Quick WINs: Switching to growth mode, culture & alignment, and corporate branding with Emily Glass

By Ian Richardson, Managing Partner, Richardson & Richardson Consulting

Podcast Season 1, Episode 12 Guest: Emily Glass, CEO, Syncro

Emily Glass is president and CEO of Syncro, an all-in-one RMM, PSA, and remote access tool that helps managed service providers run more profitable businesses. Previously, Emily was Customer Experience Officer at Datto, where she created an award-winning technical support experience, and Datto’s Chief Product Officer, driving product strategy. Emily has also served in senior leadership positions at Alyce, Backupify, Akamai, and Brightcove. Emily holds degrees in both computer engineering and fine arts.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Emily on a recent episode of W.I.N. and dive into how she and her team at Syncro have launched their product platform based off of market fit analysis and switched the company into a growth mode. We also chatted about how Emily was able to assess the intangible topics of culture and alignment in an objective manner, and we dove into the topic of launching new branding for the organization! I took copious notes and wanted to share those thoughts with you today.

1. Product Market-fit and Growth Mode: Before stampeding into trying to land accounts, Emily, and the team at Syncro spent time analyzing the market and defining their target customer profile (TCP) segments. After having those segments defined, they built product, features, messaging, and their brand (more on that below) to attract those segments and focused on meeting their needs. With this infrastructure in place, the company recently shifted into a growth mode focus and is leading the charge in their space to target those TCPs. This really resonated home with me as R&R has been doing the same journey throughout 2022.
2. Culture and Alignment: Emily shared with me a story around a board meeting where she was able to assess her team and the board’s alignment around vision and strategic focus. There were certain milestones, conversations, and conclusions that universally were achieved amongst those groups that showed that people were “on the same page.” Culture is such a difficult item to measure, and I took a great amount of value in the way Emily was able to do so.
3. Branding: One of my favorite topics to dive into is the concept of “strategic branding.” Syncro launched a new brand (logos, colors, font, messaging, etc.) recently. At a cursory glance, it might seem superficial and like a “small thing,” but Emily and I were in lock step about the importance of the exercise. Once teams have “safety” handled (people can pay their bills, meet their obligations, have enough space to have a bit of fun financially, etc.) – they want to know what their ”impact” will be in the world. They want to be part of something that resonates with them. The Mission, Vision, Values, and Messaging of a company can help present, reinforce, and align teams around what their impact will be. I was excited to hear about Emily and Syncro’s journey on rebranding, and proud to have been a place where it was shared “early.”

I gain so much value from meeting with fellow entrepreneurs and leaders. Each and every person I speak with brings their own experiences, knowledge, and viewpoints to the table, and without fail, I walk away with a head full of ideas and motivation to do better in my own business. I so greatly appreciate Emily’s willingness to come onto W.I.N. and share her story.

If you’re interested in joining me on an episode of W.I.N., it would be my privilege to host you. You can book your spot by visiting https://randr.consulting/connect and selecting the Podcast Booking option from the services menu. You can find previous episodes of W.I.N. on our website and subscribe to it on whatever your platform of choice is.

Always Forward,

Ian