Pursuing Revenue and Happiness, With Oscar Muñoz

The CRO Spotlight Podcast Powered by the Sales IQ Network. Hi and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. I'm Warren Zenna from the CRO Collective and I'm here with my co host, Lupe Feld. Hey Lupe.

Hey Warren. This is Lupe Feld and I'm glad to be here with you.

So this podcast is really for aspiring CROs and CEOs and current CROs whom are interested in learning from not only us, but the great guests that we're going to have.

We're here to tell you that there is other areas of the business that can drive revenue and we're going to look and inspect and come up with some great ideas for us to bring in as much revenue as we can and drive some meaningful change for the business.

So tune in, we have some exciting opportunities coming up for really amazing conversations and any B2B leaders. I think you're really going to enjoy it. So thanks for tuning in and we look forward to seeing you. Hi and welcome to this next episode of the CRO Spotlight Podcast. Hi Lupe.

How are you doing, Warren?

Great. I'm so excited. Today we have a great guest, Oscar Munoz. I'll introduce him. Oscar, thank you for being here. I'm going to just rattle off some stuff that you've shared with us. It's really impressive. As a matter of fact, I read this introductory stuff and I thought, boy, I feel like a loser right now. Oscar is the founder and chairman of Worldwide Payment Services and the co founder of the chairman of Altered Ethyl. He's been working in the art and science of sales and the people that make them happen in organizations of 1 billion and above, even before the term billion was even used. He's been driving sales and innovation for the electronic payments industry for over 31 years. His background includes the creation of the first independent sales organization for merchant services by the age of 20. After a short tour as an AW3A2 within the US Navy. He completed his Master's in Business Administration as an accounting major and with a 4.0 GPA and then got a graduate studies in electronic payments acceptance industry. He's part of the team that invented Mobile Point of Sale or mpos as we know it today. He's managed revenue responsibility for global organizations within the payment technology industry from different initiatives and organizational settings on both sides of the spectrum, both startup and turnaround stages. He's an active speaker over 150 events he spoke. He's also a lifelong proponent of corporate wellness and a lifelong passionate student of health. He jumps out of planes. He's a martial arts teacher. Certified skydiver, weightlifter, pro, natural bodybuilder. So, as you can see, as I'm reading this, I want to leave the room, but, Oscar, thank you. Really impressive, and it's great to have you here, Warren.

And Lupe, thank you for having me. As you're reading all that, I realized that I am the most boring guy at parties. I've been in payments since 19, 20 years old. You put me in a Fiesta, and I have nothing else to talk about but payments and sales and how to make revenues around that. But thank you for having me. Thank you.

You know, it's funny you say that, but, you know, payments aren't really boring. They're essential. It is what moves the world. You know, you're buying something or selling something without payments. Everybody keeps their own stuff, their money and their stuff. So it's an exciting industry to have been part of. It's near and dear to my heart. So thank you for making the time. Like you, Warren, I felt a bit diminished on experience and qualifications as where you're introducing Oscar, but he's a great guy, and I think you left out one of the most probably renowned things that he does. He's a breakdancer. And, yeah, so had the. The. The pleasure of seeing it, and I think you could probably Google it, right, Oscar?

Oh, I.

He went. Yeah. He was at a corporate event and was able to do a breakdance flawlessly in and not prepared or dressed for the occasion. Nonetheless, I think he was wearing suits and business shoes. So, yeah.

