Stacey Yudin - CEO of NEP Services

Stacey Yudin wears a lot of hats—CEO, innovator, strategist, and truth-teller. As the head of NEP Services, she leads in the fast-paced, ever-evolving world of tech, all while embracing imperfection and promoting a human-first work culture.

In this candid conversation, Stacey pulls back the curtain on what it really means to lead in tech as a woman today. From balancing sprints and self-care, to letting go of perfectionism, to using client feedback as fuel—she gets real about the rollercoaster of building software that actually serves people.

This is a must-listen for anyone navigating leadership, entrepreneurship, or simply trying to do meaningful work without burning out.

“Letting go of perfectionism opened the door to building something better—and more human.”

Stacey Yudin is chief executive officer of NEP Services and a champion of change. A tech leader, Stacey is known for her unstoppable drive and creating transformative technology to advance nonprofits and build strong communities. Stacey is the visionary behind Connect Plus+ mobile app platforms for building communities, communication and empowerment. Under her leadership, the company was named a 2024 Fast Company Most Innovative Company and has created a world-class team that celebrates gender diversity and female empowerment. Prior to NEP Services, Stacey was in the healthcare sector as well as a consumer products entrepreneur. She actively supports numerous nonprofits, served as Collegiate President for Face Aids and UNICEF at UCLA and is an active speaker at industry events. Stacey earned her bachelor’s degree in History and Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is passionate about the industrial 4.0 and believes that tech is the bridge to building a better future for nonprofits.

Check out https://www.nepservices.com/products/help-a-hero

https://www.nepservices.com/ 

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-yudin-722a101b/ 

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Transcript

Jason Frazell (2): 0:11

Hey everybody. My guest today is Stacy Den. Stacy is the CEO of NEP services. We're gonna talk about what that means in terms of what she does. We're gonna get into Stacy's a little bit about her background, her philosophy. I've had a chance to catch up with Stacy before we kicked off, and I can't wait for this conversation. It's gonna be awesome. Stacy, thanks for being on.

Stacey Yudin: 0:30

Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker: 0:32

Yes. Excellent. Stacy, where are you in the world today?

Stacey Yudin: 0:37

Oh, I'm calling in videoing in from beautiful Laguna Beach, California. The weather is gorgeous. The ocean is sparkling on the coast. No complaints.

Speaker: 0:47

You're talking. Yeah, I think mentioned, I'm in, I'm in New York. It's warm here today, but it's getting cold and Laguna Beach sounds very nice right now.

Stacey Yudin: 0:57

Yeah, you know, the water is incredibly cold, but for all of those health nuts out there, I do go to hot yoga and then I try to jump in the freezing cold ocean as my, my cold dip, which I, there you go. Recommend to anyone who's brave enough to try.

Speaker: 1:09

I like a good cold plunge as well. That's great. I'm gonna say this conversation's starting off very California. You're like, I go to hot yoga and then I do my cold plunge in the ocean, and then I do some podcasts. It's so good. I love it. That's awesome. It's part

Stacey Yudin: 1:20

of a balanced, part of a balanced work life. Absolutely. Gotta have it. It's, it's, it's a marathon, not a race. I've learned that the hard way.

Speaker: 1:27

Yeah. Well, Stacey, let's actually kick the conversation off of that. You, like I mentioned, you were the CEO of a software company. You're a female in tech, a female in tech leadership. It's amazing in and of itself. There's obviously, it's not, that is not an equal playing field, even though, even still today. So let's actually kick off by talking about how you take care of yourself to do that really important job so that you can take care of, you said you're married and you have a team of folks that you work for, and then you service them through the, through the software and services that you provide. So how do you think about taking care of yourself so that you can be your best self and, and do your job?

Stacey Yudin: 2:04

Yeah, well, I mean, no one is, no one's perfect at that. And obviously being a, being in the executive leadership role as myself and my colleagues know, you know, there's times of the year where taking care of yourself is just not possible. It's, it put, it's put on the back burner. So my philosophy is for the entire team and I, I do try to remind the team, we're gonna have the busy months, we're gonna have the excuse my French kick ass quarters. Yeah. Where it's. We need to focus. We have deadlines, we have deliverables, and there'll be time, time in the season where we can get back to balance and focus. So, you know, I encourage everyone in our company we're, we're fully remote work, which I think despite some collaborative drawbacks, offers an opportunity for people to not spend their time in the car. 30 minutes getting to my office. To meet with me face to face. Instead, they can spend 30 minutes taking a walk outside, taking a break. You know, I encourage people on sort of non, you know, less important internal phone calls that if they need to take those calls while walking around the block, you know, using their headset technology has enabled us to work more efficiently and also to work remotely. So. As long as it's you know, they're producing and we can measure ROI, which our team is incredible at NEP. We've done a lot with a very small team, a very nimble environment. I think remote work allows you to take opportunities for yourself and rebalance. Like I said, there's gonna be times where it's pedal to the metal and self-care is not a priority. It's the last thing on the list. But remote work's allowed us to, you know, get up a little earlier, carve out that extra half an hour you know, go jump in the ocean and then race back for your, you know, your, your podcast.

Speaker: 3:44

Yeah. There, there you go. To come back for the podcast. Stacy, you said something I, I really appreciate and it's that you and the team, you acknowledge that it's not always gonna be balanced. There are. I think that's the truth. Yet, I think it doesn't get set all the time. Like, oh we're, we've got our, and I work life balance a little. My opinion is played out, but this idea that you're gonna get it is, especially when you're running a company that's a software company. You have sales, you are doing software sprints, you have important clients, you're servicing people around the globe. There are gonna be times when it's not gonna feel balanced and that's actually normal and okay. So I really appreciate that you say that and then you acknowledge that with your team and ask them for the same.

Stacey Yudin: 4:25

Yeah, and, and I think the other sort of misnomer that that is portrayed ineffectively across social media is the fact that things need to be perfect and you're gonna launch with a perfect product and your client clients are always gonna be incredibly happy. And of course, my clients are always incredibly happy.

