[00:00:00] Warren Zenna: Hi and welcome to the CRO Spotlight podcast. I'm Warren Zenna from the CRO collective and I'm here with my co-host Lupe Feld. Hey Lupe.

[00:00:15] Lupe Feld: Hey Warren. This is Lupe Feld, and I'm glad to be here with you.

[00:00:19] Warren Zenna: So this podcast is really for aspiring CROs and CEOs and current CROs whom are interested in learning from not only us, but the great guests that we're going to have.

[00:00:28] Lupe Feld: We're here to tell you that there is other areas of the business that can drive revenue and we're going to look and inspect and come up with some great ideas for us to bring in as much revenue as we can, and drive some meaningful change for the business.

[00:00:41] Warren Zenna: So tune in, we have some exciting opportunities coming up for a really amazing conversations and any B2B leaders I think you're really going to enjoy it. So thanks for tuning in and we look forward to seeing you.

[00:00:58] Warren Zenna: Okay and welcome to episode two of the CRO Spotlight. Hey Lupe.

[00:01:04] Lupe Feld: How are you doing Warren?

[00:01:06] Warren Zenna: I'm great. How are you doing? What's been happening?

[00:01:08] Lupe Feld: It's, it's busy, budgets are getting kind of used and released and all sorts of exciting things are happening. There's, just a momentum building and, trying to adapt to the new normal, so.

[00:01:19] Warren Zenna: Yeah, that isn't, that isn't that the case, I think we already have settled into the new normal. I mean, I, I feel like everyone's sort of, kind of in this hybrid model and I think that's where they're going to stay.

[00:01:30] Lupe Feld: I think so, I think there's a lot of speculation. I think there's more, there are a lot of companies that have real estate and because of that, they're influenced to try to go back to the old way.

And, there's, there's a little bit of a tug and pull there. So I think eventually, things will land, in a place where both employee and employers are happy and everybody's productive as productive as they can.

[00:01:55] Warren Zenna: I it's a good point. I mean, people are carrying leases. Right.

But the other part of it too, is that a lot of people moved, right? I mean, all of a sudden, like you've got all these executives that are now living in, who knows where, because they can, and they're not moving back just to go to the office. And if you want those people now, I think the upper hand has been handed over to a lot of talent that are saying, look, I'm staying in Wyoming.

I want to live here. And I that's where I think it's gonna be. I wondered. What do you think, do you think that salaries are going to change? Do you think that people are going to actually going to like say, well, you're not living in New York city anymore. I'm not paying you as much.

[00:02:27] Lupe Feld: I think it depends a lot on the experience of success, the, the actual job description, that you're filling, and your flexibility to travel and when needed as needed.

There's still a lot of value in. Being in the same space and collaborating and, and having that opportunity to kind of feed off of each other. It's taking us a while to get to a really good functioning collaboration via zoom, and it takes a lot of discipline, and one of the, kind of, one of the rules that I set for myself is you have to be present.

And, so often it's, it's easy to just flip your camera off or, turn on the mute button and get a little distracted. And I think if people can be present, I think it really doesn't matter where you are. And if you can be, together every quarter or so I think, I think it's functional.

But I think it also depends on the actual job description and the size of the company and some of the objectives that they have ahead for themselves.

[00:03:26] Warren Zenna: Yeah, I get it. I agree that I think the issue you're talking about too, about productivity, the, the, the stats aren't in yet, and we're not going to know for a long time, whether or not this zoom culture.

Resulted in any changes in the way companies operate? I don't know. I think there's a lot of theory about it, but we'll see. I there's two sides of it. Right? One is, well, people are more present because they kind of have to be right there on the zoom thing. And they're being looked at all the time. I mean, I noticed think you probably did too, but there a lot of my clients were like having calls every day when they were in the middle of the pandemic and no one did.

Before the pandemic, no one had a meeting every day with everybody, it was a sort of overkill to try and get everybody engaged. And I think it seems like it's sort of flattening out, but I guess we'll see, there's a transition there, which you kind of didn't realize you referenced, which is awesome.

You mentioned jobs groups. Right. So this is something that I know you and I have talked about and I wanted to bring this up. So it probably, everyone knows cause they were who's. Who's listening to this probably follows me on LinkedIn and I'm kind of a blabber mouth about this topic, but I read the CEO, chief revenue officer, job descriptions every day.

There's a lot more, I've never seen this many CRO roles. And I am amazed and I feel like I'm saying this again and again at just these job descriptions are just blatantly, clearly. They're just looking for someone to come in and run their sales department. They're not even hiding the ball anymore. They, they really just, I think are doubling down on, on this idea that the CRO.

