Noah Marks & Ian Faison 28 min

Data-Driven Leadership


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Welcome to Riser RevOps. I'm Ian Fazan, CEO of Cast me in studios. And today I

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'm joined

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by a special guest, Noah. How are you? Doing great. Great to be here. Yeah,

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great to have

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you on the show. Excited to chat about Udemy and all the cool stuff that Udemy

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does for

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businesses and all the different rev obstacles that you all go through. So let

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's get into

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it. First off, tell me about how did you get into this crazy world of rev ops?

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Yeah, it's

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not a straight path. Probably date myself here, but it's like an old family

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circus cartoon,

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which just dots all over the place and just all mismatched. So I grew up in

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Seattle. I

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started my career in sales and enterprise software sold on-prem software, which

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came

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on a CD, much like our internet did back then as well. And it was a lot of fun.

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It was lucrative.

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It was a great intro into the technology space and enterprise stuff. It was a

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lot of fun.

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It was fast moving. It was merit-based. And I kept finding myself wanting to be

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in the

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conference room that where everyone was discussing what's going on with the

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business and what

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should we do? We're having some competitors that were eating our lunch and they

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weren't

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as good. And I felt myself drawn to solving that problem versus going out and

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finding

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customers and eventually got into some marketing stuff and did a side track

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into investment

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banking very randomly. Won't even go into that, but it was a dark period of my

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life

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for four or five years and then came back out and ended up connecting with

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somebody

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at Salesforce who was in sales strategy and had a background somewhat similar

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to mine

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and banking and so on. And I was looking to leave and look into something

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different. And

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with that background of technology joined in. And what I kind of found was that

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overlap

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between sales, experience marketing experience and finance skills was really

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applicable to

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the world of kind of sales-op, sales strategy. And it was really interesting.

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We were trying

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to solve the bigger questions, which I always was fascinated by. And it was

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something that

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was just emerging. This was maybe, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago and it was

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just kind

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of coming on the scene, this idea of what is revenue operations on think was a

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term then.

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And then subsequently I've just gone from the enterprise B2B, SaaS, pre-IPO

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startup and

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looked to scale those organizations and just iterated on the role along the way

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. And then

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it's kind of developed into this thing now, which is really kind of funny and

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unique,

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but nothing I don't think existed 10 years ago. But I think it has a really big

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impact

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on organizations. And I'm starting to see it as either the go-to-market

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strategy and

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ops or the rev-ops title appear all over the place, even in the structures of

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removing

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themselves just from within a business line, but reporting to the CEO or

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president. And

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so it's exciting. It's focusing on the biggest projects that the company's

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facing and how

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to make sure it happens. So it's a little bit creativity, a little bit business

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experience

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and a little bit of mouth. Let's talk Udemy. I'll tell you, we're huge fans of

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Udemy here

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at Caspian. I had one of our leaders send me a link the other day to Udemy

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course and was,

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"Hey, I would love to take this." And I was like, "Yeah, this is great. Swipe

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the credit card and

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go take it." We're a huge fan of learning here at Caspian, trying to figure

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that stuff out from

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the best people in the world to do it. Udemy for Business obviously is really

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exciting for

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companies that are trying to figure out how to do that stuff. Can you tell me

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about Udemy for

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Business and what size and scale that you see there in addition to Udemy the

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entire company?

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Yeah, it's been crazy. So I've been there just about three years. Udemy is so

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unique as an

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organization. It blends for-profit company with the concept and the culture of

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a nonprofit,

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because there's so much that's actually impacting people's lives. As you

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mentioned,

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I have people on my team that got to where they are by doing online training

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and cohort training

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to pursue parts of their career and their passions where they didn't have a

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background.

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And so the interesting points are Udemy started as really just marketplace by

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Erin

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Bali and a place for people to come to connect to instructors and instructors

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to be anywhere in

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the world that have expertise. And it just blew incredibly fast. It was huge.

