#46 From B2C to B2B: How to switch GTM motions

Philipp Stelzer: Welcome to another edition of the RevOps Lab Podcast. My name is Philipp, and with me today is Jordan Shaheen. And, yeah, very warm welcome, Jordan.

Jordan Shaheen: Thanks, Philipp, so much for having me. Really excited to be here.

Philipp Stelzer: Perfect. First question, did I get your last name right?

Jordan Shaheen: You did. You did. Most people mess it up, but you hit it spot on.

Philipp Stelzer: Ah, perfect. Okay. Always glad to hear it. This is one of the most important things, I think. Now jokes aside, yeah, before we dive into today's topic, Jordan, who are you, and what do you do?

Jordan Shaheen: Yeah. My name is Jordan, obviously Shaheen. I work at a clear aligner company, so an orthotech company, essentially, in the clear aligner space. I've been there for six and a half plus years, which has been pretty wild, done a variety of things. Currently, in my role, I run our revenue strategy team, strike team, if you will, really, really smart individuals running around fixing and driving big projects and problems. So, you know, it keeps us busy, and we get to do a lot of cool stuff.

Philipp Stelzer: That's cool. How big is the team at the moment?

Jordan Shaheen: Team right now is, what, five people, and then we are part of a larger strategy org that does a variety of other things, less sales related and more of the clinical education and teaching and infrastructure and all that type of thing. So our team or our vertical within it is very focused on the sales and revenue driving side, but we are excited to have a larger team that we can also connect with and share stories and build a larger sense of community as well.

Philipp Stelzer: Okay. Yeah. I think that makes sense. And how have you split the work within the team? So five people plus you, like, have you split it by — you know, so, like, is everybody doing everything, or are there, like, specific responsibilities that different people in the team take care of?

Jordan Shaheen: Yeah. It's a great question. So the way I think about our team is I want everybody to be capable of doing almost everything. We hire a lot of generalists for this role. I think for our last hire, we had almost four hundred applicants for ultimately a single hire. We do a pretty rigorous testing program throughout the application process. We do a number of interviews. We really like to make sure that somebody coming on is a good fit for the team culturally, work habit wise, and just drive and passion wise. So a team of really, really strong people. What we do to date, I guess, is essentially assign them to different projects that they then drive. Typically, we are using them interchangeably when we assign a project. So I'm usually not giving it to someone specifically because they have this perfect skill. I'm usually giving it to them because they were a trustworthy individual, that I am confident in their overall ability to project manage, to strategize, and to execute. That said, everybody has their one or two things that they're really good at, and so, obviously, that does come into play here and there. But for the most part, I try to make sure when hiring our team that it is a team truly of generalists, which is hard to find anymore. It seems like in the professional world, there are so many, you know, experts out there on one thing or another, barbell players, if you will, who are really strong at one thing. We try to operate a little bit differently. And I think that makes our team unique, but it also builds a really strong sense of camaraderie and community and team spirit amongst those in our group.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. I mean, that sounds really, really good. I mean, I think just naturally, people obviously have their strengths and weaknesses, and, you know, somebody might not, like, be super hard on, like, a specific topic and, like, I would prefer to work on something different, but I think it's extremely useful if everybody can do everything. I mean, this is similar to, I think, also how we operate at Weflow, actually. Specifically in the engineering and product team, really try that everybody can do everything. So in case, like, a person is on vacation or, you know, falls sick or something like this, there's always stuff that can happen. It's just, like, so powerful if you can just — you know, someone else can take over that work and continue it and finish it off. Yeah. I mean, I think it's also a high risk, right, if you have, like, a lot of experts, and then one of them drops out. And then, yeah, you're there, and you have, like, this huge gaping hole that you need to fill quickly. So it's a big risk also to go that specialist path. One thing I saw in your LinkedIn that I wanted to check before diving deeper into Candid and our actual topic is I saw that you actually studied late antique and medieval studies, and you finished those studies also with a Magna Cum Laude, which I think is the highest of, like, grade you can get. So I was just like, in my mind, like, why are you not, like, at archaeological sites right now? Why are you not teaching history at some, like, you know, university in the US, UK, or Europe? Like, what happened?

