Scale with Strive Podcast
Welcome to the Scale with Strive podcast - the place where you come to listen to some of the worlds most influential leaders in the SaaS industry!
Scale with Strive Podcast
'Crossing the $100m ARR Chasm' with Joe Marcin
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Welcome to the Scale with Strive podcast, the place where you come to listen to some of the world’s most influential leaders of the SaaS industry. 🚀
I am your host, Adam Richardson and on today’s episode, I am excited to welcome Joe Marcin, CRO at FirstUp!
With other 25 years’ experience in the Software Sales world, Joe is a 3 times CRO who has spent the last 10 years focussed on scaling companies across the $100m ARR chasm.
Some of my key takeaways from our conversation were:
💡 How your Hiring Profile changes as you scale – and how get people brought into change.
💡 The importance of robust processes and to move away from tribal knowledge and the importance of cross-functional alignment.
💡 The importance of technology and how to evaluate, and in some cases, consolidate this to help you scale.
Let’s Dive in!
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Watch the episode on YouTube 🎥 – https://youtu.be/ZeZ7cqrNQJM
Connect with Joe here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmarcin/
Connect with Adam here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/saasheadhunter/
Learn more about Strive here - https://scalewithstrive.com/solutions/
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15:09 Sales Leadership and DNA Profiles
20:37 Managing Organizational Change and Engagement
24:45 Strategic Changes in Compensation and Processes
29:37 Process and Accuracy in Sales Forecasting
34:39 Signal and Value Hypothesis in Sales
39:57 Process and Execution Strategies in Business
45:21 Leveraging Technology for Revenue Operations
52:59 Lessons in Scaling Organizations Beyond $100M
1:00:28 Harmonizing Best Practices for Success
Welcome to the Scourwer's Drive podcast, the place where you come to listen to some of the world's most influential leaders of the SaaS industry. I'm your host, adam Richardson, and on today's episode I'm excited to welcome you, joe Marseille, cro at First Up With over 25 years experience in the software sales world. Joe is a three-time CRO who has spent the last decade focused on scaling companies across the 100 million ARR Cazza. Some of my key takeaways were how your hiring profile changes as you scale and how to get people brought into change. The importance of robust processes and to move away from tribal knowledge. And the importance of cross-functional alignment. And the importance of technology and how to evaluate and, in some cases, consolidate this to help you scale. Let's dive in, joe. Thank you very much for the time and welcome to the Scourwer's Drive podcast. I suppose, for the benefits of our listeners, do you want to start off by introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your background?
Speaker 2Absolutely, Adam. Thank you so much for having me today. It's a pleasure to be here. Just quick introduction my name is Joe Marseille. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer at First Up. First Up is an organization centered on helping large-scale companies with employee communication, employee engagement and employee experience. I'm super excited to be a part of their organization and really helping drive better employee engagement across all the companies that we support globally. I've been in the enterprise software space for the last 25-plus years working for small startup organizations earlier in my career, larger-scale mainstream software companies. In the middle of my career In the last 10 years, working with private equity-backed businesses in the $100 million range, really helping them through their go-to-market transformations as they move from south of $100 million to north of $100 million, where there happens to be a very wide chasm that a lot of companies get lost in. Very excited to be here today and to be speaking with you, Adam. Thank you.
Speaker 1Thank you. I suppose one of the things that I always like to start with is get a bit of an idea of how individuals found themselves getting into the industry From yourself, you know. I've had a look at your background. What is it that attracted you to working within software sales in the first place?
Speaker 2It was a profession that chose me, not the other way around, so my journey was a little bit non-traditional.
Speaker 2I have an engineering degree in software engineering, so I started my career as a programmer.
Speaker 2I was working for a very small startup business in a space that today we call IoT, and we were truly evangelizing that market. I had developed some of the early code and we had formed a partnership with Intel. Who was going to highlight our partnership during a keynote presentation by the head of worldwide sales and marketing at that time, a gentleman by the name of Mike Splinter? I was sent to support the event and as we executed on the event preparation, it ended up becoming a situation where he needed my support on the stage with him during his keynote presentation the following day, and so my very first quote-unquote demo was alongside the head of worldwide sales and marketing at Intel, at the peak of their business, and it was in front of a live audience of 3,000 people. So not something I was prepared to do as a software engineer, but something that I executed well on and ultimately led to me stepping into a career in enterprise software sales, which is where I've been for the last 25 years, nice.
Speaker 1And without sitting here and blowing your own trumpet. Joe, I've had a good look through your background and it's safe to say you've had a huge amount of success, both as an individual contributor and then, even more recently, with regards to all of your leadership. What have been your underlying principles that have led you onto the career trajectory that you've had today?
Speaker 2I think if I sort of think about the early success I had in my career, it was largely built off some of the attributes I had as an engineer. As an engineer you have a high degree of curiosity and you have a lot of determination to get to a great outcome, and so a lot of those qualities that you find inherent in engineers also I have found inherent in some of the top performing sales athletes in my career. Fortunately for me, I have some of those attributes and as I made that transition from engineering into software sales, those attributes carried me far. I had a lot of curiosity to learn about the businesses that I was selling to. I was great at problem solving, so I was good at taking our technology and mapping that to the business outcomes that customers were looking to achieve.
Speaker 2And I have a lot of tenacity or grit. I was persevering through all the notes that you ultimately experience when you're in an enterprise software sales role. So early in my career I think some of those attributes resulted in me having some great results with the companies that I was a part of. As I moved into leadership roles I carried that forward, really focusing on how do I instill that in the teams that I lead. I very much took a servant leadership approach to the roles that I've had in leadership and management since then, and I think that's enabled me to be able to help invest in the development of each individual on my team, truly designing a roadmap for each of them to reach their peak potential.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's great to hear and it's always interesting to hear how people would define the sort of traits that have made them successful and how they then carry that forward, particularly when it comes to hiring and what they're looking for in top talent. Now, throughout your career, you've been instrumental in helping companies scale up to and beyond that 100 million mark. Now, so many founders, when they start a tech business, that's like the North Star that they're working towards and the reality is such a small percentage of businesses actually achieve it. I was looking into this and I think it's less than 3% actually hit that kind of milestone. So it's really impressive to see, throughout your career, that that appears so much on your CV. Like if we're talking high level and then I'd love to really dig into this in a bit more detail but like if I'm a founder listening to this, this episode now, and listening to this conversation, like what's the headline advice that you'd be given to founders that are hoping to achieve that in their career in terms of the venture that they're starting on?
