E24: What PE-Backed CROs Do Differently with Vanessa Brangwyn, CRO of Motus

And today's guest is Vanessa Brangwynne, who is the CRO at Modus. Modus is the industry leader in vehicle reimbursement and risk mitigation for businesses with employees that actively drive for work, according to their press release. I hope I got it right. Previously, Vanessa spent 12 years at Achievers, starting as a CSM and eventually rising the ranks to becoming the Chief Customer Officer. And then eventually the CRO role, which she held for her last 3 years. And over that time, Achievers grew from a non-SaaS business at roughly $3 to $5 million equivalent ARR to over $100 million in her time there. So an awesome, awesome run. And we are going to unpack some of the Achievers journey today, talk about her transition from a venture-backed startup to a public company to privately private equity owned and back and forth a couple of times. So Vanessa, thank you for joining. I'm excited for this one.

Yeah, me too. Nice to see you, Kyle. Thank you for having me.

Hello and welcome to the Revenue Leadership Podcast by Topline. I'm your host, Kyle Norton, CRO at Owner.com. And every Wednesday we dive deep into the strategies and tactics being used to drive success by the best revenue leaders in the world. So join me as I sit down with revenue operators to discuss actionable frameworks that you can implement in your business today with no fluff, no sales pitches, and no platitudes. This episode of the Revenue Leadership Podcast is brought to you by Shore People. SurePeople helps teams communicate smarter with science-backed personality insights that make every interaction more effective. By understanding how people work best, teams can collaborate better, make faster decisions, and drive real results. Get free access to SurePeople's Prism self-assessment at surepeople.com. That's surepeople.com.

Now back to the show.

Yeah, of course. Um, you're also part of our chapter leadership here for Pavilion in Toronto, so obviously we've gotten to know each other over the last year, so this is one I'm particularly excited for because, uh, you have a very unique journey. The CS to revenue is, is different than most. This, um, journey from, from VC to PE is definitely one that I think people can learn a lot from. So, uh, let's start with talking through the journey. Like, tell people about some of that Achievers corporate journey, uh, to frame up this private equity versus venture-backed conversation, we'll go from there.

Sure. So, for anyone listening who is from the Toronto tech community, this story might be quite familiar. You know, when I joined Achievers at the very beginning of 2011, it was a darling in the startup world in Toronto, in particular. It was actually called iLoveRewards at the time, and I can touch on that in a moment. But it was on all the best places to work, top tech startups to watch, and that type of thing. And so, I actually was working for another really fantastic a Toronto-founded company called Eloqua. Very proud of my time there. And I wasn't actually looking to leave, but because Achievers was on such a wild growth trajectory, they were doing something called group interviews. So, I was interviewing for a CSM position, which I was on a track for at my time at Eloqua, but I was intrigued because they contacted me and said, "Do you want to come in for this group interview where everyone who you're competing against for this the roles that we're hiring will all be in a room together. And this was kind of at the time where like, you know, reality TV like Survivor and The Apprentice and things like that were really, you know, in the mainstream. And I was intrigued. I had gone to university to study psychology and marketing, and the psychologist in me was like, wait, what? This is so interesting to be in this competitive situation. So, I went for the interview just for the experience. I knew, or I thought I was not going to leave. But I wanted to just have this fun where you were sitting around a table. And it was one of the wildest interviews I've ever been in because some of the people were so bad that you wondered if they had, like, put actors in just to throw you off your game. But turns out, after the fact, you found out that those were all real candidates. And so, fast forward to getting the job and actually making the decision to leave Aliquon and join I Love Rewards, turned out to be, of course, in hindsight, an amazing decision. Achievers was just about to close. I didn't know this at the time, but they were going through a round, a Series C fundraising round. And 2 months after I joined, we closed a Series C round with Sequoia Capital, which was a huge deal for a Toronto-based startup at that time. And it was a really—

was there any other Canadian startups that had Sequoia backing at that time?

I, I want to say we might have been maybe, if not the first, definitely one of the first. And, you know, it was— we were doing cool things through Sequoia. Like, for example, they flew a bunch of, like, high-potential employees out to Vegas to meet with the Zappos leadership team and, you know, understand customer satisfaction and how they have Zappos, which was like, you know, like hugely known for their incredible customer service. So we got a lot of exposure to some really awesome things. And the purpose or one of the main, one of the main focus areas of the Series C was to break more into the US market. And so, it was a really exciting time because Achievers had grown substantially from, you know, their initial Series A all the way through to the Series C, but largely that had been through Canadian companies who had taken a bet on kind of a, you know, a relatively small unknown player in the employee engagement and recognition space.

And so you raised the C and talk about the, the journey to public and then PE, and then I want to dig into some of the lessons.

Yeah, great. So the Series C was actually the catalyst also for us changing our name from I Love Rewards to Achievers and really turning the corner on becoming a true SaaS company. You know, through the insights that we— and then the advisor, the advisory consultation we got from Sequoia, we knew that this was kind of the next chapter for us. We opened a San Francisco office. We went hard from a go-to-market perspective into US companies. And through that period, we grew quite substantially. My career grew alongside that. I was able to take on a team lead role and then eventually a manager role and continue to grow from there all the way through to ultimately running the entire customer success team. But in 2015, Achievers, I guess, was at a crossroads and had received interest in an acquisition from one of our partners on the, on the loyalty side. So, Achievers is a technology that provides services to companies who want to make sure their employees feel valued and appreciated at work. And one of the components of that was a marketplace that provided a reward element. And so, our largest partner at the time was a gift card and payments technology company named Blackhawk Networks out of Pleasanton, California. And they actually ended up acquiring Achievers to run it as a subsidiary of their broader kind of loyalty business, very much not related, not directly related to what they they did. And so, this started our 3-year journey where we were now part of a large, multi-billion-dollar publicly traded company. And what was really interesting for us at that time is we went from being kind of this, like, you know, even with a Series C round, and I'm sure many people listening can relate to this, we were still relatively small, and we were going after, you know, significantly large whale deals that were really boxing above our weight. And when you're in these, in the sales motion with organizations that are, you know, like 100 times your size, they're gonna have a lot of questions about your financial stability. And so, when we were in our VC era, if we could call it that, we were really, we had a lot of freedom and flexibility to kind of make the decisions we needed to make, to make the product and innovation investments we needed to make, but we struggled with trying to showcase our financial stability to our largest prospects. Once we moved into our, you know, being part of a publicly traded company, um, motion, we suddenly— that went away. So we were able, you know, when, when we had prospects ask us, well, you know, what's your financial status? Can we see your financial records? Can we talk to your CFO? We could just send them over, you know, Blackhawk's latest public filings, and that question immediately went away.

Why did people care so much about that? I mean, why did they care if their rewards platform provider had Like in liquidity?

Yeah, it's a great question. Well, and largely it actually came down to that rewards component. So these were organizations that were investing millions of dollars into reward, into the reward budgets that they expected to be funneled back to their employees. And they wanted to make sure that Achievers was still gonna be around when those employees decided to, you know, redeem the incentives that their employee, that their employer had pre-purchased for them.

So, so big float that they were— Right.

