The Hyper-Growth CRO, With Dave Norton

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. Okay. And welcome to episode two of the CRO Spotlight. Hi, Lupe.

How you doing, Warren?

I'm great. How are you doing? What's been happening?

It's busy. Budgets are getting kind of used and released and all sorts of exciting things are happening. There's just momentum building and trying to adapt to the new normal.

Yeah. Isn't that the case? I think we already have settled into the new normal. I mean, I feel like everyone's sort of kind of in this hybrid model, and I think that's where they're going to stay. And what do you think?

I think so. I think there's a lot of speculation. I think there's. Well, there are a lot of companies that have real estate, and because of that, they're influenced to try to go back to the old way. And there's. There's a little bit of a tug and pull there. So I think eventually things will land in a place where both employee and employers are happy and everybody's productive, as productive as they can be.

That's a good point. I mean, people are carrying leases. Right. But the other part of it, too, is that a lot of people moved. Right? I mean, all of a sudden, like, you got all these executives that are now living in who knows where because they can, and they're not moving back just to go to the office. And if you want those people now, I think the upper hand has been handed over to a lot of talent that are saying, look, I'm staying in Wyoming, I want to live here. And that's where I think it's going to be interesting. I wonder, what do you think? Do you think that salaries are going to change? Do you think that people are going to actually going to say, well, you're not living in New York City anymore, I'm not paying you? As.

I think it depends a lot on the experience of success, the. The actual job description that you're filling and your flexibility to travel when needed, as needed. There's still a lot of value in being in the same space and collaborating and having that opportunity to kind of feed off of each other. It's taking us a while to get to a really good functioning collaboration via Zoom. And. And it takes a lot of discipline. And one of the. Kind of. One of the rules that I set for myself is you have to be present. And so often it's. It's easy to just flip your camera off or turn on the mute button and get a little distracted. And I think if people can be present, I think it really doesn't matter where you are, and if you can be together every quarter or so, I think. I think it's functional, but I think it also depends on the actual job description and the size of the company and some of the objectives that they have ahead for themselves.

Yeah, I get it. I agree that. I think the issue you're talking about, too, about productivity, the stats aren't in yet. We're not going to know for a long time whether or not this Zoom culture resulted in any changes in the way companies operate. I don't know. I think there's a lot of theory about it, but we'll see. There's two sides of it, right? One is, well, people are more present because they kind of have to be. Right. They're on the Zoom thing and they're being looked at all the time. I mean, I noticed. Think you probably did, too, but there are a lot of my clients were like, having calls every day when they were in the middle of the pandemic, and no one did that before the pandemic. No one had a meeting every day with everybody. It was a sort of overkill to try and get everybody engaged. And I think it seems like it's sort of flattening out, but I guess we'll see. There's a transition there which you kind of didn't realize you referenced, which is awesome. You mentioned job descriptions. So this is something that I know you and I have talked about, and I wanted to bring this up. So probably everyone knows, because who's listening to this probably follows me on LinkedIn and I'm kind of a blabbermouth about this topic, but I read the Chief Revenue Officer job descriptions every day. There's a lot more. I've never seen this many CRO roles out there and I am amazed and I feel like I'm saying this again and again at just these job descriptions are just blatantly, clearly they're just looking for someone to come in and run their sales department. They're not even hiding the ball anymore. They, they really just, I think are doubling down on, on this idea that the CRO sales leaders. Matter of fact, when I'm having conversations with a lot of people right now, they go, well, doesn't a CRO just run sales? There, There really is a ingrained sort of, I guess it's a, it's a, not just a perception, but I, I think it's actually like a definition and Right. I mean we're trying to kind of change that perception and a lot, everyone agrees with me on that point. So I'm curious what your take on this is like, what do you think it is that'll create the shift so that CEOs start thinking about the role and even sales leaders think about the role differently. That starts to make it more strategic. Is that possible? What do you thought? I'm just curious to get thoughts on this in general.

