Cutting Through The Noise - Stevie Case - Revenue Today - Episode # 006

1, 2, 3, 4.

Sales, marketing, and RevOps. It's sink or swim out there, and yesterday's strategies and tactics won't help you today. This is Revenue Today, and I'm your host, Jared Robin. Join me as we interview revenue leaders in our community to learn what steps we could take right now to help you scale yourself and your company. Revenue Today is sponsored by Rev Genius, and we're on a mission to bring inspiration and creativity to all revenue professionals in the world. Okay. Today's guest is someone I'm hoping to learn a lot from. She helped Vanta recently raise $110 million Series B. Started in the video games industry and made her way into business development and sales. She's a negotiator and strategist, former Quake pro expert, and the world's first female pro gamer, alias Killkree. Welcome to the first Chief Revenue Officer at Vanta. Hey, Stevie Case.

Hi, thanks for having me.

I'm so excited to have you today and, you know, really awesome to have everyone listening learn from you. So to jump right into it, debunk a myth about generating revenue today.

All right. I got, I got a spicy one for you.

Okay.

So a lot of people talk all about the perfect resume, the perfect profile, How hard it is to get great sellers, to become a, a top-tier AE, a sales leader, a CRO. But I am here to tell you, these are jobs that absolutely anyone can do, and that this should be the number one path to onboarding in tech and to wealth creation for new entrants in our market.

So help me understand, anybody could do— I, I go through job descriptions all day long. I've seen 7 to 10 years for AE roles.

Yeah. One, you will hopefully not see those types of requirements on AE roles that I'm hiring for. But the truth is you gotta kind of ignore those things on the job description, number one. And when you boil it down, sales really is a few fundamental skills. Can you put together a puzzle for your customer? Can you ask really great questions and do discovery? And then can you present them with a solution that's valuable? And the truth is everybody does certain amount of this work in their life. Reframing that and then taking that sales hustle to go after jobs, you will get jobs for which you are not qualified for. I have been in jobs multiple times that if they hired someone new in that moment, I absolutely not, would not have been qualified by the job description.

Yeah, but you're at a place, Vanta, SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, PCI, ABC. If I don't know those acronyms, and truth be told, I have 15 years in sales, I've heard of just about all of them. I don't know what all of them mean.

Yeah, that's the beauty.

How can I be a fit?

You, you can literally Google these things and it really, that's the beauty of the world that we are living in, in the market that we are in. By taking the steps to educate yourself, to do the research, all of which is out there and is free, you can differentiate and stand apart from the pack. And it really is about sort of setting aside these traditional notions of what it looks like to be a salesperson or what that entails. And just being real, being curious, asking a lot of questions and engaging like a human being, you would be shocked how much that will set a candidate apart.

So I agree, but why do you think so many companies, you know, the, the biggest joke is you need 2 years experience for an SDR role. Yeah. That, that's like the ongoing joke. It's like, isn't that an entry-level role? And after 2 years, aren't you supposed to have been promoted? Or like, like, why are companies putting all these requirements out there then if it's this easy?

It's not that it's easy. So I want to definitely correct that. Look, the job is hard. This is not in any way to say it's not a hard job to sell or especially to be an SDR, which I think is frankly one of the hardest jobs out there.

Agreed.

It's more about Companies are trying to hire well. They're trying to hire talent that's going to succeed. And at the end of the day, as a hiring manager, that's your job is to hire somebody that you are confident can succeed in the role. And those kind of bland requirements, they're like a safety net that are indicators that that hiring manager believes might mean you'll be successful. But the truth is, at the end of the day, There are always outliers. There are always folks who blow it out of the park that don't meet those requirements. And if you can find, one, a hiring manager that is really invested in non-traditional talent and willing to give people a shot, because not every manager is like that, and 2, you're willing to do the work and ask the questions and also put yourself out there, you should disregard those type of requirements. Consider them a suggestion. But not a hard and firm rule.

