How Do Pricing Strategies Drive SaaS Growth with Marcos Rivera

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue Strategies and their 10x ROI B2B Growth Guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne. Today, I'm very excited to welcome my guest, Marcos Rivera. Now I'm going to read Marcos's bio to make sure I get this right. He's the founder and CEO of Pricing.io, which is a leading consultancy that helps B2B SaaS companies build smarter monetization and pricing strategies. With more than 20 years in software and private equity, Marcos has guided hundreds of tech companies in capturing more value and driving scalable growth. Before founding Pricing.io, he was an operating executive at Vista Equity Partners, where he specialized in product management and pricing across a $65 billion portfolio. He's also the author of the award-winning book Street Pricing: A Pricing Playlist for Hip Leaders in B2B SaaS. He's a frequent speaker, a board advisor, and host of the podcast Street Pricing with Marcos Rivera. He's based in San Diego. He works with founders and investors worldwide to turn pricing into a growth engine rather than a guessing game. Markos, welcome to the show.

No, thanks for having me. I got to bring you with me on the road now with that intro. No one needs to know anything else. Thank you. Good night.

I'm a good hype man. I can swing that towel and run up and down the stage like a champ. So, you've obviously had an illustrious career and seen a lot of things and done a lot of things. Why don't you tell us a bit of the story? Of what created that bio that I just used to intro you there. Yeah.

Everything was perfectly planned since I was 11 years old. No, right? This is one of those things that the truth of the truth, right? So, for me, I've always, by the way, loved business. I love psychology, all those key things, right? So, for me, it was what is going to satisfy all of my curiosities, all the things I want to do, manage the right amount of energy, all those areas. So let me give you the real story. All right? So I was 20 years in corporate America.

All right?

20 years in corporate America and trying to climb the ladder just like everyone else, you know, manager, you know, director, senior, and all that kind of stuff. Did that for a while and it was fine, actually. It was fine. I was able to move up. I managed really large teams, had huge impacts. It was great. It was fine. But over time, what you started realizing is that as you move up and deeper into organizations, you know, the politics go up, all, you know, the, the antics go up. And there's a lot that happens that people that are probably listening right now are nodding their heads like, yeah, there's, there's people issues, there's agendas, there's all sorts of stuff. Right?

Right.

And that's fine too at the end of the day. But I was willing to navigate that shit. I was willing to go around it and say, all right, you know, I can deal with this stuff until I got a phone call one day from a recruiter. And this recruiter said, hey, would you like to work for our private equity firm? They love my background. Just so you know, as I kept going up the ranks, I also started learning how to do pricing. I took a product, it sucked. The pricing was terrible. It would, the revenue would shrink, because it was charging by seats. The more, better it did, the less revenue we got. It was a really terrible model.

That's awful.

So turned it around. It was doing $300K in revenue per year, turned it to $30 million. That's a 100x increase with the right pricing model. And that's where it took off. All of the other product people, all the other divisions were like, can you do my pricing too? And next thing you know, I'm getting really good at it 'cause I'm doing everybody's pricing, right?

Yeah.

So Vista comes a-knockin', this huge private equity firm, and says, would you like to join us? And I was their best practice leader for, for product and pricing. But the pricing took off so much. That's where I spent all my time, 3 and a half years talking to all these companies, figuring out what makes their business models tick and what's holding back their pricing. and then fixing it and then standing in front of the board and looking at them in the eye and saying, you're gonna get an 18% revenue increase, uh, within the next 11 months. Let's do this. And it would happen or we would exceed that. And next thing you know, um, I'm off to the races. I'm having meetings with Robert Smith, the billionaire himself. He wants to know what's going on with this pricing. What can I tell our institutional investors in terms of what we're getting from pricing? So it was the best role I ever had in my life. It was fantastic, the learning. I did hundreds of projects over my 3 and a half years there. But why did you leave that?

Yeah, everyone begged the question.