Sales leaders. Matter of fact, when I'm having conversations with a lot of people right now, they go, well, doesn't a CRO, just run sales. There really is a ingrained sort of I guess it's a, it's a, that's just a perception, but I think it's actually like a definition. And as right. I mean, we're trying to kind of change that perception and everyone agrees with me on that point.

So I'm curious what your take on this is like, what do you think it is? That'll create the shift so that CEO's start thinking about the role and even sales leaders think about the role differently. That starts to make it more strategic. Is that, is that possible? What, what, what do you thought? I'm just curious your thoughts on this.

[00:05:33] Lupe Feld: Yeah. I, as I, as I think about job descriptions, they're critically important in every job I, in every job that you come across. And so often they're recycled and they sit in some kind of, a database for HR and the position becomes open because somebody moves or they're asked to write.

Out of the organization and then that old job description from, four years ago, three years ago, 12 months ago, it gets put back in, gets recycled. And a lot of times, in the CRO position, it's such, a fairly new position that maybe they never had one and they don't really know what to put in there.

And so it defaults to, well, maybe let's upgrade what the VP of sales did or the head of sales did. And it's such a. A missed opportunity, but I think the root of it is having a joint conversation between the CEO, HR and, you know and having that expectation set of what you're looking for. It serves more purpose than just opening the door to candidates.

It actually helps you fine tune and find the right candidates. And it guides the type of experience and training that this candidate should have shouldn't have. And it actually leads to job satisfaction and retention as well. People will stay with. An organization if they signed up for X and they're actually able to do X as opposed to, signing up for X and being told to do Z.

So. It's really important that, you can also measure what you expect from this role. And if the job description is not accurate, then it really doesn't allow you to measure the expectations of what you want out of this person that you're bringing in. And so

[00:07:21] Warren Zenna: You're not going to get the right people. You're going to get them wrong people.

[00:07:24] Lupe Feld: Exactly.

[00:07:24] Warren Zenna: And that's what I see happening.

[00:07:26] Lupe Feld: It's so easy for, for people to fall in love with someone they interview, it's, it's like the ultimate speed dating

[00:07:34] Warren Zenna: Some people are so good at interviewing. They're just really good at that. They know they've nailed that skill. Right.

[00:07:40] Lupe Feld: And and then, you can say, well, we do, referrals and we do references and, and all of that.

But the reality is you're not going to give someone who's going to be. Not a proponent of you getting this job as a reference, you're going to give someone that's going to give you kind of an elevated view of what you do. So the discipline in the job description is critical and more so than any position.

[00:08:02] Warren Zenna: I agree. I think though, like this role. Is, and I agree. There's no question. I mean, I just, you're gonna love this one. So to your exact point, last week, I saw a job description. Someone sent me and they had actually the old company name that was originally used for, you can tell the CEO probably called up his buddy and said, can you send me your job description for your CRO?

And he forgot to take out his other comp their company's name. And the job description was different than the hiring company. And I was like, okay, this is, this is a bad sign. That's obviously pretty sloppy, but I think more importantly is aside from the laziness of it, what I really believe is the reason why it's so easy to do that is because CEO's still just think of those CRO role as a sales leadership role.

They can easily just take any head of sales, job description, and just kind of recycle it without different title on it, as opposed to, because when I speak to CEOs now and they start to get wind of some of the stuff we're referencing. They realize how much more in depth they need to be thinking about the impact that this role would have if they were to appoint it in the manner of which I'm trying to say.

Right. And I think that that's the problem. I think there just isn't enough thought going into it. They want to fill a slot for the reasons you mentioned. And what ends up happening is you. A marketplace. That's looking for a certain type of candidate for the wrong reasons. And then you've got the candidates looking for the wrong job for the wrong reasons.

And it's a match made in hell. Right. They ended up, they ended up, they ended up like getting married in there. They never should have gotten together in the first place because the job wasn't really designed properly. And this is what I'm seeing. Right?

So Dave's actually going to talk about this. We're going to have a guest coming on shortly and we'll, we'll have him talk about, this is what happens when that marriage let's call it, that it starts off wrong. When the CEO hires the wrong person and the wrong function with the wrong title and all the implications that a job of that importance has on an organization.

So I I'd be interested in knowing, because in your position, right? So you, you, you had an interesting story because you, you sort of, I would say, I don't want to speak on your behalf, but when you and I spoke, you mentioned that you sort of organically like evolved into the role, right? You didn't like weren't hired as a chief revenue officer. Am I correct?