Jordan Shaheen: Yeah. It's a fair question. And for full transparency, Magna is second, so I won't take full credit there. But I really went to college starting with an open mind, not sure what I wanted to study. At the time, I actually worked in professional sports as a radio broadcaster. So I really just went with classes that I thought were interesting and fell in love with this world of late antique medieval study. We should call it the LAMS major. It's a smaller part of a very exciting history department at the college I went to in Los Angeles. So what I gathered from that and what I really wanted to do was try to build my writing and reading skills, my comprehension skills, and really the way to synthesize vast amounts of information into singular pieces of conclusion, narrative, storytelling, and I truly attribute a lot of the success I have today to that background. That said, I came out of that program really wanting to either go the route of the PhD world and become a teacher and a researcher and all that, or I wanted to go to law school. And so where I ultimately decided at the time was to apply to law school. That's where I found myself heading and believed that that was my future. One of my older brothers went to law school. It seemed very natural and common. I applied and got into a number of places. I was ultimately set to start at University of Pennsylvania here in the US. And shortly after I graduated college, I actually ended up getting really sick and was in and out of the hospital for about six months. And so as a result of that, I had to postpone, defer law school a year. And when I was finally able to get up and about, I knew that I couldn't just sit there for seven months. I was gonna be bored out of my mind. So I started applying to some tech jobs and startup jobs just to get the foot in the door somewhere, do a little bit of everything, be a gopher if I need to be. And after a number of interviews, I was lucky enough to get a job at Candid where I had worked for about six and a half years. We were all working in an apartment when I started here in Manhattan, so it was a really ragtag, hacky, smart group of people. It was fun to be a part of. And over the course of that seven, eight months before law school would have started, I really just fell in love with the work. I got to do so many different things. The opportunity to grow and to develop new skills was much higher there than I felt for myself it would have been in the legal path. My older brothers, you know, the general counsel at Candid, a lot of people had an impact in that decision. But ultimately, I'm really happy I made it. I've got some friends who are lawyers. I've got some friends who went from the LAMS program on to get PhDs. Multiple people from my class have gone on and gotten PhDs from amazing universities. Just wasn't my path. And so while at the time I felt rocky and in the middle of it, had no idea what I wanted to do, years later, really happy I made the decision I did and look back on it fondly, but also appreciate the journey that I've had to date.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. There's — first of all, thanks for sharing. I think it's super, super interesting story. And, yeah, I mean, I think there's something really powerful about, like, you know, the situation where you have, like, a bunch of, like, really smart people sitting together in, like, some small apartment and working fast, making fast iterations. Everything you do has an impact if good or bad. Right? Like, you know, heavily depends. It's always changing. Lots of highs, lots of lows. I mean, it's just — yeah. I think that's the startup life, and it's actually absolutely thrilling or it can be absolutely thrilling.

Jordan Shaheen: Yeah. It was really cool. I look back on that with a lot of fondness. For a while when I started, I was literally working at a kitchen counter because we ran out of desk space. And then we have, you know, a fireplace in there. When we were hired, actually, one of the key benefits in the description was that they had access to a washer dryer because we were in an apartment. And so a lot of people in Manhattan don't necessarily have easy access to that. So that was a big selling point. We held meetings in a room with bunk beds. I sat right next to the COO and across from our head of operations. Our CEO was not far away. So it was really cool experience to get in and build that relationship and world that I had never been into. And to your point about moving fast — our old COO's favorite line from the tech industry goes, like, move fast and break stuff, just to avoid the true saying, but build fast and break stuff. And so we learned a lot of stuff quickly. We made a lot of progress, two steps forward, occasionally a step back, but it was exciting. It was high growth, something that I hadn't really seen before, and it's something now that I thrive on and can't imagine living without.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. No. I totally understand and fully agree. Yeah. Candid, I think, also, as startups naturally do, also went through, like, at least one bigger pivot. That's the key topic for today, and that's the switch from B2C go-to-market motion to a B2B go-to-market motion, which, yeah, I think actually happens more often than people may think. But I'd just, you know, wonder, like, what motivated that switch because it is quite a hefty decision at Candid. And, yeah, then how did you actually prepare for it? But, yeah, maybe let's just start with the motivation first.

