Planable’s Incredible Growth Story with Xenia Muntean

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker. On this episode, we have Xenia Muntean, the CEO and co-founder of Planable, back with us for an in-depth look at their growth strategy. She shares her inside perspective on how they drive Planable revenue and gained over 800 customers.

So let’s talk about Planable, because I want to talk a little bit about why you started it. Obviously, the pain point for you and your co-founder, Nick, was like, “Hey, we’re button-hitting our heads against the wall here—this is a nightmare.” There’s clearly a pain point here. What was the starting point, and where are you guys at today? You mentioned you have an office in the UK—where you’re at currently—and then, how many employees do you guys have?

Awesome, awesome. Well, congratulations on that. I know that’s a run. So it’s a full—are they a fully remote team?

Damn you COVID. I know, I know it’s one of those things. Well, you know, I think it is interesting—this COVID thing, obviously you see that with Google and Twitter and all the big players saying, “Hey, maybe remote isn’t that bad? Maybe we can run this,” because they’re being forced to do that. So I think that’s going to suck for any of these coworking spaces and stuff, you know, that might start losing people because they’re like, “Hey, we can do this remotely.” I guess we’ll see how that all plays out.

But it’s definitely—I’ve always had a remote team, so for me it affected us. We had one office that we had to shut down, but only because it was like, “Nobody’s there. What’s the point?” But it’s interesting—we were kind of prepared for remote living because my team’s all over the world. I have a nice 24-hour clock where I can tell them, “Hey, can you get this done in the morning?” and the clients are like, “Did you just stay up all night?” And I’m like, “Not really. I actually got eight hours of sleep.” My team is actually pretty amazing, all over the world, so that’s a good thing.

So let’s talk a little bit about your revenue. You guys had 20 employees, and I read online something about 42k—almost 70 customers back in 2018. So where are we at today? This is 2020.

I was looking at 70. I was like, “Yeah, it’s pretty good.” And you’re like, “No, no, Shane, actually it’s about 11 times that, 12 times that.” You’re a little behind here. Well, congrats. You guys have almost 800 customers, so it’s been four years?

That’s phenomenal. You’ve got to be super proud of that. That’s like, man, I’m surprised. I mean, people can’t see this, but I’m surprised. Your head’s not bigger. That is a huge accomplishment. I mean, 800 customers—that’s not easy. And you guys have some really big customers. Tell us about some of the brands you guys are working with.

I know, that is probably one of those sayings that makes my skin crawl—there is literally no overnight success. You don’t just wake up, put a logo up, call a friend, and then the next morning have a million dollars in sales. Those overnight success quotes are always like, “It only took me 10 years to be an overnight success,” because that’s what it is. We have to get it out of our head that success is easy or handed to you. You have to realize that it’s going to be a long haul, and that’s okay.

Obviously, being perseverant is key. It sounds like Nick is the same way—Tech Stars, you guys have a great foundation of success. But this isn’t about having 800 customers overnight. You started off at 70, then took an evaluation and said, “Hey, what do we need to improve?” Honestly, if you had 800 customers in 2018, that probably would have been a bad thing because the technology wouldn’t have been ready to satisfy them. So, an 11x growth is very impressive, but it sounds like you guys understood the process: “Hey, we’re at this point. Let’s take a look. Let’s talk to customer service. Let’s see what’s going on. What are the pain points? What’s working well and what isn’t?” Then you iterate. You have to do a new iteration of the software, adjust customer service, change onboarding if people are falling off—there are a thousand, maybe 10,000 things that go into getting to that point and then scaling efficiently.

On that note, Xenia, please allow me to tell our listeners more about our customized digital marketing services. For those who want to skyrocket their growth, we offer services such as content marketing, influencer marketing, SEO, online PR, and so much more. Visit our website shanebarker.com—that’s S, H, A, N, E, B, A, R, K, E, R.com—for more information. And now, back to our conversation with Xenia on how to successfully grow your startup.

Yeah, that’s what’s funny. I had a business—this is a whole other story—that I brought from zero to about 25 million in two years with some 30 employees. The growth rate was crazy, and it was beautiful. But a lot of things happened along the way, and one of the crazy things was how much we learned. That’s what made it possible to grow and scale at that rate. But it’s just not easy. You have to stop, look around, and assess the situation to figure out what’s going on.

Another interesting thing was that we used to worry about someone stealing our concept. My co-founder was always really worried about somebody copying us—they could use our sales form, replicate our sales process, and even our software. But I’d say, “Do you realize that there were 1,000 right-hand turns, 1,000 left-hand turns, and 500 going straight and then 100 feet back? You’re not going to be able to copy that exactly.” Sure, someone might take some of our stuff and get a fraction of our market share, but that shouldn’t be a problem if you’re treating people the right way, if you have good connections with your customers, and if they’re dedicated to you because of the onboarding, customer support, and everything else you’ve done.

For us, it was always a big worry—”Oh, somebody’s going to steal our thing.” But our process was unique. If someone wants to go through the same journey we did, good luck, because it was just not easy. This wasn’t like making three decisions in three months and being profitable. Not everybody lands a big client like Coca-Cola as their first client; that’s not always the case.  That’s not always that special.

And it’s impossible to do. You can copy little features here and there, but if you don’t have a good connection with your customers—if your customers are dedicated to you—nobody’s going to leave you for $10 cheaper, right? If they do, then there’s an issue in your process that you need to evaluate. You can look at your attrition rate; you’ll lose people—that’s just how it goes. But if you’re losing a lot of people, then there’s obviously a problem. People might leave you for someone else if they have the same feature for $10 less, but that shouldn’t happen if you’ve built real value. If you’re dealing with a half a million-dollar account and people are leaving to save $100,000, then it comes down to them not understanding the benefits of staying with you—like avoiding headaches, poor customer service, and other issues you might not see. It shouldn’t always be about the money. I love that you guys have built a strong foundation over there.

So, is there anything interesting regarding your growth strategy or anything that helped you grow? Is it really just about taking a look at what you have, taking some steps forward, evaluating what’s going on, making changes, and then moving forward? Is there anything interesting in that process that we haven’t heard in books, or is it just about keeping on moving forward?

So I love that. In other words, I could be a brand, and I can bring in freelancers on Planable. We work on a project, and then guess what—the freelancer goes, “Wow, that’s a really awesome tool. I’m going to use that with my clients,” and then they bring in more people. I love that. It’s a natural growth model because if you have something good, people naturally share it. That’s a great word-of-mouth situation where they’re using it. So, is that something you guys planned for, or did it just naturally happen?

10 times, right? Yeah, to focus on—that’s awesome. Well, that’s when you know you have a good tool: when people are recommending it, and freelancers are staying on and saying, “Hey, I need to use this for my clients,” because it’s easy to use, which is really the goal. I can tell you firsthand, when we were doing creation and stuff for our clients, it was a nightmare. We opted out of it because it was just too much going back and forth, and it wasn’t profitable for us. And now, what’s gonna hurt your Planable? You guys are changing the world. We love it.

Thanks. Xenia, it’s been a truly inspiring episode, and I’m sure listeners have learned a lot about the growth strategy at Planable. Now that you know so much about their amazing social media tool, why don’t you give it a try? As a listener of the Marketing Growth Podcast, we’re going to give you a special discount. Use the code marketinggrowth30 to get 30% off your first three months of Planable. There’s a link in the show notes as well—make sure to check it out. Let’s wrap this segment up here. Stay tuned for next week’s episode, where we’ll be back with more insights from Xenia.