Everyone said to me, you're crazy to leave this role. High paying, high profile, all this stuff, right? And the real— the reality and the truth is, is that I needed to control my time. And one of the biggest things when you're in a role like that is in, in, in private equity, time is everything. The timing of the deal, the timing of the sale, the timing of all the value creation that you do. And so when a partner picks up the phone and said, Markos, can you be in Chicago tomorrow? We're doing diligence on this deal. Or can you hit this, you know, visit this portco in India because, you know, they're having trouble. You don't ask questions. You get on the plane and you go. That's it. Right? And so doing that year over year, you know, builds, it builds a lot of air miles. I'll tell you that.

Okay.

I was hitting like status in 2 months. But the idea here is, it really wears you down.

Yeah.

And having a 4-year-old son, that was, was, it was starting to really eat at me, like, not being home for him. Then with my, the announcement that my daughter was coming and I'm having a second kid, I'm like, alright, listen, pump the brakes. I can't not be the, the shadow of a dad. Okay? I can't be gone. Alright? So I decided to leave. That was the number one reason for leaving and doing Pricing.io and starting my own, you know, My, my own single shingle was to control my time. That was it. It wasn't a plan.

All right. Well, but you were building off a great foundation, uh, and obviously a lot of expertise that you knew was going to be valuable to a lot more companies, uh, and that would allow you to, to have that control and that freedom that so many entrepreneurs chase.

That's right. It's the, it's the power of accumulation. And people always want to know what's the secret to success, right? It's not just luck. It's actually the accumulation of skills, relationships, and good decisions you make over time. That's it. It's never just one thing. It's always the— all that stuff that adds together. And maybe a decision you made 2 years ago actually helped you take this next step and you didn't even realize it.

That's right. That's right. Well, and so you talked about, you know, this started as a single shingle, which I love that term. I'm definitely going to steal that. But I know that you've certainly grown the business quite a bit and you're, you know, in a— in a planning phase right now for the next stage of growth. And you and I were chatting a little bit before we started that you've got a system that you've built around scaling from that single person to sort of really building your business and that entrepreneurial journey from you. Of course, I want to talk about your domain expertise in pricing because that's super valuable too. But I want to learn a little more about what is this Trampoline System? that, that you were talking about that I'm sure a lot of our listeners will gain a lot from.

Yes. Yes. It was an interesting journey to go from someone who is relying all by himself. And by the way, you know, wife, a baby on the way, a little kid.

Yeah.

In San Diego, which is not the cheapest place to live, by the way.

Right.

And then taking all that, you know, tapping into my savings and my credit cards and just launching into this thing on my own. So I'm gonna talk about this journey because we're, we're approaching our $10 million mark. We're 25 people now. And it's, it stuns me a little bit to say that. It's like, wow, we have this whole squad. Whenever I do, like, our get-togethers, I can't believe how many seats we're filling.

Right.

And all the, the great things that we're doing. So how did we get there? What happened? Right? I wanted to be the same, the, the solopreneur, 4 to 6 clients a year with a couple of retainers, control my time. All is good. Don't travel that much. That was the plan. And that went out the window. And I'll tell you why. After I left the firm, I got some, again, relationships and, and all the stuff that you, you invest over time. They said, hey, Marko, proud of you for taking the leap. Would love if you can help us. Right? So help some companies out there with their pricing. And the work made its way to the board. And this is me doing everything in the spreadsheets, like doing all the formulas. Like I did everything. Okay? Took, they took it to the board. The board loved it. And next thing you know, I started getting these phone calls from board members and emails saying, hey, I saw what the work you did with this company. I'm sitting on the board of another company. Could you, could you help them as well? And I was like, oh, well, what, what are you gonna say? No, of course. Yeah. So I go in there and I'm helping others. And then, so I'm getting this little bit of a referral thing going on. And stuff comes outta left field when you're at this phase as well. And the people that you think were gonna help you and send you a bunch of business actually don't. I'm just gonna say it straight up. But other people, like, outta nowhere, like, oh, hey, we met at this thing and I have this thing. And it's like, oh, wonderful. So just keep an open mind. Right? A lot of times when your pipe and your sources don't pan out the way you think. So as we, as we did that, I started getting more work and I'm like, all right, this is the big question that every entrepreneur should ask themselves, which is, I, I only have so many times in the, any hour, so many hours in the day, so much time to do things. So what I do to sort of expand on that? And the big question is, what should I not do?