Yeah. As I think about job descriptions, they're critically important in every job, in every job that you come across. And so often they're recycled and they sit in some kind of a database for HR and the position becomes open because somebody moves or they're asked to move out of the organization. And then that old job description from 4 years ago, 3 years ago, 12 months ago gets recycled. And a lot of times in the CRO position, it's such a fairly new position that maybe they never had one and they don't really know what to put in there. And so it defaults to, well, maybe let's upgrade what the VP of sales did or the head of sales did. And it's such a missed opportunity. But I think the root of it is having a joint conversation between the CEO, HR and you know, and having that expectation set of what you're looking for. It serves more purpose than just opening the door to candidates. It actually helps you fine tune and, and find the right candidates and it guides the type of experience and training that this candidate should have, shouldn't have. And it actually leads to job satisfaction and retention as well. People will stay with an organization if they signed up for X and they're actually able to do X as opposed to signing up for X and being told to do, you know, Z. So it's, it's really important that you can also measure what you expect from this role. And if the job description is not accurate, then it really doesn't allow you to measure the expectations of what you want out of this person that you're bringing in.

You're not going to get the right.

People, you're going to get the wrong people.

Exactly.

I mean, that's what I see happening.

And it's so easy for people to fall in love with someone they interview. It's like the ultimate speed dating.

Some people are so good at interviewing. They're just really good at that. They know they've nailed that skill. Right.

And, and then you can say, well, we do referrals and we do references and, and all of that. But the reality is you're not going to give someone who's going to be not a proponent of you getting this job as a reference. You're going to give someone that's going to give you kind of an elevated view of what you do. So the discipline in the job description is critical and more so than any position.

I agree. I think though, this role is. And I agree. There's no question. I mean, you're going to love this one. So to your exact point, last week I saw a job description someone sent me and they had actually the old company name that was originally used for, you could tell the CEO probably called up his buddy and said, can you send me your job description for your CRO? And he forgot to take out his other company's name and the job description. It was different than the hiring company. And I was like, okay, this is a bad sign. Now that's obviously pretty sloppy. But I, I think more importantly is aside from the laziness of it, what I really believe is the reason why it's so easy to do that is because CEOs still just think of the CRO role as a sales leadership role. They can easily just take any head of sales job description and just kind of recycle it with a different title on it, as opposed to. Because when I speak to CEOs now and they start to get wind of some of the stuff we're referencing, they realize how much more in depth they need to be thinking about the impact that this role would have if they were to appoint it in the manner in which I'm trying to say. And I think that that's the problem. I think there just isn't enough thought going into it. They want to fill a slot for the reasons you mentioned. And what ends up happening is you've got a marketplace that's looking for a certain type of candidate for the wrong reasons. And then you've got the candidates looking for the wrong job for the wrong reasons, and it's match made in hell. They end up getting married and they never should have gotten in the first place because the job wasn't really designed properly. And this is what I'm seeing. Right. So Dave's actually going to talk about this. We're going to have a guest coming on shortly and we'll have him talk about this is what happens when that marriage, let's call it that starts off wrong, when the CEO hires the wrong person in the wrong function with the wrong title and all the implications that a job of that importance has on an organization. So I'd be interested in knowing, because in your position. Right, so you had an interesting story because you sort of. I would say, I don't want to speak on your behalf, but when you and I spoke, you mentioned that you sort of organically, like, evolved into the role. Right. You didn't like, weren't hired as a chief revenue officer, am I correct?

No, actually, I came in kind of as a deputy sales officer for the company, and there was a CRO in place. And it was upon exit that I assumed the CRO position and kind of took it to the. To that next level. But I think one of the things that's important is if you bring in a CRO and you don't have a head of sales, then right there is the first pitfall that could happen.

So true.

And so you can't. If you're putting in a CRO position, you can't spare that VP of sales or the head of sales position because they're critical, they're a component. Just like you can't have the person that's doing marketing or the person that's doing social media, or the person that's doing client success. All those different silos currently function independent of each other. And a lot of times what the CRO is, it's like the person directing the orchestra and making everything come together seamlessly. And I think that's what happens to most positions. They think, well, we already have a CRO, we don't need a head of sales. And I think that's what I've seen where the pitfall happens.

