I’m Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast. In this episode, I sat down with Mike Stacy, CEO of ID90 Travel, a SaaS platform that automates space-available travel booking for airline employees worldwide. Mike has led ID90 Travel since 2011, turning it into a full marketplace for discounted hotels, cruises, and travel insurance. Before that, he ran a turnaround at Groople and rose to SVP of Marketing at Travelocity during its IPO.
When a company moves from survival mode into stable growth, Mike holds that a CEO must trade crisis-driven urgency for a team-first management style. That shift has helped ID90 Travel reach a 95 Net Promoter Score and 100% client contract renewal.
This episode is for CEOs leading a company through a turnaround, or through a scaling transition, who need to decide how their management style, their capital priorities, and their AI adoption plan should change at each stage.
Key Takeaways
- Stacy ran ID90 Travel with a survival-focused management style during its 2011 turnaround, when the company was burning $300,000 to $400,000 a month. Once the company stabilized, he deliberately shifted to a team-first culture to sustain the next stage of growth.
- Mike Stacy’s team-first, customers-second, investors-third priority order helped ID90 Travel reach a 95 Net Promoter Score, 100% client contract renewal, and almost no voluntary employee turnover in the last five to six years.
- Underfunding a company, even after raising $13 million in venture capital, forces costly trial-and-error marketing experiments. Stacy now sets spending guardrails and cuts a channel the moment its metrics show it isn’t working, instead of continuing to fund a sunk cost.
- ID90 Travel generates 90% of its traffic directly, cutting its dependence on paid acquisition channels that have grown more expensive and more complex as AI reshapes search.
- Stacy pairs aggressive internal AI adoption, including running three simultaneous coding agents, with a hard commitment to human-staffed customer service, arguing that faster engineering and a human touchpoint are not in conflict.
How Should a CEO’s Management Style Change as a Company Moves From Crisis to Growth?
Mike Stacy took over ID90 Travel in 2011 when the company was burning $300,000 to $400,000 a month. At that stage, he ran the business like a company on its deathbed.
“I use the analogy of companies on its deathbed and who cares about really kind of company morale, right? You got to get the company fixed.” — Mike Stacy
Once ID90 Travel stabilized, Stacy had to reverse that instinct. “We have great proof points. We’re moving in the right direction. So you have to change your management style.” The company that needed crisis-mode urgency to survive needed a team-first culture to grow. Stacy treats this as an ongoing discipline, not a one-time fix. He reads, listens to podcasts, and talks with other CEOs specifically to anticipate what the next stage of ID90 Travel’s growth will demand of him as a leader before that stage arrives.
Why Should CEOs Prioritize Team Before Customers and Investors When Scaling?
Stacy runs ID90 Travel on a fixed priority order: team first, customers second, investors third.
“It comes down to our team first, our customers second and our investors third, because if you go in that route, you follow that path, take care of your employees, they’re going to naturally take care of your customers.” — Mike Stacy
That order isn’t a slogan for Stacy. It has produced measurable results. ID90 Travel has had almost no voluntary employee turnover in five to six years. The company has never lost an airline client except two Russian carriers it lost for geopolitical reasons, and it holds a 100% contract renewal rate otherwise. ID90 Travel also posted a 95 Net Promoter Score from its airline clients, a result Stacy ties directly to how the team treats customers. Investors have benefited last in this order, and even that has worked out. ID90 Travel has fully repaid its investors’ initial capital.
How Can CEOs Improve Capital Efficiency When Scaling a New Business Model?
At Groople, Stacy raised $13 million in venture funding and still ran the company underfunded while automating group travel bookings from 1% to 90% in three years. Marketing experiments, like targeting destination weddings, burned cash without the payoff Stacy expected.
“I thought I was being really stringent with the capital and how we’re deploying it, but in thinking going back, I could have been much more disciplined.” — Mike Stacy
That lesson now shapes how Stacy runs ID90 Travel. He sets clear metrics for every marketing and technology investment, and he cuts spending on a channel the moment those metrics show it isn’t working, rather than continuing to fund it out of sunk-cost thinking. That discipline shows up in ID90 Travel’s results today: 90% of the company’s traffic arrives direct, reducing its dependence on paid acquisition as competition for ad dollars from Google and AI-driven search has intensified.
