The First Customer - Scaling Internal Talent and Building from Within with CEO Bridgette Ferraro

[00:00:28] Jay: everyone. Welcome to the First Customer Podcast.

My name's Jay Aigner. Today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Bridgette Ferrero Ferraro. Did I say it wrong? I said it wrong. I was so excited to say it the right way. She's the CEO of iCopy Legal, and I hope she doesn't sue me for saying her name wrong. Hello, Bridgette. How are you?

[00:00:44] Bridgette: I am great. Thank you for having me, Jay.

[00:00:47] Jay: I swear like that. Five seconds between start and fi like I messed it up.

It's okay. We're here. We're all here. We're back from vacation. We're shaking it off. We're gonna make this happen. We're gonna make this happen. You are in, Colorado. how's the weather in Colorado today?

[00:01:01] Bridgette: It is absolutely gorgeous. I feel like sometimes we get these false springs happening, but I'm here for it. I will take the sunshine and the warm weather all day.

[00:01:10] Jay: All day. I just talked to somebody from Cal, Colorado right before this, and they said, it's beautiful today, but you know, give it a week and it'll be like a foot of snow. So,

[00:01:17] Bridgette: We think that for the week of spring break, there will be snow and sledding happening.

[00:01:22] Jay: I mean, you can't beat that. how lo All right, so tell me, where'd you grow up and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:01:27] Bridgette: Yeah, I grew up in Indiana, in a small town that has a stoplight called Battleground. It's outside of, west Lafayette where Purdue University is, and I happened to also go to Purdue University, so I was a townie I

[00:01:39] Jay: Townie. Love that. what did you study in school?

[00:01:42] Bridgette: human services. So I had a concentration in child development and, adolescent development.

[00:01:48] Jay: Okay, well, God bless you for that. Thank you for your, thank you for your service. how the heck did you end up being the CEO of a legal document retrieval company is what I would like to know. I.

[00:01:59] Bridgette: Yeah, it's a journey. So ultimately I was getting together with a gal who was also a mom working in downtown Chicago and was telling me about this company where I. She got sweat equity and was bringing biz dev, new relationships to the table. But operationally, things were breaking and I'm known as someone who comes into something in existence and helps scale and grow.

And I was way too cocky in my twenties and I said, give me three months X amount of dollars. I'll solve 90% of your problems. And here I am six years later,

[00:02:31] Jay: Six years later, probably a little bit wiser. and so what did I mean? You step in a CEO at an existing company, you've got employees and you've got like some probably semblance of culture and all these other, like what was it like, just as a human being stepping into a team that already exists that probably has some cohesion and you have to kind of be like, I'm the new boss in town.

Like, how did that go?

[00:02:54] Bridgette: Yeah. anytime I'm stepping into a new environment, it's coming with the lens of ask questions first. just be open and willing to listen and absorb for a solid 60 to 90 days if you have the ability to take longer, which sometimes when things are on fire, you don't, you need like a 30 day runway. Just coming in with the open ears and eyes and the people who've been there in the muck are often going to have the best knowledge of the things that they would change.

[00:03:23] Jay: What was your biggest kind of takeaway from that initial period? Like did you, was it like, oh my God, this is the problem and I found it? Or is it, you know what? What was your biggest kind of learning from that asking phase?

[00:03:36] Bridgette: Yeah, and it's pretty common even with that scenario and even other ones, just the way, this is the way we've always done it, so. Turning over rocks, looking at systems and processes, and when you're asking those questions, why? Why do we do it this way? And something as simple as sitting down with someone and doing a screen share or sitting next to 'em while they run through a process and seeing how they click and move to get to something if it's mainly electronic and being like, oh, that's interesting that's how your brain got there.

Did you know you could do this or this? And at one point I had a staff that said, Bridgette, you know, you're only that's only gonna save me 10 minutes a day. And I said, oh. If I handed you an extra week of vacation, like, would you be super happy? She was like, yeah, I'll take an extra 40 hour week of vacation.