[00:10:17] Lupe Feld: No, actually I came in kind of as a deputy sales officer for the company and there was a CRO in place and it was upon exit that I assumed the CRO position and kind of took it to the, to that next level.

But I think one of the things that's important is if you bring in a CRO and you don't have a head of sales, Then right. There is the first pitfall that could happen. Right. And so you can't, if you're, if you're putting in a CRO position, you can't spare that VP of sales or the head of sales position, because they're critical.

They're a component just like you can't have the person who's doing marketing or the person that's doing social media or the person that's doing client success, all those different silos. Currently function independent of each other. And a lot of times what the CRO is, it's like, the, the, the person directing the orchestra and making everything come together seamlessly.

And I think that's what happens to most positions. They think, well, we already have a CRO. We don't need ahead of. And I think that's what I've seen, where the, the pitfall happens.

[00:11:25] Warren Zenna: I agree. I agree. And, and the problem too is that this is a big one. So I get hired as a chief revenue officer, but I'm actually overseeing sales.

And in many cases we see to that, then the CRO is also selling, like they actually have a re a quota. And if they're good at that, if they're good salespeople, that's pretty much what they end up doing. They end up becoming just kind of glorified salespeople with a team underneath them. CEO never wants somebody to give up their pipeline, especially if they're good at developing it.

Right. It's like almost like a bit of a drug in a weird way. And I think that this is sort of the trap that it's almost like a sort of. A codependent agreement that's made between, the CEO and the CRO is, well, let's face it. You're going to drive. You're going to get more business from me. You're going to bring in here, your Rolodex, you're going to get me business.

And we'll give you each CRO title. I think the title. Is a little kind of a dang, a dongle, it kind of is a Ababil in a way for a lot of these roles, right. It's not taken as seriously as it should be an a, I think the consequences we'll get into it with, with our guests. So I don't know, before we invite them in. Do you have any other thoughts on that?

[00:12:37] Lupe Feld: I, I think there's, there's also an opportunity for one of the skillsets that I think a CRO has to have is the ability to develop that. And that is such a key component of the role, because otherwise you tend to kind of just helicopter in and take over.

You're not going to be productive. You're going to need to elevate the talent elevate and essentially find your replacement within the team that you work with. Whether it's in marketing, customer success and sales, what have you product you're going to have to find who's going to fill your seat when you move to the next level.

Because if you can't develop the talent that you have, then you're not going to be able to be effective.

[00:13:18] Warren Zenna: Totally agree. Yeah. I want to get Dave's opinion on this. So we're, we're excited because we have a guest and I'll abolish do some, his name is Dave Norton and he's a seasoned revenue and go to market leader.

He's based out of Highland, Utah, which is like called Silicon slopes. I was just out there. It's incredible. What's going on out there. And Dave has an amazing. Career background and track record. So he's kind of, he's played a key role in building out four different unicorn organizations in the insurance tech and prop tech, FinTech and asset protection tech.

And he has, I don't know, 25 years of experience building companies like exact where and MX he's been a CRO. He's been ahead of sales. He's on the board of multiple companies. He has his own company called Vizio business consulting. He's an investor, he's a strategic advisor. He's a wonderful man.

I mean, I've known Dave now for about a year, and this is someone who just has incredible passion. He has amazing experience in building, 10 X air or growth for companies and growing market share from in some cases, 30 to 50%, 85%. I'm going to introduce him and I'm going to invite him in and we can say hello to him. Okay. Hang on a second.

Hey Dave.

[00:14:33] Dave Norton: How are you?

[00:14:34] Warren Zenna: You guys know each other, don't you?

[00:14:36] Lupe Feld: We know each other over the phone, but we've never actually met in person, but yes, I feel like we connected and had a great, great conversation.

[00:14:43] Dave Norton: Yes. I love how Lupe thinks and approaches life. She's she's a great one.

[00:14:48] Lupe Feld: Thank you. Appreciate it. Likewise, Danny talks incredibly about you, so

[00:14:53] Dave Norton: Thank you.

[00:14:55] Lupe Feld: Danny says, so it must be so right.

[00:14:58] Dave Norton: I hope so. Although Warren is yet to spend some time with me. So, so

[00:15:03] Warren Zenna: I could tell the one thing I could say is this. I was in Silicon slopes with Dave for three days and Dave, knows everybody. And I thought I knew everybody. I mean, it was amazing. Everybody knows Dave and everyone hugs. Dave, everyone embraces Dave. And I want to thank you. It was a great experience out there. I've, I've seen that buddy, that amazing community. And I'd love to hear a bit more about that. If you don't mind a little bit more me expound on the background that I just shared and also a little bit about the Utah environment and what's going on out there and your role in it. And also any background on your, your CRO experience.