I agree. And the problem too is that this is a big one. So I get hired as a Chief Revenue Officer, but I'm actually overseeing sales. And in many cases we see too that then the CRO is also selling like they actually have a quota. And if they're good at that, if they're good salespeople, that's pretty much what they end up doing. They end up becoming just kind of glorified salespeople with a team underneath them. A CEO never wants somebody to give up their pipeline, especially if they're good at developing it. It's almost like a bit of a drug in a weird way. And I think that this is sort of the trap that it's almost like a sort of a co dependent agreement that's made between the CEO and the CRO is, well, let's face it, you're going to drive, you're going to get more business for me. You're going to bring in your Rolodex and you're going to get me business. And we'll give you a CRO title. I think the title is a little kind of a dongle. It kind of is a bauble in a way for a lot of these roles. Right. It's not taken as seriously as it should be and I think the consequences. We'll get into it with our guests. So I don't know. Before we invite them in, do you have any other thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think there's also an opportunity for one of the skill sets that I think a CRO has to have is the ability to develop talent. And that is such a key component of the role because otherwise you tend to kind of just helicopter in and take over. You're not going to be productive. You're going to need to elevate the talent. Elevate and essentially find your replacement within the team that you work with. Whether it's more in marketing, customer success in sales, what have you product. You're going to have to find who's going to fill your seat when you move to the next level because if you can't develop the talent that you have, then you're not going to be able to be effective.

Totally agree. Yeah. I want to get Dave's opinion on this. So we're excited because we have a guest and I'll introduce him. His name is Dave Norton. He's a seasoned revenue and go to market leader. He's based out of Highland, Utah, which is called Silicon Slopes. I was just out there. It's incredible what's going on out there. And Dave has an amazing career background and track record. So he's played a Key role in building out four different unicorn organizations in insurance tech and prop tech, fintech and asset protection tech. And he has, I don't know, 25 years of experience building companies like Xactware and MX. He's been a CRO, he's been a head of sales. He's on the board of multiple companies. He has his own company called Visio Business Consulting. He's an investor, he's a strategic advisor. He's a wonderful man. I mean, I've known Dave now for about a year and this is someone who just has incredible passion. He has amazing experience in building 10x ARR growth for companies and growing market share from in some cases 30 to 85%. So anyway, I'm going to introduce him and I'm going to invite him in and we can say hello to him. Hang on a second. Hey, Dave. Welcome. So you guys know each other, don't you?

Well, we know each other over the phone. We've never actually met in person, but yes, I feel like we connected and had a great, great conversation.

Yes, I love how Lupe thinks and approaches life. She's a great one.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Likewise. Danny talks incredibly about you.

Thank you.

Danny says so. It must be so, right?

I hope so. Although Warren's had a chance to spend some time with me, so I could.

Tell you, one thing I could say is this. I was in Silicon Slopes with Dave for three days and Dave knows everybody and I thought I knew everybody. I mean, it was amazing. Everybody knows Dave and everyone hugs Dave, everyone embraces Dave. And I want to thank you. It was a great experience out there. I'm seeing that amazing community and I'd love to hear a bit more about that, if you don't mind. A little bit more me expound on the background that I just shared. And also a little bit about the Utah environment and what's going on out there and your role in it and also any background on your CRO experience.

