The CRO Environment and Autonomous AI Agents with Jonathan M K.

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. Hello, this is Warren Zenna, the founder of the CRO Collective, and welcome to the CRO Spotlight podcast. Today, I'm really excited to have Coach K here. You know, Jonathan and I worked together briefly. Thank you very much. Because, you know, when we started doing our CRO Roundtables, Momenta was the company that I became really attracted to in terms of what they talked about. And we did some work together, partnership-related stuff. And then things just kind of took off for them over there. And now it's really fascinating. So I thought, what a good time to bring Jonathan on and talk a bit. So welcome.

Warren, as always, my pleasure. Thanks for having me and thanks for everyone listening in. I appreciate it.

Yeah, sure. So tell us about yourself. Like, give us the whole thing. We got time. Who are you? Where'd you come from? How'd you end up where you are today?

Yeah, it's fun. I always ask my guests the same thing on my podcast. It's like, oh, what do I say? This—

you're in the hot seat now.

I'm in the hot seat. So I'll give you the briefer version. So I was in sales for a long time. My dad owned a tire mechanic shop in Idaho Falls, and I grew up busting farm tires and going out to the fields and fixing tires. And then I transitioned to selling. And then I ran the store for a while because my dad had some health issues. And so I was running the store, um, and learned a lot about sales and business as a result and decided that, um, I loved this so much that I wanted to dig in. So I went to my schooling for that. Um, I traveled all over when I was single, just doing crazy things like living in Nashville, Tennessee, doing music. And during the night I would play music and during the day I would sell. Stuff. So like my career for years was selling. In fact, my, my very first quota-carrying role was selling Yellow Pages in Salt Lake City back in 2007. I did that too. Yeah. Yeah. It was, uh, as you know, uh, enjoyable experience, especially because it was then that I learned, um, my, my assignments was a certain patch of Salt Lake and then they didn't have like Enterprise, MidMarket, whatever. You just had whatever your patch was. So If it was in the corner of Salt Lake and it was enterprise, it was mine. Or if it was small business. Yeah. So I learned a lot because I interacted with a lot of different people. And anyways, that's why I also learned that I didn't want to sell anything I didn't believe in, because that was also when Google Ads was coming out back then and the internet was breaking through. And I was thinking to myself, I'm like, it's so much cheaper and so much better than the internet. Why are people buying Yellow Pages?

Yeah.

Anyways. And so for the next 10 years, sold random things, insurance, cars, tires, obviously events. All sorts of things. And then I transitioned. I was at Franklin Covey, and I transitioned from sales to consulting and really got my teeth cut on enablement because that's what Franklin Covey does. And then from there, I've only been in enablement and RevOps. So I did enablement and RevOps for the last, oh, gosh, 10, 12 years. And about 5 years ago is when I started with AI because the company I was with bought an AI technology that was out of India. And my job was to enable both the customers and team on what the heck AI was and and all the stuff, and I learned from him. I was not the AI expert, I was just the enablement guy. And he was on some team that was like on the blue team, red team for OpenAI doing GPT-1 and GPT-2 and giving feedback. So when 3.5 came out in November '22, he was like, you need to go sign up and go play. And so I, with the rest of the planet, signed up for OpenAI and then had fun playing with it. And I realized really quickly that people weren't using it the way that, again, he taught me in how I think about it as an enablement person, because as you well know now, like, AI needs context to really have good responses. And as a trainer, that's how I think is in context. So anyways, I launched the academy a month after that happened. I've had 10,000 people plus go through in the last 3 years. I've advised, I don't know how many companies, both in AI or GTM as results. I've worked in several different places. The last one was I was the VP of GTM strategy and marketing at Momentum, which is an AI orchestration platform. They got bought out by Salesforce, which is a really cool story we can get into if you want to. And then I just recently, um, started as the VP of marketing at OneBind, which is an, uh, also an AI agentic platform for, for companies. So I'm deep in the space, love it. I geek out on it, live, breathe, eat, teach, talk, sell, play with AI all the time. Yeah.

It's amazing. Well, thank you. That's great. So it's a really cool story. So, you know, you and I are some things very much in common. You know, I started out the same way. I sold all kinds of stuff. I was selling door-to-door advertising and, you know, all kind of things. And then I, I, we were probably relatively, we must be close to the same age because I, I got hit with the same, uh, technological wave and jumped into it too and sold all that stuff. It was pretty, pretty cool thing to be able to say this. But, you know, the music thing, you know, I was a, I was a professional actor for a while while I was doing this stuff and it was really cool.

I didn't know that.

Yeah. And, uh, are you in movies?

Are you famous and I don't know this?

Well, I had a couple of things I did, but, um, they were a long time ago. You know, it's funny. Like the things that I did, for some reason I can't fricking find 'em. There weren't, I didn't do any movies, but I did, so I did a couple national commercials and then I did, uh, a small thing. It was really cool. Uh, you know, MTV, I'm sorry, no, I did an MTV commercial. No, HBO was early back then. It was still early. What they were doing is they were experimenting, as you know, these production companies, they get budgets to do all sorts of stuff and they wanted to create a, a com, a comedy ensemble, but they just have like sort of like more like on film as opposed to being like a TV studio.

Mm-hmm.

Like the same people that would just keep doing weird skits and stuff. And I was on this troupe and we did all these really cool skits and then they, they shot 2 or 3 of 'em and they did, but they weren't bought. So like it didn't get from pilot, but it was really fun anyway. Uh, so, but you could, you know, you did a lot of like songwriting and stuff, you know, I did. You did a stint of like zen of songwriting at recovery centers and stuff. I, I'd love to hear more about this. I did. You wrote this article, You Suck, Give Up. And I'd love to hear a bit more about that. It's really interesting and I love that kind of thing. I think it's really neat. You know, I'd like to hear a bit more about what that was, was about.

Yeah. The, this is, it's funny you bring that up because I wrote that article a long time ago. Yeah.

2017. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. 2017 is a long time ago. Um, I've never had anyone ask me that on a podcast, so I mean, appreciate you asking. So I, um, originally I wanted to go into music and either become a professional musician, so I. I was in a group.

What were you, a singer? Was you a guitar player? What was your thing?

I write music and I sing. Um, so I have, I have songs on Fox Sports and NFL football and, and the songs, just so you know, they're not like the main ones. They're, it's literally the 20 seconds in between the game and commercial transition. That's my music, or some of it is.

Gotcha. I, I understand. That's, that's great shit. Yeah.

