine actually work. And what I find is that's when the hidden gems are where you actually find— when you turn a regular team to a high-performance team, that's actually a growth lever. And also, I'll share with you some statistics. It turns out that software publishers as an industry is actually the second least profitable in the US by net profit margin. Can you imagine? The second least profitable in the US, in the entire US. And also, 1 in 4 only industries out of several thousands of industries with negative profitability. And this has been published by Forbes, so anyone is welcome to read on that. And also, the probability of startup failing in the first year is very high, between 40% and 70%. And the top 3rd reason why software companies fail is not the right team. The first one is no marketing need, it's actually 40%, and then ran out of cash is close to 30%, and then the third one is not the right team. So team is so important, hugely important, and something that's definitely been overlooked.

So you mentioned kind of that idea of that, you know, you can hire C players, and if you're a good leader, you can turn them around. But don't you feel that's kind of ineffective or kind of a waste of time? Upfront rather than filtering it out and just bringing on A players from the beginning. And then I think you'll probably do a lot better in the long run.

I've hired dozens, more than 100 people in the past. Not every single hire, even if you're a very experienced hiring person who have done this and you know that some things work, some people have higher chances of working out versus others, you are still kind of just guessing. So, in the end, it's not going to be 100% match anyways. So, yes, in the ideal world, you hire a perfect fit. But first of all, you don't know who the perfect fit is going to be, the A-players. And then, still, the A-players, if you do not properly manage them and lead them, they actually slowly become the B-players, the C-players, or if they are interested in self-growth, which all A-players are, they're gonna just leave. If you do not know how to lead the team, they're just gonna leave and find a winning team, someone who is actually winning.

Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. And so, you know, you work with teams who are underperforming. How do you approach a SaaS team? You go in there, you see that underperforming, what's your typical action plan? Um, to how to turn that around and improve it?

I love it. So it's actually, I have a 6 Ps process, 6 Ps. So the first P is problem identification. So this is where, well, first of all, even before that, the founder's expectations is crucial. I find that, you know, founders think, hey, you know, it's, it's not that really difficult. How difficult can it be to tell people what to do? Right. So, well, first of all, the expectations are the 2 bodies. I heard this great 2 bodies moving in the same direction create friction. So even if you have only 2 people on the team, you are gonna have people, you are gonna have friction. And if you don't have much experience managing people, you're not gonna be a good manager in the beginning, for sure. Even, you know, a few years down the road, I hear so many founders say that even those that are experienced still make lots of mistakes. And also another thing is, it is people, and their behaviors is what delivers results. Sometimes founders think that, hey, I implement the SOPs, you know, standard operating procedures. I have all of those things laid out, so I'm good. No, it's actually the people's behaviors what delivers the results. So, this is the first step in identifying the problem, is the expectations, setting up the right expectations for yourself as the founder. The second step in the problem identification is, well, like what I call, look in the mirror, and not the window. So, it's really like looking at the situation is what's wrong with me and what I'm doing wrong and what can I improve instead of saying, hey, all of them are doing a bad job. I'm gonna fire someone and just find someone who's doing a better job. So, in this looking in the mirror phase, there are a couple of steps. So, really the hire doesn't work out, not because they aren't a good fit. It is just because as managers, we can improve. And also, poor work is frequently the result of poor communication. Or poor recruiting and hiring, or maybe, you know, you don't have an onboarding process. And then the— I said that again, but I'm going to repeat. If you suck, if the team sucks, it's really who you as a manager that sucks. And I'm sorry, this is harsh truth. Hopefully people are not going to like, hey, bye, and just close out, but it is true. So look at yourself first before saying that, hey, those guys are not doing a good job. So, this is the second step in the problem identification. And then the third is one of the most important ones is take a few hours. I usually say like 4 to 8 hours and start asking yourself questions. Like, if you had to let go any of your existing team members, would you rehire anyone? This is an important exercise that I think a lot of founders do not think about. Your existing team, are you happy with what they do? How they do that, the results that they deliver? And then, were you able to take a vacation in the last few months? I think that that's a big red flag if a founder was not able to take a vacation, because a lot of times they think that everything is gonna fall apart. And maybe they say that only I can do it, without me, they're gonna just, you know, stop working. So, this is basically a self-identification again, like what's happening with the team. And then the last step in the problem identification is you ask your team 3 important questions and you start with, are we a high-performing team? So, you basically gather a team together and you start asking these questions to put their seed in their head to start thinking about, are we happy with where we are? And then the next question will be, what's slowing us down? And then the last question, do you know our priorities for the company? And if they say, no, we don't know the priorities, well, do you know your priorities for the company? Do you know your goals, like 3-month, 6-month goal? So this is the first P, which is problem identification. Now, the second P is creating a plan. I've read a great book. great book called The 12-Week Year by Brian Moran. And he talks about creating, basically like dialing down the 52 weeks, like the entire year into just 3 months. A great book, highly recommend it. So I adjusted it a little bit just because I really want the founders and the team to kind of get a feel of winning. And so I make it like a 4-week plan. So For 4 weeks, create like a plan, and you'd start doing that by basically doing a brain dump of all the tasks and projects that you can, that you think are gonna help you grow. And then split those tasks into 4 weeks. Maybe it's gonna be weekly or maybe even daily projects and tasks, and then set up those goals and KPIs and deliverables. Now, this is the second P. And then the third P is prioritization. So, you prioritize all of those projects and tasks, and then you aim for the few ones that are ambitious goals, basically. We really want the team to feel the taste of winning so that they know what it is. So, really quick, those are the 3 out of 6. I want to just check with you if you have any questions before I move on to the last 3 Ps.