Yeah.

And what am I not uniquely qualified to do? So I am not uniquely qualified to be messing around in spreadsheets doing VLOOKUPs and doing pivot tables and all that stuff. I am not. I'm okay. But so I brought in somebody, I brought in a freelancer, and I also tapped in some old friends who I knew were, um, you know, available to do some part-time work on the nights and weekends. And I said, hey, I'll pay you. Can you run with these analyses? Let me show you how to do it. And got on the phone, show, give 'em an hour. Here are my models. Here's what's going on. And immediately they're like, oh, there's a way easier way to do this, Markos.

Right, right. Like this, right?

I'm like, beautiful.

Do it.

Do it. And so brought in a bunch of freelancers, part-timers to help me out just to do some of that work that I was not really efficient at doing.

Uh-huh.

As that started growing, I said, oh crap, there's all this invoicing and scheduling stuff going on. I have no time for this stuff. So I brought in a virtual assistant. She was great. She lived in Kentucky. She was more than happy to do the work. Great. You do it. And now do you see what's going on? Right? Is this, this skill of delegating started happening. I didn't have that. It wasn't that great. I had it, but it wasn't that great. So now I started moving things around. Now I'm coordinating instead of just doing. So now I'm starting to change. This becomes more consistent. When it's consistent, that's when I flipped it to a, a full-on LLC with a structure and employees and W-2 and benefits and Tax craziness and all that stuff, right? So that was the first step in. I started with a team; we were a Fab Five, and now we're we're twenty-five. So that's sort of the beginnings of how it works. I'm giving it to you for real. But how did I scale? This is where the trampoline comes in.

Okay.

So I was really trying to make a. I think in terms of frameworks and systems, it's just how my mind works. And so for me, I'm like, all right, I cannot stand an outcome. that is, is something that we didn't plan for. I really love intentional movements. I like things being strategic. You can't plan for everything, but let's try to do something on purpose and then learn and then keep going. Right? So TRAMPOLEAN, let me tell you what it stands for. The TRAMPO stands for, and it's TRAMPOLEAN, by the way, just to have a little fun with the, with the wordplay. T is for talent. The R is for rhythm. The A is for autonomy. The M is for measures. The P is for purpose, and the O is for objective. That's the trampo. All right? And at first I had tramp. I'm like, that's a really bad acronym. So I had to extend this thing, right? So I went ahead and then the lean is actually L-E-A-N, which means lean operations, lean revenue, and lean delivery. So these are like what I think about. So that's my trampoline. So this is a leadership framework.

Yeah.

What should you be thinking about and driving and influencing as a leader? Let me step through each one here so you know what I'm, what I'm talking about. So when I think of trampoline, the first thing is talent. Do you have the right people on the bus? On the bus? If you have the right people on the bus, you will go much farther. Then you can figure out, you know, which butts go in which seats and all that stuff. But you need to have people, people who are, who are earnest, who work hard, who give a damn, and have the ability to, to sort of learn and adapt. These are skills that are really hard to find.

Yeah.

And I was making things a little bit harder on myself because I was looking, hey, did you have pricing expertise? Did you work for a pricing firm?

Right.

Nobody has that stuff. It made, it made the population really, really small. So I decided to switch and start bringing in people for their raw, like, athletic ability. You know what I mean? Right. Right. Learning. They're good communicators. They're smart. They're motivated. And they have a general good interest in pricing, a healthy interest, but they're not that good at it. They don't have 10 years of experience. I couldn't afford those people anyway.

Right? Right.