Yeah. It was a lot of fun. And so I performed a lot. Um, but my, my, at one time I was thinking about This is a really long story. I'll try to make it short. I was just— this mode where I was a life coach. So part of what I did is I did life coaching and I did music and I sold. So, like, so selling is my main income to make things come by. And I'd still do things like health coaching and emotional health coaching, that kind of thing. I'm— I was deep in the space because my original thing I wanted to do after college was being a life coach because I wanted to help people become better and have more success. And I'm obsessed with self-development books and thinking positive and being optimistic, all that kind of stuff. Anyway, so I found this world that existed that was this music therapy world that people use songwriting as a way to help people recover from addictions. And I was like, that's cool. So I did it as an experiment once where I did it for a friend, and then she told another friend about it. And then I, soon I was on this circuit where all I did was go around and I taught people how to write music to deal with addictions and grief and trauma and all this kind of stuff. It was so much fun.

Amazing.

And I wish we would have had it now because now you have all these AI tools to make music. We could have had so much fun. But you'd be amazed at like how some basic songwriting stuff can allow someone the space to get out things that they usually wouldn't have talked about, you know? So, yeah.

Absolutely.

I got a lot out of that. But tell me, what would you, you do?

No, I just love it cuz I, I, I, you know, you and you, you, you have a real lot in common. It's really pretty cool. Yeah. It's good to know cuz I was involved in a lot of, I wasn't more, I wasn't necessarily life coaching, but I did so much of this, you know, I looked at business consulting, which I still do quite frankly, as really it's no different than it's holistic. I mean, the way you approach your business is your, it's, it's your personality there. You know, it, it's not like a piece of you, it's all of you in there, you know? And, you know, if you fix up your business life, you have to fix up the rest of your life to be good at your business life. It's just a reality, you know? And people try and compartmentalize this stuff and it's just not possible. So, you know, if you're having problems at home, if you're having problems with your kids, it's, it's really hard to bring your best to work and vice versa, you know? Yeah. And, and so, you know, I look at the, I look at things that way. So when I, when I'm, I don't necessarily, well, I, I am pretty blunt now. I've gotten kind of blunt. But, you know, like when I'm speaking to people, I, I can see, I can sense these things pretty quickly. I have an extra empathetic personality and I can sense when someone is being driven by stuff that's going on that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. And yeah, if you can get underneath that stuff, you can have a much better conversation, a much better relationship, and you can, you can be helpful to people just by listening to them and understanding what they're really saying as opposed to what's coming outta their mouth. And, you know, I think about this a lot, you know? Yeah. And so when you're talking about these things, plus I, I agree with you, you know, music is a, Music is sort of like a, uh, it's unique in that there's no other creatures on the planet that make music like harmonies and melodies and rhythms and, you know, can create them. It's a really fascinating way our brains work. And when people make music together, it's a form of communication and cooperation and collaboration that's very unique. And it also, it's kind of hypnotic. I mean, you can listen to certain music and it makes you feel a certain way. It can put you in very specific moods and there's things about, you know, the frequencies and stuff. And I don't wanna get too kind of crazy, but I love music very much. And so I think about these things. So I, when I meet musicians, I get kind of nuts cuz I have a lot of really close friends who are really amazing musicians.

I'm with you. The whole frequency thing is like my—

it is everything. It's everything.

It's the, the whole quantum physics, metaphysics, frequency healing stuff is like so cool. Like I could talk about that all day long.

Yeah. I'm reading about this a lot right now.

Yeah.

I actually put these frequencies on now when I'm in bed at night and, you know, I tell you, it really, it does, your brain likes it, you know?

Yep.

You know, the thing too, I'm thinking about a lot lately, you know, as we get older, our, our attenuation gets better. Like we start to understand like why it is that we don't work with certain people well. It, we, we tend to blame ourselves as we get more younger. We're like, oh, you know, we didn't get along or we had disagreement. But I realize most of it is just, there's, there's, I think there's like sort of like, maybe I'll be simplified. It's like 3 frequencies. There's a frequency that's incompatible. Like some people you talk to that it doesn't matter how much you're on the same page, it just, you're incompatible.

It doesn't click. Yeah.

You can't, you know, it just, there's no flow of the energy. And then there's compatible where you can really get along with someone. You can, you can circulate communication. And then there's an accelerant. There are some people that when the two of you work together, you are become better because of it. Like there's a higher frequency. Oh, I love that. Okay.

I like it. Yeah.

And I find that, um, My baseline is compatibility, but my goal is excellence. I want people around me that when I'm with them, I find I'm better because of that relationship. And I could feel it. I could tell. I talk differently. I do things better. There's just a way in which the energy is supporting a certain, or stimulating a part of me that I don't know what it is. I can't explain it. I'm not God, but it's really true. And I think there is a musical component to this, and I think that it's true. So people have a frequency. There's no doubt about that.

And yeah, I call, I call 'em soul pings. Anytime I have a conversation, I'm like, mm, ping. It's like you feel this, this connection, like there's something different here. You know? It's, I like that. Yeah.

So it's cool. I mean, I, I like, I like talking about this stuff. So let's, let's talk a bit more about now what, what you're doing.

So, sure.

I mean, I, I like you, I'm a nerd, you know, I like playing around with all these stuff. I'm always in the middle of all these tools and I've always done it. You know, I was frankly lucky enough to be involved when the iPhone came out and right at the beginning of that, and even when Google was launched right at the beginning of that. And so I've always kind of grabbed onto these things and this AI is, you know, it's, it's just amazing. And the stuff I'm doing on it right now, and I'm sure you're probably doing more.

Yeah.

So I, I have some things like, so the thing I talked about before about you is that you've been the one who builds the machine so somebody else can run it. Like the person who has to go out and turn the machine into money. You're the person who helps to build it so that they're capable of running it. You know, it's a unique position to be in. Uh, one of the things I frequently talk about is this panda problem, which is, you know, pandas that when they're in captivity, they're really messed up. They don't mate, they don't socialize, they don't eat. Like, it's really weird and they don't— haven't figured it out. And they finally did. It took a long time. They realized it's, it's not the panda, it's the environment. That they're in, right? When they're in the wild, they're actually incredibly competent and they mate and they eat and they're fine. And this is the conundrum of the chief revenue officer, is that they're in an environment that isn't suitable for them and it looks like they're incompetent. But in fact, if the environment were different, they'd be more successful. And the idea is to understand the environment that they need. You are the builder of the environment. That's how I view you, right? So, I mean, you're—

oh, that's very kind.

