Brian White Podcast Transcript
Brian White joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Brian White. Brian White is the chief revenue officer and co-founder of DoorSpace. He has 14 years of experience in business development and B2B software sales, helping organizations leverage technology to add efficiency, drive revenue growth, and improve their customer experience prior to DoorSpace.
Brian has achieved success in a number of roles, ranging from mid-market to large enterprise sales. Most notably in his tenure at a technology startup. Brian helped advance the company from series B to unicorn status in just three years, helping achieve a 1 billion valuation. This experience provided invaluable insights into the importance of crafting effective business strategies and prioritizing customer centric approaches.
Well, good afternoon, Brian, welcome to the show!
Brian White: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Brian Thomas: I appreciate you making the time. Ryan again. Great name. Love to interview. This is probably my 12th or 13th Brian I’ve had on the show, so I certainly appreciate that and you making the time. So, Brian, jumping right into your first question.
You’ve had an impressive journey in the realm of B2B software sales and business development. Can you share with us some pivotal moments early in your career that you believe set the stage for your later successes, particularly in helping a technology startup achieve unicorn status?
Brian White: Yeah. So, I was able to join that company right after they raised a series B.
So, I was employee number 98 or 99. And what was awesome about it was there was a relatively small sales team there at the time. And so, we reported directly to the SVP of sales. And his track record was, you know, going into early-stage companies and scaling them up. So, he’d had success before and he brought in, you know, a system that he had put in place to scale the business.
And so I was able to learn a ton that’s hopefully going to translate to success at door space. But some of the key takeaways I had was the importance of forming strategic partnerships and building long-term relationships and, you know, it really shortens the sales cycles. It increases the close rates, and it makes it, you know, really powerful to walk in from a position of trust by having those alliances.
Right? And when you’re first, you know, trying to form some of those relationships, you know, how do you get people to trust you and endorse you? It really comes from being a act of service to those other people. And so, so many times people come to the table and it’s, what can you do for me? What can you do for me?
But starting with the point of, you know, helping others and providing value and then earning the right to ask for that help, you know, really made a big difference there. Aside from that, I would say, you know, building repeatable processes that allow you to scale 1 person that has that level of knowledge can do great things for a company.
But when you’re able to build repeatable processes and scale that, as you hire more reps to come in, and they can run that playbook successfully, making it clear and concise is really what helped them grow as a company. And then the last thing I would say is, you know, company culture is, you know, pivotal.
Making sure that you not just hire the right people, but really from the top down demonstrate those values on collaboration and trust and team building and respect is, you know, creating an ecosystem of success where everybody feels like they’re contributing to the same goal. And they’re all stakeholders in a sense of, you know, the company’s success is their individual success as well.
So, by the time I left that company they had raised another round, and they were valued at over a billion dollars, you know, reaching unicorn status. And I’m still in touch with that. He’s moved on to another company and he’s kind of mentored me along the way after I left as well. And so hopefully we can replicate the same thing here at door space.
Brian Thomas: I love that story and again, we start out the podcast every time here, Brian, with, with the story of, you know, how the guest started and what. What they achieved throughout the process, and I just love it. And again, you highlighted some great things that repeatable processes to make sure you can scale and do the fulfillment on that, which is important.
Of course, the relationships, which you really highlighted around people, which I think is awesome. So, thank you. And Brian, next question, your leadership style seems to deeply value innovation, collaboration and empowerment. How do you foster and maintain this culture within your team, especially in challenging times or when facing ambitious targets?
Brian White: You know, Brian, I really think it all starts with trust. You know, trusting yourself to make the right decisions and knowing that you’re putting in the amount of work and effort to get the results you want. And sometimes it never feels like you can do enough, right? Like, you wake up in the morning and you have your, your day planned out and it’s packed full of meetings and calls.
