Rosalyn Santa Elena: Welcome to the revenue engine podcast. I'm your host, Rosalyn Santa Elena. And I am thrilled to bring you the most inspirational stories from revenue, generators, innovators, and disruptors revenue leaders in sales, in marketing. And of course, in operations together, we will unpack everything that optimizes and powers the revenue engine. Are you ready? Let's get to it.

When I first met Steve Goldberg, the CRO of SalesLoft, we had an immediate connection. We were very much aligned in our thoughts around how the chief revenue officer and the VP of revenue operations have a unique partnership and how critical that partnership is to the success of the revenue organization.

Steve is one of my favorite people and definitely a leader I would love to partner. During our discussion, Steve shares some great insights, especially around the importance of driving customer value, making data-driven decisions and having scalable processes to optimize the revenue engine. He also shares how he keeps his team motivated, how mentors have influenced his professional journey and even a few surprises at the end.

So take a listen and I'm sure you'll understand why he's one of my favorite people. So I am super excited to be here today with Steve Goldberg, the CRO at sales loft. Welcome Steve, and thanks so much for joining me.

Steve Goldberg: Thank you. It's great to see you.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: That's great. So when I was asked to start the revenue engine podcast, you know, there were a handful of revenue leaders that immediately came to my mind, you know, given our interactions in the past, I thought you would be the perfect CRO for me as a revenue operations leader, to chat with about driving and optimizing revenue, especially through the strategic, uh, business partnership between the CRO and the VP of revenue.

So having been a previous sales loft customer, I'm also very familiar with the company and the product, uh, for those listeners who may not be as familiar with SalesLoft. SalesLoft is the high, a highly rated sales engagement platform that recently raised a hundred million dollars taking the company officially to unicorn status with about, with a valuation of 1.1.

Billion. And that is billion with a B dollars. So congratulations on that as well. Steve,

Steve Goldberg: Thank you.. It's been. An interesting year, but also a very, very exciting year as well.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: Definitely. And let's get into that a little bit too, but before we talk about, let's talk a little bit about your journey, right? That led you to becoming sales lofts CRO last year, you know, you've had an amazing career in sales.

You were there at Salesforce in the very early days. I believe you spent almost 10 years of your career there, right before moving on to companies like fuse inside sales.com and then yeah. Right before joining SalesLoft. So can you, um, share a little bit about your journey and then some of the, maybe the key milestones that have led you to where you are today?

Steve Goldberg: Yeah, absolutely. It really goes way back til like my, my father really instilled integrity and work ethic into us as we were one of the young kids, me and my brother, we had a wholesale food business. I'm kind of like with Rocky where they're hanging me.

Yeah, props and dry, you know, pack pack me in like really just work like, you know, and, and really instill that into us. And, um, I remember one time when I was in college, I met, I met someone that, you know, there's certain, certain points in your life. There's specific conversations that just are like those aha moments that you're like that click.

And I'll never forget this conversation I have with somebody. Which was, I always knew how to work hard and I was taught to work hard. And like I said, I was taught to have integrity. And if you say you're going to do something, we do it. And if you can't do it and you come back and tell somebody why. Um, but I wasn't where I was.

I was waiting for my parents and I was, I was sitting at a restaurant and, um, I turned over and I had a conversation with this person who was sitting at the bar. And, um, he said, Hey, it looks like you're about to graduate college. And I said, yo, he goes, if I can give you any advice, he said, learn your trade.

First before you're ready to take that next step in your career because a lot of people take that next step in their career when they're not necessarily ready for it. And just make sure you really learn your trade and that you're, you know, you, you blew the job you want to get. And so I'm really, I don't smell today's state stay, don't know who that person was, who I talked to it stuck in my mind.

And so when I got into this, the industry and I started off at Salesforce. Um, my objective was to be a really strong professional and understand sales. Like at first I would thought you had to be really aggressive and that you had to just make as many phone calls. You had to have any many conversations.

And, and, um, and then I realized that there was a process and there was an art and a science to sell it. And that people were also involved that people we weren't machines and you had to really get to know the person that you were working with and figure out what their motivation was. I was a psychology major in college, and so really understand like the motivation behind it.