You got it. Yeah. So it was actually really interesting because that for a while, while Achievers did become a very traditional SaaS company, there always was and is this other component of revenue that's tied to, you know, the reward component of the business.

Okay. So you spent a couple of years as a part of a big public company. Then what? And then I'm going to pick into what changed at each stage.

So during that time of being part of the publicly traded company, you know, we were, while we were run as a standalone company and we were sort of, you know, achievers of a Blackhawk Network company and very much left to be business as usual, we were beholden to some of the things that every public company, you know, has to navigate. For example, when it was time to report earnings, if, you know, we might've had to implement a sudden hiring freeze to navigate the conversations that had to happen. Those are things that don't typically happen when you're VC-backed. And so, while we had a lot of flexibility and freedom during our VC era, this next era was more around financial stability, but the dial was turned down on some of the flexibility and the freedoms necessary to really invest in innovation and growth from a technology perspective.

And then eventually you were spun out, correct?

Exactly. So, what ended up happening was in 2018, so 3 years later, Blackhawk themselves got acquired by private equity, by Silver Lake, and it's a little bit of an urban legend whether Silver Lake officially knew about Achievers or not. You know, they were acquiring a multi-billion-dollar company, and Achievers at this time was definitely sub-$50 million in revenue. So TBD on whether they actually officially knew about, about us or not, but they very quickly through diligence did learn about Achievers, and they learned that we were on a different kind of business model. We had a different trajectory from a growth perspective. And so we started the conversations to look into spinning Achievers out into its own independent entity, still private equity-backed, in 2020. And, uh, that's Achievers the current Achievers ownership structure today.

Spun out, still Silver Lake-owned, operating independently.

Exactly. Yeah. And the, the president and CEO of Blackhawk Networks is still one of our longest-standing board members at Achievers and a huge advocate for not only what the company does, but what, what they stand for and, you know, the potential for that organization to continue to thrive.

Cool. And then now you're at Modus. So again, private equity backed. Was that an intentional decision to stay in a PE-backed world versus VC? What do you think of it?

Yeah, it's a super good question. So, I actually did a stint at a startup in between Achievers and Modus that was VC-backed. Great, great opportunity and trajectory there too, French-based organization. And what I thought was when I was taking a leap from Achievers, you know, it had been 12 years and a lot of people asked me like, how did you, how have you been here this long? Or how did you work somewhere for 12 years? But now that, you know, everyone listening has heard the story, it was like 3 or maybe even 4 different companies in that time. And not only were the companies different and the strategies and ethos of the operating model different, my career took on many different roles in that, that window as well. And after 12 years, I really felt like I needed to do something completely different. And I had this nostalgia for going back to, you know, the very earliest days in the build stage. And so the company that I joined, the startup that I joined, was very much a you know, going right back to the beginning and getting to be part of like that scrappy startup VC-backed, like, let's, let's put all our efforts into, you know, growth at kind of at any cost. And that was super exciting. It's definitely different. And sometimes I liken it to folks saying like, I have a 10-year-old son who I love dearly, and some days I feel so much nostalgia for those newborn days and nights. And I think about like how much I would love to be in that exact moment again. But then I also recognized if I was in that exact moment again, I might remember why I'm so happy to be where we are today. And so that was kind of my thinking is, you know, an opportunity, I wasn't searching for an opportunity, but an opportunity to join Modus kind of fell onto my lap through someone in my network who is on one of the Modus advisory boards. And the more I learned about the company and what they did and also the mission and stage that they're on, and, and kind of specifically around go-to-market and the investment that they want to make in terms of go-to-market being the, the big play for this next chapter, the more intrigued I became with the opportunity. And the more I started also learning that not all PE firms are created equal. And I think that's something that maybe people don't always, uh, appreciate. At least I did not appreciate it. I had, I had experience with Silver Lake. We had great operating partners there, and I just kind of thought that all PE operated the same way, much like how some people might think all VC firms operate the same way. Modus is actually co-owned by two different PE firms, 50/50. So now I'm getting experience not only with another PE firm but actually with two other PE firms. And even within their different, um, these two different firms, they have, you know, they have similarities. There's definitely playbooks that you would call out as being part of the, the private equity model, but they also have, you know, different philosophies on certain topics, different, um, different visions when it comes to, for example, like sales compensation or sales capacity planning, are they— I would say they're like cousins. There's similarities, but they're not the exact same. And having the opportunity to learn from two different PE firms has been just, um, like an accelerator to my own learning and development over the past, um, 13 months.

And so it wasn't that you intentionally thought about going back to the PE world, it was just right opportunity, right time, right market.

Yeah. Although I will say yes. And I, uh, you know, being back in the private equity world, I think, I think I wanted the kind of the, the thrill of the chase of the VC world when I was leaving Achievers. But now that I'm back in the private equity world, I actually recognize about myself that the structure of the strategy, that the, uh, and the, you know, kind of the, the methodical way of looking at things probably better aligns to where I am right now in my career.

Okay. Makes a ton of sense. So let's, let's hop into that. I would love to understand what is most different about being a CRO in a private equity owned environment versus venture backed in your mind.

Yeah, it's a great question. So I think that on the, on the, from the private equity side, again, there, you know, there's a lot of models in terms of what they've seen work well before and just the amount of time, the amount of times they've seen it work well. I think as we, you know, as we know, and I've heard you talk about this on this podcast before, in the, in the VC world, the model is kind of like 1 in 10 will make it. And in the private equity world, the expectation is that like everyone is going to be successful and to what exact degree, the success may vary, but the expectation is that there's going to be, you know, a successful positive outcome, you know, 9.9 times out of 10, not 1 out of 10. And so with that, I think there's just, you know, they've seen repeatable and scalable process more often. And so, as a CRO in that world, there's just a lot of, a lot, you know, to be able to learn and to not necessarily repeat because it's not definitely not a one-size-fits-all, but to adapt to your own, to your own organization at the time and stage that it's at. So, a specific example, Thoma Bravo is one of our private equity owners at Modus, really well-known, you know, very, very long tenured experience. Yeah. And they have, they have a number of templates around, you know, how do we, how they think about things like sales capacity planning or, you know, funnel metrics like conversion rates. And so we have this benefit of being part of this like large, it's almost like a mini or not a mini, it's almost like a pavilion within the Thoma Bravo community where the CROs across Thoma Bravo's across Thoma Bravo's portfolio will get together in person twice a year and they'll share learnings, they'll share insights. And it's sort of like a little club where not only does Thoma Bravo have these specific templates, but they also have names for these things. And so, for example, their sales capacity planning model is called the QAM, the Quota Allocation Model. And everybody who's a CRO in a Thoma Bravo portfolio company knows this. So, it's like such a part of their, their day-to-day. So, when we were last together in October, it was sort of like a running joke because everybody Everybody was deep in sales capacity planning and budget season, and it was like, oh, how's your QOM? What did you put here? And what did you write there? And so, it kind of became this like really great way to blend learnings and shared experiences. Maybe that happens in the VC world as well. I'm not sure. You'll have to tell me, but this idea of like shared learnings and shared experiences is such a part of the PE world that I'm in right now.

