Hamburgers, Revenue Engines and CRO Success with Adam Crandall

Hi, I'm Warren Zenna, founder and CEO of the CRO Collective, and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of Chief Revenue Officers. Each week we have an open, frank and freeform conversation with top experts in the revenue space about the CRO role and its critical impact on B2B businesses. This podcast is the place to be for CROs, sales and marketing leaders who aspire to become CROs and founders who are looking to appoint a CRO or want to support their CRO to succeed. Thanks for listening. Now let's go mix it up. Welcome to this episode of the Cereal Spotlight Podcast. This is Warren Zana. I am the founder of the Zero Collective. And you know, I've been doing a number of efforts lately to get more in front of the PE community because I think it's an important place where a lot of the stuff that we're doing could make a big impact, mainly because the PE management style, the way in which PE firms are operating partners are being utilized, is to help companies grow and expand. And I think there's an opportunity where the CRO readiness program could be implemented there to create better cohesion longer term, in the short term, when the CRO is being employed into the company, utilizing our program might have a big impact there. And I've been, I've been having many, many conversations and coincidentally, a gentleman by the name of Adam Crandall reached out to me on LinkedIn just randomly and said, hey, you know, I listen to your podcast, love to talk to you. And yeah, we chatted a little bit. And Adam's like, I come from the PE background. And I thought, okay, let's, let's get on, let's get on the show and talk. Because Adam, sound like you have a really great background and some really interesting perspective on, on things that I even dealing daily a little about with some of the other programs that are available in the marketplace. So I thought, let's talk. So thanks for reaching out to me. Glad to have you here. And let's talk a little bit more about your background and, you know, what brought you to me. Like, why'd you reach out to me and what is it that's on your mind? And I know we talked about it, but for the sake of the audience, like, what is it that is resonating for you in terms of the CRO role and what's happening today with the way that it's being changed and it's being changed in the way that's being implemented?

Yeah, no, I appreciate It. Warren, thanks for having me on the show. Very intrigued with the CRO collective and all that you're doing for CROs like myself and sales leaders across the industry. A little bit of background on myself. I was born and raised in Rochester, New York, upstate New Yorker and got into my career early on after graduation as a inside sales rep. From there kind of climbed the corporate ladder working for Fortune 1000. Left the corporate world and went into more an entrepreneurial focused SME type business with founder led family owned businesses. Did that for a few years and then most recently as a VP of sales. The company I worked for in robotics and Automation back in 2022 was acquired by private equity. It was kind of interesting. I was on the path to be the president of this business and that was kind of what I was striving for. I really wanted to lead that business, be a P and L owner. And when the private equity firm came in and acquired us, they asked me, they said, hey, we really need a chief revenue officer. We need someone that's going to bring together all different communities in a corporation that are revenue facing. And do you know anyone? I kind of took a step back and at this point they knew I was on that path to become the president. That's what I was. I was working my development plan on and I remember it was Halloween night, I was walking through the the neighborhood with my family and I looked at my wife after I hung up the phone and I said, do I know anyone?

Yeah, me.

My wife looked at me and said, you wanted to be the president for years, this is what you were going for. And I took a step back and I'm like, yeah, but to be a chief revenue officer of an entire PE firm that has a portfolio company that's building a group of businesses on this platform. To me that sounded extremely exciting at the time. I didn't know even what that was going to entail. And I think, you know, to dovetail a little bit. That's what really interested me about the CRO Collective is when I got into this, this role. Warren, a lot of people don't know what CROs do or what companies need from a CRO or what the job entails. And again, I've always been a C suite sales leader at, you know, these smaller family run businesses, these founder led companies, even these Fortune 1000 businesses. And they have a different definition of what a sales leader is versus what a PE firm truly needs from a CRO. And I think in the beginning I worked really close with my leadership team to Put together that plan on what is a CRO going to do for this business, how is it going to add value? And how do you immediately, in the short term, start to generate results where you can actually make an impact? I think it was kind of cool doing some research in the CRO collective where you guys actually helped define like, what does a CRO do? And I loved it. I think one of your episodes where you said a CRO is not just ahead of sales. And if you only hire ahead of sales to be your CRO, that's a big mistake. I think the cool thing is at Attronics, what I've learned on my journey is my role is anything but that. I see my role as every day. I'm responsible for what I call revenue generating activities, RGAs. And if I can help with these RGAs drive not only top line, but truly contribute to bottom line EBITDA growth, then I'm doing my role as a CRO in the PE world to be useful, add value and help increase hopefully our return on investment for our investors when we continue to build this incredible platform called Nitronics.

Yeah, it's amazing. I love it. It's exactly right. You hit it on the head and, you know, you sort of arrived to this place sort organically. Right. Which happens. I understand.

I did, I did.

It's interesting. So you said rga. I never heard that. I love it. I love revenue generating activities. I just never heard the term rga. Is that something you came up with or is that something that your PE firm uses? Like, where'd you get that from?

So it's funny, I think it's out there. But I have to give some credit to my CEO.

Never heard it.

Yeah. He kept saying to me is like, Adam, I need all of your time focused on activities that just they got to generate revenue and bookings. And I started thinking, I'm like, our RGA is like revenue generating activities. So we had this conversation like month after month as I got my feet wet into this role, it's like I was flying to this operating company, we call them OPCOs, flying to this OPCO we currently own right now, six OPCOs under ownership. And as I started to fly to these different companies to, you know, energize our sales teams, our marketing teams, I was really challenged as a young CRO to say, well, when you're spending time on the road or your day to day, what is actually going to move the needle and what is that revenue generating activity that you're focused on anytime you're In a meeting, anytime you're on a call, anytime you're looking at a strategy plan, what is actually going to move the needle to generate bookings? And in the PE world, sales is bookings. That was a new term even for me as a CRO was like, what is bookings? It's the work you book. They just use that interchangeably as sales. But ultimately those bookings, they drive revenue, which ultimately drives ebitda. So you. Yeah, my whole focus in my role is every day when I wake up in the morning and the previous night before, I am planning my list of things to do on things that move the needle. And ultimately they are focused on revenue generating activities to help all of our go to marketing. It's another thing in pe, we call it a go to market team. Go to market. To me that was new, right? I bring that up because it was new. It was sales and marketing or business development. Now it's the go to market team where every morning when I wake up it's how do I move that needle and help our go to market team drive bookings and become better every day?