[00:15:42] Dave Norton: Well, I, I've had the great fortune to be born and raised, I guess if you'd say in my career here in Utah and Silicon slopes, and it's funny, you you're born and raised here in Utah. And at the time, it was always a great environment in a great culture and community to be raised in, but something I always loved and yearned for was to leave the state.

Whether that's to go to California to enjoy the beaches or to go to New York city, to enjoy all that. It has to offer all these other places. And as my professional career to golf, I traveled a ton. And so I'd get to see a lot of the country and meet a lot of the amazing people throughout our nation. And people loved, always talking about and coming to Utah and interacting with Utah companies and over the years and over the decades.

Utah, just continue to grow this great reputation for producing high performing high integrity type organizations, high tech know cutting edge organizations that soon began to rival that, which other communities across the country like Silicon valley and Austin. And. The research triangle, New York city and others offer, from a business and from a technology perspective.

And you've got really tracing back to the roots of how Utah started with its pioneers coming and coming for religious freedom and security and being a very self. Efficient self-sufficient type culture forced them to be an innovative culture coming and finding a desert type environment surrounded by these beautiful mountains.

And they can create a gorgeous place to live, to raise a family. And over the years, it became just an iconic place for people to be and to raise their families. And then in the great state for high education and. And then, just some amazing organizations and firms that have been acquired and have gone public and, and it's just continued throughout the years.

And then recently, it just seems like this past year, Utah itself has had 20 plus organizations that either. Raised capital acquired a business where when IPO and public and all exceeded the unicorn status of a billion dollars plus an enterprise value. And so the momentum is here. It's pretty fun to be a part of and to watch and to see all of our friends that we've grown up with or went to school with, or worked with, or have moved here and their professional environments that are all just having great success.

And I will say that what's unique about Utah, that that others observe. I was talking with a firm out of Boston and they said, we love how unique your culture is, because it seems like you're all pulling for each other in Utah seems as though you all support each other, you all are cheering for each other to win.

And that's absolutely the case. We, we take pride in where we're from and what we're doing and what we're trying to achieve. We are loyal to each other. And that's a trait that a lot of Utahans have is their loyal. Not just to each other, but with those whom we love. And so it is, it's something that we really try and use each other's solutions, leverage each other's relationships and, and foster great partnerships there, and really learn from each other's successes and failures so that we can all learn and grow and achieve much faster than otherwise would be possible.

So it is, it's a unique culture. And now one where I was always looking to go. Now I feel away from now, I feel truly blessed that I'm here and that a lot of businesses are wanting to come to Utah and participate in this amazing energy, this amazing passion for innovation and entrepreneurship and love for doing what's right.

Doing what's good for family and friends for the environment. And it's fun to win the right way with the right people. So I'm glad you got to come see it firsthand and want you to come back.

[00:19:29] Warren Zenna: I, I, I plan on, I plan to so Lupe you and I were talking before about the challenges associated with becoming a chief revenue officer in 10 eighties, fast paced environment. And Dave, I'm curious to know you and I. We had this conversation before what's your experience with kind of moving into a chief revenue officer position in the kind of fast paced, particularly out there, right. Where there's so much money flowing into that community right now.

[00:19:56] Dave Norton: Yeah. Great question. As I think about the chief revenue officer position and what it can be, what it could be, what it is, what it is not for a lot of organizations, a few thoughts that I wanted to share and then dive in as you guys wish. And number one CRO is not a vice-president of. CRO is not the leader of the sales organization.

A CRO is not the chief risk officer in a security organization. A CRO is not 100% responsible for the success or failure of a business. That is what it is not. In my mind and experiences that I've seen and been a part of and seeing some of my peers, what I do know the chief revenue officer position to be is one of great trust, one of great responsibility and one of great accountability.

And that comes from some critical pillars as I've thought about it, as it relates to alignment, alignment is so important, not just from the business unit. Because as you think about sales and marketing and revenue operations, as you think about customer success and expansion, all of that is, is a challenge in and of itself to align those organizations.

What I'm referring to is actually alignment with the CEO, with other C-suite members, with board members throughout the organization. That alignment is so critical because as you think about a hyper-growth organization, Decisions are happening. Fast. Trust is a critical component in acceleration and in speed, understanding of areas of ownership, responsibilities, swim lanes, what have you, but making sure that everybody's on that same page.

