Elizabeth Shea (00:43)
Hello everybody and welcome to branching out in our latest episode. We are very excited to have Houston Goodwin in our office today. Hello Houston, how are you today?
Houston Goodwin (00:52)
It was doing great. Thanks so much for having me.
Elizabeth Shea (00:54)
Yes, we're very excited to hear your story. So Houston comes to us as the CEO of Better Impact, a company in town that recently had an acquisition, I understand, of a company called Galaxy Digital.
Houston Goodwin (01:06)
Yeah, absolutely. So happy maybe to start, give you a little background on myself and how I got involved with Better Impact and then our recent acquisition of Galaxy Digital that just happened earlier this year. But, you know, I started,
Elizabeth Shea (01:17)
Yeah, I think that would be great.
So please take us back to where this all began.
Houston Goodwin (01:21)
Absolutely. So my journey in software started with Constellation Software. you know, Constellation Software is one of the number one acquirers of vertical market software in the world. And so, you know, got my hands in the operator seat early on in my career and was able to run a portfolio company owned by Constellation and, you know, got exposed to the operational excellence of companies as well as
started my exposure to &A. know, Constellation is always looking and buying companies. And so I was able to do that for a while and did that alongside actually my college roommate and really good friend who lives in the same city as I. And we had worked together on and off for several years and several different roles. And he had moved on to a publicly traded fintech company. And, we found ourselves at a ⁓ point in our career where
We'd done some startups, you we'd done some side hustles. ⁓ but what we really both fell in love with is just operating good businesses. ⁓ and what we, what we discovered with ourselves is neither of us really were the zero to one journey, people. we had done a couple of startups and, and zero to one takes a different personality, I think in a different skillset than scaling even one to five or five to 10, et cetera. And so, you know, through my career, I learned about a concept called entrepreneurship through acquisition. So instead of starting a company, you would go buy an established company. so, maybe three years ago or so we kind of exploring this and we ended up partnering with a private equity group called the Brighton group and started our journey of ETA and, spend about a year looking at companies. we were really looking for companies that one fit our skill set. we felt was good quality of life for us as well. So in a sector that we really had a personal interest in and cared about.
to dedicate a large portion of our time and lives to. the current operating model and the group and the culture was just a really good fit for us. And so we found that with Better Impact, it was really great. I stepped in as CEO in November of 2024. So just right about a year and a half ago. And through that, Better Impact is a volunteer management system. Its mission was to help unlock the potential of volunteerism. So we had clients, everything from large hospital systems and governments and city parks, all the way down to very small volunteer only or one employee nonprofits. And our goal was to come alongside the people managing those volunteers and provide them software and solutions to help them recruit and engage and retain their volunteers. ⁓ So on that journey, obviously we're casting a little bit of vision of where we want to go. It's such a great industry with such great people.
we found that one thing it was missing was really some benchmarking and some data, just kind of consolidating it. And at Better Impact, we were tracking hundreds of millions of hours across multiple sectors for volunteerism. And it became apparent quite quickly that there are a few other people in this space, that overlapped us in some ways as competitors, but really it's so greenfield. And I always come from an abundance mindset. It was really...
other people alongside us that were kind of trying to accomplish the same cause. And so after reaching out and talking to some people, we decided, is there anyone where we would be better together? So one of those things where it's one plus one equals five. So coming together, we have, a little better scale, a little more professionalization and shared resources and shared data to really make the biggest impact possible in such an awesome industry that, really, deserves the best foot forward from a software perspective.
And so I'm based in North Carolina. We had a company that was also based in North Carolina. That was the competitor of ours that I connected with maybe eight months ago called Galaxy Digital. And, started a conversation with their CEO and then their board. know, as these things go, there's a million reasons to say no. And so it's just, start out with a, intro conversation to see like, Hey, here's kind of where we're headed. Are you all kind of headed in the same direction? Is it even makes sense to continue to the next step?
to see if there's any interest in us joining forces and what that would look like. over the process of call it eight months, we, really worked and did our diligence and we finished the transaction in January of this year. So we're about 90 days in, post transaction. And yeah, we're just really excited to be here. Really excited for what it means for our market. like we don't have like a role of strategy or like a big acquisition play, but we just felt like,
this just makes sense. We fit together, we play to each other's strengths. have complementary products and we're trying to accomplish the same mission. And so we felt that was a very special pairing. we're really excited for our clients, our employees in the market at large for what this means for them moving forward this year and into the next years.