So let's break this up here. Let's unpack all this. So you said initially in your intro that the PE firm wanted a CRO and you described the PE firm as having a definition of that CRO as someone who oversaw all these functions. So why is it you think that your PE firm knew what it was and other ones don't?

Yeah. So again, I have to give credit to my chairman and also my president, young dynamic guys that started this business. So I think they are very well connected to the younger generation that's doing things differently right now with these sales leaders. Also, my president's been around the block. She's a former PE operator. She's also ran and led her own small women owned business. So when she had that type of experience, she actually helped coach and mentor me on well, we know the job title says this. We know this is what the job description says that we hired you for, but let's really map this out. So I think they did a really nice job of kind of breaking it down in chunks, looking at the job description and then really saying, okay, all of these operating companies that we have under ownership, how do we get the presidents and the sales leaders to take ownership of their results while also empowering you as the chief strategist for this whole go to market team to make an impact and really Warren focus with one major goal in mind, scalability. And when I was not in pe, it Was more hit your number doesn't matter if you're doing it every day. Whatever it takes is get it done and drive sales. Now honestly, my goal is do whatever it takes and drive bookings. But if you're not doing it in the mind of scaling where you're taking your knowledge, empowering these go to market teams, teaching them best practices, giving them the tools, equipping them with the things to be successful. You know, my CEO honestly just came out to me right out front and said look, when you start this role, if you hit your numbers year one, but you can't scale this across the whole platform, that's a failure to me. So I feel like they had a definition in mind that was beyond just a croat being ahead of sales and just being responsible for increasing bookings year over year. Even though that is important, they saw more depth behind it.

Okay, so there's a lot to ask here, but I have a weird question and this may come across like a dumb one because I sort of know the answer. But I want to know like in your way that you're viewing this.

Yeah.

When you think about that word scale.

Yeah.

So. So I mean we all know what it means because you've been saying it for 30 years. Right? Sure. You know, so you made an interesting distinction. The way you just described things. It's, it's not this, it's sort of like not the same as just being able to hit your number all the time.

Exactly.

Different. Right. So I would curious to know, how would you make a distinction between sort of like hitting your number and scaling what, what is the distinctive or the distinguishable factors or characteristics about a company that you build, that is a scalable company versus one that always hits their numbers?

Yeah. Great question, Warren. To me it's clearer now than it was when I originally started in this role, when we were developing this role. But I would say after being in the CRO seat now going on two and a half plus years, I would put it like this. As the CRO, if I'm the one always closing, I'm the one always responsible for assisting getting that deal over the line. I have to be present in every conversation, every part of the sales process that is a failure, that is not scaling. What it looks like at Attronics is take your go to market organization. When you're out in the field and you're with that sales rep, you're with that marketing specialist and you're working hand in hand with them, do you leave that revenue generating activity, whether it's A customer meeting, an infield visit, an automation audit we'll call it and we're walking through these customers facilities. Do you leave that meeting with that go to market employee better than when you walked in? Do they have the tools that you've handed down to them? Where when you're not in the room, can they replicate almost where it's not exactly your style or exactly your approach, but do they have the bones and the fundamentals when you're not present in that room to achieve scalable growth? If not, you fail. Implementing salesforce.comcrms that's a major, major responsibility of mine as CRO. Are we just every day being like yeah, we hit our number though, we sold it, or are we actually putting systems and processes in place where we're equipping these operating companies and all of these sales leaders and presidents with data that they can make actionable insights on like three pricing, close ratio, sales cycle, things like that. If I'm not able to do that, where I can create a platform when I'm not present in the room where they can continue to grow each of their businesses, that's not scaling. So I kind of look at it of am I doing it all the time and do I have to be the bottleneck or the linchpin or am I able to do it one or two times and then take that knowledge, equip our go to market organization so then they can repeat that process and do it when I'm not physically with them. And I will say this, we're buying three to five businesses every year right now. Eventually my bandwidth for each of these companies, when I started it was 100% on one company, 50% on two companies. Now I can only give maybe 5 to 10% for each company as we continue to buy more and more companies. So it's even more important now that I actually create a repeatable system in a process that each of these operating companies can use. And I actually call it our go to market playbook that I've developed where we deploy this GTM playbook across all these companies that they can use and build upon that without me being present in every single situation.

Hey everyone, want to thank you again for listening, get great comments across LinkedIn and other channels about the show and it's really gratifying to see that we're having an impact on you. Another thing I wanted to let everybody know is that we also produce events. About two and a half years ago we started these CRO roundtables predicated on the idea that well two premises. One is CROs are looking for other CROs to talk to, which is really true. It's a very lonely job. How do we get a bunch of CROs in a room where they're not being, let's say, disintermediated by panel discussions and sponsorship events and demos and stuff, and really give them a chance to talk to each other. So we created a roundtable event that is essentially that it's a three and a half, four hour discussion between between 20 and 30 chief revenue officers. And these are amazing events. The format took off, people love them and I get requests all the time as to when, when is your next CRO event. So to that end, I want to just let you all know that we have a roundup of them coming over the next number of months, over the remainder of the year. So the next one is in Boston on August 20th. Following that we have two events in September in San Francisco, one on September 16th, which is a dinner. And then we have another roundtable in San Francisco on the 17th. And then we're gonna have one in New York in October, probably mid to late October. And then I have one in November in Chicago, November 18th. So if anyone is interested in attending any of these events, if you're a chief revenue officer working for a company, over 150 to 200 people in your, in your organization, just send me a DM on LinkedIn and ask me about which event and I'll provide you with either the information or the links. But again, it's August 20th in Boston, two in September, on September 16th and 17th, New York in October, late October, and then again in November in Chicago. So sign up for the CRO round tables. They're amazing events and I hope to see you there. Gotcha. So it's a codified series of processes and procedures and technologies and playbooks that can be taught and adopted by other people who can pick them up and do them themselves without needing to be sort of babysat. Right. Because they become a machine. They're all parts of a machine. Right. Almost. Look at it like, I know this is sort of like remedial for a lot of people, but I'm just asking the question because it is an interesting distinction. So we don't talk about a lot that way, but I think, like, while you're telling me this, you know, it's funny, I was thinking about that great movie, the, the Founder, you know. Yeah, McDonald's movie. And you know, it's like these guys, what they did was they sort of, you could Tell they reverse engineering their business, they sort of figured out like, okay, what's the optimal hamburger? You know, they built the best hamburger they could build that they knew would be one that would taste right at the right amount of ketchup and pickles and everything heat and, and all the different, you know, subsequent materials that would require that hamburger to be delivered in a way that the right temperature that would be when eaten. It'd be the perfect hamburger. They're like, okay, how do we make these a hundred times a half hour, a thousand times a half hour? The same exact way. So that when as many people come here as possible, we know we can deliver that same exact hamburger. Not only that, to everybody that's in the parking lot gets the same hanger when they come back next week, it's the same hamburger. Right?