Well, I've had the great fortune to be born and raised, I guess, if you'd say, in my career here in Utah, in Silicon Slopes. And it's funny, you're born and raised here in Utah and at the time it was always a great environment and a great culture and community to be raised in. But something I always loved and yearned for was to leave the state, whether that's to go to California to enjoy the beaches or to go to New York City to enjoy all that it has to offer all these other places. And as my professional career took Off I traveled a ton and so I got to see a lot of the country and meet a lot of the amazing people throughout our nation. And people loved always talking about and coming to Utah and interacting with Utah companies. And over the years and over the decades, Utah just continued to grow this great reputation for producing high performing, high integrity type organizations, high tech, you know, cutting edge organizations that soon began to rival that which other communities across the country like Silicon Valley and Austin and the Research Triangle, New York City and others offer from a business and from a technology perspective. And you've got really tracing back to the roots of how Utah started with its pioneers coming and coming for religious freedom and security and being a very self efficient, self sufficient type culture forced them to be an innovative culture. Coming and finding a desert type environment surrounded by these beautiful mountains and they created a gorgeous place to live, to raise a family. And over the years became just an iconic place for people to be and to raise their families. And then a great state for high education and, and then just some amazing organizations and firms that have been acquired and have gone public. And it's just continued throughout the years. And then recently it just seems like this past year Utah itself has had 20 plus organizations that either raised capital, acquired a business or when IPO went public and all exceeded the unicorn status of $1 billion plus in enterprise value. And so the momentum is here. It's pretty fun to be a part of and to watch and to see all of our friends that we've grown up with or went to school with, or have worked with or have moved here in their professional environments that are all just having great success. And I will say that what's unique about Utah that others observe, I was talking with a firm out of Boston and they said we love how unique your culture is because it seems like you're all pulling for each other in Utah. Seems as though you all support each other, you all are cheering for each other to win. And that's absolutely the case. We take pride in where we're from and what we're doing and what we're trying to achieve. We are loyal to each other. That's a trait that a lot of Utahns have, is their loyalty not just to each other, but with those whom we love. And so it is, it's something that we really try and use each other's solutions, leverage each other's relationships and foster great partnerships there and really learn from each other's successes and failures so that we, we can all learn and grow and achieve much faster than otherwise. Would be possible. So it is. It is a unique culture and now one where I was always looking to go. Now I feel away from now. I feel truly blessed that I am here and that a lot of businesses are wanting to come to Utah and participate in this amazing energy, this amazing passion for innovation and entrepreneurship and love for doing what's right, doing what's good for family and friends, for the environment. And it's fun to win the right way with the right people. So I'm glad you got to come see it firsthand, Warren, and want you to come back.

I plan to. So Lupe, you and I were talking before about the challenges associated with becoming a Chief Revenue Officer in today's fast paced environment. And Dave, I'm curious to know, you and I, I know we had this conversation before, what's your experience with kind of moving into a Chief Revenue Officer position in the kind of fast paced, particularly out there, right where there's so much money flowing into that community right now.

Yeah, great question. As I think about the Chief Revenue Officer position and what it can be, what it could be, what it is, what it is not for a lot of organizations. A few thoughts that I wanted to share and then dive in. As you guys wish. Number one, a CRO is not a vice president of a CRO is not the leader of the sales organization. A CRO is not the Chief Risk officer in a security organization. A CRO is not 100% responsible for the success or failure of a business. That is what it is not in my mind in experiences that I've seen and been a part of and seen some of my peers. What I do know the Chief Revenue Officer position to be is, is one of great trust, one of great responsibility, and one of great accountability. And that comes from some critical pillars as I've thought about it as it relates to alignment. Alignment is so important, not just from the business units because as you think about sales and marketing and revenue operations, as you think about customer success and expansion, all of that is a challenge in and of itself to align those organizations. What I'm referring to is actually alignment with the CEO, with other C suite members, with board members throughout the organization. That alignment is so critical because as you think about a hyper growth organization, decisions are happening fast. Trust is a critical component in acceleration and in speed, understanding of areas of ownership, responsibility, swim lanes, what have you, but making sure that everybody's on that same page. And so that alignment, if people don't have it, then chaos ensues, distrust is abound, people are Trying to build up kingdoms and then you have walls and silos and misunderstandings start occurring and then emotions and then narratives. And so it's unfortunate what can become a fallout really, if done right, if set up right, if executed right, if communicated right, can be maybe one of the most singular, most important decisions and superpowers, if you will, to achieve hyper growth status. It takes a lot of buy in from a founder and a CEO to say, you know what, I need help with all things revenue. When you think about that, you think about a CEO or a founder who in my experience is probably one of four different mindsets. 1 very sales and customer centric, 2 very product centric and innovation centric, 3 very HR culture, company building, a great place to work centric, then the other is very financial centric, with the board, financing, raising funds, those types of things, living paycheck to paycheck, whether it's payday to payday, whether it's, oh my gosh, we're going to run out of funds. It's been amazing to see that some CEOs don't even want anything to do with finances, some CEOs want nothing to do with sales or fill in the blank and you go through. And so it's funny how you've really got to understand if you're a CRO, what is the natural tendency for your CEO? Does he or she want natural, naturally to dive into these certain components of the business? And if so, is that a good fit for you? And if so, have you talked about how critical your alignment is? The understanding, the expectations, who will do what? Do they trust you? At what point will they start to hand off more areas of ownership? Because when they have different ideas, the CEO or the founder than you as the CRO, and you don't have that trust or the time together or the understanding or the agreement, and they want to start going a different way, the wheels are going to fall off and of course the company and the customers and the board and everybody's going to follow the CEO as they should. But if you can get in front of that and make sure that what you agree on and you prove to him or her that you're able to achieve what you've agreed to, and over time you continue to build that trust, then they will see that they can then focus on one of those other three compartments, if you will, and say, looks like you've got this. You're marketing great, you're selling great, our customers are great, we're expanding, rev ops are great, your CAC is Great, man, keep rolling. How can I support you? Because that's utopia. So that they don't need to spend a ton of time unless we engage them in some type of executive sponsorship or however they wish to at any time. But man, how many important decisions still need to be made and managed as it relates to all the other parts of the organization? So that alignment, that understanding, that trust, that expectation, those areas of ownership, incredibly important if you as a CEO or founder are wanting to bring on a partner as a CRO. And if you as a CRO, whether you're aspiring to be a great one or you are one, that you have great alignment and a great team member and a great partner in the CEO.