Elizabeth Shea (05:43)
that's great. So you're better together, right? I love it. I love it. I mean, I think that's typically a goal for lot of companies that are looking to acquire other firms. what was the reaction from Galaxy Digital at first? Was there any apprehension or was it, hey, this might be a really good fit for us? Not that need to speak for them, but what do you think ⁓ that it meant for them? The same thing?
Houston Goodwin (05:45)
Yes, I think it's always exciting. I always say like the optimism is easy. You got to be pessimistic a little bit to see like where things could go wrong or what are we not asking? And so, it's a long process to get a deal across the finish line and a lot of, you know, diligence and a lot of work. that's why I go to like the mission and the real belief of like, okay, is the juice worth the squeeze, right? Is are we if we got to the other side of this really going to be better together? And, you know, for us, and we are definitely in a more
social good focus sector where like we really are focused, not that other companies aren't focused on their clients, but we really are focused on the impact that we're bringing to, a lot of these nonprofits that we partner with and, hospitals and governments that are really empowering volunteers to make an impact on their community. like both companies just believe so much in moving service forward and how important services for like social connections and community cohesion. And so I think at the start, it was very important for us.
that we were kind of aligned all collectively together on the excitement of what could happen if it worked out. And then that overcomes a lot of the hurdles of diligence and what could be seen as things that are painful or things that aren't as fun to go through, et cetera.
Elizabeth Shea (07:15)
Right, right. I mean, it's not always fun, but at the end of the day, you can pop some champagne or something, right? So just tell us about the process. How long did the process take from start to finish, would you say, when you first started looking around to when you finally made the acquisition happen and closed the deal?
Houston Goodwin (07:20)
Yeah, exactly.
would say probably like seven, eight months from like initial like first serious conversation where I was like, hey, is this something worth pursuing to getting to the closing call was about an eight month journey.
Elizabeth Shea (07:45)
Okay, so for other companies that are out there that might be looking to make an acquisition or to grow better together, if you will, is there any advice you can give to them things that they should look out for or really lean in on in terms of their own diligence process?
Houston Goodwin (07:57)
Yeah, I would say like, obviously, I wouldn't consider myself an expert in that space. But I can tell you what's like work for us and work for me and my personal experience. one thing that I learned early on in Constellation is the importance of operational excellence within the company that you're a part of. And I think that, before, I feel like companies or we could have at least gotten over our skis a bit with an acquisition where it's exciting and that's an exciting way to grow or there's there's a lot of excitement around that idea. But if we really invested even during that full eight months, like we made sure we did not take our eye off the ball for improving and getting our internal systems and our internal operations and our internal playbooks to an excellent level as fast as possible.
And what that does is that just allows like this first 90 days has been really awesome. Like meeting the teams, integrating the two teams, getting everyone connected, kind of picking the best of both worlds. so I think the number one thing for me, at least, I don't know, like general advice for others, but for me is make sure like your house is in order, before you go add a bunch, because it seems really fun, but there's just so much that can get in your way or get distracted where you actually aren't better together because
you can't give people clear direction to get everyone rowing in the same direction, which is such a powerful effect of two good teams integrating well. And, certainly we've, we, experienced our bumps in the roads and aren't perfect, but I think that's like the first is to make sure that we wanted to make sure that we were a company that was ready to take on a task like this for the market. And if we didn't, internally focus very heavily on our systems and processes and SOPs and how we were operating as a business, I think it could have been much less smooth or maybe like certainly just not gotten across the finish line at all.