So, well, you know, just your role, right? You've always been the one who sort of builds, you know, the systems and the machinery. So talk a bit more about that. Like, what is the functional sweet spot that you occupy when you're in a business and what is it that you're bringing to the organization?

Yeah, it's a good question because, um, I, I have my MBA in marketing. I ran a product marketing team slash enablement team before Momentum, but I never really ran marketing before until I got to Momentum and they gave me marketing and I had a blast, you know?

Yeah.

But I, I, I think too much like a, a systems operator. That's how I think. And inefficiencies and what's working, what doesn't work. And I don't, I, I don't jive well with just theory. Theory's great for an extent, but I'm too much of an application practical, how do we actually do this type of view that the theoretical stuff doesn't jive with me very much. So when anyone comes in and says theoretically you do this cool thing, they, I'm like, okay, theoretically you do a lot of things, but what do you actually do? Like, How do you do that? You know? Um, and most people don't have answers, and I don't mind if someone doesn't have answers, but I wanna know, like, can you do that? Can you not? And can we try it? Do we not? Like, it's just trying to figure out where you can put different things or not. So with Momentum as an example, I was, uh, probably 80% marketing. The other 20% was RevOps. And because I did all the monthly numbers for the board meetings, um, I did all the analysis on closed loss. Or reviews. I did a lot of the high-level strategy of just figuring out what was going on because it helped me as a marketer understand what's right or wrong so I can inform the market on how I did messaging and positioning, all this other stuff. But it served two purposes. My personal opinion, as you talk about environments, it's kinda like how, was it Einstein that said that, you know, if you can't fix a problem for the person, the consciousness that made it can't be fixed.

They can't be. It's very true. Very true.

Yes. And the other thing of, If someone expects a fish to climb a tree, they think it's an idiot. Like, the fish is never made for a tree. It's like this whole thing. And then I've been thinking a lot this last— we just released the Ignite book last November. And almost all 30 people who were in that book talked about some sort of system thinking. I realize I think a lot the same way. And I've been thinking about it a lot. People in the air systems think technological systems. I'm talking more a little bit more ambiguous, which is more a kind of philosophical ways of working, jobs to be done. Yeah. And, uh, I use the example of Michael Jordan. So Michael Jordan was obviously the best player, in my opinion, and he's the best player who's ever has been, um, so far. And he went to the Bulls before and they never could get to the finals because the coach at the time built the system around him instead of complementing or accentuating him. Phil Jackson comes in and does the 3-3-3 model, um, which is a totally different system that doesn't ignore Michael but doesn't depend on Michael. And they go and win 6 championships. You know what I mean? It's like you have an incredibly talented individual in a bad system, or I shouldn't say system, it's not really designed for them. They can never hit the championship. But once you have that system that's designed well, then they thrive and you bring all this other talent. So I think about revenue teams in the same way. So like, whether it's the buying process or sales process or tech systems and AI, it's like, what, what's in, in mind? Where are we trying to go to? Do we need all the frivolous shenanigans that gets in the way? Do we need that? Do we not need that? And being willing to push against the status quo, because a lot of times the CROs I've worked with have either been so connected to what they've done the last 5 companies. I'm like, we can't do that again. I know you've had success before, but especially now, we can't do it that way anymore. You know? It's just someone's willingness to think differently and to expand their repertoire of what can happen. Because I don't have all the answers either, you know?

Sure.

So, yeah.

Hey everyone, I 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 2 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. And 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 3.5, 4-hour discussion 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 is your next CRO event. So to that end, I just want to let you all know that we have a number of roundtables coming up over the next year, over the next, like, 2026. I want to share them with you so you can if you're in, if they're in your market, you can come. So the next one we're having is gonna be in London, actually, in February, February 24th in London. So if you happen to be a chief revenue officer in the UK or even in Europe and you wanna come by, you'll be hearing about it more on my website and LinkedIn, but put it on your calendar. And then following that, we're probably gonna be doing an event in San Francisco in March. There's going to be one in New York in March. I'm going to do another one in Chicago probably in April. And then I'm going to do an event in Boston. I'll do an event in Atlanta. I'm going to do an event in Salt Lake City. I'm going to do an event in Austin, and I'm going to do an event in Los Angeles or the Southern California area. So those dates are to be determined, but they'll be going across all, all next year. And These events are taking on huge momentum. They're the place to be if you're a chief revenue officer and you want to be in a room with no interruptions and have an opportunity to really share with each other in a sort of a private and confidential open discussion about everything that you want to talk about as a chief revenue officer and collaborate with great people. So thank you and thanks for supporting the show and I look forward to seeing you at the events. No, I thank you because it's a perfectly A perfect segue into what I wanted to get into with you, which is this whole idea of systems.

Yeah.

You know, the CRO collective sort of evolved as most things do, right? It went from a function, which it still is. I mean, there is obviously at the core of it, there's a person who has a job, and that job has definitions and scope, et cetera. But then it became about the company that manages that person and how that person's like authorities and scope. But then it really evolved into what we just talked about, which is the system that they inherit. So when a CRO comes into a business, they inherit the system that is there, right? And then their job is to— well, what the way it usually works, and the way the reason it doesn't work a lot, is because they're hired to operate the system that they're inheriting, as opposed to being hired to change, fix, and build the system that is, is needed, you know?

Right.

And the Michael Jordan analogy is great. I mean, if sort of Michael had the wherewithal, and maybe he did, maybe he went to Phil and said, look, I need a system like this and I'll play better, but It's possible that he was a great coach and he saw that without being told. But the CRO does need to advocate. They need to go in and say, the system I need is the one that I need to build. I need to understand your organization and build a system that works. And if you don't have the organizational maturity, let's say organizational latitude, the mindset, what they're going to try and do is just impose the system they have on you and say, we hope you fit in here, right?

Yeah.