So the talent piece is really being very rigorous around the type of talent you wanna bring in. And so those first 5 hires that I brought in, that it, there was a chemistry that really worked well for the team. And even today, as 25, I'm very careful about the chemistry of my team.

Yeah.

The talent, where it is. The bar is set very high. If you cannot meet the bar, then for me it's like, hey, do you, uh, do you need, uh, clarity on your role? Do we need to communicate that better? Do you need some coaching? Or just flat out, you're just not— you don't care. I can't fix the don't care part. I could fix the coaching and the other thing, right? So, for me, if you don't care, you're out.

Right.

And so, it's one of those areas where I know there's people listening right now who probably has an employee or 2 or a leader or 2 who doesn't really care that much, and you're avoiding the tough conversation. You got to have the tough conversation. Move them out. things will open up for you. Okay? So, the talent is the T, right? Making sure you have the right checklist of what you want, and then you start bringing them in piece by piece, and you're constantly evaluating that stuff.

Yeah.

The R comes from rhythm. So, with people now, there has to be a right rhythm and cadence in the business. When are you meeting? The quality of meetings. How often do you review stuff? How often do you do performance one-on-ones? Things like that. You have to pay attention for that stuff because there's way too much time wasted in meetings that don't mean shit. That meeting, you just sit there and you just, you know, talk around about, about stuff, and then you leave.

Could have been an email. Yeah.

Could have been an email. Uh, the agenda's unclear. Nobody writes anything down. Right. Like, all that kind of stuff. And so for me, I am ruthless when it comes to getting together because we're, we're a small team. Time is, time is really money in our world. Yeah. And so we do our Monday alignment meetings where we're like, here's what our priorities for the week. We have our Friday wrap-ups. We make sure that we celebrate the wins and we acknowledge all the good stuff our team's done. What went wrong? Let's be honest about that. Like, we thought this was gonna happen and that happened. Let's talk about it out in the open. And I don't chastise or criticize them, right? I'm just openly looking for understanding and trying to get better. And the team likes that. I have my one-on-ones on an every 2-week cadence. Everything is set. People know you're gonna show up. We're gonna talk about these 4 things. Let's go. Right?

Yeah.

So it, and it didn't start that way, by the way. It was kinda messy at first, but over time I'm like, okay, this meeting sucks. We're gonna kill that. This one is great. We're gonna keep that. And so you just kinda have to figure it out. But the rhythm really matters because then everybody gets into a nice motion. Things are flowing, and now you can move on to the A, which is the autonomy. Now this is the, you know, if you're by yourself, obviously autonomy is not, not, not that common. Right? But the autonomy is how do I, help these folks make good decisions and not be afraid to take a step forward.

Alright? Right.

This is one of the big mistakes that leaders in my, in my role, especially at my size, make, which is, look, I know everything. I'm the boss. I'm the owner. You just, just kinda do what I say. And that's really the wrong way to approach things. Right?

Right.

You may have more domain expertise. You may have more experience. That's all fine. You may have some wisdom to bestow. Great. But people need to feel like they can make a decision and not get, you know, Whipped with the belt or or some in my Puerto Rican heritage, whipped with the chancla. For those you know exactly what that is, right? The big slipper that that they put on, right? But the point here is that my my team feels like they can make a decision, feels like they can make a mistake and move things forward. They don't have to come for me, come through me for everything or come to me for every little decision. In the beginning, it was like that, and I kept having to say, "What would you do?" You can make that decision yourself. So I would actually deflect. In the beginning, I was like, "Yes, do that. Do this. Don't do that." And then I'm like, oh, this is exhausting. So I needed to start saying, what would you do? Tell me why. Or if there was a problem they couldn't figure out, I'm like, listen, give me 2 options. Pick the one that you like and tell me why. Okay. And then it was just slowly, like, pushing it back on them. And then they got the hint after a few times. So the autonomy is really important if you really wanna scale your team. And if you also, if you wanna expand, help them make really good decisions, you can't make good decisions without practicing making decisions.

That's right.