Elizabeth Shea (09:37)
Right. mean,
the transaction is important, but then to make sure that it works afterwards and that it's a smooth transition. Can you talk a little bit about the culture, the cultural aspect of it? You know, how did you align the cultures within the two organizations, or are you in the process of doing that now?
Houston Goodwin (09:53)
Yeah, certainly it's an evolving process. think, ⁓ you know, one thing that's so great about this industry specifically is. many people are in it for the right reasons. And I say, like, everyone's trying to tackle the same problem from different lanes. And so, one thing that made this integration easier is that we're both hyper aware of what the problem we're trying to solve us. And then we're both hyper aware of the goals that we're trying to accomplish. And now one of the reasons that we've said, better together is kind of something that we've really anchored on is.
Now it's not either company, it's both companies can do things better and at a different scale and at a different speed than they could have by themselves. And so that's where a lot of the cultural transformation is happening is, is less about this was the direction we were going and now we've pivoted to this direction. It's more, this is the direction we were going and now we're jumping ahead four years because we're together and we have, just economies of scale from like vendor relationships, the team size and, data and customer size, et cetera.
there's, challenges that come up with that, but overall, I think that it's gone really, really well. And part of that is just because we have a lot of people who really want to see our clients succeed. They really want to make an impact in the sector. And, we talked with our executive team through this process and was like, you know, we're very value focused. One of our values was volunteers first. Like we always want to have the volunteers in mind, their experience.
And we don't want to do anything that's competing with our values, even if it seems like a good idea. so, fairly early on when the conversation started getting serious where this could be a real thing, you have to balance, you don't want to distract the team because there's, always a million opportunities that don't turn into anything. But we brought this to the team to say, do we feel like this matches our values? Like, are we keeping volunteers first? Are we doing the right thing for the industry by diverting some of time and attention to, put into this binding of these two companies. We felt that was an overwhelming yes. I believe that the Legacy Galaxy team did as well. We got those conversations out early and that's led to a pretty fun 90 days post-transaction.
Elizabeth Shea (11:55)
Yeah, that first Sunday days is always a lot of fun, right? know, getting to know new people and expanding your services potentially to your client base. Can you talk a little bit about your client base and how the news was perceived? Did you do anything unique there? How did you communicate this change and this opportunity?
Houston Goodwin (12:11)
Yeah,
in an ideal world, like we tried to do as many.
either small group cohorts of people or one on one conversations as possible, but we have too many clients to accomplish so, you know, we put a lot of thought into the press release and how we went to market live with this, like the number one message we wanted to get to our clients, which is really important is like we were not sunsetting any products. So it's like no disruptions to service, like nothing material will change for you
as an effect of this, we just want things to get better and things to come out faster and you'd have more opportunities with us as a company. So that made it a little easier. I think for sure, if, we bought a company as a book of business and we are migrating all of the customers from their system to our system, like that's a whole, another level of customer comms and care. But overall it was nice because all the message was positive. It was just, we have more resources to expend to serve you. We have more resources to expend to make our product better.
the product that you're on is staying around. And so I probably met with 200 customers the week leading up to the announcement in a mix of like small groups and one-on-ones. Part of that helps us with the messaging as well. Like you stumble across the messaging the first time, so you pick your customers that are really bought in, that will give you a little grace. so that way by the game day when you're going live to the market, you have.
You have practiced a little bit and been able to see what wasn't clear. So it's not really changing. It's just making sure we're saying things clearly and we're addressing what's top of mind for those customers. Overall, it was received super well. most of our customers are really excited. The good news is a better impact and Galaxy Digital both have been in the market 20 years each.