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And then the idea

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was it came about maybe six, seven years ago, started- there was an interest to

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package this

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up and provide the best of the best courses to companies. And then very quickly

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, the company

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has grown nearly. It's almost closing out on $400 million a revenue. We went

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public a company,

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I guess a year and a half ago now, and the growth just found outstanding. For

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the price point,

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it's one of the best returns that organizations are finding for maintaining and

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attracting key

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talent, which is ultimately what our biggest cost line is at any company for

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the most part

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is really your talent. And the big companies are always scared about the

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smaller, more nimbular

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organizations, seeing their lunch and trying to steal their employees and beat

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them. And the

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small guys are just trying to compete with the big folks and trying to attract

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the right talent

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and get the skill sets. And so focusing in on actually for professionals, which

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is both what

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the marketplace does as Udemy business size does, certainly there's courses on

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beekeeping and bread

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making and all the rest of it that's out there. But really the heart and soul

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is for any professional

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that's learning to advance their career. And sometimes it's sponsored by an

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individual. You just go

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by course, sometimes it's by a manager, just for a small team. And sometimes

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the CEOs and L&D leaders

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and CHROs that are out there saying this is critical for the success of our

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business and the

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growth of our internal talent. So it's really exciting. It's the first real

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company I feel like

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there's a lot of meaning to, and it's attracted just a great group of people.

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And it's just been a

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lot of fun. And it's a fail like we're just scratching the surface of what's

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out there,

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based on what our customers are coming and asking us for.

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Yeah, it's great. We're a cast means a 25 person company. And as we're growing,

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one of the first

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things that I spent my formative years in the army, you do lots of training in

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the army. And we

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really wanted to figure out how to train our internal employees. But like, you

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just don't have

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time for that. Like you don't have time to like create an agenda and set all

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that sort of stuff.

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And the idea that, hey, we can send a certain course to a bunch of different

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people and then

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they can take it and then we can get together and talk about it. Oh my goodness

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, like what a

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revelation. I wish I had this one. I was an officer in the army, you know, such

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a cool go to market

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because you have so many people that find it, done it in the past. Employees

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can you can have

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that sort of bottom up thing that happens. And you can also have the top down

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motion. So I'm really

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interested in your rev ops or how do you approach rev ops for a sort of go to

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market like this?

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And how do you organize your team? I think what I love about enterprise,

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SaaS businesses in general is there is no one right answer. There's no one way

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to do it. Nobody's

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figured it out. There's so many talented people, for example, that went through

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sales force back

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in the day. But even a sales force, we made tons of mistakes. But there was a

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lot of wind behind

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our back and we made a lot of right decisions back then and the folks that

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certainly most of

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the folks that predated me and were more senior being had more influence. But

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the idea being is

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there's no one right answer. And so at any company I've been at, there's the

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same goal as how do you

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scale efficiently and effectively. And there's only so many levers you have,

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but ultimately it's

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which order do you pull those levers and when and what's the right time. And

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that to me is this

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algebraic problem solving that's really fun and allows every day to think about

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, okay,

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what should we be doing differently? How can we think about this? And for all

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the other folks that

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are in this world, there's a lot of great kind of support groups and so on. But

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we're all thinking

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and sharing ideas and trying to come up with what that next best thing. But

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again, similar,

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I think we're scratching the surface. The way that my realization is set up is

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really there's a

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couple different areas of because a functional operations role, which is

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aligned to a business

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lead. And so that person's responsible for working with the head of marketing

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or the head of sales

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or head of customer success. And the goal there is to be the person that knows

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as much about their

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business as those business leaders and to be somewhat of an advisor and provide

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recommendations based

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on the health of their business of what what they should be doing next. If they

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had one more dollar,

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where would they spend it? If they had one more hour, what would they do with

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it? And it's about

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figuring out what's the right element. And so we have those pieces, we have

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more operational

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sides of technology and processes. There's deal desk, enablement, deal desk

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enablements,

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functional ops, and the technology and processes. And so there's fundamentally

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eight teams

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within our GTMSO. And I said, there's probably room for a couple more. One area

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that we don't

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have yet is a product ops team. And I always say ops, but it's really, there's

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a kind of sometimes

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a connotation that ops is just more technology and administrative. And I feel

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like there's

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the value we try to focus on is really the strategy aspect of it, which is we

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have access to a lot

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of the data and what's going on. And the idea behind that is it's not just

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about delivering a

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dashboard. It's about just saying here, what does this mean? Which we'd be

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doing and why and be grounded

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in the data behind that answer. And so what's fascinating, what I like about

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this in the role is

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that when these organizations, these ops teams used to report into their

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business lead, you had

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this conflict of interest, you had this idea that if I'm reporting the sales

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lead, it's hard to

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challenge that person. And so the great thing about my role is that all I'm

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thinking about is,

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how do we increase the value of Udemy, not just one individual unit? Because

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every decision you

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makes then cascades through the other organizations. And so if you're going to

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do something in marketing,

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how does that apply to sales and the partners and customer success and product.