And, um, and I being a, an enterprise software salesperson with a fast growing company with a great territory is probably one of the best jobs you can. And, um, and I, I was able to experience that when I was at Salesforce. Um, and then there was a point in my career when I started, I got married and I had kids and I realized that, you know, there was it just, when you start up kids, it's kind of changes your perspective.

And I get to moving into management and realize that, you know, now I get to help like that person. I met taught me how to learn my trade. I get to help and develop other people and their career and make an impact in their career. And I was just really motivated on, you know, really teaching and coaching and learning.

And I've had so many great mentors in my career. And, and some, you know, some, some managers you've had you almost learned sometimes more from managers you've had that, um, you may not have thought were the best managers then managers you had that you thought were your greatest managers. And so, but they're all good at what they do in certain ways, but you just had the chance to learn a lot from a lot of different people.

And so, um, I, I really. You know, and I continue to do that and continue to have those mentors.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: Yeah, you definitely have talked about a lot of it towards in your past. I've seen you speak, um, in different, uh, panels and such talking about sort of the mentors and bringing those folks together. I think at one of the sales loft events that I attended.

So is there a particular mentor that you would like to highlight and kind of say this person, you know, really influenced maybe some of the choices that you made or maybe you were going a certain direction and that mentor said no, no, no, no, no, Steve, stop. You need to go this other direction or something.

Steve Goldberg: Yeah, so there's, there's really three. So you heard the podcast. So Susan St. Ledger is one of my, definitely a mentor of mine. And I was fortunate enough to do a, uh, an interview with Susan and St. Ledger, who is now the CRO of Okta and David was not a CRO at Yext. And, um, they both taught me two different things.

Like w what Susan taught me was, you know, really have, have empathy and manage people to their strengths. And help them overcome for what some of their weaknesses may be. And there's a lot of managers that focus on people's weakness, but you know, really focused on helping them with their strength. And so in certain situations where I would come to Susan for advice, she always constantly reminded me of that.

Um, and Dave is a very big process person where you, you know, if you have one person doing great, but everyone else is doing okay, it means that your processes. So really focused on the process and, and help help ha have a framework in place that is flexible, that people can make pieces of it their own.

But if everybody works with the same process to the same structure, leveraging the same nomenclature. So you're all speaking the same language because if you start, if you have a team of 10 it's okay, but when you start pulling the 20, 30, 40, it can get completely out of hand. If you have 50, 60, 70 people doing things 50, 60, 70 different ways.

You're just creating confusion with everybody and a lot of waste of time.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: That makes a lot of sense. So now I know where you get your process background from. Um, so let's talk about sales loft a little bit more, right? SalesLoft has experienced such incredible growth right over the last few years. It's just, it's really remarkable to see the company continuing to be recognized by G2, right?

As the leader in the sales engagement category. And even if I think about the term, you know, sales engagement, right. It really wasn't really even a common term until just a few years ago. So as the leader in this space, like what have you seen in terms of, you know, in the market in terms of trends, you know, how has, how has it evolved and you know, where do you see it going?

Steve Goldberg: So there's a generational shift going on right now with how people work. And I personally feel like that shift is as big as the shift from client server to the cloud. That you know, that shift is all about helping people be more agile, being more flexible. And, um, you know, it was about security and it was a shift this shift in about how do you help people be productive and efficient working from anywhere?

Our organization went from supporting a couple thousand networks to millions because we have to be able to work and make people productive, working from help people be productive, working from anywhere. And so we're that shift. We're only in the beginning of that shift. Um, if you think about where we are now versus where we were last March versus where we were in the middle of the summer, and now buyers are using the same technology that sellers would use in the past, and people are adapting to new technology.

So company out, so companies outside of our current ICP, That we started with, are you selling to high tech companies? Those things are starting to put sales engagement higher on the priority list because they're really looking for ways to digitalize their sales sales organization to really make that interaction between that salesperson and that first line manager productive, but also make them both productive in a remote environment.

And then there's companies outside of our ICP, like in financial services and manufacturing and logistics and telco and media. That are also trying to solve a lot of these same problems. And they're all going through the digitalization and a sale to make people productive. So sales acceleration is just starting to accelerate and organizations are trying to say, I have a problem here.

Solve this here. Make, and then our objective and our strategy is we can help focus on the customer and the customer's success with a specific use case and make that successful and prove that out. Then you start to look at other areas that you can start to enhance, but really focusing and being very focused on, um, Driving productivity and customer success in this world, because it's not just about the technology.

