Running Toward Challenges with Vantaca’s Ben Currin

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MICHAEL PRAEGER 

Welcome to “The Power of Change” – the podcast that delves into the intersection of leadership and technology in the finance world. I’m your host – Michael Praeger, the CEO and co-founder of AvidXchange. In each episode, I dive into the leadership topics and industry trends with business leaders, partners and customers who embrace the Power of Change.  

Welcome to another edition of The Power of Change podcast. Today I am here with Ben Currin, CEO of Vantaca. Ben has been, you know, able to build a really successful business and thriving culture that improves the lives in businesses of Vantaca’s customers. And so Vantaca’s in the business of really leading community management performance software. And Ben has been a member of the Vantaca leadership team since 2017, serving in various executive level strategy and operational positions. But before we get into Vantaca, one of the other aspects of Ben’s background is that Ben spent nearly a decade as a submarine officer and nuclear engineer in the United States Navy, where he successfully led sailors and operational deployments around the globe and is a graduate of the famed Naval Academy.  

So first of all, Ben, before we get into Vantaca, like all leaders a lot of leadership of what you execute on a daily basis has roots back to, you know, those foundational years and how you started your career as a submarine officer. What were some leadership nuggets you took away from that experience that you’re applying today at Vantaca? 

1:35  
BEN CURRIN 

Yeah. Well, first of all, Mike, thank you for having me on today. It’s great to talk to you. I’m excited. Love the topic and always happy to talk about some fun kind of Navy stories and lessons learned. The experience of living and working on a submarine is unique to most people. So it’s a question I get a lot of what was that like? And my usual answer is different than everything else I’ve done and different than probably most of what everyone’s done. And I’ve thought a lot about what are the things about living and working on a submarine and leading sailors on a submarine that I do apply now. And I think one of the things that is unique about a submarine is just the environment that you’re in. You’re in a steel tube that we intentionally sink hundreds and hundreds of feet underwater and hope to surface as many times as we sink it. And I think that environment, a lot of people imagine there’s all these dangers. 

There’s an active nuclear reactor. There feels like danger. There is flooding, etcetera. The most dangerous thing about a submarine is actually fire because again, if you’re in an enclosed environment, hundreds of feet below the water, a fire is a big deal. You have nowhere for the smoke to escape to, it gets very hot, incapacitates humans and not friendly to human life. So to kind of circle in on the answer to your question, every single person on a submarine, the first thing you learn and the first thing you’re trained to do is run towards the fire. There’s a fire that, you know, breaks out in a piece of machinery or gear, or you smell something that smells like smoke or even an acrid odor, everyone on the submarine is trained to run to that immediately. 

Whether you’re sleeping or eating or showering or anything in between, you run towards the fire because if you don’t, your life and all of your shipmates is in danger. And I think that concept, obviously, there’s no fire to run to right now and if there is, we call the fire department. 

But the concept of fire and danger and the things that are uncomfortable running towards that, running towards the biggest challenges, running towards the biggest opportunities and leaning into what’s uncomfortable is something that for me has always been really important. And I think led to a high rate of learning for me personally and for our team. 

03:50  
MICHAEL PRAEGER 

Well said that there’s some really good insights there. And I think one of the things that resonates for me is kind of your comment about the feeling of being uncomfortable. Right? Because when you’re in your comfort zone, there’s not a lot of great growth that occurs, right? And all the growth occurs when you get into uncomfortable zones, right? 

And that’s kind of when both your body and mentally and everything else, you have to learn to adjust and change. And so maybe that’s kind of a good lead into my next question for you. So you joined the Vantaca team in 2017. You’ve had a number of different executive strategy, operational type roles before becoming CEO, but maybe just talk about your progression becoming a CEO and maybe some of those things where it kind of breakthrough moments or periods for you to allow you to become that leader that you are today.  

