RECAST - ActiveCampaign President Sameer Kazi | Make the Business Better (Podcast 604)

Every day we have an opportunity to write a story, and that story is about strife, overcoming challenges, the grit necessary to get past important things that are happening, learning new things, accomplishing business goals. The opportunity to do that exists with leaders across the business, and not just leaders, but folks at all levels in the business. And really what everybody's doing every day, every fast-growing successful company, is that they're adding to their story. Because at the end of the day, someone, you know, who runs a podcast is going to them about their story and they're going to have a narrative that could be interesting and then also very deeply impactful for themselves. We're growing the next generation of SaaS leaders, the next generation of martech leaders, the next generation of finance leaders to make an impact in industry and the world.

I am super excited about today's podcast.

You're going to love it.

It is Sameer Kazi, who is the president of ActiveCampaign. He has a great background, used to work with ExactTarget, Scott Dorsey, was part of the leadership team over at at Target when they were acquired by Salesforce for $2.7 billion, was then an executive VP at Salesforce, built another company that sold to Sprout Social. Going to be talking to us a lot about his leadership ideas, his focus on execution around kind of deep product domain expertise, really focusing around financial acumen and teaching all of his leadership team some stuff on the financials. But really interesting to hear somebody who is at the most senior level and how he actually came into a company as well when they had 800 employees and he was able to join the company as the president. Also the first president in history for ActiveCampaign, the CEO Jason bringing in Samir as president. So you'll enjoy today's episode and hopefully you enjoy it and share it as well. Okay.

A quick note before we continue. Today's episode is sponsored by our trusted partner, Next Level Growth. They work with CEOs and COOs who are growing fast, but starting to feel the strain, seeing some priorities slipping, execution slowing, and even leadership being stretched thin. Next Level Growth guides leadership teams to get aligned, Establish real operating rhythms and execute better without burning your people out. This is practical operator-level work, not theory. Check them out. Proactive always wins over reactive. Details are at cooalliance.com/partners. That's cooalliance.com/partners and go check out Next Level Growth.

Hey, Samir, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Second Command Podcast.

Cameron, it's great to be here.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, looking forward to chatting with you, to learning from you. Why don't you talk to us a little bit about how you got to where you are right now with the organization, where you got to kind of your role as a CMO, and then we'll go down a couple of rabbit holes from there.

So I began my journey in software and SaaS in particular, right after B-school with a tiny little company that was based out of Indianapolis, Indiana called ExactTarget.

That's Scott Dorsey.

That's right, Scott. Scott was our CEO at the time at ExactTarget. Terrific guy. And I was fairly early at the company. They were sub $50 million in revenue. I was employee 200. I was part of the executive team. What a trajectory that company had. When I got there, some part of this lore is probably not known in the market, but when I got there, June of 2008, they had filed their S-1 to go public. Imagine that in 2008, a sub $50 million company was contemplating going public. We filed our S-1, everything, all of the markets, including the equities markets went to hell that year. Late in 2008, we decided to yank our filing. And I'd finished my MBA. I joined what I thought was a really exciting and interesting company. And not having had the experience of what it meant to file or to take a company public, I just thought, boy, I wonder if the party's over. And in 2009, what became evident was that the trajectory of the company had not changed. We were still growing. at a CAGR of about 55, 56%. And by the end of 2009, we had raised $200 million of venture, which was a giant sum for 2009. Wow. We took that company public in 2012. I had the incredible opportunity to move to London and run all of our EMEA operations. While I was in London in 2013, we sold the company to Salesforce for $2.7 billion. That was sort of my first foray and experience into SaaS and what what that feeling was like, which I think was pretty magical, honestly. The thing, you know, and most people may not know about being an operator in a fast-growing business is that most people see the endpoints, right? And their feelings always are, wow, what a path that was. But really what they don't see are the trials and tribulations between those 2 endpoints that get you to there, which was really formative for me.