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And so thinking

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through all those lines and connecting it as far as listen, what our president

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wants to do,

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I'm trying to figure out how do we make that a reality. And or is there another

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option. And so

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it's exhausting on a daily basis because there's so many things out there. And

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it's an exercise in

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prioritization of what are the most important things we should be focusing on

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an exercise in

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alignment. I have this picture I use on a lot of slide decks when I talk about

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my team, which is

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just a bunch of geese flying in alignment. And then a bunch of geese running

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into each other. And

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it's that's fundamentally that because there's no one right answer, the idea is

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, are we directionally

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all going the same direction? And is everyone on board? And there's a statistic

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out there that

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1% or less than 1% of VC funded enterprise B2B companies make it to $100

10:27

million revenue,

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because it's really hard to scale. One of the ways I believe, and I'm not the

10:33

first person to say

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that, is that I think it's around the alignment of leadership and the

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communication across those

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teams and making sure they're all working to the one communal goal. And where I

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see a lot of challenges,

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particularly in companies I work with that are on the smaller side, is they

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haven't really got that

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alignment. And so each individual department heads down and folks on building

10:54

and they pick their

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heads up and they're very disparate. And so part of this is listen, we know it

10:58

might not be the right

10:59

answer, but it's definitely over this way. It's definitely not over that way.

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And so my team is

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aligned to different parts of the business, but ultimately the communal goal is

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what should we be

11:07

doing next to make the company scale? Because you blink an eye and all of a

11:11

sudden you double

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triple your size, and it's tough to go back and retroactively build something

11:17

to scale. And then

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once you get too big, that's when companies start to falter. And so there's

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this constant view from

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my team about what's out there, what we're thinking about next quarter, next

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year, and what you'll

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be doing today to make sure that we're successful then. Love the geese

11:33

alignment thing, because that's

11:35

what it feels like a lot of silly geese that align. Anything unique about your

11:40

RevOps

11:41

organization? I know like you to me, obviously very unique company you have. I

11:45

can't imagine the

11:46

website traffic that you all get just that alone makes it complex. I don't know

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if there's anything

11:51

I think every one of us that I've talked to every other leader and that kind of

11:54

approaches a little

11:55

bit differently about how they group things together. There is a definitely

11:58

unique aspect where we have

12:00

individuals, individual professionals coming into the marketplace and looking

12:04

just for a course or

12:05

something just for themselves and then thinking about also like how would we

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address that for

12:09

a Fortune 50 company that's interested in doing that. So there is an element of

12:13

balancing and trying

12:15

to underline the prioritization. So I think it's a little bit more complex than

12:19

just a typical

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straight B2B enterprise company that's focusing on that. There's also another

12:24

element to you to

12:25

me which I think is very unique, which is our product are instructors. It is

12:29

the fundamental value

12:30

behind the organization. These incredible instructors that are everywhere in

12:34

the world creating these

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incredible courses and iterating on those on an hourly basis to make sure that

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they're always the

12:40

best and up-to-date. And so there's this other element too. It's not just a

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product. Our product

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is people. So how do we make sure that those folks can be as successful as they

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can be? But as far as

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how is orchestrated not too different, I would say. I think if I was at a

12:55

different company,

12:57

I might think about it very similarly in terms of the overall structure. But

13:02

there is a piece that

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there's a whole other side to the business. One side is really more of an

13:08

individual professional

13:09

ones and enterprise professionals. You'd have to wear kind of two lenses as we

13:13

think about that.

13:14

And historically the company was kind of focused on two different things and

13:16

that's very quickly

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becoming one. And we're finding a lot of customers are like, why did you decide

13:22

to come into the

13:23

business side? And as a company, actually, you know what? Our CHRO took a

13:27

course three years ago and

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loved it. And so we started talking about this. You know what? You got to go

13:31

talk to you to me.