This is not about here's SalesLoft and roll it out and make it successful. It's leveraging the insights that you get out of the data and the usage to enhance that and help our customers not only go through sales engagement, but we're helping them go through the shift of going digital. We have out there that are typically walking into a Walgreens or a Walmart.

Or knocking on doors, selling, selling technology or selling product. Now they're all of a sudden having to shift to be working at home. So our job is to also help them make that transition, make that transformation. So it's more than just technology processes, a big part of it.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: A lot of sense. Um, now the wonderful thing about, you know, being rated, um, highly on G2 is that those ratings are actually from customers, right?

To your point about customer and driving value around that, you know, having been a customer previously, I've personally experienced the, kind of the put customer first mentality that is actually one of sales. Um, core values, right along with focus on results and bias towards action. And I know you have some other ones as well.

So you shared a little bit about customer, um, kind of driving customer success and value, but can you share a little bit more about sort of what your philosophy is around that kind of driving customer success, driving value, and how do you see that that's actually contributed to sort of the revenue acceleration and the growth of sales law?

Steve Goldberg: Yeah. So we just had our revenue kickoff this week and, um, Sydney Sloan and I, it was our COO, um, we gave a talk about this and a lot of companies talk about being a customer first organization, but doing that is a different thing. And, um, we talked about first, you got to put yourself and think about you as a consumer and a great experiences that you've had just in your own life.

And one of mine was Chick-fil-A. I have three kids was an incredible experience. It's they make it like it's easy. And, and it's it's they have great chicken nuggets and great fries, no different than others out there. But the experience to go through a Chick-fil-A is a wonderful experience. And another experience is.

This is like flying one airline versus the other one. Airline may have a much make you feel much like a great experience, but at the end of the day, they, they both have plans, right? So way we look at the customer experience is we want our customers to have a great experience and let's face it it's technology.

And there's always going to be challenged. And we spend a lot of time on making sure that one we're investing in our culture and our resources to make sure our employees feel are very happy. And they've got the right tools within themselves and processes. And we invest in their team health. We do all of the right things to help train them and invest.

So they show up to work like they're happy. Like they, they are, they're a pleasure to be with that comes off when we interact with our customers. And that's a big, big piece of it. The other piece is really thinking about proactively our customer journey. And we live with that. It's not a one size fits all the way we handle the enterprise is going to be different than how we handle our commercial business and how we handle our business internationally.

So we went through a six month evaluation of our end to end current process when I got there and we outlined the current state and our processes across each one of those states. Segments. And what we realized that there was we've grown organically, um, within our silos. And we were a fast growing company that's growing really fast.

So where we written Sean Fowler, who was our head of enablement, ran this and what we realized that there was a number of inefficiencies that we can tighten up around the customer by putting the customer in the middle. And so we're going to continue to iterate on each segment separately and we've made some changes across each segment.

With the point of view of the customer experience and putting the customer in the center of it. And, um, and we're rolling that out as we go into this year. So like for an example, in the enterprise, a lot of it's around value based value engineering value realization, um, and the commercial side it's role clarity around the different handoffs and their specific roles, and then compensation and motivation goes into that as well.

So that I can talk about this for forever. This is a big area for us and to us, it's all around, all around how are going to help our customers adopt, be successful and then address their business outcomes. So will be a problem. We'll try to learn it from what are you really trying to achieve. And then we're constantly going to come back to you and tell you how you're doing based on what the insights are telling you.

And then we're going to be very prescriptive and proactive around what we're recommending.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: That's awesome. That is great. I mean, I think if nothing else, we've all learned that, you know, customer first is so critical to our business right. And helping our customers not look at them as customers, but really as partners and folks that we're trying to be successful together.

So that's amazing to hear, um, you know, talking about customers and, you know, I think we've all been impacted by COVID. Right. And the global pandemic, you know, both from a business perspective, as well as from a personal perspective. And when we spoke last year, I remember you shared with me that you were actually seeing sort of an accelerated growth at sales loft, maybe because the platform was becoming more of a must have for prospects and customers.