No, I think it was just a thought. I know you mentioned that, you know, people join companies, but they leave managers or they leave leaders. I think that's a saying, right? So I think that just adds to your point there.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. No, sounds good. Continue, I guess, on the next 3. Let's hear it.

So the 4th one is productivity, and this is huge. Focusing on the results, but at the same time, like, I'm not sure how about— how many people do you have on your team, Akeel?

We have about 7. Actually, we just onboarded somebody today, so 8. Awesome.

Awesome. Okay. I find that so many people, they do not have a discipline of getting done done, or doing and not— result and not action. So, even when companies have their daily standup meetings, they have, okay, what are you— they're asking, what are you working on? So, instead of this question, I highly encourage you to switch to asking the question, what are you getting done? Or, what are you finishing? What are you completing? So that you kind of talk about this productivity, like we're finishing things and not just talking about the progress, because the progress can be a few days, a few weeks, but we want an environment where everyone knows that we're finishing things. And then in the productivity also, I highly recommend at least 3 hours a day for the founder, And if possible for the team as well, put it on the calendar where you don't have any meetings. You just work on those high ROI projects and tasks because it's so easy to get into minutiae, you know, the things that are just urgent but not important. So these 3 hours that every single day you put on your calendar where no one has meetings, you know, we just work on our projects that are actually gonna move the needle.

Hmm.

And then show the sense of urgency. We do want people to feel like, you know, I don't have another 2 weeks to finish projects, but, you know, we need to do something like as soon as possible. So, you need to keep, as a founder, you need to keep the pressure on this productivity. So, this is the 4th one. The 5th P is performance and progress. We want, like I was saying before, we want to have those quick wins. So make sure that you, first of all, you measure the things that, so in the beginning when you only start the project, you identify some things ideally that you can measure so that later you can say, you know, in the first 2 weeks of this activity, we've actually went from 1.5 to 1.8 conversion or something like this.

Mm-hmm.

So we want to measure the performance and report on the progress. And then the last P is process optimization. So this is really how to sustain the achieved results. So let's say that we're done with the first 4 weeks. So optimizing the process after the 4 weeks is what's usually gonna help sustain the results that you've achieved in the first 4 weeks. And here I talk a lot about consistency. And again, going back to the founder, like, it is all on you, really. So it's like training a dog. When you hire a dog trainer, they coach the dog owner as much as they're training the dog, and the dog owner needs to stay consistent with their commands, right? And that's why it is really training of you and making sure that you are doing, you know, the things that you have the same processes, basically, that you don't, you know, One day you measure something, the next day you don't. You need to be consistent as the founder as well.

So, on the productivity side, you mentioned, I wanna talk about that a little bit. So, you talk about blocking out 90 minutes of your day to focus on your work. Is there a better time that you should be doing that? Is that first thing as you get in, or does it matter when you do that?

