Mary Beth Westmoreland - CTO at Blackbaud

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Mary Beth, the CTO of Blackbaud, and we discuss gaining respect as a new leader, managing quality by hiring A players, and why you should never shop hungry when hiring engineers. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:32) What's up?

(Mary Beth at 00:00:34) Hey, Joel. How are you doing?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:35) Good. I can't see you.

(Mary Beth at 00:00:37) Wait a second. My video just keeps coming in and going. Can you see me now?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:40) Yes. There you are. It's beautiful outside. Where are you at?

(Mary Beth at 00:00:45) We're in Charleston, South Carolina, not too far from you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:48) Oh, I love me some Carolinas. We go hiking up there every year.

(Mary Beth at 00:00:52) Where do you go?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:54) We actually go in, like, where Atlanta—like, Blairsville is, you know, northeast of Atlanta, and then there's Murphy and a couple other places. And we can drive around in there and be in like three different states at once.

(Mary Beth at 00:01:08) Oh, that's great. Yeah, that is a beautiful place to go, especially this time of year. I mean, the fall is beautiful there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:17) Oh, yeah. And then I took the drone up there, and so I got to fly the drone around the mountains, and that was a real interesting experience.

(Mary Beth at 00:01:25) Nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:26) The scenery is just unbelievable there.

(Mary Beth at 00:01:29) Yeah, it really is. It's beautiful. We didn't get—we usually go and we apple pick and eat the crappy popcorn that you get off the side of the road.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:40) The kettle corn?

(Mary Beth at 00:01:41) Yeah. It's like crack corn, though. It's so good. It's really good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:47) My wife loves it. They actually, at the where we go get the pumpkin festival things, they have some of the kettle corn food trucks. And so every year, she's like, "That's my one bag of the unhealthy kettle corn."

(Mary Beth at 00:02:00) Yeah. She probably eats it all at one time, doesn't she?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:03) Oh, yeah. Yeah, she did. Hold on. So we got connected through Peter. How weird was that?

(Mary Beth at 00:02:09) Actually, didn't—well, yeah. Right. I mean, that wasn't the first connection, but yeah. Pete sent me an email and I'm like, "Wait a second. I know Joel because I read your book, and then someone reached out about your podcast." And I had listened to your Microsoft CTO, the Kevin Scott podcast. And then yes, Pete sent me that random email. And I'm like, "What is this Kevin Bacon thing that's happening right now?"

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:31) I know. I know. Like, he's like, "Have you—do you know Mary?" And so he said your name, and I look you—I go look you up to see if I had ever engaged with you or anything, and I was like, "She's in my contact." And I was like, "This is unbelievable. Like, what a small, awesome world."

(Mary Beth at 00:02:49) Indeed. Well, there's not—I guess, you know this better than me, but there's probably a limited number of people who have the CTO title.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:57) Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, do you know about the format of the interview? So like, we're just recording the whole time.

(Mary Beth at 00:03:04) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:04) So there's no, like, big intro, and it's just us hanging out and talking about technology.

(Mary Beth at 00:03:12) Sounds good. Unless you want me to give you a big intro. I could do that for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:15) You want to MC an intro for me?

(Mary Beth at 00:03:18) And here's Joel on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:24) Hello, my friends. Oh, my goodness. That's so much fun. You're a lot of fun.

(Mary Beth at 00:03:32) Oh, thanks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:32) How did you end up in your position? Like, first of all, how do you say the name of the company? Because it throws me off.

(Mary Beth at 00:03:39) Yeah. And that's probably a sign of your age and maybe mine too. It's Blackbaud, B-A-U-D. Remember the baud rate, which is like back old school modem tech?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:49) Oh, wow.

(Mary Beth at 00:03:50) Do you remember that? So I think that—gosh, when's the first time I used a modem? Probably back in the eighties, right? Mid eighties? Yeah. The company was started—I think the first customer that we had was a school. And so it was kind of a take on technology with Blackboard, like, being the school, so it was Blackbaud, and it just kind of stuck.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:17) That's who I actually thought it was at first when I saw it, because there's that, you know, the BB, the educational company Blackboard that was really large. And I was like, "Oh, is it Blackboard?" And I'm like, "I think there's a typo there."

(Mary Beth at 00:04:31) No, we're actually different companies. Although, there is a little bit of a tangential overlap, not really an overlap, but I mean, we kind of see each other with different customers. Blackboard's a great company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:44) Yeah. I've never heard anything but. So how did you get to Blackbaud?

(Mary Beth at 00:04:51) Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, I can kind of start from the beginning, or I can give you kind of just the last fifteen years of how I actually got to this position. You tell me what you're interested in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:05) Well, now I'm going to put the official response as like, teleportation machine. Like, that's how you got there. Either is fine. How you ended up—the story of how you ended up in the exact position or just the whole thing. Like, where did I want—I like you, first of all. You're extraordinarily likable. And now I want to know your story.

(Mary Beth at 00:05:24) Well, you're probably not going to like me after the story because it's extraordinarily uninteresting. But I'll tell you about it. By the way, I'm a big Trekkie, so love the teleportation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:29) Good.

(Mary Beth at 00:05:30) So, I mean, yeah, you probably know, and you're a developer and a CTO yourself. I mean, for me, the story is similar. I love math and science. I didn't love memorizing dates very much, so history just didn't appeal to me as much and felt like I had to work harder at it. So, you know, I just matriculated into math and science at a young age, and it kind of stuck with me. So I graduated from college, and I went to work at the Department of Energy National Lab. I grew up in New Jersey, and one of my goals after graduation was to get out of New Jersey. I love New Jersey, but I really wanted to experience different parts of the country. So I took a job offer with DuPont, and they, at the time, were running the Savannah River National Lab in South Carolina. So I went there, took a job as a programmer, spent fifteen years there. And it was like a crazy place to be as a developer because it basically had every different kind of technology to play on. And we had a Cray XMP, the biggest installation of Macs—we had Quadra 950s at the time. Of course, you know, IBM PCs, but then workstations galore and IBM mainframe. I mean, all the new RISC architecture was coming out then. And I worked on a Symbolics machine, and I got to play in code that was just across the board. Like, we had a VAX VMS system, I wrote Fortran on it. You know, I wrote Symbolics code—Lisp on a Symbolics machine. So it was just fun. And so I spent fifteen years there, and then got recruited away to run R&D for a company called Ipswitch, headquartered in Boston, with a couple of Southern offices where we had most of our engineering. And I spent maybe seven or eight years there until I came here to Blackbaud. And I've been here for about ten years now, and the company's grown, and it's a really cool place to work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:23) What's the mission of the company?