04:50  
BEN CURRIN 

So for those who aren’t familiar with the history of Vantaca, I was lucky enough to join Vantaca when our employees could be counted on one hand and so could our customers. So truly at the very beginning. Not on day one, but kind of day plus one.  

And so what that afforded me is the time and the space to really get to know the business and the business of our customers, most importantly. I think that foundation of just being able to go and rather than gathering data from a spreadsheet, being able to gather data with my hands and my eyes and by sitting in the room with our customers and participating in things like onboarding and helping our, our developers kind of start to really build the product is one of the things that foundationally gave me the confidence as the business grew to really take bets and help the team understand how to continue to evolve not only the product but our relationship with our customers and the change that we want to enact in the industry. So I think personally it was being able to build the foundation of really taking the time to learn every bit of the business and learn every bit of the industry that we’re working in before getting too wrapped up with big strategic goals. 

So it’s something that I love to continue to encourage leaders that we bring on to the team now that Vantaca is much larger is don’t get too wrapped up in what the strategic mission is yet – like go gather data with your eyes and go understand what the problem set is that we’re solving for and that’s been massive for me over the years.  

06:33 
MICHAEL PRAEGER 

I love the consistent reference back to the customer. So your customers today are community association management companies, right? So maybe talk a little bit about what, from an industry perspective and the challenges that your customers are facing, maybe highlight a couple of those challenges that Vantaca, your software, your platform helps them solve. How do you help them keep growing, um, in their industry?  

07:02 
BEN CURRIN 

I think first, what are the problems that we’re trying to solve? Most listen to this will probably have an idea or, or, or many will have an idea of what the community management industry is. Some won’t. And the very short synopsis, it’s the business of professionally managing community associations of HOAs, condominium associations, things like that. And what does management mean?  

It means a lot of things. It means collecting money, paying vendors, uh, governance, all these processes. And if you think about that, there’s a lot of friction points there. I love when I get the chance to talk to folks who aren’t in this industry about what Vantaca does and you know, sitting in front of a large group of people who lives in an HOA and about half the hands go up. And who loves that experience? And a lot of the hands go down. 

I love the opportunity to help solve for those friction points. And that’s what our customers want to do. And technology, you know, over many industries, over many years has been a solution to friction and has been a solution to those problems and challenges that exists. 

So to answer the second part of your question, how do we help our customers do that? We love to provide solutions and answers to those problems and kind of lubricate those friction points. So, a big part of that is finding ways to do things faster, more efficiently. And in a more automated fashion is a huge part of what we do. 

And again, this is why the partnership between Vantaca and AvidXchange is so great is we’re really doing the same types of things for these customers. It’s what are all the things that take time, take labor and be frustrating that could be predicted and could be automated and could be done better and faster and more predictably and more accurately with technology. 

Let’s do that and allow our customers to be proactive and focus on building relationships, growing their business, solving problems rather than doing the kind of predictable and mundane things and, you know, introducing the possibility for human error. We zoom way out – that’s how I think about Vantaca as a whole.  

How can we identify those friction points with our customers, look around the corner at what could be next and eliminate them systematically so that their business can run more efficiently and they have the opportunity to grow and meet their goals.  

09:17 
MICHAEL PRAEGER 

Well said. There’s certainly a passion that, you know, HOA and community managers have to make their communities better for sure. So before we wrap one of the things I like to ask any of my leaders that I have on the program – maybe it’s a little bit personal, but you know this goes back to a little bit being uncomfortable. Maybe share a little bit about what your personal routine or rhythm that you do whether it be daily, weekly to allow you to be the best you can be as a leader for Vantaca. And the same thing is maybe what’s a rhythm or routine that you do in the business with your team that allows you guys to execute the best for your customers. 