I love that. And I agree wholeheartedly. I've been saying, like, do you think it's a function of enablement or lack thereof that get people kind of nervous? Like, they're like,

I don't— Yeah. I mean, I definitely think so. I think, you know, when I think back on my career, I've been really, really lucky. There is a lot of luck involved in a successful trajectory. You know, my role before I came to Vanta was at Twilio. And in my career, I've gone back and forth, last 15 years in sales. In that 15 years, I've gone back and forth between being a sales manager or a leader and being an AE. And when I started at Twilio, I joined as an enterprise AE. So I was one of the first AEs there. And when I left, I was running the mid-market business, which was 130-person team, $400 million business on its own. And then moved to the CRO role. And there were really only a few key things in there that I did. Like, I didn't do anything that exceptional that couldn't be replicated. Yeah. I asked a lot of questions. I was willing to do anything and everything and kind of think outside the bounds of traditional sales. And I had incredible mentors and people that taught me what it looked like at the next level.

I love that. And I, we probably have some of the similar friends cuz I know some of those enterprise AEs from like early, and if I dropped We'll drop it offline. You'll probably smile. What I do know about Twilio in particular is they're open to unique profiles. In fact, they pride themselves on it, right?

Right. That's right. And that was, that was something I was a big proponent of. And, you know, part of that has to do with the fact that the sale over there is very unique, particularly when you're looking at selling APIs into the enterprise, you know, a consumption-based API model, it's a, you know, a newer concept for a lot of enterprise buyers. And so in a business like that, you need folks who can come at things from a fresh perspective and aren't necessarily going to take the typical SaaS sales model and just stamp it out in a new business. Because what you see over and over again is you just try to stamp out that model in something that's fundamentally different in either its pricing model or the underlying nature of the product. It Typically doesn't work. So you, the non-traditional profile often leads to a seller who's willing to think differently.

Incredible. And, and if you wanted to like gear up hiring managers to CROs that are playing it safe with the job descriptions, because that's what they've seen, to think outside the box, what recommendations would you give to them to to, to change it up and feel confident that they're doing it, uh, in a way that'll benefit the business?

Yeah, I think there are a couple of keys in there. One is letting go of the idea of necessarily ever being fully confident in your ability to predict the future. Um, and then 2 is really optimizing for the qualities that do make a salesperson very successful in a dynamic business because I think we all know that really when it boils down, you're hiring somebody for your company today, but if you're doing it right in a startup, your company's gonna be a totally different business 12, 24 months from now. So you need somebody who can adapt to change. You need somebody who's super gritty, who's curious and is a learner. And if you can nail somebody with those characteristics, they will evolve with your business. They'll find new ways to outbound. They'll like approach the job in a way that is gonna mature as your business changes. And that is the kind of person you want on your team.

That's, that's awesome. Let's, let's move on. 'Cause I think, I think you left some mic drop knowledge there. And, and, you know, just to state the obvious, you know, outbound alone, when I speak to GTM leaders, it's interesting. How curious they are about the SDR role. Everything else is rinse and repeat. The SDR role in particular, outbound is changing every— is 6 months too long of a period? Like every 6 months, let's say every Google email box update or Outlook email box update, every SEO update, et cetera. And this is something that— so having that person that evolves with it versus a 15-year staunch, I sold IBM in the, in the '90s, if, you know, person is going to be better, right?

Absolutely. Well, and look, the world has changed so much. Like, we're spending all this time— so many of us are remote now. My team is remote first. And, you know, we're all trying to connect in a way that we haven't before. We don't have the luxury so much of traveling to see customers. You're trying to outbound and everybody's got so much like digital fatigue, and you cannot use the same strategies and methodologies that worked in the past. And at the same time, people are getting just hounded and outbounded relentlessly. Like, I'll tell you, in the CRO role— I do angel investing too— my inbox is like Thousands of folks trying to outbound to me and 99.9% of them don't get through. And it's not that they don't have something interesting, it's that there's just breaking through that level of noise. It is virtually impossible. And I, I had one person in the last several months succeed. And I, I, I'm happy to tell you about that, but it really boils down to like, you've got to get Human. You have to show yourself as a human being, not just an automated button pusher who creates outbound sequences of thousands and hopes the numbers turn out right.