So that's a big piece there. You gotta take a leap of faith on that one. You got— you still with me? I'm going on to M. Okay.

Yeah.

So that's the TRA. The M is measure. This is the piece. And even with our own clients, when we talk about what data do you have on your customers, it shocks me every time. It shouldn't, but it shocks me every time. Very little information. And so how do you then inform your ideal customer? How do you then inform what works in marketing? How do you then change and evolve your offering if you don't measure anything?

That's right.

Well, measuring takes time and effort and I'm too busy doing stuff. Well, that, there it is, right? That's the vicious cycle that will never break. So I made it a, a point early on, where are our blind spots? How do we measure what's missing? And let's fix it. And here's what I did. You know what I did? I pointed out not every 50 things I wanna measure. Let's get the big 5 that we want. And I went into freelancer.com And I hired some like operation metrics, like data guru guy. He was great, by the way. He was awesome. And I gave him a project and I said, here's my budget. Here are the metrics I want. Here are the systems I have. Can you get me these numbers?

Yeah.

He goes, I get in 2 weeks. I'm like, sweet, let's do it. So you don't have to like belabor, like, and force your team to get into like, no, bring in somebody, make it a temp job, whatever it is, start getting some data. And once they start getting that data and tasting it, they're gonna want more. You just gotta get, break through that first batch, and you don't need to aim for perfection, and you don't need a freaking dashboard with 90 different things on it. Start with the big 5, get it, make it consistent, and then just build from there. Measure is a big one. The P, the P is purpose. Listen, as a CEO, as a leader, you are also the number one cheerleader. You're the one that's driving the vision forward.

Right.

Right? And the teams, they're looking at you. Hey, if I'm worried, they start to get worried. But if I'm cool, calm, confident, then they're cool, calm, confident, right? So they're— they take their cues from the leadership, okay? If you're a spaz, they're gonna be a spaz, okay?

Yep.

So for me, the P is purpose. Why the hell are we doing all this? Okay? These are good people. They could do— they could do other stuff, right?

They're—

they're here. You're paying them. Uh, they're giving value. You're also giving them value with growth. Like, there's an exchange going on. Okay? Let's be real about this. Right? Some people call their offices or their businesses their family. And this might be a little controversial, but I actually prefer a high-performing team that respects each other, supports each other, and works well than the family emotion. The family thing can get a little complicated as, as we all know.

That's right.

Families, family, family. Right? So purpose. So what do I mean by that? Is, and I know this is gonna sound, people are gonna be like, Markos, are you serious? You have to repeat yourself. You gotta get comfortable with repeating yourself. So somebody like me who can be a little bit impatient, I don't like repeating myself all the time. But you have to. You have to say it again and again. You have to remind them, this is why we're doing this. This is the impact we are having. This is where we're going, and this is why it matters where we're going. And, and even especially with the, the workforce these days, you know, these folks, they wanna, They wanna know they're doing some kind of good in society, some kind of meaningful impact. It's not just about making money. And, and that's the big thing. I wanna take that focus away from we're gonna be, you know, $100 million, $50 million. That's fine. Okay. But that's not the only thing you're marching towards. It's actually the result of all the good work and the other things you're doing. It's the consequence, right?

Yeah.

So, so keep adding value, keep adding impact and moving that forward and putting a little more flashlight on that. The revenue numbers will get there, but make sure you put that attention on, on why you exist and why you even matter. And do it over and over again. Like, you don't assume everybody just knows because they don't.

Right.

Cool. That's my P. Now for the O, which is the objectives. And this is kind of what a lot of folks talk through as like, what's your annual, you know, goal planning and your, you know, what objectives do you want to hit and tying that to, to the overall North Star metric and all that stuff, Right? That is good. I don't, I don't, uh, try to create 15 different goals or anything like that. I have the, the personal and the business.

Right? Yeah.