Jason Frazell: 4:43

Oh, every time, hundred percent.

Stacey Yudin: 4:45

But you know, their expectation of perfection in all of us is something that I've had to work past as sort of a perfectionist, a self applied perfectionist.

Jason Frazell: 4:55

Yeah. Letting

Stacey Yudin: 4:56

things go, getting to development, getting to MVP, knowing you have bugs, pushing through that fear of failure. Even though, you know, it's really not about failure. The pro, you know, the, the new platform is gonna be incredible, but you've gotta get out there to get real advice, real, real feedback from the real world. Your team is a closed loop, a a closed circle of conversation, and until you really push it out there, you don't know what's gonna happen.

Jason Frazell: 5:20

Yeah. So

Stacey Yudin: 5:22

the, the balance, I think also allows you to take a moment. Allows to step out of the forest, maybe see the forest through the trees a little bit, gain a little emotional perspective that I think adds value when you get back into those sprints, those tough times and yeah, it's tough. Yeah. You're not gonna win if you're not bleeding. And, and I, I think that people need to understand that as well as it, it's supposed to be difficult. Yeah. If it's not difficult, you're probably not trying hard enough.

Speaker: 5:48

Yeah. So how do you think about, so how do you think about the. The perfectionist. That that's a, that's an interesting thing as well. Folks that I know that are perfectionists, they have trouble letting go of that because that, that isn't a way, a way to protect and con literally contra, protect and control as somebody who's leading company with a bunch of other people who don't do it exactly like you or nor did, nor should they. Mm-hmm. And in a techno, in a space, there is no such thing as perfection. Show me a perfect piece of software and I'll say, you're lying to me. How did, how, what have you done to manage or grow that part of your, like your skillset and your personality to become a more effective leader?

Stacey Yudin: 6:32

It, it took me a minute. You know, over the last 12 years we've been building strategic communication software for labor unions, nonprofits. Our mission and goal has been to centralize this fractured data and tool set. So nonprofit are using like 15 tools. Three different programs. They've got data everywhere. We have data security issues potentially. So, you know, the idea that all of that would come together in a perfect little scenario is unrealistic. Yeah. So for me, what, what's worked best is to embrace the, the feedback from customers to embrace the upset, sort of embrace that as a positive.

Jason Frazell: 7:12

So

Stacey Yudin: 7:13

for me, I'm using that as they're helping me grow my ip, they're helping me broaden my perspective. They're giving me insight and valuable information that all, although at first it might come across as negative, it's really only negative if I choose to view it that way. Yeah. So letting, letting go. Perfectionism has a lot to do with, I think the feedback that you get, that it's not perfect.

Jason Frazell: 7:35

So by

Stacey Yudin: 7:35

letting that expectation go and getting really excited, motivated. Hyped up about all of the feedback that you're gonna, that you're gonna get. And by the way, the feedback that we've been getting majority is 90% plus is positive.

Jason Frazell: 7:49

Sure, yeah. You know, it's

Stacey Yudin: 7:50

very rarely I think we take the one little negative feedback that we sort of, you know, exaggerate that in in the bigger scale, but letting go and embracing all feedback of every kind, the good, bad, and the ugly, the people that leave comments on, you know, when I do a podcast and say whatever it might be. Hey, it's great feedback. I can learn from it. We can move on. Yeah. So I think for me, the perfectionism helping us grow more strategically, utilizing different perspectives is not just internal to my team. Yeah. But I've included my clients in that perspective and that's helped me kind of roll back those un you know, unexpected or, or, or larger than life expectations that are not realistic.

Speaker: 8:31

Yeah. The icebreaker question or networking question. What's something you wish you could tell your younger self? One of my favorite ones is you're not gonna be for everybody. Nobody. There's nobody on the planet that's gonna go, I, everybody adored that person and that includes the businesses we run, the technology we build. It's just not, and I'm, I'm laughing'cause I, I came from the software industry. I's laughing, I'm, you get the one off. It's like, well, the software doesn't do this and it's the only person who'd ask it. And that feedback still stings. Mm-hmm. Because as good people who wanna do good things in the world. We wanna support everybody and then you look and you go, that just doesn't make sense from a business perspective.

Stacey Yudin: 9:09

E exactly. So you know, you can get lost and go down a wormhole, you know, mic micro adjusting features. Right. Really spending thousands of hours of, of. Business analyst time and feature experts and developers just to go down a rabbit hole for less than 2% of your client base. When really, you know, it's great feedback to take into consideration across the whole market. You probably need to do some re research to see if that applies more broadly and people aren't just elevating that particular perspective, but more likely I'm not. It is not the path that your software should be on, and you need to, you know, sort of take that with a grain of salt. Yeah. Which is an old, an old saying, but, but more applicable to software, I think and, and even running a company than anything because you're gonna go ahead and change your methodology and your approach for every little piece of feedback that doesn't match your sort of perfectionist ideal. You're gonna end up nowhere, right? So yeah, that's been the biggest changing journey for us is really, really honing in on where we are, where our strengths are, double downing on those strengths, and being really excited to embrace. All different levels of, of feedback.

Speaker: 10:19

Yeah. You're gonna end up in a product roadmap hell, where you're never actually doing the things that you're strategically set out to do and you're filling in feature requests. I had a, yeah,

Stacey Yudin: 10:27

we we've never been there.

Speaker: 10:28

Yeah, no, never. Nobody's ever done that to get the revenue. No. I worked for a series a startup where that's all we did for about two years. Like what is Yeah. That one person, one who's willing to pay us.

Stacey Yudin: 10:37

I, I think the other thing is that even the largest, you know, most well-known companies in the world, they're not that much different culture wise from

Jason Frazell: 10:43

No,

Stacey Yudin: 10:43

from most companies. Right. So they have no. Their product roadmap, disagreements, you know, they've got teams that are arguing and debating, you know, where to go with the software, what's a better fit? Yeah, what's a better analysis, what's a better, you know, marketplace. And so I don't think anything that we've experienced in our last eight years of double digit growth is sort of out of the norm for what the industry is.