Yeah, it was a great thing, dancing. I come from the kind of part of Puerto Rico that you won't see in the commercials. Right. The very underserved part of a very small island. And it's funny, dancing kept me out of trouble during those times. And it was breakdancing back then. That tells you how old I am. And all the way to becoming a competitive breakdancer when I was young. But the funny thing is that I would have never expected to be doing that. And in one of the largest, Jeff was. Jeff Jaboukie was incredible in pulling people. Pfizer Forum became that event that you can get 6,500 bankers under one room. And actually, I remember Lupe, that year, it was Joe Biden, who the president now. Right. Who was the keynote. And the host was Stefan Twitch Buss, who is one of the best dancers in the world and judge of so you think you can dance. He's a DJ. Ellen DeGeneres. And the real story that you won't know you're going to just hear on this podcast is that we were doing a deal with a bank in Cayman Islands and it was the first deal ever in where we were going to be able to sell digital channels without being the core banking platform provider. And we were on the last stages of that deal. But the EVP tells me, Oscar, that Twitch is like an eternal. My wife and daughter are eternal fans of Stefan Twitch boss. And I said, well, if that's the case, there's nothing else to do. I'm going to have to go challenge him for a dance. And he says, well, if you do that, you become a God to my family. And I said, I don't think I can take that kind of title. But if we close the deal, I take that and the rest you take all great pictures for your lovely wife and daughter. And what happened is that I ended up doing that backstage where the exhibitors were. And what I did not expect, Warren, was that I was going to do that. And then the next day after the keynote, right, he will call me on stage in front of the 6,000 bankers. And obviously it's Las Vegas, right? So you get up late in Las Vegas. Who comes up with that idea, making these events in Las Vegas. And next thing I know, yes, I did. Ended up going on stage and all that. And the funny thing is that the first guy who text me after was, was the great CEO that I work for. And his message was that was great, but you were late. So yes, yes, I get to do all the things. And I agree with you, Lupe payment, it's a different. How do you monetize as you're living today, right? It's no longer that exchange. You're living and as you're living, you're consuming and as you're consuming, you're paying. But it has evolved in so many ways. Every single gray hair that I have, I owe to some kind of payment with a Max drive with a chip at some point. We tried Google Glasses, right? We haven't seen them anymore. But you know the time of inventing the concept of mobile POS and how to, how to have beepers. You haven't seen a pager in a long time that tells you how old I am. We took the BlackBerry rim 950 pager the doctors used to use and we tied a card reader to that and it became the first ever cost effective, user friendly way a taxi driver was taking payments on the field. And then from there, I know Square says they were the first, but they were a client. Actually, we were doing that in 2004. Square came out to market in 2010. And then from there we evolved to phones and. I apologize. They're working on the building and. And we evolved to phones and we got to do great. Whenever you're flying again and you see any of the 25,000 flight attendants taking their phone to Asset payments in flight, that was our technology with their name on it. We got to do great things with MasterCard Colombia and their project down there for Ereveem Mobile. The country had this idea that out of 300,000 electronic people taking electronic payments, we really should be 1.9 million people taking electronic payments. And the rest is going to be done through phones and tablets. So I got to travel the world doing this thing and see the impact in life that payments have, right? When you go to countries and where somebody to pay a bill needs to come down from a very far away place, it might take two days to get to the city, you're taking your bus. And if you're old enough, you start kind of seeing them with a different perspective, right? How important it is from the comfort of our home, our phone, to be able to just pay something and keep the lights running. And we give it for granted. It's like right now with the whole concept of crypto, right? I can give you billions of dollars in crypto and you die of hunger because no pharmacy takes it as a form of payment. You cannot put gas in your car with it, you cannot buy food in the supermarket with it. So, yeah, payments. I'm passionate about it, Lupe, but I am yet to. We have to tell this to the. In the 150 plus events that I have done, I still waiting for that time when I say I'm gonna talk about payments and the crowd goes, wha.

It's funny you bring this up though, because I just finally got the Apple watch. I never had one.

Look at that.

I'm a bit of a watch freak and I collect watches. So I finally got one of these and I can use Apple Pay on this now. And it's insane. I mean, I press this little button and I can pay for something with my watch now I'm a techno freak. I'm not like some old fogey in this respect. But this is incredible, like the way the world is evolving. And I think Lupe makes a great point. It's not boring in the respect that I think it's one of these things that's. If you took it away, if you took away people's ability to help. We can pay for things right now with the Venmo and PayPal. How I use this stuff every day. People have no idea the ubiquity of these things and how they become embedded in the way we transact. So it's fascinating.

So, Oscar, thank you for making the time to be with us today. I wanted to get your perspective on the importance of collaborative coordination as it comes to the different areas of the business that tied to revenue. So marketing, social customer success as well as sales. So maybe you could kind of give us a little bit of your thoughts and insights on that.

For sure. I don't know if it's going to be a bit controversial, Lupe, but I tell you, we like that. I certainly. Well, some organizations, you get in trouble for that. But definitely, I don't know any other way this can work today. I mean, the future, I think of revenue and sales, that brings you to revenue. It's just different now, right? Covid happened. There were folks and companies and I was involved in several companies that March 2020 hit and the pipeline went to zero overnight. And then we were just talking at the beginning here, traveling budgets being inevitable and digital became the thing. It's peculiar because just before this I was reading the latest Harvard review and they were talking about that only 17% now of the purchase process is happening talking to suppliers. And I was surprised by that. But it matches to what Garner was saying that 80% of those contacts are happening to digital fronts. So what that tells you is that you have to be able to have your reach to all of it. If you're not involved in the marketing automation and what happens to a customer before, during and after the sale, it becomes a real tough job to pursue. So how do you integrate all those things together as working as one and stop creating that lead to revenue process has changed dramatically. And that process of having like a funnel that has a beginning and an end instead of the way you have to work it now, which is that flywheel effect of continuous interaction requires that those departments are working together. That's one. So there is, for me, it is the only way to survive today. If you don't have your hands in everything from the marketing automation that is happening, the full sales engagement that is taking place, and then the customer success process. And I personally define customer success before, during and after. Right. Not just after somebody has delivered and closed the deal. So there's no way for you to really have a path to revenue without that.

