Jeremy Weisz 13:24
Chantelle, what kept you going during those times, as opposed to going, listen, I’m smart. I can get you probably get a job at an enterprise and have good benefits, make a good salary, what kept you going with the company?
Chantelle Little 13:41
I love that question. I think it’s a few things. I think one was my dream. I was dreaming big then, I feel like I dream way bigger now. But at that point I had a dream. I had a vision of what I wanted to create. And I think that despite all of the difficulties I wanted to make it happen, like it was just like, at the core of me, it was kind of like it felt fulfilling to wake up and work on it as hard as it was, because I just believe that if I didn’t give up that one day, I would realize that vision and that dream. So I think that’s part of it, but I’m also very relationship and people-driven, and I think that ultimately, by far, now and then, my team and my clients are the driver.
Like, I didn’t want to let my team down. I didn’t want the company to fail. I didn’t want them to not have jobs. I didn’t want them to not be able to be compensated. It’s like, I didn’t want to let him down, and even today, that’s the top driver for me as a leader. I want to continue to skill Tiller so that it creates a better future for our clients, and it creates a better future for our team. And that really drives me.
Jeremy Weisz 14:55
What’s in it you mentioned you dream bigger now. What’s an example of maybe where your vision has expanded, where you were before?
Chantelle Little 15:05
Yeah, I think I’ve always thought that I dreamed big, but I realized at some point in my kind of late 20s that I had a lot of limiting beliefs. So while I dreamed big, there were a ton of constraints on my dreams. For example, I could never lead a company of more than 20 people, or I could never, I remember the day that I thought I could never sell more than a million dollars in business in a year, and then you do 3 million, and you’re like, whoa, like, I guess I could do that. So, I think that there were just so many limits, and I didn’t realize that I had all those limits. So I worked with a business coach, and she actually had me do this exercise where I’m right-handed, but she had me write with my left hand, all of those limiting beliefs.
And I think the idea is, is that by writing with your left hand, you kind of have to slow down and think about what you’re writing and realize how silly it is, and then I’ve painted this, put this circle around my life and my business. And I think what really broke me was that my limiting beliefs about myself were holding back my whole company. That’s what really got me. I was like, well, I am holding back the team, because I’ve put all these limits on what I can do, and essentially what we can do as a result. So once I was able to break through that, I’d say, now I still have limiting beliefs, but I see them for what they are, and I have mechanisms of, kind of acknowledging them and moving past them, and I think I now know what to do with them, whereas before, I didn’t even realize I had them.
So I think it’s just a maturing in terms of how I see what the narrative that’s going on in my head, and my ability to learn from it and course correct. So now it’s like, we’ve got a team of 30 people now, and plus our contractors, and I dream daily about it being 60 and 90. And I don’t necessarily want to infinitely scale, because I’m really passionate about culture, and for me, I don’t want to scale to a place where I can’t maintain that, but I do dream bigger now about expansion and becoming a world-class agency for B2B software companies and an example for other agencies of what that looks like. So bigger dreams.
Jeremy Weisz 17:19
Was your no ceilings motto from working with your coach, is that where that came from?
Chantelle Little 17:25
It kind of came from that like, it came from that season of my life. So, yeah, I would say that I’m a big learner, so I’m always learning a sponge. I like to learn from anything and everything that I can. And you sift the bad and you hold on to the good and I would say that there were some books that I read at that time, as well as some of the coaching. And then, yeah, just from reflecting on what I wanted, even for my own team, right? I have these amazing, smart people on my team, and I want them to see. I don’t want them to be limited by their own beliefs, either. So I think it came from a whole bunch of things. But yes, no ceilings. It’s on the back of our crew necks, and it’s definitely a driving motto for us here.
Jeremy Weisz 18:10
What are some you mentioned books have been very helpful. You mentioned Niche Down. What are a couple other books that are some of your favorites?
Chantelle Little 18:19
I’m a big Todd Henry fan, like huge Todd Henry fan. So I feel like any book Todd Henry has written, I’m a huge fan of. For the agency world, Herding Tigers, not hurting, but Herding. I always have to clarify that people like, what are you reading? But Herding Tigers was one of my favorites, of a leading creative people, and this idea that they’re ferocious tigers, and you’re kind of unlocking all that they’re capable of. And I think that book has been really helpful for me, but yeah, there’s so many.
I have a few of them here. One of my absolute favorites, from a personal reflection perspective, is Die Empty. And it just talks about, like, really leaving it all on the table and just using your life for a bigger purpose, and really just like serving and giving and just living big versus wasting it on whatever that could be, like whatever you want to waste it on. So I really love Die Empty, amazing book, but I could go on. I have a long list.