Yeah, I want to talk through that because everyone sees what an overnight success you were, but they never see how long it took to get to the night before, right? Definitely want to talk about that. Scott and I, I think we met 20 years ago when he was an Entrepreneurs Organization member. We knew each other when, you know, the company was much smaller and he was not as untouchable as he is today. We talked about a couple of years ago as well, but great guy. What about since then, then since selling to Salesforce? And I've got some questions around that as well. What did you do from there? And then kind of in between there and ActiveCampaign and not reading a bio, but more like some of the lesson stuff too.

My reputation's always been one of an operator. I'm a pretty sleeves rolled up, sweat out the details kind of a guy. So as soon as I left and the word got out, I started getting bombarded by sponsors of all kinds, venture, private equity, et cetera, who wanted me to help with diligence, with deal evals, wondering if I was interested in advisory work or board work, things of that nature. We were still in London at the time. We moved back to the US in 2015. By then I'd done some work with KKR, and their growth team in London, helping them look at deals. We actually looked at a deal in Tel Aviv together, came back to the US. Some of that sponsor attention continued.

It's very flattering.

Teamed up with Bessemer and a few other venture firms to help one of their portfolio companies as interim CEO for a year. I brought in a CEO and then we ultimately ended up selling that business, SimplyMeasured, to a, funnily enough, a company based here in Chicago called Sprout Social. At the tail end of that, My general feeling was always that I wanted to go buy a business. And one of the co-founders at ExactTarget, Peter McCormick, who is both a great friend and my business partner now, he and I partnered with a private equity sponsor to buy a business from Experian, a global business, 1,600 employees, just shy of $300 million in revenue. What Peter and I did was we raised our own fund. as an SPV, co-invested with the private equity firm and ran this business that's now called Cheetah Digital for the last 5 years. We ended up merging that business with a company called CM Group earlier this year in February. Between those 2 bookends, my experience was in high growth venture and then LBO turnaround private equity, which both experiences and learnings were fascinating in terms of how one has to contort yourself to meet the needs of both the market and the business. I've known ActiveCampaign for 5+ years because one of the first investors in the business, a company by the name of Silversmith Capital based out of Boston, when they invested, the person who led the diligence in charge there, Sri Rao, Sri and I worked together while I was at Salesforce. And then when he invested in ActiveCampaign, he reached out to me and told me about the Chicago-based interesting little $30 million company that he was investing in. When the opportunity came around earlier this year and when Jason, our CEO, and I started chatting, there was lots of familiarity and I've been in this martech space for 14 or 15 years now. So it seemed like a very natural fit.

Is ActiveCampaign still privately held?

Indeed it is.

Okay.

I'm not necessarily gonna ask any forward-leading questions, but I'm just curious. What was it like working with Bessemer and what was it like working with KKR? I mean, the KKR that I knew was like from the late '80s. I mean, they're a different firm now, aren't they?

It's so funny. The first time I ever walked into a KKR office in London, I sat down, I met the partner and the then VP, these 2 gents. And the first question out of my mouth was, I'm like, I looked around, really fancy office. I just said, this is KKR, right?

Barbarians at the gate? Like that KKR?

They're a little younger than I am.

They're both like, yeah. I'm like, don't you guys buy giant companies using leverage and then try to like, you know, optimize them?

Why are we talking about a growth investment?

What's going on? What I'd inadvertently fallen into was the fact that KKR in 2014 decided they wanted to get into the growth investing business. And what they did at the time was they took $500 million off their own balance sheet in Europe and started investing in early-stage but growth-focused businesses. And I just thought it was the most incredible thing. Since then, they've probably done, I don't know exactly, maybe 2 or 3 growth funds and have their portfolio of growth investing extends not just in Europe and EMEA, but in the US, in Asia. And they now have overlay partners that look at technology and growth investing all over the world. It's been An incredible run for them, honestly.