Yeah, you hit on a couple things that I think are probably important to kind of dig a little deeper into. One is the self awareness of the CEO. And I think that's critically important you make that move to hire a CRO. I've seen so often that people hire a clone of themselves. So if you're financially oriented, you're going to hire somebody who's more into finance, or if you're more into customer experience and success and retention, you're going to hire that. If you're into culture, you're going to hire more of a culture person. And I think it takes a lot of discipline to understand what you're good at as a CEO and where you need a little bit more help and then hire to fill the gaps and then really empower and open up the collaboration. And so that's, that's one thing that I've experienced in my career is having a position that's not really what you signed up for. And the other is not being, I call it setting the table. The CEO needs to set the table for who's coming to dinner and make sure that everybody understands what that means and how they need to behave going forward. And I think that those two things I think are critically important. I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

I love it. While you're talking about that, I thought of this one experience I had recently with the CEO and it goes like this. As a CEO, it could be said that the E stands for energy. You're the Chief Energy Officer and it's your job to recognize and be self aware what gives you great energy, what tasks, what experiences within running the business just makes it so that you wake up every day and you just love doing these certain things. And likewise, what zaps your energy, what is exhausting, drives you crazy, takes you away from your flow and if you are, as a CEO and a founder, are aware and can take the time to carve out. Here's what I love to do. I want to be a thought leader. I want to be on stage. I want to be in front of customers. I want to negotiate. I want to, whatever it might be, or I cannot be in these types of meetings, tracking down this type of information, doing X, Y and Z, if they are that aware, what an opportunity for you to have that discussion in whatever role you're interviewing for, if not just a CRO, but any capacity. And if they haven't had that idea of understanding what gives me energy, what zaps my energy. Because as a CEO, you want to give the best energy every day to your customers, to your employees and team members and to the board, et cetera, because it is a challenge to lead organizations. And so, yeah, if you could have a very honest assessment of yourself and with the peers who work with you and team members and say, hey, what are some of my blind spots? What are the areas where I'm the best at? What do you love seeing me do? Talk to your spouse, your family, your children, whoever it might be. And that leads me to this. If you and an organization are participating in annual, quarterly, whatever it might be.360 evaluations or evaluations, my goodness, what an awesome organization to be a part of. Because if you feel like it's better that you don't have these 360 evaluations, you won't know what others think of, view, perceive, and they may be misunderstandings or misperceptions, or they may not be. They may be very valuable and insightful. So if you want to bury your head in the sand and not be cognizant or aware of, don't do those 360 evaluations. But if you want to be your best and you want to understand your strengths, that's a great exercise to go through on occasion for everybody throughout the organization. The best organizations I've been a part of do that, and they do that frequently. So that's one answer to your question. I think. The other is, as I think about another experience, I recall one time having a very long, extensive interview process with a founder and a CEO. And at the end, prior to giving me an offer, he says, dave, this has been the most exhausting process, but I'm so glad that we've done it because we are so much better, we're so much prepared, and we know exactly how we're going to thrive together with you, and we couldn't be More excited to have you join the team. And that I took, not as an offense, but as a compliment, that we really took the time to set the table like you're talking about Lupe, to make sure that everything that was important to them was addressed in detail with examples, specificity. And same thing with me. What are all the things that matter to me to make sure that we were a great fit for each other. Because how much better is that? That you find out beforehand that you're not a great fit, as opposed to six months in, 12 months in, et cetera. And so because of that, the expectations can be great for each other and you can win faster together if you take the time up front.