(Mary Beth at 00:07:26) That's a great question. And I have to tell you this—you know, Blackbaud is a big company. We're the twenty-fourth largest cloud computing company, cloud software company. But, you know, I didn't even know Blackbaud ten years ago. I didn't know who they were. I went looking for a company that had a presence in South Carolina and had the tech that I wanted. And I just knocked on their door and said, "Hey, will you give me a job?" And they're like, "No." And then I'm like, "Wait a second. I really want to work for you." And so I found the common connection and I actually was able to come here. But the mission—funny, you ask about that. I should have known them because the mission is delivering, you know, computing, software and services for the nonprofit and for the entire social good sector. So it's charities that you might know—the largest of the large, like American Heart Association, the smallest local community food banks and animal shelters, higher ed, faith-based foundations, companies that have CSR programs, people like me and you who like to give our time and our dollars to causes we care about. And so we provide everything from fundraising and donation management to marketing to student information systems, volunteerism, everywhere in between, peer-to-peer. So it's a really deep portfolio and, yeah, I mean, it's a really cool company because as an engineer, the work we do has just amazing impact too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:49) So you're like cloud computing for good.

(Mary Beth at 00:08:54) We are cloud computing for good. Can I trademark that if I put your name next to it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:59) It's all yours. Yeah. 100%.

(Mary Beth at 00:09:03) I mean, that's exactly what we are. Because, you know, I feel like, you know, as a technologist, and I worked in the IT—like, serving IT customers for a long time, the nonprofit market, the social good sector—and I feel like that's somewhat of an ignored and underserved community where they're deserving of high-tech and the benefits and values that it brings more than, you know, as much, if not more than others. So, yeah, I'm pretty passionate about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:32) So I'm actually the president of a charity.

(Mary Beth at 00:09:35) You are?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:37) Yes. You see this little book up here?

(Mary Beth at 00:09:40) Yeah, but my eyes aren't that good. I can't read it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:42) Princess Physicist.

(Mary Beth at 00:09:49) Wait a second. Is that like a woman in technology title story?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:54) So this lovely Princess Physicist, she gets stuck in a tower, right? And she finds a book on physics under her bed, and then she, you know, tinkers about, and she ends up using physics in order to get herself out of the tower. And then she is free. And it wasn't luck or a steed with a hunk, 'twas physics her freedom attained.

(Mary Beth at 00:10:24) That is awesome. Okay. Wait a second. I have this duck, but I think that one's—oh, man. That's amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:33) That's amazing.

(Mary Beth at 00:10:34) Wait a second. I really want that. Can I get it on Amazon?

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:38) Yeah. No, I'm sending you a copy of it.

(Mary Beth at 00:10:41) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:42) We got this one, and then we got Back to the Moon, which is little brother and sister that go to the moon.

(Mary Beth at 00:10:47) Yeah. So did you use one of, like, Newton's laws? Like, how did you—was it gravity? How did—what was the—how did you explain that phenomenon of how she found her way out of the tower?

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:57) I'm going to send you the book. Okay. And you're going to have that lovely anticipation and be able to find out yourself. No. Yeah. So they—I wrote the book and had it illustrated by some of the people that do like the illustrations for the Disney children's books. And then promo—we printed up several thousand copies and then donated them to homeless pregnant women shelters and foster family shelters, things like that. Women and children in need because they need books. You need—you've got to give something to your kids for Christmas and stuff. You know?

(Mary Beth at 00:11:34) They need books, but all of us need some inspiration too and some goals. So I love that message. I mean, it's beautiful. Congratulations for that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:44) Oh, thanks. Yeah. We had—I have my first daughter. She's 13, right there. She just started walking and talking, so that's awesome. But right before she was born, my mom passed away and then left us $25,000. And so my brother's a doctor. My sister's a science teacher. And we said, "Well, you know, what can we do with this money that would be unique and interesting?" Go on a trip somewhere that she would have liked or whatever. And then we ultimately came up with—I came up with the idea to do some books so that we could read them to our kids, which would be her grandkids, so that we'd have some excuse to, you know, remember her. Right? And then we found out after I went through the whole project, it didn't cost that much. So we had a bunch of money left over. I wrote the books, had some books, and then I figured, "Well, we've got to get rid of the rest of this money." So I formed a nonprofit, which wasn't too difficult, but it took like seven months. And then we just spent the remainder of the money on printing up lots of books, and then around the holidays, we just go drop them off. And this is year two of it.

(Mary Beth at 00:12:52) Oh, man. That's great. That is fantastic. Have you gotten any feedback on the books from folks that you've given them to?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:00) Yeah. Like, people will send us newspaper clippings or something because I don't know. My brother is a doctor, so people come into the office and will buy them or take them or whatever. And, yeah, we just—this is our second year doing it. So second holiday season doing it, and I had never had any charity experience. I just wanted to do something. It makes you feel really good. Like, it's—now I understand why people give away lots of money, and they spend—when you have that first act of doing it, it just sets off this whole feeling inside of you that you have never experienced before, and then I'm like, "It's actually, like, selfishly people should want to do good because it feels amazing."

(Mary Beth at 00:13:43) It does. And, you know, that story that you told about, you know, paying tribute to your mom and doing this and really impacting people, and then you add that on top—like that feel good. I mean, it's just—I'm addicted as well. So I completely understand.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:59) Right. And it's a great excuse too to keep, you know, talking about them because I don't know if you've lost a parent before, but—and this is typically not the topic of the podcast. This is fun. But it's strange because, you know, there's like times where you'll go to want to talk to them and like if nobody talks about them, or then you're only talking about them with your siblings and then it's just like, you know—so I found this to be a way that's like, you know, it's a cool way to keep the memory active without—and also feel, you know, good about it.

(Mary Beth at 00:14:28) Yeah. But it's also a freaking awesome message. Like, what you're doing is—and by the way, your daughter's probably old enough to teach her calculus, so you might as well pull those books out and start thinking about it. Eighteen months is like the cutoff for that. But what you're doing is—we have to start to have the conversation differently so that at a young age, girls see STEM programs, whether it be, you know, CS or physics. I studied physics as well. That it's accessible and that you can be successful in a field that, you know, you can where you can see yourself, you know, going and being happy and being successful, seeing role models there. Right? Being yourself, being a princess, which might look different than the typical engineer. Like, that is what matters.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:16) Right? I've wanted to—like I had the idea of, "How could I do it bigger next year?" And I was thinking about going to—I happen to know the CTO over at Mattel. Right? And I was like, "I want them to license—and I don't even want the money. Just give it away to charity, but make the Princess Physicist a character." Right? Because that would be perfect. Because you still get to be the princess. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:39) Because there's no reason why you shouldn't want to, you know, you shouldn't have to choose. So you should be the princess and the physicist.