I love this question. So, it's actually not 90 minutes. I actually say like 3 hours for the founder, try to allocate like 3 hours every single day. I love your question because I, I speak a lot about that. In the beginning of the day, when you just sitting down as the founder, and maybe, maybe you can even teach your team to do the same thing, do not open up your emails. Because what's happening, you have a bunch of those emails. And what it is really is people come with their own agenda to you and pile up all of their stuff on top of what you would like to work on, right? And so your work is basically getting deprioritized. And so you work on those maybe less important things, but more urgent things. So in the morning, do not open up your email. And that's probably the best way for you to work on, if you're an early bird, I am, I have 2 kids, so I kinda don't get to choose the time when I wake up. And so the morning is usually the best time for me to, because in the evening, I kinda think about the entire day, and probably a lot of founders do, right? And then in the morning, you kinda wake up fresh with, solutions or projects or whatever ideas that you have. And then this is the best time to work on that, in my opinion.

Got it. And then adding to that, so a lot of people are obviously shifting to remote teams or they had remote teams of how they build their SaaS company. Do you have any favorite strategies or tools for tracking productivity specifically across your remote team?

I like the thing about tools, and I've just recently posted, made a post of 150 SaaS tools for SaaS founders. But at the same time, I wanna make it clear, do not be hung up on tools because I think thinking too much about the tools is really being like procrastinating, really. So try not to think about tools as much, but more about, okay, how do we stay productive? So blocking this 3 hours a day on your calendars. If your team is remote and all over the world, then there's a great tool called Standuply, and that's for Slack, where every single day, if you are not able to do those standup meetings, then the system is asking every single day at the same time what it is that— your question that you'd like to ask for every single day. What are you working on or what are you finishing? This can be one of the tools. But then, you know, this— the daily meetings with agenda is important. So have the agenda just to make sure that everyone's on the same page. So it's less about the tools and more about your process.

Got it. Okay. And then, you know, you said you mentioned, you know, people working across different time zones, but I guess communication, you know, there's productivity and there's also communication. How do you suggest Other ways to manage the workload and effective communications across those different time zones?

Yeah. So, there is synchronous versus asynchronous communication, right? And we, if the team is spread out all over the world, we want to make sure that if you are, let's say, in Central Time Zone, -5, versus someone in Europe, GMT+1 or 0, then you have those 5, 6, Sometimes I work with teams who are like in Thailand. Then work a lot on this asynchronous communication. And by the way, you need to have your communication guidelines. So I highly recommend you look into this. So for example, when you know it is a long email, then you encourage your people, your team, to email you instead of send it in Slack. Because, you know, sometimes if you don't pay for Slack, then the messages can be just, you know, deleted or something. So, you know, which messages should go where? If it is an immediate quick question, then ask in Slack, but do not expect the answer, you know, after 3 PM your time or something like this. So those communication guidelines is important for you to put together, but then work on this. What helped a lot for one of the founders that I worked with is They did not do daily standup meetings. I encouraged them to start doing that because one person was in Philippines, another one is in Europe, and the third one was here in the US. And so they really had like only a few hours where they could work together. And so this back and forth messaging was just killing everyone and just delaying so many projects and things. So once a day, everyone would prepare their questions, and then it was really quick, 30 to 60 minutes. minute meeting every single day. And then the founder got so much time on their hands so that, you know, they don't need to, you know, to read through all those emails. They just really quickly can answer all of the team questions in like 30 minutes.

Got it. Makes sense. Cool. Well, thank you so much for jumping on today, Natalie. Really appreciate it. For our audience, where can they get in touch with you and learn more about what you're working on?

So yeah, go to my website, Natalie Lunieva. And then also check out my website, SaaS Boss. And I also have a SaaS Facebook group for SaaS founders called SaaS Boss. Check it out. And then I'm actually writing a book about team productivity and going from, you know, a low-performance team to a high-performance team. So if this is something that you're interested in, connect with me on LinkedIn or Facebook, and I'll share the copy with you. Awesome.

Cool. Well, thank you. We'll put those links in our show notes for our audience to check out as well.

Thank you for having me, Akhil.

All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you all for watching this episode and joining SaaS District today. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the SaaS industry. If you're a SaaS company looking to grow and unlock the true value of your business, get in touch with us at Horizon Capital and myself or one of our consultants will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please comment down below and help us improve our content for you all. Thanks again and see you on the next one.