Yeah.

And they built a business around this model of replication of perfection. Right? Or excellence, let's say, because perfection is impossible. Excellence, Right. I look at this the same way. I see like, so, you know, when you first get these jobs and you first start them out in the early stages of a company, you're sort of thinking, okay, so what are the ingredients that make a successful opportunity for us? Right? And some of them are obvious. We know we have to find the right person who has the right problem, who, who has the right money and has the right authority. All that, that we talk about all the time, and then that we know what alternatives they have in the marketplace to, to solve this problem and that why we're the one that they're going to select to use and how we're going to deliver on that promise so that when they buy it, they get the outcome that they wanted in the time frame that they wanted at the price that they wanted. And that the measurable outcomes are the ones that they promised and that they love it so much that they either buy it again or they keep buying it or they tell other people about it. Exactly right. You have to sort of get in the weeds a lit first. You know, and I talk about this a lot in the stages of a company is that those first 10, 15, $20 million are doing that. You're basically figuring out what's the hamburger, what's the right burger. You know, we thought maybe it was this much ketchup, but in fact it's got these many pickles. And then you get to the point where it's like, wow, this is, we figured it out. This is the hamburger and this is the way that gets cooked. Now, how do we make a million of Them, Right. So. And so you. You need someone to go, all right, we're going to engineer a machine that produces that outcome repeatedly. And one that I could codify such that when I hire new people, I can pull them into the system, put them to work in a system that we know works, and train them. All the processes that if you follow these at scale, we use the word at scale, you'll be able to produce it over time and replicate it with success. Right. And then the other factors are, well, you know, things change. All of a sudden a new technology comes into play, or the economics of the market change, or customers change their things, or AI gets invented, and now we have to complet change the way we go to market. Right. So you need to also build a way to be flexible enough to respond to the environment, because, you know, people aren't going to be eating hamburgers the same way all the time. All of a sudden, people want fake hamburgers. They want hamburgers that are made of organics, or they want, you know, chicken burgers or they want. Yeah, exactly. And so I think it's really cool. And what fascinates me here is it's. It sounds like what you guys did at your company was you sort of built this yourselves, right? You didn't have a third party to come in and say, this is how you do this and that's what we do.

Right.

We're a third party that comes in and we're like, we have a way to do this right, so you don't have to sort of make it up. How long did it take you? Like, what. At what point in the stage of your business were you at. Were at the point at which you figure you had the hamburger ready to go and then you had to scale it?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I would say for the first six months, there was a lot of trial and error in figuring that out. Reason being that we only had two companies, owner ownership in those first six months. So you're working with different presidents, different personalities, different sales leaders. So you build your playbook based on what's working well, and then you buy more companies and you adjust your playbook. So I would say the first six months we had a really nice foundation and we had a good draft of our playbook after everything we learned with those first two acquisitions under ownership. But I would say after the first year, once we acquired in a few additional businesses and we had that core group of OPCOs under ownership, we really started to hit our strides. Our playbook really got Again, not perfected, I would say, because it never can be perfect. It's always a living document. It's always being worked on. But it got pretty, pretty foolproof. And we were able to use that playbook to start to build that scalability. And again, our hiring processes, they started to exemplify and become stronger. And I would say out of all of this, the teams that we built, after a year, we started to figure out who are the right people in the right seats. Like some of the legacy employees in our go to market organizations within these companies, they couldn't make the transition to the new PE model, to the ownership that, you know, where we were looking to go, where before it was, oh, you missed your number. You don't scale, you don't have data. You want to use the CRM, don't worry about it. You know, this is a small bit now it's, hey, you got to be ready to use AI. You have to be ready to use a CRM. You have to be ready to scale and grow and know your numbers. So after a year of kind of really taking everything in, working with all of our different OPCOs and dealing with all these founders, right. That can be a challenge too, because each company has a founder. They started these business for 20, 30 years, and they have a way of doing it. And they have to also adapt to the go to market playbook and the go to market strategy. So there's also an art on how do you use what I would call a matrix style of leadership where you have to influence your OPCO leadership and actually get them to buy in on your playbook and your way to do business. And how do you build credibility where when you're telling them, no, the hiring process shouldn't be like this, you don't need people like this, or you're encouraging them to maybe exit on an underperformer that has been there for two decades. Because this is the type of Persona and portfolio of a person that we're looking to join the team. There's a challenge in that. So it was about a good year where we worked to really perfect that. And that's when we started to see some significant traction. After a year, the results are starting to speak for itself. Warren. I mean, we are up massive percent right now versus prior year and I would credit that because we have a scalable playbook now.

So I know it's a stupid question. I should have asked this about an hour ago, but tell me about Adtronics. What business are you in? What do you sell? What do you do, who's your customer, etc.

Yeah. So Adtronics is a pretty incredible business right now, and I would say it's one that's pretty unique. We are a buy and build platform where we're acquiring three to five companies every single year. They are robotic and automation companies with the goal to advance human health and technology. And we're buying companies every single year that are in pharma, life sciences, med, device, general manufacturing and robotics. And basically bringing all of these companies together. And we're probably going to be 20 to 30 companies strong over the next few years with that goal in mind to bring this incredible robotic technology to these companies that are looking to advance human health. It's amazing platform they built. It launched in October of 2022 when they made that first acquisition, and the first robotics and automation company that they acquired was mine. So, like you mentioned, I kind of, you know, very blessed and fortunate. Where I got lucky, I fell into the PE world, which, when you talk to people in the industry, it's really tough to break into PE if you don't either have experience into it or you have a strong network into it. So Itronics is on that mission and they're building one of the most unique workplaces that I think a buy and build has seen in a long time in the PE world.