As opposed to you bringing some operational expertise and saying, no, the system we need is different than this one, and give me the license to build it. And number 2, you have to then also have the competencies to do that. So, you know, this is sort of like a two-way street, right? We'll give you this, we'll give you the keys, but you need to know how to drive, right? And so I'm curious, like, your thoughts on how that— because what you just described is great. It's like you're the person who sort of sees the bigger operational picture. Are you the partner to the CRO, or are you pulling the strings and then you bring— like, what's your relationship to the Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Usually, um, and to be fair, I've worked with some amazing CROs who they were the change agents and I was the one, and I was the one learning from them. And other times it was people coming in who had a hard time and I was one kind of saying, I'm here to help you change, but we have to work on these basic principles, you know, because they, a lot of times they're glorified VP of sales who have never ran a CRO org and they have no idea what they're doing. And it's no offense to them. It's just they don't know what they don't know. So it's like, I, it's not like I think they're dumb. I just think they're, they're put in a spot. They're doing their best to fit the role, you know? So, um, for the most part, I become kind of like, I always tell CROs, I'm like, think of me as your internal McKinsey analyst that I'm going to go through and be honest about what I'm seeing. But I'm also the person who's not just analyzing, but I can go fix it. So, Let's analyze it. Let's figure out where to go, figure out really what the problem is, and let's go fine-tune it. Get some feedback, make sure the, obviously the metrics are changing. When they do, tweak the next thing. It's like always continually going back and forth, which I love with AI cuz you can do that really quickly now. In the past, 5 years ago, it was very hard to do this because it took 9 months to do that, and that's half of an average tenure of a CRO. Whereas now you can get a good feedback mechanism depending on the sales cycle within a quarter. So within, and that's like long, I can get it in 60 days depending on, on some of the enterprise motions. We could get some really good results in 60 days. It just, it is required for someone to know ahead of time what they're looking for instead of just throwing things at the problem saying, I think this is going to work. And that doesn't, because then you're just guessing. And I don't like doing that.

Yeah, I got it. You need data that you can analyze and enterprise motions have a lot of it. You know, if you're working at a smaller business. Let's say it's like a $25, $30 million business. Like what do you do when you don't have enough data to make that short-term analysis? Is it just, you have to wait or is there ways you can accelerate it? What would you, because most of the people I'm working with are trying to jump from the 50 to 100. That, that's their, that's their big, you know?

Yeah.

That's their big thing.

Yeah. It's, it's not an easy discussion. Like when you listen to the pros in the field that have done this, like for example, like, like Kyle Norton's a classic example. The first thing he talks about is getting your data structure correct. And I would agree because you can't do a lot with AI optimization or AI transformation if you don't have the data, because that's what AI feeds off of. And then to make intelligent decisions, you can't do that either. So I would say you, you gotta get your house in order. It's like building the foundation. You can't build this massive skyscraper or even build a plane, whatever concept you want to compare it to. You can't do that without the fundamental skeleton of what's happening. That skeleton is data. But the, the challenge is that's one side of the pie. The other side is all the things that make up your system, like your process and the handoffs and, and what are, what are the humans doing inside the process and where do the breakoffs happen and what does the customers think? Like, it's that more subjective human side. And then there's the technological data side that most people don't deep dive into either. They just throw people at the problem and hope for the best and do some sales training here and there and think that that's gonna answer the problems and it doesn't. Because it's not a training problem, it's a systems problem. Does that make sense? It's like, I can train, I can train a fish to climb a tree better, but that's not gonna solve the problem.

Right.

Does that make sense?

That's right. It's still a fish that shouldn't climb trees. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah.

And I think we're doing that too often. I think we're trying to make systems do things they shouldn't, or people do things they shouldn't instead of just like changing the system and finding people that are perfectly suited for it.

Exactly. Well, you, and you told me like, there's, there's, I'm assuming no, agreed-upon methodology of CRO systems that exist that people can go, oh, you're using Medpic CRO's thing, or using— that doesn't exist.

That's true.

There's not, right?

No. You have to come into it with, yeah, you have to come in with, uh, architect, architect mindset. And it's a weird situation, right? Because most architects, most anyway, are looking at a flat piece of ground and they're gonna construct something from the ground up. Right. But you're not in that situation unless you start from day one and most of the time you're not gonna last until long. You're probably gonna be out of there within, right? After 10 million anyway. So, you know, if you're really coming in at, at a point at which it's a, it's a really weird job because it's a great job, but you can't really be effective until there's enough complexity for you to work on. And that complexity is your worst enemy if you're not given the authority to do anything about it. And this is what happens.

Right, right, right.

So, so, so what we're doing is we're, we're, we're working on this, like fixing that. But to your question, If I'm a CRO and I'm coming into a situation like this and, you know, you'd be a great person to have at the company. I'd be, thank God I got someone like this there who kind of can think this way and can help me build stuff. That doesn't always happen. You know, you get a lot of people who are more like they're practitioners and they just sort of put their head down. They work on what's in front of them.

Yeah.

And what they're doing is they're all busy trying to make the fish climb a tree. That's what they're doing all day. As opposed to saying, you know, why, why are we doing this? Like, get, get rid of this damn fish. And so the, the CRO needs to come in and, and say, all right, like you just said, what's my framework for analysis? How do I look at a business with fresh eyes? 'Cause I'm a new person here and determine based on the commercial model, the customer, the motions, is it product, is it a service, whatever the case may be, right? What's the right system that's needed for this business to run profitably at the unit metrics that we have for the business and all that stuff. And then do an analysis of the organization in a good way. You need to have a process for that. Like you already mentioned, and then have a tool with which you can get the right answers. 'Cause sometimes, you know, you're not get, you're getting bad answers and then you have bad outcomes, right?

Right, right.

'Cause I agree with you. You're right. The data needs to be the baseline. So that's the first thing that you do. So all the things I'm saying are a process, but they're not the outcomes. You have to be willing to say, well, this, this particular med pick thing you guys like, it won't work here, so we can't use it. It's just not right for this place.

Right.

I know you like it, Steve, 'cause you worked for it with it and for 20 years and you could talk about it, but It's not the right system for this company, and we got to use this one. And you need an organization that's going to go, okay, you know, I'm uncomfortable with that, but we hired an expert, and go ahead and build the system that's going to make it work. And if you have that, then you have a great situation. But most don't, and they have to figure out ways to manage those compromises and those sacred cows to figure out how to make it work. And that's why many times CROs don't last long, is because they don't They're— what happens is without them having that authority, they just get measured on quarters. And when you're measured on quarters, you make all sorts of crazy decisions that it's, it's really difficult.

That's what's tough. I think that's the key problem is that they're trying to make longer-term transformational change based on short-term, the short-term cycles. Yes. You can see results in a quarter, but your strategy shouldn't be determined by quarters.

Exactly.

It's a totally different thing.

The quarterly view is a metric. It's not an outcome. It's like, okay, what happened this quarter?

Okay, great. Right.