Jeremy Weisz 19:23
I’m open. I have some audible credits. Any others, yeah. And Todd Henry, it looks like Herding Tigers, Die Empty, The Accidental Creative are all Todd Henry books as well.
Chantelle Little 19:36
Yeah. And for the agency world, a fellow agency leader here in Calgary, actually introduced me to a book called The Agencynomics. And that became a really handbook for me, because I think in any business you’re wondering, well, how do I know if my agency is performing or my business is performing? And it introduced me to some metrics that would help me assess the health of my agency right. There are a lot of industries. There’s a lot of information available publicly on those industries. And I’d say the agency world, there is some, but it’s often less than what I see in other industries.
And so Agencynomics has been a really helpful guide. Recently went to a conference for agencies and was introduced to a book called The Agency Secret, and that one is a new favorite kind of a new handbook that so I’ve got my handbooks, and I’m always like pulling pieces from different books and trying to figure out how I can apply that to my leadership or my personal life, or to the business and the agency. So those are a few others.
Jeremy Weisz 20:42
Interesting. No. Thanks for sharing that I’ve never I’ve not heard of Agencynomics before. I don’t know if that’s one with Spencer Gallagher and Peter Pool, but it looks really interesting. So thanks for sharing. You mentioned team. Obviously, team is really important to you. Culture is really important to you, what are some of the key hires? And to say people, but like positions that you, it started off you in college with a computer, and what were some of the key positions that you hired for along the way?
Chantelle Little 21:16
Yeah, that’s a really great question. There’s been a few of them, years and years ago, I had a sales guy who helped me, who was working with me on kind of building out the business. And while he was at Tiller, he actually introduced me to a guy named Brandon Nickerson, who is our COO today. And Brandon and I worked together in sort of a contract relationship for a number of years, and I used to be the person who was like, I can never have a business partner. I kept thinking that, because I just seen so many business partnerships go wrong, and I didn’t want that to be me. But after working with Brandon for a number of years, I just sensed this like deep value alignment, like we both really care about doing things right and ethically, had the same ethics and the same values.
And so I wanted to lure him over to Tiller, he was doing his freelance business, and I wanted to find a way for him to come and join me on my journey and together, thinking that the two of us would be more unstoppable than each of us independently. And so he was really key. So he joined me in 2017 and he has been instrumental in our growth and is kind of over. He helped me oversee the process, the creation of process and delivery and all of that. So that’s been a huge, huge win. And just the greatest partner you could have. I mean, just amazing. So he’s been key. But also building on a leadership team has been really key, because you don’t like, when you’re building out a business, and you start a business, you don’t know, like, is it too soon? Is it too late? You’re trying to figure out the timing of these things, and it’s me late at night, at one in the morning, Googling, like, what is an appropriate management-to-employee ratio?
There’s no real handbook for this, especially when I’ve never worked anywhere else, except for a golf course as a kid type thing, because I started this as my first kind of job, other than the health benefit company, I guess. So it’s tough to know when to do these things. So I think the last couple years have been really about learning, how do you build a leadership team, and how do you build a leadership philosophy that goes beyond yourself, and how do you scale your influence through other leaders? And I’ve been super blessed to add three other leaders to the team outside of Brandon, so there’s a five of us in total, and it’s been incredible, because now I feel more confident that my entire team and entire organization has the attention that they deserve, because before just felt so spread thin. So that’s one key, and then the other one is fractional roles we have.
I had never really understood fractional, like the fractional concept before, but I was introduced to it, ended up with fractional CFO, fractional General Counsel, fractional HR. And what that did is it allowed me to get access to lots of experience that I do not have at a reasonable cost that I could afford, right? So those roles I’ve learned from each and every one of those ladies in big ways, and especially on the finance side, that has just been absolutely instrumental. So big impact to Tiller by having that experience on the table.
Jeremy Weisz 24:35
I know Chantelle you have by this time when this comes out, there’s an article that is about competitive advantage and about intergenerational teams. Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on how that’s a competitive advantage?
Chantelle Little 24:54
Yeah, absolutely. I’m very passionate about this, and I kind of stumbled upon the passion mid-journey as an entrepreneur. Because when I was younger, I mean, the average age was of Tiller was, like 21 where all these, like, essentially, kids not to be demeaning, but it’s kind of like kids trying to figure out how to do this, and it was sort of fun, but you just lack so much experience. And I think I dealt with a lot of intimidation on hiring people that are older than me, and just why would they want to work for me? Why would they want to be part of this? You know, when they could do this or they could do that? So I struggled through a lot of those things mentally, but now we’re in this really interesting point in time where there’s five different generations working together in the workforce. I mean, that is really, really interesting.