Then sort of a nice to have, right? With everybody moving remote and virtual coaching and all of these different things, if anything, the platforms become a necessity. So can you share maybe a little bit more about how, um, how this has sort of impacted your business as well as maybe some lessons learned or things that you now do differently?

Steve Goldberg: It goes back also goes back to customer success. If, if you, if one, if we help you and we're out here to sincerely help you solve a problem, you're going to talk to other people about your experience with us. And so you have to focus on the customer first and making sure like, when we call you up, it's not going to be about, is the product working for you?

It's is the product working for you, but are we helping you get the outcomes that we set out for it? Um, but the other piece is, is that we have to be able from a technology standpoint and where we're going with our product. It's very much driven on how do we integrate with how people work? Because a lot of technologies out there kind of force you to change.

They force you to adapt to their, their way of working. And so our perspective is if we integrate with how you work, so you can start to get real objective data out of the reporting, because it's what people are actually doing. And then you can start to compare that with what they saying, they're doing.

So you get different levels of data, but it's, and with the fact that COVID hit and that people are on zooms and go to meetings and Google meets and teams, and they're having their communications that way. And they're, you know, they're, they're still picking up the phone and making phone calls and sending emails and chats, and we have to integrate with all of them.

So then you start to get real accurate data. So there there's a process and a technology component of it. And, um, and it is, it is a bit different, like as we go on to financial services or as we go into manufacturing or as we go on to telco media, they don't all work the same. So we have to be really smart about use case driven.

And it goes back to what I was saying earlier is we'll come in there and say, here's a use case, and we're also we'll focus on that use case. And then from there, based on the data, we'll go into other use cases. And so it's more of a seed and grow methodology where we can help grow. And we're naturally being pulled into the middle of the funnel where in the past, a lot of companies buy a sales engagement for pipeline generation now, or middle of the funnel tutorials.

Further up the funnel and also renewals the renewal process and the customer success process as well. Are is getting a lot of, a lot of activity there too.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: That's awesome. That's so that's great to hear. I just, I love hearing about customer. I love hearing about data and process, you know, I'm a data-driven process oriented person, so I love that.

Um, so let's pivot with that kind of pivot a bit to an area of passion. Right. Selfishly, I think that, you know, the revenue operations function, right, especially the rev ops leader is a powerful sort of secret weapon, right? For the revenue team and the CRO, you know, we've talked at length about how critical the partnership is, right between your role and my role, right?

The rev, how the rev ops leader is really the eyes and ears, right? The chief of staff, the right-hand person, the person that sort of helps you the blind spots, right. Helping to identify blind spots and see around. And so hopefully you still feel the same way and assuming you do for other CRS, um, or revenue leaders who are not leveraging this secret weapon, um, what would you tell them?

I guess, how do you best leverage your ops leader to really help enable and optimize your business?

Steve Goldberg: I think the biggest mistake a CRO could make is if they don't hire, they don't hire a revenue operations leader. Well, we do exactly what you just said because the CRO role has changed. And it's kind of like, if, think about how to blockbuster Morris, the opportunity that Netflix just completely took over the market.

And, um, and the CRO, I don't know, I'm making a lot of trouble for saying this, but CRO pre COVID or from five to 10 years ago, it's a very different role as it is to. And, um, if you don't leverage data to help make decisions and you're, you're making a big mistake and the CRO is no longer in my view, someone who's gonna stand up on stage and get people really excited and, and go out to dinner and shake hands and, you know, close deals.

And, you know, you want to do some of that for sure. Don't get me wrong. But I, I knew that Sierra was more of an architect and a designer. And a strategist and an enabler. And my job is, is to help untie knots. So the organization can be productive. Now you have to identify what are the big knots you want on tie, right?

Because you cannot die every night because you have to identify like, what are the big, big rocks that you need to solve that are really gonna move the needle? And what are the big priorities that you need to focus on in order to move the needle? Because otherwise, if you don't do that, you'll end up running in place.

And so. The partnership between the, the revenue leader and the revenue operations leader is so critical to identify what are the big rocks? What is the data telling us? Do we, should we go into this vertical? What is the data telling us, should we go on in this country? Should we go into this market? If we do what country, if we do, what, how do we approach it?

What's our template. Do we look at how do we look at each section? If we're looking at the business around our forecast, what are the leading indicators that are telling us if we're at risk or not? And if we're at risk in certain areas, how do we overinvest, uh, to make that change really quick? And you can't do it by put your finger up there and taking a guess based on your gut, you just can't, you might get a right one.