Well, look, we agree. I'm curious to know what your thoughts are then on that? Why is it you think that that's not just a standard way of operating today? It's interesting you even couched your comment as being something that's controversial, but there should be nothing controversial about that. What are your thoughts looking at the marketplace as to how come it is that this is still what I think everyone I speak to seems to agree with. It is still something that's not being done.

I think what you. I mean there's different reasons. I was in an organization before we were talking about that grew out of complete mergers and acquisitions, right? They didn't really create a lot of things internally, but bought 230 companies in 25 or something years. And when you, when you have you looked at our product notebook back then it was really over 200 companies. First of all, the website will have over 700 different solutions because every time you buy a company and they bring their product notebook in, you have an array of products and. And when you buy these companies and they already have their own little box checked, right? For how they deal with customers, how they go out to market and out. And then you're bringing them all together on the one roof that those silos and those walls become kind of challenging to break up, really Dealing with different marketing departments, fighting to see who has the biggest biceps, right? Who's going to end up fighting for the biggest portion of the cake. And it is just the way it has always been done. But I think that is a challenge, Warren, to understand that that was before is no longer good and it is happening today. You are correct. That's why I was so impressed. I was reading on your website the things that you guys are doing. This role really needs to change the perspective that it is not a chief Marketing officer doing things over there. And then we call it customer success Management. But not many people call it customer success Management. Still have customer service name in some places.

Or account management.

Account management. And it's a very different definition, right? Success, Customer success is a very different definition. Those things can no longer be separated. So I think the challenge is just a historical weight, right? Being being guilty of our own success doing different things. And then when we come together it has become more challenging in practice that.

In theory, that's great. As I think about if you were going to advise, we have a lot of senior level executives that watch this. So if you were going to advise the twofold question. If you're going to advise a CEO on how to organize for the best revenue acquisition for the business and if you were going to advise someone like interviewing for a Chief Revenue position, How would you advise those two folks as to what questions to ask, what to think through? I'd love to. Your perspective on that.

Well, again, this is probably the controversial part of my comment before, so let's hang on with me here for a bit on this answer because I know it craze, you know, what I have seen in the past and let me just preempt it by saying not that it doesn't work one way or the other, it's just that it works for different situations. So what I have seen in the past is that you get two, there's many types of personalities, but you get two kinds of different chief Revenue Officers. Right. You have, I can, from my previous experience, I can always divide them in those two clear path. And, and it usually depends how that person got there. Right. So you have on one extreme, you have the folks that very respectfully. So they don't really know anything about the product that they sell or what they solve for their customers. Right. They're, they're great in Excel. They're almost as good as a CFO talking about the numbers. And they know that Excel left and right, their dashboard, very clear. Some people say kind of more of a desk jockey kind of guy. And again, they have their place, right? So when a CEO is interviewing for a CRO, I think there is a place when that makes sense. And I'll talk about that in a moment. Right. And then you have the other guy who has that deep domain knowledge, expertise, who gets involved and tells you exactly when the business does a deal, tells you exactly what they solve, what they fix and how they're making a difference with those deals in the front end. Right. One of them purposely tells you I don't need to know and the other one gets his hands completely involved. So to be fair and to answer your question, I think in my humble opinion you need both. Right. So it depends on the situation or the stage that that CEO or that organization is in at the moment, right. So depending on where you are is what needs to be done and then that defines the kind of athlete you got to bring to play the game. So if you are in an already successful organization and what you're doing is just preserving that vitality of a machine that is just running perfectly, right? A well oil machine. And actually your biggest challenge almost what to say no to instead of what to say yes. Right. Making sure that the team is doing what he's doing and you're not getting yourself spread Too thin. And you're being very careful on the initiatives that you take. You have already a strong team in there in place and so on. So I think that the first kind is the kind of guy, right, that CRO that can almost easily double as a CFO is probably that guy that you want, right, that is going to be able to look at that business also in turn around situations, right? You look at if you're kind of surviving and you have to turn around the business that everybody knows is in trouble and you got to make these tough decisions that you're just going to look at that cell, see what gives you what return, you're going to start cutting things off. And I think that first person is the right guy for that. But. But if you find yourself more of an estado kind of situation or maybe you even made it to the next level, which is when you have that accelerated growth process that you're kind of creating everything from system, from people, from structure, then I have my own personal thinking that you need to have a guy with deep domain knowledge. Because particularly you're going to have now this integrated view of marketing success management and sales. And if you want to put the message, if you want sales to be able to work with marketing in a continuous flywheel and where I start prospecting in here, I go through a pursuit plan based on what happens, they're gonna go back to marketing is gonna keep sending content information, right. It doesn't mean the sell didn't happen today. So for you to be able to help any of those departments, you kind of have to understand what you're fixing beneath that, right? How do you add value? And I, and I had the, the honor of working with some CEOs of very large companies. That man, you will sit with them and they will tell you sometimes it will be mind blowing. You know, Jeff Jaboukouk is one of those guys that will tell you exactly what the technology fix in a smallest country, in a corner of the world when we did that deal, right? And so I think you have those two. As a CEO you have to kind of first evaluate what is the situation, the stage of your business based on that. I know the strategies that I have to go in. Am I again, am I sustaining the success of the company? Am I going to turn around situation? I'm on a startup situation. I might just ready went from startup to really working on accelerated growth where I have to really fine tune that team and keep going. And then based on that you say okay, this is a serial. The revenue officer that I need to do that. And if I am in the startup and accelerate growth, Ren, I need somebody that can really come in and inject the structure, the processes, help the three departments to really move around the customer in the middle of that equation. So that's my two cents on that.