And so that alignment, if people don't have it, then chaos ensues. This trust is a bound. People are trying to build up kingdoms and then you have walls and silos and misunderstandings start occurring and then emotions and then narratives. And so it's unfortunate what can become a fallout really, if done, right.

If set up right. If executed, right. If communicated, right, can be maybe one of the most singular, most important decisions. And. And super powers if you will, to achieve hypergrowth status. And so it takes a lot of buy-in from a founder and a CEO to, to say, you know what, I need help with all things revenue.

And so when you think about that, you think about a CEO or a founder who in my experience is probably one of four different mindsets, one very sales and customer centric, two very product centric. And innovation centric, three very HR culture, a company building a great place to work centric. And then the other is very financial centric with the board financing, raising funds, those types of things, living paycheck to paycheck.

Whether it's a payday to payday, whether it's on my gosh, we're gonna run out of funds. It's been amazing to see that some CEOs don't even want. Anything to do with finances. Some CEO's want nothing to do with sales or fill in the blank, you go through. And so it's funny how you've really got to understand if you're a CRO.

What is the natural tendency for your CEO? Does he or she wants naturally to dive into these certain components of the business. And if so, is that a good fit for you? And if so, have you talked about how critical your alignment is? The understanding, the expectations who will do, what do they trust you? At what point will they start to hand off more areas of ownership?

Because when they have different ideas, the CEO or the founder, then you as the CRO and you don't have that trust or the time together, or the understanding or the agreement, and they want to start going a different way. The wheels are gonna fall off. And of course the company and the customers and the board, and everybody's going to follow the CEO as they should.

But if you can get in front of that and make sure that what you agree on and you prove to him or her, that you're able to achieve what you've agreed to. And over time, you continue to build that trust. Then they will see that they can then focus on one of those other three compartments, if you will, and say, it looks like you've got this.

Your marketing. Great. You're selling great. Our customers are great. We're expanding. Rev ops are great. Your CAC is great, man. Keep rolling. How can I support you? Cause that's utopia so that they don't need to spend a ton of time unless we engage them in some type of executive sponsorship or however they wished to at any time.

But man, how many important decisions still need to be made and managed as it relates to all the other parts of the organization? So that Alliance. That understanding that trust, that expectation, those areas of ownership. Incredibly important. If you, as a CEO or founder are wanting to bring on a partner as a CRM.

And if you, as a CRO, whether you're aspiring to be a great one, or you are one that you have great alignment and a great team member and a great partner in the CEO.

[00:25:13] Lupe Feld: Yeah. You hit on a couple things that I think are probably important to. Dig a little deeper into, one is the self-awareness of the CEO, and I think that's critically important before you make that move to hire a CRO.

I've seen so often that people have. A clone of themselves, so if you're financially oriented, you're going to hire somebody who's more into finance, or if you're more into customer experience and success and retention, you're going to hire that. If you're into culture, you're going to hire more of a culture person.

And I think it takes a lot of discipline to understand. What you're good at as a CEO and where you need a little bit more help and then hire to fill the gaps and then really empower and open up the collaboration. And so, that's, that's one thing that I've experienced, in my career is having a position.

That's not really what you signed up. And the other is not being I call it, setting the table. The CEO needs to set the table for who's coming to dinner and make sure that everybody understands what that means and how they need to behave going forward. And I think that those two things I think are critically important.

I'd love to get your thoughts on that. I love it.

[00:26:27] Dave Norton: W well, you're talking about that. I thought of this one experience, they had raised something with the CEO and and it goes like this as a CEO. It could be said that you're the east stands for energy. You're the chief energy officer and, and it's your job to recognize and be self-aware what gives you great energy?

What tasks, what experiences within running the business just makes it so that you wake up every day and you just love doing these certain things. And likewise. What zaps your energy, what is exhausting drives you crazy takes you away from your flow. And if you are, as a CEO and a founder are aware and can take the time to carve out.

Here's what I love to do. I want to be a thought leader. I want to be on stage. I want to be in front of customers. I want to negotiate. I want to, whatever it might be or. I cannot be in these types of meetings, tracking down this type of information, doing X, Y, and Z. If they are that aware what an opportunity for you to have that discussion in whatever role you're interviewing for, if not just to CRL, but any capacity.

And if they haven't had that idea of understanding what gives me energy, what zaps my energy. Because as a CEO, you want to give the best energy every day to your customers, to your employees and team members and to the board, et cetera, because it is a challenge to lead organizations. And so, yeah, if you could have a very honest assessment of yourself and with the peers who work with you and team members and say, Hey, what are some of my blind spots?