Speaker 2I think it's definitely something that you need to plan for. There's a lot of organizations who can scale into the $90, $95 million range but struggle to cross that chasm and exceed $100 million, and the reason why is that there truly is a chasm there. There's a major difference between $99.9 million and $100.1. And it may not sound like a lot in terms of dollars, but there's a material difference in terms of how organizations operate south of 100 and north of 100. And this is something that I just learned throughout the course of my career, having worked with companies on sort of both sides of that chasm. And one of the things that I think is important is that you have a thoughtful approach to how you build the bridge to take you from one side to the other.
Speaker 2A lot of times, when you're south of 100 million, you're focused on things like new logo, acquisition, winning deals at any cost.
Speaker 2You know you're centered around the passion and enthusiasm of the business that you've created, and that's all very, very important and something you want to preserve as you cross the chasm and exceed $100 million.
Speaker 2At the same token, you need to sell and go to market differently in order to be scalable as you start to get to that size of 100 million plus, and so to be able to do that, you need to introduce a different level of focus, discipline and operational rigor to the business.
Speaker 2That will enable you to be able to do things in a more scalable way as you go from 100 million to 250 million and beyond, and so a lot of organizations don't put a lot of thought into that and it becomes sort of the inhibitor of their success as you approach that $100 million mark. If you have a strong blueprint for that, really centered around the people, the process and the technology needed for success on the other side of that chasm, you can build that bridge that takes you from this you know high growth, you know high energy sort of startup environment to one that is more professionalized. And when I say that it's not to say that we're not professional south of 100, it's to say that we have to do things in a little bit of a different way. We have to take a little bit of a different approach to ensure that we have standardization in the way that we do things so we can build scale into the way that we grow.
Speaker 1So that's interesting that you know. You refer to this, the chasm of, you know, bridging the gap between south of 100 million and north and beyond. I love that sort of people, process and technologies in terms of like three key areas to focus in on. So like what? Let's unpack that then. So, if you know, we're at that point where we're looking to start surpassing the 100 million mark and we're having to change our attitude, our outlook, principles and how we're approaching running the business. Like, where do you start? Like, if we dig into the people side of it, like, what are the fundamentals and things that you're driving and principles that you're instilling in organizations that you lead?
Speaker 2I think when you're a smaller organization you tend to prioritize the domain experience over anything else and so it doesn't matter what space you're in, but you look for sales people who have had experience selling to that persona or selling into that particular space.
Speaker 2So, for example, here at first up we do enterprise communication and employee experience. Historically we would look for sales people who have sold to the head of HR, the head of communication, understand sort of the domain space that we're in and can communicate and speak that you know, speak that language of the customer. That's not to say that's not important going forward. But the priority of that starts to shift and you start to look for people from a DNA perspective who have that world-class enterprise selling experience first and if they happen to have the domain experience, great. If not, you design your methodology to be able to teach those people the domain experience that they might be lacking, so that you're prioritizing high-performing sales athletes over people who can simply speak the language of the customer. When you do that, you tend to drive different levels of productivity and performance out of the sales team, which of course can improve your cap and all the different metrics that your investors will look at as you exceed that $100 million mark.
Speaker 1And so that's an interesting point and as a recruiter, we've worked with both early stage and some later stage and I can definitely agree to the point that during the early stage there's a big emphasis and hiring managers index on domain experience. When you go into that towards the later stage and you're looking for scale and going across that chasm, is the reason that it changes because of the scalability and a lack of available talent, or is it just that that's no longer has the same kind of value Like? What's the reason for that?
Speaker 2All of the above. If you continue to rely on domain experience, searching for talent as you go through a scale up phase becomes more of an exercise of finding the needle and the haystack. It's very difficult to find people who have both the strong sales experience and proven track record and have the domain experience. It doesn't mean you cannot find them, but they're a rare commodity, and so you end up spending a lot of time in recruiting cycles looking for talent while you're trying to scale up and add resources to the team quickly. Rather than doing that, you can decouple yourself from one or the other and, like I said, as you start to exceed the $100 million mark, the priority becomes people who really know how to sell. They've had that experience. They have that 10, 15, 20 years of proven success in whatever you're trying to sell, whether it's on the commercial end of the spectrum or like us, where we're doing enterprise and strategic. They understand that selling motion. They understand how to manage that buyer journey which is instrumental for getting to success at scale.
Speaker 2The teaching them the domain expertise is an exercise you do through the value framework that you ultimately establish for your business. Here, at first up, we chose an organization called Force Management. They have a framework called Command of the Message and, if I could simplify what they do essentially, their approach extracts tribal knowledge from the business. It puts it into a sales consumable format that you can teach to salespeople very quickly who don't have the domain experience and don't know how to speak the language of the customer. So what it enables you to do is bring in some high performing sales talent who have had success in other domains, teach them this domain very, very quickly and get them productive.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, it's so great to hear that from yourself because it's conversations that we've had with leaders before where they over-index on domain experience rather than thinking like let's just get great sellers and enable them, because sometimes the domain experience versus hiring an exceptional sales talent like which part would they rather give up? And sometimes they will over-index on the domain experience because of lack of resources internally to enable the lack of L&D function or but it sounds like Force Management has really helped with solve that challenge for you. And for first up, like let's just dig into a little bit more about how they prevent that tribal knowledge within the organization and help document it Like what are the stages that they're going through to help enable the sales team?
Sales Leadership and DNA Profiles
Speaker 2Sure, yeah, their approach. They truly bring a framework into the organization and have a very consultative approach to help cross-functionally understand the impact that we have on our customer's business and why it matters. So it's not just working with the sales team, it's working with marketing, it's working with product, it's working with engineering and support, customer success, professional services across the entire business to truly understand through every lens the type of problems we're solving for our customers, how we're solving those problems for our customers and why solving those problems matter. Once they have that information, they can put that into a format that's easy for salespeople to quickly digest and internalize, and that's really the key to success of that particular framework. You can kind of think about it.
Speaker 2Most organizations will have their whether Sacred Cow is the term or whatever you wanna use but they have these people in their organizations who are the experts. They are the people who know everything there is to know about the domain space that we're in. You wish you could have them on every single customer call, in every single customer meeting. These are the people that bring true value to every conversation they have with your customer. Unfortunately, there's usually a small handful of them. It's very difficult for you to utilize them at scale. So this approach with force management and there's others out there who do something similar, but this approach essentially enables you to have the equivalent of those people in every meeting, in every conversation that you have with your customer, whether you're a new seller or somebody who's been part of the organization long-term.