(Marybeth at 00:15:45) Well, that's why their CEO went to Mattel. I don't know if you probably know that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:49) She went?

(Marybeth at 00:15:49) To Mattel because she wanted to have the impact on being able to transform how we think about how toys can have that indirect but super impactful kind of effect on younger people. So, oh, wow. Yeah. Do the homework on that. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:09) I just knew their CTO. And, like, I see them. We talk, we interact from time to time on LinkedIn. But I did not know that their CEO, she went there for that mission. I'm gonna call her and be like, take the princess physicist. I don't care what you do. Like, you know, just make sure to use the money to, like, donate part of anything.

(Marybeth at 00:16:30) Yeah. Well, I think that Barbies now have, like, you know, Barbie doctor, Barbie physicist, Barbie chemist. So I think that that is starting to, you know, get some momentum behind it. I think it's great. You know, when I was going through school and then got the job as the developer, the programmer, I mean, I was in a very, very, like, small minority. I mean, I would say it was probably two or three engineers in the lab at the time of a thousand engineers, and they were women. And so, it's a little bit of, you know, you got shell shocked a little bit when you go out into the real world. And, you know, having more of us doesn't just make folks like you and me feel better. It's the right thing for the business. And I know you know that and most people do, but I just need to say that, you know, this diversity of perspective and experience, that's what leads to better software.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:23) Oh, it leads to pretty much better everything. I liked it. I was watching, uh, I don't know if it was Cosmos or some documentary or something of the nature, but they talked about a rainforest and how its diversity is the thing that makes it so resilient and keeps it alive. Like, all the different types of life and how they intertwine is what strengthens the rainforest. And I was like, that's a good argument for diversity because I found it to be true as well.

(Marybeth at 00:17:50) Although, so I agree with you. I think that's a great metaphor. But in the rainforest, for the most part, they live in unity. Like, it kind of all works together, even though you have all this dichotomy of, you know, organic matter and flora and fauna and the weather patterns. And I think that we could probably take a lesson just in general as people about how to live in unity even though we come at it from a different angle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:15) Then those monkeys come through the rainforest, all of a sudden, unity is the farthest thing from your mind.

(Marybeth at 00:18:20) Then you just run.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:24) I was like, I've seen some of those monkeys on Discovery Channel, like, you got a fifty-fifty shot of, yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.

(Marybeth at 00:18:32) That's funny.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:33) So how many people are in the organization and then how many people are in technology? How many people do you currently lead in technology?

(Marybeth at 00:18:41) About 3,500 people at Blackbaud. About 800 or so of them are in the technology organization. You know, they span everything from product management, user experience, engineering. So it's those folks that exist within our technology group.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:00) And then did you start out as, I'm sorry, I was following your story earlier, but did you actually start out as the CTO there, or did you come in and then over the course of ten, fifteen years climb up?

(Marybeth at 00:19:11) Yeah. It was ten years. So I came in and I was running a software organization, and then was promoted into an SVP role, which then turned into a CTO role. So in a way, it definitely was kind of a growth trajectory from the time that I entered the organization. But really for the last seven or eight, seven, six or seven years. You're making me do the math now. It's probably not that long since I came in ten years ago. So probably five or six years I've been in that SVP even though I haven't had the CTO role. I think it's been, like, three or four years now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:48) And then through those transitions, we have a lot of early new leaders or just some leaders that want more experience. So what tips do you have for gaining, you know, I guess, gaining respect as a leader? You know, positioning yourself so that individuals, I guess, respect you.

(Marybeth at 00:20:08) Well, I mean, really, it's just the lessons of life. I mean, I know you, I read your book, and I agree with so much of what's in there. You kind of draw the dichotomy of developer to CTO out, but I see leadership really as influence, and you need to be that as an architect or an engineer. You know, so I would say things like, you know, influence and impact and passion and trustworthiness and team spirit, like, being able to support and develop your team. But I mean, as a leader, you know, my job as a CTO is, I work for my team. And so I think if you keep that attitude of the team success is my success and it's my job to grow the team and do it with passion and, you know, with integrity and character. And I think that that's really how I live my life, and I think that's important as a leader as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:02) You're a fantastic leader. I talk to people all day. Like, I love your responses. And the reason is because, like, you can't make this stuff up. Like, the only way you're able to respond like that is because that's who you are as a person, and that's what I like.

(Marybeth at 00:21:16) Well, thanks, Joel. Thank you very much. Yeah. I don't know if you mentioned Pete earlier that the colleague of ours that we share in common. You know, he may have a different story because he and I were together at the switch for a while, but I'm kidding. But, yeah, I mean, don't you like to hire people that way? Like, I mean, you want to hire people who have that, you know, that collaborative spirit and that, you know, you want people who want to be a part of something bigger than just them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:44) I just made my ninth hire today.

(Marybeth at 00:21:46) Oh, congratulations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:48) Yeah. So we're growing and just started hiring, um, director of sales, and I guess this would be, like, the second director of sales type position. But, uh, very, very diverse in the hires in the way that they think, and it's been, I don't know. It's just so exciting because I know that feeling you get when you know it's the right move.

(Marybeth at 00:22:12) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:13) And when it's there. Like, I don't like the ones where you're kind of sure. I like the ones where you're like, this is a good move. No matter what happens here, I will learn a lot and we'll be one step further ahead. And so I don't know. I don't know what made me think of that.