And, um, and so that, that partnership was not just with the CRL and higher rev ops. That partnership is with. Rev ops integrating into the business and it's integrating into every business segment. So every business segment would have a revenue operations leader, a partner there. And, um, we're all on the same page in terms of how we're measuring the business.

But you have the flexibility with your revenue operations leader to look at data the way you want to look at the data. And it goes back to what I was saying about Dave or Nitsky is that. If you have a consistent framework that everybody can work in, but the flexibility to, to work it the way you want to work it.

And how Susan taught me was manage people into their strengths, but give them the power and the enablement to make their own decisions. Right? So that's how I think about it. And, but it's, that partnership is so critical, especially as the CRO is not. It seems like the CRO to me has changed where the CIO used to CRO ran sales.

But now companies are measuring the, the way you grow is you measure the business by net ARR. So the difference of bookings and churn, and you have to continue to spread that because that's how you grow. Right. And you have to focus on that. So it's now revenue, operations, not just sales operations, or service operations, it's revenue, operations, and, and, uh, and it's, it's completely changing the market.

But I also think that it's a new. This is a new concept to a lot of people, too. And, but that, that model is, um, is going to just continue to expand because a lot of companies are grasping that, that, that partnership between data and art is, um, it's key. I wouldn't be able to do my job without it. In fact, when I got here.

And so that's number one priority.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: That's perfect. Thank you. Um, I guess going a step further, you know, one of the target personas for you and for sales loft is the rev ops, right. Or the sales ops leader. Um, your team probably talks to operations leaders quite a bit during deal cycles. So have you seen, I guess, what changes, if any, do you see from a prospect perspective or.

Even a buying decision perspective when it comes to the function or role, like, are you seeing an evolution at all around the operations, kind of the persona and their, I guess, more of their, from a buying decision or I guess maybe authority perspective.

Steve Goldberg: Yeah. I mean, definitely a, an authority perspective because like the rev ops leader helps set priorities.

For the revenue organization that aligned to the company, like where, where are you going as a company? And then what are the revenue priorities that are going to align to that? And, um, that, that in my view, the revenue operations leaders should have decisions to be able to make those decisions. Like a lot of times when I first got here, when everyone was coming to me to make, make decisions, I didn't have enough data to be able to make decisions.

And so, um, the revenue operations leader is in a position that they have authority to make those decisions. And so I think it's important to understand a lot of people try to sell to the revenue operations leader the same way they would try to sell to a sales leader. And you have to understand what the revenue operations leader truly cares about.

And, and they don't just care about in my perspective, um, what you're going to help themselves, but more about how you're going to help them solve it. How are you going to make them successful? And, um, and how are you going to fit into their, into their technical architecture to, to improve and to drive efficient?

And so, so what resources do they also need to be successful? Not just what, but how, and then how is it going to fit into your environment? So it's, you have to think about how to sell to a revenue operations leader very differently than how you would think about selling to a CIO, selling to a first line manager, a second line manager, a CRO.

Yup. Um, but it's it's you have to fit, you have to figure that out. A lot of people make a mistake when they feel like they should just sell the same way to the state, to different people.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: Great. That's right. That's a great, thank you for that. Um, so I guess let's pivot a little bit more around the sales loft, um, culture, right?

So aside from the great product, the customer focus that we've already talked about, um, SalesLoft has been recognized for having a great culture, right? Highly rated by the employees themselves. So everyone knows happy and engaged employees are going to be more productive. So from a revenue, organizational perspective, kind of looking at your organization, how do you keep your team engaged and motivated?

Right. Especially in this crazy environment of everybody working from home there's family, there's kids, there's dogs. Right. We were just talking about sort of the dogs earlier, before we started the session, but with everybody home, like how do you keep your team? Yeah. Engaged and motivated.

Steve Goldberg: Probably the hardest part of my job. It's hard. And when you have to acknowledge that and what worked for you six months ago, 10 months a year ago, it doesn't mean it's going to work today because even now, if we think about what COVID has done is like the first few months people were just adapting to it and you had heard what happy hours and you had all those things and people got tired of those rich hours, and then you have all hands.