Speaker 1Yeah, and like going back a step then. So you know, when it comes to the kind of profile, the athlete style rep that you refer to, what does that individual look like to yourself?
Speaker 2For us at FirstUp it's you know, again, it's sort of prioritizing the sales experience and proven track record over the domain experience, because we have now a framework to teach the domain and you know you touched on this briefly, but now that we've reached the $100 million plus mark, we're also of size where we can invest in resources like enablement, where smaller companies may not have the budget to do that. So we have people who can teach the methodology to ensure that not only our existing workforce is familiar with it, but as we bring new people into the organization, they can quickly become familiar with it as well. As I sort of expand on the DNA profile a little bit, for us we're selling a business application that solves a business problem for business users keyword in their business and so as we look for talent in the market, we're looking for people who have experience solving complex business problems with technology. So we're not looking for technologists who sell the IT those are great salespeople too but we're selling a business application to business users and it's a little bit of a different approach, and so we're looking for people who have that experience.
Speaker 2And then, if I could probably add a third dimension to the overall DNA profile, when you're an organization that is coming out of sort of that smaller scale startup world and exceeding the $100 million mark and starting to have a more disciplined approach to the way that you go to market. The way in which you sell does change, and so one of the things that we look for in talent is that they've had the experience on both sides of that chasm. They have that understanding and appreciation for, and maybe even passionate enthusiasm for, all the energy that goes into getting a business off the ground and getting it to $100 million, and they also have seen the show before. They understand what great looks like. They understand how to have a very process-centric, data-driven approach to going to market, which ultimately enables us to become more predictable and more scalable as we go forward.
Speaker 1And how does that impact from a leadership style then, Going from that early stage startup sort of scale-up mentality, all hands on deck, a little bit chaotic, to then being more process-orientated, disciplined sales org. How does that sort of impact the kind of leadership profile or even like the leadership rhythm?
Speaker 2It's a change, right, because I think some of the leaders that you'll find in smaller stage companies and it's not to say that you won't have hands-on people in later stage companies, but they're very hands-on right, almost to the point in some cases, where they're doing the job for the salespeople, or perhaps even micromanaging, if they're not doing the job directly, and so you'll see them getting very, very involved in deals and tactics, and that's great. When you're a smaller business, as you start to scale, that model doesn't really work because that person, an individual leader, can't do that times 10 people, times 12 people, times 50 people that are on their team, right, and so you have to start to look for leaders who not only have the ability to get their hands dirty, so to speak, or get hands-on with the business, but also can coach, and I think that's really, really important. It's why I use the term sales athletes. The profession that we're in is very much like a sport, and the role that leaders play is very much that of a coach. Their job is to help guide the seller to a great outcome, not do the work for them, and I think sometimes you'll find that in smaller scale companies, a lot of the leaders were the top salespeople when the company was formed.
Speaker 2They therefore earned the right for promotion into people management roles, and a lot of times in those roles they're replicating what they did well as a seller. There's nothing wrong with that. That's absolutely what you should be doing at that stage of growth. As you get to larger scale, that just is not a scalable function anymore, because you can't touch all the people that are on the team, and so you need to kind of build that abstraction layer, put the right tools in place and really have a system of accountability and measurement so you can ultimately understand not only what's happened through the rearview mirror, but what's going on looking through the windshield as you're moving forward. It's really, really important that you instrument the business with all those sensors that can help you truly understand what's occurring with the business at any point in time.
Managing Organizational Change and Engagement
Speaker 1Yeah, and that's where, like particularly where you see, when an organization gets to a certain size, the emphasis on new roles like RevOps and SalesOps playing such a key part to have that kind of visibility over the full SalesOrg One of the things I wanted to ask around, particularly around people. So, naturally, what you've described. There is a lot of change, so bridging that chasm going over the 100 million mark involves a lot of change changing mentality, changing process, changing people. How do you manage that change, particularly when it comes to identifying people that are right and should remain on the bus, those that should get off, but also like engagement and people being brought into that change?
Speaker 2It's not easy. I'll just be honest. I've been through this with a couple of organizations and it's complex. I think what's really important is that you're thoughtful about the type of change you want to drive. Some organizations are looking for radical, truly revolutionary change, and sometimes, in order to grow, you need to do that. Other businesses are looking for something more evolutionary, where it's incremental change, incremental progression towards a different kind of selling motion. So I think you need to sort of assess which path you're on and what's the right one for the business that you're a part of.
Speaker 2Here. At first up, we're taking very much an evolutionary approach, and so what's really important is to understand where people are today, meet them in that place and help each individual on the team build a roadmap for where they are today to where they need to be in the new model going forward. I believe that it's very important to maintain a high degree of transparency when you do that, so that people understand normally what you're doing. But probably more importantly than why, why are we doing these things differently? We did great things to get to 100 million. Why would we change? Why would we do something different to go from 100 to 250? Well, here are the reasons why, when you explain that to the team and tie it to their specific role as an individual within that organization, yeah, how have you found, like in your experience through the like, managing those significant changes in the organization?
Speaker 1What have been big challenges that you faced?
Speaker 2I think, as I sort of think about, you know the larger challenges that we've had, it's been more about the managing the pace a little bit in terms of the change itself. A lot of times, when you come into a new organization, you've, you know, left a previous organization that you've matured to a certain point and that becomes sort of your benchmark. You're evaluating everything through that lens. I think it's really important to come into the organization that you reset or re-calibrate where you are with the business that you've joined, truly spend, you know, the initial, you know, let's call it months really understanding and getting the orientation around where that business is. You have a strong point of view of what the current state is before you start prescribing what the future state might look like.
Speaker 2There is not a one size fits all playbook. I can definitely I can definitely share that from experience. However, there's a lot of in a playbook that can be adapted to different business situations and so, as I sort of think about the challenge, I think it's to maintain a level of urgency without overwhelming the team with too much change and too short of a period of time where you end up losing the team along the way on that journey to cross the chasm from south to north of a hundred million.
Speaker 1And one of the things that I'd like to ask, particularly around that change piece, going through organizational change is a challenge enough. You know, in any given market, in the current market that we've all been in, particularly within our industry sort of pose, covid, that's been so up and down and I'd say over the last two years very much been down and a challenge for most businesses. How have you managed to navigate not only getting people to change their way of doing things but also keeping people motivated and engaged during like pretty tough economic headwinds?
