276 - Building Stronger Relationships in the Nonprofit and Labor Union Sectors with NEP Services' Stacey Yudin

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Stacey Udden, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO of a company called NEP, NEP Services, which can be found at services.com. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

So NEP Services is, it has a really interesting history, started down in Newport Beach probably 25 or 30 years ago. You're a more recent CEO, I think, in the last couple of years, right?

Correct.

Why don't you, first of all, let's start with NEP Services. What tell, for those who haven't ever heard of the company, tell us about the unique things you guys do. Which I think is pretty interesting.

Yeah, thanks. NEP Services is a full-suite strategic marketing and communications firm with incredible technology that we've built to help improve the fundraising and engagement of nonprofits and unions across the country. So while we started off really on the marketing side 30 years ago with our founder, we listened to clients and we've really evolved into a powerhouse of solutions that are tech-based. We needed to build our own solutions specific to nonprofits and to labor unions. So that's really been the journey from a marketing brain to really a technology powerhouse.

Wow. And tell us, give us a little bit about your backstory. How did you end up being, what, starting at the beginning and how did, what were the steps that got you to where you are today?

I think like a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners, a lot of executives, you, life takes you on a winding road. You never truly know where you wanna go, but you have this inherent curiosity and desire to do better, to build, to evolve, to inspire. And so myself, as a, as an athlete and Huntington Beach local, I spent a lot of time working in nonprofits as a young girl and a young woman and elevated through nonprofit organizations. And it was my journey being inside of a nonprofit that made me realize all of the opportunities to help nonprofits run more efficiently, communicate more effectively with donors. But at the end of the day, we're helping changemakers elevate their change. And I just saw this opportunity in the marketplace and leapt off a diving board right into the world of entrepreneurship and found myself with NEP pretty quickly over a decade ago. And we really started evolving the software side of our business to fill those needs.

So you were a competitive diver when you were younger?

I, I was not a competitive diver, although I do feel my career feels like competitive diving. I was a volleyball player, but I've taken many leaps off of many diving boards.

There you go.

All right. Yeah, exactly.

Fun. So you, so you started with Net Services, what, 10, a decade ago or so?

Yeah, I wanna say over a decade ago, helping nonprofits build their software. When we think about the type of tools that a nonprofit had a decade ago, there, there weren't really a lot of CRMs. There weren't a lot of database management tools. It was the Wild West. So that's when I, that was my first goal joining the company.

And obviously you've worked your way up to CEO. Tell me, you've been doing this now for a number of years. What is it that gets you out of bed in the morning, gets you motivated to go to work?

We work with some of the best individuals. Our clients are amazing. And I'm not just saying that because it's the right thing to say. We're dealing with labor organizations. Unions, right, the working class of America, and especially our first responders. So I work really closely with a lot of police officer organizations, labor unions, foundations, firefighters. And when you really come to appreciate and you get to know what their needs are from an organization standpoint, they're helping officers that have been injured in the line of duty, officers that have been killed in the line of duty. Firefighters have had significant burns and their organizations give back to those families. And so when you see the sacrifices they're making day in, day out, what we can do to make their organization stronger, help them raise more dollars efficiently. Really, we're making the world a better place. And I know that sounds cheesy, but every day I wake up and think what I'm doing matters and makes an impact. And I'm incredibly fortunate to have a team of people here at NEP that they're passionate, they're driven to help and serve our clients. So I think that's probably the biggest motivator when I wake up. Early in the morning.

And, and, and as CEO, what are the kinds— what, how, what does your day typically look like? I know it's probably never the same day in and day out.

Very similar to many other C-suite executives. I'm working with our directors, um, enterprise-level clients. I'm very focused right now on the launch and development of our third generation of our Connect Plus SaaS platform. So one of the gaps in the marketplace was how do nonprofits and labor organizations manage their database of members, manage their donors, and how do they effectively communicate. Right now they're using a lot of different tools, 3 or 4, 5 separate platforms. So our Connect Plus platform is an all-in-one communication suite. We're in our third full iteration of the platform, which we're launching and rolling out. So a lot of my day is focused on listening to enterprise-level clients, getting their feedback, interpreting very complicated use cases and needs that are on the ground, and working with my team to stay motivated to push those through the production and development timeline. As you probably know, a lot of the issues in software development can be the gap between really hearing and listening to what your customers need. Versus the assumption of what you think they may need and what their problem. So that's our focus most every day.

Understanding that gap exists and trying to make sure the gap is narrowed as much as possible is 90% of the job. The coders can do anything, but if they're not given the right direction, what you get is garbage.

Yeah. And there's a hundred different ways to do it.

Right.