Super cool. Yeah, because that was, that was who I remembered them as, as barbarians at the gate as well. And that must be weird for them to have to reinvent as an organization too, but you're coming in after that. Then any lessons that you learned from working with Bessemer that you carry with you today? Or I'm sure there were lots. What would a couple of key ones be?

You know, while at ExactTarget, we had a chance, we had an incredible board and lots of fantastic investors, and I had a chance to firsthand Observe the dynamics of what a venture board was like. With Bessemer, the proximity, because of my interim CEO status, the proximity became even closer. But in the context of a business that where growth was declining and the venture investors who had all come in at different points in time in the lifecycle of that business were trying to decide what to do with that business. It's not dissimilar to what's happening in market right now. with a number of venture businesses where growth isn't what everybody anticipated it to be. Many companies have an interesting journey in 2023 with their venture investors and how they manage cash and how they— how the business succeeds or not. At the time, what I observed on that board especially was how, in spite of having different points of entry into the business, how that board came together for the benefit of the founders, the business itself, To try to figure out a path for that business. And no stone was left unturned in terms of trying things. My natural inclination was to double down on product innovation, bring that to market, and try to jumpstart growth. And the support that I got from not just Bessemer, but all of the other investors, it was a learning moment for me to understand how investors can contribute to helping a business move forward.

Doing your MBA, what do you think you pulled from that experience and I don't hear as many of the 20-somethings talking about going to business school anymore. Why is that? Or are you noticing anything there?

My B-school experience was excellent in that what became evident to me very quickly in my time there was that those 2 years were an opportunity to really get to know my cohort well and learn from them, get deep in technical skills that I didn't have. I have an engineering background. And so finance, accounting, entrepreneurial finance, valuations. Those things weren't core to sort of my toolkit that I had. And then lastly, that the piece of paper, that the credential meant something in terms of creating momentum for one in the marketplace. Best evidence of that is I met Scott Dorsey way before I ever joined ExactTarget through a mutual introduction. He and I went to the same business school and that mutual connection helped us to stay connected after that, which was really interesting. So in order of priority, those 3 things. But the thing that most people don't know is that I spent independently during B-school applying my B-school learnings towards thinking about a SaaS business in a time when not many people were thinking about SaaS.

This was 2006, 2007.

I'll go out on a limb and say that in 2006, I knew Salesforce's income statement probably better than 90% of people at Salesforce at the time. I just forensically went through that income statement to try to understand levers in this, in a SaaS business. And the big finding for me at the time was realizing that Salesforce spent 54% of revenues on sales and marketing, which is a gigantic number. And to contemplate a business where That was growing 30, 35% organically at the time. It was much smaller than it is right now. And to just think about that 54% and say that is all well and good as long as growth continues, but the minute growth stops or slows down, the board's direction will be to pull back that lever of expenses that are all OpEx below the gross margin line and let those dollars flow down to EBITDA. The inspiration of that thought process was John Chambers at Cisco, who very famously, even in the early '90s, said that 92% of all Cisco revenues came from the channel. And back in 2006, Salesforce didn't really have a great partner ecosystem, a channel, a network like that. And my big idea at the time when no one was thinking about SaaS was what if you built a partner that did some of the professional services that Salesforce was hungry for. But really, it's that partner's expertise was activating a distribution channel for a large ISV and then having a dual-pronged valuation technique, one that was services-based and one that was SaaS reseller-based. I was really excited about it. I wrote a business plan around it, graduated. My wife was pregnant with our twins.

I told her that I was quitting my job to go raise money for a startup.

She looked at me shocked and said, Go for it. I look back at the time and I realized I was naive. There was no way I was going to raise money. It was a very different market than it is right now or a few years ago.

But in that process, I got to meet Scott and then the rest is history.

Fast forward to kind of where you are today. What was it that got you to join ActiveCampaign and why do you think they, they came after you? I mean, I don't imagine you saw a job posting on Indeed.