I said, 10 minutes a day

[00:04:31] Jay: There you go. Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. I love that. And I hope you had that in the chamber when she came up with that and you said, here's a week's VA vacation time back. I love that. 10 minutes a day is a week of vacation. we may be, let's just end the episode there.

I got more out of that than maybe most of my other episodes. That was fantastic. no, but seriously, what kind of, You know, what kind of customers did you guys have when you were there? were they like the right customers? Were they, you know, all over the place? Because I know a lot of times, you know, and everybody does the same things.

You, you say yes to everything. And especially as a SaaS company, you start to build features for some comp, some you know, clients and not for others. And just what was the status of like your existing clients when you guys came in?

[00:05:11] Bridgette: Yeah, so fascinating. The company was founded by three attorneys in 2008, and it was a function of what they needed for themselves in retrieving records. So really when I came in, it was Chicago based. Friends and family within that existing ecosystem in Chicago and Illinois, and they didn't really leverage technology.

So they were in the process of building what is now our proprietary, tech platform, Nimbus, and it hadn't launched yet. So ultimately we launched in January of 2020 and we were a hundred percent in-person company. So.

[00:05:43] Jay: I know the end of this story.

[00:05:44] Bridgette: Yeah. Yeah. There's lots of things that came from this, but we are not traditional SaaS.

We're tech enabled service because we were service first and then we figured out how to build technology that could be wrapped around our service. and ultimately figuring out that now we're not bound by our geography and we're also not bound to having to. Like build a workforce in person. And obviously Covid was a catalyst for helping make that become a reality maybe sooner than it would have otherwise, and allowed us to scale and grow nationwide.

[00:06:18] Jay: Beautiful. who was your first new customer after you started?

[00:06:23] Bridgette: Yeah, so we had a law firm, that ultimately came to us through a pretty simple kind of cold outreach campaign. And it was the first one where I owned it from start to finish when the initial call and interest came in and I did the sales meeting, and then I did the onboarding and built all of those relationships.

So how we're agnostic. We serve both, plaintiff and defense firms and then also insurance carriers. And so we were building, and that particular client was an insurance defense client, not in Chicago land. And being able to onboard the entire process, which I don't own the entire process anymore, was amazing.

[00:07:02] Jay: Yes, I was gonna say, you were brought in for your operational chops, but you got dropped into the CEO role, which is very much not. operations. So I was gonna ask, you know, what were your responsibilities then? And like, what are they now and are they the same?

[00:07:19] Bridgette: Yeah, so fascinatingly enough, I had traditionally been under a certain threshold of revenue and have been able to break every ceiling with this company and continuing to grow, and I really have been able to move into my genius as a visionary and finding that I thrive as a CEO at a certain level and have been able to build up an operator.

So I have a gal on my team, super phenomenal. She's now. Officially COO but has been with me, for a little over four years now, and grown up with the company and be able, been able to take on and peel off a lot of those operational duties. And so traditionally I'm like a zero to one. Person and that I scale and I grow.

And then being able to use this as, a great use case for figuring out how to delegate and elevate and live within my true genius as the strategic, visionary for growth in a different way than when you're at a certain size where you have to roll up your sleeves, own a lot of the processes and straddle between, integrator and operator and visionary.

[00:08:23] Jay: Yes. I love the promotion of the operations person from within. We did the same thing and I think, at least for us, it was very helpful, to have somebody who knew the ins and the outs and then felt the pain and like never really had the opportunity to make the changes that they thought they should be able to make.

And then once we elevated her into that role, she has just been absolutely incredible. Ours has been with us for six or seven years. Autumn has just. The best. but yeah, I like that there is, but there's the other side of that, which is like, if you bring somebody else in to do operations or fix operations, that kind of gives that new perspective.

what do you, I mean, we both did it the same way we hired somebody within. What do you think I. About bringing somebody from the outside in to handle that. is it worth the perspective shift that you gain from something like that? Or is it like, you know, maybe there's too much to onboard and learn and to do, and we should do this internally.