Speaker: 11:06

Yeah. Thanks Stacy. I'd like to move next. Let, I want to talk about NEP specifically. You all serve a really, to me it's a really interesting. Really interesting place in the market and what you do, and I want to talk first about why or the genesis of why you're here today and what had you and the team created, and then what's the big issue that's in this space, and talk about the space and then we'll wrap the conversation. As a leader, I want to get your perspective on hiring for culture and some of the other things that you think about as you go, Hey, like three years from now or five years from now, we're gonna need to double the team. Who do we hire for? Because we've technical expertise is becoming, to me, is cheaper and cheaper and easier and easier to find between technology and people. And it's all about do you get along and do you work well? So first of all, let's talk about the space. I'll just give a little high level then go deep with this here. So any P services you support specifically nonprofits, unions. Around and you mentioned around communications and bringing a membership or groups of people that are either paying or in, in nonprofit space donors together and allowing you to communicate more effectively and do more of that. That's an interesting space. As somebody who we, we are involved in a nonprofit, I am not in a union. That is not a space that I would generally think about that much. I. So I'm, I'm, I'm really curious like that, a little bit about the challenges in that space and then why you all, why do you support that space?

Stacey Yudin: 12:38

Yeah. So, you know. Well, I believe that you can make a profit and do good in this world. Yes. I might be one of few people that do, but I, I tend to lean to the optimism side of the table and say, I think actually most people really want to add value in, in, in their current job, which, you know, working for a private company and, you know, they're volunteering at a nonprofit. They're working at a local food, food bank. So I believe in the collective power of that as a mechanism to enhance our communities, thinking about how we can work together more efficiently. It takes a village. It takes a tribe. And, and our company does that in a technology directive. So our big top level goal. Is to take nonprofits and make them more efficient.

Jason Frazell: 13:23

Hmm. Hopefully

Stacey Yudin: 13:24

they run their operational efficiency, you know, six 10 Xs so that the more of the donor dollar can go back to a cause. And so there's a lot of exciting opportunities. You know, we're, we're looking and we have some RD projects using AI inside of our platform that's gonna give our. Organizations ability to adapt to changing economy, ability to communicate strategically and in particular for our labor unions. You know, labor unions are a big representation of the middle class. Mm-hmm. The working American, you know, working hard every day for good and fair pay. And I, I personally think that their voice needs to be fair and balanced among private interest. And Fortune 500. That is how we achieve sort of a balanced economy. That is the, the give and take between in, in a culture that only serves the elite in an economy that also represents a fair and balanced working man. That everyone can work a hard day and earn a fair pay. And there has to be push and pull in that. And so our labor union communication strategically allows them to. Organize a very frac, fractured set of data.

Jason Frazell: 14:40

Mm-hmm. And

Stacey Yudin: 14:41

streamline their ability to manage communication software with an all-in-one email, text, social integration chat document storage. It's an ERP basically.

Jason Frazell: 14:53

Yeah.

Stacey Yudin: 14:53

To help these organizations be more efficient. And the goal is that, you know, they can elevate their concerns and they're not, they're not left to, you know, sort of compete with Fortune five company, fortune 500 companies, and 100 companies and lobbyists and legislators who have budgets that are, you know, 16 times there. So we're helping them elevate that conversation and, and have a seat at the table.

Speaker: 15:14

Mm-hmm. What are, I always like to ask people in the technology space, what are they doing if they're not using something like, like the products you provide, what are they doing instead?

Stacey Yudin: 15:23

Yeah, that's a great question. We had this discussion yesterday and, you know, they're, they're using a lot, a variety of tools that are one offs. And then there's a big chunk of the market that's really unrealized. So we see our market as growing over the next 10 years, and I don't think we're the only ones. But I think the opportunity for efficiency and the way that we're structuring communication between organizations is very unique and I think that'll bring a lot of value. That'll streamline a lot of administrative time where those individuals can be doing the important work of. Working with members, helping members get access to healthcare. You know, helping them find in-network care options versus utilizing out there's. And save time and effort reduce bureaucracy. And, and that trickles down to every, every single member in that organization, that labor union, that nonprofit, and that trickles down to supporting community. Yeah. And have a bigger budget to give back. So Sure. These are all areas that we can improve upon and, and that's our mission.

Speaker: 16:23

Yeah. I'll, I'm gonna brag, I'm gonna brag you on, you brag on you for a little bit. You didn't talk about who you work with, and I'm not gonna name specific, like, specific chapters, but you do business with. Some of the biggest unions here in the United States. At least that's, so if you, if you were Google the top 10 unions by membership or you know, like you're doing business with a lot of them, I'll leave it at that. So we're talking about massive impact and massive scale. We're talking a large population supported. This isn't a niche thing. And I know you work with a lot of fairly large nonprofits as well, and I knew you weren't gonna brag on yourself, Stacy, so I was gonna do that for you. Oh,

Stacey Yudin: 16:57

you're, you're kind, you're kind. Yeah. We're very proud to work a lot in the first responders space. I mean, we believe in caring for our first responders. They believe in giving police and firefighter officers and opportunity to elevate concerns that they see on the, and their unions are able to do that. Have discussion and debate about policy issues. Be to elevate their concerns. I mean, that is what this country was founded on, was robust discussion, disagreement and they're a part of that important feedback loop and all of that helps keep our community safer. You know, in addition, just general labor, labor unions as well, and nonprofits, I mean, some of the direct mail and digital fundraising tools that we've innovated. Probably have saved hundreds of millions of dollars for nonprofits in fulfillment and processing.

Speaker: 17:47

It's amazing.

Stacey Yudin: 17:47

Our new help, a hero.com crowdfunding tool is a unique tool in the sense that all of the data of the donors that comes through is never resold or shared with any third party marketing. That's just sort of a data security piece that I am very, very critical on. Yeah. You know, when you get those spam and telemarketing calls.

Jason Frazell: 18:07

Yep.