Jordan Shaheen: Yeah. It's a great question. We were a very successful direct to consumer orthodontic brand prior to the pandemic. We had a lot of really effective studios across the country where patients could go in. They could get their diagnostic records taken, get a treatment plan from one of our state licensed orthodontists. We had a great setup. We were delivering great results directly to patients. During the months preceding the pandemic, I started working with one of our cofounders to try and see if there was any market for us in the business to business world selling directly to doctors. We know that's the traditional one. You think brands like Invisalign, they do similar things. Right? They're selling to doctors who then sell to patients. It's a very different atmosphere. But what we found is that over time, the cost of acquiring patients or customers, I should say, in the direct to consumer world only gets higher and higher. Right? You're beholden to things like Facebook and Google. You do physical ads in places like New York City, but it's really hard to quantify the impact there. So as that price rose and we saw the pandemic hitting where people's disposable income was going down, and so they're less likely to take a risk. In other words, if my income has gone drastically down and I need a procedure done, I'm much more likely to go to doctor Thompson, you know, my personal doctor to talk with them about treatment as opposed to get something online, especially when it's, you know, up almost a couple thousand dollars. So that was our focus. And then as soon as the pandemic hit, we started reevaluating the focus and future of the organization. And we felt ultimately that there was a larger, more prosperous path in the business to business world. And so we just started to take that avenue. And at one point, literally over the course of a weekend, essentially, we changed the business from entirely direct to consumer or almost entirely direct to consumer to business to business. And it was really exciting to be a piece of that and get to become kind of an expert in some fields in it. I worked with our cofounder to grow it. We went everything from the prototype up to the new one. And so it was a really exciting piece to be a part of, but it's a wild journey to get an entire organization that is built around direct to consumer sales to switch them all to a very niche dental industry, business to business world, which is, you know, old school in many ways.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. I mean, it definitely sounds crazy and wild. Right? So I'm curious, like, how long did that transition take in total from basically making the decision to do it to sort of, like, feeling, okay, we've reached the point where we feel good about it.

Jordan Shaheen: Yeah. We made the transition pretty quickly. I mean, literally over the course of a couple of weeks, we transitioned from one to the other. The interesting piece about medical technology and treatment is the way we do it — orthodontic treatment, right, is a couple of years long or a year at minimum. So it's not like you completely end direct to consumer and you go straight into B2B. You still have the residual pieces of that direct to consumer brand taking care of those patients. Other organizations and companies have left people a little high and dry, and so we've made sure that as we wound down that part of our organizational history, we took care of those people properly and well to make sure that they still got great outcomes. They felt that they got great value for their purchase. But what happened at that point was we had to slowly shift everybody over to a new way of thinking. So you go from having a lot of marketing and tech experts, startup experts, to needing a little bit more in the industry expert, B2B sales, you know, institutional knowledge, personnel management, all of that type of thing. So it took a bit, but I would say even today, right, we're not perfect at it in the same way that we weren't perfect at direct to consumer when it happened. But my goal was each quarter, quarter over quarter, we're making improvements to both our process. Obviously, numbers you want, but really thinking about it holistically. And to this day, we have a great mesh of industry experts, people management experts, our original startup and tech crew, right, the hacky generalists who can come in and just learn and dive, sink their teeth into things. And it's become a really nice group that is encompassing all of those different pieces as well as some residual personnel from our direct consumer days. There were definitely people who we switched over and have been able to teach a new trade to essentially and have adapted well.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious, like, so you already mentioned, like, a few things there, like, initially, like, having, like, a lot of focus on probably performance marketing, really, that is targeting the end user on channels like Instagram and Facebook, I assume. Right? And then suddenly you make that switch to B2B. And, of course, right, that knowledge is not as valuable then anymore if you do partnership management and B2B sales because, yeah, I mean, of course, you can also advertise that on Meta channels, I guess, like, to some extent, but probably it's not really, really, like, the best way to do things. So what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced during this transition?