And then at the end of the day, you look back and it’s like, what did I really accomplish? But just trusting that you’re, you’re doing all the right things along the way, because you have the right intent. And I would say another thing around, you know building the leadership style to foster that type of culture on the team is never winning or losing alone.
So, we’re really good at door space at delegating tasks and trusting people to do their roles. But then we always come back and iterate and collaborate together and having the open and honest feedback where you can give constructive criticism. But again, knowing that you’re all on the same team, moving towards the same goals, allows people to kind of put their ego aside a little bit and, you know, understand that, you know, we’re all coming from a place of love.
And, you know, trying to have each other’s back in the sense of building the best product and having the best customer experience. And, you know, there’s no idea that isn’t welcomed at the table, but we want to make sure that whatever decisions we make are, you know, coming from a place of collaboration and making sure that, you know, the best ideas bubble up to the top.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I love that approach empowerment, of course, but really building that trust is the foundational piece to all success within the organization. And I really like again, how you empower people, trust people and just build a really collaborative environment. That’s awesome. So, Brian, you’ve emphasized the importance of.
Customer centric approaches in achieving business success. Can you share an example from door space where a customer centric innovation or strategy directly contributed to revenue growth or market expansion?
Brian White: Yeah, I mean, I think all innovation in a sense comes from some kind of need or demand in the marketplace.
And so, when we started door space, we didn’t write any code until there were hundreds and hundreds of interviews with people in the healthcare industry. So that we understood what the demand was and where the pain points were and what actually would help solve those problems. And then, you know, following that same method.
You know, now we’re building out another piece of the platform to help, you know, continuous education tracking and making sure that the investments in CME are met with the right types of results that people are targeting. And so to build that component, we’re actually currently searching for the right partner to do a pilot with so that we can roll that out for them, continue to develop it, write the actual software that’s going to solve their needs.
So, we’re, you know, trusting that the model that we use to develop the core platform is going to work for adding additional components as well.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And again, like, how you kind of dived into that. You’ve got obviously a. Business case here that you’re going to obviously trial. And like I said, I hope that is successful for you and your customers going forward, but thanks again for that little highlight.
And the last question of the day, Brian, your vision for a future where technology enriches lives is very inspiring. Looking forward, what emerging technologies or trends are you most excited about and how do you see them playing a role in addressing societal changes, particularly in healthcare?
Brian White: Yeah. I mean, I think AI is all the rage. I mean, anywhere you look right now in the news and the media, AI you know, it’s, it’s all about advancements and there’s something new coming out every week. It seems like, and there’s a lot of challenges in health care with using AI around data privacy you know, patient information, things like that.
Basically, anything that you feed into an AI program is now public domain. And so you have to be really careful to protect, you know, the HIPAA compliancy and the integrity of your data. But what’s really exciting to me about how DoorSpace is using AI is we’re trying to make life easier for the people that are in that workforce.
And so, when you think about the life of a doctor, a nurse, you know, a study came out last year that said that it would take 27 hours to complete all the tasks and duties in a single day, which is obviously impossible. And so, one way that we’re leveraging AI is to reduce and reduce the amount of time it takes to do manual tasks by automating those.
So, when you think about how all of a sudden, the impact on, burnout turnover, people leaving the medical industry, we can help with all those things. And for the first time, it’s like mental health and burnouts really being taken seriously.
Brian Thomas: I really love that. And I appreciate the enthusiasm around helping, especially in the healthcare space, which I’ve been a part of for 20 years on the tech side.
But I love that because we’re, we need to do take care of the people that take care of us. Right. Right. So that is so just really. Inspiring for me and makes me feel good knowing that I’ve been in that space, and we’ve got some people that are really dedicated to helping these folks out.
Brian White: So, I appreciate 1 of our taglines has always been. We’re working to make life better for those who make a difference. And I think that, you know, that’s the vision that we’ve had from the beginning and everything we’re doing is moving towards that goal.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Like I said, I appreciate that. It’s just amazing. And Brian, it was such a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Brian White: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Brian White Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
