Alisa Bartash
Hey everyone, and welcome to another exciting episode of In the cloud with 2600Hz. I'm your host for today, Alisa Bartash, and I'm back in action with another exciting episode. Today we'll be talking about successful business strategies, challenges for UC providers, and creating a winning team and work culture with our guest, Alan Rihm. Most recently, Alan was CEO and founder of CoreDial, and he has over 25 years of entrepreneurship, leadership, and business strategy experience in cloud software and services. He helped establish CoreDial as a leading UCaaS and CCaas provider. And under his leadership, the company experienced tremendous revenue growth and customer retention. Equally important, Alan has been instrumental in building a best places to work culture that attracted and retained top talent in this space. Welcome, Alan, thank you so much for joining me today.

Alan Rihm
Well, hello, Alisa. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Alisa Bartash
You have done so much in your career, Alan, and we have a ton to talk about. So why don't we jump
right in? As I mentioned in the intro, you have over 25 years of experience in entrepreneurship. And I know CoreDial wasn't the first company you founded. So, for our listeners, why don't we start at the very beginning? Can you tell us a little bit about your background, what led you to the cloud comms industry, and, ultimately, led you to start CoreDial?

Alan Rihm
Well, sure, Alisa. So I became an entrepreneur in 1995, which seems so long ago. And so I guess
I'm now the old guy in the room. My first company was an Internet service provider. I started that in my basement, and actually came home, told my wife−we were pregnant with our first kid−and I said, "Hey, guess what, I'm going to start a business and put the whole house on the line. And by the way, I'm not going to take a paycheck until the company can afford to pay me." And I got started. Thank God, she, she trusted me and was there to help support me through the way. So long story short, I did the ISP in 95', that was a very timely business to start. Within a year was invested in and then ultimately sold to Vario, where I ran Vario Philadelphia for a couple of years. If anybody knows the Vario story it was, they bought 65 companies or so in about four years and went public. And so it was a great event. Second business was an application service provider in the E-commerce space. And then I did a software, hosted software app in the CRM space. And so all of that does is for three businesses. And basically, my accountant was the accountant of this other company who was an ISP. He made an intro. I met the CEO. We really liked each other, and they were incubating a voice over IP service. And they were kind of sell anything to anybody that, you know, anything that smelled like VoIP. And I ultimately decided to work with them to found the business and get started in 05'. And it was−I don't have a deep background in the communication space−but very, very quickly learned about it.

Alisa Bartash
You've really done so much and founding so many companies is really impressive. And you know,
when it comes to CoreDial, can you talk to us a little bit about how you got from the moment of deciding to start CoreDial to where it is today, and talk us through some of the strategies that led you to such prominence in the field?

Alan Rihm
Absolutely. So, you know, when I saw this voice over IP service these guys were were incubating. And when I say incubating, there might have been something around $1,500 a month and proof of concept revenue. Again, they would sell anything to anybody that smelled like VoIP. They literally had a single seat in Bermuda. It was crazy. You know, as I did some research, it seems pretty straightforward that this was going to be a very popular hosted application for business. And so I thought it could be big; I thought it could be meaningful. And I thought, obviously, I'm dumb enough to think that we could do something disruptive and really, you know, grow the business to something really meaningful. So we got started; we agreed to get started. And one of the most important things when you decide to start something from virtually zero is surrounding yourself with a bunch of really smart people. People who can run circles around you in their core areas and could really help you focus in the areas where you can most help the business. So I needed, you know, I'm really strong at strategy or at least I think I am. You know, like let me put it differently. I like business strategy, going-to-market product, and culture building. So I made sure that I surrounded myself with excellence. And really, from day one, started my focus on culture building, and really used the books Good to Great and Great by Choice by Jim Collins to do that. I'll get into that probably a little later. But I made sure that we had really good internal hygiene with the business that we focused on operational-best practices. And we started to really focus on, like,
who's our customer, who's our channel partner, not just sign up, anybody who showed up at our front door, and made sure the fundamentals were strong, that we had a target go-to market, what's our customer look like? And all that, and really focused on, you know, how do we scale this thing− because we were never really looking to create a lifestyle business. And so I'd say, you know, the strategies that led us to be, you know, a dominant player in the space, and certainly weren't the biggest, but we were, we're definitely known and disruptive. Was, was being agile in the first four years, we sold both direct and indirect, but very quickly realized that, you know, we'd have to outspend people like Vonage and RingCentral. And that wasn't going to happen. So we picked going to market through the channel and really focusing on our platform to help, you know, automate the quote to cash process for them. And in a lot of grit and determination, it took through the years to, to stay disciplined, and not just sign up anybody and hunt down just whatever revenue we could, but to be disciplined. And, and again, a lot of that had to do with, you know, creating a strong culture, one where people were innovative, and would bring the best ideas to the table and, and help us to make that ultimate shift that we made in the first four years to go completely channel.