09:58  
BEN CURRIN 

I do think that’s such a governor on our potential is what is our routine? How can we ensure that we get the most out of every day, every week, every month, etc? I love having a strenuous, uncomfortable routine physically. With fitness, for years, I’ve done kind of marathons, half marathons, things like that. So I do a lot of early morning running and gym time. Over the last year or so, I’ve gotten really into triathlons. So most of my days start really early – alarm goes off at 4:30 and we’re at an hour and a half or two hours of stuff. Some days, one of the three disciplines, other days, gym time. 

But that’s how the day starts. And then it’s home by 6:30. It’s all kids until kids are out the door to school. So I’ve got a six and an eight-year-old and it’s just wonderful chaos in the morning. And that’s a big part of the daily routine. And then the workday is the workday and every day is a little bit different and chaotic and in wonderful ways. 

But a big part of my routine that I build into my calendar during the day and into my weekly cadences is really significant time for learning. So I do a ton of reading. I read a book just about every week and I consume a ton of kind of writings and news on a daily weekly basis. Because a big part of my role in the business is to push our thinking faster and to think bigger and the more I can get exposed to new ideas, that’s massive for me. So that’s kind of how I think about my personal routine.  

To answer the second part of your question, the business cadence and how we do things. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with a process called EOS – entrepreneurial operating system, but based on absolute traction, we adopted that out within Vantaca in 2019 and since kind of evolved it from what we called the entrepreneurial operating system to now what we call the Vantaca operating system.  

But what it really is, is a cadence in which the business can operate and gain alignment on our big goals. So, you know, we, we start by, okay, what’s our vision in 10 years out? How does that scale to three years?  

Okay. What’s our one-year picture? What does that mean as a company we have to do in the next 90 days to make massive progress toward that one-year goal. And then once we do that, we take, you know, we take all those opportunities and divide them up into what are the leaps forward that various teams can do and that scales all the way down to the individuals.  

So every individual in our business has 90-day transformational leaps that they are tackling to add to that 90-day plan and one-year vision and all the way up to kind of a 10 year big, hairy, audacious goal. And that process has served us incredibly well. 

12:41 
MICHAEL PRAEGER 

Absolutely. Terrific. What you’ll learn from my interactions with leaders of all walks of life, whether it be military leaders, athletic coaching leaders or business leaders is the value of routines, right? Um, and at the end of the day, we’re kind of creatures of habit, but there’s a lot of value that comes from having consistent routines whether it be in your personal life or in your business life. 

So I’m truly inspired with your personal routines. I try to make myself a little uncomfortable with my 100 pushup morning workout. I get out of bed on the floor, do my hundred pushup workout, and then I was starting to get comfortable with that. 

So I’ve added in the morning cold plunge routine and that definitely makes me uncomfortable. So I don’t know if I’m ever going to get comfortable with the cold plunge, so we’ll see.  

13:39 
BEN CURRIN 

I think whether it’s your personal life or the, or you’re in business, something that I’ve, I’ve started to say and to myself, and now I find myself saying this to folks on our team a lot is. I think it’s so valuable to get in a position where you’re confident but not comfortable. So what can you do that, you know, gives you confidence but keeps you just a little bit outside your comfort zone? I think that’s incredibly valuable.  

13:59 
MICHAEL PRAEGER 

Totally. Well said. I think that’s a great place to call it a wrap. Ben, thanks for being on the show The Power of Change and this has been an awesome episode and looking forward to continuing our relationship as we go forward and continue to learn about what are the new and crazy things you’re doing to make yourself uncomfortable. Best of luck having a great year this year in the business and talk to you soon.  

14:25 
BEN CURRIN 

Likewise. Thanks again, Mike. Take care. 

14:28
MICHAEL PRAEGER 

Thanks for listening to the Power of Change presented by AvidXchange. If you like what you heard, subscribe to our channel and leave a five-star review. While you’re waiting for the next episode, head on over to avidxchange.com for our latest research reports and business insights. And if you’re interested in learning more about accounts payable automation, click the link in our show notes to connect with our experts. Thanks again for listening to the Power of Change. We’ll see you next time.