And so in the piece that you’re referring to, I talk a lot about some of my hesitations and hang ups in terms of building an intergenerational team, but how I really fell in love with it and started to see the value. The younger generations are bringing new, fresh ideas to the table. Have high competence around using technology and all of that. But then you have other generations that have so much experience and are also really keen to mentor and keen, and that’s what they’re oftentimes fulfilled by. And so bringing all those people together in the workforce is like a superpower, if you can do it effectively and create space for everyone to feel like they have a voice. And I think it’s going to be the way of the future, and the companies that can figure out how to leverage intergenerational teams are going to win.
So now, I’m the youngest on our leadership team of five, and we have age spanning. I think 25 to 63 now is the age span of our team, or maybe it was 23 to 63 somewhere in there, but a huge age span, which has been really instrumental to our growth.
Jeremy Weisz 26:54
A lot of times, I find things that work through things that did not work. What are some things you have found in your experience that have not worked when you’re getting together intergenerational teams and trying to make create a cohesive unit? I don’t know if there’s any thoughts on that.
Chantelle Little 27:18
Yeah, I would say we have put so much emphasis on our culture that I think that it’s not perfect, but it’s created a place where I feel like people feel comfortable to come to the table and share their expertise and their ideas. So I think that having the right Cultural Foundation is really, really, really important, and the right values and all of that. For example, I have seen, this is not a blanket statement for every agency, but I’ve seen agencies where there’s a lot of ego, and so we have really focused on no ego here at Tiller. And I think that not having ego is key to building an intergenerational team, because if there’s ego, younger generations may dismiss the ideas of older generations, and older generations, if there’s ego, might dismiss the value of an inexperienced contributor.
So I think we haven’t really struggled with that because of the culture that we have. But I think that there are challenges, right? It’s just about trying to create the right environment where people can succeed. I think one other thing too is that naturally, there’s a need for training for different generations, depending on some of those gaps, right? If people are career pivoters. So I think we’ve learned a lot about how can we provide more training to support people at different points in their journey, so we can help younger people in the ways that need to be helped, and older generations in the ways that they need to be helped. So it’s an ongoing learning process.
Jeremy Weisz 28:57
No, that makes perfect sense, actually, because it really comes down to the foundation, which is culture. So no matter who it is, how old they are, if they share those same values, then it makes for a cohesive team. If they don’t, they don’t, and you mentioned the ego part, which is interesting. I always find the interview and hiring process tricky. Are there anything, because people can interview well, they can look it on paper, they can interview well, and then you find out later, maybe it’s not so good. So are there any things from the ego perspective that you have found in the interview process and hiring process have helped you find the right fit?
Chantelle Little 29:39
Yeah, this has been an ongoing learning process for us, because one of the things that I’ve struggled with in the past is to distinguish between ego and confidence. It can like, especially in a single interaction, it can be really difficult to see, and so we’ve tried to, we haven’t always got it right. Sometimes we’ve misinterpreted confidence for ego or ego for confidence. And I think through that, those experiences we’ve learned how to better notice it. I think we also have expanded our recruitment process quite a bit to include more touch points. So we’ve added in, for example, we’ve added in something, the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, as part of our recruitment process. So all of our top candidates will complete that assessment.
And one of the things that I love to ask after a candidate completes that assessment is, did anything surprise you about your strengths finder assessment? Because it’s really talking about the person’s strengths. And I find that question to be quite revealing, because if the person is quite defensive about the StrengthsFinder assessment, I feel like I should have been ranked higher on that and whatever, it might reveal that there’s some ego and not a growth mindset. So I think I’m trying to interview for growth mindset. If someone says, yeah, I was a little bit surprised about this, like I thought I might have got a bit stronger here, but in all fairness, maybe this is something that I could work on, because sometimes your strengths are your greatest weaknesses. Like it all comes down to how they respond to those questions. And we also have redesigned a lot of our practices to really like a lot of our questions, a lot of the steps in our process, to also try to gauge growth mindset, because that’s really key. If someone has a growth mindset, it’s hard to have ego, because you’re constantly feeling like you could better yourself, like I want to get 1% better tomorrow on the next day.
We’ve also introduced more group interviewing, so we have more people meet, so that we have more points of view on that candidate. And so sometimes that takes a form of a design challenge. For our designers or for a developer, it might be a development challenge. We have different challenges, and then we have the candidate present their work to our team, and we see how that interaction goes. So those are just some practicals.