Great, Dave. Thank you. What I'm hearing the theme here, it's so much in doing the hard work upfront and I just think people don't do it. I do believe that. Here's what goes on, I think is a CRO is an important role and it needs to be filled for a lot of reasons, a lot of the wrong reasons. Then you also have somebody who's looking for the role and they want to get hired as quickly as possible too. It's not like everyone has all this Runway, they can just wait around to get a job. And I think a lot of those dynamics, unfortunately make people a little hasty and ignore detail and they don't think about. It's no different. I know I'm being a bit weird here, but it's no different than getting married too quickly. If you meet somebody and three months later you run off and get married, I mean, you've served. Maybe there's anecdotal experiences where you see how happy they are together. Most of the time you can get yourself into a really bad situation because you're with somebody for a very long time and the integration is really profound. So I really think there's a lot of parallels here. I think if you're hiring someone in the role that you described, I think we agree with that. You need to be incredibly diligent about being very self aware about what it is not only you won't do you want the CRO to do, but what the company really needs, what does this role really provide? Because I think that the danger, particularly as you and I have discussed in the past, earlier stage companies have different needs than mid stage companies do or later stage companies do. So I'd like your perspective on that. So if you're an aspiring chief revenue officer and Dave, you're speaking to them and they're looking at stages of companies, what's your perspective on the way they should approach knowing where a company's at in their level of maturity and complexity?