I was having a lot of fun while my last company's transaction process was in motion. I had just come out of a pretty intense 5-year slog of turnaround, market shaping, et cetera. And I was taking some time to just reconnect with myself as a human being, reconnect with my kids, get back in shape, do all of these things that happen as part of a midlife crisis. It was fantastic. I traveled, my wife and I traveled. It was great and very fortunate. I started getting inbounds from Really high-quality recruiters. And one of them, Evan Grossman at True, reached out to me to talk about this particular opportunity. He said, I don't know if you know, there's a Chicago-based company. They're looking for a president. And he said, how do you feel about that? I said, I'd love to explore it. And he said, why, why do you, why the enthusiasm? And I said, I know the space very well. I've just come out of a CEO job where I've learned a lot and I feel like I could be helpful, but it would be helpful for me as well to take a little bit of a step and be surrounded by a team. The reputation of the company preceded, meaning is a growth business that had grown very rapidly in the 3 or 4 years leading up to me getting the opportunity in hand. And then I had a chance to speak with Jason Vanderboom, our CEO. He and I spoke for 4 or 5 months about the opportunity. Every few weeks we'd have a little chat in this conference room about the state of the business, what was going on. Jason's an incredible both entrepreneur, founder, CEO with giant product vision and a giant vision about what the company is out there in the market doing. Very inspirational. But also what I found was we were complementary because I've experienced fast growth. ActiveCampaign is in a fast growth track. There's several things that are imperfect in a company that's growing as rapidly as we are. My deep passion in life is to go fix things and optimize them for even better growth. And what we found in our conversations was I've got some expertise, the company has some need. Jason and I have very good chemistry. Our ability to partner together to really impact the business seemed to have a lot of potential. So I'm now 6 months into my adventure here.

How did you divide up the roles and responsibilities between CEO and president? You're president of the organization. How'd you divide that up?

One of the really great things about maturing, getting older, having seen a few things is very few things for me should be about, you know, sort of empire building or span of control. For me, what I said to Jason was really, I'm about improving the growth trajectory and about making decisions to improve the business more generally. And I care deeply about that. And to that end, whatever he wanted in terms of construct, was okay with me as long as I had an opportunity to ask a bunch of questions, go deep into any part of the business, and then prioritize things that needed to happen. The ultimate division of power was purely just a conversation. This is the first time Jason's hired a president. I feel very respectful of what he's accomplished as a business. And so I just asked a bunch of questions with lots of specificity. So when he would talk about a project, I would say, perfect, Do you want me to own that and for you to have oversight, or do you want to own it and for me to suggest things that you should do with lots of different topics? And then we would just agree on what that process would be.

That's a really cool iterative process too. All right. So, so we understand that part. How many employees are at ActiveCampaign now?

Just shy of 800.

It just—

okay.

Smaller than I thought it would have been.

I would have thought you're in the thousands.

So that's a nice size actually.

Beauty of being a product-led growth company. It's, you know, the people equation can be dialed into exactly what that PLG motion needs.

That's a really nice size. But with, you know, 800 people there, I'm sure there's at least one person that kind of wanted the job. Or was there a, I mean, again, it wasn't like there was a job posting on Craigslist, president wanted. When you were coming into the organization, how do you build the relationships with some of those people that were either disappointed they didn't get the job, or maybe disappointed they don't get to report to Jason now. And, you know, they get to report to Samir, right? Or they have to report to this new guy. How did you manage through that? Can you walk us through that?