Yeah, I don't see it a lot in the venture-backed world. I mean, from time to time, some funds will bring together their portfolio leaders or make introductions, but it's definitely not very formal or structured. And I don't really know of any VC that's saying, this is our growth modeling process. This is how we think about quota setting. I, I think that most VCs have the opinion that they're gonna bet on really good founders. The founders are the experts, and they're gonna, they're gonna let them run their show and help where it is requested. Um, which is kind of interesting when you think about it, right?

Because a lot of founders are first-time founders. And so, um, it's interesting that, like, I wonder how they think about where those founders will get the insights that they need. I think a lot of it comes from building great teams below them and like, you know, your experience that you bring to the, like you specifically, but other CROs like you in founder-backed, founder-led businesses. Um, not, not necessarily that one way is right or wrong, but I think it definitely, it definitely depends on the type of the style and the stage of your career that you're at in terms of which one might be a better fit.

You could definitely make the argument that first-time founders in venture-backed companies need more of the structure, not less of the structure than private equity. It's almost like it's a little bit backwards. I've thought about this a ton because I'm fascinated by venture. I think at some point in my career, that's a place I could see myself. And if I think about how could I differentiate myself, it's like, playbooks, like come in with opinions and structure and like really teach people because there's a dearth of great content out there for founders to really figure it out, transition out of founder-led sales, get into the sort of scale-up stage. And there's, you know, bits and bobs here. There's Sales Acceleration Formula and Robert has continued to write great stuff. There's Pete Kazanjis' book Founding Sales that I recommend all the time. There's, there's pieces of it, but I think that there's a big opportunity to document something much more comprehensive and offer this to venture-backed founders and early revenue leaders for sure, because they're desperate for it. Like the amount of messages I get on a weekly basis from first-time VPs of sales or founders, hey, you know, I was wondering if I could talk to you about this and this and this. It's like every day somebody has something. And obviously I'm more visible because of the podcast and stuff. But yeah, the thirst is clearly there.

And I think that's kind of one of the, maybe the myths too about private equity is like, oh, you're not going to have any freedom and they're just going to tell you exactly what to do. And like, this is the, you know, they're going to give you this like very specific prescription and you just have to follow it to a T. And that hasn't been my my experience that it's been that there are templates and there are, you know, recommendations, but that they're not like, just take this exact thing and apply it. Because I think people appreciate that, like, that's not going to work. And, you know, I'm sure we both could think of examples of, um, leaders, whether they were CROs or other function leaders that we've worked with, where they came into an organization and they were like, here's my playbook, here's what we're going to do. Like, you know, within the first 15 days, like, exactly. And Yeah, I've never seen that work out. So much like my, you know, we can get into this more later, but much like how my style is very much one of like, let me, let me take some of the things I've seen work well before and figure out where and if it applies here, and then we'll mold it to fit that. I think the similar thing is happening in the PE world where they've seen things work well before, and so they'll definitely make those recommendations, but they also need it to work in the environment that they're floating it into, and they recognize that it's not just like a take this here and drop it in there.

Yeah. I'm on a mission to get people to stop saying best practice and replace it with high probability practice. Because that's what it is. It's something that even if it's worked across multiple companies, it's still not best. It is the thing that worked in that situation, in that market, in that market, in that customer type, but it is not best. And I think the— it's funny, language, oftentimes it feels like I'm being overly semantic about this stuff. It's like, who cares? Best practice, high probability practice. I tell people, don't set a next step, give the customer an offer of value. It's like, why care about— well, I think language has such power. And if we can get people to say, you know, oh, this is a high probability practice, it seems dumb, but it is reinforcing consistently, hey, this is a thing, this is a hypothesis. Okay, it worked in another vertical SaaS SMB context, but I sell to restaurants, you sold to mechanics, and just the nuance and application I think people oftentimes miss. And you see the playbook person come in, like, I see this all the time. It can be a disaster. Yeah.

And maybe people have seen, like, you know, there's obviously a reason why stereotypes and myths and things like that exist. So maybe, maybe there was a time, or maybe there was a specific kind of subset of, of PE where that was the way they operated and maybe still do. I just, I don't know that that is, you know, again, like, I don't think that's an empirical truth. At least in my 3 experiences, that has not been the case. Um, so I would, I would encourage people if they're thinking about— and, and I know you and I both get asked this question a lot, like, should I go down a VC path? Should I go down a PE path? Like, what do you think makes sense? Um, and, you know, there's definitely, again, things that you, that you can compare and contrast. But I also think that much like how we talk about in sales, people buy from people. Like, these are people. So, it's even within an organization, within a specific VC firm or private equity firm, you might find completely different styles and approaches depending on the specific people that you're interacting with and what their experiences have been either as operators or investors or other.

Yeah. And so, just zoom out and maybe explain to people, like, so a private equity company buys a company. A private equity fund buys a company and what are they intending to do with it? And why is that different than VC? Maybe, maybe we should just explain that.

Yeah, that's, that's a good point. So on the private equity side, typically what they're trying to do is, is have a return that's going to be tied to profitability. Um, growth will play into it and growth plays into profitability, but that, I'd say that's probably one of the biggest differentiators is on the VC, VC side, what they're trying to do is have a company, you know, grow as quickly as possible and then sell on a multiple of revenue. On the PE side, they're typically selling on a multiple of profitability or EBITDA, if anyone wants to get into that acronym. I'm not a financial finance expert, so I'm happy to share only what I know, but the idea being that growth matters, but profitable growth matters most. And I think that's a key differentiator. There are a lot of companies that we all know and use that are very successful that never got to profitability. And that worked really well for a long time. I think in more recent years, everyone, whether they're VC-backed or private equity-backed or public, um, or any other format, are much more aware of how much profitability matters. And it matters a lot from a, from a what-you-can-reinvest-in-the-business perspective and, and grow from there. Um, the other thing I think that applies in, in this kind of like, you know, taking a zooming out and taking a look is what the ultimate exit path looks like, right? So, I think we talk a lot about, you know, and at Achievers, we used to talk a lot and dream a lot and really have our BHAG was all about like one day having the Achievers logo in Times Square and, you know, going IPOing. And that was kind of the dream. I think that that's not really everyone's dream anymore. I don't know if, you know, it ever was, you know, the only dream, but it was definitely the one that had the most airtime, or maybe it was the most like exciting. It was way more exciting to be like, I'm going to ring the bell at the stock market, than I hope I get bought out by another private equity company.

Um, can't wait till Salesforce buys us.

Totally. But I think for, for, for depending on the company size too, right? What you get to a certain size where only so many outcomes are possible, um, whether that's an IPO, another acquisition by another private equity company, or some type of strategic acquisition from, from a Salesforce or from a Microsoft or from somebody who's, you know, uh, wanting to tuck in a company like Modus into their, into their larger strategy going forward. Yeah.