It's great. Thank you so much for the detail. I'd like to dig into something there. It's an issue that comes up because I agree with you. There's different types of Chief Revenue Officers for different types of situations. There's no question about that. So that comes into the question around succession planning. So if I'm at an earlier stage and I have the knowledge or awareness that I need, the type of Chief Revenue Officer that you are proposing, which I agree with, what happens now? Is there a point at which that CRO sort of becomes no longer useful? Or do you develop that CRO to become that other one? Or is it more like I buy the product I need today and then I buy a new product when I need it later? What's your thoughts on continuity in terms of growth and development of that role and how those different types of competencies are so different? Because I say it for this reason, right? Because I'm training a lot of people to be Chief Revenue Officers right now. So as they enter into a company, I'm actually giving them the same advice. I'm saying, what situation are they in and what type of person do they need? What are the skill sets and competencies that are appropriate for that particular circumstance?

Right.

And if that person is the right kind of person for that? The question comes up is, well, what's going to happen when that job is done? How do I develop my skills to stay in the job and grow, or do I have to leave and they replace me with somebody else? What are your thoughts on how that could take place? Or what your thoughts are on how, from a CEO's perspective, how you'd manage that type of succession planning?

That's an excellent question, Warren. I enjoy this podcast already. I will tell you that personally, I believe that people need to be passionate, happy, healthy, passionate people just perform better. So let me start with that. Doesn't matter what you're doing right? You're making coffee, you're cleaning offices. You're right. And for me, being happy means that you have to live a coherent life between what you value, who you are and what you do right? And actually, people, I know more about this than I have come out with the idea. There's only three things you got to worry about if you really want to have a happy life at work. Work. And that includes one, you have to be able to express who you are in your job. Right. If I like to write poems, then that's what I do. I write poems and my level of expression is probably really high up. And then the second thing is you have to have impact in what you do. So if I write poems, I might have a lot of expression, but the reality of my level of impact in the world is going to take a while before the whole world is reading my poems. Right. So my impact is probably not that much. Right. And then the third aspect is compensation. You have to. If my expectation of compensation is really high for me writing poems and I expect to create a lot of impact, then I'm not living a coherent life. Right. So I have to. Coherence is something very personal. So to your answer is. And now we'll apply it to the Chief Revenue Officer. I have seen both sides of that spectrum, Warren. That is, we all are people that are very coachable. You're going to learn that the folks that make we have learned that the folks that make to this stages, they usually are in general very, very humble and hungry. They're very coachable kind of people. So I have no doubt that you can move across that spectrum of becoming that from that startup expert to that turnaround expert. I'm sure they are capable of moving through that spectrum. But I think the other side of that, Warren, which is some people that come in, they love the energy, they love the passion, they love the mess of going into a startup and having to create everything from start and that's their adrenaline. They get up every day and they get on that bike. Right. And once that ride is over and now we're going to stop going from the mountain to now flat plains in the city, they say, listen, that's not my ride anymore. Pick somebody else. So I think can they be trained to do a different kind of gig? Yes. Are they going to be happy and they're going to get up every day with. With the same passion, adrenaline to do that kind of job? I think that's the bigger question. Right.