In the early days of being here, one of the things that Jason said to me was, here's the reporting lines, but I'm also going to continue to do one-on-ones with these individuals, sort of Trying to test to see what my demeanor about that would be. And I was like, great. I said, there is no reason to shake things up in a manner that would make people uncomfortable or draw hard lines. We just have to be thoughtful about the change management process. And as part of that, if it's more comfortable for you and more comfortable for them for you guys to continue to be in more structured conversation, I have no issues with that. As a matter of fact, what I would say is what my job generally is to create lots of bandwidth for you, Jason, Mentally so you can focus on the things that are also important to the company. I think what'll naturally happen is over a period of time, assuming that all of this clicks in, again, it was early days, that you can make a decision whether you want to continue to do that in such a structured manner or not. And I think that's worked really well for us. To hit the first part of your question more directly, I'd say there's really 2 parts of that. The first one is just conversations matter. The individual connection matters. I enjoy people. I enjoy their backstory. I like to learn about their families and their kids and their hobbies and what motivates them. And because we spend so much time together, I like the banter and I like the personal connection a lot. I think that's really important for building and sustaining culture in a business. COVID's been detrimental to that for many, many companies in a big way. We were creating lots of flexibility for folks at the company to say, if you want to be a remote employee, there are a set of benefits for you. If you want to work in one of our hubs, there are other benefits for you that you could rely on. And so we encourage people to come in. Much of the ELT and the folks that reported to me would come in with some frequency. And so we had a chance to connect and get to know each other. The second part of that is in the spirit of sleeves rolled up and sweating the details is also important for me Not to take any operational topics at the surface level. I've spent so much of my time in the last 6 months just going deep in so many parts of our business to understand the fundamental mechanics of how that works. I think that lends itself to people understanding that this is not some role that's throne-driven where somebody's overseeing part of the business. I'm in it with them to help improve the business. And I think that That part of it matters as well.

It actually tied into one of my questions as well, which was how do you know when you're coming into an organization and you're still trying to learn the company and learn the people and the interpersonal dynamics and the space and everything else, how do you know when you, when you know enough to start making some decisions versus, you know, I'm, I've, I'm now testing some hypotheses still, you know?

There's nothing magical about it at all. One would think there might. You don't and you never do. The reality is the business has momentum and you are pulled into having to make decisions with incomplete information, with in-ideal circumstances all of the time. And in those moments, you have to draw on both what information you do have, polling the right people in the business around the depth of knowledge that they have, and then relying on just your own business instincts and knowledge from the past to do that. The journey of learning is a process. I mean, just in the last 6 months, I can remember feeling really passionate about a set of topics and wanting to go deep with our ELT about it. And then a week later, understanding that that priority didn't matter as much as these 5 other topics. Sometimes just taking a beat is helpful in helping you make better decisions in business.

All right. If you're the COO of a company that does at least $2 million or greater in revenue, or you're the CEO of a company, And you're in the United States or Canada, if you would like a copy of my book, The Second in Command, for free, go to cooalliance.com/freebook. That's cooalliance.com/freebook, and I will mail you a copy for free. I will even cover the shipping.

Jump on that one today. ActiveCampaign is a— what is it, an email software? Is it a marketing tool. It's not really CRM, but there's some CRM components to it.

It's a fascinating platform. It's a customer experience automation business. And I say that very deliberately because if you try to dissect each of the things we do, sure, you can think of it as a B2C email platform or a B2B marketing automation platform or a CRM with evolving sales force management capabilities or an integrations platform. What I've internalized about our mission as a product-led growth company is that there's a bunch of technology that's available to the largest, most sophisticated enterprises in the world, whether it's Salesforce or any other large ISV in the market. Our mission really, and it's really both unsaid and maybe a little understated, is to democratize the most sophisticated technologies for every business person in the world because our customer base 185,000 accounts strong is everybody from the solopreneur to a microbusiness to a small business to mid-market businesses and larger. Our platform capabilities are on par with some of the most sophisticated companies in our domain, but we make it accessible and available to everybody. And then our mission is to help them solve business problems using our platform. So you're right, there are some companies that primarily use our set of products just for promotional email marketing. But the sophistication journey many of those companies are on, we help to influence that a little bit because when you have a list and you upload a list and you send a bunch of email, the very next question that we ask is, hey, are you personalizing these messages? And then, oh, you can just do the subject line or content within the message. Then the evolution is if you do that with such frequency, You know, let's say you do it every few weeks or every week. Let's just automate all of that and get that operational overhead off your plate so that the acquisition of subscribers, the management of those subscribers, sending those messages, collecting all of the tracking data, let that all be automated. That to me is our special sauce, is helping individuals who, unlike large enterprises where they have dedicated teams doing marketing, most folks in a business like yours, Cameron, or other solopreneur or small businesses, that one individual is doing 50 things during the day, all in service of running their business. Anything that can help them automate something so that they can just put that on the shelf and not have to think about that for a month or so can be massively beneficial. We take a lot of pride in helping our customers do that.