There's strategic approaches that may seem incredibly logical from someone behind a computer screen. But unless you're really listening to your customers and we call it customer obsessive. So that's obsessive in all different forms. So we're obsessive about our products. We're obsessive about how we launch a product. We're obsessive about the communication strategy when we launch a product. It's not just this kind of blitzing tech company that you see in other sectors, or it's not sign them up and we never talk to them again. We're really embedded in this customer process from development, to build, to launch, to maintenance. It's the whole 360 success story. And when you're focused on the success of a client, not just your, your ARR, MRR, we see a huge reduction in churn. We see longevity with our client relationships. In our referral networks, most of our clients are referrals from other clients, right? Which is great. So to have that And it all comes back to the listening tour, as I call it, whether it's being on the ground at a meeting or joining their next nonprofit event, you get ideas that allows us to engineer better, allows us to dream as well.

So sounds like you're a pretty good listener. How did you learn how to listen?

I, I, I would say that we can always improve listening.

Of course.

Um, I wouldn't say that I'm the best listener. I would say that I'm working on it every day. I really try to stay as humble as possible. Even I make mistakes and I want our team to be really motivated and validated by having their ideas brought to the table. I want to create an environment. We have created an environment where it's very team-based. Clients are a part of that team. I've actually worked pretty hard with our executives to build a diverse, a diverse culture, not only of gender, but also the types of people we serve. So our company's also built. Been made up of who our clients are. So working with key clients, you know, a lot of them will work for us part-time and they help us reverse engineer what are the needs in the marketplace, what are the changing conditions on the ground that might affect our platforms. And that's how we continually innovate. And I think that's one of the things I'm the most proud of. And that's a core competency that's happening on the ground level.

And I take it, obviously listening is critical. How do you emphasize the importance of listening to all your teams?

We do a ton of interactivity among our teams. Just because I'm the CEO, we, I have office hours where anyone in the company can have a chat. We regularly and regularly schedule team meetings. Now we're all remote. So the remote, fully remote and national presence is a little challenging. But we've just actually split our team up recently into time zones so that time zone teams can really collaborate across different functions. So my engineers are connected directly to the product people. My product and customer success is connected to back office support. And that approach has really given some more connectivity between our national presence. So it's a challenge. It's a challenge that we, we definitely keep top of mind every day.

How have you found, how long has the company been remote?

It's funny. Most companies are remote now where they've just become some sort of hybrid version. But we were almost fully remote long before COVID And again, the need came back to the fact that we have customers on the ground. We have police officers who are working in New York. We have police officers and firefighters in Texas, all over the country. You've got to go where the customers are. So we needed to expand our presence and do it in a way that was as economically viable as possible and be in all these places. So we really expanded our employee base rather quickly and remote work just became the best way to facilitate growing quickly across the US. So they can drive to a customer within 10, 15 minutes. They can get on the ground, they can sit with them, they can really reverse engineer what their particular issue might be.

Wow. Huh. And are, are you able to bring people together in the company on occasion so everybody gets to have face time?

Yeah, we, we just did a customer success and sales retreat in our, at our corporate headquarters in Newport Beach and with an office in DC and Austin. We travel quite often and host collaborative meetings, again, opportunities for us to elevate customer concerns, what are the gaps in, in the product that maybe this remote atmosphere hasn't really elevated? What are those conversations? I think I definitely still prioritize as much in-person cohesion as possible. It's just a balance, of course.

It sounds like maybe one of your jobs is just prioritizing what's going to be done. You get all this data coming in from customers telling you what's working and what's not working, and then you've got to decide, okay, we can't do everything. What do we prioritize first?

Yeah, any SaaS platform, we really look at the KPIs, the analytics of usage, how clients are using the product. Again, if you're not listening and you're not working with clients every day, you can draw anything on a whiteboard and our engineering team can build anything, but that's probably not the best use of your resources. We take the opportunity on every turn to attend conferences, meet with our customers in person, go to their neck of the woods, walk in their shoes for a day. And so our team always takes advantage of those opportunities. And it, it, I honestly think it produces a better product and a better result for your customers.

What happens? I, I, I would imagine occasionally you get pushback from customers. How do you handle the pushback and the criticism?

I'm someone that likes to lean into those conversations. I think our biggest improvements to our platform have been when customers are quote unquote unhappy with so-and-so or don't like this part of the software. And so while some, some people are a little hesitant when they have negative feedback, I really lean into those. I always jump on those calls and really try to dig down past this issue. Is this an operational issue on their end? Is it a training issue? We haven't properly trained or communicated well enough for the software to be executed. Or is this a core feature issue? This feature is not working for them. Because it's just a UI problem. It's, it's not intuitive enough. It's too foreign. There, there's a ton of reasons. And so I actually lean into the criticism a lot. And I think every challenge and every brick wall that we've hit has been from those opportunities where, hey, this is not what we envisioned it to be. We want to look at this feature again. We were, we're not happy with this rollout, whatever that might be. Those are challenges that every company faces.