Stacey Yudin: 18:07

You know that, that that's because someone resold that data Yep. Or shared that data. And I just, I don't believe that that's the way of the future. And I believe in personal privacy. So that data is kept, never reshared. And each nonprofit can holistically use that. Yeah. For whatever campaign they need. You're not inundated with a bunch of garbage calls.

Speaker: 18:28

I'm you obviously, Stacy, they can't see us, but I'm smiling because I am, you know this, we're recording this. Couple weeks after the, a week and a half after the presidential of the elections here in the United States. And I got emails from various senate races from states that I have nothing to do with.

Jason Frazell: 18:46

Mm-hmm.

Jason Frazell (2): 18:47

And that's obviously because my data somehow got them and I, it's actually, it's actually a waste of resources. Like, I, I don't, I'm, I live in New York. I can't vote in the state of Ohio or wherever it is. And they weren't even asking for money. They were like asking for me to go out and vote for them. I said, this is a waste of resources and a waste of my time. Yeah, and I'm sure there's, you probably have the horror stories of where, where, what things can happen. We won't even, we won't even go into the horror of all these things. I'm wanna ask you next why this space? Like what's the, what's the origin story?

Stacey Yudin: 19:21

Well, I, I think my origin story is gonna be very similar to my team's origin story. Everyone that works with us is incredibly passionate about some part of our business or some segment of our customer base for some reason. So I'll, I'll give you a little bit of mine, but just understand that we really hire and we look for culture and fit and personality in addition to skill. But I, I, I believe working well on teams and collaboration is a, a 10 x to maybe a, having a technical skill. So to all those young people out there Yeah, who think that you know, they have to have all the, the advanced degrees, maybe it also means they need a little bit of experience, a little bit of getting their hands dirty or time maturing working with the team. So, you know, growing up, and I think, again, this is very similar to my coworkers, I was really involved in a lot of community causes. I enjoyed working at a local soup kitchen, someone Cares Soup Kitchen in Costa Mesa, which is an incredible organization. We had a lot of challenges in my family growing up, so it gave me perspective, you know? Mm-hmm. It, it could always be worse. Yeah. So I was very blessed to be brought up in a culture where I really need, it's not all about me. You know, and, and what I want for my birthday. And I think there's a little bit of that issue now with, with parents who raise kids. Yep. You know, it, it's a broader perspective and I was raised giving back, investing in the community. So working with NEP and helping nonprofits be more efficient, and ultimately that was the perfect fusion of business and giving back and making the world a better place. You know, hopefully someday I'll be a philanthropist and have the opportunity to work with some of the greatest philanthr philanthropists around the world. Yeah. Belinda Gates you know, and so. I think this is my opportunity to make a little impact with the nonprofits that we serve. Yeah. Either by saving them funds, making them more efficient, helping them raise more funds to create a bigger impact in their local community or their members. And that was my journey. And so this for me, every day I wake up blessed to work with an incredible set of coworkers who share my passion. Who constantly educate me on what's happening on the ground. Mm-hmm. And how we can do better and changing conditions for nonprofits. You know, just like businesses and Fortune five hundreds, nonprofits are affected by the economy.

Jason Frazell: 21:41

Sure. Local,

Stacey Yudin: 21:42

you know, individuals who are part of unions are affected by. You know, inflation and shrink inflation. So there's a lot that we can do to help each one of these organizations and be and pivot as much as a, a fortune 500 business to add value and improve the condition of, you know, our neighbor. Because what we're really talking about is people they serve are probably our neighbor, a guy down the block.

Jason Frazell: 22:05

Totally.

Stacey Yudin: 22:06

These are, these are not individuals that don't have a face. These are people already live in your community.

Speaker: 22:13

I, yeah, I'm, I'm friends with a variety of firefighters and police and yeah, amazing people. And they, they, you know, living here on the East coast, you know that this is kinda like ground zero for, for union, just based on the history, at least for like emergency services and such and great people. They were doing work that at the end of the day I was laughing. You know, kind of business I run and the kind of business you run, nobody's dying and nothing's on fire every day. These people are literally dealing with those things, and you probably said this to your team, sometimes you're like, you're like, is any, is everybody still alive and is anything on fire? If the answer is yes and no, we're gonna be fine. These people literally are dealing with that every day.

Stacey Yudin: 22:56

No, I mean, absolutely. The stories that we hear, I mean, again, working our team, we have, I don't know, culturally we have like 87% retention with our team. I think it's because it also gives us a little perspective. Yeah. You know, what we're, we think what we're doing is the most important thing in the world and we are very proud of it. We are really client-centric and focused on how we build features and have only improved that when it comes down to it. What we do is nothing compared to the sacrifices of labor unions and steelworkers, you know, that are out there hanging from bridges, making sure that you and I can get to work on time. Yeah, right. They're, they're building up the infrastructure that makes the economy run and we sort of forget that. We take that for advantage. You know, I can walk down the street and not bemed, well, there's a, who's traveled and been sort of countries I don't have. As great of a police and fire and public safety infrastructure as we do in the United States. I mean, there are risks when you go to the grocery store. There are risks. Absolutely. You know, when your kid walks home from school. And, and for the most part, there are areas where we can make significant improvements across the country and we can always do better. But you know, I'm, I'm proud to work with all the first responders and, and we sort of forget that. We forget that. Literally things are on fire and they're being shot at.

Speaker: 24:14

Yeah, literally. Literally things are on fire. What I wanna talk a little bit about leadership and I, I interview a lot of leaders in this show. I always like to get the unique perspectives. We all can learn from you, and everybody's a little bit different. So how do you look at, how do you look at running a company and running the team? And I always like to start with. What do you spend most of your time doing? Because I, I get that, I, I ask that question and people gimme different answers. So what do you spend your time doing and what do you spend most of your time thinking about?