Jeremy Weisz 31:59
I love that. No thanks for sharing that. And also definitely one of my favorite books by Carol Dweck, Growth Mindset. People can check that out if they want to learn more. But that makes perfect sense, and I love that StrengthsFinder and asking about what surprised you, that’s fantastic. I’d love to highlight a little bit more about what you do as a company, and we talked about that a little bit, but I have some websites pulled up that I wanted to walk through, since you and the team are all about design, CRO and everything like that. So I want to go through and some of these sites, and you can tell us about the user experience and some of the things that are on here that are great, and also some things that maybe you’d recommend testing. I know Weightwalls is one company you’ve worked with.
Chantelle Little 32:54
Yes, yeah, absolutely. So Weightwell is a really exciting Calgary success story in the tech space and their queue management solution, as you can see from the headline there. So essentially, any business or healthcare organization or educational organization that has long lines at their place of business or place of operation could benefit from a que management system that goes beyond the tickets that we used to get when we go into the registry or whatever it might be to renew your driver’s license or whatever. So Weightwell is an exciting, exciting Calgary success story. We helped them with their brand and their website, and really helped elevate things for them, and some things worth noting, I’d say, like you can see in some of the work that we’ve done for them, really heavy focus on social proof, that’s really, really important.
So you can see the five stars, the g2 you can see some stats just below the primary focus area here that are kind of explaining how they perform for their website, adding in customer testimonials, things like that are really helping to provide proof as to the headlines, right? So we always try to pair credibility and social proof with headlines so that we can get people to convert. So that’s kind of a key piece here. Now, given this website launched very recently, I definitely need a little bit of time to see how things do perform. But once we have a little bit of data to go off of, there’s different things that we can do. For example, we can test different CTA buttons and different blocks so that talk to sales button that you’re hovering over in those two or eight Well, those are examples of that.
So there’s different call to actions, and you can use whether the button is filled or not filled, color choices, different things like that, to try and provide emphasis on these call to actions. And then we also have built out, if you go to the solutions tab there at the top, you can kind of see that we built out different solutions by use case, industry and company size. Because it’s really important that when a potential buyer lands on this website, they can see themselves quickly in the website and see a solution for their pain. So this is just sort of the strategy that we apply to this. Most of these customers are high problem-aware. They already know that they have a problem long lines. So when they come here, we can kind of lean into differentiators, lean into the value prop and try and convert them relatively quickly, versus having to spend time educating them on their problem. So that’s kind of things we’re thinking about when we created this.
Jeremy Weisz 35:32
Yeah, it really is beneficial if they serve specific niches and they’re like, well, we don’t want to just focus on healthcare. We also have higher education retail, but the client wants, or the customer wants, and they feel like they know me. They’re speaking directly to me. And when you go on here, obviously healthcare has words like patients on there, where the other ones won’t have that on their wait times specifically so waiting rooms where it seems like the government or higher education is not going to have the same language. This is a lot to build out. This is quite a project, because each of these have its own kind of nuances.
Chantelle Little 36:15
Absolutely, yeah. And that’s one common pattern with B2B SaaS companies, oftentimes there are a number of audiences or buyers, right? Because the B2B buying process is quite complex. Some recent data from Gartner report showed that, I think it’s six to nine or seven to 10 stakeholders are involved in the buying process. So the website naturally has to appeal to all of those different audiences, and that can be challenging, because you have one website, but you need to serve multiple audiences, multiple user journeys, so this solution-based approach does help with achieving that.
Jeremy Weisz 36:47
Yeah, even from like you mentioned, company size and enterprise like, oh, they only work with small, medium businesses. They don’t work with our company, or the opposite, oh, they’re too big for us. They only work with enterprises. So it’s really interesting how this has kind of served different specific audiences. So I get that, really a lot of credibility, social proof testing, calls to action. I have another one pulled up. Anything else on this one that we should note?
Chantelle Little 37:17
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt just clicking on the pricing page momentarily here, because pricing is always a pricing in B2B, SaaS, again, is always a challenge to figure out, how do you present your pricing, because there’s usually so many options. So again, there’s some opportunities for testing on the pricing page that we could always explore again. Right now, we’re in a phase of trying to see how this performs, but you can kind of see, how do you present a lot of information in a clear way. There’s most B2B. SaaS companies have an enterprise option. So it’s like there is still a path of getting custom pricing in certain cases.
On this website, we were trying to also highlight some of the add-ons that they have just below this section here, so that people feel that they can, yeah, it’s actually just below that story. There you are some additional add-ons. And then we also have a feature comparison on this website to kind of enable it, enable a buyer, to make better comparisons off the top. So there’s lots of different ways to optimize pricing pages. It can be tricky to get the content clear and concise. And this product has a lot of different customization flexibility for their organizations that are their clients. So that was a challenge. So there’s probably testing opportunity on pricing pages too.