Thanks again for listening to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. We're excited about all the great guests we have and more importantly, we're excited mostly about you for being avid listeners and supporting the work that we do here. Feel free please to share the CRO Spotlight Podcast with any of your colleagues. We just think there's a great wealth of information here and want to get the word out to as many people as possible. And your, your support of the show is really appreciated. I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bimonthly group of six seasoned Chief Revenue Officers who are looking for a Chief Revenue Officer, board of Directors, so to speak, that they could share what's going on with them, collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Masters Councils, again, they're twice a month and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own Board of Directors of Chief Revenue Officers, it's a private, confidential conversation that we have. It's infinitely useful. Imagine having a room full of other chief revenue officers you can talk to and say, hey, I'm working on this. Or have you guys figured that out? Or I'm having this issue right now with my business or my results. These are just invaluable conversations with chief revenue officers. Chief revenue officers have a very, very unique role. It's a very lonely job and only other CROs understand what you're going through. So that's why we created this program. So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Masters Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DM me masters or master's Counsel, and I'll follow up with you and set up a call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there and thank you. What's the name of the PE firm?

Yeah, CA Partners is the PE firm that actually has developed the Portco and Tronics, the portfolio company that's acquiring all of these different operating companies.

Gotcha. And all these electronics and robotics companies are all in the health sector?

Yeah, majority of them are. So it's funny, in the beginning we were heavily focused on automation and machine builders, these general companies that just did more fully customized projects. Those businesses did very well. But we learned a lot from that in the first 18 months. And what we started to do was then shift our strategy and really acquire companies now that are heavily focused in life sciences, pharma and med device, but now that have more standardized robotic automation tools. Products where companies in the pharmaceutical industry that are looking to discover a drug, produce a vaccine, companies that are looking to focus on deploying medical device products, they can actually now purchase a standard product off the shelf with these companies in robotics and automation to increase their roi, decrease their labor costs, and ultimately help solve for one of the biggest challenges we're seeing right now. You can't find people to make this stuff.

So you're not a SaaS business, are you?

We are not. We are what I would consider us a capital equipment business focused on manufacturing of capex equipment in these industries.

So you're selling actual hardware products. You name it, you manufacture them and you sell them. It's like you know, any of the other larger medical devices companies. Right. But more on the robotic side. Could I work with.

Yes. So we're actually making capital equipment to empower these med device companies are pharmaceutical companies to in return manufacture their end products. So we'll actually.

You're giving them a capability here.

What you're doing exactly Exactly. Yep.

Okay, interesting. So this is where it's interesting, right, because you guys are not a SaaS business. So there isn't the, quote unquote, repeatable business model that other SaaS businesses are, I would say, saddled with. And I'll. I'll say what I mean by that in a minute. But you're producing something that I assume probably is a longer sales cycle, a lot more stakeholders involved. Right? There's.

Exactly.

Decisions have to be made. So what is the sales cycle? How long does it take for one of your products or services to get sold into a customer?

Yeah. So five are operating companies. Your average sales cycle is minimum six months. Could be all the way to 18 or 24 months. It's standard capital equipment. And you know, when you look at that, it's multiple decision makers, it's jumping through a lot of hoops. You have to get a lot of buy in early on, so it could be long. But one or two of our other companies, it's actually an aftermarket service focus. So it's funny you bring that up. You know, your traditional SaaS companies, they have that reoccurring revenue model. Some of our companies do and the ones that don't. I'm actually tasked right now, again, chief Revenue officer. Another project that never thought would fall into my realm in the beginning, where we're actually looking at how does each of these companies develop a large percentage of their business of reoccurring aftermarket revenue. So when you sell a piece of equipment.

Yep, sure.

They have a service, do they have spare parts, do they have wear parts? And we're finding a ton of success in 2025 with that, where previously we were not as heavily focused on it.

Interesting. So it sounds then to me that because you guys have this sort of non repeatable business, at least essentially at the core business, and it's a long sales cycle that you don't really have. I mean, I don't want to make any assumptions. I'll ask you, do you have like SDRs and BDRs or do you just have pure full play salespeople? How do you manage that part of your business?

Yeah, it's a great question. So you know, number one, some of these customers, I would say it's one or two pieces of equipment this year and maybe they don't have a project for another 18 months. Some of them, which is kind of neat, if you do a good job, they could give you five to six machines every year of the same piece of equipment. So there's actually a Lot of reoccurring revenue. When people think in this industry, there's not. How you handle that is you have to have a mix and you're going to market team, you got to have what I call SDRs or BDRs in our business that are constantly hunting or prospecting. They're using AI, they're using LinkedIn, they're using different tools like zoom info to help find new customers and new accounts. But on the other end you also need farmers and account managers that can what I call map accounts. So major account penetration where you take a power energy customer, they take a med device customer, they take a pharma customer and they say, well, we're doing business in say Chicago. They have 10 facilities around the US or even different parts of the globe. How do we get into all of these other facilities and kind of connect the dots? So we have all the way from a BDR at the entry level to all the way up to, you know, strategic account sellers, account executives, outside sales reps. It's really a mix on how each of our business is do business. Now they go to market and being that we have six operating companies, each of them have a different industry and a different model. So it doesn't apply equally to each business. It's different.

Gotcha. What's the average contract value of the type of things you're selling?

Yeah, so I mean it could be anything, honestly, like for capital equipment, it could be small as a few hundred thousand dollars to, you know, 4, 5, 6, 10 + million of a machine, depending on how complex it is. Where if you're selling more aftermarket spare parts, it could be, you know, a few hundred dollars, all the way up to, you know, thousands of dollars if you're, you know, providing them with a service contract or a master services agreement.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. So let's, let's, let's talk a bit now about how you built this thing. Right? So you come in as the CRO, they tell you what you have to do. You're going to be this guy who's going to run all these things. It's sort of new as what you're describing, but you know, I'll do it. Great. How did you figure it out? Like what was the way? I know it sounds like trial and error, but what I mean is, you know, what was like, give me more specific. Like what are the first things you did? Like, what was the process that you decided to engineer to get yourself through that initial learning process?