Stacey Yudin: 24:50

I. It's a good question. I'll answer it in two ways. Yes. What I spend most of my time doing, and, and this comes from when you build a product, you get so ingrained and, and obsessed with the product, and it takes a while for you to kind of pull back and see the wider playing field. So. I still spend a lot of time in, with the product. I spend a lot of time with customers, I think in our growth cycle right now as we're, you know, doubling every year. Mm-hmm. Expanding, we're in 34 states. Amazing. In probably six, 16 different sectors of labor unions and, and organizations and nonprofits. You know, meeting with customers on the ground, going to them, having face-to-face meetings, it's not just always a Zoom world. I find those opportunities incredibly valuable. I also find the opportunity a lot of times when I do that to meet with other third party providers

Jason Frazell: 25:45

and

Stacey Yudin: 25:45

they also broaden my perspective. And so a lot of my time right now is spent broadening my perspective about product, about client fit, about our. The more the, you know, the more expertise I can learn along the way, I think the better I can lead the team. And then really the other side of it's, I think as a leader, I try to get out of the way. Yeah, one of my goals for hiring is to hire people that are smarter than me, that are savvier than me, that have more experience than I do. I do not want to know it all. That sounds awful. I, it does. Yeah. You know, I, I really wanna surround myself with people that are better than me. And I, I feel like over the last five and six years, we've really broadened our hiring strategy to do that, and, and a very much focus on recruitment. And I think the other sort of fallacy in business, and I'm probably gonna rub people the wrong way with this, but Please do. Right. I, I like teams. That sort of create conflict. Yeah. I like putting a team together with different perspectives now. I don't, I don't need a, a drag out brawl, but what I do need is I need a, a team that represents different perspectives. So I'll, I'll typically approach a problem from a very business angle, more of a business analyst. When we're discussing a feature potentially, or, or a client issue. I have people on the team where they are going to live and die by representing the client and what team members. They're conversations that you have to have, and it's okay to have a difficult conversation. It's okay to disagree. It's okay to hang up the phone call and be like, I don't know where we got on that. We did not resolve that.

Jason Frazell: 27:27

Mm. But we

Stacey Yudin: 27:27

got a lot of different perspectives on the table. And that provides us an opportunity to really let that resonate, you know, circle back to that feature. And so you spend a lot of time thinking about those different perspectives. And even if you don't initially agree with them, I find that. Sort of puts together the pieces in your, in your head when you're meeting with other clients and things fit differently together. Yeah. When you allow yourself to have these very uncomfortable conversations. And so one of the, the strategies for hiring is that I don't wanna live in my own ec echo chamber.

Jason Frazell: 28:00

Yeah.

Stacey Yudin: 28:00

And so over the last five and six years we've hired and we've grown our culture. Disagreement is hard, but we need to embrace it.

Jason Frazell: 28:08

How do

Speaker: 28:08

you know what to delegate in terms of tough decisions and conversations and how do you know when you need to make the final call?'cause most leaders that I work with and we talk about, that's arguably the hardest part about leadership is it does fall on you at the end of the day, which is why you're doing what you're doing. But how do you, how do you know? Is it, is it like, I'll give you some different examples. Is it certain dollar amount? Is it. Two people just can't agree. And you need to play almost like the mediator or be like the, I wouldn't call you objective third party, be the third party. You know, some leaders are like, make all the decisions until I tell you I wanna make a decision. And others are like, bring everything to me. And then it sounds like you're most likely somewhere in the middle, like most people are. How do you think about that and how do you know when,'cause there's, as you know, there's a lot of value in delegating big decisions to your team to have them feel empowered so that you're not always stepping over them or having to be the final say. So I'm curious how you think about that.

Stacey Yudin: 29:05

Yeah, I think as a company to your point, we've evolved from a space where we had a very sort of top to about, top to bottom, you know we give a, an order, you know, we, we say we wanna do this, and, and people march along. Yeah. And NEP as a company, especially again from our hiring strategy of hiring experts we've evolved to a place where teams run pretty independently, and I. And I really do love that. I do not want to micromanage. I think people typically know where I stand on an issue. So there's this overwhelming, like, we know Stacy's not gonna like it, but they know that I, they can reason with me and they can win. And they can present their case and their set of evidence, and I wanna have that difficult discussion. I wanna hear their pushback to.

Jason Frazell: 29:50

So

Stacey Yudin: 29:50

I think that's where I land. And as a leader, I, I try as hard as possible not to do it myself and to delegate those decisions where I don't even, I don't even need to make them. I'm at a, we are at a point in our company where we have independent divisions and support staff. They make their own independent decisions. They look at the data. We have our own internal sort of, we have our own internal KPIs.

Jason Frazell: 30:14

Sure.

Stacey Yudin: 30:15

That we audit, that we measure. We do a great job, especially on our fundraising side and our digital advocacy, political outreach team of measuring our successes, creating our own internal postmortems or case studies. Thinking about how we can do better next time and, and that a lot of that has been from the leadership of our president, mark Trilio, who comes from the firefighters, has been from the leaders like our director of operations from Devon, who's been managing our direct mail fundraising for almost 20, 25 years. Wow. Yeah. And a lot of our other team members that are real seasoned in their, in their industry Yeah. And bring that expertise, but. Not so seasoned that they're unwilling to listen to innovative ideas. So the other component is that the youngest team members are a part of the conversation, and I think that's an enormous improvement in our culture. And over the last five years, our products now you could see the results. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 31:12

You know,

Stacey Yudin: 31:12

people that are on the ground level have a voice in what we build, how we build it, clients we serve, what we should be focusing on, and more importantly, what we should not be focusing on.

Speaker: 31:23

Yeah. It's such a, such a context. Context shift. From historically how unions and things like police and fire work, where it's actually your tenure and your experience in the field, you get and you get, like, I'm, I'm thinking of even like teachers, you get paid for the amount of time you get additional pay for the amount of time you've done it, not necessarily for the output or the the outcome. And so that, I'm sure that's been a bit of an adjustment for some of those who've come from these spaces where, you know, you're not gonna make detective when you're 25 because you just don't have enough time on the street yet. Really cool. Stacy, I wanna talk about two other things to wrap up here. Number one is, and you, you alluded to this earlier, hiring,

Jason Frazell: 32:03

most folks I know will say that hiring, test. Test, yeah. Weird. It just flipped. I'm getting

Speaker: 32:11

an echo on my side. Strange. The echo. Echo now

Stacey Yudin: 32:14

my, my AirPods disconnected somehow and that whole shifts, I mean,

Jason Frazell: 32:18

yeah, it's weird. Yeah, it's weird. I'm in a strange echo. Test. Test. Can you hear me now? Yeah. There we go. That's good. Yep. Can you hear me now?