Jordan Shaheen: Yeah. I think the biggest challenge is also one of the largest positive forces over time, which is the lifetime value of a customer who purchases clear aligner treatment is essentially one and done. Right? Unless they don't wear the retainer and five years later need something done again, it's pretty much you go through that treatment once in your life. Best case scenario, you get a friend or a family member to also do it. But you're talking about, you know, four thousand bucks maximum revenue there from that direct to consumer customer that you've gotten through, to your point, a bunch of digital means. And now we had to transition over to a world where you have to convince doctors to join, and then they have a lifetime value potential of tens of thousands of dollars, and so you can really get that wheel going. It's what I would say is it's like thinking about a canoe. You can get a canoe going really quickly, but a canoe can only hold one or two people. A cruise ship takes a little bit more momentum to get going, but once you get it going, you're able to go a lot further and a lot more efficiently. And what we found is that doctors, not surprisingly, need more trust. They need to verify things. They're not gonna go make a big decision about how they put their license on the line and treat patients because of a Facebook ad. Right? Let's just be honest. So then the marketing style changed drastically. We would go to trade shows. We'd be in publications. We would lead clinical publications of our own, as well as really just try to bring in doctors from around the dental and orthodontic world who are trusted leaders, who are great thinkers, and put everybody together to really focus on a product that is geared towards doctors that is appealing to patients as opposed to something that is directly focused on patient interaction and branding.

Philipp Stelzer: Got it. Okay. And was there, like, any, like, huge initial setback that you experienced where you were like, okay, we're prepared, we did this and this, the team is on board, like, we have a strategy, kind of like everyone is aligned, and then suddenly, boom, something just, you know, comes into play that you didn't expect, and it just, you know, kinda throws all your initial assumptions overboard or at least some of them?

Jordan Shaheen: I think the biggest moment for us was during that switch where we wanted to make sure that we maintained our best talent even in this new corporate infrastructure in the way that we attack the brand and industry. We brought over a lot of our sales team. So our studios at the time were run by a number of salespeople where you would come in, you'd get the diagnostic records taken, so they actually knew how to do those clinical diagnostic records, your scan photos, actually, all that stuff. And then they would help sell to the patient to get them to purchase treatment prior to getting a treatment plan and all of that to make sure that we were able to lock down as many of those sales as we wanted. Now you take these people who are in many cases younger in their career focused on almost a retail sales type of environment, and now you're telling them to go become clinical experts and go into doctor's offices, knock on doors, make them happy, make them understand the clinical benefits of something we do in a world where people are naturally skeptical. Took many years for Invisalign, for example, to actually be trusted over things like braces, and so we're coming in. Again, you have that same piece of trying to get doctors to believe that your brand and your medical device works well. So the first piece there was figuring out which of our sales team was really a good fit in the business to business world going to doctors. Some of them were really good. Some of them struggled. Some of them felt like, I just don't even wanna be in this. It's a different type of sales. To this day, some of our best salespeople came from those original studio retail type salespeople. That said, it became this piece of weeding out who necessarily didn't maybe wanna be there, who wasn't the right fit, taking the best there and supplementing it with other salespeople. And I think finding the right salesperson and the sales profile has been one of the more difficult things that we've done. First, we believed that someone who came from the industry would be great. Someone who's got dental sales, perfect. What we found over time is there's more to that salesperson makeup that leads to them being successful in this role. And some of our most successful people didn't come from dental. So not only our original direct to consumer salespeople, but people who came in from a variety of different backgrounds, some medical, some otherwise. As long as someone's really willing to learn and is okay knocking on doors, going in, getting told no, but also being willing to be a clinical expert and put their nose to the grindstone. And we found a lot of success there, but it's definitely been an evolving process as we've tried a million different things. So it's something that has been exciting, has been arduous at times, but overall, has been a really interesting journey that we've taken a lot of learnings from. And every time we hire more people, we get better at it. And that's really all you can ask for over the course of an evolution of a true go-to-market sales team focused on business to business doctor interaction.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. Yeah. You already mentioned marketing before, now also, like, switching the sales from B2C to B2B, really understanding, like, the doctor persona, I guess, how they operate, how they think, what motivates and incentivizes them, how to kinda, like, you know, get a foot in the door there. I assume, like, a big part of this is now also actually doctor enablement or so, like — because a doctor ultimately becomes also a salesperson for you now, right, in some sense. So, like, I'm assuming this was then something that you had to, like, build from scratch, or was this also something where you could take people from, like, you know, the previous B2C market motion over and, like, retrain them? Or yeah. Curious about that.