And the time horizons are diff— obviously so different. You know, venture capital is playing the power law game. They're investing in early stage companies and they just need one or two of those, those portfolio companies to deliver a 100x return and the whole fund is paid back, uh, and then some. Um, versus— and, and the outcome usually has to be, um, an IPO for that to, to really return in the way that they want, versus in the private equity game, 3 to 5 year time horizon. They're going to package and sell or roll up, roll up and go public. You know, the, the, the I think the time horizon in PE impacts things a lot because you're not saying, oh, look, Amazon, we'll lose money for 20 years, but we will build such an enormous moat and we will be so inextricably tied into consumers' day-to-day that as we need to turn up the volume or turn the dial to profitability, we can make that decision. But that's not the game.

And that actually touches on too the point that One of the things I've found is that in private equity, because those timelines are kind of more commonly held, people talk about them a lot more openly, and they inform, um, strategic decisions, you know, whether that's product strategy, go-to-market strategy, marketing strategy. Like, even right now at Modus, we, we're halfway through our kind of investment cycle, and we have a lot of great ideas, and some of them are longer-term ideas. So we're thinking about, is this the kind of idea that somebody, that a future buyer would want to inherit and take forward and like continue to capitalize on? Or is this something that we need to, you know, pause on? It's a great idea, but it doesn't really work with our current time horizons. Whereas when I was in the VC world and, you know, everything was about like we never really talked about. Exactly.

And so give me some examples of decisions you've made that are timeline-oriented that where you're saying, hey, like this is gonna pay off in 24 months versus 48 months. And, and just like talk to me through how you're thinking about that prioritization today.

Yeah. So we, like, as an example, Modus is the kind of organization that, you know, can play into a variety of different industries. And so, you know, we're, we're targeting organizations that have high populations of employees who need to drive a personal vehicle to get to work. Work. So think about people, you know, in pharmaceutical sales or construction or, or CPG where they're going from store to store, district managers, those types of things. There's a lot of other industries that we could, you know, modify the product a little bit to make more sense for, or, or go more wholeheartedly from a go-to-market perspective, strategic perspective, both in terms of marketing and kind of outbound prospecting. But if some of those verticals take, you know, could take longer to really like get momentum and traction and have enough customer success stories, customer references, and, you know, really, really get to know that vertical inside and out. We're currently in the process of evaluating which ones make sense for us to go into next as we continue to grow. Similarly with regions, Modus primarily operates in the US. We have a Canadian population of end users who are part of US-headquartered companies. There's many other regions that have employees who drive for work that we could go into. But again, how long does it take to stand up a product and a strategy that's successful in a new country or a new region? Anyone who's done that knows that that's not a short-term win. That's much longer-term play.

So way longer than you think. That's the answer.

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Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Um, does being private equity backed affect how you think about team structure, compensation? Are those, or are those more similar? What are the things that are similar versus what's most different?

Yeah. So, in the one thing to, you know, to note in the private equity world, we sort of touched on this a little bit, is around profitability, is that efficiency really matters. It matters more, I think, than, or maybe it doesn't matter more, but it's thought about a lot more than in my experience.

It matters more. I think that's fair to say.

Yeah, because efficiency drives profitability, and again, profitability matters, you know, most. So, to that end, we do think a lot about structure and not so much efficiency in terms of compensation. I'd say from a variable comp perspective, or specifically from a sales comp perspective, the two are very similar. And, you know, in our Pavilion Group and our CRO group that, Kyle, you and I are part of, we talk a lot about compensation principles and compensation highly probable successful outcomes. What was the word I was supposed to say?

High probability practices.

Yeah, we talk a lot about high probability practices. As it pertains to sales compensation. And I think that's agnostic to whether it's private equity or VC-backed, because essentially when you're, you know, running a sales team, you want to pay for performance and you want to pay people fairly for doing the hard work of bringing in new revenue. It's, you know, one of the hardest things that you have to do to grow your business. And so, I think on that side, compensation is similar, but from a— if you think about org structure in terms of span of control or supporting resources, I think that's where you might see some differences. So, for example, when, you know, when I, when I need to build a business case to, to hire more revenue-generating headcount, fairly straightforward in the private equity world, harder to build a business case for the resources that support those individuals. Enablement, rev ops, leadership, for example, span of control. We talk about that a lot. What's the right ratio of how many direct reports a sales leader should have, a BDR manager, that type of thing. I didn't feel that those conversations around span of control or org structure were as critical when I was in the venture capital world and in the startup world, even, you know, very recently. It was more like, oh, we need more people? Yes, let's get those people or go get those people. And we'll worry later about whether they have 3 direct reports or 6 direct reports as the company grows.

Yeah. What data do you look at to make those decisions? Because, you know, more reps per manager is good on a spreadsheet because, you know, it's less management headcount attributed to the same, the same reps. But the argument would be, yeah, the manager cost could and hopefully should improve the total output. So like, what type of sensitivity modeling are you doing there? How do you, how do you make these team structure decisions?

Yeah, so we're looking, I'm looking at a lot of benchmark data around, you know, again, what does, what does great look like for a company of our size and stage? And I think it's important too, when you look at benchmarks and, you know, usually they're a range like 6 to 8 is, is what I've seen a lot recently, is that you have to understand the nuances of those benchmarks in those ranges. So for example, if you have 6 really tenured reps who've been selling for a while, who know your product, you know, you can probably get away with managing 8, maybe even 9 or 10 reps. But if you have reps that are brand new either to sales, like you just promoted them from being BDRs or hired them externally and they're not as familiar with your, you know, domain expertise and things like that, then you might wanna revisit the ratio. Another example is for, at Modus, we only just now are introducing this concept of solutions consultants, which is, you know, common probably to people listening who are in tech sales. And if you have solutions consultants, then you, you know, you can, your reps have more resources. It's not only the manager who's gonna be this kind of like subject matter expert in a, in a deal or in a prospect conversation. So, I think ratios and benchmarks are important, but I also think you have to take those with a grain of salt. Solved. And then to your comment about, about, you know, productivity, we have, we have sales and marketing efficiency metrics that we look at internally and, you know, compare those to other companies in our, both our PE firms' portfolios. And that gives us a sense of like, you know, are we, are we generating a good return for the dollars that we're investing? And that includes, you know, leadership and supporting resources, marketing and dollars, program spend, that type of thing. And that's been helpful because we can set ourselves targets to say, you know, do we want to get more efficient? Do we want to get— or do we want to get more growth? And how do we find the right balance of both? Because, you know, we're in a position right now at Modus where we're not really in an efficiency play. And that was one of the things I was saying earlier that really attracted me to this specific role on this specific, um, ownership structure, is that it, it is private equity-backed. Profitability does matter, but we have a big focus on go-to-market growth and accelerating our revenue growth. And we're making investment decisions that maybe other traditional PE firms would not, uh, would not make typically. But because of where we are right now and the outcome that we're looking for, investing in go-to-market is the— makes the most sense for us.

What are the key efficiency metrics that you typically track, especially the ones that might be different from, from the VC world?

Yeah, I wonder if they are different. It'd be good to, to pick your brain about that too, because I think we look you know, the things that are really traditional. We're, we're looking at, at CAC or cost of acquisition. We're looking at LTV, lifetime value. We look at NRR and, uh, net revenue retention and gross revenue retention, GRR, um, from an efficiency perspective. We look at, um, at, at a really tactical level, we're looking at, you know, calls per rep, meetings per rep, uh, pipeline generated. So, again, I think those might be agnostic to the ownership structure, but yeah, same. What, what are your thoughts? Thoughts?