What are the areas where I'm the best at? What do you love seeing me do? Talk to your spouse, your family, your children, whoever it might be. And that leads me to this. If you in an organization are participating in annual quarterly, whatever, it might be a 360 evaluations or evaluations. My goodness. What an awesome organization to be a part of.

Because if you feel like it's better, that you don't have these 360 evaluations you won't know what others. Think of view perceive and they may be misunderstandings or misperceptions, or they may not be, they may be very valuable and insightful. So if you want to bury your head in the sand and not be cognizant or aware, don't do those 360 evaluations.

But if you want to be your best and you want to understand your strengths, that's a great exercise to go through on occasion for everybody throughout the organization, the best organizations I've been a part of do that. And they do that for you. So that's one answer to your question. I think the other is, as I think about another experience, I recall one time having a very long, extensive interview process with a founder and a CEO.

And at the end prior to giving me an offer, he says, Dave, this has been the most exhausting process, but I'm so glad that we've had. Because we are so much better or so much prepared, and we know exactly how we're going to thrive together with you. And we couldn't be more excited to have you joined the team.

And that I took not as an offense, but as a compliment that we really took the time to set the table. Like you're talking about Lupe to make sure that everything that was important to them was addressed in detail with examples, specificity, and same thing with me, what are all the things that matter to me to make sure that we were a great fit for each.

'cause how much better is that, that you find out beforehand that you're not a great fit as opposed to six months, then 12 months in et cetera. And so because of that, the expectations can be great for each other and you can win faster together if you take the time upfront.

[00:30:08] Warren Zenna: Great. Dave, thank you. You know what? I'm hearing the theme here. It's so much in doing the hard work upfront and I just think people don't do it. I do believe that here's what goes on. I think. A CRO is an important role that it needs to be filled, right. For a lot of reasons, a lot of the wrong reasons. And so then you also have somebody who's looking for the role and they want to get hired as quickly as possible, too.

Right? It's not like everyone has all this runway. They can just wait around to get a job. And I think a lot of those dynamics sort of unfortunate. Make people a little hasty and ignore detail and they don't think about, it's so different. I know I'm being a bit weird here, but it's, it's no different than getting married too quickly.

If you meet somebody and three months later, you run off and get married. I mean, you've served, maybe there's anecdotal experiences for you to see how happy they are together there. Most of the time you, you can, you can get yourself into a really bad situation because you're with somebody for a very long time and the integration is really profound.

So I really think there's a lot of parallels here. I think if you're hiring someone in the role that you described, I think we agree. But you need to be incredibly diligent about being very self-aware about what it is, not only you won't do you want the CEO CRO to do, but what the company really needs?

Like what does this role really provide? Because I think that the, the danger, particularly as, as you and I have discussed in the past earlier stage companies have different needs than mid stage companies do or later stage companies do. So I'd like your perspective. So if you're an aspiring chief revenue officer and, Dave, you're speaking to them and they're looking at stages of companies, what's your perspective on the way they should approach knowing where a company's at and their level of maturity and complexity.

[00:31:48] Dave Norton: Yeah. Great question. I think about the stages of the black magic getting from scratch zero to a million, and there's just, it is incredibly gritty. For a founder and team members to just work so hard to get those first few customers and initial contracts and everything else it's proving out.

And then you've got that 1 million to $10 million ARR space where you're really starting to replicate success. You're branching out maybe into a new vertical or not, or maybe the expansion revenue is occurring. You're starting to get a good solid sales team, a good solid CSM team. You've got a great product, potentially a great product market fit, but it's been really, really hard work.

And then you've got that 10 million to 50 million or even 20 million to a hundred million where you really go into hyper-growth mode where the company's ready to fund. Ready to invest, whether that's take on funding or you've got so much profit that you can do this, but you really double down in this hyper-growth mode where you're willing to not just invest in more sales professionals, but also your BDRs SDR mode.

The go to market, you're willing to invest far more in the marketing team, because there is so much that takes place in the marketing efforts that people don't realize. They think it's showing up to trade shows or creating up a website or having a partnership, or let's just create assets that they'll need in the sales process.

And it is so much more than that, which we can get into the details. And then there's that expansion revenue, making sure your customers are happy, making sure they're buying more and renewing, but also what additional problems can we solve? How have we provided value for you and your team? And can we do it for other teams?

Would you be willing to introduce us to others and not just expanding within an organization, but could we innovate and create additional solutions? For your business and for other verticals that are closely knit together. So there's a, there's a big difference in where you are in your stages and organization.