That's great. Thank you.

I want to kind of shift to maybe a different area. And just as I like to kind of push the envelope a little bit from time to time, as you look at your typical CRO, they don't look like me most of the time and they don't look like you, Oscar. So there's, I think there's a gap there. And so what advice would you give somebody who doesn't necessarily fit the expected mold as to how to rise within a company and become that C level executive? You've done an incredible job of climbing through organizations, having huge responsibility and in the process built beautifully diverse teams. And so I'd love to glean some advice and some thoughts on that from you.

Oh, thank you. Thank you, Lupe. I keep things simple. I like people to be themselves and there's a few in a zero. My personal take, my opinion is that as you go through leadership scales in a company, you either like people or you don't. And those things, I don't think you can fake them. Right. I mean, it's hard, it's hard to fake some of those things right and there. And nobody makes it right or wrong. Right. Different, different strokes for different folks. But I think that these companies need to pick based on the game you're going to play. It has to fit the player and they have to be happy doing it. This is something they want to do. I love we're right now in a project. I give you an idea, we'll make it public in a few months down the line. So it's still running under a stealth mode. And I love the fact that I, I had for the first time this last week to ask the team to work less. Can you imagine a CRO telling the team, please stop working this hard. You got people putting in 15, 16 hours. And I'm not asking anyone to put 15, 16 hours. They just are so clear on that. Share unified vision that and want to become the number one growth region doing this thing that they get up on that bike every day. I don't have to tell them. I actually literally, I promise you, last week had to tell them. I'm sorry, they're kind of had to tell them, please guys, log out, log out for a moment because he's getting so. And what happens when you get everybody, you give somebody direction of where we all want to go as a collective and you get the right leadership on top of that and you then you put the share accountabilities and you're tracking the right daily KPIs. You know, people in general, they want to feel important. We go back to that expression, we go back to that impact. And by the way, competitive compensation doesn't have to be higher. You never want to be lower. Right? Just competitive compensation. You give people the way for them to express who they are and create an impact in the business and give them the north and they will go to war. For you. So I think there is no right or wrong. If you think about me, right? I jump out of planes, I get electrocuted with 10,000 volts and mud runs, and I break dance. So I competed. So I am as neutral as they come. The funny thing is that I've been blessed that the CEOs that hire me, they say this is the guy that is the guy. That's what I need. The guy that's jumping out of planes and doing these things, I want them to move. I personally believe you got to bring the whole person in and appreciate that individuality. And if parts of that equation, that old saying that it is not personal, it's business, that doesn't apply. Right. It's the Same person from 9 to 5 that it is from 5 to the rest and going to bed, so you got to buy into the whole person is my personal take. I think when these hires go wrong is when you hire this Persona that wrote this resume and gave you what you wanted to hear, but then turn around and really it's somebody else. Right? And in my thinking is always that if. If you have to be someone different at home, that you are at work, then in one of the two places you're lying. And if you're not, you know, and if you're lying in one of those two places, you're no longer living a coherent life thing catches up to you again. So I keep it simple. You hire the whole human being.

I love it. I love it. That's great.

Thank you. That's really great. So I want to talk a bit about your own experience and background. You have an impressive background, which we'll discuss, but you've climbed through some really amazing experiences and you built some important infrastructure, particularly in mobile, point of sale, et cetera, et cetera. Obviously, you're very diversified. You do a lot of things both in and out of work. And I could tell through your personality that you're one of these people. It's the same no matter where you are, which I think is. I completely concur with that. If you're looking at someone, again, I'm thinking about the people listening to this. Right now we've got heads of sales or heads of marketing leaders who are looking to move up the ranks or increase their ability to make an impact in the world that they're in, or CEOs who are looking to add people to their organizations that can do that. What are the types of things in your experience, do you see work in terms of developing your own career or developing Your own ascension into larger scope and bigger responsibilities and taking on less functional responsibility and more organizational responsibility. Because that's, that's sort of the trajectory of the people who are looking at this, this, listening to this right now.