13:32

And more often than not, then that's the thing. So there's this whole element

13:35

of this marketplace,

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is this awareness engine. And allowing people to do things on their own. But

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then when it comes back

13:40

to their broader careers, there's a lot of transference back and forth. And so

13:45

trying to support that

13:46

both from thinking as a consumer model and as more of a B2B model. There's a

13:51

few companies out

13:52

there that do that. But I think ours are really tightly aligned. And so I think

13:57

there's this

13:57

transference of once you're at one, you're in a career in a company, but your

14:01

career continues

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outside of that company. So we have professionals coming and going as you know,

14:05

with one company

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and then moving on their own and then arriving at another company. And so how

14:10

do we make them

14:10

successful? And what's that future for them of like, here's their skills that

14:13

they have.

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How do we recognize that? Or how would a future employer want to think about,

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oh, am I looking for somebody's resume or am I really looking for somebody's

14:22

skill set? And so

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there's so many interesting ideas out there. And ultimately, there's a finite

14:27

number of resources.

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And so a lot of this is just the prioritization. And it's a different topic

14:32

than it might

14:33

other be at another company. But I think fundamentally, a lot of our works tend

14:37

to be very similar.

14:38

I would say that there's a couple of things out there, which is some in terms

14:42

of where

14:43

Oregon lines to, which is under the strategy, which under the president of the

14:46

company,

14:47

versus sometimes I've seen it under a CFO, or sometimes it's under a CRO. And

14:53

what I worry about

14:55

in those instances is you're not still focusing on the broader picture. The

14:58

president just cares

14:59

about the success of the overall company, not just a department. Finance is a

15:03

great gatekeeper for us.

15:05

It's good to have them not as part of my boss or my team, because I can always

15:09

use them,

15:10

whether they like it or not, as my guardrail to say, no, this is all the

15:13

finance and policy.

15:15

And oftentimes finance isn't thinking about the strategy of the business either

15:18

. So alignment to

15:19

whomever is ultimately making those strategic decisions. So I have seen roles

15:24

pop up and other

15:25

folks were the reporting in different lines. I would fundamentally disagree

15:28

with that. I think

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the more value is whoever is making the business case, that's where we're best

15:34

aligned, because we

15:35

can help provide the insight and the recommendations to make those decisions

15:38

for whoever that business

15:40

leader is. All right, let's get into our next segment. Rev obstacles, where we

15:44

talk about the

15:45

tough parts of rev ops was the hardest rev ops problem you've had in the past

15:49

year or so.

15:50

Man, it just it changes. I think the biggest one, and I think this applies to

15:55

fast-paced companies,

15:57

which is also why I love it. I can't complain because I think these are it's

16:02

the problems you

16:02

encounter because you're growing really fast. So you really can't complain

16:07

because they're good

16:08

problems. So it's constant prioritization and reprioritization as we grow. A

16:14

year goes by and

16:14

a blink of an eye. We think about when COVID hit. Okay, great. So how are we

16:19

going to think about

16:20

when that time period is and when that's going to end and how that's going to

16:23

impact the business.

16:24

And it was actually it was interesting. A lot of folks were taking time to

16:28

rethink about their

16:29

careers and retraining. And so we actually saw a huge spike in interest and

16:32

demand. And then we

16:33

had maybe about 30 minutes of calm, and then all of a sudden economic

16:37

considerations and wars

16:39

and everything started happening and supply blockages and everything is a

16:42

little bit different.

16:43

The challenge being is when you're building for scale and building over the

16:46

next year or two,

16:48

there's also so many of these unknowns, which for ultimately a period of maybe

16:52

like eight or

16:53

nine years prior, we didn't have a lot of major disruption, at least in the

16:57

technology space.

16:58

And now we're having it one after the other. And so I think the idea is, is

17:03

that still the

17:04

right direction? Is the geese still aligned and going? Is that still north?

17:07

That's I think probably

17:09

one of the biggest challenges that we've come through this. What's it look like

17:12

? I've been

17:13

able to have conversations with whom I would say are the smartest people in the

17:16

room. And they're

17:16

looking back and being said, I don't know, that's out of my control. There's

17:19

probably two people in

17:20

the world that know really the answer. And so just focus on what you know, what

17:24

you can control.