And so they're, they've been around for a while. They've got a lot of brand reputation and, that really helped as well. Like, you know, get a little social capital from the market to say, Hey, the founders thought this was a good idea. We think this is a good idea. This is what our customers are saying. We're not making any bad changes. We're listening to you. We're hopping on calls. then, honestly, we just had a great team that was scanning the first couple of days for chatter, whether was like a confusing post, you know, a question comes in and I took all of the calls, which wasn't a lot like anybody that had any like concerning questions or anyone that had a question that they posted somewhere. Like I just picked up the phone and called the clients. and I had a certain amount that I was going to be able to do with my calendar and then we're going to pass it to the next, but we ended up not having, that many that, had many questions. like we did a pretty good job. We had tight messaging and then all the clients, once we got them on the phone, they were super receptive and, and, and understood. And part of it is.
We're just trying to support them better. And this is part of it. Like that's really for us, at least in a certainly different industries. But that was the heart of this for us we want them to be taken seriously and their careers to be taken seriously. And most people, myself included are generally unaware. I'm not, I'm no longer in a room, but pre me joining the industry, just of how critical volunteers are for our communities. Like volunteers are utilizing everything. They're a third of the nonprofit workforce.
And generally, I would say the general population does is not aware of how many parts of their communities are literally held up by volunteers and how little resources they have. And so this is part of our mission is to go fight and get them properly allocated with resources and provide software that helps them get things like industry standards, benchmarking tools to help them do their job and tell their story as good as possible.
Elizabeth Shea (15:34)
hats off to you. I think that's amazing. You have two companies that can come together like that and serve a greater purpose. When you talk to your employees, how was that message received? It seems like you were really able to hone in on what your messaging needed to be to the market and reiterate that, which is always good to reinforce it. did you go about telling your employees?
Houston Goodwin (15:54)
Very similar, it's like, keep the circle tight in early stages, obviously, because there's confidentiality. And then also, we don't want to create distractions for people. But as we, get closer, we started letting more people and we started letting people specifically that we're going to be on the newly formed leadership team, because we really operate as one team. So one team, one platform, one culture. So this wasn't like
bolt on or like, okay, so we have our Galaxy folks and our better impact folks, we're all better impact employees. We sunsetted the name Galaxy Digital, we kept the product names for the customers. And so, you know, it was really fun. had all hands like, you know, the day after close and it was, twice the amount of employees that were on either all hands before, because we were about equal size as far as employee count goes.
And, we're just trying to over communicate. So right now we're doing, a weekly newsletter. do a weekly lunch and learn on Fridays where different people are sharing different parts of the company. We're doing monthly all hands. We're just trying to give people as many avenues as possible to reach out, connect, and, specifically be in virtual. And we have employees all over the our support is 24 hours, five days a week. So we follow the sun. We have a big base in Australia and the UK.
So time zones, make a challenge, but just making intentional efforts to, get on with the Australian staff or the UK is much easier for this. We're in the East coast. So it's fairly large overlap for us, but yeah, a lot of intentionality, a lot of bumps in the roads. And we always say, like, just come from curiosity. So assume good intent, when we make a decision that we didn't know how it affects you. And it's not, you know, the best decision for every respective, like, assume that we weren't intentionally trying to do something wrong and let us know and we're open to feedback and open to like, I would say firm opinions loosely held, like when you make an act, have a strong opinion on it, but hold it loosely. So if you get presented with new facts, you're, easy to let go and make a change. and yeah, I think our employees for the most part on both sides, cultures are very similar. So very bought into the mission, almost all of our customer support staff.
were users of our products in a nonprofit as a volunteer coordinator that we hired on board to be a member of our team. And so that drives really well with the industry and the culture. And keeping that at the forefront.
Elizabeth Shea (17:59)
That's excellent. I mean, it sounds like you're the poster child for how things should go well, how things should go that that's
Houston Goodwin (18:12)
It's a lot of hard work and there are bumps in the roads. But I think that like what you focus on expands. And so if you're focusing on what what's worth it, we like every time something comes up. That's not ideal. It's like man, what an opportunity to create value for us and the customers in the company, because we know that this can be done better. And it's not being done as good as it could be. So let's just do it better. And it's going to be so good for us. It's gonna be so good for our clients and
I think for us is just keeping that. It is not all rainbows. It is not always fun and easy, but it is important, I think, to keep that on the prize of why we're doing this and why the juice is worth the squeeze. That overcomes a lot of the tougher circumstances, for sure.