Like what's your kind of internal versus external view of like operations being taken over by somebody else?

[00:09:23] Bridgette: Yeah, so I think that it depends on your trajectory for growth and how quickly you wanna hit the gas pedal. So for me, I think it's absolutely necessary to have outside perspective, and I think depending upon. What your plans are for growth, choosing the pivotal points to invest and strategic advisors.

So for us, what that has looked like is investing in her and promoting her, but then ultimately, looking at external consultants that have been there, done that five, 10, 15 million above where we're at, but where we wanna be, and being able to add that perspective so that we shortcut our learning curve where we can.

[00:10:01] Jay: I love that. How did you find those strategic consultants?

[00:10:05] Bridgette: So it's fascinating because in my core, I'm a growth strategist. I came in initially as a consultant before I was offered the equity and CEO role that I live in today. And so I know and understand the value of a consultant because when you're in the muck of it, you can't see past your own nose, right?

and someone else is gonna look at your baby. Differently than you do where you're gonna have rose colored

[00:10:30] Jay: You have an ugly baby. You have an ugly baby. That's exactly what they're gonna say,

[00:10:34] Bridgette: point out all the pimples, right? Like please. so as far as finding them, I am always evaluating, where I'm at personally, where the company is at, and continuing to make sure that I'm putting myself and our leaders in a position where we're in a room with people who are far enough ahead of us.

And so that has had to evolve over the years to make sure that. you know, you don't wanna be the biggest or the smartest in the room. You wanna make sure that you're in a position where you're constantly learning and growing from those who are ahead of you.

[00:11:03] Jay: I love that. Yeah. That's very interesting. well, h how do you, let's switch a little bit to kind of personal brand and Bridgette, you know, being Bridgette. how do you see the way you promote yourself, like, you know, on social media versus like being tied to the company and doing stuff, you know, Hey, I'm the I copy person.

what's your take on personal branding and, you know, do you put any stock into it and just what's your strategy, you know, for making yourself be visible out there?

[00:11:29] Bridgette: Yeah, so with where I'm at in my career, I'm very mindful of the fact that I am the CEO of iCopy, but. What does Bridgette as a growth strategist, Bridgette, as a visionary look like potentially for the next 30 years? because I am in the legal tech space, it's constantly evolving and changing. and the reality should be that at some point I grow and I want someone else to take over that role and be able to work in my genius within a size of a company.

So for personal branding, for example, I have adopted blue nail polish, which

[00:12:02] Jay: Oh, I love those.

[00:12:03] Bridgette: I copy color, so I stay within our color palette of, marketing as a piece. And just being mindful, like, I really like fun earrings. They're not dangly today, but normally I'm known for like big, bright, colorful earrings

[00:12:14] Jay: You know, things that, pull on like my personality or like individual things. And for my social media, online presence, the main place for that for me is LinkedIn. And I lean into being a CEO mom. Being a working mom. I have got three girls. I'm a first generation college kid. I grew up with a single mom.

[00:12:35] Bridgette: Like there's just things about me personally and my story that have formed me. And to who I am today, which has led to the things that I'm able to do and achieve, and making sure that, that stays a part of the voice and the tone, no matter what I'm doing.

[00:12:49] Jay: Three lucky girls, a mom that's out there crushing it, and you know, being a great role model. I love it very much. I have three girls, myself and three boys, a completely different, species of human beings, I believe. Boys and girls. I don't think they're, I don't think they have the same DNA at all, at least early on.

They're just completely. Just completely separate, species from each other. so, if you had to start iCopy, iCopy over again tomorrow as your own company with the things you've learned, the same business, the same clients, what would be step one to start this business tomorrow?