17:25

And so that's the idea is like there's so many shiny objects out there that we

17:30

can chase and

17:30

we can fix. My dogs and squirrels is another great example, right? You

17:34

constantly be chasing

17:35

off on those bringing it back down to like, what are real main priorities? If

17:38

we can do nothing

17:39

else, what does that come out down to? And I would say that's one of the more

17:42

persistent things that

17:43

I've continued to have to make. But certainly the macro conditions of what that

17:47

impact is going to

17:47

be. And with sales companies, you slow it down and it takes a while to grow

17:51

back up. And there's so

17:52

much potential for this business that I'm always more on the optimistic side of

17:56

saying, okay, so if

17:57

this whenever this starts creeping back up again, what levers do we pull to

18:01

help accelerate that?

18:03

And so that's the stuff that keeps me up a night or rather wakes me up early in

18:06

the morning. I can't

18:07

remember the last time I had to set an alarm. I wake up and it's like a million

18:10

ideas running

18:11

through my head, which is exciting. And as long as that continues, like this is

18:15

the right sort of

18:16

role for me. All right, let's get to our next segment, the tool shed where we

18:19

're talking tools,

18:20

spreadsheets and metrics, just like everyone's favorite tool qualified. No BB

18:25

tool shed is

18:26

complete without qualified. Go to qualified.com right now and check them out.

18:30

We love qualified

18:32

dearly. Go check out qualified.com. Okay, what is in your tool shed Noah?

18:37

We got everything. Let me tell you this, if you were a vendor and you didn't

18:42

sell to you to me in

18:42

the past six years, you missed out on a paycheck. We have a sales force

18:47

instance everywhere from

18:49

like gong, Marchetto, braise to sales loft, six cents linked to navigator. We

18:56

have gains

18:57

out on the sale that we have so many tools. It's more and less of a tech stack

19:00

and more of just a

19:01

name, a product and problem. We have it. This is a challenge. In fact, a few of

19:05

us got together a

19:06

few years back and we started meeting up regularly and we would have CEOs or

19:10

founders come and give

19:12

us their VC pitch not that give us the funding pitch, not the sales pitch. But

19:16

why should leaders

19:17

in the go to market and rev up space? Why should they be thinking about this

19:21

sort of tool what's

19:21

happening? Because what I found is, is it's really hard to keep up and I feel

19:26

like I'm not close to

19:27

as much anymore. And the challenge, if I want to go learn, I have to go talk to

19:30

somebody who's

19:31

going to refer me to their age, who's going to talk to this. And so how do I

19:34

quickly digest that?

19:35

And that's a challenge that we all face. I try to pick and choose and talk to

19:39

friends we're looking

19:40

at and who's the next greatest thing. I think there's a scratch in the surface

19:44

of those things.

19:45

And I really want to, I don't think we're using any of our tools optimally. I

19:48

think I hold all of

19:49

our tools to a greater standard than maybe they do themselves. I have

19:53

expectations. I think if I

19:54

leave this job, I may have to still build something. Because I think everyone's

19:57

kind of like gnawing

19:58

around the edge of it, but like kind of getting at the core of ultimately what

20:02

we want to know

20:03

as an organization is what's our number going to be next year? What's it going

20:07

to be our next

20:07

quarter? What's it going to be the quarter after that? And then you start

20:10

clicking into it and

20:11

like what are the things that contribute to that that we can actually affect

20:14

today to help us get

20:15

there? Whether it's on the customer side with customer retention or customer

20:18

health or is it on the

20:20

pipeline side? Is it on the handoff side between the inside sales and AEs? All

20:25

these areas to look

20:26

and I feel like everyone's sending me a bunch of data. But I want to know like

20:30

tell me who my

20:31

best like going tell me who my best reps are. Yeah, I get all the data like

20:34

tell me what a

20:35

best good great call looks like. I get all the data but then I have to go do it

20:38

myself. And so

20:40

there's a lot of circling in the market and I feel like there's going to be a

20:43

lot of a lot of

20:43

M&A this year in this space because there's limited real estate and there's too

20:49

many folks

20:49

trying to vie for that front system. We use a company called BoostUp for

20:53

forecasting. Prior to

20:55

that he's becoming Larry for a couple of guys. And I think that's kind of the

20:58

real estate because

20:59

that's what people are looking at every day. That's what your E-step is

21:04

reviewing to take a look at

21:04

is how are we doing on the quarter? How are we looking on pipeline? How are we

21:07

looking on coverage?

