An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Do The Right Thing — This might seem like an obvious one, but I take it very seriously. I’m not a leader or CEO who is going to suggest unethical behavior to solve a problem, and when we recently added this value to our core values at Weave, it wasn’t because we had a problem with people acting unethically. It was because we already had this culture in our company and wanted to double down on its importance as we grow. We don’t take shortcuts to success, we do the hard work and the right things because those are the things worth doing and the ones you’ll be proud to look back on. I want that for every employee — to feel the pride in themselves and their leaders when we do the right thing.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Roy Banks.
Roy Banks is Chief Executive Officer at Weave. A pioneer in digital payments, Roy has 20 years of experience in high-tech software development, e-commerce, internet marketing and payment processing.
Roy most recently served as CEO Partner at Tritium Partners. Prior to that he was President of the LoadPay Business Unit and a Board Member for Truckstop, where he helped Truckstop’s payment initiative grow into the leading payment solution for the industry. Previously, Roy served as CEO at Network Merchants and Open Edge Payments.
Roy served in the United States Navy and holds a Bachelor’s in Business Management from Utah Valley University.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I started my career in tech in a pretty unconventional way, at least for most CEOs. I was a young guy with a wife and kid, working two jobs and trying to work my way through college — failing miserably. To make things even more difficult, our son had a major medical condition which added significantly to my already significant financial burden. As the son of an Air Force Veteran, so I knew that enlisting in the Air Force was always an option available to me to help support my family, pay my bills and obtain the G.I. Bill to pay for college. Contrary to my original intention, I ended up enlisting in the Navy because they could get me into basic training faster than the Air Force, and I’m truly happy to say it changed my life in a positive and unexpected way. I was able to learn software engineering while I served, and that made it easy to find a job when I left. I worked my way from software engineering to product management, marketing and then to executive leadership roles. In the late 90s, I joined a company called Authorize.net, which was one of the early pioneers of this e-commerce revolution — by enabling businesses to take credit card payments over a website that used to be just seen as a research tool. I see that same revolution happening right now for small business software, and what brought me to Weave was the vision of how we help small businesses communicate, attract, retain and engage their customers in meaningful ways through enterprise-level software that is designed for small businesses.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
I don’t know whether this is funny, but I can tell you what was one of my biggest mistakes. Before I actually joined Authorize.net, one of the first e-commerce payment gateways, I actually rejected the first invitation to join the company because I thought taking credit card payments online from a website was a ridiculous idea and concept that would never work. Boy was I wrong! Several months later I was once again invited to join Authorize net only this time I accepted. I had to re-orient my thinking towards technology and realize that innovation comes from doing things that are disruptive, transformative and even against conventional thinking. As I thought about the idea of excepting credit card payments from a website, I realize that this indeed could become a new commerce platform and sales channel, especially for small businesses.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I believe anyone can look back on their career and identify, not just one, but many people who either mentored or encouraged their progression and development. One person I would like to call out is my good friend Matt Vettell. He is a principal partner at a private equity firm called Great Hill Partners. Early on in my career he saw and recognized my potential to become not only a CEO but an effective business leader. He took a chance on me because he saw in me what I sometimes failed to see in myself. I think this is what makes great leaders and mentors. Without any CEO experience, he gave me an opportunity to lead one of his newly acquired portfolio companies as a CEO. I realize that this was a huge risk, but it was also a significant vote of confidence in me and my potential. Because of his willingness to believe and invest in me, I have now been the CEO of several companies who have all had success for exits and continue to flourish in my absence today.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose-driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
I took over from the founders of this company as CEO in December of 2020, and part of what connected with me was that the vision from our founders has always been around serving small businesses which aligns with whom I’ve served for the past 20 years. Small businesses deserve the access to the products and services that enterprises has had for years. Weave started as a smarter phone system for dental practices, and now we’ve taken that original vision and turned it into the all-in-one communication platform for small business, serving way more industries than just dentists (though we still serve thousands of dental practices!) and making ourselves an essential tool for the businesses that really are the backbone of the economy. Our vision to serve small business is still a part of the fabric and DNA of our company. We recently updated and added to our company values, and we very intentionally added a new value — The Customer Is Everything — our purpose is to serve small businesses. And small businesses are customer-obsessed as well — Weave’s platform actually helps small businesses better serve their customers with personalized and meaningful communications and efficiencies that give them more time to spend with their customers.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
Every business will face uncertainty and difficult times, not just once, but many. I have lead companies through the Y2K threat, 9/11 terrorist attack in the 2008 Great Recession. Each of these events impacted and affected the business I was leading at each time differently. These events all required me to invoke and call upon a leadership style that keeps everyone calm, pulls together teams and focuses on solving key challenges. One experience I had was when one of my companies had experienced a data security breach. Unlike today when data security breaches have become fairly common, at the time my company experienced this breach it was relatively new to the landscape of e-commerce. The incident was reported in the media and jeopardized the integrity and very existence of our business. To address this issue, we had to invoke and mobilize a crisis management response team where we identified the weaknesses in our security measures and remediated them within just a few hours. Once again, rather than panic, I needed to lead with a calm and decisive approach that required me to assemble the people and resources to effectively deal with this crisis event. Effective leadership is best measured by how you respond and conduct yourself in the face of challenging adversity.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
I love a saying that we have in the Navy — the only easy day was yesterday. I expect tomorrow to be harder, but I also know that today’s challenges help prepare me for tomorrow’s hardships. I think that work ethic can help overcome those hard times, as well as learning from the hardships and challenges of others. I truly feel there is no better or faster way to acquire knowledge than from the experience of other people, so I read a lot of biographies and autobiographies of great and influential people. I came out of retirement to become the CEO of Weave because of the impact this company can have supporting small businesses, and that mission also is of personal importance to me.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
In the Navy, whenever there is an actual or threat of attack, there is an alarm called General Quarters that is sounded. Upon hearing this alarm, every sailor on a ship immediately goes to their battle stations awaiting further instruction and operational readiness. The role of a leader is to ensure that everyone is at their battle stations, knows what their job is, and has the resources to carry out their specific task. A good leader is one that has sufficiently trained and prepared their organization to respond to challenging times well before they arrive. While a good leader will always be defined by what they do during times of crisis, I believe it is also important that a leader be measured by how they have instructed and prepared their organization to respond to a crisis before it even happens.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
The best way to make progress is to approach it one day at a time. While mission and vision are critical to any organization, it’s what we do each and every day that helps us achieve them. I have found that if we operate and focus on things that are too far out into the future, we lose sight of the incremental progress and gains necessary to achieve our long-term goals for the company. Hi celebrating and recognizing our incremental wins, we can boost morale, inspire and motivate teams to build a resilient and high-performing company.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
I believe it is always important to be intellectually honest and forthright with the people who work for me and the customers we serve. People deserve to know the good, the bad, and the ugly even if it’s unflattering or embarrassing. Truth and transparency will always earn respect and appreciation.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
Every organization needs a plan, even when the future is unpredictable. Leadership requires the humility to understand that we cannot control everything. The key to strategic planning is always recognizing that as conditions evolve and change, companies need to be able to pivot or adapt quickly. What’s the saying, “If you don’t have a plan, you’re simply planning to fail.”