What does that mean? You know, as opposed to, did we hit our number this quarter? I mean, I, I, I understand, believe me, you and I both come from sales. I completely respect the need to have like a, a horizon when you're selling so that people have something to shoot for, believe me. But that should be nothing more than a way to incentivize activity, not run the company. And, and I think that, right, the, the problem is that you're using things that drive the ability to build coalitions around activity and turning it into an operating model. And that's not, they're not the same thing.

Yeah.

And, and I think a CRO needs to come in and say, look, hold on a second. I don't mind looking at the business quarterly. If I'm gonna chop it up to 4 pieces, we can do that. But these goals that we have, if our business, if, if, if our intent is to become a $100 million business and then get acquired and we're only at 20, well, that's not gonna happen in quarters. You know, it's going to happen in, you know, cycles. Right. And those cycles, we're going to— we're going to define them by the how we run the business. And these are the— these are the constraints, I think, particularly when you have a board and an investment group, because they run their portfolios that way. That's the way that they manage across all their businesses. It's easier for them to just have a model and they run it across and they're trying to shove all these businesses into a similar system because it's easier for them to manage all of them. But not all the businesses are appropriate for that, you know. And so it's sort of like you need to have some flexibility. And this is the problem we see. We see there's like that latitude has to be disrupted by a CRO who knows how to come in and be an expert disruptor and know how to do it with confidence. And that's not, it's a hard thing.

It's not easy, especially when you've, like you said, that's coming out of VP of sales and you're trying to figure out what to do and there's no solid framework and you're like, what the hell? Yeah. Yeah.

Those people get thrown to the wolves. That happens all the time. Um, so let's talk about, I want to ask you a question. So it's a weird question. Do you think enablement deserves a seat at the revenue table? Like, is it like, or is it a service?

Oh, I'm probably the wrong person to ask because I definitely have opinions on this one. Okay, good.

That's why I want to hear it.

Yeah. Yeah. I was enablement for years. I talked about this to the enablement community. My answer is yes. However, the current state of enablement is not what I think should be at the table. It's what enablement was originally supposed to be. Which is that internal analyst slash execution, like what I've described to you. That's what I think enablement is. It's the person who says, our win ratio is at 22%. We gotta get it to 25%. Why is it doing that? And then create programs to make it fix. Most places don't operate that way. They're glorified training or content engines, which is fine, but they have, like, I can't tell you how many times I'll ask an enablement person, what's your sales cycle? What's your ACV? What's your revenue goals? And how far are you from it? And how do you know where you're going? They're like, what's ACV? I'm like, what do you mean?

What are you talking about?

Like, what's CAC?

Yeah, right.

What's CAC? It's like, oh my gosh. So it's gone to a place, which is our own fault, that it becomes a content creator in the corner or a training mechanism that has little or no oversight or insight into what's happening. And it's just not doing the right way. Now, the future, I've been saying this for 3 years, is that you need to have, like, a, what they, what Palantir calls a forward deployed engineer, which we call a GTM engineer. But you gotta have that higher layer. So in the book, we call it an intelligence architect. You need someone who understands the business guts of the business and then can say, okay, we should put AI here, here, here, and here and make sure it works the best, and then humans do this thing. But it requires a knowledge of your buying process and, again, things like CAC and win ratio and all sorts of stuff so you can know where do you want to move the dial? And then you can attach AI to ROI because you know what you're supposed to be hitting in the first place, you know? But people look at it too either siloed or it's like, how do I get AI to help me make a deck faster? I'm like, I don't care about making decks faster. I care about getting win ratio up to 25 to 40% or whatever the case is. You know what I mean? That's what I care about. But we're looking at too small of things from an enablement point of view.

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 6 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 6 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. Uh, 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 Masters Council, 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.

So that, that's the question.

I'm in agreement with you. It does. And it's a really good point you make, which I do agree that, you know, like many roles, I think it's weird, you know, when you don't have guardrails on a role or a steering committee on a role, it's easy for over time that role to just turn into something different. And like it's not what it originally was intended for. It happens all the time.

Yes.

And, um, I agree. Like, I, I first there was sales enablement and then there's revenue enablement. I would be curious to know what you view as the distinction between those two things. I obviously have an opinion on it. I mean, just if you look at the sales enablement world and the revenue enablement world, are they just the same with a different name, or is it a different animal?

Um, the, the how I describe it is that revenue is just as concerned about the customer journey than it is the seller's journey. So it's like what's the buyer going through and how can I enable that? And then it's also across the entire GTM function. So it's like not just sales, but sales, CS, partners, whatever. It's like I'm trying to enable the entire revenue org. I personally think that enablement or rev ops both need to have that holistic view across the organization so you can see, like, again, where are the holes? Is it the partner program? Is it CS? How does CS affect sales? How does sales affect CS? How's all that affect marketing? Like, I was that middle person in the past where I had to go communicate to marketing what just happened on the last sales call because marketing didn't have time to go watch the sales call and I was just there. You know? So I became that, I became that person saying, hey, I just heard this on a call. This is the 5th time I've heard this thing. We need to do some marketing on this, whatever pitch. The cool thing now is that all that can be done with AI. Like, that's exactly what Momentum does now. I can automate all of it, which is super nice. Like I always compare, my comparison is if you think about the revenue org is the Hunger Games, the CRO in my opinion is the emperor and the enabling person is the game maker. So you don't really see them, but they control the environment that happens so that people again can, instead of me trying to kill people with crazy wolves, I'm trying to create the environment that people can succeed and understand like what's happening in the game to make it so they can win. But there's, again, a lot of times enablement's not given the authority to do that because sometimes it's things like incentives that enablement has nothing to do with that is the trigger to get performance to change. And sometimes it's something else. It's you just need to rethink, are we getting out of this function what we need? Call enablement or not, who cares? Let's call performance AI, whatever person. But that CRO needs that person who understands the game so they can equip their team in a way so that the environment and the systems and everything in the game is conducive for them to win. Because then I can take mediocre players, put them in a good system, and they'll be kick-ass. Or I could put a good player like Michael Jordan in a bad system and I won't win. So like, I gotta be— I gotta have someone who has the pulse on that while I'm running the rest of the freaking org to make sure things are running well, you know?

Yeah, I love it. Uh, you know, I'm curious, do you see rev operations What's the relationship between revenue operations and revenue enablement?