Alisa Bartash
You touched a little bit on this, but what are some of the bigger challenges that you faced while growing CoreDial? And how did you overcome them? I know that a lot of our listeners are out there trying to start their telecom business. And I'm sure are facing some of the same challenges that you faced as you were trying to grow CoreDial. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Alan Rihm
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as an entrepreneur, kind of a career-long entrepreneur, and CEO, you have to be humble and make sure you're listening good and learning. And so going from zero to
profitability, which we did within four years, you know, cashflow positive, and then going from there to reaching 20 million in ARR, on the backs of only putting a million dollars in into the business, you know, on the balance sheet, and then taking on private equity, and then going from being, you know, significantly cashflow positive to then burning money because that's you got to put the money to work to more than doubling the business of the following few years of that. Lots of challenges. I mean so many. I could I could spend, you know, all our time together today on on all the different challenges that that really exist in any business. So one is, of course, you got a rocket ship. You got it. You're a hot industry, so many different ways to market, to stay disciplined, and to resist the urge to just do whatever it took to bring in $1. And so we had this rule around the company is just because you can doesn't mean you should like, you know, what's our true reason for existing? What's our rally cry, you know? Why do we exist? And we ended up existing to help the channel succeed with cloud communications, to everything we did in the company, we, you know, we focused on that and resisted the urge to get distracted. Then it goes to best practices, operational excellence, you know, whether it's culture building and making sure you're attracting, retaining the best talent possible to making sure that those people can spread their wings, have a feeling of accomplishment, really apply themselves, learn new skills, things of that nature, to to things like−there's another book Measure What Matters by John Doe, or that I like to talk about, because that was, in the final years of my participation in CoreDial, it was really pivotal for us. It created tremendous alignment and transparency, up and down the org at every angle
of the organization. And that's, you know, creating OKRs, objectives, and key results. So, you know,
when you have a rocket ship and you're growing double digit, and with fierce competition, lots of
headwinds, it's about all of that, it's culture building and operational excellence and staying true to your reason for existing.

Alisa Bartash
That's really great. And you've talked a lot about or you've touched on culture, and the importance of building a company culture a couple of times throughout our discussion, especially, you know, in terms of a culture that attracts and retains top talent in this space. Can you talk a little bit deeper into how you developed that culture within CoreDial?

Alan Rihm
Absolutely. So I mean, every CEO I speak with, you know, my peer group, and everybody talks about culture, but but the question is like, what are you really doing purposely about it? So the way we did it, since this wasn't my first company, I had learned the importance of culture. And quite frankly, in my, my second business we went from, I think it was like 60 to 65 employees in three or four months, and a culture was just built almost by luck, or by chance. And so as I reflected on that, I said, well, at CoreDial we're gonna do it purposely. So I leveraged the books Good to Great and Great by Choice by Jim Collins, and we came up with our hedgehog strategy, which is, you know− What are you deeply passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at? And what drives your economic engine? And so that became a rallying cry to be the best at enabling the channels to succeed with cloud communications. And it was as measured by, you know, profit per partner, how much profit the partner could make, and, and, of course, how much we could make. And so that, quite frankly, stood the test of time. I mean, it never really, we never really wavered from that. And, and so, I will say, though, that, in the early days, you know, when your handful of employees, its culture is not that hard to build, I mean, you can, you really don't have to have a lot of formality about it, you know, because you can yell over to Sally or Billy or Joey and say, hey, you know, what are you doing? And you generally hire people that you, you want to go to war with, you want to go to battle with, and you want them to be shoulder to shoulder with you. But as you get to 75, or 150, and beyond employees, it's much more difficult. In fact, we went through a phase where we hired roughly over 100 people within 18 months. And I got to tell you, it really tested our culture. And in fact, we went from, you know, winning Best Places to Work quite regularly to to missing a year. And what happened was, that we had this amazing culture that people were attracted to, and, and what unfortunately, some of the people that that joined the company brought a very different culture. So they were attracted to our culture, but they brought something very different. And you might say, well, how can you let that happen? Well, obviously we didn't do by choice. Or, intentionally, I should say. We found out that our, our recruiting process and interviewing process was broken. So we really got down and dissected that and figured out how to make sure that we're not only attracting people to our culture, but, you know, helping bring people that would augment and improve our culture and not detract from it. So that was, that was a big lesson learned for me. Because it was surprising that we that would happen, but we dug in, and we fixed it. But at the end of the day, it's
it's that constant drumbeat. You can't, you can't go a day or a week or a month or a quarter or a year without talking about culture and telling stories. When things go well sharing, you know, without embarrassing anybody, when something doesn't go well, and maybe how we could have done things better. And, really, making sure you're talking about that person that started as a bookkeeper became an accountant, became a senior accountant, switched over to HR, you know, went over to training then as a VP at a high level and, like, sharing how you promote from within, how you create opportunity, how you respect your employees, and help them bring their "A" game everyday.