Let me start by. I've been blessed by being surrounded with a lot of good people. So get the right people on the bus, right? I think as you, the only way as you're helping others, those others are going to help you. And I cannot stress enough the good to great wrote that. I didn't invented that by the way. Right. But get the right people on the bus to begin with and, and once you have the right people on the bus, right. Then you together you decide where you're going, right. Get the right process in, in place. I don't know if you heard the sayings of, of Dr. Deming, right? Edward Deming. I don't think he got as popular as he should have. I think social media wasn't that great back then. So, but, but I love, I love the simplicity of what he says in every aspect, right. It manage the cost, not the results. A bad system is going to beat a good person every single time. So get. So the things that will help you in success is that you get the right people. But for God's sakes, give them the right process and framework so you can all. Once you give them the right vision that is hopefully built together. It's not something you're putting down like that. You're saying, hey, let's get together as a team. And again, this is why I say depends on the stage of the company, right? Everything we're talking depends on the stage of the company. But if you want to climb up, you know, there are some things that are very important no matter where you are. Revenue solves all problems. That's why we're talking in here, right? Chief Revenue Officer.

That's right.

Revenue shall solve all problems. And I will actually say that the CRO is probably the most important role. He has to make sure that the CEO and the CFO are his best friends. And if you think about it, the CEO and the CFOs all they get to talk about what the CRO is selling, right? So, so you have to make sure that the CRO is. But get the right people in, put the right processes in place. If you can again not explain what you're doing in a process and you don't know what you're doing, right? So get the right processes in place. And what I mean is that sales is such an important Engine, right? Without nothing happens that somebody sells something, right? But, but sales now for me is a compounded terms. Some people look at sales now, they want to put another name to it. I have been working on teams. I remember, I'm not going to say the country. I remember going to a country that the sales executives and the head of sales didn't want to be called salespeople. And I'm like, what's wrong with that right now? Now the problem is that you have to know social media, you have to know marketing. You have to, you know, sales has evolved and now we know that that percentage of the interaction that will happen in person is much less. And if you're dealing with a millennial who are now making decisions is even more to talk to you, even less. So you have to really maximize that point of interaction or that point of persuasion and you have to become an expert on so many other things. But we're still selling, right? I'm selling with my kids every day. I'm trying to sell my wife now. And then where are we going to go? How? What are we going to do? Right? I'm not so successfully so by the.

Way, I'm with you.

But, but in business, I think it's such an important thing. But we set the right process in place for success. And I'll give you a quick example of it. Not to use a whole hour on this, but okay, if you. The good old art of fanatical prospecting has been kind of people thinking you set up these systems and they just gonna do everything and sales are just going to come to you and the challenge is that the best system, all it's going to do is augment what you do right or what you do wrong, right? It's going to really come to surface the thing. So if you want to be successful as a CRO, right, you have to make sure that once you get the right people, you give them the right north, you select what are those wildly important goals that really moves us and what are the levers that really move the needle to get to those goals. You put in the right share accountability and sometimes depending on the stage, like the stage I'm now right, I made it a point that either the whole team is going to get the total compensation and nobody's going to get the total compensation. And that kind of united that start of group, you know, there is no individual accounts don't belong to anyone. Marketing is in those meetings. Marketing goes out to field calls. They want to understand, right? So it became that cohesive team that is doing all these things. So once you settle those things then you say, okay, now we're going to go down to the detail. And if you were to look for example at the head of sale, all the reps under him, their calendar looks exactly the same. They all have two hours of fanatical prospecting, three hours of customer meetings and there is a process in place in where even the unscheduled items are scheduled. And now that process is in there. Right. So you created the right framework and then. All right, and now you got the meeting. What happens? Well, now you have to have the proper opportunity, work plan so you can go deep in discovery. And then when does marketing goes into that equation? When marketing has been on that equation all along. Sending content, looking at trigger events, analyzing buyer signals and making sure that by the time you make your cold call is not a cold call, it's a smart call. Because they have seen your name, your brand, they're getting the content that they want to get. So really working as one, right? Really really working as one. So you get that framework, you get that process, you give them the Rhine north, you put people in there and you go into ascent. There is no way that that team, right. You select the right winners to begin with and you give them that right process to succeed. Create impact, expressing who they are. And I guarantee you only up can, can be for you as far as you want to go. Right. As I mentioned, Warren. Right. Because some folks say after here.

That's right. You find your level.

Exactly.

You know it sounds beautiful as you describe it where everybody's kind of leaning in and working together and, and teamwork is the dream work. But the reality is sometimes, and I'm sure you've experienced this Oscar as well, you work in organizations where you're being told to stay in your lane and people don't want to collaborate. So any thoughts on how to bridge that or how to break down that silo? Any good advice there?

