Mitigating Churn: A Masterclass in Customer Retention with Will Cureton, CFO of Nitrogen Wealth

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Dec 23, 2024

Will Cureton, CFO of Nitrogen Wealth, shares his expertise in customer retention from a wealth management software perspective. He discusses how a major price increase misstep prompted a reassessment of growth strategies, exploring total addressable market and sustainable business lines. Will reveals key metrics for predicting churn and formulates a churn score essential for retaining customers. He also delves into the innovative risk tolerance features of their platform that enhance client engagement while navigating the complexities of today’s market.

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INSIGHT

Navigating Headwinds and Mitigating Churn

Will Cureton, CFO of Nitrogen Wealth, discusses navigating headwinds and mitigating churn.
He emphasizes revisiting growth assumptions and understanding root causes of churn.

ANECDOTE

Prospect Theory and Risk Tolerance

Nitrogen Wealth uses prospect theory in its risk tolerance functionality to help advisors.
It quantitatively measures risk and identifies misalignments between investor profiles and portfolios.

ADVICE

Understanding Your Business Model

Understand your business model, market, and customers to identify risks and opportunities.
Stack rank these factors and present them to leadership for faster decision-making.

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In this episode, CJ has an exceptionally candid conversation with Will Cureton, the CFO of Nitrogen Wealth. Will sheds light on what Nitrogen Wealth does and how it incorporates a tolerance functionality built on the prospect theory into its software platform to better serve wealth management firms. After taking on some private equity backing in 2021, Nitrogen Wealth made a big price increase mistake. Will talks about how the company went about revisiting its growth assumptions. He explains how they assessed the company’s TAM, exited unsustainable business lines, and unbundled some of their products in order to maintain or regain their customers. Will then does a deep dive on mitigating churn, covering which metrics Nitrogen tracks to predict churn, how they formulate a churn score, and other steps they take to support customer retention.

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@cjgustafson222 (CJ)

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview and Intro

(01:32) Sponsor – Maxio | RemoFirst

(04:03) An Intro to Nitrogen Wealth and Prospect Theory

(07:34) Nitrogen’s Private Equity Backing and Price Increase Mistake

(11:27) Revisiting Growth Assumptions: Assessing TAM

(14:30) Time to Land the Customer Versus the Number of Customers

(16:34) Sponsor – Mercury | NetSuite | Operators Guild

(19:58) Building Test Plans for TAM Expansion

(22:28) Exiting Unsustainable Business Lines

(25:36) Bundling or Unbundling Products

(27:43) Nitrogen’s Price-of-Value Mismatch and Drivers to Mitigate Churn

(28:30) Formulating a Churn Score

(31:47) Why Nitrogen’s RevOps Team Reports to the CFO, Not Sales

(33:31) Learnings on Mitigating Churn

(34:40) Metrics to Track to Predict Churn

(35:40) The Severity of Nitrogen’s Price Increase

(36:58) Long-Ass Lightning Round: A Business Trip to Manitoba

(39:25) A Brown-Nosing Mistake Will Made

(40:52) Advice to Younger Self

(41:51) Finance Software Stack

(43:01) Craziest Expense Story

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