Well, and also massively sticky for your customer retention as well. I mean, if you, if you can get us using your product and getting stuff automated with our, with either the pre-purchase or purchase or post-purchase part of the cycle, you've got us, right? Like we're not leaving at that point either.

That's right.

Is there any community for ActiveCampaign users? Like, is there a Facebook group that, you know, your users are a part of that you guys are stirring the Kool-Aid with? Or is it all just one-on-one engagement between your, you know, your reps and the users?

There is a community and, and Meg, Meg, who's been with the company a lot longer than I can, can weigh in on some of those topics. I would say the thing that I've found works very well is a thing that we've just restarted at the business that we call study halls. So we host these gatherings in cities all over the world where ActiveCampaign users can come in. We do a little education session. There's a networking opportunity for many of our customers to hang out together. Sometimes prospects attend those sessions, learn about the product, and it's massively beneficial to the community at large. The other way what we find in terms of creating connectivity between the community is we run these content sessions that are webinars or scaled onboardings. that are group sessions that you can join virtually. They're all available for free where you can learn about the product and interact with each other as part of this. And I find that to be massively helpful.

I love that it's with a group as well. I mean, so often when we're using any of these SaaS platforms, you feel like the idiot being kind of coached by this guru. But I think if there's a classroom of idiots and you go, okay, we're all in this together, like it humanizes the experience a little bit more and Too. I like that a lot. Clearly you've got the chops, you've had the past experience, you've got the theoretical training with your MBA as well, but I don't imagine that you're done growing.

So what are you doing to continue to grow as a leader today?

I am, I feel like I am every day. I think every business is unique in the way that it faces the market and the things that need to happen in the business to optimize not just business outcomes, but outcomes for our customers, outcomes for our employees, and then ultimately outcomes for our investors in that order. I'd say that this process of optimizing both business processes, optimizing levers for returns to the business, et cetera, a very important part of what we do, but just as important is how we support employees at the company all over the world. For me, I'm very Type A, pretty analytical. It can be easy to get lost in sort of the The work of moving the business forward and sometimes the human aspect of bringing people along, of helping those people learn new things and evolving them into leaders and folks that can help the business proliferate and thrive and survive is as important as any of the work that's being done today. I have to continually remind myself about that. Jason and I talk about that all of the time. Our team members all over the world are some of the brightest I've ever had a chance to work with. And to help those folks be part of an incredible journey is such an important part of the mission of any leader in the business. And I'm learning how to do that every day.

Are you guys leveraging AI in any way? Like AI just seems to be the chat in every room I'm a part of. That or psychedelics. So I don't know.

That's right.

We are in experimental ways in the business today. The reason I say that very deliberately is because So much of what we do for our customers is about helping them optimize their own operations. And in the early stages of that sophistication, it's just about business rules, if this, then that, right? In the background, as part of our R&D organization, what we're looking at with AI is how the product itself becomes much more predictive so that while observing a user's journey through the product, the product can by itself just prompt you to say, Let me automate those last 10 steps for you. Or if I've observed you doing X, the very next 5 things you need to do are Y, A, B, and C. I can just make that happen.