Yeah, so one of the first things I did Was it was interesting. I had a period of time to really prepare. When I was offered the role ahead about a 60 day window to start building out my playbook. And I would say the first thing I did was I put together a 30, 60, 90 and I said okay, what am I going to do in this role? The first 30, 60, 90 days. But on top of that, I've always done that in previous roles. What you do in previous roles doesn't always work in current levels. What I learned fast was in PE you got to quickly have add value in the short term. You have to have a long term mindset. So we started building out what's my one year plan, three year plan and five year plan. I put together that plan, I ran it through multiple board members on our board because it was great to get their buy in. I had one individual who is, he's an incredible board member still with us right now. He's a 25, 30 year veteran as a CEO and he wrote the private equity playbook. This guy, I mean complete genius in peace. And he helped build a whole go to market strategy with me, put together this, this playbook in my, my 3060, 91, 35 year plan, presented this up to the board. I got buy in because obviously these are investors that are involved in this. You want to make sure you get buy in alignment. I think after I got that I started to put it to work and test it. And what was working well, what wasn't working well, I started to do these kind of post mortem analysis where I met with my chairman and my CEO, I met with some of these board members and I met with these operating presidents and I said, okay, we're 90 days in. Here's my plan. What's working well, what's not working well? A ton of self reflection. Warren. I think you know where, where sales leaders can get caught up is, is that ego, right of oh this I know it all, this is working perfectly well. You know, you gotta be honest with yourself. Some things work, some things don't. And can you be humble enough to say, you know what, I screwed these things up. How do we change it? And I would say, you know, one of those great examples, you know, everything reported into me as a CRO, I had everything. I had all inside sales, all bdr, all outside sales. And we had presidents on our team saying whoa, wait a minute, if you own everything, then how do I have any accountability to my P L, to my EBITDA number, to my profit number and my president? I sat down really quick and said, you know what, maybe we need to make a pivot, an adjustment on your, you know, 30, 60, 91, three, five year plan. And we came up with more of a decentralized model where we said, okay, you are the CRO, you're the chief strategist, all go to market related marketing, sales, business development, new revenue channels. But these presidents have to take ownership of. Do they want to appoint their own sales leader? Do they want to run their own sales team as presidents, because they want to run lean, do they set the sales targets or do you set the sales targets? And ultimately we shifted to a decentralized model. We empowered them to do that so then they could say, I own everything. So if I miss my profit number, I can't go to the CRO and say, yeah, but I don't have control over sales. And that was an aha moment to me. I think a lot of people think, oh, you're the chief revenue officer, you need to have all the VPs under. You should have all the direct reports. Maybe in some businesses in pe, when.

You'Re in a buy, I don't see that working anywhere. That wouldn't.

And it didn't work. It didn't.

I get it. That's really interesting. So, yeah, you were able to sort of see how the role needed to be formulated through trial and error.

Yeah. While still hitting numbers and still producing. Fortunately, because I get it, you have to do both. Right. Yeah.

I think the big idea. I wrestle with this a lot, which is, you know, I'm still amazed I get this pushback, but maybe I shouldn't be. You know, I hear people say that's impossible. You're never going to find anybody that can do that. There's no, there's no such person who can know all that stuff. You know, you need expertise. You need functional expertise and disciplinary expertise. You need someone that runs marketing and someone that runs sales. And my answer to that is, well, I'm not proposing the opposite. Of course you do. I mean, if I'm running, if I'm the CRO of a company and I oversee all revenue related functions, doesn't mean I do all of it. It means that I'm responsible for it. And which means I have to hire people whom come to the table with the best possible functional expertise that I could find, whom report to me and execute on that component of the revenue function effectively in accordance with the alignment principles that we've created here. That's it. You got to go find someone who is the best marketing person you can find. The best sales leader you can find.

Yeah.

You know, in fact, I think, like, the greatest CROs I see, aside from having this sort of, like, strategic systems mindset, they also come to the job with these, like, superstar teams that they bring with them. You know, they're either really good at knowing how to, like, take the raw material that they're handed and turn them into superstars or determine that they're not going to be, which is a really important one, too, or they bring people with them and they're like, look, there's this person I've been working with for, like, you know, 20 years. They're the best marketing person. They know this business, and we work well together. They know the playbook, and I think it's great if I just put them in and this way we'll have no friction, and it can be disruptive. I mean, it's like sort of going back to the McDonald's movie analogy. You know, an interesting pivot in the movie was, you know, these guys were freezing ice cream to make the shakes. Right. And it cost them so much money to store and freeze this ice cream, but they like the taste and the way that the product was to the customer.

Yeah.

And this guy was like, this is stupid. We can't scale your restaurant this way. We can't afford all this ice cream and this refrigeration, so we're going to get rid of it. We're going to get a powdered ice cream mix. And they were like, no, you'll ruin the experience.

Yeah.

Remember that whole thing?

I remember, and it was a brilliant.

Moment because it was like, you know, I sort of saw both sides of this thing, and I saw how the guys who built this business, they. They were like, what makes the best milkshake? This does. Right. But they sort of knew, too, that the business wasn't going to be sustainable by keeping it, doing it that way. And there's some compromises you have to make when you do stuff like this. And this is like, the job of the CRO is to know, like, where do we compromise? What's the right place that we decide that we're going to let this down? Now, my opinion, and I don't know if it's the answer. I mean, no polls were taken, but I mean, do you make the product less good to save more money, or do you figure out other ways to save money? And I. I tend to be more on the side of the customer than anything else. But sometimes, you know, the product that you made, if you can't find out or re engineer a different way to make it as good, you have to sort of figure out a way to do it differently. And that to me was a really fascinating thing because there was no right answer to that one. You know, he looked like an evil guy for doing this. At the same time too, it was smart because it ended up actually opening up him to do the thing so similarly. Right. So when you look at your your job and you see you're making all these different compromises, one there was I have to give these people some authority or else they're not gonna be able to do anything.

Exactly.

But what if be specific, like what about marketing? Like how do you manage a marketing function in this business? From A, to make it sure that it's being done properly, how do you measure its success and B, how do you ensure that, you know, marketing integrates properly with the sales organizations? I'm just curious how you sort of.

Work that one out.

Thank you so much again for listening to the C Spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the Sierra Collective communication strategy and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with other people is really vital because we want to get as many people listening to this great stuff as possible. A couple things to note. If you're a aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even a old salty CRO and you're looking to either become a Chief Revenue officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a Chief Revenue officer, we offer the CRO Accelerator course. It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. It's a 15 week course that is populated by aspiring Chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO Accelerator course. It's people who are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now. They have number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader, or even rev ops leader. And they either want to move into the C suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn. Just DM me CRO accelerator and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can send you more information, give you a brochure. Of course. So again CRO accelerator course. 15 week program for aspiring and newly hired Crosby. Take advantage of it. It's been great. And you'll see some more information about it on the website. Thanks.