21:08

And then everything kind of backs into that and okay if this is down then tell

21:12

me why? Then how do

21:13

I break into that? Or if we need this then why? And so I find that very

21:16

interesting or the companies

21:17

are using Slack and just there's no interface. It's almost ask Alexa and you

21:23

get a response about

21:24

your account status or something like that. I love that idea because just

21:28

interacting with

21:28

a chatbot versus having to go to a tool would be a nirvana in my stage. So

21:33

there's a lot of stuff,

21:34

a lot of data, not as much prescription or somebody telling me what's what

21:39

really good is or where

21:42

I should review. But that's why I have an analytics team on my staff to go and

21:46

dig in and try to find

21:47

those trends. It's exciting. If you're in that space that's selling to the go-

21:50

to-market tech stack

21:52

it's going to be a wild ride. I think there's going to be a lot of cool things.

21:54

People are

21:55

starting to really get it. And so I'm excited about what there is. I just hope

21:58

that I'm aware

21:59

of what that is so that I can have those conversations with folks. And it's

22:04

tough. I get a lot of emails

22:06

as we all do in our inbox. And sometimes I do send an email back saying I wish

22:09

you all the best

22:10

of your own your career. I don't know what this means. I don't know what you're

22:13

saying. I don't

22:14

know what this terminology is. Don't use a script. Just speak in English. And

22:19

what core value are

22:19

you trying to do? You think I care about that you're trying to touch on. If

22:23

people did, I would

22:24

probably buy more stuff. Honestly, it's a travesty, but everyone's got to cut

22:28

their teeth. I guess.

22:29

Any metric that really matters to you that maybe it matters to other people,

22:33

maybe it doesn't

22:34

matter as much, but something that you are a couple of things that you single

22:37

out.

22:38

There's a metric that we kind of came up with using one of the vendors a few

22:41

companies ago.

22:42

And there was this element when I was starting sales strategy, which was I

22:46

realized that I was

22:48

spending more than half my time talking to the marketing team and focusing on

22:51

pipeline.

22:52

So what I realized very quickly is that what's happening today, what's actually

22:56

transacting right now, we have very little control. We have a little bit of

22:59

control for

22:59

but mostly in the negotiation aspect. But you really have control with things

23:03

in the future.

23:04

And so one of my favorite metrics is pipeline coverage. Coverage and conversion

23:08

have a lot of

23:09

interesting terminology depending on what you talk to. But in my world, it's

23:12

how much

23:12

pipelines you have today that's scheduled to close a certain time in the future

23:17

And how are you tracking to that? Because that's one of the best early

23:21

predictive signals

23:22

as to the health of your business. You can look at how your bookings, what your

23:26

revenue

23:26

look like right now. You can look at how people are generating pipeline in

23:30

general,

23:30

but then how are you looking out for future quarters? And in our rule, I think

23:34

that's one of the things

23:35

that we really have to focus on is trying to anticipate what that's going to

23:38

look like. And so

23:39

being able to extend your prediction model out there is something that I think

23:44

is very powerful.

23:44

So pipeline coverage is it predicting churn and predicting where we're going to

23:49

end a quarter

23:50

at with from a booking's perspective? Obviously my favorite number, if you're

23:54

going to go with a

23:54

favorite metric, because you have a great team that's doing that and they're

23:58

getting pretty

23:58

precise in figuring this out. And I would say the second, that probably is that

24:02

number two,

24:03

the number three would be it's this football field that I stole from back in

24:07

the finance days,

24:08

we're looking at an M&A and you're doing valuation, which is effectively just a

24:12

bunch of different

24:13

methodologies to identify a metric. And you kind of line them all up in

24:17

American football field,

24:18

and you kind of see where there's overlap. So if I'm trying to do a prediction

24:22

on where we think

24:23

we're going to end the quarter, I have about seven different methodologies that

24:27

help me determine

24:28

where I think we're going to end up. And using all of those to kind of triang

24:33

ulate,

24:33

what's that kind of band of where that confidence level is? That one is the one

24:38

that it's one of

24:38

the first things I put together to accompany when I go there, because it gives

24:42

me the all the different

24:43

inputs, whether the sales team may think it's higher, whether the analytics

24:47

says it's going to be

24:48

lower, you can all those together and see where the overlap is. And so I love

24:51

doing that. I call it

24:52

a football field. There's probably a better term for it, but it's a great way

24:56

to understand how

24:57

the business is shaping up. All right, let's get to our final segment here.