Right.

And so I definitely lean into those. They're not always fun and enjoyable, but I think they're important moments.

Absolutely. So I'm curious, what do you think it is that's unique about you that you bring to the table that makes everything work so well?

So working with labor unions and nonprofits are traditionally a very difficult market to work with, right? They're not Fortune 500 companies. They don't have recurring budgets. So you have this immediate budget constraint. From the onset. So how do you build a platform that gives them the best results using the best technology at a price that's affordable to the marketplace? I think what sets us apart is that we've been able to innovate organically and uniquely with clients so that we've been able to reach scale. We have close to 700,000 union or nonprofit members on our platform any given day. Uh, we have 3 other proprietary platforms. That they use to either fundraise, pay their member dues, build trust and engagement within their communities. And so I think that the challenge and what sets us apart is that we're not this burn and turn tech company. We've been able to slowly grow and support these platforms and, and really customize it very uniquely to this industry in a way that there hasn't been this type of investment and thoughtfulness. Before.

And that talks about the company, which is great. What about you, Stacy? What makes you unique?

I think I am just one in a team of people. Like I say many times, I would be nowhere. No one should innovate on their own. I, there is just, it's impossible. I think this entire organization has been a bottom-up innovation from the client level, from the people on the ground. And luckily we've had, I've had an incredible executive team to help support the operations and expansion of the company as we've grown very fast. We've doubled almost every year for the last 5 years.

Wow.

We've recently won the 8th most innovative platform in the US by Fast Company in North America. I should say beyond the US, that was an award that we were very surprised to win and honored to receive. And I, I think maybe it's my ability to juggle, to embrace the difficult moments, right? To hit that brick wall with clients and be able to chart a pathway through. Whether it's clients or challenges as you grow, right? I think other nonprofits and C-level executives can understand what that's like.

What do you think, just changing the subject a little bit, how is artificial intelligence gonna affect what you guys do?

As a woman who loves a good challenge, I think AI has so much opportunity, and we have an R&D team that we're really looking at how does AI help create operational efficiency? How does AI add to the sense of what can we do with data? How do we reach more donors? How do we automate communication workflows? So I personally think AI has a ton of incredible opportunities for nonprofits and unions, and we're looking at that now. There are some obviously more generalized concerns with AI that we all have, but I think its impact for business is, it's a game changer.

And you guys are looking at, you're spending considerable time now looking at it, trying to figure out, all right, what is this stuff and what does it really mean for us?

Yeah, absolutely. We've already have some working features that we're test, we're R&Ding and testing in beta right now. That incorporates some very step one, level one AI. We've been looking at different natural language models and really working backwards. But again, I don't, we don't take the approach of developing in a bubble. We do this with clients. There's no sense in spending time and money developing something that's just not going to be used on the ground. So we engage with a lot of key stakeholders across our segments and our markets, including labor unions especially. And have really great conversations and think tanks about what would make your job easier? What would make your job more efficient? As an international union, what's your biggest challenge? What's your biggest sticking point? Asking those basic questions. I think sometimes we talk about AI and have these grand, these visions of grandeur, but let's get back to the basics of what are the problems on the ground and start there.

I, I'm curious, you do a lot of work with unions. Membership has dropped precipitously in the last 50 years. What are you seeing in terms of union membership and the potential for growth for unions to come back in a resurgence and represent their members in all the ways that unions have done in the past?

Yeah, yeah. I get asked this question a lot in many different forms. And yeah, unions are an important part of our economy and they're forgotten in the day-to-day hustle and bustle. Every road you've driven on, every bridge, every toilet that you've flushed, our sanitary system, airplanes, pretty much the world runs on jobs that are really created, supported, trained, and protected by unions. And so it's really a good and important counterbalance to a free market. And although there are some data that says union membership has dropped, I would counter-argue that union membership looks different than it did 50 years ago.

Okay.

And that there's a broad range of associations and membership organizations in addition to unions that are just not classified as traditional unions. However, in right-to-work states have different regulations of how things are classified. But overall, especially with the emergence of AI, it's important for us to understand how we keep America running, how we keep America functioning, how, what are the battles that unions have won that we all take for granted. A 5-day work week. They got rid of child working, maternity leave, paternity leave, the weekend. We wouldn't have the concept of the weekend without battles that have been won and fought and won by unions and membership organizations that say, hey, we just want a fair pay for a hard day's work. And so I think that pendulum is swinging back. And I think you see it with the emergence of a lot of the Starbucks unions and organizations that are getting together and saying, look, Let's look at the cost dynamics of how much C-suite executives make and executives compared to the average worker. How much of price is increased? Yet where is that money being reinvested into the workforce? And so I do, I am optimistic that those numbers will swing back. And I think you're seeing that currently.