Yeah. So I think it's interesting, right? Again I go back to in the beginning it was all under me and I looked at it as I stepped back, Warren, and I said, wait a minute, what are we really trying to do with marketing? Well, marketing is here to serve the operating companies, the six that we own, the three more that we buy in the future. So what we started to do was we integrated marketing more closely. With each of the op goes presidents. And we said, okay, marketing, you're going to actually report into all of these operating presidents. Our president CRO is going to oversee the strategy of it, but the marketing person is going to actually report to all these presidents and they are going to work hand in hand with, okay, all of these projects that we need. These are our initiatives. We're going to build out a clear roadmap with this marketing person and sit down and set those expectations of we need better websites, we need better collateral, we need better content. And I think one of the ways they measure that is again, our playbook has a definitive, clear structure of KPIs, these key performance indicators where again corporate at the electronics level will set these. They work hand in hand with these operating presidents. And we say, okay, here's our strategy, here's our playbook. These are the things you want them to do. But how do we measure success? I think one of the things that we look at is, okay, awareness, big trade shows, big. But at the end of the day, I look at it, is it moving the needle? Is it a revenue generating activity? Is it actually generating qualified leads that we can track? And are these qualified leads turning into bookings one way or another? And is it contributing to our sales number for us again, PE is all about driving profitability, driving a return and driving ebitda. Maybe in a bigger company it's, you know, more about brand awareness or you know, different things like that. But we are definitely more focused on is that marketing function, equipping our sales teams to be more effective, to be stronger in the field so they can bring in more sales and are they helping hand in hand these presidents achieve these different agenda items throughout their year to help them meet their sales goals. And I think that's pretty simple. It's like is marketing helping our go to market organization at the end of the year meet that bookings target? So our backlogs are healthy for the following year and. And effectively did they contribute to making sure we had enough revenue to hit our EBITDA goal in that current fiscal year.

It's really interesting because, you know, I sort of view marketing as not one thing. It's, I'd say probably three things. You know, there's the branding part, which I do think is really important. I think if you're going to be in the market, you know, you already said it, like awareness, like, sure, you know, going to a trade show is a way in which awareness is generated, but the way that you're differentiated at that trade show is branding. Right, agreed. And your, your ability to communicate and substantiate some degree of thought leadership, or whether it be just a position that you take in the marketplace or a unique benefit that you have in the marketplace, or trust that you have in the marketplace. Right. All these things that go. And these things, frankly, they really can't be measured that well. I mean, you know, I don't know how many people call me because they trust me. You know, I could ask them. I suppose I can say, why'd you call me? And they say, well, your podcast is great. You seem smart. Okay, great. I guess branding worked. Right. But even still, I can't get that granular with it. I can't say, like, if I do this much more branding, I'll get this many more sales. It doesn't work that way. You know, it just keeping. Keeping on the ball. Right. And so I think that, you know, the. I'm going to talk a bit about marketing here because I think it's an important thing. Some of that stuff, and I call it the sort of magical know part of marketing that is vital. It gets kind of thrown to the side because I can't measure it. If I can't measure it, let's not do it, you know, and so I, I think that I don't know enough about your business, but I would imagine that, you know, there are competitors, there's alternatives, there's other things. Right, exactly. So why is it that they work with you? Right. Everything's not just a sales effort, like getting in front of them. And, you know, there is a degree of marketing that is associated with sales. Like if I'm a good salesperson, salespeople, as well as having a good process and understanding how to talk to the customer and understand their business and knowing how to communicate price and being asked for the order and all the stuff, decision makers, they also have to know how to talk about things in a way that is compelling and that sets that difference and that they're trusted. And I think that's actually marketing. I don't think that's sales. It's. We call it salesmanship, but it's not the same thing. And I think that that's an interesting thing. I think we, we've. We're getting philosophical a bit. But I'm asking this because I'm curious what your point of view is on it. We've taken marketing and we moved it over to the SDR function. Right. Because the SDR is out there trying to cover the ground and get the ground cover that a good marketing campaign should be doing. Right. So I could take that money that I put into SDR Group and I can say, I want you guys to make 200 calls a day and here's your script, and I want you to reach this guy or this person and I want you to say these things and get them to understand how to unlock this problem that they're having and that your awareness of it is such that they go, wow, you're so smart. Maybe we'll talk again.

Yeah.

As opposed to saying marketing, I want you to build a campaign for us that talks about why we're unique, why we're valuable. And when you make it look a certain way and have a certain sort of tone to it and a certain feel to it, that is unique and that's repetitive enough that the people in the marketplace whom we are talking to see it enough times that they start thinking about us as the ones that they turn to for the solution. And screw the SDR team. I'm gonna have you guys do that. So when my sales guys make the phone calls, they're like, oh, we know you. We saw your marketing.

It was really warms it up for you.

That's correct. I personally think that that's. I got a better longer term strategy because I think that, like, if my SDR team fails, well, then I'm left with. With nothing. At that point, I gotta reinvest in my SDR team. Whereas good branding, it lives on it, it stays in people's minds. Right. You remember all the brands you're familiar with. When was the last time you saw a Cheerios ad? I mean, but you remember what it is. You can even taste it when I say honeybee. Right? Right. Yeah. So all I'm saying is I think, like, this is sort of interesting. I'm a CRO. I'm thinking about marketing as a combination of a revenue generating thing, but also a trust building thing, which I can't go back to my PE firm and say, well, this is how much this investment created for us. What I could do is say, you know, come with me to this trade show and walk around the trade show and ask them which category brand in our sector that they respond to most. And when everyone says us, there you go. That's the result of what the marketing did for us. And that's invaluable. Right. So, I mean, I do think, like, there is an interesting sort of play on what marketing is. And I'm, you know, I suspect a lot of it is collateral. You know, creating, you know, white papers or building, you know, decks and, you know, presentations and, you know, all that sort of stuff. And that. That's a sales assistant stuff independent of the sales program. Marketing is something that should live out there. This is certainly not intended to be a dissertation on marketing, but when you speak to me this way about this, we talk about revenue generating. I think it's a bit dangerous because not everything is directly tied to revenue. However, it still generates revenue because the energy that it creates comes back to us in ways that sometimes we can't measure and is invaluable. And I think that's an important thing. Anyway, I just wanted to kind of play.