(Marybeth at 00:22:27) I love it. By the way, first of all, your mom would be proud, so congratulations. And then the second is that, like, you know, we're agile in how we do engineering. The core of who I am is an engineer. Right? And I'm a believer in ship fast. Like, don't tell me that it's gonna take you five teams in three years. Right? You have one team, ship something and learn, and then we'll shift and figure things out. Like, it sounds to me you're running your business that same way. I think that's a really important way to do it, is to bring people in with diverse kinds of perspectives and try something and learn and pivot and shift and change, and that's how you live. That's how you are successful as a technology company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:04) Oh, yeah. It came about from the show. People were asking about, you know, how do I train my technology leaders. I went to research some stuff because people ask me for tools all the time. They'll say, you know, what do you use for this or API documentation. And so I go find something. I talk amongst my friends who've used it. I'll demo it myself and then try it. So they're asking me about leadership training for technologists, and I couldn't find anything. And so then I asked if there was some interest. People said yes. I spent ten days, recorded some videos, built Ruby app, Ruby on Rails app, inside of ten days and had two paying customers, you know, cash flow. And then I hired someone, I hired someone else, we got more customers, we made mistakes, we figured things out, but the software from, you know, idea to paying customer and MVP in the hands of a paying customer inside of ten days, just because we found a need and went to go fill it. And, you know, now making hire act number nine today, like, I don't know. I'm really excited. We just closed the first round of venture capital financing too.

(Marybeth at 00:24:10) Great. That's fantastic. Wow. Yeah. Like, look, ten days. I mean, to time box it back to that short of a time frame, man, you have that on steroids. I love that. That's awesome. I usually do it, like, in a sprint block or something, like, six weeks, but I love that. That is so cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:27) It was so hard because I'm so convinced of this too. The hardest thing in the world is to keep something simple. Like, when you have an initial idea and you're like, oh, that's simple. That's cool. And then anything forward from that is just making it more detailed and more complicated by definition. Right? And so I just kept in front of me, the only thing the system needs to do is to be able to deliver this value and just kept it. And then I even recorded myself. I did, like, a video blog. I was like, today, I went off on a tangent and tried and thought about these ten features and how the product wouldn't work without them. And I convinced myself of this, and that would add additional six weeks to delivery. Like, and then I just woke up the next day and I was like, I can't do it. I just gotta stick with the basic. And it was hard.

(Marybeth at 00:25:14) Yeah. That's right. It's so hard to do that. It really is. I mean, I agree with you. I mean and, you know, it's hard not to ask your customers or to say no to them, but you have to. You know, like, really understand the problem they have versus listening to what they're asking you to do. Like, you gotta be able to understand it. And then keeping it simple, like, Frankenstein's software is horrible. They're just, like, putting things on everywhere, you know. Like, that is really difficult. And I always tell folks, look, you know, I think one of the worst mistakes I've ever made is listening too much to my customers. And by that, I mean, doing what they ask me to do versus doing something that's super valuable to them in a much different way than they would ever imagine. And that's the challenge that you'll have that I have too. Like, even in a larger company, like, your spirit of agility, we have to be able to live that every day. And, you know, in the cloud world especially, and I feel, like, really lucky that we're able to, like, trash the old way of doing things like, you know, user testing and giving people, sitting people down and putting something in front of them. You just listen to what users are doing via telemetry data, and then you shift and pivot and move and AB test and yeah. That's how you do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:22) I love it. You're modern too. That's why you were attracted to the title of the book, Modern CTO. And you know what? That was my first book. I learned so much about how to write a book from that because there's, like, two audiences of people. One who like the stories and they can understand. Like, you can extract from the stories the value. And then the other that they want, like, bullet point, like, actual, like, engineering, like, specs. They want specs at the end of the chapter. And so I didn't satisfy that side of the market, and I learned really, really fast. So that now on the next book, we're doing called Everything But Code. Right? It's like everything except code, which will include you in that too for sure. Like, I'll include some of your experiences and throw you in there and it's useful. Good information, quality people, and then, you know, our job is to spread the word so that the next generation can make, you know, less mistakes and do better than we've done. That's what life's all about. Right? Like, I was doing a lot of searching in my twenties. I'm in my thirties now about, like, what the purpose of life was for me. And one of the things I found was that DNA, unlike our most core cellular level, continually replicates and passes information down to the next generation. It clones information. And so I thought, okay. If I'm gonna live with a purpose, one of my core driving principles in life is gonna be passing information down to the next generation because, literally, it's in our DNA. And so that was a very believable purpose, part of life for me, so I latched onto that. You got me talking a lot.

(Marybeth at 00:27:54) I love that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:54) I'm sorry. Well, I love it.

(Marybeth at 00:27:57) Well, I thought you said this was a conversation. I love this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:59) So.

(Marybeth at 00:27:59) The thing is, like, you talked about everything but the software. I mean, we were on this mission to transform our entire product portfolio of products to the cloud. And we wanted to converge all of these things because, let me say this really quick, all those markets that I described earlier, that Blackbaud serves, there's, like, big common elements across all of those. And so rather than duplicate them in monolithic apps that some ship on prem, and I'm going way back here. But, like, you know, my core mission in life and really one of my most challenging things I've ever done in my career has been transforming that whole thing. And where we started, Joel, was in this platform concept of, like, let's get some core principles together and then what we call non-functional requirements. Like, you need a CI/CD pipeline, automate everything, entitlement. We want a system of entitlements and, like, orchestration of provisioning of how you provision. Like, we've gotta start at the fundamental stages of how we're going to work together, all these teams, because inevitably, we're gonna be stepping on each other's toes all day long. We have 102 scrum teams. So we started this. I love the concept of NFR. And then as you converge on this common cloud framework, what are your core tenets? Like, always have a code in a shippable state. Like, be able to click a button, build, and ship. You know, being able to, like, automate everything. Contributor model, where you can contribute code, you know, do a pull request of someone else's code base with someone's repository, which should be open as well. So those are all things that we went from this old siloed product architecture and engineering premises to this new way of doing things. And it's been fun and crazy and challenging and scary and horrifying and awesome all at the same time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:49) So with all of this knowledge and all of these things that you're doing, what does your day look like as far as interacting with your teams? Do you have, like, a core personal team that you work with? Some direct reports? Like, how is your structure laid out?

(Marybeth at 00:30:04) Yeah. Um, yes. So we're talking, like, how does my day work? So first of all, we're talking about a weekday, not a weekend.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:09) Right.

(Marybeth at 00:30:11) Because that starts a lot later. Yes. Um, but my weekdays, so, yeah, I mean, I do work mostly with, like, my core team is the person who runs technology strategy, the person who runs product management, the person who runs our center of excellence for data and analytics. So we want that to be a first-class field because all the work that we're doing around insights from all the data that we have should be informing UX, user experience. To your point of keeping it simple, we shouldn't ask customers, users to do something where we know what the right path is based on the data that we have.

(Marybeth at 00:30:47) So we have a data and analytics COE with data science practice. I have user experience, so we have a user experience team. We have a Blackbaud Labs, which is an incubation team looking at things like new tech and how we're taking things and applying things that are unplanned in a way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:04) Yeah.