Um, current state, enablement usually reports to RevOps. RevOps is usually number 2, and I believe the reason why is because of data. Um, and rightfully so, like, most RevOps people I know are incredibly smart. They're systems thinkers, generally speaking. And they're more, um, I guess you could say process-oriented. They're just a little bit more analytical. And AI or enablement for the most part, are more kind of the fluffy, feel-good, do an SKO, make sure everyone's happy. Not that that's bad because you need those people, but that's kind of classically what you see is like analytical data systems process, RevOps, SKO, training content, whatever, enablement, which I think is totally backwards.

Yeah, I agree. I've seen RevOps report to the CFO. It's very common. It's really weird. It's nuts. It's nuts.

Yeah.

It's almost like the CFO was there early and needed the metrics to put together his numbers. And so he grabbed the RevOps person, said, you're my boy and you're gonna make my decks for me so I can present to the board. And that's it. It's, it's, he's co-opted the entire like function to become like a financial advisor as opposed to an actual like go-to-market. But you know, I think it's a good point because I, I agree. I think that the RevOps person should report into the chief revenue officer and the enablement is an enabler of that RevOps organization. And it helps to push out the stuff to the teams and make them, you know, so let's talk about AI for a sec. So I, I, we're, I'm in the middle of all these conversations just like you. So, you know, right now I'm like everybody else. I'm sure I'm not unique here. I'm in the middle of all these, you know, like I'm running, running these programs. I have one that's running right now as we're talking. And, you know, I have all these really cool things I'm building. In fact, I'll even be really transparent. I had an agent. Created that, what it does for me. And I really proudly, the way I built it, it takes a long time to do.

Can I ask, would you build it in, in cloud? In local?

I built it in, no, we have, we have this really weird funky thing that we found. It's, it's, it's, it's called Personal AI and it was developed by this cyber guy and he put it in GitHub and it's really incredible. Well, I'll, I'll talk you through it one day.

It's pretty amazing.

Anyway, so we use this thing and Basically it runs on Claude's brain, but it uses every language that needs to. So it just fetches the model based on what it does. But, but the, the, the code central brain is, is Claude. So anyway, so, I created a, an agent team that I say launch the, podcast, agent inspection, whatever it's called. And it does an entire diagnostic on my guest. With every single thing about them and all their points of view related to my point of view.

Yeah.

And my audience. And then it produces all these really great provocative things based on what it is that I'm trying to, you know, talk about and how you—

is that, is that how you get my article? It's from that.

That's right.

Oh, that's crazy. That's cool.

So I have all this cool stuff. I'll send this to you. In fact, I'm gonna share this with you. I'll send you the document, but it's pretty neat. So it just, yeah, you'll, because you know, you and I are wonky, you'll look at this and you'll think, oh, this is pretty neat. But basically what it does is it sort of, it, it, it's designed to, take your profile, your history, the content, your ideas, your thoughts, your points of view on all the stuff you've done, and then sort of mash it in with mine so that when I'm working with you in this conversation, I can see how we sit together.

Everflow.

And where there's some disagreements or agreements, or whether there's opportunities to talk about things. And it gives me a lot of cool insights about you that I could have done myself, but it did an amazing job. So, I have these, I run these for everybody. And I think what I might do is after I'm finished with every one of my guests from now on, I'll send this to them and say, here's my thing I did on you and take a look at it.

Yeah, that'd be cool. I love it.

Sure. So there's that, right? So do you think, how do you define today an agent?

I can give you the technical response to that, but let me give you what I think is happening. Okay. There's, there's a, and from the marketing point of view, for most users, it's on a spectrum. So some people call ChatGPT or Perplexity or whatever tool you want to use an agent when it's not, it's just you chatting with an LLM and it's calling back and forth and giving you token usage and giving you responses. To me, that's not an agent. Agents actually require agency and some sort of action so that you're able to do things. Now, the cool thing is if anyone here listening has used Claude Cowork and created a bunch of skills. That is becoming more agent-like because it's doing things without you having to prompt every single step of the way, which is pretty cool. And like you said, agent teams is where, if you've ever used a deep research product of any of the products, you're using an AI agent team who's going through who knows how many bajillion articles to then research whatever topic you're prompting for and coming back with a really in-depth report on. All these different stuff. You just don't, all you're doing is you're interacting with one single chat, but you're talking to a team of AI agents doing things and coming back with one singular report, which is kind of cool. So the world we're going in is—

So let me, let me make sure. I wanna get in the weeds a bit. I, I don't mind.

Sure.

If you don't mind, because I wanna make sure that you just said something that's important. It's like, what's that, in your view, what's the granular distinction that makes something an agent as opposed to it not? Is it because it, it's automated or it, it's operating independently of you? Is that what makes it more of an agent? Or if I ask something to do a task for me, I query one of these ML and I say, go do this for me. And then it goes and does it and it does it and it finishes it. Was that an agentic relationship that we just had? Or is that more like it was a functional one where it did something for me until it finished it?

Yeah. Again, it's, I, that's why I put it on a spectrum because it kind of depends. Now, if, like, for example, with Momentum, we were, our AI agents were more automated, meaning that they're based on a trigger and it took some responses. Like, for example, I'd have an AI agent run on a sales call and the AI agent would decide on a score and then feed that score into Salesforce, then could populate into some other dashboard or whatever the case might be. So the amount of control or agency I gave to that was very small. It's like, you can do this numerical score and you can give me this summary and that's the only thing you can decide on. Everything else is definitive to where you have to do it in this way with this thing and this signal and that's it. So that control is very small. Now when you think about what's happening with OpenClaw, this is why everyone's freaking out.

Yeah.

Because it was based on the skill infrastructure to where it's trained on self-improving and doing things without being asked for from the point of view of self-improving. So like, for example, is the guy who made it talks about how Warren Zenna, he needed the AI to do something about consuming a voice note. He never trained it or, or gave it the ability to understand noises or audio, but the AI understood it was an audio file and it did its own thing to understand it and then did the task that was being asked for without being asked of building its own ability to understand the voice, voice note. So it's getting to the point where AI is taking preemptive motions so that it can kind of understand, like, okay, you have a call with a podcast person tomorrow. Not only am I gonna do the research for you, but I'm gonna make sure they're— I'm gonna send an email off and make sure the calendar invite's there. And it starts doing things kind of like an assistant of some kind.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

And the next level is when you do more strategic, like, things. Like, for example, think about a world where instead of a RevOps person doing a territory plan, it's an agent. And that agent has access to personality profiles of your salespeople. Has access to your ICP, has access to the third-party signals, and starts matching the right people with the right different places without ever asking, saying, I know you're gonna need this for next quarter. Here's your plan. Here's the reasons why. And it does all this stuff for you. It's like, it's all about how much control that you're willing to give or not to an agent to do things. It's about the control of agency. Most people are very far to the left where it's very definitive, saying you can do this, a really small amount of automation. 'cause that's all I'm comfortable with. And the world we're going to is more and more like a Jarvis from Iron Man where he's running the whole freaking company. 'Cause he has all this agency over whatever's happening. So, yep.