Well, I mean, you need to land in the inbox first because you're not looking in your spam, right?

No, you're not.

So even if you are that person and that human, that connection, and you're not landing in the inbox, like that That's the new top of funnel is—

Absolutely.

Well,

and you got to think differently too. The one thing I would say that the old school approach got right that we're forgetting today is pick up the phone, pick up the phone and call people, do things that show you in person with your voice and your personality. There's so much, you know, I've had AEs working for me who are lovely and very smart people. But, you know, they'll come weeks in, months in and say, nothing I'm doing is working. I'm not getting any responses. Nobody wants to talk to me. And it's like, okay, well, what did you do? And in some cases, the response is, I have sent thousands of emails. Like, perhaps you should question your strategy.

Law of diminishing return. Let's— so moving on, what KPIs are important to you today?

Ooh, this is one of my favorite topics. Okay. So KPIs for me, and it's, it's different because I'm, you know, I'm in this CRO role now. I've got sales and I've got customer success. So there are several things that are top of mind, but the one metric that's really top of mind for me as in the CRO role specifically is productivity per AE. That's something I'm frequently looking at. Like, are we maintaining adequate productivity per AE in such a way that tells me we can keep growing the business and adding people? That's my leading indicator of if we're doing well. When I then look at the field itself and the performance there, key KPIs, obviously percentage of reps that are making their number. I like to look at the percentage that are making 80% of target. You want that to be nice and healthy. So you can, you don't want too much bifurcation there. You got to have enough of your team making the target and feeling good to move forward. ACV is a big one for me, right? Right now. So looking at what that initial ACV is and how we can increase it, big focus. Net retention, but particularly gross retention, hot topic for me. So really holding on to the customers we do land. We've got a huge customer base at Manta, which is just a tremendous advantage. We have that first mover advantage. We got to the market first. We want to make sure we hang on to those customers and provide a great experience for them. So those are a few, but there's many. It's, we, we have a killer sales ops team and I put a lot of focus here.

That, that's awesome. And, and that's gonna certainly help, you know, the listeners quite a bit. What are some of your challenges keeping you up at night?

So many.

Get that HBR.

I don't, I don't think you're, I, I, well, it's not true. There are great sales leaders who have already made it and probably sleep like babies at night. Yeah. I don't know if I'll ever get to that point. I'm definitely still in the wake up in a cold sweat every day phase of my journey. And I think that's healthy to a certain extent. And it's not because anything is particularly wrong, but it's the weight of wanting to get it right and make sure I do right by my team and I'm setting them up for success and we're setting the business up for success. So the stuff that keeps me up at night right now, one is A change in the methodology of how we are selling. You know, I'm running a business that, um, first to market grew really, really fast and served a need. We had some fast follow competitors come on the market with a very transactional approach. So a lot of my energy right now is moving us away from that energy of the competitors who wanna make this commoditized and transactional, instead move to a value sale. That's a big focus for me at the moment.

Yeah. And me reading between the lines, that's hand in hand with the ACV because the transactional fast means low in general and transaction. So it sounds like, and please correct me, enablement and ops are helping you optimize your KPIs that are top of market. That's right.

Yeah, they are my number one partners in crime to make this happen. And, you know, we are— I'm so grateful. We really have an incredible sales team and they are hungry and they are out there hustling. And the reason this topic keeps me up at night is because I want to do justice by them and I want to arm them with an incredible pitch that really positions the value of our products correctly and well and attached to value. Because I think it's, we all know that's the right thing to do. And I think sellers inherently know it's the right thing to do. But if, if you as a company don't arm the field with that value-based story, you're not setting 'em up for success. So that is a big part of the mission. Enablement is everything there because it's, yeah, you can never launch that first pitch. Or, you know, the, the value drives or anything you're trying to do, it's never a one-time launch. You've got to think about this holistically in terms of how you level up your team to tell that story. And you got to do that over and over in the course of history of your company.