Speaker: 32:29

Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Stacey Yudin: 32:31

Okay, great. You're far away again for some reason, but Okay.

Speaker: 32:34

Let's try this again. Test, test. Oh, you're

Stacey Yudin: 32:36

back. You're back. Yeah, you're back.

Speaker: 32:37

Great. Awesome. Yeah, it was weird. Your video switched too. You know, software. Software. Never. Perfect.

Stacey Yudin: 32:42

Yeah, exactly. Mark, I'm gonna mark

Speaker: 32:44

that clip and I'll get rid of it. Let's see what I was about. I'm gonna about, I'm gonna hiring. Yeah. I'm gonna say, hey, a couple of the things. Wrap up the convo, da da, da. Let mark this. And 3, 2, 1. Stacy, a couple of things I wanna address with you and get your perspective on what, number one, and you've alluded to this, is hiring. And most folks in business that I know will say that this is arguably the hardest thing to do because it's easy to move around. It's a lot of times people, you're competing on money, et cetera. So I'd love to talk about how you hire and retain something like an 87% retention rate is, I would, I would argue that's extremely high in technology. A lot of mercenaries, I call mercenaries, go for the highest dollar working on the product that most interests'em that week. How do you maintain that and what do you do upfront to make sure when that person walks in the door or gets on Zoom for the first time, that they're likely to be part of that 87% who stays with you for a long tenure?

Stacey Yudin: 33:47

Yeah, I think one of the best pieces of advice, which is, you know, not my advice, but I we've tried to follow it, is, you know, hire slowly. Fire quickly.

Jason Frazell: 33:56

Yeah.

Stacey Yudin: 33:56

You know, it's not ruthless, it's you, I think emotionally and sort of intuitively know if someone's a good culture fit, probably within a month. If not sooner. And then I think, you know, that's one of the areas that we've done, we've done better also, you know, our, our strategy was to expand very targeted regionally by region. We expanded our hiring practices and set up offices on the east coast, you know, five years ago and in, and in Texas, and in Washington, DC as well. And then hired to support that and then really focus on supporting staff, building a team around that, that individual or that that strategy. So making sure they're not on their own island, I think is a great retention tool. Mm-hmm. And that's harder now than ever with remote work. We still struggle with that. I think being on the ground and I, I try to make. At least quarterly calls and connections with every employee. Obviously some of the junior ones that have just joined our team are gonna be, you know, the sort of the last ones on my list. Sure. Not for any, any reason that I just can't get to everyone anymore. Sure. But, you know, I, I personally think, you know, when I'm hiring, I don't ever post to the highest top level salary purposefully. I don't. I, if you wanna work with us, we're a mission-based, passion-based, growing, you know, startup culture. We don't need the missionaries. We don't need people that are only there for the money because what we do is so much greater than the dollars that are, that go back in our pockets now as a growing company too, you know, we need to be as competitive as we can with our for-profit. Other for-profit competitors, and so

Jason Frazell: 35:34

sure

Stacey Yudin: 35:34

we've done a good job, I think, of combining culture with a hiring process that focus on, focuses on personality, teamwork, communication skills, you know, and placing them in the right. I. The right scenario with the right support and on the right team, like really getting butts in the seats where they should be Yeah. Is one of the hardest job. And yeah. One of the things that, when we see that, if your butt is not in the right seat, one of the things we do pretty quickly and well now is, Hey, what are your thoughts about, you know, working on this team? Or, yeah. You know, and we, I, I encourage managers to talk. To their, their team and then self-identify through conversation and sort of mentorship of, you know, your skillset over here is, is, you know, really natural. You seem to be like a, you seem to be a pro of having these very natural conversations with clients. Clients opened up to you, you, you display trust. Have you ever thought about this? So we've had a lot of employees that have shift teams and, and you know, sort of made lateral moves at our company. They've brought it to our attention or we've suggested it, and I think that helps with retention and helps with, you know, building a, a culture of legacy as well. Awesome. That provides value back to the product and as well, so again, I, I really hire for personality. You know, I'm not if, if, you know, we have a long term play, you know, just like any other company in the software space, but it's gonna take grind and hustle and they have to be willing to do that.

Speaker: 37:00

Yeah. Thanks Stacy. I wanna wrap and ask you, if you look back at your time at NEP specifically, what's the toughest lesson that you've had to learn? Or maybe you're still learning?

Stacey Yudin: 37:15

Always, always, still learning.

Speaker: 37:16

Probably still learning most, like most of us.

Stacey Yudin: 37:19

Wow. The toughest lesson. You know, I. This past year, I'm, I'm a very proactive money on the ball, you know, eye on the prize, highly competitive individual, naturally. I come from an athletic background. I wanna be the best in everything that I do, and I wanna win 100% of the time. So I think one of the best lessons I've learned, and it's again, another kind of sort of cliche, but I've learned more in my significant failures. Than I have in my wins. And so now I, I really do embrace when I lose a deal or, you know, it's a better product market fit. But I thought, I, I thought I got it. You know, a channel partnership didn't work out the way that I, you know, intended or anticipated. I, I learned more in those moments than ever. They are what they are. And so as a wise man once said, never let a good crisis go to waste. Yeah. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about the areas that we could have done better, how we could have pivoted faster. I really utilize a mentorship network that I didn't have previously to help give me outside perspective and insight into my losses. You know, I think as a leader you've gotta figure out what helps you process. Negatives as quickly as possible and put that into usable feedback that you can, you know, deploy back to your team. Yeah. So whether that is exercise or whether that is a mentorship, whether that's, you know, someone trusted with within your company, that you can have these casual but poignant and honest, transparent conversations. I think as a leader, I, I'm learning how to do that better and better.

Jason Frazell: 39:00

Yep.