25:01

Quick hits, quick

25:02

questions and quick answers, quick hits. Now, are you ready? I'm ready. Number

25:08

one, if you could make

25:10

any animal any size, what animal would it be and what size? So being in the Bay

25:15

Area, I'm fascinated

25:17

with sharks and my wife from Florida, and I've become fascinated with all

25:21

igators. I would love

25:24

to take one of those and have just like a miniature, having a aquarium with a

25:28

bunch of tiny little

25:29

sharks swimming around. That would be awesome. That would show there's some

25:33

random stuff, but like

25:35

far like just personal entertainment to have something that's great white, but

25:38

it's six inches

25:39

long. So do you have a rev ops prediction for the future? So it's interesting,

25:45

the rev ops name,

25:46

I feel it was stolen because rev ops already existed. The new ops was this

25:51

organization

25:52

that sits in finance at rev ops team is the team that's usually doing like the

25:56

Rev Rec stuff.

25:57

So I shifted to the go to market strategy in ops, which I think is a better

26:01

representation. I know

26:02

why rev ops got there is because the revenue leader and the sales leader naming

26:06

convention.

26:07

I would say maybe it shifts more towards that. I would say the trend within the

26:10

teams is that

26:10

probably more of them aligned to the business strategy leader. And I think it

26:17

continues to grow

26:18

as an organization. I mean, I'm biased, right? Obviously I'm talking about my

26:21

job, but I think

26:22

in terms of what we're able to see across the business and the advice we have,

26:26

because of that,

26:27

I think is very impactful. And I think the folks that are coming into this

26:30

business come from all

26:31

walks of life, all variations and whatever. And I think that also adds to a bit

26:35

of the creativity.

26:36

I think just continues to grow. I think it becomes a mainstay. The tools that I

26:40

'm seeing that sell

26:40

to this are also, I've seen them growing too, because they're getting traction

26:44

in non-tech

26:45

companies that are starting to grow these roles. I think just continue growth.

26:48

Last question here. What advice would you have for someone who is newly leading

26:54

rev ops or a

26:56

go to market ops team? That's a great question. If you're newly leading, I

27:00

would say fundamentally,

27:02

I would start as a leader, I would go into every of the areas that is

27:07

generating

27:08

data for you. So if you have a pipeline model and operating model, I would go

27:12

back and reconstruct

27:13

those yourself. Because at the end of the day, you are accountable for what

27:18

they say. And back

27:19

when, again, another reference back to the finance days, but anytime you took

27:22

over a project,

27:23

you always started from scratch, because you don't know what was in there

27:26

before and you don't know

27:27

that's going to impact. And so as a leader, you need to be sure and you need to

27:30

be able to go into

27:31

the details into the weeds when you need to and challenge your team, because

27:35

you've been there,

27:36

you've done that, and they're still learning and for you to be a best guide for

27:41

them and helping

27:42

them along the ways to be able to challenge them. But if you haven't gone

27:45

through that path and done

27:46

it, you got to jump into the details. So in this spectrum, there's so many

27:49

different parts that

27:50

could be rolling into you. Chances are you didn't come from all of them. You

27:54

probably came from

27:55

one avenue. So really understand your weak points of where you have the least

28:00

amount of experience

28:02

so that you can get into the weeds. You can have the competent conversations,

28:05

because you're only as good as your team if you're not helping leaving the team

28:09

and they're going

28:09

sideways. So that would be my best advice for everyone. Noah, thanks again.

28:15

Great chatting with

28:16

you for our listeners. Go check out Udemy for Business. Go just get it for your

28:20

team. Get some

28:20

courses going. If you haven't already, you're going to thank yourself. No, any

28:24

final thoughts?

28:24

Anything to plug? Nothing to plug. It's great to be here. I love that there's

28:28

all these organizations

28:29

that are focused on this world and how to get people in there and how to be

28:33

successful. And

28:34

I would say the plug is to all those folks out there is make sure you're

28:37

focusing on the strategy

28:38

and not the operations I don't make sure you're thinking about what this means

28:42

and how to convey

28:42

it. Other than that, had a great time. Thanks for much for having me. Awesome.

28:46

Thanks Noah. Take care.

28:54

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