Strategic Changes in Compensation and Processes
Speaker 2I think it's always. You know it's always important to make sure people understand what's in it for them, right as individuals, and so you know whatever change that you're managing through, whatever you know macro or microeconomic conditions that you're challenged with, I think what's really important is that when you have a plan in motion that every member of the team understand, understands exactly what that means for them and how they can be successful within that plan. I'll just give an example. Earlier this year, we put a new compensation plan in place.
Speaker 2A lot of times that creates a lot of confusion and raises a lot of questions from a sales organization why are we going to compensate differently than we have in the past?
Speaker 2Well, the reality is the why is because we need to do some things differently in order to achieve new growth milestones, and so we need a different plan to drive a different type of behavior and engagement to ensure that we can be successful on that mission. That said, what's really important is that you spend the time to help each person understand what does that mean for them? And so I did this, my leaders did this, but we invested personal time with each person on the team to really look at what did the compensation plan mean for them on an individual basis last year and how do they have the opportunity to earn the same income in the compensation plan this year? And so you help them with the strategy and the blueprint for how they adapt what they were doing last year under that plan to fit to what we need them to be doing this year under this plan and to be successful and able to achieve the same kind of reward that they saw in the prior year.
Speaker 1So what does that look like then? Are we talking their approach to building pipeline and closing deals? Are we talking about the type of customers that go in after? Ultimately, it comes down to how am I going to earn the same or more than I did last year? Even being paid less on a deal is the kind of question that most sellers are going to ask themselves. So what does that actually look like in terms of the change because this is going to be a big part of bridging that chasm again is changing the kind of customers you go after. Changing the type of deals that you want. Early stage, you know win a deal at any cost, any customer will do. Any revenue is good enough. And being more that more mature later stage business, where you need to be more selective and invest your time and resources into the right kind of customers. Yeah, what does that look like from when we go back to that, educating the individual and getting them bought into, those changes like come.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it's really spending time to look at the individual business plans for their territories and looking at the accounts that are within the territory itself and the opportunities that we can potentially manufacture in the accounts that are in the territory.
Speaker 2And so, if you, you know, for our business, as an example, if you sort of look at what was happening in prior years, we were truly focused on any deal at any cost, and so we had small deals.
Speaker 2We have large deals, we had everything in between and I think the reality that everyone you know, you know, eventually reaches is that you're going to spend nearly as much time pursuing the $50,000 deal as you're going to spend pursuing the $500,000 deal. One of them is going to retire a lot more of your quota and pay you a much bigger commission check. So, yes, you can fill your pipeline with $10,000, $50,000 deals, and there's some merit to that because you sort of hedge your performance a little bit. You're, you know you're taking some of the risk out because you've got a higher volume or deals to work on. So if one doesn't happen, you have nine others to pursue. However, if you were actually redirect all of your efforts instead of spreading them thinly across 10 into a singular deal that's 500, and you have the right resources, investment and support from the organization to go be successful closing the $500,000 deal. You're going to have a much better result and ultimately have more scale, because your time and energy cannot be spent in three $500,000 deals instead of 10 $50,000 deals.
Speaker 1And that's where process and deal qualification is super important, because if you're going to invest your time into fewer opportunities, you better qualify out quickly. If that one's not going to close, exactly right, you've got to pick the right ones. That's it, and I suppose that sort of ties us over nicely. You know we've touched on people and the other area that you were mentioning was around process. So like from from your perspective in the organizations that you've led, what are the kind of processes that you've changed that have really helped move the needle and progress towards that? You know, 100 million plus.
Speaker 2I could probably spend hours on this topic, adam. It's one that's nearing gear to my heart and one that I'm very passionate about, but I'll give you a couple of examples for today's conversation. I think it's really important and you just touched on this right, it's really important to have a strong qualification process what goes into pipeline and then also what leads pipeline. I think it's very important that you have standardization around that. Otherwise you have different systems of measurement to determine the health of the pipeline, which, as a CRO, can be very disorienting because you don't know holistically whether or not you're in a good spot or you're in a spot where you're going to be challenged with achieving the number. So one of the first things that I look to do in terms of processes is ensure that we have standardization and alignment around what the process is to qualify things into pipeline and also to qualify things out of pipeline.
Speaker 2As I sort of think about process going into the deals themselves, we obviously use a lot of process to develop the value hypothesis. We have a point of view on the problem that we can solve and the impact that we'll have for our customers. You need a strong process around taking the customer through that journey so that they can reach the same conclusions that you may already have. That is the game changer between having a sales team focused on selling and having a sales team focused on being a buying facilitator. When you have that shift in mindset, you can drive different performance outcomes because ultimately, customers are convincing themselves they need to take an action instead of the other way around. So I think having a strong process around value hypothesis is also important.
Speaker 2And then, if I could touch on maybe a third for today, it would be a process around how we do deal execution. So what do we actually use as a measurement and guidepost to help get customers not only to the point of value, but to a point where they're able to understand what needs to happen, the internal mechanics of their own organization to be able to pull the trigger and make an investment? And there's a process around that as well. Really, there's, as I sort of look at, the operational rigor of the business. There's process everywhere. But these are the ones that are top of mind for me as I sort of think about how you start to develop a more predictable and repeatable go to market engine.
Speaker 1Yeah, I want to pull you back to that qualifying in and out of pipeline, because in my prep leading up to the conversation, one of the things that I noticed in your profile was, I think, one of your roles, one of the achievements is around near 100% accuracy with pipeline forecasting. Now, that is, you know, as a business owner myself, that is something that's plagued me is trying to get you know what's the pipeline look like and what we're going to close at the end of the queue, and I'm pretty happy with where we've got it right now in terms of what we predict will actually close, but definitely not with anywhere near 100% accuracy. So, like what? What was it Like? What was the key to the success, particularly in that role, or how that's evolved in more recent years that's led you to your forecasting being so accurate?
Speaker 2I think there's a few things that can help drive more predictable forecasting. One of the things that we've used successfully in a few of the roles that I've held, and we are using here at FirstUp as well, is something that we call customer verifiable outcomes. It's an action or a behavior that a customer has to exhibit before an opportunity can move from one stage to the next in your sales process, and this is really important because it takes the subjectivity away from the salesperson. Salespeople will have happy years. Sometimes salespeople will say I'm back. You'll see different behaviors from salespeople. Sometimes they're not even aware that they're doing that. Sometimes it's even influenced by where they are here today to get a quote up, and so you have emotional side, isn't it?