Yeah, I think roughly the same. Um, we're trying to break things down in a more granular fashion by channel because inbound affects outbound and channel affects all the stuff. And trying to untangle— yes, um, trying to untangle some of that is, is not an easy, uh, not an easy task. And so to really understand where, where do we want to double and triple down out because, you know, your outbound team, it looks like it's got awesome— our outbound team looks like it's got incredible efficiency, but, you know, like more than half of the ops that they booked were former inbound leads. So how do you attribute cost appropriately and spend intelligently? Yeah, we look at all the same stuff— cost per op, cost per close win. We try to look at, you Is the, is the LTV, uh, different across channels? Like, is a partner deal bigger or higher retained than an inbound or an outbound deal? Um, so I think the same, the same sort of things.

Yeah. Tied to that too, I think one aspect that plays into it is, is around segmentation. So when you were, you know, when you're in an organization, Achievers was like this, Modus is like this as well, where we're selling kind of up and down this, this segment spectrum, if you will. So, you know, we've got enterprise accounts, enterprise deals, that are hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then we also have SMB, or we call it commercial deals, that are tens of thousands of dollars. When I'm in, in kind of budget planning mode and thinking about growth, you know, there's a few different levers you can, you can pull. And how do we know how much to invest in, you know, hiring more enterprise reps and going after those larger whale opportunities versus hiring more commercial or SMB reps and focusing on like a volume and velocity play? And, you know, again, going specifically to the PE world, there's payback models that we look at. And the spreadsheet will tell you that if I hire a commercial rep or an SMB rep, I can pay— we can pay back the investment into hiring that rep much faster because the sales cycles are 30 to 60 days, not, you know, 9 to 12 months. But does that support our long-term growth when, you know, the million-dollar deals are the things that are going to really move the needle? And that's on, on just the booking side. You have to also think about what impact that has on your business from a, you know, a customer retention and cost to serve perspective. And if you're, if your company and product are set up to serve hundreds of smaller accounts versus dozens of larger accounts effectively and efficiently.

Yeah. And we'll talk about some of the lessons from CS to revenue here in a minute. I want to ask, Uh, two more questions here. So, uh, board engagement, very different in PE versus VC. So what are the big lessons that you've learned in, in managing a PE board well?

Yeah.

And what can be applied to VC?

Yeah, it's a good, it's a really good question. So I think from the PE world, um, especially when you're the CRO, you should be prepared to have lots of board engagement, um, whether they're focused on efficiency or growth. Both, you know, every board meeting I'm in, which are either monthly or quarterly depending on when and where, I usually am the first speaker. I usually end up talking the longest because I get the most questions. I always have to apologize to my product and tech counterparts because they've prepared content that we never ever get to because everybody wants to know what's happening with pipeline, what's happening with specific deals, What's, you know, where are we on revenue productivity and quota attainment? How many reps are hitting their targets? What's our, you know, performance management structure and plan if reps aren't hitting targets? How are we hiring? There's always so much interest in what's happening on the sales side. And now that I'm also responsible for retention and renewals, that's probably the second hottest topic in the board meeting. So, be prepared, I would say, for lots of engagement. But to be honest, I'm taking it all as amazing learning opportunity. Most of the folks on our board are ex-CEOs and executives or longstanding investors, and they have just an incredible wealth of knowledge that I can learn from. And I also try to remember that, like, you know, we sometimes— the board has this, like, sort of, you know, this thing about them that they're just like this group of people behind a curtain that you never see. And what's been amazing about my experience is these are real people. Before every in-person board meeting, we have dinner with our board members. We get to know them on a personal basis. I know their favorite sports teams. I know what universities or colleges their kids go to. They know things about me and, you know, my Canadian nature. Most of them are US-based. So, it's been great to really get to know them as people. And like, you know, are there sometimes tricky questions in the board meeting? Am I sweating a lot in many of the meetings? Absolutely, yes. But, you know, it's, it's important that we know as the management team what we're working towards and that we're working towards them, these things together. We have certain outcomes that we want to achieve as a management team. And the fact that they're aligned to what our board's looking to achieve for their investors and for their own successes makes it a lot easier to, to see it as like a partnership as opposed to an us versus them situation.

Yeah. You may have, well, most of the time there's one group that owns 50% of the company, and that's not true in venture. In venture, your biggest investor might have 15% if they've been consistently taking their pro rata. And the interesting dynamic in venture is that you could have a diversity of incentives on a board. You know, for an early-stage investor, might have, this investment might be a fund maker now. You know, they're a seed stage investor. They cut in a couple million bucks or half a million bucks and now it's 20x. They could be excited for liquidity versus, you know, the guy who led the C round, you know, they may now need the company to 5, 10x from there. And so the incentive structure can be different versus in private equity. You know, it's, it, I think it's a more seamless alignment.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

The, the incentives are more clear and they get to have way more opinion. They own 50, 60, 70% of this business.

Yeah.

You know, you're, you're, uh, more than just a board member. You're, you're like making decisions at that point.

Absolutely. Yeah. And you really see them, um, you know, as the, the, you know, kind of the, the, the thought leaders of what we're trying to, what we're trying to achieve. However, it's also important to remember that they're not in the day-to-day business the way we are. And this is, I think, even whether it's a VC board or, or a PE board, you know, they have a lot of, uh, kind of experiences and, and opinions and recommendations, but they, they aren't living the day-to-day. And so it's important to have kind of that healthy balance of, hey, here, that, let's, we tried that and here's what happened, and just kind of share back the stories and be as transparent as possible. And also, I think sometimes it's tricky. One of the best things about the board currently at Modus is our CEO, Phong, is a huge believer in talent development. And we basically, every board meeting that's in person, so every quarter, every quarter, we take some high potential leaders in the organization and we bring them to the board meeting and they speak about something that they're an expert on. And I think that's an awesome way for people to get exposure again to this, this board is not this like big, scary faceless thing. These are real people. And we have to remember that they're not in the day-to-day of our business, so we can't go super, super deep into the tactical, you know, details of everything because they're not living at that level. And being able to navigate, you know, different levels of altitude, I think, is one of the best leadership skills you can learn is how do you go from being like deep in the weeds on something and then present the 30,000-foot view in your, in, you know, in your next breath.

I talk about this a lot. The best revenue leaders can live at two simultaneous different levels of abstraction. You could get in the weeds, look at call data and connect data and conversion rate data and get on a call and then also think about where are we trying to go in 24 months.

Absolutely. And you have to. I think it's like becoming table stakes.

For sure. Yeah. The world is skewing towards the operator more and more and more. You know, as technology plays a bigger and bigger role in all of these companies. Yeah. You have to understand the P&L and understand how to think about the system that you're designing in, in a pregranular manner. What, what one or two pieces of advice would you give to somebody to best manage a private equity board?