(Marybeth at 00:31:05) But we bring people through. It's an accessible team. It's not some ivory tower crazy team. So those are my core team. I might be forgetting. Oh, strategic content development.

(Marybeth at 00:31:14) Like sets of our APIs and things. It is, especially for things like APIs, right? Like, these folks don't just write words. They write code, like sample code, and they're shipping it using the open source model. But so that's the core team that I work with. We're really the strategy team more so than the execution team, and we're the ones who are setting the company strategy based on what's valuable, what's possible, what's usable, what's viable, right? We bring all that together in one team and we prioritize, which is always difficult.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:47) Oh, man. I guess, like, done. You know, it's amazing when you brought up the documentation API or strategic content, right? Every time I see a company that doesn't have great API documentation, I will email them about an article of Stripe. Because that payment company, I don't know if you follow them or not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:09) These...

(Marybeth at 00:32:10) We know the CEOs very well, the brothers. We work very closely with the Stripe folks. Yes. And we know them very well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:19) Oh, the...

(Marybeth at 00:32:19) That's the back end of our payment system. We work together with Stripe very, very closely. They're amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:25) I found Stripe when I was looking for an alternative to authorize.net, probably year one of Stripe, right? I mean, I remember the website in my head, and it was very basic, right? And I found them. I was like, finally, there's an alternative to authorize.net. And because the experience was so bad, so bad. It was the worst code. It was so poorly constructed. It was 1980 stuff, and it was 2007 or something. I don't know. But I found them, and I was like, this is so beautiful. I integrated with them, and then I am personally responsible for at least 20 of their customers because I would just tell everyone to do it. I was like, look, I don't care what rate you're gonna get or how you're gonna try to shop it with your banker on the business side. If you want developers to love you and you want to reduce your time to market, Stripe.

(Marybeth at 00:33:16) Yeah. Look. Well said. I mean, they've been great to work with. Really great partners.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:20) So I love to see that you have a strategic content team that helps with developing API content and that you see that as a value point because you'd be surprised. There are companies that still don't care.

(Marybeth at 00:33:31) Yeah. Well, it's kind of like if a tree falls in a forest, you know. I think about APIs that way. I can develop a method, but if I don't expose it and write about it, then who cares? It doesn't exist. So yeah. I'm at... Yeah. We've... And that's taken discipline, really, to say this is important and we're gonna invest in it. But, you know, with all of this, we have this macro services concept where teams own the services that they deliver. You know, you have... You live on web services and API. So in a way, we had to get that discipline for internal developers, not just for the folks who are gonna consume the product externally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:10) And so how do you manage quality? Like, being at the top of the larger organization, how do you ensure that the things happening down at the teams, like if they're owning a specific experience, like how does information travel and for you to be able to guarantee and know that you've got the most quality product available?

(Marybeth at 00:34:31) Well, I mean, first, you hire really good people. Yes. And not just people on the teams, right? It's like you hire A players, and you hire A leaders who are gonna own certain aspects of the portfolio. So then you empower them, right? You tell them, you run, go fast, figure it out, and I'm gonna support you. And by the way, perfect is not the goal. You're gonna screw up and you're gonna learn and you're gonna move forward. And so I mean, that's... You create a culture that I think is of excellence, but not like the typical, you know, total quality excellence that we learned back in the nineties, right? This is a different way of getting to excellence and quality.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:12) And, you know, on a personal note, as I've been growing as an individual, because I'm young. I'm in my early thirties, right? As I've been growing and talking to all these great leaders over the past, you know, a little bit over a year, I've realized more and more that 80% of the problems come from hiring the wrong people, and then they have this horrible culture. And then when their companies start to scale, they're like, what do we do? What do we do? And as I'm looking at them, because people call me for advice all the time, so I get to see a huge variety of companies. And a lot of times, the answer is just like, you've just got a bunch of not great people. And there's no product you're gonna purchase. There's no consultant you're gonna have come talk. There's no course or training you're gonna put them through. You're fundamentally hiring the wrong people, and it's embedded in your entire organization. So for me, it's been really important with building the foundation that I'm building at this technology leadership company that we just have... We take it slow and find those A players so that everything that comes... And when you find them, you spend less time managing that their work is quality and more time just with them and making sure that you're filling that human component of it, right? Because you know that if they're fulfilled and they feel good about the work that they're doing and that it's valuable, then they will just produce.

(Marybeth at 00:36:33) Yeah. So well said. Yeah. I think I've shopped hungry in my career where I've said I need to hire five engineers and so I'm gonna go out there and grab whatever's on the shelf and it never pays off. You know, to your point, well, let me ask you this, do you find that people when they hire the wrong people, is it about not having the right people with the right skills, or is it really hiring the people who can be acerbic and counter to the culture that's the biggest problem? Because those are tough. When you have someone who's a killer engineer but who's just not a team player, those are hard to say get out, right? That's tough.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:11) You used a word I've never heard, acerbic?

(Marybeth at 00:37:14) Yeah. Just bitter. Like, just... Really? Not counter to the culture, right? Like...

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:18) I love it. Yeah. That's a good word. I just learned something. Thank you. Yeah. It reminds me of the, there's that graph of skill set versus culture fit. And as they go to the different quadrants, you know if you're gonna keep them because they're a great culture fit and upskill them or they're really, really good, but you just... I was actually talking with a senior engineering manager, a very large brand that we all know, and she was telling me that they're going to hire this individual that is an extraordinary engineering fit, but a low culture fit. But they had an interesting way of dealing with it. They said that they're gonna hire this individual, and if it's overwhelming to the team, that they have another team in mind with a much stronger type of leader that they're going to put him to if it doesn't work out on the first team. I was like, that's an interesting... That's an interesting approach. I want you to circle back with me and let me know how that goes. I'm just curious to see how it plays out.

(Marybeth at 00:38:17) Yeah. And I don't know the whole situation, but my initial gut reaction is if you have to move someone from one team to another, they're leaving a trail of destruction behind them. And that's hard to, you know, sometimes put it all back together when you have someone on the team. It can be... I use another word, like divisive almost, where you have...

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:38) I like that word. Yeah.