In terms of your typical clients, are you dealing with large national and international organizations? Are you dealing with locals or both?

Yeah, no, one, one of the things that we're very proud of is that our, our SaaS platforms, whether it's our Connect Plus mobile communication center, our nonprofit fundraising tools, our strategic communication packages, we work with community-based nonprofits that are very small all the way up to international unions worth hundreds of thousands of members. And so that's been a big tech challenge, right?

Right.

Pricing strategy challenge and a tech challenge. How do we build So that it's scalable at all of these different levels. One of, one of the, one of the areas that I pushed in our latest revision of our software was I want to make sure that it's so configurable to the small organization, but flexible enough to, to flexible enough for our largest organizations. Really are able to manage entire databases with hundreds of thousands of data points. And help that make that efficient and effective for our leaders to communicate. They're able to send mass text messages, emails, share documents in a very secure environment. Mm-hmm. So it's been a range of challenges to, to present a product with that type of flow and work sequencing.

I would say if you're working with a small nonprofit that might have a couple of hundred members versus a union or a nonprofit that has a couple of million members, That's a big gap.

Yeah, that has been one of our biggest challenges. The need for our, for the Connect Plus database management communication tool is both. It can literally connect you with not only your members, your donors, but other nonprofits that you're related to. If you're a district level union and you need to connect up to your state or state up to a national, it has the ability to do that. Both data sharing and comms sharing. And that was an enormous challenge to do that in a secure, permissioned environment. So yeah, kudos to the entire technical teams for engineering that. But yeah, it's pretty incredible.

So where do you see yourself in the next 10 years?

Oh, the tough questions. Us as a company, we, like I said, we've been doubling and growing every single year for the past 5 years. I see us absolutely continuing that trend, if not more. We've diversified now into about 6 different labor markets. We're very large in the association management space. So I see us, I see us growing pretty dramatically in that, in that realm. And of course, I have some international opportunities that I think would be a good fit for our software. National and international, I think, is the easiest way to keep it. Yeah.

And what about yourself? You're happy doing what you're doing. You're not going anywhere.

As long as the board is happy with me, I am happy leading this company. Uh, we've, and I'm pretty sure I, I get two thumbs up currently, but you never know. So I, I think there's a lot of opportunity for institutional investment in NEP Services. I think there's a lot of opportunity to broaden our, our client base, like I said, both nationally and internationally. And so I'm looking forward to leading us through those challenges.

So I'm, I'm just curious, scale, as you scale, how's that being financed? Are you, do you have, are you scaling it internally or with internal profits? Wow. So you don't have a lot of outside capital coming in. Bootstrapped.

We have bootstrapped this since day one. And I think when you, like I said, when you can really listen to your clients, we've been able to increase profits for our clients and us for every year over the last decade since I've been with the company and before that. And we have no outside investors currently. We've been able to build all 4 of our proprietary platforms in-house and scale. And again, I think that's really thinking about how to do this lean. And then our approach to obsessively listening to our clients allows us to focus on feature development that matters. Doing that in a streamlined, very Lean Six Sigma approach has allowed us to take this company all the way through development, rollout, iteration, and redevelopment for all of our platforms without any outside capital.

That's really remarkable. Good for you.

Thank you.

Your board's got to be happy with that too.

Yes, they are.

And the owners of the company, whoever they are.

Yeah.

One more question and I'll let you go, Stacy. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Oh, another tough one. I'm a foodie. I don't think many people know that. And I am And one of my favorite workouts as a former athlete is hot yoga. I would say hot yoga— I say hot yoga has pretty much changed my life and has made me a better leader and a better listener. It's now— I'm obsessed with hot yoga and wherever I am traveling, I try to find a studio and it allows me to take a little bit of time for myself to refocus and reorient, you know, what my mission is for that day, what I'm going to tackle. And so I would say that's probably how I balance my love of food also and how I moderate my stress as a leader of a growing and expanding company that's fully self-funded. So I would say hot yoga is something not many people know about. It has its own little following, but I would recommend any sort of exercise or any opportunity to take 30 minutes for yourself, set your goals. It's the every single day, but it's the consistency.

That's right.

And it just gives you that extra mental control. That's right. I think to stay really laser focused on your mission. And for me, yoga helped to calm and I, I became a better listener. I truly believe because of my morning routine.

Good for you. It's been a real pleasure talking with you, Stacy. Thanks so much for your time today.

Thank you so much. I have a great conversation.

You're welcome. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media, just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up rate Your ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasENoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.