Speaker 1That's what I've found is people are emotionally invested in. Sometimes, like you said, they get happy years or the judgments clouded by the emotion behind and the need to close the deal.
Speaker 2Yes, exactly right. And so you want to try to remove as much of that emotion as you can from the assessment of where a deal sits as it relates to your sales process, and so by using customer verifiable outcomes, not only do you get the seller's view, you also get the customer's view of where they are in their buying journey, which is more important than where we are in our sales process. What's important is to ensure there's good alignment between the two and, of course, if you have the right framework in place, you can help drive greater alignment there. But that helps drive a very predictable forecast, because you're not relying on the salesperson's interpretation of the customer's signals, but you're actually relying on a customer signal to drive where something sits in pipeline.
Speaker 1What does that look like then? Give me an example of a customer verifiable outcome Like specifically what would that look like to move during different stages of the process?
Speaker 2Here's a really easy one. Customer contacts us, we qualify them in as a stage one opportunity and they say we very much would like to see a demo. We've heard something great about your platform. We'd like to see a high level introduction to the product. A customer verifiable outcome might be us requiring them to sign an NDA before we do the demonstration. What it requires the customer to do is take an action.
Speaker 2The person who's asked for the demo probably cannot sign that NDA themselves, so they have to go internal. They have to find out who does sign it. They have to engage in an internal process. We get legal to review it and come back to us with a signed document before they get something from us, and so it's a litmus test to qualify whether or not this is real. They'll put in the effort, obviously if they're serious, and if they're not, they probably won't. And it's also giving us an indication in terms of a customer verifiable outcome that this is now ready to move from stage one to stage two, because the customer has taken an action that requires some investment on their side, not in terms of dollars, but time.
Signal and Value Hypothesis in Sales
Speaker 1Yeah, that's a great example. I'm thinking about how I can adapt this to recruitment. What about later on in the stages? Because that's like a really good way to weed out what, why I'd call a tire kicker or window shopper. What are the signals later on in the process, where we're getting closer to the business end of the deal, where the emotions high for the rep and the importance to really know is this going to close? What are some of those signals look like.
Speaker 2I think it could be. If you're very late stage, it could be the return of a red line. So you've given the customer the contract, they've invested resources to provide some inputs on the terms and conditions, they've sent that back to you. That could be a customer verifiable outcome. It could be even just the simple introduction to procurement and or legal for those initial conversations around the contract as you're approaching, maybe before you get to contracting stage.
Speaker 2As you're approaching sort of the end of the cycle itself, it may be access to more people. So maybe one of our key stakeholders is the chief HR officer and so maybe we've not had access to that person during our sales campaign and as we get to the later stage of this opportunity, we ask our champion to get us access to that person so we can validate that we have the right sort of understanding of the business in the use case that's going to ultimately support the funding of their investment, and so whether or not that person is willing to do that is an indicator, and whether or not they actually do it is another indicator, and so those can be customer verifiable outcomes. I would say you know what? Yes, this deal should be in the forecast, because this person said they were going to do something and they did it, or no. Maybe this is not forecastable yet, because there's some hesitation from the person that we're working with to introduce us to the economic buyer.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, I love that. It's very it's very black and white and isn't in just removes any subjectivity out of it, and I suppose taking the reps perspective and just looking at the facts as a way of qualifying in and out. You mentioned as well about value hypothesis then, so with regards to the customer side, let's talk about that.
Speaker 2Sure, yeah. So I think, coming into a conversation with the customer, I think in today's modern selling world, it's no longer acceptable to kind of show up with a blank point of view and say tell me what keeps you up at night. Customers are looking for something more. They're expecting you to come to them with a point of view, whether it's flawed or not, in terms of how you can help them in their respective roles within the organizations that they're a part of. And so it's really important for us, as salespeople, to do our homework before we enter the conversation. That's what we call the value hypothesis.
Speaker 2We've worked with 40 of the Fortune 100 customers as it relates to companies or organizations, as it relates to solving employee communication and experience issues within those businesses. We have a point of view. 40 of the leading companies in the world are working with our organization. We understand the type of problem that they have and how to solve that problem. So as we approach the conversation with a new customer, a prospective customer, we should have a value hypothesis that we then work during the course of that campaign to validate with that customer.
Speaker 1And I suppose, going back to that bridge in the chasm, how much would that change? Because we referred earlier in the conversation about 99.9 to 100.1, that value hypothesis. Does that change significantly? Or is it just more being absolutely crystal clear and being able to articulate it and having the use cases to back it up and putting that into all the systems and process? Is that something that people then have to like, oh, we better start doing this now, or would you expect that that is already pretty well defined?
Speaker 2It could evolve. So I'm not going to say it won't in some situations, but it doesn't necessarily have to. I think a lot of organizations south of 100 million do approach their new customers with a value hypothesis. They may not have a formality around it, but likely they're coming to them and saying hey, we work with X, y and Z companies. We solve the following problems for them Is that of interest to you as well? So they probably do have some level of approach around value hypothesis in those initial conversations.
Speaker 2I think what happens as you start to grow is that the time you spend developing the hypothesis lengthens. So a lot of smaller organizations are excited to talk about their product. They start with that initial value hypothesis. The customer says, yes, I have some of those problems, or yes, that's of interest to me. And they immediately pivot to great let me show you a demo of the product. And so they jumped from quick high level, surface level validation of a value hypothesis into let me show you what my platform can do. We missed the opportunity to really get the customer to stand in their moment of pain, understand the magnitude of those problems that they're experiencing and then help them design a vision for the future, building a roadmap between those two worlds, influenced, hopefully, by the capabilities of your platform, so that the customer can make their own decision on how to go solve that problem.
Speaker 1And with regards to the value hypothesis, how much will that as that evolves and is developed and more clearly defined and you start to really think about what that is? How much of that has an impact in feeding into the product and development. Does that change much? When you get to that kind of stage, would you have to adapt the product to fit more of your value hypothesis or would you expect it to already be at that stage?