(Marybeth at 00:38:39) Kind of like, you just need... You know, these... It's a different way of working together. You need teams to be able to get together and disagree and have common goals and celebrate each other and lift each other up and help each other out. And at the end of the day, they deliver together. And if you can't do that, I probably would have said, look, if you know that coming... Like, before you hire someone, typically, that's the honeymoon phase, right? I mean, I don't know. I would probably pass on that person if it were me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:09) That was my first instinct. My second thought went to, what team are you transferring to that's going to... I was just like, they got the boxing gloves on, and they're like, you know, they're just like, rrrr.

(Marybeth at 00:39:18) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:23) Tell me more about the fight club team.

(Marybeth at 00:39:30) They're all bloodied and scarred. Yeah. Don't... I don't... Don't sign me up for that team. That's for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:38) No. But I'll circle back with you. I mean, I've got a pretty good feeling how it's going to go. But at the same time, you know, I backed it up and was talking to her more. And because of the growth of their company and the speed of it, she was tasked with a specific integer number of hires to make. And so that's a scary position to be in as a fast growing company because you said it perfect, and I'm going to probably share that for the rest of my life. Don't shop hungry because, you know, I think everybody understands that. Because what happens is you end up at the checkout line, you get home, and you got a bunch of junk, and you're still starving.

(Marybeth at 00:40:16) Yeah. Right. What are you gonna have for dinner? Just Kit Kats or an ice cream? Doritos. Yeah. Exactly right. I mean, and look, I've been there. I've compromised on culture. I've compromised on, you know, timing, and I just feel like I've just learned my lesson over the course of, you know, many years of doing this. That it just doesn't pay off for me anyway, not personally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:41) I don't think it pays off for anybody. I've learned to notice the feeling of compromise. And as it starts to linger, I then correct myself. Because I already know what's going to happen. I get the feeling, I compromise, and it doesn't work out well. So when I notice...

(Marybeth at 00:40:57) And that's hard because I'm gonna... I wanna give people the benefit of the doubt, and I have a... I lead with red and yellow energy. Like, we just did an Insights Discovery, so it's kind of like the Myers-Briggs assessment.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:09) Oh, nice.

(Marybeth at 00:41:10) But I definitely lead, you know, like I'm kind of a very directive, like, let's go do this, let's climb the mountain kind of person. But my... I'm also like, I wanna believe the best in people, and that can get in the way too, right? It's like to your point of you kind of step back and if you're feeling in your gut that it's not the right culture fit, then it's probably not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:32) That is correct. Did you guys do the thing where they have everybody go to the different corners of the room and then you end up as a color and, like, was that the test you did? Yeah.

(Marybeth at 00:41:40) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was red, blue, green, red... Yeah. Red, blue, green, yellow. And the red is the, you know, directing, and the yellow is the visionary, like everything is great. Let's go there. And green is about team, and blue is data. So I was very confused. I was like, I didn't know which quarter it was.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:02) You're just standing in the middle.

(Marybeth at 00:42:04) Pretty much. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:05) Colors. Yeah. That's why I like to... I like to spend a lot of time with people, and then make decisions over the course of days, especially when I'm feeling impulsive because it allows me to sort of iterate through my colors, right? And check myself.

(Marybeth at 00:42:22) Yeah. Because you have to pull them out depending upon the situation, right? Are you analyzing something? Are you writing code? Are you getting your team together and, you know, motivating them? That's all... Yeah. You just lean on certain aspects of your color energy is what I've been told. And I'm not a color energy kind of person, so the fact that I'm using these words, I'm very proud of myself, I have to tell you. I wanna... I wanna know what color Pete is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:45) You know...

(Marybeth at 00:42:50) Pete would probably be blue red. Do you know Pete well? Have you spent any time with him?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:55) You know, we've had a couple one-on-one conversations where we just kind of hang out on the video chat about what's going on. And I like to share information about what I'm learning or let people... I like to let people ask me questions because, like, 200 interviews with all these leaders, if you ask me questions, I can just tell you what my experience is from all of it. And so I offer that up to people and, yeah. For some reason, we got along. He joined our Leaderbits program. And, yeah. And so, yeah, I interact with him, but not a whole lot. Probably, we spent probably about four or five hours together on calls.

(Marybeth at 00:43:33) That's great. Yeah. I... It's been ten years since I've worked with him. He's a great guy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:36) Oh, okay.

(Marybeth at 00:43:37) But I definitely see him as an analytical, but leads with red, like, you know, he can get stuff done. So I really always appreciated that about him. He's a great guy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:46) Now he started speaking publicly and stuff. You know about this?

(Marybeth at 00:43:50) Yeah. I saw that he told me about it. He sent me a couple of links to some of the presentations that he's done, which is great. And I do that too. I do it reluctantly. You know? And it's so funny because I was... He's doing a great job because he's kind of looking across the board and saying, I'd like to do this and I'd like to do that. And I'm kind of like, I guess, I kind of just go where I'm asked to go, and I'm kind of stepping back from that and saying, where do I wanna show up and what do I wanna do? So it's... He's taught me that lesson and that's been good too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:20) Well, now you gotta tell me. Where... What track are you on?

(Marybeth at 00:44:25) President? Oh, gosh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:26) I don't know.

(Marybeth at 00:44:29) No. Not the political track. No way. No, I mean, just being able to, you know, spend time, I think, with people who I can learn from and who I feel like I can, you know, share a message with as well. And so I went and I did, I think it was back in May, I did an Ignite talk. Do you know what an Ignite is? Have you heard about it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:51) No, I don't.

(Marybeth at 00:44:51) No? It's kind of a TED talk, but it's a five minute talk, which is difficult for me because it's compressed and you have slides, but they flip every fifteen seconds automatically, so they keep you on track. And so I went to a conference called N10 and I did an Ignite talk, and that was the first time that I reached out of my comfort zone and spoke about being a woman in technology. Because, I mean, for the longest time, Joel, I'm not proud to admit this, but I really didn't... I really shied away from some of the forums that were more gender specific. And this is long time ago. Like, even in my career where I was like, join the Women in ACM team and group. And I always said, no, I just wanna join ACM. And I think it, kind of going back to me starting in the lab, I, you know, the surprised looks I would get when I could actually sling code really just, I think it kind of wore on me a little bit. And so I kind of came out with a little of the, you know, I can write code just as well, or maybe not just as well as any person, but, you know, a lot of the people.

(Marybeth at 00:45:56) I'm a really good coder, and it has nothing to do with my gender. And so for the longest time, I just wanted to be known as an engineer and not as a woman engineer. And it wasn't until just a few years ago that I realized how selfish I was being. I was like, gosh, all along it was not about me, right?