Mm-hmm. I would definitely say that, kind of just to piggyback on the point that you just made, you have to know the data. Like, you have to be in the data. They are, and you have to lean in the data. You have to lean on the data, excuse me, to answer the questions. So, I think, you know, as salespeople especially, we all love storytelling, and storytelling matters a lot in our, in our world. And you can still do that. I think anecdotes and stories help to bring what, you know, what you're talking about to life, but it needs to start with the data and then stories can come from there. I've seen too often where people just kind of jump straight to the stories, either because they don't know the data or because they're not comfortable with it. And so, and it can be perceived as like, to the board members who, again, think they live and breathe data all day, every day. And so, you know, to, to really, to, to really relate to them and, and speak their language, you have to start from the data perspective. And then the second thing I would say, and this might be maybe more of like a trading secret, is board members love closing deals, and that's what they do, right? That's their, their world is the deals they're closing are not the deals you and I are closing, but they're, it's the same kind of motion. And so, anytime I've gone to a board member for help with the deal, because the are people who are just so well connected, they've welcomed the chance and really, really opened, uh, opened up doors that we maybe wouldn't have opened up otherwise to get into C-level executives at some of our largest prospects, or to help move a deal that was previously stuck to an unstuck, uh, status just by making a phone call or sending a note. Um, uh, so I would say leverage the board. Like, instead of thinking about all the things that you have that the board needs from you, which there are a lot of, there's also things that they can give back. And again, not only is there like a thrill for them to be part of closing the deal, but I think there's also, you know, they recognize that that's one of the biggest ways they can add value back to the organization and back to the management team is leveraging their network and their contacts to help move deals along. And that is, you know, a win for everybody.

Awesome. If we zoom way out, what are the one or two lessons that you've taken from PE that are valuable for venture-backed CROs?

I think it's, I think it's not dissimilar to some of what we chatted about a little bit already, which is again, thinking about efficiency and profitability matters, especially in the world we live in right now. And so again, I think people think that that only PE-backed companies care about that, But, you know, you, you were sharing with this with me earlier too, that VC, that we're seeing that more and more in the VC world. And then the other thing is probably like what we talked about with playbooks, like we don't, the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented every time, which is not the same as saying there's no place for creativity. I think there absolutely is. And all of our, all of our as CROs and all of our teams, like shared experiences can be hugely beneficial, but it's also okay to say like, oh, what's, um, you know, what's a format that I could use for this process? And, you know, again, leverage what, what might be available to you through your, through your network or through your, um, you know, maybe if you're VC, if you're working for a VC-backed company that doesn't already have some type of network to get like networking component to it, maybe someone could start one of those for their portfolio for that, for their company and find, you know, similar companies at a similar stage and age and create something like that. Cool.

Um, I want to ask one more question here. So you've just acquired a, a significant direct competitor, which is a big part of the PE playbook. You know, you see this all the time. They'll make sort of an anchor acquisition and then start— then the PE will acquire a bunch of, uh, companies in that category, roll them up, find operational efficiencies, go-to-market opportunities, the, the, uh, products can get considerably better and more comprehensive. Um, so talk about how this acquisition— what was the strategy behind this acquisition? And then I want to get into, uh, how are you thinking about bringing the go-to-market motion together? So just like, what's the strategy behind it? Why, why do it?

Totally. So, um, it— the M&A component of PE, I think, is actually something we haven't touched on yet, but definitely warrants its own, you know, airtime. We, again, we know our growth trajectory from, for this specific chapter of Modus' journey, and we have an organic case, and we also have an inorganic case, which includes, you know, multiple M&A targets. And so we did, we just announced last week that we acquired an organization called Everlance that is a, that started out as a, as a B2C company actually, and grew into a B2B company and eventually a direct competitor of ours. And, um, while I don't, I don't necessarily know that, that I don't believe that the strategy was to go acquire them specifically, there was always a strategy to create, you know, more convergence in the market and things like that. And as you said, that's not an uncommon strategy in, in PE in general and in tech, to be honest. So, um, we, we knew that there would be some type of M&A activity that taking place. And this started with, uh, their two co-founders are these amazing guys who met at Stanford Business School, started this company. And our CEO started getting to know them over time, and we found a lot of shared vision and shared values in the two organizations despite, you know, size differences and things like that. And so, I think that really helped accelerate that this was the right one for us to, to invest time and resources into. And we're super excited. We're welcoming the team into our team right now. We have shared customers. We have customers who were our customers that are currently their customers and vice versa. It's a, you know, very niche space. Space. And so bringing the go-to-market teams together is definitely the plan. This is, you know, there's specific domain expertise that can help you be really a really successful seller in this category. And the folks at Everlance have amazing expertise. And so as we looked, as I mentioned earlier, we're on a growth trajectory, and, and part of growing an organization and growing go-to-market means more people to help contribute to that growth. There's a really exciting opportunity to to bring those folks into the fold and work as one team now instead of having to compete against each other. And in parallel, our product teams are doing exactly as you said, evaluating how do we bring the best of both products to market to deliver the best, best-in-class customer experience and drive for further innovation and scale.

Interesting. Oftentimes you see these acquisitions to— you acquire a product that then you can cross-sell, which accelerates growth for both, really efficient growth for both organizations. Or there's competitive reasons, take oxygen out of the competitive landscape, stop, basically stop a race to the bottom you see as a strategy. Sometimes it's about accelerating a product roadmap. And getting to like new categories faster. What was the strategic rationale? Yeah. Or what did I miss? Yeah.

Yeah. I was going to say there's also— so I'd say in our case, it's a little bit of, it's a little bit of option B, a little bit of option C. And then I'd add that there's also this opportunity to play further up and down the total addressable market landscape. So Modus primarily has played in a, you know, we, what we call commercial. Some other companies might call more mid-market or even enterprise for, for them. You know, it's all very relative to what you sell, and you and I have talked about this with the, with the work that you do at Owner. Um, but we mostly play kind of upstream, upmarket, and this organization has a whole B2C component to it that we don't touch at all, um, with over 4 million end users. And then they also play into the, you know, the very small business space where they're selling to, you know, single proprietors, think like a real estate agent who needs to track their mileage and expenses, or a team of people, which again, we don't sell into. They also have a freemium product, which is something we don't do today. So, there was really an opportunity to not only navigate the competitive landscape, to accelerate the product roadmap, but also to extend our total addressable market.

And go acquire a bunch of talent that knows your business, that is, you know, clearly very successful. Um, exactly. And now Everlance improves their retention because people won't graduate out of that product. They can graduate into whatever version of Modus is left and vice versa. Okay, cool. Um, and so how are you thinking about bringing go-to-market together? Like, so you acquire a new product, What are the sets of decisions you're trying to make? Like, is it, is it about segmentation, where people go? Like, how, where do you even start?