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
One of our most important values at Weave is the “customer is everything.” Any company that wants to manage through the ups and downs of business can do so if they focus on the customer. Without customers, businesses don’t last. By taking care of your customers during turbulent times, you will build long lasting and loyal relationships that can help you whether any difficulty or storm.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
- Failing to financially manage the business to absorb the shock and impact of an economic downturn or crisis.
- Eliminating headcount or being too quick to terminate employees.
- Unable to adapt to changing market economic conditions. Managing a business requires both macro and micro economic understanding as well as the business.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
Depending on the issue or nature of the challenge, companies must be able to quickly adapt, change and embrace new technology. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic required us to develop new technology and services to help our customers operate in a new socially distant environment. Internally, we also had to give it the way we market our products and services. We are now Leveraging Digital Demand Generation to promote our products to the market we serve. I’m a believer that turbulent times can actually make companies better if they can quickly learn from them.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
I really like the Weave values as guiding principles because they represent values that don’t just get dropped on the floor the moment you leave the office.
- Stay Hungry
When I did my first major company meeting as the new CEO of Weave earlier this year, we had a mantra — Game On! Whenever a new CEO comes into a company, there’s always nerves and uncertainty from the team members on what to expect. And, we had just come through a year of turbulence in the world at large — COVID had really put our small business customers through a lot and they fortunately leaned into Weave as a tool to help them tackle challenges like how to create curbside waiting rooms, confirm appointments and update customers on covid protocols all with a text. It’s easy to sit back and feel comfortable when you’ve had a year of innovation and hard work that resulted in great revenues and customer retention. But we have to keep pushing to serve more and more customers, to help them continue to modernize their business and add efficiencies. And that’s what “stay hungry” is all about — never settling for good. I like to say “the only easy day was yesterday” and our Stay Hungry value is all about that.
2. Care More
We’re human beings. When you’re a business leader, you are leading people. Our Care More value is about leading with your heart, assuming the best intent of one another. This is the secret sauce to what makes a great company a great team. Disagreements are always going to arise in the business, but going above and beyond to be caring in your interactions is so crucial. There’s a great story of this at Weave. One of our team members got an entire product prioritized, built and launched because they kept hearing from customers over and over again how being able to manage multiple offices on Weave’s platform wasn’t easy. WE hadn’t designed the product to suit multi-office locations yet, and some of our dental office customers were consolidating with other practices in recent years. This team member marched directly into our COO’s office and flagged the problem, and told him she’d like to help solve it. Was it her job to do this? No. Not at all. But she CARED. Caring about our customers and our team members actually solved a business problem.
3. Do The Right Thing
This might seem like an obvious one, but I take it very seriously. I’m not a leader or CEO who is going to suggest unethical behavior to solve a problem, and when we recently added this value to our core values at Weave, it wasn’t because we had a problem with people acting unethically. It was because we already had this culture in our company and wanted to double down on its importance as we grow. We don’t take shortcuts to success, we do the hard work and the right things because those are the things worth doing and the ones you’ll be proud to look back on. I want that for every employee — to feel the pride in themselves and their leaders when we do the right thing.
4. The Customer is Everything
Customer obsession is essential. There’s almost no other way to put it. Our customers tell us what they want and need all the time. Almost every week, I take the time to review emails that real customers sent to me as the CEO of Weave. It might be a frustration, it might be praise. But if they’re taking the time to email me, I’m taking the time to read it. Because feedback matters to our business and it matters to our customers’ businesses. We tell them all the time about the power of their customers’ reviews and feedback in delivering top-notch experiences in their business.
5. It’s a universal business lesson — a great idea can die on the vine if it’s not focused on solving a need or problem that others experience.
And the business is the experts on the solution, while the customers are your best experts on the problem. It’s a winning combo when those two expertise come together.
How can our readers further follow your work?
Check out Getweave.com and learn a bit more about our business. You can learn more about our customers and some of the challenges facing small healthcare businesses due to COVID and shifting patient expectations by checking out our 2021 Healthcare Business Insights Report.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Roy Banks of Weave: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