How Should CEOs Balance AI Adoption With Human Customer Service?
Stacy is pushing AI hard on the engineering and product side at ID90 Travel. His CTO recently ran three AI coding agents at once and became the bottleneck himself, a result Stacy wants to see more of. The company is testing a workflow where product, data, and customer service teams write requirements and code together with AI in the same room, aiming to shrink the gap between an idea and a live feature.
“We have to adopt it and those who aren’t going to adopt it, aren’t gonna be around.” — Mike Stacy
On the customer-facing side, Stacy draws a different line. ID90 Travel automates one-touch customer service tickets that require no real judgment, but it keeps a human on the phone for airline employees who call in with a problem. He measures success by whether the employee’s issue gets solved and whether the interaction was courteous, not by how long the call takes. Stacy credits that human layer, combined with AI-driven speed on the backend, with ID90 Travel’s 95 NPS score.
The Scaling Framework From This Episode
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Deathbed management vs. growth management | Match your management style to the company’s stage: crisis urgency when survival is at risk, team-first culture once stability returns | ID90 Travel moved from burning $300,000 to $400,000 a month to a 95 NPS score and 100% client contract renewal under Stacy’s leadership |
| Team first, customers second, investors third | Prioritize employees above customers and investors, on the logic that a well-treated team will naturally serve customers well, which then benefits investors | ID90 Travel has had almost no voluntary employee turnover in five to six years and has fully repaid its investors’ initial capital |
| Spending guardrails over sunk cost | Set clear success and failure metrics on every marketing or growth experiment, and cut funding the moment a channel underperforms | Underfunded marketing experiments at Groople taught Stacy the discipline that now supports ID90 Travel’s 90% direct-traffic base |
| AI adoption without losing the human touch | Push AI aggressively in engineering and product work while keeping a human-staffed layer for the interactions that build loyalty | ID90 Travel’s CTO ran three AI coding agents at once while the company kept live agents on airline employee calls, a combination Stacy ties to the company’s 95 NPS score |
Quotes from This Episode
- “I use the analogy of companies on its deathbed and who cares about really kind of company morale, right? You got to get the company fixed.” — Mike Stacy, CEO, ID90 Travel
- “It comes down to our team first, our customers second and our investors third, because if you go in that route, you follow that path, take care of your employees, they’re going to naturally take care of your customers.” — Mike Stacy, CEO, ID90 Travel
- “I thought I was being really stringent with the capital and how we’re deploying it, but in thinking going back, I could have been much more disciplined.” — Mike Stacy, CEO, ID90 Travel
- “We have to adopt it and those who aren’t going to adopt it, aren’t gonna be around.” — Mike Stacy, CEO, ID90 Travel
Frequently Asked Questions
How should a CEO change their leadership style as a company moves from crisis to growth?
A CEO leading a company through a survival crisis must run a management style built around urgency, where morale takes a back seat to fixing the business. Once the company stabilizes and shows proof points of growth, the CEO must deliberately shift to a team-first management style. Mike Stacy made this shift at ID90 Travel, moving the company from burning $300,000 to $400,000 a month to a 95 Net Promoter Score and 100% client contract renewal.
Why should CEOs put their team ahead of customers and investors when scaling a company?
CEOs who prioritize their team first operate on the logic that well-treated employees will naturally deliver a better customer experience, which then benefits investors. Mike Stacy runs ID90 Travel on this exact order: team first, customers second, investors third. The approach has produced almost no voluntary employee turnover in five to six years, a 95 NPS score, and full repayment of investor capital.
How can a CEO adopt AI in engineering and product development without losing the human side of customer service?
A CEO can push AI aggressively on the engineering and product side, using it to speed up coding and shorten the time between an idea and a live feature, while keeping a human-staffed layer for the customer interactions that build loyalty. Mike Stacy’s team at ID90 Travel runs multiple AI coding agents at once but keeps live agents on airline employee support calls, a balance he credits with the company’s 95 NPS score.
Executives Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Careers
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits, drawing on 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