So, so we've kind of started at the beginning, if you think of the kind of revenue lifecycle or the customer lifecycle. So from a marketing perspective, firstly, on the B2B side, we were, you know, at the same trade shows, you know, in the same publications, things like that. So we're thinking about how do we they preserve Everlance's brand equity. And again, they've built a lot of brand equity by being a B2C app, um, as a, as a component of their solution, um, while also not confusing the market and having, you know, two players out there that are, are kind of now under one umbrella. So there's a lot of work right now. This is only, uh, 10 days old, this, this acquisition, but we've spent a lot of time. Yeah, yeah, I know. You sound like my board, Kyle Norton. We spent a lot of time thinking about the marketing strategy and again, the brand equity. And it kind of sounds like, oh, why would that matter first? But, you know, you really want to be clear on your identity because then that sets you up for success for the, for the other components of the revenue lifecycle. Tactically, we've also had to work on what it means from a, from a go-to-market sales motion. So, you know, when you acquire somebody who you were competing with yesterday, that doesn't suddenly just turn off. You know, they have a pipeline, we have a pipeline, we're in, we're in the same opportunities in many cases. And so we've been working really closely as a sales leadership team to talk through each of those opportunities. And we structured, we structured the strategy such that if one of us wins, we all win. And I think, you know, that's probably another highly, highly likely, highly probable practice to put on the radar are, uh, in terms of being successful is taking compensation out of the equation and having the team really start thinking as one, as one team. So again, if either team wins the deal, both teams win is, is a, is the model we've come up with. Of course, that you can't have that forever, but we think that that's the right thing to do for, for the short term. Um, with these—

just in terms of, just in terms of the additional revenue you'll win by like nobody discounts it, is probably worth the double comp because you can say to both these teams, hey, look, nobody discount, don't win this deal by lowering the ARR and just let the customer choose, you know, like the, even a 10% discount on a $40,000 deal, you know, the commission paying the double comp is not going to be $4,000. It'll be $2,000.

So, so exactly. And it sends, it sends the right, I think it, I feel really strongly that, um, success comes out of collaboration. This is not about acquisition. This is just my philosophy in sales in general or in leading teams. And so, this creates the opportunity to like move to this one team mentality even faster because now instead of being like hoarding information or being like, oh, well the customer told me this, but I'm not going to say that. Where everyone's putting everything out on the table. And it's been really awesome to see the maturity across both teams saying like, we all want to win. We all want to— we, the now collective, we want to win this opportunity and we'll be in a better position to do so if I share what I've learned throughout the months of discovery I've done with this account and you share what you've learned, and then we kind of bring the best together and then we actually show up to the customer as a united front. And so it just creates a lot of alignment and we're just trying to take confusion out of it for the customers as well. Because, you know, while we don't know exactly what the future product will look like, we, we know that the vision is to have kind of the best of everything and, and make that available so that we can continue to lead in the market. And so, we need to show up that way and, uh, right from the get-go. And for salespeople, compensation is one of the, the strategies to, to ensure that.

Have you already started thinking about the infrastructure? How, how do you bring two Salesforce instances together? Like, where is the, How does the data live?

Yeah, it's even more exciting because they use HubSpot and we use Salesforce. They use, uh, their whole system is set up on the G Suite platform. We're fully Microsoft shop, although we use Slack. Um, so there's, you know, there's some elements of, um, of the systems that are, that are going to be really tricky. And so thankfully, uh, you know, one of my secret weapons from a, from being a CRO is having an awesome RevOps team. And so there are very smart people who are already investigating how do we, how do we do things like that.

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So we're completely going to run out of time to dive deep into the CS thing. So now you have to come back again for a second episode where we go deep into that because it deserves its own. Airtime. I just want to ask one question on it before we get into quickfire. What— sure, you come from a CS background. Now as a CRO, you see the world through a different lens. What's the one piece of advice you could— you really wish you could hammer into the heads of CROs that come from the sales path that you think they miss, that you uniquely understand from coming from a different function? Hmm.

That's a, that's a really good one. And it's sort of hard because I can't parse apart like my CS time and my sales time because I really see them as like they just kind of merged into one. And also through my years in CS, we were a revenue generating function. But I think if I had to boil it down, I would, I would want it, I would want other CROs to think about truly putting the customer at the center of their decisions. And, you know, it's so hard because every organization is like, oh, we're super customer-centric and, you know, we believe that the customer is at the center of what we do.

Yeah, right.

But exactly, it doesn't always flow through to decisions that are made, to, you know, comp structures, to strategies and things like that. So when my CEO— well, I had been the chief customer officer at Achievers for about 18 months, and my CEO was like, you know, we've struggled with sales leadership, we've had a lot of revolving doors, we know we need to fix sales. So, what do you think about being the CRO? My immediate thing was like, oh, but I've never been an AE. Like, that seemed to be my own mental blocker as to like why I couldn't be a CRO. And without missing a beat, he was like, but you know the customer experience better than anybody, and wouldn't that be beneficial to the, to the, to the sales team? And the more I thought about it that way, the more I was like, oh yeah, why would being just having had experience being an AE make you a better CRO than somebody who kind of knew everything about the customer lifecycle. And so, I think that was something I had not given enough credit to, and maybe other customer leaders out there are thinking the same. But like, if you know what the, if you know what the customer needs, then, and you can apply that to how you go to market, I think that's going to totally change the way you think about, you know, what success looks like or what great looks like from a from a CRO's measures of success or mission perspective.

Yeah, makes a ton of sense. I am very much of the mindset that these two functions need to live with one another, but the challenge is there's not enough leaders out there who can actually do it. There's not enough CROs or heads of revenue that can take off their sales hat and think enough about the customer and actually give up revenue if it means setting better expectations, selling into a tighter ICP, being better about handoff mechanisms and spending money post-sales. It's this really tricky thing where, you know, the, where the world is going, you need to think more and more holistically about the customer journey.

Totally.

And yet there's just like a dearth of people who can, who can do it.

It's true. And, um, I think though that it can— A, I think it can be learned, like anyone can learn this. I also think that, um, you were talking earlier about really having that operator mindset. I think that might be one of the ways that we could kind of quickly help people pivot to see a bigger picture is, you know, if you're only accountable for bookings or for, you know, growing like a revenue target, a new revenue target, whether that's coming from existing customers or net new logos. And that's something we should add to our part 2 as well, because being responsible for both forces you to make some decisions on like who should actually do the selling and things like that, which is a whole other, a whole other episode. But this idea that, you know, if I'm a CRO and I only have a bookings target, then I might make some trade-offs to just get the deal. But if I'm a CRO who also has a revenue retention target, and I recognize that my company's success is going to be on the back of of revenue retention because we need to grow and we can't grow the business if we don't retain the customers and the revenue associated with those customers, then I think I might, you know, I might be able to approach some of the decisions I need to make differently.

I have the luxury in a high-velocity environment, I can get away with this, but my VP of sales and director of sales, like the AE director, are both paid not on close one business, but on launched, on launched MRR.

Awesome. That's great. That's already one step beyond. Yeah.

Yeah. I think paying them on retention's probably a step too far, but this at least ties the incentives much more closely. Our launch cycle's only 2 to 3 weeks, so it's workable, but the AEs are also paid not on close win, only on launch.

But you're ensuring then that they're winning deals the closing deals that will be, that really want to put the effort into implementation and that want to go live and that are the right fit for what your, you know, your product functionality can do. So, they actually do go live. And I think that's huge because the alternative is you pay people on closed one revenue, the customer doesn't go live, and then not only do you have an unhappy customer. And yeah, and then you have to do a clawback and like that sucks for everyone. You know, you thought you counted on a deal, like you as the AE or you as the CRO, counting towards your targets and then suddenly like you have a negative there, like that feels terrible all around.