And so, um, you have to, to really think about, um, how to, how to invest in team health. And one of the things that we've done at SalesLoft, and I've never seen this before, but we have resting phase. So every other Friday is a rest day. Actually. Now it's one Fridays a month is a rest day. And then one Friday is a focus day arrest.

A focus day is no internal meeting and people, you have to do it. Like I've got to do it. I can't be sending an email. Like, we'll be like, everybody has to really do it. And I'm like, not one thing. It's just giving people that time off. And I felt that that would impact our productivity. In fact, they improve their productivity.

Right. Um, you know, the other thing is finding ways to invest in, in, um, Like people want. Sometimes I feel like people want purpose more so than they want and recognition more so than they want compensation. So ways to invest in people and in training and in, um, and development is really important and doing what you can to try to make it fun, but also to change.

It was the virtual happy hours. And it was the all hands meeting where we're really trying to think about how do we change the way we communicate with our team. So it's not just another zoom meeting, right? So it's something that we will get productive out of. And it's, it's a really hard thing to do.

It's tough. It's something we constantly think about. Um, and we spent a lot of time with the executive leadership team and really, really talking about it and, um, And it's, it's, uh, it's a big priority of ours because that, that has been a big differentiator. Like our office culture was a big change for us.

And I mean, there are the typical things like compensation and motivation that you have to do. People can work from anywhere. So you have to do that, but you have to find ways to invest in your team. And that's going to be a big focus of mine this year is to really figure out how to do that. I have almost 300 people on my team that I've never met.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: Yeah, that's right. Well, whatever you guys are doing over there, you're doing a great job because he could see all the reports from how happy your employees are, um,

Steve Goldberg: On LinkedIn and like propose creativity and like come up with that. I saw someone, they were, they lost a bet and they had a thing since

our team does a really good job with we do. I haven't seen Tom Boston or Jay ward.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: I love Tom Boston. I need to get him on this podcast,

Steve Goldberg: Charlotte Johnson and, uh, Ellie Twitter. And they do some really creative things on

Rosalyn Santa Elena: LinkedIn. I'll have to check that out. Thank you. Um, so as I think about the revenue engine, right, and this podcast, I really hope that others will be able to learn how to accelerate revenue growth, right.

And power that revenue engine. So from your perspective, you know, what are some of the key elements that you think have really contributed to the high growth that sales loft has experienced? Is it like one or two things that you. You're really doing right. And I think I kind of know what your answer is going to be, but I'd love to hear it.

Steve Goldberg: I mean, it's a lot of it is like we're shifting from selling a product to selling a journey and it's like, we can become a hundred million dollars by being great at selling product, but to deliver customer success is what gets you to be a billion dollar company. And. You know, we, we care and we're going to continue to play.

I know I've said it a lot, but focus on how we're going to help the customers successful. And like, because if we can help them do well and help them get promoted or help them advance their career, like you're building relationships for life. Right. And so we do really focus on it. And a lot of people, when, where in relation, you know, we're in talking to customers and they might say, what makes you, where they ask me is what makes you tick.

You know, w what I'll say is, uh, you're going to be, you can be successful with whatever technology you pick. We have great competitors out there. What's going to make us different is that we are going to care about your success more than anybody. And sometimes it's hard to show in a, in a sales cycle, but if we do it right, we'll have our customers talk to our customers, and they'll be able to tell them that, that, that is in fact true.

So, so that that's always what it's going to be. And, um, and by caring for our employees and caring for our customers and our partners, partners is another key component of it, um, scale. But, but we're, we're going to innovate as well. Like we're going to innovate our product and we've got some really incredible capabilities coming out.

And I feel like personally, we're going to completely change the market with where we're going. So there's some really exciting growth coming here in the next, uh, every quarter now. And, um, and so, you know, we're just going to continue to invest. The other thing is, is we're going to be focused. Like we're, we're, we're gonna, we're not going to do 20 things.

We're going to do three things really, really, really well.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: Yeah, that makes complete sense. Um, I guess looking back sort of at your career and sort of your own personal journey, is there something that you wish you knew earlier or maybe that you would do differently if you had to do go back and do it all over again?