I think we're aligned with that. I think there's a lot of things that we do track and that we can measure. But there are other things to your point that are being done right now where you're like, huh, Are we really getting the ROI out of that? But then you get a white paper, you get a customer that says, I want to do a video and do a case study for you guys, and you're like, okay, our brand is paying off because they trust us. And marketing captures that. Where a salesperson is like, I just wanted to get that order and hit my number. They're not really focused on that. So I think that's where marketing really comes in. And there's. Those are some of the things that they're focused on that you might not be able to tie directly to a spend or an actual roi.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. I had an interesting conversation. You probably could tell I have a marketing agency. We do this for a living, too.

Yeah.

And so I was having a client, A cost conversation with a customer is working with us for a really long time. They spend a good amount of money with us to do organic marketing for them. Mostly it's this sort of stuff. It's like thought leadership stuff.

Yeah.

Happens in the background. Things that you sort of like, know you should do, but you don't really know how to measure anyway. And they were doing this big evaluation. I think it was because they did get some funding, and they were probably being asked to, like, look across their portfolio of services and find out which one really getting those results. Right. I hear this a lot. So they called us up and they're saying, you know, we want some proof. That's okay, fine. I said, we'll do it. So, you know, we're doing things like, you know, when people search for your company, you're on the first page of Google.

Yeah. SEM, SEO, stuff like that.

Right. But you know that's a metric, right. Because you see the page, you can see what number it's on. It has some numerical kind of hierarchy to it.

Okay.

And then he was saying, yeah, but what does it do for us? You know, I was like, okay, well, let's take a look at your web traffic and all this stuff. We do what we can. At the end of the day, he was still sort of saying, you know, I still don't see the value in what we're paying you. So what I said was, I said, you know what? Then let's just turn it off and stop doing it. And he said, no, why not? I said, why not?

Yeah.

And you have an answer. I said, you don't really know, do you? I said, but, you know you have to keep doing it, don't you?

Exactly.

I said, you know, sometimes that's enough because your gut tells you, you know, you got to keep doing this. In fact, I bet if we turn this off, you'd probably in three months, go hire somebody else, do the same thing. Because you know that this is important and you've been trained to try and measure everything, but certain things can't be measured, but they're vital, you know?

Yeah.

And, you know, it's an interesting sort of area of management that I think we tend to overlook because we're so busy trying to measure everything that we throw a lot of really important things out the window because maybe we can't put them into Salesforce and talk about the, you know, the lift on them. And I think it's a. It's a pretty fascinating thing. So I don't know, it's just something I'm just curious about when CROs are looking at marketing, because it's a topic that comes up a lot.

Yeah. I think in the PE world, it's. Is it adding value, even if it's not an rga or adding to the sales, but is it Adding value to our operating company presidents, like are they, are they seeing value out of it? Whether it cannot be measurable or not? These presidents that run these companies, they have all these things they want to get done. So are they happy with that marketing?

Sure. I mean, if I'm a president and I am one of your port cos and I go to a function and everybody walks up to me and goes, oh, you're those guys. That's awesome. I love those that, you know, they're.

Going to be very happy.

Exactly. They're going to go, that's great. Wow.

Holy crap.

That's really cool. I didn't know like with myself, when I go to an event and I introduce myself, oh, hey, I listen to your podcast.

It's great.

You know, that's like, okay, I guess it's working. I don't know, I'm just talking my ass off here. But it works. So. So what I mean is I think it's sort of important thing and yeah, I think it's overlooked. I do, I think that these machines, these machines that run these businesses over measure to the point where they throw out magic that is really vital to a business. So anyway, yeah, so I have a question for you before we sign off here. What are some things you tell a newly hired chief revenue officer, someone who just gets the job, just like you, they're called to arms. You know, they go, joe, you're our sales leader, you're a genius and we think you'd make our next CRO. We want you to run this thing. How would you suggest that person start?

Yeah. So first thing I would say is I take this one big piece of advice. And when I was in my early 20s, when I got into sales first, I had this great CEO in this Fortune 1000 company I worked for and he, he gave me this advice and I'd say this is the number one thing I would tell any young or aspiring or new CRO that gets into the role that hasn't been in it before. First thing you should do, hire people that are smarter than you. And a lot of people think, oh, they're going to take my job, they're going to make me look bad. That is short minded. You need to bring in people in that CRO function that are going to rally around you, that can equip you with data, that can equip you with insight that have been strong sales people or strong sales and operations people are on the revenue generation team. Rev ops. You need a strong bench of talented professionals. So number one, hire Strong people. Hire people that are smarter than you and bring them along the ride with you because you're definitely going to need them. At the end of the day, your people are everything. You get the best systems, the best processes, the best playbook. If you don't have the right people in the right seats that can run your playbook, that can equip you with the right data, that can kind of cut through the swirl and cut through that noise, Warren, you have nothing. So that's the first thing. The second thing is go in and be humble and listen and learn. Don't go in like you have all the answers. Like when they bought my company, I was like, oh, we, we quadrupled growth year over year. I was going in, I was like, yeah, we're going to. This just can easily be repeatable. When you buy three or four different companies and they have different backgrounds and different go to market strategies, you're better off taking the approach of being like, okay, how have you done this? What's worked well? What hasn't worked well? Before you make assumptions on, I'm just going to deploy this playbook and put you in this kind of cookie cutter box to do it. So that's the second thing and I think the third thing is the biggest thing. I've also learned from this. You're not just all the time responsible for hitting bookings. Yes, that's your number one rule. But if you have a market headwind, if you have a supply chain issue, you have something that is not in your control, it's going to prevent you from hitting those targets. Your next major job is to work closely with your chief financial officer and your CEO, that company, and you need to give them a forecast and let them know what is going to happen in that go to market function. That was the biggest learning, I'd say, out of all of this CRO kind of transition that I got into, Warren, was if you have a rough year but you can't forecast, it can get you into trouble quick because at the end of the day, if you can't hit your number and there's reasons why, if you can equip your, your leadership team with data and insight into, hey, I think we're going to come in here plus or minus 10%, they can control costs, they can re pivot on how the business is structured and they can still make sure the business is successful. And I think this year that's been a very big success of mine. After Learning a tough 2024 with some of the challenges, I can now tell my president and my cfo, hey, this is going to be a forecast within plus or minus 10% that's giving them the ability to run the business much easier. And it's like driving in the dark with headlights. You either can see in front of you to an extent or you can't. And I'd say any CRO, when they jump into this, make sure you are fully aligned with your CFO and you are focused on forecasting whether it's good or bad. And you have a handle on that.