Thank you so much again for listening to the Sierra Spotlight podcast. This podcast is, uh, an important plank in the Sierra Collective communication strategy and, uh, we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So, um, 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, uh, if you're an aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even an 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 5 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 whom are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now. They have a number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it be a sales leader or a marketing leader or even a 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 to give you a brochure of the course. So again, CRO Accelerator course, 15-week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it. It's been great. And, um, you'll see some more information about it on the website. Thanks. It's almost like a child and you say at a certain age you can play in the front yard.

Yeah.

And then you say, all right, you can play in the front and the backyard. And then later on it's like, okay, you can cross the street, right?

Yeah.

Because then you give more and let more and more allowances as the trust builds and you feel more comfortable. And I think that this is the interesting part you're mentioning here is the danger of like how far off the range do you allow these things to go before you, okay, the example you just gave, which I think is a really cool idea, by the way, the territory management platform, right? Where I think makes a lot of sense. You can give 'em all that data and it comes back and says here. So I, at what point do you think we're gonna get to the point where we feel like almost, let's say 99% confident that that plan is, is correct based on the way we asked it and the information it got. How much homework or how much like hallucinating do you have to do into this thing before you send it to your boss and say, okay, this thing's done? Like, where's the human part? And I don't even know the answer, but do you see that as ever happening or is it gonna be always people need to check these things? Okay. So people are gonna be always involved.

Yeah. Yeah. There's gonna be, um, again, I'm gonna reference if anyone has not used Claude Skills or a Cowork or Claude Code, this will be understanding, but like, When you look at Claude Skills as an example, one thing we talk about in the book is you have to have AI to be explainable, so it cannot be a black box. You have to be able to dig in and see what's happening inside this agent to drive whatever behavior. If you can't prove that, then it's uncontrollable, right? And the reason with Claude Skills is so cool is because skills are literally just a HTML or a markdown file with instructions on different things. You can read the markdown saying, oh, that's why this agent does this thing is because the markdown says to do this thing. So, um, that's the world I think we're going into is to where more and more people can see what's happening and the moat's gonna become, like, for example, you have all this information on CROs. Yes. And you could create a skill package of your CRO system.

We're build, we're building it right now.

You could do like that, that, that IP is moatable because the only way the AI would have that is if access to your brain. You know what I mean? Yep. Um, and then when you know you can trust it, that it then carries the weight of your reputation as Warren Zenna, the CEO of Cereal Collective, to where people can both see the content inside of it and they can see the results because you've already queried it and it's based on a system that works. Does that make sense?

Yep. It does. It makes perfect sense.

And the reason why, the reason why I say skills is because skills is a motion where if you work with a skill a lot, you have to test. It's just like prompts, prompt engineering. I have to test and retest and prove and reprove. Like my prompts are like accurate 99.9% of the time because I work on them a lot. And so I can prove and I know how a prompt's going to behave because I've prompt engineered deeply for 3 years. It's the same thing with skills. You train it and you go, oh, that wasn't very good. I got to retrain again. That's why they call them evals. You got to figure out where the evals are. It's just now we have the evals of the RevenueMotion to figure out what level am I able to give it? And I think that's where we are as a whole marketplace is that people are trying to get a good idea of where can they trust AI? That's one thing we're doing at OneMind is that we mix both generative and definitive AI, which is, again, as a way to say generative AI can hallucinate. Definitive AI does not. It's like you have to have that mix because generative gives it this personality and ability to, to think on its feet. Whereas definitive is saying, if this happens, then do this. It doesn't hallucinate, you know? And so you're able to have I mean, we've had people through OneMind who are literally replacing, if you had a 7-step sales process, the first 3 are done by OneMind, and then the last 4 steps are done by a human. You could theoretically have a technology, whether it's OneMind or somebody else, do the entire sales process. The X factor is the buyer. Do they want to have that experience? You know?

That's right.

Which is, again, that's a brand question. What experience you wanna have is like, I think the world we're going to is at least the immediate future, is you have to have options of saying, okay, I want the premium experience because it's going to be premium of a human because it's going to be scarce of an expert who knows their topic of whatever. Or I want to have the AI version that's just being an AI going through at 2 AM on whatever process and buy stuff, you know? Yep. And I think the more people can enable either path because you're going to have some customers who love AI, some people are like, eh, it's okay. And some people are like, I don't have anything to do with AI. Let me talk to Warren, you know? Mm-hmm.

Yep.

So, yeah.

So let, let's talk about OneMind. So congrats, by the way. It's really cool. Thank you, Amanda. It's a really, really great company and they're doing some really amazing things. But the last time I played around with their, with their agents, let's call them, it was still earlier. So I haven't really had an opportunity to engage them in a while. Where are they going and, and what's your role there and, and what's the future look like there? And what are you bringing in? What are you being brought in to do?

I'm handling marketing, so I'm doing some go-to-market and marketing stuff. So they don't have a CRO currently. My path is to a CMO spot at some point. And they have an incredible, like, Katie is the VP of sales there. She is amazing. She'd be a great VP or CRO. And anyways, my job is to think about more of the go-to-market strategy and the marketing to make sure we can grow. They haven't done, I mean, just because the man is Mena, they have a really good traction at the events, but They have no cohesive strategy. So my job is to get out there and hopefully make sure people know that they exist and to help build trust in the brand. Because, again, AI is very untrusting. I do the same thing at Momentum, you know? Mm-hmm. And right now, I think some of the cool, the cool things they're doing is, like, one example is they have the AI just on the website, but it's able to bring up decks and dynamically talk to them and answer literally any question you want. And it's also, they're adding this new feature where you can have an interactive experience where you can say, okay, Now you click on this and you guide it, and they actually guide through an interactive experience, which is freaking cool. The second, the second version they use a lot is called the ride-along, where it's not a face that pops up. It's just another entity or picture on a Zoom screen or Teams. And you can literally say, hey, Nigel, that's what our agent's called. Nigel, can you give me the diagram on this particular thing? So if a salesperson needs something in the moment, it's just there as a ride-along to pop up stuff as you need to, kind of like a enablement/sales engineer combines to make sure you can help with different concepts. And then the last one is on support. So, um, I think it's HubSpot right now uses us for support to when someone buys into HubSpot, the OneMind takes them through the first iteration of onboarding to understand how to use HubSpot, which is really cool. So it's what I'm finding is it's not so much that we're replacing humans. It's that it's doing things that humans were never doing in the first place. You know what I mean? We were never talking to someone on the website. And if we were, it was through typing, which was not the most effective way to do it.