Speaker 2I think it absolutely continues to be an input to strategy direction and roadmap. I think in earlier stage companies the pathway between validation or non-validation of a value hypothesis into product innovation is very short. You hear something from a customer that quickly becomes something on the roadmap. As you get to a larger scale you still very much need the inputs from the community that you're selling to into the innovation of the platform itself. But the formality and how things move from customer input to roadmap item changes. There's more work that goes into validating that point of view from a particular customer, understanding the market impact and potential.
Speaker 2If you were to productize something that a customer shared with you and then, of course, putting together a very thoughtful approach to how you bring that to market, centered on the overall product strategy. We can't have the product sort of experiencing whiplash from one customer wish list to the next. It happens when you're a smaller company and there's some merit in that. When you're of that size, as you get to 100 million plus, you can't do that because you're going to have potentially a material negative impact on organizations that are already using the platform as you continue to respond to the market need.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, now it makes sense. You mentioned as well about like deal execution, so be really keen to understand how that, what changes you've driven from an execution perspective. We've referred about that more athletic type of sales rep, so, yeah, how's that impact in terms of how you actually execute on a deal?
Speaker 2I think as we get to the latter stage of the process with the customer, we really start to get into the deal construct itself. We've been more thoughtful about how we sort of set the stage for what that looks like. A lot of times is you're an earlier stage company working with larger scale companies like we do. Those larger scale companies will come to you and say here's our terms and conditions. You need to accept those as they are. We don't negotiate with smaller companies and you sort of are forced to accept things that are not necessarily good for your business long term.
Speaker 2Once you've established some size and you have critical mass, I think you're then in a position to push back and challenge those points of view, even from larger companies. We are the organization that is selling and delivering this service. We've structured our commercial framework to best deliver the experience that our customers desire to have with us. As an organization that is in our terms and conditions You're sort of having a different sort of mindset and approach to the deal construct itself as you work through the execution.
Speaker 2A lot of times in smaller businesses they decouple sort of the legal discussion quote unquote legal discussion from the commercial discussion. As you start to grow. It's really important that you bring those back together, because everything that you would concede from a term and condition ought to be monetized in the commercial framework that you're designing with the customer. As you start to move again sort of through the later stages of that engagement with a customer, the deal execution will change a little bit too, and you'll start to think about things more holistically. Instead of what's the necessary evil to be able to get to a signed contract.
Speaker 1Yeah, now that makes sense, rather than going through a process, agreeing a deal and a price and then the contract itself then makes that deal no longer look as attractive. Making sure that that's being brought into conversation earlier on. In terms of processes, then, are there any other key aspects that we've talked about value hypothesis pipeline, qualifying in and qualifying out, and execution? Are there any other key aspects of process which have been instrumental in terms of the success and the changes that you've driven in organizations?
Speaker 2It really spans a wide spectrum and, like I said, I could really spend hours on this. I mean, we are in the process of putting some new things in place that will enable us to better evaluate talent and bring them into the organization better processes for onboarding and ongoing education, better processes for career advancement by formalizing the career paths and developing the curriculum to help people develop along those career paths inside the organization. And so everything from the way that we manage talent to the way that we manage deals, the way that we handle renewals, to everything we do around escalations as customers run into issues, there's a process around every aspect of the business, some of which was in place, by the way, prior to getting to 100 million, the company didn't operate with no process, but some of those processes needed to be matured or enhanced. And then there were parts of the business where there was not a process, so we needed to standardize and put something in place so it would enable us to execute a sequence of events in a very predictable way.
Speaker 1Well, what about from customer success and expansion? So, particularly over the last year or so, there's been a big emphasis on expanding existing accounts. We've seen organizations shift customer success out the door and having the new business guys more focused on expanding into their own accounts based on a skill set and leaning into what they're good at. What's your view on that, particularly when you go in beyond that 100 million mark? How does it change from a customer expansion and perspective?
Speaker 2I think it becomes a little bit more scientific. So as you start to get to a larger size, it's really important to understand the white space of your existing install base. Also to understand the difference between what we might call an uplift, which is a price increase, an upsell, which is an expansion of users for modules that they're already subscribed to across cell, which is the introduction of new products or modules that the customer is not currently using. And then, of course, you have any potential upgrades if you're moving from one platform to another, which some organizations go through as they do M&A and various things like that. So understanding the different flavors of expansion revenue across your install base is important through the context of what the white space is that you can ultimately capture.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, that's. It's good to know we can move on to technology then and how technology can enable people and the processes then. So, from your experience to some of the organizations that you've led, where has technology played a part in achieving those milestones and pushing on beyond?
Speaker 2Technology is absolutely essential for helping us operationalize the process and then be able to measure our performance against the expected outcomes. So you know, most go-to-market organizations will have a revenue operations team as you start to get to the size and scale and they will look at the stack across marketing, across business development, across sales, across customer success and across delivery. In the professional services organization we're very much structured that way. We brought in a revenue operations leader about six months ago and we've elevated the function that was previously sales ops into a truly revenue operational organization with the technology stack to support our growth long term. Front and center to that, of course, is a system of record for your customer. We use a CRM system for that.
Speaker 2There's other tools out there as well, but pretty common to find a CRM system of some kind inside an organization that can be a sales force, a hub spot, etc.
Speaker 2So we have that as the sort of the lifeblood of our go-to-market is the customer system of record, and around that we have applications that help us understand the customer's growth opportunity, the customer's support needs, the customer's value, in terms of not only what the hypothesis was but how we translate the hypothesis through value creation into an ongoing measurement system of value realization, which is ultimately instrumental for us to secure the renewal Within our systems. We're using applications to ensure that we have a good pulse on early interest so, as customers are starting to take a look at the market, we get an understanding of who those customers are and we can start to position our platform in the context of things that they're looking to solve for. And we're also looking at things sort of at the other end of the spectrum, as we deliver great outcomes for our customers, so we have products throughout that spectrum really to ensure that our teams are well supported in being able to show up with a firm understanding of how we create value for each of our customers on the field.
Speaker 1And how is this something that you're adopting? More and more customers that we're speaking to, particularly on the pipeline generation side of things, making use of AI as part of their technology stack to help make their BDR functions more scalable, their customer acquisition more scalable and their position more scalable. Like, what's your view on that, and are you using AI in any of your tech stack?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it's a tremendous opportunity for us in GoToMarket to more effectively utilize AI. We are doing some of that today. So I look at some of the things that we're doing from a forecasting perspective. We're using artificial intelligence to help assess phone calls between our customers and our sellers so that not only can we see the customer verifiable outcomes, coupled with the seller's point of view on where we are in the buying journey, but we can also see the output of the calls and the conversations they're having with the customers, whether it's over the phone or it's over email, to see what kind of language the customer is using, what's the tone of that language, what's the sentiment in the language, how many times are they referencing our competition? All those kinds of things are automated through some of the artificial intelligence we're using to help us ultimately deliver a composite score that will tell us how healthy is this deal? It's in the forecast, but how healthy is it really? Is this deal going to actually close?