That's really good stuff. Thank you. What do you think are the top sort of competencies of a good CRO? If you were evaluating a CRO right now, if you were interviewing for one, like, what are the things you think that they skills and competencies that they must have and what are ones that are nice to have?

Yeah. So I would say, definitely speaking in the PE backed world, I'm sure you know this applies also to SaaS and other businesses. But I would say, number one, you have to have energy and you have to be the chief cheerleader. You do like your team under you. These sales reps, these go to market organizations. Even the presidents and the sales leaders, even if things get rough, you have to be the cheerleader they have to see in your face. Doesn't matter if it's a tough year, if it's a bad quarter, that you are staying positive and you're pushing them forward. They have to see that. So I look for leaders that have that positive energy, that excitement, that have that passion. Like, you can't teach that. I think the second thing is, how do you have that balance where when you manage up, you don't manage up with unfounded optimism? Because as a CRO, again, I look for that passion and that optimistic type view. When you manage up, how do you make sure that you're communicating to those leaders, whether it's the board, the PE firm, the investors, your CEO. Look, we had a great quarter, but let me tell you what my blind spots are and let me tell you what I'm worried about versus oh my God, we had an amazing quarter. This is never going to stop. It's just going to keep going. And then all of a sudden there's like, well, Adam, what happened? You had an amazing Q1 and now the numbers are down. It's like, oh, but this happened. Were you focused on the blind spots? Were you even focused on what could go wrong? That was a big learning for me as well. It's like we call it unfounded optimism. At Atronics manage to realistic optimism. Yes, things might be going well, but how do you communicate that up properly and then how do you still keep the troops motivated down below? So that's another thing I look at and I say the third thing, Warren, you know, a big thing is just integrity and getting in front of bad news. You have to be willing to just look people in the eye and say, look, this is what's going on. Here's reality. This is what's going well. This isn't what's going well. But the things that are not going well, here's what I'm going to do about it. This is what I want you to be aware of and this is how I'm managing it versus thinking that maybe you'll just get better. Let's wait a few more weeks. You know, we had one business where we went through a few months, went through a challenging economic time and it was like, well, you know, there's so much optimism. You know, the team kept saying, it's going to get better, we're going to crush our number. And it's like, but at what point do you kind of say, well, hold on, we got to reset some expectations at this specific business unit and just look yourself in the mirror and be like, okay, this is reality and I'm going to accept reality and how am I going to manage those expectations up? But at the same time still keeping the troops down below energized and pushing their will to win. And I think those are the three things. If I were to hire a sales leader or even a head of sales or a CRO, I'm looking for those critical things. But the CRO has to have all of those things collectively in order to be successful, especially in a PE backed environment.

Do you think that CROs are best if they come from sales or from marketing or for RevOps? Like, what's the right background for a sale for a CRO today?

Yeah, I think sales and RevOps are the two I would say would have the best background because you also have to be data driven and analytical at all times, especially in pe. Warren, they are always going to ask you what's the data behind it? And like we just talked about, you might not be able to measure everything. But PE loves data and when you're making a decision it has to be, well, this is the research I did, this is the data. So I think a rev Ops background is very strong. But I still go back to this. You know, I wear this band on my wrist and I don't know if it's going to show well through the camera, but it says nothing happens until something is sold. And there was a company called World Leaders that I worked with that was a great sales consultancy firm before they ended up selling their business. And I kind of look at it and go, how could a CRO, you know, you could have maybe a CFO become one or someone that's not sold. But at the end of the day, at least to me, how could you be a CRO if you haven't carried the bag? Like if you never sold, if you haven't owned a territory, if you haven't carried the bag, owned a number. And this leads me to my last point, I guess of the pressure that CROs are under. Like it's unbelievable at times whether it's PE backed or non PE backed. I've seen some of your posts on LinkedIn about how quick it takes to ramp up and the expectations, but every single day you're dealing with, well, I don't have this. Whether it's in the supply chain side, I have this CFO that's putting pressure on me on pricing. Why aren't prices going up enough? This isn't as profitable to say, oh, you missed your booking start, you made your. The pressure is immense. So if you've never carried that bag and you've been a sales rep than a mid level sales leader. I don't know how you could be a CRO right now in today's day and times. I don't think, you know, coming through a marketing channel, you can do that. My bias or you know, a finance person, I really feel like you have to have carry the bag. So sold, closed, gone from A to Z in the entire discovery process all the way in the end to really understand what it takes.

Cool man. This is great. Really, really good conversation.

Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.

Kidding me. Love it. So look, I appreciate you reaching out to me, you know, it's great and I appreciate that so much because this was really useful. I think that there's so much packed into this discussion. A lot of people are going to like, so what's next for you and what are you looking from. From people who you're trying to talk to right now?

Yeah. So Warren, I'd say a few things, you know, just a quick plug. Number one, I have four open sales roles right now. Like when people are watching this, contact me. I have roles right now in outside sales, sales leadership. In every company we buy, we're going to have more open roles. So if you're looking to get into pe, give me a call. If you want to get into a fast paced, dynamic sales leadership type role or outside sales or the, you know, possibilities are endless, give me a call. I think for me, you know, I'm in my almost third year here as a CRO and I love it. Like I don't have any aspirations in the next few years to be a CEO or jump. This is what I like to do my first term. I'm hopefully looking to stay with Adtronics before we make our exit one day. That's a P is about. So eventually, you know, no secret, Adtronics will look to exit at some point in our whole period. So I'm looking to ride that wave, enjoy the ride and hopefully be a part of my first major PE exit not so long in the, you know, so distant future, hopefully.

Amazing. Well, you're doing great. Really impressive and thank you so much. Appreciate you being here and I'm sure we'll be talking again soon.

Yeah. And hopefully I'll get a chance to join one of the CRO Collective CRO Round tables, which I love that you're doing across the nation. That's what we need.

No doubt. We'll, we'll, we'll get you there. We have actually a bunch of them coming up, so I'll reach out to you separately about that. Actually wouldn't be a bad idea. So. Adam, thanks so much, man. Really appreciate this conversation.

Yeah, appreciate it, Warren. Thanks for having me on.

Thank you for listening to the CRO Spotlight podcast. The CRO Collective's mission is to help CRO succeed and help founders and CEOs build CRO Ready organizations. You can find out more information about our services@the crocollective.com. that's the crocollective.com and we look forward to having you join us next time.