(Marybeth at 00:46:12) It's about all these young women and girls who are coming up through the ranks and wanting to be able to relate to someone and see someone who chose that path and is happy. Just happy. It has nothing to do with success. To me, it's equivalent. You're happy and you're successful. And so I've changed my thought process about that, especially in the last four or five years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:38) So what organizations are you now a part of?

(Marybeth at 00:46:42) Well, I'm in the Fortune Most Powerful Women network, so—

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:46) Come on. How could you not be, right? Like, you're amazing. You speak well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:51) You're intelligent. Like—

(Marybeth at 00:46:52) That's so nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:53) I'm so pumped. Like, yeah.

(Marybeth at 00:46:54) When I—

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:55) I clicked on—when they introduced us, I clicked on your talk, and you had some video on your LinkedIn, right? Like, you giving some breakdown at a conference. I was like—and I heard you speak, and within 30 seconds, I was like, we've got to have this person on. And then I'm like, 30 seconds.

(Marybeth at 00:47:10) Saying that. Yeah. Well, I mean, and I don't really prep for anything, so that actually means a lot more. I mean, really, you speak with so many people, so coming from you, I'm honored to hear that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:18) I mean, it means a lot. You're at the very top. Like, there's normal, and then there's great, and then there's just that special top handful. Yeah. You're up there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:33) So just have that confidence. Yeah.

(Marybeth at 00:47:36) That's really kind of you. But yeah. And I appreciate—you're right. You have to own it, and I'm not very good at that either, as most people are not. But I appreciate that very much. Thank you.

(Marybeth at 00:47:45) But at the heart of who I am, like, I did the SyntaxCon talk about cloud transformation and some of the nonfunctional requirements and the things that we kind of touched on earlier. Like, the technology—that's where I'm a little bit more comfortable. You know, get up in front of a room, you know the subject, it's a little bit more objective even though you're going to weigh in on opinions about what the best means to solve a problem is. And, you know, at the end of the day, I've given lots of talks and stuff, but then, you know, I did this five-minute Ignite talk and I was nervous. I mean, I've given talks, like, in front of thousands of people before, like, at our conference, and I don't tend to get nerves.

(Marybeth at 00:48:24) And I found myself very, like, feeling vulnerable, and I'm like, oh my god, is anyone going to care about this? And it was a definite moment for me. And I thought, you know, I need to push myself more. Maybe I always felt like as long—to see a woman talking about engineering, that's what changes hearts and minds. It's what I do, not about what I say. Or, you know, it's telling people about what I've done. Let me say it that way. But it's, you know, to say—to talk about myself, it's a different level of commitment and vulnerability. You're opening up.

(Marybeth at 00:48:58) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:59) But the nerves—so, you know, I do a lot of speaking as well. And so what I've done is I tell myself, and I took this from somebody, right? But nervousness, that feeling, is just the feeling that—it's excitement because you're going to change the world. You only get it in moments right before you change the world, and it's just excitement.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:19) Like, it has the same attributes as excitement, right? You're pumped up about it. You just—you maybe get goosebumps or you feel sick about it. Like, it's just—it's some force in the universe because something big is fixing to happen, and then you just have to be okay with that and be like, look, this is one of my moments where I'm going to give back to the world and I'm going to change everything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:43) And then it's just—it's just what—it's just that moment. It's just the identification of that moment, and then you just get comfortable with it. Oh, I haven't felt this in a while. Okay. Lean into it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:53) Let's go change the world.

(Marybeth at 00:49:55) I love that. I'm stealing that from you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:58) Take it. Yeah. And then when you feel it—and it'll be hard because when it actually happens, it's one thing. Talking about it, it's another. But when you're backstage or they're fixing to call your name, what I'll do, and I don't think I've ever shared this before, is I sit there with my phone, right? And I have a notes app open, and I type to myself: This is going to be great. You're going to change the world. It's going to go smooth. You're going to speak clearly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:21) You're going to help people. You're going to bring value to this audience. And I don't stop typing positive things all the way up until the moment when they call, and I just put the phone down and I walk up. And it seems to always go well when that happens. There will be mishaps, but, like, a joke will occur. The clicker won't work. Like, no matter what, it just always works out.

(Marybeth at 00:50:42) Yeah. And you bring your authentic self to it, right? I mean, it's not so—and people will relate to that. By the way, you talked about the positive, and I hope you take this as a compliment. But do you remember the Al Franken SNL skits where he stands in front of the mirror and he tells himself that, gosh darn it—

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:01) Yeah.

(Marybeth at 00:51:01) You know, it's kind of—I think that there's something to be said for that, right? It's, like, really feeling that sense of—there is no real, like, you know, major reward comes from taking risks and changing the world. And I love that. I think that's really great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:18) And if you watch, and I found this out from a friend, but I don't watch a lot of sports. That's just a personal thing. I just don't watch a lot of TV. But if you watch—a friend that was into sports told me, you watch a basketball coach, what they're saying to the players is almost nothing about, like, strategy and tactics. They're just coaching them on a human level.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:42) And so, you know, while I'm not in that position in my life where I have someone standing next to me before I go on stage to coach me on it, I just sort of assume that role. What would they be saying to me? You know, what should I be saying—like, if I'm going to third person and coach myself, what are the things I would want a coach to say to me? And then I just play that role for myself because out of necessity.

(Marybeth at 00:52:03) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's—the coach metaphor is also, like, super cool. Yeah, I am a big sports fan. I have to admit that. And there are a lot of times where I see, like, the X's and O's on the football field and, like, the plan and the play, but yeah, more times than not, it's like slapping them on the back and saying, come on, get out there, let's do this, you know. Like, it's a really great metaphor.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:25) You know, I played sports growing up. I played baseball for about nine years. Played football in high school, and I played basketball here and there in the summers. I just—yeah. So I'm a very active person, so it's actually kind of hard to get me to sit down and watch something.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:41) But the one thing I will watch, like, if somebody invites me to this, I will go to a hockey game.

(Marybeth at 00:52:46) I love hockey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:48) Because there's always something going on, and it's not, like, structured—super structured plays, or at least to the point where I'm picking up on them. But, yeah, it seems like it's constantly engaging. Like, that puck, man. I'm like a cat with the laser, right? I'm like, what's going on?