So, the AE has pre-spent the money.

Oh yeah. I think sometimes they spend it before the contract is signed, but everyone's probably learned that lesson the hard way.

Yeah. Okay, let's move to our very exciting lightning round. What do you think separates a good CRO from a great one? Like somebody who's truly exceptional.

Um, I think exceptional CROs do two things really well. One is that we talked about already is kind of they think big picture and they're aligned to the ultimate, like, long-term objectives of the company and not just the bookings target, whether they are actually aligned to that compensation-wise, or they just fundamentally believe that as a stake, as a, as a shareholder, and hopefully they're a shareholder in whatever, whatever format that looks like, um, that they really see that, that long-term success is, is going to be the key to everyone's, everyone's growth. Um, and they make decisions kind of on that as one of their guiding principles. And then the second thing is, I think, like we talked about already, about different altitudes, like being able to be like on listening to a Gong call and analyzing what a BDR might have been able to say differently, um, to get the cut, to get the prospect to take the meeting versus not take the meeting. And being in front of, you know, uh, an investor committee, not even the board, but like the board's board, uh, presenting on an acquisition and, you know, thesis behind that type of thing. I think being able to do both of those things really well makes sense. And for me to be able to do that, I think like a 2A to that comment is building an amazing team around them because you can only, you know, be in so many places at once. You can only be doing so many things at once. And, you know, I fully recognize, and I knew this very early on in my leadership journey, that I was not going to be— I could never be the best at all the things that needed to be done. When again, when I'm going back to my first, my first dipping my toe into the CRO water, thinking to myself, but I've never, I've never personally been an AE. I've carried a quota, but I've never been an AE, or I've never made, I've never had to make 50 cold calls in a day. Like, what, what must that feel like? I haven't done those things, or I can't integrate Salesforce and HubSpot, full disclosure, all of these things. But I also knew that, like, if I could find people and motivate and inspire people who liked to do those things and like to lead those specific teams, then I wouldn't necessarily need to have to know how to do those things. Because if you think about like your CEO or my CEO, like my CEO hasn't been an accountant and a developer and an IT professional and a salesperson. Like, you know, as you get to a certain stage in your career, you won't have done all of the things, but you definitely need to know how to lead the teams who are doing those things. Inspire and motivate them to do what they're really good at. And you need to be super comfortable with them shining and recognize that when they shine, you look good. I think there's too many people out there who are like, they think that they need to personally be the hero in every situation. And that, that's going to, you know, get in your— get in one's way of being able to truly be successful. But if you believe that their success is your success, then it's going to unlock a lot more capacity and a lot more potential.

Yeah, I think that's such a great point, you know, being able to rely on folks around you. The challenge is at what point are you abdicating your responsibility and not being the leader you need to help that individual? And the advice I often give here is you're the person who's supposed to try to pull things back to first principles, even if you've never run a BDR team or never run a CS team or never run onboarding. These were new functions for us at some point. But if you can be the person that helps that individual synthesize their granular knowledge of what's happening in that business with the bigger picture and push them on thinking through first principles, I think that's a good way to manage these teams where you might not have the depth. What is the most common advice that you find yourself giving to leaders, mentees, so people in the earlier innings of their leadership career?

Yup. We, in my advice or kind of coaching conversations, we spend a lot of time thinking about, or I spend a lot of time talking to the team about how to be a force multiplier. And this kind of piggybacks on what we were just talking about, which is to say we need to give people safe spaces to fail. And then, like, that will help them build confidence. If I, you know, much like being a parent, if you save the day every time and you jump in every time, then how will they this seller, you know, person learn how to do the hard things. And so, trying to find, and, you know, then I get pushback like, oh, but we can't fail on this one because of, you know, all these very valid reasons. And so, I want to encourage people to think about, well, where could we make space for this individual, like, to spread their wings? And look, if they fail, it's going to be okay. But what if they don't fail? What if they soar? How are we, you know, how then will, what will that do for us from from a building confidence and accelerating, you know, growth and revenue perspective. Nice.

What's the hardest lesson you've had to learn in your career?

So many hard lessons. You could have a whole podcast where everyone just talks about all the mistakes they've made. That would be fun. Yeah, probably. Probably how it probably took me longer than I wished it had to learn how to be like really authentic as like as a female leader. So when I first became the VP of Customer Success, I had a, I had a CRO. I was reporting to a CRO who's an amazing man, you know, has gone on to do so many wonderful things. And I was— I used to be so scared to tell him that my son was sick and had to be like picked up from daycare. And for anyone who's ever had kids in daycare, you know how hard it is to to go into that conversation and say, like, you know, they call you and they're like, you have to pick up your kid right away and they can't come back for 24 hours. And there's all these like rules around it. And I would want to be— I wouldn't want to say that because all my team was all men and none of them had to go pick up their kids. But I, you know, I was the one who felt compelled and my son really wanted me to be there as he was only a toddler. And so I hesitated, like I would always I would always kind of not be super honest about it and just try and figure out how to make it work. And one day I finally just was like, I can't make this meeting. I have to do this. I have to go pick up my kid at daycare. And he was like, oh yeah, I remember when my boys were sick and like, it was such a hard time. Like they get sick every week, you know, when they're building. He was so compassionate and understanding. And I wish I had just like dove into that earlier because it would have A, taken a lot of angst and anxiety off of me. And probably made me a better leader at work, a better person at home. And that, you know, hard lesson to learn, but once we got there, I was like— and now with people, I'm just like, lean all the way into your authenticity. You know, people talk about bringing your whole self to work, and I have a lot of expectations of my team, but I also recognize that we all have a whole life going on, and you're going to be better at work if you can be, you know, if you can incorporate all the things in your life. Like, I think about work-life integration, not work-life separation. Life balance.

Same here. Um, last question: what's the best thing you've read in the last 12 months?

Oh gosh, I, I read a lot of fiction because I use my brain way too often, uh, during the, the days. But probably the best business, or maybe life book I should say— it's not even a business book, it just— this might be cliché because it's so popular right now— is Mel Robbins' Let Them Theory. Um, we had Mel Robbins as a speaker at one of our customer conferences years ago, and she and she's been inspirational ever since. But this idea of like just letting people be who they are in sales, especially, we talk a lot about controlling the controllables and the things that are outside of your control. You just got to like figure out how to let it go and focus on the things you can control. So her messaging really resonates with me right now.

That's awesome. Okay, we are up for time. We have another hour and a half long podcast to do on the CS side of the house at some point, but this was great. I think these are such, such interesting lessons to pull from place to place. I'm a big believer in range, like from David Epstein's book, and being able to pull mental models and ideas and patterns from different places. I think this is one of the things that has been a big source of my learning like learning from product management and learning from like things outside of SaaS and B2B. And so I think this was a really great one and it's a cool look into a world that I've never been a part of. So appreciate it. We're going to get you back for round 2 on CS. Great.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

To the Revenue Leadership Podcast. If you enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe, and you can find a link in the show notes. And be sure to leave a 5-star review, share it with your network, and please join me next Wednesday for another great conversation.