Stacey Yudin: 39:01

And really take those losses and redeploy them as wins as long-term strategic changes or wins. Ultimately, if I don't lose, if I lose today, I, I wanna be set up to win tomorrow. Yeah. And then that's, I think all of our employees are really good at pivoting in that moment. That's

Speaker: 39:16

great. I'm also extremely competitive and you didn't say one thing that I find useful. Sometimes it's a good scream into a pillow.

Stacey Yudin: 39:23

The, hence the, he hence the cold plunges. You know, that is, thats my own self.

Speaker: 39:27

Like who? Yeah. Like, I'm gonna torture myself in a way that's actually good for my body, even though it's gonna feel painful.

Stacey Yudin: 39:34

You, you know, I, I'm, I'm a girl who loves a great meal and some cocktails as well, so, you know. Yeah. You've, you've gotta work in your social time with your friends and family. Yeah. It's not gonna be a priority when. You're a growing company. So yeah, for all those entrepreneurs out there who think they're gonna have work life balance and they've been watching Instagram videos about being your own boss, it is the hardest job in the world, I would say, besides motherhood, I think mother motherhood and parenting takes the cake. But in the professional world you know, un, unless you've got some sweet deal that I don't know about. Yeah, it's a 24 7, 365 grind. The rewards are great if you can get there. Yeah. But the stress and the time, so yeah. Scream into a pillow. Jump into a freezing cold ocean. Yeah. Whatever you've gotta do, do, do boxing, whatever you gotta do.

Speaker: 40:19

Yeah. Stacey, this is such an ironic thing to say. It looks like you're on your yacht right now and like, it seems like you've got a party. I'm kidding. Yeah. It's like these, I I, I hate those influencer of like, work two hours a day and do this. It's just, it's absolutely ridiculous.

Stacey Yudin: 40:33

Yeah. And, and sort of, I don't know if it's setting up this younger generation for success by providing them this. Sort of glorified dream where they could dream to do anything. And that's great. We want, we want innovators. Yeah. We want more entrepreneurs. We want people thinking outside of the box, disrupting the market. Like I love all that aspect, but sort of the fantasize, idealized version that they can live in Bali, I. You know, and, and sort of run their company remote, like, yeah, please message me if you figured out how to do that. You're like,

Speaker: 41:02

I'm gonna do that too, but only if you only if it works. Yeah. No,

Stacey Yudin: 41:05

I, I'll I, my whole team will, we all will, you know, all, just all go to Valley.

Speaker: 41:08

Yeah.

Stacey Yudin: 41:08

I don't, I don't think that's realistic and No, and, but I think there's so much value being a part of a company, whatever stage of growth you're in, where you really feel fulfilled, you feel heard and you're building good things to help people. You know, improve or, or do better, add more value, whatever that is. So it doesn't have to be just in the nonprofit space, but you could still have a, a great life. Yeah. And still go to Bali on your vacations.

Speaker: 41:33

Yeah, exactly. La last, I do have one more question for you, and then just a question about what's next for NEP, but what's the next big thing that you are working on around your own growth as a leader and as a business, as a business leader? What's the thing that you, you have your eye on for. But no specific length of time, but that you've identified as like, Hey, that's the next thing I really want to focus on or work on for myself.

Stacey Yudin: 41:55

For myself as, as a leader is, is continuing to expand our ability to take feedback from customers being, I say this a lot, we're very customer centric. We listen. Yeah, we listen, we listen, we ask questions. We're curious. We're almost ob I'm al almost obsessively curious. So I think continuing that, trying to balance that with, with growing the company as well and, and hiring. Yeah, and scaling our, our company. For as far as what's next is that we've spent the last four years sort of doing that internal hard work that people don't love, which is setting your own systems up to scale. That's not the glamorous work, but we've done all that work and we're in a great spot where we can scale effectively and economically viably

Jason Frazell: 42:37

nice

Stacey Yudin: 42:37

over, over the next five years, which is great and really, really improve our. Marketing so that we can, we have now three SaaS platforms. Yeah. So, and those ips all work together and have their own little, little niche and so. That internal hard work is, is gonna pay off. So that's good. That's sort of the next best, best thing that I'm thinking of. Yeah. Is how do we take all that ingenuity, all that year, all that hard work of replatforming setting everything up to scale. You know, we have three quarters of a million users on our Connect Plus platform. Amazing. Those are actually member-based organizations. Yeah. So being able to scale. You know, over the next five years and know that our software's in a spot for all three platforms. That is, you know you know, reliable. We can really focus on, you know sort of the market conditions and, and feature focused, which is great. Yeah,

Speaker: 43:31

every, every visionary CEO's favorite terminology. Technical debt. Oh, oh. So exciting.

Stacey Yudin: 43:40

No, I think technical debt is such a great lesson and I had there was a gentleman who, who worked with me and he really gave me some incredible advice and perspective on technical debt and I will always be grateful to him for that. And I actually use that to explain that to my customers now, because I think what you don't realize is every dollar you spend going forward from this moment on is a wasted dollar, you know, in the right situa situation. So sometimes it's better to bite the bullet and re-platform or completely refactor an entire feature than it is to patchwork it. Yeah. And I think that's where we've outperformed our competitors. Great. As we did the hard work, we invested our, our profits, we invested in. Having the most innovative, innovative tech stack and now we're winning on the field and, and I think we will continue to win over the next five years.

Speaker: 44:30

Amazing. Stacy, thank you much. Thank you so much for an awesome conversation. Really appreciate you know, that I had one of your team members on, we'll release that episode as well, probably back, probably back to back. People get to know you, but just really appreciate the work you're doing and it's, I think it's likely a space that. I'm just gonna speak for myself, but I, I would assert it's probably not a space that a lot of us who aren't in that work actually think much about and just making those things easier. I do know a little bit about the nonprofit space and know that there's always challenges with keeping your donors engaged and updated, and how do you do that in a way that's, you know, and I'll, I'll leave, I'll leave you with this. You, and you know this in the nonprofit space is. There's always this eye on, well, you should be using the majority of the money to the mission. But then if you go and do something like, and I'm just using an example from somebody that I know, they had a really nice yearend yearend report pamphlet, not pamphlet, like a booklet. And it was nice and it cost them a little bit of money, and they got a lot of flack because it looked too nice. But then when you don't look nice, when you don't look nice, then they go, well, are you a legitimate nonprofit? So it's like any, as you all are helping them to be more efficient with their messaging and streamline that you can then don't have to like nickel and dime these other things, which is like a no-win situation.