Alisa Bartash
That's fascinating. I mean, you know, a lot of companies talk about how great their company culture is, but talking about it, and actually living it, and having it be true in day-to-day practice is a whole different animal. So it's really impressive that you were able to not only build such a great culture within CoreDial, but, you know, when things started not looking so great, and you didn't continue winning the award, that you were able to identify where things were going a little bit wrong, and figuring out how to come around that and get back on track so that you could continue with your excellent culture and attracting the right talent. That's, that's so impressive. And as you mentioned, it's so important, especially, in today's world.

Alan Rihm
Thank you, and by the way, we did start winning Best Places to Work again. It did work.

Alisa Bartash
Thank you for mentioning that. I was curious. That's wonderful. And as I said just so impressive. Really speaks to you as a leader and how much you cared about not only CoreDial but also the people working at CoreDial and, you know, the overall company culture, which is really important.

Alan Rihm
You wake up, and you have to be worried about your people, you know, you've you've, you know, you have to be focused on their success. We had a very success-oriented theme. But, you know, it wasn't just the success of our channel partners and, and, you know, for them and their customers, but it was also my team, like I had to make sure--How do I help my team and their families be successful? Whatever that means to them? 

Alisa Bartash
Absolutely. And you've given our listeners a lot of great information and a little bit of advice here and there throughout our conversation. But if there's one piece of advice that you could leave our listeners with, what would it be? As I mentioned earlier, you know, a lot of our listeners are working on building their own telephony business. So what advice do you have for them?

Alan Rihm
Yeah, so if I had to pick one, because there are more, there's more than one for me. But if I had to pick one, I'd say, you know, what's your rally cry? Why do you exist? You know, why you? Because because, like, when I got into the business, and 05', you know, the communication space was was it was a very mature, very big, very fragmented, highly competitive space. And by the way, it still is right. And things have changed. You know, there's new competitors, there's new technologies, but it's not, it's less about the technology. It's, like, why do you exist? And what's your purpose in life? Why does a customer pick you? And I think that's probably the most important question people can ask themselves. When I hear a company or another, you know, entrepreneur/CEO, say, well, we, we like to always say yes for our customers. We want to do it all. And I actually don't think that's the smartest advice. I think whether you're horizontally focused or vertically focused, or whatever, pick your angle. You know, make sure you understand your customer profile, your customer persona, because they're going to appreciate that more, right? Because that, you know, voice is voice, video is video, there's not a whole lot. I mean, there's there's certainly unique things and differentiators. But they want to know, well, how are you going to help me succeed in it? And maybe they need to make more revenue, or they want to reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction? Whatever it is, you know, how are you going to help them? And how can you speak their speak? and convince them that you're the right partner? And there are so many ways you could do it, there's there's a laundry list, but pick yours and stay true to it. That doesn't mean you can't change your pivot over time. For sure you should evaluate quarterly or annually, but stay true to who you know why you exist and why your core customers pick you. I think that's the most important thing.

Alisa Bartash                                                                                                                                                                                That's really great advice. And that is so important, especially with, you know, it's such a competitive landscape out there right now. So I think that that is something our listeners can really take home and take to heart and hopefully that, you know, will help them grow their businesses and be more successful in their areas. And, unfortunately, that's all the time that we have for today. But Alan, it was so great chatting with you. And thank you so much for joining us today.

Alan Rihm
It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Alisa Bartash
Anytime, Alan. And for our listeners. Thanks so much for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. And while you're there, make sure you write us a review. It only takes a second, and it's a huge help to all of us here at Team 2600Hz. Until next time, thanks everyone.