Yeah, great question. I think about the stages of the black magic getting from scratch zero to a million. And there's just. It is incredibly gritty for a founder and team members to just work so hard to get those first few customers and initial contracts and and everything else proving out. And then you've got that 1 million to $10 million ARR space where you're really starting to replicate success. You're branching out maybe into a new vertical or not, or maybe expansion revenue is occurring. You're starting to get a good solid sales team, a good solid CSM team. You've got a great product, potentially a great product market fit, but it's been really, really hard work. And then you've got that 10 million to 50 million or even $20 million to $100 million where you really go into hyper growth mode where the company's ready to fund, ready to invest, whether that's take on funding or you've got so much profit that you can do this, but you really double down. In this hyper growth mode where you're willing to not just invest in more sales professionals, but also your BDR and SDR motion the go to market. You're willing to invest far more in the marketing and team because there is so much that takes place in the marketing efforts that people don't realize. They think it's showing up to trade shows or creating up a website or having a partnership or let's just create assets that they'll need in the sales process. And it is so much more than that which we can get into the details of. And then there's that expansion revenue, making sure your customers are happy, making sure they're buying more and renewing. But also what additional problems can we solve? How have we provided value for you and your team and can we do it for other teams? Would you be willing to introduce us to others and not just expanding within an organization, but could we innovate and create additional solutions for your business and for other verticals that are closely knit together? So there's a big difference in where you are in your stage as an organization. And then of course after the 100 million plus, it's IPO, it's acquisition, it's everything else that you're getting ready for to really have sophisticated processes, systems, motions in place. So certainly there are those different stages to be considered. I would say that if you are in your one to $10 million stage. Don't look for a CRO at that moment. You're looking for some key sales individuals, maybe a sales manager, potentially a sales vice president who's going to help you recruit, manage, lead train, et cetera. Also marketing. Don't hire a cmo. That title is over inflated number one. And number two, what are the functions you need from the marketing team? And so that's where individuals such as yourself, Lupe, myself and many others in this space know what it takes to sit down with you as a business, as an owner, as a founder, as a CEO and say, what are your strengths? What areas are you not paying attention to? What have you invested in? And what were those results? What would you do differently? And just listening to them, you can quickly gauge what they have or have not ever done or thought about what they have done because they were told by somebody that it worked 10 years ago, before the smartphone even existed. And so there's these things you can pick up quickly to identify. Wow, if they could just implement these two or three things and not have to hire a ton of people, that's going to have millions of dollars of impact in them and in their business. And so really it would behoove a founder, a CEO to spend time with individuals like you Warren, who are experts in this space and really get an assessment so that you can get that outside feedback to know what types of processes, systems should be implemented. Don't go right for Salesforce or the top CRM is Freshworks. The right one is HubSpot's up and coming CRM. Is there another one? Are Google Sheets still okay to operate in? And so these are the types of conversations that CEO sometimes go overboard in investing too early, too much. Who's going to manage Salesforce? Do you have a Salesforce administrator? Do you have a systems ops? I mean that's a massive expense. And so if you're going to invest in a world class system like that, do you have the time, the people, the resource, the expertise, the funding to do such and does your business have the need? And so those are the types of things where you talk about the order of operations that really should be considered in that phase. Also when you think about moving from that 10 million to 50 to 100 million at that point, yeah, you're probably looking at, looking at hiring a potential CRO. In my world, it's my fiduciary responsibility to hire someone who has been there and done that multiple times and been successful multiple times in different environments or businesses or industries and even A foul ball or two or a stubbed toe or two. And the value in that is that when you hire these VPs of sales or director of Demand gen or account executives who have just fulfilled that criteria I just mentioned, they know what it takes to be successful because of the foul balls, the stubbed toes and the multiple areas of success or multiple times that they've been able to generate success. So they are much more attuned to plug and play. Learn about the value proposition, learn about the target market, the ICPs, who are we selling to and marketing to, what's the playbook? And let's go. And so if you're hiring people who are aspiring to be promoted, they're going to learn on your dime, your time, and there's going to be a lot more pain than you're probably wanting to endure. Or do you hire someone who is familiar with your stage, where you are, where you're going, they've done that multiple times and they're willing to take on that role again with potential opportunity down the road to grow within the organization for a career path. Those are the types of candidates you want to invest in. So those are the types of things that I've learned both from my experience and the successes that I've had, as well as a few foul balls, let's call it. And that's how we all become better, is we get anchored and this is what we really know to be true. And are we willing to sacrifice this axiom or this principle? And man, when that gets violated, you're like, I will never ever let that happen again. It used to be a hunch, used to be an instinct or yeah, I used to believe that, but now it's cemented as gospel in the way in which you operate going forward. So there's a lot of wisdom and learning off of those stubbed toes and foul balls that allow you to really put your playbook in motion and of course adopt your playbook and be flexible and crush it.

One of the things that I've seen often with kind of startup fintech organizations are the primary members of the organization evolve to the more senior roles. And sometimes that's like a recipe for failure because they've reached kind of their, their maximum level of experience and expertise. And other times you bring in people from the outside that have the experience, but you don't define success. And I think that's also the expectation. If you think adding a CRO is going to achieve 10x but really you don't set the right goal. Everybody is not going to be happy with the outcome. And so I think you've probably seen that in your area of business as well.