Stacey Yudin: 45:46

Yeah. Let, let's just talk about that for one second because I'm very passionate on that subject. Yeah. So, you know, as a donor, we obviously do want our nonprofits to be as efficient as possible with the donor dollars that we raise. But like a business, there are opportunities to buy things in scale, right? To save money in bulk. And so it's, you should be measuring results of that nonprofit and impact. Overspend.

Jason Frazell: 46:14

Yeah.

Stacey Yudin: 46:14

So you could be, you could raise the most amount of dollars, you know, you could be the top leader of your fundraising and you know, not spend a dollar and your rating will be five stars. I think that is a complete false narrative.

Jason Frazell: 46:26

Yeah.

Stacey Yudin: 46:27

I am looking to help organizations that I. Raise a good amount of money. You have to invest to raise more. You know, one of the things that we're really proud of is our donation, digital donation software and CRM. Mm-hmm. We have an 86% retention rate for donors. The national average is 45%.

Jason Frazell: 46:43

Yeah.

Stacey Yudin: 46:44

So what does that mean? I don't have to, we, our nonprofits don't have to send as many prospect text or emails or mail that saves them money in the long term. So you gotta think about, spend for a nonprofit as one, as an investment. And you are measuring your results. You, you can, obviously there's tools out there besides mine that help you do that more efficiently Sure. And cohesively. But as a donor, you need to think about impacts more than you need to think about sort of that false narrative rating that you see out there.

Jason Frazell: 47:14

Yeah. If

Stacey Yudin: 47:15

they raise a million dollars and they spent$999,000 on staff. Right. But the staff is responsible for vaccinating a hundred million kids. That means their labor cost is 99% of your donor dollar. That's right. It's not what you care about. We care about impact. The impact is that they vaccinated millions of children. Yeah. And so a lot of times, and especially in an age of technology and ai. Sometimes in nonprofits, humans are what make the difference. Totally. Hiring a dedicated staff, paying staff for your nonprofit could be the best investment that you make because there's gonna be a continuation of services, a greater impact field better results. Yeah. So I really tell people all the time, if you're gonna run a nonprofit, run it like you would a Fortune 500 business. You know, hiring great people, retaining your best staff members, measuring your results and impact and what you spend in your budget should all be directed to those three areas. So, you know, I, I see this, I, I see people getting critical with organizations. I think I recently saw one with unicef. UNICEF employs people all, all around the world. Yeah. Delivering lifesaving medicine. It takes people to do that. Yes, it takes infrastructure to do that. To build a clinic is gonna take an investment and so a lot of what we do is reverse. Narrative on that is how do you tell your story around impact? Yeah. You know, it just can't be, you know, you, you made pretty pamphlets. Well, pretty pamphlets tell your story.

Speaker: 48:47

Yeah.

Stacey Yudin: 48:48

And,

Speaker: 48:48

and attracts serious donors,

Stacey Yudin: 48:50

attracts serious donors because it means you are serious about your business. You are taking your nonprofits seriously. Now, granted, there you should negotiate the best price you can with your printers. Oh, absolutely. But at the end of the day. Impact is what should be measured, not just your nine nineties. And the fact that you spent 80% on overhead and labor. Yeah, that labor could be driving impact that affected a hundred million people. Yeah. And in the, in the perspective, you know, that's nothing, right? Yeah. That's a drop in the well to your impact. So

Speaker: 49:22

yeah, that,

Stacey Yudin: 49:23

that, that's my, that's my rant for nonprofit leaders. No, this is probably a,

Speaker: 49:26

probably a whole separate podcast episode. Like this. This is obviously a, a super cool topic.

Jason Frazell: 49:31

Yeah.

Speaker: 49:31

We're, we'll have you back on, we'll actually we'll talk about this. I've got one of my good friends, he runs a, like a 45 person nonprofit, and he, he always likes to say. We're a charity that doesn't run like a charity.

Stacey Yudin: 49:44

Amazing.

Speaker: 49:44

That's how he run, that's how he runs the business. He, he is got a real good analytical business mind and he does it.

Stacey Yudin: 49:49

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 49:49

Because he cares.

Stacey Yudin: 49:51

Yeah. One of the nonprofits I've met in New York, you know, say, I know you're based there, charity, water. Mm-hmm. Charity Water does a great job. They run it, they run it just like a business and look at the impact. Yeah. Impact is what Measures, right. Results. Just, just like any other company.

Speaker: 50:06

Small world. It's, my friend is not with Charity Water, but he's also in the clean water space. He does it overseas, but also so they, they partner with the charity Water

Stacey Yudin: 50:13

Amazing. And water i water.org to do, I I'd love to do a field trip. I've been wanting to get on the ground you know, when I can get a little break from any p and take a vacation, but I'd love to spend some time working overseas at, at some point. So, so maybe we can connect on that.

Speaker: 50:26

We'll, we'll talk offline. I've got. Potential opportunity for you. Stacy, it was wonderful to have you on. We'll have you back on and continue the conversation again, thanks to you and the team for all the work you're doing and yeah, keep doing the good work that we don't even know about.

Stacey Yudin: 50:39

Yeah. Thank you so much, Jason. It was such a fun conversation.

Speaker: 50:42

Thanks, Stacy.

Speaker 2: 50:43

Thanks for listening to another episode of Talking to Cool People with Jason Frizzell. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell your friends, follow us on Instagram and Facebook and give us a shout out or take a moment to leave a review on iTunes. If something from today's episode pique your interest and you'd like to connect, email us at podcast@jasonzell.com. We love hearing from our listeners because you're cool people too.