Jeremy Weisz 38:29
Yeah, it’s good. It’s tough, because you want to give them as much information as possible. So when they come to you, they have a lot of their questions answered that you don’t have to repeat, but you don’t want to overwhelm people either. What’s your thought of? I mean, this one obviously includes some pricing on the page. I’ve seen someone shared a site with me the other day. It was a B2B SaaS company, and they didn’t have pricing on and my mind’s always like, Okay, well, that means it’s maybe enterprise level.
It’s going to be a large ticket item. Any thoughts on even in a large B2B SaaS on putting pricing versus non? Obviously, they have kind of custom here, but they do put pricing some at least baseline pricing. Do you find any? Is there a cut-off, like, okay, here’s where we wouldn’t recommend putting pricing. Are there any kind of best practices or rules around the B2B SaaS and how people are put what they display on the website about pricing?
Chantelle Little 39:32
Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t consider myself a B2B SaaS pricing expert, although we do weigh in often with clients. But there’s a lot of chat, the lot of nuance to that, especially if organizations are wanting to price test on their customer success or sales teams. But I will say probably my best piece of advice is to look at what the competitors are doing. Because if you’ve got five competitors, and four of them are doing it and you’re not. It’s going to be difficult to perform against them. Now, if none of them are doing it, and you decide to do it, you might also separate yourself from the pack, and it might help you gain traction.
So it doesn’t mean do what the pack is doing, but think about it in terms of differentiation, and I definitely would recommend doing that. I think because most B2B buyers are more interested in self-serve these days. I think if you can put a price on your website, it will really help you, because you’re going to get higher quality leads because they already have a general sense of price. So when they actually reach out, they’re more likely to be qualified.
Jeremy Weisz 40:37
Chantelle, I know we have two minutes and then our call. So we’re new Rapid Fire, maybe one minute each, sure, and we’re gonna take just do a quick what are some things you really like, maybe some things that you test? And maybe we’ll start with good lawyer.
Chantelle Little 40:51
Yeah, sure. Good lawyer, another amazing Calgary success story, and we’re actually a client of good lawyers, so make use of their fractional legal talent. But this website’s really interesting. I think, generally speaking, they’ve, they’ve definitely highlighted social proof throughout. But the website is quite lean, so it does leave people wanting, especially what I just said about B2B software buyers being more self-serve. There’s a lot of links down in the footer. So the website is actually bigger than it looks, in some ways. But again, I think, there’s some opportunity to have a more expansive site map here, and probably more of a thought leadership play, so that companies can actually learn more about the company and the solutions.
So they’ve kind of got to that with the four companies piece in those three use case pages, state up startup skill ups in house, but they could get more industry-specific, make use of case studies. There’s a lot of opportunity to expand this and probably drive higher performance. Could also test Get Started, because Get Started is not a bad call to action, but it might be interesting to see how it performs against a different call to action. Different call to action, like book consultation or whatever it might be. So there could be opportunities to test that.
Jeremy Weisz 42:10
Awesome love it. I know you’ve got to hop off. The other one I was going to ask about was Valley Mail. But I know the, I think the Weightwell, was similar. So I don’t know if there’s any quick thoughts on that, or we should just.
Chantelle Little 42:27
Yeah, I think this one was just interesting from the standpoint of multiple audiences. So this company was in a place where they were appealing to an IT buyer, and had to expand to also appeal to an email marketing buyer, and it’s also highly technical. So you have, the way that you have to speak to an IT buyer versus an email marketing buyer is very, very different. And so we help them make that evolution here. And they have some similar structures on the solutions. Pages I love the why Dollar mail page probably worth noting. This is a page I love to see on B2B, SaaS company websites. And it’s not always the right solution, but I think taking a page to highlight those differentiation why us over someone else?
They have tons of social proof partners, that Microsoft and Google are partners. All of those things are increasing credibility. So there’s definitely a valuable page to have on your website. And when you’re appealing to an IT buyer, you really need to make sure that you address all their security concerns and considerations in advance. So again, that’s something that we’ve tried to do with dollar mail very effectively. Right off the top.
Jeremy Weisz 43:37
Chantelle I want to be the first one to thank you. This has been tremendously helpful. I want to encourage people to check out your website, tillerdigital.com, to learn more, and we’ll see everyone next time. Chantelle, thanks so much.
Chantelle Little 43:52
Wonderful. Thank you.