100%. Always in my head, you win by price, you lose by price. And geez, like, your product team is doing so much work. Why are you devaluing them? Like—

Yes. Yes. It's— and that partnership is everything. You know, wanna make sure that when we launch new products, we launch new features, that we're really clearly articulating the value of those things. And we're not letting like market forces or other noise in the market throw us off the course of understanding what is true, which is we have the strongest product. These things have value. They're attached to a real ROI. And it's up to us as a sales team to be able to articulate those points very clearly.

Yeah, you're not selling pens, you're not W.B. Mason. And even I sold FedEx, that was— it appeared to be a commodity, but like you had to sell value. We're more expensive than UPS, right?

Yeah.

But if you ship on a Friday to a residence, do you want it there on Saturday or do you want it there on Monday? What does that do to your systems? What is like the strain, your customer success, all of that. So that's, that's a big thing in your world. Security, like, are you kidding me? Right?

Critical. Yeah. I mean, this is critical and it's, it's an interesting challenge too. And this is really at the heart of the type of sale I like to do because, you know, there's a range of sales. There are SaaS products out there that it's, it's one thing to everybody. I tend to skew towards the other end of that spectrum, which is I like to sell products that are extremely technical. very complex and where there's a technical buyer persona.

Right.

And it's always a, you know, an interesting dynamic because you get salespeople and you're never going to be able to train a sales team to be as technical as the buyer. So learning how to sell in a way that provides value and educates a technical buyer, that's like to me one of the highest art forms of like, I'm a salesperson, And you might know this specific technology better than me, but I can still bring value and I can bring a point of view on the market that you can see value in.

I love it. I remember when I was selling to mathematicians and product people, I'm like, but you have to get to their level, but you also have to simplify it because, you know, like the movie Philadelphia, so a 6-year-old can understand.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's also about knowing your domain, right? So I might be selling to a technical buyer who knows cloud security better than me, but what I know better than any buyer is gonna be my own business, my customers, and their experience in this part of my business. You know, I can bring valuable market data and insights and best practices and things that this technical buyer won't have access to. But will be interested in, they will wanna hear that. So I don't try to challenge them on the things they know best, but I do try to add value.

I love it. And so what piece of advice can you offer to others waking up in the middle of the night with some of the similar concerns that you have?

Yeah. You know, my advice is if you're an AE, you're directly responsible for a revenue target and you're waking up in that cold sweat, not sure where to start or what to do. Really double down on discovery. You cannot go wrong by getting better at discovery. And this is at the heart of what I'm trying to do in evolving the way we're selling is ask incredible questions, really listen, and get to the why behind what your customer's doing, what they're trying to do. Like, why did they show up on the call to talk to you? Like, what is their interest? Don't, don't get so myopic that you're just focusing on like checking your boxes of the sale. Like really show an authentic interest in the buyer and their requirements and their needs. You will always figure out how to solve the problem if you get that discovery right.

It's incredible. And also the irony is when you're trying to sell value, discovery and value goes hand in hand. You take discovery away, We can have one-call closes for $2,000 ACV. We could do that all day. But absolutely, the bigger the problem, the bigger, um, the dollar amount. Uh, well, not necessarily, but understand the better of a chance you could pull out like a dollar amount, the more questions you ask. Tie it to your solution, hopefully, or qualify yourself out. If it doesn't tie.

Absolutely. And we all know like that buyer showing up, they've got some set of ideas in their head about what they're trying to accomplish. And really all any buyer is doing when they show up in the call is figure out like, is this person, is this company capable of solving the problem I'm trying to solve? They don't care about all the ancillary stuff and all your add-on products and like how you think about your business. They want to know, is this somebody I can trust to help me solve my problem? And if you can build that confidence that you can help them solve the problem and you can help them solve a big problem, to your point, to attach to the real source of pain, you can do that credibly and you're not like rat-holing on a million ancillary topics that they don't care about. That's who they're gonna spend their money with.

Yeah. And what about a CRO waking up in cold sweats? So like you have these AEs, you, you have this new gig, you have 100 $10 million in fresh money, which is an awesome thing for 24 hours, then you have a problem because you have the goals attached with that, this velocity required to hit those goals and all of that. That's a lot.