You're spot on. There's an icon in our industry in the fintech space. He was co founder of MX and His name's Brandon DeWitt and he recently passed away of cancer. And we love him and we celebrate him and he did so much not just for MX as an organization and Silicon Slopes as a community, but the entire fintech space and financial services. And he's revered and we learned so many amazing lessons from him. His perspective was one very, very unique. And amongst the many statements he would say this one resonates with what you talked about, Lupe, and that is there is no silver bullet ever, but there is a chuck full of a bunch of lead bullets and you need to use them all to be able to win. And so yeah, it's, there never is a silver bullet. It's all in the awareness, the preparation, the understanding, the commitment. The old adage uac, understand, agree and commit. And if you have great mutual understanding and if you both agree to what's going to be executed and you commit to it, that's a great recipe for success, whether that's in life, in marriage, in business, in education, in your community. If it's a service project, understand what the need is and make sure that you agree that you're going to do this for this entity and then commit to it and how great will be your reputation and the outcome if a service project can be executed like that, let alone relationships in life and in business, it's when we deviate from that that we somehow seem to forget what was understood or we seem to forget what was agreed to, or we forget what our commitment was. And the great thing is now that you can text, you can email, you can write things down and you can sign agreements and contracts and better agreements every time and that's how we get better. And so I'm no different and I'm sure you guys have experienced that as well, is let's all improve on our UAC and see what amazing things can be accomplished.

I love the uic. I think that's the recipe for any relationship. I mean a perfect, happy marriage as well. So that's awesome. That's awesome.

Hey Dave, that was great. That was so great. I saw gems in there. Thank you for being here and having this great dialogue with us, sharing your experience and wisdom with us and I'm sure we'll probably have you back again. I'm sure we'll See you again. I know I will. And I know you're busy, you got a lot going on. You just recently have done some pretty amazing things in your career. Is there anything you want to share before you take off and let everybody know, like what you're up to these days or how they can reach you?

Yeah, I appreciate it. Well, number one, I want to thank you, Warren, for reaching out to me. You've become a great friend and the power of social media, LinkedIn. It was either through a connection that Lupe and I had or somebody else. And you were tagged on it and you made this statement and this PowerPoint and this 60 page document and I saw it, it caught my eye, caught my heart and I started reading it and boom, next thing I'm reading all 60. I'm like, this guy gets it. This is my world, he speaks my language. So number one, I just want to iterate the mission that you're on, that you've got a lot of fans out there that believe in what you're doing, how you're doing it, and we are all aligned. This Chief Revenue Officer community can be a lonely one and if done right, can be an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling one. So I really appreciate the mission that you and Lupe and I and others are on and we're all in this together, number one. So keep up the great work and keep up the gems flowing. I love the recent post you did of the three circles together in revenue and marketing and customer success. The Venn diagram and CRO right there in the middle, that's just gospel truth. And the more that we are aligned and bring alignment throughout the organizations as they report up and as they work close together, you eliminate negative energy, you eliminate wasted energy, you eliminate duplicative efforts and you eliminate the need for meritocracy. And we deserve this and we won. But instead, if you can create that alignment under the revenue operations, it's amazing how much hyper growth can be achieved. So again, thank you. You got my full endorsement and look forward to doing amazing things together with you as it relates to me and what I'm doing now. Yes, I recently appointed a chief revenue Officer of an amazing company called LTropy. They're based out of San Jose, California. They provide Omni channel communications and data services for the financial services industry. So all things credit unions, community bank, super regional and national banks, mortgage and lending companies, title companies and also insurance companies. So it is a great opportunity to address a market that needs ideal, secure, integrated, compliant communication with our customers. So we're Achieving great success, building an amazing team. And if you'd like to be a part of that, please, please do reach out. I can be reached at Dave, at LT, that's D, A, V E, L Tropy, E L, T, R, O, P, Y dot com. Or you can ping me on LinkedIn. Or reach out to Lupe and Warren. They know how to get ahold of me, but would love to be a part of that. We're achieving amazing things. We're backed by an amazing partner in K1 Capital, a $10 billion fund, who is an ideal partner at this stage of the business. And we've got an upcoming series, B and C, which they're fully committed to. So we are very excited for what has been achieved and to replicate and grow in that success. There is no doubt we are going to be utilizing your network, Warren and Lupe to achieve all these great things. So thank you. And please, genuinely, please let me know how I can help you guys in any way. That is part of what I love doing and fulfilling my relationships and my obligation to our great community is I want our peers to win, I want our friends to win. And I am willing to share in any way I can to help you each win.

Appreciate it. That's great. Thank you.

Thanks, Dave. And they're lucky to have you, and they know that. So to that, thank you. And we appreciate you being here.

Thank you, guys. Take care.

Bye. Bye.