Jordan Shaheen: We've had an interesting journey and evolution of our role of a salesperson, an account executive, business developer. Originally, we had two separate teams. We had a group that focused on signing doctors and then a group that focused on actually making them successful once they signed. What we found is, not surprisingly, the more handoffs you'd have in a sales funnel, the less likely at each step they get — being the customer — to actually continue to engage and be successful. So we've moved to a model in which we have what we would call account executives, but who do top to bottom account management. So everything from cold calling, talking to warm leads, talking to leads they've met elsewhere through referrals, signing those accounts, and then making them successful afterwards. Positive piece of that is you get used to your rep. So if I'm working with you, Philipp, I know that you've sold me, and you're also gonna be the one I can rely on and go to. And so that builds a significant amount of trust with our industry experts, with our sales representatives, our account executives in a way that is unique to a lot of different industries. You think of SaaS and other places where the person selling you is not gonna be the same person who is actually building and operationalizing things with you. So you really develop this personal relationship, which is crucial because the dental industry in many ways, like I said earlier, is old school. Right? Up until the last ten years, you know, people were using paper records in the offices. Right? They have a higher threshold to make sure that they trust something, which is good. Means they're not offering anything to patients and their customers that they feel is not a hundred percent baked, but that was the biggest piece of working through this all. And I think finding reps who can do both of those things was really difficult. Right? It's a tough type of person you need who's willing to, you know, go knock on doors and get rejection, but also handle complex issues with doctors and make sure that you're there to also be a support system. And that was a big transition. It's a lot of work, and I admire them so much for the role that they do, but that's how we've set up our sales team. We still have some remote salespeople, some remote account executives. Obviously, we don't have someone physically in every place. You know, Boise, Idaho, we don't have someone right out in the middle of Montana. We don't necessarily have someone. But most of the country we've got set up with local reps who are incredible. They get a ton of positive feedback. Our doctor NPS score is very high. We've put a lot of effort into that bike love experience. And, yeah, it's had its ups and downs, but overall, it's been a really meaningful evolution and growth. And I've had lots of learnings. Our sales team's had lots of learnings. We've had a number of different people take the helm and try to perfect things. And I think, like I said, each iteration getting much better, but the sales role here is definitely difficult. I give them a lot of credit because they do a lot of stuff. For example, when we considered having an SDR type role that would go out and farm the leads and then hand them off to account executives for conversion and activation, what we found is the role was effective, but not necessarily perfect to fit into the funnel. And the way we started it was myself, people from our revenue strategy team — we literally went into the field for a week in Tampa in hundred degree weather, and we're out there knocking on doctor's doors. We went in there and didn't wanna ask someone to do something or make a decision about how someone should, in theory, do something without knowing how it operated ourselves. And so it's things like that that our team gets a lot of hands on experience, and we push ourselves to do. And I push the team to do — it's easy to sit behind a computer and be, in, you know, American culture, a Monday morning quarterback, but it's another thing to actually be out there on the field. And so we really try to make sure that we stay in tune with the front lines because that is where the progress comes from. A lot of orgs will split it up, and you have a corporate team, and you've got a field sales team. There's not a lot of interaction. You roll something out at corporate, it becomes volatile to everybody. And in our instance, we try to make sure that there's trust, that there's feedback going both ways so they understand why we're recommending something, and then we understand why they're wanting something, struggling, succeeding, whatever it might be.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah. Yeah. I love that a lot. I think, I mean, I think these techniques — first of all, just doing it yourself, I think, is extremely powerful. Also, like shadowing, I think, is another approach to that. Right? Like, just following, like, the salespeople around and just watching and observing. And I think what it really does is also just shows that you, your team, cares, actually wants to go into the weeds and understand how things really work in detail. And, yeah, I mean, like, I would say, like, speaking from a sales rep perspective, right, what that would tell me is, like, okay, you know, they're not just sitting behind their desk, staring at their monitor and making decisions based on some numbers or just, like, randomness, but they actually, like, ran through that experience themselves and regularly do. Yeah. I think it's one of the most powerful ways to do, like, good user research. Like, also true for product management, developing that. Right? You can always observe or try to observe people, like, based on, like, data points and using all these different tools and software that is out there. But actually standing behind someone, even if it's, like, using software, just looking at them how they use the software, how they spend their day, like, you know, sitting at the computer and, like, struggling with whatever you developed, I think has, like, a whole, you know, different level to it. So I think it's great that you guys are doing that. Curious, like, I would imagine that also, like, the way that you think about your customers has changed. So initially with B2C and the retail motion, I'm sure you had different, so, like, target personas and a specific type of segmentation. Like, I don't know, like, young person, middle aged person, older person. Right? Like, just, like, using age now, but probably have, like, very different, like, thought process, you know, when it comes to, like, okay, you know, investing money and, yeah, kind of getting the perfect smile, I guess. So different motivation and so on. And now you added — and you still have those different target audiences, the end customer, but you also have that middle layer of different types of doctors. How is that working? And do you also have, like, a different segmentation of doctors and different approaches that they take? How does that work?