[00:13:23] Bridgette: Step one. I think step one is making sure that we w with our technology, so we are tech enabled service, but actually being able to have our technology be a standalone product would be a fascinating thing if we were starting over because we have this tech product and we have this service. but if our product had some things which.

Could be a foreshadow of a future roadmap. Ultimately being able to sell and provide things within the technology as its own product, keeping our service a service. So I think had I, you know, been able to have it from the beginning and could start over, ultimately leveraging the technology as its own product that leases and lends itself back to the service,would create a different level of synergy that doesn't exist today.

[00:14:18] Jay: how, you know, how do you feel that like. And I don't wanna bring up AI because all I just don't, I don't wanna bring it up. I don't wanna talk about it. I don't wanna talk about it. how do you, how have you avoided, maybe avoided is the wrong word, but how have you kind of used, you know, what you guys have today and the technologies that you've built and all these things that you kind of, you know, you've built the business and kind of this big space on how do you keep pushing that?

without kind of just completely slandering it with, Hey, we're an AI this and an AI that, and an, and like people just eyes just gloss over. Like, how have you kind of navigated staying true to who you are? which I think everybody is, right? Like every single company in the world is going like, well, how do we not?

Completely say we're ai, if we're just like a normal services company or we're a SaaS company or whatever. you see like very clear examples of like, you know, like an ai, whatever, and you're like, that's not even a, like why do they have AI in that? It's not even a real thing. Like how have you kind of kept your distance but maybe integrated some things like, and I, again, I don't want this be an AI conversation, but how have you kind of kept true to who you guys are with this onslaught of like ai, everything.

[00:15:31] Bridgette: Yeah, so interestingly enough, I, at the end of last year, I now have majority of the company, and so with having a shift of that, it's allowed me to reevaluate our values and our messaging and our tone in general, and making sure that it's kind of through my voice as much as possible. It was a catalyst for being able to say, okay, there's this shift, Bridgette is.

Majority owner. And then how do we leverage that as a tool to think about what we are communicating in the marketplace? And one of the number one things is realizing that we are people first. Yes, we are innovative. We are one of the most innovative ones within the entire, space in general.

However, everything has quality control with people and people First, it's more of a white glove experience because we lead with people first, even in the face of everything that's happening in the opportunity for disruption in the space with technology and innovation as a whole. And AI is really only a piece of that larger umbrella for technological disruption in the legal tech space because.

We are really at this intersect between medical, legal, and technology. And medical and legal in the United States are two of the most archaic, overarching structures that are ripe for disruption and change and being able to integrate, technology. And there's so many cool things happening in both spaces to help them catch up.

And for our people first aspect, one of the things I always talk about is before we talk about ai. Let's talk about APIs.

[00:17:11] Jay: I love that you put a p in the middle and you change the whole conversation. Yes. Let's talk about APIs. well, I love that, and yeah, I mean, it's just so saturated and we're in the same boat as a services agency. I mean, all we do is quality assurance for companies, but like. We're a human company and like you wouldn't want.

A machine necessarily being the last eyeballs on something before, you know, your very important client opens the app for the day. Right. So I very much in the same way we have built, we made our hay and built our foundation on being a people business and should, can we and are we and will we be a and i ai, you know, enabled in the sense that it helps us do our job.

Absolutely. But we are a human first company, so I love that People first is, you know, something we share in common. So, another question about your. Your customers, has that changed since you took over? Like who was your, you know, you mentioned the first customer you had when you guys, when you started.

What does that customer look like today? Is it the same type of firm? Is it the same people you're selling at? Or has that shifted over the years?

[00:18:12] Bridgette: Yeah. So initially they were, targeting a certain size of a law firm, right? And so. We've continued to grow in our capacity to be able to serve larger law firms, nationwide law firms, but also targeting insurance carriers. So when you work with an insurance carrier, they have, their panel counsel and then they also have their in-house counsel.