Yeah, you know you like anything else in life Looper, right? You do, you try the nice way first. I mean at some point you have to make some decisions. So I always, I believe I, I love at heart people. Right. Some of the things when you, you look at, I guess we can talk directly about fiserv. I was a wellness champion in fiserv. That's not a pay for thing. Right. There were people that couldn't even make it to the copier machine back then when you had offices and you walked to a copy machine. Right. And we started having them lead Teams that would walk around the building. And that was your day one, right? And that was your definition of wellness. So you really have to enjoy love, care for people first and their success. And when that is really deep in you, you're not faking that. That's something that you really mean, right? Because you have to be authentic. That's number one. And when you do that, you go to that silo department and you say, hey, we have. And really that's when leadership comes into play because you have to have the bigger vision and that bigger goal that is moving the whole organization, not just parts of the organization. Right. I loved it when, before he retired, I loved it when they put in. They didn't call it a vision, actually. He called it an aspiration. It's something. It's so high up that we're never going to get to it. And it became to move money and information in a way that moves the world, right? And wow, what an impactful thing. Let me go sell a bank in Haiti. Let me digitize places where it became. It became something else. And so you have to have leadership buy into this. They have to know that this is a serious thing, right? We have to fix this thing. And once you do that, you sit everybody in the table with honest concern for how are you going to get to your number? What helps you reach your goals? And he said that the goal is incorrectly set up to begin with and we need to then move higher up and say, we have to kind of make this thing fit better. So you do that, you do that. And honestly, nine out of 10 times you're going to have people that say, listen, I see that you're coming from a good place. I see that you want to really help me, help you, help us all, all get better. Let's come and talk about it. And sometimes that one out of ten you're going to get. Somebody has been there too long is their way or no way. And then you have to make your decision, right? Do I stick around for that? And I have. Personally, I can tell you that I have turned down. Money can only buy so many things. Lupe and Warren, you all know that, right? There's some things coming. I've been in good jobs and I've been on jobs that I will have to take pills the night before the weekly forecast call and things like that because somebody decided that a number in there had to be that without any explanation of that number is even possible or not or well, it's just the way has all been done. The number was this and now is that. So if you find yourself in that situation and you cannot break through the right way with folks, then ultimately decisions need to be made because happiness has to be number one.

Agreed. Completely. And the issue that I encounter most with the people I work with is exactly the thing that Lupe just mentioned is the CRO role today is a disruptive role because of the fact that most companies don't operate in the manner in which a CRO needs to succeed. So they're entering into an organization that's sort of not.

Not.

I'll kind of tout this a little bit. Is not CRO ready, as I say, right. They're sort of. You're being brought in, if properly. If you're brought in properly as a CRO, you're sort of being told, clean this up. Bring some order to this disorganization. We haven't been able to do it. And this is the investigative part of the conversation that I am interested in is how do you make that transition? So that. Because as you said it in that great answer you just gave, you need to have leadership's buy in that this is a vision that they want to do. So you have to sort of, in a way sell in this vision first. And so when you take the job, you know that you have the right, and I usually say authority, autonomy, resources and Runway to be able to accomplish the goal that you need. What's your suggestion? Like someone who is moving into a new situation where they can send that maybe they're going to be actually fighting upward as well as across and down. Is it, and I don't want to answer it for you, but is it maybe a binary choice between don't take the opportunity, it might be one where you can't succeed, or is there a way that you can influence the situation such that success is possible?

I think you can always influence situations. But I tell you what an onboarding process looks to me so we can answer. I think. And today companies are getting pretty good. I think this whole zoom eras we're doing right now, whoever thought right that we can have this kind of conversation. And it has changed a bit the way this interview process are going. Right. So the CRO is really being interviewed by a lot of people because you want to make sure there is that cultural fit. You know, it has to. It has to fit. And again, right. I go back to the stage of that organization because if an organization is in a turnaround survival mode, there is a reason for that and the guy doesn't necessarily need to Be liked by whoever. That's true. So it depends on the stage, but I do there's six things that, that, that I try to implement when I'm on boarding someone high up or when I'm, when I apply to myself. And first, I always organize to learn. I have to know what I need to learn, how fast can I learn it and from who I'm going to learn that. Right. And it's important to do that. Then obviously we, based on the conversations and all the research that you have and your conversations from above, your best friend, CEO and cfo, you get to define what is that strategic intent, what is that vision that the whole organization is going to become. And then from there you say, okay, number three is that I take what are the A item priorities, right? What are the top three things I got to accomplish no matter what? Then once you know what the game and the play is, then you look at the team that you have inherited, you build that leadership team and you do that. And then the two other things that are very important to have that virtuous instead of vicious, a virtuous circle is that you secure some early wins. You make sure that you energize the company with that. And in the meantime that you're doing that, you're building all the supporting alliances. So that's when you're looking in and saying, okay, what do I have? How do I Marketing got to love me. Accounting, got to love me. Finance, got to love me. Legal got to love me. Because right. Implementations, professional services, they all have to be my best friend. None of them know that. I tell them all they're my best friend, but they all think they are. And then so, so once you do that, I think it's going to really go back. That's why it's such a partnership with the CEO. Right? And it's such a partnership because there's going to be. That's why an organization has a CEO. And ahead of everything, there's going to be a point in where you try to break the silo one way or the other. And then if you notice that it happens to be that you are walking into one of those situations that happens to be that the CEO and the other person in charge of product or the other person is saying they're working together and you just the new guy and you cannot break through that. I go back, Warren, to the we all have to make that decision based on our values internally. And what makes you come home with a smile from ear to ear, be a good father to your Kids and a good husband to your wife or to your significant other. Right.