Jordan Shaheen: Yes to all of that. Essentially, we originally segmented our direct to consumer world, our customers and patients there, and had an idea of what that perfect person would be who would be interested in our product, you know, probably somewhere in the twenty five to thirty five, forty range, has a little bit of disposable income, cares about, you know, appearance and wanting to, you know, improve their smile. And early on, we really focused on, hey, people are interested in a straighter smile and that, you know, you can lead off every or read off every study that shows it leads to better jobs, it leads to higher — you know, all of these better things that you think of, more confidence. And so people would do it before a wedding or before different changes in their life, and that's great. And we really focused on providing them the best clinical outcomes within that realm. When we moved to the doctor side, you all of a sudden look at an industry that has — let's start with age as you mentioned. Right? You've got doctors who are twenty five — well, maybe not twenty five. They're in their late twenties, early thirties. You've got doctors that are seventy and eighty years old. I was actually — we eat with doctors across the country very frequently to get their feedback just as a small aside. And we went this past week — I think it was the past week, we've done so much travel it's hard to keep track — but I think it was last week we went and met with one of our doctors who is offering our product to patients and literally is eighty years old. One of our other most successful doctors offering this is seventy four or will be seventy four within a month or so. And then you've also got these really young doctors who are doing a great job coming in, bringing that piece of, you know, new invigoration from the industry to really push and incorporate our product into their practices. But essentially, on top of the age, you then have what they specialize in. Right? Within the dental world, you have orthodontists, you've got general practitioners, you've got periodontists, endodontists, but, you know, it goes on forever. What we found our target to be is kind of in that GP space. Right? There are a lot of general practitioners who don't use a lot of ortho either because they're not comfortable selling it, they don't like the product, they don't like the workflow, whatever it might be. And the way that we're able to go in and get them excited about offering our product and to push it a lot more is not to make them feel like they're being a used car salesman, which is oftentimes what they feel like. They feel like, hey, I don't wanna push this cosmetic procedure on people because it's just not my cup of tea. I wanna make sure that I feel like I'm doing the ethical and right thing. And so we come in and show them, one, how to incorporate it. But the truth of the matter is around seventy five percent of Americans suffer from what we would call malocclusion or bad bite, misaligned teeth. And I'm really passionate about our product, and the way that our sales team is really passionate is because treating that at an early age or as early in life as you can really decreases the risk of other types of illness down the line. One thing really important to me and my family is Alzheimer's risk. And so, you know, that is even related. You have dementia, heart disease, diabetes, pregnancy risk, all of these types of things that cause long term trouble health wise and bank account wise here in the US, unfortunately, for these patients. And so all of a sudden, we're able to get doctors to educate their patients. This is not about me pushing some expensive procedure on you. This is about me giving you an option to really improve your health. And, yeah, there are some nice benefits of a straighter smile, but we've been able to really focus on that with our doctors, and that's been one of our biggest selling points. So while other people might be trying to just make a cheaper product or, you know, mimic others in the industry, we've tried to carve our own way. We've incorporated technology. We try to hit patients where they are. So let's say you work five days a week, you can't miss work to come in for a bunch of appointments to your orthodontist. Great. Let's create a product where general dentists can, with the support of a Candid orthodontist and expertise from our clinical side, help you get through treatment with very limited appointments because we use this thing called remote monitoring that essentially helps do a very detailed scan of your teeth every couple of weeks. We get really good outcomes because of it. And so we've positioned ourselves with our current product to focus on the general practitioner because the average one is doing one case or less a month. And so there's not a big pushing point for them. We really wanna develop that. We help them from marketing. We help them believe in the clinical side of it. We help them understand how to position it to patients effectively, how to incorporate it with different personnel within their office. And we really create that white glove service. But in order to do that, you have to look at people who want it. And that group is gonna be people who haven't quite mastered it. And so for us, that's where we've really found our niche. And, yeah, we're developing products and continue to develop products to hit other groups and segments, if you will, but segmentation characteristics and profile have been a big thing for us. Segmentation is one of my favorite things to do, even though it's stressful. And you do a lot of data and you do a lot of qualitative research and you talk to a lot of people, but it is ultimately what helps a business succeed and helps you understand your customer. Right