Speaker 2So we're using some AI. In that sense, I also think from a business development standpoint, we have an opportunity to continue to use more AI. Today we're using some AI technology to help us quickly assess 10 case, so annual reports that our customers put out to the investment community. If they're publicly traded. Those can be very lengthy and they can be time consuming for a person to read through that and truly understand what are the key initiatives that this organization has that we want to be calling on so we can use AI as a form of technology to read that for us and essentially surface the key insights that we need to have an effective and meaningful conversation with that customer.
Speaker 1And just going back to the point you're using about sentiment within conversations, that's a pretty common practice, particularly at discovery phase, for example. Are you utilizing that throughout the entire process or is that again just like using a goal, for example, as a platform? Is that something you adopt throughout the process or is it again more towards the early stage?
Speaker 2It's really throughout. Certainly it's beneficial in the early stage to understand some of the initial discovery and kind of get the customer's sentiment around, how they're feeling about a particular topic. But even as the cycle moves on, the customer's thinking will evolve as they're learning more from you and from your competitors, and so it's really important to keep your finger on that pulse, because you may start out the conversation with a customer feeling like you're in a really great position until they've learned something else, and then you start to realize that even though they're saying some nice things to you, the sentiment behind it is that you're actually losing, and sometimes you can pick that up in tone, sometimes you can pick that up in choice of vocabulary that the customer might use. But there's signals in there that sometimes the human ear is not necessarily picking up on, but the technology can surface for us and say, hey, wait a second, there might be a problem with this opportunity.
Speaker 1Yeah, Well that I think we've covered some really nice points there around people, process and technology. I think if I'm you know to move the conversation on if I'm a founder or a sales leader listening to this and wanting to take some insight from your experience, it'd be great to just understand more, like, on a broader basis, from from all the organizations that you've been a part of, that you've led, what are some of the key lessons that you've learned? You know speaking about bridging that, that chasm, again taking organizations up to beyond that 100 million mark, like what have been some of the key lessons that you have learned?
Speaker 2I think you know one that's top of mind for me now, and has been in prior roles as well, is that you know I think the expression is Rome wasn't built in a day, and I think it's really important to keep that in mind as you work through transformation, moving from south of 100 million to north, there's a lot of things that need to happen in order to get to that next milestone of scalability. You can't solve all that in a single day or in a single, you know, month or quarter, or even in a year. It is truly a multi year journey to get to sort of that next phase of your growth, and so I think you need to be thoughtful about that in terms of you know what initiatives you take on, how many of them you tackle at any one point in time and, probably most important, how you prioritize those. So I think it's very, very, very important to keep in mind that you know moving the mountain that's in front of you doesn't have to happen in one step. You can. You can simply move one pebble at a time and still get to a great outcome.
Speaker 2As I sort of think about you know some other lessons learned along the way working with organizations sort of in this growth phase. I think you know we talked about sort of the importance of capturing that tribal knowledge and ensuring that you can put it into the hands of many. I think that's very, very important and it's something that is a critical ingredient for success as you cross this chasm. I also think it's very important to have strong cross functional alignment. A lot of times, organizations have gotten to 100 million but have operated mostly in silos marketing that has done their own thing, sales has done their own thing, customer success has done their own, product has done their own, finances done their own, and maybe you've even achieved some level of excellence within those functional areas, but cross functionally, there's very little awareness of what's happening with the business, and so I think it's very important that you think as a leadership team how do you break down those silos that are preventing your business from being able to accelerate?
Speaker 1And like, like, specifically, what are things that you've done to, to, to encourage that cross flat functional alignment to, to, to and to improve it? Like what? What specifically have you done? Like examples?
Speaker 2Some of it has been, you know, hands on sort of workshops where we've gotten, you know cross functional teams together for two, three days, done some whiteboarding, really taking a close look in the mirror at how things have been working and, you know, coming up with a blueprint for how we change them going forward.
Speaker 2So some of it's been sort of sort of along those lines. Some of it has been process change. So, for example, you know how things get onto, the roadmap, you know, was different six months ago than it is today, and so we broke down one of those silos between product and sales by having an agreement on how things move from customer interest into pipeline or product roadmap. And yet, once they do, how do we keep customers informed of where we are with the development of those capabilities? None of that existed, and so we, we, there was a silo and we, we, you know we use the process to help us, you know, bring that silo down. So, whether you're using process technology or, you know, simply getting people together, I think there's a great opportunity to, you know, to eliminate some of the silos that you have within your business.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think sometimes it is just as simple as getting people in a room together, which can be quite a challenge in the world we live in now, where people are so spread out across the world. What have been some of the big setbacks that you've personally experienced then? So, coming into organizations that have achieved a certain level of success and scale and, ultimately, being that driver, have changed us on to the next phase of growth? There'll be individuals out there that are going through periods which are challenging and I'm sure we'll be able to relate what have been some of the major setbacks or specific challenges that haven't necessarily worked out.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's funny because when you look at things from the outside, oftentimes you see a linear trajectory of positivity. It would suggest that everything's gone well. The reality is it's a bowl of spaghetti right, and there's been a lot of ups and downs and challenges along the way. We always focus on and highlight the successes, but a lot of the key learnings and the magic that happens in organizations moving from south to north of $100 million is in the understanding of the failures, and there are usually quite a lot of them along the way. I'll just give a couple of examples.
Speaker 2You could potentially have a point of view on opening up a new market. Today we have success in several geographies. We might pick a new one and say, hey, that's the next frontier, let's go put a team on the ground, let's get a partner, let's go be successful there and ultimately realize that we're not set up to be successful in that market for a variety of different reasons. And so you can have those setbacks where you've made an investment, you've put real dollars, people, time, resources behind something. It just didn't work.
Speaker 2I think it's important that you have a system and a culture that allows you to fail fast, so that you can try those things to see if they're going to be successful and if they're not, just get out, recognize what it is, move on and learn from that failure so that you're not making the same mistake going forward.