I, I love that pressure. I thrive under pressure. And, you know, that's part of why I loved being an AE. It's like, It is the same in the CRO seat in that every new period you enter, you're looking at a zero and it's only up from there. You gotta climb out from the zero. And, you know, the thing that I am finding is a little bit different in the CRO seat is you have to be really methodical. And yes, you have to move fast. However, You've also got to consider your talent. You got to consider the motivation of the team. You got to consider the knowledge base of the crew that was there before you and show a certain level of respect and empathy for their experience. And so moving methodically and then articulating why you're making the decisions you're doing— you're making becomes even more important. So I think, you know, if I ever get to the point where I am not in that like cold sweat on a daily basis, I'll probably retire. Like, I think that's healthy for me. Maybe that's just me. To me, that just means I'm taking it seriously. Like, I take it seriously that I've got this big team who's depending on me and I'm looking at that amount of money we raised and I want to be a responsible steward of that runway. And I want to make sure that I can make the smartest decisions that I can make with, with what we've got to work with.

Well said. And now taking that, what excites you about the future?

Oh my gosh, a lot really. Like, I'm so grateful, you know, I've only been at Vanta, I'm in month 4, and so there's a lot of future ahead. This is, uh, part of why I joined is I was so excited about where the company was headed. I was looking for a company with great product market fit, um, a lot of low-hanging fruit in future opportunity. And incredible leadership. I, I found all those things and that low-hanging fruit in the future. I mean, my gosh, there's just a lot. Like, we are so lucky in that we had this great leadership from our CEO who just raised, did not raise at a ridiculous multiple last year or the year before, was thoughtful in her approach to fundraising and has teed us up to go on an incredible multi-year run. You know, we are really only looking at opportunity over these coming 3, 4 years. So now it's about making strategic decisions. And that the fact that I get to do that is exciting because I know not everybody's in that position right now. It's a tough market. It's very real. So just having the ability to work with that and grow and make decisions. I mean, we are gonna grow this team so much over the coming years. That excites me.

I love hearing that because we are in a difficult market. I want to be real.

Yeah.

But when you have your, you know, you're composed, doesn't hurt that you have a couple of shekels in the bank account.

Does not hurt. Does not hurt.

But you're thoughtful, your head's down with it, and you're excited. That's going to carry over to your team. They're not going to be, woe is me, per se. Like, they're going to be excited too, and that's exciting.

Yeah. And you got to find the balance in there, right? Like, there's a, there's a very real market reality out there. There's a very real macroeconomic environment. The world is a tough place to be right now for a lot of people. I'd say for most people. And, you know, part of the tough thing in, in, in running a team right now, running a business right now is, You're constantly having to balance that excitement for the future, that very real excitement about what we're all building together with the reality of what the very real human beings on your team are dealing with every day in their real lives. And that can be great, can be bad, but that balance is a delicate one. And it's one that I think leaders have to be very mindful of given what's going on around us.

Really well said. And, and the best leaders are the most empathetic. And that's, oh man, like they're, they're, you know, I want to be conscious there are a lot of things going on that surpass people losing their jobs.

Yeah.

And, uh, surpass companies going out of business even. And, uh, and what makes you a great leader and others as well is acknowledging the people.

Yeah, it really, it really matters. You know, at the end of the day, we're all just humans trying to, trying to human. And, you know, part of what I love about sales, very human endeavor, you know, it's, it's human beings connecting with other human beings to try to solve problems. But that, that human element of what this is, is part of what makes it so joyful to me. And I think that You know, there are people who succeed in sales without considering that human element and like, hey, good for them. It's not for me. For me, it's all about the people, whether that's my team, the customers we sell to. You know, if you're not getting the joy out of that experience of working with your team and working with your customers, to me, it wouldn't be worth it.

So, talking about people, let's talk about you. So, the first, the first half we learned from you. Figured out, like, you know, learned a good amount and exciting stuff. Now I want to learn about you. Who are you?