We can't better ourselves if we don't know the needs, we don't know which type of profile a given doctor falls into.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah, I think that's great. I think particularly this part about like, okay, I can totally see that, right? I would probably feel that way initially if somebody would approach me, I would feel like, okay, look, I'm not a car salesman, right? I'm a doctor, it's fine that you have this business, but that's not my job to make people smile better, but I think the points that you made, I think those are really great. And I did, I didn't use Candid, obviously, I'm based in Germany, and this was many, many years ago, 30 years ago, but when I was a small kid, yeah, that's what my parents did. They sent me to offer a dentist, and really, yeah, obviously helped me, I don't know how to put that now of my broken English, but like, you know, for my teeth, so like they were perfectly aligned and there was like a good bite. And I don't think they did it to have the perfect smile, but really to actually like make sure there are like no health issues, which is great later in life. So yeah, I can totally see that argument. And I think it's great. Like if you give like the different segments, the different target audiences, good reasons that are all true, right? but everybody has all their own perspective on these kinds of things and feels comfortable also with different kinds of things. So they need to be able to pick and choose there. You touched on it, but I just wanted to dive a bit deeper on that because I'm sure that must have been a crazy big problem is sort of like the initial moment where the team was told that this shift was being made. I imagine that was tough. It's obviously not just like a change in business, it's also a change in culture or it can lead to a change in culture. So yeah, curious, how did you manage that? How did you manage that together with the leadership at the company to really create a good vision that everybody buys into?

Jordan Shaheen: It was tough. It was a journey. I think some people took it in stride, others were a bit distraught about it, Others didn't know how they felt about it because they felt in shock. Not everybody saw it coming, obviously, as it was more of a side channel development that eventually became our main business. I think when we made the shift, the biggest piece that I found was odd, or like jarring to me, is at the time I was a manager, I worked really closely with our co-founder to develop this product, but I didn't, I wasn't senior leadership. And all of a sudden, we were training people and the entire company, you know, the following week, once we launched this, on something that now was gonna be their entire job. And it was a very almost, I can't quite describe it, it was such a feeling of almost being out of my body of like training all of these usual teaching machine, all these people about this product that was now our focus, that was now how we were gonna make a living and how we were gonna drive impact in the industry. I think a lot of people hopped on board, those that were like, hey, this is not something that interests me. Great, they kind of moved on to different positions. But I think the biggest piece of the whole transition from my perspective was just teaching everybody from our frontline support associates all the way up to senior leadership, what in the world our B2B product is? And then bringing in people who could help us drive it. And we had to believe in it, not only clinically, but we had to believe in it to the point where we could get others to believe in it. And it was a process, it was a journey, but yeah, I mean, telling people your entire job is gonna change and the product you're selling over the course of like a week, stressful, right? Under the best circumstances. Yes. So, you know, it had its ups and downs, but I think overall, we handled it as well as we could have. It's a tough thing to do. Very few organizations do it, especially in the medical space, we're like, okay, we know this is gonna be not the perfect path forward for us, the consumer or the industry, now we're gonna change. And it's not like we're gonna change slightly. We didn't add one feature to the product. We shifted who we were selling to. And it was something we're very thankful we did, but at the time was obviously, we had a hill to climb, both personnel, emotionally, and also just practically speaking, taking a product that was meant for consumers and now making it for both doctors and consumers.