Or there's a Loom video or some other thing like that.

Yeah, Loom video. Yeah, it's like, it's more, I see AIs in general doing two different things. It's either doing the old way better, faster, easier, cheaper, which opening up totally new ways we never thought was possible because we never had the capability before. And that's where I feel like OneMind is going, is doing things that we've never known we could do before. You know, which was pretty cool.

And then, uh, another thing I'm just fascinated to hear about, 'cause it's always cool to understand, um, I don't know how much you could talk about it, but like the Momentum Salesforce relationship.

Sure.

How did that happen? And fascinated just like what that was like.

Yeah.

You know, it's gotta be an interesting process, you know?

Yeah. There's, um, a few things. So a shout out to Kyle 'cause he's kinda like the, the point of all of the things here. But, um, so there's a couple things happening all at the same time and I'll, I'll give you that quick story. So, Kyle has been a customer before I joined in marketing. And part of my marketing plan was to help amplify him as a voice. So I would book him on podcasts and book him on events. And he talked about us whether I paid him or not. He was just very good about supporting us. Anyways, one of the people he talked to was at SaaSr, which is Jason Lemkin.

Sure. I know Jason. Yeah.

Jason bought us because of Kyle. And so one time on 20VC, Jason was talking to Mark Benioff and the other guys in 20VC about this AI tech that does this automatic entry into CRM. And Mark Benioff was like, what the heck is that tech? And I was like, it was Momentum. So, so to Mark Benioff, he heard it. At the same time, a guy named Adam, who's over the SMB markets of Salesforce, he kept hearing about Momentum and he knew Kyle, So he, he asked Kyle, he was like, did you tell me about Momentum? Do you like it? Like, what's going on? And he came to us originally to buy the technology for his salespeople. And then that turned into, uh, more of a deeper conversation because at the same time we're in Series B. So Adam then talks to Mark, who just heard it from Jason about the same time.

Amazing.

About this Momentum. It was like, what the hell? What's this team?

And, um, so energy synapses all happen like that all the time.

All the same time. And then It just walked down that path. I was back last fall at Dreamforce when the first conversation happened and progressed, and then we went to a deal and closed and really quickly announced it back in, gosh, was it January? I think February, whenever it was. And then we closed.

Yeah, it was around February, if I'm not mistaken.

3 weeks ago. Yeah. I can't even remember now. It seems like a blur. And the Salesforce team has been great. Like, I, most of my team's still there. I still believe in them. The Salesforce team, Chris is, is the main EVP of AgentForce, is brilliant, really good guy. He's changing things up. Um, Dina is the CMO of AgentForce. She's also brilliant. Adam's great. Like Salesforce is making all the right moves to not become irrelevant. They have a lot of things they gotta do, but I totally believe they're gonna be still relevant and a really cool technology into the future. Um, it's just gonna take 'em a little bit of time to get there. And momentum is one of the key pillars of how they're gonna get there because they've never had a first-party conversational data piece like Momentum to feed the rest of Asia for us, which now they're gonna have it. It's gonna be a really, really cool thing to see.

Amazing. Well, congrats on that and on both things actually.

It's really great stuff.

It's a great story.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's really cool. I'm really, really proud of the founders. I'm, I'm just glad to have a small part in it. Um, I, I, yeah, I, I wish I could say I was a large part of it, but I'm a very small piece of a larger team that did a lot of good things together at the same time. It's like, It's one of these things where I look back at Momentum, the founders were killer. The customers they got way before I ever got there were amazing. What we had was really special because we all got along well. Everything was firing on all cylinders. Like, there's so many good things that happened for us that, again, I was a very small piece of a larger team that did some amazing things really good together. And it's a highlight of my career and something I'm very, very proud of. I just miss that magical feeling, you know?

I know, I— we talked about that before. It's like when you're in Led Zeppelin, you're never going to get that again, you know? Yeah, everyone's the best at what they do. It's like, okay, that's, that's cool. Lightning in a bottle, right?

Yeah, it's like, I— we're— I think we have that now at One Mind. It's like we're— I'm still getting to know him, so it's a little, it's a little bit different. It's like when you're in the zone together, that's when it's just— and I feel like One Mind's going to do that. It's just, I know we had it at Momentum, which was just special.

It's beautiful. Well, good. Well, congrats to you, man. And, uh, I have one last question. Uh, it's an interesting question, and that is like, what is it that, you know, other people need to tolerate about you to get your leadership?

Oh gosh. Um, what? I've never been asked that question. That's a phenomenal question. Tolerate about me? Probably way too much. Um, the last feedback I got was that I move fast and I need to help my team move fast with me. So they have to tolerate a lot of speed, sometimes in my speaking, sometimes in my task getting done. I move very quickly, so I have to be aware of that and make sure people come along. And then I also know that, um, there's strengths and weaknesses with, with, like, every strength I know has a other flip side, you know? Yeah. Sure. And, um, my strength is in my sensitivity and my weakness is in my sensitivity. So it's like, I'm very aware of that. So people need to— I have to coach people on how to be aware of my sensitivity. 'Cause once they know, it's like, and I'm not like defensive. People critique me all the time. It's fine. Um, I'm not criti— I'm not sensitive from a critiquing point of view. It's more like I'm sensitive to, uh, like you, I'm, I have this feeling of like if something's off, So I'll tell people like, you don't have to tell me, but I feel like there's something off. There's something going on.

So you, you have a very fine attenuation to what's going on and you're sensitive to it.

Yeah. And, and people have to tolerate that cuz not everyone's comfortable saying that kind of stuff. And my, my, my purpose is not to be nosy. I just care. And people have to tolerate that.

I feel you, man. I'm, I'm the same. I, I am very transparent about that. And some people love it. Some people are like, mm, I don't wanna talk about this.

Some, some people don't like it.

Yeah. Yeah. I understand. I do.

Yeah.

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