Elizabeth Shea (18:51)
Right.
So I've heard you say that, having your systems in place, having them really buttoned up ahead of time, ⁓ over communicate, look to be better together, have transparency and openness when you were asked certain questions from either clients or employees. those are all very good sound pieces of advice to be thinking about probably on either side, if you're being acquired or if you're going to be acquiring another company. so what are, what are some gotchas that you think you.
you might not have anticipated or were there any.
Houston Goodwin (19:20)
we put a lot of work into diligence. Like I would say nothing has come up for either company that was not on our radar. So like we just were, it was out of left field. We didn't expect it. was like a big problem that we didn't catch. I think everything is just when you get into the seat and you're operating a lot of things that you thought were a six out of 10 or a seven or now a seven out of 10, or you thought it was a nine out of 10. So it was high on the radar, but you get in, it's like really an 11 out of 10. And it's, it's even more crucial or there's, you know, the
The problem needs to be fixed even faster. So I would just say it's like a heightened awareness of all the work that you put in in diligence, but yeah, that's why I'm really thankful to partner with a good, ⁓ private equity group that really helped us with, the diligence to make sure that, thankfully for the two acquisitions, like there really hasn't been any, like this just came from nowhere and it was, was a completely blind side. So we do a lot of work and you know, constellation playbook is very simple. Like what's your gross retention? What's your net retention?
it depends on what, you're looking to buy and all that. But as long as you have a mission critical piece of software, like that overcomes a lot, right? Like I've worked for companies that fall on the line of like very nice to have, but not mission critical at all. So they could cancel it anytime. And it really did not impact their business in any way. Like that's much tougher than the mission criticality of, this is a vital piece of software for us to run our day-to-day operations, gets you a lot of grace where it's like, our customers want us to win, which is so great. And so we want to win for them. So even if something pops up and there's a bump in the road and we get on the phone with them, it's coming from a, like, even if they're eventing, it's coming from a place of like, we want you to win, we want you to do well, because that's going to help our organization, it's going to help our mission. And our software is a reflection of them to their community.
And so that's something that like, we're very upfront. Like we take that very seriously. but that's also really helpful, right? Like if you're in other industries where it's not as mission critical that it makes, there's a lot more gotcha moments, I think, because it's just easier for customers to churn.
Elizabeth Shea (21:02)
And then
Right. you can see the vision in the mission that you have, which I think is great because the more critical you are to the marketplace, the more valuable you could potentially be. So you mentioned a couple of things, recurring revenue. What other things really stood out that are important to you when making this decision?
Houston Goodwin (21:32)
not to keep it like service level, but like life's too short to get in business with like bad people. That's like, it's like, everything on paper can look good, but if the people are just not people you want to be in business with, I think that's where it comes down like, do we trust the person on the other side of the table? Do we trust that we both have our interests aligned? That just makes everything in the diligence process go smoother. makes everything post-acquisition go smoother. And again, that's why we kind of lean on that come from curiosity.
you know, I haven't personally experienced this, but I've been around people where it's like, if you go play golf with someone and they cheat, it becomes harder and harder to assume good intent when you believe maybe they're the type of person that would do something in malice to purposely like hurt you. And so it's like, that's the biggest red flag, I think for me is let's get in business with good people and we can make the rest of work.
And so that was something that was really important for us for both. luckily, like I said, in the sector that we're in, like finding people that are aligned for a really important mission and are actually serious about that. harder, I think, in some industries than others, but in our industry, I think it's at the forefront for at least the two companies that we brought together. And, that makes a lot, a lot easier for sure.
Elizabeth Shea (22:40)
Right, well, sounds like you're doing some great things. And so many people that I have talked to in the past just haven't really done that part of the due diligence to make sure that there is a culture fit, that there's alignment and values and alignment in the mission and wanting to do well and get along with people to a certain extent. So tell me, Houston, what's next for you? What's next for you in your Better Together days?