Again, your story is great and I want to thank you for coming today and speaking with us. This has been great. I could see like there's probably another hour we could spend with you. Your time is valuable. We appreciate it. And I know, thanks, Lupe, for setting up this, this, this, this interview because Oscar was really great to meet you.

Thank you. The honor was, was all mine. Thank you. And thank you for all the great things that, that you guys are doing. So I appreciate, I appreciate your time to have me.

100%. Thank you.

So you're, I know you're on stealth mode right now, Oscar, on your new project, but I'm eager and excited to hear as you can kind of release it. Any little tidbits you can tell us?

I certainly can and I'll be very observant of time when I looked running platforms for different companies in my career, what you find in the payment industry is that the core platform, even though you have all this great innovation in the front end, right? User experience, nice dashboards, nice wallets and things like that, the core platforms that, that have been running this were the same ones that were created 26, 30 years ago. And what happens with that, which sometimes we don't think about that, is that the world just based on convenience have continued to evolve. Legacy, right? So you have this thing you write in COBOL and next thing you're running the whole country, the whole world in these things. And it's just easier to keep putting makeup of it and see how far it goes. But the challenge is then where all these core platforms were created, the only thing you have to worry about was a bin number, right? Nobody in the world thought about how do I accommodating a digital signature in a transaction that was not even thought about how do I accommodating an image? Now I have to have a passport as part of the routing and processing of a transaction. How can I bring anything that I do on the business trail down to make routing and processing decisions? Those things were not even on the table back then. So what has happened is that even though you still see a lot of innovation that is happening in the front end now in this whole world, in word, we always say, right, that the customer expectations are the only thing that is evolving faster than technology, right? Is what you expect. Warren is now using that Apple watch. Don't take it away from him every time he pays and just shows it like that, right? So in a world that is moving so fast, the legacy technology has really kind of ran itself scores and it's challenging for any company. There's another CRO topic for another day to decide and say I need to keep showing numbers up, but how do I break what I have and I start from scratch. How do I say, well, I really need to. I cannot continue to build around this legacy thing because he has gone as far as IT can. I really have to change the core of it and build it with the technology that is available today. And when you do that, if you were to write something from scratch not 26, 30 years ago, you end up with a whole new platform. That one is 100% written on microservices, right? No longer this whole box that you take out is what do you need for that particular transaction set. Instead of rip and replace open heart surgery taking everything out, right? You end up with something that is native on the cloud by birth, not. Not something that you're forcing into a cloud. That topic is being used so loosely, right? Cloud and cloud compliant. You can put anything on the cloud, right? I can take any, get a virtual server and pay that rent if I use it or not and it's up there on the cloud or I have a platform that was born on the cloud that really allows you just to pay by processing cycles at that elasticity is needed in your. So bottom line is that we believe it is a new renaissance. It's a whole new paradigm in technology and we're really putting a lot of time to it and working with some very exciting projects that have been blessed to allow us to come in and kind of change the story. Because the reality is that even though you see a lot of changes in the front end, in the back end of that, really not much have changed. It is the same thing that was built from the beginning, that is doing a great job and it was built for purpose at the time. But now you're just in different times. And banks like we know are no longer from eight to three kind of thing, right? They have to be open all the time and, and you need to be able to not buy a whole building. All you need is a little studio, right? You need to use that studio. And then tomorrow my, you know, day two, you might need two or three or four and kind of evolve your business that way. So. So it's. We're excited. I got to tell you, I told you last, I have to tell last week the team stop working this hard. You're never going to hear that from a CRO. I don't know we. We should put this on a podcast, actually.

No, absolutely. Well, that's exciting.

Thank you for sharing that. Well, thank you, and we appreciate your time, and this is great. And, Lupe, we'll see you next time.

All right. Thank you so much.