And so when you work with an insurance carrier, the scope and the volume of what we would execute within that type of relationship is much larger than when you're just targeting an individual law firm. So also being able to expand, From that side, from a, let's call it customer client standpoint, but also as I've continued to evolve in my role, one of the other things is, looking at m and a.

And so while it's not necessarily a traditional customer or a way to acquire customers, but being able to be in partnership with folks who have. A records retrieval firm or that as a service within an existing entity that just naturally came and came to be, but maybe they're where I copy was when I came in six years ago.

And they don't have technology, they don't have systems, they don't have processes. and there's opportunities to view that as a customer because it's a holistic client acquisition situation.

[00:19:30] Jay: I am not gonna get started on ecosystem led growth and partnerships, but, it is one of my, because I'm passionate about it, I probably wouldn't stop talking about it, but yes, I totally agree. it,I am very much the mindset of any, do we do outbound marketing and do I do all sorts of, you know, classic sales stuff.

Absolutely. But why would I. Why would I not try to do partnerships with companies who also have clients that are the same as mine? Like, why go after one when you can go after a hundred? Right. So it's, there's just a economy of scale when it comes to partnerships, so I love that. all right. Well, I feel like we could talk all day, but let's let, I'm gonna ask you one more question, Bridgette, being Bridgette, nothing to do with, I copy just you as a human being.

if you could do anything on Earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:20:12] Bridgette: Ooh. And I knew I wouldn't fail. Honestly. I would love to be a like. the ra. Like I don't wanna go to the Olympics. I don't wanna be in like major competitions or anything, but a really good ballroom dancer or figure

[00:20:35] Jay: answer. What an answer.

[00:20:38] Bridgette: I don't wanna, I don't wanna be like flashy and like at like doing it, but like if I could just be so good at it and just, you know.

[00:20:46] Jay: I've never got anything remotely close to the dancer, so that is fantastic. I love that, a competitive ballroom dancer. I mean, and look, you can't fail, so you could be an Olympic level. You could do whatever you want in this scenario. So, ballroom dancing, Olympic champion, is that even a, is that a, is that an Olympic

[00:21:02] Bridgette: No, like, I don't want, or even figure skating, like figure skating or ballroom dancing. Like, yeah,

[00:21:10] Jay: All right. I love it.

[00:21:11] Bridgette: there was this video. I totally got targeted on Instagram. I can't remember what the POV was. Oh, I think it was about kids. It was like, I just told all four of my children that like, they're skating on thin ice.

And it was this 4-year-old that just like went out on a pond, probably in the middle of Minnesota and did like a quadruple turn. It was magical. And I was like, you know what? If I wouldn't fall on my face 500 times learning how to do that, or being in heels and like salsa dancing across the

[00:21:39] Jay: Right. Yeah.

[00:21:40] Bridgette: I don't wanna do the work to be that good.

I just wanna be that good.

[00:21:43] Jay: Of course, yes. Well, my wife that you and my wife, we can commiserate about that because she thinks that she could have been an Olympic figure skater, but her mom just never gave her the time on the ice. So, you know, we talk about that every time. So now all my kids are in hockey and she's living vicariously through them, so it's fine.

It's a great answer. I love that. All right, well, people wanna see, more about you, Bridgette, or anything they heard about today. How do they do that?

[00:22:04] Bridgette: I had say connect on LinkedIn. That's the best way, and I always love having one-on-one chats and learning about other people's journeys.

[00:22:11] Jay: Beautiful. And, if people wanna learn more about, I copy legal, how do they do that?

[00:22:16] Bridgette: icopylegal.com.

[00:22:18] Jay: Nice and easy. Look at that. I almost could have guessed that was the way to do that. All right, well, Bridgette, you're fantastic. I loved, I love the story. Wish you the best of luck. let's stay in touch and, have a good rest of your week.

All right,

[00:22:28] Bridgette: Thanks, Jay. You too.

[00:22:29] Jay: thanks Bridgette. See you. 

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