Houston Goodwin (23:01)
Yeah, we're really excited. have a, now an ecosystem. So we're like the only purpose built platform for the volunteerism industry. We're really excited for some of the stuff that we've working on. have, over 85,000 organizations that touch our software in one way or another to help with either posting volunteer opportunities or managing their, their volunteer force. take the responsibility of integration really seriously for our customers. And so that's something that we're
being very open about, but we want to make sure that we're integrating the two companies well together from a cultural perspective, but then also the systems and the platforms together, where you hear a lot of horror stories of people like Frankenstein and companies together that don't talk together, work together, and it's not a value to the customer, it's just a value to the top line. And so we want to make sure like that's not our, that was not the reason for us, you know, bringing Galaxy into the fold with better impacts. And we want to...
be able to bring the best service to our clients. And part of that was scaling so we can have enough data to bring some of these benchmarks and create this ecosystem to make a frictionless experience for people who want to get plugged into their communities through volunteerism. And so, this is our number one focus for probably at least this year, right? Is integrating the teams, integrating the systems and increasing the speed to which we put products to market that actually creates solutions to real problems that our clients have.
And, know, we're trying to navigate this obviously alongside the AI search for every day. I spend my nights when my son goes to bed reading the latest on how people are using quad or different AI models. And, know, there's responsibility for that. We're, ISO two seven zero zero one compliance. So we take security super seriously. We don't want to just say AI as a hype word and it brings no value. And it's just like a chat bot rapper. But we're constantly looking at how can we increase the speed to which we bring products to market? How can we increase the speed to which we answer questions and do bug fixes or, help desk work or solve tickets. So that's part of our integration strategy is how do we as a SaaS company live in this host AI being actually useful world? Cause it's no one knows the landscape right now. Everything's changed. it's moving sand under your feet. So we're trying to make sure.
We remain small and agile enough to stay on top of that. And again, it all just flows through to our mission though of like, we're doing this because this is what we're trying to do. As someone asked me, my posture on AI and I was like, we're trying to impact communities and move service forward. And in as much as AI could help us do that faster, like we're for it. And if it's a distraction, then we're going to pass. That's kind how we look at everything.
Elizabeth Shea (25:36)
So true, so true. How did you, just curious how you melded your leadership teams together? I mean, I assume you have a bigger leadership team now?
Houston Goodwin (25:47)
so we run something called EOS, which is the entrepreneurial operating system. That I've done at companies for a long time. And part of that, if you build the seats first before you, so don't build like the seats around the people that you have, you build the seats that the company needs. so early on pre-closed, got, we got together with, a couple of people from our team, a couple of people from the other team. And we just, we made that model. We discovered like one area we wanted to hire for. So we just brought on.
a VP of customer experience that came on right at the acquisition close. She's fantastic. The CEO of Galaxy Digital stayed on as our CRO. So his background was kind of go to market. And so he's still actively involved. And myself and my business partner that I mentioned that went on this, his background was product. So he's the president of the company, but really stepped into the CPO role. So really to help speed up
products. And then it was very serendipitous. Like, we just had really strong teams where they needed some help, and they had really strong teams where we needed some help. it wasn't a lot of hurt feelings on so and so so and so's boss now. And they both had similar titles. And so we were very fortunate with a lot of it was just more specialized roles, but not a ton of overlap. And so that that worked out well
Elizabeth Shea (26:56)
I love that. Excellent. So how can people find you? Is it betterimpact.com?
Houston Goodwin (27:02)
Yeah, betterimpact.com is our website and then you can find my name is Fearly Unique and I'm on LinkedIn and stay pretty active on there as well. So I'd love to connect.
Elizabeth Shea (27:10)
So you probably have good search engine optimization on your name, right? excellent. Well, thank you so much, It's been a delight having you on the show, and I appreciate it. And I wish the best of you better together.
Houston Goodwin (27:13)
Yeah, not too bad.
Thank you so much.