That'll be cool.

Yeah.

When that, when that, when software starts learning and can adapt for us, that would be really freaking cool.

And we're, we're on the precipice of, of making that happen for all of our customers.

Wow.

My Excel spreadsheets could like format themselves. It's coming. That's really interesting. I never thought about that. That's super intriguing.

All right.

What—

And, but you can see how just from the process of just automation to binary, if this, then that decisions to having the machine learn and apply its learnings in some statistical manner, that's not a very far leap.

No.

And, and by the way, If This Then That is a great software tool. I'm sure you've No, I've got to stop here, right? All right. Thoughts around your emerging leaders? I mean, I think my core belief that a leader's job is to grow people, I kind of get the feeling like you're aligned with that. Do you have any thoughts around your emerging leaders at ActiveCampaign and what do you do with that group?

The thing that I'd add to this idea that a leader's job is to develop people and bring them along, I agree with that. I would say that for me, the bias is deep sort of immersion into the nature of the business. And in many cases, even when a person's functional role is not connected to finance, in some cases or in many cases in a business, my own passion is to bring those individuals very close to the financial operations of the business. Because you take smart people who are doing their function really well, and then when you overlay the aspect of how financially the business operates, incredible things can happen. And it also creates value for them as an individual, changes their trajectory as an individual in the market. And generally what I see, my own belief in fast-growing businesses is that every day we have an opportunity to write a story. And that story is about strife, overcoming challenges, the grit necessary to get past important things that are happening, learning new things, accomplishing business goals. The opportunity to do that exists with leaders across the business and not just leaders, but folks at all levels in the business. And really what everybody's doing every day, not just at ActiveCampaign, but every fast-growing successful company is that they're adding to their story. Because at the end of the day, someone who runs a podcast is going to ask them about their story and they're going to have a narrative that could be interesting and then also very deep, deeply impactful for themselves. I see my mission, Jason sees it the same way, many of our ELT do. We're growing the next generation of SaaS leaders, the next generation of martech leaders, the next generation of finance leaders to make an impact in industry, in the world.

I love that. We used to do it at 1800 God Junk. We did open book financials with all of our employees every month and we taught them the P&L and the balance sheet and the Key ratios. But we also tried to teach them how to take the same ideas and bring it into their personal life. Like how to have a household budget and how your household P&L works. And I was talking to an employee recently, they're like, oh, I need more money. I'm like, no, you just need to stop buying 6 big screen TVs for your, you know, you don't need all the stuff that you're buying yet. Like there's a bit of a teach them that part too.

All right.

I want to go back to the 21, 22-year-old, you know, Samir, you're just starting out in your business career. What advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today?

I'm an immigrant to the US. I moved to the country when I was 17. I went to engineering school. As a course of my academic career, I had to step back from academia for a few years because I, because I couldn't afford to go. And I've worked full-time since I was 18. I didn't graduate until a few years after being 21, 22, but my professional career has been going on for, you know, I owned a little business in college. I, I worked for consulting firms, et cetera. But when I look back at that time, really some of the big lessons outside of observations, the lessons really have to be financial. It has to do with how saving early matters, how real estate matters, how like personal finance things can really improve the quality of your life moving forward. From a business standpoint, it's a topic that I internalized later in life, but it has to do with sweating the details. I'm a big believer that being a specialist matters and that very often young people try to bypass being specialists into being generalists because they want a title of some sort— manager, director, VP, whatever the case might be. Strength as a leader, a business person, as someone that can impact change really comes from understanding a domain deeply. I value that. I would've started earlier in that journey if I'd understood that earlier. But I'm happy to bring that to light now.

I think you're doing just fine, Simir. Simir Kazee, the president of ActiveCampaign. Thank you very much for sharing with us on the Second Grand Podcast.

Cameron, it's been such a pleasure to chat with you. Thanks for the thoughtful questions and the dialogue.

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