Oh boy. You know, I am, I definitely have a non-traditional background for a sales leader. You know, I live here in the Bay Area, 45, single mom, college dropout. I finished my degree during the pandemic actually. So I, This whole run happened really without any college degree, which is part of why I believe in the non-traditional profile. Had that start in video games, which is really what moved me into tech. Once upon a time, I had these grand ambitions of being a lawyer. I was gonna go to law school. I was going to university to be a lawyer and then maybe even go into politics. And I started playing Quake and fell in love with it.

Your life went downhill from there.

It was, that's what my parents thought. I'll definitely tell you that they were not psyched on this, that I dropped out of school to go play video games. But it took me into this world of tech that I never would have explored before. And it's been a long journey from there, but I'm grateful for, for the experience I've had.

How'd you discover video games from being somebody who wanted to go to extra schooling to somebody that, to your parents, was aloof?

Yeah. Well, you know, college dorms will do that to you. I was living in this like incredible college dorm on the honors floor at the University of Kansas. Doing my thing. And, you know, there was just this crew of incredibly bright folks there, and I really gravitated towards those folks. And they showed me this game, and we started playing, and it just, like, tickled something in my brain. And it was so fun. And it was the early days of multiplayer gaming. So for the first time, you could actually, like, go into the console of a game and type an IP address of a server and connect and play other people. And It, it just turned out to be a blast. And so we formed a, what was called a Quake clan back then, a team. We ended up playing together and it sort of snowballed from there.

So did you go from that to like a desire to create video games? Because I noticed some, like, if you dig deep enough, and I'm just trying to connect the dots, we see some product management.

That is correct. That is correct. That's where I started. So from that playing professionally, and what became clear quickly was To be competitive at video games, it is really a lot like a pro sport. Like, you have to play hours upon hours upon hours a day. And, you know, I will tell you right outta the gate, I was very good, but I was not like 8 hours a day good. And, you know, I started looking around and the game industry was interesting and like all these quirky, interesting people building interesting products and like companies that ran in ways I had never imagined. And So yeah, I started building 3D levels and that was sort of my start. So I worked my way, I started in, in quality assurance at a video game company. I was doing like QA, it's the lowest paid person at the first video game company I joined of hundreds of employees. I started building levels for fun. I worked into that, then I worked into product management and bit by bit, that's what took me in the direction of sales. But it took a long time to get to sales after that. Yeah.

So, so product management, you're super structured, you're, You're, you know, organizing projects, helping everybody, and then you decide that, that, that you don't want that. I'm not saying that sales isn't that structure, but sometimes your first gig is when you're going in.

Yes. Yes. Well, so it was not an intentional choice. It was not a plan. And it is something that came to me. And I'll tell you right outta the gate, and this is, you know, a lot of my friends and folks I work with don't believe me anymore, but I am, I'm a pretty hardcore introvert. I am not the profile you would think of for a salesperson or sales leader, but I was in this product management role at Warner Brothers and I was, you had team, we were making mobile games through like in-house and, and third parties and I had a vendor. And this company called Tera Wireless and this amazing guy who was my AE, my salesperson named Matt Golden. And he was selling me this platform to like port mobile games to other phones before smartphones. That's how old this is. And Matt came to me one day and he said, hey, I think I need a junior salesperson. And I just, I feel like I could teach you to sell. Like, what do you think?

And the rest is history.

The rest is history. It was not such a foregone conclusion for me though. At first I was like, wow, like, I don't even know what that means. Like, I have no idea what the job of a salesperson is beyond like the stereotypes. And honestly, it sounds incredibly uncomfortable. Like, I'm an introvert, I'm shy. Like, it doesn't sound like me. I should probably do it. It will probably push me. And I did. And he took me on the road and taught me the ways.

That's, that's such an interesting story. And I, I, I've had investors in companies that were like the heads, like VPs of product for like the Bejeweled franchise and stuff.

Yes.

So like, I was open to that. And, and, you know, we were talking yesterday in, in our pre-call prep about like, How many products are made by gamers? Whether it's Slack, Discord, a lot of the messaging, a lot of the social.

Yep. Shopify.

Shopify, we were talking about.