And I try to keep it as simple as possible. Do these link? And when I say do these link, does, does the objective take us further towards where we wanna go? But also, does your personal objective link with the business objective? That's the one a lot of people miss. It's gotta matter and it's gotta, it's gotta mesh. And so for me, making sure that they connect more, it's more about the quality of the measure than the quantity. I don't need 50 different things to go after. Let's just get a couple and let's march from there. And then every quarter we check in, how's it going? Like, are we moving towards, oh crap, you know what? This wasn't actually the right thing to measure. Okay, let's change it. Right? And then we'll just keep on and keep it fluid and don't get overly, you know, indexed on we need to hit, you know, this $2 million a week or $100 million, whatever it is. That's, that's the, I think the wrong focal point. So the objective that is jointly agreed upon and connects the dots is what I mean by the O.

Yeah.

Alright?

Yeah.

So, that's your TRA, your MPO. That's your TRAMPO. And now for the lean part. Am I going too fast? Is this good? Because this is the— No, this is awesome.

This is awesome.

This is the thing that I think is a— it's, it's the constant circular motion of, are we lean in how we get revenue? Are we lean in how we deliver value? And are we lean in how we run the business and operations? And when I say lean, I'm talking about that lean and mean. Are we delivering the most impact With the least, uh, uh, amount of waste. Okay? There is waste. And I'm gonna tell everyone right now directly, there is waste in your business right now somewhere.

Okay?

And you have to be like a heat-seeking missile, go after it, um, and, and sort of remove that waste or improve that impact. And I'll tell you this right now, not every initiative is gonna be worth the squeeze. The juice, it may not be worth the squeeze. Sometimes you're just gonna have to let shit run and it's okay. to focus on the bigger things that matter more. So don't be one of those nitpicky, anal, that changes every little thing type leaders. It'll drive your team crazy. Sometimes you're just gonna have to let stuff ride. Okay? So let me give you the quick 3. All right? Lean on the revenue side. As a leader, how are we, how's that money cycle looking? How are we getting money? Oftentimes you're selling something to somebody who wants it and they're willing to pay you money for it, right? In some business form. And so people need to know your stuff, who you are. You need to know who you want, right? And so that needs to connect. So if you're not finding ways to increase awareness of the business, make sure people under— know you exist and make sure you're having the right conversations with the right type of clients, that's a massive, massive area of waste that you can go after first. And then sort of, then how do they go from being aware to you to then trusting you and then trusting you to then buying from you and then buying from you and then starting to work with you, right?

Yeah.

Services, software, you know, you could sell widgets. It doesn't matter. That's the flow. And you have to break down every single step. So I just put it in a Google Sheet and I just wrote down every single touchpoint that we have and how do we improve those touchpoints? How do we make sure that we are, in their mind, that we're a brand, that they know what we're about, that we can connect, that we give them a great sort of safe entry point into our services and then deliver wow. We call it deliver wow in our company. So how do we deliver wow? go a step further, give them a lot of value. Because if you build trust and they can, they can taste it, now a lot of the uncertainty goes away.

Sure.

And your ability to ask for a referral, your ability to maybe extend into another project with them goes way higher. So don't try to load up the front sail and try to sell as much as you can out of, out of the gate. I'd say it's, it's a relationship and a journey, and you sort of have to walk them through. But if you haven't even written it down, it's gonna be hard to do that. So that's the revenue piece. There's a whole pricing component in there we can get into in a minute, but that's that whole like cycle. If you don't know it, go and write it down. Like right now, just write it down.

Yeah.

The second thing I talked about delivering wow, which is the delivery side. So mapping those touchpoints out, here's the big thing is that people don't like big bang, like reveals at the end of a long project or implementation. They like nuggets of value along the way.

That's right.