(Marybeth at 00:53:05) Yeah. I love that. That's hilarious. Yeah. I mean, it's a tough sport too. I mean, it's, like, really rough and beat them up. Like, it's tough.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:14) Oh, yeah. And I just learned how to ice skate, like, three years ago. So—

(Marybeth at 00:53:19) Good for you. That's hard.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:20) You'll love this. And then we'll start to wrap up. But this is a fun story. I haven't told anyone. So, actually about, like, seven years ago, I was going on this, like, first or second date, and she wanted to go ice skating. And there happens to be an ice skating place in Florida. She's like, you know how to ice skate, right? I was like, for sure. So—

(Marybeth at 00:53:37) Of course.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:47) How could I not ice skate? I'm a native Floridian. So I YouTube—I YouTube videos of ice skating, and, like, I'm doing, like, practice things in my living room. And then I go to ice, and I don't fall. And I was like—now I definitely did that. I'm a three-year-old kid scooting along, but the first time I went ice skating, I didn't fall, and I kind of got it. And she only helped me a lot.

(Marybeth at 00:54:21) Yeah. Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:22) But I did it. I did it, and I was honest with her too. I was like, yeah, I've never ice skated.

(Marybeth at 00:54:28) For the crash and burn moment. Instead, you're like, yeah. And I got away with it. It's like the guy who reads the Cliff Notes for the exam and gets an A. I'm like, there's something wrong with that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:37) That's why I was excited to share.

(Marybeth at 00:54:39) Yeah. That is really—I was an athlete too growing up and definitely a tomboy. Definitely not the princess type, but, yeah, football and hockey and basketball and softball and tennis, volleyball. Yeah. That was my thing.

(Marybeth at 00:54:55) Because I'm tall. And I, you know, that was, like—and I was geeky and tall, so that felt like a place for me to be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:01) Nice. That's good. You—and the important thing is, though, that you enjoyed how you were spending your time, right?

(Marybeth at 00:55:07) Definitely. It's being happy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:09) Yeah. Yeah. It's being—that's why—

(Marybeth at 00:55:10) That's why I talk about success. It's like, what makes you happy? And it's going to be different for everybody.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:14) Happy, excited. Tell me what you are—as we wrap up, tell me what you're the most excited about for the future at Blackbaud.

(Marybeth at 00:55:23) Oh, well, the path that we're on. I mean, you know, it's like I said, we started at—it's been five years that we started this cloud transformation. And the vision of where we're going—I mean, Joel, I talked about how we serve each of these individual customers today in these different markets. But for me, what's most exciting is connecting those together so that together, we can have a lot more impact and drive greater outcomes. So the conversation changes from how many dollars have you raised to how much mission impact have you had.

(Marybeth at 00:55:56) And then being able to connect nonprofits together, companies who give gifts in kind, you know, foundations who have dollars, like, to be able to solve real problems in a collaborative and well-coordinated way. And we have the data and we have the customers. What we need to do is help make all these connections happen so that we can do more good in the world. And that's what we're just—in the back seat making all these things happen as the people, our customers, who are really doing all the great work. We want to help them do even more.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:27) That's amazing. I love it. Yeah. There's actually—there's a company in Boston. A guy, he was a popular stockbroker, New York money management type person, finance, and then he had a brain aneurysm or some horrible medical issue, and then he decided to dedicate his life to, like, charity and more meaningful activities.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:50) And they have a company, I believe it's in Boston. I think they have about 12 or 14 people, but they do analytics for charities. And so they'll go to the charities, and they'll do donor analytics for things of that nature. But yeah. For some reason, he popped into my head.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:05) I don't know if that's useful to you or not.

(Marybeth at 00:57:07) Yeah. I would love to know what the name of the company is. I probably know them. We've got a team in Cambridge called Target Analytics, and they do work with enterprise nonprofits doing similar things to what you described.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:19) His name is Rich Palmer, and the company—he's a cofounder and CTO at Gravity, which is AI—

(Marybeth at 00:57:26) Oh, yeah. I know Gravity. Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:28) You know Gravity?

(Marybeth at 00:57:29) Yeah. Yeah. Oh, cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:31) There you go. So, yeah, that's why I popped in my head. I was like, you should probably know this guy.

(Marybeth at 00:57:37) Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Like, again, like, I feel like if we sit on the phone another half an hour, there's probably a hundred other people that we can triangulate on that we know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:45) Awesome. Well, yeah, because great people just collect great people.

(Marybeth at 00:57:48) So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:49) Yeah. It was fantastic. We made a podcast. We did it. I'm so excited. This is awesome. I'm not kidding you. The next time I see on my travel schedule that I'm coming through your area, I'm going to put a little alert on my calendar to notify you and see if I can stop by and say hello because it'd be great.

(Marybeth at 00:58:05) Really, Joel. You should totally do that. I would love to show you a little bit more about Blackbaud, and you can see our engineering. And I hope that—I hope the conversation was what you had in mind. I mean, I really, really enjoyed it. I mean, it certainly was a little bit different for me, which was awesome, but not as deeply technical. But I loved it too. I mean, learning more about you and what you're doing, I mean, it's fantastic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:26) Yeah. We find that these conversations—because we measure the value that we bring based on people interacting with us and their feedback, and these types of conversations help so much more people because just the little passing statement of truth that you'll happen to mutter as just a side sentence will just ring true for them. There's all these little things, but these styles of conversation bring the most value to the market. So—

(Marybeth at 00:58:53) Well, thanks for all you're doing. If there's something that I can help you with, like, advising a nonprofit or anything that comes up, you should just reach out to me. I mean, seriously, anytime, and I'd be happy to, you know, grab my connections and help you network if there's anything that you're looking for specifically.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:09) Awesome. I'll definitely reach out and get your address so I can send you a couple of the books. And then we'll just stay in touch.

(Marybeth at 00:59:16) Great. It's been such a pleasure talking with you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:19) You too.

(Marybeth at 00:59:19) You're great, really. You're great. That's awesome. No. Seriously, I love what you're doing.

(Marybeth at 00:59:27) Keep doing it, and I'm here. So let me know how I can help you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:30) All right. Thank you so much, Marybeth.

(Marybeth at 00:59:32) All right. See you, Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:33) See you.

(Marybeth at 00:59:34) Take care. Bye-bye.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:35) Bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to help, please take a moment right now to open up the iTunes app and leave a review of the podcast. If you take a screenshot of the review and text it or email it to a friend who needs to listen to the podcast and then cc me, [email protected]. If you cc me on the email, I'll send you a copy of the Modern CTO book or give you a shout-out on the podcast, whichever you prefer.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:05) We're trying to get listed on the top 100 for iTunes, and I need your help in order to do this.