A lot of gamers, like that old network is strong. And I think that the thing behind that is folks who were gamers in those early days, they were smart, they were creative. We were looking for ways to connect via new technology. And like those same things that made that interesting for us, that gaming network and community interesting, are the things that drive innovation and creativity. And those folks went out and learned skills and learned new jobs and built businesses. And it really touches on a lot of the same things. Like when I really pull the covers back, like the job of a CRO Isn't all that different than being a gamer. Like, you're managing resources, you're constantly trying to optimize for specific metrics and outcomes. It's very competitive. The game on the field changes all the time. It's super dynamic. It's a team sport. You're playing with other people and you're trying to indirectly win this game with a crew of folks. Like, it is truly, not even being cheeky, a lot of the same skills.

And some of the best CEOs and sales leaders I know that might not have been video gamers were like poker players.

Oh yeah.

Oh my gosh. I, one of my best friends from high school, I found out way after the fact, he's like, yeah, I moved to Vegas like one semester as a junior and I just paid the rest of high school, uh, college off, um, playing poker in Vegas. The guy now has 3 Ferraris, you know, everything that you'd expect. I'm like, because more likely to take risk. The best ones are hedging their— they're not taking risks, they're making bets.

Yes.

There's a difference between a bet and a gamble. This is something big. They take bets. People take— they're more likely to take a bet.

I love that framing. I think that's absolutely right. It is about taking bets, not necessarily taking risk, but it is willing to— it's that willingness to Think about the world differently. Think about your opportunities differently and make bets based on your own knowledge and intuition. And the truth is, the biggest bets I have made in my career have always been on myself because it is the only thing I have any semblance of control over. So I, I trust that if I bet on myself, I know that when I go into each new role, I go into a new company, a new opportunity, new challenge, that I am going to put my all into it and that I'm going to do my best to figure it out. And as long as I keep betting on myself, I feel like you kind of can't go wrong.

I love that. And that's, that's so inspirational. I, I, I'm so happy you went in that direction. You know, I want to understand What, what, what are some of your passions outside of work? Right? Are you still gaming? Like, how much do you wanna go into some of the stuff we spoke about? Like—

I mean, I don't game all that much these days. You know, I'll occasionally do that casually, but you know, I have, I'm one of those people that kind of can't envision what it would be like to ever be bored. I am interested in a ton of things and a lot of the things I'm into are, are sort of like nerdy in different ways. Um, I, I love, uh, transit and trains. I love plants. I have a million pets. My dad's a biologist. I've got, you know, this whole, uh, rich household of folks, um, that rely on me. An 18-year-old daughter, her best friend lives with us now. My mom lives with us. So I've kind of got this crew. I love boats. Like, honestly, I grew up in Kansas City, outside Kansas City. Yeah. So like a lot of the stuff that really gives me joy is stuff that comes from being outside growing up and having a dad who was a biologist and having this crew of friends and family around and lots of animals and outdoor activities. I kind of love that stuff.

Do you roll deep wherever you go with the crew?

Pretty much, yes. It's always a motley crew.

I got a speaking engagement. My crew's got to come too. But you only have one ticket, Stevie.

We're one unit.

We need more.

Yeah,

that's incredible. And I appreciate you sharing that. Like, in closing, how could people find you? How could they connect with you?

Absolutely. So I am on Twitter @KillCreek. So gotta hold on to the handle. Don't ever want to let it go fully. I'm still part of it, part of me for sure. So that's one great place. LinkedIn as well is easy, just Stevie Case on LinkedIn. And, uh, yeah, I'm really actually pretty accessible, so you'll be able to find me out there.

Uh, vanta.com if you're a qualified prospect.

Yes, come our way. We'll help you get your SOC 2, your ISO 27001. You need those compliance certifications, we got you.

You all need to have a rap song where you just drop this and rhyme it with that. But Stevie, thank, thank you so much for coming on the show, Stevie.

Thank you for having me. It's been a blast.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. And thank you, audience, for listening. If you learned something today or laughed, tell somebody about this podcast. And Stevie, thank you so much. Just the past couple of days connecting with you has really meant the world to me.

Thank you. It's been my pleasure.

And this has been another episode of Revenue Today. See you next time. Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenue today dot live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in Rev Genius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like two seconds. And you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side.