I'm just gonna say it straight up, right? So for me, how do you give them those bite-sized chewable chunks of value that they can chew, enjoy, then take another bite, chew and enjoy, then take another bite, right? So how do you set your system up like that? And I'll give you the big one. A lot of companies think that more is better and they wanna give you all these things and take you through all these trainings and all this setup and configuration and this and that. You actually were better off breaking those down into smaller chunks. Start with 5 small chunks and then try to create small milestone moments throughout as well. They're probably in there buried somewhere, but you just can't see them because you're, you're going after the big reveal. So that's the big one on the delivery side. And what you're doing is you're looking for places to, to, um, deliver those smaller wow moments, but at the same time, make sure that you can scale this. So ask yourself as a business leader, What would happen if we 10x'd tomorrow? What would break in that system? And if you can think in that, in that term, okay, actually this will break. There's no way that can scale. That's gonna be where you start. Okay? So that's the second lean. The third lean is ops. This is, this is the thing that gets, I think, thrown to the, to the side for the most, right? 'Cause you gotta, you gotta sort of market and make money. You sort of gotta deliver some kind of value to make money. And then there's the ops piece.

Yeah.

And this piece starts to, I think, fester and grow over time. All right? So what happens is your ops is pretty simple when you're like 2 people and you do 1 thing, right?

Right.

When you become 25 people and you do 10 things, it becomes a lot more complex. Legal stuff, tax stuff, HR stuff, review stuff, a 401. I mean, whatever the hell, right? So I started with a system where I would ask myself, is this A, important at this stage of the business? B, can I do it with a, with a vendor or a third party to come in? Like, for example, like finance, taxes, and all that stuff. Do I need to hire a full-time controller or person, or can I have a third party come in and do that?

Right.

Just, we hired a third party. They're a fantastic partner. We love them. So you gotta figure out where do you wanna do it yourself and where do you wanna just offshore to offset it to somebody. And now with AI and agents, you can, you can delegate even more than before. But the point is, what are we delegating? What are we keeping? And let's set the, the sort of operational tissue. And here's the big one for everybody. Write everything down.

Yeah.

It sounds crazy, but they don't write down their policies. They don't write down their time off. They don't write down in how do you handle it when somebody leaves? Like, they don't have any of that stuff, man. So write it down. Start with your onboarding and offboarding. That's like the easiest low-hanging fruit. And then go from there. So that's my big thing on LeanOps is written down intentional, um, the right talent or the right services in the right places, and then just, just keep tweaking and refining as the business grows. Yeah, man, that was a mouthful. I just went through the whole trampoline, but this is what I think about every day and every time I do a quarterly review or an annual planning.

That was awesome. And honestly, like, such a great framework for leaders to think through, uh, how they really get that right talent, how they create that rhythm of meetings that creates that traction, how they build that autonomy that empowers other people, that talent, to actually use the talent that they have. So you're not only delegating, but you're also elevating what they're doing. That measurement, because if you don't have those measures, you can't know that your process is actually working or improving. And then setting those right priorities and that vision as a leader. And then that you know, setting that overall objective which keeps people clear and focused on what it is they're trying to accomplish. And then of course those lean principles across all 3 of those areas of the business. What a great framework, uh, for leadership and strategy. And you obviously, you know, have tons of experience in, uh, lots of areas. I'd love to spend all day with you, but unfortunately I got to be mindful of your time. But for folks that have been listening and getting a lot out of this and really resonating with them, what's the best way for them to engage? What's the best way to get in touch?

Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm really easy to find on LinkedIn, Marcos Rivera. Just follow me. I put a lot of free content out there as much as, much as I can. My big goal there, demystify pricing and make it not so much of a black box. So that way folks can, can, again, do it on purpose and, and get the value they deserve. So find me on LinkedIn. We're also at pricingio.com if you wanna look us up. See what we do, learn a little bit about us. So those are the two big ones for me.

Awesome. Well, Marcus, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really enjoyed it.

No, I likewise, likewise, Mark. Appreciate it.

Talk to you soon.

All right. Take care.

Thank you for joining this episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. We hope you've gained insights to grow your business. If you enjoyed this discussion, please rate, comment, like. on your favorite platform and share to others who will find it useful. Do you know a CEO, founder, or leader at an early-stage B2B services, tech, or SaaS company who would like to be a guest and share their story? Send us a note. Let's schedule a conversation.