And then of course, after the a hundred million plus it's IPO, it's acquisition, it's everything else that you're getting ready for to, to really have sophisticated processes, systems, motions in place. So certainly there are those different stages to be considered. I would say that if you are in. One to $10 million stage.

Don't look for a CRO at that moment. You're looking for some key sales individuals, maybe a sales manager, potentially a sales vice president. Who's going to help you recruit, manage lead, train, et cetera. Also marketing don't hire a COO. That that title is overinflated. Number one. And number two what are the functions you need from the marketing team?

And so that's where individuals such as yourself, Lupe myself and many others in this space know what it takes to sit down with you as a business, as an owner, as a founder, as a CEO, and say, What are your strengths? What areas are you not paying attention to? What have you invested in and what were those results?

What would you do differently? And just listening to them, you can quickly gauge what they have or have not ever done or thought about what they have done, because they were told by somebody that had worked 10 years ago before the smartphone even exists. And so there's these things you can pick up quickly to identify, wow.

If they could just implement these two or three things and not have to hire a ton of people, that's going to have millions of dollars of impact in them and in their business. And so really it would be who've a founder, a CEO to spend time with individuals like you, Warren, who are experts in this space and really given us.

So that you can get that outside feedback to know what types of processes systems should be implemented. Don't go right for Salesforce or the top CRM, is fresh works. The right one is HubSpot's up and coming CRM. Is there another one are Google sheets still okay. To operate in. And so these are the types of conversations that a CEO sometimes go overboard and investing too early, too much.

Who's going to manage sales. You have a Salesforce administrator. Do you have a systems ops? I mean, that's a massive expense. And so if you're going to invest in a world-class system like that, do you have the time, the people, the resource, the expertise, the funding to do such and as your business habit need.

And so those are the types of things where you talk about the order of operations that really should be considered in that phase. Also when you think about moving from that 10 million to 50 to a hundred million. At that point. Yeah. You're probably looking at looking at hiring a potential CRO, in my world, I it's my fiduciary responsibility to hire someone who has been there and done that multiple times.

And been successful multiple times in different environments or businesses or industries and even a foul ball or two or a stubbed toe or two. And the value in that is that when you hire these VPs of sales or director of demand, gen, or account executives who have just fulfilled that criteria, I just mentioned they know what it takes to be successful.

Because of the foul balls, the stub tells and the multiple areas of success or multiple times that they've been able to generate success. So they are much more attuned to plug and play. Learn about the value proposition, learn about the target market. The ICP is who are we selling to and marketing to what's the playbook.

And let's go. And so if you're hiring people who are aspiring to be promoted, They're going to learn on your dime your time. And there's going to be a lot more pain than you're probably wanting to endure. Or do you hire someone who is familiar with your stage, where you are, where you're going. They've done that multiple times and they're willing to take on that role again with potential opportunity down the road to grow within the organization for career path.

Those are the types of candidates who want to invest. So those are the types of things that I've learned, both from my experience and the successes that I've had as well as a few foul balls, let's call it. And that's how we all become better is we, we get anchored and this is what we really know to be true.

And are we willing to. To sacrifice this Axiom or this principle and man, when that gets violated, you're like, I will never ever let that happen again. It used to be a hunch used to be an instinct or, yeah, I used to believe that, but now it's cemented as gospel in the way in which you operate going forward.

So there's a lot of wisdom and learning off of those stubbed toes and foul balls that allow you to really put your playbook in motion. And of course, adopter. And be flexible and crush it.

[00:38:29] Lupe Feld: One of the things that I've seen often with, kind of startup FinTech, organizations are, the primary members of the organization evolve to the more senior roles.

And, sometimes that's like a recipe for failure because they've reached kind of their, their maximum level of experience and expertise. Then other times you bring in people from the outside that have the experience, but you don't define success. And I think that's also, the expectation, if you think adding a CRO is going to achieve, 10 X, but really you don't set the right goal.

Everybody is not going to be happy with the outcome. And so I think you've probably seen that in your area of business as well.

[00:39:17] Dave Norton: You're spot on, there's, there's an icon in our industry, in the FinTech space. He was co-founder of MX and his name's Brandon. And he recently passed away of cancer and we love him and we celebrate him and he did so much, not just for MX as an organization in Silicon slopes as a community, but the entire FinTech space and financial services.

And he's revered. And we learned so many amazing lessons from him. His perspective was one very, very unique. And amongst the many statements, he would say, this one resonates with what you talked about Lupe and that is, there is no silver, but. Ever, but there is a Chuck full of a bunch of lead bullets and you need to use them all to be able to win.