Philipp Stelzer: Yeah, I mean, I think, to me, the only way to really achieve a good transition, as good as it can be, like you said, is to really create a story, to create a vision that also positions this as an opportunity, which I think also is true in your case, because like you said in the beginning, increasing cost of acquisition, a relatively low LTV comparable to the motion on the B2B side, so this sets us up for the future and come with us on this journey. It will enable us to build a better and greater company that would be a longer-lasting. It feels to me like it's sort of like the best arguments you can make and, of course, also to be true about it. I think people quickly understand if you're telling them you know, I don't know, some made up like stories. I think just people, people will know, right? It's

Jordan Shaheen: just something that people can see through relatively quickly. And we, I can't thank enough our C-suite and senior leadership for the change at the time, right? I was kind of middle management at the time. And they were amazing about the transition. They were very transparent. They were very informative, and they were really passionate about the change. And so not only was it really, it drove passion in a lot of our personnel because they were so built, bought into it, they were so knowledgeable, and they really felt like this was the way forward. And so it wouldn't have been possible without them and without an incredibly agile and flexible senior leadership team. They made a lot of sacrifices over the change. They really were selfless and didn't ask anyone to do anything that they weren't willing to do or willing to learn. And so that added a layer of it that made it more palatable to the, or then, you know, if you have a hardline CEO, for example, or someone who just doesn't want to really understand the company, the people, and the movement. And so we're super lucky. Our CEO is amazing and continues to wow me every day in the aptitude and is incredible in his mind. A lot of different factors played into it, but overall we made it even if there was a bump here

Philipp Stelzer: and there. Yeah, for sure. I think impossible to do it without bumps. I'm curious. So one more question, just like looking at other companies, rather people in particular, where they work at companies that are also thinking about something like this, what advice would you give to them if they were to consider a similar shift going from B2C to B2B?

Jordan Shaheen: I think the biggest piece is willingness to learn. Do the research. Understand the market. Having a consumer be your ultimate customer, the person who's putting something in their mouth and and straightening their teeth is very different than telling to a doctor who has studied for probably 25, almost 30 years of their life to become an expert in some medical field, in this case dental, and have a license that is their way of life and they don't wanna put it on the line. So coming into this or anything really, you want to have, especially your revenue operations, revenue strategy team, understanding the new environment and that involves getting read up, it involves doing qualitative feedback sessions, getting out and talking to people, if you're not willing to dig in and learn and drive different activities to help foster your knowledge of that, then you're not gonna be successful. Flexibility, agility is really important for this team, and that's also why I go after generalists, right? I want to build a team that is capable of being a consultant, going out and figuring it out, coming back. Now they're an expert in it and they can help us move forward. So without that way of operating as a team, you won't be successful. And in many instances, the company won't be successful because of that. So you have to be the center of the web. You have to be willing to learn, to be wrong, to try things, and to do and take the time to research, to read up on things, to watch videos, listen to consumers, read books, all of that type of thing. And it takes a very specific type of person, right? It has a lot of that startup vibe where you meet someone who wants to grind, roll their sleeves up, work the extra hours, make an impact, and that's what drives them. That's the type of person and team that usually will be most successful in a large product change like ours, is what I found over time at least.

Philipp Stelzer: Okay, great. Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much, Jordan. I think this is a good moment to end. We always ask, I guess, one final question, and that is looking back at your career, something outstanding someone has done for you that has really and truly impacted your life?

Jordan Shaheen: That's a great question. I think over my time here at Candid, I've had almost 10 managers over my seven years, so a lot of people to learn from. And I truly believe you learned something from everyone. I think as funny as it sounds, our general counsel, when I started at Candid and was still debating whether or not I wanted to go to law school, Herschel Goldfield, He is amazing, works, he was a professor at Columbia, and now still helps us as an assistant general counsel and kind of consultant, is he walked me through what law school is like, what life would be like, what the expectations are there, and he helped me come to the realization that that's not the path I wanted to go forward. And so he made the biggest impact in the sense that he took my life, which was going this way, and helped me figure out I actually wanted to go that way, and really every day I'm thankful for that. Obviously, a million people have made an impact in my life, so I say that not as a singular piece. I always use his coffee cup because no matter what, when you asked him how he was, he'd say he was within normal parameters. So as someone that I to this day, even though not directly involved with the company anymore, is on my mind is a big piece of where I am and wouldn't have ended up here without that moment. Even if it wasn't a huge planned thing, it made a big

Philipp Stelzer: impact in the end. Yeah, I love that. Perfect. And that was a Star Trek cup or was it? It is indeed. It is. Okay, got it. Okay, great. Jordan, thank you so much for joining this episode. I think it was really good. Yeah, looking forward to getting this. It was awesome to

Jordan Shaheen: chat with you and super excited to continue to interact with you going forward. Yeah, thanks.