Speaker 2Sometimes this can happen with leadership roles too. I know you work with a lot of talent I've had some experience working with talent in my career also and although you can learn a lot about someone going through a process, an interview process in particular, you can't learn everything about them until you actually work with them, and so sometimes you've done the best work that you can to validate that you've chosen the right leader for a particular segment of the business. You bring them on board and realize that was not the right fit, and so you have a setback there too. So I think what's really important as you work through this transition from south of 100 million to north is that you plan for the fact that not everything's going to go perfectly. Of course, celebrate the successes along the way, but plan for the fact that you are going to have setbacks and failures, and you need to make room for that in your growth.
Speaker 1With that said, with the organizations that you've been a part of, particularly over the more recent in your career where you've been that CRO kind of figure, is there any common thread that you've seen repeat within organizations, or is it all very much different depending on the organization? Is there anything that you say is that a common thread when it comes to scaling beyond that 100 million mark?
Harmonizing Best Practices for Success
Speaker 2There's definitely some commonalities. I know we touched on the value framework. I think that is a common thread that I've seen where organizations have taken a less formal approach to it and as we've matured we've had to take a more formal approach to how we establish value with the customer through the value hypothesis, value creation, ongoing value realization and ultimately, how you set up the team to be able to negotiate on value and not price. So I think that's sort of an important evolution. That's been sort of a common thread across the various roles that I've held. The shift in the profile of the seller, the sales athlete, has also been common. I've done this is now my fourth role as a CRO In every single one of the roles that I've held, the prior profile was very much centered on domain experience. The future profile was very much shifted to one focused on selling experience, and so I've seen that sort of as a common thread in the organizations that I've been a part of. And then I think probably the third one that I can pull on has to do with standardization. It's standardization across technology, process and people.
Speaker 2What I felt in a lot of organizations as they're making this move from south of 100 to north of 100 million in revenue is that they're doing many things well, but they're not doing the same things well. And so you'll get to different parts of the organization. You'll be like, oh, that's great, that aligns to a best practice, but the rest of the organization is not doing it. Or, for example, you have a team over in Southeast Asia. You go see what they're doing Wow, this is really great. The rest of the company is not doing it. And so you start to see these great things happening, but not at scale. And so that's the opportunity for someone in a role like mine to be able to look for those best practices, harmonize those across the broader organization, so you're not reinventing the wheel in every part of your business.
Speaker 1Yeah, and also I suppose it's easy to get people bought into it where you can see the evidence of it being successful in other business units or other parts of the organization and then adapting that change.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly, and a lot of times, adam, I don't have all the answers. When I come into organizations, I've seen various examples of success and failure, so I bring those experiences with me into the roles that I've held. But a lot of times the answers actually sit within not within my head, but within the organizations that I've become a part of, and so, like I said, part of my role is to uncover what those are and make those standard across the entire business so that we can benefit from the great work people are already doing here.
Speaker 1Yeah Well, listen, joe. This is all been really insightful and I think, to start to bring the conversation to a close, I think, more like on a personal level, I'm always interested to hear more about the individual as well themselves. So, like, one of the things I wanted to ask is more about like advice that you've been given which has helped lead to the career that you've had to date. Like what's been the best advice that someone's given you in your career so far.
Speaker 2It's such a hard question to answer because I've been given a lot of great advice over the course of my career. Every leader I've had a chance to work with has taught me something. Some have taught me more than others, but I've learned something through every experience, all of which has taken me to this point in my career, and there's a lot of people that I could be thankful to for all the great support and mentoring that I've had along the way. If I sort of had to boil it down to a couple of things, some advice I got early in my career was get to the why. A lot of times I was focused on the surface and some of the advice that I was given was make sure people understand the why. Whether you're driving change management or you're working with a customer on an initiative, make sure they understand the why behind whatever it is that you have to share. Maybe secondary to that was to ensure that as a leader, I'm putting the team first, and I very much have embraced the servant leadership mentality. Really ensuring that is, I think, organizationally. Although we typically design organizational structures in a pyramid, I actually operate the organization in an inverted pyramid, meaning that I am a resource that's available to every single person on my team and that I'm able to get into the field and spend time with the team where it matters.
Speaker 2So I think that's some advice that I got also earlier in my career that's carried me far, and then, maybe for really anybody, but certainly for people earlier in their career, somebody shared some advice with me. They said you're going to go through various chapters in the organizations that you are a part of. Some of those chapters are going to be easy and filled with success. Some of those are going to be very difficult.
Speaker 2The best opportunity for you to learn and grow is to lean in when things get hard. A lot of people, especially today, when things get difficult, they go look for the next role and they leave the company that they're a part of, and sometimes there's merit in that. I'm not saying people should not do that. However, some of the best learning opportunities I've had in my career are the moments when things got really difficult and I could have gone somewhere else and instead I stayed and I really leaned into that challenge in front of me and I got to a great outcome on the other side. So if I could think about advice, it's around the why. It's around serving the team first, and then it's also around really ensuring that you lean in when things get difficult.
Speaker 1Yeah, I can definitely relate to the last one, particularly with, I suppose, what we've all been through over the last 12, 18 months or so with regards to the market, where things have been really tough and now coming out the other side of it, where a green shoe start to appear and the opportunity presents itself and a lot of competitors have then dispersed and that's where the opportunity presents itself for those that have managed to endure the tough time. So yeah, I'd say, definitely resonates with myself. Final bit of a curveball question then Joe Do you love to win or hate to lose? Say it again, sorry Do you love to win or hate to lose?
Speaker 2Ooh, that's a tough one. I'm definitely I love to win. Losing is never fun for anybody, but I don't necessarily hate it when I lose. I learn a lot from the losses, and so it's not something I hate. It's not I will say it's something I do not enjoy, but I wouldn't say I hate it. I definitely love to win, I love to build winning cultures and, probably even more importantly than winning myself, I love to help other people win, and that's something that I'm committed to doing in every role that I have going forward.
Speaker 1Good stuff. Well, listen, Joe. Thank you so much. It's been very insightful to understand more about your philosophies, and congratulations to everything that you've done so far in your career, and I'm looking forward to you know, watching from the sidelines the impact that you continue to have with FirstUp. So it's a good look with all of that and thank you for giving up your time today to share your experience.
Speaker 2Excellent. Thanks, adam. This was a real pleasure. I really appreciate it, no worries.
Speaker 1Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and if you want more information about the podcast, head over to our website, Scale Woodstrive.