And so yeah, it's there, there never is a silver bullet. It's all in the awareness, the preparation, the understanding, the commitment, the old adage, UAC understand, agree and commit. And if you have great mutual understanding, and if you both agree to, what's going to be executed and you commit to it, that's a great recipe for success.

Whether that's in life, in marriage, in business, in education, in your community, if it's a service project, understand what the needs. And make sure that you agree that you're going to do this for this, this entity, and then commit to it and how great will be your reputation and the outcome. If a service project can be executed like that, let alone relationships in life and in business.

It's when we deviate from that, that we somehow seem to forget what was understood, or we seem to forget what was a great to, or we forget what our commitment was. And the great thing is now that you can text, you can email, you can write things down and you can sign agreements and contracts and better agreements every time.

And that's how we get better. And so I'm no different and I'm sure you guys have experienced that as well is let's all improve on our UAC and see what amazing things can be a common.

[00:41:16] Lupe Feld: I love the UAC I think that's the recipe for any relationship. I mean, a perfect, happy marriage as well, so that's awesome.

[00:41:24] Warren Zenna: Hey, Dave, that was great. That was so great. It's that? Jim's in there. Thank you for being here and having this great dialogue with us, sharing your experience and wisdom with us. And I'm sure we'll probably have you back again. I'm sure. We'll see you again. I know I will. And I know you're busy and you got a lot going on.

You just recently have done some pretty amazing things in your careers. Anything you want to share before you take off, let everybody know like what you're up to these days for how they can reach you.

[00:41:47] Dave Norton: Yeah, I appreciate it. Well, number one, I want to thank you Warren, for reaching out to me, you've become a great friend and the power of social media, LinkedIn, it was either through a connection to Lupe and I had, or somebody else, and you were tagged on it and you made this statement and this PowerPoint and the 60 page doc.

And I saw it, it caught my eye, caught my heart and I started reading it. And boom, next thing I'm reading all 60 and Mike, this guy gets it. This is my world. He speaks my language. So number one, I just want to iterate the mission that you're on. That you've got a lot of fans out there that believe in what you're doing, how you're doing it.

And we are all aligned. This chief revenue officer community. It can be a lonely one. And if done right, can be an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling one. So I, I really appreciate the mission that you and Lupe and I, and others are on. And we're all in this together. Number one. So keep up the great work and keep up the Jim's flowing.

I love the recent posts you did of, of the three circles together and revenue in my. Marketing and customer success, the Venn diagram and CRO right there in the middle as gospel truth. And the more that we are aligned and bring alignment throughout the organizations as they report up and as they work close together, you, you eliminate negative.

You eliminate wasted energy. You'll, you'll eliminate duplicative efforts and you'll eliminate the need for meritocracy and we deserve this and we won that. But instead, if you can create that alignment under the revenue operations, it's amazing how much hypergrowth can be achieved. So again, thank you.

You got my full endorsement and look forward to doing amazing things together with you as it relates to me and what I'm doing now. Yes, I know. Recently appointed a chief revenue officer of an amazing company called Eltropy they're based out of San Jose, California. They provide omni-channel communications and data services for the financial services industry.

So all things credit unions, community banks, as super regional and national banks, mortgage and lending companies, title companies, and also insurance companies. So it is a great opportunity to address a market that needs. Ideal secure, integrated, compliant communication with our customers. So we're achieving great success, building an amazing team.

And if you'd like to be a part of that place, please do reach out. I can be reached at dave@eltropy.com. That's D A V E at E L T R O P Y dot com or you can ping me on LinkedIn or reach out to Lupe and Warren, and they know how to get ahold of me but would love to be a part of that. We're achieving amazing things.

We're backed by an amazing partner in K one capital, a $10 billion fund, who is an ideal partner at this stage of the business. And we've got an upcoming series B and C, which they're fully committed to. So we are very excited for what has been achieved and to replicate and grow that success. And there's no doubt.

We're going to be utilizing your network Warren and Lupe to achieve all these great things. So thank you. And please genuinely, please let me know how I can help you guys in any way. That's part of what I love doing and fulfilling my relationships and my obligation to our great community is I want our peers to win.

I want our friends to win and I'm willing to share in any way I can to help you each win. Appreciate it. That's great.

[00:45:02] Warren Zenna: Thank you. Thanks Dave. And they're lucky to have. And they know that. So to that, thank you. And we appreciate you being here.

[00:45:08] Dave Norton: Thank you guys. Take care.

[00:45:10] Warren Zenna: Bye bye.

This episode was digitally transcribed.