Steve Goldberg: You know, it's, I think about, I think about that a lot. Um, you know, there's gonna be, there's gonna be a time in everybody's career. That people make a decision based on emotions, not on like, they're like I'm running away from an opportunity, whereas I'm running to an opportunity. And there's been a point in my career where I was to a point where I was running away.

And if I look back and say, did I make the right decision by running away from the opportunity I was at? Would I have done it again? I questioned my decision. I don't know, but if I didn't do it, I may not be in the spot. Yeah. So the thing I really try to be thoughtful about is making sure I'm not running away from a situation I'm running to a situation.

And, um, you know, that's everybody in their careers is going to run into that at some point, because you might have a bad day, you might have a bad meeting. You might have a bad quarter. You may have a series of bad things. You might not want to face something. You know, it goes back to a big part of our culture is like, think about the positives and, um, you know, like what's going on with my life right now, being in Austin with this crazy weather and Irving shutting down, and you could think this is the worst situation.

What am I going to do versus like, how am I going to make the best of this situation? And, um, and I think in a lot of Kings is like, I've made a decision based on earlier in my career. That I may have wished I held on a little bit longer, but you know, what, if I didn't make that decision, who knows if I would be here?

Like you ever see that movie, uh, riding doors now, we haven't seen it with granted. There's the movie is about, she walks onto a train and, or she doesn't walk onto a train. So the movie starts when she walks on, it just shows her life when she walks out of the train and then probably the movies, she didn't walk on the train and it shows where her life went because she didn't get onto the.

Got it. So kind of like if you didn't make the decision, would I be in a position I wouldn't be in now? And I'm sorry to say. Yeah,

Rosalyn Santa Elena: definitely. What is that movie called?

Steve Goldberg: Sliding doors.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: The sliding doors. Okay. I'm going to have to look that one up. That'd be an interesting one. So, so thank you so much for joining me, Steve.

Um, But, you know, obviously I've really appreciate your time and spending with me and kind of sharing your experience and knowledge. But before, you know, as we wrap up and before I let you go, there's two things I'd love to know. One, what is the one thing about Steve Goldberg that others would be surprised to learn and to what is the one thing you want everyone to know about it?

And you can take some time to think about it. If you like

Steve Goldberg: Mine is, um, I love doing yoga.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: Oh, that is a surprise for me. I had no idea.

Steve Goldberg: I absolutely love doing your power yoga Vinyasa. I'm not that good at it, but I love doing it. And, um, You know, it's like making time. There was a point where we were able to go to yoga studios.

I wouldn't have to make an hour a day and it was, and I always had a time slot where I would go and if I didn't go, I was miserable, so I would have to go. And, um, I miss, I miss that. I really do. I have a Peloton now I use all the time, but I, I miss going to the AU studios. I really do. Um, And the thing that I want people to know is that, um,

I say this at all hands, and I say, I try to say quite a bit is that everyone's got to take advantage of the time they have right now, because with whatever company you're at or wherever you're at in your career, um, get to know people. That aren't in your silos, like take advantage of people now because people move around jobs and their careers and you know, you'll be, somebody will be 10 years down the road or 20 years down the road.

And they'll, they'll, they'll wish they had a couple of conversations that they didn't have. And you know, a lot of people are building relationships. They have now that are going to last a lifetime. And what I want people to know is like, reach out to me. And cause I want to get to know more people and, and I want to be able to impact people's careers and impact people's life.

Like the mentors that I've had in my life. And, and I had to, I was a pain. I wouldn't stop calling deal. I wouldn't stop calling Susan's Eli's right. I still call them all the time. Patrick Blair's. And, and just, just do it because if you didn't, you wish you had, because there's a lot of people you can learn from.

And so what I want people to know is whoever's listening to this. That's not even in my network right now. Like I like you and I, you know, I'm this I, how we met, you know? And, um, these are the relationships that really matter. And those relationships matter to people. So that's what I'd want people to know is do that.

If I can be of a mentor to anybody else. Um, I would love to do that.

Rosalyn Santa Elena: Um, I'm sure you're going to get Hendra hundreds of requests now after this airs, I hope

Steve Goldberg: I'll do, I would do my, um,

Rosalyn Santa Elena: That's awesome. That's awesome. I love that, Steve. So thank you again for joining me as always a pleasure to chat with you.

I'm so incredibly grateful for your time and again, for sharing your perspective and just your experience. So thank you.

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